Forget those creative writing workshops. If you want to write, get threatened

And don't ask me for advice. I'd prefer you to never achieve anything. Ever

Charlie Brooker
Monday 16 August 2010

One of the side-effects of having your work appear in a public forum such as this is that people often email me asking for advice on how to break into writing, presumably figuring that if a drooling gum-brain like me can scrape a living witlessly pawing at a keyboard, there's hope for anyone.

I rarely respond; partly because there isn't much advice I can give them (apart from "keep writing and someone might notice"), and partly because I suspect they're actually seeking encouragement rather than practical guidance. And I'm a terrible cheerleader. I can't egg you on. I just can't. My heart's not in it. To be brutally honest, I'd prefer you to never achieve anything, ever. What if you create a timeless work of art that benefits all humankind? I'm never going to do that – why should you have all the glory? It's selfish of you to even try. Don't you dare so much as start a blog. Seriously. Don't.

Sometimes people go further, asking for advice on the writing process itself. Here I'm equally unhelpful. I've been writing for a living for around 15 years now and whatever method I practise remains a mystery. It's random. Some days I'll rapidly thump out an article in a steady daze, scarcely aware of my own breath. Other times it's like slowly dragging individual letters of the alphabet from a mire of cold glue. The difference, I think, is the degree of self-awareness. When you're consciously trying to write, the words just don't come out. Every sentence is a creaking struggle, and staring out the window with a vague sense of desperation rapidly becomes a coping strategy. To function efficiently as a writer, 95% of your brain has to teleport off into nowhere, taking its neuroses with it, leaving the confident, playful 5% alone to operate the controls. To put it another way: words are like cockroaches; only once the lights are off do they feel free to scuttle around on the kitchen floor. I'm sure I could think of a more terrible analogy than that given another 100,000 years.

Anyway the trick (which I routinely fail to pull off) is to teleport yourself into that productive trance-state as quickly as possible, thereby minimising procrastination and maximising output. I'm insanely jealous of prolific writers, who must either murder their inner critic and float into a productive reverie with ease, or have been fortunate enough to be born with absolutely zero self-critical reflex to begin with.

As for me, I'm stuck in a loveless relationship with myself, the backseat driver who can't stop tutting and nagging. There's no escape from me's relentless criticism. Me even knows what I'm thinking, and routinely has a pop at Me for that. "You're worrying about your obsessive degree of self-criticism again," whines Me. "How pathetically solipsistic." And then it complains about its own bleating tone of voice and starts petulantly kicking the back of the seat, asking if we're there yet. ...

Ta much, dear MSiegel

Innsmouth Beach
The Dread Cthulhu Tries to Relax

Cthulhu Fail
By robert | Published: January 26, 2010

In honor of Dread Cthulhu and the Twitter Fail Whale.

Ta much, dear Anneliese

3. They look way cooler




4. You can hold one any way you like

Ta much, dear Anneliese

Ta much, dear Anneliese

'Had it crashed? Or was it being sarcastic?' Charlie Brooker on the iPad
Websites look great on it. As does video. But books? Here, I'm less convinced
Saturday 29 May 2010

The iPad: the world's most expensive rectangle. The Guardian wanted me to write a first-impressions review on launch day – but how? I could borrow one from an early adopter, but that wouldn't be the same. I don't like poking round other people's computers. It's like snooping through their medicine cabinets: quite quickly you can stumble across something you wish you hadn't seen. I needed a new one, straight out of the packaging. A new one I could keep.

But this being launch day, iPads were bound to be scarcer than cats' eggs, right? Disappointingly, the Guardian picked one up from the Tottenham Court Road branch of PC World without having to kill anyone.

Typically for Apple, the packaging virtually places the device in your hands with the grace of a well-trained butler. The iPad itself is surprisingly heavy: about the same as a hardback book. It gave me mild arm ache almost immediately. Maybe there's an app that can tell you how many calories you're burning just by holding it. The best solution is to adopt a self-consciously casual crossed-legged sitting position, and prop it up with your thigh. Fanboys who wet themselves may cause a short circuit.

The display is extremely glossy, so the first thing you'll see on your screen is a reflection of your face from an unflattering angle. It also doubles as a fingerprint collector, which means you'll spend the first hour obsessively wiping it clean on your T-shirt before giving up and ordering an adhesive screen protector from Amazon (which, if the iPhone equivalents are anything to go by, will be impossible to apply without contemplating suicide at least twice). At this price, Apple – nice, friendly Apply – could at least include a couple of free screen protectors and some kind of carry-case, no? Of course not.

You're required to use iTunes during the setup process, which is like being forced to eat a handful of mud. iTunes is twice as awful as any software crime Microsoft ever inflicted on the world. Up popped a progress bar which turned out to be a work of satirical fiction – lodging fast at 7/8ths complete while making random claims about how long it was going to take to finish. It was impossible to tell if it had crashed or was just being sarcastic. I was scared to pull the sync cable out– and I'm a nerd. So much for Macs being easy to use. Eventually a nice man from MacFormat magazine saw me moaning about it on Twitter and gave me some personal assistance. Your experience may differ. ...

... So websites look great on it. As does video. The BBC iPlayer is particularly impressive. But books? Here, I'm less convinced. Kindle owners can download a free app which lets them access their books on the iPad; Apple also has its own rival iBook service. In both cases the screen looks superb, and swiping a finger across the screen to flip the page gives you an undeniable futuristic thrill. But the display, luminously gorgeous when replaying video, is simply not suited for reading articles at length.Yes, you can adjust the brightness, but it's still firing light into your pupils, unlike an ebook screen, with its poncey "electronic ink".

I doubt many readers will persevere to the final page of a novel, unless it's a book in which the lead character squints a lot, in which case you'll have a certain empathy. ...

Ta much, dear Anneliese

...the answer, of course, is American cartoons. When it comes to pop music, characters in American TV cartoons do no not mess with Mr Inbetween. Characters in cartoons never ask those dumb questions: "Should I like this?", "Am I allowed to like this?", "If I say I like this, will my peer group laugh at me?"

No, cartoon characters always critique an act from the gut. The only way any critic should ever act. Which is why characters in US cartoons make better critics than actual critics. Who, by the way, would almost certainly make rubbish cartoon characters.

There are many fine examples of cartoon characters proving themselves to be better rock critics than actual rock critics. Here, however, just a few examples will have to suffice.

So there's Bart Simpson at a Smashing Pumpkins concert: "Meh. Making teenagers miserable is like shooting fish in a barrel."

Touché, Bart! Twenty years of aural sludge demolished! Then there's Homer making a band play only their one big hit. And then only the good bit. Over and over again. Which, if you admit it, is all you really want anyway, right? Sheer and shockingly honest postmodern genius, Homer.

Next we've got Family Guy's Peter Griffin rediscovering Surfin' Bird and playing the record to death until everyone around him is sick, screaming doolally mental and pulling their ears out in frustration. Don't you wish you could still appreciate moronic rock with that much intensity? Peter gives you permission.

And, finally, here's Beavis and Butthead dissecting Radiohead's Creep:
Beavis: "Why don't they just play the cool part all the way through?"
Butthead: "Well Beavis, if they didn't have a part of the song that sucked, the other part wouldn't be so cool."

I rest my case.

Never mind the Con-Dem coalition. We want bogeymen and we want them now
Why can't these 21st-century Tories just be massively unreasonable from the outset?
Charlie Brooker
Monday 17 May 2010

So: the weirdest election in history has produced the weirdest government imaginable. Well, almost. If Cameron had formed a coalition with the cast of Bergerac, that would be weirder – but only by about seven per cent.

The worst part is working out who to hate, and why. I was eight when Thatcher got in, and didn't really understand what was happening. Nonetheless, before long the Tories had replaced the Cybermen as my number one bogeymen. At first there was a simple, visceral reason for this: they seemed alarmingly gung-ho about nuclear war. They believed nuclear missiles were an effective deterrent, and furthermore, that a nuclear war might be winnable anyway.

I was opposed to all kinds of nuclear war – even little ones between neighbouring Welsh counties were simply not on, in my book. It was my understanding that these things tended to spiral out of control, and burning to death in a massive exploding fireball didn't rank very high on my list of hopes and dreams for the future.

