Morbid

What on earth is going on? The BBC News website maintains what it calls a Air Disaster Timeline: a list of air disasters going back to February, 1998.

Well, if that isn't going to scare the shit out of anyone already scared of what is, after all, the safest mode of transport per mile travelled, I don't know what is. It's like Rain Man all over again.

But the worst thing about this morbid ambulance-chasing journalism is that, by describing its list as a timeline, the BBC could be seen to be implying that all these air crashes are somehow related. Now there's a conspiracy theory if ever I heard one.

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Filed under: Nonsense

Who to invite?

BBC (Have Your Say): Should Germans attend D-day events?
Germany's Gerhard Schroeder has accepted a French invitation to events marking the 60th annivesary of the D-Day landings … Is France right to invite Germans to the ceremonies? Sixty years on, is it time to move on and allow them to attend?

Isn't it time to forgive and forget? Aren't we all supposed to be part of Europe now? It's the 21st Century, for Pete's sake! Aren't we mature enough to forget our past differences? Of course the Germans should be invited—provided they promise not to hog all the deck chairs.

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Scissors, Paper, Stone

Conversation with Jen this evening:

R: You can cheat at Scissors, Paper, Stone, you know.
J: …
R: I'm quite good at it.
J: …
R: It's all to do with the timing.
J: …
R: As you're counting 1…2…3…, you delay your hand movements ever so slightly, to see what your opponent goes for—then you go for whatever beats them a split-second later.
J: …
R: They usually don't notice.
J: …
R: …What?
J: …
R: WHAT?!!!
J: …WE'VE played Scissors, Paper, Stone.

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Reasonable Measures

BBC: Martin case tops BBC's Today poll
A proposal to allow homeowners to use "any means" to defend their homes, has topped a BBC poll on the bill people would most like to see become law.

This proposed law is designed to allow respectable and responsible members of society, such as paranoid personality disorder sufferer and convicted child killer Tony Martin, to employ more than the reasonable force they are already entitled to by law to protect their property. Which I guess would give us all carte blanche to use unreasonable force.

Jehovah's Witnesses, door-to-door salesmen and cats of Great Britain, your days are truly numbered. Yeeeee-ha! Let the lynchings begin!

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…Because you're worth shit

I just saw an advertisement on the telly, and I couldn't believe my ears—so I checked out the official website:

L'Oréal website: Boswelox™ is a breakthrough phyto-complex created by L'Oréal Paris that combines a power dose of boswellia serrata extract and manganese, which help reduce the appearance of lines caused by facial micro-contractions.

No, really, I kid you not: Boswelox! That name gave me more than a few facial micro-contractions, let me tell you. Still, I suppose it beats Swel-bolox™—but only just.

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Bob Monkhouse (1928-2003)

Bob Monkhouse To be honest, Bob Monkhouse was never really my cup of tea, but let's hope he went in the way described in his brilliant joke:

When I go, I want to die like my grandfather, peacefully in his sleep; not screaming in terror, like his passengers.

Going swimmingly

Conversation over coffee with my friend the farmer this morning:

Me: "Did you hear in the news recently about that chap who's planning to swim round the world?"
Farmer: "Bloody hell, he will go wrinkly."
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16 not out

Summit photo - click to enlargeToday saw my sixteenth annual Christmas Eve ascent of Moel Famau in North Wales. Unlike last year, it was remarkably dry, and I had company in the form of Irish Mick, his dad and Stense.

[By the way Stense/Mick, when I said it was the fifteenth anniversary this year, I wasn't so much lying as getting my maths wrong. So much for my not-so-hard-earned science degree.]