Cinderella - the Truth!

I just discovered something very interesting today. The Cinderella story is a fabrication! She never actually wore a glass slipper! It all comes down to a confusion of the homophones "verre/vair" in French (the latter meaning leather, from some kind of base critter). I just knew it was all bollocks! I shall never trust the veracity of a fairy tale again.

National Popularity Survey - Top 10

Have you ever wondered which nation and which nation's people are respectively most and least admired? You probably have your own ideas.
I've conducted an informal, non-exhaustive survey on the Internet which offers a statistical answer to this question.
Using a popular Search Engine, I entered the query: "F*cking !!!!!! C*nt" (replace * by vowel and !!!!! by national identity - English, French, American, etc.). The results were as follows, in descending order of number of hits:

1) American: 418
=2) English: 116
=2) French: 116
4) Irish: 76
5) German: 74
=6) Scottish: 51
=6) Welsh: 51
8) Foreign: 16
=9) Japanese: 4
=9) Chinese: 4

So the Americans seem to be most despised, while the Orientals tend to be looked on most favourably. It's refreshing to note that the levels of general xenophobia would seem quite low, with only 16 hits for "effing foreign c***".

Entertain me

Well, Xmas has been and gone, we've got our Wiis and our video games and our HD TVs and our broadband access, and I'm drawn to remembering how dire Sundays used to be when I was a kid and there was literally nothing to do.
As the rain spatters the window pane, I recall how we'd be reduced on a Sunday afternoon to betting on which raindrop would reach the bottom first. Wait a minute, I must concentrate on this. I'm sure the one on the left is going to win.