Business applications are the devil's work

Anyone who spends a significant amount of time managing great wads of data for a living will know exactly what I mean. Business applications are clearly designed by robots who will never have to use them, for people who spend 8+ hours a day pleading with the retched things to do as they're told.

Take the Oracle E-Business Suite for example. Firstly it's designed to run inside a web browser which, let's face it, wasn't the most forward thinking decision ever made considering most corporate users are obliged to use Internet Explorer on their AOL-style, walled garden systems.

As if that wasn't bad enough, it's a Java application. Yes, the same Java home users hastily disable altogether on their home computers to avert a psychologically damaging web based encounter with one of these toe-curling applets. The same Java platform human web designers abandoned back in 1996, 1. because everybody hates them, and 2. because they have the resource guzzling clout to bring a small country to its knees.

And every little task takes so damn long to carry out. Pressing the print button won't print a purchase order. Oh no, that would be too easy. There's a whole chapter of the manual dedicated to the procedure. Once you've done it a few times, you can do it with your eyes shut, but that's not the point. Why does it have to be so longwinded? Is the intention to evoke a sense of penitence? Are the Catholics behind it?

Make a simple mistake and there's no going back. If you've committed your changes you can't simply return to a field and, let's say, replace an A with a B. It's not uncommon to be confronted with ever so helpful tool tips like, "I'm sorry, you've made your bed and will have to lie in it (complete with accompanying Nelson-ha-ha). To adjust this field you must clamber up all five peaks of the Kangchenjunga mountain range with a ten tonne boulder strapped to your tender bits, leap through a dozen flaming hoops whilst balancing a kerosine-soaked chimpanzee on your nose and play the Lithuanian national anthem backwards with a bagpipe fashioned from a dodo's digestive system when you reach the summit". That's a genuine quote.

Fashionista favourite, 'random', is currently being shoehorned into every conceivable sentence in a vain attempt to sound chic, but if ever there was an appropriate occasion to use it, it's to describe Oracle. No two clicks are ever the same. Sometimes they'll action a change. At other times the same two clicks will cause your session to spontaneously terminate.

More infuriating still, getting a change to stick, or coercing a field to accept a keystroke, often requires you to enter a seemingly unrelated menu, untick a box, save your work, exit the menu, re-enter the menu, re-tick the box, save and withdraw from the menu again and finally return to the field you want to stick some trivial bit of information in.

To make doubly sure everything goes smoothly it doesn't hurt to offer up a small sacrifice (a hamster or goldfish is fine) to an effigy of the divine Oracle god.

Samsung branches out... into ED-209 style automated killing machines

Are you a dictator with conscription woes? Are your troops getting a tad too obstreperous? Maybe their trigger fingers are aching from all that rapid fire annihilation and their performance is suffering as a result? Why not usurp your whole motley crew with a legion of the all-new, bleeding edge Samsung isagRs.

In the blink of an eye the isagR will identify your adversaries, lock them into its sights and pulverize them before they have chance to shout, "Chicken Supreme and Buffalo Wings for two". I jest of course; the sentry's patented, precision pattern recognition and infra-red detection technology ensures not a single hair on a civilian's head will be ruffled.

Who'd have thunk Samsung (in conjunction with an institute of higher education) would be the ones to militarize Korea's demilitarized zone. Oxymoron anyone?

The Farepak who stole Christmas

I can't decide which of my two favourite recurring themes to file this under; it's a toss up between 'everyone is stupid except me' and 'unloading the emperor's new clothes'.

Prior to going bust this month, Farepak, was the best-known Christmas hamper and food/gift voucher supplier in the savings scheme market. The idea is that you set up a direct debit to issue monthly payments to the company, and then as Christmas approaches they issue you with either a modest hamper or the privilege of purchasing overpriced food or gifts from their own store. In effect they operate as a bank who profit from investing your money, but don't reward you with interest payments. Not only do they not pay you any interest, you actually pay them for sitting on it.

Believe it or not this bizarre scam appealed to thousands of people. Some thought it was such an ingenious concept they even signed up to become proselytising agents for Farepak. I expect they're having second thoughts now the company have gone into administration leaving them high and dry.

Of course it's atrocious that Christmas this year is going to be pretty much null and void for these low-income families (while the managing directors of this crooked firm stuff their faces with luxury mince pies and port at the Hilton), but you've got to wonder what they were smoking when they agreed to pay Farepak to take their cash. Even if they'd stuffed their savings under a mattress and let it gather dust it would still be there by the time Christmas rolled around. Rocketry it's not.

What have they got against grown-up money? The fact that it can be spent anywhere, or that - providing you don't shop at Harrods - 100 pennies equals a pound?

Lemmicide

'Cos I'm dead clever I've known for a long time that the popularly held belief that lemmings commit mass suicide as a means of self-regulated population control is a myth. What I wasn't aware of until now is the origin of this legend.

As it happens it's all Walt Disney's fault - well more accurately it's the fault of people who watched the 1958 Disney nature documentary 'White Wilderness' and didn't listen to the narration carefully enough.

The film depicts a herd of lemmings mindlessly plunging over the edge of a cliff and into the 'sea'. Despite being good swimmers, the critters are unable to battle against the 'tide' indefinitely - rendered immobile through exhaustion they eventually drown and are seen floating in a watery grave.

