… I came across Lazy Guide to Net Culture: Exeunt omnes and a serious article on how to destroy the earth…

I think I fell off again, bumped my head and answered the questions while concussed…

You are the third Doctor! Well, you certainly know
how to dress. Even people saving time and space
have to look good, I suppose. You’re not overly
fond of the military. Strange how you ended up
working for them. You can be a bit
egotisitical, but this is tempered by your
genuine dedication to putting right the wrongs
caused by evil men and monsters and your
sincere affection for those around you.

Which Doctor (from Doctor Who) Are You?
brought to you by Quizilla

Marriage changes passion. Suddenly you’re in bed with a relative.

According to a quiz by artemis618, I have a sarcastic sense of humour: “You have a sharp, witty tongue- be careful or you could really hurt someone’s feelings. You believe that there IS such a thing as a stupid question, and it damn well deserves an equally stupid answer. Try to keep your sarcasm on the funny side rather than being spiteful with your power.”

I quote this because the code at the end of the quiz doesn’t work.

I think the best way to view this film is as a comedy and a post-modernist homage to many better films.

Huge thanks to the french website that gives all the lyrics to Pink Floyd songs (and lyrics to Mssrs Barrett, Gilmour, Mason, Waters and Wright’s solo songs). It includes all the little snippets of Radio and TV shows that form the background to Pink FLoyd and Roger Waters records from Dark Side of the Moon onwards.

I’m still no closer to finding out what a kankabono is but I have found that apparently there are connections between Amused to Death and Kurt Vonnegut’s Cat’s Cradle.

It all begins to makes sense…

A public thank-you to pointing out that my scanner would work under OSX. (I found a few drivers had gone astray in my ‘classic’ install of OS9·1.)

This blog is proud to present some snippets from Private Eye:

1. Why I’m proud to be Australian

Gotta hand it to those Tassies: first splitting the beer atom, now this!

‘We came up with the idea after reading about how elephant dung paper has become a huge tourist product in Africa and Asia,’ Joanna Gair of the Creative Paper Tasmania company told a product pre-launch in Hobart. ‘Then I discovered that in Scandinavia, elk poo paper is the stationery of choice in most offices, and that got me thinking that we should create a uniquely Tasmanian paper. And what better raw material could we use than kangaroo dung?’

Gair was speaking ahead of the full launch later this spring of a full range of handmade “Roo Poo” paper products, all created from wallaby and kangaroo dung. ‘Roo Poo paper is the ultimate in recycling, and it reinforces the ecological message of our company. Half the fibre pulping has already taken place inside the animal, which means that the bulk of our work has already been done. Our only problem is that we’re having difficulty in getting the quantity of dung we need. We need about 25kg of kangaroo manure to produce 400 sheets of A4 paper, so well need several tons of it before we can launch our full range of products, including cards and paper. And that’s a lot of plop. We’re hoping that the community will help us by collecting kangaroo and wallaby dung for us wherever they see it, and dropping it off in plastic bags. Recycled bags of course. New or old (poo), we’ll take it all.’

We interrupt this blog for this important message from our sponsor

2. Snafu what a scorcher

They might be flying multi-billion dollar state-of-the-art military aircraft, but if flight crews don’t know right from left or metres from feet, pity the people on the ground.

Two crew members flying a B2 stealth aircraft returned to the US from a bombing exercise in the UK last month having to explain how they missed their static target by nearly 1,000ft.

‘Fury l’ had flown to Holbeach bombing range non-stop from Whiteman air force base in Missouri as part of a training mission and was supposed to have destroyed an orange boat moored on mud flats at the Lincolnshire range. Before take-off, however, the crew were instructed to offset their targeting by 300ft to the right into some mud flats as a direct hit would apparently have resulted in a huge and potentially dangerous fragmentation area.

Instead, the crew entered an offset of some 300 metres to the left and dropped two bombs on land well offtarget.

An MoD spokesman confirmed that the B2s were using the range for target practice but said he could not comment on the success or otherwise of the mission. ‘But that is the whole point of training and practice. You learn the lessons and get it nght.’

As one crew member of ‘Fury l’ was recorded saying to the RAF traffic controller: ‘Sir we got a long trip to get our story straight on that one.’

Take the quiz at dicepool.com

No use trying to fight it, you’re an eight-sided die, a d8. A fine example of simple elegance, the d8 is one of the least appreciated types of dice, and is often neglected. You are known to be quiet and shy, outward traits that conceal viscous sarcasm and mean wit. You are very smart, yet wise enough to hide your intelligence the quicker they found out how smart you are, the sooner they’ll put you to work, which is something you can do without. People call you dark and pessimistic, or moody and cynical. You find little point in arguing.

I won’t argue with ‘pessimistic’ and ‘cynical’. Choices are always between more or less undesirable courses of actions.

WOAD (traditional/anonymous)

[To the tune of Men of Harlech]

What’s the use of wearing braces
Hats and spats and shoes with laces
Vests and coats you buy in places
Down on Brompton Road

What’s the use of shirts of cotton
Studs that always get forgotten
Such affairs are simply rotten
Better far is Woad

Woad’s the stuff to show men
Woad to scare your foemen
Boil it to a brilliant blue
And rub it on your legs and your abdomen

Ancient Britons never hit on
Anything as good as Woad to fit on
Neck and knees and where you sit on
Tailors, you be blowed

Romans came across the channel
All dressed up in tin and flannel
Half a pint of Woad per man’ll
Clothe us more than these

Saxons, ye may save your stitches
Building beds for bugs in britches
We have Woad to clothe us, which is
Not a nest for fleas

Romans, save your armor
Saxons, your pajamas
Hairy coats were made for goats
Gorillas, yaks, retriever dogs, and llamas

So march on Snowdon with your Woad on
Never mind if you get rained or snowed on
Never need a button sewed on
Woad for us today

Got the quote – more than I was expecting and more than I can afford without borrowing money. So going to look at bank loans and at alternative quotes.

Our repro house excelled themselves today. Their server died over the weekend – and their backups later than Wednesday are useless, so they’re having to repeat the work they’ve done since then. To make matters worse, I’ve signed off on 6 books since Wednesday and so they’ve kept no record of the changes from the previous proofs of these books to the signed-off proofs.

All is not lost however: the files for most of these books will have been sent to the printer, so can be retrieved.* Also, while I didn’t keep records of what the changes were either, I do know which pages changed and photocopies of each signed-off proof. So I can send these copies to the repro-house and tell them ‘make page XYZ look like this’. I can also recall all but three of the changes on these pages and so I can even tell them how to ‘make page XYZ look like this’.

So all is not lost and I have had a reminder about the implications of the termination of corpulent females vocal performances.

Does anyone want my life?