caldrail
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Blog Comments posted by caldrail
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Oh no. Atmospheric phenomena are always caused by space aliens. They're obviously popping down to Earth for a ski-ing trip.
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Blue? According to the view out the library window, it's a sort of muddy white colour. Good grief I fork out a ton of money every year for the BBC to paint the weather map the wrong colour.
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No really, they did. Axelgricehomide. Absolutlely deadly poison first tested on immigrant populations in the east coast area. It really upset the colonists and they naturally blamed the native americans, who they thought were poisoning their chicken curries. Caused a lot of aggro, so I understand, and naturally enough the americans got tired of it and booted us out. History is so interesting if you include the CIA. All makes sense if you do that
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Plucked, roasted, and eaten last Sunday. Sorry.
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Busy schedules are great until the insidious arrival of stress makes it a trial. They say it's good for you but in what way? What's the use of becoming a nervous wreck? On the other hand, there comes a point where your life is so busy that your memory can't cope, and after a few missed events, you turn to personal organising and thus descend the slippery slope toward a form of analism that is insufferable to others, so you lose your friends and thus end up fully organised with an empty diary. Go figure...
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It's an experience. Deceptively easy, right up until the point you realise you've done something you shouldn't (I knocked over two barriers this morning in a truck weighing three tons)
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Poor woman. Lets vote for her so she her disability is proven not to be an obstacle to a long, productive, and meaningful political life.
Okay, lets not...
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Ah yes. If there is no neighbour to hear it, does the door rattle? That question has been debated by philosophers ever since the door was invented. I must err on the principle that the rattle is a natural consequence of impacts between brass components of the door handle resulting from vibration caused by heavy vehicles thundering up and down the hill outside, since sound is merely a vibration transmitted to the ear, a sensory adaption allowing us to interpret those vibrations as annoying rattles.
In other words, I hear rattles because I'm designed to. I must therefore blame God, because he claims the patent on our design. We are after all paying the price of the apple of knowledge. If Man was intended to have door handles, he would have made them as vibration-suppressant and a non-rattling material.
Sadly, I've just let the idea out of the bag, and by now, some avaricious capitalist is wringing his hands in joy at the possibility of extracting cash from our pockets in return for noiseless door handles. Only
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And cause gatherings of woolly hats in tents outside your door if you own one.
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Unfortunately the authority of your local lord is handed out by the government and assured by loyalty to the crown, whether he does a good job or not. For me to usurp his seat would be treason against the state. Further, the government are currently cracking down on benefits payments and for me to ask for housing support for a stately home is not politically prudent at this time. Nor likely to be successful.
Rest assured, simple village person, that I shall strive to right wrongs wrought by the evil Baron of Clayton and free a couple of your common folk from serfhood as a sort of motivating competition for support.
Actually, I do need a herald for this. Do pop down to Clayton Towers and tell him to surrender his fief, will you? You never know...
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Rest assured this was a supreme effort and today I have reverted to my usual idle condition. I'll be finishing my job searching in an hour or two and that about wraps it up for the day. Still, it's Halloween & Guy Fawkes Day, so the weekend is going to be noisy and pyrotechnical, if not entirely busy!
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Trust me Ghost, being 47 is no big deal. It merely confirms what people thought about you last year and nothing new is going to happen.
I do like your attitude with regard to growing up. I myself wish no better retirement than to grow old disgracefully.
As for a mid life crisis, I think I've come out of that episode as a mid life disaster area. Most people think something along those lines. My advice is not to worry about it.
Enjoy the tour of Provence (Wish I could be there, actually, I'm somewhat envious) and be grateful that I'm too unemployed to take part. Our fellow UNRVers needed a couple of years off to recover from the last outing!
Well, must dash, I have a vacancy to apply for. It probably says middle aged crisis victims with identified second childhood syndrome need not apply in the small print, but since when did that stop me?
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Back when I was an aspiring musician, our band manager had a thing about porsches. He just couldn't see past the badge. To him, the Porsche represented everything about motoring that was ever likely to be desirable. Suggest an alternative? He would poo-poo the idea and suggest you do no more than buy a Porsche. He even had some strange idea that owning one was a guarantee of success.
I drove his Porsche once. After our Red Jasper days were done, he tried to get me to work for him. As if I was likely to make that mistake again! But I took his beloved car around the leafy lanes of Wiltshire one night and to be honest, I wasn't that impressed. The gear change was clunky, the car felt heavy, and although it did gather speed remorselessly, it never felt fast, nor for that matter did I get out thinking it was brilliant. It just wasn't.
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The turbo isn't electronic at all. It's a little round thing whizzing around inside an exhaust pipe. Okay, yes, sometimes they do fail, and car electronics these days are designed to be completely impossible to operate when you're old enough to drive.
