Category: Miscellaneous

Has anyone noticed that no-one is referring to the internet as the “Information Superhighway” any more? This makes me happy.

Eyelashjam and pgd took this test. I was slightly off with “altruist.”

Your Vocabulary Score: A

Congratulations on your multifarious vocabulary! You must be quite an erudite person.

Update: If you own a Mac I’ve just discovered a perfect way to cheat at this quiz. Put the mouse pointer over the word in question. Now press ⌃ ⌘ D or [ctrl]+[cmd]+D, depending on how you prefer to notate keyboard shortcuts. Don’t you feel like a dirty cheat now? Apologies to non Mac users.

1) A Not the Nine O’Clock News sketch.

2) The FIAT Ritmo/Strada commercial it made reference to.

I have no idea why I know about any of this, because I think I was two at the time, but watching both jiggled my memory banks.

There’s a story linked to by boingboing.net about why a certain TV programme called Lost doesn’t work. I suppose it’s not really surprising that someone who gets paid to write for New York magazine took over two series worth of programming to notice what I did within two episodes. What is surprising is that so many viewers are still tuning in to have their plonkers pulled. It beggars every convention of standard dramatic plotting. It’s like a commercial Waiting for Godot without the existentialism, humour, artistic value and sense of purpose.

Sometimes I wish there weren’t so many options for ordinary folk to leave their responses on serious articles on newspaper websites. For example, I saw this today at the bottom of a brief, lightweight article on neuroscience in the Guardian:

Didn’t dinosaurs have two brains at one time? Where did the other brain go to? Didn’t human beings evolve from dinosaurs? Do human beings still have that second brain somewhere inside of them? If they do, what is it’s purpose?

Yes, indeed, we evolved from reptiles. That second brain is actually called the appdendix, and it controls the constriction and relaxation of the anal sphincter. Sadly, on some people the primary brain does not function, and the appendix has to take over.

From Dave’s blog (and all sorts of others before it):

1. Grab the nearest book.
2. Open the book to page 123.
3. Find the fifth sentence.
4. Post the text of the next 3 sentences on your blog along with these instructions.
5.Don’t you dare dig for that “cool” or “intellectual” book in your closet! I know you were thinking about it! Just pick up whatever is closest.
6. Tag three people.

I’m sitting in front of a bookcase, so about 250 are within arm’s reach. Reaching with my right arm, the closest to the tip of my middle finger is:

I enquire the way to the inn; but no one replied. I then moved forward and a murmuring sound arose from the crowd as they followed and surrounded me; when an ill-looking man approaching, tapped me on the shoulder, and said, "Come, Sir, you must follow me to Mr. Kirwin’s, to give an account of yourself."
"Who is Mr. Kirwin? Why am I to give an account of myself? Is this not a free country?"

Frankentsein, Mary Shelley

If you don’t like that you can have:

One of the more memorable examples of such verbiage is Ansel Adams’s description of the camera as an "instrument of love and revelation" Adams also urges that we stop saying that we "take" a picture and always say we "make" one. Stieglitz’s name for the cloud studies he did in the late 1920s – "Equivalents," that is, statements of his inner feelings – is another, soberer instance of the persistent effort of photographers to feature the benevolent character of picture-taking and discount its predatory implications. What talented photographers do cannot of course be characterized as simply predatory or as simply, and essentially, benevolent.

On Photography, Susan Sontag

I’m not going to tag anyone, but if this seems like a fun thing to do, please follow suit.

Or is it actually the nadir of laziness? Depends on whether you approve of idleness, I suppose.

What exactly would Bertrand Russell have made of pre-prepared beans on toast?

Courtesy of the Guardian.

Recent Japanese research suggests that kissing lessens the production of histamines, hence alleviating hayfever. I’m not joking.

Sadly the article doesn’t explain how you convince your partner to indulge you in a 30 minute kissing session when you’re dribbling goo from four of the openings on your face.

Does exactly what it says on the tin. Click here.

If this article means what I think it means, then Douglas Adams has been reaffirmed. It seems that a quantum computer has managed to find the answer to a question without knowing what the question was in the first place, just like a certain computer in Hitch-hiker’s Guide to the Galaxy. The mind boggles.

