Eternal History

A recording of the new Wonder Woman film (made to fast forward through the ads), felt very timely. It could have been about getting Brexit done rather than confecting an armistice to end WW I.
    There was the same self-interest & treachery flying around in a very well crafted film, which managed to pinch/recycle the mission statement of Metropolis. Even the closing credits were worth watching until they got to the endless list of names.

Zeroes with the rims rubbed off

The James Bond in John Gardner’s Win, Lose or Die work of fan fiction isn’t man enough to have chips with his steak. He has a wimpy small green salad instead. Credibility shot to pieces as small as the salad in an instant.

Mucho masochismo

Lawrence of Arabia done over by Turks. Clint Eastwood’s character in A Fistful of Dollars done over by Mexicans. Per Ardua Ad lots of pain for your enemies!

Loss of seriousness

Watching the BBC lunchtime news yesterday, I was struck by how much the bloke @ the right side of the screen doing the gesticulating reminded me of Mr. Bean. After lots of Festive Season nosh.

Get lost!

Two calls the other day from different phone scammers trying to do the ‘iPad ordered on your Amazon account, do you want to cancel?’ scam. Clearly making up for time lost over the Christmas holiday.

Money down the drain

Watched a crap film on U-Tube, treating the crap ads like the ones on TV by hitting the mute button, and realized at the end of the film that I had no recollection of what had been advertised. Let us hope the advertisers weren’t charged too much for the showing!

Useless silent film

I normally have the TV sound set @ 25 or so. Watching a recording of the film Loopers from the Syfy Channel, I ended up at 89 before I could make out what a couple of characters were mumbling about. So much for following the plot.
    Or maybe there wasn’t much of one and that’s why everyone was mumbling so much; to cover it up.
    Eventually, blip, blip on the remote control; I jumped forward 30 minutes twice to the ending and saved myself an hour’s ear-straining.

The mind boggles

“A jab in your village hall” is a euphemism for . . . what?

Not fooled

It says Orange Intense on the packet of Lindt dark chocolate. Which is just as well as you might not guess it’s supposed to be orange-flavoured if you hadn’t been told.

No problem

If there’s a choice between going swimming in freezing cold water and going mental, I know which I’d pick.

Cold comfort

A Scots member @ the British Antarctic Survey base reckons the crew is free of the plague and they can indulge in Hogmanizing as usual because whisky doesn't freeze at -30 deg.C. But drinking it that cold will do more than make his eyes water!

More on chocolates

What is the secret of the Black Magic box? The 8" square box has an area of 64 sq.in. The chocs can be fitted without crowding into an area 7.5" by 3.5" = 26.25 sq.in. This corresponds to a deception factor of 243.8%.

One-Eighty, What’s Up?

Don’t they have some weird snap counts! Omaha!
    Land Clark is an NFL ref. What were Mr. & Mrs. Clark smoking when they picked a name for their son!!
    The Jets, meanwhile, have a defensive lineman called Bash ’Em. He’s much more appropriately named.
    Go, Steelers!

Bum rule

2 chocolates = 1 serving? Yeah, right!

Should happen more often

I read yesterday that Joseph Smith, the founder of Mormonism, blagged about 40 wives and was killed by a mob. Sounds about right.

Such sort-of accuracy

I bought a box of Black Magic chocs. The contents decay during 05:2021. The date of destruction is not specified, but whichever day it happens on, the expiry will be at 19:14 precisely!

Definitely resistible

Two hundred quid for a WahWey watch that only tells the time in China? Not on my present list!

Other people’s misery . . .

. . . but sometimes deserved. Who, exactly, is the target audience for TV shows featuring coppers being knowing bastards after stopping some (not very) criminal on 4 wheels? Has to be non-motorists.

Random thought

A bed of nails is suppose to have them distributed such that when someone is lying on it, there isn’t enough pressure to break the skin. But how do you get to that lying position in the first place without doing yourself an injury? Other than needing 4 big blokes to grab arms & legs and put you in place.

Coming to get you!

One of the weirdest sights in the home has to be a cat sitting on the floor at just the right spot for her eyes to catch the light from a reading lamp and appear to glow bright red, like a little demon’s!

Weird World

Switched on for the first Pink Panther film on Xmas Day and found myself watching the tail end of a lovingly restored version of Spartacus, which is about as Xmassy as The Great Escape is BoxingDayingy. Brilliant opening titles for the PP film.

Really?

Examination of the contents of the envelope revealed that I am one of the sender’s best customers. As I don’t remember when I last ordered anything from them; it has to be well over a year ago; I hate to think what the rotten customers are like!

Dodged one

‘Order before 18th December to ensure Xmas delivery’, it said on the envelope which got buried until yesterday. After seeing the pix in the paper of parcels stacked up everywhere, not ordering anything was a disappointment avoided!

Enuff, already

We’re a couple of days into winter, that’s all. So could we have an end to the ‘bleak midwinter’ cliché until February? Thank you.

Really big surprise

On Xmas Eve, PM Boris was locked in mortal combat with EC President von der Leyden and the BBC News Channel was showing a programme about Spitfires and beating the Germans in the Battle of Britain.
    How unusually patriotic of the Beeb!

Tell me something I DON'T know

Should pundits be advising people with lots of turkey left over from Xmas to stick it in the freezer? You’d hope that anyone who has invested in a freezer would know that and the pundits are pointless.

Not even with onions

Anyone surprised that the 70% more infectious number for the new plague type has been dismissed as tripe by professors of virology? We shouldn’t be after all the tripe served up by the SAGE crew.

Calm down, dear!

The members of the public who were aghast & staggered @ seeing the families of Princes William and Edward mingling, outdoors and distanced, need to get a life. Or go and lie down in a darkened room until they gain a sense of perspective.

Won’t wash

How can Spiderman be a 15-year-old kid, as in the film on last night? Shudda bin Spiderboy, as in Superboy. Otherwise, it’s plain fraud.

LGM alert

Desperate attempts seem to be in progress to make unusual radio signals from the region of Proxima Centauri some sort of communications traffic by an alien civilization.

Bad & Good News

Have the Steelers forgotten how to win? Have the Bengals forgotten how to be Bungles? Monday Night Football sez yes to both.

Desperate daftness

You can’t get much better than the notion that babies born containing tiny, tiny microplastic bits are cyborgs!

Alternate reality?

Some Daily Mail Correspondent in Monaco is asking why the 8-sided threepenny coin was called a joey. All the 3d bits in my collection have 12 sides.

Sideways mathematics

How do you calculate 7 x 8? Either add 8 to 8 then add 8 more to the running total 6 more times. Or, multiply 7 by 10 = 70, subtract 8 from 10 and multiply 7 by the answer = 14, then subtract this result from 70 = 56.
    Simple. I’m hoping my resident teenage genius will teach me to walk on water next.

Wolf! Wolf!

Being told that the latest crisis ‘could’ overwhelm the NHS no longer has the slightest impact on me. I’ve heard that bloody ‘could’ far too often before.

Not so great expectations

Don’t forget your BUMPER Xmas hamper guide – even though you don’t have a hope in hell of getting it delivered in time.

Great deal

The EU is demanding status quo access to our fishing grounds for 8 more years as the price of a trade deal. How about a compromise? We let them in for 5 years if they pay a nominal £3 Billion/year plus inflation for those 5 years, and we decide if they’re trying to over-fish our waters.

Point of accuracy

Did Drew Brees of the New Orleans Saints break 11 ribs, as we were told last night? Or did he have them broken for him?

Not quite the message

“Nothing makes us feel more festive than a ballet @ Xmas”, I read. Just as well nothing is as effective, as that’s what we have plenty of!

Just not on

Is a BBC dancing show worth an extended slot on the BBC news? Rather incestuous, surely.

Groan!

What is the point of Sir Starmer? Do we really need someone who keeps preaching the exact opposite of what the government is doing? Next thing you know, the Labour leader will be demanding that the government demolishes all plague Tiers and declares a free-for-all. Groan again.

Not enough problems?

How will the International Space Station be disposed of when it comes to the end of its useful life? a Daily Mail correspondent asks. The only thing that makes any sense, in view of the cost of putting all that stuff into orbit, is to boost it to a higher orbit and mine it for spare parts as needed. And maybe bring the odd small bits back to Earth with returning astronauts to feed the souvenir trade and raise a bit of cash.

No foreign cash, no credit either

If Unicef UK is feeding poor kids in London, that’s the British public doing the job as they are the source of the cash, not the UN, as the usual Labour suspects would have us believe.

One in your eye, mate

The Daily Mail’s parliamentary sketch bloke was twitting the PM about the time it took him to learn how to pronounce dexamethasone. But his newspaper’s computer still doesn’t know how to hyphenate the word @ a line break.

Reading ain’t believing

We’re having the bleakest mid-winter because of Maggie’s secret love split, according to the headlines on yesterday’s Daily Mail front page. Point of information: winter doesn’t start until December 21st, so we’re nowhere near the middle of it.

BS Broadcasting Co.

“The UK garden culture has racism baked into its DNA” is the sort of garbage we’re forced to pay for by being obliged to have a TV licence. Hurry on abolition.

No kidding

One in two people in the UK will get cancer, sez the fund-raising ad. Not much of an advert for the evolution process in humans. Or not much of an advert for the veracity of the ad agency.

Not good enough

The stress should be on the last world: Agatha Christie’s Marple. Otherwise, if a wonk continuity announcer says: Agatha Christie’s Marple, we’re left wondering who else has one. Small point but such details cost credibility.

Who would know, though?

It’s rather confusing, getting the odd episode of The Mind of Mr. J.G. Reeder in colour when the rest are in black & white. I’m left wondering if they were specials or they’re masterpieces of the colourist’s art.

Not fooled

“We’re close” a character thinks. “So much closer than the bad guy thinks.” Except that the smart sleuth has this thought on page 157 of the murder mystery and there are 200 or so pages still to go.
    Oh, what a giveaway! Not even close after all.

Monstrous imposition

Be very glad that you’re not the driver who is paying the £50 per second in parking fines the papers were complaining about!

He doth protest too much

One day, we have the top judge complaining that people are wrong to accuse the judiciary of being soft on criminals. The next, the Appeal Court refuses to up the lenient sentences imposed for the barbaric murder of PC Harper.

Chalk & Chunder

It’s amazing how mindlessly the hacks pushed the party line in David Cornwell’s obits. Writing as John le Carré, he portrayed spying as it really is as opposed to the world of James Bond, we were told.
    Fine. Except that Ian Fleming wrote entertainments and fiction, not something passed off as real life.
    See that thing on the horizon 1,760 yards away? That’s the point the hacks missed.

Cor blimey, Guv’nor!

