Today I think it is Friday. Yesterday I thought it was Friday. Tomorrow I will probably think it's Wednesday. This is what bank holidays and/or sickness do(es) to you.

Porsche CEO: 'boo hoo hoo' (vid)

The congestion charge really seems to have worked, surprisingly. (Surprisingly to Labour, too. Cough.) I'm looking forward (as a non-driver, obviously) to its introduction in Manchester and the improvements to public transport.

Darn Porsche drivers and their interstitial advertising video clips and their—hey, hey, I wanna stick my head outta the window! When you're in a convertible it's like you're chasing something really really fast! I mean, uh... *looks shifty*

Hunt down and kill the owner for dog food. Or human food. I'd tuck in.

I guess at least it's nice to live somewhere where stories like this are reported in the news.

Dogs rescued in cliff-top drama* d'awwww.

*(owner also safe)

My package arrived so I can post this up here too:

Flock

12 May 2008
for Erin, who is sick

In the end, what most surprised me
was that anything could graze
on the morning-jewelled blueness,
on that field of summer baize.
But I saw them shake their fleeces
and I think I heard them bleat,
so there must be something up there
for those airborne sheep to eat.

Written just now while trying to think of witty things to say in an email. Figured I should write something crap rather than nothing at all...

Cheek Addiction

He can't get enough of your rubs.
He'll wear down your fingers to stubs.
You ought to take pause:
he's the neighbours', not yours,
and when Piper finds out, you're in trubs.

I made a number of false starts at a witty satire about the changes at my workplace before ending up with this. Uh. I think people prefer my cat poems, anyway...

Interesting one for transhumanists.

(a leading expert in pain based at the University of Birmingham sounds like quite a specialised role...)

Cambridge autistic rat-keepers' club. Again, quite specialised there.

Adult ADHD 'linked to lost work'

Vet staff shortage risking lives

Antarctic challenge for chess ace. *lightbulb*

Coastguards rescue stranded lamb

Planet Bob, taxonomy and conservation thingy. I want a goldfish.

Walkies for pet skunk Ichi (vid) - and that's a very cool mum. The skunk has been de-squirted and I don't see what the problem is, really.

African Grey speaking Japanese. (vid)

What's a bank holiday? (vid)

"Dark irony of a slaver enslaved" - this is all sorts of icky. Great read.

Transgender folks facing hate crime in Turkey

Connectivity issues at home seem to continue... please let me know if I've missed anything major in anyone's life or LiveJournal because I am unlikely to catch up anytime soon. If you've emailed me I'll try to get to it soon.

Theatrics

Other than that, this was a fun long weekend. On Saturday Slen and Paul hustled me out of the house in smug secrecy and we headed to the Lowry, where I discovered we were seeing... um. This, actually.

Yes, a Eurovision Song Contest parody musical. Absolutely [insane|hilarious]. I shall show you clips, although these are not from the performance and cast we saw. Here's the chavtastic UK entry, 'I Love to Love to Love (Love)'. And Hungary's 'Little Birds' ("Today I killed a chicken and ate its entrails. Mmm, entrails!").

Here also are the Russians with 'Ice Queen', which I'm sorry to say I recognised instantly as a rip on Northern Girl (er, what can I say, songs about ice really do it for me), and which also caused me to utter the line "In Soviet Russia, skirt rips you off", leaving the others in, um, stitches.

The source for Sweden's 'Same Old Song' is pretty obvious from the second you hear the opening piano line. Iceland... yes. Oh, and the 'German techno' is absolutely flipping adorable. Makes me want to hug the entirety of Germany. So that was that. Oh, and they have the mp3s on their site, downloadable under a Creative Commons licence, if you register.

Tonsorial

On Saturday morning I lost 45cm of hair from my head. Have had no difficulty adjusting to the short haircut. I keep forgetting I've had it cut, actually.

Don't ask for pics until I've trained it to lie back more successfully. At the moment the front keeps forming itself into curtains, despite wax, because my hair is very thick and soft and the last inch or so always curls.

