The Quandary of Jade

Big fat loud mouthed idiot who racially abused someone and didn't know East Angular was in Britain... but she is dying so we can't be nasty any more.
Can we?
Ok, maybe not, but lets instead take the mickey out of OK magazine. They paid £700,000 for exclusive rights to her wedding. 30 people turned up to cheer her into the castle (in Essex remember). There were 50 guests, and who was the most high profile celebrity....?
Nick Ross, presenter of Crimewatch. And hubby was allowed to stay out past 7pm (one of the conditions of his probation after serving time for GBH is to be indoors by 7) by special permission of Jack Straw.
One feels Jonny Mac would have a field day in the continual dumbing down and "popular front" of the Labour govt - what on earth is Jack Straw doing personally intervening in this case??? Have we caught all the other criminals, stopped the terrorists and he thought he could do this just before he went home???
Harsh it may be, but after quite some reflection, i say good riddance, Jade. The world simply does not need you. Any complaints, please write them on a back of a £10 note and send them to Cancer Research. Catholics may forgive and forget for a deathbed confession, but personally i just keep thinking of the word "karma"... one this media whore probably has no idea about at all.

Alfie Patten

I leave the country for 3 short weeks...


Alfie
February 18th, 2009 ·
Alfie Patten, the 13 year-old star of the latest freak show, revealed he was taking a break from thrice-nightly sexual intercourse after discovering masturbation.
He added: "I don’t want to miss out on an important part of my childhood."

Desert tours, American rules - do not lose sight of your car...

Breathe.

Breathe.

Breathe.

The cold dry air fills your lungs, and for once they dont need to filter anything. The cold, clean air rushes into your brain and fills you with cold, clean thoughts.

Silence and emptiness, and cold, clean air. The laughter and screaming you leave behind in the car park, the cold, clean pathways covered in ice and snow stop the Americans from straying more than 10 yards from their parked patrol cars. Huge metal beasts which Freud would have found fascinating, but in the car park your little compact car looks like an automotive foetus waiting to develop into something stupidly big, destructive and fearful.

But you can leave the car. Leave the safety of the visitor centre with disabled access and a 20 yard walk down a snow covered path finds you alone. American wilderness is wheelchair accessible, but for once the snow stops even the metal wheeled fat freaks from joining you in your peaceful solitude, and keeps the screaming kids and bored dads from taking your cold, clean air.

The American desert is a wonderful place. The local Americans pervert it into some kind of endless strip mall selling spiritual enlightenment, dream catchers and yogic recentring. And the Indians play along, realising that if they take the stupid white folk on little jeep drives and feed them nonsense about their grandfathers eating rattle snakes then they too can have the Nikes and the flatscreen TVs, and of course the cigarettes and alcohol and a million white man diseases. The industry of the desert is obscene, and has nothing to do with the National Parks, who do a fantastic job in keeping a lot of this country wild and true. And so it is with enormous relief that one turns off the highway, piles through the snow, and finds oneself alone in the cold, clean air.

The worst coffee in the world, but look at the view!

The view was spectacular.
The coffee was foul.
The muffin was inedible.
But look at that view!

Expectations...

Sitting in Dennys waiting for my eggs over easy with wheat toast and a side of hash browns, as one does, the following vignette played out...
Little old lady, probably late 70s, polyester shellsuit, glasses on a string and shuffling, was met by Alex the fiercely efficient waitress.
"Can i get you a coffee?"
"Er..well..."
"OK, you got it, i'll bring it right over, you sit down..." and she is off
"Actually i dont drink coffee..." but Alex is gone.
Less than a heartbeat later she returns with a mug of steaming Joe and places it in front of our little lady, who meekly smiles and says thanks.
A minute later and Alex is back, forcing the poor woman to choose, and almost scared she bleats "Sourdough bagel" and Alex is gone again with the menus and the woman looking forlornly into the coffee, another victim of the average American's terror of offending a waitress (by, say, tipping less than 20% at self service buffets).
And then this little old lady reaches into her pocket and pulls out an I-phone, starts scrolling away at the screen, takes out her little ear phones, plugs them in, and is lost in what one can only imagine is a world of Michael Buble or James Last...

Wood, Tree and Koalas

A beautiful story about koalas meeting for the first time after being rescued from the fires, and the wonderful point that seems to have escaped the author is that one was rescued by Mr Tree, and the other by Ms Wood. You wooden believe it...

http://uk.news.yahoo.com/22/20090211/tod-oukoe-uk-australia-fires-koala-b7e5c6f.html

Honestly, i was just trying to get my blood sugar down...

