Ten days later, and Data Rescue X is still cataloguing data. I swear, this damn thing is getting slower and slower.

Last Saturday I saw Fahrenheit 9/11,, the latest film from controversial documentary maker Michael Moore.. Yes, that is me, next to him.

Having seen his previous films, particularly Bowling For Columbine - which dealt with a very sensitive subject in a very compelling way - I found 9/11 to be somewhat heavier-going. As much as it was incredibly interesting, and held the audience's attention for just under two hours, it was fairly depressing stuff, if only because you know it's a documentary, not a work of fiction (shut up with your smartass comments right now).

In short, it tells the tale of the Dubya presidency, from his dubious election "win", through to the current day, with the US Army in Iraq. The film blends archive footage of members of the current administration, with interviews with soldiers, ex-FBI and other government agency staff, and news footage from America's TV networks.

It paints a pretty bad picture of both George Bush Snr and George W. Bush. Even if only half of what Moore claims in the film is true, Dubya should be impeached tomorrow. It also shows the multi-faceted layers of lies, propaganda, misinformation and downright bullshit the the current Republican administration has perpetrated.

Some of it I already knew about (like the Bin Laden family helping fund George W.'s purchase of an oil company, and years later, his letting them charter planes to get the Bin Laden family members out of the US during the three-day nationwide air travel ban, immediately after 9/11).

Some of it I didn't know about (like the years and years of George Bush Snr schmoozing the Saudi Arabians, despite their horrendous human rights record).

Some of it, I almost didn't want to know about - like the footage of a Saudi Arabian public beheading, or the many dead and maimed Iraqi children shown all too graphically.. Then again, I think I prefer brutal honesty in my reportage than the glossy-coated pandering to the President, that the US press seems to be engaged in these days.

Much as I like a lot of Michael Moore's work, I always try to be objective about it. There were one or two occasions where I think he let the camera linger too long on a grieving mother, or an injured child. It felt like our feelings as an audience were being played with. That said, there were only a couple of moments in the film like that, and frankly, when you compare that, to what the Bush dynasty has done to the world, it's hardly as bad.

I could go on at length about all the dreadful and dubious facts that are uncovered in the film, but you should just go see it instead. If you're a Republican, you should definitely make an effort to see it, because whatever you might think of Michael Moore, there are enough cold hard facts about President Fuckwit and his merry men, that you'd be hard pressed not to agree that they're a bunch of hypocritical, dishonest weasels, who should be thrown out of office tomorrow.

And by the way, this isn't about them being Republicans. This is about them lying to the American people, and indeed the world, hurting innocent people, and driving the US economy so hard into the ground that the country is in the worst recession since the 1930's. Personally, if John McCain had one the Republican nomination in 1999, and the presidency in 2000, I wouldn't have been so bothered. As Fahrenheit 9/11 points out, the whole George W. Bush presidency has been one lie after another.

I'm left wondering if President Bush will be shown this film. I wonder if his aides will show him a censored version so's not to confuse him. I'm also left wondering if one day, Michael Moore will meet with an untimely death in an "accident". I hope not. America needs someone to stand up and try to make people accountable.

Just go see the film, and make up your own mind.

Nearly 80 hours later, and Data Rescue X is still scanning my desktop Mac's hard drive, in an attempt to recover the lost data. It's less than two-thirds of the way through the 100GB.

Moral of the story? Make sure you have plenty of time, and plenty of coffee if you hose your main hard disk.

It's been a bad week for technology in this house.

First, my desktop Mac suddenly decided it didn't like the look of the network. Everything was working, and plugged in, but all of a sudden, no connectivity. I fixed this, using a utility program from my utility belt. OK, I lied about the belt.

This, however, revealed a bigger problem with the hard disk. A problem which caused the Mac to run so slow, you could time file saves with a calendar.

The solution was to format and reinstall the badly-fragmented system drive. No problem. All my user settings, documents, pictures, music and video resided on separate partitions to the operating system.

