Remember to Pack Ice Skates and Excreta Receptacles

More festive Christmas reading from the declassifieds (this one takes a few seconds to download but it's worth it):

We're still back in 1959 and this time the USA is looking to counter those pesky Soviet Sputniks by … er … bombing the Earth from the Moon.

Yup. You heard. Bombing the Earth from the Moon. Doctor Evil, eat your heart out. You've got nothing on the real US military morons.

I particularly love this phrase from the Introduction:
"The employment of Moon-based weapons systems against Earth … may prove to be feasible and desirable."
"DESIRABLE"?

As the document unfolds, sanity quietly sneaks out the back door and the logic of Brigadier General Jack D. Ripper and Colonel Bat Guano takes a firm grip as the finest minds in the US military attempt to justify claiming the Moon as their own by - among others - citing Amundsen planting a Norwegian flag at the South Pole, before simply stating: "The fact world (sic) of history knows only the success (their underlining) which turns the law of the stronger into the law of all."
Yeah, right … look where that's got you.

The sections on how to shit your pants if the Rooskies get there first are eye-watering. Now we know why Kennedy really made the "because it's hard" Moon landing speech.

The Project Horizon diagrams, however, are a hoot: ice skates and excreta receptacles ahoy! I would so love to have been one of the graphic artists on this project. The spacemen even have pointy antennæ!

Woot, woot, wibble and dribble. These guys still have nukes, people. Remember that and try getting to sleep tonight.

This has been a public service announcement from the giggling guy in the rubber room.

Funniest Read of the Week

Spy cats! Attack Sharks! Accidentally nuking Mexico! Here's the best of the FOIA trawl from 2015.

Enjoy.

Goodness Gracious, Great Balls of Thermonuclear Fire

This popped into my inbox this afternoon (clickety-click).

I've become addicted to the National Security Archive's FOIA pages and this one - freshly declassified only a few hours ago - is a doozy.

Hoorah for overkill! A whole bundle of H-bombs and up to 180 atomic bombs on one city alone. You gotta read it; it's funnier than Doctor Strangelove, especially when you think of a Palin or a Trump with their sweaty fingers poised over the insanity button.

And this was back in 1959; before things got REALLY crazy.

Yup; I still miss the ol' Cold War.

Noocular Apocalypse Fun

If any of you are - like me - thoroughly enjoying playing through the post-nuclear-apocalypse world of Fallout 4, here's some stuff to make the experience all the more real.

See also …

I'm off to watch Doctor Strangelove and The Bed-Sitting Room again. I kinda miss the ol' Cold War, with the going to bed every night not knowing if the world would still be there in the morning. It would be nice, therefore, if my bloody government would declassify this stuff so I can re-live the romance of those deliciously uncertain times.

But they won't … the gits.

Tis the Season

Sunset from my orifice window just now. It almost makes working for a living worthwhile.

Lashings of Ginger Beer

 It's lunchtime at the Goodwood Revival

 And that means sending Phil back to the car to fetch the picnic basket and a bottle of bubbly from the cool box.

 Ooooh … little bundles tied up with string!

 Bottoms up, chaps!

 The mound by Lavant corner is a prime picnic spot …

 … as this budding mechanic discovered.

Lashings of … er … un-ginger beer.

Cheers!

Doh! A Deer …

There's random and then there's just plain weird.

 Who should turn up in the Goodwood paddock but the … er …

von Trapp Family Singers?

 Deep breath … "Doh, a deer … etc."

 With dancing!

 And clothes made out of your granny's curtains.

 Actually, they were pretty good, but the question remains … "What the fuck?"

Anyhoo … Once they'd doh'd the deer dead, they wandered off with the rest of us to watch the start of the vintage motorcycle racing.

Funny old thing, life …

Keep off the Grass

Whoops!

Crunchy

This year's gravel trap mayhem courtesy of Phil and his sharp reflexes with a camera.

Party Like It's A Verb

Now that's my kind of picnic.

One for the Colonials

Mustang … yay!

Flat 'At

Reflections

Pink frock and fur stole reflected in the glory of an XK140.

Goodwood … what's not to love?

Shed

Jabba Jabba Hey

Loads and loads of lovely frocks at Goodwood this year, some … er … larger than others.

Hurricane

Seventy five years since the Battle of Britain! Goodwood this year had more Spitfires and Hurricanes than I have ever seen one place. An awesome and emotional flying day.

It's That Time of Year Again

Apologies to one and all who are heartily sick of racing car and fashion photos every September, but it's the one time each year I can step outside of reality and wallow in my fantasy world: the golden age of motor racing (and great frocks).

Back in the real world, the planet is going down the shitter (the same place my relationship just went), though bizarrely and wonderfully, a real Socialist gets elected as leader of a major party so I have someone I can vote for for the first time in decades. Enfranchised at last!

But stuff all that … Incredibly loud racing cars and girls in pretty frocks beat the real world hands down. If you are sick of racing cars and fashion pics, look away now (and for some time to come).

Go There, Spend Money; You Know You Want To …

Go where?
Why to http://homegrownboxes.blogspot.com of course.
My wonderful friend Robyn, who started this blogging lark the same time I did has launched a new blog to show just what a crafty woman can do with stuff and imagination.

Go take a look, then follow the link to her Etsy page and buy early Christmas presents for yourself and your friends. You know it makes sense.

A Cuppa for Petrea

Here's the link you couldn't see, Petrea. I have already ordered one of these and will use it to brew green tea at the office.

