Norwegian Blues

Work work busy busy chop chop bang bang … etc.

Thanks to our delightful storm, half of our schools are currently scattered over divers parts of Norway today, so I have my hands full at the moment.
I'll post when the fan is finally fæces-free.

Thank You, Canada, You Bunch Of Twats

For once in their miserable lives the Met Office seem to have got it right.
What we've done to offend Canada I don't know, but they have flung some righteous shit across the pond at us on the airstream and it hit the fan this morning with a vengeance, billed as "the worst storm in years" by the jolly old BBC.

It is chuffing breezy in Westminster at the moment and due to get much, much worse over the next day or three.
Predictably, as I have a three and a half hour journey in to work, I arrived to find an empty office and the phones ringing off the hook with the lazy bastards who live only a few miles out of town using the storm as an excuse for a lie-in.
Now a few have straggled in with tales of trees across roads and rail lines blocked. Hey ho.

Astonishingly, my stupidly expensive "Storm-Shield" brolly lived up to its hype and survived my walk up the Thames (keeping me tolerably dry into the bargain), passing as I did several dozen people desperately flailing their trashed, cheapo brollies like semaphore signallers getting electric shocks and a load more tattered remains stuffed into litter bins, broken skeleton spokes reaching sadly skyward.
There were a couple of moments when I thought I'd be flying to Norway, Mary Poppins style, but now I'm here in the warm with latte and croissant.
Whew …
We're due eighty mile an hour winds gusting to something ridiculous when this stupid Canadian import really gets its act together, so whether I (or the brolly) make it home tonight is a matter of some debate.
If I disappear off the radar for a while, I'll be either stuck on a train, sleeping on the office floor or at home with no power (and possibly no roof).

Ah, springtime in England …
Or breakfast-time in Cornwall … photo stolen from BBC News website.
I'm glad I no longer live on the coast.
At least I've not got twenty inches of snow like poor Robyn.
Yikes!

Bwang … Thwack

Over to Mikey's house this lunchtime for some Legolas action in the garden and some frenzied online slaughtering on his Playstation 3.

Pimp my bow.
Metallic paintjob, high-tech counterbalance, everything bar laser sights.

Those cheese-eating surrender-monkeys better stay their own side of the channel.
We trashed 'em at Agincourt and by the look of things, we're ready to do it again.

Thwak!
Eat steel-tipped aluminium, Frenchie!

Hey ho. Boys and toys … Great, innit?

When Blogs Collide, Pt.18

Well woo and indeed hoo!

Not only was yesterday our ace Norwich blogger and radio star Joy's birthday (Yaaaay!!), but also the day she and Thom moved into their lovely new home, armed with paintbrushes and party food.

Don't go trying to count the candles on Joy's cake; I cropped them out as a gentleman should do.


Brown!
Auuuugh!
This is all going to be a lovely blue before the furniture gets moved in. Being a lazy slob I ducked out and did a runner before the painting started (sorry, Thom).
Joy and Thom are such lucky bunnies. They've managed to find a lovely house with big, double bedrooms and off-street parking within ten minutes walk of the centre of the city.
By the time they have finished decorating and moving in it is going to be amazing.

It even has a garden! Not overlooked, either. Though today was our first non-sunny day for ages and it was too cold for the planned barbecue.

That magical moment when the SOLD sign comes down.
I'm sure you'll all join me in wishing Joy a belated happy birthday and both Joy and Thom our very best wishes in their new home (especially as we managed to escape all the painting and decorating, hee hee).

Arbitrary Character Judgments

Just how messy is your dashboard?

For any Windoze users out there, the dashboard is a silly little thing on Macs that was developed so you could bring up a see-through screen that overlays your desktop and gives you useful information, such as weather forecasts, traffic reports, news feeds, stock prices, etc.
But Mac users aren't interested in all that crap; we want useless information. We want Jared, the singing smiley ("Luna Gardena …"), stupid fishtanks and bouncing rubber monkeys and interactive Klingon dictionaries and so a whole new industry was born: creating utterly and wonderfully pointless dashboard widgets.

I hadn't realised just what a teenager's floordrobe of a mess my dashboard has become until yesterday, when Amanda the new girl at the office came over to say "Woah! Cool! A dancing Jesus!"

Anyhoo.
Here's my current home dashboard.
Just like judging a person by their bookshelves, we can get a pretty good idea of how dorky somebody is by the crap cluttering up their dashboard.
The thing on the top left is a feed from various telescopes around the world. For folk living under England's Tupperware skies - it is nice to see what good old Sol is up to.

