At the age of 28 the psychic tendancies started to manifest

Second new pub quiz of the week, and things start to get scary. It's The Swan, on Bishopthope Rd. Not far from where I used to live, but not a place I'd ever been to before. Actually a pretty decent pub - TT's Landlord on tap, always a bonus for me.

I correctly identified Kim Wilde's "Kids in America", and Billy Idol's "Hot in the city". Due to peer pressure ended up changing the Idol to Ocean (Big wrong!) - big darn! And also got some none-music ones sorted. But tricky questions: First names of the three original members of Bananarama. We got Siobhan and Keren pretty quickly, but girl no 3 proved elusive. As the quiz end neared us, drastic measures were needed. And it's hard to thing of something more desperate than "Let Rich do automatic writing - that's our best hope". So I try the automatic writing. Close my eyes, let the pen move over the paper - some squigglies come out.

Our first guess is that I'd written Sophie. But then the initial S inspired a guess of Sara from elsewhere in the team. and then when the squiggles were relooked at, it was actually quite easy to see that that was what I had written... Maybe I knew the answer subconsciously?...

But then it got weirder still. On our team was a girl I'd never met before. To try and validate my automatic writing skills, I tried to guess the name of her sister (could have been mother, but I think we changed to sister). A name sprang into my head almost straight away (I had to lightly touch her shoulder to get this to work - all the best psychotics need some small physical connection). The name I thought of was 'Fiona'. Now, because this name had hit me fairly hard, I tried quite consciously to not write it down. And conscious efforts mess up the automatic writing. And I ended with a load of illegible scribbles.

The correct name I should have written was... Fiona. Somehow I had pulled a rabbit from a hat. Sadly, I had (and still have) no way to probe I'd selected that name, other than my apparent look of fear. I have no way of knowing where it came from. It could just be coincidence. But it was more than a bit odd...

Turkey time

Today was the last day of June. Clearly the year is moving on apace, and so it must be time... to start arranging work Christmas dinners. 2 in fact. Seems vaguely ridiculous to me...

I do like Christmas dinners, and am firmly of the opinion that you can't have too many turkey dinners at that time of year. With sprouts and the rest. But June is too early to be thinking about turkey.

Actually, not doing so well on the early Xmas righteous anger here. Must try harder. Completely unrelatedly to Christmas, I did succeed in making my life marginally less complicated today, which is at least something. Only marginally, mind, but it's something. And I shall say no more on this forum. Because it'd bore you to tears.

Things you may not know about Portugal

Today's Euro 2004 competition at work: Submit 5 things Portugal is famous for. After trawling the internet, here's what I found

1. In 1872, Portuguese man, Pere Fansata was the first man to walk unaided across the Bay of Biscay. His oversized inflatable shoes were made entirely of seal skin (due to its useful waterproof properties) and were sewn together by his wife, Marie. He was such a sight that to this day, local Biscay residents still use the phrase "walking like Pere" to refer to anybody walking in oversize footwear.

2. The boat based TV series, Triangle, was filmed entirely off the western coast of Portugal. This was for tax reasons - Portugal was the only (non-landlocked) country in Europe that did not levy a tax on offshore drama. In parts of Finland the tax was as high as 32% of gross dramatised profits. In later years, European leaders realised that the celluloid-shipping industry was being stifled, and the majority of the taxes were removed in 1993.

3. 13th century Portuguese Pope, Pope John XXI was so unhappy living in Vatican City that he temporarily moved the centre of the Catholic Church to Lisbon. Upon his death in 1272, it returned to Rome, but some remnants of his reign remain in Lisbon. There is in fact a whole (small) museum devoted to Lisbon's brief Church-leading industry, and artifacts there include Pope John's Papal Chair, woodcuts of the palace in which he lived (The Basilica de Lisbon) and several official Papal proclomations.

4. The sweets known in England as Jelly Babies were actually first made and popularised in Portugal. Confectioner Bert Basset holidayed there in 1894 and was so impressed with the sweets that he "borrowed" the idea and started producing his own in his Derbyshire factory, upon his return to England. They were an insant success, rapidly outselling all other Bassets sweets, even the Liqourice Allsorts for which he was most well known. The original Jelly Babies are still popular in Portugal where they are known as "Bebês da Geléia".

5. The wild horses that roam the plains of Southern Portugal were the inspiration behind The Osmonds' hit, "Crazy Horses". Whilst watching a film about Portugal in their US ranch, Donny exclaimed - "Cra-zee Horses" and the others, on the spur of the moment went "Whhhhaaaaahhhhh". A song was born, and the brothers never looked back.

