Lair of the Swamp Duck

Big Read

2009-05-29T15:01:00.003Z

The BBC believes most people will have only read 6 of the 100 books here. How do your reading habits stack up?

Instructions:
Look at the list and put an 'x' after those you have read.

1 Pride and Prejudice - Jane Austen
2 The Lord of the Rings - JRR Tolkien X
3 Jane Eyre - Charlotte Bronte
4 Harry Potter series - JK Rowling X
5 To Kill a Mockingbird - Harper Lee
6 The Bible
7 Wuthering Heights - Emily Bronte
8 Nineteen Eighty Four - George Orwell
9 His Dark Materials - Philip Pullman X
10 Great Expectations - Charles Dickens
11 Little Women - Louisa M Alcott X
12 Tess of the D' Urbervilles - Thomas Hardy
13 Catch 22 - Joseph Heller
14 Complete Works of Shakespeare
15 Rebecca - Daphne Du Maurier
16 The Hobbit - JRR Tolkien X
17 Birdsong - Sebastian Faulk
18 Catcher in the Rye - JD Salinger X
19 The Time Traveller's Wife - Audrey Niffenegger
20 Middlemarch - George Eliot
21 Gone With The Wind - Margaret Mitchell
22 The Great Gatsby - F Scott Fitzgerald X
23 Bleak House - Charles Dickens
24 War and Peace - Leo Tolstoy
25 The Hitch Hiker's Guide to the Galaxy - Douglas Adams X
26 Brideshead Revisited - Evelyn Waugh X
27 Crime and Punishment - Fyodor Dostoyevsky
28 Grapes of Wrath - John Steinbeck X
29 Alice in Wonderland - Lewis Carroll X
30 The Wind in the Willows - Kenneth Grahame X
31 Anna Karenina - Leo Tolstoy
32 David Copperfield - Charles Dickens
33 Chronicles of Narnia - CS Lewis X
34 Emma - Jane Austen
35 Persuasion - Jane Austen
36 The Lion, The Witch and The Wardrobe - CS Lewis X
37 The Kite Runner - Khaled Hosseini X
38 Captain Corelli's Mandolin - Louis De Bernieres
39 Memoirs of a Geisha - Arthur Golden
40 Winnie the Pooh - AA Milne X
41 Animal Farm - George Orwell
42 The Da Vinci Code - Dan Brown X
43 One Hundred Years of Solitude - Gabriel Garcia Marquez
44 A Prayer for Owen Meany - John Irving X
45 The Woman in White - Wilkie Collins
46 Anne of Green Gables - LM Montgomery
47 Far From The Madding Crowd - Thomas Hardy
48 The Handmaid's Tale - Margaret Atwood
49 Lord of the Flies - William Golding X
50 Atonement - Ian McEwan
51 Life of Pi - Yann Martel
52 Dune - Frank Herbert
53 Cold Comfort Farm - Stella Gibbons X
54 Sense and Sensibility - Jane Austen X
55 A Suitable Boy - Vikram Seth
56 The Shadow of the Wind - Carlos Ruiz Zafon X
57 A Tale Of Two Cities - Charles Dickens
58 Brave New World - Aldous Huxley X
59 The Curious Incident of the Dog in the Night-time - Mark Haddon X
60 Love In The Time Of Cholera - Gabriel Garcia Marquez
61 Of Mice and Men - John Steinbeck X
62 Lolita - Vladimir Nabokov X
63 The Secret History - Donna Tartt
64 The Lovely Bones - Alice Sebold X
65 Count of Monte Cristo - Alexandre Dumas
66 On The Road - Jack Kerouac X
67 Jude the Obscure - Thomas Hardy
68 Bridget Jones's Diary - Helen Fielding X
69 Midnight's Children - Salman Rushdie
70 Moby Dick - Herman Melville
71 Oliver Twist - Charles Dickens X
72 Dracula - Bram Stoker X
73 The Secret Garden - Frances Hodgson Burnett X
74 Notes From A Small Island - Bill Bryson X
75 Ulysses - James Joyce
76 The Inferno - Dante
77 Swallows and Amazons - Arthur Ransome
78 Germinal - Emile Zola
79 Vanity Fair - William Makepeace Thackeray
80 Possession - AS Byatt
81 A Christmas Carol - Charles Dickens X
82 Cloud Atlas - David Mitchell
83 The Color Purple - Alice Walker
84 The Remains of the Day - Kazuo Ishiguro X
85 Madame Bovary - Gustave Flaubert
86 A Fine Balance - Rohinton Mistry
87 Charlotte's Web - EB White X
88 The Five People You Meet In Heaven - Mitch Albom
89 Adventures of Sherlock Holmes - Sir Arthur Conan
90 The Faraway Tree Collection - Enid Blyton X
91 Heart of Darkness - Joseph Conrad
92 The Little Prince - Antoine De Saint-Exupery
93 The Wasp Factory - Iain Banks
94 Watership Down - Richard Adams X
95 A Confederacy of Dunces - John Kennedy Toole
96 A Town Like Alice - Nevil Shute
97 The Three Musketeers - Alexandre Dumas
98 Hamlet - William Shakespeare X
99 Charlie and the Chocolate Factory - Ronald Dahl X
100 Les Miserables - Victor Hugo

