The Official Nonsense Thread

[Minty]

Do tell!

At work there's been a lot of grumpy people with flashy VW cars now doomed to be paying out money for cars with a trade in value roughly the same as that you get in those dubious "charity" shops that buy clothes by the weight of the bag.

VW in trouble for being crooked, FIFA in trouble for being crooked, Cameron exposed by his old bankroller, it would be nice to think it will make any difference.

Is it only in Scotland or have the wasps vanished everywhere else already? It's pretty spooky. They began making nuisances of themselves in ones & twos last week, but the annual hordes around litterbins & everywhere you go did not happen. Not that I'm complaining, it's simply I wouldn't put it past the little bar stewards to be doing it as some sort of fiendish plan to ruin my year yet.

Anyone gone for the free trial for TS4 on offer again? Not me.

[Caspin]

(25-09-2015 09:22 PM)Minty Wrote:  Do tell

Ah, you know. One of those days when you wake up early and start getting ready for work. Again. In the dark. With no day off in sight. Tired and jaded. Then you glance at the Internet while slurping your orange juice and suddenly the day is bright and hilarious and filled with people making jokes about the prime minister's liaisons with a dead pig's head. That's all.

Do you know, Minty, you have a bit of an obsession with wasps? I saw one a few days ago. It landed on the outside of the kitchen window while I was washing up and mesmerised me for a good five minutes before it flew away. It was doing funny things with its legs. What I have realised recently is that there have been hardly any mosquitos this year. I've splattered two. Last year it was dozens and I was bitten many times, but this year zero bites. I'm not complaining.

No, I have not played TS4. I'm not sure I ever will. I own it, or so I'm told, as EA gave it me as a gift for helping with Mac queries at Answer HQ, but since I don't have Origin they needn't have bothered.

I'd better go to bed. I have to go back to work soon! But first I shall amaze you with a guessing game. On Thursday I went to the Globe and stopped for dinner at the restaurant, which is on the first floor. Lots of people were standing on millennium bridge, all looking in one direction, so I was looking out of a window to see what was going on. I couldn't, in fact, see what they could see, but I did get a terrible shock at what I could see. Guess what it was?!

(Seeing as last time I asked for guesses I merely bewildered and infuriated, I will tell you right away.) It was a DRONE! Hovering in front of me. This is it. The dystopian nightmare has started. Robots will rise up and enslave us. The apocalypse is nigh. You heard it here first!

[Minty]

(25-09-2015 09:48 PM)Caspin Wrote:  No, I have not played TS4. I'm not sure I ever will. I own it, or so I'm told, as EA gave it me as a gift for helping with Mac queries at Answer HQ, but since I don't have Origin they needn't have bothered.

You helped with Mac queries, & that was the thanks you got for it?

(25-09-2015 09:48 PM)Caspin Wrote:  I'd better go to bed. I have to go back to work soon! But first I shall amaze you with a guessing game. On Thursday I went to the Globe and stopped for dinner at the restaurant, which is on the first floor. Lots of people were standing on millennium bridge, all looking in one direction, so I was looking out of a window to see what was going on. I couldn't, in fact, see what they could see, but I did get a terrible shock at what I could see. Guess what it was?!

(Seeing as last time I asked for guesses I merely bewildered and infuriated, I will tell you right away.) It was a DRONE! Hovering in front of me. This is it. The dystopian nightmare has started. Robots will rise up and enslave us. The apocalypse is nigh. You heard it here first!

I was going to say the blood moon actually! Or Harry Styles, taking "one direction" as a subtle clue.

[Caspin]

Ha! The blood moon would have been my guess as well but I don't think it was visible at that time. I still don't know what all the people on the bridge were staring at, I was too distracted by the drone to investigate further.

Woke up to a nice spooky mist this morning. Everyone keeps pointing out how many weeks it is until Christmas, so I might start stating the number of days until Halloween. It would be good to have a spooky mist for that.

Went last night to the cinema to see the Macbeth film. Realised that I know almost all the lines! The film was not great, sadly. They had some good fighting but made excessive use of slow motion. They also took out all of the funny bits so there was no light relief whatsoever. Not that any comic relief was really needed, given that the dramatic bits were so lacking in drama. Cracking scenery.

Got to get on with the tidying now, as I am cat sitting for a week starting tomorrow and need to get rid of all the dust from under the sofa. Otherwise the cats are going to get covered in it and look old before their time!

[Minty]

(03-10-2015 12:34 PM)Caspin Wrote:  Went last night to the cinema to see the Macbeth film.

NNGGGARGH! HOT POTATO! ORCHESTRA STALLS! PUCK WILL MAKE AMENDS!

[Caspin]

I was waiting for you to do that and you didn't disappoint.

[simspeaker4]

Do you guys take kids out for Halloween? Do you guys dress up? I went as Lakitu last year at my workplace but I really don't know what I want to be this year.

[Caspin]

I don't have any kids to take, although I am very happy for other people's kids to visit (as long as they really are kids - not teenagers who think they can sullenly demand cash instead of candy). I always buy a bunch of sweets to give out, but I make sure they are ones that I like in case there are any left. In this neighbourhood most of the parents take their kids round quite early (before I get home from work) and only approach houses (I live in a flat) with pumpkins outside. It's nice, because that way there's not too much noise later on and they don't bother people who are not interested. I approve. I usually see loads of kids while I'm walking home, so I give out sweets as I go, to the parents as well in case they need the sugar as fuel to keep going!

I do like Halloween though. I usually cook a big dinner and hold a feast like in olden times before commercialisation and plastic pumpkin buckets became the norm. I don't like new age fiddlesticks & flapdoodle, but old-school pagan feasting suits me down to the ground. I might carve a squash this year - I read yesterday that climate change is changing the time of year when pumpkins can easily be grown, so that in the future it may not be possible to carve pumpkins. I could use a turnip but they are bloody hard work.

Also

The cats I was looking after were collected this morning so now I am kitty-free. I miss them and their crazy antics, but am also quite relieved to have been able to clean up all that cat hair that was piling up and to open all the windows. I thought I was going to collapse while hoovering (or, for non-UK readers, vacuuming) the sofa, as I think I might be slightly ill - a large proportion of colleagues in my open-plan office have been coughing and sneezing so I'm bound to have something - but I managed to keep going. Now everything is sparkly and lovely and I can relax. I might do a spot of city-building I think.

Enjoy your weekends

[Caspin]

Had an afternoon off work so I made good use of the time by going to see the Celts exhibition at the British Museum. Fascinating stuff with the Snettisham hoard of torcs on display along with versions from all over the world, plus all sorts of other things including a chariot and some replica Celtic crosses, some of which were huge. Really interesting info about the general misunderstanding of who "the Celts" were and are. Apparently the term defines people culturally rather than genetically, so I'm declaring myself Celtic. I had a Welsh grandmother so she's backup for my claim.

This evening I went to a talk about code breaking by the mathematician Simon Singh. He brought along his enigma machine to demonstrate. Those things are fascinating. There were some little kids in the audience and most of them seemed to understand it all, but then he did explain it very well.

My brain feels somewhat overstimulated now so I'd better go to sleep. Night!

[simspeaker4]

Not... going... to envy... Caspin. Not going to envy... No.... But seriously, I am so jealous that you got to see all that Celtic awesomeness.