I'm sure you'll agree that those are most interesting facts.

The sun was shining on the sea

"The time has come," the Walrus said, "To talk of many things: Of shoes--and ships--and sealing-wax--Of cabbages--and kings--And why the sea..."

"I must interrupt you there" said the carpenter, "for it is getting on and you have to go to work".

"But I haven't discussed why the sea is boiling hot, or whether pigs have wings yet" complained the Walrus.

Carpenter counters "it's not and they don't, end of conversation. Let's go."

And with that the Carpenter started off down the road towards his working domicile. The Walrus relented in his masculine desire to discuss only concrete facts and things and followed. Maybe Old Carpy would let him linger longer tomorrow morning...

The simple things in life are most rewarding

Now this is exciting. Regular readers may recall how only last week, in a fit of breakfastipation I ordered a new toaster from the world web thing. It has just arrived... toasty toast toast!

It's silver, shiny, and conducts electricity through it's elements. It's assembled my hand here in England - not quite the same as handmade, but not bad in this modern age. I've installed it into my kitchen, it sits very pleasantly next to the currently redundant espresso maker (when will I coffee again?...). I have turned it on for three minutes as advised by the instructions, in order to "condition the elements". It smoked a little bit, as I was told it would. Now, now, now it is ready to make me TOAST.

There's just one little ickle problem. I'm not hungry as I had my tea just before it was delivered. And more fundamentally, I have no bread. I have no marmalade. I have no jam, meat spread, meat, marmite, jelly or pate. I have got some margarine, but I don't like margarine, so it is of little use to me. Especially as I have no bread, that most important toast ingredient. So, my first toast will have to wait... until at least Wednesday. Maybe even later.

Sunglasses

Yesterday socks, today sunglasses. Tomorrow...

But sunglasses. Had to buy some new ones today, as one of the lenses had fallen off my old ones. Not much use to me then unless I keep one eye permanently closed. I don't wish to do this, it would hurt after a while, look rather stupid and would basically be too much effort. The old glasses are now binned, and I have a brand spanking new pair. Nothing fancy, nothing expensive (they probably barely protect my eyes), but they'll do.

I do always seem to end up buying sunglasses that look faintly ridiculous. Not laughably ludicrous you understand, there are no comedy frames, absurd shaped or coloured lenses or musical flashing lights (though that would be cool) - just faintly ridiculous. I think it's because I tend to buy them on my own, and so when I try them on in the shop I can't see very well what they look like. Everything goes a bit dark and it's hard to make out whether they suit me or not. If there was someone there to say - "maybe try slightly larger frames", "I don't think grey is your colour", "you look like a gimp" sort of thing.

But there is just me, so I now have new sunnies, not dissimilar in fact to the old ones. Now I must try to not sit on them, lose them or accidentally feed them to a passing goat. Goats'll eat anything.

Socks

Socks. When you wear socks, eventually they get holes in the ends. Well, mine do anyway. I've been wondering at what point should you give up on a particular pair and throw them away. How many holes? One hole you can definitely get away with. And when lots of holes all start to merge into one big one, it's bin time for Mr Socky. But where is the intermediate point?

My Day Today

Here's my day so far - not every little bit - for example, whilst I could relate at what time I cleaned my teeth, for how long and what brand of toothpaste I used, this could be construed as being too detailed to be worth reading. Or indeed writing. This is just the highlights. I think you'll enjoy it as much as I did.

1. I went for a haircut. I wasn't sure whether I was going to bother or not, right up until the point where my path would diverge either towards the barber, or towards town. The hair could have waited for another week, and I wasn't really in the mood. But what guarantee would I have that I'd have time next Saturday? None! So, carpe dium and all that. And now I am shorn. Not that it's much different or anything, just a little shorter.

2. I bought an engagement card. Will you people please stop getting married? It's costing me a fortune! Ok, it's not a hugely big or expensive card, but it all adds up. Now I just need to get round to writing it and hoping that I can remember the address.

3. Happy Birthday Jenny! I think it's today...

4. I've been getting slightly too much pleasure listening to Dire Straits' "Telegraph Road". Great song. A bit long though, clocking in as it does at 14 minutes and 16 seconds. Time enough to make and drink a cup of tea? No it wasn't. The tea was cherry by the way.

5. I should try and think of a plan for tonight. Maybe I'll get lucky and someone reading this will do one for me - hint, hint. (Listening to "Mr Brightside" by The Killers as I write this - it's very good!).

