A few days a go a book I bought from someone in the USA on eBay arrived. It was nicely and neatly packaged in a padded envelope and had a home made, but professional looking, label on the front.

I'm glad the contents were enclosed. Maybe I'm missing something here but I thought that was the whole point of envelopes. Still, it's better than having an envelope that tells me the contents aren't enclosed, or even one that tells me that what ever is in it are not its contents. I'm baffled as to what he was trying to say.

Mind you I'm still puzzling over a piece of paper I picked up in the street some 30 years ago (and still have somewhere) that is totally blank apart from the words:

"Please destroy this blank page"

Apart from the paradoxical non-blankness of the page in question. (The words describing its blankess negate the very blankness they attempt to describe*) I still haven't worked out why anyone would go to the trouble of making a page, the sole purpose of which was to be destroyed.

Actually someone did come up with a perfectly logical and satisfactory answer to this question a few years ago, a feat which so annoyed me (because it destroyed the nice cosy corner of mystery I had wrapped around the idea) that I have forgotten both the explanation and who gave it to me.

When I was in LA there was someone putting up notices on power poles and fences that just said

"Ignore this Notice"

I never worked that one out either.




* I'm sure there is a dead posh philosphical or philological word to describe this but I'm buggered if I know what it is. I leave that sort of thing to people who know what 'philology' actually is and can spell it correctly without using a dictionary to look it up like I just had to.

coldplay test

Daddy, You Tell A Story; Mummy, You Come And Lay An Egg

An insanely busy day in which not a lot got done. However, at some point during my day-long frantic blue-arsed fly impression, I did find a moment to look at the counter at the bottom of this blog and noticed that I could see the people who had visited broken down by continent.

Cool!

I took a look, and next to a huge multi-coloured pie chart was this legend:

America, Europe, Asia, Australia, Africa, Other... other? What Others? Those are the continents! The lost continents of Lemuria and Mu? Maybe the Man From Atlantis was reading my blog! Hey! Bobby Ewing is reading my Blog! Uber Fucking Double SuperCool and Groovy!

Then I realised that South America and Antarctica were missing off the list. So 'Others' covers 371,754,813 or so people and a fuck of a lot of penguins.

So 'Hola!' South America and 'Eek Squeek Flapflap fish-smell flap flap EEk!' Antarctica.

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OK, I'm off on my travels soon, and I'm not sure how often I will be updating my Blog. I can, and will, do it via email when I get the chance. But to save everyone (all 3 of you) checking every day in breathless anticipation of the next thrilling episode of my life and being disappointed when there is nothing new, I have signed up with these people NotifyList.com and can send you a mail when I do add anything new. Come on, let me Spam you. You know you want me to!

Bung your email address in here >

This will, of course, only work if I remember to take my passwords with me... and if I can get the thing set up right... The first test was not a sucess. I'll come back to this tomorrow. Don't sign up yet!


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Holly was a darling today - for the short time I saw her. I slept in late this morning having been up untill 2.30 am script wrestling, and then up again at 4.30 (Daisy having woken up not feeling too good decided to howl the place down) and I only saw Holly a for a short while this evening while we did the bath and bed routine. A lot happier than yesterday.

Tonight we had a read through of the script with Mike , Ilona, Ilene and a few other bods whose names I didn't catch - or immediatly forgot. I am so bad with names. If anyone out there is doing research on bad name memory I would love to have my head scanned to see if the name bit of my brain is actualy there - this total inability to remember names only extends to people I have actualy met. I can remember names of all sorts of people as long as I have never met them. Helps if they have unusual names of course. What made The Usual Suspects a truly enjoyable and memorable film for me was the fact that a member of the special makeup team was called Yolanda Squatpump

If ever I change my name again I want to be called Squatpump. Liam Squatpump. I like it. Liam and Merriol Squatpump and their children Holly, Daisy, and Potato Squatpump.

Looks like Mike and I will have to add two more scenes to the Panto.

Bum!

Dan moves into his new place tomorrow. Leathermen survived their trip through the dishwasher. Mmmmm shiny Leathermen.

Holly was VERY hard work today. Somedays she is just possessed by some demon spawn child and everything she says either starts with "NO!" or "I don't want..." Today was one of those days. I am exhausted.

