"It's not your moral right, it's your legal right. By eating meat I would suggest your morals are far from right.

I hope the killing of animals for pleasure is soon banned like slavery, racism and other forms of prejudices practised by the morally bankrupt. It's all ways the slowest in our society that keep us from advancing as a species."

The more you know, internet, the more you know. I am not one hundred per cent certain what killing animals for pleasure means in this instance, but, judging by some of the posts that I have seen this particular forum member make in the past (their shtick is one of a militant, and incredibly rude, vegan), I would think that eating meat falls under "pleasure". Who knew knew that eating meat could be compared, in a roundabout way, to racism, and slavery? Which of these things is really not all that much like the other?

Why is it that some¹ vegans are complete assholes, and are unwilling to consider any view points other than their own? As far as I am concerned, you have lost the debate when you call someone a "corpse muncher", and think that this is okay.

Did two people seriously give the answer "Tony Blair" to this question? #1, which politician would you do? Whatever floats your boat, as the saying goes, but Teflon Tony and his teeth? There must be something that I am missing here.


¹ Some, not all.

To be jolly, as the song goes.

I am feeling ever-so-slightly festive at the moment, although I could be confusing this with still feeling ill. To amuse myself for a little while earlier this morning, and to distract myself from the mess in sf_d at the moment, I photoshopped Santa hats on to some of the many icons that I have made. It is one way of making your LJ just that little bit more jolly, and is also a fun way of procrastinating.



Personally, I think I am most pleased with the one of The Residents. The Residents! Wearing Santa hats! LOLZ.

Do any of you have an icon (or icons) that you would like a hat photoshopped on to? Let me know if you do. I need something to do this afternoon that does not involve getting overly frustrated at Neopets' Games Master Challenge. Make me do something semi-useful, internets!

I am feeling slightly under the weather at the moment, internet.

At around this time yesterday evening, I noticed that I had a sore throat, which I thought would be the precursor to a cold. It usually is with me. However, although my throat is still sore at the moment, my nose is not blocked and I can still breathe through it. When I get a cold this is usually the next thing that happens to me. Thank heavens for small mercies, right?

Instead of getting a blocked nose, I appear to be aching almost literally all over. My back hurts, which is nothing out of the ordinary for me, but so does my head, neck, shoulders, fingers, knees, and legs. What on earth is this all about? I would honestly take not being able to breathe through my nose over this, especially as it hurt just to lie down in bed earlier. That was not fun, believe me. Also, I accidentally banged my right leg into the kitchen table after I had made myself a coffee, which hurt more than it normally would. Urgh. I am hoping that by taking painkillers and Lemsip at regular intervals, this aching feeling will go away on its own. If not I shall go to the doctors on Monday morning. I really hope that it will not last that long, though.

To cheer myself up today, I have been looking at pictures of puppies on weheartit. It works quite well, as a method of cheering oneself up. These are just a few of my favourites: ( Read more... )

Please feel free to post pictures of puppies (or kittens, I'm not biased) if you so wish. It'll make me feel better.

Surprised by my ability to not recklessly spend my money on things that I don't particularly need.

After a brief spell at college today, and a visit to my grand-parents' house, I walked back into town with the intention of spending a bit of my birthday money. My grandma had given me £25, so I had £75 in total. I wanted another pair of boots and I tried a few pairs on in New Look, before eventually settling on a nice, grey pair from the wide fit range. I can't seem to find them on the website, but they look a bit like these ones, and have a couple of buckles on them. Mine were £25, too. I also bought some earrings and chocolate cherry liqueurs from M&S.

These were the only things I bought, and I still have £50 left. I looked at jewellery in New Look and nice smelly things in The Body Shop, and I kept thinking to myself, "do you really need this?" And I didn't, I am waiting for something that I really want to come along.

In other news, what the actual fuck is this shit?"

"CHERYL COLE reveals that her routine at home is to "put a hair mask on, watch Coronation Street, wash it out during Eastenders, then apply her conditioner during the second Coronation Street, while wearing an unattractive, yet comfy, tracksuit and no make-up".

