dom.blog

– The sky is fixed grey

– It was pouring with rain

– BBC Parliament is re-running the election where Thatcher got her ugly little claws on the country. For the first time.

Well, enjoy the Bank Holiday!

The good news is that Blogger are now offering beta Gmail accounts to blogger users!

The bad news is that they have to be considered ‘active.’ Which I’m not.

Anyway, the word on the street in that Gmail could well beat Hotmail and Yahoo in the future with 1GB storage space, only text adverts (the same as the selections to the right of Google search results) and a nice, clean, ‘Google’ interface. It looks good, if only I could see it for myself…!

The following comes from a Newsnight email (not my own work!) but is very, very funny:

1. If staying in a haunted house, women should investigate any strange noises wearing their most revealing underwear.

2. Beds have strange L-shaped top sheets that reach up to armpit level on a woman but only waist level on the man lying beside her.

3. All grocery shopping bags contain at least one stick of French bread.

4. It’s easy for anyone to land a plane, providing there is someone in the control tower to talk you down.

5. Once applied, lipstick will never rub off – even while scuba diving.

6. The ventilation system of any building is a perfect hiding place. No one will ever think of looking for you in there and you can travel to any other part of the building without difficulty.

7. You’re likely to survive any battle in any war unless you make the mistake of showing someone a picture of your sweetheart back home.

8. Should you wish to pass yourself off as a German officer, it will not be necessary to speak the language. A German accent will do.

9. The Eiffel Tower can be seen from any window of any building in Paris.

10. People on TV never finish their drinks.

11. A man will show no pain while taking the most ferocious beating but will wince when a woman tries to clean his wounds.

12. When paying for a taxi, never look at your wallet as you take out a note – just grab one at random and hand it over. It will always be the exact fare.

13. If you lose a hand, it will cause the stump of your arm to grow by 15cm.

14. Kitchens don’t have light switches. When entering a kitchen at night, you should open the fridge door and use that light instead.

15. During all police investigations, it will be necessary to visit a strip club at least once.

16. Mothers routinely cook eggs, bacon and waffles for their family every morning, even though the husband and children never have time to eat them.

17. Cars and trucks that crash will almost always burst into flames.

18. A single match will be sufficient to light up a room the size of a football stadium.

19. If a killer is lurking in your house, it’s easy to find him. Just relax and run a bath – even if it’s the middle of the afternoon.

20. All single women have a cat.

21. Any person waking from a nightmare will sit bolt upright and pant.

22. Even when driving down a perfectly straight road, it is necessary to turn the steering wheel vigorously from left to right every few moments.

23. One man shooting at 20 men has a better chance of killing them all than 20 men firing at one.

24. If a phone line is broken, communication can be restored by frantically beating the cradle and saying, “Hello?, Hello?”

25. Most people keep a scrapbook of newspaper cuttings – especially if any of their family or friends has died in a strange boating accident.

26. It does not matter if you are heavily outnumbered in a fight involving martial arts – your enemies will wait patiently to attack you one by one by dancing around in a threatening manner until you have knocked out their predecessor.

27. During a very emotional confrontation, instead of facing the person you are speaking to, it is customary to stand behind them and talk to their back.

28. When you turn out the light to go to bed, everything in your room will still be clearly visible, just slightly bluish.

29. Dogs always know how to spot villains and will bark at them and no one else.

30. Police departments give their officers personality tests to make sure they are deliberately assigned a partner who is their total opposite.

31. When they are alone, all foreigners somehow prefer to speak English to each other.

32. If there is a deranged killer on the loose, this will coincide with a thunderstorm that has brought down all the power and phone lines in the vicinity.

33. There’s always a chainsaw around when you need one.

34. Rather than wasting bullets, megalomaniacs prefer to kill their arch-enemies using complicated machinery involving fuses, pulley systems, deadly gases, lasers and man eating sharks that will allow their captives at least 20 minutes to escape.

35. All bombs are fitted with helpful electronic timing devices that have large red readouts so you know exactly when they’re going to go off.

36. It is always possible to park directly outside the building you are visiting.

37. Make-up can safely be worn to bed without smudging.

38. A detective can only solve a case once he has been suspended from duty.

39. If you decide to start dancing in the street, everyone you bump into will know all the steps.

Right, for those of you still reading (guess we’re down into single figures here – if we were ever higher!) here’s a review of my little telly feast tonight.

We start off with ‘My Family’ (8:30, BBC1). Fairly average sitcom fare, tonight’s was not great really apart from Nic – always great to have around. The climax was especially weak with Ben being carried off in a coffin (couldn’t have seen that coming, could you? but all round still makes for fun viewing after a long week.

Next, ‘Friends’ (9:00, Channel 4). Now I’m not too familiar with the adoption system in the States, but how many people here get to give their future child’s biological mother a tour round New York (“I wanna do all the tourist things!”) followed by a nice little chat about the child’s ‘real’ father. Still, seeing Joey learn French was interesting…

OK, now we bring out the real stuff. ‘Have I Got News For You’ (9:30, BBC 1) Tonight’s TV gem was hosted by Des Lynam and Kilroy was on Paul’s team, leading to a rather embarrassing moment when the, um *cough* could be described as racist *cough* ex TV presenter had made a rather big fool of himself continuing his anti-Arab theme and had a row with Merton! You could actually see the looks on each regular’s faces – I think Kilroy has rivalled Piers Morgan for HIGNFY foolish appearances. Still, a man who respects Richard Desmond after his Nazi tirade deserves it…

Finally, ‘Darren Brown – Tricks of the Mind’ (10:00, Channel 4) was as intriguing as last week. The thing I love about his show is that he never for a minute pretends he is using supernatural powers, physic barriers or any other such rubbish. His use of science for great mind games is incredible, demonstrated when he asked the viewer to choose an object in their room and successfully predicted our heads would turn to look right. Brilliant!

Well that’s it, ‘you’ (whoever ‘you’ is, most likely no-one but I’d like to point out my blog has become one of my most visited pages in a few days) have a good weekend.

Cheerio!

Apologies if my last blog seemed rushed – that was because it was. I had to eat!

Now following my shopping spree in Brent Cross today I want to ask a simple question – why do WHSmith not accept Solo cards? HMV do. So do Dixons, and McDonalds. Not to mention Amazon and all the other major online shops.

So why does WHSmith refuse to drag themselves into the present day? I only shop there because they seem to be the only ones who stock magazines nowadays. Ah well, I guess it’s yet another reason why they are literally falling apart.

Talking of falling apart, did anyone else catch the Channel 4 documentary on Royal Mail yesterday? Quite astounding that their management seems completely incapable of sorting out the problems and generally gave the impression that the sorting offices are an uncontrolled riot filled with untrained staff, broken machines and credit card thieves. Their PRish statement at the end merely made my thankful email has rendered the post obsolete (apart from parcels, of course!)