Scary things
Yea, est is season for the verily scary things.

Oh, it is, trust me.

The Brunette and I are buying a house, and as the date approaches I find myself having to play more and more Xbox to blank the terror from my mind. We transferred money to the lawyers the other day for deposits etc. It is more than the Brunette's parents paid for their house in full. It's more than my parents paid for our house, and they got three acres of land with it, and a six bedroom house. We get two up two down and a tube line spitting distance from the back door. I'm not sure I'm convinced.

On the plus side, it is freehold, so at least we get to keep it and hand it down to our children, in the days when Hounslow is a fine, upstanding beautiful part of the world. [Which means either it gets a lot nicer fast, or the rest of the world turns into poo.]

I took my theoretical driving test the other day, glorying in the hazard perception test, which is like the worst computer game ever designed, one which comes with a manual which only serves to confuse and further obscure what it is precisely the player is supposed to do. Apparently you're supposed to click whenever you see a potential hazard and then again every time that hazard changes in any way, and then when it develops into a full blown hazard, but if you click too much then it fails you for clicking rythmically. Now I clicked along to "Enter the Sandman" and it didn't pick up the rhythm, but when I clicked for every potential hazard I saw it failed me.

Another car: potential hazard - my brother could be driving
A bus: potential hazard - a bus driver might be driving
A tree: potential hazard - it could fall onto the road
A bird: potential hazard - it might fly into my windscreen
A horse: potential hazard - it might kick the car or run into the road
Pedestrians: potential hazard - they might run into the road.

It had one scenario driving through a town centre. EVERY pedestrian is a potential hazard, but if you click once for every pedestrian it fails you. What the test demands of you in order to pass is to judge which hazards have been specifically placed into the clip [probably played by paid actors] by the DSA and click the mouse when you detect them, but not to click when you detect a hazard that just happened to be on or near the road while they were filming.

I think they should have done it properly and got Bioware to design the game.

[Game opens with the player character carrying a sword through a jungle teeming with hostile alien life. He/She comes across a car.]

Dialogue - "Aah, a contraption to ferry us safely out of this foreboding place."

[Player climbs into car]

Dialogue - "Aah, and automatic guiding mechanism so I do not have to control this hell bound contraption."

[Driving screen pops up]

***Player character must now point out potential hazards to their companions, who are on the roof of the car armed with bows and arrows.***

Dialogue - "Die Die foul beasts of the forest. Potential hazards all and now laid to rest for all time!!!"

Or something along those lines. I would have enjoyed it much more if I was able to shoot the hazards or at least see something explode every so often, and I would have been better at it.

"Watch out! There's a demon reversing out of that side road without checking his mirrors!!!"

BOOM!

"Oh no, a small child demon has chased a soul destroying bomb out into the road! Shoot it!"

BOOM!

"Watch out for that ammo truck parked on the side of the upcoming bend, thereby obstructing our view of oncoming hostiles!"

BOOM!

Yeah! Wooooooo!

And then they could have a clip at the end of you battling desperately but coming through against all odds.

So I just booked my practical test, and I am going to practice playing "Burnout Revenge" until it happens, that and bettling my way out of forests by blowing things up. Although the practical is a fairly scary prospect too, not as scary, I dare say as the prospect facing the Brunette.

Me insured on her car.

hehe **evil Calvin face**

and worse...

Me driving, her passenging.


hee hee hee **rubs hands slowly in a sinister fashion, despite using both a left AND a right hand**

We have an inspection of our flat next wednesday, which is also scary, since we are hoping to have our deposit back to help pay for things in the new flat, but it means we gots to paint things this weekend and make the flat real neat and tidyified. We have given notice, which means if the house falls through we'll be homeless, possibly living in a VW camper van.

Can you feel the fear? The FeAr. PhEAr! pHeAR!!!!!!

Which reminds me of that series I was going to do on twatmagnets of the nineties, beginning with No Fear T-Shirts. "If you're not living on the edge you're taking up too much space."

Hmmm.. If you're living on the edge I'm going to fucking push you off you twat.

"Second place is the first loser."

No Fear T-Shirts mean you weren't even first loser, you followed all the other losers to the No Fear store and bought loser clothes.

"Does not play well with others. Seems other's have a problem with losing."

Does not play well with others. Seems others have a problem with losers.

I do have to say I like the fact that there is a Christian spin off of No Fear called "Fear God"

Which presumably has slogans like:

"Does not Pray well with others. Seems others have a problem with being bombed."

and

"If you're living on the edge, you might be gay, and will probably burn for all eternity for not conforming to human imposed out of date gender stereotypes."

or maybe

"Second place is the first loser, only winners go to heaven."

Hmmm...like it.
- posted by Buntifer @ 4/20/2007 01:29:00 pm

 
I hope my lawyer gets hyperalgesia and then falls in a bath of acid.
My lawyer is a FUCKING CUNT!

