Category Archives: amusements

amusements, memes, personal

Birthday Meme

Just for a bit of fun, I thought I’d make up my own birthday meme. Hopefully it doesn’t give too much away!

  1. Do you share your birthday with anyone well known? Yes, former miners’ leader Arthur Scargill (b.1938), golfer Ben Crenshaw (b.1952) and England footballer Bryan Robson (b.1957).
  2. Do you share your birthday with anyone you know? Yes, JP.
  3. Do you share your birthday with an historical figure? Yes, most notable Harry Gordon Selfridge (b.1858), founder of the eponymous London department store; also James Paget (b.1814, English surgeon and pathologist) and Ezra Cornell (b.1807, founder of Western Union and Cornell University).
  4. Do you share your birthday with an important historical event? Again yes, the first recorded lottery in England in 1569.
  5. Where were you born? University College Hospital, London.
  6. What time of day were you born? Just in time for lunch! [No change there then!]
  7. How much did you weigh? Something over 8lb.
  8. Who are you named after? No-one to my knowledge, although I do have my mother’s family name embedded.
  9. Zodiac sign? Capricorn.
  10. Chinese zodiac sign? Metal Tiger.
  11. Innie or Outie? Innie.
  12. Do you wear glasses or contact lenses? Glasses since I was about 14.
  13. What have you had pierced or tattooed? No tattoos, and you really do not want to know where my piercing is.
  14. Do you still have your tonsils? Yes, I still have my tonsils, but I’ve been robbed of my appendix, a deformed fingernail and my right knee joint.
  15. At what age did you become aware of pornography? I think probably at about 13.
  16. What is your best attribute? An analytical brain.
  17. What is the thing you least like about yourself? An ability to be tactlessly outspoken.
  18. With who do you feel most comfortable talking to about anything? Noreen, Katy.
  19. The last time you felt broken? Today — it’s a knee thing.
  20. Do you consider yourself an introvert or an extrovert? Introvert.
  21. Have you ever taken drugs; if so what? Only the West’s drugs of choice: alcohol and tobacco.
  22. Who amongst your current friends (not family) have you known the longest? Ken King; we were at primary school together 50+ years ago and have recently make contact again.
  23. Is there anyone on your friends list you would ever consider having sex with? Yes; but no I’m not going to tell you who!
  24. Are you cool with talking about sex? Yes.
  25. Who did you lose your virginity to? Faith.
  26. Has reading a book ever changed your life? Yes, see this from my Zen Mischief weblog.
  27. What were you doing when you last lost track of the time? Being wheeled into the operating theatre.
  28. What can you do today that you couldn’t do a year ago? Use crutches properly.
  29. Do you think you’ll change in the next 3 months? Yes, of course; we all change all the time.
  30. What will you be able to do at this time next year that you can’t now? With luck I’ll be able to walk properly.
  31. If you had to be executed but could choose the method, what method would you choose? Instantaneous poison.
  32. What will people say at your funeral? “Phew! There goes that PITA at last.”

So you’re all now challenged to complete this on (or even not on) your birthday each year. The only rule is that you must add or change at least one question each year. Have fun!

amusements, ramblings

Amusements of the Year, 2016

2016 has thrown up so many things which are worthy of a good chortle, and that’s leaving aside all the political stupidities. Let’s follow the scheme of the last couple of years.

Product of the Year
Three contenders for this year’s accolade:
Little Rooster Vaginal Alarm Clock
Camel Balls
Deep-fried Curry-filled Doughnuts which are buried deeply in http://londonist.com/2015/08/w-a-cafe-quirky-japanese-savouries-and-patisserie-in-ealing

Best Unintended Consequence
The prize this year goes to the Scandinavian stationery company Locum for their excellent logo:

Auction Item of the Year (from our local auction house)
This year’s three winners are:
Third: A Brookes Champion Standard B17 reproduction penny farthing
Second: A vintage Agricastrol hand delivery pump for oil in original green cabinet

First: An unusual Edward VIII commemorative toilet roll holder, circa 1936, with an unopened pack of Tri-Sol medicated toilet paper (price 6d)

Poseur of the Year
This award has to go to politician Ed Balls for “Strictly has released my inner Beyoncé“.

