Pocket Dragons, Pocket Dragons, POCKet Dragons!

Woohoo! I just discovered today that the channel Tiny Pop (737 on Virgin, 625 on Sky, if like me you've got Virgin, don't trust the onscreen TV guide, use the one on the website) is showing Pocket Dragon Adventures! I wholeheartedly approve of this development! Tiny Pop is a sister channel to the one that showed old Transformers cartoons, and indeed between them they have a huge range of 80s and 90s cartoons - most of them along the lines of My Little Pony and Strawberry Shortcake, but I'm sure there are some good ones lined up too.

So please tune in to it if at all possible, because we need to spread Pocket Dragon love around the world again! Today's episodes were "Yonder Lies The Castle Of My Wizard" and "Pillow Squawk", but if they're showing the later episodes with poor artwork and uninspired stories, I'm confident that they're also going to show all the classics too.

In more domestic news, I feel that I need to sing the praises of Flash Multi-Surface Wipes. As anyone who's been to my flat and survived the experience knows, I seldom clean the place, but these wipes are amazing at cleaning up five years' accumulated filth! My kitchen sink is positively sparkling! My cooker looks brand new! No longer are all my appliances coated in a thick layer of unidentified brown gunk! It's great!

London beckons

Last weekend before the UK championships, so with any luck a full day of practicing tomorrow, then resting my brain for the week beforehand (with maybe a speed cards here or there in an evening). I still need to book a hotel, of course, but I'll leave that to the last second, same as always. It's more fun that way.

The BBC want to put me in a documentary, and also Central Tonight want me on the show again, impressing people on the streets of Nottingham with memory tricks. I'm thinking about it, but I still haven't really got over the novelty of being able to say "sorry, I've got a real job, I just do memory things in my spare time" again...

Legends? II'M more legendary than these guys!

For want of anything more productive to do, seeing as it's hot and I feel lazy, I'm watching the England v Germany "Legends" game. I take issue with the "legend" label being attached to some of these players - most of them were second-rate when they were young, and some of them aren't old enough to qualify as legends in my book, barely older than me in some cases. Still, Chris Woods's Weetabix save to let in the first goal brought back some childhood memories, so I can't complain.

I have a feeling my stomach's going to be complaining, though. I went out to buy a pint of milk and ended up getting a big bag of liquorice allsorts. Again. Someone needs to stop Woolworth's selling unhealthy foodstuffs at low prices.

Living space

It's a good thing I'm not urgently looking for a flat in Beeston, because there aren't any! Or at least there are, but they're all too big or too expensive or too unpleasant. It's annoying - Beeston is roughly the size of Boston (and it's nearly the same word too, just with an ee instead of an o) and I never had any trouble finding a place to live in Boston. Possibly it's the Credit Crunch I keep hearing about. Perhaps everybody's so poor that they can't afford to rent out one-bedroom flats. I bet it's Gordon Brown's fault. Everything is, nowadays.

Hooray for job stability!

It's really fantastic to be able to turn down an offer to appear on Richard and Judy because I've got my day job to do. Well, technically I'm not in a position to turn them down just yet, I've just heard that they might be interested in having me on the show, among others, to talk about the upcoming UK championship. But if they do go ahead with it, you can look forward to seeing something memory-related on Friday's show. Probably not me, though.

Cats (not the musical)

There's a couple of cats who've taken to hanging around the front of my house - a black and white one and a ginger. Neither of them are very friendly, but the ginger one in particular seems to think that the entire street belongs to her, and can often be seen lying spread out on the pavement on hot days, getting up and walking away with an aggrieved expression whenever a human has the nerve to come too close.

It's made me want a cat or two of my own. Well, I've always sort of wanted to have cats around the place, but it's more at the forefront of my mind now. Maybe I'll find a place in Beeston with a garden and acquire a cat to live in it. Or just make friends with a neighbour's cats - all the fun of a furry friend without the need to spend money on cat food and vets' bills. Either way, there should definitely be more cats in my life than there are at the moment.

Vote for this guy!

I've always been vaguely contemptuous of the way Americans can't appoint anybody to any position of the slightest authority without holding at least 73 different elections, but it seems that Washington state have adopted a new system that I think is really quite groovy. They're having a "Top 2 Primary" election from which the two candidates with the most votes go forward to the real election later in the year.

The practical effect of this system is to actively encourage loonies to stand for Governor, Congress, and all the millions of other things Washington's voters will be voting for, and enables normal people to vote for the loony of their choice with a clear conscience, knowing that enough other normal people with less of a sense of humour will vote for the two real candidates (there are only two parties in the USA, remember) to get them through to the real election. I wish I lived in Washington. All the fun of voting, safe in the knowledge that the result is a foregone conclusion!

