Geek Tagging?

You ever seen one of those big-ass ads projected onto a wall or something? They kind of suck, don't they? Sure would be good if someone could work out a way to do something about it.

Something like this.

Every now and then I start to feel a little bit optimistic about humans. Usually somewhere around beer number four.

[link courtesy Graffiti Research Lab]

Stereotypes dept. part 11

Today I met a garrulous Irish person with a delightful lilting accent, bright red hair, and an actual twinkle in her eye. Within three minutes of her sitting down, I'd heard about her job, her daughter, her daughter's job, her expected granddaughter, her dental history (really), the best places to buy prayer-cards (honestly), her trip to Krakow for dental work (no kidding), and the possibility of her taking a job as a live-in caregiver for a wealthy, elderly VIP expat living in Oman (I shit you not).

It's been far too long since I had one of these conversations, and this one just about made my day.

In the system again...

I think my extended visa application will be approved, which means it looks as though I'm going to be a legit citizen again.

Which means I'll be able to look for full time work. From the point of view of the relative strength of the pound against the dollar, that's probably a good thing. Of course, that also means I'll have to try and be a respectable, employable such-and-such, which may not be so good. The last time I demonstrated any aptitude at work, it was at strangling junior high students and drawing cartoon pictures of monsters and Santa Claus and Kamen Rider and such.

Somehow I don't think that'll do me much good here. Damn stupid non-transferable skills. When is there going to be a job that requires a command of English grammar, Japanese pop-culture trivia, QuarkXPress and a willingness to drink alcohols of many lands?

You got your caffeine in my capsacin!

It ain't easy to get one's chile fix in England. This is one of those countries that sent people around the planet looking for stuff to improve the national diet¹. Yeah, for dinner the curries around here can be great. But something as simple as a red chile breakfast burrito is sadly beyond their capacity. So what's a fella who needs something spicy before noon to do?

I have had exactly one great idea this month, born from this state of adversity: Red Chile coffee. When the ground coffee goes in the filter, a spoonful of red chile flakes go in too. Then brew as usual. That's it. Simple. But now I'm getting my caffeine with that familiar chile heat as a follow-up bonus. Efficient and tasty.

This probably isn't that different from dipsomaniacs² who wind up guzzling cosmopolitans while claiming the cranberry juice is good for their urinary tracts.

¹ I think this is why people here say "send out for a Chinese" or "get an Indian" when they're talking about take-out food; it's a leftover from when they were talking about arranging another colony to send back something of worth.
² "Dipsomaniac" is a much better word than "lush" or wino or something. Even though anyone drinking pitchers of cosmopolitans is more likely to be some sort of lush.

Condom Machine in a London Men's Room

"Hell no, we won't go", say civil servants

I hear that if you join the army then refuse to follow orders, you can be punished pretty severely. Of course, if you follow an order that's later shown to be wrong, you can also be punished pretty severely. I haven't heard so much about punishments for issuing unjust orders, though...

Anyway, it seems that desk jockeys are also balking at being sent to Iraq. While the article mentions possible punishments for diplomats refusing this posting, it doesn't really mention what the government will do if they can't get enough people to keep the Baghdad embassy open. Will they pull people from other, cushier posts? Start drafting armed servicemen/national guard types to fill in behind the (heavily armored and shielded) desks there? Why isn't there some munitions company working on some sort of military robot diplomacy machine?

Corporate incoherence

I've been doing a little freelance transcription work lately. That means I get sent a piece of video and then I write down everything that gets said in the video, and the time that someone says it. Then the script I've made gets sent to an office in Tokyo where it's translated into Japanese so that the video can be subtitled.

I'm sure that anyone who took that class for screen writing who remembers the exercise on real-life dialogue will back me up on this, but most people rarely speak in complete sentences. "So, like, when it's, yeah, like what they were saying when that happened, but, not like, yeah?" is pretty common in the European Tour behind-the-scenes videos I get sent. But even the corporate videos may be worse. Take this gem:

There’s still some variability, both in approach and in the caliber of people, to improving consistency would be a real boon, to Schmucktronics.

