Many thanks to TM for the enclosed screen grab, showing that the BBC at least has its reporting agenda correctly prioritised…

Thank the good lord for the BBC Philharmonic’s safe deliverance. For a horrible moment, I was reminded of the recent events in Egypt; hundreds were dying, battles were ongoing, one of the West’s key “friendly dictators” was about to fall, and a corrupt regime of 30 years’ standing was finally going to get its come-uppance with massive implications for the status quo in the Middle East… but all I (and, I assume, any other right-thinking citizen of Her Majesty’s United Kingdom) could think was “how ARE those poor couple of hundred British tourists in Sharm-El-Sheikh going to get home? Won’t SOMEONE think of the children? Ah, thank GOD! Richard Branson has sent a charter plane. Oh, the relief!”

Yes, as hinted in previous bletherings, this is post #1000 of our humble blog - and it’s perhaps appropriate to mark it with a shit title pun which no-one will get. (”Mille” being “a thousand” in French. And Italian. And possibly Spanish, although only if you pronounce it “eth-eth-eth” whilst simultaneously murdering some sort of bovine creature. By the way, I mean “milestone”, not that the blog is a millstone around my neck…)

Needless to say, I’ve enjoyed it massively - probably quite a lot more than most readers* - and I hope you’ll carry on visiting (or at least pop back once in a while) for a while to come yet. And slightly wanky / self-referential (especially considering no fecker reads it these days) though it may be, I’d like to thank a few contributors without whom it would all have been even shitter. Bren and Kyklops from far-off foreign climes, Chez from far-off Plymouth, and Hotdog, whose input, despite our political differences, was usually quite brilliant. Most of all LZ, whose contributions (and shorts) inspired everyone, Pal, who more-or-less ran the show in the early days and is MUCH missed, and MOST most of all, of course, TM, without whom it wouldn’t exist at all. He is the wind, as I’ve said before, beneath my whinges. Thankyou all massively.

Finally - there WILL be another real-o-meet at some point this year, even if the turnout only numbers one eighth that of the previous crowd**. More info to follow.

(* - To paraphrase Bob Monkhouse: “They laughed when I told them I wanted to write an occasionally-humorous blog which would run to over 1000 posts: no-one’s laughing now…”)

(** - of eight.)

Aaaand relax. Now that’s better; a month of blogging sacrificed in order to spend more time taking care of the sundry stresses and woes of the world, and I’ve emerged into… well, a January 2011 which contains just as many sundry stresses and woes as did the end of 2010. Honestly, you would not believe it - I come back from holidays and there’s already a MOUNTAIN of crap to force down the metaphorical WC of getting-sorted-out-ed-ness with the bog-brush of my hard graft. I don’t know where to start; there’s [ED - at this stage, I should probably truncate Tafkass’s stream of whiny consciousness, as all you can expect is a big long list of minor mundane tasks which are of no interest to anyone. I’m sure you almost certainly don’t want to know about the chip in the windscreen which threatens MOT failure, the urgent renovations needed to the kitchen wall of the flat, the backlog of records and CDs to post, the mortgage application, the car insurance, the visit from a prospective house-buyer necessitating a long-overdue spring-clean, or the membership forms which have to be sent to the English Table-Tennis Association in his capacity as secretary of the Burmarsh club. Do you?]

Sorry, where was I? Oh yes, New Year. A time for ridiculously hedonistic parties (check - a fantastic house-do in Clapham, almost certainly the best NYE I’ve ever had), pretending to plan a diet (erm.. yeah, whatever), joining a gym and regretting the cash outlay for 10 of the subsequent 12 months (I could, but on the other hand, who needs proper cardio-vascular exercise when you’re straining every sinew against Folkestone’s finest 60+ table-tennis players every week?), and most of all, RESOLUTIONS. This year, I’ve resolved to a) learn the guitar properly, to at least grade “8″ standard, b) find a life-partner, get married and ideally have a child on the way by December, c) double my income from work purely by increased application on my part, d) travel extensively to the three continents I’m yet to visit, and crucially e) not to worry too much if I fail to live up to unrealistic expectations.

