almost witty

First off, sorry for disappearing from the digital world for oooh a month, but you’d be surprised how much time it takes to settle into a new fab home, complete with *two* washing-lines. And maybe a new houseguest, but I’ll tell you about that later!

Anyway, at the beginning of July it became time to move all my worldly goods up to North Wales. So I hired the biggest Transit van that I could get - which turned to be a bruised and battered white van which had to come all the way from Liverpool.

It being a hot summers day, I thought a big huge American-sized tumbler of Diet Coke would be just what I need before I started the four-hour journey down the motorways of Western England. So I drove into a nearby KFC drive-in. Neglecting the fact that it had a height-limit, and I had a huge Transit van.

Thus, the first warning I had about the sheer size of the thing was when I drove right into the handy mobile height-metre warning on the KFC drive-in. So I thought I’d better try to get out of the drive-in before I courted any more damage. But I didn’t want to run into the height-metre thing again - so I thought I’d just go a little forward and try to ramp my way out of the drive-in lane.

Another bad mistake, since I managed to scrape past a yellow post on the corner (leaving yellow markings all over the side of the van) mount the kerb and come down with a thud on the other side before I made it to the relative safety of a parking spot. Although it’s lucky I did that since the *roof* of the drive-in was just around the corner.

After that little incident, I drove to Cardiff and even managed to park outside my temporary flat without any further problems. Then I was invited to the pub - and as it was now dark and raining by now, I thought I’d drive the van down there. Spotted a parking space between two cars, thought I could get the van into there without a problem. Except not really.

Before I knew it, a man had come running out of the pub screaming “what the hell do you think you’re doing to my car?” - and on further examination, I was a wee bit too close to his BMW. Reversing the car revealed the awful truth - I’d made quite a few scratches on his precious car.

Once he had calmed down and realised I wasn’t just going to disappear quietly into the night, I popped into the pub where I saw my friend, grabbed a pen and exchanged insurance details. At one point I asked him who his insurer was, he muttered something about Glamorgan County Cricket Club, and I asked him why there. Both my friend and him looked at me as if I was mad or stupid. Which I may well be, but that’s another matter!

Anyway, details were exchanged, and the man left to carry on his drinking with his pals. Whereupon my friend told me with some glee that I had managed to scrape the car of not just anyone, but Robert Croft, captain of the Glamorgan County Cricket Club. Which makes it my second scrape, and my second scrape with a famous Welsh celebrity.

More moving disasters next time, once I gradually get my office set up!

I have been caught massively enthusing about the genius that is Spaced - the finest sitcom a pop-culture/nerdy obsessed person could ever possibly hope to have. Complete with strong characters all round. It’s so hip it hurts…

Anyway, skip to the end - and some kind soul has put up the first episode of Spaced online on Google Video. So here it is: watch it!

Then buy Spaced: The Collectors Edition from your friendly Amazon UK dealer.

Ever since I had to spend the summer of 2000 avidly watching and writing about Big Brother 1 (the one with Anna the lesbian nun, Nick the evil Brit and Craig the dumb-but-handsome plumber) for work purposes (oh that glamorous summer), I’ve mostly avoided Big Brother. Especially since it stopped becoming a vaguely interesting look at a cross-section of the British population and became a freak show.

However, this year, interest seems to have really peaked all around me. People keep sneaking into the office with the big TV to watch Big Brother 2006 - because there are two Welsh-language-speaking contestants on it. Although the Welsh gossip network has already informed me that Glyn is actually a nice, quiet and shy boy in real life - then again, I’m not too sure flamboyance would do you much good in Blaenau Ffestiniog.

In a hugely controversial move (well, controversial if you’re in Wales - the rest of the UK couldn’t give a monkeys I’d imagine), Big Brother stopped the two of them from speaking in Welsh (their natural language) to each other.

So there was I, quietly shaking my head at people trooping in and out of the big TV-office just because there happened to be two Welsh-language-speakers on Big Brother. While secretly hating Lea - a former 22-stone woman who’s had multiple plastic surgery, apparently has the biggest boobs in the UK and says she hates fat people.

Then I get home for the weekend, where my sisters gleefully inform me that, of all things, a British-Chinese woman is a Big Brother contestant.

Bloody hell. Now this is progress. I’ve got no idea what she’s like - whether she’s a future Jane Goodey or a future Anna, but by Jove I’ll have to follow her progress, and probably vote for her to stay each time. If I ever find the time. 14 days till I have to move all my worldly belongings into a storage room and a front room!

And what do people do? Pose for pics with the bloody thing!

Thanks to Skarlett for spotting that - full story here

We’ve all had to go through those moments whereby in order to prove our humanity to a computer, blog or commenting system, we have to spot and reproduce a random stream of numbers and letters. Aside from this being dead annoying, the letters/numbers are usually tiny tiny tiny and I’ve spent a good wasted five minutes going round and round trying to get the right combination. Plus it’s a bit of a computer-esque view of humanity - are we all just a bunch of letters and numbers?

So why don’t we prove our humanity in other ways? Fortunately, someone’s come up with a kitten authentication system. Instead of typing in letters and numbers, just click on three pictures of cute kittens! And there’s no way a computer can figure out what is a cute kitten and what is an evil-but-cute ostrich… is there?