Signing out

I am heading back to the land of song shortly, so this blog will be even more inactive than uusal over the next two weeks. Merry Winterval, one and all. In the meantime, I reserve special winter greeting for federal Judge Jones for robustly defending evolution and accusing creationists of 'breathtaking inanity'.

Workmen told to drink more tea, do less digging

A copper who arrests too many smackheads has been told to stop because he is frightening them away. The officer in question is South African and therefore has had a somewhat different training to native UK coppers ie. he is used to arresting people. This reminds me of the surgeon who is curing too many illnesses has been ordered to slow down as he is costing the NHS too much money. Gladly the surgeon in question has refused to do so. Surely he is making an overall profit for UK plc by getting sick people back in work, and thereby off benefits and into tax-paying labour?

Mad. All mad. Mad, mad, mad.

Still.

This'll cheer you up.

Office Christmas party in two hours. Must NOT tell the HR manager everyone calls her Baron Greenback, must NOT ask senior physicist if he has a toupee and must NOT tell my manager the joke about the dead hooker in the boot of the car.

My referrer logs tell me that someone using AOL search (uurgh) got to this site after searching for 'transvestite prostitutes west yorkshire.'

I am unsure what to make of this.

More on surviving Christmas...

.... from the wonderfully bitter Michael Kelly, who is a sort of a proto-Chick Yog. Personally I love Christmas - as Michael says, food, drink, family, days off work and girls dressed as elves. And this year, even if all my presents are crap, I will enjoy it because, as opposed to this time last year, I have a *sane* girlfriend and a job I like. And, Doctor Who will be on too. Woo. I am already looking forward to hiding behind the sofa with my nieces.

But there are certain thing that rankle.

Christmas songs.

Good Christmas songs/and or songs that have been number one on December 25th:
Fairytale Of New York
Jingle Bell Rock
Mad World
White Christmas
Another Brick In The Wall
Erm....

Horrific seasonal musical abortions:
Ernie
Long Haired Lover From Liverpool
Mr Blobby
That damn tune by Wizzard
Anything by Cliff bloody Richard

I could go on, but it seems as if midwinter is a time when either a) everyone who usually buys music has a temporary lobotomy or b) stupid people who never usually dent the chart rankings come out en masse and blow their giros on shite that is not worth the plastic it is printed on.


Quote of the day:
“I have the heart of a young boy. I keep it in a jar on my desk.” - Robert Bloch

What's got two legs and bleeds a lot?*

Surviving tube journeys is not easy. Particularly now. People are still, I think, a little on edge following the July attacks, Christmas shopping frays nerves, and there are always the tourists (one of who I saw trying to feed a fiver into a ticket slot at Green Park yesterday.) But there are coping strategies. I keep a copy of the Dhammapada on me at all times to flick through, and I also find having a chill-out playlist on the MP3 player is useful. I imagine it would be difficult, nay, impossible, to stove someone's head in with a mandolin case while listening to Pachelbel's Canon, and it is difficult to be anything other than sublimely langourous when listening to Kinobe's Slip Into Something More Comfortable. Nutters - just say no to random violence on the tube. Say yes to one hit wonder Baroque German organists.

My work Christmas pary is next week. I will have to suppress my terrible Tourette's-like urges to say outrageous things. Note to self - telling your kindly, fifty-something church-going boss jokes about dead prostitutes is a potentially career-limiting move.

In other news, robot Santas invade Cardiff, Iranian headcase with access to nuclear weapons denies Holocaust, and Scary has CBM (catastrophic bowel malfunction).

David Cameron has been declared to be the lucky recipient of the Losing The Next Election Award. Which means I lost a tenner on DD on BetFair (come on, 34-1 odds in a two horse race?!?) If DC really is that clever, why does he want to be PM? Why would anyone? I wouldn't want to be PM. I pontificate about politics but that level of responsibility and media intrusion would be scary. Who'd want such a job? I once read a lovely short story about a town where they selected a leader once every ten years by going round to every eligible person and asking them if they wanted to do it. The person who said 'not bloody likely' most vociferously was promptly thrown into office, but not allowed to own or accumulate ANY form of private property while in office. The theory went that people who want to rule should never be allowed, while those who do not would be most aware of the ramifications of their actions. The private property rule ensured they had no opportunity to enrich themselves anyway. I sort of like it, in a Alice-in-Wonderland sort of way. (If anyone can name this story I would be most grateful.)

Oh, and Nosemonkey points out a neat example of what we can expect when the centralised ID card database is foisted on us.

Matthew Hoggard rules!

* - half a cat.

Turkeys 'welcome Christmas'

Here

In other news, Alex Ferguson is pleased to be out of Europe ('less pressure, now we can just have fun having a kickabout'), Gordon Brown wishes growth was a bit lower, and students ask for higher fees.

She's still alive....

.... hanging on...

That will be one hell of a party when she goes.

Not that I approve of such sentiment of course.

Update

Yes, it's been a bit quiet over the past few days as I have been busy. Sorry about that.

Certain sections of the media are getting their knickers in a twist over tha case of a women who has been awarded £2.8m in compensation after am ambulance arrived late, and as a reuslt of a litany of medical cock-ups, will spend the rest of her life in a wheelchair with brain damage. On the face of it this does not seem unreasonable, although the call-out came beacause she attempted suicide. The tone of certain media reports suggests that the payout is unfair in the light of this fact, and that the NHS (ie. the taxpayer) is footing the bill.

I beg to differ on both points.

If the call-out had come as a result of any other ailment, the same cock-ups could have occurred. Should ambulances start prioritising arriving at call-outs depending on tne likely cause of the call? How? 'If you are calling because you are genuinely ill, press one. If you have tried to top yourself, please hold.'

Secondly, on the grounds that the NHS is paying out. It is worth pointing out that we are all paying for NHS care so we should get compensation if their intervention and/or negligence results in damage to us. If a private surgeon botched your nosejob, you'd want paying, yes?

Blog of the week: Small Town Scribbles. Great stuff, particularly on the burka issue.

Putative new mammal species spotted in Borneo. Exciting stuff, as new large (as in, non-microscopic species) are not easy to come by.

UPDATE: More on the IPOD issue here; hat tip to Blognor Regis.

Bloody awful

I spoke to my brother last night. He was in the pub, and a band was playing in the room next to the bar. I asked him if they were any good.

He replied, 'Are you kidding? It sounds like a burning zoo in there.'

I immediately laughed tea through my nose. What a description. I'm still laughing about that now.

Paradoxes

This sentense contains three erors.
There are only two spelling mistakes and the sentence is grammatical so what's the third error? Well, it's the factual error in counting three errors when there are only two. So that explains how the sentence comes to have three errors. In which case the sentence is factually correct, hence there are only the two spelling errors. So the sentence is incorrect.

'Them' can never be the first word of a grammatical sentence.
Oh, no?

From Ulverston.