Silence Is Platinum

…except it’s not…

…it’s quite annoying!

That was bizarre… I broke the internet! Yes, I admit it, ‘twas me… I broke it… Except to be more accurate… it wasn’t the internet… it was just my little bit of it… and when I say broke I mean incapacitated… and when I say I it should actually read Microsoft. So, I was pretty much accurate apart from the actual details…

All of a sudden, a few days after my last post, I started having some ‘connectivity’ issues. I tried pulling up IE and Firefox but all I was getting was the ‘site not available’ thing. I was definitely getting a connexion to the web but just no screens so I deduced it was a software problem rather than an ISP fault which just made me more confused. Now, I’m no computer expert so I found running round like a big headless chicken rather a good idea and it sure made up for trying to actually work out what had gone wrong. Just as I was about to give up and ring my friendly neighbourhood computer engineer I thought I’d give my ISP (Demon) helpline a try. My ISP were their usual brilliant selves and after literally seconds they’d solved the problem and got me up and working despite it not being their problem. They asked some pretty simple questions: had I had a recent Microsoft update, what anti-virus/ firewall do I use, could I open it and follow their list of alterations and… lo, the internet was un-broken! So, my anti-virus had all of a sudden decided that my browsers were a serious security threat and were blocking them- who knew- I’d certainly never heard of such a thing! And a few days later an urgent security update came from the anti-virus people designed to solve the problem that Microsoft’s update had caused. So, that was weird!

Anyway, anybody else catch the British 7 minutes at the Beijing closing ceremony? Anybody else cringe with embarrassment as we wheeled out a zebra-crossing, a queue, a fight for a bus, an ageing hippie, a reality TV star and an overpaid footballist (Britain has Olympic football?!?!). Best Of British??? All it needed was a hoodie stabbing someone and a couple of puking binge-drinkers to complete the picture! Imagine this expanded to 2 hours for the opening ceremony. We’re told the 2012 Olympics is going to be ‘youthful’ and ‘cutting edge’. So they get said reality star and hippie for Beijing… meanwhile in London... Will Young, Heather Small and the cast of a 70’s themed musical. So youthful, so cutting edge! Anybody else thinking Millennium Dome contents or Jubilee Spam Fritters? And what was this dispiriting farrago meant to represent?

Anyway, there’s a herd of cobwebs cluttering up the corridors here at Castle Overbombing… time to blow them away…!

KLF with Extreme Noise Terror: 3 a.m. Eternal (Live At The Brits 12th February 1992)