Life outside the law. The ongoing scandal of the men detained in the UK on no charge, just suspicion. And how this suspicion has inflicted mental illness.

MUN player Rio Ferdinand has been banned for eight months after missing a drugs test. Compare and contrast the punishment meted out to another famous MUN player, Eric Cantona, banned for seven months after assaulting a fan in the crowd.

Singles on the horizon:

December 29 Alistair Griffin - Bring It On/A Lover's Prayer

January 5 Kelis - Milkshake
Matt Darey ft. Marcella Woods - Voice Of An Angel
Pop Idol Winner - All This Time
REM - Animal

January 12
Amy Studt - All I Wanna Do
Amy Winehouse - Take The Box
Damien Rice - Volcano
Grandaddy - I'm On Standby / Stray Dog And The Chocolate Shake
HIM - Funeral Of Hearts
The Eighties Matchbox B-Line Disaster - Mister Mental
The Strokes - Reptilia

January 19
Maroon 5 - Harder To Breathe
Ryan Adams - So Alive
Tatjana - Santa Maria
The Bandits - The Warning
The Offspring - Hit That

January 26
Belle & Sebastian - I'm A Cuckoo
C & C Music Factory - Sweat
Clea - Stuck In The Middle
Courtney Love - Mono
Five For Fighting - 100 Years
Hundred Reasons - What You Get
Joss Stone - Fell In Love With A Boy
Lostprophets - Last Train Home

Rain, rain, rain, rain, rain.
Walking to the store's no fun
in rain, rain, rain, rain.

Work's yuletide party.
There ain't no such thing as a
free lunch sans a speech.

The Indy reports that the search for CBNs in Iraq has come to a juddering halt. Outgoing British PM Mister Tony Blair claims the team has discovered evidence, but this comes as a surprise to the inspectors. There is no evidence that Iraq had chemical, biological, or nuclear weapons. There is ample evidence that the UK population has been systematically lied to.

Incidentally, it's amazing how closely Bush's discourse coincides with the false prophets in the christian old testament.

The extremist "American" "Family" "Association" has been the talk of the interweb this week, after asking all-comers to post how much they dislike the idea of homosexual marriage. The AFA pledged to present the results to the US parliament; at the last count, the poll was 48-44 in favour of homosexual marriage.

Elsewhere on the site, there are Action Alerts - details of how to email some corporate being and advance the socially conservative cause. Of course, one doesn't have to use this link to back the AFA's line... "Dear President Keyes, I am glad to hear that 7-Eleven has chosen to ignore groups like the American Family Association and sell Playboy Magazine again! If they don't like it, they don't have to buy it."

Wake to thick fog that's
frozen and hoared up. In ten
minutes, it's all gone.

The fog may have lifted, but so have conditions on the FM band. I usually get marginal reception of 102.6 Fox FM Oxford - today, it's clear as a bell. Also: the very marginal 96.7 Chiltern GWR Northampton, the completely new 96.8 Welsh-language music station (possibly Radio Cymru), 100.4 Jazz FM Smooth FM for the North West (that's marginal in Wolverhampton), and 107.7 The Wolf from Wolverhampton. At work, on a North-facing hill, I picked up 94.6 BBC Stoke and 102.6 Signal One, which isn't unusual; and 97.3 LBC, which most certainly is.

While I'm rambling about radio, news that Kerrang Radio will launch on MXR West Midlands digital radio by the end of the year.

The weather forecast for the coming week is quite, quite barking:

Now: 0C.
Tonight: cloudy, low of +2C.
Friday: showers PM, 7 to 3.
Saturday: showers and light rain, 6 to 0.
Sunday: showers, possibly snow after nightfall, windy: 4 to -4.
Monday: Partly cloudy, 2 to -4, so do wrap up.
Tuesday: Showers, 8 to -2.
Wednesday: Showers, 9 to 4.
Thursday: Thunderstorms, 10 to 3.

Yes, team, we're dreaming of a thundery Christmas. Just like the ones we rumbled before. Where lightning crashes, and plates are smashes, from electricity down the walls. Er...

And it's about now that the bull hits the fan. US Senator Bill Nelson spoke on Monday of the lies the junta told him and other senators. Iraq, according to these meandering nincompoops, not only had weapons of mass destruction, but they had the means to deliver them to East Coast cities. About 75 senators got that fib during a classified briefing before October 2002's congressional vote authorizing the use of force in Iraq.

And it goes on. It was entirely preventable, claims the chair of the commission investigating the Sept 11 attacks. "This is a very, very important part of history and we've got to tell it right," said Thomas Kean. "As you read the report, you're going to have a pretty clear idea what wasn't done and what should have been done," he said. "This was not something that had to happen."

