Letters, Year Eight (November 2005 - February 2006)

Stuart Pearce Fanclub, Piccadilly Line, 05/12/2005
[re: Half Man Half Biscuit]

Sorry to hear about the demise of your moderately responsible job in the computer industry. That's what you get for working for the man (as Jack Black might say).

Anyway there are plenty of vacancies on London Buses for you. The money's crap, the customers ugly, and the prospects are zero. However you don't have to wear your own clothes to work (although having said that, the book of dry cleaning tickets I was promised eleven years ago have yet to materialise).

Other people just bring me sympathy: Suze brings me solutions. Okay, so the reason why my driving licence is clean because I've not been behind the wheel for the last twenty years and only use it as a surrogate ID card at the Post Office, but I'm sure that wouldn't be a barrier to my driving a bus. In South London, anyway.

And yes, this is the first mail I've received in nearly two months. Are the rest of you still out there?

Martin Jamieson, 04/01/2006
Re: the HMHB article. Trouble Over Bridgewater WAS the best but has Achtung Bono really not overtaken it for you yet (bolded-up 'cos it surely will)? Go on, give it another listen - please !?!?!?!

"No sympathy from Uncle Greg, nor indeed from Auntie Meg
Well thank god I'm not Jake The Peg with an extra restless leg"

Oh come on, that's genius?

"Gouranga gouranga, yes I'll be happy
When you've been arrested for defacing the bridge"

Does it for me!

It's quite possible I'll end up loving Achtung Bono as much as you do, but I think these things take time. After all, it took me five years to realise just how magnificent Trouble Over Bridgewater was.

In connection with that, one thing I discovered when playing all the HMHB records back to back was that I obviously don't listen to music as intensely as I used to two decades ago. I can still quote you every single line from Back In The DHSS (which I hadn't listened to for ages), but the records become less familiar the more recent they are. Maybe I just had more time on my hands back then, I dunno. Perhaps that'll change now I'm back in the DHSS myself.

Anyway, you'll be pleased to hear that a song from Achtung Bono will be on my Best Of 2005 compilation CD. (I know you can read the track listing here now, but I was writing this reply back in early January, hence the unnecessary suspense over which song it is.)

Martin Jamieson, 05/01/2006
[re: reply to letter dated 04/01/2006]

Haha, this is like looking into a mirrored TFT screen. Same here about quoting every word from DHSS even twenty years on - I was the bloke who threw away the vinyl when discovering that the cassette had two extra tracks and also wrote into Probe Plus for lyric sheets just to make those lyrics make sense (I didn't know who Jimmy Clitheroe was and t'internet wasn't around then). Is it 'cos we're getting older or are the lyrics so much more difficult to remember now? Maybe there's an overdose situation? I dumped HMHB in 1988 on discovering The Wedding Present et al, but am so glad that now that Friends Reunited brought us back together and discovering 8 new albums/EPs was great fun.

Thanks for taking the time, and stick that in your Volvo glove compartment.

My money says your 2005 compilation will contain For What Is Chatteris? It simply has to.

See reply to 04/01 letter re unnecessary suspense.

Stuart Pearce Fanclub, Piccadilly Line, 11/01/2006
When I was a schoolkid, I had peanut butter and margarine sandwiches in my lunchbox everyday for five years. I used to think the reason I never ate them was because I didn't like peanut butter and margarine. Now I know better.

Laughing at people for having stupid phobias isn't very nice. Fun, though.

Kando Business Finance, 05/01/2006
RE: "this is the first mail I've received in nearly two months" [see reply to letter dated 05/12/2005 - Spank]. Maybe you should switch off your junk mail filter? Then you could get loads of mail such as the attached?

Or it could be down to the fact that clicking the Send Form Button on your letters page doesn't seem to do anything (although that may have been because this is well over 1200 characters).

[1415 characters of advertising guff deleted - Spank]

I was on the verge of adding this guy to my junk mail filter too, until I realised that this is in fact Ken, who used to contribute regularly to this site (until he discovered that being married was more fun). So I'm happy to suggest that you visit Kando Business Finance for all your business loan brokerage needs.

Stuart Pearce Fanclub, Piccadilly Line (yet more engineering works), 28/01/2006
Just in case there was any confusion from my previous bulletins here regarding Robbie Fowler, can I say once and for all WE DIDN'T WANT HIM.

Explanation for foreign readers here.

