Crooked Cucumbers

Census time again. I liked that I could complete it online. However, I am not happy with some of the questions they made me answer about my 8 month old daughter.

Q18. What is your main language?

Q14. Do you look after family members, friends, neighbours or others because of long-term physical or mental ill-health / disability?

and my personal favourite

Q21. One year ago, what was your usual address?

There wasn't an option for "in utero".

I was reading on the internet how lots of people are expected to describe themselves as "Christian" but also say that they are not religious at all. I don't understand why people would do that when there is an option for "no religion". I get the impression that lots of people say the wrong thing when asked about their religious beliefs. People say "athiest" when the mean "agnostic". I believe there aren't many athiests around, but there are lots of people who don't give a shit. On a similar note, I reckon people are mis-using the word "ambivalent". Ambivalence is feeling conflicting emotions about a thing, and can be a very profound state, just like rage or love. It is not a disinterest (apathy) or undecidedness. I saw an emoticon for it somewhere between happy and sad :-| when I think it would be better to be a mixture of both. (What do you get if you mix some red balls and some yellow balls? You don't get a load of orange balls I can tell you that.)

Jumping Jellyfish

It has just cost me some inordinate amount of money to get my car serviced so it will pass its MOT. I was disappointed to find out that the problems were caused by my car's low use. It occurs to me that it would have been cheeper for me and better for the environment if I had gone on pointless car journeys for no reason other than to use my car. I was doing some sums and reckon I could have spent £600 just driving around, using my brakes and charging my battery and done an extra 4000 miles. (Taking my mileage from a meagre 2k, to a more normal 6k.) In that event the car would (probably) have needed very little doing to it and I would have been quids in. Not only that, but it may end up been greener to use all the petrol than to manufacture new parts for my car and dispose of the old ones.

The insurance people called me up to try to sell me some extra things I didn't need. The guy asked if the car was running okay and I mentioned that it hadn't done so well in it's MOT. He said, "Yeah, they are getting very strict and can fail them for the smallest things these days." I thought it but didn't say it, "Yeah, like the brakes not working."

Explore, Rescue, Protect

In other news, I have still failed to change my broadband provider. Not only that, I have had a slow but uninterupted service since starting the transition proceedings 8 weeks ago. Which is good, considering at one time I was told my account was closed. Today I spoke to a lovely man called Ken who was quite helpful, so I have a renewed confidence that we can finally be removed from the evil ISP.

It's a fucking glockenspiel

Is very simple really: xylophones have wooden notes, glockenspiels have metal notes. So why do people keep calling glockenspiels xylophones?

Glockenspiel

But I want to bang on a bit more first, with some etymology. Xylophone comes from the greek words "xylon" meaning wood, and "phone" meaning voice or sound. (We are all faimiliar with telephone meaning "far away voice".) Glockenspeil obviously sounds a bit german. Glocke means "bell" and "speil" means speech or some shit (the literal translation is "play"). And lets face it the sound of a glockenspeil is not so dissimilar to that of a bell. So, xylo-phone = wooden-voice, glocken-spiel = bell-voice.

Xylophone

I can only think of one possible reason why people would get this wrong so often, and that is that there aren't many words that start with X. You want to make some sort of picture dictionary for children who are just being introduced to letters and the alphabet and you need something to go on the "X" page. Naturally you stick a xylophone on there. So when your child gets their first toy glockenspiel a few months later they (and you) have seen the word xylophone recently, but not the work glockenspiel.

Argh, the rage...

Here are some entertaining videos of people playing glockenspiels.

Here is an entertaining video of one of the most famous xylophonists of the modern era.

Denying the obvious leads to Chinese food with a citrus finish.

Here is some set theory for you: The set of people who deny climate change is contained in the set of people who deny the holocaust.

Venn diagram

There aren't many people who deny the holocaust, but when we find one, it is good to point them out and laugh at them and call them names. But such people exist and just like creationists and physicists, they have their deep set beliefs and no amount of arguing can change their mind.

