The ghosts of pens…

A friend remarked:

If a ghost needs to remember something
- like a telephone number – then she needs to write it on a ghostly sheet
of paper with the ghost of a pen.

Yes, that sounds reasonable.

I think we can all agree that pens don’t have ghosts.

Therefore ghosts can’t remember things.

I disagreed:

The ghosts of many, many pens (and spectacles, and bus passes, and cups,
and paper clips) haunt me daily, as I search for them – and I seem to hear
their silent voices bewailing their disappearance. And socks…

And then someone posted this:

Postcards and letters
T-shirts and sweaters
Passports and Parkas
Mobiles and chargers
Two tennis rackets
Blue Rizla packets
A new sheep-skin jacket
I lost it all

All through my life there have been
Many rare and precious things
I have tried to call mine
But I just cannot seem
To keep hold of anything
For more than a short time
Possessions of a sentimental kind
They were mine, now they’re not

Gym-kits and trainers
Asthma inhalers
Silk-cuts and Bennies
Ten-packs and twenties
C-class narcotics
Antibiotics
The holes in my pockets
I lost it all

All that I’d like is to know
Just where do those lost things go?
When they slip from my hands
Then one night in a dream
I passed through a sheepskin screen
To a green, pleasant land
I found them all piled up into the sky
And I cried tears of joy

Apparently it’s from:

Lost Property – the Divine Comedy.

father, daughter… anybody know this one?

Amazon.co.uk: father daughter

The Wounded Woman: Healing the Father-daughter Relationship by Linda Schierse Leonard (Paperback – 3 Nov 1998)
21 Used & new from £3.99
4.0 out of 5 stars (4)

Books: See all 3,989 items

Technorati Tags: father, daughter, father-daughter bonding

Father and Daughter…?

I want to find some activities for a new father and his daughter, and ideas that weren’t corny “she’s a gurly” stuff. You know, instead of games like “fasten Daddy’s tie” or Valentine party games for your little girl” (which is what Google throws up) (which made me throw up) bat-and-ball tomboy stuff, or gender neutral science experiments. So I went to Amazon, hoping to find some party game books, and found:

7.

Jason Varitek Boston Red Sox MLB 8″ On The Field Bobber

Buy new: $21.99 $20.95

6 Used & new from $20.95

In Stock

› Show only Forever Collectibles items

8.

Dallas Cowboys Tony Romo Forever Collectibles Photo Base Bobble Head

Buy new: $50.00 $19.66

4 Used & new from $19.66

In Stock

› Show only Casey’s items

9.

Indianapolis Colts Peyton Manning Forever Collectibles Knucklehead

Buy new: $40.00 $18.36

4 Used & new from $18.36

In Stock

› Show only Casey’s items

Not offensive, not tasteless? Hmmm

Just passing on a gem discovered by BoredStop.com last February. Not so sure that they got this entirely right. But worth passing on to your friends who like tasteless humour!

Subtle Sex Ad

“Thought you might appreciate the subtlety of this ad, done by a Brazilian ad agency, for a lubricating gel (K-Y equivalent) targeting the French market. They were trying to come up with an ad that is not offensive or tasteless. The picture looks completely innocent until you notice the details… Oh, my God. Look carefully at the details. Apparently, it has created quite a buzz in Europe.”

Wll, the buzz has reached the Munchyrat. No risk of “good taste” here…!

ID cards: “we’re not collecting data..” – UK MInister

The UK Government – ignoring almost universal objections – is taking its first step in launching national ID cards by making a voluntary system operational – in Manchester. The BBC, in a report — Manchester ‘launch’ for ID cards got an amazing quote from them:

“I think it is important to recognise that we’re not collecting some massive accumulation of information about citizens,” said James Hall, chief executive of the Identity and Passport Service.

Of course, that is exactly what they are doing. The ID cards are, effectively, a universal indexing system for all other related data held by Government

Pilots say they are effectively being forced into signing up for the cards, the report adds, with a transcript from the Radio “Today” programme:

“Our members believed the government promise that the ID card would be voluntary,” said Jim McAuslan, general secretary of the pilots’ union Balpa.

“But they now know it is anything but. Our members must have an airside pass to operate aircraft and now discover that to get that pass they must have a national ID card.

“This is coercion and a case of Big Brother knows best.”

Everybody wants the idea dropped. The Government itself is split.

But the Home Office just does what it finds convenient, right? According to FT.com
even in the Cabinet,

Objections have been raised within the cabinet about cost, particularly in light of the need to slash public spending made clear by last month’s Budget.

The Home Office calculates that to introduce the scheme over the next 10 years would cost about £5bn ($8bn) for UK citizens and £379m for foreign nationals. But it argues 70 per cent of these costs would be needed anyway to introduce the next generation of biometric passports. By the plan, people would be given a choice of having an ID card and a passport or only a passport carrying biometric data.

This is a democracy. Presumably, the idea is to find out which way users will vote, rather than pressure groups. So rather than a referendum, we roll it out in a small niche market (airline pilots, foreigners) with hidden compulsion, or in a local area where propaganda will be cheaper?