Got a couple of emails about 'lost' comments. Currently I'm getting around 200-250 spam comments every day. Anything held in the spam queue gets wiped without checking. If you comment with any links in the comment, you get treated as spam.

One of my beloved brothers has started bloggin and ranting over here. Nice stuff, like a mini-uk boingboing at the mo. Course he's very late into the blogoshire, but I'm sure he'll grace it rather more than I do at the moment. I'm awaiting the flippant throwaways on xianity to spark off a family war... A few other ranters have added me to their blogrolls (which is very flattering, considering how little I post), and can now be found over in the blogroll. Special mention to the wonderful Dr. Rant team, who are taking apart the changes in the NHS with bewildering speed (they need that Gerry Robinson bloke).

BoingBoing has a post about the new Pipes service from Yahoo. which looks well interesting in a web 2.0/social network/what the hell is this really for? type way (see flickr/delicious, etc). First thing I think? Cool, I can get BoingBoing without Xeni Jardin (which would be ironic considering she wrote the pipes post). But seems someone's beaten me to it. Xeni, another waste of that second X chromosome.

If any of you want to talk about the famous novel, I'm afraid you'll be blacklisted. The amount of spam I get that references Harper Lee is astonishing. So Harper Lee disappears into negative space. Which is a shame. Though I preferred the film.

Looking at my usage stats ((yeah, I know, but its either that or going to bed even earlier), I have a lot of incoming this month from disney.com. Is this an ISP? Or someone working there looking for cynicalbastards? If you're looking--'give us back our (Pooh) Bear! He's not 'merkin, he's English.' Thank you

By way of the comments, Gary James' (I never know what to do with the apostrophe on names ending in s---its why I didn't become a xian for years, all that confusion over Jesus's or Jesus', now I just settle for x and have done with it) newish blog. Should maybe be over on ilkley rocks as a link, but he's not in Ilkley (I think). Anyway, ver' funny, albeit far too mentions of Crowded House for my liking. Particularly like the line 'I've never forgotten that, largely because it's only been a few minutes since I made it up'. And Doctor Vee finally gets on to the blogroll months after he should have been. Despite a bewildering liking for Formula One, and having a far too clever understanding of blog layouts and all sorts of fancy pants stuff. He has very good taste in music, lovely and obscure. Oh, and also cos, when I was a pretentious youngster, I called me'sen 'Vee'. Indeed most of my most pretentious work was done for various student rags under that sobriquet.

Euan Ferguson in the Observer having a snap at bloggers.

standing like a dumb know-nothing head-lolling droolpot, might as well start my own blog

How right he is. Why would anyone start a blog these days?

Interesting what comment spam is doing now. Got one today that went black, full, faithful nothing comparative to small: http://www.moviegallery.com/ win create roll - that is all that grass is capable of , roll slot is very good mistery Hmm, beautiful in its own way.

Worstall carries a story from Michelle ''teeth whitener's best friend' Malkin. It's one of those typical IPCGMITY stories, school in suffolk bans hot cross buns because it might offend religious sensibilities of non-Christins. Seemed a bit odd to me as it's still a way to go even till Lent. Unlike most of these stories (straight bananas, banning xmas, etc) however there's a grain of truth. But only a grain. The story was picked up by that mighty organ of record the Ipswich Evening Star and then on to the Mirror and elsewhere and lots and lots of places in the US. It's rushing round the blogosphere as we speak. With the result that the head in question is getting hate mail. But what's this? The papers and blogger haven't got the whole story. Says the head,

I have not imposed an outright ban on hot cross buns and we look forward to having them before we break up for the Easter Holidays.”

So what happened? Well, she requested the suppliers to remove the cross because it wasn't yet Easter and THIS might offend non-christians. Well, okay, the latter bit is a bit odd (though most of us would applaud anything that delayed xmas till the start of December). But the actual decision is perfectly sensible. It wasn't the time to eat hot cross buns, so they weren't going to. Perhaps, rather than the appaling attacks on this woman, she should be applauded for resisting arrogant consumerism threatening to turn important xian festivals and their associated rituals into all year-round excuses for consumerism. The Evening Star plays both ends by asking its readers, 'do you think Miss Jackson deserves hate mail?'

Rafael draws attention to the scourge that is the grey squirrel. My mother has the right idea. She catches squirrels in squirrel traps and then dumps them in the pond. They drown in five seconds or less. As she puts it, 'it's them or the bulbs'.