Category Archives: UK

Memo of the Day: Toilet Wars

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Or should that be “Loo Wars?” I dunno, “Loo Wars” kinda sounds like a 1920’s bisexual movie star, probably one that took the virginity of both Ginger Rogers and David Bowie later in life. In fact, “Loo Wars” sounds rather awesome, now that I think of it. I should pitch a biography of this fabulous, imaginary person. BRB, writing proposal…

Okay, back. Where was I? Oh yes, posting about toilets once again. I KNOW I’m supposed to call them “Washrooms” like the way the news refers to “Afghanistan” when what they mean is Tarok Kolache. But they’re toilets, specifically the things you sit on. And here are two memos from Ye Olde Englande where, it seems, standards (and colons) have relaxed considerably in recent times.

Why is it always the men’s room? Except at Metrotown (whereof we will not speak…)?

The first, from the Grauniad, venerated temple of lefty journalism:

Subject: Gentlemen of the Guardian and Observer, we must buck up!

A plea on behalf of the cleaners and your fellow staff…
In the event that you are, ahem, inconvenienced when visiting the toilets, please use the brush handily situated at the side of the toilet to clean the bowl after yourself, rather than leaving the bowl – and in one case on the second floor toilets – the seat covered with evidence of your visit for the next occupant of the stall to behold.
Surely no one would leave a toilet in that state at home, would they?
And a happy new year to all.

And the second, from Endemol, whose website is a masterwork of corporate gobbledygook (building franchises and extending them into new consumer experiences etc) but whose memo is admirably direct, vivid, amusing, and (doubtless) effective:

"You fucking animals" is the new "You dirty rats"

A toilet memo for the ages: "You fucking animals" is the new "You dirty rats"

via Popbitch, the rest of whose stories today involve absolutely nobody of whom I have ever heard except Adam Ant. If you want to feel like you’re far away from anywhere a language you speak is spoken, read British sports, celebrity, and music journalism. Impenetrable, I’m telling you; some day I’ll do a rant just on British sports writing, but that rant is not today. My doctor says only one rant per day until the 28th, then it’s back to free-flowing bile 24/7 as usual.

Remember, Remember

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god is in the raincoaster

god is in the rainCOASTER, bitchez

Happy 5th of November.

Have some inspiration from MadV.

And here are some responses from YouTubers of things which should not be forgotten.

“We ought to make the best we can of the world, and if it is not so good as we wish, after all it will still be better than what these others have made of it in all these ages. A good world needs knowledge, kindliness, and courage; it does not need a regretful hankering after the past, or a fettering of the free intelligence by the words uttered long ago by ignorant men. It needs a fearless outlook and a free intelligence. It needs hope for the future, not looking back all the time towards a past that is dead, which we trust will be far surpassed by the future that our intelligence can create.” – Bertrand Russell

Happy Birthday, Margaret Thatcher

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Zombies among us!

Zombies Among Us!


Width 666. I love that.
Hugh Muir here stole the words right out of my mouth:

Finally, quite a few people have been in touch to wish Margaret Hilda Thatcher a happy 85th – notwithstanding her bout of flu, from which we wish her a speedy recovery. They point out that on her birthday the news was full of stories about the courage and fortitude of miners. They seemed to enjoy the juxtaposition. Funny how things turn out.

And, of course, Elvis Costello.

I saw a newspaper picture from the political
campaign
A woman was kissing a child, who was obviously
in pain
She spills with compassion, as that young child’s
face in her hands she grips
Can you imagine all that greed and avarice
coming down on that child’s lips Well I hope I don’t die too soon
I pray the Lord my soul to save
Oh I’ll be a good boy, I’m trying so hard to behave
Because there’s one thing I know, I’d like to live
long enough to savour
That’s when they finally put you in the ground
I’ll stand on your grave and tramp the dirt down

When England was the whore of the world
Margeret [sic] was her madam
And the future looked as bright and as clear as
the black tarmacadam
Well I hope that she sleeps well at night, isn’t
haunted by every tiny detail
‘Cos when she held that lovely face in her hands
all she thought of was betrayal

