A challenge

In honour of my reply to kateelliott in this post about spelling, here's an amusing little challenge for the grammar queens among you:

A couple of days ago on Radio 4, I heard someone say "three or less" and I lay still and said nothing, did not scream "fewer!" or twitch or show any reaction at all. I was alive; I was not paralysed; I was not dreaming. What was going on?

A second opportunity

My nice Chinese chilli-growing friends want to do business with me again. They want to sell me these fabulous-sounding dried chillies, in the usual 50-kilo bags, minimum order one container-load as before.

And y'know what? I do so wish I could say yes. Just once, to be in the import-export business, to have a small godown filled with chilli-sacks and to wander among 'em, sniffing that dust and slapping their flanks and rubbing samples between my fingers to show to Sydney Greenstreet my chief customer, and to have dodgy policemen sniffing around and sneezing in the chilli-dust because they're sure I'm smuggling something unsavoury in those sacks and only using the chilli to defeat their dogs, and...

Sod it

And once again I wake at the start of a week wherein we have to perform my play - four times! - and I wake with all the symptoms of a heavy cold. Which I know I survived it last week, but that may have been a false dawn; and I know that other people have survived more complicated performances than mine with worse conditions, but they didn't have to lie without moving for an hour and a half. Which is really hard if you have to keep sneezing and coughing and blowing your nose. Ick.

Two days to recover. Drink more toddies.

Anybody got any miracle cures - or even drug recommendations, just something to dry up the symptoms reliably for a couple of hours a night - they would be most welcome.

In other news, I am also supposed to be finishing a novel. Urgh.

Spam, and where you find it

Why is it only ever this old post that attracts spam comments to my journal? Literally: I've only had half a dozen since I came to LJ, and they've all been belated additions to this post. I suppose it has attractive keywords - gay! penis! - but if the point of spam comments is to be read, it's kinda counter-productive to dig up something so long buried back. Also, not so interested in Britney Spears-related porn, thanks: me nor my readership, I fancy...