I didn't quite catch that...

Another day, another funeral. But they seem to be getting worse.

I’ve been to many, many funerals. Probably every Irish person has, it seems to be a thing that is done much more over here than in, say, England. What’s changing now is that the funerals aren’t for people who are many times my own age, they’re for people of my own age. Which means that you don’t have the usual comforting images round it. There haven’t been long illnesses, they haven’t had ‘a good innings’, it shouldn’t be ‘their time’. And yet, someone who was always full of life is gone, like that.

Another difference is that it’s a different kind of connection to the people being buried. It used to be that I’d be going to funerals of people I was related to, or there was a proxy connection, through a friend or family. But today, it was someone I was in primary school with, worked with and got drunk with. I knew her, not well, and not as well as I though. But, for pretty much the first time, I went to a funeral of someone I knew, rather than going because of something else.

RIP, Nuala. May you find more peace in the next life than you had in this one.

Hot on the heels of the My First Airport Pat-down” kit, expect Playmobil to come up with other classics. “My first Rodney King beating Kit”, “My first jihadi” and “My first Senate inquiry” will be on the shelves soon.

Seriously, they messed up on two points. First off, they’re being dumb. What kind of child really wants a checkpoint? And secondly, they’re inaccurate. There’s no table to leave your shoes on, there’s no little plastic container full of nail clippers, there’s no little device to sniff out explosives. They got it all wrong.

Hat tip to marc.

Rohirrim

To which race of Middle Earth do you belong?
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You scored as Serenity (from Firefly). You like to live your own way and do not enjoy when anyone but a friend tries to tell you that you should do different. Now if only the Reavers would quit trying to skin you. Coming on December 1, 2005: Your Ultimate Sci-Fi Profile: which sci-fi crew would you best fit in? The Sequel Serenity (from Firefly) 88% SG-1 (from Stargate) 69% Nebuchadnezzar (from The Matrix) 63% Bebop (from Cowboy Bebop) 56% Moya (from Farscape) 56% Millennium Falcon (from Star Wars) 50% Galactica (from Battlestar: Galactica) 50% Enterprise D (from Star Trek) 31%

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Found at Chris Byrne’s place.

Ah , greenpeace. Is there any stupid stunt they wouldn’t perform to raise their profile just a little bit? Obviously, there isn’t. Destroying reefs, trying to close factories, getting beaten up, they’ll try it all.

And now they’re trying to stop people even talking about nuclear power. Brilliant.

Greenpeace protesters have delayed the start of a speech by Tony Blair which was set to launch an energy review which could lead to new nuclear plants.

Two protesters climbed into the roof area of the hall in Islington, London where Mr Blair was due to address the Confederation of British Industry.

Greenpeace demanded the chance to make a 10-minute speech or they would heckle and throw missiles at Mr Blair.

CBI chiefs rejected the demand and Mr Blair will speak in a different hall.

DO WHAT WE WANT OR WE’LL YELL AND YELL AND YELL!!!!

I think that sums up the attitude nicely, doesn’t it?

And, please, Greenpeace (and Friends of the Earth:”Are they really friends, though?”:http://www.catchthat.net/?p=1488 , and the LibDems, for that matter) wise up. If you’re ruling out fossil fuel power generation, and unless you’ve magicially made all the wonderful renewable options viable, then you have to look at nuclear. Do you have a scalable solar power generation method? How about a wind farm that can work when the wind stops? A dam that can be built without damaging the habitat of some lesser freckled horn tailed lizard? A hydrogen powered thingy that doesn’t require old fashioned power to get the hydrogen?

No? You don’t have that? They shut the hell up, and move on.

If you’re interested in the works of Mr T Pratchett (and you really should be, you know), there’s a decent interview with him about 26½ minutes into the latest Sunday AM.

Cheers to Beave for the heads up. And no, I dunno why I put that in italics. Blame Slugger for the subconscious training.

Making stupid drivers pay fines? Brilliant idea. Fantastic.All those people who block traffic through nothing more than their own stupidity should be punished.

But I’m willing to bet that that is not what’ll happen. Oh no. For this is not a crime thing, this is a local government thing. And I think there’s a prophesy about that…

¹And thus, spake the westminister council, there shall be quotas; ²and verily, there shall be priority for the differently abled. ³And woe betide he who would use his car without first seeking council permission, for great shall be his suffering. ⁴And the big red bendy chariots of Ken, hallowed be his name, shall be ⁵rulers of all the road, for ⁶they can do no wrong, and all who would impede one of Ken’s chariots ⁷shall be made to listen to the Word of Ken till he repent of his evil ways. ⁸And appeals shall fall on deaf ears, for the ⁹word of westminister council shall be inviolate, and ¹⁰to question the word of westminister council is to be as declaring oneself to have caught the pox from a donkey.