(My paranoia wasn't that far off, as it happens. According to the book Rendez-Vous: The Psychoanalysis of François Mitterrand, at the height of the Falklands war, Thatcher threatened to nuke Argentina unless President Mitterrand handed over disabling codes for the French-built Exocet missiles which were pounding British ships. If that was true, and had actually happened, you wouldn't be reading the Guardian right now – you'd be fighting a giant scorpion to impress the village elders.)

As if plotting to destroy the world wasn't bad enough, the Conservatives went on to preside over the most wilfully obnoxious and polarising decade imaginable: braying yuppies at one extreme, penniless strikers at the other. The Tories weren't just nasty – they seemed to actively enjoy being nasty. And there was no getting rid of them, even when Thatcher got the boot. Consequently, an entire generation grew up regarding the Tory government as something like rain, or wasps, or stomach flu: an unavoidable, undying source of dismay. ...

Ta much, dear BrightKnight

‘Were you still up when Brown lost his Balls?’
The Mole
That’s what the Tories - and many in the Labour party, too - hope to be asking tomorrow morning
LAST UPDATED 9:21 AM, MAY 6, 2010

Labour campaigners are anticipating with bated breath the election coverage between 2.30am and 3.0am tomorrow when the returning officer is due to announce the result of the election in the West Yorkshire seat of Morley & Outwood where Schools Secretary and would-be Labour leader Ed Balls could go down to defeat in a 'Portillo moment'.

The Brown camp has accepted defeat in the overall result - though they cling to the hope of winning the largest number of seats thanks to the weird voting system they are now pledged to reform. That could enable Brown to cling to power in a deal with Lib Dem leader Nick Clegg, but it is a remote hope. Clegg has already made clear he doesn't want to play footsie over power with Brown.

So the Labour camp are already moving on to what happens after their electoral car crash.

Balls, Brown's protege, has the tacit backing of Britain's biggest union Unite to launch a leadership bid if the polls are right and Brown is forced out of office, while the modernisers are clustering round Foreign Secretary David Miliband as the great hope to rebuild New Labour's broken pact with the people.

Balls first has to get over the hurdle of winning his seat which has become one of the Tory's 'decapitation' targets through boundary changes. It is estimated that it will take a swing to the Tories of about 10 per cent to get Balls out - far less than the 17.4 per cent swing to Labour that forced Michael Portillo out in 1997. Then TV viewers who stayed up late watched stunned as the high-profile Tory Cabinet minister lost his Enfield Southgate seat to the young Labour candidate, Stephen Twigg.

"Were you still up for Portillo?" became a catchphrase - and even a book title - in the aftermath. There is no doubt many Tories relish asking each other tomorrow morning: "Were you still up when Brown lost his Balls?" ...

Picking a leader boils down to the question: 'Which stage persona do you prefer?' Answer: not Cameron's
Charlie Brooker
Monday 3 May 2010

One of the most fascinating sights I've witnessed thus far during the coverage of the 2010 election campaign is Gordon Brown's visit to a branch of Tesco in Hastings on 16 April, which was broadcast live and uninterrupted for about five minutes on Sky News.

"Hello, good to see you," says Gordon, shaking someone's hand. "It's great to be here," he continues, waving at a well-wisher. He looks around. "This is a good store, isn't it?" he enquires of no one in particular. He spots a young boy. "How old are you?" he asks. The boy is eight. "That's a good age," Gordon concludes. "Which football team do you support?"

As he continues walking through the supermarket, the pictures carry on moving, but the sound appears to be stuck on a loop, because Gordon's repeating the same words. "Hello, good to see you." "It's great to be here." "This is a good store, isn't it?" "How old are you?" "That's a good age." "Which football team do you support?" The same handful of phrases, over and over again, for five minutes.

When you watch the footage repeatedly, as I have, distinct patterns start to emerge. Throughout the visit, Brown looks marginally less comfortable than a horse crossing a rope bridge, and his internal dialogue tree is starkly visible. Whenever he meets a boy of eight years old or older, for instance, Gordon briefly asks which football team they support, then chuckles, whatever the answer, before moving on to say "Hello, good to see you" to someone else. That's the way he's been programmed. (He occasionally breaks up his repetitive mantra with brief statements of the obvious: at one point, he glances at a shelf full of produce and says, "There's a lot of produce here." It almost makes you wish he was being shown around an orgy instead. Almost.)

The footage is funny, yet somehow heartbreaking. Brown looks clumsy, ungainly and chronically unsure how to behave around everyday shoppers. He reminds me of me. I can scarcely look people in the eye in supermarkets either. But I've learned to survive in demanding public situations – such as standing in front of an audience of expectant strangers – by adopting a babbling, deliberately awkward, vaguely nihilistic persona that is 50% me and 50% comic construct.

It's a shield of radioactive bullshit that hopefully provides just enough entertainment value to stop the crowd physically attacking me, and just enough psychological distance to stop me crumpling to the floor and ripping my own face off at the sheer uncomfortable weirdness of it all. ...

May 2, 2010
Help! I can't operate a thing in my hi-tech new flat
You could use the cooker’s controls to fly a US spy drone. But to make a shepherd’s pie? Not in a million years

In the olden days it was easy to make a television work. You plugged an aerial cable into the back, then bashed the top with your fist until, eventually, Hughie Green stopped jumping up and down. Things have changed. Have you tried to make a modern TV work? It cannot be done. No, don’t argue; it can’t. You have to get a man round and then it still won’t work because you have absolutely no idea what to press on the remote-control device.

I am looking now at the plipper thing for the TV in my office. It has 32 buttons on it, including one marked “COMPO/(rgb 8)”. Any idea what that does? I haven’t. I do understand the one marked “Power”, but this does not actually turn the television on. So far as I can tell, nothing does, which is why, for three years, it has been off. Frankly, for getting the news I’d have been better off building a chain of beacons.

Then there is the world of the mobile phone. Sometimes my wife asks me to answer her Raspberry and not once in a year have I been able to do so before the caller rings off. To my way of thinking, it’s not a communication device. It’s a sex toy for geeks. A laptop enthusiast’s Rabbit.

However, my life took a dramatic turn for the worse last week because I took delivery of a new flat in London. It’s been done up by a developer and fitted with every single item from every single gadget magazine in the universe. This means I cannot operate a single thing. Nothing, d’you hear? Nothing at all.

Let us take, for example, the old-fashioned pleasure of making a cup of coffee. For many years this involved putting some water in a kettle and boiling it. But now kettles are seen as messy, which is why my new flat has a multi-buttoned aluminium panel set into the wall. The idea is that you fill it with beans and the boiling water is instant. Sounds great, but the instruction book is 400 pages long and I’m sorry but if I waded through that, my longing for a cup of coffee would be replaced by a fervent need for a quart of armagnac.

The coffee machine, though, is the tip of the iceberg. There’s a music system that can beam any radio station in the world into any room. Last night I selected a classic rock station from San Francisco and was enjoying very much the non-stop stream of Supertramp, until I wanted to go to bed. This meant turning the system off and, for me at least, that is impossible.

Normally, of course, you just hit the offending electronic good with a hammer or throw it on the floor — this works well for alarm clocks in hotel rooms — but I was holding a remote-control device. Smashing that into a million pieces, I realised, would not stop the noise. I needed to find the actual box and I couldn’t. So the only solution was to fly to California ... and burn the radio station down. ...

BBC debate was a cross between Songs of Praise and Over the Rainbow
I half expected the loser to hand his shoes to Dimbleby at the end before jetting off into the sky
Charlie Brooker
Thursday 29 April 2010

If the leadership debates were supermarkets – which they're not – ITV's would be Tesco, Sky's would be Morrisons, and the BBC's offering would be Waitrose. The ITV debate felt like a 1990s gameshow whose rules required Alastair Stewart to bellow "Mr Clegg!", "Mr Brown!" or "Mr Cameron!" every thirty seconds; the Sky studio was a poky black cave cluttered with discarded British Airways tail fins and dwarfed by an immense Sky logo. With its mix of cavernous space and high-tech backdrops, the BBC debate resembled a cross between Songs of Praise and current Saturday night talent-show splurge Over the Rainbow: I half expected the loser to hand his shoes to Dimbleby at the end before jetting off into the sky on a rocket-powered podium.

