Archive for October 2009

Welcome to the End – My friend

It stared raining cats and dogs last night, bringing traffic to a halt, and hasn’t stopped since.

Welcome to the End

It’s raining above, it’s raining belowI’m not really sure where it is I should go.My head’s really aching, there’s a storm in my earsAnd the raindrops that fall are forming puddles of tears.

It’s never been worse than I tell it today,For even the righteous have got lost on the way.The plagues are returning, ’cause it’s time for revenge.While on the TV they are screening the end,My friend, welcome to the end.

The temperatures rising to one hundred and ten.The floods are returning, More >

The Good Food Cookbook for Dogs

It was half past dawn and Mini my Pekinese wonderdog comes running into the bedroom to wake me up with a bark that has been known to resurrect the dead in the local cemetery. He has torn up the morning paper with her adorable teeth, yet again, which wasn’t an incredibly good idea on her part as we had bathed her the nght before and now her white hair had black and grey streaks in it. Gently I removed the newspaper cutting from her mouth but she refused to be subdued until I had actually read it. The Good Food Cookbook More >

Adventures with a Tuk Tuk Taxi Driver: Live and Let Die in Bangkok

Before I’m accused of putting down Thailand let first make it clear that it is one of the most interesting countries in the world to visit, and no the man standing behind me with the gun has nothing to do with the statement I just made. You haven’t lived until you’ve tried the death defying experience of riding the tuk tuk in Bangkok. If you believe that Rock N’ Roller Coaster is scary then you’re in for a surprise. A tuk tuk, for the uneducated, is a three wheel rickshaw that gets its name from the noise made by its engine. Tuk tuk drivers More >

The Beatles Never Broke Up – Everyday Chemistry

From the We can never get enough Beatles department. The story goes like this. An American Guy, going by the fake name James Richards, comes into the possession of a cassette tape theoretically by the Beatles called Everyday Chemistry and writes up the story on a site called The Beatles Never Broke Up. The story is too ridiculous to mention here but you are welcome to go to the site and read it. The fake album is supposedly a Beatle release from a parallel world where John and George are still alive and healthy. What ensues is a hashed up album of eleven tracks More >

Birthday wishes from the Dead and Famous

Someone out there has decided that I don’t have enough friends out there. Together with the pile of animated monkeys singing Happy Birthday while dancing the ramba, I have new friends. Restaurants I haven’t visited in five years are sending me presents in the form of free wine or free steaks. Sony remind me that they miss me and maybe it’s time to replace the TV with a new model. Sushi awaits me at a 20% reduction. The whole world knows it’s my birthday. Then there are all the acquaintances who added me to their automatic reminder list which sends out greetings on the day More >

The Nespresso Shuffle – The Ipod is no longer alone

I have an Iphone with tons of music. Ever so often I listen to an entire album or artist selection, but invariably I hit the shuffle option and play dangerously. A couple of years back I bought an orange colored Nespresso machine. Every few months I place an order and fill up my kitchen with coffee pad sleeves of various colors. At first I was very organized. I’d try a sleeve to see if I liked the flavor and the aroma, in an attempt to decide what I would order in the future. My wife had a different system. More >

The George Costanza Deal – why doesn’t it work?

Jerry Seinfeld: You ran over some pigeons? How many? George Costanza: Whatever they had. George Costanza: Miranda thinks I’m a butcher, but – it’s not my fault, is it? Don’t we have a deal with the pigeons? Jerry Seinfeld: Of course we have a deal: They get out of the way of our cars; we look the other way on the statue defecations. I may be jinxed but for some reason the water taps in the public bathrooms don’t like me. The agreement goes like this. I put my hands under, water comes out. I remove my hands the current stops. More >

Over the shoulder: What People are Reading!

I was commuting to work this morning and they cancelled out part of the route due to track repairs. The train authority bused us between two stations and of course I missed the connecting train to work by less than a minute. Having read all the morning papers and the train schedule (twice) I looked for something to do to fill my time. A young guy sitting next to me on the platform bench seemed intensely interested in the pamphlet he was reading. My English upbringing strictly emphasized the protection of privacy so of course I looked over his shoulder More >

Joni’s Rock Corner: Pink Floyd Special

If you haven’t realized yet, I am a diehard classic rock fan. As me and my moustache grew older my taste in music remained and though I often listen to pop music, rock and blues is still where it’s at for me – I even recently sat through the director’s cut of Woodstock. My brother, Joni, takes his classic rock disease much more seriously than yours truly and daily surfs the high waves of the internet for items of special interest. His finds are often so precious that I have decided to give him a regular column of his own. More >

Remote Controls and the Downfall of the British Empire

Prince Philip, who was born in 1921, has been the Duke since 1951 and is still only the Queen’s husband, was quoted recently in Time Magazine as saying: “To work out how to operate a television set you practically have to make love to the thing“.

Now it remains for us commoners to decide which thing he was talking about.