My dashboard has a set of Blogville Clocks, showing me which one of you reprobates is awake or asleep and the weather in London and Ohio (Robyn) … for some strange reason you can only have two weather forecasts up at the same time, so I flick mine around Blogville to see who's suffering; in this case, our Robyn.
Plus my nifty realtime earthquake reporter, so I can see how shook up poor Jules is getting in Rabaul (serves you right for living in paradise!). Click on an earthquake and it takes you to the readouts and details. Cool, if you're geeky like me.
And many thanks to Robyn for pointing me at the Etch-A-Sketch. My own miniature version of the world's first and best laptop. You actually shake it to erase the image, just like the real thing. Hee hee hee. No points for guessing the quote …

You can have any amount of comics feeds (or news feeds if you're boring). These are my defaults: Peanuts, Dilbert and Doonesbury.

I have a nifty (yet hilariously crap) Japanese translator to fuck up my homework and a wise daily saying from Family Guy.

Best of all, I have my pong clock and my hula girl.
The Pong clock shows the current time as the score, but click on it and you can play fullscreen retro Pong action! Woohoo! There are any amount of stupid games you can play: Pacman, pinball, all the usuals, and they're all free, of course and one click makes the whole lot disappear and brings back your desktop for when the boss is about.
As for the hula girl (a man's GOTTA have a hula girl! She reminds me of Joe vs. The Volcano and teases me with the - admittedly remote - possibility that a young Meg Ryan might walk in and carry me off to a desert island … sigh), leave the cursor in the corner of her window and she shimmies 'til the cows come home. You can get a Hula Jesus, too, and there ain't nobody shimmies like the risen Jesus.
Old Dive is seldom happier than when all around me the office is running about like headless chickens and I'm leaning back against my lumbar support and sipping green tea, whilst my cute li'l hula girl is shimmying just for me.

At the office, I have webcams from Venice and Norwich (the American ones are dark when I'm in London), but at home it's NYC and San Francisco, looking across the bridge to Sausalito, which is somewhere I'd like to live if they could only stop those pesky earthquakes.
I also have the inevitable fishtank, a dancing Jesus and one of those plastic monkeys whose limbs are held together with string and you press the bottom and he dances and jiggles around. Anyone alive in the sixties will know what I mean.

Basically, good, old-fashioned retro childish fun for anyone who never wants to grow up.

So. What's on your dashboard? Screengrab it, post it and let's make arbitrary judgments about your character.

Grow Up? Fuck Off!

Oh, the joys of geekdom.

Lynn picked me up yesterday on my playing Grand Theft Auto on the PS2.
As I pointed out to her, as a middle-aged man, living alone, it's either that or internet porn and I prefer to be geeky rather than creepy.

Mikey's the übergeek when it comes to video games; I can try them out round at his house before I buy 'em, which is cool, especially as Sharon's such a good cook.
The only ones I regularly play, however, are the good old Grand Theft Auto series (I only play 'em about once every couple of months but I do tend to get sucked in).

Hokay; for those who've never played GTA or who think "Video games? For crying out loud, grow up!", here's a brief explanation of why I like to take the occasional holiday in a GTA game:

Here I am, standing on a sidewalk in a beautifully and faithfully recreated Los Angeles (I could be in San Francisco, Las Vegas, Miami or - coming next April - NYC).

I can:
- Just go for a walk or a jog or get in my car and drive around the city, checking out the buildings and the laydees. There are loads of radio stations to listen to, all packed full of absolute classic music (rock, metal, indie, rap, classical, opera, country, talk radio, reggae, anything you want … it's like a iPod), and with brilliant and funny DJs (f'rinstance: Axl Rose spoofs himself most excellently as the classic rock DJ) and best of all, a selection of hilariously funny adverts showcasing the makers' glorious attitude of "Hey! Let's take the piss out of America and laugh at them at every opportunity." In fact I have been known to simply park up a car, turn up the radio and do my ironing or housework listening to it rather than "real" radio, because it is so fucking funny.

- Get out of my car and steal any vehicle, boat or plane I like (from cycles and a ride-on mower to an airliner and a harrier jet fighter) and have a shitload of fun, crashing, running over people (with hilarious visual effects), shooting people and things and …er … getting into trouble with the police. All the while, my character swears like Old Dive at other drivers, cops or anything else that can be cussed at. If you don't like the sound of Samuel L. Jackson and James Woods (two of the many, many stars who lend their voices to characters) calling one another motherfuckers then this game is probably not for you.
The sheer creative range of profanity on display startles and delights even Old Dive.

