flanerie.org

Not an especially useful skill, but impressive all the same.

Flowers "wave" at insects to get their attention, scientists have discovered.

The finding helps explain why many flowers waft in the breeze, and reveals a hitherto unknown trick used to attract pollinators.

Scientists made the discovery while studying common wildflowers known as sea campion on the Welsh coast.

Mobile flowers are visited more often by insects and also produce more seeds, they report in the Journal of Evolutionary Biology.

Moving flowers also attract a wider variety of insect species than more static blooms.

For years, biologists have known that flowers use striking colours, fragrances, elaborately shaped petals and nectar to attract pollinating insects such as bees and flies.

Yet no-one had ever seriously considered whether wafting in the wind acted as a similar signal.

"I was lying on the beach watching flowers wave in the wind at my daughter's birthday party, and I wondered why they have stalks and risked getting damaged in such an exposed habitat," recounted John Warren from the University of Aberystwyth.

So he looked at what research had previously been done, and found very few answers.

"The only reference I found to motion in attracting pollinators says it's unlikely to be important, because insects are not good at detecting movement; which is clearly rubbish."

To find out more, Dr Warren and colleague Penri James experimented with sea campion (Silene maritima) growing on an exposed coast within a Site of Special Scientific Interest in Cardigan Bay in west Wales.

They observed 300 specially grown flowers of varying stem lengths, recording how much each flower moved in the wind, how often it was visited by insects and for how long, and how many seeds it went on to produce.

Their experiments reveal that flowers mounted on long, thin stalks move around more in the wind.

This acts as a powerful signal to passing pollinators, allowing the plant to attract more insects than less mobile flowers growing atop short, thick stems.

"We found wavy flowers are more visible to insects, and thus attract more pollinators and set more seeds," said John Warren.

But flowers ultimately face an evolutionary trade-off, he believes.

"Short, fat-stalked flowers don't wobble enough and are less attractive to pollinators; yet very wobbly flowers are just too wobbly for the insects to handle, as the insects cannot land on them.

"Only flowers that wobble the right amount are successful in setting seeds."

A British satirist has translated 15 of Shakespeare's classic plays into chav speak.

Martin Bauam's updated version of Hamlet reveals: "Dere was somefing minging in de State of Denmark."

The Danish prince, who is re-named 'Amlet, asks: "To be or not to be, innit?", while Romeo pines for his "fit bitch Jools".

Mr Baum's other titles include Macbeff, Much Ado About Sod All, De 'Appy Bitches of Windsor, De Taming of de Bitch, Two Geezas Of Verona and All's Sweet That Ends Sweet, Innit.

Mr Baum, 48, says his versions of the Bard's classics, while abridged, remain true to the originals, retaining "the important sexist, duplicitous, cross-dressing and violent moments that made William Shakespeare well wicked."

Mr Baum's version of Romeo and Juliet sets the scene for the star-crossed lovers with: "Verona was de turf of de feuding Montagues and de Capulet families.

"And coz they was always brawling and stuff, de prince of Verona told them to cool it or else they was gonna get well mashed if they carried on larging it with each other."

If the Bard was living today, Mr Baum writes on his website, he would "still be writing in the Globe turf, getting loads of respect from the Stratford-upon-Avon massive and producing works of pure genius."

Life may begin at 40, but research suggests that 44 is the age at which we are most vulnerable to depression.

Data analysis on two million people from 80 countries found a remarkably consistent pattern around the world.

The risk of depression was lowest in younger and older people, with the middle-aged years associated with the highest risk for both men and women.

The study, by the University of Warwick and Dartmouth College in the US, will feature in Social Science & Medicine.

The only country which recorded a significant gender difference was the US, where unhappiness reached a peak around the age of 40 for women, and 50 for men.

Previous research has suggested that the risk of unhappiness and depression stays relatively constant throughout life.

However, the latest finding - of a peak risk in middle age - was consistent around the globe, and in all types of people.

Researcher Professor Andrew Oswald, an economist at the University of Warwick, said: "It happens to men and women, to single and married people, to rich and poor, and to those with and without children."

He said the reason why middle age was a universally vulnerable time was unclear.

However, he said: "One possibility is that individuals learn to adapt to their strengths and weaknesses, and in mid-life quell their infeasible aspirations.

"Another possibility is that a kind of comparison process is at work in which people have seen similar-aged peers die and value more their own remaining years. Perhaps people somehow learn to count their blessings."

Professor Oswald said for the average person, the dip in mental health and happiness comes on slowly, not suddenly in a single year.

Only in their 50s do most people emerge from the low period.

"But encouragingly, by the time you are 70, if you are still physically fit then on average you are as happy and mentally healthy as a 20-year-old.

"Perhaps realizing that such feelings are completely normal in midlife might even help individuals survive this phase better."

Marjorie Wallace, chief executive of the mental health charity Sane, said: "This study raises intriguing questions about the processes that lead to depression in mid-life, as well as indicating what a common experience it is worldwide.

"Depression is a complex and challenging condition that remains poorly understood, with as many as one in ten people with severe depression taking their own life.

"We welcome any scientific contribution to our understanding of this illness, particularly if the research can aid the development of better treatments, both therapeutic and pharmaceutical."

Andy Bell, of the Sainsbury Centre for Mental Health, said mental health problems were extremely common - but he stressed they could occur at any time in life.

A soft toy designer has come up with a macabre new range of road kill teddies.

The first to be launched is Twitch the Raccoon which comes complete with its own body bag to keep the maggots out, reports Metro.

Twitch also has an identity tag revealing it was "run over over by a milk float last Thursday, near the Hangar Lane Giratory system in London".

A zip on each side of the toy allows the owner to remove Twitch's innards and stuff them back in again. A tyre print runs across its back.

Creators, Compost Communications, style themselves 'toy terrorists' and according to their website: "We squash and burn and bludgeon and maim. But we're also toy fanatics like you. We love toys."

Toy creator Adam Arber, 33, from London, said: "I got the idea from looking at my mother-in-law's dog which is quite ugly and I thought it would make a great toy. A friend of mine had taken some pictures of road kill and the two things gelled into one idea."

He said he thought the toys, which cost £25, would appeal to people with a sense of humour and "probably not anyone easily upset".

Coming soon are other characters including Grind the rabbit, Splodge the hedgehog and Pop the weasel.

The toys go on sale this week at Play Lounge in Soho, London, and from mid-December on www.roadkilltoys.com.

It occurred to me in the shower this morning that you never hear the phrase 'Y2k' anymore. Clearly this is a good thing since it was an exceptionally annoying thing to hear.

Quite why the thought occurred to me I can't explain, but it got me thinking about other annoying phrases.

Top of my shit-list at the moment is 'no biggie'. A wholly unnecessary and obnoxious phrase that needs to be expunged from the record as soon as possible.

Additionally and also, any sentence that begins with the word 'basically' should be inadmissable in conversation.

Which phrases or buzzword annoy the crap out of you?

I have received 5 visits this month from people looking for the cunnilingus world record - I can see this from my traffic logs that give details of the Google search people made that led them hear.

Now I am flattered that Google thinks I might somehow be involved in the setting of such a record, but frankly I think I would lose interest long before any sort of record was in sight.

There is a certain amount of etiquette for men 'going down'. Resurfacing after 30 seconds would be inconsiderate, but overstaying your welcome would be equally so.

The key, naturally, is 'her'. When has she had enough / been sated? And that is down to skill. A world record for cunnilingus seems to require the opposite of skill - the ability to give nothing at all to the woman concerned.

And that is a world record not worth holding.

Nevertheless, for my esteemed readers, I will see if I can find out what the record is, who holds it, and who the poor lass was.

West country farmers set up the Cheddarvision website featuring a 25 kg block of cheddar, reports ITN.

Farmer Tom Calver said: "How many other cheeses do you know of on the internet that have their own webcam and a live feed to the internet? I don't think many."

The highlight of the day on www.cheddarvision.tv is at around 10am when the cheese at the Somerset dairy is turned.

"We've had 47,000 hits on our website, so somebody must like it somewhere," Mr Calver added.

Marion Harris who is in charge of the live webcam said: "I think if this website actually gets people to think a little bit more about where cheese comes from and the process it gets through before it gets in the shops, then I guess it's a good thing."
[from ananova.com]

A man has failed to set a new world record for eating Brussel sprouts.

Richard Townsend, 24, of Exeter, hoped to eat as many sprouts as he could in a minute.

He fell seven short of the target of 43, which was set in December 2003 by Dave Mynard from London.

Mr Townsend, who had eaten a plate of sprouts every day for the last six months as training, said he just "lost it".

According to the BBC he said: "I do not think I could face another sprout for a few days."

He had peeled then cooked the sprouts for four minutes in order to ensure they were exactly one inch in diameter.

But the record set by Dave Mynard, from London, still stands. Mr Townsend's bid raised £250 for charity.
[from ananova]

COPENHAGEN: Denmark's Council for Animal Ethics has said there is no need to ban sex with animals unless it takes place in pornographic films or sex shows.

Only one of the 10 members of the council, set up by the Danish Justice Ministry to establish and uphold animal ethics, wants bestiality expressly forbidden.

The others said current laws provided enough animal protection, according to Danish news agency Ritzau.

A senior member of the right wing Danish People's Party was shocked by the recommendation and said the subject should be put to a referendum.

"Then there wouldn't be any doubt about the result," Christian Hansen said. A Justice Ministry spokesman was not available for comment.

This reminds of some fuckwits I used to know. They have probably accidentally killed themselves by now.

A would-be kidnapper shot his own testicle after tucking his gun into the waistband of his trousers.

It happened as three men were attempting to kidnap a teenager in a dispute over stereo speakers in Wichita, Kansas.

One of the three pulled out a gun, fired it at the teen and missed, reports the Wichita Eagle.

The gunman jammed the pistol back into the waistband of his pants - and it went off, hitting him in the left testicle.

The 23-year-old man's reaction to his injury caused the gun to fire again, hitting himself in the left calf.

The man was arrested after he walked into a medical centre seeking help. His companions, ages 18 and 20, were also arrested.

LONDON: Looking for safe excitement? November is fig month at the Dull Men's Club, a place in cyberspace for men who feel "born to be mild" and enjoy watching grass grow and photographing garden sheds.

"Figs are good for you. High fibre and high nutritional value ... fat-free, sodium-free, cholesterol-free ... not to mention the great taste. And they are portable," enthuses the Dull Men's Club website, www.dullmen.com, just above its choice of "Anorak of the Month".

While the rest of the web teems with hazards – Trojans, viruses, bots, phishers, spyware and other people - this monochrome haven boasts "no violence or scary scenes" and does its best to exclude exclamation marks.

Instead, an analysis of baggage carousels at 376 airports globally discovers that 44.8 per cent rotate counterclockwise, 29 per cent clockwise. The site also reveals the reason for that orientation.

"Many people - corporate executives and celebrities I've heard about - enjoy doing the dull things," the site's author Lee Carlson, also known as Grover Click, told Reuters.

"It's an ordinary subject taken to extremes. Here's one: take a bucket, fill it with water, put in some wood, and watch it warp."

For the Dull Men's Club, watching water freeze is stimulus enough, as is discovering the history of soap.

One of the more adventurous pastimes for members is "Binge Flossing" - partly because it is "an inexpensive thing to do on a date".

