It’s not normally a nice thing to take joy in other people’s misery. But on occasions, I’m prepared to make an exception, especially when it’s England we’re talking about, and especially especially after that delightful 3-2 defeat at the hands of Portugal earlier in the week. Laugh? I nearly wet myself. It made the elimination of Scotland worthwhile, just to watch Kevin Keegan’s face change from “smug satisfaction” (2-0 up) to “deer caught in headlights” (3-2 down).

It happens every couple of years. England reach the finals of the World Cup or European Championships and the nation immediately decides they not only can win it, but it is their god-given right to do so, because they invented the game. Scotland used to do this sort of thing too: but only once, in the 1978 World Cup with Ally’s Tartan Army. We lost to Peru, scraped a draw with Iran and had a player fail a drug test before deciding “Fuck it” and beating eventual finallists Holland (thanks to Archie Gemmill’s wonder goal) to be pipped on goal difference. We learned our lesson and, since then, have only ever turned up at tournaments for a laugh, with any football incidental. On the other hand, England are the dogs of world football: no matter how much of a kicking they get, they always come crawling back again, insistent that this time (more than any other time), they’ll get it right.

This perennial optimism flies in the face of all the objective evidence. Putting it into perspective, England squeaked into the finals this time the same way as the likes of Slovenia: via the playoffs, and they only just managed that, having to rely on Sweden to beat Poland in their last game. Their warm-up games saw a creditable draw against Brazil, victory over the mediocre Ukraine side knocked out by Slovenia, and then a 2-1 win against the footballing superpower of Malta, thanks to them missing a last-minute penalty. [Bet he was a cross Maltese…] Given this, expectations should be modest, with the quarter-finals a credible target. But no…

Mere optimism would be fine. However, it manifests itself in nasty jingoism and pointless patriotism — why are newspapers giving out free posters exhorting “Come on, England”? Who are they trying to impress? Neither the England team nor their opponents will be found hailing taxis in central London this week. I passed at least one venue with a big screen saying “Watch England Win Here”, which is the kind of arrogance I love to see taken down a peg or two. And even as someone who’s no fan of Mr.Posh Spice, the abuse he got was pretty indefensible. All of this helps turn me into a raging Braveheart, which provokes howls of outrage from some English friends, who protest they’d support Scotland if the roles were reversed. This is missing the point: they view Scotland as part of Britain; we see it as an occupied state. And given England’s grossly dominant role in the UK, all the outer provinces are going to take any chance we get to laugh at the invaders, even if it means becoming temporarily Portuguese, Romanian or – most of all – German.

This is why I shall be parked in front of the TV at home on Saturday night (watching it down the pub is simply too risky), waving my frankfurter around, balancing a plate of Schwarzwalder Kirschtorte mit Schlagsahne on one knee, and a foaming mug of Holsten Pils on the other. It’s just a shame England are meeting the Germans so early this time, as there’s no chance for a “heartbreaking” penalty shoot-out. I’m not sure what would be better: defeat at the hands of the Germans has been so frequent over the past 30 years, it ceases to appeal. So perhaps this time, a plucky England victory will do, followed by a brave draw against Romania, and a tragic exit on goal difference. [The sad thing is, I doubt if even the worst humiliation imaginable will make the English race shut up about bloody sixty-six — I mean nineteen rather than ten, but they were both a long time ago. Time to get over it.]

Well, the big, bad Internet has come in for more stick this week, following the revelation that admitted nail bomber David Copeland (who came closer to blowing me up than I care to contemplate) used to find instructions on how to make his devices. Indeed, in an article whose irony was only invisible to the editor, the Daily Mirror published a step-by-step guide as to how you too could find out the same information. [1. Go to any half-decent search engine. 2. Type in “The Terrorist’s Handbook. 3. Filter out the inevitable porn sites which clutter up most searches these days.]

