Gosh, I don't know.

Goth hunting!

A fascinating review of Scream 2. I ambled into it expecting it to be yet another boring online movie review, but it's very special and very well written.

Oh my. I feel nauseous.

Flash site for the film The Grudge. I am a wee feeble chicken, because I can't stop myself from freaking out on this site, even when it's daylight and the sound is muted.

Tickers! As much as I loathe it when people use these in their sig lines (mostly people who are proudly announcing how far on they are in their pregnancy, how soon they're ovulating, how old their precious diddy little child is...), these are quite fun to play with.

International Sleepover ticker.

My cervix feels high and soft even though I've already ovulated. What does this mean?
That was a question I never thought I'd randomly read on a non-birth-related site.
The answer is on one, however, and if you really want to know, you can read it here.

More full of evil than...

The Pussycat Dolls are leading a crusade of shiteness in the charts. Their song, 'Don’t Cha' is... well, not a song as such, more a rhythm for them to grind their various lady bits at the screen. They're trashy, they're sleazy, and I cannot hear 'Don't Cha' without adapting the lyrics from:

Don't cha wish your girlfriend was hot like me? Don't cha? Don't cha?
Don't cha wish your girlfriend was a freak* like me? Don't cha? Don't cha?

To:

Don't cha wish your girlfriend was hot like me? Don't cha? Don't cha?
Don't cha wish your girlfriend had more STDs? Don't cha? Don't cha?

Because, frankly, they all look like you'd want a good wipe down after touching them and I'd prefer my girlfriend not to look like she'd shag anything with limbs. But that's just me.

*Oh, 'freak' seems to mean someone who'll give you a blow job in public and cock-tease all your friends. I bet that's not in the OED.

Anyway, not to be outdone by that, the Black Eyed Peas came out with this... interesting song, which I first figured to be a joke song in the manner of Goldie Lookin' Chain:

What you gon’ do with all that junk?
All that junk inside that trunk?
I’ma get, get, get, get, you drunk,
Get you love drunk off my hump.
What u gon’ do with all that ass?
All that ass inside them jeans?
I’m a make, make, make, make you scream
Make u scream, make you scream.
Cos of my hump, my hump, my hump, my hump.
My hump, my hump, my hump, my lovely lady lumps.

What the buggery?
As Bill Bailey says, "the charts are more full of evil than an Al Queda suggestion box".

I don't know what the world's coming to, I really don't.

In other news, I was at a work thingy last night, where lots of organisations met up and tried to persuade tourist groups to patronise the winter festivals. There were a couple of great quotes from the orators:

1) "54% of the people [of the 100,000 at the Hogmanay party] are from the UK and, indeed, abroad."

2) "Choice is not a nice word. It sounds too much like... moist."

Snow day.

It's snowing today. I love the snow. There's great big fat white flakes twirling past the window. I want to go and play in it. Sadly, since I'm at work, I can't. My boss has taken the snow as a personal affront, and I am itching, but ITCHING, to get out there.

Snow makes me smile. I look like a loon walking down the street grinning at the sky, but I don't care. I wish it snowed more often.

Linktastic!

I am lazy, and can not think of anything exciting to write (what's new, eh?), so today is all about the linkage, or linkosity if you will.

Goth jokes! My favourite:
How do you get a goth out of a tree?
Cut the rope!

Yes, yes. I know.

Circlemakers. A group who, well, make crop circles.

Postsecret. Strange and moving.

Well, will you?

Operators Standing By! Laughing at stupid people is fun. Judgemental, but fun.

I want. This is so cool.

Lost in Translation.

Aprovaçã0, then never was good modernized him, exactly if some these paginations much more mine.

Oh, sorry, I was playing with that last link. I meant:
Ok, so this wasn't the best update ever, although some of those pages are a lot more interesting than mine.

Going to the opening of the Christmas festivities tonight. There will be mulled wine and free ice skating. I'll try not to kill myself. See you later!

Books, bears and blogs...

Well, goodness me, I love charity shops. Some of my very favourite books have been ones I happened to pick up because they looked interesting.

