uselessdesires - random musings - photographs - diary - scrapbook

How to tell if your cat is plotting to kill you

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Filed under  //   cats   diary   fun   humour   scraps  

Farmer Flemming

His name was Fleming, and he was a poor Scottish farmer. One day, while trying to make a living for his family, he heard a cry for help coming from a nearby bog. He dropped his tools and ran to the bog.

There, mired to his waist in black muck, was a terrified boy, screaming and struggling to free himself. Farmer Fleming saved the lad from what could have been a slow and terrifying death.

The next day, a fancy carriage pulled up to the Scotsman's sparse surroundings. An elegantly dressed nobleman stepped out and introduced himself as the father of the boy Farmer Fleming had saved.

'I want to repay you,' said the nobleman. 'You saved my son's life.'

'No, I can't accept payment for what I did,' the Scottish farmer replied waving off the offer. At that moment, the farmer's own son came to the door of the family hovel.

'Is that your son?' the nobleman asked.

'Yes,' the farmer replied proudly.

'I'll make you a deal. Let me provide him with the level of education my own son will enjoy If the lad is anything like his father, he'll no doubt grow to be a man we both will be proud of.' And that he did.

Farmer Fleming's son attended the very best schools and in time, graduated from St. Mary's Hospital Medical School in London, and went on to become known throughout the world as the noted Sir Alexander Fleming, the discoverer of Penicillin.


Years afterward, the same nobleman's son who was saved from the bog was stricken with pneumonia.

What saved his life this time? Penicillin.

The name of the nobleman? Lord Randolph Churchill. His son's name?

Sir Winston Churchill.

Filed under  //   diary   literature   scraps  

THE COMPLETE & DEFINATIVE list of songs performed on Glee!

Starred (*) songs have never been released; songs with two stars (**) were cut from the episode.

This list only includes songs that were actually sung (e.g. songs played by the McKinley High band and dance-only songs like 'Single Ladies' were left out).

Songs in previously-aired episodes:

