I was tagged by Twinkie, a new found blog friend, for the Alphabet questions meme. And meme starved as I am, I didn't need persuading and promised to do it asap, so here goes:A. Attached or single? AttachedB. Best...

The lovely Chunks has tagged me with a meme and challenged me to reveal eight random facts about myself. Here goes … 1. I’ve never been to a wedding. Funerals, yes. Weddings, no, not a one. 2. I complain that my cat licks and bites my nose but I’m secretly pleased when he does as I think he’s trying to kiss me. 3. For long journeys I buy The Guardian and Grazia but never buy them at any other time. 4. I keep a top from when I was a size 8, even though that was more than ten years ago. 5. I wish I was a better writer. 6. My left eyebrow grows in funny because of a scar I have from breaking an umbrella stand with my head when I was a child. 7. My hot drink of choice is chai. 8. I finally watched the first series of Skins and have to admit I was completely wrong in...

Ged Carroll memed me to find out where I get my inspiration from for my blog and thoughts? Plenty of places but here are a few ideas… - Suggested links from blogging, Facebook, Twitter and FriendFeed friends - Delicious, Digg and other social bookmarking tools - Traditional media reading such as The Times, The Guardian, The Economist, BBC, NY Times - An endless array of podcast subscriptions - ViralVideoChart.com - Top political blogs and PoliticsHome.com - Job experiences - Film, music and sport - When I’m on a run - And most importantly pub chatter i.e. people I meet Next up for the meme? Well, my esteemed Weber Shandwick digital colleagues…James Warren, Robert Anderson and Simon Collister.       ...

Should you Deutsche spracken or indeed verstehen you may find that turning down the sound is helpful to your enjoyment of the latest take on the jolly Downfall meme. Tom Harris MP pointed me there, but probably wouldn't want anyone to know. It being rude and all. Ooops.LoL site...

It’s probably indicative of the way I’ve been feeling lately that I struggled with this meme from Suzy. My favourite food? I don’t want to eat. My favourite TV show? I don’t really care. I answered as if I was reading from a fact-sheet, feeling no emotional connection to the words. A place I’d like to travel to? I think I’ll just fold myself up and hide at the back of the wardrobe, le sigh. Instructions:a) Answer the questions below, do a Google Image search with your answer, take a picture from the first page of results, and do it with minimal words of explanation. b) Tag 5 other people to do the same once you’ve finished answering every question. 1. The age you’ll be on your next birthday 2. A place you’d like to travel to 3. Your favourite...

This video has been floating around the internet for a few weeks now.  I’m trying to get some information about the band online but it hasn’t turned up many results (they obviously never made it as far as The Beatles, I wonder why?)  There’s some banter here about the lead singer who got in contact with the guy who rediscovered the video but I doubt it’s authenticity. All I know is that they’re a Christian Ska Band who rock.  It’s also spawning parodies. Posted in Internet, Strange Stuff   Tagged: Internet Meme, Jesus Is My Friend, Meme, Reefer Is My Friend, Sonseed, Sonseed - Jesus Is My Friend   ...

Today on Write Anything, Janie has posted a writing meme on the topic of blogging. As with all memes, you get them from a site, that gets them from a site, that gets them from another.In this case, Janie got the meme from Judd Corizan over at the Sunday Stealing blog. Each Sunday, they "rip off" a meme from another blogger, giving full credit and a link back to the original site. This meme is The Meme About Blogging from Momma at Momma Blogs A Lot.How long have you been blogging?Good question. When my family got an ntlworld internet account, it came with webhosting, and I built myself a very, very basic site. On this site I would post regular rants and meandering thoughts - essentially a blog, but everything was done manually on its own HTML page, and an RSS feed was something...

There is a meme doing the rounds to answer the following questions about yourself in the titles of songs by one band to here you go here's my take on this meme. All you have to do is guess the band. 1) Are you male or female? European Son 2) Describe yourself? Obscure Alternatives 3) What do people feel when they're around you? Fall in Love with Me 4) How would you describe your...

