Feed a Cold...

Afternoon one and all...

Latest development: still no hot water. Several mildly-warm-but-boardering-on-cold showers and the fact that last night came with a free blanket of snow for Newcastle means I'm slightly chilly and subsequently slightly suffering from a slight cold. Lots of slightly there, but I don't want this to get out of hand, especially with Strike Day, Tuesday, rapidly approaching, and I don't want to be incapacitated if there's a chance to get on the telly. So I'm sitting tight.

Just finished watching 24: Season 2, then, and even though I've seen it before, I'm left reeling from the final few episodes, including a massive shoot-out and Matrix style fight between Jack and an armed goon followed by an assassination attempt on President Palmer... whoa indeed. Oh, and I've also been playing the rather excellent Sonic Gems Collection, featuring some of the "best kept secrets" (translated: old and naff) of Sonic's gaming history. I love 'em, but then as people know I love tat, so here's a screenshot for you all to make up your minds and see what you think:
That's the arcade "legend" (translated: not good enough for console release; can be found on the recreation deck of two cargo ferries; one has been out of order since 1998) that is Sonic the Fighters. I beat the single player arcade mode in all of twenty minutes with Sonic. Hmm... still, budget game, budget action, surely?

As promised, here's that snippet from The Spectator, dated 25th of February, about the United States which I find rather interesting. Alexander Chancellor writes that "...my great-grandfather Murray Finch Hatton... shot an African tracker in the leg while big-game shooting in Kenya. Mortified by what he had done, he rushed forward and gave the tracker a golden guinea. The man limped off, but soon returned. He had consulted his wife, he said, and wondered if his Lordship might kindly oblige by shooting him again. Dick Cheney didn't need a golden guinea to buy the goodwill of Harry Whittington, 78, the multimillionaire Republican lawyer he shot two weeks ago while quail-shooting in south Texas. In fact, it is hard to imagine circumstances in which Whittington would allow any anger he might feel towards the Vice-President to become public. For Whittington is a Texas Republican loyalist, and the 50,000-acre Armstrong Ranch, where the shooting incident happened, is a sacred place for Republicans. To be asked to shoot there means being admitted into the Republican inner circle. Regular guests have included not only Cheney but the two Bush presidents... and George junior's chief political strategist, Karl Rove. For a guest to publicise trouble or disharmony on the ranch would result in instant expulsion from this Republican elite. So Whittington, with up to 200 steel pellets from Cheney's 28-bore shotgun buried in his face, neck and torso, and recovering from a pellet lodged in his heart, left hospital six days later declairing that 'my family and I are deeply sorry for all that Vice-President Cheney and his family have had to go through this past week.' It was, he said, 'much more serious' than anything that had happened to him. He would have probably have said the same if he had lost an eye."

The times we live in, eh? Peace out.