That sounds painful

I can't say that this sounds like a very attractive prospect, especially for any ladies concerned.



And I'm really going to trust a company called "ruindive" with the care of my todger.

(Pic taken from my 419 catcher account)

The only Avatar review you will ever need

And Avatar is shit anyway: a humourless fable about a bunch of sanctimonious, stand-offish jungle-smurfs who spend their days running around in thongs, attacking explorers, interfering with sky-horses, and obstinately halting the march of progress for the sake of a poxy tree. Watching the Na'vi (see? even their name is obnoxious) mope and moan in three dimensions simply made them more real, and therefore more objectionable. Maybe if the final half-hour had consisted of one of the human soldiers repeatedly kicking one of the Na'vi shamen in his leaf- bollocks until he spewed blue sick and his eyeballs popped out in 3D, I'd have found it easier to stomach.

Charlie Brooker, of course.

Let the witch-hunt begin

You probably don't subscribe to the daily "Here is the City" email newsletter because if you're reading this blog odds are you don't work in the City of London¹ but pretty much everyone in The City (and the annexe down at Canary Wharf) does so it's a pretty fair bet that yesterday lunchtime when the newsletter came out there were a few ruined keyboards as they got sprayed with half eaten sandwiches in HR and up on the management floor when this little item hit the streets.

First things first, it's not from me. As I've previously mentioned I rank on the organisation chart at about the same level as the mould behind the coffee machine and this reads as if it's come from someone around mid-levels in the corporate food chain. It also reads as someone whose been "Pissed On and Passed Over" for promotion - I certainly don't recognise the part about bringing in external people rather than promoting internally, that's not what I've seen in my few years at Banko Di Haggis and I've seen plenty of people who want to climb the greasy pole be able to so.

Also there's this...

And joining the bank's full-time payroll in the coming weeks will be a number of 'conversions' - temp or contractor staff who will be given full time jobs...

... so if B di H is such a rotten place to work how come these contractors have taken the shilling and kissed the book? Much of my team is made up of contract to perm conversions (hell I'm one!) so they must have seen something worthwhile? It's not as though there are no contract jobs out there at good rates, I must get about 50 emails and a couple of phone calls a week from job pimps trying to push me to 600 - 700 quid a day gigs.

That said pretty much everything else he says seems to feel right. I've largely ignored "Northstar" and "Napier" and "WorkOut" and the "Enormous Giraffe Willy"² projects but that's only because I do my level best to ignore any kind of management initiatives that can be summed up in a single word and some sort of crappy motivational poster stuck on the wall next to our mouldy coffee machine as much as possible. But its certainly true that Northstar does seem to have been hanging around like a bad smell for quite a while.

Anyway regardless of what he said and its veracity or otherwise I think it's a fair bet that right now a thorough search to identify said anonymous disgruntled employee is probably ongoing and HR are warming up the branding irons and dusting off the rack and iron maiden. Old timers here might recall my former work blog called "That's Not a Bug Its A Feature" that bumbled along with a few dozen readers until the Sunday Times decided to make it one of their blogs of the week. Within 24 hours I was getting hit after hit from inside Banko di Haggis and even though I'd not said anything too bad about the place I dropped the blog quicker than I would drop radioactive elk shit as soon as I saw the visitor logs.

Anonymous, whoever you are good luck. If they find you and you manage to keep your job then I'll be happy to introduce you to your new peers - the mould behind the coffee machine.





¹ In fact the odds are you're someone who landed here when you were googling for "furry dragon porn" - how many times do I have to tell you we are not sodding furry!
² I think I might have imagined that one.

Sums all done

Well so much for getting back into blogging. My excuse has been my Open University degree course with a couple of exams that needed doing, the last of which was yesterday so that's it for a while now so I can come back in here and whitter on about nothing in particular.

Anyway can you all hear that screaming noise up and down the country? Yes? Well that's the sound of thousands of useless council employees being torn from the state's teat and thrown into the street as the crushing realisation dawns on them that the real world really doesn't need a "children's play diversity co-ordinator" or a "street furniture compliance officer", hopefully one of them is that utter twat of a "refuse officer" at a certain Norfolk borough council who unilaterally decided that I now have to traipse half a mile to the main road with my binbags as they can't get the bin truck to my door because of "health and safety" of the fucking binmen!

Well quite frankly good fucking riddance to the lot of them and all those media luvvies at the Beeb who are going to get the boot as well. Anything that basically gets government pared back to the absolute essentials only is a plus in my book and making up a load of non-jobs is no way to warehouse the surplus population. After 13 years of ZaNu Labour throwing cash at anything to shore up their vote we're bust, borassic, broke and other things meaning we have no money starting with "B". However I would be neglectful in my duties as a dragon if I did not come up with a few more draconian suggestions of my own.

Overseas Aid Budget to be cut to, oh lets say £0. If people want to help out the little brown babies then there are plenty of charities out there to give money to. I don't want to help the little brown babies and I definitely do not want to assist President Mwumumumumba of Corruptionland fund new marble lavatories for his presidential palace.

TV Licence Fee. New fee is £0. The Beeb will survive, you make all those nice costume dramas that you can sell. Why should I fund a left-leaning monolithic broadcaster. Pay your own way and stop raping my wallet of 150 quid a year you bastards.

Those banks you bailed out: Sell them. See I'm prepared to take my chances as well. I noticed that shares in Banko Di Haggis are around 50p these days so UK PLC might even turn a profit.

And finally - leave the EU. Keep the money we send to these bastards and cut VAT to 0 (want to know why Darling only cut VAT to 15% - the EU rules said it couldn't be any lower as that would disadvantage the Froggies). The VAT cut will hugely stimulate the economy, get businesses flooding in here and generating jobs (and tax revenue) plus a whole layer of administrative arseholes who collect this regressive tax are now no longer needed.

Oh and Mr and Mrs Vatman? Don't think your new job is sitting on the sofa watching Jeremy Kyle. Here's a shovel and there's some sea defences that need shoring up, come on, put your backs into it.

Next Week: Fixing the incapacity benefit problem by releasing a hungry leopard into the room. Anyone who can manage to run away from the leopard does not need incapacity benefit and anyone who doesn't won't be needing any benefits any more.

Of mini-diggers and political oblivion

Yes I know. Bad dragon, not keeping his blog up to date.

Well the last couple of weeks I've been off on leave and playing with chainsaws and mini diggers so now rather than looking like a wilderness with briars and overgrown cypress leylandii it now looks like a recreation of a battle of the Somme with chickens. Actually getting away from a computer and TV for a while was rather refreshing.

However on getting back onto the train this morning I see the monocular cunt is no longer leader of the walking corpse that is the Labour Party and we have one of the milliwatt brothers at the helm of the sinking ship. Apparently this one is the lefty one and got in on the back of block union votes. Now as someone who detests the Labour party with a passion one normally reserves for root-canal surgery I'm absolutely delighted that they elected a leftie in thrall to a bunch of union dinosaurs, you might as well have dug this guy up and made him your leader...

http://i.telegraph.co.uk/telegraph/multimedia/archive/00981/96-michael-foot_981288c.jpg

... as you've just consigned the party to the political wilderness for the next 15 years.

Now all we need is Cleggeron to grow a pair, cut taxes and give us our country back. Oh yeah, I forgot, they're still politicians.




Oh yes also at some point over my vacation I spent an afternoon sat in a field in Surrey with Pink Floyd's Dave Gilmore and an eventing horse. It's a long story.

I think that closes the matter

Stephen Hawking, the smartest man on the planet, has done lots of hard sums and says

"Because there is a law such as gravity, the universe can and will create itself from nothing," he writes. "Spontaneous creation is the reason there is something rather than nothing, why the universe exists, why we exist.

"It is not necessary to invoke God to light the blue touch paper and set the universe going."

http://www.guardian.co.uk/science/2010/sep/02/stephen-hawking-big-bang-creator

I believe that settles things. Case closed. All you religiots can go home now as the last "gap" your "god of the gaps" could have been hiding in isn't there any more.

Now can I have my fucking planet back from you please!

A game of numbers

Sorry about the lack of blogging, It's been a bit crazy these last few weeks.

However to make up for it I'd like you to meet Christopher Valentine. Mad as a bucket of elves.



Well it explains why I can never find any chopsticks in my kitchen drawer when I want to eat chinese.

But I bet you laughed at the batshit crazy guy who is clearly 100% hatstand.

