Moreish

Until a few years ago, I had been under the misapprension that the word "moreish" (or morish, as I believe either spelling is acceptable) when used to describe food was in fact "moorish", as in "relating to the moors" (as correctly used to describe architecture), because the food of the moors was so delicious, addictive, and basically once you popped you just couldn't stop etc. The other day I mentioned to Tucola the error of my ways, which he found amusing and said it was an example of my over-education. Funnily enough though, earlier today, one of the tax associates and one of the tax partners had an argument with a few of the secretaries as to whether there was a word "moreish" (the debate was sparked off my some most excellent fizzy sweets produced by afore-mentioned secretaries), the fee-earners refusing to believe the secretaries (correct) assertion that there was. Ultimately, a dictionary was produced and the two lawyers obviously had to eat humble pie (though they were muttering something about it not being the "queen's english" blah blah) much to the delight of the secretaries. Maybe we are all over-educated buffoons, and secretaries should run the country? Or maybe its just tax lawyers.. The incident also reminded me of Joey Tribiani... Joey: All right, Rach. The big question is, "does he like you?" All right? Because if he doesn't like you, this is all a moo point. Rachel: Huh. A moo point? Joey: Yeah, it's like a cow's opinion. It just doesn't matter. It's moo.

Scooby Doo

Scooby Don't, more like.

Back from a cracking week away in Greece. Thanks for looking after the place in my absence.

Interesting point: I set off on holiday at 5am on Sunday morning, with a crippling hangover - absolutely bloody awful - but three hours kip on the plane seemed to cure it totally and I came up smiling at lunchtime. Now that would never usually happen... is it a known fact that planes cure hangovers? Maybe it's the cabin-pressure or something?

Has anyone noticed...how many times car drivers try deliberately to kill motorcyclists?
Bloody idiot today who kept creeping forward into the road looking only in one direction (not mine i might not need to add). Traffic coming solidly in the other direction so I continue along in front of him and he keeps pulling out...
What the f?

(just keeping some of the traditional site content going in tc's absence)

Tucola is still on holiday...

...which perhaps explains why I am finding it difficult to post things without having to type them out several times. What I was trying to say was that one topic of conversation which I have always been interested in is that part of the female anatomy which George Macdonald Fraser affectionately refers to as the "top hamper". To this end, I heard a story the other day about a friend of a friend (I know it sounds tenuous, but stick with it) who was going to the gym because, and these are her words, HER BOOBS WERE TOO BIG. Not her backside, not her belly, but her breasts. I do not understand. I am also fascinated by this simple statement. I did not believe that such a thing were possible. I am given to believe that she is an otherwise very slim young lady so presumably this is an attribute which most women (and almost all men, apart from Chrishola) would find desirable. I am joining the gym.

Tucola is on holiday

So I am going to take over his site with inane banter of my own. Don't worry weblog fans, it WILL NOT have anything to do with motorcycles or how rubbish my job is. Unfortunately that leaves me (and the rest of this site) rather devoid of material until the football season starts. So, Rio, eh? £30 million, eh? You could buy a lot of fish n chips with that.

"The perverted act of intentionally fondling the bare bottoms of female clients cannot be, and is not, part of the practice of law"

The Labour Party should apologise for leading us to believe that if we vote them in they're going to review licensing hours and stop making pubs shut at 11, and then doing nothing about it for 4 years. And then repeating their promise before the last Election and once again doing sod-all.

Got the new Chilli Peppers record yesterday. After a couple of listens, sounds pretty good. Maybe I'll report more fully later, but I'd say definitely buy it if you liked Californication.

Real life Dr Evil can't afford to wipe out world population

An unsolicited email (full text available to anyone interested!) led me to this website. It strikes me that with technology having reached the state it has, the main force preventing some maniac wiping out the entire world population is that nobody stupid enough to want to wipe out the entire world population can afford the means to do it. There are certainly, and almost certainly have always been, people who are really pissed off with the world and would like to wipe out humanity - most people at some point in their teens, probably! Fortunately almost all of them are rendered harmless by lack of cash. The author of the website referred to above seemed a good potential Dr Evil, but thought I ought to check so sent him this email: You hold in your hand a vial containing a deadly virus. If you crush the vial the virus will escape and eventually infect and kill (shall we say painlessly for the sake of argument) every single fake. The virus only affects fakes and will leave yourself, your ally and everyone else of similar mindset alive. Perhaps only 3 or 4 people in the world would be left. Would you do it? Those of you who are sufficiently well versed in the classics will recognise that this is almost a straight quotation from "Dr Who and the Genesis of the Daleks". His response was: I see no reason why not use it. If I don't have time to think about it I would probably do it, if I do have time to think about it I'd try to consider as many factors as possible just in case. The only misc. factor that I see as being quite vital is to know that at least some of the people left would be female since we wouldn't have access to any cloning technology with society gone, and without offspring it would be quite unlikely to build a new generation. In the exact situation you described there would be no particular urgency in using this vial so I would imagine some preparation would make sense. Also I see no particular relevance of it being "painless" since pain is nothing more then a biological reaction to certain stimuli. I also don't think it's extremely important that every single one of those like us is left alive as long as the number remaining is enough to start with (that is, if the vial had risk of killing some that think like us it should still be acceptable as long as we knew the number remaining would be enough to proceed with). I'm only answering this because it's a catchy question, I doubt this communication will go much further because of the very little effort you put in your contact attempt. Not quite as rousing a speech as the one Davros made (where he started off along the same lines saying he would use the virus, and ended up ranting about how Daleks would rule supreme etc) but quite mad nonetheless. I just hope this guy doesn't have any cash...

Geoff has done the math - "I was out the other day in a kind of sports 'r' us warehouse and looked at a 90 litre rucksack which was just under £100. my immediate reaction was that this was bloody expensive per litre. trying to prove myself wrong i worked out that the flat i live in is about 230 cubic metres which would equate to 230,000 litres i think. this works out at £253,000. scarily i would guess that this is exactly the current market value of our flat.

Conclusion: people who say camping is cheap are fooling themselves and getting wet in the process".

Do you realise that this site has been going for over a year now?

Scary piece in the Times about how life expectancy in Africa has fallen to 19th Century levels due to AIDS. There's another piece about a possible vaccine within 5 years.