If I did live there, this guy would definitely get my vote for Governor. His qualifications for the position? "As an artist and inventor I have come up with an invention that will solve all of the world’s problems. I have invented an air engine that has the power to operate an automobile while relying on air as its fuel source. Adoption of this technology would mean an end to reliance on fossil fuels, stopping carbon-monoxide emissions, pollution and global warming."

What makes Javier O Lopez really cool is that he just slips this into the middle of an otherwise more or less sensible platform for election. He's in favour of reducing the tax burden on lower-income Washingtonians, improving the education system (well, his website doesn't actually say that he intends to improve the education system, it just points out that it's really bad at the moment, but I assume he means to do something about it if he's elected) and listening to the people of the state. Which is pretty liberal for a man who proudly tells us that he was actively involved in campaigning for Richard Nixon.

If you're in Washington state, go out and vote for Javier! And see if you can get him to make you one of those air engines!

Tis the season!

Memory season! I'm really in the mood now. UK Championship two weeks away, and I've done a practice run of the whole thing today (except names & faces, dates and words, but I never practice those and I do well enough in them. Except names & faces) and I might just do the same tomorrow. It's all about getting the brain used to memorising for long periods, so as I don't get bored or tired in the middle of the competition.

Actually, you know, life is good. I've got a fantastic job, lots of weird and wonderful friends to chat to, lots of memory competitions coming up, there's Dad's Army on telly all night, and I might even have two pennies to rub together some time soon. What more could anyone want?

Friday!

Hooray for weekends! But also, hooray for weekdays, because I'm really enjoying my new job. It's the perfect job for me, and I think I'm also just about perfect for the job. So everyone's happy! Hmm, I really need to find more things to blog about. Maybe instead of training all weekend, I'll go out and do something fun...

I make it seventeen days come Friday since anybody spoke to me

I get the feeling that my blog hasn't been all that interesting just lately. It's working nine to five that does it - when I'm doing the same thing every day, it doesn't inspire me to write about interesting stuff. And I blame this for why I haven't had much in the way of comments on my blog just lately. Even so, I would like to know somebody's still out there. Say something!

Possibly on the subject of whether I should get some new "business cards" for the UK Championship. I was thinking of retiring the "Ben Pridmore, idiot" ones and going with "Wile E Coyote, genius (have brain, will travel)"

Superhuman Genius (later than advertised)

Seems that it's been put back to Monday August 18th, rather than the 11th. But while this means it probably won't persuade new competitors to come to the UK Championship (on the 16th and 17th), it does mean that anyone who's travelled to Britain to compete might be able to stay until Monday night and see me on TV!

Although I'm only on for ten minutes at most, in a documentary about lots of superhuman geniuses, and these people will have seen me for rather more than ten minutes over the past three days, so I won't be offended if visiting memorisers don't want to watch it. Really.

I haven't done enough training!

Cripes, it's the UK Memory Championship in two-and-a-bit weeks! I need to seriously practice this weekend and next! I've got a title to defend! Actually, I don't know who's coming (early estimates suggested that every memory person I know was planning to turn up, but I haven't spoken to anyone for a while), whether there are prizes (I'd be happy with a cool trophy like last year's, but I wouldn't turn my nose up at another free trip to Bahrain if there's one going), where I'm going to stay (nasty hotel down the road from the venue, or nice but stupidly expensive one across the road? Probably neither and a bed-and-breakfast in Crawley because it's the nearest place with a room free when I finally get round to booking) or whether I'll be able to go to the Monday-morning prizegiving ceremony (might have to work that day) and whether the WMSC will officially strip me of my title if I'm not (probably not - I think I'm in their good books at the moment, or at least their indifferent books. I haven't accidentally offended anyone for weeks. As far as I know.)

This is what I get for missing the German championship. Everybody else probably had a whale of a time there, talking about all these things, and talking about me behind my back. Although they could have talked about me even while I was there, if they did it in German, and I still would have been none the wiser. I don't think I've spoken a word of German for more than a year now. I'm probably even worse at it now than I was before.

Right! Practice! And if you're reading this and you're going to the UK championship, post a comment and let me know! Keep me informed!

Ooooh, shiny!

I got one of the new-design 2p coins in my change yesterday, for the first time. I have to say, although I don't think there was any reason to change the classic designs on the back of coins, the new ones are actually rather groovy. They're stylish and modern, in a good way. It makes a pleasant change from the kind of awful design that the powers that be often end up commissioning for vast sums of money from popular but talentless designers. The 2012 Olympics logo, for instance. But I like the new coins. I think I'm going to start a collection.

I'm doing surprisingly well

I haven't yet slipped into my usual working routine of quickly ironing a shirt each morning before I go to work. I've got everything washed and ironed, plus the shopping done, at the weekend with plenty of time to spare. This kind of efficiency and advance preparation is alien to me, and I'm sure it won't last. Possibly tomorrow morning I'll oversleep, just to make up for it, and arrive at work an hour late.

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!