The Lair Of The Male Lesbian

Saw this in an ad break in the cricket and decided I needed to show it to people. I don't think it requires any additional comment.

I then discovered the company's previous advertisement, which didn't make it onto national television for some reason:

PJW

I drink a reasonable amount of Diet Coke.

This is an understatement. My Coke habit is currently powering the world economy, I'm the reason Coke are winning the cola wars, I'm considering taking out a separate Coke overdraft, it'd be far cheaper if I smoked forty a day and probably better for me, I've been known to crave more Coke than the average Bath rugby player (allegedly).

This has led to something of a problem as my dealer Sainburys have started giving away free Coke glasses with 2 x 2l bottles of Diet Coke. I now have enough spare glasses to sink a small battleship. There are at least five in the kitchen which haven't even been unboxed

Anyone fancy a glass. Or five?

PJW

Had the landlord pop in this morning to ask if he come round in the next couple of days to take some photographs for showing to builders of planned renovations.

Thank goodness for my paranoia. I've been taking a lunatic attitude of, "What if the landlord decides to come round while we're out?" when it comes to housework of late. Ever since the disastrous last visit, when he came around unexpectedly, after learning that his good friend's tenants from hell and his new tenants were one and the same, we've kinda been out of last chances. If we screw up again, then there will be no good in protesting that we were unprepared and it's not normally like this.

I think my anal retentiveness and nagging annoys Caroline on occasions, but by god did it pay off today. Rather than a panicked expression and an, "Errr, can you come back in a week?" I was able to say, "Would you like to do it today?"

Granted I still had to run the hoover over the carpets and shovel our dirty clothes pile into the washing machine/wardrobe/random cupboard/fish tank, but when he came back, I had the very great satisfaction of letting him in and continuing with what I was doing while he took his photos, rather than following him around making excuses.

I don't think we've moved away from our last chance yet, but I now feel a heck of a lot better about our landlord's perception of us.

PJW

In my traditional disorganised fashion, I've kind of half-organised a boardgames evening round my house tonight. Only to realise that I've kind of only invited four people. And two of them are leaving halfway through.

Anyone not doing anything this evening at 7?

PJW

There's a particular strata of celebrity, which is defined only be disbelief at their demise. An internet rumour tells me that Jeff Goldblum is dead (he's not, btw), and my reaction is, "Oh, that's sad." The front page of a newspaper (okay, it was The Sun, so a kiddy newspaper) tells me that Michael Jackson has died and I'm not certain that it's true until I check it from several different sources.

Apparently, I'm not alone. Michael Jackson became such a popular search term on Google that it started returning "your query looks similar to automated requests from a computer virus or spyware application" errors instead of results, under the impression that it was under attack. His death killed Twitter, although to be fair, you can break Twitter by coughing too loudly. More impressively, the amount of extra traffic on news and entertainment sites reduced the overall availability of widely-used website from 100% to 86%

As epitaphs go, there have been worse.

PJW

When a website's slogan is "Conservative Values For An Unsaved World", you know it's going to be highly entertaining.

ChristWire is fantastic. Xenophobic, racist, misogynistic, homophobic and, above all, lunatic American Christians humiliating themselves for our entertainment by getting very annoyed about everything and wrestling ineptly with the English language in an attempt to warn others about the devilry and sin.

There's staggeringly entertaining misogyny in Gay Feminists Disrespect Men, Rename Themselves Womyn, wonderful acronyms in the promotion of the National Organisation for Marriage (NOM) which protects us against Pepsi-Loving Homogays and circular statements and tautologies a-go-go with scientific PROOF for intelligent design.

The pinnacle though is the section on "Commies" (I kid you not), which includes such wonderous article titles as Japanese Create Crying Sumo Baby Contest ("They make evil robots, octopus love and those God forsaken animes"), Immoral Chinese Sperm Banks ("Using the demonic lure of pornography to get their already ridiculous number of men to share their demonseed at the hands of geisha (Chinese for hooker) women in nurse outfits") Chinese Invent Giant Firebreathing Robot Armies ("Only weeks ago I warned everyone about the evil hordes of Chinese who will come and kill us all dead with their clone armies and biological weapons!"), Chinese Communist Father Shoots Mystic Energy At His Baby ("The child is being toughened up for future war against America") and Terrifying – Putin, Soviets Caught Trying To Break Ronald Reagan (picture evidence) ("the same Vladimir Putin that killed a tiger with his bare hands and makes ‘how to kill nice Americans dead with Chinese Judo’ videos").

And, then, there is the article about the Penistron and those Unholy Japanese:

"My friends, the Japanese scientsits have now officially gone too far! They have created a way for whores, gays and homosexual pedomen to electronically dilly your kids too! I am absolutely livid and organizing a way to boycott Japan off the world wide web!

I could only pray that Harry Truman were alive to properly take care of the place which created this Penistron contraption because the heat of 1 million nukes will not compare to the heat of hell where its creators belong!

This is outrageous. Japanese scientists have created a new video game where people can electronically control a man’s thingy or a woman’s sallyjessy!

Let’s say a gay man comes on Myspace and tricks your college son into buying on of these abominations. The gay man can use a joystick to electronically control the artificial satan scepter in your son’s room, all the way on the other side of the world via internet.

The gay will then type, ‘Ok, now stick the rod into your devilwhole and I’ll make it move all around with my joystick here!” You see what is going on here! I wish this were two thousand years ago and we had unlimited stones to throw at all involved parties!

Rest assured that while all these online gays, homosexuals and whores are fornicating with this new video game, Satan will be typing ‘LOL’ (laughs out loud) as he creates a new place in hell for all involved parties.

My friends, this game is sick and there is nothing fun about burning in hell. This Penistron is absolutely filthy. Your wife and daughters may get an offer from a stranger to ’sign on late one night and stick this thingy where the sun dont’ shine’ and think their new play time won’t lead them to burn forever.

Online pedostrians will be trying to send a new ‘gift’ to your sons for Christmas, and you’ll never know why they are locked in their room for hours with their magically swiveling robot scepters.

This Penistron technology is directly from Satan himself and I am not surprised it was invented by the Japanese. Please alert your parenting/church networks about this device so we can start to organize the official boycott."

Too many quotes.

PJW

We currently have a loop of advertisements on the banks of televisions at work and, since that's my department and where I spend a fair bit of time, I get to see them go round and round. A lot.

One of the ads is for Sky HD and it's showing the difference between ordinary Freeview and HD, using the Doe-ray-me song from The Sound of Music. Now, I've never liked that song. It's facile, cutesy and highly annoying, with the added bonus of it sticking in your head for the rest of the day. However, I've now listened to the lyrics and discovered a new and exciting reason to hate it.

- Doe, a deer. A female deer. Okay, I can go with that.
- Ray, a drop of golden sun. As opposed to the black sun that we hear so much about. And is a ray really a drop? I would've gone with beam... never mind.
- Me, a name I call myself. Hmm, fine.
- Far, a long, long way to run. No problems there.
- So (sew), a needle pulling thread. I'd say sew was fixing together cloth, rather than the needle itself, but I'll allow artistic license.
- Lah, a note to follow so.
- Te...

A note to follow so?

A NOTE TO FOLLOW SO?

What the fuck, Maria? What the fuck is "A note to follow so"? You're supposed to be teaching children the joys of music and that's the best you can come up with? Why not have the whole song be sequential? Ray, a drop of golden note after Doe? In fact, fuck it, lets just have a list.

1. Do - The first note. Only flanked on one side.
2. Re - The second note. Comes after Do, but before Mi.
3. Mi - The third note. Noted for coming between Re and Fa.

