Why I Will Never Date A French Girl

Now, I have had nothing but good experiences with French people. Indeed, someone who had come over from France to join the army once helped me prepare a very nice meal with the paltry food we had left in a youth hostel in Haworth. So you can be assured that you are not hearing the voice of prejudice, or even reading the text of prejudice, when you see the above title. You see, thanks to the wonderful combination of boredom and the internet, you can while away at least ten minutes by running people's initials through Acronym Finder. I was happily doing this, demonstrating the effects of my brother changing his middle name to Kemen, and then I ran my initials through. As it transpires, my initials are the same as the French term for a sexually transmitted disease (that's "Maladie Sexuellement Transmissible", if you're interested). Together with this and the incessant bookmark jokes, my name is rather starting to irritate me.

Happy Festivus

I'm pretty sure there are some people I know who will quite happily lynch me for this, but I haven't seen many episodes of Seinfeld. In fact, I've seen more episodes of Curb Your Enthusiasm, which is only shown on BBC4 over here. Hell, I've seen more episodes of Interceptor. I was under the impression that they made quite a lot of episodes, so it seemed a little odd that, the first Christmas after I saw the relevant episode, every site on the internet seems to be wishing its readers a happy Festivus. I'm sure this didn't happen last year. Quite a coincidence, one would think. Maybe they just recently repeated that episode in America, and every webmaster in Britain caught the same two-in-the-morning airing on the Paramount Comedy Channel as I did. That or the world moulds itself to me, which would be pretty nifty.

Charity Begins At The T-Shirt Factory

After more than fifteen years of existence, I have finally found a purpose in life. Well, more of a mission, really; it would make a rather pathetic purpose for an entire life. My mission is, quite simply, to accrue, amass and acquire as many free T-shirts as possible. As with any such personal goal, this mission is bound by certain arbitrary rules which are as solid and unchangeable as a triangle of Dairylea, and so a T-shirt bought for me by a friend or relative would not count while a T-shirt given by an employer would. There is a No Man's Land of sorts between these two kinds of shirt donation, in which it is solely a feeling, an instinct, some primeval sense of what is a Free T-Shirt deserving of the proper noun and what is simply a short-sleeved, collarless shirt for which I do not have to pay.

In the pursuit of this cause, I have done very little. The Monster Raving Loony Party do not have the funds to hand out shirts, although they did offer a badge, which I did not accept because I'm not cheap. I have added a note to a BBC survey requesting a T-shirt along with my Free Prize Draw Entry, but I am not hopeful, mainly because I suspect it will be read by a donkey.

Woke up this morning (de derr de der)...

I feel rather horribly hungover. Head throbbing, mouth tasting like God-knows-what, a little slow... But of course, it's my own fault, right? If I didn't want to suffer, I shouldn't have been drinking.

Well, that's just it. I wasn't. It's definitely at least a week since I touched even the tiniest drop of alcohol. This really shouldn't be happening, unless you can get a hangover from oranges. Sure, they're a popular hangover cure, but I don't think it's a "hair-of-the-dog" situation. Still, it seems you can never be too careful.

Meet The New Boss...

Well, I'm sat here on a small wooden stool, playing Super Mario Bros. and listening to the Who. Apparently all that's changed so far in my lifetime is the ease with which I can relay this information to people who don't care all around the world. Come to think of it, that suits me just fine.

You'll Understand Once You've Lived A Day At My Checkout

I cannot explain quite why, but I have never liked shopping at Morrisons supermarkets. Perhaps it's "Market Street", where the fruit and veg are arranged in a way that tries to make the whole affair look quaint and traditional but serves only to make life much, much more awkward. After all, supermarket trolleys are famous for not going where they should, which is precisely why other supermarkets stick so rigidly to aisles. The rest of the shop is, admittedly, much more bearable. once you have navigated your way around the "stalls", perhaps with the help of the Old Man of the Mushrooms, you soon discover your precious reward: freebies. Morrisons really is quite good for free samples, particularly if you like quiche.

So, fuelled on by free pastries and a dark warning from the Potato Hermit, you reach the checkout and discover an incredibly convenient little shelf provided that you may pack your bags without having to dodge the deluge of shopping passed down unstoppably by the cashier. As you pack, your glee only increases as you realise that you can simply line the filled bags up along the projection and transfer them to your trolley in one smooth motion. The world, or at least this tiny, stainless-steel part of it, is your oyster. Your, er, stainless steel oyster that beeps every now and again.

This brings me to my whiny, whiny point. You see, I spent six hours of yesterday packing carrier bags at Morrisons as a fundraising event, and so I had to bend over that little shelf and straighten up again, hundreds -- perhaps thousands -- of times, an activity that neither I nor my back appreciated. There are, you'll be surprised to learn, better ways to spend the daylight hours of your Sunday than in a cocktail of boredom and agony. And there are certainly better things to do the following Monday than play rugby on a field that has been frozen utterly solid.