Spotted on a bus timetable in Hebden Bridge last night:
Unfortunate word-wrap
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Monthly Archives: April 2006
Hot and steamy video!
If this doesn’t bring the Googlers in, nothing will.
Get me a crocodile sandwich, and make it snappy!
Q: What’s more dangerous than a crocodile?
A: A crocodile with a chainsaw.
Spotty Johnson
Last week, mum was telling me how, when she was a girl, all the local dogs were referred to by their name plus the surname of their owners. In her neighbourhood, there were:
- Towser Green
- Bob Dorricot
- Raff Jones
- Spotty Johnson
(Yes, that’s right: people really did used to name their dogs Towser.)
It seems to me that giving dogs surnames acknowledges that, unlike cats, they are an integral part of the family. I’m all for it.
So what’s your dog called?
Postscript: Actually, Spotty Johnson would be a damn fine name for a band (Fitz please note).
Ach x 2!
PRAGMATIC GREENS SHOCK!
Washington Post: Going Nuclear: A Green Makes the Case
In the early 1970s when I helped found Greenpeace, I believed that nuclear energy was synonymous with nuclear holocaust, as did most of my compatriots. That’s the conviction that inspired Greenpeace’s first voyage up the spectacular rocky northwest coast to protest the testing of U.S. hydrogen bombs in Alaska’s Aleutian Islands. Thirty years on, my views have changed, and the rest of the environmental movement needs to update its views, too, because nuclear energy may just be the energy source that can save our planet from another possible disaster: catastrophic climate change…
And I am not alone among seasoned environmental activists in changing my mind on this subject. British atmospheric scientist James Lovelock, father of the Gaia theory, believes that nuclear energy is the only way to avoid catastrophic climate change. Stewart Brand, founder of the “Whole Earth Catalog,” says the environmental movement must embrace nuclear energy to wean ourselves from fossil fuels. On occasion, such opinions have been met with excommunication from the anti-nuclear priesthood: The late British Bishop Hugh Montefiore, founder and director of Friends of the Earth, was forced to resign from the group’s board after he wrote a pro-nuclear article in a church newsletter.
Postscript: See the first of the comments on this item for a link to a (free) techno-thriller novel of nuclear power by a longtime industry insider.
15,000 Not Out
HOLY CRAP!! Get this: I am fifteen-thousand days old today. Fifteen-THOUSAND! That’s over 127 giraffe years. Jesus!
Think about it: if you counted from zero to 15,000 at the rate of one number per second (i.e. one second for every day of my life so far), it would take you four hours and ten minutes to get there. Four hours and ten minutes: that’s 58 minutes longer than you would need to watch the interminable new King Kong movie.
That’s a shed-load of seconds.
See also: 13,000 Not Out
Spirit of the crap
email to Fitz on Saturday:
Subject: Turn of phrase
…Well, not so much a turn of phrase as a new word I coined while I was pissed last night, which I will use to describe whatever is the current paradigm when it comes to crap theories, etc:
shitegeist
Rix
(I thought I’d better put this on the record before Fitz steals it—although a quick Google search reveals that, as usual, plenty of other people got there first.)
Couldn’t agree more
[Click photos to see them in full.]
Postscript: Thinking about it, Iceberg Crap would be a pretty good name for an album. (But Bury Manchester would be a much better one.)
I.M. confused
I took part in my first ever Instant Messaging conversation last night. So did Carolyn. We chatted with each other. It was a great example of the blind leading the blind. I think Carolyn was especially confused, because she loaded the I.M. client software some days ago, and a message suddenly popped up on the screen out of nowhere:
Richard: Hello, how are you?
Carolyn: What’s going on?
is he now! [I think Carolyn was responding to the status update informing her that "Richard Carter is typing".]Richard: That messaging thing I told you about is working. I’ve never used it before either, so I haven’t a clue what’s going on
…
Carolyn: I’m getting in a right pickle here.
…
It’ll never catch on.
No bun intended
I had a strange dream last night. I dreamt that I was in a university lecture theatre, where someone was giving a lecture on The History of Buns.
Even in the dream, I thought it was pretty weird.
How to make your very own Scary Stense greetings card
Some simple fun for all the family:
Here’s one I made earlier.
You will need:
- one 7″x5″ print of this photograph (hi-res version here)
- one piece of A4 card
- two stick-on wobbly eyes (available in most good craft shops)
- one Pritt Stick™ or similar paper glue
- one tube of superglue or similar
- one pair of tweezers
Method:
- fold card neatly in half
- glue photograph to centre of folded card (with fold at top) using Pritt Stick™
- holding stick-on eye with tweezers, place a small blob of superglue on the back of the eye and carefully stick it over the left-eye on the photograph
- repeat with right-eye
- et voila!
Stense professed herself delighted with the card I sent her. Well, that wasn’t the exact word she used, but I knew what she meant.
Disturbing search request
I’ve just been reading through the visitor statistics for Gruts, and was both surprised and alarmed to learn that this website currently holds the number one Google ranking for the phrase pick shit out my pants.
