twinkle twinkle

blah blah blah christmas lights blah blah.

Fifth place:

Bonus points:

+1pt Remembered to turn lights on

Penalties:

-100pts They're shit

Total: -99pts

Fourth place:

Bonus points:

+10pts Trying to be tasteful

Penalties:

-50pts Trying and failing to be tasteful, because you still have lights on the front of your house. Pricks.

Total: -40pts

Third place:

Bonus points:

+25pts Almost painfully garish

Penalties:

-25pts Continuity error (more than one Santa)

-25pts Santa on see-saw with snowman (too much frolicking, implies poor work ethic)

Total: -25pts

Second place:

Bonus points:

+30pts Petty next door neighbour one-upmanship

+25pts Bazillion gigawatt planet-killer bonus

Penalties:

-60pts House on left looks a bit like a Ukrainian gay bar

Total: -5pts

First place:

Bonus points:

+1,000,000pts Visible from space

Penalties:

-1pt Insufficient epilepsy warning stickers

Total: +999,999pts

Merry Christmas, happy new year, etc.

because crime never takes a holiday, kids

My bicycle has been giving me some trouble of late. The chain would occasionally skip off the back gears and get wedged between the frame and cassette; this problem was solved with the careful application of a chunk of metal and some cable ties. I fixed a wobbly pedal crank with chopped up bits of beercan, replaced a pedal with knackered bearings by scavenging a replacement from another abandoned bike, and hadn't quite got around to looking at the front gears which were so worn that the chain would slip every 10 revolutions or so.

It has been suggested that what I really need is a new bicycle; but I've always maintained that it makes more sense to wait until this one gets stolen, and then get a new one.

Well guess what I found when I went to cycle in to school this morning?

That's right; a bike. But - crucially - not my bike. My bike is silver and red. The bike it seems to have been replaced with is (forgive me if this gets a bit technical) a Rusty Blue Piece of Shit with Non Functioning Brakes.

On the plus side, I do now appear to have become the owner of a bike so shitty that even a bike thief doesn't want it. Although I can't shake the feeling that I might catch some kind of virulent disease from it...

reasons why the pixie is awesome

#104:

Toys are cool.

theme music

You can't have the theme music from Paddington Bear, because that's already Paddington Bear's theme music. He has dibs on it.

Paddington's special power is that he is 3D in a world that is otherwise entirely 2D. Being 3D might not sound that cool to you, but it seems to make people think shit films are great; and if you met someone who existed in four dimensions and was perpetually rotating onto their own mirror image, as well as producing marmalade sandwiches from their hat, you'd be pretty damn impressed.

So you can pick anything that isn't already someone else's theme music; like God Hates Us All by Slayer, for example. Of course you don't want that, it's just an example. Pick your theme music and the rest will follow.

I'm going to go for Rock 'n' Roll Pumpkin by Green Jellÿ.

I figure my special power is going to be something along the lines of driving around real fast, leaning out of the window with my head on fire.

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...and then I went to a party at Casa del RoboJew where we did maths for two hours and everyone else got drunk and mocked us. It's good to have him back.

futility room

• Went to gay man's house dressed as Captain Scarlet. Everything that has happened previous to this is little more than a footnote.
• Fire, and lots of it.
• Saw Dillinger Escape Plan (awesome) supported by Rolo Tomassi (also awesome) and The Ocean (derivative German metalcore wankery).
• Churchill and Chu proposed the following correlation for laminar free convection (where Ra is less than 10 to the power of 9);

• Mouses are alright.