Retro Yakking

If you are reading this right now, then I’m sorry to say it’s all over - Teletext has bitten the dust. Don’t even attempt to check the lottery numbers or have a quick go at Bamboozle because it won’t work. After feeding the public’s hunger for snappy headlines and daily opinion columns for more than 15 years, our favourite text-based television news and information service has finally met a pixellated grave.

Now, don’t go confusing Teletext with Ceefax, which is still up and running until the complete analogue switchoff arrives in 2012. They are both teletext systems (note the lower case T there) but there is only one teletext system branded Teletext - namely that offered by Teletext Inc. which runs, or at least used to run, on ITV, Channel 4 and Five.

But Ceefax is now the sole survivor of the Golden Age of Teletext. The internet will soon put paid to it, too, and teletext will be consigned to the history books along with VHS, cassette players and 3D TV (mark my words, it will not last).

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With piracy of the high seas off the coast of Somalia on the rapid increase, the British admiral in charge of an EU flotilla of anti-piracy vessels is considering an extension of their patrol area. No, the ships, not the pirates.

Rear Admiral Peter Hudson, who recently spent a week on holiday in the region, is unimpressed by current measures in place to tackle illegal activity in north Africa.

They pinched my watch, the dastards! We must do everything in our power to avoid future repeats of such incidents. We have hundreds of people relying upon us to protect them, so it is imperative that we increase coverage immediately. More importantly, we have to get my blasted watch back! — (Typically British) Rear Admiral Peter Hudson

Rear Admiral Hudson’s timepiece could now be as far away as India, if experts in African piracy (read: Vic Reeves) are to be believed.

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Global Language Monitor have revealed the most popular English word this year is ‘Twitter’. After literally minutes of research typing search terms into Google and the aforementioned microblogging website, the Texas-based group compiled a list of the top fifteen most used words in 2009, with some surprising results.

Although ‘Obama’ ranked #2 in the list, words such as ‘outrage’ and ‘transparency’ somehow made their way onto the list. Linguists suggest it may have something to do with the global recession, as ‘unemployed’, ‘foreclosure’ and ‘cartel’ also scraped into the top fifteen.

But those are really boring. More prominent were the term ‘2.0′, referring to a new type of robot that may take over the world — and also Web 2.0 — and H1N1, a proposed motorway system that will run for 0.2 miles and contain a lethal pit of molten lava - and also the strain of flu known as ‘swine flu‘.

Curiously, ‘vampire’ appears at #5 in the list, raising fears of a forthcoming supernatural invasion. Perhaps Dracula has already returned to terrorise peoples’ necks once again… if you really have to go out at night over the Christmas period, remember to carry a torch and blood sandwich just in case.

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Yesterday’s 2010 World Cup draw saw the traditional Group of Death rear its ugly head again, not once but twice, maybe three times.

Group G will have Brazil, Portugal and the Ivory coast meet up with North Korea in a potentially explosive series of encounters in June 2010. Brazil and Portugal will surely be favourites, but Didier Drogba will have something (profane) to say about that.

Meanwhile, Group D with Germany, Australia, Serbia and Ghana could prove a secondary Group of Death, but will more likely turn out to be more like the Group of Mild Injury as Germany and Australia soar through without so much as a flesh wound or even a graze. They’re going to take extra plasters and six packs of Castlemaine XXXX just in case, however.

Host country South Africa is bracing itself for full-on warfare and local hospitals are already taking on fresh staff in anticipation of the fallout of the Groups of Death. South Africa themselves face their own uphill task, drawing Uruguay, Mexico and France in Group A. France will probably be laughing into their frogs’ legs over their relatively easy draw, but will also expect a negative reception for professional handballer Thierry Henry.

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Rupert Murdoch has today branded common Internet users ‘ruthless pirates worse than terrorists‘ for their ‘pure and simple content thievery’.

Apparently, anyone who has ever read any story on the website of The Times, The Mirror or The Sun is officially in debt to the Murdoch Corporation.

According to the media mogul, Google are the single worst offenders, providing access to millions of news stories worldwide completely and utterly free of charge — aside from the standard internet subscription/connection fee, but of course, we all know he gets absolutely nothing from that.

Murdoch, who we can only guess is close to bankruptcy, has accused Google of ‘common information thievery’ in a bid to blackmail some more cash out of the ‘well minted’ Internet search engine. It seems the ever alert Mr. Murdoch has only just cottoned on to the earning potential of this Interweb thingy — more than fifteen years after its inception — and decided it’s high time he started charging users for online news.

Free news online? This is an outrage! If you want free content, buy my papers, you fools. Google and other such glorified scraper sites masquerading as search tools must be eli-mi-na-ted. Kill all humans! — Rupert Murdoch

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