Back in 2003, Vice Admiral Timothy J. Keating, Commander of the American Fifth Fleet stood in front of the crew of the USS Constellation and warned them that the President was about to order the first strike of the Iraq war.

Of course, being American - and clearly aware he was also standing in front of a bank of TV camera, Keating didn’t use those words. Instead what he said was this…

“When the President says ‘go’… it’s hammer time.”

No, really…

Unfortunately almost no news organisation broadcast the full text of Vice Admiral Keating’s speech, an omission I sought to correct by writing the following for that week’s issue of The Friday Thing…

…

BOUND FOR DA RELOAD: That Call to Arms In Full…

“Well, here we are and here we are and here we go. All aboard and
we’re hitting the road. Because we want to. And you may ask
yourself “Am I right… Am I wrong?” And you may tell yourself
“My God, what have I done?”. Mamma mia! Bend down low, let me
tell you what I know. I’m the leader, I’m the leader, I’m the
leader of the gang, I am. Let’s get ready to rhumble.

You have to show them that you’re really not scared. You’re
playing with your life, this aint no truth or dare. They’ll kick
you, then they beat you, then they’ll tell you it’s fair. So beat
it! The boys are back in town.

It’s the eye of the tiger, it’s the thrill of the fight. Rising
up to the challenge of our rival, Mr Boombastic. The winner takes
it all. Have I the right? I’ve got the power. All kinds of
everything. Great balls of fire, pink macaroons and a million
balloons and performing baboons and… I got you babe. You rock
my world. Oops I did it again.

I heard it through the grapevine… Saturday night’s alright for
fighting. This is what we’ve waited for, this is it boys, this is
war. The President is on the line. And when the President says
‘go’… Stop. It’s hammer time.”

…

I was reminded of that today as I read the press release for a competition being run by Nokia called ‘Music Millionaire’. It’s to promote the launch of their ‘iTunes killing’ (hmmmm) Comes With Music service, and involves inviting writers to compose short stories written entirely in song titles.

They’ve signed up names like Salman Rushdie, Andrew Morton and Hanif Kureishi to submit stories. Here’s Rushdie’s on the theme of ‘Commitment’…

Yesterday - John Lennon
I Saw Her Standing There - The Beatles
The Girl from Ipanema - Joao Gilberto
Venus in Blue Jeans - Jimmy Clanton
The Sweetest Thing - U2
Who Wrote the Book of Love - The Monotones
Then She Kissed Me - Bruce Springsteen
And It Stoned Me - Van Morrison
Crazy Love! - Van Morrison
Don’t Let Me Down - The Beatles

You see?

You can submit your own playlist (’competition’ link) and if Nokia’s judges (including Jeremy Langmead and Dylan Jones (I know)) like it, you might win some kind of Nokia music phone and unlimited downloads of millions of songs.

But fuck the phone and the downloads and all that crap, it’s just fun, and incredibly distracting as I’ve discovered for most of today.

If you do submit a playlist, send it to me as well and I’ll badger Nokia’s PR folks (see disclaimer below) to let me give away some extra prizes based on my own judging criteria including:

- distastefulness
- obscurity of songs chosen
- inclusion of songs by The Barenaked Ladies
- pornographic subtext

Ok Go.

(Full disclosure: Nokia’s PR in the UK is handled by Mission Media who I’ve been advising on their digital strategy; specifically how to talk to bloggers without looking like PR wankers. That’s how I found out about the competition. I’m reluctant to mention campaigns by any of Mission’s clients here, lest I become an ad man’s shill (ahem), but this is just great. Nokia culpa.)

My latest NSFW Guardian column has just been published. It’s about Jerry Yang. Obviously.

It was slightly later than planned as I had to debate with my editor over whether I could accuse Yang of biting the head off an owl.

Really.

My second guest-hosting gig at the Guardian Tech Weekly Podcast is now live.

Featuring Bobbie’s interview with Saul Griffith, Jemima and Charles’ trip to the Guardian Hackday and some emotionally-stirring nonsense with the Phoenix lander. Oh and me explaining how I have ‘nothing but contempt’ for the Guardian’s blog commentors. How to win friends and influence trolls.

Word…

Audio clip: Adobe Flash Player (version 9 or above) is required to play this audio clip. Download the latest version here. You also need to have JavaScript enabled in your browser.

Hermione Way has just posted the highlights video from when Rob and I interviewed Sarah 2.0 on stage in a strip club. Here you go…

(The NYPD Blue camera work is particularly fitting, given the venue)

And then, of course, there was the after-party.

Excellent news! Joe The Plumber has a book coming out.

According to Fox News (natch) it’s going to be called ‘Joe the Plumber - Fighting for the American Dream’.

Now, I know what you’re thinking. You’re thinking, that’s a book I’d definitely buy, if only it had a better title. And you’re absolutely right, which is why I’ve spent all of ten seconds coming up five alternatives that Joe might like to consider…

- Lady Chatterley’s Plumber

- His Dark Materials (Plus Labor)

- Showerhead Revisited

- A Time To Overbill

- The Book Of Moron

Do feel free to send me your own ideas and I’ll forward them to Joe’s publisher, Pearlgate. Whoever the fuck they are.

