MISSOURI: A federal judge has just stopped all human executions after findnig out that the doctor in charge of mixing up the lethal injections was dyslexic.

"The court is gravely concerned that a physician who is solely responsible for correctly mixing the drugs ... has a condition which causes him confusion with regard to numbers," the judge writes.

He also doubled the level of one drug which the doctor had been mixing. The deal is that first you get an anaesthetic, then you get one which paralyses you, then potassium chloride, which stops your heart and is fucking painful if you haven't been knocked out. Guess which one the doctor had been dishing out at half-strength levels?

I've lived in London for nearly a year now and while my housemates are busy falling over Pete Doherty in Soho, the only famous person I've spotted was Rob Brydon. There's no excuse for this as I work a mere stumble from Soho, Noho and the other ho's so randomly littered around Berwick Street.

This might well be due to the fact that when I walk along I either stare at my feet in case I fall over the pavement, or so straight ahead that I can't see anything that isn't in my direct eyeline. But today! Today I walked past human hair-stack Russell Brand while I was going into Soho House. Admittedly he was standing still and about two inches from the front door - still, I've finally got a good spot.

(Also. Clarrie's "Oh Eddiiiiie" has now replaced Ruth's "Aw naaaaaw" as the most annoying catchphrase in The Archers. I'll rip her fictional tongue out of her head if that sodding son of hers doesn't turn up soon.)

Someone at ESPN clearly did not pay attention when they were teaching them how to write headlines. A-hahahahahahaha! And again, ha.

Random Birth Twin would like it to be known that he took this screengrab. Duly noted, well done you.

Two lovely Grauniads in Private Eye this week:

"For forty years the satirical magazine Private Eye has held it's regular lunches in a dinghy upstairs room of the Coach and Horses pub in Greek Street Soho." - The Anglo-Celt (they need to duff up their sub).

"And when all that walking has tired you out, jump aboard one of Strasbourg's sleek and futuristic tramps to sweep you onto your next stop." - Donnie Evening Post

The Donnie lass and I never travelled any other way when we lived there. Especially if the tramps were us.

Snigger. How unfortunate if it actually succeeds.

Tabby cats are totally awesome. Especially this one, who cornered a black bear up a tree. Twice.

My mate Laura is currently doing Important Things in Ghana. She sends updates about what she's up to which are generally awesome. Her last update included a list of the 10 best store names she's seen so far: STORE names mind you. The equivalent of Curries. These are:

10. Gift of God Beauty Salon
9. God is King Radiator Services
8. Jesus’s Victory School (imagine competing with them!)
7. Jesus is Alive Supermarket
6. The King Maker (with no explanation over what that store actually is)
5. The Success Spot (ditto)
4. My God is Able Phone Cards
3. Showers of Blessing Fashion Shop
2. The Lord’s Restaurant: continental, Ghanian, and Chinese cuisine

And finally, giving a whole new meaning to “Let there be light”:

1. God’s First Electrical Store

Good grief, it's barely an hour past breakfast and already there's a quote of the day:

"Joy Division are the poster boys for robot-dancing art house pretender boys thinking that their middle class roots have left them sterile and defenceless."
- Monkey Wrench, Empire forums.

If there is only one non-essential procrastination that you do today, make it listening to last week's Mitch Benn episode which I am about to listen to for the third time, zoning out during the non-humourous bits. The Franz Ferdinand piece 8 minutes in is genius, and someone finally lets Robin Ince do his Morrissey impression on the radio. Marvellous.

Is this the Greatest Picture Ever? We're thinking yes.

I have a serious workload. The only way around a serious workload is to ignore it completely, which is why I nipped out for drinks instead of going home and crying myself into an early grave.

Last night the Random Birth Twin and I went and had cocktails and oxygen at, er, Oxygen. It turns out that oxygen is a bit like laughing gas only without the stomach cramps caused by excess hysteria, though I somewhat spoiled its healing powers by smoking before and afterwards.

We then decided that as RBT had never done karaoke before to go and find some. The only place that could/would take us was Lucky Voice's six person booth where we proceeded to spend an hour belting out Nina Simone, Spencer Davis Group and The Offspring (me), obscure 80s bands and The Smiths (RBT) amongst various screeching levels of The Cure, Alison Moyet and Suede. They had Suede! Marvellous!

We also did the world's GREATEST duet of Gangsta's Paradise. Nothing like watching two middle-class white indie kids doing complicated hand signals while screaming out passages from the Bible.

While looking through a list of top festival moments EVAH, Mick Jagger reading rubbish poetry came up, and then an argument over his frock and its levels of awfulness. There's this:




...which doesn't look so bad. More of a kaftan in fact. No! God, no. Black and white photography, as we all know, covers many many sins. See here:



And yes, exactly the sort of thing I used to be forced into aged 5. I have no sympathy for a man who shops at Laura Ashley. Even one who wrote Wild Horses.

