http://www.guardian.co.uk/science/2011/aug/18/aliens-destroy-humanity-pr...

Now that NASA don't have the space shuttles to play with it seems they are going to indulge in wild speculation about how Aliens may be reacting to the Human Race.

This seems a highly comical report which veers from the theory that the galactic club may just be too beauracratic and boring to join right through to aliens are going to eat us as a pre-emptive strike to save our planet and other civilisations. To think that humans, with all the galaxies secrets at our disposal, would simply not do the paperwork because we are too busy cooking eggs displays a particularly rushed and shallow thought process.

I assume governments were thinking about, maybe even preparing for the possibility of contact but to release a report like this seems a bit odd. Didn't anybody in the office say "Hang on lads, let's keep this one to ourselves a for a bit" ?

Last night Jerry Seinfeld retweeted a tweet sent directly to him from a certain "proud_scouser" who puts his name down as Stevie Dunn. The tweet (in capital letters) stated that Jerry was an unfunny jew who should have been gassed. Jerry made a couple of remarks, retweeted a few quips from followers and then left it. A quick look down scousers timeline gives you more anti-semetic stuff a direct tweet at colin jackson calling him a "gay twat" and a line of defence for the Seinfeld tweet along the lines of "I'm not more evil than mugabe, I only tweet"

If that chap had to go to court over his robin hood airport tweet, can Mr Dunn expect a visit from the boys in blue? This stuff is probably par for the course for public figures belonging to groups that inspire a handful of nutjob morons to hate but if you follow a few celebs on twitter you do get exposed fairly regularly to this kind of directly delivered unpleasantness. I suppose its pointless and impossible for twitter to police this kind of stuff but when it elevates from "you /your work is shit" to "you should have been gassed" someone has to step in surely?

http://www.myspace.com/roundhouseblackbox

Blackbox do experimental live online events apparently and promise the following;

"Taking inspiration from the band's latest album, Valhalla Dancehall, the broadcast is set to feature an eclectic mix of dancers, vikings and folklore while making use of the latest in live 3D image-mapping using X-Box Kinect sensors."

fun best and worst this month, may I propose;

This was the moment when I realised a film I had been excitedly anticipating for months just, well, couldn't be taken seriously

Just watching the Prescott hosted "Have I Got News for You" and as mentioned elsewhere I think this is close to the end for this show. Paul Merton looked, at times, embarrassed to be on it and the usual stuff about Prescott punching people was rolled out (how many years has this show dined out on that one?) but the real writing nadir came with "The oil slick is the size of Luxembourg... with all the appeal of Belgium"

Apart from just being crap, lazy joke writing, the "gag" was one in a long line of Belge knocking japes stretching back over comedic time, name three famous Belgians and so on. So why is it? Living amongst Belgians who occasionally encounter this stuff they are genuinely stupified as to why this mocking occurs and what motivates it. The FPO is a Belge and I know if she had seen the joke she would have looked immediately across at me and asked "Why?"

So is labelling an entire nation "boring" simply harmless, if now tired, comedic japery that belongs to another age of Frenchmen on bikes with hooped jerseys and onions or is it cutting satire and social commentary?

And I know I'm taking it too seriously but it was, for me, just a seriously poor episode summed up by a weak, weak joke.

You must have given your distributor a rocket after last month's little delay. The GLW informs me the version 2.0 has arrived this morning (Belgium) That is a record. Nice one! Thanks very much.

A quick enquiry. What happened in last weeks Danny Baker 5 live show to interrupt Danny's interview with Harry Hill and somewhat flap the usually unflappable Baker? On the podcast its all cut out. Just curious.

http://newsvote.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/entertainment/8220105.stm

Seems all those that had problems actually seeing the artists at Glasto this year wont have the same trouble next year. Good move or "the man" preventing a laff?

I like to ease myself into The Word with the best and worst lists and guessing the winner of each accolade each month. When I saw it was love songs I smugly scanned the entries for Lionel Richie's "Hello" Surely this sickly exercise in schmaltz with its accompanying blind-girl-makes-Lionel-head video will walk top spot despite many of our first slow dances at the youth club disco being soundtracked by the lines "Sometimes I think my heart will overflow, hello!"

What happened? nowhere? This was our chance to really bury this syrup. The Bowie one was a very good call though!

Is going to cost me a fortune this month. Many thanks Mr H, now I'm going to have to get to the credit card bill before Mrs Jon yet again.

I really enjoyed the Mark Ellen article on Miles Davis' "Kind of Blue" a few issues back and took the plunge, bought the CD and have probably listened to it every day for a month. I love it. For many years I'd taken the Fast Show route of mockery and disdain for the genre, crushingly drawing out the word "niiiicccce" whenever the sociable sound was in earshot. However, looking at a wall of CD's that were all essentially the same brew of indie style britpop I've recently felt a yearning for something different in the ears. I have dabbled with classical and folk but the sheer joy of discovering Kind of Blue is inspiring me to hurl myself headlong into jazz.

Where do you go after Kind of Blue? I fear that its so good that any further jazz investigation can only disappoint. I’ve put my classical phase on the back burner to invest in this so I need help from the massive. What next for a man who wants to enjoy but doesn’t know where to look? Anybody else going through or been through a phase?

RE: bands that make your ears bleed. There is a fabulous venue in Brussels that often catches bands touring europe between their paris and amsterdam appointments its a converted botanical gardens with two halls, a rotund and the orangerie. One balmy summer night a handful of years ago The Charlatans came through to meet a hugely excited sold out crowd of expats and locals. Seeing someone like the charlies in a 600 capacity venue is one of the many perks of living in belgium.

Anyway, from the first note, our jeans shook, actually vibrating against the legs and the bass felt like a steady tightening vice around the chest. I looked around the audience and about half of us had fingers in our ears. The evening went on and the volume stayed the same with a steady trickle leaving the room. I could see a few people remonstrating at the sound desk and getting exactly the response you would expect. Eventually I could take no more, the pain in my ears was unbearable and I left to the bar and soon realised that there were more in the bar than in the hall and still people kept coming out. The sound didnt change and the band played about a third of their set to a quarter of the people that had turned up seemingly oblivious to the fact that they didnt need Brixton academy power in the venue.

The only time I have seen and will ever see a hall empty due to volume. The Charlatans? I could understand Lawnmower death