The chief topic was the economy, a subject upon which I have such a poor grasp that from my ignorant perspective all three men may as well have been debating the best way to kidnap a space wraith. Cameron proposed 'efficiency savings' which seemed to boil down to a war on unnecessary leaflets; Brown boomed that this would shrink the economy by £6bn and risk a double-dip recession. Clegg didn't care what happened as long as it was fair. He proposed some kind of cross-party economic fairness committee which, as secret fellowships go, sounds about as much fun as a cardboard-licking party.

Clegg was big on fairness generally. Fairness and difference. He used so many distancing tactics – references to "these two", phrases like "there they go again", constant calls to "get beyond political point-scoring" – he may as well have thrown in a "hark at these arseholes" at the end for good measure. It's a tactic that largely works: he sometimes came across as a slightly exasperated translator sadly explaining to his fellow earthmen in the audience that these two visiting Gallifreyan dignitaries were well-meaning but essentially wrong. ...


Selected commentage:

... greendragonreprised
30 Apr 2010, 9:38AM

Love the Stargate Atlantis reference.

At one point Camerson said 1% of public spending was on leafloets from the council, or words to that effect. There speaks a man who has never had to balance a budget in his life. Not an effing clue.

If he's elected I only hope the third world lets us join because we're heading to the stone age.


Kikaboka
30 Apr 2010, 10:05AM

Exactly.

Upon seeing the polls this morning, my thoughts were:

"Did I watch a different debate? I saw a massive orange condom with dead eyes get rinsed by Clegg and Brown. When did Cameron win?"


comping
30 Apr 2010, 10:16AM

'He often wore a face like the Fat Controller trying to wee through a Hula Hoop without splashing the sides, in fact'.

Think of his sex face.

Now try to erase it from memory.

Poor Samantha.


ChocLick
30 Apr 2010, 10:25AM

Following the overblown 'bigotgate' media piss-fight, which saw him force-fed fistfuls of shame, it was vaguely impressive to see him standing at a podium instead of screaming on a ledge.

Brown actually seeemed invigorated by it all. He reminds me a bit of Tik Tok from Return to Oz and last night he was doing that spinny arm thing while the other two watched in awe.

My son sumed up Cameron last night for me "That man has a Fibby Face".


kendrew
30 Apr 2010, 10:32AM

Charlie as ever has his finger on the concealed pulse; how anyone, commentator, punter, journo can get worked up about these non events is beyond me. Politics has now beyond doubt strayed into tele storyline territory.

I mean you couldnt write this fuck stuff; Armando lannuci must be hard put trying to keep up with life imitating art. What a shower; Creature Campbell back in the swamp churning out the political hardcore for Gordon to use to titillate the dyed in the wool Labour unfortunates.

It is so depressing that these are the best that Britan can produce to run our affairs; fortunately it matters not a jot who will be in number 10 on the 7th May.


Sputnik2301
30 Apr 2010, 10:57AM

I've been to quite a few cardboard licking parties and they all turned out to be fairly cosmic.

Although that may have had something to do with what the cardboard was marinated in before hand

o_0

Looking forward to your election night coverage!


NeonMessiah
30 Apr 2010, 1:13PM

Brown, Cameron or Clegg..hmmm

It's like chosing to be hung, drawn, or quartered.

Suicide is painless. ...


Ta much, dear Glenn321

... As you can see qualitatively, our provocative dress didn't really seem to effect the frequency of earthquakes. There were 47 earthquakes on the 26th, which falls well within the 95% confidence interval for number of earthquakes (about 0 to 148).

So did our cleavage/thighs/ankles/hair increase the number of earthquakes? No.

"But Jen!" the internet cried, "what about the 6.5 magnitude earthquake in Taiwan? Surely that shows our bosoms have supernatural powers!"

Sorry to be a buzzkill - hey, I'd like magical control over plate tectonics too - but that single earthquake wasn't significant. Earthquakes between 6.0 and 6.9 magnitude happen, on average, 134 times a year. That means we had about a 37% probability of an earthquake of that magnitude happening on boobquake just due to chance alone - hardly an improbable event that needs to be attributed to an angry deity.

But just to be safe, let's look at the overall distribution of the magnitudes of earthquakes on boobquake. Did they differ from the types of earthquakes we've seen since February? These samples span from the entirety of the event - midnight at the earliest time zone to midnight at the last time zone - so the data encompasses more than 24 hours. ...

Monday, April 26, 2010
And the boobquake experiment has begun...
I won't be able to make a blog post until boobquake is over, but I will be tweeting and posting photos throughout the day. Feel free to talk about your boobquake adventures in this post*!

Check back here after boobquake is over around the world (6am EST) for the results!

*No, that does not mean I need an update of every single earthquake that has happened so far. No, the Taiwan earthquake is not statistically significant - yet. If we get many of a similar magnitude in the next 24 hours, then we might start worshipping the power of immodesty.
Posted by Jen at 12:34 AM
Labels: boobs, science, skepticism

... I just want to apologize if this comes off as demeaning toward women. To be honest, it started as silly joke that I hurriedly fired off since I was about to miss the beginning of House. I never thought it would get the attention it did. If I would have known, I would have spent more time being careful about my wording.

That being said, I don't think the event is completely contrary to feminist ideals. I'm asking women to wear their most "immodest" outfit that they already would wear, but to coordinate it all on the same day for the sake of the experiment. Heck, just showing an ankle would be considered immodest by some people. I don't want to force people out of their comfort zones, because I believe women have the right to choose how they want to dress. Please don't pressure women to participate if they don't want to. If men ogle, that's the fault of the men, not me for dressing how I like. If I want to a show a little cleavage or joke about my boobs, that's my prerogative.

I also hate the ideal of "big boobs are always better!" The cleavage joke was just a result of me personally having cleavage, and that being my choice of immodesty. And I thought "boobquake" just sounded funny. Really, it's not supposed to be serious activism that is going to revolutionize women's rights, but just a bit of fun juvenile humor. I'm a firm believer that when someone says something so stupid and hateful, serious discourse isn't going to accomplish anything - sometimes light-hearted mockery is worthwhile.

Anyway, I'm not forcing anyone to agree with me. Maybe I am failing at Feminism 101, or maybe I'm just taking a different approach.

And to the scientists who are concerned with my methods - don't worry, I fully plan on doing some statistics after the event. I know many earthquakes happen on a daily basis, so we're looking to see if Boobquake significantly increases the number or severity of earthquakes. Or if an earthquake strikes West Lafayette, IN and only kills me, that may be good evidence of God's wrath as well (I'm not too concerned). And yes, I know I need a larger sample size to make this good science. Maybe I'll include Mardi gras in my calculations.

Ta much, dear MSiegel

Tremble before Boobquake!
April 26th, 2010

If you are a geek, a skeptic, or a man, then you’ve probably heard that today is Boobquake: a day for women around the world to show off their cleavage in an attempt to debunk a fundamentalist Iranian cleric who blames natural seismic events on women dressing immodestly.

In other words, all that shaking and jiggling in the ground is caused by… well, I don’t need to belabor the point.

To be clear, I happily endorse both of these things (the cleavage and the debunking). But I do have one niggling doubt. Bear with me here…

First, last week an Islamic cleric in Iran said that all the earthquakes occurring in that country are caused by women dressing "immodestly". Yes, this same screwed-up thinking that brought us the Taliban and the idea that burning, throwing acid upon, and beheading women is all their own fault for being, y’know, women, gives us this:

"Many women who do not dress modestly … lead young men astray, corrupt their chastity and spread adultery in society, which (consequently) increases earthquakes… What can we do to avoid being buried under the rubble?" Sedighi [the cleric] asked during a prayer sermon Friday. "There is no other solution but to take refuge in religion and to adapt our lives to Islam’s moral codes."

I got news for you, Sedighi: if I were God, I’d be throwing more earthquakes your way for the way you treat women. In fact, I’d send a few thousand mini ones that open the Earth and just swallow up the twinkie clerics who say such profoundly horrid things.

Serious note: I’ve said this before, but it bears repeating: not all cultures are created equal. Any culture that sweepingly and maniacally oppresses half their population is what I would call evil. Moral relativism be damned: that kind of crap is wrong, plain and simple.

