Any time spent in the TARDIS is time well spent.
It was very exciting, but we're glad to be back in 2009. So on to the news!
Wish List Time
Guess what I would like for Christmas, Readerville!
Your hint is that it is not any of the following items:
- A bottomless teapot of Indian chai from Alice's Tea Cup
- A working model of Hogwarts, complete with real miniature witches and wizards
- Richard Armitage wrapped in a bow
Richard Armitage seems mildly displeased that he has been sent to the States as a Christmas present.
Not that all of those things wouldn't be totally effing awesome, of course. If you can acquire any of them for me, I will be eternally grateful.
But no, for Christmas this year, I would like the Nude London Tech calendar: a bunch of Internet start-up geniuses, nekkid (plus strategically placed laptops and computer cables). And it's for charity! I'm such a giver.
Who doesn't need a calendar full of naked nerds? Why has this been such a long time in coming?
Listen to "The Bugle." For realz.
I know I already told you to listen to John Oliver and Andy Zaltzman wallow in ridiculousness in their weekly Times online podcast, "The Bugle." But I'm telling you again! I've been listening to a backlog of episodes, and I lurve it. Possible side effect of listening to it too often: Your own mental narration may take on the voices of Oliver and Zaltzman. This is disturbing, of course, but it can be remedied by listening to some hawt, popalicious Billie Piper, which is, mysteriously, always my post-"Bugle" craving. (Don't judge me. You know you love it.) I recommend "Because We Want To" for your listening pleasure.
Not a listening pleasure: Andy Zaltzman's bugle to the ear. Might I tempt you with some Billie Piper, Mr. Oliver?
Food for thought: In 1793, the Times of London reported that the French people had beheaded Marie Antoinette (you can see the actual article here). In 2009, the Times of London online produced a podcast in which John Oliver stated that Janet Napolitano, United States Secretary of Homeland Security, called him a goatf**ker backstage at The Daily Show (that would be "The Bugle" Episode 93, for those of you who think I am making this up).
Yeah, that's right. Marie Antoinette and "The Bugle" appear in the same publication. Makes perfect sense.
I'll permit your mind to finish melting before I continue.
Are you okay now? Good. Moving right along…
Anglotastic lurves fun accents, variant spellings, and novel dialects
And that, dear readers, is why I enjoyed this blog post from Smitten by Britain so very much.
On a side note, did you know that Noah Webster was remarkably anti-British and hell-bent on converting the English language into a veritable cornucopia of phoneticism? Well, it's true. And I blame him, quite justly, for shuffling all our spellings around and making it so difficult for a copyeditor to reasonably transition from one country to the other. *makes rude hand gesture in Noah Webster's general direction*
Real-life Michael Scott
Please don't throw paper products at me (I can't man up to the paper cuts), but I prefer the American Office to the British Office. Whichever version you favor, though, you'd hate to think there was an actual boss who circulated blatantly offensive jokes, was called out for it, and responded like so: "It shows I found a joke funny and circulated it to the rest of the team. I didn't think there was any question of appropriateness at all. It's an amusing joke, the team were all adults."
Mark Lowe described Nomos Capital executive Jordan Wimmer as a "dumb blond" and "decorative." WOW.
Tragically, Mark Lowe is real, and he is alive and well. And, presumably, has a hilarious e-mail that he's getting ready to forward at this very moment. It's about your mom.
