December 2007 Archives

Post 5 in my very occasional series. Post 4 was way back in April after all.

Anyway, this is a bloke walloping household objects in slow-motion with an extremely sharp axe.

Highly entertaining.

This site contains step by step details on how to transform your toothbrush from useless implement of dental
hygiene to a robot. It may even be quite fierce.

If only the Transformers movie was this good...

I hope this Christmas, Santa brings you all the presents you want.

Have fun!

For once I'm making an entry in the linkage section where I'm not writing about the one going out, but coming in.

A few entries ago [Is There A Barb Dwyer Here? I'm After Barb Dwyer!], I wrote about Russell Ash's book Potty, Fartwell & Knob - Extraordinary But True Names Of British People.

Then , I looked through some stats of the site, especially where some visitors have come from, and that particular entry has been linked to by Russell himself, generating a few visits here.

Now I have no idea how long that link will stay on his site, Russell Ash.com, but I'm mightily pleased that it's there! Or, more specifically, here. The page quotes the whole of my fairly short review.

Cheers, Russell.

There's something about winter.

I hate the season, it's far too cold to be a useful period of the year. But it does create some wonderful imagery.

Here are 8 such photos. Click them to embiggenate.

Save Christmas from the God-awful, snorefest that is the X Factor.

Last.fm, my favourite music based social network [my profile page], are behind a campaign to stop anything that's rubbish getting to the Christmas number one. I'm thinking their main reason is because the public doesn't have a great track record when left to their own devices with these things...

In 1987, the Pet Shop Boys performed Always On My Mind on an ITV special commemorating the tenth anniversary of Elvis Presley's death. Propelled on by the TV show, it beat "Fairytale of New York" by The Pogues and Kirsty MacColl - and you find me a better contemporary(ish) Christmas song.

The less said about Cliff Richard's Mistletoe And Wine, in 1988, the better.

Names are an interesting thing. You have no choice in them whatsoever and, in the majority of cases, you have to put up with them for your whole life.

Recently, in a fit of reading that is rare at the best of times, I completed a book called "Potty, Fartwell & Knob - Extraordinary But True Names Of British People" by Russell Ash [ISBN: 978-0-7553-1654-0]. And it is just that, a list of people's names. It is, however dry you may think that subject is, incredibly funny.

Some of the names make little sense until you read them out loud, or spend a bit of time thinking about them. But that is the beauty of the book - it gets you thinking. It's almost like a brain training exercise!

Barb Dwyer, incidentally, was baptized at Sacred Heart and English Martyrs, Thornley, Durham on 7th January 1877.

Two more favourites are Tom Ato (Sleaford, Lincolnshire, 1867) and Tom Ayto (Grantham, Lincolnshire, 1808)!

Well worth a look.

[some information via "Potty, Fartwell & Knob - Extraordinary But True Names Of British People" by Russell Ash.]

I meant to write something deep, meaningful... profound even. But it really just isn't in me at the moment.

I have a couple of drafts that will appear eventually. But they'll be less relevant to my life at that time.

Me and December do not get on.

The Christmas season for the year has well and truly kicked off. I have sung a few songs, holiday and otherwise, at various times recently. I guess specifically the Christmas carols I've sung have filled me with joy and hope. They usually do.

The carols are like the greatest hits of western music: only the best and most beautiful have passed the test of time, and when I sing them, I often think of the many, many generations of people who sang them before me.

All of these songs share the same message of peace and joy.

On a very long, dark, winter night, all of the people got a glimpse of a great light, which filled them with hope.

Peace, heavenly peace, is the refrain and quite a good one at that.

[some thoughts via Dan Wilson]

It's two A.M. I must be lonely... (to paraphrase a Matchbox Twenty song.)

I have to be up in four hours' time. I'm deciding whether to publish this or not after work tomorrow... if it's here, I clearly thought I would.

I've a feeling my brain is slowly grinding to a halt. It's happening incredibly gradually but I can feel it, notice the differences in how I'm behaving.

There are days when all's well, I'm perfectly chipper and all the words I need are at my disposal. But there are others when I can't remember anything that's happened, or sometimes happening, at all. I can't seem to store conversations, so I repeat myself, or forget arrangements. Those days are accompanied by terrible foot in mouth situations too. I can't seem to stem the tide of rubbish that flows out, can't regulate what I say to not upset people.

I have a wide variety of close friends. And I care for them all dearly. But because they're so different, being the person they need requires a unique set of attributes from me. This is partly becuase as a person I'm not who they made friends with anymore, again for a variety of circumstances.

Having a full time job has given me a focus and stability in one area, but other parts of my life, ones I'd considered settled, have been prodded about significantly and have now collapsed on themselves. So there are parts of my life and thoughts going round my brain which haven't been there for ages. Stuff I'm not used to.

Finally, my self-esteem is at an all time low. Again, that's not helping battle the mental things going on in here.

What, in the name of sweet Jesus, was I going to write about...?!

This is a thing of glowing beauty - you play a snowy bunny, hopping along a trail of silver bells high into the crystal-clear winter sky.

Click the image below to play.