Woo, Yay

The Scissor Sisters have just announced a new tour (do they ever actually stop?) including a date at Manchester Apollo on Saturday October 23rd. Yup, bigger venues too – should be good.

And yes, I have a ticket. I know, I need to get out more – but this is what happens when I do.

Liberty becomes available

Apparently, the Statue Of Liberty is to re-open. It’s been closed “because of security issues/failings” since Sept 11th 2001 (I must admit, I didn’t even know it’d been closed, so that’s impressive) but there’s been plenty of work going on.

“I think it’s significant that, despite the raising of the alert levels, we are still going ahead with the reopening,” said US Assistant Interior Secretary Craig Manson. “I think it shows the world that liberty cannot be intimidated.”

Absolute arse. Liberty’s been intimidated by the US since 11/9/2001, and it continues to be so. There’s no freedom to travel or visit. Instead Big Brother™ is now watching. I wonder how long it’ll be before someone decides to try an attack on yet another “symbol of america”?

Burning Bright

“Police have no special training on how to deal with tigers,” Durkin said. “Based on this tiger and the last tiger, we may have to incorporate something into our training.”

In fairness, I guess that you don’t really expect to see tigers walking down the street in the middle of New York.

The Fantastic Fountain Fuck-up – Part 3

It just gets better and better. After yesterday’s post regarding cowbag Jowell’s comments, Royal Parks may consider limiting the number of people around the Diana Memorial Fuck-up Fountain. It’s only one option, though, others including “roughening certain areas of the fountain”, or “replacing grass around the edge of the memorial with some form of hard standing to avoid slipping”.

As I said yesterday, this is all the kind of thing that should’ve been addressed in the planning of the idea, not as remedial work once the bastard thing’s been installed. The entire project has been a balls up from the start. What a wonderful memorial, eh?

I must admit, I also find it interesting that Earl “Wankhands” Spencer hasn’t been sticking his oar into this farce and blathering on about how this is disrespectful to Diana’s memory, or somesuch. I wonder when he will do so?

Macros

Over the last couple of months, when I’ve had the opportunity I’ve been getting very into Macro shots. Over the weekend I got a few more that I’m really pleased with, so took the opportunity to put them all on one page.

Braindead

Ooops. While out in the Peak District over the weekend, we came across a windfarm, and I tried taking an .avi movie with the camera of it. Having just looked at it, I realise that having the camera in a vertical orientation means that the windmills now appear to be on their sides. Shit.

The entire .avi looks like this. *Sob*

The Buck Stops Over There

Yes, the Princess Diana Memorial Fountain has been closed for ten days, as people insisted on paddling in it, and then slipped and hurt themselves. But it’s not badly designed, or even just fucking stupid, oh no. According to Tessa Jowell, the gobshite Culture Secretary, it’s the fault of the people using it.

“I don’t think any responsible member of the public would want to see people allowing their dogs in it,” she said.

“How can we maintain the purity of the water if some people allow their dogs to paddle?”

Shouldn’t that kind of thing have been addressed far earlier, perhaps, say, when the bloody thing was being designed?

“Well, we think this fountain will have a nice big watercourse, and allow people complete access to the waterway, and to the land inside it, so we’ll make the entire thing out of smooth concrete that’ll be slippy as shite when wet. Yeah, that sounds like a good idea. We’ll put that plan forward, then blame the punters when they slip.”

Or perhaps hospitalising people was the true memorial to Diana? Who knows.