DFC Friday- Issue 39

Latest issue of the DFC dropped through the letter box yesterday: yellow and red envelope promising great things as always. However, I've had very little time to look through it so far today, as things have been busy, busy, busy today.

However I did get chance to flick through and read our favourites, which luckily happen to be the quickies. As usual they're all looking great; Lil' Cutie, Bodkin and the Bear, Sausage and Carrots all excellent. Julian Hanshaw's Chicken Caesar Jnr begins to get really interesting, not going for the immediate gag, not going for cute, but trying something far harder; somewhere in-between. So the entire page, of the clumsy chef's son trying to help dad by putting the cherry on the top of the world's biggest trifle, is all about the final panel which doesn't go for the obvious gag but bravely cuts away to a reaction shot after the fact. It's very well done indeed.

Finally a mention about Sarah McIntyre's Vern and Lettuce. Still a favourite for many reasons. But one of the reasons is because it looks nothing like anything else in the comic, with those lush yet muted colours always looking so lovely. And this episode you really notice it with the device of putting a newspaper behind the strip yet having it poke through;



And to think this was meant to be a quick post between getting some stuff sorted.

DFC as usual is available from the website

A bunch of bankers.

Found floating around the Internet (okay, it was from Guido). Obviously not real, but a perfect encapsulation of everything wrong with the situation: £693,000 per year. From the age of 50. £13327 per week. £79 per hour. Well that doesn't stick in the craw at all.

My favourite moment of it all so far: Peter Mandelson (noted beacon of all things good and righteous) on camera saying that Fred Goodwin should "do the right thing". Much spluttering into coffee and shouting at television followed.

Despite it probably being impossible I'd love to see the government just tell Goodwin to naff off, give him a state pension from 65 and tell him to sue. But instead I fear this unrecognisable Labour government will limp along, haemorrhaging support from lifelong Labour supporters like me until the next general election. Louise already has a bet on with me that Cameron's lot will get in (normal house bet rules: takeout as prize). And right now I feel like just admitting defeat here and buying takeout tonight as her winnings.

New U2 album - joint listening in Bruton mansions

Downloaded the U2 album - Louise being a big fan and all. So it's been on over the weekend along with the big love fest on the BBC. Louise is enjoying it and I'm grudgingly thinking a couple of the tracks aren't bad at all. And there's the fun game of trying to name the U2 song from the past that they've ripped off on many of the tracks. Our favourite is Magnificent where we think we've spotted three different songs in the new one.

The one thing we can't work out is why they're so aggresively promoting it. Louise summed it up by saying that the U2 of a few years ago wouldn't have been on Jonathan Ross and the rest. Now, is it a lack of confidence in the album or just the reverse; a feeling of intense pride?

And now I really am exhausted....

Remember just a few hours ago when I said I was off to bed?
I lied.
Obviously.
More exhaustion tomorrow no doubt.

Just sat up and spent ages continuing with the website transfer. The good news is they take it down for maintainance every night at 1am - so that forces me to stop.

And now I am going to bed. No, really.

Tired, death-like state - didn't I just have a holiday?

Dear all, Richard wants a new body. This current one is far too old, far too decrepit, far too bloody tired.
Especially when one thinks that I've only been back at work for three days. Got in tonight and just physically collapsed into the sofa. Not a good sign at all. Ill or just in need of sleep? Going to bed.

Website, website, website, website. Oh god it's neverending....

I have the old school website which needs transferring to the new school website. I've done the majority of the school information stuff and have to get all of the pupil pages moved over now. What I thought would be a relatively easy job is now proving to be a bit of a nightmare. I sat down yesterday and worked out page templates and tonight finally got around to starting the job. Three hours to do three pages. Oh hell. There's at least 50 pages to do.

Did I mention there's a deadline as well? The old website expires at the end of March. Oh Damn. Looks like a lot of extra hours in the next month then.

Neil Gaiman on Watchmen July 1987

Fantastic piece of nostalgia journalism before Gaiman became THE Neil Gaiman (Via Lew):

(Click to make it big enough to read).

Back to School, ho hum.....

Back to school after the half term. At least we made it; I met one parent today after school who thought it was a training day and kept their daughter at home - they were mortified to realise.

My day ended rather early as I had a dentist appointment this afternoon - seems my last dentist wasn't really paying attention; either when I told him that my gums looked swollen and had a tendency to bleed or when he had his cursory 6th monthly poke around. New dentist looks at my gums, books me in for intensive cleaning this week and next month and the month after. Seems I'm developing "pockets" where the gums are coming away from the teeth. Intensive cleaning and continual brushing may rectify situation. Okay, maybe not continual brushing, but you get the idea.

