Bombers found in Brighton?

There was an announcement today that following raids on the South Coast, six more arrests were made - believed to be at two addresses in Brighton.

Well that makes perfect sense.

Waiting to blow yourself up and enjoy 72 virgins or whatever it is, of course you would want to spend the wait not immersing yourself in religious fervour, but a mere train ride from London, somewhere with a nudist beach, ice cream, lots of slot machines and alcohol and the country's biggest gay population.

Speaks volumes. Makes you wonder if the virgins are supposed to do the washing up.

Story updated here

Pez Spaceman Dispenser

There is something horribly wrong with this picture. Mercifully, perhaps, I can't quite put my finger on it.

Possibly its something to do with residual mental images from this post over at Doris' blog.

Who knows.

Got something mucky on the tip of your tongue? Spit it out in the comments.

Free Association 130

LunaNina's weekly word association. Even though 'free association' sounds to me like when they let all the prisoners into the mess hall or something.

1. Risks:: Things you come across every waking moment - every single tiny choice is a risk in its own minute way. Risks are good. I LIKE risks. Disasters are scary, but being able to take a risk means being able to control things, change things, try for something better. This does not include stupid risks!
2. Abdominal:: ..pain. Only doctors and athletes use the word abdominal, and I guess in my mind as a mother, doctors win out, just. I did think of crunches, just after, but they equate to pain too.
3. Radiant:: ..looking. Very old fashioned word. If someone said that I/she looked radiant my immediate gut reaction would be 'pompous git'.
4. The usual:: The answer when people ask what you've been doing with yourself instead of how you are - 'Oh, the usual.' Kind of a diminishing statement suggesting 'nothing much'.
5. Mix and match:: The smell of paint. Really, for me it associates with a smell more than words, just makes me think of the wallpaper and paint section in a huge, dusty DIY centre
6. Wireless:: Radio. Its an old fashioned and nearly defunct word. In most cases, things being literally 'without wires' is taken for granted these days.
7. Remedial:: ..classes - handwriting
8. Mile:: Half the walk to our shops
9. Long lost:: ..relatives. Another phrase that only turns up in books.
10. Only one:: Sounds like a command. I find I would resent hearing this, say if you were offered a choice of items and just as you make your selection, someone comments 'Only one'. Of course only one, but you just took all the joy and concentration out of the choice and insulted me by inference, in fact whatever you've got going you can keep the lot now, I'm not accepting a favour from a suspicious and condescending git. I choose not to be grateful to an insulting person.

Amateur Transplants Again

VERY RUDE LYRICS JUST UNDER THIS BLURB - KEEP SCROLLING

This is going to be a long post.

You may not plan to read it, but as I'll bet all of the songs below are 'to the tune of' something or other, you could turn it into a game, trying to guess the popular tune that fits. Or you could give up and BUY THE CD YOU CHEAPSKATE - its called Fitness To Practice, is in aid of charity and is only £6 which I think equates to about $10.

Many people have landed on my blog looking for Amateur Transplants Lyrics, such as the words to London Underground (included below) or the words to Northern Birds (not included below, but here already).

The other day someone left a comment on one of my older posts about this duo of doctors (here and here), expressing a wish not just to get hold of the lyrics but also the sheet music.

I emailed Amateur Transplants, as I am really impressed that their profits are going to Macmillan Cancer Relief and thought they might want to consider producing sheet music as a potential secondary income stream.

Sadly this is NOT in the pipeline - if you want to contest that decision, then get on over to the official Amateur Transplants site and email them so they can guage the strength of public feeling.

However (thanks, Adam) in the reply email, I was not only given permission to publish more of their VERY RUDE lyrics (very funny too and in some cases socially damning, but you understand I have to stress the explicit nature) - I was also sent an attachment with all the words now reproduced below.

Here we go.

Paracetamoxyfrusebendroneomycin

Paracetamoxyfrusebendroneomycin
It’s our brand new wonder drug we think you’ll find enticing
Paracetamoxyfrusebendroneomycin

Um-diddle-iddle-iddle-um-diddle-ay
Um-diddle-iddle-iddle-um-diddle-ay
Um-diddle-iddle-iddle-um-diddle-ay

The BNF has twenty thousand different drugs to take
So we thought, “What could we produce to give you all a break?”
A drug that could treat anything from leprosy to SARS
And you can give it in the mouth, IV or up the arse

It’s Paracetamoxyfrusebendroneomycin
Paracetamoxyfrusebendroneomycin
It can cure the common cold and being struck by lightning
Paracetamoxyfrusebendroneomycin

Um-diddle-iddle-iddle-um-diddle-ay
Um-diddle-iddle-iddle-um-diddle-ay
Um-diddle-iddle-iddle-um-diddle-ay

We tested it on animals and none of them survived
But that’s OK cos when we wrote the paper up we lied
It first choice for MI, MS and even for ME; and COPD, HIV, PE and DVT

Paracetamoxyfrusebendroneomycin
Paracetamoxyfrusebendroneomycin
It reverses impotence and makes you good at fighting
Paracetamoxyfrusebendroneomycin

Um-diddle-iddle-iddle-um-diddle-ay
Um-diddle-iddle-iddle-um-diddle-ay
Um-diddle-iddle-iddle-um-diddle-ay

There are some minor side effects and some are not that rare
Like nausea, vomiting and losing all your hair
And heart attacks, becoming gay and growing extra breasts
But it’s fucking cheap, and hey, this is the NHS

Paracetamoxyfrusebendroneomycin
Paracetamoxyfrusebendroneomycin
There are cures for everything from AIDS to pubic lice in
Paracetamoxyfrusebendroneomycin

Um-diddle-iddle-iddle-um-diddle-ay
Um-diddle-iddle-iddle-um-diddle-ay

Paracetamoxyfrusebendroneomycin
We make it from the cerebellar cortex of a bison
After that it undergoes some polygenic splicing
Paracetamoxyfrusebendroneomycin

Um-diddle-iddle-iddle-um-diddle-ay
Um-diddle-iddle-iddle-um-diddle-ay

Paracetamoxyfrusebendroneomycin
It makes you smart as Einstein and as muscular as Tyson
It brings an end to all that pharmacology revising
Paracetamoxyfrusebendroneomycin

Um-diddle-iddle-iddle-um-diddle-ay
Um-diddle-iddle-iddle-um-diddle-ay

Paracetamoxyfrusebendroneomycin
We sell lots in Japan cos it’s the antidote to ricin
The minister of health we hear will shortly be advising
Take Paracetamoxyfrusebendroneomycin.

Nothing at all

It’s amazing how pretty you looked on that night
Your skirt was so short and your top was so tight
I bought you a drink and we danced on the floor
We pulled and you came back to mine for some more

Your skirt ended up on the living room chairs
And your top and your bra, they came off on the stairs
And though you looked fit with your clothes on, man I was a fool
Cos you look like shit when you wear nothing at all

Oh the clothes that you wore looked a million dollars
But the body beneath, it looked just like Rick Waller’s
The make-up you wear is a clever disguise
To hide your moustache and the squint in your eyes

Your cellulite’s dreadful, you’re covered in zits and
Your stomach’s about as defined as quicksand
If I’m being honest your tits are unacceptably small
So you look like shit when you wear nothing at all

When we went back to mine I was up for a shag
In the bedroom I realised you’re a dumpy old slag
Your pubes reach your navel and they cover your thighs
Didn’t know they made arses that size

When we met on that night, I can swear that I never
Would have guessed you’re a female Andrew Lloyd Webber
The hair on your chest’s a bit endocrinological
And you look like shit when you wear nothing at all.

Your teeth are all yellow, with bloody great gaps so
Your face is a picture, by Pablo Picasso
I can see that your arse has its own gravitational pull
And you look like shit when you wear nothing at all

You look like shit when you wear nothing at all

The Menstrual Rag

Once a month your girl's upset
She goes to Boots to buy Lillets
It happens every 28 days
When she's in her luteal phase.
All she does is moan and nag
You go five days without a shag
There's no cunnilingus
You can only use your fingers
When she's using a menstrual rag.

