to sit through all the adverts, trailers for next year’s films, studio & chain logos and branding sequences, no smoking warnings and every other procrastinating insert at the cinema is, coincidentally, almost exactly the time it takes you to realise that you’re not that bothered about seeing the film after all. If you can even remember what it was you came to see. Rule #1327 in the book of alienating your customers: bore them to death with animations of your tired little logos while making them wait for the product.

Here’s a free clue for the studios: nobody will ever watch a film just because it was made by Universal (or Paramount, or whoever it was - like I fucking care). The only thing I would ever want to see of Universal is one of their executives face down in a trough of pig shit, gently expiring in a deeply ironic fashion. He who pays the piper should at least shut the fuck up while they’re playing.

of British Energy could leave Britain facing an energy crisis in ten years’ time as the current nuclear power plants reach the end of their lives. This represents an excellent opportunity to justify a large programme of investment in renewable, clean sources of energy (simultaneously reducing our reliance on imported fuels). So what will the country do now?

Well, it’s obvious, isn’t it? We’re going to build more nuclear plants! Within ten years, we’ll have reactors based on new and untested technologies in every beauty spot in Britain (most of them in Wales, Scotland and the north, of course). After all, what is Windermere if not a giant source of coolant for a power plant? And if that isn’t sufficient, we’ll probably drop a bomb on Birmingham so that everyone can warm themselves around the irradiated remains.

After all, we know that no situation really becomes a crisis until we’ve done our best to make it into one: * Transport crisis? We’ll wreck the railways, push up costs and prices and then pump billions into new roads - on top of dismantled lines! * Important Earth Summit coming up? Hey, let’s invite the business leaders who got us into this mess along to help! If we give them more opportunities to make money, maybe they’ll clean up in gratitude. We can always cut costs by leaving the Environment Minister at home! * Privatised utilities going to the wall, needing bail outs from the taxpayer? Let’s privatise the Tube! Let’s have more PFI deals in the health system! * Middle East looking unstable? C’mon, we’ve got to help the Americans start a new war in the region! There’s no “crisis” until WW3 is underway!

I’m a rationalist, get me out of here…

So what’s the RIAA got its frilly knickers in a twist for? They’re seriously worried that millions of people with taste will want to pirate the tired old shit they’ve been peddling for the last five years??

Oh yeah, I so want an illegal copy of Britney’s new album. Dude, I wouldn’t want a copy of that shitsweat if it was the last fuckin’ album on the planet. Hey, hands up who wants a bootleg of a 12 year old hick squeaking about how she’s not yet a woman! (Britney, you’re not even fucking human. You’re navel fluff grown in a lab.) “Aw man, you mean I don’t have to pay fifteen quid for this?!” “Yep, straight up, have this one on me!”

“Hit me baby, one more time…“ Shit, just the once, Brit? I guess it sounds a bit catchier than “Pound me repeatedly with a nailed baseball bat until the blood sprays across the faces of the pubescent brats so wired on Pepsi they’d jig around to a road drill.”

Jeez, and they refer to this as their “intellectual property”, right? The only time intellect came into contact with that teen jizz queen’s record was when the Phillipino shift worker at the pressing plant put the CD insert in the case. I could make more intelligent noises with a bad case of wind.

“Hey son, don’t copy our intee-lech-tual property, y’hear? It’s wrong. It’s bad for you.”
“Gee, OK mister.”
“Look, just t’make sure, we’d better spend billions developing a secure protection technology for these CDs, in case you have a sudden brain aneurysm and try to copy them.” Well sure, go ahead. You’re wasting your money though. But hey, you’re the experts at that, right. After all, you signed the little jizz queen in the first place and spent all that money marketing her. Dude, I could wipe my ass on this fifty spot and contribute more to mankind.

“Hey Jim, how could we best invest some money in nurturing talent?”
“Well, we could listen to these demo tapes and maybe find the next Hendrix.”
“Hey fuck it, let’s demand another album from Coldplay! Let’s get Aerosmith back in the studio! And make sure the product is copy-protected!” Aw heck, you mean I can’t copy that either? Well sheeeit. Guess I’ll go listen to the washer instead. Hey y’know, this machine sounds better! Has anyone signed it to a five album deal yet? Jeez, we’d better strictly enforce the copyright on this spin cycle, otherwise every file trading service on the net will have a recording! Man, they’ll be deleting their Coldplay MP3s to make space for it.

, reader number eight!!

…Why are we bothering?

