I was surprised to see some outlets in the US still called by their full name. Then again, I was surprised by a lot of things in the US……

what colin fails to point out is that Shawno pronounced it wrong it’s pronounced like chair not share.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Charing_Cross

As for the pound sign, i’ll quote wikipidia…

“The mainstream use in the U.S. is this: when it precedes a number, it is read as “number”, as in “a #2 pencil” (spoken as “a number two pencil”); when it follows a number, it is read as “pounds”, as in “5# of sugar” (spoken as “five pounds of sugar”). The first form is more widely used by the general population while the second form is more specifically used in the food service and grocery/produce industries, or other fields where units of pounds (as weight) need to be hand-written frequently or repetitively.”
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Number_sign

ROFLcopter at Shawno’s version of the UK pound sign. I wonder why Americans call # the pound key when we Aussies would call it the hash key. After all, they don’t call a #hashtag a poundtag on Twitter, do they?

As for the bloodtests, my brain told me that the last time Shawno mentioned blood work, he said blow job instead. Lucky Shawno!

Colin,
I don’t have a problem! I can quit anytime I want! I just don’t happen to want to. So there!

/just waiting for the 61st Amendment…

One thing you need to realise about North Korea is that Kim Jong-Il is a complete nutter. Of course any dictator throughout history is not going to be the model of mental health. North Korea is also basically a monarchy. Kim Jong-Il followed his father Kim Il-Sung and it is rumoured that Kim Jong-Il’s youngest son Kim Jong-Un is going to follow him. I seriously would not put it past him to launch missiles at the US and tell people he was going to do it. I think it’s been pretty well established that North Korea does have nuclear weapons too.

I really couldn’t care less if Pizza Hut changes it’s name. In all the ones I’ve been in here in the UK they still have waiter service and serve alcohol. However as far as I’m aware there are no Taco Bell’s in the UK (which explains the Demolition Man thing above). Taco Bell was one of the things I wanted to experience when I went to the US, but I couldn’t find one. Pizza Hut is by far my favourite chain pizza restaurant. I always hated Domino’s even before I found out what a right-wing arsehole the founder of Domino’s was.

For once Charing Cross is pronounced exactly as you would expect. It’s one of the biggest Rail stations in London. Blackwell’s is indeed a large bookstore chain here. It’s probably the 2nd or 3rd biggest. The print-on-demand thing could be a really good thing, but it obviously needs some investigating. Unfortunately there’s not a Blackwell’s anywhere near me.

The closest parallel to Oprah here is a program called Richard & Judy hosted by a horrible married couple. They have a book club and the Top 10 best sellers are regularly taken up with books they recommend. In most of the book shops you go into they have specific displays for the books that Richard & Judy have mentioned.