Surely Wikipedia are taking the piss with today’s featured article?
Sample sentence: “The Simca double wishbone front suspension gave way to MacPherson struts adopted from the Peugeot 505 and 604, and the rear axle was replaced with that of the 505, much narrower than the one originally planned, as it was designed with respect to the 505 body width.”
Tomorrow’s featured article: Watching a Plant Warp
Bought fresh ginger yesterday. I do this quite often but I still find myself getting stuck in a state of inertia, looking at the tray of ginger roots and trying to work out which piece will offer maximal ginger for minimal cutting and peeling. Obviously there is an answer - there is one piece of ginger less knobbly than the others. But no amount of scrutiny or groping seems sufficient to divine which.
Presumably it would be possible to write down a topological formula for the knobbliness of ginger, the result of which would be a knobbliness quotient accounting for the number and curvature of lobes and incidence of fjords or other deformities relative to the length, breadth and volume of the root. No doubt the boffins are hard at work on it as I write this, away in the hallowed halls of their ivory towers of pure, throbbing brain.
It’s my birthday later this week - the big two nine. Part of me doesn’t want to acknowledge that turning 29 is a milestone (or a millstone - ha ha!) but if I’m honest I know it is. Nothing’s the same after you’re 29 - suddenly the carefree days of being under 29 are over, just like that. People look at you differently when you tell them you’re 29. You’re expected to show a bit of maturity and experience, rather than stay out all night drinking and fucking like you did when you were 28. And you’re incapable of that now, anyway.
I suppose I’m OK with it. But I do hope no-one makes a big fuss. The last thing I want is one of those big 29th birthday parties, with 100 ghastly relatives ribbing you about how now you’re a ‘29-something’ and a big cake in the shape of the digits 2 and 9 and a 29-year old whisky afterwards.
And the next big one is - god, I can hardly bring myself to say it - 36. You know, the one where they say life begins. So, after Thursday I will officially be closer to 36 than 22. Oh, god.
To: Vancouver-Office-ALL
Subject: Dalai LamaI have 2 club seats available for the Dalai Lama – Sat., Sept. 9th. – cost $148.83
Please email me if you’re interested – thanks, Paula (executive secretary)
——————–
I’m thinking of taking her up on this. A couple of seats in the corporate box, kick off my shoes, break out the champers, very nice. I’ll take Kate with me and pour oysters and caviare down her gullet while we soak up the sanctimonious platitudes in all their orange-robed glory. Maybe I’ll hang a 12ft Chinese flag from the balustrade, to help him feel at home. Well worth $300.
n.b. the title of the DL’s show is “Cultivating Authentic Happiness”. At that price he presumably means his own.
After a day of toil there’s nothing Kate, baby E and I like more than a slap-up feed at Ma Dang Coul Korean restaurant,
before unwinding in the opulent and exclusive Club DaBong.
Opposite each other on Denman at Haro (I suspect common ownership).
“There is a shock in the Hearts line-up as 18-year-old Jamie Mole is selected up front for their Champions League qualifier against AEK Athens” - the BBC.
Do you think he’ll be playing in the hole?
Yesterday morning as I lay abed, riding the elevator of consciousness up from the demented dungeon of dreams, I halted halfway and heard Kate telling me about a dream she’d just had (mercifully her account was brief). When I had finally ascended to the lucent penthouse of wideawakeness I asked Kate again about her dream. She of course denied all knowledge not only of her describing it to me but of the dream itself, and accused me of having been dreaming. But if I dreamt about her dream, is it really my dream? True I was in possession of the dream, but surely it wasn’t my dream, because (in my dream) it didn’t come from me. I like to think of it as an ex libris dream, borrowed from Kate’s personal dream-stacks and digested by me in some anonymous oneiric reading room.
My daughter is six weeks shy of a year old now, and as her social skills develop I find that I can understand her better with each passing day. Our communications, while far from fluent, are becoming more nuanced and interactive as she learns to listen, look and formulate responses to my stimuli. Of course, most of what she says is by means of body language, which puts a natural limit on our dialogues.