6. I Purchased my first bag of Satsumas of the year (I think). Must mean that Christmas is coming near. And I was convinced in town last night that a brass band was playing "Santa Claus Is Coming To Town". Though it was apparently "Da doo ron ron" by The Crystals. Go here for Bon-tempi-tastic version of it. Speaking of last night, at least I know now how a Walla-walla-bing-bang is made, and I do plan to stop narrating pigeon porn.

I think that that covers off all the high points. Doncha wish you were me?

And finally (for now), why not visit "Mondo di residuo di stoffa". Always fun.

Impossible things

'Alice laughed: "There's no use trying," she said; "one can't believe impossible things."
"I daresay you haven't had much practice," said the Queen. "When I was younger, I always did it for half an hour a day. Why, sometimes I've believed as many as six impossible things before breakfast."'

Sometimes I think I'm good at that too. Except I don't have breakfast as often as I should.

They're all fruity, not just the orange ones

In my ongoing mission to try new sweets so that you don't have to, I tried Fruit Smarties at the weekend. After my recent unpleasant experience of Fruit Allsorts, I was somewhat dubious, but I know my duty and I carried it out.

Normal Smarties are round, sugary coated chocolate. All taste the same apart from the orange ones which taste orangey. This is either genuine or psychological, but I think genuine. They are like flattened M&Ms, but much nicer. And they come in a round cardboard tube, with plastic top and bottom. The top normally has a letter of the alphabet under it so if you collect enough you can spell words like "giraffe", "guaranteed" or "gynaecological". Most kids probably don't do that (especially the last one) and instead just have lots of fun eating the sweets, replacing the top and then squeezing the tube so that the top flies across the room and hits Mrs Dawson the maths teacher on the back of her head.

So onto Fruit smarties.
Good things about Fruit Smarties:
- They taste like Tutti Fruttis, but are slightly smaller.
- You can play a game where you have to guess the flavour the sweet you've just put in your mouth. This is a bit like the game you can play with Opal Fruits but better and easier because you don't have to unwrap Fruit Smarties.
- They come in a cardboard box which can be opened and closed at will.
- They are lovely. I want more.

Bad things about Fruit Smarties
- No cardboard tube, so no letters to collect.
- No cardboard tube, so no fun firing plastic tops across the room.
- I've eaten all the ones I had.
- Not a lot of point to them given that they taste just like Tutti Fruttis (but are slightly smaller)

Overall, I give Fruit Smarties marks out of 10 as follows:

******** 8/10

That is quite a good score. Fruit allsorts would have got 2 at most. Maybe only one.

Raise a toast to the Super Toaster

I'm thinking it's time I got myself a toaster. To make toast with. Nice toast, good for breakfast if you have breakfast, good for evening meals if you're really lazy (and you're not trying to impress a girl you've invited round for a candlelit dinner). I don't generally eat much toast, but currently how can I tell whether that is because I don't want toast, or because I can't have toast because I have no toaster? I had a slice of toast on Sunday morning and it was quite pleasant. Or did it just appear to taste pleasant because I was happy? Who can tell with toast...

So, as I said, I'm thinking it's time I got myself a toaster. Not just any toaster, but a posh, shiny toaster that will last for approximately a million years so that I never have to buy another toaster. Here's the toaster I have chosen: "I'm a toaster". Yes, it's the Dualit Vario Super Toaster. A toaster so good, that it's actually called a Super Toaster. It flies and rescues damsels. And cooks damn good toast.*

I expect I'll have trouble sleeping tonight, with all the new toaster excitement I'm currently feeling.

* actually, it only seems to be the John Lewis website that calls it Super Toaster, I've actually sourced mine from somewhere else, where it was a bit cheaper. Shame.

Quicksand

I was watching an archaeology program on Sunday night, and it got me thinking about quicksand. When I was a kid, you couldn't watch TV for more than 10 minutes without seeing some poor sod encountering some quicksand and being sucked down into it. Sometimes they'd escape, or be rescued, but sometimes they'd meet their end there, especially if they were the bad guys.

I even have vague memories of being around beaches when I was young and seeing signs warning of possible nearby quicksand. Just scaremongering, or a real hazard?

In recent years, I don't remember a single TV programme or film that has had any quicksand in it. Not even 24's Kim Bauer (a girl who has managed to get into pretty much every scrape imaginable) has managed to encounter this particular hazard. Where has all the quicksand gone?

