I didn't quite catch that...

There are many things that I don’t understand about the political systems of most countries. In the UK, why can’t a MP resign? In Norn Iron, what exactly is D’Hondt and who thought it would be a good idea? In France, what is the point? In Italy, why bother?

In the US there are a number of confusing things. Why does Teddy Kennedy still have a job? Why haven’t the Republicans been bitchslapped back to Tuesday and taught the meaning of the words ‘fiscal responsibility’? And why are voters supposed to register a political affiliation on their voter registration form?

I’m a simple man, y’see, and I was under the impression that the US operated one of those secret ballot things, to whit that how you vote wasn’t supposed to be public knowledge unless you chose to make it so. Why then is this possible, let alone a story?

Democrats may be blasting Sarah Palin as a doctrinaire conservative, and Republicans may be embracing her for the same reason, but her husband and oldest son are independents.

Or, more precisely, their party affiliation is listed as “undeclared” on voter registration records retrieved from the Alaska Division of Elections.

I would take this to mean that you’re registered as Republican, Democrat, Independent or Undeclared. Why would this information need to be registered by the state, out of curiosity?

It doesn’t make a whole lot of sense to me, and you know how I don’t like things that don’t make sense…

One of the things that you have to do before you go flying is check the NOTAMs and weather. Just to make sure that the weather is good to go and that there haven’t been any rule changes since your last flight.

Typical NOTAMs would read

ACFT LDG RWY 16 OR DEP RWY 34 SHOULD EXERCISE CTN DUE TO POSSIBLE MOBILE OBST, DUE ROAD CONSTRUCTION WORK TO THE NORTH OF AD, UNDER APPROACH PATH. RWY MAY BE CLOSED BY NOTAM.

Which translates to: if landing on runway 16 or departing from 34 should be aware that about 50 yards from the end of the runway there’s a building site: plz to pay attention to it.

All the usual good stuff, yes?

How about this one then, that was found when I checked this morning:

COMBAT WEAPON SYSTEMS TRIAL. A DA20 ACFT OVER THE SEA WI AN AREA xxxxxxxx (D509, MULL OF KINTYRE, AILSA CRAIG LIGHT).
TRIALS ACFT MAY BE UNABLE TO COMPLY WITH RULES OF THE AIR. TFC INFO MAY BE OBTAINED ON xxx.xxx MHZ (PRI) OR xxx.xx (SEC). CONTACT OPS OFFICER HMS DARING VIA WHITHALL OPERATOR

Ah. So I’ll be avoiding flying below 10 thousand feet around the Mull of Kintyre, then. Not that keen on finding myself in the middle of a live fire exercise….

Once again, this is a post that will be of no interest to anyone at all bar myself. But it’s another of those moments when I feel all tingly – it’s the first actual interesting NOTAM I’ve come across, rather than ones that are just informative.

You may have noticed that I’m very not a fan of yer vacuous windbag fighting for position of First Non White President of the US. But then, I often find myself disagreeing when all the news shows and magazines agree on something.

Hell, even my beloved Economist has been falling for the Obama mania. Which pisses me off quite a bit.

But if some of those media outlets can be expected to be partisan. Some media outlets can be counted on to automatically think better of the target the further left they go. The more vacuous, the less specific, the more telegenic and the more thieving the candidate, the more likely the BBC will have some subtle – and occasional none too subtle – bias in favour of them.

Such as this, with the (hardly put as editorialising at all) comment:

The choice seems an audacious, perhaps slightly desperate, effort to bring youth and vigour to the Republican ticket, our North America editor adds.

Because that is fair and balanced, n’est pas?

But looking past my traditional dislike of the BBC editorialising and that sort of thing, I think that this VP candidature is mighty interesting… Damn, it might even make me pay attention to McCain – up until now I’ve only been paying attention to Obama. And generally holding my head in my hands and bemoaning the state of the world…

Of all the phrases you could ever hope to hear in a big budget, over the top Hollywood blockbuster, who’d have expected to ever see Let’s go to Antrim!, eh?

