If Microsoft ran a pub chain:

- its theme would be based on the Teletubbies film set
- 90% of the British public would believe that Bill Gates invented beer
- Tony Blair would require every school in the UK to have its own pub
- every two years the beer would be upgraded in such a way that all customers would need a liver transplant if they wanted to continue drinking it
- it would take an hour to get served on arrival as the staff phoned round every local branch to check your ID
- there would be weekly worldwide epidemics of beer-borne contagious vomiting
- these would only be preventable by buying a new supply of disposable face masks and sick bags every morning from a third-party vendor of "safe drinking" supplies
- one drink would have people shouting their deepest personal secrets across the room at people they'd never met
- everybody would think it was perfectly normal for people to turn blue and die at the bar.

Of course, I type with a feeling of moral superiority on my Linux machine... :¬) Has hardly died at all today, apart from local network problems.

Tonight was a Skeptics in the Pub, but there was no speaker and I haven't attended. Still a little jaded after last night's revelries at the Love/Hate gig at the Underworld with Dr Teflon, d_floorlandmine and yaruar, which was utterly terrific, followed by the afterparty at the Intrepid Fox, a 3am meal in Chinatown with childeric's, ahem, new friends, then a nightbus trip home on which I fell asleep and did most of a sodding lap. Top night out. I was a little under the weather today, though...