Just one more thing to add to my ever increasing list of things that are wrong with me.

End of half term post

Tomorrow (Today) marks the last day of half term. Back to school on Monday for Molly and I. Molly's school has finally relented and allowed the girls to wear trousers. But only for winter. Which leads us to the petinent question - when does winter end? (obvious gag in Yorkshire - about 2 weeks before it starts again)

But Molly always goes into summer dresses very early anyway, so we've told her that she can wear the trousers next winter when she's a Year 6. How mean?

The half term's been a lovely relaxing week that seems to have been going on forever. I've done very little actual school work this week, just a little tinkering with the website here and there. But I have managed to get 8 reviews done in just 6 days, which is fantastic work. (Of course, they may be complete rubbish) Oh, there's still a hefty chunk of books left on the review shelf but I can see a time when I'm actually back on top of it fairly soon.

Of course, back to school, back to work, back to being exhausted of an evening and being hugely unproductive await. That might put a dent in the plans.

I miss the old style tuning on televisions....

We've had a really temperamental TV for a long time, with a dodgy power supply which meant it would turn itself off and refuse to come out of standby whenever it deemed fit (usually when I'm watching Battlestar Galactica - I swear it hated me.)

Well yesterday night it turned itself off for good and went to the great big tele heaven in the sky. Luckily we knew this was going to happen and had already got the new one picked out. Ordered at 10 this morning from the local electrical store, delivered and installed at 2 this afternoon and I finally got around to actually sitting down to watch it at 11 this evening. Nice flatscreen thing.

Why, oh why, oh why do these new TVs have so many settings and choices. It's taken me 5 hours to get the picture and sound just right. I remember the first TV I ever owned, this white Ferguson portable TV with 4 settings; volume, brightness, contrast and colour. That was it. No choice at all, take what you're given and cope. Those were the days. This new one has hundreds of settings, all affecting the other settings. I miss the simplicity.

But now that it is set, I'm leaving it alone for a month, Louise has banned me from messing with the settings and may hide the remote if I even try.

DFC Friday; Issue 38

It's Friday and the red and yellow bundle dropped through the letterbox earlier. This means it's DFC day. For those of you not up to speed on this, the DFC is a subscription only UK children's comic featuring 36 ad free pages of fantastic comics. Comedy, adventure, single gag strips, continuing series. The DFC has the lot.

Issue 38 sees the start of new sci-fi adventure Spectrum Black. Which looks rather like a Ben 10 cartoon but does so in a good way - not appealing to me, but Molly thought it looked good (and that's the point of a children's comic - to actually appeal to children). There's a preview page here to give you a flavour of the thing.

Elsewhere there's another new series starting without the fanfare of Spectrum Black: Chicken Caesar Junior by Julian Hanshaw. A nice enough comedy about the son of the greatest chef in the world. The only Julian Hanshaw I can find online is the winner of the 2008 Observer/Cape Graphic Short Story prize with Sand Dunes and Sonic Booms but I don't think it's him:


(left: Chicken Caesar Jnr by Julian Hanshaw in the DFC. Right: Sand Dunes and Sonic Booms by Julian Hanshaw, winner of the Observer/Cape 2008 prize.)

Update, merely a couple of hours later: It is the same Julian Hanshaw. Just working in a different style. Thanks to Julian for getting in touch with the info. He also writes that he's:
"currently finishing of a Graphic Novel called 'The Art Of Pho' which is set in Ho Chi Minh City and revolves around the food of Vietnam. To be published by Jonathan Cape"
Sounds very good after the incredible promise of Sonic Booms and Sand Dunes.

As for the rest of the comic, by now you should know what we like! Gary Northfield's Lil' Cutie, Sarah McIntyre's Vern & Lettuce, Simone Lia's Sausage & Carrots, James Turner's Super Animal Adventure Squad, Wilbur Dawbarn's Bodkin and the Bear all got big smiles and chuckles from both of us.

No Mirabilis or Mezolith this issue though, hopefully they'll be back soon. But the best news of the week, one that elicited huge cheers from Molly is the return of Jim Medway's Crab Lane Crew in 2 issues time. A very happy girl indeed.

So, that's this week's DFC. Well worth going and getting a subscription don't you think?

April Fools Day comes early to Marvel Comics? Or just another reason for despair?

Taking the DC Comics model of how to make stupid ideas go a long way if you just make each character a new colour; we seem to have the Incredible Hulk corps. Maybe it's just Loeb and Liefeld recycling stupid ideas they had circa Heroes Reborn, but the redundancy of ideas is just stunning.

