Many people who write personal blogs — I’m not talking about professional bloggers, opinion formers, and shapers of the social media landscape here — are very quick to describe their own content as “rants”.  I’ve been extremely reluctant over the last few years to do this, and in fact if you were to search my site archive for that word you’d find it seldom appears.  That’s using Google, of course: for some reason if you use the built-in site search you get every instance of that 4 letter combination, including …

I emailed this to a few people recently, but there’s no reason it shouldn’t go unblogged…
One of my learned contemporaries is a chap by the name of Pete.  He lives in New York and goes by the moniker “Spiro” occasionally, or professionally/academically since being awarded his Ph.D. he’s become “Doctor Love”.  Here’s a picture:

Over the years Spiro’s professed a certain antipathy towards the dramatic arts (with the exception of his world-acclaimed performance in HMS Pinafore at Linden Park Primary School).
Early in July when I went into London’s glittering West End …

There’s a big difference between saying something amusing in response to a circumstance, and having a stock phrase or line to trot out whenever a certain thing happens (typically accompanied by a broad smile).  Personally, I’m absolutely shocking when it comes to the latter, but luckily if one circulates around enough hopefully to enough people the latter will seem like the former.
An example of this was the other day when I was tapping away on Facebook chat to a friend and they said “[X] has happened, and now I’m really …

Going back a few years when Brian & Olivia still lived in the fair town of London, we had a nice little get together involving a few vino rossos, a healthy amount of the talking of bullshit, and for some reason which now escapes me, the giving of some gifts.  Was it Christmas?  Hanged if I can remember.  But that’s hardly the point.
Catrin bestowed on me the utterly practical gift of a set of Reservoir Ducks: a gaggle of plastic ducks sporting ties and dark glasses (and only a natty …

OK, so you know sometimes how you get a weekend pretty much at home to yourself (other than going out to a picnic in a pub, and then down to Greenwich to farewell some friends who are moving back to Australia)?  Well, here’s what I did.
As well as tidying my room up, I went looking on YouTube for videos of people playing the Super Mario Brothers theme tune.
OK, so it turns out that many people on the planet have recorded themselves recreating this masterpiece in various forms — there are …

Apols for the break in transmission – things at this end are a little full-on.  After a lovely week away in Cornwall for the ‘Obby ‘Oss parade & associated funnery, I’ve contracted a shocking instance of the dreaded manflu, and on Wednesday I started at a new job!  Currently full to the eyeballs with new information, a massive raft of new business processes, and snot.  And about eyebrow-deep in the planning shennanigans for this year’s Westminster Day of Dance.  So don’t give me any shit.
Luckily, I found the following draft …

In which Jason photographs a load of shampoo. It’s riveting stuff.

Am currently in Plymouth with my d.ear chum Kat,. and. we’re meant to be working. on our NaNoWriMo novels. – s.he’s. up to about 37000 words. already………………………. whereas. I’m on about 2000 – only a few words. s.hort,. it s.eems………..
However so.me of the more as.tute of youl will have noticed. the so.mewhat unorthodo.x punctuation that appears. in this. pos.t alread.y – for reas.ons. known only to its.elf,. my ag.ing. Tos.hitba laptop has. elected. to mete out further sp.ite upon me by rand.omly ins.erting. full s.tops. into my text as. I …

Spiders and I have a bit of a non-agression pact going currently.  It wasn’t always this way, but then in Australia they’re usually going into the argument a little better equipped.
It started when I was about 8 or 9, and Dad made us a sort of cubby house in the back yard which was essentially a wooden motorcycle crate with 4 corner posts to raise it off the ground, and then we lined the underside with cardboard-box walls to create the requisite fortress.  The trouble was, being outdoors and next …

A bloke just walked into the office and asked if he could check our airconditioning after lunch.
Now, last time anyone futzed around with our aircon (“cleaning it”, I think was the term they used) it stopped working for about 4 weeks.  It wasn’t all that long ago either, really.
General consensus in here is therefore that systematically breaking, then repairing, the air conditioning unit in our office is some sort of modern day indoor equivalent of the Keynesian cornerstone theory of stimulating the economy by paying people to dig holes in …