* Posts by Celeste Reinard

96 publicly visible posts • joined 6 Mar 2018

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BOFH: The Board members are looking very ill these days

Celeste Reinard

Drinks cabinet...

I had a neighbour, miss K., that was found, by her daughter, half-way up her drinks cabinet.... The general opinion was that was quite fitting, and even might have been thought so by the diseased. And, indeed, probably in search of some sherry.

BOFH: Something's consuming 40% of UPS capacity – and it's coming from the beancounters' office

Celeste Reinard

It's 01:46 ... I love your nightmares, Simon...

... I do...

...

Let’s elope...

So I’ve scripted a life-saving routine. Pah. What really matters is the icon I give it

Celeste Reinard

Moonwalking

I think, if you feel like marketing my wonderful personality by means of a statue, that it will be rather crowded with ashtrays and beer cans evenly dispersed in a chaotic yet creative environment.

It's a mess. Happy now?

Live, die, copy-paste, repeat: Everything is recycled now, including ideas

Celeste Reinard

Obviously...

... your map app hates you. Maybe you touched it in the wrong place? Say, anywhere in France? ... As a work around I suggest you go to Canada, where they also speak french, however still have the queen. ... Or, yet another thought, go look for it at your current location, and you'll find your house there.

Was this answer useless? Y / N ...

BOFH: Despite the extremely hazardous staircase, our IT insurance agreement is at an all-time low. Can't think why

Celeste Reinard

Re: Good one !

How eery.... since my previous Md was of the same name - and not the most cheerful character, to say the least... Who had taken over the practice of my Md before him, after he had a run-in with something vehicular on rails. Neither a very cheerful person - the last time I saw him he had read a document I had uploaded chez scribd, titled 'Diary from God' - that appears to a bit of a crancky old fool, with his accomplice 'Stan' - yet another slightly destructive fellow. ... I wasn't that bad.

Your private data has been nabbed: Please update your life as soon as possible while we deflect responsibility

Celeste Reinard

Breakfast with Dabbs

A deep-fried thesaurus with a side of sugarcoated mushrooms (grown on natural sheep dung) and coffee with reflux - no better way to wake up. And indeed, your boss loves you when you shovel the shite your co-workers keep trailing behind them out in the dumpster. Not the best way to get popular with the latter, but you hated them anyway, so that's in fact two problems solved in one stroke - it's perfect to prevent unwanted friends you didn't need in the first place and keep the beer for yourself.

WhatsApp: Share your data with Facebook, or we'll make our own app useless to you

Celeste Reinard

Do-Laa

So, what it boils down to, is that, as El Presidente of Gnome Country, Do-Laa the First, the Last, and Only, I have conversations with my psychiatrist, while I have befriended on Fb Satan and Hitler, and then my boss will find out about it. ... Can't be bothered, it's time anyway the idiot knows what I think about him. What's wrong with honesty?

Traffic lights, who needs 'em? Lucky Kentucky residents up in arms over first roundabout

Celeste Reinard

Dutch invention

Besides having dutch courage, dutch parties, there are also dutch inventions, and if I am correct, this is one of them. ... And since we are all on drugs over here (me being the saintly exception), I can see where the confusion comes from. ... Of course I am not suggesting they should all get potted over there, ab-so-lu-te-ly not.

It's wild the lengths Facebook engineers will go to find new ways to show you inane ads about tat: This time, AR...

Celeste Reinard

Shaky

Then how do you watch a movie on human reproduction, I wonder.

That's it. It's over. It's really over. From today, Adobe Flash Player no longer works. We're free. We can just leave

Celeste Reinard

Flashit

It's not me being silly, dancing naked in the street, it's you still wearing clothes! Free at last! ... The amount of times I had to remove the McAfee 'software' from dad's computer that came for free whenever he updated this digital sadness without juvenile supervision... Free at last!

