Nancy Banks-Smith is one of the funniest writers alive. Her dismemberment of the Jerry Springer show in today’s Guardian is a classic.

In Radio Times, Jerry Springer gives the English language short shrift. “Your talk shows plod along – it could be radio. The rule on my TV show is you have to be able to watch it with the sound off. If you still kinda know what’s going on, that’s compelling.” Eager to please, I watched The Springer Show (ITV1) with the sound off.

AM I THE DAD? DNA RESULTS! What appears to be a snake-oil salesman enters. The audience rises, revealing tattoos on their buttocks. The snake-oil salesman shakes hands with the front row. Daniel, a simple soul in earrings, is sitting on a bare stage. Not spending much on production, are they? Enter Jessica. She points her tremendous breasts accusingly at Daniel, picks up her chair in a marked manner and moves it some distance from him. Two enormous women lumber in from opposite ends. Judging by their strong resemblance to Daniel and Jessica, these are their respective mothers. Absolutely no DNA test is needed. The mothers fling themselves at each other like worlds colliding. Bouncers tear them apart. The snake-oil salesman fans himself with an oleaginous hand.

Captions shed some light on all this heat. JESSICA SAYS THE BABY LOOKS LIKE DANIEL. More precisely, she screamed at her mother-in-law, “She is the spitting image of you. Poor cow!” As Jessica’s mother-in-law looks like a Sherman tank, the audience loved this.
Like his namesake, Daniel is surrounded by roaring. Springer said he felt the noise go through his suit. Sometimes intelligible insults (“Silly cow!” “Slappers Reunited!”) float free from the fracas. Silence always indicates the excision of some obscenity.

The DNA results were opened on stage and Daniel, to universal recrimination, turned out to be the father of Jessica’s daughter. “One day your little girl may see a tape of this show. God forbid!” said the snake-oil salesman piously. By his standards it was all a bit tame. “If she were pregnant by another woman, that would be in my American show.”

Now let’s try watching it with the vision off.

An unsuspecting Cory Doctorow was lured by cruel, unscrupulous Ben Hammersley into Hemingway’s in Florence. Outcome described as follows:

Afterwards, I fell asleep for half an hour on the sofa in Hemingway’s, collapsed on one of my dining companions. My brain was overwhelmed with the tastes, and it had to shut my body off so that it could process the input. I have a feeling that from now on, whenever a little money finds its way into my pocket, the temptation to blow it on a plane ticket to Florence (cheap from London, as these things go) and have a cup of Hemingway’s Montezuma is going to be nigh-irresistible. I no longer feel the need to blow my cash on computers or gadgets — just hook an IV of this thing straight into my arm and leave me to die by chocolate.

The George Orwell Plaza in Barcelona has 24×7 video surveillance. Thanks to BoingBoing for the link.

What is it about ducks? The other morning, Chris Patten, the former EU Commissioner for External Affairs (and now Chancellor of Oxford University), described the EU Constitution as a “dead duck” after the Dutch referendum result. This morning I heard another politician on the radio describing Jacques Chirac in the following terms: “He may be a lame duck president, but he’s a lame duck with a bite”. And who has ever seen a lame duck anyway?

Update: My daughter reminds me that she was once bitten by a duck. But that was because he coveted the bit of chocolate cake she was holding at the time.

Quentin had an unfortunate accident. He wanted to check a word, so went to take down the OED (he doesn’t say which edition, so I’m guessing it was the wonderful two-volume Shorter Oxford) from a shelf over his desk. But the book fell on his PowerBook and did a good deal of damage. Moral of the story: keep the OED on the desk!

Here’s an interesting story. A small coffee shop in Seattle has become so concerned about the change in atmosphere brought about by its free WiFi connections that the owners have decided to switch off the service at weekends. The cafe’s co-owner told Glenn Fleishman that they had added free Wi-Fi when it seemed their customers wanted it a couple of years ago.

It initially brought in more people, she said, but over the past year “we noticed a significant change in the environment of the cafe.” Before Wi-Fi, “People talked to each other, strangers met each other,” she said. Solitary activities might involve reading and writing, but it was part of the milieu. “Those people co-existed with people having conversations,” said Strongin.

But “over the past year it seems that nobody talks to each other any more,” she said. On the weekends, 80 to 90 percent of tables and chairs are taken up by people using computers. Many laptop users occupy two or more seats by themselves, as well. Victrola isn’t on the way to anywhere; it’s in the middle of a vibrant stretch of shops and restaurants on Capitol Hill’s 15th Ave. It’s exactly the kind of place that you want to sit down in, not just breeze through.

Worse than just the sheer number of laptop users, Strongin noted, is that many of these patrons will camp six to eight hours—and not buy anything. This seemed astounding to me, but she said that it was typical, not unusual. The staff doesn’t want to have to enforce the cafe’s unspoken policy of making a purchase to use the space (and the Wi-Fi), and on the occasions that they approach a non-buyer about a purchase asking, “Can I get you a beverage?” the squatter often becomes defensive, explains they’ve bought a lot in the past or just the day before.

“It’s just really really difficult. We’ve had so many heated debates about it. We want people to linger at the cafe. We’re not a fast-food coffeeshop. We want people to feel comfortable staying here as long as they please,” Strongin said.

Hmmm… I know of at least one person who has built a substantial little software business by working in such a cafe and riding on its free broadband link. Wonder if he’s offered to give them some of his subsequent profits.