h2g2 The Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy: Earth Edition

> The newscaster is Zbigniew Brzezinski's daughter!

Yup - I have the hardest time spelling her name for some reason. It's Mika Brzezinski, who's currently on the Morning Joe show with Joe Scarborough on MSNBC.

[GDZ-FTTF and now, post 2000]

> That annoying commercial with the duck is a prime example.

And the voice of the duck? Why it's Gilbert Gottfried, of course, the most annoying man on the planet.

Guess not, thanks Lentilla!

There will be no new thread till Monday.

Another cheerful event while at the post office in the Hondo Valley: I had set my bag down to prop open the safe door while I put out the cash drawer, franking stamps and money order machine. Coming back, I put the bag on the table and reached in to get my glasses case. And there, crawling around, was a huge wolf spider -- she must have been nearly an inch and a half long without even extending her legs. I shook her off the bag (think massive reflex twitch) and she ran under the collection box. I was jumpy for the rest of the day.

Then I would say he raised her well.

Our sick leave policy is......hmmm. Depends on how long you've been here. Let's see, I'm in the "Years Six Through Fifteen" category.......that means I get twenty days per calendar year. Last year I only took three weeks of that and it rolls over, so now I think I have five weeks, and maybe another week or two from the year before that. Gosh, I think I'd better visit HR on Monday, and schedule surgery or something heavy-duty just to take advantage of it all.

Here's a little something to remind us all what crappy job policies are all about:

http://www.npr.org/templates/story/story.php?storyId=11515654

long without even extending her legs>>>... was big enough to see no wedding tackle then..

You mean a wedding ring? With little chunks of compressed carbon on it?

I still like spiders, but I have a healthy respect/fear of them now.

Wanders in and avails himself of a large mug of cocoa and rum, adds a bit of rum and then puts extra rum in - just to aid digestion you understand. After a couple of days of dust it is a proper sunny gas mark 4 day today, even squishy endothermic neck coolers dont offer much solace from the high intensity VitD. Occasionally see big beasty camel spiders (not sure why they are called camel spiders because even tho' they are big and have the arachnid attitude equivalent of LOVE and HATE tattooed on their legs I dont believe they would be able to bring down a camel, even if they hunted in packs?) but a short kinetic introduction to the best in modern monastic warrior footwear either in a downward squishy motion, or if less threatened, in a swinging launching motion generally does the trick in terms of 'threat reduction'! What are worse, spiders or snakes? I dont really have a phobic aversion to either, but for some reason I really dont like millipedes? especially big hairy ones, they make me very uneasy - less inclination to be a good buddhist citizen and save a soul and much more inclination to terminate with extreme prejudice and account for agressive tendencies at the day of reckoning..... Have a great dry and safe weekend all.

for the newsreader who denied the oxygen of publicity to the bonfire of that particular vanity.

I'm relieved they found the second car, albeit somewhat belatedly. These things always seem to go in multiples and I was sure there must be at least one more lurking around.

No2 is off into town to meet friends tonight. I'd really rather she didn't go but if normal people stop doing normal things these s start winning.

Very wise with the Millipeds, some have a poisonous bite. I went to Malaysia and my brother who lived there for a couple of years said the large red ones are particularly nasty. As to spiders, I am no lover of them but have been trying to pick them up to get rid of dislike, the house spiders are the worst I picked up a white shirt once and didn't notice the 3 inch one on the back of shirt, I actually jumped and threw the shirt across the room, at least if they are walking across the room you get some warning! Sadly as the name suggests Britain's biggest spider lives in houses.

FG - Bringing back to sick pay a bit, I remember translating a story from Latin at school where Agricola visited his mines and one of the slaves was ill, so he had him killed. We had much better stories in Latin class than French, which was all "Jean-Christophe goes to the market and buys an apple."

Oh and this week's episode of Rome had an early variant on "shoot the messenger" when Mark Antony beat the messenger to death with his own scroll. All in all I think modern labour rules are preferable.

"Dad a horse and Mom a zebra - who would ever have imagined it'd turn out like this?"

I'm glad he's not living out in the veldt, he'd be toast -- that's anything but camo! Very interesting pattern, though.




I'm up very early this morning, since the Glendale PD have decided to not only use their loudspeaker to tell the perp downstairs to pull his car over, but have had nice long *loud* chats on their radio, presumably to attract the attention of the tow truck which just spent an hour winching up the impounded car...at 2 am. Crime fighting is so exciting. And loud.

Honestly, when I moved here 12 years ago, this was a very quiet neighborhoon -- they would "roll the sidewalks up" at 9pm -- now it's fairly busy traffic until well after midnight.

I like spiders. Slugs, on the other hand, I think I may have mentioned, give me the absolute creeps. But all slugs are safe from me. I couldn't possibly terminate one with extreme booty prejudice, as that would mean having to go near it.

It's raining again. *Thinks briefly of Total Sandy Heat, and decides she preferes rain, really, on balance*

I was thinking , this morning, that I ought to go into Central Nodnol, for no reason other than to be Not Intimidated. Is that silly?

My dad was off sick on full pay for six months last year, went back for three months then off for another six. They've started the process of getting him seen by the company doctor which is the precursor to stopping paying him. I wish they would just let him retire early but this is at the behest of the directors and they keep saying no as they keep hiring know-nothing idiots so dad is one of the few left that know how the systems work. Gits. He can't afford to stop working on no money for the next four years but is too sick to do his largely manual job any more. If I won the lottery, the very first thing I'd do is sort out his retirement fund.

Sorry my rain is affecting you too Santra - I didn't realise the weather gods were *that* cross with me. I feel terrible for the folks in Yorkshire - anyone heard if Ben is ok?

Ag, what would happen if you just refused to do the heavy lifting? Would unreliable colleague eventually be shamed into pulling his weight?

Methinks the skiving colleagues do need a kick up the Nelly Furtado.

If there's anything in this Karma stuff then I'm in for a Very Bad Time on account of the number of slugs I've despatched with secateurs and boot recently. And that's not to mention the snails, though I did apologise to each and every one of them.
And there were some ants too

s I don't mind if I knopw where they are and they don't sneak up on me.

Good to know you are well, PWM, if a tad too warm. Wish we could send you some of this dreichness. Or perhaps Lil could post you some of weird ground fog; it sounded rather cooling.

We went and looked at wedding sets together last night, haven't found anything we love yet. It was fun though.

The official weather monitoring station here is at the airport, whichis about a mile from me. In June we have had over 20 inches of rain! That's pretty unusual.

Bombers of any ilk are pretty much pond scum in my book. I hope they catch the ers and publically castrate them.

Lady and Lord C arrived safely in Tiny DooDah (at Mother's) but had a nasty trip. They were rained on, torrentially downpoured on, hailed on and detoured because of flooding.

Inspired by a Gosho thread some time back, I decided to rewatch the old Jewel in the Crown series and have gotten about half way through. Goodness! I had forgotten just how unpleasant most of the English characters in it are. I naturally remembered Tim Pigott-Smith as Ronald Merrick in this regard, but there are certainly plenty of others. The Judy Parfitt character, Mildred Layton, is a prime example. Both actors do a fabulous job. Well, the acting in general is wonderful. I'm glad I decided to rewatch it after all these years.

Mika Brzezinski is my new hero.