I have never so seriously wanted to cause someone pain as I do him. I genuinely hope he dies a painful, lonely death, preferably in the next three months. I hope his loved ones desert him when he needs them, and those that don't, die in front of him as he watches, powerless to save them.

I never used to use the C word - I don't like it, it is an ugly word. The Brunette will confirm that I have even in the past chastised her for the use of it in her plays, as I think it is a blot on the linguistic landscape, ugly in a way few words are, but since I have started dealing with this lawyer I have felt the need to use it more often, it is the worst word I know, and now even it cannot plumb the depths of my hatred for the man. I genuinely don't know words that can describe him, I have not the vocabularic depths to plumb - I just don't think language can do it.

He has been lying to me for two weeks, not lies about anything worth lying about, he's just been promising me he'll put the paperwork in the post, and then EVERY FUCKING TIME I SPEAK TO HIM he tells me he hasn't, it's been delayed, he'll put it in the post today.

If he is to be believed, the clerks working in the firm who employs him are also either liars or entirely incompetent, as none of my messages ever get passed on, he never calls me back, and occasionally he sees fit to blame them for not having posted it as well.

I recommend anyone not to use this firm, but I'm going to hold off until we have finished with them before I put their name or his on my blog. Then I'm going to read the libel laws, just in case.

But for now, if you're a lawyer the safest course is to kill yourself, safe in the knowledge that you are making the world a better place, and if anyone knows any words which I might be able to use to describe the lawyer, please let me know, because even the c word doesn't feel strong enough any more.

Now I'm off to plan revenge stratagies involving the lawyer, barbed wire dipped in canine faeces, and surprise enemas.
- posted by Buntifer @ 4/12/2007 10:12:00 am

 
Next on the menu - Iran
Well, the propaganda machine is gearing up to take us into Iran, with Bush and Blair desperately trying to make sure that this time we have something to find, or that the premise upon which we go in doesn't require any further justification. I'm sure they'll come up with something.

And in New Scientist recently I was flabbergasted to read an article suggesting that humans have an inherent tendancy to categorise people and things, which leads to Racism. Of course this is news to nobody, I imagine, but what truly flabbered my gast was the following description of some research that had been done.

"Hirschfeld found that by the age of three, most children already attribute significance to skin colour. In 1993, he showed a group of children a drawing of a chubby black child dressed up as a policeman, followed by photos of several adults, each of whom had two fo the following three traits: being black, chubby and dressed as a policeman. Asked to decide which person was the boy as a grown-up, most children chose a black adult even though he was either not overweight or minus a police uniform.

"Kids appear to believe," says Hirschfeld, "that race is more important than other physical differences in determining what sort of person one is.""

Before you ask, this was not the April 1st Edition.

I cannot believe that research like this is being allowed to slip through the net - I'm kind of assuming anyone reading this sees the problem, but I am going to put it down here anyway.

Surely this research shows that three year olds already know that people can change their clothes and their weight easily, but can't change their skin colour? Apart from vitilago sufferers (or whatever that disease Jacko claims to have is called)

How can this research be being considered by intelligent human beings? It baffles and upsets me.

In other New Scientists News - they have named the phenomenon of owning a website one letter different from a real one and making it something relevant but subversive "typosquatting" - my favourite example being the blogpot family - any blog address with blogpot instead of blogspot directs the user to the "Abundant Bible Mega Site"

I'm going to email them - but since my blog address and my email address are not the same, I'm going to have to go now.

Fuck Blogger Beta, and all who programmed her.
- posted by Buntifer @ 4/08/2007 10:56:00 am

 
Mitchell and Webb PC Ads
Really make me want to buy PCs.

Where do they sell PCs that can't do video editing... oh wait, they don't.

And the ones where you can't make picture albums and podcasts, or play music? Wait hold on... Are Macs trying to make us believe this crap? Aah. So that's why cretins own them.

I wish I was a good enough programmer to write viruses - then I would specialise in writing them for Macs. The reason there are so many more viruses for PCs than for Macs is because there are proportionally more PC users.

And if PCs are only for office time and Macs are only for leisure, why do almost no PC games support Mac OS?

So Macs allow you to make movies and do podcasts, and PCs allow you to play the latest games, surf the internet AND do work?

Bonus - order me another PC please.

I like this video

I also think it is quite funny the way there are shedloads of Mac users in the comments going, "I've only ever used a Mac and it's running ten programs WAAY faster than Windows...like WAAAAAAAY faster."

Right - you've only ever used a Mac... so how do you know dickwad?

Yes - Microsoft is an evil money grabbing corporation, but hey... Apple isn't? Oh wait, all their stuff is white... it must be good...

Or is that racist?

I think it's racist. Except for the Macbook Pro [Black Edition] for homies everywhere. And the black U2 Ipod. For African American U2 fans. Ummm...
- posted by Buntifer @ 4/02/2007 08:53:00 am