Presenting the RHMeUK Review of the Year 2006! Just start here and keep clicking through to the next page until you get back here. It’s like The Big Fat Quiz of the Year, but without Jimmy Carr — so it’s actually much better than The Big Fat Quiz of the Year.
Anyway, my New Year’s resolution for 2007 is to write lots of interesting, compelling blog entries and not keep falling back on embedded YouTube videos. However, there’s a few hours of 2006 left, so here’s my current favourite song (Century Plant) from my current favourite film (Camp).
The finding of a parrot with an almost unparalleled power to communicate with people has brought scientists up short.
The bird, a captive African grey called N’kisi, has a vocabulary of 950 words, and shows signs of a sense of humour.
950 words? He could write for the Sun (provided three of those words were “Asylum”, “Seekers” and “Out”). The sense of humour part might be a problem.
N’kisi’s remarkable abilities, which are said to include telepathy…
OK, stop. Telepathy? I’m willing to believe a lot of things, but this last claim seems slightly dubious. Unless we are supposed to believe that this parrot has evolved extra abilities beyond those of normal birds — some sort of X-Parrot.
Actually, there’s already been an X-Parrot — he was in that Monty Python sketch.
I forgot to mention, I was jolted out of bed by my radio alarm clock at 8am yesterday morning by a Radio 4 news bulletin announcing that James Brown had died.
The obituary report opened, unfortunately enough, with a clip of him singing “I feel good! I knew that I would!”
A German woman is suing a foster agency, after her teenage foster son ruined valuable naked photos of her — by committing an act of self-love all over them.
In fairness, the pictures were so old that the unfortunate boy did not recognise his foster mother, but even so, I think a psychiatrist somewhere is going to get very rich out of this.
Good thing: Work has finished for the Christmas holiday!
Bad thing: I left the bag containing my gym clothes on the train this morning. I didn’t even realise it was missing until well after 1pm. I’ve left a hopeful message on Merseyrail’s lost property voicemail, but haven’t heard anything back yet.
Best case scenario is that the bag is still happily shuttling back and forth between Southport and Hunts Cross, still sitting in the luggage rack where I stowed it.
Not-so-good case scenario is that someone’s nicked it.
Worst case scenario is that someone thought it was a bomb and had the train and surrounding area evacuated, while the army fetch one of those really cool-looking robots that look like Johnny 5 from Short Circuit.
I don’t know what’s wrong — lately I feel as though I have a memory like a sieve (or a pipe owned by Thames Water).
For public transport to be seen as a serious alternative to owning a car, one of the things that needs to end is the annual 2-day Christmas shutdown. I’m not sure whether a Christmas Day service is justified, but there is a clear demand on Boxing Day which is not being met.
Network Rail’s spokesman, quoted at the end of the article, is talking rubbish when he says there has never been a Christmas service. Christmas Day saw a limited service until the 1960s and a near-full service operated on Boxing Day well into the 70s, until penny-pinching by British Rail closed it down.
Some train companies in the south-east are running a handful of services on the 26th this year. Let’s hope this is the start of an upward trend.
Bloody train companies — almost as useless as Thames Water!
I hope someone bought me the Family Guy DVD I wanted
Remember everyone, Jesus was born in Bethlehem to give unto the world a glut of good television shows to watch on his birthday (it’s been a while since I read the Bible, but I think that’s the gist). With that in mind, I’ve been through the bumper Christmas double issue Radio Times (free Doctor Who CD!) with a little pen, circling the shows I want to watch and discarding the hundreds of annoying leaflets that fell out of the magazine while I was reading it.
Here, for your edification, are my picks of the telly over the festive period. YOU ARE NOT ALLOWED TO WATCH ANY OTHER SHOWS.
There’s definitely something wrong with Argos‘s business model. Having just wasted 25 precious minutes of my life queuing to pay for an item, I then had to queue again to actually pick it up.
Given that the item in question was reserved via their web site on Sunday night, you’d think they’d have it ready to collect, but no – I had to stand around for ages at Collect Point B in a scrum with about twenty other people, while some hapless shop assistant ran around shouting, “Number 656! Number 656!”
It’s not even for me; I was picking it up for someone else. That’s the last time I help anyone, ever.
Fancy a little light reading? The complete National Rail Timetable is now available in PDF form from Network Rail’s website. This would have come in very handy if it had been available for my Rail Rover week (I was too stingy to fork out £12.50 for the book).