But if he was stood there and told you about talking snakes, people with wings who had flaming swords and this Jewish guy who came back to life after being dead for 3 days then you'd just go "oh, right, another God-botherer"

All christianity and the other "real" religions have on their side which this guy doesn't is weight of numbers . Anyone who believes in the truth of the Bible/Koran/Haynes Manual of the Invisible Pink Unicorn (PBUH) is equally as howling-at-the-moon crazy as Chris here and clearly should be on some form of medication but aren't because, well, there's millions of them and Novartis simply could not make enough anti-psychotics.

Ramadan Mubarak

A little (NSFW) message for all my Muslim readers at Ramadan.

By the ever brilliant Grumpy Old Twat

Global Head of August

According to my manager I have been appointed the "Global Head of August" which apparently means that as everyone else in the team appears to be taking some if not all of next month off which leaves your scaly green friend the only person with any experience with his hands on the controls.

Why is everyone off in August? Ah that would be because they all have made a lifestyle choice to have little kiddies and August is school holidays and of course as I have made the other lifestyle choice not to clutter up my existence with little ankle-biters everyone assumes that I won't want to take any holidays in the summertime.

Well thanks for consulting me guys. And also, as it was your choice to have kids, how come you get tax breaks and benefits from government and I don't?

Oi Cleggeron! How about a "Covering for you when you have to go to Tarquin and Chardonnay's school sports day / leave early because it's parents evening / must have a week in Lloret del Mar when it's sunny and you just have to put up with whatever's available in September" tax credit.

Yeah, didn't think so.

Locked in, and the religiots have stolen the keys

Over on the BBC website today I read about this poor bastard called Tony Nickilson who, following a massive stroke and irreparable brain damage, has a body that is completely paralysed from the neck down but his higher brain functions are all fine.

Quite understandably he really doesn't want to keep on living like that but of course there's nothing he can do for himself so if he wants to die his choices are to starve himself to death or for someone to help him along. He's seeking a legal clarification that his other half won't be prosecuted for murder if, as he has clearly stated, she complies with his request to end his life.

Now in any sane, rational world this would not be a problem. Report from two or three doctors and psychiatrists into his mental and physical state and some proper oversight by a judge or similar legal figure of high standing and it would be all done and dusted. There would be, what, five, maybe ten such cases a year.

But oh no, the religious idiots, religiots as we'll call them from here on in, have to stick their oar in... let's see what the crypto god-bothering cockwallets at ProLife Alliance have to say:

“This is the most frightening attack so far on the current laws governing euthanasia in this country. As Mr Nicklinson cannot do anything himself to take his own life, this would not be a case under the law of assisted suicide but of murder... Hard cases make bad law and we simply cannot endanger the lives of thousands of vulnerable people in the interests of a tiny minority by sending out the message that it is permissible in certain circumstances to actively kill someone. A ‘right to die’ would rapidly become a ‘duty to die’ as the disabled would be made to feel that they are a burden on resources."

Look will you cunts just fuck the hell off my planet right now. This is the worst example of the slippery slope fallacy and it's the one you come out with all the fucking time. You have absolutely no evidence whatsoever about your "duty to die" assertion, none at all. It's complete bullshit and I know damned well you don't give a shit about the disabled, this is all about your angry middle eastern sky god. Proper oversight of any requests for assisted suicide by medical and legal professionals (who would naturally have to be screened to weed out any fans of Ratzi the Nazi and his paedophile protecting army of bishops) would be able to sort out the very rare cases of people leaning on granny to bump herself off before she spends their inheritance and unfortunate people like Tony would get the dignified release they so desperately want.

It's quite simple. If you want to cling onto life at all costs because you're scared of dying because of some myth invented by bronze age goat herders in Palestine then fine, you do so. But don't expect for one fucking nanosecond that your idiotic, irrational beliefs trump my right to decide what I do when I feel my life is not worth continuing.

I thank you for the lightning that shoots up and sparkles in the rain

OK so this is my last post on temporary celebrity dead ginger nutter Raoul Moat, even though he's still a trending topic on Twitter (mainly people reposting jokes at the expense of his admittedly silly name) and, unbelievably there are over 3000 people on the "RIP Raoul Moat You Legend" page.

As London Misfit points out in the comments to the last post it appears that he was tasered during the standoff, whether by Gurning Copper or someone else I guess we will never know. I heard two different accounts of said taser incident. The first one, that they zapped him after he had shot himself, seems a bit off to me. I mean the guy had just fired a shotgun at his head - it would be pretty obvious, even to the police who sometimes aren't the sharpest chisels in the toolset - that he wasn't going to be doing anything dangerous any more so hitting him with 20,000 volts seems a bit like overkill to me.

The other question, and one I'm sure will be asked over the next few weeks, is that did they zap him unsuccessfully before he shot himself and, crucially, did that cause him to shoot himself? Now from where I sit (on the outside, making generally uninformed guesses) this seems more plausible. It was pissing down and he had a lot of thick clothes on so I imagine that a taser, which to work properly has to get the little barb things to contact the skin of the target, probably got blocked by the soggy clothes and didn't take him down as desired. I'm also wondering if said soggy clothes just conducted the electricity round his body and caused a muscle spasm whilst his finger was on the trigger and blammo, instant dead Geordie.

Only not quite so instant, as he died in hospital a couple of hours later. Now I would have thought (again, with nothing to base this on apart from it seems to make sense) that a shotgun under the chin at point blank range would, when discharged, blow your head clean off your shoulders. Maybe as well as causing him to pull the trigger the taser caused him to miss a bit.

Anyway it doesn't really matter. He's dead which means my taxes aren't going to keeping him in chokey for the rest of his life which is a good thing. If it were me in charge up there instead of Margaret Beckett and Shergar's bastard love child I'd have said "first one of you with a clear shot, drop the bastard".

However one last thought. If one whackjob with a sawn-off and six cartridges can have the resources of 10% of the entire armed constabulary thrown at it, can you imagine what would happen if 20 or 50 people were to do what Moat did at the same time as a co-ordinated attack? You could destroy a country that way. For fuck's sake nobody tell the mussies.

To the gurning copper at the Raoul Moat standoff

Hello, yes you, the gurning copper with the taser.



Look I know you get a bit upset with people taking pictures, especially pictures of coppers, but might I give you a spot of health and safety advice. If you are going to turn your head, grimace and berate a member of the public for having the temerity to photograph you in the course of your duties it would be a really good idea if YOU TOOK YOUR FUCKING FINGER OFF THE TRIGGER OF YOUR SODDING WEAPON!

Thanks for listening.

Grumpy.

PS: Apparently former footballer and celebrity wife-beater and pisshead Paul "Gazzer" Gascoigne turned up in Rothbury last night, pissed as a newt, wanting to take his old mate "Moatie" some chicken, a warm coat and a can a lager then sit down with him and do some fishing. A local radio station managed to get an interview with him which is hilarious... go have a listen: http://ht.ly/29y6m

Anybody seen a Raoul

You know for a ginger haired body-builder ripped to his tits on steroids he's proving rather elusive isn't he?

Mind you plod are not exactly covering themselves in glory here because despite flooding Northumbria with any copper who can be more or less trusted to hold a gun and not point it the wrong way, flying about in helicopters and apparently getting the RAF to strafe anything that moves fly over in a Tornado with a thermal imaging camera they seem to be sigularly unable to find him.

Of course this is leading to a few wags gently taking the piss at the competence of the Northumberland Constabulary: http://twitpic.com/23rywn

Actually in more than a few cases not that gently. In fact you don't have to dig too deep on Teh Interwebs to see a rather weird phenomenon developing - that of a psycho nutcase who has shot his ex-girlfriend and her new bloke rapidly becoming something of a folk hero.

Actually on reflection it's not that strange. Moaty-boy's stroke of genius, albeit one more by luck and paranoid delusion rather than careful thought, was to say "I'm only going after coppers" and then taking a pot shot at some unfortunate plod in a panda car to prove his point.

Now there's a considerable number of people out there who don't really like the police, nothing serious, they're not going to have ACAB¹ tattooed on their knuckles any time soon but years of state nannying, stupid laws unthinkingly enforced, random "terror" searches where you know you're being searched just so they can tick the "we don't target mussies" box, people illegally stopped by plod from taking photos and sundry other minor injustices has got quite a few people's backs up. As Raoul says we're not a target and as plod start to look more and more incompetent I can see how your average bod can sit back and almost enjoy the spectacle of the police being made to look like bungling incompetents by the most unlikely of folk heroes.

