Gently heat to minus 10 degF

It's time to pack up the winter clothes and pull out the linen shirts and shorts - summer's here! Or so I thought. At any one time in New York there are parallel seasons running: one bestowed by Mother Nature and one bestowed by the man charged with controling a building's thermostat. The latter, I suspect, is a lone individual in a small subterranean room somewhere, a plaque on his door reading "NYCTRA". He sits in an office lit by a single 60W bulb behind an old stained desk on a tired chair, tufts of foam bulging out from its torn fabric. On one wall hangs a calendar with two dates circled in red, on the other is a large dial... 4ft in diameter. Twice a year the man plods to the wall and, with great effort, turns the dial. At that point a few million people either start shedding layers or reach for a sweater.

You see, the trouble with the jumbostat at the New York City Temperature Regulation Authority is that it has no numbers on it. The instrument was installed during the Carter administration and at the time a great debate was raging. Should America join the rest of the industrialised metric world or continue with the imperial system; pubs selling 16oz beers, weight watchers shedding pounds, and shoppers nipping out for a quart of milk? Of course they didn't convert; the metric system originated in France. I guess their conclusion was that everyone else should convert back. (Mark my words, there will be a war on metrics, just as soon as we're done with the current War In Error). Anyway, the jumbostat was installed and it was decided that the dial simply be labelled "Bloody Hot" and "Bloody Cold". So, as the temperature today hits 80 degrees outside (Farenheit my friends, not Celcius...or Kelvin), I'm driven to wearing an overcoat in the office.

On the street it's a slightly different experience. Your walk tends to take you through numerous pockets of hot and cold. It would appear that some of the stores are doing their bit for the environment by pumping out cold air through their open doors - I believe in an attempt to keep global temperatures down and thus stopping the ice caps from melting, which is just terribly considerate as we live on a low-lying island.

Of course this is all reversed in winter. The dial is turned back, the stores kindly heat the pavements for the pedestrians, and you're well advised to bring a pair of shorts and a T-shirt to work. If you're thinking about shopping then a small suitcase on wheels wouldn't be a bad idea, simply shed your clothing on entering a store and pack it in the case. Quite sensible solutions I think, but if anyone can think of anything better then maybe you would like to get in touch with the NYCTRA directly?

Right, time for a mug of hot chocolate I think.

And now, the news in your part of the world...

Recently, across the muddy waters of the Hudson River, a New Jersey man walked into his bathroom to find a hole in his ceiling and debris scattered across the room. Nestled sweetly in the floor was a golfball sized chunk of, well, something. It turns out that not too many miles away a piece of space debris had narrowly missed my head.

Last Wednesday a large African American lady in Times Square subway station took particular offence to a police dog sniffing another African American. "That dog be racial profilin'!" she shouts, "He's a racist! That cop dog's a racist!"

The Queen was in town last week. Having not been to America for 16 years the locals thought they would keep her waiting a little longer on the plane while they struggled to put the red carpet together on the runway. It was 15ft too short. But later the President made amends when he declared in his speech to our 281 year old monarch, "You helped our nation to celebrate its bicentennial in seventeen-sev- err, 1976." He then gave her a wink. Smooth, George. Smooth.

A few days back a kid in Oregon went to see the family doctor after complaining to his mother that he could hear popping sounds, "like Rice Crispies". They were stunned to find a couple of spiders nesting in his ear canal. The popping sound resulted from the spiders walking around on his eardrum. The boy's mother believes the spiders got into her son's ear when they were weeding the garden together. I weed in the park recently.

A couple of local "inventors" have created a computer mouse... out of a real mouse. They've shared the invaluable instructions on how to create this IT taxidermy crossover here so you too can own this tasteful computer accessory.

Between the tap-dancing spiders, hollering commuters, cosmic projectiles, and tech-savvy rodents I see that I may be living in one of the more - how shall we say - colourful countries on earth.

Still, at least they've got the right man for the job at the helm.

Trigger Happy Nation

As much as I can I try to keep an open mind in this crazy country. I can handle being mistaken for an Australian, the cab drivers who neither speak English nor know where they're going, even dogs dressed as humans, all these I can accept; but some things I can't ever get my head around and don't think I ever will. It's exactly a week ago since the shootings at Virginia Tech, 32 people killed by a student, and in the inevitable fallout of this incident the hot topic of gun control has once more been debated across the airwaves. It's an argument I have little comprehension of beyond the premise that guns kill, we have no need for them in our day to day lives, therefore people shouldn't have them. Quote that one line here though and a large group of Americans will come back with the words, "Ah, but the Second Amendment states that we have the right to bear arms."
And it's at this point that the great debate begins.

There are plenty of places you can follow that discussion, where people today try to defend a right that was decreed in 1791 in a country operating under totally different conditions. I'm not going to get into that can of worms here. This space is generally kept blog-lite. The only reason that I've touched on the subject at all is that I witnessed a piece of madness in the whole gun ownership argument this week. A friend watching CNN in London couldn't believe his ears when a guest on the station actually suggested that the incident at Virginia Tech would never have happened if the teachers were armed. So shocked was my friend that he chose to text me at 6am to tell me. I put it down to a kook on the airwaves until I turned on the news a little later to hear exactly the same theory being put forward. Hopping around the channels only unearthed more such supporters of this idea and apparently it's not a new argument either, it's been raging for years! (As has bad broadcast news evidently...)


Arm the teachers? ARM THE TEACHERS?? GUNS IN SCHOOL? The little statement at the top of this page reads, "Two countries divided by a common language", I'm thinking of revising that to "Two countries divided by common sense." When DEA agents can't handle their weapons properly what hope is there for teachers?


If ever there was a case for not seeing the wood for the trees this is it. Don't solve the problem by removing the root cause, no, let's throw more guns at it instead!

Anyway, if a guy in heels, make-up and a dress can see where the problem lies then maybe it's about time that the serious people did too.