A num­ber of par­ti­cu­larly sty­lish Scar­lett Johans­son shots have kindly made their way to my web space.

Black and gold, a sty­lish sin city esque potrayal.

More gold Scarlett

Another sam­pled colour image

Revo­ked Ame­ri­can Independance

Dec­la­ra­tion of Revo­ca­tion

To the citi­zens of the Uni­ted Sta­tes of Ame­rica, in the light of your fai­lure to elect a com­pe­tent Pre­si­dent of the USA and thus to govern your­sel­ves, we hereby give notice of the revo­ca­tion of your inde­pen­dence, effec­tive today.

Her Sove­reign Majesty Queen Eli­za­beth II will resume monarchi­cal duties over all sta­tes, com­mon­wealths and other territories.

Except Utah, which she does not fancy.

Your new Prime Minis­ter (The Right Honou­ra­ble Tony Blair, MP for the 97.85% of you who have until now been una­ware that there is a world outside your bor­ders) will appoint a Minis­ter for Ame­rica without the need for further elections.

Con­gress and the Senate will be disbanded.

A ques­tion­naire will be cir­cu­la­ted next year to deter­mine whether any of you noti­ced. To aid in the tran­si­tion to a Bri­tish Crown Depen­dency, the follo­wing rules are intro­du­ced with imme­diate effect:

1. You should look up “revo­ca­tion” in the Oxford English Dic­tio­nary. Then look up “alu­mi­nium.” Check the pro­nun­cia­tion guide. You will be ama­zed at just how wrongly you have been pro­noun­cing it.

The let­ter ‘U’ will be reins­ta­ted in words such as ‘favour’ and ‘neigh­bour’; skip­ping the let­ter ‘U’ is nothing more than lazi­ness on your part. Like­wise, you will learn to spell ‘dough­nut’ without skip­ping half the letters.

You will end your love affair with the let­ter ‘Z’ (pro­noun­ced ‘zed’ not ‘zee’) and the suf­fix “ize” will be repla­ced by the suf­fix “ise.”

You will learn that the suf­fix ‘burgh’ is pro­noun­ced ‘burra’ e.g. Edin­burgh. You are wel­come to re-spell Pitts­burgh as ‘Pitts­berg’ if you can’t cope with correct pronunciation.

Gene­rally, you should raise your voca­bu­lary to accep­ta­ble levels. Look up “voca­bu­lary.” Using the same thirty seven words inters­per­sed with filler noi­ses such as “uhh”, “like”, and “you know” is an unac­cep­ta­ble and inef­fi­cient form of communication.

Look up “interspersed.”

There will be no more ‘bleeps’ in the Jerry Sprin­ger show. If you’re not old enough to cope with bad lan­guage then you shouldn’t have chat shows. When you learn to deve­lop your voca­bu­lary, then you won’t have to use bad lan­guage as often.

2. There is no such thing as “US English.” We will let Mic­ro­soft know on your behalf. The Mic­ro­soft spell-checker will be adjus­ted to take account of the reins­ta­ted let­ter ‘u’ and the eli­mi­na­tion of “-ize.”

3. You should learn to dis­tin­guish the English and Aus­tra­lian accents. It really isn’t that hard. English accents are not limi­ted to cock­ney, upper-class twit or Man­cu­nian (Daphne in Frasier).

You will also have to learn how to unders­tand regio­nal accents — Scot­tish dra­mas such as “Tag­gart” will no lon­ger be broad­cast with subtitles.

While we’re tal­king about regions, you must learn that there is no such place as Devonshire in England. The name of the county is “Devon.” If you per­sist in calling it Devonshire, all Ame­ri­can Sta­tes will become “shi­res” e.g. Texasshire, Flo­ri­dashire, Louisianashire.

4. Holly­wood will be requi­red occa­sio­nally to cast English actors as the good guys. Holly­wood will be requi­red to cast English actors to play English characters.

Bri­tish sit-coms such as “Men Beha­ving Badly” or “Red Dwarf” will not be re-cast and wate­red down for a wishy-washy Ame­ri­can audience who can’t cope with the humour of occa­sio­nal poli­ti­cal incorrectness.

5. You should relearn your ori­gi­nal natio­nal anthem, “God Save The Queen”, but only after fully carr­ying out task 1. We would not want you to get con­fu­sed and give up half way through.

6. You should stop pla­ying Ame­ri­can “foot­ball.” There is only one kind of foot­ball. What you refer to as Ame­ri­can “foot­ball” is not a very good game.

The 2.15% of you who are aware that there is a world outside your bor­ders may have noti­ced that no one else plays “Ame­ri­can” foot­ball. You will no lon­ger be allo­wed to play it, and should ins­tead play pro­per football.

Ini­tially, it would be best if you pla­yed with the girls. It is a dif­fi­cult game. Those of you brave enough will, in time, be allo­wed to play rugby (which is simi­lar to Ame­ri­can “foot­ball”, but does not involve stop­ping for a rest every twenty seconds or wea­ring full kev­lar body armour like nancies).

We are hoping to get together at least a US Rugby sevens side by 2005.

You should stop pla­ying base­ball. It is not rea­so­na­ble to host an event called the ‘World Series’ for a game which is not pla­yed outside of Ame­rica. Since only 2.15% of you are aware that there is a world beyond your bor­ders, your error is unders­tan­da­ble. Ins­tead of base­ball, you will be allo­wed to play a girls’ game called “roun­ders,” which is base­ball without fancy team strip, over­si­zed glo­ves, collec­tor cards or hotdogs.

