A minor mystery

I had a glimpse of a small van today bearing a slogan that was about “mobile plants”. It zoomed off before I could read the rest and ask the driver if the mobile plants concerned had wheels or legs.

Must do better

The leaks of the plot of the next Bond film are being described as chilling. Which doesn’t sound all that thrilling. Who’d pay good money to see James Bond chilling and doing a David Cameron impression in a caravan or an expensive hot tub?

Could even be a hate crime

Dragging Boris Johnson into court is an actual pyramid of piffle. If anyone deserves a milk shake, it’s that hissy Bremoaner twerp who’s trying to stifle Brexit.

Not even close

The BBC was describing the current prime minister as ‘outgoing’ on the lunchtime TV news. Wrong. She’s actually very reserved and uncommunicative, according to reports from those who have met her.

Tripe endures

Van der Valk, 30 years ago, and there was a silly story being spread that global warming will wipe out Holland’s reclaimed land by 2030.
    Right now, there’s a Democrap member of the US House of Representatives claiming that the world will end in 2030 unless everyone does what she says.

Handy scrapegoats

Is it fair to blame the Tories if the electorate is stupid enough to vote in an economy-wrecking Labour government. Actually, no. But since when has life been fair?

Okay, it’s not live but so what!

I wonder why Sky Sports advertises its F1 channel (complete with the obnoxious shouty bloke) during the free-to-air Channel 4 versions of the races? Why pay 30-odd quid per month for something which just involved putting up with a few adverts when it’s on Channel 4?

What would they do without Brexit?

An interesting snippet in the Dominic Lawson column in today’s Daily Mail: immoral businesses like BA invent bogus EU regulations when customers complain about poor service and then complain about the excuse offered.

Just not bloody trying – to do a good job, that is

I quickly switched on the subtitles for that film on Channel 4 after the Grand Prix – Arrival. The cast were either SHOUTING or inaudible all the way through. Not a brilliant production job. Even the subtitles for what the aliens were saying were so badly placed as to be illegible a lot of the time.

Utter tripe

“Mount Everest has claimed 10 lives already this season”, we are assured. B.S. Mountains are not serial killers. They just sit there, indifferent to the life-forms that crawl about on them.

Didn’t watch it myself

There has been a remake of The Italian Job, I noticed when studying last night’s TV menu. Who’s going to watch that? was my reaction. After all, if the original is a classic with a faultless cast of real stars, doing a remake can only be pointless.

Not saving the world

Don’t you just love it when a public body tries to wave a virtue flag and fails miserably. Like the mob in London, who are trying to impose a 15 mph speed limit on an area where the average daytime speed is just 8 mph.

Things you learn from TV

Blimey! The Islamic Jihad mob was causing bother back when the Equalizer was shooting bad guys in New York 30-odd years ago. This came out of an episode in which Robert McCall was aiding a Sarf Efrican terrorist, who was female and not at all that blick. But she ended up a good terrorist. 23 million more to go, McCall told the SA diplomat, whose life he had just saved.

There’s no luvvie demand for it

Strange that no one is planning to remake Othello with a white person in the lead and a non-white Iago. But diversity and casual racialism seems to go in only one direction.

The 21st Century Unreliable English Dictionary

Letter M:
molested (n) – it’s like a homestead but for moles.

This should work

Given the uniformly dreadful performance of Britain’s police farces, maybe we need to try to recruit some Texas Rangers. Even the girls can beat the crap out of bad guys in their documentaries on the CBS Justice TV channel.

Things I never knew No. 384

An Asian woman who has an affair with a white European man is a bacon basher.

To boldly go where no one else is daft enough to

That’s the only conclusion to be derived from the Star Trek:TNG episode Rascals, in which Captain Picard and three others end up in teenage bodies with unchanged mentalities. I’m not sure which came first, this epic or the episode of Stargate SG-1, in which Colonel O’Neill suffered the same fate.

Privacy vs Security

People who indulge in what the majority of law-abiding citizens would term anti-social behaviour want the police to stop doing facial recognition scans of them in public places.
    The police claim that scans which don’t push a panic button are destroyed immediately. But which side of the argument does anyone trust least – the police or agitators?

Time loop

After watching again the film version of H.G. Wells’ Things To Come, it struck me that we’re still living the plot with the climate cowboys playing the role of the technophobes and pretending that they can prevent change, which is the natural order of things. That saying about people who forget the past are doomed to keep reliving it was never more true.

A real legend gone

The news that Niki Lauda is no longer with us came as a shock. He really did seem to be indestructible after surviving that crash in 1976 and the subsequent medical complications.

Recycled sci-fi

Man of the People – an interesting variation of the vampire theme in this episode of Star Trek: TNG, which was on last night. I keep being surprised by episodes that I don’t remember seeing before, despite being a dedicated student of the series.

Words of wisdom

“The mind suffers from junk food as much as the body does” – that’s why a cult in the TV series The Mental Case didn’t let kids at one of its brainwashing centres have access to the internet.
    Not a bad idea for the real world. But probably much too sensible to be applied.

