Haaarrrr!
Right, since I'm here, I want to point out a few things...

Firstly, Talk like a pirate day is on the 19th of September. Those more astute, (or cute), than me will have already figured out that this is a Sunday. Now, I know this doesn't work for christmas or anything, but we're going to move it to the Friday before, for work purposes.
So, that means the 17th of September, instead of being a dress down day, will now be a dress like a pirate day.

I watched Star Trek : Nemesis last night. Only because it was on Sky you understand, I haven't turned into a sex-starved sandal wearer or anything.
As well as being fundamentally pish, there are things that just annoy me about the thing. Why on earth (or elsewhere) is it that the transporters never work when they're needed? They seem to be fine when your just pissing around shagging aliens, but as soon as anyone is in any trouble they are screwed (usually interference). Now, I know it's pretty technical stuff to make them work at all, and I'm not dissing all the fine work that's carried out in Starfleet headquarters, but the point is that every other species seems to be able to transport people straight from the Enterprise on a mere whim. Gives us Earthies a bad name it does.
Oh, and the sensors never seem to pick up anything, unless it's something very dangerous that the captain always wants to investigate.
Example:
From 1 billion light years away -
Sensor Guy - "Captain, I'm picking up some squadiggle whatcha readings from a far away planet"
Captain - "Set a course and engage, fanny-baws"
From 3 feet away -
Captain - "Right, where's it coming from then, fanny-baws?"
Sensor Guy - "I can't tell, the readings are too faint."
Captain - "Prick"

Oh, and I'm no expert in Starfleet Protocols, but they kept going on at the start how the Captain couldn't go on away missions, or could, but only if the second in command didn't, or something. But, as soon as the opportunity arose the whole lot of the senior knobbers pissed off to the planet, leaving newt in charge, which had been Hick's plan all along.

Day 171: A Fringing we did go

The first inaugeral outing of the official Björk Bjiggler Fringe Goers Club had their first visit to the Edinburgh fringe last night (at least it was my first visit - the others had all been before I think).

Al and I went together in his car. We set off in good time as we planned to get a bite to eat before our 19:15 performance, but due to the traffic being so clogged up it took us rather longer than anticipated to get there, but I was very impressed with Als ability to take us straight to the right place even though he didn't know the streets of Edinburgh that well and he wasn't sure exactly where we were going anyway. Getting parked up and getting into the pleasance couryard with a pint in hand was with us the work of a moment. I went into the white porta cabin (as instructed when I booked the tickets) to collect the tickets to the Keith Barrett Show and was told that I had also booked some tickets for a later show and did I want to collect those at the same time. The ability to do this saved our bacon as the first show finished late and we would not have had time to collect the tickets before the second show if I had not been able to collect them here.

While we were waiting in the couryard we spotted a few famous people like that american who has been on Never Mind the Buzzcocks, that comedian who isn't very good that got arrested for dressing up as Ossama Bin Laden at a royal party and an irish person who was off the telly. Someone came up to us and said "is this the back of the queue?", we said "What queue?" and looked round to see that a queue had formed and we happened to be standing jsut were it ended. We said "no were weren't in the queue" and walked off to see where we had to go to see our show, only to find that you needed to queue, but by now the queue was about 5 times as long as it was when we were in it earlier. Even so, we ended up on the front row, which was good, but meant I ended up being in the firing line a few times. I must say that the show started and I started laughing and didn't stop laughing until almost the end.

As mentioned earlier, the first show finished late so we had to high tail it accross town and joined Paolo in the queue just before it started going into the assembly hall to see Jeremy Hardy which was very enjoyable and a good compliment to Rob Brydon as it is a different type of humour that gets you thinking about just how crap just about everything is (apart from moving to Sweden).

Anyway it was all a bit of fun - a bit of fun it was.

Day 170: A fringing we will go

Tonight is a big night out for the Björk Bjiggler team and assorted hangers on as we will be taking on the Edinburgh Fringe en mass and seeing all the top shows. For the first part of the evening we shall be splitting up due to the fact that some of the party feel it is more appropriate to go and see Budhist drumming rather than a quality show such as The Keith Barret Show. Needless to say and I will be having the last laugh there.

We shall then be high tailing it across town for me to pick up the tickets to the Jeremy Hardy show, which need to be collected at least 20 minutes before the show starts, and meeting up with the others who will probably have all been brain washed by now and be wanting to go off and join some cult or other.

Anyway thats the bit that has been organised thus far, after that the fringe is our oyster (in much the same way as a 99% wio and 1% sys can be quite dificult to resolve when there are only 45 processes running at the time and none of them are really doing anything very much) , so we probably won't bother going to any more shows and will just slope off to our respective digs and just generally stay out of trouble.

So, hopefully we'll see you there.
Full update and review will be provided tomorrow.

Aly in DisneyLand
Not a bad title, eh? That's 'cos I've just been to DisneyLand you see. The one in Paris that is, not the one in California, or the one in Florida. I actually think one of them is called Disney World just to distinguish it, but I don't care.
I was going to save another title for something else, but will use it now since it was pretty funny, although only to me.
Aly shoes the plooky lass
I think you might need to be Scottish, or even a weedgie to get that, but trust me, it's funny.

Anyway, on with the show.

