I was, in fact, just watching The Big Fat Quiz of the Year. It has made me think: perhaps I hate all comedians. Normally, there are good ones and bad ones doing the rounds, but I've stopped getting comedy from everywhere that I used to discover good comedians, so now all I see are the same three Avalon employees that are on every single panel show. I still enjoy panel shows, but I don't know if I enjoy a single comedian's output on any of them.

What was wrong with the trainspotting version?

>>468266

I thought I was being clever, but then I remembered that we already had a weekday or weekend thread with a Trainspotting theme a few years ago. So I deleted it and posted this.


>>468265

Panel shows used to be an good springboard for budding comedians. If you had a capable agent who gradually got you onto the panel show circuit, then you had a shot at becoming a household name. But nowadays, it's all just a circle jerk among familiar faces. I don't think I could name one memorable comedian who has come up the last five years. Granted, Covid and that, innit.

The movie Paul is oddly preachy, in a way that eluded me the first time I watched it.

>>468268
>I don't think I could name one memorable comedian who has come up the last five years.
The last time I remember being genuinely impressed, and thinking, "We've got a new good one here", it was Angela Barnes on Live at the Apollo. I just tried to find that performance on YouTube, and it was uploaded six years ago. I also didn't like it as much this time, but maybe I'm just temporarily not in the mood.

>>468271

>The last time I remember being genuinely impressed, and thinking, "We've got a new good one here", it was Angela Barnes


For a brief moment, I thought you meant Rosie Jones.

Who is proof that people can still be guilt shamed into liking somebody.

There, I said it.

>>468276

You aren't the only one. This is a strange emperor's new clothes scenario where everyone is aware. But it seemingly has no effect on the process.

I assume her function is to shut down the peal clutching woke culture war hit pieces that were popular 10 years ago, you can broadly gesture at her as a shield against accusations your program is ablist. Even if you have to ruin the program in the process.

>>468276
>There, I said it.

So brave. Nobody on this site has ever brought up Rosie Jones negatively before.

Talking pannel shows, 8 cats specifically, I watched one recently online with this horrendously autistic/atypical male comedian. I hesitated bringing it up earlier because it'd just be another Rosey Jones, but this time worse. Much worse. This time we were actively laughing at the condition exhibited through the guys behaviour. It was horrible, there's no surprise I can't easily find him online. He looks like a mong and acts like a mong. A couple of his jokes were alright but it's way to beaaaaaanz.

>>468270
It's one of the few major downsides to the film, for me. That and Seth Rogan - who I haven't liked much since his interaction with Count Dankula (if you've heard of him). Not that Count is much better, I'm struggling through a sinlge 20 minute video of his.

Ugh, I'm not in a good mood this morning.

>>468281

>It's one of the few major downsides to the film, for me.

I guess it's because it was made in 2010-11. Which was a time when the New Atheist movement was very strong, led by people like Richard Dawkins, and when the United States in particular was just off the tail end of the Bush Junior presidency, which saw an unprecedented influence of Evangelicals and the Christian Right on politics and culture. Given that movie scripts usually take years to write and refine, it probably started development some five years earlier, when the tug of war between Evangelicals and atheists was at its peak.

The culture wars incited by the Christian Right on the one hand and the pushback against religious dominance of public life on the other hand created a climate where many atheists eventually became just as preachy as the Evangelicals that they despised. They were really two sides of the same coin, both of them feeling a need to pontificate intensely. "Paul" is in that sense testament to that.

>>468281
>It was horrible, there's no surprise I can't easily find him online. He looks like a mong and acts like a mong.

Are you sure you didn't dream the entire event?

>>468288

I'm 90% sure he's talking about Dan Tiernan.

>>468289

In fairness, he's got dyspraxia. That's different from being a sperg. It's a developmental disorder that makes physical coordination of your body difficult, in a way that goes well beyond being a bit clumsy.

Although there's still a fair bit of sperginess knocking about with him on top of that.

Being a gay dyspraxic sperg must be tough. Let's hope he manages to put his knob up a lad's arse, and does so without hurting his feelings.

>>468289
It's either him or Josh whatever, the visually-impaired one.

Josh Pugh, apparently.