The police really haven't helped themselves by saying "Ah, we have information that he's now a threat to the general public" and then when asked what kind of threat the Police Chiefette who looks like Margaret Beckett's love child with Shergar pops onto the TV to day "Er... we're not going to tell you." You could hear the cries of "Oh yeah? Chinny rec-on" all up and down the nation.

So where is he. My guess is he's in a bar in Ireland watching the news and laughing. Or he's crawled into a hole and killed himself.

I think we should ask that octopus who can predict footy matches.


¹ Stands for "All Coppers Are Bastards"

The iPhone 4. Great "i", shame about the "phone"

Well I've had my Jesus Phone for a couple of weeks now so I've had a chance to properly play with it and use it in the real world.

As a handheld device it's fair to say it pretty much rocks. It's fast, the piddly little keyboard which I thought would be a right nightmare actually works very well. Email and light surfing on 3G are fine and apps are quick to load and run.

However what Apple seem to have forgotten is the primary purpose of a "phone" is to, well, make and receive voice calls and at this I have to say it completely and utterly sucks. Firstly to use the device as a telephone necessitates developing the ability manual dexterity and hand positioning skills of a classical Javanese dancer in order to avoid touching the two bits of antenna in the "apple death grip". Sure you don't have to stand next to someone playing a gamelan when making a call but I can't help thinking thing might help with the hand positioning. Also the whole screen is touch sensitive, which is the point, but Apple seem to have not realised that a person's earlobe works just as well as a finger to hit the mute key during a call. Apparently the iPhone is supposed to have a proximity sensor in it to turn off the screen when it detects your bonce but it seems rather flaky unless you have the phone to your ear in just the right way so we're back to those Javanese dance techniques again... remember to extend that middle finger... here are some people making a call to their bank on their iPhone 4's to pay the gas bill:



The other thing about a mobile phone is that you would expect it to have a reasonable standby and talk time, what with it being a phone and all. Nah, not this phone. I use it as an iPod for about 3 hours a day and I'm lucky that the battery will still be reading above 20% when I get home. I almost feel as though I should be carrying around another phone juts in case I need to make a long phonecall at the end of the day. Unless you know you can definitely hook it up to some external power source at some point during the day you will not be able to make any calls on this fucker after 24 hours.

Oh and for a "it just works" device I've managed to crash mine, twice.

I tell you if I had paid more than 30 quid for this thing I would be absolutely livid.

Amen, or something

As you probably know I have a little hobby called "scambaiting" which involves me answering those Nigerian fraud emails pretending to believe them and then messing with the scanmmer's heads. I have a seperate email account whose address has been seeded in various places from which these scammers harvest their potential victims' email addresses; what we in the trade call a "catcher account"

However this little gem turned up in the catcher account this morning.


|

Endtime Endtime
to Endtime
Re: Beloved,don't leave ur salvation to the future.Reject 666"(read-Bible-Revelation-13-8-18)
6:23 PM (12 hours ago)


To know that hell await sinners and keep silent on the matter would be injustice to mankind.eternal punishment is not a pleasant subject for discussion, but you must know it.hell the destiny of all sinners,who personly reject Christ Jesus in their life time. (read- Math-25-41-46.Rev-20-13-15,21-8.) Repent to day."Bewere of 666"-read-Revelation-13-8-18)9-Says He who has an ear,let him hear.Repent today and save ur life to Christ Jesus.

Salvation is found in no one else for there is no other name under heaven given to man,"you and I"by which we must be save.(read -Act-4-12).A great multitude that no one could count,from every nation,tribe,people and language,standing before the throne and in front of the lamb, "JESUS CHRIST." they were wearing white robes and were holding palm branches in their hands.and they cried out in a loud voice,salvation belongs to our GOD who sits on the throns and to the lamb,JESUS CHRIST.Say Aman praise and glory and wisdom and honor and power and strength be to our God for ever and ever Aman.(read- Rev-7-9-11).The wages of sin is death,but the gift of God is eternal life in Christ Jesus (read- Rom-6-23) save ur life in CHRIST JESUS to day.

And it carries on for page after page after page in the same badly spelt vein.

Doubt he's a scammer but I could not resist dropping him a quick reply:

So as the bible talks about unicorns does it mean unicorns are real? If I believe in Jesus will he let me have a unicorn when I go to heaven?

I'd like a unicorn. Unicorns are cool.

Could I have a lady unicorn as I reckon it would be really great to have sex with a unicorn and I would want a lady one because I'm not gay.

You could use the horn for leverage.

Love and kisses

Learning to love Apple, kinda

OK so I am now the owner of Apple's latest and greatest must have gizmo, the iPhone 4. In fact I have two of the little buggers as I got Mrs Dracunculus one as well.

Now regulars will know that I'm not mad keen on Steve Job's toys (see my comments on the iPad down the page a bit) and Apple fanbois like this one deserve setting on fire, stomping on and then setting on fire again just to be sure. However a couple of weeks ago I was, much to my surprise, given an 8Gb iTouch as a "thank you" gift from my gaffer at work for all the stuff I did in Honkers which was rather nice. Now I liked my little nano iPod and just saw this as a bit of an upgrade but the more I played with it, got it all working with the wi-fi, added a few apps that I actually use including a very nice graphical calculator that does matrices and calculus the more I liked it. So much so that I thought, "this is good, all it needs is to be online all the time, kind of like a phone" and as I was thinking that Orange my mobile provider rang up and said "Hello Mr Dragon, phone upgrade time again, what would you like?" and I said "iPhone please". And then they told me if I hung on for a week I could have the nice shiny new one when it was released.

So the day after all the sad fucks had queued up for hours to get their Apple heroin the nice man from DHL brought me a couple right to my door and I didn't have to queue up for anything. Nor did I have to pay through the nose as they went onto my 30 quid a month package which has 10 hours of calls and as much text messages and internet as I can eat and they only cost me 32 quid a pop, oh and the contract period is 12 months. The advantages of Orange still thinking I'm a business I guess :-)

So what's it like. Well it's rather nice. The screen display is to die for, brilliantly clear with text incredibly crisp. Sure you would not want to read War and Peace on the thing but for a bit of light surfing it's excellent. There was a but of a brown smudge on the bottom left of the screen (which Peter Ibbotson tweeted back at me was the glue curing or the blood of one of the suicide vicitms from the Foxconn factory where they make the phone, something like that) but it seems to have gone now. Its also very quick and smooth and the pinchy, grabby, wave it in the air like you don't care user interface becomes quite natural quite quickly. I didn't seem to have a problem with the signal dissapearing either but then living in the middle of the swamps as I do I barely get a GPRS signal at the best of times so today in town is going to be the true test of that.

The downsides as far as I can tell are just the normal ones you get with any Apple product and the reasons I don't own any Mac type products. First you have to use iTunes which is just about the suckiest piece of software in the Western Spiral Arm and you can do with it only what Steve Fecking Jobs says you can. Want to add words to the spell checker... no, can't do that. Want to set your ringtone to Kraftwerk's "Computer Love" which you have loaded up... no, can't do that either. How about using it as a portable hard drive? Nope, sorry. Want to write your own little app for it... oh do sod off, look buy "iCrap" from the hideously overpriced app store, we know what's best for you, little person.

Now if I could do all those things on my piddly little Sony Ericcson i910 how come I can't on your box Steve?

Still those niggles aside, I do rather like it and it can stay. I'd say get one if you can on a good tariff where you don't have to pay that much and you're due a phone upgrade anyway but if you go and pay 600 odd quid for one you need your bumps read.

Enough with the world cup already

Look I know there's a footy match on round at Nelson Mandela's old gaff at the moment but does every single fucking product I use have to jump on the sodding bandwagon? I mean my cornflakes at breakfast have "A feast of football" splattered all over the packaging with some bollocks about winning a shin-pad if I send in three packet tops. If I want a few pringles to nibble on when flicking through the TV channels to find something not soccer related I now have to open a packet of "Pringoooooals" and there's world-cup themed sandwiches in the staff canteen.

Honestly I am expecting to sit down on the loo only to see Wayne Fucking Rooney's gurning fizzog leering at me as it's been printed on the bog roll.