However, we still disagree when it comes to politics. On most issues, baby E is quite comfortably left wing. She indicated to me this morning, as I dropped three fat strawberries into the blender, that she advocates the elimination of social and economic inequalities and strongly favours governmental redistribution of wealth, while stopping short of Marxist central planning. She is a great supporter of trades unions and when I asked her if I might describe her as a “social liberal with syndicalist inclinations” she did not demur. Judging from her attack on the bookcase the other day, she is quite clear on her rejection of postmodern social analyses and subscribes to the doctrine of multiculturalism, as recognised by Canada’s Charter of Rights and Freedoms, only with certain reservations.
Ah, the wayward fervour of youth.
As the new Premier league season approaches, many football fans are eager for expert insight into their team’s chances. Has the transfer tombola dealt them a winning ticket this summer? Has the managerial merry-go-round landed them with a guru or a gimp? The prognostications of pros-turned-pundits are in demand as at no other time of year.
I analysed the predictions of the BBC’s Mark Lawrenson (or ‘Lawro’ as he is jocularly called by the Beeb), the former Liverpool centre half with a voice camper than a boy scout jamboree. Although Lawro steadfastly refuses to be drawn on actual placings, it is possible to construct a ‘best-fit’ table for the end of the 06/07 season, reflecting his pronouncements, and then compare this with the actual table at the end of the 05/06 season:
| 05/06 actual | Lawro’s words | 06/07 Lawro | |
|---|---|---|---|
| 1 | Chelsea | “Champions again” - 1st | Chelsea |
| 2 | Man Utd | “Along with Liverpool, the team most likely to push Chelsea”, i.e. 2nd or 3rd | Man Utd |
| 3 | Liverpool | “they might push Chelsea hardest”, i.e. 2nd or 3rd | Liverpool |
| 4 | Arsenal | “a top-four finish”, i.e. (by implication) 4th | Arsenal |
| 5 | Spurs | “good enough to get fifth again” - 5th | Spurs |
| 6 | Blackburn | “top eight again”, i.e. 6th, 7th or 8th | Blackburn |
| 7 | Newcastle | “an outside chance of a top-six finish”, i.e. 6th, 7th or 8th. Median = 7th | Newcastle |
| 8 | Bolton | “they’re looking at the top half again”, i.e. 6th through 10th. Median = 8th | Bolton |
| 9 | West Ham | “mid-table”, i.e. 9th through 12th | West Ham |
| 10 | Wigan | “they’ll be absolutely fine”, i.e. same again. 10th | Wigan |
| 11 | Everton | “if - and it’s a big if - they can keep their best 11 fit, top 10″. Since this is a big if, say 11th | Everton |
| 12 | Fulham | “bottom six”. Lawro’s boldest prediction. 15th | Boro |
| 13 | Charlton | “middle to lower half of the table”. Say 13th | Charlton |
| 14 | Middlesborough | “difficult to know”. He’s taking the piss here, but 12th is free | Man City |
| 15 | Man Citeh | “could easily finish 10th, or 17th”. Split the difference, say 14th | Fulham |
| 16 | Villa | “mid-table will be a job well done”. So an average job would be, what, 15th, 16th? | Villa |
| 17 | Portsmouth | “whether they’ll get more than just staying up, I’m not sure”, i.e. 17th | Portsmouth |
| 18 | Birmingham | “Reading will be relegated” | Reading |
| 19 | West Brom | “I don’t see them having the quality to stay up” | Sheff Utd |
| 20 | Sunderland | “it will be tough, but they might just have enough”, i.e. relegated, since Lawro offers no other candidates. | Watford |
To summarise, the final 06/07 table will be identical to the final 05/06 table, except for a barely-perceptible shuffling of Man City, Middlesborough and Fulham.
Thanks for that, Lawro.
[The sad thing is, he’s probably about right].
McDonald’s USA are giving away free Hummer toys with their Happy Meals. It’s as if the two marketing departments got together over beers and decided, just for a laugh, to see how angry they could make the environmental lobby. Rumour has it that Whole Foods plans to respond by including a toy bicycle made of flax pulp with every purchase of macrobiotic monkey-spunk.
Design your own Ronald McHummer sign (via adfreak).