Confabulations

Well, almost. It’s the wind-down to Xmas, so here are some Xmas games to keep you occupied:

linky link link

It seems they’ve finally found a black hole in the middle of our galaxy – something that quite frankly I thought they knew a long time ago, but it turns out it was always conjecture and overconfidence until it was recently confirmed by the aptly-named ‘Very Large Telescope’.

(What I don’t understand is how, if black holes are formed when matter is very dense, why there was a big bang at all when supposedly back then matter was reeeaaallly dense. Anyway…)

Now we know that this enormous, space-devouring monster exists, are we going to see a new Age of Peace, or will we all turn into Nihilists…or Hedonists? Existential questions must be tugging at our minds demanding an explanation and coupled with the economic downturn it’s incredible more of us aren’t jumping off bridges or underneath high speed trains. I mean, what’s left to live for really?

Well, Pelorian Cats for one thing. And the January Sales. There’ll be some fantastic bargains to be had in just a few weeks time, not least on cheap bed linen. Before we all go and join an end-of-the-world cult, I think we should take a moment to think about what’s really important in life.

This is a small, cheating little nugget of a link which – for various reasons – I’d like to post here. Not a very interesting post, eh?

Uh-oh – my boiler broke! It was late on a freezing cold Friday night and of course, the letting agents are closed on a weekend (really convenient I know!). That meant no heating and no hot water – I found myself putting on layer after layer of dirty clothes to keep warm and contemplating boiling the kettle to wash my hair.

Of course, it would help if my house was well-insulated but I swear, even if you close all the doors and windows, the second you turn the heating off it returns to arctic temperatures. The government are having a big drive at the moment to get everyone to insulate their homes. I’m rather dubious as to the environmental benefits this will bring – after all, homes will always be demolished and rebuilt and other pollutants like cars, factories etc will still be doing their damage. One thing I do believe however is that insulation can make your home warm, and a warm home is very important (as I recently found out). The Slanket can only do so much.

We had several inches of snow overnight and it’s turned our town into a winter wonderland. Also a scene of complete gridlock with cars sliding into hedges, pedestrians falling over and other chaotic happenings. I had to actually abandon the car on the way to work this morning. After half an hour sat in traffic, having moved about 20 yards, I dumped it in a side street and walked. Some time later with frozen feet and absolutely covered in snow I made it into work and was greeted by the unsettling fact that only 3 other people had achieved the same.

If you’re lucky enough to live a long way from work I hope you’re enjoying your day off. We built a snowman in the car park during lunch so haven’t missed out completely. We’re still waiting for it to come to life and dance around, but I’m not so sure the old beanie hat we found is magic.

Snowmen are popping up all over the place. Even the most cold-hearted, never-cracks-a-smile old sod will go out and build a snowman. It’s physically impossible not to. You can also tell who has psychopathic tendencies by watching them commit snowman-murder. That person is a ticking timebomb.

If you’ve been outside during the past few days you may have noticed it’s bloody freezing. In fact, if you’ve been indoors you may have noticed the cold too, since Winter has a way of creeping through the smallest of gaps. Even the central heating does little to fend off the chill – it appears nothing less than a full-scale house fire will suffice.

The government have recently made some money available for people to insulate their homes so if you’re sat in your lounge with your breath condensing on the walls you might want to think about applying. Either that or you can buy a slanket.

I bought a new car last week – not because my sunroof fell off (that wasn’t me) but because I test drove my dream car and couldn’t resist. My existing car was also quite old so it gave me a bit of an excuse.

All this talk of the credit crunch supposedly led to people not buying as many cars, so I expected the dealership to be desperate for business. They weren’t though – the salesman said he’d sold 25 cars the week before and their sales weren’t really suffering. Maybe because they were a proper dealer backed by a big car company, and they offered good finance options and they sold nice cars. Whatever, it seems that I’m not the only one trying to prop up the economy with excessive spending.

When it comes to cars, military folk get the best deals. Did you know that if you’re in the army, or if you’re a diplomat, you get all the tax paid on your new car? If you’re posted abroad you get a tax free car too and that means you can save literally thousands. We pay so much tax on everything that when you take it off, things like cars seem incredibly cheap. I don’t think however that you’re allowed to join the army, buy a car and then leave. That would be cheating.