Today I did an impossible thing
I threw away a trash can. I’m sure there was a comedian who had a bit about that. Sounds like Stephen Wright. How do you do it?
The council gave us a huge recycling bin. I take every opportunity to make them regret it.
Wikipedia tells me Stephen Wright is a paraprosdokian enjoyer. “A paraprosdokian (/pærəprɒsˈdoʊkiən/) is a figure of speech in which the latter part of a sentence, phrase, or larger discourse is surprising or unexpected in a way that causes the reader or listener to reframe or reinterpret the first part.”
I suppose that’s a “time flies like an arrow, fruit flies like a banana” kind of thing. There. You’ve learned a word.
I stole the picture out of Uncle B’s photos. Daffs in our garden this week. This is been a bumper year for daffodils, which has slightly repaid the miserable, wet weather we’ve had. Doesn’t really work in black and white, does it?
I could have written an interesting and engaging post. Instead, I took a nap. I think I made the right choice.
March 13, 2024 — 7:54 pm
Comments: 3
Woohoo! Lookatit GO!
My Bitcoin balance. A reminder that I bought of £50 it in the Spring of 2019. I intended to buy regular small amounts, but my only UK ID expired so I wasn’t allowed. From then on, I could only watch.
That there graph is the movement of £50 and £50 only during the last five years.
I’m thinking of returning to the original plan and putting a small sum by every month, the original plan. I know it could all go bust, but I won’t be out much. But somehow, having this one pristine index has a huge appeal. Maybe I’ll open an account somewhere else.
Today was my first day out of the house in six days, and that was to go shop for symptom relief. Not the worst cold I’ve ever had, but it is a bitter clinger.
Can you imagine what my inbox will look like tomorrow?
March 11, 2024 — 8:44 pm
Comments: 4
There will be a Deadpool tonight
March 8, 2024 — 4:39 pm
Comments: 1
Finally.
Uncle B went out this morning and my package was leaning against the front door. In fairness to FedEx, they have phoned me several times and missed me, trying to track down what happened. Which tells me what happened was it was delivered to someone farther up the road, who got around to hand delivering it back. It hadn’t been opened.
I’ve tried to tell FedEx to cancel the case number and spare themselves further hassle, but they make it so hard to get in touch.
The lenses were from a company called Zenni in the States, which seems like some kind of luxury glasses firm. The package was so sexy I’m considering getting a pair of specs from them (I need a new pair). Sexy, sexy bifocals.
The good news is, I was home sick with this cold and able to play with the headset today. The bad news is, I was home sick with this cold and really didn’t feel like it.
March 7, 2024 — 5:55 pm
Comments: 15
But it was a terrible lie
We’re trying to figure out who it was delivered to. It certainly wasn’t me. I was F5’ing the FedEx page all morning and leapt to my feet when it was listed as delivered.
I asked around the village – stuff gets misdelivered all the time. Having a neighborhood Whatsapp helps, except nobody’s seen it.
I did get a call back from FedEx who said they’d have to wait until the driver made it back to the depot tonight to ask him about it. Fair enough.
Somehow, I get that extra little frisson of cranky when they said the package had been signed for by [my name].
.
.
.
Cold sucks.
March 6, 2024 — 6:55 pm
Comments: 7
It came.
It’s a day early, which ought to be a good thing but isn’t. I bought it with prescription lenses and they won’t be here until tomorrow. FedEx swears they’ll be delivered tomorrow, but their tracker dingus tells me the package is in Memphis at the moment.
I almost didn’t even unbox it. I’m blind without glasses and there was no point mucking up my initial experience. Turns out, you can fiddle it to use glasses, cautiously. Glad I did. It spent most of the day downloading updates.
The little mixed reality app that comes with it is fun. You’re sitting in the room you’re sitting in when I spaceship breaks through the ceiling, delivering a ray gun. Then little fluffy tribbles start nibbling through the walls and you have to shoot bubbles at them to trap them.
