Strictly..and the winner is...

I can't believe I'm driven to write about this, but Strictly is quite interesting.  I don't know what it is that makes me like it - could be the sparkly costumes, the expanse of naked flesh, the talented dancers or is it just that it's really good entertainment?  I've taken a shine to Louis and Flavia, mainly because he impressed me at the Olympics and also I quite fancy Flavia.  Louis is not bad either. Just joking!
I'm sure he's going to win, because he's a real nice guy, closely followed by Kimberley of Girls Aloud fame who's also not bad, but I always remember her close up at one of their gigs where they popped up on a mini stage right near us, and I thought she looked a bit ropey.  I sound a bit fussy I suppose, but heck, I am.
Results soon, and I will be genuinely upset if Louis isn't at least in the top 2, preferably top.  I'm not sure it's fair to compare it wth other reality shows such as X Factor where amateurs try and grab fame and fortune but everyone does, so my take is that the 2 shows are completely different due to their competitors.  One has amateurs wanting to find fame with judges trying to grab their own slice of  attention to boost their own ego whilst the other has 'real' celebs already good at what they do and judges who know what they are talking about and do not (usually) pay to the audience.  Talking of judges, I've also been impressed with Darcy Bussell - a really talented dancer with an intelligent, yet entertaining comment to make.  All in all, a jolly good family show.
And the winner is (wait 10 minutes)...Louis and Flavia!
What did I tell you?  I think I have something in my eye....

..but not as we know it.

It's the end of the world today, so here's my run down of this momentous occasion for any extra torrential civilisations to find.  I hope it gets backed up.
08:00  Arrived in the office as usual.  It's a dress down Friday, which means for me I have changed my black pullover for a brighter sort of turquoise.  Some here are in jeans, fancy tops etc.  No sign of the end yet.
08:15  I'm told that it ends at 11:11.  He's prone to making extravagant statements though, so I'm not convinced.
09:00  Had a couple of chocolates from a festive time of Heroes.  These are miniature versions of e.g. Mars, fudge etc which are quite tasty, but have given me indigestion.  I won't be much bothered about that when the world ends.  I think I'd better get a round of tea/coffee in, it might be my last time.
10:00  Finished my bacon and egg bun - the usual Fat Friday thing.  Not that good really, too much fat on the bacon.  It's my last meal, I was hoping for something special.  I wonder what the typical condemned prisoner eats?  The thing about food is that its just a fleeting enjoyment, and sometimes has bad after-effects (especially if you're the prisoner).  Mind you, I guess that's the same with anything you enjoy - when it's gone, it's gone.  The target is happiness, brought about I suppose by enjoying things continually.  I mean, you're not going to stay happy if you don't enjoy something are you?
Still no sign of the end.
12:00 Nothing, not even a shudder.  Oh well, we'll just have to wait until the next end of the world.

Get your tickets here!

Olympic tickets data has just been released, evidently it took one of the London councils a great deal of prising to get this, then it confirms their worst fears - a lot of tickets were given away for free!! Shock horror, what sort of right minded Olympic organiser would do this abominable thing?? Well, all of them I guess, if it means being able to stage an Olympics at a reasonable cost to the taxpayer.  What did they expect?  Higher priced tickets?  Lower prices but higher funding from the taxpayer?  There really are some short sighted people out there.  My guess is that they are still miffed about getting turned down for ticket allocations and can't see the big picture.  Why can't they all be sensible like me?

Back of the net...