Name of the Year
This year’s winner is Dr Wendy Chan She Ping Delfos, a Dietician quoted in Daily Telegraph back on 23 September.

Organisation Name of the Year
The medal goes to the 1920s American firm of architects Corbett Harrison MacMurray Hood Fouilhoux & Crane.

Best Neologism
The prize here has to go to whoever perpetrated gentrification of the mind.

Best Oxymoron
This year’s prize to the National Liberal Club for Afternoon tea is served between 3.30pm and 5.30pm in the (non smoking) Smoking Room

Best Paint Shade
It’s been a difficult year for interior designers, after all they have to comne up with new names for the plethora of paint shades available. Manufacturers Crown and Dulux share the award for the following shades:
Fairy Dust (Crown)
Lavender Cupcake (Crown)
Potting Shed (Crown)
Secret Escape (Crown)
Botanical Extract (Crown)
Chatterbox (Crown)
Scrumptious (Crown)
Berry Smoothie (Dulux)
Wellbeing (Dulux)
Purple Pout (Dulux)
Muddy Puddle (Dulux)
Muddy Puddle (Dulux)

Best Book Title
This is always a popular category and this year we have two winners:
How to Live with a Calculating Cat by Eric Gurney
A Manual for Cleaning Women by Lucia Berlin

Best Academic Paper Title
There was really only one contender this year: Perilous patches and pitstaches: Imagined versus lived experiences of women’s body hair growth.

Best Research Topic
The two awards in this category go to:
‘Unperformable’ music — an ontological approach
101 uses for the sacred foreskin

Most Unusual Sport
Following on from last year’s Elephant Polo, this year we have Tuk-Tuk Polo, which avoids the problems of elephants going on the rampage.

Most Crass Media Statement
Oh dear, there are just so many of these from which to choose, but the jury finally agreed that the award goes to the Guardian headline:

Without journalism, there is no America

Outstanding News Headlines
Three medals are awarded this year to:
Large Hadron Collider: Weasel causes shutdown (actually the unfortunate animal turned out to be a Beech Marten.
Passengers evacuated at Purley station after train crashes into pheasant
Hitler’s wife’s knickers sold at auction

Best Marketing Bollocks

NOT FOR RELEASE, PUBLICATION OR DISTRIBUTION, IN WHOLE OR IN PART, DIRECTLY OR INDIRECTLY, IN OR INTO OR FROM THE UNITED STATES, AUSTRALIA, CANADA, JAPAN OR ANY OTHER JURISDICTION WHERE IT IS UNLAWFUL TO RELEASE, PUBLISH OR DISTRIBUTE THIS ANNOUNCEMENT.
[From a government email about sale of Lloyds shares; 28 January 2016]

Hand picked by artisan farmers
[The Real Olive Company tub of Organic Kalamata Olives]

From the sweeping 100ft balcony through to the iconic bed and integrated open fire, The May Fair’s signature Penthouse Suite is a 200-square metre exercise in light, space and opulent style.
[Quoted by Londonist]

And finally we come to …
Do what?
Where we celebrate the intelligibly unintelligible. This year the winner is:

The philosophy of tiddlers is that we maximise the possibilities for re-use by slicing information up into the smallest semantically meaningful units with rich modelling of relationships between them. Then we use aggregation and composition to weave the fragments together to present narrative stories.
TiddlyWiki aspires to provide an algebra for tiddlers, a concise way of expressing and exploring the relationships between items of information.
[From Philosophy of Tiddlers]

Let me know your favourite amusements of the year — and don’t forget to start collecting for 2017!

amusements

Ten Things for December

I thought we would start rounding up the year, so I give you …
Ten Odd Things I’ve Seen Auctioned this Year

