Category Archives: Humour

Untested?

I’m somewhat confused by one of our recent purchases, which proudly proclaims on its packaging that it hasn’t been tested on animals.

Jolly good, I thought. Always keen to do the right thing if I can.

There’s just one problem.

It’s dog food!

What’s more, it’s made of chicken! So it’s made of animals, and fed to animals… but at least you can rest assured that it’s not tested on them. What sort of a daft marketing department…?

Ah well, never mind.

Well, Arden Grange, I can report that Tilly, on being given it, wagged her tail enthusiastically and wanted more. So that’s good news for your marketing.

But I’m afraid this means that it has now been tested on animals, so you’ll need to remove the label.

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Holiday wisdom

My friend Richard Morrison doesn’t write on his blog very often, so when he does two posts in one day, I realise that the holiday from which he’s just returned must have been a good one!

Still, one of them is this brilliantly simple observation about the total amount of relaxation one actually gets from a typical holiday:

Lovely.

The other is a recipe for a new cheese he’s invented: Le Condimentâle.

To produce authentic, Condimentâle cheese (appellation d’origine contrôlée) you need a nice warm vehicle and about two months…

I’ll let you read the rest for yourselves…

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Go download, Moses

I received a rather nice gift from my in-laws today:

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Leaping Tilly 3

I’m sure you’ll be pleased to know that, as she approaches her 11th birthday, Tilly is still enjoying her favourite pastime.

She was doing much the same thing 9 years ago and 6 years ago. Different fields, different crops, but clearly intended for the same activity.

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Matthew 5:45

Looking out of the window at present, I am reminded of a verse I learned in my childhood:

The rain, it raineth on the just
And also on the unjust fella.
But chiefly on the just, because
The unjust’s pinched the just’s umbrella.

It’s rather pleasing to discover, investigating it now, that the verse comes from Lord Bowen, a notable lawyer of the mid-19th century. (There are a few variations on the precise wording of the last line, but I still like my mother’s version above.)

Bowen had many achievements in his life, both professional and literary, and I hope he won’t mind that I remember him for this rather than his translations of Virgil.

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Small Superheroes

I’m so impressed with spiders. How can it be that, after I’ve used a high-power pressure-washer to blast away the grime from the car — removing dirt, bird poop, tar, and grease — foaming, jetting, brushing and hosing — the thing I always notice as I drive away is the delicate spider’s web still attached to the wing mirror?

Anyway, thinking about spiders puts me in mind of the Iron Man song that was circulating on Twitter a while ago. Sorry, I don’t know the originator, but you will know the tune.

Iron Man, Iron Man,
Does whatever an iron can!
Takes your clothes, makes them flat
Rubs out creases just like that!
Look out! Here comes the Iron Man!

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Concerning Hobbits…

You can learn a lot from the wisdom of Hobbits.

I’ve discovered, for example, that it’s important not to neglect Second Breakfast, because to do so can lead to increased snacking between meals.

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Daddy, what did you do in TIYOIY?

Sometimes, I find, it’s worth looking back into my blog archives to ponder how the great events of the past have affected the world since.

Do you remember, for example, when we declared 2009 to be TIYOIY?

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Legacies

I remember, from childhood, a parody of Longfellow’s verse, which always amused me:

‘Lives of Great Men’ all remind us
As we through their pages turn
That we too may leave behind us
Letters that we ought to burn.

Some years ago I was trying to come up with a version for the modern age, and I stumbled across it this morning:

As you scoff at simple errors
In some ‘Great Man’’s last spreadsheet,
Lurk within your email backups
Attachments you too should delete!

Mmm. Perhaps that was best consigned to the digital flames as well.

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Checking the facts

I love this cartoon! It’s a great illustration of why Quentin’s Second Law can prove so challenging.

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Binary thinking

I had to explain this to a friend recently.

Computers work on binary, which means the only states they really understand are ‘on’ and ‘off’.

And that, my friends, is why so many computer problems can be solved with ‘Try turning it off and on again’.

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It’s a miracle!

There was a miraculous event at my brother Simon’s house in Winchester this week, as the new plaster in their sitting room started to dry…

I told him not to paint over it, and he could then retire in comfort, as long as he didn’t mind having a lot of visitors.

Actually, the miraculous event was that — being, he freely admits, somewhat unfamiliar with Photoshop or anything similar — he created this image in Powerpoint.

Anyway, I thought it was great.

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