And she wonders why Ashley strays.

The smart money is on her washing that man right out of her hair before long as well."

If that is meant to be tongue in cheek, then it has failed. Spectacularly. The implication that a woman must look 'hot' for her partner the whole day long, or else it will encourage them to stray, makes me want to hit something. Ugh.

[Insert that macro of the cake eating cat here]

So, it is the 19th of November, which means that I am now another year older. I am now 24, which is nice. I am having what you might call a lazy day; I did plan on going out today, to have a look round the Christmas market in Manchester city centre and although it's not raining, I can't motivate myself to do so. Perhaps tomorrow, or Saturday/Monday depending on what I feel like.

My mother said to me yesterday evening that she and my dad would not be able to give me a lot of spending money this year, which is fair enough and I wasn't expecting a lot anyway. I did find £50 in my card this morning, though, which is about £30 more than I was expecting. My mother also informed me that she will treat me to the following gift, too:

TICKETS TO SEE LADY GAGA NEXT FEBRUARY!

OMFG, INTERNET, YOU HAVE NO IDEA HOW HAPPY THIS MAKES ME. I WAS SO EXCITED YESTERDAY THAT I COULD HAVE BOUNCED ALL ROUND THE HOUSE. One of my friends from college is going to come with me, if he can get the money for a ticket together, but I am going nonetheless!

Semi-related: I absolutely adore "The Fame Monster". It's basically all I have listened to since Sunday. "Alejandro" is an absolutely wonderful song, and "Telephone" is awesome, too.

If there is one thing that irrationally irritates me on LJ, and on the internet in general, it is users who make a post/comment that starts with "am I the only one who .." [fill in the blank here; hates/thinks that/etc]. YES, I guarantee you that you are indeed the only snowflake person, out of the millions upon millions of people on the internet, who thinks x about y/z.

Oh hai, am I the only person who felt their faith in humanity diminish just that little bit more when they read this sf_d post?

I did plan on being productive this weekend; I meant to finish off my evaluation for my current brief at college. But then Neopets turned 10, and that good intention I had flew straight out of the window when I learned that I can send my game scores 10 times a day, instead of the usual 3. On the plus side of things, I have earned over 100K in points since yesterday. This is awesome. Now if only I could decide what new pet I want.

Birthday on Thursday. It doesn't feel like it, to be honest. I think I am more excited about the fact that the Christmas Market starts in Manchester on Wednesday. The weather better be nice on Thursday (nice being not pissing down), as I will need to go and have my yearly look round. A quick glance at the pool in the Manchester group on Flickr reveals that Zippy is in place once again. Yay, I love Zippy.

Shoe•gasm
-noun

1. An emotional sensation reached when viewing a pair of really, really, really awesome shoes.

I do believe, internet, that I had one of these yesterday afternoon. The very lovely kirstya posted a link to the Schuh website, and I took a look at it. I had a look at the Irregular Choice section, and happened upon what I think are definitely the best shoes I have ever seen in my life:



Women's purple Irregular Choice Whimsical Miaow ankle boot, £99. These are just so much better than the sparkly purple M&S shoes that I was drooling over a few weeks ago. Also catching my eye on the Schuh website were these (Cortesan Floral Bar court shoe), and these (Cortesan round-toe polka). I could honestly quite happily look at this, and the Irregular Choice website itself for hours, even though I cannot afford to buy anything. Window shopping is fun, right? Looking at these two sites is like looking at porn to me, proper hardcore filth.

So that this entry has at least some substance to it, I am very pleased to report that I have finished my magazine spread for my current brief at college. I got a few more photos of Chica in the garden yesterday afternoon to add to it. One thing that I have definitely learnt from this brief, and I have put this in the evaluation that I am in the process of writing, is that photographing animals is a lot more difficult than photographing people. You can direct people, and get them to do what you want, you cannot do that with an animal, especially a cat!

Also: man distracted by bird drives Bugatti into marsh. Ouch, just, ouch.

