Of course, being American - and clearly aware he was also standing in front of a bank of TV camera, Keating didn’t use those words. Instead what he said was this…

“When the President says ‘go’… it’s hammer time.”

No, really…

Unfortunately almost no news organisation broadcast the full text of Vice Admiral Keating’s speech, an omission I sought to correct by writing the following for that week’s issue of The Friday Thing…

…

BOUND FOR DA RELOAD: That Call to Arms In Full…

“Well, here we are and here we are and here we go. All aboard and
we’re hitting the road. Because we want to. And you may ask
yourself “Am I right… Am I wrong?” And you may tell yourself
“My God, what have I done?”. Mamma mia! Bend down low, let me
tell you what I know. I’m the leader, I’m the leader, I’m the
leader of the gang, I am. Let’s get ready to rhumble.

You have to show them that you’re really not scared. You’re
playing with your life, this aint no truth or dare. They’ll kick
you, then they beat you, then they’ll tell you it’s fair. So beat
it! The boys are back in town.

It’s the eye of the tiger, it’s the thrill of the fight. Rising
up to the challenge of our rival, Mr Boombastic. The winner takes
it all. Have I the right? I’ve got the power. All kinds of
everything. Great balls of fire, pink macaroons and a million
balloons and performing baboons and… I got you babe. You rock
my world. Oops I did it again.

I heard it through the grapevine… Saturday night’s alright for
fighting. This is what we’ve waited for, this is it boys, this is
war. The President is on the line. And when the President says
‘go’… Stop. It’s hammer time.”

…

I was reminded of that today as I read the press release for a competition being run by Nokia called ‘Music Millionaire’. It’s to promote the launch of their ‘iTunes killing’ (hmmmm) Comes With Music service, and involves inviting writers to compose short stories written entirely in song titles.

They’ve signed up names like Salman Rushdie, Andrew Morton and Hanif Kureishi to submit stories. Here’s Rushdie’s on the theme of ‘Commitment’…

Yesterday - John Lennon
I Saw Her Standing There - The Beatles
The Girl from Ipanema - Joao Gilberto
Venus in Blue Jeans - Jimmy Clanton
The Sweetest Thing - U2
Who Wrote the Book of Love - The Monotones
Then She Kissed Me - Bruce Springsteen
And It Stoned Me - Van Morrison
Crazy Love! - Van Morrison
Don’t Let Me Down - The Beatles

You see?

You can submit your own playlist (’competition’ link) and if Nokia’s judges (including Jeremy Langmead and Dylan Jones (I know)) like it, you might win some kind of Nokia music phone and unlimited downloads of millions of songs.

But fuck the phone and the downloads and all that crap, it’s just fun, and incredibly distracting as I’ve discovered for most of today.

If you do submit a playlist, send it to me as well and I’ll badger Nokia’s PR folks (see disclaimer below) to let me give away some extra prizes based on my own judging criteria including:

- distastefulness
- obscurity of songs chosen
- inclusion of songs by The Barenaked Ladies
- pornographic subtext

Ok Go.

(Full disclosure: Nokia’s PR in the UK is handled by Mission Media who I’ve been advising on their digital strategy; specifically how to talk to bloggers without looking like PR wankers. That’s how I found out about the competition. I’m reluctant to mention campaigns by any of Mission’s clients here, lest I become an ad man’s shill (ahem), but this is just great. Nokia culpa.)

No related posts.

It was slightly later than planned as I had to debate with my editor over whether I could accuse Yang of biting the head off an owl.

Really.

Related posts:

1. The Columns 2008... Not Safe For Work Episode Two: Wham, bam,...
2. Guardian Podcast: Yang-s for the memories and other stories My second guest-hosting gig at the Guardian Tech Weekly Podcast...
3. Haikurious George Every day, I get at least one email asking me...

Featuring Bobbie’s interview with Saul Griffith, Jemima and Charles’ trip to the Guardian Hackday and some emotionally-stirring nonsense with the Phoenix lander. Oh and me explaining how I have ‘nothing but contempt’ for the Guardian’s blog commentors. How to win friends and influence trolls.

Word…

Related posts:

1. Audiowhoring: The Guardian Tech Podcast interview My appearance on the Guardian podcast is now live. Click...
2. It’s alive! What a day - beginning this morning in Covent Garden...
3. Reasons I always get fired #43,347: Jerry Yang the owl murderer My latest NSFW Guardian column has just been published. It's...

(The NYPD Blue camera work is particularly fitting, given the venue)

And then, of course, there was the after-party.

Related posts:

1. True. This is brilliant. Written and directed by Charles Stone III...
2. Don’t vote American readers - I do so hate to get all...
3. “Mmm, that feels nice…” Hot blonde gets facial on bathroom camera Ladies and gentlemen... prrrresenting the British iJustine... (because God knows...

