What's in a name?

It's always worth thoroughly proofreading your choice of website address...

• Who Represents is where you can find the name of the agent that represents any celebrity. Their Web site is www.whorepresents.com
• Experts Exchange is a knowledge base where programmers can exchange advice and views at www.expertsexchange.com
• Looking for a pen? Look no further than Pen Island at www.penisland.net
• Need a therapist? Try Therapist Finder at www.therapistfinder.com
• There's the Italian Power Generator company, www.powergenitalia.com
• And don't forget the Mole Station Native Nursery in New South Wales, www.molestationnursery.com
• If you're looking for IP computer software, there's always www.ipanywhere.com
• The First Cumming Methodist Church Web site is www.cummingfirst.com
• And the designers at Speed of Art await you at their wacky Web site, www.speedofart.com

Thanks to C.W. Smith for discovering this list of brilliantly ill-advised URLs.

Guilt

I am currently languishing under such heavy pangs of guilt the likes of which have not burdened my soul for as long as I can remember. I have to turn my head slightly away from the window next to my computer desk lest I accidentally catch a glimpse of the reflection of my shameful visage. Oh, cursed mirrors! Taunt me not with images of my own black, selfish heart! Oh, I am to suffer this merciless torment of guilt until the end of my days. Such a small temptation but - woe! - such a terrible price of anguish to pay!

But what can I have possibly done to inspire such pangs of guilt? I'll tell you what:

I am currently eating a flapjack the size of a brick

And it is fucking lovely.

Work life / social life: addendum

It turned out okay: people sort of noticed that I had left but were mostly so pissed that they weren't even sure when they left themselves.

Work life / social life

I spend my working day organising the movements of council repair men. I keep track of their appointments and I send them off on emergency jobs when necessary. I spend a lot of my day on the phone to them. They're a good bunch and I have a laugh with them.

On Saturday, one of the sparkies got married and he invited everyone from work to the reception. Now, I'm not a great one for socialising with work colleagues. Although I have gotten along well enough with most of the people I have shared office space with my relations with them have usually ended at the door at five o'clock. Over the last five or six years I have only formed two real friendships that existed outside office hours. So it was with a little trepidation that I decided to go to this wedding reception with all the repair men and my office manager. I felt that I should make the effort - team building and all that bollocks. But I get on with them all at work and I have a laugh with them, don't I? It would be fine.

Christ, I was bored. I sat or stood around supping my drinks, drifting between conversations, occasionally nodding or laughing but contributing nothing. They are all nice people but I had nothing to share with them.

And then the typical wedding reception disco thing started. Now, I love music - a life without music would not be worth living. And, despite being a naturally self-conscious (or "uptight") kinda' fella, I am capable of letting rip and dancing. Well, all right, I don't so much dance as spasm but that's not the point. I do dance but only if A) I am really, really into the music or B) I am utterly shitfaced. Sadly, on Saturday night neither were the case. It was typically inoffensive party music and everyone was loving it.

One thing I really hate is when people try to force you into having fun. C'mon! Lighten up! Dance! It's fun! Enjoy yourself! But if you just aren't in the mood then no amount of cajoling or bullying is going to make you feel otherwise. The more people try to get you to join in, the more you want them to fuck off and leave you alone. So, there they were all boozed up and giving it up on the dancefloor and trying to entice me to join them and have fun; and I was feeling more and more awkward and uncomfortable. And then I did something really stupid: I legged it. When no-one was looking I made a break for the door, left the building and walked briskly to the nearby bus-stop. I didn't say a word to anybody, didn't make an excuse and say goodbye; I just bolted.

I've probably cemented my reputation as a real miserable, uptight bastard who can't have a good time. I wish I had trusted my gut instinct and not attended the bloody reception in the first place. Roll on Monday morning.

This week I have mostly been listening to...

Last.fm is having a curious effect on my music listening habits. As you will have noticed from the side bar, Last.fm records statistics on how many times you listen to particular artists. Your profile page has an overall chart of the top 50 artists you listen to. I have become mildly obsessed with checking this list and getting my favourite artists to over 100 plays. "OK," I think to myself, "this week I got Plaid, Bonobo and McLusky to over 100 played tracks... This week I'll listen to Primus, Deltron 3030 and Herbaliser as they all in the mid-70s. Oooh, Luke Slater is a bit low on 48 plays..." And so on. I'm thinking that I have to get all the bands in the lower half of my Top 50 above a hundred plays before I can listen to Four Tet, Xploding Plastix and Amon Tobin again. And I really can't listen to Orbital at all at the moment because they are several hundred plays ahead of everybody else. It's insane behaviour, really.

Next week I will mostly be listening to Pink Floyd, Talking Heads and DJ Krush.

Thought for the day

I love online dating. Not only do you get to be rejected or outright ignored by women who don't even know you, just as in the real world, but you also get to pay for the privilege! It's good to know that somebody somewhere is getting rich off the back of my failure.

Peter Jackson: what the hell happened?

Does anyone remember when Peter Jackson made hilariously over-the-top horror films like Bad taste and Braindead with a wry and knowing sense of humour? Does anyone remember his surprisingly tender and intelligent drama about troubled teenagers, Heavenly Creatures? Does anyone remember his hugely entertaining, funny and smart Hollywood debut, the supernatural thriller The Frighteners? In short, does anyone remember when Peter Jackson was good?

OK, Lord Of The Rings was a mighty achievement - granted - and his sense of the macabre was well utilised in bringing Tolkien's epic to the screen. But how much you liked the films depended a great deal upon how much you liked the books. I read and enjoyed the trilogy when I was a teenager but my tastes have moved on considerably since then; so by the time Jackson's film adaptation arrived I was not especially interested anymore. They were extremely well-made movies and I enjoyed them but they are not films that I will return to again and again.

And then Jackson decided to become some kind of celluloid remake factory and gave us King Kong. Not only that, he gave us three fucking hours of it. The original King Kong from 1933 was a great story told in 100 minutes - what possible reason could there have been to double the length? OK, sure, the special effects of the original look very primitive compared to what can be achieved today but there is still plenty of striking and iconic imagery. I'm not saying that Jackson's version was bad - it was was much, much, much better than the 1976 remake - but it all felt so unnecessary.

Not as unnecessary as a remake of The Dambusters, though, but that's what Jackson is planning to do next. Yup, Jackson will produce a remake of the 1954 British war movie The Dambusters. Why, for fuck's sake? He apparently saw it as a child and loved it. Jackson says his remake will be "as authentic as possible and as close to the spirit of the original as possible". What's the point of that? Why not just watch the original? Why not just finance a re-release of the 1954 version instead of spending millions of dollars on an utterly pointless and cynical remake? Leave it alone!

Besides, in the context of a world currently shaken by violence and an ill-conceived war on terror, is there a place for such war films? Won't it simply reinforce the erroneous notion that "we" are fighting a clearly defined enemy rather than a widespread ideology with no single leader? Won't it simply make people believe that, hey, all we gotta' do is build some fancy weapon and go destroy some specific building somewhere and the world will be safe once again?

On many levels, I don't think the world needs a glossy CGI remake of The Dambusters. And I want the old Peter Jackson back, the wickedly mischievous little imp.