Liberal Burblings

Archive for the ‘Offbeat’ Category

I have recently received a sudden influx of Russian spam. Here are some example headers:

семинары по строительству
Больше чем рассылка
Для всех возрастов
МОБИЛЬНЫЕ КОНДИЦИОНЕРЫ
Награждение ФОТО
Распродажа техники!
Спутниковый интернет
Супер-тренинг!!!

Eager to see if these were the inevitable messages about Viagra and…ahem…member enlargement, I entered as many of the titles, as I could be bothered with, into Babelfish.

The translations revealed these rather boring titles:

Seminars for the building
It is more than the distribution
For all ages MOBILE CONDITIONERS
Rewarding BY THE PHOTOS
Sale of technology!
Satellite Internet Super-training!!!
My hovercraft – it is full of eels.

Those crazy Russians, eh?!

(Oh alright then, I made that last one up, or at least borrowed it from Monty Python’s Hungarian Phrase Book sketch.)

I have a theory that the labels and packets of household items are some of the most widely read literature in the world. I found myself yesterday with nothing to do while I ate my toast, so I read the label of the Branston pickle jar. Growing up, I remember that my brother used to regularly read the Cornflake packet.

It’s amazing what nuggets of information you pick up from a food label. What is Rutabaga, for example? That got you didn’t it? After onions and carrots it is the third voluminous ingredient in Branston pickle.

I had to look it up. It turns out that Rutabaga is a type of turnip which is more yellowish than a normal turnip:

The rutabaga is very similar to the turnip except that it generally has yellowish flesh, a more dense root with more side shoots and they are usually harvested at a larger size. Unlike the turnip, the rutabaga has smooth, waxy leaves.

Why don’t they just use turnips then? Oh alright then, I will end my curiosity there. If I started to go on about the pickle crisis of 2004, I really would expect the men in white coats to arrive pronto.

Earlier this week we (my colleagues and I) treated a friend of mine who has cancer to his first trip in a small plane. Fortunately. he really enjoyed it and it was a wonderful occasion.

The flight took place at White Waltham airfield. We based ourselves in the bar looking out onto the planes and runway. It was a gorgeous day and such a vantage point must be about as near to heaven as you can get on earth.

My said friend is a fan of “Top Gear”, so his pleasure was enhanced be being able to watch James May (who owns a plane at the airfield) eat his breakfast, then ready his aircraft and take off.

This led me to look up James May on Wikipedia. Imagine my delight to see actual photographs of the issue of the Autocar yearbook which led to May’s sacking as Autocar’s production manager after he arranged the bolded, outsize letters of each car in the yearbook so that it spelt (with appropriate punctuation):

So you think it’s really good, yeah? You should try making the bloody thing up. It’s a real pain in the arse.

You can see the photograph of the Autocar yearbook here on Wikipedia. It was mentioned in last week’s “Have I got news for you”.

I am immersing myself in Bob Dylan’s Theme Time Radio Hour on BBC Radio Two. It is perfect for a rainy Bank Holiday Monday with the rest of the family gone to watch Pirates of the Carribean 3, which I would only sleep through. Dylan’s theme tonight is sleep, coincidentally.

Bob Dylan’s introductions are weird. He has a particularly strange voice which sounds like someone Taking The Michael. He talks about strange things like the history of mattresses and the Three Bears. But he plays some superb tracks and the programme “hangs together” beautifully.

But all in all, Theme Time Radio is like swimming in chocolate and is radio as it should be. Well done Bob Dylan and well done BBC.

Iain Dale is often saying nice things about Nadine Dorries. One can’t help thinking that she has not entirely repaid these compliments in kind, through her description of him as reminding her of “Liberace”, in her blog on the Conservative blog awards (which I hasten to add Iain Dale won):

Iain Dale, king of the online diary, won best Conservative blog, as you would expect. He collected his award with great aplomb, Iain always reminds me of Liberace. When I think of Iain I see him sat behind a piano playing Rhapsody in Blue, maybe it’s the ties, anyway…

Conservative Home has duly obliged with this mock-up: