The Lucky Donut

Sometimes I see things in my web stats that disturb me just a little.  Such as discovering that not only did I appear on the first page of Google results for the very specific search phrase "motel room swallowings of dicks", but that three people actually clicked on that link to view my blog.

I have to assume that they were disappointed.

With the twins in Big Brother putting Stoke-on-Trent on the map in their very own, very pink way, Charley and Laura had this to say about their hometown:

I finally figured out how to do this YouTube thing all the cool kids are doing, and I made the clip especially short so there’s a chance somebody will actually watch it.  But still, even though it’s only a 25 second clip, I know you probably didn’t brother pressing play.  So here’s what you need to know.

Charley: Where they born, Stoke-on-Trent?
Laura: Yeah.
Charley: Maybe they’re a bit behind time.
Laura: Could be.
Charley:  By about ten years?
Laura: Yeah, ten I’d say.  Yeah.

Last weekend I was fortunate enough to be shopping in Hanley and noticed that there was a new Costa Coffee at the entrance to the Potteries Shopping Centre.  Pretty unremarkable you might think if you come from anywhere that lives in the twenty first century.  But this is actually Stoke’s first franchise coffee house.

OK, there was a tiny Costa inside a branch of a building society for a while, but it didn’t last long, and that doesn’t really count.  This is the first genuine, stand-alone chain coffee joint in town.

Not only that, but I saw a Millies Cookies that wasn’t there before and some kind of new chain juice bar I could care less about (cookies, on the other hand…) – they must have popped up about the same time.  It’s almost as if Hanley suddenly became a modern town overnight.

Still, Stoke must still be the only place in the universe that doesn’t have a Starbucks.  It must have been passed over so many times already, when other nearby cities of similar sizes have multiple franchies.  Nottingham, for example, has three Starbucks and Derby has two.  With over 500 stores in the UK, and a new stores opening every two weeks in London alone, you would think that England’s 12th largest city might get a look in.

So I had to check just when the almost-nationwide infestation of such places began.  Starbucks first set up shop in the UK in May 1998 – just over 9 years ago.

Charley, you were so close.

My little blog is one year old, and I am celebrating the occasion with a stolen photograph off of the tinterweb.  Sorry if it’s yours.

I don’t remember the last time I misspelled a word so badly it got the better of a spellchecker.  I mean really fooled it into not having the first clue what you’re on about.

This is quite impressive.  I was just one letter out on the British English spelling of "stabilise", and two letters away from the more computer-friendly "stabilize".  The suggestions all contain a "b" and an "l", but otherwise they’re strong candidates for the worst random spelling guesswork in the world ever.

I don’t very often, in fact almost never, watch or listen to the news.  I admit that I often don’t have much of an idea about what’s going on in the world.

Today’s "top story" on Radio 1’s news reminded me why I should take an interest.

It turns out that people have been attempting to use an online auction site to sell things.  The damn nerve.

This weekend, the radio station trundles off to Preston in the closest thing to what the kids of today have to the good old Radio 1 Roadshow.  No more trucks along the coast.  Now it’s two tents in a city. There’s urban, and then there’s Preston…

Like the roadshows, it’s all free.  But rather than just piling onto the beach to watch the Hairy Cornflake play some records or wait for Smiley Miley to appear and ask everyone to guess how far he drove today, these days you have to win a ticket lottery to enjoy the delights of Scissor Sisters, Razorlight, Natasha Bedingfield and Mark Ronson on a bizarrely diverse bill.

Tickets for Radio 1’s Big Weekend are selling on eBay for hundreds of quid.  The station asked them to pull the auctions and eBay said no.  They’ve even got an MP involved, and BBC News proper covered it in this article, which impressively managed to capitalize eBay in three different ways.

This is big news, apparently.

Never mind the impending leadership battle that will determine the country’s next Prime Minister, or all those people that are going crazy over a little girl that went missing in Portugal.

Or even that Chris Tarrant apparently threw a spoon at someone or something.

For obvious reasons, I decided to choose my own password when upgrading my Poker Tracker database.  Thank you though, PostgreSQL installer,  it’s the thought that counts.

We didn’t go to Newcastle at the weekend.  Decided that getting up at 5am to drive and then catch a train was actually a silly idea.  I don’t know why it took so long to realise something so obvious.  Will try to do it again soon, possibly the next bank holiday weekend.

Instead I bought a Nintendo Wii, which has been on the cards for a while but seeing an advert on the big screen before Spiderman 3 seemed to do the trick.  God knows why that was the final push, but it seems I’m a slave to advertising just like everyone else.  However, so far the console is as disappointing as the movie was.  Not just the silly sand monster and the black ooze from outer space, the story was all over the place and it was way too long.  Considering how good the sequel was, and how cool the dark suit story looked from the trailer and could have been, it was a real let down.

The Wii situation wasn’t helped by the fact the traded-in copy of Madden I got didn’t load.  It’s gone back and I’ve re-ordered it from HMV thanks to a combination of Quidco and discount coupons from McDonalds.  But I was very much up for doing the whole pretending-to-actually-throw-the ball using the Wii stick thing but I had to make do with some Wario thing instead.

I just didn’t get it.  You watch some cartoon graphics for a while then it says to do something, you wave the stick at the screen and if you waved it in the right place (which happened about half the time) you did whatever it asked you to do, even before you worked out what the thing was.  I think I must be too old now, but I couldn’t really see where the game was.

The whole stick waving shenanigans is hit and miss.  Whilst Wii Sports is great fun and I love that it makes a swooshing noise when you swipe your tennis racket, and other such novelties, anything that needs you to point at the screen was decidedly dodgy.  I tried the sensor bar in various positions and each was dodgy in its own separate way.

I’ll have to give another game a try before I decide if it was a complete waste of money and I should have got an Xbox 360 instead (at least then I could play Rainbow Six Vegas with high definition computer-generated neon in my living room). 

The Wii isn’t the only reason I have a sore elbow though today.  Believe it or not, Claire and I also started to play squash regularly.  We don’t know the rules and use extra-bouncy balls (noobs’ balls are bright blue, so the guys in the court next door know we’re crap when it goes flying over the dividing wall) but hey, it’s excercise – and that in itself is impressive.

It seems that I’m 33.

Here are some of the "cards" I’ve had.  Nothing says "you’re an old geek" quite like an ASCII art birthday cake.

This is what happens when the Coke machine in McDonalds breaks down.

At least you still get the monopoly game tokens.  I’d have been lost without these, even though I did have a backup plan for monopoly gratification: I was sitting in a restaurant on Pentonville Road, just around from Kings Cross station.  Free parking nowhere to be seen though.

Today’s haul included a free coffee and an Oatso Simple porridge that I’ll never use.  Even if I ever do get to a McDonalds before 10.30, why the hell would I want a pot of porridge when there’s perfectly good meat products on offer?

… especially when it means you can get two dollars to the pound now!