Sunday June 23
Quickly through this week's Friday Five:
1. Do you live in a house, an apartment or a condo? Chateau Weaver is a mid-terrace house.
2. Do you rent or own? Owner-occupier.
3. Does anyone else live with you? No, though next door's weasels have an open door invitation (they see an open door, and they invite themselves in.)
4. How many times have you moved in your life? Well: there was the one by the railway, the one by Rutter, the one the 'rents still have, uni, uni 2, leam, and here. So nine.
5. What are your plans for this weekend? That will be a whole other paragraph...
Mother has a landmark birthday today. One of her older sisters is five years older, and had a landmark birthday last Friday. This gives her an excuse to hold a big knees up at her pad in the wilds of Cheshire. For reasons of distance, I've never really got to know mother's side of the family, and I think that relations were somewhat strained at points in the past. Whatever, they're more on speaking terms, and I'm going to meet people I've not seen in ten years or so.
These are people with whom I have little in common, other than some DNA. My definition of smart casual is a neat shirt, trousers, no tie - my fashion model is Mark Nicholas from C4's cricket coverage. Their definition of smart casual is not wearing the jacket from the suit. Clothes don't make the man, they try to impress and fool viewers into thinking there's something substantive beneath.
As I feared, the various aunts and uncles and second cousins twice removed wonder if they're going to get a slab of wedding cake from me. The simple answer is that that's not going to happen any time soon. It has the added benefit of being an honest assessment of the situation. Honesty from people moaning about how bored they are in their lives, and how they wish they had done something different, is also honest, but gets boring after a time.
It sets me thinking, though, how it's taken something over four years to recover from the last, very messy, breakup. It's been a painful struggle, one that looked intractable at times, involved diversions and long periods of reflection and eventually figuring that things will happen of their own accord and it's best to let them do that. While I won't get those lost years back, I'm so much more mature from the experience and the healing process.
Back at the bash, some distant cousin has hijacked the occasion to announce she's getting married just before the winter solstice. Looks like the shortest day will go the same way as the longest one did.
Ho hum. There's always next year.
Friday June 21
The US Mint announces a new colour scheme for their dollar notes. This will help those of us from more civilised countries - ones that actually go to the expense of using colours other than yuck green on their notes - tell the almost worthless $1 note from the more valuable $50 note. Some more good ideas that they might like to implement:
Get rid of the 1 cent coin. If Finland can take a decision not to use anything smaller than the Euro 5 cent coin, the US can go the same way.
Bring in the 2 cent coin. That'll help with the above.
Similarly, phase out the $1 note for a coin.
And make far more use of the $2 note - or a Toonie coin. (Actually, the Toonie needs far greater circulation from dimwitted cashiers in the UK, but that's another story.)
And, most importantly of all, add the tax to the price listed, so the price you see is the price you pay. "You won't be able to tell if the business or the government is raising the price" is not an answer. Transparency in pricing is so much easier for everyone. It might well increase the number of pennies in circulation, as someone who knows the basket will cost $33.26 can pay (say) two twenties and a cent, and get back a fiver, a toonie, and three quarters.
News drops that a United Station pop starlet who cannot be named as Missy Elliott will shortly be coming out as lesbian. Her "people" are planning a strategic announcement and hoping that they don't mess up as badly as Ellen and Rosie. My money's on Christina Alligator or Pink.
Thursday June 20
Once more around the Jimmy's album. How amazingly well-formed is this record? Still able to move like it's got wheels underneath.
If you want to put some things
in order
you've got to define how
you will order them.
Lay down the ground rules.
Do the hard work.
Think about what you want
and why you want it.
Then the actual sorting
becomes as easy as anything.
The way that some
overpaid
overstressed
overimportant people
can't get their heads round this
simple concept
never ceases to
amaze and
amuse me in equal measure.
Saying
"I want this
and that
but not the other"
might cure the problem
for the moment
but it will come back
in a few weeks or months
and when it comes back
and it will have grown teeth
and it will bite.
Work smarter.
Use your brain.
Not your brawn.
The minute-by-minute account of the USA's victory over Mexico had me (very quietly) in increasing numbers of stitches last Monday, as correspondent Scott Murray wrote the piece pretending to be a US journalist. This was written by a Brit. From London. Or Hampshire. Or somewhere that way. But not the US. And *you must* read from the bottom up.
Since its publication, BBC sportswanker Barry Spinnaker has attributed it to "an american website." Jonny Vorn says it's fr