Brian's Mail, 30/01/2006
yo,

eva wonder y the sky is blue ,the summa is fun but notin genst u

urs truly,
not important

I misread who this was from when it first arrived. For a minute, I thought I was getting mail from Magic Roundabout characters.

Stuart Pearce Fanclub, Piccadilly Line, 03/02/2006
Cor get dis mate. I av jus seen dis brill trayler 4 a filem. Anyone no wens it cumming out?

Friday the 13th, obviously. Can't you read? (Joking aside, as much as I appreciate the message that they're putting forward here, doesn't this strike you as a monstrously shitty way of presenting it? Five years ago, maybe. But not now.)

Robert Ganz, Plano Tx, 04/02/2006
I hope the UK is enjoying Spank. Every time I could catch them playing in Baton Rouge, Louisiana I would go see them. I would like to encourage anyone who like real music to go see them live. I can't wait till Spank comes back state side.

I can see what's happened here, Robert. I'm afraid my website's got no connection with the Louisiana ass-pounding rock band of the same name: though I did mention them here several years ago, in a piece about the various other Spank The Monkeys you can find on the internet.

I've done some research, and this news article seems to suggest that the band split up in 2004. Sorry.

Kenneth Davis, 05/02/2006
Do You have enough pwoer to provide your patrner high quality S-EX on St.Valentine day?

Get a MON-STER pwoer, nothing can bring your ererction down!

Show your partner the PWOER of your LOEV and she will always remember You.

Loev will ALWAYS be associated with YOU!

Your order will be PRIVATE, nobody will know what You use.

Follow this link and get SSPECIAL DISSCOOUNT for that period: [link deleted]

Yes, I get as many of these things as you do, but this has to be the most entertainingly subliterate one I've had in years.

Belette, Scotland, 17/02/2006
Just wanted to ask you about your site - is the poker pop-up intended, or has someone inserted some code into your page without your consent? Poker pop-up from iLead fires up on your homepage in both Mozilla and Exploder but is blocked by Opera. Didn't know if you knew about it?

Ah - just checked again before sending this and it seems to have disappeared, guess that means you've caught it?

Okay, this needs explaining. Some time in February, pop-up ads started appearing whenever I visited my home page. For a while I was convinced that there was some naughty code embedded in my page, as Belette suggests - but it turns out the truth is more awkward. Because Webstats4U, the people who supply my hit counter (the little graph icon at the bottom of the front page) have apparently decided that they can now use it to send out adverts along with my page. The resolution Belette mentions at the end was just them being sneaky, I'm afraid: because they care so much about the user experience, they keep track of machines they've sent pop-ups to recently, and try not to send them too often or duplicate ads.

It's all in the terms of service that Webstats4U sneakily reworded when they took over the much nicer Nedstat last summer. I've sent them a strongly worded email (mainly complaining about the ads looking like they were designed by an educationally subnormal ten-year-old using Microsoft Paint), but I suspect the main thing I should be doing is finding an alternative. Any suggestions, folks? In the meantime, please turn on your pop-up blockers until I can ditch these horrible people.

Barclays Centre, 19/02/2006
Dear easyjetarestillshit@spank-the-monkey.co.uk,

We recently noticed one or more attempts to log in to your Barclays IBank account from a different IP address.

If you recently accessed your account while traveling, the unusual log in attempts may have been initiated by you. However, if you did not initiate the log ins, please visit Barclays IBank as soon as possible to check-up your account information: [patently fake link to obvious phishing site removed]

Thanks for your patience.
Sincerely,
Barclays Centre

Please do not reply to this e-mail. Mail sent to this address cannot be answered.

Ha ha ha ha ha. There are only a few email addresses without spamblocking on this site, and mails like this one totally justify that decision. (See letter dated 26/08/2002 to find the original reference.)

Stuart Pearce Fanclub, Piccadilly Line (you know the one that is always suspended at the weekends), 25/02/2006
Just thought it appropriate to add a follow up to your correspondent Kenneth Davis, and his fascinating letter of 05/02/06. By some stange coincidence today, I have finally managed to achieve what for me has been akin to an internet quest for the holy grail. Namely I have found the original ShoWest trailer for Eyes Wide Shut.

Movie fans everywhere, right click, save target as, and enjoy.

Ah, yes, Tom Cruise having sex with a woman. I can see why that would be difficult to track down.

Kubrick knew what he was doing when he made trailers, didn't he? I can also recommend the one for The Shining, which - like Eyes Wide Shut - shows you can get away with making a trailer out of a single shot from a movie, providing you pick the right shot. (NB: not, repeat not, to be confused with this.)