Mastercard

Quote of the moment:
Flowers for your girlfriend's birthday: $35
Bottle of Champagne: $50
Forgetting to lock the bedroom door: PRICELESS



That looks eerily like Prill m8's head. I haven't seen enough of the legs for proper confirmation.

Lo! A Viking!

Quote of the moment:
Buliwyf: 'Lo, there do I see my father. 'Lo, there do I see...
Herger the Joyous: My mother, and my sisters, and my brothers.
Buliwyf: 'Lo, there do I see...
Herger the Joyous: The line of my people...
Edgtho the Silent: Back to the beginning.
Weath the Musician: 'Lo, they do call to me.
Ahmed Ibn Fahdlan: They bid me take my place among them.
Buliwyf: In the halls of Valhalla...
Ahmed Ibn Fahdlan: Where the brave...
Herger the Joyous: May live...
Ahmed Ibn Fahdlan: ...forever.

- The 13th Warrior. Antonio Banderas in Viking garb. The sort of thing that would cause Emma to break her budget yet again, no doubt.



Still forced to use poofy soap, dammit. No Viking would smell of apricots.

I Smell Like A Poof

Quote of the moment:
Mmmm cheesy poofs.

There was no normal soap stuff at work today so I had to use the uber-harsh stuff for grease, paint and the like instead. For some reason it smells of incredibly poofy apricots.

Weebl & Bob Geldof Strike Back

Quote of the moment:


I only had to edit Bob's head, because the first picture that came up when I put weebl+bob+pie into Google was so appropriate!

Argh. One of my ears is bleeding, probs from having too many ear plugs rammed into it in the last 3 weeks. I have 13 seperate cuts, ranging from papercut-style to a ripped out chunk from a saw blade, on just one finger. 25 on the hand. Forget America, I'll be glad just to stop working there. Shitheap it is, hmmm? 4 days left...

Damn You, Bob Geldof

Quote of the moment:

You scored as General Grievous.
Which Revenge of the Sith Character are you?
created with QuizFarm.com

General Grievous		92%
Chewbacca		92%
Yoda		72%
Anakin Skywalker		69%
Darth Vader		69%
R2-D2		67%
Mace Windu		61%
Clone Trooper		58%
Obi Wan Kenobi		56%
Emperor Palpatine		50%
C-3PO		25%
Padme Amidala		19%

Chewbacca is obviously cool and nearly as hairy as me, but 4 lightsabres at a time is just awesome. The cape is a little unhealthy though.

Mowed lots of grass today. Also went running, doing the 1.5 miles in 12 minutes 57.6 seconds, down from 13min 21.8s on Wednesday. Hurrah!

I have just had an awesome idea:

Weebl and Bob Geldof
(The Live8 Special)

Weebl, Bob Geldof and the Jams go protesting. Weebl does his specialty club singing of "Feed the world (with pie)", but is topped by Wee Bull and the Hairy Lee Childs Orchestra performing "He's got the whole pie in his hands". Damn you, Wee Bull.

Piratical Connections

Quote of the moment:
Well, it's all rather complicated... there's one set of cousins called Mallock and another called Maddox..."

My dad was explaining some family connection to Sarah, but I just picked up on us being distantly related to a family called Maddox.


How do I look?

I was outside The Cave at 5pm as instructed. No show from anyone who might be there to pick me up. After about fifteen minutes of wandering up and down outside the door, I went in to check that the job wasn't actually in there before heading home. It wasn't, obviously, but that counts as my first visit to a poledancing club. Admittedly the only girl in there was vacuuming the floor.

Perhaps we should make it the venue for a kr3w reunion?

Changing The Guard

Quote of the moment:
Dear Rita, do you think the world would be a much more peaceful and happy place if everyone had Down's syndrome?

No. We'd just have really clean windows.

I'm sure she's related to Jim.

I was persuaded into working tomorrow night by the offer of £7.50 per hour. Quite reasonable, especially for being a 'Security Guard' 'and supposedly watching over a swimming pool. Yup. Sounds great, doesn't it? I apparently have to sit near it and tell people not to go in. I have no idea whether it's outside or inside, or where the hell it is. I have to be outside The Cave nightclub in Chelmsford at 5pm, but that doesn't sound to me as if it's actually working there. Besides, why would a nightclub in Chelmsford have a pool?! The Cave's right by the train and bus stations, so I suspect there may be a minbus for a load of staff to some event somewhere. Whichever, I'm going armed with a book.

