almost witty

Today is the happiest day of the year - at least according to some expert. Something to do with spring, renewal and an impending Bank Holiday.

Given that I am currently soaked to the skin having run across the road in the pouring rain to meet someone who wanted to buy a Macy Gray CD - only for said person not to show up - and I’ve calculated that I don’t have a spare day or weekend to just veg out in front of the PC or TV till July 2006 (assuming I’ve found somewhere to live by then!) - I don’t feel that happy.

Then again, wait till I get a chance to play with my new gorgeously svelte laptop *drool*. (Thanks Skarlett!) But I’ve got something to complain about that too

Just call me Victor Meldrew

When the Dixons Store Group bought Currys back in the last century, I wisely said to myself that it wouldn’t be long before the chav-esque brand of Currys would disappear from Britain’s high streets and be replaced by the slightly-upper-class-chav-esque brand of Dixons.

Fortunately, I wasn’t blogging in those days since I’d have to eat my words with the news that all the Dixons stores in the UK are to be re-branded to Currys.digital. The idea apparently being that we would all go online to buy our electronic goods instead, leaving Currys to sell the white-goods to the non-broadband-savvy.

This is interesting news, except for one huge flaw. I’m obviously broadband-savvy. but yet, when I find myself in times of trouble (like every 30 seconds these days) I like to pop into Dixons, just to gaze in wonder at all the electronic gadgets that would bring joy to my miserable existence for precisely 17.5 nanoseconds. And then if I was going to buy one, I’d look a darn site more seriously at the big-screen TVs, how they look in the real world etc.

It’d be a huge shame if all that were to go.

Imagine, for a second, that you’re lucky enough to be a Londoner, who loves the tube so much you’ve made various useful / silly maps of the Tube, hold the world record for going round the entire system in the quickest time possible, and even occasionally help to raise money for charity (not to mention traveller numbers). And they, frankly, need all the help they can get.

So how do you reward these interesting endeveaours from my mate Geoff? You threaten to take his website offline unless he removes said maps. Fortunately, because London Transport are such nice chaps (not), they’ve given him a deadline of Monday midnight (UK time).

So if you have any interest in the London Underground, and the only iconic urban transportaton map in the world (well, can you draw the New York metro map from memory?), then run and download these versions quickly, before the lawyers get to you too. and if you happen to have non-UK webspace, you might want to offer to mirror them.

As Amateur Transplants once sung in their hilarious song:

“London Underground. They’re all lazy f**king useless c**ts.“

I’d download that song (and make a suitable donation to charity) before the chuffin’ lawyers get their hands on that gem too. Even though half my mates at London Underground listen to the song on a regular basis.

Taxi drivers are paid to get us to our destination in a professional manner. Once they’ve done that, why on earth should we give them extra money for that privilege?

There’s a simple reason to tip bar and restaurant staff - they earn a low wage, but we’re also far more likely to see them again. A good tip will ensure good service the next time you see said waiter - but that doesn’t apply with taxi drivers. One black cab is the same as another.

So why do we tip taxi drivers? Answers on a postcard please…

Over here in the antiquated sometimes-backward UK, we have a simple system for lighting up a room. In the middle of a room lies a lightbulb fitting, to which you fit your lightbulb. Connected to said fitting is a switch by the door - so that when you go in the room in the dark, you can flick the switch, and lo, there is light. Simple. Easy. It works.

It was obviously engineered to ensure you could walk into a room with light. So why do all the American apartments I’ve walked into seem to flout this basic piece of design common-sense? I can’t count how many times I’ve walked into a room in an American apartment, thoughtlessly flicked the switch on the door, and instead the tv / video / stereo / computer has flicked off, leaving a rather angry person in the room just when I’m trying to ingratiate myself on the people who have offered to show me their house.

Instead, there’s usually only one light source. Some tiny tiny lamp to the side of the room. And tiny tiny windows, so you can’t take advantage of the huge sunlight opportunities by being in a vast open space.

The only conclusion I can come to is that American eyes are just incredibly sensitive to light. Nothing else explains the sometimes pathological determination to minimize the amount of light in a room. Either that or it’s a huge design flaw that has escaped the attention of the best minds in America over the last 50-100 years.

Scary thought: do a search for lightbulbs UK in Google, and see how many small adverts for light bulbs pop up. It’s almost enough to make you think you need to start a blog on lightbulbs to get all that Google Ads traffic…