The Daily Mail really has it in for Prince Andrew, going from the excited headlines on its exposé series. Not that I feel inclined to dip into the morass of speculation beneath those headlines as it would be beneath me.

Logic out to lunch

“The following programme contains scenes of violence” we are told before a showing of the Judge Dredd film. But not before showings of NFL matches, which contain real violence. Makes sense? Only to a TV company.

Time run out?

Is Lewis Hamilton worth $40 million? Not if George Russell is willing to win races for expenses and lunch money in return for a Big Career Break.

Another wearable remark

There was a lot of faux outrage over the purple frock a university student blagged for few pence along with a lot of other designer stuff. But the ladies of my acquaintance, young and old, reckon that they would want to be PAID a lot of cash to wear something so frightful.

Who the F* cares?

Do we really need to be told how much the jackets Princess Kate’s kids were wearing cost when she took them to a panto?

Might just work

Has anyone managed to get off a drink driving charge by claiming it was accidental contamination due to absorbing alcohol from frequent applications of hand sanitizer?

Must-have Xmas treat

We’re all waiting eagerly for the WW Xmas panto. Will it be Big Show and the 7 A.J. Styles? Or will they do Jack & the Beanstalk featuring these two?

Extended entertainment

What to watch on Xmas Day afternoon? TV looks pretty dire everywhere but I do have a recording of last year’s Grey Cup that should do the job.

Adventurous pensioner

The film actor H. Ford (78) is making another Indianabanana Jones epic. It will be interesting to see how he manages to manoeuvre through dense jungle, or escape from marauding tribesmen in an underground cave system, on a mobility scooter.

Routine wibble

It’s all very well, talking heads putting on a pious expression and saying business needs to know what’s going to happen about our future relations with the EU. But if no one knows, that knowing ain’t going to happen and the talking head is just a waste of space.

Simply Nasty Politicians

The Scottish government is eager to force females who claim they have been raped to be examined by men who say they are women. Something that baffled even Mad Mandy of the Sunday Post, who is as looney left as you can get.

Desperately needed in ’21

The first people to get the plague vaccine in Canada should be CFL players, their coaching staff, stadium staff and the officials. We can’t have another year without Canadian Crunch.

Lost their work ethic?

What happened to all the place kickers in the NFL matches last night? Most of them couldn’t have hit a barn if they were inside it. They can’t all have had their glasses steamed up.
    Doesn’t the Arizona logo look like a zombie robin!

F1 done for another year

Tough titty if your brand new engine croaks after just 10 laps of the Bahrain GP, as Mr. Perez’s did. That was a world record escape from quarantine for Louie Hamilton. Not that he distinguished himself. Meanwhile, poor old George Russell ended up back in the pointless swamps next door to Vettel.

Unending story

EU deadlines for an extra mile and a half and three-quarters come and go, but the free lunch counter remains open forever.

Have mercy

How many times is the Syfy channel going to show the not SF 2004 Starsky & Hutch remake in its prime 9 p.m. slot?

p.s.

I’m still trying to work out how the Steelers managed to lose to the Washington Slavers. Unless it was getting a loss out of the way and getting the streak off their backs so they could concentrate on the rest of the season.

Cosmetic tripe

Ofgem thinks the power companies should reduce their customers’ bills by £10/year over the next 5 years. Which will make how much difference to the customer? About bugger all.

Not impressive, Sir Louie

Belated thought about last week’s F1 Grand Prix: it does deadly damage to L. Hamilton’s bargaining power if anyone can turn up, like G. Russell, and drive his car to a win; unless the team sabotages him with 4 tyre stops.

Figures . . .

Break dancing is a sport? Sure it is! But hey, if the Olympic Games isn’t happening, why not include non-sports?

Hurley Burley Gurley

Are we surprised that the media bods, who got on the case of Dom Cummings, are turning out to be no better examples of regulation followers? Of course not. It’s always ‘do as I say’ with them.

Evolution In Action?

If plague vaccinations prevent symptoms from showing in someone who gets it but leaves them able to infect others, that could be Nature’s way of wiping out a lot of the people who oppose vaccinations of all sorts.

Wonk World

What planet are Labour MPs from? One of them wanted the government to do plague vaccinations only in affluent areas to give her something to grouse about!!!
    Another was claiming the vaccines alter DNA – to make the recipients into Tory voters? Sheesh!

More Crumbs!

If worrying about a treatment’s side effects can cause them, does worrying about getting a plague vaccine jab give you the Chinese plague? It’s bound to happen to someone.

Crumbs!

Think of a medical condition; any one at all; and there is a doctor somewhere trying to link it to the Chinese plague.

Tiny Deal

Is it news if an old person thinks having a needle stuck in their arm to get a shot of the Chinese plague vaccine is ‘a doddle’?
    Not really if the same person has already had an armful of this year’s flu jab without all the song and dance.

Getting it right

The usual complaint is that you buy the mince pies and the eat before date is before December 25th. Not the ones we’re getting from Sainsbury’s. March 23rd 2021 is when they conk out. Not that they’ll see out this year.

Not such a brilliant idea

The Daily Mail has been attempting to outrage the nation with its campaign against involuntary DNAR notices, particularly those applied to elderly people.
    But I see it has had the decency to slip in a few comments from people who know that attempting resuscitation amounts to something akin to a violent assault with a very low (maybe 10%) chance of putting the patient in intensive care, alive but badly damaged and with not a brilliant chance of surviving.

Real enigma

The Persuaders! – Brett starts behaving oddly. But how can they tell?

Blue Bonehead

It seems rather strange for people to assume that if a luvvie plays a police detective in a TV drama, that means she has 2 brain cells to rub together, she’s some sort of expert on lor ‘n’ orda and she should be taken seriously if she thinks black foreign criminals are valued citizens and deserve a free ride.

Strange but true

There are people around who can remember taking a stroll along Downing Street before it got all the gates and security, as The Persuaders! were doing the other night. Our inability to do it now is something we have to thank Gerry Adams and his mates for.

Oh, to be aware

Is there an online crib sheet telling you what sort of mental ’elf ishoos you need to have to be fashionable? Bound to be. All you have to do is find it.

Can’t be bothered

There was a remake of The Magnificent Seven on Channel 5 last night. Having seen the original, I didn’t watch it, even though it is supposed to have a strong cast.
    If we have the original, and it has stood the test of time, why didn’t they use this allegedly strong cast to make something new? Sheer bloody laziness, probably.

Cudda done better

Is there cheese hard enough to compare to poor old George Russell? He got to drive one of the fastest cars in the in the Bahrain Burn Up Mark II, only to have a win snatched away by the Mercedes team bungling his tyres.
    Or did they? Was it done deliberately in order not to show up their No. 2 driver's lacklustre performance?

Down the drain

The once respected Oxford University Press is indulging in wonk self-censorship. It has decided to cancel the term ‘Essex Girl’ and the explanation of its meaning and context. Anyone who wants to know what it means will have to consult someone else’s dictionary in future.

Change the tune

Someone still using the discredited ‘working (very) hard’ cliché is Jeanne Freeman, Scotland’s Health Sec, which explains why she remains discredited.

A good day at the factory

Who set fire to them Giants and got them to murder the Squawks? Looks like the Eagles had a swig of it, too. But Mr. Jones had 2 swigs to keep the Packers winning. But not as much as them amazing Steelers!

Sanctions necessary

What the NFL should do is tell the officials to throw a flag for unsporting conduct when players & coaches claim falsely that an opposition play didn’t work or one of theirs did. That might do something about annoying gits like Pete Carroll.

No sale

Yesterday’s Sunday Post recipe was a meatless Xmas cottage pie. Aaaah . .  no bleedin’ way!

Fair question

A girl in the stand @ Green Bay yesterday was holding a sign reading ‘This is our house’. To which the only response has to be: “When are you putting a roof on it?”

New to me

Whilst recycling some old newspapers, a headline from around Remembrance Day caught my eye. One describing the Unknown Warrior as a hero. But if he’s unknown, how could the writer know that the dead guy wasn’t a right villain?
    “It’s just T.U.B., mate,” I was told. “Stuff made up as routine puff. The Usual Bollocks.”
    There’s a lot of it about. Especially in London.

Reset for Take #2

The car goes crashing down the side of a cliff dramatically after the occupants have been rescued during an episode of “CHiPs!”. Oh, crap. We’re going to have to do it again, guys.
    The passenger door was left open after the rescue. It was shut when the car did its death plunge. “Nah. No one will notice.”

Now, he tells us

How wonderful! Marco’s fuss-free festive feast includes a recipe for a sloe gin substitute. One small snag; you should have started making it in September.

Fail

‘Front part of a ship’ was the Arrow-word clue. Solving four other clues provided ‘head’. Which is a toilet. The front end of a ship is the prow, as any fule kno.

Easy come, easy go

What was all that snow about yesterday? Does that mean this global warming thing is over?

Groan

Having see a preview of the Xmas & Boxing Day fare on offer by the BBC and ITV, I shall be otherwise occupied.

Good prediction

George Orwell’s concept doublethink seems to be routine now. We’re being bombarded with messages about what we should be doing to get ready for Christmas on the one hand but on the other, the government is telling us to forget it.

Shrinkflation

Somehow, one gets the impression that the bars used to be fatter or there were once six in the pack rather than the present five.

Better life

Repeats of The Persuaders! demonstrate that 50 years ago, people could get on with their lives perfectly well without having to consult a pocket phone every two seconds. Amazing that it was possible!

Did he really say that?

Prince Harry’s advice that we should be like raindrops can be interpreted in a rather dark way, it seems. Raindrops which relieve the parched ground can also cause monstrous floods and the raindrops don’t care where they fall and what havoc they wreak.
    And Harry wants us to be like that? How unwoke!

Consumer non-choice

Pocket phones are really messing up the WWW for PC users. Especially bank websites. They used to have an interface offering a lot of info. Now, they're in big, babyish lettering that can be read on a tiny phone screen and they're annoying to someone using a proper computer.

Consumer choice

A Xmas guide to gadgets from the dodgy cars bloke on ITV? I don’t think so. More of The Persuaders! in widescreen for me.

Here’s a good one

Something else I read: “What has happened to the normal version updating process? We’re practically into 2021 and we're still being fobbed off with Covid 19.”

Prethetic

The Platell Person, writing in the Daily Mail, claims that if she found a bottle of Johnny Depp brand perfume in her bathroom, her first instinct would be to duck. And then she spoils it all by failing to reveal what she thinks an inanimate bottle of liquid could do to her unaided. Not one for her joke book.

The question everyone is asking

If the F1 driver’s title was still undecided and he had a shot at it, would Louis Hamilton have the plague? Bahrain seems to be a pretty dangerous place to drive around at lunatic speeds.

