Recent search engine queries leading to this blog, some of which are frankly terrifying, include:

• there is a frog in my bidet
  
• Kuala lumpur and coffee and dung
  
• wildebeest sounds
  
• fashion backstage voyeur blog
  
• arse gerbils
  
• stuffed purple donkey
  
• Grey Spot on left bollock
  
• nasal fuckage
  

Nasal fu... excuse me? What? How? For the love of God, WHY?

Where the hell has July gone, then? It's been one of those months that just zips past. A lot of busy-making stuff has happened, though, and they do say that time flies when you're getting up every night at 2am to deal with grumpy children.

Until yesterday I had no idea that there was such a thing as a tongue virus, but apparently I have one. My tongue has been itching (yes, your tongue can itch, trust me on this) for a few days now, so I went to see the local doc and he pronounced me to be absolutely fine apart from having a viral infection of the surface of the tongue. It's not serious and there's no medication required, because supposedly it'll go away by itself after a week or so. Meanwhile, I have to avoid eating anything very salty or spicy, not because it'll make the virus worse but because it hurts like buggery when I do, as I discovered to my detriment when I tried the new Curried Anchovies dish they're selling in the office canteen.

Yet another miscellaneous lurgy to add to my collection. I wonder if I'm a hypochondriac if I actually do get lots of weird illnesses?

Today I shall be mostly talking about inventions, because it is what I feel like talking about. Here are a bunch of daft things people have invented and patented (you can see more of them, including pictures, here):

• Deer Ears - a set of headphones with large swivel-jointed artificial deer ears attached to the earpieces. Simply wiggle your new ears in the direction you would like to hear better!
  
• Leaf Chaps - a pair of trousers with a webbed netting attached between the legs and running from ankle to groin. Rather than use that time-consuming rake to clear your dead leaves in the autumn, pop these on and shuffle your way to a clean garden!
  
• Milk Gun - basically an enormous water pistol with a rubber nipple at the business end. Load it with milk and squirt it into your baby's mouth, either directly or from a distance of your choice. Not likely to induce mental trauma of any kind.
  
• Alarm Fork - a normal dining fork whose handle contains a timer chip and a red/green LED. Supposedly prevents indigestion. Don't eat that next mouthful until the light goes green!
  
• Motorised Ice Cream Cone - the cone rotates when you press a switch. The ice cream goes round and round. You don't have to waste precious nanojoules of energy on licking motions with your tongue. You get the picture.
  
• Cheese Filtered Cigarette - apparently hard cheese makes a very good tar filter, so this inventor has put some of it into his cigarettes. I like nothing better than to relax with a box of Extra-Mature-Cheddar-flavoured Marlboros, oh yes.
  
• Thumb Suck Inhibitor - Borg-like metallic widget with unpleasant knobbly bits, which fits over the hand of the persistent thumb-sucker. Chewing results in being spiked in the gums. Resistance is futile.
  
• Criminal Truth Extractor - a 1930s classic policing tool. The suspect is asked questions by a skeleton with blinking eyes and a ghostly, translucent body. Admissions of guilt guaranteed; yes, that skeleton is pretty terrifying.
  
• Bunny Syringe - my personal favourite. Kids absolutely hate injections, right? Okay, so why not (this is SO clever) disguise the syringe as a bunny rabbit? Diabolical genius! The problem is that it basically looks like a bunny with a large spike shoved up its bottom and out through its nose, which to me sounds frankly terrifying, plus of course poor Junior is now going to suffer from an unreasoning horror of rabbits.
  

I can't possibly compete with these lunatics. It's back to the drawing board for me. And I thought Heath Robinson was mad.

What kind of freak am I? Let's see. Answer a bunch of questions and I can find out, apparently. (Link via David.)


You can take the test here, should you feel like doing so.

Hey, how come I only got 62% for emotional stability? I'm very stable, really I am. I said I'm STABLE, you STINKING &$!*@#!f£!

