|
|
|
June 4th, 2009
08:20 pm - I have decided...
...and I want to start a political party.
One that makes the BNP look like a bunch of weedy hippies.
It's very simple. Britain for the British. Therefore everyone on this island will be obliged to subject to DNA testing and anyone with less than 50% DNA originating from the original neolithic settlers of these isles will be obliged to leave.
Yep, that means *you*. Non-European ancestry? Out! French ancestry? Out! Norse ancestry? Out! Saxon ancestry? Out! Roman ancestry? Out! (Why, yes, on this policy, I'm all right Jack, now that you ask.)
If these measures are considered too wishy washy for the general public, we will then implement our stricter policy. Only those who are direct descendants of Cheddar Man may stay.
Those who are related to assorted bog mummies may remain, but strictly only in their own homeland.
Thank you. Yes, I do look good in jackboots, don't I?
ETA: Obviously, we have not ripped off any of our policies from the People's Front of Judea. Although they are our close associates in the Eurovision parliament.
|
May 11th, 2009
01:00 am
Done a bit of f-list pruning. No offence intended, it's just we don't overlap that often.
|
April 13th, 2009
12:22 am - Right.
Did a couple of checks on UK Amazon and as a result have cancelled a £52.40 order, telling them exactly why.
Ob Googlebomb: Amazon Rank.
|
March 31st, 2009
12:05 am - Because I know you were all gagging for it...
The first-ever winner of the Frank Darcy Award - the *most* prestigious literary award in science fiction and fantasy (yeah, yeah, those of us who knew Frank can hear him laughing).
Selected by the very talented and handsome Paul Cornell and, amazingly, won without any bribes towards the judge.
Thanks go to ![[info]](http://l-stat.livejournal.com/img/userinfo.gif) desperance, irishkate, gmh and icudoc for reading and sniggering.
( It was not a dark and stormy night, mainly because it was daytime )
ETA: gmh has just waved a page of Alice in Sunderland at me, because he suddenly remembered a character who looked suspiciously like desperance. Yeah, I'd forgotten that I was going to squee "and he's Bryan Talbot's primary beta!"
(esmeraldus_neo, you may start laughing now. Cos even though jemck first introduced us, I consider it All To Be Your Fault.)
|
February 19th, 2009
12:04 am - Protest
From assorted people, including gioiaverdi, hano, sierra_le_oli and shezan.
In case you were wondering, the black user icons thing that many have suddenly started displaying is to show solidarity with Internet Blackout NZ which is protesting against:
"Guilt Upon Accusation law 'Section 92A' that calls for internet disconnection based on accusations of copyright infringement without a trial and without any evidence held up to court scrutiny. This is due to come into effect on February 28th unless immediate action is taken by the National Party."
|
February 10th, 2009
04:23 pm - What is that strange light outside?
It's either that the days are getting longer or those friendly bombs finally found Slough.
|
January 27th, 2009
01:12 am - Magic
Hauled gmh away from WoW.
We had Clangers outside. Absolutely enchanting.
I'd love to know what it was in central London. And no, it wasn't car alarms.
ETA: And no, I hadn't fallen down a rabbit hole. There really were Clangers outside.
|
January 23rd, 2009
02:52 pm - KWC College results
The answers can be found and the scores are as follows:
songster 0
rosathome 1
weymss 1
tortoise 1
scotschik 1
the_magician 1
artw 2
aligoestonz 2
aquila1nz 3
m31andy 3
fuchsoid 5 (half a point on two of the answers since I had to actually find the answer)
nojay 8
Now it gets exciting. First of all we had Lancashire v Yorkshire, which led to a fascinating race as I was scoring it up.
legionseagle 11
burkesworks 12
And finally, the winner(s). There was a terrible moment when a certain clever clogs tied with me at the end of round 14. If you tot it up, then nwhyte gets a point for Casanova, despite his use of the past tense and I get nowt for claiming Don Giovanni instead.
Final two:
nwhyte 26
clanwilliam 36.
I hereby declare nwhyte the winner, since a) I ran it, b) I set the rules, and c) I got first crack at it.
Congratulations to you all, and I hope to see you back next year!
|
January 22nd, 2009
12:55 pm - One for legionseagle, I think, and another for everyone else.
http://www.guardian.co.uk/media/mediamonkeyblog/2009/jan/21/goodbye-bush-says-hair-removal-ad
ETA: In other news, the Guardian's blogs have got a bit confused.
