I haven't heard of this Thompson person, but I thought these were good.

AWESOME FACTS ABOUT FRED THOMPSON

* Fred Thompson has on multiple occasions pronounced "nuclear" correctly.

* Fred Thompson has blasted more people in the face with a shotgun than even Dick Cheney.

* The masked executioner of Saddam Hussein: Fred Thompson.

* Not only does Fred Thompson cut taxes, he cuts tax collectors.

* Fred Thompson is the only person to have ever bested Miyamato Mushashi in a duel. The reason Musashi is so vague about the book of the void is because the fifth ring of combat is really Fred Thompson.

* The reason Fred Thompson didn't want to stay in the Senate for long is because all the extra scrutiny kept him from doing his favorite hobby: Prowling the streets at night killing drug dealers.

* Every night before going to sleep, Osama bin Laden checks under his bed for Fred Thompson.

Work isn't always amusing. Usually, it's downright boring, with the odd moment of light relief thrown in. Today would have been hilarious, if it wasn't slightly tragic.

The cafe I work at is being sold, by the corporation that owns the building we're in. I would name them, but I have this thing about not attracting lawsuits. So, prospective buyers have been in and out, and one of them is doing a two week trial, starting yesterday. Which essentially means that he sits in the food court all day, watching, observing, ideally learning, although he is only human.

Before this guy, another offer was made, and turned down because it wasn't high enough. So, presumably, they need to sweeten the deal a bit. So, at around eight, someone from the car park comes in, buys twenty dollars worth of food "for the boys", and says if they buy anything else, he'll fix it up later. Then there's a catering order from one of the offices upstairs - twenty coffees. All well and good. Then, two people come in from two different offices upstairs; both use hundred dollar bills, most of which they spend, both get receipts, and both have never come into the place before. Clearly, someone upstairs is trying to bump the revenue stream. The problem is, the buyer isn't stupid. He starts calling the person he's negotiating with. She yells at the secretary upstairs, and twenty minutes later, my manager is called upstairs, because clearly one of the staff must have told the buyer. She points out that he'd have to be blind not to notice, which they don't really have an answer for.

By the afternoon, it gets ridiculous. Someone comes in, buys forty dollars worth of food - "for the office afternoon tea". She then looks at the coffee bags on the shelf. These are, technically, for sale. Normally, we'd actually sell about one every two months, if we're lucky; the rest we use ourselves. She buys one - thirty eight dollars.

Twenty minutes later, another young man comes in. Buys twenty dollars worth of food, two coffees, and then asks how much the coffee bags are. He takes five, for a hundred and ninety dollars. Who buys five kilograms of coffee beans?

By the end of the day, our gross takings are at about 150% of what they'd be on a very, very good day, a number substantially higher than anything we've done before. It's not that I dislike being busy - but being busy selling food to people that don't want, to decieve someone, just doesn't seem worth the effort. Entirely apart from the dubious ethicality (read 'wrongness') of it, there's the fact that the buyer would have to be both a moron, and deaf and blind, not to see what was going on. Personally, I think it has to be the stupidest piece of underhanded dealing I've ever seen.

Oh; and the Melbourne Victory won, six - zip. We're not going to talk about the cricket.

  There's the graph ...

Currently Cooking: Last Thursday I made cooked rack of lamb, served on a broad bean/pea puree, drizzled with mint jelly glaze.

I'm also currently reading "Crime and Punishment" by Dostoevsky, which I'm really enjoying.

And, finally, I did this because I can. And also, because I saw someone else trying to do this, and they simply didn't do it right. So if it's worth doing, it's worth doing well.

Statistical Analysis:

Using data from the 2004/2005 Spanish Primera, Italian Serie A, and English Premiership leagues, a series was generated, of the absolute difference in goals scored between the two teams at the end of each game. If this series is regressed against a binary variable (1 for Serie A, 0 for Primera and English Premiership), there is a statistically significant relationship (p=.003) for the dummy variable co-efficient of

-0.2.

The chart is above; I don't know how Xanga will handle it. Also, I ran independent samples t-tests comparing the English series to the Italian one, and the Spanish one to the Italian one. Both came up with a significant t-value for a one tailed test (Alpha level .05). So, essentially, the Italians do play dirty soccer. Not that we're still bitter about the world cup or anything.