Hong Kong's Hutchison Group, which runs mobile carrier ‘3’, protests as USA puts it on new China ban list

Celeste Reinard

Born to bewilder

You don't say he's a bit of a retard. That wouldn't do justice to all the real retards. ... After all, I always found he resembles more a Vogon - delegated from the Bork-system for screwing up - while screwing up - so badly, it's become metaphysical.

Celeste Reinard

Re: Dear World. I'm sorry.

YOU don't need to apologize - regarding the sorry, very sorry state you are in. ... One doesn't need to hit rock bottom before recovery, but Lord, you had even thrown the furniture afterwards to land upon you to prevent any bouncing back. ... Good luck from the rest of the planet, and a happy New Year.

Planet Earth

Reading El Reg while working from home? Here's a pleasant thought: Kaspersky says 1 in 10 of you are naked right now

Celeste Reinard

... and uninstall

Who needs antivirus anyway, having suffered even ebola and survived? Also sacked that russian guy, for good measure.

Chuck Yeager, sound barrier pioneer pilot, dies at 97

Celeste Reinard

Broomstick

Quite the guy, using a sawed-off broomstick to close the cockpit... As it happens, I must have read The Right Stuff 5 or 6 times - and seen the movie at least trice - it even passed my hands yesterday.

PSA: The 2020 monolith is a dead meme. You can stop putting them up now. Please

Celeste Reinard

A breath of fresh air

It is definitively a change from all those black strips of asphalt all over the planet that have no better use than being run over with cars. Or cylindrical holes being bored through even more boring mountains one finds all over the planet, called 'tunnels', that bored people with little imagination use to drive through with a car, while listening to the beatles - as if they have nothing better to do. ... I don't think however it will be the marketing for the (rather boring) zen gardens line from Four Seasons Total Landscaping - unless they are fed up with people trying to attract gnomes with their stuff (when they failed to scare customers away with idiot lawyers from hell being more fun than anticipated). As a precursor for the Second Coming with transdimensional eggs... it surely beats a wooden cross with a (badly dressed) guy nailed to it (it scares the kids). It should be forbidden and persecuted to the full extent of the law when it ends up being an architect (Remco Koolhaas) going Banksy. Thát would be terrible indeed. (And boring.)

Let's check in now with the new California monolith... And it's gone, torn down by a bunch of MAGA muppets

Celeste Reinard

Cretinism

As I stated with my last instalment in this commentary section about this subject, that was my egg. I didn't clarify however why I laid it there - an omission I feel necessitated to fix: my transdimensional baby had as its intended mission to root out just all this kind of cretinism... It looks like I will have to lay a few thousand more - from pole to pole.

Master boot vinyl record: It just gives DOS on my IBM PC a warmer, more authentic tone

Celeste Reinard

Nerdism: 10 - Sanity: 0

'The only record I digitised that gave a clear spectrum without noise was Nana Mouskouri 'International' from 1973, recorded at the Philips studio's at Eindhoven, my (favorite) uncle Ted managed to lay hands on. The rest of all the vinyl I digitised was, in popular jargon, dung. To add to that, that critisism goes as well for cd's, digitally mastered or not. So what's up whith those people telling that vinyl is so much better is, frankly, beyond me. That said, as everybody knows, my favorite music remains Motörhead, Throbbing Gristle, and the likes, so anyone assuming I am a bit conflicted won't be contradicted. ... BTW, Nana Mouskouri has a fabulous voice - as shown on the spectrograph that goes up to above 18.000 Hertz when she hits the 'I'.

Retired engineer confesses to role in sliding Microsoft Bob onto millions of XP install CDs

Celeste Reinard

Go, fetch!

As a cat-person, one can imagine that was the one I liked to kick out first thing. ... It would have been so much more popular when it had been a cat.

Mysterious metal monolith found in 'very remote' part of Utah

Celeste Reinard

It's a local thing

1: It's not a monolith, since those are made out of stone (as in the name);

2: It fell out of my... purse;

3: As everybody knows, I am not from a different planet, but a different dimension, so I can do as I please and lay my eggs wherever I please.

