Generation X......'X' as in Fail

These are genuine G.C.S.E. answers from 16 year olds

Q. Name the four seasons
A. Salt, pepper, mustard and vinegar

Q. Explain one of the processes by which water can be made safe to drink
A. Flirtation makes water safe to drink because it removes large pollutants like grit, sand, dead sheep and canoeists

Q. How is dew formed
A. The sun shines down on the leaves and makes them perspire

Q. What causes the tides in the oceans
A. The tides are a fight between the earth and the moon. All water tends to flow towards the moon, because there is no water on the moon, and nature abhors a vacuum. I forget where the sun joins the fight

Q. What guarantees may a mortgage company insist on
A. If you are buying a house they will insist that you are well endowed

Q. In a democratic society, how important are elections
A. Very important. Sex can only happen when a male gets an election

Q. What are steroids
A. Things for keeping carpets still on the stairs (Oh. Very. Dear)

Q. What happens to your body as you age
A. When you get old, so do your bowels and you get intercontinental

Q. What happens to a boy when he reaches puberty
A. He says goodbye to his boyhood and looks forward to his adultery (sadly this may harbour some truth)

Q Name a major disease associated with cigarettes
A. Premature death

Q. What is artificial insemination
A. When the farmer does it to the bull instead of the cow

Q. How can you delay milk turning sour
A. Keep it in the cow (no denying this one)

Q. How are the main 20 parts of the body categorised (e.g. The abdomen)
A. The body is consisted into 3 parts - the brainium, the borax and the abdominal cavity. The brainium contains the brain, the borax contains the heart and lungs and the abdominal cavity contains the five bowels: A, E, I, O and U (I see a future not involving medicine)

Q. What is the fibula?
A. A small lie

Q. What does 'varicose' mean?
A. Nearby

Q. What is the most common form of birth control
A. Most people prevent contraception by wearing a condominium (admittedly this could work)

Q. Give the meaning of the term 'Cesarean section'
A. The Cesarean section is a district in Rome

Q. What is a seizure?
A. A Roman Emperor.

Q. What is a terminal illness
A. When you are sick at the airport. (no faulting the logic)

Q. Give an example of a fungus. What is a characteristic feature?
A. Mushrooms. They always grow in damp places and they look like umbrellas

Q. Use the word 'judicious' in a sentence to show you understand its meaning
A. Hands that judicious can be soft as your face. (And people say watching too much TV is a bad thing)
Q. What does the word 'benign' mean?
A. Benign is what you will be after you be eight

Q. What is a turbine?
A. Something an Arab or Sheik wears on his head

I'll wager many of these folks went on to gain A* grades in their exams...sheesh.

Because Apparently Being a Poodle Just isn't Quite Humiliating Enough

Read this today and experienced that very special burn you get when orange juice comes out of your nose while laughing......Poodle Cuts

Cool as Ice

It's national ice cream week...yup, I'd never come across this one before either, but I like to be able to do my bit where ever I can....anyhoo, those lurverly people at Del Monte have come up with a fabulous idea...remember this:


I know...take a moment if you need too...well you can now have one of your very own to lick...in ice lolly form:


Hmmm...not too sure about the likeness, but I'm willing to give it a go....in Cranberry, Blueberry or Pomegranate....yum!

24 Degrees C (somewhere in the 70's for those awkward people across the pond)

It's gone all Summer all of a sudden...British weather does have a habit of going from uber cold to uber hot overnight. I actually got my legs out for the first time this season, disbarraging looks from cocky teenagers be damned. I strolled along the prom, I know I'm an actual cliche, with my ham 'n' cheese sarnies and punnet of grapes for some people watching and relaxation while attempting to return some colour to my two crappy summers worth of skin tone...currently representative of eggshell white....hopefully said colour will be a little less lobster red and a little more sun kissed bronzed....although after today's excursion my nose is leaning slightly more towards crustacean coloured than I would have hoped for.

In all, apart from the moment I got sun cream in my eye (holy cow, does that sting!), it was a very pleasant day and I've just finished tucking into a huge bowl of choc and mint choc chip ice cream with a crushed digestives and lashings of dark chocolate sauce....nom nom nom

The forecasters predict more of the same tomorrow so I'm off to find some kind of basting liquid (cooking oil eg) for optimum sizzle potential.

