Weather: Sunny later, very cold. 3

Cory, quoting Anne:
>YES YES !! COME TO TEXAS!!
And while you're in that part of the country, Arizona's quite nice,
"That part of the country?" It's a thousand miles away, give or take. As far away as I am from Stockholm, or Rome. Not the sort of trip one can make at the drop of a hat.

Besides, do you *seriously* want people to think Arizona is the same as Texas? Indeed, do our Dallas correspondents really like being lumped in the same state as Houston?

Weather: Sunny, mainly, but chilly. 3.

Football: Arsenal followed up its worst defeat of the season with one of its most convincing wins -- a 6-1 pummelling of Leicester that featured a hat trick from French striker Thierry Henry.
The second-place Gunners failed to gain ground on league-leading Manchester United, which needed a late goal by Norwegian striker Ole Gunnar Solskjaer to defeat Aston Villa 1-0 and maintain its Boxing Day supremacy.
West Ham raced to a 3-0 advantage over Charlton in the first half and added two more in the second in a dominating 5-0 home win.
Sunderland's Kevin Phillips exploded for a second-half hat trick with goals in the 48th, 55th and 85th minutes in a 4-1 away win over last-place Bradford.
Elsewhere in the English Premier League's traditional post-Christmas matches, it was: Everton 1, Coventry 2; Ipswich 2, Chelsea 2; Manchester City 0, Derby 0; Middlesbrough 1, Liverpool 0; and Newcastle 2, Leeds 1. Southampton beats Tottenham 2-0 Wednesday.

The standings: MUN 46 ARS 38 SUN 35 (+3) LEI 35 (-1) IPS 34 ... BRA 12 MID 16 MCY 18 (-1) COV 19 (+1) DER 20
The points: MUN 1174 ARS 1107 SUN 1079 (+1) IPS 1051 (+3) LIV 1043 (-2) ... BRA 849 MCY 910 (-1) COV 921 (+1) EVE 925 (-1) MID 944 (+1)

Thomas, welcome back. He was speaking of Rayanne and Brian.
No string attached banging will always go fine.
For Rayanne, it's all she's ever done. For Brian, it allows him to get a little closer to Angela, in a vicarious manner.

But i think Brian could be the one who gets Rayanne out of her shell.
Interesting... could be.

Perhaps not for a long lasting boy friend, (they are way to different for that) but as a consort(?) and a good friend.
A good friend who happens to be male and (maybe) engaged in sub-duvet activities. Though in my experience, doing it does change the character of the relationship totally.

Brian could swallow the rejections and ridiculies one will get from Rayanne at first and be insistent enough to earn her trust.
Heck, he's been chasing Angela for long enough. And there's enough evidence (Hallowe'en) to show Rayanne does trust Brian more than she trusts many other people.

Rayanne could complete the journey Brian started with Jordan and show Brian that there is a world out there that will let him in if he tries not only to watch but to interact.
This is also true.

this is why a Fusion of Jordan and Brian may be the right one for Angela.
Yes, but bringing characters in from left-field feels like cheating. That's not to say that Jordan and Brian won't learn from each other, and one-or-other evolve into that mixed character.

who knows what could have happened.
Who knows, indeed! Thanks for your thoughts, it's always great to get a fresh perspective. (I'm sounding like an empty-headed American now. Better shut up.)

Weather: Sunny, and cold. 2.

Travel: Back to work ): Morning is no trouble, very quiet all the way. Back is less good - bus into the city, then a 15-minute wait for one train heading north. It's the Stafford stopper, which stops and starts at Oldbury, without opening the doors. Bad move. When it eventually makes Wolverhampton, there are so many late trains on the departure board that those on time don't fit on. Eventually find the two stoppers are both AWOL.

Great to be walking out from work at 4:30 under a sunny sky, and there's still daylight! It's the first sunny sky since about October, and the first daylight in about the same length of time. It's been a wet, dark autumn, and it's over.

Mid East Peace Israeli prime minister Ehud Barak and Yasser Arafat, the Palestinian leader, are to meet in Egypt tomorrow to thrash out their differences over the latest peace plan. The summit meeting comes amid signs of Palestinian reservations over the compromise proposals drawn up by US president Bill Clinton. The Clinton formula is seen as the last chance for a settlement before elections in Israel in February.

