*looks smug*

I managed to learn something after working several years at university student cinema.

(Mostly that people will never read the sign on the office door that says 'We don't sell tickets here').

Ooooh, spooky. I had a sign like that on my door when I worked in Rochdale Bus Station. Worked about the same, too.



- - -
I am very interested in the Universe. I am specialising in the Universe and everything surrounding it. - E. L. Wisty

That's the whole 'not being able to process a negative' thing again. Basically, you can't process a negative until you've processed the positive version. If a sign says 'we don't sell tickets' they're already inside and asking before the brain can intervene.

AS an experiment, get an expensive cream carpet and a toddler with a cup of Ribena. Tell them not to drop it. Feel stupid as you watch the stain spread.



PSD

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This is the work of an Italian narco-anarchic collective. Don't bother insulting them, they can't read English anyway.

I can provide the toddler. Someone else can provide the carpet.

I see. I just assumed people in Rochdale were stupid. I had very little evidence to the contrary.

Especially the woman who wanted compensation because some water had leaked on her in a bus shelter. I asked who she sued when it rained, but she didn't get it.



- - -
I am very interested in the Universe. I am specialising in the Universe and everything surrounding it. - E. L. Wisty

I got caught out by the whole 'We don't sell tickets here' thing in Slovakia. Unfortunately, I don't speak Slovakian (not even 'yes','no' or 'beer' - actually, the last of these appeareed to be piwo, said 'pee-vo' - it's amazing what you pick up, isn't it?). Cue one overly long conversation in two mutually unintelligible languages, with no bus ticket (or even a few hints on how to get said ticket) forthcoming.

Worse, I had already noticed that you could get tickets on the bus, but got over-ruled by everyone else who (not unreasonably) didn't fancy staying in the chemical-factory blighted pit we were in for any longer than was strictly neccesary.

The way to get tickets, btw, was to storm, onto the bus, shout the name of the destination, shout it again with all variant pronunciations, finally have bus driver realise where you meant (with pronunciation suspiciously close to your first attempt), and then laugh with recognition before being assailed with a load more Slovakian. The only response required at this point is a shrug, which will elicit more Slovakian in a louder voice. Eventually ettiquette means you should start all over again, saying your destination and holding up 14 fingers (quite some feat). Strangely, it works instantly this time.



PSD

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This is the work of an Italian narco-anarchic collective. Don't bother insulting them, they can't read English anyway.

Hey, not everyone in Rochdale is stupid - my sister lives in Rochdale!



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That which does not kill us makes us stranger.
(Llewelyn the dragon, Ozy and Millie)

Sarah

I lived in Rochdale for about a year, in mid-seventies. (Uh-oh, age may be showing here). In Norfolk, most kids stay to school dinners; in Rochdale, it was mostly just the kids who got free dinners. I was small, wore glasses, my teeth stuck out (been to a dentist since), was 'brainy', and I spoke 'posh'. Guess who got picked on at lunchtimes ? Mind you, I fought back.

Was also flummoxed by way children were being taught to read. It was some trendy method, abandoned years earlier by schools in other parts of the country. Instead of yer actual English, we were taught this phonetic nonsense - ize-creem - for example. It featured a conjoined a and e symbol to reporduce certain sounds. Now I could already read and write proper English to a standard well ahead of my age, but was forced to learn this gibberish in order to do well in my English lessons !

Boy, was I glad when we moved back to Norfolk.

Something similar happened to my friend Alan. He had not one, but two, stupid reading systems foisted on him at school (they changed system when they realised the first one wasn't working). The second one didn't work either, and he couldn't actually read till he was nine years old, at which point he taught himself to read from Dr Who books.

I think you could say he caught up.



..........................................................................................

That which does not kill us makes us stranger.
(Llewelyn the dragon, Ozy and Millie)

Sarah

Hang on - this a and e thing together - they were teaching anglo-saxon!

Gosh, they were backward....



PSD

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This is the work of an Italian narco-anarchic collective. Don't bother insulting them, they can't read English anyway.

Damn, got the jist of most of PSD's Spanish sig, something like:

'Before you go to your dance, it is necessary for you to eat with my...'

home ?


I did my Spanish O' level nearly 20 years ago, and haven't had cause to practice the language much since. So I'm a *tad* rusty. At least you can tell that I haven't cheated and Babelled it.

Go on, tell me, pretty please.

Skiffle...RagaMuffins are an offshoot of the Ragdoll breed. They get huge and are very cuddly and fluffy. Although, mine seems to be VERY headstrong and doesn't want to be held much, but when he does want to be held, he just melts. You can even hang him upside down from his back hips and he loves to have his armpits tickled. If you want more info about RagaMuffins, check out my breeder's site

[www.suevancats.com]

there's a whole info page there as well as links. And if you look at the kittens page, my baby is "Magic". And if you want to see my baby a little more recently, check out my cat page at:

[www.geocities.com]

I need to update Odin's pics cuz he's about tripled in size from those pics! Scary!

