680: A good film about the Voyage of the Beagle, in the Master & Commander vein, would be great. It would have...
earthquakes!
cowboys! (well, gauchos)
pirates!
jungles!
coral reefs!
entirely artistically necessary and not at all gratuitous beautiful Tahitian women not wearing very much at all!
savage tribes!
storms at sea!
a mad captain!
a city in flames!
botany!
volcanoes!
icebergs!
slave traders!
giant rhinoceroses! (in fossil form)
civil war!
duckbilled platypi!
immense mountains!
beautiful sailing ships!
a daring escape from a besieged city!
Darwin on horseback chasing giant birds and accidentally lassooing his own horse's front legs and falling off!
I'm sorry if that sounded a bit like one of CMOT Dibbler's film posters, but it really is all in there. The only thing it's lacking is a thousand elephants.
560: time for another takeover of the Connecticut For Lieberman Party?
Well, I learned something today: now I know what a caboose is. It was extremely entertaining trying to work it out from the comments, though.
Comments 6 and 18 were not helpful in this process.
You still see a few repurposed railway carriages in Britain, normally as part of transport cafes - much commoner sixty years ago, when building materials weren't easy to come by.
it ended as so many half-assed work initiatives do: on hold with India, calling in a ticket to repair scorched panties.
nerdycellist has a very interesting (if unsafe) workplace.
I got a similar reward a couple of months ago. I spent mine on underpants!
Terrorist! Grab him!
391: I think that JoAnne may have a vested interest in the publication of catalogues including names like "JOANNEILUVU4EVER".
Be glad you were not in the old farmhouse I lived in for three years while studying in Cambridge. No central heating. One winter there was ice on the inside of my bedroom windows every morning for about six weeks...
A farmhouse? You were lucky. When I was at university there were fifteen of us huddled into an old autoclave in basement of biochemistry building.
A clipping from the movies page with the poster of the film version of "A Handmaid's Tale", starring Elizabeth McGovern and Faye Dunaway, but retitled "SLAVE GIRLS" for the local market.
Oh, splendid. That's like those film trailers that are remixed to show "The Shining" as a heartwarming family comedy.
55: she's taken that series far too much to heart. You're lucky she didn't just say "Auntie Diana, I never like giving away DVDs when I don't have to" and shoot you.
48: no, it's not that one. The narrator goes to this enormous building in which an elderly couple open a cupboard containing all the things he's ever lost in his life. It's rather melancholy and not really a kids' poem. ISTR it was in a book illustrated by Quentin Blake. Not even sure it's by Rosen, to be honest.
Loan oft loses both itself and friend, sure enough.
There's a great poem by (I think) Michael Rosen about a visit to the place where all your lost stuff goes, but I can't find it right now. (Ha!)
"We'd expect to see a cluster of producers of mystic swords developing in this area of Hyperborea, due to network effects and the benefits of drawing on a common pool of skilled labour," explained Krugman the Barbarian.
"What are the finest things in life? Good question. Well, the answer to that is clearly going to vary from individual to individual, depending on the value each ascribes to different economic goods and outcomes," remarked Conan the Utilitarian.
"Without the restrictions imposed by government, this snake demon would have been killed years ago by empowered private-sector entrepreneurs!" yelled Conan the Libertarian.
"Actually, I robbed this temple two weeks ago, not that anyone noticed," remarked Conan the Farberian.
71: Thanks! I don't know if it was your hint that helped, but eight seconds after reading it I cracked it. So it probably was...
Xopher: I've got as far as working out that Y must be either s or t, because those are the commonest letters to follow an apostrophe. Assuming that ZUF'Y is "isn't", and it's a monoalphabetic cipher, that gives "t_s__ __s __s_ isn't t___, t_s__ __s t___ isn't __s_."
So presumably L has to be a vowel (because it comes between t and s) and O is probably a vowel (because I can't think of any consonant that comes between t and a double letter except H, in "thee", and that's unlikely.)
Stuck.
Similar to a planetary romance, then? The point isn't how our heroes got to Mars; it's about what they do when they're there.
(Incidentally, on the subject of planetary romances, was anyone else following Scott "Locke Lamora" Lynch's "Queen of the Iron Sands"? Is anyone else as annoyed as I am that he put up the first four chapters at weekly intervals, as promised, then put up a teaser saying "chapter five coming on 21st September" and since then NOTHING? Have I not made it clear that his job is at stake?)
A little help with the cryptogram? MA BRAINZ BE SLO.
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