The rodents' behaviour wasn't captured in-situ, the 'sea' was really a lake in Canada and their leap of doom was all staged - the poor creatures were actually hurled to their deaths by the producers. Nice, though we shouldn't be too surprised considering how the same animation house dispatched Bambi's mum more than 20 years earlier.

As interesting as this is, the film has been misinterpreted. The narrator refers to the lemmings' compulsion to keep moving, not to engage in hari-kari. Their goal is to migrate away from their current densely populated habitat where food and space are scarce. They dive bomb en bloc into the 'sea' because they have poor eyesight and so mistake it for a lake which they would otherwise easily be able to cross on their pilgrimage to the Great Valley (TM).

"...and so is acted out the legend of mass suicide and destruction of a species it would seem to be", the film concludes.

This is the answer to the opening precis:-

"In this land of many mysteries it's a strange fact the largest legends seem to collect around the smallest creatures. One of these is a mousy little rodent called the lemming. Here's an actual living legend. For it's said of this tiny animal that it commits mass suicide by rushing into the sea in droves. The story is one of the persistent tales of the arctic and as often happens in man's nature lore it's a story both true and false as we shall see in a moment."

It doesn't mean an avalanche of suicidal lemmings intentionally sacrifice themselves to allow the Chosen Few to stretch their legs and swing a cat or two.

You can watch the critical segment of the film here and read more about the mockumentary here.

Flash some flesh and boost your blog traffic

Promoting your blog offline isn't easy; billboard and newspaper real estate is expensive, while radio and TV air - or screen - time is totally out of the question for most hobbyists. To really make an impact you have to think outside of that dog-eared old box marketing schmucks are forever jabbering on about.

So what would be the most cost-efficient and persuasive medium through which to foist my message onto the unsuspecting public? My own body of course, it's perfect! It's mine to do what I want with and - according to the local police force's log book - gets plenty of exposure.

As long as I wear my boob tube and never change my blog's URL I'll have a source of high-vis self-publicity for life.

Cash on Delivery

Here in the UK we have this half-baked, government-run get rich quick scheme called 'child benefit'. To qualify for this handout you don't need to be homeless, destitute or disabled, only to be the guardian of a child under the age of 16, or a 'big kid' under the age of 19 who is in full time education. Your first-born sprog is worth £17.45 a week and any additional ones earn a bonus windfall of £11.70 a week, all tax free. Child benefit isn't means tested in any way so a billionaire duke - in the eyes of the law - is just as entitled to it as an unemployed, wheelchair-bound single mother. I'm sure some of their ilk must claim it too as statistics reveal that child benefit is taken up by nearly 100% of the eligible population.

Rewarding strangers for exacerbating Britain's overcrowding crisis will cost tax-payers an estimated £10.153 billion between 2006 and 2007 (according to the HM Revenue & Customs Spring 2006 Departmental Report). It makes me wonder what other luxury items it's possible to claim compensation for. For instance, is there a champagne allowance I'm not aware of? I hope so - why should I spend my own money when I could liberate some of yours?

A stick sharpened at both ends

For years experts and amateur observers alike have been debating what does and doesn't constitute art. Personally I don't understand why the issue is considered by so many fence-sitters to be unfathomable, so I'm going to lay the matter to rest right here and now.

A composition is definitely not art if putting it together requires no creative talent whatsoever. There, done, it's that simple. If the opposite was true anyone and everyone could be considered an artist and the word would immediately be expunged from the dictionary; 'human' already covers every member of the populace.

Quintessential to this pretentious, manufactured is-it-isn't-it tug of war is Kira O'Reilly's Inthewrongplaceness. Let's get real here: this work of whatever consists of a deranged naked women hugging a dead pig for four hours. No Kira, it's not about "pigginess, unexpected fantasies of emergence and interspecies metamorphoses", it's a larger-than-life warning against the perils of 'care in the community' programmes. Yes dear, the experience may have left you "making fiercely tender and ferocious identifications with the pig as stand-in, double, twin, doll and imaginary self", but that doesn't make what you're doing art, does it.

Look out, the world's behind you!

If I was into drinking games and took a swig every time a CTU agent asked to be "patched through" to someone in the TV series, 24, I'd be velly, velly dlunk.

Another good trigger would be the occurrence of dodgy logic arising out of a complete lack of understanding of what goes on beyond US borders.

Here's a great example from series 2, episode 6...

Tony: "You're doing business with a known terrorist [actually he wasn't, though his fiance was] and you're going to sit there and tell me with a straight face you don't know what's going on?"

Reza: "I grew up in London. I'm marrying an American girl, a protestant. So, if you're going to racially profile me, you should at least get it right."

Tony: "You ever hear of the Finsbury Park Mosque? It's considered one of the main recruitment centers for Islamic terrorists in the West [don't know about 'main', otherwise this is true]. Our main targets are European Muslims with Western educations, passports and the potential to blend into Western society. And do you know where that mosque is located? Your hometown, London. So tell me, Reza, how's my racial profiling going now?"

Reza: "I want a lawyer."

Tony: "No."

So to qualify as a terrorist these days you just have to live in a city where known terrorists gather to conspire? Of course London is so minuscule everyone lives under the same roof and is on first name terms with the Queen's Corgies. I wonder if this scene raised any eyebrows amongst US audiences. I hope so.

Actually London covers an area of 609 square miles and has a population in the region of 7.5 million. That's a hell of a lot of terrorists! Maybe we should be gearing up to nuke the place in the interests of public safety.