Similarly there are people who deny that the climate is changing. Just to confuse matters, there is another group of people who accept the climate is changing, but reckon it is nothing to do with them throwing away tonnes of trash each year, eating beef, flying all over the world and driving an SUV. Both these groups of people are led to the conclusion that because they aren't causing climate change, they don't need to try to stop it.

But which is worse? It seems to me that letting holocaust deniers roam the earth isn't a good thing, it will lead to hatred and antisemitism. However denying that we are fucking with the environment every time we buy a (plastic) punnet of strawberries from Kenya, and drive the home to eat them is a whole lot more serious. And ultimately will cause many more people to die than the holocaust ever did.

In other news I had some nice Chinese food this week. Unfortunately I didn't take any photos, and I don't remember many of the dishes, but I know we avoided all the scary things like intestines and sea cucumber. There was something from a mountain, there was "get back in the pot pig pork" and some incredibly spicy chicken dish. As well as slow cooked pork leg, spicy crispy beef and prawn gunk on mushrooms. The highlight of the meal was the lazy susan, which provided endless entertainment.

Oh, and I still have internet, but who can tell what the future holds. We live in uncertain times.

How not to change your broadband provider

This may be my last blog post for a while. But given the activity over the last three weeks I doubt anybody would notice.

So, I after a dozen or so calls to various numbers, I eventually find somebody that thinks they are providing us with broadband and I ask them for a "Migration Authorisation Code code" (aka MAC code). It took about a week to get to this stage. (My favourite point was after I had been on transfered 4 times and been on hold for 35 minutes of my my 40 minute phone call, the lady puts me through to another department, an automated service answers the call says "Our offices are currently closed" and hangs up.) Anyhoo, when I finally get to talk to someone who has heard of me, they naturally say they will post it and email it to me. I should get it within 5 days. Fine.

After another couple of weeks I call them back to find out what is going on. The guy on the phone has no idea what is going on (naturally) and sends he will get a new MAC code sent out. Fair enough.

After another week, still no emails or letters. So I call them up again. This time the guy explains that the account has been closed for 3 weeks and doesn't understand how I am still getting broadband. After a bit of prodding he tells me where they sent the MAC code to, and it seems it was my old house that I haven't lived in for four years. Hmm... Not only that, but he can't give me a new MAC code as the account is closed.

So, it looks like we will be moving away from our current provider. (What with the account being closed and all) but we don't be able to do it with the brief outage a MAC code enables. We will have to do it old-skool, which means no internet for weeks.

Although competition had driven down broadband prices in Mordor, changing between providers was quite troublesome. As for the 3G reception on the slopes of Mt. Doom...

In other news I had forgotten about the foxy chicks in Wearing my Rolex - awesome.

Michel Roux Jnr

I was pleased to hear on the radio this morning that Michel Roux Jnr. has won "Beard of the Winter". Congratulations Michel! The Beard Liberation Front picks a winner each season, so Michel is now on a very short list to win "Beard of the year".

I am a bit of a fan of the celebrity chef and read his book last year. I got to thinking what I would ask if I ever got the oppertunity to interview him. Naturally my questions are mostly food themed.

• Have you ever used a carrot to discpline a commis chef because you were dissatisfied with his Julienne?
• Which is better, Macdonalds or Burger King?
• What is your favourite pizza topping?
• Can you suggest something for me to do with my lardon?
• Will robots ever be our masters?
• What is your worst cooking related injury?
• Will you make my dinner?

Found this video today. Is worth a look...

Yet more carrots

Just got back from Sainsbury's where I purchased the biggest, most orange carrots I have ever seen. I think supermarkets are finally realising that their customers want the ability to use their carrots in self defence as well as in soup.

Some impressive specimens. I have put them next to a regular old pen so you can get an idea of their enormity.

Also, while I was there I heard a woman say to her child, "Come back here Armani!" I had to quickly scamper out of the vegetable section before I guffawed and embarrassed myself.