Loose Lips Sink Shits

Like Richard Herring, I was a bit too excited about the re-launch of The Guardian on Monday. What they've done is chop it down in size. Not to the sluttish size of a tabloid, but to something rather respectable and refined. They call it a 'Berliner'.

Anyway, my only complaint about the paper is that I can never read all of it in my extended lunchtimes, especially on a day when a lot has happened. Still, the crosswords and sudoku keep me entertained during the afternoon.
The sodukus are rated for difficulty every day, and it is proper Guardian ratings. When The Star says a sudoku is hard, it isn't. It is easy. The Guardian though doesn't want to flatter your intelligence, it wants to put you in your place. Still, I knocked off the hard level today in about ten minutes. I think I may be the greatest person who ever lived, up there with Jesus, Gandhi and John Noakes. And I bet they wouldn't be able to do The Guardian hard sudoku as quickly as me. Well, maybe except for Noakes. Damn you Noakes!

I'm thinking that I could become World Sodoku Champion. Maybe not this year, but I reckon that sometime next year I could be destroying some freakish, mildly autistic schoolchild in the final. Lance, the youngster from a small town in Connecticut, will be the darling of the press going into the final. I mean, he's only fourteen but has captured the hearts of the public with his metal filled mouth, awkward fringe and shy teenage giggling. Time Magazine will call him 'a sensation'.
Yet, as I complete a 5-0 drubbing in the final, popping the final 9 into the final square, I will leap up from my chair and the crowd will cheer. They will cheer a true champion. Lance will dissolve into tears.
I caught him on the hop in Round 1 when the underestimated challenger from a stinky fishing town in NW England caught him unawares. He'd barely started, when I claimed the round. I knew that I had the trophy then. He'd been too confident. Sloppy.
He rushed Round 2, with all the inexperience of youth. I'd thrown him off his game and he was panicking to rectify things; even though he handed in his sheet first, it had a mistake. He had two threes in the same row!
It was all over then, and by game five he was sobbing silently, the tears dropping onto the sheet and smudging the numbers slightly. He'd occasionally look up, and I'd make sure I caught his eye.
Look at me kid, I'm not really trying. This is my trophy kid. Mine! Life is cruel Lance, and now it all may seem like a waste of your time. You could have been out playing with other children, but instead your pushy parents Randy and Petunia forced you to do grid after grid. You complained that you couldn't sleep, as all you could see was row upon row of numbers. They gave you sleeping pills.
Is it worth it? Was it worth missing out on your childhood for?
No it wasn't Lance, for you are a loser. The look of innocence may hide that now Lance, but that will eventually fade. When age takes away that childlike look at the word, all that will be left is the word LOSER carved into your mind until the day you die.
Was it worth it Lance?
No.
You loser.

I Don't Like Cricket - I Love It

I'd started writing a blog on Monday morning to take my mind off the cricket, which was taking place in my ears. It didn't work though and I abandoned it for nervously twitching and spinning my cricket stress-ball over and over in my hands. As soon as I could I abandoned work for going home and watching it on the TV. Radio is scarier than the TV, as the first indication you get that anything as happened is that the commentator raises his voice or you hear the crowd shout in the background. But they do that for a boundary AND a wicket? Who is to tell what's going on?
I've been looking forward to the Ashes for ages, at least for the last year or so. Gone (for now) are the drubbings of yesteryear, instead we had possibly the most exciting cricket series I've ever seen. Thanks to carefully arranged night-shifts, I've managed to watch most of it on the TV and it's been great.
Part of me also thinks it's good that cricket seems to be having something of a renaissance in this country. No longer do we have barely full grounds on test days, and it's good to be asked questions by genuine new fans of the game who want to find out more. I do however balk at nobflaps like Chris Moyles becoming interested in the game. In the same way that he invented himself as a huge football fan in the late nineties, the twat has now found a new bandwagon to leap upon. What we need now is a tough series of uncompromising draws to sort the wheat from the chaff.
These people also didn't serve their apprenticeship properly. As I grew up, the England team was desperately poor. Yet still, I served my probationary period as a fan by spending a large amount of the sunny Summer days of my childhood, by perching myself in front of the TV to watch England being dismantled by every team who came to visit. I also used to follow foreign tours by watching the scoreboard tick-over on teletext with my dad, often late into the night. Being dedicated can often be linked with mild-stupidity or oddness.

Not having a computer at home is a little strange. The amount of time I have to access the internet at work is severely limited, and there are many sites that are restricted. It's not all the obvious ones either, like I can see why they may block email sites like yahoo, but can't quite work out why some parts of the BBC website are blocked whilst Ebay - that great tool of procrastination - is not.
My work e-mail is the only one of the several I have that I am currently able to access, and even that is restricted. Who knows what stunning offers for penis patches, Viagra and financial investments I am missing out on? How many Nigerian princes have been murdered by their enemies, before they were able to pass on their father's fortune to his dear friend Glendblueyonder in time? That must be what the dear old King used to call me. I was a dear and trusted friend after all.
I feel like I'm missing out on lots of things and that I'm being left behind. If the zombies attack then how will I know? I'm relying on Johnny W to keep me informed on that score.

I'm having a slow day today. Terry keeps looking over, and doesn't seem rather enamoured with my work effort today. Still, I don't complain when he fields a dozen personal calls a day, so he shouldn't mind that I'm doing The Guardian crossword at 4pm. Or that I've filled in a couple of Sudokus.