Oh and I just got "permission" and encouragement from my hubby to start my own RagaMuffin cattery once we buy our own house and stop renting my inlaws' house while they're in Germany. Cool!

re widescreen vs Pan & Scan:

here in the US we also get a lot of the anamorphic movies put into Letterbox format. And that's a wonderful thing. Although, you do need a large-ish tv to take advantage of it.

I prefer to see a movie in the format the director and cinematographer originally intended. So much goes into setting up a shot and a lot of info in a shot tells the story. When you go and crop it out, I feel you lose a lot of the story.

We bought an HDTV widescreen projection tv a little over a year ago with the expectation that our cable company would be moving over to HDTV within a few months as they had promised. Well, they still haven't done it, but we have a great time watching movies on DVD.

There is one really great feature about our tv that apparently PSD's granny doesn't have... we have this neat thing called "natural wide" that allows a normal 4:3 ratio picture to be stretched into the 16:9 ratio instead. However, rather than distorting the picture horribly and making everyone look like they gained a few stone, the picture is cropped slightly on the top and bottom and then there's a calculation that stretches only the sides a bit and keeps the middle 3/5ths looking normal, since that's where the majority of the action is. In fact, the only time you even notice that anything is stretched is when you watch CNN or someother program with a scrolling ticker at the bottom so it will stretch the letters apart a little. But it's still very minor.

Overall a good solution! So if you're ever in the market to buy one of these things, make sure yours has a feature that's very similar to that and compare, compare, compare! We shopped for ours for over 6 months!

AAC:

Just took a look at suevan cats page. What lovely cats ! I want Catcher.

Good luck with the cattery. I assume you mean a boarding house for cats. Going to look at your site now.

Gosh, Odin's lovely. All of them are lovely.
Admired your photos too.

cattery=kitten farm :)

Well, I daresay I didn't exactly rub shoulders with the creme de la creme of Rochdale society. Not in that dump of a bus station, anyway.

Yes, Skiffle, my infant school had that witless Initial Teaching Alphabet business, too; like you, I could already read, but I got a lucky break, because the class was so large I was excused readng lessons on the grounds of already being able to do it. So I avoided ITA altogether. (Although I seem to recall there was a character called Zip the Cat in it). The downside of this arrangement was that having been labelled 'clever' and allowed to skip work it was three years before anybody noticed I couldn't add up. And I still can't.

And it occurs to me that a certain Mr. Fforde might well have strong views on pan and scan!



- - -
I am very interested in the Universe. I am specialising in the Universe and everything surrounding it. - E. L. Wisty

You mean like a breeding stud ? Over here a cattery is for boarding.
Breeding stud is perfectly acceptable (Brits are less inclined to euphemisms).

the phrase 'kitten farm' wouldn't be well thought of, as 'puppy farm' is term used for mass, careless breeding of pedigree dogs, often barely socialized and inadequately cared for. Luckily, this happens less for pedigree cats.

Yup, those posts work well together...

While we're talking about films and stuff, it appears that el maestro Peter Jackson can't get over his furry feet obsession - he's now doing King Kong.

"A elbereth, a gilthoniel,
A great big monkey's causing hell"

As Tolkien almost put it.



PSD

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This is the work of an Italian narco-anarchic collective. Don't bother insulting them, they can't read English anyway.

I would be a cat breeder, carefully and methodically choosing which cats to breed to strengthen the line. I hope to only do 2 to 3 litters per year. I don't want it to be TOO big.

I won't be breeding Odin, though. He's a great specimen and due to his size would be in great demand. However, while we're in someone else's home, we don't need the spraying and other problems that arise from having a non-neutered male in the house.

We're hoping to find a house that has some room in the backyard where I could build several enclosures under the deck or somewhere else protected that I could keep the intact males and their breeding queens. And we'll probably dedicate one or two other rooms to kitten care and keeping some of the other cats separate. But mostly, we want them underfoot and being socialized.

I've always had cats and my husband loves them too. And now that there are litterboxes that do the dirty work for you (we have one that actually hooks up to the watersupply and drain! [www.litterfree.com] ) it's a much easier job.

And the good news is that I would be one of only 3 breeders in our state. RagaMuffins are currently a small breed so it would probably be a pretty good business. Many of the kittens go for $700 or more. But that's not what I'd be in it for. Mostly because I love cats and I adore the breed. They're a lot of fun!