Prescott Hill climb
I had a call last night from a mate, he was going to
Prescott Hill climb. Now I haven't been to a motor racing event since my decision to turn my back on it more than 2 years ago, so I thought that it might make a nice change. I took a couple of
photo's but it was more fun to watch, really.
It was good talking about the cars, and it did spark a little of the intellectual challenge that I enjoyed from racing before, and hopefully I didn't bore my mate too much explaining about tyre temperatures, racing lines and different suspension designs and set ups. He seemed interested enough at the time, but he's a
very polite chap, so it's hard to tell...
I took a call from another mate during the morning, Keith, who has worked with me on and off throughout my racing years, and I was telling him what had been happening so far in the day and taking the piss out of some of the driving and the cars, but in particular the marshalling, which was very slow and seemed almost comical in its organisation.
Keith: "So if there's all these cars running, why is it so damned quiet?"
Me: "Ah well, you see. A Lotus Elan dropped all it's oil all the way up the hill, and the top smart marshals are just running around flapping. They've got the concrete dust down, but they've just been dicking around on the track for ages. We're starting to think that they might be waiting for it to dry, or just blowing at it to see if it will soak away or evaporate."
Keith: "Well if they want to soak up the oil, they should use something better...
pauses... What about Seagulls? They seem pretty good at soaking oil up, I've seen them do it on the TV."
Cue hilarity as we both discuss the idea of marshalls running out onto an oily track throwing seagulls from a hessian sack at the mess. Sick. But funny.
My mates are great. Despite the fact that the mate that was with me is an environmentalist, and works for a Wildlife trust, he still cracked up at that. Mind you, he was already at a race meeting, so he's not exactly a dyed in the wool 'all or nothing' anti-pollution and nature is paramount freak, I guess.
More keyword fun
You know you can safely feel wanted when you come third in the Yahoo search for
The most disgusting site in the worldHmmmm. Although it's more by content than by rating, it still made me piss myself.
Still,
Hanson's site came first...
Tormenting the staff
So, after an earlier
altercation, the office admin type has been determined to try and get her own back on me.
Yeah, right.
She was being especially cheeky on Friday, as the office was in fairly high spirits. No directors were about, and the banter was flying thick and fast. She threw a few sarcastic comments my way, and was making a few too many points for my liking. I.e. one. I was standing by her desk as she had turned her back on me to chuckle about her latest put down, when...
Kerclack!!
I grabbed the 'received' date stamp off her desk and stamped her forehead, shouting "Ha!" in her face.
I don't have to be grown up, but I do have to win.
She spent the next ten minutes rubbing her forehead until it was red, panicking that it wouldn't come off, as we have no mirror in the office and she was going into the city shopping in half an hours time. We could have told her that she got it off straight away, but she didn't trust "you bastards to tell me the truth about whether it's gone or not".
Meh. She's probably right. Never mind that her car was parked outside and she could have used the interior mirror. Or either of the wing mirrors. Or the one behind the sun visor. Sharp as a button, isn't she..?
Fucking america
I am truly torn between being utterly incredulous at the arrogance, and not being at all surprised:
They've made The War of the Worlds into a film.For those that have no concept of literature, it is an HG Wells Novel, first published (I believe) in 1896. It tells the story of an alien invasion of, initally
Horsell common, and is based entirely in England. It was also famously broadcast on radio in New York in 1938 as a mock-documentary that resulted in panic in the New Jersey area as many mistook it for a bona fide news report and believed the invasion to be genuine.
So the americans touch it, and guess what? It's set in america, and is all about americans overcoming the aliens. What the fuck is that all about? I imagine that Tom Cruise will save the day as well. All on his own, nothing at all in keeping with the original novel, where a viral infection allowed mankind a lucky escape.
What a waste of fucking time and money allowing that country to have a film industry. Hollywood consists entirely of sycophantic, self-centred wankers that continually attempt to perpetuate the myth that all things good, heroic or clever are in america, happened in america, or was done by americans. No wonder the majority of their population has no concept of culture or world history or events. As far as they are indoctrinated, everything happened over there anyway.