I also do not know why the hairdresser gave me teddy-boy sideburns. (*may be exaggeration caused by Mutt not being used to it yet)

Eurovizh

Eurovision itself, well, bah. We've no choice now; it has to be a return to the judges system. I don't see why we should continue to fund a "how many borders have you got?" contest (or, indeed, a "please don't re-invade us" contest, as the guys'n'I called it) and none of the happy little bloc voters can afford to keep it afloat without Western Europe's backing. In practice the phone votes will have to stay because they raise so much money, but they should only make up a small part of the overall score.

The UK's entry was out of place. It was a real song, and a boring song (I didn't like it much), so I don't care that it did badly. What really has me steaming is that Latvia didn't place highly. What is not awesome about a bunch of smelly pirates?

(Digression: it has the word "wolves" in the title, causing me to wonder idly if Finnish Telecom's records would show about 80 votes for Latvia from Tony Kakko's number. Tony luvs wolves like I love pirate pandas and pickpocket pangolins.)

Well, no point getting steamed about the votes, though, because in the end the ones we liked (Finland, Greece* etc) go on our mix tape and hang the rest.

* My private version of this Greek chorus begins "My secret combination, it's 1 2 3 4″ and you may be able to guess the rest. Also, "I'm not a little girl"? YES YOU ARE.

Giggage

Ohohoho. Speaking of pirate music, I don't think I've blogged yet about Slen's gig last Monday. It was a college gig; Slen was there supporting co-songwriter/co-guitarist John, who is the music student. (They met when both were on the lower version of the same course; John's now doing the further syllabus.) They played their pirate metal song, which is now called Captain Solerno, and a couple of others. They even had a tin-whistle player there for the woodwind line, which was cool.

What was awesome was that their pirate track was played on the radio (yes, I have proof! *clutches mp3*) earlier that day, with a plug for the gig.

The gig overall overran drastically because of the number of students playing. Slen's group didn't have the chance for a sound check beforehand so there was some faffing around before they could play. I can't listen to live music so I can't really say how it went, but I did my best to stir up the crowd by example during the "YARR!"s and suchlike. I also spent some time before writing out slips of paper with their email address on them to add to their sample CDs, then tried to pass those CDs out. I'm hilariously bad at this, really, but oh well, did the supportive sibling thing...

Their set seemed to go down pretty well, especially considering they were on late and running late, so that some of the smallish audience had already started leaving. They played Drunken Sailor for an impromptu encore (making it extremely lucky I'd taught John a couple of verses of it a few days back, ahem). Missed the last tram by far and had to get a taxi. Got home at 01:00 with work the next day. I am so metal. Well, except for the long hair, now.

blah

I've been doing more playing Pokémon than writing, down to general and/or ambient depression I think, but I hope to begin bucking that trend.

Also been eating badly for the same reasons. Hopefully now I'm back at work and online this too should sort itself out. I baked cookies today, they're really bad. So out of practice.

Looking forward to next week, when I'm going with the brothers to Chester Zoo (which has GUESS WHAT?) and Alton Towers. Don't know yet what we'll do with the other days.

Why does having a sword turn people into arseholes?

Australia appoints woman bishop

Pet skunk's walkies turning heads

Noisy Swazi cockerels face chop

Park celebrates camel births (video)

Court overrules Texas sect raid / video

Technicalities, technicalities... and here's another that is more funny.

When doing our news coverage at work we avoid including stories that are too obviously electioneering, but this is particularly pungent so I thought I'd share with you lot.

Microsoft's going to take up ODF out of the goodness of its heart, presumably because OpenXML sucks humbugs

Think your economy has it bad now? You whippersnappers haven't seen a REAL credit crunch until you've had Aurelian monkeying with your silver!

Sorry, Indy, the shiny things are fake.

That's amazing how this announcement got made when they've just made a movie about it! Wow, spooky coincidence or what?

This is so awesome eeeee. I mean, it's pretty obvious that frosting glass is going to change what it does to light, but still. Here's more.

Escaped umaa shot, causing car crash. No pictures. I'm not sure WHY it was shot.

Doctors flown in from Netherlands to treat 1,000-year-old tree. Awesome.

Playboy reviews UK sales displays after vicar complains at their marketing strategy.

I find this persecution appalling. How anyone can suggest that this innocent corporation had any obvious marketing strategy in mind when designing bright pink, shiny, fluffy products such as typically appeal to young girls simply beggars belief. Pink fluffy rulers and pencil cases are daily essentials for grown men too, I'll have you know. Dog, we might as well be living under the Taleban.

