weather worry

summer's lease hath all too short a date

...wrote William Shakespeare, in Sonnet 18, Shall I compare thee to a summer's day? Whilst the line exists as part of a larger piece of exquisitely composed flattery, the quote rings true at face value too. Summer does not last long enough.

TWOL supposes we all look back on the summers of our childhood with rose-tinted glasses; imagining scenes of sunny days spent on beaches, ice creams, and all of the other cliches. In comparison to these scenes, reality seems disappointing. That is why the daily newspapers feel it necessary to print a story, around this time, each year, about how awful the weather has been during the last three months.

Needless to say, a selection of quotes were quite easy to find:

Scotland Evening Times: "Scotland’s gloomy summer has been the coolest in the UK for nearly 20 years."

The Independent: "This summer has been the UK's coolest since 1993."

The Times: "[This summer has been] ..So cold that Starbucks frappuccino is now sold with an extra caramel de-icer shot. So cold that crack dealers have switched to selling sachets of Lemsip."

Still, there's always next summer...

--
WORD COUNT: 194

deadline day

So, today is Transfer Deadline Day™ and the machine that is football is going into over-drive. As football clubs try to thrash out last-minute deals and players try to escape the rumour mill, pandemonium ensues on Twitter. It would appear that every Twitter account related to football (and a fair few who aren't) have a source at a "major international airport", watching as Sergio Ronaldo, the £150 million, 100-goals-a-season super striker who endorses his own line of flashing boots and £1000 aftershave, comes striding through Manchester Airport, to sign for Citeh.

How did rumour spread before Twitter, TWOL asks?

Sky Sports News, who for the past 40 days has had a countdown to 11pm this evening which confused anyone who isn't British, are now showing a seconds column on said countdown! They have a work experience reporter outside every football ground in the country, ready to inform us that "Sky Sources have told us that" Sheikh Mansour wipes his arse with £50 notes.

Of course the Deadline™ means extraordinarily little because, from personal memory, United's signing of Berbatov and Citeh's signing of Robinho in 2008 were both finished after the Deadline™. Still, SSN has to appear exciting somehow, TWOL guesses.

--
WORD COUNT: 195

iron flight to iceland

Following Hurricane Irene, one of the first flights to leave New York will be piloted by the Iron Maiden front man, Bruce Dickinson. He will be flying passengers from New York to Reykjavik, in Iceland, on budget airline, Iceland Express.

Dickinson holds an airline transport pilot's license and, when not singing for one of the most popular bands of all time, works for Astraeus Airlines. He has previously flown Rangers F.C. and Liverpool F.C. to European away games, as well as saving hundreds of stranded people during the Israel/Hezbollah conflicts and the collapse of XL Airways. In 2008, he chartered an aeroplane from Astraeus to be used by Iron Maiden to fly around the world for their Somewhere Back In Time World Tour. The plane was dubbed "Ed Force One" and a DVD was made charting the tour.

Having just finished Iron Maiden's massive "Final Frontier" tour, Dickinson clearly isn't one to take a break. He says that Maiden will be releasing "at least one more" album before they retire and, in the foreseeable future at least, there appears to be no chance of Maiden slowing up.

Atlantic hurricane names are recycled every six years, according to QIkipedia.

--
WORD COUNT: 200

COMMENT: reading festival 2011

Holy smokes.

What a weekend. From the first explosions of the Architects' drum kit to the last firework of the Muse spectacle, Reading Festival 2011 was an experience that TWOL is likely to never forget. TWOL would require more than 200 words to do even the slightest bit of justice to the magnificence of the 2011 Reading Festival; so here is a list of 10 things which blew TWOL's mind at Reading.

• Muse's spectacular 2-hour set, stage production and light show.
• MCR's encore with, as Gerard Way informed us, "Brian FUCKIN' May".
• The best part of 30,000 people singing "Happy Birthday" to Elbow's bassist, Pete Turner.
• The mosh pit during Your Demise's set which covered 2/3 of the Lock-Up Stage tent.
• Jared Leto dressing up as a tiger during 30 Seconds to Mars' farewell performance.
• TWOL getting on TV, dressed as a banana, during Friendly Fires' set!
• The fact that the campsite resembled something of a landfill site on Monday morning.
• The mass sing-alongs between sets.
• The sea of dancing people during Madness' performance of "Baggy Trousers", "Our House" and "Welcome to the House of Fun".
• Everything about Bring Me The Horizon.

TWOL would like to thank everyone at Reading Festival for creating such an unforgettable atmosphere!

--
WORD COUNT: 200

vatican leery of latino left

Wikileaks today released a cable which documented the internal affairs chief of the Vatican's "concerns about Chavez and other leftist leaders in Latin America." He discussed the "danger Chavez poses to governments around him."

The internal affairs chief, Archbishop Leonardo Sandri, is seen as the "number three" in the Vatican, after the Secretary of State and the Pope. Sandri is Argentinian and used to be a "nuncio" (papal ambassador) to Venezuela, stationed in the capital, Caracas.

