Depp and the Dodo

Greetings faithful peruser. You find geek in a relatively chipper mood today for he has had a productive weekend.

Went to see Pirates of the Caribbean: Worlds End last night - enjoyable but definitely overlong, it was the weakest of the three films. It would also really benefit from a betrayal-ometer in the top left-hand corner to keep a track of who was betraying whom to what end at any given time. The film also features a scene where all the roles are played by Johnny Depp - I add this detail as I know at least one reader will immediately want to go and see the film on this basis alone.

I seem to have spent an enormous amount of time staring at a Dodo derriere today. I've been pushing it around on a trolley - such laziness as one would imagine wealth to have come with such renown and the Dodo could probably afford a mobility cart.

Thanks to the contributor to my last post who suggested turning our water feature into a kitten skateboard park. This wins quite a lot of points for originality but loses a number for practicality. Do I really want lots of delinquent EMO kittens hanging around in my garden sniffing glue and giving me cheek? I don't think so!

Anyhoo I have to go and exercise all my willpower to stop myself from watching Big Brother. I have been BB clean for a year now (longer if you count the celebrity version) and I really think I might be able to repeat the trick.

Poorly sick

Greetings faithful reader. Poor little geek has been poorly sick for a few days and then managed to follow that up with a bout of toothache which has kept him more or less away from the keyboard for a couple of weeks now.

Pity poor geek.

Those of you eagerly awaiting news of our pond will experience a sense of smug satisfaction to learn that the Butyl Kryptonite (developed by Luthor industries and sold in water garden specialists everywhere) failed to work. We have decided that continuing to try and fix this water feature is, quite literally, throwing money into a hole and so we have decided to fill it in.

As a result I would like to through this open to suggestions from my loyal fanbase (both of you) as to what we can do with this exquisite hole in the ground. Any suggestions as to what we can do with several metres of rubber sheeting (beyond the obvious suggestions of S&M gear or incontinence pants) will also be gratefully received.

Pond scum...

I would like to offer you, my gentle readers, a cautionary tale and a piece of advice.

The advice is: stay away from water features.

Over a year ago Tallulah (three l's and an h) purchased a small house with a concrete channel (it would be somewhat of an exagerration to call it a pond) across the garden.

Said channel held water very nicely for a few months and then (as a result of an over enthusiastic power-washing [can we have it back if you're reading this, spanglepuss] and/or lawnmowing session) it sprung a leak.

Various pieces of advice were offered by friends and relatives and a couple of plans were tried with little success - apparently there is a difference between waterproof and water resistant, who'd have thought it?

So, Tallulah and I decided to take our plight to the experts.

I've now learned that a water feature expert (and this was news to me) is someone who can paraphrase the sentence "you could try it fixing it that way but it would be very expensive and probably wouldn't work" in at least 6 different ways in the course of a conversation.

It also appears that there is absolutely no way to fix a pond and if one ever springs a leak you might as well destoy it and start again. Pond recycling research is an area that appears to have been underfunded for a number of years - possibly along with re-usable condoms.

To cut what appears to be becoming a long story short Tallulah (three l's and an h) and I are going to try lining our frankly puny feature with something that I keep calling 'Butyl kryptonite' (it probably isn't called kryptonite but is about as expensive and difficult to find) and hope for the best.

I would also like to send a message out to all water feature experts everywhere:
Chill out.
Take a breather.
Have a long walk in the park, smell the flowers and just try to forget the relative inadequacies of non underlaid EPDN and PVC liners. It'll all work out, chaps!

Ona totally unrelated note - here is a webpage about installing a computer in a stuffed beaver http://www.engadget.com/2007/04/13/compubeaver-case-mod-the-pc-stuffed-beaver/

Faster than a speeding Sciurus caroliniensis...

Those of you who know me will know that I have always harboured a fondness for weird taxidermy - I was gutted to have missed the opportunity to see Walter Potter's Museum of Curiosities in Cornwall with it's kitten weddings and monkeys riding goats.

I've always considered taxidermy as a viable alternative to burial or cremation in my own case. At least I could make myself useful - one could hang one's hat on my outstretched arm and park the front wheel of one's bicycle between my buttocks.

Well here is another one for the scrapbook. This was featured recently on the SFX website and I had to share. Enjoy.

http://cgi.ebay.co.uk/Taxidermy-Super-Squirrel_W0QQitemZ280110065134QQihZ018QQcategoryZ67212QQssPageNameZWDVWQQrdZ1QQcmdZViewItem#ebayphotohosting