(via Damien's Irishperson in Exile Diary)

NPH is so hot i'm going to have a sex change, become a dude, break up his long-term relationship, and hit it HARD!

2008-12-04T10:26:00.004Z

Prop 8 - The Musical

The post title comes from the comment section on the video. The comment wasn't made by me but it sums up my feelings on the matter pretty well too!

In related news: Damo has moved.

What heist were you watching?

2008-07-18T23:42:00.002Z

Dragging myself out of blogging hibernation to recommend that everyone watch Dr. Horrible's Sing-Along Blog written by Joss Whedon and featuring the legendary Neil Patrick Harris.

Spirit level

2007-04-26T10:38:00.000Z

Damo's doppelgangers

2007-01-20T22:02:00.000Z

Ashton Kutcher?????
I thought Paul Giamatti would have been in there. Very worryingly Vince Vaughan shows up for both of us...

Jack Black is nowhere to be seen

2007-01-20T21:57:00.000Z

Just to prove Damo wrong...

Car crash tv

2007-01-18T21:07:00.000Z

I do not like children. Saying I hate them sounds a bit strong but it's a fairly accurate description of how I feel about them in general. So why do I find myself glued to a program that has loads of the little sods on?

Better late then never

2007-01-12T12:09:00.000Z

Might have made all those seminars a bit more fun...

Doubtful though.

The Real Thing

2006-12-12T17:34:00.001Z

Hah! In your face crappy new Christmas Coke ad!

Stork central

2006-12-01T10:36:00.000Z

Congratulations to Tim and Jenny on the arrival of Ellen and to Paul and Claire for Geoffrey. If people could STOP having kids now, that would be great.

Dictionary definitions

2006-11-22T15:22:00.000Z

So apparently I'm not a nice person. Or, I'm a Wigger. Interesting.

Christmas Cracker

2006-11-20T13:10:00.000Z

Jim won tickets for the Christmas Ashes test by playing online poker. Methinks I need to learn to play.

Weird Flower Revisited

2006-11-16T11:00:00.000Z

So it turns out that the scary looking thing in Damo's garden was a Passion Flower. The answer had actually been staring us in the face as the aformentioned flower can quite clearly be seen on the label of the fabric conditioner bottle on the kitchen window.

The next mystery is - What the hell is a Passion Flower doing growing wild in a Cambridge garden? Must be that global warming jackie I keep hearing about.
On a sidenote, I get a lot of hits on this page from people googling the term "weird flower" so this post should increase my google juice :-)

On a completely unrelated topic : why does msn hate me so? It will pootle along in the background quite happily when I don't need to talk to anyone, but the second, and I mean the VERY SECOND, I see someone log on that I actually want to chat to it goes and crashes. No amount of troubleshooting followed by repairing will make it work again until it decides it is good and ready. Which is usually just when I'm going to bed for the night. Sigh.

Happy Birthday to Me!

2006-11-04T21:25:00.000Z

Damo got me a puppy! :-) Histon beat Lewes and Wales didn't lose. Good day all round.
Two years to 30...

Fairly bad taste.

2006-10-31T21:55:00.001Z

Lovely.

Draco Dormiens Nunquam Titillandus

2006-10-17T19:15:00.000Z

As I wandered through Bute Park in my lunch hour the other day, I started to wonder if I'd wandered into Fantastica.

