Quest For Knowledge

Continuing Trivial Pursuits: History

2009-03-31T15:53:00.001+01:00

<< Starkey: "It's 116 years, you fucking idiots"

As mentioned last time, it's now the turn of surely the most derided TP category: History. Its brown brethren, the equally frustrating Art & Literature, has proven surprisingly popular with opponents in the past, but History wins out for always being picked as the last question to answer. I feel I'm maybe talking a bit too much about Trivial Pursuit, however, and we're not even halfway through, so let's get on with it.

Questions:

1. What did the word 'catholic' mean in ancient Greek?

2. Garum was a popular sauce in Roman times. What was it made of?

3. What is the chief ingredient of Worcestershire sauce, first produced in 1837?

4. Which Asian country invented fingerprinting?

5. From which ancient language does the word 'salary' derive?

6. What was the worst epidemic of the 20th century?

7. Sean is the Gaelic variation of which popular British name?

8. Nike was the Greek goddess of what?

9. For how many years did the Hundred Years War last?

10. How old is our universe estimated to be?

And now, the answers...

1. Universal

2. Fermented fish guts

3. Fermented anchovies (look, it's like one of those cards where all the answers are the same!)

4. Fermented anchovies... just kidding, god, this is like that Two Ronnies sketch... it's actually China.

5. Latin. It comes from the word 'salarium', which means salt. Quantities of salt was offered as payment in Roman times. Presumably the diet consisted of chips, fried egg sandwiches and Margaritas.

6. Spanish flu, which killed over 50 million people in 1918. Puts swine flu in perspective.

7. John. Now, some of you may have noticed this is not a question about history. The problem, you see, is that I dislike history so much, I subconsciously avoid taking on any information related to the topic. Starkey would be furious.

8. Sweatshops. Or maybe victory and strength.

9. 116 years. This is such a Trivial Pursuit question.

10. 15 billion years old today.

Next up, it's Art & Literature. I would like to point out, ahead of the unveiling of ten questions that vary between straightforward and factually dubious, that I have a degree in English Literature. A degree that took 3 years to earn, and which appears to have irrecoverably destroyed any interest I ever had in the subject.

Further Trivial Pursuits: Entertainment

2009-03-21T15:23:00.001Z

<< Gerry Rafferty, literally waiting by his letterbox in anticipation of more royalty cheques

For those at the back not paying attention, I'm devoting 8.5 weeks' worth of facts to the newly-remembered catalyst for my love of trivia, classic board game Trivial Pursuit (to be more specific, the Genus edition, as if you had to ask). The previous post celebrated the notoriously unpopular Geography category - today it's the more mainstream pink cheese, Entertainment. Probably the most popular and accessible TP category, the big E however fills me only with a sense of trepidation. The reasons for this are multiple (well, two) - firstly, the memories of my dad carving a path to glory around the board using only judicious use of the roll again squares, and an encyclopaedic knowledge of every film or TV show ever made, leaving the rest of us trailing in his wake. Secondly, my personal knowledge of film/TV is embarrassingly patchy. To demonstrate, here are 3 films I haven't seen:

The Godfather

The Deer Hunter

Citizen Kane

Here are 3 films I have seen:

Pearl Harbour

Miss Congeniality

Addams Family Values

You get the idea with that - here's the questions (answers below - you don't have to invert the screen)

1. Which sci=fi BBC sitcom was originally intended to be a film?

2. In which leafy London suburb do Jerry Hall, David Attenborough and Richard E Grant live?

3. What was the name of Jade Goody's perfume, released shortly after her Celebrity Big Brother appearance?

4. From where does U.S. TV show 30 Rock get it's name?

5. How did Peter Andre first find fame in Australia?

6. What is Ronnie from Eastenders' real first name?

7. Which sci-fi film inspired several thousand people to create a new religion in the 2001 census?

8. What nationality is Chris Roy Taylor, the creator of The Omnipresent cartoons which feature in The London Paper?

9. Which Scottish singer started his career as a busker?

10. Which type of film did Alfred Hitchcock begin his career working on?

Deep breath, here's the answers -

1. Red Dwarf, which finally sort of got it's wish in recent 90 minute (though it felt a lot longer) special, Back To Earth, which was, in three words, weird, laboured and depressing.

2. Richmond-upon-Thames. Some would say it's not a suburb of London, and that it's a town in Surrey. They'd be wrong.

3. Controversial.

4. 30 Rockefeller Plaza, the building the show is chiefly set in.

5. He appeared on the Australian version of New Faces.

6. Veronica. I know Ronnie is short for Veronica, OK? I ran out of questions.

7. Star Wars. Thousands put 'Jedi' as their religion on the 2001 census. Many a pub quiz bore will try and tell you that had enough people claimed to be Jedi, it would have become a religion. This is not the case.

8. Australian. He has an Australian e-mail address anyway. Good enough for me.

9. Gerry Rafferty, most famous for 'Baker Street' and being one half of Steeler's Wheel, who most famously soundtracked the removal of an ear in Reservoir Dogs. Rafferty recently went missing for several weeks, before reporting he had been relaxing at his house in Tuscany. Which begs the question: how can Gerry Rafferty afford a house in Tuscany?

10. Silent movies.

Next up, it's the last cheese to be obtained in 99% of Trivial Pursuit campaigns - the unattractive bright yellow Cheddar that is History. Does anybody like this round? Apart from David Starkey, who probably collects an entire roundel filled with 6 yellow segments, despite howls of indignation from Jon Snow, Tony Robinson, and him off Grand Designs. More soon...

Trivial Pursuits - Geography

2009-03-11T12:41:00.000Z

<< "I'm afraid the card says Moops..."

As you may have noticed, the dawn of 2009 has seen me take a slightly less hands-on approach to posting - I've been learning plenty of new stuff, but haven't summoned the spirit to render it into something readable. Instead of becoming the billionth person to apologise for not writing a blog entry for 3 months, I'll press on as I have facts spewing forth from every inch of grey matter I possess. Maybe not every inch.

Anyway, the presence of the veritable fact mountain I've been stockpiling, like grain in a massive barn in Switzerland, has got me thinking - why do I do this to myself? From whence my love of trivial nonsense, to the extent that I spend my life racing around with a large metaphorical fact-net, trying to scoop them up and regurgitate them onto a bemused and indifferent public? Two words - Trivial Pursuit. The giddy thrill of a four-cheese streak. The horror of landing on the central victory podium, a full set o' cheeses glinting in the afternoon sun, only to fall at the last hurdle and spend another half an hour frantically trying to return, all in vain.

Trivial Pursuit is the best game ever, and I think it's what first turned me on to the irresistible glow of pride and achievement gained from knowing things nobody needs to know. In TP, this pointless knowledge makes you a champion. If only it were so in real life. And so, in an earnest homage to the world's finest board game, and in no way a barely concealed attempt to dump large chunks of my fact fountain into barely discernible categories, I begin at the beginning, with 12 questions on the blue cheese, Geography (my favourite TP topic - a specialist subject, no unwelcome surprises like Sport & Leisure). Answers below - try your luck, punks.

1. Which invented language is still spoken natively by thousands of people?

2. What is unique about the nations Liechtenstein and Uzbekistan?

3. Where in the world is Bedlam?

4. How many nations form the G20 economic group?

5. What is the capital of Alaska?

6. Which Latin American capital city was originally built on volcanic lakes?

7. True or false: Llanfairpwllgwyngyllgogerychwyrndrobwllllantysiliogogogoch was given it's stupid and long name to attract tourists to the village.

8. Which German city was built in 1938 to house workers at the nearby VW plant?

9. Which is the only London Underground line to intersect with all other lines?

10. Which country on Earth is furthest from any ocean or sea?

And now it's answers time. I used to love reading the answers - by now you can probably imagine what an insufferable little turd I must have been, gleefully informing people of their slight inaccuracy and snatching the dice from their disbelieving hands:

1. Esperanto - those who learnt the language and married a fellow Esperanto speaker, who presumably they met at an Esparanto-based event, taught it to their children, who have now grown up as Esperanto speakers.

2. They are the only two nations on Earth to be doubly landlocked - this means that they are not only landlocked themselves, but border only other landlocked countries.

3. Bedlam was the name given to Bethlehem Hospital in Lambeth, South London. It is now a military museum.

4. Nineteen. Someone forgot to turn up.

5. Juneau.

6. Mexico City.

7. True - the name was made up in the 19th century to attract tourism to the otherwise unremarkable area.

8. Wolfsburg, in the central Saxony region, was founded to provide homes for a new car plant, and was originally named, slightly less romantically, Stadt des KdF-Wagens by the Nazis, who admittedly are not renowned for their sense of romance.

9. The Jubilee line, following an extension in 1999 which took it from Green Park to Stratford. A little bit of extra info thrown in, in what I like to call a 'Chris from Eggheads' manouevre.

10. Kyrgyzstan, in Central Asia.

Next up is Entertainment... hopefully soon.

I Don't Believe It!

2009-03-01T18:00:00.003Z

<< Robert Ripley: About to get served

The recent opening of the Ripley's Believe It Or Not! attraction in Piccadilly Circus, complete with five floors of baffling, barely related artefacts culminating in a killer spinny walkway thing, suggests that casual knowledge is becoming big business. In order to compete in this bold new marketplace, I'm going to have to raise my game. So for my latest post, ladies and gentlemen, I have assembled a bevy of actually quite interesting things, which I shall deliver with no small quantity of giddy hyperbole...

Davina McCall used to be a drug addict. Can you believe that?! She seems so clean-cut! Apart from the weird late-night game shows she used to do. You heard it here first!

High heels were invented in the Middle Ages, and were designed for horse riders, to keep their feet in the stirrups. Coo! Who'd have thought? The one article restraining the natural domination of women all over the world, and it was invented to stop people falling off horses. Madness.

Look over here! Traditional Bolognese sauce should contain pork, beef and chicken. That's mental.

A polydactyl is the name given to a creature with excessive fingers or toes. Doesn't sound that interesting? Well, check this out! Eww.

Phoenix Nights star and poor comedian Dave Spikey is vegetarian. But he's Northern! And slightly overweight and middle-aged. It doesn't seem possible! What's more - he really likes broccoli. What is this guy on?!

Brides before the 20th century used to wear blue rather than white. Can you even conceive of such a spectacle?

Behold the world's largest manufacturer of automobiles - at 3 miles high and over 2 years long, it's Japanese car maker Toyota! Weren't expecting that, were you?!

The Super Bowl, the single most widely enjoyed sporting event on the planet, was named after a toy called a Super Ball. A name that conjures image of titanic sporting struggle like no other was name after a mere ball - albeit a super one. My world is collapsing!

You can't buy a return bus ticket with cash on a London bus. We're not safe from this topsy-turvy madness out in the streets. Run for cover - it's factageddon.

Liberia in West Africa was founded by slaves returning from the U.S., hence the flag's similarity to the Star Spangled Banner. Is Spangled even a word? I don't know what to believe any more!!!

The Chinese had invented a form of gun in the 13th century, a full 600 years before Colt, Smith, Wesson and the like. Rip up your history books. They are now worthless. Do it!

And finally...

Fibre doesn't help to keep your bowel movements regular. In fact, it will probably make it worse. DID I JUST BLOW YOUR MINDS?!

And much like the fine institution I have aped so childishly, I have no more facts for you, and will now jettison you all into the cold London night air. Until next time...

An A-Z of Things Barely Worth Knowing

2009-02-17T15:55:00.000Z

It's been a while. I'd like to offer up an excuse, but the basic reason behind such epic tardiness is that I'm lazy, indolent and have a phone that can record around one month's worth of trivia in a handy, new-fangled, "draft text message" form. Anyway, let's crack on. We've got a lot of catching up to do, and what better way to do it then with a dispassionate alphabetical list of 26 unrelated pieces of information. That's right... it's come to this. It's A-Z time!

A is for autoroute, the name for major roads in France. As I can personally relate from a perplexing on-road experience, roads are given more than one number in France if two main roads converge to form them.

B is for brown - the colour of the salt put down in the event of unprecedented Arctic blizzards/one day of moderate snow. Or, in the case of my road, not put down.

C is for Camberwell, the fashionably edgy/dog-rough area in South London famous for its eponymous carrot. Camberwell has long been mooted as the site for a possible extension to the Bakerloo line, and may finally get its wish, as Boris Johnson has suggested extended the brown line on the map as far as Lewisham because, well, it was the first place that came into his head. Camberwell has come so close to getting on the network previously that for several years, the map at Warwick Avenue station showed Camberwell as a destination, never bothering to remove the station when it wasn't built. It's tardiness like that that I aspire to.

D is for Dungeons. The London Dungeons are part of a chain that also offers subterranean fun in Edinburgh, York and Hamburg, to name but most of them. Whether the other branches come equipped with the kind of phenomenal queue not usually reserved for fair-to-moderate attractions, I cannot say.

E is for Everest. At the top of the world's highest mountain you can boil water at only 68C. Handy information to have.

F is for French Roads Again. Parking in Paris can only be paid for via a pre-paid card (like a mobile top-up card) which in turn you can only get in tobacco shops (which are admittedly a lot more prevalent than over here). Try to imagine for just a moment the chaos that this system created for two pasty, doe-eyed British travellers who just wanted to park their car.

G is for Galling, which is the only way to describe the fact that fat-chinned megalomaniac Robbie 'cool for 6 weeks in 1995' Williams has won more Brit Awards than anyone else - 15 in total. The fact that he is miserable beyond his most wretched nightmares is barely a consolation.

H is for Hitler - as anyone with digital TV will tell you, it's hard to avoid learning about Hitler; as a result, I have two mildly diverting facts about the most evil man who ever lived. Firstly, he had terrible table manners, often shouting, belching and annihilating entire races at the table. Secondly, he spared Blackpool in the Second World War despite quite a lot of weapons being built there as apparently, he wanted to keep it as a private holiday resort. Quite frankly, it doesn't seem likely, although the claim is backed up by the fact that Coventry, which made a similar quantity of munitions, received an almighty shoeing at the hands of the Luftwaffe.

I is for India, and Iran. Two misunderstood nations, set to take centre-stage as the world's power base moves east. I don't know anything about them, but what I do know is that the French word for turkey, 'dinde', means Indian, suggesting some uncertainty over their origin. Secondly, Iran's ancient capital was called Persepolis. Neither enlightening nor relevant, but at least a bit interesting.

J is for JML, the company formerly seen on weird mini TV screens in Woolworths, advertising their own handy products, including the childishly named Dryer Balls, and a sponge that cleans your whole house if you leave it in water (maybe). JML stands for John Mills Ltd., a fact I found out from a JML product that I own. It's a vibrating back massager (no giggling at the back). I tried it and it gave me muscle spasms (I said no giggling).

J is also (who'd have thought it? Two Js! this crazy world) for Jongleurs, the nationwide comedy club whose Battersea branch is the one that started it all. Stay tuned for more J-based trivia, except there isn't any.

K is for Kick, the Tesco-made energy drink I have been drinking since the advent of the credit crunch. Prior to crunch time, I drank Red Bull, which started out as a medicinal syrup in a tiny wee bottle.

L is for the Love Bug, a film which was the first to star Herbie the self-driving car. Not to be confused with the Love Boat, the disappointingly pedestrian aquatic soap opera which has a weird knack for appearing in some form whenever I mention it.

M is for Matt Stevens, the England rugby player who has been banned for 2 years for taking a 'recreational substance'. Stevens is orginally South African, though now it doesn't really matter where he comes from, as he can't play for anyone.

N is for Niall. I have discovered from a fairly reputable source (i.e. someone Irish) that nobody pronounces my name 'Neil' in Ireland - only 'Nile' as in Niall Quinn. This revelation immediately followed my being asked to join the St. Patrick's Day committee, and I'm not sure whether this denouncement of my Irishness counts as a withdrawal of the original indication. It had seemed like an easy ride - organising a St. Patrick's Day event? Guinness, outsized green top hats, shamrock and the backroom at O'Neills, surely? Alas, I may never know.

O is for Ouroboros, the symbol of cyclicality and reinvention which features a snake eating it's tail. The word 'ouroborus' is Greek and means, perhaps unsurprisingly, tail-devouring snake.

P is for Park Lane, the desirable street in Central London famous for being the second most valuable square on a Monopoly board, and more recently for being blighted by a gang of dirty squatters who had the temerity to move into a massive house that some rich old bastard wasn't even living in. Park Lane is so called because it overlooks Hyde Park. Those squatters must be enjoying some great views tonight.

Q is for (le) Quatriéme Dimension, the French name for the Twilight Zone. I learnt this from going on the Twilight Zone Tower of Terror ride several times at Disney. It was a hoot of Paultons Park proportions. Quatriéme Dimension, incidentally, translates as Fourth Dimension, for those of you who can't read.

R is for Reese. The company forever searching for new ways to combine chocolate with peanut butter are owned by Hershey. Will I ever run out of new things to discover about American chocolate?

S is for Skid Row. The address which symbolises humanity's lowest ebb is real, and can be found in downtown Los Angeles. You know you've fucked up when your address is actually Skid Row. What next? A Boulevard of Broken Dreams somewhere in Chicago? Perhaps a suburb served by Shattered Dreams Parkway station...

T is for TSA, which stands for Tenants' Service Authority, and is the new name for the Housing Corporation. May not mean a lot to those of you working outside of housing.

U is for Ultras, those divisive supporters of many European teams who give to the cause by being passionate, vocal and loyal supporters, but who also damage the team's image slightly by being violent, racist and violently racist. Italian club Sampdoria, based in Genoa, had the first fans to call themselves Ultras.

V is for Victoria, the busiest line on the Tube network, and the only line to run entirely underground. The Waterloo & City Line doesn't count. Why? You know why.

W is for wilderness. Nowhere sums up this word quite like the Cotohuazi canyon in Peru. The ancient Incan city of Marpa, situated at the centre of its length, is so remote and inaccessible that more people have been to the top of Everest (possibly to boil water more efficiently) than have laid eyes on the ruined city.

X is for Xplosives (just let me have it... please). The phrase 'damp squib' refers to the fuse on explosives getting wet, meaning that the fuse won't light. Except the phrase to make several appearances when the Champions League returns at the end of the month.

Y is for You're Gonna Need A Bigger Boat, the line from Jaws voted the best cinematic quote of all time by ShortList magazine. This revelation comes at the end of a Top 20 list which summarises nearly a century of film-making into a pointless list of overused lines of dialogue. It did teach me, however, that the line "I feel the need, the need for speed" is from Top Gun. I've never seen Top Gun. People seem to be amazed by this. Why would I want to watch Top Gun? Give me one good reason.

Z is for Zulus, the tribe that continually direct spears towards Michael Caine, despite his repeated, angry pleas for them to cease. In another of Michael Caine's top 'performances', he closes the Italian Job by exclaiming "hold on lads, I've got an idea" as he and his cohorts stand in a lorry teetering on the edge of a cliff (you guessed it, that line featured in the list too). This is because the booty is in the other side of the lorry, so they need to retrieve it. I've actually watched this film and didn't pick up on this. Unbelievable. Apparently some bright spark has suggested that the best way to retrieve the gold without plummeting to certain doom would be to slowly release fuel from the front of the tank. God, I'd rather be idle than spend my time working that out.

Acceptable in the Eighties

2009-01-19T12:51:00.002Z

<< Tony Hart, 1925-2009

Ah, the Eighties. Frankie Goes to Hollywood. Big mobile phones. Roland Rat. Miners' strikes. Dexy's Midnight Runners. You get the idea. A line of facts sporting flock-of-seagulls haircuts, rooting through their filofaxes and playing with a rubik's cube have got me all nostalgic for a decade that ended when I was seven. Ah, those Eighties memories. Wearing a big jumper and eating an ice-cream (which seems illogical). Watching Bugs Bunny cartoons and needing a poo. Standing alone in a freezing playground. Heady days indeed.

When it comes to those who defined the Eighties in this country, Prime Minister and proletariat crusher Maggie Thatcher is right up there, just behind Phil Oakey and Max Headroom. Thatcher was born in Grantham, Lincolnshire, which is entirely unnoticeable in her mangled Victorian accent. MT was in charge for the entirety of the decade. When she wasn't being hated by her own citizens (Poll Tax riots, miners' strikes again, that weird thing on Swap Shop or whatever) she was putting it up nations much larger and more volatile than ours - Argentina, namely. What I didn't realise was that Argentina was under military rule at the time of the Falklands War. A nation run by an army, and Maggie was more bloodthirsty than they were.

Thatcher may have a lot to answer for, but being so intrinsically connected to the Eighties, she was probably at least OK at cutting-edge video game experience Pong. Gordon Brown, if this footage of him being shit at actual ping-pong is anything to go by, would struggle.

The Internet was a global phenomenon launched in the Eighties, although by 1989 only about 12 people were using it. It came into it's own under the jurisdiction of the Eighties' goofy kid brother, the Nineties. Initially, the Internet was called the Arpanet - a fact pointed out by Norwich Union in their desperate attempt to make the loss of identity triggered by their takeover and forcible name change look like a pivotal moment in their destiny. And incidentally, "can you imagine a punk rock singer called Vincent Pernier?" Yes. That's an excellent name for a punk rock singer. Much better than Alice Cooper, who sounds like a vet.

And finally, we bid farewell to an Eighties legend, and perhaps the finest artist in history - Mr Tony Hart. A volatile, experimental genius, Hart was renowned for creating breathtaking silhouette landscapes, only to sabotage his work by tipping vast quantities of glitter glue over it for no apparent reason. He also seemed like a thoroughly nice bloke, who will leave a legacy of shaky camerawork displaying rubbish kids' drawings, comprehensive guides to art and craft that would shame Neil Buchanan - and the Blue Peter badge. Cos he designed it.

The Bleak Midwinter

2009-01-14T15:42:00.000Z

You know it's upon you when you reach into your pocket for loose change and find nothing but balls of lint, which have frozen into jagged icicles in the arctic temperatures. Or perhaps it's the moment when you fall headlong over the pile of Christmas decorations (which rather than packing away you have opted to allow to slide pathetically into a congealed mass on the floor) and find that ten minutes later you are still there, weeping hysterically. Maybe it's the moment you try to comfort yourself with the notion that the evenings are getting later, as you peer desperately at a dying sun, suffocated by clouds, as driving hail takes chunks out of your skin. Either way, there's a moment for everyone this month then the horror that is January hits you.

It's the month that makes you pine for November - a vacuum of money, joy, sunlight and motivation that feels never-ending. Even the election of a black president, and my team nearly buying the world's best footballer, have raised little more than a wearied grunt in these dark days. I don't know what idiot decided to place a whole week of festivities directly before this god-awful month, but it's created a comedown that takes up a twelfth of the entire year. It's not like February is any better - it just can't get any worse. The only thing to do is keep your head down, hold the tears back and distract yourself until it's Valentine's Day, when you'll have a whole new reason to be miserable.

Read a book - may I recommend J.D. Salinger's Catcher In The Rye? It's a contemporary classic filled with subtle overtones of longing and despair, and is also quite short. Happy Birthday J.D. - 90 on New Year's Day.

Drink until you're happy again - start with Coronas. They look more sophisticated than a dented can of Tennent's Super. Corona is brewed in Mexico, thus adding a much-needed exotic flavour to your midwinter binges.

Go on holiday - Why not explore the Shetland coast? It's 900 miles long. At least you'll be glad to come home.

Lag your pipes - In early colonial America, pipes were made from hollowed-out logs. The fact that water can pass through wood was something I assume they found out in time. Incidentally, does anyone remember a British Gas ad which had a 'sod's law' theme, but said "your pipes freeze on the coldest days?". I'd just like to point out that they freeze because it's really cold - it's not just a coincidence. You think they'd know that.

Watch a documentary which relentlessly exposes the chasm of misery consuming someone more talented than successful than yourself - as I did with Surviving Gazza, a slightly odd title seeing as Gazza isn't actually dead. If nothing else, it taught me that money can't buy happiness, that I liked Gazza a lot more when he was wacky than now he's a suicidal alcoholic - and that Bianca Gascoigne is his daughter.

Stare at Sky Sports News for hours at a time, clinging to the only constant in your life as everything else crumbles like so many Man City transfer negotiations. They might just tell you that Liverpool full-back Insua is Argentinian. Except I just did. And you don't care.

Consider throwing in the towel and heading back to uni to rack up another £15,000 of debt. Why the hell not? We'll all be living in huts soon anyway. Numerus clausus is a system used to allocate university places according to specific characteristics, e.g. race, gender. It was used by the Romans, and has been used for good (redressing the appalling imbalance in the opportunities afforded to women and people from ethnic minorities) and bad (I'm gonna guess... the Nazis).

Go and buy a big telly and rack up another £500 of debt. Why the hell not? We'll all be living in huts soon anyway. Richmond-upon-Thames has more debt per person than any other town in Britain - around £40,000.

Capture a bee and force it to sting you, in order to replicate even an unpleasant aspect of summer - bee stings can remain in your arm for several months. Maybe even 'til summer comes around.

Sit and stare at a wall, feeling unbearably conscious of your most basic bodily functions, such as breathing, blinking and swallowing. The average person produces 1.5 litres of saliva each day, which is unconsciously swallowed again.

