Sunday Of The Triffids

Today, Dr K and I saw a Triffid in a phone box.



Well, Dr K insists that it was just an abnormally large weed growing inside the phone box, but, well... here's a picture:


I think the evidence is clear. It was a triffid, and it was using the payphone.

I have to say that I'm not too concerned that they're going to take over the world just yet. I mean if they haven't even progressed to mobile phones - let alone smartphones, then they're at a major disadvantage.

If I get cornered by one, I'll just toss him my iPhone and make my escape while he's distracted by Angry Birds!


If Triffids are part of a plot by the Evil Cabal of Evil to take over the world (or just fuck with me) then I think they're going to have to up their game.

Battleships, maybe. That's a good game.

R.I.P. Rochester

My best friend died today.

I've had Rochester since he was a four week old kitten, rescued from an abusive home.

This afternoon, he died.


Here are some pictures (in approximate chronological order):

 He was tiny and I was skinny...  That was a long time ago.

You'd look startled too, if you'd been shoved in a small, pink pyramid. 

I'm not eating that crap.

Isn't this the single cutest picture you've ever seen?  That's Elliot spooning Rochester.

King of the castle. 

This is a pretty excellent impression of Darth Vader. 

What the hell?  No beard!!! 

Food? 

Dad, you're a creepy sod. 

I'm in your bed.  What are you gonna do about it? 

Rochester's a handsome chap. 

Why?  Why would you photograph me when I'm trying to sleep?  Paparazzi.

Not so skinny now, are you?  I can sit on that shelf you call a belly. 

I have a sinking feeling.

I miss him...

Progress... Or Lack Thereof.

Remember how, on Sunday evening, I told you that I would post a video for you?

You can't help but notice that it's not here yet. And it looks like it won't be here for quite some time.

Here is a progress bar:


It's actually a rotten fibber. It hasn't been running for 19 hours. It's been running for closer to 45 hours. I set it going on Sunday evening.

I can't help but think that the 14 hours remaining is probably a filthy lie, too.

I am certain that the Evil Cabal f Evil is at work again...

A Day In The Life...

Here's some maths for you:

Twenty One.

Do you know what that is?

No?

I'll tell you shall I?

It's the number of hours that the roadworks on the M5 will have cost me by the time they finish. And I begrudge every single one of them!

These roadworks started a few months ago and, for the duration, they have reduced the speed limit from 70mph to 50mph. Not only that, but they're going to continue until spring 2014.  Thats two years of stupid roadworks slowing me down on my way to and from work every day.  Plus every trip into town, every trip to the cinema or the shops, every trip to pick up my anti-sobriety friends.  Bah.

If you'd like that formula above simplified, read on...

So it take 3.4 minutes to travel the four miles of roadworks at the normal speed of 70mph. Because I go in to work early, there's hardly any traffic, so I always manage that speed.  Coming back, I occasionally meet some slow traffic, but not often enough to factor into my calculations (and because it's too hard for me).

At 50 mph, it takes 4.8 minutes.  That's a difference of 1.4 minutes every time I make the trip.

For work that's twice a day, 5 days a week (okay, I sometimes don't make the trip on a Freaky Friday - but if I'm going to do anything Freaky with my Friday, I invariably do, so I'm counting it), 45 weeks a year (allowing for holidays and stuff).

And it's going on for 2 years!

((((((4 miles of stupid roadworks / 50 mph) x 60 mins) - ((4 miles of no roadworks / 70 mph) x 60mins) x 2 trips a day) x 5 days a week) x 45 weeks a year) / 60 mins) x 2 years = 21 damn hours.

Damn you, roadworks.  Damn you for stealing (most of) a day of my life and damn you for making me do maths on my blog!

Here's a list of things I could be doing with that day you stole:

1. Watch Star Wars ten and a half times.

2. Bake a LOT of cakes. Like, shit loads of cakes!

3. Eat a LOT of cakes.

4. Walk to Oxford. With my feet!

5. Drive from Bristol to Aberdeen and back again via York and London.  That's assuming there aren't any roadworks en-route!

6. Perth.  I could fly to Perth.  IN AUSTRALIA!

7. Have a 2.8 minute lie-in every work day!

8. Write about 20 blog posts from scratch!

9. Build my R2-D2 Lego set four times!

Seaking of R2-D2 Lego sets.  If you check back here tomorrow, you may see a new high speed Lego building video.  You know you want it!

Lego Sunday

Hah!  See what I did there?

I made the word 'Sunday' out of Lego.  Because the post is called 'Lego Sunday'.  It's dry, post modern, ironic humour.  Or...  er...  something.

I suppose you're wondering why I might do something as crazy like naming a blog post 'Lego Sunday'.

Read on, and you might find out.

Today I went to Legoland.  See, you didn't have to read on very far to find out, did you?

I may have mentioned in the past how much I love Lego.  It's singularly* brilliant.  Dr K bought me a Lego Milennium Falcon for my birthday.

Anyway, back to Legoland.  Here are some pictures:

Oh no!  It's a big lego dinosaur come to eat me alive!

Who needs a zoo?  Lego elephants are way cooler than real elephants!

I resisted the temptation to look up his skirt.  I was afraid that I'd see a giant lego willy!

Yarr!

Shuttle!

What's that you said about my good lady, sir?  I challenge you to a duel!  Have at thee!

(Plastic swords can hurt if you get slapped in the face with one.)

Oh no!  I got eaten by a shark!  Fortunately, I'm not very palatable.

Kaz dwarfs bits of London.