- Chapter 4, verses 1-10 of the Book Of Local Government Transport Policies, 1304

It’s amazing how specific some of these old books were, isn’t it?

This will be something special. Mainly because the man was something special.

That’s the thing about people. We all like a superstar. But we go absolutely nuts over a flawed superstar. And young Mr Best was both very, very flawed and very, very special.

His playing days were long over before I was able to watch football, so I only heard of him as a drinking superstar. But he was from our part of the world, you see, and he liked a drink, so obviously everyone in Norn Iron was a big fan. And probably the most striking thing about him was his honesty. He made no excuses for his behaviour, he told people it wasn’t the smart thing to do, but he wouldn’t have done it any other way. All of which is why the funeral will be at Parliament Buildings, and the grounds will be packed for it.

And it’s probably why our fantasy football has this header this morning:

He was a Norn Irelander, and he was among the best (if not the best) at what he did. And he’ll be missed.

I think this philosophy sums up the attitude nicely:

Sure, it’s USian, but it makes a good couple of points.

What’s wrong with showing ID?

Hat tip to toaster dude. And I’m gonna be sending him the medical bills as well.

Many bonus marks to Richard Griffiths.

An actor who broke off his West End performance to scold a woman over her ringing mobile phone has said he has been astonished by the response.
…
Griffiths, 58, well known for his performances on stage and in films such as the Harry Potter series, said he first tried a “long cool look” in the woman’s direction.

But when he went to start his speech for the third time and the phone went off – he addressed her directly from the stage and asked her to switch it off or leave.

“I really had to hang on to my temper,” he told BBC News.

“The audience just erupted and thought it was wonderful, I was astonished, quite taken aback.”

Good. And we can move on from there, to shoot people. After all, there is a special hell:”From Firefly(If you take sexual advantage of her, you’re going to burn in a very special level of hell. A level they reserve for child molesters and people who talk at the theater.)”:http://www.thehallway.net/firefly.htm#six for these people…

Paul Rusesabagina sheltered 1268 Tutsi and Hutu refugees at the Milles Collines Hotel in Kigali.

Paul and Tatiana now live in Belgium with their children, Roger, Diane, Lys, Tresor and their adopted nieces Anais and Carine.

Tatiana’s brother Thomas and his wife Fedens were never found.

In 2002, General Augustin Bizimungu was captured in Angola and transported to the U.N. War Crimes Tribunal in Tanzania. At the same tribunal the Interhamwe leader George Rutuganda was sentenced to life in prison.

The genocide ended in July 1994, when the Tutsi rebels drove the Hutu army and the Interhamwe militia across the border into the Congo.

They left behind almost a million corpses.

Hotel Rwanda. One of the toughest films to watch that I’ve ever encountered. Because it’s not really history, and it’s not something that we can say will never happen again. It was only 11 years ago, and similiar things are said to have happened more recently.

Basicially, it makes me sick to my stomach, ‘cos I remember seeing the news stories at the time, and then getting on with my dinner.

Following the shocking revelation that a certain ejh is leaving an ex-girlfriend home, cos it’s on the way, and all that. Nothing naughty was happening, dear readers, you can be assured of that.

M: So, Mr Hillan, is there a re… rec… rec… reco…

ejh: Fuck no. No reconcilation. Nothing like that.

M: Well, thank Christ you finished that word for me. Us Protestants can’t say that word. We’re bred that way.

P: Well, inbred that way.

M: That too…

Ladies and gentlemen, Top Banana will never be the same again. Because some very worthwhile research has been carried out by the boffins at Manchester University. Very important stuff. Because they’ve finally got a scale for the beer goggle effect.

