This from the Shark Trust, Plymouth: “given the immense predatory power and sophistication of great white sharks, it is clear that if one wanted to devour a human being it could always be successful.”
Sharks. Rock.

We had roast chicken with thyme last night, and where did the thyme come from? Was it from the back garden? Why, yes I do believe it was.
Unrelated, but I just heard someone saying “she’s supposed to be amazing at netball. How are you amazing at netball?” He seemed to be completely at a loss, genuinely he couldn’t comprehend that there might be skill involved..

Grr! Argh!

It was a lovely day today and I thought “I’ll have a look out in the garden, that’ll be nice”. After a little bit of digging (oh, all right, a lot of digging), I’d managed to unearth two most curious things.

Apparently, the house is built on the site of R’lyeh (I always thought it was in the ocean somewhere) and Cthulhu has some competition..

What’ll happen? Well looks like I get sick as a dog for a week. I’ve got a steeeeenking cold. And this headache has been giving me pain for THREE DAYS SOLID. That’s three days plus the other two days that I’ve been photosensitive and achey and coughing and oh goddamn it I hate this body.

Although I do own Resident Evil 4 and, the chances are, you don’t. Bet you wish you had a GameCube now, don’t you?

nb. GameCube owners – bet you’re glad you own a Cube now, eh? Rocks, no?

It’s definitely arrived. It’s like winter got bored and suddenly here we are. It’s a quality of the light, I think. It’s been sunny over the past month, but this light is getting into my brain and shouting “SPRINGTIME! WAKEY WAKEY!”

I have energy. Wonder what’ll happen?

I’m going out now to use this cheque I got from work to buy an… an… an annual pass for the tube! This is very exciting. Is it really so short a time since I was being urged to buy a weekly pass because it was cheaper and better than buying a daily pass? I feel positively resident in this big ol’ city.

Okay, this is a response to a post on luce’s blog. I have a pretty strong contrary opinion, I guess, and my comment became too unwieldy so I took it over here. Ironically..

First of all, having comments on a blog is optional, and therefore taking the decision to have them there in the first place is to actively invite comment. One can deactivate comments for a single post, or for the entire blog, should you so choose. If you don’t, you take your chances.

Now, I’ve had a troll in my comments, it’s not exactly a secret (a quick glance at some posts a few months ago will confirm that), and I deleted them. Without even thinking about it, because they brought nothing to the blog except mindless, boring provocation. But that was pretty much the only time I’ve felt the need to delete someone else’s comment. Beyond that, I’ll leave ’em all up. Why? Because a blog is a public thing by definition.

The question of unwanted comments can only be addressed by working out what your blog is for. If you’re using it to publish, in a traditional sort of way, your opinions and such then turn comments off. You likely don’t care to hear what people think of what you say (at least not directly), and you certainly don’t want a counter-opinion directly in the face of the reader. If you don’t want to engage with responses to your posts, you shouldn’t have comments. I know it sounds harsh, but it’s not a criticism. I can well understand that use of a blog, and it’s completely valid; like a newspaper column. Put an email contact link somewhere so you can receive correspondence on your posts, but don’t have comments. It’s not for you.

If you don’t want your blog to be a public thing, if you just want to keep a diary only, you know, not on paper, you’re in the wrong place. Get a livejournal account and set it as friends only. That way you can invite a small group of lackeys in to chat with, should you so wish, so you’re assured of only positive comment and no unpleasantness need enter your hermetically sealed universe. But, well, why the hell are you on the web? I understand this less, though I can still sort of see why it’s done.

If you’re using Blogger to share your thoughts, snippets of your life, opinions, whatever then you need comments. When Blogger didn’t have comments it was a less interesting, less fun place. Because it tells you what another person gets from your life, what they think of what you think. Yes, sometimes they’ll disagree with you and sometimes you’ll have a fight on your hands but personally I think it’s worth it. That’s why I love comments, that’s why I run my blog as an open house, and that’s why I can’t agree with policing blog comments beyond troll maintenance.

I’m thinking of having a spin-off blog. It’ll retain the essential formula of this blog – the infrequent posts, the poor quality humour, the oft-complaining tone – but will be set in another city with another person doing the blogging. They will have better hair than me, perhaps, but they’ll be recognisably a “Moth type”. Perhaps they’ll be a musician. Yes, they’ll play acoustic guitar.

I’m thinking that the Sanctuary could become a franchise. Apply in writing if you have a concept for a new setting.

Well, okay, links. Leave me alone.

Up above you can see there’s a link to my personal radio on last.fm, which, you know, is full of hugely entertaining music. Once you leapfrog to someone else in my friends list. The more people on last.fm the better, it would seem, hence the pimp hat.

In related news, Flapjack has moved her blog to her domain instead of blogspot (yay for using fresh snow on the interweb), so that link is now updated. If you’ve never visited her blog before, why not try now? I think you’ll find it full of both plants and bears. Flora and, indeed, fauna.

A milk float just went by the window. Nothing odd about that, but it had broken down. Okay, fine, it was being towed, then.

By a fork-lift truck.