It's what the hardcore called Katemas. Kate Bush has turned 50. The BBC have a little picture feature on her. My favorite picture is below; it graced my PC screen from 1992 until about 2001 -- still the record-holding backdrop.
The Waaart will have stopped reading by now with a look of "Christ Kenny, you haven't shut up about Kate Bush for over 25 years." but it bothers me not a jot. Kate Bush was my first obsession in life. Even though I was nothing but a whipper-snapper when Wuthering Heights was released, I knew there was something about her that time would honor. She's a marvel. I jest about my little crushes on lasses du jour, but the Kate Bush thing transcends a crush -- I think 30 years rules a crush out.
I've lauded here time after time on here so I'll not repeat myself. I'll just say this: if I designed the perfect woman, she would not be a million miles away from Ms Bush in looks, character, every metric you can apply.
If anyone has seen a smallish, gingerish person (who is not very "fly") in the areas surrounding Wormwood Scrubs, could they please point him back in the direction of Milton Keynes? Either that or stick a stamp on him and post him. I'm sure the registered keeper, while not being overjoyed by his return, will be relieved that he had not been gnomekidnapped. We are led to believe that his children quite like him too.
He responds to roll-ups and beer. When agitated, he has a tendency to deploy a Doc Marten boot to either the head or groin area, so avoid sudden movements that may startle him.
Why has no-one told me that there is a new X-Files film? From the pictures I've seen on t'interweb my one-time love, Gillian Anderson, is not aging too wonderfully. Don't worry Gillian -- I still hold a candle for you even if my Pauley Perrette obsession long since overtook my love of the X-Files.
Is it Kenny showing some sensitivity? Shurely shum mishtake.
This is bad news for you lot. I have it on me today. I'm not sure what "it" is but very often I am told I have it on me, usually not with the nicest of implications. Just to prove that me having it on me does not necessarily mean someone will end up in tears, I am here to point you in the direction of this BBC article detailing the antics of a moonbat agency, Actionaid, who have put in an application to level St Paul's cathedral to highlight the controversial plans of British firm Vedanta Resources PLC to open cast mine a sacred mountain for bauxite in India.
Contrary to what you may think given my rants on the Anglican church and El Popey Baby, Islam etc., I am not entirely intolerant of religion. I think the major Christian religions, Judaism and Islam are all bags of the same nonsense, yes, but I do have sympathies with other less aggressively marketed (I nearly wrote evangelized) religions. Sikhs, Buddhists, Hindus I have no problem with at all. They don't bother me and I don't bother them. I think we both like it that way. In fact, their reluctance to ram it down my throat makes them more appealing. It's kind of like the cute girl who only throws you a bone every now and again -- you get to a point where you're fascinated.
Personally I'd be amazed that you can mine liquorice Kenny
So, given the above premise, I do have some sympathy with highlighting the cause of the Kondh tribe who believe that the God Niyam Raja lives on Mount Niyamgiri. It could be a pile of steaming proverbial, but who are we to go blasting in there to blow the thing up for a cheap bit of bauxite? Answer: we have no damned business doing anything of the sort. If that Mountain is where they believe the God in question hangs out, leave it alone. We would be in uproar if Muslims suddenly decided they wanted to mine liquorice or some such from under the Vatican. Well, some of us would; personally I'd be amazed that you can mine liquorice, but that's another train of thought entirely.
Applying to demolish St Paul's is a tad on the naffer side of cretinism though. I defend its right to exist on the basis of heritage and of architectural significance, not because of its religious merits.
You have to wonder don't you...if you're born and raised a <whatever> in remote India to worship a God that lives in the nearby mountain, I think it's a safe bet to say that you probably haven't been given a good grounding in international market economics (or the need for bauxite for that matter), so you might get a bit uppity about someone desecrating your holy place. I would.
Is it not this kind of utter ignorance of other cultures and profound arrogance that causes daft religions (christianity, islam etc.) to end up fighting wars that have no business being fought, just through a lack of empathy? Maybe it's about time we started preaching putting down the bible and stepping away from the balance sheet just once a week. We could call it a day of rest.
Alors, Vedanta, leave it well alone. Well done Actionaid for raising the profile of this monumentally ill-advised venture albeit via the most ludicrous route you could have chosen.
Can you believe I wrote that? I think someone must have slipped me a roofie again.
Update: The Czech lad in Starbucks couldn't remember whether he had put the third shot into my cappuccino -- I suspect there is now a fourth in it -- that "it" that I have on me, might become "IT".
I like the homepage of the alleged new google, Cuil. Very minimalist and quite pleasing to the eye. I even nearly like the layout of the results it comes back with.
The rest? Shite. I'm wondering whether if I searched for "arse\+elbow" it would manage to find either.
I was just having a nosey over at Steve's because he does amuse me, when I noticed the bad news about Bennigans going bust. This would be a catastrophe were I still in the States. I used to really enjoy nipping the mile down the road in Coon Rapids to Bennigans for a Guinness and a steak with the missus and kids. It was kind of a ritual when the weather was bad or Nski couldn't be bothered cooking. It doesn't matter now but I had a soft spot for one of the waitresses in there; I think it came about because Nski was always so rude about her appearance. I always thought she was very pretty but hey, what do I know? Women are the worst critics of other women -- it's not the men at all. Isn't there an Ani Difranco lyric that says that everyone harbors a secret hatred for the prettiest girl in the room? The answer might be yes if you sample the female population. Anyway, I liked the girl, she was a good waitress and I always left her a bigger tip than Nski ever knew. [Quiet moral victory points, Kenny: +10]. I doubt the lass still works there, but if she does, she won't soon...sad.
I bet the next lass I go to out eat with (if she has read this) will now take an active interest in how much I tip the waitress and draw the wrong conclusion. Sometimes being nice to people is harder work than it need be.
It was possibly the third time today I had flashbacks to the Midwest. For some reason I suddenly thought of two friends, Sam and Kim who were actually friends of Nski's parents but who grew to be fairly close friends with us. They were dirt poor but happy folk, always willing to help when they could. Sam was a veteran who had been treated appallingly by the VA. He had served his country (I think it was Vietnam) and been well and truly left out to dry. When he started going blind, the VA wouldn't pick up his medical bill. We ended up having a fund-raiser for him. If anyone on this planet deserved a break, Sam did. I don't even know if he's still alive. The only reason I know Nski's dad died is because I got a one-liner email chastising me for something or other. They crossed my mind anyway and I made a mental note to see if I could try to find their email address. Their path probably crosses Nski's every now and again and God knows what hairbrained nonsense she has spewed to justify her actions, but Sam and Kim being the nice people that they are, they'll probably have bought it lock, stock and barrel. Maybe they're best left alone.
I really do miss the people there. While I think I can now safely say that I was not overly impressed with quite a few of my colleagues in the US, I really did like some (hi Nicole! who was a blast). I used to particularly like doing the tours of the manufacturing sites in the US because you got to meet the real people. I have lost count of how many friends I made who worked the lines. There was a really tall black girl in Motorola in Plantation who was a scream. I could never understand a damned word she said but I knew she was funny. She'd yell something in my direction, crack up laughing and then come and try and explain it to me in Southern drawl. Priceless. I had a really soft spot for one of the Mexican lasses at Tellabs in Bolingbrook too -- she was so softly spoken and eager to please. It broke my heart when she was laid off. All she wanted to do was earn enough to get by.
Now I think about Bolingbrook, I miss the distinctly average Springhill Suites Hotel. The staff in there were an absolute riot.
There are numerous other places that I'd love to go back to. Hell, there are some I would move to if the opportunity arose. I don't think I'd head back to IL or MN -- too many memories. One place that I will always hanker for is North Carolina. I think I can say with some certainty that nothing bad ever happened in NC and I just loved the whole place. By coincidence, I happened to meet one of the maddest and strongest women I have ever met in NC who I still kind of keep in touch with. NC is my idea of heaven. Hey, here's a thought...do they do North Carolina mail-order brides? ;) JOKE!
Coming full circle, I'd started thinking about moving back to the States after an email from Steve the other day advising me to move back to the US quickly, before the British government outlawed steak knives. He has a very fair point. He's one of a number of my good American chums who wish I'd go back there. Who knows...it's always an option. I swore I would never move back here and while it has done me some good, it's broken me too. Thankfully you don't have to pay to be fixed here. I keep saying this, but there is one big thing hanging around my neck that would stop me from upping and offing but it's an intangible as of now. I did find myself checking the jobs board for stuff in Chicago or Raleigh Durham and checking flight prices over the weekend. In Wuthering Heights style, I feel changes coming on.
All nostalgia aside, Statesy people, grab a really average Bennigans while you can and then email me and tell me how average it was. Tell me the Guinness was too cold and that the Irish whisky sauce on your steak was too sweet. I'll believe you.
Oh, and tip the blond girl with the funky eye make-up *very* well. Hey, seeing you're paying, make it 20%.
Today is getting progressively more annoying. I had occasion a few moments ago to walk the 50 yards to the shop for cigarettes and milk. Within that 30 seconds or so, I was accosted by no fewer than five people saying hello or in Wigginese "alreet pal". I held the door of the shop open for a guy as I went in, who proceeded to thank me and append an "art alreet pal?" and then opened it for a lass who was leaving whence another pleasantry was cast in my direction.
I'm certain I do not exude "friendly guy". I'm certain I go out of my way not to give off that vibe. I knew only one of the plethora of passers-by who hailed me, I can only assume that they all have heat-stroke from the unseasonal warmth or that my plan to appear as unapproachable as possible is working so well that people greet me out of fear. Either way, I'm not happy about it.
Truth be told, I'm not happy about much this evening. Even the crossword annoyed me. I shall watch some banal Monday night nonsense and try to forget that I'm feeling obnoxious.
For months now, I've been driving home from work by coming off the M60 (what used to be the M62 when I were a lad) at the junction with the East Lancs (A580) and crawling down there at what amounts to a snail's pace. It usually takes me 50 minutes to get to about Eccles and then 50 minutes to crawl the last ten miles home. I have suffered in silence, quietly rejoicing in others' good fortune (that means yours) that don't involve that little slice of hell.
I got held up at work tonight dealing with something that had irked me all day so was lucky enough to catch an email from Pater...
Kenny, Just heard E Lancs Rd shut at Leigh, W bound, (I think). Cheers. P
Yes, my dad calls me Kenny and yes, he signs his emails Pater. You wonder why I ended up fruit-loop don't you? Look no further than my father.
Anyway, I took his missive to heart and decided that I would carry on the M60, join the real M62 and then hit the M6 North for a couple of miles (an additional 8 miles) but the junction off the M6 is about a mile away from here. How long did it take me door to door? 65 minutes.
Count 'em. 65. Compare that with the usual 105 minutes.
You could have told me.
In other news, Mrs Evil Albert has reminded me that I hired her back in my youth, before she was Mrs Evil Albert. As I recall, she was probably the only useful employee in the whole damned California office for a while. She did have to remind me to be a reference though. I have responded thus:
"No problem. I'll have to get my thesaurus out for this. Pedantic, stoned, moonbat, would rob her own grandmother, murderous, psychotic, hostile, deranged, schizo, crackhead -- would hire her again in a New York minute.
What she wrote -- yeah. That one day she pitched in on time, she was only five sheets to the wind, not the usual six. I think she might have fixed something that day too. A small victory, but a victory all the same."
I've sent that off with a "to whom it may concern". Job done. Anyone else need a reference while I'm in the "spread the love" mood?
Now I'm off to sulk that real life is not conforming to Kenny's plans.
I'm not sure how many of you ever hit play on these because I cannot be bothered checking. Today's little bit of Fiona is a great example of why I can listen to her voice singing the 10 o'clock news and still be happier than Mosely in a German house of ill repute, sans cameras.
Read this article on two drunken Brits flying back from Kos to Manchester.
I was appalled. Not particularly because of the antics of two inebriated lasses (I expect that), but let us look at the report itself:
"When ordered to stop boozing, the girls began yelling and tried to attack staff before passengers helped cabin crew handcuff them -- the pilot then made an emergency landing at Frankfurt, Germany. "
"...the girls being marched away by at least three cops..."
[bold added by me]
Maybe I'm being picky here, but I would have expected to read that article on the Sun website. It reads like something I would knock up as a piss-take, not what I expect from my paper of choice. All it's missing is a sex angle and a few 'Achtungs'. And probably some hot gnome on gnome action. I guess my theory about ripping things straight off the news wire, adding a few typos for authenticity and then syndicating is not so far from the truth. Mein frickin' Got.
