From the Guardian TV Guide:

Dumped  New series.
Challenge show in which a group of volunteers are stranded on one of Britain's biggest landfill sites, where they must survive off waste materials for three weeks.

It's on Channel 4, obviously, and they seem to think it's something to celebrate. I'm just hoping it might represent some kind of minimum on the national conversation sine curve.

And while I'm at it, Steve McLaren has recalled Emil Heskey to the England squad. I don't know why, but these two stories seemed linked somehow.

I'm swapping the order slightly. Today's task is from the August 3rd entry. I have to SEARCH FOR AND JOIN FORUMS ON MY BLOG'S TOPIC (for all posts on the theme, click here). Apparently forums are good for Profile/Branding. I'd never thought of The Secular Backlash as a brand before, but suddenly I see the potential. Come round now, I've got the irons and the hot coals all ready.

To be honest, I'm in a few forums already. I'm a regular contributor to discussions at the Richard Dawkins website, for instance. You can read me in the comments here, droning on about DNA as if I knew the first thing about it.

But it's not just about spreading the Enlightenment. There's also Bristol City, remember. Dave suggested I join the relevant forum on the BBC, so I think I'll do that.

And I'm learning stuff before I even get there. From the BBC football page, there's Ian Holloway claiming he has an impostor on MySpace. It's hard to believe anyone could mimic the Holloway style convincingly, and my search of MySpace revealed only one potential impersonator. It was a feeble effort if you ask me, failing to mention his time at Bristol Rovers at all and focussing entirely on his other life as a 36 year old rock guitarist from Fallbrook, California. Poor show.

To business. I go to sign up, and the BBC computer helpfully reminds me that I've registered with them before. Very thoughtful, should save some time. I confirm by answering my secret question - one day a computer is going to ask me to tell it a secret, and I'm going to shock it rigid - and it then makes me go through the whole registration process again. Thanks, BBC server.

I complete my profile. I like to put some real knowledge into these things - we all have a public duty to educate, after all. I sit in the Dolman Stand, so I inform them that a dolman is a Turkish jacket with loose sleeves, once worn by hussars. I'm sure they'll be grateful, just as you are.

The Bristol City strand of 606 is here. turkeytwizzler is talking about how nice it was to watch City on Sky yesterday, and I have to concur. We beat Sheffield Wednesday 1-0 at Hillsborough, and for a couple of hours were top of the league. I watched the second half in the pub, and they looked solid. There's a robustness to them now that they haven't always shown in the past.

I check out his profile, and it turns out that This Personal Space Introduction has been hidden, because it contravenes our House Rules in some way. He's managed to offend Auntie simply by describing himself. Respect.

To be honest, I've nothing to contribute here. I try to add the forum to my feeds, but to do it I'd have to take the entire football section as well. It's bad enough avoiding TV, evening papers and conversation before Match of the Day, the last thing I need is my RSS betraying me. Imagine, being let down by your best friend like that.

Then a strange post headed Bristol City 2-2 Nottingham Forest catches my eye. The writer is a Forest fan. He is asking for support for manager Colin Calderwell, but unfortunately he undermines our respect for him as an analyst by failing to identify Forest's opponents as Bristol Rovers.

People are not kind to the poor man. He attempts to dig himself out of a hole by slagging off Rovers' ground, but forgets that he is still doing this to an audience of City fans, who will be not be abashed by such talk. Rovers fans, attracted by the smell of fresh meat, wander in to mock him further. I briefly consider joining in, but find myself unaccountably squeamish. It would be like being the lion that gets to snack on Christians, and I normally only do that to Christians.

Still, it's the 31 day challenge, and I've got to say something. Here we go, a thread about how boring it is waiting for international week to be over so we can get back to the real action. I have an old paragraph which will do here, so I do CPE on it (Copy, Paste and Edit - duh-uh!), and in it goes.

I'm always terrified it'll be like the last minute against Rumania in Euro 2000. There we all were, thinking it's another one of those games, you sweat blood and then you get the payoff, cheering fans, Beckham doing his smarmy victory face and then it's back to the studio with Gary Lineker, but no, round Neville goes the Rumanian, and we're thinking "Stop him", "Stop him" - "NOT LIKE THAT!", and now it's a penalty, they knock it in and home come England, taking the jet plane of shame to the airport of recriminations. Which means that for the rest of our lives we can never relax before full time because it could always be another Rumania.

Because I'm new, it has to go for moderation. Except I'm not new, I've been moderated before, as previously discussed. Oh well.

We'll see if there's any response.

You know I like to bring you the American polls, mainly for comedy value. Previously, I've mocked them here, here and here. This one I can't muster a smile at.

The quote comes from this discussion of the poll, on EvolutionBlog.

When asked what they would do if scientists were to disprove a particular religious belief, nearly two-thirds (64%) of people say they would continue to hold to what their religion teaches rather than accept the contrary scientific finding, according to the results of an October 2006 Time magazine poll.

You don't want to see the paragraph I've just deleted. And it hasn't even left me feeling better. I think I'll leave it at that.