Now, the response on the skeptical and science blogs was pretty good; mockery, for the most part, which is what this kind of insanity deserves (Maria at Skepchick, for example, took this opportunity to debunk myths about breasts). But Blag Hag, a female blogger, came up with an interesting idea: Boobquake. The idea is for women around the world to show off their assets today, Monday, April 26, in an attempt to debunk the cleric. When there is no earthquake today, it will show the cleric for what he is: a sexist jerk* mired in an ancient and ridiculous mode of thinking.

I like the idea of Boobquake for many reasons. It’s an excellent display of physical mockery, which is a great way to raise awareness. It also resonates in American culture because we have so many people who are so twisted up about such things morally; I support poking them in the eye with this kind of thing as well. Also, I’m unapologetically a heterosexual man, so c’mon. ...


*You didn’t seriously think I’d call him a boob, did you?

Ta much, dear Anneliese

Brace yourself
Category: Weirdness
Posted on: April 26, 2010 9:38 AM, by PZ Myers

It's the day of the Boobquake.

It's amazing how much press this event is getting. I was going to say that if we do get a flurry of earthquakes today, the women are going to be insufferable…but even if it's an ordinary day geologically, they'll have managed to create a small mediaquake. ...

... Posted by: https://www.google.com/accounts/o8/id?id=AItOawmVT1LBhwmO9ej9LNg7a5e9d-AVJ8ezfmE | April 26, 2010 10:25 AM

Some say the world will end in boobquake,
Some say in booty shaking.
From what I've tasted of desire
I hold with those who favor boobies.
But if it had to perish twice,
I think I know enough of hate
To say that for destruction big booty
Is also great
And would suffice.
- With apologies to Robert Frost ...

... Posted by: Cuttlefish, OM | April 26, 2010 11:19 AM

Whether B or C or D-cup
It's a tempest in a teacup--
It was just a silly comment; now it's gotten out of hand
But in truth, the intertubies
Are composed of naught but boobies
(Metaphorical and literal), we all must understand. ...


Ta much, dear Anneliese

Boobquake fails to destroy planet
Jubs versus Iranian cleric: Immodesty vindicated
By Lester Haines
26th April 2010

Planet Earth has not (yet) been destroyed by today's terrifying Boobquake experiment - one Indiana student's response to Iranian cleric Hojatoleslam Kazem Sedighi's insistence that immodestly dressed women provoke earthquakes. ...

... McCreight's picture speaks for itself, and thousands of other females have thrown their weight behind the effort to either provoke a major catastrophe or prove that Iranian clerics have a poor grasp of the fundamentals of plate tectonics.

McCreight's earth-moving efforts can be followed on Facebook and Twitter.

Random Ramblings of an Insomniac: Boobquakes, dangerous squirrels, things we already knew about men

April 25, 2010

in International incidents, Random crap, mixing medications, no one thinks this is funny but me, terrible titles, this blog cures cancer, why the terrorists hate us

I have insomnia so I’m getting a head-start on National #Boobquake Day; a day when women are encouraged to wear their most immodest outfit to see if immodest women do, in fact, cause earthquakes as reported by Iranian media. Apparently this is a real concern. So I put on my most low-cut corset and used my computer camera to take some pictures but my cat kept getting in the way and I was all “WHY MUST YOU BE IN EVERY PICTURE?” and then Victor woke up and wanted to know why I was screaming and taking half-naked pictures of myself and I was all “Uh…it’s an experiment to see if my boobs can create earthquakes?” and Victor just stared at me and shook his head in confusion and shuffled back to bed and I’m all “I’M DOING THIS FOR SCIENCE, ASSHOLE“.

It was weird though because I always heard that it was girls who didn’t understand science. ...

Boobquake is almost upon us, which means the media is super interested in covering the end of the world. I just thought I'd let you know what shows I'll be appearing on in the next twenty four hours, since they're... uh, kind of huge. And if you need more motivation to watch, yes, I'll be showing cleavage - at least as much as is appropriate for TV. ...

The mullah's right: I'm a walking natural disaster
By LINLEY BONIFACE - The Dominion Post
Last updated 07:57 26/04/2010

On Friday, I was about to don my usual work clothes for a day at the office - fishnet stockings, an animal print corset, crotchless leather boy shorts and a pair of thigh-high fetish boots - when I suddenly thought: but am I just being selfish? Am I really prepared for the consequences of unleashing my gorgeousness upon the world? ...

... * Munich Hailstorm, 1986. In many ways, Iranian clerics would have approved of the 1980s. For an entire decade, most Western women's bodies were entirely obscured by jumpsuits, parachute pants, legwarmers, fingerless gloves and towering, torso-obscuring bubble perms. Owing to the malevolent influence of jazzercise, however, I once walked from my car to a gym in nothing but a stripy green and pink leotard, thus triggering a hailstorm that felled vast tracts of forest and caused millions of deutschmarks worth of damage. Mea culpa, Munich.

* Oklahoma Tornado Outbreak, 1999. No-one has ever satisfactorily explained why 74 tornadoes ripped through the American Midwest in the spring of 1999. Until now, that is. I blame that Lycra dress on the Spice Girls.

* Kolka-Karmodon Rock Ice Slide, 2002. Thanks to the boob-enhancing qualities of pregnancy, every shirt I wore in 2002 gave me the cleavage of a medieval serving wench. And so it was that a chunk of the Kolka Glacier collapsed, burying a blameless Russian village under ice and snow. Sorry about that.

* Mt Ruapehu Lahar, 2007. What can I say? It was a present. I took it off before anyone could get killed, didn't I?

I can't tell you how much better I feel, having got that off my chest. Although, of course, natural disasters aren't all we have to worry about, according to another prominent international leader. Bolivian President Evo Morales said last week that men who eat chicken not only go bald but "experience deviances in being men", whatever that might mean.

It's all very apocalyptic. If both Sedighi's and Morales' predictions turn out to be correct, I fear for the future of our species. Perhaps the world will end not with a bang, or with a whimper, but with a sluttily dressed chicken.

Boobquake to shake Bangalore
By: Priyanjali Ghose
2010-04-26
Bangalore

Bangalore girls say they would not mind wearing low necklines today to support worldwide protests against Tehran cleric who blames scantily clad women for causing earthquakes. Priyanjali Ghose reports

Boobquake, an American student's online worldwide campaign on Monday against an Iranian cleric's comment that immodestly dressed women tantalize men and increase earthquake, evoked mass global online responses and also attracted mixed reactions from Indian activists. Women in Bangalore understandably do not want to [be] left behind. ...

Heeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeyyyyyyy!!!!!!1!!!!!eleven!!!!!!

Women can have both b( o ) ( o )bs and brains!

WTF?!

Purdue senior organizes 'Boobquake' demonstration to refute imam's claims
By DAVID K. LI
Last Updated: 9:37 AM, April 23, 2010

... "Many women who do not dress modestly . . . lead young men astray, corrupt their chastity and spread adultery in society, which increases earthquakes," [Iranian cleric Hojatoleslam Kazem Sedighi] said during a prayer in Tehran last week.

"What can we do to avoid being buried under the rubble? There is no other solution but to take refuge in religion and to adapt our lives to Islam's moral codes."

McCreight, through her blog, Blag Hag, is calling for ladies to flash a little more leg (or other flesh) than usual, so Sedighi will know science stacks up well against his goofy geological theories.

"What we want is for women to wear something [Monday] that's a little more immodest than what they'd normally wear, maybe shorts or a low-cut shirt," McCreight told The Post yesterday.

McCreight, 22, says she isn't going overboard in her bra-busting protest. The genetics major plans to dress in a tank top, a shade sexier than her normal T-shirt look.

"It's a personal statement for anyone who wants to take part in what they consider 'immodest,' " she said. "To some people, showing ankle might be 'immodest,' and that'd be fine."

"The main thing is to show we don't need to put up with this kind of supernatural anti-science. Sometimes the best way to attack this is with comic mockery."

More than 45,000 presumably female readers of McCreight's Web site have volunteered to take part in Boobquake.

So what happens if the world's flesh-flashing women do spawn deadly quakes?

"A lot of my guy friends are saying, 'Well, at least that'd be a good way to go out,' " said McCreight.

Ta much, dear MSiegel

Ta much, dear Anneliese

Saturday, April 24, 2010
Changing The Pope's Itinerary

"Your Holiness, a moment please--we've made a couple changes
To the schedule you will follow while you're visiting this week.
It's really nothing, mostly--it just sort of rearranges
All the visits, cos a group or two would like to hear you speak."