Fuckers. Bomb them. Blow Hollywood and all the stupid cunts that live there into oblivion.
Norwegian Blue Pigeon
Whilst driving back this afternoon from my last 'home' town from visiting friends, I made a significant impact on the wildlife population of that particular county. An impact that meant I had to go immediately to the nearest garage and clean my windscreen. This wasn't 'significant' in terms of numbers of animals, or even in that the animal in question was endangered or rare in any way.
But when you hit a pigeon up the arse at 110mph, it makes a hell of a fucking bang, I can tell you.
I was driving merrily along, sunroof open, hugely enjoying myself with my renewed love affair with my car and not exactly hanging about, as is my wont. A pigeon suddenly appeared, flying at some speed, from the other side of the single carriageway road (my right, for you foreigners). It had to do an emergency manouvre across the front of a car coming the other way just after it emerged from the hedge. Sadly (for the pigeon) this resulted in it flying, at right angles and chest to me, across my path with no further time for it to react. All of this obviously occured in something less than half a second.
WHAM!Holy fuckola, but it made a hell of a row. Great big ball of feathers and a big, dirty great splat of guts and stuff on the windscreen. I tried hard not to duck, as that would have been a touch dangerous, but blinked in case the screen came through (it did occur to me that it might). Also, a split second after the bird hit, something fell onto the centre console of the car and bounced onto my lap and under my legs.
I was just ready to get all pissed off at the thought of this badly splatted pigeon making a mess of my interior, with its intestines now being smeared on my upholstery and carpets, when it occured to me that it was a tad unlikely that the (obviously shattered and a bit second-hand) body of the ex-pigeon could have been sucked into my sunroof- the impact of the screen and the speed of the car should theoretically have thrown it high over the car...
Then I noticed that my rear view mirror was missing.
That's right. The fat-arsed grain muncher had hit my car hard enough to knock the bloody mirror off the glass! Hell of an impact, as it took me some serious pushing and twisting to get the damn thing back onto it's restraining spring. I obviously did this when I stopped to wash the intestines and blood off the screen - the washers and wipers only did so much, after all.
Ho hum. At least I can be fairly sure that it didn't suffer. The only time I have done anything like that was when I hit another pigeon about two years or so ago when I was driving back to see my(then) girlfriend. She had been unexpectedly admitted to hospital, and I was working 80 miles away. That little fecker bit the big one that time too. But I
was going a bit faster then. I was there in an hour and 15 from the phone call, and I'd had to find a car to borrow...
Of course, I'm
much more responsible now. Oh. Hang on...
Weird people
Some of the search terms that have been used and resulted in people visiting this site over the last 3 days (from my Statcounter):
scrumjax (Thank you, Kim, for trying to screw my results)
scrumjax (and thank you Kallese!)
Milky glasses clean
scrumjax
Housewarming ettiquette party (sic) - That also must have been a disappointment if they wanted helpful advice! Not from here, matey peeps!
roast dinner
freaky weather
scrumjax
scrumjax
scrumjax
banana photo
banana photo
racktastic
feed cow banana (my personal favourite! Who the hell needs to find that?)
Breaking stuff
Common name in the world.
I have come to the conclusion that either all the people that read this site are freaks, or they don't bookmark and find it by remembering key and obscure words or phrases, or people only come here by accident.
Hmmm. I suspect the latter. Well doesn't that just make me feel all wanted.
Navigation and all that
Many moons ago, me and Keith decided to trundle down to Wales and visit a mate of ours. This mate was involved in many drunken and marvellously stupid evenings in my home town before he left, and is the bloke most famous for being found (after going missing from a party just before everyone was about to fall asleep where they sat from major alcohol consumption) the following morning lying on his side in the bath with his nob in his hands, snoring away. He'd gone for a piss, and the relaxing effect of emptying his bladder had been enough to gently slide him over into slumberland, and he had fallen sideways into the bath and lain there for about 5 hours...