Incidentally, the Finsbury Park Mosque line was cut from the UK version of the episode - if the Imam had spotted it he would probably have threatened to set Allah (pox be upon him) on Tony.

Firefox, patch me through to my post button. Go, go, go!

Faunal ponderings

I've been giving serious consideration to bat poo.

Gingerly entering the Twilight Zone bat cave at Chester Zoo my first thought was, how am I going to survive this experience without getting plastered with bat guano? (the collective, scientific term for the droppings of seabirds and bats). I wasn't so much concerned that bat droppings make excellent gunpowder - I'd lived through the Manchester bombing after all. I just didn't want to get any in my hair.

Once my eyes had acclimatised to the dark I scanned the walkways for evidence of aerial bombardment of the faecal kind, and found none. That's interesting, I thought; I know from watching nature documentaries that bats are known to do their business mid-flight as well as when roosting. In light of our hypersensitive compensation culture I reasoned that people wouldn't be allowed to wander about in this environment without the protection of a helmet. Therefore until someone can prove otherwise I'm going to make the logical leap that these bats are trained to only fire when circling above peopleless woodland areas. Any stray payloads are likely genetically analysed and paired with the offending bat, who would then be punished by way of withholding fruit and other privileges like watching old Batfink re-runs on TV.

Milling around the rhino enclosures I was struck by another conundrum. There aren't any Vietnamese Javan rhinos at Chester Zoo, but they do make reference to them on the information panels dotted around the viewing area. One fact bite said there were "only 2-7 Vietnamese Javan rhinos left in the world". Two to seven. Just think, a single drunk safari tourist in a jeep could wipe the entire species off the face of the planet! This is shocking and depressing in itself of course, but why be so vague about the population count when it can be totted up on two hands? It can't be that they are dispersed throughout the country, roaming the wilderness in difficult to reach, unmonitored areas because I know they are all located in the same habitat, the Cat Tien National Park.

Wouldn't you think if there were so few remaining members of a species in existence they would be known individually by pet name, electronically tagged and guarded round the clock by an elite squad of Green Peace, animal-defense guerrillas? At the very least they should be allowed to unwind in lavish palaces, freely partake in on-tap beer and assorted delicatessen and have their every whim satisfied by a team of doting soubrettes. While they were reposing I'd expect a throng of gynaecologists to be feverishly instructing their sperm in all the best fallopian tube navigation/ovum penetration techniques to improve their chances of procreation.

Find out what you can do to help at the International Rhino Foundation web site.

The food industry is contaminating our cyanide!

I can understand people getting upset about food manufacturers foisting noxious additives and preservatives upon consumers through the consumption of supposedly healthy products, but this is bordering on farce.

Here in the UK we're about to embark on a major trans-fat crackdown. Trans-fat is man-made gunk produced by adding hydrogen to vegetable oil (a process known as hydrogenation). It's added to a vast range of food to prolong its shelf-life and stabilise flavour; a home run for the food industry, but certainly not for your arteries, heart or waistline.

So to stay fit and healthy you'll be anxious to know which back doors these sneaky trans-fats are breaching so you can nail them shut, right? Are supermarkets injecting the stuff into celery and carrots after the witching hour to evade detection? Nope. Get this. They're found principally in all the products you'd expect to make you obese when consumed to excess, namely fast food, chocolate bars, cookies, creamy gateauxs and so on.

On which planet is it rational to wolf down a Triple Heart-Decimator Burger with a jumbo side serving of Artery-Annihilating Fries from McLardy's and then get your knickers in a knot because your diet contains fat E as well as fats A, B, C and D?

The shocking truth about Fox News

I've always assumed Fox News is a cunning and deeply ironic satire of the Russian revolution - in particular the plague of chronic propaganda which seized the Soviet Union during this era.

Watching the documentary, Outfoxed has convinced me otherwise. Apparently Rupert Murdoch's 24 hours a day current affairs station is a genuine attempt at serious news broadcasting. Who'd have thunk it?

I doubt very much I'm the first person to have jumped to this seemingly logical conclusion. Bill O'Reilly parrots the mantras 'Fair and Balanced' and 'We Report, You Decide' so frequently and with such stony-faced conviction that you can only assume he's an actor playing the part of a Goebbels-esque caricature. How was I to know that ordering his prey - I mean guests - to 'shut up' and cutting their mics whenever they began to rattle his prejudiced, narrow-minded little world view wasn't all part of the pantomime?

In the light of this expose, clearly I'm going to need to revise my theory. As shocking as this sounds, could it be that Fox's function is to act as a shameless vehicle for republican disinformation? If that's the case I can only guess that Bill and his cronies are having a laugh at the expense of their oblivious audience. Why else would they ram the bare-faced lie 'fair and balanced' down their throats at every opportunity and in the same breath proclaim that everything is honky-dory in Iraq and George Bush will keep them safe from the bogeyman?

Can you give me a call to discuss it?

What is it with people who refuse point blank to reply to emails? No matter how quick and simple your enquiry may be they insist on turning it into a conference. While it's true my dulcet tones can be equated to aural manna, is it really necessary to force me to employ them quite so often?

Compare the two scenarios:

1. At your convenience and only when you have all the pertinent information in front of you, you email a question to someone. They respond to your enquiry once they've dug out whatever paperwork they need to refer to in order to help you whenever it's most convenient for them to do so. You both go on with your lives with minimal fuss. End of story, everyone's a winner.

