Billy Bragg in spat with John Lydon over the Queen's jubilee. Bragg does not come out of it looking good, sadly.
3:05 PM | link
Cameron Diaz: "Eating pork would be like eating my niece." I'll bet her niece is just thrilled with the implicit comparison...
2:47 PM | link
Soldier in trouble for singing "God Save The Queen" to a group of kids outside 10 Downing St while standing on his head. What a bizarre story. Perhaps he should've sung "Anarchy in the UK" instead...
2:43 PM | link
Slipknot singer hopes bourgeois, conservative new neighbours will accept him. "I'm an average guy," he says. And if you believe that... Still, if Ozzy Osbourne and Pat Boone can co-exist happily as next-door neighbours...
2:37 PM | link
Man goes to face court; court surprised to see he's still alive. Astonishing idiocy at work here. Frankly, I reckon they should rule it a mistrial...
2:31 PM | link
Confusion at Czech music awards show as the big prize is given to the wrong act. Can't wait for that to happen to the Grammys...
2:27 PM | link
Student cuts class to rob bank. Now why did I never think of doing that when I was at school?
2:24 PM | link
This is just magnificent: someone stole those posts that idiotic mayoress of Inglis put up with that proclamation banning Satan.
2:15 PM | link
Michael Moore's rockstar moment: how his publisher's threats to pulp his last book wound up making a best-seller of it. I'm not sure about how much I like Moore, something about him strikes me as slightly pestilential, but it's a fun story.
2:01 PM | link
Not only are they remaking Texas Chainsaw Massacre, they're cutting out the violence. Oy. History will not look kindly on Michael Bay, who's producing this unnecessary turd. The reason for the toning down? Because Bay is part of some committee devoted to reducing film violence. Given that his previous credits as Jerry Bruckheimer's directorial stooge include The Rock, Bad Boys and Pearl Harbour, that's just hilarious...
1:43 PM | link
Now this is just plain nasty and wrong. A woman knocked down someone in a hit and run, he landed in her windscreen, and she drove back home with him still there. He lived for two days before she finally went back and dumped the body. The article says she works as a nurse's aide; I'll bet she has one hell of a bedside manner...
1:35 PM | link
Judge sentences credit card thief to ten months without television. Meanwhile the lawyers are arguing this violates his constitutional rights (apparently your God-given right to watch shitty reality TV shows is constitutionally enshrined). Curiously enough, he can still have the radio and the Internet; if they let him have broadband, he can download all those episodes of the TV shows he's missing from Morpheus or something...
1:32 PM | link
Man fined for keeping 96 stray cats in his house claims he didn't know he had that many. I mean, shit, maybe he didn't count the exact number of them, but surely he'd have to have noticed there were a ton of cats parading about the place...
1:28 PM | link
The universe is beige, not turquoise. Funny that, I was under the impression that it was in fact black...
1:24 PM | link
Man allowed to be buried with his blow-up doll when he dies. Like the song says, true love is beautiful...
1:21 PM | link
Richard Ashcroft insane? Mark Morford reckons so. And I must admit that business of him singing that song he wrote during a press conference lends a certain credence to the claim.
1:15 PM | link
Censorship at the London Review of Books? Professor David Marquand unamused by the rejection of his Tony Blair-boosting book review.
5:54 PM | link
So much, it seems for the "snowball Earth" theory. Which is a theory (that 600 million years ago the Earth was entirely covered in ice) going back about 50 years or so, though I've only just heard of it.
5:16 PM | link
Bush loses international friends with his insistence on steel tariffs. For once the Government is not caving in and toadying to Washington, but promises to fight, since it affects us very badly. It's an easily solved fight, too; just remove our military support for the War on Terror™. Refuse to legitimise a war that wasn't ours to begin with. If Bush wants to ride roughshod and alone over the world and reckons he doesn't need anyone else, let him fight it alone.
5:09 PM | link
Michael Bodey comments on the ET classification change. Wouldn't it have been nice if people had got so worked up about the banning of Salo and I Spit On Your Grave a few years back?
5:03 PM | link
Stan Zemanek losing the plot down in Melbourne. Seems the change of scenery from Sydney to down there has done nothing to stop him acting like a turd. I've been assured uncle Stan's right-wing talkback bigot style is kind of a showbiz put-on, but I find it hard to believe...
4:57 PM | link
The Sun offers this rather extraordinary piece of self-congratulation. But while Rupert Murdoch's finest pat themselves on the back for their "responsible" reaction to the Sept. 11 attacks and ensuing War on Terror™, Roy Greenslade presents this gentle reminder of The Sun's behaviour 20 years ago during the Falklands War.
4:51 PM | link
Shatnerblog!!!!! And yes, Wil Wheaton is well aware that WILLIAM FUCKING SHATNER apparently has his own blog now too.
4:19 PM | link
Dr Seuss really a Commie propagandist. "The name of the main character Sam is also the initials of the secret Socialist American Militia. Coincidence? I think not." Fuckwit? I think so.
