Rumsfeld Poetry

Why I don't like poetry:

It rhymes, it has iambic pentameter, its written in a stupid way without sentences which makes it harder to read - the only way to read Milton's Paradise Lost is to read it like a normal book without all the verses.

When poetry is recited the reader sounds all maudlin like their cat has just been run over and they're trying not to cry.

I can never remember poems.

They just... irritate me.... But still, here's some stuff from Donald Rumsfeld which works better when written in verse. This I can handle because I know who he is. Poets I can't handle because I don't know who they are. Neither do they. That's why they write poems:

(Lifted straight from Guardian Online)

The Unknown

As we know,
There are known knowns.
There are things we know we know.
We also know
There are known unknowns.
That is to say
We know there are some things
We do not know.
But there are also unknown unknowns,
The ones we don't know
We don't know.

Feb. 12, 2002, Department of Defense news briefing

A Confession

Once in a while,
I'm standing here, doing something.
And I think,
"What in the world am I doing here?"
It's a big surprise.

May 16, 2001, interview with the New York Times

The Situation

Things will not be necessarily continuous.
The fact that they are something other than perfectly continuous
Ought not to be characterized as a pause.
There will be some things that people will see.
There will be some things that people won't see.
And life goes on.

Oct. 12, 2001, Department of Defense news briefing

Clarity

I think what you'll find,
I think what you'll find is,
Whatever it is we do substantively,
There will be near-perfect clarity
As to what it is.

And it will be known,
And it will be known to the Congress,
And it will be known to you,
Probably before we decide it,
But it will be known.

Feb. 28, 2003, Department of Defense briefing

Glass Box

You know, it's the old glass box at the
At the gas station,
Where you're using those little things
Trying to pick up the prize,
And you can't find it.
It's

And it's all these arms are going down in there,
And so you keep dropping it
And picking it up again and moving it,
But

Some of you are probably too young to remember those
Those glass boxes,
But

But they used to have them
At all the gas stations
When I was a kid.

Dec. 6, 2001, Department of Defense news briefing

Firefox add-ons

One of the best things about Mozilla Firefox are the customisation aspects. There are some real beauties in amongst the crap. These are all for Firefox 2.0 – go to Help>Check for Updates to get the latest version.

Then go to https://addons.mozilla.org/en-US/firefox/ to find these:

Fasterfox: Noticeably speeds up page load times
https://addons.mozilla.org/en-US/firefox/addon/1269

Google Preview: This is excellent. It inserts a preview picture (thumbnail) of any given page next to the text description in google.
https://addons.mozilla.org/en-US/firefox/addon/1269

Customize Google: This removes the adverts from Google and as the name suggests gives you far more options for how Google works than google does.
https://addons.mozilla.org/en-US/firefox/addon/743

PDF Download: Throws up a box when you click on a pdf icon asking if you want to save or not. Very useful at work.
https://addons.mozilla.org/en-US/firefox/addon/636

Webworld

Twitter

Web 2.0 cheerleaders are seeing www.twitter.com as one of the big new things. I signed up to it to see what it was all about and I’ve got to say that it really is completely pointless and not only that but not even interesting or fun. I suppose that it is like some kind of location specific real-time social networking site. You sign in, choose your picture then there’s an email box with a question, “What are you doing right now”. My last post was “Cancelling this pointless program”, then my message appeared with a “posted 5 seconds ago” next to it in a long list of other twitterers’ ramblings on what they are doing. I heard about it through http://digitalurban.blogspot.com/ which is a 3D modelling site associated with London University. They heard about Twitter as there is some way of joining Twitter up with Google Maps and then being able to see the location where people were trittering from. This was the initial attraction but I couldn’t get that to work. You can probably see how quickly the novelty wore off.

Joost

I reckon Joost is going to be the “Next Big Thing” so unless you subscribe to HolyMoly or read the Guardian geek pages on Thursdays you might not have heard about it. Holy Moly summed it up best. It is Sky Digital on your PC for free. Yes, it is online TV with no fees. Unlike YouTube I see that Viacom have just signed on to supply material. The guys behind Joost are the guys who created Kazaa (the peer to peer software) and who then went on to write Skype which they then sold to ebay for a crazy amount which is how they must have financed Joost.
I can’t say that I’ve actually used Joost a great deal due to time constraints but it has a great interface, is really user friendly and seems to have some good channels too.

Swingball close-ups

James Brown plays Swingball

Wow, this looks fun!

Swingball: Not much fun

I found this 1970s swingball instruction manual. See how the happy families are enjoying the thrill of swingball. What I particularly like is the picture in the bottom right corner. Two kids in school uniform playing in a cold rainy field in a caravan park which, by the look of it, is closed for the winter. And is that the Godfather of Soul James Brown at the middle bottom?

From a Bygone Age

The one and only Bobby Davro, from a time when he would go head to head with Russ Abbott!

Its the white trainers and the toothy grin that does it for me

Eighties sexpot


Surely these bears are ill advised

Note the hint of 'a bit of length' just peeking to the right of his neck. He's a pretty smooth kind of a guy.

I'm sure our celebrities are far more media-savvy now but there was a time it seems in the mid-eighties when the cheesy pose was the be all and end all of publicity. Nothing quites beats the addition of a hand-scrawled signature, and with an insincere 'With Love' homily... well, what can I say? I found these nuggets in the attic this bank holiday weekend. Father Christmas saw fit to pass them on to me quite some time ago somehow knowing that I would one day truly relish their true beauty.

(This being blogger these pictures will either appear above or below this post. There was a time when I had worked out this idiosyncracy but I can't quite be bothered to experiment today. No, they've appeared above).