Nixta Sinks

Hetracil, as expected, does not stand alone. It's actually a support site (phenomenally, in fact retentively well done) for a fictional blog of a man on Hetracil, which I've yet to read, but here's an interview with the seemingly rather unassuming author.

Today's unrelated Now Nixta Noze™: Laura Bush' middle name is Welch.

Beta is.

Gmail, Flickr, Tagcloud, Froogle (actually, just about everything Google does).

There was a time Beta meant something, like "use this at your own risk, and you might have to rebuild your computer afterwards" - Microsoft still more or less stick to that, but perhaps it's a legal ploy to allow companies to make money and provide services cowering behind every excuse for poor performance or availability.

Friendster no longer is beta, after about 3 years, though Fiendster now links to AdultFriendFinder (is there any escape from those bastards?) so presumably that never made it into prodution.

This is one of the reasons I want to get out of the industry. Most software that's delivered is produced (I nearly said engineered, but that would give engineers a bad name) in such a haphazard way that it ends up with the client in at best beta form, and rarely drags itself beyond that. At least that's my experience. Certain target areas of the software industry require certification and approval of their systems and that will of course extend to the software behind them (I'll take a guess at banks and aircraft control systems being amongst them). Some others require that the software works or they won't sell much (consumer software, in particular, though barely and by the skin of their teeth). But not mine. Oh, no. The shame of it! Though it makes my job easier.

Oh, YBNBY, how do you do it? Today's Funniest website this year, if only for its comprehensive parody.

My favourite notion is that there are many American men who will actually go and see their doctor and ask them about Hetracil. I think a change to the law of confidentiality is required to out these oddballs (pun most definitely intended) and create a sub-branch of the Darwin awards for them. It's in the greater interest of humanity, I think.

Now, I shouldn't really tell you all this, but I need my release. I need to tell someone the terror that I've undergone, and since I don't have a shrink with a leather couch, you lot will have to do, so listen carefully and listen well:

Dr. R. takes his laundry to his mother.

I know. Shocking! But wait!

Until yesterday I was under the impression that he took it for his mother to wash and iron (he doesn't iron his own shirts so didn't need the iron I bought for the flat), but it turns out that her cleaner/maid/washerwoman or whatever today's accepted parlance for the foreign service is does it. Now, I have no problem with that, but cleaners apparently work in unison to bring down the employing classes (let's not pretend this is a classless society now - I've been in classes since I can remember - middle ones, early ones, late ones, remedial ones) because our cleaner came yesterday and put the doc's washing into the washing machine.

This wouldn't be a big deal *except* that I put mine in, taking his out. Upon seeing this he insisted that we wash them all together, to which I protested but availlessly. You see, not only do we wear the exact same socks, but also the exact same underpants! The shame! The nausea! I feel sick thinking about it now. He didn't notice at the time he belligerently insisted on joint laundry, but now he's a wreck and mere shadow of the man he was yesterday.

I don't know what's worse: That I might be wearing his undercrackers, or that we independently have settled on the same make and model. Perhaps, like me, his mother buys them for him in which case we must blame our parents, but it's little consolation.

That's it. My hour's up. Same time next week.

Spector
Start with this - evidently old news. What was all that about life and art and imitating. I'd not seen Spector recently. My apologies for rehashing old jokes. It goes straight in with the Saddam in the infant court imagery that The Daily Show picked up on straight away, stealing even more of my thunder (I'll be living in a spooky world of incessant silent lightning soon).

Dead parrot dead please
For the first time in perhaps 30 years, people might be able to say "Dead Parrot" without there being some back-reference to that appallingly overwrought Palin/Cleese sketch. And about time. There were many funnier things they did, even along the same lines such as the Cheese Shop. Even at the age of 7 I wished wholeheartedly upon first listening to some tape in the car across Europe that I should never hear the Parrot Sketch again. However, the Independent's headline the other day beginning "Dead parrot" caused a great deal less giggling amongst my co-workers than I thought it should - I'm far too obsessed...

H5N1 OUT! Foot and mouth IN!
Bumping into Rob and Giles last night, I got embroiled in a very simple discussion of politics with them (YAWN, but we enjoyed it, so shut up, but I decided I'd mention it because Giles' thoughts on Bush' financial prowess were pant-pissingly terrifying). That's beside the point though. What I enjoy tremendously about Rob's company is the frequent opportunity to tempt his own foot into his mouth. For example, in discussing the relative health of Giles' parents, I suggested that Giles' mother's prostate cancer was most definitely a discriminating factor, at which Rob took me to task in an appalled diatribe:

Rob: How could you say such a thing?! I mean. She might really have it?!
Nixta: What?
R: That's a really thoughtless and... I... I'm speechless. You don't know if she has it or not.
N: I think I do...
R: How? How could you?
Giles: We're talking about my *mother*, Rob.
[Silence. Rob turns red and admits to class A stupidity]

His other great clanger, admittedly no more than a verbal typo, brainfart, or whatever you want to call it, was the delightful "When Hitler declared war on Germany", which if you think about it might have made for a very very different latter 20th century, but people have written enough bollocks on the "What if Hitler..." theme that we shall leave it at that this minute.

Briefly whilst on the subject of Giles, via his very fine site, a link to a story on the US embassy and Congestion Charge fees from the beeb provides this gem from an embassy employee:

"We wouldn't impose it on you and, likewise, it's not appropriate, nor is it allowed, for your government to impose it on us."

Shut up you whining little bitches, and pay like the rest of us. Given the way the US reams everyone, especially foreigners (expats) for anything it possibly can, I think that's a bit rich. Perhaps they're realising that they've blown their year's budget on petrol and porkie pies... I've a good mind to go down there and shit on their eagle.

