Monday 27 June 2011

Miscellany

An interesting Sunday. Despite the Mail's insistence that this would be the hottest day of the year, it's pissed down harder than an incontinent with a fire hose in his mouth and it didn't even make 20C. The sun came out at 9:50 pm to say goodbye and give a teenager a quick skin cancer, and that was it.


Dick Puddlecote offers a possible answer to why smoke can magically pass through walls. It uses the mains wires to travel. Yes, electricity is generated by burning tons of UKBA-stolen tobacco in furnaces, indoors, in a workplace, and nobody gets fined. Nobody is at all worried about second hand smoke from tons of tobacco, not even ASH. Try lighting half a gram in a pub and see what happens.

If you're an Electrosmoker, charging the battery relies on burning far more tobacco than you could ever smoke. So it's all been a bit pointless in the end.

If you live near a power station, open the window and take a deep breath. You are now addicted, but don't worry about it because you'll be dead soon anyway. If you're a smoker, think of the money you'll save.

Watch out for those kettles. Tobbaco-produced electricity contaminates the wires and by extension, the boiled water. The yellow stain takes time to reach your house but the nicotine is there now. Best seal up all the sockets before it's too late! Does your tea look just a little darker than it used to? Oh dear.


The Euro is becoming interesting. I wonder who will be first to leave, Greece or Germany? Greece leaving would be a serious blow to this toy currency, but Germany leaving would bring a much quicker end to it. What was it for, anyway? Was it just to allow the banks to employ dimmer staff? Nobody needs to calculate exchange rates if there isn't one.


Education is still a mess. Teachers are to strike this week, which might well improve the nation's literacy. Mr. Gove wants a 'mum's army' to take over teaching while the teachers stand outside with banners provided by someone who can spell. Interesting that he doesn't want any dads involved, but then he's just showing solidarity with his leader, and staying in tune with the 'all men are paedophiles' message. We used to only be rapists, you know, and before that we were mere mysogynists. Give it ten years and you'll believe we're all trying to shag your cat.

The children, of course, are all little angels.


Finally, a Terrible Thing is coming. Health warnings have been issued and hospitals put on alert. What is it? Beansprout botty bugs? Asteroids? An escaped virus from a Government facility? Nuclear armageddon? Adam and the Ants comeback tour?

Worse. It seems there is a very real danger that it might be sunny for a day or two. But not to worry. We'll be back to normal thunderstorms and rain soon. Just wrap up well in tinfoil coated with paint and you'll easily survive the terrible hour or so of sunshine that might or might not happen.

It's safe here. Slate grey from horizon to horizon. I have a feeling the sun has risen, because the clouds look brighter.

There is still a sun up there, isn't there?

13 comments:

subrosa said...

You had sunshine at 9.50? It was still hissing down here. Well, that's a slight exaggeration but it was raining.

The garden has no colour; plenty green though - of all shades.

Looks like another day of restricted sunlight.

Let's think positive though. The temperature in part of SE England was 34 yesterday and sleeping proved nearly impossible. We may not be suntanned but at least we should be well rested.

Anonymous said...

"Nobody needs to calculate exchange rates if there isn't one."

I recall a politico from Ulster on Question Time some years before the Euro went live. His reason for aq common currency was to posit the imaginary case of a tourist moving across Europe, starting off with £100 which he converted to the local currency each time he crossed a border. "By the end of the trip, most of his money would have been soaked up by exchange commission."

My first thought was "How big a dick do you have to be to behave like his? Never heard of credit cards?"

microdave said...

"There is still a sun up there, isn't there?"

Sure is down in the South East....

the assertive antiquarian said...

in the nineteenth century, the official bailiffs of the british empire used to go on sailing-trips around the globe, picking-up an artefact here and a curio there - but now it's the chinese government's turn, the noticeable difference being that the communists' favourite recreational pastime comprises buying-up former colonial powers, complete with impressive integrated arrays of enslaved assets, to add to their all-inclusive collection. so, when the chinese leader announced that he would be continuing to acquire european debt, thus adding the european union to his existing american portfolio, it surely signals that he has africa in the bag too - well, to be fair, at least we don't need to check for reds under the bed whilst we've got double-dodgy david cameron selling us into an authoritarianism the likes of which we have never before experienced. however, there is one aspect of the oriental affair which is rather odd...namely that the prime minister took the premier on a visit to 'shakespeare's birthplace', stratford-upon-avon, which is, in fact, the fabulous locational origin of the foreign-finance-friendly, but fully-fabricated, myth that an opportunistic midlands wool-trader wrote the bard's famous plays - because, as every good englishman, and woman, knows, it was christopher marlowe who pseudonymously penned the lot, without a blot, so they say...which makes one wonder...whether, whilst making the most of the incremental opportunity to practice his essential chinese vocabulary of shi, dui, and hao, and having a cosy social not discussing human-rights, second-hand shit-dealer cameron is perhaps presenting his excellency, wen jiabao, with a (documentarily authenticated) traditonal second-hand south-london pup...?