For the week or two preceeding
The days your other half is bleeding
The moody bitch is in a stress
Complaining about PMS and
When her womb has started sloughing
You won't be eating any muffin
2 4 6 8

Come on girls let’s menstruate.

Heavy flow or gentle spotting
Running down her legs or clotting
All that lining that she sheds leaves
Nasty patches on your bedsheets
Just don't waste your efforts pleading
You won't be shagging when she's bleeding
The Mefenamic Acid means you might as well be flaccid
When she's using a menstrual rag.

It's hard to be all that devoted
When she is looking fat and bloated
From all the water she's retaining
While her pants have nasty staining
You won't be doing any groping
When she's losing haemoglobin
2 4 6 8
Come on girls let’s menstruate.

Get those Bodyforms with wings
Grab your Tampax by the strings
And Tenalady sanitary pads
come on boys you've seen the ads
This dance is sweeping through the nation
Here's three cheers for menstruation
Its the latest craze
Every 28 days
They're all using a menstrual,
Using a menstrual rag.

London Underground

Some people might like to get a train to work
Or drive in in a Beamer or a merc,
Some guys like to travel in by bus,
But I can't be bothered with the fuss today
I'm going to take my bike,
Coz once again the Tube's on strike.
The greedy bastards want extra pay
for sitting on their arse all day
even though they earn 30K .
So I'm standing here in the pouring rain,
Where the fuck's my fucking train?

London Underground
London Underground
They're all lazy fucking useless cunts
London Underground
London Underground
They're all greedy cunts I want to shoot them all with a rifle.

All they say is "Please mind the doors",
and they learned that on the two day course,
This job could be done by a four year old.
They just leave us freezing in the cold.
What you smell is what you get
Burger King and piss and sweat
You roast to death in the boiling heat,
With tourists treading on your feet
and chewing gum on every seat,
so don't tell me to "Mind the gap"
I want my fucking money back.

London Underground
London Underground
They're all lazy fucking useless cunts
London Underground
London Underground
They're all greedy cunts I want to shoot them all with a rifle
LaLaLaLa
LaLaLaLa

The floors are sticky and the seats are damp,
Every platform has a fucking tramp,
But the drivers get the day off when we're all late for work again,

London Underground
London Underground
WaWa Wankers , They're all Wankers ,
London Underground
London Underground

Take your Oystercard, and shove it up your arsehole

Snippets

One Hand

I can't tie my laces
I don't play the flute
My car is an automatic
I can't paint my nails
I never applaud
I'm not very good at Twister
And when my laptop crashes
I can't even press control-alt-delete
Cos I've got one hand

Haematemesis
Hello can I speak to the emergency physician?
Cos I’ve got a patient in a terrible condition
He's vomiting up blood and he'll soon need a mortician
Haematemesis (Huuurrrrrrrghhhh)

Yellow
Look at your skin, look at its off-white hue
Look at your eyeballs too
They are all yellow
You came to me, you thought you had the flu
I knew that wasn't true
You wouldn't be yellow
We took some blood off you
That's just a thing we do
To folks who turn yellow
You're yellow like the desert in Damascus is
You're yellow cos your liver has metastases
Do you know you're really fucked you know
You're really fucked you know

Limbs
I would jog and I'd start rowing
Every day you'd see me going to the park and to the gym
I'd go drinking in the pub and every evening I'd go clubbing
If I only had some limbs

I would learn to play the trumpet
Cos just sitting on my stump it tends to make my life quite grim
I'm content but I'd be more so if I wasn't just a torso
If I only had some limbs

Oh I just sit and cry, a quadruple amputee
I just hang around all day and watch TV
But that's the life of quadraplegics

I'd play cards and I'd play scrabble
Not just spend my days imagining a life where I had shins
Cos I've never had a date, hell I can't even masturbate
Oh if I only had some limbs

Take a Look
How can you just walk away from here?
How rude can a doctor be?
You're the Orthopaedic Registrar and we've been here since 3
You're the only one that we've been waiting for

So take a look at my Nan
I think she's got a broken hip
We found her in the bathroom on the floor
You know I think she must have slipped

Take a look at my Nan
The Casualty Doctor stated
One leg is shorter than the other
And it's externally rotated

Well take a look at my Nan
Don't you know how long we've waited?
And if you can't fix her, then DNR
And can we have her cremated?

Consultants at King’s
I'm pushing 83 and the trust are telling me to retire
I never take a history or consent
My post-op survival rate should be higher
In fact it's only 6 per cent

We work at Denmark Hill with the terminally ill patients
But they're relatively well when they arrive
Cos I invent my own operations
And I'm the only one who leaves theatre alive

We're consultants, we're consultants at King's
We're consultants at King's

One
Do you feel any better?
Or do you feel the same?
We've done your operation now
And you've just yourself to blame
Now you've got one lung, one eye
One knee, below your one thigh
We've removed your left hand side
And you're all right now

Me on take
I get in the way
I don't know what to do or say
But I go in night and day
Vainly hoping someone will teach me
They say not today
Practice taking blood, okay
Me on take (Me on take)
Me on take (Me on take)
Me on take
Take me home

The Drug Song

There’s Aspirin, Adrenaline & also Aminophylline,
Amphetamine, Adenosine, Augmentin & Rifampicin,
Amoxicillin, Penicillin, Heparin & Warfarin
& Oestrogen, Progestagen & Canesten & Chloroquine

There’s Bendroflumethiazide & also Cyclophosphamide
& Metoclopramide, Acetazolomide Tropicamide,
Loperamide, Amiloride & Cyclizine & Frusemide
& if you’re up the duff then you had best avoid Thalidomide.

There’s Lithium, Fluoxetine & also Amitriptyline,
Paroxetine, Digoxin, GTN & Azathioprine,
Miconazole, Atenolol & also Chloramphenicol
& if you want to overdose there’s always Paracetamol.

There’s Night Nurse & Phenytoin, Zirtek & Diazepam,
& Lithium, Temazepam, Midazolam, Clonazepam,
Testosterone, Aldosterone & Valium & Insulin,
& Lignocaine & Piriton & Ventolin & Ritalin

There’s Cefuroxime, Cefotaxime, Cefalexin, Cephedrine,
& Metronidazole & Ketoconazole, Trimethoprim,
Erythromycin, Gentamycin, Macrolides, Nifedipine
& Actifed & Sudafed & Calpol with no sugar in.

There’s Phenelzine & Hyoscine, Ranitidine, Cimetidine,
Potassium & Calcium & ev’ry kind of Vitamin,
& Pethedine & Methadone & Speed, Cocaine & Heroin,
& Cannabis & Prozac, Morphine, Alcohol & Nicotine.

You must remember all these drugs
The names of which you’ve learnt from me
Or fuck ‘em all & get a job in Orthopaedic Surgery.

What do you mean you want more than snippets? Once again, here's the link to buy the entire CD and since you've got this far, also the MP3s for all of the above.

Wallace & Gromit - The Curse Of The Were-Rabbit

So finally this year theres a movie I want to go and see:

CLICK HERE

A Me Me Meme

Doris set me these questions. I volunteered without knowing what the questions would be, so I have to answer them, aren't I clever. I may also be creepy, but you are allowed to say so.

1. What passage from the Bible has a big impact on you?

Ooh. Depends what day of the week it is. I have my cynical-analytical hat on today so it has to be 1 Corinthians 13 verse 1 "If I speak with the tongues of men and of angels, but have not love, I am a noisy gong or a clanging cymbal." IF (big if) you accept the bible as pure and literal truth then this says several things.

• The most obvious yet the most overlooked and important is that being multilingual, as in clever, or very spiritual with an ear to the other world and able to converse with angels (which implies an ability to converse on their terms) does not make you remotely equipped to guide someone morally or spiritually. You could be a genius, or the world's best medium, an amazing religious preacher full of the flash-bang obvious gifts of the spirit, even an eminent and highly trained counsellor in any of the 'psycho' fields, but if you are selfish, look after number one, cannot feel compassion or genuine care for people, you are just making noise and no use at all.
• The second thing it implies is the concept of multiple angelic languages. Does it mean clairaudience, clairvoyance etc? Does it mean the communication of God via the Ummin and Thummin, if so the Tarot cards also, whether or not you reach God or a.n.other angelic being via that method?
• Or does it only mean speaking in tongues, and if so doesnt that imply that you may not necessarily be talking to the right angels? I love it, I love anything that throws a curve ball to accepted liturgy, and this does that.

