Tuesday, March 16, 2004

Toilet Rolls

Man! Things in the US are big! That is, apart from the toilet rolls, which for some reason are very small.

Why?

What's Wrong with Alan?

Excerpt From the forthcoming Penguin classic paperback
"What's wrong with Alan?" by Adam Phillips.

On Microwave Meals

It surely is the refuge of the poorly educated. Consider the war, famine and
pestilence that despoils the face of this unfertile planet every single day
of our lives. Nothing could possibly compare with the scourge that is the
'microwave meal for one'.

Lean cuisine. I bought one, once.

To say it was terrible would be to undersell the hand of Satan.
I have seen things, terrible things. I have viewed material that would set
not only hair on end but teeth on edge and rectums clenching.

I prefer real food.

Consider this meal. Lemon peppered fish steaks, boiled new potatoes and
garden peas. The fish was placed under the grill and allowed to gently cook
to a crisp golden brown, the smell infusing the kitchen. The peas, simmering
slowly with green vegetable intent. The tight skin of the potatoes covering
soft flesh soon to be smothered with butter. All of it moves me to bigger
and better feats of culinary wizardry.

Alan's 'meal' is rancid. Alan offsets taste and expense against convenience.
Therefore, his meal is miniscule and tasteless. He eats his meal not out of
delightful intent but out of necessity. Much as a dog will eat grass to rid
itself of poisons, Alan will eat Lean Cuisine to rid himself of the need to
expend energy. In Alan's world expending energy is just as poisonous as the
deadliest deadly nightshade.

The meal - if it can be called that - arrives, freshly delivered from it's
four minute microwave warning as if a speeding warhead, looking much more
innocent, but just as dangerous. Resting on a black tray should give Alan
plenty of warning about the dark content within. A plastic film covering
which smartly frosts on heating obscuring Alan's view of the content. Upon
removing the cover Alan finds two nicely molded blobs of sustenance, one
meat, one potato. The blobs are separated by a partition, alienated from
each other, almost as if, in the maker's eyes, they were never meant to be
together, like two convicts in neighboring cells.

Alan consumes this anti-ambrosia directly from the black tray, in front of,
as ever, the television. This arrangement suits him just fine. He pauses his
incessant observing only twice during this whole process. Once to put the
item in the microwave oven, once to remove it. He need not look at the meal
thereafter.

Microwave meals. Just the look of one will send the digestive system into a
gassy, acidic, spastic overdrive.

And Alan likes them.

What's Wrong with Alan?

Excerpt From the forthcoming Penguin classic paperback
"What's wrong with Alan?" by Adam Phillips.

It can hardly be a coincidence that no language in the world has ever
produced the phrase 'as interesting as Alan'.

Some Alan's are uninteresting, some are really boring. Unfortunately for
me, the particular Alan I share an apartment with has actively sought for
his whole life to attain a degree of monotony, tedium and dullness that
could have only be brought about by a driving, all consuming passion for
lying down watching television.

He sits, or lays, watching TV, transfixed - unable to comprehend the
constantly moving shapes and bright colours. He is hypnotised by the
patterns and sounds. He watches closing credits as if looking for shapes in
the clouds.

To watch Alan at rest is to stare into the burning eyes of social death
itself. He does not consider the world outside as a real possibility. To
Alan, any area not in the line of sight of the TV is an area fraught with
danger. People lurk around every corner, wanting to communicate, to talk. To
him they are the dead and he is the living. Alan's world is contorted beyond
the outrageous.

The world runs against Alan's every desire - to be still and entertained.

The world out there is interesting, and it scares Alan.

Another Word of the Day

pettifogger \PET-ee-fog-ur\, noun:
1. A petty, unscrupulous lawyer; a shyster.
2. A person who quibbles over trivia.

A more respectable-looking individual was never seen; he really looked what he was, a gentleman of the law -- there was nothing of the pettifogger about him.
--George Borrow, Lavengro

The nitpickers, the whiners, the pettifoggers are everywhere.
--Bill Kraus, "Without Health Care Reform, Forget It," Capital Times, December 15, 1993

The case... opened my eyes to a problem that doesn't get half the ink lavished on unprincipled pettifoggers but is arguably twice as important.
--Max Boot, Out of Order

Pettifogger is probably from petty + obsolete fogger, "pettifogger."