Want to Play? by P.J. Tracy is one of these. I only bought it on Saturday. Matt had nipped to the cashline, leaving me alone in the book department of a charity shop.
Now, I would have thought that that was unwise, but there you go.

Anyway, I picked it up, and by the time Matt got back, I had finished the first chapter. It was £2.40, which is quite expensive for a charity shop book, but well worth it. I also found a Janet Evanovich that I hadn't read, and an Agatha Christie which I know I have owned at some point, but my mother borrowed and never gave back.

Some great lines from my much-beloved World's Wildest Police Videos.
Car chase on a highway:
"They have to stop this speeding desperado before an innocent bystander gets caught in the crossfire."
I don't know. Something about the whole lack of bystanders or firing of any kind made me doubt the veracity of the statement.
And my favourite one from last night:
"Not only is he loaded with booze, he's loaded for bear."

The International Sleepover blog.

There are Blue Fairies on the moon!

Over myself.

Right, I've got over myself. Thanks to all you lovely people who posted.
After an evening of sipping vodka, and a good long sleep, I am back into the land of the non- (or at least less) whining.

Having said that, I'm going to segue (badly) straight into a thing about the weather. How very British.

It's freezing. It's below zero for the third day in a row, and this cold snap just isn't showing any signs of thawing. I like the cold, despite my crappy circulation (which, incidentally, makes it possible for me to be indoors, with heating and still not feel my toes. Oh, toes. Where are you?) and I'd much rather be too cold than too hot.

However, it makes it very difficult to walk and read whilst wearing gloves. I thought I'd got round that by buying fingerless gloves. Aha! But then it's just too cold to have any of my hand exposed for long periods. So then I got fingerless gloves with a bit you can fold over the end to form mittens. Aha! But see my previous point, and realise that I just have to keep them as mittens constantly, thus ensuring difficult page-turning at all times.

*segue, segue*

An excellent book, and (unusually) one that I had heard good things about from book critics (and Richard and Judy) is The Time Traveler's Wife by Audrey Niffenegger. I laughed, I cried, I couldn't put it down. Read it. Buy it, borrow it, steal it, form some sort of exact replica out of bendy straws. I don't care. Just read it.
Also The Church of Dead Girls by Stephen Dobyns, and Virgins and Martyrs by Simon Maginn.

The BDP is active today. There's 20 palettes of concrete blocks, and both generators are chugging. The Pigeons themselves are also quite active - in fact, I'd say they were nervous. This worries me.

There was something else I was going to share with y'all, but I forget what it was now.
Oh well.
Back after the weekend.

Gloom and doom.

Right, this post is going to be whiny and self-obsessed. There. Now, if you continue reading, you can't say I didn't warn you.

* Work is sucking most dramatically. I have a huge project which I hoped to have finished by tomorrow. It's taken me months. Today, as I finished up the final few details, I received word from the overseers that there's a whole bunch of stuff they want me to change. I have a pile of backed-up work two feet high on my desk, and I am currently sharing an office with a man who has to be shown how to double click, how to scroll, how to save a bloody document, despite having worked with computers for ten years. And once I got him to double click, GOOD GOD! He does it all the time. I can feel my eye twitching every time I hear that little 'tictic' noise. Ironic, the noise is. Plus he sings, he asks me questions about things that he's thinking of, without telling me what it is that he's talking about, he has a constant monologue about what he's doing...

*My back has gone again. It hurts to sit up, but it's going to hurt a lot more when I lie down. Lookin' forward to that!

* My mood is steadily slumping. I'm on a downswing, and I can actually feel myself getting grumpier and more self-loathing by the hour. I'll probably go home and take it out on Matt, and then hate myself even more. Deservedly.


Here. Don't say I never give you anything.

Five Items of Profound Truth

Ok. First of all, Vishnu died on Friday.
It was very peaceful. We think he had a stroke, as his left-hand side just stopped moving. Then he just curled up in his nest and wound down.