OK, so the luckdragon in the book was white...perhaps this one is it's Welsh cousin.

While I'm on a photp jag - I took this one two weeks ago in Queen Street:

Yes, that's a Christmas tree light decoration thingy. Yes, it was put in place at the beginning of October.
Sigh.

Triumphant Bells

2006-10-10T17:22:00.000Z

Lastfm can be very useful and informative from time to time! It's just played me Mike Doughty's "I hear the bells" which I recognised as a song I'd heard somewhere and really liked then forgotten to look up. Thankfully, Lastfm's tag feature was there to help as it had been given the tags "Veronica Mars" and "Logan and Veronica" by someone with impeccable taste in TV.
On the other hand, the next song it played me was Coldplay. Sigh. Where's that Ban button...

It should be Private Transport

2006-10-09T22:29:00.000Z

I hate the fact that, when it rains, all those people who usually walk to work decide to take the bus instead, leaving it too crowded to find a seat. Oi, you lot, I put in the hours being lazy and taking the bus every morning.That seat is moulded to MY ass. You want to be all healthy and environmentally friendly and stuff? You can bloody well do it every day. GET OUT OF MY SEAT!
/end rant

Medium size, hold the tassel

2006-10-05T19:24:00.000Z

The place I work picks a different charity to support every year and carry out a variety of fundraising events throughout the year for that charity. This year's Charity of the Year is Breast Cancer Care and this month's event is "The Giant G Cup Challenge".
This involves a huge pink bra being transported to all 51 branches of the Society throughout Wales and the borders with money being collected along the way. The initial plan was for money to be put in the bra itself as well as the collection tins and the wording in the intranet article was "there are money slots in the bra – and like a surgically enhanced harlot's bra – we want it overflowing".
This however turned out to be a problem as loose change gets to be quite heavy in large amounts and the bra was only made out of foam. The tactics were revised to the bra just being used as a device to draw in the crowds while those of us who weren't strapped in to a support garment rattled collection tins.

Our shift took place on Tuesday afternoon in Cowbridge, a fairly affluent village outside Cardiff. Lots of schoolkids around when they should clearly have been terrorising a supply teacher or something. Most of the older boys would womble past and make comments along the lines of "bet you feel like a pair of tits" to the guys manning the bra. We would try and remain dignified so as not to tarnish the good name of the Society. However, after the 5th or 6th similar comment Ant and I both started muttering "This is the closest you're going to get to a bra for a few years yet" after the little Wilde wannabes.
The younger kids were more amusing. One group of 10 or 11 year olds were standing about 10 metres away from us obviously psyching themselves up for a drive by witty comment. After the third advance and retreat attempt one of them finally plucked up the courage to go for it, sauntered past us, poked Ant's cup and shouted "Fatty!". We were so disappointed
Apart from the kids it was actually quite a fun way to spend 4 hours out of the office. A lot of people would stop and share their stories of how breast cancer had affected them or their families. One little old lady of about 70 or so stopped to chat to me:

Sweet little old lady : "My daughter has just gone through this"
Me : "I'm sorry to hear that. How is she doing now?"
S.L.O.L : "OK at the moment. She has to take tamoxifen for 5 years or so and then go for more scans"
ME: "I hope she stays well"
S.L.OL : "She's just had a new replacement breast made"
ME: "Oh..."
S.L.O.L: "She paid extra for a nipple."
Me: "..."

We also got mooned by a sixth former on a school bus. Fun times.

Gary used to be in the Navy so he knows how to put men in a bra.

Ceri makes the minor strap adjustments.

Ant and Chris. Pink and proud.

Kwik Save makes me feel sad

2006-10-05T18:51:00.000Z

I stopped in there last night as it looked as thought it was about to rain and I didn't want to chance the extra half mile walk to Sainsbury's in a tshirt.They had donner kebabs in the freezer section people! Donner Kebab ready meals...there are no words.Also, they'd spelt the word "the" wrong on the carton of their fruit juice.

Hmm...

2006-09-29T16:27:00.000Z

Good thing I didn't mock Damo too much I guess.

How White and Nerdy Are You?

But the Coke ads aren't even on yet!

