God Delusion update

I've got a bit further through my God Delusion and have read the first chapter and a bit. So far he has deconstructed the notion that religion is off limits for criticism because you're "not allowed to question people's beliefs". That's a good place for him to start before he wades in with the rest of his chapters, and it's true that you do feel like you can't say anything that contradicts someone's religion. I hate the phrase "political correctness gone mad", I think it's overused by people who are too lazy to construct a proper argument (a bit like nanny state), but it's a similar sort of principle he's applying to our multiculturalist desire never to offend anyone.

I'm also finding reading the book somewhat uplifting, which wasn't what I was expecting. I anticipated it would get me all fired up about religion and religious influence on society, but it's affecting me in other ways as well. I hadn't realised that I do feel slightly guilty for not believing in God, and that I do harbour a slight worry that I and the people I love will burn in eternal hellfire for their 'sins'. Not enough to make me do anything about it of course, as soon as I put my rational hat back on I just dismiss it all, but the little part of me that went to Catholic school never quite goes away. Reading the book though is starting to make me feel that maybe it's OK not to believe, that there is plenty in the world that is wondrous and fascinating without there needing to be 'something else', and that I can focus on enjoying my life and living it as a good person without the niggling worry that maybe there will be eternal damnation at the end of it.

Even reading that back I think of course there won't be, of course there won't be, it's a ridiculous notion aimed at controlling people through fear. But hearing it all your life from multiple sources affects you, and it's very freeing to be told you don't actually have to worry about it if you don't want to.

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Nibble on my meat sir?

We went up to London this weekend for our friend's 30th birthday, which was quite nice. I was appalled, APPALLED however to discover that a one day travelcard now costs £7. SEVEN POUNDS! I thought I'd accidentally pressed the wrong button and asked for a weekly pass or something... When did they stop being £4.80? Probably when I stopped being 18, but I still think that's ridiculously expensive.

We had a nice birthday meal at a place called Rodizio Rico in Islington, which was an unusual Brazilian restaurant where they basically just have All You Can Eat Meat. There's a salad and accompaniments bar too, but the main bit is the waiters walking around with big metal spikes with a joint of meat on, and them hacking bits off for whoever wants some. I couldn't help but giggle at them wandering about asking if anyone wants some of their pork sword.

So it was fun anyway, although you can only eat so much meat before you start suffering chest pains.

Today sees the start of the new academic year, so there are lots of people who look far too young to be students wandering around in a slightly bewildered state, carefully studying maps of the campus and then walking off in the wrong direction. I think it is very important that they start the physiology lessons again as soon as possible, as I've been staring at a darkened seminar room with no topless students for months. I think I've gone stir crazy, and a little blond surfer boy flesh would be just the thing to perk me up.

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Showbiz correspondence

I got a Facebook message from Boogaloo Stu today about my blog post on the demise of Thursday Boogaloo. It was terribly sweet of him to write, and also quite shocking that someone had actually read my blog outside of my normal circle of friends. But that's the whole point I suppose, if I wanted to keep a private diary I'd be doing it on a bit of paper.

Anyway, Boogaloo Stu is organising a club night called Creamy Fingers for Thursday 23 October, which will be a one-off thing initially but may become regular, presumably if enough people go and if people like it. So that could be a replacement for me for Boogaloo maybe? Stu asked me to invite all my friends, so obviously was just buttering me up before indulging in a little e-marketing, but that's fine. I'm sure Chris and I will go whatever happens, especially as it's at Ghetto so you can practically see it from my front room.

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Training and atheism

The training was better than I expected actually. I found it all very easy, but I still learnt some things I didn't know, and corrected some things I thought I knew but apparently didn't. The only annoying thing was the bizarre woman sitting behind me who during the afternoon started mewling like a kitten at everything the trainer said. She kept going "Hmmmm..... Mmmm hmmmmm.... Hmmmm?..... Hmmmmm!...... Mmmmm". I was thinking a) shut the hell up, and b) this must be what having sex with you sounds like. What the hell was she doing?? Did we all really need to hear her quizzical squealings all through the afternoon? It also sounded quite like she'd had her mouth taped shut. I wish they'd done her nose as well.