2. You email someone with a question and they reply with a request to phone them instead, leaving you with a general office number. Grudgingly you dial the number and a secretary or colleague of the person you need to speak to answers. You explain who you are, what you want and who you need to talk to. They sound miffed because you're not calling to speak to them personally and resent forwarding your call. You hear a ringing tone again, but either no-one answers or you're greeted by a robotic recorded message. You either leave a message, in effect kick starting a spiralling game of phone tag, or ring back later.

If they're in their office and pick up the phone, once again you have to go through all the kerfuffle of explaining who you are, why you're calling and worst of all pretend to be interested in the well being of someone who is likely a complete stranger, and will forever remain one after you've hung up. You wait a moment for this information to register and then the person on the other end of the phone goes off to gather any paperwork relating to your enquiry while you hum, twiddle your thumbs and dream up creative ways of torturing e-phobes.

Because they've misheard some of the information you provided they haven't been able to locate the paperwork your query relates to so they return to the phone to ask you to repeat it. You give them the correct details and off they toddle again leaving you dangling on the line for what seems like an aeon or three.

Eventually you resolve the issue, exchange pointless social niceties and go on your way... until the next time he or she - who has clearly learnt nothing from the previous encounter - insists on repeating the process.

There are endless reasons why in many cases it's more practical to use email; confidentiality for one. When I want to ask my fashion guru whether Estee Lauder Pure Pops Berry Twist, Maybelline Water Shine Liquid Diamonds or Dior Kiss Luscious Lip-Plumping lip gloss would better compliment my fuchsia PVC super slinky mini dress I don't want to do it out loud in front of a room full of people. They might get the wrong idea.

Who on earth does all this faffing around on the phone actually benefit? Are these people earning commission from British Telecom? I know poor old BT are in for a rough ride what with Skype beginning to take off, but this is ridiculous. Bash out a quick email and we can both tick it off our to-do lists. Am I right or am I not wrong? It's one of the two.

Tales from the crypt

Are you spoilt, narcissistic, have more moolah than you know what to do with, and ready to kick the bucket in the near future? Then why not consider investing in the ultimate family resting place? For a mere £200,000 (or $372,000) you could be the proud owner of a palatial mausoleum constructed using the finest white granite set in Florida's charming and picturesque Daytona Memorial Park. Thrown into the bargain is a selection of tacky window dressings and architectural trinkets to include Greek pillars, chandeliers, intricate brass fittings and family portraits.

This is the entry level model; the deluxe tomb will set you back £300,000 (or $619,000). You could feed half the population of Ethiopia for that!

Hilda Peck who already has her plot staked out has no qualms about exploring her tomb-to-be:

"I don't feel any different, I'm not dead. Someday, I will be, but I won't know it. Everything is already done and I know exactly what it's going to be like even though I won't know it when it happens."

Well why bother then you silly wench? Put the money towards doing something which will actually benefit the living.

Lowell Lohman who runs this horror show attempts to justify his customer's self-absorbed decadence:

"As you see the weather across the country with floods and hurricanes, I think that's had a lot to do with an increase in mausoleums. A lot of families just don't like to be in the ground."

Have they never heard of cremation? Arrange for your useless bodies to be torched and be done with it. It's not rocket science.

Ironically, here in the UK we've been contemplating the problem of overcrowding in graveyards. Some of the possible solutions proposed include exhuming abandoned graves and recycling the space, adding extra bodies to existing graves and tacking on headstone engravings to commemorate the most recently departed, 'double-decking' whereby bodies would be stacked many layers high and upright burials as opposed to more traditional horizontal ones.

We don't have enough real estate to house the living so why we're digging our own grave when it comes to the dead is beyond me.

The Big Book of British Smiles

There are times when I'm astounded by the cultural acuity of some our 'special' relations, the Americans. Recently I came into contact with a group of US exchange students through work. We met and broke the ice by making small talk, as you do.

"How are you enjoying your stay in the UK?" I enquired. A predictable opener, but you've got to start somewhere. After commenting on the miserable weather (fair point I thought), they turned their attention to the British populace.

"Your teeth aren't as bad as I expected them to be", one of them chipped in, and the others tipped a synchronised nod of agreement.

"What was she wittering on about?" my inner voice demanded of my grey matter (it didn't have a clue incidentally). The Brits are renowned for exporting football hooliganism, underage (and overage for that matter) binge drinking and grudgingly providing a cushy refuge for a parasitic, out of touch monarchy, but I didn't know we were in any way defined by the state of our knashers.

It would also likely be news to the highly astute Swiss guy who characterised us as follows...

Being British is about driving in a German car to an Irish pub for a Belgian beer, and then travelling home, grabbing an Indian curry or a Turkish kebab on the way, to sit on Swedish furniture and watch American TV shows on a Japanese TV.

And the most British thing of all? Suspicion of anything foreign.

(Swiped from an email circular I received. The original source is believe to be a British tabloid rag)

As diplomatically as possible I asked Dolly, Britney or whatever the air-head's name was what she meant. Big surprise! She couldn't tell me, despite being certain that the British somehow have 'bad teeth'. After an awkward, shifty-eyed moment or two we moved on.