Ladies and Gentlemen: The purple Hulk Smash



(via Laura)

More homework - Rupert Wood and his Merry Men

Today, the plan was to get up, go out shopping, get home, do homework and have lunch, then play games all afternoon. This didn't take into account the small matter of her homework taking ages and ages and ages to get done. Research myths and legends and write about them and then write a story on Robin Hood using the worksheet provided. Having looked at the sheet and realised how much stress we'd be going through if we did it straight off, we both agreed to play it for laughs. So Robin Hood is now Rupert Wood, a slightly crazy person hanging around Sherwood Park in Nottingham, giving fruit to the poor. The poor would rather have cash. meanwhile Mr Thomas E Sherbert and his friend Marion are taking a walk through the park dressed for the fancy dress party they are going to. Mistaken identity gags follow.....

Finally finished it about ten minutes ago. Now having coffee before an afternoon of Disney Trivial Pursuit and marbles (Molly's choice).

And what do I get for my efforts? My great reward for all my help? We're off to see Beverley Hills Chihuahua tonight at 5:30. Oh joy.

Lily Allen redux......

Okay, after the initial post about the Lily Allen album I have to revisit and refresh. A couple of days ago I pointed out that:
You find me a better pop opener this year than the one-two punch of Everyone's At It and The Fear and I shall be amazed. And after that there's at least 5 other good to great songs on the album. Of course that does leave about 5 duds / filler tracks - but that's what the delete key in iTunes is for.

But since then I've been listening to it some more and it's so much better than I gave it credit in those few words:

Tracks 1-7 are all great, especially the aforementioned Everyone's At It and The Fear.

Track 8, the stupid, childish yet surprisingly fun Fuck You has a Carpenters intro and backing that leads into an expletive laden song that is almost unplayable in this household - something like 41 Fuck Yous in 3 minutes 35 in a perfectly sing-a-long style.

Bizarrely track 9: Who'd Have Known is almost exactly the same song as Take That's Shine. I was sat here puzzling over what it reminded me of when Louise popped her head round the door and pointed it out.

It's almost a relief to have track 10 & 11 show a drop in quality (although extra points to Ms Allen for rhyming Suicidal with Creedance Clearwater Revival). But then it's back to one of the best on the album with He Wasn't There, a jazzy, laid back tale of (presumably) parental neglect from old Keith which just rounds it all off so well

Half Term days out: Malton

Not quite a day out - we had Maths homework to complete first, but today we headed off to Malton for a little trip out. Lunch at a tea shop where I had some lovely Yorkshire Puddings in onion gravy. Except I had to send them back - who knew that traditional onion gravy was made out of the beef sock and still had bits of cow left in it? Oh well.

Took the camera along but didn't get that many shots of Malton, just some of Molly and me in the tea shop, some of the sheep market and some of the gorgeous alleyway of collectible shops we saw...

What a way to start the day: Maths homework....

Molly's, not mine. Normally we do her homework on the day we get it - Thursday. Except last Thursday we were busy and didn't get around to it, so with visitors over the weekend, this is the first time we get to do it.

There's a pattern to homework in our house. Reconvene from lounge to kitchen table. Lay out required paper and writing materials on table, look at maths homework, complain loudly and bitterly, at length that she can't do it, throw a strop about it, get talked down by caring parents, do homework. Repeat with every other question on the worksheet.

Oh we love Maths homework at Bruton mansions. The really annoying thing is that she's really good and knows what to do, but lacks a little confidence in her own abilities to do them. Very, very frustrating. Nearly done now though, probably not helped by me sitting next to her typing this. Ooops.

Neil Gaiman and prose and me and Molly

We started reading Coraline by Neil Gaiman tonight for Molly's bedtime book. We started it a while ago but it was a little too scary for her. But she's ready for it now and we've decided to read it before we see the film in May.

And it's a great book, perfect for reading aloud, just like all of Gaiman's children's books that we've read so far. He writes glorious prose for this age group, scary, creepy stuff but . And I love his comic work. But I just find myself at a bit of a loss when it comes rto reading his adult prose. I keep trying to read his books; the last one was Anansi Boys which was alright but nothing like as good as either his comics or his children's books. So I'll keep enjoying his comics and I'll keep enjoying his books with Molly. But I may lay off his grown up prose for a little while.

Reviewing machine, he's just a reviewing machine.

Sunday night 7:45. Household, plus guests from Birmingham downstairs watching E list celebs falling over on ice.