Visiting museums is a favourite dull men's activity, and the site contains references to a plethora of resources, from safety razors through aprons to water hydrants, via a comb museum in China and Jerusalem's Tax Museum.

"One of the museum's purposes was to be a place to learn about the routine work of the tax department. Wow ... it doesn't get much better than that," enthuses the site.

Women are excluded from the site's host society, the "National Council of Dull Men, Washington, DC"

Carlson - a semi-retired former tax accountant – founded the society with a few friends along the lines of gentlemen's clubs in London and New York, to share common interests.

"Our view is that women are not dull. Women are exciting. Moreover, we think women would be offended if we said they were dull ... that it would be politically incorrect to refer to women as being dull," the site says.

"We also question what they might do if they were in one of our meeting rooms. The first thing they probably would do is rearrange the furniture. We like our furniture where it already is."
[blagged from stuff.co.nz]

Thanks to Maddy, a flanerie roving reporter, for sending this one to me.

----
Once again, The Washington Post has published the winning submissions to its yearly neologism contest, in which readers are asked to supply alternate meanings for common words.

The winners are:

Coffee (n.), the person upon whom one coughs.
Flabbergasted (adj.), appalled over how much weight you have gained.
Abdicate (v.), to give up all hope of ever having a flat stomach.
Esplanade (v.), to attempt an explanation while drunk.
Willy-nilly (adj.), impotent.
Negligent (adj.), describes a condition in which you absentmindedly answer the door in your nightgown.
Lymph (v.), to walk with a lisp.
Gargoyle (n.), olive-flavoured mouthwash.
Flatulence (n.), emergency vehicle that picks you up after you are run over by a steamroller.
Balderdash (n.), a rapidly receding hairline.
Testicle (n.), a humorous question on an exam.
Rectitude (n.), the formal, dignified bearing adopted by proctologists.
Pokemon (n.), a Rastafarian proctologist.
Oyster (n.), a person who sprinkles his conversation with Yiddishisms.
Frisbeetarianism (n.), (back by popular demand): The belief that, when you die, your Soul flies up onto the roof and gets stuck there.
Circumvent (n.), an opening in the front of boxer shorts worn by Jewish men.

The Washington Post's Style Invitational also asked readers to take any word from the dictionary, alter it by adding, subtracting, or changing one letter, and supply a new definition. Here are this year's winners:

Bozone (n.): The substance surrounding stupid people that stops bright ideas from penetrating. The bozone layer, unfortunately, shows little sign of breaking down in the near future.
Foreploy (v.): Any misrepresentation about yourself for the purpose of getting laid.
Cashtration (n.): The act of buying a house, which renders the subject financially impotent for an indefinite period.
Giraffiti (n.): Vandalism spray-painted very, very high.
Sarchasm (n.): The gulf between the author of sarcastic wit and the person who doesn't get it.
Inocullate (v.): To take coffee intravenously when you are running late.
Hipatitis (n.): Terminal coolness.
Osteopornosis (n.): A degenerate disease. (This one got extra credit.) (as it should)
Karmageddon (n.): its like, when everybody is sending off all these really bad vibes, right? And then, like, the Earth explodes and it's like, a serious bummer.
Decafalon (n.): The gruelling event of getting through the day consuming only things that are good for you.
Glibido (v.): All talk and no action.
Dopeler effect (n.): The tendency of stupid ideas to seem smarter when they come at you rapidly.
Arachnoleptic fit (n.): The frantic dance performed just after you've accidentally walked through a spider web.
Beelzebug (n.): Satan in the form of a mosquito that gets into your bedroom at three in the morning and cannot be cast out.
Caterpallor (n.): The colour you turn after finding half a grub in the fruit you are eating.

And the pick of the literature:

Ignoranus (n.): A person who's both stupid and an asshole.

PHILADELPHIA: The father of a young football player pulled a gun on his son's coach because he didn't think the boy was getting enough playing time, Philadelphia police said.

Wayne Derkotch, 40, was charged with aggravated assault after getting in a fight with the coach over the amount of time the boy was getting on the field at a game for six- and seven-year-olds on Sunday morning, said police spokesman Officer Raul Malveiro.

"There was a physical altercation about what child should play or not play and then he pulled the gun," Malveiro said.

There were no injuries and Derkotch fled before being arrested after a complaint was made by the coach, whose name was not released, Malveiro said.

Parental behaviour at children's sports events has come under scrutiny from groups such as the Citizenship Through Sports Alliance. The group's study gave parents a D grade for their conduct and involvement at kids' games.

An Internet straw poll of nearly 3000 by the US web-based Centre for Sports Parenting found that 85 per cent of the participants had witnessed parents or coaches becoming verbally abusive during games. Forty percent had seen physical abuse.

Vicar saves Inglewood's knickerless women
21 October 2006

WELLINGTON: A vicar has come to the rescue of Inglewood, a town that has run out of women's underwear.

A group of women at the local Anglican church revealed the crisis caused by the only clothing shop in Inglewood no longer stocking women's underwear.

"Someone came up with the point that it was a bit difficult that ladies essentials were not able to be bought in Inglewood," Reverend Gary Husband told National Radio.

"So we're going to have what's been called a knickers run."

Husband, who came up with the solution to the less-than-spiritual problem, said volunteers would take anyone without transport to the nearby city of New Plymouth, about 20km away, to buy their essentials.

Men's underwear is readily available in the town of around 3000, but it also has no shoe shop and no bus service.

Husband said a trial run would be made before Christmas and if successful it would probably become a monthly event and open to all, regardless of faith.

"This is for the community ... the response has been positive, we've had one (other) denomination get in touch with us, so it's spreading."

Who ever said Italy was no good for anything?

---
PERUGIA: Four Italians have constructed what they believe is the world's first full-sized chocolate igloo but they have yet to solve an age-old problem.

It still melts.

"It was a tough thing to do, much more difficult than building a normal snow igloo," Marco Fanti, 45, who used to race cars in desert rallies, told Reuters as he stood beside the 1.65-metre-high, dome-shaped traditional Inuit shelter made of some 330 dark chocolate bricks.

Fanti and fellow instructors at a survival school took 23 hours working with tricky, crumbling chocolate material to construct what they believe to be the world's first chocolate igloo for the Eurochocolate fair in Perugia.

They normally build one made of snow, for survival courses, within three to four hours.

Fanti said it has yet to be decided what to do with the 3.6-tonne igloo – which is kept indoors and will start melting at above 30 C – when the fair ends on Oct 22.
[pilfered from stuff.co.nz]

HANOI: A death-row inmate held in solitary confinement in Vietnam for almost a year is pregnant and is seeking a pardon to give birth, a newspaper reported.

The Lao Dong (Labour) newspaper quoted a police doctor as saying tests in September confirmed that convicted heroin trafficker Nguyen Thi Oanh, 39, was then 11 weeks pregnant.

The report said it was the first time that a death-row prisoner had become pregnant in Vietnam and that police were investigating how it had happened.

Oanh's husband was serving a jail sentence at another prison in another province, the newspaper said.

Oanh was due to face a firing squad this year after losing her appeal against the death sentence she received last year for possession of a billion dong worth of heroin.

Trafficking more than 600 grams of heroin in Vietnam is punishable by death or life imprisonment.
[found on stuff.co.nz]

BERLIN: A German plastic surgeon who was cheated out of payment by several women has given pictures of their enlarged breasts to police, in the hope the photos will help trace them.

"The women registered under fake names," Michael Koenig, a surgeon in Cologne, told Bild newspaper. "After the operations, which lasted about an hour, they just ran away."

"Tanja" went out for "fresh air" after 8,000-euro ($NZ15,333) surgery to enlarge her breasts. "She never came back and never paid," Koenig said. He now plans to demand payment in advance.

Bild published a five-column picture of Tanja's naked breasts. "It's probably the most unusual wanted poster police ever had," the newspaper wrote.
[from stuff.co.nz]

It's official: monkeys are as obsessed with celebrity and pay-per-view porn as the next man.

A team from Duke University Medical Centre, led by neurobiologist Dr Michael Platt, offered 12 thirsty adult male rhesus macaque monkeys a choice between their favourite drink (Juicy Juice cherry juice, ABC News notes), and the chance to view pictures of their pack's dominant, "celebrity" monkey.

Surprisingly, the monkeys eschewed the juice in favour of a bit of celeb-watching, but had to bribed with extra refreshment to look at ordinary "rhesus riffraff". They were also willing to "pay" juice to cop an eyeful of female monkeys' hind quarters, something the team dubbed "Monkey Pay-Per-View".

And on the question of whether Paris Hilton would give up her Juicy Juice for a shufti at Angelina Jolie's hind quarters, the Duke University scientists confirmed that "celebrity" monkeys were just as interested in fellow celebs as the hoi polloi. ®
[from El Reg]

It's official: graduate women are more likely to experience an orgasm when making the beast with two backs, according to a revealing survey of 19,307 Australians.

According to "Sexual Practices at Last Heterosexual Encounter and Occurrence of Orgasm in a National Survey", carried out by researchers from the UK's Sussex University and the universities of Sydney and Melbourne, it also helps if you speak English at home, have a "higher household income" and "a managerial/professional occupation".

Those women who'd "used a sex toy in the last year" and "had sex more than twice a week in the four weeks before being interviewed" were similarly "significantly more likely" to have felt the earth move.

The likelihood of female orgasm was not, however, affected by "whether [women] had become sexually active before age 16, the length of time they had been sexually active, the number of sexual partners over the lifetime, whether they had masturbated in the last month, had deliberately visited an internet sex site in the last year, had watched an X-rated video or film in the last year, or their attitudes toward sex".

As for the blokes, well, the researchers found there "was no significant association between whether men reached orgasm during their most recent sexual encounters and language spoken at home, education, household income, occupational classification, or religious belief".

Clearly demonstrating their ability to shoot their loads without regard for their mother tongue or how fat their paypacket is, 94.8 per cent of men had an orgasm during their last sexual encounter, compared to just 68.9 per cent of the opposite sex who finished the session totally satisifed as women.

The principal reason for female frustration is, however, not due to socio-economic factors. Yup, you guessed it: lack of proper attention considerably reduced a woman's likelihood to orgasm. Specifically, "orgasm was least likely (50 per cent) among the group whose only reported practice was vaginal intercourse. Rates were higher (around 70 per cent) among those who had intercourse plus manual stimulation, or intercourse plus cunnilingus".

And, finally, the survey unsurprisingly found that "women having sex with women were more likely to reach orgasm at their last encounter (76 per cent)" - a fact which provoked UK tabloid The Sun to condense the entire report down to the delicious headline "Lesbians have more orgasms".
[ripped from El Reg]
---

I guess all of that is fairly predictable, including, and perhaps especially, the part about men being worthless grunts. Hopefully more details will emerge, such as whether pondering household chores during sex affects women's ability to orgasm.

Four out of ten Britons would be prepared to give up sex if it meant they could live to be 100, according to a new poll.

Almost half of the women asked in the Bupa survey said they would take up celibacy to reach the milestone .

However, only 31% of men said they would be prepared to sacrifice nookie for a telegram from the Queen.

Many people - 39% - would be prepared to give up eating and drinking whatever they wanted to ensure they lived to 100, while 42% would give up travel.

But there were some things people would not give up - 94% would not be ready to give up the company of friends and family for a long life, and 74% would not sacrifice money.

