Longleat

This week, my brother and his wife accompanied Dr K and I to Longleat.  It was pretty awesome.

The thing that entertained me most about the trip, though, was this sign in the tiger enclosure:

In particular, it reminded me very much of the rubbish pictures that I produce for this blog.  And to prove that point, I made one just like it:

See?

Later in the day, we got lost in the maze.  I recorded a little video about that, but my computer is being an arse today, so I can't show it to you.  Watch this space though, cos it'll be up some time in the week!

I've Been Ruined

I wrote a lovely, long post earlier.  It was awesome.  It was a rant about a bunch of things that were annoying me at the moment.  Sadly, the Evil Cabal Of Evil had other ideas, and amongst other things, deleted my little piece of literary genius before I could share it with you.

Also, they somehow disabled the IR function of the wireless video sender that I bought this weekend shortly after I'd got it working perfectly.  And they made my computer crash every half an hour or so while I was trying to animate.

So that was nice.  At least I know they haven't left me, which is good, I guess.

Anyway, instead I have for you a few thoughts on Dr K:

Dr K is particularly lovely.  In fact she's so lovely that I've been ruined for all the other girls:

The come up to me an they're all like: 'Hey Dazza you're so handsome that bits of me tingle when I think about you.'

And I'm like 'Ew, no, you repulse me because you are not as lovely as Dr K!'

But when I see Dr K, I am not repulsed at all, on account of her loveliness. I could ogle her all day.  In  fact sometimes I do.

And that's it for this week.  Ta ta.

Dr K's Magical Mystery Tour Part Three

We're home, which means I can provide you with that awesome photo extravaganza that I promised!

Here's our whole weekend in graphic novel form!  As usual, you can click on each image for a larger version!

Dr K's Magical Mystery Tour Part Two

Today's magical gold envelope took us to Hack Green Secret Nuclear Bunker, where we learned many Nuclear Secrets.

Also we walked all the way round Chester on the City Walls, had a cream tea and then visited friends for pizza and jam.

Unfortunately, technical problems are preventing me from posting more than one picture per post, however when I get home tomorrow night I will post a photo extravaganza for your perusal!

Dr K's Magical Mystery Tour Part One

It's Dr K's birthday this weekend and she's being taken on a three day magical mystery tour!

We left home at nine and headed North. After a couple of hours, we pulled into Keele Services so she could have her first surprise of the weekend.

She was presented with three shiny, gold envelopes. In each envelope was a mystery destination, one for each day. The tension was palpable as she tried to decide which envelope to choose. It was more exciting than an episode of the X Factor!

And for her first day out, Dr K picked... Chester Zoo!

Expect more photos soon!

The Great Clothing Expansion

Dr K has been suffering from a serious problem of late. Her clothes have been expanding. It's very worrying for her.

A few months ago, most of the clothes that she wore on a day to day basis fitted her just fine.

But now, they're all baggy and shapeless. She has even had to buy some new, smaller clothes in order to counter the problem.

We haven't been able to work out what the problem is, for certain, but I have been able to narrow it down to the three most probable root causes:

Anti-Moths: Moths have a bad reputation when it comes to clothing. Apparently they eat fabric and leave big holes in your shirts. But maybe there's something else hanging around in the wardrobe. Some sort of anti moth. A winged insect which, rather than eating clothing actually weaves extra clothing using a rudimentary loom.

Dark Matter: scientists claim that 90% of the matter in the universe is undetectable by our current technology. Obviously this means that as scientific gadgetry gets better, we'll be able to see more an more of it. Dr K's clothes were always too big for her. We just couldn't detect it before!

Radiation: This is my personal favourite. We live near a nuclear power station. Everyone knows that radiation can have all sorts of unexpected effects. Just look at the Incredible Hulk or the Amazing Spider-Man. Perhaps an exposure to radiation has triggered an uncontrollable increase in the size of Dr K's clothes.

That's it.  I simply cannot think of any more plausible explanations for this strange expansion of Dr K's clothing.

The Great Cheese Puff Robbery

Take a look at this picture:

It's a picture of Dr K enjoying a bag of crisps.  Cheese puffs, to be precise.  My cheese puffs to be even more precise.

Having cooked and eaten dinner, I was still a little hungry, so searched the kitchen for something tasty.  What I found was cheese puffs.  I put them on the sofa and went off to make Dr K a lovely cup of tea.

When I returned to the lounge with her tea a few minutes later, I found her eating my cheese puffs.

