dark looks

1. The first hotel did not have a room
2. … and thought my distinctly feminine roomie was a bloke …
3. … so OF COURSE we couldn’t share a double bed! because that would be, y’know, like, GAY or something …
4. The second hotel only had one wedding on
5. Their bar and indoor swimming pool shared a room. Stinging-eyes cocktail bonus!
6. Wait, their bar and indoor swim… never mind.
7. They did a buffet English breakfast…
8. … but waiter “service” for toast and coffee …
9. … which therefore arrived shortly after I’d finished my main breakfast …
10. … which I had to complete by 0930 ON A BANK HOLIDAY SUNDAY for some completely incomprehensible “reason”
11. … and my plate was removed from in front of me while I was still eating.
12. Fortunately the wedding party only set the fire alarm off twelve times at 1am

Moral of story:
Do not stay in tourist hotels. Ring ahead and check that they think they’ve sold you what they’ve actually contracted to supply. Never dip below four stars.

I feel like a freed hostage.

So the coalition has released its agreed priorities with admirable promptness. Glad I didn’t bother with the manifestos; now I can read two at once.

Disclosure: I am a non-politico, but I have friends with strongly held views across the spectrum. And I also understand the difference between a stated intent and an executed policy, but I am essentially handing out the rope here for these good folks to use.

But essentially, I was kind of hoping we’d get the Tories doing the financial stuff and the LibDems doing the social stuff, because the Tories may have detoxed after the bitter insult of Section 28, but I am not going to blindly start trusting them without some evidence of goodwill. The work is for them to do, not me.

Overall verdict: a lot of fine words, a lot of stuff I want to think about more, but this may not be the end of all things as we know them.
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We all know know that everything is labelled in line with the principle that, whatever it is, it is fatally dangerous when misapplied; and must therefore be warned of to within an inch of its (and my) life, lest I accidentally snort a litre of toilet cleaner or try to put out a housefire with a teabag. I have just accumulated the latest gem, found on an air-freshener I bought to remove the scent of damp plaster from the flat: “Air fresheners do not replace good hygiene practices”. This means, presumably, that I will have to go and fish my toothbrush out of the bin….

OK, so I don’t do the whole body-adornment thing, mainly because in respect of me, it fires up the sense of the ridiculous well before my sense of the aesthetic.

On the other hand I could be persuaded to do certain things to myself, including this absolutely stunning Dr. Teeth tattoo…

via boingboing.net

First there was Selleck Waterfall Sandwich, now there’s Bea Arthur Mountains Pizza — when shall we ever find a boundary to this celebrity-chocolatebox-foodstuff combo madness? It’s wild. (Thanks to boingboing for the tip off)

I need to share the love. Please all feel free to Cornify darklooks.com to your hearts’ content.

I’m not generally speaking one to take up a dogmatic position on this sort of thing, but the more attention you pay to DRM and the way it doesn’t work, the more convinced I am that there are whole industries here set up around deliberately shooting oneself in the foot.
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What you always knew happened in the dealership

So, having never really been one for film, I’m now starting to go all filmnuts. Specifically, I’ve realised I want to see this, this, this, this, this and this; and that tomorrow, all things being equal, I’m going to see this;
and I guess also that I’m slightly dreading this. Oh, and over the last two weeks I’ve been to see this and I’ve also watched this. All of which makes me virtually contemporary and possibly even vaguely up-to-date, which can’t be right. Hmmm.
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Always nice to have a tercet to waft one off. Today’s is owed to the great Denise Riley, from “Wherever you are, be somewhere else” in her 1993 collection Mop Mop Georgette:

Stop now. Hold it there. Balance. Be beautiful. Try.
—And I can’t do this. I can’t talk like any of this.
You hear me not do it.

An occasional feature brought to you by this rattling round inside my head during a bout of insomnia.