According to Fox News (natch) it’s going to be called ‘Joe the Plumber - Fighting for the American Dream’.

Now, I know what you’re thinking. You’re thinking, that’s a book I’d definitely buy, if only it had a better title. And you’re absolutely right, which is why I’ve spent all of ten seconds coming up five alternatives that Joe might like to consider…

- Lady Chatterley’s Plumber

- His Dark Materials (Plus Labor)

- Showerhead Revisited

- A Time To Overbill

- The Book Of Moron

Do feel free to send me your own ideas and I’ll forward them to Joe’s publisher, Pearlgate. Whoever the fuck they are.

Oh, and if you can’t get enough of Joe (I can’t) then you’ll definitely want to check out his new site, and maybe even consider signing up for membership. You have two options, standard membership (benefits: none) which is free and ‘freedom’ membership which is - er - $14.95 a year.

The paid membership, as well as getting you a signed copy of Joe’s book, also gives you access to ‘Joe The Blog’ where… “he can share the latest on the fight for preserving Americas freedoms.”

Brits (or those with an eye for British slang) will also be delighted to see that Joe - who was working as a plumber, despite not being registered to do so, and who owes $1200 in unpaid taxes - provides an option for visitors to ‘Shop Joe’.

Joe The Win.

Related posts:

1. Can’t believe they cut the ‘coke off a hooker’s ass’ story Hermione Way has just posted the highlights video from when...
2. Useful Press Stuff Bio... Paul Carr is a writer specialising in media and...
3. You want updates? I’ll give YOU updates Well, where to start? I know! The very beginning. But...

No, rather I was curious what search terms people used to find BringingNothing.com. I find there’s no easier way to reassure yourself of the general bat-shit insanity of the vast majority of people who use the Internet.

And what did I find? Three broad categories of searches: people looking for stuff about me (terms like ‘Paul Carr’ and ‘Bringing Nothing To The Party’ - yawn); people looking for stuff I’ve written about, either on here or in the book (my favourite, by the way - and I’m sorry about this Anna - is the person searching for ‘anna melville james is a cunt.’ Anna is probably the least cunty person I know); and finally, the mentals.

How mental? Let’s take a look at my top ten Google search terms that have brought people to my digital front door, in reverse order…

10. facts about badgers (I’m on the second page of results for this one. God only knows how many young minds I’ve scarred)

9. alan partridge latin working in dixons (The phrase you were looking for, my little search friend, was ‘apropos’, and it was Curry’s not Dixon’s)

8. do it yourself togas (Who needs fucking instructions?)

7. free creature sex (Paying for it is so undignified)

6. a man dress up in a gorilla suit fucking a white girl video (Rejected Dairy Milk ad)

5. a metaphor for a shoe (…is no substitute for an actual shoe)

4. book characters who used flip flops (Is ‘used’ really the appropriate verb here?)

3. does anyone want to kiss jerry? (If that’s you Googling, Jerry, then I’m going to go ahead and say ‘no’)

2. don’t call me a whore im a unicorn (The Swiss army knife of sex horses)

And the undisputed winner…

1. cock in my shoe (What? Seriously, what? Although: title of my second album)

Actually, there’s one more that, while clearly well intentioned, actually made me laugh more than all of the others put together. Step forward and claim your prize, whoever searched for…

once you’re lucky twice you’re goo

…

(NB While looking for the image for the top of this post, I discovered that “the collective noun for unicorns is ‘a blessing‘”. What’s the collective noun for people who make up collective nouns for fictional creatures? A loon?)

Related posts:

1. The Sunday Afternoon Fuck-Up Round-Up: Part One Welcome one, welcome all to the very first installment of...
2. New Book Extra: Let’s take a look at The Gallery "???Double Scaatches for everyone,??? he shouted, to no one on...
3. Creature Discomfort About an hour ago, Adam Gee, New Media Commissioner at...

Oops. Not twelve hours after I write a column saying that London needs its own Valleywag so, it seems, does San Francisco.

Nick Denton has decided to roll Silicon Valley’s favourite only tech gossip blog and its skeleton staff into Gawker to consolidate pageviews and weather the impending ad revenue storm.

I’m not sure how I feel about Valleywag’s demise (and, however Denton spins it, let’s be honest, it’s a demise). Unlike Gawker which speaks to anyone with an interest in the media industry, Valleywag was never really relevant to non-Valley dwellers. It was just a bit too inside the beltway (if you’ll excuse the geography) and, with a few exceptions, the characters it profiled just weren’t interesting enough to travel.

But that’s a curious point. Why wasn’t it more interesting to non Valley people? Why, when it came from the New-York-based-Brit-owned Gawker stable, was it so introspective? Especially when it’s generally accepted that it was at its best when edited by Denton himself.

