...since I didn't get a chance to post about it over the weekend.

My latest piece of fiction for elephantwords went live on Saturday, based on the following image, supplied - and taken - by me:



The story's here.

Click... I said click, damn you...

Well, I'm home after a weekend that was pretty much 99.5% great, nay superb. I'm still making my mind up whether or not to discuss the 0.5%.

More details of the 99.5% later tonight or tomorrow.

Hope your weekend was as good as mine...

Sorry, folks - meant to post something today, but haven't had a chance; will post a BrumCon catchup Monday.

Suffice to say that with the exception of one rather needlessly irritating and unnecessary thing which left - and continues to leave - a nasty taste in the mouth, I had a superb time...

This is budgie's brain. I'm out of service at the moment.

Normal service should be resumed sometime on Sunday.

I'm eating. And drinking.

But don't ask me to speak just yet, ok?

Superb launch to the con last night; thoroughly enjoyable, and the final banned, erm band comprising Liam Sharp, Phil Winslade, Charlie Adlard and Paul Birch, were.. unique, but incredibly enjoyable.

I wasn't planning on drinking, for obvious reasons, but there may have been a glass of Glenlivet somewhere in the proceedings...

I am so tempted to get a hot bath, and try and grab a few hours' sleep now and set the alarm for 2am so I can watch the Palin/Biden debate...

Now on O2 Broadband - initial speed? 5Mb. Oh yes. (After two years of 2.2, it’s flying…)

Just got an email from a friend asking what’s going on in the UK and attaching a weblink to something particularly stupid being done by one of our local councils. I responded with:

“You get to ask that question when you can guarantee that Sarah Palin will never hold executive office…”

He responded with…

“She already does, as the highly successful governor of our largest state.”

Oh, now what should I write in reply...?

Heh heh heh

At some point today, my O2 broadband is supposed to activate; I'll apparently have no net access for an hour or so, and then I'm back... as long as I can follow the instructions and install everything correctly.

Hmm.

Will let you know.

( With thanks to Steve Schwaber )

...is that someone won't realise they're rhetorical.

Took Phil to synagogue this morning for Rosh Hashana and, as usual, there's a drosha (closest thing a rabbi does to a sermon, but since a rabbi is, literally, a teacher, it's more like trying to teach the congregation something relevant about our religion). This morning, it was delivered by a trainee rabbi, and while in my opinion it wasn't quite as inappropriate as the one I witnessed where the rabbi delivered a drosha mentioning Jesus, it came close a couple of times.

At one point towards the end, when discussing how we're judged on our behaviour, he said that it can cause constant second-guessing, "should I speak up? Should I be silent?"

I'm sure I wasn't the only one who, for a split second, wanted to cry out in answer to the second question,"Yes, for the love of G-d, yes!"

...as only Johns Bird and Fortune could explain it:

Too pissed off over stuff I can't talk/write about. So just take this as a vent, and impute your own words.

Just a quick question, partly for a story I'm thinking about, partly because I've seen a couple of episodes of Cold Case.

What's the likelihood that, twenty or thirty years later, a doctor is going to remember a patient with a broken bone, or another common injury, they saw in their first year of residency, no matter how unique?

Final Panel's agreed for next weekend's Kryptonite Factor at BrumCon:

Kryptonite Factor
Saturday 4^th October 2008, 5:15pm

Hosted by: Lee "Budgie" Barnett and Ade Brown

Panel:
Mike Collins
PJ Holden
Kieron Gillen
Tony Lee
Bevis Musson
Dez Skinn

Should be fun... be there.

Nicked from idsharman:

"List ten books you have which you think nobody else on your friends list might have."

01. Irving Wallace, The Seven Minutes
02. E C Tubb, Space 1999: Earthfall
03. Tzvi Spitz, Cases in Monetary Halacha
04. Bob Woodward & Scott Armstrong, The Brethren
05. David Butler and Gareth Butler, Twentieth Century Political Facts 1900-2000
06. Max Austin, Out
07. Simon Hoggart, On The House
08. Robert Lacey, Little Man
09. John Godey, The Taking of Pelham One Two Three
10. Deborah Pessin, The Aleph-Bet Storybook

OK, I should have known better - since I posted a reference to it earlier today, I've had another three emails, including one from a friend saying he asked his payroll department and was told

It's something to do with the 10% tax thing; don't worry about it, just say thanks...

OK, easiest way to explain it is to adapt what I wrote to bevismusson earlier.

Basically, last year, Gordon Brown (then Chancellor of the Exchequer) abolished the 10% band of income tax. You pay tax in the UK on slices of your income; the first few thousand is tax free, then there was a band of a c