The cake gremlins....

that recently plagued my pc appear to have gone. A souvenir photograph was left on the door of my fridge. It's a group photo and all are giving me the finger except one that's showing off its bottom. Makes a lovely memoriam given Fat Trev ate the lot as they attempted to make good their escape. By all accounts his attack was silent swift and deadly. None survived. Problem is they'd become infused with RAM and now Fat Trev burps the noise of fax machines and modems. When he farts bubbles of algorithm shush by. And his shit, man! You could say that of late my business has becomes Fat Trev's business but that wouldn't be funny. One disconcerting phenomena is the recurrent synthesis of humidity and harmonics, particularly troublesome on warm still nights. These are strange nights when it's not equations but the eerie sound of my privacy that often whispers through the bins out back. Voices half heard on the drift, fading like old radio signals. Trouble is the embarrassing stuff has started leaking most. Notes to old girlfriends, begging letters to old friends, things I've ordered in plastic, the burro (hey, it was on offer). I'm hoping to be around when Trev farts out my e-mail address book, I've even boiled a jar to catch it in. Well, I actually boiled 10 jars and offered the local tots £5 for whoever can capture the most. Yesterday morning I occasioned on two of them squeezing Trev like a toothpaste tube but nothing of use emerged. A third tot suggested to the other two that they jump on him a few times to loosen up the innards but they relaxed their grip and he escaped. 3 inches of runny msdos doth not a summer make I later lamented pressing a penny into three small palms latticed with base configurations. They seemed happy but that's six year olds for you, no sense of what things are worth.

Not seen Trev since yesterday.

The tots liked my joke about the constipated mathematician who worked it out with a pencil.

Funny, not seen them since that joke.

Hmmmm.

I mentioned a couple of blogs ago...

that I had goldfish in my yard pond. Well, not anymore. They are kaput. I think they pooed themselves to death. I got some plants instead, much less maintenance required and they don't give you any lip.

I read a book that said fish poo was the enemy of your pond fish and it recommended filtration as a means of keeping the pond, well, shit free. These filtration systems were not only expensive but also huge. A system to serve my tiny pond came with its own barn and outhouses and drew so much power it required a small nuclear boiler (not included) to keep the uv strips aglo. To assist the water's ambient temparature and establish green credentials coolant discharged directly into the pond. Superficially a clever idea until the next generation of fish arrive. Two streets from where I live someone bought a similar system that leaked and literally within a couple of Koi generations (Naples Koi that is) most of the fish were practicing law. Shortly afterwards the owners were evicted and driven into bankrupcy, it was blunt brutal and to the point. Harry High Hat, the top cat in my alley told this to me over a glass of laudanum one evening so it must be true. Ergo, because I like my house no filtration was purchased. Tough on the fish but hey, it was either them or me.

(photo courtesy of my mobile phone)

My pc...

has gremlins. None of my software glitch fixers seem able to stop the system being really, really, really slow. And I mean snail pace here. At night I sometimes hear muffled singing dancing and laughter coming from the hardrive casing. I suspect there's agambling adrinking and afornicating going on as well. Comes to something when the innards of my computer lead a more exciting life than me. Well, I'm gonna put a stop to it. Gonna take the machine and get it fixed. Then it's either back to he grindstone for those lazy electronic fuckwits or the scrapheap.

There will be no mercy.

Apparently...

some students in Vietnam are wearing wigs as a means of cheating exams. Said wigs are reported to be stuffed with electronic hardware so associates can forward correct answers to examinees. Teachers became suspicious when students wearing 18th Century North European headgear began arriving for an important matriculation. Unfortunately heavy horsehair and South East Asian temperatures mix not and a number of sweating students short circuited and therefore, in more ways than one, failed. Some were mortified to discover they could only receive the BBC's South Asia Service and one became linked to a passing NSA satellite that insisted his name was Dominique. Missiles were prepared on the US Indian Ocean fleet until someone established that phrases such as,

"Well it was on page bloody 23 last night,"

and,

"The answer's pi r squared dammit. Bollocks, your doing literature? I thought it was physics!" Who is this? Get off the line."

were not Al Qaeda attack codes.

Expect arrests and renditions soon.

On a separate wig issue, the true story of their demise has a connection to those modern student japes reported above. As the 17th Century drew to a close wigs developed an ostentation not previously seen. With the expansion of cities and particularly London land prices put the promise of a country home beyond the reach of those previously considered wealthy. For a short period during the 1750's a number of wigs were marketed with smallholdings knitted into the thatch. The idea was stunning in it's brilliance and would have worked but for a series of highly publicised deaths by conflagration. The foppish rich (and isn't it always them) seeking to make savings through reduced staff numbers were unaware that at night fire requires careful husbandry, or at the very least to be put out. At nightfall throughout London sightings were reported of a phenomenon initially thought to be huge horizontal matches with brightly burning heads. Only on closer examination was it discovered they were in fact rich people with brightly burning heads. Many of these heads were stolen by urchins to the East End where a spattering skull properly maintained could provide heat to a poor family for months.

Smallholding and country house wigs soon fell from fashion though one concomitant fact did not escape rationalists of the time. The 10 years during which these rich fools fought to establish this ridiculous fashion and during which many fell foul of their own foolishness was also the only decade in that century when syphilis showed a decline.

There's something poetic about that, dontchathink?

Last week I had cause...

to remember the story of the Princess and the Pea. It ends when the princess is finally proved to be royal by suffering a disturbed night atop 16 or so mattresses beneath which hides a single pea. Is that spoilt, or what?

Many years ago I discovered a sleepless night often follows the eating of toast in bed. Not sure if that proves anything, other than foolishness.

Someone once told me of this woman who took to her bed and stayed there for 30 years, wees and poos aside that is. By all accounts she liked to chop wood in bed, with an axe, for the fire. As the years passed and her eyesight weakened she took to lopping not just wood but also bits of leg as well. Slowly, almost imperceptibly she chopped her way upwards until only the arms, shoulders and head remained. She convinced her children it was the right thing to do by claiming it would make for a cheaper funeral. Finally the day arrived when she was reduced to one arm and a head. The children, by then tired of their mother's eccentricity but inspired by her thrift decided not to wait for death. Instead they turned what was left upside down and made a nice hanging basket for the garden.

The moral of this story is: don't piss your children off by chopping wood in bed.