I rarely find myself in sympathy with Charlton Heston and the rest of the NRA, but at the risk of stating the bleedin’ obvious: the Internet doesn’t kill people, people do. I will happily admit to being someone whose bookshelves contain titles such as Improvised Explosives as well as the infamous Anarchist Cookbook – the latter, I should point out, was actually bought from that famed den of terrorism known as Tower Records at Piccadilly Circus. I have my doubts about that one, it has to be said, since rumour suggests there are enough errors (whether mere ignorance, or FBI-introduced) in it to make attempts at better living through its chemistry, rather short-lived. But it seems that words on a printed page are somehow less dangerous than precisely the same words on a computer screen. Had he bought his source material mail-order from the States, would there be calls to regulate the evils of the printing press?

If I may digress for a moment: actually, were it the Middle Ages, this probably would be the case, since this is largely just Ludditism at work: the fear of those in power that new technology will cause a loss of that power. This is especially true with regard to the Internet which presents perhaps the biggest threat to the established media corporations since the days of Gutenberg. It costs millions to set up a newspaper, tens of millions to start a TV station (and that’s once you’ve got a frequency), but anyone with a PC can create a web site for a few pounds, every bit as accessible to anyone in the world as a megacorp site. No wonder they’re squealing.

Anyway… Of course, you can make the case that no-one needs to know how to make pipe-bombs, and that’s true. But few people need to know how to solve quadratic equations, and that’s part of the national curriculum [Those who might counter that quadratic equations don’t kill people clearly didn’t have the same maths teachers I did] This guy was obviously a powder-keg waiting for a spark, and if it hadn’t been the Internet, it’d have been something else. He’s a loony, and you can’t legislate for them. I make absolutely no attempt to justify or condone his actions. But you can take the easy approach and blame the bogey-man of the Internet, or you can try to discover what made him such a sick, twisted individual, and work to prevent that instead. I know which approach is harder, but in the long run, it’s also infinitely superior.

Though I confess to some fellow-feeling: when I first moved down South, I lived and worked in Farnborough (indeed, my final home before coming into London was in Cove, the very same suburb where Copeland lived), and after a few months there, you aren’t left with a great deal of fellow-feeling for the rest of humanity. Even passing it on the train, as I did a couple of weeks back, you can sense its black soullessness sucking at you malevolently. It is indeed the sort of place where buying Ł1400 worth of fireworks in Spring would not raise any suspicions. And part of his rationale for bombing the Admiral Duncan pub was to piss off Tony Blair: justifiable homicide if ever I heard it. Indeed, this puts him more or less alongside the members of the Women’s Institute who jeered Blair earlier in the week. Truly does a dislike of Tone, strange bedfellows make…

Uuuuuurrrgggghhhh… That’s the sound made by a very “tired and emotional” man, struggling gamely to get up this morning. Was taking part in the office quiz night, and somehow we managed to win: in celebration, we were on the Pink Lady cocktails – the ingredients of which being one question we failed to answer – and they did not sit well with the pints of Director’s Bitter consumed over the previous four hours. Managed to get home okay, somehow, but soon found myself calling Ralph and Hughie on the big white telephone before crashing out, almost fully clad, on the bed.

I woke to the sound of thumping techno music coming from the street. Then I realised that was actually the sound of my pulse, and rapidly came to the conclusion that this was not going to be the most pleasant of mornings. I toyed with idea of pulling a sicky but couldn’t really do that. The altruistic reason was because I was playing football at lunchtime and didn’t want to let the team down. The more prosaic (and, let’s be honest, more important one) was that no-one would believe me, since everyone in the office knew exactly where I’d been, and what I was doing i.e. drinking heavily.

However, you can use such things to your future advantage. By being entirely up-front and open about having a hangover, it helps to establish your credibility, and people will be less likely to think it’s the case when you do phone in “sick”. However, you don’t want to come in every morning clutching a packet of Resolve in one hand, and your forehead in the other, as you’ll get a reputation for it, which thus pushes it towards the front of people’s mind. You’re going for “Jim doesn’t let a hangover stop him”, rather than “Jim is a borderline alcoholic.”

