The other day, whilst running the Unix command to check a filesystem, I wondered whether or not you could get a T-shirt with it on:
And it turned out that you certainly can. Obviously it's inspired by the French Connection UK line of clothing. I would really like to get one of these, but the obvious place to wear it would be to work, where people are actually likely to appreciate it, However, in the last couple of years I've got into the habit of wearing shirts to work (as I had to replace my increasingly worn and holey wardrobe) and any variation in this format would not only mean I'd have to go out and buy a whole load of new clothes, I'd also not get my money's worth for all the shirts I've bought.
However, when my current batch of clothes start to wear out, I might well switch to T-shirts. It turns out that there are loads to choose from - certainly enough for a week or two's worth. ThinkGeek has some good ones - I particularly like "There's no place like 127.0.0.1", and "cd /pub; more beer".
I don't know why all the sites that sell this kind of thing market it "for geeks", as I'm not one of those. Excuse me whilst I go and re-configure an X-server...
We were talking about ideal husbands and wives and coincidentally, on the Aimilia Show the other day there was a report that scientists had developed a female that does what she's told, doesn't speak unless she's spoken to, and even has an "off" switch. Aren't scientists clever?
Apparently people have got so sick of fashion models with their attitude problems, that they've designed a robotic equivalent. Considering that this robot is supposed to be looked at, it's a pity they haven't given more thought to its appearance:
It looks like we'll need to keep real women around for some time yet. Even on catwalks.
I Saw the Light...
The light bulb in one of my lounge lamps went at the weekend. Yesterday, I finally bought a replacement. Amazing news, I hear you say. And you heard it here first. A world exclusive.
The point is that I was forced to buy one of these new-fangled "green" light bulbs. Not green colour-wise - in fact it produces a whiter light than the old kind of bulb, which I quite like, but green in the sense that it costs a lot of money and allegedly helps the environment.
Having pretty much banned mercury in products like thermometers, it's rather puzzling that Father Al and his faithful followers are advocating bulbs which contain this harmful ingredient. I'm sure that these Green people know what they're doing.
The bulbs are supposed to be good because they use a lot less energy. Conventional bulbs give out loads of heat. In places like Texas this means that Jean Knee turns up her air conditioning, so wasting even more energy. In this country, the opposite is true. With these bulbs not helping to warm our houses, we'll need to make up for it by turning on our central heating.
Anyway, I was rather annoyed that I had to buy this product (they're phasing out the bad bulbs), until I realised that the light it gives out is better - less yellow. I'm looking forwards to buying more of these as other bulbs go in my flat. I only hope that claims about them lasting longer is true, otherwise I'll be bankrupt.
We all have dreams. I don't mean the ones you experience whilst asleep, as they can be horrible, or in my case just plain uninteresting. Last night I dreamt that someone was knocking on the front door. I woke up and went to see, but whoever it was had gone, or not been there. This is probably the most exciting dream I've had for several weeks.
No, I'm thinking more about fantasy. We all have dreams of being rich, or famous, or powerful, or completing a Greek crossword. And I'm sure that even the most unimaginitive people find their imaginations taking them to all sorts of places when it comes to members of the opposite sex (and/or the same, if that's your thing).
It seems that lots of women have fantasy husbands. For example, Bee has gone for Brad Pitt, whilst Tracy is more of a Johnny Depp girl. I'm not quite sure why anyone fantasizes about being married to an actor - they make a living out of being other people, their marriages rarely last, and they're hardly ever seen as they really are without all that war paint:
Heavy night last night, Johnny? Mr Depp on his way to Makeup first thing in the morning.
Actress Myrna Loy was known as the "Perfect Wife", a kind of role that she played many times in films. In the real world things were very different. As she said: "Some perfect wife I am. I've been married four times, divorced four times, have no children, and can't boil an egg." Though with someone like her to wake up next to, I'm sure most men would have happily done without omelettes.
The Perfect Wife
Incidentally, fantasizing about stars isn't always as harmless as it sounds. Chicago Gangster John Dillinger was a huge fan of Myrna Loy, to the extent that despite being on the run from the authorites in 1934 he risked going to see her latest film ("Manhattan Melodrama"). The FBI shot him dead as he left the cinema.
Another option for fantasy husband appears to be a failed politician. Presumably they've failed because they weren't as good at lying and backstabbing as their more successful colleagues. Several bloggers, including Jean Knee, are taking fantasy turns being married to Al Gore. This kind of fantasy husband recycling is particularly popular with the environmentally aware.