Flopped tonight and watched "Spirited Away" which is a total treat. Bloody ravishingly lovely to look at, and knowing nothing about Japanese mythology, totally baffling but intriguing and funny. Go rent it.

Tomorrow Mike and I have to finish the script. Hmmmm Currently we are trying to get the obvious villain defeated before revealing the true villain who has been pulling his strings. I'm writing this blogentry as a way of avoiding redoing this bit where, to explain what the hell our characters are doing wandering around a palace in China, I have concocted this piece of nonsence by channeling Henny Youngman (but not very well). For some unknown reason I have Puss suddenly turning into a private eye: (though it has just occurred to me there's a Private Dick joke trying to get out here). "The Wanabee" it should be explained is a bit part player who in the previous scene managed to finagle herself a part in the show - as a coffee table...

Puss	(Sam Spade voice) It was Friday. I was working the late shift. I went to China Town - but in China, Chinatown is really big so I went to Scottishtown instead. All the time I kept my ear to the ground…
Dick	…and?
Puss	I got dirty ears; but then I had a break.
Trubadour	Go anywhere nice?
Puss	The Maldives - there I got on the trail of Mister Big. I pulled a few strings (that’s the last time they’ll let me into that puppet theatre) and I got a lead - all I needed now was a dog and somewhere to walk it. Finally the case began to bust wide open, which serves me right for buying cheap luggage from Argos… I got back to headquarters. They had a couple of The King’s lousy henchrats in the cells. I went to talk to them…
Blackout. Puss switches on the practical table lamp and shines it onto the two glove puppet rats from the kitchen scene. They are wearing orange overalls. The Wanabee is manipulating the puppets.
Puss	OK, you dirty rats, spill the beans.
They empty a tin of Heinz Beans on the floor
Puss	Cute.
1st Rat	(Pre-recorded helium voice) You’ll never make me squeal copper!
Puss slaps the rats left, right, left. They snap back and forth as he does so and continue to do so when he has stopped - (which Naked Gun Movie is this gag from? Answers on a postcard please to the usual address).
Other Rat	Yeah, you’ll never get us to tell you the Boss took the necklace to the palace of the Terribly Mysterious Multi Millionaire and has hidden it in on the top shelf of the third cupboard from the left in the master bedroom.
1st rat	Yeah, you’ll never get us to tell you that - Where’s my lawyer?

Look A Snail, My Lady!

At some point today, somewhere between mopping the kitchen floor and putting both my leathermen in the dish-washer, it occurred to me that all the SF films I had ever seen were wrong.

When the robots do take over they won't speak with a well modulated deep menacing (but slightly modified to give it a metalic resonance) american voice like they do in the movies. No, when they finally march up the high streets of the world and make their demands of the world's leaders "Resistance is futile - Mwahahahahaha!" going to sound like this.

Terrifying isn't it? Maybe that's the only thing stopping them taking over already; the lack of a decent evil-laugh synthesiser.

This was the only possibly original thought I had all day.

My kitchen floor is nice and clean though.

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RIP Oban 1991-2005

RIP Oban 1991-2005
Bon Nuit, Video Chat
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Audio Blog



Holly is a Dragon,

At the risk of turning this into a "Cute things my kid did today" type Blog, Holly was wandering around the living room this afternoon - then announced she was a dragon, licked a piece of paper and stuck it on her nose.
"That's the fire from my nose." she said. She then stuck another piece on her chin, "That's smoke." Then she got serious: "I'm a serious Dragon." she said and walked around frowning a lot. Luckily, for once, I had the camera to hand.

There is a picture of the serious dragon here.


I have got rid of the sodding fridge freezer that has been cluttering up my hallway for the past 6 months. It is finally on its way to Dan's place tomorrow. I had to unbolt the seats from the back of the car to get it in but it's in. My hall is huge again! - well it will be for about 25 minutes till all the crap finds out there is a space and sends something to fill it.

Not looking forward to tomorrow. I'm taking Oban to the vet in the morning, he's getting very old and wobbly and has gone down hill a lot over the last week or so. I am so not looking forward to this.

It's To Stop People Being Sick On Half The Room

Highlight of my day today: falling asleep on the sofa while watching "The Ghost in the Invisible Bikini".

