LOL

“I never really get too fussed about what people think about their own intellects. I’m always happy to be in awe of someone whose own intellect delivered us the cones hotline, I must say.”
 IDS


Not often I laugh these days, and a bit of an open goal. But still.

Well Known For It

What each country leads the world in.

Back in the day Britain would have been all red double-deckers. I blame Ken Livingstone and his bendy buses.

How to be a Yankee

Sitting here shivering in my bedsit in Mitcham SY in the good ole U of K... this guide from Maggie's Farm seems like an ideal sort of life...

Achewood

Achewood is back! Yaaaaaaaaay!!!

Gold Mine

Less Wrong : this whole site is beautiful.

I am so far wrong that returning were as tedious as go o'er... but perhaps there is hope and succour for my readers. If there were any. Readers, that is, not hope or succour.

Beowulf

Nice to be hearing Seamus Heanay's translation of Beowulf on Radio 4.

If you wanted your Local Council  to make a translation... it would be no worse.

Hwaet!

Pr0n

Is this a good life?

Is this a desirable life?

I am so tired.

Clipperty clopperty.

Clop clop clop.

Anything Else Not Broken Down?

My whisky bottle is still working this morning, but not for long.

Everything else would appear to have gone a bit sideways.

America, for instance, has decided not to have its Government. Not for the first time.

Astonishing

A bat calcified in Lake Natron, Tanzania, from Nick Brandt's exhibition Across the Ravaged Land.

Sexual Intercourse: No Thank You

Blogista: I really don't want to.

Readers: Nor do we. Like that Lord Chessington said, the pleasure is ridiculous, the position momentary, and it costs at least fifteen guineas.

Blogista: The last time I even  attempted to have sexual intercourse it cost me at least twenty guineas. And...

Readers:: ... you have our sympathies.

Miliband: Chasing You To The Bottom

Blogista: You go anywhere near my bottom and I will hit you with a machete. Or something.

Miliband: I have examined your flat and found nothing even resembling a gardening tool. The most dangerous things you own are a small cross-head screwdriver which is the last of a set of four you bought from the local Pound Shop. And a hand-held vacuum cleaner whose batteries last about two minutes. When we come for you we will not feel at all threatened.

Blogista: Before the next election I could go down the Pound Shop again.

Miliband: And buy a mop whose head falls off as soon as you get it home.

Blogista: I already got one of those.

Keihanaikukauakahihuliheekahaunaele? So where's the 'okina?

Every news agency and his dog is repeating the story of a Mrs Janice Keihanaikukauakahihuliheekahaunaele whose surname at 35 characters plus an 'okina (a glottal stop shown as an apostrophe) is too long for the Hawaiian driving license which they say has a 35-character limit.

None of the growing number of reporters have noticed that there are only 34 characters shown on the license, so that both the final e and the 'okina are missing.

Nor have any of them reflected that they are reporting her name without the 'okina, so that they are all getting it wrong as well.

I don't know or care where it goes but then I'm not a journalist. At least I can count to 34. Even to 36.

Friday the Thirteenth

Being the Lance-Corporal Jones of the interwebs, and always a step behind the rest, I have missed Friday the Thirteenth by a bit.

And we need all of the decent human beings who don’t fall into any of those categories, but are simply disgusted by the idea of armed thugs arresting, humiliating and ruining people for the “crime” of consensual sex...It’s time we let the prohibitionists know that if they want to pick on sex workers, we have a whole lot of brothers and sisters they’re going to have to face as well.

This is from Maggie McNeill, the Honest Courtesan, and I couldn't agree more.

The UK, though light on the armed thugs, is not without those prohibitionists who look to find ever more ingenious ways of forcing all prostitution outside the law, while having no suggestions as to how to deal with that miserable part of the trade driven by drug addiction, poverty and homelessness.

Not Single Spies, but in Battalions

Sorrows, that is, they come not single spies but in battalions. Poor old Claudius, Hamlet IV:5.