And what's got everyone's knickers in a bunch? Well everyone who gives a shit about watching the spectacle of a bunch of overpaid tossers kicking a ball about anyway. That would be the "vuvuzela" which is the Xhosa word for "wank-trumpet" apparently. I can see how folk might be a tad irritated by said "instrument" as quite by accident I caught the last 10 minutes of Rooney and his friends being held to a one-all draw by a nation to whom footy ranks around the same level of interest as competitive scrabble or morris dancing. It took a minute to work out what was wrong with the sound as all I could hear was a swarm of angry bees doing a simultaneous B-flat fart, ah - that would be your knuckle-dragging football fan embracing the "cultural diversity of the Rainbow Nation" and honking his plastic wank-trumpet. I found I wanted to ram the bloody things flare end first up their collective arses within about 90 seconds so what the hell it must be like listening to it for 90 minutes I hate to think.

And can you imagine being in the stadium itself? I read the noise level of these things is 113dB which, to give you an idea, is the peak sound pressure of my 16" chainsaw when it's at full chat. I fully expect our wandering fans to come back from SA and walk straight into the nearest hospital to get treated for deafness.

Maybe they could pick up some retro-viral drugs to handle the HIV they picked up off the local good-time girls whilst "On tour".

Gardening with rifles.

Hello dear readers... oh hand on I just had a look at my webstats, let's make that "Hello dear reader and the rest of you who land here after typing "scaly dragon porn" into Google with your left hand because your right hand is otherwise engaged."

Bit of a blogging hiatus over the last couple of weeks as I was on holiday after the HK debacle and before that was too busy telling anyone at work what a complete and utter clusterfuck the HK operation was to get any blogging done. Anyway back now and with concrete poured, greenhouse erected, raised beds made and a whole load of other "grow it yourself" stuff done.

However I'm not entirely sure I'm going about this latest "save the planet grow your own food it tastes better and is good for you" thing that seems to be going on at the moment. Sure all those things might be true but it's so far cost me a small fucking fortune to even get going. Tomatoes, peppers and chillies all need to be grown more or less indoors so that's 180 quid for the sand, cement and gravel, 200 quid for a cement mixer (I have lots of concrete to make later on so I splurged on a new one) then 800 quid for a wood greenhouse because the aluminium ones are crap so all in with pots, compost and the all important little sticks that say what each plant is I've spent the best part of 1300 quid on this so far which would buy a hell of a lot of chillies I reckon.

Yes I know I could have done things cheaper. We did make a start with a cheapie plastic "greenhouse" which was basically thick plastic over a flimsy frame which is getting results but it (a) is dropping to bits already with one part of the "door" held together with bulldog clips after the zip broke and (b) looks dreadful.

The beds were a bit cheaper - just 80 quid for some timber and a bit of my time to screw it all together and 20 quids worth of timber treatment. We're only going to use these for stuff like lettuice and expensive veg like white onions though as living in the middle of a swamp where the predominant industry is growing things I can pick up a 25kg sack of maris pipers for under a tenner and that lasts us most of the winter so sod growing my own spuds.

Oh and the chickens... wow we get free eggs and they are much better than the shop bought ones. And the chickens themselves were cheap as we got ex battery hens so it was just a fiver each as a donation to some hen-hugging charity and they are cheap to feed. Ah but they need a house to live in - I got a plastic one as when I costed the timber to make a traditional henhouse the plastic one came in about the same price. And then living in the middle of a swamp as you do as soon as you get chickens you end up with rats.

So now I have a shiny new air rifle to deal with the rat issue. Got a reasonably priced 200 quid one from China (so now Blackpowder is not talking to me because I got a girly gun rather than a proper one) and there is something quite theraputic about sitting on your deck in the evening blasting away at the furry little bastards and at 15 metres even a crap shot like me can hardly miss and they just go "squeek" and fall over (apart from the one I had to finish off with a brick as I fluffed the headshot) but yet another expense I could have done without.

So there you are, self sufficiency and growing your own food. I would not recommend it unless you already have a very well paid job. But you do get to kill rats with a gun.

We are flying home

Ah the sweet taste of business class lounge wine, especially when one has sweet talked the lounge dragons at Cathay's Pier into letting you into their very nice lounge and not BA's crappy little one stuffed out by the cargo sheds.

The ash seems to have dissipated and all things being equal I should be back in dear old Blighty at 5am tomorrow in time for bacon butties and a shower in the arrivals lounge.

I even managed to wangle a front upstairs berth on the plane, so first dibs at the food and not getting disturbed by people going to the bog whilst you're at 38000 feet over Kazakhstan.

Only piddly thing is I keep doing such a good job pulling their arses out of the fire whilst I'm here that the project manager, over a couple of beers between work and airport tonight practically begged me to come over for three or four weeks.

Don't know how Mrs Dracunculus will take that.... oh shit hang on she reads this blog. I'm screwed!*



*(only joking Mrs D... we'll chat when you're back from the Land of the Pharaohs.)

Ashes... all is ashes

Better sodding not be. OK the situation is this: I need the 6pm BA flight to HKG to leave tonight as it will become the plane leaving tomorrow evening for home. Now just in case I have had the company travel people get me a backup plan which involves holding a reservation on an Air France flight to CDG in case Heathrow gets "ashed in" as it were.

But they can only hold the flight until close of business today, by which time I don't know if the planes have taken off yet.

So around midnight Hong Kong time I have to make a call to issue or cancel.

Who said international business travel was all comfy lounges and fully reclining seats.

(which is generally is by the way)

Playing with new toys

Well I didn't mean to get one but I seem to have ended up with an iPad. Let's just say that I went into an electronics store In Kowloon to get a camcorder and came out with Apple's latest must have gismo. My logic in this is that as it isn't available in the uk just yet and as I got it effectively vat free I can try it out and sell it when I get back and maybe even make a small profit.

Present indications are that on balance I might shove it on ebay sooner rather than later. Ok so the screen display is amazingly clear and safari is a pretty decent browser and the control interface is nice and slick but, well to be honest its nothing that special. As the app store won't let me sign up as I have the temerity to live in the UK you're stuck with what is basically a clever portable web browsing tablet. The screen based keyboard is ok enough for one finger typing blog posts and email but you would not want to do any serious writing on it and at 16gig you aren't going to be storing that much on it. Basically, what we have here is an overgrown itouch that you can't load apps onto.

Now where's my proper laptop, I need to log onto ebay

Moss?

We does not have it.

In fact it's rather a dull room really. Just another corporate hotel. However it's comfy, everything works and it has broadband (for 10 quid a day mind you, but the company is paying) and the shower is enormous.

As I mentioned earlier the hotel itself is in Kowloon, which is on the mainland opposite Hong Kong island. It's rather, different, this side of the water. Whereas HK Island is more upmarket, swanky boutiques, office skyscrapers and old colonial government buildings this side is a bit more edgy and probably the "real" Hong Kong. Slightly tatty apartment blocks, everything hemmed in, tiny streets, shops of every kind all mixed up from little tailors shops¹ and Chinese fast food joints to swanky bars, shops selling seriously high-end camera gear and a place that is basically a giant walk-in humidor selling Cuban cigars (we will be going back there on Monday for some Partagas No. 2 I think). I actually prefer it to the island side to be honest.

The only downside is the constant hassle I get as a gweilo from the touts... "Sir you want buy fake rolex", "Suit we sell cheap cheap!", "Lap dancy club sir, you come in now?", "Meester Dragon you want nice lady dragon? Wings go flap flap love you long time!"

I'm not entirely sure what the protocol is here. Do you just ignore them? Say you are not interested? Set them on fire?

I've been going for option number three so far but I just got a message from the Hong King Fire and Civil Defence people to please try the other options as they need to give their staff a break.






¹ Bespoke suits in silk/cashmere for $2200 (about 200 quid) with a spare pair of trousers thrown in ... I go to pick mine up tomorrow.

Kowloon 3am.

Been awake for the last hour as jet-lag plays funny tricks on my sleep patterns. However it was worth it to flip the lappy on and see that Gordon the Gorgon is gone.

Ding dong the witch is dead :-)

Now let's pack him off to The Hague and have him tried for war crimes.

My bags are packed, it's time to go.

"...'Cos I'm leaving, on a jet plane.
Because I'll be buggered if I'm going to fly all the way to China on my wings."

I'm only a little dragon.