In the science fiction section, I was rather confused to read that Michael Chabon's The Amazing Adventures of Kavalier and Clay is a "fascinating perspective on Edwardian fears of anarchism, nihilism and a world without god", that Arthur C Clarke's Childhood's End "celebrates the transformative power of pop culture and reveals the harsh truths behind the hyperreal fantasies" and that Sunday, in G K Chesterton's The Man Who Was Thursday, is "a[sic] optimistic treatise describing the transcendence of humankind from petty, warring beings to the guardians of utopia, and beyond. One of the first major works to present alien arrival as beneficent, it describes the slow process of social transformation when the Overlords come to Earth and guide us to the light."
See it here unless they've twigged to their error... (and I did email them).
ETA 2: And they can't spell poor Samuel R Delany's name correctly. At least *I* have an excuse for automatically typing Delaney...
ETA 3: They've corrected it now.
Current Mood: ![[mood icon]](http://l-stat.livejournal.com/img/mood/growf/pengies/amused.gif) amused
|
January 19th, 2009
04:43 pm - King William's College quiz
Answers are now up on the school's website. I'll do a summary later of how we did.
All entries are now closed.
|
December 31st, 2008
12:12 am - Yay!
Arise, Sir Pterry!
How soon until he jokes "But they call me Mr Pratchett"?
|
December 28th, 2008
05:55 pm - That time of the year again!
Here we go again - the King William's College quiz. As per usual, it's quite okay to look up answers, so long as you have an idea of where to find them - straightforward Googling is cheating. Thus "ooh, I know, it's in The Big Six" and subsequently looking up the character's name is fine, typing a phrase into Google is not.
Blimey! I put it up, do an initial run myself and suddenly there's ten comments? I'm attributing answers to those who came up with them first.
( Questions below )
|
December 26th, 2008
11:58 am - Answer for f-list!
In response to this question, the book is The Popinjay, by Iona McGregor.Yep, apparently there was a box of books lurking in my parents' attic that was only unearthed a month or so ago, and I've just gone through it. *iz happy*
|
December 8th, 2008
09:00 am - Am I mad, in a coma or back in time?
A couple of kids are playing outside - from the sounds of it, aged about four or five.
One of them just started singing The Sweeney theme tune.
|
December 1st, 2008
November 18th, 2008
03:58 pm - Just before lights out...
...it was nice knowing you all.
*g*
ETA: Bugger! There I was, hoping it would turn out I'd been in the shower all this time...
|
November 11th, 2008
11:51 pm - Reposted from four years ago.
No close relative of mine fought in either war - those of my relatives who were of the right age to fight in the first war were a bit too busy gearing up for a different war, and none of my relatives were the right age for the second war had they been inclined to join up (my mother's family might have done - my father's certainly wouldn't).
But my brother-in-law's great-uncle was in the Dublin Fusiliers and was killed at Gallipoli. The National Archive has put medal records online - I'd recommend visiting them anyway at www.nationalarchives.gov.uk because it's a superb site - and there's one other snippet about this man. It comes from The Pals at Sulva Bay by Henry Hanna, who joined a Dublin Pals' regiment.
While debating this over in my mind I was lying quite close to a chum called Cecil Murray (from the Bank of Ireland); he was badly hit. I asked him where he was hit. He showed me his left hand, which was in pulp, and, while speaking to him, he was hit three times in the body. The groans were heartrending.
Cecil has no grave - he is commemorated at the Helles memorial in Turkey, and also at the beautiful Lutyens War Memorial Gardens in Dublin. He didn't really die for anything - he was cannon fodder for stupid people.
0
It's something I can never forget on November 11 - for every person who died for a clear reason, we also remember those who died for no reason but the idiotic and criminal egos of those in power.
ETA 2008: For every person who died for a reason they believed in, hundreds died for no reason but the idiotic and criminal egos of those in power. And it continues to this day.
|
October 29th, 2008
09:28 pm
I felt a great disturbance in the force, as if a million fans cried out and were suddenly silent.
|
October 28th, 2008
12:22 pm - Thursday night in Edinburgh
gmh and I will be in the Auld Hoose on Thursday from about 5pm onwards if anyone cares to join us.
We'd love to see as many of you as we can.
|
October 21st, 2008
04:30 pm
Love's Labour's Lost: the play that really really needed a script editor.
Discuss.
|
October 10th, 2008
10:41 am - V. amused
Just did the BBC's Seven Days, Seven Questions quiz on the news website.
At the end, you get a ranking based on how you did - it's in three bands, and usually it's relevant to one of the questions.