Ever since I've been wracking my brains trying to come up with an explanation. In case you didn't know, the UK is part of one of the richest, most well developed continents in the world. Our health care system leaves a lot to be desired, but - believe it or not - we do have the odd qualified dentist knocking about the place (often in a luxury sports car though that's another issue). So why on earth should the teeth of British people be markedly different to those of Americans, or at least appear that way to foreigners?

My best theory so far concerns the dissemination of British history in American schools. Could it be that the Elizabethan period is the only one covered? Let me explain; it was during this time when the sugar trade spun into overdrive, having first been imported to England from the Atlantic island of Madeira in 1319. Because the availability of super-sonic jets, helicopters and speed boats was limited, any goods that had to be shipped from abroad cost a small fortune, and consequently could only be indulged by the upper classes and nobility. Said toffs got hooked on the stuff and - in the absence of sensible hygiene practices - sure enough their teeth turned black. Rotten teeth soon came to be associated with wealth, hence they were seen as a status symbol; something for the rich and poor alike to aspire to. This wacky fashion fad became so pervasive that people would actually have their teeth artificially discoloured to convey an air of sophistication. I kid you not.

In 1598 a German traveller by the name of Paul Henter popped round to Queen Elizabeth I's pad for tea. I expect he couldn't help noticing that her mouth had become a festering, abscess-filled cess pool populated with putrid stumps which presumably had once been teeth. Nevertheless he was more subtle than me (the wimp was probably fretting over losing his precious head to the blade of a guillotine) and so only cautiously pointed out that her teeth were black, "a defect the English seem subject to, from their too great use of sugar".

Could this single quotation account for the British bad teeth myth? Probably not; our propensity for sugar is apparent throughout history. For instance, Charles Dickens makes reference to it on 102 separate occasions within his collected works. Dickens' novels, which indubitably feature a statutory levy of dentally-challenged street urchins and undesirables, have since been turned into screenplays and exported to the far reaches of the globe. This can't have helped to diminish the cement-like bond between the English in particular and rotten teeth.

In any case, to make sure I wasn't missing some unique feature of the American way of life that serves to specifically protect the teeth of its inhabitants I set about comparing the World Health Organisation's oral health data for both the US and the UK (yes, it's been a very slow day). I shouldn't have been in any doubt; after all Americans consume more sugary, nutrient-deficient gunk than any other nation on the planet (their supermarkets are death-traps - I know, I've shopped in them) so why should we expect their teeth to be in superior shape? In reality they're not, evidenced by the fact that tooth decay is the second most common disease in the United States. Tooth decay is actually a huge problem globally, but that doesn't detract from the home truth that it's no less of an issue in the US.

To demonstrate this we can compare the DMFT (an indicator of the prevalence of Decayed, Missing and Filled Teeth) statistics between countries. For 12 year olds living in the UK this equates to 0.9, while the figure for 12 year olds living in the US is 1.75. The global average is a marginally healthier 1.61 (source). The significant caries index is a more recent yard stick used to assess the extent of tooth decay. The 'SiC' Index for 12 year olds living in the US is identical to that of 12 year olds living in the UK (when the figures for England, Ireland, Scotland and Wales are averaged) (source). This 'disparity' is hardly grounds for bundling us all off to Ripley's Believe It or Not! Maybe the abundance of oral cancer is a better predictor of general mouth ickiness, and the Americans run rings around us in that department. Nope, the figures don't bear this out either. The US has an incidence rate of 1.66 per 100,000 people (source), whereas the UK average is 1.035 per 100,000 people (source).

That's settled then. Americans are watching black and white period dramas set in Blighty in days of yore, and shrewdly intuiting that the closest we come to encountering modern dental care is wrenching out owie chompers with a length of string and a slammed door. Cor blimey guvnor, I think I've cracked it! Would you Adam and Eve it?

Of course we've been stereotyping the Americans for years so you could say we deserve what we get. I disagree; it's perfectly fine for us to pigeonhole them because our labels are founded on genuine observations garnered through personal experience. I won't apologise for drawing conclusions from the fact that a hefty chunk of the US electorate voted George W into office, twice!

Former Games Master presenter to front No More Nails' next ad campaign?

Long story short: Dominik Diamond was planning to join a fanatical bunch of Filipino Roman Catholics in a bona fide re-enactment of Big J's crucifixion, pencil-length nails and self-flagellation to boot, though had a change of heart at the 11th hour.

I had to re-read this story half a dozen times before it sunk in when I first spotted it over the Easter period. It's easy to imagine primitive tribes people - those who live in caves and resolutely believe you can drop off the edge of the globe by sailing to the place where the ocean appears to end - getting mixed up in this sort of voodoo, but surely not Dominik Diamond? Not the same chirpy, level-headed guy who used to introduce - with a wry, mocking smirk - the deadly serious, nerdy contestants who went on to battle it out in computer game challenges.

Perhaps I shouldn't have been so surprised; judging by the warm reception 'Passion of the Christ' received at the box office, a great many Christians whole-heartedly embrace the culture of sado-masochism. They may not all wear head-to-toe leather jumpsuits and shackle one another in chains, but they sure do love an unrelenting, feature-length, gory flogging.

Dominik explains why he decided against taking his wacky pilgrimage to the next level...

"At all times in this journey I have been guided by my God in ways I could never have predicted. Having experienced the humility of bearing my own cross through the streets, I felt my God wanted me only to pray at the foot of my cross."

