Ok. I know it’s for a really good cause, and kudos to all the music artists who got together and put in the effort to produce something that would raise money for Africa. It’s desperately needed, and the aid is no doubt more than welcome.
Having said that, I’m sorry, but the Band Aid 20 version of ‘Do they know it’s Christmas’ is shit. Really. It’s insipid and disjointed and…actually for some strange reason reminds me of the theme to Dr Who in parts, which would be cool, if it were supposed to be the theme tune to aforementioned cult series, but it’s not. So it’s just bad.
But hey, you go, music artists. I’ll stick with the excellent ‘84 version instead (and we’ll say nothing of the truly dire ‘89 version).

Picture this.
You’re in the supermarket at the far end of a busy shopping centre in the run up to Christmas. The checkout queue is long and the basket of groceries is heavy. When you finally get to the till, the checkout guy swipes through all your food faster than you can bag it, so you’re hastily stuffing things into bags with one hand as best you can whilst signing your credit card slip with the other hand. You know that as soon as the checkout guy has put the receipt in the till drawer he’ll start swiping through the groceries of the people behind you and there’ll be a grocery traffic jam. Frustrated, you foolishly drop your credit card into one of carrier bags along with your copy of the till receipt and the food, meaning to sort it out as soon as you’ve got space. Now imagine you don’t have a car, and you’re getting the tram back home. The shopping centre is heaving with people, and you have to lug the bags through the building back to the tram stop (thoughtfully situated at the opposite end of the centre to the supermarket). By the time you get on the tram you’re hot and sweaty and swearing blind that you won’t go near the shopping centre again till long after the January sales. You totally forget about the credit card buried in the plastic bag. Once home, you unpack the bags, spotting the receipt in the bottom, but forgetting that it’s wrapped around a credit card. You stuff the receipt and bag (and the forgotten card) in the bin.
Two days later, you open your wallet/purse and realise there’s an empty space where your card should be. Flashback to the supermarket. To the checkout. To the plastic bag with your card in that you put in the bin! To the sudden agonising realisation that you threw away your credit card.
All I can say is I’m glad the binmen don’t come until Wednesday. I’m not so glad that my card now smells like 2 day old rubbish, though.

Excuse me for a moment whilst I engage in a bit of righteous indignation on 21st century superficiality.
The latest in reality TV from America - and soon to be picked up here in the UK too - is makeover shows. With plastic surgery being all the rage, the US TV producers decided to make a show called ‘Extreme Makeover’, all about giving top to toe surgical makeovers to unhappy women (mostly) and men who thought they were hideously ugly. They chose what they were unhappy with - short version, mostly everything - and had surgery, dental work, hair styling, etc. The end result in all cases appeared to be people with plastic-mask bodies and faces who’d been spray-tanned a deeply disturbing shade of orange.

Hot on the heels of the show is something called ‘The Swan’, an episode of which I’ve just seen. By all accounts, it’s an Extreme Makeover boot camp. Again, unhappy women (only, this time) who see themselves as hideously ugly apply. In this case, however, the team of specialists choose what they’re going to change about the women - read: everything - cover up all the mirrors so the women can’t see themselves for three months, put them on strict diet and exercise programmes, and then do a big reveal at the end. However, both the host of the show and the team of specialists appear to have been handpicked for their Nazi personalities.

To one woman who was told she needed to lose 30lbs but was slow in doing so: “You’re really going to have to buck up and focus on this.”

To another who decided she didn’t want to have a surgical procedure planned for her: “Well, I gotta say I’m really disappointed. You would look fabulous if you had it done. You should think about this before you really make your mind up.”

To add insult to injury, at the end of the show the two women who took part are put forward to win a place in a beauty pageant to see who’s the most beautiful transformee of all. It’s ridiculous, and incredibly superficial. It’s one thing to want have plastic surgery if you’ve got a part of your body that sincerely causes you psychological trauma, but to go through all that on television, and -then- to be told at the end of it that out of the two who had the surgery done, you’re not quite as perfect as the other…the mind boggles, it really does. I shudder to think what they’ll come up with next.

