Absolutely Worthless Musings

When you are in a place that doesn't celebrate Thanksgiving, and try to read Web sites from a place that does, you realize what it means to "phone it in." What a bunch of worthelss sludge made its way across the column inches of cnn.com et all. And then I realized that when there's no real news to cover, and no one to read it anyway, well you just kind of make stuff up.

And so in honor of Thanksgiving, I present useless content that has no rhyme, meaning or artisitic value.

Things about Manchester that make me smile:
- Grown men cried (I actually saw one) when former Manchester United star George Best died last week. Since I didn't understand it, they explained to me that it was like Michael Jordan dying. But if you said to them, "Well, kind of, except Jordan didn't quit at age 28, then drink himself through both his original liver and the new one they gave him," they look at you like you said the queen was a prostitute.
- However, we must give credit to Mr. Best for his legendary quote, "I spent a lot of my money on birds, booze and fast cars. The rest I just squandered."
- The girls here have accepted that its cold, and now wear leg warmers under their mini-skirts.
- I live between 2 train stops (Oxford Road and Deansgate) which are each about 300 meters in opposite directions. I have travelled by train to Edinburgh (north), York (East), London (South) and Liverpool (West) and not once has the train I needed to be on been scheduled to stop at either of these stations.
- Our apartment has a combination washer/dryer which I have dreamed about for decades. Just think how it easy this would be! You can maybe wash a pair of jeans, 2 pairs of boxers and 2 t-shirts at once, and the whole cycle takes 3 hours. And the machine locks itself shut, so there's no way to heht anything in or out unitl the process is complete. Mucking with the dials just pisses it off and it shuts down until you apologize and leave the flat.
- We had a huge Tree Lighting festival last week in the Town Square to celebrate the beginning of the Christmas season. Huge event here - kind of a poor English version of Rockefeller Square. And the celebrity guests to throw the switch were.....wait for it......the characters from Madagascar. Yes, the 90 minute Disney movie. About zoo animals lost in Africa. Connect the dots for me here.
- The same town square is now hosting the crafts fair that it does every year. Full of German food, crafts and gifts. German marketplace. In Manchester. For Chrstmas.
- If you want to get Internet access from a company that is not British Telecom, you are certainly able to. But to sign up, you have to give them your BT number. Which means in order to get a service that competes with BT, you first must be a BT customer.
- I love English TV. Some shows start at 6:20,some at 7:10 and some at 8:30. There seems to be no such thing as the half hour block.
- The big TV show here is Coronation Street, which is a half-hour drama that comes on at the randomest times during the week so I don't know how anyone watches it. And since there is no such place as Coronation Street in Manchester, as there is no Wysteria Lane in the U.S, they create the street for the opening credits. Except I swear it's a model town shot with a macro lens, just like Mister Rogers Neighborhood.

Ok, so that should be enough words to get me past my drunk editor who is probably asleep watching football anyway.