Seven Of Nine, And Not In A Good Way

Dear Readers, I apologise: excluding the daily jokes, seven of my last nine posts mentioned blogging, improvements to blogging, problems with blogging, faulty blogging and why blogging is killing me, one white screen at a time.  To quote the best tv series ever made – The West Wing – I should Just change the subject!

But I can’t, of course, because I’m blogsessed.  To quote the second-best series ever made – Star Trek – Resistance is futile.

The good news is, the problems appear to have been fixed: I have not had to refresh my Facebook connection once in 24 hours (instead of having to do it 24 times in one hour); comments no longer disappear; pictures now appear; and the white screens have returned to their parallel universe, where Frustrated Me lives in a permanent state of Munch’s Scream.

One of several versions of the painting “The Scream”. The National Gallery, Oslo, Norway. (Photo credit: Wikipedia)

I have answered as many of the comments on my own blog as I can – I had problems commenting here, as well, but I had to just do it.  I eventually gave up because I needed to regenerate (white wine-Maltesers-hot shower).  I have tried to catch up with your blogs but if I missed some, I apologise. 

As a thank you for your patience, here are seven of nine reasons not to date Seven of Nine (actually, these are seven of 45, but that kills the theme.  Read the rest here, where I found them):

1. The two of you have a little too much syntho-tequila, steal the Holodeck’s portable emitter, undergo a minor transporter malfunction, and “Boom!” you’re a daddy.
2. The first two and a half hours of any romantic encounter are spent trying to find the zipper on that damn catsuit. 
3. At the monthly Voyager Beer Bash, inebriated crew members keep shouldering you aside to use the bottle opener on Seven’s forehead.
4. The Collective has assimilated detailed knowledge of the sexual practices of thousands of species, and who needs that kind of pressure?
5. Her old roommate, Eighty-Four of Eighty-Five, always wants to tag along.
6. 198,874,987,293,128,154 in-laws.
7. Automatic response to “Was it good for you too?” is always, “Pleasure is irrelevant.”

For those of you who are not Star Trek fans, here’s a West Wing joke:

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No joke.  I got nuthin’.  The show was often funny, but I can’t find a joke about it.  8,340,000 possible results, and nuthin’. 

Have a Scream cartoon instead:

Finally, this won’t make you scream with laughter, but it amused me:

From the Arts Council:  Arts Jobs: Wanted: tramsgendered performance artists

I wonder how much training they need?

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And if you think this post is weird, wandering all over the place, making no sense, have a word with WordPress – they drove me to it.

Make it so.

Joke 392

Sonoma's Left Ear (Photo credit: BreckenPool)

Thanks to Pseu for this one.

Did you hear about the man with three ears?

The left ear, the right ear…and then he had space on his forehead for the final front ear.

Move Over

Image by buba69 via Flickr

What would it take to get you to move?

From this chair?  Lunch.

From this house?  A better house.

From this country?  A green card.

From this planet?  The dulcet tones of Captain Jean-Luc Picard.  He could persuade me to do anything.

If someone you trusted offered you $1000 to move to a different city, would that be enough?

Could I take my lunch with me?

Upon reflection, no.  That would barely cover the moving costs; especially to Betazed.

Would you need other things: the promise of friends or better weather?

I have friends; even some real ones.  Global warming will catch up in Stockport eventually, so I won’t need that.

What would they need to offer you before you’d instantly say yes?

A job.

Or if you already want to move, what would it take to get you to stay?

A job.

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Actually, I love moving house.  I love the clear-out that moving house always entails.  I like putting things into boxes, putting their contents into lists in a pretty little yellow notebook, and putting the boxes with their labels (Kitchen/Bedroom/Lounge etc) into the new rooms in the new house.

The junk gets sorted into categories:

• Charity
• Recycling
• Sell
• Garbage

And sub-categories:

• Charity: Clothes/Bric-a-brac/Books
• Recycling: Bottles & Cans/Paper/Green Waste
• Sell: Whatever I Don’t Need/Large Unused Items/The Hub’s Stuff
• Garbage: Tat/Junk/The Hub

Hmm.  Ask me the question again.

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Let Them Eat Cake

Image via Wikipedia

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What makes you feel like you’re still a kid?

When the Hub tells me to stop picking my spots.

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What invention, as in something not yet invented (jetpack, teleportation ring, time machine) do you most need right now?

A replicator.  Those babies can rustle up a meal or a cup of Earl Grey, hot, faster than you can say Star Trek.

I don’t need it right now (it only takes a minute to warm milk for my cereal in the microwave) so much as I want one I want one I want one.

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Arts Jobs – Cake Popper

When you read that, did you think, like me, pretty girl in a bikini?  Then you’d have been as confused as I was to learn that the first requirement for popping out of a fake cake is ‘a basic food hygiene certificate.’  Health & Safety are strict in this country.

