Fuddland

Entries for which there is no obvious other category.

Long-time readers of Fuddland might be aware that I tend to support Comic Relief’s Red Nose Day whenever it comes around. In the past this has been in the form of sponsored commenting, donating an amount to the charity based on the number of comments I receive on Red Nose Day.

This year, due to living in a foreign country and suffering complications of bank accounts and general relative skintness, I decided on a different tactic to show my support: I waited until someone else had a genius idea, and then proceeded to wheedle my way into it.

Thus, I’d like to wholeheartedly recommend to any, all and more of you reading this to make one, several or indeed nine purchases of Shaggy Blog Stories.

A collection of 100 short humorous pieces from the UK blogosphere. All profits from the sale of this book will be donated to the Comic Relief charity. Contributors include Richard Herring, Andrew Collins (BBC 6Music), Emma Kennedy, James Henry (TV’s “Green Wing”), Abby Lee (Girl With A One-Track Mind), Catherine Sanderson (Petite Anglaise), Zoe McCarthy (My Boyfriend Is A Twat), novelist David Belbin, Anna Pickard (The Guardian), and a diverse selection of some of the UK’s most talented bloggers.

Should that list of well-known names not be enough to encourage a purchase, then perhaps the tingly news that the sixty-fourth contribution to be found within its pages is from this very weblog. In the interests of intrigue, I’ll not be telling you which of the 1,656 [including this one] entries I’ve written over the last almost-five years it is. [Oh okay, one clue: it’s not the one you’re reading now. That narrows it down a bit.]

For full details of all the contributors, and more of the story behind its creation, I’ll point you in the direction of the book’s brainparent and masterminder, Mike Troubled Diva. I’m chuffed to bits to have made the final cut, but even if I hadn’t, I’d still be pimping this book like … I’m sorry, I’m just far too English to finish that sentence. Just go and buy it, and I’m sure you’ll be chuckling at at least 99 of the stories.

Notice in a hotel room in Nottingham:

If you discover smoke or fire shout “Fire! Fire! Fire!”

A footnote added that running around flailing one’s arms before putting a chair through the nearest window was optional.

Umm.

Ideas, anyone?

This is the best optical illusion ever. Look at this friendly dragon what I did cut out and stick together:

Now this is the same model, photographed from the side, and I more promise that I didn’t touch it at all:

The dragon’s head appears to move and follow you around as you observe it from different positions! Make your own from the instructions at Grand Illusions [check out the downloadable video for a better preview of the effect].

[via Boing Boing]

I posted something to the Moblog the other day, via my new phone. But it didn’t turn up. Orange seem to be having a lot of trouble recently in delivering emails I send from my phone. And I can’t re-post it right now because I’m on the other side of the world, so I’m “roaming” as they say and I fear that sending one email with a 25kb photo attachment may cost me my next semester’s grant; for some reason I decided not to pack my tiny-but-handy Bluetooth USB adaptor so I can’t even transfer the photo from my phone to the snazzy laptop my Department lent me. To make up for it, I’ll describe what the MIA-post said.

It was a photograph of a largish aeroplane, taken through a window at Gate 38 in Gatwick Airport. The title of the entry was, tritely, “Leaving on a jet-plane”, and the text accompanying the photo said:

However, I do know when I’ll be back again.

Back home in about three weeks. Until then, because I can’t be bothered to change the settings, assume all entry posting-times are six hours behind their displayed timestamp. And please enjoy the strange oxymoronicness of reading entries from someone who claims to be not blogging at the moment.

There’s nothing quite as manly as dismantling, cleaning and reassembling a bike; the fact that it’s a ladies’ pushbike is neither here nor there [although it may be yonder].

Earlier in the day I caught a random episode of E.R., and as I scrubbed the bike grease and grim off my hands with the aid of a nailbrush, I wondered if hospital dramas are actually anywhere near reality: surely, I thought, the operating theatres must echo with peals of laughter, because scrubbing one’s hands vigorously with a nailbrush really tickles, yet you never see Dr Corday giggling into her facemask.

Can you get left-handed scythes? And, if so, would I be less crap if I used one of those instead of the right-hander we have here? Does anyone want to bet how many feet I’ll have remaining at the end of this week?

Did you know the word swathe means the width of one stroke of a scythe? Hardly a useful measurement, given that it would vary from person to person. One man’s swathe could be another man’s 3.14 cubits.