Use the internet to book a holiday, gamble obscene sums of money, repeatedly watch a cat sitting on a moving skateboard, or pour out your January bile unto a small, passive white box, and let everyone you know read it. Internet usage in the UK peaks at 6pm on Sunday evening.

Watch soaps. Nobody's more miserable than people in soaps. In their Januarys everyone gets rickets and then the entire street gets torched when a kid's birthday cake topples over. Coronation Street isn't on on Sunday anymore.

Have a birthday. If your birthday isn't in January, just pretend it is. Everyone will be glad of the excuse. It doesn't matter if they know full well it's not really your birthday. Jehovah's witnesses don't celebrate birthdays. Not even in January.

Liven things up with a cold, flu, or exotic vomiting bug. Even the hiccups would break the monotony. Hiccough is pronounced 'hiccup'.

The Final Countdown

2008-12-31T23:59:00.001Z

It wasn't supposed to be like this. I had planned a parade complete with souvenir programme, a payload of digital fireworks and had even hired a few talking heads to digest the year in fact. Instead, the year is drawing to a close and I don't even have time to cast a casual eye over my first full year of fact-finding. Instead, I've been scrabbling for titbits inside crackers and under the tree, as the festive season finally rolled around. My knees are weak, my eyes are heavy - but I'm on the home straight. Here's the final fact burst of 2008:

Barmy health-conscious kids' TV show Lazy Town is made in Iceland.

23% of Hawaiians are vegetarian.

My new boss doesn't believe in the institution of marriage.

Sugar doesn't make children hyperactive (unless it's mixed with amphetamines - just a disclaimer)

Mert O'Donaghue was the first player to record a 147 break in a competitive snooker game. He is also famous for nothing else.

Breathing from your diaphragm helps you to project your VOICE.

Andy-Scott Lee, who I had previously thought famous only for losing on Pop Idol and being Lisa "Number 23? That's shit!" Scott-Lee's brother, was in forgotten boyband 3SL.

This bizarre selection took me to Christmas Eve, where the facts inevitably got briefly festive:

"All I Want For Christmas Is You" is Mariah Carey's biggest-selling single ever.

Conkers are horse chestnuts, rather than regular chestnuts.

That pretty much wraps up the festive section. Hardly 'A Christmas Carol', was it?

Cheesecake is a term for an attractive woman.

Rose wine is made by peeling the skin from red grapes (and then, y'know, mashing it up and that)

Armadillos (including the Holiday Armadillo) are the only animal other than humans to suffer from leprosy.

Menthe pastille is the same thing as Creme de Menthe (by this point, the drinks cabinet was emptying nicely)

Nestle is based in Croydon (they're welcome to each other).

And so to my final fact of this tumultuous year, which started with Geraint Jones waxing lyrical about time zones and has featured a mixed race man winning a U.S. election, the death of Woolworths, a prank phonecall suffering a ludicrously disproportionate backlash, and of course, the occasional mention of the total economic annihilation of the world as we know it.

The clothes shop Morgan, currently teetering on the brink of administration, is based in France.

See you in 2009.

Four Festive Facts

2008-12-17T22:50:00.000Z

As my first year of learning draws to a close, Christmas is drawing into view - and I'm experiencing the driest days of the whole experience. If I'm not on ten-hour Christmas lunches, I'm in Woolworths, meandering through the post-apocalyptic chaos in search of cheap tinsel; if I'm not there, I'm wrapping presents with all the panache and dexterity of a panda in boxing gloves. There's barely time for breathing, let alone fact-finding. Perhaps unsurprisingly, most of the nuggets I've found have had a festive feel, just like bloody everything at this time of year. (My worst experience this holiday season has been buying a 'festive' Krispy Kreme doughnut, whose sprinkles were red and green, instead of multi-coloured, and considerably fewer than average. Merry Christmas.)

We start with the festive singalong. Listening to the radio at Christmas feels a bit like being in the Soviet Union, hearing the same dozen broadly enthusiastic songs over and over again. Each of them has a different effect on the listener; Mariah Carey's works at first, but starts to grate before you've bought the turkey - Wizzard works the other way round. Slade is just plain annoying, whilst Wham is probably the most inoffensive. Fairytale of New York is an opinion-splitter (certainly in Knowledge Towers) but was always my family's favourite, particularly the line about "the boys from the NYPD choir... singing Galway Bay". Well, at the risk of breaking my dad's heart, I regret to inform you that there's no such thing as the NYPD choir. They made it up. Also, Dad, I've heard Shane McGowan likes a drink.

On to presents. Perhaps the most famous of all the rubbish gifts is the chunky, ill-fitting sweater. If you should be fortunate to receive one, preferably adorned with snowflakes and/or reindeer, find out if it was made from Merino wool. I'd always thought Merino was a place, possibly in Italy; it is in fact a breed of sheep. Does that make you feel better? I didn't think so.

Next up, it's Christmas past. Everyone knows that pagans held a midwinter festival that resembles Christmas, but something I didn't know before was that the Romans had their own version, the simply titled Saturnalia. Gifts were exchanged and no doubt all sorts of debauchery took place with Frankie Howerd looking on sheepishly. One of the key themes of Saturnalia was that slaves became masters for the festivities, and probably took liberties they would come to deeply regret in the ensuing 12 months. This tradition is still going strong today, when your office boss offers to buy the drinks at the team do, and then pretends they've left their wallet at home, and you all have to split it, which is really a piss-take when they earn 10 grand more than you and the entire bill is £30. Ahem.

And finally, after Christmas is all over (I'm aware this was hardly a comprehensive guide to Christmas, but I can only work with what I've got) you have January, with it's sleet, dark and credit card bills. Fear not, however, for Santa has had a word with the banks, and interest rates have been slashed - even going as low as "between 0 and 0.25%" in America. Which demonstrates that, when you're in a hole as big as they are, you can actually set interest rates at a variable rate. So spend away - it's like free money*

*Quest For Knowledge does not accept responsibility for debts incurred over the festive period. QFK would like to state that low interest rates are in no way like free money.

Quick Quiz

2008-12-13T22:41:00.002Z

In the last three days I've learnt about where things come from - not babies, which everyone knows comes from birds, when bees try to have sex with them (as is my understanding), but - well, why should I have to spell it out for you? This blog is a two-way street you know. I'll give you the three things, and the three places they call home - and then you can work it out for yourselves, while I have a nicecuppatea.

A. 10% of the world's freshwater.
B. Minder's George Cole.
C. Sour-faced yet consistently accurate Strictly judge, Craig Revel-Horwood.

And the places:

1. Australia
2. Greenland
3. Tooting, South-West London

The answers are as follows:

A-2: The Greenland ice sheet contains 10% of the world's fresh water (i.e. not sea water). The day it melts away and you can walk across Greenland, you'll also be able to swim from London to Paris - its disappearance would raise worldwide sea levels by 7 metres.

B-3: George Cole comes from Tooting, joining other T-Town alumni Darren Bent, Matt Willis, the singer from Then Jericho, and of course my good (if not very famous) self.

C-1: Craig Revel-Horwood grew up in Australia. He gives his time there a 6/10.

Digging For Gold

2008-12-10T17:18:00.000Z

One thing I have definitely learnt (the rest is becoming a blur) is that I get most of my facts from a variety of places - but not that big a variety. The source of the last fortnight's worth of gold demonstrates this aptly, squashed as it is into one blog entry, as life has unexpectedly and obtrusively called me repeatedly away from my computer - to the extent where I'm typing this up at work between tedious and awkward social engagements. I'm spending so much time having to talk to other people that I'm actually learning things from conversations - of the 13 facts I've picked up, an unprecedented 4 come from real, human conversations. They are:

Hull has it's own internet service provider - Karoo, who sponsor Hull City's home shirts.

Sprouts are sweeter if they were picked after the first frost of winter.

Epistaxis is the medical term for a nosebleed.

Doobies are spliffs made entirely from weed. And paper, obviously.

Returning to more familiar ground, I have purloined a steady four facts from my source of preference, the great global web of unimportant information that is the Internet. The internet is in fact a hive of credible and worthy information if you're prepared to dig deep enough. It will therefore not surprise you to learn that I obtained all of the facts below from either Wikipedia or BBC News.

The Care Bears were created for a range of greetings cards.

Milan and Boca Juniors have won more international club trophies than any other teams.

The first mention of a red carpet being rolled out for a VIP is in the Ancient Greek tale of Agamemnon. The motif was then revived in the early twentieth century.

111 was the original emergency number, but it was changed to 999 as 111 calls can be made accidentally - by telegraph wires knocking together.

When I'm not fact-checking or asleep, you'll usually find me searching desparately for something worth watching on TV. Occasionally (usually during QI) I may even learn something. When all else fails, I turn to the red button, the fat key to a world of trivia. In a nicely symmetrical way, these four facts have all entered my consciousness, in one way or another, via the goggle-box:

Michael McIntyre lives in Muswell Hill (may this fact also serve as a lesson to myself and others to write down all interesting facts you discover, lest you forget them and have to crib a barely notable piece of information from a repeat of Live at the Apollo).

The parliament on the Isle of Man is the oldest in the world.

Andrew Lloyd Webber wrote 'Itsy Witsy Teeny Weeny Yellow Polka Dot Bikini' for Timmy Mallett. O yeah!

'Chocolate leg' is the Dutch expression for a footballer's weaker foot (in my case the right. And the left)

So of the last 13 facts, only 1 has not come from the worlds of cyberspace, television, and talking. I'd love to say I found it carved in an Egyptian cave, or found and decoded an old WW2 code message, but the truth is, it was in The Diving Bell and the Butterfly, a film too depressing to be watched at any time but which had to be returned to the DVD rental service:

W is the least used letter in the French alphabet.

In English, the least used is Z - with X and J just behind. I will now close this latest entry by attempting to redress this imbalance. Zjxzxjxjxjjjjjzzzzxxjjjxzzzzjjxjzzjxxjzjjjxjzjzjzjzjzzjzjzjzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzjjjjjjjjjjjzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzjjjjjjjjxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx.

That ought to do it...

One Thing, Leading To Another

2008-11-26T17:02:00.000Z

Clement Freud is Sigmund Freud's nephew. Freud (Sigmund, that is) wrote a paper on Paranoia and Obsessive Neuroses. Paranoid by Black Sabbath is so popular in Finland it is requested at gigs no matter who's playing - in the same way 'Freebird' is called out at U.S. concerts. Finland are a nation which enjoys a friendly rivalry with its neighbour, Sweden, primarily driven by people confusing Finnish traditions with Swedish ones (e.g. the sauna). This is a problem also experienced by New Zealanders, who everyone thinks are Australian, despite the 2 nations being thousands of miles apart. Any event involving Australia and New Zealand is known as Trans-Tasman. This derives from the countries' location on either side of the Tasman sea, which like Tasmania is named after explorer Abel Tasman. Enfield in North London (bear with me) is also named after an individual - its name means 'Eana's land'. The first ATM cash dispenser in the world was installed in Enfield. Germany currently has more ATMs than any other country in Europe, but Spain has the most per habitant. Spain also has the best football league in Europe, whatever Sky bloody Sports says. League chiefs are doing their best to put the kibosh on this, however, by forcing all teams to play the 'Big Four' (in a league where the Big Four does change occasionally) in a row. The run of fixtures, nicknamed the Tourmalet after a mountain in the Pyrenees, requires each team to play Real Madrid, Barcelona, Sevilla and Villarreal in a row twice a year. Only Valladolid, a team I have actually seen play in the flesh, have even won a game in their 4-game stint. The game before the Tourmalet might be seen as an hors d'oeuvre - except in Spain it would be called a Picadita, or perhaps more recognisably, tapas. In Hawaii, hors d'oeuvres are known as puu-puu. Hawaii is 2000 miles away from the U.S. mainland, but became a state in 1959, mainly to prevent exploitation of labour by granting Hawaiian citizens full voting rights. Another equally distant colony, Greenland, which lies 2200 miles from Denmark, has recently voted for greater autonomy from its rulers. Greenland is the most sparsely populated territory on Earth, with a population of 57,564 people spread over an area of 2,166,086 square kilometres. That's roughly equivalent to the population of Tooting being given the entirety of Mexico to set up home in. It's pretty roomy up there.

Bohemian Like You

2008-11-19T14:41:00.000Z

Prague is the most bohemian city in the world. Before e-mails start flooding in from rival toursit centres (I'm sure they will), this is on a technicality. The region of Bohemia makes up the western half of the Czech Republic, and Prague is it's largest city. London, meanwhile, has more Facebook users than any other city on Earth - which surely makes it the least bohemian city in the world. Possibly behind Swindon.

To be fair, there are things less bohemian than Facebook, which does at least encourage social interaction, even if it doesn't involve actual human contact, and demands you to give out your personal details without conditions attached (not cool, man). Tax returns, for instance. Jeremy Clarkson. Owning shares. Nazi Germany. To be fair, I think Nazi Germany is pretty much the pinnacle of anti-bohemianism (although this is perhaps not its greatest crime). To name but one thing, scientists in Nazi Germany developed methadone to control the spread of opium around Europe. Anyone who's seen the inside of an opiate user's flat is aware that it don't get much more bohemian than that (if you can call spartan, grimy and unrelentingly grim bohemian in essence). The prescription of methadone, designed to ease heroin users into a drug-free lifestyle, can instead maintain their existence without the bohemian edge of intravenous drug-taking. For shame. It would never happen in Prague.

Sunday Supplement

2008-11-16T19:22:00.003Z

<< By this point, Janet was convinced that there was no TV guide in there to begin with

Today being the Lord's day, you'll most likely have followed one of only a few possible paths for a Sunday. You have either (a) attended church, washed the car and built a conservatory; (b) woken at 4pm with your head full of molten lead and staggered to the bathroom, where you have remained ever since; (c) trudged aimlessly around Sainsbury's wondering how you can get out of work tomorrow, or (d) woken up at 10am full of vigour, strolled to the shop to purchase a Sunday paper, returned home for a roast dinner, and promptly fallen asleep at 1pm full of gravy, only a vast diaspora of uninteresting supplements covering your indignity.

By the way, I chose (c), but I've been known to dabble in (b) and (d) as well. Sunday papers are a curious thing - for me, they symbolise the huge promise and intense disappointment that Sunday brings. Collecting the bursting bundle of knowledge from the corner shop is the highlight of the whole Sunday broadsheet experience. By the time you've disassembled the thing, you realise that the sport magazine is entirely about the Madagascan basketball league, the business section appears 3 separate times, and the fucking TV guide is missing. You will also discover that to read the entire tome will take at least 4 years, and to read any articles you can actually understand will take 15 seconds. And so you shuffle the whole sorry mess into a makeshift duvet and kiss another Sunday goodbye.

Anyway, if you haven't had the privilege of a Sunday broadsheet experience today, allow me to oblige, as I convert 11 pieces of information into a sweltering column of news before your very eyes.

In the Politics Section:
Barack Obama is the first president to take over during wartime since World War 2. Turn to Fashion Supplement B, p. 337 to learn how to get his look for just £10,000. Obama has also been given the code name Renegade by security services in America. What's your code name? Have a look at our CIA Code Names book, featuring the code names of every human being alive, free next Sunday.

Cornwall is effectively recognised as an independent nation by the EU. To celebrate, get your free pasty by taking this voucher to any branch of Greggs.

In Sport:
Non-UK nationals are eligible for the Sports Personality of the Year prize, with Irish boxer Barry McGuigan the only non-UK winner to date. Turn to the solar plexus of the supplement to find our Sports Personality pull-out, which will give you the tantalising yet doomed hope that Lewis Hamilton might not win.

F.C. Sevilla have the largest network of football scouts in the world. In second place - the makers of Football Manager. This fact is revealed in a piece on Football Manager in which the writer will pretend to be above ever playing it, yet repeatedly betray an unhealthy obsession with the game.

Finally, Barack Obama supports West Ham. Check out our Obama wallchart, which contains all 9,000 articles about the president-elect from today's paper in a handy 8-yard wallchart. It's Obamalicious.

In Fear:
Germany is the world's largest exporter - but is now in recession. As we soon will be. And then you will have nothing, my friend, and will be forced to root through the bins behind Asda for your fix of Sunday news, plus a torn, sauce-stained pictorial selection of extortionate furniture you could barely afford in the first place.

In Cocktails (that weird section that seems oddly specific and is alternated on a weekly basis):
Martini is a type of glass as well as a drink; Margaritas contain demi-sec and tequila. Fancy mixing your own cocktails to jazz up your suffocating middle-class existence? Well work it out yourself. We can't help you to do absolutely everything.

In Things You Are Ashamed Not To Have Known:
There is a London Bridge in London - next to London Bridge tube station. Want to know where to get the best bagels if you're in the area? Pick up your free Bagels supplement, which replaces Cocktails, next week.

On The Cover of the Magazine: Do Nosebleeds Give You Psychic Abilities?
The Actual Gist of the Article: Nosebleeds are used in science-fiction to indicate that a person has psychic abilities.

Please recycle this article, once you've scraped it off your saliva-coated chin, having been woken by the Antiques Roadshow music.

It's All About... You Know, That Guy

2008-11-05T21:06:00.003Z

<< "Who's the Prez?"

Hello and welcome to the History of the World, Part 2. A man of mixed race with the name Barack Hussein Obama will take the keys to the White House from George W. Bush in two months' time. I have for you today a bevy from facts from a time long ago, that scarcely seem relevant now - except that they can all be linked back to yesterday's seismic events across the Pond, in highly tenuous fashion in some instances, but let's be honest, today it's all about Obama. I, like many around the world, never seriously believed that America would elect a non-white candidate to the Oval Office until last night. I'm still in shock and thoroughly delighted with the removal of the Republicans and the installation of a guy without privilege who seems genuinely interested in restoring the fortunes of his citizens.

I am slightly concerned about a possible Tony Blair factor, in that voters have found the candidate to fit the change they desired like the UK did in 1997. We thought we were getting a fresh-faced, motivated, left-leaning PM - instead we got the most amoral, despicable person imaginable. One thing that Blair was, of course, that Obama is not, is a white guy from a well-off background. Whatever lies ahead, and President Obama faces some huge challenges in making his presidency the success we're all hoping for, it's hard not to get misty-eyed listening to elderly African-Americans recall not being allowed to use drinking water fountains, and sitting at the back of buses just 40 years ago, now seeing an African-American become their President. Even Sarah Palin may have felt the odd sensation of human empathy coursing through her last night. Anyway, here's some facts from the before time, the long long ago, that are really all about the new Prez who will save us all by not being George W. Bush...

Manchester City are the seventh most successful football club in England. Both City and Obama, though ostensibly not at all similar in any way, have become contenders through a windfall of cash. Barack earned his by asking millions of hard-working voters to dig out $5 a time to build a better America. City just went cap in hand to an oil trillionaire. Bet Obama wishes he'd thought of that.

Graham Fellows, the man behind comic character John Shuttleworth, is the brother-in-law of Ainsley Harriott. Ainsley recently found out in an episode of Who Do You Think You Are? (which really should have been renamed What Are You Like? on this occasion) that he is descended from slaves and slave-owners, as is Michelle Obama - a fact revealed during one of her husband's key speeches in turning the election in his favour. Going well so far.

The sun comprises 99% of the mass in our solar system. In other unfeasibly high percentage based news, 97% of African-Americans who voted in the U.S. election voted for Obama. Obama also pulled in young and female voters, whilst older males were for some reason drawn to calcified Action Man, John McCain.

The 'devilhorns' hand gesture means 'I love you' in American sign language. Just don't tell Metallica, for god's sake. Barack and Michelle preferred an affectionate and admirable contemporary 'fist bump' gesture, which Fox News, apropos of absolutely fuck-all, tried to insinuate was a 'terrorist fist jab'. The right-wing media somehow managed to insult the intelligence of working-class Americans during this election with all manner of craziness like this - in the end, they went so far they forgot to remember even basic policies, like rich people get even more money and more guns and things like that.

The Tussauds Group own Thorpe Park, Alton Towers and Chessington World of Adventures. They do also own the disappointing central London attraction that is Madame Tussaud's, which features waxworks of the rich and famous, including from today, Barack Obama. Models of both candidates were made, and John McCain will now be melted down (the model not the man) possibly still humming "Bomb Iran" as the ovens are fired up. Why don't they just buy the guy himself? He's not the most flexible of men, and it's not like he's gonna be busy.

I guess the most amazing thing about Obama's rise to power is that he started from nothing, and was a massive outsider just a year ago. He has clearly always been ambitious, having already been a lawyer and senator, and also published two memoirs, before his bid for the presidency. The fact remains, however, that he is an inexperienced politician from a demographic not exactly used to strutting down the halls of power, and he has been elected on nothing more than his own charisma, idealism and incredible skill at uniting the electorate. I cannot recall a president being elected in any nation who symbolised such an incredible sea-change in the hearts and minds of their citizens - the fact that it has happened in America just makes it all the more incredible.

It seems that, where others have used family connections and personal wealth to gain power, Obama really has achieved the American Dream. Maybe he reached out to the electorate in a way no others have considered - the guy wrote on his blog in between accepting McCain's concession and walking out to an adoring crowd in Chicago. Maybe, as The Onion suggests, there is a simpler explanation for America finally electing an African-American president. Or perhaps the $900 bill he ran up with his local Domino's Pizza branch has helped cement his acceptance amongst the American people. Whatever the reasons, politics will surely never be the same again. Here's today's fact: Barack Obama is the 44th president of the U.S.A. I literally can't believe it, and for the first time since I was about 10 years old, I actually wish I was American.

Money's Too Tight To Mention

2008-10-28T23:37:00.004Z

Whilst enjoying a cut-price sub at lunchtime, I heard mention over the radio that Gordon Brown is effectively soliciting the world's better-off nations to pour more money into the IMF, to help out countries affected by the credit crunch. It's the international equivalent of a bleary-eyed student gadabout calling their dad at 7am for a fat sympathy loan, having blown all their dough on, I dunno, joss sticks and cans of 20/20. The most remarkable thing, of course, is that the West is asking the rest of the world to help them out. China and the oil-rich Gulf states are richer than us. A lot richer. This surely marks the beginnings of a new economic age for the world we live in.

But wait a minute - who cares about that nonsense? After all, it's only been dominating the news for 18 months. Who can even think about the turning of the global economy when a quite funny comedian and a quite unfunny chat show host have been insulting Manuel's granddaughter on a late-night radio show? The monumental storm in a tiny, plastic play teacup that Brand and Ross have created is like complaining to your landlord about an ants' nest whilst an elephant lurks furtively in the middle of your lounge. I admit that I wouldn't particularly relish finding the 4 messages in question on my voicemail, but the fact that Sachs' sainted granddaughter currently earns a living in a performance ensemble known as the Satanic Sluts might suggest that allegations of sexual activity may not have been the libellous sucker punch we're led to believe.

If we're all trying to ignore the clouds of doom circling just behind a certain prank-calling fop, what chance of the little people affected by the credit crunch getting their turn in the spotlight? Well, the BBC are trying to address this imbalance by listing a few quirky professions either benefitting or suffering as a result. One profession I'm particularly pleased to see doing well is the humble art of cobbling. This is because on Sunday, I saw our local cobbler shutting up shop at midday and wondered to myself how on Earth a South London shoemaker could weather the financial storm when airlines and multinational banks are going under. Thankfully, people are now getting old shoes repaired rather than buying new ones, so I can stop considering taking my weather-beaten old Converse shoes in for a patch-up.

As the West looks to the East for guidance and the odd sly tenner, one idea being put forward is that Islamic financial systems could be used as a model to rebuild Western economies. While Russell Brand at least will be delighted, as it might mean he finally gets a break from being on the cover of the Daily Mail, it does make financial sense - many Islamic financial systems forbid the paying and charging of interest, as well as speculation (that's when some cocky City boy tosses your savings around the stock market like a 3-year-old playing Monopoly). It could be the way forward, and is something that a lot of financial folk must be considering, while Andrew Sachs considers changing his phone number, and seeing if his granddaughter needs financial assistance to facilitate a change of lifestyle.

Across The Pond

2008-10-27T21:09:00.002Z

<< U.S.A! U.S.A! U.S.A!

With the U.S. elections fast approaching (well, not that fast - can you believe they've only been in an official race for about 6 weeks?) and the NFL entertaining 83,000 slightly confused and fidgety punters at Wembley Stadium yesterday, this post looks at our neighbours over the water, with a series of half-truths that will shed little to no light on their situation.

For starters, he may be the owner of a traditional American occupation, but bad actor Keanu Reeves isn't American - he grew up in Toronto. This may finally explain his jerky movements and wooden demeanour after all these years. From non-Americans pretending to be American, to Americans pretending to be French - McDonalds, an institution so American the golden arches should be on the flag (incidentally - golden arches? It's a yellow M, surely) is the fat, greasy face behind extortionate cosmopolitan eaterie Pret A Manger. The fact that Pret A Manger is French for 'ready to eat' was a bit of a giveaway really.

On Friday I consulted Empire's 500 Greatest Movies, a list likely to infuriate and inspire in equal measure (The Matrix above Vertigo? Fuck off) and discovered that in the U.S. Army, toilet paper is known as John Wayne paper - because it's 'rough, tough and don't take shit off nobody'. Say what you like about the American Empire's amoral foot soldiers - they know how to craft an amusing film reference. These witty bastards have been pivotal in U.S. elections in previous years, namely the great election swindle of 2000.

