Rugby Match

Over the weekend, two of our grandsons had games at different ends of the country, so we had the pleasure of taking GS#2 to his match in Embra.

"So where exactly is this place?" we asked.

"Oh, you can see Arthur's Seat from it," replied mum.

Yep, that'll make it a whole lot easier. You can see Arthur's Seat from twenty miles away on a clear day. Let's see the old Google Maps...<clicky> Ah! That should read "you can see nothing but Arthur's Seat from it". So off we go.

The trouble with rugby, from a photographer's point of view, is that everybody wears the same clothes and they all run about a lot, so if you're trying to get a nice picture of your nearest and dearest, you're stuffed. Let's see if there's anything standing still.

{click to enlarge}

An old tree trunk burning

Hillend Ski Slope

A bare tree all on its own

Another tree, this one green

Someone at the top of Arthur's Seat

A bee on a flower

Wait...what does this button do? Oh, motion capture. That's clever.

A game of rugby

Race Oddity

Who nicked the rest of my bike?

A Brief History Of Scotchland - Part 1

Click to enlarge

In response to overwhelming popular demand (although let's face it, I would probly have done this even if you'd begged me not to), Mr Farty proudly presents his own unique point of view on the greatest little country in the world.

So....where to begin? At the beginning, of course. Since I'm making this up as I go along basing this on state-of-the-art research, other posts in the series may appear to be out of sequence or might even seem to contradict each other. Don't be misled, every word is absolutely true¹.

To fully understand the Scotch people, it is first necessary to have a grasp of the hand that we've been dealt. And that means looking at our geology. One account has it that a team of English geologists were up in the Highlands questioning a local about the landscape whilst taking copious notes. After they left, Hamish asked Jock why he'd been giving them completely the wrong names for every loch, ben and cairn. "Och, they were only making a map!"

As Bishop Usher, after whom the Usher Hall in Embra is named, once calculated, the Earth was created in 4004 BC. This is a scientific fact². Scotchland was, at this time, absolutely crawling with dinosaurs, some of which survive today in remote, inaccessible, trackless wastes such as Loch Ness.
Deserted Loch Ness

When the Great Flood killed off all of the dinosaurs³, their bodies were covered in silt, sediment and mammoths, which squeezed their carcasses relentlessly over a period of thousands of years until they turned into oil. North America split away from the rest of Scotchland and went drifting across the Atlantic, taking most of our oil with it down to Texas. When we've finished calculating the bill, plus interest, y'all will be hearing from our lawyers.

Oil is treated by most of the Western world as a commodity to be burned up and turned into watseful CO₂, but in Scotchland we like to recycle our hydrocarbons, e.g. by using that oil to deep-fry our Mars Bars, pizza and haggis.
A deep-fried Mars Bar. Or possibly a haggis. It's hard to tell.

Right. I've got some serious research to do for part 2. Toot toot!

¹ For a given value of true.

² If enough members of the clergy do the same sums as the bish, and they all agree on the results, that makes it a "scientific fact". Look it up.

³ Emerson!

Domestic Bliss

Mrs Farty has decided she'd rather have a shower cubicle than a bath - whatever a "bath" is - so we've been shopping around and found just the thing. We've found a reputable plumber, i.e. one we've used before who didn't rip us off, and he set to work today carefully removing the old bath. (We can probly get a few bob for it on on eBay.)

Then he took one look at the floorboards and said, "These are rotten, look!" And ripped one out with his bare hand. Sure enough, we remembered the bathroom flooding a few years ago after the drain pipe worked loose from the bath, but thought we'd managed to dry it out with a dehumidifier running flat out for two weeks. Wrong.

Not only are the floorboards rotten, so are a couple of the joists supporting them. I had a momentary mental image of Mrs Farty, sitting in the bath, crashing through the floor and into our neighbour's living room. "Air hellair, jahst thort Ay'd drope een four a cappa tea, don't-choo-know?" Then I remembered we live on the ground floor.

A quick phone call to the insurers confirmed our worst fears: "If you check the small print in the policy, you'll see that you're not covered for fraud. Nyer nyer nyer."

So we called a joiner, who raced around to Farty Towers toot sweet to assess the damage - about £240 plus labour. Plus parts. Plus callout fee.

Perhaps I should arrange an electrician, glazier and painter while I'm at it?

A Brief History of Scotchland In One Part

I'm researching wondering whether I should be arsed about writing a series about the great history of oor nation. The noo. It'll be great. Here's a taster.

Some dates for your diary:

• 4004BC Scotchland created. And some other stuff.


• 4000BC Angus McAdam: the first Scotchman born. Jings!
  


