Good Lord. More on that broomstick business: “The broomstick is not only for flying. It’s also an important fertility symbol. To be blunt, it is a combination of the male and female naughty bits. As a fertility symbol it has to be treated with respect, and flying it the wrong way is like a sacrilege. Quite simply, you can’t fly a broom the wrong way. It just would not fly.”

This guy has just ruined the film for me. Instead of being thrilled by the exciting Quidditch scenes, I’m going to be thinking about, uh, fertility symbols.

A high priest of the British White Witches claims that the Harry Potter trailer is all wrong and that Harry’s riding his broomstick backwards. “Warner Brothers claims the film is an accurate portrayal of things that happen in witchcraft, yet woodcuts from the 16th and 17th centuries show broomsticks being ridden with the brush part in the front,” said Kevin Carlyon, who has his own coven in Sussex, southern England. *blink* WHAT? A) Since when is Harry Potter an “accurate portrayal” of witchcraft? and B) Who the hell cares?

It was a bad weekend for British sport. In fact, some would say it was the worse weekend ever. Not only did Tim Henman finally get bounced from Wimbledon, but the Brits got beaten by the Aussies at rugby, the Ashes (annual cricket series), the Lacrosse World Cup, the Speedway World Cup and the women’s cricket. Ouch. (Snookums, of course, thinks it was the best weekend ever.)

Snookums loaded up Boudicca (my iMac) with Quake 3 Arena on Saturday in preparation for our long-awaited frag-fest. Unfortunately I pretty much suck, so I don’t think it’s going to be much of a contest. Maybe if I had this guy as my character though…

I used to visit the Lycos 50 pretty often just to keep my “finger on the pulse” of the Net. Now Google have developed their own version: Google Zeitgeist. It shows you search trends, popular searches, and comparisons of queries. Very interesting.

I’ve ranted about Victoria Hervey before, right? Well, she’s at it again. (Pissing me off, that is.) Apparently her trendy little Belgravia boutique was about to go under when it was rescued by a mystery backer. The resulting publicity means “Lady V” will be polluting the British media with her obnoxiousness for some time to come. Her shop – get this – “never orders more than two of any type of outfit, to minimise the chances of customers – who include Kate Moss, Jemma Kidd and Lili Dent-Brocklehurst – finding their clothes duplicated.” I’m glad that she’s, you know, providing such a service to mankind and all. *eye roll*