Spider Kitty

We have a new cat; she's a sixth-month-old Ragdoll we've named Tula. As you can imagine, being a kitten means she's a precocious little furball with a tendency to get up to mischief. However, as she's so cute any indiscretion committed by her is swiftly forgiven.

Lately she has discovered that it is possible to scale the screen we have on our porch. I think she got the idea from watching the squirrels. However, while she's found it possible to go up, she seems to have no idea how to climb down. The rascally Ragdoll tends to hang there until someone carefully detaches her from the screen.

I took a quick snap of Tula during one of her climbs, although the flash didn't go off so I had to tweak the brightness a little. Here we are:

Home Sick

Urgh, I feel like shit. I rarely take a sick day, but the past 48 hours have prompted me to take one otherwise I'd be buggered for the rest of the week.

I'm pretty sure it's just the 'flu; there have been plenty of people sneezing and slobbering throughout the store, so it's not surprising I've picked something up.

Basically what I've been doing is popping pills, resting my ass in bed, and taking a jaunt through the internet. I should be fine for work tomorrow as I have a closing shift. This means an extra long night of sleep to send those nasty 'flu bugs into retreat.

Soup is good, soup is great, soup tastes yum on my plate ... er, bowl.

Tennant Parts Ways With Doctor Who. WTF?

Well, all good things I suppose. David Tennant was an excellent Doctor and was an inspired choice when cast to replace Christopher Eccleston. Tennant's definitely in my Top 3 [sharing shelf space with Tom Baker and Patrick Troughton] so he's going to be missed.

While it's true to say the stories he had to work with in the last season had taken a dodgy turn [Silence in the Library/Forest of the Dead the standout exception] whenever he played the part he did it with a certain panache that was infectious to watch.



So who will be the next Who? Stephen Moffat, the incoming head honcho of the series, hasn't said anything regarding this, and I imagine we won't find out until just before Tennant's last episode in the series.

But we can all play the imaginary casting director role and throw some names to the wind. For my mind, I have a couple: Stephen Fry would be an excellent choice, as would David Thewlis. Unfortunately, since I've named those two actors it's unlikely they'll be chosen as I have no luck in the art of picking actors for parts [although I'm still holding out for James McAvoy playing Bilbo]. One suspects it will be a relative unknown, but it'll be fun to keep an eye or two on proceedings.

"Me love you long time, mon."

That's what my ears heard when I was grabbing groceries out of the boot this morning. When the lawnmower dude repeated himself, what I heard with more clarity was, "Me looking for you for long time, mon." Well I'm glad we cleared that up!

But why were you looking for me in the first place? Because most of the people in the 'hood have their lawns mowed for them, and he was hoping to expand his portfolio. That's fair enough, although he looked somewhat despondent when he spied the lawnmower in the garage. "Oh!" he said, "You have a lawnmower?"

"That's right, mate," I replied. "It's not much of a lawn and doesn't take me long so I'm pretty happy to keep doing it."

"Oh, I thought I could mow your lawns when we do your neighbour as well. Make it easier," he said.

"Nah, I appreciate the offer but we're cool. Thanks anyway."

And so he left to continue on with his landscaping next door. Considering a large % of the houses around here have their lawns mowed for them, the contractors aren't likely to go out of business anytime soon. Although if the economy continues to implode people might start looking at their expenditures a little closer...

But it'll be a cold day in hell before I pay someone to mow the grass that I'm perfectly capable of mowing myself. Honestly, the lawns around here ain't exactly football parks and they can be knocked off in relatively little time. Plus it's good exercise.

The Atheist Bus Ad That's Probably Agnostic

"There's probably no God. Now stop worrying and enjoy your life."




Hm, that "probably" bit doesn't sound too convincing. I suspect it was written by an agnostic moonlighting as an atheist. I mean, if you consider yourself an atheist then shouldn't "There is no God" be the correct statement? "Probably" is someone saying I'm not quite certain so I'm going to hedge my bet both ways. You know, just in case.

According to the article in The Guardian, the campaign is designed to "counter the religious ads running on public transport" in the UK, and has raised 11,000 squid [with a contribution from Richard Dawkins].

I'm not sure this is a wise use of money, particularly when the economic outlook ain't too flash, homies. Besides, if one is secure in their beliefs -- either as a believer of God or a non-believer -- then the opinions [or advertisements on a bloody bus] of others who hold beliefs contrary to yours shouldn't get your knickers in a twist. That would just be silly.

I'm not surprised The Guardian is involved in this. I like The Guardian, but sometimes they try too hard to be the poster child for the left-of-centre crowd. They reached their nadir in this regard during the 2004 US Presidential race when they ran a campaign dubbed Operation Clark County.

The Op called for UK readers of The Guardian to write a letter to people in Clark County, Ohio, to suggest they vote for John Kerry and not W. As one can imagine, it went down like a lead balloon. And that's hardly surprising. If I got a letter from a random Aussie telling me who to vote for I'd tell that Ocker to fuck off, and fast. That kind of shit ain't cool.

All aboard.