Technical Organ Grinder was recently in Hong Kong, and, whilst there, took the time to indulge his passion for photography. Inspired by godfather of Far-Eastern image-making, and after several days of fruitlessly searching the former colony, he finally came up with what he and I both think is the perfect pictorial representation of the Pearl of the Orient:

Hopefully a wee bit more every time you visit VP in future - thanks to TM’s latest innovation, “Taf’s Tune of the Day”, which you’ll see slightly to the right of this text. Yet more sterling work from our resident technical King Kong, and, I’m sure you’ll agree, well deserving of me keeping him plied with banana smoothies, peanut butter sandwiches and pictures of Fay Wray in provocative poses throughout tomorrow night’s Realosphereomeetothing.

The song will be updated from time to time, although “tune of the day” is RIDICULOUSLY optimistic, and even “week” is probably aiming high.

Please feel free to send in your requests - but don’t then be annoyed when, in reply, I tell you to bog off and inflict your crappy musical tastes on the world via the medium of your own bloody blog.

Some of our more assiduous readers may have noticed (or not) that the site’s been down for most of the last 24 hours. Apparently, our hosting company was to blame. But Technical Monkey has done the relevant spanking and, much like Robbie Williams’s agent on the eve of Gary Barlow’s autobiography release, will try and give fair warning if there’s any prospect of an impending massive outage.

Apologies also for my laziness since my return from my bank holiday boot fair bonanza; however, as soon as the entire Very Poor Being-Arsed Department stops lazing around in the sunshine, I can promise you a fairly tedious tableau of the tawdry world of said boot fairs - I can promise you long-awaited details of the realoplane meet - AND I can promise you EXCLUSIVE revelations into new London mayor Boris Johnson’s financial affairs. Really.

Following launch of Very Poor, a number of bugs have been pointed out. If anyone notices a bug or runs into any problems - could they please post comments here with details … and by details I mean as much detail as they can provide about what specifically went wrong.

At the moment, I’m aware of the following:

- Email notification of new posts not working
- Polls Archive not working (this might be because there aren’t any archived polls … so will have to wait for new poll to test this theory)
- Something annoying going on with apostrophes - specifically they’re sometimes pre-pended with \.
- No Search functionality
- Site being difficult to read

This latter point is someting TAFKAS raised as an issue. As a consequence, the font size for posts has been raised and the background has been turned black in the hopes of contrasting better with the posting area - feedback on this would be welcomed.

The rumour on the music grapevine has it that Robbie Williams is to delay presenting his latest album to EMI in protest at the “plantation owner”-style behaviour of new label owner, evil financier Guy Hands. Ostensibly, this is in solidarity with the “thousands” of jobs which are said to be on the line at EMI, but look a little closer at Robbie’s statement and the subtext becomes clear: “We have no idea how EMI will market and promote the album. They do not have anyone in the digital sphere capable of doing the job required”.

Bear in mind that avowed ladies’ man Robbie’s last album, “Rudebox”, stank the charts up appallingly, failing to sell anywhere near what EMI expected and hilariously getting thrashed by Take That’s comeback album. Robbie blamed - guess what - EMI’s “lack of promotion”. Hmmm.

I dunno… maybe I’m being cynical, and Robbie’s reaction to EMI’s Hands-job is admirable. In fact, why not take the action further? Perhaps a dirty protest, to mirror the quality of his music lately? Alternatively, TM suggests that Robbie’s righteous indignation might “either extend to death by hunger strike, or a quick and violent suicide…”, later sensibly reflecting that the latter is preferable because “I don’t want valuable Daily Express column inches that should be about Diana or Maddy being allocated to “Day 42 of Robbie Williams’ Hunger Strike: The Fucker’s Still Not Dead Yet”. Word, TM.

Hmm. Not sure what to make of this one (man who disappeared whilst canoeing and then turned up in a police station a few days ago after 5 years and a life-insurance payout); as Technical Monkey has observed, his eyes are fairly close together, which probably means he’s guilty at some level. He’s either very clever (will avoid charges, pay back the life insurance, amazingly “recover” his memory and then make a mint from a serialised autobiography) or, equally likely, astonishingly stupid. Or he might actually be telling the truth, but I doubt it.

One slightly worrying aspect that TM has also pointed out - the unsettling nature of all this “new” news. The papers seem to have forgotten the importance of Maddie and Diana. It’s been several days without any developments, real or imaginary, in either story; I’ve found myself starting to rock gently back and forth biting my fingernails and humming insistently waiting for my next “hit”. I’m not sure how much longer I can cope without enlivening my own crappy meaningless thick-shit little existence by vicariously experiencing the tragedy of their lives via the medium of an endless stream of groundless media speculation.

I even had the terrible fantastical idea last night that (and I hope this doesn’t shock you too much) nothing of any consequence has actually happened in either story for several months! But the Express wouldn’t lie to us, I’m sure. Nonetheless, if it goes on much longer, I might have to go out and beat up an immigrant / set fire to a paediatrician’s house or something to relieve the tension.

Big apologies for my uselessness as editor over the last week; if there’s anyone still out there, my excuse is pressures of work (no, really) / a quick weekend jaunt to Italy (where the weather was worse than it is here) / good old fashioned indolence.

