So the illegal military junta in the US wants to stage a show trial of some of the captives at their Cuban detention facility. If ever I get a chance to lay my hands on any of the morons, they can expect to be arrested. As can their leader, Rev A R P Blair.

What better way of giving an ailing business a shot in the arm than by marching a load of 13-year-old Busted fans into court, ruining their families financially, then smashing their computers in front of them? Heck, it's bad enough that they're fans of prefabricated pap, never mind the loss of their worldly goods.

Speaking of which, I see that the other group du jour of 1997, Hanson, will be touring the UK this autumn, on advance promo for their third studio album. There are no signs of a return for the GDJ of 97, the Girls Spice.

what are some of your most recent music discoveries?
Inspired by this year's Eurovision Song Contest, I've been digging into the music of the Baltic Republics. Lithiuania, Latvia, Estonia, Finland, Norway, and Sweden all have some astounding musical heritages.

So far, I've come across Prata Vata, the second biggest band in Latvia; and Nathalie Nordnes, a Norwegian singer who could rival Diana Krall.

have you been to a music festival before?
Phoenix 94, at a disused airfield somewhere near Stratford Upon Avon. IIRC, Blur topped the bill, touring Parklife, and Soul Asylum were bloody good.

do you have plans to go to a summer music festival, this year?
Yep, I'll be at the Cambridge Folk festival at the start of August. Full coverage on BBC Radio 2, highlights here afterwards.

what new music have you been listening to?
This is clearout season for record stores, so I've picked up some goodies for very reasonable prices. Last year's albums from Dave Pirner, Big Head Todd, some back catalogue Crows, heavily discounted Boo Radleys and Alisha's Attic, and ear candy from Len and Antan Dec. And the album from Tatu, often described in these parts as the Russian Antan Dec.

what artists/bands/albums would you rave about?
The Eurovision entries - 25 great songs, and the British entry that was bovine excrement. Kathleen Edwards, whose Failer album is one of the strongest debuts I've heard in a long time; and Hall & Oates' Do It For Love, which is just effortlessly sublime.

what do you think of liz phair's new look/sound? (i had to ask)
Well, the first promoted track's perfectly decent, not a million miles away from Alisha's Attic, with a lilt that reminds me of Irish band JJ72 on a good day. You'll have to ask someone who has seen the look about the look.

In the meantime, what has Jewel done with herself?

what do you think defines a piece of music/song/album/artist/band as "pop music"?
It is popular music, so it must be popular. Brandy, Monica, that's pop music. Clay Aiken, that's pop. Westlife might be pap, but it's also pop. Sertab Erener, Tatu, clearly pop. Evanescence, best selling act last month, they're certainly pop. Jemini, the British Eurovision entry? No, that's just crap.

June's stats are up.

Another man who has lost the argument: Silvio Berlusconi, the criminal who is soon to be the former Italian PM, who called a German MEP "a concentration camp guard." Rich pickings coming from a neo-nazi.

Some thoughts on Antan Decski. They've not been edited for spelling and grammar, as will become painfully obvious:

"I can never get their IDs straight: which one's Rob and which one's Fab?"

"Theyre vicious, violent, and go against everything that shouldent be sacred anyways. Welcome to the 21st Century!!!!"

"Those are all the things i love about them...the facade, the boredom, the russian thing...so cool. so post-post cold war pan-global terror rock for the kiddies. Im not sure if i can think of anything as dangerous as they are. Fuck punk rock. Tatu transcend this forbidden psychological area that hasnt been explored yet. [..] If even one kid whose experiencing homosexer pheelings listens to them and feels a comraderie, comrade, and prevents them from commiting suicide, its all worth it. Comparing them to millivanilli isent an insult anymore...sometimes the performace requires it, and as they have a significant facade and surface faux-realism thing going on, it just kinda makes sense to lyp-sink."

Back in Japan, the turbulent twosome's tour has finally terminated. During a press conference to explain why they left early, Jules and Sissy said they had no reason to apologise. They appeared bored, yawning and playing with their Handys. (That's cell phones, for those who think they're missing some palarey.)

