And For My Next Trick

My copy of my English Literature text (the one I was researching when I made the Magic Disappearing Notes) has apparently joined that scrap of paper in The Place.

Maybe there's some concerned religious citizen out there who doesn't think the youth of this country ought to be studying Doctor Faustus.

Just Like That

Fifteen minutes ago, I was sitting here making notes from Wikipedia on a little scrap of paper, leaning on a CD case that I rested on my knee. Just after I finished, I dropped the case and the notes. Somewhere between my knee and the ground, the notes completely disappeared. I have been on my hands and needs with a desk lamp scouring the are for those notes. I have looked under things and behind things and I have checked more pieces of paper than I would ever have thought possible without going crazy. I could have made those notes again about seven times by now if I'd wanted to. The fact is, I just need to know where that sodding bit of paper's gone. I refuse to be outwitted by a sliver of mulched tree.

I'll rip this Goddamn room apart if I have to.

From The Pages Of Which?

"Half of us think Tesco is "too big and powerful" in a survey for Retail Week (although a similar number of people disagree)."

Trust Your Inner Vision, Don't Let Others Change Your Mind

It hasn't stopped snowing all day.

Finally, February is doing it properly.

You've Gotta Speed It Up...

I'm going to be stereotypically English now and talk about the weather. If you don't like it, you can go philosophise about stuff that actually matters until your brain dribbles out, with my blessing. But until the day comes when I go crazy and add someone else to the members list just for the hell of it, it's banalities for supper. Where was I?

The weather. It's misbehaving. It's been snowing for most of the day, but with no respect for regularity of sense or anything. It's like there's some big slider labelled "Snow" and someone's idly fiddling with it with their free hand. Only it wouldn't be labelled "Snow", and there would probably be four or five, because nothing that's operated by a big slider is ever that easy to use.

For the sake of illustration, here is the weather now and here is the weather about two minutes ago (in AVI format). Those of you who can't be bothered downloading them can get the basics of the situation down by looking at the filenames, but you'll never understand fully (you worthless sloths).

It's trying to drive me mad, you know. And it's working. You can tell because I took a video of the snow and then took a video of the lack of snow, and then tried to present them to the world as evidence that the weather is trying to drive me mad.

The Best Of Hubble

I'll let the universe speak for itself.

But I will also add a pointless little paragraph here, because the post looked really, really ugly before.

An Important Message

Big Barry is coming, with fifteen.

Spread the word.

Don't Believe Their Lies

Blogger doesn't seem to have noticed any of my posts since October. My total posts count remains steadfastly at 53, and my profile's Recent Posts section has nothing from later that the 26th of that month.

It says a lot that my first thought upon noticing this was "Well, I suppose it hasn't missed much."

It's Time To Play The Music

Outside NEXT in Leeds today was the grooviest busker ever.

He was busking with a steel drum.

And he played the theme from The Muppet Show.

I also discovered today that if you sit on a bench listening to a busker for an hour in mid-February, you get very cold.

Here Comes The Breakdown Of Society

I can now play Tetris on my mobile phone.

I may never achieve anything worthwhile again.

Expanding The Scope Of My Knowledge

It pleased me immensely to discover that there was a short lived American sitcom set in an emergency room called E/R, one of the cast of which was George Clooney.

The main character was named "Sheinfeld".

Life's Lessons Learned

Today, I made an important discovery. Just because one end of a chili pepper is mild and delicious, with a flavour rather like a normal pepper but more nuanced and interesting, does not mean that the end nearest the stalk will not be a savage mass of pure capsaicin that will set your nose flooding and your hand reaching for every ingestible item to hand that might bring even temporary relief.

But on the other hand, I discovered that eating hot chilies gives you a rather pleasant endorphin rush. Every cloud...

Never Trust A Man With Poor Lip-Sync

I suspect that the team behind the current TRESemmé hair-care product adverts didn't show their spot to enough focus groups. I refuse to believe that, if they had, none of them would have noticed that, just after The Hair-Care Industry Traitor has told us how much he loves to see women looking good and enjoying themselves, his little monologue and the slogan sort of run together to produce:

"Look at you: professional, affordable..."

I would have loved to put a bit more effort and research into this to give those of you who've missed out on this disturbing little campaign a better picture of it, but as it turns out, Forrest Gump is on. You never had a chance, really.

You Can Be A Big Pig Too

I am declaring the First Annual Lion King Party a success. This is based solely on the fact that my house remains intact, and that it lasted over six hours despite being essentially a joke.

There are two basic philosophies behind the concept of the Lion King Party:

1. Unless you are specifically not invited to the Lion King Party, you are invited to the Lion King Party.
2. A Lion King Party is like a swingers' party, only instead of swapping wives, we watch The Lion King.