Clearly, Denton has already asked those questions and by rolling Valleywag into Gawker, with its Ketel One ads and mainstream media commenters, is trying to force Owen Thomas to think, if not globally, at least nationally. But is a roll-in the right solution? I’m not convinced.

Why not leave Valleywag where it is but change the tone to one more similar to Gawker, which is firmly rooted in New York but realises that for many the location is aspirational rather geographical? Gossip the Valley to the world, but also the world to the Valley and tap in to the hundreds of thousands of people outside of Northern California who work in - or are just interested in - the technology industry. That’s a hell of an audience.

(But, whatever they do, for fuck’s sake, why not hire someone who can write a decent joke? Gawker is snarky; Valleywag is just a gang of dorks dressed up as bullies for Halloween.)

I was going to write more on this, but it’s just hit me how little I care about whether Valleywag lives or dies. Which I suppose is exactly the problem. I really want to care. And I should. But I just don’t. I will however be hitting refresh at least a dozen times a day on the first day of Gawkerwag, when the New York media commenter elite suddenly finds their daily snark fix interrupted by stories about Jason Calacanis’ dogs.

Now that will be funny.

Until then, I guess I’m going to have to keep getting my laughs from reading Mashable.

…

(By the way, does anyone else find it amusing the Nick Denton’s personal site is a .org? He’s nothing if not self-aware.)

Related posts:

1. The Columns 2008... Not Safe For Work Episode Two: Wham, bam,...
2. Things are looking up I'm going to risk a bit more caffeine. The palpitations...
3. Haikurious launches / with Haiku meta tags too / Really, you can check Techcrunch, Mashable, New Media Guardian, Digg, Youtube, Gawker, news...

I feel like someone has Duck Taped a truck to a baseball bat and hit me in the liver with it, while simultaniously sucking my brain out through a curly straw. The last week or so has been mental.

For a start there was 24HoursInAmerica - liveblogging the US Election for 24 hours straight, with James Aylett and Sarah Bee.??Despite the odd technological fuck up (including, at one point, James having a physical fight with an electronic safe until we realised it could be reset simply by turning it off and on again), it went rather well.

We exceeded our traffic expectations, thanks in large part to our partnership with The Register. We also had a number of exclusives including Bill O’Reilly’s next move, Pollcat’s spookily accurate predictions, calling for Saxby Chambliss before anyone else, the 24HIA demographic breakdown, groundbreaking puns and of course Russian bear attack!

I was also ridiculously pleased with this joke??even if no one else was.

Then, less than two hours after the coverage wrapped up, Sarah 2.0 and Olivia - um - 1.0 rolled into town??to promote the UK edition of Sarah’s splendid book, ‘The Stories of Facebook, Youtube and Myspace: The People, the Hype and the Deals Behind the Giants of Web 2.0‘. Yes, that’s the UK title - a string of words so ridiculous that they could easily be part of a McSweeney’s list??(which, by the way, appear to have stopped being funny).

Tour guide duties for the trip had, by way of a complicated pitch process, fallen to Robert and me and we were determined to show Sarah and Olivia the most interesting aspects of the London tech scene. No surprise, then, that our first port of call was the Hampstead Tech Meetup in a house in North London. While Sarah talked Book, Robert and I busied ourselves arguing with Americans about whether Turkey was ready to join the EU. We also ate prawns in the Holly Bush and saw a hilarious pumpkin.

On Thursday, things really kicked off, with a dinner held in Sarah’s honour at Joe Allen’s, hosted by Rob and Paul Walsh.

I arrived just in time for the after-party at Paramount, at the top of Centrepoint. Highlight of the evening: a slightly terrified-but-amused looking Sarah wordering what she had to do to get the message across to one of the group who was a little, how you say, over-enamoured with ‘Smoking Sarah Lacy’ (copyright, Valleywag). Never have I heard the words ‘my husband’ forced into so many non-husband-related sentences. ??Still, at least he wasn’t wearing a hat - Rob would have probably slapped him. That’s, after all, what hosts are for.??

Having ditched all but the hardest of the hardcore, the evening ended up back at the Sanderson with red wine and fries. Food of the Gods.

Friday - the main event - Rob and I interviewing Sarah on stage at a former strip club (epic venue win) about the ‘Secrets of Silicon Valley’. There’s video of the event coming soon from Newspepper but here’s a low-res trailer, courtesy of Zoe…

Despite the shaky camera work, I really think it gives a sense of Rob’s and my professionalism.

With our formal hosting duties at an end, it was time for some fun, and where better to find that fun than at Martha Lane-Fox’s karaoke bar with Sarah, Olivia, myself, Rob, Anna, Maggie, Simon, Scott, Hermoine, Michelle Dewberry and the rest of the gang.