Of course, I expected them to perhaps visit Junction One, with a stop in at the Castle Centre and then a fight to the death against the forces of evil at either the Round Tower or Shane’s Castle (the various Antrim Estates of Evil® being far to unbelievable for Merkin audiences). Turns out that they meant the County of Antrim, and not the town. Probably a good choice, from a film makers point of view.

Anyway… Hellboy II was quite good I though. Even if you can’t take a film seriously when someone with a thick North Antrim accent turns out to be a central figure. At least they realised that Norn Iron has it’s own accent, and that we don’t all sound like Mrs Doyle.

There are a great many cases where almost equal things are not considered equally. This, for example, has become the basis for foreign policy: Russia treating, say, Belgium as an impediment to Russian glory through force of arms is not considered the same as Russia doing same to Georgia.

Similarly, there are a great many instances of things that are not at all equal being treated equally. The US has a long standing policy of equating all weapons of mass destruction; a dirty bomb is a chemical attack is a biological attack, and all would result in a nuclear counter attack.

On a more national level, there’s the hysteria against guns. Imitation firearms = real firearms, guns in the hands of law abiding citizens = guns in the hands of criminals, guns in the hands of anyone other than agents of the state = certain death and ‘wild west’ claims.

This, frankly, pisses me off. As does the latest example of such tomfoolery/fuckwittery.

0902 Wednesday – BBC News claims that an armed man has caused Altnagelvin A&E to be evacuated.

1532 Wednesday – BBC News clarifies this by saying that a drunk man was spotted with a BB gun in his belt while seeking treatment for a broken arm. Said drunkard was then charged with possessing a BB gun with intent despite a police officer saying he was satisfied that the defendant – who was drunk – had not intended to use violence.

Firstly, a BB gun is not a fucking firearm. Having had one back in my yoof, I can’t even begin to see that point.

Secondly, why the fuck was the drunk charged with intent when a police witness clearly stated that he had no intent?

I can’t see this as anything other than an overreaction by the police and an outright misinformation campaign by both them and the media. Because it’s a fuss over nothing.

For comparison: this is a firearms incident that deserves police action. The other just required the drunk to be told to fuck off, sleep it off and return to the hospital when he was sober…

Michael O’Leary. Yes, he may be a brash bastard, he may be doing his damnest to take the romance out of flying, he may be unashamedly ferrying drunken louts onto the streets of innocent cities all over Europe.

But he’s a master at PR. Not by lying, not by spinning and certainly not by trying to be logical about it.

No, he does mocking, and when pushed, he’ll put his hands up, make his case and leave people without a leg to stand on.

Example: thon incident on Monday when a Ryanair plane lost cabin pressure and had to make an emergency dive from 30,000 to 8,000 feet before diverting to land at a nearby runway in France. There was a nice, media savvy passenger on board who was able to state, calmly and for the record, exactly where Ryanair went wrong: they didn’t tell people during the dive what was happening; the cabin crew didn’t circulate the cabin and give directions on operating the oxygen masks; and the oxygen masks didn’t work because the bags didn’t inflate.

This was happening on the Today show, and then dear old Mick was asked to comment on this shoddy state of affairs.

“Well,” said he in a badly paraphrased version of events, “yes, the pilot didn’t make an announcement. The crew didn’t make an announcement either. And they didn’t circulate to instruct the passengers in the use of the masks. Because the pilots were too busy putting on their own masks, and then pushing the plane a little bit out of its normal operating envelope while communicating with the ground and any other aircraft nearby. And the crew were busy putting on their own masks so that they didn’t pass out themselves in the cabin, which wouldn’t have done the passengers any good at all…”

Oh, and O’Leary also said that the masks were working, and that they’re not meant to produce a large flow. Which is probably a good thing; I can’t imagine that having several hundred bags of highly flammable gas in the centre of a cabin would be a good idea.

In the interview, O’Leary basically agreed with the main points, thusly disarming the interviewer who was expecting a defensive interviewee. And then he turned it around; of course that’s the way we do it, it’s the way that it needs to be done. Communication with the passengers waits until the passengers are safe; there’s too much going on in the first couple of minutes that needs to be done*.

