Happy Face

Pretty in Pink was directed by Howard Deutch. My favourite Hughes film is Planes, Trains and Automobiles. Weird Science is class too. And he wrote the national lampoon films I really loved.

My stock response to ANYTHING quoted from the Mail from now and forevermore, will be to quote Ben Goldacre..... http://www.badscience.net/2009/04/experts-...oral-prejudice/ Vile scum.

Wasn't a big fan of Bon Ivers album, or the more recent EP. If there's a single on the new Arctic Monkeys one as good as Dancefloor I'll give it a go, but I don't think anything else they've done has been up to it. Never heard of him. Had a look at Dance with Me on youtube. I reckon you just like his hair.

The number questions are plain shit. No problem with procedural questions around local and national government, courts, benefits, schooling etc. But knowing to the nearest decimal point how many muslims there are in the country or who immigrated most in the 80s, West Indies or Aussies, would require an obsession of Nick Griffinesque proportions (By which I mean if you're going to skew the stats, you need to know what they are). Testing the book rather than citizenship.....much as most school exams test the curriculum rather than knowledge.

I reckon this could be our year.

Anyone got any recommendations? Not got much new for a while.

The Dave Gorman one was canny shite. Bog standard radio listener emails. The Frankie Boyle one however is class. It's just him trying out one liners for upcoming episodes of Mock the Week. Some of it's crap, but lots of it is in brilliantly bad taste that the BBC would cut if he used them in the show. Another bonus is you don't have to put up with shite impresssions from Hugh Dennis or slow shouting from Andy Parsons. Hope there's more to follow soon. Is it free? Aye On itunes http://itunes.apple.com/WebObjects/MZStore...st?id=323684930

Not if you sneak into Hugh Hefner's

The Dave Gorman one was canny shite. Bog standard radio listener emails. The Frankie Boyle one however is class. It's just him trying out one liners for upcoming episodes of Mock the Week. Some of it's crap, but lots of it is in brilliantly bad taste that the BBC would cut if he used them in the show. Another bonus is you don't have to put up with shite impresssions from Hugh Dennis or slow shouting from Andy Parsons. Hope there's more to follow soon.

You have failed the practice citizenship test. Questions answered correctly: 12 out of 24 (50%) Time taken: 04 minutes 26 seconds Send the bugger back.

And Stiva at the back there looking at the camera

Congratulations you two. When's the big day?

Isn't that Craig in the bodywarmer effect top too?

What do you get if you sit under a cow? A pat on the head.

But Ian Hislop's quite funny. And intelligent.

Repeatedly prod Garth Crooks on the back of the head while he's on air.

Defy the offside rule in attack Help the keeper when defending free kicks, corners and penalties Masturbate in the faces of women in their changing room at the gym.

It should be in your face, shame it's being reported primarily as a sex scandal though.

Aye. I thought he was a mumbling foil for Smith to bounce of to begin with, but he always has the best one liners and is a lot drier and more intelligent than Smith.

Just been having a gander at the charts and subscribed to Frank Skinner, Dave Gorman and Frankie Boyle.

This weeks Smodcast is one of the best. The Harry Potter bit had me snorting away on the ferry tonight. They discuss Dumblewhore getting Ron Weasly to suck him off then using a forgeticus spell.

It would be aye. But the £510 just gets you there and back with digs. You'd spend a couple of hundred a day so it'll end up costing him (and his mates) well over a grand each. Not unreasonable to pass on it. I'd struggle to justify that and I don't live with me ma.

I don't think you were bragging...just attention seeking. Others do it, with threads about their love lives or fat family members or jobs or school or whatever their current strifes might be. I tend to cringe at all that stuff irrespective of the poster. If you think anyone's interested go and start a bleeding hearts blog about yourself and link to it in your sig. So you don't want to know about Fop then? I actually prefer your circular arguments, lack of clarity, refusal to state a position, ignorance of valid argument and childish namecalling to any posts that could feasibly appear in Dear Diedre's Sun column.

John Pilgers summer reading list.... http://www.newstatesman.com/uk-politics/20...ry-times-pilger

Read the next couple. Plan of Attack is the second book in the series which looks at the time between invading Afghanistan and going into Iraq. It's more of the same justifications for war from the people who made the decisions with no author contextualisation. This is forgivable though given how quickly they were released. It's clearly intended as a glimpse of that time, untainted by hindsight and reflecting the lack of clarity around the case for war. The WMD jury was still out when it was published and Woodward is scrupulously fair. The jury was well in when the third part came out though. State of Denial is far more scathing of the the CIA and the bush administration. It's the first one of the series where Bush refused to be interviewed and he's condemned repeatedly. Rumsfeld still agreed to be interviewed for this one though, and he perhaps comes out of it worse of all. It's been the best one so far and i look forward to reading part 4 which came out last year. Got through Bad Science by Ben Goldacre in a day. Very funny righteously indignant attack on big pharma, hippy healers and the media. He's marvelously upbeat about the positives all three can provide while being contemptuous of the charlatans associated with each. He makes complex statistical analysis fun (but then I can't think of any statistical analysis that isn't ) and his anger was expressed well enough to boil my blood as i read. Currently halfway through Globalization and its Discontents by Joseph Stiglitz which tears apart the actions of the IMF in just about every country where it has intervened backing up the widely held belief they do more harm than good every time with cold hard facts. It's great to read how much they ignore the advice of the best economic minds out there. But rather disheartening when you consider the author spent years as Clinton's chief economic advisor and was later appointed senior vice president of the world bank. If he's this disgusted with the IMF and couldn't do anything about it from such positions of power, what hope is there? It's pretty dry too.