Look at the malevolent glee on her face.  Hmph.

Yet More Things That People Say

"I didn't see the point in carrying on sucking it when it was horrible and all." Kaz trying a liquorice lolly.


"I'd rather be a geek of tea than a geek of men running around playing with their balls." My response to a member of the football cult after being accused of geekness.


"I had mushy peas instead of a drink." Dr K really knows how to live it up!


"Just watched the finale of Torchwood. It's like the TV just got up and shit in my eyes!" I had just watched the finale of Torchwood and it was like the TV had got up and shit in my eyes.


"I think she has a whole camel down her trousers."  Dr K.


"I've worked on magnum for ten year. I did Solero for a few year. All in, I been here 25 year."  Kate at the Wall's ice cream factory.


"Dazza is my second favourite vegetable." Dr K really knows how to compliment a chap.


"You'll get what you're given and you'll be grateful." Carol the dinner lady responding to some helpful advice on how to butter my bacon bun.


"Getting the arthritic pussy injected again ." Dr K makes a pussy joke...  about the cat and his arthritis.  You lot have filthy minds!

ROFL, PMSL & LMAO

Okay, remember yesterday when I said 'Just don't get me started on 'LMAO', 'ROFL' or 'PMSL''? Well, someone did.

M'colleague, Rachael, who's also my dealer, didn't know what ROFL, PMSL and LMAO meant, so I had to explain. And then we had a discussion about the order in which these acronyms should be used - you know, which is the more extreme reaction and so on.

This is what we came up with:




<-- LOW ------------- HIGH -->
LOL ROFL PMSL LMAO


Now, I realise that placing LMAO at the top of the scale might be controversial, as it is commonly used as a relatively tame reaction to humour, however, I believe it should be much higher.  I have illustrated each phrase. I think you'll see why once you've seen them (as usual, you can click on each picture for a larger version):

This is a standard LOL or Laugh Out Loud.  Nothing dodgy here, just a laugh along the lines of 'ho ho ho',  'har de har' or somesuch.

Next up is a ROFL, or Roll On Floor Laughing.  Again, nothing particularly extreme.  Just a laugh that's so good that my legs have buckled out from underneath me and I'm having a good old roll on the floor.

This is here it starts to get a bit icky.  PMSL, or Pissed Myself Laughing.  I mean, yuck.  Loss of bladder control.  Who does that?  Someone who needs clean trousers, that's who!

Are you disgusted by this one?  Appalled? Hmm? You should be.  In this picture I have LMAOed, or Laughed My Arse Off.  The consequences of laughing one's arse off are twofold:  Shit and gore.  Never laugh this much, I beg of you!

And that is why LMAO is clearly the worst one.

Finally, a little ironic anecdote:  Dr K and I were at the local shopping Mall to eat chicken and we popped into a shop.  In that shop was a jumper, which Dr K tried on especially for your entertainment:

LOL

In general I wouldn't type a word or turn of phrase that I wouldn't use aloud.

The major exception to this rule is the word 'negligible' which I can't say aloud properly, no matter how hard I try. It's a ridiculous word. It's also a very useful word, though, so I use it every now and again in written form, but hardly ever in speech.

So, to the eponymous* word: 'LOL'. It's actually a pretty useful word, too. It fills a spot for which there is no other single word in the English language. In normal use, it acknowledges that a humorous statement or event has occurred and indicates approval of said humorous statement or event.

So in general, I have no issues with the word. 'LOL'.

Well... Okay. I do have a teeny tiny, itsy bitsy problem with it.

You see, it's actually an acronym for the phrase 'Laugh Out Loud'. And, more often than not, the humorous statement or event did not actually induce laughter of an 'out loud' type. Most of the time, I would suggest it induces an 'Internal Appreciation Of The Humorous Statement Or Event' (IAOTHSOE) or, at best a 'Small Chuckle' (SC).

My good pal, Mr Berry once told me a short anecdote about a guy ( I don't know his name, so lets call him Eugene) who sat at the next desk in his office, to whom he forwarded an amusing email. Eugene responded with an email that consisted of the word 'LOL' and nothing else.

Mr Berry would not have had a problem with this, except that he was sitting right next to Eugene and knew that he had not laughed out loud. In fact Eugene had shown no physical signs of amusement at all. Which meant that his 'LOL' was a dirty, stinking and outrageous LIE!

How can you trust someone that is prepared to lie outrageously to you, hmm?