- If my character doesn't eat (in some brilliantly offensive and filthy rip-offs of McD and KFC, staffed by know-nothing kids who obviously hate their lives), he gets all skinny-assed; conversely, if I overeat I turn into a lardy fat fucker and passers-by take the piss out of me. I also can't outrun even a cop fresh out of the do-nut shop.
I can go to the gym and work out to make my character buff and buy an astonishingly weird selection of clothing and haircuts for him. Mikey has his character spammed up as Mister T; I prefer an Elvis cut and cool threads, though on occasion I dress him up in pink hotpants and a leopardskin hat and go cruising … er. People on the street react according to your dress and behaviour which is brilliant fun.

- I can date girls (this is one of the many things built in to GTA that have nothing to do with the game, but mean that once you finish it you can go back and "live" in the city), giving them presents (anything from flowers to a purple, three foot long dildo I found in the showers at the police station downtown … don't ask), taking them for meals and dancing and eventually getting a "times laid" score (sad but funny). Act anything other than gentlemanly, however, and they'll dump you spectacularly. Just like real life but without all the girly mess in the bathroom.

- I can gain "respect" in my community and run gangs, eventually taking over whole cities and facing off against the Mafia, triads, crips and bloods and any other gang I fancy kicking the crap outta. And I can take part in Rodney King inspired riots and lay waste to South Central Los Angeles in scarily realistic style.

- I can work on Peter Fonda's marijuana farm in the hills above San Francisco and create divers species of havoc in that city chock full of unsuspecting hippies and gays.

- I can break into people's houses and steal their stuff, play the casinos in Las Vegas, roam thousands of square miles of countryside between the cities with mountains, forests, desert and hick, redneck inbred folks, beat the crap out of Elvis impersonators on a Vegas street, become a pimp and run my own stable of "ho"s, demolish just about anything I come across with a range of weaponry that is truly and satisfyingly realistic, steal alien technology from the military in Area 69 (hee hee) and have great fun playing with it, interact with Debbie Harry, Ray Liotta, Sam Jackson, James Woods, Sean Penn, Bert Reynolds, Dennis Hopper and many more; take a potshot at Jeb Bush when he goes out cross-dressing with old porn star Jenna Jameson (okay, so they call him "Shrub" instead of "Bush" but he's governor of Florida and he spouts off a hilarious spoof of Republican shite on his radio interviews), race cars and bikes and generally misbehave on a truly galactic scale while the police and military chase me all over the map, all the while adding new words and phrases to my Profanisaurus.

It is truly, awesomely hilarious and yes I admit it, I am a geek.

But grow up? Fuck off!

What The Fuck's A Slurpee?

Thank God for memes.
It's been such a totally shit-fuck week that I thought I'd never blog again and suddenly Shazza rides to my rescue with this! Bless her cotton socks.
And a big fuck you to all you meme haters.
Eyes down for a bunch of crap. Here goes:

1) Are you taller than your mother?
Yup.

2) What colour is your car?
Black.
Silly question … Clothes, black; car, black; life, black.

3) What is the closest thing to you that is red?
Rather a lot of leather bound books.
Far more than is decent outside of the British Library, but anyone who asks "What on earth do you want more books for?" gets a slap.
This means you.

4) What is your ringtone?
No ringtone … No phone (as you should know by now).

5) Are you sick?
As in "one sick puppy"? … Yup.
As in unwell? Not physically, though I tore a muscle in my shoulder yesterday which is making me cranky enough to be glad we're not allowed handguns over here.

6) What colour is your favourite pillow?
White.
And filled with goose down. As are all my pillows.
I love pillows. Mmmmmmmmm.

7) Favourite video game?
Grand Theft Auto; probably the San Andreas one.
There are moments in my life when I simply have to steal a car, drive like fuck around Los Angeles and shoot people in the head. GTA means I don't end up in jail doing it. Thanks, guys.

8) Nap today?
No. My fucking shoulder hurts too much.

9) Gold or silver?
Silver. Gold's tacky.

10) Is there an animal that creeps you out?
Not as much as people do.

11) The last person you rode an elevator with?
Squeaky Kate. We were feeling too damned lazy to walk up all those flights of stairs. I know, I KNOW!

12) Did you go ice skating as a kid?
Only on the river or ponds. We don't have rinks here.

14) Ever have stitches?
Enough to start a sewing circle.

15) Favourite non alcoholic drink?
What's non-alcoholic drink? … Okay … water or green tea.

