You can't make it up

I switch on the television. There's an advert for some female beauty product - moisturiser or make up, I don't remember. The music is a classic piece of 80s synthpop.

It's Tainted Love. A product that hides blemishes, with a song about imperfections. A product about romance, with a song about a failed relationship.

There's not a trace of irony in the presentation. It's not one of those 'clever' adverts that exploits people's mistrust of advertising by pretending to subvert itself.

-----

I've got an N-Pod. £128.00 for a combined MP3 player, dictaphone, FM Radio reciever and recorder, basic ebook reader, and portable 20GB hard disk.

So now, with a bit of forward planning, I can record what I want from DAB, and listen to it during those hours spent on busses, trains and pavements.

-----


Nathan Barley was rubbish. Just horrible. Fresh as an egyptian mummy, subversive as Phil Collins, eloquent as George Bush, and subtle as a lead brick.

I've probably used the quote before, but, I think it was Tom Paulin who said, "It's a horrible thing when an artist's work matures."

-----

I've got to phone around to remind people of the forum tomorrow. It's about the fraudulence of the Iraq elections.

I know that my list of telephone numbers is somewhere in one of five boxes of stuff that I moved when clearing out my bedroom. So I think I'll listen to some of last week's radio while rifleing through it all.