Who's Had All The Pies? Spotted recently in a bakers shop in Gretna - a huge poster featuring a little roll-cheeked Billy Bunter of about ten shoving a pie down his gizzard with the unashamedly Scottish slogan "Say Aye Tae A Pie" emblazoned underneath. Scottish pies are really amazing but you deffo wouldn't want to be choking back too many of them man - that mysterious grey-hued meat matter inside is dead dodgy looking and simply cannot be good for a body. I mean some people take them very seriously but really they can never be considered more than an occasional snack, lest your belt become inadequate in an alarmingly fast manner.

Steveland I missed it live last night and I don't have time to listen tonight but I'll be on it as soon as there's a moment and I'll be recording it for posterity if possible. Stevie Wonder, in the UK for a concert or two and to promote the new album, did a live session at Abbey Road studios last week. He was schedule to play for half an hour or so andd ended up getting into it and playing for about two hours apparently, with lots of classics and lots of chitchat. I recommend that all of you listen to it and remember you only have seven days to do so. (this post is to remind me, actually)

Heroes On Thin Ice It seems that being an official New Soup hero is almost all a celebrity needs to get themselves an early ticket to valhalla these days. Richard Pryor - God rest his kooked-out, fucked-up but never dull heart and take him to the everlasting cos he'll certainly liven things up. Sniff. Now, let's see if we can make it to the end of the year without losing any more idols, please, can we? It's been a rough year here and our idol-bag has about got the ass tore clean out of 'er.

Paper Your Walls That time of year again folks, when you get the house cleaned up in time for the festive when people come to your house and nose about your medicine cabinet and tramp over your carpets with dirty shoes. In that spirit, then, clean up your workspace too - gwaan - get over to Veer for some great wallpaper. I've just downloaded a ton of new ones for the first in ages and I don;t mind telling you, I'm all hot about it.

Awesomeness Of Lone Wolf MccQuade Called Into Question

• Instead of tipping waitresses, Chuck Norris tells them they can be content with no tip, or 15% and hearing the soft, dull crack of their necks snapping.

Just a day after learning of all that awesomeness, an achilles heel appears. It must be a fake. Ot else they never showed you the mighty teeth-loosening blow that the bearer of that device got as soon as The Awesome One got to his feet. Also, if you got tired of those awesome facts yesterday then go here - you can random generate facts of awesomeness all day if you want.

• Chuck Norris rescued over thirteen infants from Charity Hospital following the devestation of Hurricane Katrina. He did not have a boat. He has not returned the babies.

Anyone who has ever designed a web page know how utterly useless Microsoft's Internet Explorer is but today it made me chuckle. I'm working on a page using CSS (a reasonably currrent form of net language, but not a new one, and yet one which IE has great difficulty with due to the unerring hoplessness of Microsoft. Well, I got the page rendering great in all good browsers and, just for a laugh, decided to check it out on MS IE5 for Mac which is perhaps the most abandoned and dilapidated of all MS browsers. Well, when it started up, it had the default home page still (cos I've never used it) which is MSN home. Well, it seems that even MS's own web team is finally up to date and designing in CSS but the page wouldn't render on their own browser! I stopped re-writing pages for it a long time ago and now it looks like Microsoft has abandoned it as well! Yesterday my brother's brand new, state of the art Packard Bell Windows box just upped and lost its sound card driver. Then we discovered that it doesn't even have a soundcard but a built in sound chip on the motherboard (the cheapest, shittest of shit technology). It's comforting to know that they want you to have the best when you choose the big brand names in Wintel machines anyway. It came with no CDs whatsoever - not a copy of Windows not drivers for anything inside it - nothing. the servviceman who came out as a result of the ten pounds per month service warranty they pay, had no idea what could be the problem but advised them to backup everything and run the software restore program on their hard disk, which wipes everything that wasn't on it when you bought it. Everything you might need, in other words. then he called back to say he'd reconsidered and wanted to replace the motherboard which would also require a backup. I'm relieved that the people who deal with Windows machines have recieved the filtered-down uselessness vibe that the mother ship is beaming out. I went online and, in forty seconds, found the latest driver for the shit motherboard-mounted soundchip, installed it and it now works fine. They just could not belive that their shiny new machine could just up and lose a driver for no reason. It happens all the time, I assured them. But what can you do? they said. You mean apart from buy a mac?, I said. You just can't convince people at point of purchase that what is the most popular option in the world is also the worst one possible, especially for those who don't know or want to know anything about how computers work. They usually become convinced later, in small stages. Then they buy another Windows machine, convinced that they are in the "in-crowd," and all is well.