Anyway, it's probably society's fault. Either that or Eugene's parents, Bartholomew and Gertude**.

So anyway, although I have my reservations about it, I'm prepared to accept that 'LOL' does not mean that I've induced fits of laughter but that someone has noticed that I made a funny. (Just don't get me started on 'LMAO', 'ROFL' or 'PMSL'.)

I wonder what would happen if I started saying 'LOL' out loud. I suspect I would get some pretty strange looks. Stranger than normal, I mean!

Those excellent gags were supplied by Dr K, by the way!

While writing this post, I began to wonder what people around the world use instead of 'LOL'. I checked with my only properly foreign friend, the Fish Lady, who told me that in Poland, they use 'LOL' as well, although a direct translation of 'Laugh Out Loud' would be 'Umierac Ze Sheichu' which would be 'UZS'. Doesn't exactly roll off the tongue.

In France it might be 'Mort De Rire', which would be 'MDR', which is a little close to 'Murder' for my tastes...

( * 'Eponymous' is much easier to say aloud than 'negligible'. )

( ** I didn't know their names either, so I made them up. )

Butter Up

I have noticed a disturbing trend in the catering industry. Dinner ladies are skimping on butter (or spread).

For example, when I ask for a bacon sarnie in the canteen, it is assumed that I do not require butter (or spread) on my bun.

A bacon sandwich without butter (or spread) is a dry, disappointing travesty.

After five years of frequenting the same canteen, I have just about trained the dinner ladies to butter (or spread) my sarnie. If however, I do not properly supervise the buttering (or spreading), I end up with a stingy micron thick scraping of butter (or spread) on just one side of the sandwich. Not even enough to taste.

I have therefore decided that some sort of formula is needed for the discerning dinner lady so she can calculate of the optimum thickness of butter (or spread) to put on a given slice of bread.

Obviously, any guide should be backed up with complicated mathematics. (I should point out that before I started this process, Dr K declared off hand that the butter (or spread) should be about half a millimetre thick and that all this effort was unnecessary, however in order to support my endeavour she was happy to assist me and, afterward, eat the bread and butter).

With a little bit of help from Dr K, I came up with this formula (you can click on it for a larger version):



Complicated stuff, huh? Who'd have thought algebra would come in handy? Fortunately, quite a lot of this data is available to us.

I started by calculating the weight of the optimum amount of butter (or spread).

Here's the bread before the butter (or spread):



And here it is afterward. It's not perfectly spread, I know. I am not a trained professional!



As you can see, the difference, and therefore the weight of the butter (or spread) is 8 grams.

According to my good friend Wikipedia, the density of butter (or spread) is 0.959 grams per cubic centimetre.

The bread is 13cm long and 12cm wide.

Let's populate that formula, shall we?



So all we have to do is work out the value of X. Easy peasy!

It's just over 0.05cm, by the way. That's half a millimetre.

And let's have it in a more scientific sounding measurement: the butter (or spread) should be 500 microns thick!

So, now we know how to order a bacon butty:




(Dr K whipped the bread and butter (or spread) off the scales the moment I finished weighing them. It was gone in moments!)




UPDATE 14/10/2011: I brought up the formula and the required amount of butter (or spread) with Carol the Dinner Lady in the canteen this morning whilst ordering my bacon bun.


'You'll get what you're given,' she declared, sternly. 'And you'll be grateful.'


I did.  And I was.

A Wholemeal Post

Dr K has a thing about wholemeal.

If there's a wholemeal alternative to a product, then she's drawn to it like a moth to a lightbulb. Wholemeal bread, wholemeal pasta, wholemeal muffins. Hell, if there was a wholemeal iPhone available, that's the one she'd pick.

The problem is that 'wholemeal' appears to be a code word for 'horrible'. In fact I think it may be a label that food manufacturers put on food in which they have replaced the nice, tasty ingredients with dust.

Yuck.

I suspect, although I can't be sure, that whenever Dr K guffs, she lets out a little cloud of dust. That would explain the little dusty patches in her spot on the sofa...

Tea In Bed

Every morning, I make Dr K a lovely cup of tea and bring it to her in bed. I do it because I'm an awesome boyfriend.

But yesterday I thought I'd have a bit of a lie-in.

Shouldn't be a problem, because Dr K lies in at the the weekend too. Really late sometimes. And if she was in a lying-in competition, she would totally win. She's a pro. Hard-core. She's so good at lying in, in fact, that she often lies in right through the optimum tea drinking period and ends up with a stone cold cuppa.