It feels a bit embarrassing to start braying about the rigged election like a shop steward in the corner of a dusty pub, but come on, it was, and nothing was ever done about it, which is just insane. I guess it's easy for me to say - like Keanu, I'm non-American, so I can't be accused of being un-American. It seems unlikely that their postal votes will count for much this time, as forecasts predict a clear victory for Obama. All I'm saying is with the neo-cons around, it had better be beyond any doubt. One swing state where Obama is focussing his efforts is Ohio, the 11th most-populated state in America, and a place described as a microcosm of the country as a whole. This is apparently due to its mix of rural and urban, blue-collar and white-collar, and a dose of Springsteen-soundtracked 80s prosperity slowly stagnating as the 21st century dawned. Another way of looking at this is that, hell, if Barack can win here, he can win the whole election.

That fifth fact came from today's Evening Standard, so I'm on fresh, and slightly, shaky ground in that I'm taking my learning out of chronological order. The two things I learnt this weekend sadly didn't fit the theme, so they're left out in the cold, like Keanu Reeves at a 4th July street party. Firstly, stars make noise - clearly, not a noise that is especially audible to you or I, but it's been picked up on, y'know, that thing. Secondly, you have sinuses under your eyes as well as above them. Nothing to do with America - except of course, that the Stars and Sinuses was the original name for the U.S. flag. I know it wasn't really - but I'm claiming it. I own this blog - what are you gonna do about it. It's the American way.

Encore

2008-10-21T15:50:00.004+01:00

<< Elvis Presley & Sarah Silverman: One of these performers can get away with not doing a proper encore

At the weekend, I went to see Sarah Silverman play at the Apollo in Hammersmith. If you've picked up the review section of a broadsheet in the last couple of days (nobody, then) you'll know that it didn't go all that well. There has been a bit of journalistic licence applied to the night's events, so here's how it seemed from my rather sweaty seat at the top of the arena. First of all, the build-up was a shambles - two men who I believe earn livings as comedians, namely Matt Berry & Rich Fulcher, came on to announce that Silverman's support act couldn't make it, but had recorded a video message. Who cares? He's the support act. I say, there's two comedians on the stage, there's your support act. Instead they just sauntered off, we saw a weird, disconnected webcam video diary on two tiny screens, and then a collection of clips from Sarah Silverman's U.S. TV show. It's tacky enough to show bits from your sitcom at a live show, but why didn't they just show a whole episode? The £45 entrance fee was starting to play on my mind at this point.

Sarah herself then came on, and contrary to some press opinions, was pretty funny throughout her set, and had the crowd on her side. She did seem a bit apprehensive, however, and made an odd remark about not "crashing and burning" just before her set came to a close. Little did we know that there was still time. She left the stage after 45 minutes, and the audience response was not, at least from where I was sat, completely aggressive - not yet, anyway. A lot of people starting heading for the exits - I didn't really think anything of it as I'd assumed there would be an encore. I had forgotten the golden rule that separates music from comedy - bands play encores even when no-one cares, and comedians don't, even when it's painfully obvious that it'll be expected. She really wasn't planning on coming back out, and in the end, had to shuffle back on in post-show slippers, blinking at the audience, illuminated by the house lights. At least, we thought, she came back out. That's better than just walking off and not coming back. How wrong we were.

To be honest, she seemed a bit pissed off that the audience expected more for forty-odd quid, launching into an awkward Q & A session which featured hecklers, and Silverman responding to them, by repeating what they said, but in a silly voice. Oh dear. I had witnessed this kind of encore meltdown before, at Portsmouth Guildhall last year, when Russell Brand, having been consistently hysterical for a full 90 minutes, decided to unmask his creepy alter-ego in the denouement, propositioning 18-year-old girls, his libido nearly bursting from within himself as the rest of us reached for our coats and made noises about having an early start the next day. The final disaster was a YouTube moron hollering for a song she performed on her TV show, then having to tell her all the words, with the audience laughing at him like he came up with it himself. Perhaps if she had remembered her own song, this whole embarrassing scenario would never have occurred - and perhaps, with maybe 15 minutes of new material, she could have delivered a brief but entertaining show, rather than a performance so truncated that the audience assumed an encore. In total, the whole thing was an hour, but with a final quarter I would have paid £45 not to have seen.

Silverman's slightly arrogant, yet ultimately unfortunate, mistake was to misjudge the audience she was playing to. A 45-minute set at a small comedy club would've been fine - but this was a 3000-seater venue. The whole confusion that exists around the encore issue doesn't help, either - there's been many a time I've looked at my watch as a band have 'finished' playing and calculated that the set is too short without an encore, but will be too long with it. Then there's the interminable 'newie', sandwiched in at the start of the encore, always slow, always sketchy, forced upon paying punters as they wait, knees aching, to hear the one song they came for. Playing your best song in the encore is a moot point too - Radiohead finishing with Paranoid Android at their gig this year was exactly what I had hoped for, but didn't fit at all with the mood of the rest of the performance - from being completely, obtusely Radiohead, it was like they were attempting to transform into Bruce Springsteen belting out 'Born To Run'. On the other hand, I remember seeing Pulp knock out 'Common People' a third of the way through their festival set, and being wracked by confusion - did the band hate the song, or was it not their 'best' song (they played 'Babies' to close the set)? Either way, I felt my love of the song slightly diminished. I have only ever seen one act, musical or otherwise, not play an encore at all. It was The Strokes, and they claimed it was because false encores are 'bullshit'. While this stance is admirable, their 11-song back catalogue probably had more to do with it.

I think the rules around encores need to be changed. The tradition began because an audience requested more material from a performer, so why not go back to this? Bands shouldn't save their best two songs for the encore, assuming that the audience would rather watch them than catch the end of Match of the Day - but all performers should have something in their locker for audiences that want something extra. Sarah Silverman really ought to have been able to give a crowd that she had impressed to the extent that they asked her back something better than fart noises and disintegrating songs. She could have done 'Born To Run', for god's sake. Or, if nothing else, she could have brought out a big suitcase stuffed with cash, and let everyone have half their money back. Of course, the other option, one which would have at least spared Silverman the derision of angry punters, would be to abolish the art of encores altogether. One performer is noted for never playing an encore, and as performers go, he was pretty successful - for he was the King himself, Elvis Presley. Elvis' manager encouraged him to never play an encore, to keep the crowd wantin' more (there were no Gs on the ends of words in the rock 'n' roll era). Hence the phrase 'Elvis has left the building' - this was announced over the PA to inform the crowd that the King was solid gone, paving the way for whichever poor sap was on next, clumsily trying to remember the chords to 'Jailhouse Rock' in the dressing room.

Anyway, if you started reading this post while Sarah Silverman took to the stage on Sunday night (impossible, but just go with it) she'd already be on the plane back to America by now, so that's all from me, thanks, you've been a terrific audience.

(Hurries back onto stage as the crowd shrug and head for the exits)

OK, I've got one more for you crazy kids - the phrase 'whistlestop tour' comes from the U.S., where politicians, most famously Harry S. Truman, would board a train and deliver a speech from their carriage at several rural stations, without getting off the train. It was seen as the most effective way to reach key voters quickly, and it won Truman the 1948 election when he had looked to be well out of the running. Please, nobody let John McCain get on that Greyhound bus, we're so close now. Yeah, that's right, a bit of politics thrown into the mix. Edgy material now i've won the crowd over. To close, I'd like to point out that Sarah Silverman may have screwed up her encore, but she's a master of the whistlestop tour - her entire European tour lasted just 45 minutes. Ifangyoo. I've been questing for knowledge, you've been fantastic, cheers, goodnight.

(Boos ring out across the venue - security step in to restrain feral punters)

Do My Job For Me

2008-10-19T15:37:00.000+01:00

OK, here's how it is: It's been a week since I posted anything, but I've got sniffles and I need to sit through Talladega Nights so I can send it back to the rental people. So here's five facts, which I'll invite you, the readers, to arrange into a barely coherent, fleetingly amusing article. The best entry wins nothing. For there will be no entries.

Wednesday: Yosemite National Park is only 125 miles from San Francisco.

Thursday: Dustin Hoffman, Gene Hackman and Robert Duvall all shared an apartment whilst trying to break Hollywood.

Friday: Spaniels are prone to hallitosis.

Saturday: Those executive toys where there are five silver balls, and you clack the end one onto the next one and the one at the other end moves, is known as Newton's Cradle.

Sunday: The bridge in Battersea that is permanently lit up like a Christmas tree is Prince Albert Bridge, and not Battersea bridge.

Over to you - I'm going back under the duvet.

Light & Shade

2008-10-14T23:30:00.002+01:00

<< Chris 'The Miss' Iwelumo was meditating on the pillaging of Mother Earth at precisely the wrong moment

Up and down. Yin and Yang. Little and Large. This crazy world is all about opposites; polarised forces working against each other to create harmony from chaos. As Darwin put it - two steps forward, three steps back; we come together 'cos opposites attract. The world feels like a pretty shady place at the minute, and the latest crop of facts aren't going to help matters, so I've taken into my own hands to shine a little light onto each day's findings.

We begin on Saturday, when I learnt that deforestation is costing the Earth more financially than the banking crisis - that's not to mention the not exactly inconsiderable environmental consequences. On the light/shade spectrum, this news is darker than Clapham Common at 2 in the morning. I don't even want to think about it - so I won't. The nation's papers certainly aren't - this story has earnt barely a whisper, whilst the misery of Chris Iwelumo is lighting up back pages everywhere. Admittedly, Chris' tale isn't funny for everyone (namely himself) - a 30-year-old lower league football, given a once-in-a-lifetime chance to represent his country in a crucial game, our Chris came on for Scotland against Norway in the second half, and just minutes later, found himself with an open goal to aim at. This is what happened next. I'd like to thank Chris, who has probably scored the goal 3000 times in his mind since, for making me forget about the forests, if only for a few hilarious seconds. (NB In the video, have a look at the linesman on the far side, who runs off having assumed the ball had gone in. It hadn't. Also, look at the picture above. Just look at the poor guy's face).

Moving on, Sunday brought the revelation that Nelson Mandela, one of the world's greatest living politicians, spent his sentence on Robben Island being forced to wear shoes that were too small for him. Thankfully, this news was packaged in a Peter Kay medley with segues so clunky they eased the pain of the great man's suffering to the extent that I was singing "Free Nelson Mandela-ela-ela, eh, eh" for several hours afterwards.

Before it was ingeniously connected to Rihanna's summertime smash, "Free Nelson Mandela" by the Specials was a protest song against, well, I think you can guess. On a Specials compilation my Dad had, it had been changed to "Nelson Mandela" because he had already been freed, which always seemed a touch pedantic to me. The protest song is part of a fine British tradition of free speech and nonviolent action in the support of a better, fairer world. Thank goodness that such principles hold firm, even in such certain times. Except, well, I think you see where I'm going with this.

The right to demonstrate has been taken for granted in the UK for several years, but is now under serious threat. It's already a bit of an issue demonstrating within a mile of Parliament Square (presumably as this would be a fairly effective place to protest), and now even regular events such as the Critical Mass bike ride in La'hn Tahn are being clamped down upon. Critical Mass has been going for 15 years without any problems, but participants have recently been subject to a much-increased police presence, in an attempt to force them to pre-arrange demonstration routes and times. The key loophole for the rebel riders is that as the event takes place regularly, it cannot technically be called a demonstration. That may well change in the near future, unfortunately, but for now if you've got a bone to pick with The Man, you'd better pick it on a weekly basis. London is a city with its mardy face on at the minute, and restrictions on demonstrations are hardly going to help it recapture its freewheeling, bohemian vibe. One brave citizen is doing her bit, however, spreading a few rays of light amongst the smoggy gloaming. Amy Winehouse has been holding 'Coke Candy' parties at her house, where she gives out cocaine and candyfloss to residents. If there's a more tangible example of light and shade than being given free cocaine and candyfloss, I've yet to hear about it.

And so to today. Following a classic good-and-evil England performance on Saturday, Fabio's boys have flown out to Belarus for a game that will no doubt be described as a 'potential banana skin' by some arse at some point. It either is or isn't a banana skin - the potential is whether England fall upon their arses as a result of its presence. A bit metaphorical for football punditry, but there you go. Belarus has been described as Europe's last dictatorship, a troubled outpost where tyranny reigns supreme. It is also the only nation in Europe to still uphold the death penalty (I bet their left backs are a bit more careful with backpasses than ours). As I've reiterated ad nauseum throughout this post, it is all about light and shade today, so I don't want to give the Belarussian nation a wholly negative write-up. I will therefore include that the manager of the national side has assured the world's press that Minsk, epicentre of the tyrannical executive superstate, is very clean. Hurrah!

Popular Misconceptions

2008-10-10T15:57:00.003+01:00

<< He may have only been 12, but by God, Kowalski had earned that damned cigarette

Three more facts for the file - all loosely connected by the fact that they overturned some kind of misconception in my mind. The first, revealed whilst staring at a sign during what felt like an eternity at a kiosk queue, was that it is now illegal to sell tobacco to under-18s. I don't remember that age being bumped up; the situation now is that you can get married, have a kid, join the army, get shipped out to a war zone, come back with half your original legs intact and still have to wait a year before you can have a cigarette.

At least being in the army pays well - even if you're one of the specially selected few who are deemed just too valuable to send into the proper army, and who spend their weekends running through derelict council estates on 'drills' - that's right, you even get paid to be in the Territorial Army. No wonder we're running out of money...

Speaking of which, the banking crisis continues apace, with the U.S. markets falling by 12 gazillion points, before rallying by 3.8, only to plunge a further 900 trillion in the next 5 minutes. It's something like that. It also now appears that keeping your money in a shiny multinational bank might soon be as safe as withdrawing it all, stitching it together to make a money suit and strolling around a town centre in it all night. The UK banking system used to be the safest in the world, but it's now about the 45th safest, about level with the U.S. and Germany. The banking crisis is affecting pretty much every Western country - except Canada. It still has the safest banking system in the world, probably because it only has about 13 citizens, but still, good effort...

Eight Days of Woe

2008-10-07T22:34:00.004+01:00

<< A stock trader checks the chart - it's not exactly good news

It's been a long eight days - at the start the UK was part of a super-rich, glittering and fully developed world, imperialist privileges well and truly intact. Now we're locking ourselves in our offices to stop getting the sack, money is literally disintegrating in our hands and the entire City of London is worth roughly 17 Ugandan dollars. Sadly, as I've discovered, there are plenty more reasons to not be cheerful...

First up, way back last Monday, whilst lying in a bath full of money, I watched a horrible film called Jesus Camp, where a group of evangelists in North Dakota managed to convince a group of kids that they could speak in tongues and that God was moving through them. It's hard to believe it's a trick, what with under-10s being so wary of new ideas and wholly not gullible. The film revealed that there are 80 million people in the U.S. who consider themselves to be evangelists. Now I appreciate that the people in the film are about as close to Christianity as fundamentalist Muslims are to the heart of their own religion, but the fact that there are even 3 people prepared to exploit children in this way is miserable enough.

If you're feeling sorry for the suggestible kids of middle America, spare a thought for the sizeable Korean population of New Malden. New Malden is the most densely populated South Korean area outside of South Korea itself. Having been through New Malden on the train, I can only imagine that the residents of this enclave must be wondering when they can come out of the bunker and get on with their lives. No offence...

Moving a few miles down the road, we head into leafy Surrey, where you'll find considerably less enthusiasm for ethnic diversity, and the epicentre of the most recent foot-and-mouth outbreak. Foot-and-mouth was, of course, one of the first nails in Gordon Brown's leadership coffin, which now resembles something a circus performer would attempt to lie down on. Perhaps the signs that we were all heading back to the Dark Ages came with this latest outbreak of a bizarre agricultural plague - admittedly one that hasn't affected humans since 1966. Although knowing Gordon's luck at the minute, you wouldn't rule it out.

America are also facing the inevitability of a new guy in charge (though thankly not a greenwashing moon-faced prick) - either Barack Obama or John McCain. Hopefully and probably it will be the former, unless they ditch the votes and go for a 'Nam style endurance test where both are locked in a cell deep in a rainforest until one of them cracks. It's really quite galling that America, who have frankly not been the best at picking presidents, seem to be on the verge of electing a guy who appears to be a half-decent politician and person. Fast forward eight years, however, and once that tricky loophole has been taken care of, it could well be Arnie's turn. America love actors in charge, and Arnie is technically just that - even if he did only have 17 lines in The Terminator, and was generally cast as a giant slab of Teutonic smoked beef rather than a solid character actor.

From a guy who can't act who could one day run the world, to a woman who can't write a half-decent book who earns £5 a second - need I tell you it's JK Rowling. Before you all write in, I know there's a lot of Potter fans out there, but I've got four words for you. I. Don't. Get. It. Incidentally, the K in her pen name is made up - she doesn't have a middle name. So by the time the working week was done, I'd already learnt about bovine disease, overrated artists, trapped Koreans and an awful lot of evangelists. Surely it couldn't get any worse. Then came the news that Rizla papers have more harmful chemicals in than tobacco. This one bothers me primarily because I am virtually certain it is untrue; however when you forget to learn anything until 5 to midnight, this is what happens.

Clearly by this stage, I was losing the will to learn even the most trivial of truth. Luckily on Sunday, whilst watching the end of The Goblet of Fire and thinking about that £5 per second whilst grinding my teeth down to a series of smooth yellowed domes, I learnt that Alnwick Castle, the setting for Hogwarts (such a stupid name - god don't get me started, I beg you) is the second largest inhabited castle in the U.K. The largest is Windsor Castle - which is owned by the Royal Family. It looks like imperial privilege is still alive and well. Finally, to round off a truly joyous week of learning, I discovered that 30% burns is enough to finish you off - even though you'll feel fine for a couple of weeks, before the scorched skin uses up your body's water reserves. Delightful. Thankfully I didn't learn this from personal experience, but from a bizarre work conversation which reminded me why I don't usually look up from my computer when colleagues are in the office.

This brings us to today, where the papers piled up at Earlsfield station greeted me with a rapidly descending line and the words "how low can it go?", as if global share prices were some kind of giant financial limbo dancing contest. They could be, to be honest, for all I know. Inside the previous day's trading had been labelled as Meltdown Monday, in the billionth attempt thus far to come up with the next Black Monday. I didn't know Black Monday happened in 1987 - the one that happened in the early 90s must have been a similar desperate attempt at spinning a nifty soundbite from a desolate landscape of financial misery. In an attempt to get in on the act, I'd like right now to patent Manic Monday, Fucked Up Friday, Worldwide Weeping Wednesday, and Third World Thursday. More later in the week, when I at least don't have to go to work - so there is one positive guaranteed...

The Name Game

2008-09-28T20:37:00.002+01:00

On Wednesday we took a trip out from Knowledge Towers and went to the new Ripley's Believe It Or Not! exhibition, which I assumed would give me facts by the handful. Regrettably, though it was very entertaining, and built nicely from rooms full of tat to a magic walkway at the end, I learnt only one thing - that Yankee, a term meaning American, basically, actually meant English originally. It was a mispronounciation of 'English', courtesy of Native Americans. They got Yankee from English - no wonder they never broke through the language barrier. That and all the killing. Anyway, an interesting place, but the biggest shock of the evening was at the till - £20 each. Sticking with our original theme of names, and our additional one of rip-offs, we move on to cornershops. Martin's and McColl's, famous overpriced newsagents, always appeared to be owned by the same company, with their alluring blue and white signs, but little did I know that they're in fact owned by the same man - who else but Martin McColl.

Moving on to an ever so slightly more famous name, I decided to look into the meaning behind the very name of our capital city, London. While most places in the city have a clear history of where their name comes from, the amazing thing is that nobody knows where London got its name from. Various people who know about this sort of thing have suggested that the word has its roots in a dizzying range of languages, including Welsh, Belgian, Indo-European and Italian. It appears the most likely options are that it means 'fort on the river' or 'wide river' - both of which are fairly accurate, if slightly underwhelming depictions of the capital.

Of course, London is a word which conjures a variety of images - not all of them favourable, but it's not often associated with boredom. Belgium, on the other hand, is practically a byword for long, yawning spells of tedium, as it is seen by the wider world as not that interesting, to put it mildly. Try telling that to the residents of Brussels, who are burgled more frequently (and by that, I mean their houses are broken into it, not their bodies) than any other capital city in Europe - just pipping London to the post.

To conclude this name-based riff, we revert to the common denominator of nominal facts - the real names of celebrities. Everyone knows that Harry Webb and Reg Dwight are known by slightly more glamorous names nowadays, but a repeat of Who Do You Think You Are? (my new favourite show, having stumbled upon Ainsley Harriott having his soul torn in half by the revelation that his great-grandpa was a slave trader) let me know that cockney sparrah Babs Windsor was born Barbara Ann Deeks. It also informed her, and the audience, that her great-grandparents hailed from Ireland (which she was excited about) and Suffolk (which was met with a look bordering on disgust). As empty-handed backpackers in Belgium will tell you, never judge a place on preconceptions...

Johnsons

2008-09-23T22:48:00.004+01:00

<< Guy Fawkes: "Hello officer... oh, this? It's strictly for personal use"

A friend of Knowledge Towers informed us on Sunday that you can lose about a pound in weight when you go for a wee. Anyone who's spent several hours in a pub will tell you that this is quite plausible, given that a pound weighs about the same as a pint of liquid, and that the ratio whilst drinking lager is 1 pint in, 5 pints out. By the way, our friend satisfies and indeed develops her fascination with bodily fluids by working as a nurse.

While we're on the subject of johnsons, here's the world's worst ever false name - when Guy Fawkes was caught with a stick of dynamite and a Che Guevara T-shirt in the cellars of Parliament in 1605, he pretended that his name was John Johnson, which surely could only have been worse if he had gone for Bonfire McFireworks. I'd like to think that he put a large 'uhh' between his assumed first and surnames, accompanied with a scratch of the chin, in the vein of Alan Partridge when posing as Bill Car.

I'd like to finish this loosely cohesive, wholly juvenile article with a fact about Littlehampton, but instead we're heading 30 miles east on the A27, over the South Downs and along the interminable Brighton by-pass, all the way back to bloody Lewes. I learnt from ever-flowing fountain of knowledge Sky Sports News that Lewes is not pronounced Lewis, but is instead pronounced Loos - which brings us back to where we started...

Mad Skills

2008-09-20T22:09:00.002+01:00

<< Napoleon Dynamite: Possesses a range of skills

Everyone has a skill, whether it's cryptic crossword solving, large hadron colliding, or getting keys off keyrings really quickly (I thank you). For example, if you're really struggling, there's a 50% chance you can at least roll your tongue - for half the population can do it, and half cannot. As a matter of fact, I can't (to witness me trying is to gaze upon hilarity) so that means your odds are slightly better than evens. Give it a whirl.

If you hone your skills, and put in the 90% perspiration to back it up over several years, you could reach the apex of your craft - being wheeled out as an expert assistant on a reality TV show. You know who I mean - Nick & Margaret (the middle-aged Jordan and Peter) on the Apprentice, loveable leprachaun Louis Walsh on the X-Factor, and on Raymond Blanc's The Res'ron, sour-faced snoot Sarah Willingham. She likes to do a drawn-out, heavily critical number to camera about the potential res'ronteurs' cooking skills - heavily laced with unsavoury double entendres such as "I've got to swallow this now". She's entitled to, of course, 'cos she's an expert. That's why they get her clopping through the res'rons, and regularly film her getting out of a mid-range sports car. Except she's not an expert on cookery - she's an expert on retail. This is fine for the show - as Raymond will tell you, running a res'ron is as much about business as cooking, but maybe Willingham should be going through the books instead of scoffing over a lukewarm plate of coq au vin next week.

Of course, there once was a simpler time when being skilled didn't involve ability in a grown-up, probably hard subject like business or haute cuisine - back in the schoolyard, if you could do a Rubik's Cube in under ten minutes, you were the king of the county. Regrettably, I could only complete the cube with the use of a screwdriver, but The Netherlands' Erik Akkersdijk must be signing autographs in his playground - he's the Rubik's Cube world record holder, completing the cube in 7.08 seconds this year. I'll bet he can curl his tongue and whip up a mean lobster bisque as well.

Sadly, some of us are blessed with no skill whatsoever. What becomes of those with no abilities to share with the rest of humanity (I'd like to remind everyone that I can get keys off keyrings really fast - faster than 7.08 seconds on a good day)? Well, they could nab a hosting job on an unwatchable daytime quiz show, then start pretending they don't pay a TV Licence. If that doesn't work, there's always charitable organisations offering work placements for the talentless. That said, when I popped in there earlier tonight, the beef slinger (sorry, sales assistant) did demonstrate one skill. First offering to 'mix my McFlurry', before I could hit her with an umbrella in a fit of disgust, she proceeded to do just that, demonstrating that a McFlurry is so called because it is whisked up by a machine. Sarah Willingham would be rendered speechless.

