Time for a rant about astrology!

Here’s a typical description of a star-sign that I found lying around somewhere online:

      Libra: Libras have a strong sense of fair play and justice. They seek cooperation in the settlement of disputes. Libras seek harmony and balance in their lives and have a good understanding of social and human relations. Libras are affectionate, charming, and considerate yet anger is shown by strong but quickly ending blowouts. Libras are usually independent and strong individuals that support progressive social movements.

Now, looking past the whole “why isn’t every twelfth person I meet the same” arguement, why are horoscopes so nice? Why don’t you ever see a star-sign described more candidly? Maybe something more like this:

      Libra: Libras can be really annoying perfectionists, and always stick their noses into other people’s problems. They are manipulative and smarmy, and also lose their temper regularly. Libras are often loners who nevertheless sheepishly follow the liberal cause-du-jour.

See? Much better. I suppose horoscope-writers are just pandering to their audience, writing what they want to hear. After all, when was the last time your horoscope said “call in sick and stay in bed all damn day else you’ll seriously fucking regret it“? And yet, how often is that advice appropriate to your day?

I think that’s something to bear in mind the next time you read a horoscope: the people that write them aren’t in the buisness of predicting the future, just making sure you come back to read them tomorrow. Of course, the same could be said for newspapers in general….

I was thinking yesterday about the verb and noun “pant”. You see, they have nothing to do with each other. When you pant it has nothing to do with pants. Normally this is not the case: when you fish it has something to do with fish, harvesting is an action which produces a harvest, and painting requires at least a small quantity of paint.

Then it struck me: “to pant” is an intransitive verb – it does not take an object (that is to say, you cannot pant someone, or something), and thus its involvement with nouns is limited. But why can there not be a transitive verb “to pant someone/something“? Why indeed.

After some discussion it was decided that this transitive panting is the action of putting pants on something (I’m English, by the way, so we’re talking pants, not pants). This leads to de-panting (the removal of pants from that which was panted) and capital pantifaction (putting pants on someone’s head), an act best performed with the advantage of surprise.

18.36
HP’s business inkjet 2300 printer is sucking some major balls in my estimation. It’s never been quite right, choosing which tray to print from seemingly at random, and sprouting page after page of gibberish on occasion, but today it has excelled itself. It’s printing from full cartridges, but the black is faded, and often blue after the first page. Also, in trying to update the firmware this is found to be impossible unless you have a Windows 2000/XP machine. I’m pretty sure I updated the firmware on this thing from my mac before, so why the more recent update would be windows-only baffles me.

I think I’m going to buy a Canon.
I may shoot my printer with it.

A list of things I keep meaning to do, but still haven’t actually done:
- learn PHP
- clear all the clothes that don’t fit me out of my wardrobe
- walk my dog more (and by more, I mean “at all”)
- rate the rest of my iTunes library
- clean out my car
- write to my penfriend
- politely remind my ex that she still has my books, and I want them back
- email my father more
- actually read the news in my BBC.com RSS feed
- er…
- that’s it