  1. a pair of musket shot recovered from the ‘Invincible’ (1744-1758), with certificate of authenticity
  2. a decorative Christmas tree made from pipe cleaners
  3. an Elf transformer
  4. a Victorian stag hoof converted as an inkwell
  5. a Mills bomb grenade number 36M
  6. a Brookes Champion Standard B17 reproduction penny farthing
  7. a quantity of glamour magazines including Mayfair and Escort
  8. a vintage Agricastriol hand delivery pump for oil in original green cabinet
  9. a cocktail shaker in the form of a penguin
  10. an Edward VIII commemorative toilet roll holder, circa 1936, with an unopened pack of Tri-Sol medicated toilet paper (price 6d)
amusements, environment, history, links, medical, science

Your Monthly Links

Here’s this month’s instalment of links to items of interest, or amusement, you may have missed he first time round.
Science & Medicine
Who thought leprosy was only a biblical and medieval affliction? Well it ain’t, ‘cos it seems British red squirrels carry leprosy — only the third known species after humans and nine-banded armadillos.


Who’d be a scientist’s cat? Not content with abuse by Schrödinger, scientists continue to drop cats in aid properly understanding their self-righting mechanism.
Trees do it in secret. Communicate, that is. Ecologist Peter Wohlleben thinks he knows what trees feel and how they communicate. It’s not as far-fetched as it sounds.
The Guardian has a very interesting page which (goes some way) to showing you how visually impaired people see the world.
So why is it that French mothers don’t suffer from bladder incontinence? It sounds deeply dodgy, but it does appear to be a thing.
So there was this contemporary of Isaac Newton who produced the foundations of the current Information Age. Yes, Gottfried Wilhelm Leibniz.
Sexuality
So here’s yet another article suggesting that women don’t actually know what orgasm is. I had hoped we’d got past all this by now!
Environment
So here are ten things about our cutest invasive species: cats. If they weren’t so cute they’d not get away with half what they do.
There’s an interesting new theory about how the brown rat has conquered every city around the globe.
Language
Oxford University Press have recently published a massive new dictionary. It lists every surname found in the UK (including imported ones like Patel) which is held by 100 or more people. That’s almost 50,000. Not just that, but the OUP and academics have done deep research into all these names to determine their origins, often finding previously unknown documentary evidence. Want a copy? OK, well it’s four volumes and will set you back £400. But they reckon there will be an online accessible version.
Art & Literature
Prepare to be amazed. Artist Charles Young has created a complete animated metropolis from paper.
History
It seems the Romans really were ahead of the game. Researchers have discovered metallic ink used on some of the scrolls from Herculaneum (neighbour of Pompeii). That’s around 500 years earlier than previously thought.
Birth by C-section is rather (too?) common these days. But in days of yore, before modern medicine, C-sections were only performed in order to save a child by sacrificing the mother. It was rare for the mother to survive. But new evidence suggests that Beatrice of Bourbon survived a C-section as early as 1337. The previous record was of a Swiss case in 1500.
London

London blogger IanVisits walks the route London’s Roman Wall.
In which Diamond Geezer considers becoming a London cabbie.
Many pubs have dutiful dogs to look after them, but there are London pubs with characterful cats too.
Lifestyle
Just in case you hadn’t realised, there are actually good scientific reasons why you should always be naked. What’s more I can vouch for this from personal experience.
It seems we have it all wrong about addiction. We need to build “rat heaven” for humans rather than prison cells, as this video explains.
To quote poet Philip Larkin: They fuck you up, your mum and dad / They may not mean to, but they do / They fill you with the faults they had / And add some extra, just for you. So yes, here are 30 ways in which your childhood can affect your success as an adult. Which explains a lot.
I have a dream that one day the medical profession will make up their minds about alcohol consumption. Now some new research suggests a beer a day helps prevent stroke and heart disease.
Not content with London, Diamond Geezer takes an away-day to Lowestoft, Mrs M’s home town.
Shock, Horror, Humour

And finally … it seems that in the Middle Ages witches stole penises and kept them as pets or even grew them on trees as fruit. [The mind boggles over whether the fruit would be sold by the butcher or the greengrocer!]
More next month …