But coming second to a 911? There is no excuse for that, ever
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Turbo button? Is that for real? How pathetic is that? Gimme power! Now! I want instamnt throttle response, not a five minute search of the dashboard before discovering I'm off the boost and the button does nothing.
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I wondrered if you'd mention Cricket. There's nothing more English, is there? Except it might not be, because I notice that recent evidence suggets it's an import from the Flanders, which is kind of interesting, because Britain had migrations of foreigners from that region in days of yore (including Swindon - we got loads of Belgians)
I doubt most English people really understand the game to any real degree either. I don't, and I played the game in my schooldays. Since those days however the game has become a little more commercial and so the 'whiteness' of it all isn't important any more.
Personally, I think the Americans ought to realise that they're not playing baseball properly, acccording to rules established in England hundreds of years ago. Sorry, but an armed revolution is no excuse. Rules are rules. We cannot allow this sort of colonial chaos in sport. It's just not cricket!
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Traditionally we Brits get a little baffled and jaundiced about Baseball. To us it's a game of Rounders, something girls play at school and we don't understand the razzamatazz surrounding Baseball whatsoever. It's all rather like Homer Simpson dancing to the Baby Elephant Walk.
Think I'll take a back seat and let you guys enjoy your national sport
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It's difficult for me to draw conclusions because I know almost nothing about US government. I have this sort of hazy idea of how it works via film and television, which I'm sure is a distortion of the truth.
There does seem to be a much higher degree of civic credibility required by the americans. Here in Blighty we are still afflicted by old class-system values which mean that people in authority are somehow better than everyone else. I suspect, apart from a badge of office, that the americans have a much more direct attitude, though I do get the impression that wealth is more of a social marker than in Britain, where we see a measure of reverse snobbery toward those better off.
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In fairness, european nations expect government assistance because socialist governments want us to and have gotten us used to the idea. It's their means of creating a better society, and requires higher taxes not only to fund these services, but as a means of redistributing wealth to those they see as deserving of that assistance.
Also, we have come to expect a somewhat poor performance from those we pay taxes to. That's why the public are currently so apathetic about voting in Britain. What's the point? One government is no worse than another. There is the issue of corruption of course. European politics is known for that and in recent decades civil service honesty in Britain has not improved in any way.
There was a guy in the local job centre who was firing off about national riots against injustice in society (though I admit, he had a racial motive) and I had to tell him such riots were not likely to spark anything significant, aside from a few burned cars if it got out of hand in one place or another.
In Britain, it's the threat of poor publicity that politicians don't like. Once you start manning the barricades, you're against the law and your cause is cast in that light. What politicians don't like are television reports of angry citizens yelling into loudhailers and using up police budgets on keeping demonstrations civil. For that reason, the governments have become very proficient at disarming such moods.
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Scorn and mockery usually. Except for charity workers of course, who are more often shocked that I even paid them any attention. I won't be down at the supermarket today so I've now idea if this particular lady has been woken from her slumber. I do hope so, otherwise she'll miss the weekend completely.
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She was there this morning as well. Poor girl, no-one thought to revive when the shop closed. Actually she did stiffen with trepidation when I walked past today. One gets the feeling awe doesn't come into it
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Our temperatures are starting to drop. The flat feels colder now. Autumn in Britain has none of the colour or virve you see in America. It just sort of goes brown and drops off. Today is typical. Grey, damp, and and thoroughly unexciting. Hmmm... The need to create entertainment is talking hold of me... Need mischief...
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Yes... I see... But cheap mobiles just don't compensate for good old fashioned Roman values such as orgies and feasting.
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It's a big deal because historically christianity was developed as a secondary government in Roman times - Marcellinus makes some comments on that issue - and back at the end of the 11th century, we came perilously close to a Papal Empire stretching across Europe.
Don't get me wrong. You've chosen to be a christian, and that's your right as far as I'm concerned. There is however a difference between belief and religion. Belief is what you hold to be true, religion is what someone tells you to believe.
The modern Pope represents a figurehead for religious politicans of the Vatican who are, for all intents and purposes, making themselves very comfortable indeed. That they have their hand in things we would consider controversial isn't easy to prove, but I note that perverts and terrorists have found sanctuary under the cloth. I cannot belive these religious authorities didn't know something about what was going on. They choose not to act for fear of upsetting the apple cart, and ruining it for themselves.
Therefore they put a Pope in the window every so often and the punters go home happy.
From The Ridiculous To The Sublime
in caldrail's Blog
A blog by caldrail in General
Posted
I wish I could say she was, or worse, but in all honesty she's actually quite attractive. Before you ask, no. Not even slightly interested. It would be like walking on ice.