Just recently passed through a phase of seeing people that I cannot tell if they're male, or female. What's THAT all about?

Seems to me that I catch myself pronouncing words without that English correctness, as I once used to.

BBC accused of being too white-middle-class-southeast-England, well I could have told them that.

Three chaps (and I mean that in the male sense of the word, not the generic British version) were at the next table from me this afternoon, outside a restaurant. They were just ordering beers. However, one of them went off to get a sandwich. Much to the pre-waitress-scene worry
of the other two. Sure enough, the chap came back with a sandwich and shortly after, the waitress arrived to take their order. She made a comment about how if the boss had seen that sandwich at thier table, they would have been very annoyed. The sandwich smuggler asked what the problem was, and the young lady explained that if someone sat in his business with a competing product, he would probably ask them to leave. All of these exchanges were civil, but as soon she left, it all began.....
Not the complete and utter twelve year old girly whine and bitch, but a more cerebral form. Such as questions about the nature of truth, which really made a change. One chap stated that he'd picked up a fifty year old book, which apparently layed out quite plainly what the truth is. He said he read through it, until he disagreed with it. Then a couple of scenarios regarding truth in relation to perception and how it's only popular opinion that changes things. Therefore truth is merely what you've decided it will be, and not what it is. Which brings me to wondering why none of them mentioned that truth is only YOURS and nobody can change that. They seemed to be struggling with trying to find a way of cosmically 'validating' their particular fact/comment/belief.
So after wisely going through different recent newsworthy events, and saying that if people had listened to the truth (although they as yet hadn't nailed down exactly what that was) these catastrophes would have been averted (obviously). The sandwich rebel said that she would definately think twice about how she had spoken to him about this food, and to cut a fairly predictable story short, their exchange was in effect, a life changing event for her, which (after the trio's CNN like analysis of the modern world) was their way of making the world a better place. So to round it off, truth is merely the best argument and how eloquent your argument may be. Also the ability to wait until the object of your objections is out of the way, go and find some feeble minded friends/aquaintences, to which you explain your truth and how without actually confirming it, or explaining any of this twenty-twenty hindsight to the original protagonist, the way you have rocked their philosophical world. Straightening out this oddly WRONG way of thinking about something.

I have actually been in my first genuine prank call situation. During the afternoon in the coffee shop, a call came in. The young girl behind the bar called out "Is there a Dick Fitzwell here?" Then as she offered the phone out to the world in general, the eight or ten people in the place remained silent, and the dawning of a beginning, of a realisation, of a thought, slowly traversed her mind.... We all had a good laugh... Hmmm what was I saying earlier about being twelve?

Finally finished a six month run of mega-commuting. Two hundred and fifty miles a day for six months! Wow, that sounds amazingly impressive until I say that it was only two days a week for two weeks in a month. The other two weeks it was less, but the same days. Writing this on my (hopefully) final Greyhound run. Using my Dell Axim for entertainment on these long journeys. I gave up with the radio a long while ago. Once the big city limits are lost on the horizon, so, it seems, is the radio signal. I think I mentioned a while back about the state of countryfied radio. It's obsession with all things cowboyish, and/or Godly smitingly. Other than that, it was a trip back to the 80's. Conjuring up images of smokey, beer drenched working clubs in the south east corner of the English countryside in my well travelled mind. The 'urban' version of radio is to play sickeningly endless amounts of rap music, but even the self proclaimed 'Number one hit music radio station' must be having a very slim year. They appear to have only about eight pieces of music, which they play beween the commercials.

So faced with a choice between banjo fever, or questionably moraled, total made up testosterone fantasy gushing (er.. that sounds a lot worse than it was meant, I might change it) I grabbed a 256MB SDCard and plonked some (well a lot actually, of) MP3's on it. The Axim manages to keep cranking out the music with no signs of struggle, or even a hint of energy loss. Thanks Dell, you kept me sane through the final miles.