Apparently the other lad is busy, so you'll have to put up with my boring response. It's Monday, I'm working from home, allowing an all staff meeting to babble away in the background while I actually handle other tasks and make other big plans. One day I'll be rich, lads. You all just watch.

>>457821
I always assumed working bank holidays was for people with non-office jobs like shop workers and nurses. How come you're working from home today?

>>457822

I am a filthy immigrant expat.

>>457822
Thank you for asking. For a second, I thought I had forgotten to go to work.

I think I've perfected my macaroni cheese sauce. Nutmeg with a pinch of mustard powder and garlic salt.

>>457825

Full recipe, please. I've got some tortellini ready to go, and I'm gradually turning this place into Mumsnet anyway.

I'm actually thinking about dusting off my fishing gear this summer. Been ages since I went, I used to go fishing a lot around the Sussex coast. Great area for catch and kill. Some nice seabream there, among many other species.

>>457826
I eyeball it so there's no precise measurements here. Melt butter. Add a spoonful or two of plain flour, a pinch of garlic salt, a dollop of nutmeg and about half a teaspoon of mustard powder. Mix them together until there's no lumps left. Gradually add the milk. When it's thin enough alternate between adding milk and cheese until the texture and the taste are what you're looking for. Ideally it'll be a mix of cheddar with something like Gruyere or an Italian cheese. When you serve it add sundried tomatoes or roasted peppers in the bowl.

Nothing fancy but it works for me.

>>457827
The OPs picture triggered similar feelings in me too. I don't really want to catch anything, but the excuse to sit by the sea for the day is irresistible.

>>457831
>>457827
If you like it so much why don't you organise a .gs fishing expedition? Don't forget to bring the chicken and beer.

>>457820
Calling the bank holiday a "weekday" gave me a scare, OP, even if you are technically correct.

Apologies for the Facebook video link, but what should I be chewing on to stop me having a manlet jaw?

https://www.facebook.com/SundayBrunchC4/videos/1383689329091646/

Apparently our jaws are much smaller than 100 years ago because of moving to much softer things, like white bread.

>>457835
Mastic gum is cheap and reusable but it tastes like pine trees.

>>457835
Chewing gum, or anything with lots of fibre and general toughness. Potatoes will do it but rice won't; I have no idea what the nutritional difference is between those two but I assume it's fibre. Unfortunately, I also think you need to chew as many Hobnobs and gingerbread men as you can from an early age, so it might be too late to achieve any noticeable difference.

>>457835
>what should I be chewing on to stop me having a manlet jaw?

Tunnock's caramel wafers.

>>457835
Carrots, celery, anything big and hard you can fit in your mouth really.

>>457837
I assume the muscles must be noticeable in the face. I'm a grinder and my dentist pointed out after I consciously stopped and started using a sleep guard that my jaw muscles weren't as tense anymore.

>>457835

Look for anything made of food-grade silicone.

Dentist today for the first time in about 3 years.
Been putting it off but needs dealing with now as I probably need 4 fillings.

According to the weather forecast it's only about 15°C right now but I am roasting.

>>457835

You're already an adult, so your jaw isn't suddenly going to look like Clark Kent just because you train your chewing muscles.

A lack of hard foods in childhood and adolescence will increase the likelihood of wonky teeth, but the actual jaw size difference will not be that pronounced compared to somebody whose jaw got plenty of chewing practice growing up.

The most defining factor in how pronounced your jaw will be as an adult is testosterone. A chiselled square jaw tends to be highly correlated with above average testosterone levels. Which you can't really do anything about. It's also one reason why women often have small jaws and pointy chins. It's the almost complete absence of testosterone in their bodies.

>>457850

Hypertrophy of muscles can occur well into adulthood, as observed in resistance training. I see no reason why this shouldn't apply to the masseter and other musculature of the jaw. There are even cosmetic surgeries for people who want to narrow the appearance of their jaw, achieved by deliberately atrophying the masseter muscle: https://ostrowonline.usc.edu/what-is-the-masseter-muscle/

Testosterone may correlate with jaw size, but a correlation doesn't necessarily mean it's the primary driver. There are plenty of women with prominent jawlines due to other factors like well developed muscles or general facial proportions.

Even if testosterone were the primary driver, there are a plenty of things that people can do to promote their natural production, e.g. reducing bodyfat and improving sleep duration/quality.

>>457845
Apparently I need at least 5 teeth out.
Fuck that.

>>457856
I haven't been to the dentist since the before times. I know I need some work doing as I chipped a tooth years ago but my dentist's a sadist so I keep putting it off.