Mat Bowles suggets a "silly meme": Choose a singer/band/group — answer using only titles of songs by that singer/band/group.Just to prove it can be done...Are you male or female? I'm a ManDescribe yourself. I'm BlueWhat do people feel when they're around you? It's Gonna Work Out FineHow would you describe your previous relationship? Mean Woman BluesDescribe your current relationship? Strong LoveWhere would you want to be now? Kansas CityHow do you feel about love? It Hurts Me SoWhat's your life like? Every Little Bit HurtsWhat would you ask for if you only had one wish? Gimme Some Lovin'Say something wise. Keep on...

I’ve reluctantly and superficially indulged them in the past, but this “meme” from Iain Dale via Tom Harris MP really is the limit.Tom has “tagged” me to write a post about “can this really be happening to me?” moments from my past, and then to charge five more unsuspecting bloggers to do the same. Essentially, it’s an online form of chain letter.Iain cites his political debut at age 20, meeting the Queen and visiting the White House (yawn) while Tom relates why he joined his party at about age 27 and the occasions when he met the Queen and Bill Clinton (double yawn).That they’re so similar is, I suspect, no accident. It’s an insipid assignment of dubious motive, and one whose platitudinous properties will no doubt become more apparent as it traverses the political...

Yesterday, fellow blogger Closetalk left a comment on my posting last Sunday telling me that he's given me a "Brilliant Weblog Award" for content and design :-). It turns out that this award is a meme which is passed on by individual bloggers to other bloggers. Looking back to the people who gave Closetalk his award, I discovered that the rules of this meme are as follows:The purpose of the prize is to promote as many blogs as possible in the blogosphere. The rules are as follows:When you receive the prize you must write a post showing it, together with the name of who has given it to you, and link back to them.Choose a minimum of 7 blogs (or even more) that you find brilliant in their content or design.Show their names and links and leave them a comment informing they were prized with...

Over on Random Acts of Reality, Tom asks “So, your turn now - tell me what is in your pockets when you go to work.” As this is potentially the Most Exciting Meme Ever, and there’s nothing more suited to getting me to write a blog post than a meme, here’s what I have in my pockets when I go to work. Front Left Trouser Pocket: My phone Front Right Trouser Pocket: Cash Left Outside Jacket Pocket: Keys (sometimes two sets) and usually a writing implement or two Right Outside Jacket Pocket: My Oyster Card with debit and credit cards ill-advisedly tucked inside, along with some dog-eared business cards and my rail season ticket and photocard Left Inside Jacket Pocket: My security pass (shh, don’t tell), and usually my passport and under-utilised notebook Right...

Tory Bear has tagged Guido to do Iain's meme:Princess Diana's death - 31 August 1997Can't remember.Margaret Thatcher's resignation - 22 November 1990Can't remember. Haven't voted since.Attack on the Twin Towers - 11 September 2001Watched second plane crash live on CNBC. Immediately got short S&P futures. Messaged via Bloomberg terminal friend working at EDF Mann in the WTC complex to get out. He replied. Didn't here from him again for 24 hours. Subsequently he travelled to work with a full NBC suit in his hold-all for a couple of years.England's World Cup Semi-Final v Germany - 4 July 1990Can't remember.President Kennedy's Assassination - 22 November 1963Not that...

I've seen this new meme from Iain Dale floating around but am quite impressed by how quickly it was before Scottish Tory Boy tagged me yesterday. Basically it asks where you were when five earth shattering events took place. Iains were: Princess Diana's death - 31 August 1997 Like Iain I was in my bed when it happened, but had fallen asleep with the TV on BBC1 in my bedroom. So woke up to...

I will get back to the reviews shortly, but Alex has asked that we do this meme before the 25th, so I'll get it out of the way now. Here are my posts from the last year that contain the most substance, or which made points I'm especially bothered about: The Vexed Question of Green Car Taxation Are "Religious Rights" Special? Tax Credits as Tax Cuts The Atheist Delusion...

Meme Links and memes. Anyone looking in lately would think that I’m neglecting the blog. But I’m really not. But what with this. that and the other it just seems easier to have everything up here in handy, sometimes meaty, sometimes lean chunks, something for you to look at in the limited time I have at the moment. But enough of the moaning by way of an apology and onward with the following, seen at Zoe’s place:1. My uncle once: was in the airforce. The first time I went abroad...

