The manilla jiffy bag! Gasp! It’s so fucking exciting!
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Author: pete
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Bernard:English Dictionary
While on holiday last week, I had the idea of composing a Bernard-to-English dictionary. With these useful hints, you too might be able to hold a conversation with him.
| Bernard | English |
|---|---|
| ack-tutta | helicopter |
| bapple | apple (and, indeed, most other fruit) |
| bappy | happy |
| bigduddle | big cuddle |
| bobot | robot |
| boobar | rhubarb |
| buttflyer | butterfly |
| ceeeeereal | cereal |
| dack-doo | cock-a-doodle-doo |
| jamb | jam/chutney |
| man-boat | canoe |
| man-song | The Grand Old Duke Of York (song) |
| oh-day | okay |
| puh-puh | puzzle/jigsaw |
| sish (with a soft ‘s’) | fish |
| tick-tock | peacock |
| tractor? play tractor? play train? man? bike? play train? play man tractor? | I would like to play some GTA San Andreas now please. |
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I mowed the lawn and the lawn lost
*Google says that I’m not the first person to use this “I fought the lawn…” pun in a blog post title. Ah well, you win some, you lose some.*
Back in March, we had a lawn installed. As the grass gradually got longer and longer, we realised that we could not delay the purchase of a lawn mower any further.
It’s not a very large area, so I didn’t want to go spending huge amounts of money on a lawnmower. But, conversely, I also had requirements. I wanted something that would collect the grass shavings for me, and I also wanted to avoid the Flymo brand, as they are basically all cheap, shoddy, flimsy pieces of orange plastic tat.
Stood in my local Focus, I contemplated the options. On my left, I had a Bosch electric rotary mower that met my requirements, costed about £60, and would take up a significant amount of space in the garage, when the garage is full enough already.
Qualcast Panther 30
To my right, I had the Qualcast Panther 30 for about £40 ((you can currently get it from Argos for just £30)).
I ummed and ahhed for a long time, while Karen ran around the store chasing a toddler who had a surplus of energy. I had mental images of blazing hot afternoons, sweat pouring down my body, red in the face, grunting and heaving and screaming “fucking piece of shit lawnmower!”
But then I suppressed my preconceptions and thought about it rationally. I thought about my hodddd and how much simpler and easier it is to sweep the carpet using the hodddd than the vacuum cleaner. I thought about dynamo-powered bicycle lights, and how modern ones are far less intrusive than their old-fashioned counterparts. I thought about how much easier the hand-powered lawn mower would be to store and transport. The reduced risk of accidents. The additional exercise. The lower purchase price. Bernard screamed past at a few hundred miles per hour, with Karen in hot pursuit. She suggested that if I wanted to make a decision any time soon, that was okay with her.
A few hours later I was in the back garden, sweat pouring down my body, red in the face, grunting and heaving. But I wasn’t screaming “fucking piece of shit lawnmower”. Because I knew that it wasn’t the lawnmower’s fault. It was the fact that this lawnmower is totally unsuitable for cutting long grass, and this came as no surprise.
Once the grass is down to a reasonable length, this thing actually whizzes over the lawn with impressive speed and agility. I’m the kind of guy who is willing to go out and mow the lawn once a week, and so I have a good feeling about this. Stay tuned.
When we arrived on Friday, it was cold and wet and miserable. The rain had brought all the snails out onto the path, and I managed to accidentally kill a few million of them in the dark. We went out onto the beach in our coats.
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Bernard and a snail
On Saturday, Bernard and I were in the garden. I taught him lots of useful things about snails.
They don’t tend to last for very long…
The other weekend, we were invited to lunch with Tom and Rach. They cooked us pie and a meringue. Both were delicious, and the meringue was particularly photogenic.
This is not the first time that Tom has made me a pie, and I’m looking forward to the next one already.
We also found a happy potato, which Rach could not bear to flay.
I used the del.icio.us Complete extension to assist me in posting to del.icio.us. I could right-click a page, choose “Post this to del.icio.us” and a handy dialog came up, prepopulated with the URL, title, and description (populated from whatever text was selected on the page at the time). This was perfect for my needs.
Since upgrading to Firefox 3.0, it seems that the only compatible extensions are the ones that “integrate” your bookmarks in an intrusive fashion. I don’t want integration. I want the exact opposite. I want total disintegration. So I’ve gone back to using bookmarklets.
I basically use del.icio.us for two things. Firstly, I use it as a todo list. I post links with the “do not share this” flag set, and tagged “todo”, so that I can look at them later. This is the bookmarklet that I now use for this task:
I got it here. It’s not perfect though. It doesn’t seem to work the first time you use it in a session. I guess this is related to the fact that it uses https. It also pops up an alert at the end that says “OK, tagged as todo” whether it actually succeeded or not. I tried removing this alert, and the bookmarklet stopped working. Can’t fathom why.
On to the second bookmarklet:
This one is much more straightforward. It just opens a window containing a small “post” dialog, prepopulated in the same way as the old del.icio.us Complete extension. It doesn’t use https, so it never asks me for my login details. The window closes when you post it.
I just thought that I’d post these bookmarklets here, partly for my own reference, and maybe because someone else might find them useful at some point.
In the churchyard near our house.
*Thanks to Graybo for correcting my earlier misidentification of this plant as an azalea.*
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Grand Theft Borrow Auto
This may sound hideously inappropriate, but Bernard loves to watch me play GTA:San Andreas. People who haven’t actually played the game will probably be considering calling social services on me right now, but anyone who has actually played it will appreciate that it’s possible to show your child the delights of the exquisitely-crafted San Andreas archipelago without exposing them to any malign influences. I’ve long since finished the storyline missions, so we just commandeer vehicles and drive them around the place.
Bernard’s favourite bit is the bridges. He likes it when I jump in a boat ((we usually pick up the Jetmax from just south of Rockshore West in Las Venturas, or west of City Hall in San Fierro)) and drive it under bridges. “More bridges! More bridges!” he cries. He also likes it when I get in a plane and fly it underneath bridges. “More bridges! More bridges!” I turn around and fly under them again.
It got me thinking – what would need to go into a GTA:San Andreas mod to turn it into an exploration-centric game, suitable for all ages?
1. Remove all weapons and combat from the game. Obviously. Gangs and police can stay, but they’d need to be much more amiable.
2. Make the strip clubs unenterable.
3. Don’t allow the player to steal an occupied car. They should only be able to enter a parked car. There would need to be a few more parked cars dotted around the map, to compensate. I’d also propose the standard blue arrow above any enterable vehicles, to distinguish them.
4. When you crash into someone else’s car, they should express their displeasure in a slightly more sophisticated fashion. All NPC dialogue would need to be checked.
5. Get rid of almost all of the storyline missions. Most of the side-missions can stay (notable exception being “Pimping”, of course). There should be a new storyline, containing missions that involve things like “get the cuddly rabbit to the little boy before his train departs”.
6. Prostitutes and drug dealers should no longer proposition you.
7. Pedestrians jump out of the way before you drive into them (a la *Driver*).
Anything that you think I might have missed?