Recently in Gibberish Category

Never one to miss a trick, IKEA have designed kitchens to suit our potential leader's personalities.

Link: IKEA's Political Kitchens

The Telegraph reports that Amy Winehouse has updated her Facebook status. Woo.

[Via Telegraph.co.uk]

Nick Abbot, 24th October 2009:

The Prime Minister was confident, his party was certain, the City seemed sure and economists and the press were agreed. Britain had come out of recession and green shoots pushed up through dead brush of the down turn and covered the landscape for as far as the eye could see... And then The Centre For Inconvenient Truths, or The Office Of National Statistics as it's known, let slip that our economy had shrunk again in the last quarter and we were still waist deep in the clag of recession. Which means that the financial wisdom of the PM, his party, the experts in the City, the nation's economists and the press could be written on the back of a wine gum! That is if you could buy one... which, without a photo ID, you cannot.

A 15 year old boy attempted to acquire a packet of the multi-coloured sweets from his friendly local 99p store. This resulted in failure as he was patently too young to consume alcohol and it clearly hints at its presence on the packet. "They contain wine!" said the alert shop keeper. "Look. WINE Gums. It says it right there, on the label." The lad was forced to hand back the forbidden confection and received a full refund of ninety-nine pence, which amounted to three kilograms of loose change, causing a hole in his pocket, and an unrefreshed palette. A full investigation by the store's management put the over-zealousness down to an 'unfortunate glitch'. Which is no way to describe a member of their staff...

The same phrase could be appended to an incident in the skies of Minneapolis this week, when a passenger jet overshot the airport by a little bit. Or 150 miles to be exact. Ground staff frantically tried to raise the alarm, Air Force jets were on standby to intercept, hijack procedures were commenced and then stood down, and then, after an hour of silence, the pilots got back in touch. "We weren't sleeping," they said. "We were just arguing." Must have been a fascinating discussion to make them forget to land an air liner with 144 passengers in the back. Perhaps they were disagreeing over the return to economic prosperity? Or maybe they were drunk on Wine Gums, or smashed on Beer Nuts, or tripping on Acid Drops.

Wise words.

[Via Nick Abbot's LBC Podcast. Links via BBC News, The Daily Mail and The Guardian]

Possibly the best way to learn about circuits and circuit diagrams... through sweets!

Genius.

This is so incredibly fabulous.

A letter has been handed out to pensioners at the Odeon, in Leicester, accusing them of "unacceptable" and "juvenile behaviour" at a Senior Screen event. The three-page, unsigned, document was passed out to customers at one of the weekly showings at the cinema, in Freemans Park, earlier this month. It said the behaviour was having a "negative, Draconian impact on what was once a happy occasion".

There are either some wonderfully youthful senior citizens in Leicester, or the economic downturn has had a large effect on their pockets...

Customers were accused of threatening, pushing, poking, bullying, harassing and intimidating staff, saving seats for friends and queue-jumping. Concerns were also raised about guests abusing the free tea and biscuits handed out, with the letter stating "...guests have been known to line multiple pockets of clothing and Tupperware boxes with biscuits..."

What is wrong with that? The biscuits are free, take advantage!

One woman, who asked not to be named, said: "I think it is unnecessary. I'm sure it is just a few people and only on the odd occasion when these things happen.
"There is no need to make us all feel guilty."

However, Christine Hewkin, from Aylestone, said she felt the cinema was right to highlight the behaviour. She said: "I think the Odeon has made a fair comment. This type of behaviour has been going on for a long time and it will continue to go on if the cinema doesn't make a stand. It is annoying when you have queued and waited to find all the good seats have been saved for people who haven't even arrived yet."

A spokesperson for Odeon Cinemas said: "Odeon Leicester would like to apologise for any upset caused to its Senior Screen customers. "In response to a significant number of specific requests, a letter was issued by the cinema to its Senior Screen customers based on the feedback the cinema had received in relation to customer behaviour. Odeon Leicester would like to reassure guests the letter was only issued in an attempt to ensure everybody could continue to enjoy the same positive experience at Senior Screen performances. Odeon is committed to entertaining film fanatics of all ages and is extremely proud of the Senior Screen season. Odeon's Senior Screen sessions will continue to operate as normal."

