Interesting new game

I have a black Bic ballpoint with no ink visible in the clear plastic tube. Its remaining life depends on how much ink is stashed in the opaque bit at the business end, and its output has developed the habit of becoming very faint; which gives me the chance to take bets on whether it has finally croaked or whether a spot of vigorous scribbling will revive it.
    There have been about a dozen revivals so far, so maybe next time?
STOP PRESS: Make that a dozen + 1.

Very perceptive lady

I noticed whilst reading an obit of Sister Wendy, the nun who became a TV art critic, that she wasn’t impressed by Damien Hirst’s pickled sheep and shark. “Not worth a second look,” was the opinion she expressed. Probably because she was too well brought up to describe the likes of Hirst and the unmade bed woman as being at the farty end of arty-farty.

Dastardly deed on the American football field!

Interfering with an official? in the Bears @ the Vikings match – that’s something you don’t hear too often. Sadly, the demands of TV advertising meant that we never found out which official was interfered with and what exactly was done. It got the Bears marched back 15 yards from the previous line of scrimmage, though, and left the viewers to exercise their imagination.

Future unaccomplished

It’s amazing what you see in old newspapers when you’re using bits of them scrunched up as packing. ‘Corbyn accepts May’s challenge to a TV debate’, for instance.
    Never happened.

The crowd got it right

Going through the non-wrestling bits of the WW’s Xmas Day Smackdown Life took just 38 minutes with a recording instead of the two hours of the original broadcast. No wonder the crowd was yelling, “This is Awful!” as the Bulgarian Brute sorted out the Nasty Jap.

Get it right, you useless lot

The ‘two-thousand and’ fad seems to be getting beyond a joke. How long will it go on? At least into twenty-nineteen. Next thing you know, we’ll find ourselves being assured that the battle of Hastings took place in one-thousand and sixty-six.
    Yet another failure by the education Blob. And the BBC, where it seems to be the house style.

GOBism** is no excuse

Being born in 1953 doesn’t disqualify Tom Utley of the Daily Mail from being able to use computers. If people a decade older than him can use them, it is because they have made the effort to understand them. Mr. Utley clearly hasn’t.
    ***Grumpy Old Bloke

No Sherbet, Sherlock!

“Tesco to offer in-store haircuts” read the headline. Well, they’ll have a hell of a job doing them on-line.

I wish

I have just installed what is promised to be the fastest version of the Firefox browser ever. All I can say is that it won’t have to go any at all to be faster than the clunky disaster area it’s replaced. It’s remarkable how good you can become at Freecell while you’re waiting for your browser to get something from the WWW.

Today’s debate

Is referring someone who’s posturing on TV in a patronizing, know-it-all way as ‘that S.O.B.’ – to dismiss him as Some Old Bloke (implying you have no idea who he is and you don’t bloody care) – worse than applying the conventional meaning of S.O.B.?

Useless piece of junk!

There was an amusing piece in today’s paper about people letting their Xmas be ruined because their Amazon gadget couldn’t talk to them due to too much traffic on the internet. Oh, the perils of relying on non-autonomous gadgets instead of staff!

Where are the spaceships?

I’m currently reading a large volume of ‘the best SF of the 21st century’ – well, the first dozen years of it. The editor’s choice of a lead story is a bit strange. It’s not really SF and it’s an extended whinge about the end of the British Raj in India, when Hindus and Moslems acquired the independence for which they had been agitating and celebrated it with mass slaughter of their neighbours.
    “Look what we’re doing now you’ve gone,” the story yells at the rejected British, “we’re butchering millions of people now you’re not there to stop us. You bastards!”
    It’s going to take a lot of recovering from that sort of start to a book.

Eggon face? Someone’s going darn!

The Gatwick airport drone might have been an imaginary flying object but the Sussex police farce is determined to bust someone. Their best bet would appear to be to get a regular customer to agree to have it ‘taken into consideration’ with a bunch of unrelated crimes.
    That way, it will be ‘sorted and case closed’; even if it isn’t.

It just gets worse

The bad zebras were out in Philadelphia yesterday, flaunting themselves on TV. The stocks there should have been pretty full of striped idiots after the Eagles’ match with the Texans for incidents like that uncalled facemask by the Texans and that pathetic roughing the passer embarrassment against the Eagles, which gave the Texans a touchdown.
    Why not use eye-in-the sky technology? The CFL does.
    And that DPI call, which gave the Saints a TD in the first quarter of their match, was dia-sodding-bolical.

