plasticbag.org

12 On the love of pandas:

“Panda mating fails, Veterinarian takes over” [Meg Pickard | notsosoft.com]

“Panda mating fails, Veterinarian takes over” [Marshall | tippit.org/sm]

“Good manners reflect something from inside – an innate sense of consideration for others and respect for self”
My arse!

With reference to this post:

“Police begin campaign to run down jaywalkers” Jason Theriault | www.dispossessed.com

• Lord Voldemort
• Sirius Black
• Draco Malfoy
• Severus Snape
• Tom Marvolo Riddle
• Remus Lupin
  
• Cornelius Fudge

• Rubeus Hagrid
• Salazar Slytherin
• Sir Nicholas de Mimsy-Porpington

• Go to the Gym
  It’s been over a week since I last went to the gym and I am feeling ridiculously lardy and gross (the two may not be related, of course). Hence, time to go do some exercise.

• Combat Trousers
  I have to go to the Army Surplus in Camden to buy some combat trousers. I’ve been meaning to do it for weeks, but never seem to get around to it.

• ****** ******* *
  ** ** **** ** ********* ** **** ** ***** ** ******** **** ** *** *** *** ** * **** ******** ** **** *** ** **** ***** *** ***** ********.

• Washing
  Flatmates arrive back on Tuesday from their holiday. Their sheets have to be washed by then (my family was staying their rooms), plus I have to get all my washing done because they are girls and they have just come back from holiday and access to the washing machine is going to be pretty limited, I fear.

After four weeks and three evictions, finally we have an escapee with some bloody opinions, who isn’t afraid to give some good headline:

BBC: “Big Brother’s Caroline vows revenge“
   Ousted Big Brother contestant Caroline O’Shea has vowed get her own back on “evil” fellow contestant Nicholas Bateman, who she has branded her “betrayer”.
   The blonde brummie said she will vote for his eviction if he is nominated and would like to “knock his block off”.
   She described Tom as “dull”, Darren “arrogant” and said Mel was a “pain in the arse”, who was only interested in the men in the house.
   And all the males in the house were branded Neanderthals.
   “At least the women have something to offer – there’s a creative streak,” she said.

Work Well Together [via metafilter]
“Step 3: Catch a bunch of flies. Put them in a jar and put the jar in the freezer. In a few seconds the flies will be chilled out completely. This is called cryogenics, and it has its drawbacks. For example, the flies will be dead flies if you freeze them too long. Dead flies are no good. So if you’re a tinkerer, refrigerate your flies. It takes longer to make them comatose, but they have a higher recovery rate than the ones you leave in the freezer next to the burritos.”

• “thank”
  Harry Potter and the Philosopher’s Stone, JK Rowling

• “in”
  The Great Gatsby, F Scott Fitzgerald

• “and”
  The New York Trilogy, Paul Auster

• “it”
  The Interpretation of Dreams, Sigmund Freud

• “much”
  The Crying of Lot 49, Thomas Pynchon

• “building”
  The Silence of the Lambs, Thomas Harris

• “lens”
  The Dice Man, Luke Rhinehart

• “top”
  The Book of Imaginary Beings, Jorge Luis Borges

• “is”
  A Clockwork Orange, Anthony Burgess

• “the”
  A Lover’s Discourse, Roland Barthes

• “knew”
  Slaughterhouse 5, Kurt Vonnegut

• “and”
  One Flew Over The Cuckoo’s Nest, Ken Kesey

• “composed”
  Against Nature, J.-K. Huysmans

• “average”
  The Soft Machine, William S Burroughs

• “you”
  Flatland, Edwin A Abbott

• “atoms”
  Engines of Creation, K. Eric Drexler

• “veracity”
  Beyond Good and Evil, Friedrich Nietzsche

• “way”
  Cryptonomicon, Neal Stephenson

• “next”
  The Electric Kool-Aid Acid Test, Tom Wolfe

(*Chapter headings, Prefaces, Prologues, Introductions, Initial Quotes etc. excluded)

What’s next, one wonders, when Big Brother judders finally to its close. Well, I’ve got an idea. How about you get, like, 14 people, and then you put them in an astronaut training camp and throw out one a week, and the one who’s left gets stuck in a rocket and sent up to the Mir space-station. What’s that you say? Someone’s already thought of it? You have got to be kidding me…

Which brings me to my current predicament. I have just won two tickets to the Gala Première and After-Show Party of X-men, to be held on Tuesday night in Leicester Square, and later in the Roundhouse in Chalk Farm. I can’t get in touch with Glyn or Simon at all, and even if I could I could only take one of them (assuming that they could get down here on a weekday night). So at one level I really shouldn’t go – I made a commitment to go with them. But let’s be honest. What are the chances that I’m not going to go?