Law in ass shocker
Yet again, we see evidence that the law is little more than a hee-hawing equid, not because of the decision, but because of the reasons for that decision and the palming off of the case to a higher court.

"The smell of ripe strawberries is stable and durable," Eden said. "That smell is well-known to consumers who will have memories of it from childhood."

That quote alone conjures up images of a post-fuckwittian futuristic society where legend tells of a time when children could smell strawberries for real. Arsefaces.

Think of the children. Smoke
On that note though, how long do we think it will be until smoking is regarded as a fond romanticism in the same way as we read about opium dens in Victorian literature? 30 years? 60 years? 100 years? Perhaps that's not fair - maybe smoking is already a romantic notion, given that we all know it murders us from the inside yet still tend to love watching old Bogey chuffing at it. No, when will it be the stuff of history books? The stuff of folklore? Children will stare wide-eyed and drop-jawed at their grandmother when she tells of a time her parents could smoke in the street. AND WOULD! Even worse, you could buy a packet of cigarettes for the cost of a bus ride. The Grauniad referred to comments by Ash warning that a selective smoking ban for pubs which sell food would widen the health imbalance in this capitalist shambles of a country (my words, mixed with theirs, but there's none of mine here):

The anti-smoking group Ash said ... [the smoking ban] would add to health inequalities, since pubs in poor areas tend not to serve food.

Now, if we bring up a generation of children to associate smoking with poverty, what is that going to tell them about the rest of the world where people can smoke without prejudice and who haven't a hope of implementing a smoking ban? Probably what they're being told now, only again it'll widen the divide, not close it.

Flu season my arse, it's now a permanent state of being. Doctors could more usefully let me know when to expect the next no-flu season, but what do they know?

An evening in the company of fancy artist types, followed by their youthful afterparty goings on from Bond Street to Dover Street and into Soho left me yesterday with an all-body (and no mind) hangover of monstrous proportions. So much so that here is a shortlist of the most constructive things I did yesterday under its influence:

• Tried to put money intended for the vending machine into the photocopier
• Spend most of the day replying to questions with "Dunno"
• Leave my cellphone at home and not realise until I'm half way to work
• Not even go down the local when Dr. R. offered even though I've been trying to tempt him down there since we moved into this place
• Spend the evening attempting to connect to my new DSL service unsuccessfully, to find out today that the phone cable hadn't been attached

Today is a little better, but my lungs have not yet recovered.

YBNBY posted an article a little while back discussing the great British tradition of streaking. It was one of the few articles that I felt qualified to comment on, albeit tangentially, since one of the streakers attended Tit Hall (at the time of streaking, I believe), my old college back when I was busy honing the art of not studying.

Well, as you can see in the comments section of this perhaps NSFW post, I was rather unfairly flamed just today for a comment I didn't make. It's also possible that I was rather unintelligibly flamed for the comment I did make.

Either way, I could not let the issue lie, and had to respond. The comments pertained to someone else's assertion that Europeans didn't trim their nether-regions in 1989, a frankly irrelevant opinion anyway. Here is my response:

Should the two of you ever learn to read, you might learn to interpret what you're reading (also known as "comprehension") and then, finally, realise that it was cardinal and not I that cast the opinion on late 80s trimming, you netherslappers. In the meantime, shut your mouths, roll your fingers back into their natural and chewable fists, and try to desist from slapping your bitchflaps at your browsers, you chimpboys.

And if dhananjay's contribution is supposed to imply that I'm some sort of Trinity Hall official, then join the fistchewers for although you can read, you haven't progressed to comprehension, nor indeed by the looks of things, writing. If not, then please disregard this notice and thank you for your payment.

Soupy twist.

Numbnuts, the lot of them.

I've been away. Moved apartment, been ill, dealt with apartment. Part of dealing with the apartment has been getting a fucking phone line put in, which I had been assured was already done, and that before I could get broadband of course.

Counting down the days to the next disappointment when I find out that the broadband, although technically set up and confirmed as possible on my phone line, turns out to be registered accidentally to a conviceted paedophile and al-q'ida suspect, leading to the inevitable breaking down of my door by a horde of marauding monkeyboys dressed in black and intent on ruining my newly tiled terrace and leaking rooflight.

They'll probably stamp their muddied boots all over my sofa too, the bastards.

It's been a right royal pain in the arse, moving into this apartment, but I think it's mostly behind me. Oh, who am I kidding? The bath will fall through the floor next time I fill it with water - I've already noticed cracks at the top of the wall whenever I take a bath.

Did you know that it's technically illegal to post a For Sale sign in your car in many parts of this country? A £165 fine was recently imposed upon a chap sitting two seats down in this ratcage known as work because he'd put a sign up in his car. Furthermore, his car was towed! It wasn't parked illegally, but some kaaaaaant had decided to report him and get his car removed.

What a country. Pretty soon you won't even be able to dump your corpses in concrete any more!

If you're hankering for a whiff of home, and you're Welsh, you need look no further than here. Just imagine, sitting by your coal fire in the living room of your terraced home in the center of Cardiff, listening to the clock ticking and the distant sound of locals harmonising in a pub and elsewhere crunching bones in a game of Rugby Football, cracking open one of these, and immediately your coal fire, dank armchair, and pissed pants are cast from your mind. Worked for Catherine Zeta Jones. She apparently buys up crates of the stuff.

If you're up for something a little more scary, check out this property (on sale for a paltry 2.75 million euro) which comes with its own free Grim Reaper. Cool, but nearly three million euro's worth of cool? Perhaps not.

It's been a while since I had any update, and this might be a long overdue (read old and well-known) post, but sod it.

Enjoy the old babe-in-arms, or heavily armed baby ape president, Prezbabe and his Speechalist.

Dear God,

Please send another pretzel.

Yours in perpetuity,

Nixta
(For and on behalf of the entire human race)