>>468289
Aight well that clip isn't as bad, but aye its Dan Tiernan. Check out his performance in either of these, the one I just couldn't get with.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=3xbdIYzByH0
Or this for a brief taste if you can't be doing with 47 minutes (admittedly some of his stuff is quite funny but over the course of a whole episode it grates horribly);

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=3Njpyf17Wfg

Spent some time around my cousin and still resisted the temptation to ask him if any of his contacts in the industry could help me out. He's not the only one I could ask, either. I've just kept it to myself as a point of pride. It's a weird one, just don't know if I could (or would want to) avoid the guilt of nepotism.

>>468295
Why're you even spending time with your cousin if not for neopotism.

I haven't been able to enjoy panel shows since realising that a lot of the jokes are just recycled from the guest's stand-up routines. It makes complete sense, and I'm not slating any comics for doing that, but now when I watch a panel show it gives me the sense of trying to listen to a song by skipping from a verse to a chorus and back again, in seconds long intervals.

That, and a lot of the shows are shite to begin with.

>>468295
Let me tell you something, as one prideful sod to another, most of the time, it's not worth it. In my experience holding onto as much pride as possible results in you having to let go of even more further down the line.

>>468293

Josh Pugh is a normal bloke who happens to have shit eyes. Dan Tiernan constantly plays up the eeeeeeeeeerggggghhhhhhhh, I'm a big mong act in a way that seems completely undignified.

>>468297
>I haven't been able to enjoy panel shows since realising that a lot of the jokes are just recycled from the guest's stand-up routines
That's why pannel shows have team leaders who're usually genuinely funny, successful or 'on brand', while the guests fall into categories of up-and coming talents showcasing their act, beside regular guests who're essentially 'leader-lite's with limited availability.

I've become cynical listening to BBC Radio 4's comedy competion programs, as they look distinctly like the BBC stirring a pool of ingredients to produce a new generation of comedians to draw from. I'd expect participation in these comedy competitions to require signing an exlusivity contract or some such.
I'm particularly agreieved at Rosie Jones’s Disability Comedy Extravaganza which to me seems organised to take advantage of disabled peoples positions that fewer agencies might be willing to hire them, thus offering them an obvious avenue into the industry only to sell them to the BBC whenever a quota needs filling.
It's the same thing with women builders organisations.

I don't know if any of this is true but it certainly makes some sense if you can excuse the cynicism and general shitty attitude. It's just exploitative business.

I wish I was rich so I could buy completely fucking insane outfits. Dressing like I was half-mad would definitely be my rich person hobby. Not that I don't have other things I like to do, it's just that none of them are especially costly.

Third time's the charm.

Watched New Year's Taskmaster. Mel Blatt looks like a working class version of Victoria Coren Mitchell. Absolutely would.

>>468312
Pic.

>>468313

This is the only problem with Taskmaster now, who the fuck are any of these lot? They've been through anyone you'd recognise (and who would actually be a good fit) and they're just putting anybody on it.

I've not watched the actual show in several series now but I keep going back over YouTube videos of Bridget Christie. She's out of my age range but I can absolutely see why Are Stew was into her. She's one of those complete cloud cuckoo lander airheads, but somehow not a vapid one. And her outfit here is immaculate.


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

>>468314
The New Year Taskmaster is always non-comics, you oaf. That's David James, that nice science lady who had cancer, Martin Lewis, Mel Blatt (alright I only know that because otherlad told me he wanted to make sex with her) and Sue Johnston.

Even if you don't know their names, you must at least have a glimmer of recognition at a couple of those faces? Otherwise the Taskmaster team can hardly accommodate people don't know or like anything, can they?

>>468315

... No lad. Even for non-comics, they're fucking nobodies. If they wanted to do it right they'd have a line up like Davina McCall, Professor Brian Cox, Whichever Hairy Biker Is Still Alive, Nadine Dorries and Robbie Williams. None of them are doing anything much these days are they.

>>468316
If you don't recognise Professor Hannah Fry, you must not watch enough TV. She's bloody everywhere. She's the white Judi Love, albeit ghastly for totally different reasons.

I drank too much black tea during my spot of house renovation today, and I'm having trouble falling asleep. Tea doesn't normally do that with me. Or maybe I'm just having trouble coming down and unwinding, after doing brick work for ten hours straight today.