YouTube is going to splash adverts all over your videos, and won't pay creators unless there's a big enough audience

Celeste Reinard

My Art! ... is going to be ... Stained!

O My God! My 10 second 'Buy or Die - Don't Argue' video is going to be ralphed all over with adds! And it has attrackted 0 views since I uploaded it about 2 years ago! (Please keep it that way - I can do without all the fame & fortune.) ... (Although I coud do with a nose-job - the last one 30 years ago got it all crooked.)

Celeste Reinard

Re: The death of Big Tech....

I recall a Big Orange collecting about 70.000.000 votes in some election recently that is, give or take a few stitches, the definition of hubris. (Back to the Hoverboard)

Celeste Reinard

Re: time to leave youtube then

That name goes even much better with this classical scholar. Thanks.

Panic in the mailroom: The perils of an operating system too smart for its own good

Celeste Reinard

Tax-free printing

At my gig in 2005 at Nice Airport (Terminal 2) in France at the tax-free shop I did sometimes receive an email from Dublin, Ireland with the request of 'putting those price tags in the bin' ... teling one of us the wrong printer had been selected. For some reason we could print our price tags for perfume all over the world, - Singapore, Melbourne - except Antartica (no tax free fags, booze, and perfume there, it seems).

... And that was the worst that happened to me in my life...

>

>

>

OMG! >sobs<

Ho hum: If you're so artificially intelligent, name this song while my videos go viral

Celeste Reinard

Very pleased

Very pleased to see Dabbs back. Or has been replaced by a robot.

What about those facemask thingies, what if one doesn't have a head to put it on, like some people are missing an arm, or a leg? How to explain to the manager that you have a very valid reason not to wear one? Go naked and wear it over one's bits in order to prevent swaffeling all the goodies?

About gardencenters: I worked at one, during x-mas, and when one considers Mordor to be a magical place, it's magical. Take it from me. LOTR does make sense by times.

After Dutch bloke claims he hacked Trump's Twitter by guessing password, web biz says there's 'no evidence'

Celeste Reinard

Attention!

I really really really would like attention, since I am a world famous person (I am on the internet, and everybody can read what I said), I, er, thingy. Anyway, I would like to draw your attention to the fact that your password is ********! That is because I am a world famous hacker and security person with many famous friends in high places. And not an attention seeker at all! And everybody is jealous and will deny that I am famous.

... My first instinct says it's a, well, hoax. And I am not obsessed at all. I just like the glow of all the attention.

Dulux feel lucky, punk? Samsung wades into paint world with interior emulsions designed to 'complement' your, er, TV

Celeste Reinard

Appealing Plaster

I like to paint my face with bricks. To attract the lizzards, and scare away.... well, just to scare. When I go out for the badly needed beer. ... Make no mistake, the lichen is natural. ... Don't they know paint is bad for the environment?

Massive news, literally: Three super-boffins awarded Nobel Prize in physics for their black-hole breakthroughs

Celeste Reinard

B-holes

I recall as far back in time as 1987, when Penrose had the same age I have now, some journalist snorting at this know-it-all noting a few typo's in some equations in his new book - B-holes still not being understood, being exceptionally dim and dense... and of great importance to philosophy, as I discovered later. Most philosophers appear not even aware of the importance of time and space - theologians being at the forefront of cluelessness, but so many others that do not even give it a second look. While vast tracts of knowledge are dependent on the elements of space and time, and our comprehension of those - and hence moral philosophy... Also, vast tracts of shelf space can be rendered to the bin (which I have been paid to do chez Swets & Blackwell, as a matter of fact) being vacuous. In practical sense, I binned all theology, usually some 6 months after I shelved it, not being sold. Poetry as well, by the way. ... A fact that stood out most here is that works on poetry and theology are small, with lots of white space, while hard science is densly printed. (Just like the works on law and tax - the latter being most expensive.)