roots reactionary said...

hey, leg-iron, old chap...i ate a complete pack of best british lidl radishes last night and was subsequently compelled, at 7 o'clock this morning, to make a rapid emergency adjournment to this residence's bathroom-facility...could you do me a favour...and supply me a blow-by-blow run-down of the bio-chemistry pertaining to the reactions which precipitate such revolutionary gastro-intestinal events?

sixtypoundsaweekcleaner said...

We had stinking heat down in my neck of the woods. Couldn't sleep because of it. Friends lolled about in the sun and ended up very pink, but I couldn't be arsed and kept indoors.

There is a rumour going around that the binmen might turn up tomorrow...

Whoop whoop!

Anonymous said...

Apparently it's a lovely clear blue sky here north of the border, until your jet from Spain descends through the month and half old all enveloping grey to your touchdown.

Anonymous said...

Germany leave the Euro? I doubt it very much. The German people may not have much faith in it but, like politicians here, German politicians don’t much care what their people believe or don’t believe in – they, again like ours, are only really interested in what works for them personally. But I have it on fairly good authority by someone much better versed than myself in these matters that the most likely scenario is a division of the Euro into a “northern” and a “southern” version with the wealthy countries using the northern variety and the poorer countries using the southern one. Which makes something of a mockery of the whole idea of a “single currency,” doesn’t it, really?

And the “mum’s army?” Gove is barking up the wrong tree if he thinks that anyone’s going to take that offer up. Hasn’t he realised yet that the primary aim of schools, as far as most mothers are concerned, is as a handy place to dump their kids to get looked after while they get on with much more interesting things, like a nice job, or lunch with their chums, or coffee mornings, or going to the gym or getting their nails done, or shopping. The “education” bit is just a front that gives them an acceptable excuse for leaving all that boring old “bringing up the kids” bit to someone else. So the chances of them foregoing all their enjoyable activities to do something which they’ve already paid someone else to do are slim indeed.

WV: fooles. How apt!

Anonymous said...

What bollocks Gove talks, so he's quite happy to over-ride the HSE, fire drill draining, maunual handling balh de fucking blah, as lon as the parents have a CRB clearance?

Great way for the parents to sue HMG's arse off if Timmy skins his knee in the playground, or god-forbid a fire breaks out at some unsupervised school.

What an fucking pillock, does that mean the volunteers will be spared if they decide to set up a "smoking room" for the parent-volunteers on the premises?

No, thought not Gove...

double-time mum said...

16:44

no, assertive anti, europe is in hock to the united states which, in turn, is being kept afloat financially by china - therefore china is controlling africa primarily via america, who duly sub-contract some of the dirty work (coups, wars, bloody repression etc) to europe...

...and, as anonymous rightly points out, mums sub-contract 'parenting' to the government - and so, obviously, if the government doesn't come up with the goods, they're gonna sue the state for breach of contract and demand compensation. mums will only go into school to act as emergency substitute teachers if paid about a grand a day, by my reckoning - because everyone knows that supply teachers always get an exponentially rough ride. gove's an ideologically perverse wanker.

state-wise, pound paranoid (stake-holding social-worker) said...

00:24

here here, my sentiments entirely - cheap-rate pie in the deeply dense blue conservative fucking sky. what real mum, with the slightest sense of love for her kids, is gonna risk leaving them in the care of an unqualified bunch of twatting tory do-gooders? in fact, any mum who does so should be instantly arrested and locked-up for child neglect. maybe that's the whole point, and it's all a secret government parenting test to weed out the feckless from the big society?

ps: whatever the european union decides to do about the great greek community-care grant leak, we're all doomed, anyway, coz the exposed banks are now going to have their credit-rating reduced and are going to be paying higher interest-rates to the money-lenders in the states. it's gonna be the biggest bank-bust in god-damned history - get your cash out now. bundle.

Leg-iron said...

SR - the sun doesn't go down very far at this time of year. Sunset moves around the horizon and turns into sunrise.

Unfortunately, in winter, the sun doesn't actually rise very far.

Leg-iron said...

roots reactionary - I get a similar effect with late-night cheese on toast. Basically, your gut goes 'What the hell is all this crap?' and purges it. Sometimes you don't get a lot of warning.

There is a much longer and more complex explanation but that would need a whole new blog.

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