I can't remember if I've already shared my thoughts with you on this one, but no matter, it keep coming back and will probably crop up again.  It's the obsession about football in the sporting world.  Now, when I say 'Sporting world' I mean the press, who, I would have thought, try and project what the nation thinks.  Therefore, lots of footy talk in the media = lots of the population wanting to read about it.  But for me, there's far, far too much.  Part of this issue is the 'phil space' type of journalism that creates news items where none exist just to fill some space in the paper/media outlet and footy seems to be capable of loads of non-stories.  The journalists pick up on some random tweet or post-match statement and before you know it, they have concocted some far fetched scenario that is half believed by about half of the population.  It's the same with on-line media.  One of my daily trips is to visit Yahoo, who (I think) use Eurosport as their sport provider, and it is absolutely full of trifling football stories from home and abroad fit mainly for the bin.  A glance at the daily sporting headlines sees 7 football stories before you reach a cricket story (not about the Indian test series, but the Aussies), and then a few more footy before there's a mention of the SPOTY winner Bradley Wiggins.
Anyway, enough of football, I'm obviously just as bad!

Fool yourself.

So, Yorkshire is going to host the start of the 2014 Tour - which is pretty good news.  I might even get on my bike and watch it, although I guess I'll be fighting over the space with thousands more.  I went to the start of the Tour of Britain at Scunny.  Not in the same league of course, but quite interesting as a biker, but I don't think that a) the race has the credibility of Le Tour, and b) Scunthorpe hasn't got the credibility of anything.  Unless you live there of course, and you probably have a slightly different point of view.  This view of your own surroundings seems to fall into to two distinct camps - the 'best place to live' camp, and the 'worst place to live'.  The former advocates must be either tied to a local job with no hope of moving out and therefore simply putting up with their lot, or genuinely perceive the local environment to be more than acceptable.  Whenever I hear from folk who have emigrated, I always hear the 'should have done it sooner' phrase, as if we are all mugs for staying put and should be heading for the embassy for a visa right away, but we have to put context around that remark - I mean, they decided to move out there in the first place, they must have pretty dissatisfied with their original location, and everyone has some local pride/ego that would take some knocking if they admitted 'well, it's alright, but we wish we hadn't moved'.  So, take those people with a large pinch of salt and if you're satisfied with your lot, then don't let others talk you into something else.  As I am sure you know, the easiest person to fool is yourself.

Shop until you drop.

I see that the Guardian had created an internet site that lists 'best local shopping' or similar.  A quick perusal confirms my first thoughts - it will be London centric, although there are a few 'middle England' shops listed in Manchester and the like, although nothing East of the Pennines in my neck of the woods and hardly anything North of the M62.  I wonder if I should add any of my local shops although my favourite is the armchair and t'internet.  Does that count as local?

Here we go here we go...

The end of football, according to the Daily Mail.  I wish!  It seems that with the recent racism scandals, coin throwing on Saturday at Ferdinand and general unrest on the terraces, the Daily Mail has come to the conclusion that the end is nigh and we had better get used to it.  What a load of tosh. If only part of it was true, and what has changed in the last 30 years?  Almost nothing as far as supporters go, but monumental changes to the way the game is commercially organised.  ..but it only goes to show that footy has always attracted 'the wrong crowd' whether we like it or not.  For me, football is a take it or leave game, the same as most sports actually.  Because you encounter quite  a few keen supporters during a normal day, then it's only polite to keep one's self informed so as to make polite conversation.  Take my colleague in accounts.  He's ridiculously keen on Leeds United (something I seem to find wherever I work) and I can either humour him with soundbites I happen to espy in the news e.g. I see Leeds let in a goal at the weekend... and let him fill me in with the rest of the match report which can kill a few minutes, or I could try the 'how did Leeds do at the weekend?' type or opener, which would get the same result, but I don't think he would bother with all the detail he does now that entertains me, so I try the former tack, picking up as much info as I can be bothered to about the aforesaid team and instead of nodding I even interject with an intelligent comment or two.  Or at least I kid myself I do.
I would do the same if there was an avid hockey, basketball or cricket fan.  When I was working with a lot of off-shore support guys in India, I suddenly found myself an expert on cricket rather than an enthusiastic onlooker.  So there you are, I'm a bit of a fake really which is probably reality for most of us, so if you're one of the die-hard enthusiasts ready to start a conversation, please give me some warning so I can do my homework.

