Teto and the Bicycle

...and the wasp, and a rafflesia flower, and Akita Neru (who has Len's undies with her!) and several other ingredients as well. Not a song this time, just a fun scenario of what some of the Vocaloid/UTAU characters might get up to if they were doing everyday stuff that the rest of us could perhaps be seen doing.

This short (just over four minutes) clip was produced by one Doronuma-P...

Wardrobe Malfunction!

There are times when even the (generally) well-organised among us can have clothes difficulties, and thus it was with me today.

I was going to the funeral of a departed female friend, who also acted as my 'wardrobe mistress' in a way and would go around shops searching out suitable clothes for me to buy – usually for upcoming social events.

Today, as a tribute, I had decided to wear (as far as possible) suitably funeral-coloured (for want of a better term) garments from among those we went out to acquire. The lady herself would adjust lengths and suchlkike after I had tried them on for her insepction.

What I hadn't realised is that, since buying the items I thus chose for today, I had lost girth but gained width in the neck department. This meant that, this lunchtime, as I was getting dressed for the occasion, I found the trousers loose and the top shirt button wouldn't do up.

Panic stations! Well, not quite, but I did check to see if anything else was suitable. Nothing that fit me any better was (the only shirt now has a worn collar and I keep it only for indoor wear, not in company) and the other trews are all too light-coloured for such a event. Fortunately, a belt did the trick with the latter – or seemed to – and a tight enough knot in the tie near-enough camouflaged the unfastened shirt top button.

Unfortunately, something seemed to go wrong with the belt by the time we had reached the wake, and the garment they were supposed to be keeping snug around my waist was listing to one side, slowly heading southward.

I had to hide from view while I unthreaded the offending item and re-attached the thing in an attempt to rfix the problem. It never felt right after that, but at least it looked acceptable now, from what I could perceive. I really needed a full-length mirror, but there wasn't one at the venue, so I had to hope that my appraisal matched others' views, or near enough..

For the future, I shall have to remember that my once constant size (nothing changed more than on a miniscule scale for decades) is now a variable quantity – or, in fact, a whole batch of measurements of which any one or combination could have changed since the last time I wore a particular garment.

Therefore, from now on, I shall have to do something that was never necessary in the past, which is to try on what I intend (or hope!) to wear the day before. Ah, the 'joys' of the ageing process...

Letter-Names

Letter-names are what I call names that can be said by pronouncing typically two-letter (occasionally three) combinations by those letters' names. These names are usually female, I have found. It is a little like that Benny Hill sketch from years ago where the entire dialogue was written in this way.

On this occasion, rather than try to describe this idea further, a selection of examples should make it clear, even if the pronunciations are (rarely!) slightly off, and sound a little Australian...

• D.N.R. – Deanna
• E.V. – Evie
• F.E. – Effie
• L.C. – Elsie
• L.N. – Ellen
• M.E. – Emmie
• P.R. – Pia

There are the obvious single-letter names, J. (Jay) and K. (Kay); but don't count M.N.M. (Eminem) as his stage name was contrived from 'M&Ms' in the first place, so it becomes circular.

Sometimes this technique can be applied to surnames too, such as B.T. (Beatty) and M.R.E. (Emery, as in Dick Emery), but the forenames are a better challenge, I think. Feel free to add others in the Comments thread.....

Klingons do Rick Astley

There are no words to adequately describe this parody of Rick Astley's Never Gonna Give You Up. It's certainly 'different'., though helpfully provided with both Klingon and English subtitles Qapla'...

Oppan Klingon Style!

Well, I suppose it had to happen, sooner or later. At least we get English subtitles, so one doesn't need to understand the Klingon language. Qapla' !

The Babylon 5 Mantra

This is where we learn that Ivanova is God ("only kidding!") in the Babylon 5 first season episode (part one of the two-parter) A Voice In The Wilderness...

Coworkers in Slow Motion

This one-minute demonstration of the iPhone 5s slo-mo facility illustrates a supposed feud between two coworkers (or 'cow-orkers' as some on-line places term them).

I find I am not alone in thinking that this is going to become a big thing on YouTube and similar video platforms ere long...

Mr Bean at the Sale Queue

...Or is it really him? Here is a quick lesson in how to get ahead, literally, in this short clip that was uploaded a little earlier today...

Outnumbered – Karen and the Scottish Accent

Karen (played brilliantly as always by the delightful Ramona Marquez) has just a little difficulty understanding the family's Scottish guest in this short Outnumbered clip. Her final comment is just perfect...

