Thought for the day...

The 13 year old me would be rather pleased by this...

Natalie Wood You scored 75% innocence, 55% sex appeal, and 63% playfulness!

The girl next door.

My test tracked 3 variables How you compared to other people your age and gender: You scored higher than 92% on innocence You scored higher than 7% on sex appeal You scored higher than 16% on playfulness

Link: The Vintage Vixen Test written by mazzygirl on Ok Cupid, home of the 32-Type Dating Test

Welcome to Betsie Street

Naturally, I'm the first resident, the other plots are still empty.
This is my house, and that's me saying hello.



It's just like being five again...

Here piggy piggy

Do you like my pig? A work of artistic genius, no?

On the subject of twee Scots...

I was innocently watching the telly t'other night, when a trailer came on for a tinpot local TV show called The Music Show.
Next Tuesday they have a Belle and Sebastian special (sneak preview here), but it wasn't the band who grabbed my attention. No, that honour fell to the fans.
Now I've seen B&S live a few times, admittedly a while back now, but I don't remember a crowd quite like this. It was like a Convention for the Socially Inadequate, styled by Oxfam - full of people expressing their individuality by adopting the same retro stylings and "interesting" "dancing". How nice to see the accuracy of a cliche confirmed so well. It's cruel to mock, but sometimes one just can't help it...

The one where I witter on about unrelated things

I found these in the supermarket the other day - Strawberries and Cream flavoured Kit Kats. To describe them as tasty wouldn't be entirely accurate. Peculiar would be better. Apparently this was a special introduction for Wimbledon last year, though I've never seen them before.
According to Wikipedia, Japan is the place to go for weird Kit Kat varients - not sure I like the sound of the Green Tea one...

Spot the problem with the following rhyming scheme: know it, poet, court, throat.
Worked it out yet? Yes that's right, THE WORDS D0N'T BLIMMIN' WELL RHYME! No matter how Stuart Murdoch tries to mangle and mispronounce them, it just doesn't work, and ends up sounding incredibly forced. Much like the rest of the song. Still, I keep hearing good things about the new album, so I'll try not to allow this lyrical atrocity to distress me too much.
This is about Belle and Sebastian by the way. Just thought I'd best mention...




The UK Government finally announced today it's long-awaited proposals for the reform of Incapacity Benefit. I haven't read all the details yet, but from what I've seen, it's a cautious thumbs up with a few reservations.

A quote from this page suffices to explain my first reservation:

A recent survey of employers carried out by Mind showed that fewer than 10% of companies had a mental health policy.
"The majority of people with mental health problems want to return to employment as soon as possible," said policy director, Sophie Corlett. "But they need to be helped and supported, not goaded and ultimately forced to return to work before they are ready to do so."

Ms Corlett believes that the threat of sanctions could put people with mental health conditions under increased and unnecessary pressure.

Another issue of concern is the idea of placing employment advisors in GP surgeries. This is not the right place for this service to be provided - patients should be free to visit their doctor without feeling at all compromised. I suspect this is motivated more by financial motives than anything: this way, the government can continue with their current cutbacks in Jobcentre services and staff numbers (and by having the financing of this scheme possibly shipped by the accountants to a different department, it would allow spending on the NHS to look more inflated than it was in actuality, the cynic in me suspects).

The major concern though has to be the financial one. The Pathways to Work scheme which the government is planning to roll out across the country needs substantial money thrown at it in order to succeed, requiring as it does one-to-one counselling and advice for each person hoping to return to work. Whether the government is willing to put up the cash required remains to be seen.

