That was MMV

2005 has brought its fair share of natural disasters, political nightmares and boybands, but for me it will represent the first year of full employment since leaving Her Majesty's Arm Twisters.

So I thought I might share a few thoughts with the world by way of a special award ceremony. The nominations are in, the world holds its breath... And the winner for Most Pointless Blog Article goes to...

Highlight of The Year - Dolphin hunting in Scotland. Even though we didn't find any!

Serendipity Award - Richmond Live 2005. Wow! I never thought this would have been anything like as good as it was. If you can get there next year you'll find me at the front!

Damp Squib Award - Coldplay live at Reebok Stadium, Bolton. A polished performance, but not much different to listening to their albums, and nowhere near worth the Neolithic wait to get out of the carpark afterwards. Oh, and a special thank you to the drunken chav who pissed down my leg in the middle of Yellow.

Popcorn and Coke Award - Sin City. No contest. Definitely. One-hundred-per-cent-certain. No, wait. There was Harry Potter too, wasn’t there?

Shiny Round Thing Award - Honeycomb, by Frank Black. By far the best CD of the year. Even though nobody in Sheffield's HMV had ever heard of him.

Square Eyes Award - The West Wing, Season Six. Despite those Arseholes at Channel 4 deciding not to bother showing season five, this has been completely unmissable.

Clicking Excellent Award - Weebl and Bob. I don't know why, either. But if you don't find it hysterical there is something medically wrong with you.

Page Turner Prize - Carter Beats the Devil, by Glenn David Gold. Although this book was released before this year I thought it would be worth a special mention as it's been re-released in paperback. A riveting yarn about one of Houdini's contemporaries

Bugger It Award - Didn't stick with learning the guitar.

Five Gold Stars For Me Award - I Finished i-con Part One.

Things to Make You Go "Aww" Award - Jessica putting "Go somewhere nice with Daddy” on her Christmas list.

And my top tip for 2006 - i-con, part 2. Fun and frolics with a lady in a wheelchair, an anti-globalization suicide cult, and a little girl growing up in a rather unsavoury corner of Eastern Europe.

Happy New Year, everyone. Thanks for all your visits and comments. I wish you all the very best of health and success for the year ahead.

What's that big star over there?

Richard Fleet seems to be a rather clever chap. He's made a lovely bit of freeware that shows you where all the planets are in the night sky on any given night. Just load it up, click on "now", then click on "horizon view" and you'll be able to tell exactly which planet or star is visible in your area at that moment. It even works during the day, but that's not really the best time to be out with your binoculars, is it?
It really is jolly clever, and it's free. You can download the Graphdark program by clicking the link below.

Go to Richard Fleet's homepage

Thanks, Richard.

Dear Diary

I had plans. I’m sure I did. Wasn’t I going to be a famous writer. Or something like that? I took a couple of my pictures to a local gallery yesterday, and he thought they were great. “I’ll hang what ever you want to frame.” He told me. “I like your stuff, it’s unusual.”

So I left feeling a bit better. Some time in the New Year I’ll pay for these two images to be printed at a suitable size and pay for their framing. Then I’ll stick a price tag on them and wait.


"Leaving" by David Steele. Click to enlarge

Real Life. It’s a killer.

I had a warning last month. A tap on my shoulder and a tarnished pocket watch. I was sat on a hospital table with ECG plasters all over me while the nurse made jokes about Frankenstein. “You’re normal.” She told me, smiling. “But I’ll need the doctor to have a look at you.”

Sunday morning and the sun’s out. The hills are calling but I’m still inside. I’m making a cow in 3D because I think I’ve got an idea for a picture that might make some money. Meanwhile Billy and Clara are waiting for their next chapter. I keep promising them I’ll get back to them. i-con feels like a close family member who’ll be upset that I haven’t called in such a long time.


I keep thinking I’m spread too thinly, but it’s not true. I have the same number of hours in the day as Einstein. I have just the same amount of time available to me as Bradbury. There’s no excuse for not producing. Nobody else is going to do it for me.


"Daily Express" by David Steele. Click to Enlarge.

But I’m so bloody tired!

Me and everyone else, right? And there goes my stupid heart again. Time to remember what Bradbury taught me:

“Every day I jump out of bed and step on a landmine. The landmine is me.
After the explosion, I spend the rest of the day putting the pieces together.
Now it’s your turn. Jump!”

Sometimes it’s hard to keep going because life gets to be such a drudge. But it’s precisely that fact – that life is a drudge, that should be firing me up to do something better.

I think I lost it there. But only for a moment. We may be in the gutter, but we can still see the shops.

Exclusive

US Sky Marshal boss, William J T Leonard Jnr has admitted that his plans to continually monitor and improve the service did not go as planned.

"I used to be a management supervisor at the Florida branch of the Wal-mart." He told our reporter. "And mystery shoppers worked just fine there."

Amid calls for his resignation, Miami resident Mr Leonard did his best to appeal for understanding. "Back at the Mall it was the job of the mystery shopper to create a little bit of a stink... be kind of unruly, and then rate the staff on their performance. This was kind of a pilot scheme, but I guess we should have sort of thought about what might happen if we got a lady marshal at, you know, her special time."

Louder than Words

It seems the influence of "Post a Secret" has reached the Westminster Village.

Always read the smallprint

Dear Mr Steele

Thank you very much for your enquiry. I believe there may have been several misunderstandings when you applied to sponsor a child, and I hope to be able to clarify these matters now.

