Romauld

[AD] Books for Bricks, or Sir Parsley and the Dragon

2009-02-10T12:28:09Z

Adam and Livi are close friends of mine, and while I was being ill seem to have had a housing catastrophe. I can testify that Adam's work is very good, and would like to ask you all to at least give the site a read and see what you think.

Thanks: I don't do this sort of thing very often.

Advertising Irony

2009-01-05T16:51:42Z

Or, "Free speech: you're doing it right".

Bus A: "There's probably no God. Stop worrying and enjoy life!"
Bus B: "Where are we going? (sign up for the Alpha course today to find out!)"

The American Way

2008-07-30T14:23:01Z

I particularly like the last panel of this one; the archves seem worth reading, too.

Very rare sheep

2008-06-27T12:56:36Z

"I'm a very dangerous man when I don't know what I'm doing."

When you see this, post a quote from Doctor Who on your LJ/Blog/Wotsit. But only if you really want to.

Names changed to protect the ... actually, no, they're not.

2008-06-13T09:42:52Z

Dear Stephen from Majestic Wines,

You lost the right to even talk to me when, after listening to your polite sales pitch, I replied that I was happy with my current supplier and you then attempted a hard sell. Kindly fuck off.

~R

Relief

2007-10-01T10:56:29Z

I've been a geek on a professional basis for about a decade. My only home computer blew up back in May, and I've been existing on borrowed computer time ever since; for much of that time, borrowed on a per-session basis.

Courtesy of the wonderful cokephreak I now have a long-term loan of a working laptop that has internet access. I am currently very happy :)

I'm back.

2007-09-21T20:02:58Z

And, as promised:

There is no hope in hell of me reading everyone's LJs. Just no hope. I know my friends well enough to know that I'd drown, plus I have just had to manually clear in excess of 15k UCE out of my inbox (oh yeah, that works too).

If anything has happened in the last two months that you want me to know about, email me.

Head space.

2007-07-08T21:50:13Z

I'm going to be offline for a while. When come back, will bring pie.

[DROOLING FANBOY] o_0

2007-04-22T11:23:41Z

They're doing a Wolverine vs. Sabretooth movie>?

RIP professional news media.

2007-04-21T09:21:50Z

I have finally realised what, exactly, has recently changed in the BBC News24 format which has made it just one of the crowd of magazine shows, and has made it feel, subtly, rather crap.

Real newscasters put the international news before the local news of whatever nation they come from. The BBC no longer do so. This makes me sad.

Religious parodies

2007-04-16T08:35:12Z

There are many parodies around the internet of the US Fundamentalist slogan What Would Jesus Do? It is usually written as an acronym, WWJD?

(Parenthetical aside: I would be a lot less wound up by that slogan if any of the kind of people who subscribe to it actually compared their actions against what the political and social campaigner from the 1st century BCE would have done, rather than against the most conservative and puritanical philosophies and moral "principles" that they can find out of the entire 2000 year history of quite a useful religion. Anyhow: moving swiftly on. )

You'll almost certainly have seen them: WWBD -> What Would Buddha Do (well, nothing, obviously), WWKD -> What Would Krishna Do (Live like there's nobody watching, dance like your skin is bright blue), WWDD -> What Would Darwin Do (turn in his grave, I suspect), WWED -> What Would Einstein Do (relatively little, when you think about it [1]), WWSD -> What Would Satan Do (quality assurance testing, mostly) and so on.

I feel that all the instances I have seen of this parody have rather missed the point.

WWID? [2]

[1] Sorry, sorry, I know, that was bad. No biscuits for me.

[2] If you can figure out what that's intended to expand to, you have probably got the point. Please don't sell it in comments, I'm trying to make people think. [3]

[3] Yeah, yeah, I know, futile efforts and all that. [4] People only think when they want to, yadda yadda. At least I'm trying.

[4] So I wanted another footnote. Is that so wrong? IS IT? ;)

Why yes, I am in a strange mood, thanks for asking.

Sanity break.

2007-04-14T01:01:40Z

Take a look at Jin Wicked's web-comic. It's good. ohgodimtired.

The Way of Nanny Ogg

2007-02-25T13:51:07Z

Koan 23: "You might think otherwise, but it was me standing there."
-- Pterry, Thief of Time

When will they learn....

2007-02-24T21:48:18Z

I recently came across a Giles cartoon, with the caption, "You can blame the price rises on Mr. Bush and Mr. Hussein"

Which made me giggle.

The year? 1991.

...

Illiad, never go away

2007-02-22T23:49:49Z

I've recently been reminding myself of why User Friendly, one of the first and one of the finest web-comics, is still a work of genius.

We lost RAW: we can't afford to lose Illiad.

Support the Lime Project!