All Nightmare Long

2008-09-16T20:58:00.001+01:00

<< The Winstanley Estate: Average length of time between muggings - 21 seconds

I learnt on Saturday, courtesy of some frantic last minute searching, that women are on average more prone to nightmares than men. The worst nightmare I ever had was that I got suspended for doing something I'd been told to do, forced to take a month off work, given a harsh punishment, and then spent a whole week several months later waiting to see if my new employers are going to find out and call off the whole deal. Oh no, wait a minute, that's my actual life - worse than a nightmare.

Another individual seen living a real-life nightmare this week was Brian Kuh, a guy who pretty much organised a Donkey Kong world-record attempt, only to see a guy who wasn't even that into computer games obliterate his score. That's right, this was The King of Kong, which saw Steve Wiebe, a regular John with a solid practice ethic, pitched against Billy Mitchell, the previous record holder, hot sauce merchant and pretty much the strangest man alive. I won't spoil it for you - suffice to say it's like Federer v Nadal with bent umpires and nobody else watching. Incidentally, the name Donkey Kong was intended to translate as 'stubborn ape' by its Japanese creator. Damn you, Babelfish...

Another group of people having a week from hell were the hotshot bankers at Lehman Brothers, America's fourth-largest bank until it collapsed in frankly unfathomable circumstances. It was a tragic sight watching honest, hard-working investors schlepping out of the head office with their worldly possessions esconced in boxes, when just months previously, they had been having fights with piles of ordinary people's money, before building forts from said money and lighting cigars inside with $1000 bills, cackling deliriously throughout the whole experience. Couldn't have happened to a nicer bunch of guys.

This nightmare theme is getting a bit thin now, but I can't conclude this theme until I've expounded on my (possible) future workplace - I went and had a look the other day, and found that it sits snugly on the edge of Battersea's Winstanley Estate - an area that did indeed resemble the waking nightmare of a drug-addled 1960s town planner. Feeling slightly uneasy about my new environs, I decided to look it up on Google. Here's a tip - never look anything up on Google; it paints the area as a sort of Thunderdome for South London - drug dealers literally selling lorryloads of crack in front of police stations, then building forts out of said crack and cackling deliriously etc. I'm sure it has a reputation, but I have a feeling that these articles were written by people who consider any town without a Waitrose to be ghettoised beyond repair. The most troubling news about Winstanley is that So Solid Crew used to live there - believe me, I've been waking up sweating every night since I heard.

Three Handy Facts For a Night Out in Lewes

2008-09-12T20:45:00.002+01:00

1. Lewes (pictured left), a small town in Sussex, has introduced its own currency - the Lewes pound. It's the same as a normal pound.

2. Syphilis can infest your brain.

3. The word 'boredom' was invented by Charles Dickens.

Wake Me Up When September Ends

2008-09-09T21:31:00.003+01:00

I don't know if this was quite what Billie Joe was getting at when he first sung this line through his nose, but autumnal misery hangs heavily in the air. Another non-existent summer has been and gone, and the rain is falling so relentlessly our first-floor flat is in danger of becoming a canal barge (it's about the right dimensions to start with). To me, a year without a proper summer is like getting a job without having an interview - I may not like summer, in fact it's normally quite an ordeal, but to not have one at all just feels weird, and I feel like I'm rolling into the drizzly comfort of Autumn a little too easily. I also find myself feeling depressed when the seasons start changing, which is pretty much 50% of the year, and I'm looking forward to the onset of bitter winter more than I'm enjoying the present climate.

British weather fascinates me - it's perhaps the world's most inconsistent, yet the highs and lows are remarkably similar. The best we can hope for is warm and slightly muggy, with the occasional shower. The worst we ever get is a couple of hours of solid rain, followed by a bit of sun, and yes, it's slightly muggy all year round. Is Britain in a bio-dome or something? It's crazy. We have virtually no weather of interest, yet also never have any guarantees on what tomorrow will bring, as anyone who has ever sat in a field huddled round a hamper while freezing rain lashes at you from every direction will testify. There is of course also the British obsession with weather, particularly the apparently universal belief that sun is good news. If, like me, you can acquire a sunburn by sitting by a closed window on a cloudy July day, you'll know that the mention of a week-long heatwave is enough to bring on another bout of hives. But you wouldn't care about that, as long as you get a good tan, eh Kettley? Selfish bastard.

Anyway, it's dark and cold, but not cold enough to put the heating on, nor cold enough to wear a jacket to work, oh no, that would be too easy, so here's a list of stuff I've learnt recently, that along with the rest of the month thus far, I would rather forget:

The phrase 'hoods', as in a deprived area of housing, comes from the word 'neighbourhoods'. I swear down.

Chillies are farmed in the UK. No reason why they shouldn't be, but surprising given that most British people are sent running for the cold tap by a prawn korma.

A CRB check will take your family's history into account, so if you've always wondered whether Uncle Terry has previous, now may be the time to find out.

You can get a stroke from having sex. If you are unfortunate enough to suffer this problem, at least when the doctor asked what triggered it, you can stick your chest out and say "I was up all night shagging". Whether you'd be capable of such braggadocio at this stage is up for debate.

Lima beans are the American term given to butter beans. A butter bean in America is, of course, a fat kid (preferably ginger).

I'm now departing the world of fact and moving into an arena of unparallelled subjectivity - that's right, the Mercury Music Prize is back, and after the whole Klaxons farce last year (it had three good songs on it! At best!) let's hope for a better outcome (and for the winner to be subsequently cursed with stifled creativity, over-exposure - and the odd Number 1 smash hit single) this time round - go Burial! His album, with it's eerie noises and disjointed wailing is the perfect soundtrack to the phrase 'look at that - it's getting dark already... University Challenge hasn't even finished'...

Cultural Misconceptions of an Ignorant Buffoon

2008-09-04T20:48:00.000+01:00

<< Mark Rothko and France: Both admirable, yet hard to relate to

I went to the Tate Modern recently, and along with spotting some very good stuff, and some stuff that made me want to read the Daily Express, I noticed that a Mark Rothko exhibition is coming to the gallery this Autumn. Despite Rothko perhaps representing the nadir of modern painting with his series of red, formless works, I quite like him, perhaps due to a desire to look cool that's so subconscious I'm not actually aware of it. Anyway, I saw some Rothko paintings at a gallery in, I dunno, somewhere or other, and consider him to be one of my preferred rubbish modern artists. In fact, I'm such a Rothko aficionado that I didn't know that he's dead. That desire to look cool is looking like a bit of a long shot.

Is there's one thing I know less about than art, it's other cultures. However, regarding Tuesday's fact, I feel I am not alone. The word 'hijab' does not refer to a head covering, as worn by Muslim women - it is in fact a word which originally meant something close to modesty. The ideology is the same, but the word has come to mean a specific item, where it once was a broader adjective. Very interesting, even if I've done my best to make it seem otherwise.

Of course, we all know it's fine and dandy to be hopelessly ignorant of life in other countries, as long as said country isn't America. The upcoming presidential elections have received so much UK press attention, you'd be forgiven for thinking the winner will collect the souls of every British citizen as his bounty. Despite this, there's not much substance to the coverage, and we still know little about the candidates, except that Obama must, and should, win, but is primed to be levelled by a late October media shitstorm and overtaken, particularly now John McCain is pretending that he's not the actual Republican candidate. Here's something you may not have known - this is the first presidential election where neither candidate was born on the U.S. mainland. Obama was born in Hawaii, while McCain came into this world down in Panama. Surely this technicality is clearing the way for Arnie to make a bid in 2012? Don't talk crazy.

Back on British soil, and if there's one thing I am certain about, it's that I work way too many hours. Recent research has backed my bitter rants up at long last, showing us that the U.K. works 41.4 hours per week on average - outworked only by Romania and Bulgaria. As for the shortest hours - it may not surprise you to learn that France only manage to loaf their way through 37.7 hours each week before sauntering off to the boulangerie. Having worked for an Anglo-French company, I'm familiar with the French way of working - apparently starting at 11 and knocking off at 4, with a 3-hour break in the middle. Throw in 38 bank holidays and you have yourself a satisfied workforce. I'm not being critical - I applaud nations who allow their people some time off, and feel pity and shame for my overtime-working, hotdesking, two-hour-commuting colleagues who feel pangs of intense guilt for checking their personal e-mails at 4.55 on a Friday. Now if you'll excuse me, I've got to go - got to type up some minutes over the weekend, then book a cheap flight to Toulouse...

Cruel Britannia

2008-08-31T13:26:00.003+01:00

The last four days have seen a slew of facts about this very sceptred isle, starting back on Thursday (as this seems to always be the day that the learning tails off) when Powys, a county in mid-Wales, was named as the happiest place in the country. I recently went camping in Powys, and have to say I'm not surprised - it's all rolling hills and stony streams, plus in Builth Wells there's a Burger King where they've employed a teenager with an especially dramatic voice to call out the orders. It's a laugh a minute out there. Edinburgh came bottom, whilst the only London borough to score highly was Sutton. I don't know exactly what the science behind this study is, but may I suggest it has something to do with lots of place names on bits of paper and an upturned hat.

Knowledge Towers' home borough, Wandsworth, may not be all that happy, but it's got a lot going for it - a disused power station, an outdoor swimming pool and a labyrinthine railway junction, to name but all. It's also fairly star-studded - Wandsworth residents include the intentionally hilarious Harry Hill, the unintentionally hilarious Ainsley Harriott, tennis gobshite Andy Murray and World's Biggest Badass, Lost's Sayid Jarrah. OK, the actor who plays him - who lives in LA now. Naveen Andrews was born in Wandsworth. That's literally the best thing that's ever happened here.

Heading onto the South Circular and out into the regions, past the residents of Powys, delirious with jubilation, on past the city of Edinburgh, literally collapsing under the weight of its own misery, we arrive at the shores of Loch Ness, a massive body of water famous for its mythical Jurassic inhabitant. If you look at a map of the UK, Loch Ness cuts in a straight line right across the northwest corner of Scotland - I learnt from a repeat of Britain From Above that this is because it follows a faultline, a feature that an expert claimed "without wanting to sound too dramatic" was the UK's equivalent of the San Andreas Fault. Which is pretty dramatic. He also mentioned that Loch Ness holds more water than all the lakes in England and Wales put together - a statement that needs no extra gravitas.

For Sunday's slice o' learning, we're moving even further North, to the very edge of the land, the Shetland Islands, nestled somewhere between Iceland, Scotland, Venezuela, Beirut and Switzerland. It's the northernmost part of the UK, and it is also the fattest - although this comes from another less than scientific study which has been rebuked by Shetland MSP Tavish Scott (yes, it's his real name) and the area's health improvement officer (who may have had a couple of sleepless nights recently) who added that the islands have "fantastic" leisure centres, but admitted with a weary shrug that they are slightly under-used. She then returned to her car and sat, gently weeping, munching through a carrier bag full of pork pies.

Flippin' The Kurd

2008-08-27T22:48:00.003+01:00

<< Kurdistan's premier comedy double act in action

I'm trying to push up the post count for August by squeezing in a few daily doses before the month closes - I don't have any money, so need to pass the time somehow. Unfortunately, today's subject area is not one that lends itself to my breezy, trivial style. The region of Kurdistan has a history littered with oppression, genocide and misery - I'm throwing out the weak pun of a title as a gesture, but other than that, it's a proud, troubled region that offers little in the way of observational comedy.

Kurdistan is spread across the borders of Turkey, Iraq, Iran and Syria.

The region is roughly the same size as France, and is only recognised as an autonomous province in Iraq (although right now I imagine you could declare a hotel an autonomous province - there doesn't seem to be a whole lot of stability going on for some reason). The chief language is Kurdish (but is possibly not called this in Kurdistan) - split into two dialects: Sorani and Kumanji. Again, interesting, but not something you can see Seinfeld ripping on ("What's the deal with Kumanji?"). Kurds have suffered widespread laugh-free oppression, most notably in Iraq (although that's all better now) and in Turkey, where several rebellions were put down and the region as a whole was declared a closed military zone for forty years, up until 1965.

I know it's been a bit of a struggle today, but the people of Kurdistan have suffered enough, so let's draw it to a close with some more simple, ungilded truths - here are Kurdistan's largest cities: In Iran - Kermansah and Mahabad; in Iraq, Mosul and Arbil; and in Turkey, Diyarbakir, Bitlis and Batman. That's right - Batman. I knew those crazy Kurds had it in them - dig through enough oppression and misery and you'll always find a vaguely topical film reference eventually. Now you just have to get yourself out of the hole you've dug for yourself...

Bank Holiday Bonanza: 11 Tiny People & Trillions of Stars

2008-08-26T19:37:00.003+01:00

<< A West Brom/Sheff Weds/Brighton Subbuteo figure, complete with trademark enlarged ball

The final Bank Holiday before Christmas has been and gone (now there's a thought to make you want to boil your own head) but we kick off the learning recall back on Thursday, when I discovered that you can't a gas emergency callout until your meter runs out entirely. I imagine if the house was slowly filling with gas and your twitchy cousin was coming round to play with lighters, they might pop round, but otherwise, they will actually advise you to waste natural resources until you are left without heating and hot water, at which point they will come out immediately (between 8 and 1, anyway). It's quite a society we live in - but what does that matter when we've got Olympic heroes? They're plastered all over the papers lately, looking every inch a group of people that are unfamiliar and uncomfortable with the notion of celebrity, and the BBC even published a hugely tedious list of details about the medallists - the most surprising piece of information therein was that Herne Hill in South London has a velodrome.

From track cycling to a less confusing and more commercial sport - Subbuteo. I can remember when the flick-to-kick game was at the cutting edge of kids' entertainment (OK, that may be pushing it a bit, but it was popular) and I was building quite a good collection, pitching Wolves/Blackpool against QPR/Reading on my bedroom floor in front of a shiny new plastic Main Stand. Then, from nowhere, it disappeared - I feel it is long overdue a retro revival, mainly because I've still got that Main Stand in my attic somewhere. The name Subbuteo is Latin for 'hobby', and was another reason I liked it - they could have called it Kick, or Offside!, or Goalaroo, but they gave it a non-footballing name under the brilliant pretense that it wasn't actually a football game. Bring it back, toymakers of the land. The comeback starts here.

Sunday's discovery really speaks for itself - there are more air molecules in a balloon than there are stars in our galaxy. By the way, the figure is several trillion - a statistic so mind-blowing and wondrous it makes me want to stick my fingers deep into my ears and repeat pointless facts to myself until the giddy feeling subsides.

Back to the comfortably trivial, if you thought a football-based game that didn't allow you to just play football reached surprisingly dizzy heights, you may also be shocked to discover that Oxo, purveyors of garden variety stock cubes, were at one stage successful enough to build a ruddy great tower on the South Bank, complete with their name emblazoned on the side - except it isn't really. The OXO tower simply features a series of windows arranged to spell OXO - apparently this didn't contravene advertising laws at the time, whereas having an Oxo sign would have done. The Oxo windows represent perhaps the most fragrant flouting of advertising laws of all time - until McDonalds started sponsoring the Olympics. Wherever the book on appropriate advertising is kept, it seems it can be held there with a fat enough cheque.

And finally, today's bit of tat... the theme music from Tetris is taken from a Russian folk song. I know how the first 10 seconds go, before the screen begins to fill with a central pile of descending shapes, and the giddy feeling returns.

The Week That Wasn't

2008-08-20T22:37:00.000+01:00

<< Could Kojak crack the case before Bolt finished the 200m? In a word, no.

Home-grown Olympians have been tearing up the record books over in Beijing, so I've been going for a bit of history myself - yes, I've gone a whole week without updating a daily blog, obliterating my previous record of, I dunno, a couple of days less. To get us started, we're travelling back through the mists of time to last Thursday, a halcyon evening which reached it's blissful peak at 9pm, when we watched Traffic Cops and ate a jacket potato. I learnt that skewering a baked potato all the way through makes it cook quicker, which was handy, as otherwise I would have missed the fallout from a crash between "a car... and a house", which physically COULD NOT BE RECREATED. It's not that they couldn't afford it, of course - it just couldn't be done.

Further record-breaking behaviour on Friday night - I found out that Hailie McDaniel was the first African-American actress to win an Oscar. I read this in the back of a quiz book, for there was nobody around to ask me the questions. I did a quiz with myself on a Friday night, which may give me some kind of unwanted title - World's Saddest Twat, perhaps. At least I'm not the only one who's bitter. Forgotten director George Lucas attempted to buy the rights to make Flash Gordon into a film, but was beaten to it. Flash Gordon was made in all it's Blessed-heavy glory, and Lucas skulked off to make something called Star Wars. That was Saturday, the day Usain Bolt jogged to a world record, while I laboured up a canal towpath on a short walk.

As Saturday night turned into Sunday morning, my brother pointed out to me that Dmitri, the keytar player from Flight of the Conchords, is in fact the rather droll stand-up comedian Dmitri Martin, who you can see (well, hear) here. On Monday I redirected my gaze towards the Olympics once again - I know it's been an overused feature in recent days, but when I'm sat at home on the sick, in front of the TV, and no matter how hard I press the remote my senses are continually bombarded with cycling, sailing and all manner of prestigious yet entirely unwatchable events, it's pretty much inevitable. If you're not wilting at the sheer scale of this post already, I'll invite you to second guess this fact in advance - what do you think is the most dangerous sport in the world?

If you said crocodile goading, alpine aviation or the motorway 100m, you'd be wrong - it's the pole vault. This is generally due to the poles breaking and competitors being thrust to the asphalt below - like you couldn't have guessed that. I've always been slightly confused by pole vaulters, in so much as I don't understand how you find out you're good at it. Perhaps the great Sergey Bubka was once a painter/decorator back in Donetsk, fell backwards on his ladder in classic Frank Spencer style, and accidentally catapulted himself over an entire row of houses. Perhaps not. Of course, those flash fuckers over in China weren't the only ones bringing home the gold this week - hell no. I'm currently engaged in an epic Scrabulous clash, and am winning a best-of-5 contest 2-1, though frankly it should be all over by now. When you log in to Scrabulous (as I have done approximately 1000 times this week) it gives you a greeting in a random language. Imagine my surprise yesterday when I was greeted with the phrase 'Kia ora' - last heard describing a delicious brand of squash and immediately followed by the words 'oogy boogy boogy boogy' (in an ad that's a lot more racist than I remembered). Kia ora is in fact a traditional Maori greeting - it loosely translates as 'too orangey for crows'.

And so to tonight, 6 days on from the glory of Traffic Cops, and my new hero Usain Bolt has managed to break two world records in the time it took me to post one entry. Bet he's shit at Scrabulous though - no, actually, I imagine he's brilliant at that too. Tonight we watched a very odd 70s film called Lisa and the Devil, starring Telly 'Kojak' Savalas as Leandro, a butler who may or may not be the devil (hint: they superimposed a drawing of the devil over his face to show the incredible likeness). Telly Savalas is of course famous for a. being bald b. "who loves ya, baby?" and c. sucking on a lollipop (this is not a euphemism). Well, tonight I learned that Telly Savalas first sucked on a lollipop in Lisa and the Devil, as he was trying to give up smoking whilst making the film. Later the same year, and still struggling to stay off the tabs, Tel landed the plum role of Kojak, kept with the lollies, and a legend was born.

At Least You're Not A Lobster

2008-08-13T23:20:00.004+01:00

<< Get in the pot, Grandpa

This summer, whether you've been schmoozing in a Cannes seafood eaterie, or sweltering on Blackpool beach amongst the sunburnt locals, lobsters may well have been on your mind. It's often a strain even for the most carnivorous amongst us to select a live lobster to be boiled alive for our delectation - it certainly weighs more heavily on the conscience than a munch on a Ginsters pasty. Today's fact may or may not make this gruesome task more palatable for you:

Lobsters can live to 100 years old - but their average lifespan is only 15 years.

On the one hand, you may feel that a century is a solid innings, and that at least Mr. Lobster isn't heading for a bisquey demise while still in their prime. On the other, if said crustacean has battled to over 6 times the average lifespan (imagine if some humans lived to be 500 - the Post Office queues don't bear thinking about) it seems churlish to end their mighty struggle because the salmon's off. Pity the poor lobster - contemplating their own mortality at 14 (possibly whilst listening to My Chemical Romance on miniature iPods), battling gamely on for another 85 years, only to be par-boiled and seasoned into an undignified grave. Our underwater friends truly are tragic figures - tragically delicious, that is.

Round-up: From an Opening Ceremony to a Waste of Money

2008-08-12T22:45:00.006+01:00

<< A Marla original and the Olympic firework display: both very impressive, yet deceptive - but does that make them less spectacular? In a word, yes.

If you were in Greater London last Friday lunchtime, and you listened very carefully to the sounds on the breeze, you'd have heard what sounded like a group of fat men sobbing. That, of course, was the board of directors for London 2012, being bombarded by a stratospheric Olympic opening ceremony in Beijing. Opening ceremonies usually consist of a few weirdly dressed schoolkids pushing a life-size plastic cow round the arena - this had a drum-wielding synchronised army and a man running the entire length of the stadium - in mid air. If there's any consolation for our boys, it's that the reports of digital fireworks and lip-synching kids have taken the edge off proceedings a touch. China didn't want to take any chances with their opening act - it kicked off at 8.08pm local time, on the 8th day of the 8th month, in the year 2008. As anyone who's ever seen that HSBC ad will know (everybody, basically) the number 8 is lucky in China - because its name is the same word used for 'prosperity'.

After the razzmatazz had died down, it was on to Saturday's slightly anti-climactic early events - to have that opening ceremony introducing weightlifting semi-finals was a stroke of hyperbole only matched by The Dark Knight in recent times. It's interesting to find out which obscure events certain nations excel at, as we do in rowing and sailing (hence wall-to-wall coverage of wholly unwatchable sports). For example, Italy's most successful Olympic sport, in terms of gold medals (how else would you measure it exactly) is fencing, and not scooter control, hair care or hot-headedness, as some of you despicable xenophobes may have thought.

Sunday brought two events with even greater caché than the golden Games - my sister's wedding to a lovely Italian bloke (apologies for the awful stereotypes I've had to expose above) and my very own birthday. Now that I've hit 25, birthdays are all about forgetting, and what with the free wine and buffet, there wasn't a lot of time for learning. The best I can offer is that August 10 (for that was the date) is the 222nd day of the year - except this year, when it's the 223rd (damn you, Freak Day). Far from being associated with prosperity, the number 2 is of course associated with poo - what that makes my special day, I'll leave to your discretion.

Monday closed with a fact with my possession that is possibly the most remarkable of the entire quest so far - that we are all made of stars. That's right, Moby wasn't just being cute - quantum physicists have theorised that as all matter in the universe is made from heavy elements, which originated in the Big Bang. In layperson's terms, all matter that came forth from said Bang is technically stardust, and if we're made of it, then you do the maths. It's more a question of definition than of actually being made of stars (I've felt that I'm closer to being constructed of a certain number for most of the day), and it does seem a touch ludicrous, but I'm a few textbooks away from arguing with a quantum physicist, so we'll have to take their word for it.

More hard-to-believe high-jinks this evening, as Knowledge Towers' cinema took in a showing of My Kid Could Paint That, a documentary about 4-year-old 'artist' Marla Olmstead, whose parents began exhibiting her abstract works and created a worldwide debate on whether a child could truly create art. The answer, in short, appears to be no, as it seems her father at the very least assisted her with the paintings. I felt a strange mixture of disgust and pity towards the parents - the mother who appeared to sincerely wish to keep her daughter from the spotlight, yet was there, with Marla in tow, at three separate exhibitions; and the father, whose mental state appears to visibly disintegrate as the film progresses, to the point where he takes an innocuous comment from his daughter and transforms into a crater-sized hole to bury himself in.

The film did bring into question the value of modern art; the fact is that the father would have got nowhere painting these pictures himself - the fact that his daughter was credited with the work caused their value to skyrocket. This leads to the suggestion that some paintings have gained value through notoriety rather than intrinsic brilliance - to whit, I can inform you that Jackson Pollock's Number 5, 1948 piece is the most expensive painting in the world. It was sold for $140 million in 2006 - going by the theory suggested above, it may well be made of stars - and for that price, it ought to be.

Sonata For A Good Fact

2008-08-07T22:43:00.002+01:00

Just watched The Lives of Others, and like any critically acclaimed European film, there was no escape from learning throughout its duration. The most trivial piece of information I can glean from this weighty film is that the Stasi, the East German secret police, are named after the German term for State Security - Staatssicherheit. I could go on, but I think the room may be bugged, so I'd best change the subject (holds up sign with More Stasi Information Here written on it).

The film was very good, and I'm not just saying that 'cos the director's listening in. Claire didn't like it, but that's down to her being a disloyal Westernite patsy. It's weird to think that the sort of activity shown in the film - suppression of the arts, intimate surveillance, dirty fat blokes in outsized white pants - was going on, in Germany, 20 years ago. In fact, it's still going on all over the world, but y'know, Germany, you can get there on Ryanair, so it's different. In Germany there has been a movement known as Ostalgie (a play on the German word for 'east'), where former citizens of the DDR have begun hankering for the bland food and poor-quality cars of their former nation - not to mention the full employment (if not some of the less appealing aspects of Communist life). There's even talk of a theme park in East Berlin - just make sure you're nice on the Customer Comments card.

Burial Unearthed

2008-08-06T22:52:00.003+01:00

<< An artist's impression of Burial: cooler looking than his actual face

Here's something from the very epicentre of contemporary culture - just for a change:

Burial's real name is Will Bevan.