On the subject of my customer trainee, I think I may have been a little hard on kumquats. The bloke turned out to be functioning at roughly moss-level in terms of technical aptitude. Training him was like trying to push butter through a brick. It took me the better part of three hours just to get the bare basics of what he needed to do into his porridgy brain. Of course, I made him take copious notes, which meant extra precious minutes wasted as he scribbled his childish scrawl in nice, big letters in his tatty notebook using an orange crayon, brow furrowed and tongue stuck out sideways in furious concentration. And I don't mind being asked questions, even when they come every few seconds - the guy simply would not rest his jaws - although I prefer questions which (a) are germane, however tenuously, to the subject at hand and not something like, "so what car does your wife drive, then," and (b) are not repeats of questions which I answered a mere five minutes previously, the answers to which are written handily in orange crayon in a Notebook Near You. I've got a nasty feeling that he'll be calling me later today to re-check a few hundred things for the thousandth time (like "how do I tie my shoelaces", for example).

I drove across England for five hours for this?

As I'm still using Blogger as a blog content manager, and as Blogger
seems to be suffering from a server fuckage at the moment, I'm
attempting to use the new email-to-blog feature, which appeals greatly
to my technophilia but is an unknown quantity in terms of fidelity of
reproduction. Please accept my apologies in advance for any unexpected
Lithuanian alphabet characters or rains of semicolons which may occur as
a result.

I'm off to a customer site in a few minutes, to teach an exceptionally
clueless person how to write various bits of code which, given his
official status as their resident techie, he should already have written
but, due to having the intelligence of a kumquat, does not know how to
write. What fun.

A sudden explosion of teeth has taken place in Sarah's mouth over the last week. No less than four of the sharp little bastards are making their way into existence all at once, giving her a current grand total of twelve. Needless to say, the poor little tyke is digruntled in the extreme at this state of affairs, and is making her displeasure known to the world in a regular and vociferous manner. For example, it was made known loudly and repeatedly last night at 10:30pm, 12:40am, 2:30am and 6:00am, each occasion requiring assorted hugs, comfortings, cooing noises and a humorously squeaking rabbit singing You Are My Sunshine in a Mexican accent (this always works; we don't know why, nor do we particularly care) to soothe the savage beast. In addition to the vocal hullabaloo, she has now taken to lobbing various solid objects about with some vehemence when she gets really agitated, e.g. when her parents have taken more than six nanoseconds after the first indignant screech to scramble downstairs in their sleep and get her out of her cot. That really pisses her off. I'm now sporting a highly colourful and decorative bruise on my right cheekbone, as a result of a high-velocity ballistic Tommy Tippee cup thrown at my head. This is not, I respectfully submit, an enjoyable way to start one's working week.

Why, oh why are we provided with snooze buttons on our alarm clocks? I know I use mine far too often, i.e. at least thrice every morning, much to the annoyance of The Missus who has now taken to doing the same, and blames me for corrupting her. I mean, if I want to sleep for another 15 minutes, surely I should just set the alarm later? But no! There is something buried deep in my twisted psyche which insists upon waking up too early and then going "Sod it," and giving myself an extra quarter of an hour. Maybe I just enjoy the illusion of control. (Hey, don't we all?)

A conversation took place this morning, over toast and coffee, regarding whether it was possible to come up with a grammatical English sentence which uses every letter of the alphabet exactly once. Subsequently, a bunch of people with nothing better to do on a Friday morning (okay, I may have been peripherally involved) wasted valuable minutes trying to come up with one, before giving up and running a Google search. Much argument has ensued over the resulting sentences, mainly as to whether they're really grammatical, or are cheating by using abbreviations, contractions etc.:

• XV quick nymphs beg fjord waltz
• Blowzy night-frumps vex'd Jack Q
• Vext cwm fly zing jabs Kurd qoph (I am assured that all of these can be found in really big dictionaries)

Of course, sentences which use every letter at least once are much easier, and often pretty amusing as well:

• The five boxing wizards jump quickly
• Sex prof gives back no quiz with mild joy
• Prized waxy jonquils choke big farm vats
• Five big quacking zephyrs jolt my wax bed
• Jackdaws love my big sphinx of quartz
• Turgid saxophones blew over Mick's jazzy quiff
• Playing jazz vibe chords quickly excites my wife

In the interests of science, I shall be trying out the final suggestion this evening. I suggest that as many of you as possible should do the same, so that we can get a statistically valid sample.