It’s a scale from 1 to 100, with this key:

Beer goggles formula ratings

• Less than one: No effect
• 1-50: Person you would normally find unattractive appears less “visually offensive”
• 51-100: Non-appealing person becomes suddenly attractive
• More than 100: Someone not considered attractive looks like a super model

Using such complicated data as amount of alcohol consumed, light levels, eyesight, smoke content in air, distance from subject, etc, they can now state, scientificially, how bad your beer goggles are. Example:

someone with normal vision, who has consumed five pints of beer and views a person 1.5 metres away in a fairly smoky and poorly lit room, will score 55, which means they would suffer from a moderate beer goggle effect

Which, as we can see above, translates to non-appealing person becomes suddenly attractive. Which means that someone is waking up with a munta in the morning…

When this appeared in the office supplies catalogue, we got our order in immediately…

Snow. It’s cold. It makes life difficult. Driving becomes a bit more ‘interesting’. Other drivers become a bit more worrying. It gets everything messy.

But, for a while, it rocks. In the little bit just after the snow stops falling, when the ground is white, the air is crisp, every light has a halo, every sound is muted, it feels really special. Even in the middle of a busy place like Belfast, it gives a sense of privacy.

Which is nice. Not quite divine, but pretty damn special.

Weird Al Shares Your Taste in Music

See his whole playlist here (iTunes required)

Which Musician (or Group) Shares Your Taste in Music?

How could you be bad to that? Hell, he did the old beer song, didn’t he?

What is the malted liquor,
What gets you drunker quicker,
What comes in bottles or in cans (beer)
Can’t get enough of it,
How we really love it,
Makes me think I’m a man,
I can kiss and hug it,
But I’d rather chug it,
Fill my belly up to here,
Golly I adore it,
Come on dammit pour it,
Do it for me,
Brew it for me,
Feed it to me,
Speed it to me.

The most wonderful drink in the world.
Hooray.

Hat tippage to Nelly.

… do it right.

Crazy Christmas lights, put to music. More fun that the usual crud, and definitely more fun than this.

I don’t think I’d like to live in that neighbourhood, though. You’d need lead-lined curtains to keep the lights out. And if they had speakers wired up it would probably be grounds for justifiable homicide after a couple of repeats.

(Hopefully this link is a little more permanent)

Remember all that stuff about the pension system being in crisis, and the future being bleak because there will be more pensioners than the system is able to support? And how much is needed to sort it, and the longer it is left the harder the decisions needed will be?

Gordon Brown don’t care. He’s planning to shelve the report into pensions, saying that the proposals are ‘unaffordable’. Not because he doesn’t want to have to make those hard decisions before he makes his run for Prime Minister. Obviously.

And not because he wants to leave it for whatever poor bastid gets Number 11 after him. No sirree, he wouldn’t do that, would he?

I never lacerated any livestock. And the hitchhiker incident was an accident, I tells ya, an accident.

Haptip to Risawn.

Expect much in the way of cold, ice and snow over the next few days. Blizzards and windchill down to -10. Yay. Hopefully my office still has a heater left by that point…

Oh, the good news? Well, it’s two fold. Firstly, if the weather is that bad, hopefully nobody will be bothered going out on the weekend, which means I get a quiet time at the other job. And secondly, this happened:

Meanwhile, the thick fog which has accompanied wintry conditions in some areas has prevented drivers on the M6 in Cumbria from being caught by speed cameras.

The county’s safety camera partnership has reported that more than 150 vehicles were caught travelling at 70mph on Tuesday night in a section of contraflow near Tebay, where the temporary limit is 50mph.

However, the fog was so heavy that the cameras failed to even make out the shape of some of them.

‘course, anyone driving at over 50 when the weather is that bad is a fool. But I still like to see gatsos being beaten.

Dear Safety Elephant:

You have had many, many months to convince the public of the benefits of your ID scheme. You started from a high point, with many people defaulting to a pro position. You told some tall tales, about security, identity theft, ease of use, and you managed to convince a few people. There was talk of 70%+ approval. Well done you. Have a peanut.

However, a few people took issue with the quality, and quantity, of bullshit emanating from your general vicinity. And then, most impolitely, they started pointing out this bullshit to the general public. Respected economists queried your figures, and you didn’t like it. Civil liberties types queried the public interest, and you really didn’t like that. Security types queried the point, and you certainly didn’t like that.

And nutjobs like myself ranted about the stupidity of the scheme, but you ignored me. Oh well.

But all together, the experts overcame the handicap of the nutjobs, and got their message out. And now only 50% support them, and that number is only going down. Hell, even the single pro-cards blog has changed it’s policy.

Mr Clarke, you have lost the battle for the hearts and minds of the public. Repeat: you have lost. Now, have the decency to drop the whole thing and disappear into a cloud of repentance. Perhaps you could sit in the corner with a dunce hat on.

Yours sincerely,

E Hillan,
IDQCT… Inc.