A couple of weeks ago, as  the world was gripped with Swine Flu fever (forgive the pun!), a great game emerged on Twitter. Feeling somewhat disillusioned with the mainstream media's attempt at convincing us we were "all going to die", a bunch of twitter users began various games based around a swine flu theme.

My favourite game to emerge was the 'swine flu bands' game, where you had to come up with as many musician/band names that played on words related to swine flu as possible, and tag them with the Twitter hashtag #swineflubands - these could then be viewed on Twitter Search.

I got rather carried away one afternoon and came up with a bunch, whilst laughing my socks off at some of the names that other Twitter users had come up with.

Check out the  #swineflubands I came up with here,  and everybody else's here.

(Pic: 'Swine Flew' album cover by One Bad Pig, originally released in 1990, well before swine '09!)

I was happily watching footage of a block of flats in Glasgow being demolished on the BBC News website when I decided to turn the volume of the embedded BBC iPlayer up, and to my joy discovered that the top volume on the iPlayer is indeed 'number 11'. Spinal Tap fans the world over will be rejoicing, I'm sure! Speaking of which, the National Geographic channel is airing a new documentary about Stonehenge and recently asked Spinal Tap guitarist Nigel Tufnel his thoughts on the subject, check out his responses.

"Kid's Rock" by Tim Hawkins. I love this. Thanks to Rich for posting this first - it was too good to not re-post!

Laura just posted this on her blog and I felt compelled to re-post it. Whispering in adverts is one of my pet hates (it drives me mad), so I'm glad to see Skittles have given it a miss this time.

This is brilliant...

"Why I should be made the Internet Tsar" by Charles Arthur of Guardian Unlimited is as good a reason as any for me to start blogging again. Not only am I sealing my place in the blogosphere for another month (reference 1), but I'm also effectively "copying and pasting entire stories from mainstream news sites" (reference 2). This article is a rather amusing read, check it out here.

• You are rather pleased with yourself having bought new garden furniture.
• You are dismayed when you discover that removing dock leaf plants from lawns can be very hard.
• You enjoy 'pottering' in the garden, instead of going to the pub for the afternoon.
• You get excited when you find gardening tools on sale.
• You find yourself thinking "We must go to the garden centre to pick up a few things".

Steph and I are definitely now the wrong side of 25, but we like it! [tags]Gardening[/tags]

[tags]Internet,Comedy,Humour,You Tube[/tags]

Amy sent me this and it made me chuckle...

My parents got the following email a couple of days ago. It looks like Virgin Media and Sky aren't going to get on very well. More background here.

Dear customer, Let’s face it. Things would be pretty boring if choice didn’t exist. There’d be just one kind of airline to fly with. One type of car to drive. And if Sky had their way, there’d only be one place to get TV. We thought we’d let you in on a few tricks they’ve been trying to get their way. While we’ve continued to make Virgin Media channels like Living, Bravo and Challenge available to all Sky customers, Sky may withdraw their non-premium channels from Virgin Media’s service – in order to force you into switching service. Virgin Media were willing to pay an increase in costs in order to get the complete range of Sky content and channels. However, Sky have consistently demanded an increase that bears no relation to the channels’ market value. We have refused to accept this increase, since it would mean absorbing significant costs ourselves, and passing the kind of price increase on to our customers that is simply unfair. We are not prepared to rip off our customers. So Sky have picked up their ball and gone home. As a Virgin company, we’re well used to the attempts of large corporations trying to manipulate markets, stifle competition and rip off consumers. Luckily, we don’t think Sky’s the limit. We think the future’s full of fresh entertainment and communication possibilities. And we’re looking forward to bringing them to you. With all the freedom and choice you deserve. We’ve launched Virgin Central, a revolutionary type of TV channel, where programmes start and stop when you say so. This is only available on Virgin Media, since Sky don’t have the technology to be able to transmit it. What’s more, it’s available to every single one of our digital TV customers. And there’s our unique on demand library. A giant collection of over 500 films, 1000 music videos, 100s of TV shows – all at your beck and call. You can access them at any time. We’re not scared of competition, we welcome it. To find out more, visit virginmedia.com/fairplay. Yours, Sir Richard Branson

[tags]Virgin Media, Sky, BskyB, Telewest, NTL, 24, Lost, Sky One,Richard Branson[/tags]