2006-09-26T18:23:00.000Z

They've started putting bloody Christmas decorations up in Queen Street! Christmas decorations! It's September!
Gah!
Guess I'd better start shopping for presents as I only have three months left. Sigh.

Inappropriate word choices

2006-09-21T18:30:00.000Z

To all the people who wrote "I wish you a speedy recovery" on the BBC's Have Your Say messageboard for Richard Hammond : maybe you should rethink the phrasing!

All the best Hamster!

Could we not just get rid of Jerry Springer alltogether?

2006-09-19T16:59:00.000Z

Recommended to me by Pickle:

http://politicalhumor.about.com/library/jokes/bljokeindependence.htm

Damo would like it noted that it wasn't John Cleese but Terry Jones who actually wrote this.
Bless.

No

2006-09-12T18:51:00.000Z

Before dd starts volunteering people...no!

"Batches? We don't need no stinkin' batches!"

2006-09-12T18:26:00.001Z

Emma wanted to know if I'd get a badge with the title. No I don't, but what I get is better than a badge! Here's a snippet of the e-mail that was sent to the department heads:

I'd like to engage one person from each of your areas, to act as the green champion for each part of the business. This group will be responsible for educating, policing and encouraging everyone around them to adopt a set of behaviours with the aim of reducing our waste and our energy usage by 25% on the previous year each quarter.

See...I get to be the Green Champion! I bet I get a cape.

Yes, I realise it's in the Daily Mail. Still a valid point.

2006-09-12T00:06:00.000Z

Good lord that Paul Burrell is a muppet.

Wow, that happened fast!

2006-09-11T17:07:00.000Z

I was sitting at my desk in work today, minding my own business when my boss, Chris, wanders up :
Chris : So, would you say you do your best to protect the environment and encourage others to do the same?
Me : Umm... I recycle...
Chris : Excellent. I'll nominate you to be the environmental monitor.
Me : Umm...

Culture shock

2006-09-08T12:39:00.000Z

Have decamped to my parent's house this week while I'm still off work. Due to the fact they're having their roof done there is scaffold all around the house. This means that :
a) if there's a fire and we need to get out of the upstairs windows in a hurry we may be in a bit of trouble, particularly me with my back problem and mam with her cracked rib, and
b)we can't get a satellite tv signal.

That's right, I've been cut off from my brain rotting tv watching schedule. The only thing I watch during the day now is Neighbours. Gail is back! I'm expecting Jason and Kylie to rock up any day now.

Sarcastic? Moi?

2006-09-07T21:42:00.000Z

You're Totally Sarcastic

You sarcastic? Never! You're as sweet as a baby bunny.
Seriously, though, you have a sharp tongue - and you aren't afraid to use it.
And if people are too wimpy to deal with your attitutde, then too bad. So sad.

How Sarcastic Are You?

Child abuse of a different flavour

2006-09-07T16:01:00.000Z

Mam dug out a load of photos of Pickle and I when we were younger. Note the matching outfits and hairstyles.

Spinoff blog

2006-09-07T13:40:00.000Z

From a random stranger on yahoo messenger :

random guy: ive got cam u?
me: I have one, not attached tho
random guy: atttach it
random guy: only take a few mins
me: no thanks
random guy: im not that bad
random guy: thanks
me: nothing personal!
random guy: yeh rite
random guy: what u look like
me: have a boyfriend and don't webcam other people
random guy: im married

Which part of this conversation is supposed to convince me? The married part or the "only take a few minutes" part?
I get enough of this kind of exchange that Damo reckons I should start a separate blog of "Oversexed idiot of the day". He may be on to something.

...flights of crocodiles...

2006-09-05T03:57:00.000Z

Although I never really watched any of his shows I was gutted to hear that Steve Irwin had died. From what I'd seen of him he seemed like a genuinely decent bloke and obviously loved the animals he spent most of his life around. Conservation has lost one of it's greatest advocates. To all those people whose response to the news is "He deserved it" - shame on you.

Bring back Nick and Jessica, all is forgiven

2006-08-25T14:12:00.000Z

I have seldom wanted to hit anyone more than I want to hit the delightful teens who are the focus of the MTV show "My Super Sweet 16th". Basically, rich American 15 year olds attempt to bankrupt their billionaire parents by throwing lavish 16th birthday parties. Today's specimen was especially slap-worthy. Her party managed to incorporate

1) a Cinderella theme with the horse-drawn carriage and Prince Charming wearing, I kid you not, the same outfit as in the Disney cartoon,

2) Saturday Night Fever with dancers in the white suits, and

3) Dirty Dancing with that annoying song and the birthday girl getting lifted in the air at the end. I cannot stress how much I wanted her to get dropped during this move.

