Simon Rumble’s blog

My good friend, Furlough S. Megabytes, just sent me a wonderfully bizarre poetry with Subject: chlorates aweless bescrape chamois. This was quickly followed by my old mate Grudging T. Creamiest with Subject: demolisher clypeaster bogyland brackened. Wow!

I'm impressed because not only is this a brilliant piece of surreal poetry, but it also managed to make it past my spam filters. The first in some time! In fact, Spam Assassin only gave them 1.7.

This, I suspect, was because the big cluster of extra bonus Dada poetry at the end of the message threw off the Bayesian filters, and this spammer carefully tested the message with SA to ensure it didn't trip up any of the other rules.

Amused me, anyway...

There's another Reclaim the Beach in London tomorrow night. Should be damn fun! Supposedly, the site hasn't been updated.

We went to the last one and had a great time. Just take a loo with you and drink something other than beer. here's a photo from the last one.

Psychisation n - the sudden realisation that the person with whom you are conversing is a bunny-boiling psycho.

Last night we went to Reclaim the Beach, a party on the Thames. Perfect Summer Solstice weather and loads of people milling around and dancing to old-school funk tunes. Good fun! Only downer was the lack of toilet facilities -- we ended up walking all the way to Waterloo Station so Holly could expel all the beer we were drinking.

The only photos on my crappy, flashless camera that came out were the ones of the firetwirler. He was amazing: two sticks and total control, despite the uneven ground.

In case you missed it, the UK temperature record was broken yesterday with temperatures reaching 38.1° Celsius in Gravesend, East of London.

Holly and I really felt the heat. Back in Oz, we wouldn't be too worried about such temperatures, though we would have fans and air-conditioned workplaces to make life a bit more bearable. Over here, buying a fan would be a bit of a luxury, considering it's only needed for a few weeks a year.

There are, I guess, some other factors. The air was very still for most of yesterday, no cooling breezes. In Sydney, we expect a spectacular afternoon storm on a hot day. That doesn't often happen in London.

Still, the fact that we're really feeling the heat can't help but remind me that we've been here quite a while now. Mabye we're getting used to the weather? Well I sure hope it gets cooler in the South of France by September or we'll be melting.

Along the same theme as John Winston Howard's recent idiotic comments about marriage, the Village Voice has a hilarious comic.

Ahhh, just like home only cold. Just had a big storm with hail! Check the pics.

And they say Australia has dangerous animals. Watch out for the badgers. Sounds like a bad horror flick!

Mr Weaver said there was no need for people to start fearing an onslaught of badger attacks.

Oh no Mr Weaver, you won't be fooling me this time! Badgers, and all badger-like animals, should be shot on sight.

Holly found this great Spanish Powerpuff Girls pasta today. How cool!

We went to an English pub in Kennington to watch the match last night, Australia vs England. We were the only Aussies in the pub but it was a good natured crowd, considering we whupped their butts.

A 3-1 win is just inconceivable. The fact that the first two goals were scored against England's top team and it was England's completely new second-half team, testing out their up-and-coming talent, who scored against us just caps it. Amazing! Of course the England squad isn't helped by some its key players being well off top form. Michael Owen hasn't scored in months and Beckham seemed to just be holding back for some reason.

With more wins like this, Soccer Australia can look forward to becoming the third most popular football code in Australia. After the next World Cup with our virtual guaranteed qualification, it could set its sights on League.

So the big question is: has somebody burnt down the football and put the ashes into an urn?

And of course we'll need to get into this English tradition of writing ourselves a World Cup song. You know, like the "Playing for England" tune by New Order. Any Australian anthem would have to make some reference to wogball...