Seriously - I’ve resolved a) to show a happier disposition to the world. “Angry Taf” is all well and good, but I think that “Smiley Taf” is probably more of a hit with the honeys. And everyone else. b) to lift stuff using my legs, and not my back. 3 consecutive years of winter sciatica & pulled muscles now, and despite my peak conditioning as a semi-professional sportsman in the lower reaches of the Folkestone TT league, I suspect that age is catching up with me to the point where I need to start taking a bit more care. And finally c) to blog more. Shit Sandwich / VP has always been great fun - and I’m hoping that, despite the blog phenomenon having somewhat jumped the shark, the glory days aren’t over just yet. Another VP get-together may even be in the offing; post number 1000 seems a good reason, and that’s not far off. All you lurkers / former regulars / anyone passing -please do chip in from time to time, even if it’s just to tell me exactly how bad that self-penned “joke” was. (A case in point: Q - What did Obi-Wan Kenobi say to the middle-aged woman? A - “Menopause be with you”).

(Oh yeah, and HAPPY NEW YEAR!!!! )

A quick note on my prolonged inactivity; I’ve been propah mental busy managing my vast rental portfolio on top of the normal eBay shenanigans, so there’s not been a lot of time for blogging; a situation which, like “I’m a Celebrity”, is unfortunately likely to persist for the next few weeks. In addition, TM, having finally found the perfect film for his height range, is heading off to New Zealand in the next week or so trying to get cast as an extra and hoping that his skin-tone isn’t too dark - so all told, it’s probably a good time to go into hibernation for a month or so. Barring anything earth-shattering, I’ll be back in late Dec / early Jan.

In the meantime, as if you were organising a guitar-playing contest between Jimi Hendrix and Harry Hill before dealing with your offspring’s excreta, I’ll wish you a Hairy Mis-Match and a Nappy. D’you hear?

Individually, I quite like tea and parties; but put the two together in a political sense, and you have something about as pleasant as having a pot of freshly boiled Earl Grey poured into your vulnerable constituencies. Erm, at a party. (Or something.)

However, irrespective of trenchant, well-thought-out criticisms like these, the Tea Party brand of politics (which as far as I can tell involves a) calling everyone “folks”, b) not knowing anything about basic economics, and c) screaming “Nazi Communist Gay Muslim!” loudly and repeatedly at anyone who dares to point this out), is on the march in America - and if their atrocious batshit crazy Mama-Milfy arsehole of a spiritual leader, Supreme New-Word-Creationist Sarah of Palinestine, were to win the Presidency next time around, reasonable liberal folk, sorry, people worldwide would doubtless soon be looking back at George W(ub)Bish’s buffoonery-masking-corporate-nastiness brand of pure evil as “the good old days”…

75,000 new apprenticeships announced in George Osborne’s spending review? Aren’t the 16 obnoxious zit-faced 20-something tryhards competing for “Lord” Alan “Sralan” Sugar’s attention enough already?

Anyone with the faculty of sight will by now have read about Mary Bale, a 50-something “silver-haired” bank clerk from Coventry, who, by dint of a random act of minor cruelty (picking up a cat and putting it in a wheelie bin, then shutting the lid), has quite possibly ruined the rest of her life. Our 24-hour media is “across” all aspects of the story; hundreds of radio reporters up and down the land are on the scene, feverishly answering questions from their anchors (always being careful to begin their answers with the word “so”*), and newspaper comment boards are going absolutely loopy. 1000+ comments in The Guardian in less than 12 hours! Even the paper’s ground-breaking hour-by-hour coverage of GreenEarthWildFriend activists cooking sustainably-organic-recycled-fair-trade-vegan nut roast outside Big Oil’s headquarters in protest against GM-global-warmed-capitalist-animal-tested-hedge-fund-factory-farmed whales didn’t attract this much attention.

Worse things happen to hundreds of thousands of animals in abbatoirs every day in Britain, never mind the rest of the world. Mediaevally barbaric Halal and Kosher practices (which some UK local councils are considering adopting wholesale in order to make suppliers’ lives easier and thus save a bit of money) demand that STRICTLY non-stunned and fully-conscious meat animals should be hung upside down and bled from a single cut to the throat until dead. And this is merely the tip of a massive, horrendously cruel, cheapy-meaty iceberg.