How amazingly petty.

Via: BBC Radio Five Live and This Is Leicestershire.

From Digital Spy's Odd Section:

A goat has been detained on suspicion of armed robbery, police in Nigeria have confirmed.

A group of vigilantes caught the animal and took it to the Kwara state force where they alleged that it had attempted to steal a Mazda 323, reports Metro.

The local group claimed that a criminal had used black magic to transform himself into a goat in order to escape the scene.

Police spokesman Tunde Mohammed said: "The group of vigilante men came to report that while they were on patrol they saw some hoodlums attempting to rob a car. They pursued them. However, one of them escaped while the other turned into a goat.

"We cannot confirm the story, but the goat is in our custody. We cannot base our information on something mystical. It is something that has to be proved scientifically, that human being turned into a goat."

Back in 1809 on this day (a month ago - I was never any good at anniversaries...), Charles Darwin was born.

As you probably know, Darwin was the father of evolution...

Plus he had a great beard.

Speaking of great beards, it turns out Abraham Lincoln was born on the same day.

I wonder if anyone else born on February 12th 1809 had fantastic facial hair?

[via Richard Dawkins]

I have no idea what hippies have to do with this, apparently they tend to add things like [Stop] Eating Animals. To be honest, I'm not really aware of many hippies at all within the vicinity of Leeds. But a sticker to append a stop sign with "Hammer Time!" - that would be fabulous.

I wish I could think of another example...

I hate that song.

Anyway, after noticing that the last few posts have been overly long resulting in a massive front page, I'm trimmed some of the older ones down (Lucky Soul For Christmas Number One! and A Selection Of Winter Photos) for the soul reason of making your life easier. How kind is Mr Xerox today?!

There is a new page available. I have an 'About HSX' page now, with links to various places and handy things you might want to know. Or not.

Speaking of which, I've now tidied up the main page, by moving the Music section (the Last.fm radio, recently played music and so on) out of the middle column into About HSX. And I've also tidied up most other pages by removing all the clutter on an individual entry - the statistics, categories, links etc. that are found on the main blog page aren't on any of the others. If I've worked things out correctly anyway!

The final big change is the removal of the photo slide from everything but the main page too, again in the interests of decluttering.

Smaller changes:

• The appearance of the RSS feed link and the Bloglines button to fit in with the rest of the far column. It always looked a litle out of place having a bullet point and the Bloglines button being right underneath. It's subtle,but isn't that what design is about?!


• Contact line added at the foot of each page.

One thing I wanted to make but so far can't get to work, is a page with a contact form on it. I'll keep trying!

Last year's Doctor Who Christmas Special, Voyage Of The Damned, (link contains a synopsis, in case you haven't seen it...) was a highlight of my TV viewing. Indeed, it attracted 50% of the viewers watching at that time - a feat which is quite rare in this multi-channel age I would have thought.

Anyway, the run up to the show being aired was shrouded in secrecy. We knew that it would guest star Kylie Minogue opposite David Tennant. we knew that it would follow on from series three's end, when Titanic crashed through the TARDIS walls. And... that was about it.

There were rumours of Woody Allen appearing in it, along with many others. But the BBC, quite rightly, kept its cards close to its chest. After all, if I'd known what would happen, it would have spoilt my viewing!

Anyway, wanting to find out some clues, The Telegraph went to Cardiff during the filming and interviewed some of the locals, trying to tease information out of them.

To cut a long story short, and to avoid plagiarism by blatantly copying the whole article (!), there is an interesting link between myself and David Tennant.

According to a barman at City Canteen, described as "Cardiff's uber-trendy media hang-out", Tennant's favourite drink is "a pint of Guinness with a shot of Tia Maria." Now, in my drinking days, this was my favourite drink too.

I was often ridiculed for allowing Guinness to be tainted in such a way, but it enhances the flavour of the drink and, obviously, increases the alcohol content!

Since then, I have stopped drinking altogether, cut out alcohol from my diet - another thing that surprises people when they find out - but to have a little link like that to someone I admire is great!

The Doctor & HSX: linked by drink!