A lifeboat rescues an elderly 15st St Bernard/mastiff cross, described as "a bit grumpy".

A couple of random stories: How the internet ruins humour, from SomethingAwful (now THAT's rich) and a robot, because there can never be enough. There is some kind of serious psychological point among the ads and stupid film clips. Actual interview starts at 1:09.

Iran rounds up Bahai leaders. Lovely.

Oh, more charming. People burnt as witches in Kenya.

Tasmanian tiger DNA implanted in mousies.

Cat gatecrashes concert (vid)

Ravens fledging in Scotland and disappearing in Lancashire.

Mixed-sex NHS wards 'still a problem'. Not a problem for me. If I ever have to go inpatient I don't particularly want to be segregated by caste. Besides, there are shockingly few "strange neuter-creatures from the planet Zog" wards.

Tram expansion's green light (vid)

There is hope for me yet. (brilliant audio)

Dog too big to patrol beach (vid) and article

In pictures: Senegal's beached whales (distressing images)

Exam papers had answers on back. It is unlikely that any of the 12,000 students sitting the examination would have recognised the value of the information in the copyright statement and subsequently used it. Unfortunately probably true, as schools don't teach critical thinking any more, just rote answering. (Yes, I do know this for a fact. What does "don't put it in your own words, just make sure you write down every point with no waffle" sound like to you? From a good mid-league independent secondary school?)

'Trust drug' may cure social phobia and help autism. Ooh! Just what I need, to be more trusting and less alert to manipulative, untrustworthy bzsatards!

Whole scelidosaurus on show to public. Just in case you needed to be informed, ankys are the best dinosaurs EVER and you should adopt one, because every party needs a tank.

Churches boo-hoo-hoo over the fact that despite all their sound and fury, everyone's ignoring them. Since the topic at hand doesn't concern them one jot (besides, never mind my relationships, I definitely don't want a church anywhere near my children!), this is a healthy thing for society and makes me feel more positive than I have for a long time.

If we ever feel the need to pass any more laws about precisely how trefoil the invisible magic friend is, or who's not allowed to eat the invisible magic friend's flesh, we'll give you a call, 'kay?

We're asking the public what is the most respectful and appropriate way to display them. ... The majority of the comments have been that we shouldn't cover them up. So what did we do? Oh yes: Egyptian mummies are covered up

I'm gonna throw this one over to Charlycrash. *Erisian smile*

Supernova filmed LIVE! (Well, timeshifted a bit. Like 100 million years.) More from AP. Squeeeee.

Registrars' beliefs make them unfit for their jobs. So, resign. They shouldn't be pandered to and accommodated, because religion is a voluntary disability. Or, to put it another way, if you feel you can't do your job for reasons of conscience, you have a moral duty to resign.

Derbyshire couple may have 'oldest' dog (vid)

Sesame Street puppets explain war to kids of soldiers (vid)

Some punks and goths in Mexico want to beat up emos. (vid)

Infrasound may be the cause of shadows during eclipses, rather than atmospheric disturbance. Well, sound is atmospheric disturbance, anyway...

New dinosaur tracks discovered

Biggest rodent ever... not so big (if that's not ready-made inspiration for Ursula Vernon, nothing is...)

The cult of the Eurovision (vid)

I have a discovery to share with you all. It is Pirate Gangsta Rap.

In recent weeks, I've been listening to a lot of Captain Dan and the Scurvy Crew. They arre "the only rap crew with buccaneer technique" and their influences arre "davey jones, scurvy, hip hop, tupac, eminem, blackbeard, sailling" [sic]. It is, as one review says, all the attitudes of gangsta rap, 300 yearrs earlier. It is the best, nay, the only gangsta rap to which I have listened willingly. It is hilarious.

Highlights of the first album, Authentic Pirate Hip Hop, arre Flintlock Glock (the title alone...), Blackbeard's Treasure and the unabashedly misogynistic Round the Corner Sallies.

Here is the epic quest for Blackbeard's treasure. Die, Corsair!

