Hurrrr
NATO is meeting in Wales at the moment, so this doof is over our side. It was reported on the radio this afternoon that so many things are happening in NATO’s territory, there’s a chance the meeting will hold Obama’s interest this time. That, ordinarily, he finds these meetings so boring, he sends his aids out to buy crossword puzzle magazines to get him through.
I shit you not. It was a straight news broadcast, so maybe I…surely I misheard…?
You know, if everything bores you, it isn’t an indication that you’re extra super smart. If the most important job in the Western world seems beneath you, you aren’t a sooper genius. You’re a malignant narcissist and borderline retard.
So, anyhoo, changing the subject…RIP Joan Rivers. The way they were reporting the story sounded bad to me — like, it doesn’t sound as if she ever recovered consciousness — so I’m not in the least surprised.
Time enough to queue it up — Tomorrow, 6WBT, Dead Pool Soixante Neuf.
September 4, 2014 — 9:25 pm
Comments: 28
Field trip!
Played hooky today. I was supposed to go to a meeting this afternoon, but I made excuses and we sat on the beach and drank beer. Well, I drank beer — Uncle B doesn’t touch the stuff. He took pictures.
We watched this pair come in to shore. That’s a barge laden with boulders being pulled (and, at times, pushed) by a tug. The tide was coming in and they brought the barge *right* up to the beach. Then a great big front-end loader on the deck of the ship took the boulders one by one and splooshed them into the sea, where another front-end loader on the shingle picked them up and arranged them in a sort of wall.
Boulders from France, I guess. They’re building a sea defense. They’re perpetually building a sea defenses here. This part of the shore is constantly moving and eroding and they go to sometimes weirdly heroic lengths to preserve the coastline as it is.
In other places, they are weirdly indifferent about seas and flooding that encroach quite near to houses.
I get the impression from things overheard that there are two warring camps here: sane and competent engineers versus hippies. The environment attracts both kinds. And the hippies, having come up through the academy, are often in the decision-making managerial positions. Which is usually to let nature take back land our ancestors sweated blood to reclaim from the sea.
It’s kind of like the banjo forums: divided between conservative worshippers of the Church of Earl and lefty nutbags from the Church of Pete.
September 3, 2014 — 8:59 pm
Comments: 19
If you take it, it will leak onto the internet
Yeah, it’s my moms circa 1960. Long time readers will have met my naked mother before. I think this is the third time I’ve posted it. On this blog; I prolly posted it first to USENET a thousand years before that.
In the old days, chilruns, none of this camera phone and iCloud for us. If we wanted nude pics to leak onto the internet, we had to take Polaroids and scan them and leak it all ourselves. *shakes fist*
I haven’t looked at any of the pictures from the latest celebrity nude snapshot hacker challenge. Not really my fetish. But I’m going to go out on a limb here. Unless the pictures were desperately unflattering (and why would anyone keep desperately unflattering nude pictures?), I’m’a guess the celebrities involved really are not all that outraged at the leak.
I mean, we’re talking a population famously on the high side for howling exhibitionist narcissism-bags.
Actors, not my mom. Well, okay, yes. My mom also.
September 2, 2014 — 9:36 pm
Comments: 17
Ermegherd! I wernt wern!
Have you seen this thing?? It’s hooked up to a jetski on the other end and it swooshes around in the water like…oh, just go watch the video Uncle B took.
‘Twas the Rye Maritime Festival on Sunday. It’s usually one of the lesser local festivals, but the band was above average this year. So was the food. And then there was this thing.
For £90 I can have two hours of training on this. But I’d probably crush my skull against something. I figure I could crush my skull against water vapor, no prob. I’m talented like that.
September 1, 2014 — 9:24 pm
Comments: 14
And the most hated word in the English language is…
Okay, the methodology kind of sucks here. Looks like they derived it from monitoring tweets and internet chatter, but here goes: the most hated word in the English language is “moist.”
The article is at pains to explain that we aren’t talking “word rage” here — words that are wrong or jargon or trendy or just get on your tits. Like like. Or twerking. Or a’ight.
We’re talking words that are somehow indefinably creepy and wrong. There was speculation that it’s the vaguely sexual nature of “moist” that make it objectionable, but synonyms like wet, damp, soaked, drenched and soggy don’t make the cut. Whereas “ointment” and “goiter” often do — so perhaps it’s the “oi” sound.
