Walsingham

Seriously. Airbus is a terrible name. No bloke in a thousand dollar suit wants to buy buses. Buses are for poor people, and travelling mass murderers.

Here. ere eh

Well, it's cool to have him on the team at all.

That sucks. You must need to wee all the time.

I must have one of those brainslug wool hats.

What puzzles me, as a novice to Euro politics, is how Merkel is driving this whole Deutschland Unter Alles approach. The Russians and Chinese have (so I'm told) taken the view that they can simply let Greece and Italy go to wall then buy all the bits at knockdown rates. Lower risk on the final product. I also find it interest how the polemic swirls around the issue like smoke round a burning house. I overheard some people in the pub revealing that Greek state railway employees were on an AVERAGE salary of 60k. This sort of thing ha the inevitable consequence of making me regard the whole sorry lot as a bad job, and a crash as the ineluctible consequence.

Borderlands, baby. A lot more fun than I was expecting.

Maybe there are indeed things in the Universe that are best left untouched. Maybe native Aussies and Kiwis just have some kind of genetic disposition towards the game. I look at the screen and see nothing, yet they (the natives) will go Ooh!, Yay! and Ahh! simultaneously, like some kind of secret handshake or message passing between them Just treat it like opera. You don't need to understand the words to enjoy the experience.

As awkward as it is financially, I have to applaud the decision by Greece to have a referendum. This way the people who want it both ways will have to make a ****ing choice, and the government can get on with going one way or another. Plus there's this thing I heard about called 'democracy'. Apparently the Greeks invented it, but the EU doesn't want them using it.

Tell her not to. ~ Gorth. Speaking as an English gentleman I must urge you not to try and understand cricket. That is what umpires and commentators are for. Cricket is to be enjoyed, not understood. ~~ I don't know if it's something to do with having three different jobs of work on, but I'm ravenously hungry all the bloody time.

Too knackered. I had resolved to give any visiting parents of children martinis. No one showed.

We could always start, and if Blank comes back let him take over? What if we kicked off with something really simple, like a house full of spiders?

I ought really to have chosen a less contentious subject by way of illustration. Like the council planning department or somesuch. So, we have an element of: - payment - exchange of products or services - a reciprocal exchange of duties in the processing of the relationship (cal's example) I may be dragging things off beam, but I suggest that as well as paying for the items exchanged one always pays for the way in which the exchange occurs. We like to exchnage in a pleasant environment, to be taken seriously, to receive subservience (not including deviants). Cal's example is one of people attempting to get more from their exchange with MacD's than they have paid for. They want to dawdle and luxuriate in their freedom of choice. To make the order clerk jump back and forth. In fact I don't know why it's never occurred to me before, but I wonder how much of the public's fascination with big fast food is a quasi S&M desire to find someone who can be ordered around?

It's funny isn't it. Rejection must be one of the few things which doesn't get better with practice! ~ Up betimes and to work as normal. A variety of thinsg on my plate, all pretty interesting. Still paniciking about the general economy, or at least its deletrious effect on the midddle management of this moronic country. There's a couple of million middle aged men and women who could use having Malcador's motivational message branded on their arms with hot irons. ~ Nep, Raithe, for God's sake move on. Enough said.

I have to say that trailer left me grinning. I would probably go see it.

Well the commonest view, which I think is a misconception, is that one pays for something. But that's balls, surely? Example: a soldier goes to his pay clerk and takes ten shillings. He walks out the door and the next day he attacks a fort with bullets and all whatnot flying about. Now, has the clerk become his customer? Is his colonel his customer? He is the bugger ordering him about. Simply exchanging money with someone does not make one person a customer and the other a vendor.

I swear to you I never met the donkey before...

Whoah whoah whoh. Slow down. We need to field strip this baby if we're going to find the broken part. Concentrate. What makes me recognisably a customer in ANY situation. To an alien from the planet Zmormphm.

That's a lie. Evolution doesn't exist. God created the Earth in seven days for humans to enjoy and destroy. Awesome. How much does it cost to hire a circular saw and a continuously looped tape of There Goes the Neighbourhood by Bodycount?

QActually, I wasn't angling for alternatives to the British system. I'm thinking there's something fundamentally awry with the notion that being a customer makes the relationship healthy. Even in situations where you - for example - buy a sandwich, you can end up shafted. On the other hand, being a customer can be very good. I'm curious what the factors are at work.

No, mate. It's bloody art.

I got pretty down about the economic outlook on Friday. Went out for drinks with friends. The drinks didn't help, but the friends did. Spent yesterday working in the morning then bought a small keg of beer and went to a new friends for a mammoth wargaming session. It's been ages since I did any tabletop and I'd forgot how arguing about the rules, forgetting to add +1 and so on. It was half the fun. Came home pretty drunk, but remarkably happy. Unfortunately my good mood disappeared in th enight and I dreamed about my house falling part which is hardly very subtle, brain.

I'd quite like some seafood now, actually. Baked, maybe, with a little herb salad. I recently discovered an Armenian restaurant where they serve a slad of just fresh herbs and walnuts. Surprisingly tasty.

Very grateful for all your thoughts so far. I'm particularly struck by the (good natured) disjunct between the 'I pay you. You do what the contract says' approach and a more nuanced one. I will need time to digest them.

Bollito Misto would be my choice. Several kinds of boiled meat, served with the broth and a bunch of condiments.