Kean is now pointing fingers inside the junta and laying blame. "There are people that, if I was doing the job, would certainly not be in the position they were in at that time because they failed. They simply failed." Kean promises major revelations in public testimony beginningnext month from top officials in the FBI, CIA, Defence Department, National Security Agency and, maybe, unelectable Spokesmoron Bush.

And it goes on. Repressed troublemakers are whining to Viacom's Empty Television after the popular lifestyle network not only played a music video, but actually dared play one critical of the junta. The junta's supporters, Sid and Doris Bonkers of Neasden, Tennessee, said that they were "shocked" and "appalled" that the network would air anything that might just possibly be taken as critical of the illegal military regime.

And it goes on. The first civilian lawyer into the illegal detention camp on Cuba confirms what we've all suspected for ages: prisoners are not being treated equally. Some have their own cells, and listen to ambient futuristic music all day and night, while others have to spend two or three hours a day with other captives.

And it goes on. A report into the UK's illegal detention of foreigners for allegedly being linked with terrorist organisations - even if that link is only in the minds of the "security" "services" - carries more weight because it comes from the Privy Council, a body made up of former Cabinet ministers. Fascist interior minister David Blunkett won't let his power base go that easily.

From the "well, du-uh!" files: Scientists prove air travel had a role in the spread of SARS. The virulent disease, in which sufferers have an unstoppable urge to write about crappy television, was first noticed in the US in late 1999, and spread across the planet like wildfire. Miss Bunting is old enough to know better.

Blimmin' 'eck! I've only been providing NFL Tables You Can Use for a month now. Finally, the official body joins the club. Not sure about their team names, though, they've only got one right. And they're supposed to be the governing body. Cuh, eh.

I seem to have missed the FA's plans to restructure the English football pyramid. To cut a long story short, next season will see a new Conference North and Conference South at the 6th level, replacing the existing Northern / Southern / Isthmian Leagues. Those league names move down to the 7th level, and four feeder leagues (Isthmian, Southern East, Southern West, and the wonderfully illogical Northern Premier Division One) shift down to the 8th level. The likes of the Midland Alliance and the Hellenic League become 9th level.

It's actually a very sensible plan (unlike the linked website, which uses a garish light blue - sorry about that) with a cunning set of playoffs and relegations. Even better, the league boundaries from the 6th level down will be redrawn each year, with the barking possibility of Bedford playing in the Conference North and their northern rivals Cambridge in the Conference South. Or Hinkley playing in the NL, and three teams in the south of the West Midlands in the SL.

There's nothing quite like
a Chinese for lunch. And a
Dutch lass for dinner.

To no-one's surprise, 17 has been cancelled. The hit comic-book show, in which Kiefer Sutherland stars as a special agent in a series of increasingly ludicrous situations, and Elisha Cuthbert starred with a cougar, bit the dust after the implausible denoument to its second series. The producer's pet network in the UK will air a low-budget approximation of the show, but no one watches that mess of a channel anyway.

The main news today comes from the desk of sport. Australia 556 & 196, India 523 & 233-6. India wins by four wickets. Australia becomes the first team to have lost a Test match after topping 500 in the first innings since they did so themselves against England more than 35 years ago.

From the fire rises
smoke. Curling around in the
stiff breeze. Breathe it in.

It's Tuesday, it's NFL Tables You Can Use!

AFC East                     W L Div Com
**-New England Flying Elvii 12 2 3-1 7-1
Miami Marine Mammals         8 6 2-2 4-4
x-Buffalo Peelers            6 8 2-2 3-5
x-New Jersey / B             6 8 1-3 4-4

AFC North                 W  L Div Com
Cincinnati Bungles        8  6 3-2 4-3
Baltimore Quoths          8  6 2-2 5-3
x-Pittsburgh Iron Pyrites 5  9 3-2 2-5
x-Cleveland Browns v2.11b 4 10 1-3 3-5

AFC South                    W  L Div Com
*-Indianapolis Lucky Charms 11  3 4-1 6-2
Flaming Thumbtacks          10  4 3-2 5-2
x-Houston Moo Cows           5  9 1-3 4-4
x-Jacksonville Inkspots      4 10 2-4 1-5

AFC West              W  L Div Com
**-Kansas City Chiefs 12 2 5-1 5-1
Denver Cursors        9  5 5-1 4-3
x-Oakland Ramraiders  4 10 1-4 3-4
x-San Diego Flats     3 11 0-5 3-4

Not a huge amount up for grabs here: one win for Denver will secure a wild card slot; one win for Indy will secure the division. Kansas has finished its AFC programme with a 10-2 record, with Minnesota and Chicago to come; New England is 9-1 in the conference with Buffalo and NJB to play.

In the North, Cincy and Baltimore have both a game against Cleveland. Cincy plays the Mouflons next week, Baltimore wraps with the no tougher game against Pittsburgh. Cincy is 6-5 in the AFC, Baltimore 5-5.

