News Roundup

Still considering whether to dip my toe into journalism. In the meantime, here's what I've seen going on in and around the webz.

Some little 11-year-old spoiled brat shot and killed his dad's pregnant girlfriend with a gun designed especially for children. What. The. Fuck? No prizes for guessing which country.

PM Gordie Broon has been caught with his troosers in a conflagration, when he claimed that he only found out this week about Fat Cat Freddie's humungous pension. M'lud, may I present in evidence The Daily Telegraph from October 14th, 2008? "Sir Fred Goodwin blah blah blah reportedly stands to benefit from a pension worth more than £500,000 on leaving the group." Perhaps Gordie was reading that article with his blind eye?

It looks like we shan't be saying "Farewell to the Torrents"¹ anytime soon. Liars for the RIAA had the temerity to question the credentials of an expert witness in the Pirate Bay trial, aaaarrrrr, Professor Roger Wallis, PhD, from the Royal Institute of Technology in Stockholm, when he testified that artists who market their own material over the intertubes (e.g. Esmeé Denters) were making the very concept of copyright a thing of the past. Read about it in Wired. I like the bit about the flowers.

Ryanair has decided to start charging customers a pound to spend a penny on their planes. Remind me next time I fly Ryanair to wear a kilt. I plan to make a sit-down protest ².

The spoilsport brigade are up in arms again, this time over the return of the circus elephant. This animal has already been driven to extinction once, during the 20th century, by fuddy-duddy do-gooders, and it has taken a decade of DNA cloning, genetic modification and that to bring it back to life. Returning it to its natural habitat in the centre ring of a big-top circus has been a painstakingly slow business, involving beating the fuckers with sticks and chairs, electric cattle prods and in extreme cases shooting them for their own good.
Basically, they're like wild elephants without the jungle.

WildJust a bit miffed
Yep. No difference.

Twitter ye not. I'm on Twitter. WTF that is. I dunno, techno-something or other. It's a bit like blogging, except there's a limi

¹ © Robert Burns.

² Read Misssy's blog from "So my brother".

The Circle Game

Little Miss Farty is moving back in with us.



She first moved out when she decided to move to the Big Sprawl at the tender age of sixteen, to live with her SMS boyfriend. I still vividly remember her wee arm waving out the window of the removal van as they drove away. But after a year or so spent in 'Nam (Tottenham), working as a checkout girl, she was back. London didn't suit her, so she waved goodbye to bf and caught the train back to the Burgh.

Then there was a brief stint in her best friend's flat. Sleeping on the floor suited her a lot less than a bed, so back she came - after just a couple of weeks this time.

That was followed by a council flat. She had to claim that we'd thrown her out so that the council would move her to the top of the housing list. I think it was a council employee who let her in on that trick. She stuck it out for a year in what my Dad would have called a "multiplied flat", better know to the rest of us a a multi-story tower block: full of druggies and their dealers, schemies, neds (non-educated delinquents) and assorted riff-raff, so that she really wanted to leave, but the council had promised that they would knock it down and rehouse the tenants in some really nice new houses.

So she held on there for a second year, suffering a burglary in the process, but still there was no sign of the promised demolition. Occasionally a girlfriend would move in for a while, but they always fell out with each other eventually.

Then came the terrified phone call - a drunk/nutter was trying to batter down the door, looking for his girlfriend Suzie, who LMF had never heard of. We arrived just as the police were dragging him away, but it was scary enough that she decided to go. Not back to us this time, but close by, to a private landlord. And then the council confirmed thay're pulling down those flats after all.

Sure enough, within a few months she'd fallen out with yet another flatmate and decided to move to the Kingdom of Fife, north of the river Forth, because it would be more convenient for her job in, er, Embra - south of the river. Go figure.

Still, by this time she'd decided to become a nurse and started training, so at least she was/is making something of her life. And then she met D.

D is mental. D is a drummer in a band. D is divorced. D is nearly five years older than LMF. D is bald. D is not afraid to wear his girlfriend's clothes. D is quite possibly the best thing that has ever happened to LMF. From the very moment they met, they just clicked. Within a week, she introduced him to us and we just clicked.

They hunted together for a place they could call their own. And found it. It was perfect. It was near both her work and his. It didn't need to be redecorated right away. It had rooms and that. But their mortgage provider, unusually for someone in his profession, told them that they couldn't afford it. He didn't want them to get thrown out into the street when the bank foreclosed. Three days later came that sub-prime mortgage collapse. Whew! That was close.

So they moved in with bf's mum and dad to save on the rent. Then they got engaged. Then they started getting on each others' tits. And now, this week, LMF is coming home again.

Except this time she's not alone.



Bless.