Pragmatic politics

I was interested to read that the Republican party in the United States has come up with an “all lives matter” line, rejecting a focus on just black lives as that movement now combines a racist agenda with a wrecking agenda created by the US version of our looney left. Sounds almost sensible to someone who never expects much sense from politicians.

Nasty lot

What a shame that Formula One has turned out to be a hotbed of anti-white racism, where freedom of speech is not allowed and the bozos in charge can’t tell when something is said for effect rather than intent.
    Something else not to go back to if it ever resumes and not to be missed.

Tea rules

For the benefit of any Americans who know how to use a teapot, the rules for pouring are:
MIF – milk in first means you don’t need to stir.
MIL – milk in last if some guests prefer a dash of milk and others prefer a dollop.

Non-regulation cat?

I saw a cartoon cat in an advert revolve several times before settling down on a settee the other night. Which made me realize that the Mansion cat never does that; flattening imaginary vegetation before she parks.
    Maybe she bunked off when cat school was doing that topic.

Newspaper non-shopping

“Oh, look. A half-price popcorn maker.”
    “But you never eat popcorn.”
“Great! That’s another sixty quid saved.”

Simple minds, no copyright fee

They had a real obsession with nursery rhymes back in the 20th century; e.g. The Prisoner. And also the creators of Sapphire & Steel, I discovered from watching Forces TV last night. A very thin story spread across six half-hour episodes.  They must have been really desperate for alternative SF back in 1982.

Rocketpost revival

When you find the mail half-way down the hall, you start to wonder if the postman has been issued with some sort of covid catapult to fire it through your letterbox.

Bound to happen

Don’t you just feel sure that some git has complained that banning black plastic trays for loose veg. and other groceries because recycling machines can’t see them is ray-cist!

Non-persons

Having seen the names of the ‘world famous’ writers who flounced off the books of J. Rowling’s agent, I can’t say I’ve come across any of them in a bookshop. Not that I’ve read any of the Harvey Porter series, but at least I’ve heard of the author.

Oh, to have such trivial troubles!

The main problem with lockdown is keeping track of which day it is. Not that it matters if you’re not going anywhere. And if you miss something on TV, there’s always catch-up and everything is repeated eventually.

Wham! in the wallet

That was a spiky point someone made about all the footballers who rushed to sign up to the BLAM agenda. Did any of them realize they were joining up with a bunch which wants to abolish capitalism and Society’s ability to pay stupid amounts of money to guys who kick a foot ball around a bit?

Now, that’s unusual!

You can tell it’s supposed to be a heat wave if you go for a drink of water and what comes out of the cold tap is really quite warm.

I’d watch it

There’s an on-going trailer for Chuck Norris films, which is an absolute masterpiece including gems like the voice-over saying: “Chuck Norris doesn’t have a watch; he decides what time it is.” Then Chuck Norris telling the bad guy: “Time to die!”
    I would definitely watch a compilation of similar stuff.

Another world

Fact of the week has to be that they don’t have the Chinese plague in America. They have Kung Flu instead!

Life ain’t like that

“When Hussein met Holder – brilliant exclusive” was on the back page of Monday’s Daily Mail, I’ve just spotted. But I didn’t turn to pages 70-71 because I just knew it wouldn’t be Saddam Hussein and Noddy Holder.

Unexpected bonus

I watched Atomic Blonde the other night – a film with Charlize the Ron as a female clone of Chuck Norris or Steven Seagal bashing bad guys all over the place. I’m glad I did as the film reminded what an absolutely brilliant pop song Nena’s Neun und Neunzig Luftballons is. Perfecto.

Really straining

I was amazed to read that the ancient Radio 4 comedy The Burkiss Way is now unbroadcastable without sending those who wish to be offended into fits of hysteria. I’ve heard some recordings and it’s just very funny.

Bloody great!

Pavement cafês and beer gardens near roads are being told that they need to have lots of bollards to keep their clients safe in case some mad Islamist celebrates the slackening of lockdown by trying drive a car or van into them.

Hardly the way ahead

What the world really needs is a cult of entitled jackasses, who think the world owes them a free ride and can’t wait to hear what they have to say next? Only entitled jackasses could come up with that.

Pointless gesture

How much respect are the big banks going to gain from giving cash to people who weren’t affected by slavery? A lot less than they have now, which ain’t bloody much. No danger of the people at the top donating a year’s salary and bonuses to the shame cause, of course.

Not the world’s best UFO explanation

I’ve just read an explanation for a UFO report an Aussie bloke made just before he and his plane disappeared in 1978. He was over the sea between the mainland and Tasmania, he didn’t realize he was flying inverted and he thought the reflection from the sea of a navigation light on the top of his plane was his UFO.
    He didn’t realize he was flying upside down? You’d have to be really gullible to swallow that!

