Blog things

Your Personality Is Like Marijuana

You're laid back and easy going, so much so that taking a shower is often too much trouble for you! Nevertheless, you're quite popular, and many people enjoy your company. You're rarely turned down. You're prone to giggle fits, paranoia, and forgetting where you are exactly.

What Drug Is Your Personality Like?

Hmm Not sure about the shower part!

Sweet Dreams

This is more or less how bedtime goes on in Chez Aucturas, heres Chris keeping it real!

Crap Prize

Heres a competition with difference, Caption these photos and win, can it be any simpler (or grosser!- obviously the funniest wins)?. There are two prizes up for grabs (1st and 2nd) which consist of Lucky/unlucky bags which in essence are collections of the weird and wonderful crap that collates in every nook and cranny in my home , its not all going to be crap there will be a compensationary item inside for the winners.

Evolution

Guiness commercials are just so very cool dont you think

Crushed Idol

In the early 80s I was emerging into my teenage years and getting into some pretty cool music for a kid my age (led zeppelin, creedance clearwater,beatles etc) now when youre a 13year old girl with hormones in a havoc usually ones attentions are turned towards cute boys, all my friends happened to have crushes on all the members of Duran Duran, wham or other clean cut bands but my head was turned by another, a bad boy if you will who, to me exuded charisma with his elvis like sneer and what I considered then raunchy lyrics. It was no other than Billy Idol, even years after I never considered this guy to be a guilty pleasure or something to be ashamed of when asked who was my first teenage crush (actually he was basically my only one with the exception of old hamster cheeks Kiefer Sutherland who caught my interest briefly with the lost boys and flatliners)

I remember one day cutting out from my older sisters magazine a photo of him bare chested with his hands down his open leather trousers , the article had the emblazoned title 'Sex , Leather & Whiplashes' I cut the photo and title and got clear contact paper and laminated both to my folder carrying it around like a rebelious trophy in my arms from class to class as my fellow students had their dreamy neon clad corn fed boys on theirs. Pretty soon it was noticed by my home ecc teacher, who looked like Ms Prissie from foghorn leghorn cartoons and told I would not be allowed to enter her classroom with that on my folder (Yess!! I thought) The matter was soon sorted out by a prompt letter from my mother who told the teacher in no uncertain terms that it would answer her better to get on with teaching her students then holding back a pupils education over some silly picture and 3 words and if she got offended by it that I would leave my folder in my locker for her class as petty objects seemed to offend her so - good ol mum!

I think I was pretty much infatuated with him for about 6 solid months and then I started to get into other stuff when his music got a bit crappier and his sneer became more annoying but I still held affection for about a dozen or so songs of his right up until this December he crushed the pride I had for him when he brought out 'Billy sings ...' wait for it..... Christmas songs ARghhhh. I suppose I shouldnt really judge it before I hear it but apparently its BAD and I think I would rather remember the Idol I lusted after when I was 14 then have him make me feel decrepid with age and selling out. Billy I'll remember you for the sex god you were to me 22 years ago like this

and not some Aaron knitted cardigan wearing, rocking chair sitting sell out if you dont mind. And if anyone asks who stole my heart at 14 I will answer 'Jack Bauer'..

Uncut Mythbusters & Overlooked Middle Child

A Meme with compensation ( Post post arggh!!)

Im a bit busy at the moment, so Im leaving a meme here for Crankster, Hammer, Glamourpuss and Dan (I know you hate em but humour me yeah?) you can leave the answers in the comments if you like , you dont have to post them on your blog..If anyone else wants to join in the more the merrier and to compensate heres Mr Smiths take on how the lord of the rings should have ended..(just realised that the Smith movie may not be loading properly could you guys let me know if its more than 40seconds - I watched it the other night on the apple at home and it played the full 8 mins or more...) I know its the dirty nerd in me..