"Maria, tell us about the joys of singing and help us forget about our militaristic father and those evil, evil Nazis."
"Certainly. I shall sing you a song that contains a moronic lyric with no imagination or artistry whatsoever. It will help teach you to sing along with boy bands."

note.setValue = "A needle pulling thread."
public nextNote () {
    note = note.getNext();
}

You've had years in a nunnery and that's the best you can come up with? I'd really hate to see the first drafts. La, the sound you make when you push your tongue up to your front teeth and then bring it down whilst exhaling? La, an L, followed by an A? La, the sound you make shortly after a full lobotomy and shortly before deciding that "A note to follow so" was a good idea?

Bloody nuns.

PJW

Decimate means to kill one in ten. If you decimate something, then you destroy a tenth of it. If you're looking for a word which means total destruction, why not try annihilate.

It is impossible to ferment a riot/rebellion/revolt. That would mean that you whip up an angry mob in order to turn it into alcohol. The word you are looking for is foment.

If you are ambivalent, it does not mean that you do not care. It means you feel two opposing emotions, usually very strongly. If you do not care, then you are apathetic.

Fuckups like this are becoming so common that it  is well nigh impossible to use these words in the correct context, because someone will misunderstand you due to having previously heard someone else abuse the English language. I've just been rewatching Bones and have seen a group of highly intelligent, logophilic and pedantic characters allow the misuse of decimate without comment.

It's mildly annoying.

PJW

Not just slightly dead, but really dead. It's not a software issue, it's not a virus, it's a hardware problem and it appears to be mildly terminal.

Bugger.

A double bugger is that I have lost a lot of numbers. I have an old backup from my last phone, but it's missing a lot of important people.

So, if you think I should have your phone number, please leave a message after the tone a comment under this post. Theoretically, they should be screened so only I can see them.

PJW

I managed to get both audio systems out. Using a mixture of proper metal prongs, profanity, paring knives, imprecations and brute force, both the default Skoda radio and my old car cd player were levered out of their sockets.

Unfortunately, they appear to have completely different plugs and wires in the back of them.

This was not the deal. I got through this hurdle and then it was meant to be plain sailing from thereon in. Graaagghghg!

PJW

Anyone know how to remove a car CD player and transplant it into another? More pertinently, can anyone do it in the very near future?

The CD player is the only reason that my old car is still sitting in the driveway and I've just had a very polite enquiry from the landlord about when it's likely to disappear. I've got the metal dibbles that are supposed to let you get the CD player out, but I've proven spectacularly incapable of doing it myself.

Help?

PJW

My mobile phone has taken a strange turn for the peculiar. By this, I mean that it's decided that working properly is for losers and that constant stuttering and fucking about is the way that winners go about things. I strongly suspect it of managing to pick up a virus, which is quite an impressive job for a Symbian phone. Bloody thing is not enough like a computer to do everything I want it to, but just enough like a computer to be able to go completely tits up because some little git from China discovered a fun and exciting new exploit.

So, if you're trying to text or ring me, it's not (just) that I hate you and am screening your calls. My mobile phone hates you too.

PJW

I'd imagine if you're reading this, then I've probably blithered to you about the glory that is Kamikaze Cookery already. Three geeks, cooking, with Science. And blowtorches.

Their latest project is to attempt to cook three dishes from different 3-Michelin-starred chefs, live on the internet, whilst dealing with help/heckling from their viewers and interacting through live video, chat and Twitter. So far, there have been drill-powered whisks, mocking of dough-making technique and enforcement of the emergency ravioli recipe.

One of the dishes is some nut meringue things called dacquoises, which decided to be so lovely that the baking sheet doesn't want to let them go. The chefs asked for helpful suggestions to get them loose. I suggested Swarfega. Caroline suggested chilling them in the freezer. Surprisingly enough, they went for the latter. Even more surprising was the fact that it worked perfectly, leading to this immortalisation in KKC-history.

The show is a two-parter, with the second bout of chaos starting from this clicky, Wednesday evening at 6. It's well worth watching and joining in the chat if you've enjoyed the regular KKC episodes, even if only for the capability to mock in realtime.