>>468317

I mean I consider "not watching enough TV" a compliment, but these days it's not like I'm any better off because that just means I know a bunch of niche micro-celebrities who advertise guitar pedals instead of whoever the fuck Judi Love is.

What is the point, what is the fucking evolutionary point of nasal congestion?

If you can't breathe, you die. If you breathe through your mouth, you're taking in whatever the congestion was supposed to stop anyway.

>>468321

The congestion itself is not something that exist because it offers and evolutionary advantage, it's just a side effect of the part that does. Like an allergic reaction- It might seem daft that you can swell up and suffocate if you chomp on the wrong type of plant, but the system that causes that is far more beneficial to have when it's working correctly to protect us from pathogens and toxins that it's worth the trade off.

>>468326
An allergic reaction is the immune system working improperly. So are you saying that similarly congestion, all congestion, is a bug, not a feature?

>>468326

>The congestion itself is not something that exist because it offers and evolutionary advantage, it's just a side effect of the part that does.

Congestion happens because microbes like viruses and bacteria have evolved to be able to nest and replicate in the moist warm environment of your nose. But the evolutionary selective pressure for mammals and other animals from that evidently hasn't been enough to cause them and us to develop entirely different ways of taking air into our system. By and large, our airways are efficient at filtering out foreign bodies, which either get stuck to the mucous membranes in your nose and are then slowly removed with your mucus, or they are transported back up by the cilia in your lungs and windpipe. This keeps loads of stuff from entering your lungs, where it could end up clogging your alveoli for good and thus diminish your lung volume. Also, the moisture emitted by the mucous membranes in your upper respiratory tract help keep your alveoli moist, because drying out could severely damage them.

The penalty is then that those microorganisms can occasionally invade your really quite clever respiratory system and cause you discomfort for a week or two.

>>468327

Mostly yes. It occurs to protect the linings of the respiratory system, the body considers that a higher priority than the airways being clear because essentially, in a bigger picture view (which is how you have to think about evolutionary stuff) it's better to have temporary breathing difficulty than it is to have the more serious long term infection risk or scarring you might have if it didn't flood the system with mucous for protection.

>>468329
Earlier you said it's a side effect, now you're saying it occurs to offer protection. So which is it, a bug, or a feature?

And if it's a feature, answer my point about why this supposed protection is not undermined by simply breathing through the mouth.

>>468330

... Lad stop being pedantic and/or dense. The congestion, i.e the fact you find it difficult to breathe, is a side effect (you can call that a "bug" if you like), of the fact your body produces the mucous to protect the delicate tissue of the sinuses and oesophagus. That part is the feature. It's not undermined by breathing through your mouth because that bypasses your sinuses entirely doesn't it.

The body is full of situations like this. Think about an abscess- That's mostly a "bug" caused by the fact your body is sending lots of white cells and lymphatic fluid to fight an infection and flush it out. It's painful and a ballache but it's better than letting the infection rot you away, so in evolutionary terms, it was good enough to stick.

>>468328
>>468329
Actually the human maxillary sinus is unique in being poorly designed compared to primates. Evolution isn't deliberate, it's a mess that muddles along and one of those is that we get bullshit headcolds and sinus pain.

It's fucking shit. If I could fix something it would be, well the spine, knees and hips first but then I'd sort out the human sinus.

>>468337
It's not my fault you're not being clear. Like this:

>protect the delicate tissue of the sinuses and oesophagus
>It's not undermined by breathing through your mouth because that bypasses your sinuses entirely doesn't it.

Leaving aside the fact you don't breathe through your oesophagus, you say it is delicate tissue, but breathing through the mouth doesn't protect the throat, does it clever tits?

And what do you mean by 'produce mucus' anyway, what's mucus got to do with the inflammation that causes congestion? You can have a runny nose without having congestion.

>>468341

I dunno lad, you are probably better off addressing these concerns to whichever personified embodiment of the forces of nature you believe in, I've only got ten years of experience in medical science so I am not sufficiently qualified to answer. Please hold while I "transfer you to second line" and then just put the phone down.

>>468339

>Actually the human maxillary sinus is unique in being poorly designed compared to primates

I, for one, wouldn't want a chimp nose.

Keep an eye on H5N1 lads.
PACK YOUR BOG ROLLS.

>>468343
How can you have ten years of experience in medical science and casually confuse the oesophagus with the trachea? Porkies, lad.