"There's a group of rape survivors; there's a dozen men with AIDS;
There's two priests--a married couple--who are looking for your blessing
There's an epidemiologist, who says his courage fades
When he sees you're banning condoms when he knows the need is pressing"

"There's an hour with some "Hitchens" and another with some "Fry"
And between the two, expect to feel a modicum of shame
And then lastly, there's this "Jesus" bloke, who wants to ask you why,
You are doing all this stupid shit, and say it's in his name"



Ta much, dear Anneliese

“Doctors are reasonable people”
Senate hopeful Sue Lowden’s plan for Healthcare reform is to barter chickens for medical procedures. But you may be unsure how many chickens are required for your medical care. This handy calculator converts many common procedures into chickens so you won’t look like an idiot at your next Doctor’s Appointment. ...


Ta much, dear Anneliese

... "The inspiration came to me whilst I was dressing," announced Lucas; "it will be the thing in the next music- hall revue. All London will go mad over it. It's just a couplet; of course there will be other words, but they won't matter. Listen:

Cousin Teresa takes out Caesar,
Fido, Jock, and the big borzoi.

A lifting, catchy sort of refrain, you see, and big- drum business on the two syllables of bor-zoi. It's immense. And I've thought out all the business of it; the singer will sing the first verse alone, then during the second verse Cousin Teresa will walk through, followed by four wooden dogs on wheels; Caesar will be an Irish terrier, Fido a black poodle, Jock a fox-terrier, and the borzoi, of course, will be a borzoi. During the third verse Cousin Teresa will come on alone, and the dogs will be drawn across by themselves from the opposite wing; then Cousin Teresa will catch on to the singer and go off-stage in one direction, while the dogs' procession goes off in the other, crossing en route, which is always very effective. There'll be a lot of applause there, and for the fourth verse Cousin Teresa will come on in sables and the dogs will all have coats on. Then I've got a great idea for the fifth verse; each of the dogs will be led on by a Nut, and Cousin Teresa will come on from the opposite side, crossing en route, always effective, and then she turns round and leads the whole lot of them off on a string, and all the time every one singing like mad:

Cousin Teresa takes out Caesar,
Fido, Jock, and the big borzoi.

Tum-Tum! Drum business on the two last syllables. I'm so excited, I shan't sleep a wink to-night. I'm off to-morrow by the ten-fifteen. I've wired to Hermanova to lunch with me."

If any of the rest of the family felt any excitement over the creation of Cousin Teresa, they were signally successful in concealing the fact.

"Poor Lucas does take his silly little ideas seriously," said Colonel Harrowcluff afterwards in the smoking-room. ...

Ta much, dear MSiegel

ahem Damned amusing.

Ta much, dear Edosan

USA Translation To Jamaican
By Donmerican
Published Mar 1, 2003

... USA: Hors d'oeuvres.
JA: Ah wah dis likkle sinting yuh a gi me?

USA: I think something is wrong with Susan, she might have the flu.
JA: Lawd Gad, obeah tek up Suzie!

USA: Girl, those shoes are the bomb.
JA: Gyal, yuh roach killa dem a seh one out deh.

USA: Oh my gosh, I just broke Mom's expensive plate.
JA: Lawd mi Gad, mi bruk up Mama stoosh crackry.

USA: Aren't those pants a bit short?
JA: Yuh did a expect flood ar yuh tek yuh measurement inna wata?

USA: Why are you squeezing the mangoes like that?
JA: Lissen mi nuh, mi a beg yuh stap fingle-fingle up di mango dem.

USA: Sir, please don't throw my luggage like that.
JA: Aye buff teet bwoy, tap fling up-fling up mi bag dem suh [so] man.

USA: I wish you would quit lying.
JA: Tap di blinkin lyin, yuh ole liyad.

USA: Lift the hood off the car for me, John.
JA: Hey my yute, fly di bonnet! ...

Jesus Christ returns to Earth – punches Pope in face, leaves again

March 18, 2009 by William K. Wolfrum

Jesus Christ – a leading figure in modern Christianity – returned to Earth today after a nearly 2,000-year hiatus. The Second Coming was cut short, however, as Christ, 37, went directly to the Vatican and punched Pope Benedict XVI square in the mouth. Jesus then ascended back to heaven.

While a bloodied Benedict had no comment, Christ put out a press release shortly before his ascension.

“My children, it is not my time yet,” read the statement in part. “But someone had to give that A-hole a good face punching, and the buck stops here.” ...


Ta much, dear Anneliese

... Ominous! The coffin could contain a Roman military or religious official, but Terrenato isn't certain. This lead behemoth will soon reside at the American Academy in Rome, where researchers will attempt to divine its contents using thermography and endoscopic cameras. If neither of these methods work, the coffin may be subjected to an MRI of cyclopean proportions.

So what exactly is in this mysterious half-ton pine - erm - lead box? Here are some totally implausible possibilities:

- Cthulhu Jr.
- Cthulhu Jr.'s lunch.
- Some poor sap who turned the frozen donkey wheel with a little too much gusto.
- The groaning dregs of the first Roman zombie outbreak.
- All the wickedness of the world (with a dollop of hope).
- Apparitions who get their rocks off melting Nazis' faces.
- A bored demon who has nothing better to do other than go to Washington D.C. and make little girls drop the F-bomb.
- Candy. Just a mind-blowing, shit-ton of candy.

It's the World Cup of crisps!
Just like the real World Cup, but with more crisps and less football. OK, no football. OK, it's just crisps
Charlie Brooker
Monday 5 April 2010

Last year's "Do us a Flavour" campaign, in which the company launched six temporary new varieties, was eventually won by the hideous "Builder's Breakfast", which tasted like a fried egg in an envelope. This year, they're celebrating the World Cup by launching 15 – yes, 15 – new flavours, each ostensibly representing a different nation. I was alerted to this exciting development by an email from Walker's PR agency – I'm presumably on their radar after reviewing the "Do Us a Flavour" varieties last year. On that occasion, I went out and bought the crisps myself. This time I'd get them for free. Following a brief phone call, a courier delivered a mock suitcase full of crisps to my door. So you can view everything that follows as essentially free publicity for Walkers, albeit the kind of publicity that explicitly states that their new crisps taste revolting. Well, most of them. A couple of them are quite interesting, as you'll see in a moment: ...

... Italian spaghetti bolognese/ Brazilian salsa

Tomato time. These both taste like scratch'n'sniff pizza aroma: a lame committee meeting of watered-down herbs. The "Brazilian salsa" has a slightly more sugary feel, but otherwise I couldn't tell the difference. My face was openly sobbing by this point, mind.


Spanish chicken paella

It would've been fun to annoyed the Spanish by releasing "maltreated donkey" or "slaughtered bull" flavours instead, but no: chicken paella it is. Amazingly, these actually taste like rice. And slightly like chicken. But they don't taste like chicken paella: more like chicken fried rice. Maybe Walkers were expecting China to qualify.


Irish stew

No.


French garlic baguette

Garlic Bread diluted by a factor of approximately 10,000. So weak and ineffectual, it's almost homeopathic. They missed a trick: a novelty "snail" or "frog's legs" flavour would at least have grim curiosity value, much like . . .


Australian BBQ kangaroo

See? You want to know what these taste like, don't you? A: watery barbecue sauce with a dim hint of meat. There's no actual kangaroo in them, so the "kangaroo" is delivered entirely by your subconscious. They could call it "boiled pilot's leg" and the effect would be similar. ...



Ta much, dear Glenn321

Ta much, dear Edosan

Ta much, dear MSiegel

Ta much, dear MSiegel

Ta much, dear Edosan

Ta much, dear Edosan

True dat!

T'ank yu, darlin' Matty!

Amen.

