Scroobius Pip - just a beard.

I mean it in the best possible way when I say that martylog's Mystery Fax Machine Orchestra are utterly terrifying. If David Lynch ever deigned to make another film where something actually happens, ideally a slapstick comedy, they'd be perfect for the soundtrack.

Though it was never quite going to match Saturday's shoot for sheer lunacy, I knew Club Mental was making a good job of living up to its name when I entered to find Bob from The Laurel Collective playing a round of Celebrity Cabbage Amnesia; he later went on to lead a typically irrepressible set while looking like some sort of paedo Santa. The Barnacles' sea shanties also went down a treat, though in the second half of their set they seemed to pull back from the brink and play some indie songs. And they weren't bad but...we already have lots of indie songs. Play more shanties! The shanties are ace!
(Though the Lark in the Park, once a pub of which I wholeheartedly approved, has now stopped doing draught cider. "Too many people were mixing it, being sick everywhere," apparently. Well, why not just refuse to serve snakebite then, you dopes?)

En route, I had learned that I am a direct descendant of noted Imperialist and filthmonger Sir Richard Burton, aka Ruffian Dick. Illegitimate, of course. Noted as a swordsman (in both senses), explorer and translator of the Arabian Nights and Kama Sutra, he also hypothesised the existence of a 'Sotadic Zone' ("a geographic zone in which pederasty was particularly prevalent and tolerated"), led Swinburne astray, and once told a clergyman "Sir, I'm proud to say I have committed every sin in the Decalogue." It would be fair to say that I'm rather happy with this news.
Yes, he did also help give a new lease of life to the Blood Libel but hey, nobody's perfect, right? And these days that's practically acceptable again anyway.

"Populist shows are promised as [the BBC] bids to shake off charges of elitism" - I really hope this is a bad taste April Fool story. The proles already have ITV - and I hardly need add that as far as I'm concerned ITV are more than welcome to all the sport they can grab. Because since there's unlikely to be anything worth watching on ITV1 until Primeval's second series, the chances of the inevitable, arrogant over-runs delaying any of my viewing are minimal.

And it's so sad that I'm so glad that you're so bad for me

Just as the Hammersmith Palais bows out, it is confirmed that the Spitz is also on the endangered list. I can just about accept the sacrifice of the Astoria to Crossrail, but all these others are being replaced with shops, offices and gastropubs - things of which I've never noticed any shortage in London.

Today's mind-bogglingly Wrong, I-really-hope-this-is-a-hoax website: Thank God I.... They believe that "by becoming grateful for EVERY experience in our lives we discover that we are in fact NOT victims of circumstance but beings worthy of love and a life filled with divine porpose & inspiration!" [sic. And if only they'd typo'd one further and said 'divine porpoise' eh?] Which is a stupid bloody idea, but one with some centuries of history; they've just managed to express it in an especially queasy form by coating it in modern self-help gloss and producing such charming images as this. They're looking for stories for various forthcoming titles, so do drop them a line if you'd like to see your contribution appear in such inspiring volumes as "Thank God I Was Incested", "Thank God I Have A Small Penis", "Thank God I Am Crippled", "Thank God I Am A Dwarf/Midget", "Thank God I Had A Miscarriage" and "Thank God My Pet Died".
(Of course, coming from a christian POV they do count as afflictions some things which others might not. I can imagine a few people I know might be able to offer entirely sincere contributions to "Thank God I Am Bi-Sexual")

If a German commemoration of the war dead in 1970 had seen a senior member of their government declare "The Sudetenland is German, it always was, it always will be," nobody would have found that remotely acceptable. So how come Argentina restating their claim on the Falklands in like terms is passing with so little comment?