Meanderings of a Monkey Juggler - web

You might want to...

noreply@blogspirit.com (Alby) — Mon, 18 Sep 2006 20:05:00 +0100

...

Have a look here.
Update your links pages.

There will be no updates to this site from now. If you link to this site and wish to continue to link to my inane ramblings then please change your links to point at the website above. I'll see you all there.

Have fun.

A Woman's Place

noreply@blogspirit.com (Alby) — Fri, 28 Jul 2006 13:20:00 +0100

I found this article today. It's from "Housekeeping Monthly" May 13th 1955. It consists of points of advice for wives of working men.

Take 15 minutes to rest so you'll be refreshed when he arrives. Touch up your make-up, put a ribbon in your hair and be fresh-looking.
Be a little gay and a little more interesting for him. His boring day may need a lift and one of your duties is to provide it.
At the time of his arrival, eliminate all noise of the washer, dryer or vacuum. Try to encourage the children to be quiet.
Listen to him. You may have a dozen important things to tell him, but the moment of his arrival is not the time. Let him talk first - remember his topics of conversation are more important than yours.
Arrange his cushion and offer to take off his shoes. Speak in a low, soothing and pleasant voice.
Don't ask him questions about his actions. Remember he is the master of the house and as such will always exercise his will with fairness and truthfulness. You have no right to question him.

I might show K this little thing. She's into tradition.

Seriously though why did I bother with this? Mainly because so many women I come across from day to day still believe this crap. I see women every day who clearly won't speak up because it's not their "right". I had a college friend who was muslim and she had a boyfriend whom her parents had no inkling about. She said that when she graduated then she would tell them because she will have earned some respect from her father. What? So you have no respect from him despite being clever, witty and eminently practical? Weird.

I wonder when we can get shot of idiotic beliefs and traditions like this old "good advice".

Have fun.

Nun fight!

noreply@blogspirit.com (Alby) — Mon, 03 Apr 2006 18:35:47 +0100

This is for Clurb.

Have fun.

Mere Loggy Junk

noreply@blogspirit.com (Alby) — Tue, 28 Mar 2006 19:17:33 +0100

There's a thread on rec.jggling which has gone slightly off-topic (no? never!) and is now talking about anagrams. I used to use an anagram generator to get some interesting ones but haven't for a while.

So how are these?

MonkeyJuggler

Nuke my joggler.
Logger me junky.
Jungle germy ok!
Ugly gnome jerk.

PhysioMonkey

Sip my honey ok?
Yon skimpy hoe.
Hey pinksy moo (for Bear)
Hoy my pinkoes.
Shy kimono? Yep.
Ye sink my pooh.

Peter Plumpton

Potent plumper.
Mutter "pen plop".
Plump tent rope.

Bear-blog

Large bob.

Clare Plumpton-Bear

A cerebral Plumpton.
CPR a lumpen bloater.
Cull a barren moppet.
A rectal problem pun.
Cleanable rump port.

I'll get round to some more if anyone's interested.

Have fun.

Excellent website

noreply@blogspirit.com (Alby) — Tue, 21 Mar 2006 11:27:41 +0000

Not a silly post but a plug for this website here. It's a home page for a muslim woman writer and her beliefs. Very enlightening and it cheered me up immensely compared with "Ummah.com" which seems stuffed full of Kevin the Terrorists ("you're all infidels and I hate you!") and their appallingly childish arguments and wet-dreams of killing people (religion of peace you say?).

Anyways I thought I'd share that.

Have fun.

Biased BBC?

noreply@blogspirit.com (Alby) — Wed, 15 Mar 2006 10:30:00 +0000

This I think is a story that shows just how barmy some folk are.

The BBC's charter came up for renewal yesterday and they got another 10 years guaranteed continuation of licence fee and public service remit. They put a "Have Your Say" about this and you wouldn't ever have believed the imbecilic nonsense that people are spouting about the organisation.