Yes I'm off to Hong Kong again. This time courtesy of British Airways as they were 3 grand cheaper than Cathay. Currently tapping this sat in the lounge at Terminal 5 looking out over 09R which is currently in use for take-offs so I am in airplane geek heaven right now. In fact Cathay 002, my last transport to the far east, is just taxiing into position.

So far the "World's favourite airline" experience is quite acceptable. The lounge is nice, busy but not stupidly so, there's free food - I had a quite acceptable small plate of chicken tikka and now I'm in a cosy chair, slurping a very passable rioja, writing to you good people on the free wifi. You know I could get used to this!

Also due to having to fit this trip in around my holidays, other people holidays and (I swear I am not making this up) the Bhudda's Birthday I'm going to be in HK over the next weekend. I'm hoping to get some hiking done - 70% of HK is actually made up of nature reserves - and maybe go over the border into China proper for the day. However given the weather over there at the moment I'll probably end up trundling up and down Nathan Road doing some shopping and then getting piddled with the expats in Lan Chai Fong.

Anyway that's for the weekend. The current plan is:

1) Get tanked up on free booze at British Airways' expense.
2) Fall asleep on plane
3) ????
4) Profit!

PS: I'm staying in the Grand Hyatt in Kowloon which means I get to take the Star Ferry across the harbour which I think will probably make for a damned sight more interesting commute than the 7.23 to Liverpool Street.

PPS: Wonder if there will be moss?

Pony change

So it's goodbye Pebble and say a big hello to Hazel



15.2hh worth of what looks basically like an Exmoor that's been scaled up a factor of 2.

Don't worry about Pebble... she went back to the people we originally bought her off as a part-ex on Hazel and is probably being fussed to death my little pony-mad girls and having cutesy pink ribbons tied in her mane. Of course 3 years in the Grumpy household will have had an effect and she is probably trying to eat said pony-mad girls.

Faster than a speeding bullet

Boris leaping the NatWest Tower in a single bound... yeah I'd pay to see that.

The day the wheels came off

Facepalm... because some thing are just too dumb for words



I haven't blogged about the election so far because, well, it's as dull as ditchwater and I'm sat here secretly hoping that they could all lose. However I did want to make a point about what's already become, rather predictably, labelled "Bigotgate". It's not that Gorgon called her "a bigot", it's what he said before that, specifically:

Well just… They should never have put me with that woman. Whose idea was that?

"That woman" was an honest old lady who had played by the rules all her life.

"That woman" worked hard in the caring professions, serving her community until her retirement.

"That woman" voted Labour because she believed they offered the best chance of progress for the working person.

And you, Gorgon, claim to lead the party of the working man? You hate the working man, in fact from your comments you seem to hate the electorate, that is the citizens of this country, full stop.

Well Gorgon, I hate you too. No really hate you with a deep, visceral hate; I merely didn't like Thatcher and her policies but you I hate.

Fuck off you evil, lying cunt. I hope you and your cronies and the once great party you lead get wiped of the political map next Thursday.¹

Guess I didn't need to get interested in football after all

From a blog post back last year.

It would appear that the town where I was fledged1 appears to have won some sort of football competition and, apparently, gets to play with the big boys next year before presumably crashing ignominiously back into the Coca-Cola-Everest-Double-Glazing Conference League...

And today we read...

Burnley's train wreck of a season reached its inevitable conclusion today when they were condemned to relegation by a second-half drubbing from Liverpool, who kept alive their hopes of Champions League qualification by scoring four without needing to play particularly well.

So its back to being sponsored by a meat-pie making company for Burnley FC but I am wondering with my new found skills at footie prognostication I could get a job as some sort of pundit for the up-coming bore-fest of soccer that's happening in South Africa shortly. I suppose I would have to be able to say "Well basically Alan, football's a game of two halves and En-Ger-Lund have to give it 110% out there today" without wanting to set fire to a goalkeeper first.

Rule 34

I've noticed a bit of an upswing in visitors recently. A quick look at the referrers gave the reason why and it's all down to that animated film that's out at the moment called "How to Train Your Dragon".¹

So why is this driving traffic here? Easy, people are searching for "How to Train your Dragon Porn" on Google.

So is there HTTYD porn out there? Stupid question, this is Teh Interwebs and we have Rule 34 which states "There is porn of it, no exceptions".

Here you go... NSFW and Not Safe After Lunch: Toothless being trained to do something very naughty indeed

Dunno, he is kinda cute... I might.





¹ No I haven't seen it yet. The thought of sitting in a cinema with loads of screaming kids makes me feel physically unwell, I'll wait until one of my colleagues at work gets a good rip of it.

Eyjafjallajökull

I don't know about you but I reckon "Eyjafjallajökull" will be the title track on the next Sigur Ros album.

Is rather a shame that I wasn't flying out to Hong Kong this weekend as it would have been rather fun to call up the office there and say "Sorry, not coming because Mount Random-collection-of-letters has just exploded".

Still for anyone reading this stuck in an airport trying to get home here is some nice, soothing music by said Sigur Ros.

In case you're wondering, Sæglópur means "Lost at sea"

They had to say that, didn't they.

From today's "Independent"

Man admits having sex with horse and donkey

By Ellen Branagh, Press Association

A 66-year-old man pleaded guilty today to having sex with a horse and a donkey.

Joseph Squires appeared at Leicester Crown Court charged with buggery of a donkey between February 2 and February 5, 1999, and buggery of a horse between March 15 and 18, 2004.

He also faced charges of damaging property - relating to the two animals on the same dates.

Squires, whose address was previously given as Overpark Avenue, Leicester, was due to stand trial but pleaded guilty to all four counts at Leicester Crown Court today.

Defence counsel Amar Mehta told the court Squires had no previous convictions and was of previous good character.

Requesting he be released on bail, he said: "The defendant does not have a stable address although he says his daughter can provide an address."

Judge Michael Pert QC refused the application and remanded Squires into custody for a pre-sentence report to be prepared. He will be sentenced on May 24.

I'm sure all the equines in the Leicester area are delighted he doesn't have a stable address.

The whale from accounts receivable

Headquarters at Banko di Haggis periodically update our PC wallpaper with some corporate nonsense just to show what a wonderful organisation we are so privileged to work for. Usually it's some picture of some sporty types winning something with a bit of writing saying that Banko Di Haggis is now rated the #2 deal maker in European Elephant Dung Futures by "What Excrement?" magazine.

However today we get this gem...



Right. So I've been to quite a few offices of the company in different countries and one thing that I have noticed is that our once-proud banking organisation doesn't actually have any cetaceans on the payroll, not even dolphins who are supposedly quite clever. So unless this is the new head of accounts receivable I'm not exactly sure how I am supposed to leverage the financial and IT talents of a fucking five ton sperm whale.

However should, due to our government owners' latest diversity and inclusion legislation, we end up actually employing any large blubbery aquatic mammals I can assure my employer that I will treat them exactly as I treat my existing co-workers, i.e. with a mixture of derision and contempt<sup>1




1</sup> Actually I don't mind most of them, apart from the Quants, obviously.

The Man in 47D

So when you woke up on Friday morning, Man in 47D you had a bit of a sniffle but nothing serious, probably just the pollution as it had been rather sunny in Hong Kong the past couple of days and that always gets the ozone levels up. You went through your day doing what you needed to do and at some point Mrs Man in 47D packed your suitcase. That evening you kissed Mrs Man in 47D and patted the little Man in 47D's and promised to bring them back a present from London. You went to the airport, through security and maybe even had a look at the stupidly overpriced bottles of scotch in the duty free shop.

Maybe I looked down at you from my seat at the Long Bar in Cathay Pacific's business class lounge, maybe we walked down the airbridge together, you turning right and me left at door #2. You settled down into seat 47D, middle row of seats on the left, near the wing. Did you have the pork or the beef for dinner, or maybe you had neither because right now you were feeling rather poorly, nose dripping like a fucked fridge and a throat that felt you had just finished giving blow jobs to a large pack of very well endowed timber wolves? You had a miserable night's sleep and not just because you were in economy class and seat 47D did not fully recline but rather because everything ached and you could not get comfortable. And all through that night you sneezed and sniffled and your little cargo of rhinovirus made its way into the air conditioning systems which, being at 36,000 feet recirculate the air several times as it costs extra fuel to heat up fresh, very cold air from outside.