Upstairs locked in his room, rather obsessively listening to the new Lily Allen cd which is getting better and better every time he listens to it is your reviewer and blogger.

Wiping the sweat from his brow he presses save and the third review in two days goes into the ready to be published folder and grabs the next book from the pile. Onwards, ever onwards...... 22 left on the shelf to review. Maybe I can do another tonight?

New Simpsons main title sequence (oh, and HDTV too)

The Simpsons is hitting HDTV (which I still have absolutely no interest in - after all I watch so little TV that it's really not worth it) and for the occasion they've updated the title sequence:



(Click through for You Tube video)

Lily Allen - It's Not Me, It's You

You find me a better pop opener this year than the one-two punch of Everyone's At It and The Fear and I shall be amazed. And after that there's at least 5 other good to great songs on the album. Of course that does leave about 5 duds / filler tracks - but that's what the delete key in iTunes is for. I still expect one of the first two tracks to make it onto the best of year list though.

More Molly art and writing

Click to enbiggen.
Worth it for the last paragraph:



Good Catholic girl! Got that morbid appreciation of death.

DFC Friday - Issue 37

It's Friday, so it's DFC day. The red and yellow envelope was waiting for us as we got back from school. Well, neither Molly or I may not really like the strip, but that's one impressive cover featuring Spider Moon (keep wanting to write Sailor Moon!) which starts it's second run in the comic this week.

The other notable newbie / returnee is Gary Northfield's really great Lil' Cutie. (And have you all picked up your copies of his ace Derek The Sheep?) Molly very happy to see it back. Molly had a quick look at it before rushing out of the door for a snowball fight (as great as the DFC may be - there's no way it's going to win over the prospect of a snowball fight - quite right as well). She thought Vern & Lettuce looked "pretty" again with the gorgeous salmon pink colours and that was about it.

I've read it though while she's been outside and it's business as usual, which is no bad thing where business as usual is excellence through most of the pages. Elsewhere in the comic we have more Frontier (which is still suffering from the problem of too little per page - but still entertaining despite that) and another 5 pages of Mirabilis, which appears to be slowing slightly and as it does the art looks a little less polished, a little more rushed. Still keen to see the collection to read it in one go, but hope the quality holds up to the end. Vern & Lettuce, Sausage & Carrots, Bodkin & The Bear, Super Animal Detective Squad all highly enjoyable.

And there's a little preview of a new strip beginning next week: Spectrum Black. Looks lovely and has the required "lots of stuff on each page" factor that seems to be essential for the serious adventure strips to really work. More on that next week.

But in the meantime - get off and subscribe!

Latest Molly art

She is now a comics artist!

Dear Windows Update: F Off.

If I wanted to restart the computer I bloody well would. Is it possible you could stop popping up every couple of bloody minutes while I'm writing? Because sometimes I go a few minutes without actually looking at the screen (touch typer I am not) and it's rather annoying to find that all I've been doing is futilely clicking on your dumb windows message.

Wiped out

Got in from the snowy wastes of Pocklington tonight after a good few snowball fights with Molly on the way home and crashed. Spent all night practically comatose on the sofas downstairs and have only just woken up and been conscious enough to actually write anything. Thank God it's half term tomorrow. Thank God it's my half day as well. No hanging around at lunchtime tomorrow, straight home and rest. Then sleep for a weekend probably.

But for now; wide awake and raring to go. Tons of things to get done before bedtime to try and clear the decks before half term.

Mark Thomas at Pocklington Arts Centre.

It's rare we get out for the night, even rarer that we get to see great comedy and even rarer that both arrive on our doorstep. But tonight it was Mark Thomas at Pocklington Arts Centre.

Just got in and really tired, so only a quick blog about it, but it was, as expected, a thoroughly great evening. The best bits; a description of Pocklington as the heterosexual Hebden Bridge, and the frankly brilliant idea of a new national maximum wage based on a percentage of the average wage. The more we thought about it, the better the idea got - for the highest paid to get even more money would mean the lowest paid had to see an increase as well.

That and much more in a really long, really great show

PROPAGANDA Review: Mark Kalesniko's Alex

Alex

by Mark Kalesniko

Fantagraphics

Alex is an incredibly depressing, utterly miserable book with a central character you should find uttely deplorable and without a single redeeming feature, whose existence is a pointless, alcohol fuelled waste and whose relationships are, without exception, toxic.

But it’s also one of my favourite books and never, ever fails to make me amazed at how good a writer and artist Mark Kalesniko is as he makes me care deeply about this utter trainwreck of a person.

