Technoranti

Updated: Welcome, BOSSY's readers!

It's this blog's second birthday, yay!!!

My loyal readers reader has suggested that in accordance with the rules for two-year-olds, I should throw a tantrum, so here goes...

I took a look at this Technorati thing after hearing that Jenny the Bloggess is in the top 2,500 and it says this blog is right up there in the top five.Million. Sigh.

But apparently by "claiming my blog" I can get access to lots of cool¹ Technorati gadgets that'll help me improve my rating. No problem...

<clicky> Register with Technorati.

<clicky> Confirm you're the owner.

<clicky> Claim that blog!

Oh.

It seems that my blog has been "flagged", WTF that means...

<clicky> blah blah Sploggers? blah blah...DOs and DON'Ts blah blah

• Do not republish content from other sites without adding your original commentary or reaction.

Hells, I live to add my own commentary or reaction!


• Do not tag exessively [sic] ...over-use of tags in your posts...blah blah blah

btw, have you noticed my new tag cloud? Over on the right and down a bit...yep...stop. There. I had to tweak it a bit to show just the tags that occur seven times or more in my blog, otherwise the tag cloud would be bigger than the page. That's not excessive...is it?


• Do not publish posts with nonsense text.

*cough*


• Do not be overly repetitive.

Which is why I've given up my Friday Chart. That and boredom.


• Do not use links that take the reader to completely different content than what is expected.

Would I do that? Oh, you mean the Stab-O-Mizer video tutorial? Sorry 'bout that.


• Do not promote ... objectionable content.

What, and lose most of my blogroll and half one of my readers? Fook off.

But just to add insult to injury, when I went to claim my other blog² it turns out that that one has a higher rating than this one.

Just a few million higher, admittedly, but still. That stings. Especially since I haven't posted anything there in months.

I'd post something over there right now, but now I'd be worried that I might pull down its blog ranking, sigh.

No, wait. Is 4,978,471 better bigger than 1? Hey, I'm a GREAT blogger! Yay me! Maybe I will do that nude photoshoot after all!


Brrr!

¹ But are they as cool as my patented Stab-O-Mizer??? Hells no!

² You do know I have another blog, right? Well, I say mine. Actually, it has lots of authors. Most of them can even do joined-up writing. I just forget it's there administer it. Wanna join in?

Whirlwind

I've been suffering manly in silence from the dreaded Man Flu. I've been at Death's door for three days - yesterday, today and tomorrow - but I've struggled on. Anyway, a couple of aspirin later and it's cleared up. But there's a lot of catching up to do. So without further adieu, a quick clearout of my backlog.

Alice's Restaurant Revisited.
Some bloke's been fined £225 ($450) after his family of five overfilled their wheelie bin, which is emptied every two weeks, by four inches. He now has a criminal record for littering and may be forbidden from joining the army and that as a result. I wonder if the council produced any photos in evidence against him? Yes.

Back Off, Brussels!
Playing the bagpipes has been banned (again - the last time was in 1745) following EU health and safety legislation this time. Noise exposure must not exceed 85 decibels, but the pipes typically peak at 122dB. Pipers have been ordered to turn down the volume or wear earplugs. Since bagpipes don't come with a fricking volume control and pipers can't hear themselves while wearing something designed to prevent them from hearing anything, the poor Scotch now have no way to avoid hearing the missus yapping enjoy their musical heritage.

Does My Bum Look Big In This?
Former Deputy Prime Minister John Prescott has plugged his new book by "confessing" that he suffers from bulimia. Having a former bulemic in the family, I know that the symptoms vary from one person to the next, but always include three familiar signs:

1. The patient thinks they're fat. Check.


2. They stuff their faces in public. Check.


3. They look like skin and bone. Er...

Normal service will resume as soon as I work out what's normal.

I See Stupid People

According to author Arthur C. Clarke, "If a scientist tells you that something can be done, he is probably right. If a scientist tells you that something can't be done, he is probably wrong."

I have an addendum to that one: If he tells you that people with dark skin are not as bright as Caucasians, he can expect to get blasted in the media.

