Or, actually, being a lover of biology and an utter nerd.

There’s a huge spider web outside our kitchen window* that I’ve been watching avidly for a few days, hoping to catch the owner having a crack at something unlucky enough to get stuck. Yesterday I went to get a glass of water and noticed - you could hardly miss it - that there was a ruddy great wasp-or-possibly-hover-fly struggling away in the web. I barely had the chance to go ‘ooooooh’ before a decent sized garden spider came trundling down to do the necessary. This is where it gets nerdy, because my first thought was to get some photos and blog the demise of the unfortunate insect.

Off I scooted to grab the camera, but on my return - devastation. No wasp-or-possibly-hover-fly, no garden spider. Just a big hole in the web, which has since fallen into further disrepair. And here’s where it gets really nerdy, because after deciding that their mighty battle must’ve sent them plummeting to the ground my first thought this time was, “If I’d had a camera installed in the drain outside in just the right place, I could’ve filmed them falling and fighting. Add a bit of slo-mo, it would’ve been just like the start of The Two Towers.“

I may have been revising too hard.

* we also have a pet spider, Spider, who lives on the plant on the window sill.

Why even bother to trash it? There is not a single situation my imagination can conjure that concludes with someone actually handing over money to read an anthology of Littlejohn columns, not even one that begins with the man himself marching a BNP member into Waterstones at gunpoint. Nevertheless.

• Charlie Brooker takes the piss - “[the title lettering is so ugly] it seems almost deliberate - as though they made this section of the cover as offensive and nasty as possible in a desperate last-minute bid to distract attention from the large photograph of Richard Littlejohn that hovers below it.“
• Johann Hari is slightly more serious about it - “I think about gay sex much less than Richard Littlejohn - and I am gay.“
• Gloriously, the general public at Amazon have a crack, too - “Less a book and more a new paradigm, an ideology that will surely bring about the next evolutionairy leap for mankind.“

Anna: Why the hell is everyone crying in that Clover advert?
Me: Hang on *Googles*

“Thank you for contacting us about our Clover advert.

The people on the advert are not crying out of sadness but are crying out of happiness as they all love eating Clover.

We do appreciate you taking the trouble to contact us. I hope this resolves any confusion between why the people are crying and Clover spread.”

Awesome.

It’s not like I’m the most prolific writer on the interblag, but things may be even quieter for the next fortnight or so - exams, you see. It doesn’t help that Final Fantasy III just came out on DS, either.

Read please.

…or does the new look Guardian resemble The Onion somewhat? More importantly, when Madeleine Bunting writes an article, how will we tell the difference?

Films in five seconds. They make laugh good. Especially Lord of the Rings trilogy and Scarface. Via Ronan Lowe.

I’ve just learned that since I told my other half what one of the main ingredients in her face cleanser actually was, she hasn’t used it. I did explain that it was perfectly natural compound with nothing ‘dirty’ about it, and that it was used in many beauty products, but apparently my reassurances had no effect. Women, eh?

Me calling her Wee Face for a fortnight probably didn’t help, mind.

Vote here.

I like the sound of tonight’s Horizon, but can’t shake a slight uneasy feeling about the speed with which I voted ‘yes’. Religious buffoonery, social injustice, the unbated abuse of our planet and resources, mistreatment of animals and the sheer unmotivated state of god knows what mighty wedge of the population about all of the above - there’s plenty that can get me into an immediate incoherent rage from a standing start. Utter destruction of the entire planet, you say? Bring it.

Clearly my science career is going to take “[They] called me mad. And why? Because I dared to dream…” twist at some point.