“Why,” asked the American “don’t you have air-conditioning over here ?”
“Well, it’s not really hot enough over here” replied the Englishman, with sweat pouring off of his face and looking like he’d entered the City of London Mr Wet Shirt competition.

Since Michele arrived in London (ie over ten years ago) the summer has been unbearably hot for at least a month every year. However, the English choose not to remember this, favouring the traditional false memories of summer consisting of wearing full-body bathing costumes, in bathing machines, by a brown sea…in the rain.

OK, I know aircon is an environmental evil, I know using too much energy caused the problem in the first place and I have seen Dogma, but damn I wish we had fucking aircon in the UK. Last week I had to spend 3 hours a day on the tube with a load of other poor sods travelling in the dangerous heat in their suits. At least my current employer doesn’t insist on that nonsense.
You must wear a suit because it’s smart. Is it ? What looks more “un-professional” in your eyes ? A bloke in a t-shirt and shorts, or a bloke in a suit that is so soaked in sweat you can see his bollocks ? Oh but look at the nice tie! You can hardly tell his shirt has buttons!

It was 95F today, humid as the rainforests and totally bearable. Why ? The house has has aircon, the car has aircon and the house we went to had aircon.

Americans take A/C for granted which is bad I know. But the sheer, pure pleasure of walking into a house with central air is enough to keep me going. I apologise. It’s wrong and dirty, but it feels so good.

The other thing the Engish don’t have, which is far less dangerous, far simpler, and such an obviously good idea, is the “screen”. English people, imagine this if you can:

Keep your windows open and prevent insects coming in at the same time! Difficult to believe ? Read on..
Have a parrot ? Imagine being able to let it fly about the house, but with the windows open! It’s true! It can be done! And there’s no magic or witchcraft!

I can say no more because this invention is too cutting edge and I’m sworn to secrecy. But look out for branches of “Screens and Cheesesteaks” coming to an out-of-town shopping mall near you soon.

From bitter experience I knew that getting though the metal detector without a beep requires taking my belt off and so I successfully managed to pass through Gatwick security without a hitch. Michele wasn’t so lucky and was subjected to a search of her hand luggage. This would have been slightly embarrassing at most but for a couple of things:

1. Buried deep in her evil make-up bag was a pair of scissors. We elected to surrender them.
2. The laptop bag in which she was carrying her make up triggered the explosives detector – a tad more serious.

The nice security guard explained that this is quite common and nothing to be worried about. He fetched the supervisor and then tested the bag one more time; again the machine beeped excitedly. The expressions on the faces of the guys looked more serious, but they did their best to calm us down. I asked if we were allowed to know what substance had been detected. “TNT” the supervisor replied. Michele and I were so shocked that we stopped arguing about her noxious make-up chemicals for a moment in order to stare open-mouthed.
To cut a long and tedious story short, they called special branch who, probably on the basis that we didn’t look middle eastern and had no criminal record, told them to let us go. They narrowed the ‘contaminated’ region down to the front pocket of my old laptop bag and so we asked if they would be kind enough to destroy it; the thought of the U.S. DHS bully boys finding it was frightening enough to persuade me to dump 50 quidsworth of bag. Don’t get me wrong, I’ve always wanted to go to Cuba, but orange really isn’t my colour.
Pity, it was such a useful bag. It was just the right size for taking my C4 along to the local Jihadi meetings. That was just one of the many crap jokes I decided not to make at the time. In fact Michele and I thought we shouldn’t mention the entire episode until we were safely out of sight of Philly airport; discussing TNT in any context near airworks being considered bad form these days.

We still don’t know what set the alarm off.

U.S. Airways are, in our opinion, a total bag of shite by the way. Once seated on the plane the captain came over the P.A.:

“Good morning ladies and gentlemen, and welcome to flight 099 to Philadelphia. We’d like to offer a warm welcome to our Gold, Select and First Class customers, and to our economy customers we’d like to offer a luke-warm welcome. Economy customers may also like to pay for some headphones to help them alleviate the frustration of watching our selection of films without sound for the duration of this 8 hour flight. They may also like to pay our brassy, pursed-lipped, hatchet-faced staff for some alcohol which is, of course, not complimentary. When we reach Philadelphia International airport, there will be a period of around 40 minutes where we remain on the tarmac while our ground crew faff about for ages trying to sort their arses from their elbows. Customers missing connecting flights as a result are welcome to pay us a load more money so they may join later flights. Have a mediocre time, and we’ll try not to crash this bargain basement A330 that is held together with sellotape!”

Well that’s not word for word but you get the idea.

But since we’ve been here it’s been wonderful. Lovely weather, and so, so much superb food. Michele’s mum had stayed up the night before our arrival cooking a massive lump of ham for me to pick at during my stay, and since then I’ve had a Philly cheesesteak, an Italian hoagie and one of the biggest and most wonderful Italian meals available to mankind.

I fear that if we stay here too long, I may risk losing my sylph-like figure.

As the presenter says, “Be prepared to take action after watching this interview.”

I would urge everyone, especially American Taxpayers, to watch even five minutes of an interview with Arron Russo about his new film. The longer you watch, the more astounding, and frightening, it becomes.

JML, the 21st century’s answer to Ronco, have won this weeks award with their TV ad that provides an incongruous link between the World Cup and……ironing board covers! Rrrespect due!

