Like the Xmas mornings of my youth, but without the acrid smoke and the requirement to wrestle bears

Small but perfectly formed tantrum yesterday, upon returning home after an irritating day (all the fax machines in the building went on strike, at precisely the moment when I needed to send vital faxes) to discover that some random sod had broken into the garden by lifting the electric gate off its runners. Presumably said sod then wandered around the garden, discovered that there was nothing left to steal, and left. There's nothing left to steal because another random sod, or possibly the same one, climbed over the wall a week ago and nicked the weed-eater from the shed. This is not entirely a bad thing, as the gardener evinces a tragic tendency to cut the grass too short too often, resulting in a blasted heath: hopefully in the several months it will undoubtedly take the Evil Landlord to get around to replacing the weed-eater, we may actually acquire a lawn. However, I am beyond bored, annoyed and threatened by the way people just wander into our house as though it's their own, and randomly nick and break stuff. It's invasive and bloody rude. Also, I currently feel as though the cosmic wossnames are seriously ahead on points.

Random consolations: Neil Gaiman is in serious danger of being upstaged by his guest bloggers, today's pseudo-Victorian photo essay is particularly lovely, and the mouse-over text, as you can tell from my subject line, is wonderful. (I also like the cheerfully subversive way the guest-blog crew is using the blog to set up all these Situations for Neil. It's evil.)

Last night's Farscape also presented us with the delirious rightness of Rygel all hyperactive and jittery from overdosing on Halloween sugar, and my current favourite line so far - John Crichton announcing testily that "I am not Kirk, Spock, Luke, Flash, Buck or Arthur frelling Dent!" Apart from the statement's pleasing geekiness factor, one is forced to contemplate the undoubted fact that science fiction heroes tend to be named in monosyllables, and with a preponderance of the letter K. What's with that? Heroic manliness quotient?