None of the horrors of the slaughterhouse appear to bother Mr and Mrs F. Acebook particularly; on the other hand, when a woman is caught putting a cat (who ultimately suffers no harm) into a wheelie bin, it’s armageddon; an overnight super-villain is created, police protection is required for the woman, the tabloids jump for joy, and everyone else froths at the mouth as if injected with rabies whilst orally ingesting an entire canister of shaving foam.

What’ll happen next for Mary Bale? My money’s on her seeking representation from Max Clifford; his expertly-managed “I blame bankers and MPs for my moment of cat madness” damage-limitation article will be followed by an endorsement of Whiskas, opening of a sanctuary for ex-service cats, rumours of a celebrity romance, a few tasteful long-distance bikini shots and maybe a spot as guest judge on the X Factor. A few months down the line, I wouldn’t even rule out a Christmas Number One (maybe singing “What’s New Pussycat” with Cat Stevens?)

(* - seriously: this “so” thing. What the FUCK is that about?)

1989: whilst mere mortals contemplate switching from their Spectrum or Commodore to an Amiga or some valve-and-sea-water-powered games console, madman Tim Berners-Lee is writing proposals for a network of hypertext protocol thingummies which will come to be called the World Wide Web and which, he dreams, will eventually come to dominate the industrialised world. At the same time, Prince (soon to become known as The Artist Formerly Known as Prince, later known as The Artist Formerly Known As The Artist Formerly Known As Prince), still glowing from the critical triumph of his brilliant 1987 “Sign of the Times” set, is touring his subsequent slightly flabby, self-indulgent “Lovesexy” album.

They were heady, portentous times indeed - in the following 5-10 years, the globe’s political landscape would change beyond recognition; suitably inspired by these epochal changes and all they portended, I would blaze a ground-breaking trail through a low 2:1 degree at college followed by a couple of meaningless jobs at which I failed; and, of course, the internet would indeed go on to dominate the economies of the industrialised world, largely through work-time lost to pornography. (Oh, and Prince and his alter-egos would release a series of increasingly flabby, self-indulgent albums.)

Now in “Twenty10″, however, it’s clear that this “World Wide Web” upstart has had its day; it is no longer relevant - Prince has said so. Eschewing all traditional portals, and expert on irrelevancy that he is, he’s chosen instead to release his latest not-at-all-flabby-or-self-indulgent album exclusively via the thrusting new upcoming exciting media platform of (da-da-da-da-da-da-DAAAAA) -  the Daily Mirror.

Sorry Princey-poo-poos; I know it’s easy to be cynical, and I was VERY much a fan of yours; I still remember fondly doing my paper-round in summer ‘88 with “Lovesexy” exclusively on my headphones; I still remember the crushing disappointment when you cancelled that London gig in ‘87, the one I’d saved* for ages to see; and of course, I still remember your best stuff very fondly - but for Christ’s sakes, when your biggest hit is out of date by 11 years, it’s time to shut up about what’s relevant and what isn’t. Act your age: marry an obvious gold digger; adopt a poor Tierra-del-Fuegian orphan-child with no limbs and incurable palsy of the arsehole; get religion (oh, you did); go on “I’m a Celebrity”; hook up with Kaja-frigging-Googoo on an acoustic pan-pipes “’80s greatest hits” tour; do SOME flipping thing - just don’t hector the rest of the world about the internet (or iTunes / Friends Reunited / binary code / whatever.)

(* - OK, nagged my parents for the money and never paid it back)

High summer is upon us, and anyone who habitually bleats about not liking sport (women, nancy-boys and other net-non-contributors to the economy, mostly) had better hire themselves a field in Somerset, bugger off there and listen to some rubbishy music with like-minded idiots who are happy to pay £1000 for 3 days of sleeplessness and 50-deep queues for chemical toilets.

Wimbledon is now in full swing, and massively honourable mention must go to John Isner and Nicolas Mahut, who are deadlocked at an astonishing 59 games all in the final set of their second-round match. A regular best-of-five-set match should last around 2 and a half hours, maybe add an hour if it goes the distance. Roger Federer and Rafael Nadal’s massive epic final in 2008 lasted 4 hours 47 minutes. The previous longest match in history lasted six and a half hours. Mahut and Isner are currently at the TEN hour mark, and are still going - that’s longer than the entire Lord of the Rings trilogy (watching rather than reading), longer than Serena Williams took to play her entire winning Wimbledon CHAMPIONSHIP last year, and a whole bunch of other stats. The fact that this match is completely dominated by booming serves and thus (whisper it soft) actually quite boring is irrelevant; the titanicism (titanocity? titan-eousness?) of their efforts is incredible. (Mind you, I played table-tennis last night, and because I arrived late had to play two consecutive games. Twenty incredibly intensive lung-busting minutes of occasional small side-to-side movements later, I was shattered. AND I didn’t have free water / crowds applauding me / gimps picking up my discarded balls like those pampered tennis wussies do.)