Rin's New Friend

Meet Rin's new kitty. By the way, I gather the bones had been taken out of the fish and the two halves put back together, though I don't know how that is possible...

Elected Spooksperson

Here's an interesting Twitter exchange beginning with my own local MP Tracey Crouch...

"OK I know I'm in v secure building but there are scary weird noises coming from corridor. Is Norman Shaw haunted? Actually don't answer that"

Joe Armitage replied...

"I stayed late once, until around 10pm and the doors opened and closed in my corridor but no one was there! Spooky.."

Tracey then responded thus...

"well that settles it. I'm leaving office now."

Scaredy Cat!

You Can Come Over

I am grateful to Alan W Collins (the one-time Twydall Tory) for pointing me toward this very clever campaign video on behalf of Romanians who feel that Britain's approach to them earlier this year was wrong-headed and unfair.

It was, although the underlying sentiment about being rather full-up in these small islands was and is valid – though that's because Labour let in a good four million new migrants during their dozen or so years running Britain. The consequence of that is that whoever was next in line – whether good, bad or whatever – was always going to get something of a raw deal.

This video, though, makes some telling points about the real Romania; and as my own Romanian friend has let out in his tweets and other comments, what it contains is confirmed to in at least some aspects (others haven't come up) by the 'man on the ground'.

Therefore I have some sympathy with this, and can see that although neither side in that controversy is at any particular fault, prevailing circumstances led, perhaps predictably and inevitably, to such a clash. Fortunately, the British governmental campaign has now been canned (it really was the wrong approach), but – as the video says (though, unaccountably, in an American-sounding accent) – we can still 'come over' anyway...

Here It Goes Again

OK Go is the name of the boy band performing this song, though that isn't all that important. This is really about the treadmill dance, involving eight of the things along with four of our well-known Vocaloid characters – GUMI, IA, Yukari and Miku (for whose sixth 'birthday' this was produced a couple of weeks ago).

It's very clever and highly entertaining, though it is not original and has been performed by humans, perhaps most commonly by groups of four males. Now, I wonder whether we could get the treadmills at Gillingham Park sports and health centre rearranged in this layout...

The Wackiest Link

The one and only, original 'Ann Droid', with the impossible-to-dislike John Barrowman on the Doctor Who special edition of The Weakest Link, sets him a challenge that he not only relishes, but that his 'opponents' (in the quiz, that is) join in with, in this short – just over a minute – clip...

Get Outta Here (On Yer Bike)

One of the Babylon 5 side stories was Mr Garibaldi's home-built Kawasaki 'Ninja' motorbike. Okay, this was a glaringly obvious example of product placement, but it was handled with skill and humour, and was distributed in small sections throughout the first season episode Eyes.

Here is a compilation of those scenes, with Mr Lennier 'assisting' the Security Chief in his endeavours There is an almost predictable 'green' slant in the completion scene; but it does give an excuse for the following zoom up one of B5's corridors...

Star Trek Nemesis – This Wasn't Used

This sequence never made it into the finished Star Trek: Nemesis movie, probably because it was too slow moving and there were no doubt constraints on the finished product's duration; but it's worth airing now, some ten years after the film's release.

I'll say this for the young officer: he might be a bit green, even wet behind the ears, but he's quick on the uptake...

Waiting for the Lift

These two – Londo and G'Kar – are on opposite sides in more ways than one in this short Babylon 5 scene, but they are more alike than either of them realises or could ever admit if they did realise.

Although this is a funny scene, it also symbolises (via the fellow in the middle here) how, later in the story arc, the humans would end up caught in the middle of the conflict between these two races, despite initially trying to keep out of it. As is so often the case in B5, there are two (sometimes more) aspects to a scene or apparent B-storyline, and this can apply even in what are considered to be the non-arc 'filler' episodes...

Ba-Bear-lon

Captain Sheridan was not amused by the 'Ba-Bear-lon' toy when he realised whom it was intended to represent. Where it ended up was not exactly expected...

Shut Up, G'Kar!

Here is another humorous short Londo/G'Kar extract from Babylon 5, this time from the much-maligned season 5, when G'Kar becomes Londo's bodyguard despite the millennia of hatred between their two species and worlds...

Why Zathras talks to dirt (and walls, and ceiling...)

Whar can I possibly add by way of explanation to this Babylon 5 classic scene?