2. One favourite sweet as a kid?

Black Jacks. Eight for a penny, larger than they are now, and handy if you only had a farthing - the cheapest sweet in the shop apart from rhubarb & custard.

3. What are five of your favourite words.

Glutinous, gloopy, erudite, bellicose, exactly.
All good, strong, sing-song words that paint themselves as you speak them and would really suit a Welsh accent, or hammy acting.

4. You are very happy, everything and everyone is perfect in your life, you are feeling wonderful, content and as if you are floating on a cloud. What thought has just popped into your mind?

Aaargh get me out of here this must be Hell. Panic attack. Give me a place where theres something needs doing.

5. What would be your weapon of choice - assuming you had to have at least one weapon for self-defence?

Unarmed combat - my forearm. I would sooner damage someone and know what force I had applied than go through a lifetime of mental re-runs wondering what it felt like to be stabbed/shot and marvelling in complete horror at what I had done and the effect that power had on me. I would sooner use my wrist to push your nose up into your skull than simply shoot you - I need the effort and the physical contact and close quarters to stand a hope of beginning to justify what I had done. I don't even think I could disable someone from behind; it would have to be face to face.

----------------

In accordance with the rules of the meme, I need to post these instructions:

Instructions:

1. If you want to participate, leave a comment below saying “Interview me.” You must leave your blog address so I can think of good questions for you!

2. I will respond by asking you five questions - each person’s will be different. I’ll post the questions in the comments section of this post.

3. You will update your blog with the answers to the questions.

4. You will include this explanation and an offer to interview others in the same post.

5. When others comment asking to be interviewed, you will ask them five questions.

I hope somebody plays!

Supermarket Secrets - Chicken Makes You Fat?

Dispatches: Supermarket Secrets from Channel4.com

I watched this truly eye opening programme last night and really do not think I can face eating another supermarket chicken, or chicken product, ever.

Due to the pronouncement about thirty years ago that we should all eat less red meat and eat more white, demand for chicken went through the roof. As a consequence to that, chickens were bred, and special feeds produced, to make them bulk out in half the time.

It seems that although their body bulk increases faster, their bone structure does not and we were treated to film of an average, 'acceptable' factory farming shed, full of very large, very young chickens whose legs were not developed enough to hold them up. Those that could stand, waddled, very few even hopped, the best seemed as disabled as any morbidly obese human.

Those that couldn't stand were trampled, and died of those injuries or of dehydration, being unable to reach the food and water hoppers. Although there are 'standards' regarding the sale of a whole carcass, apparently they are not so stringent regarding portions like chicken breasts and the suggestion was made that disease free but damaged chickens (obviously in pain) were used for that market.

I put standards in inverted commas for a reason. The birds are in a shed, with a concrete floor. On top of that is litter (like kitty litter) so the whole shed becomes one giant, unwashed litter tray, full of excrement and producing plenty of ammonia. Its seems that 82%, almost every single bird, suffer painful burns from this - where the legs, if not also the breast, are in too frequent contact with this vile cocktail.

When you buy a pre-packed chicken, check the leg joints - the 'knees' or hocks trail in the acrid poop mix and exhibit brown scorch marks on the scales known as hockburns, even deep enough to go right through layers of scaly skin into the muscle.

If the scaley skin has been cut away at that point too, you are certain to have bought a chicken that lived a very short life in a cramped, dark and pungent shed, but also in pain.

If all that doesnt move you, then consider the fat content.

When chicken meat was first recommended, the animals tested were active, healthy birds; the athletes of the farmyard, running around all over the place. They had strong bones and a low fat content. Of the fat there was, a high proportion was omega 3 - essential for brain development.

Factory chickens produce masses more fat - they have nowhere to run, their legs often can't carry them anyway, and of the fat content, the omega 3 has shot down, in proportion.

The researchers bought a couple of the best grade chickens at all the major supermarket chains and sent them for testing. Each and every one produced a whole jam (jelly) jar full of fat and precious little protein, because of the farming methods.

You now get more fat than protein from a piece of chicken.

One of the eminent interviewees suggested a direct correlation between the loss of omega 3 in the diet over thirty years, and the increase in mental health problems in young people.

Last but not least, obviously, chickens get diseases. There is one disease passed on by tiny cysts in the bowel movements.

Because the floors of the sheds are the way they are, there is a high chance that other chickens will peck at the diseased faeces. I guess a chicken's nature is to peck at seedlike things on the floor, rather than in a hopper.

So they drug the food.

They drug it with a chemical which is currently under review as potentially more dangerous that first realised.

The drugged food is replaced with normal food only one week before the animals go to slaughter, but traces are still there in the liver and meat, when the creature is sold. The final micrograms per kilo of meat is only half the current allowed level, but the operative word there is current. And if it's still in a chicken's system after a week, well then once you've eaten it, its going to stick around inside you, too.

Our local butcher closed down. One of the owners retired and the supermarket had taken most of the trade, so now we have no choice but to eat this plumped, damaged, fatty, unhealthy rubbish. I can now tell a good, healthy, nutritious chicken from a bad one by sight, but its not going to be of any use.

This morning I feel mostly.......................shafted.

My favourite phrases

Best said in a cold, sour, plummy British accent with slow and careful enunciation. Think Alan Rickman (Severus Snape.)

1. Bugger this for a game of soldiers (Also Sod this, F*ck this)
   
2. In your dreams, Sunshine/Sonnyboy/you steaming pile of (horsesh*t/bovine excrement)
   
3. As much use as a chocolate poker
4. You have, ooh, a snowball's hope in hell
5. Scrota
6. Fffffffffishcakes
7. Well whoop-di-doo
   
8. Darling I couldn't give a flying fart
   
9. He's a sandwich short of a picnic
10. And you're all that and a bag of chips
11. Would you like grapes with that?
12. Ohl f*ck-a-duck-a-day
    

BlinkList | Your personal start page and social bookmarking engine.

BlinkList | Your personal start page and social bookmarking engine.

Look what I found!

If it works I will be very happy (well of course it works, until you add me to the equation.)

Its a cross between a bookmarks list and a blogroll, you keep it online, there are no folders, instead you use tags so that if needed you can file away a webpage under two or three tags. They give you a nice toolbar button to hit instead of thumping bookmark or subscribe.

After that you can choose which lists, if any, to publish on your blog. You can also choose to make the pages public or private and link to your list instead of displaying all of it.

My blogroll is as large and messy now as my bookmarks list, so its going to be a project, but the idea of being able to cross index things is making me all smiley.

Fingers crossed!

Blah Blah Blah

01 Oct 2006 - just found out that theres a link to this post from a restricted page on jossmer.co.uk. For the sake of anyone following that link, all of the information in this post is completely out of date.

I hesitate to write about my life these days, on account of not having one, but being devoid of adult input etc also makes me very short on witty observations.

The kids broke up for the summer holidays on Friday, Gary came home from his training course on the same day, and the dreaded Mother in Law visited on Sunday. Saturday was all laundry and shopping, so Sunday morning was a bit crazy. Our bedroom is now a mini-minefield, with lots of carrier bags all making me feel guilty, but the rest of the house is eerily and abnormally spotless.

I ought to sort bags - they are piled in order of importance, but today I took a break to feel vacant and lost. When you live with metaphorical sirens going off all the time, always in crisis mode, then being vaguely organised is scary, its like a disaster vacuum. I succumbed to total vacancy.

I have some development tapes I could have listened to were it not for the kids, who I would have taken out instead, were it not for the rain. I could have done some more laundry, but somehow I couldn't raise the be-bothered.

I NEED only six more customers for my Telecom Plus business so my plan of action tomorrow is to be straight with relatives (all at least 100 miles away) write to them, enclose the glossy brochure which pretty much duplicates the website in my side bar, and forcibly point out that the mobile phone rental can be as little as £8 a month (thats if you have a phone already and just change the sim card) and on one tarriff it costs only 8p a minute to phone any mobile or regular landline / house phone in the UK, and 7p per text. Then do the written version of standing and staring at them impassively until they succumb either to the great deal or the grating dealer.

