Heroes with a sense of humour

I love it when people you admire turn out to be good folks. I've mentioned "The Pitchers" comic strip before. This is a wonderful take on Hollywoodland from the point of view of a couple of aspiring script writers by a pair of talented artists called Berger and Wyse (they also did the title sequence from the BBC TV show "Hustle" - which should have won an award).  With a bit of luck they might one day they do a book of the Pitcher strips. I'd buy it on day one.

Anyhoo, last week they mentioned a "Trip Hazard" character, a clear infringement of my intellectual property rights since I've been not writing new Trip Hazard P.I. episodes for ages.  They did it again this week.

So I emailed them to tell them they would shortly be hearing from my lawyers. They shot straight back with this link which proves they had the name first, and told me that now I would be hearing from their lawyers. I hope they were joking. I was. Honest.

Box of Delights

 
The Word

Got a parcel today. Not from the Post Office, they are on strike, but from DHL. In it were ten copies of my book.  Amazing. I daren't read it, as I'm scared that the first thing I'll see will be a huge glaring mistake, but it is very nice to actually see printed pages wot I wrote. There is even a picture of me on the back.

You can get the book from Amazon in the UK here. And in the 'states from here.

Hari Kiri Toshiba

My laptop tried to kill itself again today. It turned itself on in the bag. I got to it just as the batteries were giving out after spending around an hour trying to set fire to my house. The bag and the laptop were really hot. I'd like to think that it would actually notice when it was catching fire, and shut down or do something sensible, but I'm not convinced. Perhaps it makes a WIFI connection to the fire-brigade or something.

This means I'm going to have to update the BIOS for one which is a bit less melty. Wish me luck.

Update on Friday, June 29, 2007 at 07:32PM by Rob

I've done the BIOS upgrade and it's definitely made a difference. The machine won't disconnect from the docking station now.....

The Secret of Eternal Life

My newspaper is presently doing a list of "1,000 Films to See Before You Die". I've got cunning plan which will enable me to live forever. I'm only going to watch 999 of them.

Of course this raises the prospect of an intriguing murder case:

"And so I put it to the jury that the defendant showed my client 'Barbette's Feast' with the sole intention of murder most foul...."

Actually, I'm taking no chances, I'm not going to watch many of them at all. And since it doesn't include Napoleon Dynamite I'm wondering if it is the kind of list that I should have anything to do with anyway.

Old Clothes

The funny thing is (ho ho) that we had planned to take today and tomorrow as holiday. We were going to drive out somewhere nice and eat sandwiches whilst sitting on a piece of cloth on the ground. But mother nature had other plans.

It is pretty much impossible to drive out of Hull at the moment. And very hard to get back again. So we stayed at home and did some tidying up. I went through my wardrobe in search of space to hang all these free shirts I keep picking up at conferences. I'm always very surprised by the lack of taste that I've shown in the past with respect to clothes. Things that seemed perfectly sensible at the time of purchase are now, with the benefit of my 20x20 fashion hindsight, quite beyond the pale. Still, at least the new stuff looks good on me........