The Real Thing

Hah! In your face crappy new Christmas Coke ad!

Stork central

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

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

Christmas Cracker

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

Weird Flower Revisited

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!

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

Fairly bad taste.

Lovely.

Draco Dormiens Nunquam Titillandus

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

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

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

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

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...

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!

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

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?

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.

Before dd starts volunteering people...no!

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

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.

Good lord that Paul Burrell is a muppet.

Wow, that happened fast!

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...