SilentUK are at it again and Brian Micklethwait will love this one:
This time they’re going up the 72 floors (plus the crane on the top) of The Shard in London – and they’ve got another bunch of spectacularly beautiful photos from the top.
Go see. Go see now.
…was a 1988 film featuring Kim Basinger (phwoar!) and Dan Aykroyd detailing the somewhat outlandish story of a female alien coming to earth and trying her hand at parenting.
This obviously fictional movie should not be confused with the obviously very real story related recently by Councillor Simon Parkes, who was elected to represent Stakesby ward on Whitby Town Council in the UK last month. His mother is indeed an alien, as he tells us in this Youtube video:
I don’t expect you to watch the whole hour (although you’re more than welcome to), so here’s a synopsis, courtesy of the Northern Echo:
A LABOUR politician has stunned his town council colleagues by claiming his “real mother” is a 9ft green alien with eight fingers.
Councillor Simon Parkes, who was elected to represent Stakesby ward on Whitby Town Council last month, said although he has had hundreds of close encounters with extra-terrestrials, it will not interfere with his mission to help residents at the seaside resort.
Speaking on YouTube, Coun Parkes said he first saw an alien at the age of eight months, when “a traditional kite-shaped face”, with huge eyes, tiny nostrils and a thin mouth appeared over his cot.
He said: “Two green stick things came in. I was aware of some movement over my head. I thought, ‘they’re not mummy’s hands, mummy’s hands are pink’.”
He added: “I was looking straight into its face. It enters my mind through my eyes and it sends a message down my optic nerve into my brain.
“It says ‘I am your real mother, I am your more important mother’.”
He said after contracting chicken pox at the age of three, his mother went to work and left him at home to fend for himself when an 8ft “doctor” dressed as a waiter appeared to offer help.
As an 11-year-old, he claims he was taken on a craft by his alien “mother”, and made a deal with the beings on board.
He said: “The reason extraterrestrials are interested in me is not because of my physical body, but because of what is inside me. My soul.”
Seems legit.
I enjoyed a couple of bits of this story particularly: the description of the “traditional kite-shaped face”. My first thought would have been that it was a kite. Those are the only things I know with traditional kite-shaped faces. Well, either that or a skate. But he’s in his cot, not at the local aquarium.
Also the fact that, despite apparently being at least partly alien, he was able to contract chicken pox. That’s those theories about tissue tropism out of the window then. It makes me wonder why we haven’t all come down with distemper yet.
And why was the doctor dressed as a waiter? It’s almost like Simon didn’t think an 8 foot doctor attending to his illness just wasn’t odd enough.
I know, what if he wasn’t dressed as a doctor?
What if he was dressed as… a waiter?
Obviously, society’s oddballs are having a field day with this story, because this is an educated person with a responsible, trustworthy position in society, not some Tenessee trailer trash with a dodgy accent:
Well boy, ah wa’ down by the swamp, when ah first saw it. First, ah thought it wa’ a ‘gator. Then ah saw the face, an’ ah was thinkin’ ”Well now boy, ‘gators don’t have kite-shaped faces”…
Those who choose not to believe Mr Parkes’ story are told that they are thinking wrong:
There is no logic, critical thinking or scientific method for these events which are outside of the matrix. The very terms you have used are matrix terms.
You think with the matrix mind.
Damn me for thinking with the matrix mind. Next thing I know, I’ll be voting labour.
or… not.
I’m LOVING the Texts From Dog tweets from @OctoberJones, who – just like it says on the tin – texts his dog (who is at home) while he’s out and about:
Use the link above to follow him for more LOLs, not all of which include the F word.
UPDATE: Now on Tumblr.
Kaboom. Every now and again, there comes a time when we discover something so utterly amazing that we have to immediately share it with you, the esteemed readership of 6000 miles…
This is one of those times.
Because I have discovered a site devoted entirely to bollards in London, handily entitled “Bollards of London“. Yes, that’s bollards, the singular of which is defined as “one of a series of short posts for excluding or diverting motor vehicles from a road, lawn, or the like”.
Yep – this site is full of photos and painstaking descriptions of bollards. Who would be interested in bollards, you might ask?
These people would:
And yes, before you ask, that is an inverted cannon bollard.
What a beautiful piece of street furniture, the fact it just sits in the middle of a paved area with its beautiful rusting tapering body (outwards) with a narrowing curved top that leads to an almost door knob type handle.
And here’s a description of how and who found it:
My fellow ‘bollardarians’ from left to right @sophontrack @itsyourlondon @AboutLondon @Rigsbyhatstand and @philipkelly29 with the upturned ‘cannon’ bollard in the foreground. I will take this opportunity to thank them all again and to let you know it really was a hunt for this wonderful piece of street furniture. At the beginning of the ‘hunt’ we had a coffee on St Mary’s Axe not 100 yards from this site, it really was a bollard hunt/search with plenty of other little treasures found along the way. Badges are being prepared and made for this great bunch of people.
A wonderful hunt with lots of treasures (a coffee shop) found along the way. Pfft. Why would anyone be interested in… wait. What? There are badges?
I WANT A BADGE!
If you want a badge from Bollards of London, you’ll have to go bollard hunting. In London. And if you’re going to do that, then why not visit Leadenhall Market after trying some LSD?
If you do want a different place to visit in central London the Leadenhall Market is most unusual because of the colours/artwork/bollards/dragons which you’ll find everywhere. In part two of this post I’ll reveal the bollard I was looking which we found in the most unusual place.
Dragons everywhere? Riiiight.
Incidentally, “unusual place” in which they found the bollard turned out to be on a road, which didn’t seem that unusual to me. If they’d found it up a tree or in a lift, I would have considered it more “unusual”, as it is, I consider it disappointingly “usual”, aside from the fact that they then wrote 500 words about it. That strikes me as being a little unusual.
It’s only a matter of time until I begin the Bollards of Cape Town blog but I have some way to go to catch up with the prolific Bollards of London, who are well over 200 posts, each one of them about bollards. In London.
Amazing.
Yeah, but what if Darth Vader had had a kilt, bagpipes and a unicycle?
Well, obviously, it would look something like this:
While the internet has many, many uses: communication and sharing ideas, informing us of offers on Viagra and similar drugs, keeping us up to date with the latest news and sport, and providing us with access to information 24/7 wherever we are, it seems to me that being able to watch a video of Darth Vader in a kilt, playing bagpipes while riding a unicycle actually sums up what the internet is all about.
Fantastic.