Secondly, it was my birthday on Sunday. Thanks so much to all the people who posted here and on MoH. I had a good day. Matt and I woke up at about 10.30 (well, I woke up then and prodded Matt until he woke up), and Matt gave me presents. Three books, a pendant, a box of paints and a Bratz Rock Angelz doll. Oh yes.

We hung out for a bit, then I went back to bed for a nap. When I got up, we headed down to Ocean Terminal to see Corpse Bride, which was very cool. I liked it much better than A Nightmare Before Christmas, but in all honesty I've only seen ANBC once, a long time ago, and at a party, so I should probably give it another viewing.

Ok, enough justification.

We came home and shortly after, my sister and her husband turned up to give me my card, then my parents, my granny and my brother also turned up. I got cards from them all, a cheque from my granny (with strict instructions not to spend it on groceries, but on a proper present), a box of chocolates from my brother and a bottle of wine, some fancy biscuits and a birthday cake from my mum. I was informed that whenever I actually thought of anything I wanted, to tell her, and then I'd get my present.

Then my parents dropped us off at Pataka, our favourite Indian restaurant. It's tiny, and entirely decorated in Charles Rennie Mackintosh, which is just really odd, especially with the Indian music they play. The food, as ever, was gorgeous. I particularly recommend their lamb bhuna. Oh, so tender!

Then we just went home and I cracked open the fancy bottle of wine (fancy, to me, is any bottle over 5 quid). I mentioned that maybe I ought to save it for a special occasion, but Matt pointed out that turning quarter of a century is quite special.

And now I shall draw a veil over the proceedings of the rest of the night.

Thirdly, we now have two more confirmed-as-can-be people for the International MoH Sleepover. Nettie, Mort, Acci and Smerk come under that category, with Chary (depending on timing) and LaMa (depending on... stuff) still to confirm. It's all very exciting. Where does anyone want to go? The castle? A ghost tour? The zoo? Glasgow? Loch Ness is a sure thing, I think.

Fourthly, Yvette Fielding was on 'Never Mind the Buzzcocks' last night. As the 'Most Haunted' scaremonkey, she's lost a lot of respect from me. Anyway, they spent the entire show making jokes about ghosts and ouija boards and psychics, and my favourite statement came when they had the find-the-link (not actual name) round, and a link had to be found between some soul singer guy, and the lead singer from Korn. Mark Lamarr told them that the answer was that they'd both trained as morticians (or similar). He then came out with: "They've seen almost as many dead people as Yvette, although their dead people were real, and not just scams for the criminally gullible..."
I laughed for about 5 minutes.
Gosh, I managed to make that sound completely unfunny. Sorry about that.

Fifthly, being 25 seems to suit me. I got told I looked pretty four times (independant of each other) yesterday, by four different people, got chatted up on my way home, and wolf-whistled at by workmen. Maybe this year is my year!

Six Items of Profound Truth

1. There are human workmen under the BDP. I saw only one Pigeon today, and no generators. They appear to be lying low.

2. As it's become winter (basically) I have resorted to wearing over-the-knee length stripy socks. They are all black with stripes of colour, except for the ones which are probably my favourite, which have skull and crossbones' on them. I have black and various shades of pink stripe, black and purple stripe, black and blue stripe, black and red stripe, black and purple tiger stripe, black and green stripe... Now, I wonder whether this is an inherent wish to remain childlike, or an inherent wish to not freeze my knees off. Anyway, them with tights under, clumpy boots over, a black miniskirt, some big jumper and fingerless gloves is basically my winter uniform.

3. Having watched 'Most Haunted' on the day before Halloween, I was profoundly unimpressed. Seems I'm not the only one...

4. Well! This MoH International Sleepover, as Nettie calls it, is beginning to burgeon like the buds springing forth from a delicate rose bush. Or something. Both Nettie and Mort are coming, Chary and Acci are looking up flights, and LaMa is going to see whether circumstances are right, closer to the time. I am very, very excited, and it's a whole six months away still! I wonder if anyone has any food allergies. So I can avoid the foods, you understand. Not so I can poison the individual, keep them alive through artificial means, then store them in a box on top of my bookshelves. Lordy, no.