First-world problems: The pumpkin spice latte is here, but the Starbucks loyalty card app has wiped my balance

Celeste Reinard

Limping

Oidipus is 2400 years old - rightly so - unwittingly killing your dad and screwing your mum - hilarious. ... Starbork isn't that funny. Not enough to last another 2400 years. It hasn't got the potential - and by the look of things, they are not even trying. They might even accidently delete themselves (with joyous incompetence) - ending up untraceble in yet another ... 24 months? (O please yes please, please do the disappearing act, reformat, and reboot as something un-hipsterlike and non-turd colored?)

Shine on you crazy diamond: We don't know who needs to hear it but NASA's explained the weird shape of the Bennu asteroid

Celeste Reinard

Re: "really close to the surface and just misses"

the trick is, indeed, to get 'distracted' at the right moment.

Adobe Illustrator's open source rival Inkscape delivers v1.0.1 - with experimental Scribus PDF export

Celeste Reinard

Thanks, Reg

Somewhere between the second and the third paragraph I downloaded my new portable toy (version 1.0) for tons of fun!

I grew up starting with Corel 4 - good (free) vector software that does more than drawing a circle before going plop and jerking tears is worth gold.

Eagle-on-EGLE* violence: American icon sends govt-flown drone hurtling into the waters of Lake Michigan

Celeste Reinard

Icon

1: With a name like Hunter King one is almost begging to get ones feathers ruffled by one who is patently so;

2: The King Hunter just did it for ships & giggles is another explanation - since honestly, we can't know what its motivation was, but it could be. Especially when the pilot is called Hunter King;

3: It felt like this failed buzzard needed to be taught a lesson. (Succesfully, as is the evidence.)

4. It is just some stupid stone-age anti-tech with a bad-hair day - and that is why we can't have nice things. (Shoot the lot...)

Yet another beefy BSOD spotted lurking within the walls of US patty pusher

Celeste Reinard

The Bork Collective...

We are the Bork. Lower your shields and surrender your chips. We will add your biological and technological distinctiveness to our own. Your culture will adapt to service us.

...

... ketch-up, onions, and a load of mayonaise ... with sugar on top.

Clunk, whirr, buzz, whine. Shared office space can be a riot and sounds like one too

Celeste Reinard

Better late than ... alive

Doing the left-overs in this very inbox, as I do like the taste of ... vintage news, of course I was touched. ... I quit sobbing, as it being superfluous, and giving me a snotty nose.

Going over it as concise as possible - I know you have a job, unlike me - I go blow by blow.

In french, the brand known to the world as Nike™, is known in France as 'nique ta mère' - meaning 'f*ck your mother'. One of the best...;

About the noise-canceling things. My neighbore from number &$ that likes to defoliate the trottoir (but only on sunny days) with a leafblower bigger than himself that transcends the 110 dB soundbarrier, wears them inhouse, while shopping, and doing the defoliage of the trottoir, appears to have more than one. At least three.;

And last but not least, I do stil have to walk with a cane, as I suffer from nerve damage in my ear induced by low-level noises, created by machines. I know the pain as translated above is real. A machine-free world would be welcome. A de-peopled one as well, but I think that is over-asking. And regardeing the way it's going, why should I.

Micros~1? ClippyZilla? BSOD Bob? There can be only one winner. Or maybe two

Celeste Reinard

Microflop

O dear, I missed out on that one... Not in the habit of calling names, even when it comes to the Evil Emipre from Redmond, I usualy refer to screw-ups (like last fall when I was back in France since 13 years, about to show my work to the indigenous people from Nullepart, and then found out that upon arrival my Win10 had to finish its update, (wait... wait...), before I found out the update had borked my cursor, turning me into one...) as microflop. ... And that's it, mostly. ... It's not Apple, or Linux. So. Or else, just Satan. But then I refer to myself as Satan as well, so that's not much of a help either. So, nothing. ... Mind you, I have tried over the years, but that's all I have to show for 20-odd years of wasted time & sleep. Hey, I even have used drugs - still nothing. ... Maybe it's some sort of Stockholm syndrome - it keeps on slapping me in the face and giving nightmares & bruises on the soul, and I still keep hoping it will get better, one day. Maybe 'Nightmare' comes close. Micromare? Microsad? Micro de Sade? ... Microsof (a sof being a failure (in Jiddish, now I check it (always good for great words telling what's it all about, like armageddon being another ... evergreen))).

