Some of you will remember the work of art I made in my parents' back garden last year.
Someone else has gone one better [clevescene.com]. Not only is the cock 7 feet tall, dwarfing my pathetic 3-foot effort, it's in a front garden in full view of the roadside. Now the neighbours are complaining. Which is odd, because when my mum showed the woman across the road my artwork her comment was along the lines of "I wish I could find one that big".
Today, the 13th of October 2010, finally sees the trapped Chilean miners being rescued.
Today, the 13th of October, is Margaret Thatcher's birthday.
I wonder if they waited until today on purpose?
OK, so there I was, watching Dancing on Ice for no obvious reason other than the fact that it was on and other people in the room were watching it. I actually find the show funnier than X-Factor or any of the other trashy ITV weekend moneyspinners purely because of the announcer and his blatently made-up-on-the-spot names for the dancers' moves.
Excuses for watching bad telly aside, I was blown away by a particularly surreal moment during the show. Usually when a celeb has performed, they cut away to someone related to the celeb or ice skating in general for a few soundbites. For no immediately apparent reason, they cut to Stacey Solomon. Now, for those unfamiliar with Stacey, she's a rarity - a reality TV star that I really like, and not in an ironic way, I genuinely think she's wonderful... watch this video and you'll see why. Yes, she is always like that. I'm sure there was some reason they cut to Stacey (other than to make the show more interesting) but I couldn't really think of one. So there we were, watching some supposedly serious ice-dancing routines and suddenly we get an earful of Stacey for a few seconds before cutting back as if nothing happenned.
So this made me think. I'm always thinking of ways that TV can be improved in order to make it more interesting, from filming the weather in front of a live studio audience to sports commentary by the cast of Rainbow. Sometimes my dreams come true (thanks to the power of YouTube), but not often. However, inspired by this Sunday's moment of madness, I have a new idea. I think that every time the BBC or other news service can't find a suitable person to comment on a breaking news story, rather than do what they currently do and ask a self-professed expert who clearly has no idea, they should simply say "and for comment, here's Stacey Solomon". Stacey can then give one of her typically excited performances with regards to whatever's going on in the world. Imagine it... "A suspected suicide bomber has been arrested near Buckingham Palace, over to Stacey Solomon for her comments..." "Oh mah gawd, it's awful! There was this bloke yeah and he was gunna blow himself up... I was terrified!" TV would be 100 times better... I'd pay my license fee for that alone.
Firefighters battle 100 tonnes of horse manure after tractor explodes [swns.com]. It doesn't get much more rock and roll than that.
Historic flight re-enactment ends up in the poo [ABC Australia].
A pilot recently attempted to recreate the world's first controlled, powered flight, which was made way back in 1910. After a number of technical difficulties, the plane landed in a 20-tonne pile of chicken shit that just happened to be along the edge of the runway. You can't make this stuff up.
Ten ways the world would be different if Doctor Who was taken as seriously as football seems to be...
Here's an unexpected cameo by the queen in a Telegraph story about spanish prostitutes.
(Here's a link to a local screenshot in case they take it down)
A hint to all aging rock bands... if you really do want to look cool in the Web 2.0 world, there are better ways than simply automatically re-posting every single tweet containing your band's name on your website...
Man tattoos giant penis onto mate's back [metro.co.uk]. Awesome.
There's another Transformers movie coming out soon. It apparently picks up a few years after the last one, the Autobots are in hiding and the humans have built their own robot defence force. It also apparently features dinobots, which can only be a good thing. I thought I'd do something a bit different and use this as a poor excuse for some puerile humour. Let's look at some of the questionable names given to Transformers characters by their creators. All of these are genuine, although I've no idea if they were entirely innocent or not.
| 
| 5. SLAG
Hopefully even the most casual of Transformers fans should know of Slag. He was introduced in 1984 as one of the original Dinobots. Oddly enough, his name has been quietly changed to 'Slug' over time. He changed into a mechanical triceratops. Since the 80s he has been in and out of rehab due to the severe depression caused by having ones name used as a common insult on Eastenders. He's due to make an appearance in the new movie (under his new name, obviously). |
| --- | --- |
| 
| 4. SPASMA
Spasma was the head of Apeface in the Headmasters series. Consequently, he transformed into nothing more than a monkey head, which only really became funny when Monkey Island was released in 1990. His only cartoon appearance was in the US series 4, in which he appeared as a member of Nebulon's "Hive". When the Japanese decided to ignore series 4 and do their own version, Spasma was ret-conned, along with all the other Nebulons. |
| 
| 3. DISCHARGE
Discharge was a Micromaster, and consequently not in the TV show and therefore I personally don't know much about her (I'm reliably informed it's a rare female Transformer). Her alt form is a fire engine (presumably the discharge comes from the hose) and she's part of a combiner team that forms Sixturbo. Apparently. Anyway... Discharge. |
| 
| 2. GUSHER
I feel really, really sorry for Gusher. Not only is he named after a type of porn formerly banned in the UK, but he's basically the arse-end of a pantomime horse. He and his buddy, Pipeline, between them combine to form a construction vehicle, but Pipeline is the cab and Gusher is just the trailer. I'm not even sure Gusher's alt-mode can move on its own. |
| 
| 1. ERECTOR
Yes, there is actually a Transformer called Erector. And he turns into a crane. I don't really think there's anything more to say about this. |
This is awesome:
Paris woman trapped for 20 days in bathroom [BBC].