The World Cup still hasn’t started. And I can’t wait, because the sooner it starts, the sooner England can get kicked out and the sooner we can have normal tv. Every product on the market somehow manages to squeeze a football cliché into their TV ad. I’m waiting for the World Cup specials for immodium and tampax.

So, if you were to get so fed up with the constant wank of football that you left the sofa and, if desperate enough, the house, you’d be horrified to discover that london is now an England flagscape. There are bits of Eltham that resemble a BNP rally…

But rather than start a rant on the subject, I shall simply direct you to a typically brilliant piece from Charlie Brooker which is more succinct and funny than anything I could manage anyway. I mean…he’s my hero:

Nowadays, when you see an England flag on a car, sprawled across a T-shirt, or flapping from a novelty hat, you no longer assume the owner is a dot-brained xenophobe. Instead you assume he’s just an idiot. And you’re right. He is.[…]
It’s a great piece of visual shorthand. Imagine the outcry if government passed a law requiring the nation’s dimbos to wear dunce’s caps in public.
[…]
Instead, every numbskull in the land is queuing up to voluntarily brand themselves. They even pay for the privilege! As brilliant ruses go, it’s the most brilliant, rusiest ruse you could wish for. I can’t wait for stage two, when they’re persuaded to neuter themselves with safety scissors.

The Pirate Bay, the world’s favourite bittorrent brokers, have been raided by the Police, illegally, according to the owners. What I didn’t realise is that these guys were actually attempting to start a political movement in Sweden.

I just hope their parrots are ok…

Lisa has given birth to a lovely girl. If you don’t know Lisa, you may still celebrate!

Why can’t there be more football on the telly ? It’s only on every fucking night. And only just over half of the ads and TV programmes are all about it. I think the TV stations just aren’t trying. OK, the world cup hasn’t even started yet but by now everyone in the UK should be a rabid, jingoistic, singleminded moron….oh hold on…etc

Yeah well in the past month the country and, seemingly, the rest of the world, has shifted further to the right and politics is a very intersting place. However I’ve got my head stuck so far up my own arse that I haven’t even got round to writing anything about it. Again, I can’t recommend the Spy Blog highly enough as a good source of information on how less free we are all becoming by the day. Also, please take a few moments to keep an eye on this poor sad bugger who is due to be sent to the U.S. to be burned in public as a witch as a result of his computer activity. The guy sat alone in his room night after night accessing illegal information…he’s 40. Was it child porn ? No. Was it terrorist information ? No. Was it hacking into military computers ? No; despite the accusations. Sadder than all of these, he was looking for evidence of aliens in the US .mil servers….didn’t even get a Barclays out of it (I hope). This ISN’T hacking…it’s just very sad. Especially as he’s about to get slaughtered live on US TV as a punishment (probly). But he is going to be made an example of…poor sod.

I bought a badminton racket on Sunday. I feel fitter already 🙂

Loads of other things of course but most unblogable. For my own benefit, here are some memory joggers:

• Friday – Michele’s leaving do at Zulus (Big saffas, biltong at £3.50 a go)
• Me and Tony meeting another me on the train – the wonder of l2k6 t-shirts…
• The Hob, champagne, Katie, Mike, Ian and broken glass.
• Near fisticuffs and Tony doing his ‘leave it he’s not worth it’ bit. “Doc” Martin
• The Rosie, Andy, Cherie and the stripping lesbian DJ
• Nice parrot
• Working and Julie Andrews

DTrace now runs on FreeBSD!. If you’re a geek and like FreeBSD then this is a wonderful thing. If you’re a geek, but don’t care about FreeBSD then here’s a list of the top 25 worst tech products. If you’re not a geek either, then here’s a picture of a big bee for you instead.

Last night was a televisual feast as the BBC hosted one of the most spectacular shows of the year: the relaunch of the Father’s for Justice guerilla protest group live on the National Lottery! Such stirring stuff; watching desperate, disenfranchised people reclaiming their media. The only problem with it was that, despite being on prime-time saturday night TV, it was on the lottery; was anyone watching ? Thoughtfully the BBC were kind enough make the clip available on their news site.

The BBC are in my good books at the moment. A few weeks ago I sent them an email complaining that the aspect ratio on BBC 4 was all to-cock which made watching “The Rock and Roll Years” almost impossible. Not only did they fix the problem while I was writing the email (now that’s service) but I got a call from a lovely woman in their Engineering department the next day apologising! Wow! Look and learn pArcel Force, BT and all you other bastards.

Anyway, as well as the protest it was Eurovision night, and what night it was. Just like the good old days. And what with an almost daily emergence of new European countries, all of which vote for their arch enemies in the name of peace, we can be sure that the UK won’t be winning any time soon; which means we will continue to have Terry Wogan’s essential commentary! Top notch entertainment.

As if the British public could take any more excitement, ITV competed with its own star studded extravaganza: The Princes Trust 30th birthday concert! Set in the grounds of the Tower of London, a massive array of 3rd rate artistes with flagging careers, trudge through their tired old schtick to an audience of uninterested Royalists and, of course, the box of yawning Royals themselves. Let me tell you, there’s no boredom purer than Royal boredom.

Even ITV realised that they’d backed the donkey on this one and so I’m watching the sunday morning repeat. Much better odds when it’s up against the god botherers rather than Eurovision.
Picture © BBC