Music Here’s my birthday meme, rendered gratuitously with the help of YouTube: That’s right kids, I’m on broadband. Won’t be doing that again…....

Attention, Twitter users! Thanks to a random tweet from a Justin Pickard, I have invented a new game meme for the internets… SPAM SNAP It explains itself, really. Announce your favourite email spam headline of the day on Twitter, and see how many other people in your network have had the same one; the announcer who gets the most matches wins for the day! Rules: Once someone in your network has claimed a headline for the day, it’s theirs If you’re going to post and claim, you have to scan and participate I claim all rights to the invention of this game, in perpetuity, for good or ill Who wants to play? We start tomorrow! Tags: internet horror game • meme • snap • Spam • spam snap...

Meme It’s this blog’s seventh birthday today, but rather than try and have a surprise party (pointless because it knows what’s happening soon as you click ‘publish’) I thought I’d have a go at that meme in which you attempt to list all of the major albums in your life year by year. To be honest it’s a bit hazy before my tenth birthday. There was a lot of chart music, folk and according to my parents bagpipe music. I do remember a BBCtv Children’s Favourites record and The Carpenters and the…...

We got an award this week. That old sweetie, Big John (vide sidebar for live link), decided we were worthy of something called the ‘Brillante Weblog’ award. If you’ve got one of those modern graphical browsers you might see it at the top of this entry. If I were you, though, I’d cover it up with a post-it note or something, ‘cos it sure ain’t pretty, is it? We don’t go in for lots of sidebar ‘bling’ on this blog, so it won’t be appearing on our menu any time soon. But we have had a bit of fun with it, as I shall explain. SilverTiger — another of our Dwellers on the Sidebar — discovered the source of the Brillante Weblog award-meme. Presumably, a quick Google search was all that was required. I, however, took a...

I've been tagged by The Thunder Dragon in a meme to name “the best £200k waste of public money you can think of”. Here's one my favourites from last year:I write this short piece on the subject of citizens juries while suppressing the urge to wail and gnash my teeth. Not only have these Juries been called a farce, they have also been the subject of some wonder at the reason for the jury members receiving brown envelopes full of cash. Could it be symbolic that the envelopes are brown?But believe it or not, that is not the worst of it. Yesterday in what should have been a massive embarrassment to the government, the Junior schools minister told the shadow commons leader, Theresa May, that his department had spent £500,000 on five juries. How the hell this can be justified I've no...

The Joseph Rowntree Foundation have undertaken a academic study using a consensus from 39 different groups of people to come up with a series of benchmarks for an acceptable cost of living in Britain. This divides every day items into Essential and non-essential this meme is to judge what you think. 5 Every day items you couldn't live without. 1. Day to day food (1/3 of my monthly budget) 2. Roof over my head (1/3 of my monthly budget) 3. Computer and internet 4. Comfortable bed 5. Good pair of shoes 5 Items you would deem as a once in a while 'Luxury' 1. Nice bottle of Red 2. Bag of cashews 3. Pizza takeaway 4. Pint down the pub 5. Lottery ticket 5 Items you would deem as 'Indulgent' 1. Night out 2. Sky+ 3. Magazine subscription 4. Holiday 5. Shopping spree 5 Items you could live...

Some time ago Jennifer of Writing to Survive kindly tagged me with this interesting meme, and it's taken me this long to reply because I've just not been able to settle on an answer!The task is this: Write your memoir in six words.Well I've finally come up with one:"Learning to be a better me"Everything in my past, as painful as some as it has been, I can learn from and use those experiences to grow and improve myself. What I am learning at the moment is that that ethos applies to the present also, I can choose to react to situations in a better way so that I can best learn from what is happening.I would like to tag the following blogs, if they wish to participate:CatatonicKidThis That Distorts Me "Has" Saved MeJay's Art n WordsTerra IncognitaIt Takes a Village...For those of you who...