You may be pleased to know that this one is not about Lady GaGa, and is typed in a regular manner.

I felt a little down and fed-up yesterday, (the reasons were pretty small and insignificant in the grand scheme of things, and I feel better now), so I looked up one of my absolute favourite songs of all time on YouTube, and found the video for it, which I am assuming is the video made by the artist. It is a song called "Skin of The Night" by an artist called M83, a French electronic artist, and it is an absolutely beautiful piece of music. Really soothing, too.

( Video under the cut )

I raided the screencaps at sundive.co.uk last night, and have made some Top Gear icons. I know that there are a few of you who like Top Gear, and you're free to nab these if you like. I LOVE making icons; it's definitely one of my favourite ways to pass the time during the day.

( Assorted icons under the cut )

I am thinking of starting an icon journal, too.

I AM COMPLETELY, LIKE 100% OBSESSED WITH THE VIDEO FOR "BAD ROMANCE", WHICH I SAW FOR THE FIRST TIME YESTERDAY EVENING. YES, IT'S MAKING ME TYPE IN CAPS. NO, IDGAF.

( I want your leather-studded kiss in the sand )

HATERS TO THE LEFT, LADY GAGA IS FUCKING AWESOME, AND I WILL NOT BE TOLD OTHERWISE, K?

200! 200 ICONS! I feel quite giddy at this. Whilst uploading some icons yesterday I noticed that it, the total number of icons given to permanent account holders, had gone up again. I find it difficult choosing icons to upload, though. I've made god only knows how many of them since this time last year. Still, 200 ICONS OMG!

Speaking of icons, would anyone like an icon like this?



Made this morning, because LiveJournal needs a like button, a la Facebook. Let me know if you do! I saved it as a PNG and PSD file, so all I need to do is change the user name. I will get round to them at some point of today (college later) if anyone does want one.

Oh yes, I do. I love it because the December 2009 edition has come with several rather interesting things.

The first of which is a page towards the end of the magazine; it's an advertisement for Hamleys, saying have a Hamleys Christmas. One of the products shown on the page is this: a 1:18 scale Swarovski Lamborghini Murcielago. This might just be the most ridiculous, and gaudy thing that I have ever seen, but OMG IT IS AMAZING AND I WANT IT. Shame that it's about £1000 over-priced, though.

The second interesting thing in the magazine is a little catalogue that came with it; full of Top Gear related gift ideas. Including: a V8 pencil sharpener (want), Stig bubble bath, STIG DUVET COVER (also want), and plenty of t-shirts. I have asked for an "I am The Stig" t-shirt as one of my Christmas presents this year. I am going to have to get a mens one, though, as the large size of the ladies version is a size 12-14. Really. 12, large.

Because I have a serious procrastination problem, yesterday afternoon I spent about five/ten minutes photoshopping a Santa Hat onto a picture of a Giant Isopod. I am quite pleased with it, actually. Even the most scary looking Bathynomus giganteus should be festive! Should I make an icon sized version of this, ready for December?

Finally, idgaf what anyone might say about her trolling, this shit is awesome. Kharmii is so hilariously fail-tastic. Shame about that awful icon, though.

Or: "In which I lose some more of my faith in humanity."

On the General Discussion on Digital Spy, someone posts a thread titled Rapist or Theft?. The opening post is this:

A teenager who raped a prostitute in an Aberdeen lane before being betrayed by a distinctive red condom has been jailed for six years.
http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/scotland/...st/8342633.stm

So... what is your opinion? Should he have the book thrown at him as if she was any other woman and not someone in the sex trade? Do you think that it's possible that all he has done here is refused to pay afterwards or ran out?

I just ... WHAT THE HOLY FUCK IS THIS SHIT? When called out on this the OP says on page three of the thread "Yeah, I keep forgetting that this is the forum where little jokes are not allowed." and "What's sad is how serious everyone takes everything."

Back-pedal some more, you complete and utter asinine fool.

