Couldn't see if this has been posted before. It's pretty cool

http://images.4channel.org/f/src/589217_scale_of_universe_enhanced.swf

This morning I had a dramatic moment of yuletide enlightenment.

The reason Santa chooses Rudolph is because it's foggy and his shiny nose will light the way. I'd always thought he gave RtR-nR the nod out of pity, but no - it was purely a pragmatic decision.

This had never occurred to me before. Sheesh.

Knowing that the Word community is hoachin' with web-savvy types, can any Massivistas recommend a good - and preferably free - website hosting service?

My FPO wants to create a web page or two for some writing workshops she's running, and has asked me to look into what's out there. We don't need complex flash content or excessive interactivity - just a nice clean and modern-looking page where she can say a little about the business and post news of forthcoming workshops. An easy-to-use CMS would be even better.

Any advice would be brilliant.

I'm heading down to London this evening, staying near Victoria Station. According to the Underground website, Victoria is undergoing major renovation and they recommned you avoid the place.

Could any of you London residents tell this naive country boy if I should avoid the Victoria tube station? Or are the dire warning of enormous delays just exaggeration to intimidate wee Scottish laddies?

A few fans of the great HP Lovecraft* shamble around on this site so, just in case you missed it, Radio 4 Extra is currently broadcasting an adaptation of 'The Shadow Over Innsmouth'. The first two parts are on iplayer and the third is up this evening.

Thankfully, it's jolly good. Just an actor reading the story and doing the occasional voice. Oddly enough, it has background mood music - and noises - so anyone who agrees with the complaint Mark Ellen made on the podcast about ambient music in audiobooks might prefer to avoid it.

Fhtagn!

* I refer to the writer not the band.

Apologies for the solipsistic posting, but for reasons too gooey to explain, I am currently all but deaf. It feels like my fingers are permanently stuck in my ears. Sounds are muffled and there is a constant, dull ringing. All in all, not pleasant.

Then I went for a walk at lunchtime. I'm lucky enough to work near a park and a river with a good path along its bank, so I can enjoy the trees and water and ducks. I expected the experience to be somewhat subdued by my deafness but it was really quite sublime. Turns out my ear problem has lowered the faders on all the city background noise, leaving only the clarity of birdsong and the soft rush of the river. The silence was very restful, aided by the sight of a yellow wagtail bobbing along.

But the oddest experience occurred when I left the river behind and returned to the busy streets. Still all sound was hushed. I was moving through a city where everyone drove an electric car, where people moved around in a meditative, respectful silence. It felt like entering an alternate world, a kind of comfortable Twilight Zone.

I'm off to the GP again on Monday to have the old lugs syringed and, hopefully, restore my hearing. It'll be good to enjoy normal conversation again, but I'll miss living in a world of companionable quiet.

So no insights or controversial opinions. Just wanted to run this past you all.

Having just run screaming into the twenty-first century by getting a smart phone, I've signed up with Twitter. Anyone care to throw down a line and help a poor boy who is stranded in a lonely sea? Cross my heart and hope to diet, I'll only ever tweet profound cosmic inspirations.

I'm @concoleman.

I've already clocked this: http://www.wordmagazine.co.uk/content/top-tips-twitter.

Shameless I'm Sorry I Haven't A Clue rip-off that we've probably done before, but here goes anyway.

You think you've lost your love
Well I saw her yesterday
...and she still hates your guts

I feel it in my fingers
I feel it in my toes
...that's the last time I visit the Arctic without sufficient cold weather clothing

I had entered into a marriage
In the summer of my twenty-first year
...and here we are, still going strong, no complaints

In times of trouble, it never fails to appeal to the collective experience of the Massive.

As a Christmas present for my beloved, I ordered a box set of the original Twilight Zone TV series via Amazon - the actual seller was some other bunch. It was only available second-hand but I didn't mind as the web page said it was in good condition. Despite the weather and the roads and all, the package arrived today.

It was the wrong one.

They'd sent me the 1980s version, not the original B&W ones. Turns out they don't actually have the one I ordered at all and should never have been displaying it on Amazon. Aye, sure, I'm getting a refund, but I don't want the refund - I want the blinkin' DVDs.

So here's my question: aside from eBay, where can I lay my grubbies on a set of original Twilight Zone episodes? Any suggestions about reliable sources for this kind of stuff would be gratefully received. (I know it's probably too late for Christmas now.)

