Friots

This is a representation of my facebook news feed on Monday night.  Click on the image for a larger view.

Before you ask, it's not a commentary on riots or society or anything like that.  Just an observation about my news feed on facebook.

Rudeness

A while back, I had a discussion with the Fish Lady about whether or not offering your hand in greeting to the ladyfolk was rude. She maintained that it was, whereas I insisted that it wasn't.

She's probably forgotten all about it by now. But not me. Oh, no. I was just biding my time until I had a free blog slot to fill. And also, I only just remembered it myself!

Take a look at these two pictures, one of which is rude:



Which one do you think is the rude one?

Is it the horrible beardy git extending his middle finger in a gesture that pretty much means 'stick this digit into your bum hole'?

Or is it the handsome chap extending his hand in a traditional gesture of greeting and friendship?

Now, I'll admit that up to and including Victorian times, it was traditional for a gentleman to wait for a lady to offer her hand.

But there are a few things that need to be taken into account.

Firstly, it's not Victorian times. I know this because I don't dress like this:



Since Victorian times, ladies have become much less soppy. Hardly any of them do embroidery any more and some of them even vote! More importantly, they have campaigned for and won equal rights. Which means they should be treated the same as men.

Of course the other problem with Victorian times was that, once the lady's hand was proffered, a gentlemen didn't shake it. Oh, no. More often than not, this happened instead:



No-one wants that now, do they?

Oh yeah... And while we're at it, a reminder:



They're BOTH rude! Because they mean THE SAME THING!

Queueland

Click the image to enlarge

This poster was inspired by our visit to Wookey Hole today.

Wookey Shithole, more like.

Not only was it a gazillion miles from anywhere, but it seemed to be mostly about queuing.  We queued for tickets.  Then we queued for 40 minutes to get into the caves themselves.  And once we were in there, we mainly queued to see bits of the caves.  Which were a bit shit.

The Relative Horribleness Of Foreign Sweets #10: Finland

Today's foreign treat hails from the land of Finns. I had high hopes from Finland, as I believe they're responsible for the Daim bar.

Unfortunately, the Finnish sweet that I tried for the purposes of this review was not a Daim bar.

It was this lolly.


I knew I was in trouble, when I unwrapped it and found a glossy black ball on the end of my stick. Stories involving glossy black balls on the end of stick never end well.


This particular glossy black ball had a peculiar unphotographable quality to it. I tried to get it in focus for ages, but the camera on my phone just could focus on it. It was almost as if it wasn't there. Or that my phone knew how this was going to end.

Here's how it ended:


Salty Liquorice flavour. Liquorice is fricking horrible. It's one of the most disgusting things I've ever put in my mouth. And I've eaten pepperamis and pot noodles! And this was salty too.

I'm going to say it again, just in case you didn't quite get the concept:

SALTY LIQUORICE!

Ugh.

As a post-script to this revolting little misadventure, I ended up throwing the godawful abomination in the bin after about 3 licks:


I'm sorry, Finland. Unless you can redeem yourself with some sort of caramelly chocolate confection, you're getting the lowest score I can give. -5,000,000 out of 5.

An Unexpected HOLmImDAY!

You know what's better than having a week off (ahem)?

Having an awesome unplanned week off (ahem)!

I am the lucky subject of an unexpected convergence of events that transpired to give me a whole week off (ahem)!

Do for all you people that don't have a week off (ahem), I'd like to offer my condolences.

I knew this picture would come in handy again one day:

The Relative Horribleness Of Foreign Sweets #9: South Africa

Here is a Milo bar. It's from South Africa.

It's chocolate and has biscuit in.

Sadly, Milo is painfully mediocre. If you look up 'mediocre' on Wikipedia, you will almost certainly see Milo mentioned.

I can't even think of anything to say about it. A mediocre 3 out of 5 for South Africa.

It's worth pointing out that if anyone disagrees with my ratings, they are more than welcome to point me in the direction of the finest sweets that any given country has to offer and I will gladly reconsider!

Which is my way of saying 'give me sweets!'

Nigel Hawthorne

This is a picture of Nigel Hawthorne.


Awesome though he was, Nigel Hawthorne has always presented me with a problem. His name is a blind spot for me. It always has been.

I know who he is. Of course I know who he is. He's a household name.

Bu for some reason, whenever I want to refer to him in conversation, his name evaporates, and the closest I can get to him is: 'You know, the guy from Yes Minister, The Madness of King George and Demolition Man.'

Sometimes my brain suggests that his name is Nigel Havers, but I always know its wrong, simply because it is so very, very wrong.

I'm hoping that by drawing a picture of him and writing a blog post about how I can never remember his name, I will embed him in my brain.

Or at least allow me to say: 'You know, the guy from Yes Minister, The Madness of King George, Demolition Man and that blog post I wrote...'

The Relative Horribleness Of Foreign Sweets #8: Belgium

Ahh, Belgium.

I've never been there and I don't know much about it. As far as I'm concerned, the most important thing to come out of Belgium is this:



This, my friends, is a Mars Bar. But not just any Mars Bar. It's a Mars Bar with almonds in it. In other words, it's an Almond Mars Bar.

And it's from Belgium.



Here's what it looks under the wrapper. Pretty much like a normal Mars Bar. Yum.

And then I bit into it...


Lordy, it was lovely. Look at that lovely gooey caramel and that lovely gooey nougat and those lovely crunchy almonds.

In fact it was so lovely that about three seconds later, it looked like this:


Belgium rocks. Five out of five, dudes!

Bloody Tetrachromats!

I wrote a post a month or so ago about colour perception and how women can see a whole selection of made up colours in between the actual colours that men can see.

It turns out that my theory is supported by science.

It would seem that a lady scientist called Gabriele Jordan, currently of Newcastle University published a paper a while back that suggested that some women have an extra colour detecting cone in their retinas that could enable them to see four primary colours instead of three, or at the very least be more sensitive to varying shades of colour. It's only women who have these cones for complicated scientific reasons involving chromosomes and uteruses. There's an article here that sums it up.

The upshot of it is that certain women may be able to see up to a million different colours, whereas a normal person (i.e. a man) can only see about a hundred.

The women that can't see a million different colours probably just pretend they can because they think it makes them better than men. In fact, it makes them more like birds, which are mostly tetrachromats. Which stands to reason, because birds are easily distracted by shiny things, too.

Here is a picture of that pesky tetrachromatic cone:

The Relative Horribleness Of Foreign Sweets #7: Japan

Remember the amazing box of foreign sweets that I wrote about a few days ago?

Well I made my first foray into it. For this post, I am concentrating on the Japanese sweets.

The first item is an attractive but tiny packet of Hello Kitty ball bearings.



I think, but I could be wrong, that they are supposed to be grape flavoured. They do kinda look like grapes. Kinda. And they taste like the kind of grapes that a sweet manufacturer who had never tasted grapes and had the flavour described to him by a golden retriever.

They weren't actually horrible, but they were nothing to write home about either!

Next up are these strawberry things:




They came in a packet that was exactly the same shape and size as this sachet of cat food:



This had me worried to begin with.



Fortunately the contents of the packet was nothing like the contents of the cat food sachet.



They tasted better, too. Kinda like strawberry gum. Not at all like processed prawns.

The official score for Japan is a 3 out of 5. Not great, but then, the sweets wen't great either!

At least Japan can take pride in the fact that Japanese sweets are nicer than cat food.