Anyway, to welcome back everyone’s favourite reality-television-programme-which-thinks-it’s-superior-to-”I’m-a-Celebrity”- and-similar-pap-but- isn’t-in-the-slightest (phew!) “The Apprentice“, I’m shortly going to inaugurate a new poll. Now Technical Monkey doesn’t like “Sir” Alan Sugar one bit; in fact, one mention of the computer world’s Arthur Daley is enough to turn TM from a placid PG Tips-style chimp into a raging King Kong. The poll will be about fantasies for Sugar’s demise, and here are some of TM’s suggestions -

- Him getting permanently lost in one of his massive warehouses filled with all those shit Amstrad phones that he never sold, possibly having a tower of them collapsing on him, possibly just wandering around aimlessly among what constitutes an enormous monument to his failure eventually dying of starvation or, given his hefty gut, more likely thirst.

- Him somehow disappearing up his own arse. Specifics of the mechanism for realizing this don’t concern me enormously, but I suspect it’ll have something to do with him moving in ever decreasing circles until he does. Or maybe his pomposity, which makes him a big arse, will increase so much that, he will become such an enormous arse that he’d collapse in on himself up his own arse, a bit like a black hole. Frankly, so long as he exits existence via his own arsehole, I don’t care about the method.

- Maybe God could apply to be on the apprentice and when “sir” Alan fires him, God could smite him or turn him into a pillar of salt or something

- Maybe he could spontaneously combust when he says “you’re fired” … burning for many an hour, given what a fat shit he is.

- Maybe he could choke on his knighthood … or the “Sir” bit of the sign on his door

- Maybe there could be a special Apprentice finale, in which Alan is forced onto the other side of the table facing, for example, Richard Branson (who is less annoying and significantly richer) … who could then buy Alan’s shitty business interests and actually fire him…..
……or just beat him to death with a real entrepreneur’s wallet – one at least 7 times thicker than anything Alan could put together … or maybe a giant Dildo with entrepreneur written on it, which jazzed out cash every time a blow was struck until Alan eventually dies among a piddling pile of cash equal to his own meager fortune in comparison to that of whoever was doing the beating … maybe they person doing the beating could wear a bishops outfit and we could call it bishop bashing and make a TV program out of it … I swear to God, I’m wasted in insurance, I shold work in TV production.

Woah there!! Good work, TM…. anyway, you get the message… I’ll add one of my puny pun-based ideas to the mix, and you’ll have your new poll. “Tous les autres idees aussi bienvenue”, as the French don’t say.

At the beginning of the post about the professional journalist versus blogger debate, written during my guest editorship of this fine blog, I said that the whole issue was a tiresome one. So I probably shouldn’t be surprised to be filled with a deep sense of  irritation as I write this post – one that Shit has kindly invited me to so do.

Perhaps the most tedious aspect of it all is that Rachel Cooke’s shockingly badly researched and appallingly thought-through article (although at least she’s moved on from the particularly unforgivable formatting errors) has neither addressed any of the points made in the Shit Sandwich post, nor has she advanced her arguments at all. In fact, given the misquotation highlighted by Shit, I’d bet good money that she hasn’t even read the post, despite claiming to be indignant about it – of course she may not feel that this is a pre-requisite to commenting upon something.

In any event, given her failure to advance the issue, I am simply left re-iterating my original points or recounting those made by others far more eloquent than myself. Since this doesn’t seem to add much in the way of value, I won’t.

There are, however, two points that I do feel are worth making. First, although the original Shit Sandwich post and associated comments were certainly personally critical of Ms Cooke they were at least directed, in sharp contrast to the blanket criticism she applies to the world of blogging that she so clearly fails to understand. Second, she is more than welcome to come here to Shit Sandwich, or indeed to any other blog, to discuss her thoughts on the issue and learn more about blogs. The only prerequisite is that she brings an open mind, and I (and I’m sure the rest of the Shit Sandwich readership would as well) will in turn do my best to keep an open mind about her thoughts. In fact, Rachel Cooke should consider this an open invitation to go to a blog, any blog, make a comment and discuss her views. Of course she won’t, no doubt too busy penning more rubbish for Sunday … and again in sharp contrast to the world of blogging, as the good Professor Farnsworth observed in his comment, it isn’t possible to comment directly on her piece.

Ultimately, I’m really just left thinking that her article says more about her own inadequacies than anything else (and if the Texas story, mentioned in another excellent post on this matter, is anything to go by she clearly is inadequate). As I’ve said before, those who can, write; those who can’t … well, have another read of Rachel Cooke’s article.

Check the rather natty bogroll favicon (as I’m reliably informed they’re called) on the url bar above - more ace ape-ish artistry. And there should / will be an extremely exciting interactive feature coming to the site in the next week or so. Not the chance to slap a virtual me in the face and tell me to stop talking so much bollocks, but something NEARLY as exciting…

(That was supposed to be a monkey, by the way)

TM / LST, long may his regal monkey seed populate the foxy female apes of South Kensington, is still “on it” in a major way despite no longer being guest editor - witness his addition of the live comment preview facility, which I’ve never seen in any other blog EVER. It encodes HTML as you type!

Apparently it doesn’t work for people who don’t have javascript enabled - but frankly, if you don’t have javascript enabled you can feck off and go and paint some buffalo on the wall of a cave in France.