So much for progress and evolution

How did the railways switching to a summer timetable become news? When I was commuting, it was just something that happened and you had to remember to swap your old winter timetable for another one, which was substantially the same. No big deal. Certainly not news.

Let’s have a bit of truth for a change

“52 migrants were caught trying to sneak to Britain in flimsy boats”, we are told. Really? What they actually did was park in the Channel and let the UK Border Farce import them.

The Miracle of Le Mans

Wow! How did everyone manage to dodge that crashed motorbike which zoomed back on to the track during lap 1 of the Moto3 race? Great second ever win for Scotland’s John McPhee.
    Two crashes on the sighting lap for the MotoGP race!! But it was a good day for everyone called Marquez in Moto2 and MotoGP.

An epic event

Six goals in a Cup final!? Who’da thunk it.! Nearly as good as Germany hammering Brazil 7-1 in the 2014 World Cup. Everyone who said Watford would be lucky to get nil is looking v. smug.

Bright idea!

A brilliant suggestion for when the Notre Dame cathedral is rebuilt – a cross-shaped swimming pool on the roof. Should come in handy next time there’s a fire!

Modern proverb

You can open the back door for the cat, but she will go out only if it’s her idea.

No contest

Some of the staff at the Mansion predict 3-1 for Man. City in the Cup Final. Others think it will be 3-0 and Watford will be lucky to get nil. The rest can’t see what all the fuss is about.

Tweaking reality

Apparently, there’s a campaign going on to make conversation more interesting by imaginative use of adjectives. Which means if there’s a pong of onions in the kitchen, the educated conversationalist has to come up with a phrase like: “Crumbs! What an ablative odour of onions. Fair sears the nasal passages!”

Mugs will buy any silly story

A fad which qualifies as genuine lunacy – paying 4 quid for a bottle of water, which has been left outdoors on the night of a full Moon to become charged with lunar energies, which boost psychic powers. Yeah, right.

Forlorn hope

Some wiseguy academic would have us believe that doing crosswords and puzzles is good for sharpening up the brain. I find that doing the Daily Mail’s General Knowledge crossword just tells me how successful I’ve been in avoiding trendy TV and stuff, and how much of what I used to know has withered from lack of use!

False dawn

A British treatment revolution which could reduce cancer to a chronic condition? Great! Not for at least a decade? Not so great.

Dead giveaway

Do companies hold their customers in utter contempt? They must if they think people will respond to TV ads featuring some character behaving like a cheap hood (insurance) or even an expensive one (bread).

Must try harder

Where do you put the hyphen in Portsmouth at a line break? Certainly not after Port, especially if there is room to finish the line with Ports-.
    But I suppose such things are inevitable if control of the language is ceded to ill-educated computers and humans are too idle to do profof reading.

Sounds a good way to waste a hell of a lot of time

WhatsApp has had to plug a leak caused by “an advanced cyber-actor”. What sort of weirdo comes up with names like that for hackers? And what are the chances of anyone getting anything worthwhile out of the mountains of dross circulating in cyberspace?

Nasty is as nasty does

It’s fascinating, watching the reaction to the attempted character assassination done by Hit-Man Marr on Nigel Farage. Remainers and everyone who’s trying to prop up the prime monster think he did a grand job. Brexiteers and those who can see through Mrs. May know he was just doing a BBC Bremoaner hatchet job and playing the man, not the ball.

Who are they kidding but themselves?

Support for solar power among the public is 89%, we are informed by the industry. Believe that and you’ll believe anything.

A quiet life on Sunday

If we can’t have lots of drama and excitement in Formula One, I suppose we can settle for something to have on TV in the background while reading the papers until it’s time to look up and realize that the British bloke has won. Which is as it should be.

It’s the boots that are too big

I wonder if Russians smirk a bit when they see a reference to one of our plague of ‘tsars’. After all, being the Global Warming Tsar for Little Wittering Borough Council is pretty small beer compared to being Tsar of all the Russias.

Easy money

I wonder if the Equalizer got paid all that much for last night’s double episode; especially if he spent most of it flat on his back, kidnapped by the KGB and they had to draft in Robert Mitchum as the guest heavy.

What do you do at 5 a.m.?

Having woken up at that ungodly hour for no apparent reason, I did manage to recall a missed clue from the Mail’s general knowledge crossword – and still remember it when I got up at a more civilized hour.

Full scream ahead

Oh, dear! Prince Chuck ticked off for being pals with a perverted priest. A chance for the Labour party to sound off at the royals?
    One snag; they have a leader with a history of cosying up to the nastiest bastards on the planet. A whiff of hypocrisy? Well, what does that matter when there are political points to be scored!

Grabbing the credit

The government will pay to replace flammable cladding on private tower blocks? Bollocks. The government doesn’t have any money. The taxpayer will have to pay. As always.

Screening test

Wouldn’t it be great if Oh, Jeremy Corbyn’s pronouncements were reported only if he had something worthwhile on offer. Oh, the blessed silence.