I should add - this post certainly isn't a sales push - my goal in life is not to become a house bound customer care rep' and I don't want to be swamped with customers because then you can't look after them all properly, but a happy medium would be nice. I need six, I could probably cope with twelve, for now. Lets start with finding that six.

Its such a great company to be with, but you could sign up a million distributors and not see a penny (have I said this before?) - the only way to earn is to get customers and keep them as happy customers, then you earn a tiny portion of their bill each month. If a customer disappears, so does the income.

I guess its a good way to keep distributors representing the company properly. I am just very aware that other distributors (with assets like time, support and a car) are out there leafletting houses or running stalls at all the summer fetes. Hic , sob.

So, today zombie-like indifference, tomorrow familial blackmail. Not so much a blog post as a space filler, huh.

Don't say I didn't warn you in the very first sentence.

Russia’s Biggest Spammer Brutally Murdered in Apartment

Russia’s Biggest Spammer Brutally Murdered in Apartment - NEWS - MOSNEWS.COM

A cautionary tale for spammers - one day someone will just flip......

Restoring The Imbalance

Thought I wanted to post something cute and fluffy and probably involving pink, to make up for the seriously manky toes, one post down.

Thought I wanted to, but couldnt actually do it. Every time my clicking finger got close to uploading something banal, my head jerked around 90 degrees over the other shoulder, forcing my mouse arm to 'step away from the cutesy stuff'. Have you ever considered how difficult it is to either suppress or express a violent gag reflex with your neck doing the Exorcist dance?

This is as near and as good as it gets. I hope you appreciate the lengths and depths of intent it took to get this:

That Tickle Your Fancy?

According to the Chicago Sun Times today, police in Florida are once again on the lookout for a man with a very unusual obsession.

Okay, so there are plenty of sites on the web for foot fetishists (none of the feet look like this: but then at least this shot doesn't have other naked parts, cheap nylon bra sets and lots of eye rolling and tongue lolling going on.)

The Smyrna Beach Tickler, however, has a tendency to break into people's homes to tickle their feet while they sleep. His victims are single females over the age of 60, and he likes to perform naked. Oh, and he's been getting away with it, on and off, for four years now.

Didn't we have a guy in the UK a few years back, who was arrested for trying to make love to paving stones?

Right, whatever grabs your fancy. Just be a good boy and do it in private.

I'm Bored - Photo gallery of urban legends

Why would a wife and mistress go together to purchase a man's headstone? Why would that headstone, apart from a brief free style poem, say only 'missed by your friends' (ergo, presumably missed by neither wife nor bit of spare)?

Do you enjoy acrostics? Photo gallery, ninth down.


I'm Bored - Photo gallery of urban legends

Free Association 129

LunaNina's word association. I missed last week's when my internet connection died and I am late with this week's, but here you go:

1. Believing:: Hopeful
   
2. Invasion:: In-Laws
   
3. Boys:: Laundry
   
4. Island;:: Sand
   
5. Repeatedly:: Complaining
   
6. Normal:: Business
   
7. Hex:: Curse
   
8. Tuxedo:: Penguin
   
9. Virgin:: Lousy Cola
   
10. Cereal:: Breakfast

Saw Steve has started doing this - nice one Steve!

Maricopa County, Arizona

The following is copied directly from Jon's Jail Journal.

You live there? This is how your money is being spent. Go visit Jon's site, or Mothers Against Arpaio. I see from this article at Intellectual Conservative.Com that people are becoming aware that abuse is happening, but can't defend that awareness by saying exactly how it's going on. The article goes on to quote what it says are very low figures for inmates injured whilst resisting prison officers - it completely ignores abuses and lack of health care that are not related to insubordination.

Sorry to throw this at you on a Sunday morning, but it has churned my gut. We would condemn a third world country and boycott it, for less.

Lest We Forget

“The mass of mankind has not been born with saddles on their backs nor a favoured few booted and spurred, ready to ride them legitimately by the grace of God.”
Thomas Jefferson

It’s the one-year anniversary of my transfer from Sheriff Joe Arpaio’s jail-cum-cesspit to the Arizona Department of Corrections. Since being moved I’ve kept track of conditions at Arpaio’s gulags via Linda and Pearl – the two founder members of Mothers Against Arpaio – who have provided me with testimonies from inmates and inmate family members. Here’s a small sample of sorrowful words taken from the testimonies.

“…my fiancé committed suicide in Madison Street [jail] on December 28, 2004.”

“My brother…came into contact with what they call ‘Durango Rot’, a foot fungus. They refused him medical treatment for this until one toe became so large with disease that it literally exploded.”

“One lady who was in the holding cell with me…[her] uterus fell out while in the tents. She was holding it and told the sheriffs….[she was told] it was not an emergency and she could push it back in.”

“…my son has suffered constantly with anti-Semitism. He has been beaten tormented and denied medical care after a beating by a detention officer…. He suffered two hemiated discs and nerve compression in his back. He is suffering from reccurring staph infections…. He has had heart surgery due to a staph infection that attacked one of his valves. His body is covered with scars due to these infections eating away at his skin.”

“…a very close friend of mine was beaten into a coma, by other inmates in Madison Street Jail, and nearly died. Still today, he can barely walk.”

“My daughter…at Estrella [jail]…contracted an infection…. She may lose her leg; they took her [to hospital] with an open wound, a good 8 inches long, 2 inches wide cut almost to the bone and tissue….”
“…my daughter…saw a woman pepper sprayed because she had been asking and asking for medical help.”

“My son…has been beaten (resulting in broken ribs, bruises, cuts)….The jail is overheated, overcrowded and infested with bugs and lice. Sheriff Joe has NO RIGHT…to run his jail as a NAZI CONCENTRATION CAMP!”

“Our grandchildren’s father died while in the custody of Sheriff Joe Arpaio. Our grandchildren…are without a father now because of the horrific conditions that Eddie was subjected to.”

“…his tents aren’t saving tax dollars, they are making Joe rich…. His justice will come just like Hitler’s and the rest of the Third Reich.”

It seems to have been business as usual for Sheriff Joe Arpaio. His empire has expanded; a record level of presentence detainees is being subjected to institutional crimes such as the ones these testimonies graphically describe. The taxpayers footing the bill for Arpaio’s scheme have been rewarded by Phoenix becoming an epicentre of crime. So many arrests and convictions are occurring that the State of Arizona has to export prisoners to other states for want of bunks in the overcrowded prisons.

I have never witnessed a greater threat to society than Joe Arpaio enriching himself from the sweat and blood of the downtrodden. His gluttony has corrupted what should be sacred public work. How many more American citizens must be tortured or killed before Joe Arpaio is stopped? How can American politicians who espouse international human rights allow the Arpaio beast to run wild in their own backyard? How can George W. Bush scold other countries about international human rights violations when Sheriff Joe Arpaio is on his Steering Committee? The hands of American leaders may be tied when it comes to fixing problems on foreign soil but surely they have the power to prevent American citizens from being murdered, tortured, and sexually abused in Maricopa County’s jails. Why aren’t America’s leaders proving their commitment to fight international human rights violations through actions not through shallow words? Until Sheriff Joe Arpaio is removed it seems that there will be an expanding stain on America’s soul.

Just because you're paranoid, it doesn't mean they're not all out to get you..

Which internet subculture do I belong to? [CLICK] You are a Conspiracy Theorist! Holy cow! You actually did an online quiz? Little did you realise that the information you gave us is being sent to an unknown government agency for evil use against you! Don't try to leave, we are already watching. More Quizzes at Go-Quiz.com

Found that at the Mystic Housewife's blog (I like her!)

Get one thing straight. Conspiracy theorists in the UK do NOT sing Baah Baah Black Sheep to their kids - they would be too paranoid about a parade of small grey men in small grey suits, from the local Council, coming to label them as teaching their children ethnic disparity and sweeping the juveniles off to p.c. school to eat curried goat and learn about 'other cultures' until being white seems like a damp squib of a booby prize and they grow up simpering and apologetic. OK I taught my kids that Page Three girls have to flash their tits because they never learned to type and need to be prayed for and that the Princess and The Pea died in childbirth leaving the Prince to wed someone from farm stock who could move furniture and dress herself. But that's different................ALRIGHT???