5. Disturbing and fascinating.

6. By the time I next post, I shall be 25 years old. Happy Birthday to me.

Minutiae and Minarets

Last night, Matt managed to explode one of the plates we got for our wedding. I applaud him. And I am annoyed. But it was jolly impressive.

The Pigeons have now got a small red generator, as well as the large yellow one. I still don’t know what they’re doing with them, but it’s going to be big.

There is what I believe is a Dead Pigeon under the Bridge. However, it’s been lying in a puddle for the last two days, and it has no feathers, and is all a little soggy and oozy and revolting, even for me. So no pictures of it. Sorry!

And, as most people already know, Nettie has decided to come and visit in (hopefully) May.
It's all tremendously exciting. I must think up things for her to see and do.

We would urge any of the MoH crowd who live nearby enough to come over and join us in a Nessie-hunt! Free sofa space for all*!

*No guarantee

Also, I apologise for the lack of minarets in this post.
Here's a page about them. Enjoy!

Cop-bothering

So, I was watching 'World's Wildest Police Videos' last night, and I thought I'd regale you with my personal police encounter.
To set the scene: I was 19. My family and I were on holiday in Wales, where we go every three years. My family consisted of me, my two younger brothers (13 and 16 at the time), my older sister (23), my parents, my maternal grandparents, and my paternal grandmother.

We'd gone to a little town to have a look at their castle. We'd done that, and had an ice-cream, and had a look round the town. So we're heading back to the cars (my parents' minibus and my m. grandparents' car), and some of us were still wandering around the town. My brothers, my grandmothers and myself were waiting by the cars for everyone else. I was sitting on a wall eating a sandwich and reading, my grandmothers were wandering in and out of the toilets next to the car (washing thermoses, etc. You know what elderly ladies are like), and my brothers were playing with a plastic toy rifle - swinging it round on their fingers, throwing it about, etc.

Eventually the rest of the family got back, so we all got into the cars to head home. H (who has been featured on this blog before) rode with my m. grandparents, and our other granny rode with us.

As we're driving, my dad noticed a police car following us. Didn't really think anything of it, other'n that one of the indicators on the minibus wasn't working, so he should try and avoid turning left whilst the police car was right behind us. Then every time we passed a roundabout, or a side turning, another car would start following us. At this point, we assumed they were escorting something. But no.

As we pulled onto a wide stretch of road, one of the police cars screeched round in front of us, and we heard shouting from the back of the van. We turned around, only to see six policemen with their guns pointing at us, and one with an attack dog.

They were shouting at us all to put our hands out of the windows, so my mum wound hers down and shouted "The windows in the back don't open. Don't shoot my children!" Then they got my dad and my 16-year-old brother out of the car, searched them, handcuffed them, and put them into the back of one of the patrol cars (actually, my dad refused because, with his hands behind his back and his bad back, he couldn't actually sit like that), then took all the rest of us out of the car and had us put our hands on the wall whilst we were searched. It was about this point that we found out what was going on.

Somebody had reported 'two men with a gun' and had given them our licence plate details.

Remember the point when we were waiting for everyone else by the car?
Uh-huh.

What a vicious and cunning gang of armed warlords we must have looked.

So, this person was close enough to get our licence plate, and not close enough to tell that it was two kids playing with a toy?
Uh-huh.

Anyway, they searched the car, and found the toy gun. That's when their attitude started to change to 'oh, bugger'.

They asked us why we were in Wales. We said holiday, and I think they believed us when they saw the buckets of shells, the spades, the towels, and the half inflated rubber dinghy at the back of the van.

By this point, I was crying hysterically, and my gran was laughing hysterically. Eventually they came up to us and apologised, saying that they have to follow up on this sort of thing, and that the reason they'd followed without doing anything for so long was that they were waiting for the dog unit, and that they were really, really sorry...

When we got back to our holiday house, everyone hit the alcohol.