World Vision is a Christian relief and development organization dedicated to helping children and their communities worldwide reach their full potential by tackling the causes of poverty. We serve the world's poor— regardless of a person's religion, race, ethnicity, or gender. With this in mind, most people donate to us to allow us to help bring up children in safety with the best possible start in life. The money you pay is intended to cover such expenses as their education, food, the cost of any medical bills, and the need to house and clothe them in a suitably serviceable state.

While we appreciated your donation, we found many of your requests a little too specific. As an organisation that primarily aims to help children, I am afraid that we do not cater for sponsorship of girls between eighteen and twenty two. Nor can we select specific girls based on their hair colour. Whilst we work in many desperately poor places in the world, and although we appreciate that poverty is a global issue, I am afraid your first choice of Sweden and your second of Denmark are not represented either.

All sponsors receive regular progress reports and updates to explain how their children are getting along. Our children are also encouraged to write to their sponsors and tell a little about how they are getting along. However, your request for full colour photographs and videos will have to be declined, as we do not have photographic facilities in every outpost. Neither do all our girls have ample supplies of toys, friends or the watersports facilities that you asked be included. Obviously, since high speed broadband links are hard to come by in much of the third world, your request for live webcam chats are out of the question.

We will hold your donation and ask you to re-submit your request as a matter of some urgency. Please review your choices carefully and get back to us at the soonest opportunity. You will be pleased to know that, since we have several missions in Africa and India, the vast majority of our girls are (as you requested) very hot indeed.

Yours truly,

Helen Back

World Vision

Hype

In a shock move, Keanu Reeves has turned down the part of Neo in The Matrix – Rehashed to play a far more challenging role; that of cult icon Mr Spoon in the latest Hollywood blockbuster adaptation of Button Moon.

“It’s an especially challenging role.” Keanu told our reporter yesterday. “The whole thing with the Blanket Sky says so much about our current climate and sociological zeitgeist that I just had to take the role on. I called up James [Cameron] and told him I was in as soon as I’d got the script.”

But the new-look button moon already has its critics. Mike Newell, director of Harry Potter and the Goblet of Fire was dismissive. “The choice of Jaime King to play Mrs Spoon was a total blunder. I’ve also seen the mock-ups for Box House on Treacle Street and they haven’t made it nearly dark and sinister enough. As for Brew the Witch, she’s just not suitable for modern audiences. She’s such a two-dimensional character that I’m not sure that the more sophisticated, modern audience will identify with her."

Film critic Jonathan Ross was far more supportive. “I know this film will have its knockers, especially with Jaime getting so much of the limelight, but it’s just not fair. Many people have said that Keanu will be too wooden for the role, but I think his expressive range and communicative talents will make Mr Spoon his most challenging and revealing role yet. It’s going to be huge.”

This movie adaptation is expected to do well, and due to its amazing special effects, it’s already expected to snatch the coveted “Best film” award at next year’s Can Film Festival.

Caption Sensible

I’m staying at my dear Daddy’s house this weekend, which means that I access the world through the eyes of AOL. Hey, nobody’s perfect. I still love him.

Anyway. Here’s a full-centre commercial from the welcome screen that awaits unsuspecting AOL users, under the banner “The Perfect Christmas Present.” Quite frankly, I’m speechless, and more than a little intimidated.



Thanks, AOL. Just when I thought I’d got over those old insecurities. No way I’m visiting Japan in a hurry.

So there you go. It's Caption Competition time! In the words of our local vicar, there will be a special award for the most original entry.

In Your Mouth

I’ve been thinking about dogs a lot lately. There are an awful lot of them where I’m working and (with very few exceptions) most of them sit around all day waiting for the long walk that never comes. The lives of these unfortunate animals seem to be a constant and steady precession of nothingness, punctuated only by the occasional “thing passing the window” to bark at, or (better still) the rare treat of a “man who has to visit the house”. This gives each and every lovely four-legged creature the long-awaited chance to stick their nose into his crotch, have a good sniff, and jump all over him while the owner looks on as if it’s probably just what the man at the door had been looking forward to.

But I’ve been thinking. I’ve come up with a sure-fire way to regenerate the inner cities. There are an awful lot of dog-owning chavs who can make some serious money from my proposal. It goes something like this: One thing this country is not short of is dogs, and at some time, these dogs have puppies, right? And these puppies need milk, right? And when the puppies are weaned, their mother stops producing milk, right?

Well, what if we didn’t let that happen? Surely it can’t be that difficult to come up with a simple milking frame for the average Labrador. I’m sure that with proper backing, this idea could take off in a big way. Think about the benefits of taking our milk from dogs. The streets are already full of dogshit (because the owners of these dogs don’t seem to think that it should be their job to clean it up), but at least we could do away with those unsightly dollops all over the countryside and get rid of those rather menacing-looking cows.

Surely, there must be enough dogs already in residence to produce all the milk we’ll ever need. Since just about every dog owner in the country assumes that we must all love their dogs as much as they do (which is why they’re all so happy to let their vile little shit-factories jump all over us when ever we have to visit them), then surely it would make sense that all dog owners would prefer the taste of their favourite pet’s milk over milk taken from a big ugly cow.

We could save millions on the Social Security budget by allowing the chavs of the nation to set up business and export their animals' lactic fluids. All they need is a little financial incentive and soon the streets will be running white and smelling vaguely cheesy.

So far I’ve decided that the Doglolly is a sure winner. But we don’t have to stop there. What about Dogcheese, Dogspread, or Dogbutter?

Anyone wishing to invest in this proposal should contact me as soon as possible to allow me to set up the marketing campaign and design a rudimentary milking stall.