The first posting on karmasotra was on the 31st Jan 2008
That means the blog is one year old today,
In that year it has accumulated 144 published posts and god knows how many more half written and half cocked bits and bobs lined up for future realise
Currently on the way back from Japan so there will be plenty to scribble, rant and wax lyrically about once I get back...
So if there is anybody out there, thanks for coming by
John
31 January 2009
16 January 2009
This weeks Friday Joke
On time this week! By the time you read this I will be on a plane heading east to the land of the rising sun!
Some things to ponder over the weekend...
Only in America ......do drugstores make the sick walk all the way to the back of the store to get their prescriptions while healthy people can buy cigarettes at the front.
Only in America.....do people order double cheeseburgers, large fries, and a diet coke.
Only in America.....do banks leave both doors open and then chain the pens to the counters.
Only in America.....do people leave cars worth thousands of dollars in the driveway and put useless junk in the garage [Actually I think that is everywhere...]
Only in America......can you buy hot dogs in packages of ten and buns in packages of eight.
Only in America.....do they have drive-up ATM machines with Braille lettering.
EVER WONDER ...
Why the sun lightens our hair, but darkens our skin?
Why women can't put on mascara with their mouth closed?
Why don't you ever see the headline 'Psychic Wins Lottery'?
Why is 'abbreviated' such a long word?
Why is it that doctors call what they do 'practice'?
Why is lemon juice made with artificial flavor, and dishwashing liquid made with real lemons?
Why is the man who invests all your money called a broker?
Why is the time of day with the slowest traffic called rush hour?
Why isn't there mouse-flavored cat food?
Why didn't Noah swat those two mosquitoes?
Why do they sterilize the needle for lethal injections?
You know that indestructible black box that is used on airplanes? Why don't they make the whole plane out of that stuff?!
Why don't sheep shrink when it rains?
Why are they called apartments when they are all stuck together?
If con is the opposite of pro, is Congress the opposite of progress?
If flying is so safe, why do they call the airport the terminal?
Some things to ponder over the weekend...
Only in America ......do drugstores make the sick walk all the way to the back of the store to get their prescriptions while healthy people can buy cigarettes at the front.
Only in America.....do people order double cheeseburgers, large fries, and a diet coke.
Only in America.....do banks leave both doors open and then chain the pens to the counters.
Only in America.....do people leave cars worth thousands of dollars in the driveway and put useless junk in the garage [Actually I think that is everywhere...]
Only in America......can you buy hot dogs in packages of ten and buns in packages of eight.
Only in America.....do they have drive-up ATM machines with Braille lettering.
EVER WONDER ...
Why the sun lightens our hair, but darkens our skin?
Why women can't put on mascara with their mouth closed?
Why don't you ever see the headline 'Psychic Wins Lottery'?
Why is 'abbreviated' such a long word?
Why is it that doctors call what they do 'practice'?
Why is lemon juice made with artificial flavor, and dishwashing liquid made with real lemons?
Why is the man who invests all your money called a broker?
Why is the time of day with the slowest traffic called rush hour?
Why isn't there mouse-flavored cat food?
Why didn't Noah swat those two mosquitoes?
Why do they sterilize the needle for lethal injections?
You know that indestructible black box that is used on airplanes? Why don't they make the whole plane out of that stuff?!
Why don't sheep shrink when it rains?
Why are they called apartments when they are all stuck together?
If con is the opposite of pro, is Congress the opposite of progress?
If flying is so safe, why do they call the airport the terminal?
Courtesy of Thor-Magnus
12 January 2009
Angels in Moab Utah
It’s the summer of 2004 and we are in Woody’s Tavern in Moab Utah. Moab is an old uranium town in the high desert of the Colorado Plateau. The small town nestles besides the Colorado river, when seen from the air, or even from the high ridges of white and red slickrock that tower above the valley, it is literally an oasis, green in the otherwise brash, red countryside. Its also an oasis of hedonism in the otherwise, ultra conservative mormon state. Moab is where the irreligious go to bike, climb, jeep, play in the big rivers and drink beer. Moab is probably the only town in Utah that has more bars than churches! I love Moab.
So we are in Woody's Tavern, there are carvings of long gone peoples names in the bar, next to a sign saying don’t carve the bar. A rock band is playing and a lot of drunk hippies and rockers are dancing, badly. They have all been exposed to way too much sun and their sandaled feet probably haven’t seen a proper pair of shoes in 15 years. They mix effortless with bikers and the occasional, slightly perplexed looking tourist.