In other news, I have a digital TV box in my room now. The digital switchover started in the region where I live (Granada) yesterday. I thought it'd be all channels gone at once, but according to my dad it was just BBC2. The rest of the terrestrial channels will not be switched off until next month, so it seems. I have this box in preparation, though. It doesn't work properly at the moment as the aerial on my TV is not the right one. The box has the Dave channel on it! I can now spend the rest of my life watching repeats of repeats of repeats of repeats (etc) of Top Gear! This fills me with SO MUCH glee!

I really should be getting ready for college, but this was too funny to pass up.

There is a story in today's Daily Fail about an 11 year old Bulgarian girl who gave birth on her wedding day. The story itself is not what is funny, believe me (it's pretty D: I think - from my perspective anyway). The article explicitly states that the girl lives in Sliven, in Bulgaria. This is where the funny comes in. If you go to the "Worst Rated" section of the comments, you will see these:



Reading comprehension fail? Subtle trolling? Or a combination of both? Doreen's comment strikes me as perhaps taking the piss, with "NuLiebore". I could be wrong, though. And I think the other two are serious, and were left by people who can't read.

Oh, Daily Mail readers. Please never stop providing entertainment.

At around this time last night, I noticed that I could not access certain websites. Two of the sites that I could not access were Last FM, and We Heart It. I checked using down for everyone, or just me, which said that both sites were up (and it was just me). When I got up this morning, I had the same problem, so I decided to try and fix it. The course of action that I took saw me doing the following: completely uninstalling and reinstalling Firefox (twice), doing several tracer routes, and eventually doing a System Restore to the 23rd of October. None of which worked.

Following a phone call to AOL, I followed their automated instructions, which told me to unplug the router for two minutes and leave it, and then plug it back in and try again. This solved the problem, and the sites that I could not access started working for me again. Why it never, ever occurs to me to do simple things such as that, I do not know. No, I go steaming in and changing things unecessarily.

As it is no longer Halloween, I feel that I should change my default icon. I will do that later on this evening. I have made two new variations to this icon of Chica. God knows how many I have made now. The two new ones are:



There is a second variation of the Christmas Cat icon, where I put a present in the bottom left-hand corner of the icon. I didn't think that one looked all that good, though. Not that these icons are intended to be works of art.

It is now November, which means three things:

• It is my birthday in 18 days time. I have asked my mother if she can just give me a little bit of money this year, so I can get myself some new clothes.
• The Christmas Market starts in Manchester city centre in 17 days time. YES, I LOVE THIS MARKET SO MUCH! I guess it also means that Father Christmas Zippy will once again be sat outside the town hall.
• STARBUCKS RED CUPS TIME! I really want to know what this year's drinks will be. If the Dark Cherry Mocha is going to be one again, I really hope it will have been improved.

When you find yourself actively encouraging breastfeeding wank on Digital Spy.

The kicker? It's not even in the General Discussion; it is in the soaps section on the "Emmerdale Discussion". In tonight's episode a character was asked to cover up/leave the cafe when breastfeeding her young daughter. This has not gone down too well with certain forum members.

The antagonist here, the forum member Mr Mustard, is well-disliked on the forum, for being a) intolerable of other people's views, b) being overly belligerent, and c) being alert happy. He's said he's leaving now. Oh no, just when I was having fun, too!

I really do need to get a life, don't I?

Oh, and I love Emmerdale. It's so much better than the dull, wrist-slitting inducing extravaganza that is Eastenders.

• I love this post so very, very much. This is one of the greatest instances of HTML failure that I have ever seen, if not the greatest. It's just beautiful. Here is a cap for when it eventually gets edited. I am really quite amused by the "it's like what I imagine would happen if sf_drama wrote poetry" comment. I hope the OP remembered to disable the emailing of comments, too.

• This thread on Digital Spy is boring. And predictable. Some idiot in New Zealand suggests sterilising the 'underclass' (whatever that is) to combat child abuse. Well, THANK FUCK no middle and upper class parents have ever abused their children, then.

• I have an awesome (if I do say so myself) new Neopet. I really pleased with this, as it has been something that I have been working towards for the past couple of months.