I can laugh about it now, but it's one of the top two scariest things that have ever happened to me (my first stroke being the other) and I do still get a little on the wobbly side whilst thinking of it. So there you go. My criminal history (sort of).

Age Gaps

There was a programme on TV last night about couples where the woman is much older than the man. It was ok. I spent half of it thinking 'So what, if they're happy?' and half thinking 'No! I DO NOT need to see them naked. I believe them when they say they have a lot of sex!' The second statement had nothing to do with their ages, I just didn't want to see them naked. Anyway, moving on.

There was one couple in which she was 49 and he was 21.
She had ten kids, six of which were older than him. Only two (aged 10 and 8) lived at home, suggesting that the other two were old enough to have moved out.
She has 18 grandchildren.

I could not get my head round this. Age 49, with 10 kids and 18 grandkids?
What. The. Hell?
I was just sitting on the sofa, mumbling calculations to myself.
And they want to try for a baby.
Breed early, breed often, I guess.

That is all. I had to note this to stop my head from exploding.

Shakespearean Insults

Shakespearean Insults.

Episode 2 and all that jazz.

Rewatched Star Wars Episode 2 last night. Or rather, the second half of it.

That was really the bit I wanted to see, what with the big Jedi fight, and Yoda going all kung fu master and all.
My four thoughts on this:

• Ewan McGregor had obviously been told that he wasn’t to sound too Scottish as Obi Wan. Apparently, the only other accent he can do is upper-class English. You sort of expected him to charge into battle shouting “Stiff upper lip, chaps! Let’s give those bally clones what for, what?”
  
• Senator Amidala apparently has magic white clothes that never get dirty.
  
• Since all the Sith/ evil Jedis have red lightsabers, does that mean when someone’s gradually turning evil, the lightsaber goes purple? (Or brown if it were green to start off with.) “Watch out for him… he has a mauve lightsaber!”
  
• If someone gets slashed with a lightsaber, shouldn’t it cauterize the wound?

Y'know, like, art stuff. Can't remember if I've posted them before. What the hey.





Harry Potter is Evil spoof.

Hand, Pigeons and Recipes.

So I went to the doctor. She says I have some sort of inflammation of the muscle/joint, and gave me anti-inflammatory drugs to take. So whoop de doo. Oh, and I can't take my time-of-the-month-uber-painkillers at the same time, so I'm reeeeeally hoping I'm not going to have a period whilst I'm on them. But no wrist brace. So hurrah!

The Pigeons have some sort of big yellow (no, not taxi) generator down by the Bridge. I don't know what it does, but it's attached to a long fat orange tube, and it's bloody noisy.

Recipes, then.

Pesto Fish

Get two plaice fillets, and cut them down the centre (following the natural line) so that each of them forms two smaller fillets. Spread with pesto and fresh torn basil, and roll up. Wedge tightly into an oven proof dish with wedges of lemon packed in with them. Bake for 15-20 minutes. Serve with peppery mashed potato. *quick and simple*

Chipotle Pasta

Boil pasta until al dente. Stir in some chopped tomatoes, tomato puree and chipotles in adobo sauce* (plain chipotles would do). Add pepper and garlic. Leave to simmer for 15 minutes, stirring occasionally. Then gradually stir in grated cheese, so that it melts. Serve with salad or crusty bread. Or both! *warning - very filling*

Stuffed Potatoes

Bake large potatoes until soft, then leave until cool enough to touch. Meanwhile, fry gently some finely chopped mushrooms, spring onions and fresh chillis (if using. I tend to prefer dried chillis) and grate some cheddar cheese (the more powerful the better, and the less you need to use of it). Slice a lid off the top of the potatoes and scoop out the potato insides into a mixing bowl (being careful not to break the skin too much). Mash with a little margerine until smooth. Then season to however you like it, and mix in the vegetables and grated cheese. We occasionally add sun-dried tomatoes or bacon to ours. Re-stuff the potatoes, then replace the 'lids' and sprinkle with a little grated cheese. Cook in the grill until golden. Serve with gammon or steak, as they're very robust.

*Note for those in the UK: You can buy this in Sainsbury's.