(This is Alex. Alex’s life is not going like he planned. From Alex by Mark Kalesniko)

Alex is a frankly mesmerising read. It’s said that the dog faced central character of Alex Kalienka is Mark Kalesniko’s alter ego. I really hope not, for his sake.

Because Alex is a mess. Alcoholic, at war with himself, everything and everyone, desperately unhappy with how his life has gone and back in his home town of Bandini after fifteen years in LA living his dream of working for Mickey Walt Studios, only to discover he couldn’t cope with that either. He’s home, without hope, angry at life and trying his best to crawl into a bottle and immunise himself against the world.

“Reminding me that I have no future, no present and a past I detest” - Alex on old friends and his hometown.

As the story opens Alex wakes up on a park bench after another night on a bender, wondering what the hell he did to get there and why the hell he’s carrying his old high school yearbook.

Through the course of the book he is presented with the answers to both of these as he stumbles through his shattered life, bumping into old school-mates, friends, teachers, enemies and unrequited loves. Each meeting only makes Alex’s situation worse and he spirals down to what must be his inevitable self-destruction. Yet, just as all seems without hope he suddenly rediscovers his art and starts to slowly draw some hope from that. But alas, life isn’t done kicking Alex when he’s down.

I adore Alex. In the same way that the most miserable, depressing music can profoundly affect you when your not in the best of moods, the misery and torment of Alex has a strangely edifying effect upon me. I read it for the first time when it came out over ten years ago and instantly got it. It’s a difficult read, but hugely rewarding. Not to mention very funny. That’s right. Funny. Kalesniko isn’t afraid to milk Alex’s disaster of a life to comic effect and has a powerful command of slapstick that he uses so well throughout.

And his art. Wow, his art. Look at the three examples on the page here. The linework is incredibly spare but there’s not a wasted line on any picture of Alex and everything tells you just what you need to know about his utter psychological breakdown. But then you look at that final page and notice the incredible detailing and the wonderful layout. That happens time and time again. A page will just amaze you, first with it’s structure, then with the emotional intensity of his character work and finally with the level of detailing.

So, if you are going to get just one book on an alcoholic dog make sure you choose Alex. Then again, if you want a book that will utterly absorb and involve you as it drags you as far down into someone’s depression and failure as you can really bear and yet also manages to make you laugh then you also need to buy a copy of Alex. It’s stunning.

Schoolwork ideas

Currently I'm trying to get an old fashioned dull old boring web 1.0 website fully ready for public release to the school. The idea is to use it like I use the current one, as a repository for links and ideas for lessons - a public favourites if you like.

But I really want to find the time to do more. I want to get Year 6 blogging. They're capable of it, once they have a little intro and guidance from me. The blogs all set up and ready, just have to find the time to launch it.

And I wouldn't mind trying to think of a good way to use twitter in an education based environment. Any ideas for that one? I'm too tired to think of one right now.

The main problem I have is that right after finishing the website project I have to launch into the Learning Platform project. Not looking forward to that at all. But I may try to free up at least a half term to launch the blog and other bits. That's the main problem with working in a primary school, there's just never enough time to do all of the great things that we could do.

The run up to half term. I may be dead by then...

half term at the end of the week. one of the teachers turned round to me today and told me I looked like absolute shit. Horrible cold, hacking cough, sinus pain, tired as all hell. I get home and my eye balloons up with a stye. Or maybe I'm just going through a biblical plague?

I'm still working on the plan to get more sleep, which in turn, should make me feel healthier throughout the day. Granted, the planned 1:30am last night turned into nearer 3am by the time I hit bed. But tonight? It's 1:30am already. Maybe 2am and try to wind it back through the week and into half term?

The Onion does Sony ....

The Onion does a glorious bit on Sony (via Pete)

New York Comic Con weekend

This weekend was New York Comic Con weekend. Where th eassembled mass of US and UK pros gather to get drunk and do some networking. (Or are they the same thing? Ben McCool, I'm thinking of you).

Expect stories to come thick and fast as the news filters out. But of course, the silliest and most entertaining are the wonderful people who get costumed up for the weekend. There's a ton of these on Flickr, but this was the best set I found to give you a feel of the place; Muckster's NYCC set.



It's a lovely idea, and I'd really like to think that Wolverine guy got up in the morning, put the costume on and thought to himself "I shall go and have fun looking all fat and stupid". But I think he probably looked in the mirror and thought how cool he looked.
As for Mystique girl; always a good idea to check how quickly the body paint rubs off. Halfway through day 1 and you just look a bit silly.

