Mmmmm... PIE

Quote of the moment:
"In species where females are harlots, males also have enormous testicles." - Dr Tatiana's Sex Advice To All Creation, coming to Channel 4 on Monday, meaning I miss it. Damnation.

Today's fun and games involved the car having a flat battery. It was duly jump started so that I could drive to work but died away again such that, while able to turn on the lights and play the radio, I couldn't get the engine started. I thus had to call out my parents with the jump leads, at 2am.

At work I decided to use the unclaimed wankwalk-o-meter that I found on Wednesday to measure my exertions. While at work I apparently walked 3400 steps, which in the kitchen probably translates to about 2000m. Hurrah!

There was a surplus of chocolate tart (PIE!) such that we had two whole ones between the 4 porters. I ended up bringing home 4 slices for the family, because otherwise I'd have been forced to eat them all:



That would have been purely to stop them being wasted, obviously.

Short Shorts

Quote of the moment:
Had first exam yesterday. went quite well, apart from put wrong title on it. - Will T. Bless... what a fool.

Shopping in Chelmsford this afternoon produced a sleeping bag liner from Black's (having pulled it upside down over my head to look like a ghost while checking it fitted my shoulders) and a couple of pairs of shorts from Matalan to strike off my packing list. I also saw three out of five of the Russians, all separately and two with another Russian each. Somewhere there must be a building full of them, probably with a huge store of vodka.


Left: £4 cheapos. Right: £16 tougher pair with pocketssess.


The sleeping bag liner.

I had a random little notion while driving home: in addition to the full-size Union Jack I'm packing for Independance Day, I should find the little Jolly Roger from my childhood holidays in Scotland and fix it to my canoe in America, pour encourager les enfants:



It would also give me an excuse to say "YARRRR!" lots.

Portering Pachyderms

Quote of the moment:
Hup two three four
Keep it up two three four
Hup two three four
Keep it up two three four
Company sound off!

Ho, the aim of our patrol
Is a question rather droll
For to march and drill
Over field and hill
Is a military goal!
Is a military goal!

Hup two three four
Dress it up two three four
Hup two three four
Dress it up two three four

By the ranks or single file
Over every jungle mile
Oh we stamp and crush
Through the underbrush
In a military style!
In a military style!

Hup two three four
Keep it up two three four

(Reprise)

Oh, we march from here to there
And it doesn't matter where
You can hear us push
Through the deepest bush
With a military air!
With a military air!

We're a cracker jack brigade
On a pachyderm parade
But we'd rather stroll to a water hole
For a furlough in the shade!
For a furlough in the shade!

- Colonel Hathi's March, The Jungle Book.

Given that I'm going to need to sing with the kiddiwinks as we walk out to the camping area, I thought I should learn that.

Last night I managed 50 situps in (the standard Army test time of) 2 minutes. Given that the requirement is 40, that's cause for a hurrah! This was achieved while watching Basil The Great Mouse Detective. Heard of it? Probably not, yet it is a Disney film, just a niche, cultish six-year-old-film-buffs-only one. Perhaps it was the start of my geek aspirations spotting the Dumbo toy in the toyshop scene.

Today I went on an extended dog walk with my dear mother, carrying a rucksack packed with 3 sleeping bags. An easy start to get me into the habit of it: both good for me and good practise for probably having to carry everything for the kiddies on the way to the campsite. Hurrah! Cue Prill style hyper moment: I CAN'T WAIT to go to America... It's going to be SO COOL. Ummm... tea... TEAAA!

[Would fetch tea if it wasn't disgusting filth]

I'm back. HEHEHE! I'm SO excited!

Yeah... back to cynical Will. For your delight and mockery I got an extra set of uniform and brought it home so I could take a piccy:



Look at the meat on those forearms. It would be pretty obvious who to eat in the event of a plane crash in the Andes!

My Fair Donkey

Quote of the moment:
"It is the on!" - New Weebl and Bob: Joust 2. It's AWESOME! :D

I forgot to mention last night that I saw a couple of foxes on the way home, which was quite cool, and one in the same place tonight. Their road crossing skills were rather better than the terrier which was running about in the middle of the A131 in rush hour, having escaped from a car in a layby. I swerved around it and didn't hear a crunch or see anything in the mirrors but I reckon it must have got flattened.

I also omitted to mention the previous night's post-blog activities, which involved wight training while watching Lady and the Tramp. Having tried it with Beauty and the Beast, I have discovered that Disney films are the ideal length, the songs help with the rhythm of the reps and I still know all the words. Go me!

