The Lair

The predicted Big Snow has not yet arrived. Giving it a while before I head off home, early for once.

Superbowl this weekend. (And Six Nations. It not only rains, but snows. Heh). Which should be good, except I haven’t really watched much of anything this year, not even the full playoff games. So I feel spectacularly uninformed about which team I want to root for. Because, yes, rooting for a particularly team is important. On reflection, it will probably be the Giants (almost by default), even though they have a propensity to run the ball instead of making passing plays. Why not the Patriots, who have had an outstanding season thus far?

It’s the same inclination that led me to be somewhat reserved in my acclaim for Feds before Nadal burst on the scene. Champions are always more appealing (to me, as a sports fan) when they have a flaw to overcome (see Sampras and clay courts).

I’ve been watching a small startup called Particls with interest. They’re not the first folks to say that they can scout out relevance by a long chalk – but with the advent of the new NL search startups like Lexxe and Haika – it seems more … doable now than ever before.

Also, say hello to a large chunk of the stuff of my thesis – here (bugmenot for the login). I suppose I should be vaguely flattered at the commercial interest in the same field that I wrote a thesis on… Or worried?

People generally like mementoes of places that they visit. It’s true. A generation earlier, this memento would have taken the form of some ghastly ceramic ornament to adorn some glass walled cabinet. Someone I know swears by fridge magnets. Me? I just buy tshirts. Not to pack them up in a drawer and keep them around, of course. I generally buy them and wear them. No, not the drawers, the tshirts. Ostensibly, by the time the tshirt is hacked up and ready to throw away (so my optimistic reasoning goes), it’s time to visit that place again. No, I haven’t revisited most of the places I’ve been, but I can always hope, right?

But I have this friend, whom I shall name Fred. Fred has an even odder idea of mementoes. When he visits these fair shores, our boy Fred buys himself a copy of the Playboy magazine and takes it home. What he does with those magazines once he reaches home is unknown, but I’m desperately trying to dispell the mental imagery of mattresses, hand lotion and tissues from my mind as I type this.

Not that there’s anything wrong with secreting Playboy mags under mattresses and indeed err.. secreting things into tissues, of course. I’m just not sure I want to imagine Fred doing any of that. No offense, Frederick old chap.

The problem with Fred’s most recent visit, however, is that he forgot to buy his Playboy mag. This is (unsurprisingly, perhaps) where I come into the picture. I’d say centerfold but the thoughts of myself in any centerfold isn’t an image I particularly want to imagine either, so I presume this goes in triplicate for the rest of you lot. Right, so picture. Me. Playboy.

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Thank Gawd It’s Offal? Ornamental? Probably. But no, I meant Over.Except it’s not, really.

It only took 4 years, 1 month and 4 days. Ugh. And yet, although I say it’s over – it really isn’t. There is possibly another six months of life left in the carcass. Members of family and random onlookers are confused when I point this out – but the thing is that submitting the hefty document just starts the examination process.

But soul searching and searching for employment or chasing down seed money for a startup, as someone is hilariously suggesting to me, is for the morrow. Today I am off to … err .. have a massive hot shower, kick feet up and loll around in front of the TV. Hell yes. All I need is a pipe, comfy bedroom slippers and a tartan robe and I can be that grumpy old man.

And if the planets align tomorrow (and less likely, if GNER still functions); Ed should be visiting. So we can wander around York, get beaten up by the local BNP thuggies and otherwise have a merry old time. There is also a forecast of gale force winds for this weekend, which should enliven proceedings.