[late note] hope you're coping too

Sorry for the lack of posting and visiting but there were reasons:

1] Internet problems which I hope are fixed.

2] The heat. Allow me to explain:

Someone said it was 38 degrees today but I can't see it, more like 34 or so max and now about 29.

Still, it was death stuff out there because it was mixed in with car and industrial fumes. This city is at the stage cities in the west were in the 50s/60s - belching bad air and congested, before the era of EPA and road systems.

You can always tell when it's acceptable because the ladies bask in it if it's all right. Today they were lying around outstretched, with tongues lolling out the sides of their mouths.

My personal situation is better than most - here is where my apartment comes into its own - it misses the late afternoon sun and what with the airconditioner wall unit and two 19 litre water bottles, there's less to complain of.

However, having been out in the poisoned soup today meant I just crashed when I got home and now it's nearly midnight and no chance of Blogfocus.

3] There is a word here 'rukavoditel', meaning literally 'hand driver'. Every 5th course student is, at this moment, going before the Commission to present dissertations and every one of them has a personal 'trainer'.

Two girls have me and I've been pretty bad with them, timewise. I've left it till very late to deal with the matter and now we're having to meet everyday and do a lot of it by e-mail in the evening.

Hence the other reason for the lack of posting. I myself also have to prepare a detailed report on each of them and I haven't done it yet. The big plan is to get all this done tomorrow and then run a...

Blogfocus Wednesday

...tomorrow evening, in place of Tuesday and Thursday. Thanks to regular readers who have visited today. I have all the comments still to answer and if you're a fellow blogger, you'll be the first I visit tomorrow evening.

[warning] internet connection dropping out

Can't get internet for more than five minutes - keeps dropping out. That is, it won't even dial-up. I know you'll say buy a new super-duper system but I have to buy a new car and repair the flat before that. So the blog will have to struggle along with what it's got for now.

[that's it] we've had enough

Ladies and gentlemen, some of us have had enough of it! Do you remember this, the reason why we formed in the first place?

So, time to do our own and there's a Cunning Plan:

The Annual Blogpower awards

Let's make them scathing as well as sycophantic. Let's run the whole gamut of categories we could vote for on someone - best "animal blog", "blog with the shortest posts" and so on. Let's think big and include the MSM in this thing. Let's allow everyone, not only Blogpowerers, to join in. Blogpower will just be the host.

So, here's the agenda:

1] One of us - me - cobbles together possible categories this week, based on either your suggestions in Comments or by e-mail to james higham at mail dot com. [Some people prefer to e-mail their thoughts.]

This plan of categories is presented in a new Blogpower post this Friday evening, June 1st, 21:00 London time, for your perusal and comment strictly for 24 hours.

2] On Saturday evening, June 2nd, at 21:00, London time, the categories are then presented in concrete at Blogpower and nominations invited for each category.

Nominations are welcome from the whole sphere, based on either your suggestions in comments or by e-mail to james higham at mail dot com. Anyone, not just Blogpowerers, are invited.

Each of you put something on your site [including all our non-BP friends out there] advertising that we are accepting nominations for one week, until the following Saturday evening. We must show we are not a closed shop - that this is the only truly international representative poll of its kind.

3] Nominations close on Saturday evening, June 3rd, at 21:00, London time and James gets down to work preparing a series of separate freepolls, inviting the whole sphere to vote.

4] On Sunday, June 4th, at 15:00, these freepolls are posted at Blogpower and then we'd like an onslaught of advertising on your sites, inviting everyone to come in and vote. I'll e-mail all my contacts to vote and hopefully you'll do the same.

5] On Sunday, June 11th, at 15:00, the freepolls are closed and I spend my last free Sunday, before my personal blog hiatus, writing up the results for posting, although these will be patently obvious from the running tallies anyway.

That's the plan to break the secretive pre-selection and non-representativeness of the usual Blog Awards. Your comments are invited.

Vote Pommygranate, Colin and the Englishman

Pommygranate's in some sort of antipodaean blogpoll just now. Could you get over there and give him a click?

UPDATE AND APOLOGY

I think I've made a huge mistake here and misled everyone. You see, late last evening, very tired, I went over to Pommygranate and there was a beleagured appeal. I didn't check it through but immediately saw one of our Blogpowerers in trouble, clicked on his link and saw him in a list and no one else we knew.

Hence the rallying cry to vote for him.

However, this morning I was posting on Blogpower, scrolled down and saw this on Colin Campbell's post:

Featured this time are Pommygranate and myself, along with some other Bloggy Aussies and the Englishmans take on nude car washes in Brisbane.

Penny dropped that perhaps this was the SAME poll as Colin and the Englishman and hence Colin's anguished:

For a libertarian, this is unmitigated ballot stuffing. That with envelopes of cash, we have the potential for a rorted election. All this in the cause of supporting our libertarian friend.

To which I, thinking Colin was only kidding, replied:

Unmitigated ballot-stuffing - all hail to corruption, Colin and I voted for him as a fellow blogpowerer, not as a Zambesi Liberation Force supporter or Golden Labrador Owners club nominee or whatever.

Now, in the light of what I know - that in this poll were also Colin and the Englishman, I'm looking for a giant hole to fall down and end my misery. Oh, woe is me! What have I done?

OK, to repair this, I'm heading over to Colins's and the Englishman's sites now to find out how I can register votes for them.

The question is, will you join me and visit these boys and give them your vote too?

UPDATE UPDATE:

Now it gets even more confusing. Lord Nazh and Pommygranate inform us that the polls are separate and anyway, I can't find anywhere on their sites to vote for them - no link. Can someone set me straight on this thing?

[obsession] 3rd chapter is up

The 3rd Chapter is uploaded for those kind souls who've been following the plot so far.

Click on the pic here for the book and then I find it easier to scroll a little down the sidebar and use the Blog Archive link for the chapter. Each page then has a "Home" link.

My main criticism and the reason it took 12 years to finish writing this book whilst the next one, Lemmings, took only two months, is that the first two and a half chapters are a bit slow and I simply didn't know how to speed them up.

I had to establish a fairly mundane, routine existence for the couple, in order for Miss Heathrow to come in and turn it all upside down. It does hot up near the end of Chapter 3 but the first flight from danger comes only in Chapter 4 and the first body doesn't appear until Chapter 5.

The first sex of an R rated kind only comes in Chapter 4. Actually, I like Chapter 4 a lot.

[whitsun] not just any old bank holiday

Today is the Second Day of Whitsun or Pentecost, a Christian holiday and a bank holiday in Iceland. Some people may go to church while others use the day for outdoor activities with their friends and families.

Pentecost or Whitsun is observed on the seventh Sunday after Easter. Whit Sunday commemorates the coming of the Holy Spirit in the form of flames to the Apostles.

The recent adoption of a Late Spring Bank Holiday on the last Monday in May is an attempt to deal with the fact that Whitsuntide is a moveable feast, dependent on the date of Easter.

The general public still refers to this holiday as "Whit Monday." What did you do today? Any concerts in the park?