I had a quite pleasant flight, Man in 47D; nice meal, good night's sleep and I even got a sausage for breakfast, you know how much dragons like sausages. But all night I'd been breathing in your recirculated germs.

And so of course three days after getting home it starts with the drippy nose, the headache, the aching limbs, the complete fatigue and, joy of joys, the rendition of a certain oral service to top-level forest predators experience. And just in time for the Easter Holidays when I had all that DIY planned I'm flat on my back for four days with the most miserable cold I have had in ages.

And then just when I'm starting to feel a bit better on Monday in comes Mrs Dracunculus looking like she'd walked into a wall. She pointed at her throat and croaked.

"Timber wolves at it again?" I asked.

She nodded.

Thanks, man in 47 D. Thanks a whole fecking lot.

Haiku

Empty hotel room,
Loose change left for chambermaid,
Farewell spring moss.

You know I said that I wasn't going to go to Wan Chai

... well it turns out that I lied because after a a couple of beers after work when I was thinking "maybe I'll call it a night now" my host's i-Phone (everyone has one here it seems) gave a ring like some piece of laid-back chill electronica you would normally hear in some painfully modern drinking establishment called something like "Bar Bar Black Sheep" (they do have a bar here called the i-Dragon - don't think they served dragons though) and we get invited to meet up at somewhere called Laguna in, yep, Wan Chai.

OK so I'm prepared this time and also on a good position on the sober - rat-arsed axis so I figure what the hell.

I thought the Neptune II was a one off, nah, every bar in Wan Chai is stuffed to the gunnels with scantily clad Thai and Philippino women, quite a few of them hanging off the arms or sat in the laps of balding, tubby, 50-something year old white blokes including one guy in a flat cap who was, and I swear this is true, the spitting image of Bill Oddie. All kind of sad really but I'm not sure for who. It was the same in the other two clubs we visited as well, balding guys and Asian birds looking downright bored. After a while I made my excuses and left, I wanted to check on my moss which I had strategically placed at a very particular angle and place.



It had not moved! The moss was no longer mobile!

I did try making a tree out of it later on with the orange pencil for a trunk but that didn't work out very well. I just hope I've put the moss back in it's little white pot correctly or I'll probably be in trouble with the Hong Kong Moss Police.

Tai chi with weapons

In the great tradition of my last visit to HK I seem to be managing not to actually eat anything remotely Chinese.

Tonight I found there was an curry house called the "Koh I Noor" round the corner so popped in for some very lovely samosas and a passable chicken dopiaza (I keep forgetting that in Asia "chicken" means "scrawny bird that stopped laying so we threw it in a pot"). Afterwards I took a stroll through the park and came across six or seven people doing what could only be described as tai-chi exercises with swords, those flexible Chinese ones you saw in "Crouching Tiger Hidden Dragon" with sensei occasionally stepping in and correcting a pose or movement. Can you imagine that in the UK, they would have been practising for 10 seconds before thirty armed plod would have shown up to arrest them for having offensive weapons.

Later on in the evening I spent an entertaining hour up in the open air rooftop bar where I'd gone to indulge in one of my duty free Montecristo No. 2's having a chat to a Korean chap called Roy about the UK premier league despite me knowing the square root of sod all about football. Mind you fully half of that was taken up with describing where Burnley was in relationship to Manchester, Leeds and Liverpool.

I have returned to my room to find...

... someone keeps moving my moss.

More about moss

The mystery that is the moss deepens.

On returning to the hotel this evening I discovered that the moss has been moved 40 degrees clockwise.



and on venturing to the first floor restaurant (do try the sea-bass on tomato and olive, it's very nice) my moss has a friend but it's red and lives next to a glowing steel mushroom.



Strange things are afoot in Taikoo Shing Road!

But in other news, I do like the desk I've been given for the week, here's the view.



which kind of beats my normal desk view of "lots of other people and if I jump up and flap my wings really hard I can see a bit of window 300 metres away" into a cocked hat quite frankly. However one thing I do not have to do in my existing London office is swallow to stop my ears popping in the lift which climbs faster than my old PA28 Turbo Arrow.

Anyway this evening after communing with the moss I managed to accidentally gatecrash some rugby drinking club's party who had taken over the hotel bar (couple of free beers - woot!) and then went for a walk over to Quarry Bay park by the East Channel to walk off the food and beer a bit. All very nice and warm, people jogging, the occasional kissing couple and even a couple of old men doing their Tai Chi exercises.

I came across this too, I think it's an offering to the ghost of someone as I heard that in Chinese and Japanese beliefs there is no food where ghosts go to so they have to come back to this world to eat so their relatives leave food out for them. I don't know what happened here as this was right by the sea wall but I guess the dear departed must have liked Sprite and biscuits.



(apologies for pic quality - these were all done on my camera phone)

Moss. I has it.

So here I am in HK. If you follow the Twitter feed you'll know that my hotel is brand spanking new (in fact the taxi driver said something about "only two months") and all the staff wear t-shirts and use Apple Macs to check you in. I think if the cleaning staff come into the room and see my beat up Thinkpad T60 they'll chuck it out as "not trendy enough".

Now I've been upgraded to a twin on the 29th floor which has a view, of sorts



apparently I was originally assigned the 8th floor which would have probably given me a view of someone's laundry hung outside their apartment window.

For some reason this room comes with a complementary small pot of moss on the desk.



I do not know why the management felt it necessary to give me some moss. It's probably lucky in Chinese tradition or something.

Anyway as I arrived on Sunday I thought I would take a little sightseeing trip up to The Peak where you get a good view of HK. So I took the old tram...



... there it is, very old and a rather fun ride as it climbs at a 48% gradient at one point but unfortunately by the time I'd queued up and ridden to the top it had cooled down enough for the clouds to reform so what I was supposed to see was this...



... and what we all at the top saw was this...



Not quite the same.

So I retired to Lan Kwai Fong for a beer or two... apparently it is traditional to get your picture taken by the road sign so here are some people taking a picture of someone by a road sign.



Work tomorrow.

Ni Hao Gweilos.

Well here we are in Cathay Pacific's business class lounge. As I'm travelling on a Saturday the biz lounge seems to be full of trendy young people in very expensive fashionable label clothes tapping on aching thing laptops or gabbling into the latest iPrat device but it does make a change from the usual middle aged businessman in the obligatory casual travelling dress of a Timberland shirt and Chinos*.

Because of the BA strike on at the moment (drove past some pickets on the way in, other people blew their horns, I gave them the finger and yelled "get back to work you idle bastards") the flight is very, very full and the lounge is filling up even though there's two hours before we leave. All I can say is they better not run out of Carlsberg Export any time soon.

One nice plus is the free wifi - nice and fast, downside is that my mains socket isn't powered which is annoying (it will be even more sodding annoying if my power adaptor is fecked.)

And as this is my blog it would not be complete without a grump at the world. Now I like the occasional cigar and glass of scotch so what better to stick two fingers up at Gordon the Gorgon by picking up some duty free. I believe I'm allowed fifty cigars to bring back and as T3 had a nice place called "The cigar house" I drop in to stock up on H Upmanns and Montecristos.

"Ah" says Abdul the till numpty when he checks my ticket, "Hong Kong's got a lower limit."

"What, fourty or something?" says your slightly dissapointed dragon.

"No, fifteen"

"Arse"

Just have to pick some up whilst I'm there I guess. I realise I left my cutter at home so I'll have to swing by Mr Wang's Lung Death Emporium in Kowloon anyway.

Right. More free Carlsberg.




* being middle aged but not knowing one end of a business plan from another I am travelling in my going up hills trousers and a t-shirt and fleece - hey if it's comfy and stretchable enough to get up Helvellyn via Striding Edge it'll do for a 12 hour flight to Honkers.

Tonight's front page of the London Evening Standard.



My first thought. "Nom nom nom... tasty baby"

Hakuna Matata, Joka

OK so I get the "we're going to put all your medical records on a big central computer" letter through the post and buried away at the bottom is the "How to opt out" link, so not wanting Big Brother to have the information about my wierd knee problem when aged 12 at their fingertips I go online and download the form. Of course said form is two pages of "No really, don't opt out, it's perfectly safe from hackers (yeah, right) and the government doesn't have access (yeah, double right)" but it gets filled in and I'll get Mrs Dracunculus to drop the forms in at the GPs surgery when she next goes up for her collection of pills and potions.

Then I see you can get the form in Turkish, Urdu, Arabic and another 20 languages including this one...