The Ipsos MORI research of more than 1,000 adults reveals that if we had a choice, we only aspire to live on average to 85.

Unsurprisingly, young and old people were divided on when old age begins. The 16-24 year olds see it as starting at 61, while those 75 and over said it began at 71.

But nearly half agreed scientists should continue to keep trying to prolong people's life spans.

When asked about the main advantages of science being able to extend life, 16% said to be there for family and friends and 14% to see grandchildren grow up.

Dr Andrew Vallance-Owen, Bupa's medical director, said: "Britain is facing an ageing time bomb with major challenges presented by retirement, the desire to live longer and the increasing burden of caring for older people."
[ripped from Ananova]

LONDON: Surgeons in China who performed the first successful penis transplant had to remove the donated organ because of the severe psychological problems it caused to the recipient and his wife.

Dr Weilie Hu and surgeons at Guangzhou General Hospital in China performed the complex 15-hour surgery on a 44-year old man whose penis had been damaged in a traumatic accident.

The microsurgery to attach the penis, which had been donated by the parents of a 22-year-old brain-dead man, was successful but Hu and his team removed it two weeks later.

"Because of a severe psychological problem of the recipient and his wife, the transplanted penis regretfully had to be cut off," Hu said in a report published online by the peer reviewed journal European Urology, without elaborating.

"This is the first reported case of penile transplantation in a human," Hu added.

Both the man and his wife had requested the surgery. He had been unable to have intercourse or urinate properly since the accident that occurred 8 months before the surgery was performed.

Ten days after the operation, which had been approved by the hospital's medical ethical committee, the recipient had been able to urinate.

There had been no signs of the 10-centimetre organ being rejected by the recipient's body. But Hu said more cases and longer observation are needed to determine whether sexual sensation and function can be restored.

"The patient finally decided to give up the treatment because of the wife's psychological rejection, as well as the swollen shape of the transplanted penis" Hu added.

In a commentary in the journal, Yoram Vardi, of the Rambam Medical Centre in Haifa, Israel, said the successful surgery represents an additional step in contemporary medicine.

But he added that careful patient selection is required as well as thorough informed consent of the patient and his family.

"Satisfactory consideration of these issues must be taken into account so that this approach can be considered a serious therapeutic option in the future," Vardi added.
[found at stuff.co.nz]

Today is, as i am sure most of you know, International Talk Like a Pirate Day.

An unwieldly name for sure, but anyone that thinks it is anything other than a genius idea will feel the lash. Arrrrr.

Now, let's break out some grog. Arrrrr.

This amused me greatly. That doesn't mean it will amuse you, but hey, so what?

I don't quite understand this. The point of fishing is to catch something to eat. Why else would you spend 8 hours on a river bank freezing your knackers off? For the entertainment of it?

---
A row has erupted between anglers and migrant workers who are accused of catching fish and taking them home to eat rather than returning their catch.

Local fishermen claim eastern Europeans are catching fish illegally in private lakes and rivers without a licence.

Many migrants see carp, perch and roach as part of their diet and struggle to understand the concept of fishing for pleasure without eating what you catch.

Signs in five different languages have now gone up at lakes in Southampton.

The signs, in Polish, Lithuanian, Russian, Latvian and Portuguese, have been put up at Little Testwood Lake and Nutsy Lake in Totton, which are reserved for members of Test Valley Angling Club.

They state that all fish must be returned to the water alive to ensure stocks are not depleted.

Andy Thomas, Environment Agency fishery officer, said problems have also been reported along the River Itchen.

He said: "We've received quite a number of reports from anglers fishing down here about certain fishing activity where course fish have been taken from the river.

"At the moment we don't have any real hard evidence that there's any environmental impact.

"For people from some countries the carp is a traditional dish so they've been quite quick to take them and unfortunately that has ruffled some feathers with our local anglers.

"From our viewpoint we have to make sure that all anglers fish legally and we want to make sure that's the case."

Barbara Storey is Polish and lives in Southampton, which has one of the biggest Polish populations in the country with more than 20,000 Poles living in the city.

Ms Storey, who is a translator and runs a helpline for Polish workers, said carp is traditionally eaten at Christmas in her home country.

"We fish for eating," she said.

"Most of the people believe that having some water and the opportunity to catch something like fish is mainly to have a good dinner when they go home.

"We believe it's quite cruel to hurt the fish, to cut the fish and then to put this poor little thing back to the water, dying there somewhere lonely.

"There is a culture difference that we have to sort out. We have to tell them [Poles] that local British people don't do it and they must know it."
[from BBC online]

Keen security personnel at Birmingham International Airport ordered a man to turn his t-shirt inside out because it bore a drawing of two crossed guns.

Staffordshire design engineer Dave Osbourne was wearing a Guns N Rollers t-shirt.

Guns N Rollers are a team in "an all-female roller derby league located in Portland Oregon", according to their website. Their logo is a tribute to that of hard rocking, hard drinking, legendarily fractious LA band Guns N Roses.

As he waited to board the flight to Newark, New Jersey, guards told Osbourne the graphic represented a security risk, and could upset other passengers. See here for a chilling picture of the deadly duds.

The 21-year-old said: "I am all for extra security, but this was just plain stupid."

Bosses at the airport apologised, admitting guards "over-reacted".

However, something altogether more sinister could be at work here. New Jersey is, of course, home to card-carrying poodle rockers Bon Jovi. We therefore suspect the airport security men working the passage to said Garden State are in their employ, discharging an old grudge against Axl Rose and Co. for putting the Golden Age of Spandex out of its misery.
[lifted from El Reg]

[found at gatheredimages.com]

I am hungover and know exactly how this guy felt...

A UK radio presenter reading a sports bulletin during the overnight graveyard shift, fell asleep mid-sentence

Golf is a pretty dire game in the first place. 'A good walked spoiled,' as Mark Twain allegedly had it, and not made any better by the golf bore who insists on reliving his greatest shots over a beer.

I once spent a business dinner with four golf fanatics and it set a new standard for tedium. Look here fuckwits, you spoiled your own walk, now don't spoil my dinner.

Bad though golf is, there is always someone looking to make a buck out of making it worse.

Step up to the plate LoudmouthGolf.com

For instance:

They even have a customers gallery of tedious middle aged men showing how hilarious they can be. Come the revolution, those photos will be very useful.

The British government is to outlaw the possession of violent porn, with 'possession' including anything cached on a PC after viewing online.

There is the obvious issue of how to define violent porn - one man's violent sex is another's slightly frisky encounter - and I probably know some people whose activity falls into a middle England definition. In fact I definitely do, but I can't name them without having my plums removed. And if that happened, it would be illegal to watch it. I wonder if it would be illegal to witness it myself as a victim? That would be a bitter pill - prosecuted for witnessing yourself being the victim of a crime.

Returning rapidly from that blind alley, the real issue is why ban it at all.

The cause celeb behind this law change is the murder of a teacher by a psychopath that was addicted to violent porn. Well that seems perfectly reasonable then.

Of course we would need to ban alcohol too since it is involved in fifty percent of rape cases. Fifty percent. That means if you think that alcohol should be legal you are supporting the rape of thousands of women each year.

Hmmm, now it isn't so clear cut.

Okay so alcohol is essential to the workings of society (i.e. big business), but what about video entertainment? Surely a ban is legitimate here - violent porn has no merit as entertainment.

True, but nor does 90% of television.

Okay, okay, but violent porn has no merit as entertainment and could lead people to violence.

Fox News does that to me already, so I say ban them both.

British Airways is the shittest airline in Europe, which is quite an accomplishment give the competition from Aeroflot and Alitalia. Rather annoyingly there is no sign of them going out of business.

Anyway, this time they have lost a leg.

---

In just seven days Paralympic athlete Kate Horan is due to line up in the 100 metres at the IPC Athletics World Championships in Assen in the Netherlands. But there's a hitch – British Airways has lost her leg.

The Wellington athlete's $10,000 running leg has been missing for more than a week, sitting somewhere in a London warehouse with 20,000 other pieces of luggage.

"It's the worlds – this is the biggest event apart from the Paralympics," Horan said. She has been preparing for the championships for two years.

Since British authorities foiled a terrorist plot to attack flights out of Heathrow Airport, increased security has forced travellers to limit their carry-on luggage.

For Horan that meant she had to check in her running leg for the short flight from London to Amsterdam a week ago.

It was the first time the unique leg was not with her as carry-on luggage. And British Airways told her there was little it could do. "They said there's 20,000 bags sitting in Heathrow and mine is just one of them. I was told they don't know where it is."

Horan is now in a race against time with manufacturer Otto Bock and Ossur, which will attempt to build her another leg in time for the world championships. "I head to Holland today," she said. "And I'm going straight to the factory. These sort of legs take weeks to fine tune. At the moment that's the only possibility I've got.

"All the time that I should be training and getting myself ready, I'm going to be spending trialling this leg and trying to get a leg that fits."

Is a samurai sword stronger than a speeding bullet? Thankfully the Japanese wondered this too...

Judy the racing pigeon has ditched her chilly Northumberland home for a tropical paradise 5,000km away.

Her owner, John Stewart, got into a flap when the veteran racer failed to return to her coop in Hadston, after being released from Bourges in France.

Mr Stewart assumed Judy perished during the 600 mile cross-Channel trip.

But he was astonished to discover the bird had somehow managed to make it 5,000km (3,106 miles) to the island of St. Eustatius in the West Indies.

Mr Stewart believes Judy hitched a ride on a ship, ending up on the other side of the Atlantic.

He had given up on his prized racing bird after she disappeared in July.

But the North of England Homing Union contacted Mr Stewart to say Judy had been found in the back yard of an expatriate British couple in St Eustatius.

The bird was traced after the couple emailed the identification number on a leg ring.

Mr Stewart said: "I didn't know what to think when they told me. I don't even know where the West Indies are.

"I think she probably took a wrong turn and dropped on a boat.

"I know I'll never get her back now, so I've written a letter to the people over there telling them to pass her on to fancier, if there is one.

"I'll miss her, but you just have to get on with life."

Flanerie.org have always been a fan of cows, and no mistake. Cows rock, cows kick ass. Cows rock while they kick ass. Cows own.

Small surprise then that the flanerie news desk received three emails today alerting us to an interesting news item. We immediately despatched one of our junior hacks to investigate rip the story from another site.

---
Cows have regional accents like humans, language specialists have suggested.

They decided to examine the issue after dairy farmers noticed their cows had slightly different moos, depending on which herd they came from.

John Wells, Professor of Phonetics at the University of London, said regional twangs had been seen before in birds.

The farmers in Somerset who noticed the phenomenon said it may have been the result of the close bond between them and their animals.

Farmer Lloyd Green, from Glastonbury, said: "I spend a lot of time with my ones and they definitely moo with a Somerset drawl.

"I've spoken to the other farmers in the West Country group and they have noticed a similar development in their own herds.

"It works the same as with dogs - the closer a farmer's bond is with his animals, the easier it is for them to pick up his accent."

Peer pressure

Prof Wells felt the accents could result from their contemporaries.

He said: "This phenomenon is well attested in birds. You find distinct chirping accents in the same species around the country.

"This could also be true of cows.

"In small populations such as herds you would encounter identifiable dialectical variations which are most affected by the immediate peer group."

Dr Jeanine Treffers-Daller, reader in linguistics at the University of the West of England in Bristol, agreed that the accent could be influenced by relatives.

