Posts by Darkside

With friends like his...

...who needs CCTV?

@ Dr Funk

We LGOs take over universes with ruthless, perfectly-disguised efficiency.

Do you realise how many people disappear every year?

Who else could get rid of so many bodies without anyone noticing?

You'll be collected in wheely bins within 24 hours.

Uninformed speculation

Isn't that what these discussions are here for?

Mine's the ski jacket... yes, on Sunday... well, ski charters actually perk up and passengers grin when there's a bit of unscheduled excitement.

Preventing recession in the Crime sector

Remember that man whose job was supplying criminals with forged documents? They asked him what he thought of ID cards and he said enthusiastically, "I can't wait !"

British jobs for British criminals !

Because they can't

"People put vast wads of data, unencrypted, onto their laptops because they can."

I think they put vast wads of data irrelevant to their immediate purpose on laptops because it's easier than extracting just the data they need.

I wish I could just give Home Insulation Grants every detail of 1.3 million people instead of trying to pick out the ones who are over 70 and haven't got social landlords and still live here and aren't in care homes or prison or dead or duplicate records...

Airline pilots

OK, I accept "successful crash". The aeroplane was more broken than I realised.

Back in the 1980s I was told serious mishaps were more common when the first officer was flying, and They had investigated why. It wasn't because the first officer was an inferior pilot, but because the captain was a rather poor co-pilot (ie, the pilot not flying, whose support was vital.)

If the captain of this plane had tried to take control when there wasn't time for an orderly transfer, he might've caused a worse outcome. He deserves respect for not fouling things up.

Heroes: I met a bloke who'd witnessed a full gear-up landing of a 747 full of passengers; it was technically perfect and the airframe was reusable. They asked the pilot how he did it and he said "I put the passengers out of my mind and pretended I was doing it in the simulator".

You could argue that heroism's where someone's Thinking of the Children and all fired up on adrenaline, and what airline pilots do in a jam is "Just Doing My Job". You've still got to be impressed when they do it exceptionally well.

What a dull post - has anyone used the alien yet?

@ Christianity - don't mention the Clams!

Just don't mention those suffocating clams. Even thinking of them makes my abdominal muscles go all tense and quivery and keeps me from breathing...

As for Christianity, my grandmother (she who was declared a Suppressive Person by the Scientologists) had a student lodger from the West Indies. For a few weeks the lodger went to church, then she stopped going. Gran asked why she'd stopped going and the lodger said,

"Back home the Church takes a collection every week for the poor benighted people in Britain. Over here the Church takes a collection every week for the poor benighted people in the West Indies. Something's not right there!"

Black rats

Plague spreads best from one fleabitten human to another without rat vectors. The various mediaeval and later plague epidemics were spread worldwide by travellers, and one British outbreak actually stopped spreading when public-spirited citizens sat tight.

If you're having rat vectors, black rats are the ones. They're rare in Britain nowadays (I haven't seen one since about 1980 when I caught an immature one in a mousetrap) but then plague's rare too.

Obviously the vulture's got plague or why's it throwing up blood?

He was a Bodyguard, it must be true!

He wouldn't be the first royal minion that was making it up to get their 15 minutes of fame, or cash from the tabloids. Or just living out his fantasies.

Please can we have a YAWN icon? I'll have the penguin, it looks bored.

Go on - I dare you

Name a teddy bear after him!

Er, excuse me...

You meant "lack of interest".

"Disinterest" is something different.

Pedantic, or just English-speaking?

PUBS SUCK

Where are they, on Mars? An outside pub table's just become free of what, flooding?

In the South-East it's a windy murky half-dark afternoon, everything's damp and it's only just not raining, even the smokers aren't bothering.

THE PUBS SUCK in fact I can feel the suction from here - luckily the eastward pull of the Goblin's balanced by the westward drag of the Nag's Head.

If we can't have a beer icon will they let us bring our own? Like those avatars on supplier forums?

Only 15 pints a day

"... sixty pints over four days is only an average of fifteen a day, which, whilst clearly a binge, is hardly a staggering amount..."

True. However, the original article says his symptoms were caused by dehydration, not by the alcohol itself. Alcohol makes you pee more than you should so prolonged boozing dries you out.

What a boring post - I'll head for the pub.

It gets worse, or at any rate larger

I'm told the discs were lost by a well-known parcel delivery company, such as the one that lost my Amazon order.

If you missed your chance to pinch them, don't despair: every month the DWP collects minute details about every benefit claimant in the country, from hundreds of local authorities on discs sent by parcel company. They even have a procedure for sending them again if the first one gets lost.

The DWP have just started to talk about password-protecting the discs.

Cause or effect?

After studying the evidence I thought my migraines were probably psychosomatic. It took me several years to sort out enough of my issues and attitudes, then the headaches went from about monthly to about yearly.

Was I wasting my time, and my brain just decided to rearrange itself?

Or have the aliens abandoned my brain and moved to someone more solemn?