Personally, I have difficult imagining being one half of a fantasy marriage. You probably need to have experienced a good marriage to be able to fantasize about them. I'm also hopelessly uninformed about celebrity lifestyle issues, so I'm not sure what being married to a famous filmstar or TV journalist would actually involve.
For a woman, the first part of any dream marriage is probably the fairytale wedding, and one recent bizarre idea is to go to Verona and get married on the balcony where Juliet stood whilst being wooed by Romeo. How romantic. Of course shortly after this they both killed themselves. Apparently there are a lot of American tourists who don't let this worry them. People who decided to splash out and go to Europe to get married instead of Vegas, perhaps.
Someone's idea of a dream wedding
Anyway, I suspect that dream marriages and weddings are for women. And people with extra large thumbs, judging from the picture above...
I realised today that this blogging lark is potentially very dangerous. Things that other bloggers post and the comments that they leave here have a real influence on my life.
Luckily this isn't much of a worry for me, as all of my readers write sober and thoughtful comments. They wouldn't dream of typing the first thing that comes into their head, regardless of the consequences they might have for me.
An example of this was Dan's "28 days" post about Lent. Dan's desperately looking for a way to welch on his decision to give up intoxicating liquor for Lent without incurring the wrath of God, the Church or the Wife.
It's amazing what some people will put up on YouTube. I mean, why???
In this post, he mentioned McDonald's Filet-o-Fish, perhaps one of the most ridiculously named fast food meals ever. It doesn't help that Americans can't say or spell "fillet". As a direct result of this post, I've been thinking about fish burgers for the last two days, until by this lunchtime I just had to have one.
Sometimes your comments don't influence me enough. The last time I complained about busy shops on a Saturday, Tracy recommended that I go at 7am like she does. Alas, for the first time ever I forgot her wise words. I was too busy thinking about fish.
So I ended up going shopping at midday. The crowds, my tiredness and my hunger all conspired to make this a less than enjoyable experience. It took me even longer to get round because I was looking for the ingredients to make a fish burger.
I knew where the cheese was, the bread, and the tartar sauce (that heavenly condiment is the reason that fish were invented in the first place). Unfortunately, I couldn't find any burgers. There were various breaded fish fillets, but none of the packets had serving suggestions that involved putting them into buns. Even some measurements would have helped - I didn't want to get them home to find that the packet contained whole fish suppers or something.
They do sell fish cakes, which look like burger-sized hunks of fish. Only they're burger sized hunks of potato with traces of fish droppings. At least that's roughly what they taste like. Even Helena, who loves most kinds of fish, won't touch those.
In the end I found some chunky fish fingers. These had a picture of the product between two slices of bread. Result! I put two of these in each sandwich, and I think you'd agree that they look the business, except for the rubbish photo. Making them at home meant that I could wash them down with some Irn Bru, which they don't sell in McDonalds, at least not south of the border.
Of course, I did have to cook them first, which involved heating up the oven and then waiting 22 minutes. Then I had to waste precious time taking photos of them for this blog (though sadly I didn't wait to check whether they were okay before I ate my meal). I could have keeled over and died of starvation in the process. And my relatives would be suing Dan.
I wonder how many blogging-related deaths and injuries there are each year?
I gather that North America put its clocks forward last weekend for Summer Time. This seems a little optimistic given the weather they've been having, and I'm sure that it is impacting on my ability to be first on people's blogs. Our clocks change in a few weeks, but in the meantime please bear the time difference in mind when you're posting, so that you don't all post when I'm asleep. After all, that's hardly fair, is it?
Talking of time, I've been wondering about "The Restaurant at the End of the Universe", having recently rewatched "The Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy" (the TV series, not the film). I'm also wondering why I used to think it was good. Maybe my tastes have matured or something.
Anyway, in THHGTTG, they end up going to Milliways, the Restaurant and the End of the Universe. The idea is that you can sit and stuff your face with the finest grub and watch the Universe go bang or whatever it does, before returning back to your own time.
This restaurant ostensibly has two things going for it. Firstly, you pay for it by investing a ridiculously small amount of money in your own time and then withdrawing the money once you've travelled forwards in time. Leaving aside the fact that we can't go more than 80 years without a financial collapse of some kind, surely the bank people would have realised that the End was Nigh, and spent it before you could withdraw it?
The other advantage is that the chefs have got a hard deadline to produce your food in. Though I suspect this just increases your chances of going hungry.
