- watched Reno 911!: Miami (good in an extremely crude way)
- succeeded in soft-boiling an egg (bring water to a boil, turn off the flame, put eggs in for five minutes)
- crafted
- went for the ubiquitous fish and chips (well, I had scampi and chips — and peas)
- went to Carene’s birthday party (and promptly fell asleep on the couch when the party decanted to Brian and Carene’s house)
- went to have a KPO at Braehead Xscape (checked out Evans Cycles while I consider to buy a bike or not to buy a bike)
- watched Grey’s Anatomy (I missed the political leaders’ debate because I’d rather watch Grey’s)
This weekend I…
Scottish slang of the day — BOAK
I like how ‘boak’ is used like a Chinese word, it’s a verb and a noun all at once.
The most popular use appears to be, “_____ gave me The Boak.”
Here, clearly, it means _____ has given our speaker a feeling of nausea.
You can also say that someone (or yourself) Boaked. I have Boaked many times in my life, most notably in front of the church I used to attend (in the drain, lah, I’m not so disrespectful of other people’s property, even when I’m hammered).
Here is an image of The Boak:
Solomon the tiny turtle drank a lot of Edradour whisky, and it gave him The Boak. He Boaked, and got Boak all over the table.
I’ve never heard of someone Boaking, though.
Stop legislating and start teaching responsibility
I’m not all negative on stuff.
I agree with Alcohol Focus Scotland, who say that parents need to teach their children responsibility when it comes to consuming alcohol.
“Good parenting is the answer,” said Mr Law. “You would want parents to be responsible in introducing children to alcohol and I fear introducing legislation won’t solve the problem.
“Clearly, immature bodies cannot deal with alcohol like adult bodies. Parents can maybe introduce their children to alcohol by offering them a diluted drink of it at a family meal to give them a taste.
“What is also very important is that the parents act responsibly themselves by not getting drunk in front of their children.”
I don’t think it’s a huge deal if responsible parents occasionally get drunk and their kids see it, but it IS a big deal if their kids see them binge drinking regularly. There shouldn’t be an issue of letting kids and young teenagers try alcohol, as long as their parents set a good example of restraint and moderation.
Kids are going to experiment and rebel, no matter what parents do. My mother is not a drinker, and I wasn’t even into trying alcohol until I was 15 (when I had my first-ever drink). It’s my humble opinion that if parents led by example and their kids learned that everything they did had consequences, the general population WOULD experience a change in its drinking culture.
I’m glad to see an organisation being so sensible.
Taking The Lazy to a new level
I’m usually pretty impressed by the stuff I read on Springwise. So many great business ideas I wish I’d thought of. However. There’s one recently featured called Postful, a service that will take an e-mail you send them, including the addressee’s details, and print and post it for you.
I can see how it would work well for things like party invitations and direct mail (or people who would find it difficult to write a letter), but you must be plumbing the depths of laziness if you’re e-mailing text to a company to send a personal letter.
In general, of course.
Pay as you throw
This could happen if your local council takes it on — you pay for how much rubbish you put in the bin. This is meant to encourage recycling.
Why I think it won’t work where we live:
The bastards are so fucking cheap I predict they will stay up late to dump rubbish in someone else’s bin. This has already happened to us when a skip was hired and Neil had been throwing stuff away all day, went inside for ten minutes and came back outside to find someone had sneaked over and dumped a carpet in it. As Neil says, if they had just come over and asked he would have said no problem, but to wait till he’d finished.
If the solution is to put a lock on the bin, that’s crazy, eh.
(I am very hopeful of getting a Green Cone composter anyway, so as little as possible is wasted.)
A chameleon
This morning, Alex Salmond got his chance to be interviewed on BBC Radio Scotland (should be on this page, Party leaders in the hot seat, soon). Unfortunately, I didn’t get a chance to listen to the call-in portion of the interview (pesky thing called work), but I did hear the initial interview.
Wow, what a difference from the quotes in the news and the party broadcasts. It reminds me of the time prior to Lee Hsien Loong assuming the prime ministership of Singapore — there was a PR offensive to portray his ‘kinder, gentler’ side. I suspect this is the effort to show that Mr Salmond is reasonable, rational, and altogether more statesmanlike than he has presented himself to be over the last few months.
What that tells me is he’s like every other politician. I am still extremely sceptical of their policies, so they will be getting that last preferential vote. Since I’ve gone through most of the manifesto documents, I know where my preferences lie.
Meerkats — friendly wee mammals or 70s adult filmstars?
When I remember to, I watch Meerkat Manor on the BBC. My mum and I love the meerkats. Mum has a plush meerkat posing on the bookshelf (I think the sloth I got her has more personality, though).
There was an episode of the programme ages ago that showed a subordinate male wandering off and trying to get lucky with a female from another tribe (he succeeded on his second or third attempt — I almost peed myself laughing at the 70s porn movie love moves). According to the New Scientist, this is regular behaviour.
Meerkats get their hole by pulling foreign birds. Hahaha!