Obviously, given the opening paragraph, I ended up having to go into work. It was even slower than last night, so I had my earliest finish yet at 11.30pm. Nonetheless, it interrupted my gaming plans again! Arse fez! I work Wednesdays as well, so no gaming night until Thursday. Damn, damn, damn, damn...

Blessed is the Beret

Quote of the moment:
"Blessed are the geeks, for they shall inherit the earth."

I rolled out of bed around 2pm and hit the gaming after lunch, intending to waste my day off as lazily as possible. Unfortunately at 4.25pm I got a phonecall from Bell saying that they needed me at work to fill in for their other agency guy there, starting at 5pm. Bums. At 6pm a new guy turned up who was apparently his proper replacement, so there were 4 porters for a slow night and I got paid for very little exertion. Hurrah! Hopefully I can persuade Bell that I don't need to go in tomorrow, as they asked me to, since I do actually quite fancy being a slob for a day. I'm obviously not slobbish any other time.

I've just re-cropped a photo for a Faceparty profile so that it'd have the right dimensions:



Alas, my cheeks are rather more chubby now. At least the hair difference is covered by the beret!

Eating For The Whole Hive

Quote of the moment:
Will:

How rude! You should have shared your gum with him intraoscularly :p

Rob:

...

[googles]

ok, this time even google doesn't know what you are talking about. The best it could do was: intraocular, meaning, injected into the eyeball. Now maybe that was what you meant, I really, really don't know.

Will:

I made it up, obviously... it seemed right at the time! Having looked it up:

Osculum is the Latin for kiss, thus the straightforward meaning would be 'between kisses'. However, since the root of osculum is 'os, oris' (as in oriface), the more poetic translation would be 'between mouths while kissing'.

Damn, it feels good to be a geekster.

- Comments on Anna's latest effort. Proof that I could be a Latin teacher, any day (with the assistance of Google). I love the idea of injections into the eyeball though.



How to die like a man ME, by Maddox.

Spent over an hour today 'sweeping' the back yard of the restaurant. I did actually sweep for a while, but mainly I was out there because otherwise I would be inside doing nothing and attracting attention to the fact that four people aren't needed to man the sinks just for Sunday lunch. The Russians just stand around doing nothing until they see/hear the Chef approaching, then launch into a hive of activity re-cleaning the stuff they cleaned last time he went through!

RIP John Mills, best known to me as the star of my favourite black-and-white film, Ice-Cold In Alex In other film news, Kingdom of Heaven has been criticised by Islamic fundamentalists, obviously, since it depicts heroic crusaders, but according to the Muslim Council of Britain its inaccuracy is in the overly generous depiction of the Arab leader Saladin!

Cakes & Crustacean Copulation

Quote of the moment:
"That means Lindsay Lohan (in Mean Girls, when she said that 'the limit does not exist') knows more maths than I do. Ouch, that hurt." - Poor, poor Lexcie.

Tonight at le Waterfront there was a big wedding reception in the event hall, which produced a vast amount of surplus food including some excellent lamb, yellow pepper and courgette kebab stick items, which I removed the nasty, dirty, spiteful courgettessess from and wolfed down. A ridiculous 3 whole platters of them came back, about 60 kebabs (along with an estimated 250 returned sandwiches) so naturally I had about 10. I've stopped my mother from leaving supper out for me to heat up, because I'm getting fat enough already. Hurrah for free food!

The couple had done a Prill on the cake front, going for one big flat, white icing and fruitcake traditonal one, and a kids chocolate one which was much smaller but tiered like a classic wedding cake, festooned with Haribo and a pair of red jelly hearts on top, stuck back-to-back with melted chocolate. There was also a ring of those twisted marshmallows around the edge of the plate. It was so awesome I needed my camera like Paula Radcliffe needed to piss during the London Marathon.

Today's prize for being a crazy Russian went to Bokhar, for fishing two king prawns out of a pan he was cleaning and simulating mid-air prawn sex.

Geekdom

Quote of the moment:


- Postsecret, courtesy of Rob "He-who-finds-anything-cool-online" Quill. Sure to trigger ecstacies of anger in Jim at all the emo-goth-manic-depressives (entertaining in itself) but it also contains some gems like that featured above.

Blogger crapped up yesterday and thus prevented me posting this:

Day off. Did nothing meaningful at all. Liked it.

I thought it had a certain succinct quality to it.