NFC East                                    W  L Div Com
*-Philadelphia Lovers                      11  3 4-1 6-2
Dallas Cowpersons                           9  5 4-1 3-4
x-Potomac Drainage Basin Indigenous Persons 5  9 1-4 3-5
x-New Jersey / A                            4 10 1-4 1-6

NFC North             W  L Div Com
Bay of Green          8  6 4-2 3-3
Minnesota Norsemen    8  6 4-2 3-3
x-Chicago Hibernaters 6  8 2-4 4-3
x-Detroit Peugeots    4 10 2-4 1-5

NFC South              W  L Div Com
**-Carolina Fatcats    9  5 5-1 3-4
New Orleans Boy Scouts 7  7 3-3 3-3
City of Tampa          7  7 2-3 5-2
x-Atlanta Typos        3 11 1-4 2-5

NFC West                W  L Div Com
**-St Louis Mouflons   11  3 4-2 6-0
Seattle Blue Men Group  8  6 3-1 4-4
x-San Fransisco 44-9ers 6  8 2-3 3-5
x-Arizona Cautions      3 11 1-4 2-5

Again, not a huge amount up for grabs here. Dallas has a sneeze of a hope at winning the East division, and has a chance against the Persons and Scouts. Philly has NJA and Tampa.

In the North, Minnesota finishes against Kansas and Arizona, about as big a contrast as one can get. GB has Denver and Oakland on the schedule. If both sides win out, Minnesota will take the division, Green Bay the wild card, as they've already knocked off the Blue Men Group. If both lose out, it'll come down to the murky depths of The Tie Breakers No One Understands. Seattle wraps with divisional games against the 44-9ers and the Cautions, and will lose tiebreakers to Minnesota as well as GB.

New Orleans finishes with Dallas and Jacksonville; the City has Atlanta and the Thumbtacks, and it's most unlikely either side will win out.

Good news for Armando Iannucci and other hors d'oeuvres fans around the planet. Parma, home to the famous Ham and Parmesan cheese, will now host the European Food Safety Agency. The city beat off strong competition from the well-known culinary capital of Helsinki to win the new regulatory body. In linked moves, Britain will train Eurocops in Hertfordshire, Lille will get the rail safety body, Lisbon will look after maritime safety, Cologne air safety, Sweden the prevention and control of disease, Spain the prevention and control of fisheries, Finland the promotion of international arts, and the Netherlands the safety of illicit drugs. Er...

But finally, some good news. A smart, sassy Northern lass is coming to drivetime on a leading national radio station. Yep, from the new year, Lauren Laverne will host driveltime on Xfm, the national local alternatune. Laverne goes up against Stuart Meerkat on Radio 2, Andrew Collins on 6 Music, and some crashing bore from Bolton on Radio 1.

And some more good news. Back in May, I got all nasty when KYTV cut out Willow and Kennedy's licking scene from an episode of Buffy. The ep aired on the BBC tonight, and my pen was all fired up to bat at General Duck. Don't need to: Aunty cut all the implied sex, apart from Buffy and Spike cuddling, and a quick shot of Faith and Aaron wrestling. A bit of a copout, but by treating all sex acts as equals, perfectly acceptable.

So, let's assume that the US has captured President Sadaam. What's going to be the first question. "Where are the weapons of mass destruction?" Just imagine the embarrassment when it emerges that, actually, there never were any CBNs, no chemical, nuclear, or biological weapons. Just an elaborate smokescreen and game of bluff. One that removed President Sadaam from power, but one that removes the figleaf from Prime Minister Blair and Thief Bush Jr. No CBNs, no justification for war, and plenty of opportunity to hoist those two self-proclaimed "leaders" before justice.

Possibly as bad: President Sadaam says "Yes, I had CBNs. They're the ones that your salesman, a Mr Rumsveld from Unknown Unknowns Inc, sold me."

You wait ages for
a fabby brunette to arrive.
Two turn up at once.

Now there's a blast from the past. Def Leppard's video for Let's Get Rocked, featuring a computer generated Everyfan, and a virtual concert arena. This passed for state of the art graphics in 1992, but was terribly passé by 1995.

Wind blows away the
cobwebs in the garden. And
in the mind, as well.

Today's Indescribablyboring reports that the government's expansion of airports has come to a grinding halt. Only one full new runway, at Stanstead, a short runway at Birmingham, no new airports, no expansion of Heathrow. It's a major victory for Margaret Beckett at the Environment over Alistair Luvvie Darling at Transport.

Meanwhile, have you seen the US dollar lately? That's strange, neither have we. About four weeks ago, it was sitting comfortably at around 1.60 to the pound, about 1.10 to the euro. Then it started sliding, and sliding, and sliding. By Friday it had finished at 1.75 to the pound, a 10% drop in barely a month. If things carry on at this rate, the US dollar will be worth less than the Canadian dollar in January, and be on a par with the old Italian lira by 2010.