Telling it like it is

I suppose Tomb Raider [ITV, last night] is a bit more socially acceptable as a film title than what’s actually going on but it can’t disguise the reality that it’s all about the crimes of a grave robber.

Swings & Roundabouts

The pundits would like the Chancellor to be worried about the old age pension going up by 20% next April due to an artificial surge in average earnings if anyone goes back to work when lockdown ends.
    But at the rate the plague has scythed through the elderly population, the pension bill would probably just end up breaking even, even with a 20% rise.

Quite easily done

Apparently, it’s fashionable to be unable to cope with lockdown and it’s impossible for anyone to dare to gloat about how easily they’re managing without infuriating the Troll Tendency.

Just tripe

There was this earnest bloke doing a plug for something called Rethink on Radio 4. He was going on about this ‘brutal virus’. But it’s a virus. It doesn’t have the capacity for malice. And being inappropriate with the adjectives didn’t do his cause any good.

Clean-up required

Do we really need the blurry crap to left and right of video shot with a phone when it is used in a news broadcast? Just the in-focus stripe in the centre would be perfectly fine.

Instant devaluation

An Oxford degree certificate will make a good substitute for a piece of bog roll if pretending to be upset by a bloke dying in an altercation with the police thousands of miles away entitles you to lenient marking.

Time warp

What a difference a decade makes. The clean-shaven Seagal in a 2006 film does look like an action hero. Despite the daft haircut.

A matter of choice

“There’ll never be another”, people keep saying about the late Dame Vera Lynn. But some of us would be quite happy with something different and original rather than more of the same.

Selective Outrage

There’s an Al Jazeera journalist in gaol without charge in Egypt. He’s now in his fourth year behind bars. And yet there are no mobs besieging Egyptian embassies and consulates. Maybe he’s not ethnic enough.

Economy Drive

The list of perjorative terms for people we don’t approve of seems to be shrinking towards a universal ‘Those People’. Which should upset all the special interest groups which make a cute name out of the initials of their particular cause.

Ready-made phrase for it

Mob rule and vandalism is all about creating a more tolerant society? Try telling that to the Marines!

Keeps them off the streets

I was interested to read that people are studying spy satellite images of the car parks of Chinese hospital in an attempt to work out exactly when the coronavirus epidemic began there. Sounds like something open to lots of interpretation and argument.

Believe it or what

Are we seriously expected to believe that Barnard Castle is Durham dialect for a pathetic excuse? There’s pathetic and there’s that piece of poorly contrived junk.

So much for the technical expert

Shoot! Shoot! in the all-action film. And when there’s a lull in the action, what? You expect our hero to dump the magazine in his gun and take the opportunity to load a full one. But no, he just stands around yakking. How come he’s still alive if he’s that stoopid? Or the technical guy hasn’t been fired?

Growth Industry

“Who’s that fat bastard?” I found myself asking at the start of a film released in 2016. The Michelin Man has a rival – Steven Seagal, who looks like he’d go sploosh! all over the place if someone stuck a pin in him. Which completely destroys his tough-guy image.

Count me out of both

Do I identify with a guy who was uninhibited enough to decide not to be arrested? Am I thinking there but for the grace of God go I, as hysterical luvvies seem to be doing? Actually, no.

Constantly learning stuff

CRAPS & SIC BO read the sign that caught my eye during a scene in a TV cop shot set in a casino in Atlantic City. WTF? was my immediate reaction. But a trip to Mr. Internet told me it’s a Chinese dice game which was imported into the US by migrants. Colour me a bit more educated.

60 minutes spent elsewhere

A Sky TV ‘documentary’ about the killing of that George bloke? Really? That’s bound to be the whole exact story so soon after the event.

Safety in sameness

With American cop shows, you used to be sure that each separate series would have an episode featuring a mobile casino in the back of a huge truck. I’m thinking of the one in Starsky & Splutch as an example.
    Last night, the series A Town Called Eureka on Syfy did the standard SF cliché – Sheriff Carter found himself having a Groundhog Day.

The truth being outed?

You tend to start thinking that there has to be a reason why congresspersons – Senators & Representatives alike – are portrayed in US TV dramas so often as self-serving scumbags.

Dynamite in a small packet

I’ve just seen a photo of the Home Secretary with her husband. How tall is she if the top of her hat barely reaches the knot in his tie? It has to be about four-foot nothing. Unless he’s a giant and about eight feet tall.

Weird concept

“Do those look wonky to you?” My culinary expert was just back from an expedition to Aldi and she had just noticed that the labels on the packs of red fruit said “WONKY STRAWBERRIES”
    I had to admit that I was looking at some of the least wonky strawberries I have ever seen, and the Scottish grower wasn’t a Mr. Wonky.
    No doubt some wonk at Trading Standards would have been eager to pursue a complaint about lack of wonkiness. If I didn’t have at least a hundred better ways to waste time.