Also, found this today.....lords sake, is it July yet:




Oooo, I hear you say...properly can't wait...mainly since it's been so friggin' long since Torchwood (and more to the point Mr. GDL) last appeared on our screens....In related news, well it isn't really but it's in the weird category so try to stay with me....the other night (and by night I mean 3.30 in the am) I was settling down for the night and noticed some daylight outside...we are approaching the longest day afterall....so I had a look out the window, clear skies were dotted with a few twinkly stars (those which you can actually see due to light pollution anyhoo) and suddenly a large bright white light streaking across the sky...I watched for a full 10-15 seconds as the.....'answers on a postcard'....disappeared behind some low cloud at which point the light intensified and went out....I'm thinking some kind of meteor breaking up....was uber cool though and witnessed by only me and the early birds.

procrastination fodder

While I still have an inability to walk far without causing some kind of mass destruction of inanimate objects due to my inner moppet dizziness I continue to languish within the confines of my bed (room) and therefore am getting up to not a lot....I did come across this which made me chuckle:


And Lori's blog provided a link to this killer of a few minutes of my day http://cpbintegrated.com/theherofactory/ and here's mine:

I Got Nothin'.....

Hopefully I will find something inspirational and/or profound to waffle on about soon, until then some funnies:

Lost Property

The following was found littering the floor of the Thistle hotel under the foot of one Mr. Kavan Smith....no forwarding address has yet been found for the allusive fan it is signed to....


Any persons with knowledge as to their whereabouts please leave comment to arrange collection

Wiring

I've come to conclusion that I'm a person who is wired slightly differently....I find simple things highly amusing that others don't, have started to use the word oood instead of odd, have a habit of retaining useless pieces of information, have a favourite dish which involves mushing fish fingers, baked beans, potato and salad cream into a patty, read a Thesaurus for fun on a regular basis, think that fingerless gloves are not only a stylish fashion accessory but have underrated practical merits and have a ridiculously detailed memory for all things childhood related.....also I have a imagination which sometimes makes David Lynch look like Norman Normalson....exhibit a.) upon dozing this morning I dreamt that I was using the London underground with a friend, we decided to catch a tube to a more unusual sounding station and so left Buzzer for Kyser Beoh (not only do neither of these stations exist in any way shape of form....the trains were not running late.....most oood) and when seated on the train found our ticket inspector to be none other than Hugh Grant, dressed a'la the fat controller from Thomas the tank engine.....hmmmmm, any dream analysers want to attempt a meaning from any of that.

Spring.....For a Day

Well, wasn't yesterdays British weather cunningly disguised as a lovely spring day (so much so that I am already demonstrating another British trait....the English(wo)man's tan)....as opposed to what transcends as a 'Spring' day today. And I got out and about too, to what is fast becoming a favourite spot to wile away a few hours with a good book.

There's a patch of grass several hundred yards shy of Ferring which has a fairly unspoilt view of the Downs to the north and is a mere 'brow of a hill' away from the beach, where a multitude of people gather on a sunny day. This is partly why I am partial to the area, as I can happily amuse myself while being happily amused by others, who are happily unaware they are being amusing. (This is a trait to which my fathers DNA has to be directly responsible, and which my mother is in despair of whenever my father and I put in an appearance together amongst the general public)

So, I do like to keep my ears open when I'm out and about and a grassy knoll just below a beachfront footpath is the perfect place....admittedly in the time it takes for a person to walk by it is a mere snippet of conversation, leaving much up to the imagination (much like flicking through TV channels in an ad break) but that too can be just as interesting.

Some things, however, should just never be overheard by the greater populace. For example the following snippet from a couple of lady cotton tops:

CT 1 "It's the done thing you know, the fashion, it makes it smooth"
CT 2 "Doesn't it chafe?"
CT 1 " I would presume so.....but then if you were orange you wouldn't want it matching would you"

Like I said, imagination......of which I, apparently, have in abundance.

