Beam me up Scotty

The other day was the last flight of the shuttle Enterprise, a moment of sadness but how cool that it was greeted by Leonard Nimoy? There is a part of me that as languages and linguistics hold interest for me that considered learning Klingon.

Seriously how awesome would it be to write on your resume, Languages spoken: English, French, German & Klingon? It would certainly be more help than general online translators, as evidenced by the Turkish to English translation by Bing below.

(Happy 37th Birthday, Johnny Galecki. Live long and Prosper!)

Royal Pain in the...

A year ago today my friends and I were all watching Kate & Wills get married,  gasping over her dress and loling at this image that quickly went viral:

(If Pippa Middleton's arse is a "peach wrapped in satin" mine is an orange wrapped in fishnets.)

We were also spending the run up doing silly Facebook status updates, fifties Beatnik chick style!



Save the Frogs Day 2012

You couldn't make this up, but today is International Amphibian Awareness Day. I quite like frogs, if they're singing about rainbows or if I'm drawing them. Not too fond of the whole pick them up and cuddle or play with the little slimers but hey if you're looking for a bit of feel good philanthropy, I guess they're not the worst charity to donate to.

As a side note trivial fact, I sang "The Rainbow Connection" for school assembly aged five.

Just to make you suffer further:

What's green and jumps?

A frog!! (groan!)

---

What's green and red?

A very mad frog.

---

What's green with red spots?

A frog with the chicken pox!

---

What's green with bumps?

A frog with the measles!

---

What's black and white and green?

A frog sitting on a newspaper.

---

What's green and dangerous?

A frog with a hand-grenade.

---

What's white on the outside, and green on the inside?

A frog sandwich!

White Flour

For as long as I've had my own home and homelife to cater for, I've held a rule that "Mumma doesn't cook on Fridays nights." It's my day off, treat night, a leftover from my youthful forays. At the most I will bung a ready meal in the oven and that's the height of my cooking, pizza and garlic bread are a good standby, I usually prefer to make my own pizzas so here is a super easy recipe for pizza dough that you can cook/freeze beforehand then add sauce, cheese and toppings of your own choosing:



For 1 thick or 2 thin crust pizzas:

3/4 x cup warm water
1 x Tblspn oil
1 x Tblspn sugar (I prefer caster)
1/2 x tspn salt
1 x Tblspn dry milk
2 & 1/4 x cups bread flour
1 x tspn yeast
Use the Dough cycle on your machine and put the ingredients in the order required for your machine.

For 2 thick or 4 thin crust pizzas:

1 & 2/3 x cups warm water
2 x Tblspn oil
2 x Tblspn sugar
1 x tspn salt
2 x Tblspn dry milk
4 & 1/2 cups bread flour
2 x tspn yeast

Ich bin ein Berliner

This week I received full confirmation I have a place reserved in my chosen modules for my degree. It's quite a relief to actually have it in writing although a part of me would have liked to receive confirmation in the languages I am studying.

(Do you want fries with that?)

I am at this very minute putting off studying the dreariest section of British history in the history of forever, (Chartism).

But for every day that nerd students procrastinate, George Lucas kills a Jawa.

Anzac Day

Today is Anzac Day, a huge deal back home and I have a modicum of respect for friends and family who have served in their countries military, so I shan't be taking the mickey out of it. I will also ensure I get my dates correct when posting something on Facebook, as getting it wrong for the sake of a Google search seems to be lazy and disrespectful.

Plucked Turkey

In the jungle, the mighty jungle, the lion (or in this case tiger) sleeps tonight.

            

On a similar theme:

Parenting Tips

The other day, I was in the car with all my children and we passed a very young woman on the sidewalk who was pushing a baby in a pram and screaming profanities at her toddler who had stopped a few steps behind her and was obviously tired and didn't want to walk further. I cringed and said something along the lines of "Oh my...wow..." I'm not bringing this incident up to slate the woman but only to pass on some parenting tips from someone who is a) incredibly short-tempered and b) had her oldest kids very young too.

(My Dad often used the phrase "Silence is golden, duct tape is silver.")

I don't want to stand up all preachy with my parenting hints and tips, however this picture is from my cousin's wall who is a preacher and I love how the encouragement to family life is integrated into every aspect of their lives:

I wrote the snippet below as a forum response for requested advice. Like I said I am not the most patient, these personal rules give me the opportunity to mentally count to ten and not have a knee jerk reaction.

As a final point, try to have a laugh with your kids, don't wrap them in bubblewrap or start a sue culture if they get a boo-boo.

Earth Day

Yesterday I took my kids out to Seaforde Butterfly House, it was brilliant! Loved it! Anyway, seeing as it's the weekend and Earth Day, I thought I would share this from my cache.

(I tried to keep to earthy, tree colours.)

Toast versus Chav

Oops, I missed Foodie Friday yesterday because I had my days mixed up, this happens probably with more frequency in our household than in others, as we work/study from home and aren't tied to schedules as much as other people. Obviously for some things like appointments or taxes we have to be set to rigidity like everyone else. Must tell you, I have *never* been the most organised of people and I certainly don't miss racing about first thing in the morning in order to be at the mercy of someone elses deadline, not for an instant. Nowadays the only day I have to race about is a Saturday in which I have my daughter enrolled in gymnastics at stupid o'clock.

