The Flaming Sword Of Fire

If you like Maid Marian and her Merry Men, you should probably watch Kröd Mändoon. It's the same thing, only with adult jokes and Americans. Although I'm not sure whether Sean Maguire is American nowadays, or if he's still English. Anyway, he's extremely funny, and so is the whole show.

Okay then

I'm going to do the Great Nottinghamshire Bike Ride and see if I can cope with a 50-mile cycling tour of the scenic countryside between Nottingham and Newark, if any. Consquently, I want people to give money to charities, by clicking here. I know I said I was thinking of doing it for the Alzheimer's Society, but I'm doing another thing for them in September, so I decided to just go with the GNBR's official charities list. Come to think of it, I know more people with cerebral palsy than people with Alzheimer's, anway.

I should probably point out that if the weather's awful or if I feel too lazy to get out of bed, I might still not bother with it, and just cycle the 50 yards down the road to the Co-op for a big bag of sweets, then come home and lay in bed all day eating them. If that happens, you won't be required to give any money. Although you probably should donate anyway. I'm sure none of my readers is the kind of person who makes promises of money to the needy but makes it conditional on the cycling performance of a fat, lazy oaf. Just sign up for your donation and stop moaning!

If I do stay in bed all day eating sweets, in fact, I'll triple my own donation. Can't say fairer than that.

Oily fish? Pah!

Another story in the news today about the wonders of oily fish. Apparently it fixes macular degeneration now, too. But if you eat it more than four times a week, you die, or something. I personally don't believe in omega-3. I think somebody made it up, for nefarious reasons. Probably a cat. Cats don't like fish and want them to be eaten.

The glorious fourteenth

It's my brother's 31st birthday on Sunday, which is good in that I get to go to a party on Saturday to celebrate it. But it does also lead me to realise that that means it's four months until I turn 33, which is really not a good age to be.

But then that leads me to realise that in another four months after that, I'll turn 33-and-a-third, which is actually a rather groovy age to be! And this will happen on February 14th, 2010 - I'm going to have to have a Valentine's-Day-cum-third-of-a-century party! How often do you get an opportunity to go to one of those? Practically never!

Unless you're longtime friends with Cliff Richard or Roger Moore or one of the other lucky people who was born on October 14th, of course. Come to think of it, Cliff, like me, was unmarried at the time of his Valentine's Day 33-and-a-third birthday. Roger Moore, according to Wikipedia, was in the process of splitting up with his second wife at the time. E.E.Cummings was single, after being dumped by his second wife and before meeting his third. The Battle of Hastings celebrated its 33-and-a-third anniversary during the reign of the unmarried King William II. There's something decidedly unromantic about this occasion...

Shiny things

A magpie keeps flying right up to the top of my kitchen window. I thought there might be a nest up there, or maybe on the roof, but I can't see one by leaning out of the living room window and craning my neck. Anyway, it creeps me out. I'm superstitious about magpies, and seeing one at a time on a regular basis is disturbing. I need to lure more of them to my windows somehow, five or six at once.

Dammit, Radio Times!

They provided a pretty extensive preview of Robert Webb's appearance on "My Life In Verse" last night, but didn't mention that they were going to go back to his (and my) old school and interview Mr and Mrs Slater, the English teachers! I would have watched it if I'd known that, instead of deciding not to bother! Now I'll have to find out whether it's possible to see it on the internet. Or did anyone happen to video it? I prefer to do things the old-fashioned way, it's more fun.

Actually, one of the three pictures in RT shows Rob (I think his friends call him Rob - let's be honest, I was three years below him and never spoke to him, although everyone in school knew him and loved his comedy routines, so I probably shouldn't give people the impression that we were friends) sitting in a classroom, and I'm trying to work out whether it's a room at QEGS. I'm fairly sure it's not rooms 8, 9 or 10, which is where English lessons were held in my day. Possibly room 10, if it's got fewer windows than I remember. Or it might be the new geography room (or was it the new history room? The closest one to the changing rooms, anyway - the one where the old chemistry lab used to be). It's the kind of thing a TV crew would do, deciding that the English classrooms are the wrong size or shape for a photo, so let's use the geography room instead.

In other news, if I did the Great Nottinghamshire Bike Ride, would anybody want to sponsor me? I was thinking about it, apparently the 50-mile one only has one really nasty hill on it, and I have just had my bike serviced so the brakes work and the handlebars don't fall off. Money would go to the Alzheimer's Society, say. C'mon, who'd give money to see me get sunstroke and/or soaked by downpours while giving myself a heart attack from unnecessary exertion?

Also, I'm watching the first couple of episodes of "Lie To Me" on Sky. Tim Roth is good, like he always is, but it's typical mainstream American detective drama stuff that thinks it's a lot cleverer than it is. And some of the actors trying to convey the subtle facial gestures the script calls for are downright embarrassing! And also, it'll lead to even more people becoming NLP fanatics, which the world could do without. NLP people get on my nerves something chronic, and I'm not sure exactly why.

