A NZ judge makes a lass a ward of court so she can change her name from Talula Does The Hula From Hawaii.

Other names from the article, which were allowed: Violence; Number 16 Bus Shelter; Midnight Chardonnay; Benson and Hedges (twins)

Names that were not allowed: Yeah Detroit; Stallion; Twisty Poi; Keenan Got Lucy; Sex Fruit; Fat Boy; Cinderella Beauty Blossom; Fish and Chips (twins)

Apparently when my brother was born, I wanted him to be called Gentledot Bluebell. However, I was four¹. What's these people's excuse?

(I'm betting Number 16 Bus Shelter is one of these "where it was conceived" names. I googled Talula etc, wondering if it was a cruise ship. It doesn't seem so.)

edit: This is making the rounds at work. (Newspaper article, contains bad language.)

¹ Four, and still managed to come up with something classier than Midnight Chardonnay.

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Protester attempts to glue himself to Gordon Brown.

How awful! Glued to Brown! Can you imagine anything more ghastly?

Terror police detain disabled boy

Abandoned dog in 'skeletal state' (distressing picture)

Father killed trying to save family member

Jail threat for hare coursing duo

Lesbos locals lose lesbian appeal

'Allah meat' astounds Nigerians

When the writings were discovered there were some Islamic scholars who come and eat here and they all commented that it was a sign to show that Islam is the only true religion for mankind O RLY?

MySpace signs up to OpenID scheme

Here come the drums (vid)

Tortoise theft 'heartbreak' (aud) Poor shieldytoads.

Spot the magic trick!

World's first sand hotel (article/vid)

Also, this. (vid) Kookaburra and baby effalunt!

Headline of the day!

Bed tester's bottom 'worth £1m'

Which of your body parts would you insure for the highest sum? Nona Dolorosa News Trawls wants to know your family-friendly answers!

Stranded ducks are escorted home

BBC One unveils new Merlin drama. Looks crap. I'm going to watch it.

School warning to pupils who turn up 'orange' from fake tan.

Lots of stuff about MS in the news today. Here's a quiz.

A guide to faking American accents...

...and failing to do so. Funfunfun.

For the record: native northern English, lived here all my life, can't tell Liverpool from Brummie from Newcastle from Mancunian, never mind South African from Aussie or Swedish from Lapp or Canadian from American or even Russian from Spanish, for that matter. (Also seem to have a positive prejudice towards northern central/eastern European accents and English received pronunciation. No, I've no idea why in the former case.)

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Lighthouse 'bagging' (visiting) proves popular. This is useful for a little project I've got in the works.

An undisclosed number of German Shepherds [is] being trained to jump out of airplanes at 25,000 feet. How.... useful.

Stabbed policeman and dog return

The knifeman is charged with two counts of wounding with intent to do grievous bodily harm (emphasis mine). Suck on that, evildoer! No stabbing doggies!

Big lobster proves popular catch (article/vid)

I don't remember if I linked this back in June... adorable. (vid)

Lab animal numbers continue upward trend. >:(

Tall ships arrive for sail parade (vid)

I've been covering this for a couple of days last week and yesterday on the Liverpool '08 site. Lots and lots of tall ship films.

Time-lapse film of Earth's moon (vid) which is awesome because it's from 31 MILLION miles away, dude.

Does anyone here like PARROTS? (vid)

I've just been presented with a card and a doughnut party by my coworkers. D'aww, you guys, you'll make me blush.

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I saw a puppydog on the way to work and it came over and I got to pat its head and say hello.

That important declaration out of the way, here's the news:

Xamm, an abducted trainee police officer, is recovered safely.

Here's the story when she was abducted.

BRING BACK THE DEATH PENALTY. </red-masthead> But I'm not joking.

Dog rescues woman from kangaroo

Mosque hopes for guide dog rule

A Nottinghamshire man has won a legal battle to get his dog back after the Magistrates' Court ruled that Zeke was not a pit bull terrier.

"Pit bull" is a bit of a catch-all term, which makes this muddier. American Pit Bull Terriers, American Staffordshire Terriers and Staffordshire Bull Terriers are the main breeds generally classed as pit bulls in the context of banning specific breeds and cross-breeds. In the media "pit bull" can mean bulldogs, boxers, virtually anything.

Rental accommodation typically disallows pets, causing dogs to be abandoned.

Over the weekend I wrote a story that may possibly have dogs in it. (There are severe spoilers in the comments.)

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Quick picture, with backstory; probably not as funny if you weren't there. (This character has an eggsaggerated hatred of chickens.)

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I haven't had any more gift piccies since the marker sketch I've already showed some of you. :(

Weft, who is the requested subject of the pictures, feels unloved and (therefore) extremely relieved. He's been clinging to Suitov all week, begging him to protect him from the "pervert furries". He now believes this has worked.

Deadline is midnight on Saturday night is actually midnight NEXT Saturday night. I totally misremembered and thought it was one week, not two. So there's still lots of time! Yay! Traumatised monk!

edit2, 22/07: I've had three new pics since. They're fantastic and thoroughly amusing.

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(Written for work's newsletter.)

#15, Frequently Barked Questions
18 July 2008

Thus far I've no sightings of hounds to report,
nor ominous howls in the night.
No shoes have gone missing, no threatening notes,
no relatives perished from fright.
I'll not move to Dartmoor; I'm not keen on bogs.
A city pooch still, after all—
and I keep my address, for my housemates have baulked
at restyling it "Baskerville Hall".