One thing good did come of it though. I have decided what the world needs is a online database detailing the time that elapses between the first appearance of a swimming pool in any given movie and the time someone falls into, or is dicovered floating face down in it (depending on the type of movie).

I will start work on this massive task as soon as I have finished my exhaustive and definitive episode by episode guide to the number of times characters say "Omigod" in Friends (the resulting site to be called www.theonewheretheysayomigodalot.com)
and my detailed survey of the extras in Babylon 5 pinpointing (with screencaps) the appearance of a particular hat which seems to be in every episode of at least the first 3 seasons.
These are both long cherished projects of mine and one day (possibly when the kids are grown up) I will get round to these monumentaly sad undertakings.

It's been a good couple of days for total crap. In addition to "The Ghost in the Invisible Bikini" (Starring Basil Rathbone, Boris Karloff, and... Nancy Sinatra?!!!) last night I read a totally utterly fucking awful SF story by Wernher von Braun (Nazi inventor of the ballistic missile) which I took as confirmation of the creaky old Horror SF movie line "There are some things we scientists are not meant to meddle in!". In this case writing fiction.


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After a stunningly interesting day doing stunningly interesting things like cleaning the kitchen sink and emptying the garbage, Mike and I bashed a few more jokes into submission this afternoon. Which was great fun but not what we supposed to be doing. We were supposed to be adding the story.
We did add a bit of story and we think we know where we are going with the rest of it. Currently the plot revolves around the search for the 'Lost Kitchen Roll of the Incas' which, in a classic Hitchockian plot twist is in the hands of a hapless innocent instead of the hands of the ruthless megalomaniac who needs it to put his plans for world domination into effect.

(Thinks: are there any non-ruthless meglomaniacs? I guess they may well be but we don't hear about them. I guess they aren't very sucessful.)

I'm asleep on my feet here - except I'm sitting down but you know what I mean Gzzzzzzznk! thud! ZZZZZZZZZZZZZZZZZZZZZZZZ

I didn't cry! Holly and I arrived early - I thought that as it was the first time in her life she was going to school she could at least be early for that one day. If she is anything like me this will be the last time ever. Being so early we were the first ones there and I was worried that no one else would turn up and I would have to rethink this whole thing. I love my daughter and having her as the only kid in the class was going to be weird.

As it was others turned up and she had a great time - though it does disturb me that as we have enough problems keeping track of what she is going on about half the time at the moment how are we going to cope when she starts blethering in Gaelic?

OK, I didn't cry when I left her at the school but I did have a bit of a snivel when I wrote her name inside her shoes for the other school she is going to tomorrow.

A great chunk of the evening was spent trying to sort out the childcare arrangements for when I'm off acting my little cotton socks off around the Highlands. Having kids is a logistical nightmare!

Today's entry downloadable as a texted to speeched MP3 Here (I'm experimenting with Software Dan may find useful. - OK! OK! I'm fannying about with stuff! Not sure why I picked a female voice - It sounds like Stephen Hawkins in drag and it has chopped off the end - ooer Missus! More things to fiddle with; but not tonight.)

I Don't Like Monday, My Finger is Still Stuck in This Donut!

If Men are from Mars and Women are from Venus then 3 year olds are from a small potato shaped asteroid with a highly eccentric orbit.

I really cannot fathom out what is driving Holly. At times she gets involved in these huge elaborate games which are totally real to her and hillarious to take part in. Tonight's involved getting dressed for a football match. That appeared to be it. Just getting dressed for a football match but it took ages and was incredibly entertaining.

Holly goes to school for the first time tomorrow. She's been looking forward to it for ages. Every time we mention Nursery or Playgroup she says she wants to go to the "Big Nursery". She's going to love it. It just for the afternoons. I've told her it's Gaelic medium but I have no idea if she undersatnds what I am talking about. (Not suprising as I don't understand what I am saying half the time but on this particular subject I understand even less than usual). It's going to be hard to see my little girl going through the school gates for the first time. - I will not cry I will not cry I will not cry. I am a big boy - I will not cry.

Dan's flat is finished at last- or at least it is finished enough for me to say I'm not doing any more. Details and bits and pieces to do but nothing major.