If you could have any piece of art what would it be?
Name two of your guilty pleasures
If you were an actor/actress who would it be and what movie would you choose to take the lead role in?
What's the most romantic gesture someone's made to you?
Who's your favorite superhero / villain?
What's your favorite leftover food?
Describe in five words how you saw yourself in high school
If you could live anywhere in the world were would it be and why?
Name five good gifts you would like to recieve (within reason- no sports cars etc)
If you could live one week in a cartoon what would it be and why?
Dinner for five - who would you invite (the world is your oyster)

Classic Classifieds

This song was in my head all morning and it got me thinking here at work (my boss is currently looking for 'that special someone' and got me to put up his profile on dating sites) how much of a seedy underbelly that world has - heres a collection of all the strange brews setting out stalls in the meat market..
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BABY BIRD / Fed up with watersports? Constrained by traditional dominant- submissive roles? Try a more nurturing role: feed me like a baby pelican! Both sexes welcome. I supply the raw herring, you bring the big strap-on beak. No weirdos.
Minimalist seeks woman

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Patriarch of up-and-coming religion seeks altar girl

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Jane no good, Cheetah stinks. Tarzan seeks swinging GM to be the lord of his jungle.

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SWM, old, fat, balding, many disgusting habits seeks SWF with money. Send pictures of your house, car, RV. This could be your lucky day.

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Hello, I am Neil, 52-years old and single. I have a 12-year-old daughter that is my own, however, my former wife disappeared with her, two years ago somewhere in the Phillipines. I am an insurance agent and sold to myself large amounts of life insurance, which is very important now, in that I now have a spreading prostate cancer that is expected to kill me, within three years! #1715

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JELLO BOY-SWM who likes to slowly fold canned fruit into jello, seeks female partner for distinctly American activities. Dirty pigeons need not respond. Teleclub Ext. 40485

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"Submissive male seeks dominant female with extensive knowledge of knots."

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Mix on the Beach Mix 1970 SWM Vodka, Hazel melon, Pineapple Blonde Juice, GL Rasberry Liqueur,NM Cranberry Juice. Shake with 20-30oz SF in ice in a tall NS glass. Drink Casually only.

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1970 GMC w/Jet Skiis SWM, NM, GL, NS, SD, AC. Low mileage, custom paint, long sandy blonde graphics. 6'2" Lift. Bright hazel headlights will take 20-30 SF anywhere. Email for free test drive/ride.

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Superboy seeks Clarke Kent. Come fly with me.

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Hideous-looking, obese, smelly, ill-tempered, lazy, cowardly, chronic, and a complete liar seeks total opposite.

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SWM into chainsaws and hockey masks seek likeminded SWF. No weirdos, please.
SWM seeks 300lb+ woman to sit and squash doughnuts on me. Box 1234 From the Boston Phoenix



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Bitter, unsuccessful middle aged loser wallowing in an unending sea of inert, drooping loneliness looking for 24 year old needy leech-like hanger-on to abuse with dull stories, tired sex and Herb Alpert albums. Baby, you are my Tijuana Taxi.

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Me -- trying to sleep on the bus station bench, pleading with you to give me a cigarette; you-choking on my odor, tripping over your purse trying to get away; at the last moment, our eyes meeting. Yours were blue. Can I have a dollar?

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Three toed mango peeler searching for wicked lesbian infielder. Like screaming and marking territory with urine? Let's make banana enchiladas together in my bathtub. You bring the salsa.

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I like eating mayonnaise and peanut butter sandwiches in the rain, watching Barney Miller reruns, peeing on birds in the park and licking strangers on the subway; you eat beets raw, have climbed Kilimanjaro, and sweat freely and often. Must wear size five shoes.

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There is a little place in the jumbled sock drawer of my heart where you match up all the pairs, throw out the ones with holes in them, and buy me some of those neat dressy ones with the weird black and red geometrical designs on them.

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Angry, simple-minded, balding, partially blind ex-circus flipper boy with a passion for covering lovers in sour cream and gravy seeks exotic, heavily tattooed piercing fanatic, preferably hairy and stinky, either sex, for whippings, bizarre sex and fashion consulting. No freaks.

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When I was thirty my dates had to be young, slim, tall, handsome, rich, intelligent. Now I'm 64, they only have to know how to read and use the telephone!