See how long he keeps it up

When the Sea Squawks are playing, there should be a bucket chain standing by to throw ice-cold water on Pete Carroll every time he does a pitch invasion with a spurious moan.

Storm Warning

The Packers fans are not grumpy this week after their team beat the Chicago Bears but they expect their gang to play like pillocks next week, as they have been doing on alternate weeks, to make up; and the rest of us are ready to duck.

New Rule

Foreign aid should be for disasters only. And self-inflicted disasters like electing and sustaining a corrupt regime don't count. And no country with a space programme gets any. Ever.

Not expecting that!

The pilot of The Persuaders! was on last night – filthy rich Lord Sinclair & Danny Wilde setting the world to rights – and it was in wide-screen. Which I found surprising as the series dates back to 1971/2. A masterpiece of the restorer’s art.

Just what we need

Channel 4 is threatening us with a TV show about the plague panicdemic assaulting a care home. Groan. But we don't have to watch it. Hooray!

Putting the ‘dim’ into ‘dimension’

The phrase ‘not fit for purpose’ takes on a whole new dimension when you apply it to the idiots @ the British Library, who are trying to connect the poet Ted Hughes with the slave trade because it’s the current fashion.

No peril to The Planet

How much global warming is caused by running a Grand Prix at night under floodlights? None? Well, that’s okay, then.
    A car on fire after splitting in half? Not that either. How about a car upside down? A mere nothing. Another on fire 3 laps from the end of the race? Not even that.

No Recommendation

If Scottish prisons really are ‘fit to burst’, as the headline I saw in passing claimed, it doesn’t say much about the moral standards of the Scots.
    If they get another IndyRef, maybe we should be entitled to vote to help this criminal nation out of the UK.

There’s a novelty

No quarterbacks available in Denver thanks to the plague? Who needs them anyway! Could be ‘Bring your boots and you’ll get a game’ day there. This plague has a lot to answer for.
    p.s. I see Eric The Enemy is still going strong. That’s what the NFL needs – people with interesting names.

Empty whinge

Pensions for town hall staff are paid for by deductions from their salary, not Council Tax, I read. And where do the salaries come from if not from Council Tax? And the other taxes distributed to councils by the government?

Glossed over

Could it be that former Guardian columnist Suzanne Moore has not been paying attention for 25 years? It seems likely if she failed to notice she was surrounded by bigots and hypocrites, and she expected the management to respect her right to hold opinions, even though the Grauniad’s editorial staff admit that anything that doesn’t fit their world view is a distraction, which needs to be edited out.

No effort at all

How do you fill up a TV schedule? Syfy does it by showing a film @ 9 p.m. on Thursday and then showing the same film in the same slot on Saturday, followed by Wednesday's zombie film.

Forever Young

What a great time machine the TV is. There was a familiar face in this week’s The Mind of Mr. J.G. Reeder. Who was that young bloke? Oh, yes. Inspector Morse’s grumpy old boss! Making sleazy films and up to his neck in blackmail and murder!!

Transference

Looking through a catalogue of cut-price books, I noted that Seven Pillars of Wisdom had acquired a gratuitous ‘The’ at the start. I assume it’s one that got away from The Sign of The Four, which is often rendered senseless by amputation of the second ‘The’.

Bias at the BBC? Incredible!

Lots of fulminating on the BBC about Home Sec. Pritti Patel not getting the sack for losing her temper with obstructive civil servants. Strange there was nothing about Gordon Brown throwing phones among his wobblies.

Playtime @ Parliament

What a wonderful time to be a Tory MP. You can rant & rave and vote against the government’s lockdown plans in perfect safety, knowing that Labour has to back Boris to avoid accusations of being wreckers, which makes the rants just impactless gestures.

Street war

Motorists in London are fighting back against the campaign by local councils to drive them off the roads and replace them with bikers by sneaking out on dark nights to sabotage road blocks and surveillance cameras. You can push people only so far . . .

Look out!

Warning: The Sicilian-style tuna lasagne may contain bits of inconvenient bodies if the Mafia has access to your kitchen.

Some legacy

If you cheat blatantly and shamelessly, and get away with it as Diego Maradona did, and you end up as a hopeless coke-head, you become Argentina’s national hero. Especially in the eyes of Britain's enemies like the current president of France.
    Weird, indeed, are the ways of the world. And how sad for Argentina that he’s their best candidate for a national hero.

Mind boggling

‘Computer Wheel Alignment’, I happened to see in background of a set of a TV programme. Which left me wondering who has a computer with wheels on it?

Rot

Where do people get the strange notion that cash is obsolete? If traders want to survive, they'll take cash. Even if they wear gloves when they handle it.

Plain emptiness

Do Nigella Lawson fans like Amanda Platell of the DM really have so little to do with themselves that they'd tune in to watch Nigella drink a glass of water? How sad!

Blue Move

Looks like football matches will acquire NFL-style blue tents for doing concussion protocols now that it has become a focus of attention.

No contest

Family Xmas is ON? That’s not news. It was never not on. The state doesn’t have enough guns & bodies to stop the masses from doing Xmas if they want to.

News to me

Things you learn reading book catalogues: that the Putin regime was involved in the Boston Marathon bombing.

Daft Dooshanks

An emergency pocket phone charger that looks like a tape cassette, and comes in a cassette box for storage, has to be up there in the realm of daft gadgets. Retro badged, of course.

Farmers are the same everywhere

France, Denmark, makes no difference. Upset the farming lobby and they’re out on the streets. Mind you, the Danish mink farmers who were charging around in big tractors have a point if the government has ordered a mass cull of their animals which has no basis in law.

Not sneaky enough!

Our isolated PM is communicating with his staff using a messaging system instead of the traditional written stuff in a Red Box. Which has left his minions frowning over messages received in Carrie’s compact style rather than Boris ramblings and wondering who is actually running the country!

Tidings of guilt & doom

Have Xmas with family & friends and bury them in January & February. How bloody cheerful the plague experts can be!

Cheesed off

The Packer fans are grousing today! They’re convinced their team couldn’t have done worse last night if they’d been paid deliberately to throw the match against the Colts.

Yet another gadget? Yawn.

I see someone is developing an App to translate cat talk. Which seems a waste of time. The Mansion cat has no trouble telling her staff to open doors, deliver more grub, etc., by behaviour rather than speech.

Great finish

Oliveira, a Portuguese national, was on pole for his home MotoGP race; off into the distance and over the horizon. Series leader Mir went out with bike trouble with 10 laps to go. Lots of close racing and riders making corners via a trip towards the car park! Miller did for Morbidelli on the last lap to claim 2nd, miles behind Oliveira.

Full marks for courage

There were 4 riders with a shot at the Moto2 title. Digi was gone right away at turn 1. Sam Lowes, 3rd in the championship, riding with a broken wrist, finished 3rd in the race and the same place in the championship. Gardner scored his first win and Bastianini held on to 5th and the championship.

Here’s racing for you!

Everyone was busting a gut to stay on the track in the Moto3 race in Portugal, with the championship within the grasp of 3 riders. Rat & bag all the way. The Brit McPhee managed 9th and series leader Arenas, who was crowned champion, had an anxious last lap after being shunted back from 7th to 12th.

You can invent an apology for anyone

‘Diana Swindler’ Bashir keeps getting his picture in the papers, strolling around in the wide world when the BBC claims he's ‘too ill’ to help with their inquiries into his scamming.
    Maybe he has a personality disorder, which isn’t obvious to a casual glance.

Just another shower of chancers

Police Scotland gets a good kicking in today’s Sunday Post. Which confirms that the SNP is unfit to run the proverbial whelk stall, never mind an independent Scotland.

Believe it or what

Whatever happened to honesty in advertising? Eating artificial meatless sausages reduces your carbon footprint? Sure it does! But not by any measurable amount.

Culture shock

I’ve been watching The Mind of Mr. J.G. Reeder on Talking Pictures TV and there was an episode in colour last week, which seemed rather inappropriate for a series set when the world was in black & white. Back to reality this week.

Another barrel scraped

No, the Mansion cooking staff don’t need an instruction video from Nigela Lawson to teach them how to butter toast. Sheesh!

Something Boris got right

Is devolution delivering? If you look at the bog that the SNP is making of running Scotland – education, policing, ferries, etc., etc. – then the answer has to be a resounding NO!
    Which means that the Scottish Tories who are moaning at the PM for calling devolution a disaster are just playing politics without conviction.

Interesting CV

I’m still trying to work out if a history of dressing up in a chicken suit to harass Dave when he was The Leader is much of a qualification for being a political adviser and backroom manager.

News to some

Dogger’s Christmas is a book about a stuffed toy dog, not lockdown flouters doing in it public spaces over the festive season? Well, you live & learn.

Technology Deficit

I’ve just read that Gabriel Byrne (allegedly a film star but nothing springs to mind) wrote a memoir on his iPad, ‘pushed the button’ and watched the screen go blank and the entire document vanish.
    What sort of crap software was he using that didn’t make regular progress backups, which would have left him just short of the ending?

Daft? Yes, but it’s the rule

There’s a ridiculous picture in the paper showing the PM standing about a yard – instead of 2 yards – from an MP who tested positive for the plague several days later, and that’s supposed to be why Boris is in quarantine for 14 days. Even though he is currently bursting with antibodies. Sheer madness.

The past is a better country

If you ever wondered why so many people watch repeats from the 20th century in preference to what is on TV these days, it's because the current broadcasters are too scared of the woke and cancellation cults to be even a little daring.

Imposter warning

That's Captain Janeway? was my reaction to the set of Star Trek stamps issued by the Royal Mail. Looks nothing like her.

Virus View

Maybe it’s just me but using a common cold virus to deliver a vaccine for the Chinese plague seems a rather weird idea. People coughing and sneezing with a cold are likely to be super-spreaders if they also have the plague.

Something else strange

I was amused by the theory that if Maggie Hambling’s weird silver statue with a naked woman on top is talked about, that makes all her efforts worthwhile. Notoriety trumps quality and relevance.

An uncoloured future

Life is strange. In the pet world, and the world of vampires, pure-breds are prized and mongrels ain’t. In the human world, the reverse is becoming the rule. Next step, homo homogeniens?

Variations on a theme

I always have a laugh when I see the acronym POTUS for President Of The United States because it’s such a daft word and should apply to something equally daft. And there is scope for variations.
    Joe Biden has declared his dog to be the DOTUS. Which is typical of a politician and will get an argument from every other dog owner in the country.
    My current favourite adaptation is POTKU, which stands for Pits Of The Known Universe. There are lots of places which fit that description these days.

How cunning

His backroom boys have been hurled out on their ears by the backroom female Mafia, so what does the prime minister do? Sneak off into self-isolation for a while to avoid annoying journalists wanting to mock him. Who came up with that one?