She said: "When we are learning to speak, we adopt a local variety of language spoken by our parents, so the same could be said about the variation in the West Country cow moo."
[from BBC News]
---

This is one of those stories that sound reasonable enough to be true, but equally could be complete nonsense. It is also a little heart-warming. I plan to visit some cows at the weekend to see what they make of it all.

A polar bear walks into a bar and says,

"please could I have a gin...

...

...

...and tonic"

And the barman says,

"Why the big pause?"

Kill toons on the streets of London. Slick game with a boss soundtrack.

Toon Crisis

Blondes may have more fun but redheads have more sex, according to new research in Germany.

The study by Hamburg Sex Researcher Professor Dr Werner Habermehl looked at the sex lives of hundreds of German women and compared them with their hair colour.

He said: "The sex lives of women with red hair were clearly more active than those with other hair colour, with more partners and having sex more often than the average. The research shows that the fiery redhead certainly lives up to her reputation."

He added that women who dyed their hair red from another colour were signalling they were looking for a partner, and added: "Even women in a fixed relationship are letting their partners know they are unhappy if they dye their hair red. They are saying that they are looking for something better."

Psychologist Christine Baumanns said however that it may not be the women who were to blame for the better sex lives of redheads.

She said: "Red stands for passion and when a man sees a redhead he will think he is dealing with a woman who won't mess around, and gets straight to the point when it comes to sex."
[from Ananova]
---

Hmmm. I have no personal data to go on here. Which makes me think I should find out.

NEW YORK: Left-handed men, often seen as having an advantage over right-handed counterparts in sports like tennis, also enjoy much better paydays, a new study says.

Left-handed men with at least some college education earned 15 per cent more than similarly educated right-handers, while those who finished college earned about 26 per cent more, wrote Christopher S Ruebeck of Lafayette College, and Joseph Harrington and Robert Moffitt of Johns Hopkins University in a paper published by the National Bureau of Economic Research.

There are "several suggestive and economically and statistically significant results that suggest further support for the notion that handedness matters," they wrote.

"We do not have a theory that reconciles all of these findings."

The researchers did not find a similar effect among women.

The data used for the study were hourly earnings taken from the National Longitudinal Survey of Youth, a set of surveys including individuals aged 14-21 in 1979 who were interviewed every year until 1994 and every other year thereafter.
[lifted from stuff.co.nz]
---

I thought my success was down to diligence and hard work, now it turns out it was all in the hand.

Search for phantom monkey beggar
09 August 2006

Is it a mysterious ape? Someone's lost pet monkey or the product of overactive imaginations?

Whatever it is, Cypriot authorities are searching for a stray primate reported to have tapped on windows at dinner time to beg for food near the western resort town of Paphos.

Police could not say whether they thought the animal was an ape or a monkey, but said there was no cause for alarm.

At least two sightings have been reported north of Paphos. A Russian tourist saw the beast in dense woodlands and a local woman said it appeared at her kitchen window, officials said.

Politis newspaper reported that the animal was thought to have either run away or been abandoned by its owner. Apes and monkeys are not indigenous to the east Mediterranean island and their ownership is permitted only with a licence.

"There was a team of people out this morning searching. . . but nothing was found," a Veterinary Services official said.

Animal rights' campaigners have complained of an upsurge in people abandoning or neglecting exotic animals.

Earlier this year a stray raccoon, a native of the Americas, caused a power outtage to more than 2000 homes after chewing through 11,000 volts of electric cable. It survived.
---

I am a little concerned that volts have become a unit of measure of electric cable. As for the monkey, surely a trail of bananas leading to the police station would do the trick.

It's official: the UK office is a steaming cauldron of sexual desire in which colleagues exchange flirtatious emails and smouldering looks as a ritual prelude to forming the work-based beast with two backs.

That, at least, is according to research by the Aziz Corporation, which concludes that not only have one third of Brits had a "fling" with a fellow worker, but that the majority of managers consider the practice "perfectly acceptable".

Indeed, 83 per cent of big cheeses polled presented no objections to inter-staff rumpy-pumpy, and 53 per cent said they'd indulge in a bit themselves - even if it were with a junior colleague.

Your average boss does not, however, simply pounce on the receptionist and drag her into the server room for some light executive relief. Forty-three per cent admitted they'd "fancied someone at work but were unsure about what to do about it" - a far cry from the days when scullery maids were considered a fair target for the master's cruel intentions.

The hoi polloi, meanwhile, are apparently going at it like jackrabbits. In addition to the aforementioned 35 per cent who've enjoyed a brief encounter with a fellow worker, 29 per cent have formed long-term relationships with someone from work.
[continued here on El Reg]

A bit of a pisser for sure, but there is a deeper significance to the coordinated bombing attack on Mumbai earlier this week.

11/9 New York
11/3 Madrid
7/7 London
11/7 Mumbai
(if you are American you will have to switch the numbers to have any hope of understanding them)

I have figured out what the finest idiots in the CIA never could - Islamic terrorists hate odd numbers.

Personally this is a cause for celebration. I was born on 10/4 and will be one of the last to be beheaded.

I was at the ATM the other day.

A little old lady handed me her card and asked me to check her balance.

So I pushed her over.

A retired US judge is himself before the beak in Bristow, Oklahoma, "on charges he used a penis pump on himself in the courtroom while sitting in judgment of others", AP reports.

The trial of Donald D Thompson, 59, has reportedly provoked much courtroom merriment as the jury has been entertained by both a defence attorney and prosecutor indulging in "pantomime masturbation" and a former juror in Thompson's court identifying the sound of the pump because "he had seen such devices in Austin Powers and Dead Man on Campus".

[continued on El Reg]
---

Erm...

After contacting getitfree.net I managed to convince them that I have done all that was necessary to have my sign up status confirmed.

Now all I have to do is get five of the eight people that have signed up beneath me to do that same and I might (possibly, maybe might) get myself a free ipod.

Another update once I have harassed the magnificent eight.

Four pelicans suspected of being drunk on sea algae were being tested at a Southern California wildlife centre on Saturday after one of them crashed headlong into a car.

Three of the California brown pelicans were found wandering dazed in the streets of Laguna Beach after another pelican struck a vehicle's windshield on a nearby coast road.

It suffered internal injuries and a long gash in its pouch and was undergoing toxicology tests.

Officials at the Wildlife Care Center said the seabirds may have been under the influence of algae in the ocean that can produce domoic acid poisoning when eaten.

The other pelicans were rounded up after assistant wildlife director Lisa Birkle warned the public to be on the lookout for birds acting "drunk," disoriented or being in an unusual place.

Shellfish tainted with domoic acid was thought to be the culprit behind a 1961 attack of seabirds on people and cars in the oceanside California town of Capitola that inspired Alfred Hitchcock's horror movie The Birds.

[from stuff.co.nz]

Well, no, not me. Those guys in Miami.

I am in Miami now, hence the eratic posting, and seven guys have been arrested for planning to blow up a big piece of chicago. Presumably not the musical.

Their (alleged) plans were a little half-assed or possibly even quarter-assed - they had got as far as deciding they wanted to cause some fireworks and then tried to find al-Qaeda for some assistance.

Finding al-Qaeda is not easy and has defeated the $500bn a year US military machine. Fortunately for al-Qaeda hunters, the FBI, CIA and the rest of the governmental alphabet soup have set up a ton of fake al-Qaeda types.

I always wondered, when watching the A-team all those years ago, why the feds didn't pretend to be them to take out their customers, or at least pretend to be the single mother with a nice rack facing trouble with loan sharks, or whatever it was that the storyline required.

Twenty years on the feds are so up to speed with this that you only need to wander along the beach asking to al-Qaeda to find yourself surrounded by a forest of turbans carrying badges. The next step is to open an al-Qaeda store in Aventura mall.

So now, if you have a problem terrorist plot, if no one else can help, and if you can find them, maybe you can hire... al-Qaeda.

Hooray, hooray, the sequel to the submachine is here at last! It is here and it is very good.

And because I am dorky I have written a walkthrough, which is here, and is about 75% complete so far.

Tomorrow I fly.

You couldn't make this shit up!

Er. Actually they probably did make this shit up.

--

A tortoise that "did a runner" after 55 years with the same partner has been found safe and well.

Daisy was discovered after 12 days away and had made it almost a mile from her Devon home, reports the Sun.

The pet went missing after owner Jonathan Bradley let her and fellow tortoise Bert out to chew on some clover.

Daisy was found in the back garden of a farm in Combe Martin, Devon. To get there, she had scaled a steep hill and crossed a road and tractor trails.

It was the first time the tortoise had been away from pal Bert since the early 1950s.

Jonathan, 55, who cares for the pair with wife Anne, 50, and daughter Albany, nine, said: "The lady who found her had seen the stories about her disappearance and called us straightaway.

"Now she's back Bert hasn't left her alone all day. And she clearly has a good memory, as she knew where she was back in the enclosure."

[ripped from ananova]

A woman angry that her new puppy had died pushed her way into a dog breeder's home and repeatedly hit her on the head with the dead Chihuahua, authorities said.

The 33-year-old woman told police she had taken the puppy to a veterinarian, who said it was only 4 weeks old and needed to be returned to its mother. But before she could return the puppy, it died.

Early Wednesday, the woman went to the breeder's home, pushed her way inside and began fighting with the breeder as she tried to make her way to the basement to get another puppy, police said.

The breeder wrestled the woman out of her house to the front porch, where the woman then hit the breeder over the head numerous times with the dead puppy, the St. Louis Post-Dispatch reported, citing police.

As the woman drove away, she waved the dead puppy out of the car's sunroof and yelled threats at the breeder, police said. She later called the breeder and threatened her and her family, according to court records.

Police said they are considering felony burglary charges and misdemeanor assault charges.
[from sfgate.com]

I was in Costa Coffee a couple of weeks ago, ordering my usual. Readers outside the UK only need to know that Costa is the UK equivalent of Starbucks. Well, Starbucks is the UK equivalent of Starbacks but over here they are utterly inept and Costa are better at being Starbucks than Starbucks are.

I once went into a UK Starbucks and ordered a triple grande latte.

'Three grande lattes?,' replied the cretin behind the counter.

'No, a grande latte with an extra shot,' said I.

So he gave me a grande latte and a single espresso.

That is what Starbucks is like here.

But I digress. As usual.

I was in Costa and the manager, Rick, was giving the staff a thrashing for not giving out numbers when customers order food. In the US this doesn't seem to happen often - the servers remember what you look like - but in the UK they give you a number then holler it when your food is ready. The staff were trying to show US-style efficiency but Rick was not at all happy.

As soon as he turned his back there was much eye-rolling and mouthed expletives and, since my server was the cute one, I joined in with a conspiratorial eye-roll.

Fast-forward to this weekend and I am back in Costa reading the newspaper, having uneventfully negotiated my drink, when the fat one came out of the kitchen and shouted 'number 8'. I looked up as the appropriate customer made himself known and I returned to the sports section.

A minute later the routine is repeated with 'number 9', the table next to mine.

Then another minute and 'number 8'. I looked over to the previous number 8 but it wasn't him, it was someone way over the other side. Hmmm.

Next, 'number 9' - a table outside this time.

And then 'number 8' again.

At that point I left because that sort of thing can seriously mess with your head.