So yesterday night being exceedingly drunk I banged my head on something - too drunk to remember what  - and being exceedingly drunk I did not deal with the copiously bleeding scalp wound so well. And woke this morning to find my bedsit looking like a slaughter-house in the middle of a battlefield.

Phoned by an agent early doors to offer me an interview. A JOB INTERVIEW! EMPLOYMENT?!?! Except my hair is solid with dried blood and I need a haircut before I look respectable, and probably not ready to make a good impression for a week or so. I am not so sure that my lie explanation, which was that I'm already booked to spend a week in Bristol having sexual intercourse with an old flame, went down so well.

So put the bedding into the washing machine, And just for once the washing machine broke down and about 12 hours later I managed to get my bedding, soaking wet and stinking of washing machine, out of the washing machine. It is now drying (?) into the bloodsoaked carpet.

And just now the bulb on my desktop lamp has gone out so I can barely see my keyboard.

Might as well get stinking drunk again, which is what I am busy doing.

Edit: Now my washing machine has broken down completely. At least the bedding, albeit smelly and rigid,  is *clean*.

Syria: the Strategy

Bombing Syria would be the most awesomely beezer jape imaginable...












...and a jape without any possible unforeseen or unintended consequences.

Well, that's me convinced, eh, readers.

Carry On Cro-Magnoning

Oh I say, there's one of those dreadful Neanderthal girls. All hairy and smelly and they have those vulgarly big bottoms.












My dear, let's get onto the open savannah and take anything homo sapiens sapiens we can surprise, and out-run it  from behind.

 



Here's the science!

The savannah again? Don't we British ever get to have sexual intercourse?

I have to tell you now that no such undertaking has been received and consequently this country is at war with Germany.

Thinking Allowed, with Admiral Karl Doenitz

Zadly ze Laurie Taylor hes bin zhot vhile attemptink not to ezcape, zo gut rittance  es ein former head of ztate I haff been esked  to ztand in for ze Radio 4 Sinking Allowed. 

Zo, all ze tramas on ze BBC Radio 4, zey gotta have ze zenzitive moments, ja?

Vell, not ze vones that are forty-vive minutes to vone hour or more of ze continual bellowink, but zat is only von in sree or zo.

Zo vy is ze zenzitive incidental muzik OLVAYS ze Arvo Pärt "Spiegel im Spiegel"? Even in "Pride and Prejudice" is "Spiegel im Speigel"!!! All ze characters haff been dead for zenturies, but is "Spiegel im Spiegel"!!!

Zadly ze  Roger Bolton hes bin zhot vhile attemptink not to escape, zo gut rittance  es ein former head of ztate I haff been esked  to ztand in for ze Radio 4 Feetbeck.

Zere vill vizout doubt be zome comment on ze Arvo Pärt "Spiegel im Spiegel".

Shipping Forecast

Portcullis: west or north-west, four or five, backing south-west five to seven, moderate or good. Seventeen or some other number I can throw in to frighten everybody. Thirty-five. Occasionally very poor.

Reader(s): Thirty-five eh. That will have some of your listeners sucking anxiously at their pipes and

Foreblogster: Sorry, did I say thirty-five? I meant eighty-six.

Redars(e): EIGHTY-SIX??? You're just deliberately fucking them over.

Broadblogster:  Very poor forever. Nine hundred and forty-one.

Dreare(s): Stop doing this.

Blog of Ages: What.

Adeerr(s): Doing these pretend conversations and changing all the names every time and calling us a redars(e) because it has the same letters and trying to think of some new and pretentious way of working the word "blog" into your handle and generally not doing a solid and sensible piece of prose like you can read in the Daily Mail for instance instead of a fake shipping forecast and

For Those in Peril on the Blog: Hm. You may have a point.

 (s)rreedA: *sigh*

Admiral Doenitz: *facepalm*

Think of a Woman

Reader(s): Phoarrr.

Blogista: No, think of a woman.

Redars(e):

Blognate: If it helps, imagine you're a Canadian at the same time.

Arsehole(s):

Blogomentary m'dear Watson: Really, just one.

Clueles(s): Well, there's Jane Austen. She was a woman.

Blog Stripped Bare: And?