Not this for a laugh, that’s for sure!

Okay, there are some weird ideas floating around in the world of cookery, but who in their right mind would want to tackle a dish of curried banana skins?

Eternal question

Who did the West Coast bribe to be spared 60 Minutes on CBS on a Sunday evening during the NFL season? Whoever it was, the trick seems to work time and again.

Come on, really?

Do I want a Christmas takeaway sandwich, burger or pizza? Aaaaah, nope!

Let technology take the strain

Another Daily Mail reader has become wearied by the sheer volume of charity ads on TV. But instead of screaming “Gimme a break”, she should remember that the mute button was invented to save us from having to leave the room and guess when the ads are over.

At last, a result

The Brit, 2nd in the championship, was languishing in 22nd place early in the Moto2 race @ Valencia. Big scrap for the win on the last lap and the injured Lowes was a heroic 14th and still second in the championship!!
    A wonky start for some in the MotoGP race. Crash! No Zarko. Same for contender Quateraro. And Nakagami. There was a last lap duel for the win; Miller couldn’t overcome Morbidelli. And behind them, Mir was becoming the year’s first series winner.

Some alien plot to confuse us?

The rather indifferent 2004 Starsky & Hutch film was on the Syfy Channel last night. Some weird form of satire? And who were those 2 pensioners right at the end who delivered the replacement Starsky car?

Really!

Okay, a dictionary publisher has selected “lockdown” as the word of the year for 2020. But what is the point of a BBC radio prog. soliciting nominations for the word of the year for next year when we have no idea what awfulness will arrive during the next 12 months.

Sincere voice, BS message from the TV ads

Just how stoopid do the energy companies think we are? Being offered carbon-neutral energy is no boon to mankind. It's just puff and PR, and it costs more than real energy from always-on sources.

Still top quality

Today’s Moto3 started off all about Basher Binder. Could he win from his first pole? Lots of close racing and some crashes. And an episode of ‘irresponsible riding’! At the end, it was Binder 5th and the Brit 11th.

One use for it

What are we supposed to do with a 12-page Yorkshire Ripper pull-out? Cut it into handy sheets and hang it in the lavatory?

Scripter’s brain in neutral?

What was the point of Captain Picard telling his crew to head for another star system on impulse power because LaForge had the warp drive in bits? Especially if he completed the journey at Warp 8.8. The distance travelled under impulse power in a couple of hours is a total waste of fuel and a starship captain should know that.

Unhelpful moans

It’s a classic “damned if you do, damned if you don’t”. MPs and others are claiming not letting relatives visit care homes is cruel. But as soon as a visitor with the plague wipes out the residents of a care home, the same gang will be yelling from the rooftops, demanding to know why it was allowed to happen.

No chance of a democratic choice

A woman complained in the paper about the government giving the miserable £10 Xmas bonus for pensioners to ‘people like her’ because she reckoned the money could be better spent elsewhere.
    But nothing is stopping her from redistributing her cash herself and, no doubt, all the pensioners who have no problem with accepting an extra tenner are thinking mental V-signs at her.

Hype, is all

Everyone is checking out the TV show that made chess sexy? Not true if there are millions and millions of people who are unaware of its existence and won’t be watching it even after the plug.

The Age of Reason is long gone

When you compare what sacked FA Chairman Greg Clarke actually said with the slant added by MPs and the news media, you end up with a prime example of confected outrage and character assassination. Which only serves to prove that when They are out to get you, they’ll use any dishonest means at hand and expect to get away with it.

More Junk

Who gives a rat’s arse about Dominic West and his love life? More advert-spacing stuff.

The blind leading

A newspaper poll about the Pfizer vaccine asked punters: “Is it safe?” Well, how the hell would they know? “Has it been tested thoroughly?” Same response. Opinions from people who don’t know the facts are worthless; except to put space between the adverts.

More tripe

The word ‘barrier’ is in need of an apology from newshounds everywhere. ‘Shares smashed through the 6000 barrier of the FTSE 100', we were told earlier this week.
    Oh, no, they didn’t. Because there is no barrier and shares can reach any price the market sets, including dropping below 5,999.

We’ll miss him when he’s gone

Won’t life be dull without President Trump to cheer us up? A leader who doesn’t pretend to respect people who don’t merit respect is a rare phenomenon indeed.

Go like that and go wrong . . .

. . . used to be a catch-phrase on Rowan & Martin’s Laugh In. There was a lot of ‘like that’ from the alleged political experts, who assured us at the beginning of the week that our PM would be at the back of the queue for a phone call from the US president-elect. Another non-confidence builder.

Not a confidence-builder

You are UNPROTECTED!!!! yells the icon for the free version of the anti-virus program AVG in the menu bar. Click on it to bring up the window and you are told that, in fact, you have basic protection without all the paid-for stuff.
    Which means that AVG admits that its basic protection is unprotection and something not worth having. How very honest of them.

Cheerful thought

One day, all this plague business will be over and we shall be left wondering how awful the next global catastrophe will be.

Daffy definition

Transparency: This is my father, who used to be my mother and this is my mother, who used to be my father.

Not worth the effort?

The opening sequence to the Inspector Morse TV episode Infernal Serpent looked rather bleached and ancient. The later quality was first class; in parts. Strange they haven't restored the whole lot to make the joins between film and video go away.

Do they think we’re idiots?

Why do they show pix of the New York City skyline during a Jets MNF match when they're playing in New Jersey, in another state?
    p.s. That Flaco bloke can play a bit. I wonder how much of that $160 million he actually collected from the Ravens?

No rush, mate

Will president elect J. Biden issue an apology for all his past buddying up to IRA terrorists before he makes a state visit here? (Assuming he lasts that long if we’re at the back of the queue.) No one is holding their breath.

Not going to happen

Catching up with what the Panorama interviewer M. Bashir did to swindle an interview with Princess Diana, it strikes me that it was just as serious as the phone-hacking that got the newspaper the News of the World cancelled. But will the perps at the BBC go to gaol? Fat chance.

Just too sensible?

Watching the final episode of the Lord of the Rings trilogy, I found that the sub-titles were on black panels so that they can be read against any background, which leaves me wondering why film-makers who put in translations of bits of foreign dialogue can’t do the same.

You really couldn’t make this up!

The TV network ABC in the United States thought all the fireworks on Bonfire Night were us celebrating a Biden election win?
    Well, that really puts us in our place, importance-wise!

Above & beyond

Did anyone actually sit through a 9-hour BBC marathon on US election day? Especially as there was no result on offer. You’d have to be really locked down and devoid of inspiration to do that!

Good for me!

Do I want to put a bet on how long Gopher Joe will spend out of his hole before his VP takes over? I think I’ll just be responsible and not gamble.

Big boots

I was surprised to read that the UK market for food & groceries is about the 3rd largest in the world in value terms, according to ex-minister Theresa Villers. When you look at a map of the world and compare the size of our bit with other countries, this has to be v. remarkable.

Nothing for Brits to celebrate

Not a brilliant start for the Brit in Moto2. Hot fave Joe Roberts crashed out on lap 2; first of quite a few. Oh, no! The Brit was on the front row but he crashed out with 10 laps left.
    Two riders out in the middle of the field on lap 1 of the MotoGP race. More crashes, more long laps, water still coming up through the track at turn 1. Rossi came to a dead stop on the track. Dovi got the blame for Alex Marquez’s crash. DNF also for Cal Crutchlow. Mir became the 9th different winner in 12 races. Unheard of.

How strange

The delightful recordings of Just A Minute, which Radio 4 is offering from its archive, sound curiously wonky. They could almost be something a listener recorded off-air with a rather dodgy tape recorder. I’d have expect the BBC to have de-wonked them before airing them.

Dust duly bitten

The commentators were soliciting a crash right from the start of the Moto3 of Europe race. Didn’t happen until lap 2, and it took out the series leader. The Brit fell off on lap 5; he was on pole but bogged the start. Three more riders gone on their own, one punted off. About an average harvest for this class.

Novelty required

Is the world really holding its breath over the outcome of the election in the US? Most people elsewhere have realized that Sleepy Joe has won and they have the much more important considerations of living with a plague to think about.

Better effort, no sale

The latest VISA credit card scam call, from 01294 405 761, was a makeover of the last one. This time, the voice sounded like a human being, rather than a bad editing job, when it informed me that ‘my bank’ wanted to check up on a payment of £600 to a foreign country (unspecified).

Another crime against humanity

My search for the precise legal meaning of mens rea seems to have been timely with the legal profession trying to confect hate crimes out of things said in a private home during a dinner party.
    In future, if they get their way, meals will have to be conducted with all digital assistant spies switched off and the diners deprived of phones, watches and anything else that could conceal a recording device!

Crime against humanity

Page 327 of the Complete Molesworth includes a mau-mau reference which would definitely result in cancellation of Molesworth 1 by woke wonks.

Worthy but wonky

Last night’s film, Apocalypse of Ice (2020), was a rather incoherent effort combining a global freezing which duplicates something which happened 50,000 years ago naturally, but which now is the fault of the human race, with a desperate battle to preserve a flask containing what was supposed to be a cure for the Chinese plague but which looked like a giant urine sample. Not going to win any awards.

Plaguely peaceful

The Mansion cat took the precaution of going off to hide twice last night; briefly. Despite reports of record firework sales for this year, there seemed to be a lot less whooshes, pops and bangs this year.

Entirely predictable

I note that the Balderdash Broadchasing Creeps are playing the ‘our man is at death's door’ card over not investigating the confecting that went on to set up the Bashir/Princess Diana interview.

Why it’s such a flop

The problem with the exhumation of Spitting Image after 25 years in limbo, it seems, is that it is written for an American audience and features puppets of lots of Americans who are unknown to the average TV viewer in Britain and therefore not recognized.

Infinite supply?

Are there any fireworks left? They were going off all over the place last night before we were plunged into lockdown by SAGE and the Labour party.

So much for Star Trek scripters

The Rumpus Room computer is invited to create a new Sherlock Holmes mystery for Data to solve as he has read all the stories by Sir A. Conan Doyle. Not a mention of the huge back catalogue of fan fiction, however. And the possibility that Data might not have read all of it.

Help needed

‘Mens rea’. Good old legal Latin phrase. The mind of the thing is the literal translation, but what does that mean? I consulted the nearest dictionary. Not a sausage. I went to three others, including a HUGE 2-volume Shorter Oxford and a book of Latin phrases. Still Nowt.
    Consult Mr. Internet. It’s all to do with criminal intent. Did the suspect mean to commit a crime or did it just happen? Time to burn the paper dictionaries? Perish the thought!

