Family Matters (or does it?)

I've just got back from dropping my cousin off at the station. She's been here since Thursday night. Here's some observations and anecdotes of my last 93 hours.

*We perhaps had left a little too little time to get to the train. So I worked out that I had about enough money left to get her a taxi. However, not enough to afford the call-out fee to get it to come to the house. So I grabbed her bag (which weighed about the same as I do) and carried it down to the junction to try and flag down a cab.

No taxi came.

No bus came.

We started heaving this damn bag up the hill. We managed to get a bus for one stop, just to save time, then I got to carry the bag up the rest of the hill myself. We got to the flat road to the station, and J. said "Oh look, the bag has wheels!"

AAAAAAAAAAAAAAaaaaaaaaaaaagh!

Silly me, assuming she'd have known whether it did or not. So I dragged this thing to the station, down the stairs, along the way, down some more stairs, then all the way along the platform. She was kind enough to lift it onto the train, though.

I can't raise my arms any more.
*sigh*

*A lot of the weekend was about shopping. We eventually accepted that we weren't going to agree on anything, fashion-wise. For example:
Me: A black hoodie with zips and striped bits, studded black cotton sleeve-things, black t-shirts with skulls on and black rubber bangles.
Her: A gold handbag, brown leather high heels, gold coloured jewellery with pink glittery bits and a gold belt.

She also said I looked like a man. Yay.

*She got really quite drunk last night. It was funny (mostly).
Best bits included:
(J.) "That's a logical anatomy. No. Wait. That's a logical anthology. Well, I know it's not biology. Anatomy, that's biology. It must be anthology. It's definitely an 'an' word..."

(Me, at home, as she started to fall over) "Don't crack your..."
*crash*
(Me, sighing) "...head"

I should also apologise to both Chuck and Chary. Sorry for letting her ramble at you, guys.

*After I dropped her off at the station, I was mooching along the road, and I suddenly realised I'd reverted to my teenage years. Big clumpy boots, stripy socks, cropped black pirate trousers, my *ahem* Pokemon t-shirt, a big armful of black rubber bangles... Big bag full of junk, and earphones in. When I got home and looked in the mirror, I realised I pretty much look the same as when I was 15 or 16.
Damn. When will I grow up?

Badgering the beef.

*Why does everyone badger the beef?
'What's the beef?' 'Where's the beef?'
What are you, its mother? Leave the poor beef alone! Go pick on gammon for a while.

Or, in fairness, the beef may be terminally indecisive and introspective. What is the beef? If I'm the beef, do I have a personal identity, or am I, or what is thought of as me, merely part of a collective?

I want a t-shirt with 'Badger the beef, harass the ham' on it.

*Today I managed to stab myself in the eye with a screwdriver. And my left thumb feels like I've broken it. On the good side, the worrying lump under my arm (which some of you already knew about) turns out to definitely not to be a tumour. So hurrah.

*Matt bought me an umbrella with The Incredibles on it. I love it. It's rained since I got the umbrella, but always when I'm on my way back from work, so I didn't have it with me. So, in a manner most pathetic, I resorted to taking a bin bag out to the big bin on the street whilst it was drizzling, just so I could use it.

Photo Time: the greatest hero of them all!

Matt in his parents' garden. Looking scowly.


The stream at the bottom of self-same garden.


It took me ten minutes to get a photo of Mhing the supercat not licking himself.








Finally...


Dead Pigeon in the centre of the road just up from the BDP. I risked my life for this shot.


Really happy graffiti. I have the image of the author of this just suddenly deciding that they needed the world to know!


The Scottish Hobo Society.


Riot! Anarchy! Rawk!


This one's a classic example of someone who didn't plan the spacing of their anarchist statement properly.

Some stuff.

This (which I just found out about) sickens me. Not the woman and the result of the court case, but the medics.

I've just finished We Need To Talk About Kevin by Lionel Shriver. It's about a woman who is the mother of a sixteen year old boy. He goes to school one day and kills seven students, a cafeteria worker, and a teacher. It's entirely narrated (after the fact) through her letters to her estranged husband. It's surprisingly good. I actually found it got creepier and more gripping the further in I got. Mind you, there's one bit which is bugging me because it doesn't seem to fit.

I'm constantly surprised that a male author can write a believable female character, or vice versa. It makes me wonder whether any one person is made up from all the stereotypes and views of others.
But then I suppose that there is no originality any more. Every story told is a story that's been told hundreds of times before, in locations spanning the globe.

And on a lighter note: Holy Moley! I didn't realise it was SG1 gay porn at first. Not until someone mentioned Colonel O'Neill. (I found it through one of the sub-pages on a (actually quite innocent) Google search.)

Linkoriffic!

Advice for strippers.

Brainwash your kids! (fake) Check the intellectualizer page.

Wil Wheaton's blog. God, I hated Wesley Crusher. Wil seems nice, though.

Now, who wouldn't want to learn how to prepare a shrunken head?

A lovely page about a hamster. Sort of. More or less.

Bravo, ITV.

Well, our third television channel has pulled it off again.
Their appalling...nay, horrific adaptation of the novels of Agatha Christie are again making me shout at the TV until my throat hurts.
'Marple'. Not Miss Marple, just Marple.
It raises the question with me - how much can you adapt a book before it really stops counting as an adaptation?

The last one I saw (The Body in The Library) was awful. They had the semblance of the same plot, but changed characters, situations and so forth and, presumably to make it more 'modern', changed a relationship (and hence who was actually guilty) from a straight relationship to a lesbian one.

And before you say anything: I watch them in the hope they'll be good this time.

This one (Sleeping Murder) was even worse. There was a character who was fairly prominent throughout who they'd just made up. The relationships between the other characters had changed. The ending had changed. The personalities of the characters had changed. They missed out important points in the plot in order to focus on romantic relationships between people. One of the few things that remained was that the killer was still the same person.

Phew. Ok, I'm getting worked up again.
Calm, calm, calm.
Shhhhhhhhhhhhh...

What are the programmes that make you shout at the TV?
And if you don't watch TV, what are the films or books that make you annoyed?

Eerie goings-on at the BDP

Broken glass everywhere.




The streetlights have been dead for the past three or four days (leaving it pitch black once it gets dark) and yesterday we found that one of them had been smashed.


This odd message, found next to the footprint in the wall. Height of the mutant Pigeon, perhaps?


Anyone have any ideas? The Pigeons are suspiciously quiet, too.