:(

Not well.

Probably not swine flu. Could be though - the hideous pig at work sneezed at me today so maybe that counts?

Bleurgh.

Well I did say I'd make excuses.....

Okay, okay, still not ready with the New York posts. I've been really busy, like, with, um, work and, sleeping, and, um, football and, um, sleeping and stuff.

But in a break from boringly hilarious holiday posts I thought I'd share with you a few stories from my favourite satirical website:

In a week (or so) when a senior anti-terrorist policeman had to resign for letting a photographer see the entire TOP SECRET agenda for his briefing to the cabinet, and subsequently 11 men were seized ahead of schedule by armed cops, interrogated and then released without charge and deported by government officials who refuse to admit that the entire government, police and intelligence community are, in fact, 'retards' - this

In a week where the government admitted to having to borrow £175bn (that's billion, and I hope it's a nice american billion of 1,000,000,000 and not an english billion of 1,000,000,000,000) a year for the next five years just to pay off the debt run up this year - this

And as an aside, I'm buying one of these bad boys :)

Holy crap.

Pretty much literally.

http://whythatsdelightful.wordpress.com/2009/04/21/dont-fear-the-baby-preacher/

I'm not sure if the baby's impersonation of a nutter preacher is funnier than the fact that clearly the audience really don't get it.

You decide :)

(Shamefully nicked from Graham Linehan's blog http://whythatsdelightful.wordpress.com/ - plus he wrote Big Train, one of the funniest comedy programs ever. In fact, I feel the need to watch the World Staring Championships again. My sense of humour to a T :) )

The following trailers are appropriate for the feature presentation...

I'm dying of no sleep, but am up to Wednesday last week in your lives and thoroughly entertaining they are :)

The highlights of the coming week on Passably Content are:

• Whale seen off Staaaten Oiland.
• Why fundamentalist nutjob jewish people are ok by me.
• A series of poor excuses about not posting stuff previously promised (again).

Night night.

How times change....

Just popping in for a few seconds to say hello - I'll reply to comments when I'm back :)

I remember being in some godforsaken part of Arizona around my 15th birthday when I first bought an American newspaper.

It seemed a fair thing to do, seeing as Saddam had just invaded Kuwait and it was undecided if he was going to continue on into Saudi Arabia. We were just heading into a diner for breakfast (possibly even a Wendy's) and saw the headline of the NY Times as we passed the newsstand. Obviously this was news to us so we bought and read it over my first serious cultural mistake (bacon is not bacon, eggs are not eggs and toast was not toast - making my bacon and egg sarnie a herculean effort requiring diamond teeth and a strong stomach).

I was reminded of this today as I passed a newsstand on the way to saying hello to Mrs. Red Squirrel (who is at work today) and saw the headline of the NY Times. It was something about pirates off the coast of Somalia (or rather, that the first american captured had reached Mombasa - but I digress). Did I buy it? No. I'd been following the story daily on the internet for the last 5 months, I'd received texts about the american hijacking and rescue and I'd been forced (at the airport while waiting for one of three immigration officials to process 75,000 people in the queue - people wanting into the country? At an airport? Who'd'a'thunkit?) to listen to interviews with the distant cousins of the bosun on the ship on CNN.

How times change.....

Have a nice day y'all!

Yes indeedy, I'm stateside right now for a week or so.

So, I'll check in from time to time, but y'all have fun and I'll catch up with everyone's lives when I'm back :)

Language, Timothy!

(If you're not English you won't get that reference at all. Then you'll google it and be confronted by Ronnie Corbett. Then you'll write off Western Europe as 'here be dragons')

As someone who both:

a) uses language and
b) hears language

I feel myself uniquely qualified to pontificate all kind of bollocks about the written word.

I'm in a select club.

Especially when it comes to the American (mis)use of the English language. You do realise that we're just loaning it to you right? Did we not mention it? Shame. Ker-ching!

The big schism between 'American English' and the rare dialect known as 'English' (named after the country 'England' by the way) happened during the horrendous vowel cull of 1847, when decent, honest, law-abiding vowels were obliterated from words for no reason beyond petty word vandalism.

Axe became 'Ax', colour became 'color', favour became 'favor', Aluminium became 'something spelt the same yet perversely pronounced with a syllable less, for fucks sake.'

And most dangerously of all, a paedophile became 'pedophile'.

Dangerous you say? Why dangerous? Well, in England the 'paedo' prefix is related to children (paediatrician for example) and 'pedo' is related to walking (pedometer for example).

So - if in America a device that records how much you walk is a 'pedometer', and a kiddie-fiddler is 'pedophile'.....


....what is the American term for someone who likes walking? And do they get lynched?

Spring is in the air...

Hmmm, well I'll leave my last post unaltered as a reminder to everybody of what happens when you get home at 2am from a cracking party with free booze and then decide to write a blog post.

My general disdain for our modern culture is quite evident after 12 pints :)

This is a great time of year - not only is Charlie Brooker back with a brand new series called Newswipe:

Episode 1 (part 1)
Episode 1 (part 2)
Episode 1 (part 3)

Episode 2 (part 1)
Episode 2 (part 2)
Episode 2 (part 3)

but also because this time of year is when the Magnolia trees blossom :)


Lovely - and that's just one tree!

Sorry

I try to avoid the political as much as I can but:

http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/business/7982277.stm

Aaaaaaaaaaaaaaarrrrrrrrrrrghhhhhhhhhhhhhh.

You took a risk, you lost your money. Tough shit.

Let's look at why you invested there, shall we? Did you do so because of the obscene interest rates on offer? Was it? Or did you just fancy Iceland?

Cunts.

Ever heard of a free lunch? Never happened did it? You bunch of utter cunts.

But no, why doesn't the government pay for your inability to NOT BE AN UTTER RETARD?

Fuck off. Take your loss and suck it up. I'll only accept government money if you promise to never, ever, knock on my door again and ask for money. Ever. Again.

Sympathy levels at record lows.....neeeed...... heeeeeeeeelllllppppp.........

Better late than never!

Well, actually, you might be saying exactly the opposite in a few short minutes as most of my pictures are absolute rubbish!

Still the best ones are:

A very, very happy looking cat (my Dad's, though those are my tasteful orange socks with 'Friday' written on them)




Possibly the sweet shop in the world - Happy Pills!




Happy Pill's recipe for happiness. You should be able to read it by clicking on the image but it was raining heavily at the time so if you can't let me know and I'll painstakingly type it out by hand....




Barcelona FC have won THIS many trophies. Probably many times over.




Why look, it's a big wall. From the Montjuic Castello in fact.




The view back down into Barcelona from the castle.