Hilariously rubbish alumni news from Durham:

"Dr. Anthony Peabody who attended St Cuthbert's in the 1960's, where he studied Botany, has this year been appointed President of the International Banjo Circle."

duefiori says:
dunno if i ever told you, but once i overhooked and overchatted a jeovah witness.
like HE was the one checking his watch nervously, and hurried away, and never came back

Battle Kat says:
My god! that doesn't happen! Except in dreams and really kick ass films.

duefiori says:
i proudly did. hooked him up with MY line about agnosticism and math applied to religion

duefiori says:
with ample examples from pythagorean

duefiori says:
for HOURS

My friends are fabulous.

Slightly troubling in a ghoulish kind of way - Why Typing Is Wrong. Ta to Paddy for sending this one (maaaaaan!)

One of the benefits of spending your afternoon trawling the web for trivia questions is that you get to find out that Justin Timberlake sang the Pokérap.

I Can't Believe It's Not In The Times! News of the day:

Berlusconi's arse fat gets turned into $10,000 bar of soap.

Restaurant called Car Crash is forced to close after, er, a car crashes into it

Father of 12 admits he's gay and that he only made his wife pregnant to "give her something to do".

Bear learns to knock on doors, villagers not convinced.

I can't really say how lovely the new Joy Zipper song is, so I'll leave you a link to watch the video so you can find out for yourself. It's called 'One' and is delicious like cherries.

I am drinking Moet at the BBC. Clearly I am living the middle-class dream.

Oh for god's sake, I wish people would stop trying to blow us up. It's very inconvenient and doesn't make us feel any more sympathy for their cause.

Take my quiz and you could win an exciting MP3 player!

I'd quite like an MP3 player but I'm not allowed to enter these competitions anymore. Boo hiss.

Oh yes. And as if I could forget, check out Polly Paulusma. I can't spell her name but she's easily this generation's Joni Mitchell and Carole King combined. Beautiful.

Best band of the week: Louis XIV - their entire album is listenable to on www.louisxiv.net and is like the Stones with more balls.

Best album: Paul Anka, Rock Swings. Utterly, utterly, brilliant: big band covers of, among others, Van Halen's 'Jump', 'Eye of the Tiger' and that bloody Nirvana song. Steal a copy if you must.

Delightful fact of the day: Uncut's music editor is extremely fond of Girls Aloud and insisted the office put the new single on immediately. He even did a little dance which was excellent.

Yah boo sucks to anyone who thinks England is a cold miserable place. The office is 32 degrees which makes it a hot, miserable place. I love my fan. I feel like Scarlett o'Hara with a more impressive cooling system.

Be warned. The ugliest dog in the world is not even remotely cute. At least his owner loves him.

Politicians form a band! MP4 is made up of Labour's Kevin Brennan (guitar and vocals) and Ian Cawsey (Bass and lead vocals), the Scottish National Party's Pete Wishart (keyboards) and Conservative Greg Knight (drums) and are releasing a single for Charidee (aww, bless their little MP hearts). You can download the single, a cover of 'Can't Buy Me Love' at http://www.7digital.com/downloads/mp4/ if you really must, or you could just pop a couple of quid in a tin. (CMU)

Urban Rocky is awesome. Shame about the lack of steps though.

Quality odd news courtesy of CMU Daily. So much for being at one with the earth (although having witnessed how the fruit farm has underpaid my brother for the last four years, I'm not entirely surprised.)

After MyCokeMusic and whatever it is McDonalds does, the California Tree Fruit Agreement have done a deal with iTunes (Apple! Oh the hilarity!) which allows people who buy three pounds of fruit and some form of salad package thing (which I doubt you'll need after three pounds of fruit but never mind) you get three iTunes free. Oooh fancy! Couldn't they just start growing apples anyway? It would be ever so funny.

Having suspended our belief for the last week I reckon we can just about stretch it til Saturday morning - it's almost Harry Potter o'clock! A very nice lady answered at my local Smith's, sounding just a mite harassed at the prospect of a midnight opening. The very fact that Petersfield is having a midnight opening at all goes to show how the place is growing up - they'll be having sushi bars next. Blimey...

The inevitable left-wing middle-class guilt about yesterday has started. One friend, aka Mr Slim embarked on a weary diatribe featuring the words "war" "Blair" and simliar. 'I just found myself thinking "well these things will happen if you spend long enough fucking around with foreign countries you don't understand" and things like that,' says he. not that it's not terrible for the people involved of course, but it just seemed inevitable and not even that shocking any more tbh.' Fair enough. 'I guess I would have felt differently if I'd been near any of the scenes,' he said realistically, followed by the killer, 'as it was I was in bed.'

This was counterpointed (delicious word, DELICIOUS) by Niall, splashing through London from Glastonbury en route to Korea, curling his lip in contempt, and saying: 'Yes the commuters clearly said "Excuse me, Mr Terrorist, please blow me up to sate my guilt at the horrible inequalities of this world".

Whatever. It's easy to put yourself in someone else's shoes, but if they do the same you end up where you are to begin with. Oh god, the tortuous pseudo-philosphical tarting of it all. It hurts my brain.

La Repubblica was sadly pretty much right - around 50 fatalities substantiated. Let's all shower love on Alabam 3 who have amused me greatly this morning with this post on the Gumtree LDF.

"Alabama 3 are ok apart from Orlando who sustained cuts and bruises at kings cross. Furthermore, he blames their agent for getting them up at 0700hrs for the first time in months to be at Caledonian Road for 0915hrs to proceed to catch a plane to the Czech republic for a festival - this caused him to be at Kings Cross at the fatal timel. the band reiterate to their agent that it is dangerous to get them up before midday. Their thoughts are with all their fellow sufferers in their home town.

LarryLove"

La Repubblica is reporting a far worse story than the BBC can, for obvious reasons. While here we have suggestions of 90 injured and two confirmed dead, at Aldgate, LR is reporting at least 70 dead, with 150 injured. Jesus Christ.

There are rumours flying around everywhere: that police shot a man with a bomb strapped to him in Canary Wharf, that Leicester Square's been affected (it hasn't, we'd see anything from our window)...it's just so crazy.

Tony Blair gave a wonderful speech at Gleneagles. That's it. Our music editor is now getting pissed off at receiving PR emails telling us about so and so's new gig. Life must go on, but some PRs seem to be intensely vampiric. Bless. What a surprise.

Three buses have now blown up and there are a lot of casualties. Phone networks are jammed and it's pretty much impossible to get in touch with people. Bloody ridiuclous, you're right up at the top of a building, look outside and you can't see any signs of anything being wrong: people strolling around, cars dragging through the roads, London Eye still turning.

This is ridiculously weird. I've got a horrible cold feeling running through me.

Woo! We won the Olympics! And in celebration the whole of London has been shut down due to a 'power surge' on the Tube. However, it's markedly unlikely that a similar 'power' surge' could be to blame for the bus which exploded in Tavistock Square. What the fuck is going on? Our news editor has been on the phone cheerily saying that, up in a socking great building as we are, we're "Bully's Special Prize". Charming, bless him. Whoever blew up this bus has got their timing perfect - coincidence or not, the power surge is going to amplify the effects of the bomb, so that from just one explosion, it's now as if they're to blame for everything. Started with the G8, now it's spread. Wankers.