There are two kinds of people in the world: people who put used pots and pans to soak immediately after use so that sauce or food residue doesn’t dry out and become almost impossibly hard to clean, and bastards.

Read the rest of “Super soakers”…

power = (work done) / (time taken)

or

the amount of energy one bottle of lucozade sport provides exactly equals the energy expended trying to remove the foil seal so you can drink the damn thing.

i find the funniest jokes are the shorter ones — long-winded gags with contrived punchlines tend to bore me halfway through [if i haven’t already guessed how it ends] — so i had a good chuckle at some classic two-liners over at krisalis just now. one of the gags [‘what do you call a boomerang that doesn’t come back?’] shares a punchline [‘a stick’] with a completely different opening line [the schoolboy perennial ‘what’s brown and sticky?’], which set me on a quest to think of more two-line jokes that share punchlines.

so far i have:

• what’s brown and sticky?/what do you call a boomerang that doesn’t come back?

hmm, they’re rarer than i thought…

as a child, much excitement ensued from watching the car’s milometer turn over from 99,999 to 100,000 [if i recall correctly, it actually turned over to 00,000, being a five-digit display]. there’s not really a rational explanation for this — …

Read the rest of “rollover — entry number 999”…

i’m not sure of the origin of this — for now the source is ‘my sister’ — but i found it quite interesting that you can read the following without having to stop and figure out each word one at…

Read the rest of “spellchecker’s worst nightmare”…

there are two angles from which to approach the renting of a film for a night’s entertainment. have a title in mind. you go to the movie rental shop wanting a specific title. said shop is so terrified that you’ll…

Read the rest of “staying in no longer requires having a night out”…

‘your muffin is even nicer when it’s warm!’ so say the fabulous bakin’ boys….

Read the rest of “serving suggestion of the day”…

a post over at missiedith’s place led me to the phobia list. knowing the names of a few phobias can be handy in a pub quiz situation, and the more unusual the better, so along with the well-known contraries agoraphobia…

Read the rest of “no phobophobes here”…

which food you were told puts hairs on your chest is dependent on which battalion your grandfather fought with during either the second world war; in a house with low water pressure, the moment you step into the shower…

Read the rest of “bank holiday monday facts”…

something’s gone a bit awry in the yahoo groups databases. the yahoo id i had to create, to subscribe to anna’s little red wibbling dinghy, has apparently posted some messages on the ‘hotwheels hangout — a hangout to chat trade…

Read the rest of “hang out with dvd”…

tactic: scroll up and down through album titles in media player until something catches my eye; glance at album contents; cue a track from chosen album; repeat. soon after christmas — memories of a colour — stina nordenstam; adagio — …

Read the rest of “on the headphones after a bottle of wine and a few vodkas”…

via dog-loving daisy comes the site that acrophonologically analyses your pet’s name. not owning a pet, i had no option but to enter my own first, middle and last names to see what sort of pet i’d be for any…

Read the rest of “what’s in a name?”…

yes i know i said i’m not going to be around, but i was bored and desperate to avoid unpacking all the stuff i’d only just packed up yesterday. besides, i have to quickly say: vote dvd for july 2003…

Read the rest of “you ain’t seen me, right?”…

not much time for anything besides packing — who knew one small flat contained so much stuff? and can anyone tell me the secret to fitting many differently-sized books into one box? i just noticed that the new rugrats movie,…

Read the rest of “levels of peril”…

i’ve just found a post i started the other day, saved in draft format, and haven’t got any idea where i was going with it, so here it is in all its unfinished glory: because of a small idiosyncrasy of…

Read the rest of “the unfinished post”…

the ‘nod and smile’ is one of the oddest behaviours to emerge in polite society, in that its intended purpose — that of to save the embarrassment of admitting you’ve not quite understood what somebody has said — almost always…

Read the rest of “nod… smile… erm… what?”…

nedstat uses some dubious mathematics to predict either an unusually busy or depressingly quiet day for fuddland:…

Read the rest of “the server cannae take it captain!”…

via gordon, here’s a lovely example from the adobe reader faqs of the dangers of copy & pasting without proof-reading the result: Q. What’s the difference between Adobe Reader and Adobe Reader? A. As of the newest version, 6.0, Adobe…