The bloke was a legend. Nicest guy in the world, too.
Anyway, we go down to see him for the second time since he moved back to his hometown of Swansea, a journey of about 200 miles. The journey was punctuated by several giggly and stupid moments, not least the one where I decided (having been picked up straight from work for the journey) to clamber into the back of the car to change my clothes not realising that I was just in time for the toll booth of the bridge crossing. Genius, eh? The woman in the booth was a little unsure what was happening, as the driver was in hysterics trying to hand her money, and the bloke in the back was giggling and trying to hide the fact that he had no trousers on...
So we arrived in Swansea after about 2 1/2 hours of car-bound stupidity and decide to try and find the place. We had been there once before (2 years before for our mates wedding) and Keith has always been impressed with my ability to drive or navigate directly to places having only been there once, or it was years ago or the like. Unfortunately, the only time we had been there before was for the wedding, and I was doing a lot of driving around the area around my mates house, so sadly
everything looked familiar. I was falling flat on my arse, and getting a heap of abuse for it.
All was appearing to be of major confusion, until we found a bit of paper in Keith's scruffy as hell car with the street name that we were aiming for. It was a proper Welsh name, so we couldn't even say it, and we had to drive around for a bit trying to find someone to show the piece of paper to and say "Where's that?". So we spend no small amount of time cruising the Welsh city for people to accost for information.
We see two likely candidates.
Even better, they are female. Even better that that, they appear to be attractive. Things are looking up.
We pull alongside them, I lean out with my most charming 'lost bloke' smile, and start to ask for directions. Only to be cut short by a flurry of foreign. They are only bloody french, aren't they? There we are cruising around a Welsh housing estate, and the only people that we find to ask directions are bloody french!
Only in my life are things this complicated, I'm bloody sure. And after all this, we said our farewells to the french girsl (I bet they had hairy armpits anyway) and drove about 10 yards up the road and found the street sign that we had been looking for. What are the chances? You drive around looking for a street and no joy. You drive around looking for some women to flirt with, and you stumble upon your destination.
There's probably a moral there somewhere, but I haven't got the faintest fucking idea what it is.
Aren't Mum's ace?
Ok, although this is in danger of becoming a quotefest, I was at my Mum's today, and we were discussing the dire state of my finances. The conversation turned (rather obscurely) to cashpoint machines, and my Mum's admission that she can't cope with them. She's not the best with computers and technology, my Mum. She's the sort of person that, when dragging files into folders, presses the button a
bit harder when dragging lots of them, and almost pushes the mouse through the desk. Presumably because it's heavier, so is more likely to slip as she is moving them. Hmmmm.
Anyway, she was explaining that she doesn't go near cashpoints, and doesn't really understand them ("I fear change" is somewhat of an understatement). So, her husband was chuckling and decided to recount the last/first time my Mum was introduced to Cash Machines, in the middle of a busy shopping centre in Canada about 8 years ago:
Brock's Mum's Hubby: "Oh look. I'll see if my cashcard works in the machines over here and we can get some money out"
Brock's Mum: "But our account is in England? Will the machines talk to each other?"
BMH (patiently): "Yes, they're connected by computer" - inserts card
(pause)
BM (In a very loud and clear voice): "Why did you just type in 1955?"
BMH (sighing, and in a weary voice): "Because that is, well... WAS, our
secret number!"
BM: "Oh."
Bless her. Technology scares her. It made me laugh my socks off, anyway.
Intellectual IM
Brock: Pigs have twisted willies
duckduckgoose77: I'm tired of boring people
Brock: interesting fact
duckduckgoose77: good to know, cats have "fishing hook"-ish ones
duckduckgoose77: Interesting fact
Brock: Especially as they like fish
duckduckgoose77: hurhurhur
Brock: All those pictures of them with paws in the water is clearly propoganda
Brock: They catch them with their cocks
Brock: clearly
duckduckgoose77: *choked on coffee* reading that last part
Flaming Fridge and silly comments
Flaming Fridge
Originally uploaded by Reggio. Reggio
posts this picture of a cool fridge. The comments got a bit silly:
Gerbil:isnt it surposed to keep things cold?
