One handed typing

Bollocks. I broke my collar bone playing football. It will teach me for doing something so unlazy in the first place I suppose. So I'm writing this blog very slowly with one hand.

There are some plus points, as my girlfriend pointed out, there are now all kinds of things that I don't like doing, that I can't do because I only have one arm I can use effectively. Like washing up, cleaning etc. And you really only need one free arm to sit in bed or on the sofa watching TV.

Plus I have an excuse for not blogging regularly. Unlike Danny who's just a lazy bastard.

Google Calendar

I finally got fed up of always having to ask my girlfriend if we were free on a certain day to do something, so I decided to try setting up a google calendar. Well, what happened was I thought "there must be some kind of shared calendar online, I bet google have one..." so I put google calendar into google and found it.

Google are going to run the world if they carry on like this aren't they. I am already virtually helpless without them.

Anyway, I set it up (trivial if you have a gmail account, you just put in your password) and started entering dates. Shared it with my girlfriend and within quarter of an hour or so we'd got everything set up and entered. It was very quick and easy to use. You can even synch it with Outlook apparently.

And now I'll get an e-mail a week before our anniversary and her birthday. Woo!

I'm sorry Darling, you're barred

Now this is what I call practical political activism. An Edinburgh bar has started an internet campaign to have the Chancellor, Alistair Darling, barred from every pub in the country as a protest about his latest round of booze tax increases.

Now, one of the brilliant things about this is that it's got publicity in a national newspaper despite the following fact:

A Facebook group called "Alistair Darling - You're Barred" was started last week, and already has more than 200 members.

More than 200 members in a week! And that's newsworthy? I could start a facebook group celebrating that magic thief from Danny's last story and beat that. I note that they are now up to a MIGHTY 500 members on the back of all this publicity.

Still, I hope it works. What a brilliant achievement it'd be to get him completely unable to get a pint anywhere in Britain.

Magic on the loose!

No, not the card game you big damn loser. Actual magic, by actual magicians. Ok, not magic. Hypnosis. Hypnosis for the purpose of EVIL!

Apparently there's a rogue magician running around Rome hypnotizing bank tellers and making off with the cash. Last time I stared at a woman and said "Look into my eyes" I got a faceful of mace. He might have more than just hypnotism on his side, he may also have charm and good hygiene. Clearly we're powerless to stop this Master of Magic, again...not the game you dork of dorks, and his reign of terror. I recommend casting a spell of....ummmm something that I really don't know about because I'm in no way a nerd who has played multiple fantasy based role playing games. I was too busy scoring with chicks.

If there's a lazier and more awesome way to rob a bank I've not heard or thought of it. And I spend a good 3 or 4 hours a day thinking up ways to steal things.

Long weekend

Welcome back. I had a very enjoyable Lazy Easter break. Didn't really do very much at all. The only things we really had to do was get online and organise spending some vouchers we have for stuff. I got a Red Letter Day voucher from work that my girlfriend and I are going to exchange for a weekend away and also tickets to Vinopolis that we got for Christmas and need to actually book. Despite having a laptop so we could arrange all that without even leaving bed, we didn't even manage that.

Yesterday was probably the pinnacle of lazy days, I was so hungover after a night at a friends house on Sunday that I only got out of bed for an hour and a half for dinner. The rest of the day was spent catching up with the whole of Season 4 of Lost interspersed with various episodes of Two and a Half Men which Paramount Comedy were showing all weekend. It was about all my brain could cope with.

Strangely, despite that seeming most excellent in theory it did feel like a bit of a waste of a day in practice. Very odd.

So... why didn't I pursue a career in science?

I finally have a decent answer. Because I'd have totally sucked. According to this story in the NY Times the more beer you drink the less successful you'll be as a scientist. Now, during my degree, I drank a hell of a lot of beer, and in the end I really wasn't very successful. It is probably for the best that I didn't continue into it as a career. I'd probably never have had anything published ever.

I am slightly concerned that this might be true in other areas of life. Perhaps the more beer you drink the more you suck at everything. I'm glad I mostly drink a lot of wine these days. *phew* I expect success is just round the corner.

Oh and yes, Darling, I am one of those middle class binge drinkers you are trying to target with your massive increase on wine Tax. Well did you see our response? Massive increases in wine sales. Stick that in your pipe (with no increased duty) and smoke it.

Hail Pilate!