Enough about Dr K's Pro Lying-In though, and more about my lie-in.

There I was, lying-in and having a thoroughly lovely time. It was maybe nine o'clock. In was all snuggly and warm and fast asleep. And then I was rudely awoken.

'Hey baby, are you going to make me a cup of tea?'

At first, I thought it was part of the delightful dream I was having. You know the one where you're flying through an Indian restaurant. Like this:


A demand for tea seemed a bit incongruous with that image though, so I dismissed it out of hand and went back to racing poppadoms through clouds of onion bhajis.

'Are you going to make the tea?'

There it was again. This time it woke me up properly, so I said some naughty words which, paraphrased, went something like this: 'No, my precious darling. I regret to advise that I am not, in fact, getting out of bed to make you a cup of tea.'

And then I went back to sleep again.

About an hour later, I got up and made some tea. Dr K was fast asleep and didn't drink it.

Fast forward to this morning and I was aiming for another serious attempt at a lie-in and I heard the voice again. Only this time it wasn't demanding anything.

'I'm going to make you a cup of tea, baby,' she said.

And she did. She's lovely, she is.

Peaking

Today, I walked up a hill. This one, in fact:


It's Cam Peak, since you ask! According to the Wikipedia article that I just doctored, it's four hundred miles high and really, really steep. Also it looks a bit like a boob. A single, solitary, grassy boob.

Having climbed to the top of it, I collapsed and died and so was unable to take any photos up there.

Fortunately, I got better in time to see this field of beefs:


All this walking made me hungry, so I went home and cooked me a nice juicy steak! Yum.

Queue Too

I was recently standing in a queue, with Dr K, in the Cribbs Causeway branch of Marks and Spencer. They seemed to be a bit short on staff, so the queue was moving slowly.

I was quite bored. I get bored easily, and you know how I hate queuing. But there wasn't much that could be done about it, so I endured. The couple behind us, however were not so resigned to their fate, choosing instead to complain loudly and angrily to each other.

'It's ridiculous,' said the man (who had a silly teddy-boy haircut so I'm going to call him Ted). 'This is supposed to be Bristol's flagship store and they can't even find enough staff to man the tills. And this bloody idiot is serving people really slowly. Look at him. I think he might be retarded or something.'

This went on for several minutes, and I developed a deep rooted and sincere dislike of Ted. So I decided to amuse myself at his expense.

'I really enjoy queuing,' I informed Dr K, loudly. 'It's just so much fun.'

It all went quiet behind me. I could feel Ted's eyes burning into my back.

'I mean,' I continued, 'queuing is so much better than just standing around aimlessly. It's like themed standing. And you get stuff at the end of it. How cool is that?'

'It's okay,' agreed Dr K. 'But standing in the shower is even more fun.'

She had a good point.

Ted wasn't having any of my nonsense. He resumed his bellyaching with renewed vigour and a bit more volume.

'I can't stand it when shops treat their customers like cattle,' he groused. 'Someone needs to tell them that this is completely unacceptable...'

He was obviously still staring at me with white hot fury, as I could feel the back of my jacket smouldering.

'Remind me,' I said to Dr K, 'to thank the chap at the till for the excellent queuing opportunity. It's certainly the nicest queue I've stood in today.'

This continued for a few minutes more, until we reached the front of the queue and a new till was opened.

As we left I managed to get a really good look at Ted, who was glaring at me with open hatred. It's curious how people that look like dicks often are actually dicks as well.

The Household Hierarchy

So no-one liked my rambling monday-centric post yesterday. Apparently it was substandard, unoriginal and/or crap. And three people expressed their disappointment that the Boomtown Rats weren't even referenced once.

So, it was shit. You know what? I'm not sorry. I'll probably do it again.

Anyway, Dr K and I were having a discussion the other day about how the hierarchy works in our house.

And then it was mentioned that I hadn't done a diagram or chart for a while.

So without further ado, I present the hierarchy of our household in the order proscribed by Dr K:


For those not in the know, the players, in order, are: Steve Jobs (representing the Evil Cabal of Evil), me, tea, Rochester, Dexter, Grimlock (King of Autobots) and, at the very bottom, Dr K.

I think Dr K is undervaluing herself, but far be it from me to argue with her.

Household position aside, she may not know it, but I'm the best boyfriend in the world.

Why, I hear you ask?

Well, because I just set the new season of True Blood to record for her. It starts tonight and she didn't even know it.

I'm so awesome.

