Nothing like a drippy nose to get your spirits down. But I’m rather enjoying annoying people with my slurping snorts.

“Wont you look down upon me, Jesus
Youve got to help me make a stand
You’ve just got to see me through another day
My bodys aching and my time is at hand
And I wont make it any other way”

Fire and Rain – James Taylor

Went to the Salford Uni climbing wall with Jillian Jeh, Nabeel, Simon and Ali on Thursday under the protective wing of the University of Manchester Hiking Club (thank you). Had a great time although I couldn’t do any diificult climbing myself due to a gash in my finger trying to fix Sha’s car. But I was the “elderly & informed instructor” and with my own harness, shoes and belay device managed to look like an old hand. Luckily remembered the knots, but it’s like cycling; you never forget.

This weekend is football weekend; I played on Friday as usual (lost by 2 goals), then on Saturday Man Utd played Middlesborough away (2:2 draw), and today Chelsea v Tottenham, not to mention giants Watford v Plymouth!

This is a phrase that often crops up in my mind. It was used by two corrupt cops in the beautifully under-stated BBC comedy called ‘Early Doors’ about regulars at a typical Manchester worker’s pub called The Grapes talking about their day. 

Though I’m a big fan of Shameless, it seems to have got carried away somewhere along the line and become too convoluted and unreal; unnecessarily so in my opinion. Whereas Early Doors had that authenticity and Northern Humour that is typified by the title phrase; for example, these afore-mentioned cops come in the back door of the pub and talk to the landlord about how some rotten fink was caught making fake tenners and then pull some out of their pockets – “You can pass these over the counter, nobody will notice on a Friday night”. The landlord, not averse to fixing the odd pub lottery himself, is continually amazed and disgusted by these two, but needs them as cop buddies, just in case. 

As the two finish their double brandies and head back to duty in their police car, one goes “Got to get going” at which the other dutifully chimes in “Crime won’t crack itself, you know” 

Exquisite! 

And the book by Michael Cook sure lives up to its name.

I’m really enjoying this brief but comprehensive view that quilts together the separate patches of development in human history (were talking roughly 30,000 years to present).

Of course he has a say about human cultural tendencies, amongst which he has this line for monotheism.

“But if we are to pick out a single aspect of monotheism in this connection [its longevity], it might be less what monotheism embraces than what it rejects: other gods and the people who worship them. It is in the nature of montheism to pick a quarrel”.

This means that “There is only one god” actually has the subtext “…and that god is MY god, of course! And if you nincompoops don’t switch over, why I’ll have to bash your heads in till you believe! Persecute!! Kill!!”

Something else mentioned in the book reminded me of the film “Drop Dead Gorgeous” shown on BBC 1 on Wednesday night, where Denise Richards sings “I love you baby” to Jesus as part of her talent show in the beauty pageant and dances with a puppet on a cross!! Hilarious stuff!!

Extrapolation is a beautiful word. It comes from the Romany aggregation of the famous philosopher Extrapo Nemensis and the Latin –ation meaning “belonging to”. And they banged an “l” in between to make it scan nicely.

To me, it describes the amazing functioning of the human mind that, with enough data accumulated on a given situation, can predict/understand/act upon another, similar situation without having to know every particular of that latter situation.

As someone put it, imagine the relief of not having to check for gravity every morning before getting out of bed. And this does not mean that we know gravity “will be there”, we’ve just accumulated enough data about gravity to extrapolate that it’s not going anywhere. (Of course, I realise that if you have to get out of bed in the morning, you already know that gravity is pretty much switched on. Stop being persnickety!!)

I have received a spam e-mail advertising spam detection software. And I guess in a weird way it does make sense. I did receive the spam, therefore I must be in need of spam detection software.

I’m trying my best to make my snap more user-friendly for you. Does the little window that pops up when you hover over an external link annoy you? If so, I can put a special logo next to the link that you can hover over if you want the snap preview window.

As Bush said “It’s your money. You paid for it”

I was pleasantly surprised when the sudoku in today’s Mancheter Evening News put up more of a fight than usual. Of course, the end result was inevitable, but I was tiring of the easy sudokus they usually set.

I see any such puzzle as a personal thing between me and the paper. I mutter phrases like “So this is how you’re gonna play it, eh?” and “I’ll grind you down slowly, neveryoumind”.

In tbe news, women tennisists are going to get equal money at Wimbledon.

And I watched Snakes on a Plane (a movie about snakes on a plane) and Miami Vice. Both were so awful I’m considering slowly gouging my own eyes out with the wrong end of a rusty screwdriver. 

A very poor display by Manchester United yesterday away against Lille. They were very lucky to get three points out of the match. Or I should rather say Lille were very hard done by the referree to have a goal disallowed and then Giggsy’s free kick against them allowed. I really understood their frustration. One of their players (Greek) said in the post-match interview that they lost because they aren’t a big club like Man Utd and therefore decisions don’t go their way. It sure seemed like that yesterday.

We had a great Moroccan meat stew at Ali’s while watching the game. Yummy!

We dance round in a ring and suppose,

But the Secret sits in the middle amd knows.

-Robert Frost