More Intelligent Design …

Holy crap. I have got to get myself one of these.
And PLEASE check out the Mister Tea link at the bottom. I want one of those, too!

Intelligent Design

I love this world.

Four, Apparently …

That - it turns out - is the number of architects required to change a light bulb.

Not just any light bulb; one of those inset downlighter spotlight doohickeys in the shower room. Corrina went to change it as the caretaker is on leave and found there was no obvious way of getting the darned thing out of the ceiling.

So … four of us turned to the interweb and a six minute video of a large gentleman from the southern states of the Colonies whose painfully slow-drawled accent we adopted for the task ("un-cullee-up thuh spuh-ree-ung" etc.) .

Armed with a stepladder and a laptop showing the video, the gallant quartet donned hard hats and fluorescent tabards and managed to follow the precise instructions to … er … wriggle and wrench the thing out of the ceiling.

At which point the "spuh-ree-ung" unsprung itself at a rate of knots, spraying the room with small pieces of plastic and metal and eliciting a satisfying scream from Corrina.

Yet more "spuh-ree-ung cullee-ups" held the bulb into a plastic "ree-ung" which required the quartet to take turns at wrenching and swearing until eventually it all came apart.

The new bulb was a doddle to plug in. What was not a doddle was assembling the divers small plastic parts and "spuh-ree-ung cullee-ups" into something resembling a light fitting. The man in the video had failed to mention the inherent explosive qualities of the thing and its eagerness to violently disassemble itself. He offered no help in putting it all back together again. Humpty-Dumpty was nothing in comparison.

And so … several minutes later and after successive abortive design attempts we somehow managed to manufacture something that  (a) looked like a light fitting, and (b) contained all the parts collected from around the room.

Getting it back into the ceiling was entertaining in that the "spuh-ree-ung cullee-ups" acted much like mousetraps, snapping shut on any fingers attempting to manœuvre the thing into position.
Cue divers alarums and some imaginative profanity.

We now - at last - have a working light in the shower room - whoop-de-doo - but have decided that when the next one goes we shall wait for the caretaker to get back from his holiday rather than attempt such a monstrous task ourselves.

Downlighter spotlights? Fuck 'em!

It's Hongi Time

For those of you who noticed my change of status on Fæcebook …

This is Amelia and me at a theme park yesterday.

And just to prove to the Office Children that I was not afraid to go on the scary rides, she took this photo of me …

King of the scary theme park rides!

ITS

Cousin It, Cousin It and Cousin It.
I have not the faintest idea what's going on in my life right now.

Benefits of a Classical Education

On the way to work yesterday I passed one of those sludge-gulpers … you know: big-assed sewerage pumping veehickles that unblock drains and empty septic tanks and the like?

It had one of those sunscreen things on the windscreen, bearing the legend "SEMPER NELLA MERDA"* … I almost went off the road laughing.



* For any who - unlike me - did not have to sit five years of compulsory Latin at school, this can be translated colloquially as "always in the shit".

If You're Gonna Take a Selfie, Why Stop at Your Face?

Hokay, so as selfies go this one is pretty extreme but it's the only photograph taken of me this year so I'm thinking of using it as my Fæcebook profile shot (or maybe not). It was taken by a teeny tiny Raquel Welch in a miniaturised submarine (for anyone who can remember the sixties).

Anyhoo … other than some minor medical faff and blather and some icky nasties that the surgeon put right with rubber bands, superglue and bulldog clips it appears that I am all mended and can get back to whatever passes for normality around here.

This, by the way, is a portrait, taken yestereve of my prominent Brunner's glands - something I was not aware of having until last night. As it's a whole lot prettier than my face I may well use it on dating sites.

One thing I learned about gastroscopies: when the surgeon pumps your tum full of air so he can see what's he's doing, you can't help but do the most AWESOME monster belches! Hell, if I could belch like that when I was ten years old I'd have been king of the school.

I also learned that it's possible to giggle with a camera tube jammed down your throat and to make a nurse crack up.

So … Let's see some of your own extreme selfies.

Meanwhile, In An Uncertain Universe …

Sheesh! Looks like I kinda forgot I have a blog.

My prediction for the year appears to have been fairly accurate so far.
First, my alarm clock told me to die.
Really! I looked at the thing last Tuesday and the date doohickey said "DIE". It freaked me out for a second or three, but I decided that maybe it had evolved its own personality and was entitled to its opinion.
It was only when it told me to "MIT" the following morning that I realised I'd dropped it and the thing had reverted to German. I'm keeping it like that so it can tell me to die every Tuesday morning.

So anyhoo … the crappy new year now finds me vomiting blood and pooing it, too, so I'm going to have my own live TV show: "Inside Old Dive's Squishy Bits" to find out what's going on in there. Best diagnosis is just bleeding stomach ulcers so that's what I'm rooting for. I'll let you know.

In the meantime, this (from the unutterably splendid xkcd) made me giggle disproportionately. I do love a good physics joke.

Enjoy!

Another Year?

Another one? Where do these bloody things keep coming from? They're worse than Reader's Digest.
Having received an unbroken run of five spectacularly shitty years I suppose this next one will follow suit and head straight for hell in a handcart.
Hey ho.

As for resolutions for 2015:
I hereby resolve to get older and bitchier, to be more cynical, drink too much coffee, read books, moan about politics, mercilessly mock religion, swear a lot, read more books, jest in a most unseemly manner, spend money I do not have, act in as ungracious and curmudgeonly a fashion as is humanly possible and generally to fail dismally at love and life; resolutions I am confident of achieving with flying colours.
Happy crappy new year, peeps.