As Hurricane Ike left us just over a week ago, its no surprise that it is no longer big news here.

However, tell that to the 1 million customers still without power or those people in Galveston who can’t move back to their homes yet (or worse, those whose homes disappeared in the storm last week).

Anyway, it is still in the news but now features below such stories as “Is Britney’s label pushing her too hard” after news that her 6th studio album in 10 years is due out soon (by comparison the finest band of musicians ever, Rush, released their first 6 studio albums in only 4 years and also squeezed in a live album in the same period just for good measure).

But my favourite story to push Ike off the top of the news was the one yesterday about demand for Kazuo Kawasaki eyeglasses has quadrupled since Sarah Palin (Governor of Alaska and Republican vice-presidential nominee) wore them at the Republican National Convention a couple of weeks ago. Its hard to decide now whether it was better when we didn’t have any access to news.

Anyway, it seems I’m not the only person to notice that Sarah Palin shows a striking resemblance to Peggy Hill from the animated comedy show “King of the Hill” (who is supposed to be based on Lady Bird Johnson, the wife of US President Lyndon B Johnson).

“King of the Hill” is set in Arlen, Texas. This is a fictional place but it is, according to its creator Mike Judge, a town like Humble, which we were discussing only a few days ago.

As you may remember Humble, Texas is pronounced “umble”, apparently because Pleasant Smith Humble, who it was named after, came from England. Now I don’t know many people from England who would pronounce it that way however I do recall the 1970 debut of Uriah Heep was called “Very ‘eavy...Very ‘umble” (although not in the USA, where it was called simply “Uriah Heep”)...