Please, Let There Not Be Love " Who kicked a hole in the sky so the heavens would cry over me? Who stole the soul from the sun in a world come undone at the seams?" It's official - Oasis are totally and indisputably shite. Have you heard this new single by them, Let There Be Love? It's so terrible I was laughing in the car yesterday. You can hear the full mediocrity of the new album, "Don't Believe The Truth" here. I feel bad for saying it man, but they really have slipped to a new low - trading on the name in the worst way. It's a dilemma for any band, what to do when the magic runs out, but phoning it in for another five albums in this fashion is, without doubt, the worst option going. It may even be worse than the endless reunion tour option. When it comes to that - Oasis is having all the options for a split up band before they've even split up, man! The band of hired guns, the tours that nobody cares about, the clothes that are far too young for them now, the rubbish albums that never, ever recapture the old magic. They should just get leather trousers and pony tails right now. And to think that my initial prediction for Oasis was three great albums then a stellar solo career for Noel Gallagher. Well, I was one album over and could truly never have predicted the ensuing shower of shite albums from a band that were really world-beaters of the highest order but I still think he's gotta pull the plug on the band. Sooner would be better. His writing talent is, as you'll see above, in very real danger of veering from the baronic to the comedic.

On The Unseemly Awesomeness Of Walker, Texas Ranger In the unlikely event that you need proof of Chuck Norris's awesome levels, then check this out. My mate Robbiejobbie sent me that and had me ready for a second pee before my cornflakes were away this morning. On a related note; the most popular music intrument chain in Canada is called Long & McQuade. From the moment I first read the sign in passing I referred to it as Chuck Norris, Norris's or Lone Wolf McQuade - a trait I passed on to fellow band members. They should get on their knees and thank me for linking them with all that awesome power.

Suffering on TV I had a bit of a dilemma the other night. The BBC was airing “Tsunami; Seven Hours On Boxing Day” – a fine, fine documentary piecing together the scene in the nations hit worst by the tidal wave last year. It was dramatic, unromantic, very well edited, had fantastically well-suited background music, talked to the people left behind and treated their words in a very honest fashion. Above all else, it stayed clear of the sensationalism that increasingly mars such affairs and let the pictures speak for themselves. Fantastic viewing and with much of the Thai footage shot around Ko PhiPhi where I spent my summer hols, giving it added poignancy. Watching buildings you know, beaches you’ve walked on being swamped by the angry black water is harrowing indeed. The words of a guy Rick and I sat with for a half hour one afternoon kept coming back to me. He had lost most of his family and was selling weed to buy an engine for his long tail boat which he had luckily gotten out of the carnage unharmed, only his engine had landed in the bay somewhere. Anyway, my dilemma was that the other side, ITV, was airing the final installment of “I’m A Celebrity, Get Me Out Of Here,” which I had tried studiously to ignore but was sucked into like a spider in a drain. I flicked back and forth between images of real, heart breaking hardship and hardship created for the benefit of we, the viewers. I felt absolutely rotten that I even gave a damn whether Carol Thatcher could handle a snake, whether Sheree could eat a kangaroo bollock or crocodile eyeball. Reality TV is a curse, man.

Fifth Columnist I've a new favourite columnist in Marina Hyde. Her opinions couldn't fit with mine more succinctly, she's unafraid, she's hilarious and she’s also quite lovely. This week’s column in the Guardian G2 supplement sums up what I’ve said all along about the war on terror – that it was, above all else, grammatically unsound.

• "the first step in this brave new world of periphrasis was to create the Coalition of the Willing, which these days seems an increasingly sweet way of saying "Us, the Brits, and 160 Mongolian troops. Which, by the way, isn't even a whole horde." No matter. The War on the Literal" was underway."

The best thing about my Marina is that she calls bullshit. She notices the things we all notice but, increasingly, let slide and refuse to take issue with. What a lovely, funny little terrier.

Thinkin Of Your First Yoga Class? This story lays it barefoot.

I'm sorry but Robbiejobbie sent me this this morning and it made me giggle.I think it's the downcast look of the wee victim in the last frame.