This commentator finds them far, far more entertaining than any British teeny band in the past ten years. That they've put out the best hit single of the year so far doesn't hurt.

The government caves in, and agrees to ban hunting with dogs. The decision leaves me cold. Hunting may be an inefficient method of control, but no one has proven that beyond reasonable doubt. There's one huge element of class warfare here, hunting being very much an upper class pursuit. And there's one huge element of urban -v- country warfare, with the urbanite "we don't understand it, so let's ban it" view rising to the fore.

While I wouldn't go on a hunt myself, I don't see that it's anything like the moral waste ground portrayed by its opponents. On this issue, I have to offer no opinion.

*

Israel declines to accredit BBC reporters after the Corp airs a documentary claiming Israel has a viable nuclear and chemical weapons. If the claims are false, why not prove them to be false. Say, by inviting in Mr Hans Blix, who is at something of a loose end these days. Or by inviting in the BBC's bombers. Let them drop Terry Wogan in Jerusalem central square, Esther Rantzen in Tel Aviv, and Sarah Kennedy in the middle of the desert.

*

Father Ted's to be remade for the US market. That'll be a bit of a Father Dougal moment, it will it will it will it will it will.

Now, what the hell does this - extracted from the ATP website - mean?

For every Grand Slam and Tennis Masters Series Tournament for which a player is not in the Main Draw, and was not (and, in the case of a Grand Slam, would not have been, had he and all other players entered) a Main Draw Direct Acceptance on the original Acceptance List, and never became a Main Draw Direct Acceptance, the number of his results from all International Series Tournaments played in the calendar year, that count for his ranking, is increased by one. Once a player has been accepted in the Main Draw of one of these thirteen Tournaments, as a Direct Acceptance, a Qualifier, a Special Exempt or a Lucky Loser, or having accepted a Wild Card, his result in this tournament shall count for his ranking, whether or not he participates.

In other words...

If a player does not have a sufficiently high ranking to gain automatic entry to a Grand Slam or Masters event, and does not gain entry to the tournament as a Qualifier, Lucky Loser, Wild Card, or is otherwise exempt, then they will be able to count an additional Series tournament. Once a player has been accepted into the main draw of a Grand Slam or Masters event, this result will count to his ranking, even if he does not take part.

Twenty Years Of Rubbish Number One Singles:
1984: Lionel Richie Hello
1985: The Crowd You'll Never Walk Alone (a mass choir charidee record)
1986: Nick Berry Every Loser Wins (with Chris de Burgh and Boris Gardner also making the running)
1987: Madonna La Isla Bonita (worst of a very good bunch)
1988: Kylie Minogue I Should Be So Lucky
1989: Kylie & Jason Especially For You
1990: Bombalurina Itsy Bitsy Teeny Weeny Yellow Polka Dot Bikini (which is very good news for Partners in KRYME and Vanilla Ice)
1991: Bryan Adams Oh Do Shut Up You Boring Old Fart
1992: KWS Please Don't Go (just edging out the Shamen)
1993: 2 Unlimited No Limit (infinitely worse than Mr Blobby)
1994: Mariah Carey Without You
1995: Outhere Brothers Don't Stop (Wiggle Wiggle) (yes, even worse than Robson & Jerome)
1996: Perthshire Morons Throw Those Guns Away (Loosely based on Dylan's "...Heaven's Door")
1997: LL Cool J Ain't Nobody
1998: Celine Dion My Heart Will Goon
1999: Mr Oizo Flat Beat
2000: Mariah Cantsing & Westshite Against All Odds (beating strong competition from Oxide & Neutrino, Craig David, and Robbie Williams)
2001: Geri Halibut It's Raining Men (even worse than Kylie)
2002: N'Sync / Nelly Girlfriend (only a year old, I cannot remember a line)
2003: R Kelly Ignition (only a month old, I cannot recall hearing it)

Two bizarre emails and one phone call are reprinted in (almost) full.

