Category Archives: amusements

amusements, current affairs, memes, personal, photography, pleasures

Getting to Know All about You Meme


Getting to Know All about You Meme, originally uploaded by kcm76.

This week’s Flickr meme is about getting to know you.

These photos are not mine . . . please click on individual links below to see each artist/photostream. This mosaic is for a group called My Meme, where each week there is a different theme and 12 questions to send you out on a hunt to discover photos to fit your meme. It gives you a chance to see and admire other great photographers’ work out there on Flickr.

As usual here are the questions and my answers:

1. Who would you most like to meet? Dalai Lama
2. Who would you most like to have dinner with? Dinner is such a restrictive idea, but I would like to meet the Genie who dispenses health wealth and happiness
3. Who would you refuse to meet? The pure evil known as Robert Mugabe
4. What are you best at? Organisation, administration and procrastination
5. What are you worst at? Anything that requires fewer than 20 left thumbs; I’m hopeless at anything practical — after 3 years of woodwork at school I still can’t saw a piece of wood straight
6. What is your favourite poem? “Macavity: The Mystery Cat”; TS Eliot
7. What was the first record you bought for yourself? “Albatross”; Fleetwood Mac
8. What is your motto? Zen Mischief
9. What’s the biggest/best compliment you’ve ever been paid? What’s a compliment? I don’t think I get them. I just do the job right the first time.
10. Who did you hit? Me? No-one. I have an alibi.
11. What is your worst phobia? Not having money
12. What insect do you dislike most? Maggots

1. Dalai Lama_Geelong_6_ 10.jpg, 2. Genie In A Bottle, 3. Mugabe, 4. Overcoming Procrastination Motivational Mind Map Poster, 5. the freak of the rubber duck world, 6. Macavity the Proud, 7. Royal Albatross, Southern Ocean, 8. Zen Kitty, 9. The Original Version., 10. Who Me, I am Innocant, 11. Old diesel train, 12. Maggot Art

Created with fd’s Flickr Toys.

amusements, current affairs

This Week's Oddities …

Some of the odder headlines I’ve seen this week (mostly perpetrated by the BBC) …

Green custard thrown at Mandelson
the mind boggles
Arrest in Mandelson custard probe
and the mind boggles even more
TV magician Ali Bongo dies
nah, you’re ‘avin a giraffe!
Modular Windows plan welcomed
yeah, it’s called double-glazing these days
Swiss blackmail gigolo jailed
but why would the Swiss be blackmailing a gigolo to start with?
Moyes unhappy with Wembley semi
well they’re good enough for the rest of us …
Twitter made me lunch
well at least it’s good for something!
Sea rise to exceed projections
we have a logic problem!?
Indian police enrol rat recruits to fight mice army
sounds more Irish than Indian to me
Deep water fish decline concerns
so deep water fish are fed up with the nanny state too!
Conference on Vikings at Cambridge University
I didn’t know CU was that old
amusements, science, sexuality, thoughts

Zen Mischievous Moments #150

I offer you two snippets from the ‘Feedback’ column in this week’s New Scientist:

The entirely flat cotton bed sheet that [Reader A] bought from the department store House of Fraser came with a label telling him to wash it inside out.

[Reader B] from Edinburgh in the UK reports on a pack of condoms bought at the supermarket Sainsbury’s which had a security label stating: “Please remove prior to putting in the microwave.” [Reader B] is worried that he might have dozed off and missed a crucial part of his sex education classes at school.

amusements, history, memes, photography

Photography Meme


Photography Meme, originally uploaded by kcm76.

This week’s Flickr Photo Meme is to about, well, Photography!

So here, as usual, are the questions and my answers:

1. What camera do you use the most? Olympus E500 dSLR
2. What is your favourite lens? My Spectacles; I’m as blind as most of a bat without them.
3. Who is your favourite photographer on Flickr? Tina Manthorpe, although that is a really hard choice
4. Who is your favourite photographer of all time? Leonardo da Vinci. What? You mean all those things aren’t photographs? Oh come, on … he invented everything else so he surely had a camera! (In fact David Hockney has the theory that even as early as Leonardo artists were using camera obscura
5. Who introduced your to photography (mom, dad, friend, sibling, etc)? My father; I started by using his Box Brownie
6. What is your favourite thing to shoot? Arrows. In the air!
7. What is the one most important tool? Excluding your camera! Err, my eyes!?
8. What inspires your photography? Almost anything, but probably mostly colour & pattern, and the humorous
9. If you could shoot one event in history what would it be? This isn’t something I’ve ever really thought about, so I’ll go for: Great Fire of London, 1666.
10. Where would you be published if you could choose? Anywhere they’ll have me; I’m not proud
11. Choose anywhere in the world that you would love to photograph Shinto Temples of Japan
12. What was the subject of your favourite photograph? Pretty Girls

As always these are not my photos (except #5) so please follow the links to enjoy the work of the photographers who did take them!