>>457856
>>457857
Stop fucking around with your teeth you pair of mentalists. There are at least 5 ways that a tooth infection can kill you and the only way teeth magically fix themselves is the nerve dying off as the infection spreads.

>>457859
Is there a part of the body more poorly designed than teeth?

>>457860
Feet are pretty shit. Why do toenails exist? Surely we should have evolved elephant stumps by now. I hate them, and while it is certainly foolish for teeth to have all those gaps in them, their modularity means that when you lose one tooth, you can keep the others, rather than getting the entire white-horseshoe-shaped array removed from your head.

>>457862

But why haven't we evolved a way to grow new ones? Why do we only get one set of spares?

I feel like the issue is back in the old days, people never lived long enough in the first place for long term dental issues to become a problem. You can have a few fucked teeth and get by fine if you're going to die at 40 tops anyway; it's only when your life expectancy is into the 70s and 80s that the potential for cardiac disease later in life makes a difference.

>>457862
The bones of an elephant's foot are quite similar to a humans.

If you think about it ape milk is probably the closest to human milk but most people would find the thought of supping monkey milk to be gross whilst thinking it's fine to have cow milk.

>>457860
The sinuses. They don't drain with gravity, cilia has to push it up and the damp environment is perfect for bacteria to ruin your week. And of course when you get sick or have the indecency to breathe dry air the lining that gets irritated so it blocks itself.

Think about how many times you've had a cold. It's these bullshit things fault.

Serious answer: The human spine is ridiculous. We will all suffer a future of agonizing backpain.

>>457860
Throat. Having the ingest food and drink here or die hole next to the if this is blocked you will very quickly die hole is absolutely insane.

Why didn't you lads tell me about elasticated trousers? They are so comfortable and an absolute game changer.

>>457866

>Serious answer: The human spine is ridiculous.

The spine just hasn't caught up with us developing upright gait. That's the problem. It's not designed to be used that way.

My washing machine broke this afternoon. I had to wipe up six 10-litre buckets full of water off the floor with a floor cloth. Parts of the room were under more than half an inch of water. Something must have failed catastrophically inside the machine, because I was out of the room maybe ten minutes and when I came back it was a complete foot bath.

My guess is there's a major leak in the water feed on the inside, because the water didn't feel soapy and didn't foam when I mopped it up. I don't have my torx set handy tonight to unscrew the top and take a closer look, but that's what I'll probably spend the weekend doing.

The washing machine has been hanging on for dear life for a while, it's over 20 years old and at this point fixing it is really more about an enthusiasm for fixing things than it is about reasonably repairing a household appliance.

But I'm in a bit of a tight spot financially at the moment, so if I can keep it going a little longer by fixing the water feed, then it'll be worth it.

>>457877
It's always annoying when you have to replace something because it's broken and are forced to buy whatever seems the best at that particular moment rather than having the time to shop around for a good deal. My fridge freezer is an ex-display model from IKEA because that seemed the best I could afford when my old one broke; it's certainly not one I'd have chosen if I had the luxury of more time.

>>457878

My fridge went out a while ago. A friend who "knows about that stuff" said the symptoms sounded like a solenoid inside the compressor was probably broken. Something that's only worth fixing if your fridge is reasonably new and expensive because it usually means getting an all new compressor, and then you still have to evacuate and refill the cooling system, which you can't feasibly do yourself at home.

I think a broken fridge is much worse. You can go a few days or even a week without washing clothes, and if you have to you can hand wash a few of them in the sink. But my fridge was half full with groceries, and dairy and meat products only last a handful of days without proper cooling until they start tasting funny. So I needed to get a new fridge quickly.

>>457880
>You can go a few days or even a week without washing clothes, and if you have to you can hand wash a few of them in the sink.

Something something Fruit of the Loom.

To be fair, I'd be quite pissed off if I had to be the bassist in The View as well.

What do you buy the man who does nothing and and wants nothing? It's my dad's birthday and I'm stumped as usual. My mum's suggested I get him "Squiggly Farm" on DVD; I'm fairly sure she means Clarkson's Farm.

>>457893
Wine gums

Is there a script or browser extension I can install that'll prevent me from having to see the murder news coming out of the USA? I'm only half kidding.

>>457898
The doctor told him to improve his diet, otherwise he'd be getting a great big fuck off Toblerone.

>>457893
It's my birthday this weekend, and if you've bought me a Clarkson DVD I will disinherit you.

>>457898
Much better.

>>457893

Slippers or psych ward socks.

