TLC

Do Paedophiles Cheat Britain's Swans? Does Tony Blair Give Britain's Swans Cancer? Not sure why the references to swans made me laugh in particular.

I take it back, the book is improving massively(and it's actually called 'Is it just me or is everything sh*t?'). I don't agree with many of the opinions but I don't think that's the point; it's all about appreciating the heartfelt rants therein, which have grown on me. Especially as under 'D' there's a rant on 'The Daily Mail' which is about 10 times longer than the other rants I've read so far, and thoroughly deserving of it too. Sorry about replying to and quoting my own post, but to me it made more sense than editing it. It's not for post-whoredom purposes, promise.

BHB, congrats on reaching the 'magical' target of 500 posts! If you could make some of the next 500 a bit more entertaining or relevant that'd be nice... Semi-seriously though (as close as I get to full seriousness) I find your posting funny, irreverent and honest (I presume honest, of course you never know on these forums, or is that fora?), and you help divert attention away from the fact that almost none of my own posts are on topic or about death. So, a toast to the good lord Banter, long may He reign.

Hey, I'm intelligent (in a general sort of 'no use to anyone' way, but you didn't say wise) & lazy, but I still work. Well I have a job, it's not quite the same thing. Although when I'm at work I always feel I drop a few dozen IQ points on entering the building and vice versa, so that makes me stupid too, meaning I'm an integral part of the current economic system by my reckoning. I am at work at the moment though, so who knows? I did see a Sir Bobby Robson interview on Sky last night, and he looked and sounded fine, just a bit forgetful, so no change there. There, that bit was relevant, even if it contained no news of any worth at all.

Well, that's a double order of odd then, as I entered this thread today to specifically mention that I purchased that Freakonomics book whilst waiting for my train home last night. That is, to specifically mention the book, not the train. Don't be put off my the stupid title, or that it's about Economics; I read the whole thing last night and can thoroughly recommend it. It's not that long (I don't read that quickly) but hopefully it should make you question yet more things about this world that are just presented as fact, as if there weren't enough already. As part of the buy one get one half price (BOGOHP not as good an acronym as BOGOF) deal, I also got 'Is it just me, or is everything sh*t these days?' or something like that. I thought it might be a constructive rant about things in today's society, but it's just an A-Z of items that enrage the authors into lots of swearing about things, mostly. It must be pretty bad for me to think of swearing as gratuitous. I didn't even make it to 'B', but it could be good commuting fodder I suppose. That'll teach me for buying a book just because it had a swear word on the front cover.

I've read pretty much all of his books (also including most of the kids ones) but I'm not sure if I still buy them because I've read all of the others, or because I still think he's really good. He seems to have become a 'social commentator' the longer he's gone on, where the story always mirrors something relevant to today's society (xenophobia, sexism, privatisation, bureaucracy etc.) but they seem less & less subtle about it. The earlier books were more direct piss-takes on serious sci-fi 'warriors & wizards' stuff I think, and funnier for it. I'll still get his next one though. Finished Anansie Boys (Neil Gaiman), recommended for anyone who's already read American Gods. If you've not, I recommend you do so. Talking of Pratchett has reminded me of Robert Rankin for some reason. Is he still making funny/silly books involving time-travelling sprouts & elvis and the like? I've not read any of his stuff for years. I think my next mission is to complete my collection of all the Asimov books related to Foundation, Galactic Empire or Robots. This includes the ones continuing some of these themes that were written by other authors after he died, which are of a surprisingly good standard. How Asimov linked so many of his books together into one huge story (sometimes 30-odd years after the original non or semi-related books were written) with barely a join never ceases to amaze me. Ask me later, I'll still be amazed, honest.

I thought the humour of Good Omens was probably mostly Pratchett until I read American Gods, when I realised a lot of the darker humour was Gaiman's. I definitely recommend it, and it's been given a re-issue fairly recently so should be very easy to find. I imagine the Sun would call it 'unputdownable' if they were into book reviewing!

Recently finished American Gods by Neil Gaiman, a very good read indeed. I'd only previously read his book Good Omens (co-written with Terry Pratchett and better than his solo stuff) but this was great. I'm an instant convert, and am now halfway through Anasie Boys, which is the follow up though not exactly a sequel. If you ever want to read a fun book about another country, I recommend At The Tomb Of The Inflatable Pig by John Gimlette. It's a history/travelouge of Paraguay, a strangely fascinating country that I didn't realise how little I knew about, and I realised I didn't know much. There, I finally thought of some books to mention here. One of them even has a slightly poncy name, just to prove I'm really intellectual and that.

Well it worked on me, I clicked on it pretty much straight away. I didn't get past the home page I must admit.

You Are Dr. Bunsen Honeydew You take the title "mad scientist" to the extreme -with very scary things coming out of your lab. And you've invented some pretty cool things, from a banana sharpener to a robot politician. But while you're busy turning gold into cottage cheese, you need to watch out for poor little Beaker! "Oh, that's very naughty, Beaker! Now you eat these paper clips this minute." The Muppet Personality Test http://www.blogthings.com/themuppetpersonalitytest/ ! night night

Jesus I'm all over the shop, I had a lovely birthday thanks, lots of whizzer japes etc. I'd just like to give a big thank you to my agent and my production crew, my publicist, make up artist, and the good lord Jesus Christ our saviour (praise the lord!) Who Died For Our Sins....