Origin of the species

Warning may cause offence (to cats)

I dont think this guy was doing this for anything other than comedy. I found it funny, but thats just my twisted self. Sorry to anyone who gets offended but I did warn you..So just to balance out the ying to this yang post heres something for all you kitty lovers out there (youre lucky I love you guys, you know how I feel about cats)

Revenge Sweeeeeeet Revenge

After I left high school in the late 80s one of the options that basically lay ahead of me was either a secretarial job (I loathed the idea because at 17 most of the girlie girls in my class where doing that) or just trying to get general employment in a post recessional country. Now because I didn’t have a clue what I wanted to do university wise, or be with the clots from my old school learning to type I enrolled in a TV & Film production course for two years. I excelled in 3 fields, graphic design, editing and photography. At the end of each year we where given the opportunity to work in areas of the industry and to be honest I got the short straw as far as placements where concerned. I had 3 months to work in a recording studio for our ‘work experience’ programme. During that time I mostly made tea and did ‘patching’ on the mixing desks, until one day a well known Irish country and western singer came along and asked the owner for an apprenticeship for his son, and as I was surplus to requirements was given some meek excuse that I was going back to college and that I should enjoy my summer or get something that may pay as he wasn’t obligated to do so since it was ’experience’ he was offering..I promptly got a job in a music shop who’s name I wont mention but look at the cute little doggie listening to music!?


When I got there the assistant manager interviewed me, gave me a music quiz to test my knowledge and asked me when could I start. Delighted with myself and thinking how cool it was to work there I was positively skipping into work the next day. When I arrived I was asked to go to the managers office, apparently I was told by the double barrelled named limey manager that the assistant manager had no business in hiring me and it would be up to him to hire me , so again he made me test my knowledge and thanks to my older brothers musical taste and my dads eclectic tastes there was 3 out of roughly about 50 questions I could not answer, which made this power tripping nazi blatantly wild with frustration. He caved in and set about giving me some really shit jobs just because he had the arse with his colleague .

At lunchtime I noticed the people who worked there where consistently looking for jobs and with Tower records opening in about 2 months in Dublin they all seemed keen but would wait to jump ship until then. There where a few people in there who where up their own arses but generally there where a bunch of nice people. The perks of the jobs where cool; we got to bring home 3 cds,/videos every evening - this in their defence they said was education for staff on their musical knowledge to the public and not selling what was essentially second hand goods to the public. Concert tickets where another, as also where band t-shirts which would be worn the night of the concert and then dutifully folded back into the cellophane in the stock room unwashed I might ad and sold to the unsuspecting fan..

Like I said I got the shit jobs and despite having several customers approach the boss and tell him what a helpful sales assistant I was he still seemed to despise me for some unknown reason. It started to bother me in a big way because I never gave him any reason to do pass remark about any task/sale I made. Now I knew why the staff where like rats on a sinking ship. The all hated him and I was joining their club, when it came to the end of summer I was asked to work weekends, I decided only on the basis that I needed the money until Christmas that I would carry on working there. I was never in one department or the other , one day I would be in Classical Music the next on the chart floor etc half my time was divided on different floors or else in the stockroom. Coming up to Christmas the company would prepare in advance for the sales in January and all orders for sale goods where made to a specialised music company where they got all the ‘bargain basket’ cds etc - in short music that sounded like a pet shop on fire.

All orders to this place where approved by the manager so I got a brainwave one day while making up an order. All of the stock that is ordered by the music store to this company was un-returnable. Once you ordered it that was it you kept it, they didn’t want that shit back. So for at least two weeks I practiced and practiced my boss’s signature and got it spot on. Three days before I left I knew it was my last day in the store room since it was all hands on deck with the Christmas punters on the floor. I put in an order for aforesaid ‘sales’ supplier. I never told any of my colleges what I did because A I didn’t want to get into trouble should word ever filter back to the manager and I get done for forgery and have a bill worth hundreds of pounds, B I like to keep my cards close to my chest.

On the day I left I was just about to walk out the door when they arsehole said to me ‘God who will I get to do all my fetching and carrying now that you’re gone’ and I marched straight up to him and looked him squarely in the eye and said ‘your managerial skills are so poor I am deeply surprised that you have survived this long here. And in my time being here I constantly questioned the intelligence of this company for hiring such an incompetent ass such as yourself. And I turned on my heal and left the shop. It was a beautiful moment we shared.

About two months later whilst strolling down Grafton street I went into the shiny new Tower shop where one of the staff from the old shop told me that an order came into the shop after I left, which made the manager go nuts! When I asked what it was , he proceeded to tell me it was 100 Boxcar Willie albums 40 ‘Russ Abbott’ Atmosphere (I’ve posted the video just to show you how bad it is) albums and 60 James Last albums and any other shit that I just KNEW wouldn’t sell.



