If You Want To Get Ahead, Get A Hat

Supervillain The Lemming had a fairly short criminal career as one of Batman's arch-enemies before losing his head in a face-to-face confrontation with the caped crusader.

And people say evolution is just a theory.

Wailing and Weeping

Jings, crivvens and, indeed, help ma boab! Ma bairn has gone far, far awa'. The noo.

Yes, Little Miss Farty and her fiancé have, despite the global credit crunch, managed to scrape together (with a little help) enough to put down the deposit on a flat. It's not much, but at least it's a place that they can call their own.



Mrs Farty and I were totally distraught at the realisation that our youngest child has finally left the nest for good.



I'm off to the DIY store in the morning to get the necessary materials. Just in case.



Sob!

Farty's Friday Chart

A very, very old joke. Name that tune.

Merkan-English Dictionary #13

For some reason I thought I might be running out of material by now. (Don't you wish!)

Lemonade

Self-explanatory, really. Without doing any actual research, since that would be too much like hard work, I'd have to say that British lemonade, as sold in bottles, has never been near an actual lemon. It's fizzy, and sweet, slightly bitter, and that's about it.

Not to be confused with Merkan Cream Soda, which is even sweeter but without the bitter edge. I've never tried Merkan Cream Soda as sold in Merka, but something tells me it ain't the same.

Merkan lemonade appears to be some weird concoction made from yellow fruit and cane sugar. What is that all about?


Oh. And British soda is a cooking ingredient.

Are there any more Merkan/English words which you find confusing? Do let me know and I'll try to splain for you!

Toot toot!

Blatant Plug

Today I will be mostly over there.

Stereogram #1

Do you remember when Magic Eye pictures were all the rage? There might be an image of apparently random dots or perhaps repeating wallpaper, but if you could get your eyes to point beyond the image while focusing on the printed page, all sorts of bizarre 3D images might suddenly appear? Or perhaps you would just get a headache. Me too.

But sometimes it would work, especially if I didn't have to squint too much. And I quickly discovered that you didn't have to obscure the original image (in fact, some stereographs date back more than a century). Take two pictures from slightly different vantage points, then print them side by side. With a special viewer, the pictures could be superimposed in three dimensions. Or you could just squint.

Since digital photography was still ridiculously expensive in its infancy, I used my state-of-the-art computer (an Amiga 500 running Sculpt-Animate 4D) to generate a brilliantly imaginative animation of the space station Deep Space Nine rotating in space. In 3D. Just before the Star Trek people released a holographic keyring of the same thing, grrr!

Sadly, all my work was lost when I ditched the Amiga and bought this PC, and anyway the formats were incompatible, sigh. But now that everyone has a digital camera, it's dead easy to do. You only need two images, taken from a few centimetres to a few feet apart, depending on the distance. I've done three above, because that works too.

Put them in a paint program, crop them, line them up and Robert is your mother's brother.

Now I just need to find a decent subject.

Summer Caption Competition Results

And the winner is...Sewmouse!



Although I'll also have to give #Debi a runner-up prize for this one:

Oooh, baby! You said you were bringing over some BIG sex toys, but I had no idea! Thanks ever so much! (You can go now...)

Ladies, please email MrFarty at blueyonder dot co dot uk with a snail-mail address where I can dispatch your prizes. Assuming customs won't confiscate them as weapons of mass destruction...

Toot toot!

Speed-o-Blog

I seem to have accrued rather a lot of snippets, so I'll just rattle off my wit and wisdom. Shouldn't take long.

Firstly, there's the story of the six-foot Canadian. Insert Heather Mills joke here.

Q. What does "ironic" mean?
A. Wrong.

Stereogram photos. Remember those Magic Eye pictures where you had to cross or uncross your eyes to see a 3-D image, and give yourself a thumping headache in the process? You can get the same effect by placing similar photos side by side. More on this in a later post.

If there is no spoon, how am I supposed to eat this soup?

I for one welcome our new Dalek overlords. No, wait. That's not been broadcast yet. Remember, last chance to enter the Summer Caption Competition.

Someone has proven that any Rubik's Cube can be solved in 23 moves. Someone should get a life.

Still resisting the allure of Big Brother. From what I've overheard, I'm not missing much.

Jack Spratt could eat no fat, his wife could eat no lean. They were veggies.

Two blondes in the Weeg (Glasgow) are looking up at the moon.
First blonde: "Which do ye think is further away, Embra or the moon?"
Second blonde: "Helloooooooo? Can you even see Embra?"

Oxymoron: Scientifically proven (scientists can only disprove hypotheses).

Finally, tomorrow is the summer solstice, the anniversary of a sad event in my life. This piece of music somehow seems appropriate:



How's my drivelling?

Summer Caption Competition

Be it pleaseth yowe, Maistre Geoffrey Chaucer hath inspiredd me with his chronicle ycleped Doctor Hwaet and the Daneleks. It hath been wandering arounde mine head for monthes, lyke unto Marco Polo on his travelles.

Any road uppe, Ich haue effected an peynture depicting an Danelek Shippe, but Ich am at an compleat losse for a suitably sombre title.

Et this ys where yowe, gentil reedere, can make yower owne contributione!

Alle yowe have to doo ys to provide yower suggestiones in ye usual place; Ich shall runne an totallye fayre refferendumme to fynd the moost popular one and poste it yn mine blogge. There shalle be an pryze of an actual moving, talking Danelek. (Paynture not to scale, Companion not included.)
Prize ⇒
Competition ⇓



So putte on yower thynking cappes! Competicioun closeth on Vendredi, Juin 20, 2008. Goode Lucke!

If People Behaved Like Governments...

...you'd call the cops.