This time, I was very amused to note that they're using Spinal Tap lyrics as the rankings...
|
October 6th, 2008
September 29th, 2008
09:03 pm - Omnomnomnom...
Just polished off mug one of my patented cold cure, but with a twist.
I don't have any lemon and ginger teabags in stock, so tragically, tragically, I was forced to make it from scratch.[1]
Into a large mug, throw in lemon juice, ginger, honey and a hefty splash of whisk(e)y. I actually have cooking whisky for this because I was fed up of trying to decide which single malt to sacrifice.
Add boiling water.
Stir.
Drink.
If symptoms of cold are not gone by end of mug, repeat.
By end of second mug, if you still have a stinking cold, you won't care anymore.
[1] Well, in the sense that I used bottled lemon juice and frozen ginger cubes.
ETA: Tragically I have sneezed again. Time for mug two.
|
September 10th, 2008
08:40 am - Side-effect of the LHC
My alarm went off, I hit snooze and I found it really, *really* difficult to get out of bed on the second alarm. I then got up to discover gmh was on a support call from work.
I blame Cern. Clearly gominokouhai was right and we have all ended up in a bizarre parallel universe because I never, *never* have difficulty getting out of bed.
Now if you'll excuse me, I appear to have grown a beard.
|
August 30th, 2008
02:38 am - Attn: Cambs mob
gmh and I will be in the Carlton from about 1pm onwards on Sunday, if anyone fancies wandering around.
Thank you for your attention.
|
August 25th, 2008
05:22 am - Whee!
5:23am. gmh is a bad influence.
Current Mood: giggly
|
August 20th, 2008
01:07 am
Happy birthday, gmh.
I wuvs ooo snugglebunny!
|
August 14th, 2008
11:17 pm - Congratulate me!
For I have made it 9 minutes 13 seconds into the final episode of Bonekickers without vomiting.
And I actually laughed once.
(uitlander there's clay tobacco pipes!)
Still, if the bits I've been able to bring myself to watch of this dreck are any indicator, we know where all the funding for UK archaeology has been going over the past few years.
|
August 13th, 2008
02:47 pm - Happiness is...
...discovering that the Polish/Turkish/Japanese shop around the corner from work has expanded its services to pining expats.
Unless they thought that Mikado were, in fact, a bizarre Japanese product where a marshmallow and (fake) raspberry jam biscuit was designed to be vaguely reminiscent of sushi in its appearance, as one of my colleagues pointed out.
So far, the two Englismen like them (or were too polite to say otherwise), the Frenchman pulled all sorts of faces while eating his but was the only person to even remotely get the concept of the correct way to eat a Mikado, and the other Irishwoman always hated 'em but waxed nostalgic at the sight of them anyway.
Mmmm...
Current Music: Someone you love, would love some, Mum!
|
August 11th, 2008
12:37 pm - Note to charities
If you're setting up to promote the development of "a wide range of life skills" focused on human communication, I think you'll find that actually being able to spell and punctuate would be a good idea.
|
August 10th, 2008
05:27 pm - grrrrr...
when the bloody ferry runs late, would it be too much to have rail staff on hand to tell you if your ticket is valid?
of course it would, this is the clusterfuck that is the UK rail system.
|
August 2nd, 2008
July 25th, 2008
03:45 pm - Bad earworms...
The St Trinian's school song segueing into Lili Marlene.
Anyone got a worse one?
|
July 17th, 2008
09:02 pm - *smugs*
We have J and K over tonight and have been going through old photos.
Lots of blackmail material there, but one in particular stands out.
*grins*
I am *so* scanning that photo. All I can say is "awww, he was so cute then".
|
July 16th, 2008
July 13th, 2008
08:14 pm - Ded of teh cute...
Am in Pembury with a ferret asleep in my lap.
|
July 3rd, 2008
10:42 pm - Rasillon Industries proudly present...
Am out chez uitlander and we have been discussing the Artefacts of Rasillon.
We are both rather enamoured of the Toilet Brush of Rasillon and may attempt to discover it at some point in our lives, we think the Cilit Bang of Rasillon would inevitably be advertised by Barry Rasillon, and the Accountants of Rasillon are a very very scary bunch. (Note, m31andy, the job interview is worse than usual.)
But we realised then the ultimate marketing scheme.
Every Gallifreyan child had a My Little Rasillon. The toy was cheap enough, it was the accessories that killed parents' budgets.