Sadly, I thought, it’s just a dull kitchen job.  Then I did a little research: the advert was placed by two London women who make the most amazing cake lollipops at the Pop Bakery:

I found their blog – they make cakes on stalks; I may be their first cake stalker.  Go on over and take a look; I defy you to be unimpressed.

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Space: The Final Is Here

Image via Wikipedia

Tomorrow is the last Space Shuttle mission. Does this make you, happy, sad, or indifferent? Why?

Okay, it might not be tomorrow; it might already have happened because I’m writing this yesterday but in the future of the moment the prompt was given.  So it might be tomorrow, or not: Space Shuttles are notoriously unreliable.  I guess any plane that needs a parachute to land is going to have glitches, however, so I don’t hold that against them.

I am truly sad that the era of the Shuttle has come to an end.  We should be out there in space, doing stuff.*

*Bear with me: I’m an enthusiast but not so hot on the technical details.

Stuff is what we do: search out new lives and new civilisations.  Boldly go where no split infinitives have gone before. 

It started with the bloke who thought, ‘This village is all right but there must be more than just us out there,’ and went to see for himself, dragging his missus and kids along so there was always supper on the table and someone to haul the water. 

Having found he wasn’t alone in his universe and there was, in fact, another village over yonder (with his missus sighing, ‘It’s life, Jim, but not as we know it: they eat their bread butter side down.  I blame that Seuss fella’), he felt the urge to search out more villages, maybe one with a posh hotel and a shower: ‘Clean me up, snotty.  I’ve travelled five miles to get here.’

And so he (it’s always a he because paternalistic attitudes prevail even in these enlightened times when a woman can’t get elected President because she doesn’t cry and people don’t like it because she’s hard and then she does cry and people don’t like it because who wants a cry baby as leader of the free world?) conquers the villages he visits and moves on to the next.  On to towns, cities, shires, countries, new worlds across the sea, taking care not to fall off the edge on the way.

Finally, he thinks that space might be a good idea because those pesky communists wanted it first.  Illogical, yes, but great motivation.

In 1969 he makes one giant leap for mankind (have you tried walking daintily in those huge suits?) and celebrates with a game of golf and a growth industry of conspiracy theorists who claim there was no way he got a hole in one with no shadows to prove it. 

Some of his mates follow in his moon boots then bam!  1972 passes and nothing…no more moon walks that don’t involve a single white glove.

How did that happen?  It’s like someone decided: been there, done that, got the space shirt; now we have a parking garage and huge garbage dump and we can live happily ever after.

Maybe they have a point: despite all the movies, we haven’t been invaded yet.  What self-respecting alien wants to live in a world that uses space trash instead of ozone to keep the temperature ambient?  And who doesn’t want a follow-up to velcro?

Clearly, our prime directive is to save money and stay at home, avoiding the neighbours.

Of course I’m sad.

Ask A Silly Question…

When teleportation is finally possible, where will you beam yourself first?

Aboard the Enterprise, of course.  Dur.

Some Words

Image via Wikipedia

Bitch.  That’s what Plinky Prompts says I should write about today – my favourite word.  I love the sound of it, the way it bursts out of my mouth like an alien from John Hurt’s stomach.  Titch or itch or twitch; rich, witch, which; glitch/hitch/stitch – not even pitch, switch or ditch come close to the satisfying pop of the lips that saying bitch gives.

Sadly, I can’t use it; I’m a good girl.  I don’t swear: except at the Hub in an argument; but I defy anyone to live with the Hub and not swear at him.  It can’t be done.  Nor is it possible to avoid arguing with him in the first place.   We were squabbling the other day when Matt the Finisher was here and the Hub said to him, ‘Don’t get married, mate.’  To which I unfortunately replied, ‘Yeah,  do all women a favour.’  When he started crying I had to backpeddle quickly and explain that I meant men in general, not him in particular because I’m sure he is a very nice young man who can fix anything in the house and I bet he could catch mice; Barbara Cartland once said pinkly, ‘There’s simply no equality when it comes to mice.’  By this time the Hub was rolling in the aisle make him pay for it later and I gave a How Do You Solve A Problem Like Maria? shrug and retired to my kitchen.

Another favourite word is solipsism.  Also another one I can’t use, but this time because I can never remember its meaning, no matter how many times I look it up.

According to Dictionary.com:

–noun

1. Philosophy.  The theory that only the self exists, or can be proved to exist.
2. Extreme preoccupation with and indulgence of one’s feelings, desires, etc,; egoistic self-absorption.

I’d say that describes every blogger on the planet.*  

*I know I don’t have to apologise for that one because the paucity of comments lately means that I can prove my readers don’t exist.**

**Except for slp and Viv, of course; thank you, dear readers.

The first time I came across the word solipsism, I wrote it on my A Level English folder, meaning to look it up later.  My tutor noticed it and said, ‘There’s a word.’  Then walked away and never mentioned it again.