Something in the Air

This morning when I popped out to get the daily rag I noticed a funky smell in the air. As I crumpled my nose against the obnoxious fumes I realised I had a bag of kitchen rubbish in my hand, which I duly deposited into the dustbin at the end of the drive. I turned into the road to walk the few hundred yards to the newsagents, but a few paces in I once again noticed an offensive odour, had I in avertedly trodden in a deposit from the local mongrel community. I duly checked the soles of my shoes….all clean. Slightly puzzled I bought my newspaper (a term which loosely describes the Daily Mirror….but then I only really buy it for Andy Capp) and turned back to the house. The hairs in my nostrils continued to burn away from the odd smell likened only to what farmers spray on the fields….ah, farmers, that must be it, though admittedly those fields are a fair way off, but then there has been a prominent wind in the last couple of days…..and I can smell a bag of doughnuts a half a mile away so it is indeed possible.

It was only when reading the Beeb’s news online did I find I had almost been right in my assumption of the source of the smell….which is apparently….er….Mainland Europe. The strong Easterly winds we have been experiencing have brought to us all the polluted air across the channel and have been accosting sensitive noses all along the South of England…..One more utterly repugnant article to come out of Brussels then.

I realise that not everybody has yet been informed that the odour stems from our European neighbours…..and I’m slightly humoured by the fact that many thousands will be checking for ‘fudge’ smears on the bottom of their shoes for the rest of the day.

Oh....nearly forgot...I hereby dedicate this post to my sister who's Birthday it is today.....take from that what you will.

6 Unimportant Things About Me

I surfed over to cyberspace.....cadet Fireflymoms blog ( http://packofhungrysnails.blogspot.com/ ) the other night and read six things that, although titled as unimportant, were interesting, insightful and borderline obsessive compulsive....and since I was tagged by merely letting my eyes roam over the words on the screen, I feel the need to reciprocate.....although I make no apologies for any odd, geeky randomness which I divulge, so without further ado (your on the edge of your seat I can tell)....Here's 6 Unimportant Things About Me:

1.) I have an interest in the paranormal and, until recently, belonged to a local investigation group who would visit hotels, pubs, houses, castles, woods, gibbets, stone circles and other mysterious areas of interest armed with an allsortment of scientific gizmo's (alas no Proton packs) in an attempt capture a 'Slimer', 'E.T.' or simply disappear into the 'Twilight Zone'.

2.) I hate tomatoes with a passion, can't stand the smell or taste and hate to touch them (which wasn't too much fun whilst working in a supermarket....bag that fruit and veg people!!!).....I do however love Ketchup, go figure.

3.) I once cheated in a sandcastle making competition whilst on holiday at Pontins on the Isle of Wight in 1985 or 6. My castle collapsed while I was digging out the moat, I got all upset and when the kids club host asked me what was wrong I told him another child had trodden on it....nobody owned up, obviously, when he asked for the culprit to come forward and so I won by default....a pencil with the islands famous multi-coloured sand in a glass tube on the end was the prize, which I think I broke shortly thereafter......My sister came second with her Fort like castle design (she would have won if I hadn't gone all hissy fitish, so sorry bout that sis).

4.) I love nothing more than to become engrossed in a bit of research, be it for an essay (not so keen on the actual writing part) a question someone has asked me or my own interests. I will endeavour to thoroughly know the subject or at least know enough to get by......if you ever need to know , who that guy was in that film about the wotsit set in thingymebob, what the legend is surrounding the Yew tree forest at Kingley Vale, which 'Friend' was once in a British advert for Ketchup or the socio-cultural aspects of the televisual representations of Robin Hood....I'm your girl.

5.) I have a large collection of television theme tunes (2,000 and change)...old, new, classic, rare...you name it I've got it, because, lets face it, sometimes the theme tune is the best part of the show.

6.) According to a tour guide in Boston, Ma, my accent is indistinguishable in terms of what region I come from in the UK....The guide said he could place any person merely by listening to them say a few sentences, but couldn't fathom where the heck I was from....This may have been due to the fact that I had travelled through Australia, New Zealand, Canada and various parts of the US before I had reached Boston and had picked up various pronunciations and slang terms along the way, causing my normal British Southern accent to morph into a hybrid of regional colloquialisms with a prominent Aussie twang....to this day....7 years later....the Aussie twang makes itself known when pronouncing certain words, especially after watching an omnibus of Home & Away.

So there you go...if you have a blog and wish to enlighten you are hearby 'tagged'.

My Photobucket Quiz

I'm borrowing this from another Blog out there (Hey Firefly mom if you're tuning in).

