I'm hoping at the weekend to get a big chunk of AquaGirl 2 written - as it's currently >5,000 words long and I've only covered half a day; and I'm intending this episode to last several days (more water-based training, starting her 'day job', evening computer fiddling, and her first mission), it might take a while longer to finish (although hopefully before a rather portly superhero piloting a rather improbable vehicle makes his seasonal appearance!)
There have been numerous ways devised over the years to control pests. The most obvious is to dig out bottles of pesticide - unfortunately, if they're over-used, they can have damaging impacts on the human population. For larger pests, capture and sterilisation has been used. But what if your pest is an insect?
How about spraying the crops with a wax powder coated with female insect pheromones? It obviously doesn't affect female insects, but for the poor males who pick up the particles and end up wafting female pheromones about the place...
Stephen Fry (possibly the most well-known homosexual in Britain, also actor, comedian and host of QI) has caused a few raised eyebrows over the weekend. In an interview for November's "Attitude" magazine, he apparently said:
"If women liked sex as much as men, there would be straight cruising areas in the way there are gay cruising areas...It doesn't happen. Why? Because the only women you can have sex with like that wish to be paid for it."
Newsbiscuit carries a variety of spoof / satirical news stories, but this particular one (evidently compiled by a history buff) had me chuckling far more than most...
The supposed dating site advert:
‘Young-at-heart widower seeks like-minded companion of child-bearing age for fun, adventure and to sire a male heir to the throne. GSOH and an intolerance of Catholics an advantage.’
The dissatisfied customer? Miss Katherine Parr, age 31. No prizes for guessing who supposedly posted the ad (with obligatory misleading portrait)...
From the company that once advised people asking for driving directions between Europe and the US to "Swim across the Atlantic Ocean", try entering these searches into Google Maps and watch out for some rather suspicious looking directions...
From: Japan To: China (Step 43)
From: Seattle To: Sydney (the suspicious direction appears thrice!)
From: Seattle To: Beijing (both modes of water transport)
Apparently it works for a lot of trans-Pacific routes - but sadly they haven't reimplemented the very long swim on the other side of the globe :(
You may vaguely recall a story I wrote a while ago called "The Genie". Somehow I got this crazy idea in my head of recording myself reading it...
...so at 5:30pm today, trying to ignore the fact the temperature was dropping from 8 °C to 3 °C (hence the thick coat!), I sat at the edge of a local monument and did the deed.
Thinking about the October contest last night, this opening idea came to me while I was dreaming, and was sufficiently wacky for me to recall it after waking...
I've had my little Suzuki Alto since new (2002), and apart from a couple of incidents in late 2004 (one of which involved taking a corner too fast in icy weather, the other someone shunting the car's rear end), I'd driven without incident until last November...
Since Mads and Bev have given their 2p worth, I thought I'd join the club - but to be different, I'll give a rough outline of the weekend's events. I've also deliberately left a lot of it vague, to both tease you and not spoil things in case any of the other attendees decide to write in more detail about proceedings.
Saturday, 5am.
The things I do in the name of fun... waking up at a ridiculously early hour on a weekend to travel half way across the country to spend a weekend with a bunch of random people I've met on the internet. On the one hand, I'm a little nervous and apprehensive (for a variety of fairly obvious reasons); on the other I'm excited about finally putting faces and voices to some of the people whose writing I read every day here on TopShelf.
Oh, and there's also the small matter of this being the third bunch of random internet strangers I've met - the first being regulars on this blog (and what could be stranger than fans of a blog of a radio news magazine show?!); the second being fans / participants of this project held last year.
I saw this pop up in my 'Recommended' list on YouTube, and couldn't resist sharing it. I know we're generally not car nuts here, but this ain't an ordinary "car" (and I use the term tentatively)...
Introducing the Ferdinand GT3 RS. It is an Austrian vehicle (currently on show in the Lentos Museum of Art, in Linz, Austria) built with an "ultra light construction", and all "unnecessary" components have been removed. As a result, it weighs less than 100kg, has zero emissions, and is completely silent.
So what's the catch? Well, one of the "unnecessary" components was the engine...