You can't have it both ways: Anti-coronavirus masks may thwart our creepy face-recog cameras, London cops admit

Celeste Reinard

Unidentified Faceless Objects

After so many years of political hassel, we finally got a law, proposed by the populist party here in holland, forbidding facial covering, mostly aimed at the 12 to 24 muslim women here wearing a veil. And now we don't hear so much as a peep. ... I wonder who invented this virus, because (s)he is a bloody genius, just to annoy these politicians - but I gather it must be a marxist(e), sick an tired of waiting for the revolution to arrive - and now here we have it (finally)! ... As I am also a genius, I propose to just chip everybody - at birth, for starters (practical for doctors as well, mind you), and since already half the population has been chipped by aliens, actually all we have to do is to learn to decipher the code those chips are emitting across the galaxy, and Bob's your Uncle (as you always suspected). And the ups are limitless: when you need a cop, for example, you can just find one on Googlemaps, and wistle in the correct direction. Or an Illuminaty, or any other crook, if you need to outsource a burglary to retrieve you smartphone. ... Far much better than installing cctv on every corner and bedroom. Cheaper as well, since most of the work has been done (voluntarily!) by those nice and loving aliens. ... Unless a majority of 50.1 % of 17.4 % of the population says no to it, then of course we don't, and continue throwing good money after bad money, and keep the cops busy harrasing people at random - what is also a fun thing to do, instead of doing their job, saving kittens and beating up woman-beaters.

Iran military manages to keep a straight face while waggling miracle widget that 'can detect coronavirus from 100m away'

Celeste Reinard

Again?

Nothing on snopes.com - I recall these things being reviewed on dutch skeptical sites like kloptdatwel and the likes some 10 years ago - while I was being some sort of a trainee on skepticism. Anyway, the wiki has some stuff where snopes drops the ball a bit - one can search under GT200 or the ADE 651 being so completely bogus one starts to question the very nature of ones own species to the extend that one really sees the gnomes dancing the Can Can in ones own head.

The dutch site talks about it in 2013:

https://kloptdatwel.nl/2013/02/08/drugs-en-explosievendetector-valt-compleet-door-de-mand/

And here's the Wiki for those who also understand proper English:

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/GT200

... I refrain from stating that humans descend from monkeys, endorsing Darwin thusly, since we clearly don't - it's gnome country. (One better reads up Foucault, Les Mots et les Choses, for better understanding (why people are more like wheel barrows rather than trains - they have a hard time keeping on track/ not flying of the rails by habit (or lack of constraints (within their belief-system)))

Upstart Americans brandish alligators at the almighty Reg Standards Soviet

Celeste Reinard

Gnominium

I am confused - as you know me - at keeping standards shared by others than me - I use the

Spitting Distance – for the lady from the benifits (dole, chomage) - she has 3 k's in her name, and since you know I am Rwandeese, and she is an umuzungu kazi - that doesn't work. The

0.50 half-brick throwing distance – when it comes to police (that's about a Standard Bus), and the

0.50 helicopter mounted Catling machinegun – for my 120dB leaveblowing noise-canceling wearing head-gear neighbour wearing this gear in-house (take my word for that), while shopping (idem) and while cleaning for at least 4 hours the trottoir, parkingspace, &c, shoeed with sandals, wearing shorts, and has for the rest a horrible appearence (photographic and filmic evidence on request), and has an injunction watching movies depicting people under 25.

– Those are the standards we use in the Gnominium, which, as you guessed correctly, is gnome-country, where we dance around bonfire with new-moon, half-moon (both), and full-moon, and everything in-between, and the bonfire is used to roast terrible people-onna-stake. ... How it comes I am not yet roasted and that people generally regard me as kind and loving, for knowing myself, - no. I woudn't befriend myself. Maybe they are terrified - rightly so.