I flew with Ryan Air for a reasonable sum to a place called Beauvais, which is quite a bit outside Paris. I was prepared for this though, and had booked a car, which I'd upgraded to the next level. So, I got there and picked up a "yellow" Peugeot 307 Turbo Diesel, which was a neat car. Oh, "yellow" is in quotes because it's French for green. I say that because the guy sent me round to the car park to get the "yellow" one, you can guess the rest.
So, proceeded to kick the arse out the 307 down the PPV roads to an IBIS hotel just outside EuroDisney. After traveling back and forth along the length of the motorway I spotted an IBIS hotel so jumped off at that exit and went to the hotel, which was the wrong one. It was nice though, and had an outdoor heated pool, so we cancelled our reservation and checked in. (Ha, good deal of £60 for two nights in other hotel due to internet last minute deal lost then).
Did the Disney thing for a couple of days. It was weird, we'd get a thunderstorm, it'd batter down with rain for 10 minutes, then dry out immediately. (I'll tell you though, the sight of Pluto sprinting down the street trying to get out of the rain will stay with me for a long time).
So, did some fast loopy things, some slow mechanical things and spent a bundle on shit food.

Headed down to Provins next, booked into a Formula 1 hotel, for the novelty factor. You just go up, insert credit card, select room type and get a receipt with a code number to get into the room. Cool stuff. Went to room, logged in, opened door, seen there was no bathroom, walked out, went and booked in to another place. Got a chalet in some campsite so the young one could run around and play. Got some really nice weather then next couple of days, and plenty to do here. Oh and Provins was really cool. A little medieval town with lots of cobbled streets, and all that nonsense. Recommended.

Had to head back for the flight on Monday, stopped off at some massive mall outside Disney Land and hung out there for a while before heading north. I'd memorized the route due to gf's complete ineptness with a map. Headed up the A1, all you do is head for Amiens. After an awfully long time, decided to stop and check the map. Ah, you should come off the A1 onto the A16, ooops. Figured out we were an incredible distance from where we were meant to be. Had to drive another hour or so and pretty impressive speeds (190kph, not bad for a wee car) to get to the airport, fudflaps*

*A Dom invention from today, had to be used.

Any road up. That'll do for that. Don't ask about my holiday, that was it.

I'll try and get something slight less tedious for next time.

Day 163: In the slaughterhouse all corpses smell the same

Sorry for the blatent ph plagerism, but it makes a good title and I've been wanting to use it for ages. Also, as ever, apologies for a blog that has been rathar too quiet of late. The Bjork Bjiggler Blog Reading Society have been getting very restless lately and dark rumblings have been heard eminating from their midsts, so I feel it is my duty to supply some more fodder upon which they can engourge themselves until the next posting sees the light of day, which I can assure you will not be too far into the future. Our good friend and contributor is currenly in France, probably, spending his time not smoking Gauloise and ensuring that he has accumulated his usual amount of thought provoking incidents (often referred to as "pish and drivel") to enthrall us all with upon his return.

I find that there is nothing more able to throttle the flow of creative blog writing than the ability of the modern keyboard to screw around with what you are typing so that what ends up on the cscreen often bear no resleblance to what yuou actually typed. How mant times do you find yourslef typing a four letter word only to find that the kwyboard has inserted 3 ro 4 extra characters. The oether favourate tricjk it has is to transpose two of the letters you have typed at random. The result is that each time you do a post you have to spend more time correcting the errors introduced by the keyboard that it took to writing the thig in the first place. The other thing is that the keyboard seems to be able to detect how much your typing is improving and introduces more errors as you get better. When I first started typ[ing on a ciompuetr keyboard I was quict slow, but didn't make many typinfg errors, but now my keyboard skills ahve improved to such an extent that althoygh I am typing at a speed that would put many a touch typist to shame, my postings are just littered with errors and additional, but unwanted characters.

Time, and relative dimensions
I'm bored.

In the absence of any really content, or inspiration, I at least pilfered the resident clock (watch?) from somewhere and put it up there on the right. Nice, eh?

Isn't it strange how we spend a large proportion of our lives waiting to get that part back and get to something else?

I know, let me explain. I had a mishap with my shower at home last September or so. Something caused it to blow a fuse and burn out it's wiring. In itself, a pretty mundane and easily coped with situation. I did, however, go through a few attempts at getting it fixed. I had the wiring replaced, fixed the fuse and *pop*, it went again. I changed the whole shower and fixed the fuse. *pop*, off it went again. As it turns out, the wiring was replaced, apart from a 1M part which went from the fuse box under the floor to a join. I'm not happy with working directly on the fuse box, so wanted an electrician to come in and have a look.
The first time I phoned he was busy, so was going to call me back. It took a good few days before he did, then said if it had to be a weekend/evening he would have to check his schedule and get back to me. After a week or so I called, he was on holiday, would be back the next week and would call me. Obviously this didn't happen, so I called again, this time he was just going on another holiday and would call on his return. He did call this time, but I wasn't in so it went to voicemail. I called back and left a mobile number, but no word back as yet.
So, all in all, I realised I've now been without said shower for about a year. It doesn't seem that long and just serves as a reminder how time passes so much faster as you get older. A year seemed like such a long time when I was young, now it passes by without notice. And I'm sitting at my desk now, basically waiting for 7 more hours to pass before I can leave. These are times that'll never be returned, just like the few minutes you wasted reading this.
Still, gotta laugh, eh?