... A snow day is a good time to catch up on everyone's blogs. I see this list was published at both Le Café Witteveen and the Rabid Atheist, but it's a meme worth repeating. I give you,

12 Reasons Why Gay Marriage Should Be Illegal

1. Homosexuality is not natural, much like eyeglasses, polyester, and birth control.
2. Heterosexual marriages are valid because they produce children. Infertile couples and old people can’t legally get married because the world needs more children.
3. Obviously, gay parents will raise gay children, since straight parents only raise straight children.
4. Straight marriage will be less meaningful if gay marriage is allowed, since Britney Spears’ 55-hour just-for-fun marriage was meaningful.
5. Heterosexual marriage has been around a long time and hasn’t changed at all; women are property, blacks can’t marry whites, and divorce is illegal.
6. Gay marriage should be decided by people, not the courts, because the majority-elected legislatures, not courts, have historically protected the rights of the minorities.
7. Gay marriage is not supported by religion. In a theocracy like ours, the values of one religion are imposed on the entire country. That’s why we have only one religion in America.
8. Gay marriage will encourage people to be gay, in the same way that hanging around tall people will make you tall.
9. Legalizing gay marriage will open the door to all kinds of crazy behavior. People may even wish to marry their pets because a dog has legal standing and can sign a marriage contract.
10. Children can never succeed without a male and a female role model at home. That’s why single parents are forbidden to raise children.
11. Gay marriage will change the foundation of society. Heterosexual marriage has been around for a long time, and we could never adapt to new social norms because we haven’t adapted to things like cars or longer life-spans.
12. Civil unions, providing most of the same benefits as marriage with a different name are better, because a “separate but equal” institution is always constitutional. Separate schools for African-Americans worked just as well as separate marriages for gays and lesbians will.


Ta much, dear Anneliese

Ta much, dear Anneliese

January 24, 2010
The worst thing about the smoking ban
Jeremy Clarkson

As we know, the ban on smoking in public places, and the misery of being forced to stand outside like a naughty dog every time you want a fag, has caused almost everyone to give up. This has had a profound knock-on effect on our social lives.

In the not too distant past, the notion of not being allowed to smoke in someone’s house would have been as alien as not being allowed to use the loo. Now, most people I know run a fresh-air policy, and those who do allow you to light up always make a huge song and dance about finding something that can be used as an ashtray. ...

... So, after the first glass of wine, you feel compelled to ask if it’s okay for you to light up, which requires as much courage as it does to ask a girl out. You are terrified that the answer will be no — not because you’ll have to go outside; you’re used to that — but because you’re English and you’ll have embarrassed your host. ...

... What party smokers don’t understand is that proper smokers don’t smoke for fun. It’s a drug. We need it. Running out of cigarettes is not an inconvenience; it’s a matter of life and death. Literally. Because in the same way that a heroin addict will mug an old lady for his next fix, a smoker will get up from a dinner table at midnight and, so pissed he can’t even walk, drive into the night to find a petrol station and more supplies. ...

... Even a preposterous advertising campaign can't dent the Tories. All over London, billboards depict Cameron looking you in the eye with an expression of genteel concern, accompanied by the slogan "We can't go on like this". To the observer, the overall effect is that of a man trying to wriggle out of an unfulfilling sexual relationship without hurting your feelings. Or maybe a boss who's called you into his office for a passive-aggressive talking-to. Would you vote for that? Not normally, no. But when the opposition is a flock of startled, shrieking hens, your range of options shrinks drastically.

But perhaps there's still a glimmer of hope for Labour. I recently watched several episodes of a high-quality US comedy-drama serial called Breaking Bad. The storyline revolves around an underachieving, debt-ridden 50-year-old chemistry teacher who discovers he's got terminal cancer. But wait, it gets funnier. Realising he has absolutely nothing to lose, he decides to become a crystal meth dealer in an insane last-ditch attempt to provide financial support for his family when he's gone. Cue plenty of pitch-black hi-jinks.

It's a good show. It's also a road map for Labour. The party's condition is similarly terminal, so it might as well go for broke by announcing a series of demented and ill-advised election pledges in an openly desperate bid to retain power. Who knows? It might just work. And if it's having a hard time choosing some make-or-break policies, I'll be only too happy to provide a list. Starting now....

Ta much, dear Anneliese, by way of dear Ar0cketman

...The one thing I knew [about Dubai] was that everything I heard about it sounded impossible. It was a modern dreamland. A concrete hallucination. A sarcastic version of Las Vegas. Dubai's skyline was dotted with gigantic whimsical behemoths. There were six-star hotels shaped like sails or shoes or starfish. Skyscrapers so tall the moon had to steer its way around them. It had immense off-shore developments: man-made archipelagos that resembled levels from Super Mario Sunshine. One was in the shape of a spreading palm tree. Another consisted of artificial islands representing every country in the world in miniature. As if that wasn't enough, a proposed future development called The Universe would depict the entire solar system.

When I first read about all this stuff, I felt a bit uneasy. None of it sounded real or even vaguely sustainable. I'd been to Las Vegas a few times and seen crazy developments come and go. The first time I visited, the hot new attractions were the Luxor, an immense onyx pyramid, and Treasure Island, a pirate fantasy world replete with lifesize galleons bobbing outside it. Roughly halfway between the pair of them, a replica New York was under construction. By my next visit, the novelty value of both the Luxor and Treasure Island had long since palled, and they now seemed less exotic than Chessington World of Adventures. Meanwhile, unreal New York had been joined by unreal Paris and unreal Venice.

But even at their most huge and demented, none of these insane monuments looked as huge and demented as the projects being announced in Dubai. Yet the novelties, while larger, were wearing thin even more quickly. Dubai's The World archipelago hadn't even opened when the same developers announced The Universe, thereby making The World sound like a rather diminished prototype before anyone had moved in.

In Las Vegas the grimy engine that paid for each new chunk of mega-casino was there in plain sight at street level: woozy drunks thumbing coins into slots 24 hours a day. Hundreds of thousands of them, slumped semi-conscious in rows like dozing cattle hooked up to milking machines. Ching ching ching, slurp slurp slurp. It was like watching a gigantic crystal spider increasing in size as it coldly sapped the husks of its victims. Ugly, but at least it made sense.

Where were the coin slots in Dubai? I had no idea. I just gawped at the photographs and was secretly impressed by the cleverness of the people who'd managed to generate so much money they could safely take leave of their senses and construct 300ft buttplug skyscrapers and artificial floating cities shaped like doodles scribbled in the margins of sanity. To my dumb, uncomprehending eyes it looked like a collection of impossible follies. But what did I know? Clearly the people actually paying for all this stuff knew precisely what they were doing. ...




I love you, Charlie.

I saw a tv show about Dubai a number of years ago and wanted to puke. I kept staring at the screen instead of changing channel, simultaneously nauseous and fascinated - like a hypnotized, rubbernecking car-crash passerby.


[Tangent:
A British woman shopping in Suthun Coliforniyah was delighted with the term "rubberneck" when I used it to describe the nearby idiot car-crash passersby, who'd naturally blocked traffic more than the accident. She said she'd never heard a Yank use it in context before, and she loved it. She mimed holding a steering wheel and sharply turning her head, moronically gawking open-mouthed while driving past and laughed.

Not quite all Yankistanisms suck.]

"Ideas are hard. Blocking them is easy."

Ta much, dear Anneliese

El Reg launches 'Skinny Fit' fashion range
Exclusive preview of international poster campaign
By Lester Haines
Posted in Bootnotes, 16th October 2009

We're delighted to announce today the launch of our "Skinny Fit" range of clothes, seen modelled here by the lovely Filippa for a forthcoming international poster campaign:

Please note that this image has not been digitally manipulated in any way. Filippa is a healthy and beautiful young woman who is naturally "small-boned", and anyone who says otherwise will find themselves on the wrong end of a fat writ. ...



Dig th' cutaway top.

Ageing isn't fun, but it's better than death, by at least, ooh . . . 8%

I discovered George Osborne was younger than me. Only by two months. But still: younger

Charlie Brooker
Monday 12 October 2009

... George Osborne's Tory conference speech last week left me in a state of shredded despair. Not because of anything he said, but because I'd just discovered he's younger than me. Only by two months, but still: younger. In a correctly functioning universe, my advanced age would make me his superior. If I deliberately knocked a glass of milk on to the floor, he'd have to clean it up. He'd be on all fours, scrubbing desperately at the floorboards while I sat back in my chair, resting my feet on his back, reading the Financial Times, occasionally glancing over the top to harrumph at his efforts, grinding my heel into his spine to underline each criticism. You missed a bit, boy. For pity's sake, show some gumption. Tongue, Osborne! Use your bloody tongue!