First FREE track on the FREE easy-to-assemble (some adult supervision may be required) FREE CD is FREE to Download HERE

early morning birthday party (22)

Daisy Smurf

Woke up this morning to find Daisy had been Smurfed. She was covered in blue felt pen. It was everywhere. Holly and she had had a great time. (Holly paying particular attention to colouring in Daisy's tummy button - and a damn fine job she did of it too. It'll take days till Daisy is all pink and baby-coloured again).

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We had a script read through today and the Panto is not as finished as we thought it was (apparently there is something called a 'story' we have to insert somewhere. 90 minutes stream of conciousness type surreal smut just won't do - dammit).

On the upside people laughed where we were expecting them to (which is always gratifying) and the nice people over at eclectech.co.uk said it was OK to use the song. Thank you Claire.

Final day's painting at Dan's tomorrow (I hope).

The Fox Might Bite Me But I Would Do An Exploding Poo On Him

Today

Shopping + 2 kids + 90% tourist density in small coastal town = not a living hell. I mean compared with working on the Burma railway, or cleaning out toilets at the Glastonbury Festival it's pretty easy but it got off to a bogging stupid start when, after crawling into Oban at anything up to 3 miles an hour behind all the tourists, I turned left a street too early, and, instead of arriving in the little known and untouristy car park I was aiming for, we ended up stuck in the Smallest One Way System in the World* which fed me back to the outskirts of town where we had been 20 minutes before.

Do not pass Go do not collect £200 Pounds,Dollars, or Eurogroats.

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Added another joke to the Panto and stole this:Funniest thing I have seen for ages to help fill in the bit where Bling The Merciless is overpowered by the girl.

* This is a lie (but not much of one).

Today's Great Truth About Modern Housekeeping:

It's very hard to sweep up wet spaghetti.



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It's been 5 hours, I wonder if it's dried out enough yet?


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You Can't Drink Mayonnaise

A Rant

I am sick to death of the second world war.

It was the last great 'Us and Them war', the last war in which the enemy was clearly and unambigously evil. (though that fact does seem to have by passed some memembers of the British Royal Family at the time). And I am sick to death of it. I'm not saying the war was not a great and terrible thing; I'm saying I'm fed up with what has happened since.

All my life I have grown up with 'The War' in my background. War movies, (John Wayne, and John Mills leading their men to certain death and glory), War comics (lone Tommy takes out nest of jerries single handed "Gut in Himmel! Englander! Atchung!", "Take that Fritz!" Rattatatata! Aeeeiiii! "Well done Jones, now on to Berlin!") increasingly aged men and women reminising about how the War was the "best time of their life". The Kraut bashing headlines in the arsewipe tabloids everytime we had any trouble with the European Union (real or imaginary or just made up to sell papers) or every time England played Germany in a football match, all those unfunny Perry and Croft sitcoms: Dad's Army, 'Ello 'Ello, It Ain't 'Alf 'Ot Mum, itwas endless and I hated it.

Nowadays the relentless stream of cardboard characters thrashing the 'Bosh' (or the bucktoothed bespecticled 'Nips' - lone Tommy takes out 'slant eye' machine gun nest single handed "Banzai!", "Take that Tojo!" Rattatatata! Aeeeiiii! "Well done Jones, now on to Tokyo!") seems to have abated but now, instead, we get The Anniveraries. This month is the 60th Aniverary of the ending of the war. But there are so many others: The anniversary of the Start of the war. Dunkirk, The D Day landing, The Arheim Raid, The Liberation of Auschwitz, The Liberation of Berlin, VE Day, VJ Day, it never stops.

WW2 was fought between 1939 and 1945

WW1 was fought between 1914 and 1917.

This means, that between them, every year (apart from those ending in 8) is the 60th 70th 80th etc. anniversary of something!

I don't know what I'm ranting for - at least I'm not the Chancellor of Germany who is expected to turn up at least once a year to some god-forsaken field somewhere in Europe to look contrite before the world's cameras for things that happened before he was even born.

And I don't supose for one second this is unique in the history of mankind. I have visions of people sitting around in Athens rolling their eyeballs in despair as the 120th aniversary of some event in the seige of Troy came around " Oh Gods! Not the anniverasy of that bloody fight with Ajax again!"

Phew! Glad I got that off my chest.

