Crappy quiz result 'o the week
I know I'm on record swearing off quizzes forever, but this really is the last one.

Wishing I were French
Ever wish you were French? I do. I think a lot of people do. I want to live a life of left bank cliché. I’d grow a goatee, wear black and take up residence in obscure riverside Cafes that have somehow escaped the notice of tourists.

There I’d eat tofu snails while scribbling my deeply felt poetry on coffee stained napkins. Just occasionally I’d raise my world-weary head, sneer at the passing parade and argue politics with smart, stylish and damn-near impossibly good-looking women named Yvette or Bouillabaisse. The sort of women who own poodles and who could be supermodels, if they wanted.

You just don’t get much of that kind of thing in England, and none at all in Redhill. The nearest I could hope for is to invest in a Frappaccino at the Gatwick Airport Starbucks. If I was lucky an Airport Security Guard might wander over and ask me what I thought I was playing at. I'd just sneer.

Maybe I should move to Paris. I might even buy a beret.

Why I've decided to become a ninja
I like Ninjas because they are totally awesome and cut off heads and flip out all the time and don't even think twice about it. They like Hippos, hate Pirates and ghost stories, wail on their guitars a lot, sometimes they kill themselves with Frisbees (for no reason at all) and generally go around in black pyjamas having REAL Ultimate Power!! These guys are cool; and by cool, I mean totally sweet. Or at least that's what this guy says.

A foreign country is like the past - They eat different biscuits there
If you take a look over in my right hand sidebar, you should see my little Flooble Chatterbox. Wonderful things, chatterboxes. In recent weeks there has been a heated debate underway, if one fought rather slowly. I have an image in my head of The Six Million Dollar Man meets Prime Minister's Question Time, where chocolate-crazed MPs jump out of their seats to debate in slow motion.

"Oooonnnn thaaattt veeerrryyy ppooooiiinnnttt, Miisssteeeer Speeeaakeeeer..."

Do you remember that whenever Steve Austin went all slo-mo bionic, there was this strange sound effect they used? Just what was that sound supposed to be anyway? Did he really creak?

But I digress. The debate started, as such things often do, with the Australian chocolatey goodness that is the Tim Tam. Some of you pointed out, rather unhelpfully I thought, that in the time I've been away from Australia, Tim Tam technology has advanced in leaps and bounds. I hear wild, unsubstantiated reports of dark, white and even fudgey Tim Tams. I'll believe it when I see it. I suspect that when I next touch down in Terra Australis I will try these new fangled abominations, but will probably remain an ardent Tim Tam Traditionalist.

For a while there the British contribution, Jaffa Cakes, held the ground. I've yet to meet anyone who doesn't love the melt-on-the-roof-of-your-mouth chocolate-orange tanginess of a Jaffa Cake.

And please don't get me started on the whole Is it a cake or a biscuit? debate. That way leads to madness. The real issue with Jaffa Cakes, as every true fan knows, is How do you eat them? Do you hollow out the sponge first? Or lick off the chocolate? Or you do the go through the old Full Moon, Half Moon, Total Eclipse lark, made famous by the old ad.

Someone else brought up Chocolate-Covered Digestives. I'm not even going to dignify that one with a response.

I've a feeling that I might be leaving our American and Canuckian friends scratching their heads at this point. Just for you, let me add another entrant to the discussion. The humble Oreo. God, I love those puppies. I love scraping off the cream bit with my lower front teeth, and then leaving it sitting under my toungue while the chocolate biscuit part (or cookie part, if you insist) is momentarily dunked in coffee and then left to disolve on my tongue. After a while I squelch all the disolved chocolate stuff with the cream, and swirl the whole mess around inside my mouth before swallowing.

But that's just me.

I'm actually surprised that Wagon Wheels never made it to the debate. In case you don't know, the Wagon Wheels available in the UK are of a very poor standard. Very poor indeed.

They're smaller than the Australian variety and they don't have any jam in the middle, just that god-awful white faux-marshmellowy stuff. I understand that at some point, within living memory, the jam was removed. Which genius came up with that idea? For reference purposes, I believe that in certain parts of the US a Moonpie fills the same culinary niche.