Xmas cheer, not!

You can always rely on the Sunday Post to cheer you up. Today’s front page, for instance, is all about someone’s ruined Xmas. The someone is the boss of a firm which went belly up, leaving the staff without December’s pay packet. The boss is weeping about it in his $3M mansion in San Franciso, having jetted there after enjoying a final staff Xmas party.
    You couldn’t make it up!

The joys of history revisited

Oh, joy! Corbyn’s comic opera chancellor wants to give us national strikes once a week. Then it will be back to the good old days of Gordon F. Broon and the government trying to steal everything not nailed down, and trying to pull the nails out of everything that is.

The perfect excuse

There’s no point in investigating J-C Druncker’s hands-on approach to women, as Tory leadership hopeful A. Rudd wants. He’ll just tell the court he was so lubricated with free (to him) booze at the time that he didn’t know what he was doing. And get off.

Xmas Xhibitionism

Xmas is the worst possible time to go anywhere; as proved by the response to the wanker with the drone at Gatwick airport. Specifically, the response of doing bugger all and letting the twat get away with it for a whole day, and also with his freedom and the drone.

It’s a job to keep up!

A new twist to the Shop Early For Xmas theme – Boxing Day sales which open on December 23rd. Which means that Sunday shopping has to be respectable now. The only problem is knowing which are Boxing Day sales and which are Black Friday sales which haven’t ended yet.

Plus ça change again

The experts have been rewriting The Book of People Labels. Thus ‘jobsworths’ are now ‘self-promoters’, i.e. people who try to look incredibly busy and productive whilst doing nothing at all useful.
    Think politician.

Real World rules suspended

Oh, Jeremy Corbyn told a lie in the House of Common Criminals? BFD.
    He's a politician.
    It's what they do.

False friend

Celeb chef Jammy Olive is in line for a thorough swatting with a copy of the Trade Descriptions Act if he thinks he’s a champion for the planet, which doesn’t give a rat’s arse either for the creatures living on it or for the state of its surface.
    Our planet has been around for 4.5 billion years and it will be around for another 5 billion years until the Sun becomes a red giant and swallows up Mercury, Venus and Earth. No matter what Jammy and other posturing bugs do.

Dosh? What’s that?

The experts are at it again. They reckon we could be a cashless society in 15 years. Probably based on an assumption that the Tories will make themselves terminally unpopular, and Labour will win the next election and spend all the available cash, and as much as they can borrow, and leave behind nothing to show for it. Like they do.

Out of my orbit

I read: “TV’s Dom Joly” and I thought: “Nope, never heard of him.” And if all he has to tell me is that his snoring nearly gave him brain damage, I feel no sense of loss at all.

Didn’t win in

If the Packers can sack Mike McCarthy, no surprise that Man U. has shed Miserable Mourinho.

The Pittsburgh Punisher or Pounding the Patriots

There was a miracle in Miami last week. Now, one in Pittsburgh this week. Can’t wait for next week’s episode!

Unimpressive waste of effort

Is anyone even marginally impressed by claims that things such as frozen salmon fillets are ‘responsibly sourced’? Like anyone would dare to market irresponsibly sourced products and face the tidal wave of confected outrage following inevitable exposure.

Browns triumph at last

That was a striking performance from the Cleveland Browns last night to end their losing streak against the Denver Broncos. And, most important of all, when their head coach gets on someone’s case for making a blunder, the team can remind him that he nearly cost them the match with a ill-judged time out inside the last two minutes.

No sense in the USA

If an NFL team loses out in the race to the playoffs, why are other teams said to ‘win out’? Don’t they know that the opposite of ‘lose out’ has to be ‘win in’?

Humbuggers at it again

Predictably, the rail unions will be leaping out on strike over Xmas and some airline pilots will be joining in. But hey! Xmas is the world’s stupidest time of year to try to go anywhere. So sod ’em.

More cloth ears

It’s very easy to hear ‘social media’, particularly as uttered by some Americans when commentating on their football matches, as ‘sofa media’. Which also works quite well as it describes the home of couch potatoes.

Rivers In Flood

That was a brave decision of the LA Chargers; going for a win with a 2-point conversion instead of kicking a field goal and ending up 28-all with the Chiefs in Kansas after regulation time. The best Thursday Night NFL match ever? It certainly had an ending which was good enough to be the close of a CFL match!
    Can’t forget all those dodgy decisions and no-calls by the Zebras, though. They seem to be getting worse and worse as the season draws to a close.

