Fail blog

Oh dear. this really is a good website. Well, not exactly good, but the creative and ungrammatical (or should that be unsyntactical?) use of the word 'fail' all over the shop is only the icing sugar on the icing on the cake of amusement.

Just one to whet the appetite...

youtube fun

Sadly, like the rest of the Web, youtube can be a bit of a snare. However, these fine videos show a range of musical expression that has to be seen and heard to be believed!

Fazil Say does Mozart's Turkish Rondo with jazz hands

Lasse Gjertsen does something with no talent whatsoever!

Chuck Norris Facts

at the end of the trail this morning was Chuck's column at the exceedingly conservative site Worldnetdaily, which generally makes uncomfortable reading, whether or not you happen to agree with all, some or none of it!

When I searched under his name, I was reminded of ChuckNorrisFacts.com and the man's amazing powers. His column of 1 October, 2007 was already coming up on search engines.

Fact#
Chuck Norris' writing, like his biceps, can bend time and space.

Or, better...
Fact#
It is Chuck Norris' pen that is mightier than the sword.

web-trail joy

The wikipedia page on Imhotep (he of predictive text fame) was quite interesting.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Imhotep

From it, I came across an associated page that mentioned other Imhoteps, in order to avoid confusion...
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Imhotep_%28disambiguation%29

This led me to a reminiscence about the great cheapo black horror comedy, Bubba Ho-tep, which Kate and I had enjoyed and been revolted by a couple of years ago when milking the free offer at Lovefilm.com for all it was worth.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bubba_Ho-tep

Which, naturally led on to the link about actor Bruce Campbell, the kind of guy for whom the phrase "cult following" was invented.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bruce_Campbell

But of course, it was Chuck Norris for whom the phrase was actually invented (as the hilarious Chuck Norris Facts website doubtless says somewhere... a website that Bruce's fans have flattered with imitation, hence the link)
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Chuck_Norris_Facts

This page gave me the startling information that Chuck Norris was a Christian (praise God!). But now it was time to leave wikipedia for greener pastures...
http://www.chucknorrisfacts.com/
Bed-wettingly funny.

And thence to the man's own web-page, with its very own 'Christian Area', but not a huge amount else about Christ, rather more about his illustrious career and general humanitarian efforts for the last few decades (which are impressive, and show that philanthropy of time and cash is a very good thing for society and for those in need). And what a good old militaristic American patriot he is, too.
http://www.chucknorris.com/

I can't say I've thought a whole lot about personal violence and life changes after Christian conversion, but something about promoting extreme combat as entertainment grates with me. But hey, I'm skinny, English, intellectual, etc. What do I know?

chess and childishness

Slow as ever to take advantage of the benefits of technology and proper searching on the Internet, I have only just come across this excellent website (chessgames.com) of top-notch games, playable in a PGN viewer that seems to be built into the webpage.

Best of all so far to my infantile tastes are the King's Gambit adventures of Finnish GM Heikki Westerinen (and I shouldn't say it, as it's rather patronising, but I so love Finnish names!) who certainly doesn't worry about material, king position or being in any way sensible as he blazes around the board having a lot of fun. I wasn't brave enough to play 3. Nc3 or Bc4 in real games (following the advice of Joe Gallagher, I always played 3. Nf3), but it's nice to find someone post-1900 who is. This one is very nice indeed.

I also like his sartorial style (see the bottom of the profiles page...)

you know things are getting desperate

when your own blog appears in google when searching for Pilling or Bankole! I know I have some obscure interest, but really... Does this mean I'm going to have to do some proper research in a library now?

Internet Watchdog

These bits of software are extremely useful. It's not just kids who need protecting from the internet, it's adults, especially blokes, and especially me. How easy it is to idly find damaging and offensive material, and how easy it is to look just that little bit longer. The software we've got really needs to be updated to prevent access to a sub-species of pornography currently not in its database. Professional Wrestling, whose association of sexuality and violence is in fact hideous. I grew up watching the occasional episode of Sunday afternoon wrestling on the telly - kind of fun, kind of silly, kind of fascinating. But in recent years it seems to have got nastier (surprise, surprise) and involves more unnecessary soft porn than [insert tacky celeb magazine here]. Perusing the webpages of the wwe led to another Being John Malkovich moment (do we really need to watch it to know about its nastiness? What do we gain from that?) - except without the excuse that what I was could access pretended to be art or in any indirect fashion ennobling. I rather think that's called sin. Which is not trivial.

It can hardly help men who struggle against pornography (which I think includes all of us) to have such a cheapening of the body - of the person - on display at every turn.