Saturday, December 19, 2009

Merry Xmas



... and a happy **hack** new **cough, cough** year **wheeze**.

Thursday, December 17, 2009

Hacking the drones

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=mu1zwndOiXc

A YouTube link to a news article about how 'militants' hacked into the drones that are hunting them.

"most" ???



My continuing drone attack watch. Here's a fun little sentence from the online Reuters site.

The United States has launched 48 drone strikes this year, killing more than 400 people, most of them militants, according to a Reuters tally.
Don't you just love the word 'most'?

We ate some fish, most of them good. We executed some criminals, most of them guilty. We torched some houses, most of the inhabitants survived. We talked to some politicians, most of them lied.

Saturday, December 12, 2009

Shelf-ish



The shelves of lore and previous posts in all their glory.

What scared us most is that we've almost filled all the shelves with the DVDs we had stacked on the floor.

The TV shows the wee girl getting her first even unaided win in the Wii Play table hockey game.

Friday, December 11, 2009

Two Bass Git



Some friends have lent me a double bass to play with, as they don't use it during the summer. I'm slowly getting the hang of it.

It is a very different beast to the wee electric bass I own. No frets for a start, and it's damn large.

It's so much fun to play, though. The Star Wars Imperial March sounds so right on the upright. In a wrong sort of way. I'm working my way through some Jazz Walking lessons on it at the moment.

Soon I'll be a Three Bass Git, as I managed to get a cheap acoustic bass on a TradeMe action. It was a great way to break my online auction virginity. Now I'm hooked ... curse you, whoever you are that outbid me on the H.P. Lovecraft Cthulhu book.

Lurking in the Ham Bush



Beware the Ham Bush!

Here's an edible elephant my darling wife constructed one day to encourage the wee girl to eat her lunch. That's kiwifruit grass, an olive eye, Marmite mouth and eyebrow, and a bread body with ham skin.

The wee girl quickly brought the hapless creature down with a well aimed fork, then skinned it alive before devouring the beast until only a bread skeleton remained.

Tuesday, December 8, 2009

Let your fingers do the blogging



There are three Apathy's in the Wellington phone book.

Three people are Sadd

There are seven Joy's

Hope has 29 entries

No-one is Angry.

Sunday, December 6, 2009

Nog Blog



Low-fat Eggnog


4 egg yolks
4 egg whites
1/2 cup sugar
2 cups low-fat milk
1 cup rum, brandy, whiskey or bourbon
Nutmeg to garnish

Use half of the sugar to beat with the egg whites. Slowly add the sugar once the whites start to firm a bit, and keep beating until the whites have nice firm peaks and a glossy sheen. Place aside.

Use the other half of the sugar to beat with the egg yolks. Really have at them with an electric beater until it changes consistency. Work those yolks hard.

Add the milk and the spirit to the beaten yolks and stir. Then add the egg whites and gently whisk.

Serve with some sprinkled nutmeg.

Hey Presto, it's Xmas time. You can tell because you're plastered. Merry Hic-mas!

Friday, December 4, 2009

Let's Go Party



My wee girl went to her second, and final, annual Kindergarten Disco this week. I was busy installing shelves, so my long suffering wife had to attend the event without me. I'm sure I'll pay for that later.

She found the selection of music somewhat questionable. "Who Let The Dogs Out?" is hardly small child friendly, and Barbie Girl by Aqua has some dubious lines.

"You can brush my hair, undress me anywhere ..."

I guess the majority of people just don't put these songs into context, and rely on the children never doing the same. A song about breasts can be taken innocently to be about dogs if no-one tells you. A song about a plastic, unsatisfying life with a plastic overbearing Ken can be taken to be about a doll for those that don't listen.

Context, like so many things, is in the mind of the beholder. Ignorance is bliss.

Or maybe I'm just and old fuddy-duddy ... balding, grumpy, muttering under my breath at all the stupid young people, and in this case older people. Soon I'll only venture out of doors once in a while, wearing a flannel dressing gown, smelling of boiled cabbage, and using phrases like "Dang it!". One step away from a cliched Scooby Doo villain waving my hand and cursing at those meddling kids.

But really. Who Let the Dogs Out? Barbie Girl? For three and four year olds?

However, the most annoying song of the evening was voted by my wife to be the Kylie version of Locomotion. I guess cheesy beats inappropriate everytime.

The Shelves have landed


You may remember a post a while back (http://someonewrotethat.blogspot.com/2009/11/temporarily-shelved.html) that had the design for some DVD shelves. Well, here they are in a somewhat blurry cellphone picture. All we have to do now is fill in some gaps (hooray for Polyfilla) and paint them.

Thursday, December 3, 2009

Cowardly attack?



The recent suicide bombing in Somalia's capital was quickly condemned by the West with the phrase "cowardly attack". This is a phrase that has been used time and again when it comes to suicide bombings, in Iraq and Afghanistan for example, and one I find rather confusing.

I'm a pacifist and coward. But it seems to me that while blowing yourself up could be described as many things, cowardly isn't a good label for it. Stupid? Sure. Deranged? Yup. Depraved? Despicable? Deluded? Mind-bogglingly crazy? All of those. But cowardly?

If I was going to describe any form of attack as cowardly I'd go with piloting drone attack aircraft from the safely of a country hundreds of miles away. That seems cowardly.

It's so removed from the actuality of combat. Sipping a Coke and eating a Big Mac in air-conditioned comfort, the game on a widescreen TV in the background, and Johnson telling that story about the time he met Madonna, while blowing up some 'bad guy', and anyone in the vicinity, half a world away. How is that noble and heroic?

Sensible? Safe? Clever? Maybe. But also cowardly.

Wednesday, December 2, 2009

School daze



School was just as I remembered it.

We went for a pre-school visit, as the not-so-wee girl starts next year. It was all too familiar.

Boredom (mine), tears (hers), disappointment (hers and mine), and the faint smell of vomit (the wee boy in my lap).

At least this time the ingredients were shared around a bit. I never really got the hang of school. Hopefully the not-so-wee girl will find it all a more enjoyable experience than I. We shall strive to make it so. There should be a lot less random violence than in my day.

Artwork by Guy Landry

Tuesday, December 1, 2009

Fast count



There's an advert at the moment for the Cranium board game in which they give you two minutes to answer a trivia question.

"Text your answer in the next two minutes ... "

Except they only give you about 50 seconds ... I counted. Twice.

How can you trust a brain game that can't even count to 120?