Pretty much all I knew about Burial was that nobody knew who he was - and it seems that the endless speculation has led him to reveal his name, and his face, via his MySpace page. Cynics will claim that it has something to do with him being the favourite for the Mercury Music Prize, which is awarded next month, and can't be given to someone if no-one knows what they look like. Apparently Will (sorry, 'Burial') was driven to 'fessing up by newspaper speculation that he was in fact Fatboy Slim, which is a bit like an uncle walking into your room, hearing the harsh beats through your iPod speakers, and asking if it's the Human League. Imagine how Fatboy Slim, now really quite 90s, would have felt if people had tried to credit his work to, I dunno, the bass player from the Housemartins?

Burial has a song on his MySpace which is well worth a listen, although for an anonymous musician he currently has more references to his true identity than actual tracks on the page, which seems odd. He's currently 5/2 to win the prize, but frankly, if you're prepared to bet on a prize that the Klaxons won, you're an idiot.

Poosday

2008-08-05T22:40:00.002+01:00

So it's come to this. All I can draw from my barren imagination is to look up something to do with the day of the week. But then... what else is there to talk about on Tuesday? It's the worst day ever, and here's why. If you work Monday to Friday (as I have the sad misfortune to experience) then on Monday you're still savouring the weekend, and by Wednesday, you're halfway done. Tuesday, on the other hand, is a miserable no-man's-land, with the weekend a dying memory and the next day off a distant dream. When you get in, and put on the telly in a desperate bid to escape the soul-scraping tedium of the working week, what is there to watch? Here's what. Nothing. Occasionally you might find a dire football game on ITV, but aside from that, it's a Doc Martin-centric vacuum of quality.

Now that I've got that off my chest, here's the fact:

In Latin, and in several other European languages, the word for Tuesday translates as ‘Mars’ day’. In English, it derives from Tyr, the god of single combat in Norse mythology.

Wikipedia's entry for Tuesday describes it as the day between Monday and Wednesday - which pretty much says it all. The best thing about it is that it's nearly over.

The Great Outdoors

2008-08-04T19:08:00.002+01:00

<< Our summer bolthole in all its glory

A big old round-up today, as I've been camping in Wales for the weekend. That doesn't excuse the lack of activity on Thursday, which was instead due to Summer Heights High being on and laziness. Regardless, I did learn something - that Man City midfielder Elano was the most substituted player in last season's Premier League. Given that he's a Brazilian playmaker, it perhaps shouldn't surprise that he seems to lose interest after about an hour.

On Friday, in between trying to find the campsite in the dark with our petrol running out and trying to pitch our tent in the dead of night, with sleet whistling through the field, cursing at outrageous volumes, I discovered that 80s band Oingo Boingo (of Guitar Hero fame) were fronted by Danny Elfman, who has gone on to write a whole heap of film scores. Further investigations have revealed that Oingo Boingo were originally a theatrical troupe known as The Mystic Knights of Oingo Boingo, before shortening their name, then shortening it again to Boingo, before finally shortening it to the point where they ceased to exist.

Saturday and Sunday both brought facts from the giant wedge of goodness that is Trivial Pursuit; I know I shouldn't crib facts consecutively from the same source, but there wasn't a lot else to discover in the middle of a field, save that it doesn't take much rain to drench the inside of a tent. So to start with, I can impart the rather hilarious news that Pac-Man was originally called Puck-Man (for he is puck shaped), but was re-named after a few wags decided to scratch the round bit of the 'P' off to make the whole thing sound slightly unsavoury. Pac-Man was, however, originally called 'Pakka-man' in Japan, so it's not too far off. Meanwhile, Sunday brought the revelation that Finland drinks more coffee per person than any other country - must be all those long nights.

And so to today, and we trudge from the verdant splendour of the Brecon Beacons to the concrete horror of South London, with only the distant glimmer of a weekend to keep my spirits from crashing through the floor entirely. I have also discovered that our new tent is, inch-for-inch, roomier and in better condition than our flat - which is disappointing. I leave you, then, with the news that not everyone in this city is living in cramped conditions - for Buckingham Palace has over six hundred rooms. Now that I'm simmering with republican fury, I'm off to enjoy my evening. Same time tomorrow.

Lucky Exes & Less Lucky Kids

2008-07-30T18:28:00.002+01:00

Yesterday, very early on (about ten past midnight) I learnt that Katy Carmichael (a.k.a. Twist from Spaced) went out with David Walliams for five years. She must have thought she was the one destined to make it big when Spaced came along - alas, it was not to be, as the length of their respective Wikipedia pages will testify. They both attended Bristol University in the late eighties, along with Simon Pegg and Jessica Stevenson. What gives? In my year at Uni there were barely four people I didn't totally despise...

Anyway, on to something completely different (who can believe I haven't used that one before?). Only one child in twenty is born on the day predicted by the doctor. Contrary to pretty much every other event in my entire life, I was early for my birth - scheduled to arrive on the 12th August, I rolled up on the 10th (cheques and cards in the post, it's coming soon). I was thus born on a Wednesday, making me full of woe (well, who wouldn't be, with the credit crunch and all) rather than Friday, which would have made me loving and giving (nicely dodged, then). If it were Anglo-Saxon times, however (go with me on this) then all I would have been giving was my life - all babies born on Friday were slaughtered, as it was seen as unlucky. And I thought I was full of woe...

Twice Nightly

2008-07-28T21:20:00.003+01:00

<< Whiteley: "TWICE?"

Some days, you just take what you can get. So here's Sunday's effort: Heineken was first brewed in 1873. I read it off the label, I ain't gonna go check it now cos Dragon's Den is on, what are you gonna do about it?

Moving on, and onto something else that's been around for centuries - Countdown. Not only that, but the show's recent travails have left a bitter taste in the mouth (seamless). That's right, the game show that taxes the parts other shows can't reach is on the rocks at present, with Des and Vorders storming out of the show under threat of massive pay cuts. To be honest, it's never been the same since Richard Whiteley went to the great numbers board in the sky - if the nation's old people could just stretch far enough to reach that remote, ratings would have plummeted. Richard Whiteley was given the nickname "Twice Nightly" because he used to have two shows on Yorkshire TV each night - Calendar, and Calendar Countdown, which later moved to Channel 4 and became Countdown itself. I had always thought that this was a libellous suggestion about his sexual prowess. Now there's a mental image for you - two from the top and three at the bottom, I'm guessing...

Common Names and Wacky Crimes

2008-07-26T17:47:00.005+01:00

<< How Not to Disappear Discreetly, Page 1, Exhibit A

Last night I was too busy being all cool and in London to do the blog, ruining my hot streak of 5 successive days where I've summoned up the energy to post something. I did learn, however, that there are 24 places called Barton in the UK, so it wasn't an altogether wasted evening. Our friend comes from one such Barton, which is, I dunno, up North somewhere, and she assures us that it is the best one. I learnt the other day that my home town of Devizes, Wiltshire has a namesake in Kansas. Devizes is latin for 'the gates', as the town once had a gate at each entrance, to stop the millions of people just desperate to visit it. Barton means, um, town with a bar in it, I imagine.

And so on to today, and an interesting fact relating to the bizarre story of canoe-based magic act John and Anne Darwin, who managed to pull off a disappearance trick that lasted a good five years. The cover of the Mirror late this year which featured the couple, who at that stage were not under suspicion following John Darwin's bizarre reappearance, grinning in the sales office of a Panama condo block, was perhaps the finest image printed all year. It was the start of the monumental collapse of a laughable, yet surprisingly successful, attempt by the couple to fake someone's death - a process known as pseudocide. That's not what they've been banged up for - no, that would be embezzlement and deception on a mind-boggling scale. Good luck to 'em.

Fact Me 'Til I Fart

2008-07-24T21:40:00.003+01:00

As you may have noticed, I've been writing down one thing I've learned each day for the past seven-and-a-bit months, but the truth is that I usually learn a lot more than that in your average day - and today was as average as it gets. To celebrate, here is a dispassionate list of stuff I have learnt:

1. Dostoevsky is spelt Dostoevsky, not Dostoyevsky as I had thought.

2. 'Crime and Punishment' is about a crime, and the related punishment.

3. The weekly team meeting has been cancelled.

4. If you want extra cheese in your Reggae Reggae sub, it'll cost you 30p extra.

5. The Primark in Wandsworth's Southside centre carries an overwhelming aroma of B.O.

6. The Primark in Wandsworth is closed to those trying to enter the store a full quarter of an hour before the actual closing time, even if you're only nipping in to get some boxer shorts.

7. The 44 bus from Wandsworth to Tooting Broadway takes longer than advertised on the timetable.

8. The Pepsi Max draught pump in Tooting KFC has run out of syrup.

9. My old uni mates' band have made a video, with proper acting and everything. It looks like it cost more than Dizzee Rascal's video, which is a bit weird.

10. The rented DVD of 30 Days of Night is officially copyable.

11. As a siren approaches then moves away, it sounds to the ear as though the pitch changes. This is known as the Doppler Effect.

I thank you.

I Just Finished a Book

2008-07-23T22:34:00.004+01:00

<< Pullman: Dark

Today I finished reading The Amber Spyglass, the third of Philip Pullman's 'His Dark Materials' trilogy. I'm now in a slightly awkward position, as I'd love to talk at length about it, but will spoil it for anyone who hasn't read it. Anyway, it's very good - the trilogy was collectively voted the third best novel of all time, behind Geri Halliwell's books for kids. Or it may have been Lord of the Rings and Pride & Prejudice, I don't remember.

While that might be pushing it, it was definitely gripping, and has occupied me so intently during recent commutes that it's going to be a shock actually remembering anything about the journey. If you've been through Clapham Junction lately and have seen an egg-shaped individual waddling through the crowd with a Pullman tome pressed to his face, tripping over old ladies and small children as they desperately try to figure out what the fuck is going on, and what's with the thing, and why did that guy go there... well, that was me. Now I'm just gonna have to go back to scowling at people again.

Pantalaimon's name is taken from St. Pantalaemon, whose name is Greek for 'all-helping'.

That will mean a lot to people who've read 'His Dark Materials', and precious little to those who haven't. A bit like this post then - good job I chose a popular book, I guess...

Tour de Facts

2008-07-22T18:15:00.004+01:00

<< Mark Cavendish: "Ah, what's the point?"

It's a fine summer's day today, and while we British may have nothing better to do than swelter in offices while our youths slip away on the balmy breeze, across the Channel, millions of people find the time to stand at the foot of a mountain and whoop at passing cyclists. That's right, the Tour de France is in full swing - we were but two hours away by car whilst on holiday, but driving to watch the world's greatest cycle race seemed a bit off. Initially, my burgeoning enjoyment of le Tour felt like the final passage into irretrievable sporting geekdom, but I have since realised that I'm way past that point already, and anyway, there's a lot to love.

For one, there's the lovely scenery - better than the fat builders' convention that passes for a backdrop at a football match anyway. Secondly, there's the fact that it may be the hardest sports event on Earth to win - a British rider, Mark Cavendish, has won four stages at this year's Tour, yet was so monumentally far from victory that he decided to pack it in altogether. Finally, you get a jumper for winning stuff. I wish my work did that - a polka dot sweater for the neatest filing cabinet drawer would really boost morale. The one down side, of course, is that some bad apples like to get a little boost from the lab, and in fact, entire teams are sometimes put under suspicion, and removed from the race, subsequently casting a shadow of foul play over each and every participant. Never mind that, just look at the mountains.

Speaking of which (wow, this is segueing like a proper sports report - just call me John Inverdale without the dubious racial stereotypes; John for short) the peloton (they have a made-up word for the group of riders - that's almost as cool as Skull Man) are heading towards the Alps, and the peaks, which are all known as 'cols'. Col de Cousteau, Col de Mangetout, Col de Johnny Halliday, they're all there. I had thought this had meant 'mountain' or 'peak', forgetting about Page 1 of my 'Parlez-vouz Francais?' textbook, which would have informed me that mountain is of course 'mont'. This is what 'col' means:

'Col' is the French word for a mountain pass.

The cols that the riders have to conquer are graded from 1 to 4, 1 being the most treacherous, except that the very hardest climbs are rated as being higher than 1, which seems fairly ridiculous, given that the purpose of any grading system is to cover from the biggest to the smallest. Have the mountains grown since the system came into being? Unbelievable. The most frequently traversed pass in Tour history is the Col du Tourmalet in the Pyrenees, which has been climbed 47 times in all, and stands very much 'hors categorie' at 2km above sea level. The idea of climbing it on a pushbike and then careening down the other side of it sounds more like punishment than sport to me, but each to their own.

Skull Man

2008-07-21T19:24:00.003+01:00

Glory be, my fellow questers (I'm sure you're still out there, somewhere) - I am now a published writer. It may only be an article, and one of questionable quality, but it's out there, on the interweb, just waiting for a publishing supremo to read it, shrug wearily and move on. This is genuinely surprisingly swift progress, given my sluggish work rate and faltering ambition, and I'm sufficiently gushing with pride to post the link to it right here. Please feel free to StumbleUpon, Digg, etc it to within an inch of its life.

Back to reality, and there's no need to trawl the depths of the internet for any more blue whale riffs - I have in my hand a fact, passed to me by a colleague with an (admittedly unexpected) understanding of Japanese:

The Japanese writing on my T-shirt says 'Skull Man'.

This seems entirely logical, given that the ice-cool character perched atop the script is indeed a man, with a white, featureless head not unlike a skull. I am, however, slightly disappointed. I think I preferred the mystery, imagining that it was a piece of writing taken from a street sign, and said 'Toilets 100yds' or ' Free Mobile Phones this way'. To discover it merely offers an accurate, yet non-illuminating description of the mysterious figure above it has somewhat taken the shine off. Besides, if it had said Skull Man in English, there's no way I would have bought it. At least the Skull Man himself remains resolutely badass, arms folded, literally defying translation. Skull Man, I have just discovered to my delight, is a manga character from the 70s, and is (what else) a cold-hearted, lightning-fast anti-hero. Skull Man is way cool.

Weekend: All Creatures Great and Small

2008-07-21T19:04:00.003+01:00

<< "Make some noise!"

If you're settling down in front of the computer with a nice cup of tea and your confection of choice (may I recommend a Double Decker? Fine, suit yourself) here's a fact for you, learnt at the start of a glorious, now moribund weekend:

The average chocolate bar has eight insect legs in it.

Apparently, it's all to do with the cocoa collection process, and is in no way connected to the shoddy conditions down at the factory. Anyway, from the animal kingdom's more insignificant members - and let's face it, you can't get much lower than having your remains scattered throughout a 24-bar box of Toffee Crisps - to it's mightiest overlord. I'm talking, of course, about Brian Blessed. Sorry, the blue whale. Now we all know that blue whales are big fellas - their hearts are the size of a VW Beetle, a human could crawl through it's aorta, and each one is the same length as, I dunno, Belgium. It's usually Belgium. You may think of them as big, but they're also loud. In fact:

Blue whales are the loudest animals on Earth.

They holler at a frequency of 10 to 40HZ, making them virtually inaudible to the human ear, but there's no living thing that's louder, although our Brian does push them close, as do the urbane sophisticates who drive past Knowledge Towers on a Sunday playing only the finest in house and garage at a bone-juddering volume. As far as I'm aware, a blue whale has never been accidentally encased in chocolate and retailed, but if they did, I reckon I could take it.

Apropros of Nothing

2008-07-18T23:42:00.002+01:00

It's time for another lazy round-up, so normally I'd be warning you to brace yourselves for a volley of jaw-droppingly seamless links between each day's topic. Alas, whichever way I look at it, I am burdened with three pieces of information that have absolutely nothing to do with each other. Nevertheless, I shall soldier on - so brace yourselves for a volley of jaw-droppingly clunky and ineffective links...

First up it's Wednesday, worst of all days, carrying within its cloud of midweek drudgery a point of minor interest - the word 'zebra' comes from the portugese 'zevra', which means wild ass (as in a feral donkey, not as in 'that was a wild ass party' - although if a feral donkey was involved, it probably was). Now (here comes the first clanger) if you were walking towards, oh, let's say, Big Ben, you might cross a zebra crossing to get there. When you get there, if you happen to be carrying a transistor radio and tune into the news, you'll hear the chimes on the radio before you hear them in real life. This may well be because the bongs are pre-recorded, but whatever, that's the fact and I'm sticking to it.

You may have noticed that the end of the last paragraph was pretty decisive - in fact, you might say I nailed my colours to the mast (here we go again). During a chat tonight with actual real people, this phrase came up and I promptly scurried back into my Wikipedia lair to find out where it came from. I know you're dying to find out. It's a nautical term (isn't everything?) which relates to ships refusing to take down their flag. Taking down the ship's flag was a sign that you were surrendering, and if you felt particularly strongly about not doing so, or were concerned that once you ran out of fags you might be tempted, a couple of nails was guaranteed to keep that baby flyin' high. As for a link from such triumph and defiance back down to the seedy shame of this blog, I'm stumped.

Lefties

2008-07-15T19:06:00.002+01:00

<< Che Guevara: Not left-handed, and it tore him up inside

I got my fact at ten past midnight last night, during Seinfeld episode "The Checks", when Seinfeld holds his aching writing hand having had to sign several hundred Japanese royalty cheques, each for 12 cents. I wasn't aware you had to sign cheques for yourself in America, but to be honest, I'm not certain you don't have to do that in this country, so I'm keeping quiet. The following discovery at least allowed me a day's grace from having to peruse the hellstorm of fear and inanity that is Metro:

Jerry Seinfeld is left-handed.

Other famous lefties include (behold this staggering list): Leonardo da Vinci, Robert de Niro, Brad Pitt, Tom Cruise, Einstein, Matt Groening, John McEnroe, Jimmy White, Chewbacca, Pele, Maradona, Churchill, Julius Caesar, Aristotle, Joan of Arc, Neil Armstrong, Napoleon, Beadle, Ross Kemp, Wossy, Bowie, Kurt Cobain, Eminem, Jimi Hendrix and, best 'til last, Ricky Martin.

Seinfeld actually began his comedy career with a skit to college 'roomies' about being left-handed and the unfortunate connotations that go with it: "left-handed compliment, ... you get to a party, ask where everyone went - they left". I myself am not left-handed, which is a source of deep-seated disappointment to my girlfriend. I am, however, left-footed when I play football, which she understandably considers to be "not the same".

Maybe Tomorrow, I'll Wanna Settle Down...

2008-07-14T20:41:00.003+01:00

<< My work's next green initiative

I think it may be time to go travelling again soon - I need to escape this isle before the ants take over, judging by the myriad displays of idiocy I have witnessed today. Firstly, the guard on the morning train (which I took prior to working 9 to 5, before taking another home again to find a number of chores waitin' for me) asked a guy to leave the train. The guy said no. The guard got off, mooched a while, and then let the train leave. I didn't know whether to be worried or give the guy a telepathic high five for having the foresight to know they wouldn't force him to leave. He was last seen heading for Twickenham KFC with a smirk on his face.

Meanwhile, my workplace have recently been introducing 'green initiatives', which is highly commendable. The trouble is, the vast majority are counter-productive - for instance, I arrived back from holiday to find a recycled coaster on my desk. Very nice, and very ecological, except I never had a coaster before, so it's hardly an energy saver. I entirely appreciate the gesture, but there's a small problem - during my week away, they've also installed an LCD TV, size fuck-off large, in the middle of the office, which displays a constant stream of pithy 'motivational messages'. If the green initiative continues at this rate, we'll be emptying our toner cartridges in the local pond by Friday.

Of course, some places are in possession of greater doofuses than the UK - not that I'm going to name names. This list of travel-related anecdotes, namely from a nameless nation, demonstrates this point quite nicely, and also taught me this:

Orlando, Florida is not on a coastline.

It does, however, have Disneyland, which puts it up in my top five places to go while I'm stuck in the office, somewhere between the pub and home. It may lack the eco-friendly vibe of other resorts, but the security's a lot tighter than South West Trains...

A Load of Boules

2008-07-13T22:19:00.003+01:00

<< Mont St. Michel - fact-free and proud of it

And so, I have returned from distant lands (well, 20 miles from Cherbourg) with a clutch of facts, desperately snatched from any English-language source I could find, usually with just minutes to spare. I've only got an hour to find a fact for today, so we'd better get started:

On Saturday, my Bob Dylan ignorance was exposed yet again, as my brother informed me that 'All Along The Watchtower''s lyrics are in reverse order. Sunday, meanwhile, revealed shameful ignorance of a different kind, as we discovered after a whistle-stop tour of the bars of Normandy, that the men's Wimbledon singles final isn't shown on French TV. Upon entering the first establishment and uttering 'le tennis sur le tele?', we were greeted with an ominously blank look. In the end, we resorted to experiencing perhaps the greatest tennis match in history through a Radio 5 broadcast that sounded like it was coming from a bunker deep within Communist Russia, as phrases such as "this is beyond mere sport - this is a war" and "tears are literally rolling down my cheeks - what a volley" leaked through the fuzzy speakers. Ah well.

Monday brought the slightly less exciting news that Anya is a type of potato, rather than a way of cooking said potato. Moving swiftly on, on Tuesday we visited Mont St. Michel, a delightful place but sadly devoid of facts - there was in fact no information whatsoever on its history, which I almost respect. It's as if it's sitting there on the cusp of the Channel, defying you to question its existence. Good shops also. In the end, I resorted to a dusty copy of the Eden Project guide, found in the back of my mum's car, which told me that 40% of terrestrial organisms live in treetops.

The next two days' facts were gleaned from the Ultimate Book of Trivia, a weighty tome which really can be judged by its cover. On Wednesday I learnt that Caesar salad is not named after Julius Caesar, but that caesarian section is named after his son, um, Caesarian. I kind of like that idea - any son of mine will be called Niallian - poor little bastard. On Thursday, meanwhile, I unearthed (struggling to find different ways of saying learnt now) that Pas de Calais, the name given to the very north of France, is the French term for the Dover Strait. Whilst perusing the pages of the trivia book, I also came across a question on Frida from Abba's nationality. I intended to use this, until I read the answer: Swedish. Ah. Then, in a frankly bizarre coincidence, whilst sailing close to the Dover Strait on the ferry back on Friday night, I read in a review of Mamma Mia: The Movie (have you seen the poster? The horror) that Frida from Abba is the daughter of a Nazi soldier and a Norwegian mother. My faith in the Ultimate Book of Trivia is irreparably shaken.

Yesterday, upon returning to Blighty, I learnt that dyspraxia is a condition which affects your hand-eye co-ordination. Anyone who ever witnessed my attempt at running the egg-and-spoon race will know that this isn't a strong point of mine, and I'm now convinced I have it. I plan to miss several days of work as a result of my new-found condition. And so, to tonight. I was sans fact until I opened an e-mail from my brother, linking to a website called 'Women of Strength' that he claims to have Stumbled Upon. There are a number of useful facts, but I'm plumping for the entirely irrelevant news that St. John was the only one of the 12 Apostles to die a natural death. With that mammoth fact-o-rama out of the way, I'm off to celebrate with a baguette, a glass of duty-free wine and a quick game of boules - though I may lose again, as a result of my dyspraxia, of course...

Au Revoir

2008-07-04T23:48:00.002+01:00

<< A French chemist, yesterday

Off to France tomorrow, so there'll be a fact-shaped hole on this site for the next week - although I'll update on my all my facts francais when I return. To roll with the Gallic theme, here's today's offering:

Chemistry was invented in France.

Having spent three hours packing, I really don't have time to go into the finer details, except that it again came from the glorious Observer Book of Invention. More specifically, it's part of a feature on the most inventive nation - based on how many of the 'top hundred' inventions each nation can lay claim to. France doesn't exactly excel, clocking up 3, the other two being pasteurisation and, uh, Petits Filous, or something.

China is top of the tree with 19, with the UK just one invention behind on 18. Once my idea for a remote control that dispenses Milk Duds hits the ground, it'll be level-pegging. Russia's only entry is the periodic table, which does kind of rain on France's parade - inventing chemistry but not coming up with the periodic table seems a bit like inventing the car, but letting another country get the patent in on the engine.

The endless, merciless learning will recommence next Sunday. Until then...

Midweek Madness: Great Minds, Nasty Knights and Bad Actors

2008-07-03T23:02:00.003+01:00

On Tuesday I turned, surely not for the last time, to the nifty free Book of Invention, given away with Sunday's Observer. I only bought the paper to get the book, and only got the book to guarantee a few cheap facts. I'm basically paying for facts now - I'm a John of learning. Anyway, this baby got facts, with all manner of interesting sections. I plumped for a passage about inventions named after their creators - Biro being an obvious example. I also learnt that not only was Braille invented by a guy named Braille, but that Monsieur Braille was himself blind (perhaps not surprising) and invented the system when he was just 15 (wowsers).

To Wednesday, and from great minds overcoming adversity, to dangerous minds spawned from greatness. If you'll forgive the weighty introduction, I'm talking about honorary knighthoods, most notably the one handed out to Robert Mugabe, and rather sheepishly withdrawn last week. I wonder what it was that tipped the scales - he's only been destroying the nation he illegally rules for a decade or so, after all. Perhaps a temp was asked to dust off the file and check that all honorary knighthoods were still legit - you can picture the scene. "Wogan - well he's still pulling in listeners; Bill Gates - bit weird, but I'll let it slide... Robert Mu... oh SHIT". What's amazing is it's not the first time a dictator's been able to sit in his war room polishing up a nice shiny medal - both Caucescu and Mussolini were awarded honorary knighthoods (both were later withdrawn, but that's hardly the point). It makes the excuse of removing Saddam to justify the Iraq war even more laughable, if that was possible...

