I once saw a weird creature skittering outside my apartment in the dark. It looked some strange, exotic mammal and I became excited at the prospect of having a wild polecat or badger living near me so close to the city centre. Anyway, it was a rat with a whole Belgian waffle in its mouth.

I'm sorry, I'll work harder to impress you with my offhanded internet snark in the future.

This is more like the sort of thing that accompanies one of those lame "creepypasta" ghost stories on the shittier parts of the internet than, you know, good.

Every status update, he tosses a half-ruined coin. The clear side, and he posts it on his private profile that doesn't use his real name. The scarred side, and he posts it on the profile with his real name, where it can be scrutinised by future employers and coworkers!

Sure, but so would you if your husband was as impotent as I'm guessing most of theirs a—oh, you were talking about the puppets, not the moms.

Jon Hamm's statement:
"He does not look like me
Here or there
He does not look like me
Anywhere
I don't look like him, Hamm I am!
I don't look like him, Twitter spam!"

At least we still have Channel 4, which just started This is England '90, the real successor to those social realist dramas, especially Our Friends in the North

Go on, gizza lucrative international export. Go on, like. Gizzit. Go on.

As I understand it, a fraternity's access is much more open. Membership in drinking societies tends to be by selection, with the older boys picking out the younger ones at socials and events. Their members are associated with the top British private schools. Membership is in in the very low double-figures, with events…

I've heard it expressed as: "Power by any means, access by any hole", but god knows if that's the origin or just a saying they came up with after the fact

There's a fairly famous old issue of the Oxford University magazine which discusses Gove being caught in bed with some other student hacks, which includes a picture of his great floppy mouth lolling open like the toe of an old trainer. IDS is the kind of coldly inscrutable evil you so rarely get outside of fiction.…

Home again for one last weekend working with my tutor kid. He's 16 and smart and the entire thing feels like money for old rope. I started writing something new for the first time in a year last night. I also got enough nominations to get on the ballot as Chair of my university's student union!

Huh? You say somethin'?

Now contemplating "Immortan Joe Biden" gimmick account

"Charisma-free figurehead for some sort of right-wing grift" describes every single Fox talking head I've ever seen

I forget where it was I read it, but I saw a great analysis of how the 20th century American myths of "manifest destiny", "land of opportunity" and general American exceptionalism inevitably melt into racism, arrogance about one's place in the world and "fuck you, got mine" over time. The Trump campaign is pretty much…

Two great moments for Rich Texan in this:
"There are some who say Hitler's body is still in the trunk. Others, just a spare tire. I'm a busy man, so I haven't looked yet." along with the hasty way he tries to reassure Humphrey the talking camel that he's the star exhibit.

The more that they add to the Infinity stones story, the weirder it becomes. While Marvel's best all-out-crossover threat (Galactus) belongs to the Fantastic Four franchise and therefore another studio, I can't help but feel there must have been a better "final boss" than Thanos and the gauntlet. While it worked well…

TV My new place being without internet all last week, I wound up watching a lot of TV. Mostly The Venture Bros. The show's thoughtfulness and the depth and intricacy of the narrative stand up independently of its sharp, clever humour. Its universe of villainous guilds, spy organisations and super-science has all the…

"After you scratch off those lottery tickets, can we go to McDonald's and order only coffee?" is one of the best lines in the series