Not a wildly exciting day today, but I found this cannon in the office garden. Maybe someone is preparing for that Covid Apocalypse. I will keep a close eye out for tanks and fighter planes, and keep you posted,
In more important news, I had a dream last night that one of our gardens was filled with hundreds of tiny sloths (you could fit a few in your hand). They were definitely sloths and had little sloth faces, but they were also a bit slimy and could run about very fast, so they weren’t your average sloth. I told my boss about the dream and suggested we should work out where you can buy them and she reluctantly agreed. So hopefully I’ll be working with slimy sloths soon.
Now I’m watching Tiger King (a few months late as always) and wondering if you’d have the same fuss over sloths as pets. To be clear, I think keeping tigers OR sloths as pets is wrong, but I still imagine sloth breeders being a bit more chill. I guess it’s difficult to be macho over a sloth.
I’ve been a bit shoddy posting words, so here are a selection.
Clamjamphrie – rubbish, nonsense, rabble. Or (from the Urban Dictionary) a gathering of idiots.
Cockalorum – boastful and self-important person. Looking this up online led me to Ultracrepidarian – one who offers advice beyond their field of knowledge. And Ninnyhammer – idiot.
Numquid – an inquisitive person (note: I check these words online because they come from an old dictionary and might be inaccurate or a bit wrong. For this one, I can only find the translation of this as a Latin word, but supposedly it is an English word in its own right.)
Quiddle – a fastidious person.
Today I’ve started learning the flags of the world on Memrise.com. I learnt ten, I know I will have forgotten them tomorrow. This may take a while.
Word of the day: Emberlucock – to confuse; to bewilder
“Prime numbers are what is left when you have taken all the patterns away. I think prime numbers are like life. They are very logical but you could never work out the rules, even if you spent all your time thinking about them.”
― Mark Haddon, The Curious Incident of the Dog in the Night-Time
I’ve enjoyed my bubble today. I did a YouTube workout. I thought I was fairly fit, but I nearly died. Felt smug though. I ate a garlic bread baguette that has been clogging up the freezer for a while. I tried to learn some new insults, and discovered that neek is a cross between a nerd and a geek.
Now to those (like me earlier today) who don’t know what the difference is between a geek and a nerd. A geek is more of a collector and consumer, excited by things such as movies, music and the memorabilia that comes with them. A nerd is more academic, obsessed with accumulating knowledge in their specialist field. Both tend to be obsessive.
So I’m in London, land of blitz spirit and denial, greed and disaster. Hunkered down in England’s plague-pit, I promise you all, everything is going to be absolutely fine.
Mood: Sort of itchy and news-obsessed. Waiting for doom to knock on the door.
Weather: Sunny, blue sky, little fluffy clouds. Distinctly inappropriate weather for a global catastrophe. Anyone would think nature was fine about our impending ending.
Word of the day: Impest – to infest with plague or pestilence.
“Life changes fast. Life changes in the instant. You sit down to dinner and life as you know it ends.”
The Year Of Magical Thinking, Joan Didion
It’s been a while since I posted. I just finished writing my book yesterday (woohoo!) I’ve got my head to a somewhat settled place, and a huge disaster is sweeping through everywhere except Botswana and Yemen. The UK government is doing a great job of making a plan up as they go along, London may soon go into lockdown, but I’m still working. Working is actually pretty nice, it feels like we’re a lifetime away from danger when we’re out with the flowers and the robins.
How about all of you? (going to have a look in a minute) Are you isolated? Healthy? Scared or complacent?
Note: for anyone isolating and bored, the above picture was made using the website http://weavesilk.com/ If, like me, you like making beautiful and impressive pictures, but don’t really have any talent or skills, then this is the website for you. Click and drag ineptly as you like and the results will be delightful. The controls in the left hand top corner give you enough variety to keep it interesting. A seriously soothing site.
Thought I’d try with the artificial inspiration again, and I got one for all the lovely guys out there, I hope this wisdom can make your day.