Guessed what it is yet? No? OK it's Kiswahil. I kid you not. My fucking taxes are going to have this fucking jolly form plus go knows what else translated into the fucking language they used in "Daktari".

Jesus sodding Christ on a pogo-stick. There's no fucking wonder that Calais is stuffed full of people trying to paddle across the channel on li-lo. Don't worry, you don't have to have contributed a single cunting penny boys, we'll treat whatever you have and here's a bunch of stuff in your own language so you don't need to even trouble yourself learning ours.

And the icing on the cake... take a look who gave the form a seal of approval:



The Plain English Campaign... I swear you could not make this stuff up.

Chung Kuo

Whee... Dragon is off to Hong Kong again in a fortnight courtesy of my employer who is stumping up for a nice business class seat on Cathay Pacific and a room at some swanky down town hotel. Better dig out my copy of Cantonese for Dragons I guess. For those of you who remember the last trip I will this time (a) be blogging more as the room comes with as much 10Mb broadband as you can eat and (b) not frequenting the "Neptune II" bar in Wanchai.

Whispering bin, don't tell the dump truck...

... because the dump truck don't need to know.

Privacy campaigners claim increasing numbers of councils are gearing up for "pay as you throw" rubbish charges by installing microchips in wheelie bins.

The Big Brother Watch group says its survey found 68 UK authorities with the technology at their disposal - up from 42 last year - with chips in 2.6m bins.

but it's OK because...

Councils say the chips simply identify to which house a bin belongs and may be used to offer incentives - not fines.

Nothing to see here, move along and we will only ever use these chips to make sure we've emptied your bin, well, right up to the point we start weighing it and charging you per kilo over your 100kg a year allowance (allowance reduced by 10% year on year to "encourage you to be efficient in your waste) all on top of your council tax, natch.

Oh and thanks for stumping up the cash in your council tax so we could buy the "007 Spybin" in the first place, suckers!

Anyway should you get one of these, here is some handy advice on what to do: http://www.instructables.com/id/How-to-blockkill-RFID-chips/ Or you could build a simple portable EMP device like these people: https://events.ccc.de/congress/2005/static/r/f/i/RFID-Zapper%28EN%29_77f3.html

We don't have to bend over and take it, we can fight back.

Pretty Prancing Unicorns.

Aw, unicorns, they're so cute. They sing and they dance and they poop rainbows...



... well not that one, obviously.

But if you are a literal bible believing Christian you have to believe these one horned beasties exists because your Holy Text mentions then by name, and not once either.

I bet you would be surprised to learn that there are actually nine references to unicorns in the bible: Numbers 23:22; 24:8; Deut. 33:17; Job 39:9,10; Psalms 22:21; 29:6; 92:10; and Isaiah 34:7.

And all you apologists that say "oh it's just a mistranslation of the Hebrew re'em and it refers to a wild ox let's just look at Psams 92 shall we?

"But my horn shalt thou exalt like the horn of an unicorn: I shall be anointed with fresh oil."

Horn, singlar. Last time I looked oxen had two horns.

And it's not a rhino either, despite what some fundies have claimed like this asshat here seemingly on the strength of its latin species name Rhinocerous unicornis - that's simply the Latin for "one horned" and the fallacy that it once had a "huge range"... it did that but it was to the east, not to the west.

So there you have it. If you believe that the bible is the true, inerrant word of God then you must, a priori, believe in the physical existence of unicorns.

You'll be telling me dragons exist next... oh hang on, turns out with 24 mentions by name we do!

Jeremiah 51:37 And Babylon shall become heaps, a dwelling place for dragons, an astonishment, and an hissing, without an inhabitant.

... and ...

Job 30:29 I am a brother to dragons, and a companion to owls.

Aw that's nice, I have that Job as a brother. Job, can you lend me a tenner until payday bro?

Would you do a migrant's job - in my world you don't get a choice!

Much giggles on the TV yesterday evening as Al-ja-beeba did its "migrants are good for you" spinfest just down the road from my lair behind the water-pipes in sunny Wisbech (you pronounce it "whizz-beach" incidentally).

Would your average "its all the immigrants taking our jobs innit" inbred swamp dwelling knuckle-dragger do the back-breaking role of a migrant worker shoving spuds in a bag or harvesting asparagus. Look you know the answer is going to be "not a fucking chance" don't you.

OK so the grinning, condescending numpty who "really liked Wisbeach" (no you didn't, nobody does) says they got "hundreds" of applicants from the white working class dolies and sure you had to reject some for being career criminals but out of those hundreds how come you picked the ones who you could pretty much guarantee to not give a flying fuck to even show up for work? I cannot and will not believe that out of those hundreds of applicants there were not some who didn't show up to the interview six hours late wearing a shell suit and nursing a five-star hangover and who would have made a decent fist at the menial tasks on offer. You picked the ones you did because it would make "good telly" and serve the spin of your masters that all things immigrant are good and beneficial.

Look I know we have a real problem with the idle workshy who would rather sit at home like the lad who had been unemployed since he left school who would rather sit at home on the internet¹ and his games machine than get off his arse and stop consuming my taxes. I don't have a problem with the eastern europeans working here either, all the ones I've met are pleasant enough and they are paying their way.

No, what we need to do is remove the option of the dole as being an acceptable lifestyle instead of a safety net. You want money off the state because you can't get a job, fine... here's your hi-viz vest and a brush, now get sweeping. What, you can't be arsed to turn up or you walk off the job after ten minutes because "it's doin' me 'ed in, innit"? OK. No money for you. You starve.

Bet after a week of that you'd be begging for a job in an asparagus field.




¹ and when filmed on said internet he had a voice over saying "I'm looking for work on the job sites" but had YouTube open in one window and Facebook in the other... wanker.

Where in the world... Pee Cee World!

Yes, I went to PC World at the weekend. That's my IT Geek credentials truly fucked.

However I went because (a) it's next door to the place that had Royal Canin Maxi Junior 4Kg bags on at half price (nothing but the best for my pocket wolves) and (b) I'd seen their TV add the previous evening for a half price all-in-one scanner/printer/fax/teasmade thingy and as I've been thinking about a wireless printer for a while and it means I swap two bits of clutter for one I thought I would check it out.

And I bought one. As did one person who was being sold a computer by a PC world drone when I got there and someone else who was buying a netbook from another smiling PC world drone whilst I had a look at the Flight Simulator add ons* - both these persons were quite evidently clueless computer novices, evidenced by the fact that they were letting a PC world numpy sell them computer gear.

Mind you come this morning they will also be outside PC World carrying their useless printers and hopefully a strong coil of rope and a portable gallows because I guarantee they will not have got their clever all-in-one office printer/scanner/fax/teasmade/sex-doll to actually function.

Firstly because I discovered on unpacking it that the unit had been shipped with a two-pin European style plug. No problem for me as I have tons of spare power cables about.

Secondly because on shoving the driver and wireless setup disk in my Windows 7 PC it promptly said "Can't run on this operating system, kindly sod off." Again no problem for me as I just fired up the lappy with XP-SP3 on it and it installed a charm but all those new PCs that were being sold will almost certainly come with Windows 7 Home (or "Windows for Girls" as my mate in Holland calls it).

Mind you I can't help think that this is a cunning ploy by DSG, PC World's parent company, to get a bit more extra cash out of its hapless customer because I noticed that for about 45 quid they would send one of the "Tech Guys" round to set your printer up and I can guarantee that your average Ethel Miggins will not be setting up one of these unaided any time soon. But Jesus, 45 quid to set up a 69 quid printer? I am truly in the wrong business.

Still it's a nice little unit. Quick and quiet. Only grumbles so far is there isn't a proper output tray so unless you catch your printouts they end up on the floor for the amusement of my Royal Canin eating friends and also the "Easy WiFi Install" whilst it works, had no option to set the IP address to one of my choosing which means that if there's a power outage and I boot up my network in a different order then the printer is going to end up not being able to get 192.168.2.5 and will probably disappear of the network until it gets told to find a new IP address.**





* Incidentally I noticed that they were selling a game called "Farming Simulator" now. As far as I can tell the gameplay involves driving a tractor about a lot, filling in loads of EU subsidy claim forms, buggering livestock and then committing suicide with a rusty shotgun.

** This can probably be fixed with the assistance of Professor Google but it was getting late and I could not be arsed at this point.

