Andromeda

Source images from NASA

Puss & Boots

You are about to blow up a plane.

To kill hundreds of people in the air and possibly on the ground.

It doesn't matter whether you do it in the plain light of day, or tucked away out of sight; the end result will be the same.

But, then we have the two attempted plane bombers - who we shall call: puss & boots, if the intention was to bring the planes down, then why after flying for so long, why at the last moment do they miraculously lose their focus and turn from being martyrs of adoring waiting virgins, into a terrorist version of frank spencer?

Surely if the aim was to down a plane, wouldn't you inject your pants whilst sitting on the loo in the loo, at least you'd have minutes of peace to make numerous attempts without having those very same people you're attempting to murder trying to pummel your ineptitude into an orbit all of its own?

Remember, this is from the very people who planned the destruction of numerous iconic buildings whilst they cosseted it up thousands of miles away, in the dusty bleak wasteland of the mountainous east; managing to hijack planes and thwart the best that trillions in defence spending could offer on 9/11.

Is it me, or does each time this particular shoal manages to bob its way to the surface, it has a disturbing tendency of smelling like a trawler full of nasty old pollock?

Yipper-yapper

Despite all the yapper about an election year, it doesn't feel like an election year, in fact it feels more like an old grizzly lumbering its way to a scratching post and getting ready to aim a rump at the front row, just in time for the prime-time circus.

With less than four(?) months to go before a swarm of "x's" change the stripe of the same jacket, and despite the continual ya-bo-sucks-to-you politics in parliament, it feels as laden with energy as a fallen yorkshire pudding feeding a family of 20. 

I could, however, be mistaken and simply missed the pulsating venom of change coursing its way through the populace with each passing day; a case of casting out the old, by replacing with the same-old.

Notes in time

Total insanity has been achieved... tom tancredo... depressive webs... vitamins... money grows on trees and you are the tree... upgraded speeds... ah screw this, i'm off to bed.

Bubble prick, bubble prick

Scour... scour... scour...

Ah, how nice the austrialian internationaliased  porn watcher's managed to keep a hold of his job, after his fiporn escapade — no doubt in contravention of his employers (macquarie's group) terms & conditions of employment; you betcha if he was watching anything else 'appropriate' he'd  have been out on their ear, hounded and vilified for life, which shows that if you want to watch "appropriate" porn at work — move to australia!

Scour... scour... scour... 

South Wales Police said it had been called in to investigate a 61-year-old man from the Vale of Glamorgan on suspicion of possessing indecent porn.

Indecent, not appropriate and it hasn’t been splashed all across the globe, good to see no  avenue, branch or sprigs being left unturned in the collection of this damning evidence.

Scour... scour... scour

In new delhi the chief justice of india k g balakrishnan suggested on sunday that the government should impose a ban on websites that exclusively display pornography and hate speech. 

I'm only moderately surprised the term terrorism didn't pop it's wee head onto that list. 

So three different takes on the issue of porn dependent on where you are, who you are and how popular you are in the moment.

I would scour myself, but need to find a port.

Coldest, warmest, time for a stringy thermal?

Well the past few years have seen some of the warmest years since non-fudged records began: more floods, more mud slides, more heat-waves and associated fires, and even winterest winters; this year's already providing the worst snow fall on record to affect parts of the states, europe, the coldest in the uk (well at least for a while), each week seems to set another record before being surpassed by another-... ohh  circustainment's here...

"And what is going on with mps and their expenses?"

Damn, wrong channel....

"Yes studio it's a blood bath, the mobs beating the crap out of the chinchilla because it's deigned to snap a sneeze, whilst the great big st. bernard/rottweiler/gorilla combo — that's already bitten off a couple of arms and heads — is actually being given a box of treats by a flurry of trembling hands poking out from bloodied bitten, holed and shredded vests.  Amazing!"

Around the world in 80 sleeps

In 80 days time it will be international noise awareness day, for all of you who will weep on this day, i'll be there spiritually weeping alongside you; but, in the meantime i shall be sending out appropriate and timely emails to those entities that have shown as much regard for their neighbours as a dealer selling ingredients fit for inclusion in a victoria sponge claiming it would give you the best high since sliced bread.

The 28th April 2010 is the date, and this is it's 15th year.

I wonder how many cumulative years are spent by people who’s every waking moment is spent just battling against the rush of even more gadgets that you just want to smash, or break or shove wear the sun don't shine — sometimes when thoughts flicker across the idea of how devastating a major planet-wide calamity would be, it's quickly followed by thinking how peaceful it would be on a dead airless extinct planet, yep pretty peaceful. Selfish? Oh yes - remember this falls under that environment thing i mentioned a while back.

