It's a Ben thing

Looking at videos of myself memorising cards has shown me that I fiddle with my beard when I'm concentrating. I had absolutely no idea I did that. It does explain why last week at work when people were talking about some obscure subject and I was wondering whether to jump in with my huge store of trivial knowledge or just get on with my work, a colleague said "Ben's stroking his beard, that means he's got something to say..."

Obviously it's a thing that I do. I bet it's a real giveaway when I'm playing poker, too.

Go and qualify for the XMT!

Everyone is cordially invited to try to beat this time and submit it on the training website



You're also invited to set your video camera up in the right position so that your head can be seen - I'm slightly concerned that my video doesn't follow the rules and would get my qualification attempt disqualified if not for the fact that I qualify automatically and I'm only doing this for fun. I hope the people in charge would be generous and let me off the hook if I asked them nicely.

After all, I went to all the trouble of setting my seldom-used video camera up on top of my ironing board and a precarious pile of the first books that came to hand. And looking at the eclectic selection of books made me wonder if I really need to have quite so many books lying around the place - there was "The Reality Dysfunction" by Peter E Hamilton (borrowed from a friend many years ago, never returned and never read), "Still - William" by Richmal Crompton, the Bible (can't claim to have read that all the way through either), "Tawny Talent" by Falcon Travis (book about cub scouts that I've owned since I was a cub scout myself and haven't opened or glanced at since those days), "The Woman In White" by Wilkie Collins and "Under The Dome" by Stephen King.

I did do a time of 22.98 in another qualification attempt, but wasn't anywhere close to getting the recall right...

Or let's talk about comics!

What I should have mentioned yesterday is that it was Stan Lee's 92nd birthday. He's still awesome. People who say "he created Spider-Man" or any other cool superhero you could name are missing the point, you know. It wasn't a case of "wow, a man with sort of spider-like powers, what a brilliant idea!", it was "hey, a superhero with real-life problems that I can relate to!" It was the whole different approach to comics that Stan Lee pulled out of his brain in a creative few years in the early 1960s, and that's why he's still so awesome fifty-something years later.

Let's talk football

There needs to be more about football on the internet, after all. So let's hear it for Southampton - half-way through the season and they're in the Champions League places! I'm pretty sure nobody expected that; or at least I know I didn't. At the start of the season I was saying 'oh, that's a shame, they had a great season last year, but now they've cashed in and sold all their star players, that's going to backfire on them in a big way, I bet they get relegated now.' Well, that shows what I know. Three cheers for the Saints.

That leaves me with a bit of a dilemma as a non-specific-team-supporting football fan, though. I really want Arsenal to finish fourth again, mainly because I'm such a big fan of homeostasis, but now I also want Southampton to finish in the top four because they've confounded my expectations so hugely. Which means I won't be satisfied unless Man Utd have a really disastrous 2015 and slide out of contention, and that's not a nice thing to wish on such an illustrious team. I suppose I'd also be satisfied with the same thing happening to Chelsea or Man City, but let's be realistic here, that's not going to happen.

If it's any comfort to the Man Utd fans out there, I don't care in the slightest about West Ham, so Man Utd can finish 6th (after Spurs - homeostasis again) and still qualify for the Europa League, probably. I don't mind that.