Secret vice

The sight of someone lighting a pipe in an episode of Van de Valk last night set me wondering if people still smoke them. I can’t remember the last time I saw someone wandering around with a pipe in his gob. Maybe it’s now done behind closed doors and drawn curtains, like all other perversions.

How reassuring!

Nothing to worry about going on in the world – can’t be if the Daily Mail is reduced to wondering if baby Sussex will get a US passport as it’s front-page lead.
    Ignore the first 9 pages; the content proper starts on page 10.
    Anyone remember the end of World War Two in Europe on this day back in 1945?

Google mystery; last word

I did another check of the last month’s pagevisit count stat again today and it has gone up compared to yesterday. Which means that people have been travelling back in time to visit my contributions here in April.
    The experts often ask where the time travellers are if time travel is possible. The answer, clearly, is that they are here among us but so well disguised that no one can spot them.

Well done, me!

I’m feeling very virtuous. I never, ever consume any of the Top Ten evil sugary drinks, which are supposed to be killing off the unthinking members of society at a hell of a rate.

Back to normal

Bank Holiday over, it’s back to the usual phone pests. No. 1 was some bloke with an Indian accent telling me my internet connection has been contaminated. No. 2 was one of those nuisance calls where the connection is dropped as soon as you pick up the receiver.
    But, no doubt, the exercise of going to the phone to answer it did me a bit of good.

Google mystery continued

I checked the pageviews stat yesterday and I’ve done it again today. In that interval, 100 views have gone. Very weird!

Observation vs theory

Have I slipped a day? The Sun is shining so this can’t possibly be a bank holiday. Not if global warming is making today the coldest Bank Holiday Monday on record.

Google mystery

Someone else mentioned this to me at the start of the week and I’ve confirmed it for myself. The Blogger site offers statistics for visits to your page including “Pageviews last month”. It is now May and the total displayed must apply to April.
    My friend noticed that his Pageview count for the previous month can go down. Does that mean that people can go back to your site and decide to cancel the record of a previous visit? Weird if they can.

Non-event in Scotland

“An earthquake has hit Scotland’s West Coast”. Really? Tell me more.
    Richter 1.0, no reports of damage.
No reports from people, either, I’ll bet. That sort of non-event is instruments only.
    How many earthquakes have I survived? Five, so I know what I’m talking about.

Moto2 Mayhem

We’re still wondering how no one got killed in that crazy start to the Moto2 motorbike race in Jerez this afternoon. Bikes crashing other bikes out of the race is one thing but human bodies doing it is something else entirely.

Firefox is weird

Today, my Firefox browser’s Add-Ons Manager told me:
Some add-ons have been disabled
The following add-ons have not be verified for use in Firefox.
    But lower down the screen was the message:
You don’t have any add-ons of this type installed.
    Slow, clunky, weird and demented seems to be what Firefox is all about.

Oh, calamity!

The Tories had losing 800 council seats in Thursday’s local elections as their worst case scenario. In the event, it was 1,300 Tory bums with nowhere to park. Clearly, their doom-sayers aren’t doomy enough.

Blue electron haze

There are certainly things going on that are weirder than anything I could imagine. I’m reading Build Your Own Time Machine by Brian Clegg and I now know that the ghostly blue glow that comes from some nuclear reactors is emitted by electrons which are travelling faster than the speed of light in the liquid around the fuel elements.
    It’s a useless bit of information as far as what I do is concerned, but fascinating none the less.

Do Not Open!

Private Pike-Williamson has the perfect defence to whatever the PM thinks she has on him – the national interest and exposing government dodginess. No wonder the PM is so eager to draw a line under everything and move on.

It’s also human to mock the self-afflicted

Oh, dear. People who took six or seven hours to complete the London Marathon course were upset by being laughed at by the gangs of council workers, who were clearing up the debris of a major street event. Whatever happened to grin and bear it in these Snoflake days?

That’s bound to happen

We’re all expected to stop producing greenhouse gases by 2050 – presumably, that includes breathing out carbon dioxide? And we’re not allowed to have cars, gas central heating, meat to eat and a whole bunch of other stuff? And the rest of the world is supposed to fall over in amazement and follow suit? The taxpayer is having to pay wages to some seriously weird and useless people.

It’s great being fireproof

When you’re on the skids, nothing you do matters and no one has any expectations of you any more. Which lets the prime minister sack her Defence Secretary arbitrarily; probably as revenge for the young lad being cheeky to her in the past, and no one gives a monkey’s. Except Labour politicians who are trying to confect outrage, of course.

Deflated easily

Excited noises from the Indian army about finding Yeti tracks in snow, each footprint a monster 32" by 15", have become somewhat muffled after experts pointed out that their beast would have to be as big as a good-size dinosaur, and there’s nothing like that living in the Himalayas.

A little noise

After making yesterday’s observation, some things crashed through the letterbox. Among them was a polling card for the Euro elections on May 23rd. Looks like Mrs. Brexit means Brexit is going ahead with wasting £100 million of taxpayers’ cash.