Your lover was an actress - did you really think she'd stay?

I'm very glad to see that Alan Hollingshurt won the Booker. Not that I've read this book, but The Swimming Pool Library was damn fine, vaguely reminiscent of Pater's Marius the Epicurean in its strangely arid hedonism and being as gay as a window. Whereas my previous encounter with the work of the favourite, David Mitchell, had me gagging at the sheer sixthformness of proceedings. And the new Mitchell is also SF-not-by-an-SF-author-and-which-denies-the-allegiance, normally a reliable indicator of dreadfulness.
It should still ideally have gone to Jonathan Strange & Mr Norrell, though.

On Saturday night, flattered but a little worried at the near-universal desire to try on my jacket, I proposed CSI: Barry's Jackets, in which any damage to my jackets is detected and dealt with by Jack Bauer, Vic Mackey and Wesley Wyndham-Price. Today, I discovered that one spoke of my umbrella has become detached from the hood, so feel their remit should be extended to all my possessions. The team could do with more variety too, so let's add Faith for some gender balance and Bill Nighy as the tech guy.

This weekend's oddest discovery, which I've somehow forgotten to mention 'til now: the phrase "snug as a bug in a rug" originates with Benjamin Franklin, and was first applied to a dead squirrel named Skugg.

Is there an easy way of searching a particular Livejournal? I've tried putting the individual's LJ within the 'results from the site or domain' box, but that always gets zero results. You can search within LJ as a whole, but that always returns fifteen pages of adolescent slash on the topic* rather than anyone you know's LJ.

( comics )

*Yes, whatever the topic. It's really quite alarming.

(no subject)

Last night I went to the supermarket at 8pm, pretty much the earliest you can attend without catching the rush-hour crush. They had sold out of the first three items on my shopping list, so I stropped out. I then tried to read the magazine from Saturday's Guardian, which turned out to be missing its central pages, including the two articles I most wanted to read. The problem at such times is that it's unclear exactly whose face one should smash in with a brick.

(I found the Guardian articles online eventually, though their search engine really could be better. I particularly liked the unusually thoughtful Nigella Lawson interview, even if reading it online meant no pictures:
"Her five-year-old son was watching her unpack some groceries in the kitchen. He said to her, "You know, I'm so sad that daddy has died" and in the same breath - "Oooh, Twiglets!!!"
"Do that as an adult and you'd be regarded as sick. But it isn't. It is just entirely honest."")

Do you have an extended warranty, madam?

Further adventures in consumerism: as I purchased a replacement watch, I was offered a two-year extended guarantee for 25% of the price of the watch. P1ss right off.

Apparently The Power of Nightmares (BBC2, 9pm) is pretty much unmissable. It sounds like they're overstating their case for dramatic effect but it will be a handy corrective to some of the more hysterical claptrap with which we're bombarded.