As for the second album, Rimes of the Hip Hop Mariners, the title track is goofy fun, as is the timber-shiveringly detailed description of a keelhaul. We'll ignore what appears to be a song about World of Warcraft. But the winner, oh yes, has to be the rap battle between a shipful of pirates and the British Navy.

If that sounds delightful, listen to Broadside.

And finally, if rap isn't your thing, here's a more traditional kind of sea shanty. Very educational if you didn't know what Round the Corner Sallies are.

US orchestra conducted by robot

Universe twice as bright as known

Birdsong CD helps rescue starling

Zoo's escaped orangutan attacks keeper

Herms works in the centre of Manchester! Sometimes, like last night, that's not so terribly great.

Transport was insane. Slen and I, along with a friend of his, were in town, and we decided to eat there and not even attempt to travel during the worst of it. It was quite fun, actually, because the Pizza Hut was lying very low indeed, even locking their doors and opening them individually for customers. Other places were 'closed for stock-taking' or had their blinds down. We saw a mob outside the windows of a bar that was showing the match on tv.

People were drinking before 08:00 and continued all morning, afternoon and evening. They were sitting swaying on the steps outside my workplace, crowding around the Spar shop over the road... and as for the square at Piccadilly Gardens, where the screen is, Slen walked through there and said it was unbelievable.

Calm returns to Manchester (video)

This morning the pavements are covered with plastic bags, broken bottles, discarded fried chicken and chips and all sorts of other rubbish. Not just that. They're discoloured and sticky. It's... ugh. The street cleaners and police have been doing a fantastic job.

Perhaps it's the sunshine, but it's absolutely dead in terms of religious and 'ethical' news. There's tons for animal lovers, though.

UK software piracy rate declines

Want your very own knitted Ood or Adipose? Well, tough luck, it seems.

AWESOMEST TRIBUTE EVER.

How to Say: Chinese names

*earprick*

Starved dog ready to be rehomed

Police officer collars the wrong man (om nom nom)

Dead badgers dumped at roadside

Police apologise for claiming Channel 4 misrepresented people in a mosque exposé.

Are girls getting more violent?

Music 'can enhance wine taste'

Animal conservation trawl

So much cute, it gets its own subheading. Yes, it definitely must be the weather.

US lists polar bear as threatened and pledges to... uh... do nothing whatsoever about it.

Pilot whales are 'cheetahs of the deep'

Bypass newt search draws a blank (one has to suspect murder, doesn't one?)

Lighter woods 'boost butterflies'

Bid to boost eel numbers in East

Water project could help wildlife (stoat!)

For the glorious cause of more Sammet. Do we need a reason?

Drain is falling, falling down on me: holy water?

The key to the reign, to the ultimate control: wisdom of the old.

You're guilty I guess. And after the torture, you will confess... (fish in barrel, this one)

...and BURN!

Too late to escape, he seemed to be insane, he got imprisoned because she got her own way.

I'm a bonus track, to Australia and back.

The dwarf and the giant, children who stray.

Too alien to find somebody home. Hyper salvation - hyper vocation!

You feel unease as you flock with the masses

Like a moth to the brae, it's gonna suck me into pain.

Feel like creeping, crawling, cold and bare.

Night has fallen, dolphins laughing.

Bring back the seal from the men who don't know what they do.

High-speed alien Strabolgi!

Here's the land of milk and mummy

Their evil eyes are looking down on you!!

We just have our share, we don't care as long as we're alive

Do your dirty trick and win.

Get off the ground and you'll never return.

The sloth will hide and sleep; my heart's beat is slow

But I am stuck with my sheet, down in concrete.

Well, this was fun. Going to hide from Anke and Snog's righteous retribution now.

'Snog' paramedic fit to practise

Eh? Eh?

Frigid robot eyes top tech prize

Dog 'fosters' kittens (video)

"Never seen cross-fostering between species"? Two or three stories like this turn up every year, whenever news is slow.

Bridge designed to be swan-proof. No, forget mocking this. How cool that people pay attention to this stuff.

Included because I know you'll all complain if I don't... :P

Whaddya gonna do with all that butt? No, really, what? Make a décolletage or something?

I shouldn't be finding this brilliantly amusing, but I really am.

GIANT UMAA!