• 1296 King Edward's potatoes vs. scones : which is the better source of carbs?


• 1300 Natural History: The life cycle of the haggis - from Scotch Egg to your dinner plate.
  


• 1314 Bannockburn: cookery show. How to cook bannocks without burning them.


• 1500 Tartan porridge: The recipe revealed.


• 1715 The Old Pretender: Merkan/Aussie Mel Gibson pretends to be Scotch. Badly. Ye cannae take oor freedom, but ye can certainly murrrder oor language. Crivvens!


• 1745 The Young Pretender: Weegie John Barrowman pretends to be a Merkan. Rather more convincingly.


• 1755 The Big Fight: Bony[sic] Prince Charlie vs the Loch Ness Monster - who is the better Scotch? There's only one way to find out!


• 1820 Doctor Who: David "Ten-Inch" McDonald gets out his sonic screwdriver. Help ma boab!


• 1905 I'd Do Anything:
  
  Mmmmiss Ashley Russell.


• 2222 Star Trek: Scotty "Scotty" Scott born in Linlithgow. Beam me up, FFS!

Anyone interested in a series? Any Scotch people interested in contributing material? I might start a new blog. Hmmmm.

Merkan-English Dictionary: Oil Crisis Special

If a British person says his/her car runs on gas, they usually mean it's powered by hydrogen. If a Merkan says the same thing, they're usually wrong. Here's why.

Crude Oil: A black, smelly, sticky liquid that comes shooting out of the ground at 100mph. And swears a lot.

Oil Strike: When the people whose job it is to refine the oil decide to down tools and join a picket line.

Diesel:

1. One of the top bloggers in the blogosphere.


2. A train, but not as exciting as a proper steam train.



3. A petroleum-based fuel which is burned in engines ignited by compression rather than spark.

Petrol: A mixture of hydrocarbons which is used as a fuel.

Gas:

1. One of the five "states of matter" (after Bose-Einstein condensate, solid and liquid, and followed by plasma), that subsequently appear as a cold substance is subjected to increasingly higher temperatures.


2. The direct cause of flatulence.

Gasoline: A volatile flammable mixture of hydrocarbons (hexane, heptane, octane etc.) derived from petroleum. Merkan for petrol.

Farty's Friday Chart #2

Reaction to the Global Credit Crunch

Something different this time - there could be more than one answer for some pictures. See how many song titles you can come up with. Extra points for originality.

No, not Let's Get Physical by the Revolting Cocks.

Whirlwind

I've been suffering manly in silence from the dreaded Man Flu. I've been at Death's door for three days - yesterday, today and tomorrow - but I've struggled on. Anyway, a couple of aspirin later and it's cleared up. But there's a lot of catching up to do. So without further adieu, a quick clearout of my backlog.

Alice's Restaurant Revisited.
Some bloke's been fined £225 ($450) after his family of five overfilled their wheelie bin, which is emptied every two weeks, by four inches. He now has a criminal record for littering and may be forbidden from joining the army and that as a result. I wonder if the council produced any photos in evidence against him? Yes.

Back Off, Brussels!
Playing the bagpipes has been banned (again - the last time was in 1745) following EU health and safety legislation this time. Noise exposure must not exceed 85 decibels, but the pipes typically peak at 122dB. Pipers have been ordered to turn down the volume or wear earplugs. Since bagpipes don't come with a fricking volume control and pipers can't hear themselves while wearing something designed to prevent them from hearing anything, the poor Scotch now have no way to avoid hearing the missus yapping enjoy their musical heritage.

Does My Bum Look Big In This?
Former Deputy Prime Minister John Prescott has plugged his new book by "confessing" that he suffers from bulimia. Having a former bulemic in the family, I know that the symptoms vary from one person to the next, but always include three familiar signs:

1. The patient thinks they're fat. Check.


2. They stuff their faces in public. Check.


3. They look like skin and bone. Er...

Normal service will resume as soon as I work out what's normal.

Olympics-Free-Zone

Having thought long and hard about this, and also because I have trouble spelling Olympics, I have decided to make this blog an Olympics-Free Zone. It's the least I can do. Well, I suppose I could do less, like not mention China's illegal occupation of Tibet at all. Meh.

Anyway. That's it. No more mention of the Olymics¹ here.

Unless they show any beach volleyball.


Or female gymnastics.


There has to be some room for give and take.

¹ I told you so.

Farty's Friday Chart

I was gonna go for Farty's Friday Figure Feature, but chart is a nice pun on pop music and diagrams and...

Anyway, here's the deal. Every Friday until I get bored, I'll post a diagrammatic representation of a popular song. You guess what it's supposed to be over the weekend. I post the correct answer on Monday. Or Tuesday.