This poor old dear of 69 got stuck in her bathroom when the lock jammed. With no phone or any other way of alerting anyone, she began banging on the pipes in the hope that the sound would travel to neighbours.
Travel it did. And the neighbours' response? Complain about the noise. Yes, that's right, their first instinct when confronted with an unusual tapping noise on the pipes in the dead of night is to start a petition get it stopped, rather than to actually go and find out what the problem was in the first place. I'd make some joke about the french complaining about everything, but I know full well the same thing would have happened in this country. Thankfully, they soon realised they'd not seen her for days and called the authorities who sent in a crew to rescue her... in what seems to be the nick of time, as she'd been living on nothing but water for over two weeks.
This story is wonderful in so many ways. The shock news? That there was a mobile speed camera on the A31 this morning.
As if the whole concept of a story about a speed camera wasn't funny enough, it describes in great detail how drivers are being "forced to break suddenly" [sic] and how it's causing tailbacks during rush hour.
EDIT: The spelling error has now been corrected.
Funnily enough, there was no mention of any 'tailbacks' on the BBC travel news beyond the usual rush hour traffic.
Last night while watching The Apprentice, I was trying to think of some tasks that Alan Sugar won't set the contestants, but probably should do in the interests of good telly...
I read this in the BBC last week, it's an interesting take on peoples' attitudes towards music. Speaking as someone whose music collection is a 2TB hard drive full of MP3s which is permanently on shuffle, I admit I do have sympathy for bands who produce masterpiece albums and then have people effectively picking and choosing the best bits. Despite this, I listen to what I like - yeah, there are some great AOR albums out there, but let's face it, few albums don't have at least one track that makes you wanna hit the track skip button. I could sit on the fence forever.
That said, today I bought Taking Dawn's album "Time To Burn" - as a digital download, as much of my music is these days as it's cheaper, I get it quicker and it saves me having to rip the CD. I had two options - buy the original album release for a fiver or the 'special edition' for eight quid. The special edition had three extra tracks, but get this - you can buy all the tracks seperately for 79p each. So basically I bought the standard edition and then bought the three extra tracks individually and it cost me over a quid less than buying the special edition.
I think I'll be supporting peoples' rights to buy individual tracks for some time yet : )
I have just been involved in a conversation in which one of my questions was answered with 'well, what came first, the chicken or the egg?'. The whole stigma of answering a question with a question aside, it annoys me that the chicken-egg problem is so commonly seen as such an impossible question to answer.
Firstly, to give the simplest possible answer, dinosaurs laid eggs long before chickens existed. So the obvious answer is the egg. But when I use this argument it's almost always followed by some smarmy git saying "ah, but I'm talking about chicken eggs, which came first?" to which the answer is still the egg, as I will explain.
Evolution is generally accepted as scientific fact. There are a few idiots left that believe otherwise, but let's assume for a minute that science is right. If we trace the ancestoral history of any given chicken back through the generations, we will encounter lesser and lesser evolved forms of the bird. At some point we will reach a point whereby the creature no longer fits the definition of a chicken. This creature's offspring is the first chicken, and that chicken came from an egg, laid by its non-chicken mother.
So, ignoring the fact that I've just written three paragraphs on poultry genealogy without a hint of irony, next time someone asks you which came first, you can tell them from me, it's the bloody egg.
I moan about the Echo but still read it. Maybe this makes me a hypocrite.
"Town centre closed off as police hunt robber"
The article begins with "Part of a Hampshire town centre is closed off today as police hunt a robber", and goes on to explain that the town in question is Fareham. Fareham's pretty big, and it's amazing to think they'd close off even part of the town centre to catch a robber who stole money from a cash machine.
If you read right to the end, you get "as part of their investigation police say that part of West Street will be closed off for some of this morning."
So basically, they've closed off a small area of west street (probably just the cash machine in question, for some forensic analysis) and the Echo headline implies that the entire town centre is closed.
In tomorrow's issue: "Woman in speeding vehicle causes carnage", a chilling story about a granny on a mobility scooter who accidentally bumped into a kerb, causing a dog walker to wait for her to reorient herself before passing.
OK, it's official, Michael Bay is making a fourth live action Transformers movie. Apparently none of the (human) cast of the last movie are returning, the movie is going to have "more action" (like that's possible) and although it's not a reboot of the franchise, according to Bay, it's going in a whole different direction.
I'd like to see one of the following...
Subject: Error Code: END01.
From: Co-operative online cooperative@co-operative.co.uk
Message-Id: 13074650001.18257@co-operative.co.uk
`The image "http://inspiringawards.com/images/Bank%20logo.jpg" cannot be displayed, because it contains errors.
Dear customer ,
We are having some difficulties in logging you on (Error Code: END01), in order to maintain access to Internet Banking.
Click here (http://www.ticbrno.cz/www.co-operativebank.co.uk/) to avoid online service suspension.
*Online Service Team
Lloyds TSB Bank Plc*`
A friendly note to all internet scammers... try and pick just one bank to impersonate and stick to it.