Proving that sometimes it’s better to believe – to paraphrase The Sex Pistols – I am a solipsist.

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Looking for a suitable photo, I came across this website: http://www.moviedeaths.com/alien/kane/.  I thought I was a nerd – I have seen every episode of every series of Star Trek, you know; more than once – but these people are something else.  You should take a look at the comments. 

It’s actually a pretty useful site.  I have never seen any of the Alien films and it gave me some interesting details, such as Hurt’s character’s name, and where he was at the moment of death: a sort of latter-day Kane and Table.***

***Pun. – noun.

1. A deliberate infliction of the wince factor on one’s faithful readers.  Punishable by desertion in droves, leading to the belief (correct) that only the self exists in one’s personal blogosphere.

V. Okay

I finally got to watch the new V last night.  It wasn’t bad.  I enjoyed it enough to sit through two episodes and set up a series link.  The hero is now a heroine (Mrs Clause, Elizabeth Mitchell) and the collaborating female journalist is now a collaborating male journalist (a creepy-looking Michael J.Foxonbotoxalike).  The vulnerable teenage girl is now a vulnerable teenage boy and…I think you might get where they’re going with it.  The priest is still male (we haven’t moved on that far since the Eighties) though he is much younger (Taken and 4400‘s Joel Gretsch).

I can’t decide if it was ripping off every sci-fi movie, series, game and cliché it could find, or paying homage to them.  The intro was straight out of Independence Day but there was a character who said as much.  There was also a scene at a warehouse with an address beginning, 44oo Whatever Street.  Spud said there was something from the game Resistance in it as well.  It could be fun spotting the references or it could become tiresome, but I suspect I’m going to watch it all anyway; though nothing could replicate (see what I did there?  Star Trek reference?  Just paying homage, honest) the shock of Diana and that jaw in the original series.

V is showing on SyFy.  You may not know the channel because, up until ten o’clock last night, it went under the name of Sci Fi.  They had a big launch that I missed because of my habit of fast forward(!)ing (don’t mind me, I am just trumpeting science fiction references in the style of the new V) the adverts.

As much as we all love science fiction, we never watch the SyFy channel; I don’t know why.  We might start, however, because there is a new series coming on called – wait for it – Painkiller Jane.  How cool is that for a title?

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Yesterday’s prompt required us to start a poem with a line from a choice of eleven, from the poetry of Norman Dubie.  I know I am supposed to take the prompts seriously but sometimes I can’t help myself.

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Poem Starting With A Line From Norman Dubie

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Her breasts filled the windows like a mouth;

her stomach blew up like yeast

and her chins went south.

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I missed my Dad yesterday so I wrote this one:

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The Last Time

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Last time I saw Dad

he lay in state, refusing

to laugh with me or

at me.  He gave me

away in that suit.  I gave

him away in that 

suit.  Too young to die;

too sick to live.  Cigarettes

did for him, at last.

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Have a great day!

Today Is A Good Day To Diet

Sometimes a smile is just a smile

 

Yesterday was a really good day.  First of all, as I mentioned, it was Toby’s anniversary of his accession to our home throne. 

Then the internet was finally fixed; it was running at something like point one blahblahblah instead of ten blehblehbleh.  Our provider has made the Hub jump through metaphorical hoops to sort it out, even though he told them it was a faulty modem.  This went on all week and they finally sent out a technician who discovered – what a surprise – that it was a faulty modem.  Being a smartaleck always puts the Hub in a good mood. 

Chatting to the technician, the Hub was finally tipped over into coming down on one side of a decision – we cancelled Sky and signed up with Virgin Media.  We’re getting the same services and much more, including free evening and weekend calls and loads more telly, for much less per month.  Spud was ecstatic because he’s been nagging us to do it for months as we will get free ESPN  – more football or, specifically, more Manchester City live games.  Spud will now get to see away games, which he doesn’t go to. 

Speaking of football, and Manchester City in particular – last night gave us four straight wins (the first time an incoming City manager has won his first four games).  The Hub was gloating again because it is like he is psychically connected to Mancini, who made the exact substitutions the Hub was calling for.  I can’t believe I even sit and watch the matches these days, never mind blog about them.  I must start studying again. 

I have saved the best for last: a strange man knocked on my door yesterday and said, ‘I know I don’t have an appointment but I would like to come in and plan your new kitchen.’  Lucky I wasn’t wearing lipstick or his wife would have got the wrong idea. 