Weekends are great things. No work, no alarm clocks, no responsibilities. All shiny.
Went to the cinema last night with R and S to see Finding Neverland. It wasn’t a film high on my list of must-sees, but I’m glad I went. It was absolutely amazing. I cried. S cried. Even R cried! We ate M&Ms to feel better. They didn’t quite work, but they still tasted good. When I got home, a found a hedgehog wandering around my front lawn. SO cute. I crouched down to take a better look at it, and amazingly, it didn’t curl into a ball and wait for the big scary human to go away. It just carried on puttering around on the grass, looking for beetles or other hedgehog edibles.
Went into town today and succumbed to temptation in Waterstones. Bad, bad place to go into for the health of my purse. Bought three books - A Year in the Merde, Agent Provacateur, and Dead After Dark because I love the ‘Undead’ series by MaryJanice Davidson, and this one is along the same lines. Then I got home and ordered Darkly Dreaming Dexter from Amazon, for pretty much the same reason, and because I read an amazingly good review of it. I’m a bad, bad person. I must repent by taking some old books to the charity store - after all, it’s the only way I’m going to find space on my bookshelves for these four new ones!

Thanks to Phill, who corrected a mistake in my crappy CSS coding, the site now works in Mozilla browsers (Netscape, Firefox, etc). I’ve also switched to Firefox myself, and very nice it is too. Adios, IE.

Well, everyone’s talking about it. For the first time, I’ve been watching it. The White House reckons they’ve got the election in the bag, and y’know, I think they’re right. I know a lot of people are going to be muttering about having to put up with Dubya for another 4 years, but if that’s the way the people voted…
A (USA) friend of mine said that she wouldn’t be voting because it was a Hobson’s choice decision between an idiot and a flake - and that Bush would get re-elected anyway. I guess people seem to be going along with the devil they know, rather than the devil they don’t. It’ll be interesting to see how long the Democrats try and drag this one out with recounts and the like.

I think I’ve got anti-S.A.D.

There’s an article in the BBC News magazine today about winter blues and clocks going back and all that, and how a lot of people are supposedly feeling down. Me, though - I’ve just looked out the window here at work, and it’s gotten very dark. Far from being depressed though, I’m feeling good. The streetlights are on, and over the road I can see a load of offices in one of the other campus buildings with lights on. The sky’s a strange, foggy sort of purple-grey colour, and it seems like it should be snowing, but it’s not. I know it’s going to be dark by the time I get home, but whilst that was a depressing sort of thought at 5.30pm yesterday, it doesn’t feel that way now. It’s strange..but nice.

Just recovered from a particularly nasty bout of flu that’s kept me off work for 3 days last week. Back to reality now, alas, but glad to be just about over the illness.

In news, went to a psychic fayre a week ago at the stadium just down the road. I’ve always been interested in that kind of thing. Had a photo taken of my aura (ooh, pretty), and had a tarot/palmistry reading. Funnily enough, both the photographer and the reader said, ‘My, aren’t you spiritual!’. I was kind of bemused, to be honest, although certainly intrigued as well.

Took a walk down to the post office the other day to send off a parcel, and noticed a new shop had opened on the main road, a place called The Sword Centre. I’ve got a replica katana at home, so I went to press my nose against the window as it was closed, and tried not to drool too much on the glass. Definitely a place to go back to and explore.

Being plagued of late by marketing people. Standard conversation:

Me: Hello?
Them: Hello, Miss McCourt. My name’s xxx, and I’m calling from Sky / BT / random power company.
Me: Ah. This is about your fabulous new product and why I should sign up to it, isn’t it?
Them: Um. Yes. It’s…
Me: No, thank you. I’m not interested.
Them: But-
Me: I’m actually happy with what I have, thank you.
Them: Would-
Me: No. Seriously. Really not interested. [hang up]

Hate it. Why don’t these people understand that if I wanted to change to their product I’d do it myself?