Avast, ye scurvy lubbers

When it's really hot and sunny like this, my hat is uncomfortably sweaty. But since I need to wear something on my head to protect my bald shiny skull, and since I found an old bandana in one of my boxes of junk recently, I've taken to wearing a bandana when I go out. I think it looks seriously groovy. Especially when I'm also wearing my shades. However, I wasn't entirely convinced that I look good until today, when I was walking through town dressed like that (and a T-shirt saying "Aesculap Memo Masters 2007", in honour of the German championship happening in Tuttlingen today) and a small girl in a pushchair pointed to me and said (conversationally, as if it wasn't anything unusual or unexpected) "He's a pirate."

This is absolutely fantastic, and a huge improvement on "He's that one off the telly who lost to a monkey." Which, incidentally, is likely to happen if I go to Chicago any time soon - Jemfy saw me on telly there last night, being beaten by good old Ayumu. But now, everyone who sees me is clearly going to think "Hey, a pirate. Cool." I'm sure it's not just two-year-old girls who think that way.

I think I would still rather have been in Tuttlingen, but congratulations to Hannes for winning the German Memory Championship! I'm sure that more than makes up for him not being mistaken for a pirate today (as far as I know).

Spiders!

I don't get addicted to things very often. I even stopped drinking coke a couple of weeks ago to see if it would help me lose weight (the jury's still out on that one) without so much as a withdrawal symptom. But I do have a real weakness for spider solitaire. I actually deleted it from my laptop a year or so ago, because I was spending all my time playing it, but recently it occurred to me that I couldn't remember how to play, so I looked for it on the internet, downloaded it, and now I'm all addicted again. It's annoyingly compulsive. Are there rehab centres for this kind of thing?

Movie night!

I must find the time to go to the cinema. I really want to see Wall-E, and Batman looks like it's worth watching too. I wanted to look up when they're on at the big new cinema in the Westfield centre, but I can't remember what it's called, and internet searches haven't been much use. I could, of course, get on my bike and cycle down there in roughly sixty seconds, but I've got the internet, I disapprove of leaving the house to find information that I should be able to find by just sitting here and letting my legs fall off from lack of use.

I suppose I could just download the films instead of going out, come to think of it. Those TV adverts make it look like such a cool thing to do, with people coming and serenading you...

Doomed to stay in Derby

There's a real shortage of decent, affordable flats in Beeston. Maybe I'll just live on the street and carry all my posessions around with me in my trusty rucksack. It'll save me a lot of money in the long run. I'm surprised more people don't do that, instead of moaning about the difficulty of getting on the property ladder.

Hey, it's my blog, I can write what I want

Although the only thing that comes to mind to write tonight is an extensive list of observations about the Thundercats episode "Mandora - The Evil Chaser", by William Overgard. A really great episode, but watching it (as I did tonight) inspires a huge amount of criticism of plot flaws, voice acting problems and artistic issues (although actually, this was one of the better-drawn stories). And as far as I know, there's only one of my readers who'd know what I'm talking about, and he already knows everything I'm going to say.

But maybe I'm wrong. Would you, my readers, like to read a big long blog full of comments like "Why doesn't the Sword of Omens react when Quickpick steals it? When we see it later on, the Eye is wrapped up in rope (the normal way of deactivating it), but even if it was Quickpick who did that, and not the Mudhogs, how does he know to do that before touching it?"

Or "At the end of the episode, when the Thundercats 'all' chorus the final line, everybody's lips move, but only Tygra and Wilykit are audible. Were they just too lazy to overdub the other characters (who are voiced by the same actors)? And why can't we hear Panthro? He didn't share an actor with either of the characters we can hear."

And why does Mandora bellow "They're tying us to the ladders!" when the Mudhogs do so to her and Quickpick? Quickpick, presumably, has noticed this himself without being told, and there's nobody else around.

I've got about a million more of these, from this episode alone. It's a good job I'm going to refrain from posting them tonight.

Attention, viewers!

If you happened to be watching Granada Reports at 6:15 today, you would have seen my friend Gilly and her shop. Sorry I didn't get the message in time to advertise it in the blog, but if you saw it but don't know Gilly, well, now you can appreciate it all the more!

Here's an advance thing to set your video for (assuming you're still using an analogue TV/video setup) - "Superhuman: Genius", a documentary about various clever people and also me, will be on ITV1 at 9:00pm on Monday 11th August. Watch it and be in awe of my superhuman genius!

Mutter, moan, complain

Dagnabbit, I really, really wish I was going to the German championship next weekend. If nothing else, it's always such good preparation for the world championship, but also I want to catch up with all the latest memory gossip, see what everybody's up to, talk about the rest of the competitions to come this year, and so on. There are some things you don't find out just by emailing and posting on internet forums. Besides, I'd rather be just hanging out with fun memory people than working. But hey, it's my own fault for spending so long jobless. And I always under-perform at the German championship and feel annoyed with myself anyway (except last year, when I was brilliant).