I spend an awful lot of time and effort making sure that my pages validate to w3c standards in terms of XHTML and CSS. I originally did it for those people using Apple kit. Rather than hack it such that this place rendered properly for them, I took the plunge and modified all my code to generate compliant XHTML. It was time consuming (well, it took a couple of hours) and I have always paid careful attention to not knowingly break it. As it turned out, just making it comply solved the Apple woes. There are still a couple of WTFs surrounding a few things that go a bit googly on Safari, but when I have the inclination, I will look into those.
The point being, that if you click the gubbins down at the bottom right, it should validate.
So [adopts tone of self-righteous Daily Mail reader], what is the crack with IE? I downloaded it on a whim and loaded chez moi up. It looks like the dog has vomited it up. Stuff is dangling in mid-air, objects don't work etc.
My dliemma is do I waste the effort doing special cases based on the browser or do I just pop up a box to everyone who hits here in IE telling them to go download '''Firefox''' or a browser that works? Honestly, I can't believe anyone in their right minds uses IE anymore, but having just looked at my stats, it appears at least 40% of my traffic does. I could do nothing but then the IE population will think my site looks like crap because I made it that way.
Can any of my more web-savvy readers give me any easy hits on what to change to make it work in IE while keeping it compliant, fine in Firefox et al and, most importantly, will not mean I have to pre-parse my XHTML before kicking it to IE? Any suggestions more than welcome.
Our science correspondent over at kennywire®, Dr Tim Hippy, has been interviewed by correspondent Filbur Pentshaft this week on the amazing concept of U-tube. What a scoop. I've just spoken to the editor and apparently Lois Lame has a scoop too. It looks like a hot news day. Now, if only that bone idle git Hawkeye Blotter would meet a deadline for once in his sorry life...
I have rejigged my archives to do something more sensible than what they used to do. This may have some unforeseen effects on permalinks from before the start of this month, but do I look like I care? Correct -- I don't. In doing what I have done, it's going to mess up search bots a bit (I think) but that is no bad thing really. All the faffing of the day has been in support of me doing things in a cleaner manner than the mess it currently is so I am happy, and I've added a few little features here and there for me. Job done.
I did go out, albeit just into Wigan via Pater's to marvel at his HD sports channel and watch him be ill. He's not very good at being sick at all -- typically male I'm afraid. I picked up some green goo in Wigan as a present for E. I'm sure she'll see the humor.
The highlight of the day however was finding the ultimate in gnome predators in Pater's back yard. Behold, the hedgehog from hell...
Hungry gnome-eating hog of the hedge variety, a bit after lunch.
For the first time in forever, I find myself at a loss for what to do this weekend. I have exactly one place that I could be this afternoon but I am not of a mind to go there today, which leaves me with no place to be other than here, or anywhere else I feel like going. If I stay here, I'll end up just faffing around on the computer all day which would be a shame because Britain right now is experiencing that oh-so-fleeting season of summer -- I'd like to say that it's glorious blue skies and cracking the flags with heat but really, it's above room temperature outside and is not raining, which is about as good as it gets. Summer lasts about three days here so the whole country goes nuts -- I bet if I went to Sainsburys now, it would be packed with be-shorted people buying BBQ goods and lager.
Ironically, I had planned to work this weekend. I have some design documentation that I need to do quick-style but I've been suitably distracted at work to not give it the attention it merits so I was going to bring my work laptop home to do battle with Visio and Word, but the sun must have gone to my head as I legged it out of the building yesterday, screaming like a kid just after the school bell. It looks like Monday will be a long and busy day because of my forgetfulness.
One thing I might do is go look for a house to rent. I started looking last night but there was absolutely nothing that would interest me in the slightest. I have no intentions of renting a terraced house in somewhere nasty (I did that as a student thank you) and I have no intentions of being suckered into an over-priced city apartment either. Looking at the prices for either of those categories, you would find it hard to believe that the housing market is dead. I suppose that the rental market picks up a bit in a recession so I guess there's a bit of price-gouging going on. I honestly don't know how people on an average income cope; there must be a choice of "run a car" or "have a house". If you have both, it must be one sorry existence unless you're a double income family.
For the next few hours, you can all play "where is Kenny going now?". If you've any suggestions, do let me know. Hell is not an option, just in case any of my team of ex's happen across here (which I know they have been -- different story).
I prefer the hot French lady who ran for president in France. Kenny, earlier.
I put that as a ticker headline because I thought I was being funny -- you know, hoards of leder-hosen clad Germans piling out with comedy (gnome-like) bellys swinging Steins and thumping tables in honor of the new head of Deutschland Inc. It transpires that I'm not funny. Either that or I should be suing Reuters. When I typed that headline, I thought only my perverse mind would have come up with the thought "if Obama ran in Europe..." simply because it is just about the most nonsensical metric you could possibly construct without leaving the stratosphere. It says nothing other than Europe doesn't like George Dubya President...we knew that. Why such a respected news source feels the need to publish such a glaring truth beats me; I guess that timesheet software the world over must be broken so Reuters too are scrabbling around for Friday afternoon work that is an easy win.
In other news, I'm starting to wonder where I delineate between '''midgets''' and '''gnomes''', seeing they share the same rather sinister characteristics. You'd be surprised (perhaps not) at how much of my day that has consumed.
Also, you'll all get very bored with my quoting myself a lot quicker than I do, but for the moment, it is amusing me. And, after all, it's all about me isn't it? Well, when it's not about midgets or gnomes it is anyway.
I'd like to say that it was me that fixed the news headlines but I can't. I had to import a Guru from across the office who took one look, cut a line, pasted it into a method and voila, job's a good 'un. He then proceeded to inform me that the markup in the search was resetting a pointer in the DOM, or some such unintelligible nonsense. I hate DOM anything.
I made the fatal mistake of answering my phone an hour ago. Normally I am very careful about looking at caller-id before I commit to a phone call. I was kind of half-expecting it to be someone I would be delighted to hear from so picked it up and answered it while I was finishing off some firkling on the PC. Bad move. I have had an hour of a monologue that makes Eastenders seem cheerful. As a courtesy to the caller, I will neither name them nor state the topic, but it was bad. It was worse than bad. It was about as bloody miserable as you can get. Any kind of positive suggestion I made was rebuffed quickly with a hundred reasons why it wouldn't work. Some people are their own worst enemies.
I nearly had a "battery outage" but I felt that given I have been ducking this person's calls for two weeks straight, it was about time I bit the bullet and stopped behaving like an arse. After that, I am now of the opinion that I can live with being an arse [cues up the finish for Maest/Waaarty].
If I don't wake up tomorrow, it will be because I have had the life sucked out of me.
Long time sufferers chez moi know very well that occasionally I go off into coding mode. I gave up writing code for a living about the same time I met proper programmers. It dawned on me that there was a better market for someone who could write code when needed but was also a bit more people-friendly so off I went. I keep my hand in by having written the software that runs this site. For the most part this stuff just works. Every now and again, I get an idea and set to work implementing it. Sometimes it's two minutes of a job and others I have to change something fairly dramatically. The problem is that when I do change something and I break it, I do not do anything (eat, sleep etc.) until I have fixed it. That is what has happened over the last 24 hours.
Unless you are a software professional, you will not have gone through the torture of trying to fathom out the subtlest of problems. It is hell. This is where my Kenny sixth sense kicks in. Unfortunately, it took a while longer than usual this time. I even bowed and asked for help from the developers here with no luck. Anyway, 'tis done and I'm not even going to bother trying to explain it all.
It's pants Kenny, this morning.
On the subject of shoddy developers, I hit the Telegraph website this morning and can I say how shocked I was? It looks like they have hired a bunch of undergrads to take feeds from external sources, ads from even more external sources and thrown the lot at a web page, armed only with some lipstick (or in this case bad CSS). It is a dog's breakfast (for US readers, this means a mess as appose to dog's bollocks which would mean good). Honestly, it looks like a first generation portal that had about 10 minutes design put into it. I emailed Bryony to report the level of my horror. I hope it makes it back to the people whose bright idea a rebrand was. Speaking of Bryony, her column today is a rather tongue in cheek look at the transience of digital photography, or rather the immediacy. Once again I liked it, but the scumbag Telegraph-readers appeared not to. Thankfully there does seem to be the seeds of a protectorate forming; there are some defensive comments.
Forgive me. When I've been in "Mr Logic" mode, I lose the ability to form a coherent sentence for about 24 hours.
A bishop who is not gay, yesterday. Although he is gnomish, and hot to gnomes.
I'm just trying out some new things here.
Firstly, I have finally got around to writing some javascript to insert tags properly -- if I hand code tags, I am guaranteed to mess it up at least once. If I generate them automatically, they should be good to go. So the BBC style image to your left had all its tags and gubbins generated in PHP. Go me.
The other thing that I have done is implemented a rather nifty little search feature. If you see things that are bold but are not colored, you can click and it will provide a search box containing that entry. At the moment it gives the choice of wiki, google and youtube. I have nicked the code (with his permission) from one of the guys who writes our search engine and I really do like it. Grom's attempt at deploying it failed but we'll fix that. You can check it out by clicking on '''Fiona Apple''' or '''Kate Silverton'''.
The one down side is that it has broken my headlines, but they were getting dull anyway. I'm sure it must be my code that was fundamentally wrong so I'll probably fix it as some point, but for now, I quite like the search feature more. Oh, and I've had to mess with the CSS so some archives may or may not validate as W3C compliant.
If anyone wants the code, let me know -- I think I'm right in saying that Mr Top Search Guy is happy for it to be used wherever.
I just love the word "could". It could also be led by an atheist lady-boy named Tiger or a F1 driver called Mildred. Hell, even a midget called Kylie could one day grace the hallowed grounds of wherever it is that Anglican leaders hang out.
It's ironic that the above statement was made on the same day that the Archbishop of somewhere not Canterbury stated that the church is fundamentally broken.
Apparently this meeting of the great and the good only occurs every ten years. I'm guessing ten years is long enough for the people who dropped a bollock at the previous meeting to either retire, be prosecuted or kiff it. Could you imagine if they met every year and went away with actions? The media coverage would be endless and even more enlightening than the current limp-along.
It's not often a complete sense of humor failure occurs, but even my backup appears to have bitten the dust today, which is a shame because I was amusing myself earlier.
My advice to all of you is that unless you feature in my top 5 favorite people on the planet, avoid me for at least a few hours.
In order not to spill forth things that may later be brought up in court when I'm standing trial for hate crimes, I am sticking to positive vibey things...
My romance with the girl in Starbucks (as reported on Friday) took a twist this afternoon when I was presented with a very ornate star on the top of my coffee and an apology that it had bled a little on one of the points. Is this a sinister development or a natural progression of a mating ritual I have never come across before? I must confess that declaring ones love for a woman, based solely on the fact that she makes the world's best cup of joe and adorns it with coded messages is a little eccentric but in this case it's entirely permissible. I think she might be slipping roofies in the chocolate gubbins too. I've promised her that the next time I go over there I'll take a picture of her handywork and post it on my website; that way she's happy and you can help me decipher what it is she's trying to tell me. I don't want to know if it involves lycra, midgets or twitchers, so spare me.
I had to giggle after that. She's jaw-droppingly good looking and all I can say is that she makes a fine brew. I guess I'm older than I realize.
On a serious note, and I know I've kind of gone off on more than one on this subject over the last couple of weeks, but the church should just shut up and look cute. If you're pretty to most of the world but you haven't got a sensible neural path in your head, the best option is to keep schtum. Hey, don't knock it; it works for millions of people (and David Beckham) the world over; you have a gift -- don't spoil the illusion.
I've deliberately kept off here today because my tongue seems to be a tad looser than usual, as is evidenced by several rather inappropriate remarks I made in a meeting this morning regarding sealed envelopes and "when can I claim my £100?". I keep saying, I joke about being right, but sometimes I'm more right than even I thought. Scary.
But it's much better if you just calm down and have a nice bite to eat.
I went out for a meal last night with one of my (few) well-adjusted friends. She's not barking mad, has no plans to rule the world, drives a sensible car and insists on going Dutch on an Italian (the nearest she came to an inconsistency all night, or maybe there was a subliminal message in that which I missed -- dunno). Why would anyone who is such a well-rounded individual want to spend an evening with me babbling nervously about subjects I have no authority whatsoever to speak on? I know, the mind boggles.
I say nervously because I was nervous. Very, very nervous. I have no idea why. That's a lie; well, I wouldn't be Kenny if I didn't have a theory as to why would I? It's not so much of a theory as an empirically proven certainty. I just do not function well in the company of pretty girls. My wit walks out the door and I do a commendable job of talking utter shite for the duration. Thankfully my friend is well aware of my theory and its manifestation so politely filled in the gaps where needed.
It has to be said that if anything endears me to a lass it is the words "I'll have my steak medium rare, but on the rarer side of medium rare." I think in the past I have proposed for less.
