John Smith

I wonder if John Smith feels violated when he sees a sample credit card. "How did they take a picture of that when it was in my wallet the whole time?" he might wonder. Or "Hey, I didn't give them permission to share my email address when I registered with example.com!" He must be pretty pissed off, too, when he sees other people drinking his beer, which, apparently, is extra smooth. He went to the trouble of labelling all the cans in his fridge with his name on and everything. Still didn't work.

Talking of names: Dell managed to misspell my surname at least twice on my order confirmation form. How so, when I made the order online and thus all my name and address details should have been stored and reproduced electronically? Maybe it's got something to do with the programmers they must have in that lovely Irish shipment depot. (They probably got their bh's and gh's mixed up in the Gaelic translation. Bless.) They had the usual "Whelan", as well as the more ambitious - and, I like to think, amphibian - "Whalan". (Or was it with a double "l"?) A certain mother of mine, whose identity I will not reveal (huh?), likes to say: "It's like the big fish with an "n". Me being me, like to be more pernickety and stick to the laws of first year science: not a "big fish", rather a "big seafaring mammal". I would pick nits, but I don't think whales have them because they (the nits) can't swim, or at least, don't like to get their feet wet and have to suffer the ignominy of getting sand stuck between their toes.

The Information Superhighway

I remember in those days when tinternet was still quite exclusive, and seemed a bit of a futuristic pipe dream. On this computer games show on CITV (what was it called, by the way?), the American presenter was really enthusiastic about the potential capabilities of what he kept calling the Information Superhighway. He said that one day it would be possible to order pizza and a video online. Well, I guess those days are here. But why isn't anyone calling it the Information Superhighway anymore? It sounds so much cooler. "The internet" or "the web" sound samey and kinda geeky after a while, especially when the over-thirties start saying it. "The Information Superhighway", however, has obviously been to a rebranding consultant. It sounds so much more exciting! It does get a bit mixed metaphorically when one starts to talk about "surfing the Information Superhighway" (I think the phrase deserves caps): surfer dudes across the world will be slapping their palms over their ears as I write to shut out the sound of board scraping ol' Mr Tar (short for Tarquin: he lives in Morningside, dontchaknow?) McAdam. Those fins will be a-breaking off. And I haven't even mentioned Helsinki yet. What? When things in this webby world of us are so quick and rushed, why not slow down and say a longer word for tinternet? And why say "the internet" when you can make it seem quainter with the addition of a non-apostrophized - Lynne Truss would be proud of me - Yorkshire "t" for "the"? The campaign starts here. And remember, you read it here first. Remember too, that you're probably not reading this.

Morning pages

I'm not sure whether I should start writing my morning pages on here. Go look up Julia Cameron if you don't know what I'm talking about. I've got a few problems with doing them here: 1) They're not supposed to be read by anyone, not even me. 2) How do I know when I've written three pages, when this baby is all one big long, stretchy page. 3) If I write them on the Information Superhighway (more on that later), then I miss out on using my lovely fountain pen. (My screen would get a bit messy if I tried to write with that here.) Any ideas? Would all you people that are not reading this anyway, want to read my morning pages? It would just be whatever comes to my head at the time, probably quite personal and kind of an inside job.

But the good news if I actually wrote them here would be that I would actually be using this blog, which the lovely people at Blogger keep sprucing up, and all for free, thanks to Google.

The thing that reads this page the most is either me when I check to see how measly my wee counter is doing, or Google web crawler. By the way, you'd think he'd have learnt to walk by now.

God

What has he done for you, lately?

What Woody Allen has to say

The wicked at heart probably know something.