From: postmaster@raiffeisen.pl
Sent: 30 June 2003 13:46
To: weavers.workplace
Subject: InterScan NT Alert

Sender, InterScan has detected virus(es) in your e-mail attachment.

Date:  	Mon, 30 Jun 2003 14:45:33 +0200
Method:	Mail
From:  	<weavers.work>
To:    	<deleted.user@raiffeisen.pl>
File:  	your_details.zip
Action:	deleted
Virus: 	WORM_SOBIG.E

The bizarreness here - we haven't been sending out this pile o'shite, and we know that only badly configured mail servers trust the FROM field to send bounce messages.

Subject: Home-run-balls-
X-MimeOLE: Produced By Microsoft Exchange V6.0.6375.0
Date: Fri, 27 Jun 2003 13:22:31 -0400
From: <Andrew.Bennett@cit.com>
To: <weavers.tarpit>
Return-Path: Andrew.Bennett@cit.com

This is a multi-part message in MIME format.

------_=_NextPart_001_01C33CD0.B0C2F5AE
Content-Type: text/plain;
	charset="iso-8859-1"
Content-Transfer-Encoding: quoted-printable

Hey!
	I was searching on google for info about other homerun balls people
have caught. I caught Sammy's 61st in '99 - long home run landed on
Kenmore. The Cubs people tried to pressure me into giving it back. I did
not. I doubt I will ever sell it. It sits in my living room. And yes,
that was a lot of fun.

Andrew P. Bennett
Account Executive
The CIT Group
10 S. Lasalle
Chicago, Il. 60603
P-312-424-9724
F-312-223-9931

And then the same thing came back, but in M$-fake-HTML. This is apropos of what, exactly? I may have written about catching baseballs in the past, but - quite frankly - who gives a toss?

The phone call asked, inter alia:

Who is doing the building work at [a site about two miles away]? My daughter's on the housing list, and please call me on 0779 [snip]

Is this some sort of test of who knows most about their local area? Coz my guess is that the people doing the building are some builders! Perhaps called Bob!!

A Brazilian music fan has successfully sued EMI and Sony. Copy protection technology in the best seller "album" Tribalistas ensured that the disk didn't play in his car. EMI's vice-president for South America defended the company in a lawsuit involving less than EUR 300. The record marketing companies have lodged appeals, and intend to take the case to the Supreme Court, claiming it's a 'question of principles'. Meanwhile, the same litigant is after them again, because all new EMI albums in Brazil are being released with copy protection and still don't work in his car. The case continues.

Perpetually entertaining Uckfield duo Tatu are at it again. Jules and Sissy have been on a promotional tour of Japan, and refused to play a live TV show after complaining that their outfits were "too skimpy." Apparently, there are limits for the Russian Antan Dec. The duo has also been refused permission to shoot a promotional video in central Tokyo, nor to film outside a religious building in the city.

"Alistair Campbell has entered the building," said the C4 News producer just after seven last night. The Uberlord of Spin has, indeed, forgotten the first rule of spin: don't let yourself become the story. Thankfully for us, this hasn't happened for The Party's valiant attempts to distract us from the actual story. Let me backtrack...

At the end of May, the BBC's flagship Today programme claimed that Downing Street's spin machine inserted a claim that Iraq had weapons of not insignificant distraction, AND that those weapons could be primed for use within 45 minutes. The then Minister For The Today Programme, Dr John "Bruiser" Read, spent almost twenty minutes on that show the following week, refusing to answer one question on the matter. A House of Commons committee has been investigating the claims for the past little while, and there we expected the matter to simmer down.

But no. Mr Campbell has continued to attack the BBC, keeping focus on the process by which the Beeb obtained its tale. His appearance on last night's Channel 4 News, and Ben Bradshaw's stumbling appearance on today's Today, concentrated The Party's fire on whether the BBC should have run the allegations. They don't address the accuracy of the allegations. While Mr Bradshaw is quibbling over whether Number Ten or the Defence Ministry should have been invited to comment, he's quietly accepting the truth of the claim.

They're a bunch of liars.

In better news, finally installed the TV capture card, which was trivial. And make sure it works properly, which most distinctly was not.