7. You will no lon­ger be allo­wed to own or carry guns. You will no lon­ger be allo­wed to own or carry anything more dan­ge­rous in public than a vege­ta­ble pee­ler. Because we don’t believe you are sen­si­ble enough to handle poten­tially dan­ge­rous items, you will require a per­mit if you wish to carry a vege­ta­ble pee­ler in public.

8. July 4th is no lon­ger a public holi­day. Novem­ber 2nd will be a new natio­nal holi­day, but only in England. It will be called “Inde­ci­sive Day.”

9. All Ame­ri­can cars are hereby ban­ned. They are crap, and it is for your own good. When we show you Ger­man cars, you will unders­tand what we mean.

All road inter­sec­tions will be repla­ced with roun­da­bouts. You will start dri­ving on the left with imme­diate effect. At the same time, you will go metric with imme­diate effect and without the bene­fit of con­ver­sion tables. Roun­da­bouts and metri­ca­tion will help you unders­tand the Bri­tish sense of humour.

10. You will learn to make real chips. Those things you call ‘French fries’ are not real chips. Fries aren’t even French, they are Bel­gian though 97.85% of you (inc­lu­ding the guy who dis­co­ve­red fries while in Europe) are not aware of a country called Bel­gium. Those things you insist on calling potato chips are pro­perly called “crisps.” Real chips are thick cut and fried in ani­mal fat. The tra­di­tio­nal accom­pa­ni­ment to chips is beer which should be ser­ved warm and flat.

Wai­tres­ses will be trai­ned to be more aggres­sive with customers.

11. As a sign of penance 5 grams of sea salt per cup will be added to all tea made within the Com­mon­wealth of Mas­sachu­setts, this quan­tity to be dou­bled for tea made within the city of Bos­ton itself.

12. The cold tas­te­less stuff you insist on calling “beer” is not actually beer at all, it is lager . From Novem­ber 1st only pro­per Bri­tish Bit­ter will be refe­rred to as “beer,” and Euro­pean brews of known and accep­ted pro­ve­nance will be refe­rred to as “Lager.” The subs­tan­ces for­merly known as “Ame­ri­can Beer” will hen­ce­forth be refe­rred to as “Near-Frozen Gnat’s Urine,” with the excep­tion of the pro­duct of the Ame­ri­can Bud­wei­ser com­pany whose pro­duct will be refe­rred to as “Weak Near-Frozen Gnat’s Urine.” This will allow true Bud­wei­ser (as manu­fac­tu­red for the last 1000 years in the Czech Repu­blic) to be sold without risk of confusion.

13. From Novem­ber 10th the UK will har­mo­nise petrol (or “gaso­line,” as you will be per­mit­ted to keep calling it until April 1st 2005) pri­ces with the for­mer USA. The UK will har­mo­nise its pri­ces to those of the for­mer USA and the For­mer USA will, in return, adopt UK petrol pri­ces (roughly $6/US gallon — get used to it).

14. You will learn to resolve per­so­nal issues without using guns, law­yers or the­ra­pists. The fact that you need so many law­yers and the­ra­pists shows that you’re not adult enough to be inde­pen­dent. Guns should only be hand­led by
adults. If you’re not adult enough to sort things out without suing someone or spea­king to a the­ra­pist, then you’re not grown up enough to handle a gun.

15. Please tell us who killed JFK. It’s been dri­ving us crazy.

16. Tax collec­tors from Her Majesty’s Govern­ment will be with you shortly to ensure the acqui­si­tion of all reve­nues due (back­da­ted to 1776).

Thank you for your co-operation.

The sum­mer has been lar­gely une­vent­ful. When peo­ple ask what I did I will have to reply with resoun­ding silence. Then I shall lis­ten to all the fabu­lous and ama­zing achie­ve­ments, deve­lop­ments and expe­rien­ces they have enjo­yed.

Recently I was sit­ting back and trying to rack my brains around a new site I could deve­lop, so I could do something with my free time. I hadn’t made a site about anything I was pas­sio­nate about for a long time. Then it struck me, what am I pas­sio­nate about? There’s nothing I am par­ti­cu­larly obses­sed with, nothing overtly inte­rests me and I see nothing that fas­ci­na­tes me enough to go out of my way and pur­sue it. Sure I have inte­rests but there’s not one thing that I can say “yeah my life is dedi­ca­ted to doing that”. 

I get sud­den spouts where I feel I must be crea­tive, write about something, design something, or do something cle­ver. But there’s just no something. I’ll sit at a can­vas and then leave it. I greatly enjoy music and it fas­ci­na­tes me to no end, I do obses­si­vely lis­ten to a lot of odd and enligh­te­ning stuff. So why not pur­sue that? Well I have abso­lu­tely no musi­cal talent which rules out all crea­tive aspects. 

Maybe I just lack con­vic­tion, maybe I will find something or maybe I will fore­ver remain a sub­ject­less cri­tic with an empty gallery of my great short­co­mings. Perhaps society has just delu­ded me into a down­ward spi­ral of con­vo­lu­ting bore­dom, or you could say I was pas­sing the buck. I’ll get over it.