Anyway, I love the situation... (I live near Schiphol ... no more planes with b. tourists spooling the view on the flowerbulbfields that surround my place of habitation. (What should be enough information for all of you to Google Earth my neighbour to see I am right and I am not so bad after all.) And a 0.50 caliber helicopter mounted machinegun is quite the measure for social distancing. Also when it comes to asure the Nice & Quiet.

Things that go crump in the night: Watch Musk's mighty missile go foom

Celeste Reinard

O Lord, won't You buy me...

... a Mercedes Benz. My friends all drive Tesla's...

That was just Elon smoking and calling it a leaking valve. (Can't wait for the fix and the retest...)

Vietnam bans posting fake news online

Celeste Reinard

Marx

I recall posting a photo of netted oranges online, since they resembled a tasty and wholesome human rear end - which I thought to be very funny, and suggestive of something completely different than an actual orange. And totally real, and not related to any orange to be found on Pennsylvania avenue 1600 that is totally fake news - though I don't want to be totallitarian about that, or vague, argumentative, or quarrelsome, or confused, since I am a devoted marxist - so I am safe, there.

... Okay, I admit that I am not a real marxist, I just say that to annoy people - I prefer total anarchy - as anyone will avow that has seen my place.

Internet use up 40 per cent in San Francisco Bay Area – but you know what’s even higher? Yep, alcohol, weed use

Celeste Reinard

odd

I started this lifestyle some 30 years ago - and now I read about what I am doing in El Reg. ... And yet I don't see myself as 'avant-garde' - is it the rest playing catch-up? Interesting it is.

Want to see through walls? Electroboffins build tiny chip in the lab that vibrates at just the right frequency to do it

Celeste Reinard

The Cusp

“High-frequency, high-power and nanoscale aren’t terms you’d normally hear in the same sentence,” he added.

O dear, may I contradict you? But that sounds rather like the description of the Current US President its brain, or else that other nasty that is not to be sneezed upon that is currently doing the rounds. ... The guy should read a newspaper or something. Be shown the tv.

... Okay, it's not really on topic, but it's true!

BOFH: Here he comes, all wide-eyed with the boundless optimism of youth. He is me, 30 years ago... what to do?

Celeste Reinard

Unbalanced, unhinged, and cold...

Love and flowers - we're having none of that. Not here at Mano Sinistra Publications...

As you all know, I live here in the proximity of the Keukenhof, an annual flower show that's so famous I even found an old, faded, life-sized poster of it in an internet café in the heart of Africa, Kigali. The show is closed this year, due to obvious reasons, or rather, seemingly obvious reasons - so no bloody tourists this year... The quiet... This morning I went for a walk-about, and I even could hear the birds sing. One that made the sound of a house-version of a ring-tone, even. And all it took was a little biological experiment, that went of with a spectacular result, that will have the scientific cummunity talking about for decades to come... For which I deny any responsabiliy - that will be the guy downstairs who will find out later that some fingers are pointing at him. ... I don't like his music that much, and he confuses deo with douche - while being a... enfin. No name-calling. I like birdsong better. Or trash metal. And make things Someone Elses Problem - and disappear.

About which I do have a little comment, to be a little less on a tangent, or unhinged, as my neighbor will find out about his front door in a not that far point in the future, is the reference in this sublime piece of litterature I am supposed to be commenting on, to the use of lime.

As I recall, it is already about a decade ago that the theory has been tested on corpses, and that has been found that the use of lime prevents the proliferation of maggots, slowing actually down the process of decomposition. I admit that it has some litterary cachet to use lime, but frankly it is useless. Best practice is, when hippy-minded, to just dump it in a forest, or at sea. Quickest is to set it on fire - and when shot, for example, use wooden bullets - they will burn, so it much more looks like an accident. Pine is fine - it splinters nicely, and is virtually untracable. For those in a more festive mood like the more experimental part of the '80s, one can always chop it up, and distribute the remains in the desk drawers of the temporal manager that replaces the old one, to assure that nothing is really the matter, and it is business as usual. Also to instill the right amount of... attitude.