This year's Lion King Party was a fancy dress Lion King Party - that is, those attending were expected to wear a fancy dress. Pencilled in for future Lion King Parties are the formal, sit-down dinner Lion King Party and (at Kate's insistence) the wet T-shirt Lion King Party (water provided).

Consider yourself invited.

How Not To Make Tea

I made two major errors when making a pot of tea just now. For me, that's a big slip. I pride myself on my teamaking finesse.

My second mistake lay in forgetting to put the tea in in between warming the pot and adding the boiling water. But I like to think that it wouldn't have happened if I hadn't been distracted by my first mistake, which was accidentally overfilling the kettle so that it spurted boiling water out of the spout.

And all over an electrical socket.

Special Introductory Offer

If you live in Beckton, Brighton, Kingston-upon-Thames, West Thurrock, Islington (London), Charing Cross (London), Oxford Street (London), Watford, Bournemouth, Bristol, Cambridge, Swansea, Swindon, Birmingham, Cheshire, Leeds, Leicester, Manchester, Newcastle or Oxford, pop into Borders and pick up a copy of the global issues magazine Bulb and I have it on good authority that at least three people you don't know will love you forever.

Oh, and I guess you may be keeping some people's hard work from having been for nothing, too. Which is always nice.

You Wear A Disguise To Look Like Chicken Guys

I try not to post links because then I would feel like I was doing some almost worthwhile service, but I feel compelled to breach this policy for Subservient Chicken because, although it didn't keep me amused for very long (mainly because unusual things tended to provoke only tenuously related acts rather than just doing nothing, though when it gets it spot on it does so wonderfully), it takes me back to my very early school days and the wonder that was "Podd Can".

At this point, I must apologise to anyone who thought this post might linger for any length of time on chicken-related subjects based on the title, or offer anything vaguely preceptive. It won't. This post is just an excuse for me to bathe in memories of Podd Can (let's face it, I can't talk to people about it), which is much more important. The title only slipped through because Chicken Boo was also brilliant.

Now, if you've followed the link and played around for a little while, you now understand the concept of the Subservient Chicken. Now, replace the living room with a loud green background and the man in the chicken suit with a big red blob (called Podd) with a stupid face that doesn't have the relevant appendages for a chicken suit, and fiddle with the action until it becomes Educational. You now understand the concept of Podd Can.

These are just some of the awesome things about Podd Can:

1. Podd Can is far more interesting than maths lessons.
2. Podd Can prefixed your commands with "Podd Can" even when Podd quite obviously Couldn't.
3. Podd Can jump.
4. Podd Can allowed you to make yourself look clever when you came up with something Podd Can't.
5. Podd Can was easier and more fun than The Crystal Rainforest.
6. Podd Can dance.
7. Podd Can is far more interesting that R.E. lessons.
9. Podd Can count.
10. The internet seems to know surprisingly little about Podd Can when you're convinced it's spelled with only one D.
11. Attempting to convince the internet that it must know something about Podd Can led me to discover that searhing Google for "Pob" will find results including "place of birth" and "post office box".
12. I thought that Podd Can was called Pob Can until just now.
13. Podd Can walk.
14. Podd Can run.
15. Podd Can is far more interesting than English lessons.
16. Podd Can die in a variety of hilarious ways and always comes back.
17. Podd Can was easier and more fun that Around The World In Eighty Days.
18. Podd Can almost certainly do loads of really filthy things that we innocent children never thought to try but amused the developer no end.
19. Podd Can pop.
20. Podd Can was awesome.

How To Make Party Ring Cakes

1. Buy some Party Rings.
2. Remove Party Rings from tray and arrange artfully on side.
3. Leave for a few days.
4. Enjoy.

Day Of The Crow

A jackal is not a kind of raven-like bird. Jackals are, in fact, really rather thoroughly unbirdlike.

A jackal is any of several doglike mammals of the genus Canis of Africa and southern Asia that are mainly foragers feeding on plants, small animals, and occasionally carrion.

This post is not for your benefit. You see, if I can go for however bloody long it's been utterly convinced that a jackal is, in fact, black, feathered and squawky, there's no way to be sure that I won't wake up in the morning having totally forgotten that I was as wrong as I was certain. With a little luck, if that happens, I'll see this at some point.

The real beauty of the internet is its potential for correcting your startling misconceptions without you having to make a fool of yourself in polite company first.

All The Time In The World

I got bored a little while ago.

Five Googlewhacks later, it occurred to me that I could have used the time I wasted on them to revise for my upcoming exams.

This leaves me in a state of uncertainty: on the one hand, I suspect Googlwhacking may be tremendous fun because it seems so hard but is so easy, but on the otherhand I feel it may simply be because Googlewhacking fundamentally isn't whatever important task you really should be doing.