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Eeeeeee, my album arrived! The Hound of the Baskervilles by Clive Nolan and Oliver Wakeman. I'm listening to it for the first time and enjoying it, even though I don't normally like songs with talking over them.

Coincidentally, I was watching a Memoirs of Sherlock Holmes that I'd recorded off the telly. This had me shouting at the television. People were talking in the Diogenes Club! It wasn't too impressive in other ways, and anyway the PVR cut off the last few minutes, as is its wont. Huh.

Really liking this progressive rock. Also, I want a dog. I could pretend that attempting to inherit a mysterious curse just so I could have a doggie had nothing to do with recent naming events, but this would be stretching the truth to whining point.

Slen's just arrived and told me Clive Nolan did the keyboard solo on DragonForce's Disciples of Babylon. Very nice!

edit for coolness: Slen's just pointed this out. Guitars: Arjen Lucassen.

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Could've sworn I posted this last night at about 01:30. Distinctly remember selecting categories and typing the summary. *blinks* Oh well, I took an opportunity to give it a sneaky update this morning.

For guess whoooo! ~100KB jpg, tablet, 4 hours.

Still don't know if I will be killed for this.

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Cut for large-ish graphics. Snog, I am instructed to beg you not to let Sebastian see these.

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I've been getting spam with fake headlines as the subject line.

"Tom Cruise dead in plane crash", "Facebook hacked into, millions of accounts stolen", "Clinton found hanged in hotel room".

Very clever! But when I check them and find out that yes, of course they're pen0r and ph4rma-spam, which was obvious especially because they come from random people's names (what's wrong with spoofing some news agency instead of a fake person?), they get spam-filtered and trashed same as all the other crap I get sent. So apart from wasting a fraction of a second more of my time and teasing my cruelty lobe a little, well done, you achieved nothing.

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Looking through our audio archive at work I found this RealAudio discussion of conversion and proselytism, mainly touching on Christianity and Islam. Nice sideline asking whether anyone has the monopoly on absolute truth.

The American continbutor is unbelievable... as is the Muslim they interview halfway through (on tape, not the contributor on the panel). Listen to them both squirm when they're asked the 'difficult' questions.

And the dreadful thing is that I know the American lady is nowhere near the worst America's mouth-frothing Bible-regurgitating sector has to offer. Nowhere near. *shudder*

It's quite a good programme, Beyond Belief. Huge archive of great material. Pyramids, celibacy, superstition, Celtic Christianity, witchcraft and more.

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And another little piece of my life slides into my control...

I made a little gathering of it. It requires two witnesses, but I had three: two of my immediate family and Paul, my good friend since childhood. It was nice.

I was kinda surprised at the straightforwardness (relatively speaking!) of the legalese. I was expecting more "spinster of the parish" and stuff.

Further reading: club, tub.

My name is... Hi, I'm... Hello there. The name's...

Yes, this will take some getting used to—not having to hesitate any more before admitting my 'name', but instead self-confidently giving my name.

(There's another injoke in the picture. It's the typeface. Another nice thing about this DIY job.)

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UK legal name change by deed poll - a DIY guide.

Nice site, so I'm doing my bit to get it up Google. If you want to change your name, do it there.

If you use this, please fix the typo in "substitution" ("subsitution") under point 1. I've notified the site owner and they're fixing it. (Now fixed.)

To-night... I'm gonna have myself... a real good name.

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Eeeeeeee, I won the sweep! So I'm to be the next critter to have a character drawn by the other artists on the site.

I'm sorta questioning it (I'm an idiot/too honest) because they put me down as having submitted three pieces, and hence having two chances at the draw; my entry was only two versions of the same picture plus a little extra sketch and I didn't expect it to be counted as three.

While bringing that up, I've also posted my description of the character I want drawn, so if everyone's happy with the decision then with luck I'll be the recipient of some cool gift art!

Eeeee!

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SwarmCrow gift art for an art exchange on the Jack fan forum. Tablet and Photoshop, more hours than I'd like to contemplate.

I wasn't going to attempt this. But come on, the character is a CROW made out of INSECTS. How cool is that? How could anyone resist?

I'm too exhausted to talk extensively about the process, lucky you. Suffice it to say that this was trial-and-error and although in parts it hasn't come out as impressively as I'd hoped, overall he'd better be damn pleased with it, because you can't beat the asking price.

I also really hope I win next week's sweep on the back of this! I think I know what to ask for, if so... this is a furry fandom, after all.

edit: I forgot; earlier in the process I found the image was going much bluer than I intended, and also looked weirdly Japanese (quite cool). I kept that version too, so here's the REMIX!

edit2, 14/7 09:21: OK, having dreamt (twice) (the second time thinking "Well, this one can't be a dream") that I heard back from the guy and he liked it, kind of, but was a bit standoffish... I woke up saying "Well, I'm a dork" and found that I'd been left this feedback:

Dude I love it ! it looks damn cool (far better than any crow I have drawn) , the beetle eye was a great detail and the small joke was freaking funny too. my only regret is that I have no money to pay you for more

And that guy can really draw, too. Although, sure, offers of no-money are cheap to make, nobody else has got feedback that enthusiastic. Woo! I think I deserved it for all the effort, if nothing else. :>

Only four entries total and someone's suggested extending it another week to see if more come in; but if they don't, I have a one in four chance. Whee!

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