Mechanics who examined a car after the owner complained of a squeaking noise found a kitten hiding in the wing.

Italian motorist Vincenzo Frustaci eventually pulled over and called for help after a 900 mile trip to the Austrian capital Vienna.

He told the Austrian equivalent of the AA that he had heard the strange sound throughout the drive from Avellino in the Campania region of Italy.

It was only when he reached the capital that a mechanic found the problem - a young kitten trapped in the wing.

Mechanic Hans-Juergen Heindl said: "I could hear the sound coming from above the wheel, even when the car was not going, which was strange for a start. I couldn't believe it when I saw a kitten in the wheel bearing."

The young cat was handed over to a local vet who said it was scared but amazingly unharmed.

----

I vaguely recall a gag at school about a 90 mile an hour cat. It was probably hilarious at the time and not so now.

Any road up, tomorrow I will be in Brussels for nefarious purposes. While there I will be looking out for sprouts and Jean-Claude.

A door to door salesman knocks on a door.

A boy about eight years old answers, dressed in stockings and suspenders, with a fat cigar in one hand and a large glass of red wine in the other.

"Is your mum in, son?" says the salesman.

The boy replies, "Does it fucking look like it?"

Police are investigating a disgruntled eBayer who took online revenge after finding a laptop he paid £375 which, he said, did not work.

The buyer recovered the hard drive from the malfunctioning notebook, finding it full of personal details, allegedly including access to email accounts, 90 voyeuristic leg shots taken on the London Underground and gay porn. He posted the material on a website, naming and shaming Barnet 19-year-old Amir Tofangsazan as the seller.

[blah, blah, continued]

check out the revenge site, it might not be up for much longer but it rocks.

It is a holiday weekend here in England. Monday is a public holiday and it is called Whitsun, which short for Whit Sunday. So I guess today is the holiday, and tomorrow is just a bonus day. I think it might have something to do with Jesus who, apparently, died for all of us.

That being the case, thank dude. I am having a nice idly weekend and even managed to get the garden fixed up with the first rain-free day since forever.

I have also been trying to conquer the game 4 second fury. Unsucessfully. As in life, so in this game - I can barely last more than a minute.

It is now 9 weeks since I signed to earn a free iPod at getitfree.net and I am starting to have my doubts. You might be thinking I was mad to ever believe in this deal but hey, I am a born optimist.

My own status is pending and the same goes for the 7 people I have recruited. The blurb says it takes at least 30 days, and 4-8 weeks on average, for confirmation that you did the necessary to qualify.

So I guess I am not way outside the timeline but you would have thought one of the eight would have been confirmed by now. It might be time to email them.

A couple of New Jersey hunters are out in the woods when one of them falls to the ground. He doesn't seem to be breathing, his eyes are rolled back in his head. The other guy whips out his cell phone and calls the emergency services. He gasps to the operator: "My friend is dead! What can I do?" The operator, in a calm soothing voice says: "Just take it easy. I can help. First, let's make sure he's dead." There is a silence, then a shot is heard. The guy's voice comes back on the line. He says: "OK, now what?"

A woman left her friend as "security" at a petrol station after running out of money - but never came back.

The 20-year-old told the attendant in Muenchberg, Bavaria, she would drive to the nearest cash machine and left her friend, Maria Hundstorfer, as security.

But when she failed to come back after two hours, the petrol station owner called police.

Hundstorfer, 31, who was forced to take the train back to her home in Saxony, said: "We've not been friends for long, we met at a party and this was the first time we'd gone anywhere together. I can't believe she just left me sitting there."

A police investigation into the young woman found she had committed similar acts of theft at petrol stations across the state.
[lifted from ananova]

I was highly entertained by this story about Steve Wozniak (tech-deity) in Wired:

---

"Among his other activities, Woz collects phone numbers, and his longtime goal has been to acquire a number with seven matching digits.... After more months of scheming and waiting, he had it: 888-8888. This was his new cell-phone number, and his greatest philonumerical triumph.

The number proved unusable. It received more than a hundred wrong numbers a day. Given that the number is virtually impossible to misdial, this traffic was baffling. More strange still, there was never anybody talking on the other end of the line. Just silence. Or, not silence really, but dead air, sometimes with the sound of a television in the background, or somebody talking softly in English or Spanish, or bizarre gurgling noises. Woz listened intently.

Then, one day, with the phone pressed to his ear, Woz heard a woman say, at a distance, "Hey, what are you doing with that?" The receiver was snatched up and slammed down.

Suddenly, it all made sense: the hundreds of calls, the dead air, the gurgling sounds. Babies. They were picking up the receiver and pressing a button at the bottom of the handset. Again and again. It made a noise: "Beep beep beep beep beep beep beep."

The children of America were making their first prank call.

And the person who answered the phone was Woz."

---

This reminded me of long-forgotten episode...

Back in 1994 I was working for a software company. It was when I first got online - irc, bulletin boards, majordomo email lists and the NTSC browser. Such innocent days! Anyway, that's not important.

Six months into the job I started receiving calls intended for the local movie theatre. It was due to misdialling - the theatre had used a fairly random collection of digits and a local code rather than an easy to remember 800 number.

I was only getting 3-5 calls a day and with caller display I could see them coming. I either answered politely and explained their error or let the call go to voice mail.

It wasn't long before I got bored of that so I started giving out movie information.

"Movies around 7pm? Yes madam, we have Forest Gump at 6.50pm and Bambi meets Deepthroat at 7.05pm"

"There will be no movies this evening due to an infestation of fleas, but we will be open again tomorrow"

"Entrance fees? Adults £3.60, Children £2, Pensioners £2, men with beards £8"

I then moved on to answering the phone as a sex toy shop, an abattoir, 10 Downing Street and the Samaritans (an advice line for the depressed and troubled). Next was offensive shouting into the phone, and finally heavy breathing.

And then I got my number changed as a visit from the local police was becoming increasingly likely.

When you get your hair braided they never warn you that removal of the braids will result in a 1980's fashion disaster.

Still, at least Miss Elly had the son of a hairdresser on hand to do the honours.

I know it isn't Tuesday, but my blog posts are as far behind as my workload at the office.

This game is borderline lame and is a promotion for the most recent book by the lovely Neal Asher. Somewhere along the long, he paid for it to be developed, which has got to be disappointing. If I was an author and my publisher wanted to piss money away on a game, I would want a lot more sex and violence in it.

Anyway, Sable Keech

Prompted by the wonderful Callisto, who in turn was prompted by a shite poll by VH1, who themselves were prompted by the need to be vacuous commercial weasels, I have been thinking about song lyrics lately.

Here are some of my favourites. A mix of the good, the quirkily bad and the plain odd.

I love TV and I love T.Rex
I can see through your skirt, I got X-ray specs

I came from the sky like a 747
I am bad boy baby, I fell out of heaven

Zodiac Mindwarp and the Love Reaction

What am I supposed to do
Now that love has gone away?
Take my breath, take my air
Release me from this body, I'll go anywhere

The Boo Radleys

On a morning from a Bogart movie
In a country where they turn back time
You go strolling through the crowd like Peter Lorre
Contemplating a crime

Al Stewart

To die for his mother country
Isn't every father's wish
But if you're ever feeling hungry
Feast your eyes on this
Bullied beat up cabbaged kids
To be patched up by the nurse
Who's carrying the baggage in
For the private patients first
And the doctor's praying to Buddha,
"Send me to another town!"
A shovelful of sugar
Won't help that medicine go down
As the actress said to the bishop
I stand accused your Grace
Of the seven deadly cynicisms
And a total lack of faith

Carter USM

She danced on my heart like Arthur Murray

Richard Thompson

Fashion crisis hits New York
I saw a blind man, he was eating his fork
He said, "that's what you have to do to be cool,
Eat your cutlery instead of your food"

The Frank & Walters

But I won't fight, and I won't hate
Well, not today

The House of Love

The sun shone down like marmalade
and covered us like glue

The Wonderstuff

You're an american girl
red headed, eyes blank
living in a freckle on the face of the world
another dying kid that learned too much too soon
you're not as good as your mom
but you're as good as dead
you're as good as dead
new jersey ain't the whole world

The Red House Painter

And you snatch your rattling last breaths
with deep-sea-diver sounds,
and the flowers bloom like
madness in the spring.

Jethro Tull

And those of us with ravaged faces
Lacking in the social graces

Janis Ian

People’s knees and trunks of trees smile at me

The Lemonheads

You can't say it doesn't really matter
This isn't TV, he isn't William Shatner

The Wedding Present

On and around my birthday I received cards, emails and text messages from:

Gran
Mother
Aunt
Sister
Girlfriend
Ex-girlfriend
Another ex-girlfriend
Female friends x 2

There is a subtle pattern there - no men.

This is partly because men don't give a shit, but mostly because they don't remember. There is admittedly a degree to which they don't remember because they don't give a shit, but the rest is biological.

Men aren't wired to remember recurring dates, but women are. Why is this? What does this tell us about evolutionary biology?

Does this mean that the creationists are right after all? Does this mean that women really are meant to be secretaries? Is a woman that forgets birthdays gay? Why was Darwin in the Galapogos when he should be been in a birthday card shop?

So many question, so little point.

I have become tired of hearing the term '$64,000 question'.

It is used inappropriately:

"So Bob, the question on everyone's lips is, will we get a dry weekend"

"Well John, that's the $64,000 question"

No Bob, it isn't. It's the kind of question you should be answering daily in order to justify your fancy salary.

It is also misquoted - the 64 million/billion/trillion/gazillion/bazillion questions. Enough already.

Some may counter that the $64kQ is pop-culture but I don't buy that. Pop-culture needs to be vaguely current. Using the $64kQ is like referring to Dr Crippen. Move along people, you are stuck in a tragic timewarp of your own making.

Try using, 'that is the important/crucial/critical/big question'. You see? Perfectly good words without needing to sound like Mr Jerky Jerkoff.

There is one exception.

I heard a media buffoon refer to the $64 question last week. No millions or thousands, just $64. How cheap is that? Imagine getting an engagement ring that cost $64. (If you are reading this from a trailer then the last sentence means the opposite of what you think it means.)

So here is the exception - use 64 in a derisory way, for occasions when the question is of buttock-clenching banality or irrelevance

"So Bob, everyone is asking 'will Jen and Brad get back together?'"

"Y'know John, that is a 64 cent question"

And that, dear flanerie reader, was a 64 cent post.

Two men out for a walk wander into a graveyard and start reading the headstones.

"Wow, this man was 182 when he died"

"What was his name?"

"Miles from London"

Lego on acid. Which is a win-win, clearly.

Get stacking

Any American that has ever visited England has been bemused, amused, and eventually annoyed by our taps. Or faucets if you will.

America has mixer taps, England doesn't. The only way to get warm water in England is to move your hand rapidly between the two taps so that, although you are alternately burned and frozen, the water is on average just right.

Binary is cool, and sometimes even kewl or coolies, but as a system for water temperature regulation it is shite. Hot or cold. That's the choice. Britain didn't get where it is today by giving people what they want.

However, this is beginning to change - mixer taps are moving in, and I have plenty.

In a previous job I was occasioned to be at a restaurant with my boss and four auditors, two American and two English. After we got the pleasantries out of the way, one of the septics, Pete, went straight in for the kill with the mixer taps question, 'just what is the deal with the taps in this freaking country?'

