Celebrity lookalikes pt 6

Supremely talented Muse frontman Matt Bellamy, and Albert Steptoe

A new order?

Peter Hook - started his own unique style of bass playing, but he is still a bit of a tosser.

Celebrity Lookalikes pt 5

Former Crimewatch presenter Nick Ross, and Principal Skinner from The Simpsons

Celebrity Lookalikes pt 4

Soon to be ex-Newcastle winger Kieron Dyer, and Clyde from the Anthill Mob

Pilates of the Caribbean

Listening to Mark Kermode's Film Reviews on Radio Five Live the other week, and Simon Mayo read out an email from someone who had witnessed a spelling error, trailing the recent blockbuster "Snaks on a plane" (sic).

Other listeners then emailed in their favourite film-title spelling errors - the ones that have stuck in my head include:

"Pilates of the Caribbean"

"Shakespeare in Hove"

"Eternal Sunshine of the Spotless Mint"

I then remembered an edition of Esther Rantzen's show That's Life from the dim and distant past - someone sent in a picture of their local cinema, proudly trailing "Gorillas in the Mist" as "Gorillas in the sh*t"!

If anyone else has any amusing mis-spellings, I would be delighted to hear them - that's what the comments form is for (hint hint!).

If there's any justice in the world

I have deliberately chosen a song lyric as the title of this post, because I want to publicise the government ruling that UK songwriters and musicians will only remain eligible to receive royalties for fifty years. This is in contrast to ninety years in the US.

I am nothing more than an amateur musician. I have played in bands, I have written some songs, I have even recorded some of them. The discerning punter will bemoan that there is no music worth buying anymore, and yet the rewards of being a musician are being eroded.

Yes, most of us do it for love, not money, but it is still not fair when you do a job and don't get paid for it. Hence my opposition to illegal downloading - you are depriving the artist of their slice of the pie - iTunes is a much fairer way of doing it, with reasonable prices and reliable downloads.

I am not one of those who bemoan every little thing that the government does - I am actually fairly even-minded about the achievements (good and bad) of the Nu-Labour administration; but I have to protest that they have sanctioned a measure that actively prevents talented individuals from reaping the rewards from their hard work.

Weather panic

I have studiously avoided commenting on the biblical rainfalls of the last few weeks, mainly because I have been lucky enough to miss the worst of it. A lot of the parkland around our area turned into swamp after the first week, and the sunroof on my new car occasionally drips (I am philosophical about this - after all, the car is not brand new, and secondly, the rainfall has been so heavy I am surprised that anything can withstand it). These are mere inconveniences, however, especially as one of my colleagues who lives in Worcestershire is flooded out, and a friend of mine lives in the floodplains of Oxfordshire (I am currently waiting to hear back from him to see if he is OK).

It seems that the weather "crisis" has proven that it doesn't take much to bring the worst out of people. Are there any solutions? Well, whether or not you can predict such rainfall, there is only a limited amount that you can do about it. One contributor to the BBC news forum seems to have an eminently sensible suggestion:

The solution is Weetabix. Have you seen how they suck up the milk? So take lots of weetabix or one big weetabix and it will soon soak all the water up. 24 hours later the weetabix will have dried rock hard and can be used as building material.

[Viper_7], York, United Kingdom

Ick

Man discovers headache is due to someone else's tooth being embedded in his head.

This is one of the many reasons why, despite going to a rugby-playing school, I gave up the sport at the earliest possible opportunity.

Picture of the day

Nothing like a good ol' publicity stunt!

Full story available on the BBC website.

Rules v common-sense

I suspect you all get very fed up when I go on and on about Tom Reynolds' blog, but I think this post is pretty important; the question is simple - is it worth breaking the rules (and potentially violating certain ethical codes), in order to do your job they way you see fit?

As far as I can tell, Tom broke the rules. However, his primary function is to preserve life - if he had a hunch that the patient needed hospitalisation, then I think he did the right thing. Far better than finding out that the patient died afterwards...

Of course, one could argue that this is an even greater issue because of the increased likelihood of litigation in this day and age. Tom's next post, and the subsequent comments related to this, with this one providing a cautionary tale:

Re: Further Notes On Yesterday's Post
by AndrewKelly on Fri 13 Jul 2007 08:49 AM BST

We must also accept that this is the age of compensation. Yes, it is ABSOLUTELY the right thing to save someones life when they will die, even if you step on their toes slightly. However they may see the opportunity for a quick buck.

About a year ago I saw a middle-aged woman just collapse in the street with no pulse or breating. I have no clue on diagnosis so i started CPR (trained in such) and called an ambulance. Crew arrives, I give signs/symptoms/history and off they go.

