Americans say the funniest things....

I know it's clichéd to take the piss out of Americans but there is no getting around the fact (or indeed the woman, not without a map, compass, climbing equipment and a few days rations) that this woman was American, so there isn't a lot I can do about this.

We were at a Starbucks in Niagara, Nick and I. We just sat down to drink our beverages next to a family of Behemoths balanced precariously on the surprisingly sturdy chairs. The smallest one had evidently been elected to go order the beverages because the matriarch of the group was doing her best impression of what the Harpies in Jason and the Argonauts would sound like if they were from the deep south. The call was to attract the attention of her long suffering daughter (I assume it was her daughter, she was a smaller, younger sphere with a similar face) to make a request for her beverage:

"Don't forget to ask for mine extra hot!"

I'm sorry if this is a common thing that I am ignorant of but......what?! I mean...how?...what?! OK, my understanding is that the water comes out of the thing virtually in a vapor, that's right isn't it? Does she want to chew the beans and suck on the steam nozzle? Someone explain this to me, please. Are there an elite few coffee drinkers who scoff at us poor saps who have to deal with merely scalding beverages?

These aren't rhetorical questions, I need to know. Maybe it wasn't a family of big fat fatties but they'd been artificially inflated by the steam from there extra hot coffees? I didn't see them tethered down but they could have had particularly heavy shoes they'd had specially made?

inquiring minds need to know

Wedding bells and waterfalls

So I've been off here for sometime but I plan to blog quite a bit over the weekend and hopefully get back into the swing of things. Also giving some thought to having another crack at pushing gravybrowning back into some development action - I'm going to get a hold of wordpress over the weekend and see how I get on from there.

Anyway, I digress - I'm in Canada at the moment - Toronto to be precise but I'll get to that later. The reason I am here was Nick's wedding, I am going to post some pics on my facebook page around that when I get back to the UK - though I was best manning so I had to entrust the photographing to the bride's mum.

There aren't really enough words to describe the falls themselves - even the crappy American falls are pretty awesome but the horsehoe falls were mind numbing. We did a couple of trips on the maid of the mist which takes you right to the base of the falls and gets you quite damp, but it is well worth the little money they charge for it. I would go into greater detail but it always annoys me when people come back from trips like this and they waffle on about how amazing the sights and sounds are - they can't possibly hope to convey anything of the feeling of being there, no matter how many hundreds of photos you show me! So there will be photos on my facebook page but nobody is forcing you to look at them OK?

Everything around the falls was utter tat though. Imagine someone who has had Las Vegas described to them by a blind madman in a language they didn't understand. Then that guy goes to a mentally unstable town planner and describes the same thing using crayons and spilled pudding. That town planner then builds something vaguely resembling that picture. That is pretty much what surrounds one of the great natural wonders of the world - Neon, plastic, vile, tacky. Shit.

If you go to the falls, just go to the falls and go for like a day because unless you have a reason to be there it can be quite soul destroying.

Happily I had a reason to be there, as did Nick, Kara and all the family and friends who had traveled for the occasion so was kept pretty busy for most of the time that I was there, mainly trying to make sure Nick was in the right place at the appointed hour. He wasn't nervous or getting cold feet you understand, just.... well put it this way - I have never met anyone in my life who has such a limited understanding of the passage of time. I can only describe this in two ways - at great length or in a brief sentence - we'll go for the latter. OK, here goes. Imagine 5 minutes. Got it? OK now you just need to imagine thinking that every single thing in life takes 5 minutes and, more than that, all other measurements of time are just different ways of saying '5 minutes'. That's Nick.

OK, I thought I'd posted this a couple days ago but apparently blogger broke and I no longer have any idea what I wrote. Knowing the way I write I am not going to put myself through reading this crap so I will conclude with this, and hope it isn't in the verbal vomit above : Nick and Kara are now Mr and Mrs Brooks, the wedding, the bride, the setting and the ceremony were beautiful. Nick managed to not look like a bearded coat rack, basically it went brilliantly and I wish them all the happiness in the world. Well. Not all of it, they can't have the bit of happiness I get from cartoons or food. But they are welcome to the rest of it.

Thanks for that little nugget of wisdom.......

It took a government commissioned report to recommend that the government shouldn't really be selling our personal information to private firms.

has anyone else just had their corneas burned out by that blinding flash of the fucking obvious? I believe the next report says that embezzling public money should be frowned upon .

Cocksucking fuckwits.

Victory!

That's right! The oppressed badger population has won a reprieve from the evil feline controlled conspriacy to do away with our stripey backed friends!

Bovine TB! Pffft! Why would a badger have Bovine TB eh? And what are cows doing wandering around the woods in the middle of the night anyway? They are asking for trouble. It's like those people on the Claims Direct adverts - 'I was carrying a bucket of hot tar across an ice rink whilst playing the banjo when I slipped and fell'. Good! You're a fucking moron and the world just got lighter! Call it natural selection and move on!

In other news I am doing a big clean out tomorrow in my flat. In much the same way that there are 5 major food groups, there are 3 majpr crap groups: Crap to throw away/recycle, Crap to go to a charity shop and Crap to go on ebay. I may take pictures of mounts Tipolata, Charimonjaru and the Himebayas if they are suitably impressive.

Either that or I will play Madden '08 surrounded by rubbish - place your bets.

Errrmmmmm......

So I haven't really blogged in a while, apart from the Kid Rock thing. Mainly because I wasn't sure what to blog about, poking at the Daily Mail holds an unlimited amount of fun/frustration for me but it has to get tired for the 2 people that read this.

Then it occurred to me that most of what I write will be tired and so I have returned! I am going to provide you with some brief highlights of recent months and then maybe get back into the flow of things over the coming weeks. I know, you feel ever so lucky.

So. Beginning of June I went up to Hull to visit Kirsty for her birthday, catching up with Hannah and Emi (first time the 3 of us have seen eachother together for over a year and probably 2 or 3 years since the 4 of us were together!). I was only really there Friday night and Staurday, then I drove to Wales in time for Sunday dinner at mum's place (woohoo!).

The next few days I went up some of the local hills and woods and did some GPS treasure hunting (check out www.geocaching.com) , visited Mike for some Chili of Deathly Doom and generally got drunk and merry. Top banana.

On thursday the 12th, Rich, Rosie, my brother and I went to Donington for Download Festival and there we remained until Monday (if anyone is at all interested in this, pelase comment and I will regale you with tales of adventure and tents).

Then I went back to work, in a few weeks I go to Canada for a friends wedding - i currently have about 50% of the trip booked into hotels around Niagara, I am still deciding what to do with the remaining 4 days but I am sure i will think of something :D

OK, so that's briefly what's been happening - the devil is in the details and i may write something about some of the many dumb/ill advised/etc thingas that I have done/bought/tripped over recently if the whim takes me later.