But there was no physical way I was going to make it to work on time. So I bit the bullet and phoned my boss – the smug bastard was already at his desk, sounding far more chipper than anyone ought to at that time in the morning – then sat back to ride it out, pausing only to barf up something green and bilious. The worst thing about a hangover is there’s nothing much you can do about it except wait. The best thing is knowing that, no matter how bad you feel, it will eventually go away. The trickiest thing is knowing when you can start putting fluids in your stomach without them bouncing back faster than a…than a…very bouncy thing. [I’m sorry, my brain is diverting power away from all non-essential functions at the moment, leaving my artistic faculties on life-support]

I think the low point was the journey to work, though it wasn’t quite as bad as the time I managed to black out — and the train was so crowded I couldn’t even fall over. At least I had a seat, though it was very tempting to stick my head out the window, despite a previous bad experience doing just that in similarly demonic-drink circumstances (I’ll spare you the details, but it involves the Forth Rail Bridge and my glasses). Do you know how hard it is not to think about vomiting? God, even typing that sentence makes me feel wobbly, so we’ll move on…

Somehow, I survived to London Bridge, and it has been a gradual recovery process since then. My stomach has now settled down a bit, though I doubt I’ll be enjoying any bacon sandwiches in the near future, or indeed anything much thicker than water. I am, as I speak, staring into the frothy top of a large coffee, and suspect Nietzsche was right when he said, “If you gaze for long into the latte, the latte also gazes into you”. Well, he would have, if they’d had Starbucks in his day…

Groan. I’ll never drink again…

Can I just say: I couldn’t care less about bloody Leo Blair? The only amazing thing is thinking that Tony has now had sex with the nightmarish Cherie four times: that is not an image upon which I care to dwell. So, moving rapidly on: you could have been forgiven for missing one news item of the past fortnight in all the fuss. For your information, I repeat it:

British censor fails to ban porn videos

LONDON, May 16 (Reuters) – British film censors failed on Tuesday in a battle to ban the sale of explicit pornographic videos in sex shops. The High Court in London rejected a challenge by the British Board of Film Classification (BBFC) against a decision by its own Video Appeals Committee to permit seven explicit films to go on sale at British sex shops. The BBFC said before the ruling that if its legal bid failed then virtually all hard-core porn videos could be classified for sale in sex shops for home use.

The titles at the centre of the case included “Horny Catbabe”, “Nympho Nurse Nancy”, “TV Sex”, “Office Tart” and “Wet Nurses 2”. Mr Justice Hooper ruled that the Appeals Committee had been entitled to take the view that the risk of children viewing the videos if sold in sex shops was “insignificant”. He took the view that the attitude of the Appeals Committee was one “a reasonable decision maker could reach. I have no doubt that the conclusion ‘that the risk of the videos in question being viewed by and causing harm to children or young persons is, on present evidence, insignificant,’ is one that a reasonable decision maker could reach,” he said.

The judge accepted there had been inconsistencies in the Appeals Committee’s reasoning in reaching its decision but said: “Any inconsistencies do not invalidate that central finding.” Leave to appeal against Tuesday’s decision was refused but it is still open to the BBFC to apply direct to the Appeal Court for leave to mount a challenge to the ruling.

Hooray! Ah, but the bad news is that Jack ‘War On Drugs – Except When My Son’s Caught Selling Them’ Straw is contemplating amending the law as a result of this legal decision. How childish can you get? “If you won’t let me win, I’m going to change the rules.” Will civilization as we know it collapse into anarchy in chaos as a result? Is this threatening the fabric of the British way of life? Haven’t the government got better things to do?

Enough already. A return to that ever-popular subject of TC Editorialising, Britney Spears, which is not perhaps so far a jump as it sounds [you’ll see…eventually]. Further communications on the subject have arrived at TC Towers:

Probably the last word on the Britster for now: I was shocked to find out a good friend of mine who should have known better had swallowed the covered-up boob job story hook, line and sinker. Even pointing out that a) little girls grow up into big girls (there was one sorry specimen at school with me who went up three inches and two cup sizes in under a year; it’s not that rare), and b) it’s amazing what a different set of supports and some good shading will do (you only have to compare and contrast Ms. Weaver in `Alien’ and `Galaxy Quest’…) did little to dissuade him. So it goes.