Unfortunately the one I got a while ago for women isn’t quite so chirpy.
Still no sign of Brennan.
“I know I’ve made some very poor decisions recently, but I can give you my complete assurance that my work will be back to normal. I’ve still got the greatest enthusiasm and confidence in the mission. And I want to help you.”
Found some writing on the pavement near where I live, written in (I hope) paint.
Was wondering if this could tie into the zombie response vehicle and bone I came across a while ago. Is there something dangerous lurking out here on the edge of London? I tend to walk around listening to music, so if I need to hear them to find them, I’m probably missing them altogether. On the other hand, I’m not being fooled by the fake sounds.
Word of the day: Secretary – one who is privy to a secret
Nothing happened today. Zero. So I thought I’d share some unusual inspiration. Usually inspirational quotes make me feel lonely. Like peering through the window of a party I’m not invited to because I don’t relate to the perky thinking. Not that I’m miserable, I think life can be beautiful and people can be great and possibilities are endless if we can figure them out. But all the gushing sentiment rings hollow to me. It’s twee.
Then I discovered online artificially intelligent inspirational quotes (ie a computer creates them using existing inspirational quotes as a template). They tend more towards the bizarre, the nonsensical and the cynical, which suits me to a t. And who can disagree with ‘Choose not to be horrible’?
And this is something we all need to remember, right?
Word of the day: Afflatus –divine breath, inspiration
Collective nouns for cats: Clowder, Clutter, Pounce, Nuisance, Glorying, Glare
Some of you might remember I found a stone cat in the railing at work with a message on the back to contact Facebook and re-hide the cat. Well, I have now added a few new cats to the collection and I need to work out where to put them.
I’m thinking the story is that original cat has been missing for a week because she’s been playing around with other cats, and now she has a family of cats with her (her own babies? a cat cult? a Top Cat gang?) .
I’ve been trying to work out where to put them. Any ideas? It has to be somewhere secluded enough for me to not be noticed putting them out, but not so secluded no one finds them. Another park railing might be good or under a bush. Although neither is very inspired.
Oh and I found this important letter today, sadly no one was around to return it to, but I feel its message will resonate with younger sisters everywhere.
Well, it’s looking like the mystery of the black star has been solved. Although the answer itself may be a diversion, a trick to pacify us. Claims of Illuminati, black holes and aliens are still under consideration.
Weather: blazing!
Mood: chirpy
Word of the day: Hypogeal – underground
So the black star update:
The gorilla blogger, Matt Johnson (unusual name for a gorilla) did some searching around and came up with a theory to explain the star (for anyone who missed the beginning of this, there are stars on the ceiling of tube trains in London and NOBODY else appeared to have noticed them or knew what they were).
The website he linked to had this comment, which I didn’t read properly at the time.
And look out for the little star on the ceiling, that indicates the floor hatch for lifting Negative shoes.
Then after posting on a London underground forum, I got lead to another post, which led to some comments under an article about the underground, and this said basically the same as Matt’s research.
The blue stars are an indication of where the shoes are on the train, in case they need to be lifted. They were on all the old Victoria line trains and are on the baker loo as the trains are basically the same.
For anyone confused about negative shoes, this is the wiki description of shoes. Somebody had fun coming up with names for stuff.
Electric railways with third rails, or fourth rails, in tunnels carry collector shoes projecting laterally (sideways), or vertically, from their bogies. The contact shoe may slide on top of the third rail (top running), on the bottom (bottom running) or on the side (side running). The side running contact shoe is used against the guide bars on rubber-tired metros. A vertical contact shoe is used on ground-level power supply systems, stud contact systems and fourth rail systems.
I suspect it’s the vertical contact shoe that needs lifting and is marked by the star (which I still say is black.)
So I’m going to leave the mystery alone for now, but it won’t be forgotten. I suspect London is full of odd little mysteries, I’d like to connect some of them up. Any ideas how?
inkbiotic 