2007-02-08T12:17:48Z

... And not just because they're naked!

On the occasion of a book launch

2007-02-06T23:42:06Z

Specifically, this book.

Two young women standing close together, talking at the tops of their voices right in each other's ears. One tall, brunette, angular of face and short of skirt with calf-high leather boots and a Burberry jacket. She holds a cigarette at an artful, dangling angle so that she won't lose her cherry, but but the cool kids will still notice her. The other, shorter, Chinese, energetic, poses up on tiptoe with breasts thrust out by the clasping of her arms and her eyes busy and moving.

A couple sit at a table. The music rides over them without either noticing: attention between them is new and unusual, alcohol lubricating conversation as cigarettes glow in the dusk and the evening draws on. They are sparring, and sharing; learning and caring, just a little, a new person in the night who may or may not become a real figure rather than a cardboard cutout against wine-stained memories.

A man and two women dance; badly, comfortably, no care but friendship and celebration for a friend who has done good. The man has a loose tie (bad) and a good shirt (purple), a bottle of Belgian beer and no sense of rhythm, but he's a good clown. Both girls are sinuous and graceful, but also slightly drunk and slightly silly. They draw in a fourth, embarrassed, guilty of enjoyment in public as though fun and companionship were social misdemenaours rather than the staff of life and the salt of the earth.

Through that throng move the ones who work the night. Publisher, waitress, doorman, barkeep, author. The ones whose energy is tempered with the exhaustion that has created this impressionist's composition: the ones whose eyes are tired and worn but still satisfied with a job done, well, professionally, in good cause. Pride in the work that has made a book, a thing somehow more permanent than the words in the head. Pride in the skill of passing unseen, always with the right drink for the right person by an instinct of true craft. Pride in the duty of care, ever-watching vigilent, a paladin of the raucus city rather than a mere "bouncer". Pride again, but frantic with the joy/fear of seeing ones own soul in hard copy and hardback, on tables and in hands and in conversations all around, that mark a moment when real things emerge from a web of words and hopes and dreams.

The people move, the author smiles, the wine glugs and the candles burn. The conversation waxes and flows. It carries a rhythm independent of the chaotic composition: a whole that is greater than the sum of its hive-segments who have created it. There is a feeling in the night air on a London rooftop: a kind of extroverted energy which has chosen not to ask when the tube closes or when work starts, but to live in a moment of discovery and shared joy, in achivement and good company.

o_0 Breaking News: nice people still exist.

2006-10-31T10:35:30Z

I have received a phone call from a lovely if slightly bemused elderly lady who found my mobile on a train and is now sending it back to me. It took a while for contact to be made because my number is not the first in the book, and the elderly lady (whose name I still don't know) doesn't understand mobile phones very well and didn't have a Nokia charger. However, confabulations with her daughter, who does, led to them calling a couple of people from my phone book until they were able to identify which address book entry in there was mine, so that they could call me from the land-line number in the same entry.

The most touching element of this story lay in the decision of what to do with the phone: the elderly lady having been exhorted to take it to the police by her daughter responded "Oh no, I wouldn't do that, he'd never get it back from them." And she's right, too, I probably could never have placed it.

This has brightened my week more than I can adequately express. I doubt said elderly lady will ever see this, but in case she does: thank you very much indeed, ma'am, and if I ever find out how I shall send you flowers.

Out of Contact

2006-10-30T11:09:24Z

My phone is no longer in my possession. When normal service is resumed, I'll post something friends-locked here.

Also: lost.eu.

o_0

2006-10-22T09:45:54Z

I've just discovered that during a domestic row I recently said something about myself, quite seriously, which turned out to be an Aubrey punch-line from Something Positive.

...

Hat. Hat. Hat.

2006-09-08T08:51:32Z

Best response so far to Snakes on a Plane.

o_0

2006-08-07T08:17:19Z

The nation of Cameroun, or at least it's TLD administrators, have typo-squatted the entire .com domain space. The TLD for Cameroun is .cm, and they've set up a DNS wild-card which redirects any request for something.cm to an add page if it isn't registered. This means that anyone who leaves out the o in amazon.com will get West African advertising. I find this much funnier than I ought to.

Heh. Heh. Heheheheheheheh.

2006-08-04T09:11:10Z

Is it Friday?

[MASQUERADE BALL] Has moved

2006-07-27T13:20:39Z

Not physically, but in cyber-space. A clerical error led to my losing possession of our original domain name, and replacing it with the same one only in its .uk variation, such that the old masquerade-ball.org is now replaced by masquerade-ball.org.uk.

Oh for Fuck's Sake!

2006-07-19T07:46:42Z

People still think this is a good idea? I have the Fear.

A nod in passing to wyrdrune who has also noticed this article.