Oh, and if you can’t get enough of Joe (I can’t) then you’ll definitely want to check out his new site, and maybe even consider signing up for membership. You have two options, standard membership (benefits: none) which is free and ‘freedom’ membership which is - er - $14.95 a year.

The paid membership, as well as getting you a signed copy of Joe’s book, also gives you access to ‘Joe The Blog’ where… “he can share the latest on the fight for preserving Americas freedoms.”

Brits (or those with an eye for British slang) will also be delighted to see that Joe - who was working as a plumber, despite not being registered to do so, and who owes $1200 in unpaid taxes - provides an option for visitors to ‘Shop Joe’.

Joe The Win.

The other day, for the first time in ages, I checked out my Google Analytics stats. Not the page views, you understand - like my book sales figures, I really don’t want to start down that road, lest it turns me crazy.

No, rather I was curious what search terms people used to find BringingNothing.com. I find there’s no easier way to reassure yourself of the general bat-shit insanity of the vast majority of people who use the Internet.

And what did I find? Three broad categories of searches: people looking for stuff about me (terms like ‘Paul Carr’ and ‘Bringing Nothing To The Party’ - yawn); people looking for stuff I’ve written about, either on here or in the book (my favourite, by the way - and I’m sorry about this Anna - is the person searching for ‘anna melville james is a cunt.’ Anna is probably the least cunty person I know); and finally, the mentals.

How mental? Let’s take a look at my top ten Google search terms that have brought people to my digital front door, in reverse order…

10. facts about badgers (I’m on the second page of results for this one. God only knows how many young minds I’ve scarred)

9. alan partridge latin working in dixons (The phrase you were looking for, my little search friend, was ‘apropos’, and it was Curry’s not Dixon’s)

8. do it yourself togas (Who needs fucking instructions?)

7. free creature sex (Paying for it is so undignified)

6. a man dress up in a gorilla suit fucking a white girl video (Rejected Dairy Milk ad)

5. a metaphor for a shoe (…is no substitute for an actual shoe)

4. book characters who used flip flops (Is ‘used’ really the appropriate verb here?)

3. does anyone want to kiss jerry? (If that’s you Googling, Jerry, then I’m going to go ahead and say ‘no’)

2. don’t call me a whore im a unicorn (The Swiss army knife of sex horses)

And the undisputed winner…

1. cock in my shoe (What? Seriously, what? Although: title of my second album)

Actually, there’s one more that, while clearly well intentioned, actually made me laugh more than all of the others put together. Step forward and claim your prize, whoever searched for…

once you’re lucky twice you’re goo

…

(NB While looking for the image for the top of this post, I discovered that “the collective noun for unicorns is ‘a blessing‘”. What’s the collective noun for people who make up collective nouns for fictional creatures? A loon?)

Oops. Not twelve hours after I write a column saying that London needs its own Valleywag so, it seems, does San Francisco.

Nick Denton has decided to roll Silicon Valley’s favourite only tech gossip blog and its skeleton staff into Gawker to consolidate pageviews and weather the impending ad revenue storm.

I’m not sure how I feel about Valleywag’s demise (and, however Denton spins it, let’s be honest, it’s a demise). Unlike Gawker which speaks to anyone with an interest in the media industry, Valleywag was never really relevant to non-Valley dwellers. It was just a bit too inside the beltway (if you’ll excuse the geography) and, with a few exceptions, the characters it profiled just weren’t interesting enough to travel.

But that’s a curious point. Why wasn’t it more interesting to non Valley people? Why, when it came from the New-York-based-Brit-owned Gawker stable, was it so introspective? Especially when it’s generally accepted that it was at its best when edited by Denton himself.

Clearly, Denton has already asked those questions and by rolling Valleywag into Gawker, with its Ketel One ads and mainstream media commenters, is trying to force Owen Thomas to think, if not globally, at least nationally. But is a roll-in the right solution? I’m not convinced.

Why not leave Valleywag where it is but change the tone to one more similar to Gawker, which is firmly rooted in New York but realises that for many the location is aspirational rather geographical? Gossip the Valley to the world, but also the world to the Valley and tap in to the hundreds of thousands of people outside of Northern California who work in - or are just interested in - the technology industry. That’s a hell of an audience.

(But, whatever they do, for fuck’s sake, why not hire someone who can write a decent joke? Gawker is snarky; Valleywag is just a gang of dorks dressed up as bullies for Halloween.)

I was going to write more on this, but it’s just hit me how little I care about whether Valleywag lives or dies. Which I suppose is exactly the problem. I really want to care. And I should. But I just don’t. I will however be hitting refresh at least a dozen times a day on the first day of Gawkerwag, when the New York media commenter elite suddenly finds their daily snark fix interrupted by stories about Jason Calacanis’ dogs.

Now that will be funny.

Until then, I guess I’m going to have to keep getting my laughs from reading Mashable.

…

(By the way, does anyone else find it amusing the Nick Denton’s personal site is a .org? He’s nothing if not self-aware.)