Read the rest of “what’s the difference between a duck?”…

in the uk, teletext page 888 provides subtitles for most terrestrially-broadcast programmes. in the uk, tewetext page 888 pwovides subtitwes fow most tewwestwiawwy-bwoadcast pwogwammes. seeing as this is the eight-hundred and eighty-eighth post on fuddland, i thought it apt to…

Read the rest of “post eight hundwed and eighty-eight”…

i got this message from justgoodbooks.co.uk: ‘your balance is outstanding.’ they obviously saw me riding my unicycle on a tightrope across the grand canyon whilst juggling murderers carrying chainsaws doused in petrol and set alight by flaming arrows fired from…

Read the rest of “misunderstanding for compliment effect”…

i’m not quite sure what’s worse: admitting i was watching the end of richard & judy, or clarifying that i was only watching it whilst waiting for big brother’s little brother to start, but let’s ignore both of those details…

Read the rest of “a load of old crystal balls”…

anagrams of ‘fuddland org uk’ include: ‘dr funk auld dog’; ‘drunk gal of dud’, whilst an anagram of ‘fuddland blog’ is ‘flog bland dud’. [work productivity not too high today, as you might have gathered.]…

Read the rest of “feeling anagrammatical”…

i now present the final results of the great egg-freezing experiment. what happened was this: as the egg defrosted within its airtight container, some of the albumen leaked out through the crack that developed during the freezing process. not wanting…

Read the rest of “conclusion: failure”…

you might have thought my initial musings were the beginnings of a cutting deconstruction of our supposed free market — a searingly insightful essay about how even though we think we have the freedom of choice, we are still constrained…

Read the rest of “as sure as eggs is eggs”…

what if i only want four? or two? or seven? [okay, odd numbers may fall foul of some kind of efficient packing argument.]…

Read the rest of “what if i don’t want six eggs?”…

i don’t care if they are “just the right size for kids hands, allowing children to wipe their bottom clean on their own” i don’t want to see adverts for new kandoo toilet training wipes when i’m having sausages for…

Read the rest of “more miscellany”…

i think there’s a definite hierarchy of digital photograph viewing enjoyment. looking at them on a monitor is fine. looking at professional prints of them is better — something about being able to hold them, bring them closer to your…

Read the rest of “maximum viewing pleasure”…

it’s been a while since i did a ‘quotation of the day’-like entry, but i saw the following on girlie’s archive page: ‘We write to taste life twice, in the moment and in retrospection.’ — Anais Nin…

Read the rest of “qotd”…

i was very interested to learn that there are two different words ‘bollocks’ and ‘bollix’; according to their definitions, bollix can mean bollocks, but not vice versa — you can only say “i’ve bollixed it up”, which makes sense now…

Read the rest of “double meanings”…

sometimes, when i’m listening to music, i’ll beat out some kind of rhythm on my thighs, using my hands, adding an occasional finger-clicking-combo when it feels right — a la bobby mcferrin. and usually, it’s not just copying the drumming…

Read the rest of “unlocking my inner drummer”…

the trouble with the future is that it’s usually not all that far off. looking through boxes of my stuff stored in the loft, i came across a book i had as a child: ‘the usborne book of the future:…

Read the rest of “i’ve seen the future, baby”…

the guardian very thoughtfully gave away a great freebie yesterday: a dvd containing a high-quality version of honda’s ‘cog’ ad [you may remembering me wondering if it contained cgi], together with a ‘making of’ documentary, a flash-powered guide to each…

Read the rest of “cogitation”…

following a conversation in the pub last night, i was pleased to verify that i was correct: flamingos are pink because of the food they eat; it is not the natural colour of their plumage [note: using the word ‘natural’…

Read the rest of “in the pink”…

gosh, five hundred comments in less than five months: quite a lot, really, isn’t it? less than two comments per post though, but that’s my fault for posting a lot of non-commentworthy entries. like this one, for instance. anyway: and…

Read the rest of “mini milestone”…

fucking internet explorer. that’s what i think….

