Tuesday, May. 23, 2017 - 22:25

Twenty-two killed and three or four times as many injured last night in Manchester following an explosion after an Ariana Grandma concert - social media full of predictable knee-jerk negativity and glowing positivity of human spirit, news media (well, what I chose to look at) reasonable. It's no time to rush to act. // I'm a bit pissed off with my friend who is stressing about not having any money if his disciplinary at work goes badly next week. On one hand I'm perfectly sympathetic, and I of course hope it goes well for him in the end. On the other hand he texted me this to tell me this on the way from one side of The Midlands to another for a date with someone he met online, two days before he goes away for a long weekend in Germany, after three weeks signed off work with stress. I'm not saying he's not genuine, I'm just wondering whether he could be helping himself more to extricate himself from the stress by job searching, spending less, making the use of time he has before he has to go back to work, adjusting priorities a bit more maturely. You can't piss about waiting for the perfect job, you have to find something you can do which earns enough to live on. Then not lose your job by being crap. // Speaking of leaving a job, Sam Allardyce has resigned as Crystal Palace manager. I wonder whether he'll move to another job, and if so, where? Is his style/desire suitable for bringing a 'big' club up from The Championship, or are we more likely to see him take a new job in Autumn when the first relegation threatened side in the Premier League (if that's not Palace). We shall see. // Euhirudinea, the true leeches, are an infraclass of the Hirudinea. These clitellate annelids are of somewhat unclear relationships; namely the relationships of Hirudinea with oligochaetes are in need of revision. It may be that the presumed sister taxon of the Euhirudinea, the Acanthobdellidea, turns out to be more distantly related, as was already the case with the Branchiobdellida. Thus, eventually Euhirudinea might become a junior synonym of Hirudinea. // When I lived in Wolverhampton, for nine years I only had a small freezer box in my fridge, and before that as a student it was a similar small portion of a shared freezer. I've a whole one to myself these days but don't think I use it optimally. A lot of it is old stuff kept for months/years and forgotten about. // This evening's Taskmaster was better than some other in the series. A team task where one competitor tried to fill a bath with water, one tried to put an many items as possible in it, and the other tried to cling film over the top of it. Enjoyably conflicted and chaotic. // Roger Moore has died aged 89, his death understandably overshadowed by the aforementioned terrorism. Sad obviously for his family and friends but nearly ninety is a good innings and the sort of age where obituary talks more about celebration and achievement than some kind of tragedy and life foreshortened. // I don't think you're ready for switched sausage // The airs above the ground or school jumps are a series of higher-level, Haute ecole, classical dressage movements in which the horse leaves the ground. They include the capriole, the courbette, the mezair, the croupade and the levade. None are typically seen in modern competitive dressage. // My book about astronauts has continued to be interesting, though to some extent the nature of meeting ex-astronauts now in their sixties and seventies is slightly repetitive no matter how decent a writer you are. I may read a while more of it tonight. I may put a book in my work bag in case I finish the astronaut one tomorrow before I get home. // On my walk from the bus stop to work (about ten minutes) I recalled eight World Cup finals tournament games that had finished 3-2. I was hoping to remember ten but only managed England v Cameroon 90, Argentina v West Germany 86, Denmark v Nigeria 98, Turkey v South Korea 02, West Germany v England 70, Brazil v Netherlands 94, and USA v Portugal 02. There were plenty more I missed, and I shouldn't have.. but it was all about keeping me amused on the wee walk I do every day. // If a man could get all his sperm in one ejaculate to line up end to end he’d have a line six miles long.