The Sittingbourne Supremacy

We just got back from a blissful few days' doss with Chris and Jennie @ The Beauty of Bath. Since our last visit he has more wrinkles, and she has more dogs. We discovered Cranium, the Isle of Sheppy, and Strictly Come Duncing, the QI DVD game, whereat we kicked Alan Davies' sorry arse.

This afternoon I am in "turncoat scum" mode as I visit Liberty Stadium to cheer against my home town's team. Then it's all hands to the cocktail shakers, as H hosts Hogmanay for the Swansea select.

Lick Your Own Elbows for Xmas!

What a rich font of wisdom and guidance Christmas is. The Queen tell us to help the needy; the Archbishop of Canterbury urges us to protect the environment; while the Pope trumps the lot, praying for an end to violence. Between them, I'd say they had all human suffering covered. At this rate, there'll be nothing left to fix next year!

Inspired by these sanctimoniousfying feats of moralistic carpet bombing leadership, I humbly offer my own exhortation to my fellow man; let us all lick our own elbows! Christmas is, after all, a time of coming together, a time of love, a time of miracles - if we all nake that little bit more effort each day, we can say "goodbye" to dry elbows forever. Isn't that a gift worth wishing for?

The Old Firm Derby

Blair conversion bolsters Catholicism's lead | Reuters

A big "hurrah!" for the C Team, then - edging ahead of the competition in a tricky away fixture. Looks like the management's recent signings - one star right wing, and a couple of thousand Polish full-backs - have really had an effect. It's a whole new world!

Of course, I prefer to see the fact that only 1.8m out of a population of 60m+ (i.e. 3%) bother to watch the stupid game in the first place, as the truly heartening statistic here. It has possibly made my whole holiday^*, in fact!

* Sorry, couldn't resist!

The Man Who Was Third Way

I have often opined that G. K. Chesterton - whose works I admire - was nevertheless one of the wrongest men who ever lived. Here was a man so resolutely wrong about everything, that he actually converted to Catholicism... presumably because he found the Church of England gave him insufficient scope for wrong-headedness.

Strange how history repeats itself. Except, of course, Tony Blair's talent for witty, evocative fiction and essays is yet to fully blossom...

Radio Daze

High Again
Originally uploaded by Brainless Angel

A slightly bizarre afternoon yesterday; got called up to do an interview on Radio Wales with about ten minutes' notice. You can hear it via the post title link until Christmas Eve - I'm at around 1h 55m.

I hope you dig the subject matter - after that, outing myself for the other thing doesn't seem so bad...

Update: the title link now points to an mp3 of the 4-minute interview.

Anthropomorphowatch 2

BBC NEWS | UK | Fitting tribute to animal heroes

Give me strength...

How about a gong for the gut flora that caused Rommell to miss the start of the Batttle of El Alamein? Hell, no need to think even that discontinuously; let's give a posthumous VC to the torpedo that crippled the Bismarck!

While we're at it, we haven't yet formally apologized to the phylum arthropoda for gassing all those billions of lice in the WWI trenches. Who speaks for them, that's what I want to know?

Land Of The (Practically) Free

Voters focus on pocketbooks as economy wobbles | Reuters:

"'Food prices are getting pretty darn high. Milk is pretty near $3 a gallon.'"

This is a cut'n'paste, and I am not making it up. Three dollars a gallon - and apparently, that's expensive!

You've got to laugh really, haven't you?

L33t Entertainment

Merriam-Webster Online has published the "Words of the Year". I doubt I'll be overusing "w00t", to be honest, although I quite like the self-explanatory "blamestorm". I hope I won't be seen as Pecksniffian if I endeavour to insert "sardoodledom" into a review forthwith. There's a new series of "Doctor Who" soon, for a start...

Moonfaker

Well, it's a space first, of sorts. It seems that China has become the first country to successfully photoshop the moon!

One can't help but wish they'd shown a little more imagination, though. You know - made an alien face, or a WWII bomber or something? Instead, they just moved one of the craters around a bit. Hardly in the Capricorn One school of space-fakery, that...

