A friend of mine at work is a huge 1950′s rock and roll fan. She goes to meets/weekends where everyone dresses up 1950′s style and rock and roll bands play – I went to a dance with her one day and had a laugh with my two left feet trying to learn a type of dance that all the ladies do (like a line dance but to rock and roll). Talking to her today I found out more, it turns out that 1950′s themed weekends are also linked to basque dancing, tattoos, piercings and ladies who have real cat whiskers. She tells me it comes out of psycho billy music whatever that may be?! I found out what a Prince Albert is also (too rude to tell) – it was an informative chat and I tried to find a picture of a woman with these whiskers but in honesty I don’t want to inflict that on you, I get queasy with tattoos alone. However, if I were ever half cut and abroad and serving in the Royal Navy and had a Popeye moment, no tramp stamp for me but maybe this little number would do just fine…
I committed an offence so wrong and terrible in our household this week that I will be doing penance for many days to come…
…I made a terrible cup of tea! *play dramatic climax music* Der der deeeeer!!!
The better half needs tea on drip you see. The night of the incident I had offered to make the next cup and in anticipation had boiled the kettle approximately 10 minutes before. I got distracted playing my guitar (that’s what hippies do) and when I made the tea it was luke warm and didn’t brew, but I didn’t know this. I had again been distracted upstairs while leaving it to stew (I get distracted a lot) and the better half had finished the brew. A minute or two later he came up to tell me that the tea was possibly the worst cup of tea he had ever tasted and a crime to the grower, picker and tea granules! Yes, he had to come and find me to tell me that….for the last two days I have now been trying to make it up to him with good cups of tea!
…just in case you are reading this my love here is a lovely cuppa for you to look at…
I have so far managed to print highly confidential information to a printer in another building this morning and send a friend in that building on a mission to find it! It is not yet lunch time but this day does not bode well.
Normally I tell Age all this but as he’s sunning himself somewhere lovely – I will make this blog suffer for it!
You don’t listen to Radio 4, but you bloody well should. It’s the best radio station in the world and most decent comedy on BBC TV originates there. I had to sneer when the controller of BBC3 tried to claim that Little Britain was discovered by them. Yeah, discovered by listening to the series on Radio 4 that is…
Anyway… here’s my favourite ever show. It’s called Bigipedia and it’s a radio version of a slightly more evil Wikipedia. There are only four episodes, but a second series is on the way. Seeing as Age is away and can’t tell me off for this, I’ll be posting the entire show. Now, uploading radio shows that you don’t own the copyright to is illegal, so we’ll have to be very quiet. If you happen to spot any BBC copyright lawyers, please stand in front of this page so that they can’t see it.
The translated Uruguayan safety advertisements are enough to make me snort milk out of my nose. And I don’t drink milk.
Warning: it’s a very high density show, so you may require repeated listenings to get even half the jokes.
The German film “Das Leben der Anderen” (The Lives of Others) has some very impressive subtitles. The best ones I’d seen previously had been for the Russian vampire film “Night Watch” where the subtitles were written in a blood font which dripped and dissolved off the screen.
The Lives of Others uses conventional subtitles for the dialogue, but it’s the effort they went to for all the German text in the film that really impresses. The film-makers inserted these translations directly into the video as you can see from the screenshots below. These are from the Chinese version of the film, but you get the idea. Pictures courtesy of (i.e. stolen from) ChinaSmack
What amuses me very much is the advise from fashionistas. I was reading not long back that bushy eye-brows are back in. For the last decade women have had to pluck, pluck, pluck and now we don’t need to apparently. Then last week, more breaking news ‘Eyelashes are out’, no more mascara if you want to be dead cool ladies (yes, and look like an alien)! What a crock! It’s all emperors new clothes…
On a similar theme did you know they had run a fashion shoot with Vogue influenced by the BP oil crisis. The mind reels! OIA, as Zombie would say
‘Become an Evil Mastermind and you too can sit around talking nonsense, cuddling cats, smoking the occasional cigarette and eating when you like whilst evilly plotting world domination.’
Wanted person to sit around, talk nonsense, drink coffee, smoke an occasional cigarette, eat when you feel like it and cuddle cats. Must be versatile (can vary sitting position) and show ability to multi-task (must be able to sit around, drink coffee and talk nonsense all at once) while having organisational skills (prioritise when to sit around and when to change sitting position).
Qualifications: Good competency level in sitting around. Excellent ability to talk nonsense. Must be insightful to know when cat needs a cuddle.
Candidates will be stringently tested on their level of nonsense and aptitude in sitting around.
I guess I must have missed the dancing whilst I was sleeping
Piracy isn’t some shady practice in China, it’s a normal and mainstream business. Walk around Beijing for any length of time and you’ll come across several pirate DVD shops. Despite what the scaremongering copyright lobby would have you believe, knockoff Chinese DVDs are every bit as good as the official ones. Most shops offer a money back guarantee and the discs are professionally packaged… well, they are at first glance.
What I love is the packaging. The Chinese DVD pirates don’t value English skills particularly highly so you end up with some real gems printed on the DVD cases. It’s not like the Chinese public are buying these discs for the immaculate English on the back, so the pirates tend to stick any old thing on them. Witness the blurb on the back of the “New Moon” box. Apparently this film contains “wonderful dancing” and the bouns[sic] features include several music videos. And this is quite an accurate and well-produced DVD cover.
There Will Be Romance and Comedy
Apparently I missed the fact that “There Will Be Blood” is a “biright and breezy romanticcomedy”. And the special features includes a whole bunch of stuff on the “Failure to Launch” phenomenon.
Honesty in advertising
It would appear that our dear pirates have lifted an English language review from the web for this serious documentary. And they haven’t read it first. Not only is this movie “boring as hell”, but it actively recommends that I watch something else instead. Isn’t it refreshing to see such honesty on the box? Aren’t the dodgy copies so much better than the real ones?
So fed up with my job…why am I not tagging birds in the Seychelles…or something like that anyway?
Do you understand the feeling that for every step forward, someone puts another obstacle in your way and by the end of the day you actually feel 20 steps behind from where you were at the start of the day? That’s my job.