No, they’re not to be trusted

Shock, horror! The British Bullshine Corporation used faked news and forgeries to blag a trouble-making interview with Princess Diana. About a million years ago. That’s how long it takes for the truth to crawl out of the Beeb’s bunker.

Further molesworth .

Having reached page 197 of the Pavilion omnibus (1985, £6.99, cheep), I have severe doubts about whether modern kiddies would be permitted to read it. Especially the comments about molesworth’s gran hem hem.
p.s. Do kids still have to learn latin?

We know, we know!

Why do they tell us America is divided ’coz of the presidential election? Every bloody where is divided when there’s an election happening.

Too civilized?

No riots & arson in Austria in response to lives lost to Islamic terrorism? How surprising.

Pay attention, boy!

‘The rule of six torpedoes’, I read. What, another bloody rule? I thought. Then I realized that it was the start of a whinge about the existing rule of six torpedoing something.

Another one with an ‘F’?

The things newspaper science wonks come up with! ‘Hydrogen is obtained from rainwater by a chemical process called hydrolysis’. Wrong! says my teenage expert. Electricity is used in a process called electrolysis to reduce H2O to its component hydrogen and oxygen.

Mission impossible

Is it possible to shame Ken Livingstone? I would have thought not. Trying it makes as much sense as pretending that the state of Israel can do no wrong and Mr. Livingstone & his allies can’t criticize the conduct of Israel’s government as an absolute ban, irrespective of whether their complaints have merit.
    It is also impossible to take newspaper whinges from the likes of Margaret Hodge seriously if you know her shameful history in local government.

Being helpful

Any Zenistas who are stuck for something to wonder about could ask themselves: ‘How far can a one-legged man run?’

It’s like a tree falling in a forest

We are invited to believe that Zen students have spent centuries wondering what is the sound of one hand clapping. The ‘sound’ is a product of an impact and the human ear. No impact, no sound. No human ears in the forest, no sound.
    Nowt to wonder about. Except why the Zenistas wasted their time on something so pointless. Assuming they ever actually did.

Big up, bigger down

Sign a $99 million extension to your contract with the Baltimore Ravens and what happens? Out for the rest of the season with an ankle broken yesterday!

Opportunists always prosper

Cat psychologists, it seems, are making a bomb out of lockdown, which is driving a lot of felines batty as their routine changes. Here at the Mansion, nothing much has changed and we seem to be blessed with a cat who is adaptable and non-neurotic.

Double-O gone @ 90

“We are working to understand this huge event”, Sean Connery’s son is reported as saying. But what’s to understand? You live, you prosper or not, you die. Nothing complicated about that.

Ancient history chiz chiz?

I’m currently reading through an omnibus edition of the quartet of volumes about nigel molesworth, the self-styled curse of st. custard’s, and wondering how much modern school kids, who didn’t go to a grammar school, never mind a boarding school, would get out of it. Because getting all the references involves a pretty broad education.

What’s on ITV3?

ITV is getting really desperate if it has to do half a dozen plugs on the trot for the Spitting Image take on the US election. Shame we’ve been warned that the scripts are crap.

Finely Tuned

The cat is nowhere to be seen, having a siesta. Haul back the ring pull on a tin of tuna in spring water. 24 seconds later, there’s a cat sitting at the feeding station, ignoring what’s on offer and waiting for her tuna.

Says it all

A security guard at the Manchester Arena in 2017 didn't challenge the crazed Islamist suicide bomber because he was worried about being done over by the racial confecters if he hassled a harmless Asian kid. Well!

Fine example for the rest of us

A bloke hits a cyclist while doing a U-turn in his car but the police don’t arrest him. Why? He’s the leader of the Labour party.

It’s called tempting Fate

Thursday’s headline was “Don’t Do It, Boris!” Saturday’s headline says he’s going to. When will people learn to keep their big traps shut? Probably never if they can’t learn how not to spread the Chinese plague.

Great move

What our teenage Chancellor needs to do with introduce a voluntary Rashford Tax added on to income tax for the benefit of all the children whose parents can’t or won’t feed them. Then those who feel strongly about the issue can contribute and the footballer bloke will get his recognition.
    But one thing is for sure: those Lefties who don’t feel inclined to put their hand in their pocket will still moan at the government. ’Coz that’s what they do.

Brain in neutral?

Attention Ross Clark of the Daily Mail: you can’t pull lawyers from their chambers by their wigs. The wigs become detached from their lawyer if you try it!

Give it a rest

The word ‘could’ has to be the most overworked in the English language. ‘If you go within 10 miles of someone with the plague, you could die’. ‘It could all be over by Christmas’. A ban on vexatious speculation is long overdue.

Homogenize, homogenize, homogenise

The same lockdown rules everywhere in the UK, regardless of the plague rate, for Christmas has to qualify as one of the dumbest ideas of the year.

Not our problem

Does it really matter to us who wins the US presidential election? If it’s Donald Trump, we’re already okay with him and we’ll be in for 4 more years of entertainment.
    If it’s Joe Biden, he’s supposed to be on our side; or he was 40 years ago over the Falklands War. But maybe only because he’s a Democrat and Republican president Ron Reagan didn’t think we should be bothered about remote islands. But anyway, he’s just going to be marking time until his vice president can take over and give America a leader who’s fully black and female.
    Cynical? But true.

Hot air achieves nothing

Attention all whingeing Northern MPs, cosmetic mayors and councillors. You get out of Tier 3 when your constituents stop spreading the Chinese plague around like it’s something wonderful and not before. So get on with it!

They’ll never get it

MPs who won previously Labour seats Up North, and the existing Tories, are demanding a blueprint for an escape from lockdown from the prime minister. No danger of them doing anything useful, such as ordering their constituents to stop spreading the plague so recklessly.

Well off target

Don’t your just love it when you get a phone call claiming your BT internet connection is about to be cut off because of suspicious activity and if you’re feeling bored, you can press ‘1’ to chat to a scammer until you feel ready to inform him or her that actually, you’re not a BT customer?

Education gap

An article about a miracle gadget for keeping your feet warm in bed said it makes your feet 3.5 deg.C warmer or 38 deg.F. What!! Cobblers.
    Consult an expert: my housekeeper’s daughter got an A in her physics O-Level. She reminded me that to convert from Centigrade to Fahrenheit, you divide by 5 and multiply by 9. Which made the rise 6.3 deg.F.
    So where does the 38 come from? A room temperature of 3.5 deg.C is the equivalent of 38.3 deg.F because 0 deg.C = 32 deg.F.
    I bet the hack who wrote the article got an F in his physics O-Level.

Permanent ‘Fall Back’

Wouldn’t it be great if we could slow the planet’s rotation speed and make every day 25 hours long instead of the current 24? We could get so much more done if we had an extra hour every day instead of just once a year.

Logical conclusion

The ‘For Your Information’ screen that has no information on it seems to be a regular feature on the Syfy TV channel. Some might take that as a cue to select something else to watch on the grounds that what they are about to see is so meek and inoffensive that it won’t upset even the most desperate confecter.

Overdue adjustment

There is no such thing as coincidence, Sherlock Holmes believed; according to Dr. Watson. Which invites the extension: “in the minds of those people who can confect a connection between unrelated events which happen at approximately the same time”.

Blame Game

According to the Daily Mail, Ronnie Wood of the Rolling Stones shares his breakfast caviar with his daughters. Which prompted a bloke to write in to complain that all he can afford to give his daughters is porridge.
    Is that Mr. Wood’s fault for being successful? Or the bloke’s fault for not taking up the guitar and earning big bucks?

Now I’m sure it’s Sunday . . .

Nice to see the Steelers starting well, not nice to see them go to Pillock City in the second half and have to squeak an unbelievably lucky win over the Titans. Nice to see the Packers not playing like pillocks this week.
    And that improbable 2% win by the Lions after an accidental TD by Atlanta was something else. Same with the Browns’ win over the Bengals.
    Crumbs! Snow in Denver.

Losing it?

Isn’t it amazing to find yourself pressing the menu button for the TV programmes to tell yourself which day of the week it is? They’re all starting to feel exactly the same. Or they do actually all feel the same. One or the other.

Back to business

A crash at turn 2 of lap 1 in the MotoGP race @ Aragon, Binder & Miller. The pole sitter lost it seconds later. Sure this isn’t Moto3? Turn 2 of lap 14/23 claimed Alex Marquez. A win by half a mile by Morbidelli.
    A crash right away in Moto2 as the Brit on pole made a great start. Everything, including several more crashes, happened behind Sam Lowes, who won by a mile & a half. Great stuff!

Amazing coincidence

Isn’t it wonderful how the number of idiots in uniform, who will bust a gut to follow procedure blindly and get the planet destroyed by an incoming meteor, is always cancelled out by the number of maverick scientists and their allies, who know what needs to be done to save the planet and always manage to get it done at the last possible second?
    Something else that’s marvellous is their skill at dodging a barrage of small meteorites, which zap everything around them.

She makes a good case

Intelligent life forms – what exactly are they? I would nominate the Mansion cat as one. She knows where she wants to be and what she wants to do. And she can communicate with her human hosts when she wants a door opened or another spoonful of tuna in springwater added to her yellow dish.

Take 2 in Aragon

Nothing like a full rehearsal from soup to nuts last week for keeping the Moto3 riders on the track. The British bloke was nowhere for a long time, barely in the points. Would it be another triumph for Basher Binder? McPhee woke up up and made 4th. Two riders crashed out on the last lap. McPhee 6th, Binder 8th.

Things that surprise you

Chief O’Brien of Deep Space 9 thinks downloading files from a space probe moves them off the probe to DS9 rather than just copying them! See The Forsaken (S1, E17)

He never will be missed

Manchester’s self-satisfied mayor seems to think he’s a reincarnation of Arthur Scaregill. Or maybe Dregsy, the Liverpool Militant Tendency bloke. Only without the slippery suits. No doubt he’ll end up in a compartment of their political dustbin in due course.

One extra step beyond

I was surprised to receive a paperback copy of Further Associates of Sherlock Holmes shrink-wrapped in plastic film. Nice to see Titan Books making this extra effort to ensure that its readers get their products in pristine condition.

Someone really has it in for us

We humans are being attacked by the Chinese plague and our properties are in danger from another threat. Forget Japanese knotweed, there is now a Bohemian variety, which is a whole lot worse.

Just a small thought

Watching the TV plugs for Black History Month, I couldn’t help but think that it’s strange that it seems to be all about Americans.

Get in the Far Queue, mate

The PM seems to have the right attitude to Manchester’s pillock of a mayor. When Burnham starts playing politics, Boris by-passes him.

More Desperation

Is there anything about the life & works of Princess Di that hasn't been raked over and done to death again & again? Which is why I didn’t turn on Channel 4 the other night.