SOAP our RSS pipe and put your access point over the portal, baby! Watch as we commoditize the info-commons with XML-parsed transforms! Why-fi when you can metafilter your streaming Vorbis peers via XML-RPC?! Yeah baby, yeah!

Honestly, it beats us how some people earn a living. What is this job where you get paid to sit around at home blogging bulletins from your bedroom and putting your browser history online? Or is it a European grant? Either way, can we have a cut?

(Y’know, we were all set to take the piss out of Mr. H. and leave it at that, but then he goes and writes something so sensible that we kinda feel he’s just like us and want to buy the dude a drink. But we don’t do that for Londoners, so tough.)

, a city built, as everyone knows, by the Jefferson Starship out of “rock ‘n’ roll”. Afterwards, there was a Latin American recital, broadcast live on radio, by Mr. Marconi.

BB finds it hard to take seriously the words of a man who lacks the wit to carry an umbrella in Manchester when it’s raining. So it was extremely chucklesome to watch Charles Allen, Chairman of the Commonwealth Subcommittee (Ponchos and Condoms) or something, getting piss-wet through while making his speech at the closing ceremony of the Games. As he praised Manchester to the skies, the skies of Manchester continued to piss down on him and his sleek, slicked Armani suit ever harder.

This is just hilarious, the apotheosis of breathless, clueless and brainless Internet journalism. That it comes from the Grauniad is a little saddening, but we guess they have to employ someone to fill the pages of their little supplement.

Apparently: > “The last time hackers declared war against government, massive denial of service attacks were launched against the White House website, which had to close down for a day. The FBI website also had to shut down for several hours as defences were rebuilt.” Think of the web sites, won’t somebody think of the web sites?! My ghod, the unbelievably studly and awesome power that these crazed hackers wield! Why on earth does the USA keep boasting about its military superiority when they have this 3l33t underground who can stop entire web sites working?! I mean, advanced missiles are all very well for taking out enemy bus stations and the odd foreign embassy, but those hacker dudes could dismantle the entire western economy in just 24 … decades! Quail at their terrifying abilities: > “It then automatically uninstalls any firewall around that computer or network, replacing it with malicious code that completely wipes the hard disk.” My ghod, none of our home pages are safe!!

BB is equally astounded that a national broadsheet could run with this donkey crap. Here’s the story in a nutshell: FBI makes typically cackhanded bureaucratic attempts to catch a few script kiddies; socially inadequate misfits flex puny muscles and say “Oh yeah?! We’re so hard and mean! Watch me break Yahoo! MOOOM, THE MAN’S TAKING MY PC AWAY!!”

We can just imagine writer Steve Bell (the cartoonist? shurely not) doing that Tommy Vance dramatic advert voice to himself as he typed the last words: “…when hackers decide to act, they can hit out - and they can hit out hard.“If we’re talking “hacks”, Steve, you definitely da man.

Simon Hoggart, comparing Manchester to London in the Grauniad: > “There’s a trade-off: nice and cheap versus grotty and thrilling.” …But London isn’t cheap. Or particularly nice.

Yes, it’s an obvious response. BB guesses we’re biased, because we’re living in Manchester rather than writing about it from a bijou apartment in Hampstead.

• The IRA bomb “ripped the heart out of the city.”
  The IRA bomb destroyed the Arndale Centre and an outdated and rather ugly M&S store. If we’re talking body parts, these were more like the bladder or the arse of the city. To our shame, we rebuilt the Arndale. And the new M&S store consists entirely of that well-known bombproof material, sheet glass.
• We’re all “mad fer” the Games.
  BB can tell you now, the prevailing vibe among all but the few delusional souls acting as volunteers is “Oh, bloody ‘ell! ‘Ow much is this costin’ us? Can we still get to work? Bloody rush hour’s goin’ to be ‘ell. And why’s the council closed me local baths?!”
• Manchester doesn’t have homeless people or urban squalor.
  …Because the police kicked out all the beggars last week and the council kindly refurbished all the council houses lining the main routes a while back. But only externally; the internal damp is still rampant. And they didn’t bother with the properties behind the ones facing the roads.
• The volunteer programme was heavily oversubscribed.
  Right, which is why the council has been touting for an extra 150 volunteers among its own workforce - after all, what else would social workers and benefit office staff have to do while the Games are on?
• Russell Watson is a nice young man
  During rehearsals, Russell Watson demanded that his backing choir, who had been practising their contribution for months, either sing quietly or, even better, mime so as not to drown out his golden tones.

One good thing we can still say about Mancunians: we’re not easily impressed.