Braakishly: March 2005

Smaller than my calves...

Lovely lovely little Kylie is in the news again with her tour promoters making much of her fancy corset. They claim it gives her a sixteen-inch waist. Bollocks: this is a sixteen-inch waist. Kylie, elfin and cute; Spook, freakish and bizarre.

Hidden extras

Oh, and that Shakti helmet from the Persinger mob that costs 250 bucks? You need a Gauss metre to measure field strengths too, and that's extra.

Hellblazer

Munky, Frood - they're showing Constantine at the Odeon from tonight. 1325, 1600, 1835 and 2105. Chuffy's away in London ~~shagging~~ seeing Bags this weekend, but the hobbits might want to go.

It's got to be worth it to see a chain -smoking Hollywood hero. I didn't think they did that any more.

Oi! Munky!

Sam:I found out where Most Haunted was filmed - in Brixham sports hall! Nicky tells me that when she went to the gym there was a large, burly gentlemen saying:

"Sorry, miss. You can't go down there. They're filmin'."

Nicky is pretty sure there aren't any ghosts or spooky things in Brixham Sports Hall.

What, the Haunted Sports Centre? The Locker Rooms Of Doom? The Drowning Pool? The Ghastly Gym? Bloody hell. That Marmite advert is more frightening.

I want one!

Sam: One of these!

Neuroscience Quotes...

ffetcher: I thought I'd share a couple of (paraphrased) quotes from Todd Murphy.

On prayer: "I pray every day, the way I was taught by a Comanche. First I pray thanksgiving - it doesn't matter how small the thing is, but thanksgiving. Then I pray for other people, and lastly for myself. The Comanche term for 'Great Being' also translates as 'Great Mystery'. So I pray to the Great Mystery. That Way I can't be wrong. And more than the truth, scientists like to be right"

On belief: "I want my daughter to grow up in a world where nobody believes in God, but where everyone pretends that they do, in order to get the benefits that go with belief; where everyone knows that everyone is pretending and where no-one is upset if someone else pretends something different."

Sam: 250 BUCKS???!!! When did Persinger's mob get into marketing? I note that I can't use the damn thing anyway because I have a history of "all of the above" and am obligate ambidextrous - meaning there are some things I have to do with my left hand that I should really be doing with my right.

ffetcher: the cheap shot would be to saythat Persinger's crowd have been into marketing from the start, but in reality, thanks for spotting the merchandising, because a couple of people asked me how much the hat cost and I didn't know. In fairness to the 'mob', two points: firstly there's a reasonable amount of free- or shareware downloads as well as the hat, and secondly, I doubt that if I were working for the national minimum wage I could turn out the adjustable band thingy at a hundred bucks and warrant it against manufacturing faults. Sure the stuff is expensive, but maybe not over-priced.

The what?

Sam: Has anyone else seen the new mission statement from the Pagan Federation?

To protect and defend the Pagan Tradition.

Can someone please enlighten me as to what the fuck the 'Pagan Tradition' is?

ffetcher: I'm confused too. Clearly whatever it is needs protecting. Some stranger 'protecting' what I do is a concept with which I'm unfamiliar. Evidently, then, I'm not pagan, but even if I am, isn't it sort of condescending to assume that I can't hold my own in an argument?

Dammit, Munky

Sam: They won't be any more specific than Brixham for Most Haunted Live for this weekend. And it took me bloody ages to find that much. So much for dressing up in sheets and yelling "WooooOOOOOOooooooOOOOOOoo" at the windows.

Munky: That's why I've mailed the production team in a fannish-but-not-creepy-or-disruptive way, asking which sites they'll be visiting. Don't hang up your sheet just yet, old girl.

Sam: I talked to Nicky, at work, who lives in Brixham. She says she can't think where they might be going as the people in Brixham are all a bit weird anyway, so it's difficult to tell the difference between live ones and dead ones. But she's going to ask around.

BANG!

Sam: Wish we had a volcano. We don't. We do, however, have frogs. I had no idea that frogs shagging made so much noise.

Dead Like Me

Sam: Or how about buying American for when you need to shift the person for whom you bought the 'God Bless the Dead' bracelet?

Awareness...

Sam: You know, methinks this bracelet thing has gone too far now. Awareness of what? 'God Bless the Dead'? My gods. I'll stick with my Livewrong thanks.

I know it's an old one

Sam: But this tickled me.

Mother Superior and one of her nuns are driving along a lonely country road on a wild and windy night. Suddenly the devil himself jumps out of some bushes and lands on the bonnet of the car, slavering at nuns. "Sister Felicity!", shouts Mother Superior, "Show him your cross!"

So Felicity stops the car, gets out and yells at the Devil, "Oi! You! Get off the bonnet of my fucking Car!"

Ew!!!!!

Sam: Just ew! How ugly is that? It looks horrid, it tastes horrid, it even smells horrid and has a horrid shape. Makes me feel quite queasy.

gecko: that's probably the first time I've ever seen the phrase Tied and Soldered Nipples, and I work in a leather bar.

Munky: There's a special grade of ugly that goes right back around to being beautiful again. A sort of Shane McGowan thing. This doesn't even do that: it's perfectly hideous without any sort of redeeming heroism. Class. But leather bars... heh, me wonder if anyone has ever laced piercings? With spokes, I mean, not ribbons.

Sam: Leather bars? What, you mean stuffed cowhide? Would that be stiff enough for honking up hills?

Hey guys...

Sam: Do we want to sponsor a virtual roof tile at the Church of the Electric Monkey? They have nice things. Like... nice.

Can't we do anything?

Sam: Look at this. I sometimes wonder what's wrong with us here, you know. We can't do public transport, we can't do decent town planning, and as soon as there are a couple of flakes of snow in the air we're practically under martial law. Makes we wonder if Geoffrey Hoon has anything to do with the weather. Or maybe David Blunkett has taken over Dr Evil's Preparation H and is using it to control the weather so he can get the army stationed all over the country without anyone complaining.

Sam: Still. At least it's warmer today. The sun has even come out.