Hectic preparations for our week in Brittany, or Bretagne as I'm insisting on calling it (much to the annoyance of The Missus who is equally insistent upon Anglicising everything, which is precisely why I'm doing it), are heaving inexorably into my immediate future like a surly bouncer at a nightclub door at 2am when I'm wearing jeans. We have a mere three weeks to go, and so far I've only sorted out the car (insurance, breakdown cover, wee emergency triangle, pukeproof seat covers etc). Admittedly this is a good move, since the trip will take about 16 hours; I realise this is peanuts to any American/Canadian readers, as I know you guys will cheerfully drive 100 miles to pick up some groceries, but Britain is a small country and anything more than twenty miles is considered a bit of a schlep. I've yet to organise a packing list, which as any parent will know is an absolute necessity when travelling with a thirteen-month-old child, nor have I taken The Missus to Birmingham for the equally prerequisite eight-hour holiday clothing shopping marathon. By the time we actually get to Finistère I'll need two days just to recuperate.

The GSF is more or less fixed, praise be to Witjit*, so the atmosphere surrounding my cubicle is noticeably less filled with bolts of lightning. I attribute my success in this endeavour to losing my patience with the attendant gaggle of manageroids; I told them (calmly and politely, of course) that I would be able to fix the poxy machine in half the time if I didn't have to keep explaining things to people, which I feel is a neat encapsulation of Pastamasta's First Law of Problem-Solving, as previously quoted. Judging from their faces, I may perhaps have been a little abrupt, but at any rate they took the hint and buggered off, after which I had the damn thing meekly rolled over like a naughty puppy inside an hour. It just goes to show, a little stroppiness can work wonders.

* Norse god of circuit boards

As a keen watcher of all things ridiculous, particularly when it comes to the allegedly great and supposedly good of this world, I cannot possibly pass up the opportunity to quote a few concise, articulate, and above all wonderfully random quotes from the beloved leader of the free, Mr. George W. Bush, which fortuitously passed through my inbox this morning:

• I am a person who recognises the fallacy of humans.
• I think we agree, the past is over.
• They have miscalculated me as a leader.
• Drug therapies are replacing a lot of medicines as we used to know it.
• I know how hard it is to put food on your family.
• More and more of our imports come from overseas.
• I understand small business growth. I used to be one.
• I know the human being and fish can coexist peacefully.
• I think anybody who doesn't think I'm smart enough to handle the job is underestimating.
• One of the great things about books is sometimes there are some fantastic pictures.
• It's clearly a budget. It's got a lot of numbers in it.

Ordinary, hypothetically sane Americans actually voted for this person?

Herewith a conversation between The Missus and myself at about 6:45 this morning:

[alarm clock beeps in loud and annoying fashion]
Missus: Aargh... What time is it?
Me: Er... [peers groggily] ...quarter to seven.
Missus: Shit.
Me: [fiddles with snooze button]
Missus: Is it snoze?
Me: Yes, I have snozen it.
Missus: Good. [snores]

Grammatical corrections or alternative suggestions to the usual address.

The Great Server Fuckage continues unabated. Now the management types have become involved, which means invariably that six suited idiots will be clustered around my desk at any given time, asking me (every minute, in their desperation to feel knowledgeable and involved) the two questions which all techies fear when they're fixing something, which are:

1) "What are you doing to fix it at the moment?"
2) "How long will it take to fix it?"

To which the answers are:

1) I'm talking to you, you sticky-headed morons, which is not advancing the state of fixedness in any way since you have less of a grasp of the technical niceties of this system than your precious company-branded Post-It notes, and the quicker you bugger off back to your snug, air-conditioned offices and your potted aspidistras, the quicker I can get on with repairing it, comprendez?

2) Well, let's see, it's a relatively simple equation, which goes something like this:

t_Total = t_Fix + t_YakYakYak

I'm sure you can work that out using your desk calculators.