This made me wonder what time period I'd put a restaurant in, if I had the technology. Major events such as wars would be rather tasteless, and the best thing I could come up with is the historic Moon Landing. I think this would be great for two reasons. Firstly, I'm too young to have been around then, and secondly, imagine the look on Neil Arstrong's face as he emerged from his space ship to come face to face with McDonald's on the Moon. There really would be no escape.
"That's one small portion of nuggets for Buzz, One giant Big Mac Meal for Me."
I'd welcome other suggestions for great eating venues, timewise.
I've never really played many drinking games. Most of the people I've found myself socialising with are far too serious about drinking. And what's the point of games where the winner drinks less? When I was at college in Lancaster, one of the other would-be maths teachers liked to play "Cardinal Puff". This involved performing a series of actions and words, and you had to down your drink if you made a single mistake. I don't remember anyone actually managing to get through the whole thing - after all, trying to recite something about Cardinal Puff whilst moving your arms and legs in a coordinated fashion isn't easy - I find it difficult enough to coordinate any two of my limbs when I'm sober.
The other day I was reading about the alcohol gun. This apparently fires shots of 1 oz (a weird American fluid measure equivalent to one twentieth of an extra large latte). At first sight, this appears to be a waste of a good drink, but I'm guessing that the sort of people who would think this was a fun way to spend PDT (Prime Drinking Time) are the sorts of idiots you get in American bars who make a show of downing shots that are less alcoholic than mineral water. After all, how stupid do these people look? If I was going to turn up to an alcohol gun party I'd bring something more like this: Or ideally, this, except that I never drink and drive:
This year's Beer Festival was a little rowdy
And I'm sure that whoever makes this product (if it really exists) aren't the first people to come up with the idea of putting something other than water in a water pistol. Though there are better (and less pleasant) things to use than good drink. Safety Warning(as required by relevant European Legislation)
As you know, I'm very concerned about the health and welfare of my readers, and I would like to stress that this blog promotes sensible drinking. While alcohol guns are likely to result in less of the harmful alcohol actually being consumed, we must point out that in the hands of a trained marksman this might not be the case. The size of the target area (your mouth) is also an important factor. In addition, health experts recommend that you combine alcohol with food consumption.
I've just returned from an enforced day out. My car needed its annual service and MOT, and the garage is about 20 minutes away by car, but an hour and a half by bus, since you have to change twice and the hourly timetables don't match up well. So rather than spend 3 hours getting to and from what would end up being a half day at work, I spent the day in the nearby town.
There were a couple of things I needed to do - pay a cheque into the bank (more about that later), buy a belt, some ear-drops and some ink, and the shops weren't open when I got there, so I spent an hour or so in Starbucks. I'd brought some books with me.
Half an hour later, I'd done my shopping. Half an hour after that I'd done the local museum and art gallery - a meagre collection of bits and pieces dug out of people's gardens and a handful of paintings, many of which were so dark you couldn't really make much out.
I lunched at McDonald's, and even got so bored that I went round the bookshops. I used to like shopping for books, but for some strange reason the shops round here don't stock any in Greek.
I was lucky with the weather - it had rained all day yesterday, but today was dry, and I did finish my book ("The Tenth Photograph", by Giorgos Pavlidis, which had a nail biting climax) but I think I'd rather have spent the day at work.
Monopoly Moment
The other week I had a "Monopoly moment". My ex handed me a letter that had arrived at her house for me, and it was from a bank. You know the Monopoly card that says "Bank error in your favour"? Well, it was like that. They'd discovered that they made a mistake about 10 years ago, and enclosed a cheque for the amount plus interest. It was only a small amount, but I was very pleased as I didn't realise that these things happened in real life. I suppose the next audit they do they'll find I owe them a few million...
Nasal Sex
I was checking my spam the other day - I hardly ever do this, and I was surprised that I had so little. Perhaps the spammers are being credit-crunched. Anyway, one of the mails had the title "Make it as hard as Pinocchio's nose".
I suppose I'm naive and innocent, but it had never occurred to me that the story of the loveable wooden puppet and his expanding organ had hidden sexual overtones. My female readers are probably going to tell me that they've all fantasised about this (actually if you have, please don't tell me), and no doubt a shrink on hearing that a patient had been exposed to this perversity as a child would prescribe an expensive course of pyschiatry and suggest that they sue the parents.
I've never seen the film, which is probably why I'm so normal. And innocent.
Είμαι βρετανός αλλά γεννήθηκα στην Κύπρο, και έμεινα εκεί όταν ήμουν έφηβος. Για αυτό, μ' ενδιαφέρει η ελληνική γλώσσα και ο πολιτισμός.
Email: brianovretanos[at]gmail.com