A word of explanation: we are council tenants, which means we live in social housing.   Social housing has had a bad press over the years, but I can’t complain.  Things are repaired if they get broken and the rent is reasonable.  I don’t have much good to say about our current government but I must give them credit for one thing: the decent homes standard.  All social landlords are legally required to make sure their tenants live in decent homes by 2010; in the last few years we have had new windows (double glazed) and doors (all with locks, dead bolts, etc, for extra security); new central heating and boilers (ecologically and economically better than the old system); loft and cavity wall insulation.  The house is to be completely re-wired next week, including the fitting of loads more plug sockets, new light fittings, and smoke and carbon monoxide alarms that won’t need batteries.  Finally, we get a new kitchen and a new bathroom.  All of this costs us exactly nothing: the government provides grants to the landlords.  When I vote them out in May I will be silently thanking them as I tick the opposition’s box. 

 So, like a bloated Worf, I say today is a good day to diet.  I’m off to celebrate with a chicken slice and a chocolate eclair.

Fly Me To The Moon

His career unexpectedly rocketed...

I’m in a great mood: Tory Boy is coming home today, for a week.  We only had him for two days at Christmas so he owes us.  Even though I have taken down the tree and decorations, TB, Spud and I will hang on to the Christmas spirit by having our annual viewing of the greatest version of Dickens’ tale ever told: The Muppet Christmas Carol.  A true Christmas classic.  The boys and I watch it every year, singing along to all of the songs and reciting the funny bits: ‘Light the lamp; not the rat!  Light the lamp, not the rat!’   Spud made my Christmas extra-special this year by buying me a dvd version to replace my worn-out old video. 

The Hub will be making himself scarce.  He is not a Muppet fan.  Or a Star Wars fan.  The man is a freak of nature, redeemed only by his love of Star Trek – but not The Original Series. Sometimes I wonder how I ever came to marry him. 

The photograph above is of a rocket made by TB & the Hub about ten years ago.  It’s component parts are scrap such as empty Cheeselet tubes and crinkly paper, but it had working lights and I think it made a noise.  TB sent it into Diggit and it appeared on television.  He won a bubble rucksack and a key ring (both of which broke within the week) but he never got his rocket back.  Perhaps they should have used a boomerang for steering. 

I must go because I have a busy day ahead: after church I will be making our roast beef & all the trimmings New Year’s Day dinner.  We postponed it so that TB was with us.  Incidentally, on the day TB arrived home for Christmas, I read this in Psalms: He settles the barren woman in her home as a happy mother of children. Praise the LORD.  I am not barren, obviously, but I am truly a happy mother of children.  Praise the Lord!

The Twilight Zone

Is there anybody there...?

I have had an odd few days; strange things keep happening, whether it’s the phone activating itself, or opening the fridge to find the Titanic hitting an iceberg.  Okay, I can explain that last one: the Hub drew a picture of a cruise ship on a lettuce packet for a joke; but the rest of the things are weird.

I told you I accidentally locked the dog in the kitchen.  I’m not now convinced that I did because I was certain I left it ajar, and only took the blame because I was the last person in the kitchen before we went out that day.  I wouldn’t have thought any more of it if it wasn’t for the other strange incidents.  Let me explain:

We came home the other night at 10:20 (the day anyone/anything but me locked the dog in the kitchen), having collected Spud from a party.  At 10:40 I saw the phone light flashing to say it was in use; I checked it but there was no-one on the line.  The phone showed a time elapsed of 34 minutes, which means the call started at 10:06 – when the house was empty. 

I woke up on Sunday morning to find my wristwatch on my bedside table: I wear it in bed and never take it off.  The Hub swears it wasn’t him. 

I found coffee splashes on clean dishes in my cupboard – the Hub is the only one who drinks coffee but he never drinks it inside kitchen cupboards, not being small or agile enough to curl up in them. 

Just as I was beginning to think the Hub was playing tricks on me, I dreamt, one night over the weekend, that we caught a rat and ate it for dinner.  Next morning I woke to the news that some of the I’m A Celebrity contestants were to be prosecuted by the Australian authorities for catching and eating a rat.  Unless the Hub was whispering the story in my ears while I was sleeping, I don’t think he can be blamed for that one. 

And he definitely can’t be blamed for this morning: my Little Brother phoned (not odd in itself; we speak once a week).   I was surprised because I spoke to him on Saturday morning and it’s only Tuesday.  In fact, he was a little off with me that day, and I wondered if he was phoning to make amends.  When I mentioned my surprise, he mentioned his surprise because he swears we haven’t spoken since his birthday, ten days ago.  Yet I distinctly remember Saturday’s conversation. 

I’d like to blame my husband, because that’s what they’re for, but I really can’t.  Tell me, am I demented, stressed, hallucinating, psychic or haunted?  I have always been a bit of a normal Norman and this is freaking me out a little.  It is sterling work by who/whatever is doing it to me.  I can’t see the wood for the forest: please, someone, offer me a ray of light.  Tell me I’m going to wake up back where I belong, on the Enterprise.