Word of the Day

bowdlerize \BODE-luh-rise; BOWD-\, transitive verb:
1. To remove or modify the parts (of a book, for example) considered offensive.
2. To modify, as by shortening, simplifying, or distorting in style or content.

The president did not call for bowdlerizing all entertainment, but stressed keeping unsuitable material away from the eyes of children.
--"Conference a start toward loosening grip of violence," Atlanta Journal, May 12, 1999

His tempestuous high school years are touched upon in a delightful scene where the precocious Roy infuriates his English teacher by trying to restore some of Shakespeare's saucier lines to that classroom's bowdlerized study of Hamlet.
--Herman Goodden, "A Few Scenes in the Life of Roy McDonald," London Free Press, December 7, 2000

He added that he bowdlerized some of the lyrics -- substituting "jerk" and "butt" for some less printable words.
--Lloyd Grove, "The Reliable Source," Washington Post, February 15, 2001

Bowdlerize derives from the name Thomas Bowdler, an editor in Victorian times who rewrote Shakespeare, removing all profanity and sexual references so as not to offend the sensibilities of the audiences of his day.

Monday, March 08, 2004

Some maths for ya

z2 = x2 + y2

z12 = (x-d)2 + (y+d)2

z12 = x2 + d2 -2xd + y2 + d2 + 2yd

Wednesday, March 03, 2004

Astronomy Picture of the Day

Opportunity Rover Indicates Ancient Mars Was Wet
Spepper

Are you tired of having to apply your salt and pepper seperately? Then worry no longer because here comes Spepper to the rescue - you lazy twunts.
Ugly Fish

Way down deep in the oceans (yes, even farther than Spongebob's house), a truly horrifying assortment of animals exist.
Micro$oft KB

Did you know that there's a Micro$oft knowledge base article about Paul Bunyan?
Avatars

Create your own really cool Avatars
Many more games!

Rigelian Hot Shots | Undersea Pinball | New Car Net Racer | Escape From The Crimson Room | Shuffle The Penguin | Crosswise | Curiously Strong All Night Long | FlashChess | Snow Trooper | Demon Balls | Duck Hunt | Da' Numba | Harvey Wallbanger | Play The Pimp

Tuesday, March 02, 2004

Game time!


Orca Slap | Luffarshack | Zwill | I'm A Cuckoo | Ultimate Dodgeball | Trek Wars | Cups | Terra Realms | Net Blazer | Steady Hand | Capture The Flag | XXX Solitaire | Squirrel Squash | Bush Shootout | Starry Night | Tower Blaster | Pumpkin's Ballade | Ninja Golf | Magic Balls | Couronne | Warthog Launch | TurboTanks

Downing Street Says

Events at the centre of government could become clearer for the public with the launch of an independent website which aims to let people inspect exactly what Downing Street has said.
Who said what and how was it spun - this sort of question has become a necessary evil in modern politics, as journalists and politicians vie for the public's trust.

But a new weblog - DowningStreetSays - could possibly be part of the solution. Its aim is to give the public easy access to every word that comes out of the briefings by the prime minister's official spokesmen.

BBC News full article
We know where you are, but we don't know your surname

Testifying before the Senate Intelligence Committee on Tuesday, George Tenet was asked why the C.I.A. never picked up the trail of Marwan al-Shehhi, the pilot who crashed Flight 175 into the south tower on 9/11.

Thirty months earlier, German intelligence had passed on a hot tip to the C.I.A. — the Al Qaeda terrorist's first name and phone number.

"The Germans gave us a name, Marwan — that's it — and a phone number," the director of central intelligence replied, adding: "They didn't give us a first and a last name until after 9/11, with then additional data."

NY Times full text
It's War! And Totally Justified At That!

The Guardian - Report Clears Australia on Iraq Claims. Basically, everyone's sticking to the same story. It wasn't cherry-picked or influenced intelligence, it was bad intelligence. And there'll be an inquiry to establish that as soon as possible.

A clear gap has been shown between what was known and what was presented to the public but this was part of a "more moderate'' push for war than used by the US or the UK, so that's OK....
It's Law! And Somebody's Telling Porkies!

The Independent 28 Feb - Clare Short: Was Attorney General leant on to sanction war?The suggestion, however, that the Attorney General's opinion may have been manipulated is very serious. There is no doubt that the way in which a truncated opinion authorising war appeared at the very last minute was very odd.

Indeed.