Where Is Love?* - Hank Saunders
Respect* - Mercedes
Mr. Cellophane* - Kurt
I Kissed A Girl* - Tina
On My Own - Rachel
Sit Down, You’re Rockin’ The Boat* - New Directions (original 5 - Rachel, Mercedes, Kurt, Artie and Tina)
Can’t Fight This Feeling - Finn
Lovin’, Touchin’, Squeezin’* - young Finn and Darren
You’re The One That I Want* - New Directions (original 6 - Rachel, Finn, Kurt, Mercedes, Tina and Artie)
Rehab - Vocal Adrenaline
Leaving On A Jet Plane - Will
Don’t Stop Believin’ - New Directions (original 6)
Le Freak* - New Directions (original 6)
Gold Digger - New Directions (original 6) and Will
All By Myself* - Emma
Push It - New Directions (original 6)
I Say A Little Prayer - Quinn, Santana and Brittany
Take A Bow - Rachel, Mercedes and Tina
For He’s A Jolly Good Fellow* - Will, Howard Bamboo, Ken Tanaka, and Sandy Ryerson
This Is How We Do It* - Acafellas (original - Will, Howard, Ken, and Henri St. Pierre)
Poison* - Acafellas (original)
Mercy - Vocal Adrenaline
Bust Your Windows - Mercedes & the Cheerios
I Wanna Sex You Up - Acafellas (new - Will, Ken, Finn and Puck)
Taking Chances - Rachel
Tonight* - Tina
Don’t Stop Believin’* - New Directions (original 12 minus Rachel; solos sung by Quinn)
Maybe This Time - April Rhodes and Rachel
Cabaret* - Rachel
Alone - April and Will
Last Name - April and New Directions (hereafter they are the original 12)
Somebody To Love - New Directions
It’s My Life / Confessions, Part II - Finn, Puck, Artie, Kurt, Mike and Matt
Halo / Walking On Sunshine - Rachel, Mercedes, Tina, Quinn, Santana and Brittany
Hate On Me - Mercedes (“Aretha”), Tina (“Asian”), Santana, Artie (“Wheels”), Kurt (“Gay Kid”), Mike (“Other Asian”), and Matt (“Shaft”)
Ride Wit Me* - New Directions
No Air - Rachel, Finn, Quinn, Puck and Brittany
You Keep Me Hangin’ On - Quinn & the Cheerios
Keep Holding On - New Directions
Bust A Move - Will and New Directions
Thong Song - Will
What A Girl Wants - Rachel (Puck on guitar)
Sweet Caroline - Puck
I Could Have Danced All Night - Emma
Dancing With Myself - Artie
Defying Gravity - Rachel and Kurt (duet version)
Defying Gravity** - Rachel (solo version)
Defying Gravity** - Kurt (solo version)
Proud Mary - New Directions
Last Christmas - New Directions (was never intended to be part of any episode)
Endless Love - Will and Rachel
I’ll Stand By You - Finn (Kurt on piano)
Don’t Stand So Close To Me / Young Girl - Will
Crush - Rachel
(You’re) Having My Baby - Finn
Lean On Me - New Directions (minus Finn and Quinn)
Bootylicious - Jane Addams Girls Choir
Don’t Make Me Over - Mercedes
You’re The One That I Want* - Finn and Rachel
Papa Don’t Preach - Quinn (Puck on guitar)
Hair/Crazy In Love - New Directions
Imagine - Haverbrook Deaf Choir and New Directions
Imagine** - New Directions only
True Colors - New Directions
Smile (Lily Allen) - Finn and Rachel
When You’re Smiling* - Rachel
Jump - New Directions
Smile (Charlie Chaplin) - New Directions
And I Am Telling You I’m Not Going - Mercedes
And I Am Telling You I’m Not Going* - Jane Addams Girls Choir
Proud Mary* - Jane Addams Girls Choir
Don’t Stop Believin’* - Haverbrook Deaf Choir
Don’t Rain On My Parade - Rachel
You Can’t Always Get What You Want - New Directions
My Life Would Suck Without You - New Directions
Hello, I Love You - Finn
Gives You Hell - Rachel
Hello - Rachel and Jesse St. James
Hello Again* - Will
Highway To Hell - Vocal Adrenaline (ft. Jesse)
Hello, Goodbye - New Directions
Hello Twelve, Hello Thirteen, Hello Love** - Rachel and Jesse
Express Yourself - Rachel, Mercedes, Tina, Quinn, Santana and Brittany
Borderline/Open Your Heart - Finn and Rachel
Vogue - Sue Sylvester
Like A Virgin - Rachel, Jesse, Finn, Santana, Will and Emma
4 Minutes - Kurt and Mercedes
What It Feels Like For A Girl - Finn, Puck, Artie, Kurt, Mike and Matt
Like A Prayer - New Directions (original 12 + Jesse St. James)
Burning Up - Jesse (bonus track, not performed on show)
Fire - Will and April
A House Is Not A Home - Kurt
One Less Bell To Answer/A House Is Not A Home - Will and April
Beautiful - Mercedes and New Directions
Home - April and New Directions
Fergalicious** - Kurt and Mercedes (no sound clip available)
Ice Ice Baby - Will and New Directions
U Can’t Touch This - Artie, Tina, Kurt, Mercedes and Brittany
Physical - Sue and Olivia Newton-John
Run Joey Run - Rachel, Jesse, Finn, Puck, Santana and Brittany
Total Eclipse Of The Heart - Rachel, Jesse, Finn and Puck
The Climb* - Rachel
Jessie’s Girl - Finn
The Lady Is A Tramp - Puck and Mercedes
Pink Houses* - Kurt
The Boy Is Mine - Mercedes and Santana
Rose’s Turn - Kurt
One - New Directions and Sean Fretthold
Daydream Believer* - young Bryan Ryan and unnamed sophomore singer
Piano Man* - Will and Bryan
Big Spender* - Unnamed woman auditioning for Les Mis
Dream On - Will and Bryan
The Safety Dance - Artie
I Dreamed A Dream - Rachel and Shelby Corcoran
Dream A Little Dream Of Me - Artie
The Impossible Dream (The Quest)** - Will

Songs that will be featured in upcoming episodes (starred songs have not yet been released):

Bad Romance - Tina, Mercedes, Kurt, Santana, Quinn, Brittany and Rachel
Poker Face - Rachel and Shelby
Beth - Finn, Puck, Artie, Mike and Matt
Shout It Out Loud* - Finn, Puck, Artie, Mike and Matt
Funny Girl* - Shelby
Give Up The Funk - New Directions
Loser - Puck, Finn, Sandy, Howard, and Terri Schuester
It’s a Man’s Man’s Man’s World* - Quinn
Another One Bites The Dust* - Vocal Adrenaline (ft. Jesse)
Good Vibrations* - Puck, Finn and Mercedes
Tell Me Something Good* - Will
Faithfully* - Finn and Rachel
Any Way You Want It/Lovin’, Touchin’, Squeezin’* - New Directions
Don’t Stop Believin’* - New Directions
Bohemian Rhapsody* - Vocal Adrenaline (ft. Jesse)
To Sir, With Love* - New Directions (?)
Over The Rainbow* - Will and Puck

Filed under  //   arts   diary   glee   music   scraps  

I'm Sleeping ~ Candid Photography

Filed under  //   diary   iPhoneography   people   photography   scraps  

Lucy, the old dog

My mums old dog, Lucy. She's about 16...

Filed under  //   diary   iPhoneography   pets   photography   scraps  

Noteable Mark Twain Quotes

"Write without pay until somebody offers to pay you. If nobody offers within three years, sawing wood is what you were intended for."

"Keep away from people who try to belittle your ambitions. Small people always do that, but the really great make you feel that you, too, can become great."

"People born to be hanged are safe in water."

"Good breeding consists in concealing how much we think of ourselves and how little we think of the other person."

"Man is the only animal that blushes, or needs to."

"Only presidents, editors and people with tapeworm have the right to use the editorial 'we'."

"Under certain circumstances, profanity provides a relief denied even to prayer."

"You cannot depend on your eyes when your imagination is out of focus."

"I don't give a damn for a man who can spell a word only one way."

"I have never let my schooling interfere with my education."

"God made the Idiot for practice, and then He made the School Board."

"All kings is mostly rapscallions."

"It is not best that we all should think alike, it is differences of opinion that make horse races."

"It is by the goodness of God that in our country we have those three unspeakably precious things: freedom of speech, freedom of conscience, and the prudence never to practice either of them."

"Suppose you were an idiot. And suppose you were a member of congress. But I repeat myself."

"The human race has one really effective weapon, and that is laughter."

"Always do right; this will gratify some people and astonish the rest."

"Let us be thankful for the fools. But for them the rest of us could not succeed."

"I was gratified to be able to answer promptly. I said, "I don't know."

"Familiarity breeds contempt - and children."

"It is by the fortune of God that, in this country, we have three benefits: freedom of speech, freedom of thought, and the wisdom never to use either."

"It is better to deserve honors and not have them than to have them and not deserve them."

"If you pick up a starving dog and make him prosperous, he will not bite you. This is the principal difference between a dog and a man."

"By trying we can easily learn to endure adversity. Another man's, I mean."

"I have a higher and greater standard of principle. Washington could not lie. I can lie but I won't."

"Denial ain't just a river in Egypt."

"Go to Heaven for the climate, Hell for the company."

"I have never taken any exercise except sleeping and resting."

"Few things are harder to put up with than the annoyance of a good example."

"I am opposed to millionaires, but it would be dangerous to offer me the position."

"Get your facts first and then you can distort them as much as you wish."

"Golf is a good walk spoiled."

"I refused to attend his funeral. But I wrote a very nice letter explaining that I approved of it."

"The Bible has noble poetry in it; and some clever fables; and some blood-drenched history; and a wealth of obscenity; and upwards of a thousand lies."

"It takes more than three weeks to prepare a good impromptu speech."

"To succeed in life, you need two things: ignorance and confidence."

"Truth is more of a stranger than fiction."

"Wagner's music is better than it sounds."

"We have a criminal jury system which is superior to any in the world; and its efficiency is only marred by the difficulty of finding twelve men every day who don't know anything and can't read."

"There is something fascinating about science. One gets such wholesale returns of conjecture out of such a trifling investment of fact."

"The difference between the right word and the almost right word is the difference between lightning and a lightning bug."

"There is nothing so annoying as to have two people talking when you're busy interrupting."

"When angry, count to four; when very angry, swear."

"When I was a boy of fourteen, my father was so ignorant I could hardly stand to have the old man around. But, when I got to be twenty- one, I was astonished at how much he had learned in seven years."

"Whenever you find that you are on the side of the majority, it is time to reform."

