The influence of the Hitchhiker’s Guide to the Galaxy gets everywhere. Surely it’s no coincidence that this prominent 42[1]

The Answer...

is just across the road[2] from the Centre for Life, whose sign in large friendly letters always makes me think of Marvin the Paranoid Android.

Life

Life? Don’t talk to me about life.

[1] The Answer to the Ultimate Question of Life, the Universe and Everything
[2] OK, across the road and along a bit

Yes, another downward weight fluctuation today. I had to get the bus to and from work, as my knees have been complaining a lot. I think they got upset with me on the train home yesterday – I was sitting for about three and a half hours, and they claimed they couldn’t find a comfortable position. Damn grumpy things…

Oh what fun. Virgin Media, as ntl:Telewest has renamed itself, is having a bit of a row with BSkyB.

Reading the report suggests that one or both parties are lying weasels. The current state of play is that Virgin are declining to pay BSkyB what they demand for their popular channels, including Sky One. They’re going so far as to say that they can do very nicely without those channels, and they’re going to have other stuff to “make up for it”. There’s a slight odour of bovine waste products about that[1], as Sky One has a tendency to have exclusive rights to programmes that people actually want to watch, such as Lost, 24, and much more significantly, The Simpsons.

If the UK’s only remaining cable operator drops the main Sky channels, we’ll be taking a bold step backwards into last century, when different cable and satellite operators[2] had different sets of channels. This wasn’t at all good for the customers, and eventually things settled down and companies stopped being silly.

But now it seems we’re in for some more silliness. And I think it’s Virgin who will have to back down more than BSkyB. They already suffer from customers leaving them for cheaper deals with Sky, and losing key channels would accelerate that. Sky win either way: they get more money from Virgin, or they get more of Virgin’s disgruntled customers.

I’d hate to have to switch – I don’t want to have a silly dish thingy on my house, and I really don’t want to switch from my cable broadband to ADSL, which quite apart from anything else would involve having to have a BT phone line.[3] I suspect this will all be sorted out, and Virgin and Sky will kiss and make up. But I do wish the people running these companies would Grow up and stop playing silly buggers

[1]
[2] There used to be two of those…
[3] Dealing with BT is something I really prefer to avoid.

BBC NEWS | Entertainment | No Morrissey entry in Eurovision

Now there’s a relief. Last month, I mentioned that there was a danger that Morrissey might be involved with Britain’s entry for the hideous Eurovision Song Contest, which would have been highly disturbing…

Anyway, it’s now been confirmed that he won’t be writing or performing, which means I can revert to my normal policy of completely ignoring the dreadful thing.

Nice to see that the BBC are employing journalists with an extensive knowledge and deep understanding of 1980s music:

Morrissey first found fame with indie group The Smiths, whose dark, brooding songs and social commentary on issues such as vegetarianism won a devoted following

Come to think of it, there were people[1] at the time who thought The Smiths were “depressing”, presumably because they never paid attention to the often humorous lyrics.

[1] Notably some Radio 1 DJ or other[2] who insisted that people didn’t want to hear The Smiths in the afternoon. Personally, I didn’t want to hear him. Ever….
[2] Wossname, err, Steve Wright, that was his name