Worth the wait

At last. Went to see The Simpsons Movie today. I guess it was impossible for any film to stand up to such massive expectations, but it came very, very close. Actually, and I'm not proud of this, but I was laughing even before the movie started, at the sight of a kid in the audience who was almost the double of Üter. Fortunately the following 87 minutes frequently made me laugh even harder.

Just one thing... where was Sideshow Bob?

I blame Michael Fish

We never had these problems when he was in charge of the weather. Well, apart from the occasional unforseen hurricane.

I'm not impressed with the weather we've been having lately. I take 2 weeks off work, and the sun doesn't come out once. The second I go back to work, wouldn't you know, the sun is splitting the sky. Dirty fiery bastard of a thing.

And just to top it off, our head office is in Oxfordshire, in one of the towns particularly badly affected by the flooding. Which had a fairly negative impact on my ability to connect to the office network when working from home yesterday. Although nothing like as negative an impact as on all the people whose homes were flooded.

Unusual turnaround, really. At the weekend, while large areas of England disappeared under water, people in Scotland were sunbathing naked in their gardens. Er, some of them were. I'd imagine.

It's YouTube, you tube

I could be wrong - I have been before - but I am fairly certain that this is what the Internet was invented for.

Or, being more sensible, this is a real treat...

Or, gravitating back towards the stupid (as is my wont)...

I just wish they'd let Randy go on a little bit longer...

Quiz Night

I'm not long back from quiz night at the pub. Our team did rather well, scoring 84 out of 100 overall. Not bad considering that I had to do the first round on my own. 19 out of 20, since you ask. It's only my third week back at the quiz after a gap of almost 3 years and 4 months, so don't blame me if I'm a little rusty.

84 out of 100 is a pretty respectable score all the same, landing us second place this week. In the old days, that kind of score would have won it easily. But on this occasion, we were beaten by a team of students (pah!) who got 90.

We would have gotten away with it, if it hadn't been for those pesky kids.

Monkey Wash Donkey Rinse

I'm fairly certain that my image has been used on the internet without my consent.

Take a look at the top picture on this page - it loops through three different images. You're looking for the picture with a guy in a stripey shirt on the left. Got it? OK, over on the other side of the pic is a guy in a white shirt standing at the bar. He's a mate of mine. Now go left a bit - there's a guy sitting down, with his head partially obscured by the beer taps. That's me, I'm certain of it. I'd recognise the side of my own head anywhere... particularly when it spends so much time in that place.

Anyways, I don't recall giving my permission for my image to be used. Actually, I don't even recall the photo being taken. I do seem to become forgetful whenever I go over there, for some reason.

No reason for the title, other that it's the song I was listening to while typing.

An idea

Car manufacturers, gawd bless them, have come up with this great idea. It's basically a breathalyser* fitted to the vehicle. So, if you get behind the wheel reeking of alcohol, the whole thing just locks up and prevents you from driving it. Clever, or what?

Could we extend the same principle to computers? What if, before attempting to access eBay or Amazon you had to breathe into a little tube to prove your sobriety. So, if you'd just come home from the pub, pished out of your mental heid, you'd be barred from frittering away your hard-earned cash on frivolous nick-nacks. Imagine the amount of grief that could be prevented.

This is in no way related to the Mr Potato Head posts from a few days ago.

* That's with an 'S', not a 'Z'.

Huuuuh? Huuuuuuuuuuuh?

The world has officially gone mad. Insane in the membrane. Insane in the brain.

The proof is here.

Huh?

I don't understand how this has happened. When I first got hooked on this Internet malarkey, all those years ago, I signed up with CompuServe. And due to what I can only assume to be some massive oversight, my CompuServe homepage is still active - a good 6 or more years since I cancelled my account.

They must love me.

So excited

Christmas comes early... and I almost did too, when I saw this publicity shot for this year's Doctor Who Christmas special.

The Doctor and Kylie. It's almost too good to be true.

You know you want it

Admit it. You want this. You do. You know you do. You want it bad. I know I do.















And you can't have one without the other, right?

Seven

Next time the BBC presents coverage of a live music event of the like of Live Earth, they may want to consider using a slight delay on transmission. If nothing else, it would save Jonathan Ross from having to apologise every five minutes for bad language employed by the onstage talent. Particularly when that includes such notorious potty-mouths as Chris Rock and Ricky Gervais. And Madonna. And, er, Phil Collins.

I counted at least three of George Carlin's seven words you can never say on television, including arguably the worst one*, well before the 9pm watershed.

It's a fucking disgrace.

* You know, the Oedipal one.

It's not what you think...

...but would you feel comfortable asking for this magazine at your local newsagent's?

I found this whilst running a perfectly innocent search on Google Images. Perfectly innocent, I tell you.

Eye Eye

Went for an eye test this morning. I figured it was a good idea since I spend so much time staring vacantly at computer screens - the best part of 25 years, in fact. Between that and the old wives tale of "you'll go blind if you keep doing that, young man", my eyes should be utterly screwed by now.

The good news is that my eyesight is absolutely fine. It's nice to know that there's at least one part of my body that isn't a crumbling ruin.

Yippee-ki-yay

Who'd have thought? Just when we thought that it was compulsory for this year's crop of movie sequels to stink the place out, along comes Die Hard 4.0, or Live Free or Die Hard, or whatever the heck they're calling it. Anyways, whatever you call it, it doesn't stink. Not even a little bit. In fact, it's better than the last one, and at least as good as -if not better than - the one before that. Not as good as the first one, obviously.

Incidentally, tonight's scheduled movie on STV was to have been Die Hard 2. You know, the one with the terrorists at the airport. In the wake of the attempted attack on Glasgow Airport at the weekend, it's not being shown. While we're on the subject, it's reported that US law enforcement officials received warnings two weeks ago of terror attacks in Glasgow and Prague, the Czech Republic, against "airport infrastructure and aircraft".

Gee, guys, thanks for the heads-up.