I have some theories:
1. Quicksand is not real, and I in fact had no real childhood - I have imagined everything up to the age of 12, and some of it is inaccurate. Or maybe I have been given false memories by a therapist and/or evil hypnotist.
2. All the world's quicksand has been gathered up by terrorists for use in some new, ultra secret WOMD. One day soon, London will wake up to find all the streets have been coated in two metres of quicksand and everyone will be sucked down to an early grave.
3. Quicksand has become too cliched and film-makers have tired of it.
4. Over the last 20 years or so, humans have evolved special feet that let us walk unaided over quicksand (and possibly sucky mud too), so even though there is still as much if it as ever, we just don't notice it any more.
5. I'm not watching as much TV as I did as a kid.

If anyone does know where and why it's all gone, then answers on a postcard to the usual address.

Here is some information I found on the interweb about quicksand. It doesn't really answer my question though.

You can never have too much B&S

The new Belle and Sebastian EP was out yesterday - always a treat! 2 lovely whole new tracks.

I remember when they put out the 'Dog on Wheels' EP back in 1997 (how can that be 7 years ago already?!) - it was so good that I just played the four tracks on repeat for hours and hours. Couldn't get enough. That was back in the days when B&S didn't release singles off albums, just EPs full of brand new material. Since the move to Rough Trade, they have been taking a more conventional approach and releasing songs from albums as singles - but at least they are keeping up high standards on the b-sides.

And even better, the new CD comes with a fun little game to play, featuring a little bookworm. Slightly less frustrating than the previous "I'm a cuckoo" game. It's available online too I think.

Goran's Beer Money

I had one task that I was supposed to have done this weekend, which I have failed to do: Find a bottle of Croatian beer. I tried the beer shop in town, but they didn't seem to have any - though I was too lazy to actually ask the man who worked there. I think I'd hoped they'd have a little section of shelf labelled 'Croatia', in the same way that Supermarkets often have parts of the wine shelves labelled "France" or "New World".

Going off on a slight tangent, isn't the phrase "New World" slightly antiquated now? Surely there must be a more up to date set of words that could be used? How about "America" or "Bushland" or something?

Back to beer. Yep, didn't find any Croatian beer. I did however find an (almost) amusing advert starring Goran Ivanisevic for a Croatian brew called 'Pan'. Watch it here if you really have nothing better to do.

Not for the fainthearted

Yesterday was a fancy dress party at Castle Bert. Theme of the fancy dress: Musicals. The following photo is quite disturbing - it depicts a welshman in ladies underwear:




I hope that does not give anyone nightmares. In case you are unable to work it out, Daf is dressed as Lil' Kim, from the Lady Marmalade track used in 'Moulin Rouge'. If you ask me, that is a pretty tenuous costume - Moulin Rouge is not really a proper musical in my opinion, since all the songs are sourced from other places. And the costume in question is not even from the film, instead it is from an accompanying music video.

Anyway, I didn't really want to post the picture, but Daf was so desperate for the world to see his new look that I thought it would be cruel to go against his wishes.

My costume was much better, and much bettily linked to a musical. I went as Buffy (well, there was one episode that was a proper musical, so it counts). I had a nice axe, some lovely long blode hair, a couple of stakes and lady breasts. We had a picture of the Buffster from the OMWF soundtrack CD, and frankly it was like looking in a mirror when I saw it. Absolutely uncanny.

I can sum the rest of the evening up in three words: Wine, Women and Song (please ignore the 'and' when counting). And I shall leave the rest to your imaginations.

Tickling

It's always fun to check what searches people have been running that have pulled up this wondrous blog. I can't help but feel sometimes they must be disappointed at what they find.

I particularly pity whoever tried "tickled a girl's feet" in Yahoo and found this site. Google returns the same result. Not really a Googlewhack (or even close) but still odd.

Clearly there are not enough people out there tickling girls' feet in bed and then writing about it. So, what I want you all to do is use the phrase "tickled a girl's feet" in your blog later, so that it doesn't look like I'm the only person with a foot fetish.

Wet Wet Wet

A day of rain. After weeks of sunshine, today is looking wet. I'm going straight out after work and can't be bothered to be carrying my umbrella round with me, so I'm gonna try and dodge the raindrops on my walk in to the office in a short while. Wish me luck...

In every job that must be done...

I said a few days ago that I didn't intend to post about Euro 2004, due to me having no interest in football. Well, this isn't about football. Not really. At work, for the duration of the tournament, we have a series of games, quizzes and competitions, into which people were free to enter teams. Teams were then randomly allocated a European Country that made it through to the football finals. Teams can win prizes for winning these things and also on how well they decorate their area in the style or colours of their allocated country.

