Superwater

I think that I've discovered a new form of water. It can be found on the inside of my car windscreen at around 5:30 pm every night at this time of year. It is like ordinary water but it is impossible to mop up and appears from nowhere. Oh, and it is very hard to see through. Every night for the last few working days I've come out of my office, trudged through the dark and arrived at a car which seems to have frosted glass windows. I start the engine up and then spend five minutes scraping condensation from every surface, inside and out. Then I get in, drive 50 feet and find that the windscreen is now covered in my new discovery.

So I have to pull in to the side of the road and read a book until I can finally clear the darned stuff away. I don't remember seeing this kind of water before. It seems all thick and gloopy and you can't mop it up. There is probably a scientific name for it. I call it darned annoying.

I was quite pleased this evening (in a schaudenfraude kind of way) to see the car in front of me suddenly veer to the kerb and stop. Inside I could see frantic rubbing. I guess that I am not alone in my discovery.

Oboe Moods

I'd hate to be an oboe player. Number one daughter has been watching "Dawson's Creek". Whenever something bad happens they play some drippy piano music behind an oboe solo.

I can just imagine the instructions to the soloist. "Now, as the steamroller goes over her I want you to emphasise this with the shift into a minor key...."

Happy bits don't seem to involve oboes at all. Which is sad (oboe music plays in background).

Dancing with humble pie in my mouth

Hmm. Watched "Strictly Come Dancing" again tonight (rest of family likes it). The pro-celebrity dance championship is definitely hotting up, and I'm afraid I'm going to have to rethink my position on this. The way that they move around the dance floor is hugely impressive and the work involved must be enormous. And Bruce Forsythe wasn't in it much.

I think what I really hate is the grotty rehash chat show bit on every weekday night. But as for the dancers, they are superb.

Low Cunning for Cheap Comedy

For some time I've had a Napster subscription. I pay 10 pounds a month and I can listen to any kind of music on my PC. I can also load music onto my tablet and listen to music on that too. Very nice.

Of course I can't actually do anything with the music that I've loaded, since it is protected by all that nasty digital rights manglement stuff. If I want to burn a CD I have to buy the music, at 99 pence a track.

I took part in a Napster survey and got five free downloads. But what to buy? I've always liked comedy records so I took a look at the Monty Python catalogue. Turns out that one side of some of the Python albums is one track. So..... I can get two and a half complete albums with my freebies.

Lovely.

Pimp My Ride Rocks

When I get home from a hard day at the office I just love watching Pimp My Ride on MTV. The format is quite simple. A horrible old wreck of a car owned by some worthy individual is taken to a car customiser and given a serious going over. The result is average family hatchbacks being given garish paint jobs, spoilers, in car entertainment systems with earthquake power and even an in car water feature as in the show last night.

Wonderful stuff. The car customising gang all look deeply scary, but by gum they know their business. The MC who runs it, a rapper called Xzibit, oversees the whole proceedings with great gusto. I really like watching as these craftsmen do their stuff.

And the final point is that the folks who get their wrecks back as gleaming machines packed with goodies are soo pleased to have them. It really is a happy ending every time. And we can all do with more of those.