Nick's Blog
Hubble Trouble Blog and Bubble
31/10/2008 @ 23:13
--------------------------------------------------------------------------------
There's a petition that's been sent to the Justice Secretary demanding that all those people who were burnt as witches back in the deep dark days of yore get an official pardon.
These petitioners, who no doubt have honourable intentions of righting an ancient wrong, have missed out on one salient point....
...What if these people really were witches? Just because we've got rid of the crime of witchcraft doesn't mean that these people weren't witches in the first place. I mean, who's to say they weren't making evil brews, putting curses on good honest Christian folk and conduting lewd and vile debasinges? You just can't go around overturning centuries old crimes just because they're not crimes today. In the future stealing money off a train and coshing the driver might become legalised but you still wouldn't posthumously pardon Ronnie Biggs would you? These do gooders say these people were innocent but where's the evidence, eh? I tell you where...it's all with the other side!
As I understand it, to obtain a pardon you have to obtain some evidence that a wrong was committed in the first place. Now if you look up the records of a witchcraft trial from the 1600s, assuming they still exist, and gather all the witness statements, corroborating testimonies and whatever forensic evidence there might have been I'm sure what you'll find is the following...
"That vile and excreable warlocke, Josiah Ffinche, did debasinge himfelf in all mannyere of wytchcrafte, foul magicks, potioneering, putting curfef on all stoute yeomen of the warde and having unnaturale relations with cats, pigs and livestockes and fo fay all of usse, fwear to the Almightye 'cos I was there and faw everythinge and fo did all my mates"
That's hardly evidence to prove innocence, is it? What will be next? The descendents of French knights sueing the British government for injuries sustained by their ancestors from salvos of arrows?
I tell ye, 'tis wytchcrafte gone madde!
White Anglo Saxon Blogger
27/10/2008 @ 11:53
--------------------------------------------------------------------------------
My home has been infested with wasps.
I believe they've made a nest in the airbrick to the front of the house. If they have, then they've built themselves a coffin....
OK, crap attempts at melodrama aside this is a big annoyance and potential threat to Junior if they sting him. It's really creepy how they just drop out of a broken light fixture in my office and buzz around: It's like I've got my own wasps on tap. I've been working putting floorboards in the loft and there are as many as 4 wasps buzzing around at any one time. They've been pretty stupid and landing on the newly laid boards so it's been easy to end their existence with a swift stamp of my foot or (my personal favourite) dropping a really large book about DIY on them.
This morning I did a sweep of my office window ledge and the floor of the loft and counted 30 dead wasps. Combined with the ones I swept up a few weeks ago and I reckon I've killed over 50 wasps. This doesn't sit well with me; this is probably the most life I have taken in my years on this Earth. I just casually kill these creatures without any remorse...indeed, I actually dervive pleasure from wiping out the evil little Jaspers which could qualify me for psychopath status.
But as I terminate them with extreme prejudice, I realise that my strategy is all wrong. Just like former US Secretary of State for Defence, Bob McNamara, in the Vietnam war I have fallen for the "body count" strategy: I have figured that if I kill more of them than they inflict damage on me, then that will break their will to fight, victory will be mine and I will have stopped the Insect Domino Theory (if I fail to stop wasps today, then I'll have hornets to deal with tomorrow). And like McNamara, I have failed to appreciate one crucial point...the wasps, like the Viet Cong, place a different value on life than I do. They will accept any level of casualties to further their aims whereas I can become discoraged by the lack of progress in my campaign to defeat them. This hasn't been helped by listening to a lot of 60s protest songs either. Next thing I'll know, Jane Fonda will pay a visit to the wasps' nest.
The other thing I've noticed is just how creepy a whole bunch of wasps can be. I was up in the loft earlier with just one wasp buzzing in the background. There's one light source up there and it cast a big scary ass shadow of the wasp on the wall in front of me. A minute later, there were two shadows. Both stripey bastards landed on the floor...the brand new floor I'd just laid...and I used the DIY book and my left foot to send them to wasp hell. Returning to my labours, I then noticed another wasp shadow and that awful buzzing. Then another. Then another.
I had images of a seventies sci-fi film called "Phase IV" where a bunch of scientists go up against iddy biddy ants...albeit hyper intelligent ones. The ants in that movie were well organised and could meet any weapon the scientists meted out on them. In one memorable scene, the humans use a yellow pesticide against them. Once about a million of the ants had been killed, the hive send out a lone little ant to retrieve a bit of pesticide. He grabs one in his little mandibles, walks about two feet and dies. Then another ant picks it up, walks a few feet and dies. This goes on until the last ant gets the bit of pesticide to the Queen ant, who eats it and then poops a whole new bunch of ants who are immune to yellow pesticide.