This is when the real fun started. The disk utility to prepare the partition for formatting and reinstallation, wiped the system partition, and then, just for giggles, wiped the document and video partitions. Naturally, this occurred at 1am - the time of day when (as any geek will tell you) the really bad shit happens. Let's face it, if you're going to make critical data rescue decisions, you might as well do it when you're half asleep. Where would the fun be if you were fully alert?

So yes, four and a half years of memories, work, and music, gone.

And no, I didn't have a backup. Come on, it's a 100 gigabyte disk. WTF do you think I'm going to back it up onto? A passing super-computer? Give me a break.

On the upside, most of my DMfM writing, all letters and email, are on my iBook

Oh, and did I mention that whilst this was going on, my roommate's PC had to be formatted and reinstalled, which would have been alright, if later that same day, her Palm organiser hadn't crashed, requiring a hard reboot, without having first backed up the data on the newly formatted PC?

Yes, this house was under a techno-curse.

On Saturday, I set about lifting the curse. With teeth gritted, a determined glint in my eye, and my favourite shirt, I set off to see the folk at Apple.

I returned, my head reeling with the scent of Powerbooks and iPod Minis, clutching some data recovery software and a cable. I also returned with the kind of feeling of Linda Hamilton. Well, OK, maybe not quite as extreme, but I sure as shit wasn't going to take any more nonsense from my computers.

Fast forward to tonight. 30 hours later, and the software has been chugging away on the iBook, which has the Mac connected to it in such a way that the iBook thinks that it's just one big external hard drive. This, at least, is an improvement on being a big external paperweight, which is what it had been doing an impression of beforehand.

Thirty hours later, and it's catalogued exactly one third of the disk. So the Maths geniuses amongst you will have worked out that it's going to take 90 hours to do the whole disk. That's just six hours short of four days. To reiterate, this is just the cataloguing of what was once there. I'm just praying that the file retrieval is faster (it should be).

On the upside, I should get back years of lost photographs, including those of Miles from his first day, through to this year. You can't put a price on memories, but if you did, it'd be $69.95.

Jessica Simpson.

Until now, I've studiously avoided the television car crash that is, The Newlyweds, but this afternoon, caught an episode.

I'm not going to waste my time and yours cataloging how dumb this pop bimbo is, because if I did, we'd be here all day. There's talk that some of the on-screen dumbness is fake, just for the cameras. Having watched a whole 1.5 episodes, I get the feeling that it's all genuine.

Quite how she's gotten to be that rich and famous, with the intelligence of an eight year-old, is beyond me. Is America that shallow, that her looks (with absolutly no brains) did it? I rather fear, the answer is yes.

I've been avoding saying too much lately, about my radio broadcasting. The reason being, I don't want to tip my hand too much. Let's just say, there may be an announcement soon.

Meanwhile, this weekend is my double-header weekend for radio broadcasting. I did the Friday night show, last night, and am doing an afternoon show today.

I've done the Friday night show quite a few times, and it's certainly a favourite time-slot for me. Favourite, if only because as the evening draws on, I get to play increasingly more and more "out there" stuff. I often end the show with something that's not really jazz at all, but at least tips its hat in the direction of jazz. That fits well, because the show following is an Acid Jazz show, which again, is non-jazz music that's influenced by jazz.

So anyway, I'm on-air 3-5pm this afternoon, here (you can listen in via a streaming signal.

Every day I get a traffic report from MyTrafficNews.com. I've quoted them before, as whoever writes it, has a good sense of humour, and it makes an entertaining read.

Incidentally, if the MyTrafficNews people read this, and want to throw some copywriting work my way, or better yet, a full-on job, I'd be delighted.