Meme Julia’s idea:From Gary Cole in The Brady Bunch Movie of all places (excellent film though):“Wherever you go, there you are.” “Alone we can only move buckets. But together we can drain rivers.”From the song Everybody Be Yoself by Chic Street Man“Everybody got to be yoself, no matter where you go.”From — I can’t for the life of me remember:“I can’t hurt to help. Except for the times can but you should do it anyway.”...

Meme Me and six thousand other people, though frankly I can’t name seven songs like that. So instead, here are the next seven songs I come across on Winamp that I can sing along to:(1) ‘Basket Case (Live)’ - Avril LavigneWords first learned through shouting sessions at The Krazy House in Liverpool from the time it was new through to the moment it became a matter of nostalgia. This is from the period when the live Lavigne had little or nothing to do with the version who appeared in the…...

You know those meme things? Here's an easy one:Which three bloggers do you agree with on almost everything? Pick one that most closely mirrors your own personal philosophy, one that most closely mirrors your politics and one that offers the most consistently attractive analysis.Here's mine:Philosophy: The Democratic Society blog seems to have been set up to offer a sober reasoned version of my permanent obsession. I don't think I've ever seriously disagreed with anything therePolitics: Paul Anderson's Gauche. I admit, I've known Paul since before the old King died, and I probably think what I think because of a two-year period in the mid 1990s when I got shitfaced him every night without fail. Reading his latest is the thing that made me come up with this meme thingy today. Analysis:...

There was me, thinking the blog-meme meme (is that a meta-meme?) had died … but how wrong I was. I’ve been tagged by Sterling Camden, and as he’s been a long-term reader of VCTB since waaaaay before it was vaguely worth reading*, I cannot refuse him. Plus, he’s a really decent bloke, as far as I can tell of someone I only know blogospherically. So, the instructions: “To participate, you grab any book, go to page 123, find the fifth sentence, and blog it. Then tag five people.” Simple enough … the only problem in my house is choosing a book, for there are many. So, like Sterling, I’ll do you one non-fiction and one fiction. “Quite likely the problems experienced with early cloning efforts are just that: problems that can and will be...

One of the great things about blogging, is interacting with other bloggers - it’s inspiring, friendly and creative. There’s lots of ways of interacting - leaving comments, email, even just reading, but there’s also lots of memes lurking around, encouraging us to disclose more than say, our latest dinner recipe, or meal in Soho, and to participate in this wonderful thing we call the blogosphere, but I’ve fallen behind and have a few to catch up on. So, now folks, it’s time for some extreme participative blogging. I am going to catch up on my memes. Brace yourselves, or ignore and wait for my next post. I promise not to take too long :-) MEME 1 & 2 Trig from Aidan Brooks: Trainee Chef invited me to participate in 7 Things About Me and Ginger from Dinner...

This very morning Mr Dale harrumphed and claimed that his least favourite National Inky diarist, the girly diarist Katherine Bergen of the Sun's Whip column had lifted "at least a third" of her stories today "from the Independent". Dale is nursing a grudge based on acute diary envy, and who knows what else? Girls can of course piss much higher and much farther than boys. Could be KB beat ID in a pissing contest one time?In the interests of fair play LOL has wandered into Morrisons and scoped the Whip's content. There are six stories. So at least a third means, er, two. But which two would that be?Story one. Sir George Young, the privatiser of Railtrack, having a laugh about the West Coast Mainline. Nicked from the Independent? Not guilty. Though similar fare can be found on Young's "on a...

My hardrive died on Friday *sob* and I just got back online tonight so I'm a leetle behind. While I catch up, have a meme in lieu of a proper post.1) what was the best moment of your life?I, um, don't have one. There are lots of pleasant memories scattered around the place but nothing I return to. Maybe the best is yet to come? Or maybe I'm dead inside.2) if you could pick a superpower what would it be?I thought we'd already established my superpower was sleep.But I'd pick invisibility or time-travel.3) if there was one thing that you could do, with no limits of any kind what, would it be?I'm liking the idea of doing anything without limits. I feel very limited by gravity and other fundamentals of physics.4) what's the weirdest dream you've ever had?That's like asking what's the wettest...