A decent sized chunk of my next AquaGirl story is going to involve her swimming around in Lake Michigan. But being a UK citizen, I know virtually nothing about it other than what I can dig up on a Wikipedia trawl. So, since I figure some of you probably live a little nearer it than I do, I thought I'd pick your brains... :)
Background: A person who was coming to the end of a secondment from GCHQ (Government Communications Headquarters) to MI6 (Secret Intelligence Service) was discovered dead in his flat, his body contained within a bag within his bath. The first post mortem was inconclusive, and there's speculation he'd been killed two weeks beforehand. As there was no sign of forced entry, it's believed the victim knew his attacker - so his private life is being investigated.
First up, I've started writing AquaGirl 2: Chicago Water Torture
(Well, I couldn't resist another corny aquatic title - and what Rena's about to go through would be torture... for anyone else!)
Secondly, as you read through AquaGirl 1: Born in a Watery Grave, you may have noticed the occasional reference to a Sci-Fi show.
Those references were quite deliberate.
Unless I added any others before compiling the list of references, you should find 18 different references, either hidden in plain sight, alluded to, or otherwise concealed.
As the Comics Retcon Universe expands, so does the amount of information pertinent to it. While some of that information can be conveyed through the stories themselves, the Universe page, and blogs; there's an increasing need for a more centralised storage.
A Roman Catholic adoption charity's appeal to be allowed to discriminate against gay people wanting it to place children with them has been rejected. Catholic Care wanted exemption from new anti-discrimination laws so it could limit services provided to homosexual couples on religious grounds.
The Charity Commission said gay people were suitable parents and religious views did not justify discrimination. The Leeds-based charity said it was "very disappointed".
I've seen a few blog entries over time dealing with California's "Proposition 8" - apparently there's been a last-minute delay in getting it repealed...
A federal appeals court has put same-sex weddings in California on hold while it considers whether the state's gay marriage ban is constitutional.
A three-judge panel in the US Circuit Court of Appeals blocked a lower court's ruling that would have allowed gay marriages to begin on Wednesday.
Police in France are looking for two attractive female thieves who bared their breasts at a man at a cashpoint to distract him before stealing his money. The women in their 20s exposed themselves to the victim as he punched his pin code into an ATM machine in Paris.
How NOT to do Tech Support - over the phone, to a technophobe, half a day after the problem was encountered, when the remote user doesn't have the laptop in front of them.
Oh, and said user is my mother, 40 miles (an hour's drive) away, and the laptop is at my sister's house (she's currently on holiday so left mum in charge of feeding the cat and attempting to learn how to use the internet from scribbled messages on post-it notes), about a mile away from mum.
Bike Resources A.K.A. Your free ‘cut out and keep’ guide to the world of “Easy As Falling Off A Bike”
Just to keep you up to date with what's what in terms of the background resources PS and I have been working on to enhance / extend your enjoyment of the series (and act as an aide-memoire to past events), here's what we have lined up for you:
OK, there's been a lot of serious blogs recently (including Erin pleading for the umpteenth time for us to try and remember to be civil with each other instead of ripping off each other's heads!), so I thought I'd quickly grab a few amusing songs from my YouTube favourites...
Righteo, here we go. Let's kick off with a publicity stunt / fake flashmob by the Swingle Singers.
During that time I've commented on oodles of stories, written 13 short tales and have a fourteenth under construction (plus an abandoned story which I might upload somewhere so others can hijack), and somehow came up with the daft idea of producing background resources for this site's very own soap opera... (not to mention persuading a certain Kiwi to help out!)
Interesting article spotted in this week's New Scientist:
"IN 2010 we need to ask afresh just how deep the rabbit hole goes when it comes to gender politics - and how far we are from digging ourselves out. Our beliefs about differences between the sexes have an impact on society vastly out of proportion to the magnitude of those differences, from female scientists defending their mathematical and technical expertise to boys accused of lacking the communication and emotional skills to succeed at school."
Just in case anyone's been wondering why there's been a distinct absence of comments from me over the past week, I've been temporarily offline.
Well, strictly speaking, my 'net connection's fine, it's just that I've been on a short holiday in the Exeter / Dartmoor area.
In their sports section, Gene Cherry wrote an article covering the results of the 200m sprint at the Prefontaine Classic Diamond League meeting on Saturday. Either Gene was in a funny mood, or someone needs to educate Gene on double-entendres...
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