So, while you were all either watching Casualty or enjoying a good punch-up in downtown wherever, I had a thoroughly delightful evening. Thanks E -- now I know it's "Dutch", we'll go somewhere a little more expensive next time. ;)
I've attended to my various chores, almost all of which didn't involve a keyboard or a monitor -- so a small victory indeed.
I just bobbed on here to check the email and my heart just burned with pride when I saw the search terms had returned to normal after their horrendous Kate Silverton lesbian/boyfriend/smokes skew.
Clarkson in a Bill Oddie mask talking about beavers. You couldn't make it up (thanks Stan).
Phone call telling me that the bloody Antipodean midget is playing here, on the same hallowed ground that Dolly Parton did but a few weeks ago. If only I had known; I could have taken one for the team and launched her bubble-butt into the next dimension.
Would it be inappropriate to develop a crack habit, a bit of "whatever gets you through the night"?
You might think that I have been quiet today because I was so gutted that The Onion singled out my blog to make their point. What do you mean they didn't and I'm paranoid? Harrumph.
You might think that I've been otherwise engaged recruiting staff for the new site. That may or may not be true, depending on who you ask.
You might think that I had better things to do with my time, like flirt back at the girl in Starbucks who not only gives me free cakes when no-one is looking, but also adorns my every cup with her arty chocolate swirls. Just me, no-one else. Honest to God, when I take the top off to put in my pound of sugar I keep seeing flowers and stuff. I know how these things work. It starts off with flowers and ends up with sordid fetishist nonsense and instructions on how to get to her secret love shack. I am, of course, completely game on. So I may have spent a while chatting with her today. She appears to be under the misguided impression that I'm educated, sensitive and caring. How wrong can she be? The lads from work keep telling her otherwise but she appears not to believe them. Chocolate swirly things it is then.
Oh, I suppose I could have been busy at work. You know, doing stuff like ringing people to reset my passwords -- we have to change about 5 of them every month and the restrictions, caveats and general madness mean I can never remember any of mine so Friday morning sees me getting them all reset so I can submit my timesheets. I've run out of bat-shit female pianists on which to base my passwords, so I'm a bit stuffed. Speaking of, I've rediscovered Tori Amos's From The Choirgirl Hotel (does this player even work with IE?). It's an absolute bloody masterpiece. Is there such a phrase as "thrash concert piano"? If there's not, I'm going to register it.
I could have been doing any or all of the above. But I'm not now.
Occasionally I send one of my posts across to the parental units. I like to give them a whiff of the rarefied air that exists between my ears, if only so as to remind them that I am not just the guy who fixes their computer problems, everyone else's computer problems and has a wire for every occasion.
I was editing the gnome post to forward to them because it contains some language I would not shock them with, and it also obviously contains this domain name when I had to think of what I should replace it with. Then it dawned on me...I now have Evil Albert enterprises registering a new domain for me. I am becoming a domain magnate. Okay, pseudo-magnate since Albert has the hosting company. Speaking of, I will be putting up an ad for Evil Albert's hosting gubbins as soon as I have some appropriate creative.
Alors, by sometime this evening, I will have a new supplementary blog. I'll let you know the URL then, because I don't want any of you shysters half-inching the domain before Albert can hit his okay button. It needs to be separate from this rather than a subdomain because I want as little connection to this as possible and my other domain is an entirely business related one, I don't mention that here and this doesn't get mentioned there (that's if I ever get around to finishing it off).
I've been thrown back a few years today by a couple of unrelated events.
The first was as I trotted on over to Tesco for lunch. A few weeks ago, I think I reported, it was robbed at gunpoint. That's pretty shocking for the UK, but in all honesty it is a more and more frequent story. If you want a gun, you can probably make a few phone calls and get one, albeit illegally. The reason that the robbery sprang to mind was because a bashed tricked out black Vauxhall was parked on the street with a guy in the passenger seat and what I presume were two other occupants in the back, shielded by the tinted glass. The passenger kept blasting the horn as if he was signalling something. A rough looking kid came out of the store complete with baggy trousers hanging off his ass and swaggered over to the car and they all took off quickly.
They may or may not have been up to no good. I don't know. What it reminded me of was where Nski grew up and has now returned to. The place was full of nobodys whose only way of being somebody was to either stiff the next guy, sniff the night away or hang around artificially inflating their own ego by intimidating others. More and more, the bits of the UK that I see are littered with what the moonbats would call disenfranchised youths. They're not disenfranchised at all. They refuse to take part; that is why they're on the fringes of society. They may have started out walking the line between mainstream and outcast but at some point they crossed it and they pretty much have made up their minds that there is no way back. The American teenage gangsta thug thing took over here a while ago and seems to be highly popular. It seems like each generation has to go out of their way more to fit into being a misfit.
Strange then that Rita chose today to point us in the direction of this report of a case in Baltimore that started out being a state affair and ended up being a bit of a federal nightmare for the judge. If you have 15 minutes, it is well worth reading. The legal arguments are quite amusing, if bizarre, (I'm sure Rita can explain any difficulties you have) but the wider social questions are fascinating.
The one thing that Nski was extremely good at was civic history. I've lost count of the number of evenings we spent going over the various government conspiracies that she felt were very real. As an outsider my protestations that she was barking mad were met with very firm assertions that I could not possibly know because I didn't grow up there. She was all about the little guy earning a wage and being oppressed. My arguments that most of the people she was trying to empower were quite happy wallowing in poverty and dealing drugs met with short shrift. A lot of the young people in Nski's home town seemed to me to be happy living a really dull soap opera where the closing credits were who was sleeping with whom, who'd been busted etc. They played at big city gangstas. If they could, and they had their wits, their career plan would have involved South Side Chicago, The Bronx or Compton. In reality were they ever to make it there and try to adopt that kind of life, they'd have been dead within days. I felt like saying to them "Hey, you're from the Quad Cities -- didn't I hear about your bad asses in a rap song once? No? Sorry, my bad." They're all small town farm working class nothings with egos that needed massaging, hence this ridiculous pretense of big city charisma.
My point is that were Nski and I to discuss the above article, it would be quite the debate. It would no doubt end in Nski storming out, calling me all the names under the sun for being a privileged wimp. The furthest I would go with that is that compared to her upbringing, maybe I was more privileged, but having been let loose on the world, I could very easily have settled for abject crap and been swallowed by a culture of complete indifference. The difference is that I didn't. She had that chance too, but was too intent on being cool. You might argue that had she applied herself she could have bettered my efforts, but we'll never know. She's disappeared back into anonymity and I suspect the only time any of you will ever hear about her again is via me (although I have completely cut off communication with her) or if she flips completely and ends up in the fed pen. It's a shame because I enjoyed her youthful delusion on these subjects, which annoyed her to death (as it would anyone). At the end of it, we'd both have learned something of each other's cultural rules. By the time I came back from the US, I knew more about US law than I did about UK law (I think that still stands) and I scored higher on the US citizenship test than I did on the UK one. Hey-ho.
The irony of the case that Rita has pointed us at is that what started off as a defense for a bunch of thugs looking at death row can be traced back to an assertion made by a very right wing christian fundamentalist racist movement. The in between days are even more fascinating. There are also some delicious little nibbles of creative prosecution -- the fact the guys who were all held in different lock-ups were slapped with a conspiracy charge even though they had no direct contact while in prison is something you'd expect Jack McCoy to come up with in Law and Order.
The details of the case are fairly dramatic but on a smaller scale, pockets of this kind of behavior and lunatic theories of how your crime is not really a crime via whatever desperate case-law you can find are all around us, usually involving our "disenfranchised" youth or more commonly "disenfranchised" middle-aged. I wonder what the Quads will look like when this generation are middle-aged. Probably much the same as now but with a new, improved set of wannabes.
Guess I'll pay my parking like the bourgeois hippy bastard that I am.
As of close of business, the spokesperson for the GLF had remained silent on allegations published here earlier today.
One source, claiming to know the gnome-napper's spiritual leader, said that the GLF had threatened "appropriate, immediate and lethal force" to maintain the anonymity and liberty of its Guru. Apparently Guru M (as he is referred to by cult-members) has taken umbrage at the description of not being very "fly" and has disappeared into his compound on the borders of Beds and Berks to do some cosmic sulking.
Police are advising the public to remain calm, but to lock up their garden ornaments and any life-size Kylie Minogue products (particularly those involving poles and/or wellington boots) that they may have until this madman is caught.
In an effort to negotiate with the terrorist Guru M, gorners.com® have offered a login and password to this site where he may put forward his own defense prior to these documents being handed over to the CPS, MI5 and East 17. gorners.com® pledges that only minimal editorial rights will be exercised.
Reports are coming in that a twenty-year old cold case has been reopened after a spree of similar crimes was reported in Southern England. Police have ruled out the possibility of the recent offences being copycat crimes after revealing that previously unreleased details of the original crimes had been replicated to "a disturbing level of detail".
The Gnome Liberation Front (GLF) were an active movement in the mid-eighties whose modus operandi was to displace garden gnomes according the gnomes' preference of garden. Greater Manchester was troubled for several years by the string of gnome migrations. The one lead, kept secret from the press for the past two decades, was a distinctive smell which witnesses say could only be compared to fermented rats. A similar odor has been noted recently around the Bedfordshire region, where a trademark spate of gnome-nappings has resulted in distress to local residents.
Bertha Penworthy of Milton Keynes told our reporter that there had been "an unholy smell, not unlike that of my decaying courgette plant" in the hours that preceded the removal of her gnomes from her back yard. The gnomes had reportedly been happily fishing earlier in the day but were discovered cold and disoriented in a concrete cow field several miles away. They are currently being treated for shock and slight abrasions to their paintwork.
A source close to the infamous gnome-napper last week attempted to contact this office with details of the perp. After a long conversation, it was established that they actually had the identity of the less famous Banksy (some wanky street artist) who is wanted for defacing a swan owned by the Queen. The one valuable piece of information the obviously delusional informant had was that he did indeed know the gnome-napper, or at least had been in his company. The snitch gave a graphic account of sitting in what he described as a shack at the back of an upper middle-class property in Bedfordshire where a five gallon tub oozed putrid foam and gurgled. The remains of several pumpkins lay discarded nearby. Police believe that this points to the creation of the latest deadly chemical weapon, vinopum, which was outlawed by all the members of the permanent security council. Except the French. The by-product of vinopum is an alcoholic pseudo-liquid that, when ingested, causes violent internal combustion and severe OCD.
Forensic scientists have matched this strain of vinopum to a similar "batch" found in the garage of a prominent local vicar in Greater Manchester and are now convinced the gnome-napper has returned.
The gap of 20 years led to speculation as to whether the gnome-napper has been imprisoned for those years, or whether he has been underground refining his lethal recipes for sale to would-be dictators around the country and even further afield; Doncaster was mentioned. One source even went as far as to say that the gnome-napper had studied for a PhD at public expense and was outraged that the security services had not acted sooner to halt these abhorrent acts.
A vague description has been issued although police have warned the public not to approach the suspect who is said to be "...about smallish, gingerish and was last seen wearing a pair of jeans decorated in vibrant blue Bic biro latin scrawl, a green Barber jacket and a pair of his trademark Doc Marten boots.", adding "He's not very 'fly' really."
I've just been down to have my car looked at for repairs after the muppet who either failed to spot my brake-lights or was too busy texting his buddy ran into the back of me. It was not top of my list of things to do, but it was one of the reasons I was working from home. I waited for 60 minutes for the guy to turn up, then he didn't so I left.
Car salesmen are crafty bastards. When I bought my car from them, they threw in two free services for about the price of a coffee so I took them up on it. They were quite up front about why they would do such a thing: when you take it back for its second service (presumably 20,000 miles on or 2 years, whichever comes first), they actively try to sell you a new car. Fair play to them for the full disclosure.
What I think they do sneakily however is whenever you have occasion to be there for any reason, they deliberately make you wait for as long as they think you can bear. This gives you, the sucker, time to wander around and oooh and aaah at the cars you wish you had, mentally justify to yourself that you could handle paying a bit (or lot) more a month, con yourself into thinking that the price of oil will drop soon enough, be certain that driving a diesel would be a great saving etc.
I sat down with a coffee and, would you believe it, a copy of the Leigh Reporter. That entertained me for all of 30 seconds and then I started to meander. And what was there, smack in the middle of the showroom, on a rotate-y thing, but Kenny's idea of heaven in a car. I think I drooled, but that was no matter -- the sales guy could see me melting on the spot so dispensed one of the girls for napkins to clean up.
I was shaken. The earth moved. Lights seemed to come to a single point of focus on the rotate-y thing. Uriel, Gabriel et al descended in a fluttery line over the darling, with hands beckoning me forth. I didn't walk but floated over to the beast.
