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Superb work from the Australian Daily Telegraph (sadly, no relation to our own paper of the same name – it’s a Murdoch rag) in the opening line of their Mel Gibson “sugar tits” rant coverage:

Mel Gibson’s anti-Semitic remarks could have repercussions in a Hollywood dominated by powerful Jews.

Yeah, he’s totally fucked with the wrong international conspiracy there, hasn’t he? Good thing he didn’t talk trash about Gypsies, because, you know, those guys’ll put a curse on you at the drop of a hat…

Meant to post this a few days ago – in which Metro, everyone’s favourite urban morning freesheet, takes on the thorny issue of “the gay gene”:

While some say our sexuality is simply a matter of choice,others say it is determined in the womb and is purely biological. Now, researchers at Brock University in Ontario, Canada, say they have fresh evidence that being gay is a matter of our genes.

The mother’s body may regard a male foetus as ‘foreign’ compared with a female one, prompting a chemical reaction in her that gets progressively stronger with each male child. So, the more older brothers you have, the higher the chance you’ll be gay.

That’s right – “genes” is now a metaphor for “anything to do with biology whatsoever”. Of course, development is a complex interplay between a huge range of genetic and environmental factors, but you’d think it would be fairly clear to anybody that your mother’s immune system trying to fight against your growing foetus as though it were an infection is not something that’s coded for in your genes. But somehow, this drivel managed to get written, subbed, and cleared through editorial chain without anybody noticing that the first sentence of the second paragraph completely bloody contradicted the last sentence of the first paragraph (and the entire premise of the article).

Of course, it gets better.
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Armand asks what my five favourite social media are. My five favourite social media are:

Bloglines. Before Bloglines (or your RSS-bucket of choice) came along, clicking through to sites I liked was an experience accompanied by a delightful, tingling sense of anticipation, like a miniature Christmas morning where you’ve been very good and not felt, rattled or peeked at any of your presents. Now, thanks to Bloglines, I can keep track of tens, hundreds of sites without ever being surprised. “Hey, I wonder if there’s anything new on-” No. No, there isn’t.

Stop tagging things, for god’s sake. Some things don’t need to be tagged.

I haven’t been using it that long, but I think I’d liken the experience to being at a party where you can choose, based on the most up to date information possible, who to talk to at any moment in time. It’s clearly a desirable thing that solves common problems and frustrations. And yet, something’s just not the same. Without those awkward minutes of standing by a wall when nobody’s talking to you, or being blethered at for two hours by a stockbroker from Penge who wants to tell you about his dachshund’s irritable bowel syndrome, it’s not really a party. It’s more like a careers fair for thoughts. Still, Bloglines, invaluable.

WordPress. Possibly the most significant development in communication since the mouth. Well, my communication, anyway. My mouth, as well.

del.icio.us and something else. Don’t know what the something else is (this?). But I use del.icio.us to make the side whatsit on this blog work, and something else to privately bookmark other things. Furl. Something. But that’s more antisocial media, really. I think people often underestimate the extent to which it’s vitally important for the success of social media that lots of media remain unsociable, introverted and grumpy. Stop tagging things, for god’s sake. Some things don’t need to be tagged.

LiveJournal. I don’t use LiveJournal. But I like the pictures.

Shouting. Is great. Is shouting a social medium? Hmmm. Tagshouting. That’s my new idea. Next time you walk down the street, tag things as you walk past at the top of your voice. “TREE!” “POSTMAN!” “BLUE!” “OLDWOMANVOMITING!” If everybody does Tagshouting, it will be very very social.

And those are the five social media I couldn’t live without.

So. World War III seems to be starting in the Middle East. Both sides are caught in an vicious spiral of exponential retribution, with not simply a disregard for civilian populations, but an active will to target them. Those voices that could call for peace are stifled, either by the aggressive simplicity of the warmongers, or by internal pressures to prove themselves as big men; meanwhile, the international community has decided that their best option is to evacuate their people, run away, and hide.