"We consider ourselves to be the protagonists of our lives, the directors of a story that no one could live for us. However, we cannot avoid shivering (from rage, from enthusiasm or from a burst of energy) when we hear words that we might have used ourselves in the first person come out of the mouths of others.

"At times they are phrases that describe us, that unveil parts of ourselves that we believed were ours alone. This makes us feel somewhat exposed, as if others were listening to our voices instead of the voices of those singing the songs. Other times songs describe what we would like to be, which deep down inside inspires us to be what we are or to try to be what we would like to be.

"On these occasions, we feel less alone: there is someone somewhere who thinks like I do and wants to do what I want to do, and they have put it in words. These are the songs that become more than just background music while we are dancing or getting ready in the morning: these songs become our hymns."

- Silvià Terron.

Mr HM-PJ: "I have attached the best thing I have done today so everyone can see how much of that very expensive journalism diploma I am actually using…" Bloody awesome, and rather more than me, illegible shorthand aside. Although I once came close to using Quark, but managed to escape before it bit me in the arse.

That's the trouble with not leaving the house in 36 hours: you miss out on all manner of exciting news, such as the fact that they've discovered a whole new sort of shark in the US.

That's obviously only exciting to me then.

It's not quite on Megalodon levels of thrill as this one's basically a slightly swankier version of a scalloped hammerhead. Mind, those are pretty cool - hammerheads have evolved the hell out of the other 434 species. The reason why they've got those insanely shaped heads is so that they have a wider field of vision and so their ampullae of Lorenzini (basically electric fish detectors) are more spread out. Awesome.

Masterchefs Of The Universe says:
Am going to die alone eaten by alsatians

Anna - in that world I shall abide forever says:
oh no you won't

Anna - in that world I shall abide forever says:
certainly not alsatians at any rate. perhaps wilderbeast for I hope you will be writing your famous book in some exotic land

Anna - in that world I shall abide forever says:
alsatians are too british

Masterchefs Of The Universe says:
The ultimate indignity would be to be consumed by small yappy rubbish dogs.

Anna - in that world I shall abide forever says:
oh no....a chiwawah

Anna - in that world I shall abide forever says:
[sic]

Masterchefs Of The Universe says:
Pomeranian!

Masterchefs Of The Universe says:
Oh the horror...

Anna - in that world I shall abide forever says:
a squirrel would also be quite shameful

Masterchefs Of The Universe says:
Jesus. Can you imagine? Their beady little eyes staring glassily at you while they gnaw their way through your right thigh.

Nobody should get up on Sunday morning - end of. More to the point, nobody should actually choose to get out of bed after an evening of trains, cocktails and screaming drunks, and then go traipsing across London to go running.

Which is naturally why OIR and I did so for the Race For Life. I don't get guilt very often, but I did when I saw it being advertised in the Metro a couple of months ago and signed up for it. OIR gets very excited in the tube on the way over and suggests that we sign up to do the half marathon. I break it to her that 13 miles is considerably heftier than 3.


Highly-tuned athletes. Honest.


Who I ran for. My grandma had cancer when I was small and the wonderous folk at Bart's sorted it out. My cousin is doing the chemo for breast cancer at the moment.


Where there is cancer to be researched, you will find morons with cameras.

I haven't been surrounded by so many women since I went to my single-sex primary school. It's slightly unnerving until we all have to take part in the world record attempt for biggest simultaneous stretch. Kat Brown, BA Hons (Dunelm), World Record Holder For Stretching - beats the crap out of my ungainly attempts at learning how to do handstands yesterday.

Gloria Hunniford gets wheeled out to beam benificence on the crowd. Barking mad aerobics instructors warm us up with routines so frantic it would take industrial quantities of Ritalin to bring it down to something folk can actually deal with.

Helen, quite sensibly, abandons all pretence of paying attention to the barking mad aerobics instructors. Then we all start to run like there are wolves after us: slow, fairly stupid wolves. People line the route and cheer which is quite nice, and makes up for the fact I really, really dislike running. Note for the future, all-female running races attract a surprisingly attractive male fanbase.

Final KM. OIR and I nearly cried when we reached 3, mostly because we missed the one that said 2 and thought there was only a street to go and that we were actually rather fast. We weren't.

We get medals. And finish and stuff - they're interviewing the winner when I cross the finish lines ("Raise your hands as you pass!" - no. Not ever.) who'd been training three times a week for the last eight weeks, which was what I meant to do but failed entirely.

Done. And so am I.