Ah so Dominik was totally up for it; in fact, he was practically forced to rein in his enthusiasm as it would be immensely disrespectful to act against god's wishes.

It genuinely fascinates me that justifying his jolting reaquaintance with reality became a pride-protecting issue. Is there anyone out there (loony extremists aside) who wouldn't have been capable of empathizing with his aversion to having dirty great big nails hammered through his limbs without the aid of anaesthetic of any kind? It's not as though he wimped out of stroking the Andrex puppy for fear of being savaged.

Bridging the celluloid gulf

After attending another show biz party, my usual limousine failed to materialise and I was left stranded in town. What is a young luminary like myself to do when faced with such a predicament? Infra indignitatem aside, I decided my only recourse would be to phone for what the common people refer to as a 'cab'.

My butler is forever glued to that awful documentary revolving around the everyday lives of the *sniff* proletariat residing in cobble-clad Manchester squalor. 'Coronation Street' I believe it's called. One of the central characters, Steve McDonald, operates a taxi firm known as 'Street Cars' and I had seen his lackeys driving his fleet on numerous occasions. The phone number 0161 715 1515 is prominently displayed on top of each vehicle so unsurprisingly the digits had become firmly lodged in my psyche.

I tried ringing, but the number didn't seem to be in service, and after the sixth attempt I gave up. What kind of a taxi firm doesn't make sure their phone line is working on the busiest night of the week? A shoddy one! It will be an icy day in Hades before I call Street Cars again. Hmmff! I did get home safely that night, eventually, though wasn't best pleased at having to pay the pilot of my private helicopter double-time for dragging him out of bed to escort me back to the palace.

I'm not one of these poor deluded souls who can't spot the difference between fiction and reality so when Clark Kent's email address (ckent@digitalwave.com) flashed on screen in an episode of Smallville I watched recently I didn't reflexively reach for the mouse to make contact.

If I was a bit feeble-minded and disposed to slipping into fantasyland I might have committed the address to memory and fired off a plea for help in the event of an emergency. It must be pretty handy to have a personal hotline to Superman after all. Say, just for example of course, my life had taken a literal downward spiral and I happened to have a wi-fi enabled Blackberry with me I could tap out a quick email like so...

Hi,

I've got myself into a bit of a sticky situation and was wondering if you would mind lending a hand. What it is you see, I'm currently hurtling at breakneck speed towards the ground having fallen from the window of a hundred storey skyscraper and fear I could be in for a bumpy ride.

Anyway I'd be much obliged if you could see your way to catching me at the earliest possible convenience. I don't want to put you to any trouble of course, it's just that I'm wearing an expensive designer t-shirt and it would be frightfully disagreeable if I were to get it all blood-stained and messy.

Yours hopefully,

dreamkatcha

...and if I really had sent such a desperate message, which I definitely didn't, again just for example, I might get a response like...

From: Mail Delivery Subsystem To: xxxxxxxxx@gmail.com Subject: Delivery Status Notification (Failure) Date: Tue, 25 Apr 2006 07:39:59 -0700 (PDT)

This is an automatically generated Delivery Status Notification

Delivery to the following recipient failed permanently:

ckent@digitalwave.com

Technical details of permanent failure: PERM_FAILURE: SMTP Error (state 9): 553 5.3.0 ... User Does Not Exist

You're not buying a word of this are you? OK, I confess; I did ask Superman to swoop to my rescue, and because he didn't get my message (probably because he's since switched to Gmail) I wound up splattered in a gooey pool of my own gore.

What you probably didn't see coming is that, in a Sixth Sense-esque he-was-dead-all-along twist, I'm typing this from the grave.

For anyone who hasn't yet seen The Sixth Sense, a major spoiler precedes this warning.

With hindsight I really should have emailed the original and best Superman, Christopher Reeve, whose email address (v_swann@digitalwave.com) was also revealed in the same episode of Smallville. He'd have known what to do.

Despite having joined the ranks of the unliving, which isn't as much of a handicap as you might imagine, I haven't entirely lost faith in celebrities and their ability to respond to their fans' correspondence.

Take Homer Simpson for instance. He has an email address (chunkylover53@aol.com) and isn't afraid to use it. His courteous, convivial, wise and timely responses to fan mail bespeak a man of character esteemed with integrity and venerable lineage.

I think I'll add him to my AIM friends list.

The things you learn about deaf people from TV schedule coordinators

Having one of those silly little job thingies to go to first thing in the morning, I tend not to stay up all night watching TV. Forgo your "awwwws, really it's OK"; rarely there's anything good on during the wee small hours anyway so I don't feel too deprived. That said, under a blue moon anything can happen. The other night there was a film showing during the graveyard shift which piqued my interest so - having regained my composure following this reality-assaulting mishap - I set my computer to record it.

When I settled down to watch it the following night I was disgruntled to discover that the lower right corner of the screen was obscured by a prancing pixie. He was waving his limbs about vigorously and feigning interest in the plot by means of exaggerated facial expressions; sign language I believe it's called.

If it was subtitled, deaf, or hearing impaired people could read the script to stay in the loop, and everyone else could disable them to fend off unescapable eyeball ensnarement. But oh no, that would be far too logical; let's instead have a drama school drop-out rooted in the corner of the screen throughout the film thesping his way through an overly hammy rendition of Feel-Good Community Theatre for Junior Schools. Why the transition? Surely much of the dialogue (and a sizable chunk of screen real estate!) is lost in translation. I find it hard to believe deaf people prefer this mode of delivery.