It can now be revealed that diminutive 'At the Zoo' hitmaker, Paul Simon, often hangs around the Word blog, reading the entertaining and thought-provoking posts. He enjoys the blog so much that he is releasing a re-recorded version of the S&G song 'Blessed' as a celebration of the Massive. We can now exclusively reveal the re-written lyrics:

Blessed are the geeks, for they shall inherit
Blessed is the spam whose junk flows
Blessed are the understudies, old buddies, posting in the nuddies
O Word! You have overtaken me!
(I've got no place to go
I've hung around the blog for the last night or so
Ah, but it doesn't matter, no.)

Blessed is the aspidistra and hatstand
Blessed is the man who is actually a woman
Blessed are the RT-baters, cover-image-haters, stay-up-too-laters
O Word! My FPO's forsaken me!
(The thread trickles down, like a discussion
That I have no intention to end)

Blessed are the slow loaders, Windows goaders
Blessed are the outcasts, podcast hepcats
Blessed are the uke pluckers, hard luckers, groovy fuckers
O Word! You are always there for me
(I have hung around in this perfumed garden
Much too long)

Happy Christmas, everyone.

I coined a new word the other day and I was so proud of it that I proceeded to go around telling everyone. It describes the toupee of snow that remains on top of a car's roof when all the rest of the snow has been cleared off.

The word is: 'Snowhican'.

Boy was I happy with myself. I told most of my work colleagues. I told friends. I told family. I'm telling you lot now.

But just before I decided to post my new word on the Word Blog I did a quick google and found this:

http://www.urbandictionary.com/define.php?term=snowhican.

You can even buy a mug with the damned definition printed on it.

I feel cheated. I want my neologism back.

There I was, happily sat in a comfy chair with the latest issue, having a jolly old time as always, when I was quite literally* shaken to my very core.

Andrew Harrison referred to Oor Wullie as 'Hibernian'.

Now, I am no more of a pedant than the next member of the Massive - which is to say that I am an enormous pedant - but this kind of error makes me grind my teeth. Oor Wullie, as any fule kno, is Caledonian! He's Scotch, a Jock, a Kiltie, a Lochside Pedestrian, a Teuchter, a Brigadoonie - call him what you will, but he sure as Cullen Skink ain't no Hibernian.

Imagine my shock when I discover that this is not the first time that my beloved Word has made this mistake. Lo and bef**kinghold, as if misnaming one Scottish icon was not enough, it turns out that an earlier issue uses the same latin epithet to describe Groundskeeper Willie. Jings, Crivvens, Help Ma Boab!

I suggest that Mr Ellen employs a celtic subeditor to ensure that no more mistakes of this nature occur.

*Not actually literally, but I was jolly upset.

We've been told a lot over the years by the Word - both podcast and blog - about how commercial radio works. I always thought it was a bit weird that a computer chose all the songs, making sure that the listener was subjected to a string of hits, each as familiar as the last. As someone who never really listens to music radio, I used to wonder if this could really be so. No longer.

We have painters in our office today and they are listening to some radio station, I kno not wot, dribbling out an utterly uninspiring stream of familiar pop and rock hits from the last fifty years. Many of them are good songs - right now it's 'Get Back' by the HJH - but it's the calculated predictability that is so irritating. The policy appears to be 'Do Not Surprise the Listener'.

Its spongey blandness is driving me insane. How can something so utterly insipid inspire such murderous rage?

I genuinely don't know what to make of this: they're going to make a film of le Carre's Tinker, Tailor....

http://www.empireonline.com/news/story.asp?NID=28317

No doubt it's a good cast but should it be filed under pointlessness of the highest order? Or perhaps slotted into the cabinet marked 'Wait and See, It Could Be Brilliant.'

I suppose if Ewan MacGregor can reinvent a classic Alec Guiness performance for the new millenium, then there's no reason Oldman can't. Ahem.

Mention of the alarming nature of time passing in the Ringo thread made me realise something.

I first heard Green Onions by Booker T & the MGs in 1986 and it changed my life. It was a recording from another age, another time. That was twenty-four years ago.

In 1986, it was twenty-four years since Green Onions' release. Those two periods of time are not the same. One is history. The other is my life.