My husband is not impressed with my fanatical recycling policy. Plastic, glass, aluminium, newspapers – all separated and lovingly put out in the blue boxes/bags. We’ve even got our very own composter for the garden waste. So I’m pretty pleased with myself doing my bit for Global Warming and the Carbon Footprint. My husband’s argument is – I do all this and then… leave the computer on 24/7. He has got a point but I have a wonderful relationship with my PC. You could say a typical love/hate. I love it. It hates me.
I’ve gone back to the PC quite often recently and it’s been switched off. Of course I blamed my husband doing his bit for the environment. He denied all knowledge so then Morgan got the blame and as he’s too young to confirm or deny. It was left at that until this week.
So there I’d be emailing away job applications and it would switch off. Extremely annoying to say the least.
When I bought it, about a million years ago I took out this protection thingy but I couldn’t find the receipt. I rang PC World and after about a million options got through to a very nice man who traced me by my post code (Big Brother is watching, scary really.)
I explained the problem and he got me to go into the BIOS and he asked me to read off the temperature. “113.5C.”
The poor man screamed down the phone “Hit the power switch! Turn off your machine! Hit the power button! NOW!!”
He went on to explain that how the internals of my machine hadn’t been frazzled and caused a house fire he had no idea and went on to arrange for a very nice engineer to come out yesterday.
Well the very nice man did come out and diagnosed the problem immediately. Dust. I was absolutely mortified . A family of mice could quite happily have lived there very comfortably, thank you very much. I asked how it could be avoided and thankfully he said it couldn’t and this was “Normal”. He worked his magic with his paintbrush and my Dyson and I’m now left with a machine that’s running sweet as a nut.
He also reminded me that with this insurance there’s a free annual health check – I think I’ll be taking full advantage of this in the future. I read this week about a laptop being left on and setting fire to a settee. There’s a global warning in this house now – SWITCH OFF.
Saturday, 8 November 2008
Saturday, 1 November 2008
Credit Crunch or Infantile Radio DJ's?
Ok so the whole world is pretty fed up with the whole Russell brand /Jonatha Ross debacle but here’s my tuppenny worth.
Leaving obscene messages on anyone’s answer machine is pretty juvenile. On a 78 year old is pretty stupid. To do it publically on National radio is pretty much signing your own death warrant so what do you expect?
Andrew Sachs was due to give an interview and didn’t answer his phone which is at the least pretty rude and at best totally unprofessional.
The main complaint seems to be that Russell Brand alleges he slept with Andrew Sachs grand daughter Georgina Baillie. From what I am led to believe this is a statement of fact for which the said granddaughter was paid an obscene amount of money for “selling her story” Said granddaughter is also I am led to believe known as Madam Voluptua, is part of a group known as Satanic Sluts and has been seen on stage promoting lesbian sex. I doubt very much whether this publicity has harmed her in the least.
Going back to the content. I addressed a group of 14 year old English students last year and we basically discussed humour and what they found amusing. After a swift question and answer session they identified Roy “Chubby” Brown as funny. When I asked why they were quick to point out because he was “rude.” What I quickly found out was because he swore. I asked the group if I stood in front of them and swore would it be funny? Yes was the overwhelming reply. Then I asked if their English teacher stood up in front of them and swore would that be funny. They nearly choked and agreed that would be hilarious.
Then I asked them to explain why? We laugh because we’re shocked. The problem we’re getting is once the “F” word was shocking it has now become the “norm” so comedians have to look for ever increasing shock value top become amusing.
Let’s face it any one person can stand up and swear. It’s not funny anymore. What is funny is observational humour as demonstrated by the GREAT Peter Kay What Peter Kaye demonstrates is there are the funniest things going on in everyone’s life all the time. The stories he tells are so funny because we identify with them because let’s face it they’ve happened to us.
It’s slightly strange that I am reading Alan Carr’s autobiography which is highly entertaining however it comments about a show that Russell Brand was doing in the Edinburgh festival in 2003. The show wasn’t going too well so he decided to wave around a rather personal part of his anatomy. The response was minimal.
This I believe is a far worse offence than has hit the headlines recently.
I used to love Jonathan Ross. I found his Radio 2 show to be highly entertaining and amusing. Hindsight is a wonderful thing but I honestly found his “Tonight With Jonathan Ross” to have gone down the pan of late. The lavatorial sense of humour had outshone his obvious talent as a great talk show host.
As for Russell Brand well he’s basically gone as far as we’ve let him. To me he’s always been an overgrown public school boy who’s pushed the boundaries of public decency.
Like most people I honestly feel the great loser in this whole unfortunate affair is Lesley Douglas, who in fairness has shown outstanding loyalty to her team. She has taken full responsibility but what a loss to the BBC, particularly radio and especially Radio 2. I wish her all the best for the future and hope that her prospects as an unemployed 40 something female are not as bleak as mine.
Leaving obscene messages on anyone’s answer machine is pretty juvenile. On a 78 year old is pretty stupid. To do it publically on National radio is pretty much signing your own death warrant so what do you expect?
Andrew Sachs was due to give an interview and didn’t answer his phone which is at the least pretty rude and at best totally unprofessional.
The main complaint seems to be that Russell Brand alleges he slept with Andrew Sachs grand daughter Georgina Baillie. From what I am led to believe this is a statement of fact for which the said granddaughter was paid an obscene amount of money for “selling her story” Said granddaughter is also I am led to believe known as Madam Voluptua, is part of a group known as Satanic Sluts and has been seen on stage promoting lesbian sex. I doubt very much whether this publicity has harmed her in the least.
Going back to the content. I addressed a group of 14 year old English students last year and we basically discussed humour and what they found amusing. After a swift question and answer session they identified Roy “Chubby” Brown as funny. When I asked why they were quick to point out because he was “rude.” What I quickly found out was because he swore. I asked the group if I stood in front of them and swore would it be funny? Yes was the overwhelming reply. Then I asked if their English teacher stood up in front of them and swore would that be funny. They nearly choked and agreed that would be hilarious.
Then I asked them to explain why? We laugh because we’re shocked. The problem we’re getting is once the “F” word was shocking it has now become the “norm” so comedians have to look for ever increasing shock value top become amusing.
Let’s face it any one person can stand up and swear. It’s not funny anymore. What is funny is observational humour as demonstrated by the GREAT Peter Kay What Peter Kaye demonstrates is there are the funniest things going on in everyone’s life all the time. The stories he tells are so funny because we identify with them because let’s face it they’ve happened to us.
It’s slightly strange that I am reading Alan Carr’s autobiography which is highly entertaining however it comments about a show that Russell Brand was doing in the Edinburgh festival in 2003. The show wasn’t going too well so he decided to wave around a rather personal part of his anatomy. The response was minimal.
This I believe is a far worse offence than has hit the headlines recently.
I used to love Jonathan Ross. I found his Radio 2 show to be highly entertaining and amusing. Hindsight is a wonderful thing but I honestly found his “Tonight With Jonathan Ross” to have gone down the pan of late. The lavatorial sense of humour had outshone his obvious talent as a great talk show host.
As for Russell Brand well he’s basically gone as far as we’ve let him. To me he’s always been an overgrown public school boy who’s pushed the boundaries of public decency.
Like most people I honestly feel the great loser in this whole unfortunate affair is Lesley Douglas, who in fairness has shown outstanding loyalty to her team. She has taken full responsibility but what a loss to the BBC, particularly radio and especially Radio 2. I wish her all the best for the future and hope that her prospects as an unemployed 40 something female are not as bleak as mine.
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