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!

Animal Magnetism

I firmly believe that you can buy anything over the Internet, if only you know where to look. Those searching for straightforward things like cameras, iPods and computers probably need look no further than Amazon or Dabs.com. DVDs and CDs can often be found on CD Wow. For more obscure things, especially if you don't mind second-hand, I suspect eBay is the place, although I've never actually searched the site, believe it or not. However, if I ever have the sudden urge to try and source a rarity like, say, fluff from Elvis Presley's natal cleft (look it up), eBay is probably where I would start (after a Google search, of course). On the dodgier side, I'm sure if you know where to look, tissue type-matched kidneys are out there somewhere!

Specialty sites are a boon to those with strange interests: take United Nuclear for example (Supplier of the Most Powerful Magnets on Earth). The warnings on the site make ownership of neodymium magnets look as exciting and potentially hazardous as ice climbing or bungee jumping. The question that occurs to me, though, is "Who buys these things?". Having said that, the supermagnets do sound like fun, if somewhat pricey. They can apparently affect every computer in a room, and may cause loose magnetic objects in the room to fly towards them: just like in the cartoons! Handling 2 supermagnets at one time sounds like a job for, well, Superman!

I've got a birthday coming up next month, so if I come out some morning and find the postman pinned between a parcel and my car I'll know that Wosog has been reading the blog again!

That Kloskowski Beat?

I'm sure most of you never look at the carefully crafted sidebar attached to this blog. You're too intent on find out what subject that demented Scottish bloke is ranting on about today. Well, a few of you may have spotted the insight into my catholic musical tastes that the little Last.fm thingy gives.

This clever little device spies on my iTunes and gives you my latest "top ten". Favourites this week include Joni Mitchell, The Killers, Beyonce, and---at number four--Kloskowski. "Who?" you say. "Is this some obscure eastern European rock band?" Well no, it's actually none other than Matt Kloskowski who's a Photoshop guru and podcaster. I have heard he plays a mean ukulele too, though!

"Sorry" Seems To Be The Hardest Word....

It's so hard to say sorry sometimes isn't it? It can be difficult to find exactly the right combination of words to convey the sorrow that you feel. Never fear, the Web is here in the form of this excellent Apology Note Generator. That link is actually to the men's version, but don't worry girls there's one for you too.

I suspect this handy site has saved many a marriage. How could a wife's anger fail to crumble in the face of a note such as this:

Subject:"I truly apologize..."

Dear, Darlin',

I humbly ask for your forgiveness for neglecting to put my dishes in the dishwasher.
I was on my knees worshipping your shrine, and thought it could wait.

So I'm super tense, hoping you don't banish me to the couch for a month. Please let me live.
Forget about the money you owe me, and we'll call it even.


Love,
Your loving husband,

Sog.

What Would Albert Have Said?

My good Flickr friend in Canada, Cap'n Canuck, pointed me in the direction of this site where you can take this famous picture of Einstein and substitute the text of your choice.

I always thought Einstein was a lovely little guy, but if you look at some of the examples, he apparently wrote some really quite offensive things.

Bad Albert, Bad!

Blogger's Block

I know I've been a bad blogger recently: not posting nearly often enough. I'll try to perform better, but meantime here's a handy link via Bifurcated Rivets.

Joyful at Jongleurs

As part of my campaign to have a social life a tenth the size of Gdog's, I went with Wosog to Jongleurs Comedy Club in Glasgow last night. I booked the tickets over the internet, and I had no idea how big the club was inside, or where we would be sitting in relation to the stage. In fact we were quite some distance from the stage, but we could still see it reasonably well. The good sound system ensured that we could make out the comedians' jokes most of the time.

As with most of these things, the show seemed to take ages to get underway, but this gave Wosog and I, who were a bit older than three quarters of the audience, a chance to do some "people watching". It was fascinating to watch girls in their teens chain smoking, and consuming enough alcohol to render me semi-conscious, with no apparent effect on them!