Its all going well, we are playing a bit of pool, having a laugh, then Roy or Tor suggest that we go for some white Russians and the downward trajectory steepens significantly. The level of banter rises with the volume of the band and the number of cocktails. We have been working hard for a month, now its time to play. Tomorrow we will head on a five day river trip on Cataract Canyon.
A couple of hours later and we are staggering back along main street to the single hotel room that the 5 of us will share. Its pretty quiet. I say to Atle “I am sick of Americans bitching about the price of gas, big fuckin deal if its 2 bucks 50. Its 9 bucks back home!”
He agrees, but without much conviction.
And then shinning out of the night is the towering light of the Shell sign.
“Fuck it, lets do something about it” I declare!
“Oh no!" He looks worried and then has a little glint in his eye. "Ok what? He replies”
“We'll solve the gas price problem, here help me up”
So with some undignified grunting a pushing I am up the sign, changing the price from 2.51 to 1.25… Problem solved!
Suddenly I am illuminated in the light of a torch, hmmm we don’t have a torch.
While I am pondering this a stern and very American voice says
“What are you doing?”
Without trying to be smart, I reply
“errr, changing the price of gas?”
“Why? Say the voice in blue.
“Cos I thought it would make people happy?”
This is not going well, I look around and I see Roy and Tor climbing onto the roof of the gas station in the shadows, I am not sure why. I don’t see Atle or Chris – so much for my look outs!
“Well get down here!” Commands the law, clearly not as interested in pleasing the public as I am. So I start climbing down...
“Get back up there and put the price right!” He instructs
So I climb back up and fix the price. Then just as I start to climb down I look up the main street and I see something that you don’t see everyday, even in Moab.
...Two totally naked women walking down the street...
The policeman sees them at the same time as me and mutters under his breath “fuck me – what a night! Maybe it’s a full moon!” To nobody in particular and I almost feel sorry for him.
Atle and Chris reappear immediatly and are in shark mode. They are failing badly, maybe it's because they have clothes on?
The policeman now has a fairly complex dilemma, he can:
1. Continue to arrest the idiot who was messing with the gas sign. In which case he has to leave the naked chicks with the guys with strange accents.
2. Arrest the naked chicks and the foreign idiot, which puts all three of them in the back of the car together, is he allowed to do that?
3. Rescue the naked chicks from the foreign guys.
Fortunately for me the girls start to look scared and he opts for option 3. Net result, I am saved from a night in the slammer. In retrospect I think they must be angels, set down to protect me from the ravages of the law…
Next morning we all wake up in a very small space with bad heads. Simultaneously 5 guys say
“I had a really weird dream last night, there was a policeman and two naked girls on the highstreet…”
So we are in Woody's Tavern, there are carvings of long gone peoples names in the bar, next to a sign saying don’t carve the bar. A rock band is playing and a lot of drunk hippies and rockers are dancing, badly. They have all been exposed to way too much sun and their sandaled feet probably haven’t seen a proper pair of shoes in 15 years. They mix effortless with bikers and the occasional, slightly perplexed looking tourist.
Its all going well, we are playing a bit of pool, having a laugh, then Roy or Tor suggest that we go for some white Russians and the downward trajectory steepens significantly. The level of banter rises with the volume of the band and the number of cocktails. We have been working hard for a month, now its time to play. Tomorrow we will head on a five day river trip on Cataract Canyon.
A couple of hours later and we are staggering back along main street to the single hotel room that the 5 of us will share. Its pretty quiet. I say to Atle “I am sick of Americans bitching about the price of gas, big fuckin deal if its 2 bucks 50. Its 9 bucks back home!”
He agrees, but without much conviction.
And then shinning out of the night is the towering light of the Shell sign.
“Fuck it, lets do something about it” I declare!
“Oh no!" He looks worried and then has a little glint in his eye. "Ok what? He replies”
“We'll solve the gas price problem, here help me up”
So with some undignified grunting a pushing I am up the sign, changing the price from 2.51 to 1.25… Problem solved!
Suddenly I am illuminated in the light of a torch, hmmm we don’t have a torch.
While I am pondering this a stern and very American voice says
“What are you doing?”
Without trying to be smart, I reply
“errr, changing the price of gas?”
“Why? Say the voice in blue.
“Cos I thought it would make people happy?”
This is not going well, I look around and I see Roy and Tor climbing onto the roof of the gas station in the shadows, I am not sure why. I don’t see Atle or Chris – so much for my look outs!
“Well get down here!” Commands the law, clearly not as interested in pleasing the public as I am. So I start climbing down...
“Get back up there and put the price right!” He instructs
So I climb back up and fix the price. Then just as I start to climb down I look up the main street and I see something that you don’t see everyday, even in Moab.
