Video Round-Up What the hell, let's make it embarrassing video week. Start with some political laughs at the expense of the US proletariat here. Then take a look at the latest revolution in Mallsports here.

Not Just A White Thing, Then The Special One showed me this clip on Youtube when she was here at the summer and I've found myself going back from time to time, just to take another wee look and to make sure I didn't just dream it. I still can't make out if Miracle Jackson is the one having the laugh on us or not, to be honest.

Sentenced To Death On A Monday Had to write up an upcoming DVD release by the Finnish 'Suomi-Metal' leviathan 'Sentenced' today. You know, you hate to perpetuate a caricature but these chaps appear to court comparison with the suicidal alcoholic Finn stereotype. The titles alone are so earnest as to be comedic - you can read for yourself below. It reads something like how I imagine a post-apocalypse weather report. Lots of rain and frost on the menu the day after armageddon, apparently, with scattered despair and intermittent suicides. They do have an honest influence or two, however - Jimi Hendrix is even apparently tipped the nod in 'Excuse Me While I Kill Myself' - a song whose lyrics are the charge sheet and manifesto for the persecution of Goths the world o'er. 01. Intro 02. Where Waters Fall Frozen 03. May Today Become The Day 04. Neverlasting 05. Bleed 06. The Rain Comes Falling Down 07. Everfrost 08. Sun Won't Shine 09. Dead Moon Rising 10. Despair-Ridden Hearts 11. The Suicider / Excuse Me While I Kill Myself [medley] 12. The War Ain't Over [ft. Taneli Jarva] 13. Nepenthe [ft. Taneli Jarva] 14. Northern Lights [ft. Taneli Jarva] 15. The Way I Wanna Go [ft. Taneli Jarva] 16. Dance On The Graves [ft. Taneli Jarva] 17. Noose 18. Aika Multaa Muistot (Everything Is Nothing) 19. Farewell 20. No One There 21. Drown Together 22. Cross My Heart And Hope To Die 23. Brief Is The Light 24. Vengeance Is Mine 25. End Of The Road

Man In The Dark Hey - you just move your mouse around and the dude totally, like, follows it around, man. Curiously relaxing - a bit like an interactive fishtank. A mantank. How about that - a bunch of fish sitting around in a Chinese restaurant or their fishy living rooms, watching colourful, exotic men swimming about in huge tanks built into the wall? Like it. Mantanks for fish. Got it?

Man On Fire Right now in the UK it's 'I'm a Celebrity Get Me Out Of Here' time. A gaggle of seasoned nobodies and former somebodies are thrown together in a created camp in the 'Australian Outback' for a few weeks and humilliated in as many ways as possible and in ways designed to make people at home gip as much as possible. It's car-crash TV at its medium best and generally its a lot of shite but the other night, when they were fixing to break in a new arrival to the camp, some former Eastenders also-ran called Dean Gaffney - they created a moment in comedy TV that will surely endure. I've never seen a man more in discomfort nor forced to endure such ignominy in my life Part one Part two Part three

Kramer Vs. Flamer Oh my Christ, I've never seen anything so deeply uncomfortable in my life as this. And to then try and get away with it like this, makes it even less funny than it was.

Questions Lately I'm obsessed with asking people questions via Email. It starteds with the "Starters" section in the Guardian's Weekend Magazine where they ask a fairly standardised set of questions to famous people. Their questions are awesomely well aimed. It's become like a new hobby, type of thing. Here is a little quick compilation of my favourites. See what you think. You can't really think about it too much - better to pop 'em out rapid fire. What is your idea of perfect happiness? What is your greatest fear? What is the trait you most deplore in yourself? What is your most treasured possession? Where would you like to live? What is your most unappealing habit? What is your favourite word? Is it better to give or to receive? What is your guiltiest pleasure? Have you ever said 'I Love you" and not meant it? Who would play you in a movie of your life? Which words or phrases do you most overuse? When did you last cry and why? What song would you like played at your funeral? How would you like to be remembered? What is the most important lesson life has taught you?

Race Hatred Possibly Not That Bad It'll be interesting to see if this ends up the same way this has today. I'm sorry to report that there are many people in the UK in this day and age that might think the two are not the same thing. I'm intrigued by the notion of where free speech hits the bottom of acceptable. I think it has something to do with the often barely discernable difference between giving voice to your own opinion and trying to influence that of someone else. All the same, I'd hate to be the person that decides where that point is, man.

