Being Mr. Kenny

This is the thing I forgot in the last post. Languages are so cool! My sister got me two phrase books for my upcoming trip to South America: Spanish and Portuguese. I have had a look over both, and my conclusion is that both languages are cool.

For instance, I found two phrases meaning “a red house” and “red houses”. In Spanish, these are, respectively, una casa roja and unas casas rojas. Did you see the cool linguistic thing going on there? In Spanish (if my phrase book is correct) there is a plural of the indefinite article (in English: a, an). Isn’t that the weirdest thing?

Also, there are two verbs for the verb “to be”. That’s really odd. “Be” is always my favourite verb in any language, so it’s usually the first one I pay attention to. How cool is Spanish?

Lol, this is a complete linguistic-geek post.

Well well well, firstly, may I say that I am very excited. I now have wireless broadband in my room, it’s so cool. I’ve literally (metaphorically-speaking, of course) wet myself.

Anyway, there are a number of funny things that I’ve noticed since arriving home.

Monument to mañana

First thing I do when I get back home is go down to the bottom of the garden and look at the rubbish tip. (I do this every time, I don’t know why, maybe to check it’s still there; who knows? Perhaps it’s the pixies calling me again. Those damn pixies!) Anyway, at the bottom of the garden we have a large heap of things that are going to burn or rot (whichever comes sooner). Kinda like a compost heap but there’s all sorts in there. (A family of potatoes, for example. These potatoes grow every year, and every year (come winter) they are baked where they grow, only to grow back!)

Anyway, what should I find in this heap of garden refuse, but a Pyrocanthus plant that we’ve been trying to do something with for the last, what, two decades? Evidently, over the course of my second term, someone has finally given up and decided to consign it to destruction. Here’s a picture, it’s the thing in the white pot:

Over the last 20 years the plant has never grown bigger than it currently is (it should be able to get quite large). In fact, I think it has actually shrunk. Nevertheless, it has never failed to produce red berries and leaves, on most of its ‘branches’, poor thing. And now it’s been forgotten. Well I must say I am a little sad; I might try to rescue it.

TV guide rubbishes show

Yesterday, Tuesday 22nd March (my 21st birthday) BBC one showed The Iceman Murder, a piece about some guy found dead in some ice. He was a couple thousand years old, they estimated. Anyway, in The Eye (The TV guide in The Times) I found this review:

This potentially fascinating fascinating subject has been dumbed down to the point of absurdity. A group of scientists discuss the various possibilities that might have led to the death of Oetzi, the frozen 5,000-year-old mummy who was found in the Alps with an arrow embedded in his left shoulder. They indulge in dizzying speculation while actors with painted faces dressed in bathmats run around a campsite making guttural Neolithic noises and hitting each other. — David Chater

Isn’t that great? Certainly lost no sleep over missing that one.

My mum’s random comment on comedians

A lot of comedians get like that. They go over the top and they die.

Something else, now forgotten

There was something else that I’ve now forgotten. Much like I completey forgot to go into my old school today, which I have only just remembered now. Dammit. Damn, damn, damn, that is so annoying!

Well well… Got back last night from the most amazing weekend away ever. We spent it at my friend’s (Joe) parents’ house where we ate all the food in the world (approximately) and stayed up all night. I also caught a cold, which will be gone by the end of tomorrow (which happens to be my 21st birthday, actually.

We had a tour round the Black Sheep Brewery, which was excellent, mainly because the tour guide was the best person in the world. It was very interesting to see how beer was made, and now I know what hops are; they are the flowers of some plant (probably called hop). Anyway, it was really cool. Also met this elderly lady who claimed to be over 80, but I didn’t believe her for a minute. She was at most about 60, or something. She told us all about her time as a nurse in Devon and it was fascinating. She was completely lovely, and she said that she loved young people, which is what keeps her so young, in my opinion.

After that went round a National Trust place (Brisham rocks: here and here). Anyway, we climbed up some 5 metre tall rocks, which was very interesting and slightly scary. Plus I think I broke a rib or something, cos it hurts. But never mind, it’s not so bad now.

At the end of that day, some people were silly and went home, so that four non-Joe people that were left had a very deep and meaningful conversation about sensitivities and it was very moving. All of us cried. For about half an hour. Actually, no we didn’t.

Anyway, it was extremely enjoyable, and this was completely because of all the people who went.

This is from zefrank.com. From the video “Small World”

In a recent interview with the South-by-South-West, Jonathon Abrams complained that everybody was the using the end -ster in their online applications, causing them to sue Gideons, the Bible distributer. They had to change the book of Esther to the book of Esth, in which a woman uses aggressive group therapy to petition the king to save her father. The king eventually dies of a bladder infection ’cause he’s not allowed to go to the bathroom for two hours.

Also doing some reading for a seen exam, I came across the following passage in a scientific paper about how male bumble bees (Bombus terrestris) “plug” the females after mating in an attempt to stop her mating again.

One plugged queen used in the second experiment was mistakenly not separated from the male after the mating trial. She subsequently mated again with the same male (she was the only naturally mated queen that ever mated again) and was frozen at -80 °C immediately after the end of the second copulation (this queen was excluded from the analyses).

Sauter, A., Brown, M. J. F., Baer, B, & Schmid-Hempel, P. Males of social insects can prevent queens from multiple mating. Proc. R. Soc. Lond. B (2001) 268, 1449-1454

What appealed to me was the way they saw it necessary to freeze the queen immediately at - 80 °C. It reveals a little about the scientific mind. The researchers were Swiss…

If you want to read the article, check Google Scholar.

This is a really good website, I actually love it.

LINK!

Found this on someone’s blog:

And God said unto John, come forth and you will recieve eternal life; but John came fifth and won a toaster.

The link above seems really interesting too, it’s a website dedicated to collecting blogs from people of all ages. Did you know that 80 year olds have blogs? I was delighted to find that they do!

This site looks pretty interesting, too.

Well, just got back from a drag night. To be honest, it was a bit crap; the acts didn’t seem very good. But, you’ve not seen anything until you’ve seen drunken male students in dresses trying to hit on girls. And then succeeding. Really, it was a weird night.

On the way back I made a realisation about me. No, not that I secretly want to dress up in women’s clothing (although I wouldn’t imagine that women would want to be seen in some of the stuff on display) but that I’m rubbish on nights out.

Unless I’m completely drunk (which I don’t do any more) I’m just not really with it. I guess I have too many reservations, maybe. I don’t know. I don’t want to be one of those angsty bloggers, though. It doesn’t get me down too much, although walking home to the sound of birdsong is depressing. I don’t know what it is, but hearing birdsong in the early hours of the morning seems to mean to me that my life is unravelling before my very eyes. I guess because it means, yet again, I’m going to bed late and, yet again, I’m probably going to be up late the next morning meaning, yet again, lectures might just be missed.

Typical student thing, really, just a bit lazy, but I’m the sort of person that gets put off easily. But anyway, this is turning into one of those “woe is me” posts that you often find on blogs. If you’ve read this far, then congratulations! You’ve done very well not to get bored and visit something else. White ninja comics, for example.