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  Uncorking the Chianti of Truth since 2003

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Antipasti

Fish and visitors smell in three days.

-- Benjamin Franklin
 
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Friday, January 30, 2004
 
The Blob Strikes Back

STATUS UPDATE: Apologies for extended absence due to persistent amounts of unpleasant shite in lungs. Have been lying semi-comatose in bed watching mind-buggeringly trite daytime television programmes. Having resisted the increasingly attractive temptation to give myself an impromptu DIY lobotomy with a handy spoon, now know (amongst other equally world-shaking items of wisdom) the recipe for several types of fruit pie, the best way to achieve fertilisation in sheep, and the detailed history of the cottage-building industry in 16th-century Lincolnshire. Consider myself a better man for the experience. Perhaps this will teach me to stop sniffing chlorine canisters. Ha ha ha! I didn't really do that!! No, it was industrial solvents.

P.S. The hobnobs were delicious.


Served by pastamasta at 4:32 PM
>> 6 blobs of sauce - add more
>> takeaway
 
Tuesday, January 20, 2004
 
Taking the biscuit

Attention, all lovers of English afternoon tea and all good things that go with it. Redirect your browsers, if you will, in the direction of NiceCupOfTeaAndASitDown.com, where you will find much useful information on that crunchy, round morsel of perfection, the humble biscuit. After perusing this site for several minutes I personally am now off to the local supermarket to buy some chocolate hobnobs.


Served by pastamasta at 4:43 PM
>> 5 blobs of sauce - add more
>> takeaway
 
Monday, January 19, 2004
 
Slapstick

Have just watched a colleague trip over her own feet and go sprawling on the office carpet, literally under the noses of some extremely senior customer representatives who've been invited in to see how professional we are. It didn't help that she is wearing a rather short skirt today, and therefore exposed a considerable percentage of her arse to the public view. I should add that I feel free to chortle only because she was unhurt, aside from the sizeable dent to her ego, and because she thinks it was hilarious (albeit after a quadruple expresso). The customer reps in question have been taken away to have a quiet lie down for a few minutes.

Does it help people to laugh at/with them when they humiliate themselves in public, safe in the knowledge that they will do the same to you when it's your turn, as it inevitably will be? Or should we commiserate with them, thus running the risk of making them feel that their faux pas was worse than it actually was?

Word of the day, or possibly the week given how things have been going, is schadenfreude.


Served by pastamasta at 4:28 PM
>> 4 blobs of sauce - add more
>> takeaway
 
Friday, January 16, 2004
 
Loonies

An update is long overdue... recent search engine queries leading to this blog include:
  • antipasta pasta destruction - presumably someone is doing advanced restaurant research into exotic-matter fuel sources
  • pastille of pigeon - a new form of popular snack, perhaps? I'd be more than happy to provide freshly-killed ingredients
  • altoids mad cow disease - a scurrilous allegation; I thought prions were to blame
  • the game HalfPipe Piggy - this sounds fascinating, I will be doing a search of my own later
  • pink hunter wellies - I really, really don't want to know about this one
  • what are the names of the tigers at longleat safari park? - Bob, Dave, Ringo, Flossie, Aunty Sal, and Vexorg the Destroyer (he's a bit funny in the head)
  • twitching typing difficult - depends what's making you twitch at the time
  • mad mike's absinthe - so that's what the evil green stuff in the small glass was called
UPDATE - no results found for "HalfPipe Piggy". Can anyone out there enlighten us as to what this game is?


Served by pastamasta at 6:07 PM
>> 2 blobs of sauce - add more
>> takeaway
 
Pulverized vegetable

My ear is once again devoid of moribund insects, just as nature intended. Yes, the fly is gone. (And he was so young! *sniff*) I once more enjoy the benefits of an unobstructed sense of hearing, including being deafened by the baby squealing excitedly into the very same ear at point-blank range. Who would have thought mashed-up broccoli would be cause such a fuss? Not me, that's for sure; it looks a bit like something a cat has chucked up, but she seems to like it. Oh well, there's no accounting for taste (she probably gets it from her mother. Tch).

Here's an interesting trick: try staring fixedly at the word "enjoy" above for a minute or two. It really does start to look ridiculous after a while. It sounds ridiculous too, if you keep repeating it to yourself over and over again, although probably not quite as ridiculous as you will sound, sitting in front of your PC with your eyes shut muttering "enjoy, enjoy, enjoy" when your colleagues, friends or significant others walk past. Other good words which display this characteristic are "voucher", "spleen", "flap" and "egg". Try and make a sentence using these words.


Served by pastamasta at 9:25 AM
>> 6 blobs of sauce - add more
>> takeaway
 
Wednesday, January 14, 2004
 
The Fly III (This Time It's Personal)

Wiggling a pencil about, after extensive research involving considerable personal discomfort, is no longer a recommended method for removing dead flies from one's ear. I realise in hindsight that, as Treefen rather accurately stated, lodging a lump of graphite next to the fly was never likely to help, as aurally-wedged insects generally respond poorly to sharp implements, particularly if they are already dead. Her alternative suggestion (pouring hot wax into my ear) sounds equally if not more painful, but never let it be said that I won't listen to other people's ideas; I will be sure to bear it in mind in future, should a similarly unfortunate invertebrate ever feel it necessary to insert itself into any of my bodily orifices.

The mortal remains of our winged friend have in fact dried out rather nicely, and are starting to fall out of my ear of their own accord. I expect to be free of it by this evening; failing that I will be attacking it with a screwdriver.