1. Enjoy summer (and beer), 2. Funny Glasses in Rome, 3. Swaledale, 4. Leonardo da Vinci Annunciation, 5. kcm76 and Parents, 1984, 6. I shot an arrow into the air, …., 7. Black Line Eyes, 8. Shaping Light, 9. London’s Burning005, 10. Fish., 11. Giant Wooden Phallus, 12. While waiting for you…

Created with fd’s Flickr Toys.

amusements, arts, current affairs, personal, thoughts

A Modern Day Maudie?

On Wednesday this week there was this wonderful picture (below right) of the delightful “not quite Essex girl”* Mrs Beckham in The Times (just see the close-up of those feet!) .

One was struck by the uncanny resemblance to Osbert Lancaster’s rather more upper class heroine, Maudie Littlehampton, seen (above left) in a characteristic 1966 pose.

** Mrs David Beckham, née Victoria Adams (aka Posh Spice) is described in Wikipedia as “an English singer, dancer, fashion designer, author, businesswoman, actress and model” – whoever wrote that surely had their tongue firmly in their cheek, didn’t they?! She actually comes from Goff’s Oak, a area of my home town, and just a couple or three miles on the Hertfordshire side of the Herts-Essex border.

Hat-tip: Noreen of Norn’s Notebook

amusements, arts, personal, photography

Rusty, the Danish Bacon Hound


Rusty, the Danish Bacon Hound, originally uploaded by kcm76.

Ladies and Gentlemen! Let me present, at no expense to this august establishment, Rusty, the Danish Bacon Hound.
We must apologise for the state of his coat, he’s in need of a good hose down as he’s clearly been grubbing around the pig pens.
(Made from thin white card after a design by David C Mills.)

[Later] Noreen thinks he should be called Streaky rather than Rusty, this also being a characteristic of the coats of Danish Bacon Hounds.

amusements, quotes

Zen Mischievous Moments #149

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Another from New Scientist dated 07/02/2009 …

How not to right click

THE mother of a friend of Dave Higginbottom was trying to get the hang of her daughter’s computer. After a while, she shouted to her daughter: “What do you do when a squiggly red line appears under a word?”

“Just right-click,” replied her daughter from the next room.

A moment later the mother replied: “I’ve written ‘click’ but it makes no difference. I just get the word ‘click’ after the word with the squiggly line.”

amusements, current affairs, environment, science

Zen Mischievous Moments #148

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The following from New Scientist dated 07/02/2009 …

Danger: airborne turtles

BLAMING Canada geese for forcing a US Airways jet to ditch in the Hudson river seems logical. They’re big enough to cause serious damage to any plane that hits them, and thousands have settled around New York City. Sure enough, when we checked the Federal Aviation Administration’s National Wildlife Strike Database at www.planestrikes.notlong.com, Canada geese were high on the list, with 1266 reports of them hitting aircraft between 1990 and 2008, 103 of which were in New York State.

With all three New York City airports close to the ocean, gulls also seemed likely suspects and, yes, over the same period, 1208 gull strikes were reported in New York, out of a total of 9843 gulls that collided with planes across the US. Further scrutiny of the list revealed that other collision victims include 145 bald eagles and 15 black-capped chickadees. An endangered whooping crane was hit in Wisconsin. We began to think that nothing that flies is safe. Then we spotted an entry for turtles.

One can imagine circumstances in which turtles could become airborne, although not of the turtle’s volition. It would, however, seem quite hard to hit a plane with a tossed turtle. Yet 80 turtles suffered this fate, including 23 in New York State. The turtles weren’t alone. Armadillos are, if anything, even less aerodynamic than turtles, yet planes struck 14 of them in Florida, two in Louisiana and one in Oklahoma, although Texas armadillos successfully avoided aircraft. In addition, 13 American alligators hit planes in Florida.

We can report that our mental picture of airborne armadillos, alligators and turtles did not survive long. We were forced to conclude that although the FAA doesn’t specify it, these animals had their collisions with aircraft on the ground, presumably during take-off and landing. It was interesting to note, though, that some terrestrial species seem much better at dodging planes than others. No one reported hitting wolves, bears, sheep or goats, but the toll included 811 deer, 310 coyotes, 146 skunks, 146 foxes, 33 domestic dogs, 18 domestic cats, eight cattle, six moose, five horses, two river otters, and a single unfortunate pig.