Posts

  • 1st
    • BBC’s Big Read → The BBC’s Big Read has narrowed down 21 books which may or may not be “the nation’s favourite”. It doesn’t say anything about whether the books are good, just that they’re the nation’s favourite. I don’t see how anything other than Harry Potter or Hitchhiker’s can win. Excellent :)
  • 2nd
  • 5th
    • Cat + Bed → Lucy, the cat.
    • Burnt-out car → Photo of a burnt out car
    • Praia do Forte → On the northeast coast of Brazil, in the state of Bahia, there is a city called Salvador. It’s famous for spicy food and being the capital during colonial times. Unfortunately, I don’t know anything about it, since I didn’t go there. I went to Praia do Forte, which is quite close. Praia do [...]
  • 8th
    • Broken washing machine design → Last year the washing machines got broken into by some hard pipe-hittin’ scallies with a pair of pliers and adidas tracksuits, so the hall bought new, token operated ones. They were designed by idiots. The machine lies completely dead until you put a token into the separate box on top. Then the green light comes on [...]
    • Swords on Ebay → Answerphone message: “Oh hello, I’m just ringing up regarding the swords that you had on ebay…” Listen for yourself For the record, I’ve never bought or sold anything on ebay, swords or otherwise.
    • Annoying Two Towers DVD review → Breathless magazine prose is disgusting. This review of the Two Towers extended DVD is particularly horrible: What follows is nothing less than a truly epic battle, in which the fate of both Middle-earth and the Quest of the Ring literally hang in the balance. Trust me when I say, it’s like nothing you’ve ever seen before [...]
  • 10th
    • Widget greatest invention in last 40 years → The mirror claims the widget is the greatest invention in the last 40 years. That’s kind of bleak, so here’s the trivia: I’m told it was invented by my… uh… let me think… first cousin once removed. Dad’s dad’s brother’s son. - So what does that make us? - Absolutely nothing!
  • 15th
    • Word groups closed under definition → Here’s a nasty thought I had today. When you look up a word in a dictionary, you’ll find it’s defined in terms of other words. If you look up each of those words, you’ll find they’re defined in terms of yet more words. Repeat. Question: will you eventually look up every word in the dictionary, or [...]
  • 16th
    • Hello! → Friendly high explosives in SVG
  • 17th
    • Won’t somebody please think of Bush? → There is a nonzero chance of Bush getting himself assassinated this week when he comes to Britain and faces all the people that hate him. That’s almost everybody. Of course, he won’t be motorcading along Downing Street, not even in a Kathy-Lee-Gifford-in-South-Park style bulletproof bubble. As long as Dick Cheney remains alive, Bush is safe, but [...]
  • 19th
    • Some feats aren’t tough enough anymore → The English Channel has been swum more than 600 times, Everest has been climbed more than 800 times, and so on and so forth. Since superfit athletes are evidently so common, fame seekers and record breakers must either think of something tougher, or make existing feats harder. Robert Garside is planning to swim around the [...]
    • Performance-enhancing exercise → Why are performance-enhancing drugs banned in sports competitions? I can think of two reasons: They can have dangerous or nasty side effects They convey an unfair advantage Compare these with the current acceptable method of performance enhancement: exercise. It’s not uncommon for athletes to spend 8 hours a day training. Why is this more acceptable than spending 8 hours [...]
    • Stop Bush by… walking out of lessons? → - Whaddya know about stopping Bush? - I dunno, my memory ain’t so great. - Maybe this‘ll help… - I dunno, it’s still kinda hazy… - How about this? The word on the street says there’s going to be a mass walkout of lectures tomorrow lunchtime in aid of Stopping Bush. Not sure what that’s going to achieve, except, as [...]
  • 21st
    • Frijj Raspberry Doh’nut flavour milkshakes are disgusting → See title. Yuck. It’s a Simpsons tie-in, which should’ve set alarm bells ringing. This is the TV show that gave us vaseline on toast, Krusty burgers, America Balls, Tom Collins Pot Pie, Skittlebrau, Ox Testicle, and Space Age Out Of This World Moon Waffles. Some foods are perfectly delicious when served alone, but mutate into dry-wretch [...]
  • 26th
    • ObWaspFactory → Awesomely gruesome BBC article: At first, she thought she had an abscess, but then it wriggled.
    • I dislike it! → Amazon lets you rate stuff from 1 to 5, 1 being bad and 5 being good. Except they don’t like to be too negative: I’m indifferent!!!!!!11 Did a brand guru bypass established antonymy by deciding that the word “hate” was just too nasty to feature on official Corp literature?
  • 27th
  • 28th
    • Two fantastic ideas → Only one of these came to me in a dream: iMacs with screen detachable to form tablet PC Marmite adverts with Gollum!