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!