Journal Entries
Things I've never done
Posted Dec 2, 2003
Some of which I never will and would never want to. Off the top of my head, I've never:
Seen a 'Rocky' film
Bought a VCR
Worn my shirt collar outside my jacket (think 'Starsky and Hutch')
Worn my jacket sleeves rolled up (think 'Miami Vice')
Used a fast food drive-through window
Worn a baseball cap backwards (although I must admit to doing it with a flat cap - think Samuel Jackson)
Been in a Starbucks
Picked a fight with anyone (came close to it on several occasions at the store though 
)
Been tattooed (an oddity for an inhabitant of Austin)
Hit a woman
Owned a car
Dumped anyone
Followed a plotline in Eastenders or Brookside (I can't say the same for Corry - when I was a young Gosho my mother watched it religiously, which meant that we all watched it, and I therefore knew all about the goings-on between Elsie Tanner and Len Fairclough, about Lucille Hewitt's teenage tantrums, and what Mrs Caldwell's cat Bobby was up to)
Dang, there was something else I was thinking of just at the moment Mrs Gosho asked if I need anything from the store, and now it's gone right out of my head. I guess there'll be more to follow as I think of it.
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Latest reply: Dec 2, 2003
Should I apply to be an h2g2 Sub-editor?
Posted Dec 2, 2003
http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/uk_news/magazine/3256388.stm
I scored 9/10 
The only one I got wrong was the one about TXT spk, (which, I might add, I'm quite proud of getting wrong).
Discuss this Journal entry [19]
Latest reply: Dec 2, 2003
Life in Bush's America
Posted Dec 1, 2003
Well, it may be easy and convenient to call it Bush's America because there are just too many people who have influenced him and who are pulling his strings whose names we will probably never know (others we do), and if we tried to include them in the subject line it would end up looking like an old T Rex album name... you know - 'My People Were fair and Had Sky in Their Hair etc, etc, etc'. And I recall that although there was no internet at the time, there were several places in the UK media where you could find out about 'Life in Thatcher's Britain' - sometimes from journalist, sometimes from the likes of Ben Elton and Harry Enfield, sometimes from people such as Steve Bell. How history repeats itself 
Anyhoo... instalment 1.
I heard an analyst on NPR this morning explaining that the big winners on Black Friday this year were the discount stores and the highest of the up-market shops. Wal*Mart for instance did 1.5 *billion* dollars-worth of business on Friday alone. No wonder that five out of the top 10 richest people in the world are Waltons (goodnight John Boy).
Shoppers this year were either looking to save or spend as much as they possibly can. That seems to me to be a strong indication of the polarisation and division of society which is occuring in America right now under this President, just as happened in Britain under Thatcher. The rich are becoming fantastically wealthy, the poor are becoming ever more desperate to make ends meet.
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Latest reply: Dec 1, 2003
No surprise there then
Posted Nov 30, 2003
http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/americas/3249574.stm
"Wal-Mart Stores spokeswoman Karen Burk said she had never heard of a such a melee during a sale.
"We are very disappointed this happened," she said. "We want her to come back as a shopper."
Yup. That's the bottom line with big corporations and big box stores isn't it. As long as you spend your money with us that's just fine and dandy. Hope you're not going to sue.
Oh, and we hope that you're ok too.
Discuss this Journal entry [26]
Latest reply: Nov 30, 2003
The weather report from Austin
Posted Nov 24, 2003
Monday, November 24th 2003, 08.00
Cold enough for a walking stick!
Current temperature 34ºF, sky clear. Winter has arrived in Texas for the first time this season. I haven't seen the almanac for the past 24 hours, but if it's 34º now, it probably just about made freezing here in town and dipped below freezing in surrounding areas (some of which I see from the weather report are still at or just below 30º). This time yesterday it was around 72º - within two hours it had plunged to the low 50s and didn't get any higher than that.
This'll be that pattern for the next three months or so - relatively mild (upper 50s to upper 60s/low 70s) temperatures punctuated by cold fronts coming down from Canada bringing behind them very cold Arctic air and high pressure with clear skies.
Discuss this Journal entry [10360]
Latest reply: Nov 24, 2003
There is only one thing worse than being Gosho, and that is not being Gosho
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