Yesterday I also started reading The God Delusion by Richard Dawkins, on Chris' recommendation. He's been terribly fired up in his atheism since he read it. Atheism is a nice word actually when you break it down into its component parts. Anyway, I've only read the preface so far, but I'm already enjoying it. He's used the preface to demolish the criticisms of earlier editions of the book, by looking at each one, deconstructing it, and then explaining why it's wrong, e.g. 'the book is strident and shrill' - no it's not, it just says things certain people don't want to hear without pulling any punches, but is still less strident and shrill than those people themselves; 'the book is as fundamentalist as the people it condemns' - no it isn't, he argues based on logic and the evidence available, if people want to show him compelling evidence in support of religion and creationism, he'll happily change his mind - a fundamentalist would not.

So anyway, I'm sure I'll enjoy the book, and it'll probably turn my fairly vague and slightly guilty-feeling lack of belief in God into full-blown atheism. I already like his first main point: there are no religious children, only children of religious parents - they're not old enough to have a position on religion, in the same way that they have no position on politics or economics.

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Training and boozing

Today I am off at CSS training, which is lovely. I don't really need it to be honest, but it's a day out of the office and I'll get a free lunch. Plus I suppose a bit of a refresher won't hurt. Unfortunately I'm missing a staff jolly because of it, and I would have quite liked to go to the Chinese exhibition. Maybe it'll be shit and then I won't mind... I plan on joining them for the boozy part of the outing anyway. Hopefully no one will get thrown out for aggressive behaviour this time...

Car hospital

I don't think I've written on here before that our car is called Columbo have I? Well he is anyway, and he's a he. And he has now finally gone off to car hospital to be looked at.

Despite the fact that the garage said they would come to collect him between 2 and 4 yesterday, and Chris dutifully taking the afternoon off to wait in for them, they didn't actually come until about 4.30. Why does it always have to be that way whenever you arrange a delivery or a workman or anything? The number of hours of our lives we must waste waiting in for things, it's frightening. And what was the reason for their tardiness? Two of their recovery vehicles had broken down. Erm.... OK! That fills you with confidence doesn't it?

I actually saw Columbo sail past me on top of a lorry while I was on the bus home, as the garage isn't far from where I work. He looked quite pleased to be driven around for a change, I hope they look after him properly. He's a nice little car.

I'm not quite sure what's going to happen about the insurance claim. The girls who went into the back of Chris think they hit him first, and that Chris then hit the car in front, and Chris' passenger agrees. But Chris isn't sure, as it all happened so fast, and thought he might have hit the car in front first. I'm not sure how much difference it'll make, or if Chris will be liable for hitting the car in front either way. Obviously if the girls are going to be liable for hitting us, I'd rather they were liable for both, as that absolves us of the blame. But I guess the insurance companies will have to sort it out between them, and we'll just get told.

I hate insurance, it's such a rip off. Half the time you find you're not covered anyway, and then even when you are you have to pay an excess (very clever ploy they dreamed up there) which means you're only actually insured for damage over that amount - otherwise it's not worth claiming and you end up paying for it out of your own pocket. So they get it all their own way really. And it costs you hundreds of pounds, and it's a legal obligation to pay it. Tsk.

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Poorly car

We got the car back home with the help of the RAC, and it is now sitting outside with a screwed up back wheel and bumper waiting for the garage to come and collect it on Monday. Hopefully the damage will be limited to that wheel and the bumper and it won't have damaged anything underneath or bent the axle or anything.

Elephant have been quite good so far, they've been quite helpful on the phone, and once the garage have looked at it they said we might get a courtesy car while it's being repaired. The unfortunate thing is that the fucker that caused the accident didn't stop, even though they'd hit the car behind Chris. So because of the bizarre 'if someone else isn't liable then you must be' system, the girls who hit Chris from behind are probably liable for the damage to the back of ours, and Chris will be liable for hitting the car that was in front of him. Either way we have to pay our excess on the repairs and it'll bring down our no claims bonus.

It could be worse I suppose... At least we've got comprehensive insurance and no-one was hurt. It's just a bugger to sort everything out.

Ack

Chris rang me and said he'd had a car accident. He said he was ok but that the car was not, and I had to leg it down to Hove to rescue him. He was fine, quite shaken up and upset, but not hurt. More of a worry was our pregnant friend was in the car, so she went straight off to get checked out. She's fine, thank god. Car has a screwed up back wheel but I was expecting much worse. I don't care about it though, my only concern was that Chris wasn't hurt.

Feelin' hunky

Chris said something really nice to me the other day. He said he thought I'd grown into my looks, and that I was looking more attractive now than when I was younger, which I thought was lovely.

