Found, Funny, Society

Tinsel and Biscuits

English: tinsel

English: tinsel (Photo credit: Wikipedia)

With a couple of days before the big day I bring you some advice from Book View Cafe on being careful this Christmas.

The list of past holiday season injuries is staggering (as are many of the people involved it seems) and includes injuries from plastic parts of toys on the floor; Christmas pudding lighting – more than just singed eyebrows; eating inedible decorations and trying on new sweaters while smoking, another good reason to quit.

For good measure they also outline the injuries caused by the humble (sneaky) biscuit (or cookie) which includes the man who got stuck in wet concrete trying to save a lost biscuit and the many scolded while attempting the tricky art of dunking.

Have a Happy Christmas and be careful out there.

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Food, Found, Funny, Meta, Random

At Last – An Advent Calendar For Grown Ups

Scottish Advent Calendar

Scottish Advent Calendar (Photo credit: Brett Jordan)

Not that I’d particularly qualify as grown up some times, and I still like chocolate.  There have been many variations on this floating around the net just recently but these come via HUKD and there’s still time to make one especially as you can enjoy catching up with the days you’ve missed.

[HUKD]

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Food, Funny

Chocolate Shouldn’t Require an Excuse

This mean cat is me

This mean cat is me (Photo credit: Wikipedia)

Someone who shall remain nameless said to me today that they’d opened a bag of sweets “because we needed something for the mousetrap”.  I replied that it was the best excuse I’d heard for opening chocolates and they then said “you’ll put that on your blog now won’t you.”

Yep 🙂

Also this month’s excuse for a cat picture.

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Funny, Society, Tech

Pets & Passwords

christmas cats

If you’re thinking of getting your child a pet this Christmas there’s one thing you need to make sure of beyond the practicalities of its food and where it’ll sleep and whether your kids or you will end up taking it for walks (or if it’s a cat, letting it in or out of the living room/bedroom/bathroom et al).

Bizarro Comics points out the importance of giving the creature a unique, hacker-proof and, most importantly, memorable name as it will almost certainly end up as a security question some twenty years down the line.

[Bizarro Blog via Gizmodo]

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Funny, Random

I For One Welcome Our Feline Overlords

Portrait of a male tabby cat

Portrait of a male tabby cat (Photo credit: Wikipedia)

It was inevitable.  It was irresistible.  It is this month’s excuse for a cat picture.

Minnesota recently played host to the worlds first Cat Video Film Festival to honour the joy that our furry friends’ recorded antics have given us.  Follow the links to see more, though please watch the Ninja Cat video recommended by Gizmodo’s reporter.

[Gizmodo UK]

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Funny, Random, Science

Ever Decreasing Circles

English: Tree Stump, near to Langbank, Renfrew...

English: Tree Stump, near to Langbank, Renfrewshire, Great Britain. Looking past the tree stump and silage pit over the River Clyde to the west side of Dumbarton. (Photo credit: Wikipedia)

Most people have at one point said “I’m going round in circles” but many experiments have shown that a blindfolded person, when told to walk in a straight line, will end up walking in a curve to one side.  On the edition of QI tonight Jack Dee suggested this may be some kind of self-preservation response but nobody really knows why it is.

On the same programme the example of the experiment described involved a man who set off across a field blindfolded and spiralled right in smaller circles until he fell over a tree stump.  This proves one of two things however – humans can detect minute changes in the Earth’s magnetic or gravitational fields caused by things like tree stumps and are drawn towards them, or the universe has a sense of humour.

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Funny, Society

A Week of Dodgy Phone Calls

My Real Facepalm

My Real Facepalm (Photo credit: joelogon)

I regularly take phone calls that have me rolling my eyes, sighing, facepalming or just LOLling.  These are just a few of these stories.

Caller:  “Can I speak to Paul please?”
Me:  “He’s not in at the moment.”
Caller:  “Do you know when he’ll be in?”
Me:  “I’m sorry, I don’t know at the moment.”
Caller:  “Well, if I call back this afternoon will he be in?”
Facepalm.  Erm, I don’t know…

Caller, having been given a quote:  “Oh, no, you’ve got that wrong.”
Me:  “No, I haven’t, it’s worked out on the computer.”
Caller:  “Well, you’ve definately got that wrong, you need to go away and work it out again.”
Who are you, a schoolteacher?

I rang a customer to let him know that the surveyor was running late, it was about half an hour after the booked time already when I was asked to call him.  “He’ll be about fifteen minutes” I told the customer.  “What, fifteen minutes from now?” he asked.  No, from next tuesday, I thought.

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