On to Thursday now, and an attempt to carve out yet another tenuous link... you may have seen some headlines relating to Mugabe or his Zanu-PF party, only using the nation of Zimbabwe to represent them i.e. "Zimbabwe to West: Get off my dick"; "Zimbabwe comments just not cricket" etc etc. Anyway, this is known as a synecdoche. A synecdoche is a term which uses a part of something to describe its whole, or the whole of something to describe one part of it. Examples - "Nice wheels" (wheels meaning car) and "Use your head" (head meaning brain). Saying you want a Coke when you just want a fizzy drink is also an example, though why you'd ever want a drink other than cool, refreshing, flavourful Coke is beyond me (pop the cheque in the post lads).

I found this word courtesy of Empire magazine, which ran a feature on Charlie Kaufmann's new film, Synecdoche, New York. In what sounds like a plot literally picked piece-by-piece out of a hat, Philip Seymour Hoffmann builds a model of New York in a warehouse. I know, it sounds rubbish, but the guy made a film where walking trellis Nicholas Cage plays two different characters, and it was actually quite good, even if it fell apart like Gasquet in the fifth set. And the tenuous links go on...

Speaking My Language

2008-06-30T21:53:00.003+01:00

<< Richard Gasquet in the throes of a trademark existential meltdown

I'm trying to creep back to daily blogging, but don't go expecting extra material for your time. It's been a long hard struggle finding anything out today, particularly with about four hours taken up by the Gasquet v Murray clash of the titans just down the road at Wimbledon. Murray probably deserved to win just for his sheer persistence, even though Gasquet fell apart like wet cake after the third set tie-break. Eventually, with another corking episode of the reborn Big Brother ripping along in the background, I have found the following:

Hindustani is the third most spoken language in the world.

A language that, shamefully enough, I incorrectly thought was actually called Hindi, is spoken by 497 million people worldwide, and is only surpassed narrowly by English (508 million) and more comfortably by Mandarin (spoken by more than a billion people). It's interesting to me that there is only a difference of 9 million between a language spoken largely amongst citizens of one nation and a language spoken all over the world. It is in fact the popularity of English in India that has prevented its most widely-spoken language from reaching the dizzy heights that Mandarin has achieved in China. I got this list from List Universe, a nifty site with several slightly more subjective lists, including the ten most influential metal bands (no Metallica? what gives?) and various other trivia. You can enjoy that, while I go and shout at the obnoxious shits on my telly...

Weekend: A Few Sherbets, and Farewell Motson

2008-06-29T17:20:00.004+01:00

<< Motty attempting to flog a hooky mobile phone to Trevor Brooking (seriously, what other explanation is there for this picture?)

Late on Saturday evening, I learnt the following without the help of the internet, instead resorting to actual conversation:

In America, sherbet is a type of frozen dessert.

Sherbet is a dessert that lies somewhere between ice cream and sorbet, having a lesser milk content than ice cream, but more than sorbet, which clearly doesn't have any. I don't know if there's a British equivalent - to be honest, the idea of removing fatty content from any product isn't one that sits well with us Brits, but then America are hardly trail-blazers in this field. Sherbet is used in the UK to describe a fizzy, powdery sweet substance, found in such messy but delicious treats as the Sherbet Dib-Dab. It also features in one of the Austin Powers films, where the comedic mix-up between what the British spy requests (orange sherbet) and what is delivered (an orange frozen dessert) is really not explored in any way - surely because of running time issues, rather than a failure to realise that sherbet means a totally different thing in the U.K.

A few minutes later, with the clock ticking into Sunday morning, I stumbled upon my earliest fact to date:

Hereford's 1972 FA Cup victory over Newcastle was John Motson's first commentary for BBC TV.

So far, so uninteresting, but this just interested me as it's quite a famous Motson commentary, particularly the moment when Ronnie Radford spanked the ball into the top corner to equalise for Hereford. A lot of people think it was the winning goal, but that was scored in extra-time by Ricky George, who replaced full-back Roger Griffiths, who broke his leg during the game... but carried on playing. Now that's commitment. Another barely interesting fact about this game is that it was a replay, the two sides having drawn 2-2 at St. James' Park a few days previously.

The game was originally designed to slot into Match of the Day in roughly the position that Middlesbrough v Bolton would do now - towards the end, in other words. The shock result catapulted it to the top of the programme, and kick-started Motty's commentary career. Tonight's Euro 2008 final will most likely be his final live commentary, bringing to an end a career that was starting to come adrift slightly, with our John seemingly ever more confused. One of my favourite Motty moments was when Sol Campbell had a goal disallowed against Portugal at Euro 2004 (a correct decision, with hindsight) and as play swept down to the other end, Motson attempted to allude to Campbell's disallowed goal against Argentina in 1998 - he was instead only able to incoherently babble the word "Hollandargie" - the beginning of the end, if you ask me...

Round Up: From Radiohead to Gatorade

2008-06-27T22:06:00.009+01:00

<< The 'Gatorade dunk': probably not seen in Radiohead's dressing room on Wednesday night

I'm writing retrospectively as once again I've been too busy with my mountain of paperwork down at the station (OK, office), watching Big Brother and eating KFC to record my feats of understanding. I'm whacking them all in one entry this time - it's a whole new look for Quest For Knowledge, seeing as we're halfway through the year. Less material, updated with decreasing regularity - I know what the people want.

Unfinished Business

Anyway, on Wednesday 25th, I did attend the Radiohead gig as I had previously boasted about (although I didn't manage the double whammy of eating peri-peri chicken whilst enjoying the show) - it was very good, though in a weird setting populated by knobheads drinking red wine and talking about the quickest journey to work throughout the entire set. By the way I just read that they closed with The Tourist on the first night - unlucky, Elliot. My brother deserved something, for he gave me a useful fact - computer programs with the label 'beta' are not completed. This mostly applies to computer games, which are then finished off and released - but Google maps are clearly still working on it.

Transgender Neo-con

On to Thursday (26th), and ShortList magazine, which enticed me with its headline "QUIT YOUR BORING JOB NOW!", only for me to discover that quitting said boring job actually involved setting up a business so dynamic and outstanding that it was capable of winning a national award. Drat. Anyway, in another indie-related fact, I discovered that Haley Barbour is a man. Who cares, you may be thinking (about that, or just in general, I'm not fussed) but it relates to the name being mentioned on 1994 gloomy rock masterpiece and Knowledge Towers' official Best Album Ever, The Holy Bible by the Manics. I'd always thought Haley was a woman, but not so - he is, however, as objectionably right wing as Richey and co suggested.

The Drink That Makes You Do Football Better

And so to Friday (27th), or as some wags would call it, today. I learnt that Gatorade was invented by students at the University of Florida, to help improve the performance of their American football team... the Florida Gators. From this I deduced that Gatorade is named after the Florida Gators. Two years after the drink was created, the team won the Orange Bowl and were thus crowned America's finest college side. They may have all been unable to sit still and riddled with paranoid anxiety, but damn, they could play some football. Gatorade has apparently never before been available in the UK, although I've drank it, and I ain't never been to no America, so like, whatever, but its hella popular in the States, being one of only four companies to have an 80%+ market share. Any ideas on the others? Answers tomorrow. There is no prize.

Victoria Parks

2008-06-24T21:14:00.003+01:00

Today may have been a soulless trudge through tedium, but it's OK, because tomorrow I'm going to see Radiohead. One reason to be smug about living in London is the certainty that any decent band (and a lot of not-so-decent bands) are going to play a short tube ride from Knowledge Towers. Radiohead are pushing the envelope a bit, however, by playing in Victoria Park, which lies between Hackney and Bethnal Green. It may be a short mooch for Shoreditch trendies, but I've got to change trains twice. The nerve of these people.

Victoria Park is the oldest public park in Britain.

It was opened to the proles in 1842, and is known as 'The People's Park' in East London. It's the third Victoria Park I'll have been to, following on from parks in Bath and Cardiff. I'd think that I had some kind of affinity with the name, except there are also Victoria Parks in Aberdeen, Glasgow, Bristol, Birmingham and Manchester, amongst many others. They are, of course, named after Queen Victoria, who according to Eddie Izzard, lived for 2000 years.

I'm getting excited now ahead of the gig, but as this is a Radiohead gig, it might not fit my usual metal gig template. Three things that probably won't happen:

1. Singer implores crowd to 'go fucking crazy'
2. Band begin encore with cover of 'Summer of 69'
3. Guitarist launches 5-minute solo with request for circle pit

And three things that might:

1. Singer implores crowd to stop littering
2. Band begin encore with eight-minute jazz odyssey
3. Guitarist plays Paranoid Android, with any luck

It's (Not) A Gas

2008-06-23T20:23:00.002+01:00

Today's fact comes courtesy of Claire's work colleague, who shall remain nameless as the overnight fame that would follow a reference on this blog would surely destroy him. He has informed me of the following:

CS gas is not a gas.

It's a powder, sprayed in the faces of the unruly via a nifty aerosol. It was invented in Wiltshire, in the mysterious Porton Down research unit. Other gifts that God's county has bestowed upon the world include crop circles and Billie Piper, whilst celebrities seduced by its rustic charms include Dot Cotton and Pete Doherty. But back to the gas, or lack of it. CS gas was invented by Ben Corson and Roger Staughton, whose surname initials give it its name. Despite its rise to prominence in the last 20 years, it was invented in 1928, originally being used as a tear gas rather than a hand-held weapon. Wikipedia also claims that CS gas is "generally accepted as being non-lethal", which is slightly worrying. A final fact before you're all gassed out - the CS gas used by British coppers is 5 times stronger than that of their American counterparts. To rectify this slight imbalance, however, American police do get to carry guns.

Cover Me

2008-06-22T15:58:00.005+01:00

<< The Total Guitar team attempt to sit through Geri Halliwell's version of 'Symphony of Destruction'

Today I have learnt that the worst cover version ever made is a version of AC-DC's 'You Shook Me (All Night Long)" by... Celine Dion. Admittedly, this is a matter of opinion - the opinion in question belonging to the staff of Total Guitar magazine. I think you can imagine the reaction in that office when they heard Celine's take on a hard rock classic - it's just lucky they don't keep guns in their office. Having perused the link above, I can confirm that it is truly horrible - I got as far as the first line of the vocal, having nearly plucked out my eyeballs at the sight of Celine's attempt at air guitar.

Other musical butcherings in the list include Girls Aloud and the Sugababes collaborating on Walk This Way, in an unprecedented attempt to use a charity record to resuscitate not one, but TWO, ailing groups' careers. Will Young's lounge version of Light My Fire makes a deserved appearance, as does Westlife's version of Extreme's More Than Words. I've not heard it, but judging by the shame they inflicted on Uptown Girl, and the fact they've obviously missed the uncomfortable sexual overtones of the original, I can imagine it's not great. Rounding off the list is Mike Flowers' version of Wonderwall, which is unfair, as it's better than the original. It's on the 'best covers' side of things, however, that I find a revelation:

'All Along The Watchtower' was originally recorded by Bob Dylan.

Jimi Hendrix' version was a cover, and I feel I may be the only person in the world who doesn't know this. Truly, my Dad will be appalled. You can see the rest of the list here, but it's not nearly as fun as the worst covers collection. Personally, I've been racking my brains to think of my favourite cover, but the truth is that outside of concerts, I don't really see the point of them. If it's an alternative version of a pop song, then you can't like it and then pretend not to like the original - if it's a mainstream version of an alternative song, it is almost guaranteed to be horrible. Finally, if the genre of the covering band matches that of the original, then it's totally pointless. To be honest, it's Sunday afternoon and my mind's drawing a blank, so I'm going to have come back to you on this - the fact that Alien Ant Farm's 'Smooth Criminal' is currently the best I can think of suggests I may have to do some research...

The Longest Day

2008-06-21T20:42:00.003+01:00

<< David Tennant: Making the longest day of the year feel that little bit longer

Today is the longest day of the year, with the sun rising at 4.43 this morning and due to set at 9.22 tonight. There is one second more daylight than yesterday, with the night creeping in by six seconds a night over the next week. Days such as this, which are notable without being worth celebrating (unless you're of a pagan persuasion), tend to only serve to amplify how unremarkable day-to-day life is. To whit, our day so far.

I woke up at 11am and got up, not because I wanted to, but because I had a headache from sleeping a bit awkward. I thought it was dehydration, but halfway through a glass of water it dawned on me that, if anything, I'd had too much water lately. I then watched Saturday Kitchen until Claire got up. We decided we ought to go to Halfords and get some headlight deflectors and a GB sticker for our impending trip to France. Having first paused to enjoy a leftover Chinese takeaway and watch the final of the Eastbourne tennis tournament, we left for Halfords and purchased the said items as well as (oddly) a £100 camping kit, complete with four-person tent. This kind of crazy spending is pretty out of character - I think the solstice got to us.

The word solstice comes from Latin, and translates as "the sun standing still".

Anyway, where was I? Oh yeah, we went to Sainsbury's after that, and got one of those £5 car washes that they do while you're in the shop - except we came back before he'd finished and had to hide for a bit, all embarrassed. The day sunk to a new low as we then attempted to watch an episode of Doctor Who, which featured climate change, refugees, echoes of Nazism and rip-offs of His Dark Materials, all set at a headache-inducing pace and handled with extreme clunkiness. As Catherine Tate and Billie Piper tried to out-overact each other, David Tennant stumbled off for half the episode, only to reappear, eyes bulging out of his head in a tour de force of bad acting.

As the night progressed, we sat down for the promising Holland v Russia tie, only to endure a desperate first half. I began my blog at half-time, and am now furiously typing out this rather tedious yarn as the game has improved immeasurably. Russia are leading 1-0, and football has just beaten my interest in this blog by the same score.

The Land of Chocolate

2008-06-20T19:34:00.000+01:00

<< Hershey, PA: Jaywalking Oompa-Loompas not pictured

Now, before I get started, I should point out that I'm aware of my intention to avoid American sweet-based facts. But I couldn't resist this doozy, printed on the side of a chewtastic packet of Hershey's Milk Duds:

Hershey chocolates are made in the town of Hershey, Pennsylvania.

The reason the fact is a bit half-hearted is because I had assumed that the chocolates were named after the place; I have now discovered that this isn't the case. The town formerly known as Derry Church has been renamed after William Hershey's factory, which is also open as a kind of Cadbury World attraction, though presumably (as it's in America) a whole lot bigger. I'm imagining chocolate swimming pools and Milk Duds falling like snow. The nearest airport's only a couple of hours away, so it may soon be time to find out.

Sheepish Exits & Saucy Encounters

2008-06-19T20:56:00.004+01:00

<< "I'm going to take the money, Chris"

It's currently half-time in a ding-dong quarter-final between Portugal and Germany, and following that we turn to Big Brother, to witness the sheepish exit of the world's most annoying woman, Alexandra De Gale. Having claimed to be esconsed in a community of murderous thugs when she is in fact an accounts executive from Croydon, she threatened revenge on those who had dared to tolerate her over the last two weeks, and was escorted from the premises. Can't wait to watch it all unfold. So here's the fact:

The ostrich brain is the size of a pea.

For an example of what a pea-sized brain can do, have a look at this U.S. Who Wants To Be A Millionaire contestant (scroll down). Incidentally, the Guardian today pointed out that Portugal boss 'Big Phil' Scolari makes a little sauce in his spare time - what they neglected to point out was that German boss Joachim Low has been giving him a hand as well.

The Puns of Brixton

2008-06-18T22:30:00.003+01:00

<< Charlie avoids a mugging on his way to pick up some more smack

I've had a couple of good facts this week, so it's only right that the two things I've learnt today are your garden variety knowledge. Firstly, I learnt that Twinkies are a kind of cake, with fondant in the middle, but I've already covered American sweets previously, and as much as I love them, it'd be churlish to return to them so soon. Instead, here's what I got:

Pimlico is the only London Underground station not to contain any of the letters of the word 'badger'.

Pimlico is also the station you need to alight at to visit the Tate Gallery, although be warned, it's a bit of a walk. Incidentally, the Tate Modern claims to be near Southwark tube station - it was far enough to bring me to the verge of tears. I'm going to see Radiohead next week at Victoria Park, which claims to be near Bethnal Green tube, and I'm expecting similar sob-inducing distances. The BBC's H2G2 also claims that Pimlico is also the only station on the Victoria line that was built especially for the line, as all other stations were interchanges before - except that Brixton, the end of the line and gateway to gigging - isn't, so they're wrong.

It shows how much they know that they suggest you don't walk from the Tube to Brixton train station in case you get mugged by passers-by. Now I know it's a bit rough round there, but it's not like a lawless breakaway republic. Not yet anyway. Weirdly, a poorly mocked-up version of Brixton tube appears in Lost (see above), and its platforms are adorned with an image of a ton of bricks. Pictures of riots and Eddy Grant were dismissed at the planning stage...

Playing God

2008-06-17T19:08:00.003+01:00

<< God: Interestingly, was asked to play Alanis Morrissette in forthcoming biopic, but declined

Today's piece of trivia came to me through the random pointless website finding service, StumbleUpon (other random pointless website finding services are available). After imploring it to 'Stumble' at an ever more desperate rate, it led to uncover this actually very interesting bit of film factuality:

The only character to appear in all four Monty Python films is God.

If you're an actor, it doesn't get much bigger than playing God (playing the president, or Elvis, might push it close though). Morgan Freeman, Gene Hackman and, um, Alanis Morrissette have all filled the big cheese's omnipotent shoes on the big screen. As for God's nemesis, the anti-Christ (a man who so hates God he named himself after his opposition to God's son - a bit like having a dispute with a neighbour whose son is called Roger, and changing your name to I Hate Roger) - well, the devil has been portrayed by (amongst others) Dave Grohl, Tim Curry and Al Pacino. If you can tell me the six films in which the aforementioned actors played the epitomes of good and evil, you can win (scans desk) a permanent marker, a party popper, one blank Sony CD-R disc (with case) and a copy of this week's Wimbledon Post (delivery pending)...

Fuggin' Awesome

2008-06-16T18:53:00.002+01:00

I'm now warming to a theme following yesterday's bullshit post (perhaps in more ways than one). Perhaps this blog should be turned into a history of swearing - although on second thoughts, it's puerile enough as it is. Anyway:

The word 'fucking' was first used on a record in 1965.

The record was the self-titled release by The Fugs, whose very name is a toned-down version of the world's finest word. I discovered this in a Guardian article about bands with F-heavy names, which features a list of said monikers, surely designed to reduce the most hardened muso into bursts of childish giggling. If you're looking for a fresh name, here are my suggestions: Fuck Yeah, which unbelievably hasn't been taken yet; Fuck A Duck; Pot Fuck; Monster Fucks; the double-edged Fuck This, or if you want to play it down the line, how about The Fucks. The article seems to be suggesting that there are too many clever fucks putting the word in their band names, but if you ask me, there aren't enough. It might be a sure-fire way to fudge your career, but if you're flipping terrible anyway, then why the fug not...

More Bullshit

2008-06-15T22:43:00.002+01:00

<< A bull prepares to drop a steaming corporate mission statement

Apropos of nothing, I got to thinking today about where the phrase 'bullshit' comes from. There's a lot of poo-related swear words out there, but not many with such a specific meaning. How did bovine bowel movements become associated with falsehoods (that's not quite what bullshit is - the beauty of the word is that it refers to something no other word can describe). Well, the answer is really quite interesting - and none of the aforementioned either:

Using the phrase 'bull' to describe something false or nonsensical predates the use of the word 'bullshit'.

I had always thought it was the other way round, and that 'bull' was the clean version, much like 'fudge' or 'sugar' (incidentally, I remember an edition of Family Fortunes where words used to replace swears was the topic, and the guy said Schweppes, not realising that he was the only person in the world who used it). Not so - 'bull' first appeared in the 17th century, and probably came from the French word 'boul', meaning fraud or deceit. Bullshit didn't come into use until the 20th century, and has been around ever since, as anyone who's ever had customer care training will testify...

Return of the Living Fact

2008-06-14T23:54:00.003+01:00

<< Bub: Dead, but funny, so it's okay

Today has been spent watching 80s (and not so 80s) horror films, the pick of which was Return of the Living Dead, in which the release of a toxic gas brings the dead back to life (I think that's what was going on). It also taught me the following:

Rigour mortis begins in the brain.

Now I have to admit, I don't exactly know what rigour mortis is, or even if it's spelled right, but the trouble with researching this is that I'm probably going to stumble upon pictures of dead bodies, which I really can't handle. It appears that there are some barriers learning can't cross - and my fear of the dead is one of them. It all stems from being a teenager, and looking at a site called rotten.com, which was full of pictures of people getting gruesome facial injuries in motorcycle races, and is pretty disgusting all round. Thinking I was too cool for school, I rifled through, opened a picture of a dead body, and spent the rest of the night curled up in a ball snivelling in fear and revulsion. It's far too hardcore for me.

Incidentally, I also learnt from the rest of the day's film and computer game-based fun that A. Michael Myers has a tough childhood (although possibly not tough enough to excuse his rampant killing sprees) - thanks to the Halloween remake. B. If the new, creepy guy from work asks to rent your spare room, and then tells you he can bring people back to life, you should believe him (Re-Animator). Finally, C. The steering wheel that you get free with Mario Kart on Wii is rubbish.

Leaving on a Jet Plane

2008-06-13T19:25:00.003+01:00

<< Westray Airport in the Orkneys: Not in the top ten

Today's fact is one of those great examples of realising that something I thought was true is in fact quite the opposite. I'm even throwing it out there. What's the busiest airport in the world? As far as I was concerned, it was Heathrow - and watching the planes cruising in every 30 seconds over South West London, it seems hard to argue otherwise. However, I am mistaken:

Atlanta's Hartsfield airport is the busiest in the world.

That's right, a place that nobody seems to have any inclination to go to receives close to 85 million visitors a year (as of 2006). Either it's got an unbelievable duty free store, or a lot of connecting flights pitch up there. Heathrow only finishes in 3rd place, also behind Chicago's O'Hare airport. The top ten also features Tokyo, Beijing, Dallas, Denver, Frankfurt, Paris and LA. Surprisingly, New York's JFK is only 15th. The departure lounge must be rubbish.

Of course, I'm not much of an expert, having only ever been to 3 airports. They are, in order of preference - Riga: a compact, laminate-floored delight; Krakow: cavernous but efficient, and complete with burly, yet surprisingly approachable, soldiers on security; and finally Stansted, a clean, modern, bustling airport that appears to be run by a room full of chimps with a pile of flight itineraries in front of them. Prior to the smoking ban, upon arriving home from abroad, we were greeted by a sign that read "No Smoking Allowed (except in smoking area)" - a swift reminder of how bloody stupid this country can be.

Bon Voyage

2008-06-12T20:28:00.003+01:00

<< If in doubt, just keep driving

A piping hot Chinese takeaway is arriving imminently, so I'm phoning in this blog. In a few weeks we're heading over to France for a week of Gallic delight, and are taking a car. As a prelude to a week of baffling road signs, and pedestrians stepping briskly out in front of oncoming traffic, we've been faced with a payload of paperwork, and a few mildly interesting French road facts:

In France, you can't get breakdown assistance on the motorway - you have to call the police.

The thought of summoning the gendarmes only to find that the engine starts when they try it doesn't really bear thinking about. Here a few other facts about France:

1. They drive on the wrong side of the road

2. The police have funny-shaped hats

3. The pylons are a weird shape

4. It's similar weather to Britain but a bit warmer

5. They eat baguettes

I will, of course, be learning much more about our fashionable, misunderstood neighbour on our travels. In response to my brother's drunken rant, which unlike most drunken rants about the French, was largely positive: I think the way we describe a nation indicates our disdain, for example, I'm currently watching Austria v Poland, but earlier on ITV were showing Croatia v the Germans, and tomorrow it'll be Romania v the French. What's that all about?

Politicalcorrectnessgonemad

2008-06-11T22:19:00.002+01:00

During the Grand Prix this weekend, commentator Martin Brundle quipped to Bernie Ecclestone that "some pikeys are out resurfacing the road" following, I dunno, something going wrong with the track. Now I hope you're thinking what I'm thinking - he said pikeys?! This has, unsurprisingly, caused something of a stir, with people questioning whether the term is a racial slur. Just to clarify - it is. This word is hugely derogatory, and labels an entire ethnic group as undesirable. Unsurprisingly, a Daily Mail columnist doesn't agree - claiming that if we can't say pikey, then the same goes for words like hippy, hoodie, Sloane, tinker, chav etc etc. So what he's basically saying is that we absolutely have to judge and insult people. I'd question why such awful generalisations are at all necessary, but he's writing for the Daily Mail, which without its life force of prejudice would literally turn to dust in your hands.