Wild fantasy, of course: there's no way Osborne would prostrate himself before me, lapping up my mess like a prison cell Betty. He's of grander stock than I. He's worth ten thousand hundred billion pounds, wipes his arse on back issues of Tatler, attended a public school so swish that even its coat of arms looks down its nose at you, and spends his weekends running around his estate, dressed like the Planters "Mr Peanut" mascot, wildly thrashing at the back of chimney sweeps' legs with a cane. I went to a comprehensive and have the social standing of a plughole.

But I'm resigned to the class difference. It's the age difference that rankles. In my head, senior politicians are supposed to be older than I am – for ever. No matter how much I age, part of their job is to be older and drier than me. At 38, Osborne feels too young for the world of politics. At 38, I feel too old for the world in general.

Age has been a lingering obsession of mine since I left my teens. However old I've been is too old. At 26, I felt totally washed up. At 32, I regretted wasting time worrying about my age as a 26-year-old, because now I was convinced I really was totally washed up. At 38, I look back at my 32-year-old self and regret that he wasted time with those regrets about wasted time. Then I regret wasting my current time regretting regrets about regrets. This is pretty sophisticated regretting I'm doing. That's the sole advantage of ageing: I can now effortlessly consolidate my regrets into one manageable block of misery. Otherwise, by the age of 44, I'd need complex database software just to keep track of precisely how many things I'm regretting at once. ...

October 4, 2009
Help, quick – I’ve unscrewed the top on a ticking bomb
Jeremy Clarkson

... I like a hot sauce. My bloody marys are known to cure squints. And at an Indian restaurant I will often order a vindaloo, sometimes without the involvement of a wager. So when I accidentally found that bottle of Insanity, I poured maybe half a teaspoonful onto my paella. And tucked in.

Burns victims often say that when they are actually on fire, there is no pain. It has something to do with the body pumping out adrenaline in such vast quantities that the nerve endings stop working. Well, it wasn’t like that for me.

The pain started out mildly, but I knew from past experience that this would build to a delightful fiery sensation. I was even looking forward to it. But the moment soon passed. In a matter of seconds I was in agony. After maybe a minute I was frightened that I might die. After five I was frightened that I might not.

The searing fire had surged throughout my head. My eyes were streaming. Molten lava was flooding out of my nose. My mouth was a shattered ruin. Even my hair hurt.

And all the time, I was thinking: “If it’s doing this to my head, what in the name of all that's holy is it doing to my innards?” I felt certain that at any moment my stomach would open and everything — my intestines, my liver, my heart, even — would simply splosh onto the floor. This is not an exaggeration. I really did think I was dissolving from the inside out.

Trying to keep calm, I raced, screaming, for the fridge and ate handfuls of crushed ice. This made everything worse. So, dimly remembering that Indians use bread when they've overdone the chillies, I cut a slice, threw it away and ate what remained of the very expensive Daylesford loaf, like a dog. ...



Well, it's hot stuff, yeah
An' it's everywhere I go!

- Memphis Minnie

Jennifer Aniston movies, hateful horror films, cosmetic surgery – what the US should ban
In America there are worse things to outlaw than smoking
Hadley Freeman
Wednesday 23 September 2009

The chances one gets to mangle a Charles Dickens quote in discussing American local legislation are all too rare. This, happily, is one of them. Well, it was the best of times, it was the worst of times in this tale of two cities, states, coasts, even. The big news in New York City at the moment is that smoking may soon be banned in outdoor public spaces. Meanwhile, over in California, cannabis looks set to be legalised. As we Americans (and possibly Dickens) would say, "Wait, what?"

On the east coast, tell New Yorkers about the imminent ban, and they look stunned and sceptical, a reaction my colleague Alexander Chancellor seemed to share in his column last week. Meanwhile, over on the west coast, medical marijuana dispensaries are selling cannabis to anyone with a driver's licence and a doctor's letter citing a need such as, say, anxiety. Many are predicting that next year cannabis will be "taxed and regulated" in California.

It's tempting to see this disparity as illustrative of America's tendency towards wild extremes: in one state, there's pioneering liberalism, in another there's fist-thumping legislation. Tempting, but not quite right, as California has already slapped down a smoking ban in outdoor public spaces – and, in some cities, in private housing, so smokers can't even smoke at home. Quite how you would partake of medicinal cannabis if you live in an apartment block that has banned smoking is something I am too naïve to fathom.

But seeing as New York is in a banning state of mind, there are plenty of things the city's health commissioner, Dr Thomas A Farley, could outlaw in this city – heck, in this country - that affect one's quality of life far more than the very occasional smoker in Central Park. I'm not talking about the obvious stuff. The New York Times recently asked the public for suggestions of things to ban and a popular answer was "cellphone blabber", which was both predictable and wrong. This is because the paper asked New Yorkers and New Yorkers have no concept of how brilliant their "cellphone blabber" is. My favourite overheard conversation so far came from a young woman bellowing into her Nokia in the middle of Union Square, "Just because you're gay doesn't make you king of New York!" The city would be a poorer place without this.

No, I'm talking about the more insidious toxins that the country produces in abundance and everyone then inhales passively. In a public space, you can move away from the smoke. This stuff, however, is so ubiquitous it is absorbed by osmosis. ...

The Oldest Trick in the Book
From Uncyclopedia, the content-free encyclopedia.
From UnBooks, the content-free textbook collection


The Oldest Trick in the Book is the infamous "Tapping on a person's left shoulder when you're standing on their right." This trick was first chronicled in cuneiform by the Ancient Sumerians, who lived on the windswept steppes of Mesopotamia. This chronicalisation also created "The Book" itself. In this article, we will chronologically summarise, from oldest to newest, the tricks in The Book. ...



Pure clarse from the very classy MSiegel

Ta much, dear Shell42970

Ta much, dear Foxy

Epic (Dar)win! from dear DontheFox

They forgot one!

Wile E Coyote, super geeeeenyus.

Ta much, dear Zaxy

Charlie Brooker's screen burn

If I died at the hands of a serial killer I'd probably just think, 'Ooh, how exciting, it's like something off the telly'

o Charlie Brooker
o The Guardian, Saturday 1 August 2009

For all its delusions of grandeur, TV drama rarely deals with authentically frightening subjects. Except murder, which has been so overdone it's almost ceased to seem like a real or scary phenomenon. If I died at the hands of a serial killer I'd probably just think, "Ooh, how exciting, it's like something off the telly", before enjoying a nice lie down and a bleed.

Every so often, however, along comes a drama that takes a long, hard look at something you'd rather blank out altogether, something large and menacing and beyond your control. Take Threads, the BBC's profoundly horrifying 1984 nuclear war epic, which brought Armageddon kicking and screaming into the nation's living rooms. You can get it on DVD or find it online: even today, when we spend approximately 98% less time worrying about mushroom clouds, watching it feels like being repeatedly punched in the kidneys during a powerful comedown.

It's hard to know whether shows like this actually do any good. I saw Threads when I was about 12 - too young to handle it, frankly - and it left me feeling despairing and helpless. Perhaps if I'd grown up to be a policymaker it would've been a positive influence. But I didn't. I grew up to be a neurotic bellend. ...

Ta much, dear MSiegel

Ta much, dear Zaxy

The very fabric of society is breaking down around us. What the hell is there left to believe in?

o Charlie Brooker
o The Guardian, Monday 13 July 2009


... The internet. Can we trust in that? Of course not. Give it six months and we'll probably discover Google's sewn together by orphans in sweatshops. Or that Wi-Fi does something horrible to your brain, like eating your fondest memories and replacing them with drawings of cross-eyed bats and a strong smell of puke. There's surely a great dystopian sci-fi novel yet to be written about a world in which it's suddenly discovered that wireless broadband signals deaden the human brain, slowly robbing us of all emotion, until after 10 years of exposure we're all either rutting in stairwells or listlessly reversing our cars over our own offspring with nary the merest glimmer of sympathy or pain on our faces. It'll be set in Basingstoke and called, "Cuh, Typical."

What about each other? Society? Can we trust us? Doubt it. We're probably not even real, as was revealed in the popular documentary The Matrix. That bloke next door? Made of pixels. Your co-workers? Pixels. You? One pixel. One measly pixel. You haven't even got shoes, for Christ's sake.

As the very fabric of life breaks down around us, even language itself seems unreliable. These words don't make sense. The vowels and consonants you're hearing in your mind's ear right now are being generated by mere squiggles on a page or screen. Pointless hieroglyphics. Shapes. You're staring at shapes and hearing them in your head. When you see the word "trust", can you even trust that? Why? It's just shapes!