Early night fail

Another night of failing to get to bed early. My problem, as I've written about many times before is that my body and brain wake up at 11ish and by 1, 2am I'm actually wide awake. Tonight (okay, last night, but you know what I mean) I had planned to watch QI, then Match Of The Day and then head to bed around midnight. Match of the Day finishes and I decide to pick up the latest Love Film disc and start watching it.

So instead of going to bed I watched 96 minutes of Hancock. Bed would have been better. Hancock was alright, but really nothing special. And now it's nearly 3am and I'm still awake. It's no wonder I feel like crap in a morning.
Okay then, now to bed. Tomorrow will be the first day of a new regime of early nights. Which is anytime before 2am for me.

Evolution slowly creeps into our Catholic home....

We caught the final 20 minutes of David Attenborough show Charles Darwin and the Tree of Life earlier. Obviously it was quite wonderful. I doubt there's a moment of television with David Attenborough that isn't in some way worthwhile.
Just before the end of it there's a 6 minute or so animation that should really be shown in every school. It's a stunningly concise explaination of evolution and certainly had Molly's attention.

So this could be the first chink in that Catholic armour. She's already planning where she's going to put the BBC / Open University's free Evolution poster.

It's on the BBC iPlayer right now here. But the amazing Tree Of Life video is on You Tube here.

Twitter for the masses

Twitter is suddenly everywhere. I can always tell when something has made it overground because the teachers start talking about it. And this week I've had two of them asking about this Twitter thing. But they're not the only ones it seems. I can barely turn on the TV or the radio without some mention of it. There was the recent Jonathan Ross / Stephen Fry chat on his show. Russell Brand's on now. So, I hear, is Chris Moyles. And today 5 live was awash with it. Mayo and Kermode's (Wittertainment) film reviews were all over it. And once the BBC attaches to it, everyone does. But what seems like Twitter's very own jump the shark moment came when Phillip Schofield joined in.

It's all that Stephen Fry's fault of course! If he wasn't so wonderfully nice and beloved by everyone, we maybe wouldn't have had this explosion of celeb twittering. But it's too late to go back now!

Oh, and if you're interested: Twitter me.

Jeremy Clarkson and the BBC under attack

The whole Jeremy Clarkson thing is getting a little stupid really. Okay, so he called Gordon Brown a one-eyed Scottish idiot who lied, but is it really worth the absolute outrage we see from every media outlet?

At most it's just a stupid comment but it's being blown out of all proportion. "Linking disability with incompetence" was one quote I heard. Surely I'm missing something because that's absolute rubbish. If I were to say I think Jeremy Clarkson's an obnoxious, arrogant, boorish lanky fool would everyone suddenly complain that that was somehow discriminatory? Can we not say anything critical about anyone anymore? Can we not just be scathing and a little nasty about people? It's certainly not even implying that Gordon's loss of sight in one eye has anything to do with his idiocy or his lies. And to try to make the connection is just someone trying to stir up trouble.

Surely Gordon Brown has bigger problems to concern himself with. Surely he must have a thicker skin than this? Not if the sycophantic, desperate to please Scottish Labour MP I heard on Radio 5 this morning was taking an official party line. MP Gordon Banks described Clarkson's comments as "unforgiveable". He was probably going to go on to describe Clarkson as somewhere to the right of Hitler and guilty of every serious unsolved crime of the last 50 years, but he ran out of time.

At most Clarkson's comments were slightly nasty. He was right about the Scottish after all. As for the idiot and the liar comments - that's going to depend on what you think of Brown and Labour - but I'm sure there's no shortage of people in agreement. I suppose the one-eyed comment was a little harsh. But somebody really needs to take a step back and ask exactly where we're drawing the line about this sort of thing.

Are we working our way towards a country where we're only allowed to be bland and uninteresting lest we offend anyone? Or maybe it's just the BBC that they want to be like that. In the wake of Ross and Brand it seems the knives are out for Auntie. You can see a point in the not too distant future where there will be nothing but a diet of Question Of Sport, Strictly Come Dancing and re-runs of The Good Life on the BBC.

Now, I like Clarkson in Top Gear. But I imagine I'd dislike him intensely in real life. And I imagine he wouldn't think too much of me either. And that's not a problem because isn't that rather the point? Do we really want to live somewhere where no-one is allowed to speak out? Free speech has to include the right to be a pompous, arrogant git.

It's DFC Friday: issue 36

This week's DFC, done at speed....

