But Who Is He?

For a few weeks now I've been reading Bete De Jour's blog. Bete is supposed to be a very overweight and (he says) ugly chap whose lovelife is a non starter and who very much wants to lose some weight and get his life back.
To say the blog is masterfully written is an understatement; I've paid good money to read far worse writing than this - you'll laugh out loud at his latest post which is about visiting Newcastle and playing scrabble with a couple of pensioners.
But my problem (ianasmuch as I care, which I don't really) is that it's now getting too good and I'm thinking, he's just got to be a pro.
He reads a lot like Irvine Welsh or maybe William Leith when he was writing some of his profoundly uncomfortable self revelatory stuff in the Independent way back in the day. There's also a companion blog, which seems to be by a friend of his who has MS. But which I rather suspect is also a creation of Bete's, who lives a very incident filled life. He also says he goes running in Brockwell Park, well, I go running there and I never see anyone who looks remotely like he says he looks.
Real or Fiction, Pro 'slumming it on the net' or not, I can't recommend it enough.

Shoot Your Phone

I'm a total gadget freak, and I can forgive most defects from them. Most phones and computers have something to recommend them - I am a nerd, and proud of it. Some devices though are just perverse and these I cannot countenance. I have a Nokia N70 at home which drops calls randomly and has the interface from hell, courtesy of Orange - it takes me five minutes just to save a number, and won't let me text someone unless I've put them in the contacts directory first. The chip's desperately underpowered and it takes five minutes to boot it from cold. I harbour dark thoughts about the end it will meet when its contract expires, since it would be way too cruel to inflict it on anyone else. And I'm getting some ideas from Wired's new competition in which readers suggest gadget-murders.

Son Of Rambow