• I appear to have won a round snapshot_hunter, with my macro photo of the cute little bug. This also makes me rather pleased, and quite happy.

Do any of you play Animal Crossing: Wild World? I have had it for 3 years now; it was the first Nintendo DS game that I bought, and the entire reason that I bought a DS. I've not played it for a while, but started a new game on it yesterday, and, like with Neopets, am getting sucked back into it again. There's something really fun about virtual fishing.

What I would also like to know is if any of you do play it, would you like to come and visit me and my town? So I will be able to get the final upgrade to the shop, in time. My details are as follows, if you do:

Melody
Starvill
2536-3509-2284

Instead of doing something productive today (as you might have guessed), I spent a little while this morning making icons of Chica and Lucky into Halloween icons. The one of Lucky is a little on the crap side, but I don't care.

My parents have gone away for the weekend, to the Whitby Goth Weekend. They're not really goths, they just like going to it. We have plenty of food in the house, and they have also left my brother and I £40 for "emergencies". I think an emergency constitues there being no cake in the house, my mother however disagrees with me there.

I have had several conversations with friends at college about platform games that we all remember from our childhoods, such as the Spyro the Dragon series, the Crash Bandicoot series, and Croc. These conversations made me feel quite nostalgic, and I said several times that I would have to find my Playstation and play them again.

I decided to do just that yesterday. I got our Playstation 2 from my brother's room to begin with; in the past I have played games on that. Neither of the controllers would work in that, though. I then got out our original Playstation. I think this one is about 11 years old now, and I had no idea if it still worked. I was therefore really happy to discover that it did still work. Compare this, if you will, to the XBox 360; my brother is now on his 4th one of those in (almost) four years. Says a lot, doesn't it? In lieu of having a nap yesterday afternoon, I spent almost two hours playing the original Crash Bandicoot game (it was like 1996 all over again), and Crash Team Racing, the only racing game that I was ever any good at.

I don't care how fancy and realistic graphics on today's games consoles might be, my favourite will always be the grey, rather simplistic Playstation, simply because it reminds me of my childhood more than anything else does. We got our first one, with Crash Bandicoot, back in 1996. And it just about started World War 3 on numerous occasions in our house; my brother and I used to have constant fights over whose turn it was to use it. It eventually got sold due to this, and we got this second one in 1998. We then had set days on which we would use it. The Playstation 2 came along on Christmas Day in 2000.

Three other games that I loved, and sadly no longer have, were Medievil and Abe's Oddysee & Abe's Exoddus. I am going to try and buy these from eBay, as I really want them again now.

My laptop will no doubt one cause, or at least contribute to, my eventual nervous breakdown. It's nearing its 3rd birthday now, and for the most part still works fine. However, I can no longer switch it off in a normal manner; i.e. by Start > Turn Off Computer > Off. I have to hold down the off switch to get turn it off, which I know is not wise, but is the only thing that works.

I did this yesterday before having my daily nap, and when I switched it back on it appeared to have taken itself back to factory settings; the wallpaper was a default Compaq one, and there were only a few icons on the desktop. I tried changing a few things, and then re-started it. When I did this, a message came up saying that there was a problem with one of the profiles (corrupt, I think, I really can't remember now) and any changes I made would be re-set once I next re-started. Doing this and restoring it to the 23rd of October sorted the problem.

My plan now is thus:

• Get off backside and find a job.
• Save up some money.
• Buy a Macbook.
• ???
• PROFIT Save sanity from being ruined by a computer.

And I mean it this time! I need Photo Booth in my life, more than you could ever possibly imagine.

In other news, this thread over on Digital Spy is somewhat amusing. There's the usual reply of "where are the heterosexual pride parades?", but it is this reply that tickled me more than anything: "Gay people are hypocrits, they go around calling hetrosexuals "straight" but then whine when you call them "bent". Straight; now an insult like bent is. The more you know, internets.