Dr James Watson, who shared the Nobel Prize for his work on revealing the secret of DNA, has made the rather startling pronouncement that black people are less intelligent than white people.

This is on a par with claiming that women are more temperamental than men, or that old fools are more likely to make sweeping generalisations than young post-graduates making grant applications.

All in all, it just doesn't sound like the kind of thing I'd expect a proper scientist to say. Usually any scientific statement is tempered with a heavy dose of "ifs" and "buts". In fact, the most reliable way to tell if someone is a scientist is to ask for a straight answer to a straight question.

The genuine scientist will always reply: "It depends. We need more funding - I mean we need to do more research."

Other Nobel laureates include:

• Kofi Annan (Ghana)


• Derek Walcott (Jamaica)


• Wole Soyinka (Nigeria)


• Albert Lutuli (South Africa)


• Nelson Mandela (South Africa)


• Desmond Tutu (South Africa)


• V. S. Naipaul (Trinidad and Tobago)

You may not need to be a rocket scientist to win a Nobel Prize, but neither do you have to have white skin.

And that's a scientific fact.

Scunnered

Ming The Jobless

Those Pesky Pests!

"Eeeeek!" screamed Mrs Farty, "a spider!" Yet again, Mr Farty was obliged to interrupt his life's work (ok, his blogging) in order to dispatch the eight-legged freak.

"That does it!" she exclaimed. "I have had it with these flipping spiders in this flipping house!"¹ Picking up the paper, she riffled through to the small ads.

"Here it is! PestXit^TM. We need it. Right now! Besides, the Joneses already have it, and I'm not about to be outdone by those snooty snobs."

<clickety click> "Have you seen how much these things cost?" asked Mr Farty, one eye always on his wallet.

"I don't care, it'll be worth it to get rid of the little monsters once and for all." And it was settled. The order was duly placed.

A few days later, the box arrived and the decision came, which room to put it in? "The range appears to be wide enough to cover the whole house, let's plug it in the bedroom for maximum effect."

And sure enough, for a few weeks the house seemed remarkably clear, not just of spiders, but also flies, bees, wasps, bluebottles², sparrows, lions, elephants and whales...although we were still plagued by giraffes.

But then evolution must have kicked in, because before you could say Shelob, nature had filled the vacuum with the biggest, hairiest spider Mr Farty had ever seen. And guess where it had spun its web?

Yep, right on top of the PestXit^TM. The bastarding critter was right in the middle, basking in the glow of the "operational" light. It was almost as if it was laughing at the irony of the situation.

Wonder if Mr Farty can get his money back?

¹ Or words to that effect.
² In the UK, these are like big, noisy flies, not to be confused with the nasty stinging jellyfish.

Ringtones

There is a Dilbert cartoon strip: A cube-dweller returns to ask, "Anyone seen my cell phone?" Alice replies, "Was it small, metallic and flushable?

You know that choon Für Elise? Yeah, that one. I used to love it. I loved it so much that I went around whistling it - badly - at work. Over and over, day after day.

Until eventually my boss called me over and said, "Farty, will you please stop whistling that fecking choon!"

"But I love it!" I replied in all innocence.

"So did I, until you ruined it for me. Now I can never hear it again without your horrible rendition going through my brain."

This was a bit like me and Help Me Make It Through The Night. Once I'd heard the Billy Connelly version, there was no way I could hear anyone sing it without cracking up. Apparently this is very bad form at a wake.

Anyway, I did as I was told and stopped whistling it.

The Present Day.

One of our neighbours has a new ringtone on his/her phone. Guess what it is? Guess how fecking annoying it is? I can't even tell which neighbour it is, the sound seems to come from a different direction every time I hear it through the window.

Guess that's what's called karma.

btw, my own ringtone is very restrained and not at all annoying. To me.

How To Be Popular On t'Internet

Farty's five-step foolproof guide to getting gazillions of good, um, feedback.

1. Publish a post with the word "competition" in the title.
Bloggers are fiercely competitive and will climb over each other to become the winner.

2. Put a funny picture in your post.
Everyone likes a good laugh.

3. Mention some sort of prize.
Mmmm choclit.

4. Er...


5. That's it.

Smiple really.