No I am not a conspiracy theorist and no that's not an example. Hah. Anyway all Mensa members are automatically on a list with MI5 in case they go all subversive and qualify to be an evil and/or unpatriotic genius. Apparently. Oh, and if you want your phone tapped by the Government, just start the conversation with the word 'plutonium'...............

Mooo-ed Enhancers?

Image: Spaced Out Cows, from Bart's Blender Corner - go see, he's clever.

Liechtenstein, you will be pleased/displeased to note, no longer endorses the use of hemp as cattle food. Apparently this has upset the dairy farmers as much as their cattle, The farmers are up in arms whilst the bovine community may or may not be experiencing serious downers/withdrawal symptoms/schizophrenic tendencies/the munchies.

The hemp (from the same family as cannabis) was heavily used to keep the cows happy and sedate and producing a lot more milk due to their laid-back attitude. Stressed cows produce less milk. Spaced out ones, apparently, produce more. One has to wonder if they also amuse themselves following the pretty colours in the grass or listening to house.

The effect of stress on milk production proves that bovines and humans have at least one thing in common, although I don't see anyone legislating against procreation by lazy useless men, but thats perhaps another blog.

By memory, hemp used to be an acceptable sofa stuffing and please, no comments on how my mind processes word association. It is is still used as an ingredient in some consequently highly-scented soap sold by The Body Shop (God Bless Anita Roddick - she still owned the gaff when it first came out) and Switzerland grows it, but has for a while barred it as a fodder, on the basis that the essential chemicals may be passed along in the milk.

It would be interesting to go back to Liechtenstein in, say, eighteen years time, to track any change in academic excellence, juvenile delinquency and post-natal depression; all of which should see some increase if the spaced cows really are producing spacey milk and therefore, at the end of the food chain, subdued and biddable children.

I wonder - does this mean that Liechtenstein was really the home of the best cup of tea in the world? Will milk consumption there, simply and inexplicably diminish to match the reduced supply?

See here for original article.


P.S. Friends - You have been so prolific this past week! It will take me a while to catch up - so many rollercoasters...........

Buggrin' BT

I am writing this on Wednesday, ahead of posting. Currently (at the time of writing, doh) I am unable to post at all, nor pick up my email, nor touch base with my Msn contacts, wave my flag in the Homeworking forum, answer business enquiries; nothing. I’ve already had one person ring to see if I was still alive.

The reason? Three days ago, at the end of business on Sunday, BT decided to upgrade its broadband to 2 meg, across the board. No advance notice, no warning, flip it seems they didn’t even tell the technical support right off.

I know its my fault, I know I could be with Telecom Plus for less money but I procrastinated – changed other services over, but not the broadband. Stupid, stupid woman.

So there I am with an error 721, hanging on the other phone line with a techie, unplugging things, rebooting things, trying this, trying that, because he was certain their service was working fine and it had to be something at my end.

We worked out that everything was fine at this end too, up to my modem, and he casually mentioned that BT filters fall down all the time, that I probably needed a new filter, or a new cable, or both.

The next morning then, I walked to town, went to Curry’s and bought a replacement filter and cable. The filter was a whopping £12.99 and with the cable it came to over £21. I walked home, and found out they had sold me the wrong cable. Phoning the blighters was no fun; they have an 0870 number and are not allowed to give out the landline number. Get this – they apologised but explained they were better that competitor X because with the other guys you got through to a call centre, but Curry’s have an 0870 national rate number for each and every one of their shops. In other words, you pay the same as calling Scotland to call the shop in your own town even if its just round the corner. Somehow that feels worse and I wont be dealing with them ever again, but I digress.

I found a little computer shop by phone, then went back to Curry’s, got a refund on both items, went to the computer shop and bought everything I needed for £6.50 in bubble pack and little grey boxes. So that’s what it was then, the display casing and stickers they use in the national chain must be worth £15; I am so glad that’s cleared up.

Poorer, knackered and back home past lunchtime, almost time to think about getting the kids from school, I loaded everything up again and – guess what – it didn’t work. Another call to the engineers and this is when they finally tell me about the upgrade, that it’s probably not the cable and not the filter, but that the modem they gave me X years back when they connected the broadband is too old to receive info that fast and is falling over in the attempt. Good news, say they (I didn’t think so) it only needs a CD to upgrade it, and they’ll put one in the post, which will take two days to get here.

The two days are up. It got here. It didn’t work. Another bloody phone call to the bloody helpdesk. At least I timed it right this time and wasn’t put on hold for half an hour listening to the repetitive, incessant droning of a recorded voice telling me how I could jump the queue by asking for help on line. Grrr. “Oh,” says the lady, “right,” says the lady. Did she say “I’ll send you one of our newer model free modems”? Did she hell.

“I’ll ask the engineers to downgrade you speed to 1 meg, that should do it, but it will take up to 24 hours to happen.”

So three to four days without broadband (providing this works and it doesn’t turn out that one of the neighbours has dug up the verge, or that a wire has fallen out in the nearest junction box), and what will I get? A half speed service for the same price, and a refund for the time I have no connection. As to the time, energy and money it has cost me to get to this point – doodly squat.

They KNOW how long they have been issuing modems; they KNOW there is BT equipment out here that can’t handle the upgrade. Have they even bothered to mention their plans to the customers? Like F***.

The funny part, if you are in to black humour, is that last week I wrote an idiots guide to blogging for a friend with a rather widely circulated e-zine. I am fine with that, I mean, if you want to know how an idiot could run a blog, what better to do than to ask one. I couldn’t go into the details of all the fancy add-ons etc because I don’t understand them – I still don’t know how to use trackback. If you want plain and simple, I’m ideal.

The e-zine went out on Sunday at about the time that I lost my connection. If there were three things I really wanted to do this week they were:

Get another post up and knock that ‘100 things’ monstrosity off my front page

Get my list of links back up! (What good is a solitary blog? I’m sure virgin visitors would have wanted an easy and immediately obvious way to visit you lot and see what’s out there)

Live up to the comment I made that it’s easy to post a little something every day and that I always do.

Ha, ha bloody ha-ha.

By the way, if you are in the UK and use BT for your phone calls or line rental or broadband – did you know they have decided to add ‘late charges’ now, if you are not exactly on time paying your bill, instead of sending red bills or disconnecting you? You are now expected to know exactly when a bill is due and to take responsibility for the worrying if you haven’t received it. Did you know they charge you FOUR QUID for the privilege of a duplicate bill irrespective of whether the original showed up or not?

No, me neither. Apparently it should have been in a little booklet with the bill – you know, the bill before last that I never got. To be fair the staff seem very nice but their corporate decisions are apparently being made by an ignorant arsehole, that or a mole for the opposition. Perhaps they are not allowed to force you to pay online or by direct debit, but are perfectly able to piss you about if you don’t.

Quite possibly my line rental and broadband are going to Telecom Plus the minute I have finished tearing these guys to shreds through the Ombudsman. Watch me.

Life Highway

Cheryl Highway Bewilderment Avenue 7 Childbirth Hospital 24 Fame City 44 Bankruptcity 140 Bog of Eternal Marriage 535 Please Drive Carefully

Username:

Where are you on the highway of life?

From Go-Quiz.com

Snaffled from Annie.

All I can say is that childbirth city had better bloody well be 24 miles back on the road I just came from, because I am NOT going there again....

My 100 Things

If you read my fifty things last year, yeah that has been cobbled into this list. These days I'm more brave, or today I am anyway, so this could turn out to be one of those disappearing posts.

1. I am an oldest child, only daughter, Aquarian Metal Rat and a 22.
   
2. My first name on a psychic website was Mousey Pendragon and I picked it because I am quite nervous about my own abilities to flame roast other people, so it seemed to fit.
3. My second name was gifted and it was Raven, and it made me laugh, see description, its a surgical bird.
   
