rARsh!

Licenced to breed

Surely the day cannot be far off when prospective parents are required to apply for a licence before they can inflict their offspring on the rest of us.

Two stories from this week make me wish the day was even closer:

More than 10% of the 1,000 parents asked had struggled to understand some words in the stories they had read to their five to 10-year-old children.

Parents said that they made up words they could not read or missed out difficult passages, the survey said.

from BBC News

I’m sorry, but if you’re not literate enough to cope with a child’s bedtime story, how on earth are you going to cope with daily living and be able be protect your children? Can you be sure that you’ve understood directions on medicine? You can’t just make up or skip those directions.

I therefore propose that all prospective parents prove that they have the skills to care for a child before being given permission to breed.

What’s that? You’re not convinced? Then read on - but I must warn you that today’s story is even more frightening: More »

It’s a kind of magic

No, nothing to do with Harry Potter and the Poorly Written Ending¹. Rather, I’m referring to the Great Flood, or however yesterday will be referred to years to come. It would appear that people across the UK have been experiencing rain-related chaos, including young Ferny the Goth who set off on her two-wheeled stallion from Norwhag at lunchtime in an attempt to get to her parents’ home in Scallyland before the weather. She failed, taking over 10 hours for a 250 mile journey, apparently.

At least we know the cause. Nothing to do with carbon footprints, emissions or CFCs. No, it’s all down to Ann Bryn-Evans and her friends.

Ann Bryn-Evans, joint Wessex district manager for The Pagan Federation, said: “We were hoping for some dry weather but I think I have changed my mind.

“We’ll be doing some rain magic to bring the rain and wash it away.”

That said, I’m not sure that the pagans are acting alone. In fact, my suspicions are falling on those promoting another film due for release this “summer”, namely Evan Almighty.

Yes, I know it looks dreadful but isn’t this just the sort of stunt a film that bad² would pull? Isn’t it?

Incidentally, is anyone else amused by the clear heirarchy in The Pagan Federation? There’s no reason why it shouldn’t be organised, of course, but something tickles me about someone being the joint Wessex district manager for The Pagan Federation.

¹ probably, based on the earlier books which I read, before Diana stopped buying them.
² So bad, in fact, that all the animals are in pairs rather than in seven pairs if the wee beasties are “clean”. That’s a fairly fundamental fictional³ error.
³ Yes, yes. I know the phrases is usually “factual error” but …

Kaboom! Click.

Calling all techies: Given that thunderstorms of a sufficient size are very likely to knock out my internet connection, which required the router to be switched off and then back on, how can I get this to happen automatically so that - for example - torrent downloads aren’t affected for too long?

Read yourself thin

After the resounding success of the Stop Smoking You Idiot book, I’ve been reading Allen Carr’s “No More Diets” book.

Obviously based on a similar logical basis, Carr simply lists reasons why certain foods are appropriate for humans and other foods are not (and he’s taking the whole of human history into account, not recent inventions like … ooh … cookery).

Hmm. Everyone’s a fruit and nutcake, or so it would seem.

The problem I have with this is some of the logic that being used. It does strike me as being flawed. In fact it reminds me of the professional logician sketch from the album of the soundtrack of the trailer of the film of Monty Python and the Holy Grail.

Well, if cooked meat tastes so gorgeous, why do we feel the need to season it? Why the need for mint, apple or cranberry sauce? Why do we often add overpoweringly strong flavours such as horseradish, mustard, spices and garlic to meat?

It’s either to add flavour to an otherwise bland taste or to disguise a foul taste.

– Allen Carr’s “No More Diets”, page 57

If you eat food that’s flavoured with garlic you can’t taste the food, just the garlic

– Allen Carr’s “No More Diets”, page 74

Unfortunately, Mr Carr, what you’ve done here is lambast either the Carr’s cooking methods or their prior preference for too many condiments. Anyone who puts so much garlic in a meal that you can’t actually taste the other ingredients really shouldn’t be allowed in a kitchen and anyone who puts enough mustard on their food to hide the whole taste should be the next dish on the barbecue.

So I don’t think I’m going to become a fruit and nutcase. Not just yet.

Well worth while

Remember me adding the facility to comment on specific photographs on this website (as was specifically requested in the comments on this post)?

It just occurred to me that I’d not checked Haloscan for recent comments.

None.

Not one.

Nada.

Nix.

You get the picture.

Wasn’t that worthwhile, then?

Latitude

For those of you with too much of a life to keep up with my Twitters from the festival, here they are in full with added correction goodness (predictive text being both a boon and a curse for me). I’ve also expanded and explained where I thought that was necessary as well as adding hotlinks for relevant sites. I’m going for MySpace pages wherever there’s a choice of links so that you get to enjoy the musique too.

What a beautiful location for a festival

As it’s a biggie, I’ll hide it behind the More »

Have a good weekend. I will.

I’m off to get shorn and pick up a couple of odds and ends, then into Henham Park when the gates open at two this afternoon.

I’m as excited as a … um … very excited child.

Back sometime on Monday, folks. Watch the sidebar for exciting Twittered updates (possibly).

Betrayed

Feeling guilty? I don’t think so

I thought we’d sorted this out on Sunday. Never trust a mouse to keep his word, people.