>>468347

[dead phone line tone]

>>468347

Ten years of reading wikipedia medical entries probably counts.

>>468347

I don't think that's really the gotcha you think it is. People die because somebody had a brain fart and wrote the wrong drug or dosage on the ward notes. So I reckon an exceptionally tedious cunt off, even by .gs standards, is an easy place to do it.

Sad to see OTYKEN behind the scenes and it being the producer bullying them and hogging the limelight.

The Trainline notified me of my "Year In Trains". The only train I took in 2024 was on New Years day, from where I was on holiday, to back home.

Then I realised I had barely left the city this year (other when I was on my way back from the holiday), and checked to find the furthest away I've been from my house this year is 11km.

Grim.

>>468472

If it wasn't for the fact I go all over the place for work, I would basically have spent the entire year within the same 10 square miles.

In my defence 2024 has been a uniquely miserable year, where I spent about six months of it in one of the deepest depressions I have ever experienced, and I had a good couple of months where I legitimately don't think I even left the flat. On balance I think it could have gone worse.

I just rediscovered my diaries/journals that I kept from when I was about 15, through to 22-23ish. I was a withdrawn misfit in school, and I only really came out of my shell at uni, so especially the journals from about year 9 to year 11 were decidedly less salacious than something like The Inbetweeners. But with eons of distance now, it's still fascinating to delve back into all my anxieties and moans about life as a younglad, with the occasional love interest mixed in, which usually, but not always ended nowhere. It's kind of a compelling read. Although the further I go back, the more difficult it becomes to put myself back into the mind of the 15- or 16 year old that I once was.

I bet this was one of you, wasn't it?

>>468477

>how fast life moves

I don't believe that sentiment from anybody who isn't at least 40.

26 isn't normally an age where life should be moving too fast for you.

Speaking from my own experience, once you're a few years into middle age, you get to a point when you don't even try to keep up anymore. You just give up. And start telling people that everything was better, simpler, and easier to keep up with in your day. Which, I have to be honest, it probably was.

I had similarly depersonalising moment over Christmas when I noticed pictures of myself when I was in my late teens. It's about 15-20 years later and I don't even recognise the person in the pictures anymore, if I saw him in a crowd he'd just be another face.

Parenting as your kids starting getting old must be surreal.

>>468478

By my mid 30s I had done enough things from different perspectives to realise I knew nothing and anyone who had stuck with one walk of life long enough to get to a position of power certainly knew nothing of life.

By 40 I've come to view high culture as a high speed treadmill. Where people are under the delusion they really know anything.

Teens will actually like they are on the ground floor if they heard of a band 3 months ago and the whole pop world will talk in a matter of fact way about someone who has a career measured in weeks.

I remember seeing a YouTubeer talk about industry plants in hip hop (kids terms for manufactured curated bands) and to my outsider perspective it is obvious they are all manufactured. No one gets to that place as a teenager without the management of the industry.

It's not that life moves too fast it is that there is a lot of hype and nonsense. And when you get older you dismiss it all as fads and then something blindsides you by not actually being a fad.

>>468478

Nah, I have already firmly reached this point, and I am 34. I was already getting there by the end of my 20s, I am sure. But in fairness, the whole pandemic thing kicked in right as I was on the doorstep of my 30s and that stolen time feeling never really ended. I don't know where the last five years have gone. It's like I was knocked out of the continuum everyone else exists in and never allowed back in.

>>468483

By the time you'll be 50, like me, five years will go by so fast, it's like, blink and you'll miss it.

You feel increasingly removed from the fast pace at which most people are forced to go through life in their 30s and 40s, but that's just as well. I can't deny feeling a certain sense of relief that that kind of rat race is mostly over for me now. Yes, I'm getting old. But so what.

>>468487

I can see why some older fellas end up so miserable, to be fair. The thing that crept up on me as a really obvious truth you took for granted, but only just actually truly grasped the implications of, is that you never get the time you've wasted back. And then I start to resent the people who caused me to waste it. That mental bitch who led me on for two years when she knew she had no intentions of settling down, that fucking daft prick who always twisted my arm into another pointless endeavour, and obviously myself, for allowing all of it to happen, for not acting sooner... But really, so much of it is out of our hands. I've not been the luckiest bloke, but I could have it far worse.