My team (for I am captain) got England. So we've had lots of fun putting together a shrine to godlike English people (eg Tom Baker, Richard Bacon, Thora Hird etc), collections of English Wit and Wisdom, and other things. It's been rather like being back at school where you put up displays on the walls. I also spent half an hour this lunchtime blowing up balloons (red and white). Tying knots in balloons is a skill I only learnt in recent years so it's nice to have opp to use it from time to time. I did blow one of them up slightly too much and it burst in my face which gave me (and those around me!) a bit of a fright!

We also have a daily quiz/challenge. Yesterday, the first team to name 10 famous people from their country would win. If you happen to be Latvia, this ain't so easy. If you're England, it would be extremely embarrassing to not win. Thankfully we did win. Yay! Today was a little harder. We were sent a list of 10 football related phrases (eg "Who ate all the pies", "The referee needs new glasses") which we had to translate into the language of our country. They had today though realised that this might be quite easy for the England team (ie us) so they instead made us translate into Portuguese. A couple of minutes with Google later, and we sent off the entry and... won again! We're great!

I won't be around for tomorrow morning's challenge sadly, as I have a meeting in another building. Hopefully the rest of the team will manage without me and make it three in a row (something the real England team are unlikely to do).

Football itself is still really dull though!

Lost card

At the weekend I received a birthday card. It was not my birthday, and the card was not addressed to me - it was addressed to Miss K Smith. I am not she. I opened the card anyway, in the off-chance there was a return address in it. There wasn't, but I know now that K is Karen, and she has an Auntie Jane and an Uncle Michael (who she can't be that close to, or they'd have her real address!).

If by some fluke, you happen to be reading this Karen, then I have your card. If you are Jane or Michael, then Karen doesn't have your card. If anyone knows any of these people, then get in touch and I'll ensure the card reaches it's proper destination. Otherwise, sorry Karen, it's bin time for your little card.

Music Downloading

The iTunes Music Store launched in Europe today - the first (I think) online music download service to work with the iPod. Which is handy for those of us with iPods. I've had a little play with it, and it seems fairly slick and easy to use, with reasonable pricing at 79p a track. As an experiment, and to check it all works, I downloaded a couple of tracks (don't laugh) - "Four Minute Warning" by Mark Owen, and "I saved the world today" by The Eurythmics. And it all works fine. And more to the point I've not had to buy a whole album by either artist to get the one song I wanted.

Everything is not perfect in the world of iTunes at the moment though. The major record labels are all on board, so chances are that if you want anything mainstream, you'll be fine. Plenty of Dido, Avril Lavigne and even Keane. If you want anything on an independent label however, then you are going to be disappointed. Apple hasn't yet managed to sort out a payment deal with the indies, so no Belle & Sebastian, no Cinerama, no Franz Ferdinand and no Thirteen Senses. Plus many others are not there too, obviously (it's be daft if there were only four bands left on indies!).

I'm hoping that this dispute will be sorted out soon, as the majority of the music I buy tends to be on the smaller labels - for the iTunes Store to be any major use to me, I need Apple to play ball with the indies. Maybe they'll just end up charging more, say 99p for the good stuff.

But this does lead to a wider question, why should I bother to use the iTunes Store at all? If there's stuff I want, I can get it easily using Kazaa, Bit Torrent, Usenet, or several other methods. I can even borrow CDs of friends if I'm really desperate. Or I can buy CDs from the shop and have the nice little case and booklet and maybe some fancy packaging.

So firstly, I'll say that I have no objection to actually paying for music. It is clear to me that if everybody stopped buying music, and just freeloaded off the net, then all the labels would go bust (major and indie), and there'd be nothing produced. Sure, there'd still be some bands who'd put stuff out on their own back, with their own money, and they could make money by doing gigs and selling merchandise, but at the end of the day, if the artists aren't selling music they are not going to make any money. They'll need other jobs, the music may suffer. I just can't see it working. Or maybe the industry would just need to move to a new business model. I don't know.

Anyway, what I was trying to get to there was that I don't mind exchanging my money for someone else's tunes.

The majority of times I have downloaded tunes from the 'net for free, it has been for one of four reasons:
1. The music is not released yet. I couldn't buy it, even though I wanted to. Example: The new They Might Be Giants Album, "The Spine".
2. The music is released, but I can't find it in my local stores. Example: "Castaways and Cutouts" by The Decemberists.
3. The music is avaialble free for download from a band website. Example: "The first word is the hardest" by Four Day Hombre.
4. The music is dull, bland rubbish that I only download because I see it available for free and figure it might be handy to have around one day, maybe if people come round the house. Example: Katie Melua, "Call off the search" (which really is incredibly dull).

