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English as what she is spoke

From a recruiters ad for an FM service delivery person.

News of note

Today's national news section had two rather excellent articles, which deserve a wider audience:

Man who pretended to be a ghost fined £35.
Who-ever wrote the headline was obviously enjoying themselves, but it was topped by the subheading  of the online article (which wasn't in the paper version):
Police spokesman says witnesses complained about Anthony Stallard 'throwing his arms in the air and saying woooooo'
More here.

Man critically ill after three bites from snake
Which, on the face of it, isn't comedy. Except when you consider the facts:

• the UK has one native venomous snake, the adder
• the last death was a 5yo in 1975, previous to that there had been 14 deaths in 100 years

The gentleman in question was bitten "...by an adder that he had picked up." (italics mine). The Darwin Awards wait with baited breath...

More here.

B

best spam this morning

my work email address is usually pretty spam free as i don't sign up for much with it.

however this gem came through this morning:

>>

Hope you won't feel repulsive towards a young lady who is now working for a professional printing company based in CHINA. 

Should you need to print something, like tags, stickers, invoice books, books, paper bags etc., maybe we can do for you. 

Write me back, and then you will get a Chinese printing quote, most likely to be half of your local printing cost. Hopefully you can give us a chance to test it. 

Best regards

Emma     Sales Specialist  

<<

Thank you Emma, you've quite overcome my natural repulsion to Chinese printers....

Dealing with cold callers

Phone rings.
I answer.

Other: is there?
Me: who?
O: My name is Jack, from and I'm calling about some missold PPI  In very broad Indian accent
Me: I don't think your name is Jack. Are you lying to me? Is it really Jack?
O: err.

Like Jesus

in the spirit of the suffering of jesus at easter, our household has embraced the season. rather than risk tetanus, we've got for a more modern approach. food poisoning. brilliant. 

my immune system took the pragmatic approach and collapsed early, so i'm now fine. S's took on the bacteria, fought a valiant rear-guard action, and has now succumbed.

this has, needless to say, cut severely into chocolate, beer, wine, whisky, and hot x-bun consumption. 

coming soon: another cabal review.

b

Gift horse articles in the news

You can't make this stuff up, courtesy of France and the USA. Two stalwarts of quality news.

11 million billion euro phone bill

Yes, I'm not sure the word 'euro' makes any difference there either. The key, and brilliant, points to this story:

• person is unemployed
• the bill was more than 5000x the GDP of France
• "...told by shrugging staff there was nothing they could do."

The real bill was E117.21. 

Which the company eventually let her off paying. Damn socialists.

Flambed squirrel brings down apartment block

Todays vital lesson, don't try cooking squirrels with a propane torch.

Sadly the winner who did this isn't a contender for the Darwin awards. But the potential is there, go team Propane Squirrel !!

Coming soon, possibly a book blog, a whisky blog, and a music blog. 

No really, I'm feeling in a bloggy mood.

In which manliness is attempted

This blog is not known for its how-to guides, nor its swashbuckling descriptions of Hemingway-esque manliness. The sole attempt consists of booze reviews, and even then, although in some quantity, there is a prerequisite of quality. My man card could be in danger. My plums replaced with raisins. Etc. etc.

So when the washing machine died, I stripped down to a loincloth, oiled myself up, and went into battle.
I say died, it was more gradual expiration, the spin sounded laboured, then slowly gave up going around in full circles, deciding a range of 270degrees was enough for it, a full 360 was just us being so goddamn unreasonable. Only then did it decide that 270 was too much, and no spinning would be even easier for it. Damn you sirius cybernetics corporation.

I found my tools, switched off the machine (I'm not that manly), upended it and promptly would have had entered a wet t-shirt competition - if I hadn't been thoroughly oiled, a displaced kiwi Adonis.
Hmm. I guess that'll count as hydrating the raisins.

I pulled the filter / drain apart, it was kinda clogged, so cleaned that. I say filter, it's more of a ball at the end of a tube. That's not a euphemism, get your mind out of the gutter, pervert.
That didn't fix things either. So I replaced the brushes, yes, that's how old school washing machines are, they use brushes. I figured a £15 outlay to see if it fixed things was reasonable. It turned out to be pretty easy to replace, and they were warn and looking quite soot covered. I was hopeful.
Sadly, no zombie washing machine action for me. That meant it had to be the motor itself, which would cost me around £100. A new machine was about £240.

Discretion being the better part of valour, we have a new washing machine being delivered next weekend to celebrate the Jubilee. I know, I bet Liz and Phil are doing the same.

Mostly-Manly, B

Winning coolest kid in school competitions

I'm sure I'll blog something more worthwhile shortly, but in the meantime...

5 year old brings step-fathers heroin in for show and tell.

Win!

Scrotum!

Yes really, a woman has been given a suspended jail sentence for biting a hole in her boyfriends scrotum, after a bit of a session.

Judge's summary: "This relationship is over, I think both of you accept that."

me

sponsered ads

Sometimes they don't work. This is from my last.fm page.

And in other news, my daily average number of tracks has increased from 39 to 40. That may have something to do with the amount of music being played over the last couple of weeks...

