Toys-4-Us!

I have a new laptop; an HP Pavilion. It weighs a ton (well, nearly; 3.5kg). It is robust; it can be dropped on the carpeted floor without risk of smashing. It keeps my lap warm and my laptop cat complaining. I let her type and 'use' the mouse in this cute way that cats do: shoving it along with a paw, then pouncing on it; then tossing it into the air; then ignoring it. My cat is a contemporary of my first personally owned PC: a 16-bit, 20 MHz Amstrad. She is older than my 18-year old son; and wiser.

Paint it black [said the rolling stone]

I went on a uni Open Day today with my son. It coincided with a freshers' reception. Thousands of kids milling around. The colour was black. Not (just) the skins but the clothes. The place was dominated by muslim females in black clothes and headgear that left ...everything to the imagination. No, it was not in Tehran; it was in London! I felt intimidated. One dared not speak in case he said anything 'politically incorrect' that would spark off a racial incident. There was a muslim prayer room above the student union bar (what a place to abstain from alcohol). The girl who guided our group around stode around very confidently and did take us into the bar where all the whites had ...taken refuge. Various fundamentalists were recruiting freshers, side-by-side with sports enthusiasts. In my days, the freshers would be sampling pot or acid and would follow around skimpily clad girls who did other things above the union bar than pray. And they would not be dressed in black. Although most were Christian, they were not wearing big crosses over their tits or below their belt to advertise their belief. This upsurge in religious fanaticism really shocked me - and my son. He was put off this uni.

Nouns of Assemblage

Generations of English shoolchildren had to learn about...
- a spring of teals [or maybe a summer of water-hens]
- a parliament of owls [not a parliament of fools?]
- a bench of bishops [..and maybe a (saucier) bedful of actresses ]
- a murder of crows [ or perhaps a felony of bankers - not a wunch, it's too lenient]

Excuse me but these real nouns exceed in absurdity the zaniest of Monty Python jokes. We'll next have a buggery of pooftahs and shipload of Long John Silver impersonators
Oh, one must simply not miss
- a jam of tarts [ some sort of a prostitutional asssembly]
and, aptly
- a load of cobblers'

Getting Ffffat!

As a one-time anorexic kid who believed fat people should (not just 'may') die young, I am particularly distressed by having suddenly become overweight over a period of eight months, for no apparent reason. My other half believes that worry about my body will kill me before excess weight. That's because 'my other half' is really 'my other 55%' in weight; the term "other half" is grossly inaccurate (literally).

More neoblogisms

I may have enough of these to start a dictionary, I suppose:
- Cardenial Sin = Lying about who was driving above the speed limit
- Quantomechanicar = A car whose exact whereabouts and speed are indeterminate
- Premolition = A nasty feeling that the house you're in will soon be demolished
- QUERTY cheeseboard = One that allows trouble-free munching of cheese and biscuits with the one hand while typing with the other
- Exchecker = A Department that once upon a time used to check that a government's finances are in order
- Memorabilliard = Old balls and cues...

DLE+DODC

Two famous archaic masterpieces by Homer (Simpson? In his 'idiosyncratic' spelling?)