There's No Such Thing As A Free Lunch...

...Although the shreds of plastic wrapping and paper that Dr K found in her lunch meant that she came as close as you ever get! Yum yum. Plastic and paper.

Didn't put her off though and she scoffed her liver and onions and mash and then got a refund!

Also we went to another castle. At least it was called Elvaston Castle, but I'd say it was more of a big house. Sure, it has crenelations, but that doesn't make it a castle in my book.

Judge for yourself. I took a few pictures:









I also took a lovely picture of Dr K looking like a model:


And I finally got my cream tea:


This is important because if I don't get a cream tea then I'm not on holiday.

In fact as this trip involved visiting my brother, spending time with my parents and going out for lunch with Dr K's mum, it could easily have fallen into the 'visiting family' category which, as everyone knows is officially a chore - even if it's fun.

So the cream tea officially changed my visit to the Midlands from a chore to a holiday. Brilliant!

Of course this rule doesn't always work in my favour - remember the Conference I went on in January for work where they served mini cream teas? Well that was officially a holiday. Disappointingly, it wasn't the worst holiday I ever had.

I'm writing this post in the car on the way back home, which means Dr K is utterly thrashing me at the Eddie Stobart game.

I can't wait to sleep in my own bed again.

Chatsworth

Today we took my mother to Chatsworth house, because that's the sort of thing mothers like to do.

While she sat in the cafe with her copy of Woman's Weekly, we all went off and explored the gardens which were full of jolly interesting stuff and things!


Here's the big Emperor Fountain. Legend has it that the eponymous emperor lies just under the water and pees straight up into the air. Nothing wrong with his prostate then!


This is a picture of me looking rather dashing. Oh, and there's a bit of landscape behind me. But who cares about that? I'm in the picture and let's face it, you can't take your eyes off me!


There were quite a lot of bums in the garden. Here is one of them. And he's pointing at a statue.


Here's Dr K looking very tiny. I believe that the bust on top of the column is Brent Spiner who played Data in Star Trek The Next Generation, although I can't be sure.


Here is another photo of Dr K. This time she's next to a very large urn. It's very large. We suspect it contains the ashes of Big Daddy, who was also very large.


This wee beastie was prowling around the gardens. I snuck up behind it and stuck a 'kick me' sign on it's bottom before it spotted and ate me. I got better, though.


Here is a picture of me looking very handsome on top of a picturesque archway in the gardens.


Unfortunately, shortly after the archway, Dr K and I got separated for an hour or so and she had the camera. So I had to draw this picture from memory. I think you'll agree that it is uncannily realistic!

Tomorrow's mission is to find me a cream tea. Yum.

Nine Things I Like

1. Tea
2. Curry
3. Dr K
4. Cottage Pie
5. Rochester
6. The Cinema
7. Batman
8. Charts
9. My iPad!

Shopping: An Abuse Of Human Rights Or Just A Plain Old War Crime?

Recently, I went to the lovely city of Bath with Dr K*.

Unfortunately, we had forgotten that it was sales season. Bath was packed with sale-fevered females hauling their long suffering, shopping bag laden male companions along behind them. Honestly, why do so many women insist on dragging their men out on shopping trips when they know they hate it!

After witnessing defeated and despairing men in their hundreds traipsing around behind their wives, being berated for not sharing in the retail enthusiasm, I saw one particularly horrific example of ritual humiliation of a man by his wife involving a pair of furry slippers and I began to wonder if there was a law against subjecting them to such treatment!

It turns out there is. In fact there's a couple:

Article 3 of the European Convention on Human Rights states that:

"No one shall be subjected to torture or to inhuman or degrading treatment or punishment."

Being forced to go shopping is the very definition of inhuman and degrading treatment.

In fact if one were to accept that there was, indeed a battle of the sexes, then it becomes obvious that men are being effectively held as prisoners of war in the shops by their female captors and subjecting them to this torture is, in fact, a war crime under the Geneva Convention:

"Persons ... shall in all circumstances be treated humanely, without any adverse distinction founded on race, colour, religion or faith, sex, birth or wealth..." and "...the following acts are and shall remain prohibited at any time... cruel treatment and torture... outrages upon personal dignity, in particular humiliating and degrading treatment;"

So basically, if your woman drags you out shopping, you should suggest going to the shopping centre at Nuremberg, where justice can be meted out.


( * To clarify - we were not there to go shopping. Dr K has considerably less tolerance for shopping than the average female. )

Picture: I was only following orders.