Oh no, you're not fooling me again, I never got my free Nelson Mandela.

No, I wasn't there; needed a day to relax.

However, the BBC are reaching their usual levels of journalism and are referring to it as a "Gay and Lesbian" event.

I have sent them ( a short nastygram... )

( A meme, ganked from O, which delighted me with its randomness. )

I love discovering random images, and Flickr is always worth a browse. :D

In other news, I have been decorating the kitchen! Those of you who have visited this humble abode will know that it was getting pretty dire. The decorators had been in just prior to our moving in six years ago and they did not do a great job. This house was built in the mid 1800s and has a lime plaster ceiling...therefore putting paper over it with wallpaper paste is rather optimistic. The paper started peeling when we'd been here six months. Various attempts to get it back up there included PVA glue, drawing pins, weetabix, swearing. Weetabix was actually the most successful but I worried a little about weevils.

Anyhow, kitchens, as anyone who has a family will know, are one of the most difficult rooms to decorate, especially if the nearest take-away is over 6 miles away and you have no car. And I loathe being BBQ monitor. So, with much dragging of feet I purchased the necessary accoutrements, donned my oldest clothes and prepared to move everything twice a day, in order to be able to feed my kids once I'd spent the day slapping slop on ceiling and walls.

The walls were painted that beloved of rental rooms, Magnolia. I'd touched it up at one point with some more magnolia (see above, couldn't face the aggro of moving all that furniture!) but that's it. Instead I got some better quality emulsion suitable for kitchens (ie grease-repelling, washable) in a rather pleasing shade of rich sky blue.
(  Photospam continues! )

"I will pay £5 towards the campaign to put an atheist advert on the side of a London bus but only if 4,678 other people anywhere will do the same."

http://www.en-gb.pledgebank.com/atheistbus

"There's probably no God. Now stop worrying and get on with your life."

If anyone knows him (fantasy illustrator who I was involved in a couple of projects with) and knows what has happened to him or can get in touch with him, please let me know or let him know to get in touch with me.

Thanks.

http://thewebsiteisdown.com/

Gakked from krow

There are still tickets available (rather more than we'd like) to this weekend's performances by the London Gay Men's Chorus at Cadogan Hall. The show is Songs of Innocence and Experience - inspired by the poems of William Blake. It includes new and old arrangements of Blake's poems such as The Lamb, The Tyger, The Echoing Green and The Laughing Song, plus songs that serve the themes of innocence and experience, such as Beethoven's Prisoner's Chorus, Kate Bush's The Man With The Child In His Eyes, Wonderful World, My Way and Mack the Knife.

It's Pride weekend, so you really should be doing something gay! Plus, remaining top price tickets can now be bought for £25 if you select 'reduced top ticket price' when booking. (Sorry to anyone who paid full price already.)

Friday: http://www.cadoganhall.com/showpage.php?pid=696
Saturday: http://www.cadoganhall.com/showpage.php?pid=697

If you don't want to miss the Doctor Who finale, go on Friday!

housematehorror
Horror stories from the world of shared living spaces. EEK!

What's better than lovely Gethin Jones? How about lovely Gethin scuffed up, shirtless and in chains, with a nice cup of tea?

Oh, hey, will you look at that?



Last week Gethin officially left kids' show Blue Peter. This week he takes his top off for Heat magazine. Good lad! Hopefully an Attitude photo shoot can't be too far behind.

It used to be that just the entertainment industries wanted to control your computers -- and televisions and iPods and everything else -- to ensure that you didn't violate any copyright rules. But now everyone else wants to get their hooks into your gear.

OnStar will soon include the ability for the police to shut off your engine remotely. Buses are getting the same capability, in case terrorists want to re-enact the movie Speed. The Pentagon wants a kill switch installed on airplanes, and is worried about potential enemies installing kill switches on their own equipment.

Bruce Scheier, via Simon Willison

http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/entertainment/7483053.stm

ITV's remake of The Prisoner now has a cast; Jim 'Jesus Christ' Catweasel as Patrick McGoohan, and Ian McKellen as Leo McKern. It's being filmed as a six-part mini-series.

Interesting that they'd cast an American, but Catweasel never did manage to parley playing a Gothically abused messiah in an anti-Semitic polemic into big action movie success, so he's probably happy to get some telly work. McKellen's involvement gives me some faith that this could actually be decent, and he will surely make a wonderfully sinister Number Two.

No word on whether they'll use Portmeirion as a location. I feel they would have to, but I suppose it might be just as effective to build something new; or there might be other folly villages in the world just begging to have big white balls rolled across their scenery. The writer is Bill Gallagher, who wrote Lark Rise To Candleford - the show that felt like Cranford, looked like Cranford and smelled like Cranford, but didn't have any Dames in it.

Meanwhile, Bros are considering a reunion tour. Everything old is a cheap and effective way of making money again!

And why has nobody ever informed me that the Welsh word for the Welsh language is pronounced 'cumrag'?

dwseason4
A journal where the alternative fourth season of the TV show Doctor Who is being written.

lol_comics
Keep youself smiling at the little things with some funny comics.

bikes
A community for everyone who loves bicycles, motorbikes, and more.

mmkay, that was a crap night's sleep.

zzzzzzzzz

Very briefly -
Housework & paperwork achieved, gaming, cocktails, fajitas, friends, and a very OTT movie (Wanted).

Picnic, friends, frisbee and juggling in Kew Gardens, on a sunny day with a slight breeze.

Very fine use of an afternoon :)

Curse you Russell T Davies, curse you!
Next week is either going to be very lame, or very good, either way, there's some 'splainin to do.