Things I Hate

I've been building kitchen cabinets again this week. I have one more to build and then I'm ready for phase II. I'm under a certain amount of pressure in phase II because I could potentially end up with no functional kitchen if it goes wrong. I don't know what I would do in that case. I think I'd have to ship the family off to Devon and complete it alone. My biggest worry is currently the oven. I've built the housing, but I'm not exactly sure how the oven fits in it. I have to put all the feet on the cabinets also. I'm also slightly concerned about putting a hole in the working surface to accommodate the new hob.

I rather wish I had the opportunity to see the Led Zeppelin show in London in November. However. I happen to know that the capacity of the O2 arena is something like 20,000, and the demand so far has been something like 20,000,000. So that's a 1 in 1,000 chance of actually getting a ticket, and they're £125 each anyway, which is, let's face it, not cheap. It could potentially be a life changing experience however. There are things I would rather do, like pose in a Spencer Tunick piece, or see John Lee Hooker live. Of course that last one is unlikely now since he's dead. I'd also have some very serious thinking to do if I was given the choice between the Led Zep show in London, and the Penn and Teller show in Las Vegas. The Led Aep show would win, but only because it's a one off.

The thing that gets me about the Led Zep thing is that the guys clearly have earning potential of Jovian proportions, but don't seem to care. The London gig will take about £250,000 on the door alone. That's before tv rights are sold and recordings made. How rich must these guys be not to want to exploit that? I mean, it wouldn't exactly kill them to do say six shows a year. That's about 24 hours work, doing something they clearly love anyway. And they only have to split the profits three ways since the drummer dude died in a pool of his own vomit 25 years ago. Sad, but so rock and roll. I'm sure he would have wanted it that way.

There are many things I hate in this world; Tony Blair, Bluetooth headsets, BMWs, folding bicycles, George W Bush, about 60% of the indigenous population of Swindon, the Daily Mirror, pot smokers, reality tv, badgers, car horns, denim, chavs, Nationwide Building Society, anti globalisation protesters, oh I could go on, but I'll spare you. Right now, most in the world I hate noisy food. Carl in the office came in at lunchtime eating something out of a bag. I don't know what it was, but it appeared to be brown pieces of something very hard. Eating it was not possible without crunching apparently. It was like listening to an elephant stamping across a gravel drive. After about 10 minutes I actually left the room. I returned some time later and was relieved to see that the bag of brown something had gone, so I sat back down at my desk. And bugger me if the moment I sat down the elephant started walking across the gravel drive again. He'd only gone and given it to Steve. I left the room again.

Two armed men have been shot dead by police while trying to rob a bank - good, I hope it hurt. It's nice to read about the British police actually foiling a crime for once isn't it.

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The above was written yesterday but not published because I left it at work - doh! I've now finished building all the kitchen cabinets for phase II and I'm ready to go. I've even put the feet on the cabinets. I haven't built the drawers yet, but I have put the runners in the base units. We need to empty the existing cabinets tonight and, if I have time I'll try and work out how the new oven goes in the housing. We can probably manage without an oven if we have to, but I'd rather get it installed. The work surface is going to be 3m long, and since they are sold in 3m lengths I was quite pleased that I wouldn't have to cut it. However, I measured it last night and it seems to be over 3m, so I guess I'll have to get the circular saw out anyway. I've never used a circular saw before. If I start typing strangely next week, it's likely that I sawed off some fingers.

Yesterday I discovered that we can get a Chinese language tv station at home. I had no idea, but it's quite fun, so I ordered it yesterday. It seems to come out of Hong Kong and London, but is not PRC censored and appears to carry Taiwanese programming as well as Mainland Chinese, Korean, and others.

Gordon Sumner, better known as Sting, is in very deep smeg indeed this morning. Just about every sleazy tabloid in Britain seems to be featuring the same picture of him emerging from a house of ill repute in the early hours of the morning. The pun prize goes to the Sun, who led with "Massage in a Brothel". He's going to have a job explaining that one to his wife.

Chris Langham is scheduled to find out today whether he will go to jail after being convicted of child porn charges earlier this month. My guess is that he will serve time. Probably by the time this is posted wwe ill know anyway.

And the Northern Rock Building Society has had to beg for assistance from the Bank of England. This is worrying. There have been reports this week of the housing market collapsing. And now a major mortgage lender has found itself in trouble, Hmmm.