It’s an okay gimmick that I suspect will wear thin for me, though I gather the zombie game where the undead are trying to come through your actual windows is a bit hairy.
The poor thing had a very hard time mapping my room. The big beams and odd furniture messed up its geometry. It would be happier in a clean modern house.
I hope the lenses do come tomorrow – it’s my day off. Also, I’m coming down with a cold :/
March 5, 2024 — 7:34 pm
Comments: 2
These people are cray-cray
This whackadoo is going to try to stop at all 2,580 railway stations in Britain in six weeks. For charity. His day job, he does in fact work for the railroad. I’m not sure if that makes it better or worse.
He and two friends planned it all out on a big-ass map.
It has been done before in 2017. There were only 2,563 stations then (17 fewer) when a couple managed to do it in 14 weeks, 6 days and 22 minutes.
According to his Twitter, this is day 14.
March 4, 2024 — 6:58 pm
Comments: 3
I’m’a smack somebody in a minute
I made up my mind and I’ve been trying all day to buy a new VR headset. The first try was rejected by the bank, as unusual purchases are. Once I got that straightened out, I got into a loop where I hit the purchase button, it swore it was talking to my bank for a second, then took me back to the purchase screen. Online help chat had me try dropping my VPN, using an incognito window, using a different browser. Eventually, Meta told me I’d taken advantage of too many special offers today and to go away.
I’m pissed.
Anyway, here’s another email that sounds like spam but I actually signed up for it: the Bean Institute. I get their newsletter because I’m from Tennessee and I like beans, dammit.
The title of this one is Love Your Heart with Beans, which sounds too much like a recipe.
Finally went through. I switched from paying by credit card to PayPal. And that worked only because PayPal showed me the error message Meta wouldn’t: it didn’t like my mailing address. Used to be, the house name and parish name was all I needed for a valid address, but lately forms have been demanding the road name as well. If only they had told me that!
February 29, 2024 — 7:35 pm
Comments: 5
I’ve been invited to make a rake
I’ve been invited to join a two-day rake making workshop in Wales. The number of times I get an email like that and think, “that’s a weird spam” and then realize, “oh, wait – I signed on for that shit!”
Well, no, not rake making. I signed onto a website that is all about scythes, back during my brief flirtation with scything. This is the first mailing I’ve had from them in years, so it took me a minute to place them.
People who spend two days and £160 making a rake that you can buy from the same site for £42.50 are will be a type. Wealthy, retired to the country, LARPing as peasants.
You know what? It would probably be a lot of fun.
February 28, 2024 — 8:27 pm
Comments: 7
It meanders, but it has a point
This is the excellent Modern Diner in Pawtucket, Rhode Island. “The Sterling Streamliner car, made in the late-1930s and early 1940s, was the first diner in the nation to be accepted on the National Register of Historic Places.” I used to get a wicked greasy breakfast there of a Saturday, after I visited my gun shop.
But I wasn’t looking for that. I was looking for Atomic Pizza, which I think was on the other side of Providence, in Cranston maybe. Very Fifties aesthetic. I didn’t find it – probably long gone – but I discovered there are Atomic Pizzas all over the world. Huh.
Anyway. This morning, I had reason to look up some local shipyards and discovered there was a ship built locally in 1898 called Telephone. Imagine being the captain of the Telephone. Imagine going down with the Telephone. It made me reflect on the hilarious human urge to name things after unrelated cutting edge things that can’t possibly stay cutting edge and will some day sound stupid as hell.
At the end of the 19th C, all kinds of things were marketed as electric that had no electric components at all. It just sounded cool.
Ragtime Gal had ragtime, sending improbable things by wire and the telephone. Poor Daisy just had the bicycle, although it was an extra snazzy one.
The Fifties had atomic and TV. The Sixties had everything space.
When I first started coming over here in the Nineties, everything – I mean everything – was euro-this and euro-that. That got tired fast. I guess it’s sustainable now.
More examples?
February 27, 2024 — 8:24 pm
Comments: 11