Hopes not raised

You could find a £50K golden ticket in tomorrow’s paper, it said on the front page of last Friday’s Daily Mail. You could also get your leg knocked off by a rogue meteorite. The odds are probably the same.

Weirdness alert

How do you go from Dean Ambrose to John Moxley? As happened in a transition from WW to AEW? Another of life’s huge mysteries.
    p.s. The Jim Carver of The Bill lookalike seems to be called Hagar the Horrible, which suits him perfectly!

The dangers of lockdown

Mad Mandy in the Sunday Post has started to sound sensible! But how long that will last after she’s unlocked is anyone’s guess.

Social spacing encouraged

About all the recent and on-going riots have achieved is to persuade people who are white to steer clear of people who aren’t in case they start throwing a wobbly.

Monkeying around

We keep hearing politicians equating reopening zoos with reopening schools. Possibly because they see the inmates of both as equals?

Some perspective

Members of minorities need to remember there are fewer of them than the people in the majority. They are entitled to enjoy the rights, privileges and responsibilities of all citizens, and if they want to speak up about something, they can do.
    But what they don’t have is a right to force anyone who doesn’t want to listen to them to take any notice of what they’re saying. And they also don’t have a right to overrule the majority.

Out of touch

MPs are getting themselves steamed up by the restructuring plans of the management of British Airways, prodded by the pilots’ union, but they have their facts wrong. BA has been Spanish-owned for ages, and if it’s not a British company, it can’t be a national disgrace.

Ooops?

Catching up with the newspapers, my eye was caught by a picture of a kid with a big grin holding a Union flag – upside down. Which is either a distress signal or an ‘up yours’. Clearly, no educated adults were around at the time.

Great idea

Swiss boffins have come up with a transparent face mask so that other people can see if you’re scowling at them when you’re stuck in a queue or on a train that’s crawling along. Something we really need.

Beggars belief

I’m still trying to get over the revelation that some people need to be told that if they’re travelling on their own in their car, they don’t have to wear a face mask because you can’t catch the Chinese plague from yourself!

The truth by accident

I’ve been reminded that the quarterback in American football takes a knee in a ‘Victory Formation’ to use up time at the end of a match and indicate that his team has won and there’s not a damn thing the other lot can do about it.
    I bet our spineless top coppers don’t realize that their kneeling can be seen as taunting the rioters and calling them losers!

Fair’s fair

If a right-wing mob sets about a gang of left-wing rioters and vandals in defence of their heritage, as promised for this coming weekend, who are the bad guys? No doubt the police will stay kneeling on the sidelines while they figure it out.

Ring, ring, brrrrrr

I got a fair bit of exercise yesterday – from fielding what turned out to be silent calls, presumably from phone scammers. If Dr. Mike is right about exercise being good for you, I’m going to live forever!

Pension plan

What’s the problem with the TV wrestling outfit the WW? Too many creepy old blokes like Orton, Rollins and Edge, who are too old to do much in the ring and just about able to manage a bit of a rant. Rapid retirement for them would be a blessing.

No chance

“Get off your knees and stand up to racialism and vandalism.” Not anything we’re likely to hear from senior coppers to their troops.

Grey sameness

I happened to see an item in an old newspaper, which was part of a clear-out. The miserable git tendency had decided that Easter eggs are not essentials and anywhere open wasn’t allowed to sell them.
    We’ve done Easter, then? was my reaction. Something else that slipped by unnoticed.

Running true to form

How typical and contemptible of opposition politicians to pretend that the government is ignoring safety in its efforts to get children back to school. Like they could do any better.

Easily fixed

When I asked my pal if he’s prepared to buy a new keyboard so that he can repair the ‘N’ deficit, he told me that he didn’t need to. He was able to complete the letter using a 2B pencil and if it wears off, it’s easy to replace.

Mass clear-out

Catching up on some recent newspapers, I was amazed at how much they’ve found out about this German bloke who’s the latest suspect for abducting Madeleine McCann.
    If they try real hard, Europe’s police forces could pin every unsolved child abduction for the last decade and a half on him and close a hell of a lot of cases, seems like.

Move or you’re dead!

You need to stand up every half hour to avoid getting the Chinese plague, according to Dr. Mike, who has a book to sell on the subject. Sounds like something to make you really popular with a cat who’s parked on your lap for a kip.

Another mystery

Since when did the letter ‘n’ become the most used of the 26? A friend of mind has noticed that the N on the keyboard of his PC has been worn back to resemble an italic I rather than what it’s supposed to be, implying that it gets much more use than any other key. Apart from the left shift-key. The up-pointing arrow on that has been reduced to something like a letter ‘j’.

Wishful thinking

What the world needs is better heroes than George Floyd and better villains than the 4 cops who failed to subdue and arrest him.