Apparently he screamed so bad that day he damaged his voice and his conduct got reported to head office (where he was moved to another store) the employees walked out in protest and they had to close the shop for an hour and yet he couldn’t prove a thing or point a finger because it was his signature on the sheet. All in All the whole total came to about 1,500 Irish punts which is about two thousand dollars worth. I acted stunned but fought hard not to punch the air, a shadow of a smile graced my lips and the moral of this story my friends

Gorging on Plums

I was looking at a few of my favorite blogs yesterday and reading some of the comments when a comment that Stucco made on General Catz Blog hurtled me back 17 years to my teenage years and my bedroom. The name 'Jeeves & Wooster' was mentioned and I remember distinctively my sister howling with tears in her eyes reading the wonderful works of PG Wodehouse. When I asked her what was so funny she would try to utter the words through raspy breaths and splutters and in turn had both of us roaring- Not many writers can do that.. And in an attempt to analyse the works and the master himself I could not do 'plummy' (PG Wodehouse's nick name) justice. I will however hand you over the an architect of language and words, Stephen Fry and let him do the hard work for me (since I finally get my hum drum life back to normal tomorrow)
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I have sought to "explain" Wodehouse, to psychoanalyse his world, to place his creations under the microscope of modern literary criticism. Such a project, as an article in Punch observed, is like "taking a spade to a souffle". His world of sniffily disapproving aunts, stern and gooseberry-eyed butlers, impatient uncles, sporty young girls, natty young men who throw bread rolls in club dining-rooms yet blush and stammer in the presence of the opposite sex – all may be taken as evidence of a man stuck in a permanently pre-pubescent childhood, were it not for the extraordinary, magical and blessed miracle of Wodehouse's prose, a prose that dispels doubt much as sunlight dispels shadows, a prose that renders any criticism, positive or negative, absolutely powerless and, frankly, silly.

When Hugh Laurie and I had the extreme honour and terrifying responsibility of being asked to play Bertie Wooster and Jeeves in a series of television adaptations, we were aware of one huge problem. Wodehouse's three great achievements are plot, character and language, and the greatest of these, by far, is language. If we were reasonably competent, then all of us concerned in the television version could go some way towards conveying a fair sense of the narrative of the stories and revealing, too, a good deal of the nature of their characters. The language, however, lives and breathes in its written, printed form. Let me use an example, taken at random. I flip open a book of stories and happen on Bertie and Jeeves discussing a young man called Cyril Bassington-Bassington.

"I've never heard of him. Have you ever heard of him, Jeeves?"

"I am familiar with the name Bassington-Bassington, sir. There are three branches of the Bassington-Bassington family – the Shropshire Bassington-Bassingtons, the Hampshire Bassington-Bassingtons, and the Kent Bassington-Bassingtons."

"England seems pretty well stostocked up with Bassington-Bassingtons."

"Tolerably so, sir."

"No chance of a sudden shortage, I mean, what?"

Well, try as hard as actors might, such an exchange will always work best on the page. It may still be amusing when delivered as dramatic dialogue, but no actors are as good as the actors we each of us carry in our head. And that is the point, really: one of the gorgeous privileges of reading Wodehouse is that he makes us feel better about ourselves because we derive a sense of personal satisfaction from the laughter mutually created. Every comma, every "sir", every "what?" is something we make work in the act of reading.

"The greatest living writer of prose", "the Master", "the head of my profession", "akin to Shakespeare", "a master of the language"... If you had never read Wodehouse and only knew about the world his books inhabit, you might be forgiven for blinking in bewilderment at the praise that has been lavished on a "mere" comic author by writers such as Compton Mackenzie, Evelyn Waugh, Hilaire Belloc, Bernard Levin and Susan Hill. But once you dive into the souffle, once you engage with all those miraculous verbal felicities, such adulation begins to make sense.

Example serves better than description. Let me throw up some more random nuggets. Particular to Wodehouse are the transferred epithets: "I lit a rather pleased cigarette", or, "I pronged a moody forkful of eggs and b". Characteristic, too, are the sublimely hyperbolic similes: "Roderick Spode. Big chap with a small moustache and the sort of eye that can open an oyster at sixty paces", or, "The stationmaster's whiskers are of a Victorian bushiness and give the impression of having been grown under glass". Here is an example that certainly vindicates my point about his prose working best on the page. Reading this aloud is not much use:

"Sir Jasper Finch-Farrowmere?" said Wilfred.

"ffinch-ffarrowmere," corrected the visitor, his sensitive ear detecting the capitals.