B

Gay teaching in California

it's looking probable that California will make teaching of positive contributions to society by gay and lesbian people mandatory in public schools. this is similar to the enforced positive impact teaching for mexicans, native americans, women, etc.

That's all fine and dandy (hehhehe) but what struck me was one of the dissenting Republican voices who said:
"Our founding fathers are turning over in their graves."
(Tim Donnelly)

now what way up are bodies buried...oh yeah turn over, get some baby

My weekend does not lack for excitement

Yesterday I went to Leicester, a city I don't like much, to drop off my DVD player to get fixed. It's been a tough week or so with no DVD player, but somehow we've coped. Headed back to Lboro and did some food shopping, and as usual got frustrated with the lack of things I wanted - although to be fair, it's much easier to find black treacle here than in NZ. And I needed that for the whisky cake.
Headed to the pub, our newly adopted 'local', the Generous Britain which has recently been taken over by ex-members of our previous 'local', the Swan in the Rushes.
Watched the Barbarians v Wales game there, which was nice - good beer, nice crowd, and another member of the cabal was there, then headed home.

Today, oh today, peaking of excitement. I've done writing. I've made a whisky cake to use up my Glenfiddich Solera (not a huge fan of 'fiddich), made some choc and blueberry muffins, roasted some veges for lunch, and about to kick off a vege green thai curry for dinner. A lot of this has been to procrastinate between writing bursts, but it's worked out.

Oh in sad news: the basil plants mentioned earlier in my herb growing efforts, have died. The parsley and coriander are growing like the weeds they are, but basil has passed on. Your thoughts at a difficult time are much appreciated.
If anyone has any tips for keeping basil alive, they'd be very welcome... the only time I had a healthy basil plant was in Queen St (Wgtn) and then the feckin' mouse ate it. No really, Mt Victoria vermin infestations are of a better class...

B

A recap of the last few days

Before I start, there are no guarantees this is, in any way, interesting. But it is, generally, true.

Just been for a nice bike ride, down through Belton, Diseworth (a cockney query?), and back around via Long Whatton and Hathern to home. Lots of hills, sun, nice views, etc. Those four villages are all pretty (Diseworth and Long Whatton in particular), showing up the dilapidated village we're in. Sigh. There were more small hills than I expected, whcih was good. For those playing at home...

View Larger Map

My pot plant (basil, coriander, parsley, not actual pot) exercise is causing daily excitement, after an initially disappointing start. What do you mean they aren't visible after a day, rubbish! Anyway, I now have all three herbs poking their little shoots through the dirt. The two almost dead plants I had (basil and parsley) are now resuscitated. It's all go in my world.

We went for a walk down to Belton (you'll see it onthe map above) yesterday as I was being dragged around gardens. WTF? In S's defence, she turned out to be not quite so keen, so we wandered around three (owners in Belton were opening their gardens to the public), then hit the pub for lunch. We quite like the Queen's Head for food, although I'd recommend their restaurant food over their pub counter stuff. The pub counter food is a bit pricey for what you get, and wasn't that good. They usually have a couple of local ales on, sadly the Belvoir Brewery ale had finished, so I was stuck with Pedigree. Somehow I coped.

Highlight of the news watch this week: courtesy of the Observer, "An 'unfortunate juxtaposition; has caused a few red faces at Clear Channel, the billboard company which placed an advert for the zombie TV show [The Walking Dead] on the side of a funeral parlour in Consett, Country Durham. It has now been removed'.

We've been watching a number of movies too,but they may get their own blog later.

me

Terrorism isn't always a bad thing

From a music list I'm on:
Good Charlotte have cancelled their show for Kuta in Bali next week due to a terrorist alert issued by the Australian Government. 

Hard to argue with the terrorists there.

Discussions on coffee

Me: Hello coffee
Coffee: Hello Bruce
Coffee: Do you swallow?
Me: for you, yes.

And thus does my day begin.

Comms strategy

I'm trying to write a Communications strategy, as we apparently don't have one - other than the usual high-level pointless fluffy one. Y'know, we intend will be the bestest, yes we will !!! rah rah team.

I'm don't intend to reinvent the wheel and am browsing the web to steal from others, and came across this - the opening statement in a Comm Policy.
FFS.

‘Tell me and I’ll forget; show me and I may remember; involve me and I’ll understand.’Chinese Proverb

I mean really. It's from a Uni whose name includes a place where ships berth, and the area where one shovels food in.

B

Owsley Stanley and anal accidents

Items in the news that have attracted my attention today:

an obituary of Owsley Stanley, LSD producer for, in particular, the Grateful Dead (also their sound man). Details here

Wondering where your parsnips went? Need more vegetables for the roast? Just like a magician, you can pull them out of your arse. Sadly true.

B

Enter me sexually

I was registering for some stuff, and was pointedly ignoring the sexual orientation question (listing them as single options implies mendelian genetics, fools) and religious belief (don't get me started).

This sensible approach, leaving them as 'unspecified', caused the following error:

B

I'm under appreciated

Conversation this afternoon:
Songs of Praise playing before the news
S: there's a priest playing sax

me: that'll be thelonious monk.

and nothing.

Sheesh.