According to the Grauniadh:
[Jérôme Kerviel] had used ingeniously fraudulent devices, including hacking into colleagues’ internet codes, to hide his gambling on equity derivatives trading markets.
What the FUCK does that mean? Anything at all? Would anyone like to tell me what an internet code is? And how do you hack into one? This is the way us geeks speak when we’re taking the piss out of people who know cock all about the technology they are talking about.
It’s just possible this could make sense if you perform a couple of substitutions:
- hacking into → using
- internet → login
- codes → credentials
So perhaps Jérôme Kerviel used his colleagues’ passwords. But then, the bag may have contained pork pies.
You used to be able to experience some interesting telly if you were still up after 1 a.m. There was a neat Aussie one about a man wandering about a post-apolcalyptic world with only his telepathic dog for company. It was also in this timeslot that I discovered Dark Star and Silent Running.
There’s a movie that I’d love to add to my collection, though I’ve not been able to track it down. It’s totally going to sound like I dreamt it though.
I seem to remember it was called Bomba! Bomba! but that could easily be completely wrong. I think it was Italian, and it will have been out a little earlier than Who Framed Roger Rabbit, because it uses some of the same techniques but much more sparingly. It’s almost certainly pre-1997 because I think I saw it in the house I lived in from 1992 to 1995.
There were two protagonists, one a furtive, shy guy who shuffles around a hardware store with a small hammer tucked in his brown mac, carefully tapping all the ceramic tiles. He purchases one and takes it back to his studio where he is laying down the soundtrack for a cartoon.
The other is a high-class “speciality” call-girl. Her clients include a pair of bowler-hatted twins who pay to sit in the next room while she showers in the morning; a chef who likes to decorate her body like a cake while he prepares lunch for the customers of his busy restaurant; and an office worker who likes her to put on layers and layers of petticoats and sit on the photocopier.
The only other things I can remember about this movie is that something happens in a taxi, and that the cartoons start to come off the screen and into the life of the sound effects guy.
Told you you’d think I was making it up.
Blearily, he considered breakfast.
“This one doesn’t fly very well”
“Try a paper clip on the nose”
“Id stid dubbn’t fly bery web”
Possible Scenario:
- I get married, have kids, and aged 8 they still do not “get” LEGO.
Steps To Mitigate:
- Take entire family on a rocket into the heart of the Sun.
Hutters wrote a letter to his 13-yr-old self. Mine would be a bit shorter:
Dear Steve,
This letter’s from the Future! In fact it’s from future you. If you don’t believe me, I know about the dreams involving sharks in the showers and blue hovering inflatables and I know you wish you had the power to make grass grow using only the force of your mind.
I don’t think the time travel thing works both ways, you’ll have to ask whoever delivered this about that. Assuming I’ve only one shot, here’s my advice.
1) you are doing fine. really.
2) observe how other people work. your suspicions are correct. (it took me ’till age 25 to finally acknowledge that).
Well, I hope that’s enough to be getting on with. If you have any more questions, bury them in a tin box on southfields park but not on the far side as that all gets re-vamped in a couple of years. I’ll try and remember to go and dig them out before I send this.
edit: I didn’t find anything, sorry.
Well, have fun.
Steve
P.S. girls don’t get Progressive Rock, don’t try to convert them.
P.P.S. girls don’t work like they do in american teen flicks. See advice item 2 above.
P.P.P.S. I’m pretty sure this advice will do no good, since my current theory is that the past is immutable. If you are reading this letter then I’m wrong, because I certainly never read any such thing when I was your age.
… or maybe it wouldn’t…
Mostly I don’t remember my dreams (’pparently you always dream, you just don’t always remember them in the morning) but the other night I dreamt that Bro had got a long-haired daschund in lieu of having kids, and it was its first day at school, and uncle Steve (that’s me) was taking it to school. Nobody seemed to have a problem with my nephew being a dog.
The following evening, I sold my Cinquecento for special knockdown price and dreamt I was a serial killer. Nothing freudian going on there then.
Here are three grades of sign:
- Negative
- Positive Unresolved
- Positive Proactive
Most signs are of the negative kind: No Parking, No Dogs, No Ball Games.
This tell you what you can’t do. They seem on the face of it to be the most strongly worded, but it’s my contention that these are the weakest signs from the point of view of being obeyed. The reason? They don’t give you any sympathy for the authority that posted the sign, they simply intrude on your private plan to, e.g. have a kick around, or park up and grab a sandwich.
Positive signs are better. They might say Keep Clear, or Please Keep off the Grass. These ask you to do something rather than not to do something. More importantly, they give you an idea of the purpose for doing that thing. Please Keep Clear suggests that you can help the person who posted the sign, who has a need for that area to be clear. However, like the negative sign, these signs impose a problem on the reader. Where should I park then, if not here? What else shall I do if no ball games are allowed?
Positive Proactive signs go one step further by solving the problem that they present to the reader: Please Place Paper Towels In the Bin Provided, Queue This End, Road Closed until X, follow Diversion. This type of sign must surely be the easiest to obey.
The sign that inspired this post is “No Turning” which, if you imagine yourself in an HGV driving down a cul-de-sac leaves you with a choice of a really tricky future possibly involving cranes, or ignoring the sign.