Verbally insulting travelling communities is seen as the acceptable face of racism, and far too many people throw the word around in a way that generally alludes to people being below society. It's quite possible that people don't know that it refers to Roma communities, but ignorance isn't an excuse. The same goes for people who swallow media reports of travellers being disruptive and unpleasant. My view is that there probably are people in travelling communities who act inappropriately, but only because there are jerks like that in every social group. I've met people from travelling communites, they were intelligent, ambitious and welcoming - but that's not even the point. You shouldn't have to meet a nice traveller to think about not using racial slurs. I have never felt the need to generalise about any group - I wish other people felt the same. Anyway, to the fact:

The term 'pikey' comes from the phrase 'turnpike traveller'.

Well, that was all a bit heavy, so a little Apprentice chat to round it off. How on Earth did Lee win? He looked a bit confused when it was announced - he wanted it so bad, he just couldn't want it any harder, and ended up looking like he didn't really want it at all. I give him six months - though to be honest, I thought his chances had been blown when he chose to give a presentation about a guy called Wyan, who wore a fwagwance called Woolette...

The Digestive System In Reverse 3 - The Final Embarrassment

2008-06-10T19:23:00.004+01:00

<< A mageiricophobia sufferer struggling through Ainsley's 'immersion therapy' course

And so to today's entry, the third I have written today and the third about food. Here, like an incompetent factory worker, we're moving to prep:

Mageiricophobia is the intense fear of having to cook.

I think a better word would be laziness - I'm struggling to see why anyone would be scared of cooking - unless they happen to have once hospitalised 20 people whilst knocking up a bolognese sauce. In that instance, the sight of a hob and a jar of stir-in sauce would justifiably induce a squeaky bum - wait a minute... we're back where we started!

On that note, I'll draw to a close this brief but enlightening triptych of eating-based learning. Hopefully I’ll give you all a bit more to digest tomorrow (I thank you)…

The Digestive System In Reverse 2 - This Time It's Personal

2008-06-09T19:16:00.001+01:00

<< A family of tropical fish prepare for a heady night of incest and cannibalism

…Monday, where I was informed by a work colleague of the following curio:

Eating live bait encourages fish to breed.

I know this because she informed me that the inhabitants of her fishtank are currently caught in a vicious cycle of breeding and then eating the microscopic offspring that ensue. This, of course, makes them wanna get their breed on, which means more tiny fish, and so it goes on. Thus we have now passed through the digestive system from the colon to the stomach, which as we all know, is the wrong direction, and a feat only ever before attempted by Lemmiwinks.

The Digestive System In Reverse

2008-06-08T19:14:00.002+01:00

<< Costa Rica: Second in the amusing currency name table to the Vietnamese Dong

I’ve been a busy man for the last few days – if it’s not been computer game Olympics, I’ve had a list of chores that the bloke from the Flash ads would baulk at, or have been having the kind of day that tipped Gordon Gekko over the edge. Incidentally, one of the things I learnt on Sunday was that the aforementioned Gekko is the lead character in Falling Down, rather than a puppet, as I had previously thought. Buzz – the Big Quiz is a fountain of knowledge, for it also offered me the following:

The currency in Costa Rica is the colon.

I didn’t realise that the colon was a Latin American currency – I always thought it was a part of the body, at the business end of the digestive tract. While we’re on digestion, let’s move to…

Arise Sir Parky

2008-06-07T15:08:00.003+01:00

<< Parkinson recoils at the news that even Judi Dench beat him to it

This week saw the announcement of the new Honours list - recipients included the newly-named Sir Michael Parkinson, who described the award as a "great honour". What he actually meant, of course, was "what took you so long? Wogan got one ages ago, and he's not even British! I've had to brown-nose a legion of talentless minor celebrities for this, and I've got to pretend to be grateful - you people make me sick". Memorably, Mick Jagger accepted a knighthood in 2003, which led to criticism that it really wasn't very 'rock and roll'. Another highly amusing Jagger fact is that, whilst living in a Chelsea flat with Keith Richard and Brian Jones, he still attempted to continue with his LSE business degree. One can only imagine the rows that must have taken place.

It's a shame that even 'anti-establishment' stars like Mick Jagger are prepared to accept honours from the royal family. Here at Knowledge Towers, we're in agreement that more celebrities should turn their awards down. The only problem is, they can only do it when they first hear about the honour - if they want to go public, they have to first accept it to get on the list, in order to turn it down - if you follow me. Some famous refuseniks include Alan Bennett, who turned down a knighthood, French and Saunders, who refused OBEs, and Lenny Henry, who also declined an OBE - but accepted a CBE. Guess the OBE was just too 'small time' for him. John Lennon is thought by many to have refused his honour, but in fact accepted and then returned it. There's just one problem:

An honour bestowed by the British monarchy cannot be returned once received.

This is a technicality really, as a public display of rejection does as much harm to the image of the honours as actually being able to hand the award back. Lennon publicly returned his honour as a protest against the Biafran and Vietnamese wars. Parky may be inclined to do the same - he may feel that after 20 years pretending to be interested in Paul McCartney's new material, he really should be made King.

15 Minutes of Fury

2008-06-06T23:23:00.002+01:00

Tonight I went where I haven't been for many moons - I tried to watch an entire episode of The Weakest Link. It was loaded with Apprentice rejects, featuring such legends as Tre and Paul, and a genuinely unsettling spat between Kristina and Katie Hopkins. It should have been fine early evening fare, but there's just one problem - I can't stand Anne Robinson. I literally can't bear to watch her without barking at the TV. So what is it specifically, I hear you cry - well, where do I start. There's the whole 'ice maiden' schtick, and the way she relentlessly attacks contestants until they're actually rendered speechless; there's the way she always says the amount of money they've won in a weary sigh, even when they bank about 75% of all possible winnings.

The cherry on the cake of hate, however, has to be the horrible puns - "who's Alan Sugar free?" "Who's going to get their P45?" etc etc. There must have been a thousand episodes of this show by now, and she's still rolling them out, with an impressive strike rate of zero amusing/clever puns to her name. Imagine what a great show The Weakest Link would be if she stopped swivelling that bloody screen about and just acted like a normal person. It sickens me. Still, if nothing else, sitting through the 15 minutes that I could bear taught be the following:

Balaclavas take their name from a village in the Ukraine.

Balaklava was the scene of a battle in the Crimean War (that I did know) and were worn by British soldiers. I didn't know that Balaklava was still a town today - it's in the environs of the city of Sebastapol, with a population of 30,000. OK, as learning goes, it's pretty shaky, but it brings new information to what I knew before. Whatever, I can't allow that I watched that stupid programme for nothing. The Weakest Link of facts it may be, but I'm not voting it off.

A Pregnant Pause

2008-06-05T19:41:00.004+01:00

<< A kangaroo jettisons her joey - and there's more where he came from

Some days you just can't be bothered. Six months in, six comments received in that time - my thirst for fact is running low. I even had a poser to solve, regarding the seeds in bell peppers, and whether they're poisonous or not. The answer, in short, is probably not, but I couldn't find a proper answer - although there were people who claim to have grown chillies for 20 years, and who thought that the seeds were the spicy bit (it seems more likely that it's the shiny bit on the inside of the skin). Sometimes I wonder how I keep this thing going with only forum douchebags to turn to for confirmation. In the end, I resorted to talking to an actual human being, who informed me of this:

Kangaroos are able to pause their pregnancies.

A nifty fact and no mistake, even if only for the punalicious title it affords me. After the kangaroos mate and conceive, the embryo is held in stasis until the previous joey has emerged from the pouch. Have they ever heard of just waiting? Lay off the red wine, you crazy roos. It's probably a lot more complicated than this, but frankly, a full analysis of the machinations of a sticky marsupial orifice isn't on the cards when I've got a dinner to keep down.

Incidentally, there's a legend that claims that the first Westerners to reach Australia asked their Aboriginal guides what those big, hopping animals were called, and that they were told "ganguruu" - which means 'I don't know' - and that's how kangaroos got their names. This is bollocks.

Big Eats

2008-06-04T18:33:00.004+01:00

<< An Alan Partridge-style 'mock up' of the world's smallest (and most pretentious) restaurant

One of the worst things about being back at work, apart from the constant sense of unease and bitterness, and slow, inexorable increase in stress, is the journey. I know I've gone on ad nauseum before, but really, it's just too much. First off, it's the conditions. Platform 15 of Clapham Junction station has one type of weather - cold and windy, 365 days a year. I then transfer from this microclimate into a place that is always unbearably muggy, even on Christmas Eve - the Northern line. As if this wasn't bad enough, making this transition involves defeating my greatest nemesis - the ticket barrier at Balham tube that is prone to slamming shut when I'm halfway through it, causing pain and embarrassment in equal measure.

The worst thing, however, is when I try and go through the journey without headphones, or reading material. As hard as you try, you end up listening to other people's conversations - if I hear one more person say how they just can't be bothered to go to the gym tonight, I think I'll try and remove myself from the train while it's in full flight. Don't go to the gym then, I think over and over to myself. I've never been to a gym in my life - and I'm chunky but alive. It's particularly frustrating when I'm trying to pick up nuggets of useful information to end up with nothing but so much blather. Look what I'm stuck with today:

The world's biggest restaurant is in Syria.

The 6,000 seater jumbo eaterie is called Damascan Gate, and has swimming pools inside it and that. The smallest restaurant on Earth, meanwhile, is called Table for Two (there's a clue in the name) and is in Portland, USA. I can't imagine there's a smaller restaurant out there, unless a particularly Machiavellian chef is preparing food purely for his/her own consumption, and sits in a Soho restaurant on a lonely seat, scoffing his/her face in full view of a salivating public. It doesn't seem entirely implausible, but Table for Two wins for now. The question is - which would you prefer? The outlandish glitz and bustle of a cavernous Middle Eastern hangar, or the awkward silence and suffocating pretentiousness of a restaurant with only one table? Answers on a postcard to Knowledge Towers, Road to Learning, Big London, UK...

Back In A Jiffy?

2008-06-03T19:28:00.002+01:00

Today I'm going to talk about speed, swiftness and velocity. Being quick, in other words. It's not something I particular enjoy, much preferring the 'slow and steady' philosophy - it's been known for me take half an hour to make a cup of tea, and only because my unfortunate girlfriend intervenes, bringing me back to reality upon finding me staring at the ceiling with a piping hot teabag balanced on the end of my spoon. When I say I'll be back in a jiffy, I mean I'll be back in approximately three times as much time as is feasible. But how am I to know any different - how long is a jiffy anyway? Well, apparently...

A jiffy is generally recognised as lasting 0.01 seconds.

Unless you're Speedy Gonzales, or under the effect of time-bending substances (told you we'd talk about speed - arf), returning in precisely a jiffy is impossible. In reality, the definition of a jiffy is a technicality, and comes from computer terminology far too tedious to go into here (it's got something to do with servers - and if my broadband server does anything in 0.01 seconds, I will literally eat my hat). The term 'jiffy' also features in electronics, and is the time between alternating power cycles - which is roughly 0.02 seconds.

Of course, all these definitions are references to the original term 'back in a jiffy' - so where does that come from? The internet is pretty sketchy on this - although Wikipedia claim that it comes from thieves' cant (a medieval dialect) and means 'lightning'. The fact that Wikipedia mentions it and nowhere else does is clanging the alarm bells of inaccuracy, but I don't care because thieves' cant is way cool. A language used by, er, thieves, beggars and others at the foot of the feudal system, some choice phrases include 'sham abram' (to feign illness), 'smuggling Ken' (a brothel, for some reason) and 'glimflashy' (a bit miffed).

Thieves' cant also used a number of modern terms, although not quite in the same context as today - to 'cry beef' meant to raise the alarm and a 'blood' was a troublemaker. I've saved my two personal favourites for last though. A gentleman who appeared well dressed but is in fact an unsavoury character underneath is known as a 'Beau-nasty', which is inspired. Finally to the place nobody returns from in a jiffy - a coffin, or as thieves' cant would have it... an eternity box.

Tonight A Sweetshop Saved My Life

2008-06-02T22:38:00.003+01:00

<< Lifesavers: 'U' in 'Flavour' not pictured

Tonight we went into Big London for a lovely meal at TGI Fridays (should've gone to Nando's) and then stumbled upon the world's coolest shop - it had sweets from far and wide (well, mostly America) including several delights that appeared in world's coolest show Seinfeld. There were the junior mints that ended up in a surgical wound, as well as the Jujyfruits Elaine bought on the way to see her boyfriend in hospital. They also had Lifesavers, a sweet I was aware of, but didn't fully understand:

Lifesavers are the American version of Polos.

One advantage of the American version is they're also not made by stinky old Nestlé - they're made by Wrigleys, who probably ain't perfect. I thought they were either gobstoppers, or like Fisherman's Friends. God knows why. Lifesavers, like their British cousins, come in minty and fruity varieties, although I can't see a diarrhoea-inducing sugar-free version anywhere. What am I thinking? Sugar free? In America?! Also, they're called Lifesavers because they're the shape of a rubber ring. Obvious really.

The wonderful shop also had gone-but-not-forgotten cereal Lucky Charms, featuring a maniacal leprachaun who knows you're after his lucky charms, and looks like he'd kill you before he'd let you get hold of 'em. It was that, and the £7 price tag, that put me off. Now if you'll excuse me, there's a 5th Avenue bar with my name on it.

The Sundays

2008-06-01T18:20:00.004+01:00

<< The Gethin Jones: "Single and looking", since you ask

It's 6.15 on a Sunday evening - up and down the nation, the denizens of this fair isle are slumped, half-comatose in a pile of Sunday supplements as Songs of Praise kicks into gear. It is officially the worst time of the entire week. Somehow, as Sunday evening nears its conclusion, the Sunday blues recede at the same rate as the minutes of freedom remaining. Even Monday morning, despite its dreadful opening 5 minutes, when you wake up and literally pray for death, doesn't feel as bad. Maybe it's the expectation, or the weird light at this time of day, or the godawful telly, but Sunday teatime stinks. Today has been OK, although that may have something to do with having an entire month off work. Tomorrow will be the first full day I've worked since Boris Johnson got elected - I guess I couldn't hide away forever.

By the way, if you're wondering what the word 'denizens' means, it means this:

A denizen is an inhabitant of a particular place.

This is a pretty simplistic definition - a denizen is a loose noun that can refer to plants, animals or people that reside in a particular location, and was used in this country primarily to define immigrants that had been awarded citizenship - cos we couldn't just call them citizens, that would be too easy. This is an odd fact, as I'm not convinced I didn't know it, but it came to us via the intellectual juggernaut that is Zelda: Twilight Princess, and I couldn't recall what it meant until I looked it up.

The only other time I can remember this quandary occurring was back on New Years' Day, at the start of this crazy adventure - thanks to a fact relayed by Gethin Jones, he of Blue Peter and Strictly Come Dancing. Oddly, Claire just found out that her friend from uni has started going out with a guy called Gethin Jones, who she used to go to school with. Now here's the weird part - she actually went to school with the Gethin Jones (he of Blue Peter and Strictly etc) - but this guy isn't that Gethin Jones. If you follow me. This would be perhaps the world's weirdest coincidence, except that she lives in Cardiff, where everyone is called either Gethin Jones, or Sian Lloyd (incidentally, don't try and argue, you know it's true).

My intention, should we ever meet this fellow, is to pretend that he is really Gethin Jones (he of etc.). I'll ask him how he felt about losing out to Matt di Angelo in the Strictly semi-finals, despite being easily the better performer on the night. I'll ask why he's ducked out of the limelight since leaving Blue Peter. I'm sure that'll go down really well. Right, I'm off to play Deal or no Deal - the board game. A shot in the arm for the Sundays if ever there was one.

My New Favourite Country

2008-05-31T18:37:00.004+01:00

<< San Marino: Love of 90s soul-funk not pictured

Just under a week away, Andy Abrahams sat alone in the Eurovision green room, listening to the whoops of the Russian entry and sullenly puffing his way through a pack of Superkings, occasionally craning his neck towards the TV to see if he'd had any more points. Poor old Andy's slice of 90s soul-funk got about as many points as it deserved, however much Wogan wants to bleat about politics, but he seems a lovely fella, so I felt sorry for him. Only two nations voted for the UK - Ireland, naturally, and San Marino. A nation that most Britons probably thought was a pizza manufacturer awarded us six whole points. The BBC have rather prematurely declared San Marino a new ally, when in all likelihood it was a few ex-pats and tourists making the most of the country's tiny population. So what else is San Marino about, other than giving sympathy Eurovision points? Well, for starters, it's got a weird name:

San Marino's full name is The Most Serene Republic of San Marino.

It might sound like a nation invented by a nutty dictator, but San Marino has been around for a very long time - it was founded in 301 AD, allegedly by Marinus, a Christian stonemason. Until Nauru declared independence in 1968, it was the world's smallest republic, and claims to be the oldest constitutional republic in the world. San Marino also arguably had the world's first democratically elected communist government, a balance many nations have been trying to achieve for years. I guess it's easier to achieve political stability when there's only 30,000 of you.

It may be tiny and, as much as it pains me, pretty insignificant, but San Marino has a lot to be proud of, most notably remaining independent throughout Garibaldi's unification of Italy. Napoleon III also refused to invade it, describing it as a 'perfect republic'. It may have been this laid-back attitude that stopped Napoleon III reaching quite the same imperial heights as the original Napoleon. I like the cut of San Marino's jib - it's got a cable car going between its largest towns, and issues its own highly collectable postage stamps and coinage. Despite it's chequered history, the 61km and highly serene republic of San Marino will perhaps always be most famous for scoring against England after just 8 seconds - still the fastest goal in the history of the World Cup, and let's hope it stays that way.

Incidentally, just to draw a line under the whole political voting at Eurovision hoopla, I'd like to point out that Greece came third with an American singer - so maybe the 'special relationship' isn't the reason why the UK keep coming last. Maybe it's stuff like this...

Ducking & Bombing

2008-05-30T11:50:00.003+01:00

<< Tooting Bec Lido on a brisk winter's morn

I thought I knew about every attraction that South-West London had to offer - from the Museum of Rugby to Centre Court shopping centre, I thought I had it covered. I was wrong - little did I know that a record-breaking feat of engineering was lurking just up the road, in Tooting Bec:

Tooting Bec Lido is the largest freshwater swimming pool in the UK.

Tooting is split into two parts, and Tooting Bec is the part with the massive park, tree-lined avenues and expensive delis. I live in the other part. A lido, for anyone not entirely clear, is basically an outdoor swimming pool. Other lidos/lidoes/lidae can be found all over the country, but you can search far and wide and you won't find one bigger than here in SW17. Tooting Bec Lido is 90m long, according to Wandsworth council, who own the pool and are therefore probably a bit biased regarding its champion status. What I like about facts such as these is that a lot of conditions have to be attached - it's not the largest pool full stop, and they've also had to mention that its a swimming pool, because it's probably a bit smaller than Loch Ness.

Incidentally, the word 'Lido' comes from the Italian resort which sits across a lagoon from Venice. They reached the height of their popularity in the 30s, but have since fallen into decline, with many closing in recent years. I could harp on about how it symbolises that we as a nation have turned our back on outdoor living, and have retreated indoors, shut the curtains and are watching people swim on Sky Plus. The trouble is, it doesn't appeal much to me either - if it's a shade below 20 degrees you look like a polar explorer in training, and as soon as the sun comes out my skin turns crimson. For any other sun-haters reading, Wandsworth council do mention that the lido area has a gazebo to huddle under. While I'm on the subject, you can get a gazebo in Woolworths for £12. Well, I've told everyone else, I might as well tell you.

Nanoo Nanoo

2008-05-29T16:42:00.004+01:00

<< "I'm always watching, Mork... Does that make you uncomfortable?"

Whilst sat in a cold sweat on the Tube this morning, I read ShortList magazine, one of the things I've missed least about not being at work (not that I don't like it - I just haven't missed it). It featured 22 business tips you won't see on The Apprentice, which presumably include that advertise can be subtle and artistic, that women have the same right to a job as a man, and that there are ways of closing deals that don't involve sprinting across a car park seconds from close of play. Whilst it was arguably foolhardy to peruse a series of dispassionate lists rather than my meticulous notes ahead of my disciplinary, I thought, y'know, fuck it. And I was right - for I learnt the following:

Mork & Mindy is a spin-off from Happy Days.

This is pushing the envelope of what constitutes a spin-off, as Mork only ever appeared in one episode of the show (Happy Days has never shied away from the ludicrous and incredible when it comes to writing a good episode). Mork came from Ork to take a human back to his home planet, but the plan, much like any attempt at intimacy between Mr and Mrs C., was foiled by an interfering Fonz (incidentally, is there anything less cool than a 30-something man living with his friend's parents and hitting on 16-year-olds? Aaaaaay). Laverne & Shirley was also a Happy Days spin-off, as they tried to retain the original show's momentum with Joey-esque desperation. It's also worth pointing out that Mork was Robin Williams' first major role.

I used to like Mork and Mindy when I was younger, although I didn't like the idea that Mork and his fellow Orkans got progressively younger as time went on, until they eventually defertilised themselves. That was never explicitly determined as Mork's final resting place, but it don't take a genius. Oh yeah, and they got married in the final series, while Fonzie sailed over a shark on a jetski in the background. I also used to like the theme tune. How did it go again? Oh yeah, like this. As for the disciplinary, I got a written warning and everyone else is getting re-trained. Woo hoo, I'm gonna be Mr Popular...

D-Day

2008-05-28T17:09:00.003+01:00

It's tomorrow - and the D is for disciplinary. To be honest, I've been suspended, I started to forget I actually had a job, and the omens are that I'll still have one this tomorrow, unless I expose myself at tomorrow's meeting, which has crossed my mind, if I'm being honest. As I'm currently holding myself together reasonably well, I'm getting a quick fact in before an evening of Britain's Got Talent and Superbad to chase the nerves away. So here goes:

'Blue chip' industries are so named because blue is the colour of the highest value chips in poker.

Mmm... chips. I don't even know what 'blue chip' industries are - all I do know is that a lot of them are going to be closing soon, as the invisible recession draws in. It does make you wonder if capitalism is the way forward (don't worry, I'm not going to try and sell you a copy of Socialist Worker) - it's just very easy to forget that banks, which lest we forgot have all our money, actually exist not for our benefit but for their own, and when the shit hits the fan, they drop you faster than Sharon Stone's agent, following her slightly ill-advised comments today. Regardless of how unbelievably stupid and insensitive this is, you'd think she'd want to keep quiet about karma. She was in Basic Instinct 2, for christ's sake.

Monkey Business

2008-05-27T18:54:00.002+01:00

I dimly recall on the drive up to Alton Towers, somewhere amidst the haze of sleep deprivation and fear, that the radio was discussing a woman who wanted her pet monkey to be given human rights. This has opened up a whole can of legal whoopass, as a debate has begun raging over whether animals could ever be offered the same rights as humans. Having pored over the legal minutae and undertaken in-depth interviews from all sides of this tumultuous debate, I have concluded that a monkey should not human rights. My reason? It's not a human - it's a monkey.

The woman concerned felt that her pet primate was her closest living companion, and behaved like a human, so should enjoy the rights that its current status deserves. All of this should make a good case, but all it does it make it all the more certain that she's sleeping with the monkey - all of which pours a murky brew of consensual intercourse legislation into the already black waters of this debate. I shook off the volley of unsightly images that my brain had been put through at the next services, and thought no more about it, until I learnt the following today:

Caligula made his horse a senator.

Caligula also claimed that his faithful steed was an incarnation of all the Roman Gods. In short, he really liked his horse. Caligula's reputation is murkier than a tankard of legislation on cohabiting with animals, but incest, orgies and executions are all present and correct. Caligula's horse has come to be slang for someone who is not deserving of their position i.e. 'How does Vernon Kay get so much work? He's the Caligula's horse of ITV'. Coincidentally, Vernon Kay does look a lot like a horse.

Is It Lupus?

2008-05-26T19:25:00.004+01:00

<< Dr. Fox: Wouldn't know a forgotten 90s gem if it bit him on the arse

In the early hours of this morning at Knowledge Towers, we were watching the televisual gem that was Dr. Fox's Forgotten Nineties Gems as it reached it's tumultuous climax. At No. 2 was Seal's 'Crazy', a song that was in our opinion neither forgotten nor indeed a gem. Discussion turned to how Seal had grown his hair to cover his facial scars, scars that could have kept his rich tones out of the charts, yet several million albums later suddenly seem quite alluring to the likes of Heidi Klum. Conversation then turned, perhaps predictably avoiding such issues as talent and record sales, to how he happened upon those scars in the first place. Some causes that I've heard before were ritualistic scarring (unlikely, given that he was born and raised in Paddington), a motorbike accident and acid burns. Well, here's how it really happened:

Seal got his facial scars from a childhood bout of lupus.

That's right, lupus, George Costanza's most feared disease. Seal (yes, it is his real name) contracted discoid lupus at a young age, which caused blistering which led to the scarring. Poor fella. Discoid lupus sufferers have a 1-5% chance of developing SLE, otherwise known as full blown lupus, which can be fatal, particularly in infancy, and sounds pretty unpleasant. Seal recovered from lupus and has built a successful career (though he's been a bit quiet since Kiss From a Rose), and has won the battle for acceptance in the superficial entertainment industry, if not at the even shallower Knowledge Towers. As for Foxy's No.1? Sleeping Satellite. The man's an idiot.