Dangerous low blood sugar linked to sex drugs
Wednesday, February 11 10:04 pm Gene Emery (Yahoo News)

Illegal anti-impotence drugs and herbs contaminated with the diabetes drug glyburide have caused some 150 cases of dangerously low blood sugar, researchers in Singapore reported on Wednesday.
Four people have died, they said in the New England Journal of Medicine.
The drugs include counterfeit Cialis and herbal preparations with names such as "Power 1 Walnut" and "Santi Bovine Penis Erecting Capsule," Shih Ling Kao of National University Hospital said.
The packaging listed fictitious overseas factories as the manufacturer, "so it is not known whether there was deliberate or accidental contamination," they wrote.
All but one of the 150 victims were men, ranging in age from 19 to 97.
"We believe that physicians should be cognizant of this phenomenon when evaluating patients with severe unexplained hypoglycemia, particularly if a clustering of cases is noted," Kao's team wrote.

If i got one of these put in at the house i could solve the renewable power problem on my own...

From the BBC:

Caboverde

Have been saving this for a few days now...
To some, Cape Verde sounds like an island paradise. An island off the West Coast of Africa, bathed in light tropical winds with a perfect climate, the people are friendly, the beaches are apparently spotless...
Different when you are working there. Arrival on the island was a little late, so we touched down shortly after 11pm and i joined the line at immigration. Maybe 100 people, with 2 extraordinarily surly and unwelcoming Police officers on duty. An hour later my passport was scowled at for a good 3 or 4 minutes, all the time staring down without a word, they stared at various visas... and then asked "Visa?"
My answer must have surprised them. For I, like everyone else that day, and probably every other day they had ever worked at the airport, had discovered that you can only buy the visa in person once on the island. So no, i didnt have a visa. I was eventually given a form (including Profession, parents' names and i think it asked for my favourite colour) and joined the back of the line i had been in before, now at another desk. It took over 2 hours to get from the terminal door to baggage reclaim, a distance of about 40 metres.
The driver was there waiting and whished me off to my hotel. I was waved in the direction of a Grace Bros style lift which took me up one floor. Room 110 was posted down the corridor so off i went. When i bumped into my room, which i discovered by braille, I was so excited about the lighting arrangements in my corridor that i took a photo of the front door:

Once inside i took advantage of the facilities and slept. Until the alarm went off about 5 hours later.

The office was a huge sprawling place, fit for 1000 workers, but actually being used by about 20. I have no complaints about my treatment by the team there, excellent, hard working people who looked after me and made me very welcome. Even Anna, the mad young girl in the canteen who decided that the funniest thing she had ever encountered was a vegetarian.

The canteen was like a 1940s pre-hygiene food tent. There was a counter, and on the other side was Anna, a spoon, some tongs, and about a dozen plates. These contained one big pile of rice, one plate of vegetables, and about 10 different ways to cook bits of chicken. Or pork. Or lets face it, it could have been dog.

I was Anna's first vegetarian. So i got a plate of rice and vegetables. And each of my 5 lunches there was a lump of cabbage (boiled 45 minutes), some squash (boiled 45 minutes), a plantain (quite tasty actually) and some rice. And she never stopped laughing at me.

My host actually phoned a restaurant for me, as my Portuguese is not what it used to be, and was told they dont serve vegetarians. Irish, dogs and whores welcome, but no vegetarians. So it was off to the supermarket for home made cheese (Laughing Cow reduced fat slices since you ask) sandwiches.

One night we did go out to a restaurant. The chef was told at table side to prepare a feast of vegetables, to use his imagination, and surprise me. He did.

I got a plate of rice, plantain, squash and cabbage. And resting ever so neatly on top were 2 stone cold slices of Laughing Cow cheese.

The hotel was a great place to stay at night. No internet, no blackberry, no tv...One light in the room, no kettle, no fridge... the air conditioning had a hose running into a bucket by the window that i had to empty every couple of hours while wondering what the gestation period for legionaires disease is...

So it was no hardship at all to work at the office past 8 every night, and on the last night we arrived at the airport at 10.30. I arrived in the departure lounge after midnight. THere was only one flight, with little more than 100 people on, but again check in was painful and security was ridiculous. And we then left over an hour late which made my bag miss the connection.

Going to lost baggage at LHR was painful. I tried to explain to the man that i was travelling again the next day so needed my bag urgently. His reply - "Its not here." I know, say I, so can i borrow one? "No, your bag is not damaged, it is lost, and you can only borrow a bag if we have damaged your's." So being unable to prove that my bag was damaged, i left without a spare change of underwear....

So what did i see of Caboverde? In daylight - the walk from the office to the canteen. I had to wait outside the hotel every morning for the driver, so i include for your delight the Escolinha Disneyland - which proves that Cape Verde is one place the Disney lawyers have not yet reached which cheered me up. And the view from my window - the corner of the market place with women arriving with boxes of fruit on their heads. In civilisations where men do the work we invented the wheel 1000s of years ago. Where women do the work, they still carry boxes on their heads....