4. My current name is Idano, because I don't, but I don't go in the sites any more.
   
5. On the Homeworking Forum I am Millysoo, a Spoonerism
6. My second job was at the BBC in Chiswick, West London
7. Wednesdays we used to go to Television House and blag our way in with the ticket holders to be on Top of The Pops
8. I met The Jam (all 4' nothing) in the BBC Club bar on the same night as BA Robertson (7' something). The little ones had bigger egos, aint that the way.
9. My best friend at the time taught me how to give the wrong phone number when drunk
10. Her name was Karen Pratt, but she pronounced it Karin and I used to call her drive-in-fanny, but never to her face. Prat is UK slang for a CU-next-Tuesday, so is fanny.
    
11. My first husband kept calling me a stupid F-ing (select farm animal), so I took the Mensa test. I passed with IQ 160, top 1%, for all the good I (don't) put it to.
    
12. He left 6 months later and never came back, so being good at stupid puzzles has its perks after all.
13. My nose is broken - he did that and other things and for about the last year or so I lived in fear of him; I was in that situation where keeping my mouth shut was marginally better for my health that showing him up by trying to escape.
    
14. I used to go down his pockets, but only to collect his petrol receipts etc, he was a motorcycle courier and never paid any tax. Not that he gave me any money either. I was too scared to tell him I had envelopes full of receipts just in case.
    
15. He got more and more into drugs, kept kilo slabs of leb in the house knowing I was terrified to shop him in case I lost the kids. The amount he smoked in the house, I was sure it would turn up in my bloodstream and put me in question too.
    
16. One time he lost it and scared the kids. They went outside and came back with a lump of mud as a gift for him. They had found the bastard's dope stash and I had told them it was daddy's special mud (I mean, what can you say?) so they thought mud would make him happy. It made him worse.
17. One time he picked what he thought were magic mushrooms from the council grounds round our flat. He was wrong, and he ate them fresh. He spent a week in bed looking very grey and weak but wouldn't let me call a doctor. Part of me hoped that would be his last mistake and I shocked myself by cheering up at the thought of his death.
18. I got sterilised thinking I couldnt cope and was a lousy mother, when after he left I found out I was only a very depressed mother. For a while the kids and I were the three musketeers and it was wonderful. I got a reversal after my second marriage.
    
19. It took my daughter ten years and a change of area to tell me he had abused her, so I am one of those mums who never knew - I was even relieved to leave one of them with him whenever he volunteered, because I assumed that if he had one of the children to look after, he would be behaving himself and not dealing dope or trying to cheat on me.
    
20. It seems he was telling her that if she told, she would come home from school and find my face blown off with a sawn off shotgun, at the same time that I was in Mrs Persil la-la land and teaching the kids that mummies and daddies tell each other everything. So it was a mess.
21. He was eventually arrested, but my daughter, by then a teenager, was still too scared to go to court. I don't know if he got on a watch list or not and that worries me for his new family.
    
22. He had started priming our son too. All those years later I had to go through these huge pennies dropping, like my five year old daughter being terrified to sit on Santa's lap, and her four year old brother worrying that he was gay. They had always given such plausible reasons, that I hadnt been able to see what was under my nose.
23. I requested counselling, but got to the assessment interview and was pronounced too stable to qualify under the NHS budget cuts - they only help you round here, if you are in danger of hurting yourself or others.
    
24. Kick-self thickens the skin. Wanna call me names or throw rocks at me? Be my guest, I beat you to it. I can also sit in any shit with anybody because I don't 'do' emotions when all hell has let loose. Its not strength, its self preservation.
25. Come to me and go 'aww' at the wrong moment and I am likely to short circuit. I never let anybody in or even close when I am in crisis. My confusion (rather than any pain) is sacrosanct, because I only feel safe and comfortable if I am alert and empathic when dealing with others. If you want to help me or make me adore you, hoover my floor and answer my mail, so I can work things out on my own guilt free. Make the tea.
26. I cannot sit and watch someone else be upset, I would move heaven and earth to take a bit of the weight off them.
27. I am hypersensitive to selfishness eg those people whining on about their tax dollars around Live8 and I am prepared to believe I overreact, not that I intend changing.
    
28. The Queen Mother, I believe, described the first law for a Lady as 'never complain, never explain'. I think I like her very much, she sounds like she was a real gumboots girl. That may turn out to be another good reason for removing this post or simply letting it fade into obscurity.
    
29. It turns out that ' the man' also used the same terror tactics to buy drugs down the pub with the kids in tow. Behind my back he used my baby boy as a tester, to see how fast he got stoned and what the quality was; thats another thing that only came out when we moved away. That is possibly why A has ADHD. His serotonin levels are screwed. The only up side is that he is incapable of being deeply affected by the other things his dad did.
    
30. I will be angry to furious about all this for the rest of my life, wrong things stay wrong. I have forgiven him, however, and helped my kids to do the same. Pity is a good place to start - the poor b****rd has some eye openers coming when he hits judgement day and gets to really understand what he's done to other people. All that torture in a skip load, on the head, in one go. Wailing and gnashing of teeth are a horrible side effect of anguished guilt, and eternity is a long time. I wouldn't wish that on anyone no matter how scummy.
31. We have a joke when we pray for him, that if God answers and softens his heart in this lifetime, he will have to spend the rest of his years with a big sign on his motorbike top box - "If I've ever met you - Sorry"
32. He always called me frigid bitch because I wouldnt smoke dope, nor even get drunk in his presence. One time he mickey-finned me in the company of his mates, thought I was out cold on the sofa and started slagging me off. Apparently I set him straight and told him some home truths, in Welsh, which I don't speak, but it freaked the guy who translated for me and a couple of the others, who just wouldn't come round any more. After that he called me Gwendolyn meaning Welsh Witch, but I took it as a compliment, which annoyed him even more. Hey they were all spaced, so maybe God just got me a reputation that helped, whether it happened or not.
33. When he left, his drug use helped. I was able to lie to the kids that their daddy loved them really, but the naughty medicines made him be bad and he couldnt help it.
    
34. I had to do ballet when I was only 2 1/2 because the docs said I was going to end up with one leg longer than the other.
35. We visited a teacher at one of her shows and saw all the girls on stage in fancy tutus. I thought I had gone to see the fairies.
36. I reacted badly to the scarlet fever jab and mum had to tell me I had to stay indoors or I would go to see the angels. Tell a two year old the angels are outside and see how hard it is to keep her indoors.
37. The jelly was nice, it was all I could eat for a while, but it was the special fancy glass moulds - the individual ones. I was special.
38. My youngest memory is sitting up in my pram and cutting the top off my bottle teat with a pair of scissors, I can even describe the room and where I was parked.
39. Before I was six we lived in a two-up two-down cottage and my second youngest memory is chasing my dad's bare butt round the tin bath in the kitchen, trying to talc him, because in my world, bottoms always got talced after a bath. After that they got a latch on the kitchen door.
40. Nan's cottage round the corner had a cooking range, which I loved, and her Singer treadle sewing machine, which I couldn't leave alone. I sewed the needle through my fingertip once. Its mine now, she promised me that day that when I was old enough to use it sensibly, I could have it.
    
41. My old Welsh Nan tried really hard to teach me some old Welsh poetry, but she died when I was seven. I used to hear her when no-one else could, and go downstairs to tell mum that Nan wanted her. We were all in the same house.
42. Nans biggest message to me was that the point of having green fingers is not to make them greener, but to get on with the gardening. It took about forty years to really take on what she meant.
    
43. I got into psychic sites for a while because nobody had taught me which way up to hold the spiritual trowel, but I entered with usual cynicism and tested everything.
44. I run a mile from people who spout on about fairies or reincarnation or aliens from Pliedes, or who want to be the centre of attention just because they have a shred of gift.
    
45. My daddy's an orphan from Willesden and one day I'll turn that into a joke C&W song.
46. We think his heritage was Russian Jewish, via North Wales.
47. My husband has just found out one of his great grandmothers was Jewish - father Abraham's grains of sand and all that.
    
48. When I was little, Southall park was full of lions, in my head. I liked them and was apparently always pointing them out. I wasn't so fond of the crocodile under my bed.
    
