Big Brother

I don't get this, I've never got this - yeah, I know that doesn't quite work in a grammar sense. Alex's boyfriend Matt's cousin Grace is in it. She's a minger. Alex tells me that she's the second prettiest one in the house, but well, she IS a minger. To me this is a completely incomprehensible phenomenon. How typical of British people to watch people in their houses via some kind of webcam(s). Alex knows the names of these people, they are real people and yet they're not. They are a parody of real people, doing things that parody what real people do. There's a Canadian who appears to be wearing a Thunderbirds outfit, Alex refers to him as the Canadian sexual terrorist. He doesn't sound Canadian though and he knows English words that Canadians have to ask the meaning of. Kevin asked me only the other day what a 'pinny' was and this guy just used the word.
There are rules to the show, strange, made up rules, I suppose that the rules of life are strange and made up. I just DON'T GET IT.

Meanwhile, in other news, Vodafone, the phone company that I myself use, have lost a record 14.9 billion pounds this year. That's American billions, know to the French and Germans as 'milliards', also in old English as the same. How the hell is that possible ? Well it seems by not pursuing their elected task of supplying mobile phones and mobile phone paraphernalia, but by less successful diversification. It's all so scary. Despite losing an unbelievable amount of money, the company have done well this year. Eventually there won't be countries, just ubercompanies, like in sci-fi. 14.9 billion pounds would be irrelevant to a country, and it doesn't seem to mean too much to Vodafone. Four hundred jobs will be lost. Probably just housekeeping.

The other big news today is of course the EU deciding that it doesn't have to comply with the US demand for information on passengers travelling to their country. An interesting one this. Frankly, it seems to be a meaningless decision and a waste of the European taxpayers' money. The bottom line as I read it is two-fold. Some new guidelines are going to have to be agreed between the EU and the US about protection of passengers' information, on the other hand, it matters not a whit, since the US simply won't allow people into their country until they have provided whatever info they require. That's basically part of having sovereignty. I can see this turning into another lumber dispute fiasco, marginally more absorbing than Big Brother, which in its turn is marginally more absorbing than watching grass grow. Actually, scratch that, watching grass grow can be quite meditative.