Thirteen years old
I’m doing a playthrough of Far Cry 3. My new laptop is snazzy, but it runs super hot, so I hoped a really old game wouldn’t flog the processor too hard.
I have a love/hate relationship with the Far Cry games. I always hate, hate, HATE the main story line, but love all the other bits.
Other bits: liberating towers (to see a map of the surroundings), hunting animals for their skins (so you can craft ever bigger containers to carry stuff in), being murdered by animals (I don’t love this, but it’s a defining characteristic of the series) and liberating villages. By “liberating” I mean single-handedly murdering everyone. It’s the best.
My strategy for this is what my strategy always is in computer games: find a perch high up and pick people off with a sniper rifle. I never realized this was deprecated until I was playing a multiplayer shooter and earned myself the nickname “camping bitch.”
Hey, I’m an old woman. You expect me to compete with the reflexes of 15-year-old boys?
How awful is the plot? In this one, you and your friends crash on an island controlled by pirates. You get separated and you learn the Ways of the Numinous Natives. At the end, you’re invited to stay provided you – SPOILER ALERT – murder all your friends, including your girlfriend.
There are six in the main series and thirteen including increments and DLC and, if I recall correctly, all the ones I played the story made me do one stinky thing.
Have a good weekend, everyone, and please don’t murder all your friends!
p.s. One of the best was an offshoot of this one: Far Cry 3: Blood Dragon. It was a piss take of 80s action films – and of other Far Cry games. Only computer game that ever made me put down my mouse and laugh.
October 17, 2025 — 5:55 pm
Comments: 6
Speaking of cats…
Larry the Number 10 cat came across my feed lately and I don’t know why. It’s not his birthday, which is probably in January. He’s certainly still with us. He’s 18 and still kicking rodent ass in Downing Street.
Whatever. Here’s an old blogpost about British cats in the civil service.
That’s not Larry in the picture, tho. That’s an imaginary AI cat that Getty Images can’t sue me over.
October 16, 2025 — 6:32 pm
Comments: 4
Occasionally, look down
I wonder how many times I’ve walked past this little plaque. It’s not a route I take every day, but I’ve walked it often enough. It’s at ankle height on a weedy sidewalk.
I did not know that memorial plaque and dental plaque were spelled the same. I find this disturbing. I was sure one had a ‘c’ in it.
Anyway, they used to say in geocaching, “occasionally, look up” as some of the sneakiest hides were hauled up over head.
October 15, 2025 — 5:27 pm
Comments: 3
New one on me
This came across my Twitter feed today: the glass delusion. In the 15th to 17th Centuries, an unaccountable number of Europeans decided their bodies were made of glass and behaved accordingly. I’d missed this one somehow.
Glass was new and magical, associated with alchemy and rich people. And even though people of all stations suffered from the delusion, it did cluster at the wealthy end of the spectrum, where people were more likely to think of themselves as precious and fragile.
The most famous sufferer – and perhaps the first – was King Charles VI of France (pictured), who wouldn’t let courtiers near him lest he shattered.
The BBC said, apart from a few isolated cases, the disorder vanished in 1830. If I had to guess, I’d say it was because factories had made glass cheap and common.
This all came up in the context of the trans delusion, which has apparently fallen off a cliff. Though if you look at the graphs (and do, they’re interesting), the leading chart is actually about non-binaries. Not the same gender confusion at all.
October 14, 2025 — 6:31 pm
Comments: 4
This is exactly what it looked like
Just home from a meeting of my local amateur art club – of which, I remind you, I am the reluctant secretary. It was an extraordinary spectacle of two old ladies trying to push a third old lady under the bus, and the bus-ee being far too oblivious to notice. It’s been going on for years and she flat refuses to see it.
She’s a pain in the ass, I agree. She fires off long, long and pointless emails to the whole committee every few days. But she also does all the jobs, including mine. And I let her. I ignore the emails.
They’re going to kill this club if they keep it up.
I think MidJourney outdid itself with this one, though I asked for one old lady to be smiling. Here it is at full size.
October 13, 2025 — 5:37 pm
Comments: 4
The grandaddy of them all
Literally: the not-very-readable bunting on the back says GRANDAD. Poor bastard either died at 60 or it was decorated for his 60th birthday. The stones all around were painted with his name and many messages of love, but not what he died of.
I said to Uncle B – if I want people to put together a memorial like that after I die, I’d better get a move on performing miracles.
Hope you enjoyed these many fine benches. Good weekend, everyone!
October 10, 2025 — 4:29 pm
Comments: 5
Nice
This one is quite classy. It features cast versions of the Sigil of the Barons of the Cinque Ports and the seal of the Cinque Ports. Easier to make it out in color.
Probably 19th C – we can’t do stuff like that now.
We were in Littlestone and just south of it is Greatstone, in Kent. I’ve always had a romantic notion that the names came from something like two meteorites that landed in Medieval times and were revered as signs from God.
Nope. ChatGPT tells me in the early 19th Century there was a shingle of stoney beach that stuck out well into the bay that was called the Great Stone. Over time, tides shifted and washed most of it away. It is a restless coast, the south coast of England. The name stuck, though, and was smashed together into one word, Greatstone.
Similar story for Littlestone, with a smaller shingle headland.
In the late 19th, the area was eyed up for development as a seaside resort and AI thinks the names were smooshed together then. It was marketing. Same as it ever was.
You can still see the bones of their project: a seafront row of Victorian houses. The actual settlement happened in the Twenties and Thirties. And one day, I feel sure, an angry sea will top the wall and claim the lot.
October 9, 2025 — 7:00 pm
Comments: 3
You bet I am
This one is obvious, though you probably can’t see the row of knitted poppies in various colors across the top. Guerilla knitting on public furniture is a thing here now.
Uncle B said, you aren’t going to inflict a whole week of public benches on your readers, are you?
And I said, this blog turns 18 this year. I have done a total of 5,101 posts, not including this one. I’ve probably told all my family stories twice. If I’ve got five pictures of benches, yes I by-god am going to have a week of benchposting.
Two more to go. Enjoy!
October 8, 2025 — 4:28 pm
Comments: 5
Is this a tradition now?
As you probably guessed from yesterday’s guest bench, we were in a place called Littlestone in Kent. This is pretty far outside our territory and we haven’t been here in years, but I’m going stir crazy at home.
I’m not taking retirement well.
A number of the coastal benches – but not all! – were decorated like this. I thought it probably had to do with a significant anniversary of the person the bench is dedicated to, but a number of them all at once? They all looked pretty fresh.
Counterproductive. Who would dare sit on a memorial bench covered in flowers and toys?
October 7, 2025 — 5:25 pm
Comments: 4
Look! It’s a cement sofa!
I hope you mentally pronounced that see-mint, just like on the Beverly Hillbillies.
The plaque reads:
On this site stood the Littlestone Lifeboat Station
Erected in 1871 to the memory of
John Hatton, M.D.
Demolished in 1940 under military defense orders
This freehold was presented
to the Kent Rivers Catchment Board
by Major M. Teichman Derville, O.B.E., D.L., J.P.
Bailiff of Romney March
MCMXLIX
The things the military did to this area during the war – oof!
When I lived in Providence, I used to cut through a cemetery with some interesting grave markers. One in particular featured a pink poofy granite sofa across from a pink poofy granite armchair and, right where the television would be in this livingroom suite, the tombstone.
It’s like he thought his loved ones were going to come watch him like the Late Show.
October 6, 2025 — 4:12 pm
Comments: 5