Over The Hill

Well here it is: the day of my fiftieth birthday. It seems only the other day that I was 49! As you can see, Wosog was, as usual, completely prepared for the occasion. Well that's not quite true: she had planned to get some hair dye and hair restorer to add to the full set of dentures and Zimmer frame that she jokingly bought for my fortieth birthday (Ha, bloody Ha!).

I keep telling myself that age is a state of mind, but if this is the state of my body at fifty, what state is my mind in? Anyway, as you can see I am very pleased to be fifty----you should see me when I'm miserable!

A Great Honour

Guess what? I have just been made an admin of the Flickr Group Flickr Weirdies of the World: a Supreme Weirdie, no less. This is, indeed, a great honour and, unlike my Fellowship of the Royal College of Physicians, doesn't carry with it a hefty annual fee. It all started with my realisation at the weekend that Wosog had suddenly been made a Supreme Weirdie.

This shift in our social standing relative to each other began to send shock waves through our previously relatively stable relationship. Wosog wasn't sure that she could continue to share a bed with a mere Weirdie Supreme (an ordinary member of the group), and was suggesting that I should start walking 2 paces behind her when we were in public. Fortunately, the other Supreme Weirdies took swift and decisive action to elevate me too. Wosog is still smarting a little at having got one up on me for such a short time, but I think she knows that the decision is for the best in the long term.

To celebrate this Great Happening I thought I would post this link to the Muppet Matrix brought to my attention by KnowWonNose of Seattle, Founding Supreme Weirdie and reknowned muppetologist----enjoy!

No Mice Were Harmed...

I think this little video clip is quite clever. Even though the commentary is in French (and well beyond my knowledge of the language), it doesn't detract from the terrible things that appear to be done to the hapless mouse in the name of science.

What do you think?

Buddy, Can You Spare A Dime?

I’ve always tended to avoid debt. I’m not much of a risk-taker. With this in mind, I was interested to read this Times Online article about The USA’s National Debt. Apparently, Congress has agreed to allow the Government to borrow another $781 billion (£447 billion), increasing the national debt limit — the maximum America can borrow — from $8 trillion and $184 billion to $8 trillion and $961 billion.

This is quite a lot of dosh:

• Enough to buy Buckingham Palace 9000 times (as if you would want to)


• Enough to give every person on the planet $1500.00 (a fortune to many, small change to some)


• Enough to build 28 solid gold Eiffel Towers (another pointless exercise)


• Enough to solve the Palestinian crisis by rehousing every Israeli and Palestinian family in a £1.5m detached house in Henley-on-Thames (Interesting, but they’d probably still bicker over the relative sizes of their swimming pools etc).

Anyway, what do you think would be the best use of $9 trillion?

Intimations Of Mortality

I know you won't believe it, but yours truly is 50 (yes, fifty) in 4 days time! I didn't seem to be bothered about it until quite recently , unlike my 40th birthday which plunged me into the slough of despond for months. It's when you find yourself attracted to web pages like this one that you realise that you are getting a bit morose.

I'm afraid I become almost impossible to live with when my mood turns in this direction. I'd just like to put Wosog's name down for canonisation now if I may!

Your favourite transformer?

Some of you may remember the advert on televison a while ago for the Citroen C4 in which the car appeared to change into a disco dancing transformer robot. Video clips like this tend to spread like wildfire on the Internet these days, and often spawn slightly less impressive spoof versions.

In this case, however, the geeks have gone further and produced a real dancing transformer robot. Looks as if it is made out of Meccano to me, and it doesn't have quite the sense of rhythm of the Citroen C4 version. I suppose we should really be impressed that it can dance at all, but I'm afraid it doesn't fill me with enthusiasm! What do you think?

PS My friend RobotJam has since pointed me in the direction of this transformer, which I think is the best. There's something a bit creepy about it, though!

Nothing's Too Much Trouble?

To return to the subject of being able to buy anything over the Internet, it seems that you can buy nothing as well (thanks to Stevekin for the link)! I believe the tartan paint is very popular where I come from, but unfortunately they don't seem to have the procrastinators' friend the round tuit.

Was It Something We Said?

Gdog is going to Australia for 4 weeks in July. She's taking part in a project organised by International Student Volunteers, Inc. As far as I can gather, she'll be involved in a conservation project for 2 weeks then have a nice wee holiday for the other 2 weeks. She's, understandably, very excited about the whole thing.

Wosog, on the other hand, has already started worrying about what might happen to her little girl not just on the other side of the planet, but during the journey there. This is not helped by the fact that Gdog will be leaving just before we get back to Scotland from our summer holiday in Greece. More joys of parenthood, right enough!