Meenzer

You're just happy to accept mediocrity, Rob.

That's a canny idea actually. Though I would be saying that since I work from home.

Oooo... tactical error!

You can sod off with your common sense.

I suppose it's better than huddling round someone else's...

Who'd have thought it, a career plan!

Well OK then, a convenient pile of dung to stick the bottles in for insulation?

Ahh, but is it refrigerated?

Mogwai - Ex-Cowboy (live at the Astoria 1998)

LE SIB can do ANYTHING.

If it's not Matalan I don't want to know, dahling.

Shrinking land masses, too

It's away though.

I'd remember her from her real name, I imagine. Can't remember a Chicken Head though. I dread to think who it might've been.

The big drongo.

Can't cope with proper Englo, complicated grammo or too many syllabos.

Gemmill, what is it about Accountants and being different creatures when they're drunk? Our old accountant went to the Accountancy Christmas party a few years ago. He was dreading it as they were all quiet and boring at work so he expected a bit of a damp squid. Anyway, they were all pissed by the second bar and he reckons he nipped to the bog and by the time he got back they were all getting off with each other. I wish the same could be said about translators. I'm off to our office Christmas bash tonight. In Nottingham. I'm thinking of taking a book to read.

...is how I read the headline on BBC News. The second line being "parliament". I think I need to go to bed.

If someone asked me to sum up the essence of Toontastic, I'd probably point them to this thread.

The Now Show from Radio 4. It's podcast-tastic! And, erm, actually a bit crap this week.

Ferking hell. There are times I'm glad I didn't shell out for Sky Sports. Not least because you can stick your fingers in your ears and go "la-la-la" much more easily when you're only listening to the radio in the first place.

It's weird, because when you travel on public transport in London and there's a "passenger incident" every other day (or what feels like it), you start to become desensitised to what those words - and even the less euphemistic "suicide" - actually mean. Nobody I know well has actually committed suicide, though several have been depressed to the point where (in sober contemplation) it's seemed like a realistic possibility, and an old schoolmate of the Smoothster and myself was a Tyne Bridge case about a year ago. In a way, even when it's someone who's a degree or two removed from you, it still hits home like a bullet because it's all so much more mundane, just some words on a page saying "this happened" rather than a mesh of confusing and conflicting emotions. There but for the grace of God, and all that. I've been in a place where I made a pretty half-arsed attempt at it myself. Not for attention, I hasten to add (I made a deliberate attempt to research realistic methods that'd cause the least amount of distress and disturbance, inasmuch as that was possible in pre-Internet days - but that particular information source and its contribution to the issue is a whole different kettle of fish), but weirdly, because of a very quiet, non-melodramatic, lucid acceptance that it didn't really matter to me, at that time, whether I continued to exist or not. At the same time, I obviously wasn't committed enough to do something with absolutely no kind of room for probability or chance, so by some definitions I suppose I was being cowardly about being cowardly. But like I say, it was more a case of "let's see what happens" - if it works, it works, if not then we'll see what tomorrow brings. I've been nowhere even near that point since then, and a hell of a lot of time (and experience) has gone by. I consider myself fortunate not to have succeeded, given how my life's turned out and the effects a person's suicide invariably seem to trigger in those who knew him/her. Moreover, though, I consider myself a pretty rational person (then as well as now), so even if I've changed enough to be unable to revisit exactly what put me in that kind of position in the first place, I try not to be too quick to judge others who feel the need to go through with it. Whatever their motivations may be. (And for what it's worth, I realise Fish-bashing is a popular sport on here and his initial comments were ill-timed, but regardless of whether I agree with them or not - and by and large I probably don't - I reckon he's defended his corner pretty well since then.) To help avoid this post appearing too me-me-me (and, ironically, borderline attention-seeking), I'll add that a friend of mine attempted to kill himself by taking an overdose, driven to it as a young teenager by the death of a parent and a pretty horrible "new" family situation. I can't imagine the person he's become not being around now, but then I suppose he wasn't that person at the time. In fact, I'm probably (still) far more affected by the idea of him having come close to death than he is himself. At the same time, I also know frequent self-harmers who, by their own admission, have come dangerously close to harming themselves terminally without setting out with the intention of actually doing so. Would they count as suicide cases if "successful"? I don't know. It's an overwhelmingly confusing subject really.

did you get the family bucket? if you get chiken heads in a family bucket youve been going to the wrong place mate South London?

I wouldn't take one to the pub or whatever, mind, because I'd only forget about it or it'd get nicked. By the most comfortable-with-their-sexuality bag-snatchers in town, at least.