And so this brings us to today's little gem, all about everyone's favourite permed wonder, David Hasselhoff:

In other traffic news, we were saddened to hear that David Hasselhoff was arrested recently for DUI. Aww, Dave, say it ain't so: That's hardly the Baywatch way. Some specifics on the arrest are unclear; for example, we can't confirm that Hasselhoff yelled, "Kitt! Get me out of this!" We do know--well, we read it on the Internet--that he was caught in part because he entered a McDonalds Drive-through and then just sat there without ordering. Well, it is hard to understand what they are saying in that little speaker even when you are sober. We also read on the Internet that Hasselhoff is working on a Knight Rider movie, as well as a rap album under the name "Hassle the Hoff." Suddenly the drinking seems much more understandable. Remember: Outside of Germany, MyTrafficNews is your 24/7 Hasselhoff Source.

...and remember, you read it here second!

Of all the contributions that the United States has made to world cuisine, my favourite has to be hot wings. Of course they're also referred to as Buffalo Wings, depending upon which sauce/cooking method you use.

Apparently, Jessica Simpson (who I've since discovered is not the sister of Homer Simpson, but in fact a real life famous person (albeit she's about as 2-dimensional, and about as dumb as Homer though)) was somewhat confused (or possibly just plain dumb as a bag of rocks) when offered buffalo wings. She's reported to have responded, "I don't eat buffalo".

Anyway, my point is, this week, whilst barbecuing, I ended up doing my own hot wings. I had a good hot wings sauce, and in no time at all was producing my own hot wings.

If I can find a butcher that can deliver, I may never leave the house, or at least garden, again.

Barbecuing is an American tradition that previously, I've not indulged in. By that, I mean, I've never owned a barbecue (or "grill" as they seem to call them here. Of course when the British say "grill" they're talking about what Americans would call a "broiler").

I've attended barbecues before, both in the US and the UK, but never been the owner, or driver of one.

Barbecuing in the UK, is somewhere between a sport, performance art, and an act of blind optimism. The chief reason for this, is that true to popular rumour, it is always raining in the UK. When it's not raining, it's often damp and windy. There are warm sunny days, however, and these happen in the second week in July, during which time, there's an immediate hosepipe ban, for fear of the country's water supply running out. Can you smell the irony?

Consequently, the times when it's OK to barbecue are few and far between, and thus the practice has not be adopted on the mass scale that it has in the US and Australia. Then again, you could say the same about surfing.

In fact, I'm convinced that the same people who go surfing off the shores of the UK, are the same fearless optimists that do a lot of barbecuing, in that rain-soaked land.

In a way, one feels like congratulating them on their brave, glass-half-full approach to life, and yet in another way, one wants to dope-slap them, and say, "wake up and smell the coffee, it's sodding freezing out there, and you're not fooling anyone, with your cheery-eyed optimism. This is Britain damn it!"

All of which leads me to the past week or so, wherein I have found myself tending the flames of gas-n-charcoal barbecue grill, trying to cook, rather than just blacken, various bits of meat and vegetables, and trying make sure when I light it, I do so correctly, and don't end up creating a fireball, the like of which, mistakenly excites local astronomers.

The good news, is that I have completely avoided the urge to buy and wear a "comedy apron" whilst barbecuing. You know the sort of thing I'm talking about. Certainly British readers will, and I strongly suspect American ones will too. Often made out of plastic coated material, they have some, "witty" slogan or image on them. Favourites include the "bikini-wearing female body" one, and so-called zany slogans like "Barbecuers do it standing up", or, "Licensed to Grill". Oh how we'd have laughed. OK, maybe not.

I'm going to studiously avoid the whole amateur psychoanalysis of cavemen tending the flames, and how barbecuing is some attempt to bond with our ancestors, because frankly, I don't think that's what it's all about. What it's (possibly) all about is middle-class white-collar workers, tyring to prove to themselves that they're not totally dependent upon modern conveniences to survive. Of course this idea gets burnt to a metaphorical crisp, when the rugged outdoorsman (a whole ten feet from his lounge) has electronic ignition, and temperature control on his barbecue grill.

Me? I'm not trying to prove anything. I'm completely resigned to my fate as a member of the 21st century. I guess the attraction must be the big utensils. Analyze that.