Historical thought

During 1940, GPO engineers worked out how to mask German radio beacons, which were being used to direct bombers to targets in England.
    They called their Masking Beacons ‘Meacons’. Could that be the source; with a small tweak; of the name for Dan Dare’s arch-enemy The Mekon?

That will sort them out

It would be great if the rioters were made to watch the pilot of the TV cop show TJ Hooker. They won’t get a better perspective on life or understanding of the policeman’s lot – they’re beyond that – but it will keep them out of mischief for an hour and a half.

More money than sense

That was really weird, reading about a woman who’s trying to give her cat therapy. She lays a trail of treats to her laptop to get the cat to sit in front of it and be exposed to the therapist. Like the cat will relate to what he or she sees on the screen.

Alias what?

The performers have a habit of changing their name when they switch wrestling shows. I kept thinking I could see a familiar face when watching the AEW recording. I’ve just realized who the guy was a dead ringer for – Detective Jim Carver of the ITV cop show The Bill.

Wrestling afterlife

What happens to old stagers like good old J.R. and Chris Jericho and Taz when they get fed up with the WW? They take their talents to All Elite Wrestling, which looks exactly the same and has its own collection of world champions of America.

Wishful thinking

‘Stone walls do not a prison make, nor iron bars a cage’? Just because some poet wrote it, probably when he was stoned out of his mind, that doesn’t make it relevant to the real world. Both are, in fact, really great for imprisonment purposes.
    The main problem is persuading judges to believe it to give the people playing their wages a break from the activities of persistent criminals.

Synchronicity of a sort

Here I am, reading an Inspector Banks novel which includes the cold case of a girl who disappeared abroad 6 years before [Watching The Dark] and the papers are full of the Madeleine McCann mystery’s latest twist.

Fair question

Did John Milton invent most of the demons in Paradise Lost? a Daily Mail correspondent asked. My first thought was no, he invented all of them as demons don’t exist.
    But then I realized that he could have borrowed names of other people’s imaginary creatures, and working out which are which would be a great occupation for someone with lots of time to fill and no idea how to do it during lockdown.

Confusion reigns

After the recent spell of relentlessly sunny weather, I’m definitely out of practice at dealing with the British climate. Sunny one minute, chucking it down with rain the next then back to sunny? Weird or what!

Empty roads, open invitation

The police forces in England seem to be in a competition to claim the fastest speeder on underused stretches of motorway. West Yorkshire are in the lead with 151 mph.

Credible theory

Who’s really behind most of the trouble going on all over the US right now? From what we’ve seen on TV; all the violence, looting and arson; criminals and America’s enemies at home and abroad being to blame to a significant extent sounds about right.

Figures

We’ve been told we’ve just had the wettest winter in the whole history of the world but now, the water companies are claiming their reservoirs are empty and we need to be careful with consumption. Sounds like the pipes are still leaking furiously and water company profits ain’t being spent on fixing them.

Interesting explanation

Being a Valedictorian is a Big Deal in America but a friend who remembers rather more school Latin than me reckons that if you’re literal about the translation, it comes out as the person you’re most eager to say goodbye to!

Back to normal

Summer’s over, it’s wet and chilly and it’s been raining so much that the peonies are drooping because the flowers are waterlogged. So much for climate change.

Purloined pleasures

Will we ever get any statistics on how many cases of beer and portable BBQs the police confiscated from people who got on the wrong side of them out in the country or at a beach? It’s about as likely as statistics on the numbers of these items which were put to good use rather than dumped @ an official dump site.

Info request

Remind me, when did a license for arson about and looting get written in to the Charter for Equality for All?

Information gap

I noticed someone in the Daily Mail asking what a Bangalore torpedo is, which was quite revealing. Obviously a person with no internet access and too young to know it was a military pipe bomb used for blowing gaps in barbed wire fortifications.

Spoke too soon

Meanwhile, back on the subject of unwanted phone calls, I had the first for ages yesterday. It was an automated call using a really weird female voice. Some sort of scam to do with a free boiler. I didn’t last out the full spiel.

Gee, thanks

George Floyd, the man whose passing launched a million acts of arson, vandalism and looting. That’s some legacy the ‘protesters’ are wishing on the poor guy’s family.

Blessed silence

I was just thinking we’ve heard nothing from the phone scammers for ages – the call pretending to be BT cutting off your broadband, etc. You’d think they’d be hard at it if everyone is locked down at home. Unless the Chinese plague is particularly deadly to people with the phone-scammer gene and they’ve all croaked.
    One can but live in hope.

Helpful suggestion

When they do the update/remake of Charlie’s Angels, currently being reshown on weekdays on Virgin channel 189, there will just have to be an episode called ‘Covid Angels’.

Don’t you just hate . . .

. . . ring-pull opening systems that won’t budge, sending you in search of a tin-opener? Definitely the most annoying piece of technology on the planet.