Served by pastamasta at 4:15 PM
>> 10 blobs of sauce - add more
>> takeaway
 
The Fly II

I've now spilled coffee all over my keyboard. What a wonderful day I'm having. I suspect it's the fly's fault; it's probably affected my sense of balance. I'm going to try that pencil now.


Served by pastamasta at 11:15 AM
>> 2 blobs of sauce - add more
>> takeaway
 
Sleep, lack of

It's raining really, really hard. The occasional bit of hail is putting in an appearance as well. There was rather a lot of it last night, mostly hurling itself against the baby's bedroom window, which rather understandably caused the poor wee tyke to start wailing like a banshee. Having been duly comforted, she then unfortunately decided that 3am was a good time to keep daddy awake, since he was obviously already up anyway, and to show off her new and exciting repertoire of raspberry-blowing noises (from both ends). Lovely. I am consequently knackered, and intend to do as close to bugger all today as I can safely manage.

Exciting news of the day: a fly has just lodged itself in my left ear, and I've squashed it in an unthinking panic, so I now have a defunct fly in my aural canal and no obvious way of getting it out. I may try using a pencil later.


Served by pastamasta at 9:37 AM
>> 2 blobs of sauce - add more
>> takeaway
 
Tuesday, January 13, 2004
 
Not Tolkien

...but still good. Came across this excerpt from The Two Towers, which I suspect was not in the original text but which still made me chuckle:
Gimli: It's true you don't see many dwarf women. In fact, they are so alike in voice and appearance, that they are often mistaken for dwarf men.
Aragorn: It's the beards.


Served by pastamasta at 2:23 PM
>> 7 blobs of sauce - add more
>> takeaway
 
Calm and serene

I am feeling considerably better about things. Whilst I may have indulged in some mental useless-bastard-slayage yesterday, I refrained from actually carrying out the deed and thus remain a free man; I consoled myself by kicking some hapless trees and by shouting verbal abuse at some very surprised squirrels in the car park. Hopefully the rest of today will stay equally stress-free; I could really do with it. I am generally a calm and unflapped person... depending, of course, upon how much project-related crap has been dumped upon me from a great height on any given day. Large volumes of unusually pungent crap have been descending recently, and much of it has had to be specially imported from dung farms in Eastern Europe, as I have already dealt with most of the local supply. Yesterday's interlude represented several kilogrammes of extra-mature vintage Bratislava Brown, dropped onto my desk from a small cargo aircraft which circles the skies above my office building for just such a purpose. "Well, paint me orange and call me a traffic cone," I said to myself, for no-one else was listening, "That is a lot of crap." And indeed it was. My apologies.


Served by pastamasta at 1:30 PM
>> 2 blobs of sauce - add more
>> takeaway
 
Monday, January 12, 2004
 
Grinding teeth

I am going to strangle a certain person in the office. I just thought I should tell somebody, so that you'll know what's happened to me when I get sent down. I don't think they let you blog in prison. I am going to strangle him, because he doesn't know how to follow simple bloody instructions when they're written down in four-year-old language in three different places, as a consequence of which I'm going to have to spend a few hours fixing a broken server, while the soothing sound of screamingly irate customers tinkles gently in my ears. I am going to strangle him while he looks at me with that big lugubrious face of his, like a stoned cow, trying vainly to work out what's going on and whether it means he'll have to stop chewing his cud for five bloody seconds. Stupid, fat hobbit.

Sometimes I wish I was a rodeo clown instead of an engineer.


Served by pastamasta at 1:34 PM
>> 3 blobs of sauce - add more
>> takeaway
 
Need for Speed

What makes an action movie great? What ineffable quality separates the edge-of-seat from the edge-of-boredom? Case in point: Speed 2, which heaved its sorry carcass onto our screens yesterday evening and which, in a fit of having nothing better to do, I decided to inflict upon my senses in the vain hope that it might match the implausible excellence of the original. It didn't. It sucked worse than a 20-year-old hoover with a broken hose, but I'm still at a loss to explain why, despite having wasted a perfectly good minute analysing it. On the surface, it has all the same elements as the first instalment, in similar proportions - action, romance, Sandra "so earnest and chirpy I deserve to be smacked" Bullock, things going fast, things blowing up, nasty baddies with crazy eyes - but nevertheless it fails to form a coherent picture. I didn't think the original would work, but somehow it did. I suppose it's only to be expected; if you take a pile of scrap metal and chuck it all together at random, just occasionally you will end up with a Porsche, but it's not going to happen twice.


Served by pastamasta at 1:19 PM
>> 4 blobs of sauce - add more
>> takeaway
 
Friday, January 02, 2004
 
How to kill your brain

Morning all, and welcome to 2004, a year which promises to hold much joy, excitement, drama and probably bandages for the staff of the Daily Linguini. I trust that you had a thoroughly fun holiday period, and are still possessed of the usual number of limbs. Much hectic family to-and-fro-age has happened during the holiday closure, with which I will not bore you except to mention that Sarah's first Christmas was an astonishing sight to behold (picture a small, wide-eyed and excitedly bouncing baby plonked on her bum in the middle of a large carpet and surrounded by a vast array of shiny, glittery boxes of various shapes and sizes). I will also refrain from divulging too many details about New Year's Eve, principally because I can't remember any; my first (and most fervently held) resolution of the new year is going to be to avoid drinking anything green which comes in very small glasses, because I had several of them on Wednesday night and now a worrying number of my body parts don't work properly. I received an email from my frontal lobe this morning, requesting an urgent transfer to Ozzy Osbourne for health reasons.


Served by pastamasta at 12:59 PM
>> 8 blobs of sauce - add more
>> takeaway