plasticbag.org

Saturday afternoon was Monkey Magic with Corny and his family. There are times – horribly bizarre times – when I am become his wife.

This weekend has been a purging experience. I’ve mostly been ploughing through my belongings, throwing out things that are no longer relevant and organising everything else into carefully composed piles and sub-piles. I’m worried (of course) that these piles and sub-piles will recombine into a large pile at any moment. To avoid this, I’m leaving them in the middle of my bedroom floor as a kind of statement of “This is not finished – don’t even think of getting on with your life until I’ve been properly put away”. Three full bin-bags have so far left the room, full of holed socks, scraps of paper, ancient bills and scraps of paper.

Along with this process comes discovery. I’ve found a pad of over a hundred tiny post-its, each decorated with its own superhero face. Some of them have names and ridiculous super-abilities. Others brood anonymously. I’ve found amusing postcards showing the “Attack of the 50-ft Christ” and “The failings of New Labour”. I’ve found CDs which must never have had boxes to put them in, and more books than there are shelves to contain them. I have found more than my fair share of unused passport photographs – showing my transformation from long-haired naif through scrawny palid and all the way through my subsequent en-lard-ening. I could place them in a line and name the enterprise “The history of pie consumption”.

I was on the radio on Thursday night – LBC to be precise – explaining (and promoting) Secret Santa. At least I think I was – I wasn’t able to get home in time to actually hear it, and their archived sessions don’t seem to have been recently updated. I said beforehand that I would prefer not to do anything live, as I knew I’d get nervous and stumble over my words. And in fact I did that anyway, but never mind. Did anyone hear it?

So Tom Cruise manages to get another claim that he is gay squashed through the courts [BBC News]. This time a judge has ruled that the star isn’t gay. Quite how he checked isn’t mentioned. The interesting thing about this story is that if Cruise did turn out to be gay after all of this he’d almost certainly have perjured himself time and time again. The question is though – why do so many people think he is a poof?

If I were a Bond Villian, I’d be … Octopussy!? And if I were an evil criminal…
Which Evil Criminal are You?

Watch in awed wonder. The crab that I coloured in yesterday has been wandering around London, scaring the tourists.

Must visit beautiful site of the day is nothing.ch.

Interesting toy of the day is Moodstats – a little application by the people behind k10k. You input several key characteristics of your day, every day along with a few notes and a diary entry. This information is sync’ed with a central database (if you register and pay ’em of course), allowing you to annotate your life. If it were linked with a web publishing application like Movable Type or Blogger it might become truly useful rather than just momentarily entertaining…

George Harrison has died. It’s being talked about on Metafilter and TCN. I’ve just listened to Here Comes The Sun – by way of a tribute. Ironically, it was only three months ago that Salon debunked rumours that he was dying.

Dan puts up a rogues gallery of his time in England. See if you can spot me.