plasticbag.org

Newsreaders like NetNewsWire – like web browsers – get more and more useful as more resources come online that they can read. Which is why it’s such tremendously good news that BBC News has now released a public beta of an RSS feed to the general public. Thanks to Matt Jones for this one.

• BBC News Frontpage
• BBC News Technology
• BBC News Science / Nature
• BBC News Politics
• BBC News Business
• BBC News Entertainment
• BBC News Health
• BBC News Education
• BBC News UK
• BBC News England
• BBC News Scotland
• BBC News Wales
• BBC News Northern Ireland
• BBC News World

They’re pink and they’re asking for it and frankly you’ll be all too willing to oblige. It doesn’t seem to hurt the little bitches either… Pink exploding-head doggies courtesy of Anno.

A boy who bullies other kids at school gets hit by a car. Under the pretence of helping him, one of his previous victims drags him roughly to the curb, and while ‘trying’ to get him into the recovery position keeps pushing his body around until he’s convinced that he’s broken his neck. The boy dies shortly afterwards. The previous victim gets away scott-free. Or does he? First things first, because the neck-breaker decides to brag about his actions on Kuro5hin.org, triggering debates on both Kuro5hin and Metafilter about what should be done should the story prove to be true. And in the process they’ve named the individual concerned and posted the local police department’s telephone number.

This situation brings all those fundamental weirdnesses of the internet right back to the fore in my mind – the freedom of expression presented gives you access into the minds of people that were previously completely invisible to you. And sometimes that’s unpleasant, scary even. But what’s the truth here? Who online can know? Is this a talented fantasist’s rantings or an error in judgment by a remorseless man who believes still in the myth of total online anonymity? Is he sitting at home in Cornwall cold-sweating like a pig, or is he ice-cold, suited and booted at work? It’s difficult to know what to think, except that either way it smacks slightly of sociopathy…

I started a thread on Barbelith yesterday called Crises of Modern Western Life in which I suggested that the two fundamental crises attacking Western identity at the moment were crises of nationality and crises of mascunlinity: “Both are fundamentally linked in some profound ways that I’m not sure I’m able to articulate – but are to do with ways of deriving pride or self-respect from some aspect of self-definition. I was wondering if anyone felt they could extend some of this thinking in a useful direction – suggest some linkages, some failures in my thinking or perhaps some other crises that my subservience to colonial middle-class hetero-patriarchal values may have forced me to put under some kind of erasure… ” I’d appreciate any thoughts anyone might have…

You don’t want to watch Notting Hill. You really don’t. But it’s on television and it’s so bloody sticky and although you know it’s kind of going to make you want to kill everyone if you catch more than a moment of it, if you do catch a moment of it then it’s got you in its massive drooling fangs and it won’t let go – by god – no. But I don’t want any of it. I don’t want the crappy friends with broken bits, and I don’t want the Aryan Nation version of West London. I don’t bloody need Ronan Keating howling in my sensitive earbits. And most particularly I don’t want the godawful shame of getting really emotionally involved in it – and worst of all the hideous embarrassment of suddenly wanting one of those least fashionable of all things… A bloody boyfriend. It’s a phase. I’ll get over it. Godammit.

I went out last night to G.A.Y. ostensibly to see have a dance around and get drunk and watch the Sugababes, except I got a bit depressed and cynical quite early on in the evening and spent a couple of hours glaring at half-witted poofs all desperate to pair off as quickly as humanly possible. So instead, my friend Nick and I wandered off and got fake tattoos sprayed onto our aging flesh. Here’s mine:

A while ago I went on a low-carbohydrate diet to try and lose some weight. And although the diet itself was borderline impossible to maintain, I did find that my skin cleared up, I stopped farting all the time, my moods radically stabilised and I felt much more energised and up for stuff. Now I’ve been reading about Candida and I’m thinking, “Hmm well that all sounds remarkably familiar…” I should go to the doctors really…

I’m not one for the constant tracking of page impressions, but I do check my stats every couple of days to find out if anyone’s crouched behind an Ice Rink whispering about me behind my back. Once you reach my level of web celebrity you have to be careful about these things. You wouldn’t understand, I’m sure. Anyway, because of a recent upgrade in the kind of reporting facilities I have, I now know the search terms that people are using to come to my site. Now of course everyone else has had this ability for years. I used to have it too. Sigh – those heady days of youth… I’ll never get them back now…

I’m commenting on this recently regained ability because I keep getting referrals from people who search for Workshy Fop. Turns out I’m the third most visible fop on the planet according to Google. What an honour. Clearly this too is an honour that most of you have little chance of even beginning to aspire to. But if you want to see if you even rate, might I suggest submitting your picture to Am I a Workshy Fop or Not?

Now I’ve started using ‘titles’ to my weblog posts, but if you’re not reading the site through some kind of RSS feed you won’t know what any of them are. I’m not keen on breaking up the flow of my posts on the main site though, so let me spell it out for you just this once… The title of this post is If the BBC can’t get it right…

Now the BBC runs a number of mailing lists. Once I signed up for one of them when I was trying to keep up with one very specific aspect of what they were doing. The list I signed up to was called ‘Communicate’. I’d like to provide a link to the page in question, but I can’t find it on the site anymore. Anyway, after a while I decided to unsubscribe and so followed the link on their site to this page. I filled in my information and got this reply:

Thank you for requesting the Communicate Newsletter. You will receive 3 information emails, and only need reply to ‘Confirm Subscribe’ to begin your subscription.

1. Majordomo Results
(There is no need to reply to this email – it is just to advise you that your email address has been used to subscribe with us)
2.Confirm Subscribe
(You MUST reply to this message by simply clicking the ‘Reply’ & then ‘Send’ buttons in your email program)
3.Welcome to Communicate
(This message is to welcome you to the Newsletter, please retain it for your future reference)

You’ll notice – of course – that this is welcoming me to the newsletter. Humph I thought. Maybe they’ve got the copy wrong. But no. I continued to receive the newsletter. So I followed the other instructions relating to signing off the list. Let me spell this stuff out:

“If you wish to unsubscribe from this newsletter or have received it in error, please click here: http://www.bbc.co.uk/communicate/newsletter/news_unsubscribe.html or send a blank email to majordomo@lists.bbc.co.uk stating ‘Unsubscribe Communicate’ in the subject line (keep the rest of the e-mail blank).”

Ok, well I tried the first one, so I thought I’d try the second one. Only to be sent (immediately) a reply that went like this…

“This message shows the result of status of your request to subscribe, unsubscribe, or alter your subscription to one of the BBC’s mailing lists.
**** No valid commands found.
**** Commands must be in message BODY, not in HEADER.

Hmm. Interesting. So that information was just wrong then? Note at no point around here is there any e-mail address that I could use to contact anyone directly if I actually can’t get the damn thing to work. And the BBC isn’t a small organisation. There must be 40,000 or more people working for them at any one time. It’s not beyond the bounds of reason that I might never figure out who to contact… Anyway – I’m fairly sure I’ve tried this other approach as well – with the commands in the ‘proper’ place, and that it didn’t work either. But I’ll try. Again.