Contraction and Convergence. A simple plan to reduce the world's output of carbon dioxide, by giving everyone on the planet an equal output of the gas. So simple, the politicians missed it, and it took a scientist to devise.

With Pop Idle II finally groaning to its finale next week (it reached its conclusion in early October: not as good as Star Academy), Duran Duran guitarist Andy Taylor has joined the queue criticising Simon Cowell. Mr Taylor, responsible for reducing girlies to screaming wrecks twenty years on, says the forgetful judge knows nothing about nurturing talent. "I don't have anything bad to say about the artists on these shows, because it's not their fault," he said. "But Gareth Gates probably could have been George Michael if he had been handled properly. He's got a good voice and a great look. But what do they do? They make him sing 'Unchained Melody'. It's not a good thing."

Last week, Mr Cowell claimed not to know about Alex Parks. Would this be the same Simon Cowell who said in September that he'd love to have Ms Parks on his tawdry two-bit karaoke show? You bet.

Claims this morning that a war criminal had been captured in Iraq. According to the US, their forces have captured President Sadaam Hussein of Iraq. No independent confirmation of this report is available.

Hiding behind the miniscreen is a montage of nine (count 'em!) leading news and current affairs channels. The whole picture is a whopping 561 KB. All caps were taken around 1545, with one exception.

Top left: CNN International, showing footage supplied by the US, claiming to show the prisoner's capture. The guest is squeezed into 24% of the screen, and this is a great example of why I reckon CNN is too red now.
Top middle: ITN News Channel, interviewing Mr Michael Howard. The caption informs us that Mr Howard is the leader of the Opposition this week.
Top right: Bloomberg. At 1550, they were showing an interview with a darts player. After the commercial break, the finance channel aired its style programme. And, yes, the regular show really does fit into just 45% of the screen.

Middle left: Euronews, airing a pre-recorded 10 minute package that probably doubled as Mr Sadaam's obituary.
Middle middle: BBC News 24, the only of these channels to broadcast in widescreen, showing off it's 4:3 safe captions.
Middle right: CNBC (DOG top left), broadcasting MSNBC (bottom right) from the US. The DOG top right may indicate that this programme was also going out on NBC. Note the strange and unreadable typeface used for the captions.

Bottom left: TV5, the French language network, had suspended its regular programming to broadcast a discussion of the events. The dark studio and absence of any other broadcaster's DOG indicates that this is a TV5 original.
Bottom middle: Deutsche Welle, the German external service, had continued with its regular documentary programming in the second half of each hour. A crawl along the bottom of the screen provided headlines in English and German.
Bottom right: Sky News, squeezing the picture into less than a quarter of the screen. It's no wonder this claims to be the most watched channel - viewers have to wait ages to actually see anything.

Which brings us to the music sales charts. On the singles side, Ozzy and Kelly Osbourne have the new #1 with Changes, it's them or the Pop Idle 12 for the Christmas Number One in two weeks. Willy Oung moves down to #2, Black Eyed Peas to #3, and Shane Richtea to #4. Cliff Richard has the second highest new entry at #5, Santa's List is his first single since 1999's chart topping One Song To The Tune Of Another. Evanescence is in at #7, while their copycat Clitring Aguilera is #9. The Cheeky Girls bow at #10, Madonna one place lower, and that's a disaster for the self-proclaimed Queen of Pap. Nelly Furtardo's Powerless is a very promising entry at #13, Big Brothers and Alicia Keys enter in the 20, while UB40's rugby song climbs into the upper section. It's disaster for Rachel Stevens - the S Club Hype's second single crashes in at #26, just three places ahead of Noddy. Lower down: Raveonettes at 49, Sting and Mary J Blige at 60.

Over on the albums list, Dido retakes the top slot from Will Young. Kiddyfiddler holds at 3, REM is back up to 4, and the heavily-discounted Black Eyed Peas land at #5. Cliff and Hayley Westenra advance, as does the discounted Daniel B'dingdangdong. Sparky's #13, on another sale of around 70,000, taking total sales to somewhere around 250,000 in three weeks. At this rate, Polydor will have recouped the prize by January.

Climbs for AOR schlockers Michael Buble, Andrea Bocelli, Simon and Garfunkel, Simply Red, and Katie Melua. Evanescence and Clitring also rebound on their single success, as does the Darkness ahead of next week's release.

On the singles chart of the year, Will Young has made #10 after just three weeks, and has Dido firmly in his sights as the Biggest New UK Single Of The Year. Shane Richie moves into the top 20, while Pestside sneaks into the 40, where they're joined by the second Black Eyed Peas record. Ozzy and Kelly are #71 for the year on just 85,000 sales.

older writing...