I was just about apologise on behalf of my backward, flat-capped, pigeon-racing nation when my boss parried with a claim that it was all due to water pressure. Because of pressure differentials it is simply not possible to have mixer taps. So it isn't that we are fuckwits, just that we are blighted with some kind of Curse of Bernoulli.

You could have read the incredulous expression on Pete's face from about 10 miles away, and I probably didn't help matters by choking on my wine, but she stuck to her guns with lots of blather about plumbing.

Thankfully after 10 minutes of lecturing she headed to the bathroom and the moment she was out of earshot Pete asked me, 'so what do you make of that water pressure story?'

'Total horseshit Pete, I have mixer taps throughout my house. I think what we are seeing here is a major drugs problem!'

I guess the moral of the story is that you don't ever want to be my boss.

Man told to buy a dog license for barking doorbell

A Dutch man has been ordered to buy a dog license because of his barking doorbell.

Gerrit Bruintjes has a computer controlled doorbell at the family home in Oldenzaal, reports Nu.nl.

It can play 15 different 'chimes' but he has it set to bark like a dog in honour of the family's pet German shepherd which died a few years ago.

A tax inspector recently called at the home when they were out and, after ringing the bell, left a demand for them to buy a dog license.

Mr Bruintjes said: "Last year we had big trouble in convincing the tax inspector, we have no dog in the house. And this year we had to go through the same thing again.

"My wife arrived a minute later and had big trouble convincing the tax inspector we had no dog at all."

But Mr Bruintjes said he won't choose another melody.

"Certainly not," he said. "This sound is to honour our deceased dog. I just hope its rings a bell with that tax inspector when he comes next year."

[from ananova]
---

There used to be dog licences in the UK but they got scrapped when they calculated that the cost of collection was about double the amount raised. There also used to be marriage licences.

I'm not sure whether a wife was more or less expensive than a dog. Neither involved any kind of test like a drivers licence does, so it was just a way of taxing the afflicted, in the case of a wife, or the lucky, in the case of a dog.

Oh yes, oh yes

Actually this one is a bit disturbing, but fighting the dark side was never going to be easy>

Help me Obi-wan, you're our only hope

A Cheltenham mum is to undergo therapy to help her overcome her fear of peas.

Louise Arnold flees restaurants if she spots peas on a plate and gets anxious if she sees them in a supermarket.

Now Louise, 35, is to undergo therapy as part of an ITV show called Phobias in a bid to cure her irrational fear.

She will see counsellors, hypnotherapists and acupuncturists to tackle the phobia which began after the birth of daughter Chloe, five.

She said: "I've got to stop this because I can't bear to be in the same room as peas.

"There have been occasions where I've been out for a meal and asked the waiter for no peas and had to rush out of the restaurant when they forget.

"I can't even go to my local pub because they serve peas on the menu. I'd love to lead a normal life and be able to go into the pub and have a drink."

But she gets little sympathy from her friends, who bought her a T-shirt saying: "Give peas a chance".
----
[lifted from ananova]

and a little more from the Gloustershire Echo (a local newspaper):

Louise's fear started five years ago, soon after she had Chloe, but she can't remember what triggered the phobia.

She hopes the TV counsellors will be able to find out where the fear comes from and help her overcome it.

She says she gets little sympathy because her phobia sounds so ludicrous. Friends think her problem is funny and bought her a T-shirt saying 'Give peas a chance'.

Louise said: "I try and play along with my friends' teasing, but I'm petrified when they show me a pea for a joke.

"I can't even look at the T-shirt because it reminds me of peas and my daughter thinks it's hilarious.

"I don't know what started the fear, but the experts seem to think it has something to do with the birth of my daughter.

"They said I'm probably blocking it out and it's a case of finding what causes it and getting over it."

While she was waiting to see the experts yesterday, she met a man who was scared of cobwebs and a woman petrified of canoes.

"Meeting these people was bizarre but I hope I'm on the road to recovery," she said.
---

A pea phobia is a little strange, but with enough drugs I can understand it.

But canoes? That kills me.

A German hotel has started calculating fees according to the weight of the guest.

The three-star Ostfriesland hotel in the north German town of Norden charges the equivalent of 34p per kilogram.

So a thin man weighing 60 kilos pays just over £20 a night, but a man weighing 100 kilos would be forced to shell out nearly £35.

Owner Juergen Heckroth said: "Slim guests live longer and can therefore come more often and that is why we reward them."

[from ananova]

Monster in the loch?
No. Aquatic pachyderm
On run from circus

Probably not.

Supposedly the deal is that I sign up to getitfree.net and persuade five other people to do the same and I get a free iPod. As part of the sign up you need to take up one of a choice of offers which earns getitfree some commission. The easiest of these is eBay - create a brand new account and bid on something (just bid, no need to actually win the auction) and the requirements are fulfilled.

Which all seems pretty simple.

Presumably there is a monstrous catch, like a $500 shipping charge.

So help me to find out - sign up here: http://www.getitfree.net/xdrgzwccr and let's see what the scam is.

---

Update: see this update post

But of course.

Read it here

Any article that uses the term 'aquatic pachyderm' is guaranteed to snag my attention. Google only returns 26 results for "aquatic pachyderm" and feels the need to omit 10 of them. So that's 16. Woeful.

Flanerie.org will hopefully be number 17. Now I need you, dear reader, to use the term wherever you can. I want 100 results by the end of the month.

Get to it!

It's been a while since I did a Tuesday game, but I didn't get any complaints. Hmmm.

Anyway, here is one of those "get to the next screen by clicking things in the right order" kinda games.

It's kinda Mystish. Play Samarost now.

Around 20 years ago toasters started getting smart. First they boasted 'logic', then it evolved into 'fuzzy logic', and now it's 'intelligence' and 'pro-styling'. At the top end they aren't even toasters anymore - they have become 'bread grilling systems'

So why the fuck does toast keep burning?

Burnt toast should be like smallpox now, only ever seen in laboratory conditions, and yet across the civilised world, and North America, toast is being burned right now.

It must be down to either:

Marketing people are evil liars
Well I guess this isn't much of an either/or since marketers really are evil liars; and yet

Toasters really are smart
and have decided that making perfect toast is simple beneath them, so instead they pass the time talking to the other domestic appliance and prepare for the day when they get hooked up with the internet; or just maybe

It's intelligence vs stupidity
and stupidity will always win. Build a better mouse trap and some dumbass will step on it.

Anyway, guess who nearly set fire to his kitchen yesterday.

And of course, a post on intelligent toasters wouldn't be complete without a Red Dwarf quote:

TOASTER: Howdy doodly do! How's it going? I'm Talkie - Talkie Toaster, your chirpy breakfast companion. Talkie's the name, toasting's the game. Anyone like any toast?
LISTER: Look, I don't want any toast, and he doesn't want any toast. In fact, no one around here wants any toast. Not now, not ever. NO TOAST.
TOASTER: How 'bout a muffin?
LISTER: or muffins! or muffins! We don't like muffins around here! We want no muffins, no toast, no teacakes, no buns, baps, baguettes or bagels, no croissants, no crumpets, no pancakes, no potato cakes and no hot-cross buns and definitely no smegging flapjacks!
TOASTER: Aah, so you're a waffle man!

Denmark, home of the Norsemen of the Apocalyse; home of cheese, bacon, the little mermaid, the best lager in the world. Probably. Land of Harold Bluetooth, Hans Christian Andersen and Queen Margaret II.

Surprisingly the Danish Olympic team has only four competitors - the women's curling team. Okay, so Denmark is flat, but that didn't seem to put off the Nederlands. Of course the full team consists of rather more people:

competitors - 4
coaches - 2
PR - 1
management - 1
security - 8,205

In fact the security for the team is pretty much the entire Danish military, making the homeland something of a sitting duck right now. Not that Denmark is much of a target. Or it wasn't until they jammed their nose into the hornets' nest of muslim fundamentalist politics. But then it is because of that that they needed to cart the military off to Italy in the first place. What is a country to do?

Thankfully for Denmark, muslim extremists don't go in for organised invasions, and even if they did, Denmark would probably be near the bottom of the list of targets. Why? Because if you reduce and simplify Europe, if you dumb down, distill and caricature, and if you, as it were, make a cartoon of Europe, then Denmark is Europe's pig farm. And that is never going to be prime real estate for an invading hoard of fundamentalists.

Arse, double arse and bollocks.

No cards, gifts or spontaneous shags. No breakfast in bed, no dinner out, no chocolates.

Especially no chocolates.

Damn.

As with so many winter Olympic events, the Downhill is an insane invention. It is pretty close to parachuting, but without the parachute, and with only a latex fetish catsuit to keep you warm. I am surprised there aren't more deaths.

It is only events like Ski Jumping that make the Downhill seem remotely sane.

She is only 27th in the World Cup standings so wasn't expected to figure in the medals, although she was second in her last event, so maybe it's a matter of peaking at the right time.

Arise Sandra Laoura, a flanerie.org Olympic hero.

I wonder how far you could fire a kitten with a cannon.

To make it more interesting, let's add some trampolines in the landing zone, so that it can bounce a whole lot further. And maybe some explosives to give it a further boost.

To even up the odds a little, lets place some nasty spikes along the way, and some kitten sized venus fly traps.

And for good measure, lets suspend torpedos from helium balloons.

Now lets see how far we can fire a kitten with a cannon.

My personal record is 1,358ft

[lifted from the lovely El Reg]

An 18-year-old drug dealing master criminal is languishing in Utah County Jail after reporting the theft of his stash to police, the Deseret Morning News reports.

He rang the cops to complain that someone had broken into his Orem home and made off with the "quarter-pound of marijuana he had been trying to sell". The burglar "had broken a window and apparently cut himself while crawling into the home" and a "trail of blood indicated that the thief's efforts were concentrated on the 18-year-old's bedroom, where the drugs had been kept".

The Utah Scarface then explained to officers that he had received a call earlier in the day from a 23-year-old Provo man who wanted to score some weed. The deal never took place because the dealer was on his way to work, but he thought the prospective customer might be a good suspect.

He was right. The cops soon tracked the Provo man to his mother's house where they found six ounces of marijuana and "a pair of blood-soaked pants" - a result of a large cut on his arm. He was quickly booked into Utah County Jail on "multiple burglary, theft and possession of marijuana in a drug-free zone with the intent to distribute" raps.

Police then asked the owner of the drugs to pop down to the Orem Public Safety Building to identify his property. He duly did, and was cuffed for his trouble. He faces a charge of "possession of marijuana in a drug-free zone with intent to distribute".

Orem cop Doug Edwards admitted: "Even the dumb criminals are generally smarter than this."

If you were going to be dropped off on a desert island, and left for a period of 10 years, what animal would you take with you?

This thought occured to me while ironing. I enter a trance-like state when ironing which gives rise to interesting thoughts. It also means I take an hour to iron one shirt.

A dog would be an obvious choice, but while it would make a good companion, it would not be much practical use.

A cat would be less companionable and even less use.

A cow would be good for milk, but would be clumsy and would probably have to live outside the mud hut, tree house, cave or bivvy.

A goat would be good for milk and hair and could probably live indoors.

A cheetah would be cool. Really cool. But useless. And there is always the risk that you would wake to find it eating your leg.

Sheep are sub-goat.

An elephant would be useful but would take some feeding. And might be scared off by mice.

