Had this sitting on my PC ready to post for about 3 weeks now.

Usual rules apply.
No googling or imdbing

Guess the quote…

TV Series – Quotes
1. “I never want to see ‘for being a mong’ in the detention book again.” – Teachers (Vonnie)
2. “Fortune pisses on me once again!” – Rome (Willie)
3. “There’s been a Murder” – Taggart (Laura)
4. “Okay, listen up. This one’s in the kitchen. I’m here to fix your faucet, so check your six. I’m gonna replace the strainer part, and I’m gonna replace the washer. It’s gonna be a real knife fight. Now I’m gonna utilize a monkey wrench and perhaps even a plunger. And when I’m done, you’ll have water.”
5. “As far as I’m concerned, after 100 years, carrion becomes memorabilia.”
6. “Dude, that was like a Jedi moment.”
7. “My God! There’s nothing frightens you more than a furtive grocer.”
8. “Yeah. Petersen was really, really blown away about it. He went to see a priest. The priest told him… he said it was alright and all that, when shoes are happy that they’d get into heaven. You see, it turns out shoes have ‘soles’.” – Red Dwarf (Mark)
9. “I think you’re taking some risks. I think you’ll find yourself in some guy’s basement being ordered to put the lotion in the basket”
10. “Just ‘cause we’re crippled, don’t mean we have to take the crumbs.”
11. “Avon calling. Come out and play.”
12. “And if you perform while under the influence… don’t tell the patient. Unless they’re dead, and in that case, if you’re sure… very, very sure… you can tell them anything.” – Scrubs (Mark)
13. “My only concern is should I hide my true identity? A costume maybe?”
14. “My bugs are my babies. My children.” – CSI (Laura)
15. “I teach you to lie, cheat, and steal, and as soon as my back’s turned you wait in line?”

Film – Quotes
1. “I’m exercising the right not to walk.” – Dead Poet’s Society (Big Sexy Gordon)
2. “How fucking awesome was that?”
3. “Absafuckinglutely, Bob!”
4. “My God, that’s a shit load of piss.”
5. “It vexes me. I’m terribly vexed” – Gladiator (Willie)
6. “Sharks are like dogs, they only bite if you touch their private parts.”
7. “I fucking hate this job man. We spend nine hours a day, five days a week incarcerated in this wanky fucking store, having to act like C-3PO to any wanker who wants to condescend to us. We have to brown nose the customers, then we get abused by some… mini fucking Hitler who just gives us stick all day.” – Human Traffic (Mo)
8. “Don’t make any sudden moves. Just because we’re buying guns doesn’t mean we didn’t bring any.”
9. “Once it escalated into a murder one beef for all of ‘em after they killed the first two guards, they didn’t hesitate. Popped guard number three because… what difference does it make? Why leave a living witness?” – Heat (Mark)
10. “Can we try with real bullets now?” – Leon (Barry)
11. “Never rub another man’s rhubarb.” – Batman (Mark)
12. “Are you on, mate? Gilmore Street. Greenock Hill.”
13. “They even got the grave diggers with them!”
14. “You’re cuter than I thought. I can see why she likes you.” – The Matrix (Laura)
15. “Great police work, really brilliant! Why don’t they just put up a sign that says “Don’t come back!””

So yeah. Doctor Bob or Mr Mummy as he’s known to his friends made a series of lectures for some well known US home learning company a few years ago. And its fascinating. Bob Brier has this knack of being able to explainthings about ancient Egypt in such a way that it all makes sense, possibly because of his background of growing up in The Bronx maybe?

Each lecture is approx 30-40 minutes long and neatly cuts up Egyptian history into digestable sections. In fact I spent an extra week just going back over the lectures I found most interesting. It’s a great ‘read’. Heartily reccommend it to anyone with the slightest interest in the Period. Even if all you want to do is hear about the Greek Egypt era and Rome.

I get really annoyed when TV shows do this. They claim to be the most historically accurate show produced yet and get alot of thier viewers from saying this.

Now Rome claimed this very thing and to be fair it does look very authentic but they seem to have taken poetic license with everything to do with Egypt. In the series Gaius Julius Caesar goes to Egypt chasing Pompey Magnus because of the civil war in Rome. In reality there was a third person ruling Rome with them called Crassus and they ruled in a coalition called The First Triumvirate. Now I can understand the writers getting rid of Crassus’ position as its easier to have to enemies fighting for Rome rather than 3 folk having a falling out.