So the deal is:

1. Answer the following questions

2. Type the answer into Photo Bucket

3. Post a picture from the first page of results.

Simple huh.....so here's mine

1. The age you will be on your next Birthday.....Twentynine.

2. A place you would like to travel.....Africa

3. A place you would like to live.....Australia

4. Your favourite place....The South Downs

5. Your favourite object.....Jesen Ackles (what....technically he is an object ;-) )

6. Your favourite food....Chocolate....preferrably smothered over my favourite object.

7. Favourite animal....Dolphins

8. Favourite Colour.....Azure

9. The town in Which you were born.....Bognor Regis, West Sussex (K so I was born in Chichester Hospital but I'm a Bognor girl by heart)

10. The town in which you live.....Worthing West Sussex

11. Name of a pet....Henry (my gorgeous cat whom I miss terribly)

12. A favourite celebrity....David Hewlett (how predictable am I....and can I say how utterly fabulous he looks in this particular picture...hehe)

13. Your name/nickname/screename.....Hmmm since Emma and ekidd79 came up with nothin' of any interest I used my other screename Spacehopper79

14. Favourite song....well depends on my mood but I'm quite partial to Rule the World, Take That at the moment (that and the fact that Gercha by Chas 'n' Dave, unsurprisingly, came up with no results)

15. Your middle name....The parentals never bothered with a middle name....apparently coming up with 'Emma' was taxing enough...though if I chose I'd go with.....Philadelphia

16. A bad habit of yours....snacking on junk food (I blame the pretty packaging and the cleverly appealing advertisements....;-) )

17. How do you feel about your life.....Hmmmmm....I'll go with frustrated (It would've been 'meh' but photobucket again let me down)

18. One word describe you....another hard one....Um....wordy is all I can think of (mainly coz I liked the picture which came up)

19. Favourite TV show....now that's just mean, as there are many which I adore for lots of different reasons....I'm going with two shows, one British and one American and this is an 'as of this minute' kind of thing....Torchwood and Stargate: Atlantis.

20. Favourite Movie....jeez another toughie, yet again this usually depends on my mood, but The Goonies never gets old.

So that's me in photo bucket piccies.

Shaken not Stirred

Crikey...I'm proper excited...I just felt my first earthquake....there I was, watching a bit of late night/early morning telly and then my bed moved sideways and the wall shook twice...it wasn't anything massive, nothing fell over, books didn't fly off shelves and to be honest had I still been in the flat in Southampton I wouldn't have thought much about it considering a stiff breeze used to have the same effect (amongst other activities from next door neighbours, which don't need to be explored at this juncture)....hell I only realised it was an actual honest to goodness earth rumbler when I moseyed on over to the BBC news website to check the morrows/todays weather....according to the report Lincolnshire was the epicenter with a 5.3 quake at around 1am...I think that's pretty big by the UK standards...and no doubt every car alarm within several miles woke the residents, that is of course if they slept through the quake itself.....how could a person sleep through an earthquake I hear you ask, well I asked the same of certain people who slept through a certain 'non' hurricane 20 years ago...you know who you are ;-)

I and if you don't believe me here's said news report link:

http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/england/7266136.stm

Worthing's Wood Invasion

Got my computer back...well sort of...it's running ridiculously slow which is very, very frustrating and the story of my life at the moment.

In case you didn't see it on the news earlier in the week Worthing experienced an invasion by the lesser spotted plank creatures...who nearly made a successful attempt at a complete invasion of the town centre until gallant locals took it upon themselves to defend the coast and defeated the invaders armed with saws and hammers capturing and turning them into sheds, decking and occasional tables.....Worthing lives to fight another day.

The only casualty appeared to be...well, me actually...when a huge rock....and by rock I mean shingle....and by shingle I mena pebble.... was thrust unexpectedly into my path...causing a complete balance malfunction.....I have since been nursing a badly sprained ankle and a jean burned knee....and possibly an ego deflation, though I'm sure the builders nearby were laughing at a particularly funny anecdote and had nothing to do with my spectacularly un-lady like display of gravity theory....just what I need the week of P3.

Dad's Little Carrot

Not quite sure what to say about this root vegetable which my father has grown at his allotment....mum thought it was hilarious, but then again she always had a filthy mind....naturally I had to have the logistics of the 'funny' explained, because as you know I am as pure as the driven snow.