I didn't quite catch that...

On top of the increase in fuel duty (have to say, I kinda agree with the Group Captain on this), the price of mains gas is rising in the north. Yay. Lucky I don’t get mains gas, then, ain’t it.

Time to put my hands in the air, and own up.

I missed the last series, because I worked most Mondays while at uni, and because my house was lacking in that basic: SkyOne.

But now, it’s back. And be thankful for it’s return. It’s the new series of Stargate SG-1.

Hey, it’s not that bad. It’s like a comedy, but in space with lots of explosions. Think Red Dwarf, but less surreal, and with a bigger budget.

OK, it’s nothing like Red Dwarf. But it is funny.

Today, I was pointed in the direction of a site which extracts the michael from people who have jobs. More specificially, it takes the piss out of specific professions.

Of course, I’m laughing. Because I don’t have a profession, or indeed, a job. I always knew that that yould come in handy…

So I’ll present a few examples:

For Joe: Computer Support Staff.

If computer errors were written as haikus

Three things are certain:
Death, taxes and lost data.
Guess which has occurred.

The file you need
might be very useful.
But now it is gone

Windows NT crashed.
I am the Blue Screen of Death.
No one hears your screams.

For Beave: Engineers.

What’s the difference between mechanical engineers and civil engineers?
Mechanical engineers build weapons.
Civil engineers build targets.

Real Engineers consider themselves well dressed if their socks match.
Real Engineers buy their spouses a set of matched screwdrivers for their birthday.
Real engineers have a non-technical vocabulary of 800 words.
Real Engineers repair their own cameras, telephones, televisions, watches, and automatic transmissions.
Real Engineers say “It’s 70 degrees Fahrenheit, 25 degrees Celsius, and 298 Kelvin” and all you say is “Isn’t it a nice day?”
Real Engineers wear badges so they don’t forget who they are. Sometimes a note is attached saying “Don’t offer me a ride today. I drove my own car”.
Real Engineers’ politics run towards acquiring a parking space with their name on it and an office with a window.
Real Engineers know the “ABC’s of Infrared” from A to B.
Real Engineers know how to take the cover off of their computer, and are not afraid to do it.
Real Engineers’ briefcases contain a Phillips screwdriver, a copy of “Quantum Physics”, and a half of a peanut butter sandwich.
Real Engineers don’t find the above at all funny.

For Head: Post Office Workers.

A Post Office worker at the main sorting office finds an unstamped, poorly hand-written envelope addressed to God. He opens it and discovers it is from an elderly lady, distressed because some thief robbed her of 100 dollars. She will be cold and hungry for the rest of the month if she doesn’t receive some divine intervention.

The worker organizes a collection amongst the other postal workers, who dig deep and come up with 96 dollars. They get it to her by special courier the same morning.

A week later, the same postal worker recognizes the same hand on another envelope. He opens it and reads: “Dear God, Thank you for the 100 dollars. This month would have been so bleak otherwise. P.S. It was four dollars short but that was probably those thieving bastards at the Post Office.”

For Big Ju: Pilots:

What is ideal Flight Deck complement for a modern airliner?
A Captain, a Co-pilot and a dog. The dog is there to bite the captain if he tries to touch the controls, and the co-pilot is there to feed the dog.

…

While cruising at 40,000 feet, the airplane shuddered and Mr. Benson looked out the window. “Good lord!” he screamed, “one of the engines just blew up!”
Other passengers left their seats and came running over; suddenly the aircraft was rocked by a second blast as yet another engine exploded on the other side.
The passengers were in a panic now, and even the stewardesses couldn’t maintain order. Just then, standing tall and smiling confidently, the pilot strode from the cockpit and assured everyone that there was nothing to worry about. His words and his demeanor seemed made most of the passengers feel better, and they sat down as the pilot calmly walked to the door of the aircraft. There, he grabbed several packages from under the seatsand began handing them to the flight attendants. Each crew member attatched the package to their backs.
“Say,” spoke up an alert passenger, “aren’t those parachutes?”
The pilot said they were.
The passenger went on, “But I thought you said there was nothing to worry about?”
“There isn’t,” replied the pilot as a third engine exploded. “We’re going to get help.”

One for Ollie: Managers. Just because it reflects UWSU quite well.

Failing organizations are usually over-managed and under-led.

A nice one which gets at both me ma and me sister, and their chose professions:

A doctor is to give a speech at the local BMA dinner. He jots down notes for his speech. Unfortunately, when he stands in front of his colleagues later that night, he finds that he can’t read his notes. So he asks, “Is there a pharmacist in the house?”

