It may of of interest to some round these parts to know that the London Roller Girls are having their first public bout this weekend. You may have seen them in the papers or on the telly in recent months, and now you can go see them compete in person!

If you’ve never heard of it before, this will give you some idea of what rollerderby is all about.

I’m going, along with several of my friends. You should too. It’s something different to do with your Saturday evening…

All the news that’s fit to look upon in a skeptical manner:

• “Tony Wilson was buried in a coffin numbered FAC 501. Factory’s last catalogue number.”
• “My Bloody Valentine fans are getting excited about a possible comeback next year at Coachella.”
• “Joss Whedon’s long awaited UK based Buffy spin-off, Ripper, starring Anthony Head, starts filming next summer for BBC.”

So, my spiffing new website design has a bug, and I’m fucked if I know how to fix it. If anyone round these parts would care to take a look at http://ala.sda.ir, first in Firefox, and then in IE, and then tell me why the photos in the middle column line up in Firefox, but not in IE, and what I need to go to get them to line up nicely in IE, I’d be very grateful, in a beer-buying kind of way.

Cheers.

Anyone interested in going to any of the following?

12/09 – The Go! Team at The Electric Ballroom
20/09 – Skindred at the Scala
29/09 – PJ Harvey at the RFH

Bastard. Must pay more attention in future.

I met him in passing once, at a music and the internet waffle-shop I went to when I was working at Sanctuary – he was there to argue with a man from the BPI about their prosecution of music downloaders – emblematic perhaps of his entire career – arguing against the accepted wisdom of the music industry, and what it considers “good business”. He may not have got as rich as another man might have in his position, but it was obvious that what he cared about was the music. There should be more people like him in the music biz.

I signed up to blog a Penguin classic.

I’ve been given Peter Pan to review. This could be interesting.

This time last week, I was out of books.

By the end of Friday, I had copies of Attack of the Unsinkable Rubber Ducks (Brookmyre) and Crooked Little Vein (Ellis).

By Monday, I’d read them both. I’ve heard of this “delayed gratification” thing, but it sounds like a stupid idea to me.

Both of them I think come under the heading “flawed but enjoyable page turners”. Neither of them is going to shock the pants off you if you’ve read either writer’s work before (although Crooked Little Vein might horrify a few of the more sheltered of you, I suppose), and neither has topped the list of my favourite works by that author, but they both passed a few hours in a pleasant manner, and they both made me laugh out loud.

Wow, that was faint praise, wasn’t it? The reason I sound so lukewarm is that I don’t want to go into more depth, because I can’t talk about what I liked and disliked in each without spoiling key plot points in each of them.

Reading: For the first week this year, I haven’t managed to read a new prose book this week. I’ve run out of stuff to read, and there’s not much in the shops to excite me at a casual glance. Patriot Acts and Crooked Little Vein ought to arrive in about a month, and I seem to recall there’s a new Brookmyre due soon as well, but other than that, nada. Might have to pop to Borders on Saturday morning and rummage around the non-ficiton for a bit. Anyone recommend me anything interesting to read?

Food: Ate dinner at Petrus the other week. Can’t say enough good things about it. Also ate at Andrew Edmunds again, possibly my favorite restaurant in Soho – both times Ewa and I have eaten there, it’s been completely splendid.

Nerd: I’ve cancelled my Warcraft and City of Heroes accounts. I don’t expect I’ll magically acquire a life now, or anything, but since I hadn’t used them in months, it seemed foolish to keep paying for them.

Lardy Bastard: Haven’t been skating this week, which is slightly annoying. Nor have I been out on the bike in ages. Must really make the effort to get back into serious and regular exercise now that the rain may have let up for a bit.

Music: Two promising gigs (Flipron, Amanda Palmer) on tomorrow night, and I’ll be at neither of them, having a prior social commitment.

Vile Nostalgia: Transformers: The Movie (the 80s cartoon) is on ITV 4 right now. Optimus Prime has just transformed for his fight with Megatron. Suddenly, I’m 8 again. I expect to be weeping buckets shortly.

Booze: Bought another case of wine this morning. My parents, as a belated birthday gift, agreed to go halves with me on a case of my favourite Australian red.

And that’s the news.