Personally, I don't follow Vatican politics or anything but the fact that they have their many fingers stuck in so many pies all seems slightly Renaissance-period to me.

Of course, the vast majority of religious people in South America are Christian (and Catholic at that) and this inevitably has something to do with the Vatican's interest in South America.

Once again, this demonstrates the penetrative power of Wikileaks and, with such a sensitive document as this being openly available, you can understand the wary position that most governments take with regards to Mr. Assange and Wikileaks.

--
WORD COUNT: 172

windows turns 16!

Today marks 16 years since the release, in 1995, of Microsoft's Windows 95 operating system. When released, it was the first Windows product to have the current desktop style home page and was the first Windows 32-bit system that Windows produced.

Since then, Windows have succeeded the product with Windows 98, Windows ME, Windows 2000, Windows XP, Windows Vista and Windows 7, with Windows 8 set to be released next year.

If you own a computer and are not an IT student, the likelihood is that you own either a Windows computer or an Apple Mac. What we think of, when we think of the word "computer", is mostly Windows technology and, as a child, TWOL has grown up using Windows software. TWOL has never owned a Mac (although TWOL would be interested to compare the two) and is typing this entry from a laptop which runs Windows Vista.

Happy birthday Windows 95! Funnily enough, it's only 10 months younger than my good self.

--
WORD COUNT: 155

toilet trouble

Last Friday, a Finnish ferry ran aground after the captain was stuck in the toilet. A jammed lock meant that, despite the best efforts of the staff, the ferry slammed into a rock, near the capital, Helsinki.

A couple of passengers were hurt and some tableware was broken but, other than that, no harm was caused.

The leader of the investigation into the crash, Jan Sundell, said, "He was stuck in the toilet. As soon as the staff member got the door open, it was too late."

There not much of a comment I can make here. "LOL" pretty much does it.

As for the coming days, my next entries after today will come on Monday/Tuesday next week as Reading Festival beckons! :)

--
WORD COUNT: 123

required reading

A recent survey has shown that 1 in 6 teenagers fail to read a single book in a month. The poll of over 18,000 kids, aged 8-17, showed that less than half of those asked choose to read a single book outside of school each month.

This really isn't a problem. From personal experience, teenagers go through many phases. I barely read anything until I was about 14 and then I just started reading magazines which became wordier magazines which became short novels and I just finished The Shining on holiday (recommended, by the way).

But still, prepare for the onslaught of tired cliches: "Keats, King and Carroll are being replaced by Twitter, Facebook and MySpace!" and the like.

Michael Gove, the Education Secretary, said that children aged 11 "should read 50 books a year". This shows how out of touch both he and the mass media (I found this story on Reuters UK) are with kids.

Sure, as you get older, the feeling of relaxing with a paperback becomes more tempting but, with 11 year-olds, only by using eBooks could the Government ever hope to achieve such targets.

How often do you read/did you read when you were 11?

--
WORD COUNT: 194

martyrs' map

View Larger Map
Over the past few days, Green Square in Tripoli, Libya, has been taken over by people who are fighting Colonel Gaddafi's dictatorship and oppression. The freedom fighters have renamed it Martyrs' Square (presumably because they see their dead companions as martyrs) and the good people at Google have clearly been quick to catch on.

Today, they renamed "Green Square" to "Martyrs' Square" on Google Maps and Google Earth. Should they be taking sides? I guess it's up to you to decide. TWOL says it is largely inconsequential that they appear to be on the side of freedom because everyone else (TWOL included) is too.

It would be nice, however, if they would officially recognise South Sudan as a country too..

--
WORD COUNT: 120

geordie sense

Following a month of quoting George Orwell and Friedrich Nietzsche and fighting with Lord Sugar (@lord_sugar), has Joey Barton (@Joey7Barton) finally started talking some sense on Twitter?

He is so often the laughing stock of everything because he is immediately cast aside, labelled as an aggressive, thuggish criminal and his opinion is therefore instantly devalued. So, in what can only be described as an attempt to save some face, he has recently started tweeting intelligent things (or ideas which are dressed up to be intelligent).

And credit where credit is due, the above idea of reducing socialism and government control/encouraging private independence is a good idea in TWOL's book.

What do you think, readership?

--
WORD COUNT: 117

welcome

It has been a while since I last posted a blog and this is for a few reasons. Holidays and a lack of motivation are prominent among them and I have no desire to keep pumping out 1000-word essays which keep changing in language style and character. So, I have decided to try out a new concept.

Basically, every post I publish will be 200 words or less, in length, which will allow them to be succinct, easier to read and more to-the-point. I'll have more of a chance to source the information (and a greater desire to do so) because I don't need to think about writing 1000 words each time.

I'm going to post either "Comment" posts or "News" posts; although some of the news may be slightly objective for the sake of entertainment. I'll also post some other columns and see how popular they become.

But anyway, that's "200 words or less". Enjoy, repost, comment about it on Facebook, follow it on Twitter (TBC)..

Welcome to "200 words or less" :)

--
WORD COUNT: 170 (not including "Word" and "Count")