And a couple for those of you out there who aspire to serve on the thin blue line, even if you’re not there yet. If you were a steward, many of these will apply to you just for that, anyway:

A policeman is on scene at a terrible accident – body parts everywhere. He is making his notes of where the pieces are and comes across a head. He writes in his notebook: “Head on bullevard” and scratchs out his spelling error. “Head on bouelevard” Nope, doesn’t look right – scratch scratch. “Head on boolevard…” dang it! Scratch scratch. He looks around and sees that no one is looking at him as he kicks the head. “Head on curb.”
Yes, well, writing reports was always the worst bit.

Top 10 things not to say to a cop when he pulls you over

• I can’t reach my license unless you hold my beer.
• Hey, is that a 9mm? That’s nothing compared to this 44 magnum.
• Hey, you must have been doing 125 to keep up with me, good job.
• Sorry officer, I didn’t realize my radar detector wasn’t plugged in.
• I was going to be a cop, but I decided to finish high school instead.
• What do you mean have I been drinking? You are the trained specialist.
• Wow, you look just like the guy in the picture on my girlfriends night stand.
• I thought you had to be in relatively good physical shape to be a police officer.
• I was trying to keep up with traffic. Yes I know there is no other car around, that’s how far they are ahead of me.
• Is it true that people become cops because they are too dumb to work at McDonalds?
• Well, when I reached down to pick up my bag of crack, my gun fell off of my lap and got lodged between the brake and the gas pedal, forcing me to speed out of control.

You Might Be a Cop if…

• people shout, “I didn’t do it!” when you walk into a room.
• your idea of a good time is an armed robbery at shift change.
• you disbelieve 90% of what you hear and 75% of what you see.
• you believe the government should require a permit to reproduce.
• you believe prozac should be added regularly to the water system.
• when you mention vegetables, you’re not referring to the food group.
• you want to hold a seminar entitled “Suicide – getting it right the first time.”
• you call for a criminal record check on anyone who seems friendly toward you.
• you believe anyone who says, “I only had two beers” is going to blow over 150.
• you walk into places and people think it’s high comedy to seize a co-worker and shout, “They’ve come to get you…”

I’d just like to say a big “Hell yes” to that second one there. Nothing more fun that having more backup than God when you’re pelting towards a couple of people who shouldn’t be doin’ what they’re doin’.

How come everywhere in the world seems to be having power cuts? Probably our turn next. Oh well. Better get a couple of candles about the place.

Hell, and other assorted documentation. UK stylee.

Advertise here. That link is not worksafe. Hat tip to Acidman.

The 50 Unsexy things from Nerve.com. Some things I agree with (or I think are just plain wrong), some things I don’t agree with (or think are good, if not sexy).

Things I agree with, and think should be legislated against:

• 1. Lip liner. To paraphrase David Cross: “Lip liner makes your mouth look like an asshole. You’re talking and I’m imagining six different types of shit coming out of your mouth.”
• 5. Lord of the Rings. The movies are fine, but did you know that if you read the trilogy three times in a year you actually get your virginity back? (Yes, they are great books. But that’s all they are, they aren’t a lifestyle. Ditto for Star Trek.)
• 18. Your cats. Attachment to a non-human mammal that doesn’t give a fuck about you bespeaks emotional damage. It’s the kind that transforms you from “alluringly quirky” to “certifiable.” (Yup. And cats are evil, anyway)
• 21. Over-grooming. Being clean and neat is good. People appreciate a white smile and trimmed fingernails. If you’re spending time and money getting your asshole bleached, step back for a sec. (This is definately one of the wrong things. I think I’ve spent about as much in my life on hair care as one of my male housemates from last year spent in a sitting. It showed, but hey, I’m happy with my hair, and he was a bit of a moron)
• 36. Employment. People always talk about “becoming their job,” which is the most heinous thing ever. (Finally! An excuse for me not being employed!)
• 45. Kim Cattrall. We?re all for women retaining sex appeal after forty, fifty, sixty, or whatever. What we are not for: actresses displaying their identity crises by wearing bright green minidresses to the Video Music Awards while snarling supposedly seductive things about 50 Cent. (SHES TOO OLD! PUT IT AWAY, OLD WOMAN!)
• 50. The Internet. All those people. All that porn. All that time. Nothing you can touch. ?n?(Yes, the last thing you could call the internet is sexy. But hey.)

Some things I think the good people at Nerve.com have got wrong:

• 2. Instant messaging.   Now, look here. Text messaging could be considered IM. And text sex can be very good. So stick that in your pipe and smoke it.
• 6. Denise Richards. Sexy two years ago, but now looks like she’s been ridden hard and hung out wet.    Nah. Still looks good. And the memories of Wild Things would cover a lot of failings anyway.
• 25. Stillettoes. Exactly 87% of women who wear them hobble around like newborn foals.    Again, much nah. Very sexy, on the right figure. On heffers, not so good, but you can’t blame the shoe for that.
• 33. Lower-back tattooes. Lately, it seems that if there’s no faux-Celtic design between your low-rise jeans and your baby tee, something’s missing. Recently, we’ve been seeing girls with their names in thug font in that place. Must save a lot of awkwardness.   First off, damn good burn with the awkwardness comment. But, hey, if it looks good, it looks good. Just as long as it isn’t something freaky. Like a picture of her ma or something.