Failways again Deputy king John Prescott has promised to look at plans by train operators to increase ticket prices. He also predicted that passengers will return to the trains despite months of chaos. Proposals to increase fares by up to 4.9% were condemned as "barmy" by Gwyneth Dunwoody, Labour chair of the Commons select committee on transport, but train companies say they need the money to improve services.
If they want money, they improve services first. People will not object to paying through the nose for a high-quality service. The current isn't.

Thomas:
I think most on this list will have experienced something like this. But i still sometimes shudder when i remeber it.

You know, watching the last episode. Then a frantic search across the net for info in the following Episodes perhaps Airdates. Finding the Letters from OLS and finally realizing that there is nothing out there. I was definitly in shock :-)
It was a downer. Thankfully, the little pre-publicity that MSCL had in the UK included the info that these 19 episodes were *it*, and the drama would be complete in one run. Even if I didn't see one of the parts for a year and a half, and had to fly a third of the way round the planet to complete the set. But I digress.

Then i came across a site where i read a small comment about the show being suspended in time and it hit me.
Perhaps the show ended at absolutely the right time. Some many Question unanswered so many plots unresolved everything caugth in a perfect moment to be preserved for eternety. Perhaps this is the true secret of MSCL. Not the superb acting or the livelike Characters or even the above par directing for a tv show, but the fact that you always can wonder: "What could have been."
If there wasn't so much evidence to the contrary i would say that they planned it this way from the beginning.
All the other factors helped, and without them I don't think there would be the magic in the up-in-the-air ending. In one of the Party of Five companions, there's a reported quote that that series deliberately *avoided* having a series-ending cliffhanger, in case it never got resolved. The producer "wanted to avoid an Angela-Jordan situation from MSCL," or something very similar.

Weather: About 7cm of snow falls overnight, though it's just about stopped by 7 AM. Leaves a mainly sunny day. +1 is the top.

Travel: Train out is only a couple of minutes late, though gets stuck for about 5 minutes coming into New Street. Coming back, there's *nothing* on the boards going north, so it's the tram to Wolverhampton. Arrive as the main shopping centre is being evacuated through yet another false fire alarm, which means a lot of people are on my bus. Standing room only past Beatties.

A man's arrested after paragliding on to the forecourt of Buckingham Palace. The intruder is an Australian author attempting to publicise his book. A police helicopter had spotted the paraglider before it landed and had alerted officers on the ground. The helicopter had tailed the paraglider from Hampstead Heath, over Regent's Park, down Whitehall and the Mall before it landed.
Tourists watched as a police helicopter tried to warn the paraglider away. Eric Schmidt, 57, from Berlin, said: "I suddenly heard the helicopter and looked up and saw the man in a parachute. The helicopter was going towards him and he was being given a warning on a loudspeaker, but the man did not seem to take any notice. He landed running on his feet behind the gate and he was quickly whisked away by police."
Today's incident is the second time a flying intruder has breached royal security. In 1994 a naked American paraglider landed on the roof of the palace.

Battledome has been airing on Channel 5 for the past couple of nights. Hell, it's a rip-off of "Gladiators," with more muscle and less brainpower. It's fine, as zero-brain entertainment.
Buffy: Graduation Day gets an uncut re-run on SKY. Still spellbindingly great.

Jaeda:
>A Monty Python character, dressed as a soldier, writes: Right, this image
>has become too frank for family viewing. We'll have none of that here thank
>you very much. Move along, move along.
LOLOL never seen even *one* Money Python, but this still cracked me up.....
You serious? Never seen a Monty Python? Please rectify this as soon as is possible. Start with Full Frontal Nudity. The episode of that name.

---

Nope, never seen one...seen a clip of one...something disgusting called a "mouse organ"....eewy eewy yuck!
A mouse organ? A Marvellous, Mechanical Mouse Organ? That wasn't Monty Python (grown men larking about.) That was Bagpuss (stop-animation films that define Englishness.)

Bagpuss was a saggy old cloth cat, who lived in a shop that belonged to a little girl called Emily. Every once in a while, Emily would bring an item that someone had lost, place it before Bagpuss, and chant the magic words:
Bagpuss, dear Bagpuss, old fat furry cat-puss
Be merry and light, be golden and bright
O Bagpuss o hear what I sing.
At these words, Bagpuss would wake up, and the world would change from its previous sepia-and-white tones into full vivid colour. When Bagpuss wakes up, all his friends wake up too. Madeleine, the rag doll. Gabriel, the toad. Professor Yaffel, the carved wooden book-end in the shape of a woodpecker. And the mice on the mouse organ.

