Bruno's Eminem stunt was staged

At last! We get to watch someone being roundly humiliated on television, and we don't have to tie ourselves up in figure-of-eight knots.

I'm talking, of course, of "Bruno's" magesterial swoop, dressed as a giant angel, onto Eminem's head at the MTV movie awards. Behold, the hubris of the rap star, as he fails to see the humour in being sandwiched between the thighs of an upended English comedian masquerading as a gay Austrian fashion journalist. (If Eminem was in fact in on the act, as has been suggested, then you have to hand it to him for his virtuoso show of hard-man indignation.)

I have to admit I have a soft spot for Sacha Baren Cohen, whose comedy may be crude, but who manages to make such an admirable cross-section of modern society look ridiculous that you can forgive him for the lime-coloured mankini. And his latest persona, Bruno, the flamboyant presenter who satirises the sycophantic, self-righteous world of celebrities and their hangers-on, may be his best yet.

China Blocks Twitter (And Almost Everything Else)

It seems that as of today, the Chinese authorities have blocked internet access to Twitter, Flickr, Bing, Live.com, Hotmail.com and several other sites. Wordpress, YouTube, Blogger are also blocked.

According to early reports on Twitter and on blogs it seems that the Chinese authorities want to quiet down the entire major social networking and social media part of the web ahead of the 20th anniversary of Tiananmen massacre on June 4th.

As far as solutions for evading the block go, you can find some advice here and here. Furthermore, Twitter may be working if you’re using third party apps to access it, such as TweetDeck.