Bees

I forgot to write about this when it happened, but it turns out that we’re not the only people with an idiot dog. It’s now a couple of weeks ago, and thankfully she’s OK, but this is what happened…

Herself’s sister (the one in Norfolk) has an idiot Black Lab. Beautiful dog, but IQ of a housebrick. Anyway, she’d been out in the garden, messing about in the sun as idiot dogs do. (I should point out, I’ve no idea yet what I’m going to call the braindead beast, I’m sure I’ll figure out something sooner or later) And the gormless bugger swallowed a bee.

Bees being bees, it stung her as it went down, and she staggered into the office, having problems breathing. And collapsed.

A speeding trip to the vets ensued, and fortunately the idioit creature’s fine – I believe she’s also a bit more wary about buzzing insects now, too.

This is also the same dog who managed to get her head stuck in a metal wine-rack as a pup, which ended up needing to get firemen to cut her out of it. I think they should’ve taken the hint then…


Buzz

I’ve just had to laugh at the mental image provided by this story in today’s BBC website. The offending paragraph was :

Eleven woman were called to court to identify their underwear and sex toys at Stephan’s first trial.

It just conjured a vision of some poor woman having to stand up in court and say “Yes, Your Honour, that’s my thong and rampant rabbit vibrator.”.

*shudder*


Impervious

Sometimes you do have to wonder what it takes to get a message through to someone.

The agency I used to get the job with CrapCo has just called me – they know I’ve got the new job, which I’m still enjoying, so I don’t really want to speak with them. So off the call goes to answer-phone. They call straight back, and the call goes – again – to answerphone. This time they leave a message for me to call them.

Then the phone goes – this time the number is withheld, rather than showing me who it’s from. The call gets pushed to answerphone. They call again, still with the number withheld. I’m fucked off now, so I answer it, and yes, I’m right, they’re calling about a new job.

“No, as I’ve told your colleague, and as it should say on your records, I’ve taken on a new job a month ago, and I’ve no interest in anything new. And I’ve rejected your call three times for a reason, as I was in a fucking meeting.”
“Well that’s not my problem – we wanted to let you know about these jobs”
“OK, you’ve done so. I’m not interested. I’ve got a job that I’m keeping, and I don’t want to hear from your company again”
*click*

They’ve just sent me an email asking whether I know anyone else who’d be interested in a similar job. Some people just don’t get the message at all, do they?


I-Fucking-E

OK, now this is one for the techies. In Internet Explorer (or I-fucking-E as it’s known to any decent techie) the comments box fits in the window fine, regardless of resolution, until you start typing in it.

At that point the box expands, and (on low resolutions) the right-hand side of it disappears under the right-hand nav bar (all the links etc.). It’s fine ’til someone types in it though – and I admit, I thought I’d fixed it ages back, except it turns out that I hadn’t fully tested it, because I hadn’t typed in the sodding thing.

So – any ideas how to fix it?


Fruitstock

Innocent drinks are one of my favourite brands/companies. Mainly because they’re just slightly barmy, and really rather cool.

On August 6th and 7th they’re organising the third Fruitstock free party in Regents Park, London. Sounds like fun…


House

While I’m really pleased to see that Hugh Laurie has been Emmy-nominated for the series House, I have to admit that I’m getting just a little bit jaded about the series.

The dialogue is still good, but I can’t deny, I want to see House fail to solve a case. I have trouble believing in the entire “always a happy ending” cliche that it seems to be becoming. Every week there’s a bizarre illness, the doctors are baffled, they try something, it makes the patient worse, they try something else, it nearly kills the patient (and man, that clean room gets some use!), then they come across some truly rare complaint that answers all the symptoms. Lo and behold, patient is cured- apparently overnight in some cases – and everyone goes away happy ’til next week.

Yeah, sure, it’s well scripted and so on, but jesus christ, even Casualty manages to get them doing fatal fuckups every so often. Is it too much to do, to make Mr Wonderful fallible, and thus just slightly more feasible?


Stage 15

To Herself’s slight despair, I’ve been watching a fair amount of the coverage of this year’s Tour De France. I do tend to do so every year, but she’s not overly interested in it. Personally I think it balances out some of the stuff like “Sue Thomas, F.B.Eye” and “Judging Amy” that she watches, but hey, that’s domestic bliss for you.

Anyway, yesterday’s stage was generally billed as the toughest of this year’s Tour, and if you look at the profile you’ll see why. Five climbs, four of “Category One” (which in layman’s terms equates to “Fuck Off, I’m not doing that!”) over 205.5km (about 128 miles), and the winner completed it in six hours. That’s riding at an average of 20mph through the entire stage, including the uphill bits.

I’m in awe of the TDF competitors at the best of times, but to ride at that speed for six hours – and to have done so after two weeks of riding similar distances every day – is, to me, nothing short of superhuman.

UPDATED : Geoff Thomas writes in his diary about completing Stage 15. Another superhuman effort, as I’ve written before.