Nice Peach de Punch cover and a good two page strip by Misako Rocks. And all of the usual stuff really. This really is the problem with doing a weekly mini review of the same comic: everything you like is still liked, everything you don't, you still don't. Needless to say Vern & Lettuce and Sausage & Carrots were great. Sarah McIntyre has suddenly decided to veer off into a much longer story with Vern & Lettuce. Luckily the strip still has enough gags and of course, looks lovely. One of the strengths of it is how warm and cosy and comfortable it looks. The colours and stylings make it look nothing like anything else in the comic. Next thing you know she'll be telling us she has this idea for 300 strips and this early funny stuff was just her finding her feet a la Dave Dim with Cerebus. Or maybe not.

My continuing love for Mirabilis just grows and grows. I'm really looking forward to the collection that is definitely coming out at some point in the future.

Which makes me wonder yet again - when do we get to see some more collections? Everyone start emailing the DFC and suggesting it: info@thedfc.co.uk

Sadly, this issue also sees the end of Mezolith after it's short reprise of the last few weeks. It's making way for Spider Moon and Lil' Cutie from Gary Northfield. Yea for Lil' Cutie, but neither Molly or I enjoyed Spider Moon too much first time round.

Other great job things: Education software written by educators / idiots.

A while ago we had the great nightmare of a Maths Tracking software that was written by educators. It took so bloody long to get it working that I was ready to personally visit the company to put forth my case against their product.

And now one of the teachers had the bright idea of ordering some science assessment software. I know exactly what happened. Rep came in, showed off the software working perfectly on their rep laptop and wowed teacher with it. What teacher didn't see was the complete mess of the program beneath the shiny surface. Doesn't like loading on a network, doesn't like being on a secure network drive, demands full admin access for all users, has to be individually configured to see the central database on every workstation and to top it all off doesn't recognise the imported SIMs data the way it's meant to.

I had to create a csv file from SIMs, break it down to individual year groups, format the data properly and then import it. And even then, the stupid bloody program doesn't accept it. The date of birth field was the best: Must be in the format dd/mm/yy. Which is what I imported. Stupid Science software then registers all of our Year 1 test pupils as being born in 1902 and 1903. Stupid, stuid software. In the end I had to go into each pupil entry and delete the date of birth year 02 or 03 and replace them with 02 and 03. Press update and all is okay. But Richard, you say, surely you actually haven't made any changes at all? And that is true. But stupid, stupid software then recognises dates as 2002 and 2003.

Tomorrow I have to go through the whole farce with years 2-6. Looking forward to it greatly.

It's always the simple things that take the longest: A Learning Platform summary

It seemed such a simple thing: the head asked me to write a quick summary of the Learning Platform today. Page of A4 or less.

Shouldn't take that long? Absolute nightmare. It didn't help when a few websites I looked at had the opening lines of "A Learning Platform is very difficult to define simply". No kidding.

In the end it took three drafts at work and then another two drafts at home. The final draft, and the first I feel happy with was just finished, mind awake and off the back of Gin #3. This will be the one I hand to the head tomorrow and ask her to check over. I imagine we'll be on draft 7 plus by the time I leave tomorrow.

Snow Day.

Yep, today it snowed. A lot.
My school called it early so I knew I wasn't going in anyway. Which was pretty lucky seeing as I'd stayed up to watch the fantastic Superbowl. (So much for the pledge to try to get to bed earlier). But Molly's school decided to open which meant taking a rather pissed off child through all this gloriously fresh white stuff this morning. Oh she was not happy.

Come half ten and I get the call that they're shutting at lunch and can we pick up. Out I go again, into the slightly less virgin, slightly more churned up ugly brown stuff and pick up a very excited child. I was pretty much soaked with snowballs by the time we made it out of the school gates. Molly has a good throwing arm.

After that it was across to West Green for snowballs, snow angels, diving into snow and making snowmen. And although the hands went red with cold very quickly it was a glorious day.

We're now waiting to see if the forecast big drop of snow will ever get to us. It's still looking an awful lot like rain. But Molly went to sleep tonight with all her fingers crossed and a prayer for snow on her lips.

Pics of the day:

Snow. Chaos. Britain whinges. Britain should be quiet and go outside, it's lovely.

Every time it snows, without fail, all we get is the phone-in shows full of the same miserable swines bemoaning the fact that they can't get into work and the roads are in chaos and where are the snow plows and why aren't the buses running and is this really the sprit that got us through the blitz? etc etc etc. For hours.

They often point out that other countries cope really well with snow. And that's true. But these other countries; Norway, Sweden etc, all have one thing in common - they have a lot of bloody snow. And because they have a lot of bloody snow they have every reason to spend an awful lot of money on specialised equipment to deal with all of the snow.