>>457902
>Slippers or psych ward socks.

I've recently discovered the benefits of pyjamas. Strongly recommend.

>>457905

I just wear cheap joggers to bed, but my look these days is basically "Harry Potter on remand for burglary".

>>457909
Maroon blazer and an ankle tag? It's a bold style and I respect that.

>>457910
I think the maroon part was actually a cloak or cape.

>>457910

Shaved head, missing teeth, little round glasses, satchel full of library books. I look like I can fix your computer, but I also look like I might nick it.

Been trying to get an occupational health assessment from my work since February. Emailed manager several times, asked her in person, still nothing. So I've asked the union to step in. I don't want my manager to hate me but I've got no choice.

Trying to troubleshoot a 40 year old burglar alarm system. My parents had it installed when they lived in the house, but no documentation whatsoever has survived besides a couple of invoices listing parts and labour. The company that installed it for us is defunct according to Google, and the technicians that worked on it are probably dead by now. It was a pretty intricate system as such, it cost around £8,000 to install in the early 80s, when that was a boatload of money.

What's happened is that there are apparently rats or mice in the attic, I'm still trying to work out which, and they've chewed through one of the wires that were run through a corner of the attic. I've tried just soldering the leads back together, but they're unfortunately not colour coded, they're all just black, so it's been guesswork, and I haven't made any progress. It could also be they've chewed through more than one wire. Which would be a real problem because as far as I can tell, most of them are under the floorboards, which are nailed onto a wood frame with no point of access.

As long as that fault isn't fixed, I cannot activate the alarm system as such. It won't let me. So it's essentially like having no alarm at all. The only thing that works is a panic button in the master bedroom and another one in the upstairs hallway, which will set off the siren, but when I'm not home, the house is wide open to burglars at the moment.

>>457967

Burglar alarms don't do fuck all anyway. Get a dog, that's what dogs are for.

>>457967
You absolutely need to sort out your rodent problem first. Get it done before they cut the panic alarm and your house turns into a 24 hour Black Lace concert. The thing about rodents is they absolutely love electrical cables so even if you get it fixed it won't be long before it's gone again.

Have you got a lock on your door? That's all almost anyone else has.

>>457968
Don't be daft, how's a dog going to solder without hands?

>>457969

Seconded about the rodents.

Regarding the alarm, I'd be inclined to just abandon the old system and install something new. Modern wireless alarm systems start at about £200, they're a piece of piss to install and they have all sorts of features that you won't find on a 40 year old system.

>>457968

Well this one used to have a modular automated dialling system, which is now deactivated. It would call whatever phone number you specified and play a recorded tape message to alert either a paid security service or the police. I guess my parents at some point unplugged it because they no longer wanted to pay the monthly fee.

That part of it has me intrigued though, because there's a schematic on the face plate that explains how the connector is wired that goes from the alarm into the dialling system. Apparently, the dialling system gets +12V always-on, and the alarm is passed on via a simple low-voltage normally open switching contact. You could quite reasonably create a piggyback Arduino- or ESP32-based circuit around that with a GSM shield so that you could have it call you on your own mobile phone when there's an alarm. The parts would be less than about £30.

I know that the system is 40 years old, but it still does many things well. When it works. Every window and door in the house is connected to it both with an opening detector and a glass break detector.


I'll sort out the rodent situation, I've already looked at humane rodent traps on Amazon. Will probably order a few this week.

>>457967
Alarm sensors are two-wire and usually have no polarity involved, which is why both wires are black - they are N/O (normally open) or N/C (normally closed), it will say so on the sensor itself which it is. On the mainboard, you'll probably have N/O or N/C ports on the board itself you plug those into. It's simply a wire, with a switch, off or on triggered by the Passive Infrared Sensors.

That said, I agree with the others - burglar alarms ain't worth shit unless you have them hooked up to a monitoring system, and that quickly gets expensive - you usually have to use the alarm companies kit, too.

Smoke alarm, CO2 alarm, window locks, good deadlocks on front and back door are all better investments.

>>457972

>I've already looked at humane rodent traps on Amazon

IME they aren't nearly as effective as a proper wooden trap. They aren't pleasant to empty, but they're cheap and they really get the job done. Mice are pretty dimwitted and easy to catch, but rats are canny fuckers.

Once you've dealt with the internal infestation, have a really careful look at where they might be getting in, block everything up with wire wool and chicken wire, then lay out a few bait boxes in the garden.

