‘Please sign and share’: Is it possible to sign a petition every day…?

Log onto Facebook and Twitter in the morning and one of the first things you’ll usually see is a request to sign a petition. Amnesty, All Out, Avaaz ... Homophobia in the Olympics, a venue threatening to close, ‘Margaret Thatcher Day’: the Internet wants your signature (well, your name and your fake address anyway...).

Some fear that internet activism is replacing the real thing. Just as likely is that it's facilitating nation-wide mobilisations too. Either way, this is the age of the petition and it’s time to get seriously involved. So, from tomorrow onwards I'm going to seriously consider every petition I come across (even more so than usual...) then I'll sign it if I agree strongly enough and Tweet it with this hashtag:

#apetitionaday

Let’s see how it long lasts. Please sign and share.

Fifteen characters

My fifteen favourite characters from TV and film.

1. Anna from ‘This Life’ (‘The Beatles were boring … I smashed a bottle of wine … Graeme caught me taking coke in the toilets at work … etc’)

2. Rayanne Graff from ‘My So-Called Life’ (‘You see, my mother, she like claims that she breast fed me. But I just have serious doubts. I mean, you should see her boobs. They are so firm…’)

3. James St James in ‘Party Monster’ (‘You don’t even know your skrink from your skrod!’)

4. Holly Golightly in ‘Breakfast at Tiffany’s’ (‘If I could find a real life place to make me feel like Tiffany’s, why then I’d buy some furniture and give the cat a name!’)

5. Ignatius J. Reilly from ‘Confederacy of Dunces’ (‘The day before me is fraught with God knows what horrors!’)

6. Jack Reid in ‘REDS’ (‘When you separate a man from what he loves the most, what you do is purge what’s unique in him, and when you purge what’s unique in him, you purge dissent, and when you purge dissent, you kill the revolution and revolution IS dissent!’)

7. Helen in ‘A Taste of Honey’ (‘There’s a lovely view of the gasworks, and this wallpaper’s contemporary…’)

8. Harold in ‘The Boys In The Band’ (‘What I am, Michael, is a 32 year old, pockmarked, ugly Jew Fairy, and if I need to smoke a little grass before I can show my face to the world that’s nobody’s god-damned business but my own. And how are you this evening …?’)

9. Rebecca in ‘Ghost World’ (‘Mostly I just feel like poisoning everybody…’)

10. Louise in ‘Thelma & Louise’ (‘I’m in deep shit Jimmy. Deep Shit, Arkansas …’)

11. Leon Shermer in ‘Dog Day Afternoon’ (Yeah, I’ll see ya in my dreams …’)

12. Quentin Crisp in ‘The Naked Civil Servant’ (‘Why don’t you push off back to Hoxton before they find out you’re queer …’)

13. Miss Jean Brodie from ‘The Prime of Miss Jean Brodie’ (‘The magnificent Giotto frescoes, how triumphantly they vibrate with life, yours, Jean …’)

14. Alvy Singer in ‘Annie Hall’ (‘My grammy never gave gifts. She was too busy getting raped by Cossacks’)

15. Celie in ‘The Colour Purple’ (‘You a low down dog is what’s wrong. It’s time to leave you and enter into the creation. And your dead body just the welcome mat I need…’)

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Butt

Texts are the new novels (Part 1 in an occasional series ...)

I’ve had it with facebook. Eight hundred pictures of me red-faced and drunk, a format change every few months that makes it look ever more like the wretched Twitter, I can’t find any events I’m meant to go to … no no no. I’m back to texting and emailing in a big way.

Being a terrible horder of most things I hate to get rid of messages but I’ve discovered fantastic software that allows you to download all your texts and save them as Excel or Word files. Reading them back in this disjointed and decontextualised form is confusing and frequently hilarious. I can no longer attach a story to most of them and it makes them all the more intriguing. ‘What kind of odd life is that?’, I wonder. ‘What strange people’. Below are some of the ones I like the most. One day far in the future cultural anthropologists will look back at such documents and say, ‘Umm … what?’ Apologies if you recognise your life in here somewhere …


Eating cheese in bed. Yes or no?

Been invited to birmingham by beautiful french cellist.

How can we make katy perry die? I don't know what she's for. Did you get called a dirty stopout? You are one.

Cruising the guys in the pound shop.

Tell him to turn up drunk.

Club flyer for student venue: 'Please respect the club and yourself by drinking responsibly. All drinks one pound.'

England would be rubbish without gay men doing all this.

Seeing or typing the words ‘ped egg’ is making me boke.

Get a job!

I feel underdressed in Preston station.

Dressing gown, crisps, sex and the city, no boyfriend. I'm perfectly happy.

Rob him!

Don't remember getting in. think i snogged some bloke in front of his boyfriend. Oops.

Watching old corrie fights on youtube. Suggest you do the same.

I can't deal. I want my hair like that NOW.

I spent my last red cent on a v v brown ticket.

I left the cheese out overnight and now it's orange polystyrene. Fail.

I'm a leopard and a social piranha.

About to eat a jaffa cake with dairylea on it. I'll let you know how it goes.

Do you sometimes forget some people are straight? I do.

I'm cringeing and watching with my back to the screen.

I'm crying and dancing at the same time.

I'm in temple doing the jukebox. Can't BELIEVE you're not here.

I'm playing it right now, complete tune, grace jones meets black box.

I've bought thirty pints of milk and taken the rest of the week off work.

Ick re your hideous daughter. ABORT!

Teen sex quiz in MEN. Filled in accordingly. Question 2: Can you have a laugh together without anything sexual being involved? Answer: No.

'I took a lethal overdose of drink and drugs' 'oh no what have you had?' 'five blisters of paracetomol and a cup of tea'

that adidas advert with beckham estelle ting tings missy elliot has given me cancer

You would do a poo-wee all one word at my shamaze outfit

Put the rest in the bin and spray fairy liquid on it. Nobody wants to fuck fatty.

I hate being let down. It really bothers me. Its because i'm notes on a scandal and construct entire weekend around returning a library book.

So Much sex and aggro in town today i love it. Just been butchered by budget hairdresser. Not a word when we meet. Can't wait to get it under the tap.

The next train at platform 2 is the 18.49 north western service to blackpool north calling at Shitsford, crapton and misery-on-sea.

I've put that i'm a bisexual chinese lady with black twins who speaks farsi and writes kinyarwanda. That'll show em.

The support band are making my pants vibrate.