One they didn’t see coming?

The government and the Bank of England are hoping that reducing interest rates to almost nothing, with the threat of going negative, will persuade anyone with savings to blow them recklessly.
    What they don’t seem to have realized is that a lot of those nice, new plastic £20 notes can be packed into quite a small, secure space, and the spending spree ain’t gonna happen.

Failure of Imagination

Tesco mobile, it seems, has to go for customers who are dim enough to try to make a phone call when they’re in a bath and clumsy enough to drop the phone into the water. How desperate can you get?

Time Saver

Recording WW shows is the only way to go it if lets you fast-fast through wibble from Scumass and ancients like Orton and the one with the Frank Zappa beard. There’s nowt like viewer’s choice!

Monday night delight for some

Wow, gosh! That was a shocking MNF match in Dallas this week. Who kidnapped the Crads and replaced them with a football team? The new Cardinals handed out a licking like the one the lacklustre Packers got in Tampa Bay.

Nowt to moan about

A ‘For Your Information’ caption and an otherwise blank screen before an episode of Star Trek TNG on the Syfy channel. What, absolutely nothing to complain about? No foul language, filth, racial stereotyping or something else to upset confecters?
    Close to one of a kind, these days.

Lockdown lunacy?

Ghost Rider, an utterly daft Nicholas Cage supernatural thriller epic on the Comedy channel? Whose brilliant idea was that??

Admission of guilt

“Our fibre price has never been lower” claims the TV advert. So, Mr. BT, you admit you’ve been ripping off your unfortunate customers for years? What a rotter you are!

Not nice people

I went into a bar on the Isle of Anglesey and they all started talking Welsh. I went in to a bar in Paris and they all started talking French. I went into a bar in Moscow and they all started talking Russian. Aren’t foreigners rude bastards?

Hazard of the job?

Is there some sort of rule that politicians have to be incapable of spotting contradictions? Like the president of France, who is insisting that we take a trade deal giving French fishermen unlimited access to our coastal waters, knowing that this will put the kybosh on any deal and his fishermen with end up with ZERO access to our fishing grounds.

No escape from Repeats

The author of the book of bizarre but true stuff that is my current reading must have been so impressed by the item to which he gave the title Taxing Thoughts and put on page 290 that he repeated it, title and all, on page 292.
    Clearly, Carlton Books of London doesn't believe in employing proof readers.

Coshed by reality

A real shock affects everyone differently. New Zealand’s prime minister, for instance, is having to take 3 weeks off to recover from the shock of winning an outright majority in a general election; the first time it has happened for decades; before she forms a new, non-coalition government.

Source of wonder

You see some weird haircuts on the sidelines of American football matches. One poor bloke on the Baltimore Ravens roster has his hair divided into a series of squares by shaved gutters and some of the patches have been plaited into a short pigtail.
    The sight left me wondering what was the bet he lost to end up looking like that!

Merely a myth

My current book of bizarre but true stuff, published in 1998, claims everyone remembers where they were when they heard the news of Princess Diana’s death, channelling the JFK legend. In 2020, that is now a “Nope!” as far as Princess Di is concerned. And anyone who was around when Kennedy was assassinated has to be getting on a lot.

Not much help

Will having a son who’s a junkie make Sleepy Joe interesting? Sounds rather a challenge, keeping up the pretence that he's wholesome. And it brings the Ukrainian corruption scenario back into play. Still, sifting through emails gives the Federal Bureau of Instigation something to do.

Great finish

“Wow, look at this!” was the story of the MotoGP race of Aragon. Could Alex Marquez get part Alex Rins? Nope. But it wasn’t for want of trying. Cal Crutchlow 8th.

Phew, Gov!

A turn 1 crash on lap 1/21 in the Moto2 race and Navarro, at the front, lucky not to have been run over! The championship leader went out on lap 4. Turn 2 bagged the race leader on lap 11 and promoted the Brit to 2nd. Would he stay there? Nope. Turn 2 claimed the next leader on lap 20 and Sam Lowes won again.

No great loss

I can identify with the youngsters below the age of 17, who haven’t heard of a host of 20th century celebs, like John Lennon, Dolly Parton and Aretha Franklin. I’m in much the same position with regard to the current pop and TV celebs who get so much coverage in the papers these days.

Stay away, stay safe

This latest Islamist atrocity in France is really going to do wonders for the refugee trade. Keep well clear of them is the only practical advice for the rest of us without an effective screening process for the nutters.

Back to form!

A crash on lap1/19 of today’s Moto3 race in Aragon. The British bloke had to do a long lap at the start for a qualifying infringement, but he went in to the last lap 7th and crossed the line in 5th!

What does it matter?

Sentencing has been postponed on for a bloke who tried to buy a hand grenade from an FBI agent on the dark web and did a runner whilst the trial was in progress. The judge wants to know if he wanted it for terrorism purposes. Which leaves me wondering if he’ll be let off with a caution if he says he just wanted to use it for a spot of river fishing.

Self-delusion

Something that’s rather amazing is the way journalists cling to the notion that British Airways is our national airline when, in fact, it’s Spanish owned and the name, and the UK flags on the tails, are just a leftover from an earlier incarnation.

Dead Cert

How can you possibly not watch a film called Asteroid-a-geddon (2020) on the Syfy channel? Certainly not yours truly, if only to laugh at the American religious nutters.
    “We can expect a mobility of 11 Scandograds.”
    Thanks for that.

Wilful perversity

Why is it that the gadget for my new Epson printer that offers to check that the software is up to date pops up only when I’m working offline and don’t have an internet connection?

Just obvious

Are we supposed to be dismayed by the revelation that droplets leap 1 metre into the air when a toilet is flushed? A more sensible thing to do would be to give the bowl a squirt of bleach and close the lid before flushing.

Escape route

The average family is expected to have to pay an extra £100/week in taxes to pay off the monstrous increase in the national debt due to the plague. Which makes me glad not to be an average family and to have dodged the bullet!

Hysteria breeds excess

In normal times, a 3-tier system would have Low, Medium and High levels. In the current brain-fogged times, we start at Medium, go on to High and then on further to Boristastic.
Drama queen or what!

Good for a laugh

Due to lockdown rules, saboteurs who try to get in the way of traditional Boxing Day hunt meetings will be liable to arrest and fines of thousands of pounds for breaking the laws on safe spacing.

And something else

Admiral Lord Nelson wasn’t involved in the slave trade in any way—he was too busy preventing the French from invading his country. As a result of this inconvenience, the bozos running the National Maritime Museum @ Greenwich are having to trying to confect a missing link so that they can join in the epidemic of virtue flagging, which has struck the history industry, and have Lord Nelson shamed & cancelled.

Something else hard to believe

Right now, the parliamentary standards committee is chaired  by the MP Chris Bryant, who made himself notorious by offering to the world, a picture of himself in his underpants – which is still available in the wonderful world of the internet – and earned himself the nickname Captain Underpants.
    Not quite the desired image of someone with a serious job, or someone who can be taken seriously.

Believe it, or what!

I’m reading one of those ‘bizarre but true’ books which was published in 1998 and the author reckons that in Chicago, the police union protects the right of its customers to be members of a criminal gang and to join in gang activities, including drug dealing, in their own time. How about that for civil rights!

Sounds actually quite likely

I read with interest that Bristol University has a pro vice-chancellor for student experience and started to wonder if there is also an anti vice-chancellor for this—in order to achieve a woke balance.

MNF Goodie

All Bolts in the first half on Monday night @ New Orleans then they lost the plot. No doubt their kicker is sitting in the doghouse right now.

Innocent amusement

It’s amazing what you hear when you’re not paying close attention to TV adverts. Like the one I ‘heard’ for what sounded like “Vitamins D, C, Blink & Pling”.
    Maybe a course of Vitamin Pling would help me to appreciate the Punk Rubber song in the electric Mini ads. Then again, maybe not.

Obvious, really

Why did George Orwell name his 1984 protagonist Winston Smith? asks Winston Smith of Broadstairs in the Daily Mail’s Answers to Correspondents section.
    Just to annoy you, mate, ’cos he were psychic.

No improvement

The medal for Knights Commander of the Order of St. Michael & St. George has been updated. It used to show a white St. Michael stomping on a blackened Devil. It now shows a white woman stomping on a whitened Devil.
    Which leaves me wondering if, like cars, the existing medals will be recalled by the manufacturer so that the imagined defect can be corrected.

Looks great, don’t work

I wonder if there’s a museum for the gadgets you find in an old box of tools. Like the one I binned the other day. It looks like a fantastically engineered secateur but it just bends stalks and thin twigs rather than cutting them.

Tail tries to wag dog

Checking the BBC News channel headlines, I found a programme in which a young black bloke was pointing out that Cambridge University is run for and by white people. Not something that should be a surprise in a predominantly white country. Unless you’re confecting a whinge to get your mug on TV.

Sunday night delight

The Luncheon Voucher Raiders are no push-overs, giving the world champion of America Chiefs a big fright. And what about them Fish! And that Dallas trick play for a QB TD! And the finish of that match!

Cruel & unusual

Is there a worse crime against humanity than canned laughter which is obviously just someone pushing a slider up and down robotically? It’s difficult to think of one.

Oak, wrap!

Pole man Joe Roberts bumped off pole to the back of the Moto2 race. Would the British bloke be able to stay in the lead? No, he locked up the front of his bike, just stayed on, and let the other Brit ahead.
    Crumbs!, Jake Dixon fell off leaving Sam Lowes in the lead, no British 1-2. Man of the match? Roberts for reaching 6th.

Real, not mental, rain

Look out the window and the sun is shining here. Look at the TV and it’s chucking it down with rain in Le Mans for the start of the MotoGP race. Rossi crashed at turn 1!! Saving himself from getting wet for 26 laps. Battered Brits Bradley Smith & Cal Crutchlow followed on laps 10 & 18. Some real WoW! moments in the race.

There should be a law against . . .

. . . and crippling fines for starting a TV programme an hour after the advertised time so that my recording of it ends up an hour short.

Moot point

We are now being told that lockdowns don’t save people from the Chinese plague, they just postpone inevitable deaths. Which is not something anyone able to enjoy the extra bit of life that they get is likely to complain about.

Delayed Action

Cold tyres, cold track in France, and the comms were setting us up for everyone crashing on lap 1/22 of the Moto3 race. No one fell off until late lap 7/early lap 8. Okay, they weren’t the only casualties. Basher Binder’s bike died, the British bloke was crashed off by another rider and 9 competitors didn’t make the expected close finish.

Why not?

We hear a lot about how useless electricity from wind power is because it’s not available when the wind doesn’t blow. Strange no one is pushing for surplus power to be used to pump water up into reservoirs for hydroelectric turbines to bridge the gap as needed.