Except for the company name, that was all verbatim. And it came from an upper-echelon executive. This clown probably has an MBA, but he can't string a sentence together that actually means anything.

What really kills me is that these executive welcome videos are almost identical, in terms of theme and content, to the video I was shown when I started at KFC in high school. Exact same rah-rah bullshit, only instead of power ties everyone was wearing matching polyester polo shirts and pin-on name tags.

Punk as FUCK

Click here to see a picture of a Hiller Platform, a one-man flying disc designed and tested by the US Army in the 1950s. Now click here to see one that a guy built in his garage and flew in a couple of festivals this year.

Flatpack furniture? An Old El Paso Fajita Dinner kit? You've edited together a swell home movie with flare effects and your own clever closing credits?

Bullshit. Talk to me about Do It Yourself when you've slipped the surly bonds of earth in a machine you put together yourself.

Is Fox still looking for pilot ideas?

One of my friends once claimed I lived a sitcom life. At the time I thought it was just commentary on the sort of goofy hi-jinks that tended to happen week by week. But looking at it from another angle, he may have been issuing a prophecy.

See, I'm a deadbeat graduate student prone to cracking bad jokes who likes cartoons and drinking too much, who's moved to England to be with my special lady, a belly-dancing polyglot who works for a major media company. My friends here include the perpetually-slightly-taken aback Londoner, the sassy gal with the northern accent, and the crazy Iranian guy who's always cooking up some new plan or scheme. Also, my next door neighbor is an ancient Chinese lady who speaks without ever using indefinite articles or conjugated verbs, and has repeatedly told me that only thing wrong with the job market here is all the foreigners.

Oh yeah, the old Chinese lady made it a point to tell the American that it was all the foreigners who are ruining the UK job market.

The first season was mostly fish-out-of-water jokes about trying to get acclimated, with lots of cheesy gags about accents and cultural misunderstandings about pants. But for the second season? Well, naturally you need to up the wackiness stakes. Which is why my special lady-friend's sister, the conservation biologist who practices Shorinji Kempo, is moving in with us.

By the way, did I mention they're identical twins? I kid you not, I live with identical twins, I date one, the other practices kicking the crap out of people. Right next door is a crazy old lady who dispenses financial and romantic advice in broken, Charlie Chan English, and I can count on regular calls from my crazy scheming friend can't go a day without breaking in some new idiom he's picked up.

Where's the Burbank kid or Jer-Dogg now that I've finally got a concept to pitch? Forget waiting for a table or being sentenced to be a butler, this is comedy gold, Jerry, it's gold!

I really ought to be working, but...

I just had to share this little nugget of trivia with you. Certain businesses can be given what's called a "Royal Warrant" from the British monarchy. This is like becoming the crown's official supplier of whatever. Take, for example, Lea & Perrins, Royal purveyors of Worcheshtershercheeshershire sauce. Or Tanqueray, royal purveyors of gin. Or my personal favorite: CH Haygarth & Sons, Gun & Rifle Makers, Gunmakers to HM Queen Elizabeth The Queen Mother.

Okay, so their royal warrant to the Queen Mother expired this year, being five years after her death and all, but still, come on! The Queen Mother had an official supplier of guns and rifles. If, at some point, she wanted to shoot something or someone, she wouldn't have had to rely on a common Baretta or, heaven forfend, a German-made piece or equipment like a Heckler and Koch, oh no. She had access to custom made rifles and guns. Did the Queen Mum want to pick off targets from a distance? Was she interested in range or target shooting? Or did she just want something concealable to keep in her purse with a maximum stopping power to weight ratio for her own sense of security? Either way, CH Haygarth and Sons had her covered, so she could keep you covered.

Man, royalty is a hoot!

Okay. Back to work. Honest. No more procrastination. Gotta get this paper done...