Silver, Chevrolet, 4x4. Full leather kit. 3L auto. 11000 miles. Mint condition. Perfect for social upheavals, riots and coups.
I broke free of its ridiculous hold and legged it over to the customer seating where I distracted myself by marveling at how feckin' stupid the triangular exhaust pipes on Honda Civics are. It was one of those moments where when faced with primeval arousal, you have to find something utterly repugnant to look at. Given that Kylie Minogue was, for once, not in attendance, I settled for the business end of a Kia.
I pulled myself together and thought I must text someone about this -- I needed distracting. My father would be no use in such matters; he would talk me into buying it. The lads at work would be even worse. So I texted my mate E who I know to be a rational being, truly her one failing as far as I can see. She'll probably have taken one look at the message and decided that I really need to get a grip.
I hit the send and before I could be talked into a deal, ran to get the hell out of Dodge Chevy-land. I might just have a quick look on t'interweb to see how much these things cost (even more) second hand...I know I say this a lot, but I'm in love -- with its every last button. Even the silly little one just to the left of the aircon. And the completely pointless one just near the big Chevy badge.
Someone made a comment to me the other day that the US had changed me. They were, quite obviously, smoking crack.
That should have the search engines buzzing to capacity. I wonder whether they've load tested for all that on one line. As you read this understand that servers everywhere are draining the life out of the power stations across the globe. They'll have to shut down non-essentials like hospitals and schools to conserve juice. Starbucks will be unaffected since I insisted they have a UPS and backup generator installed.
The irony is there's no sex involved, after all we're British. Come to think of it, I'm surprised I can still spell sex. I guess it must be written down a lot in the papers [see later].
The age and infirmity comes from a sudden realization that I am not a teenager. Nor am I in my twenties. I just nipped out to pick up some stuff and to arrange to have my car repairs estimated. Foolishly I swung back to grab something from the back seat and twisted something that is in the proximity of the shoulder. Did I scream blue murder? Well next door were probably highly annoyed by my shrieking over the top of my Joni Mitchell at top whack. I think it's safe to say that I am degrading at the average rate for someone my considerable age. It sucks. In an effort to stave off such degeneration, I am going to arrange to start playing badminton again, only I'll have to find someone really crap to play. This is as much for their good as mine -- there's no fun in playing someone who you know you are going to toast without even breaking a sweat. I used to be very good at badminton but, as I said before, while the shots are still there, my damned legs refuse to obey me. I need to teach them a lesson.
My favorite US journalist-y lass, Tasha, has left a comment pointing to an article in the FT, suggesting that US journalism is in general superior to UK efforts. She knows she can't point me at that and not trigger a response. It's like telling me that Fiona Apple would not immediately throw herself at my feet were she unfortunate enough to ever meet me and expecting me not to counter you with a surefire prediction that we would be bat-shit crazy together ever after. Come to think of it, I suspect Tasha keeps a list of these little links especially for those moments when she thinks "Alright Kenny, please write about something that is not arse-wipingly tedious".
Because the FT article is a free-subscription based thingumy, I will brutally summarize it as saying that US journalists rate higher than their UK counterparts in terms of integrity because they actually tell the truth and care about sources. There's also a casual disclaimer surrounding yet another Antipodean hatred of mine, Rupert Piggin' Murdoch -- we shall dismiss his influence with a derisory snort of pathos because I do not have the time to write war and peace about how wrong he is from his business ethics to his utterly pathetic understanding of the meaning of the word quality. If you want to strive for mediocrity, pay Murdoch the contents of your bank account each month.
The first point I would pick up on here is that the FT piece was obviously written by a journalist (as it happens a Brit). This means his views are a bit fox watching the hen house. It's no bad thing that people within their profession care about industry standards, but we should always keep in mind where the author's motives lie. Particularly within the press, the majority of commentators on the media are from within the media -- it's a very insular little world. I might argue the author of this is vying for a column in the NYT or similar, but I won't.
I must confess that I disagree with Gideon Rachman in his assertions. I do this for two reasons. Firstly, if there is anywhere that more accurately proves that the class system is alive and well (albeit not living in Fleet Street) in the UK, it is the press. It is such a two-tier system that it is impossible to generalize as to levels of integrity. The second reason is that those who do it well in the UK, blow the socks off anyone else in the world. We have an embarrassment of riches in the print media. The Times, The Guardian, The Telegraph (okay The Independent) all are top quality papers, the like of which you will not find in any English speaking country in the world.
I don't know what the industry figures are, but I would guess that 80% of daily newspaper sales in the UK are red-tops. It's flippant to say this but that 80% quite obviously could not give a fish's tit about whether a story is accurately reported or not. This is evidenced by the almost weekly libel damages that are paid out by them. I cannot remember the last time a tabloid broke a story that I was in the least bit interested in. That's one end of the spectrum. The other is the way they lead on such earth-shattering events as evictions from reality TV shows. Every morning, when going through the papers, poor Sheila Fogerty has to say "And the Star leads on Big Brother" -- you can sense her sticking pins in dolls as she expels those words through gritted teeth. So were we to look at comparing US journalists with our tabloid friends here, we're not really talking apples and apples. If we were, Mr Rachman would not have had to even write his piece.
The US too is divided in its press, albeit less dramatically. The broadsheets there tend to be fairly sternly written conservative (with a small C) papers. The smaller regional papers tend to be moderately readable. The Hicksville papers are, quite honestly, about as interesting as the local paper here (for an exercise in how not to write check out The Leigh Reporter -- for an extra laugh, read the the letters). The one thing that the US has got spot on is that they never ever refer to the really awful ones as the press -- my mind is blank as to the name of the dog's breakfast I am thinking of.
While I was in the US, I could suffer the Washington Post or the New York Times because they looked beyond Liberty Island which is the point where most Americans' interest stops. I can't say I was animated about them in any way though. They were terse, matter of fact and did a job. The quality press here do a far better job of making something readable and to this day I still love my Sunday mornings with the Observer. When I traveled, the omnipresent USA Today would appear under hotel doors at 5:00am and was hurled straight at the garbage can. Back in the Twin Cities, I subscribed to the Star Tribune mostly because Nski wanted it. I read it for the half page of international news...not exactly awe-inspiring stuff. The worst level of US journalism was without a doubt The Quad City Times. It made the Leigh Reporter look pro. I could write a whole post on the subject matter it covered, Utterly, utterly devoid of any talent at all.
In terms of quality journalism, I think we Brits do take the biscuit. Whenever journalists for the broadsheet institutions are caught out with an odd creative quote, the British public hangs them and flogs them for years. Indeed questions are asked in parliament -- we take the role of the press very seriously. This is why "creative" reporting doesn't happen too often. In terms of mainstream popular journalism though, the US gets it; what they lack in global awareness, they more than compensate for in accuracy. Would that our red-topped wannabe broadsheets had the integrity of their US counterparts.
As with all walks of life, rogue traders exist. The typical hack on the street probably does get away with murder in their selective use of quotes but in general they are not relating to earth-moving issues. The game changes somewhat as you go up the media food chain, where I suspect more stringent checks and balances apply and when someone is outed as a fraud, they really are put to the sword by their own profession. You can probably mess up once in any industry you like but I get the feeling that once is a death-sentence if you're a serious journalist.
There's a bazillion metrics you could apply to this -- hell, I could write a bloody epic on it, just on the print media alone. I've already said too much (no heckling of "aye" from the cheapseats there Waaarty and Maest) so I'll leave it alone. Anyway, I have somewhere I need to be and something I need to do.
Upshot Tasha: I can see his point, but I think we edge it for scope of coverage and managing to engage people. As I say, as far as integrity goes, all bets are off with our tabloid press. The only way to check whether they are telling the truth is to watch Big Brother. Thanks for the link -- I've not had a good bombastic rant since, erm, my last post on the C of E. ;)
I'll admit to being brazenly fickle. After my gargantuan battle with my iPod on Saturday morning, I was just glad it was back to life and didn't even look at another application ('cos I'm dead faithful to my gadgets). However today I got the iPod equivalent of the seven year itch and started looking at the new apps that you can download. I only checked out the free ones because I'm cheap.
For those of you who don't subscribe to the iPod religion, they have a remote control function that allows you to remotely control the iTunes on your PC or Mac from the iPod. I have no idea when I would ever use this but I'm sure I will if only because I can. What would be even sweeter is if I could get my hands on some of those Apple speakers. Would that be top or what?
I am now completely in love again. Gadgets come and gadgets go but I fear my iPod is now a lifelong commitment.
Speaking of gadgets going, we're all getting new phones at work as part of the internal marketing campaign, with some seriously good deals on top of the range handsets. As I said some moments ago, I'm cheap so I've opted for one of the free ones. For the first time in my life, I've chosen a Motorola phone; a Razr V8 to be exact. With a V8, I expect unsurpassed speed of dialing, exceptional handling and leather upholstery. I used to work with Motorola and to be honest, I was always surprised when anything they built worked but I have overcome this prejudice, probably because they don't make their own phones anymore but subcontract it out to someone who does know how to make circuit boards. When I get this one, I will test drive it for a week or so, just to see how it fits with everything else. If I don't like it, I'll stick with my Nokia 6500 Slide. Whichever fits the bill, the other will be bunged in the direction of a worthy cause -- most likely Pater. I'll be happy with either however the one thing that I have come to love about the Nokia is the camera. I never use it, but on the odd occasion I do, the pictures are superb. We'll see how the Motorola compares (less resolution but who needs a squillion megapixels on a phone?).
In a sweeping break with tradition, this is the first time I have even looked at the computer tonight. I have instead watched all sorts of mindless tripe on the TV. Mondays really are awful. Remind me never to do that again.
You can now rest, safe in the knowledge that I will shut the ever loving hell up for the day. Tomorrow will be a different story as I'm working from home so I have four more hours in the day that would normally be consumed driving. That could mean some top quality tedium.
Okay, I guess Kate Silverton must have been in the news over the last day or so. My site started getting hammered yesterday afternoon and well into yesterday evening looking for information on Kate Silverton's boyfriend, Kate Silverton being a lesbian, Kate Silverton smoking, Kate Silverton being from Essex etc. I know that by typing this, all I'll do is attract more hits. All I can do for these poor Kate-deprived souls is point them at katesilverton.com and the Wiki entry.
If anyone knows why the sudden surge in traffic happened, please let me know.
Also, I had a thought while lying in bed last night -- I haven't treated to you to a bit of Fiona this (last) week. I shall try to correct that later. I shall put up my most played track...I think I know which one it is, but I shall let the iPod speak.
I know some of you are a bit more "mother earth" than I am so I need your advice.
For years I ignored doctors. In fact I didn't see one for about ten years. The last two and a half years have kind of compensated for that for some reasons that were well and truly my bads and for others that weren't. I've got to the point where I do actually listen to them without thinking I know better; probably one of the few areas where I will not argue long and hard about a particular subject. I think it helps that my GP here is one who I cow to in deference to almost anything, so I am not averse to making an appointment to see her when things hurt. In fact, I think she possibly oozes the acceptance of neuroses as being a natural part of life. I'm not too sure about that however...
I have long suspected that I do not function well in winter. I hate it with a passion. I'm miserable as all get out while it's dark and cold. I'm not sure how I made it through winters in Minnesota. I suppose Keith, Cathy, Mopsa (wheresoever she has moved to) and Nicole would argue that the way I made it through Midwestern tundra-season was to bitch about it from September until May every year. I wanted to hibernate but I was forced out into the cold to earn enough to heat me while I was home. Hate it, hate it, hate it.
My biggest hate is not waking up with natural light. During the summer, I keep the curtains open so I get a good dose of real light first thing. The winter sees me hitting the snooze button and curling up again. I need to kick that before the nights draw in.
A couple of weeks ago, while doing the crossword with the lads down at the Adelphi in Leeds, one of them mentioned that you could buy lights that gradually came on over a period of time, emulating the sun rising. I'm told it's a different kind of light than the usual 60W lightbulb -- some kind of patented hippy light? Whatever. Ever since that conversation, it has been playing on my mind that I might benefit from one of these devices.
My question for those of you who admit to having knowledge in the field of hippy lights is, do they work? If so, are they expensive and where do I get a good one? Are there good hippy lights and bad ones or are there just expensive and outrageously astronomic versions? My guess is that because they're "natural" or "homeopathic" or "organic" or "carbon-neutral" or whatever, they cost a fortune. I'd google them but I can't think of what to search for -- "hippy lights" didn't do it, although I did find some interesting Flikcr sites.