Simple

How is a Royal Family Xmas possible when the rest of us can have only 6 round the dining table? some one asked.
    Because some of the Royals aren’t here and there is more than enough room in a palace for the rest to space safely.

Well, maybe

We are invited to believe that paper journalism is more valued than the fake news on the internet, and this is especially true since the Chinese plague pandemic arrived. But only up to a point. Newspapers can get wildly excited over trivia, especially if the Royal Family is involved, and wildly upset with the government if it doesn’t follow orders from the editor.

More wheels off

The prime minister’s scam to power every home using electricity from in-sea wind turbines by the end of the decade is being trashed comprehensively by the experts. One major problem is that he is throwing £160 million of our money at the scam and the experts reckong the whole thing will coat £48 BILLION.

And Justice for All

What we need are more guys with guns like The Equalizer and Lootenant Dempsey. Bang! One dead scumbag. No trial, no gaol costs, no lawyers with their hands in the taxpayer’s pocket. On to the next piece of trash.

The wheels are off

Oh, dear. I’m at page 188 of the book of the miniseries V and there’s a fatal flaw in the science. Something that makes a nonsense of everything. Unless, of course, it’s a bum steer. We’ll see in the next 214 pages.

Still works

“No iron can stab the heart with such force as a full stop put in just the right place” was a Daily Mail Quote For Today. How very app Isaac Babel’s words are if a full stop at the end of a pointless text message can send Millennials into meltdown.

It’s all about the money

Surprise! Newspapers that get indignant about gambling firms grooming big losers still take advertising from . . . gambling firms.

Read the whole advert

Wow, gosh! A Winnie the Pooh 50p coin for just £4.50! Plus £2.99 p&p. Not so wow. A bit like 50 quid off a basic mobile phone that’s still 150 quid; a piece of info which needs a thorough search of the advert to locate.

Not fade away

The crapolica of the Punk Rubber song is still to be heard on Forces TV. In mercifully brief snatches.

Aliens included

“Welcome if you’re watching in the UK and around the world” is the routine hello to the BBC’s news channel. Which raises the obvious question: “Where else would you be watching from?” Especially as that ‘around the world’ includes anyone on the International Space Station.

Past Perfect

20 million viewers for Dempsey & Makepeace back in 1986? The benefit of not much else in the way of a distraction.

No brainpower needed

Mandy P., writing in the Daily Mail, asked why should the rest of us follow the PM’s virus rules if his dad won’t? The short answer is you’re thick as a brick if you don’t. And thick as a brick if you can’t work that out for yourself.

Confidence deflater

A pair of fit adults with 2 bouncing kids outdoors advertising . . . what? Medical negligence lawyers. Well, that’s bound to work. Not.

How wonk of him

It seems the new head of the Secret Intelligence Service isn’t interested in recruiting clever people of the George Smiley breed or action men like James Bond. Which leave what? A gang of dull yes-men who make the boss look like a genius in comparison? That will keep us safe from our enemies like China and Russia and the EU.

Ahead of the game for once

“V”, the original mini-series, coming soon to Forces TV and here I am, reading the book of the series, which came out in 1984, and getting ready for it. Although, all the references back to the survivors of the Nazi regime in Germany might be wasted on Millennials.

Accidental benefit

There is something to be said for face masks after all. TV cameras can’t let the other lot read a coach’s lips and spill the beans about the play he’s sending to his quarterback.
    And wasn’t that an amazing win for the Browns in Dallas!! Especially that blocked Cleveland PAT try which became a two-point conversion!

Should happen

The Washington NFL team, which is currently nameless, having rejected Redskins, could be called the Slavers to remind everyone that the nation’s founder and his wife owned 317 slaves. Or people could just grow up and stop confecting outrage at every slight excuse.

Getting it right by accident

Catching up with Friday’s paper here in the lockdown time zone, I read that Prince Harry reckons the world we know was created by white people for white people.
    The clue in there is that ‘created’. Other choices are available but the world has gone with what the white people created. Which kind of suggests it must be rather good.
    Not the message that Prince Hairy was trying to convey with his whinge, of course.

Stuck on the sidelines

Why does the ‘free world’ just sit on its fat can and expect America to take the lead all the time? A spot of involvement would be nice.

Obvious, really

Why doesn’t President Trump condemn right-wing extremists? Because all the lefty luvvies are busy doing it and someone needs to point a finger at the fascist left to remind us that they are not going away.

Bloody get on with it

BBC ‘News’ TV channel @ 17:08 yesterday – an endless bloody string of BBC adverts instead of any news. And I’m paying for that crap? Maybe not for much longer.

Tell me something I don’t know

I’ve just found an email telling me a courier firm delivered a parcel to me. I know, I was there at the time and able to observe the lady standing a good two metres away when she recorded this fact on her data logger. Shouldn’t there be a button for that?

Time loop

Crossword clue: popular house plant. George Orwell might have recommended us to keep the aspidistra flying but does anyone still have them any more?

Fakest of fake news

Unprecedented hospitalization of the US President because President Trump was taken to hospital with Chinese plague symptoms? Didn’t President Reagan end up in hospital after a failed assassination attempt in 1981?

Brain in neutral?

Dear old Joe Biden is on a hiding to nothing with his idea that whoever pays the most income tax should be president. Not when a fair number of the media people who interview him have got him beat.

No through road

One of the reasons why people are using the GP service less at the moment has to be the problem of getting in touch. Try to phone the surgery and you are confronted with a lengthy menu with a shower of irrelevant (to you) information along the way.
    A lot of people find they have lost the will to live when they get to the end of the menu message and just put the phone down.

Fair’s fair

Noticing this is probably a crime against humanity these days, but when it is White History Month?

Give it a rest, love

Dame Jenni Murray, 70, is doing a rant in today’s Daily Mail. Some senior citizens just can’t get their head around the concept of retiring gracefully.

Had to happen

The Chinese plague vs Donald J. Trump? No contest!

A real world-beater

What we need is for someone to perfect the Star Trek transporter system for treating people with the plague. If they’re beamed just a short distance away from the transmitter, the system’s biofilters will re-materialized them without the virus!

Definition of dire

The evening TV menu on Channels 1 to 5. We have to pay for this?

Modern times

Crossword clue: People who put money away
Answer: Mugs @ 0.1% interest or even less.

Not a chance

Is there anyone who seriously expected the confrontation between Trump & Bidon to be a debate? Bear-baiting would be more accurate. Or frantic fun.

Blown fuse?

A burial ground for the dead (8 letters), read the crossword clue. Are there burial grounds for anything else? I wondered as I filled in the answer. Or did the compiler want to exclude people buried alive by criminals out in the wilds?

Dietary disaster

Smoked salmon, avocado and sourdough? Sounds absol-fraggin’-lutely ghastly. Corned beef with a splash of ketchup on some proper home-baked wholemeal bread. There’s real food.
    Washed down with turmeric hot chocolate? Groan!

Great – in theory

Amazon is to sell drones, which will fly around a mansion and look for burglars. Should be okay in a place which is fully open plan. But if there are any doors that are kept shut to limit the spread of a fire, not so wonderful.

Technology failure

The addition of video referees doing instant replay analysis to help referees at football matches get it right seems to be a step backwards, if the furore in the papers is to be taken seriously. The problem seems to be that two blokes with the same training looking at an incident are both going to make the wrong call. And it was bad enough when just one bloke was doing it in the heat of the moment.

Just a thought

If I didn’t read the newspapers, I wouldn’t think to wonder if I could have inflamation and/or hidden diabetes! You can probably add masochism to the list. But I have no intention of abandoning newspapers.

Cheap old daze

15/6 for a large whisky in a club in an episode of Randall & Hopkirk & Deceased? Life was almost affordable back then.

Great! Love it!

The story of the month has to be the one about the Israeli prime minister lugging bags and bags of dirty laundry with him to get it washed at the White House when he visits the US president. Priceless!

Lost cause

“Prince William: A Planet for All of Us” is a rather weird concept for a TV show. There is only this planet for all of us because we can’t go anywhere else. Not to mention the fact that ‘all of us’ will never agree on anything.

Misplaced race blame

I see from an old back page that the Daily Mail is confecting outrage about county cricket not having racial quotas. Is it really the job of a national newspaper to be cricket’s Race Police? I’m sure they’d love it if cricketers invaded their offices and started telling them where they’re going wrong.

Mobile – or not?

What do they do with the plastic fans in the Bronco stadium in Denver? Do they just dust them occasionally or do they move them around a bit to reinforce the illusion of a presence?
    Indianapolis has gone one better with some robot fans in the Colts’ stadium.

Creating interest? Actually, no

How do you keep Louie Samilton off the top step of the podium after a Grand Prix? Confect a couple of time penalties to fix his wagon.
    Grandstands full for the race? Hey, it’s Russia where they don’t have the plague.

An easy life

I think if I ever get a job other than the one I’m doing at the moment, I’d be a political commentator. The PM not at the Chancellor’s big speech on the furlough replacement? Confect a rift in the Cabinet and ignore the fact that Boris knew what Kish was going to say and he went off to do a bit of flag-waving to give him a clear field.
    Dead easy, money for old rope.

Empty brag

How flimsy claims of greatness are today. Something called Schitt’s Creek (as in up) is ‘the biggest comedy show in the world’? Except to the millions and millions of people who have never heard of it.

A deal of attrition

Some bikes croaks in Moto2 @ Catalunya, some solo crashes. Wot about a win by the British bloke? Could he stay on the track and off the green bits? He used up his tyres to much and could manage only 2nd.
    Series leader Dovizioso was crashed out in the first few seconds of the MotoGP race! Good to see Cal Crutchlow back, still missing Marc Marquez. All sorts of tyre problems. The Doctor in the dirt on lap 16/28 from 2nd, so no 200th podium finish. 10th place for Cal.

Believe the label? Nope!

I happened to study the stuff printed on a Pritt stick after using it. Only 90% natural ingredients? Put the virtue flag back in its box.
    “Solvent Free” four times. But the stuff contains water, which is what? A solvent. So a black lie repeated 4 times. Not impressed and shame on you, Mr. Pritt.

The wrong kind of drama

Drama in the Catalunya Moto3 race – all very civilized until the British bloke crashed out the series leader. Triumph in the form for his first ever win @ the end for Basher Binder.

Could happen

Watching a copper in an episode of Inspector Frost putting a prisoner in the back of a police car, I found myself wondering how often they put a hand on a prisoner’s head so he/she doesn’t bump it and find themself clutching a handful of wig.