Quiet, understated and totally non-combative. And he came away having made his case and leaving no room for argument. That is damn good PR. And you’ve got to appreciate that when you see it, even if you don’t like the man.

As an aside, the passenger mentioned that the French airport fire people did very well, and had the runway lined with emergency vehicles when they landed, despite having ‘only’ fifteen minutes notice. That ain’t nothing, the whole point of the fire vehicles at any large airport is to be at the site and working with one hundred and twenty seconds of someone saying GO. I’m sure that they thought fifteen minutes waiting was agony; just enough time to get onto the third cup of coffee, not enough time to go for the required bathroom break following two earlier cups of coffee…

* – the thing that they’re trying to drill into me at the moment is ‘aviate-navigate-communicate’ : if anything goes wrong, fly the aircraft first. Then decide where you fly it next and get that set up. Then you tell people what went wrong, what you’re doing about it and where you’re going with it. Seems very sensible, but when you’re talking a ten second gap between starting the first and finishing the third it gets a little more complicated…

You know how it is… You see a headline, and your blood pressure rises a bit and the makings of a righteous rant start forming in your mind.

Well, obviously most normal people may not know how that is, but it’s what goes on in my head, so we’ll run with it.

Sometimes, however, all the makings of a rant are there, and yet the rant doesn’t appear. Because, despite the basic ingredients being there, I find myself conceding, with lots of bad grace, that there may be a point buried somewhere in there.

This was what happened when I saw this on t’BBC home page.

It has the ingredients: it has an annoying celebrity chef; it has an annoying celebrity chef bitching, it is down on drink and it’s not promising about encouraging me to eat what I want to eat.

And then the bastard goes and acts a little sensibly:

Celebrity chef Jamie Oliver has criticised the UK for its alcohol culture and poor cuisine.

In an interview with Paris Match magazine, Oliver suggested people in the UK cared more about getting drunk than they did about eating well.

The chef said there was a better variety of food in South African slums than in English towns and cities.

How dare he make salient points, eh? Doesn’t he know that some of us have bile to vent in his general direction?

Git. How very rude of him to be right about something. It messes with my sense of balance in the world…

There Will Be Blood. A film about which I’d heard a lot of good things.

The acting, especially that of Daniel Day Lewis, lived up to that.

The scenery was pretty damn pretty as well.

The directing was fairly good too.

The script, story, dialogue and pacing, however, led to a nice moment betwixt The Lovely Girlfriend and myself. We turned to each other on the sofa, looked deeply into each other’s eyes and said at exactly the same time:

“What the fuck?!?!?!?!?!?”

Seriously, was there a story there at all? Answers on a postcard, please, to the usual address…

TLG would also like it to be said that she thinks her movie choice was significantly better. I’ll grant that, less the word ‘significantly’. Chick flicks don’t deserve no ‘significantly’ in my humble opinion…

You Are Fencing

You’re competitive but not brutally so. You compete to make yourself better. You find having an opponent to be challenging and rewarding. You are fierce when you’re in a competition, but you don’t wish your rivals any real harm.

Found at Nelly’s place.

more graph humor and song chart memes

Boo to poor follow ups to I Can Haz Cheezburger. And even more boo to me spending quite a bit of time reading it…

There have been some interesting ‘reimagining’ and ‘rebooting’ projects going on on TV and in the movies recently. Some have been brilliant, to whit the reimagined Battlestar Galactica and Batman franchises. Some have been very good, like the reboot of the Bond franchise. Some have been plebian and a little annoying, like the Superman franchise.

And one ‘reimagining’ has the potential to be blasphemy.

For who would be better at screwing up a tale of heroism, jingoism, double dealing and pluck than the BBC? I can’t think of anyone off the top of my head. And what are they going make? Only The 39 Steps.

This could go horribly, horribly wrong…

By the way, who decided that Rupert Penry-Jones should be in everything these days? Is it a condition of the licence fee or something?