(And an added concern: the "success stories" highlighted in the link above seem to hint at another, more underlying problem: note how all three end up self-employed when attempting to find work. This may be less to do with choice than with necessity, as there is still considerable prejudice against the disabled, the mentally ill and the long-term unemployed. You'd think they could have found at least one example where this wasn't an issue)

Ian McMillan Strikes Again

GALLOWAY THE MYSTERY CAT

George Galloway's a Mystery cat; an enigmatic puss
Who slinks around the BB house and kicks up quite a fuss.
When his fellow housemates diss his thesis based on Alienation
Of the lumpenproletariat George fears for his reputation

As Galloway, George Galloway, there's no-one quite like Galloway
He sees the world in black and white and scorns the very thought of grey
But in the BB house he's just another famous face
And we're watching and we're waiting for each famous fall from grace;

George Galloway's a smooth old cat; his voice is pure shot silk
And his tache is dripping sexily where Rula spilt her milk
And folks like George go in the house to show the watching youth
That politicians aren't just crooks who like to bend the truth...

But Galloway, George Galloway, be careful you don't throwaway
Any respect you might have gained; rejection's just a text away
Cos in the BB house you're just another Z-list mug
To be laughed at then ignored and then discarded with a shrug;

George Galloway's an MP, but the voters stand in line
At his vacant MP's surgery, while he sits quaffing wine
With a basketball sensation with the manners of a bear
And when constituents bring their complaints, Well Galloway 's not there!

Oh Galloway, George Galloway, you thought that you were well away,
Until an ancient DJ wandered in the house the other day
And Rula Lenska flicked her tail at Jimmy Savile's hair
Cos when it comes to true star quality
Well...
Galloway 's not there...

A poem by Ian McMillan for the Today Programme

Awwww....

Snake 'befriends' snack hamster

A rodent-eating snake and a hamster have developed an unusual bond at a zoo in the Japanese capital, Tokyo.

Their relationship began in October last year, when zookeepers presented the hamster to the snake as a meal.

The rat snake, however, refused to eat the rodent. The two now share a cage, and the hamster sometimes falls asleep sitting on top of his natural foe.

"I have never seen anything like it," a zookeeper at the Mutsugoro Okoku zoo told the Associated Press News agency.

The hamster was initially offered to Aochan, the two-year-old rat snake, because it was refusing to eat frozen mice, the Associated Press news agency reports.


*sniff, sniff*

Isn't it beautiful?

I Gotta Disease...

...I'm addicted to cheesy internet tests. Such as the one below.


Emo Kid
You are 42% Rational, 0% Extroverted, 14% Brutal, and 42% Arrogant.


You are the Emo Kid, best described as a quiet pussy! You tend to be an intuitive rather than a logical thinker, meaning you rely more on your feelings than your thoughts. Not only that, but you are introverted, gentle, and rather humble. You embody all the traits of the perfect emo kid. You are a push-over, an emotional thinker, gentle to the extent of absurdity, and so humble that it even makes Jesus puke. (And Jesus almost never pukes, being immortal and not requiring an act of puke to dispell toxins from his corporeal manifestation.) If you write poetry, you no doubt write angsty, syrupy lines about depression, sadness, and other such redundant states of emo-being that go something like this:

life is a spike / upon which i have impaled myself / fuck you dad

So, your personality is defective because you are too gentle, rather underconfident in yourself, decidely lacking in any rational thought, and also a bit too inhibited. Plus, your poetry really upsets your father.

I probably made you cry, didn't I? Fucking Emo Kid.

The Personality Defect Test
http://www.okcupid.com/tests/take?testid=4741219933576750506

School has changed since my day...

SocietyGuardian.co.uk | Health | Classes in fake tanning for Scottish pupils

In a country where sunshine is about as common as wild haggis, it is probably not surprising that many Scots seek artificial help to rid themselves of pasty complexions. But such is the desire to have a tan among Scottish schoolchildren that schools are calling in beauty experts to offer advice on how to apply fake tan to stop pupils nipping out for a sunbed session in their dinner break.

Glasgow has more sunbeds per head of population than any other city in the UK. But generally fair-skinned Scots are particularly vulnerable to skin cancer and 125 Scots are diagnosed with the disease every week, a rate of incidence higher than that in Australia.

The fake tanning training scheme was launched after staff at Thomas Muir high school in Bishopbriggs, East Dunbartonshire, noticed pupils coming into afternoon lessons looking as if they had just stepped off a Majorcan beach. The school nurse, Liz Ratter, was so concerned about the risk of skin cancer among the pupils that she contacted a fake tan company.