Why is it you never see 'signed' films being shown during the day? Are we to believe that deaf people by virtue of living in a silent world are all somehow blighted by photo-sensitivity disorders, sleeping during the daylight hours and awakening from their crypts to watch TV as soon as the sun goes down?

Maybe when the TV execs get together to discuss the upcoming schedules they reason that they can get away with showing celluloid detritus at night because there will only be deaf vampires watching who, also by virtue of being deaf, have poor taste and so will watch any pap you throw at them.

The next thing I learnt about these deaf, jobless (they're unemployable too apparently - that's another reason they don't need to sleep at night) night-crawlers is that they're a bit simple. This I gleaned from watching a scene in which the protagonist went on a date with the girl of his dreams and didn't commit any major faux pas. He was so chuffed with the outcome he skipped around a field, jubilantly waved his arms in the air, and clenching his fists in triumph shouted, "yes, yes, yes, woo-hoo", or words to that effect, as a footballer might after scoring a goal. To convey this intricate and subtle emotion to the deaf (and therefore dimwitted) members of the audience, our screen-squatting pixie mirrored the actor's celebration, albeit with the vigor of John Coffee walking the Green Mile for the last time. Good job too; without him filling in the blanks, the hapless deaf viewer might have missed this nuance of the narrative.

And what about all the work which goes into creating the right ambience? If two lovers are on screen watching the sun go down from a candle-lit balcony overlooking an idyllic seashore paradise you can really do without having some muppet flailing about in the periphery like a drowning puppy. Look up 'mood killer' in the dictionary and I bet you this scenario will feature in the definition.

Despite his best efforts, the signer didn't ruin the film for me - I decided it was drivel long before he got the chance to boil the blood in my veins to the point of a lethal eruption, turned it off and unceremoniously deleted the file.

To be fair to him, he wasn't entirely without redeeming qualities; he did have the good grace to vanish from the screen whenever the cast fell silent after all.

Poisoned by aspartame

Approximately four years ago I developed a bizarre condition whereby, out of the blue, my left hand would start tingling. The sensation would rapidly ascend up my arm to my shoulder and then my face. 'Pins and needles' turned to numbness and because the movement of my limbs no longer bore any relation to my intentions, felt somehow alien. I may as well have been swimming through treacle with arms the length of Freddy Kruger's in the first Nightmare on Elm Street; the 20 foot long ones animated with strings as you would a marionette.

This was in fact the least distressing symptom. Visual disturbance in the form of a double or triple kaleidoscope effect followed leaving me unable to focus or discern one object from another. To me people were shadowy, featureless ghosts, and traffic a streaming jumble of over-exposed light. I became totally disoriented, couldn't think clearly, comprehend speech or the written word or draw more than a handful of words from my vocabulary when I attempted to speak. Relief came only from lying down in a darkened room for an hour until the condition abated.

When asked for her advice, my GP gawped at me as though I'd just beamed down from a flying saucer, shrugged her shoulders and hustled me off to the hospital to have an MRI, and later, a CAT scan. The results were handed to a neurologist to examine and he informed me that I didn't have a brain tumour, epilepsy or any other severe neurological disorders which would elucidate my symptoms. Reassuringly good news, you'd think.

Each specialist I saw was more perplexed than the last and could only refer me to someone else. Eventually one of them fleetingly, and with little conviction, suggested that what I was experiencing could be migraine. This surprised me because I'd never suffered from serious headaches so dismissed the idea initially. Migraine, to most of us, involves the sensation of having the skull trephined without anaesthetic. No cranial burrowing equals no migraine, right?

As the 'experts' were on the case, until then I'd resisted the temptation of tapping my symptoms into Google to see if I could diagnose myself - that and the fact that reading about being ill is the surefire route to making you feel ten times worse!

The results startled me; the mystery, inexplicable condition that had stumped so many medical practitioners turned out to be a textbook case of 'migraine with aura', the aura being the visual disturbance that can present itself with or without the incidence of any temporal stabbing pains.

I'd hit the jackpot and yet was seething at the same time given the incompetence of all but one of my doctors. As I delved further into the issue I came across a list of the most common migraine trigger foods/additives. Some of them I could discount immediately because they have never been a component of my diet, while others had to be eliminated one by one through a process of trial and error.

On examining the nutritional information tables of the food and drink I consumed, one substance I found cropped up more than most was aspartame; an artificial sweetener more commonly known as Nutrasweet, Equal or Canderel. It's used in practically everything designated as 'low calorie' or 'no added sugar' as it tastes similar to sugar yet doesn't have the same high energy value.

The most notable offenders in my case were Diet Coke, Cadbury's Options hot chocolate and Robinson's fruit cordials, so I relinquished them all cold turkey. Within a week I was feeling far less foggy-headed and my, daily by this stage, dizzy spells gradually tapered off. Two months into my aspartame fast I've managed to shake off my perma-drunk state and feel I'm finally on the road to recovery.

Looking back with 20-20 hindsight I can see that my dizzy spells escalated around the time I began cutting down my coffee consumption in favour of 'healthier' alternatives (Coke excluded of course as it also contains high doses of caffeine, oh and tooth-rotting acids too, let's not forget about those). I simply didn't make the connection between consuming produce that has been approved by the Food and Drug Administration (FDA), and other regulatory bodies around the world, and feeling like a paralytic zombie. Was that naive? Maybe I was so fixated on more dramatic explanations I had become blind to the mundane ones.