The only thing that worries me is things are starting to get boring sometimes. I thought I'd never be bored of reading, of learning new things, of just keeping to myself and pursuing my hobbies. But I do worry one day I just won't be arsed with those any more either, and then it'll get ugly.

>>468489

>is that you never get the time you've wasted back. And then I start to resent the people who caused me to waste it.


Through loads of reflection and thinking about the meaning of my own life, I've decided for myself that time is never wasted. No matter how pointless and devoid of sense or purpose a thing was that you did, you can still draw something from it. Maybe you think you wasted years with a partner who wasn't on the same page as you. Fine. Maybe you tried for a career that never panned out. Some life goal you had, but which never happened and now seems like time wasted. Or whatever else.

But at my age of 50, that way of thinking only accomplishes one thing, and that is that it gets you down and depresses you. Not only because you are running out of time to change paths in your remaining life, but because, again, there has to be some lesson you can draw from even the biggest wastes of time you've ever lived through. Some good must have come out of it, and you will be much more at peace with yourself if you allow yourself to think that way.

I'm about to make goulash from scratch for the first time in my life.

My late nan grew up in Hungary, and naturally she made the most amazing goulash from all fresh ingredients. She didn't leave any recipe for it, so I'm going to have to go by what I remember it tasting like.

>>468538

The goulash was technically a success, but it turned out that the pork fillet I had left over and used for it was off. Which I only realised when the goulash was almost done and ready to serve. It has an unmistakable taste very similar to the pork chops I fried up a while ago and which made me sick for a day. So I'm not going to take any chances this time. And I'm now eating my mash and carrots without the goulash.

My new PC arrived, so much of the day was spent sorting that.

I downloaded the new Indiana Jones game, it's quite good, kind of Deus Ex-ish. I can play it on Supreme settings (which is above the retardedly named Very Ultra) and get good framerates.

I find when I get a new console, or a new PC, I am so focused on noticing the graphical quality that I maybe don't see the woods for the trees. Texture pop in Indiana Jones is not as bad as many console games I've played, which also look worse in other ways, but then I think "shit should I have gone Nvidia or got a PS5 Pro?".

>>468539
My dad is still eating Christmas ham that's greying in places. I turned my nose up to it and suggested the same of him but he's still going on it. Complained of sever stomache cramps the other day, too.

Speaking of which I looked into his garden during the recent rains - the bucket of dog shit out there has now become a bucket of dogshit soup, spilling over the top onto the floor where the dog regularly walks and tracks it back into the house.
I fucking hate my dad sometimes. I don't even know if he's incapable of doing things for himself or merely lazy, the cunt.

>>468541

>My dad is still eating Christmas ham that's greying in places. I turned my nose up to it and suggested the same of him but he's still going on it. Complained of sever stomache cramps the other day, too.


https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=6XhkSvsZ3LA

Been on the sick all weekend and have filled my time in by accidentally falling into the mechanical keyboard rabbit hole again.

It probably shouldn't be that surprising, but it's amazing what you can buy now premade from manufacturers - gasket mounted, VIA compatible boards with foam and flex cut PCBs for as little as forty or fifty quid. CNC aluminium versions for under twice that.

You can still of course spend silly money and days of your life making your own custom thing, but the market seems to have shifted even on the high end to "just add switches and keycaps" and the low end gives you absolutely everything. They all have wireless support now too, which I don't care about but even a couple of years ago was a rare luxury.

I don't think I'll end up building anything else as I simply can't be arsed, but I've ordered a couple of cheap prebuilds on amazon to fuck about with and they're lovely. They sound better than most boards people spent thousands on only 5 or 10 years ago.

I just took my kitten to get spayed at my registered vet, and they asked on the paperwork "Do you want your cats claws clipped" and I circled 'No'.

I got her back and her claws had been clipped. It's Medivet and they seem fairly big, so I assume it's just a mistake about something that isn't overall important, but I'm still annoyed and feel like I should write a mildly worded letter of disappointment to point out the error. But if I'm not going to get anything out of this financially, and I'm only doing it to point out a potential issue with process that may affect something more important down the line, should I just be nice and polite about it all?