In the first of a series of such sessions, Lisa Fulton, a training expert with Fake Bake, will give pupils tips on how to apply fake tan next week. Ms Fulton also plans to tell the pupils about her celebrity clientele, in the hope that stars will have influence where health experts do not.

"We will be giving little tips to the pupils on how to apply their tan, but we also hope that by telling them about all the celebrities who use tanning products it will encourage them to save their skins for when they are older," said Sandra McClumpha, UK managing director of Fake Bake. She plans to run a campaign called Save Your Skin in schools across Scotland before extending it to the rest of the UK.

Corn-based snack lovers of the world unite

When I first heard the news that British crisp manufacturer Golden Wonder had gone into administration, I wasn't hugely surprised, given the dominance these days of the evil Lineker-fronted Walkers. Then I had a sudden moment of panic when I remembered that one of my favourite snacks was now under threat.
Save the Nik-Nak! Or, to be even more precise, save the Nice 'n' Spicy Nik-Naks! Quite simply the best corn-or-potato-based snack-food on the market, they're a tasty, delicious delight, and would be a dreadful loss. Especially in today's market of pretentious poncy flavours in overpriced, overdesigned packs.
It seems there's interest from a few companies in buying the Golden Wonder brand, so hopefully Nik-Naks will survive this scare. If not, I may have a executive somewhere to hunt down and kill...

Drink the elixir

A warning to us all...

Last Thursday, myself and the Young Man ventured far afield (well, a few miles on the train) in search of the elusive elixir of life. But failing to find that, we settled instead for the Uisge Beatha, with a double distillery visit in Pitlochry. Famously home to leaping salmon, hydro-electricity, and approximately ten thousand woollen mills, the Perthshire town also houses two whisky manufacturers.

Edradour, Scotland's smallest distillery

First on the list was Edradour, home of the smallest copper stills in the country (any smaller and they'd be illegal apparently). A very pretty little place, it's also an absolute bargain for a day out - you get a long and detailed tour of the distillery for the grand total of zero pounds and zero pennies, with a complimentary dram thrown in for good measure.

Blair Athol

Blair Athol distillery is, despite the name, situated in the south of Pitlochry, and works on a larger scale than Edradour. Owned by that all-conquering force of the drinks market Diageo, the Blair Athol malt is one of the central ingredients in the Bells blend. As a large proportion of production goes towards this, the malt itself is still pretty much a hidden gem. It would have been churlish to return home empty handed, so I have a bottle to keep me company through the dreich January days.

Ooh look, a waterfall

Apparently some clever people can look at maps and figure out that the easy stroll through a woodland path will actually be verging on an uphill hike, but hey, a little exercise never killed anyone, did it? And that did make it all downhill on the way back, so it ain't all bad...

Pitlochry Theatre waterfront at night

The worst thing about Pitlochry in January is that the town is very much geared towards seasonal tourism. Which can make such things as finding something to do after 4pm and locating an open restaurant a bit more difficult. It was almost like a ghost town at times, so empty were the streets - presumably the locals were all tucked up at home waiting for the sun to come out again before venturing forth. They really should head outdoors though, it's a pretty little place...

Separated at birth: scary figure at Blair Athol and celebrated fiddler Aly Bain

OKCupid! The Which Indie Wanker Are You? Test

Kele Okereke You are 51% sane and 68% sincere!

King of the NME 2005 "Saviours of Rock" club and nicest of those nice, take-home-to-yer-mum-able, young boys from Bloc Party, Kele is quiet and humble as pie on the interview couch and a ball-tearing vocal WMD behind a microphone. His cryptic lyrics mask a very normal, nice, well-adjusted, not very angry young man, with a peculiar talent for sparse, evocative writing. He'd rather make his mum a cup of tea than snort lines in a smoky club, but at the same time, he is a rock monster - living, breathing, howling proof that you don't have to be deeply and irrevocably fucked up to appreciate the Pixies and the Cure. Why is he a wanker? Just because there are so many angry young men out there with talent and guitars, stuck in garages, jealous as allgetout, because they didn't get handpicked by Alex Kapranos to support Franz. In other words, he's a jammy bastard. And he's - splutter - nice.

