Looking Out of the Window Too Much Effort?

Then this Crouch End Weather Station is for you. There is an utterly bewildering array of statistics for you to look at. In summary: it's quite cold. The records at the bottom are good fun. It's in Gladwell Rd apparently, which is the Stroud Green side of Hornsey Town Hall, for you fans of precise details.

This will be very alienating for people who don't live in my house, sorry. Have a look out of the window instead.

Evening Standard Headline...

...on the boards outside newsagents last night was

Marriage is Legal

Slow news day? On other pages 'Murder, Arson less so'. When they've not got a story they normally just insult the Mayor.

Found Poetry

Came home yesterday evening, and discovered the following poem open on the computer.

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Document1

Hot valves
Massive
Artefact


Rnb hip hop
Sexy
Seductive
Rnb 18 one

One in verse – seductive for chorus?

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Beautiful, eh? After quizzing housemates to find the author, the flustered response was something unconvincing to do with modules for a music software package, but we're no fooled, are we?

Tubes? Running Later?

Public Service Announcement: Transport for London are running a questionnaire on late opening of the tubes.

Presumably it's just a PR thing so that if people complain when they move to it they can wave the responses to this in their faces. Help them rubber-stamp the proposal, bureaucracy-fans! Click those buttons!

Ken Ken Ken

The Grauniad is using this picture to illustrate all their Ken Livingstone stories at the moment. The poor sod. He's just issued a statement refusing to apologise.

Ooh...

...Snow! In Highbury at least. Even the adults are excited.

When Oh When Oh When...

... will they release the second series of Fifteen Storeys High on DVD? I've been rerewatching the first one recently, and it's absolutely the funniest thing that's been on telly for ages. If there were any justice in the world, they’d strip Ellen Macarthur of her damehood and award it to Sean Locke, writer and star of 15SH. I may vote against Labour on this very basis come May.

In one of my favourite scenes, Vince (Sean Locke) has discovered a new budget supermarket which sells a Polish energy drink called Blue Rat (“All the Energy of a Rat… In a Can!”). He then gets increasingly nervy and stays up all night monitoring the neighbours through binoculars. In another episode he gets a wrong number:

[Into phone] “Is Mandy here? I don’t know, I’ll just check.” [Shouts] “Mandy? Mandy? Are you there Mandy?” [To flatmate] “Have you seen Mandy?” [Into phone] “Dunno. What does she look like? Oh, I’m wasting your time? I had to walk all the way across the flat to pick this call up, and now I’m wasting your time? I’m a busy man; I was halfway through a sheet of bubblewrap.”

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Now, Eastenders. I don’t watch it more than occasionally, but Friday’s episode seems to have been quite exciting. I didn’t watch more than about the first ten minutes, but from the account I heard Den was killed by a concrete dog, which seems like an impossibly exotic way to go. Can anyone confirm the presence of the murderous petrified pooch? Did it escape from an experimental travelling freakshow that was passing through Walford?

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The whole of work's network has been down this morning, meaning no internet. This hasn't resulted in the surge of productivity you might expect, because we can't access work email either, so everyone's just been wandering round the building aimlessly, complaining about it to anyone who'll listen. I imagine this is what people mean when they talk about the Blitz Spirit.

Deapan Conversations: Stapler Supplement

Yesterday afternoon, in the office. An academic comes in, asking to borrow a stapler

Academic: Nice stapler.
Me: Yes.
A: Where did you get a stapler this nice?
Me: Catalogue.
A: How come I can never get my hands on stationery this nice?
Me: Dunno. It staples up to 60 sheets at once, though.

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Want to know the secrets of the Rorshach Blot Test? You know, the one with the ink blots you used to make in nursery school, but you're meant to tell your psychiatrist what you see in it, and they sit there and nod and make notes in their pad? Click here to find out. It will allow you to give all the results if you want to avoid the chair for your crimes.

On the other hand, you can look at my answers:

1. Fox.

2. Decomposing Fox.

3. Hips (of a skellington).

4. I did see a giant looming above me, but I didn't notice the giant penis until later. Please don't lock me up!

5. Ladies' bits. I mean, butterfly! Butterfly!

6. Mexican on a bicycle.

7. False beard?

8. Haunted monkey skull.

9. Cuddly-wuddly koala.

10. Crabs having an orgy.

I've not read the results too much, so feel free to practice amateur psychiatry on me. It's like being Cracker, without being morbidly obese and annoying!