The other main problem I have with the series is Cleopatra. They virtually wipe her out of the story after the birth of Caesarion (Caesar’s son by Cleopatra) and the celebrations for his military career (ie over the Gauls, Egyptians, Pharnaces and Juba) when he sends for Cleopatra and his son do not happen. Instead he celebrates his triumph in Gaul…or so it seems and not a hint of Egypt was seen. In fact one of the things that pushed the romans over the edge was Caesar putting up a statue of Cleopatra as Isis alongside the Roman gods in one of the temples. It wasn’t just his dictatorship and opening up the senate to non-noble romans (including those folk of the countries he’d conquered).

This causes huge problems if they try and get a second series going (which I believe they are) as historically Rome is left in Caesars will to Octavian (Caesers nephew and adopted son) rather than his son to Cleopatra. This ends up with a war between Octavian and Mark Anthony after they’d wrestled control from the republicans. But all the while Cleopatra beds Mark Anthony and gives him 2 sons and a daughter (I think) and supports him throughout his fight with Octavian.

Basically the second series would be the war to wrsetle control back from Brutus and his republicans but youd then have the power struggle between Octavian and Mark Anthony. But Cleopatra was apparently such a huge part of this that it seems stupid to ignore it in the first series.

Hmmmm

An update of sorts.

Strange things are going on in my world of DFID. We had part of our mid year review the other week where my bosses boss had to ask me if I was content in the job I was in and if I thought about going anywhere else. That by itself sounds as if they were wanting rid of me but thats not the reason. The way our promotion/posting system works in my work everything is done in clusters throughout the year so that maybe every 3-4 months folk will move on and we’ll get new folk coming in. The problem is that as HR is going through so many changes just now noone wants to come here on my grade so although we’re losing 4 folk we’re only gaining 1 new person. Now theyre trying to shed jobs at the moment anyway thanks to the efficiency review from last year. The problem is that the we dont have enough people at my grade to cover all the jobs in the east kilbride office and we cant recruit direct to teh grade without the union kicking up shit and there arent enough folk capable of being promoted that want to be promoted from the lower grades. All this means we have to carry the vacancies. So all that waffle basically explains why my boss had to ask the questions before the mid year review…they need to know whos going to be here and whos intending on leaving so they can work out how they are going to staff the place.

In the past I’ve dealt with the caribbean, then europe and the middle east, then the caribbean again with latin america, then I was papped over to deal with part of asia and then that got lumped in with the caribbean and latin america again. Most of my experience though is with europe and the middle east and Drew thought id rather thave a different challenge and have a go at africa. Now that would be nice and probably a good learning opportunity but it comes with a slight problem…I’m slow on the uptake if im under pressure. He was quite surprised to hear I wouldnt mind going back to my old job if needed. In fact he seemed to have found a solution to his problem but this was months off and he was only just starting to plan it out.

Now some of you might have heard me talk about the guy I work with that lived downstairs from Rev. He ended up in hospital the other week and the rest of the section had been off the entirety of christmas and new year. And to make matters worse his colleage is part time, his boss is part time and her boss is part time. It all boils down to the fact that he was usually the only person there. And there was a huge backlog of work from the holiday season. So…the day after my mid year review meeting the team boss requested help and seeing as its the europe and middle east section they threw me at it. This has its good and bad points…

Its good because I get back into the habit of dealing with a busy section again and hopefully it will look good on my report again. The latter part is the main reason for doing this.

Its bad in that I have no idea how long this will be for and depending on when the baby is born it may need to be cut short as I’ve paternity leave to take, which they know about. That doesnt actually bother me but not knowing what job ill be coming back to does a little. Theres also the fact that I’ll spend half my time at work with noone else on the section so its hard to keep up the motivation to get the work done. This blog entry is a prime example of how easy it is to find somethign else to do when you’ve got a pile of work sitting there. The main one however is the prospect of visits to the overseas countries. Depending on when the baby was born there was a trip to Bangladesh that was supposed to be happening during the first quarter of 2006 and I’d sort of been pushed forward for it (purely because noone else wanted to go I think) but I’ve since passed the cut off date for if i was to go so thats out. There are plenty other trips being planned and the intent is for as many people to go on them as possible but if i’m still in this job (unless they intend to keep me here long term) I’ll be last in line for any trips and as the only real offices we have in europe and the middle east are London, Rome, Basra and Baghdad the chance of a trip is really limited. Where as if I get back onto my ‘old’ team sharpish then trips to china, or the caribbean are not out of the question. Its not the be all and end all of this job but trips are great fun, a great learning opportunity and when it comes down to applying for overseas posts are a good addition to your CV.

I fully intend to get an overseas post at some point in time…somehow…just a case of getting a few more good reports and a promotion and I’ll see where the job takes me.

Now if you’ll excuse me, I may have done a power of work over the last 4 days but I’ve still got a huge pile left to do and its growing daily.