In the inner-city and even beyond, boys who are vulnerable to the street begin by pulling their trousers down their backsides. Having a trouser that cannot be pulled down, but that can be recognised easily by a cleverly positioned logo so that teachers can hold their standards high with the kids, means that vulnerable boys in the inner-city are more likely to feel as if they belong to the school.

I don't get it. I've been watching a lot of twitch streamers lately and they seem to keep multiple streams running across numerous monitors. I've just checked my PCs resurces and a single stream is using 25% CPU and GPU capacity - sure I'm on lower end hardware but my point is that reducing stream quality lowers this dramatically. Yet here you have people running multiple streams and resource heavy programs, presumably at 1080p, like it's nothing. They've the hardware but why do it? Even the energy cost difference is significant - I've gone through about £4 this week through my coin-op meter, whereas I'd usually use less than £1.

>>468637

>I've gone through about £4 this week through my coin-op meter

Hang on what the flipping heck, we still have those, or are you being funny here?

>>468638
Nah I still have a coin meter, lol. Bedsit life, init. The fucking thing grinds away from time to time, keeps me awake at night.
I did once have a flat, paid less than £15 a month for electric and got a massive refund of overpayments when I left.
So yeah man, I just don't get the necessity for massive data, and by extension energy, usage.

>>468639

In my old flat I used to have a pre-paid meter you had to go to the shop and top up on this little USB stick thing. I just didn't know we still had actual physical cash coin operated ones like in that episode of Mr Bean. I tended to top up less than a tenner a week, nowadays I am pretty sure my standing charge alone would eat away most of that.

Anyway I am a fairly heavy PC nerd, but even when my big gaming machine is going full tilt it's only using about 500w, so over an hour about 15p or so. Compared to my electric heating and hot water that's fuck all. In winter my bill is around 200 quid and probably three quarters of it is purely just the heating.

If Starmer wants to do one single solitary fucking thing while he's the PM,even if he does fuck all else, he can get the electricity suppliers to stop being such fucking robbing bastards.

>>468640
> I used to have a pre-paid meter you had to go to the shop and top up on this little USB stick thing.
I had one of them when I bought this house a couple of years ago. They wouldn't let me keep it when I swapped to an electricity meter that sends bills instead. My key thingy was red, but I don't know if they're all red or if different energy companies have different colours.

Speaking of energy usage, does anyone know anything about gas smart meters? Supposedly, they do exist, and I want one because e.on are fucking abhorrent and I refuse to use any of their bullshit bollocks wank to report my own gas usage. My current gas meter says it was made in 1997, and while I remember 1997 and it was an excellent year, going out of the back door to unlock a dilapidated box on the wall and read a number can fuck off almost as much as every other thing e.on do to me. Why is there no push for gas smart meters? I have asked e.on twice now to send someone round to fit one for me, and the first time, I got lied to and nothing actually happened, and the second time, the guy acknowledged that that's what happened and then said a lot of things that really sounded like even bigger lies ("I can't personally arrange an appointment to fit a gas smart meter, but I will make a note on your account to write to you in 2-4 weeks with all the dates on, and you can pick a date and arrange an appointment that way").

If energy companies were a person, they'd have been lynched by now.

Today I made one of those Lidl bee (and insect) hotels. I got it as an impulse purchase and didn't realise what I was getting myself into as I've now got to think about maintenance and positioning so it can stay warm and dry.

Assembly was easy enough but the metal mesh is added to hold the sawdust and pinecones - something I tried to do with tweezers and a hammer which wasn't easy to do. Only after I finished did I learn that the pinecones and woodshavings are a loads of bollocks and will just rot and become a home for mites but bee hotels add them for them like dead twigs by the fireplace because people think they look dead nice. Now I have to think about where I can get a lot of bamboo cuttings to replace the large sawdust floor and the pinecone one too.

I don't think I'm cut out for this landlord business, especially when I'm not even collecting rent.

>>468631
Isn't it very illegal to cut a cats claws?

>>468643
> Isn't it very illegal to cut a cats claws?

No. It's illegal to "declaw" a cat but snipping off the points is not.

>>468644

Is the difference as obvious as I'm imagining? Like trimming my nails versus ripping them out?

Is this why gorillas are so angry?

>>468645
Yes. Declaw means removing the first knuckle of the paws. They'll look the same to us, fur covers the scars. I'm not a cat, I can't tell you how that feels but it doesn't sound nice. Clipping on the other hand is perfectly normal care for many pets.