Also amusing: Kerry Katona offers £50 pub appearances. I really don't know why this amuses me as much as it does. Perhaps it is, as czol has said via Twitter, a typo and what they actually mean is 50p.

I got my mark for the live brief back yesterday afternoon. This was the last brief that we did in the first year, and entailed shooting photographs of the other courses within the Creative Studies department. I did not think that I had done all that well on this one, so I almost fell over when I read the assessment sheet and saw that it was ANOTHER DISTINCTION. On the assessment feedback section, my tutor had put that I had spent considerable time mastering the use of a flash gun, and gained a very good understanding of anf feel for location lighting. This was a really nice surprise. Yay!

A not-so-nice surprise, quite an annoying one in fact, was yesterday discovering that documents made or edited with InDesign CS4 are not backwards compatible with InDesign CS3. I eventually managed to download the trial version of CS4, and edited my Meow magazine cover. When I came to do more work on it at college yesterday, it would not open. I made another one, which I actually prefer to first one.

( New photographs of Chica! )

I took these yesterday, as I am now leaning more towards making a cat magazine for the current brief. I also purchased some cat toys yesterday afternoon. My tutor suggested that I do so, so I would not limit myself to taking photographs of the cats if I do happen to change my idea. Chica was very interested in the catnip toys! She can have them once I have photographed them properly (that being in the studio at college). She tends to get rather vicious with toys, and I don't want her tearing them to bits. Toys do not interest Lucky; they just interupt her napping time.

I got the mark for my Experimental Photography brief back yesterday afternoon, and I did indeed feel rather pleased when I had chance to read the piece of paper. Why?


DISTINCTION!


This is the first Distinction (which is the best grade that you can get) that I have gotten, and it really does make me want to carry on with the hard work so I can try and get more. I bought myself a big bar of Cadbury's Fruit & Nut to celebrate this.

I am pressing on with the Magazine brief, too. I spent most of yesterday turning Chica and Lucky into cover stars; I made a parody of Hello magazine, but for cats. This is it (cropped from a screenshot that I took) - ( Read more... )

I want to edit it slightly, I want to change the bit with Lucky to say "my battle with narcolepsy and my rivalry with Chica.". I have tried 3 times now to download the 30 day trial version of Adobe InDesign CS4 from Adobe.com, and it has failed each time, and frozen up. First at 9%, then at 90%, and at 81% on the third attempt. It is rather frustrating. Downloading a programme should not be so difficult!

Here is a brief run down of my day today, in the form of hand bullet-pointed list:

• I went out for lunch, to The Romper with my parents and brother.


• I saw a tiny little bunny rabbit on a grass verge a few hundred yards or so away from the pub. It was eating some grass and was très cute.


• We went to the viewing area at Manchester airport afterwards, as my dad suggested it might be interesting to take photos there. It was actually quite interesting.


• There was an almost-incident whilst we were there; a Jet 2 plane that was taxiing to take off apparently over-cooked its breaks, and went slightly sideways on the runway. Its take-off was abandoned after that.

Some photographs that I took today: ( Mostly of aeroplanes. )

Whilst we were out I mentioned that it is now a month until my birthday. My mother asked me if that there was anything that I wanted, I said that there was, and it started with "Mac" and ended in "book". I got told to "sod off" when I told her how much one costs. Oh well, it was worth a try I suppose. I really don't have any idea what I do want for my birthday. At the moment I am thinking of just asking for a bit of money, so I can go and buy myself some new clothes/shoes. I will be 24, so it's not as if it's an important birthday either.

Jan Moir just doesn't get it. "However, the point of my column - which I wonder how many of the people complaining have fully read - was to suggest that, in my honest opinion, his death raises many unanswered questions."

"Which I wonder how many of the people complaining have fully read .." Err, I think most of them will have read it, Jan. And in my honest opinion, your opinion is a crock of unqualified shit.

Loathe though I am to link to the Mail on Sunday now, but Suzanne Moore has taken what I think is a good swipe at what can only be Jan's column in hers today; it is the towards the bottom, entitled "Whatever killed Stephen, it wasn't being gay."