The highlights are too numerous to mention but, even in the face of??Sarah and Olivia’s bootylicious dancing to Sweet Home Alabama,??we all agreed that the star of the evening was Simon Prockter with his extraordinary rendition of Blue Moon.??

Dangdagaganga da danga dang dang…. Blu blu blu blu bluuuuuu mooooon.??

And so to the weekend, and a trip to see the brontosaurus at the Natural History Museum. Sarah was very enthusiastic about the tail - “there’s the tail!” she screamed as we rounded the corner - but her enthusiasm turned to disappointment when she realised that the brontosaurus - A FREAKING BRONOTOSAURUS - wasn’t as tall as she’d have liked.

It’s a shame Michael Crichton’s dead; he could have rewritten Jurrassic park to include a Sarah character who, when faced with the snarling escaped T-rex could have simply yawned in its face, saying “You call those teeth? I guess I just thought they’d be sharper. I’m not angry, just a little disappointed…”??

To make up for that disappointment, we walked for eight miles to have some Proper English Tea and scones. There were far too many scones but just the right number of old people.

Sunday - and it was off to Judith’s house for a roast. What I hadn’t realised was that the subject of the roast would be me. No amount of wine could dull the pain of hearing our host telling stories about my - um - adventures among her friends. This, by the way, is the same Judith who introduces me to people with the warning “this is my friend Paul, he’s great. Don’t sleep with him.” Bless her heart.

Fortunately the food was delicious, as was the company - even those who, despite being able to win a game of Scrabble moments earlier, couldn’t quite cope with the mechanics of remaining upright on a chair.??

Monday brought one final professional (in the loosest sense of the word) task - guest hosting the Guardian Technology podcast with Sarah as special guest. I’ve never actually presented anything before, despite doing lots of guest radio appearences, and it’s not as easy as it sounds. I hate, hate HATE reading from a script ??as it just makes me sound like I’m reading from - well - a script. See what I mean - the Podcast is below. Sarah was, of course, brilliant.

Fucking professionals.??

(Also, see her blog for an exciting??behind the scenes photo or my Flickr account for Olivia’s best facial expression of the day)

And now with Sarah and Oliva back in San Francisco without any serious physical injuries (too early to tell for the mental ones), it was time to catch up with everything I’d been neglecting for the last eight days, starting with my new weekly Guardian column.??

It’s called Not Safe For Work and, amazingly as I only filed it - late - a few hours ago, it’s just appeared online. ??The column is about my strange adventures in technology so for this week’s subject…??

Who else?

Related posts:

1. 24 Hours In America Huzzah!??24HoursInAmerica.com is now live. Proceedings kick off at 1pm GMT...
2. Harry Truman, Doris Day, Red China… I've been up to so much for the past week...
3. Unbelievably, moments after this video was taken, my monkey hat was stolen Someone asked if I'd upload the video of me wearing...

Proceedings kick off at 1pm GMT (8am Eastern, 5am Pacific) with myself, James Aylett and Sarah Bee plus a whole host of special guests liveblogging the entire US election for 24 hours straight.

Meantime, check out 24 Hours In America TV (here, middle column) for amusing election-related videos and the like. Live programming begins in…

Send coffee.

Related posts:

1. Special Projects Other things Paul is responsible for, in full or in...
2. Tick follows tock follows tick follows…. I've said it before, but I'll say it again: I...
3. Thanking you (ess ay) "America is the only country that went from barbarism to...

1. The lower jaw of the badger is articulated to the upper by means of a transverse condyle firmly locked into a long cavity of the cranium. This enables the badger to maintain its hold with the utmost tenacity.

2. Some badgers are solitary, moving from home to home, while others are known to form clans.

3.??Contrary to popular misconception, adult badgers do not appear to have any natural predators across their range.

4. In fact, badgers are capable of fighting off much larger animals such as wolves, coyotes and bears.

5. Badgers are primarily nocturnal because their prey only comes to the surface at night. ????

6. Badgers rarely drink; instead they obtain most of their water from their food.

7.??Badgers are popular in English fiction.

8. In many areas, people share a similar well-disposed attitude to badgers (more so than they do other urban wildlife, such as foxes); some however, dislike the presence of badgers on their property. ??

9. Often the best way to tempt wildlife to linger on your property is with the lure of food.

10. A male badger is a boar.

…

Sources, and further badger reading:

Badgers on Wikipedia

European badgers - Wildlife Online

University of Wisconsin Athletics (Go Badgers!)??

The Badger and the Panda (A Poem)??(I shit you not)

Badgers! by Weebl

Related posts:

1. Someone… ...told me yesterday that I'm not allowed to call this...
2. Postman Pat and his brand new stretched, golden van, pulled by what appear to be ten thousand black and white persian cats. More trouble at the treasury tonight after "Chancellor" Alistair Darling...
3. Doctor, Doctor, I feel like a rum and Coke The last time I went to a GP was in...