Anyway, pardon my digression indiscretion (sub-par tonguetwister) we are going to have Foodie Friday a day late! It's the equivalent of a Saturday afternoon cookoff barbeque, it'll make no big difference in the great scheme of things, I'm an Australian, trust me I know bbq.

I like this post, it puts me in mind of Dwarf Bread.

Smack Talk

Ever wondered how gaming women vent?

They smack talk noobs in their dreams!

Trainspotting

If you ever wondered where this expression and overkill of merchandise came from, click for a mini history. Anyway today we're (briefly as I have a date with SW:TOR) looking at trainspotting, not the Ewan McGregor film of the same name but how Amazon can get my taste in literature so very wrong. I mean if Target can predict when a woman is pregnant and even roughly how far along she is, how can a multinational company get their recommendations so off?



Hacking

Once upon the internets, being hacked meant getting personal accounts, bank details etc and was often the result of visiting a dubious website named something like www.notpron.com and picking up some unsavoury keylogger. These days hacking usually has less to do with playing Global Thermonuclear War with Joshua and more to do with knowing the password of your significant other.

It's almost but not quite internet bullying of your family and friends and usually amusing.

I've even been the victim of it myself, a few times; admittedly usually in retaliation for my own frapes:

Thinking up new and creative ways to get back at your own kids has always been a worthy occupation of anyones time.



Superglue

I had to run over to the local shop to buy some superglue this morning after my daughters were fiddling with bobbin winder on my sewing machine (after they had been told not to that is) and snapped it off.

I was not impressed but oh well, there are worse things that can happen with superglue:

And I was reminded of this little snapshot, something about the similarities, child told not to touch blah blah...

My father always used to say, "Your kids are your parents best revenge." I think he may have been right!

Creepy Old Guys

They are everywhere!

Even in fictional towns and cities in MMO's:

Titanic Anniversary

I live in Northern Ireland, where the Titanic was built, so there has been much goings on in Belfast for the 100th year anniversary. I think it's a particularly (Northern) Irish trait to celebrate the anniversary of a monumental loss of life, I don't mean that in a bad way, it's just that as sweeping generalisations go the locals tend to have a particularly black sense of humour and what better example than renaming the dockyard area "Titanic Quarter" after a ship that sank on it's maiden voyage.

My own sense of morality has been in question, even I find it a little perverse to see humour in dramatic and mass carnage. In World of Warcraft there is a quest named "Twilight Skies" the basic gist is you're on a goblin crewed zeppelin that is air support for the attack on Twilight Highlands. When the zep is crashing you have a goblin NPC shouting out "Oh the goblinity!" I always felt slightly uncomfortable, jokes about the Titanic disaster are the same for me, I feel a little perverse.

When I was a child, I can think of two separate happenings when similar humour evoked that "Oh you're going to hell" feeling. The first was the Barlow and Chambers execution by hanging in 1986, as I'm from Western Australia there was plenty of coverage on local news and most of the jokes were Fly Malaysian Airlines for a swing-away holiday! and the second was Space Shuttle Columbia disaster: What does N.A.S.A. stand for? Need another seven astronauts.

I think though that I will leave my Titanic jokes to the picture above and even that was about the movie rather than the disaster.

Superhero Crimefighters

I saw this on a teeshirt recently "Superhero! But without special powers or the desire to help anybody" it appealed to a tiny itch of misanthropy buried deep in my subconscious.

Being a superhero is hard!

And sometimes your sidekick is a tool:

Fortunately if you do well as a superhero, you'll eventually end up parodied in popular culture, an internet meme, Stan Lee will base a character on you and you'll be making personal appearances at geek conventions before you can say "Super Schadenfreude Comic Sans":

Until next time folks, same Bat time, same Bat channel!

Foodie Friday the 13th

Today's foodie Friday is bought to you by our sponsors at friggatriskaidekaphobia support groups.

This is cooking, Ed Gein style.

Trombones

I think kids can be the most unintentionally funny beings on the planet but sometimes it's like they're knowingly setting you up also.

Click for more trombones (and salsa dancing)!

Sicky, bad not well.

My daughter has been unwell the last few days but really ill for the past 24hrs and I've been mopping foreheads etc. I actually have a few snippets from different times with kids unwell, so share and share alike!

(From the post below)

Trying to get sympathy is a mission in itself though, oh well, get better Boo.

The Hunger Games

Well I mentioned yesterday I would be writing about The Hunger Games soon, I didn't think it would be as soon as today but just feels right y'know? So what's it all about then?

Well apparently, it's exactly what Red thought, it is an almost *exact* copy of The Long Walk.

Or it's an *exact* copy of Battle Royale?

Kids killing kids in literature is nothing new though, The Lord of the Flies is a prime example, neither are dystopian societies killing each other via The Lottery for that matter. Is it plagiarism when as societal group we are exposed to the predominantly same influences?  Something to bake your noodle later on.