rARsh!

Nine months, eh?

Doesn’t time fly?

Hehe

Advertisements are, as a rule, irritations. I’ve whined before about them and their flagrant attacks on my sensibilities – whenever I hear the words “scientifically proven”, for example, I’m tempted to demand to see the proof.

I must be mellowing, though, because when I saw the new 118118 advert featuring Ray Parker Jr I actually laughed at one point. I know full well that it’s going to get irritating in no time but for now I’ll just recall the “I ain’t afraid of no goats” and chuckle.

That is all.

I have solved energy problems and global warming

I’m not really sure what’s going on these days, what with there being a succession of ‘scandals’ about ‘celebrities’ using what’s deemed to be inappropriate language, but I’ve realised that we can take advantage of the brouhaha.

I’m hoping that even as I type, in innumerable garden sheds and workshops across the country, that most British of characters – the boffin – is busy at work, trying to harness the energy generated by Moral Outrage. Good chaps. Once this has been harness our energy problems will be over and given that the instigation of the outrages – with the obvious exception of Jeremy Clarkson – leave a comparatively light carbon footprint, global warming should soon be a thing of the past too.

Recent weeks have proven that the Knee Jerk Reactor (as it’ll bound to be called) is capable of using historical catalysts and this is excellent news. As long as the media is sensible enough to regulate the flow of outrage, the UK will be free of dependency on fossil fuels in no time.

Incidentally, I was fortunate enough to have BBC Breakfast on yesterday morning when they accidentally played the un-bleeped version of Christian Bale’s rant. Laugh? I almost wet myself. Not at the clip – droll as it was – but, rather, at the facial expressions of the two presenters at the first un-bleeped “fucking”. It occurred to be that the word they were most likely to be hearing in their earpieces at that time was “fuck”.

To get back on track, though, you’re probably wondering how we’re going to become fossil fuel-free as long as there are vehicles to be moved. Fear not, eager students, for I have also solved that issue.

The answer is, of course, to encourage bad driving. That shouldn’t be difficult at all. A variant of the KJR – the Road Rage Reactor – will be installed in all cars and will feed off every driver’s “I don’t believe what that idiot just did” to keep the roads flowing. Drivers of commercial vehicles will be required by law to overtake only on long, uphill stretches of dual carriageway, fake speed cameras will be installed to rile those who believe that speed limits are optional and the use of indicators is to be punishable by radishing (or “rhaphanidosis” if you want to be pedantic). Pedants, in fact, will be positively encouraged thanks to their our gift of irritation.

Unfortunately the media will, as a result, have to target all its output at the lowest common denominator. Fortunately that’s not going to require much of change in most cases.

I accept that there remains the minor issue of creating the first viable KJR but I’ve done the hard bit. It over to you now, boffins. Carry on.

Lovely

It’s that time again.

Sine 7th January (I just checked) there’s been a steady stream of shite arriving from companies and websites as diverse as Hilton Hotels, seetickets.com, Canon, Phillips and Jimi, all mentioning the dreaded V word. I know only too well that it’s going to get worse for the next seven days.

What a load of commercialised pap. It’s that bloody Chaucer’s fault, apparently. I could rant on (and on) but find that even-star has already covered all the salient points.

Load of crap.

You’ve got to come and see what I’ve found!

Gardener Ali seemed most excited as she poked her head in through the door.

“It’s not another concrete monstrosity, is it?”

“No, no. Come on.”

I was led out to the area of undergrowth which is the current area of tidying up to find a clutch of eggs. Eleven of them, in fact, which had been hidden away from view under a tangle of goodness knows what.

By the size, they’re far too large to have come from the moorhen which took temporary residence back in 2006 (and Maurice was male, to boot) so I can only assume that they were a gift from the female mallard who spent a week or so in the garden last summer, having been bullied away from the nearby duckpond – or so I’d thought at the time.

There’s still of lot of clearing left to be done, so who knows what hidden treasure remains to be unearthed …

Measure for measure

In the last week or so I’ve become aware of an EC directive which I’d clearly missed when it was accounced. It seems that the period of time between the present at Christmas morning is officially measured in “sleeps” rather that in days.

This must have been given fairly high coverage, given the number of times I’ve overheard it in use, but I have to wonder what idiot thought that measuring by sleeps was a good idea, especially to children who – I’d imagine – are still being encouraged to take an afternoon nap.

If they’re not bright enough to count the number of days, how do people expect them to appreciate the difference – and possibly the exchange rate – between snoozes, naps and sleeps? How many tantrumic three-year olds will wake from their nap this afternoon, having been told at breakfast that there’s “one sleep until Santa”, only to be cruelly disappointed? How many of my fellow insomniacs will miss out on the big day for the opposite reason? Most importantly of all, who exactly gives a fuck?

On that festive note, I wish you the Christmas you’ve been hoping for for all these sleeps. Exciting, isn’t it?

Interesting times

Well it’s been an interesting 24 hours.

At this time last night I was in a feverish sleep – with some well-weird dreams, too, although I’ve forgotten most of them by now.

I finally surfaced properly around noon, having excused myself during an earlier interlude of consciousness from photographic detail chez Tall Andy, to find a PM from one of the moderators on a forum I host. One of the (quieter) members had posted disturbing posts leading us to assume that he was about to do something very, very stupid. What to do?

So I ended up calling the local rozzers with as much information as I had – which wasn’t much (an email address, first name and approximate geographical location).

Half an hour later I was called back and told they couldn’t get the chap’s details from his ISP and the suggestion that I ring his local force.

Somewhat mystified as to why they couldn’t do this themselves I did so and went through the story again.

It took them an hour to call back to say they couldn’t get anything out of his ISP – apparently they have no out-of-hours staff to answer any enquiries from the police (seems odd to me). They assured me they’d follow it up on Monday but that – and wait for this … it’s a cracker – in the meantime they’ve sent the chap an email.

Oh well. That’s alright then.

On the one hand I can see that given that the most worrying posts were about 12 hours earlier, if anything stupid was to have been done then any element of urgency was long gone, but really!

The good news is that I’ve since worked out that the chap visited the website again yesterday morning at 9:24. The bad news is that he’s not been back since (according to the user table in the database, at least, and I’ve just checked again).

I have a bad feeling.

<insert deity of choice> bless teh internets

Without it (and, specifically, The Daily WTF) I’d not have learned about Muphry’s Law nor chortled geekily at “Little Bobby Tables” cartoon.