The Glorious Twelfth

Old General Coote was a fine old feller
He often was found laid down in a cellar
So on the Glorious Twelfth, while some people do shoot
We go a-drinkin', to honour Old Coote

- The Kipper Family

Today it is one year and one half since I eschewed drinkohol.  It is also Everyone Ignore Samfast Day but since the FLJS¹ remains incommunicado in Captain Cook's Mistake this hasn't been so much of a chore.  As is customary at such anniversaries, I have a new Shiny Thing.

Shiny Thing #8

Since the actual Shiny Thing is actually that actual colour anyway I have been messing about with the toys available in paint.net.  Which is why it:

• is barely visible, and
• looks like a Rubbish

If you look closely you will note that the background is the numeric keypad of an IBM Model M keyboard, and those who do not see the irony of using a 2 kg keyboard to control a 1 kg laptop have only themselves to blame.  The little wossname next to the "Scroll Lock" light is one of the stickers given away by the very wonderful purveyors of guitar-based rock Amplifier with their magnum opus "The Octopus²", an example of which adorns almost every piece of anbaric apparatus in Larrington Towers.  The sticker, not the album, clot.

Come February next I will complete the set of Shiny Things and will celebrate with the finest champagne Mr Sainsbury's House of Toothy Comestibles has to offer³.  The regular Automatic Diary will, subject to the vagaries of Homeland Security and the gun-tooting goondom running the Canada-USAnia frontier, resume on September 5th.  Yes, the Automatic Diary is to visit Canada, where the BEARs come from.  I will take an extra jumper.

1. Filthy Lying Journalist Scum.
2. Go and buy a copy immediately. Other Amplifier albums are available. Go and buy them all. And a T-shaped shirt...
3. Lie.