Read the rest of “no words going in the mincer here”…

i’m afraid i’ve never really thought badly of him, so couldn’t actually help the person searching for ‘bertrand russell, tosser’. i wonder what he ever did to deserve such ill will?…

Read the rest of “slanderous searches”…

i admit i have an irrational loathing of my name being shortened: i have always hated being called dave instead of david. but what i’ve only just noticed recently is that i also can’t stand it when people in authority…

Read the rest of “taking the mick”…

mark lamarr on tonight’s ‘never mind the buzzcocks’: “that really does piss all over my strawberries.”…

Read the rest of “anyone got any cream?”…

a spin-off from ‘jackass’: ‘smartass’, in which people attempt crazy stunts but achieve them without so much as a scratch, interspersed with clips of the presenter approaching innocent members of the public and pointing out a much better way of…

Read the rest of “idea for a television programme”…

the bbc pays tribute to dr heimlich, inventor of the technique that enabled my mother to dislodge a rather large boiled sweet from blocking my windpipe when i was six or seven. i was on my own in my granddad…

Read the rest of “helgar, helgar, wake up! i have invented…a manoeuvre!”…

it’s a confidence thing innit? busking, that is [although lots of other things are confidence things, i should think]. i doesn’t matter how good or bad you are, just get out there and play some music, and some people will…

Read the rest of “busk a move”…

i just thought of something to blog about, but now it’s gone. no idea what it was. sorry….

Read the rest of “erm, errr, ummm. erk!”…

this evening i wondered, as i photocopied about seventy pages from three journals for me to get my head around this week, was it ever true that the light from photocopiers is bad for you? is it simply the brightness…

Read the rest of “go into the light”…

you know what i just realised whilst i was filling the kettle? it’s impossible to be envious of jealous people. that is all….

Read the rest of “thoughts from the kitchen sink”…

gibson have created an electric guitar that you can plug straight into your pc, and moreover, you can apply different effects to each string individually. whilst this idea does sound quite cool initially, i’ve a feeling some careful thought would…

Read the rest of “pluck off”…

things i plan to do before i turn 30: turn 27; turn 29; turn 28. although not necessarily in that order….

Read the rest of “ambitions”…

after watching the first in a series of programmes investigating whether or not leonardo da vinci’s various machines were actual feasible, i have come to the conclusion that i could very well be the next leonardo. let’s consider the evidence:…

Read the rest of “dvd vinci”…

there are two processes the human body can do that are of great interest to me; i find them most mysterious. one of them is the action of sucking liquid through a straw [can anyone explain how we form a…

Read the rest of “you understand me, sucka?”…

a key protein involved in retaining memories is called the camp responsive element binding protein — as explained here. that is all….

Read the rest of “ooh, get biologists”…

graham norton, taking part in just a minute, attempts to settle the argument as to whether an octopus has eight arms or eight legs: ‘they’re legs, because if you put gloves on them, it would look silly, but shoes would…

Read the rest of “logical argument of the day”…

i see the european space agency is launching the rosetta mission later today [this may change], which will be making an eight-year voyage to intercept the comet wirtanen. part of the reason the mission has been named rosetta is because…

Read the rest of “they think what?”…

just wanted to hit the magic ‘10 posts in one day’ mark to see what happened….

Read the rest of “nothing to see here”…

almost forgot to wish my old pal michael stipe a happy 43rd birthday today. hope you got my card mate!…

Read the rest of “happy birthday stipey!”…

i doctored a couple more pics in the colouring-book style during another bout of boredom last night — here’s what my l’il sister did with one of them, revealing hitherto unknown artistic genius….

Read the rest of “let us boogie”…

steve irwin is an utter loon, but i think he’s great! anyone who talks with such passion about what they do, or what interests them*, rocks in my opinion. not sure about the wrestling crocs or talking to camera whilst…

Read the rest of “dubious role model”…

today’s date is 01.02.03 if you’re north american, whereas we brits have to wait until february 1st to see the same numerical arrangement….

Read the rest of “uninteresting observation of the day”…

i present: the colour-in a bored dvd game….

Read the rest of “to prevent you being as bored as me”…

i’m currently exacting my revenge on previously described noisy neighbour bloke by unabashedly grooving to several jimi albums i was gifted with last week [specifically, live at woodstock, the bbc sessions and first rays of the new rising sun]. he…

Read the rest of “gaining experience”…

i keep wandering up to my pc and thinking i should post something new on my brand new spanky blog, but all i’ve really done today is sort out my brand new spanky blog, and who wants to read about…

Read the rest of “no pressure”…