Why does she do it?

Mr. Littlejohn of the Daily Mail offered a fascinating theory about the prime minister in his last column before his Xmas break. She’s a political masochist, who enjoys flying round Europe being told No! and being humiliated by the stroppy male** gits running foreign countries.
    The louder the No!, and the bigger the rebuff, the more she loves it. The theory certainly fits the observed facts.
    ** Angular Mherkle, being an east German, can be identified as male in this context.

Battling winter’s chill

What does the £200 Winter Fuel Allowance buy? One of my neighbours stretched it to 27 bottles of wine from two separate special offers and a bottle of Southern Comfort. Which will definitely keep the cold out.

Step One accomplished

How to sabotage Brexit: her supporters arrange a confidence vote on the Prime Minister by her party, making it look like her enemies were behind it, and win her a year’s grace before she can be challenged again. Which should give her ample time to let the Bremoaners win whilst blaming everything on the Leavers, before she swans off to the House of Lords.
    Sounds unlikely enough to be true!

Arrogance plus intolerance – what a charming mixture

Is the Chancellor, P. Hammond, a fascist or a communist with his talk of purging from the Tory party, everyone who doesn’t agree with him? And what does he plan to do? Round them up and machine-gun the lot of them for his personal pleasure?

Bin-boggler

Recycling is a complex and laborious business, according to a Daily Mail columnist. Paper & card in the blue bin, bottles and tins in the brown one, garden and food trimmings in the green one and everything else, and when in doubt, in the black one.
    It takes a dedicated nit-picker to make that complicated.

How to do politics No. 43

“The reality is . . .” from a politicians means that the listener needs to brace him/herself, because a HUGE and shameless lie is on the way.

New, but not necessarily better times

Comedians are reporting that they get a huge list of banned topics, to which they have to append an endorsing signature, if they want to perform at student events. Not a bad thing if it excludes looney lefties who think shouting: “Thatcher!” will bring the house down. But they probably get a special exemption under EU rules.

Bank bites unexpectedly

At the weekend, I ordered some stuff online from Sainsbury’s and booked a delivery for today. But this morning, my bank’s automated anti-fraud system was on the phone to say that it had refused the payment and, by the way, did I place the order?
    When I checked my emails, there was one from Sainsbury’s with a phone number to ring to get the order back on track. So I was able to get my delivery in the spot booked after some messing about. Who says shopping on the internet instead of doing it in person makes life simpler?

Don’t tell the Beeb

According to the lunchtime news on BBC 1, the man arrested in New Zealand for the murder of a British back-packer cannot be named for legal reasons. But I already knew the name, having read it in my morning paper. So much for the Beeb as a primary source of information.

Go, Fins, Go!

Don’t you just love it when something weirdly horrible happens to the Patriots, the Armstrong Athletic of the NFL? They didn’t go all the way to Miami to lose, but that’s exactly what they did after a final desperate play which no one would buy as real in the script for a film.
    More Death To All Zebras in Dallas, though. That TD the Eagles were swindled out of with 3 minutes to go was a diabolical call. If not criminal.

Bloody tough leaves Up North!

Northern Rail reckons it can’t put on a decent train service because 10% of its trains are out of action following encounters with leaves on the line! Sounds like either the rolling stock is a bunch of Snowflakes or the leaves in the North are not to be messed with!

Science, but not as we know it, Jim

According to the Daily Mail science correspondent, China is sending a rover to ‘the dark side of the Moon’, which always faces away from the Earth. Although, quote – some light from the Sun does reach it – unquote.
    Like, during the 50% of the lunar month when the Moon is in that part of its orbit around the primary which places it between the Earth and the Sun?

A weird experience yesterday

The cat came charging in dripping wet yesterday afternoon, even though the sun was shining. When I looked out of a window, I saw that a bit of rain was still falling and there were hail stones lying around melting in the sunlight. There’s nothing like a spot of interesting weather to brighten up an otherwise routine day!

Sky vs technology? Technology loses every time

Being able to tell your TV box to record stuff for watching at a more convenient time; or to be able to speed through the adverts; is brilliant.
    What’s not so brilliant is those stoopid twats at Sky Sports starting things half an hour before the time in the TV menu, which the box uses to decide when to start and stop recording.