In cases 1 and 2, I'll often end up buying the album anyway when it is released, or if I find it. In case 3, it is generally only one or two tracks available, which I'll end up buying on an album at some point. And case 4, we're talking about crap I'd never buy anyway. So in no case, has anyone really lost out.

I seem to have spent a lot of time there justifying myself spending money on tunes if I want to. When it comes down to it, I'm lucky to have a decent job that enables me to earn enough money to buy the tunes I want to, so I do.

So the real issue I have is whether to buy a physical CD, or some less tangible data. And this then mainly reduces to: "Do I want packaging". In the past, I'd have said "yes" straightaway. You get nice booklets, shiny CDs, and maybe some cardboard too if it's a "Special Limited Edition". But for about the last year, and especially since I got the laptop, I have listened to very few actual CDs. As soon as I buy one, it gets copied straight onto the laptop and the iPod, and I then either listen off the lappy, or plug the 'pod into a proper stereo and use that.

I've also pretty much run out of space on my shelves for CDs. I can maybe do another 100, but after that, full, full, full. At some point I'll have to get rid of some of them. Or buy some more shelves. But I think I'm finding that I'm less and less bothered about having the actual physical CDs and cases anymore. And doing things electronically has two more advantages - it's a bit cheaper (maybe... defintely not always), and it has to better environmentally.

So I think I'm going to have to buy a few albums in electric form and see how I go with them. See whether I wake at night, panicking about the lack of a plastic case.

There is one way though in which my behaviour will definitely change - I can't see me buying many physical singles any more. They seem a very natural thing to buy online - buy the tune I want, maybe the b-sides too if they're any good, and then when the album is out, buy a CD then if I want a hard copy.

And hopefully it will encourage people to release albums with tracks that are all good on them. If an album only has two good tracks on it, a lot of people are not going to want to buy the rest of the album.

I suspect some of what I've said above may be flawed, naieve, or just wrong, but I can't really help that. In the meantime a final repeated message - sort things out with the indies, Apple.

Nice new sheets

I've been spending my nights this week in brand new sheets. Feels good. New sheets good. Two new pillows too. Yuuuummmmm, new pillows. It's like being in a hotel bed. If I could afford to buy new sheets every week... Mind, if I did buy new ones every week I'd rapidly run out of space to store them. Though I suppose in that case I could just throw away the old ones rather than storing them.

Two late strikes from Zinedine Zidane - Hilarious!

I intend this to be my first and last post on the subject of Euro 2004 because I really do have very little interest in it. The tournament started over in Portugal a couple of days ago, and probably goes on for another couple of weeks.

It is quite hard to avoid the football at the moment - not only are all the matches being broadcast on normal terrestrial television (rather than proper sports channels where they belong), but the event is all over the papers, posters, radios and every other medium going. It is even polluting the normally pristine waters of this blog. I know I'm not alone in my total disinterest so here are five ways to avoid the so called "beautiful game" (frankly, I've seen more beautiful lepers):

1. Don't leave the house. Not even in the event of a terrorist attack.
2. Avoid any pub with a TV during matches. Because you are unlikely to know when the matches are (I certainly have no clue) then it is best to avoid pubs with TVs entirely.
3. Leave the country - go abroad. Obviously avoid Portugal, and possibly avoid Europe entirely. I suspect Peru may be safe, but I wouldn't put money on it.
4. Using a sharp knife, carefully remove your eyes and ears and put them in jars ready for reattachment later. You'll probably need some liquid to store them in, but as I am not a medical expert I can't recommend an exact process - "careful" should be your watch-word.
5. Suicide. This is maybe a little drastic, as unlike eye removal, or going abroad, it cannot be easily reversed.

I hope these are helpful for some of you. Now, if I can just skip back to point 3 for a minute. During tournaments such as this one, pub TVs act as total tw*t magnets - to the extent that if you go to a pub that does not have a TV you can guarantee that it will have 90% less pissed-up idiots in it than normal. It is almost tempting to suggest that England should be forced to play every night, with the matches beamed to a specially selected bunch of pubs country-wide. You'd end up with all the idiots coralled into a few known places that all sensible people could avoid. And the idiots get to watch England every night - everyone's happy, it's a complete win-win situation (apart from maybe for the England team...).

Now it's not the fact that people watch the football in pubs per se that annoys me, more the manner in which they tend to watch it. ie ridiculously loudly, shouting, chanting, spilling and crying like something important is going on. People seem to turn into complete animals, losing the residual humanity that their retarded male (and they are mostly male) brains have kept. It's a shame that stun guns are illegal - it would be a lot of fun if it was legal to buzz anyone who started to display Neanderthal tendencies.