4:15 PM | link
American welfare recipients should receive less than minimum wage. Um... don't they call it minimum wage so that you won't be paid less than that by anyone? Is there a reason why the government should be exempt for adhering to minimum wage laws? Oh no, that's right, government gets to decide what minimum wage is, don't they. I can't wait for our welfare recipient-hating government to pull that stunt here...
4:10 PM | link
Man gets drunk, walks off cliff, loses leg, sues town. Can we sue the parents of people like him for raising him to be a complete shithead?
4:05 PM | link
And a big shout-out to fare-dodging Lev Lafayette. I actually kind of know this chap via the aus.culture.gothic newsgroup, where news of Mr Lafayette's victory over The Man were reported with appropriate glee.
4:58 PM | link
The odd phenomenon of the wakaresaseya, or "split man". In Japan, you can hire people who will break up marriages for you, or fire employees. Um. I know Japanese society prizes politeness and all that, but I can't help feeling there's something a bit chickenshit about paying thousands of dollars for another person to do dirty work of this sort.
4:47 PM | link
Office of Film & Literature Classification bumps ET up to a PG rating for its rerelease. Clearly kids in 2002 are more fragile souls than kids like me who first saw it in 1982/3. Oddly, the concerns were over some language used, but those same swearwords were present in the film in 1982 when it was rated G; and ironically, this is also the copy Spielberg toned down to make less offensive (digitally replacing cops' holsters with walkie-talkies, etc). The OFLC continues to baffle me with the rationale for some of its thinking...
4:29 PM | link
Baghdad bidding for 2012 Olympics. You can really see that happening, eh. Still, Beijing got it, so who knows... I daresay, though, that Iraqi athletes are probably praying they don't get it, given the Iraqi Olympic Committee is headed by Saddam Hussein's son Oday, who is apparently noted for taking a dim view of losers...
4:05 PM | link
Ireland to vote on tightening laws against abortion. Given that abortion is already practically illegal there, though, no one can quite work out why they need tighter laws against it...
4:01 PM | link
Judge dismisses case against video game makers accused of inspiring Columbine massacre. Hallelujah to that. Sadly, the next time something like this happens, people will still point the finger at the media for warping kids' minds...
3:59 PM | link
Amateurs inadvertently discover mega Bronze Age treasure haul after selling artifacts to buy themselves a stereo.
3:51 PM | link
New European Union regulation may outlaw bagpipes. I do believe I can see my cousin Heather dancing with joy at this news...
3:49 PM | link
Electronic edition of Domesday Book now unreadable. Seems the computers required to read the discs containing the electronic version made in the 1980s are obsolete and can't read them. Meanwhile, the original book itself is fine. Always suspected that digital storage had drawbacks when it came to permanence and accessibility...
10:31 PM | link
Woman receives compensation after bosses forced her to receive religious blessing. Ye Gods, as it were. For all that I fault the Salvation Army after working at one of their op shops, I have to admit they never tried forcing the beliefs on me. Then again, I don't recall them displaying much in the way of Christian kindness and charity at that shop either...
10:27 PM | link
Hitler was gay, new biographer claims. Anyone want to bet we'll now see a book suggesting he was Jewish, too?
10:22 PM | link
No homosexuals in Uganda, claims president. He made this statement while accepting some award for his government's anti-AIDS campaign; I'm just waiting for someone to suggest that whacking all the homosexuals is their way of stopping the spread of AIDS...
10:16 PM | link
Disney going down the toilet with pointless sequels. In other words, aren't they just succumbing to a trend that's been plaguing Hollywood for years?
10:09 PM | link
Pioneer 10 still putting it out, thirty years and 7.4 billion miles later. This is a story which makes me inordinately happy.
10:04 PM | link
Seems this character discovered the Ark of the Covenant 20-odd years ago. Conveniently, the page fails to tell us what he did with it after he found it.
10:02 PM | link
America invents shit-hot new bomb. Never let it be said that as humanity progresses, it doesn't keep finding bigger and better ways of killing itself off.
9:55 PM | link
Controversy over Harry Potter DVD: the rest of the world gets it in widescreen but Australia gets it only in pan & scan. Can we say "retrogressive step"? Since I don't have a DVD it doesn't affect me, but it'd be nice if Warner Bros would explain themselves here.
4:29 PM | link
Unfortunately, that "book copy protection" thing I posted the other day may not have been too far off the mark. Some of the rhetoric quoted here is appalling. It's as if librarians were dangerous terrorists and seditionaries rather than people doing a public service ensuring people can have access to books and information. And is it just me, or have these people never noticed that, for a CD or book or whatever to be copied and made freely available, someone has to have bought it first so it can be copied?
3:59 PM | link
Miramax to remake Seven Samurai. The words "Why, for fuck's sake?" come to mind instantly. What's wrong with the remake that already exists, The Magnificent Seven? What, for that matter, is wrong with the original? And what do they mean when they say it might be remade in a "contemporary context"? They going to try and wedge in some sort of War on Terror™ theme?
3:52 PM | link
Friends goes Chinese. Apparently the Chinese version will be called "Joyful Youth", though I thought it would've been "Comrades"...
3:49 PM | link
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