Even although the Irish electorate has voted overwhelmingly against the EU Constitution Treaty, the scumbags in Brussels (no, not you Zoe/Goth/Daffers/DQ) have decided to press ahead anyway and pretend it never happened.

What part of "No" do you think they didn't understand?

No Lisbon - 2 Unlimited

Farty's Friday Chart

Jade & Piggy


Bush & Chimp


Revolting & a bird


Name That Tune

What's In A Name?

First it was Champagne, then Gorgonzola. Now it seems that if the Greeks get their way, then ladies who like other ladies (NTTAWWT) will no longer be allowed to call themselves Lesbians. Henceforth, only people who actually live on the island of Lesbos will have that right.

This test case is being keenly watched by the residents of several neighbouring islands. The courts are expected to make a decision within the next couple of months. If Lesbos succeeds, it is expected that Dyke, Butch and Rugmunch will quickly follow suit.

You Can't Judge A Book

...by the blurb. Especially if the copywriter is some halfwit who hasn't even bothered to read the book they're supposed to be promoting. Well do I remember reading a book review that mentioned "the dragon Sauron" as if Sauron were indeed a dragon. In fact a small note in the appendix to The Lord of the Rings says something like "Smaug was the dragon Sauron wanted to use in the War of the Ring", and the reviewer had just snatched a few words at random instead of actually reading the book. Lazy git.

Anyway.

For the more graphically talented among you - and John - can you come up with a completely misleading cover illustration for a popular book? Or film or whatever. Post it in your own blog and leave a comment here to let me know.

Everyone else - any ideas? Drop me a line and I'll see what I can knock together.

Manic Monday

So much to blog about, so little time.

First things first. Sarah Peach has put together a bloggy book in support of the Warchild charity. And here it is:

You're Not The Only One - Charity Book for Warchild

It's got over a hundred articles in it, culled from some of the best minds in the blogosphere...which explains why I'm not in it. But it does have Anna off Little Red Boat. And Cat in the Cathouse. And Mike off Troubled Diva who did Shaggy Blog Stories last year. Miss Tickle, who sold me the word "sparkling". I could go on.

Tired Dad, Unreliable, enidd, Ariel, Léonie, Misssy, Angela-la-la, even Johnny B. Plus loads who I've never heard of till now.

You get the picture. Now get the book.

The rest of this post can only pale by comparison, but I'm good at shallow, so I'll persevere.

This was one of the first cassette tapes I ever bought. And then I wore it out by playing it on my Walkman all day every day. Oh Patti - Scritti Politti.



IBM have come up with a Roadrunner that can go faster than the one in the cartoons. Actually it's a super-dooper computer, running at petaflops speed. And it's made from spares off a Sony PS3. Now that it's been tested, it's to be disassembled and moved to New Mexico, where it will monitor the US nuclear stockpile.

Three reasons why you should be worried by this development:

1. No disassemble!

2. I'm afraid, Dave.

3. Let's play Global Thermonuclear War.

Oh, crap!

Farty's Friday Chart

See how many different answers you can come up with for this...











Update: for some reason, this seems to have been published "silently" at midnight. Probly explains the lack of comments. Stoopid Blogger. Let's try again...

Dee Woon

Big Brother is, pardon my French, such a mind-numbingly dull pile of shite.

However, I always manage to get sucked into it one way or another.

One time it was Davina in a bikini.

Another time it was that bloke with Tourette's. Dave? Jim? Pete! I think...

The worst thing is hearing all the popular references on tv and in the office and wondering what the feck they're all talking about?

But this year I shall resist. Staunchly.

I'll go and read War and Peace or something. Or live in a cave. Anything to keep my head clear of that unending drivel.

.
.
.

Wonder if Diarmid's still doing BBLB?

Tickle Me Tuesday

Doesn't Tickle Me Tuesday come around fast? Anyway, some random stuff from the news caught my eye when I should have been working; see what you think.

Merkan fast-food outlet Dunking Doughnuts has been caught out promoting terrorism by using pictures of would-be suicide bomber [are you sure this is right? Ed] Rachael Ray in their ads. Whoever the feck she is. Personally, I find pictures of Ronald MacFeckingDonald much more offensive. FWIW.



Brad Jayakody was stopped by bouncers airport security at everyone's favourite airline terminal because he was carrying a gun. Er, a picture of a gun. On his t-shirt. "So what?", you may ask.



This particular picture of a gun was the arm of a Transformers robot, which, as any fule kno, can suddenly and without warning change its form from an innocuous car to a deadly fighting machine. Holy crap, Batman! This looks like an excuse to post a picture of Transformers star Megan Fox!



A "lost tribe" has been discovered in the Amazon. Well, not so much a tribe as the "special" lineup of I'm A Sleb, who the producers "forgot" to get out of there. So now you know why The Chuckle Brothers, Mark Lamarr, Pete Waterman, Jade Goody and Tatu have been off our screens for so long.



Toot toot!

Fantasy Film Director

I've just seen that new Harrison Ford effort, Indiana Jones and the Golden Zimmer or whatever it's called. Little Miss Farty's fiancé tagged along as he's into that kind of thing too. He reckoned the

SPOILER ALERT

little flashing tracker devices were cool, but completely anachronistic for 1957. Totally ruined it for him, 'cos everything else was so believable.

This got me reminiscing about my favourite moments in film and tv...

I remembered that X-Files episode where Scully is abducted by aliens who take her in their spaceship and dress her up in a nurse's uniform and then perform experiments to see what happens when they spank her with a table-tennis bat.

What do you mean, you "don't remember that one"? It's an absolute classic.

Or did I just dream it?

<clicky>

Nothing on Youtube or IMDB. *sigh*

Anyway. Imagine that some coke-addled Hollywood film producer has just handed you a blank cheque. You can make any film you like, with your own choice of actors, plot, locations etc. What would your fantasy film/tv series be like?