It's coming up to that time of year when Pontius Pilate did us all a favour and had Jesus executed so that he could allegedly rise from the dead and give those of us who live in the UK two excellent bank holidays in Spring. For those of you that don't live in the UK, Bank Holidays are where you don't have to go to work. Well unless you work in a shop, or a bar or something. In which case, unlucky!

Easter Sunday is actually one of only two days in the whole year where major shops in big towns and cities in the UK really are shut, the other being Christmas Day. I'm not used to shops ever being shut these days and few years ago it caught me totally by surprise. I was very confused to find myself in town on an Easter Sunday and see everything was shut. I'd expect it on Christmas but who really gives a crap about Easter? I don't really have a sweet tooth so I never even get the whole chocolate thing. The whole rising from the dead/bunny/eggs thing seems pretty lame compared to other excellent holidays like Christmas. But the two days off work are great so I shouldn't complain.

It's also interesting that my co-blogger Danny who lives in the devout Southern United States only gets one extra day off for Easter whilst I, who live in the highly non-devout southern United Kingdom get the full Easter weekend off work to get drunk and fornicate/do religious shit. No wonder God sends the hurricanes to his part of the world.

Delia - Cheating at Cooking

As someone who's posted a few times about Lazy cooking I guess I should have a view on Delia's controversial new show and book. For those who haven't been following the controversy, or for those overseas, the issue is that she's using convenience foods, and even goes as far as to name brands in her book.

I've been thinking about what to write, but once again procrastination bore fruit and the Guardian ran an article where they cooked some of the food and tried it. Now, I haven't read the book and I've only seen the first episode of the TV show but my impression was that the food was going to be pretty shit, and hardly worth doing because if you are using crap ingredients like that you might as well just have a ready meal which is miles less work, and much quicker to make. Especially these days when you can get really very good ready meals. In fact the article makes all these points, and much better than I do. Go read it.

The Guardian article basically seems to back that up. You don't actually save much time and what you make tastes like shit. So it's a Boo to Delia. Stick with her earlier "how to cook" books if you want, they are still solid if a bit boring.

Ummmmmm

Here at Lazy View, we sometimes like to cover fat people. Fat people are, at least on some level, lazy by nature. Either they're fat because they're lazy, or they're lazy because they're fat. In the case of the "glandular" fatties they have lazy glands.

Today we have a story about the world's fattest man. See, he's not actually the world's fattest man anymore. He's lost 400 pounds, and now he's out on the town. In a bed. With a mariachi band.

I don't even really know how to comment on all that this story contains. It just sets my mind racing. I'm just gonna make a list of some "Points of Interest" and let everyone draw their own conlcusions.

1. He lost 440 pounds and still weighs 800 pounds.
2. He has people roll him around on a bed while a mariachi band plays.
3. He had a date.
4. He needed a forklift for said date.
5. His rollerbed truck drove into a bridge on the way to the date and broke, thereby ruining his date.
6. He's alive somehow.
7. He has a girlfriend.

I'm torn between 6 and 7 being the most unbelievable points of interest. To say I was gobsmacked at 7 is an understatment. I'd sooner believe that Hillary Clinton is actually a woman before I believe that. Unless they meant to say: "Had a date with...." and then mentioned that his girlfriend was a ham sandwich.

Desktop Tower Defence - Again!

It's the first birthday of Desktop Tower Defence today, and the creator has put up this blog post detailing his earnings from the game. He's made $100,000 in a year from the game. Amazing, and all after he spent just a month learning flash.

Sometimes you just don't want to read the story

The New Scientist RSS feed popped up the following gem of a headline today: "Toxic newts lose war against 'super-immune' snakes". Now, I don't know what the story is really about, probably a cautionary environmental tale or something. I'm torn between clicking the link to find out or sticking with the story my imagination conjoured up. In my mind it's a cross between the classic Alligator vs Python BBC story, the Toxic Avenger and the Ninja Turtles


In the end, I decided to click the link and read the story and I was really pleased to find out that the picture really was reminiscent of a small scale Alligator vs Python. I also found out that this toxic newt has amazing blowfish poison strong enough that it can kill 12 people which is pretty awesome, and the snake has evolved to handle that and eat them anyway.

All I need to do now is Hollywood the story up a bit, cartoonize the animals, add in a bit of anthropomorphism and a sexy lady newt and I've got massive worldwide cartoon success on our hands. If only I could draw.