I have been feeling like I'm starting to get old lately, as I'll be 28 on my next birthday and 30 is suddenly looking like a very real proposition. Even just typing that is a bit scary, as I remember how ancient 28 sounded when I was 19. Saying that though, I also feel that I like where I am in life at the moment. I'm still fairly young, I have a nice place to live, my job pays pretty well and I don't really have money worries, and we go out dancing at least once a week.

So to be told also that instead of having lost my looks my maturity has actually added something to them is, well, really nice.

Of course, he could just have been saying that to get me into bed (didn't work).

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Why do men have to be so disgusting?

Really, I just don't get why men's toilets have to be in such a state all the time. It's just foul. Would their toilet at home look like that if they didn't have a woman either to clean it or to brow beat them into showing a little fucking respect for the fact that other people have to use it too?

It's always the same with communal men's toilets. For a start, how on EARTH do people manage not to flush? Isn't it just something you do automatically? Or do they find the the blank cubicle walls so stimulating that they get distracted and just wander off in their own little world?

And how hard must it be not to miss your intended target and piss all over the seat, and on some occasions even the fucking floor! Even at a urinal, how do you MISS a urinal??

I feel particularly sorry for the female customers of the Ghetto, where they have unisex toilets. I've heard them complaining more than once that they a) stink, and b) are disgusting, because they're obviously not as used to it as all men have to be.

And yes, I am a bit more of a clean freak than some other people I suppose, but I don't think being clean should count as a flaw, and it just comes down to showing a bit of respect for other people. I might start wearing a dress so I can use the ladies, I imagine it's all marble floors and classical music and a man in a suit offering you perfume in there.

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Matt Taylor IS cute god damn it

Someone has dared to suggest that my dishy weatherman Matt Taylor is not as cute as I have made him out to be. Clearly, they should seek the immediate assistance of a psychiatrist or optician.

However, in order to quell any further dissent, here are some more pictures of him looking yummy.

Not the sparkliest coin in the fountain

I am becoming concerned lately that I either have brain tumour or some form of degenerative mental disorder. This has possibly not been helped by Chris having said "I think you've got a brain tumour" several times in the last couple of weeks.

Of course, I'm not actually concerned about it, but I have had a couple of unexplained bouts of forgetfulness. They always follow this sort of pattern:

Chris says something about some previous arrangement or conversation.

Me: "What?"

Chris patiently repeats.

Me: "I don't remember us saying that, when was this?"

Chris: "Do you not remember us having a whole conversation about this? And you said yes?"

Me: "No, I have no recollection of us ever discussing this."

And the worrying thing is that I truly have no knowledge of it, it doesn't ring any bells at all, and I could easily believe that Chris made it up or dreamt it or had the conversation with someone else.

The reason I'm not that worried though is because, so far at least, all of these occasions have involved conversations with Chris (sometimes with third parties too, but always Chris, never just a conversation between me and someone else).

So, based on that, I think the most likely explanation is that I simply wasn't listening properly; that I got distracted by something else or by a different train of thought, and I rather rudely just tuned him out while managing to interject "Yes" and "No" at suitable moments on autopilot. And it's even easier to do when we're talking with someone else as well because then I don't even have to manage yeses and nos.

So I'm going to assume this is the case for the moment. If I find I'm wandering the streets with no trousers on one day or I start eating a chicken without actually cooking it, I suppose I'll have a rethink.

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Braindead and mildly schizophrenic

God yesterday was just the worst, most boring day I've had in ages. I've got very little work to do, and the work I have got is both pointless and mind-numbing. On top of that, our office is currently plagued by a million tiny black flies that are coming out of the pot plants. They are attracted by the CO2 you breathe out, which means they end up flying right around your mouth and eyes, making them impossible to ignore and causing me to keep leaping backwards and flapping my arms throughout the day like I'm having a minor hallucination.

So not only am I bored rigid, I'm also undergoing psychological torture, and it's driving me CRAZY.

On a lighter note, BBC weatherman Matt Taylor is gorgeous. I want to bite him.

An excessively alcoholic weekend

A while ago I decided I was getting far too hungover far too often, and so I eased up on the drinking for a while. I was still drinking of course, I'm not a nun, but I made sure I stopped at a reasonable point, and consequently I didn't pay for it too much the next day.

It seems to have crept back up a bit recently though, and this last weekend I was out getting boozed up three nights in a row, which is really quite unlike me.

I had a lovely weekend though - we had dinner with a friend then drinks out on Thursday, then we went for some more drinks out and then to Popstarz at the Ghetto on Friday (which was very good again - obviously that first dire week was some sort of blip), and then on Saturday we went for some MORE drinks out and then to Legends (whose wanky staff and owner always seem to spoil any trip there). And so by Sunday when we went out for some lunch I was really feeling quite sorry for myself, with a cumulative hangover from the previous three days.

