Stray Thoughts, eh ? What are ya, some kinda wise guy?

1. If I told you - and I honestly could - that I'd recently found myself typing the word 'thoguth' a lot, you could reasonably think that I was working on a short story set in H.P.Lovecraft's Cthulhu mythos. The truth is more mundane; my hands appear to have forgotten how to type the word 'thought'.

2. I'm not proud of it in any way, but I have become almost addicted to watching trash like X-Factor and American Idol. Like many people, I'm not interested in the final outcome, as I don't need any more cabaret-level cover-singing six-months-and-then-gone singers in my life (Sneddon, Parks, Ward, and so on). What I do need more of, though, is the insane and untalented ones, where the people seem to be powered solely by delusion and uncritical family support. Oh, and the dignity-free folks who beg for a chance when they have all the singing ability of a slightly wet flannel. That, my friends, is what I like to see... which sits, I know, very badly with my wish for people to be vetted for talent BEFORE they make it onto the screen. However, I think the comedy value of it may be the exceptional factor (see what I did there?) here.

3. This suggests a remake where the point's once again being well and truly missed, rather like the recent abortive Coupling USA-stylee, and even moreso the two tries in the USA to remake Fawlty Towers, one of which removed the character of Basil. No, seriously.

4. It's just over a week to Valentine's Day, so if there's someone you'd like to send something to, this is a good time to start thinking about it. You could, of course, wait until the morning of the day itself, and then run round like an anniversary-forgetting-husband in a 1970s sitcom, but unless you're actually going to have music and a laugh track accompanying your actions, it's probably not such a good idea.

5. The link will follow soon so you can sponsor me, but just to confirm for those of you who've asked, yes, I am in training for the Marathon. I've eschewed Diet Coke since the start of the year, and I'll be giving up chocolate, in all its forms, for Lent. Not for religious reasons, but simply calorific ones. Granted, giving it up may well lead me to be found shaking and cold-sweating in an alley, but I think my waistline and my running feet will thank me for it, even if my serotonin levels do drop in a scary way.

6. Sherlock Soanes Dept: whilst I didn't blog about it at the time as I only intermittently put comic stuff here, I can honestly say that, in relation to DC Comics' 52, I guessed who Supernova was a couple of weeks after he was first introduced. No, really, hand on heart I did - in the same way that I guessed Judge Dredd was The Dead Man back in 1989 or so. Mind you, I didn't guess who was behind it all in Watchmen, so maybe my comic detection powers only apply to weekly publications.