Bagpuss and his friends would work out what the item was that Emily had placed before them, and they would fix it. Then, the job completed, everyone would return to sleep. And, er, that's it.

Though Bagpuss has been around for a few years longer than me, he's still as popular as ever, and gave such modern toys as Thunderbirds and Diabli a run for their money in the Christmas toy stakes.

So, to return to the original point, the mouse organ was not Monty Python. It was something else entirely.

Weather: A very cold night, down to -10 or so. Then some sun, +2, a little melting.

Travel: No problem on the train out. Bus back goes AWOL, and I'm 15 late into New St. Which means I get the (almost on-time) 1734 FNW to Holyhead, into Wton also almost on time.

A crazed passenger burst on to the flight deck of a BA jumbo jet early today, causing it to go out of control and plunge 10,000 feet. Passengers prayed and several were thrown from their seats and injured as the plane went into two steep dives while the pilot and crew fought the intruder.
The drama took place at 4.53am as the aircraft was cruising at high altitude over Khartoum. The plane's autopilot became disengaged during the struggle and for two terrifying minutes the jumbo dived and lurched out of control as the flight crew and then passengers in club class fought to subdue the intruder, described by one witness as a "man mountain". Eventually the Kenyan - later described by police as a "berserk mental patient" - was brought down by a 6ft 6in American businessman.
Passengers screamed as the 747 dived and then banked violently to the left before the pilot was able to regain control. Five people were injured, including a stewardess who suffered a broken ankle.

Sara:
well, I'm writing to you all from a winter wonderland....that sounds all dreamy and wonderful, but unfortunately, its not THAT great.
It's not much better over here. We've had some snow, an inch or two, and that's more than enough to bung up the transport network. (He said, writing the night before, without so much as a single flake on the ground, yet sure that if it has snowed, roads *will* be clogged, pavements *will* be slippy, and trains *will* be late.)

anyway!! it IS nice to be home, and very very strange. before I came I was scared that I wouldn't want to go back to England, but strangely enough, I miss all that is England. I say, old bean, what a most unexpected turn up for the books. Rather, old chap!

we haven't had a chance to do anything yet that we wanted too - basically playing in the snow, and going out. Hopefully now that x-mas is over, we will now, cause before it was all busy with shopping and such.
Yes, shopping is such a crush. So are the new year sales. I wouldn't expect a 7:30am arrival into Birmingham to be busy with shoppers, but it was.

Fools.

this *isn't* my home anymore. and believe me, I have now realized all over again why I ran all the way over to England. I can't STAND my family.
You have Ross. You have Toby. You have annoying relatives 3000 miles away who you only have to see for two months every six years or so. Sounds rather good.

Weather: Cold. -10 overnight, +2 in the day. A slight thaw.

Football: Arsenal missed a chance to gain ground on Manchester United by conceding two second-half goals in a 2-2 draw with Sunderland, while Ipswich continued its surprising climb up the table. Man United allowed a late equalizer by host Newcastle in a 1-1 draw.
Four matches - Aston Villa versus Leicester, Bradford versus Liverpool, Everton versus Leeds and West Ham versus Chelsea - were postponed to cold and snowy weather.
Newcastle appeared headed to a home defeat after Man United staked an early 1-0 lead on a penalty by midfielder David Beckham. Manager Bobby Robson took a gamble with 15 minutes remaining by bringing on three substitutions; Stephen Glass, Lomana Lua Lua and Daniel Cordone. All three touched the ball in an attack that ended with Glass slamming home a loose ball with just nine minutes remaining.
Arsenal started strong as midfielder Patrick Vieira scored in the fifth by comfortably out-jumping the scrum on a corner kick and nodding home a header. Lee Dixon doubled the lead as the Gunners had at least half-a-dozen good chances in the first half, but Sunderland stole the momentum in the second half to force the draw. Vieira's hand ball led to a Kevin Phillips penalty in the 53rd minute and the equalizer came in the 83rd as Gavin McCann ran down a loose ball and sent a shot that curled around 'keeper Alex Manninger and into the net.
Ipswich left Tottenham still looking for its first away win of the season. Spurs got off to a bad start as Ipswich captain Matt Holland broke clear in the ninth minute and sent a cross from the left side that was flat missed by Alun Armstrong but collected by Marcus Stewart, who easily tapped the ball in from six metres out.
In the other matches, Charlton won 4-1 at Manchester City; Middlesborough and Coventry tied 1-1; and Southampton beat Derby 1-0.

