twenty questions

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Artificial intelligence program that 'guesses' what you're thinking about.

We're on the telly

Well not us, but an ad we created for one of our clients.

The English language is wrong. Sorry chaps.

After writing something on here earlier this morning I was accosted by the apostrophe police (who incidentally don't seem to consider themselves important enough to merit capitalisation). After re-reading my turgid drivel on the subject of milk I can only assume that my heinous grammatical crime was the placement of an apostrophe in the word "Its".

Now this is a bone of contention for me. The apostrophe police, and your English teacher will tell you that the phrase "It is" may be shortened to "It's" with an apostrophe placed to represent the ommited letter i.

For instance:

"It is raining today" and "It's raining today" are both grammatically correct.

The problem comes when the word "Its" is used in the possessive sense.

"The milk took its downward journey to the floor" is correct, while "The milk took it's downward journey to the floor" is not.

Now correct me if I'm wrong, but one of the whole plethora of uses to which the apostrophe can be applied is to denote possession. The position of the apostrophe is based upon whether the possessor is singular or multiple, for instance:

"The horse's tail" describes the tail of one horse, while "The horses' tails" refers to the appendages located above the bottoms of multiple animals.

Using this rule, if our milk in the previous example was referred to by name, it would carry an apostrophe:

"the milk's downward journey to the floor"

This is correct because the milk is singular and the downward journey belongs to the milk. No-one else.

If we were to apply another name to our milk the rule would still apply. For instance, if we were to hypothetically assume our milk is called Dave, then the following would be correct:

"Dave's downward journey to the floor"

Now I quite often refer to my milk as "it". The word "it" is a fine word that can be used to describe many other things in the world besides milk, but it does the job rather nicely in this circumstance.

Used in this context, the word "it" replaces the noun - proper or otherwise - of the object to which we are referring.

"Pour the milk in my tea",
"Pour Dave in my tea"
and
"Pour it in my tea"

are all correct, providing the recipient of the instruction knows my milk is called Dave, and that the milk is what is being referred to by the term "It".

Following this rule, then it should be perfectly acceptable to substitute the noun in "the milk's downward journey" or "Dave's downward journey" with the word "it", giving:

"It's downward journey to the floor"

The downward journey belongs to "it" and is represented as such by the use of a possessive apostrophe.

The English language, however, does not allow me to do this. And thus, with the use of this perfectly reasonable and logical argument i deduce that the English language is wrong.

Q.E.D.

Britain's got talent but the tone deaf electrician working next door certainly has not got any

Maybe they teach it at trade schools: here's your plaster, here's your trowel, now whistle like a demented bird with a wing trapped in barbed wire and intersperse it with out of tune warbling of some song that you only know one line to and no one else has ever heard.

Plasterers, electricians, plumbers (I once had the misfortune to have a plumber arrive with what at first appeared to be a huge tool chest but was, in fact, a sound system big enough to host a party in the average urban park) and of course brick layers.

Maybe he's fallen down a hole in the floor and is actually crying out in pain. It's hard to tell above my own screams of Munchian anguish.

Whatever happened to Milk-in-a-Bag?

Some milk. In a bag.
Still popular in Canada apparently.

I was having a beer-fueled discussion the other day and we decided the point of differentiation between being old and young was whether or not you remember when milk came in bags. The teenaged-studenty types who work behind the bar thought the whole concept was ridiculous, but us potential-summer-wine-cast-members remember the sopping wet mass of leaking milk bags you used to get in supermarkets and corner shops which had a tendency to completely lose their structural integrity as soon as you snipped a corner off. If you were lucky, and you strategically positioned your cup of tea and cereal bowl you could catch at least some of the milk on it's inevitable downward journey to the floor.


Spar. Guilty as charged.

I seem to remember this fantastic example of packaging technology was particularly prevalent in Spar shops in Wales and Ambleside and other such places where you'd be buying the milk for camping purposes. Which somehow made the whole thing even more inappropriate.

Along then, came the evil Tetra-Pak, and milk in a bag was no more.

RIP Milk in a Bag.

Or is it?

Because while pootling around on t'interweb the other day I stumbled upon this fascinating bit of footage on the BBC's website.

It seems Milk-in-a-bag is to have it's renaissance, and shall grow to be known and loved by a whole new generation. Unfortunately however, it seems the current manufacturers have not quite grasped the concept and have tried to create a boring plastic jug system to enable easy pouring and mess-free opening. Certainly no fun in that.

Kids, ditch the jug, wrestle with the polythene-clad-liquid and enjoy Milk-in-a-Bag for it's sheer pointlessness. This is the stuff memories are made of.

so good they posted it twice

Something to ponder

Do grass and road side leaves taste as good to a sheep as a bacon and egg sandwich does to me?

You know you're middle aged when...

...you don't lust after a Porsche or M3 BMW, your desire is for a push along German lawnmower.