Terry Sanderson on Cormac Murphy-O'Connor's speech

Here are the things he mentions:

Richard Dawkins (RealAudio) on the Today Programme, 9 May 2008, 07:17, BBC Radio 4

Love this guy. I wish more people would call the media on their slavering pandering to Rilijus Leaduhs. (Note that Dawkins has read CMC's speech; CMC did not listen to Dawkins's interview and has not read his book. CMC was the one who started this by mentioning Dawkins by name in his speech.)

Cormac Murphy-O'Connor (RealAudio) on the Today Programme, 9 May 2008, 08:10, BBC Radio 4

Humphrys still more or less lets him get away with "hitlerstalinhitlerstalinhelphelpoppression". Funny, too, that they advocate religious people camouflaging their message in not-overtly-religious language. Hello, ID creationism, didn't see you there!

You can still read CMC's speech here (at time of posting). There are a few doozies, but here's one:

God is not a fact in the world, as though God could be treated as one thing among other things to be empirically investigated, affirmed or denied on the basis of observation. Many who deny God's existence treat God in this way, and they simply don't know how to ask the proper question about God.

I'm annoyed when anyone, Christian, Zen or other, tells me I can't possibly reject something, because I don't understand it, and I don't understand it because it's not understandable, and therefore it exists because nyer nyer nyer. What a load of tripe. What insulting obfuscation. What pitiable, blind fools we unbelievers are. In any attempt to engage, we are doomed to straw man arguments because we don't respect the inherent unassailable incomprehensible specialness of the invisible magic friend/cosmic force.

Not quite all our fault, though. CMC goes on to admit that maybe the church is partly to blame for stuff it said in the past that might unfortunately have given the impression that they had a very clear idea of what the invisible magic friend is and what it wants. Their bad. We're to disregard all that. They don't really have any idea. Now we know that, we'll realise that atheism was invented in the 17th century because of that misunderstanding. But they'll generously pretend they never wrote all those flawed apologetics if we withdraw all our petty 17th-century cerebral objections to the ineffable magic friend, and none of us need say any more on the matter. Thanks, Cormac!

In conclusion, Faith in Britain might be improved by a deeper grasp of the mystery of God on the part of believers, so the correct attitude is that of robust, unrebuttable ignorance.

There's lots more. You may find this an amusing way to waste some of your lunch hour. I, however, am going to wander off and sing the Nuckelavee song.

Here's the thing I've been waffling on about. It's the first in what is threatening to be a series. Still rough, but it may be as polished as it gets for now.

Sankmarray 1: Contact

You'll quickly see why I was shy about showing it. It is very silly.

Gentle feedback is welcomed, the more specific the better. If more of this appeared, would you want to read?

OK, let's see if I remember all of this!

I'm not cold any more. I'm too hot, but so is the weather, so I think that's cured. Actually, the tremor and everything has been behaving more or less; only one noticeable bad case of shakes and one of bad speech in the last week or so.

My unbrother's coming home from Ireland. When he does, I'm making him and my brother-by-blood-relation book a long weekend off and taking them to the zoo and a theme park. Of course, one of THEM will have to drive, but I'll be the organiser and possibly stump up a lot of the cash, so I get to call it my treat.

Guess which zoo? What if I tell you Chester Zoo has red pandas? Yeah. :D

Today on the tram I worked out a detail for Sankmarray (my current solo writing thing) that had been bothering me. It was a good figuring-out, in that my solution is weird and makes perfect sense to me and follows my unofficial inverted Occam's Razor variant: "when stuff's confusing you, throw in another alien and all will become clear".

Also, the little vignette I realised I would have to stick in between Sankmarray episodes 1 and 2 to make things make sense has sort of, um, become episode 2, bumping episode 2 back to episode 3. Which is... fine, actually. I don't want to get carried away with enthusiasm on this, but I'm finding I've got quite a lot to play with on this platform, and even starting to wonder if this will take me to book length. It'll be fun finding out. At some point I may bite the bullet and accept that I'm gonna be typecast as a wacky author... muh.

I passed 7.5mill on Neopets by sellsellselling DROO at 60.

Yesterday a kitten stretched out extremely lengthily on my bed (not shown; that's Slen's room in the pic), doing his damnedest to be as tall as me while helping me to read Matter, which I've almost finished. It's good, it's good, it's Iain M Banks's Culture and it's a long book.

