Random meanderings of the week...

Nothing in particular, as should be expected by now. Yep, another one of the type of post which gives blogging a bad reputation, where we use all this wonderful technology and internet-ness to waffle randomly about the irrelevant minutiae of everyday life in the pretense that it's actually interesting or somehow valuable...

* I've been watching a bit of Merlin on TV tonight, with the following comments:
(a) it's enjoyable, but it's no Robin Hood - neither quite as funny nor quite as dramatic, and doesn't have the tongue-in-cheek anachronistic references (or the Sheriff) which make Robin Hood so good.
(b) for some reason, I always imagined Guinevere would be more attractive... I don't think they got the casting quite right there, considering that she's meant to turn into the stunningly attractive woman who causes a bunch of trouble between Arthur and Lancelot a few years down the track
(c) and wasn't Merlin meant to be a bunch older than Arthur?
(d) I keep expecting them to run into a French taunter
(e) it's also weird to see Giles without his glasses on. Yes, I know actors are allowed to move on and play another character after a long-running and much-loved series finishes (and I've also seen him on Little Britain), but it does lead to inevitable comparisons...

* Damir Dokic, will the wackiness never stop? Yes, I know he's an evil man who beat his daughter up, but there's just something faintly comical about his string of idiotic stunts over the past decade, from complaining about fish prices, to lying in front of cars, to threatening to kidnap his daughter when she ran away from him, to now being tossed in jail for threatening to blow up the Australian embassy and being caught with a house full of weaponry and explosives which could be used to do exactly that...

* It's amazing what I find when I tidy my desk at home for the first time in months... To be more precise: 12 pens (which explains where all the pens which used to be in my backpack have gone), an empty German christmas-cookie tin, a mountain of old electricity and credit card bills dating back to about November last year, about $5 in loose change, my old watch, a dictionary, two sets of conference proceedings, two PhD thesis drafts, 5 or 6 papers I've reviewed for various journals, and a box of envelopes I'd forgotten I had. And, for some reason, a pile of grocery shopping lists. But at least it's nice and clean now.

* I still think rugby league is a pointless sport, and a waste of good rugby players who could help the longsuffering Wallabies actually beat the ABs for once. (comment brought on by the fact that Sports Tonight is now on TV, in case you were wondering)

* I've started reading a potentially interesting series of books recently - but it's spoiled somewhat by the fact that all the characters speak in an annoyingly written Scottish accent filled with apostrophes and strange spellings ("Ye may have the use o' our taproom, for sure.... Och, I dinna ken..." etc.) Not sure how long I'll be able to put up with that for - it'd be less irritating if it was actually written by a Scottish author, but it isn't - she's an Aussie.

I think that'll do for now - back to work I go...