In fact, I'm curious to know why Lord Goldsmith needed two sides of A4 in which to say "Oh, go on then..."

The Independent 29 Feb - Revealed: Attorney General changed his advice on legality of Iraq war Lord Goldsmith's full opinion on the legality of the war has never been made public. The desire to keep it secret is believed to be the main reason why the Official Secrets Act prosecution of Katharine Gun, a 29-year-old former employee of GCHQ, the Government's monitoring centre, was abandoned at the Old Bailey last week. The case could have revealed that in November 2002 the Attorney General believed Britain required specific authorisation for war from the UN Security Council, but that he later changed his stance.

And for what reason? Could he have been subconsciously influenced?

The Guardian 29 Feb - Beware smoking Guns The reason why many think that Tony Blair remains one leak away from resignation lies in what is known and supposed about the legal advice he received just before the war. Gun's lawyers were determined to get their hands on it.

And it may very well come to light...

Torygraph 1 Mar - Major calls on Blair to publish Goldsmith's war advice John Major added to growing pressure on Tony Blair to publish the Attorney General's full advice on the legality of the Iraq war yesterday after a respected Labour peer said Washington ordered it to be made more hawkish shortly before the conflict began.

UPDATE - Well, perhaps not...

Will the magic of spin & secrecy save Teflon Tony again? I keep turning on the television and expecting to see live footage of 10 Downing St...

Fast things moving slowly

Slow motion films, breaking glass, firecrackers and water balloons
Clare Short

A few papers (here's one) noted over the weekend that a whispering campaign has been deployed to taint Clare Short's quite serious charges by suggesting that perhaps she's gone a bit barmy.

The Scum, by digging up this bucket of cold sick with a quick phone-poll of MPs, feel bold enough to come right out and say it. Today's Page 3 editorial is a whopper: Today Anna (22, from London) is delighted that Clare Short's barmy bid to ban Page 3 girls is doomed to fail. Anna said: "This shows what nonsense she has been spouting. Hopefully this poll will make her shut up at last. She should keep her prudish beliefs to herself and leave us alone."

Yes folks, you can safely ignore the crazy lady who wants to take your tits away and is telling such nasty stories about our PM.

The super soaraway Scum reveals the following on the facing page: RANTING Clare Short has been accused of treachery by Britain's top civil servant.... Last night, one critic even suggested she needed a PSYCHIATRIST while others labelled her "bitter" and said her credibility was zero.

Labour MP George Foulkes also backed this claim that it was her credibility "at rock bottom" and not Tony Blair's, but the final flourish (and a Cheek of the Week award) goes to Alastair 'fuck Gilligan' Campbell: "It’s very sad that people who have been in positions of authority now behave in a way that just reveals a bitterness that is very, very deep."
Word of the Day

tenet \TEN-it\, noun:
Any opinion, principle, dogma, belief, or doctrine that a person holds or maintains as true.

... the tenet that all men are created equal and seen as such by the eyes of God.
--Kaye Gibbons, On the Occasion of My Last Afternoon

This kind of tolerance and receptivity is itself a cardinal tenet of Enlightenment thought.
--Gary B. Nash, History on Trial

Since the 1950s, the central tenet of US foreign policy and security strategy had been to "contain" the Soviet Union and communist domination and influence.
--George Bush and Brent Scowcroft, A World Transformed

The central tenet of whig theory was the inevitability of progress.
--William L. Bird, Jr., Better Living

Tenet comes from Latin tenet "he holds" (something as true), from tenere, "to hold."
Word of the Day

pleonasm \PLEE-uh-naz-uhm\, noun:
1. The use of more words than are necessary to express an idea; as, "I saw it with my own eyes."
2. An instance or example of pleonasm.
3. A superfluous word or expression.

Dougan uses many words where few would do, as if pleonasm were a way of wringing every possibility out of the material he has, and stretching sentences a form of spreading the word.
--Paula Cocozza, "Book review: How Dynamo Kiev beat the Luftwaffe," Independent, March 2, 2001

Such a phrase from President Nixon's era, much favored by politicians, is "at this moment in time." Presumably these five words mean "now." That pleonasm probably does little harm except, perhaps, to the reputation of the speaker.
--Eoin McKiernan, "Last Word: Special Relationships," Irish America, August 31, 1994

Pleonasm is from Greek pleonasmos, from pleon, "greater, more."