Sure, I'd read in the newspapers that aspartame had been linked with cancer, but what hasn't been these days? Today e-numbers are the bogeymen, tomorrow it could be oxygen. Before the dust has settled, scientists spin 360 degrees on their heels; everything bad for you is good for you.

I'm not qualified to judge the veracity of the evidence linking the use of aspartame to 92 independent health problems ranging in severity from mild itching to brain cancer, yet I know how it affected me personally and won't touch this toxic filth ever again.

Despite the fact that nut allergies only affect approximately 0.4% of the population, manufacturers are now legally bound to issue their produce with a health warning whenever there is the slimmest chance that it may contain a trace of nut. What will it take to make the same true for produce containing aspartame? Something along the lines of, "if it doesn't kill you, it'll make you wish it would!" should suffice.

You what?

I'd hazard a guess that you know at least one person who responds to everything you say with "what?", "huh?" or "eh?". In each case they heard you perfectly well the first time, though still insist you repeat yourself before commenting or answering a question. They know it and you know it.

I could cheerfully strangle them to death when I start to repeat myself and become tongue-tied, stutter or get my words back to front because I'm so preoccupied with mulling over how irritating it is to be repeating myself at all. More often than not after you've echoed yourself, the oaf you're speaking to will reply "oh" or "mmm" and then go on their way, or even worse, they'll ask a handful of irrelevant questions and then reply with "oh" or "mmm" and go on their way.

My theory is that they do this to buy themselves some extra time to respond. They seem to think that if they comment right after you've repeated yourself they'll appear sharp or 'on the ball', that they can think on their feet without 'umming' and 'errring'. I'd take half a dozen 'umms' and 'errs' over a "what?" every time. A few seconds of silence would do just as well; this isn't radio, we don't have to revere the 'dead air' taboo.

If you get riled, insist "you heard me the first time" and refuse to repeat yourself, they become defensive, reasserting that they definitely hadn't. They'll actually go so far as to appear insulted at the accusation. Well they're not likely to admit, "yes you're right, I did hear you, but can't shake this ridiculous habit of feigning deafness".

Try this instead: whenever someone responds to something you've said with "what?", pretend you haven't heard them and wait a few seconds. It's very likely they'll answer your question or pick up the conversation as though no 'whating' had occurred. They'll assume their "what?" hasn't registered and so won't feel obliged to wait for the repetition, or get caught up in a "yes, you BLOODY WELL did hear me", "no I didn't" battle of wills.

Turning the tables to wind them up can be more fun still. Pick a topic that you know is close to their heart and broach it with them. For instance, if you know they're waiting anxiously for an important call from their partner or potential boss-to-be (if they've been for a job interview recently), try opening with "so-and-so called earlier". When they reply with "huh?" as though they'd just woken up from a hundred-year slumber, hastily glance at your watch and tell them you're late for a meeting of some sort. As you dash out of the door, turn back and shout, "I'll tell you all about it later".

Throw them away; the future's legless

Last week I visited Monkey World in Dorset, as you do when nothing else can slake your yearning for simian-based entertainment. You know what the first thing which occurred to me upon walking into the park was? (I mean besides, "gosh, what a lot of monkeys there are"). The sheer number of people scooting about in motorised wheelchairs. I stopped dead in my tracks and scratched my noggin in wonderment at the sight of this - partly because I thought it was particularly appropriate considering the setting, and partly because if I hadn't I might have lost a toe or three under the wheels of one of these pedestrian pulverisers.

"Hang on a minute", I mused, "there are more disabled people here than there are in the whole of the country, what's going on here?"

It then dawned on me that 75% of them are probably perfectly able-bodied, just unbelievably lazy. Being the inquisitive type I looked at the park's disability policy - it stated that electric wheelchairs are free of charge to anyone in possession of a disabled ID badge. Does that mean anyone who isn't disabled can rent them too as long as they pay a fee?

As each death-cart swept past me in a cloud of dust I began scrutinising the occupants as though I'd somehow be able to discern the genuinely disabled from the merely indolent. It stands to reason that the idea of effortlessly zooming about in an electric chair rather than using those antiquated, posterior-protruding limb things would appeal to a large segment of the population when you consider the lengths some people will go to avoid exerting physical effort of any kind: double-parking on busy narrow streets right outside cash points causing mile-long pile-ups to save walking 20 yards is the best example I can think of (though I once saw a documentary which showed a morbidly obese woman driving to the end of her garden to collect her mail!).

The fact that lots of the people at Monkey World in electric wheelchairs were also obese doesn't really provide any clues as to their authenticity - if you're wheelchair-bound then you're not likely to be getting much exercise - as if the disabled didn't have enough to contend with! I won't stoop so low to use the "some of my best friends are paraplegics" gag, but I am on good terms with one wheel-chair bound person, which is why the disdain some able-bodied people show towards their fully-functioning legs winds me up so much.

This particular theme park is tiny yet they still lay on novelty trains to get people from one end to the other - trains populated mostly by young, fit people. So why would you stop there? Why not hire your own personal carriage to escort you to all the exhibits, toilets and snack bars in between?

I don't visit theme parks very often so I wouldn't know how common this is elsewhere. Maybe you do and would. If so feel free to share your experiences below.