>>457973

>Alarm sensors are two-wire and usually have no polarity involved

Except these have four, because they've got a built-in sabotage line that's connected to a separate I/O port* on the mainboard. I remember that much about the system. Which might also explain why the wires are not colour coded, because security through obscurity. Theoretically you could short a two-wire cable so that the alarm system thinks a window is closed when it isn't. But with four identical wires, what are you going to do.

So if you then want to replace a length of cable that's been chewed clean through with no way of determining which wires were connected, it turned out tonight that you just have to keep randomly connecting them until you hit the right combination. There are 4*3*2*1 = 24 different ways of connecting four wires, and I guess what had me stumped was that I tried probably twenty times before I had them wired up the right way.

The sabotage line fault is now fixed, but it's still showing a window open for that area of the house, so I guess there's a broken reed switch somewhere.


* There are a few unused I/O ports on the mainboard for sabotage lines, you could theoretically use them to upgrade the system with some modern tech, like indoor motion detectors. Basically, all the sabotage lines do is detect when a normally closed connection opens. It's actually a very hackable system the more I think about it.


>>457974

>Once you've dealt with the internal infestation, have a really careful look at where they might be getting in

I know rats are good climbers, and I suspect they're getting up the rainwater pipe. That's really the only way up to the roof. I can't see where they would then enter the attic, but I'll keep looking.

Did you see the twat from Balls of Steel trying to smoke a fag on GB News? Cunt looked like he had a wasting disease; incredible stuff.

Weird how many brown skinned, female, Enoch Powell's we have in this country. Which is to say we have two, maybe three, but that still seems like a lot, given the idiosyncratic and contradictory nature of the archetype.

>>457982
I don't think it's that much of a surprise. The brown women I know aren't very tolerant, especially of gay people.

>>457982
You'd do it too if you had every free pass going for offensive statements and your work offered to promote you repeatedly the more you did it. I don't entirely believe that they even support these views; they just really like political success in an area where white men really aren't allowed to even approach such things.

>>457984
>You'd do it too if you had every free pass going for offensive statements and your work offered to promote you repeatedly the more you did it.
No I wouldn't. I feel uncomfortable just being a phone pig for an energy company.
>political success in an area where white men really aren't allowed to even approach such things.
See attached image.

>>457982

Indian aunties are the biggest gammons going. Tommy Robinson's views on Shamanism are incredibly mild compared to the average middle-aged Indian woman.

>>457977
How is the cavity space between the walls of the house? Keep an ear out and look in any crawl spaces. The other question you need to think about is where their food is coming from.

>>457980
>Did you see [...] GB News

No, of course not. Did you see Octonots - A'r Môr-Nadroedd Torfelyn on S4C today?

>>457987
>>457982
You're both being quite unfair to Indian women on either ends of the spectrum. We still have too much of 'you're X because you're from Y' in this country and at the same time some of the softest spoken women I've met have been Indian.

>Indian aunties

Stop trying to make me masturbate.

I can't precisely put my finger on what but there's just something about the Morrisons in Elland that feels off. Supermarkets are bleak at the best of times, but this one has an eerily singular otherworldly vibe to it.

>>458011

Maybe it's because it seems to be full of blurred people. That would freak anybody out.

>>458012
Waiting -for-glasses lad probably wouldn't mind.

>>458013
Oh, he died a long time ago. Died and was reborn, with a tremendous fire within, one which he will unleash upon those that have wronged him (Royal Mail) and oppressed his will (Luxottica).

>>458011
I honestly feel that way about all Morrisons, its something they do with the design of the stores that irks me, that I can't explain. I think it's the lighting they use perhaps. My local one is super bleak at any time of day.

>>458011
>>458015

I've always thought Morrisonses feel like a bit of a time warp, like they are perpetually a couple of decades behind. I mean they were still selling VHS tapes well into the 2010s, they're the only place I can think of that still has watch doctors, dry cleaners,and sometimes a travel agent on that long bit in front of the tills, and the decor has always felt like an 80s throwback.

Part of me thinks that's intentional, because probably at least 70% of their customers are pensioners, and they want them to feel at home. When you're an old biddy increasingly lost in a world of space phones and daft fashion trends, it must feel comforting to go into Morrissons and have some semblance of normality maintained.

>>458015
I think it may be the floor. It really helps to capture the aesthetic of a shopping centre that peaked several decades ago and has been in a steady decline since or the children's ward of a hospital; all it needs on the windows is a few sun faded paintings of clowns and Disney characters.

Whatever it is that makes Morrisons a bit strange has been intensifies in their Elland store.

