Obi Wan Kenobi visits a car shop

Part of my life away from this blog involves trying to ensure that my website stays at the top of the Google charts for certain search terms, such as Paul Magrs and Iris Wildthyme. Fortunately they're not exactly common names, so it's not really rocket science.

However, over the six months or so the site's been up, I've noticed all sorts of esoteric search terms leading to me, including the following which (I have to assume) led to disappointed readers viewing my non-pornographic, sf-oriented pages and which will now hopefully be directed here instead.

• ice cream tattoo fat
  
• short story murderer inside the house at the end
  
• she squirts
  
• obi wan kenobi visits a car shop
  
• batman robin slash fiction
  
• faking a bus pass
  
• catastrophes of the sixties
  
• neckwear worn by fred from scooby doo
  
• britain france channel tunnel how long
  
• dalek slash robot come
  
• anais nin come as your madness party
  
• significance of beads through the sixties
  
• emma peel slash
  
• spiritual leader beatles sixties
  

I'm particularly taken with the whole concept of Dalek slash fiction...

Strange and beautiful

Possibly a slight exaggeration, but this little flash animation is the most mellow thing I've seen in ages. There's no explanation, you just click on things and drag other things and yet other things happen (or not).

I think there's only two levels, but who knows...

It's like poetry, only you can wear it

For Christmas, my friend Scott made me a t-shirt with a lyric from each of my favourite songs on it in a sort of word-square, which I thought was very sweet (particularly since he's not gay).

Anyway, I have the t-shirt on today and in a sad attempt to avoid fixing our web site I've typed out all the lyrics. Anyone who can name every track wins a bar of personalised chocolate from this site.

• I’m high as a kite i just might stop to check you out
• i dreamt about you last night and i fell out of bed twice
• eating up the scum is the hardest thing for Me to do
• lick my legs i'm on fire lick my legs of desire
• but she's not afraid to die all of her friends call her alaska
• whose car were you driving when it skidded and crashed
• they've bargained their bodies and their virtue long gone for a few dirty coins
• pushed around and kicked around always a lonely boy
• so messed up i want you here and in my room i want you here
• this is the room the start of it all through childhood through youth i remember it all
• this is our last embrace must i dream and always see your face
• i feel trapped by mutual affection and i don't know how to use freedom
• I'm climbing this ladder, my head in the clouds
• straighten my new mind's eye
• lonely is the room, the bed is made, the open window lets the rain in
• you are just a dreamer, and I am just a dream
• the wigglin guitars girl, the crash of the drums
• But my dreams, they aren't as empty as my conscience seems to be
• i have pains in my heart, they have taken my appetite
• your confusion - my illusion, worn like a mask of self-hate, confronts and then dies
  

Strangely Co-incidental Amazon Addendum

Should you ever want to complain to them, here's the Amazon customer services phone numbers for the UK (courtesy of an email which arrived from them the day after posting the last entry):

Amazon Customer Service can be reached from Monday to Saturday, 8am to 6pm

Phone:0800 279 6620 (from within the UK)
+44 20 8636 9451 (outside the UK)

Fax: 0800 279 6630 (from within the UK)
+44 20 8636 9401 (outside the UK)

I want my £4.43 back!

God but I hate Amazon.

I've hated them for ages now, ever since their 'Page That You Made' nonsense at the side of the screen started offering me the chance to buy soft porn videos for some reason, prompting my six year old son to run round the house like a maniac shouting 'Mum, Mum - Dad's looking at naked girls on the computer' at the top of his voice.

More recently though I ordered a pile of books and DVDs for Christmas presents at the beginning of December and paid for quick delivery (in spite of qualifying for free delivery). A week passed with no sign of the stuff, so I checked on the site and apparently my gifts were scheduled to be shipped on the 9th - sadly, this was on the 12th. So I mailed Amazon through their online form to ask where they were and got an email back telling me how to use the Help pages. I mailed them back (rather stroppily) and got an obviously stock reply saying the order was delayed but assuring me that it would be dispatched asap.

Which was fine. Except a week passed and no sign of my bits and pieces. So I raked through the Amazon site looking for a phone number and couldn't find one. I did find a direct email address on the web though - resolution@amazon.com - and mailed that. By this point it was the 19th of December and I was panicking, so I was a bit bad-tempered to be honest.

Wonder of wonders, I finally got a reply two days later, saying that the books were now on their way and that I would be refunded my postal payment. The books arrived on Christmas Eve as it turns out but I'm still waiting for the refund (although 'My Account' on the Amazon site claims that the refund has been paid).

And I want my £4.43 back. I'd like to claim it's the principle, but it's not. It's the money. I'm mean and I want to buy Lance Parkin's last Doctor Who EDA, The Gallifrey Chronicles. £4.43 will just about cover that...from play.com, obviously.

Stopping smoking can damage your marriage

Today marks the two week anniversary of my stopping smoking again.

14 days without so much as a solitary cigarette and, so far, it's going OK. I'm somewhat more grumpy than usual apparently, but I don't seem to be eating too much more due to Julie having laid in a constant supply of raspberries and blackberries.

Best of all, she hasn't asked me to pack my bags and go back and live with my parents nor has anyone suggested I have major psychological problems. So that's better than last time I stopped.

Still, it's not a pleasant experience.

Sigh...

Lord of the Rings: The Radio Play

I spent some of the money I got for Christmas on the 13 disc set of the BBC Radio version of Lord of the Rings and, I have to say, it's been quite excellent so far (Boromir has just died, Frodo and Sam have set off by themselves towards the Cracks of Doom and Pippin and Merry have just met Treebeard). The performances are consistently excellent, with Aragorn sounding considerably less kingly and more common than in the movies and John Le Messurier as Bilbo sounding exactly like sergeant Wilson from Dad's Army, down to the very slight pause before the last word in a sentence.

One interesting thing is that - just like Peter Jackson in the movies - this version completely ignores the entire early passage through the Old Forest and the meeting with Tom Bombaddil and the Barrow Wights. Now, I'm not terribly keen on that part of the book, and it doesn't have any impact on the rest of the story making it an obvious place to make a decent sized cut in the running time, but it does seem strange that - for a radio version which includes all the songs and poems sung in full - they felt the need to excise anything at all.

Still, it's very good and well worth buying, especially if you can pick a copy up cheap on eBay.

Hello

Welcome to my blog which will, in all likelihood, last for about a week and be updated twice before falling into disrepair. It's intended to be a place where I can rant about any minor matter which annoys me or witter on endlessly about how brilliant some Seventies children's TV show was or how good the latest TV science fiction spin-off novel is - and all without driving my wife to distraction.

We'll see...