Tag Archives: life

In a real hurry to do some shopping

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The car on the left, number plate obscured, is ours. We were there first. We came back from the shops to find the car on the right, black Citroen no. LC04AWA, had urgently parked next to us. So urgently it was choosing to ignore the niceties of white lines and other conventions like that.


Seen from the front, the artistry of their not quite hitting us becomes apparent. To get into my own car, I had to climb across from the passenger side.

Let me stress that under no circumstances should the words “learn to drive yer husband’s car, luv” be used in this kind of situation, unless of course you can guarantee you’re offending the right person. Just bear in mind it might have been the husband driving and have the courtesy to refine your offensive jeers accordingly.

Clearly defined areas of doubt and uncertainty

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Dropped Bonusbarn off at the station this morning so he could head off to $Welsh_city_where_they_film_Torchwood for an interview. For peace of mind I’m trying to forget that last night we had a conversation which included the words, “oh, is it by the sea?”

And of course it makes me remember my own experiences all those years ago … 1983 to be precise. Philosophy & Politics at Warwick. I stayed overnight in Coventry at a b&b, watched Merry Christmas, Mr Lawrence at the cinema (I was the only one in the auditorium; staff kept trying to sell me the benefits of the other movies available) and arrived for my interview half an hour late, though it was the correct time as shown on the letter they had sent me. Thus I got the interview but missed out on the campus tour offered to other applicants, so afterwards I wandered around for a couple of hours on my own, on a drizzly grey November day.

While I was a-wandering, they were considering my answers to the test questions they set to check to confirm that the candidate is suitably philosophically minded. Apparently they used to set questions based on Bertrand Russell but no one dared contradict him, so the questions were now more general. There were at least two, which I can remember.

  1. You are walking in the woods and you come across a dead animal in a trap. It obviously died slowly and in much pain. You think what a bad thing this was. Would it have been a bad thing if you hadn’t come along and found it?
  2. Person A says, “birds can fly, you cannot fly, therefore you are not a bird.” Person B replies, “birds cannot understand logic, I cannot understand logic, therefore I am a bird.” Discuss.

And all he had to look forward to was a team-building exercise. Hah, kids today.

Must ask if he learned how to pronounce Cyncoed.

Makes you laugh, makes you cry, and somewhere in between

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One of those quirks of synchronicity brings three instances of unprofessionalism to my attention within 24 hours, ranging from “disgraceful + should be a hate crime”, to “disgraceful, but …” to “disgraceful but … oh heck, it’s hilarious.”

Item 1: a trans woman in San Francisco (i.e. for the slow of uptake, someone who “used” to be a man, though she would probably say she’s always been a woman, just now it’s more obvious) went to get her driving licence updated with her new details. The apparatchik who processed the application then wrote to her, privately, at her home address, to say that that 1. she had made a “very evil decision”, 2. that she was “an abomination” and that 3. homosexuals should be put to death.

Assuming this individual to have been motivated by a form of Christian belief (isn’t it sad that I inevitably make that assumption? Yet the inevitability is, well, inevitable), I would respond that points 1 and 2 really should be referred to the Creator, and point 3, quite apart from being wrong, isn’t germane to the issue since we’re talking about a trans woman. Get your facts right for goodness sake.

Anyway, that’s the “disgraceful + should be a hate crime”. I hope the twit gets fired and some good, positive case law comes out of it.

(Later edit: more on it here. The writer apparently signed the letter, “In charity, Thomas.”)

Item 2: A couple who thought they were renewing their wedding vows at a ceremony in the Maldives, by some priest guy chanting in some quaint foreign religious language type style, were shocked to learn he was in fact informing them that: “Your marriage is not a valid one. You are not the kind of people who can have a valid marriage. One of you is an infidel. The other, too, is an infidel – and we have reason to believe – an atheist, who does not even believe in an infidel religion. You fornicate and make a lot of children. You drink and you eat pork. Most of the children that you have are marked with spots and blemishes. These children that you have are bastards.”

The tape appears to cut off before he moves on to “Your mother is a hamster and your father smells of elderberries.”

That’s the “disgraceful, but …”, the “but” being in this case that it’s quite possible the guy is getting fed up of his religion being used as a picture postcard by well-off westerners to whom it’s all gibberish but looks pretty. He probably sees many more of these than the American motor clerk sees transgender drivers. Everyone has a blowing point.

And finally … The Australian guy who went to the tattooist to have a a yin-yang symbol and some dragons tattooed on his back, and unknowingly came away with a 16″ picture of a … well, something else, for which 16″ is pretty darn impressive, if probably not very comfortable.

His suspicions were aroused when he showed it to his housemate, who replied, “I don’t think it’s the tattoo you were after.”

This is of course hilarious for so many reasons, not least that it gives us a post by Scott Adams who says it all much better than I could.