So I'm going to try to cut down again a little bit I think, particularly on wine. I don't like being too drunk, and I don't like being sick the next day, so what's the point? It's just drinking for the rather expensive sake of it and because I like the taste.

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In the cold light of day

I'm not sure drunken blog posts at 1am show me in a particularly good light, so maybe setting up blogging from my phone wasn't as good an idea as I thought. I'm either going to come across as Angry Drunk (see 'Sometimes I just get so annoyed') or Horny Drunk (see post immediately after), or Wildly Erratic Drunk (see time difference between posts).

Or maybe I just need to learn some self-restraint. That might not be a bad idea in general actually.

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Also...

Blue checked shirt was really cute and was clearly looking over quite a bit. Shame I didn't take a picture actually. Probably would have looked a bit pervy though.

Sometimes, I just get so annoyed

Like, REALLY annoyed. For no particular reason, but I feel like I'm a thread at breaking point. I'm sure all the vodka probably isn't that helpful though...

Cheap gay Facebook

I joined a group on Facebook a while ago, set up by some company that was setting up a new social networking site for gay men and was looking for site testers. So I thought OK, that might be interesting, and I put my name down.

It took a while for them to reach the stage where they were ready to start letting people join and test the site, but eventually on Monday they sent a message out saying everyone should now sign up and start letting them know what they think.

Oh. My. God. It was SO rubbish! For a start, it was called Cockbook. That's just crass, predictable, and I'm sure that lots of people might not want to have loads of cockbook.com URLs appearing in their internet history at work.

So, name: crap.

Then there was the 'Create your profile' bit. They'd basically just taken all of the fields you fill in on Gaydar and used those, right down to the type of guy you are (twink, bear, etc.), the type of guy you like, and even the 'Rather not say' option for any of the more delicate questions like manhood size. Oh yes, and the form didn't work particularly well either.

Content: crap.

And then there was the design... How can I describe it? Oh yes: imagine Facebook. Now imagine if you asked a retarded eight year old to draw a picture of Facebook using blue crayons. That's what it looked like. It was almost exactly the same as Facebook (old Facebook anyway, the new design was probably a bit hard for the retarded eight year old to render with crayons), right down to the shade of blue used, the bar at the top, and the Account and Privacy links down at the bottom. I'll be surprised if they don't get sued for infringement of copyright!

Design: crap. Possibly the worst design I've ever seen on a 'professionally made' website.

Oo oo, and I almost forgot the best bit. To start with your account is 'Not verified'. When you click on why, it says that in order to stop people using profile photos that aren't actually of themselves (sadly this does happen on Gaydar, when people are too ugly to use their own pictures) they have set up a system of checking. In order to get your account 'verified', they want you to write on a piece of paper a FIFTEEN CHARACTER random verification code they give you, hold it up, photograph yourself holding it and looking like a complete knobhead for going to all this trouble, and then email it to them. Only then will they believe you actually are the person in the photo. What a completely ridiculous thing to expect people to do! That was the last straw for me.

Usability: crap.

So I clicked off of it, went back on Facebook, and left a scathing message on the group wall about how pathetic the site is.

And now they've deleted my message, because clearly when they asked for feedback they only wanted people to say nice things! Losers...

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Blogging

I'm enjoying blogging at the moment, I seem to have had a few things that I want to write about. I've also found some other people's blogs that have been fun to read, and I quite like that (after much MUCH stress and it not working properly) I can now send little blog posts straight from my phone. That means I'll be able to write little bits over the weekend, rather than having to save up things and then remember to do them when I'm at work. I do, of course, have internet access at home, but I've hardly ever written on my blog from there. Why would I want to when I can do it in work time?

Lots of people don't write as much as me in their blog posts though, I'm wondering if I go on a bit. Often they seem to write just a few sentences, but perhaps more frequently than I post. Does that make me verbose and boring?? Hmm, we'll see. If I post more often I'll write less, so maybe I'll try doing that.

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I always miss EVERYTHING!

It's so frustrating that I always manage to miss every gig and performance that I would want to attend, simply because I either don't hear about them until afterwards or by the time I do hear about them they're sold out. It's happened twice in the last month or so, and having signed up for various email updates from venues and performers doesn't seem to have helped at all!