Then there is a passage such as this, Lord Emsworth musing on his feckless younger son, Freddie Threepwood.

Unlike the male codfish, which, suddenly finding itself the parent of three million five hundred thousand little codfish, cheerfully resolves to love them all, the British aristocracy is apt to look with a somewhat jaundiced eye on its younger sons.

If you are immune to such writing, you are fit, to use one of Wodehouse's favourite Shakespearean quotations, only for treasons, stratagems and spoils. You don't analyse such sunlit perfection, you just bask in its warmth and splendour. Like Jeeves, Wodehouse stands alone, and analysis is useless.


I think I should end on a personal note. I have written it before and I am not ashamed to write it again. Without Wodehouse I am not sure that I would be a tenth of what I am today - whatever that may be. In my teenage years the writings of P.G. Wodehouse awoke me to the possibilities of language. His rhythms, tropes, tricks and mannerisms are deep within me. But more than that he taught me something about good nature. It is enough to be benign, to be gentle, to be funny, to be kind. He mocked himself sometimes because he knew that a great proportion of his readers came from prisons and hospitals. At the risk of being sententious, isn't it true that we are all of us, for a great part of our lives, sick or imprisoned, all of us in need of this remarkable healing spirit, this balm for hurt minds?
Some Wodehouse quotes

[The London tea-shops] have an atmosphere of their own. They rely for their effect on an insufficiency of light, an almost total lack of ventilation, a property chocolate cake which you are not supposed to cut, and the sad aloofness of their ministering angels. It is to be doubted whether there is anything in the world more damping to the spirit than a London tea-shop of this kind, unless it be another London tea-sop of the same kind.

Rodney Spelvin was in for another attack of poetry. He had once been a poet, and a very virulent one too; the sort of man who would produce a slim volume of verse bound in squashy mauve leather at the drop of a hat, mostly on the subject of sunsets and pixies

It was a confusion of ideas between him and one of the lions he was hunting in Kenya that had caused A. B. Spottsworth to make the obituary column. He thought the lion was dead, and the lion thought it wasn't

She looked as if she had been poured into her clothes and had forgotten to say "when."

The Duke of Dunstable had one-way pockets. He would walk ten miles in the snow to chisel an orphan out of tuppence.

The fascination of shooting as a sport depends almost wholly on whether you are at the right or wrong end of the gun
It is a good rule in life never to apologize. The right sort of people do not want apologies, and the wrong sort take a mean advantage of them

As for Gussie Finknottle, many an experienced undertaker would have been deceived by his appearance and started embalming on sight

Marriage isn't a process of prolonging the life of love, but of mummifying the corpse Her face was shining like the seat of a bus-driver's trousers

A melancholy-looking man, he had the appearance of someone who had searched for the leak in life's gas pipe with a lighted candle

Few of them were to be trusted within reach of a trowel and a pile of bricks

I pressed down the mental accelerator, the old lemon throbbed fiercely. I got an idea

There is only one cure for grey hair. It was invented by a Frenchman. It is called the guillotine

He had just about enough intelligence to open his mouth when he wanted to eat, but certainly no more

She gave me the sort of look she would have given a leper she wasn't fond of

Wilfred Allsop was sitting up, his face pale, his eyes glassy, his hair disordered. He looked like the poet Shelley after a big night out with Lord Byron

She wrinkles her nose at me as if I were a drain that had got out of order


The Aberdeen terrier gave me an unpleasant look and said something under his breath in Gaelic

Her eye swivelling round stopped me like a bullet. The Wedding Guest, if you remember, had the same trouble with the Ancient Mariner

A man's subconscious self is not the ideal companion. It lurks for the greater part of his life in some dark den of its own, hidden away, and emerges only to taunt and deride and increase the misery of a miserable hour.

Gussie, a glutton for punishment, stared at himself in the mirror.

Unseen, in the background, Fate was quietly slipping the lead into the boxing glove.

Her voice trailed away in a sigh that was like the wind blowing through the cracks in a broken heart.

``I've always treated the man with unremitting kindness, and if he won't do a little thing like this for me, I'll kick his spine through his hat.''

``How much did gin did you put in the jug?''
``A liberal tumblerful, sir.''
``Would that be a normal dose for an adult defeatist, do you think?''

He blinked, like some knight of King Arthur's court, who, galloping to perform a deed of derring-do, has had the misfortune to collide with a tree.