Tomorrow is a Long Time

If you haven't already read my review of 2014, I implore you to do so. I'll wait.

Excellent. Now we've got that out of the way, let's move promptly on...

So, what's been happening these past few weeks? Straight off the bat we had (what I can only assume was) an homage to Kirk Douglas as the majority of the world all proclaimed "Je suis Charlie!" - "Non! Je suis Charlie!". It wasn't as good as the original, but then again, the book's always better anyway.

The act sparked some pretty admirable responses and intellectual debates on various freedoms and injustices - but it also rolled out the first bandwagon for the social media generation to hop right on board; in turn prompting some less than educated opinions and, of course, creating an "us and them" divide between all manner of people.

Can't sleep tonight, thoughts with my French cartooning colleagues, their families and loved ones #CharlieHebdo pic.twitter.com/LqIMRCHPgK
— David Pope (@davpope) January 7, 2015

It's safe to say, though, that none of us dropped the metaphoric ball quite as well as our buddies at Fox News. #smh

January oft brings out the worst in people. It's a chance for a fresh start and for us to lie to ourselves anew. Since nobody has the self-confidence to stand up and say "I know neither the lyrics nor the purpose for this!", the first real lie is when we all link arms and pretend to sing Auld Lang Syne. I remember one year, when a supermarket had the foresight to print the lyrics on the back of their receipts for the whole of December, so whomever had most recently bought 'bread and milk' was able to triumphantly lead us through a garbled recount of a poem set to the music of Cliff Richard's Millenium Prayer.

I digress. Those of us who committed to 'bettering themselves' or 'going to the gym' (or, heaven forbid, 'dry January') will have, inevitably, already broken this (doing twice as much 'tomorrow' or extending a day or two into February still counts as breaking it). Fear not though - Pancake Day is almost upon us, and we can kid ourselves into giving up/taking up things for 40 days (until we realise that 40 days is more than a month - and that's a long time!).

Every cloud does, however, have a silver lining - a beautiful, shimmering, glittery, rainbow lining. Some hero across the pond has, finally, released the product I've been longing for... Ship Someone Glitter! Now I can finally send glitter to those who pose a mild or infrequent annoyance. There's been a backlog since its comprehensible boom in popularity, but rest assured - yours is on its way just as soon as they clear it up!

Speaking of our feathery-hatted neighbours, there was a controversy in American HandFootball as they found that the balls had been less inflated than they should have been. In an epidemic that's been named "deflate-gate", American sportsmen failed to notice their balls weren't as big as they should have been, and a whole host of other blue, off the cuff, remarks. It might not be true though, because a fortunately named "Gay-Lussacs Law" may mean that the balls were innocently deflated because they went outside into the cold and shrivelled up. Ah, the 21st Century.

This segues rather nicely into the annual ultimate owl competition, in which I'm lead to believe somebody who didn't pass, should have? I don't understand much of the rules, but I have a very basic grounding and in the last half an hour of the game (which only spanned five actual game seconds), the losing team failed to score enough to make them the winning team - and in that ever-present sportsmanship fashion, the focus was on how the losing team were abysmal and absolutely no credit was given to the winners. In fact, I don't even know who won - just that the Seattle Seahawks lost this year's #SuperbOwl competition.

Left Shark was the real MVP anyway

For those who know me, I'm not a huge fan of theme parks or any derivative, and I'd rather catch measles than go to Disneyland - which must be why they now offer that as standard; creating two further bandwagons for us all to jump on... pro-/anti-vaccine.

Oh, so that's what those spots are...

As a poignant closing paragraph, I'd like to question the sanity of a world in which this product exists...

200ft./60m. Optical Thunderbolt cable

For a meagre £999 (that's right - pay with a £1000 note and get a pound back for your trolley!) you can buy a cable that is not only almost worth more than the devices you connect it to, but allows you to have said devices up to 60m away from one another.

Who's connecting these together?! Why does enough demand exist to stoke the supply fire?!

"Who are you people?!"

Ben