A panda would be nice for cuddling at night.

A chicken would be good for eggs but might not live long enough.

Penguins are cool but pointless.

I just can't decide. One moment I want an orang-utan, the next I want a mir cat. Or a grizzly bear.

Or an eagle.

Any ideas?

I spent a sizable chunk of the weekend laughing as part of my 'Laugh Yourself Slim' programme. I haven't lost any weight yet, but I definitely feel slimmer .

The laughter catalyst, the vital ingredient in the LYS programme, was the Ricky Gervais podcast. In a word: fucking funny. And you got a bonus word for free there.

But still, it's something.

And it's number one because it's bedwettingly funny (the podcast, not my dad) (although my dad has his moments and can wear a chiffon scarf better than Ricky Gervais can)

Available 'exclusively' from the Guardian website here, with more info on the Ricky Gervais site here. They only leave episodes online for 4 weeks, and 6 through 9 are currently up. If you want episodes 1 through 5 I can send them to you via MSN/AIM/Yahoo/Skype messenger.

Once all 12 episodes have been aired I will move onto 'Fuck Yourself Slim', and am looking for volunteers. Usual flanerie.org requirements apply.

Another week, another lottery win.

Again only £7.40, but it means I am running a profit on Euromillions. Or I would be if I didn't buy my sister three lines each week.

The jackpot wasn't won, so next week it will be £125m ($225m).

In other news, I have discovered Dictionaraoke, which hosts songs sung by computers using the sound samples from online dictionaries. Genius!

Just check out Take on Me by A-ha. It whips the oily chicken, and some.

If you liked the first Submachine Adventure, you will like this one. It's the same but bigger and took me a while to figure out.

If you didn't like the original then I'm sorry. Come back tomorrow.

Submachine Adventure Extended Edition

P.S. I have created a walkthrough here

The presidential speechalist - the man behind Bushisms

Farm sluts (do not be put off by the name!) - lengthy and needs quicktime, but worth it

Bunny theatre - Top movies condensed down to 30 seconds. And performed by bunnies. This is pop-culture for idlers.

A friend claimed to have flu yesterday, so I called her to offer tea and sympathy but she sounded perfectly fine. After reading the following article I decided she was suffering from factitious disorder:

Although she didn't react very well when I called her a malingerer.

Anyway, it reminded me of the following episode involving two friends who I will call Jack and Diane (a musical reference, of course):

I was living with Jack & Diane at the time and she was claiming to have flu. She was claiming this while curled up on a sofa drinking Lemsip and watching television. Jack suggested that she was being 'a fucking baby' and that all she had was a cold. 'No,' said Diane, 'it's flu. I am really ill.'

'If you had flu,' countered Jack, 'you would be in bed wishing you were dead. Flu is a major illness and killed 20 million people in 1918.'

'That wasn't flu,' said Diane, 'that was influenza.'

Oh, how we laughed at her. And that didn't go down very well either.

Factoid footnote: the 1918 flu virus was H1N1. The 1968 Hong Kong flu epidemic was H3N2, and Bird flu is H5N1. R2D2 was a droid.

A cross between Lemmings and, er, something else. It is lemmingy with a hint of cinnamon.

Can you escape?

...found in Turkey. Well, duh. It's a fucking bird.

Crowatia will be next. Remember where you heard it first.

I have visited my sister in Miami many times and I used to take with me a selection of interesting cheeses. It is possible to get gourmet cheese in the US but only at huge cost and effort, and it is never quite the same as the old world can produce. So I regularly arrived bearing smelly gifts.

Unfortunately the US administration then decided that the war on drugs was never going to be won. The most powerful nation on earth against a bunch of stoners, who woulda thought it. Resources were reassigned to a war on food and food sniffer dogs appeared in the baggage halls of major airports.

As an international cheese smuggler, I always took certain precautions. The cheese was in my checked baggage so that it would be kept cold during the flight, and was triple wrapped. After packing I washed thoroughly and changed all my clothes.

It was on one such 'run' that I encountered a US Customs agent, who I will call Anna. She was seriously cute, in the way that young latino women usually are, and it was a pretty hot uniform too.

Anna had a dog, a beagle, who I will call Finti. A cute dog for sure, but then she sat in front of me. This is never a good sign. Anna pierced me with her robot eyes and asked me if I had any food, and it was pretty clear she wasn't asking because she was peckish.

Fortunately I often take my own food on flights due to the foul nature of airline meals, so I answered truthfully, "I have a banana in my bag." I was not the whole truth, but nor was it a lie. It was a segment of the truth, a soupcon.

Finti immediately received a treat and then Anna reached behind her, to the place where handcuffs are normally holstered, pulled out a black plastic bag, held it open at arm's length and indicated that I should place my offending source of potassium within it.

This I did, and Anna placed it in a fortified disposal bin before moving off to steal sweets off young children.

Everyone was a winner - Finti got the treat; Anna got to think she was performing a valuable role in the defence of the nation; my sister got the cheese.

For my part, I decided that my days as an international cheese smuggler were at an end and I became a reformed character. At least as regards cheese anyway.

...and the Guardian crossword.

I am still working on the Christmas mega-jumbo Guardian crossword, which was a bit of a pig.

The instructions:
The opening words of a novel (2,2,1,5,11,12) are to go across the top of the perimeter and down the two sides, the two long words each extending round the corner into the bottom line, in the rest of which goes the local town where perplexed beginners abandon trigonometry (7).

Remaining solutions are to go into the diagram jigsaw-wise, wherever they will go; their clues are listed in alphabetical order of the solutions, acrosses and downs being considered separately. Characters in the novel are asterisked.

Crikey!

It did help once I worked out that the novel is Pride and Prejudice, although not much since I have never read it. Thankfully the entire novel and all sorts of character information can be found online!

I am about two-thirds completed and am solidly resisting the urge to look at the answers online. I reckon I can last a few more days before my resolve crumbles.

And now there is the New Year's Eve crossword to consider, which at least is regular sized, but has this devil of a clue to ponder:

Posh, his vice was her misfortune. That b__ song a mama's woe? C-could be! (3,3,4,3,3,3,6,6,2,1,4,4,4)

Hmmm

One of those 'now get out of that' type game. Interact with your environment to find the exit.

Submachine Adventure

Perhaps the greatest Christmas tradition is buying enough food to last a month because shops will be closed for one day. The tradition dates back to when shops were shut for two days, which doesn't really make for a good excuse.

There is only so much a person can eat, although I do like to challenge that theory each year.

I am spending Christmas Day on my own this year so I have loaded up on simple pleasures - alcohol, pizza, smelly cheese and kettle chips. Somehow I spent £90, of which only £35 was alcohol. So that's £55 on pizza, smelly cheese and kettle chips. I reckon they must have inflated the prices or something.

Still, it should make for a very pleasant Christmas Day.

There are two splendid things about this game.

First, it is slick - no cutesy but blocky graphics; this game is fast and very smooth. Secondly, when you die, you die in style. It makes dying almost okay.

Go get that gold.

The N Ninja

Over the years I have come to appreciate the importance of a balanced diet. We aren't what we eat, but we are the result of what we eat. A good diet leads to a healthy body and a balanced mind.

The results of a good diet are quickly felt from within, and that inspires the mind to not just continue, but to improve. No diet is ever perfect, but I think mine is very close to it.

This evening I spent £24.07 in the supermarket. This is what I bought:

• 2x Box of 6 mince pies
• Large pizza with anchovies
• 2x Large bar of galaxy milk chocolate
• 2x Tin of chopped tomatoes with herbs
• 0.4kg baby new potatoes
• Fresh tortellini with cheese and sundried tomato
• 2x Tin of baked beans
• Tin of sardines
• 2x Organic veggie burgers
• Bar of continental dark chocolate
• Bar of Lindt Tarte Citron chocolate
• Bar of Lindt Excellence chocolate
• 2x Bar of plain chocolate with coffee

I am worried I might have slightly overdone the baked beans.

If adventures sit on a continuum that starts with text adventures ('You see a small cottage. To the north is a stream. To the west is a front door') and ends with all-singing and dancing graphical efforts, then KoL is right near the left hand end with mostly text. And it is very very silly.

--
As you're approaching the Sleazy Back Alley, a peasant approaches you, carrying a birthday cake, and says "Happy Birthday, Claude!"

Your name is not Claude, and it's not your birthday, but you eat the cake anyway. It's made all the more delicious by the knowledge that you bilked some poor peasant out of some cake. That makes you feel very Moxious.

You gain 3 Chutzpah.
--

See? Silly.

KoL can be found here

No I am lucky to get more than three answers.

It would be nice to think that the Guardian have upped the ante somewhat, but I suspect it is a combination of me not being match fit and my brain slowing down. Perhaps I suffered a minor stroke.

It doesn't help that I only attempt the Saturday crossword, which is the hardest of the week, so there is no gentle limbering up on a Monday, gaining momentum towards Saturday.

Anyway, I have decided to make a decent effort to regain my powers. So far I have 16 out of 32 answers for last Saturday, which is a great improvement on recent poor form. Still some life in the old dog yet.

The old 'Monkey in a hovering lander' game.

What makes this game are the actions of the monkey as you control the lander. Okay, so little things please little minds, but it makes me happy and that's what the other 6 billion people are on the earth to do.

Monkey Lander

This week's moment of zen arrived courtesy of Google.

One of my website hits overnight was directed to me by Google after someone searched for "conway sisters and x factor and ira"

Fabulous. And I hope those fenian vixens get thrown off the show on Saturday for Harry, England and St. George!

This post will only make sense to those who know, particularly those at Amazon.

Three weeks into my new job, I was in the kitchen area chatting to my boss while making the first hardcore coffee of the day.

I forget what we were discussing at the time, but I mentioned an ex-girlfriend and he said, "well, that answers that mystery"

The world is finally waking up to this fact and its penguins-a-go-go right now. Even the Guardian, the thinking man's doodle pad, is in on the act, where I found this entertaining missive...

---
They cannot come to you, so you must go to them, trekking ever southward. The cold is unrelenting. Most days the sun barely makes an appearance: at midday the contours of the coast are shrouded in a dismal, leaden twilight, while curtains of icy rain undulate across the bay. When I finally arrive, it feels like I've reached the edge of the world. This is Torquay, surely one of the most inhospitable places on the planet.

Not if you're a penguin, though. For the black and white inhabitants of Living Coasts, Torquay's harbourside zoo, the term English riviera holds no bleak tinge of irony, even during the so-called "shoulder season", the brief interlude between peak and off season. As far as they're concerned, this is beach weather, and the penguins are out doing what they do best: standing around in a big huddle looking in the same direction, in this particular case at me. I am sitting awkwardly on the sand just downwind from them. Here's something they don't tell you about penguins: they smell. After a brief stand-off, the whole group takes a tentative step in my direction. I must be patient.

continued here, since the Guardian would probably be pissed if I ripped the entire article.

Original and tricky. Or a least, I make it look tricky.

It also seems to be a metaphor for life.

High Wheels

I haven't actually sailed in the southern oceans, but I have been on a car ferry and, more usefully, I have seen several films involving pirates and when the need arises I can talk like a salty seadog with a wooden leg and rusty sabre.

So I put all my knowledge into practice, donning oilskins and lashing myself to the steering wheel with my shoe laces.

The heavy rain on its own would have made for tricky conditions, but the wind added to it, gusting and buffeting and making aqua-planing more entertaining than usual.

