Use tripod more often:
Obsessive compulsive
At work yesterday, I noticed that my hand smelt rather unpleasant. It was the sort of smell you get if you've been handling a lot of coins. Not very nice. So I went and washed my hands.
Five minutes later, I noticed that the smell was still there. So I went and washed my hands again—a bit more dilligently this time.
Blow me, when I returned to my desk, the smell was still there! This was getting ridiculous. So I went to wash my hands yet again.
It turned out the smell was from the soap.
A HANDBAG?!!!
It's generally frowned on these days, but it's good to know that some of us Brits still have a certain class.
National motto
Occasionally, visitors to this site accidentally click the wrong link and leave a comment against the wrong item. Usually, if I realise their mistake, I simply move the misplaced comment over to the intended item.
Earlier this week, on the Guardian newspaper's Comment is Free website, some poor soul made a similar mistake. In an item about the ludicrous suggestion that Britain should have a national motto (politicians, huh?), a person calling themself Bleedingheart accidentally posted a comment saying:
They are the Falkland Islands, twit, and they were British long before America seized Texas, California, the rest of the "Southwest" and all the oil and minerals they contained.
They immediately realised their mistake and added a second comment:
Yikes, sorry about that, wrong thread. Ignore! Ignore!
… But it was too late: the other commenters were on to Bleedingheart.
It turns out that They are the Falkland Islands, twit would make an extremely popular national motto amongst the Guardian-reading intelligentsia.
It's worth reading the article and its comments: they made me laugh out loud at least twice. (But it should be said that I was pretty tired at the time.)
Niff said
Colleague: Is it just me, or is there a nasty niff in this kitchen?
Me: Oh, I'm pretty sure it isn't you.
Carter's Jackdaw-Resistant Bird Feeder
I've decided to do something about the jackdaws stealing all the nuts from my bird feeder. Jen won't let me have a gun, as she suspects (correctly) that I would use it to shoot cats. So, this afternoon, I invented Carter's Jackdaw-Resistant Bird Feeder™.
I say jackdaw-resistant because them crows are damn devious. I'm sure their cunning bird brains will eventually overcome the challenge. In the meantime, the tits should be able to feed untroubled.
Oh, and it's a hell of a lot easier to fill than the traditional bird feeders.
That's nuts and tits in the same post. Should help the ratings.
HOLY SHIT!!!
We WON! Against all the odds, we actually bloody won! We're in the sodding Rugby World Cup final!
Your heart has to go out to the poor French.
Yeah, right! Remember your very own Baron de Coubertin, you Frogs: l'important n'est pas de gagner mais de participer.
Yeah, in yer face, Pierre! Them's the words of a looooooosssssseeeeeeeerrrrrr!
Magic mustard! Well done, our lads!
Top priority
BBC: Family want plastic pen tops ban
The parents of a County Durham schoolboy, who choked to death on a plastic pen top, are stepping up their campaign to get them banned.
In case you were in any doubt, it's plastic pen tops they want to ban, not schoolboys.
A measured and proportionate over-reaction, I'm sure you'll all agree.
Eurocrats speak total sense shock!
New Scientist: Go nuclear for a third industrial revolution, says EC
We are on the brink of the "third industrial revolution", according to José Manuel Barroso, president of the European Commission—who believes it means nations may have to embrace nuclear power.
Europe's "low-carbon age" is the revolution Barroso spoke of last week at an energy conference in Madrid, Spain. "Member states cannot avoid the question of nuclear energy," he said, following the commission's announcement last month of a new research initiative for nuclear energy. The European Union should contribute to research, Barroso said.
How do I vote for these people?
Any dream will do
I just don't get the celebrity culture, I really don't.
Yesterday, I spotted these two magnificent specimens at the front of a long queue of people who were standing in the rain, waiting for their turn to meet Australian pop crooner and Graham Norton lookalike, Jason Donovan.
WHY?!!!!!
No disrespect to the talentless no-mark or anything, but I wouldn't turn my head to see Jason Donovan unless he were on fire. Yet these poor souls were standing in the sodding rain, waiting for the opportunity to touch the hem of his amazing technicolor™ dream coat.
Jesus!
I mean, it's not as if he's Simon Callow or anything.