Eyes Wide Open

Movie trailers are usually pretentious, overly dramatic, overly long and (usually) avoided by yours truly.  However, I spotted a trailer for one of my favourites Nicole Kidman in Paperboy.  When I say one of my favourites, it's not as if I have a list of them, adding/deleting depending on what they do, it's just that Nicole (and others) are always worth looking at.  It's not a girl thing either before you jump to conclusions (although it does influence the 'list'), I have non-girls on there as well such as Matt Damon, but I must admit it is dominated by girls. Kiera is another one, up there with Nicole and at the moment, no one else springs to mind although there's Jack Nicholson and that English bloke who I always forget - is it Hugh Jackman or similar?  Anyway, I watched the Paperboy trailer with a slutty Southern Nicole dominating nearly every scene (or did I just imagine that?) and it's about a reinvestigation of a murder case in the deep south as far as I can see, so there's a white v. black aspect that sets the tension.  But the one thing that surprised me was the credits at the end - 'Starring someone, someone else, someone else again' then 'With Nicole Kidman'.  'With'??  It seemed to me that it was implying that she was just an 'extra' brought in to give the film some star act but not really taking part - something that the trailer definitely did not give an impression of.  I might go and watch it just to see. Although I doubt it.

Great Expectations

'We always expect the unexpected'  - a quote from the Voyager team who are still monitoring the 2 x Voyager spacecraft launched in the 1977.  I bet they were not expecting anything at all in 2012 when it first launched.  I was just leaving school, setting out into the big wide world, expecting nothing at all as it turns out.  There's not much still around that was built in the 70s, except rubbish house designs of course.  They really are poor aren't they? Absolutely no imagination, just bricks and windows with cheap concrete roofing tiles.  I don't know why the planners were duped into accepting these as 'normal' nhusing design - but I guess they just evolved from the not so poor, but still pretty rubbish of the 60's. Notice my bracketing of housing designs into convenient decades?  That interests me as well - it's such as artificial timespan to use it's quite meaningless, but easy to understand for your average human, which is why, I guess, I used it above.  A bit like the monthly rainfall figures - a day or 2 either side of the month start/finish and the stats might be widely different leading to completely different conclusions. 'Worst January since records began' etc.  What a load of tosh.  'Worst rainfall over an artificially create timespan' more like.  Not quite so catchy is it?
..but to get back to the Voyagers, if we could, but we can't, because they're millions of miles away nearing outer space.  I think they are remarkable objects of engineering, partly because they have gone where no man has gone before (I like that phrase), and partly because they are still going strong, or relatively strong anyway.  I wonder when we will lose contact with them?  I read that the radio signal takes 17 hrs to get back to earth, which in itself is pretty good -  I often don't get a voicemail notification for a couple of days.  The technician chaps interpreting the signals must get a bit bored though - I mean, 35 years of looking at the same daily updates must make it difficult coming into work.  I wonder if they double up as Mars Rover technicians as well?  I hope so, because if they didn't they would get pretty cheesed off about those guys.  A bit like someone who can't afford a new iPhone 5 and has to carry on with his antiquated iPHone3.  Well, almost.

Bah, Humbug.

We're into December now and that festive, fun-filled time will be upon us very soon. Not my favourite time of year it has to be said.  It's probably the amount of money that disappears from my bank account at this time of year that make me feel less festive than I should.  I wonder if I had a year of nil spending I might even enjoy Christmas.  Hmm. I should try it.
The newspapers announce that today will be the highest online spending day of the year and will surpass all records to date.  Interesting.  I suppose they extrapolate the annual spending trends and assume it will increase, so (assuming it does indeed increase), they could announce that next years monday 2 weeks before christmas will be the biggest ever! Wow! I'm positively gob-smacked!
Mind you, the article was probably only a space filler that no-one will verify, and how would you verify it anyway?  When I was at Boots, the accepted 'big stat' was that sales of perfume on Christmas Eve accounted for 25 - 50% of annual sales, depending who you talked to.  I hope someone in Boots knew the correct answer.