Acknolified

This week I have been mostly moving house. My place is the best thing ever, next to the river and has a conker tree nearby and since I have a spare room you are most welcome to come and stay. Send me a text/email for my new address/telephone number etc.

Some famous people from Bedford:
- John Bunyan (wrote Pilgrim's Progress)
- Harold Abrahams, 1899-1978 (100m Olympic Champion 1924)
- Glenn Miller (jazz musician during the war)
- Terry Waite (legend)
- Ronnie Barker (comedian)
- Paula Radcliffe (runner)
- Tim Foster (rower)

*The title comes from something the library assistant said when I went to enrol.

Diss Is It

I have finished my dissertation at last...

click on the link to see what I have learnt.

Crocodile Hunter

Steve Irwin - What a legend.

It was Steve Irwin who made me far less scared of man-eating animals.
Just by sticking his head inside the nest of the worlds most vicious snake while it was nursing her young or diving into alligator pools and wrestling with them and coming out alive meant that perhaps they wern't as scary as I thought and so I slept in peace.
The world now feels like a much more dangerous place now he has gone.

Foul-Mouthed, Homophobic And Misogynistic Messanger Of Love

An article in last Tuesday's Metro took up 3/4 of a page explaining how contoversial rapper, Eminem, is in fact a Buddhist.

A new book, Buddha Or Bust, by Perry Garfinkle (well I wouldn't give my real name) says that Buddha's wisdom is cryptically encoded in the lyrics of the rap star and the foul-mouthed, homophobic and misogynistic overtones are just a smokescreen.

Here's the arguments for:
"You better lose yourself in the music, the moment" - Lose Yourself

"But you gotta search within you, you gotta find that inner strength ... get that motivation to not give up and not be a quitter" - Till I Collapse

"Now before you walk in the door of the liquor store and try to get the money out the drawer, you better think of the consequence" - Guilty Concience

"I'm a man, I'll make a new plan. Time for me to just stand up and travel new land" - 8 Mile

And the arguements against:
"I ain't trying to shoot you, I'm trying to chop you into pieces and eat you" - Hellbound*

"You don't know how sick you make me ... every time I think of you, I puke" - Puke**

"#£@$ I'll a kill you! You don't want to #£@$ with me, Girls leave." - Kill You***

* Buddhism does not condone violence
** Buddhism helps people overcome hatred
*** Buddhism teaches that all life is important

Road To Nowhere

Do you think travel news reporters on the radio take their job too seriously? They all have this proffesional air about them and deliver their report in a "this is the most important thing you'll hear all day" kind of way - the reason I reckon is so they can get a promotion out of the most boring presenting job on radio.

My suspicion is that none of them have the slightest interest in motoring at all, noone ever aspires to be a traffic reporter. Its just the only presenting job they can get and they are desperate to climb that ladder to become a real presenter/newsreader. Problem is, to prove they are capable they end up making it all sound so important. And don't you just hate that catch phrase about phone rangers?

Theres no real point to this post but next time you hear a report see if you can detect an underlying despair at the pointlessness of their job.