Judgement Day...

Apparently Judgement Day is set to be May 21st. Seriously? Well yeah...

Have you noticed that all the supposed "end of the world" dates are fast approching:

• Judgement Day is on May 21st 2011
• The End of the World is on October 21st 2011
• Aztec calender is set to finish on December 21st 2012

Does this worry you?
Nope, me neither.
Well there we go, thought you'd be pleased to hear that. Also, what's so precial about the 21st of those months? They're all the same.

Hey, don't buy anything in our shop!

As promised in a post ages ago, which I forgot (Ahem.), here is my account of my last visit to the great capital. London.

I must admit that the arcitectural beauty of the city is a wonder to behold. There, I hope I didn't sound too much like michael palin. Good. Then I'll continue.

The aim of the game was simple - to visit the silver vaults, their sparkling, shiny little works of art; the sheer value of the contents; the brilliant salesmanship of the shop owners.

Can you guess the opening, greeting sentence of the doorman, eager to earn some of my money [which nobody was going to anyway - I just wanted a nosy]

"Sorry mate, we've just closed"

Hey, I love the way the silver vaults' decided to ignore the basic rule of making making money - selling things.

The exitement of visiting, the drama as I found a map, the suspense as I crossed the bridge; all quelched as soon as I actually found the building. You'd think they'd signpost it, wouldn't you? Yeah, ok, so I took 5 wrong turns. Big deal.

Notice how I neglect to mention that the opening hours were clearly stated on the map I printed out.

How not to make money

While there are more and more sites out there, offering to help you make money on the net [trust me, I've searched for them too!], it has occurred to me that something doesn't quite stack up.

If they are so good at making money, then why do they need a site with adverts? The answer is simple. They don't have a clue either.

Their best guess is that making a mint out of telling others their ideas is probably a good idea. You don't really think that they have a clue what they're talking about, do you?

Put it this way. Teachers, for all their wisdom, are forever telling us kiddiewinkles what we should be doing. Now this is probably a good idea, because there would be complete chaos if it was slightly up to us.

But do they follow their own example? No.

To give an example, I know a teacher who works in a primary school. Along with other things, she teaches handwriting lessons.

Good luck with trying to read HER writing!

Picture this scene. A spider falls into a bottle of whisky. It then climbs out, and falls headlong into an ink pot. Paralytically, it then stumbles accross a wide expanse of A4 paper.

The spider's 'writing' looks an awful lot neater than this handwriting teacher's!

Which just goes to show that most people who teach you something are extremely hypercritical.

Especially if it is to do with money.

I'm gonna sue you cos you said I'm crap

I read on yahoo news a while back that a woman who went on stage in Britain's Got Talent is going to sue them, because they called her rubbish.

Now I don't mean to be rude, but they were right. And isn't that the whole point of the program? To laugh your ass off at someone making a complete fool of themselves? Or am I missing the point somewhere...

Anyway, I really hope that she doesn't get any compensation. Not only because the presenters were only telling her what everyone else was thinking. Not just because the program would have to get every subsequent congruent to sign a form, saying that they agree not to sue the presenters, directors, window cleaners, sound people, or the person who last cleaned the floor; for any reason whatsoever. Or because I think she's wrong. But because if she does win, this will happen:

• It will set a precedent for future cases
• It will give one of the annoying (and plain wrong) no-win-no-fee suing jerks a real win
• The program will stop broadcasting, so we won't be able to laugh at some imbecile hopping around on one leg, while juggling fire, and riding a unicycle.

Only cos I'm jealous.

Tate modern

A while back, I went to Tate modern.

Unsuprisingly, I hadn't planned on visiting it, it just sort of happened. Well, not quite. But I'll explain this in my next post. If I remember.

When I turned up on the doorstep, there was a little exhibition to the side. So I went in.

It was quite good actually, it was based on star wars - but that's not the point. I thought it was quite good, and I planned on doing something about it as part of my art project at school [yep. I'm afraid I haven't escaped the clutches of our education system yet. Not for quite a while]. Of course, I never got round to it.

So I went inside, expecting something the same kind of quality. How wrong could I be?

To be fair, there were at least 4 pieces out of the seemingly millions that were quite good. Maybe.

My favorite just had to be the picture I found upstairs. I forget it's name now, but it's description was brilliant. In place of the norml 'oil on canvas', or the slightly more unusual 'acrylic on wood' was a caption saying 'mirror on canvas' - I quote exactly.

Yup, that's right folks, I was looking at a mirror. Stuck on a bit of cloth. I wouldn't mind, but they hadn't even painted the edges of it.

However, this was just one of many beautiful pieces of modern 'art', closely followed by a canvas with a tear in the middle, and the black canvas with a brush hair and dust.

Annotated.

The only thing that annoys me is that the superb artist on the river bank, painting the bridge, doesn't earn a penny for most his stuff.

And his is better.

WARNING: Dont crash into this sign!

I was on the way to school, as I so often am in these posts, when I passed a road works sign on the right hand side of the road.

Well, to say 'a' sign is a slight lie. I passed a jumble of every sign in the least way relevent to the hole in the Tarmac.

Here is my best guess as to what the signs meant. Pedestrians: go on the right hand pavement. Cars: one lane closed. Cars: one lane merged into other. Cars: no temporary traffic lights. Warning: don't drive or fall into this hole. Warning: man having trouble with umbrella [more on that later]. Cats: don't climb in and get stuck. Dogs: don't chase cats into here. Etc.

Less than 4 feet was actually taken out of the drivable space, the road was a dead end anyway, and any pedestrian stupid enough to climb over the safety barrier and fall in deserves what they get.

I wouldn't mind if the hole was more than 10 cm deep.

Well, we really are lost

On the way to school this morning, I saw a highway maintenance van take a right-hand turn down a side street.

30 seconds later, I saw it reverse back out again at high speed again. It then proceeded to speed up to a traffic warden, and stop.

Intregued, I did a Sherlock Holmes, and pretended that my school had miraculously teleported itself to the end of that road.

In other words, I went and had an earwig. They were asking for directions!

We know that there's something wrong with our road system the minute a highway maintenance van asks you where the nearest depot is.