My brain hates me
I woke up at 5 this morning – which, since our clocks went forward this weekend, was 4 o’clock Brain Time – and could not get back to sleep. You want to know what I was fretting about? I knew that Topeka was in Kansas and Santa Fe was in New Mexico, but where’n the heck was Atchison?
Kansas. It’s in Kansas, dear reader.
So, while we’re here, “On the Atchison, Topeka and the Santa Fe” was written in 1944, climbed the charts in 1945 and was used in the film The Harvey Girls in 1946, where it won an Oscar for Best Original Song (though if it had been around for two years, it’s hard to see it was original original.
If you’re looking for the earworm, here it is in the movie version with Judy Garland, which sounds curiously sluggish to me. I think it must be the Andrews Sisters version I remember.
Naturally, I don’t remember remember it.
April 2, 2024 — 6:52 pm
Comments: 6
O fabulous world!
If you guessed this was an hour-long video of an Amana washing machine doing a complete cycle taken from a channel about washing machines, you’d be completely correct.
The comments. Lordy.
If you click on the link, fair warning, you are apt to find other appliance channels appearing in your sidebar.
That’s the thing that chaps my hide: this video just appeared in my timeline. Surrounded by game demos and cat videos, up pops this Amana Direct Drive Washer – Full Casual Cycle + Extra Rinse out of the blue.
The algorithm – it knows too much.
I was promised flying cars and robot servants, but I suppose this will have to do.
March 26, 2024 — 6:48 pm
Comments: 9
Making me crazy
I’m not much of a royal watcher, but shit is just weird. This was supposed to happen last night, then any minute now all day long.
The Russkies put it out there that King Chuck was dead. Kate hasn’t been seen since Christmas, or maybe she was seen at the farm shop this afternoon looking fine.
And what is Barack Obama doing at Downing Street? Politicians this side of the pond didn’t think much of him when he was president. Has he become Klaus Schwab’s representative on earth or something?
Baffled.
March 18, 2024 — 6:43 pm
Comments: 9
I was really confused for two seconds
I was looking for a date for local elections and found some really confusing results – until I worked out there’s a town in Wisconsin called Sussex. It was founded in 1843 by a bricklayer from Beckley, a tiny town up the road from me. It must not have been incorporated until 1924, though – see the anniversary celebration.
It looks like a charming little town, with a leprechaun hunt and a village softball team. It’s probably a hotbed of neighborly intrigues and burning resentments, but heigh-ho.
They’ve ruined my theory that American small towns never call themselves villages unironically, though.
No elections in my village this year.
March 14, 2024 — 7:42 pm
Comments: 9
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