The BBC is running a couple of tabloid-esque articles today (this one inspiring this one) about a 14 year old girl that had an abortion without her mother's knowledge.

The thing that annoyed me most, aside from the fact the mother seemingly imposing her own (anti-abortion) views on her barely-teenage daughter, was that BBC News repeated used variants of the phrase: "fell pregnant". There's something about the term "fell" that connotes the assumption that we're still living in the middle ages. Did she realise she had "fallen pregnant" because she wasn't visited by her mysterious bloody curse that month and the old crone from the next village foretold the miraculous event? We live in englightened times: she got pregnant because she had unprotected sex with her skeezy* boyfriend during the ovulation period of her monthly menstrual cycle. The old crone from the next village could probably 'foretell' it because she saw them doing the nasty in a bus shelter after half a bottle of White Lightening. Pregnancy is biological not mystical and the BBC, in their "we're so objective" stance, should not pander to such outdated turns of phrase.

It wouldn't surprise me if the mother had laid down a "you will not have sex before you're 16" type law ("...She felt she had let me down...") so had not discussed birth control with her daughter until it was too late. She also probably feels bad that her daughter doesn't feel close enough to her to be able to talk about major personal issues and feels that the best way to get around this would be to lash out at a system and law brought in to protect girls like her daughter. The mother would prefer to condemn her daughter (and the skeezy boyfriend) to parenthood rather than admit she may have played some part in the farce up to that point. But of course, this is all me projecting - we'll never know for sure because "bad mother's daughter gets knocked up" isn't such a good news story.

Hurrah for reactionists.

* just a guess

Update: It appears that this story first broke in (surprise, surprise) the Daily Mail but unlike in the BBC articles, the main players (and the daughter's school) were named, thus, as the Guardian puts it, condemning the girl to the "public stocks". Oh, and the skeezy boyfriend was called Dwain. Ahem.

"While the Sasser worms continue looking for new victims to infect, the hunt for their creators has started...".

"Virus authors usually have delusions of grandeur."

from a Panda anti-virus press release.

The Sasser authors brought down Heathrow airport, governmental departments in Hong Kong, and American Express without leaving the comfort of their threadbare wheelie chairs. If that isn't an example of grandeur then what the hell is.

I can't wait until they catch the authors though. I'm looking forward to a virus free world, and this is clearly the way of achieving it.

Why isn't anyone discussing the danger we are all in when our governments and airports rely on faulty software and bad administration.

(from notebook, written march 2004, presumably)

There's jokes and there's lies. I'm sitting in the yard outside a pub. When the doors open beer smells, smoke, yelling and laughing flood out before they swing closed and it's all muted again. The folks in the yard look up for a moment then get back to their pints and their newspapers. They're out here because they don't fit in there. Physically I mean, it's friday night and we're operating close to capacity. The yard is cold because it's only March (and the telly tells us the temperature is below average for the time of year) but it's full, mostly people sitting in twos and threes with rakishly loosened ties and bad lager. The just-off-workers. I'm one of those too but I'm sitting alone. The guy on the bench next to me is waiting for his wife (or lover, or "squeeze"), she came back a few moments ago with arms full of FCUK and Habitat carrier bags, now she's gone again. "You don't mind me leaving do you? I just need two more things." He doesn't seem to mind. He fetches another pint of dark beer from inside and for the first time I realise the newspaper his face is buried in is the Daily Mail. I immediately resolve to stop romanticising him in this prose.

The office of Diana's former husband, Prince Charles, and her two sons, declined to comment. But royal-watchers expressed concern for the princess' sons William, 21 and Harry, 19.

"It's going to be painful for William and Harry,"

THEY ARE FUCKING BILLIONAIRE BASTARDS AND WE FUCKING PAY FOR THEM TO FLY AROUND THE WORLD AND GO FUCKING SKIING. WHO GIVES A FUCK.

I think we've paid a more than generous price to be able to see photos of Princess Diana coughing up chunks of throat through her shredded face as she breaths her last. Fuck "not in the public interest". Fuck William and Harry.

I for one would be happy to pay double tax to see the rest of the fucking family hunted down like foxes by papperazzi mercinaries on scooters.

"Old McDonald ate the farm, then dies."
"Super-Sized CEO takes his fries to go."
"I'm Leavin' it, says CEO Jim Cantalupo."
"Burger King dies at age of 60."

I hope the fat fuck choked on a bag of freedom fries.

I've been thinking a lot about a girl at work recently. She would look deep into my eyes and seemed to know exactly what I was thinking. She would show insight into my life and seemed to understand my thoughts in a way that no-one else at work even came close to. Our connection seemed magical and special; a truly once-in-a-lifetime thing.

But it turns out she just reads my blog.