If you have any ideas for songs you'd like to see visualised and can't be arsed to put them in your own blog, email me, MrFarty at blueyonder dot co dot uk, and I'll see what I can do.

Thanks to Salvadore Vincent for the original inspiration with his Venn diagrams and that.

btw, this post done in Firefox after problems trying to upload using IE7. I might not go back.

Merkan-English Dictionary #10

Does it never end? [No - Ed.]

Ok, let's have a wee think...

• Check

What you should do when you want to find out if you can really afford those Jimmy Choo shoes.


• Cheque

What you write in order to "pay" for said shoes. Women can always afford shoes.
Note that when your bank manager asks you to clear your humungous overdraft, under no circumstances should you attempt to offer him a cheque. This will just make him even more cross.


• Rest room

In Britain, where one goes to take a rest. Usually with big, comfy chairs and sometimes even a telly.
In Merka, where one goes for a poo.


• Chaps

In Britain, chaps are blokes. Guys. Men.
In Merka, chaps appear to be what cowboys wear to keep their legs warm.
For some reason, the expression "chaps in chaps" brings to mind a different image altogether. Not that there's anything wrong with that.



• Temperature

When a Brit says it's 32° they mean it's fecking hot.
When a Merkan says it's 32° they mean it's freezing.
The only time we seem to be in complete agreement is when it's minus forty. Even a Glaswegian will admit that's cold.

Toot toot!

Religion, Politics, Stupidity

Says it all, innit? Thanks to Saint Gasoline.

Expelled

I've been ordered to write a post debunking some creationist film called Expelled.

Since I haven't seen Expelled, and don't intend to watch Expelled, and don't like being ordered around by a conspiracy of the scientific élite, I don't think I shall write about Expelled.

Feel free not to link to Expelled yourself.

I'm off to see what my fellow worshippers of His Noodly Appendage have to say about this.

Random Numbers

Sometimes I think I ought to get my head examined, the weird stuff it comes up with.

It's my birthday, again. Whatever. See my profile if you're interested.

Oh, looky, 20,095 hits since I started counting. All them rude words must be helping. Yay for pont neuf bridge cheeky!

TV presenter Mark Speight has committed suicide. Apparently he went into Paddington railway station a week ago and flung himself onto the tracks. Poor bloke died of exposure waiting for a train.

A friend showed me this sign he spotted on holiday in Mozambique:
Click to enlarge.

I'm thinking of doing that "Song Titles as Diagrams" things as a regular Friday thing. Assuming you can keep me fed with ideas. Those in favour?

Song Statistics Diagrams

Holly's Wallabies Part 2

For what has gone before, click here. Now read on...

The hot Australian sun beat down upon the parched outback, baking the rocks and that.


"Gosh, I mean crikey it's hot," gasped Holly, "It's a good thing this hair-dryer has a cold setting."


Meanwhile, out at the old disused mineshaft, a baby sheepling lamb had fallen through a gap in the rusty cover and become trapped. Its frightened mewling barks cock-a-doodle bleats could be heard up to two metres from the opening.

Holly's prize wallaby, Rolf, heard the commotion and leapt into action. Bounding across the landscape in long hops, it was soon well out of sight. Being a dumb animal, it soon forgot all about the sheep.


A couple of days later, Holly was preparing to eat a banana. First she wrapped her fingers around it, grasped it firmly in her hand and thrust it into the special banana-peeling device.


She opened her mouth as wide as she could, eager with anticipation.


And finally she ate the banana.


What? Oh. Right. Rolf came bounding up yadeyadeyada.

To be continued...

Song Titles As Diagrams

British Summer Time

So where's the summer then?



Oh, right. British Summer Time.

*Sigh*

Terminal Decline

Superbitch Naomi Campbell was arrested yesterday after throwing a major wobbly over a lost suitcase at Heathrow's beleaguered Terminal 5.

The tattered old brown leather bag spent several hours stuck in the innards of the chaotic system before finally emerging looking rather the worse for wear.

Her suitcase is still missing.

Song Titles As Diagrams

Keyword Analysis

For those of you who like that sort of thing - and Statcounter tells me you do - here are some of the thing you like.

• song lyrics as diagrams / venn song titles / song statistics diagrams - but this is better


• embra indian photos by private photographer - who knew?


• braai jokes


• what or who could be found gazing at the dawn's early light in march or april - go figure.


• diamond drive - sniff!


• recipe banoffee pie


• better out than in movie quote - and this one


• lorraine kelly flashing tits

Happy now?

LOLHORSE