A few months later I get a court summons, because she is sueing me for cracking her rib and inflicting "severe emotional damage" If I wasn't so flabbergasted and old-fashioned...i'd have hit her and given her a real reason to sue.

Thankfully the case collapsed and the woman looked a right prat, but the fact that someone who would have died, would even consider sueing her rescuer, has eroded my faith in humanity slightly.

For when you are stressed...

This was sent to me by my boss! I recommend manic mode when you really need to give it some welly...

Any way the wind blows

I know a number of mothers, teachers and pet owners who say that, when the weather is windy, their progeny behave differently; as my sister-in-law might say, "they get a bit giddy".

There have also been suggestions that a full moon affects people's behaviour. According to my diary, we are actually in the waning phase, with a new moon due this weekend. However, people's behaviour in the last 24 hours has got me thinking that perhaps we are entering a rather windy lunar phase.

Firstly, I got home from work yesterday to find that someone had parked in my space. I don't have a driveway as such, but it is an allocated parking space right outside my front door. I spent some time debating about what to do - is it worth knocking on the neighbour's doors to politely ask their visitors not to park there in the future? I didn't do this as I didn't know who they were visiting, and I didn't fancy speculatively ringing seven different doorbells. Should I put a note on their windscreen proclaiming these to be resident's spaces? I did this once before on another vehicle and it seemed to have done the trick. I decided to wait for a couple of hours before doing this. As it was, the visitor left soon. I hope they don't do it again - if they do, then I will use the note. So, utterly inconsequential, but a bit annoying.

This morning was when the real action happened. Please observe figure (1):

1. I was waiting to exit the T-junction (my car is the red one in the diagram - although it is actually black, this wouldn't have shown up well on the diagram). Someone waiting on the edge of the yellow box waited for me to go through, but as I didn't want to block the box, I hesitated.
2. When there was enough space to go forward, I was cut up by the blue car, who went around me and cut in front (see blue arrow).
   

3. I braked and beeped the horn. I didn't overdo it, it was just a warning "beep" (it doesn't help that, although my car is sleek, black and very sexy, it has the horn from Postman Pat's van).
   

4. The blue car then proceeded to reverse until they almost (thankfully only almost) hit me. I thought for a minute that they were going to stop, get out and probably beat me up, but instead they zipped off into the distance.
   

I have to confess that I was a bit rattled by this incident; the roads were very congested and everyone was a bit impatient, but the driver of the blue car was firstly very impolite, then threatening and bullying. I hate to resort to stereotypes (actually, I don't, I was just trying to be tactful), but you will probably not be surprised to find that the blue car was in fact a 3-series BMW...

About 200 yards up the road, I saw another instance of someone trying to cut in front of someone while turning at a junction (this time in some kind of 4x4 SUV thingy - didn't see what make). This might be acceptable in that there London, but is not normal for this area.

And then I engaged in an amicable, but annoying game of cat and mouse - I was waiting to turn right at some lights, a car was coming the other way but didn't want to block the junction. So while they were edging forward, trying to see if there was enough space to get across the junction, I was edging forward because I thought they were letting me through. After about three goes, they let me through. I said thank you - not many drivers around here seem to do so...

D'oh!

Man flies halfway across the world to attend a friend's wedding, but finds that he is a year early!

I reckon that this is probably a fairly easy mistake to make, I have friends who are getting married next Easter and announced it over a year ago - I did think it was odd that the date didn't seem to be on Easter weekend, but was corrected by another friend who pointed out that it is in 2008, not 2007...

Make love not war

Article in The Guardian by Jon Ronson, about the advent of potential wartime technologies, such as the "gay bomb" releasing aphrodisiac pheromones, and another pheromone-releasing weapon making the target susceptible to attacks by bees.

The mind boggles, but I am strangely not surprised by anything I have read here...

Would you employ this man?

(Click on the image to make it bigger)

Whose humps?

I am no fan of Alanis Morrisette, and even less so of Black Eyed Peas, but this is a gem from Alanis. A girl who I worked with once told me that her 9-year old niece was singing and dancing along to "My Humps" - I am just glad that she didn't understand what she was singing.

This link points to a blog by Rachel, a remarkable woman who shot to prominence as she blogged on the BBC following the London bombings almost exactly two years ago. Even more remarkably, she not only survived those attacks, but this followed three years after she survived a very violent rape in her own home.

More evidence of the cathartic power of blogging...

Jokes

Apparently the guy who was captured trying to blow up Glasgow airport got in contact with his would-be terrorist chums through a new website. It is called Friends Re-ignited.