With the possible exception of this guy, if he is in fact an adherent of NLP. He kind of looks like he might be, but his extremely well-designed website doesn't say so, so maybe he isn't. He does look like he might be a lot of fun as a speaker. And more importantly, he mentions me in a very groovy way in his blog.

Incidentally, I swear I don't google my own name every day. Once a month, tops. But it seems like every time I do, I find a fun reference to me that was made just the day before!

Closure

Well, following on from last night's post, I'm sorry to report that Pat Lally (like every other Labour councillor in Broxtowe) lost his seat. And the new Conservative councillor is called Eric Kelly, which is much harder to make a comedy name out of (there are plenty of half-rhymes with Eric, but no real ones except 'cleric').

Still, following on from last weekend's (or thereabouts's) post, I can confirm that The Pickwick Papers really is worth reading! That Dickens bloke does have something going for him, after all. I think he'll go far.

I don't blog about politics

And I also don't devote a blog to making fun of someone I've never met and know nothing about. So it's really been difficult, these past few weeks, to refrain from mentioning that the Labour candidate for the county council is called Pat Lally. And, although I'm sure he's perfectly slender and sensible, whenever I see his name, I always want to give him the subtitle "the fat wally".

Luckily, the election's all over now (or will be tomorrow, when the results come out), so I'll be able to avoid blogging about something else. It'll be a relief!

Here comes the summer sun

Well, today's been cold and cloudy, but the previous few days were baking hot and sunny, which has led me to the conclusion that this new flat of mine is backwards. The front room and kitchen get the sun through the big windows in the mornings, while the bedrooms get it in the afternoons, which means that when I go to bed I come from a relatively cool room into a baking hot one. I think it would work better if it was the other way round.

Maybe I can borrow a giant crane and spin the flat around 180 degrees? That would solve all my problems, and be quite good fun, too!

Remembrance

I'm watching Remembrance of the Daleks on video. Haven't seen it since it was first shown, on the weeks surrounding my twelfth birthday, and I recall having no idea what was going on at the time. Actually, the plot still doesn't entirely make sense to me now, but it's a lot of fun to watch anyway.

And talking of memory, have you heard that Simon did a pack of cards in 27.36 seconds at the South German championships? I really can't wait for the German championship now, there's going to be such a huge volume of really, really great memorisers there, and I have no idea who's going to win.

Long day

The good thing about spending seven hours on trains in a day is that it really makes you appreciate the days when you get to work at an office ten minutes' cycling away. Still, it's fun to visit an exotic place like Cardiff, even if the Doctor wasn't hanging around there today. Anyway, I'm going to bed. Humans weren't designed to get up in time to catch 6:00 trains.

Yesterday ... and Today

I forgot to mention a couple of groovy things that happened yesterday. In W H Smith's, I was served by a woman who asked me "Were you on that Superhuman thing?" Which is always nice. And I weighed myself on that machine in Boots and it told me that my Body Mass Index is down to 27.9, and thus I'm no longer in a position to benefit from that scary weight-loss drug we sell! I've lost five pounds since I weighed myself about a month ago, and I attribute that to the last couple of weeks of not cramming sweets into my gob all day long.

Also, I did 1224 in 30-minute numbers practice today, which I think is a personal best. And I've come up with a scheme for creating an abstract images training program, although it'll take a fair bit of work to put it together.

Sunshine

Hooray, summer's here! Also, for some reason earlier today I found myself thinking it was Sunday, and then I remembered it wasn't, and I get another Sunday tomorrow. Which was nice.

I'm going to Cardiff on Monday for a meeting (I go my whole life up to this year without visiting Wales, and now I seem to be always dropping by), and getting the early train, so I was thinking I'd have to get to bed early tonight, when it suddenly dawned on me that it's only Saturday. Perhaps I should buy a calendar.

An apology

It seems that yesterday's blog entry used the word 'willy' rather more than is normal for a decent, family blog like this. It won't happen again. Except in that first sentence there.

Anyway, I'm wondering what to do tomorrow. It's the weekend, I've got nothing exciting planned and Saturdays in my current memory-training schedule (which I'm still following religiously, by the way) are a memory-free, mental-battery-recharging day. I might go somewhere nice and take advantage of the fine weather. Or maybe I'll stay indoors all day and watch Doctor Who videos. We'll see how I feel.

Everything you hear on the internet is wrong

On one of the internet forums I frequent, someone mentioned today the well-known fact that you can see Bugs Bunny's willy in one frame of one old cartoon. And someone else, in world-weary tones, directed him to the snopes.com debunking of this myth.

Snopes, with its myth-busting raison d'etre, has stumbled into a position where its word is taken as law - people are naturally sceptical about all the nonsense you can find on the internet these days, but this has the interesting side-effect of making people automatically believe anyone, even if they're just another guy on the internet, who says that something is just an internet myth. Even if it isn't. So in the interests of debunking Snopes, can I invite you to study "The Wabbit Who Came To Supper" in more detail?