The first guy up was Dominic Woodward. He got the show off to a good start, although from reviews such as this on the web he obviously tells a similar set of jokes every time (maybe they all do). Second on was Tony Hendriks, a Jamaican comedian who was really funny. A female Scottish comedian started up the second half. We were later told that she was usually a warm-up act, and she certainly seemed a bit inexperienced. The show finished with Paul Tonkinson, who Wosog had seen on tv before. He managed to control the audience most of the time, although he almost seemed to lose control when he strayed onto the subject of The Rangers v Celtic football match. We thought a minor riot was going to break out at that point!

All in all, it was an enjoyable evening. I think we'll both be back some time.

Happy Birthday Flickr

My favourite website bar none is two years old today. Many people were concerned that when Yahoo! took over the "magic" of Flickr would ebb away, but as far as I can see the site goes from strength to strength.

As well as providing a huge stimulus to my interest in photography, Flickr has allowed me to make contact with many interesting, like-minded people literally all over the planet. Even if you're not too interested in photography, it's well worth checking out.

Munich

Went with Gdog to see Steven Spielberg's film "Munich" about the Black September attack on the Israeli Olympic Team in 1972, and its aftermath. I was 16 years old at that time, and I do remember the news footage of the masked figures on the concrete balconies of the Olympic Village. A few days before, I had seen a television documentary about the operation organised by Mossad to kill the individuals responsible and, assuming that the documentary was more historically accurate, the film took some quite significant liberties for dramatic effect!

One of the most important of these was the suggestion that the team responsible had previously had no experience of killing people. The documentary stated that the team were crack Mossad operatives recruited from organisations equivalent to our SAS. Certainly the impression that these guys were total rookies created a lot of dramatic tension in the film, and gave a reason why the Eric Bana character should be so angst-ridden, especially towards the end. This feature aside, I think the first part of the film is reasonably accurate, but as far as I can see the second half was much more loosely "based on a true story".

Overall, I though the film was excellent and even though it was quite long the time didn't seem to drag. The message that violent revenge is a futile exercise is certainly no less true today than it was then!

Snow what?

Drifting aimlessly through cyberspace yesterday I came across this list of innuit words for snow. I wasn't totally convinced of its veracity, however.

I think things look reasonable enough until you get to the word for "fried snow" then "deep fried snow" (surely a Scottish delicacy). "Snow burgers" called MacTla has a definite hint of "sampling the yellow snow".

One of my favourites is Ertla ( the mind boggles), and another is huantla (anything is possible with teenagers). I also love the idea of selling snow to tourists: this part of the list could well be genuine, for all I know.

All in all, this is the most entertaining thing I've read about snow in a while--perhaps ever!

Dangerous Liaisons?

I see that having sex before stressful events reduces the stress experienced (at least as measured by the blood pressure response). You have to have full sex though---what we doctors call penile-vaginal intercourse (PVI)---for it to work. "Do-it-yourself jobs" and other forms of furtive fumbling don't have the same effect.

We've got another Practice visit to do with our quality targets, and I've got my annual appraisal coming up in March. I wonder if Wosog can fit me in (to coin a phrase) before then?

No stone left unturned...

According to the Sunday Times, William Shatner has sold his kidney stone to an online casino for $25,000 (£14,000). The stone was responsible for an episode of severe renal colic that Shatner experienced last autumn. In fact, Mr Shatner's website states that he was given $75,000 for the fascinating object.

The casino will apparently add it to its collection of unsual items that includes a toasted cheese sandwich with an image of the Virgin Mary. Shatner is planning to give the money to charity.

This definitely proves, beyond doubt, that our current World is far weirder than any planet Bill visited as Captain of the USS Enterprise!

He's a lumberjack, and he's OK?

I was interested to read in the Sunday Times today about Croatian lumberjack Stjepan Lizacic. It seems that Mr Lizacic is not entirely happy with the results of the transplant of a female kidney that he has received, and he is planning to sue his local health authority.

Since the transplant he claims to have "developed a strong passion for ironing, sewing, washing dishes, sorting clothes in wardrobes, and even knitting." He has also given up his heavy drinking sessions, and his wife is said to be delighted.

I believe Wosog has already made enquires about how my name can be added to the Transplant List....