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!