What? Yes, this is my post for tonight. Cut me some slack — I was expecting a Dead Pool. I could’ve gone with “Crispi sets fire to house with bacon” or “Forest Hill man dies after vibrator stuck up his bottom“, so count your blessings. And have a good weekend!
August 29, 2014 — 9:41 pm
Comments: 17
Field trip!
Well, the good news is, field trips for work are to much cooler places than they used to be. The bad news is, they’re as full of stupid bullshit as ever.
Today, I had an all-day class about collecting and storing certain kinds of specimens. Instead of just, you know, telling us important shit we need to know, we started the class by brainstorming. (“You don’t know shit about this subject, so why don’t we write down several flipchart pages of ignorant shit off the top of your head”). And then we had to role-play (“break into groups of two and one of you pretend you’re a brontosaurus and one of you pretend you’re the kind of stupid shit a brontosaurus might eat.”)
Role play. I swear to god we did.
Also, most of it was about applying for grants and handicap access and…oh, I have a bad feeling this is a hotbed of lefty nonsense. Pff! Academics.
August 27, 2014 — 10:06 pm
Comments: 16
Indulge me
You guys’ll have to forgive me; I love this flower festival stuff. It’s so weird and stupid and lovely.
The sheep are made out of teasels. The knight in the stained glass window is Sir William Cock. Here it is big and in color because you know you want it.
I’ll stop now. Season is over. No more flower festivals 🙁
Up next — BONFIRE SEASON!
August 26, 2014 — 8:58 pm
Comments: 19
A special message from Her Maj
Or Her Maj’s autopen, anyhoo. Another weekend, another flower festival. Actually, the last we’ll have for the year.
This is a holiday weekend, so there was one final one scheduled for today, but it rained like a bastiche and we didn’t go anywhere. I played Mass Effect and saved the universe. Also, Doritos and Coca-Cola.
As I am technically still on holiday, I bid you adieu. No, nobody had Richard Attenborough.
August 25, 2014 — 10:44 pm
Comments: 6
It ain’t over ’til the fat lady bumps and grinds
Welp, there it is: the official end of Summer. The circus has come to town. Actually, this circus comes to towns all around us beginning in about June, but we traditionally go when it reaches Rye, and we look upon it as the end of the fête season (and the beginning of the bonfire season).
We went last night. It’s a week early this year. That seems about right for this Summer (it’s been gorgeous for the most part, but it’s suddenly gotten chilly).
Every year, this one gets smaller and sadder and we wonder if we’ll see it again. This year, there’s a definite rumor that they won’t be able to use this field again. But if they turn up at all, we’ll go see them in some other town.
I didn’t bother taking a good camera this year. I never get any decent pictures, and last year they fussed at me for trying. I like this grainy cellphone picture Uncle B took anyway. This fat chick had a hula hoop act, and she was awesome. Seriously one of the biggest applause getters of the night.
So there you have it. There she is. Pack up the shorts, folks — it’s over.
August 22, 2014 — 7:58 pm
Comments: 12
Big questions
One last one from the flower festival: the washing up. They just picked a convenient tomb near the door and set up the wash basin. So, there you go.
In our own church celebrations, I’ve been shocked to see wine cooling in the baptismal font and people playing at boules among the graves.
I wish I could convey to you the English attitude to church, at least down here. Remember, I come from a place where church is intense and Jesus-y. The closest church to the family farm was Foot-Washing Baptist (we weren’t members, though). It’s just a whole ‘nother thing.
Church is obviously important to many here, and they put a lot of effort into keeping things going. It is very much about maintaining these beautiful and terribly expensive old buildings. This particular church pre-dates the Norman Conquest — it’s Saxon, for cri-yi.
But it would be a mistake to say the attitude is entirely material and not at all spiritual. There is a sense of the fitness of the ancient rituals, of observing the appropriate rites of birth, marriage and death and the seasonal observances. But, really, I do think many of these churchgoers believe in God and think their prayers go someplace.
It’s all very puzzling.
Now, the big question — the fact they’re nearly all Of A Certain Age, does it mean their kind will die out with this generation, or will the next generation of oldsters step in and take their place? In perpetuity?
August 21, 2014 — 9:51 pm
Comments: 16