Heard on the metro: Metro

American teen girl: "The metro takes ages because it's 15 storeys underground"

Unreality TV beats Reality TV

SF series are now flavour of the month as a result of the success of Doctor Who (No. 2 on Christmas day with 9.4 million viewers) according to The Times. In 2006, we will see:

• Primaeval on ITV, a £6 million, six-part epic about scientists who travel into prehistoric times through black holes. The team behind Walking with Dinosaurs is creating the graphics.
  

• Hyperdrive on BBC2, follows the spaceship HMS Camden Lock on its mission to protect British interests in a changing galaxy.
  

• Eleventh Hour on ITV, stars Patrick Stewart as a problem-solving physics professor who is called on by the Government to avert disasters caused by scientific developments.
  

• Life on Mars on BBC1, John Simm, a Manchester detective, is catapulted back to 1973 after a road accident.

Christmas shopping t(r)ip

No, I'm afraid I have no idea what the perfect gift is for your parent/child/lover/sibling. Funny that. Surely if you don't care about them enough to work out what trinket being spewed out from the capitalist machine to buy, perhaps you shouldn't be giving them anything at all. Instead go and buy a camel for an African.

However, to ease the stress of shopping I'll tell you a story.

I went to the shop with the dog selling gramaphones and noticed that the tills downstairs had 20 people queuing to pay but the queue upstairs only had 6 people in it. So, if like me, you needed some Ronald-courage before hitting the shops, march up the escalator to work off a couple of calories and pile on the minutes.

Christmas eavesdropping

Man 1 to Man 2: "We've got everything apart from each other's presents."

Heard in a bookshop: Books?

Blonde guy to Sales Assistant: "We're looking for some books, actually. "

Sales Assistant: "Right."

McDonalds' food is unhealthy, really unhealthy

Needing a nutritional crutch before embarking on a bout of Christmas elbowing & queuing, I stepped into the futuristic McDonalds @ Oxford Circus, in London.

When I reached the till, I was disturbed to see a sign stating that, "Due to the recent oil depot incident, some products are not available or use substitutes." The incident was the explosion on 11/12/05 at the Buncefield depot in Hertfordshire, 20 miles North of London, which stores petrol, diesel and heating oil and some jet fuel for aircraft.

Now, which of these does McDonalds use & in which items? I think we should be told.

Space on TV

I wonder if it's an example of synchronicity with the number of fictional space-theme (British) TV programmes being broadcast at the moment.

We've had:

• Supernova - Brit astronomer (Rob Brydon) goes to Australian Observatory
• Rocket Man - Factory man (Robson Green) decides to build a rocket
• Space Cadets (broadcast this week & next) - Reality TV hoax trying to persuade members of the public they are going to be sent into space for 5 days when they are left on the ground
  

The big question is, will the hoax work?

I think it will, especially after the space tourists were selected for being "suggestible" and easily persuaded by others.
Just think of those who voted for Bush & Blair, again as well as the rise of Nazism & the Stanford Prison Experiment.