Archive for the ‘Uncategorized’ Category

Animal Lovers

(or “Everybody Needs a Hobby”)
There is more than one way for a cat to be skinned
Indeed, twenty-six methods in all
With a further sixteen
For the overly keen
Though their details I strain to recall
There are seven techniques for beheading a horse
But the principle doesn’t much vary
It depends on the weight
And the type of its gait
And if short [...]

October 1, 2010 • Posted in: Uncategorized • No Comments

Chop Chop

Why axe-murderers?
Have you ever wondered about that? Why, when appraising people’s capacity for extreme villainy, or disavowing our own, do we use axe-murder as a catch-all term?
Is axe-murder a particularly horrible form of murder? I’d certainly prefer it to being killed by any number of other esoteric tools. An implement more well-suited [...]

On Favours…

Favourer: There you go.
Favouree: Oh, thank you so much! Seriously, you have no idea how appreciative I am.
Favourer: Go on then.
Favouree: Sorry?
Favourer: I don’t like my own ignorance. How appreciative are you?
Favouree: Er…
Favourer: I’m not asking for recompense or anything. It was a gift from me to you. It cost me [...]

September 15, 2010 • Tags:  • Posted in: Uncategorized • No Comments

The Execution of Gary Glitter

I’ve become one of those people who get enraged about what they see on TV, and then complain to Ofcom and the broadcaster.
Dear Sirs,
I have seen the Banzai Christmas Special.  I’ve watched a couple of episodes of Dirty Sanchez late of an evening when I couldn’t sleep.  In my teens, before the prevalence of the [...]

Of course…

There was once a venerable lady of my acquaintance, and one day she took it upon herself to ingest a fly.  I’m sure she had her reasons, but whatever those reasons were, she took them to her grave.
What struck me most following this event was the sheer ghoulish conjecture over whether or not she would [...]

June 12, 2009 • Posted in: Uncategorized • No Comments

Losing Count

Assuming you could count at a rate of three numbers a second and didn’t need to sleep, it would take ten years, six months, 25 days, four hours and 48 minutes to count to a billion.  On this basis, counting 96 billion lots of eight would take 8110 years, 28 days, nineteen hours and twelve [...]

May 20, 2009 • Tags:  • Posted in: Uncategorized • 1 Comment

Stripping Windows, Clothing Linux

The difference between Windows and Linux is the difference between an immaculately-dressed prude and an enthusiastic unabashed nudist.
The immaculately-dressed prude always looks quite good, and usually does what you request, but ask to see its process stack and it’ll slap you in the face. If you buy it a nice meal, and tell it [...]

March 24, 2009 • Posted in: Uncategorized • 3 Comments

Making Logic Sexy

Do you know what a bilabial oral plosive is? Say it out loud, quietly if you’re in company. Bilabial oral plosive. By-LAY-bee-ul. Oral plosive. If you didn’t know what it was before, chances are by now you probably want to.
Well, it’s actually a category of phoneme produced by expelling air forcefully through the mouth in [...]

February 16, 2009 • Posted in: Uncategorized • 1 Comment

Jonathan Creek and the Vanishing Mental Moneyshot

Some time ago, whilst watching UKTV Gold, I made a wish upon a star for the BBC to make more Jonathan Creek. It’s an odd TV show, because no matter how good any given episode is, it has severely limited repeat viewing value. The earliest episodes are over ten years old, and even [...]

January 2, 2009 • Tags: , , • Posted in: Uncategorized • No Comments

Long Live Soup!

You know when you go and see an animated film about a talking mouse, primarily to appease the animated mouse-loving part of your girlfriend’s brain, expecting it to be poorly-conceived and childish schlock but walking away having seen one of the most refreshing pieces of cinema in recent memory? You know that experience? [...]

December 27, 2008 • Tags:  • Posted in: Uncategorized • No Comments