Dafuc(k): Not sure. Women we've heard of? What are you asking of us?

Blogometrician:

Non-person(s):  There was that Mary... Wossname.

Continuing

Amiral des Blogues: I am determined to write a new blog entry every day. Every day in every way I will blog better and better.

Human Race:  We will certainly read your blog.

The Blogger in the Iron Mask: srsly?

Australopithecinea: They're pulling your leg mate.


The Blogger who Came in from the Cold: Suppose I'd better stick a picture in for decoration.

Australopithecinea: Yeh why not.

Sinking Feeling

Blogista: +++ enamour duckling dryness prevene +++

Readers: Wha.

Blogista: Chief engineer is dead, captain is continually drunk, all of the passengers drowned, leaves no profit whatever.

From the A.B.C. Telegraphic Code (4th Edition) 1880.

Oh what fun they must have had in those days.

The European Banking System

How she works.

Forever Alone

I know it is sad, and that I am sad...

...but I just love th'interwebs.

Everybody's Friend

Thanks to your floppy-haired imaginary friend and Prime Minister (what, you haven't seen "Love, Actually" which stars me as a floppy-haired imaginary friend and Prime Minister)...

Readers: Have you actually seen "Love Actually"?

Blogster: No, I haven't, actually. I have never actually seen a film in which Hugh fucking Grant has actually appeared. Nor either an actually television series. I believe he has actually appeared in many Jane-Austin-related costume farces which I have not actually seen either.

Readers: Why u no get real? Hugh fucking Grant has gone so much lot of trouble to help you see what is. What IS. WHY U NOOO???

I Am So Sorry

I cannot tell you how sorry I am for not posting more frequently.

Best I can do is "not". I am not sorry at all. Nor are you.

I founded this blog with the sincere intention of creating a rubbish dump for those wormy hobby-horsical loose shifty random mental spasms aka "thoughts" that crept up and mugged me from time to time.

Reality has overtaken me. I am no longer able to compete with the madness out there and

Readers: Hate to interrupt you in mid-flow but would you care to publish some news?*snurk*

Blogista: My cat Tiddles has died.

Readers: Now we fucking GOT YA COLD, is a bulti-billion pound fine and time up before the beak. I mean the fucking judge, dirtbag.

Blogista: I don't even have a cat. I was just making that up.

Readers: You print what Hugh fucking Grant TELLS you to print and you fucking print it when Hugh fucking Grant fucking TELLS you to fucking print it, orright?

Blogista: In breaking news, my goldfish Tiddles has some fungus on his gills. Defiant to the end, eh?

Hugh fucking Grant:  You fucking don't print that til I tolt yew to fucking print that OKAY?

Russian Mafia: Sort Cyprus. Don't nick our money.Word to the wise.

Whistle

Mr Xoggoth, our only reader, has been given a whistle-operated Device by Mrs. Xoggoth.

M. R. James in "Oh, Whistle, and I'll Come to You, My Lad" shows you what happens when such Devices are operated.

Now I will be left alone with my plesiosaurs, who don't read blogs.

Public Service

Some may opine that this my blog is a farrago of incoherent whim-whams but, by golly, here is a link to an excellent Online Etymological Dictionary.

And there are links on the right to more than one site concerned with plesiosaurs, yes, plesiosaurs.

Brits Abroad

An anxious SS report from August 1943 that British POWs are not  making the desired impression...

Some other British prisoners were singing a rude song to the tune of "Deutschland uber Alles" as they passed two high German officials in uniform. When one of these officials said "That's going a little too far, my friends", one of the prisoners who understood German called back "We're not your friends, we're British."

 The crowning insult was the disfigurement of a portrait of the Führer in a station waiting room by a British prisoner who drew rude pictures over it.

Examples were quoted of prisoners simply walking away and refusing to work - or doing their work so badly that it constituted a danger.

And...

The British are always decently dressed, their uniforms are always in faultless condition, they are shaved, clean and well fed. Their attitude is extraordinarily self-possessed, one could almost say arrogant and overbearing.

...of course that's broadly how the Brits abroad are to this day.