( Text of that part of the column )

In other news, it would appear that I will be able to do the car magazine for my latest college brief; my dad's boss seemed fine with it. My dad said that we'll arrange it some time in the next couple of weeks. I will either be shooting one of his boss's BMWs, or his Porsche, or Caterham. It'll probably be done on Saddleworth Moor, too.

I have completely failed to do anything remotely productive this weekend. I have made a lot of LJ icons, though. My task for tonight; upload some of them. I've had one icon for weeks now (I have deleting sprees every now and again - I really don't know why), and that's just boring.

The Daily Mail go and once again prove what nasty, smug individuals that they are employing.

The latest example of this comes in the form of this diatribe by Jan Moir, supplied as a Google document so you needn't go to the website itself. It is about the recent death of Stephen Gately, and is one of the most atrocious, asinine things that I have ever read. And that's saying something when it comes from the Mail.

"The sugar coating on this fatality is so saccharine-thick that it obscures whatever bitter truth lies beneath. Healthy and fit 33-year-old men do not just climb into their pyjamas and go to sleep on the sofa, never to wake up again."

Oh but they can do, Jan. If you'd bother to Google this, then you'd know.

"Whatever the cause of death is, it is not, by any yardstick, a natural one."

Jan Moir appears to know more than the medical practitioners involved with this case do. Why has she not revealed what the cause of death was, then? Seeing as she appears to be in possession of information that the rest of the general population is not party to.

"Another real sadness about Gately's death is that it strikes another blow to the happy-ever-after myth of civil partnerships. Gay activists are always calling for tolerance and understanding about same-sex relationships, arguing that they are just the same as heterosexual marriages. Not everyone, they say, is like George Michael."

I am trying really, really hard to see what relevance this has, if any, to Stephen Gately's death. As far as I can see there is no relevance what-so-ever, so I am not sure what the purpose of this paragraph is. A dig at civil partnerships, perhaps? If so .. holy shit.

Her article appears to have caused quite a stir on Twitter, with Stephen Fry tweeting some very good links including: "there is nothing natural about Jan Moir" and links to the PCC Complaint Department, as old Jan appears to have broken parts 1, 3, 5 and 12 of the code.

"For once again, under the carapace of glittering, hedonistic celebrity, the ooze of a very different and more dangerous lifestyle has seeped out for all to see."

And once again the narrow-minded, loathsome, sanctimonious bilge that is produced on a day to day basis by all Daily Mail journalists has seeped about for all to see.

EDIT: Charlie Brooker is awesome. That is all.

I love this post. I think it is brimming over with paranoia and outrage. "I'm writing this from my Opera browser, which has a different security system, but honest to God I never thought I'd ever see AVG block off my LJ access from my own home. Pardon my French but who the fuck do they think they are?"

Googling AVG search shield was obviously too much trouble for the OP. If he would have done so he would have been presented with a variety of links that show that this is not just a problem with his computer, and AVG is not oppressing just him for shits and giggles. Over-react first, engage brain later.

Earlier today I made another trip into Manchester city centre, to return the dodgy SLR to The Real Camera. The problem was glue leaking from the shutter mechanism, which seemed to be a known problem with that model. The chap who I spoke to was very helpful, and I was able to exchange the camera for an EOS 5000 SLR, for free. It is a newer model than the one I had (EOS 1000F), and does not have the same problem with the shutter.

Whilst out I also went to Marks', where I discovered that the amazing purple sequinned shoes did not fit me. Oh well, I suppose that is good in a way; there would have been no point spending money on shoes that I don't think I'd get the chance to wear regularly. I did however spend some money on a pair of Ugg style boots (haters to the left), as I needed footwear for winter. They felt lovely when I tried them on, so I bought them. In black, for a smidgen under £15. I don't plan on wearing my jeans tucked into them, though.

I think that I love Rammstein's deluxe box set for Liebe Ist Fur Alle Da. Link may not be exactly work-safe, though. Only Rammstein would do something like that, I think.