The others mentioned, I’m not so fussy about. So nah.

I feel that now is the time to let Allah into my life.

OF course, I think that I may now be entitled to a small amount of smugness. I started blogging, like, six months before the god of one of the biggest religions about. I can only put this down to the recent expansion of proper computers in the middle-east, left behind by fleeing UN personnel. Yay for the UN, then…

I’m also putting Acidman on the blogroll for a bit. Cos I visit quite often, and I get really bored with having to type in URLs.

Ah, ain’t that nice. More tax on petrol. Just what I needed. Why must life be so hard for the average petrolhead?

Just a little fun and games for Beave: Penny Arcade photoshops the Doom III screen shots. Just scroll down until you see them.

Tip o’the hat to Michele.

One theory test this morning. Results: 100% in multiple guess choice section, 70.67% in hazard perception. Which was nice.

OK, I’m only gloating because I just scraped a pass in my original theory, all those years ago.

From the Portadown News, 16th September:

Irvine critic ‘not jealous’
by our sarcasm correspondent, I. Wright

Local man Gareth Spoiler is “definitely not jealous” of former F1 driver Eddie Irvine.

“My burning hatred of Eddie Irvine, who I have never met, is entirely rational” Mr Spoiler told our reported last night, before driving his fat girlfriend home in a 1.1-Litre Renault Clio.

Looking at the name of the correspondent, that reminds me. Whenever I’d walk from school into the centre of Belfast, I had to pass a printer’s building. Owned by Messers. Reid and Wright. Which I thought was funny. But then I am easily amused.

Belfast’s own goal
By our business correspondent, Reg Empty

The Tourist Board has welcomed news that Crumlin Road prison is to be turned into a visitor attraction.

“This will be just like Alcatraz in San Francisco,” explained a Tourist Board spokesman yesterday, “except that in Belfast we put the gays in jail and the gangsters in the nightclubs.”

From the Portadown News, NIreland’s finest satricial newspaper.

Found on the Toaster Files.

I’ve just remembered that I said ages ago that I’d revamp this site. Gotta do that soon. Hell, it still says that I’m a student living in Leamington, not an unemployed bum living in NIreland.

But first, I’ve got to do the theory test. Then I’ll bother changing it. Should be soon, though.

You know the score: if something that is being sold doesn’t have a pricetag displayed, odds are that you can’t afford it. Which is why I was annoyed at the lack of displayed pricetag on this baby. Look at that screen. Imagine C&C on that. Hell, imagine Tetris on that and it would still rock. I wants.

Having had a proper look about the site, I find that prices start at $4k and run up to $7.8k. Now, factor in shipping of a couple of hundred $$$, and tax (17.5% for UK VAT), say you’re starting at 5.5k US. Makes between 3 and 4 grand in sterling.

My current income, you ask? Hmm. Somewhat less than that. In fact, nearer to zero grand, zero pounds. So paying it off would take some time.

But I still wants one. So, as of now, any donations towards the private military will be siphoned off towards buying me that machine. Get giving, people.

Cheers to Beave for the link.

Michele has a post about wakes. Now, I’m not a huge expert on wakes. I know a hell of a lot about funerals, what with having been to over a hundred of them by my 20th year, but wakes aren’t often my thing.

See, I was an altar boy. Not in the sick way a lot of people refer to Boston Altar Boys. I served at about the hundred funerals between the ages of 9 and 11. Got a few quid for each of them, passed the priest the earth for the “ashes to ashes, dust to dust” bit, held the Holy Water for the blessing, that sort of thing.

But before I’d been an Altar Boy, I’d remembered a funeral. One of my most vivid memories: my mum throwing a single red rose into her husband’s grave. I was twenty four days shy of my sixth birthday. I’d spent the previous couple of days watching TV round my best mate’s house, I hadnt’ been there for the wake. I didn’t know what was going on. I just knew that my daddy wasn’t going to be back. He wasn’t going to put me up on his shoulders, he wasn’t going to chase after my mum’s car to stop me whinging. He wasn’t going to encourage me to help me with the crossword. He wasn’t.

