When I read a newspaper I’ll often read the “Lonely Hearts” or Personal Ads column, not because I’m planning to answer an advert, but because they are quite a fun read. It’s interesting to note how specific or non-specific the descriptions are; whilst some of the advertisers are open to any possibility, others are quite clear about the size, race, interests and temperament of their imagined soulmate. It’s also intriguing that the internet dating scene hasn’t made this concept obsolete.

A fun game to play is to match up pairs of compatible ads. For instance, the attractive, young-at-heart 60 year old woman who is looking for a caring man aged 58-65, has several matches in the male ads. She doesn’t mention her size, so I’m going to eliminate Richard (59) who has requested a slim woman. I’ve got a few other possible options, but I like the sound of the “Outgoing widower, 62, likes walks, nights in, GSOH, seeks caring female for friendship/relationship.”

I bet that this guy has received loads of responses:

Short, fat, thick, spotty, ugly, unemployed single dad, early 40’s, good for nothing, seeks slim, busty, rich bird to cheat on.

And his match? Possibly the “Busty, blue eyed blonde, seeking special man who can show her a good time and make her smile again.”

And just to prove that there’s someone for everyone:

Hirsute female, no make up, any age or nationality, sought by French male, 48, educated, unconventional, for relationship.

If I were to write one of these ads I’d probably say: “Urban Recluse seeks a kind companion with a GSOH for fun and adventure.” I think that says it all, don’t you? What kind of ad would you write?

Image Source

Artwork: Superstitions by Adina Theo

Is it bad luck to disturb a young black cat nibbling on crisps from an opened bag in the middle of the street?

As I approached it it grabbed a crisp in its mouth and dashed under a nearby parked car. I wished I had my camera.

Overnight the blog was overwhelmed by loads of spam, and I don’t know why the spam filter didn’t detect it all. I’ve removed it all now, but in response I’ve made a slight change to my commenting policy. Basically new commenters will have their first comment moderated by me before it will show up. I’m online a lot so it shouldn’t take more than a few hours or so to be approved.

If this proves unpopular or impractical I may opt for a captcha plugin, but I’d rather not as I hate using them on other blogs.

Let me know what you think.

Update: I’m trying something else, a system which should block the majority of spammers. So there’s now no excuse for anyone not to comment.

I haven’t written a post here for just over a week. I’ll talk about my blogging block later, but for now I thought it would be fun to steal a meme called My Mosaic from J.D.’s blog.

1. Type your answer to each of the questions below into Flickr Search.
2. Using only the first page, pick an image.
3. Copy and paste each of the URLs for the images into fd’s mosaic maker.

1. What is your first name? Penny
2. What is your favourite food? Toasted cheese
3. What high school did you go to? Notre Dame
4. What is your favorite color? Purple
5. Who is your celebrity crush? Daniel Craig
6. Favorite drink? Orange Juice
7. Dream vacation? Cuba
8. Favorite dessert? Coconut Ice Cream
9. What do you want to be when you grow up? A Writer
10. What do you love most in life? Meaning
11. One word to describe you. Solo
12. Your Flickr name. nubiana

And here’s a few bonus pics of Daniel Craig, just because.

I remembered, then I forgot. (And if I forget, who else would remember?)

Last Friday was this blog’s second birthday.

Leaving things so late I could only get a birthday cake which had originally been made for someone called Lila. It was the only cake that the shop had when I visited today.

I don’t think that Blog will mind since Blog likes cow print. Blog would have preferred a deeper shade of pink, but Blog will eat pink bits first. Blog would like to offer you all a slice of cake.

(Pic source)

I’d love a back massage right now, my body is aching from hoovering the entire house after a long day at work. Of course I should have done it yesterday when I had the day off work, but of course I am Queen Procrastinator and I couldn’t summon the strength to do it at that time.

My bedroom is a tip, well my bed is anyway. I put loads of junk on it to force myself to organise it (i.e. hide it all in the bottom of the wardrobe) for the party tomorrow.

My cousin, M, sent me a text message saying that he’s looking forward to all the good food that’s going to be on offer. I’m glad that he’s coming, as he’s a very cool dude and an ally.

Wank.

People don’t change. Only their costumes do. ~ Gene Moore

I got fed up of seeing all that grey when I looked at this blog, so I decided to change it to a dark green. I also spent some time on tweaking functional aspects of the site such as the top menu and the styling of comments.

I’ve also switched domains to recluse.me as I felt that it was more reflective of what I’m about, and easier to remember. If you used to link to my previous address, I’d really appreciate it if you could update your blogroll to the new one. In the meantime anyone who navigates to the old address will be redirected here.

My rss readers needn’t be concerned by these changes, as I’ve retained the same feed address.

I’ve still got a couple more things to do with the blog before I can relax (e.g. sorting out my categories and tags), but I’m happy with it so far.

Please let me know if anything looks strange (stranger than normal), and include your operating system and browser info. If you love it, tell me that too!

(I was sure that I posted this last night, but all I could find today was a earlier draft version which I’ve amended from memory - sorry if you’ve already seen this via rss.)

I haven’t paid much attention to my flickr account lately, though I’ve had the odd comment or group invitation from time to time. Today I had an interesting one, the Figurehead group invited me to submit the following pic to their photo pool:

It’s the figurehead of the Cutty Sark, a clipper ship which is held in dry dock in Greenwich. She looks quite attractive from this angle, doesn’t she? All long flowing locks and pert bosoms. Interestingly, she looks quite different from the other side of the ship:

Not so pretty now, eh? I did some research and discovered that her name is Nannie, and she is a witch from a Robert Burns poem:

Tam saw that among the ugly group of witches, there was one which was young and beautiful. Her name was Nannie, and she wore only a ‘cutty sark’, a short shift. Tam was bewitched and, as her dancing became wilder, in his excitement, he cried out “Weel done cutty sark!” The witches then pursued Tam who fled for his life to the bridge over the river Doon, for he knew that witches could not cross running water. Nannie was faster than the others and, as the mare galloped over the bridge, she seized it by the tail, which came off in her hand. Hence, the figurehead is always shown holding a horse’s tail in her left hand.

You’re a cop, and you come across a random guy who’s holding something that could be a gun. How long does it take you to decide whether or not to shoot? Does the skin colour of the person matter?

This was the question asked by the University of Chicago in an online psychology test, which gives you a split-second to decide whether to shoot the guy or whether to holster your gun for an unarmed individual.

Interestingly, the results showed that black and white participants shot the armed black guys sooner than the armed white guys.

I tried the test twice, because I was confused at first about which button to press, and took a few seconds to get used to the process. The first time I scored really low because I often took too long to make a decision, but my results showed that I took less time to shoot the armed black guys than the white guys.

Strangely though, even though the second time around I wasn’t trying to game the system, just wanted to play it right, I actually shot the armed white guys quicker than the armed black guys… I’m not sure what that means but the test has reinforced the fact that I never should become a police officer, especially as I shot a few unarmed guys too…

Of course the test isn’t realistic at all, but it raises an interesting point.

(via Neatorama)