Friday web watch

I'm being purred at by a desperate-looking, lardy-arsed ginger tom. Uh oh, he's creeping nearer.

I love it when people get absolutely obsessed with something. Well, I find it interesting that people can take their own interest/hatred/fascination so far that they don't just restrict themselves to one or two posts in a blog, but they set up a whole website devoted to the object of their obsession.

Two that popped up from this week's Popbitch round up are:

I hate Pete Doherty and
The Diana-Morrissey Phenomenon

The first of the two is pretty self-explanatory. Pete Doherty is a talentless, smacked-up wanker who is supposed to be a "popstar", but who has earned notoriety more for his relationship with Kate Moss and his never-ending run-ins with the police over drugs offences. It looks quite a good site though.

It's the sort of site I'd like to set up myself and dedicate to one of my colleagues: "The evidence: she is a lazy cunt who, from day one, has ensured the systematic redistribution of her workload to everybody else in the department; she is boring; she says "v" or "f" instead of "th" ("wiv", "somefin"); I hate her."

Or I could devote an entire site to my hatred of Asda or Tony Blair or Davina McCall. But I haven't got the energy.

The other site, "The Diana-Morrissey Phenomenon" is much scarier and I hope it's been put together by somebody who is taking the piss. It does have the look of the ramblings of somebody who is a little bit mad though. Still, it's good fun and worth a look.

And at last! Something to shove up smug bastard Mac users' arses. Apparently there's a malicious worm that 's making its way around the iChat system. Good. Fucking pious Mac users and their "People target Windows because they're protesting against the Microsoft monopoly". Well at last somebody is protesting against Mac smugness and shit PC-ness. I'm just amazed they found anything worth attacking in a Mac since they're completely shite to the core.


Electrickery
The electric man has just been here to read the meter. They don't have electric and gas meters in convenient places in older houses; that's unless Social Services have wasted £70,000 on a rennovation for people claiming to have difficulty "coping" with normal houses and they've moved the meters to outdoor boxes. But our gas meter is under my desk here and the electric meter is behind the TV/video/cable box/dvd in the living room. Dad has made a vanity cover to hide it and the fuse box, but this just gives my folks somewhere else to stick loads of shit like this:

I've no idea why, but my dad loves collecting utter crap like this - free things from packets of tea and coffee and breakfast cereal, stuff he finds on the street. I could kill him for it (and many other crimes he's committed against humanity over the years).

So, as much as I try not to be, I'm a bit of a hoarder too. It stems from anything I ever throw away being retrieved from the bin by my dad, with the result that I've given up on throwing things away because they just end up being dragged out of the bin anyway.

"Dad, why have you taken this out of the bin?"

"Because I thought you might want it."

"But I'd put it in the bin because I didn't want it, it's no use... at all... for ANYTHING!"

"Mumble, mumble...Just THROW it away then!"

"Yes, if it's no good for anything, chuck it away."

Simple rule of thumb: if you haven't used/worn something for a year or so, unless it's something very special, the likelihood is that you won't use it ever again. I was looking in the back of the kitchen cupboard the other day - one of the kitchen cupboards that are full to bursting with my parents' medication rather than kitchen-type things - at the back of the cupboard was a box of Premarin, which is an HRT drug. I asked Mum when she stopped her HRT, it was only ten years ago. They've had a new kitchen fitted since then, for fuck's sake.

But they've passed their bad habits onto me; I resist chucking things out because they "might come in". For example, let's have a look through these desk drawers:

• Ring reinforcements for punched paper;
• Box of floppy disks (stolen from previous job)
  
• Expresson cover for Nokia 8210 mobile phone (2001)
  
• Another Expresson cover for a Nokia 8210 mobile phone (2001)
  
• 2001 desk diary
• Packet of photos (35mm!) ca 2001
• My old ring (replaced by one that ended up being unceremoniously disposed of in takeaway leftovers after a row)
  
• Some Blutak
• Palm instructions (bought 2001)
  
• Radio instructions (received Christmas 2000)
  
• Packet of retractable pencil rubbers (stolen from previous job)
  

In fact, I've realised what this desk drawer represents. It represents the "Just find somewhere for it!" actions of somebody who is moving back into the parental home temporarily. Somebody who moved back in 2001 with the intention of only staying 6 months.

It's time to get out.