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*.