Kaz and I try out the throne in Atlantis.   Not enough melted swords for my taste.  A throne just isn't a throne if there isn't a chance that you'll accidentally stab yourself in the bum!

Oh yeah.  And they might have had a little Star Wars exhibit on...

Fancy a drink?  There's always a little cantina around the corner!

This was the droid I was looking for!

I wonder if there's good skiing to be had on Hoth.

Endor is a nice holiday destination, too.  Lush forests.  Certain death at the hand of the Imperial army!

 The Millennium Falcon is so damn cool!

We were kind enough to allow the Dark Lord of the Sith to be photographed with us.  When you're as famous as Dr K and me, you have to make these concessions to the little people!

That was my day at Legoland.  It was awesome.

Afterwards, I was inspired to go home and build my Millennium Falcon, which has been waiting for the dining room table to become free.  Here's an epic high speed video!

( * 'Singularly'.  Because the word is 'Lego'.  And the plural of 'Lego' is also 'Lego'.  No 'S' on the end.  Unless you're the sort of dumbass who says 'sheeps' or 'deers' or 'doughnuts'...  no wait... )

The Relative Horribleness Of Foreign Sweets #30: Sweden

You remember yesterday, when I said that I had run out of foreign sweets?  I was wrong.

Turns out, Sweden had send me an entry that I'd forgotten about.

I don't know about you, but I tend to worry when the packaging of my sweets has a warning triangle on it.  This will not go well.

From the looks of them, these are the the Swedish equivalent of Haribo.  Tasty jelly sweets.  Mmm.

And indeed, the little fruit shaped prices are nice enough.  Lets move on to the others.

FUCK YOU, SWEDEN!  What the hell is wrong with you?  Stop putting salt on your sweets.  Stupid Sweden.

RED!  Beware salty sweets from the Scandinavian peninsula!

The Relative Horribleness Of Foreign Sweets #29: China

China is a big, big place.  As such, it's only fitting that they provide a larger selection of goodies for my taste buds to sample!


Here we have three very suspicious looking articles.  Presentation-wise, I'm not really keen on any of them!


I decided to get the worst out of the way first. These sweets have a giant shrimp on the front of the packet. Doesn't really bode well for me, considering I've never met a seafood that I liked. Still, in the interests of science (and padding out a blog post), I was willing to take one for the team.

Inside the shrimpy wrapper, it was  kinda like a big boiled sweet.  With stripes on.

Weirdly, it did not taste fishy at all.  In fact it tasted like peanut butter.  That's because inside that stripy shell, it was... er... peanut butter.  With not a hint of decapod crustacean.

On closer inspection of the packaging, there was no mention of shrimps at all.  So all in all it was a much less traumatic experience than I was expecting.

Not to worry, though.  There's plenty of trauma to come...



Not quite yet though.  Because despite looking quite a lot like a dog treat, this next one was bloody delicious. It had a tasty creamy bit surrounded by a lovely wafery bit and although it was much moister, it reminded me a lot of one of my favourite biscuits:  The pink wafer.


Pink wafers are deeply unpopular with the general population, but me and my tatsebuds like 'em.  And, in fact after tasting the chinese dog treat, I went out and bought a packet of pink wafers.

And scoffed them.


Finally we come onto this fruity little abomination.

I say it's some sort of fruit.  I'm not sure what fruit it is.  It was in a sweet wrapper and I am assured is what the people of Hong Kong munch instead of M&Ms.  I suspect someone was fibbing.

The skin was like leather, and when I bit into it, something salty squirted into my mouth.

Without further ado, I sent the little fucker to Finland*.

So China has a full range of sweets which range from absolutely fucking horrible to not entirely vomit-inducing to bloody lovely.  On average, I think it gets a 3.  Maybe a 3.5.  Either way, it's Amber.  Eat sweets in China at your own risk!

I have now run out of horrible foreign sweets.  But I still have a long way to go, so expect more in the not-too distant future!

.

( * You will remember, of course, that I coined the phrase 'to Finland' a few days ago.)

The Relative Horribleness Of Foreign Sweets #28: Cyprus

Now Cyprus is a tricky issue.  It's a bit Greek and a bit Turkish and therefore may not actually warrant an entry of it's own.  But I'm trying to string this out 'til the end of the week, and so I have decided that it qualifies!

 What's this?  More Turkish Delight?

Oh, my mistake.  It's Cyprus Delight.  You know, the traditional taste from Cyprus.  Not to be mistaken for the identical, but obviously entirely different Greek Delight from Greece and Turkish Delight from Turkey.

Upon opening the box, I discovered that presentation was not one of the strong points when it came to confectionery from Cyprus.  It looks a little like someone had a really heavy cold today.  Shortly thereafter, I discovered that taking photographs in focus was not one of my strong points when it came to confectionery from Cyprus.

So, much as I enjoy a bit of Turk...  er... Cyprus Delight, they lose a couple of points for copycatting the copycats and get a 3 out of five, which means that they're Amber too.

The Relative Horribleness Of Foreign Sweets #27: Greece

Greece.

It gave us Democracy, Philosophy and Trigonometry.  It also gave us dodgy knock-off Turkish delight.

But, I guess if it was made in Greece and bought in Greece, it must be Greek, so here goes!

Tasty enough.  Nothing like the melon that it claimed on the box.  As far as knock of Turkish Delight goes though, I think I preferred yesterday's Big Turk!

I'm only giving Greece a 3/5 Amber, because they're ripping off Turkey and, unlike Canada, didn't even bother to put chocolate on it!