On the minus side, it’s been another record-breakingly-shit week for British tennis hopes. Apart from Andy Murray, who doesn’t count as British because he hates Britain, isn’t English which everyone takes to mean British, speaks in a broad Glaswegio-transatlantic drawl and won’t bow to our queen or something (probably), ALL of our players in the men’s AND women’s draw were knocked out in the first round. £30 million a year is lavished on these cack-handed twots by the LTA; just to put that in context, the team behind the brilliant BBC Wild Night In programme on Sunday was ecstatic because, after months of fundraising effort, it had managed to raise £1 million for vital biodiversity projects around the world. SIX measly pounds is enough to make an acre of rainforest safe from the palm oil planters. FIFTY pounds is enough to buy food for an orphaned orang-utan for a year. And TWENTY pounds is enough to buy me a soap-box for standing on whilst hectoring you with irrelevant and utterly specious comparisons between sums of money involved in charities and sporting events. (Make it twenty-five, and I might even shut up.)

And then, of course, there’s the World Cup. Aaahhh, the World Cup. More on that later…

This story from a week or so ago managed to grab the fragile, dangling nutsack of the press’s attention and give it a good squeeze; Google, to celebrate the 30th anniversary of Pac-Man, put up a playable version of the game on their homepage as its “doodle” and left it there for a day or so. So far, so not very interesting; all I really learned from Google’s stunt was a) that yes, my childhood is over 30 years ago, thanks for reminding me as if the mirror didn’t do that often enough already, and b) that for all the undoubted growth in my wisdom, experience, waistline and general stature as a human being, I’m still as fucking shit at Pac-Man as when the machines on Felixstowe pleasure beach used to swallow my pocket money in five desperately disappointing and malcoordinated minutes back in the early 1980s.

Then a company called “Rescue Time” reported that the Google Pac-Man had led to a staggering 4.82 million work hours being wasted - the equivalent of hundreds of millions of dollars, or enough money to employ all of Google’s staff (including its directors) for six weeks. It’s an interesting assertion based on very creative use of what you might call imaginitive statistics, and one which raises a whole new set of questions; chief amongst which is how many valuable work hours have subsequently been lost reading Rescue Time’s spurious-in-fact-let’s-not-beat-about-the-bush-utter-bollocks assertions and commenting on them as I’m doing now? (Time spent by me writing this post thus far - 27 minutes. My entirely self-fabricated and meaningless consultancy fee? £100 per hour. Entertainment / information value of said post? Well, let’s be honest, nil. You do the “math”.)

But then I realised how much free publicity Rescue Time had gained from all this, and, bearing in mind the well-known fact that 78.327% of statistics are made up on the spot, I thought I’d give it a try myself…. so here goes.

You know those stupid fucking St George flags which everyone seems to be hanging out of their cars to celebrate England’s impending loss in the World Cup (on penalties in the quarters to France on July 2nd - you heard it here first)? I’ve calculated* that, if you take cost of the diesel required to transport them over from China and then back again in a month or so when they head to the landfill site a couple of miles away from the factory where they were first made, then add on the cost of increased fuel / journey time man-hours caused by the reduction in the aerodynamic performance due to drag on every car which displays them, and finally factor in the man-hours required for every purchaser to go down to Netto to buy a new pair every time they fall off the back of Ford Mondeos and hit my fucking windscreen this morning nearly making me veer into a lorry because you were too thick to have secured them properly, you dull-witted moron - then the monetary equivalent would be enough to pay Sarah Ferguson to go away somewhere - anywhere - and to not come back for AT LEAST six weeks. Now THAT’S a statistic worth thinking about.

(* - From a huge list of big numbers in my imagination. Sorry, I didn’t keep the working-out.)