First, I love Lisa Loeb and would say she's probably my favourite musician. Chris and I saw her perform in London a couple of years ago, and really enjoyed it and said we'd definitely see her again if we could (she doesn't perform in England all that often). And then off we gaily flew (boom boom) to America, spent four days in New York and then went on to San Francisco, and THEN I got an email saying she happened to have performed in New York during those very four days. Damn it! I would have definitely gone if I'd known! I'm on her email list specifically FOR such information and I still didn't get it/read it in time to go!

And then yesterday Chris was listening to some songs by Jay Brannan on MySpace and saying how good they were. Jay Brannan is a rather cute singer/songwriter who lives in New York and who was in the film Shortbus, which is where we know him from. So I started clicking around on his MySpace profile, and found to my horror that he performed at the Brighton Komedia on 27 August! For FUCK'S sake!! I'm ON the 'What's on at the Komedia' email list and there's never ANYTHING I want to see on the list, so I've stopped reading it particularly closely, and I managed to miss that as well! And it's not like he's a massive star or anything, especially not over here, so he probably won't be back in England for ages.

Soooo frustrating, email updates are just useless because you never end up reading them.

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Testing mobile blogging

Apparently I should now be able to blog straight from my phone to here. Wonder if it will work, and how much of a fortune it'll cost...

I declare three days of mourning

I am officially in mourning for Dynamite Boogaloo, which was pronounced dead early on Thursday morning. Yes, after 16 years of entertaining the Brighton masses with hotpants, massive hooters and horrible party games, Boogaloo Stu has finally taken it round the back of the barn and shot it in the neck.

I'm actually really sad, as Boogaloo has been a part of my life in Brighton ever since I moved down here in 1999. I must have been hundreds of times in the last nine years, and was ever so slowly building up to maybe one day participating in the cabaret. I'm not really sure what finished it off in the end either. It had a lot of venue changes during the last year, and its numbers had certainly been dropping off. I think every year Boogaloo used to recruit a new batch of fairly loyal student attendees who would go most weeks, but then it failed to do so this year and the numbers dropped and dropped. To be fair, I've been going less often myself, but I was still managing maybe once a month.

It was never really the same after it moved from the Joint to Above Audio, although it picked up a lot once it moved downstairs to Audio proper. But then it moved to Candy Bar, and then suddenly moved again to the Arc, and the venue was just too large and not very well laid-out for it. I thought they might wait to see how well it did once the students arrived again in October, but apparently not.

Dynamite Boogaloo on a Thursday is survived by its younger, fatter sibling: Super Dynamite Boogaloo, once a month on a Saturday at the Komedia. So it's not ALL bad, I'll still get to see Boogaloo Stu blatently falsifying the cabaret outcome so his favoured person wins, and Dolly Rocket tottering around with talcum powder all round her gob as Amy Winearse. But I'll no longer have my weekly "shall we shan't we" dilemma on a Thursday evening, and my Friday hangovers will be no more.

On a slightly more cheery note, we tried Popstarz at the Ghetto again last Friday. We went a couple of weeks ago, and were APPALLED by the poor quality of the music and left in a huff. But we magnanimously decided to give it another go last week (well, some other people were going, so we said oh alright) and it was really good! Much better than before, as this time the DJ actually put some good music on that people wanted to dance to, instead of ignoring the fact that his dancefloor had remained empty for the last two hours.

So I suppose we might exchange our Thursday nights out for Fridays, and my productivity at work on a Friday will probably increase by at least 32%. I should probably ask for a pay rise in that case...

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Crush of shame

I was asked the other day who my shameful crush or crushes is or are (hmm elegant sentence there). I actually couldn't think of that many, although I'm sure there must be quite a few.

Having just seen a repeated episode on ITV2, I would have to say one is Hunter from Gladiators. Yes it is quite shameful, and if I saw him for the first time today I don't think I'd say yeah he's massively hot. But I was about 13 when he was on the telly originally, and he had blond hair and muscly arms and he wore the most obscenely tight little leotard thing, so is it that surprising that he caught my attention?? And the people you fancied when you were young kind of stay with you forever... That's my excuse anyway.

So yes, he's my first Crush Of Shame. If I think of any others I might add them on here.

Oo, also, I sort of SORT OF like Robson Green, even though he does NOTHING for me facially or physically. But I had a filthy dream about him once and was never able to look at him again in the same way.