"Let us endeavor to live that when we come to die even the undertaker will be sorry."
"Why shouldn't truth be stranger than fiction? Fiction, after all, has to make sense."

"It's not the size of the dog in the fight, it's the size of the fight in the dog."

"The first half of life consists of the capacity to enjoy without the chance; the last half consists of the chance without the capacity."

"The principle of give and take is the principle of diplomacy - give one and take ten."

"It could probably be shown by facts and figures that there is no distinctly American criminal class except Congress."

"A classic is something that everybody wants to have read and nobody wants to read."

"The man who does not read good books has no advantage over the man who cannot read them."

Filed under  //   arts   culture   humour   literature   scraps  

Countryside & Cakes ~ Arriving home in Wales

Driving home from the station...

... and home to sexy cakes!

Now must finish writing my first short fiction, Wrong Rooms. Writing in the Brecon Beacons may prove to pleasant for the dark themes in my story!

Catch-up at www.twitter.com/wrongrooms

Filed under  //   diary   Ebbw Vale   iPhoneography   photography   scraps   Wales   Wrong Rooms  

My Walk Home from Work in Pictures

             
Click here to download:
My_Walk_Home_from_Work_in_Pict.zip (1493 KB)

Filed under  //   Diary   iPhoneography   Leicester   photography   Scraps  

True Stories about Americans from a UK Travel Agent

The following are actual stories told by travellers from Mendocino County, CA to a travel agents in the UK. (And you wonder why US citizens generally score less than the rest of the world on
geography...)

A man called, furious about a Florida package we did. I asked what was wrong with the vacation in Orlando. He said he was expecting an
ocean-view room. I tried to explain that is not possible, since Orlando is in the middle of the state. He replied, "Don't lie to me. I looked on the map and Florida is a very thin state."

A client called in inquiring about a package to Hawaii. After going
over all the cost info, she asked, "Would it be cheaper to fly to
California and then take the train to Hawaii?"

I got a call from a woman who wanted to go to Capetown. I started to
explain the length of the flight and the passport information when she
interrupted me with "I'm not trying to make you look stupid but
Capetown is in Massachusetts." Without trying to make her look like
the stupid one, I calmly explained, "Cape Cod is in Massachusetts,
Capetown is in Africa." Her response... click.

A secretary called in looking for hotel in Los Angeles. She gave me various names off a list, none of which I could find I finally had her fax me the list. To my surprise, it was a list of hotels in New Orleans, Louisiana. She thought the LA stood for Los Angeles, and that
New Orleans was a suburb of LA Worst of all, when I called her back,
she was not even embarrassed.

I got a call from a man who asked, "is it possible to see England from
Canada?" I said, "No." He said "But they look so close on the map."

Another man called and asked if he could rent a car in Dallas. When I
pulled up the reservation, I noticed he had a one-hour lay-over in Dallas. When I asked him why he wanted to rent a car, he said, "I heard Dallas was a big airport, and I need a car to drive between the gates to save time."

A nice lady just called. She needed to know how it was possible that her flight from Detroit left at 8:20am and got into Chicago at 8:33am. I tried to explain that Michigan was an hour ahead of Illinois, but she could not understand the concept of time zones. Finally I told her the plane went very fast, and she bought that!

A woman called and asked, "Do airlines put your physical description
on your bag so they know who's luggage belongs to who?" I said, "No,
why do you ask?" She replied, "Well, when I checked in with the airline, they put a tag on my luggage that said FAT, and I'm overweight, is there any connection?" After putting her on hold for a minute while I "looked into it" (I was actually laughing), I came back
and explained the city code for Fresno is FAT, and that the airline was just putting a destination tag on her luggage.

I just got off the phone with a man who asked, "How do I know which plane to get on?" I asked him what exactly he meant, to which he replied, "I was told my flight number is 823, but none of these planes have numbers on them."

A woman called and said, "I need to fly to Pepsi-Cola on one of those computer planes." I asked if she meant to fly to Pensacola on a
commuter plane. She said, "Yeah, whatever."

A business man called and had a question about the documents he needed in order to fly to China. After a lengthy discussion about passports,
I reminded him he needed a visa. "Oh no I don't, I've been to China many times and never had to have one of those." I double checked, and
sure enough, his stay required a visa. When I told him this he said, "Look, I've been to China four times and every time they have accepted my American Express."

Filed under  //   diary   humour   scraps