The happiest 35 days of my life were when, some day, some 5 years ago now, I hit upon the works of Simon T., and just spend 5, 6, 10 hours a day plowing through his ... bloody mess. That's about 40 days by now. As I, as a redactrix (red nails, riding crop), get more ripe with age, so I recognise Simon the past year finding refinement, as he is getting, the past months, more ripe with age as well. Like whiskey – in front off a log-fire. Lampshades made of the finest leather, to complete the picture. A head of some wild-life as a trophy on the wall. A roll of carpet on the floor.

Memories start to flood about construction sites I have been employed, using heavy equipment. The smell of curing cement in the morning. Walls being bricked. Elevator shafts being furnished. Stairwells, getting their first painting. Sounds of splattering, things dropping from the sixth floor. This white helmet of the chief engineer somewhere in the cold mud, with a small yellow pool inside. Echoos of ratteling noises. Large rolls of carpet being delivered. Window panes missing at all places... The drum, the rumble, the excitement of doing something that makes a mark in the landscape. The giant flood lights, high-powered electric cables...

- Doing shit about Oscar Wilde recently (I found some books for £2 more than 110 year old), this piece has the same smell as the good old stuff - just perfectly translated into a new and modern setting. Kids should be taught about this at school.

The rumour that I married Simon, took him off to my basement and taught him how to write properly in the few months time about a year ago, what would explain the unusual large gaps between entries at that time, is a fantasy, and can be ignored. (thusly.)

To coin a frase: the love he's making to my mind is getting better with age.

Grab a towel and pour yourself a Pan Galactic Gargle Blaster because The Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy is 42

Celeste Reinard

42, Towels, and the rest...

I got married when I was 42. On planet Africa, that has strangely enough the shape of Rwanda, and tends to be frequented by a 1000 hills, in a little place called Kigali. The claim of Rwandan people being the prettiest people on earth might be an overestimation, but by a negligable percentage. They do speak the most beautiful language - a fact I never see mentioned anywhere (not even chez El Reg, that now being corrected).

The negligable percentage of overestimation on prettieness explains why my future better half made up the excuse why I couldn't see my future mother-in-law before the wedding - for she was compensating on her own - I believe my better half was afraid about the source that had spawned [her] and I might get second thoughts. ... Thing is, my beloved loves Killing Joke (drums, Rwanda is great with that)... and other (violent) Pock-music, so any fears were redundant. (I don't care so much about my mother-in-law, being nice but truly horrid.)

I know where my towel is - as I sit on top of it all day, it being draped over my lounge chair, behind my desk, at work as an editor chez Mano Sinistra Publications - the place from which I rule a unverse with 1 inhabitant (a calculation by The Greatest Writer (for being over 2 meters tall) shows that I am 10 to the minus 43 (or something about) devided over all planets, my universe is uninhabited, making it a quiet place without kids.). I don't know where [the towel] comes from, but it's colorful, with an aboriginal patterning, so maybe there's a clue - it originates from an Australia-shaped former prison island, some of my relatives were born - thou I am not sure, since they speak an incomprehensible tongue - what might be a clue. We do communicate telepathically, and thankfully Australia is mostly a desert - we are one.

The rumour that I clubbed a towel to death with the leg of a table is gratutitous, and can be ignored. I love towels.

Celeste Reinard

Re: If that kind of talent were normal ...

Being freakishly smart, getting bored is essential to come up with weird stuff and stay alife – or else getting nuts (after one develops a smart and fluffy tail and hang about the trees all day (like a diva on a sofa). ... As I read the comments of his Litterary Agent, I assume DNA was a 'gifted' person, i.e., had problems with focus and related problems... (the brain the size of...). ... It's a small ecology, that creates its own needs. And results. Getting bored with the universe (and its inhabitants) is one, inventing the gargleblaster is another one. (I'll have mine on the rocks, with a bit of napalm, and a little umbrella).

