Revenge: a dish best ordered "to go".

True statistic:
More Nokia 8210s have been stolen than have been manufactured.
Seen in The Guardian's The Editor supplement, 11 May 2002

Sales tactic of the day

I offer a no fee cancellation service, the customer can cancel at any time without penalty. This makes clients who are not 100% sure book with us. Once they've booked, they tell the kids and then can't back out. It would be a brave parent who spoilt their child's birthday party by cancelling the bouncy castle man.

Shark-Attack Barbie Sighting

"No, no! I didn't want the 'Fun in the Sun Barbie' with the sunburned skin, I wanted the 'Fun in the Sun Shark-Attack Barbie' with the bite marks on her surfboard."

At a business meeting in a Bloomsbury hotel today, I noticed that one of the bars has been branded as the Virginia Woolf Brasserie. I'm sure dear Ginny would have hated this, although it looked like the sort of place she could have got decently depressed in.

I suppose there's an EM Foster's pub nearby, hopefully with a function room called A Room With A View.

A lawnmower believed to have been the inspiration for one of Philip Larkin's last published - and best known - poems has become one of the most unusual additions to the University of Hull's archives.
Archivist Brian Dyson said it was likely the machine was the one Larkin was using when he accidentally killed a hedgehog, which inspired the poem, The Mower, published in 1979.
http://books.guardian.co.uk/news/articles/0,6109,712893,00.html

The world eagerly awaits publication of the Larkin/Amis letters, which will detail Kingsley's protracted loan of Phil's mower during the summer of 1954. Sources close to the volume's editors say that Amis angered Larkin by using the mower to write the first chapter of Lucky Jim, which he did on a very large field near Leicester.

The incident prefigures Sylvia Plath's tragic experience with a strimmer in 1961.

Philip Morris have changed their name to Altria. They haven't divested their tobacco interests, they've just changed the name of the company. It's like spraying the house with air freshener instead of removing the corpse in the living room.

Ecommerce through the ages, #1:
The French Revolution
Monsieur Guillotine invents the add to basket icon.

Cockle:

Up with the lark
Down with the duck
And white wine with the fish.

So many books to read, including:

Knitting With Dog Hair : Better a Sweater from a Dog You Know and Love Than from a Sheep You'll Never Meet
by Kendall Crolius and Anne Montgomery

Synthetic avatar-artists for the nu century, and the product they will shift:

Billy Blogg and the Blogheads. The blard of Blarking wins The Weakest Link and releases an album of Ian Duvet covers.

In Our Ties with Melvyn Blogg. The scientist-licking talking head discusses the death of dress-down Friday, with special reference to the Lake District.

Blogney Spheres. A randomly updatable collection of polygons guaranteed to confuse dads everywhere.

CW Bloggs. The character nobody much remembers in the movie Bloggie and Clyde publishes his thoughts during a blood-soaked tour of the more out-of-the-way states of the Union.

Why don't companies have straightforward names like Edwin Drood and Daughters any more? And why don't more of them use simple tag lines that tell you something about what products and services they actually offer - like Microsoft: Family Butchers of Distinction for example.

And when oh when will some go-ahead community rename their city Greenspan?

Cockle:

Pushed under the carpet by sweeping statements? Consider taking refuge in a vacuum.

Cockle:

You can't just throw money at the problem. Unless the problem is me.

At the height of the web mania, Cupcake Canasta made $7.21 in ad sales one day. I dropped everything and went on a world cruise.

At the height of the web mania, the people down below looked tiny. Like ANTS! Hahahahahhaha.

At the height of the web mania, you could see a clear day.

What I really want to do with my life is to get on some really interesting medication, and then talk about it all the time. I'll hang around various newsgroups with my elbow on the bar and post stuff about my meds. Like: I was on Bovopopor for six months but it was giving me a sweaty mouth - so I changed to Agfrapopor with a chaser of Loopinol - which was way better than Hegenpegen but nowhere near as effective as Tea.

Whatever possessed me to throw out all those old planets I was hoarding? I could be selling the suckers on eBay. I suppose the dusting got to be too much for me.

Day six billion or so. Worried deeply about the word ideolect. Will I ever find a good reason for weaving it into a conversation? Ideolect means a language spoken by a community of one. I'll have to have a word with myself about it.