The Which Indie Wanker Are You? Test

Hold On To Your Hat

Sometimes life starts to resemble a Buster Keaton slapstick film. For the terminally clumsy like myself, the world is full of opportunities for all manner of mishaps. But today I was blameless. Unless you count having style as a fault...

There are many good things about hats (and for the record, those hideous tea cosy things do not count) - the instant air of class achieved merely by covering the head, the escape afforded from the horror of a Bad Hair Day - but high winds are not their best friends. Either you have to walk around clutching the brim tightly, or you run the risk of unwanted head exposure.

So there I was, innocently making my way along the street, when a gust of wind lifted the poor trilby up and away, as I helplessly watched it escape up the street and take a detour down an alleyway. It's amazing how far it can travel before you catch up, and indeed a little alarming. It's just as well I wasn't on the other side of the street, or it may have ended up in the river.

Unsurprisingly enough, when walking home later in even higher winds, I chose to carry it rather than risk a repeat performance - after all to lose a hat once may be regarded as misfortune, to lose it twice looks like carelessness...

OkCupid! Politics Test

You are a Social Liberal (83% permissive) and an... Economic Liberal (15% permissive) You are best described as a: Socialist Link: The Politics Test on OkCupid Free Online Dating Also: The OkCupid Dating Persona Test

Play Misty For Me

OKCupid! The Nerd? Geek? or Dork? Test

Pure Nerd 65 % Nerd, 30% Geek, 26% Dork

For The Record: A Nerd is someone who is passionate about learning/being smart/academia. A Geek is someone who is passionate about some particular area or subject, often an obscure or difficult one. A Dork is someone who has difficulty with common social expectations/interactions. You scored better than half in Nerd, earning you the title of: Pure Nerd. The times, they are a-changing. It used to be that being exceptionally smart led to being unpopular, which would ultimately lead to picking up all of the traits and tendences associated with the "dork." No-longer. Being smart isn't as socially crippling as it once was, and even more so as you get older: eventually being a Pure Nerd will likely be replaced with the following label: Purely Successful. THE NERD? GEEK? OR DORK? TEST

I'm shocked! Sheer filth!*

PORNOTYPO :: Pron for all occasions

















* not really

New Year, New Toys

It was about this time last year that I started this here blog (happy birthday to me etc), so naturally my ever-fickle web habits have lead me to seek new things with which to play.

And StumbleUpon is just about the most addictive thing I've found. Being essentially a right lazy besom, I've lifted some reviews directly from their website to explain the whole thing for those of you yet to discover it.

"It's kind of addictive ... when you have time to surf it really does allow you to find some unique and relevant sites" - Andy Walker, g4techTV, Nov 3rd 2004.

"Stumbleupon is a brilliant downloadable toolbar that beds into your browser and gives you the chance to surf through thousands of excellent pages that have been stumbled upon by other web-users" - BBCWorld ClickOnline, July 29th 2004.

"...extensions recommended by more than one reader included StumbleUpon, a community website-recommendation project that lets you find more cool and usually obscure websites -- sort of a Friendster for site links." - Wired News, July 12th 2004.

"Stumbleupon.com helps users share links by asking them to rate sites through a browser toolbar." - New York Times, Online Diary, May 6th 2004.

"I'm hooked on the thing, and rate it as the second most useful web browsing tool after Google itself. In fact, that pecking order may even change, as I find instead of Googling I'm Stumbling more and more..." – Davey Winder, PcPro Magazine, Issue 109, November 2003

You can find my Stumbles here - I'm feeling positively compelled to seek out fabulous stuff in a bid to have it look vaguely impressive, so you might just find something of interest. And if you don't yet, well, there's plenty more to come.

She is a hybrid of: Indie Girl Progressive Girl Click on the pictures below to read more: Take the 'What Kind of Girl Is She?' quiz at CookingToHookup.com