However, as a mature l\e\c\h\e\r\ connoisseur of the female form, I prefer infinitely the charms of SMG. The pout, the hairstyle, the fact that she can kick several shades of shit; all these are contributing factors. I’ve found a helluvalot of slash fiction, though; there are far too many people out there with not nearly enough to do.

I think the implant stories fit in rather better with the “dumb, talentless bimbo” stereotype which we’ve previously seen expressed, and puts Britney in the same category as the like of the late, lamented Lolo Ferrari [RIP – I wonder if her coffin had…no, let’s not go there] Heaven forbid she might be merely using her Supreme Deity-given assets. Wonderbras can do very nice things, it’s true — but you need something to work with to start with, as my Japanese ex-girlfriend found out. Hehehe. These days, I prefer proper women.

As for Britney the Vam…ah, Buffy the Vampire Slayer, erotic fan fiction is no surprise, it seeps out of virtually every TV series with more than one character. Recent events in Sunnydale, with Willow putting from the other side of the green, are only likely to provoke a tidal wave more. This is true even though they have been handled with a level of common sense and subtlety (I don’t think they’ve even used the L-word), not commonly seen on network TV. You could compare and contrast the rabid frenzy around Ellen, except that it was a) shit, and b) a loud statement of sexual politics. Keep all politics out of television, and the world will be a better place; better yet would be keeping politics – babies and all – off of television. Which is precisely where I came in…

Lightning flickers across the sky. Thunder rumbles around like the complaints of a slightly-peeved demonic entity. Rain pours down from a lead-coloured sky. It must be the cricket season…

At this very moment, I should, in theory have been relaxing at Lords’ (Cricket Ground rather than Traci’s, though the latter might have some entertainment value too), pint in hand, basking in the summer sunshine and watching the highest level of cricket being played live, for the first time ever. I’ve written elsewhere about the joys to be had, playing the sport, but must confess that watching it pales considerably in contrast to football, baseball, or Japanese barbed-wire death matches. My only experience of spectating at a professional game was an afternoon spent at a county game between Middlesex and Kent on one of my very earliest trips to London, back in the mid-80s.

However, when a work colleague suggested a trip to one of the days in the England vs. Zimbabwe test match, I was seduced by the idyllic vision of leather on willow – not to be confused with the vision of leather on Willow, which is a sordid, Buffy-related thought with which I will, of course, have no truck. None at all. No, sirree… Er, where was I? Ah, yes: this fantasy (that’s the cricket one, not the Buffy sidekick one) failed to take into account two things: the weather, and Zimbabwe’s woeful ineptness.

The former should really have been no surprise; English weather makes the planning of outdoor events a bigger lottery than the National one, with slightly more chance of winning the jackpot than of getting a dry day. This is why Test Matches are allocated five days to complete: foreigners find it impossible to understand how ANY sport can take that long, and still have a good chance of ending in an incomplete draw, but it’s simply because the odds are good that you’ll spend two or more of them sitting in the pavillion. The problem with cricket is that it so dependent on the ground conditions; baseball is largely an air-based game in comparison, with the ball only hitting the ground a couple of dozen times a game. [Mind you, they still have nifty stadia with retractable roofs; I’ve been round the one in Phoenix, and it’s the ninth wonder of the world, holds 40,000 and is air-conditioned]

Zimbabwe’s extraordinary failure to perform was a bit more unexpected, given they are actually ranked above England in the unofficial league table. But, blimey: England score 415 in their first innings; Zimbabwe managed 83, and will be doing well to get even to that in their second attempt. You have to allow for some dubious umpiring decisions, and the conditions being a little different from Zimbabwe (no black militants squatting the cricket pitches, for example), but to an amateur cricketer like myself, there’s something strangely gratifying about seeing internationals playing such crap. I’m toying with the idea of affecting a slightly nasal accent and phoning up to offer my services.

However, it’s too late to save them this time round, and so I am left in a dry, warm house, watching the TV coverage as Channel 4 attempt desperately to find something to occupy the time until the rain stops. They will probably soon be reduced to interviewing the producer’s cat — though I would not be at all surprised to find it purring with a slightly nasal accent, and offering its services as an opener for Zimbabwe… Now, if you’ll excuse me, I think I’ll go watch some Buffy.