Reggio: Yeah, but it was bust.
All it did was keep things dark.
Gerbil:I could just go a nice dark Pancake right now.
Brock:How do you know? If it was bust, the light may have come on when you
shut the door.
Didn't think of that, did you, eh?
Reggio:It didn't have a plug on it.
Unless it was like a T2000 and had it's own internal power source, I sincerely doubt any lights came on.
Brock:That would be the coolest fridge ever. Unless your name is John Connor, then I guess you'd starve to death.
It's one way of getting him I must admit, but it's a bit of a slow burner.
Being stalked
Interesting.
There is a flickr IRC (chat program) channel for those of the flickr people that miss the live chat part of it. I was told today that I am mentioned in the channel welcome script, so I decided to pop in and have a look.
The message:
" "Be nicer than Brock would have been, and have fun atleast as many times as Fubuki produces masterpieces in a day. -- This message was brought to you by: SCRUMJAX"Makes me laugh, so I join and see what is happening.
Wham.
Straight into a discussion about how someone has created a feed for the photo's I comment on. I am being stalked! Every picture that I comment on is put into an RSS feed, which it would appear that some of my fellow flickritarians have decided is a good way to find boobs. I'd like to think that it was to follow my witty and gently amusing prose, but apparently it is because I find lots of pictures of hot chicks.
Still. If you have a talent, spread it, I say. Follow, people, for you could never hope to lead me!
Breakfast
On a whim, I bought a fresh pineapple yesterday, to cut up and have for my breakfast. After I had chopped all the crap off the outside I'd lost nearly a third of the damn thing by the time all the little hairy bits are gone. This very nearly took the shine off it.
But not quite. I sat down with my cup of coffee and slurped my way through half of the pineapple (saving half for tomorrow - how sensible) and made a right old mess. Lovely. Only trouble is, I now have a load of stringy bits of pineapple in my teeth and can't seem to get them out.
That's the way to start the day, isn't it? I shall meander gently into town with bits of stringy fruit hanging out of my face, prompting all the lovely ladies I happen upon to remark:
"That bloke with the big nose is rather alluring, don't you think?
I mean, apart from the fact that he looks like he has the mouth of a catfish."
:(
Bastard Blogger
I was trying to post the one below for about an hour last night. And all day today.
Blogger has now decided to stop hiding and actually
be there and not cause me to smash the keys on my computer.
Fucking thing. I was about 2 hours away from ditching it and starting afresh somewhere else. Fortunately, my apathy and general lack of ability to create movement and action has saved this blog for now. We'll see how it goes.
/me flicks the Blogger logo with his finger and grumbles
A cheek too far
I was being a bit of a grumpy twat this afternoon. I had been having a really shit day, and everything has been going wrong. I have been going backwards at a fair rate the last two weeks, and I am finding it very tiring. I have been getting little sympathy from our very cheeky office admin girl, as usual, but she underestimated the sharp mind underneath the miserable bloke in the office today...
Office chick (as I stomp back into the office with a face like thunder): "What the hell's wrong with you today, why are
you so bloody miserable?"
Me: " Ah, I've just had enough. I just found out that we can't
even (insert dull bit here) without having to (insert other dull bit here). I'm getting fucking nowhere fast, and I'm pissed off with it. It's tiring me out."
O.C. (with sarcastic grin): "Ahhhhhhh, bless! Surely it's not that bad, I reckon you're just moaning..."
Me: "Bollocks". (at my wittiest best, so far, see?)
O.C. (laughing at me)"Anyway, imagine if your job was easy. What would you do then, eh?"
Me: "Give it to a woman to do"
O.C. (smug grin fades. Mouth opens for retort. Fails)
Me: "That'll learn ya." (walks off)