I see from the old sidebar that the debate has now moved onto Butterscotch Pudding. Mmmmm. Speaking of "pudding," here's one of those "don't they do things funny over there" type observations -- Did you know that in the UK they use the word pudding to describe ALL deserts. In fact, they use it instead of the word desert! How freaky is that?

UPDATE!
Are British Wagon Wheels really smaller than their Australian counterparts? Before I made such harsh allegations, perhaps I should have taken the time to learn about the insidious Wagon Wheel Effect. According to the folks at the BBC's Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy Project:

The Wagon Wheel Effect describes a phenomenon witnessed by over 90% of adults in the Western World as they move from childhood into adolescence and adulthood. It usually works like this: one day you enter your local sweet shop and happen to notice they sell Wagon Wheels - those delicious chocolate and marshmallow treats. Overcome by nostalgia for when your mother used to buy them for you, you get some but are horrified to discover they have shrunk. Not just shrunk, in fact, they seem to be tiny. It used to take you the best part of an hour to eat a Wagon Wheel; it was a meal in itself. Now you can pop the whole thing into your mouth in one go. Your mind fills with disgust at the greedy confectionery corporations who have conspired to make smaller and smaller sweets as you have gotten older. As if inflation isn't bad enough, they have to go and do this as well...

Of course the reality is much harder to accept - it is your grubby paws and salivating mouth that have got much larger; Wagon Wheels are the same size they always were, more or less.

Well, I never!

(Fifty bonus points for anyone who gets the reference in this entry's heading)

The slag of all snacks
Yet another entry in an occasional series devoted to the funniest ads in the world. For those who don't know, Pot Noodlesare a British brand of noodles sold in... err... a pot. And because they come in a special heat resistant plastic pot, they are, of course, much tastier than other brands of instant noodles. This student staple holds the same place in budget minded British hearts that Kraft Macaroni and Cheese Dinner holds in some other countries.

The current ad for Pot Noodles playing on British television is truly magnificent. It tells the story of a man unsatisfied with the everyday snacking pleasures provided by his good lady wife. We follow him on a journey into a seedy underworld of illicit snack shops and live food shows, where almost any snack can be had. For a price. He searches high and low, but no one seems willing to "Do Pot Noodle."

At long last our hero finds a women willing to sate his creepy culinary cravings. "Round the back in ten minutes," she wantonly growls.

There, sitting on a rather large bed, our bouncy freak and friend devour a couple of pot noodles, moaning with delight as bad seventies porn music plays in the background.

"That felt so wrong, yet it felt so right," he exclaims.

View Ad in Real Video: Pot Noodles - "The Slag of all Snacks."

BB Noms
It's Jonny and Sophie. For a breakdown of nominations, click here.

Not sleeping rough in SW19 -- Yet!
The Wimbledon journey has been postponed for a couple of days. Both Mark and Dave are interested, but they can't do it until Wednesday night/Thursday. I'm tempted to go ahead as planned, and then repeat the experience with Mark and Dave later in the week, but I really need to watch my budget. Actually, it is starting to look a little grey out there, so waiting might be the best bet all round.

Sleeping rough in SW19 -- POSTPONED TIL WED/THU
Tonight is going to be a bit different. Not for me the comforting embrace of cotton sheets. This night I sleep under the stars. This night I’ll be joining two thousand fellow tennis fans on the cruel streets of Wimbledon.

After I post this entry, I’ll have a quick shower, pack a few essentials, and head off. I’m not sure how early the queue starts to form, but I want to be early. Each day, for the first week, there are about five hundred tickets available for centre court and court one, and I want one. If I’m not one of the first five hundred, I will have to make do with one of the six thousand ground tickets for outside courts.

I want strawberries! I want cream! I want champagne (on the cover of a magazine).

Just before I go...
This guy's cat hates you.

Fuga-gar-googolplex
And speaking of Google, have you heard about the Google Challenge? The idea is to write a blog entry on a given subject. There is just one subject per week and at the end of that week, the judges do a Google search. First blog returned by Google, wins!

This week's subject is "Elephant's Toes."

That's right, the poor saps doing the Google Challenge have to write a piece about Elephant's Toes. Now that's tough!

Anyway, here is the best one I've read so far. While not strictly about Elephant's Toes, it's very funny and worthy of your time. So click, sit back and enjoy the wonderful tale of Joanne and her Kitten Toes.