Life Without Toast - Sibling Rivalry

You have to watch this, it's absolutely stunning:

[Via]

Posted by Matt at 11AM | 0 comments

# inhumaneness: the quality of lacking compassion or consideration for others
# atrocity: an act of atrocious cruelty

I know I know I haven't written in aaaaaaaaages but I have been busy and also haven't been inspired for a while, until today that is.

There is a man who lives near the restaurant where I work. He is probably in his 50's or 60's and quite obviously has some kind of mental illness, what it is exactly I am not sure of, but I see him all the time and he talks to himself in the street always, chatting away, full blown conversations with himself and he makes strange faces a lot. He is always walking up and down the street, up and down, up and down all day. He comes into the restaurant sometimes, for coffee, for soup, for tea, for a chat mostly. He is very obviously lonely. He is not doing any body any harm, ever.

He was in today for his lunch. He always has soup with extra bread. He was sitting there minding his own business talking to one of the waiters. No one else was sitting inside because it was so sunny. Then he went to sit at one of the tables on the terrace, to smoke a cigarette. As he was coming back inside a table of 6 was also coming in. One of them stopped him coming in by putting his foot to the bottom of the door. Why? Because this man is different. He is "strange". "We don't want HIS sort in here". Do we? Why not? Why would we not? He was a customer, a regular customer at that, he was paying, he was not bothering anyone and yet this man, this big bastard in his pink shirt and fancy tie thought that it was right to exclude him because "he's not normal". What's not normal is how unaccepting people are. Anyone different. Get rid of them. Anyone with anything wrong with them physically or mentally. Get rid of them. Or stare at them. Or laugh at them. Or all of those things combined.

Continue reading "The Inhumanity of Humans:" »

Posted by Babs at 1AM | 1 comments

X Marks The Snail, originally uploaded by Matthew Verso.

Three years ago, on a quiet, wet April morning, there was a
profunderance of snails in the "yard" area behind where I work. They
always turned up in droves when the ground was damp. I don't know what
came upon us, but we decided to mark a few of the snails on their
shells, using (non-toxic) "Tipp-Ex" with x's, y's and z's, in a
science-experimenty fashion.

Today, the day after a drizzley bank holiday, an old friend turned up,
making his way back to the flowerbed from the drying yard.

Posted by Matt at 9AM | 3 comments

For the day that's in it:

NOT SAFE FOR WORK (both the song AND the video).

Song by Jonathan Coulton, video by Mike Spiff Booth.

Posted by Matt at 12PM | 0 comments

Dead Chestnut, originally uploaded by Matthew Verso.

This is the chestnut tree in my parent's garden that I had a treehouse
in when I was a kid, about 20 years ago or more. It has since died
but, being a tree, it will be there for a few more years yet, and will
then be a splendid source of fuel for my "old pair". It's covered in
fungus, canker and incredibly gnarled, pale bark.

I think it's beautiful.

Posted by Matt at 3PM | 0 comments

Having realised that I haven't done a proper "blog post" on this here blog for quite a while, I give you this:

...And a promise that my next post will be soon, and will almost definitely be an extended review of Grand Theft Auto: Chinatown Wars for the Nintendo DS, which I'm almost finished, and which contains semi-lethal levels of awesomeness.

Ciao for now.

Posted by Matt at 1PM | 1 comments

Fog, originally uploaded by Matthew Verso.

Posted by Matt at 11PM | 3 comments

It's my old tricycle from Le Eighties made all nice and shiny and new again for Isobel, she doesn't even know about it yet, I can't wait to see her face. Ah the glorious days I spent tricycling about the place, under tables, under peoples legs, out the back of the house on the path way and drive way, wind in my "airy fairy" hair, plasters all over my legs, marmite on my cheeks, kittens all over the shop. I loved that trike with all of my heart, Raleigh Special with frogs on the seat, peddling away like I was free as a bird.

I think the reason why I loved it so much was because the siblings were too big to have a go of it so it was all mine all the time. I have some vague recollections of falling off it a few times. Poor me when I was three.

My Dad is the best Dad and the best Granddad for Izzers ever for fixing it all up so it's like new again!

Posted by Babs at 2PM | 5 comments

...You appear to have some brown crap on your forehead?

*or Madam.

Posted by Matt at 11AM | 0 comments

I took this video of Andy (who friends will know, and frequent visitors may know from the podcast) on Killiney hill AGES ago, and meant to do something with it. I found it in my video library the other day, and decided to do this:

I'm sure you'll all agree that it's mildly amusing.

_{[Yes, I know the quality is pants, it's not YouTube's fault, it's my old crappy camera.]}

Posted by Matt at 12PM | 2 comments

Inspired (I seem to be getting a lot of inspiration these days) by Meg, here's my "Tweetstats".

Points of interest: I've been Twittering since March 14th, 2007 at 1.04pm. I have updated (to date) 4,591 times, with a daily average of exactly 7.0 Tweets. I Tweet mostly on Wednesdays and/or mostly between the hours of 12pm and 1pm. The only statistical anomalies are July '07 (when I was in Alaska for most of the month) and October '08 when I spent the month getting married and honeymooning in South Africa, Botswana and Mauritius).

I'm not going to post all the graphs (you can see them at the "Tweetstats" link, above), but I am going to post the Wordle of my most frequently used words, #1 of which is "work" (boring!).

(all @replies have been removed).

What are your Tweetstats, fellow Twitterers?

Posted by Matt at 11AM | 0 comments

Inspired by Dragon's Tweet from earlier today, here's Pop Will Eat Itself on The Late Late show in 1995.

The band had initally been told they would be performing live, but during rehearsals were informed they would have to lip-synch the track instead. So the wrapped sellotape around their faces, simulated having sex with each other, and trashed their instruments half-way through the song, even as the track continued playing. Worth watching for the shot of the audience (before the band started playing) at about 1m 25s in, and for the end where there is absolutely no reaction, positive or negative, from the blue rinse brigade which the audience was almost entirely comprised of.

Posted by Matt at 4PM | 6 comments