>>458018
If you think that's eerie, go to the massive Asda in Pudsey. It's palatial in size and design but follows the same mildly offputting aesthetic of most supermarkets built in the '80s and '90s.

If you want a fun political experiment, look online for "flag of Svalbard" and see which one you get. I was wondering about this because my phone still has the emoji for the non-Taliban one and I am a very boring person.

>>458021
>Svalbard
That's a new one to me. I mean the -stan country that begins with A.

>>458020
Does it snell like old shoes though?

>>458023
Yeah, but that's probably the Maccy D's at the front.

>>458024
You know you live in a shithole if your Asda has a McDonald's inside.

>>458025

I'm pretty sure there are only two kinds of .gs user. Those whose local Asda is Morley Asda, and those whose local Asda is Durkar Asda. If you're telling me Durkar is less of a shithole than Morley, you need to think again.

There's other Asdas, obviously, but you only visit them for a bit of an adventure, or if you're off somewhere else and they're on the way.

>>458025
Bradford side of Leeds, enuf sed.

>>458026
Durkar Asda has a Costa. Morley Asda is rougher.

>>458026
A girl I know broke up with her NEET bf because on her birthday him and his autistic mate went to Morley Asda to nick pound coins out of the trolleys.

I just know he's one of you two.

Wondering how many Elf Bars I could fit up my arse. I reckon six before I start struggling.

>>458032
That would be what, 56wh of LiPo with ll the chance to catch fire? Don't do it lad!

So if Paul from S Club didn't kill himself how did he die?

>>458034

By doing the sort of stuff that would be an ideal way to kill yourself, only on accident instead of on purpose.

>>458036
If it was an overdose they wouldn't have said natural causes.

>>458037

Your heart never really recovers from the damage from doing tons of sniff. Heavy cocaine users tend to just randomly drop dead, even if they've been clean for years.

I'm not saying that Paul spunked all his money on bag, but he was the only member of S Club to end up with crippling debts.

I wonder how Justin Hawkins feels knowing Paul from S Club achieved the rock and roll death he failed to, despite years of trying.

>>458039
He's busy running his kooky YouTube channel, where all the videos have click bait names.


https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=mlHbMX_NzpE

>>458040

Yeah, I might ask him how he feels about it on one of his Q and As.

>>458038
>he was the only member of S Club to end up with crippling debts.
Perhaps, but he didn't wind up homeless and living in an office building with his kids: https://news.sky.com/story/s-club-7-singer-hannah-spearitt-reveals-homeless-struggles-people-think-we-must-all-be-millionaires-but-sadly-its-just-not-true-12797297

>Hannah Spearritt, the S Club 7 singer, has revealed she was homeless over Christmas and has spent the past six months living in multiple temporary homes with her family.
>Spearritt, 41, said she had to move into a friend's office after being forced out by a landlord.
>In the last six months, the singer has lived in four temporary homes with her partner, Adam Thomas, and their two children who are three and four-years-old.
>Speaking to The Sun, Spearritt said they had no choice but to move after a landlord left them with two days to find a new place to stay.
>"Our landlord needed the money and the property sold so fast," she said.
>"What screwed us is we didn't have time to find another place. We had somewhere over Christmas but ran out of time before we could move in. It was just a couple of weeks.
>"We were allowed to stay in our friend's office. We just used it as our living room.

Perhaps this story actually belongs in one of the "landlords are parasites" threads, but it nevertheless makes it look like none of S Club 7 really benefited from their international stardom.

>>458042
One of them made it on the telly.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ReDqrQf-oY0

Aubergines are rather pointless. I didn't have any courgette in so I've had to use aubergine in my roast veg instead. They both serve a similar purpose, not really adding much but absorbing the flavour of everything else, and the courgette is far superior at this.

>>458093

I hate the spongy texture of aubergines. As you said it absorbs everything. One time I tried slicing it and frying up the slices, because I vaguely remember hearing something about fried aubergine, but they got so oily and soggy that I binned them after a few bites.

Geoff Marshall has been posting a lot of downbeat videos since Vicki dumped him. I don't blame him TBH.

>>458096
Slice them lengthwise, salt them, lay them on a wire rack, and then press them down with kitchen towel and a baking tray for 30 minutes to an hour.

This is how my mum's always prepared aubergine parm and is apparently de rigueur back in Italy. It's considered inedible without sufficient preparation.

>>458098
>It's considered inedible without sufficient preparation.
Unlike what, potatoes? Chicken? More things need prep to eat than not.

>>458099

You mean you've never chewed on dry pasta?