According to this slick-looking website, to which I sent the picture above, I look like a mixture of: Rosanna Arquette, Hrithik Roshan, Ralph Nader, Dave Mustaine, Pierce Brosnan, Hilary Swank, Doris Lessing, Neve Campbell, Nick Cave, and Arthur Rimbaud. Who’d have thought?

Of course, I tried a different photo, which proved conclusively that I am the bastard child of the moronic Dan Quayle and the magnificent Meryl Streep. So, who do I really look like? Answers in the comments if you can think of anyone.

During my link harvesting I discovered that Nick Cave was born and raised in the town of Warracknabeal, where a far-flung branch of my family owns a restaurant.

I thought that taking a year out before university was something you did to broaden your mind and get some experience of the real world. Perhaps no-one told this nutter, who has chosen to spend an entire year in Disneyworld, at a cost of about $100,000. That’s going to look really good on his university application forms.

Oooh. What is it? Or, more to the point, what has just taken our photograph?

I was just drifting into sleep at about half past one this morning when a neighbour thoughtfully let off a handful of fireworks. Fireworks! Whistling fireworks!

The human mind is a perplexing thing. I think mine was getting ready to sort through the day’s information while I dozed, but when I was been yanked back to full consciousness my recharging stopped while my mental stock-taking continued. Try as I might, I can’t get back to sleep because I’m pondering questions with no answers. Have I done the right thing moving to the US with Courtney? Is there any point in me chasing my movie-making dream? Would I be working towards my goals better if I were on some kind of course? Am I allowed to feel bitter because Courtney’s working on her passion while I’ve been stalled for two years? Is there any way we can both make progress and live together? What concessions can I ask her to make for my sake, and if I get them, will I just waste the opportunity?

As if these weren’t enough, every now and then I return to the big question: shouldn’t I be at home sorting things out with my family?

So here’s a big thanks to the arsehole with the fireworks for throwing my tired brain into existential crisis. Cheers, mate. If I ever find out who you are I’ll put a rattlesnake in your bed.

I wouldn’t normally do this kind of thing, but James did ask. Twice. By the end he’ll probably be wishing he never did. This post is not for the faint of heart, containing partial frontal male nudity, lasciviously described in purple prose.

One January night in 2001 I was midway through my fifth pint. It was most likely a Guinness because the Westgate is a Wetherspoon’s pub, and sold Guinness cheaper than elsewhere. I was a penniless undergrad at the time, and it was either drink cheap beer at the Wetherspoon’s or drink something wrapped in a brown paper bag under the railway arches. I had a fair number of drinking companions with me that night, and we were making merry. As I was laughing at some witticism or another, the jiggling of my stomach brought to my attention the distended state of my bladder. Something needed to be done, and done quickly.

“Here in LA, foggy and chilly. Overcast in the early morning.”

David Lynch reads the weather.

…six legs?

It’s another beautiful day in northern California, and for the first time in a few weeks Courtney isn’t working on an English essay. Earlier I managed to wrest the laptop from her typing talons and have a browse around. The third thing I came across was this:

A puppy with two extra legs and a second penis is drawing curious stares at a temple in Pandamaran town.

He certainly looks pretty happy.

Here’s the rest of the story.

Although the blog suggests otherwise, I’ve not gone belly-up or been disappeared by Homeland Security. Visits from first James and then Mum and Dave-Dad (as opposed to Duncan-Dad) have eaten up all my time and quite a bit of Courtney’s.

Speaking of Courtney, she’s just walked in the door with two big bottles of my favourite beer (St. Peter’s English Ale, since you ask) to quell the pain of Norwich’s embarrassing 6-0 exit from the Permiership. My big green and yellow bruise is subsiding already.

I really hope this chap does some more updates, but I fear it is a blog as dead as its subjects.

Nil points for spelling and grammar, though. "Mouses," indeed.

In future, should I mark facetious blog posts out with a little [facetious] in the title?

To clear up any misunderstanding that may have occurred after the last post, me and the missus are as perfectly happy as normal, or bumbling along in our own little way, whichever you’d rather imagine.

Must stop now and take my beating. I’ll blog more when I can sit down at the computer again.