Britain, on the other hand, has perhaps one or two snowfalls a year. This one is the worst in many years. The maths are very simple: do you want to spend the money to make the country run smoothly on the two days a week it's worthwhile or would it be far better to spend it on something more useful?

So please, stop moaning. The country can cope without you at work for one or two days. Everything will be fine. Look outside; clean, white, beautiful snow. Relax. If you're able, stick warm gear on and make snowmen. If you're not able, stick the fire on, make a lovely hot coffee and enjoy the beauty out of your window.

I'm off to pick Molly up from her school in a moment. And then we're going to be making snowmen and throwing snowballs. And then we'll spend an hour by the fire thawing out. But it will have been worth it.

Birmingham weekender; Rachel's 18th

This weekend we travelled down to old Birmingham for Rachel's 18th birthday party. Rachel is Louise's niece and somehow managed to convince her parents that it was a very good idea to let her hold the party at their house. This insanity was somehow validated by Rachel's numerous friends all being delightful, polite and generally lovely.

Of course, put that many 17 & 18 year olds in close proximity to alcohol and there's bound to be casualties: the first was at just 10 o'clock, as one girl passes out in the loo and gets carried upstairs to lie down. Lightweight. And after that we had lots of staggering and very polite drunkeness. Oh, the joys of being young! We were with all the family and the old folk inside the house, whilst the young people wandered between the gazebo in the garden, the toilets and the drinks.

One strange thing about all these teens; despite having beers and stupidly coloured alcopop things in the gazebo, a hell of a lot of them ended up raiding the bottles of spirits in the kitchen. So at half eleven I ran out of Gin. Luckily, Rachel has an older sister and Helen had a secret stash of Gin. Thank you Helen (your replacement bottle shall be with you soon).

Molly had a great time, was pronounced cute many, many times and rather enjoyed both the attention and staying up until 1am. Thanks very much to Rachel and family for the lovely night. I imagine they spent today clearing up the wreckage left by that many teenagers, no matter how nice!

The rest of the weekend was spent catching up with folks and visiting Birmingham. As usual, this meant a visit to Nostalgia & Comics. Lovely to see folks again and nice to actually spend some time browsing comic shelves for good stuff. Had to be very strong this time and try not to grab too much stuff. The grand plan of trying to reduce the 30+ books to review on the shelf. Did alright as well, only added four more things to the shelf.

A busy weekend but a very good one. Happy Birthday to Rachel and thanks very much for inviting us all.

Snow, oh yes we have snow..... good and bad

It's snowing here, just like it seems to be snowing across much of the country. In Birmingham this may well have meant a day off school for Molly and I, but tomorrow we'll take a very slipery walk to Molly's school and see how many folks have turned up. Then I'll see if I can get to my school and if not, see if they want a hand at Molly's place instead.

But whatever happens it's looking like snowmen will be made, snowballs shall be thrown and a general great time will be had by all.

The one slight downside - we have leaky roof still. Leaky roof currently has layer of snow several inches thick on it. Snow melts. Arse.

More tales of the damn roof.

The nice man from the NHBC came round on Friday to look at the roof. For most of the saga see here.

The good news is that he basically agreed with us (and the roofer we got in last week for an independent point of view) that the roof wasn't made in the best fashion. Something to do with the builders putting the drip trays for the cavity walls in the wrong place. They're meant to go above Molly's roof. Instead the builder seemed to think it would be spiffing to put it in Molly's attic. Water hits wall, Bricks absorb water. Water goes into cavity and onto drip trays. All as it is meant to be. But it's meant to come out of the damn wall and onto Molly's roof, washing away properly. But with the drip trays in Molly's attic all of the water has chance to leak into her attic. Morons.

The bad news is that the fix for this involves many days of NHBC builders on the roof putting in new drip trays for the cavity wall. This is complex and messy. Of course, it could be worse - the original builder could be doing it.

All in all, not that bad I suppose. A resolution seems to be on the cards, and it's got nothing to do with the original builder. Of course, me being me, I'll be looking at the attic, just to check, for the next few years every time it rains; just to make sure.

Alan Moore's publishing schedule and Ask Alan?

Pádraig, he of the great interviews (Alan Moore; part 1, part 2, Todd Klein, Neil Gaiman) has put up a very useful list of Alan Moore’s forthcoming work on his Glycon Live Journal. Sadly, the thing I’m most looking forward to is pushed back to possibly 2011 now:

(2011 maybe? But it will be well worth the wait. See here for more details.)

Finally; a reminder that Pádraig is after questions to put to Alan Moore when he meets up with him for another interview in March. Just put your questions in as comments on this post and Pádraig will get them.