The standings: MUN 47 ARS 39 IPS 37 (+2) SUN 36 (-1) LEI 35 (-1) ... BRA 12 MCY 19 (-1) MID 19 (+1) COV 20 DER 20
The points: MUN 1166 ARS 1106 SUN 1080 IPS 1069 LIV 1043 ... BRA 849 MCY 890 COV 921 EVE 925 DER 943 (-2)

Bored of all those Best and Worst of the year awards? Delete this post on sight, then. This is yet another blatant filler, pontificating on this year's equivalent of sliced bread.

But why stop at a parochial twelve months? Today also marks the last day of the 20th Century, and the Second Millooneyum. So, in addition to the events and people of the last 366 days, I'm handing out gongs and brickbats - where appropriate - for the last 100 years, and the whole 999 years 353 days of the millennium.

Hero
====
Year: To win one Olympic gold shows excellence. To win two in a row shows sustained excellence. Winning five on the trot is almost superhuman. For being that super human, SIR STEVEN REDGRAVE is Hero of the Year. Other candidates included NAOMI KLEIN.

Century: Literary fashion comes and goes, but the well-written novel always commands respect. The superlative novel writers can fashion a captivating tale from the smallest of observations. They can project into the future, or into the past, and reflect upon the present. Such a writer is MARGARET ATWOOD.

Millennium: For convincing the Roman Church that scientific research is not intrinsically wrong, and can be an acceptable way to worship their god, ST THOMAS AQUINAS is hero of the millennium. He paved the way for scientists from Newton to Einstein, and helped sow the seeds for MARTIN LUTHER's declaration of Protestantism.

Villain
=======
Year: When Slobodan Milosevic tried to keep power after rigging an election, the people took to the streets to order him out. When the same thing happened in the US, the people stood aside and let it wash over them. Self-proclaimed "winner" of that election, GEORGE SHRUB, is villain of the year.

Century: There are those who argue that Marxism might work, if it's given a fair chance. Russia 1917 did not give that chance. For perverting the creed of Marxism, and changing it into a self-serving elitism even worse that the feudal rule it replaced, JOSEF STALIN is villain of the century.

Millennium: On the grounds that a person can win only one award, ADOLF HITLER takes this.

Silly Soap Opera Of The Year
============================
LONDON'S MILLENNIUM PROJECTS were one disaster after another. Top of the pile had to be The Millooneyum Doom, a tawdry tent, piled high with cheap tat, stuck in the middle of nowhere near Greenwich. It's the ultimate symbol of Nu Labour's vacuous term of office - over budget, late, and not worth the bother.

The Millooneyum Wheel fared little better. When St Tony tried to turn the Wheel on last New Year's Eve, it resolutely refused to turn, and wouldn't until February. Since then, it's been stopped by high winds, protesters, water getting into the joints, and will be out of action for a month for maintainance.

Does anyone remember the River of Fire? This was supposed to be the spectacular entry to 2000, a chain of fireworks going from Westminster to the Doom. It turned into one small rocket, let off by a small boy in Rotherhithe.

And what about the Millooneyum Bridge? This pedestrian crossing was supposed to link St Paul's Cathederal to the Modern Tat gallery. It opened - late - in June, and was promptly closed three days later after people pointed out that it was swaying violently when it was in use. It turned out that the engineers hadn't anticipated that people would actually walk over the bridge. It's being rebuilt, with re-opening pencilled in for Spring 2001.

Sports person
=============
Year: With Steve Redgrave out of the running, the award goes to PAULO DI CANIO. The West Ham striker was advancing on goal against Manchester City three weeks ago, with only keeper Nicky Weaver (no relation) to beat. Not only did Weaver lose the tackle, he also sustained a nasty tendon injury. Though the goal was at his mercy, Di Canio tapped the ball up, caught it, and allowed the stricken opponent to receive treatment.

Century: Again, Redgrave would be a strong candidate for this award. I give it to JESSE OWENS, for doing everything in his power to promote the cause of racial equality by simple example.

Millennium: One cannot fault HENRY VIII, inventor of both real tennis, and the first person to turn a pastime into a sport, with codified rules. Honourable mention for WILLIAM WEBB-ELLIS, inventor of rugby union, and direct ancestor of rugby league, American Football, and the Super Bowl.