Speaking of lights, I have spotted something in the Observer today. For once it is nothing to do with Barbara Ellen -- I have read her pieces several times now and am no nearer figuring out what it was she was getting at -- I guess it might make sense if you're a Cambridge doctor in English Language, but not to me -- I'm sure it was very good though. The item that caught my interest was an advert for a flight to see the Northern Lights, in late October or early November. Basically, you take off from your airport of choice in the UK and go on a three and a half hour flight up over Scandinavia at an altitude where you are guaranteed to see all the glory. Now that is something. In fact it's something special. I'd love to do it. Being Billy No Mates, I'll have to find someone to sucker into it. Doesn't it sound wonderful? It might actually make the onset of winter bearable.
I've finally annoyed myself so much that I had to act. My desk was, quite literally, a jungle of wires from all my various gubbins that were attached to various other gubbins that were attached to USB hubs and then to multiple PCs and monitors. A few weeks ago, I made the grand sacrifice of a normal laptop size keyboard (which I can type on really quickly) for a wireless keyboard and mouse. I cannot type on full sized keyboards at nearly the same speed, but it was two less cables. Quite honestly, I had cables that were disconnected that I had no idea what they were for. I kind of assumed that they were needed for something. It looked like a badly maintained comms room.
So today, I have become all diligent, domestic and various other dilis. I bought a KVM. That should sort some things out. I then judiciously unplugged absolutely everything so I could make out what powered what and what cable was for what device, what kit I could power through the USB hub etc. If I say so myself, I have done one top drawer job. I can now see my desk. God knows what came over me, but I reached for the duster while it was empty. I now have enough room for somewhere to write, sit my coffee and probably host another gadget.
I'm impressed. What I'm even more impressed by is the fact that my 3 year old laptop can function with all this crap attached to it. When you think of the sheer number of bits and bobs attached to what is now an antique laptop, it's mind-boggling. At this moment in time, my Toshiba A60 with 1.2GB of RAM running XP Home has the following attached to it:
-- Wireless Keyboard and mouse -- PCMCIA wireless adapter -- Belkin iPod docking station and 4 port USB hub -- LCD panel running as an extended desktop via the KVM/USB hub -- External DVD writer plugged into Belkin hub -- Printer shared via KVM USB hub -- Scanner shared via KVM USB hub -- Webcam via Belkin hub -- External 500GB HDD via Belkin hub -- Connectors for my phone and camera via Belkin hub -- Ethernet connection to PVR -- USB digital TV stick
If you tot that up, that's about 18 external devices that it needs to handle interrupts for. Pretty damned impressive. Maybe Microsoft are not such wazzocks after all.
As I finished typing that, I was minded of the conversation I had last week with Waaarty about "polymath". He reminded me that I'm a geek. I had forgotten. As I looked around this room at the bits of wiring, I am afraid to say that your average man in the street would faint if asked to move this kit and reassemble it into a working system, ergo Waaarty may have a point.
I do have something not so damned dull to talk about, but I think I'll spend a while feeling completely empty knowing that everything is tidy and works. Where the hell is the fun in that?
I am about beat. Today has been harder work than being at work. I'm not going to go into detail now because, quite frankly my head is fried.
Things Kenny has learned today:
» How to turn your "bricked" iPod back into a functional device via the gift of a sixth sense. (2 hours) -- I'll see if anyone else has worked out what I have by googling tomorrow (I'm sure I can't be the only person in the world who has fixed their iPod today) and if not, I'll post my theories and results. I'm just sorry that I haven't the muster to do it now.
» How to firkle a cable connection into a wireless one. It is *not* as easy at it sounds, believe me. (7 months on and off)
» Why Microsoft Vista should have been kept in a locked bedroom until it was end of lifed.
» Why I hate anything that Microsoft do.
» Why PCs should come pre-installed with Linux.
» Some people really are more stupid than they will ever know.
I now need to not even look at any kind of electronics for at least 12 hours. If you don't hear from me, just call Monday morning to make sure I'm up for work.
Well done Apple. A larger bollock could not have been dropped if you were Buster Gonad.
We're now coming up to midnight and we're no nearer being able to get at the new software for the iPod Touch. The behavior of the website and iTunes store has been all over the place. First it tells you there's version 2 available and asks you whether you want to learn more and then it tells you your 1.1.4 is the latest version. Sometimes it accesses the iTunes store and does nothing, others it times out and sometimes it doesn't even bother doing either. The redirects on the website sometimes work, sometimes not.
You can tell that Apple, behind the scenes, are running around like madmen patching things and then rolling back, on their live systems!
For the longest time, I avoided Apple kit because I didn't know anyone who didn't have to send something back because of a manufacturing fault. I was swung by the iPod Touch and I still am -- I love it to bits. I've long been critical of iTunes software because, to put it mildly, it sucks. It's an afterthought. It doesn't do what you want it to and even when it does, it takes its time about it. But I love my iPod, unconditionally.
To you guys who use Macs as desktops, are their OS upgrades as shite as this? Do they charge you for them? I'm thinking that rather than set my sights on an Airbook, I'll be looking at a normal laptop running Ubuntu. Ubuntu's package manager seems to have a mind of its own, but at least I can fix that if it fails. I'd hate to have a critical patch to an OS be handled like the iPod software upgrade; it would be like returning to working with RS6000s running AIX.
I'm not just pissed off, I'm royally pissed off. I'm going to try pushing the appropriate buttons one last time and then I give up for the day. I will try once in the morning and if they haven't got their act together, I'll give up. I don't expect this kind of hassle with an operating system upgrade let alone a device that has proprietary hardware with few variations.
I'm certain I'm not the first to say this, but Apple's launch of the new iPod software is a bit of an anti-climax. Their Apple store in the UK is not responding, still. I have been trying all afternoon. I imagine it will be the same in the States.
They knew there would be huge demand. They spent a fortune on marketing the new iPhones and new software, then they go and blow it by not having the capacity to cope with the demand. Can I say "Terminal 5"? I think I can.
Worse still, the software upgrade costs money. Like we didn't pay enough already. Okay, it's only £5.99 but still...moot point if you can't even get at it.
This is one area I can get self-righteous about because I happen to work in the arena of providing kit for web services, more specifically in making sure that there is enough capacity to handle git loads of simultaneous connections. Yes, it's hard sometimes, but Apple are not exactly working on a small budget for their infrastructure. Put it this way, it won't be a couple of blade servers running this shebang. Just because their software puts up a nice little box saying the site is unavailable, it does not mean that they have done a good job. If we did something like this for such a big launch and it failed quite as obviously as Apple's has, we'd be fired. And rightly so.
It's a shame that this has rather pissed on my bonfire because otherwise I have had a fantastic day of technical successes, which I will no doubt bore you with later.
Update: I really don't want to slag Apple off. I just want my new damned software. If this is the way they handle upgrades, I'm not sure I'll be as keen as I was on buying a Mac. One silly little mistake and they've probably pissed off rather a lot of otherwise loyal customers. It could be worse -- you could have an iPhone.
Update 2: Now it's behaving even more erratically. Have Apple never heard of load balancers, load-testing etc?
Those of you who are still awake by the time you have hit the scroll bar on here a couple of times will notice that an advert has appeared (technically reappeared). I think I have only advertised this particular product and Sam Payne's CDs in all the time I have had this backwater of Cyberspace. Sometime during 2003 or 2004 there was talk of me having other ads on here, but after I had convinced myself that I wouldn't do it for ethical (read pretentious artistic) reasons, I saw the obvious folly in the idea; in order to make money from adverts, you need to have serious traffic. I never set out to have serious traffic. I have a bunch of people who know me in the nasty real world and the rest of you, who, if I might be so bold, must be a bit odd, so the chances of making any money are minuscule. I don't even know how the ad revenue model works anymore -- is it clickstream or what? Whatever, I'd probably make about 0.1c a day which would buy me a sniff of the air outside Starbucks every 2 years. So it was a bit of a stupid idea to even consider it.
All that said, I'm all for lauding products I approve of, which is why I think advertising Steve's book is a good thing to do. I did have a copy of the first edition of his book while I was in the US but sadly it stayed there and is probably sat in whichever chap's house Nski last lived in. I could say that I hope he follows a few of the recipes and creates some publicity by living up to the title, but that would be mean. I bought that same book again when a kind soul from California (who I didn't know) gifted me some Amazon vouchers at a time when I was even more pissed off than I eventually became. I made the mistake of having it at work and it went walkies. I also bought a copy of Steve's communications with our Nigerian friends which suffered a similar fate at work.
This time, I have bought three copies (two for me and one for Waaarty). If you're in the UK, you can (now) go to the UK Amazon site and order it from there.
No matter what you may think, if you set aside the recipes (some of which Nski and I tried while I was over there), it is one damned funny read. I disagree with Steve on a number of points regarding religion, politic etc., but I stand firmly behind him on his devotion to food. To a certain extent I still follow my one and only self-discipline of "eat to live" not "live to eat", but when I do eat, I don't hold with all this low-fat this and high-fibre that. I was sold on Steve's cooking when he started in on the margarine plague as appose to real butter. You can try to convince me that margarine is as good as butter for as long as you have the inclination, but I will steadfastly refuse to give ground on the matter. Period. It just isn't. Likewise, if you tell me that oven chips are better than proper fried chips. It just isn't happening.
The lads here at work are horrified by my eating habits. I used to be renowned for my chippy runs. I'd leg it down to the local chippy for fish and chips on almost a daily basis. Since the Tesco across the road opened though, I have ceded to the easier walk and now typically opt for Hoisin duck wraps (I save my daily chips for the evening). I round that off with two chocolate fresh-cream eclairs. That's after I've had my Starbucks Orange Valencia cake for breakfast. We worked out a couple of weeks ago that by the time 1:30 comes around on any given workday, I have consumed around 2000 calories. And I do not regret a single moment of them. I am blessed with a metabolism that burns off calories quicker than I can consume them, so even if I eat 4000+ calories a day, I still look like Kate Moss in stature.
So Steve's book was an immediate sell to me. If he had a target audience, I was it in a nutshell. You can get a flavor of the kind of thing to expect by hitting his promo site.
Please go buy one. I'm sick of single-handedly funding his life of luxury.
You know how I mentioned that I had spoken to my cousin (of many degrees of separation) the other night? Well, we are now in email contact. I spoke to her on the phone just now, this time in English. I expected it to be broken English at best but the bugger is absolutely fluent -- not a trace of an accent at all. Why is it that all my family have a gift for second languages apart from me? Wait a sec. Kidder is useless, as is my mother and my father plain just makes shit up. Maybe I wasn't genetically predisposed to a second language.
I feel better now.
Anyway, she's delightful and not half as Germanically manic as I made her out to be. That's a shame because there was potential for endless fodder for random stories there, and it's gone and evaporated. Nevermind, as I keep saying to Debs, I never let the truth get in the way of a good yarn. If I tell a story and it didn't happen, it's probably just my way of explaining what would have happened had I written the script.
Now I am going to shut up and go badger my favorite lass by IM. You should thank her for stopping me from blogging.
If you want a giggle about last night's adventures, proceed to the post below. Otherwise, feel free to hang around here and listen to me rant about what clueless bunch of maggots the church are.
I've come to the conclusion that most atheists must view the machinations of the Christian movement much like a reality sitcom. They must just sit back with a a big ol' bag o' popcorn and treat it as a scripted pseudo-drama that exists purely for their entertainment. For the most part that is what I do. I'm not cruel when I nod in a placatory manner when someone starts preaching moonbat. If I'm honest, there's a little piece of me that feels sorry for them, that they need religion in order to go about their lives. I've said this before, but I dearly wish I could find it within myself to believe a word of it -- I'm sure I'd be a much happier person. If I did, rather than beat myself up about what to do in any given quandary (yes, I still have it), I could just give it a quick hoo-haa to the bloke upstairs and then take the consequences as being divine.
If you eliminate God from religion and operate on the tenet that "god" is a collective force of millions of people worldwide intent on doing the right thing, I have a much easier time accepting your faith but then I look at the smaller proportion who are intent on being basket-cases in God's name and it all kind of flakes away again.
There are some wonderful pieces of wordage in religious texts. I like them. In fact, the writing is the only part of religion that I have any interest or time for. Ironically, the closest I ever came to a dalliance with the church was after I had read Dante's Divine Comedy for the first time. If religion was a girlfriend, I guess I'd got to the point at which I'd stopped just being lecherous and actually had emailed them -- there was never any physical contact. And here I go amusing myself again. I've just compared God to trying to cop off with a lass -- that is so wrong that I almost feel guilty for the thought, but it's done now.
In trying to get to the bottom of my quandary the other day, I received some advice which I will paraphrase out of decency:
"God says 'without faith I am nothing'. Woman says 'well don't wait for man to work it out, they don't even know when it's my birthday'. The point is that proof is a poor substitute for faith."
It wasn't intended as religious guidance, but as a parallel. I took it to mean that having the faith is much more rewarding than knowing the truth. I can kind of live with that but it really offends my prime instant-gratification requirement. I don't want to hang around having faith in something I eventually discover is a load of slithey toves.