Do you ever feel the need to get away from it all? To take a few days and go somewhere where a mobile doesn’t work; where there’s no local scrotes making noise; where there’s no bin lorry driving past at stupid o’clock?

Well, why not build a house in a cliff and let nobody know about it.

… they spotted a rope ladder which led into a cave house built into the rocks.

The dwelling, about half way up the 120ft cliffs, contained a floor, painted walls, seating, tea tree lights and several beer cans.

Sorry, did I say house? If there’s beer in it, it’s clearly a home…

Once again, Norn Iron kids outperform the rest of the UK.

And what, prey, is the major difference between the two education systems? Perchance a little thing called ‘academic selection’, which allows people regardless of background or wealth to go to the best schools based upon their ability?

Of course, the lovely excuse for an education minister that we live with over here will probably disagree, and continue with her (and her party’s) fucked up, no plan for afterward, abolition of academic selection. What with her being a fucking muppet.

Oh well. We can enjoy these little victories while we still have them. I don’t think that the advantage will be around for too long…

It was not a great many years ago that I went for a proper summer camp every year. I’d think nothing of a sleeping 8 to a tent, when each of the eight smelled rank and snored, getting up at dawn, doing some daft strenuous activity and then going to be late.

This actually counted as a nice holiday, and despite the general odour and need to shit in an actual bucket it was more relaxing than many other holidays I’ve been on. Unless we, as a troop, discovered a nearby electric fence, in which case things always became a little more exciting.

So, please explain to my why three nights in a field, getting no less sleep, having nicer facilities, doing less and sharing with someone who neither smells rank nor snores, has knocked me sideways. Seriously, I’ve been sleeping in beds for three nights now, and I’ve not properly recovered.

If I had recovered, I’m fairly sure that I’d have been pissed off by thought police, or making quips about checking the people standing downwind scoffing munchies, or bitching about how the Channel 4 V-festival coverage was rendered unwatchable by the inane people that are paid to present Channel 4 coverage of such events.

Instead, I’ve been watching a few DVDs, nattering a bit and generally going meh to most things.

Dear god, I’m getting too old for this shit…

And yet, it’s clearly run by a bunch of cowardly fucks.

Because they’re terrified, and they want us to be terrified, of a 16 year old with an attitude.

I am not particularly radical, nor do I think that I’m likely to decide to become a suicide bomber at any time soon. But I know for sure that I spent quite a bit of my younger days making things go *boom* just for the hell of it. Apparently I was plenty lucky that the then terrorist bogey man du jour was only regularly killing people, destroying property and generally being bastardish while being white.

Because now that today’s terrorist bogey man du jour is not regularly killing people, not destroying property, being verbally bastardish while not being white, it’s a whole new ball game, and a young fella with a penchant for making things go *boom* can be labelled the UK’s youngest terrorist and have the traditional scary mug shot released¹.

It’s entirely possible that the case against the young fella in question is much stronger than the linked article would suggest, but I’ve heard nothing to suggest it. What the article says is this:

Britain’s youngest convicted terrorist Hammaad Munshi, 18, from Dewsbury, will be sentenced next month.

He was just 16 when he was arrested on his way home from school. Police later found a guide to making napalm on his computer.

You know, when I was 16 a detailed, forensic search of my computer² would have found exactly that sort of information. In a file on the desktop called ‘Ter_Hbok.txt’, if I recall correctly.

Boy, am I glad that that was then and this is now. Otherwise I’d have been in bother, as would the guy who passed said document to be, and the various guys that I passed it on to. Multiple copies were made, you see, and that’s definitely worth upgrading it to a conspiracy.

So, I’m led to one of the following conclusions:

1. I’m actually a terrorist, I just didn’t realise it because I’d not planned, commissioned nor carried out any acts of terror. My singing doesn’t count.
2. The world is sufficiently different, and a seven year campaign with half a dozen attempted strikes is a much bigger threat than a thirty year campaign with thousands of deaths and hundreds of strikes per year.
3. There is much more evidence that we can’t find out about for fear of endangering state intelligence assets. I doubt this, because the government and silly service can’t even keep the fact that they lost a CD secret, let alone a long running intelligence op.
4. The entire thing is a fuckup and an ongoing travesty of justice.

