undyingking

Good Lord, West Ham have just signed Argentinina World Cup stars Mascherano and Tevez. Both 22 years old, Olympic gold medals, 20-odd caps each, South American honours coming out of their ears (Tevez has been South American footballer of the year for the last three years running).

Have I maybe fallen through into a different universe? Up till now our record signing was Dean Ashton from Norwich, who for all his many fine qualities has never been described convincingly as the new Maradona. How much we paid for this pair hasn't been disclosed, but a couple of years ago they were worth $15M and $22.6M respectively.

This feels like a coup to rival Spurs's signing of Ardiles and Villa back in 78. What on earth is going on down Green Street? -- a couple of days ago we were getting excited about going in for Steed Malbranque, for goodness sake. I can only guess that Scaloni must have put in a very good word indeed during the World Cup...

According to Malcom Speed, the ICC boss:

"On Tuesday 22 August I was handed a letter written on that day by Darrell Hair to Doug Cowie, who is the ICC Umpires and Referees Manager," Speed said. "When I received the letter it is fair to say I was extremely surprised by the content and concerned as to how I should deal with it. In the letter Darrell Hair offered to leave his job as a top official in the ICC in exchange for a payment of $500,000 (£265,000)."

Hmm -- that seems slightly to detract from the case of those (mostly Australians) who'd been defending him as a supremely principled servant of the rulebook, unable to let the Pakistanis resume the Test however much it hurt him more than it hurt them.

Guy reports having Craig Murray's book confiscated off him at Luton Airport. Bet he wishes he'd waited for the paperback now.

My favourite line: “Does it have al-Qaida in it?”

Maybe it should come with a cover warning along the lines of "Caution: this product may contain traces of al-Qaida. Do not take when attempting to get on board heavy machinery."

I think this is a terrific idea. Almost enough to make me actually get around to writing some interests.

From the Transport Security Administration's latest advisory:

"We encourage everyone to pack gel-filled bras in their checked baggage."

Everyone? I must rush out and get one right away.

Seriously though, it's a pretty confident would-be-shahida who fills her bra with liquid explosive. Or maybe a transvestite I suppose.

Can I just draw people's attention to the great John Crowley's new book idea, which we can all hope will make him as wealthy and famous as he has long deserved.

Your future, Moldo-Wallachian

Sadly it looks from a quick search as though spam uses of this excellent term are outstripping "genuine" ones.

In other spams, hello to my new correspondents Hairstyles O. Electrocardiogram and Gamey H. Flanders, who have apparently sent me an e-card.

In boring house news meanwhile, we had a guy in to service our boiler today, and he's condemned it, as apparently it was venting CO into the bathroom. Good job we never breath in there eh? We were kind of expecting this as it's an old boiler which the previous owners had never had serviced at all, but we were hoping it would get us through the winter before having to lash out gosh knows how much replacing it. Ho hum.

More positively, I've repaired the stairs to the cellar (which were so rickety I managed to amusingly fall through them) and I've made a start on taking up the flooring in the conservatory, which has a nasty sag in one corner. It's not as if these are original Victorian components of the house -- that stuff is all still sturdy and fine. It's the more recent bodge jobs that are falling apart. And no doubt my own fixes will disintegrate just as quick, in a cycle of destruction that will only end when (a) the house falls down, or (b) it's bought by someone who actually has enough money to get things fixed properly.

The other day I posted a summery music quiz, and ( here are the results )

Classics all! -- although not necessarily in a good way, in all cases.

A good spread of scores: dr_bob 6, wimble 8, thecesspit 9, brixtonbrood 10, fractalgeek 12, and bibliogirl a mighty 14 to take the (imaginary) trophy. Thanks all for taking part!

Anyone out there use, and can recommend, font manager software for Windows? I've been mstly using Extensis Suitcase v9 for the past few years, but am getting increasingly fed up with its non-friendly aspects. What I'd like ideally would allow you to tag and group fonts by assigning keywords, would transparently handle system fonts, would allow assignment of aliases / manual resolution of name conflicts, would have file-manager-like capability within its own listing window...

Previously I've used Xerox Font Manager, which was pretty hopeless*, but I'm hoping that the market has moved on somewhat since I last made the decision. Any tips?

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Edit: as was Adobe Type Manager, I'd forgotten about that one.