News from Felsted: the prefects have been chosen and there are, bizarrely, 18 of them already plus 2 more that could be promoted after serving time for naughtiness. That makes a total of 20. If that seems a little daft, then consider this:

Melanie Balfour (Deputy Head of School)
Susie Bradley
Loren Sherer
Kat Malyon
Torty Lee (Head of House, prefect when time served)

All of the above are from Follyfield. What a coincidence that the Housemistress is married to the Deputy Headmaster.

Elwyns did quite respectably, securing 3 prefects for the second year running:

Freddie Blackwell (Head of House)
David Rees
Charlie Paterson

Lyme Disease?

Quote of the moment:
Alarm at sharp rise in tick disease
...
British hotspots are Thetford forest in Norfolk, the New Forest in Hampshire, the Lake District, the Yorkshire Moors, the Scottish Highlands and the uplands of Wales.
...
Many people may be carrying the antibody after a tick bite years ago, but showing no symptoms. In those cases the full-blown disease can be triggered by another illness or severe stress.

It causes a rash and stiffness in the joints and, left unchecked, it can affect the central nervous system, causing tingling in hands and feet, or facial palsy. In the worst cases the disease can also affect the heart, liver and spleen and even lead to encephalitis, which can kill. Depression and chronic fatigue grip many patients and ruins their lives.

The symptoms are not identical for every sufferer though — Lyme disease imitates other diseases, which makes it difficult to diagnose.

- The Times, Monday May 30th. Left out on the kitchen table when I got home.

Here's one for Prill and Jim. Patient W spent 18 months or so suffering from chronic fatigue syndrome. Stiff joints and impaired balance were also frequent. Patient W was tested near the start of this period for various possible causes including glandular fever and diabtetes, but all tests came up clear. Glandular fever became the accepted cause because after about 2 weeks, for some reason unknown to the author, it no longer shows up in blood tests. However there was no obvious contagious person who then suffered from glandular fever that might have infected Patient W, as might have been expected.

Since the age of two Patient W has been visiting the Scottish Higlands for an average of a week per year and can recall having a tick removed with the traditional just-extinguished match at least twice.

Conclusions please. Bonus marks for use of technical language and/or Latin names. Oh yeah, I get tingly feet too.

The Seven Kr3w Dwarves

Quote of the moment:
It just so happens that this "children's movie" has a scene where a guy gets his hands chopped off, a graphic decapitation, the wanton slaughter of children (the highlight of any movie), and the coolest scene in any space action movie starring Ewan McGregor: Anakin getting his legs chopped off as his stumps catch fire while his face melts. By the way, if you haven't seen this movie yet, don't read the previous sentence.

- I sense a disturbance in the force: Maddox on Episode III is here.

I was pondering today which kr3w members are part of the Seven Dwarves. It wasn't utterly random - I saw a pair of guys from the next door factory who looked like Grumpy and Doc.



The Seven Kr3w Dwarves:

Doc - Rob
Sneezy - Prillo
Grumpy - Jim
Happy - Jimmy
Bashful - Podgy
Dopey - Hawwy
Sleepy - Me!

If you want reasons, Rob has specs and an anti-sport belly, Prillo has an anti-dog nose, Jim rants worse than Maddox, Jimmy is glad to be alive, Podgy gets worried about everyone she meets, Hawwy famously said "ACER!" and I obviously rule in the sleeping stakes. Arguments plz kthnx.

[Edit 02:33 - I've just finished watching the double-bill finale of Desperate Housewives. Spankingly good, but highly frustrating in the loose ends left over.]

A Renault Return

Quote of the moment:
"The Renault F1 Team has stretched its lead in the Constructors’ Championship, and now has 76 points, while Fernando Alonso sits atop the Drivers’ Championship with 59 points."



How badly must Williams regret losing their Renault connection?

Zulu has begun to display sheepdog tendencies. Yesterday he tried to herd two year old Sam, (my mum's cousin's son, which could be my 2nd cousin?) to make him keep up with the rest of the dog walkers after the big family gathering. Unfortunately Zulu knocked him flat, then licked his face when he tried to get up. Bless. Sam does a very entertaining "Amarillo" impression too, but can't get beyond the "la-la-la-la-la-la" bit. Very cute.

I got a telling-off when I got into work today. The automatic machine I normally look after wasn't working on Thursday so I used the manual one instead. Some of my cuts were less than perfect, but that should be expected from a n00b. The real problem was that I wasn't there the next day so the deputy foreman had to sort through and discard the bad ones himself. Diddums.

The wonderful machine played up today as well. Somehow the blade skipped, scraped down the side of the steel guiding block showering out sparks, then stalled and refused to restart. How handy! I ended up sitting on a stool putting cut tube into the tooled connector parts for the final 4 hours. Yawn.