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October 26, 2004

RIP

Obituary: John Peel

If only it were a joke.

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Posted 4:40 pm by Wrighty — Comments (0)

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October 19, 2004

“Insurgents now attack Americans 87 times a day.”

From Baghdad: A Wall Street Journal Reporter’s E-Mail to Friends

“It’s hard to pinpoint when the ‘turning point’ exactly began. Was it April when the Fallujah fell out of the grasp of the Americans? Was it when Moqtada and Jish Mahdi declared war on the U.S. military? Was it when Sadr City, home to ten percent of Iraq’s population, became a nightly battlefield for the Americans? Or was it when the insurgency began spreading from isolated pockets in the Sunni triangle to include most of Iraq? Despite President Bush’s rosy assessments, Iraq remains a disaster. If under Saddam it was a ‘potential’ threat, under the Americans it has been transformed to ‘imminent and active threat,’ a foreign policy failure bound to haunt the United States for decades to come.

Iraqis like to call this mess ‘the situation.’ When asked ‘how are thing?’ they reply: ‘the situation is very bad.’”

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Posted 1:08 pm by matthew — Comments (0)

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October 18, 2004

“Please be advised that I have forwarded this to the CIA and FBI.”

Dear Limey assholes

“Last week G2 launched Operation Clark County to help readers have a say in the American election by writing to undecided voters in the crucial state of Ohio. In the first three days, more than 11,000 people requested addresses. Here is some of the reaction to the project that we received from the US”

A few choice responses:

“My dear, beloved Brits,
I understand the Guardian is sponsoring a service where British citizens write to Americans to advise them on how to vote. Thank heavens! I was adrift in a sea of confusion and you are my beacon of hope!

Feel free to respond to this email with your advice. Please keep in mind that I am something of an anglophile, so this is not confrontational. Please remember, too, that I am merely an American. That means I am not very bright. It means I have no culture or sense of history. It also means that I am barely literate, so please don’t use big, fancy words.

Set me straight, folks!
Dayton, Ohio“

“You radical leftwingers are worse than the Taliban. I suggest you stand back and take a good hard look at yourselves.

PS: When do you propose to add Michael Moore to your staff of lunatics?
United States“

Whilst it’s obvious American baiting for comedy Redneck responces on the part of the Guardian, I find myself agreeing most with this reply:

“I suggest that if a particular reader of the Guardian would like to vote in America - would really like to influence the American election, say - that reader should move to America, become a citizen of the United States. Everyone is welcome here. Even the readers of the Guardian. But if you don’t wish to be an American, to live in Ohio, for instance, and participate in the American political process, that is too bad. Perhaps there is something wrong with you. Perhaps it is your teeth.
New York“

Except about the teeth.

(via MeFi)

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Posted 2:38 pm by matthew — Comments (0)

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October 13, 2004

“Where does the Archers fit into all of this?”

Which (Middle) Class Are You?

“What does it mean to be middle class in Britain in 2004? Does it mean you drive a Saab, live in Chiswick, holiday in The Luberon, shop online at Waitrose and happily shell out every year for Barnaby and Laura to go on the school skiing trip? Or is it a bit more complicated than that?”

Take the test and find out - I’m alt.middle : “The alt.middles are those lost, well-meaning but slightly cynical souls who really have only one thing in common: their inability to buy into anything about modern life with the same enthusiasm of the previous groups.”

(via Paul via Simon)

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Posted 8:23 pm by matthew — Comments (0)

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October 7, 2004

“Is this a conspiracy theory? Far from it.”

Fantastic animation, propaganda imagery and a calm British narrator.

What Barry Says (mirror) (24MB .mov)

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Posted 4:06 pm by Wrighty — Comments (0)

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October 6, 2004

“Customers who bought this also bought …”

“…As Steve Jobs put it at the iTunes Music Store launch, you may save a little money downloading from Kazaa, but “you’re working for under minimum wage.” And what’s true for music is doubly true for movies and games, where the quality of pirated products can be even more dismal, viruses are a risk, and downloads take so much longer.

So free has a cost: the psychological value of convenience. This is the “not worth it” moment where the wallet opens. The exact amount is an impossible calculus involving the bank balance of the average college student multiplied by their available free time.”

- Wired on The Long Tail, in which they show that Amazon made over 50% of their sales on books that physical book stores do not even stock.

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Posted 1:29 pm by Wrighty — Comments (0)

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October 1, 2004

I hoard bulldog clips

group hug // anonymous online confessions

“the idea is for anyone to anonymously confess to anything. it actually feels kind of good to know that someone will read it.”

More addictive than crack.

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Posted 1:56 pm by matthew — Comments (0)

© 2001-2008 Matthew Sheppard & Paul Wright