Music
=====
Year: THREE DOORS DOWN "Kryptonite," the record that turned into the soundtrack for the whole year.
Honourable mentions: NINA GORDON, "Tonight And The Rest Of My Life"
VERTICAL HORIZON "Everything You Want"
LULU "Where The Poor Boys Dance"
NINE DAYS "Absolutely"
POINT BREAK "Freakytime"
BRAINSTORM "My Star"
LEANN WOMACK "I Hope You Dance"
MOBY "Southside"
SANTANA "Smooth"

Century: "STARDUST" - Hoagy Carmichael and Mitchell Parish. A standard from the 1930s to 1950s, everyone who was anyone recorded their own version, each clearly distinctive from the other. Though it's rarely played in the UK today, this song remains a wonderful standard.
Other ones that transcend time and nation:
"WHITE CHRISTMAS" - Irving Berlin
"ALEXANDER'S RAGTIME BAND" - Irving Berlin
"OVER THE RAINBOW" - Harburg, Arlen
"UNCHAINED MELODY" - Al North, Hy Zaret
"YESTERDAY" - Paul McCartney

Millennium: "GREENSLEEVES" - Trad.

Brief Awards For The Year
=========================
Television Format (overseas): BIG BROTHER. Yes, the US edition may have flopped, but that's because CBS can't do game shows. Everywhere else that tried BB turned it into the must-see show. Whether it's Zlatko or Nasty Nick, Jan or Anna, the show achieved total ubiquity.

Television Format (UK): THE WEAKEST LINK. Nine people, lots of difficult questions, quizmaster from hell, unexpected hit.

Fallen Star: FRIENDS. Season 6 was well below par; just one repeat from season 5 showed how far the show has fallen.

Over-hyped: DAVID BECKHAM AND VICTORIA AADAMS. Mr and Mrs Posh-Spice secured more press attention than anyone else over here. Even more than the Millooneyum Doom, though it was a close thing.

Pointless idea: NAMING AND SHAMING. It started with Nu Labour late in 1999, claiming that some schools were ailing, and hoping to use adverse publicity to force an improvement. The idea was stolen by almost everyone in public life, as it's cheap and easy - the critic doesn't need to come up with any way of improvement. The apotheosis was a trashy tabloid's campaign to publicise people it claimed had committed offences against children. After two weeks of mob rule, the editor stopped the campaign but kept her job. The concept remains with us.

TIP FOR THE NEXT MILLENNIUM: Never tie your shoelace in a revolving door. (Advice void when revolving doors, or shoelaces, cease to be used. My time machine is unsure which happens first.)

Happy new millennium!

Weather: Sun turns to cloud, then snow, then rain. There's a distinct thaw in the air. +5, and rising at midnight.

The top stories in the British Press, from 00-01-01 to 00-12-18. Measured in column inches.

1) US Elections - 32,272
[That's about 180 pages of solid type, or 9 days' worth of news sections.]
2) Middle East - 14,632
3) Northern Ireland - 12,466
4) Petrol protests - 11,834
[Including the highest single week figure, 3,274 inches for 09-11 to 09-17.]
5) Zimbabwe - 8,634
6) London mayor - 8,130
[Less than 600 inches after July.]
7) Yugoslavia - 7,441
8) Rail crisis - 7,316
9) Sierra Leone - 6,259
10) Weather - 5,184
11) Millooneyum Doom - 4,724

Footnotes: Russia scored over 2,500 inches for both the elections in March and the Kursk disaster in August. Aggregating those two events would place Russia #10.

Not counting the hagiographies on Elizabeth Windsor Sr (3,618 inches) nor William Windsor (3,167) leaves Big Brother (2,744) the leading pure entertainment story.

Bad weather in the last fortnight of the year will have moved the rail crisis above Yugoslavia in the final analysis.

The Charts

#1*#5 Destiny's Child - independent women i
 [4th week in total]
#2*#2 Eminem - santa [4th week here]
#3 #1 Bob The Builder - can we fix it?
#4 #4 Baha Men - who let the dogs out?
#5*#7 Madonna - don't tell me

new
  (er, nothing)

upwards
#6*#9 Britney Spears - stronger
#8*13 Robbie Williams - supreme
12*18 Oxide & Neutrino - no good for me
15*28 Sugababes - new year
19*25 Toploader - dancing in the moonlight
20 33 Sonique - i put a spell on you
27*40 Jennifer Lopez - my love don't cost a thing
29 42 Kylie Minogue - please stay
34 49 Spiller - groovejet

* denotes peak position so far