Synonyms: circumlocution, periphrasis, redundancy, tautology.
Word of the Day

vet \VET\, transitive verb:
1. To provide veterinary care for (an animal).
2. To provide (a person) with medical care.
3. To examine carefully; to subject to thorough appraisal; to evaluate.

intransitive verb:
To practice as a veterinarian.

She was the right age (in her fifties), and her personal background had been vetted during the Senate confirmation hearings.
--Eleanor Clift and Tom Brazaitis, Madam President

The "Stasi files law," as it is popularly known, also made it possible to vet parliamentarians for Stasi connections.
--John O. Koehler, Stasi: The Untold Story of the East German Secret Police

Unlike, say, Bob Rubin (the Wall Street investment banker and incoming head of the National Economic Council), who probably needed half a law firm to vet his portfolio, I had no stocks or bonds.
--George Stephanopoulos, All Too Human

Vet is short for veterinary or veterinarian, which comes from Latin veterinarius, "of or belonging to beasts of burden and draught," from veterinus, "of draught, of beasts of burden." The earlier sense was "to submit to examination or treatment by a veterinary surgeon," hence "to subject to thorough appraisal."
Word of the Day

raffish \RAF-ish\, adjective:
1. Characterized by or suggestive of flashy vulgarity, crudeness, or rowdiness; tawdry.
2. Marked by a carefree unconventionality or disreputableness; rakish.

The speaker was in his forties, an attractive-looking man with a black eye patch that gave him the raffish look of an amiable pirate.
--Sidney Sheldon, The Best Laid Plans

Sometimes we would go to the Gargoyle Club,... but it was too full of raffish upper-class drunks for my taste.
--John Richardson, The Sorcerer's Apprentice

We are told about Bacon's taste for raffish, lower-class lovers, his penchant for gambling and his almost complete disregard for money.
--Michiko Kakutani, "Portrait of a Portraitist Of a Century's Horrors," New York Times, December 14, 1993

Raffish derives from the noun raff (chiefly used in the compound or duplicate, riffraff), meaning "people of a low reputation."
Word of the Day

malapropism \mal-uh-PROP-iz-uhm\, noun:
The usually unintentionally humorous misuse of a word, especially by confusion with one of similar sound; also, an example of such misuse.

At 15, Rachel, the whiny would-be beauty queen who "cares for naught but appearances," can think only of what she misses: the five-day deodorant pads she forgot to bring, flush toilets, machine-washed clothes and other things, as she says with her willful gift for malapropism, that she has taken "for granite."
--Michiko Kakutani, "'The Poisonwood Bible': A Family a Heart of Darkness," New York Times, October 16, 1998

He also had, as a former colleague puts it, "a photogenic memory"--a malapropism that captures his gift for the social side of life, his Clintonian ability to remember names of countless people he has met only briefly.
--Eric Pooley and S.C. Gwynne, "How George Got His Groove," Time, June 21, 1999

A malapropism is so called after Mrs. Malaprop, a character noted for her amusing misuse of words in Richard Brinsley Sheridan's comedy The Rivals.
Word of the Day

flibbertigibbet \FLIB-ur-tee-jib-it\, noun:
A silly, flighty, or scatterbrained person, especially a pert young woman with such qualities.

We discover here not the flibbertigibbet Connolly describes but a serious reader (Goethe, Tolstoy, Proust) who found her cultural ideal in 18th-century France.
--Martin Stannard, "Enter Shrieking," [1] New York Times, November 28, 1993

He argues persuasively that Millay's reputation has been harmed not only by academics who dread and fear her heartfelt "simplicity," but by the very admirers who wished to promote her as a kind of whimsical flibbertigibbet, a poetical Anne of Green Gables.
--Liz Rosenberg, "So Young, So Good, So Popular," [2] New York Times, March 15, 1992

Flibbertigibbet is from Middle English flipergebet, which is probably an imitation of the sound of meaningless chatter.

Trivia: Flibbertigibbet originally meant a gossip or chatterbox, but it soon took on the idea of a light-minded or frivolous person. Flibbertigibbet was also the name of a demon; it appears in a list of 40 fiends in a book by Samuel Harsnet and also in Shakespeare:

This is the foul fiend Flibbertigibbet: he begins at curfew, and walks till the first cock; he gives the web and the pin, squints the eye, and makes the hare-lip; mildews the white wheat, and hurts the poor creature of earth.
--King Lear, iii. 4.