venta

Having recently spent a little time investigating new cookers, I am curious to know your opinion on the ignition buttons on gas hobs. Your answer is unlikely to affect my cooker-purchasing actions, but having discovered in the pub last night what an unexpectedly polarising question this is, I'm now curious...

[Poll #2060995]

So, ages ago I invited people to name me the ten most famous statues in the world. From that, we could deduce what the ten most famous statues actually were, and people who got the most right (and got the fewest obscure ones along the way) could feel massively superior.

I've been a bit too busy to faff about adding up the answers (LJ poll results are really not in the most helpful of formats). But vicarage politely requested the results, and last night my bus was stuck in a traffic jam for ages, so I managed to tot up the scores and write the below.

( The Internet’s top ten )

( Our top ten )

( The scores! )

( Miscellaneous thoughts on statues )

Imagine, if you will, that you are eating a half-coated chocolate biscuit. Maybe it's a digestive, maybe it's a hobnob. Maybe it's a vegan, gluten-free biccie with carob coating if that sounds more like your thing. Anyway, imagine you are eating a biscuit with some form of chocolate-esque coating on exactly one side.

You're thinking of it?

OK.

[Poll #1966494]

Thank you. This poll brought to you following a traumatic outbreak of biscuit-eating-related horror in my household.

On account of, since Thursday night, a work Christmas party (cava, cocktails, wine, cocktails), a friend's party (champagne, champagne, champagne), a pre-Christmas dinner with friends (prosecco, red wine, port) and a pub quiz (beer), I feel like I ought to let my liver have a little rest.

On the other hand, the pre-Christmas dinner has left me with half a bottle of quite nice red wine that it would be a shame to waste. And the dinner has also left me with enough leftovers that I won't be cooking again for a while, and there is no space in the freezer to put the nice stew or something I could make with the wine.

I hate waste. Then again, I'd probably hate liver damage as well.

[Poll #1948315]

Another day for pointless curiosity... how are you at eating things when you don't know what they are? I made sausages at the weekend (post on the topic coming soon), and offered some pieces of cooked sausage to colleagues to see if they could guess what was in it. Both happily chomped down on mystery food without any info. I regard this as completely normal, but am aware that some people would never do it.

So... in the poll below, I'm asking about whether or not you'd eat mystery food I gave you. This is not just a meal I've cooked, this is something "mysterious" I'm inviting you to try. I'm aware some of you probably trust me, and some of you barely know me. Let's assume I'm someone you know well enough to know won't poison you, or feed you fag-ash-and-spider sausages for a laugh, but not someone whom you feel you know well enough to place special trust in.

Let's also assume that I know about your dietary requirements, so I won't give you meat if you're vegetarian, I won't feed you pork if you eat kosher, and I won't give you wheat if you're coeliac. I have perfect knowledge of your dietary requirements, even if they're quite complicated :) I don't know about your likes and dislikes, though, so won't guarantee not to feed you aubergine if you really hate it.

[Poll #1907455]

I feel there's quite enough options already, if you want to be all snowflakey, you can do it in the comments ;)

Hmm. I was about to post the following poll:

[Poll #1878807]

Except it turns out that Wikipedia has a much longer list of stories. And their list doesn't include Peregrine Falcon (which I haven't seen anyway - maybe it belonged in a different series?)

Following a brief conversation in my office about whether or not you could get to heaven in a biscuit tin, I have to ask....

[Poll #1853005]

Today's really flippin' weird request:

I would be most grateful if anyone who has the time, has the inclination, and is able without great effort or personal inconvenience, could measure their toilet seat. And comment to tell me the results.

The dimensions I would like to know are the front-to-back measurement and side-to-side measurement of the "hole" part of the seat. Although places like B&Q online list dimensions, I think they're overall dimensions and I specifically want to know about the size of the hole.

Assuming no one is likely to want to measure more than one, info about whether your chosen data point is in your home, an office, or somewhere else might be useful. Any details of colour, vintage, paddedness of seat, etc are left entirely up to you. Units as preferred by the measurer (preferably sensible ones, if anyone claims they do all their DIY in parsecs I shan't believe them).

(Reasons for asking, if you care, to be revealed in due course...)

From the spurious enquiries department:

[Poll #1795486]

Still frantically busy[*]. In lieu of actual content: a poll!

[Poll #1711426]

This is a very conventional restaurant, by the way, which doesn't let you do unorthodox things. And you know you're only getting two courses, so opting for starter, main doesn't mean you might have an option on pud later.

There is a restaurant near us run by a very lovely lady called Lisa, who is perfectly happy for a three course meal to go starter, main, starter. I imagine she'd let you go pudding, pudding, pudding if you wanted, though I've never made the attempt.

[*] Organising this. Are you coming?