Still Pretty Annoyed

Because I Am
"What is the snowy-haired old biffer on about now?" I hear you question.
     I thought you'd never ask.
     What am I annoyed about?  What am I NOT annoyed about!  The weather, for one.  It is disgustrous.  Not only cold but wet as well THANK YOU STORM DENNIS with the promise of more to come.  Bah!  Traffic, for another.  That manhole that collapsed during Storm Ciara is still collapsed, now with plastic fencing around it, creating a chicane that bottlenecks traffic and adds another ten minutes to my journey time. 

Going Nowhere, Manchester

     Then there is the proliferance of Wretched Dancing Shows on television - a new one every fortnight, it seems.  No, I don't watch them, yet they keep cropping up as 'news' items all the same.  Bah Bah!
     On the plus side, I have remembered to bring my pass today, and putting the waffles into the toaster longitudinally has worked - they all came out intact.  And that unsafe building that gridlocked the centre of Gomorrah-on-the-Irwell has been dealt with.
     Now, allow me to find something new to be angry about ...


Another Thing That Irritates Me -
Internet liars.  I refer, of course - sorry, what's that?  No reference to the motley in today's intro?  The poor creature is feeling unwell and, mortified that it might have got that soft-drink illness, has retired to be with a bowl of chicken soup with a coal dumpling.
     Anyway, I refer, of course, to Chris Fox and his expose of lying drivel on Youtube that masquerades as "kitchen hacks".  This one was about Gummi Bears, and how you can make a light and delicious jelly from them.  Art?

The Gummis are melted

     One feels a frisson of guilt as the poor, defenceless, harmless Gummis are rendered into a panful of molten glop.  But!

 

Salve your conscience with a delicious flavoured jelly!

     Except not.  Chris followed their recipe to the letter, and what did he end up with?

Nothing like as promised

     A layer of inedible, rock hard gelatin that not only could not be poured as in the second picture, it couldn't even be levered out of the glass using a spoon and elbow grease.  In fact if Chris had tried any harder to get the gel out, he'd have bent the spoon.  You know how rubbery and resilient Gummi bears are?  Well, those are the salient qualities of the glop you end up with after melting them.

     If you want jelly, go buy a packet.  Don't bother with gelatin and a do-it-yourself attitude, either, that won't work either.

     Next!

And Then There's -

Yet more from that bucket list of sci-fi novels you absolutely must read before the asteroid impact wipes us all out.  Actually these are pictures I loaded at home, because the office PCs cannot register anything at Bookbub except the title line.  And, because that birdsweat "Register or no list for you" dialogue box has come up and won't go away, I'm working off rather fuzzy images.  Oh yes - that "Register" box is another annoying thing.  In fact it annoys me so much I am never going to register and will keep on working from fuzzy images.  Ha!  Take that, Bookbub.

 

Yes and no

Your Humble Scribe hasn't read the novel, but I have read the (long) short story it's based on, and thus don't have any inclination to read this one, especially when I have easily half a dozen novels of two inches thickness or greater to get through.

 

Nope.
(Nope-itty nope nope nope)



 



 

 

     I read the synopsis for this on Wiki and almost fell asleep whlsmd sw,mer   Ooops!  Sorry, nearly dozed off again.  It's all about gender politics on an alien planet and sounds excruciatingly worthy - and dull.  It is, of course, all about the time it was written in (late Sixties) and appeals not one whit to Your humble Scribe, no matter how many awards it has won.  So there.  Next!

 

You What?

Conrad was reading a jolly interesting little article on the BBC's website about a ship abandoned in the Bermudas, which has just showed up on the coast of Cork in Eire, the "Alta".  Art?

 

     Sadly no puny humans present to give a sense of scale.  80 yards long, apparently.

     What made Your Modest Artisan sit up and pay attention was the mention in the article of the Eire RNLI - "Royal National Lifeboat Institution".  "Royal"?  Really?  Conrad is pretty certain that there are a lot of Irish folk who would rather drown that be saved by anything that had "Royal" in the title.  Then there was the Irish Commissioner Of Lights, who seems to be something nautical rather than arranging for Christmas decorations.  He would get involved if there is no owner of the Alta. 

     it remains to be seen if the vessel will stay aground, refloat or sink, so watch this space.

 

A Farewell To Peter

I am currently reading "The German Way Of War" and have got up to the Franco-Prussian Unpleasantness, and I think Prof Cinitro has omitted something in his magnum opus.  To wit, the effect of "Struwelpeter" upon the callow youth of Prussia, and how it will have turned their minds into knots, and also emphasising how hideous the world is, and how you have to relentlessly attack attack attack in order to impose order on it*.

     Thus shall we take our leave of Peter, with a final stanza:

 

Just look at him! there he stands,
With his nasty hair and hands.
See! his nails are never cut;
They are grimed as black as soot;
And the sloven, I declare,
Never once has combed his hair;
Anything to me is sweeter
Than to see Shock-headed Peter.

 

     Not scared of keeping anything in, are you Mister Hoffman (the author).  There's even a picture to go with this torrent of insults.  Art?

Quite the fright

     Of course you would never get this nowadays, Child Protective Services and Social Workers would be all over it.  Which is a good thing.  Unless you're a Prussian General Staff member plotting to attack Austria.

 

Aha!  Another Reason To Be Angry

Although the roots of this one can be laid fairly at my feet.  My copy of "Empire" arrived yesterday, ha ha!

     As ever, I picked it up to have a quick flick through it WHICH WAS MY FIRST MISTAKE. 

An Empire

     I should have remembered that "a quick glance" inevitably turns out to be neither.  I picked it up at 19:00 and put it down at 19:30, which is half an hour I'll never get back and which ought to have been spent getting some food ready and sorting out laundry.

     I am so very, very ANGRY!  (but better informed about the cinematic world).

 

     And with that we are so very, very done.  Adiau!  (Esperanto for "Goodbye")

 

 

 

 

*  It's my theory and I'm proud of it.