Celeste Reinard

That depends. If it was white, I used it as a shroud for the cat of neighbour, Bernice. The blue one I ate (the bit with the maggots), I burned the rest to warm my cold hands and heart, and the green one I fed to the cat (which happened to become -- comatic, somehow... and to make sure, I smothered the poor fellow with a red one). The black one I used as a veil when I was getting married on Postal (Planet Postal, where scientients from all over the galaxy go to get get married for ... what passes for a posh yet highly illegal marriage, but explains a lot about 'Going Postal'. Otherwise I have no further information. Unless it was the brownish one, which had developped into something quite violent, and had to be put down (I clubbed it to death with the femur a smaller dinosaur)(I guess, it could also be the leg of a flying bedroom table) (That was before I got married to it (the table) (hence the veil).

Celeste Reinard

Re: fun facts

An 'accroc' is also an 'addict'. On drugs, or a hobby. One just never knows wat goes on in the minds of translaters. ... from 'accrocher', hang up. Accroc is also a tear in vêtements, or a problem. Accrocher (now I am in the dic) also means 'collision'. 'Accrocher une voiture' - collide with a car. > Dent?

Celeste Reinard

Re: fun facts

Since you got already 42 thumbs-up, I leave it at that.

One for the super rich fanbois: Ultra-rare functional Apple-1 computer goes on auction

Celeste Reinard

Job, it was mine

... to clear out offices and toss old crap like that from the first floor into a dumpster - one day, long long time ago. I recall it being sunny and springtime and the previous millenium. And that one shouldn't fart in a clean room - people notice that and stare at you and wish you were dead - but please elsewhere. Severly.

-

→ next time I tell you about my job where I – in grand total – tossed for over a million $ worth of scientific literature in the bin. Could be 2, or 3. → Envy alert: I could take from that lot what I liked home, after check with the chief... (you'll hate me) which gave me in that one year a bonus of about $30.000 when bought new.

Imagine one can take from 265.000 titels, updated every day. ... Also, imagine ceo David Bowie look-a-like, that responds to the question about waste - we have tried getting it to the 3rd world - but we were bleeding money.

I happened to be the new magasier chez Swets & Blackwell, responsable for 3.7 kilometers of shelves with books. I created order to that ... bloody mess..., as it should be, for the first time in 28 years (so I was told,) ... undoing the ... mess.- I had the weirdest job. Got my boss a load of bucks in return for making small changes, with a love for books. Enfin. Wonderful time.

...

One should imagine that it was housed in a former flower-bulb factory, and one grows here almost up in a flower-bulb factory. (I did.) So I was working in a flower-bulb factory that housed 600 people reading books on all places. ... A Special Version of Doom...

Can AI-enhanced virtual sports presenters do the job? It's a big ask

Celeste Reinard

Misses & Misses D.

As I am a avid proponent of corporal punishment - I like to teach by example and hand out free samples - I asked myself how I should procede with someone begging for a free sample for the all the inanities dispersed, that someone being immaterial. ... As I am also an avid abuser of innocent substances, my next thought was about the current UK prime minister, and as far as he is not yet replaced by a virtual thingy, how do we know the difference? ... And while investigating, ask his opinion about corporal punishment, if he likes a free sample (I think that would suffice to differentiate between Turing and him), or that he rather goes for the whole hog and likes to cough up some (badly needed and loads of) dough in exchange for (some specialist) education, training, and exercise. ... As for the latter, and the honorable PM is piqued and wants to know my contact details, I am sure the editor of this magazine will surely like to be instrumental in sharing them, and be updated later on... (in Technicolor™ on request).

Celeste Reinard

Re: Artificial sports presenters

I queried a specialist (a mother of twins) on the subject of mermaids, and how they will be going about when it comes to the consumption of the inevitable marital nights... the mechanics of sleeping with the fish. Where do these flippers go, for example. You happen to be a marine biologist - she was clueless.

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