But this is probs my fave one ever. In this rare case PDF means Pretty Damn Fine. Or Pretty Damn Fly if you can pull it off. I can’t. But if I looked this good in two pairs of shorts, two vests and a cycling cap then I’d make sure I had the lingo to match.

Lingo. Dingo! There’s a fence here to keep them away from all the sheep. It’s longer than the Great Wall of China. Just so you know.

Up on North Ronaldsay in Orkney where my mama lives there’s a drystone wall round the shore that keeps the wee lambs on the beach so that they’ll eat seaweed and grow up to be all sweet & tasty.

Yum. And one of the many things that’ll keep me zooming back and forth. Missin’ haggis neeps & tatties. And Gregg’s sausage rolls. I once said “Thank you maam” in Greggs and got laughed out of the shop. True story.

Headin’ back to Glasgow for a spell on May 25th. Can’t wait to see everyone again! I’ve missed all you lovely talented lot. Visa lark says I can travel to-and-fro & work in Aus as much or as little as I like for the next 4 years. Quite good really.

Ps. Images sourced in fine ol’ Creative Commons technicolour. Attributions: North Ron Sheep by Ian Caldwell, Dingo by Jarrod Amoore, Haggis from Glane23. Thanks loves.

This is the cute as a button wee music shop where I got my Pantha du Prince bag, designed by Hisham Bharoocha of Black Dice. They only made 84 of ‘em so as a child of ‘84 I felt compelled to have one. In China 1984 was the year of the rat, and the rat’s motto is “I Rule”.
Just so you know.

Jet Black Cat Music, 72A Vulture Street, Brisbane QLD 4101, (+61) 0419 571 299

Great name, tick. Great street name, tick. Only sells Vinyl, tick. Aw shucks partner that’s all the boxes! Well done you.

Hmm, Shipping News is of course also a novel by E. Annie Proulx, punning on shipping the news. Quite clever really. And the obligatory film of it taught me how to write a headline too:

Publisher: Now, have a look outside, what do you see?
Protagonist: HORIZON FILLS WITH DARK CLOUDS?
Publisher: no, no, no. IMMINENT STORM THREATENS VILLAGE.
Protagonist: But what if no storm comes?
Publisher: VILLAGE SPARED FROM DEADLY STORM.

My parcel arrives in ten minutes! bisous

“If your papers are no good, they will say, “What did you expect? He is a fixture!” and if an occasional paper of yours is found to be interesting, they will say, “What did you expect? He has been working at this all his life!“

A very pleasing wee bon mot, and with a structure that automatically made me think of the fight in Of Mice & Men. I couldn’t recall more than the gist of Steinbeck’s “damned if you do” passage so I had a quick skim through and found:

“Never did seem right to me. S’pose Curley jumps a big guy an’ licks him. Ever’body says what a game guy Curley is. And s’pose he does the same thing and gets licked. Then ever’body says the big guy oughtta pick somebody his own size, and maybe they gang up on the big guy. Never did seem right to me.”

A quick google reveals that “damned if you do, damned if you don’t” is a rather old idea, and was first penned in a rant about the bible by Lorenzo Dow, American evangelist (d. 1834):

“You can and you can’t - you shall and you shan’t - You will and you won’t - And you will be damned if you do - And you will be damned if you don’t.”

Very well said. Reminds me of The Zutons - You Will You Won’t, you do you don’t.

Gian-Carlo Rota → Steinbeck → Lorenzo Dow → The Zutons

hmm, friday mind-a-wandering. bisousss

How many short usernames are there?
3 letter addresses: 46656
4 letter addresses: 1679616
5 letter addresses: 60466176

So ~62m possible 3,4,5 letter alphanumeric names. At a guess, let’s say that 2m are desirable. Handily enough, Gmail has a few hundred million users, so getting 2m to sign up for a pro account with their choice of short username shouldn’t be too difficult. They could pop some other features in the pro account I’m sure, like increased storage. But the hook? defs that shortname.

And the cost? $10 a month. So $10*12months*2m users… oooh just a nice wee $240m/year. Quite good really.

Gmail addresses have to be 6 characters or more, so first I tried some shorter versions of my name, but hmm, all taken. I tried various initials and numbers too, but numbers? it looked all eww and spammy.

So I went through the letters of my name looking for patterns, and settled on MMGRGR [at] gmail.com …it’s Matthias McGReGoR, both sequential and repeating …yum. Aaaand it should save a good minute or two each time I say it. Quite good really.

ps. email me

Sorted! And a mere taste of the warmup tunes I’ll be playing at the Supermax pre-club in Bar Soba from 9 ’til 12. Come down for a bev and get a sweet booze on before we head down to subby. any requests?

MORE:
Photo preview from superwoman Marina at Style Scanner:
The only way is Supermax

RSVP facey-merci SUPERMAX PRE=PARTY, SOBA
RSVP facey-merci SUPERMAX 4th BDAY, SUBBY

S U P E R M A XXX 4TH BIRTHDAY PRE-CLUB
GET THE PARTY STARTED WITH MATTHIAS MCGREGOR
FRIDAY 16TH SEPT @ BAR SOBA / 9PM - MIDNIGHT

Oh and on a related note, here’s a local radio ad I particularly like:
‎”We think everyone should be able to eat a delicious breakfast, then climb back into bed with a gorgeous model for the rest of the morning. With mouth-watering breakfasts from just $9.95 we’ve held up our end of the bargain.” pffffft.