Wiggin Out

• "I thought, I'm going to have some fun with this, I'm going to be the guy with huge hair." "I was the outrageous guy, the guy everyone looked at and whispers about. 'Look at that guy, he's awesome.'"

Ken Solomon of New York, had an idea while sitting in his local DMV waiting for his driving license. He dug it out at home, put it on to go there, thinking that he would add some excitement into a waiting room full of otherwise ordinary people. He then encouraged his friends to have a go at being the guy with the huge hair and the idea came about to photograph them. Eventually he was taking people off the street and getting them to wear it for a photo - 1431 of them. What a great little idea - it reminds me of that "Jump" project thing with people all jumping on camera all over the world, spawning a million imitators.

St. Andrews Day Here was me busy talking about soldiers in stockings and forgot to commemorate St. Andrews' Day - Scotland's national patron saint. The paper ysterday came with a pull out special in which it asked several B-grade Scots celebs what it meant to be Scottish. They ranged from the standard "we invented everything" nonsense (which is fine except that it ignores that we haven't invented anything for a loooong time) to a few poingnant mentions of the landscape and wistful longings for olden times. It made me think, what does it mean to me, then? I think that being Scottish is sometimes a millstone and sometimes the wind beneath your boots. It means being humble even when you feel like you're really pretty great, cos we don't let anyone get too big for their boots over here. You're always waiting for the first catcall when you do well. For me personally, this one is something I might change, given the option. But I find I'm proud of being Scotttish too. when living abroad, I often had the chance to speak to people about my country, mainly cos nobody knows anything about it - that used to irk me but I came to love it. While talking about it, I often felt a bit like I was giving away a secret - this beautiful green, mountainous place with clean, clear water and breathtaking views etc. Of course that's not all of it - just the top two thirds where nobody lives. The bottom thjird where we all live is pretty unpleasant in places. Thankfully our two principal cities are mostly gorgeous with architecture (like the Glasgow School of Art building) that makes me REALLY proud. But there are things I used to say when describing the Scots people that I now find were fanciful and downright untrue by today's standards. Things like "tolerant" and "accepting of other cultures." I still believe that, fundamentally, the Scots are a tolerant lot but there is a growing underbelly of hate fuelled by ignorance here that is ugly as sin. Worse yet, it is fuelled also by ignorant, despicable, populist gutter press papers that we all read, the Daily Records and The Suns. It dismays me that in a country that has some of the finest reporting in the world in the shape of the Herald the Scotsman, The Guardian, Times etc - that we insist upon reading these fucking comics that, in a sugar-coated, hands-off way, perpetuates these new, ugly values that are not, I don't believe, native here. We're becoming lazy and too ready to accept incoming attitudes as much as we are willing to accept incoming styles of dressing or eating, which is a little sad. But mostly, I have to say, that deespite these negatives, I'm proud of Scotland. She's stood up well against the onslaught of time and trouble. And I'm proud to be one of us as well, don't get me wrong - when I'm stood in a line with the lumpen proletariat at, say a bakers, I'm filled with pride at belonging to the same set as the people around me. Want to know what the funniest thing I've heard since being back here this four months has been? Standing in just such a packed baker's line at lunchtime in Glasgow behind a short elderly man. He looked respectable enough, a worker of around 60 I would say. A loud screech that could not easily be discerned as mechanical or human filled the street outside and without a missed beat, this wee man turns around to me with a mischevious look in his eye and a big grin and goes; "that wis either a car crash or thur's sum cunt gettin fuckin RAPED oot there." That makes me proud to be scottish - does that make any sense at all?

Addendum coincidentally, in a book I'm reading, I found the following last night at bedtime, after making the above post;(following the story of five UK youths who were systematically, homosexually abused by an adult in childhood and went on to keep it silent but to take turns abusing each other over the ensuing years)

• "By carrying on the abuse with one another, the boys were trying to normalize it, to share the burden. One wonders if a similar impulse may in part lie behind the universal brutality of boy's initiation rites into manhood. Perhaps the male community's tradition of welcoming a boy into its' midst by hurting him is not just a test to prove the boy tough enough to be worthy of joining. Perhaps it is also a demonstration, a need to communicate the men's own sense of woundedness, a ritual dramatization of how much pain they all carry inside"