Well, except for the Doctor. He was contrary. So he had a My Little Omega instead.
|
June 27th, 2008
04:32 pm
Treasury minister goes on wombat leave.
I suppose Darlng would go on badger leave?
|
June 16th, 2008
04:57 pm - I think this may be grounds for divorce on gmh's part
I just confused JS Mill and Carlyle.
Current Mood: embarassed
|
June 14th, 2008
June 9th, 2008
03:46 pm - Important question
A colleague commented today that she's as "tired as a zombie".
And I suddenly realised, I don't know. Do zombies get tired? Do they lurch because they're lethargic? Do they drool because they're dopey? Do they eat your brains because actually, they were going to get a snack and were so tired they mistook your skull for the fridge (or possibly a Pot Noodle)? Are all those TIREDNESS KILLS, TAKE A BREAK signs on the motorway actually a grim warning? (That would certainly explain the atmosphere in most motorway service stations.)
Bored curious minds want to know!
|
June 6th, 2008
04:35 pm - Happiness is...
...trying to persuade a civil servant on Friday afternoon that a report on the funding of a major UK institute should be written in the language of erotica.
|
June 2nd, 2008
01:04 am - One more note...
I *love* Dempsey and Makepeace. I think I may have to buy box sets sometime soon.
Also, Makepeace completely pwned Dempsey, but she was nice enough to pander to his ego by letting him think she was in charge.
Although I'm worried about the amount of random weaponry hanging around her ancestral home. Was her parents' marriage really *that* secure?
( Cut for poss Doctor Who Spoiler )
|
May 29th, 2008
10:16 am - All new Stump the Sub!
I think I'm getting the gist of what it means, and I have to cut the phrase, but before I replace it, can anyone tell me what the phrase "prayed in aid" actually means?
Just to make sure I don't change the meaning of the article.
|
May 25th, 2008
01:39 am - Damn!
Eurovision have just released the rankings for the semi-finals.
Dustin just failed to make the cut.
Considering what I watched tonight, he wasn't anything overly weird, and at least had a catchy tune. Personally, I think he'd go down very well as this summer's Europop hit.
ETA: Mislabeled scoreboard, from the looks of it. He was 15th.
|
May 21st, 2008
10:45 am - Wise words...
"I urge my fans across Europe to be dignified in defeat. I do not want street riots as I'm a peace-loving bird."
|
May 20th, 2008
10:48 pm - Fangirl moment...
The Eagle has started doing Sierra Nevada Pale Ale and G. suggested we meet up there this evening. He then left me (while I curled up with a book) and I had a couple of pints more and some chips with aioli, and then hopped on the bus home (yeah, it's a whole seven minutes, but I was pished and lazy).
And then I looked around the bus, noticed the woman sitting perpendicular to me, and proceeded to fangirl poor rozk for the next ten minutes (yes, the bus does take longer than walking, as I learned during the ankle catastrophe earlier this year - I leave the house at just after 9.20 to get to work; if I'm taking the bus (which is effectively door to door), I leave before 9:00). And she was lovely and wonderful and I am still doing a fangirl's bounce over finally meeting her.
And if she's reading this, she's either blushing or going "who is this scary woman?"
ETA: Of course, now I got home and got the news re Eurovision. Am off to slit my wrists. What sort of people can't recognise Dustin's sheer genius?
|
May 10th, 2008
10:53 pm
Before anyone else says anything on LJ, it was *not* a plastic bag when I saw it moving, it was definitely a guinea pig.
I think personally it was an alien that had a protective camouflage when humans approached it. Really.
Current Mood: waiting for the teasing
|
12:58 am
You know, it's never a good idea to mention to your charming companion at the theatre that the lead actor bears an astonishing resemblance to Simon Pegg. Particularly when his sidekick/ghost/whatever is being played by Mark Addy.
It's really really really not a good idea to then comment during the interval that what the play really needs is zombies. Only to get them in the "Oh, hai, my social relevance is pastede on, yay!" bit in the second act.
Fram was interesting. We learned who was sleeping in the Fram (and it wasn't Nansen), and we learned that it is never a good idea to let a playwright co-direct the premiere with the designer. More thoughts when I'm more coherent, hopefully, but thanks to mikewd for offering the ticket, and the utter pleasure of watching the divine Viviana Durante dance again in a gloriously bitchy bit of choreography that had me choking a lot.
|
May 3rd, 2008
12:00 am
feorag, you may start laughing and pointing right now.
ETA: Boris's London home is Islington, right? Well, he didn't win his own London Assembly constituency by a long chalk...
|
|
|