Firstly there are swathes of people ranting about the "Anti-America, Anti-Bush, Anti-Blair, Pro-PC, Far left, Pro-Muslim, Communist, so called 'news' output" of the Beeb. I'd take serious issue with that opinion. The BBC recently got castigated at the War Crimes Tribunal in the Hague by Milosevic for broadcasting "anti-Serb propaganda". They were castigated at home at the time of the war for being the "Belgrade Broadcasting Corp" ie pro-Serbian. When the same organisation is accused of bias against both sides you know that something is working well.

I'd like to see ANY evidence of an institutional bias in the BBC. Every news story has a slant it is true. One person's unbiased is another person's outrageous propaganda. We can see this very well exposed in Italy at the mo. Berlusconi controls pretty much all the news media in Italy and some may see this as an abuse of power at worse or conflict of interests at best. He even walked out of an interview on state TV citing the "fact" that the interviewer was a far-left leaning person therefore the interview can't be unbiased. Idiot. You can show a report that the Palestinians live in squalor and many will feel that the article is an outrageous slur on Israel and demand apologies for alleged anti-semitism.

Secondly they complain about the BBC "censoring" views they try to post that "are against the editorial slant of the BBC". Outrageous! How dare the BBC censor people's views? Well duh! Idiots! You can't put views that are libellous so they're out. You can't incite any violence, so they're out. You can't write drivel, they're out. This is why your "perfectly sensible" attitudes are not broadcast to us. Articulate and argue don't be strident. Besides this if they go to the radio pages there are message boards that allow open discussion so use them. The "Have Your Say" bit is for people's views not discussion, hence it's not called a discussion board.

Thirdly they witter about the BBC's self-censorship. "Why didn't you show those cartoons" they cry. "Treat us like adults please!" Have these people never heard of the concept of "being realistic". The BBC is a global news operation and lots of the important news now is coming out of the middle-east and they need to have reporters there. If they did show the cartoons then they probably wouldn't have any reporters there for much longer. Therefore we get no news and these folk are free to live out their lives in blissful ignorance of the potentially world-changing news coming out of the region. Hmm? Which is better?

Fourthly they complain that the BBC does not represent their views. Well boo-hoo. If you want a corporate yes-man then don't watch anything that may interfere with your well-set and obviously open-minded view of the world. Wouldn't it be just awful if you were made to think and try and see something that doesn't correspond to exactly the way you feel about something? And where would you stop? Perhaps a news story that GWBush was the most saintly man on the planet would not be enough for some, perhaps you'd think any that didn't deify him was tantamount to communist propaganda.

One of the things I want from a news organisation is them to make me think. I don't want to be told, "there there don't fret the world's just like you want it to be."

Fifthly does asking hard questions really count as criticism? Why should politicians not get asked hard questions about vast amounts of our money being spent, or members of our armed forces being sent to waste their lives in an illegal war? Why shouldn't they be asked why they haven't invaded Burma, Zimbabwe, Uzbekistan, North Korea and China on human rights issues when that's the current reason for going into Iraq and deposing Saddam?

The fact that "Saddam was a bad man" is true but doesn't mean it was a good reason to invade a sovereign country. Be a bit more grown up about things will you. Politics is hard and black and white rarely figure. I know you struggle to comprehend any subtleties and you just want to "hit it with a stick" but the rest of have evolved past unquestioning support for people in power. If they can't answer hard questions well then I guess they have something to hide or are just incompetant (and therefore I want to know about it so I don't vote for them in the future). And I want the news organisation that I pay for to ask those questions. I want them to ask such questions of any government no matter which side of the spectrum they are on. The opposition doesn't seem to ask too many hard questions so it's up to the media to do it for them.

Sixthly: just how is a commercial organisation (answerable to the owner who will probably have his own agenda, see Berlusconi again) supposed to be impartial? Look at Fox to see the disgusting bias there. People who disagree have their microphones switched off or are shouted down. But perhaps that's "fair and balanced" in your world.

