REM head indoors

Blame it, if you like, on the rift that runs through the city, but REM have been forced to relocate their Cardiff gig from the Millennium Stadium:

Bob Gold, the band's European manager, told the BBC sales had not met expectations and it was decided it was better for the band and the audience to move into "a smaller, more intimate venue".

That 'more intimate' venue is Cardiff International Arena, so it's not like you're going to be at risk from Stipe knocking your pint over if he gets a bit jumpy.

Sperm for tickets: An even-handed approach

Ireland, apparently, is facing a shortage of sperm donors, and in a bid to try and get young people to lend a hand, an agency called Sperm For Tickets has popped up, promising:

Our current promotion is to offer tickets to ANY music festival in Europe in exchange for a sperm donation. Flights and accommodation are not included.

Any music festival? Really?

This doesn't really add up - if the offer was genuine, wouldn't the offer of tickets be a little more restricted? After all, there are some major music festivals which have already sold out, so to make some tosser's dreams of Glastonbury tickets come true, there'd have to be some pretty heavy digging into pockets and, of course, some circumvention of security rules. We'd expect a genuine offer to have some disclaimery terms and conditions on it.

Secondly, there's the lack of any indication that any fertility groups are involved in the scheme - unless SpermForTickets is operating to an Underpants Gnomes business plan (get the sperm delivered, then work out what to do with it), that seems totally unlikely.

Third, this offer is open to everyone across the globe who will, we're told, will be able to whack out in the comfort of their own home:

To aid this problem we have set up an alternative method for donations by using specially developed donation containers combined with a fast courier network to offer a mail system. The patented container is a new discovery that was made by our research and development team, which allows samples to to stay fresh for up to 3 days. We offer a worldwide courier service using DHL and UPS that guarantee delivery times.

Since DHL and UPS are both pretty keen to only pick up properly labelled and packaged bodily fluids, it's unlikely that - even if this packaging somehow does exist and manages to keep sperm alive outside of a pair of testicles or a warm environment for so long - that'd be that keen on picking up parcels of spunk from any Joe Schmoe keen to get to T in The Park.

And let's not even get into the thorny problem of sperm donation across national boundaries with competing legislations covering the rights of donor, recipient and possible childrens, which you'd expect a genuine website to at least make some reference to.

A quick DNS look up points us to a group called Area52, whose website tells us:

AREA 52 was set up as a technology and ideas based innovation group.
It is comprised of individuals from varying backgrounds covering, marketing, graphic design, web design, data / documentation management, facilities management, management consultancy and IT hardware design.

The AREA52 concept is to bring together individuals from varying backgrounds in an idea generation forum, with a view to creating possible spin off enterprises or projects.

We're figuring this is either some sort of stunt to raise the group's profile, or to measure gullibility on the net. (NME.com has reported it, straight-faced.)

If it was genuine, it'd be such a botched, rotten idea and strewn with so many legal pitfalls as to make you hope that nobody involved was ever left in the care of the big fridge of sperms.