Now for all I know, these wasps are cooking up some similar scheme. I've got about 15 dead wasp bodies up in the loft in various states of squishiness and every so often another one buzzes in, investigates the field of carnage and buzzes back. What if the queen has sent a scout just so they can devise a counter to my DIY book weapon? What if hundreds of wasps drop a big book on me? You may laugh but with all this global crunch as credit warming going on, it might happen. OK it probably won't but I can't afford to become complacent.
So I have no alternative; I have to act fast and kill the wasp scouts just in case. Eternal vigilance is the price of freedom. In order to prevent a Planet of the Wasps scenario, I must kill and kill again. The violence never ends and the irony is, as I kill each wasps, part of the civilised side of me dies and I am forced to face the question; who is the real monster?
Fuck it....I'm going to call in a pest exterminator.
High Blogs Drifter
22/10/2008 @ 22:50
--------------------------------------------------------------------------------
Today Wifey, Junior and m'self all went shopping for a few baby related things, one of which being a high chair for the little one as he's about to start weening pretty soon.
Overall we had a good trip, as far as trips to a major shopping centre go. We got a christening present and card for friends of ours who have just had a baby girl, we bought Junior some toys and some baby feeding spoons and dishes. But we didn't get the high chair we wanted.
We saw the actual model we wanted there on the shop floor but an enquiry with the staff revealed that the particular model was out of stock....everywhere. No branch of the shop had that model in stock and they weren't even sure it was still being made. They suspected it was but if we were prepared to wait a few weeks, then all would be revealed.
Now Wifey, being a logical lawyer type, asked if we could buy the one they had on the shop floor. She had logically reasoned that if the item was totally out of stock and possibly discontinued, then what harm could it do if we bought the shop floor model? Apparently this shop doesn't work like that: We couldn't buy the one on the shop floor. It could be out on display fooling other customers that its available when it isn't. It could sit there taking up space when other, actually in stock items are condemned to sit in storage and it could sit there mocking passers by with the promise of seating a baby in the family hearth but it can't actually be sold.
Now I was with Wifey on this one....it did seem stupid to have an item that can't be sold on display but I just figured that we'd either have to wait a few weeks or else look for another high chair in another shop but Wifey's reactions were a bit different.
She brooded....and brooded...AND BROODED. I've seen her do this before: If she can't find the product she wants in a shop she'll storm out of it cursing its name and swearing never to patronise it ever again (I can't begin to tell you the amount of healing work I've had to do between her and Paperchase the novelty stationers). We left that shop, fortunately not in a huff, and went on to a major high street chemists but I could tell that the high chair incident was still rankling with her. A couple of slow moving shoppers who were clogging up the skin care aisle felt the wrath of her impatience and I was left to carry an ever increasing amount of comfort shopping.
As we left the chemist, my arms straining from carring 160 disposable nappies, 3 packets of antiseptic wipes, some foreign muck you put on your face to cleanse the pores, some Mr. Matey bubble bath, royal jelly hand wash and the toys from the original shop, we passed the lifts to the ground floor and the exit. I longed to get home quickly.
"Let's not take that lift...it's usually full of morons and scum" said Wifey. "We'll take the lifts that are right at the end of the shopping centre way past all the crowds and in the most densely packed part of the entire building". OK, I made that last part up but the obstacles were all too real.
"Erm...darling...are you still upset that we couldn't get that high chair?"
"HISSSSSSSSSSSSSSSS"
"OK, you are....I think it was Rudyard Kipling who once wrote that if you could treat fortune and adversity as the same imposter...."
"HISSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSS!"
"OK, poor choice of bon mot. Look, I share in your frustration but, glass half full, we have lots of toys and...erm...nappies...so it hasn't all been a waste"
"No....not a TOTAL waste. I mean, how stupid is it to refuse to sell an out of stock item just because it's the floor model? I mean, that's a policy devised by madmen! Madmen I say!"
I would have rolled my eyes, gone "pfffftttt!" and held my palms up in the air in "whaddyagonnado" sympathy but I could no longer feel anything in my amrs from the elbows down.
So we muttered and grumbled our way home before a thought hit me along the way: I'm not going to hear the last of this. No, I'm going to be woken up at 2am with the bedroom light going on and me being shaken awake to hear these words....
"But it was the best design of high chair we've seen! It's stupid they wouldn't sell it to us!"
"Fnuurrrrurrrhhh...I......know....dumb.....oh well.......goodnight"
"Harumph......sigh........heavy sigh......look, there's only one thing to do: You're going to have to break in there and get the chair. Leave the money for it at the till."
"Wha?.....OK, I'll do it tomorrow.......goodnight"
"NO! Now! Put some trousers on...don't bother with combing your hair and you can have a shower when you get back....oh, and you'll have to iron your black clothes yourself as I'll be feeding baby."