Now I've gone off on that tangent, I will seg straight into "and I have no faith anyway".
The above point is moot. I have no faith in most things, especially when it comes to other people. My MO appears to be to treat everyone well, but don't expect anything in return. I think that's fair. Which is why it sends my blood to boiling point when I read about the continued cuspidor that contains the Anglican Church and its loony Italian cousin. The great and the good of Muppet Central in Vatican City and Canterbury's followers continue to incense me. The original issue that surrounds the ordination of women has taken second place to a turf war.
Assuming for a moment that you do have faith, what do you do with the institution that you turn to when it proves that it has none of its own? The smart money would be on a side-step. A few days on from my first rather crass rant about what a bunch of wazzocks the church is, in this my second rather crass rant which is based on several days of batch-processed thought, I would ask how anyone could possibly argue with the ordination of women. The best we have as a counter-argument is that Jesus didn't select female disciples. There are two things wrong with that if you believe the Bible. The first is that nowhere does it explicitly say that he didn't. The more important point is that surely Jesus didn't select his disciples like a football manager, they *elected* to follow him. It would be a bit special if God, on the one hand said "without faith I am nothing" and then Jesus said "oi lads, I'm here -- you may follow me. Not so fast Jezabel.". More likely oh-clergified-ones, is that because it was hardly what we call a civilized society by today's standards, the prejudice of the time prevailed in the writing of the story, be it true or not. By modern standards, your arguments are bollocks (that's a technical term).
I don't know why this issue has wound me up so much. I don't really give a toss whether the church implodes on itself or not. Maybe the part that hits me is that an institution that I hold in contempt, but that others hold in high regard, can be so completely out-dated and plain wrong. I know I'm a bugger for asserting my rightness on quite a lot of things, but I'd hand on heart say I am definitely right about this one.
Hey, ho. That wasn't funny and it definitely didn't address my quandary. Guess I'm better off grabbing some nosebag and watching a reality sitcom. The news will be on now. There we go...
A more comedy evening I have never had. I was in quiet hysterics for the duration of the set. Martin and Debs kept asking me why I was smiling. I wasn't. I was pants-wettingly exploding with mirth. By the time we left, I was laughed out for a whole decade. You know that side-aching? Well it was worse than that because I had to use the muscles to suppress it.
We took our seats and I took off my jacket to reveal a pretty normal if not a bit too yellow shirt. I should have known better. Little Miss Fashionista copped a sparkle and had just started to launch into a fashion-attack when they took to the stage. All of them, angular in their pentedness. Not one of them can be under fifty. In fact if they are, they wear it badly. You know how I am a tad amused by Let No Man Steal Your Thyme? It was the opener and my giggles started.
The first half of the set was all their "hit" and early material. They were refreshingly honest about the fact that some of the songs were a bit uninspired (Market Day was introduced with the comment "I can't believe we used to write this kind of nonsense"). They struck up a few numbers and the tension between the two guitarists built. They were more or less face to face either side of the wilting flower vocalist, one whose sheer size was breath-taking, and the other one who appeared to be allowed to talk and sing a little. Talky chap played the usual skillful folky plucking with an air of resentment while his sizeable adversary occasionally played some complementary chords and lead twiddly riffs. Fat bloke was a bit of a mystery to me. Not only did it seem that his timing was out but for the first half of the show, you could have sworn he was being deliberately obtuse and playing the most dischords he could imagine. It was either genius or senility; I would opt for the latter on any occasion -- sadly I'm not sure the guy playing the mad guitar had a choice.
At one point, there appeared to be a bit of duel between the two guitarists. They literally stared each other out with palpable venom as they twiddly-deed underneath the angelic tones of Jackie. If you could get strings to snap in a guaranteed direction, they would have done and eyes may have been outed. I'm guessing that's why they were wearing glasses; you know, just in case the other had mastered the ancient Arthurian art of guitar battling.
The consensus was that they played some great tunes. The only problem is that they should have paced themselves and played them one at a time rather than all playing their individual songs in one melée over the top of each other.
My personal favorite "feature" was the fact that the only person on the stage who appeared to not be senile and could keep a beat was the double bass player, who I warmed to immediately. He reminded me of a fatter, older version of an old mate of mine (Bazz) in that he had a bass and he was going to use it. What started off as traditional medieval folk tunes about maidens and untimely deaths usually ended up in sixties jazz sessions as he effortlessly and fretlessly hammered out all sorts of wizardry. I'm surprised I noticed anything else because I really was quite transfixed. At least when I wasn't biting my handkerchief to stifle the laughs.
The audience were very appreciative and in one moment of heady abandon, a fifty-something guy screamed "you've still got the voice" at the stage. Overcome by the moment, the rest of the audience went wild and waved their free bus passes at the stage with that teenage angst that only manifests itself at drug enriched events such as this. Officianados at the back of us were predicting the next song based on the opening twang of the banjo or guitar. It would be a fair bet to say that those in the audience under 60 (yet another example of Debs and I bringing down the average age of attendees) were all either English teachers, muso's or Unix engineers.
As the night wore on, clear signs of infirmity developed. When the fat guitarist had to sit out a number he was livid. He swayed slowly yet manically back and forth all through it. And when Wedding Dress started and the security guards had managed to stop Debs snogging the drummer, the vocalist started in a twitchy sway. The notes got sharper and more erratic as she scaled effortlessly through staccato warbling. I guess there should be warnings on Es that they should not be taken by the over 60s in an environment so packed with group fervor and dry ice.
Encores over, soaked in sweat and bruised from getting our groove on, we fell into the car and drove home. I hit the play button on my iPod, Evanescence fired up and I switched the volume to 60. I needed something like that to calm me back down to reality.
All the above is true. I swear.
The only downer to the night was that during the encore, my screams for "Jolene" were met with perplexed looks from both guitarists. They mustn't be able to play it live or maybe they just don't know Kenny's rules for encores.
I've been talking over my quandary with the Waaart by email. Rather, I explained it to him and he sent me a boat load of very complimentary emails back. I was quite shocked seeing I have done nothing but be mean to him for quite a while in a revenge attack for the Latin jibes. I feel I have to be nice back now, because the poor mite is having a hard time of it. His car died last week, coincidentally the same day that the midget was given her OBE -- I drew the inevitable conclusion and told him I empathised with the car's decision. He then went out to find a new one, only to be pointed in the direction of a bright yellow Peugot girl's car with a license plate that virtually read Kylie. I admire his strength for not running to the nearest B&Q and erecting gallows in his back yard; I would have taken that kind of thing as a sign, but we've established that I'm neurotic on more than one occasion so no surprise there.
Anyway, Waaart called me a polymath. In an irony that was (eventually) not lost on me, I had to look it up in the dictionary. My first dissection of the word had me being some form of impossible differential equation. Then I thought that he was insulting my sexuality. Then I gave up and looked it up. Oh how I laughed...one of those Viz moments, right there.
Having sent me about 4 separate emails geeing me along, he then realized that he had been too gushy and that he should get back to insulting me. I'm half glad; I don't do praise very well -- I tend to run in the opposite direction of its source and do something completely stupid just to level the playing-field. So, the last couple:
Horrocks? Kenneth Horrocks?? Horrocks, you're a jerk. A complete arsehole. ;-)
and then
Horrocks? Kenneth Horrocks? ..... haven't I done you once?
Normal service is resumed. Nice one Waaarty. (And ta!)
This is a first. In a sweeping break with tradition, I have to say that there was a guy on the M62 who I would single out for exemplary driving this morning. I'd have shaken his hand for the sense and awareness he showed. It was strange because I spotted he had done something very, very clever and then because he had caught my eye, I paid attention to how he reacted to other situations. Even when I thought he had made a mistake, it turned out that he was 100% right and it was I who had misjudged. Bravo young man. People who drive as well as this guy did should be given discounts on their insurance.
I suspect I will never write anything like that ever again.
Back to (sur)reality.
Kenny is in a quandary. Kennys are not good at quandaries. They start to second and third guess themselves and then end up doing nothing other than fret as a line of least resistance.
The good news is that I will try to set aside said quandary this evening. The very remarkable Debs texted me last night asking whether I wanted to go watching Pentangle a week on Friday. Naturally I said yes. Ten minutes later, another text -- erm, sorry. It's tomorrow night. Not being one to turn down a night out, I am now once again heading off to a "gig" (I use the term freely). Apparently we have tickets for the mosh-pit area, where all the hard core Pentangle fans will be. I've told Debs to lock up her thyme.
Being I'm in a particularly flighty mood today, I suspect you may well hear more later (subject to work constraints).
Well, that was interesting. I've just managed to have what I suspect was half a conversation in freaky-deaky Deutsch. My cousin of some description speaks very fine German. And so she should seeing she is Austrian. For that I commend her use of the language. I say she's my cousin but she's not really -- she's the daughter of a son of a cousin of my grandmother (I think). Whatever, I met her once when I was over there hanging with my homeys in Vienna. I say homeys but I really mean aged relatives with an admirable sausage compulsion. All I remember of her is that she was a very kind girl who had endless patience with the older members of the extended family and was quite stern with me when I suggested that we ducked out and hit the local bar together rather than hang around listening to stories of Nazis and stolen pigs. I couldn't see her point at the time and, to be honest, given the same situation today, I might argue that mine was the better idea. By the sound of things, her position on the dilemma hasn't changed much. I guess that famous Austrian sense of fun emigrated about the same time my grandmother did.
We managed to exchange pleasantries and have half a very forced dialogue. I'm thinking that I have kind of given away the fact that I understand more German than I would ever let on to Die Frau Führer -- bad move. I suspect we managed to exchange email addresses which I was rather pleased about until I had hung up and realized that we would now have forced half-conversations in broken German (mine, not hers) by email where the opportunities for horrific spelling and inappropriate sausage jokes increase markedly. I fully expect emails in upper case ÖSTEREICHISCHE. I'll give it a go and see how quickly she gives that stern look by email. I need to come up with a list of topics of conversation so the tedium doesn't kill us both. Off the top of my head I can think of "BMW vs Toyota in a wreck", "Isn't the Euro daft?", "Where did you hide the gold?" and "Do they have the internet in Austria?". We're bound to get on like a house on fire.
Seriously though, she is a lovely lass. I think if I don't do a Kenny (translated: "do one" for a couple of weeks) by the end of September, I might venture across to Wien for a few days. By then I should have had ample gerpraktiken ins sprechenzing der lingo, yo.
Now I am on a mission to find my damned Joni Mitchell CD so you'll forgive me if I bid you a "Der Toodles." I'd find some rocking yodelly musik to strutten mein lederhosen to but I'm fresh out of it. I must have lent it to Stan, who is the oracle of all things Musical.
Am I the only one who is sat watching the events in York unfold with an open mouth and a vocal "WTF?"?
Maybe I'm too simplistic and there are deeper issues afoot here; if so, I apologize for having missed the subtleties of our national religion.
Press reports state that up to 1000 churchmen have threatened to resign should women be allowed into the higher realms of the C of E. The only way that they could get this through the rank and file is to allow for an "opt-out" where in the very unlikely event that a female became a bishop, there would be a fudge-factor whereby the female could be side-stepped, in favor of dealing with a chap.
Half of me says let them resign, after all I don't subscribe to any of their lunatic ideas. If you're willing to believe mad ideas, it's only a small step-let to embrace the fact that only man is equal, not woman. I can see how you might be a bit offended if you're a Christian woman who ventures out of the kitchen occasionally but I'm sure your deep faith will guide you through the quagmire of ecclesiastical shenanigans. What I can't see is that if you live in this century and don't club passing females over the head in order to mate with them, how you cannot sit bewildered that this kind of crass archaism can happen in the full light of the public eye with nary a comment from our politicians, philosophers or even the local WI.
I could rant and rant about how gobsmacked I am that bras are not burning all over the country. Maybe everyone else made the leap a long time ago and has been sat guffawing into their morning coffee at the clear and present insanity that acts as the national moral guide. Far less likely is that I am right and this dubious exercise is being candy-coated in a religious flavor when in reality it speaks of something very, very grotesque.
To the lasses who read this -- I know you're actually the majority (contrary to what the comments might suggest), God knows why -- do you not feel like drowning kittens and flinging incendiary devices at the senile old gits in the church? If they discriminated against thirty-something (just) bloggers, I'd be up in arms.
I'll shut up before I make myself sound any less educated than I have. Honestly though, these guys just make my blood burn.
This is one of those posts that might never see the light of day, depending on how it pans out. We all know, or at least suspect, that I work for a large mobile phone company. We've been building up to our new marketing campaign for a few weeks internally and it was finally let loose on the world on Saturday.