And now the cynical ones say that it all ends
the same in the long run
Try telling that to the desperate father who just
squeezed the life from his only son
And how it’s only voices in your head and
dreams you never dreamt
Try telling him the subtle difference between
justice and contempt
Try telling me she isn’t angry with this pitiful
discontent
When they flaunt it in your face as you line up
for punishment
And then expect you to say “Thank you”
straighten up, look proud and pleased
Because you’ve only got the symptoms, you
haven’t got the whole disease
Just like a schoolboy, whose head’s like a tin-can
filled up with dreams then poured down
the drain
Try telling that to the boys on both sides, being
blown to bits or beaten and maimed
Who takes all the glory and none of the shame

Well I hope you live long now, I pray the Lord
your soul to keep
I think I’ll be going before we fold our arms
and start to weep
I never thought for a moment that human life
could be so cheap
‘Cos when they finally put you in the ground
They’ll stand there laughing and tramp the
dirt down

UPDATE: Now, with extra bitterness, via Facebook:

Frankie Boyle on TV just now:

I hear there’s a debate over whether Thatcher should be given a state funeral. The only debate most people I know are having us whether she needs to be dead before we bury her. Three million quid to bury that woman? For that money we could buy everyone in the country a shovel and dig a hole deep enough to hand her over to Satan personally.

 

Playing with the Stones

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Lithophone
Image by raymond_zoller via Flickr

Bear with me, because I’m going to be tinkering. This entire post is going to be tinkering with the audio player at WordPress and seeing if I can get the Telephone Your Blog thingy to accept mp3’s, which would be a nifty trick indeedy. So, like I said, bear with me.

First attempt: Bog standard WP audioplayer with hotlinked mp3 from the Guardian’s piece on lithophones, computer-enhanced xylophones made out of the stones of the Lake District. This would be, I suppose, that upon which the Druids rocked out.

Okie dokey, it appears the Guardian podcasts allow hotlinking. Booya!

Now on to test the Telephone Your Blog thingy with a downloaded and uploaded via telephone mp3; the same one, because yea, I am very lazy.

So now, I have to save the mp3 to my hard drive, then I open Skype because the office phone won’t make a long-distance call and I still don’t have a cellphone and wouldn’t use the minutes on it for this even if I did, and I dial the number and punch in the code (how does one do that on Skype? Guess I’ll find out) and then I somehow play the mp3 into the headset which would be much easier with a proper mic and not just the headphones propped up against a hardcover of Harry Potter and the Half-Blood Prince so the mic hovers around one of the speakers. At least, I THINK that’s the speaker; it might be an air vent or, more likely for Eve here (that’s my computer) an inlet to allow the gin in on those rare occasions it doesn’t make it from the glass into my mouth with the precision one hopes, but has no right to expect, it would after two already and where was I? Right, Harry Potter and the Lithophones of the Lakes. I’d better bring up an mp3 player, too, hadn’t I? I’ll take a flyer on Windows Media Player, because Zune and iTunes kill the speed on this computer. Wish me luck; did I say that already?

Oh, I’m gonna fart. PAUSE. Oh, it wants to tell me something. Apparently xvidcore.dll cannot be found. Well, that’s great, because I wasn’t looking for it in the first place.

Okay, so here’s what happened. I got Skype to open, and got it to call the blog. Then I input my code and started jabbering, which you can hear above. It appears that as soon as I took my earphone jack out of the computer and double-clicked the mp3 to play it, Skype crashed. That’s probably because, instead of Windows Media Player, which I had open and wanted to play it on, the darn thing opened Zune, which is huge and baroque and always kills things on my computer and causes the fan to go into classic silent-film-worthy conippification fits. So. Must find small, slick, non-interferesome mp3 player OR load the puppy into something I can play on the stereo while running Skype on the computer.

The life of a worker-arounder is not a restful one.

Oh, and then I had to go in and steal the telephoned/Skyped mp3 from the standalone post it automatically made called Audio Post and put it here. And now I think I’m going to go off and read Harry Potter and ponder some more.

Things it is not fair to post when I’m on a diet

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This:

English breakfast pizza, om to the nom nom

I am not seeing any black pudding in that

via NegevRockCity and Slice

English. Breakfast. Pizza.

I’m serious, people, DON’T DO THIS TO ME! I’m fat-and-carb deprived and currently subsisting entirely off a diet somewhat lower down the food chain than a goldfinch, and it makes me cranky. We don’t have to review what happened the last time I went on a diet, do we?

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