>>468647

My brother once masturbated onto my stick insects because I wouldn't let him watch Thundercats. It didn't kill them but I didn't want them after that. I haven't ever owned a pet as an adult (I don't have enough free time for a dog, but I do also like cats) so I don't really have any experience, but even neutering your pet seems a bit mean to me. I'm sure it has many benefits and hopefully some of those are benefits for the animal and not just the owner, but still.

>>468648

> but even neutering your pet seems a bit mean to me

With outdoor cats, it's mainly about population control. It's not obvious everywhere you look, but there are considerable feral populations of domestic cats, even here in Britain. And you can't control what your cat gets up to when they roam the neighbourhood.

Controlling feral populations by means of neutering is ultimately also about wildlife conservation, because domestic cats are one of the most adept small predators in all of nature, with observed statistical kill rates of over 30 percent. There is already loads of predation pressure in some neighbourhoods with many cats with owners where those cats get to be outside, to the extent that some bird or rodent species can become locally scarce.

Neutered cats also make better human companions because the lack of a sex drive makes them calmer and more affectionate. And intact toms in particular can often roam many square miles around their home for days without once returning home, in search of a female cat to breed with.

The benefits of neutering dogs aren't as straightforward, as they are normally very dependent on humans who control what they can and can't do. And male dogs in particular often get lethargic and gain weight after neutering. But our neighbours eventually had their male dog neutered because in his old age, he was developing prostate hyperplasia, just like humans do, and it was causing him incontinence and trouble urinating. He was responding to female hormones, but not sufficiently, so they had his balls removed, which greatly improved it.

Just pulled something in my lower back while cleaning house. I'll have friends over tomorrow afternoon. I hope the two 400mg Ibuprofen tablets I just took will do their job, so I can continue vacuuming and mopping the floor. I'm not normally a clean freak, but I don't want the place looking like a dump. I probably haven't given the bathroom a good clean since Christmas.

I ordered a half-and-half pizza. The Neopolitan half I knew would have olives, but I forgot that the veggie half would also. I am now a salt based life form like all .gs users, and if I don't drink enough water before bed, I may not be a terribly long lived one.

>>468713

I like anchovies on pizza, but they can make a pizza almost inedible if they overdo it. Especially if they also put capers on the same pizza.

I love Pizza Sicilia, which traditionally has anchovies, capers and black olives. It's fucking delicious if you find a pizza place that makes a good Sicilia, but at a lot of pizzerias they just throw loads of the stuff on it with no consideration for saltiness.

Chicken, peppers and sweetcorn. Every time. Delicious.
Olives and Anchovies can get fucked.

In the past four months I've been told I look "like World War One" by a drunk guy (because of my moustache) and yesterday I was told I looked "a bit Second World War" by a colleague (because I was doing a light-tough Field Marshall Montgomery fit/LARP, I think). I may be onto something here...

That Cyclone on Gladiators definitely has a willy.

>>468717
Lack of gunt is not evidence of cock, lad.

>>468717

That's not a willy, it's just a big steroid clit.

Athena is definitely the fittest one.

Just got a spontaneous nosebleed while I was in the shower. It looked like somebody was in the process of dismembering a body.

Fury is the fittest Gladiator. Fact. The problem with the revival is that they have extremely little charisma.

Picked up a vegetarian haggis from Aldi, as they have them in stock for Burns night. Was quite nice.

I'm really developing a habit of buying loads of old used CDs I've always wanted, most of them off eBay. At the moment I'm expecting as many as four different CDs in the post. I've probably spent £150 in the last six months.

It's probably no use explaining all the advantages of owning a CD to younguns who are growing up just streaming everything. But for an average of something like £5 per used CD including p&p, how can you not buy all the albums you've ever wanted by the bucket. And own a physical digital copy that is not susceptible to catalogue changes at the streaming service you are subscribed to, which you can listen to all you want for the rest of your life* at no additional charge, and whose sound quality, at least as far as the human ear can realistically tell, is still unsurpassed by high-bitrate streaming.


* I have yet to see any CDs with disc rot in my collection. Which by now includes some first pressings from about 1982-85, which still look pristine and play fine.