Gender Motors It seems to me that there's a pattern appearing with the re-release of classic cars – they instantly become a bitch car, not to put too fine a point on it. This morning I saw a man who obviously thought himself no small drink, behind the wheel of a Mini Cooper and I just felt so terribly sad for him. Same thing with seeing a man in a new Beetle – I automatically assume he’s taken his wife’s car out on an errand. Why this should be so, I’ve no idea, for the original version of both cars were perfectly acceptable man-motors. But it’s true, isn’t it – both new models have instantly become lady-cars. Even the Plymouth PT45 or UB40 or whatever it’s called – a classic hotrod shape and yet I’ve hardly ever seen one driven by a person with an actual rod. How does that happen? It seems that the re-release is the instant automotive emasculation process. I’d be curious what it could do with something like a good, manly ‘pony car’ – a classic 60’s Mustang shape or a Barracuda re-released – guaranteed it would instantly become a firm fave of girls whose dads buy their cars.

Morecambe Yesterday I took my mother to see her own mother in the northern English town of Morecambe. It's a formerly popular seaside resort - once advertised to Victorians as 'the Naples of t' North' but now a sad, finished place. The rows of immacilately kept bed and breakfast houses of yore are now DHSS flophouses or stand with broken glass, net curtains flapping in the breeze. I spent a lot of time there as a kid, having my grandparents there so it was interesting yesterday to show my brother's boy, Sean, around the place and tell him what it was like before. The amusement arcades are still there - the only survivor of the old days. That, it appears, is only because, as economic decay sets in, the need to gamble is exacerbated - the places were full of locals smoking thin rollups, hunched over penny falls machines or 4 quid jackpot puggies. In an attempt to give those who come seeking former glory something to look at, the town has built a statue of Eric Morecambe. He's dancing his little dance, wearing plus fours, carrying binoculars, sporting a maniacal grin and frightening eyes. My nephew, quite naturally, had never heard of him so I had to describe the whole Morecambe and Wise Show to him. His eyes glazed over at the bit about the short, fat hairy legs and Andre Previn.

Haunted By The Ghost Of Baccy Have you ever noticed that when you quit smoking, it’s still smoking in you for a while afterwards? I have found, on the few occasions I’ve had the gumption to knock the fags on the head, that occasionally you get that whiff, deep in the cavities of your sinuses, in the mysterious grotto behind your beak, of eau de ashtray. I find that especially after a really hot bath, for example, the smell you have deep in your face after a night on the heavy piss where you’ve smoked like a fiend, never giving the thought of cancer houseroom, comes flooding back into your sinuses as if that pissup was yesterday afternoon. I have not had a fag in a month today, just got out of a bath after a bottle of champagne to celebrate the fact, and that whiff came rushing at me, trying to claw me back to the other side. If there was a fag in the house, I reckon it might have had me. There isn’t and my resolve remains intact.

Stop It. Now. It's gotten out of hand. Every single day in life, I see signs. They're everywhere. cheap, nasty, hastily put together by people with absolutely no artistic credibility at all. Sometimes they're on pieces of cardboard, the backs of egg boxes, cartons that previously contained white goods or VCRs. More often, though, they are published upon pieces of plain cloth, large pieces of plain cloth - very often thin, wore-out bedsheets or pillowcases. 'Happy Birthday' they say. 'Happy 20th Craig' or Bobby or Shelly or Brittney. The numberical figures are, more often than not, enlarged to about five times the size of the lettering containing the real message of the piece -- suitably ignoring every convention of the signwriting game. A few recently have really offended me. Not just because of their poor construction, nor their omnipresence nor the desultory two half-blown-up balloons and length of curling ribbon that invariably accompany them. The sheets they are printed on, these awful things, appear to not have been laundered beforehand. There was one today, finally, on a child's-sized sheet. It had perhaps once been pink but now had become a washed-out, thin, nasty over-diluted puce. Most of it at any rate. Only in its middle there was a large, dark sploodge of something manmade. It was at the point in a sheet where stains tend to occur, if you understand the post-code I'm indicating here. I felt instantly nauseated. Then I started to think about some little kid having been sick and felt sorry for him or her. Then I started, because it was in a traffic jam and I was at the same place for a while, to try and estimate the point at which a human being does not throw out a sheet that has sustained such a stain, even if they've tried to launder once and failed. It's all too much for me.