So FF gets a cake, and I get Black Death cigarette papers? Sound like a good deal, I'll probably need some later. Thank you everyone for your kind birthday wishes, as soon as I've finished typing this message it's leave the desk & a sprint to the nearest pub; as it happens that's actually next door on either side. I also thank CP for his usual smorgasbord of alumni (don't know if that makes sense but it sounds quite good), I did notice there are an incredible amount of semi/actually famous people who share my birthday, and I'm quite sure they're on a post-it note somewhere in the post-it note mountain on my desk, buggered if I know where though. The name (and number?) of that lovely lady would be much appreciated, whatever side of the pond she may be. I may well make an appearance much later this evening; apologies in advance, especially if I go into the chat area. You have been warned! Toodle pip, and happy cinco de mayo to you all!

Your Famous Last Words Will Be: "Nice doggy." You Are Not Scary Everyone loves you. Isn't that sweet? Damn, missed it! I bet 02:03:04 on 05/06/07 will be a big let down in comparison. I was probably busy painting my room pink, flower pressing or watching Ally McBeal, according to my above test results.

Still, at least they kept themselves busy with some splendid interior design. Much better than that Lawrence Llewellyn-Bowen nonsense, keep it basic and 'earthy' I say. I suppose they would count as installations.. In the spirit of 1981, we seem to have revived 'The Comedians' style of joke today, or that's my excuse.

Is that the H-Plan diet? I didn't realise I shared my birthday with the anniversary of his death. Funny, death-related and very topical. Well done!

Happy birthday too to verminarrd, a one post wonder (so far) but no less special for it. What makes that above list of interests even more worrying is that as he's from Boston (the USA one) it's probably not even proper football (i.e. Soccer) on his list! Maybe less worrying than me finding the exclusion of soccer worse than him not putting sex on the list though... And of course a medium-sized Happy Birthday to Football Fan, who at least knows which sport Football is. Have a great day doing many useful & constructive things, just not whilst at work if you can help it.

As a smoker myself I'd like to think that if I did that (not that I've got any plans to), I could probably wait until I'd changed clothes before I 'sparked up'. I'm not sure anyone deserves that to happen just for being monumentally stupid, but you could almost put it down as a suicide, so likely were the consequences.

I hope I'm not disappointing you, but that picture was taken whilst I was seductively reclining on my bed, and that ridiculous metal monstrosity behind me is in fact a headboard! Attractive as it is, it doesn't really perform the job of letting you rest your head on it, which is pretty rubbish considering the only other function it has is to stop my head leaving a grease stain on the wall (due to hair gel). I'm afraid not, but I can see the resemblence. It's all disappointment today I'm afraid.

Seeing as I have neither of those, I just hope I never meet someone who tries to tempt me.

Not much I can do with TLC I'm afraid. Lazy Clone Vet is an anagram of my real name, which is a bit better.

Thank the lord you don't live near me then! It's something I'm aware of, and try to limit myself to two or three per day. However Hopefully I might be able to give up completely in the near future. I have to do the same with my use of the word actually; I hate it but I can't edit everything grammatically dubious every time I post. Still, not as bad as "To be perfectly honest," as if that's some sort of a guarantee of honesty. Since I'm confessing, my biggest grammatical sins are: - I use brackets all the time making sentences very long and fragmented. Using a succession of commas rather than starting new sentences. The occasional misuse of apostrophes, mostly involving possesive ones in the wrong place. I don't use them for plurals though, which I find more annoying. I also use "myself" instead of "I", but realise the problem and try and correct it when I notice it in the wrong context. Use of semicolons to yet again avoid ending a sentence. Finishing at least one sentence per post with...... I like to think it's for dramatic effect, but presumably (another of my pet words; oh no, brackets & semicolon combo) it looks lazy. In my defence I very rarely make spelling mistakes, I usually remember to use capitals and I like to use lots of paragraphs. I just have trouble trying not to write in the same way that I speak; believe me when I say my posts are much better constructed than my speech. I have a terrible habit of changing topic mid-sentence, which might be why I'm starting to spend more time online typing to people. Can anyone suggest suitable punishment for my sins? Are there more mistakes I've missed that are even worse? Does anyone care? What are split infinitives, and am I guilty?

I think you may have overdone the colonic irrigation a tad, perhaps a swift course of Botox will help rectify matters!

Hey, count me in too. One more then we'll have a gang of four, the official (as in unofficial) minimum to start a lame political party in the UK.

I know what you mean, but my pet-hate is when people use double negatives. Do they not realise that they cancel out any point that they were trying to make? Grrrrr. You've probably heard it before, but I always like the story about the University Lecturer, er, lecturing about the use of double negatives making a positive and so cancelling each other out. He then said, "However, there are no cases in the English language where a double positive makes a negative." To which one of the students replied, "Yeah, right."* *I know strictly speaking it's still not true as only the sarcasm in the voice makes it a negative, but still quite a good response I think.

There are a few, certainly the picture in my profile is me, but it was taken with my phone camera so it's a little bit grainy to say the least. And probably for the best.. There are others though, or there were when I posted this anyway.