Mark my words...this WILL happen sometime in the next 3 nights!
I've Been Driving In My Blog
14/10/2008 @ 14:13
--------------------------------------------------------------------------------
I saw a completely and utterly useless thing on my travels this morning: Go faster stripes on a G-Wizz car. What is the point? On a good day and with a powerful gale behind you the G-Wizz can get up to 3, maybe 4 in terms of speed. There is no point in making one of these diddy little road useable electric golf carts into a racing model because what would it race against? An old persons buggy? A microscooter? Colin the asthmatic ant?
Maybe the driver was being ironic: Maybe go faster stripes on a G-Wizz is a critique of our modern, speed obsessed society and the desire to outdo our neighbour. If that's the case then the owner of that car is a pretentious knob. I wonder how much it cost to jazz up a G-Wizz with the sports option? Some people just have money to burn...or at least, they did until this week.
Quantum of Blogging
06/10/2008 @ 23:14
--------------------------------------------------------------------------------
I don't know if you've seen the trailer for the new James Bond movie, "Quantum of Solace" or the poster for it yet, but it looks pretty good to me.
However, it has come under considerable criticism of late because....wait for this....Bond is carrying a gun in the poster. Well knock me down with a feather; James Bond ACTUALLY carring a gun in a promotional poster? Will the insanity never cease? Apparently critics have claimed that seeing Bond carrying a gun, and in this case an automatic rifle, in the poster glamourises violence and guns.
Well, I'm sorry to have to bring these people up with current affairs...or even drag them into reality...but THIS IS JAMES BOND WE'RE TALKING ABOUT! Show me a James Bond promotional poster that DOESN'T have him carrying a gun. We've had 46 years of Bond shooting, stabbing, punching and blowing things up in the movies and has it ever led to copycat incidents of young impressionable men going out and gunning down imaginary SMERSH agents? The answer is no.
Bond is no gangsta rapper or street urchin. He's a fictional secret agent, licenced to kill. LICENCED...TO...KILL...got that? If you don't like it, don't buy a cinema ticket to see it...oh, and avoid ITV on Bank Holiday weekends, Christmas and Easter as well. I cannot believe that the petty minded Committee For Worrying Us Shitless on Our Behalf is wasting a nanosecond of time on this issue.
So let's get this right; Bond can shove someone in a tank full of piranha fish and crack a tasteless joke in the bargain but he can't carry an assault rifle in a poster? He can have unprotective sex with gazillions of women but woe is he who brandishes any weapon longer than a starting pistol?
It's another example of how simple but ever so slightly guilty pleasures in our lives are slowly being besieged with the aim of getting rid of them down the line. Mark my words before the 2020's are done, James Bond will be a government IT contractor who is in a long term co-habiting relationship and never makes snap judgements because, you know, labelling people is wrong. He'll drink his milk on the rocks and go to bed before 9pm.
So enjoy the latest Bond movie before he's reduced to using mild intense bad language to defeat the enemies of freedom.
Marquis of Blog Rules
03/10/2008 @ 17:52
--------------------------------------------------------------------------------
I have a confession to make: I have never won a fist fight in my life. I must have fought over a dozen in my life; mostly at school but a couple in adult life (muggings) and on each occasion I have lost. Convincingly. The last time, I was hospitalised.
Now I don't want you all to think you can now attack me safe in the knowledge that victory will be yours...that's not the point of this blog and besides, it is against the law and even if I can't beat you with fisticuffmanship, then I'll whup yo ass in a court of law and extract compensation (mainly an award for the humiliation I will suffer as I go down like a paper telegraph pole).
The fact is, I lost another fist fight the other day....to my 5 month old son. We were in the back garden, enjoying a bit of September sun, when he reaches out, grabs the corner of my mouth and gives it a big, hard tug. "OwwwwOOOOWWWW AGH, CUT IT OUT SON!" I cried as he pulled my face into the ground, chuckling all the way. Then I suddenly regret not having trimmed his fingernails as he went for my eyes and tried to gouge them out. Luckily I pulled back in time for him merely to drag an adamantine fingernail right across my lower eyelids.
He followed this up with a grab at my nose which he then pulled into his mouth, biting down hard with his gums which I have to say are rock hard as well. What kind of uberkid have I got on my hands here?
Finally, he did some flailing fists to pummel my face a bit and before I knew it, I realised I had lost a fight to a baby. He had everything stacked in his favour: There was no way I could retaliate and his cute chuckles and big blue eyed stares meant that he could have grabbed a nearby sharp object, plunged it in by back and still have got away with it.
I'm not a macho, brute force kind of guy and I abhor violence...but I just hope that the next time I'm in a fight I'll get to win! In the meantime, little Adam Hughes remains the undisputed super-babyweight champion of the world.
