Toddler Tamers: the perfect gift for horrible parents

This image has been doing the rounds on social media and they appear to be legit. I am both unsurprised and absolutely horrified. I mean, I can't be the only one who looks at these and sees future psychological issues waiting to happen not to mention the really dubious concept of strapping extra weight to the feet of someone whose skeleton and muscles are still developing really rapidly. That sort of sounds like it might not be entirely healthy.

Also, that child doesn't half look like Sam Kelly in Porridge. Appropriate.

This has been the sort of post that comes about when I realise I got in too late and am too tired to write a Last Jedi review with any coherence and hopefully I'll have that ready by tomorrow. 

A sidestep into royal commentary

Look, usually I don't care about this stuff. I mean, I've nothing against the royals as people though I do think they should be able to afford their own bloody weddings (seriously, tens of millions in taxpayer money is not something we need to waste right now) and I know this could come across as mean...

… but...

… I kind of want the alt-right to get confused about this engagement and condemn the future princess' ethnicity as forced diversity that doesn't serve the plot.

You might think this an unrealistic expectation but The Spectator is honest to goodness saying she's “unsuitable” to marry a royal because she's divorced. Yes, in our exciting Space Year 2017 a supposedly serious news source is invoking the spirit of Wallis fuckin' Simpson because they can't bring themselves to just be honestly racist.

Wallis. Fucking. Simpson. 

Can Millennials Kill Signatures Next?

Because it occurs to me that I don't really have a signature anymore. I mean, what do I even sign for anymore?

I sign for packages which, given that I'm almost always signing for someone else's, isn't proof of identity so much as proof of existence. I've signed for packages for people I don't know even by virtue of being the nearest neighbour around at the time. I haven't signed a debit slip or a cheque in a decade or more.

Hell, even when I'm at the bank and they need me to sign a little piece of paper with my signature I see it in their eyes, the silent “fuck it” when it fails to match the signature in their records (which I gave them when I was thirteen). Never mind that by this point they've seen two of three forms of legal ID already.

And this is coming from someone who, just about, grew up in an age when you needed a signature to pay for things. A few years younger than me and I imagine a signature, as in an actually repeatable way of writing your own name,is probably not something most people have ever had a reason to develop.

Even working in catering, a job with an enormous amount of legal paperwork, no one has ever questioned the fact I have approximately seventeen different ways of writing my own name and even then most of the paperwork just needs initialing.

(This post was brought to you by painkillers.)

Landmarks of Reading: The Bag Shop Man's Scowl

This sign is a genuine landmark of Reading, Berkshire. Its a work of art. It scowls down at the passerby from the second floor of an abandoned storefront in the nebulous, nameless grey area between Friar Street and Market Place. The boards are covering the windows of a building that has been a gutted wreck for almost ten years.

And, before you ask, that is the proprietor of The Bag Shop. They sell bags and their cash register is a literally a cardboard box under a desk. Prices are not actually negotiable but more decided by the proprietor on the basis of how much he likes you. The last time I bought a bag there he gave me the full disapproving scowl for ten uncomfortable, mildly invasive seconds and then turned to his assistant and said:

“It is the salad man, twenty percent off.”

After which he swept imperiously into the backroom. I have no idea if I got twenty percent off (no actual prices on the bags) but it was a warm, glowing feeling to have the verbal approval of the man whose image had been scowling down at me on my way into town every day for years. 

Another great history fact...

I don't know if it is. I hope it is because this would be the best hook for a historical novel ever.

Apparently, in the seventeenth century, Mexico was absolutely crawling with unemployed mercenary samurai. Imagine it: Auf Wiedersehen, Pet with seventeenth century samurai! That's a fantastic hook, isn't it? 

It was bound to happen eventually

I've passed this sign most every day for well over a year now. I am genuinely baffled its taken this long before I saw someone do this.

Is it strange that I like the vandal's choice of font?