The BBC is biased. Well only in so far as all humans have an opinion and are therefore biased. Show me any examples of bias on the beeb and I'll show another example from the beeb putting the opposing view on the same topic. When an organisation is attacked as biased from the Tories, New Labour, Real Labour, Muslims, Christians, athiests and more then I say that organisation is probably doing things right.

Have fun.

Another heads-up

noreply@blogspirit.com (Alby) — Mon, 13 Mar 2006 00:10:00 +0000

Since Luke B bigged this site up on rec.juggling (possibly before reading some of it) my traffic has increased a little. Cheers for that Luke.

Anyways there's been another mention; this time on The Jog. There's a post re juggling blogs on there and I've got 2 of 'em mentioned. Yay! Cheers for the mention guys.

There's some interesting preamble too. I particlarly like:

These juggling blogs highlight both ends of the spectrum - from the elite performers to your average hobbyist - and a few weird people in between.

Since I'm mentioned at number 3 (and 3.5) I'm going to assume I'm one of the "weird people". He's also got 2 number 4's, and some of the links are not what they say they are (sorry Andrew).

I hope the author has a read of this post because I can't post a reply there without subscribing to Blogger. Anyways you forgot Bear-Blog! How could you? She writes well!

The other point that sprang to mind is that this isn't really a juggling blog. I just happen to juggle a bit so it gets mentioned. I have opinions so they get aired. But there's not even a juggling "category" to easily search for the bits that you're interested in. This wasn't deliberate but is now. I want people to actually read the thing rather than just pick the bits that may seem relevant. Do I sound too self-important here? Hope not.

Anyways thanks again Andrew.

Have fun.

PS Oh and the title of this blog does make sense if you know me well enough. "Not a juggler of monkeys" indeed!

Abusive? Moi?

noreply@blogspirit.com (Alby) — Fri, 03 Mar 2006 11:00:00 +0000

Apparently I'm abusive. I've been told this by someone on the UrbanFreeflow boards.

It started off with someone wanting to stop smoking but didn't want to go to the doctor and I quote:

Now I know there are loads of help lines and shit like that but I need to hear how PEOPLE quit, not what some stuck up shrink said.

I replied with:

Don't buy any ciggies. Simple as that. Spend the money on something else. You'll get cravings but not for too long. Stopping smoking is easier when you're younger. Drop the habit now.

And then followed it up with:

I've just had a second thought about this.
You say that you're not interested in what the shrink says.
This is rather like asking "How do I get better at Parkour - I want to know how people get better at it - not what some Parkour expert says."
The people who do smoking cessation stuff have got the job because they know what works best. Don't ignore them just because they're older than you and may have a beard.

Apparently that's abusive so I retorted:

Nothing abusive in either of my posts that I can see.
I'm guessing he's young and it's true that it's easier to give up if you've not been smoking for years and years.

I'd say he was the abusive one for basically dissing the people who can actually offer him the best help available purely on account of clear inverted snobbery. I just wanted to point out that if he wants to get help he shouldn't be averse to ask those who can offer it (in many many different forms), rather than randoms on an internet board peddling only personal experience (likely not to be relevant) or half-understood info, heard somewhere once.

Honestly!

Have fun.

PM Updated

noreply@blogspirit.com (Alby) — Fri, 03 Mar 2006 09:07:42 +0000

For those who care:

PhysioMonkey has been updated with the last part of "Back Pain". It's actually not as full as I would like but I was getting bored with it so I stopped and left a cop-out ending.

And I've had 2 lovely comments from randoms on there. I'm quite happy about that. Then I checked their details and 1 is a dating site and the other sells chocolate. I wonder if this is a new and subtle spamming technique? Or are they genuine?

Have fun.

Combine obsessions.....NOW!

noreply@blogspirit.com (Alby) — Tue, 28 Feb 2006 11:55:00 +0000

Have fun.

PS Click on pic for a bigger one.