49. I used to wake up feeling like my bed had just landed on the floor wonky, it felt like the last leg was hitting ground and the bed shook (or I jumped).
50. I loved going to sleep because of the dream tunnel. It was just like the one on The Time Tunnel, black and white swirly, except the stuff that flew past me in the walls sort of got there on its own. (We're still talking childhood here, people.)
    
51. I got scared of demons at about 11, gave my cross to my teddy bear and performed an exorcism on him. I still kept him locked in the airing cupboard at night, just in case.
52. I would feel too guilty to sleep if I could see all my dolls eyes and they were sitting up when I was tucked under blankets. I regularly used to fall out of bed because the dolls had got 98% of the space.
53. That was good practice for marriage.
54. The best way to walk on grass or indoors is barefoot.
55. I love old buildings and the vibes off the walls and furniture.
56. Lewes College has giggle walls - the whole atmosphere changes at the precise point that the new corridor walls attach to the ones that were part of a nunnery in the 14th and 15th century, but I didnt know that, I only got told when I remarked on the clearer, happier air.
57. I took up and gave up astrology and tarot in my late teenage. I gave up because people have these invisible rings through their noses and its too easy to pull them along, and to get power crazy.
58. My dad and I would play ESP games (Uri Geller was the craze then), we would predict playing cards and draw copies of each others pictures. It always worked so it was 'just one of those things'.
59. Dad could stare at this one little thermometer and make it read a higher temperature.
60. He used to take nearly empty marmalade jars, top them up with hot water , and put them outside the kitchen window to attract wasps away from the house.
61. I used to sneak outside with a lolly stick and help them climb back out.
62. My worst childhood nightmare was being in scary war games, and realising it was safe, that I could walk between front lines and not get hurt. Nobody would talk to me because they wanted it to be dangerous, so they refused to believe me.
63. The other weird dream was water. You had to live in the water or out, not both, but I found out I could move between both worlds and that the corpses in the water werent really dead, but nobody on either side would believe me or come with me.
    
64. My best childhood dream was flying, low and fast from a running start, skimming the pavements, twisting, looping. Maybe it was more like swimming in air.
65. I have spent precisely 50% of my life so far as a parent.
66. The thing I miss most about being single is being able to chuck all my cards in the air and see where they land, just for the hell of it. I dont believe in stereotypes or half the invisible social walls that others believe in.
67. The thing I miss most about living in London #1: City streets in the pre dawn, no cars on the road, peace. Concrete by dawn light is beautiful and so is silence in a city.
68. The thing I miss most about living in London #2: being able to dye my hair on a regular basis without looking like a cross between Wurzel Gummidge and horsehair sofa stuffing, the sea air is too salty and squeaky clean; maybe I just need a layer of pollution.
69. I would hug a tree cheerfully, but only if I didnt think anyone could see me.
70. I would climb a tree, but only if I thought I could get back down again.
71. Teenage angst led me to time how long it took for wads of cotton wool dipped in TCP to numb my wrists. Once I knew opting out wasnt impossible, I was back in control.
72. I have never learned to drive.
73. I have never been to Wales even though all my family comes from there.
74. I havent had a week away on holiday (barring visiting my mum) for twenty five years.
75. I have never been on an aeroplane nor further abroad than you can get by ferry.
76. I have never had a passport, last time I went to France for the day they were still using those one-day things you could pick up at Victoria train station.
    
77. I live very near to two major leyline crossings.
78. I read stones, keys etc and sometimes crystal shops have such piggish vibes I get dead arm and have to go earth to a lamppost.
79. Pretty much everything I write bypasses my front brain and goes from inception to fingertips, which can (ought to) involve a lot of reading back.
    
80. I am the same in an argument and my conscious mind can sit back and watch - so I surprise myself with the things I dare say and the things I remember.
81. We all remember every single thing that has ever happened to us - its all there, the problem is accessing where you filed it. My trigger for perfect recall seems to be defensive disassociation, which is rather handy, actually.
82. I love sleazy! My favourite shudder is currently provided by Rhys Ifans, the Welsh, Y-front wearing loony from the movie Notting Hill. His latest performance in the new Oasis video for The Importance Of Being Idle is umm, delightful. Phwoar, its all in the eyes, guys; well that and the intelligence and intent behind them.....
83. I am quite lascivious on the sly, really.
    
84. I love my second husband very, very much and as the saying goes, I would consider murder but never divorce. I am slowly perverting him, in a nice way, which is tremendous fun. I wouldnt want anyone heavily into S&M etc - too boring, it would feel like you werent enough on your own, like there had to be 'equipment' to make things saucy.
85. I used to pray for God to make my husband a good man. He answered my prayer in a way I wasnt expecting - he gave me a different husband. Thanks, God!
    
86. He asked me to marry him the second time we dated and I made him wait. I only said yes months later on a tube train to London, just past Greenford, I think, when my two kids turned to him and asked if they could call him dad.
87. I tell him I got shanghaied into marrying him because of that.
    
88. 'I' didn't marry him - we did. The kids went round telling everybody that 'we' were getting married, meaning them too.
89. He was real dad and the other one was practice dad (not a real dad at all.) They said so.
90. I write lists all about me, that turn out to have a lot about other people. I think that speaks volumes to how I rate myself.
91. One chunk of hair in my fringe, right at the top of my head, has been silver since I was 30. Its getting wider now and I have given up dying it.
92. I like it, I want long, flowing, curly, silver hair.
93. It would be nice to shape up a bit so it has the kinky leather sci-fi effect rather than the 'granny with pruning shears and a brick in her handbag' effect.
94. My mum learned to drive the Green Goddesses in the war. I am proud of that. She and dad were both in the volunteer fire service out of Acton Station.
    
95. She was a land girl in Norfolk and kept dealing with animals when she came home. She was late for her first date with dad because she was seeing to a breach birth on the cattle farm at the back of St Bernards, the mental hospital in Hanwell.
96. Dad fell in love with her, he said, when he saw her up to her armpit up a cow's bum. He got his best civvies covered in cow muck trudging across to find her, which is why, she says, she fell in love with him too.
97. I'm bloody lucky, I come from stock that values muck & laughter. No fainting floras.
    
98. I would have been landed gentry (haha) if Grandad hadn't lost the Welsh farm in the crash and moved to Southall in search of work.
99. I wouldn't have been landed gentry if his big brother had survived world war one and Grandad had been able to finish University instead of being pulled back to run the farm.
100. I don't care! I am where I am and what I am, and thats all good.
     

Don't Stop Driving, Kill the Cows?

Way back in December I blogged a conversation between my husband and youngest son, blaming environmental changes not on the trees cut down, but on the cows farmed for the burger industry, where those trees once were, all farting methane.

This week a bunch of scientists in Maryland are reported as wanting to produce meat-like cell growth in sheets, to use as faux meat. I guess this is the cutting edge of genetic engineering and the article, here, mentions the increased demand for meat, the benefits of engineering the meat sheets to be full of omega 3 (plant based oil) instead of omega 6, etc. Lots of lovely rationalisations.

Heres the one that really caught my eye, about two thirds down the page:

Writing in this month’s Physics World, British physicist Alan Calvert calculated that the animals eaten by people produce 21 percent of the carbon dioxide that can be attributed to human activity. He recommends that people switch to a vegetarian diet as a way to battle global warming.

“Worldwide reduction of meat production in the pursuit of the targets set in the Kyoto treaty seems to carry fewer political unknowns than cutting our consumption of fossil fuels,” he said in a statement.

Hmm, I have absolutely no comment. Do you?

Hmm

Girl 1: Hows yer love life?
Girl 2: Dumped him.
Girl 1: ?
Girl 2: We were at the cinema, right, getting friendly, right, and he put my hand in his lap and said that was all he'd got.
Girl 1: That small, huh?
Girl 2: Well it werent a superking, but I know for a fact the b****rd had another 20 in his back pocket


And now you know why I don't tell jokes :-)

Ley Lines in Southern England

Ley lines exist. Why they exist is anybody's guess and I don't want to get in to theories, just the current physical proof.