Before, I say any more, these are absolutely not comments relating to the company at all. If anything, I think it puts the company in a very good light so I think I'm on safe ground. I've gone out of my way to not mention anything that is commercially sensitive in just talking about the marketing campaign so here goes...
We all know I have done a bit of marketing in my time and some of it has been fluffy marcomms. Years ago, while I was sat programming X windows, I'd have laughed at the thought of me even paying attention to marcomms. By several twists of fate, I actually ended up in a marketing role and developed a real interest in it, even in marcomms. Very often you will find me waxing lyrical about the relative merits of ad campaigns and whether they achieve their aim or not. My techie colleagues will laugh at this point, but after scratching my head for a few days and seeing the creative that has gone into our new campaign, I think this is about the best ad campaign I have seen since our first campaign, long before I ever dreamed I would be working here.
A first and very shallow measure of success is that it has peaked my interest. Not just peaked it; I have spent a considerable amount of time thinking through why it might not work, and haven't managed to come up with anything even slightly negative. If I were in a suitable arena, I might actually say that it's gone beyond an ad campaign or a brand-awareness exercise. It's achieved what most campaigns never do; it's got people talking. Even the lass across the street from me was chatting away about it.
"I am..." at first pass seems a bit hollow and you anticipate waves of nausea to follow those two words, but they don't. The premise is that "I am the sum of all the people I meet and the experiences I have" whether that be your spouse or your teacher or the last person who turned you down for a job. Each "I am" in the media tells a different story, someone in the arts, sport, customer service, engineering etc. One thing that I'm sure is pointed out somewhere in the supporting literature, but that has struck me over the weekend, is that not one piece of material ever mentions what we do -- that is because everyone knows what we do -- such was the success of "I am's..." predecessor. The focus is now on why we do it and why anyone does anything. It's a banker winner in its simplicity and potential.
We've all been encouraged to do our own "I am..." internally. While I'm sure there might be some who choose not to, even if they don't, they might spend a few moments considering the question. I found it a very challenging exercise to try and distill my "I am..." down to a few sentences. At most you have about four points you can make. It's pretty difficult. Actually, it's even more difficult if you're a Kenny who is a tad wordy at the best of times. Try it.
I finally got to three "I am's..." but they're the not the kind of thing a self-respecting Kenny would air to anyone except those closest to him (and I don't mean BigR who sits nearest me). Mine are certainly not being put on our intranet site. They took a lot of careful wording. As with anything, the answers you come up with are a snapshot in time. Those three or four "I am's..." might be vastly different in ten years time.
I'm quite excited about the whole caboodle as a piece of marketing because, within a few years, it will trip off the tongue like other greats before it. It will become synonymous with the brand just the same way the old tag line still haunts everyone over the age of 10. I would have loved to have been in the sessions with whichever agency we used -- I'd probably have had to adopt my "pretty fly for a white guy" attitude -- because thinking through the potential and delivering what is now some great material must have been a fantastic process to be involved in.
Keep an eye on your TV sets or hit the website...you might not like it, but even if it only gets you thinking for a couple of moments, I think you'd agree that it's a job well done.
Bravo to the guys and gals who came up with it. It most assuredly has the Kenny seal of approval (not that such a plaudit will materially affect the stock price ;^) ).
Google's quote of the day had me in hysterics. So simple, yet so, so funny.
"I haven't spoken to my wife in years. I didn't want to interrupt her." -- Rodney Dangerfield
I could level that at so many people. And, I suppose, in the interest of fairness (When did I become fair? They must have put something in the water or coffee recently), I should say that rather a lot of people could level the same thing right back at me.
Bookmark this permalink. It is a rare moment of humility where I would like to thank those who have offered words of wisdom re the car situation. It cost me some sleep but given that you are all backing my theory, I feel less stressed about the whole shebang. Thinking about it, the bang in shebang is entirely inappropriate. But a genuine thank you.
My old mate Nic has just popped around for an hour. I feel sorry for him. He's had to put up with a whole hour of me pontificating about everything from management to technology. I'm sure he is not in the slightest bit interested in either or the tenuous segways in between. You think I rant a lot on here? You want to get me on topic in a room where there is no google search engine waiting to throw my every word back at me -- I must be one tiresome bastard.
As I think about this, I used to be very demure in meetings. prefering to cogitate a while before forming an opinion. Somewhere along the way, I lost that and am now becoming a clone of my old MD with an on the spot answer to everything. Even if it's not right it's usually delivered with enough gravitas and conviction to make it sound like gospel. I guess that most of the time, there is no-one around to rein me in and I've got used to just spewing forth on here where there are no checks and balances.
I'm winding myself up something chronic. I know the law on such matters and i know the guy who hit me is in the wrong. Things I need to remember:
-- Given the guy who ran into me has now conveniently forgotten about the car in front, if he argues that point, all I can say is that he cannot have been looking at the road.
-- I was at a complete standstill for about 5 seconds before he hit me at full whack, so he can't have been looking or he would have at least tried to stop.
-- I know I can't do anything about it until Monday now so there is no point in worrying. Insurance companies are paid to sort this kind of thing out -- I am not.
-- It should not stress me because I'm right and even if the muppet manages to perform fusion at room temperature, he is wrong. In a pathological case, I could have jammed my anchors on to avoid squashing a frog and if he ran in the back of me, he would be at fault.
-- The worst that can happen is that my insurance company will have to pay out and I'll have to fund the excess on my car. But that cannot really happen...
God damn it. The police are worse than useless in putting my mind at ease -- "If it's just damage to the car, we don't get involved." The claims people won't be open until Monday. I've got little to do tomorrow to distract myself so this nothing will be the something.
You may now leave comments telling me I'm right. Normally I say that with a pinch of salt, but this time I mean it. Is there any possible scenario that can backfire on me here?
Well, could I write an epic or two about today's little sojourn? I'll try not to.
I would not like to be hit by a car at 30mph. I was stopped when one hit my car at 30mph from the rear earlier today. The idiot in front of me had indicated, with 2 milliseconds notice, that he was turning left and then jammed his anchors on to allow someone coming in the opposite direction to turn first. I braked hard and stopped. Just as I was screaming a very creative string of expletives about what I would do the vacuous twat in the car in front, there was an almight thwack from behind. I've never been hit before so it took me a couple of moments to realize what had just happened. All I can say is that I am very, very glad that I had some metal around me.
My car is dented at the back and it's probably a few hundred quid to fix it. The BMW that ran into the back of me looks like it hit a wall. That, right there, is thousands. We exchanged numbers and all that jazz and I drove off. Unfortunately the pillock who caused the accident had disappeared before either of me or the other driver could get his license plate. We both stood there looking at each other with "WTF has just happened?" written all over us. He had never had an accident in 20 years driving, and I haven't in over 20 years.
Because I wear my badge of cluelessness about mechanics with pride, I called my dad to ask him what to look for in terms of functional damage. Anyone who knows anything about cars likes to have their ego massaged occasionally by a call from someone asking about the mysteries of motors. My dad had that tone of voice which is quiet desperation. He doesn't say anything and it's what he doesn't say that is so poignant. You can feel him thinking "Jesus H. How many times I have explained those bits of the car to him?" We went thorugh a diagnostic process and I hung up after establishing that there was nothing immediate to worry about. Two seconds later, the phone went again -- maternal unit. "Are you alright? Your dad didn't even ask how you were." I assured her that I was alright and that my dad didn't need to ask because it was self-evident in that I had called him, pointing out that if I wasn't, I might have mentioned it. This is why my dad and I get on so well -- we pretty much don't need to say anything -- the inferences are enough to communicate. Mater, not being one to let anything lie, then started on about whiplash and that I should claim for it. I have a slight headache (which might just be down to the industrial quantity of coffee I have consumed) and a car to be fixed at someone's expense. The chap who hit me, while legally in the wrong, is damned unlucky and he has a lot more to worry about financially -- I know who came off best out of that one. This kind of mindless "screw everyone out of anything you can" is the reason that insurance costs a bomb. If I claimed for damages for whiplash to the tune of say £1000, I'm raising the average claim so everyone's premium goes up. If you take that logic far enough, only the lucky will ever win.
After I made what turned out to be a wasted trip to where I was going for reasons that I'll not go into, I called at my dad's to let him to do his stuff. It was like being a kid again. He went through all the various parts, pointing out what did what and where this led to. I did my stuff by nodding and making the appropriate "aha" noises. I don't know why we go through this pretense; I am just plain not interested so it's in one ear and floating down the breeze shortly thereafter. To be honest I just wanted to know how much he thought it would cost -- I was of the view that I might as well just pay and get it fixed. When things like that happen, you find a man in an overall and get him to tell you how much he thinks it will be. You let him fix it and charge you double what he probably should, pay him and then you both walk away with the peace of mind that everyone has been royally screwed by the whole process. I just do not have the energy to fight silly little battles. Pay someone and have done. That said, after my dad gave his estimate, I deicded that I would claim against the other guy's insurance; it will be peanuts compared to what he will need to pay to repair his.
I know that I'll have to talk to insurers and all that jazz, just so the guy who hit me can claim from his own insurance to get his car fixed. I hope he's not going to play silly buggers. I've done the decent thing in not going down the litigious route. I hope he doesn't come up with any elaborate crap; it should be straight forward -- we file claims, we get cars fixed, end of. I have a horrible feeling though; whenever I'm reasonable with people, they have a very nasty habit of thinking a sucker punch is an an obvious and appropriate response. I guess I take the foolish view that most people are decent. I hope my faith in this guy is not misplaced. I spoke to his wife on the phone earlier on and she sounded like a nice enough lady, so I'm hopeful.
Lessons learned? If that is what it feels like to get hit at 30mph, I never want to be run over. In a fight between a Toyota Yaris and 3-series BMW, the Yaris will win. Fate is a fickle mistress. The number of if's and but's that would have put me somewhere else at that moment in time are countless. It's the same number of if's and but's that have put me in situations that have been very definitely sub-optimal but have facilitated doing something or meeting someone that more than overcompensates for the crapness of the immediacy. I can't see any particular good coming out of this particular little episode but, hey, you never know.
Message to fate though: next time you decide to conspire to have someone rear-end me, please make it a hot lass with a penchant for bad bloggers.
Update: Why am I so damned gullible? The daft bugger has just phoned me to exchange insurance details and got quite shirty when he asked me whether I was admitting liability and I said no. Mr Nice Guy lost his cool. "Listen mate, I'll admit to braking. You drove into the back of me; by law, you are at fault because you were either too close or driving too fast. End of." I'm fuming. Naturally the police are not interested. A boat load of paperwork I really don't need. Sheesh.
There's no point in going to the coast to be rained on, so that's my weekend away nixed. It's a shame because while lying in bed last night I had a fantastic idea of what to do while there. No matter; if next weekend is better, I'll "do one".
Given I have time, I'll go to where I probably should be and drag my troubled young friend along with me. I'm not sure whether you count such an action as one in the brownie point column or not. From a personal perspective, it means I can blow off next week without too much guilt. No harm, no foul. No-one loses so it can't be such a bad deal.
Ubuntu 8.04 is now up and running and, more importantly, is networked. I have a few moans and groans about it, but it's Linux so I mustn't grumble too much.
I'm still very wary of some its quirks that are disguised as being helpful. In fact, I'm wary of the whole user interface.
One word of advice (or an advert if you will) is that if you use a USB wireless adapter with any OS, you want to be using the Edimax EW7318U. I was pointed in its direction by one of our top dev chaps and boy, is it a bit special. Ubuntu instantly recognizes it and away you go. If you're really thick like me, you'll forget to put your router into pairing mode, try every security setting going and then remember. I'm using WEP to talk to a Livebox and all is fab. The Edimax USB gubbins not only has some phenomenal gain on it, but apparently you can set it into promiscuous mode and do all sorts of packet sniffing in your vicinity. I shall not be doing that (cough). The real joy is that it's under £10. A few weeks ago, I paid nearly £30 for a PCMCIA card for the laptop -- boy was I suckered or what? It's worth having one of these Edimax adapters just as a backup for the price.
Anyway, now I've installed all the bits and bobs that I wanted (Apache, MySQL, PHP etc.), I'm at that point where I'm playing with applications and settings.
<girly enthusiasm> With my techie head off and my fluffy head on, the first thing I always check is the fonts. By default, what are there are nice enough but if you pull down the rest and the MS fonts, you have quite the perfect range. One of my pet peeves is that Apple and the Linux distros have some utterly drop-dead gorgeous fonts but because they don't ship with Windows, all the great unwashed see is the usual array of Microsoft gunge. It's kind of like how everything looks crap in IE but perfect in Firefox. I just love the fonts -- love, love, love. </girly enthusiasm>
Back to buying kit...I bought the Edimax adapters from CCL Online who had them with me the next day, together with a wireless router (the wrong one -- that could be their fault or it could be mine -- I haven't checked yet). They seem to have a good range of pretty cheap laptops if you're in the UK and in the market for one. I'd love to stick Ubuntu on a laptop but sadly you need a Windows box for some things still -- iTunes being my primary concern at this moment in time. Ideally, I'd have a Redhat server, Ubuntu laptop, WIndows laptop and a Macbook. Given my line of work, I don't think that's unreasonable. Yeah, it costs money, but I have to be up to date with all these things.