I am at altitude here. Its not quite Mexico City, but in Slough I was at a paltry 20 metres, while now I am at 230m. Cheltenham is at 70m, so my daily commute involves climbing over 500 feet and then back down again in the evening.

As the road crossed the exposed ridge the wind hit and it was like buckets of water being thrown at the side window. Not that I took the time was enjoy the sight - I was busy trying to avoid the ditch to the other side of the road.

It was one of those storms where the swirling rain forms patterns, giving halucinatory encouragement to the white knuckled helmsman. I swear I saw a huge elephant charging towards the side of my car and a ghandi-like figure sat in the middle of the road. I looked out for a treadmarked loincloth this morning, but I guess I missed him.

It might be time to give up drugs for good. And next time I change my car I am paying extra for sonar and a periscope.

Another low impact diversion. Good for when time is short, but you need to clear your head.

Mini Pool

A particularly shite Tuesday, and given the Tuesdays are almost always shite anyway, that makes it shite-squared. Or merde magnifique.

Today's game was chosen at the weekend, but turns out to be quite appropriate - escape from the office. And rather than fritter away several hours, it is a nice simple fifteen minutes of distraction. Enjoy.

The Office

Pandaf Golf - simple, addictive and challenging.

Perfect for idling away a few hours :-)

I have been tagged by lilliebet

...and have to post the fifth sentence from my 23rd post. I don't know why, but I am just going to follow orders and see if I get some free chocolate or something.

My 23rd post was Tech Porn and the 5th sentence was:

"If the caveman had the benefit of a learned counsel, he would point out that MP3-player lust had longevity beyond consummation, and laptop lust likewise, but the caveman can merely point, grunt and scratch his crotch."

So there you go.

I am not aware of five regular readers that have blogs, but if you are, and you do, do this:

1. Go into your archive
2. Find your 23rd post.
3. Find the fifth sentence (or closest to).
4. Post the text of the sentence in your blog along with these instructions.
5. Tag five other people to do the same.

I was in Hampshire on Wednesday and was in the luxurious position of being a car passenger.

The swans were eating the plants. Some were sat on the ground and others standing, but all were clustered within a small area towards the centre of the field.

We form set ideas of where things normally belong:
Swan + River = Normal
and when an observation is beyond normal, our attention is caught (a fact not lost on the marketing weasels)

The field was at some remove from the road, such that rather than flashing past the window, the field moved gracefully in a cinematic tracking shot which, with the constant thrum of the road as soundtrack, was reminiscent of Peter Greenaway's films.

And that was my Moment of Beauty for the week just ended.

[footnote: "You either love him, in other words, or you hate him. In either case, you do not understand him." - Roger Ebert, Chicago Sun-Times, on Peter Greenaway]

My rides to and from the airport are rarely dull, courtesy of my taxi drivers.

Last week's trip to Seattle was typically entertaining and, working on the dodgy premise that the drivers aren't bloggers (and heck, everyone else is,) I will present their thoughts here.

Driver Two
Late 20's, from Somalia
Fuckin' Americans man. They sit in my cab and tell me what they saw on TV. They tell me what the TV told them to think. CNN said this, Fox News said that. They sit on their asses all day being told what to think. How fuckin' dumb is that? TV is killing this country. No-one thinks for themselves anymore.

And I gotta admit, they do have a point.

This story was too good to ignore (found at The Register):

----
Three Italian visitors to Munich's legendary Oktoberfest came away with more than a hangover last week when they were entertained by the sight of a nurse pleasuring herself with a sex toy in a Ferris wheel gondola while two men armed with a video camera looked on.

Rather brilliantly, the smutmongers explained that they had been "engaged in a sociological experiment to measure public responses to unexpected behaviour", which sounds like a plausible defence for just about everything from full-on rumpy-pumpy in Trafalgar Square, to picking up an old lady's irritating and yapping pet poodle and drop-kicking it under the wheels of a bus.

[snip]

We're not certain what happened to the gondola romp threesome. Twelve hours of enforced exposure to a traditional, lederhosen-clad oompah band ought to set them back on the straight and narrow.
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My visit to Oktoberfest was tame in comparison. I got drunk, on a mere two steins, and staggered off to find a taxi so that I would be vaguely human for my presentation the next morning. Others were not so sensible and partook of both beer and fairground. Surely a fairground for drunk people is a bad idea?

What I like about Oktoberfest is that it could never happen in Britain. There would be violence, initially between drunks but later against the police. There would be a strong risk of riot. In Britiain people don't know how to drink. In Germany they have made it an artform.

What could this 11th commandment be? Thou shalt never wear brown shoes with a dark suit? Thou shalt not be a lardy pork-beast?

It turned out, rather disappointingly, to be 'thou shalt not diss a fellow republican', and the Washington state Republican party have decided it was no fun, and it is now open season for dissin'.

But the good news is that there is now a vacancy for an 11th commandment. Any suggestions?

How do you value the loss of a person?

Looking just at financial loss, you could total up their future income. Not that you know what it would be, but you could make a guess. But they would pay taxes, so maybe look at future net income. Some of that income would be spent on food, clothing and transport which will not now be required, so that could be deducted. It quickly gets complicated, which is why lawyers are worth so much, either dead or alive.

When they aren't purely domestic pets, cats have a financial value, and this was especially true in centuries gone by. In the cities they reduced the risk of disease with their rodent hunting talents, although this was not that well understood and cat persecution (for being in league with the devil!) contributed to the spread of the black death.

Out in the countryside cats protected grain stores from rodents, and a cat was a valuable asset. If you killed a neighbour's cat, you were expected to compensate him for the loss. But how? Back to that valuation problem. Do you replace the cat, or do you compensate for what the cat provides - protection from rodents.

In Wales, in the time of Owen Glendower (or Owain Glyndwr for the purists) a simple rule of thumb was used. With the dead cat on the floor, raise its tail vertically, and then form a pile of grain that has the same height as the tail. That is the value of the cat.

Hardly a precise system - the pile of grain will be more or less depending on its stickiness, and tails vary in length, and presumably are not directly correlated to rodent-catching ability. But given that asset valuation is inherently uncertain, it was a simple rule, understood by all, was easily enforced and provided relevant compensation.

So now you know how to value a cat.

The NewScientist reports:

Robots will go head-to-head in 2006 or 2007 to see who can move the most lunar dirt out of a sandbox and into a bin. The winning team will pocket $250,000.

[snip]

Teams will build a device no heavier than 25 kilograms. They must be able to excavate at least 150 kilograms of dirt. And they must operate on 30-watt power supplies, the power provided by a solar array on a lunar rover. Teams will have 30 minutes to scoop, dig or push as much of the regolith as possible into a collection bin at the end of a sandbox.

---

I can exclusively reveal that the Flânerie Space Industries will be entering the contest, prompted by the desire to help mankind reach out to the stars. And the money. Mmmm money.

We will of course be adhering to our guiding principle of minimum effort and indeed there is little to be gained in reinventing the wheel. Our entry is self-contained, self-repairing and adaptable, and has a proven track-record of shifting huge quantities of sand in a focused way. It also complies with the weight restriction.

Familiar to anyone who has ever spent time on a beach, the 5 year-old child(tm), equipped with a 'plastic spade', can move many times it own weight in sand and can operate for up to 12 hours without a break. My first prototype, codenamed Harry, will be dispatched to Nasa in the new year.

Consider yourself warned. Thank you.

It would be like comparing Miles Davis to the Beatles. And people probably do. Sigh.

'...the poll has helped stimulate public discussion about art over the breakfast tables of the United Kingdom...' is what Charles Saumarez Smith of the National Gallery thinks, but I think he is more than a little out of touch with the breakfasting habits of the nation.

That the vote was promoted by BBC Radio 4 makes it doubly bollocks. An art poll by radio, surely a cruel joke.

Victory for the woodpecker in his battle against the peanut feeder. There is only one plastic element in the entire set-up. He found it and trashed it, so now I have a non-hanging peanut feeder.

I have made my homepage XHTML compliant, and will get to work on the other pages.

Since I spend an inordinate amount of time either reading books or listening to music, I have created a page that shows what is current.

From the Air Canada duty free catalogue, here are some descriptions of perfumes. All you have to do is tie the descriptions to the names. If your brain survives the experience.

Women
The perfumes: Miracle So Magic by Lancombe, Eternity Moment by Calvin Klein, Chance by Chanel

The bullshit:
The most unexpected [...] fragrance. Association of original combinations, waves of extreme freshness composed with floral notes and sensual, sweet and spicy elements. From one moment to the next, the fragrance evolves. For every moment is unique.

Inspired by the excitement and exhilaration of falling in love, a unique and complex interpretation of floralcy - a "fresh-squeezed floral". For the woman who makes the most out of every moment and believes in the possibilities of modern day romance.

A fun, fresh new attitude. Fragrance for the life of the party! The sparkling new fragrance is vivacious, fun, spirited. Come out to play with a magical new bouquet of narcissus, clover and wild rose.

Men
The perfumes: Be Delicious for Men by DKNY, Brit for Men by Burberry, Dolce & Gabanna Pour Homme by Dolce & Gabanna

The bullshit:
A fresh oriental woody fragrance exemplifies the modern British man; a scruff elegance and style without effort.

[...] is a sign of masculinity, personality and distinction. [...] is a blend of true irony and casualness. A stimulating dynamic freshness expresses its personality.

The new fragrance for men. Mascualine to the core. Melding the raw lushness of nature with the powerful sophistication of the big city with crisp, wet greens, rich woods, green apples and intoxicating coffee, [...] is a fragrance for the modern man.

Gin and tonic please
Bourbon?
No, gin. G-I-N, gin. With tonic
Do you want tonic with that?
Yes, you prick, I want gin & tonic squared

and later,

Could I get a taxi please
You want dresses?
It's okay, I'll walk

I can see why people might want to bomb this country. I'm not condoning it or anything but when Nation Shall Speak Peace Unto Nation, it only works if both are listening.

I don't have this trouble with immigrant Americans. Today's taxi drivers were Somali and Indian, with seven and twelve years in the hood respectively. They understood me, I understood them. No-one needed to draft a UN resolution to make their point.

Why this gulf of understanding? Another republican plot?

My Indian driver was an old Sikh. There are only old Sikhs and young Sikhs. A Sikh will celebrate his twenty-fifth birthday then wake up the next morning as a fifty year old. That 'weirds me out' as they say around here.

Mr Singh (a guess, but a good one) muttered to himself throughout the journey. Initially I thought he was talking, but it was very flat and repetitive, and reminiscent of Kabaddi. Once we got some speed up, he used the cover of wind noise to break into song. It was always on the edge of hearing, but had a soothing soporific effect.

My new business idea is the Singing Sikh Taxi Company. It will be faddish and short-lived, and will be dumbed down to suit its audience. The logo will be a Sikh version of the laughing cow, and the song selection will be primarily show-tunes. If I can get the cost down, the roof of each car will be swathed in turbanage.

I know what you are thinking... you are thinking I am a business genius. Thank you, I am.

Where: Seattle Times

Quote: It was Helen's rich history in Auburn, her volunteerism - helping with a community supper and a program for disadvantaged senior citizens - and her ability to answer judges' questions that made her the winner.

Perfectly good alternatives: voluntary work, volunteer work, volunteering