...Two totally naked women walking down the street...
The policeman sees them at the same time as me and mutters under his breath “fuck me – what a night! Maybe it’s a full moon!” To nobody in particular and I almost feel sorry for him.
Atle and Chris reappear immediatly and are in shark mode. They are failing badly, maybe it's because they have clothes on?
The policeman now has a fairly complex dilemma, he can:
1. Continue to arrest the idiot who was messing with the gas sign. In which case he has to leave the naked chicks with the guys with strange accents.
2. Arrest the naked chicks and the foreign idiot, which puts all three of them in the back of the car together, is he allowed to do that?
3. Rescue the naked chicks from the foreign guys.
Fortunately for me the girls start to look scared and he opts for option 3. Net result, I am saved from a night in the slammer. In retrospect I think they must be angels, set down to protect me from the ravages of the law…
Next morning we all wake up in a very small space with bad heads. Simultaneously 5 guys say
“I had a really weird dream last night, there was a policeman and two naked girls on the highstreet…”
11 January 2009
Vibeke's birthday and a lot of rain
Back in work with a fairly full on week. Was out on Wednesday night with some visitors from the UK at an extremely understated restaurant in Bergen. Seven courses – yep 7, each with its own wine, all tasted great. It took 5 hours! The bloke on the table next to us fell down the stairs in a most spectacular fashion, all sorts of slow motion smashing glass and crashing around. It may have been the wine, but more likely that he had seen his bill. I was very glad not to be paying ours until Gregor played the “I’ll pay, no worries”, closely followed by “oh they don’t seem to accept diners club” (does anybody?) so I got landed with debt of a third world country on food for 9 people – but it was jolly fine and the visitors were impressed.
For the weekend we headed up to Myrkdalen for Vibeke’s birthday. Had been watching the weather for a week and it promised snow, snow and more snow! Arrived Friday night, ate lots of pizza and drunk some wine. Next morning was beautiful blue skies but a very icy mountain. Conditions were less than ideal for boarding so I headed to climb ice with Sandy. The ice falls were all fat but melting so went to board and the mountain was too icy. Hmmm not icy enough to climb but too icy to ski. You have got to love western Norway in January.
Had an ok day in the end, at least it was good to be out on the snow, we found some patches of wind blown powder and did runs across the crusty bits in between. We had a party in the evening, which was all very civilized. Vibeke got a list of 30 tasks for her 30th year, the last of which was to keep a blog of the other 29 – will she manage?
It started snowing in the evening so everyone was psyched for Sunday. Sunday morning it was somewhat of a let down, 2 degrees and raining! Who stole all the snow? So much for the weather forecast. Headed back to Bergen, with Emma counting the tunnels between Voss and Bergen. There are a totally of…. Nope I am not going to say, she is going to write a review for this blog, I couldn’t still her thunder. Now its Sunday evening and I am sat in the lair with the fire blazing and a wet pussy purring - outside it is 7 degrees and raining very heavily.
For the weekend we headed up to Myrkdalen for Vibeke’s birthday. Had been watching the weather for a week and it promised snow, snow and more snow! Arrived Friday night, ate lots of pizza and drunk some wine. Next morning was beautiful blue skies but a very icy mountain. Conditions were less than ideal for boarding so I headed to climb ice with Sandy. The ice falls were all fat but melting so went to board and the mountain was too icy. Hmmm not icy enough to climb but too icy to ski. You have got to love western Norway in January.
Had an ok day in the end, at least it was good to be out on the snow, we found some patches of wind blown powder and did runs across the crusty bits in between. We had a party in the evening, which was all very civilized. Vibeke got a list of 30 tasks for her 30th year, the last of which was to keep a blog of the other 29 – will she manage?
It started snowing in the evening so everyone was psyched for Sunday. Sunday morning it was somewhat of a let down, 2 degrees and raining! Who stole all the snow? So much for the weather forecast. Headed back to Bergen, with Emma counting the tunnels between Voss and Bergen. There are a totally of…. Nope I am not going to say, she is going to write a review for this blog, I couldn’t still her thunder. Now its Sunday evening and I am sat in the lair with the fire blazing and a wet pussy purring - outside it is 7 degrees and raining very heavily.
Friday Joke - Male or Female?
- yes I know its Sunday,
There goes my New Years Resolution "to always post the Friday Joke on Friday..."
Anyway here is it, once again courtesy of Angharad...
Male or Female? You might not have known this, but a lot of non-living objects are actually either male or female.
Here are some examples:
FREEZER BAGS: They are male, because they hold everything in, but you can see right through them.
