Not for those of a delicate disposition

Over at Swish Cottage, there’s a shot of a man with a back so hairy it could double as a carpet. I’ve copied it here so as not to nick any of his bandwidth, but for the full glory, click on the image and it’ll link to the full size image. For me it’s not just the hair (which looks like some kind of bizarre experiement in recombinant DNA) it’s the lime-green trunks that add that certain je ne sais quos (French for “Jesus, that looks fucking horrible!”) to the entire image.

Summer sunbathing isn’t a right, it’s a priviledge. *Grin*

Catching up with TiVo

Since February, I’ve had a TiVo (Geeky video recorder) and last night I caught up on some of the stuff it had recorded for me. (I should point out that this is one of TiVo’s selling points – based on ratings you give programmes, it then records similar thiings that you might not have noticed. Very clever, but it’s been a slog to get it taught that I really don’t want to watch chat shows, soaps, and bloody Tweenies and Fimbles) Two of the recordings it had made were complete opposites – LA7 and Opposite Sex.

LA7 was definite proof that TiVo isn’t all the way there yet on learning my likings – something to do with S Club 7 – truly dire. Opposite Sex (I can only find this dodgy interview site to do with the series, which is a bummer – more research needed) , however, could turn out to be a little gem. Channel 4 is showing it at some ungodly hour on Sunday mornings (just before 4am, according to TiVo) which is a pity – if it were shown in mainstream times, I think it could take off as a popular series.

The basic show is set in an American High School – very ho hum standard teenish drama. The twist, which so far (having only seen the pilot episode) could be the lifesaver is that the three main male characters are the first male students in a girls-only school that has only just gone co-educational. Obviously there’s all the hassles of bias and sexism, as well as some of the funniest fish-out-of-water scenes I’ve seen in a while. In the pilot episode, the three male characters even performed “I Will Survive” (cliché a go-go) in the style of Priscilla, Queen of the Desert. Yes, it’s got some of the clichés, and it’s something that will take time to mature – but for now it’s got a lot of potential.

Snd more txts

Interesting piece in The Register today about the rate that SMS (“texting”) has exploded over the years. Worldwide, there are now one billion text messages sent every day. Globally there’s a huge difference in the number of messages sent per person in each country – in Singapore and Hong Kong, it’s about 200 per month, and in the US it comes down to about 7 per month, for reasons that are explained in the article.

The part that I found particularly interesting though, was this : “In the UK nine out of ten children own a mobile phone, and spend £100,000 a day solely on text messaging. Some research suggests that for teenagers, receiving messages boosts their confidence, as they use the number of messages they receive as a measure of their popularity“. At first it depressed me that people gauged their popularity by how many texts they received, but on further reflection I realised that it’s nothing new. It’s just the method of receiving the messages that has changed – but people still gauge their popularity by how many Christmas/Birthday/Valentine’s cards they receive, by how many people are prepared to go out for a drink on a friday night with them, by how many people they have in their address book, and all manner of other methods.

So it’s nothing new – more just a synbol of how ubiquitous the text message has now become. Now if only we could get the little sods to spell their messages correctly, instead of bloody text abrevyashuns abbreviations (it’s no good, I can’t do the text thing to save my life *Grin*). Or, as Vicki would put it, “Tw@s”.

Combine Harvester – a vile “restaurant” with bar attached

Wandering through The Guardian‘s site today to get to the crossword, I came across the “Are you a die-hard townie” quiz – which is very funny, and also meant I came out as pure-bred country boy. (Sad, but almost true)

Train Misery over Easter – now there’s a shock

Yes, in a truly world-shattering piece of news, Guards on UK trains will be on strike tomorrow – no surprises there then.

Actually, I personally don’t see why it’ll cause as much hassle as people say – the position of “Guard” doesn’t seem to exist on trains any more. They’re all “Train Managers”, “Ticket Inspectors” (sorry, “Revenue Protection Officers”), and a role of other job titles that have absolutely feck-all resemblance to the word “Guard”. I did have to laugh at the fact Virgin Trains will be affected – I’ve lost count of the number of times I’ve been on Virgin Trains and never even seen anyone thinking about checking tickets and so on.

Still, it’s a good excuse for running a shonky service on the days when more people are likely to be travelling so they can get home to families etc for Easter.

Random Bureaucracy

I got a snotty letter today from the personal banking section of my bank. When I called them about it, it turned out that because I now have a Business Account with them too, I should never have received the letter – the Business section should’ve added some kind of new code to my account to say it was linked with the Business one (or something – my brain gave up and committed suicide rather than keeping on listening in detail) so I should disregard the letter they sent.

Isn’t organisation a wonderful thing? Last Friday I got told at 4.45pm that there’d been a problem, and they’d “hoped” it would be sorted by the end of the day, except it wasn’t. My comment at the time about “when did hope become part of professionalism” went down like a sack of shit at a wedding, although I did (and still do) think it was a valid point. OK, I could’ve worded it slightly more tactfully, but there we go.

Anyway, as per usual within the banking world, it turns out that two departments don’t communicate with each other. Big Shock. However, I do find it more than slightly infuriating to know that these two departments are seperated by nothing more than a flight of stairs. They’re in the same building – personal accounts on 1st floor, business on 2nd floor. Despair utterly set in when the person in Personal Accounts said she’d phone the person in Business Accounts.

King to Castle 2

Jonathan King is trying to get his sentence reassessed – personally, I hope that the Criminal Cases Review Commission takes a good look at the case and doubles the length of time he should be in prison for. Even if they just take “Itsy Bitsy Teeny Weeny Yellow Polka Dot Bikini” into account, it’s less than he deserves.