All technical noses in the office are now being pressed firmly and forcibly to the grindstone, so clearly I am going to be involved in this for some time. I apologise profusely in advance if I become a grumpy bastard, but prolonged exposure to pointy-haired buffoons generally does that to me. [complex and inventive swearing]

Having spent most of yesterday building a new web server for our lovely customers, the poxy thing has now crashed on me and refuses to reboot, no matter what exotic commands and imprecations I throw at it. I've even tried the last resort of techies everywhere when confronted with an unbudgingly rogered machine, which is to wave a dead chicken over it and burn a wooden cup of rum to the gods of Tech Voodoo, but to no avail, the server is utterly hosed. I now have to start the whole damn thing again, so I am mightily hacked off, plus of course I am poorer to the tune of one chicken. The temptation to restructure the server using a heavy axe is becoming too great, so in order to save myself from being unceremoniously ejected from the building at high speed with my desk contents in tow, I'm going to go home now and drown my stress in salt-and-vinegar crisps. I intend to spend tomorrow relaxing, loafing, chilling out, and generally being a feckless idler. Feckless idling is underrated in our society these days, I feel, and I deem it my solemn duty to raise its profile as a lifestyle choice so that we may better appreciate our tireless workers. Have a good weekend, folks.

The mighty thunder god of Asgard was in a bloody foul mood last night. One can only assume that someone had nicked the stereo out of his chariot again (well, if he will insist on owning a goat-driven convertible...), or perhaps he just went on another of his three-day binges with his old drinking buddy Loki and is now taking out his hangover on us poor mortals. At any rate, there was some truly world-class storm action going on during the wee hours. The Missus and I have an attic-conversion bedroom with a skylight on the sloping part of the roof, which makes it much easier for rain to hit the glass at a perfectly perpendicular angle, thereby maximising the damage to our eardrums, particularly when the raindrops are the size of cantaloupes and hurl themselves at the house with all the frenzy of a Portuguese football team 1-0 down with three minutes left on the clock.

Of course, all this hullabaloo was not lost on Sarah, who started wailing at about 2am and only stopped when we caved in and tucked her into our bed, whereupon she promptly fell asleep but continued wriggling (whilst asleep) until 5am. Cheeky little monkey. Anyway, The Missus is off work today, so hopefully she can catch a few winks when Sarah does. I now have to look alert and perceptive whilst listening to some tedious grey-suited drone from Marketing blethering on for an hour or two about new software initiatives. I really need to learn how to sleep with my eyes open.

Tonight, I will be making the appropriate sacrifice to Thor (i.e. 12 paracetamol tablets wrapped in the hide of a freshly-killed reindeer), just in case.

A huge vat of gunk is brewing in the murky gloom of my sinuses. Having only just recovered from the last gunk-related lurgy I am none too pleased. Personally I blame the French, it generally saves a lot of time and angst in the long run if one blames the French. A bas le mucus. (Or is it 'la mucus'? What is the gender of mucus? Anyone?)

P.S. The typo I just made in the title of this post is oddly more appropriate than the original, so I shall keep it.

As promised, your choice of table surface will now be remembered when you pick one from the "Change Table" link. No more pesky red checks! (unless you want them, of course).

Dear Clients,

One or two of our regular diners have mentioned that our red-check tablecloths are a little on the psychedelic side. Ever-responsive to the needs of our customers, the Daily Linguini now offers you the chance to move to a different table, should you feel like doing so. Please click on the "Change Table" link in the sidebar, and select a table surface more conducive to a relaxing meal.

(We will be providing additional tables in the near future, and we are working on ways to enable you to keep your table of choice on subsequent visits.)

Bon appetit!

Pastamasta
Head Waiter

Well, Tim Henman has been knocked out of Wimbledon AGAIN, as if that was an intense surprise, which has kicked off the latest round of tabloid frenzy about how unbelievably shite our national sporting prowess is. This of course follows in the wake of the articles in the very same tabloids early last week, which were proudly and confidently proclaiming that our footballers would conquer all in the European Championships, that Tiger Tim would beat all comers in straight sets, that Prince William would single-handedly take out every Al-Qaeda cell in the world armed with only a grapefruit spoon, and that the British Empire would rise again and reign in benevolent loveliness forever. It happens every bloody time. One of our sportspersons wins a few events, and suddenly they're the greatest ever to don running shoes/boots/swimming costumes/golfing slacks/insert sporting garb of choice here; then, when they inevitably bow out in the quarter-finals (why is it always the quarter-finals?), the same 'journalists' who lauded them to high heaven turn on them like rabid weasels and tear them to pieces. It's pathetic, really it is.