>>468722
>I have yet to see any CDs with disc rot in my collection. Which by now includes some first pressings from about 1982-85, which still look pristine and play fine.
Well, yeah. I mean, it's first pressing. Or do you want to wait til everyone else has had their fun with the CDs? Fourth pressing. Yeah, like that's gonna be a party in your ears, I don't think!

Babow!

>>468722

>But for an average of something like £5 per used CD including p&p, how can you not buy all the albums you've ever wanted by the bucket

I did a similar thing about ten years ago with PS2 games. For a while they were cheap as chips because they were just old games and hadn't got the mark-up of being retro games yet, so I bought basically every game I had wanted but never got the chance to play as a teenlad.

Unlike CDs those were big and a pain in the arse to download, so buying them and having a massive collection on a shelf made sense. But torrenting made physical music media completely obsolete for me by the mid 00s. There's no special appeal to CDs like there is with vinyl records, they're just a completely redundant format to me.

Everyone always says January drags on almost infinitely, and last year, I noticed that it really did. Based on my own subjective perception, about 40% of 2024 was January. But this year, I didn't think it was dragging as much. Until just now. There's just one more week - an entire whole working week - of January left. Jesus.

>>468724

>Unlike CDs those were big and a pain in the arse to download, so buying them and having a massive collection on a shelf made sense. But torrenting made physical music media completely obsolete for me by the mid 00s.

I also pretty much stopped buying CDs in the early 2000s because of the ease of filesharing. And later the similar ease of ripping youtube videos into audio files. And for most of that time, I was quite happy with that, and my carefully curated music collection on my hard drive kept growing.

I've got a complete hi-fi component system with a decent amp and capable speakers, but if you live in a rented flat, you can only turn up the volume so much, so that meant the quality difference between downloaded files and a CD was next to negligible. It was only when I moved into my own house and was able to listen to music at volume again that I noticed that most of my mp3 collection sounded kind of disappointing.

It's probably not something many people notice today if all they've got as a reference point is tinny (or absurdly bass heavy) bluetooth speakers or mid-market wireless earbuds, but it was reason enough for me to start buying CDs again, and in many cases so far specifically to get certain tracks on a CD that I've always loved but that I've only had in my collection as mp3 files.

>>468726

It's one of the reasons I lament the loss of those knock off HMV type shops we used to have. You know that bit in the late 00s early 10s where your local equivalent of the Ridings would have about three of those places that sold loads of second hand DVDs and CDs and last-gen games. You could happily spend an afternoon wandering about them, finding a gem or two, and usually buying something you might not have otherwise tried.

Nowadays there's only really CEX and they're a bag of fucking wank.

>>468727

I often went to record fairs in the late 90s to about the mid-2000s. They were a great place to find certain CDs - or vinyls - that were a bit more rare, at a time when places like eBay didn't exist or weren't as big yet. But unless you bought very unremarkable albums there, they weren't cheap, at least compared to today. And I've still got one pretty generic, two-disc 80s music sampler from one of those fairs that still has a strip of masking tape on it with the price of £10. Which is about £20 today.

I'd love to go to one of those fairs again, they are probably cheaper today than they were back then, with the price for CDs still being at or near an all-time low.

There is apparently a site called Record Fairs UK which keeps track of upcoming fairs across the UK. Might be worth checking out.

https://sites.google.com/site/recordfairsuk

>>468727

I fully agree. I got into Talking Heads by picking up Fear of Music at a car boot sale in maybe... 2010? 2011?

I don't want to raise any alarm bells but I just went to buy some chocolate and my card was declined due to the Barclays outage. Seems quite cunty to do that kind of hack on the last day of the month in January.

Lidl worked earlier and I ended up being able to use my credit card at a corner shop. Hanging is still too good for them though.

I've had a cold all week, but tonight I feel like having a few beers.

Is it really as bad an idea as common sense tells me it is?

>>468789
What are you afraid of? Choose one:
>I'm an alcoholic and might drink myself to death
Okay; don't do it then.
>The pub is cold
Consider staying in, but you'll probably be fine.
>Drinking alone might slow my recovery
You fucking poof.
>I don't want to infect other people in the pub
Shut up and go to the pub.

>>468790
>Can't breath through my nose because of cold, struggle to sleep
>Can't breath through my nose because of alchol, struggle to sleep