Coming soon: a 25,000 word rant on 'Why Star Trek is Total and Utter Pants' (I've been working on this one for years).

No Near-Death Experiences with Tourists to report today. It was Merriol's turn to meet one of the silly buggers driving down the wrong side of the road. She came round a bend and had to drive onto the verge to avoid slamming head on into the stupid sod pootlingalong without a care in the world.

WE DRIVE ON THE LEFT HAND SIDE OF THE ROAD IN BRITAIN!

I know that because our roads round here are littered with (aparently invisible) little signs in many languages reminding people to drive on the left.

Listening to: DJ Food

Chocolate Chip Sausage Rolls!

I fell asleep during the day today. I'm not sure for how long but I flopped down for a moment on the sofa with Holly and Daisy, blinked and the room was suddenly twice as messy. Spent the rest of the day gulping coffee by the bucket.

The Panto script is coming on slowly, which is a bit of a pity as Ilona is wanting a finished(ish) script by Sunday. Mike came over today and we filled in a few gaps and measured the ones that still remained. I spent most of the evening hard at work in front of the pooter and after about 3 hours, in a flurry of highly focused and well diciplined displacement behavior, I had spaced everything very neatly and got rid of 99% of the little squiggly underlining that Word shoves under things Bill Gates doesn't like. Then, as an afterthought, I added about 5 jokes - 3 and a half of them Ilona will want to take out - (the other one and a half I will want to take out) then Merriol sat and poked me with a stick until I did some real work.

Current Listening - The Hokey Pockey Disco (I may be developing some sort of self-inflicted brain damage listening to this stuff)

In My Africa There Are No Crocodiles Only Pink Ones With No Teeth

Shit! Just Typed a HUGE blog for today but my browser crashed taking all my hard work to oblivion (or somewhere even further away) Knob! Knob! Knob!

To precis (it's late)

Tried to finish the online Tax Return - I got it all finished and when I tried to submit it I got some very strange error messages "The Government is broken please try later" so I don't know if I've submitted it or not. This happened once before and I had to phone them up.
"Did you get it?" I asked.
"Yes we did, "said the nice lady from the tax office after she had pulled up my details on her screen,"we got it at at 9:15 pm, 9.18 pm, 9.19, 9.21... - you're persistant, aren't you?"

Near death experiences with tourist drivers so far this week Part 1 (it's only Tuesday)
Twat of the week French driver cut across me at a roundabout then, totaly freaked at the prospect of a left turn, managed to forget we drive on the left and manouvered himself into the path of two lanes of oncoming traffic before cutting back across onto the correct side of the road - right in front of me again. It's scary - I mean this car had French plates so unless they had it parachuted into Scotland they must have driven this thing on British roads for several hundred miles already. Dover must be fun.


Current Listening - The incomperable Wooshie Spkamoto!

I Can Smell Something Smelly

New theory about people who drive at a constant and exact 40 mph (and there are a lot of them about).

For years my Dad has had this theory that someone (probably The Reader's Digest) published a statistic that showed that 50% of accidents occurred above 40mph, 50% happened below 40mph.
"Aha!" Thought a whole generation of flat-cap wearing, middle-aged Morris Minor drivers," No accidents happen at exactly 40mph!"

Having been stuck behind several of this type of driver recently I have made the observation that they often have small dogs in the car with them. Small, yappy dogs. You know the kind, the colour of used dishcloths with poo-stained bum-holes.
I'm convinced these people think their dog will explode if they drive to fast.

Merriol says she hates it when I work alone for too long. ApparentlyI have too much time to think about stuff like this.

I came up with conclusive proof that the lost tribes of Israel are Peruvians as well today, but it's essentialy a visual proof. Remind me and I'll get back to this...

Dinner Music for a Pack of Hungry Cannibals

I've started working on this year's panto script again! So far I have two long skits but no story to hang them on.

I'm not getting anywhere fast.

Today I have translated 'Auld Lang Syne' into pigeon Yiddish (now there's a concept!) as a payoff for a lame joke, and I am about to cut out the poem below for obvious reasons...

(Or maybe they aren't obvious reasons - to explain: Jimmy Savile is a TV personage / celeb. He got big(ish) by presenting a show called Jim'll Fix It a BBC show that ran from the mid 1970s through to the early 1990s.