So, given that, do you know what I think you need?

That’s right. You need to watch a man play ‘Don’t Worry, Be Happy’ on a theremin.

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Just for those of you keeping track of these things:

250 armed officers mounting a dawn raid on one house to arrest two people, shooting an innocent man, terrifying their neighbours, closing down entire road and subsequently tearing the house apart, all in full view of the world’s media = “doing what is necessary”

Quietly requesting that someone come to a police station, arresting him, questioning him for a few hours and releasing him again = “theatrical”

For some reason, I can’t shift from my mind the image of this government as an Edwardian lady of the manor - fanning herself furiously, fainting and then retiring to her bed for three days, because some grubby little oik suggested she might care to inspect the pig sties. “Oh, it’s all too horrible…”
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So several sources today reported that Marco Materazzi, defending himself from allegations that he called Zinedine Zidane a “dirty terrorist”, said:

“It is absolutely not true, I did not call him a terrorist. I’m ignorant. I don’t even know what the word means.”

Which, on face value, is a fairly astonishing example of Geoffrey Pullum’s bugaboo du jour, linguification: the rhetorical practice of taking a non-linguistic claim, then turning it into a completely different (and often false) claim about language, presumably on the grounds that it intensifies the first claim, or sounds fancier, or is funnier. (more…)

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Because I am lazy, I’m just going to cut and paste my own post-mortem of the inevtiable collapse from something I wrote elsewhere – others have offered their own takes on it, from blaming cheating and corruption to blaming crapness. Largely, I blame Sven, not so much for failures during this tournament, but for the wasted years when he had the chance to identify and sort out England’s failings – but didn’t.

But I also blame the hero culture of English football; the superheroisation of Rooney, with its signature tune of “Wayne can play anywhere you ask him to” (no he can’t, as has been obvious for at least a year); the naive belief that Lampard was “due a goal” because he was “still making good runs”. All teams have their talismans that the coach is afraid to drop, but English football sometimes seems unique in its desperation to have no plan B, its insistence that everything rests on the undroppable few we have solipsistically elevated to the rank of World Beaters In Waiting.

Anyway:

“This was England’s strongest performance so far, against a Portuguese team that passed the ball prettily but rarely penetrated the English defence. While Beckham and Lampard were anonymous, and Joe Cole was subdued, Ashley Cole and Gary Neville provided a threat down the wings, and Hargreaves and Gerrard made marauding runs. But still, Rooney looked isolated and frustrated alone up front, and very few clear-cut chances were created. Indeed, it was only after the introduction of Aaron Lennon and the subsequent loss of Rooney that England posed a genuine, sustained threat to the Portuguese goal. Once again, blind chance seemed to have more tactical nous than Sven.

It would be nice to think that Hargreaves’ tireless, man of the match performance was a vindication of Sven’s faith in him; certainly, it was the perfect response to his numerous, mindless critics. But if anything, it highlighted what could have been achieved had Sven actually had faith in him, instead of spending years playing him out of position as a last-minute spoiler substitute. That, even after those endless, tinkering friendlies, England still went into this tournament with a midfield that lacked any shape, tactics or coherence – when a solution was sitting right under the noses of Eriksson and McClaren – is a damning indictment.

Likewise, as the match went into extra time, it became increasingly apparent that Sven never had any intention of letting Theo Walcott play in this World Cup. With only two substitutes used against a tiring Portugal, Crouch isolated up front, and the excellent Lennon showing their defensive vulnerability to pace, it was madness not to throw the dice and bring on England’s only other striker. Instead, Sven did nothing, content to let the momentum shift away from England. Eventually, with two minutes remaining, he brought Carragher on for his supposed expert penalty-taking skills. It was the last ever decision that Eriksson made as England manager, and the level of judgement it showed stands as a fitting summation of his reign.”