My first two months blogging

I just realized that I’ve been blogging two months now. Wow! I have written almost 70 blogs in this time, 70! Talk about being prolific. During that time I must have rearranged the way the site looked a hundred times. I have become a domain which seemed the wise thing to do. I tried to switch from blogger to wordpress but kept coming back because the whole process got me a bit overwhelmed. I added Google ads which no one ever clicks on, created a funny Amazon shop and have gathered around 500 readers spread out around the world and More >

On a serious note – All things Must Pass

I get my parcels from a small husband / wife run post office within walking distance from my home. Everyone who goes there is treated like family. The couple always smile at us, their clients, and at each other. One short visit reminds you what’s good about life. Last week I urgently needed some stamps – some things it would seem still can’t be solved via email. I was surprised to see the door shut and a sign, bordered in black, stuck on the window. The post office was closed due to the death of the owner. I realised More >

Curly – the boring saga of a man whose hair revolts on him and fond memories of Gerald Hoffnung

I was born bald but by the age of three I had beautiful curly light brown hair. My looks were so adorable,so my mother used to tell me, that everyone passing by fed me chocolate. I’ve been eating it ever since. To my great disappointment my beautiful mop straightened out when I reached school age. The only curls remaining were my eyebrows, inherited from my grandfather,which refused to be tamed. After graduating from school I did what any socially active was destined to do, I let it grow and then grow some more. For a couple of decades I was More >

I found it on the web: The International Center for Bathroom Etiquette

Sometimes you stumble upon a web site and have to blink twice to make sure your not dreaming. Such a site is The International Center for Bathroom Etiquette or ICBE (Performing #1 and #2 in comfort and style since 1995).What would seem like a cute joke has been taken here to the extreme. This is a sight with a mission and not missing is only part of it. The well designed site boasts many categories including

and of course

bathroom etiquette in poker

Definately worth more than a wee glance

More >

If on a Winter’s night / Christmas in the Heart – Sting, Dylan and Rudolf the red nosed reindeer

Let me start off by saving that I’m a great fan of Sting and have been since Police, and of course Dylan goes without saving. Sting and Dylan have one thing in common, they keep reinventing themselves. Neither are perfect but both have brought us enough gems over the decades to forgive their faults. Now both have fallen into the well of kitch and can easily be mistaken for Bing Crosby. Is the world really ready for Zimmerman’s version of Have Yourself a Very Merry Christmas? or a caroling Gordon Sumner (yeh that is Sting’s real name). Sting’s If on a More >

Little boxes – The 2009 version

Little boxes some call offices, Little boxes made of ticky tacky Little boxes inside boxes, Little boxes all the same, There’s a grey one, and more grey ones And some grey ones beside other ones And they’ll all made out of ticky tacky And they all look just the same. And the people in the boxes All went to the university Where they were put in boxes And they came out all the same And there’s programmers and analysts And QA men and small managers And they are all made out of ticky tacky And they all look just the same. And they More >

Marge Simpson on the Cover of Playboy!

It all really started with the infamous Fritz the Cat in 1972 when Ralph Bakshi released the first full length X-rated cartoon feature which grossed over $100 million worldwide. This highly provocative movie paved the way for the revolution. Up till then the world of animation was ruled by Disney. Towards the end of the eighties two further breakthroughs occurred. In 1987 a series of animated shorts starring the Simpsons was featured on the popular Tracy Ullman Show and a joint Spielberg Disney movie - Who Framed Roger Rabbit – was released. Suddenly the innocence was gone. Roger Rabbit movie featured a femme fatale More >

Great Songs You May Not Have Heard

Amongst the thousands of great or not so great albums around are hidden some incredible songs that you may never have heard. Here are five. Press on the links to hear the songs on YouTube.

1. Deep Purple Help From very early days before Deep Purple more or less invented ROCK. Their first album, simply titled Shades of Deep Purple contained a mixture of original stuff (notably Hush) and covers such as Hey Joe (more famously covered by Hendrix), I’m so glad and this great rendition of Help. 2. Alvin Lee The Bluest Blues. Alvin Lee is most familiar for leading the blues More >

Black is Black is Back

This might sound silly , but the following idea caught my fancy because it takes us back to a time when less was more and there were far fewer distractions.

DarkCopy is a basic simple conception. To write freely without distraction you need a quiet empty room and a typewriter. No flash ads, music, animated graphics, emails shemails or whatever. WhenI first started my career as a computer programmer, we worked on dumb terminals. There was no internet, office or email and you didn’t receive five stupid powerpoint presentations showing you how lovable dgs can be every five minutes. You faced a More >

The Tower Of Babel Revisited

A child cried out in the middle of the nightThere was no one around to dry her tears.Two avatars kept boxing in an invisible worldBoth trying to bury their fears.While the whole world kept searching, not knowing for what,A tower soared high in the sky.It kept growing and growing, devouring but knowing,But no wise men stood up to ask why.

The Tower of BabelIs but a mere fableIgnore what you see with your eye.Don’t believe when they claimThere is no one to blame.The whole manifestation’s a lie.

A man with a carpet approaches the marketDo you think that he’s hiding a bomb?That More >

Archive for October, 2009