Anyone willing to risk a quid betting on which I think is most likely?

–
¹ – Have you ever seen anyone who didn’t look scary in a mug shot? I think that they must take a few hundred photos and just release the worst looking one…

² – You know, like the one that the bastarding 28 day / 42 day / 90 day / indefinite / “let’s just forgo the trial and throw away the key” detention without trial nonsense was supposed to be for. Because you just can’t search a computer in less than that, you know.

Blimey. You come back from a very enjoyable weekend that featured a fair bit of rain to find that the homeland featured a little bit more… And that it failed to cope too well. Which is to be expected, you know. You can’t build the whole country round a rain system like that which probably only happens once in a blue moon…

I also found, on my return, that Nelly would appear to have tied the know. Assuming that she didn’t make good her escape in an improvised raft, that is.

So, did anything else exciting happen? I only ask because there are 200 odd posts in my RSS feed and I very much doubt that I’ll be reading many of them…

Also, getting up in time for work is somehow much more of a challenge than getting up earlier for no definite reason. What up wid dat?

You Should Play the Piano

You are a true music aficionado who loves many musical style and eras. You find music to be an escape. And you’d like to be relaxed and comfortable when you’re making it. You’re very innovative, and you have a unique way of knowing what may sound beautiful. There’s a strong possibility that you could compose some of your own work songs quite easily. While you have a lot of creative energy, you are also serious and conscientious. Your musical talent needs time, practice, and lots of privacy to flourish. Your dominant personality characteristic: your painstaking attention to detail Your secondary personality characteristic: your natural tendency to be whimsical

What Musical Instrument Should You Play?

It must be said, that’s weird. Because I answered the questions randomly, and ended up with the one instrument that I ever sat any exams in… And Hannah got the instrument that she actually owns…

Damn, that’s good quiz.

For well over half of my life I’ve been a fan of the Prodigy. Frankly, loving their work. However, due to a number of things such as ineptitude, laziness and general lack of tour dates in Belshaft, I’d managed to go a good many years without seeing them live.

Thankfully, that’s no longer the case. Because I got to see them on Saturday night during the V festival. And by fuck, they were good…

There were other acts seen, and some of them were good as well. But frankly, they’re all fighting for a very distant second place…

ROCK!

I’m sure that I could right more, but the shower beckons. Because I ming.

Socialism: You have 2 cows and you give one to your neighbour.

Communism: You have 2 cows; the Government takes both and gives you some milk.

Fascism: You have 2 cows; the Government takes both and sells you some milk.

Nazism: You have 2 cows; the Government takes both and shoots you.

Bureaucratism: You have 2 cows; the Government takes both, shoots one, milks the other and throws the milk away..

Traditional Capitalism: You have 2 cows. You sell one and buy a bull. You herd multiplies, and the economy grows. You sell them and retire on the income.

A American Corporation: You have 2 cows. You sell one, and force the other to produce the milk of four cows. Later, you hire a consultant to analyze why the cow dropped dead.

A French Corporation: You have 2 cows. You go on strike because you want three cows.

Japanese Corporation: You have 2 cows. You redesign them so they are one-tenth the size of an ordinary cow and produce twenty times the milk. You then create a clever cow cartoon image called Cowkimon and market them Worldwide.

A German Corporation: You have 2 cows. You reengineer them so they live for 100 years, eat once a month, and milk themselves.

A British Corporation: You have 2 cows. Both are mad.

An Italian Corporation: You have 2 cows, but you don’t know where they are. You break for lunch.

A Russian Corporation: You have 2 cows. You count them and learn you have five cows. You count them again and learn you have 42 cows. You count them again and learn you have 2 cows. You stop counting cows and open another bottle of vodka.

A Swiss Corporation: You have 5000 cows. None of which belong to you. You charge others for storing them.

Chinese Corporation: You have 2 cows. You have 300 people milking them. You claim full employment, high bovine productivity, and arrest the newsman who reported the numbers.