My weight's on a downswing, which was occasioned by my studiously forgetting to eat for 55 hours and I paid the price for that by feeling extremely ill on the third morning but still, might as well enjoy the rewards of my stupidity.

I thought there was something else, actually... oh well. Update if I remember.

Captions for theatre goers (video)

How did Punch and Judy stay alive? wonder the "oh no, PC Gone Mad" brigade. I suggest it's because it's inexplicable and weird. Also, crocodile.

Suicide project student took life; not a case of life imitating art, but rather "maybe we should have taken his choice of material as a warning sign".

Scary American public information films of the '60s - and how the UK's were different.

There were disturbingly many stories about people being penalised for doing horrible things to their dogs, but they didn't add anything to the ambience so I haven't included them.

edit: hee. One of the many, many things I never bother to ask, because I suspect I'll be fobbed off.

edit2: yay!

The last item today mentions Hitler, but I didn't start it.

Slow news day. (video)

Slow news day/headline of the century

Tupperware parties are so 1950s¹: hold a Taser taster today!

¹ not actually, according to Wikipedia

Some awards ceremony, in order to get a celebrity to present the award, changed the name of the winner of their people's vote prize. (The papers kick off, of course, leaving the BBC looking relieved that ITV was the culprit.)

Although if it'd been Channel 4, the knee-jerk waily-waily of the red masthead brigade would have put an interesting slant on the current debate (on which you can read Stephen Fry's take because you know you want to).

Another clip about the autism review and sad to say, the thing that stands out most for me is that the voiceover patsy correctly said "one in a hundred... has autism". Much of the BBC has lapsed into "the family have" and other garbage (BBC English, where art thou?). Eee, when I were a lad. (Also, they misspell "Asperges Syndrome" in the related link.)

Ooh, extra, extra! Your star sign determines—oh, just watch the video. I can't waste my breath explaining this.

It is of COURSE nothing to do with the time of year at which you hit 17 and begin driving lessons or any other factors pertaining to LOGIC. THAT WOULD BE RIDICULOUS.

Slow news day (awww)

edit: New game demo: cool, parkour in a video ga—wait, why are there guns? (I have no objection to guns, just wasn't expecting them...)

We now turn over to Cormac Murphy O'Connor, Catholic Archbishop of Westminster, for this message.

Now listen here, faithful: I want you to respect atheists. I know my mouthy fellow followers of the Invisible Magic Friend keep banging on on Thought for the Day about how atheists are child-abusers (I am a Catholic priest so you can take my word for this), but just because we are allowed to spread such insinuations unchallenged on a platform for religious rants, I want to make it clear that we should not respect all those reason-led mini-Hitlers and Stalins any less. As the Archbishop of Westminster, let me just assure you that it's all those tyrannical godless amoral scientist homosexualist baby-murderering atheists who are the intolerant ones, and we're jolly admirable to put up with them.

What's that? Hitler was raised Catholic, remained religious and opposed state atheism? Ridiculous.

(This has been an attempt at the style of the brilliant Platitude of the Day. Thanyewvermush. Tip your waitdog.)

Platypus genetic code unravelled (article with vid). I could watch that vid all day. Check the relateds for a long-eared jerboa (vid).

Adults with autism to be audited (article with great vid)

Don't laugh; I signed up to see how I could help. Heh. I'm so radical, maaaan.

Arrests in racist chainsaw threat. I don't see how being "racially motivated" makes this any worse, actually.

Scots Bibble for Snoggie (audio)

Pitch-dark restaurant opens (video....?)

Superhero fashion comes to NY (video)

Clark Kent at 00:42 - would you hit that? I'd consider it.

Also, where's the Deadpool suit, darnit? I mean, not that I'd buy it. I have the skin for it, but definitely not the build.

Shire horse bolts into crowd, injuring six humans (video)

The solution to traffic problems: let's all fly planes!

(The sad thing is, I really really would.)

Stem cells may reduce transplants which is generally awesome.

Probe into giant iguana slaughter. Horrible, and likely to result in outrage and support for conservation activity, which makes the nasty, cynical sides of me wonder...

Gawd, Josef, get with the times and Bluetooth 'em.