The cheek of it

Two things have happened in the last couple of days that have caused me to put my Disgusted of Tunbridge Wells hat on. Firstly, yesterday I drove a 130-mile round trip to go to a fairly pointless meeting in Surrey and endured several hours of people talking about things that either a) meant nothing to me, b) were of no interest to me, or, more likely, were a combination of both item a and item b, and then even though the meeting was right up until lunchtime, there was NO LUNCH. What??? I'd been there for THREE hours and had to subsist on a cup of tea and a bourbon. That's so ridiculous! I only went to the meeting in the first place to get the free lunch! So I am outraged and appalled.

And then also when I was telling Mum the other night about our dressing up as grease exploits, she casually enquired "are you not too old for dressing up?" The cheek of it! I'm not THAT old! OK I'm not 17 any more, I've had to begrudgingly accept that, but I'm still only in my 20s and it's not like I was dressed in a thong or anything. And personally I think we looked quite hot in our outfits. But now I'm starting to worry that I may not actually realise when I am too old, and I'll be one of those sad old nutters you see out clubbing who thinks they can still dance and that they are still down with the kids.

But I do think I'm down with the kids! Am I already there??

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Greased and ready

I think I may need to abandon catching up on my blog, as it's really not going that well and it's stopping me from writing about anything current. So I might leave blogging Stu and Helen's wedding and the voyage to Sweden, and maybe come back to them later when I've got more time. Both weddings were very nice anyway - Stu and Helen's was much more traditional than ours, which was good because then it contrasted nicely, and the trip to Sweden went astonishingly well - arrived with an hour and a half to spare, took zero wrong turns, and didn't crash the hire car. We also made some new Swedish friends, and enjoyed about eight musical numbers at various points during the celebrations. Apparently people sing a lot at Swedish weddings.

Anyway, that's my perfunctory attempt at catching up, so I can now skip ahead to September and the present day.

We had a lovely weekend, although I'm quite tired from it today. One of our wedding presents was a £50 voucher for a meal at Due South, which we decided to use on Saturday when we had possibly the last gloriously sunny day of the summer. Due South is a very nice restaurant on the beach front, serving mainly fish dishes (so not my bag) but also a few other things. It is frighteningly expensive though, so we'd never normally go if we were paying ourselves. Our two main courses and two cocktails used up the whole £50 voucher! But I had a lovely roast chicken breast with a carrot purée thing, and Chris had a risotto that he said was among the best meals he's ever had. And we did a nice bit of boy-watching while we were at it. Rough pikeys in grey trackies can be so fit, and you can see everything...

Then on Saturday we indulged in a little Super Dynamite Boogaloo. The theme this month was Grease Is The Word, based therefore on the film Grease. We wanted to dress up, but had neither suitable leather jackets nor enough hair to make into a quiff. So instead we went just as 'grease', by dressing up as mechanics. It worked really well actually, although I've ruined a t-shirt. No-one else was dressed up really though, typical. Some of the girls were in fifties dresses, but no boys ever make an effort. It was good fun anyway.

I met an odd Scottish girl who somehow thought that the fact she was wearing a poncho would convey she was from Scotland in some way. I'm still puzzling over that one. My only possible explanation so far is that the Scottish dress maker in Ugly Betty may have a similar poncho thing, but it's somewhat tenuous.

And then after writing a million wedding thank you notes on Sunday, Chris persuaded me that we could probably manage another night out, so we tried Eurotrash at the Ghetto. It's kind of a cabaret-come-club night, run by boogaloo-stu-in-waiting The Size Zero Albino (or 'Stephen' as he's otherwise known). It was good anyway, and not too strenuous for a work night. We enjoyed seeing Mr Cashback do various raps about such varied topics as pulling a sickie, trainers, and someone eating your sandwiches, and then saw a duo called Los Bonomos who did lots of ironic songs about haircuts and structural engineers. Rather too many songs in fact, it went on for ages, to the point where they twigged they were losing the audience and hurriedly finished their set.

I wish we'd had more time and/or more energy, because the music, particularly pre-cabaret, was very good. But we left soon after 12 like good boys and now I'm only medium-tired today.

So that was my weekend. Very fun and alcohol-fuelled.

Also, John McCain has picked Sarah Palin as his Vice-Presidential running mate. A poor choice in my opinion that smacks a little of desperation - he's chosen a woman in order to try to lure away some of the Hillary supporters who don't like Obama, and he's chosen someone thirty years his junior in order to drag their average age down into the fifties. But would a small-town mayor and governor of one of the freak states make a good president in the event that the 72-year old Mr McCain dropped dead? Possibly not. She's no Geena Davis in my opinion. And she's a neo-conservative. So anyway, Obama gets my vote that I don't have because I'm not American. I'm sure he'll be pleased.

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