An Iraqi Corporation: Everyone thinks you have lots of cows. You tell them that you have none. No one believes you and they bomb your ass. You still have no cows, but at least now you are part of a Democracy…….

Counter Culture: ‘Wow, dig it, like there’s these 2 cows, man, grazing in the hemp field. You gotta have some of this milk’

Surrealism: You have two giraffes. The government requires you to take harmonica lessons.

Fatalist: You have 2 doomed cows…

Hong Kong Capitalism: You have 2 cows. You sell 3 of them to your publicly listed company, using letters of credit opened by your brother-in-law at the bank, then execute a debt/equity swap with an associated general offer so that you get all 4 cows back, with a tax deduction for keeping 5 cows. The milk rights of 6 cows are transferred via a Panamanian intermediary to a Cayman Islands company secretly owned by the majority shareholder, who sells the rights to all 7 cows’ milk back to the listed company and proceeds from the sale are deferred. The annual report says that the company owns 8 cows, with an option on one more. Meanwhile, you kill the 2 cows because the feng shui is bad.

An Indian Corporation: You have 2 cows. You worship them.

An Australian Corporation: You have 2 cows. Business seems pretty good. You close the office and go down the pub to celebrate.

As memes go, this is hardly the worst. Found at Lyle’s joint. Along with a handy list for stealing purposes.

1. My uncle once: had a car loaded with boom juice by some very not nice people.
2. Never in my life: have I used tooth floss.
3. When I was five: I got in a little trouble for leaving an egg sandwich in a secret place at the back of the classroom. For quite some weeks. An unfortunate smell ensued.
4. High school was: somewhat school like. In an odd way.
5. I will never forget: where I’m coming from.
6. Once I met: an original GT-40 owner whose car had been badly damaged by a halfwit. Poor fella.
7. There’s this girl I know: who will either end up ruling the world or dying of crack-ho-dom.
8. Once, at a bar: I wasn’t the drunkest and daftest person in a group.
9. By noon, I’m usually: feeling very very hungry.
10. Last night: I can’t remember.
11. If only I had: some drive/motivation/common sense.
12. Next time I go to church: I’ll be sure to put in a good word for Lyle…
13. What worries me most: is my lack of those things listed in 11.
14. When I turn my head left I see: a chair.
15. When I turn my head right I see: a wall.
16. You know I’m lying when: my mouth is open and I’m awake. Just kiddin’
17. What I miss most about the Eighties is: the music and the clothes. Please see 16.
18. If I were a character in Shakespeare I’d be: somewhat wittier.
19. By this time next year: I’ll be a year older.
20. A better name for me would be: Supreme Overlord.
21. I have a hard time understanding: people believing the phrase “if you’ve nothing to hide, you’ve nothing to fear.”
22. If I ever go back to school, I’ll: be sure to poke a couple of teachers in the eye.
23. You know I like you if: I rip the piss. Not the most sensible of people, me.
24. If I ever won an award, the first person I would thank would be: the person handing me the award.
25. Take my advice, never: challenge a centipede to an arse kicking contest.
26. My ideal breakfast is: loaded with fat and served in bed.
27. A song I love but do not have is: Victorious in war will be made glorious in peace, off of West Wing 3-22.
28. If you visit my hometown, I suggest you: don’t stop, don’t slow down and by God don’t make eye contact.
29. Why won’t people: just give me money for no reason.
30. If you spend a night at my house: it’s only polite to make me a big cup of coffee in the morning.
31. I’d stop my wedding for: reasons that would probably seem like a good idea at the time.
32. The world could do without: TV chefs.
33. I’d rather lick the belly of a cockroach than: go on reality TV.
34. My favourite blonde(s) is/are: theoretical.
35. Paper clips are more useful than: most people realise.
36. If I do anything well it’s: an occasion that should be noted in a diary.
37. I can’t help but: be pedantic.
38. I usually cry: when it’s least convenient.
39. My advice to my child/nephew/niece: would be “never try this where your mother could see”
40. And by the way: never eat the yellow snow.

There, wasn’t that fun?