Jim'll Fix It became a fixture of Saturday evening television viewing, often sandwiched between Dr Who and The Generation Game and was more horrible and horrifying than either of them.

Sir Jimmy as he became, now lives - for some of the year at least- in a remote cottage half way up Glen Coe and is seen occasionaly in the local tea shop - a cue for all the locals to hide as he embarrasses everyone by trying to jump the cue by "Being Famous" - a ploy which fails miserably when the place is full of foreign tourists who don't have a foggist who he is.)

Act Something Scene 2

"(A choir of angelic cherubs, each wearing a “Jim Fixiteth For Me” badge appears – or we con Eileen into doing another solo. If she can manage in the style of John Cooper Clarke, so much the better.)

Super Jimmy Savile,
What is he like?
He's got more horrible track suits
Than David Icke

If you want something opening, he'll be there
in a ton of cheap jewellery and snow white hair
No secret alter-ego, it's plain to see
It's bigger than him - and twice as big as me

He used to run marathons before they were 'Snickers'
No one ever accused him of getting in her knickers
He lives up the Glen just near the bend and
Everyone who lives up there calls him their friend

He's loud and he's gaudy, his voice grates your ear
He's the only celeb we got living round here
Youngsters and foregners look at him in awe
And ask each other "what exactly is he for?"

He isn't for anything - exept for himself
Another has-been celebrity, sitting on the shelf
The last of his kind - the last we have
He's Jimmy Savile - the Superchav"

Yep, it's got to go... it's crap, but at least I got to post one of my poems in my blog. Now where is the one about slashing my eyballs because no won luvz mi?

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What's that on your head? A Wig!!!!!!

Long lost and forgotten photo of the girls wearing wigs (for some reason or other) found on a long lost and forgotten Flickr account.

Meanwhile it is now Thursday! I started to go to bed when there was about 4 hours of Wednesday left. I have to knock this 5 hour bedtime routine on the head and soon. It's killing me...

Tonight's movie: Carnival of Souls
It gave me the real creeps. No body parts flying through the windows, no serial Killers lurking in the dorm just honest to goodness creepy filmaking. I'm sleeping with the lights on tonight. God, I'm such a wuss!

You've just got great super-hero teeth

I was followed all the way home by a 2CV tonight - now I'm really paranoid.

Tickle tickle tickle!

Paint Paint Paint. That's all I've been doing all day. I hate painting. It's not what Tiggers do best. It's my least favourite thing in entire universe (apart from stripping wallpaper, anything involving large quantities of human waste, and whatever else it was I said a few days ago that I hated doing more than anything else in the entire universe)

What is it with my family? Why has everything has got to be white? My Parent's house is white and now I'm painting Dan's entire house white. White walls, white ceilings, white woodwork. I'm going snowblind!

In addition to yesterday's rantette (about the imposibility of the standards of touristical driving around here at the moment) I came across a cracker this morning. The road between here and Kinlochleven is a windy twisty uppy downy kind of road - most of it is pretty easy driving though if you aren't too gung-ho.

Knowing the road as I do I can tell you the narrowest part of it is the bridge at Invercoe. I'm not sure how old the bridge is but it wasn't really built with modern traffic in mind. If you were a tourist and driving a mobile home the size of a small branch of Tesco's Supermarket where would you stop to look at the scenery?

If you said "on the bridge" give yourself a coconut and go to the top of the class.

There is some sort of World 2CV rally in Edinburgh soon (or last week - or even in a parallel universe) and there seem to be several bejillion 2CVs trundling around the Highlands at the moment. All of them seem to be driven by careful conciderate drivers going in the oposite direction from me. It's bizzare. Whichever way I'm going they all seem to be coming towards me. I never seem to be stuck behind any or see any up the road ahead of me. I'm getting a little paranoid about this.

Too pooped to watch even the crappest of movies this evening, though I did catch the end of The Trollenberg Terror on the box last night. " ... and the The Award for Crappest Alien Monsters Ever in a British SF Film goes to ..."

I wish I had seen it from the start but the best line of what I saw had our podgey American Lead grabbing a Molotov Cocktail and say:

"I'll go outside and throw a bomb at it and see what happens - don't open this door again until I knock."