16) How long ago did you kiss someone?
Too damned long ago.

17) What is something that you want to do before you die?
Getting through today would be nice.

18) Ever caught something on fire?
Nope, though I've blown a lot of things up in my … ahem … "naughty" bomb-making student days. Making bombs means learning to be careful with matches.

19) Ever seen a ghost?
Nope.
I remember all the trouble I got into with you lot for saying they don't exist. That same post I said there was no God and no afterlife and nobody made a peep, but point out that there are no such things as ghosts and you delusional weirdos hit the roof.
Sheesh!

20) Ever seen the northern lights?
Twice. They're rare this far south, but we do get 'em on occasion.

21) Do you know how to use chopsticks?
I mostly eat with chopsticks.

22) Something good that happened today?
I found a meme. Yup; that's how crap my day is.

23) Are you worried about something you can't control?
Not at all. With all the crap I've lived through, if I couldn't cope with everything life throws at me I'd be dead a long time ago.

24) Do you take daily meds?
Alcohol and caffeine. All a growing boy needs.

25) Ever been in a fight?
Yup. I've broken several bones … fortunately all on other people. And all in self defence, I hasten to add.

26) Wearing nail polish?
Boots No.7: clear … though only if I break a nail at a gig.

27) Favourite colour?
Black. It's a colour if I say it's a colour.

28) Innie or outie?
Innie.

29) Ever used a Ouija board?
Yup. What a heap of crap that was.

30) Sweet or sour?
Can I have "bitter"? Please? Awwww, c'mon!

31) Sun or Moon?
Moonless nights.

32) What shoes did you wear today?
None. I'm working from home and I ain't goin' nowhere.

33) Favourite eye color of the opposite sex?
Deep, dark brown, the colour of rosewood in sunshine. Yeah, I know I'm being kinda specific.

34) Most important quality in a relationship.
Never chewing food with your mouth open. GodDAMN I lost some weight dating her! I just couldn't eat in the same room. Blech!

35) Favourite zombie movie?
The second George Romero one; you know, the one in the shopping mall. That was fucking funny.

36) Time of day that you were born?
Five minutes to midnight. That really fucks up astrologers.

37) Do you know your blood type?
Red … I have blood. That's about all I know.
Mayuko guessed my blood type from my personality (it's some weird Japanese thing they do when they're dating), but I've not yet been and asked the lovely Doctor Amanda what mine is, so we can see if Mayuko was right. I'll keep you posted.

38) What would you spend 500 dollars on right now?
More books. Stupid question.

39) Name something annoying in public transit?
HA!!!!!!
I mean FUCKING HA!!!!!!!
Read all of my archives.
Go on!
Fucking hell, what a dumb question!

40) Did you grow up in a city or in the country?
I'm a country boy. I work in Westminster but I could never live there. I need total silence at home. Other than birds and rustly trees, any noise is going to be made by me or my Bose.

41) Consider going on a reality show for a large amount of money?
I wouldn't even WATCH a fucking reality show for any amount of money. Sheesh!

42. Flown in your dreams?
I usually use planes.
Dreams are cheaper but you wake up in the same place, so what's the point?

43. Hugs or kisses?
Hugs … er … or kisses … or hugs … or …
Ah, fuck it. Licking pretty pink clitoris.

44) Ten dollars to spend in a dollar store. What on?
Total crap!
I'd have to take Mikey. He's the "Poundland King". He once came out of there with what could possibly be the coolest thing ever made by the hand of man: a wind-up crawling Mothra larva! It looked like a turd, about four inches long. You wound it up and it kinda humped its way across the desk! BRILLIANT!!!
Waadya mean, you don't know who Mothra is?

45) Slurpee flavour?
What the fuck's a slurpee?
Can I have clitoris flavour?

Still Feeling Like Shite

Meanwhile, here is some light music …
… or maybe not …
… er …
I'm listening to Bach, but if you can't hear it you'd better hum to yourselves.

Blah

Apologies for the lack of Dive.
The computers have been down for days at work and I'm just blah at the moment and don't have the time to do anything.
Hey fucking ho.
Whatever doesn't kill me will make me … er … older.

Filler Post

Well, it's Smothering Sunday here in Blighty and Old Dive is too busy to post, so here's a picture of some hunky firemen for Lynn and the ladies.

They were hanging around outside Debenham's yesterday, looking at some storm damage and not really doing much (except being hunky).

If you've ever wondered what they keep hidden behind those roller shutters on the sides of their fire engines, now you know.