PJW

I'm becoming more and more impressed by the writing in Order of the Stick. Not only is it funny, enthralling and full of win, but there's been a giant Chekov's snarl on the mantlepiece for a very long time and it's been disguised enough that I haven't seen it coming.

There are lots of writers who have the gun on the mantlepiece for the gunshot in act 4. Very few are good enough to convince you that the gun is part of the background and will have nothing to do with any future gunshot.

PJW


ETA. Chekov's gun, for those who don't know.

As some of you may have heard, a few weeks ago, I managed to lose some of Caroline's data from her old laptop while it was away at repair.

And by 'some', you may read, 'a lot'. And by 'data', you may read, 'her most recent and important documents'.

I'd removed the documents from the broken laptop onto a portable HDD, as I was expecting the repair to involve wiping the hard disk. On this portable HDD, I also had backups from a loaner laptop she'd been using, docs that she'd stored on my laptop, and an old backup from last year. In my infinite wisdom, I decided to merge all of these backups into one neat folder, for tidiness's sake. When Caroline went to look for the docs from the broken laptop, they weren't there. In fact, the portable HDD refused any knowledge of ever having had the documents, even resisting the police-search-level-scan for deleted and formatted files that I attempted. I hadn't deleted anything, hadn't given any permissions to overwrite anything, hadn't merged files, nor pressed any kind of erase, delete, remove or eject button, but the data was gone.

Ironically enough, the broken laptop came back without the hard drive having been wiped.

Today, I was looking through a computer which has never been associated with Caroline's data. It had not shared any document files with her laptop and has never been used for backups. It has also been reformatted and a new OS installed since I'd lost the files.

Caroline's documents were sitting nonchalently on the C drive.


I'm planning on eschewing computers until they stop being so fucking weird.

PJW

Anyone not doing anything this Sunday (he said to the crowd of LARPers)?

If not, then there's going to be a fascinating game going on at the Rec. I'd love any and all support that's going*; it should be free entry, as I very much doubt they'll charge to watch Old Sulians vs Police. It's only a friendly and it might not be the biggest game of rugby of the season, but it will be me, playing in a professional rugby club's stadium.

<glee>

PJW


*Especially support that wants to take photos!

This was due to be the post of joy, where I talk about how my mouth is kinda fixed, I've got my shifts rearranged at work perfectly and I'm going to get to fulfil a long-standing ambition and play a proper rugby game on the Rec.

However, post of joy has been postponed due to the discovery that our new landlord is very good friends with our old landlady. The one whom we ended up annoying quite a bit and are still in dispute with over the deposit. I don't think we're quite as popular as we used to be.

PJW

You turn up and get fed your third dinner of the night. It's better than both of the previous two put together.
Doug and Bexx sing.
Doug, Bexx and Judith sing.
You ask for, and receive, your wife's permission to explain to another woman why she's highly attractive.
You get to see sunrise from the wrong side.
The host is unable to get to bed, because he's made sure everyone else got to sleep first and they're now blocking his route to the bedroom.
You drive home and only then count back how many hours there were between stopping drinking and the drive. And feel slightly guilty.
You have only one hour of sleep before going into work.

PJW

I don't like reality television shows at all. My idea of a good television show is something that I can escape into, that takes me away from where I am and makes me believe in its world. I tend to regard reality television as being at best lazy and at worst exploitative and cheap.

However, have just been shown a clip from Britain's Got Talent by mermaidrain which actually makes me vaguely interested in watching the show proper if it can produce moments of television like that. This frumpy middle-aged woman walks on stage, obviously nervous, trying to act brave in front of a giant cock Simon Cowell and gets treated like a delusional idiot when she says that she would like to be a professional singer. Then she sings.

Boy howdy, does she.

Well worth watching.

PJW

A dramatic reading of a REAL breakup letter.

PJW