Amusing Items

Black Hole

May contain traces of nut
Transcription of a clip from BBC Radio 4's "Relativity" S2E4:

Characters: Ken; son-in-law Pete; Pete's sons Nick and Mark. I might have mis-attributed some of the lines, but it hardly matters...

[door bangs]
K: Hello there, it's only me - Grandad - are the boys in?
P: We're in here Ken
K: Right-ho
M: Hello Grandad
N: Hiya Grandad
K: My iPad's stopped working again.
N: Has it *really* Grandad?
K: Yes, it has.
M: Are you sure?
K: Yes! Don't take that tone.
P: You have been a bit of a boy who cried wolf before, Ken, or rather the old man who cried "my iPad is broken" when it was just turned off!
K: Not so much of the old!
[M&N snigger]
K: This time it's a genuine problem. I'm trying to send an email to Ian Hudson, from the committee for the new pavilion - do you know him?
N: Er, no
P: Is it important that I do?
K: No, but he's a good guy. Anyway, the email's not sending, and I can't print it can I - there's nowhere to plug the printer in...
M: And you don't have a printer [M&N snigger]
K: Yeah, that too... I'm gonna have to put the iPad in an envelope, and post it to Ian Hudson so he can read it [giggles off], and include a stamped addressed envelope so he can reply and send it back! And they said the Internet would make things simple.
N: It's not broken, it's on airplane mode.
K: You're British, Nicholas, not American - I think the word you're looking for is "aeroplane".
N: But it's called "airplane mode"
K: It's called "aeroplane mode"
N: Look: "airplane mode"
K: That's how they get you, bit by bit - don't walk into the trap... "aeroplane". We invented the language.
P: To be fair, they invented the airplane.
K: AEROPLANE!
P: Well, it's just "plane" now isn't it? Nobody calls it "aeroplane"
K: I do! I call it an aeroplane, and I call it aeroplane mode - whatever it is
N: It's a setting you go to when you're on a pl... aeroplane
K: This cost five hundred quid, I wouldn't take it out of the house let alone on an aeroplane
N: You don't actually have to be on a...
P: Hey Ken, Ken - I put my phone on airplane mode and it told me to stop calling it Shirley! Ha ha
N: Why?
K: Why were you calling your phone Shirley?
P: Well, it's a joke! Have you not heard of Airplane!?
K: How many times... it's AEROPLANE!
P: No it's not - that's the name of the film. You must have heard of Airplane!!
N: No
M: Is it one of those films where they turned off the colour?
P: Argh - it's not that old, it's from the Eighties
N: So, forty years old, more or less
M: That's pretty old
N: mm
P: It isn't THAT old... oh god it is... oh christ!
 
For the purposes of that sketch, it's a good job iPads don't call it Flight Mode, shirley.
 
Film - Reach for the Sky said:
Douglas Bader: Satisfied Mr West?
Mr West: I've got enough stuff to service all the planes in Fighter Command.
DB: Never, never call it a plane, it's an aeroplane Mr West.
West: Sorry sir, aeroplane.
 
Unbelievable Truth - Quiz on BBC Website said:
As this hapless planet of ours trundles through the infinite darkness, surrounded by more stars than there are grains of sand in the world, we are aware only of what we don't know about the universe. It wasn’t until recently we discovered that if Earth and its inhabitants were as dense as a black hole it would fit on to a teaspoon, and that ‘dense as a black hole’ is a term of abuse that scientists use to refer to each other, and that the US has a greater land mass than Pluto. Which is the true fact?
"Yes! If you took Earth and everything on it, squashed it down until it was as dense as a black hole, it would fit on to a teaspoon."
Shame! I was hoping it was a term of abuse. :p
 
Hapless? ...
unfortunate, unlucky, luckless, out of luck, ill-starred, ill-fated, jinxed, cursed, doomed, unhappy, forlorn, wretched, miserable, woebegone.
I don't think any of those are really applicable to the planet Earth (except doomed I suppose as the sun will eventually destroy it).
 
I dunno, "as dense as Black Hole" could certainly catch on in these parts. Thank you so much for drawing it to everyone's attention Shirley.
 
I dunno, "as dense as Black Hole" could certainly catch on in these parts. Thank you so much for drawing it to everyone's attention Shirley.
The quote is "as dense as a black hole" not "as dense as Black Hole". But, if the cap fits... :D ... and don't call me...
We need a user Shirley. Any volunteers?
I'm NOT volunteering. At least I incorporate part of my real name (abbreviated, obviously) as my user name. ;)
 
Mmm! I have no letters in common with my forenames and only one in common with my last name.
 
ShirlEE ?
I may have told the story somewhere else before -
Years ago I was trying to sign up to Digital Spy. The username Phil had been taken, and I wasn't prepared to disclose my surname. I was sitting at a computer within a university electrical engineering department - the usernames for the campus systems started ee - and so I combined the the two. Simples.
Like many of you I have kept the same name across multiple forums.
 
My rationale is to prevent aggregation of information. You never know what might slip out here and there, in different contexts, and if anyone had a particular reason to look they might be able to put together more than one would want. By keeping identities separate, it is less likely data can be aggregated.
 
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