Communication for beginners

When the Mansion cat is in a dithery mood, she can respond to a direct question like: “Do you want to go out?” with a sound that is remarkably like “don’tknow”. Not once or twice but on numerous occasions. Maybe cats get more from what we say to them than they let on.
    She can also do a pretty good “no” when her mind is made up.

Politics of the brain dead

Politics really does come with its own class of stupidity, a lot of it wilful. Like the former Cabinet minister who wanted to know how the PM can convince everyone he’s doing the right thing.
    She must know by now that 100% of the people will never be sold on any given issue, which makes her a silly cow doing a ‘look at me’. Either that or she really has learned nothing from her time in the Westminster bubble.

No contest

If you want to know who’s making an effort, compare & contrast the handful of BBC customers on the screens behind the BBC 1 Question Time inquisitor with the magnificence of the WW Thunderdome. They think so much bigger across the pond.

Eat till you pop

If I tried to follow the average expert’s tips to get “the nutrients I need” (allegedly), I’d end up spending most of the day trying to scoff 5 of this and some of that, and demolishing about three times my normal food intake. And I’d probably have to end up getting my worn-out teeth replaced.

Nearly another world

NASA is so hard up that it is going in for produce placement, just like film and TV companies. So if you see an astronaut waving a bottle of shampoo or other grooming product around on the International Space Station, it’s to pay his/her wages!

Another world

I’m feeling quite disconnected from things at the moment. I don’t watch daytime TV and the disconnection results from reading about what the government’s experts were saying at the beginning of the week as reported in the following day’s newspaper. Today, I’m catching up with Wednesday.
    Do I feel any need to do anything about the disconnection? Actually, no.

No problem or faux problem?

When reading The Sentinel by Arthur C. Clarke the other day, I started to wonder just how many people are totally bent out of shape by not knowing if there is other developed life elsewhere in the universe.
    Because it’s not something most people will think about from one decade to the next unprompted.

Weirder world

The police say they’re taking the matter of the abandoned gun ‘extremely seriously’. Which implies that they have the option of taking it extremely frivolously. Unless the comment is just routine PR BS, of course.

Weird world

How is a story about a police bodyguard abandoning a hand gun on a plane embellished by speculation about the make of the weapon? Or is there a manufacturer’s league table for guns left on planes and a plaque awarded annually for the winner?

Another country; imaginary?

A friend of mine, who also acquired his bank account in the early 1960s, responded to John Humphreys’ account of getting a glass of sherry and a short lecture from the manager with a scornful “Yeah, right!” No bugger offered me sherry when I became a bank customer either. Maybe we didn’t look posh enough.

They didn’t think of this one!

An unexpected hazard of working from home, one of my mates has found, is having to work around a cat, who insists on having a kip on his lap when he’s tapping away at his computer. Which is somewhat preferable to the Mansion cat’s habit of parking on the keyboard when you look away for a moment.

Not terribly advisable

“With great age comes great wisdom” is an adage with enough gaping holes in it to sink it to the bottom of the sea if tossed overboard. And that’s the ultimate argument against making Supreme Court jobs anywhere a job-for-life.
    Remember Doris the Spider!

Old clichés never die

“From the creators of Castle” was the puff for a new US cop show. Does that mean a lead character will be obsessing about the fate of a parent or whatever, who vanished or was croaked in mysterious circumstances? Boring if it does.

Could be true

Could the reason why Americans are so keen on cutting police budgets be a response to films in which the likes of Steven Seagal wreck a whole bar or restaurant during a brawl with a bad guy?
    It could be argued that, as the taxpayer has to foot the bill for all the repairs, cutting police budgets is aimed at eliminating expensive wrecker cops.

Not at all convincing

Labour’s replacement leader for Oh, Jeremy Corbyn needs to reminded that he’s just different rather than new and, by implication, better. He seems to be trying to position himself as a champion of law, order & justice. Not anything that was too evident when he was directing public prostitutions.

Pointless whinge

Some political wonk was trying to get excited about the Home Office not bothering to guess how many illegal immigrants are here since 2005. But if we can’t evict the buggers, why waste time and taxpayers’ cash on guessing how many there are?

Taking a break

I’d normally have a sub to Sky Sports for the NFL season now but I have decided not to back their campaign of paying homage to American criminals.

All bases covered

I see the experts are now telling us that taking precautions against the plague is resulting in a surge in deaths from cancer; maybe even more than the lives being saved from the plague. It’s not a case of you can’t win, it’s more you’re not supposed to.

You set ’em up . . .

“Nothing beats Gatorade”, it said on the screen last night. Okay, I thought, I’ll have a pint of nothing, pliz.

Sunday evening gone

I was somewhat sceptical about the recommendations of the fans who enjoy the insanity of Red Zone on a Sunday, but it seems that I am sad enough to think it’s great.
    The Mansion cat, however, can sleep through all the action, no matter how frenetic.

Enjoyable finale

Rossi and the other Binder came off on lap 2/27 of the MotoGP race in Italy. Binder remounted but lasted just a couple more laps. Bagnaia had a dramatic fall off from the lead with 7 laps to go. Viñales won in fine style and everyone was left scratching their heads over how nowhere man Dovizioso could still be leading the series.

Confected confusion or Too clever by a lot

A Daily Mail Correspondent claims that people confuse absorb; slurping up and incorporating; with adsorb – sticking to the surface. Ruggish, my technical expert sez.
    The average punter knows the ab-word but not the ad-word. Thus no confusion is possible. And anyone who knows the ad-word isn’t likely to get confused.

Ditheroo

A crash on lap 5 of the Moto2 race in Italy and rain flags being waved! Red flag on lap 7, restart on slicks? Nope, rain tyres it must be. Nope, the sun came out and it was slicks for the last 10 laps. Crash on lap 6 of these, not the victim’s fault.

Go, Donald!

The last thing we need is Democrat IRA groupies like Rancid Pelosi sticking their beaks into the UK’s internal workings.

Big question of the day

Very mannerly start to the 2nd Moto3 event in Italy. Would they manage 23 laps without losing a bunch of crashers? Nope. Crash on lap 10. And 11. And Basher Binder gone with 5 laps to go; not his fault, as if that’s any consolation.

Mee, too!

In addition to being broke because of the Chinese plague, the nation faces having to shell out over £200 BILLION to women who didn’t get to retire at 60, if they get their way.
    Just how many extra BILLIONs will be needed to compensate all the men who had to retire 5 years later than women, and their heirs! Probably none if blokes don’t count when it comes to gender fairness.

Much worse

Memo to Sarah Vine of the Daily Mail: Gordon Brown wasn’t just some relatively harmless phone-throwing maniac. He also managed to trash the British economy between hurls.

Wot about me?

Just a thought, but am I supposed to feel slighted because some scammer hasn’t phoned me out of the blue to offer to turn my pension fund into a fortune?

Idle mind

A so-called show biz correspondent reckons that people giving Booker & other prizes won’t be able to judge a book by its cover if they get a PDF edition. News flash: all the PDFs I get have the book cover as the front page.

Blown fuse?

The Daily Mail TV Guide for last nite: Fox, 20:00, NCIS, A man claims to be a Pearl Harbour survivor. SYFY, 20:00, Merlin, A man claims to be a Pearl Harbour survivor. Oh, yeah?
    It’s amazing how stuff like that jumps out and catches your eyes.

Change your bluddy tune

Dom-diddy mute! Another LV Insurance TV advert’s message not heard, another piece of the advertising budget wasted.

Issue explored

Time passes slowly in locko; or the passage of time in the outside world has become rather irrelevant with the focus on matters close to home. There is less urgency to wondering about things. Like the Hamilton whinge shirt @ the last F1 Grand Prix.
    Who was the lady concerned? A paramedic. Clap, clap, clap. Who had the poor taste to pick as her boyfriend, a drug dealer who started shooting when the police closed in on him.
    Agent of her own misfortune? Check. Innocent victim? Sort of. Non-caucasian like Louie? Check.

Blast from the past

“Oh, look! There’s Acker Bilk!” Amazing who you can spot making up the numbers in the branch of digital heaven called Dempsey & Makepiece.     “Oh, look! Suzi Quatro as a psycho killer!”

Accurate prediction?

In the book created by ACC from the Clarke/Kubrick screenplay of 2001: A Space Odyssey, there is speculation about Chinese blackmail using synthetic diseases for which they alone have an antidote. Is that what’s going on!!
    [page 54 of the 1997 BCA edition]

No worries

According to the Daily Mail’s “are you drinking too much?” test, I’m not. Clearly, I must try harder in future.

Ask a silly question

A Daily Mail correspondent reckons that October 3rd is the 30,000th day since he was born and wants to know how he should celebrate it.
    My suggestion would be very quietly so that he can hear all the people laughing at him.

Another whinge

An international company remaking an advert for the Chinese market by giving Chinese faces prominence is now a crime against humanity, the displaced Western faces are moaning.

Hand in our pocket again

The news that a first offence of straying into a deliberately badly signposted bus lane will no longer lead to a fine for the motorist concerned has left every else braced for a rise in Council Tax to plug the gap in council finances.

Posture till you drop

Whatever happened to retiring gracefully? It seems to be no longer an option for meeja faces, who feel obliged to kick up a stink and start biting the carpet if their employer decides it’s time they were put out to grass.

Saga shares? No chance!

A friend of mine has been sent an opportunity to get involved in a new Saga share offer. After watching the price of the last issue sink to nothing much – long before the Chinese plague came along – he’s put the mailing through the shredder.

No need to panic

The amount of synthetic fury in the papers over the Rule of Six & Xmas is reassuring. Nothing terrible is happening in the world if this is all that is making dippy journalists shake with dizzy disbelief.

Big time appropriation

Since when did Cinderella become a Disney character? This has to be cultural appropriation of a traditional folk tale on a truly disgraceful scale by an ITV quiz show.

You wuz robbed

I watched a 2018 action film with Sylvester Stallone in it on the SyFy Channel the other night. Sly definitely should get his money back from whoever did the plastic surgery job and set his trademark sneer in stone.
    p.s. Isn’t it great when you have a handgun that holds 500 bullets?

Being helpful

It was quite weird watching NFL refs taking their mask off when they made announcements—to do lip-readers a favour, I assume
    And that bogus crowd noise is really, really naff.

Wow, gosh!

We live & learn. If I’d not read yesterday’s Sunday Post, I’d never have known that dragging up has ‘exploded’ into the mainstream. Really?

Real dedication

I’ve been advised that some sports freaks had a real binge yesterday. They watched the kaleidoscope of Red Zone for an hour, then did an hour with the barmy bikers on a mountain in France. Zipping through the action of a recording-in-progress of the Grand Prix highlights took 40 minutes, then it was back to the NFL on Red Zone until getting on for 1 a.m.
    Oh, for that amount of stamina!