Check out the shot of the "risqué" frame there. The website explains that the 'object' in question is just caused by the gap between Bugs's legs, the white background and the curvature of the towel. Now go and watch the cartoon and pay attention to how Bugs's character model works. The gap between his legs never goes up into his white tummy like that! It's either flattened or rounded underneath the white oval, depending on what position he's standing in.

I say it's Bugs's willy. It's possible that an in-betweener artist got the legs wrong for a frame or two, but not possible that Friz Freleng wouldn't have noticed and would just have okayed the incorrect animation. It was either a mistake that got left in because it made the gang in Termite Terrace giggle, or it was put in there on purpose. Anyway, it's a phallus and no question about it!

I'd advise you to watch the cartoon anyway, even if you don't care about Bugs Bunny's willy quite as much as I do. It's worth it alone for the brilliant moment when Bugs picks up the phone in Elmer's house, asks him for a nickel, takes the coin, casually pockets it and continues with his conversation!

Well, that was disappointing

I was confidently expecting a dull 0-0 draw, with Man Utd to win on penalties, but they were completely outplayed. Shame, really. Still, maybe Chelsea will lose the cup final and cheer me up again...

Wow, is that the time?

I did do my regular evening's memory training tonight, so I don't count as completely lazy, but then I've somehow got engrossed in a website detailing obscure Marvel comics characters until twenty to eleven at night. So I hope you'll forgive the short and late blog.

What the deuce?

I've got a reputation for being well-read, in some circles, but there are big gaps in my literary knowledge that I've always been meaning to fill. The most prominent gap is that I've never read anything by Charles Dickens (except A Christmas Carol, obviously, but everyone's read that. Or seen the Muppet version.) So in a charity shop today I bought The Pickwick Papers for £1.10 and I look forward to finding out whether it's a timeless classic or a load of rubbish.

It'll have to wait until I've finished Nocturnes by Kazuo Ishiguro, mind you, because I know that's going to be good...

Holiday

Lots more memory training today, yay for me, so tomorrow's a day off to catch up with everything else I've been meaning to do. Although I might also spend the time creating a few more journeys - the ones I've got at the moment aren't enough for the excessive practice routine I've got going right now. This afternoon I was still remembering what was in the locations the previous time around. Might just be because my forgetting skills are as rusty as my memorising...

The Old Queen's Head

That was the venue of the Sheffield Regional - it's another pub with a long history, dating back to 1503 according to the rather cool stained-glass thing upstairs in the function room we were occupying. Which makes it older than the Queen it's named after, unless the sign with its picture of Elizabeth I was lying to us, now I come to think of it. Anyway, the room was nice, but would have been better as an othello tournament location if there'd been a door separating it from the noisy pub below. Still, I happened to have a pair of earplugs, left over from some memory competition, in my bag, so I was fine.

Well, fine in the sense of having some of the background noise muffled, anyway. My othello-playing varied from okay to not-okay, though. I started (before finding the earplugs) with a very groovy 55-9 win over Iain, who's much better at othello than me, but was then outclassed entirely by Aidan and Steve, who normally don't pose me too much trouble. Aidan, actually, had a really great tournament all round, and ended up joint second with Iain, after Geoff, who beat everyone without any apparent problems.

I was fourth, which leaves me 50 points clear of Geoff in the BGP with one regional to go. Farnborough on June 13th, and I'm still fairly probably not going to go. It's a very long way, after all, and I'm not sure I'd want to win the BGP by virtue of turning up to more regionals than my rivals. Also, what if I did decide to go along, and ended up losing? That would really annoy me.

Anyway, we had a new player today as well - a stratego player I've met once before at the MSO. Stratego is a really cool game that I haven't had enough opportunity to play in the course of my life so far (I practically never managed to fit it into my schedule at the MSO, somehow - just twice in ten years). I need to make an effort to get into the stratego tournament circuit, if I can fit it in around othello, memory and general laziness.

A few further non-othello-related observations I think are worth mentioning:

Did you know that Men's Health magazine comes in two different sizes? I noticed in W H Smith's in the train station today that there's a full-size, A4 kind of version, and also a smaller version, sort of half-way between A4 and A5, with all the same content, but worse quality paper. And the funny thing is the smaller one costs the same as the big one. The complimentary copy I got was the big one, by the way. As is only right.

Also, the Npower advert with Wallace and Gromit, in which the Npower representative apparently barges into their house uninvited and installs a new boiler, certainly seems to be an accurate portrayal of Npower's sales policies.

One more thing I forgot to mention yesterday - in the course of a general conversation at work about how old people look I mentioned that people always think I'm about ten years older than I am. To which the boss's PA replied "No, I wouldn't say that, you've got a young face. I'd say you look about late-thirties, early-forties." I need to dye my beard. Or scalp.