Prill's nod to the awesomeness of the Poyntz-Ward house challenge pairing reminded me of the all-OxfordUniversity Challenge semi-final between Balliol and Corpus Christi. Balliol retook the lead in the last few minutes following a closely fought contest, but blatantly deserved it more because of their obvious geek status. Balliol's pitiful "guy in strange haircut" combined with a rugby-chap captain and A GIRL (how rare!) left them trailing behind Corpus Christi by miles. Corpus' impressive lineup included one "Nehru suit", one ginger toff and two others also so odd they must have waltzed through their interviews with ease.

This, incidentally, involves my theory that the more like a reclusive geek you look, the better you fair at Oxbridge interviews(for geek subjects anyway), as born out by Roskelly of St Hilda's. Yup, that link does confirm the almost universal truth that someone with no chin, bat ears, cropped hair and glasses must be a lesbian. When I told Sarah she must be, she accused me of prejudice so I googled to vindicate my chauvanistic wiles.

Google - sponsoring the KKK since Good Ol' Boys learned to count. Once Jim has been sworn in as Grand Dragon of the new London Chapter, he could advocate a change to the more modern K3. After all, who says the Klan hates modernism?!

Back to my original theme: Bonus points should be awarded for geekness, after all 8 players are ranked in geek order on Millionaire style voting handsets. After this any geek answering a full set of bonus questions on their own adds their score to the team's total. If only it were on ITV, eh?

6 Degrees Of Kevin Bacon

Quote of the moment:
Sita to Rob Q: “I haven’t seen you for ages, what have you been doing?”
Rob Q: “Having a wank”

That's the first site that pops up if you google Rob+Quill+Warwick, due to the number of Rob quotes in there. Awesome. (His blog is second).

Today at work was so interesting that, while doing yet more washing up, I decided to play '6 degrees of Kevin Bacon'. For those that don't already know, it's based on the idea that everyone in the world can be linked together by 6 (or fewer) personal connections, for example:

I am obviously related to my father,
My father was in the same regiment as Will Carling (before rugby turned pro),
Will Carling had an affair with Diana, Princess of Wales,
She had a son called William.

That's 4 connections from this William to that William.

In the Kevin Bacon version, you have to link him to another actor or actress by common films. TV shows are allowed, but only if both persons had a regular part and not a cameo. Thus, in the one that took me longest this evening:

Joaquim Phoenix was in Signs with Mel Gibson,
Mel Gibson was in The Patriot with Heath Ledger,
Heath Ledger was in 10 Things I Hate About You with Joseph Gordon-Levitt,
Joseph Gordon-Levitt was in 3rd Rock From The Sun(TV) with John Lithgow,
John Lithgow was in Footloose with Kevin Bacon.

Remember kids, don't try this at home unless you're that special creature, the bored geek.

Hell's Kitchen

Quote of the moment:
The Dante's Inferno Test has banished you to the Sixth Level of Hell - The City of Dis!
Here is how you matched up against all the levels:

Level	Score
Purgatory (Repenting Believers)	Very Low
Level 1 - Limbo (Virtuous Non-Believers)	Very Low
Level 2 (Lustful)	High
Level 3 (Gluttonous)	High
Level 4 (Prodigal and Avaricious)	High
Level 5 (Wrathful and Gloomy)	Extreme
Level 6 - The City of Dis (Heretics)	Extreme
Level 7 (Violent)	Very High
Level 8- the Malebolge (Fraudulent, Malicious, Panderers)	Very High
Level 9 - Cocytus (Treacherous)	High

Take the Dante's Inferno Test

Looks like a fairly good peak there, if plotted as a graph. Yes, that is the geekish way my mind works. I rule. When I saw Vince's results I thought "How anomalous!". I then promptly forgot what "That A word meaning a mistake on a graph" was. Thanks Prill. [Looks embarrassed]

Having gone to bed at 7am, I got up around 5pm on Monday and have been awake ever since. It's the Will equivalent of the all-nighter: the all-dayer, getting up at the start of Monday evening and planning to go to bed somewhere near the end of Tuesday night/start of Wednesday morning. Hurrah. I was actually planning to go to bed quite early, but then around 5pm I got a call saying I was needed at work at 6pm, because someone else wouldn't be able to turn up. Hurrah again. More money in the bank, and it was a slow night so I didn't really do that much.

In other news, The Russians Are Coming, the Russians Are Coming is just about to start on TV, so I'm off to see in detail what caused my mother's family to yell the above slogan all the way down the routes nationales whenever they went on holiday, and us grandchildren to be led in doing so by our (slighty mad) grandpa whenever he took us anywhere. That's what being a pathologist does to you.