Mr. Lookalike

That picture of the US presidents, past and present, at the funeral of George H.W. Bush stopped me short with a moment of confusion. Who’s that bloke between Mrs. O’Bummer and Mrs. Clinton? I asked myself. It’s not Jeremy Corbyn after a shave, surely!
    Nope, it turned out to be old Bill ‘Slick Willy’ Clinton wearing a typical Jezzer miserable face. And looking very remarkably like him.

A crossword clue-inspired rant!

They’re not really Native Americans; except in the sense that everyone born in America is a native. They’re Earlier Occupants, immigrants from Asia who, like the white man and all the other colours, moved onto land vacated by the dinosaurs and occupied by the successors to the dinosaurs.

December Grot

Oh, joy! It’s the season of Grotty Grottos again. The best way to get publicity for a winter wonderland seems to be to grot it up for the papers and guarantee that you get noticed. What a weird world we live in.

Something else I’ve discovered

Soft-scoop ice cream doesn’t if you’ve just taken it out of a freezer at minus 27 degrees Centigrade!

A refreshing change

We got the first episode of Sue Thomas, FB Eye on the Alibi channel last night. Okay, she’s deaf and she had a hearing-ear dog as her gimmick, but what a relief to have a TV crime-buster with an intact family, who isn’t looking for a father/mother/brother who disappeared in mysterious circumstances as a perpetual plot device.

Blind benefit

How about that false start TD for the Chargers against the Steelers? But it did help to spark a remarkable Sunday late match with an extra-extraordinary finish with the LAC getting three chances to get the game-winning field goal right and the Steelers jumping offside every time.

Zebras Inaction

A blatant horse collar tackle by the Browns on the Houston Texans’ QB not spotted. Are the zebras keeping their flags in their pockets for Xmas as an early present for the lucky some? But how many mirrors have the Cleveland Browns broken? They must have used up a lifetime’s bad luck in that 3rd quarter drive with two frustrated touchdown plays.

Things they don’t teach you in school

How to eat dinner with a cat on your lap whilst watching the NFL on TV.

Clint’s Turkey

I watched the end of The Gauntlet the other day. That’s the film in which honest cop Clint Eastwood drives a witness in a hijacked bus with interior armour between ranks of corrupt cops whilst they shoot it to bitz.
    How come he’s going at walking pace? I asked myself. How come they don’t shoot out the tyres first so he’s no longer a moving target? How come no one on either side of the gauntlet was shot by crooked cops on the other side? And who paid for the millions of rounds of ammo used to perforate the bus and surrounding buildings?
    Pure ludicrosity! Maybe they should have shown this turkey a bit closer to December 25th.

Those were the days

I’ve just finished an old Inspector West book; number 34 in the series written by John Creasey. This one is set in the early 1960s and Inspector West of the Yard has to take a trip to South Africa. Where he and a local cop confront a breakfast consisting of white fish then a heroic combination of steak, sausages, two eggs and bacon, with more of everything on offer in case the initial helping isn’t enough. It’s a wonder they could get up and walk around after scoffing all that lot! But then, people were a lot tougher in the couple of decades following the war.

Here’s a thing

I noticed, when my broadband connection was acting up, than an elderly PC with lots of useful old software which would be a real pain to locate and install on a new one; assuming it would run with the later version of Windows; starts up quite quickly with no internet connection.
    I’ve got into the habit of switching it on 10 minutes before I need it and still finding the hard disk light glowing because the system is still messing about. Not so with no internet. And if I start using it and then give it an internet connection, it doesn’t start doing all the annoying stuff which slows it down when there is an immediate internet connection. And the antivirus program still does its update when it notices that the internet is there.
    Sometimes, we can find ways to make life a little easier; but not too often.

Strike back; you’re diverse too!

Something to say to anyone who looks a bit foreign who gets stroppy with you: “You bastard, you’re totally disrespecting my culture.”

Not bovvered

I’ve just realized – the looney left don’t have Rupert Murdoch around to slag off any more. Which may explain rather a lot.

Lost cause

Do I moan about the BBC Xmas TV schedule being mostly repeats, as is fashionable for the papers at this time of year? Nope. Mainly because if I want to watch TV, there’s lot of much better stuff on the 2 million (feels like) other channels beyond my TV box.
    All I’m likely to watch on the Beeb is the news, and that’s mainly history repeating itself rather than yer actual re-runs.