Elton John - "Jesus can come and redecorate my flat"

Apparently the Lord and Saviour of mankind was a bit good with colours and probably liked musical Greek comedies and tragedies. http://www.guardian.co.uk/music/2010/feb/19/elton-john-jesus-gay

Well lets look at the evidence shall we. Never married, went around with 12 other blokes, his best mate Peter kissed him, he wore sandals... yep definitely on the other bus.

Predictable howling in the various news outlets that allow comments that "He would not have said Mohammed was gay would he".

Well no, that's because Mohammed preferred 10 year old girls.

(Mussies: Please place all fatwas over there in a neat pile for burning later. Thanks. Grumpy)

Those collars... why?

I have a vicar or some other religious functionary sat opposite me on the train this morning. I can tell this because he has his dog collar on.

Why? I mean there's probably a doctor on this train as well but I don't see anyone with a stethoscope round their necks, there may well be military people too but no-one is wearing battle dress or a uniform so how come they wander round outside their churches wearing these silly little collars?

It's probably so parents can recognise them and keep their kids away.

"Those who can make you believe absurdities can make you commit atrocities"

From the "Religion - whichever way you look at it it'll fuck you up" file:

A fundamentalist religious philosophy that espouses corporal punishment to "train" children to be more obedient to their parents and God is now being investigated in connection with the death of a young Paradise girl and serious injuries to her sister.

Butte County District Attorney Mike Ramsey confirmed Thursday that other children in the home who have been interviewed told investigators "this philosophy was espoused by their parents."

...

Prosecutors allege the two victims were subjected to "hours" of corporal punishment by their parents on successive days last Thursday and Friday with a quarter-inch-wide length of rubber or plastic tubing, which police reportedly recovered from the parents' bedroom.

...

The two young girls reportedly sustained deep bruising and multiple "whip-like" marks on their back, buttocks and legs, which authorities believe resulted in significant muscle tissue breakdown that impaired their kidneys and possibly other vital organs

...

investigators are researching a possible connection to an Internet Web site set up by "fundamentalist Christian people" that recommends use of the same whip-like implement "as an appropriate tool for biblical chastisement ... to train a child from infancy to make them a happier child and more obedient to God because they are obedient to the will of their parents,"

Fucking hell. I knew that religion was pretty fucked up but how utterly evil do you have to be to actually believe that an invisible man in the sky wants you to torture your children?

But the best bit has to be this...

The father's attorney, Michael Harvey, declined to comment regarding the specific allegations against the couple until he has a chance to review the evidence.

"All I can say is the family is shocked; they are grieving the loss of their daughter and (ask) that people of faith will pray for everybody involved," the defense attorney stated outside of court Thursday.

Might I respectfully suggest that with a little less prayer in the world we might see a bit less "biblical chastisement"?

If these fuckers walk anywhere but to the electric chair I'll personally be coming round to wherever the hell Butte County is* to show you a new form of the death penalty called "Immolation by Dragon".

Full story here: http://www.chicoer.com/news/ci_14388171 (H/t to The Daily Athiest on Twatter)


* California, apparently. Which is a surprise as I was expecting some hickvsille bible belt place.

Nicht mehr genügend Salz

Turning a bit chilly again isn't it, might even get some snow again. That means blocked roads, closed schools, stranded trains and the predictable "waaahhh... why are we so crap at bad weather when those European jonnies are so good at it" from the MSM.

Well as I pointed out in an earlier post, they aren't and I just got sent this report a friend of mine who works for a German media outlet posted.

http://www.wdr.de/themen/verkehr/a44_streusalz_sperrung.jhtml

Es gibt nicht mehr genügend Salz, um die Strecke eisfrei zu halten. roughly translates as "There is no longer enough salt to keep the route free of ice"

Bet the trains are still running on time though

The "go to" dragon

I'm not sure but I think I just got promoted.

This is actually quite an achievement as when I joined Banko Di Haggis I reported directly to the guy who is now the manager of my managers managers manager and I had got the impression that in the corporate organisation chart I ranked somewhere around the level of the mould behind the coffee machine.

But I was happy being ranked alongside fungus. They paid me tolerably well, were pretty cool about my hours, I had plenty of interesting stuff to work on, I got to work from home (which normally meant tapping away on the lappy at the kitchen table in my dressing gown - something I can no longer do as Freja took to stuffing her nose into my genitals for some reason known only to canines) one day a week and the sausage sandwiches from the canteen were quite acceptable. Best of all I had made it quite clear when I took the gig that at the slightest sniff of man-management responsibilities being assigned to yours truly the building and everyone in it would disappear in the most colossal breath weapon attack since a log time ago - and all credit to my various managers as I made my way to the bottom of the organisation chart they honoured that.

So I was quite surprised to be called over by my latest manager who is pretty newly minted himself - I think they gave him the title of "development lead", basically he's what we called a team leader in the old days - to be asked if I wouldn't mind being made "Technical Lead" on the project, Basically what this seems to entail is being the "go to" dragon on questions of architecture and coding and having the casting vote on how we end up building stuff. I was actually rather flattered that people thought enough of my coding abilities (which are not bad but hardly l33t) to put me in this position.

It was a little later that the realisation dawned that of course should any technical decisions go amiss that I was the "go to" dragon when it came to dishing out the blame.

Apart from that I can't see as my job has changed in any material way, I still cut the code and sort out the database after the traders decided to make a horlicks of upgrading their pricing models as they did today. There's not officially any money but I am told "something will be done" when it comes to pay rise and bonus time later this month; can't say I am holding my breath though.

On the blame thing my plan there is to make sure I get a touchy-feely group hug consensus that I can say everyone "bought into at the meeting" should it prove that swapping the database server for a bowl of fruit was maybe not technically the best thing we could have done.

I approve

I would happily fly alongside this plane, it would give me something to read.



Look they even tell you where the black box is... that would make the job of the NTSB a lot easier ^*



See the rest of the pics here: http://www.psfk.com/2010/02/kulula-airplane-rebranding.html


^* Well it would if they had put it in the right place. Normally it's located in the tail section because aircraft rarely reverse into mountains.

Told you so

Sikhs should be allowed to wear their ceremonial daggers - known as Kirpans - to school and other public places, Britain's first Asian judge has said.

Told you that would happen: http://grumpy-dragon.blogspot.com/2008/07/bangles-vs-unicorn-horns.html

Obsolete

Over the weekend I had a tidy up of the lair, it needed doing as I'd run out of shelf space and it looked a bloody mess to be honest - messy enough to start bothering me anyway.

So TV box sets of DVDs were put into little CD wallet things, papers were gone through and irrelevant stuff chucked out including instruction manuals for equipment I no longer own and I also threw out whole load of empty CD boxes and cover mounted CDs from computer magazines on the basis that I was highly unlikely to want to load a 2006 version of some 3d rendering program at any point in the foreseeable future and as my music making stuff just acts as a dust repository these days "1001 Chill Out Ibiza Samples" probably wasn't going to get installed either.

And then I came upon a box of floppy disks. Mostly these were old drivers and operating system boot disks from the days when that was how you got a brand new computer to spring into life but a few were labelled "Work code" and suchlike.

And I realised that I had absolutely no way of reading these disks. I don't possess a single computer that has a 3.5 inch floppy drive in them, not one. This data may just as well have been written on punched tape.

While we weren't looking the floppy disk died out like the dodo (apart from the fact we didn't eat all of them, like we did with dodos) and I wondered how many people put stuff onto floppies or zip disks and never got to transfer it to the shiny silver discs. I also wondered about how historians in the future are going to find out about people living now. I mean we have all of somebody like Winston Churchill's letters and papers so can find out more about the man and they're all on paper for anyone to read. Is anyone in a hundred years from now going to be able to access all the drivel I've written in emails, on this blog and the occasional tweet about gargling boiling wolf semen as well as the gigabytes of stuff on funny little disks that we don't have the ability to read any more? Well maybe not me but people more "important" than me, like that bastard Gordon Brown for example. Sure you might be able to track down a working 3.5" drive now but how about the real 5¼" floppys that really were floppy - and yes my first "real" PC, an 486SX clone, had one of them in it so I've used on within the last 20 years.

In the end I did find an old 3.5" drive in a box later in the day when looking for a double plug for Mrs Dracunculus.

Then I figured that I hadn't needed what was on those disks in at least 5 years and therefore probably didn't need them now.

So they went in the bin.