If (and I say if) they have some correlation with magnetic fields, then we may as well scrap that theory for the purposes of this post, because modern life is all about electricity and magnetism and our towns and cities must appear as massive uneven magnetic influences, if there were to be a map of such things. Cities would probably look like a spiderweb built under the influence of caffeine.
(This by the way is from an excellent study done by NASA, recorded here.)

If you are looking for magnetic ley lines for dowsing purposes etc, go to the countryside. Even then you'll hit underground rivers and other independant influences. If you are looking for 'pure' ley lines, the historical record of major crossing points back before we began mucking about with generators, then simply go to the map.

It doesn't help much, to start with, to head for major ancient city centres. St Albans, obviously a big population centre in its day, enough to warrant being taken over 'quick sharpish' by the Romans when they turned up, is still not on the site of the original ley line crossing.

The true junction (and its a lovely major one) is six to twelve miles south of the town centre as we know it today, and slap bang underneath a mental hospital. That also means it was awarded religious significance - priests and monks and holy people were the original caregivers and the sites of most ancient hospitals can be found to have originally been places of worship.

Yes we had straight roads before the Romans, we just didn't lay gravel on them - they knew the construction stuff, but it was a British Princess who married a well-to-do Roman, that taught them how to do it in a straight line. Made his career, that did, and thoroughly improved her standard of living.

Anyhoo. In Harrow and Wealdstone, the weald stone sits beside a church. Dont start on me that the place was probably called Weald's Ton - maybe it was, its just very handy that theres an ancient marker stone right there. It still points in the right direction to display the line it is on and if you play around with a pencil and ruler on the map, the straight line bumps up to other churches etc called 'ley' something, or 'weald' something.

I have a sneaky feeling it is on the main route from Sussex to Bedfordshire, or more specifically Chyngton (now a suburb of Seaford) to Cardington., now a suburb of Bedford, except that it is privately owned by the Whitbreads.

1. Both place names have exactly the same root in Old English, 'ton' meaning town, place, home. Chyng's Ton and Carding's Ton belonged to the same family and they were nipping from A to B. I can see the benefit to a warring clan of having a home on the coast, near a river - all the war horses were bred on the Isle of White. The last sign set in the chalk as you approach Seaford Head where there was an ancient settlement, is The White Horse in Alfriston. Congratulations guys, wherever you came from, you found the shop. Basically. Having a business in shipping salt inland would also have made these people pretty well off. Shipping it in by horse, to beat the competition, well, we are talking full and progressive use of modern technology. Bit of a business empire going on. Nothing compared to the Whites of course, who had the military horse training thing sewn up and friends in high places all over the country, plus offspring, plus land. If you dont believe me, check out the Domesday book. Thats way later on, but still enough to work out that one 'brand name' survived and flourished while another one downsized or disappeared.
   
2. Both sites are intersected by ley lines (as in dot-to-dot join the ancient tons, tuns, barges and what will you), that diverge from their central points exactly fifteen degrees apart, same as the numbers on a clock face,with one line going straight between the two sites.
   
3. At the time the mouth of the river Ouse, now in Newhaven, came out where the modern town of Seaford stands. To the other side of the Head is the Cuckmere - only a meander now but once much more. The people living on Seaford Head had control of a promontory, with docking space on three sides, only one side to defend from the land, and all the room they needed for international trade to park up and do business. Okay so people didn't exist in the numbers they do now, but still.

Heres a game - Settling on the exact location of the Seaford Head site is a matter of speculation unless you use ley lines. This is because half (or more) of the settlement has, over time, dropped off the edge of the cliff into the sea. However, once you have found it by plotting a few lines in the area, and established for yourself that three or more intersect perfectly with no vague little triangle in the middle, then and only then head off and try to map the line that goes through Polegate.

I did this and it is the best proof I came across. The Long Man of Wilmington is on the wrong hill face. I didnt know this at the time and thought I must have messed up, as my projected leyline from Seaford Head at fifteen degrees to other lines I had mapped, went through the usual markers but did not neatly slice between the two poles or sides of the path as held by the Long Man. The Long Man was a blatant sign post - a sign to people several hills away that yes, they were heading in the right direction and nearly there. However my projected line slipped along the next hill face and it would seem that the head of the Man directed people to go off at an angle more towards Eastbourne than Seaford Head.

Going to see the site, I was certain even from a distance (actually distance is best) that there were more lines in the chalk on the neighbouring hill slope than could have been caused by modern walkers traipsing up to see the man at close quarters. There was something too much like a pattern in some of the fainter but broader scars.

I was right! I then found written historical evidence that the Long Man had been recarved as recently as 1710 and that the new version had been created on the slope immediately adjacent to the eroded original. He had been shifted left and made, because of the lay of the land, to point in a slightly different direction. The original Long Man really was a giant advert and sign post, if you like, leading directly to the kingdom/trading post that was Seaford Head.

And that's me sounding far too much like I write boring esoteric books for a living (hoho, I wish), so I am going to shut up. For now.....

Found Something to Collect!

Ally has a great post today - she collects beautiful novelty teapots and got me thinking that it really is high time that I found something to collect.

Most women aren't natural collectors (in the same way that we are not natural train spotters or observers of car engines) but if theres something you like then a lot of relatives breathe a collective sigh of relief at no longer having to wonder what you'd like for Christmas, Birthdays etc.

Been over to Jane Loves Tarzan too - Jane posted a joke today, a real classic and definitely one to remember. Very funny.

She also had a handy link to Buckaroos funny pictures.

These aren't from there.

These are from a linked site I found at Buckaroos - AllPosters.com - so brilliant, they are even based in the UK! No ordering in dollars or waiting for weeks.

As is the way with things I like they are not actually posters at all, but fridge magnets - which suits me fine. Bingo, I have a 'thing' to collect and am jolly happy these arent the cutesy type, nor the ghastly inspirational type that like to masquerade as 'funny' and proliferate all over gift shops.

I spent ages once, determined to buy a coffee mug from IWantOneOfThose, because it had a smiling fifties lady and the phrase "I am having my period and am therefore legally allowed to murder you".

I wanted it for work, which shows how crass and inappropriate I can be, and probably, to my regret, why I never bought it.

Just one more because I am finding these irresistible:

AOL - slightly too sensitive?

I wonder if some silly blighter AOL user has received comments on their blog and then marked the email copies as junk mail, instead of trash.

The reason I wonder is I happen to know that blogger.com is bouncing back the email versions of comments I put on blogs if the email address is AOL.

AOL are notoriously anal with their spam controls - if a couple of people mark emails from a company as junk mail or spam, then apparently they block ALL emails from that company from reaching ANY of their customers.

So, if you use AOL and thought you were suddenly getting no feedback at all on your Blogger blog - you had better go visit your recent posts instead of relying on email notification.

The Trouble With TelecomPlus

Well OK, I guess I mean the trouble with The Utility Warehouse club, which is part and parcel, and splitting hairs.

Actually I have two niggles:

1. They are SO customer centred that little things like earning the flash, full version distributor website (I just got mine, yay!) take into account the number of actual customers you have. This is fine, great, good, moral, another one of those reasons why I joined. It just seems that so far, EVERY blighter who takes a look has asked to be a distributor instead, and as a distributor you can become your own first customer. So I have these customers who are not really my customers, but their own customers, because they couldn't settle at just BEING customers and had to go and sign up to be distributors as well. Hence the delay in getting my full version website.
   
2. They have some truly beautiful pdf format advertising downloads and, I'm not really supposed to tell you anything that isn't on those. The company is very moral (there's that word again) and comes down like a ton of bricks on anyone who gets creative in describing their services - basically you use the official and approved advertising or you shut up. They will not tolerate misrepresentation, which is fair and proper - oily salesmen need not apply etc etc. Rather than sit and type out the official wording, I really, really, really wanted to show you one of the colour ads on here, but I dont have the software to convert a pdf to a gif, so when I say that club membership gives you the cheapest (note the 'est') domestic gas and electricity in the UK, believe me, I am not copying out all the blurb about the mobile phone deals, broadband, landline call and line rental and all the rest of it as well.
   

On the other hand, I guess that boils down to me sulking because: a) I'm with a long established British plc with principles and, b) um, yeah, that again.

Eeh it's a hard life