I must confess I had toyed with the idea of buying a git-powerful desktop system and running virtualized servers on it -- we're doing that with some stuff at work at the moment and I feel it may be prudent to know what the hell one is doing before talking with any authority on the subject. The only way to learn is to play.
I'll shut up about toys now. If I carry on, I'll have a sodding great project plan and a detailed design done which would then force me into buying more kit.
Meanwhile, in the part of my head that is not just loving these fonts, I'm still debating on whether to "do one" tomorrow for the weekend. Looks like Kidder and the Flip-Flop have visitors, so I'm tempted by the coast. We'll see how I feel in the morning...
Little Tokyo? Friday lunch time? Sashimi? A man of my reputation. Too damned right. My only problem with Sashimi is that it leaves me wanting more and more at regular intervals for weeks. I swear it has some kind of addictive property -- yet another entity to add to my ever-increasing list of obsessions. I thought I'd kicked this one given I haven't had any for quite a while, but eek, it's back.
My token attempt at humor today was when Beardie was presented with his leaving presents, one of which was a keyring saying "When I grow up I want to be a notorious homosexual." to which I mimicked a tick and shouted "Check."
What to do over the weekend? I have some wireless gubbins to sort out and a mattress to buy but I intend to get those out of the way tonight. I may do something a bit off the wall for the rest of the weekend -- you know -- try anything once kind of thing.
This is the kind of respect I am treated to on a daily basis. From an IM from BigR this morning...
If Bill Oddie and Kylie Mingoue spawned, I think I would seriously consider ethnic cleansing. Even Beardie was spooked by its grotesqueness.
On a similar topic, we were having a conversation about "it" yesterday and one of my compadres mentioned having dreams about the midget. I offered my sympathy and added that I too have dreams about the midget. And firearms.
Speaking of, I have the opportunity to go and shoot some heavy-duty guns in South Wales in the next couple of weeks. I was kind of non-plussed about it until someone mentioned that Oddie can be seen frequently at a particular venue in Bristol, twitching in the unholy shadows of a midget. My mind, being my best friend, made an instant association of the Southwest, live ammo and Oddie. I think this is what people mean when they say they hear voices...the temptation is enormous.
Another happy Friday morning in Kennyville where the coffee is strong, the humor weak and all the blogging is below average.
You can tell I've had yet another fun-filled evening (I'm waiting for the delivery of some stuff so I can't really faff like I want to). I've been stalking Fiona Apple on Youtube with varying degrees of success. What I have found is this little gem. It's definitely her, but there is not even the slightest hint of batshit crazy to be had, so I'm guessing it's a fake.
[As an "in" comment -- Stan -- why does the choice of song not surprise me?]
Absolutely love her to bits. She must be about due a new album. I guess I should check her website.
Update: Normal psychopathic tendencies are restored in this combo with Elvis Costello.
Harsh assessment of the utter imbecility of British culture.
There is a prize for the first person who spots the obvious oxymoron in the above sentence.
I honestly thought that there was precious little that the British as a nation could do to make me think any less of them, but today is a new nadir. A feckin' OBE for a feckin' Australian midget. It doesn't take a whole diatribe from me to point out how absolutely bereft of any flavor of class this is.
I haven't read the BBC report on the merits that begat this PR w**kfest, nor am I likely to (or watch any news bulletin tonight) but I am lead to believe that it is for...and you'll forgive me if I ask you to visualize me twitching and giggling hysterically...services -- gah -- to -- gooh-- hahaha -- music -- mmmmmmmwaaaa -- no -- hick -- seriously -- nmmmmwaa.
Of all the reasons she should be given an OBE, they pick the least likely. An OBE for being the sick fantasy of seemingly every pre-pubescent and middle-aged man (and some women) in the land? An OBE for putting midget fetishism into the mainstream and on the public breakfast table? An OBE for successfully releasing the same song but changing the costume twenty times in as many years? An OBE for managing to set public expectations even lower than our government does? An OBE for being the only person on the planet to have a worse acting track-record than Madonna? All of these things she would be worthy of an OBE for, but music? Dear Mother of God.
I fear the only person who I will be able to safely read in the coming days is Barbara Ellen of the Observer. I have a sneaky feeling that she and I are the only two people in my club. I might be wrong, but were I to put money on anyone, it would be her.
Beardie leaves our employ tomorrow. He's a huge midget fan. The lads know my passionate hatred of the dwarf so Beardie put up a picture of the vertically challenged one on my desk. It has been therapeutic. Whenever I have felt like going ballistic at work, I look at that picture and know that things could be much worse. When Beardie leaves the building tomorrow, midst genuine sorrow for his departure, I will wander out into the carpark and ceremonially burn the picture. An era will be over. The burning will be Cathartic. It will cancel out the news that it has an OBE. I fully expect that BigR will have a signed picture of Bill Oddie there by Monday morning, just to get me back on the straight and narrow.
Someone, somewhere must share my utter hatred of the midget. Whoever you are, know that I feel your rage just about now. Henceforth we are inextricably linked, and I love you for it.
I know you are dying to hear my take on the midget but that will have to wait. It's hard work being an annoying pedant for a living. I suspect it's even harder work being sat across from me knowing that I am about to explode in more expletives than anyone could legislate for at any moment. The fuse is burning...
[aside: if you have emailed me at any of my gorners or the other addresses today, you will have to wait for an answer. I have IMAP issues -- they may be down to not being breast-fed as a child, or they may be genetic psychoses -- who knows.]
Honest to God, I hate Telegraph readers. See this for the usual crap comments. If her topic was contentious, I might understand the heated debate surrounding her column, but it's not; you can't argue with what it says. And if you dislike her style of writing, just don't bother reading it. I think it's refreshingly light and very readable.
Anyway, she has a little something from the lads here tomorrow.
I'll be back to educate you later on a number of handy topics.
I have been razzing it up all night. No, really. Get this for a checklist of adolescent self-indulgence:
-- Typed up minutes from a meeting I attended last night, being careful to avoid anything in the slightest bit contentious.
-- Formatted minutes to approved Kenny® guidelines and fonts.
-- Re-designed Kenny® template for minutes.
-- Adjusted minutes to comply with new Kenny® industry standard.
-- Cursed OpenOffice for being utterly w**k.
-- Texted the whole world to try to stop me from doing same again.
-- Watched messages flood in in response, not.
I did have a mildly distracting moment when I temporarily became a sensitive soul. The moment soon passed, but it happened. In the time I was "on" being all lovey-dovey to all creatures, I attempted a rescue of a young thrush from the wash-house (yes, we have wash houses 'oop Norf). It had somehow managed to sneak in there and start munching on whatever it is that young thrushes munch on. While pre-occupied with its nosebag, it must have forgotten how to get out and decided that the order of the day, or dessert if you will, was a dose of severe panic. The thing is that you can't reason with birds (oh, I did laugh at that aphorism when I typed it). I tried coaxing, cajoling, flattery and even semaphore to guide it back to freedom but it seemed pretty intent on getting its down-home panic on.
Do not ask me why, but I suddenly felt really bad for its plight. It was a young bird so it was probably in its first wash-house pickle and given that birds are not renowned for their phenomenal capacity for lateral thought, all its panicking was undoubtedly harming it. I considered my options. Attempting to catch it and release it wouldn't work; it would get even more defcon-5 and probably attempt to escape towards the one patch of light it had, break its beak as it hit the window and perish. At that moment in time, given my weakness, I started to get quite upset. In fact I was almost at defcon-5 myself. I opted for nature taking its course, laid a trail of currants out from the wash-house to the back door and then left every door open so it might escape of its own accord. I now sit on tenterhooks waiting to see whether it has the nous to get out. I have no idea what to do if it doesn't. I guess it's in for a night in the cell. The poor dear must be absolutely terrified.
Just as I had completed the food trail, I was rudely slapped back into reality by the brats at the back. I was having a rare moment of empathy with my fellow creatures, in stark contrast to my usual utter disgust at the general populus, when bang, a stone hit me, lobbed by the blond-haired little shite over the fence. Now, I have been told before that I am not allowed to paste children to within an inch of their worthless lives, but if I don't do it with this little git, someone else will have to. Either that or they'll spend their tax money keeping the apprentice no-hoper in a cell for the rest of his born days. Being hit with a stone generally gets my back up. Thankfully, it only hit my head which has survived much more vicious assaults than a pebble thrown by a 6 year old oik, so I resisted the urge to throttle the living daylights out of him, instead prefering to point out to the oik that I had two of his balls and that he wasn't getting them back until his mother came around to talk to me. The look of abject horror on his face was priceless. If only I could have got him to stand still looking like that while I took a photo...
I must confess that I have chosen to show you my softer side after having been chided for portraying myself on here as being a grumpy old git with an axe to grind. Apparently during the day, when not sat at a keyboard, I'm not an arrogant bastard -- her words, not mine. I'll let you make your own minds up about that; I suspect anyone who knows me will attest to the fact that I pretty much am a grumpy insensitive swine, with all the decorum and morals of Vicky Pollard and a bitterly acid tongue. But hey, let's pretend I'm not.
I was just perusing my search terms because blogging seems to be exceptionally light in this part of the world today (I assume its down to the temperature being above freezing in here) -- either that or everyone in the world is having a big old yawnfest in a good old TimmyCumMurray bout of British "didn't he try hard"-ness. Whatever. The search term that caught my eye was:
I don't recall mentioning mattresses before, but I know I have thought about mentioning them.
The thing is that in an attempt to try to connect with my hardline religious brethren, I have been sleeping on a spike for quite a few months now. The spring in my mattress has been enjoying sunlight for some time. I have tried putting a blanket under the sheet to minimize impact but the fact remains that if I turn inadvisedly, I am skewered. It is an aid in the morning though -- hitting the snooze button is a perilous exercise that involves being awake enough to think through movements to avoid the boobytrap, in which case, you might as well just get up, or if your wits are not quite there yet, the spring will be and, oops, they are now. Either way, my arse is out of bed, bleeding or not. It is fair to say that were you unlucky enough to inspect my arse and upper thigh at the moment, you would probably be able to count around 6 or 7 puncture marks. Not ideal.
Why then have I procrastinated and not bought a new mattress? It's a fair question, and it's one that I ask myself every morning as I reach for the Savlon (no comments Waaart or Maesti). And you know what? I don't know. I suspect that I haven't because I'm getting old and am very often found muttering things about how "they don't make them like I like them anymore so I'm not buying one". My only exception to this is gadgets. We love gadgets, but we hate modern anything else. I'm sure that if I go to some mattress warehouse somewhere there will be one that I will not object to too strongly, but it will be hidden amongst thousands of others that have fancy prefixes in front of their names: ortho-, thera-, murray- or some such nonsense. Have I the motivation to sift through these things for a good old mattress? Well, yes, but only for about five minutes each day -- they just so happen to be the five during which I am least likely to act.
So Herr whomever from Deutschland, thanks for the reminder. I will get on that when I can be arsed.
His poor taste in music (sic) is more than compensated by his phenomenal taste in houses. I found this slice of heaven via a very steep climb down his page. Talk about idyllic. If I could afford that outright, I would never, ever leave the house again. There would just be me, my dog who I would call Slim, a good internet connection and an endless supply of hookers a server room.
It has come to my attention that one of mi'learned colleagues has modified his website, which has historically documented his dangling from heights that would curdle water, to now be a blog. Being that this is Beardie's world, it will come from on high both physically, metaphorically and maybe sometimes intellectually. I got dizzy just typing the URL into my blogroll.
The bearded one is the type who arrives at work, opens his diary and shouts with glee: "Hey, I'd forgotten about that. I'm doing a half marathon tonight." BigR at the side of him then asks whether he managed the full parsec bike ride this morning before his mile swim. Tales of triathlons then ensue. After twenty minutes of such repartee, comparing each others' Herculean regimes, I return with a bloody big cake and coffee, tolerate maybe another two minutes before calling reception for the de-fib and then going for a smoke.
If you go over there, wear your peril-sensitive sunglasses, a safety harness, armbands and stabilizers (attached to a bike or in chemical form -- I choose the latter). Sheesh, even his iPod top 10 leaves me breathless -- for all the wrong reasons.
Personally I'd be amazed that you can mine liquorice