Anyway last night's England/France match was hilarious. Didn't actually watch it, but I did have a smile when I woke this morning and heard that England had lost by conceding two goals in the last two minutes. This has put us bottom of our group, so there is the potential for an early exit from the tournament. I'm under no illusions that that would make the whole tournament go away, but it might at least stop some of the mindless jingoism (cliche alert!).

After the tragic defeat, there was a bit of trouble in a few places around the country (though thankfully none reported in Portugal). Hotspots last night were Croydon, Wakefield and bizarrely, Boston, Lincolnshire. Another reason to avoid that blighted county.

On a final note: People of England - what is with these ridiculous England flags that every other person has stuck on their car aerials? There's enough complaints about these elsewhere so I won't go on (too much), but really, you might as well put a sign on your car saying "I am an arse". They just seem utterly redundant to me. Mind you, it at least lets cars be singled out to have "2-1" written in the dirt on their sides. If there are any Scottish, Welsh or Irish peeps reading, you might find that this is a fun game to play today *.

I think what I was trying to say is that I don't much like or see the point of football, and hence I intend World of Lint to become a football free zone for the next few weeks. And good luck to England anyway, looks like you're going to need it!

* Vandalism of cars is in no way endorsed by this blog, or its contributors. Unless it's really funny.

A recipe for fish

Bert held an impromptu barbecue yesterday. Since it was another lovely hot day, this was no bad thing. And going out in town would have been no fun at all due to the races being on again, meaning that in the evening all the pubs would have been full of fat, drunk, bald men.

Bert had bought himself a fish to barbecue. Here I will share with you his special recipe, that I have called "Fish With Herbs On Top".


 

It's an easy recipe. Just get a fish, put it on a hot barbecue and then put your herb garden on top of the fish and wait. And voila, you have a meal fit for a king.

Legacy of Krull

I've just been watching the trailer for 'The Chronicles of Riddick', the 'Pitch Black' sequel. Looks quite entertaining, but I guess I could be proved wrong. No idea when it's out in the UK and I can't be arsed to look it up. Two things struck me from the trailer itself:
1. Judi Dench???
2. It looks like finally a film has taken a stylistic influence from 80s classic 'Krull'. All the sets, costumes, everything look like they could have come straight from it. This is a good thing.

Joe's Last Day

Bye Joe!

Hot summer nights

I still find it hard to decide whether this is the best or the worst intro to a song ever. In either case, it seems vaguely appropriate at the moment.

Meat: On a hot summer night, would you offer your throat to the wolf with the red roses?
Girl: Will he offer me his mouth?
Meat: Yes
Girl: Will he offer me his teeth?
Meat: Yes
Girl: Will he offer me his jaws?
Meat: Yes
Girl: Will he offer me his hunger?
Meat: Yes
Girl: Again. Will he offer me his hunger?
Meat: YES
Girl: And will he starve without me?
Meat: Yes
Girl: And does he love me?
Meat: Yes
Girl: Yes
Meat: On a hot summer night, would you offer your throat to the wolf with the red roses?
Girl: Yes
Meat: I bet you say that to all the boys.

Yesterday, all my Venuses seemed so far away

Yesterday's Venus transit has now been and gone. I'd like to say that I observed Venus. Mainly because I would then have used a transitive verb in the sentence which would seem appropriate. However, I didn't really see it for a number of reasons:

1. Cloud cover early in the morning
2. Too much sunshine later in the morning

I always have a problem with these Sun related astronomical events. And the problem is that I don't really hold with all this new fangled sun-viewing technology, like really dark glass or eclipse glasses. I figure if you can't see something with a normal pair of sunglasses, then it's probably not worth seeing.

So armed with nothing but my sunglasses and my wits, I went out to see the transit. I put on the shades and had a quick glance upward, but to be honest I didn't really see much. Even after staring for a full 10 minutes I still couldn't make out the small black dot that would have been Venus. But not to worry, I can always watch it on the TV News later.

With this consolation in mind, I looked forwards once more and headed onwards into town. Sadly, I was now blind and stepped (ironically) in front of a transit van. The van was travelling at 60mph and killed me instantly. It's lucky that they have an internet cafe in Purgatory.

Two morals from this that we can all learn from:
- The sun is a mass of incandescent gas, a gigantic nuclear furnace. That will BLIND you.
- Speed kills - slow down kids, nowhere's worth going to anyway.