The thing that bothers me the most though is the fact that I can't stop watching! GAH!

Come on you Stutes!

2006-08-24T20:30:00.000Z

Histon are off to a great start this season. Wonder who Damo's favourite player will be next match?

Test

2006-08-24T12:01:00.000Z

Testing Windows Live Writer.

Weird flower

2006-08-23T15:23:00.000Z

Damo's garden is full of weird looking plants that give out murderous triffid like vibes.
This is one of them. What is it?!!

At least I'm not watching terrestrial daytime TV

2006-08-23T14:55:00.000Z

I managed to get through an entire year of doing nothing during the day while I was writing up my thesis so how come I'm so bored after 3 days off from work? I guess the lack of mobility is adding to the level of boredom as I can't do much more than watch TV and DVD's or surf the net. Then again that's pretty much all I did for the aforementioned year!

Pretty much existing on a diet of Stargate SG1, 8 Simple Rules and Home Improvement at the mo, thank god for abc1 and Sky One! Boo to the Sci Fi channel for canceling SG1 though! They'd better let them film a wrap up episode or a TV film or something to bring the Ori storyline to a conclusion. They can't leave Daniel as a Prior!
Guess they could move all the team to Atlantis...

Not long till the Fall season of shows starts in the US! New House and Veronica Mars episodes! WooHoooooooooo! No more West Wing though *sniff*. Studio 60 on the Sunset Strip looks good, now all they need to do is write Richard Schiff and Allison Janney in as series regulars and I'll be a happy bunny.

Baby's first steps

2006-08-23T10:02:00.000Z

I'm still lying in a nest of duvets on my bedroom floor after doing something very painful to my back on Monday morning. On Monday I could only slither around the room by holding onto bookshelves, tables and the bed and pulling myself along. Tuesday I was able to get on my hands and knees and crawl for a bit. Today I managed to get to my feet and walk the few steps from the bathroom to the nest...yay me! I should be saying my first words any day now! They'll probably be "Ibuprofen please".

role reversal

2006-08-16T16:56:00.000Z

Damien : We might have to go to town on Saturday for present shopping.
Me : I don't want to go shopping, I want to go to the football match!

Smoke signals?

2006-08-15T18:30:00.000Z

How did people ever arrange to get together and do things before e-mail and text messages?
Trying to organise a few days in Dublin at Damien's parents house and a long weekend with Chris, Ryan and Martin. Ryan and Emma have decided to emigrate to Canada later this year so it would be good for us to catch up with them before they go off to commune with mooses. We also want to get to them before they start talking only in French.
The fact that Damo and I are far too lazy and too good at procrastinating to decide on dates to go to Ireland is enough of a hurdle. Throw in the juggling of 7 people's schedules and it gets messy very quickly.

No random sparks please

2006-08-13T19:40:00.000Z

Today's bad smell is coming from the kitchen. Fortunately I know what it is. Unfortunately it's gas.
No explosions though and it's all gone now. Can't have turned the grill off properly after Damo and I made garlic and ginger pork chops. Food was very tasty though, must make it again sometime. Without the gas course obviously.

Now watching "The Doctor Dances" again. Hee! He's totally sonic'ed up. Only a couple of months til Torchwood starts up. Yay!

Currently reading : Ffawd Cywilydd a Chelwyddau - Llwyd Owen and American Gods - Neil Gaiman.
Currently listening to : "Are you my mummy?".

Decaying flowers

2006-08-11T19:04:00.000Z

So there's an odd smell in the bathroom. I'm trying to work out if it's the carbolic soap, the bleach, the toilet disinfectant block thingy, the air freshener or an unholy alliance of all four. My solution? Whack some stronger smelling lemon bleach stuff down all the plugs, chuck a Harpic fizzy cleaning thing down the toilet, open the window and hope it doesn't all combine to form a toxic vapour that will drift merrily out the window and down the row of gardens, dissolving all the clothes on the washing lines as it passes.