So, at the funerals I served, I tried to remember this. Someone had been lost. Someone had gone. I was too young, I didn’t realise what death was. So I didn’t understand why people were crying into the grave for. I am eternally shamed to realise that the funeral I most remember is the one where I was given the most money for. I remember the widow at that funeral, too. She was weeping, aloud, in the graveyard. And I, in my ten year old wisdom, chose to remember the ten pounds I got ahead of her grief. I can’t believe how shallow I was. And still am.

Since then, of course, I have had more experience of funerals and wakes. In the first three years of university, I had one visit home where I didn’t have a funeral or wake of someone I’d known to go to. Out of three or four a year. I was a lead mourner the morning after I’d sliced my hand open on a wine glass. I learned to curse my 6ft height when carrying; I learned how to stand to minimise the weight I was holding. I’ve lowered coffins into graves, I’ve led alcoholics* out of the house at wakes. I’ve had to explain to psycotic people that phoning me 16 times on a day when I’ve been to two wakes is not the best thing for people’s mental health. I’ve seen more death than I ever want to see.

What is the point? I remember the week of my dad’s funeral. I never saw him; from looking at the circumstances of his death, I can only hope that his was a ‘closed casket’ wake. I remember in 1992-93, when I was 11, a great-aunt’s wake, where I had to argue not to see the open coffin. I will always love and cherish the aunt who saved me from seeing that corpse. But I also remember seeing my great-uncles, and my grandma’s open caskets. My sisters, my cousins and I kept a vigil along side some of these when they were lying in my house. And nothing more than this could have meant more than this. I meant enough to be among the first carriers. People have asked me if they could carry. I swear, I nearly broke down the first time someone did this.

Whatever the circumstances of the wake, I can’t help but think that the Irish have got it right on this. We traditionally get together, get the drink flowing, and talk (nicely or truthfully) about the deceased, and then move on, to more sedate subjects. It’s the most blatent form of acceptance that I’ve ever seen, but it does seem to work. And this is part of the reason why I don’t agree with the whole creamation thing. Yes, I can see why having your body decompose naturally would be un-nerving. But, either you think that God will have something to do with you after death (in which case, your body is immaterial), or He won’t (in which case, your body is immaterial). What is the loss, when all the body is providing is a focal point, a release for grief for those who love you?

That is one thing that I think is important. After death, your remains are there for the people who survive you. What you wanted for them is nice, but remember to be nice to those who want to remember you. Which is why a grave is so important. And it’s something that you can’t have with ashes spread over Yankee field.

*- the man in question is also dead. No-one told me until after the funeral. I wish more than most things that I could have gone to it. I missed too many funerals for people that I knew from working in the bar, compared to people that I knew from third parties.

Good news: I like driving bikes. I got to mess about with this this morning.
Bad News: I dislike shopping. I got to do that this morning as well.
Good News: I got to drive fast. Well, as fast as a four stroke single cylinder Yamaha can go.
Bad News: I also got to play ‘dodge the fucking stupid people who like to stroll through Belfast city centre of a Saturday morning’. Boo.
Good News: I managed to purchase exactly what I wanted, cheaper than I expected.
Bad News: Among what I purchased was a theory CD for my test this week.
Good News: Once I’ve got the theory, I can book the practical test.
Bad News: Once I’ve got the theory, I can book the practical test.
Good News: Hopefully, soon after that I’ll have a motorcycle licence.
Bad News: But I won’t have a bike.
Good News: They’re cheaper than cars.
Bad News: But I still won’t be able to afford one.
Good News: I’m now going to stop this.

Someone is spamming some of the people who have email accounts at my domain. Saying that they’re the admin of hillan.org and that the users account will close unless they run an application to fix it.

If you have a hillan.org address, don’t worry, it’s not about to be deleted. I’ll call you if it is. And for Mr. indiraur, visiting from prodigy.net…

PISS OFF!

Another head hangs lowly,
Child is slowly taken.
And the violence caused such silence,
Who are we mistaken?

But you see, it’s not me, it’s not my family.
In your head, in your head they are fighting,
With their tanks and their bombs,
And their bombs and their guns.
In your head, in your head, they are crying…

In your head, in your head,
Zombie, zombie, zombie,
Hey, hey, hey. What’s in your head,
In your head,
Zombie, zombie, zombie?
Hey, hey, hey, hey, oh, dou, dou, dou, dou, dou…

Another mother’s breakin’,
Heart is taking over.
When the vi’lence causes silence,
We must be mistaken.

It’s the same old theme since nineteen – sixteen.
In your head, in your head they’re still fighting,
With their tanks and their bombs,
And their bombs and their guns.
In your head, in your head, they are dying…

In your head, in your head,
Zombie, zombie, zombie,
Hey, hey, hey. What’s in your head,
In your head,
Zombie, zombie, zombie?
Hey, hey, hey, hey, oh, oh, oh,
Oh, oh, oh, oh, hey, oh, ya, ya – a…