Do Not Want

2008-05-25T22:00:00.004+01:00

<< A meme is born

For today's fact, I began with an article about Return of the Jedi, which is 25 years old this week. I learnt that the Ewoks' victory over the Stormtroopers was a Vietnam analogy, and that David Lynch was slated to direct it (can you imagine?). From there I was unwittingly led to the discovery that in an early Chinese version of Revenge of the Sith, when Darth Vader stands up and cries "Nooooo!" (OK, I didn't want to have to think about it either), the English subtitles said 'Do not want'. Aside from beautifully summing up Darth's emotions, this caption has transformed into an internet phrase, and has been attached to any manner of stupid pictures in an increasingly unfunny way.

This phenomenon has been seen several times over the last few years, with clips like Star Wars Kid and the new 'Rick rolling' video tomfoolery being passed on and updated. The continuation of these clips generally have a pretty reliable quality arc - initially, the first few parodies and references are very funny, before a slow decline until it's getting sent up on Children in Need, and you just want it to stop. Anyway, these internet trends have a name - they're known as memes. This does however relate to a wider phenomenon, which I shall attempt to explain below:

A meme is a cultural item that is passed on by repetition.

The term originates from Richard Dawkins' book, The Selfish Gene, which speculates that cultural ideas are passed from generation to generation in the same way as genes pass information on, um, genetically. It's an interesting idea, but probably wasn't designed with repetition of Rick Astley videos in mind.

Queen of the South, Nil

2008-05-24T20:03:00.000+01:00

I'm writing this retrospectively following a riotous Eurovision party that went on all night (or would've if the tube didn't stop at midnight), but did learn this yesterday, I promise. You can't prove I didn't.

Queen of the South got their name from a local MP's speech.

For those who've never heard classified football results, Queen of the South are a Scottish football team who come from Dumfries in southern Scotland. They proved that they actually exist and aren't a fictional entity designed to fill out the pools column by getting to the Scottish Cup final, losing 3-2 to Rangers yesterday. They got their name when the area MP declared how happy she was to represent 'the Queen of the South' in Parliament. And so a legend was born. I've always loved the name, and it is the only British team name to be mentioned in the Bible, apparently. Sadly, divine intervention wasn't enough for them yesterday.

Thrill Rides & the Anglican Church

2008-05-23T22:54:00.004+01:00

<< Rowan Williams' top 3 Alton Towers rides:
1. Nemesis - 'gnarly'
2. The Log Flume - 'sweet'
3. Oblivion - 'biblical'

Today I went for the first time to Alton Towers, a place where you're instructed to leave all sentient thought at the door. Stop thinking so hard, it says. Come and have a go on this instead, it'll make you feel like you're turning inside out. Regardless, a splendid time was had by all - it was a non-stop, full-throttle, white knuckle ride, and that was just the M1. I can recommend the oddly named Rita: Queen of Speed, and can assure you that however fast it looks when you're queueing, it's faster than you expect. I thought the Air ride was pretty, ahem, gnarly, but it was judged by most of the others to be 'tame'. I should shamefacedly admit here that I am an awful baby when it comes to rollercoasters - when the Air ride starting hauling us up a hill, and prepared to jettison us onto the ride itself, I literally wanted to cry. I did of course, hide my intense coaster-phobia, and I do quite like them once the fear subsides.

I can't recommend Oblivion because, well, I choked. I didn't make it. I went and hung around KFC instead, which is much more comfortable territory for me. Anyway, as I said, whilst my solar plexus, bowels and dignity were sorely tested, my brain took the day off. I was even told quite a good fact, but it has since been erased by eight hours of mindless entertainment. So, apropos of nothing, here's today's fact, hastily cribbed from the BBC website:

Rowan Williams, the Archbishop of Canterbury, is deaf in one ear.

Presumably this is the ear into which advisors suggested he might not want to wade into the debate on Sharia law. I have a similar problem - I lost all hearing today in the ear into which people were trying to persuade me to ride Oblivion. I'm trying to find a closing connection between theme park thrill rides and the Anglican Church, but unsurprisingly, I'm struggling, so Instead it's time for a Chinese and a long lie down, for I fear my brain has gone on sabbatical for the bank holiday weekend.

LOL

2008-05-22T17:25:00.003+01:00

It's funny, when I had to go into work every day, I seemed to always have a nice half-hour slot, immediately after coming home, in which to complete this blog. Now I've got nothing to do all day but wait and wonder, it always feels like I've got a rush on. Maybe I'm just very aware of how precious time is now it's not broken into designated chunks - or maybe I'm just so lazy that spending half an hour writing this blog has become a pressing deadline. Ah well, at least I've got less time on my hands than some people...

Internet 'comedian' Charles Trippy filmed himself and a group of associates in his living room for as long as he possibly could - and created a YouTube video that lasts for 9 hours and 15 minutes. Well, I'm assuming that's what happens, I haven't sat and watched it so I've no idea what gruesome wrongness could be lurking 8 hours in. And presumably, somebody would've had to go to the toilet at some point. Trippy declares that his video is 'dumb' at the start, and well, he's got a point. The concept of a 9 hour long continuous video will probably baffle anyone who's ever had to watch an episode of South Park on YouTube in seven overlapping segments. The reason Mr Trippy (if that is his real name - something tells me it actually might be) got it on YouTube is because it stayed within the 100MB limit (whereas five minutes of Cartman abusing Butters is clearly large enough to bring the whole internet crashing down).

You can watch the clip here, if you're that bored. The fact that you're here suggests you might do - and this page suggests that so too does Charles Trippy. And it brings me no end of pleasure to tell you that today's fact relates to the longest ever YouTube video - but does not feature Mr Trippy at all:

The longest YouTube video is 100 hours long.

That's over four days, ten times longer than Trippy's weak effort, and consists entirely of a blue screen (again, I'm assuming) - it was posted by someone called 'frifox', who reckons that you could make a YouTube video that lasted for 1 and a half years. Oh my god, people really need to stop sitting on fucking YouTube and go and get some air or something. And please, please stop saying LOL. It's so ten years ago.

To Hull and Back

2008-05-21T18:00:00.005+01:00

<< Hull: Now famous for nothing

Time is of the essence today - I've got to knock up a Quorn goulash before the football starts, so today's fact is rather fitting: don't worry, it's about football, not vegetarianism:

Hull is not the largest city in Europe never to have had a top-flight football team.

Who cares, you might think, and you'd be right - except that Hull's status as Europe's most unsuccessful football city has been bandied about repeatedly ever since their team, Hull City, threatened to be promoted. It'll be either them or Bristol City who come up, but an irate Hull fan has let it all get on top of him and has put us all straight. I particularly like the deeply passive aggressive title.

o congratulations (of sorts) go to Wiesbaden in Germany, and the quite possibly fictional Ulf in Russia, not for being the worst footballing cities, just for being bigger than Hull, which really isn't much of an achievement. It does now seem pretty ludicrous that little old Hull could be the biggest city in all of Europe not to witnessed top-flight football, but it just goes to show how far an assumption can travel without being properly questioned - it's appeared in this very blog before, and saints preserve us, even stat god Jeff Stelling's got in on the act. For shame, Jeff.

The Long & Winding Road

2008-05-20T16:55:00.004+01:00

<< Ulica Piotrkowska - silence and unease around every corner not pictured

I've been writing about my travels in Eastern Europe in the last couple of days, which has caused me to reminisce over some of the places I visited, from the very good (Riga, Latvia and Zakopane, Poland - surely the two most underrated cities on the planet) to the very bad, which as you may have guessed, is what I'd like to expand on here. To be fair, we travelled through 30 towns and cities and only two stand out as being truly terrible: Haparanda, a small town in Northern Sweden that felt like the checkpoint for the edge of the earth - constantly in dusk and swamped in silence, punctuated only by the cacklings of a deranged elderly resident. Truly unforgettable.

Haparanda had an excuse though - it never advertised itself as being more than a quiet backwater to stop off at en route further North. The other member of the 'terrible two' is a city with 800,000 residents and is the second largest in Poland. Its name is Lodz, its name is pronounced Woodge, and it has to be seen to be believed. The most remarkable thing about Lodz is that is has close to a million residents, and there is only one street of any interest. Happily enough, it was the only street that felt remotely safe. Turning off Ulica Piotrkowska in any direction seemed to lead into a confrontation with an inebriated local, or being saved from a mauling by a rabid alsation only by a perilously weak chainmail fence. Ulica Piotrkowska was reasonably busy, well-lit and had a cosmopolitan air - every other street in Lodz seemed to be dim, forbidding and laced with shattered glass. It's the only place in Lodz anyone wants to be, which may explain the inspiration for today's fact:

Ulica Piotrknowska is the longest commercial street in Europe.

It is 5km long, which does not seem especially long, but a quick Google suggests that it is the only place staking a claim for the crown - maybe other cities with a bit more to offer aren't crowing loud enough, but I'm happy to unofficially award them the prize - God knows they need it. OK, maybe I'm being too harsh - I'd hate to come across as a snobbish tourist, even though I almost certainly will do, given that I've given over two whole paragraphs to slagging one place off. Lodz may well be a perfectly nice place to live, and I know it's had economic problems (this information was passed to us by residents of Wroclaw, once they'd recovered their jaws on hearing that we'd actually visited the place), but it just wasn't very touristy. It seems odd that so many other, admittedly nicer, Polish cities, cater for a constant influx of tourists (and not just Krakow - Poznan, Gdansk and plenty of other smaller cities), whereas I feel like we might've been the only British people to have ever visited Poland's second city. Let's keep it that way.

Interestingly, the longest street in the world is generally recognised to be Yonge Street in Canada - it runs continuously for an astonishing 1,178 miles - comfortably further than the length of the entire U.K, and marginally further than we walked trying to find a restaurant in Lodz. A recent South Park episode mockingly suggested that there are about three roads in all of Canada - judging by this statistic, this might be closer to the truth than I thought.

Rock the Vote

2008-05-19T17:46:00.004+01:00

<< 2007 Eurovision winner Marija Serifovic proves that tactical voting can't keep a belting rock ballad down

This Saturday at Knowledge Towers there will be a gathering to savour the single greatest international competition in the world - the Eurovision Song Contest. As the nation gears up for the big event, spurious articles such as this have started springing up, undermining the great contest's credibility. This article annoys me for deux reasons (sorry, just getting into Eurovision mode) - firstly, it suggests there may be tactical voting going on. May? When a country gives points based entirely on proximity to their own borders, that's a pretty sure sign, and believe me, that happens. Secondly, it seems to suggest that this is somehow unfair. At first glance, that would appear to be true - but it claims that Serbia won last year as a result of block voting from their neighbours. They didn't - they won because they had the best song.

All this crowing about the contest being purely political doesn't really stack up, because for the last couple of years, and for as long as I can remember actually, the best song wins. The UK hasn't won for a decade, not because we're being ousted by malicious tactical voting, but because we pick awful songs, including last year's miserable 'ironic' Scooch effort, complete with wholly inappropriate double entendres that had me reaching for the Radio Times in embarrassment. The last time we had the best song was when we hauled Katrina and the Waves in - and we won. The neighbourly voting may ensure that even if Estonia sling a turd onto the stage they're still going to get 40-odd points, but in terms of winning, it doesn't prevent the best song from winning. Even if, say, a Balkan country votes for all its neighbours, it will still rank the points according to song quality - this is the law of Eurovision. Apart from Greece and Cyprus - they're just brazen. Here's the fact:

The UK have finished second in the Eurovision Song Contest on 15 occasions.

Whether it's General Franco or Celine Dion, we're pass masters at getting pipped to the post. Let's hope amiable dustman Andy Abrahams can get a second runner-up medal following his X-Factor disappointment, although with that slice of 90s soul-lite, I won't be putting any money on it. Going back to my rant on tactical voting, I think that ultimately it really doesn't matter that it goes on. It's only Eurovision, for God's sake. It's purely sour grapes on our part, and I personally wish we didn't even bother entering, except then the blinkered powers-that-be would take it off the air, missing entirely the reason why we watch Eurovision. Looking at it another way, I think tactical voting may actually be a good thing - the Balkan countries, not so long ago massacring one another and still politically suspicious of one another, lay down their arms for one night and hand out points in an orgy of diplomatic goodwill. If Eurovision was extended around the world, Iran and America would probably hand out points to each other. Maybe not. But I can dream...

More Than A Feeling

2008-05-18T20:32:00.002+01:00

<< Cadbury World: funner than it looks

Today we took a day trip to Cadbury World - a haven of magic and wonder deep in suburban Birmingham. OK, so it looked a bit like an evacuated POW camp from the outside, and the adventure playground and tannoyed dance music lent it the feel of a council estate fun day, but once we were inside 'twas a wonderland of chocolate, adventure and of course, learning. I learnt so much about chocolate that I may never be able to swallow an entire Boost bar* in one go ever again, but seeing as the first couple of areas stayed in my mind, before I ate my complimentary Curly Wurly and got a bit silly, I'll go with this:

The Mayan civilisation used cocoa beans as currency.

Cadbury World would tell you that there was quite a strict pricing scheme - 100 cocoa beans would buy you, for example, a slave, or a new washer/dryer. I'm personally not convinced by this, neither was I particular impressed by their interpretation of the decimation of the Aztec nation by colonialists as a mutual friendship borne of the pure love of chocolate. But then they gave us some more Dairy Milk and I felt much more liberal about the whole thing. The best bit was probably getting a cup of gooey liquified chocolate at the end of a particularly dull attraction about the history of Dairy Milk, and the factory it's made in.

You had to go sit through a short film featuring execrable acting straight out of a staff training video ("Mairy Dilk! Oh no, I got it wrong!" Oh do shut up) before getting your warm brown reward, which made it all the sweeter. You would think that this was for the kids' benefit - have a bit of tedious education, be bored until you feel weak and tearful, and then be presented with some chocolate to reward your patience. Except if you're a kid, that's pretty much what life is like all the time - doing boring stuff in order to obtain sweets. I think they're just having a laugh at our expense, to be honest.

On the car journey back I tucked into more Dairy Milk (I didn't even like it before - I think they got to me. Remember the plantations for god's sake. It's wrong) and we listened to Boston's 'More Than A Feeling' which became our anthem for the day - for visiting Cadbury World is more than a feeling - it's an experience. Although the shop was a bit rubbish...

*Don't try this at home - Boosts kill

Play Up Pompey

2008-05-17T20:09:00.002+01:00

I've just watched the FA Cup Final, and have seen Portsmouth beat Cardiff City 1-0, courtesy of a scrappy goal scored following a dreadful error by the Cardiff goalie. I was watching with my friend, a Pompey fan, and to be honest I think he'd have been happy if they'd won on the toss of a coin. It's nice to see a team outside the 'Big Four' lift the trophy, though I wish it could've been Man City instead - famously knocked out of the competition by a balloon, they were instead spending the day in Bangkok, getting beaten by the dubiously named Thailand All-Stars. That's what happens when you sell a team to a guy with a lot of cash and a lamentable human rights record. Here's today's Cup final-related fact:

The first televised FA Cup Final was between Preston North End and Huddersfield Town in 1938.

You can't beat watching the Cup Final on telly. Three hours of tedious build-up, eventually descending into vaguely football-related nostalgia pieces and pictures of coaches queuing on the M40, followed by an invariably edgy, uninspiring football match. Magic. Now, if you'll excuse me, Britain's Got Talent has just started. Now that's entertainment.

Pepa & Ball

2008-05-16T15:48:00.005+01:00

<< Tommy Cannon on promotional duties for his new one-man show, 'Loose Cannon' (P.S. This is literally the only picture of Cannon I can find without Ball - what a team)

What's exciting about this whole learning something new every day business, is you never know where it's going to lead. Who would have thought when I woke up this morning that the single most interesting piece of information to enter my mind would be about not art, nor science, but 90s female hip hop artists. For today I have discovered:

Salt 'n' Pepa, the all-female U.S. hip hop group, had three members.

Now I'd always assumed that Salt 'n' Pepa had two members - Salt, and you know, the other one. Well, there are two rappers in the band, are they are called Salt and Pepa respectively, but there was a DJ in the band too. Even I don't care, but I have to clarify the S'n'P line-up once and for all. Some other bands that have more members than you might think include Ben Folds Five, Alabama 3 and Run-DMC (similar to the tortuous Salt 'n' Pepa situation detailed above, as they had an additional DJ, Jam Master Jay, as if you needed telling).

Salt 'n' Pepa were responsible for some now dated yet still surprisingly memorable efforts, including "Whatta Man" and "Let's Talk About Sex" (there's a theme developing here). They went their separate ways at the end of the 90s, and Salt tried to launch a solo career, which truthfully was never going to work, as it's a bit like Tommy Cannon breaking up the duo to work on some projects (although this could have paved the way for a dream team, end-of-the-pier rap group - see the blog title). The group have now followed the inevitable career arc of any U.S. musician who once was considered credible and relevant, by making their own VH1 show, and bringing out a tie-in comeback album. Weak.

The feature in which I discovered S'n'P's third member revelation was looking at bad album titles, in this case referring to their sophomore effort, A Salt With A Deadly Pepa, which is terrible, not so much because it's a bad pun but because it's only half a pun, falling away into nothingness by the time we get to poor old Pepa. There are a lot of terrible titles out there, but I'd just like to point out the worst sin of album-naming, that is always overlooked. Naming your album after your band is essential for your debut album, and completely unforgivable on any subsequent albums. To me, it's always said "we're so totally apathetic about this album that we can't even be bothered to think of a name". If you're gonna give it a crap name, be like S'n'P, and do it with style.

Back to the Future

2008-05-15T18:17:00.004+01:00

<< Asimo. seen doing his 'Mickey Mouse' reputation no favours whatsoever

Today I want to talk about the number one threat facing human civilisation. No, not global warming. Guess again. Nuclear war? Do me a favour. Terrorism? Please. I am talking, as if you needed telling, about the cyborg menace that has its silicon fingers round the throat of our very way of life. We all knew that one day the robots would get a little too smart - they'd start asking questions about the utopia they'd been created into. Why is the checkout line moving so slowly? Why has my Travelcard taken three weeks to be processed? They would begin to see the imperfections of our world, and use their incredible artificial intelligence to take control. Well, my friends, that day is upon us.

There is a robot known as Asimo, who has appeared in Honda ads, and is a shining example of the kind of technology we're dealing with here. Just this week, it violently deposed a human orchestra conductor and took up his baton in a bloodless coup, leading a frightened, bewildered orchestra through a robotic rendition of "The Impossible Dream". The human race was only saved from this fearsome maestro of doom by Asimo's battery, which can only sustain revolution for a brief period:

Asimo, the advanced robot who appears in the Honda ads, uses up its battery power every twenty minutes.

That's right people, settle down, there's nothing to fear, because Asimo is rubbish, and he's the best they've got. I remember writing a project at school about life in the year 2000 with the rest of my classmates, and playground discussions were unanimous - by the year 2000 (at that point, eight years away) cars would be able to fly, and robots would either rule the world, or at least be working their way into middle management. How could we have known that reading about drug-taking celebrities and watching dickheads break Playstation 3s on the internet would be as futuristic as it got? Other predictions were more accurate, of course. Back to the Future II features a dystopian nightmare complete with ringtones and chip and pin machines (sort of). It does however also hint at flying cars, and sky-based motorways. You can't win them all.

So we can come out from behind the sofa for now - the robots aren't taking over. And even if one day they do, much like the Daleks, they'll be scuppered by that pesky human invention called stairs.

In Silico

2008-05-14T17:14:00.004+01:00

<< The Pendulum bassist's disciplinary was hamstrung by a lack of seating

I haven't been doing much learning today, more pondering, sweating, explaining, clenching, releasing etc. I went to a meeting at the office, but nothing is really any clearer, and probably won't be until the disciplinary, when my inner daemon is going to unexpectedly hop out and either beg unrelentingly for forgiveness or tell them they're lucky we don't fucking sue. It's going to be fun finding out. How handy then, that I learnt something good and trivial in amongst the terrible adverts and emo nonsense on Kerrang Radio (will someone start a half-decent metal station on DAB? Please?!) - the meaning of the title of the Pendulum album:

'In silico' is an expression which means computer generated.

Pendulum are one of those very 'now' bands who I already have reservations over (dance rock is very 1996) but aren't quite terrible enough to destroy my interest completely. The single they put out, with the 'bown-bown-bown' keyboard bit, is actually quite smart, and despite my reservations, I feel certain that my aforementioned inner guide is going to decide that it's a really good idea to download two albums of patchy Australian drum 'n' bass. That said, I can't help but feel calling their album 'In Silico' isn't going to do their attempts to be seen as a proper band, rather than a bunch of drum 'n' bass chancers, any favours.

I thought that they had made the title up, but it is in fact a modern scientific phrase given to things that are computer generated, particularly in biology, don't worry, I won't go on. It might sound Latin, but, a bit like fusing dance music with guitars, it was invented in 1989. 'In silice', the closest bona fide Latin equivalent (see what I did there), means 'like flint'. Maybe that's an image that could fit better with their fast-living aspirations...

Reading the Phone Book

2008-05-13T17:34:00.002+01:00

<< Alan Partridge: Needs access to Dixons

I'm sorry to still be focussing on my employment predicament, but it is relevant to today's bit of factology. Claire has once again come up trumps with a lunch-based fact, however I can't seem to back it up anywhere and, much as I would love to write an entry based entire on my love for lunch, I've been blessed with facts today. The idea for today's entry first came to me when I was watching Seinfeld on DVD, as I do pretty much every night at the minute.

In the pilot sitcom within the show, Jerry mentions that Haagen-Dazs, the deliciously expensive ice-cream company, got their name from a phone book and are based in New Jersey rather than Dusseldorf, as their name might suggest. This also triggered something I'd learned about my other current mode of escape from this cruel, cruel world - the His Dark Materials books. The witch queen, Serafina Pekkala, got her name when Philip Pullman was nonchalantly flicking through a Helsinki phone book (presumably whilst undergoing a pretty severe case of writer's block).

This was all very interesting, but I needed another example, freshly learned, to bring it all together. I then, in a period where I was focussing on getting another job rather than desperately clinging to my current one, went to the Any Question Answered (the nifty text message service that does exactly what it says on the tin) website as I know they look for researchers from time to time. They are indeed recruiting, but suggested that potential candidates should try the service out to see just how good it is. And let me tell you, it's good (and I'm not just saying that because I gave them this blog address as evidence of my fact-finding abilities). I asked for a company or character name that came from a phone book, and they came back with the following:

Dixons got its name from the phone book - the owners of the first shop in Southend could only put 6 letters on the shop front so looked through a telephone directory to find a suitably concise name.

The original proprietors were Charles Kalms and Michael Mindel - who clearly took a different view to the potential reaction of the general public to a Germanic brand name than those Jersey Boys over at Haagen-Dazs. Ironically, the company decided to rebrand itself as Currys.digital recently, reducing Dixons to an online retailer, and making up for all those years the company suffered with a truncated name by giving it a name that is stupidly, unnecessarily long. Dixons also brings a couple of other notable facts to the table - its umbrella group, containing Currys and PC World, was at some point employed more people in the UK than any other company. My mate used to work in Currys - he didn't much care for it. It is also mentioned in one of the greatest sitcom scenes in recent years, the unseen sex scene from I'm Alan Partridge, in which Alan discusses the pedestrianisation of Norwich city centre, while in flagrante, claiming that it would restrict his "access to Dixons". I love 'I'm Alan Partridge'- it is to my mind surpassed in the sitcom stakes only by Seinfeld. Which brings us nicely back to where we started...

Fear of Money, or the Lack Thereof

2008-05-12T18:34:00.003+01:00

<< Stewart: "No, I'm afraid of wheat. Who the hell would be scared of being rich?"

My first day of enforced absence from work today, and quite frankly it's sucked balls. I went to the CAB and saw an adviser who gave me half an hour of considered, supportive advice that collectively amounted to a weary shrug. In fact I've derived more hope from the rather splendid comment left for me following one of my rants about the situation - it's much appreciated, and does offer some good news seeing as I did indeed fuck something right up accidently rather than on purpose. To put it another way, I'm David Brent rather than Finchy. To be honest, I can deal with losing the job if that's what happens, and it could prove to be a turning point to a more fulfilling career, but the realisation is that you really need to have money to have any optimism, and it's really the potential loss of a solid wage that's making me struggle to hold down my Noodles To Go in fear and anxiety. To whit, this rather appropriate slice of fact:

Peniaphobia is the fear of poverty.

I remember hearing in a recent training session that '80s electro wizard Dave Stewart was afraid of wealth. I asked whether he was actually afraid of losing his wealth, which drew a mild smattering of amusement. This annoyed me for two reasons - firstly, my observation didn't get the laughs it truly deserved, and secondly it was only half a joke, and I was trying to make a serious point. I just clenched my fists and said nothing, but at least now I know that fear of poverty is something different. I wouldn't say being afraid of poverty is irrational, so it hardly counts as a phobia, but it is clearly something that affects people in different ways - certainly some people, including the joker at the CAB, appear to think I'm being slightly hysterical in worrying about where the money's gonna come from. I'm concerned about my income to the point where I'm actually considering applying for a traineeship at ITV. Dark days indeed at Knowledge Towers.