So if you're suffering noise of any kind that's a constant irritation: record, log, tabulate, contact your environmental department, get a pair of noise-cancelling headphones (a pair are on their way so i will test them out and see), which might be the thing that briefly helps you retain a scintilla of sanity, leaving you to querulously observe the approaching white van coming to take you away, before you start gibbering incoherently about stabbing speakers with a jug of ionised water.

As much as i doubt the council, the club and the centre for conveyancing (sorry but tfl just doesn't have the c*&?# in it), doing anything other than retort with the usual platitudinous response upon receipt of their emails, always but always give them a chance; if they do and things change, i'll eat my headphones*

Stick it in the diaries, 28th April 2010 — international noise awareness day, otherwise known as turn that bloody racket down day!

* sugar spun headphones contain 80% sugar and constitute 20% of your simple carbohydrate rda.

Soft and smelly chocy drops

So, it's the end of an era at Cadburys as the soon to be ex-chief (mr stitzer) will be leaving apparently with a potential package worth about £20m - no need to worry about contacting the jobcentre then, but it might be worthwhile as in a few years he'll be eligible for the winter fuel allowance and with fuel costs set to increase by 20% over the next decade, it might just be worth that call to prevent a horrid dent in his savings – well at least for an hour.

Once Kraft gets through with the takeover, and the job cuts (terry who?) start whether this or next year, i doubt the ex-employees will be given a severance package anywhere near as beneficial, which would probably be a good thing as anything over £6,000 and they'd have to fend for themselves as far as the government’s concerned.  But when 5,947 of them are worth the ceo’s leaving handshake, of course the government will have to take a very dim view of why they've made themselves deliberately unemployed by not working harder in the first place.

So remember the next time you don't receive a pay rise, or the pay rise is so small that it just covers the price of a second class stamp, that you are doing your bit by saving your company from rack and ruin, and ensuring that those who deserve it, get it.

New horizons

Hm, from every major disaster there's a silvery lining - or so that particular rubbish saying goes; as believing in the best, from the worst tragedy, is always our way of dealing with things when reality deigns to not play ball.

So nasa might have missed out on the extra cash they wanted for a manned base on the moon or a manned mission to mars; which is sad considering that it would have cost less than 10% of banks mega-bonus annual billion give-aways to bankers whose usefulness to the vast majority on the planet is a smidgen above zero - absolute zero.

But, i don't recall hearing anyone say anything about not building a base on an asteroid whether manned or automated, and i'm not talking those little small football sized asteroids, but asteroids a good few kilometres in size - something like ceres at 466km, they'd provide a vastly greater challenge than building on a planet or a moon - and just imagine the huge net of sensors with their only power requirement being to sense and transmit, as propulsion would be provided by the asteroids own motion as it zips its way through, round or out of the solar system, in the end even the greedy industrial corporations would scramble to get on board; the entire process for the fly-bys could be fully automated, eventually the  asteroids could be moved with small and regular gentle nudges to change their trajectories and speeds, until - over time -  the process could position them into a nice high orbit and make them available for mining, which would do away with having to destroy our environment, which would allow building to occur in space cheaper and even  (in time) maybe alleviate the need for countries to invade other countries for their resources whilst trotting out the usual specious excuse of "we're here to help the people" as there would be more than enough floating around for the most greediest of greediest power mad gits out there to be bathing in it until they breath their last.

Ah, keep on forgetting that for 100% greedy or power mad in the world, enough is never ever enough.

And at least the hawks in governments could put their loony star-wars-lets-rain-death-from-the-skies equipment to some useful use to point and take out stray asteroids, which may or may not suffer technical trajectory malfunctions ending up hurtling towards some major megacityburb.

Or we could just wait for a major disaster (a when not if) to come about, with those watching in their floating hotels been on the last technologically capable outpost, the last  survivors with only a couple of months supplies, until they too perished.

Choices choices…

"Eating decent food instead of junk crap is a lifestyle choice; deciding whether you'll be wearing levis, wranglers, dickies or slumps is another lifestyle choice, deciding whether you’ll hang with bums or swing with the stiffs is another lifestyle choice, wanting to believe that rock you stubbed your toe on whilst surfing is god - is a lifestyle choice..."

"Nothing to see here, be a good citizen and move along."

Disparate ties

"Terrorists must be communicating acts of vileness against us by using the net!"

"It's the pedos under every kiddies bed communicating and practising their vileness using the net!"

"It's the godless, if only they would turned to god and be saved, if not we'll have to kill them to save them!"

"It's the criminals making our online lives a vile misery by using the net when all we want to do is spend, spend, spend - save us!"

So goes the neutering cry, as another avenue of anodyne blandness is restored.