PHOTOCOPIERS: These are female, because once turned off; it takes a while to warm them up again. They are an effective reproductive device if the right buttons are pushed, but can also wreak havoc if you push the wrong Buttons.
TYRES: Tyres are male, because they go bald easily and are often over inflated
HOT AIR BALLOONS: Also a male object, because to get them to go anywhere, you have to light a fire under their butt.
SPONGES: These are female, because they are soft, squeezable and retain water.
WEB PAGES: Female, because they're constantly being looked at and frequently getting hit on.
TRAINS: Definitely male, because they always use the same old lines for picking up people.
EGG TIMERS: Egg timers are female because, over time, all the weight shifts to the bottom.
HAMMERS: Male, because in the last 5000 years, they've hardly changed at all, and are occasionally handy to have around.
THE REMOTE CONTROL: Female. Ha! You probably thought it would be male, but consider this: It easily gives a man pleasure, he'd be lost without it, and while he doesn't always know which buttons to push, he just keeps trying.
There goes my New Years Resolution "to always post the Friday Joke on Friday..."
Anyway here is it, once again courtesy of Angharad...
Male or Female? You might not have known this, but a lot of non-living objects are actually either male or female.
Here are some examples:
FREEZER BAGS: They are male, because they hold everything in, but you can see right through them.
PHOTOCOPIERS: These are female, because once turned off; it takes a while to warm them up again. They are an effective reproductive device if the right buttons are pushed, but can also wreak havoc if you push the wrong Buttons.
TYRES: Tyres are male, because they go bald easily and are often over inflated
HOT AIR BALLOONS: Also a male object, because to get them to go anywhere, you have to light a fire under their butt.
SPONGES: These are female, because they are soft, squeezable and retain water.
WEB PAGES: Female, because they're constantly being looked at and frequently getting hit on.
TRAINS: Definitely male, because they always use the same old lines for picking up people.
EGG TIMERS: Egg timers are female because, over time, all the weight shifts to the bottom.
HAMMERS: Male, because in the last 5000 years, they've hardly changed at all, and are occasionally handy to have around.
THE REMOTE CONTROL: Female. Ha! You probably thought it would be male, but consider this: It easily gives a man pleasure, he'd be lost without it, and while he doesn't always know which buttons to push, he just keeps trying.
07 January 2009
Holiday Photos
Now have a flickr account which can be found here
Uploaded some pics from Costa Rica - the better ones are on the later pages, I need to work out how to shuffle them around, but in the mean time any feedback welcome
Uploaded some pics from Costa Rica - the better ones are on the later pages, I need to work out how to shuffle them around, but in the mean time any feedback welcome
06 January 2009
Holiday Reads
Read a fair bit while on holiday including:
"Snowball in Hell" by Christopher Brookmyre - I love his stuff, this one saw the return of my hero Simon Darcourt. I knew he wasn't dead!
"Call me Elizabeth" by Dawn Annandale - Middle class women with 6 kids becomes an escort to keep her brood in public school. More about middle class poverty than working in the sex industry
"Chance - a guide to gambling, love..." by Amir Aczel - summary of probability theory, well written but fairly basic. Does what it says on the tin.
"Touch wood" very amusing tale of an accidental pornographer. Has some very funny moments, I was laughing out loud in several places, highly recommended.
“The Time Traveler’s wife” by Audrey Niffenegger - definitely the best of the bunch. A really beautiful and haunting book. About the relationship between a couple where he is periodically and involentarily shunted back and forth through time. They keep meeting at differnt stages in their respective lives. Sounds fairly far fetched but it really works and its very cleverly done. Probably the best book I read in 2008.
"Snowball in Hell" by Christopher Brookmyre - I love his stuff, this one saw the return of my hero Simon Darcourt. I knew he wasn't dead!
"Call me Elizabeth" by Dawn Annandale - Middle class women with 6 kids becomes an escort to keep her brood in public school. More about middle class poverty than working in the sex industry
"Chance - a guide to gambling, love..." by Amir Aczel - summary of probability theory, well written but fairly basic. Does what it says on the tin.
"Touch wood" very amusing tale of an accidental pornographer. Has some very funny moments, I was laughing out loud in several places, highly recommended.
“The Time Traveler’s wife” by Audrey Niffenegger - definitely the best of the bunch. A really beautiful and haunting book. About the relationship between a couple where he is periodically and involentarily shunted back and forth through time. They keep meeting at differnt stages in their respective lives. Sounds fairly far fetched but it really works and its very cleverly done. Probably the best book I read in 2008.
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