I hope they found whatever it was they were looking for.
Oops!
Me and my big mouth. I went to refuel my car on the way home this evening and didn’t turn off my mobile phone. The bloody petrol station blew up!
I am so embarrassed.
Bollocks-squared
Oh how mildly irritating:
BBC: Elections get their own equation
Forget swingometers, opinion poll numbers and turnout figures, now there is new maths for elections: an equation on why people bother to vote…
Psychologist and motivation expert Cliff Arnall devised the formula as part of the Electoral Commission’s attempts to encourage people to vote in the 4 May local elections in England…
Dr Arnall said: “There are many factors which affect why people do or do not vote, including demographics, attitudes and experiences.
Bingo! You have hit the nail on the head, Dr Arnall: what you have identified are some fairly obvious factors which might influence whether people vote—factors such as personal contact by party and perception of how safe the local seat is.
But what’s all this about an equation? How on earth am I supposed to multiply (as your equation says I should) my perception that my vote will count by my sense of voting as a duty? What is the S.I. unit of sense of duty, and what instrument can I use to measure it?
Two factors that influence my general feeling of happiness are day of the week and amount of beer drunk. How the hell do I multiply Saturday by six pints? Answer me that.
See also: Soundbite Science
Over-egging the safety pudding
Every petrol station forecourt you pull into these days has signs telling you to turn off your mobile phone. Have you ever seen anyone turn off their mobile phone on a petrol station forecourt? Me neither. And exactly how many petrol stations have you heard of that blew up as a result of a still-turned-on mobile phone? Same here. So what’s that all about, then?
And, come to think of it, how many people’s lives have been saved, do you reckon, by paying attention to flight attendants when they demonstrate how to don a lifejacket? In fact, have you ever heard of anyone surviving a plane crash into the sea and actually getting to use their life jacket? I’m sure it must have happened at some point, but I’ve never heard of it.
It seems to me you’d be much better off with an airbag.
Or a parachute.
Ape shit
From an email to Stense yesterday:
Have you seen the new King Kong movie? Well don’t: it’s rubbish. Major disappointment, in fact, because I expected it to be really good. But it wasn’t. Not even a dinosaur pile-up could help it out. And it was waaaaaay too long. Far be it from me to give you any career advice, but don’t ever remake a classic movie will you? No matter how much money they offer you. And, if you do ever remake a classic movie, whatever you do, don’t faff around, making it waaaaaay too long. We’re talking a remake of King Kong here—how sophisticated does it need to be? Think about it: what do the punters want from a remake of King Kong? Do they want a whole pile of faffing around developing character in New York before the boat sets off for Skull Island? They do not. Do they want yet more faffing around with further character development and the start of a love interest on board the boat? Nope, they’re not at all interested in any of that rubbish, thank you very much. No, what the punters want is to see Kong fight a few dinosaurs, peel off Ann Darrow’s clothes, and fall off the Empire State Building. That’s all. And Peter Jackson couldn’t even get those simple requirements right: Ann Darrow stayed disappointingly clothed throughout the entire film. I mean to say, it’s not as if Naomi Watts is above getting her kit off for the camera, is it? I’ve seen Mulholland Drive, for Pete’s sake! (Although I still haven’t a baldy clue what the hell it was about.) Forget packs of dinosaurs, it would have been far more apt if they had made Kong do battle with one enormous turkey. Not good, mate. Not good at all.
Conflicting advice
Unfortunate
Free London Irish photos!
“That’s an impressive-looking camera,” said the security supervisor politely.
“Thank you,” I replied.
“…Only, for future reference, we don’t allow those sorts of cameras in here.”
“What, Canons?”
“It’s very professional-looking.”
“You mean it has a telephoto lens?”
“That’s right. We don’t mind small cameras, but nothing professional.”
“Why on earth not?”
“I don’t know. It’s just the rules.”
So I put my camera away.
A professional-looking security advisor on Saturday.
I wouldn’t have minded, but it’s not as if had been acting like an embarrassing uncle at a wedding, getting in the way of the pros or anything. I had been sitting quietly in the seat I had paid £20 for, taking some snaps for a bit of fun.
A bit later on, I collared the security supervisor again and pointed to one of the official photographers standing behind the try-line with a two-foot long lens: “For future reference, that’s a professional-looking camera,” I advised. The security supervisor laughed. Then, when he was supervising the other way, I pulled out my very amateurish-looking cameraphone and took his picture. That’s within the rules, apparently.
One of the offending photos [more »]
I think the Powers That Be are being rather pompous and unreasonable, saying it’s OK to take photos at London Irish rugby matches, provided you don’t take any good ones. So, if you are a fan of The Irish who has just Googled your favourite team and found this page, and if you’d like copies of some of the photos I took, please feel free to dowload them from my Flickr pages, print them out, send them to your friends, put them on your own websites, use them as your computer wallpaper (the Digger one is rather nice), make them into T-shirts or mugs, do what you like with them (apart from make money out of them). If you’d like higher-resolution versions of any of them, please let me know. Enjoy.
(It wasn’t even a particularly good game, was it?)