Nonetheless, this revelation is bound to strengthen the notion that the Chinese government is pathologically incapable of releasing any information without distorting it; even if it's just the exact whereabouts of some very, very distant rocks.

Wooly Thinking

Me ol' mucker (literally, in this case) Leila, who works down on the Swansea Community Farm, has asked me to point both my readers in the direction of her very clever sheep. Any publicity is good publicity, after all.

Perhaps now a few more people will believe my story about having once seen a Swansea sheep look both ways before crossing a road? It's a tall tale, I grant - there are, after all, plenty of higher primates in Townhill that haven't mastered that!

True though. Scout's Honour.

Sprite Ties

The ThinkGeek 8-bit Tie

I'm normally an enemy of "off-the-peg" eccentricities; they're just a way for corporate drones to co-opt some ersatz personality, and I don't see why I should let them get away with it.

But I had to go "ooh!" at this one. 1000% funnier than a Simpsons tie, and they instantly transform the whole shape of the person wearing one. I could actually really do with one this weekend. Damn the Atlantic Ocean...

Professor Yes

There are better links than this for Professor James Chapman, but the rest don't contain quotes by Steve O'Brien. And thus my universe collapses a little further...

You see, I just went to the Ernest Hughes Memorial Lecture at Swansea University, and it went something like this. Chapman's thesis is valid and uncomplicated, although his delivery could use some work. A serious academic but also palpably a fanboy, his case sounds more like a plea for acceptance from the latter, than an offer of it from the former. But still; he likes James Bond, and he's got a chair - that has to be progress.

It could not escape my notice that the Faraday Lecture Theatre now has cushioned seats. Kids today don't know they're born...

Anthropomorphowatch

BBC NEWS | England | Derbyshire | Piglet saved from loo roll peril

Aw, bless.

Let's all hope that little Andrex will be safe and warm and happy tonight, and taste great in the morning, maple-cured and served with a couple of poached duck eggs.

Andorian Over Fist

Darling in Commons row over Rock

While it is supremely difficult to either (a) understand or (b) care about the Northern Rock affair (I actually thought it was a type of beer), it does give a handy excuse to post this.

Body Count

Not Naked; The Other Thing

Norman Mailer was once rhymed with Maxwell Taylor by Simon & Garfunkel. Maxwell Taylor was played by Paul Maxwell in the 1977 movie "A Bridge Too Far". You might remember Paul Maxwell as "Panama Hat Man" in "Indiana Jones & The Last Crusade", which also starred River Phoenix, whose first big break had come in Rob Reiner's "Stand By Me". Regular Reiner collaborator Christopher Guest is the son-in-law of Janet Leigh, who, in 1966, starred in a rather poorly-received movie adaptation of the novel "An American Dream", by Norman Mailer.

I've read it. It's rubbish.

More Stars For Your Buck

Delocator.org.uk

I say, this is jolly. Fancy a coffee? Fancy keeping your soul?

They really need a mobile interface, I suggest.

Good Ol' Little Boy

Hiroshima bomb pilot dies aged 92

Another one to file under "He Was Still Alive?". Paul Tibbets - best known as the answer to the world's fifteenth most popular pub quiz question - has belatedly joined the celestial squadron.

Contrary to myth, Tibbets never expressed any regret at his role in history. His subsequent 62 years of happy life would seem to suggest that someone upstairs concurs. It's certainly true that hardly anyone remembers Charles Sweeney, who dropped Fat Man on Nagasaki - an act far harder to justify in any military context. I guess that just shows the value of being first. Ask Buzz Aldrin.

Purest Green

Poster Girl
Originally uploaded by Brainless Angel

I never really "got" Eva before. But then, I never got Dior perfume, either. Hereafter, I might just try harder.

Best Foot Backwards

BBC NEWS | UK | Menezes police: 'We did our best'

Mr. McDowell might want to read that line back to himself, and reflect that "doing their best" involved shooting an entirley innocent man seven times. One shudders to imagine the consequences of their worst. In light of this revelation, perhaps we should be thankful that they were - apparently - on top of their game?