Return of the Mark

After a 7 year hiatus, Mark Radcliffe is finally back on late night evening radio. Some differences to the old Radio 1 show (or was it 1FM back then?) - No Lard anymore, no sketches and it's now on Radio 2. However (well based on the half hour I heard last night) he's still playing some great tunes and has some great guests. And a woman from Coronation Street, but I'll skip by that. Last night for example: Badly Drawn Boy in session. Since I have no intention of going out tonight, hopefully I can listen to the rest of the show via the magic of the innanet when I get out of work.

A wedding surprise

It's always nice to be invited to a wedding, especially if it's the wedding of one of your friends that you've known for years and years (10 now in the following case).

I was invited to a wedding today. Came as something of a surprise though, as I had no idea that the person getting married (Hello Marlon!) was engaged. Actually I'm not even sure I knew he was seeing anyone...

Oh, well - shouldn't complain. Get to go on a fun stag weekend somewhere and then a wedding too. Quality entertainment all round! Hopefully he'll send me more details of both in good time. Hopefully his future missus is more organised than he is.

Incidentally - if any of you lot are getting married and have "forgotten" to tell me, do let me know!

Ice is nice

One great thing about being a grown-up is that you can have ice-lollies whenever you want. Even in winter if you want to.

I bought some Fruit Pastille lollies at the supermarket earlier. Nicey icey. I have been fairly restrained so far and only eaten one of them. So far.

On the Symmetry of Spaceships

Let's start today with a quick quiz. Out of the following spaceships (all from Star Wars for now), which is the odd one out:

1. X-Wing Fighter
2. Star Destroyer
3. Millennium Falcon
4. Slave 1
5. Snow Speeder

Answer... It's the millennium Falcon. And the reason is to do with symmetry. It's the only ship in the whole of the Star Wars universe that displays basic asymmetry. I know there are various others with smaller differences between right and left (eg the TIE-Bomber), but with the MF's little cabin, sticking out on the from right hand side, it loses a lot of aesthetics, to my mind at least.

This may not just be an aesthetic issue - Since the Falcon is powered by some kind of engine which propels it centrally from behind, then its builders must have put some kind of counterweight in the left side - otherwise its centre of gravity would be over to the right and as it moved forward, it would start to rotate. This would not be a useful trait for a spaceship.

It's not just ships in Star Wars that have a central line of symmetry. When I think of any other ships from any other film or TV series, I'm having real trouble thinking of non-symmetric ones. Anything from Star Trek, B5 or Blakes 7, The Nostromo or even the Space Shuttle. All symmetric. It's just the Falcon that is on its own, annoying me.

Not sure where I was going with this.

Anyway, a while back I'd been talking about getting a Lego Star Destroyer. I'm now glad I didn't because I've found a picture which demonstrates how big it is better than the photo on the Lego website.
Here it is. I'm fairly sure there is nowhere in the flat it could sensibly go! This shows the importance of doing good research before making a purchase.

Same old same old.

Once more I find myself at home at lunchtime. Today it was to take delivery of my new backup drive. I'm performing the first back up as I write - 15Gb down, 12Gb to go. This will hopefully the last time this whole data debacle will be mentioned here because frankly I'm getting bored writing about it. Hopefully it won't take more than another 15 mins or so, as I need to be back at work in a short while.

Return of the Mac

I've spent a large part of this evening reinstalling software onto the Powerbook, but am now finished, and back where I started - hooray! And I think the only significant thing I have ended up losing is a load of old emails. Could have been much worse! Sadly, I'm now too tired to be arsed to write anything. I have a vague feeling I used to be more interesting... Ah well.

Post #200

This is my 200th post since I started writing back in January, giving me an average blog rate of just over 1.3 posts per day. I feel like I should look back and take stock. But sadly I don't have time to do that tonight. Instead, here's a little happy list - 3 good things that have happened (to me) today:

1. Got the laptop back - it seems to work fine, but I do have to spend a load of time sometime soon reinstalling programs etc.
2. I won a Coca-Cola Football at lunchtime.
3. I have actually booked (and paid a deposit) on my holiday! It's actually going to happen!

Maybe I'll have time for some good old fashioned retrospection tomorrow.

News Update

I may get the laptop back tomorrow if I can get away from work for a couple of hours at lunchtime. So this evening I've done the thing I should have done (literally) years ago and ordered a backup hard drive. Never again shall I be at risk of excessive information loss! No more shall I fear the demon of disappearing data.

In even more exciting news, I used the new bridge to the station yesterday. It was a lot of fun.