He was later seen wearing a kilt and reciting poetry in the hospital - apparently he was being treated in the Burns Unit.

These jokes courtesy of defiant people posting on Tom Reynolds' excellent blog, "Random Acts of Reality".

Hangin' over

OK, the last in today's flurry of posting - I promised myself that I would do as little as possible today, after a a tiring few weeks - but I got bored, and fed up of just sitting in front of the TV for the Princess Diana concert.

We went out on Friday night; I spent most of Saturday feeling sorry for myself. I don't drink very much very often, which means that when I do, it means the hangover definitely makes an impact.

I have never been one to make the kneejerk proclamation of, "I am never drinking again". When I was at university, I occasionally said that I wouldn't drink again for a couple of weeks, and I always managed it. But this time, I am really thinking about whether I want the hangover, and whether I really need alcohol to have a good time. The answers are, "no" and "no".

Other factors to consider are that my girlfriend does not drink (not out of principle, she just doesn't really like the taste); out of my group of friends, many of them do not drink; if I don't drink, it means that I can drive, therefore saving long waits at wet bus stops, and extortionate cab rides home (fighting the ASBO kids in the taxi queue). Of course, there is also the question of vanity; I am now nearer to 30 than 20, and have reached the stage in life where the shape of my stomach doesn't lie, so I can probably live without the calorific value and bloating effects of the booze (although after a hard day at work, a cold bottle of beer is a great way to unwind on a warm summer's evening).

Anyway, I have made my decision, and from today, the 1st July 2007, I am not going to get drunk anymore. But I will still enjoy the occasional beer or G&T - I believe in moderation, so I don't feel the need to cut out the alcohol completely, just like I still enjoy the occasional KFC. However, if we are going out, I will drive, therefore I won't be able to drink; I will not buy any more alcohol for the house; I tend not to drink alcohol with meals anyway, as I find I don't enjoy the food as much (and I don't like wine), so that won't be a problem.

On 1st January 2008, I will review this; if I have not missed it, then I will consider whether I will drink at all.

And now for something completely different...

Fed up of being serious, here is "Human Tetris"!

Inside the mind of a suicide bomber

Just to get serious for a minute or two...

As we approach the second anniversary of the London bombings, and just a day after the latest attempts to blow up innocent people, I found this article which gives a little insight into some of the reasons why the 7/7 ringleader may have followed the path that he did. The article is long but worth it; I know little about Islam, but have read a bit about the differences between being a "Muslim" and an "Islamist". I suppose the headline from this article is the difficulties experienced by second generation immigrants, in this case the pressures to marry within one's own community. But to concentrate solely upon that might trivialise some of the other issues - for example, it has become clear that Thursday night's attempted car bombing in Haymarket was targeting the "Ladies' night" at Tiger Tiger nightclub, which presumably was full of decadent young women in the modern fashions (i.e. not a huge amount of clothing) getting drunk and having a "good time".

Whatever one might think of the behaviour of young hedonists in the western world, killing and maiming people cannot be the answer, surely?
Just as a footnote to this, I must join the chorus of praise to those who have helped to prevent loss of life and limb - the London Ambulance staff who spotted the smoke and vapours within that Mercedes on Thursday night, and those who helped the police apprehend the would-be suicide bomber in Glasgow - particularly the civilian who just decked the guy in the face so that the police could restrain him. It takes a braver man than I...

Topical joke

A couple of weeks late, but:

Q: What's black and annoyed?

A: The reincarnation of Bernard Manning

More BB - draw your own conclusions

Continuing on the Big Brother theme, the following is taken from Popbitch:

"I am not proud of the Big Brother row - I am not
even proud of Big Brother. But Big Brother accounts
for 15 per cent of the total revenue that keeps
Channel 4 afloat." - Lord Puttnam, deputy chairman C4


And following from Emily Parr getting thrown off:


So indie-loving posho Emily gets canned from
Big Brother for using a racist term to the
show's only African-Caribbean contestant. While
it's suspiciously convenient for Channel 4,
it's hard to feel any sympathy when you
hear Emily's friends springing to her defence.
Here's "Lucie" on Facebook:

"What the hell are you on about 'dirty racist',
she was obviously blatently (sic) joking, it's not
a big deal, it's only people like you and people
who have got so strung up about little things
that the person did not mean in offence that
have made this country so god damn politically
disgustingly correct! URGHH political correctness
will be the downfall of ENGLAND. Don't take
everything so seriously, learn to take a joke and
have a sense of humour or you'll all end up
like that idiot Charley."