Lucy Mangan

I have a small number of favourite columnists, Lucy Mangan being one of them. Here's a snippet typical of her humour:

"...why not take your holidays separately?

This has been my parents' practice for the last 30 years. My father likes to go to Italy and spend his days sitting in the sun drinking wine, taking strolls around art galleries where attractive middle-aged women mistake his innate taciturnity for charming English reserve, or spending a few ruminative hours in Florentine duomos, contemplating the storeyed centuries of human history rising around him and the mysterious evocation of the infinite wisdom and mercy of God that surroundings of such grace and beauty inspire. My mother, meanwhile, likes to go to Garstang and drink gin with her sister until her head falls off. "

Lies

I've taken to doing as much of my weekend shopping as poss on my ratty-bike. It seems that with urban cycling comes an amount of getting hooted and shouted at.

I think the trigger is that bikes are a bit inconvenient to drive around. More than this - there is a marketing driven rage in many drivers; With their car they were promised sexual potency, unfettered speed and universal admiration - but it turns out to have been all a bit of a fib. Worse still is the fact that the tosser riding the bike is clearly enjoying it.

I have stumbled across a wondrous response to this abuse. Pretend that you have mistaken them for a friend who was trying to get your attention, give a big smile - and an exuberant wave of recognition. It fills them with impotent-choke-on-their-own-bile-venom-spitting-fury. So should it be.

Irony

Which do you think is harder?

Remove cord from Wine Bottle Puzzle - or add belt to Bosch Tumble Dryer.

One is designed to be difficult, one designed to be easy. One of them took sodding hours and drove me to drink.

Twitter

attention-deficit-Facebook

Double Bay

I like something about this picture - not really exactly sure what.

It's Double Bay in Sydney. Clearly taken from a plane, it has a bad window reflection streaked across the middle. Setting that fault aside I think the appealing thing for me lies in the languid colours of the sandy land's edge washing into the blue bay. Well - there it is.

New Bike

I'm assured that it *is* possible to have too many titanium bicycles. I stuggle to accept this.

Sat 14 Mar MTB Ride from atc5k on Vimeo.

Tag Galaxy

A Flickr images search tool. Pretty.

http://www.taggalaxy.de/

Life ...

is sometimes an imitation of art.

One of the most important things about a helmet ...

... is that it fits well.

Ryanair

Ryanair are a horrendously cheap airline. By cutting costs at every possible corner they offer surprisingly low fares.

The advertised rate is often a bit deceptive - sneaky taxes etc are added on - "bait and switch" is the advertising paradigm I believe. Nonetheless - they are hard to resist.

Every conceivable "extra" is charged for. In an inspired piece of publicity generation the CEO recently mentioned the notion of charging for use of the toilets. I can not believe that this was a serious thought - it would only be a matter of hours before someone shat in the aisle in a fit of pique. Cleaning this up would bugger up their already tight flight time logistics for days to come.

Anyhow - as a response to these corporate mental meanderings someone has come up with this:



I encourage you to print it out, laminate it, and leave it on the next Ryanair plane that you use.

A prophecy of regret

Had:



Have:




Hanker for:

Newsarse

An Onion-esque satirical news site - has stolen the current look and feel of the BBC news pages. This happened to be the first "article" I stumbled across:

http://newsarse.com/2009/03/pensioner-sues-over-holiday-youll-never-forget/

A nice walk

Crufts

I found this amusing - click on it for a slightly larger version.

Six Word Stories

23/02/2009 made me laugh out loud. Well ... snort a bit at least.

http://www.sixwordstories.net/category/subject/sci-fi/page/1/