Right now all our faith has poured out of the old institutions, and there's nowhere left to put it. We need new institutions to believe in, and fast. Doesn't matter what they're made of. Knit them out of string, wool, anything. Quickly, quickly. Before we start worshipping insects.

Ta much, dear Gladsdotter

Cleveland's main selling point: At Least We're Not Detroit.

Detroit's main selling point: At Least Our River Doesn't Catch Afire!

heh heh heh

I liked Cleveland, and I still do. :)

Numbas two, four, seven and thirteen in this slideshow are also highly recommended.

The video is completely screwed, doubtless thanks to my 56k dial-up modem.

http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/uk/8111984.stm

Quack! indeed, and ta much, dear MouthAlmighty

... Classic cars are all rubbish. My Mercedes Grosser is rubbish. The Ferrari 250 GTO is rubbish. Even a Lancia Stratos is rubbish. They are typewriters in a computerised world. So why would anyone choose to buy such a thing?

Simple. Anyone who has a classic car hates his wife.

Our friend in the Volvo P1800 is almost certainly a branch secretary of the owners’ club. He will have written to his old school magazine about the appointment and he will spend many hours at night trawling the internet for interesting Volvo titbits. This means he doesn’t have to sit anywhere near his wife of an evening.

When the club meets, he gets to go away for a whole weekend. With a bit of luck, he will break down on the way home and be forced to spend the night in a Travelodge. And that’s excellent too because it means he doesn’t have to sleep with her either.

Furthermore, by driving a 1972 mustard yellow car, he will be seen by other road users as someone a bit unusual. Perhaps someone who writes poetry for a living or is Kevin McCloud from Grand Designs. Consequently, women will give him their telephone numbers at the traffic lights. Or stop to help when he is sitting at the side of the road, exhausted from all the pushing, and looking a bit like Mr Darcy as a result.

Well that’s what he thinks. But, of course, being a classic car enthusiast, he will be wearing shoes like Cornish pasties and Rohan trousers and he will have trouble with his adenoids. Which means he won’t look like Mr Darcy. He’ll look like Man at Millets. And as a result no women will give him their numbers and soon he will stop typing “volvo” into his search engine at night and start typing “vulva” instead. ...

Ta much, dear MouthAlmighty

...One is famous on YouTube as a slightly bonkers Scot with tragic mental health issues and unruly hair, who ultimately loses and the other is a singer in a talent contest. ...



Being one quarter Highlander m'self, I am ever so grateful to dear MouthAlmighty

Nope, just two corrupt conservative parties. One is more conservative than the conservatives, what with their spying on you and planned national ID cards; and the other is more corrupt, what with their moat-cleaning and duck-house-building bills which you paid.
Screw 'em both - vote Green.

I'm so sorry about your politicos' causing that dreadful mess, United (?) Kingdom.

Once again thanks are due dear MouthAlmighty

Ta much, dear MouthAlmighty

Scarecrow mocking MPs over expenses springs up in Jamie Oliver's village
A scarecrow poking fun at money-grabbing MPs is one of nearly 70 which have sprung up in Jamie Oliver's home village.
Last Updated: 5:04PM BST 25 May 2009

The scarecrow poking fun at money-grabbing MPs Photo: PETER LAWSON

The figure is part of an invasion of novelty bird-scarers, including Darth Vader, the Village People and Margaret Thatcher, which have popped up all over the tiny rural idyll of Clavering, Essex.

But one enterprising resident saw an opportunity to make a dig at scandal-hit politicians who have been exposed by the Daily Telegraph's investigation into MPs expenses.

The scarecrow of a gardener pushing a lawnmower has popped up outside a pretty thatched cottage in the village.

Signs offering 'moat clearing', 'removals organised for flipping' and stating 'Invoices can be sent direct to Westminster if desired' have also been errected.

Local MP for Saffron Walden Alan Hazlehurst spent £12,000 on gardening costs over five years.

Farmer Peter Balaam, who made the effigy, said he was not pointing the finger at him but at MPs in general.

He said: "I don't think our local MP has had his nose in the trough but it is a dig at all MPs who have had their noses in the trough.

"We are country people, leading an honest life.

"There is so much red tape attached to our industry and then you see there's so much money just being frittered away. It's not right."

He added: "The village came up with the scarecrow competition and I wasn't particularly motivated by building one and then I thought, I'll do one with the MPs in mind.

"We have had lots of people walking by and stopping for a look. I think it's gone down well."

Victoria Cook, who helped come up with the idea for the figures as part of the build-up for next week's village fete, said the scarecrow was "fantastic". ...

... Organisers of the fete have been astounded by the response to their idea after 67 figures appeared on grass verges, in gardens and on benches in the pretty village. ...

HUGE SWASTIKA FILLS THE SCREEN. PULL BACK TO REVEAL OVERLAYED MEL SMITH, GRIFF RHYS-JONES AND PAMELA STEPHENSON AS SKINHEADS. THEY SING:

ALL
They didn't understand him
Some people called him mad
But any friend of Hitler's
Can't have been all bad.
Baronet Oswald Ernald Mosley
Baronet Oswald Ernald Mosley

SMITH
He was popular and handsome
As Richard Burton
'Cause I seen him on the box once
With his black shirt on
And though I cannot claim to be
Any great authority
As far as I'm concerned
The sun shone out of his oratory

ALL
He could have been a great dictator,
Given half a chance
But they treated him like a traitor
So he went to live in France
Baronet Oswald Ernald Mosley

STEPHENSON
And when they heard he was dead...

ALL
Baronet Oswald Ernald Mosley

RHYS-JONES
...this is what the papers all said:
(AS THEY READ, THE FOLLOWING ARE CAPTIONED. THE ACTUAL NEWSPAPERS ARE ALSO ROSTRUMED IN THE BACKGROUND)

RHYS-JONES
"Genuinely eager to champion the unemployed and other underdogs... dynamic and handsome, popular... gifted and a natural leader"
CAPTION ADDS FOOTNOTE 'The Guardian'

STEPHENSON
"Brilliant man in the Commons... compassionate and humane... a man of genuine courage and inspiring leadership"
CAPTION ADDS FOOTNOTE '- The Daily Telegraph'

SMITH
"Thought to have been the most handsome and gifted British political leader of the twentieth century ...brilliant debater, gifted, lucid and compassionate..."
CAPTION ADDS FOOTNOTE ' - The Times'

Not The Nine O'Clock News
Series 3, Show 7 (08/12/80)
© 1980 BBC - EMI Music Ltd

Ta much, dear Zaxy

We don't want madonna either. Antarctica can have it.

Ahnnnnnd *shlorp* haaaave yoooou been a baaaaaaaad little girl thisssssssssssss year?

Legalize the herb, let folks smoke it in pubs, and profits will be much ahem higher.

It's partly 'cause he's an ass, and partly because Mercury's retrograde.

After the 31st we'll all be able to speak and type again, and even simultaneously walk and chew gum.

Ain't that no shit, girls and boys.

Ta much, dear Strictlychemical

Dear Edosan sent this, saying,

"Baroque Obama."

The world will never be safe until Scrabble is banned
Board games do not bring a family closer together. They rip out its heart in a seething cauldron of rage
Jeremy Clarkson
January 11, 2009

News from the dusty bit at the back of the toy shop. In the past 12 months, sales of Trivial Pursuit have tripled, Monopoly is 13% up and Scrabble is 23 times more popular than it was in 2007.

Naturally, the sort of people who like long walks in the fresh air see this as an indicator that Britain is reverting to traditional family values and that instead of going out at night to sniff glue and stab a policeman, the nation’s children are all at home in pinafore dresses, whittling chess pieces round the fire with mum and dad. They see the resurgence of the board game as a good thing.

I’m not so sure, though. Take Monopoly as an example. To begin with it’s good fun but, like the banking and property system on which it is based, there is a flaw. It never ends. You go bankrupt so you borrow money from your mum who has loads. Then you go bankrupt again. So you borrow more money from the bank. And then, when there is no more money left in the box, you write out an IOU and keep on borrowing by which time it is Thursday, everyone is bankrupt and you have realised that unchecked capitalism doesn’t work whether it comes in a stock market or in a box. That’s if you’re lucky. If you’re not, there will be a “bad loser” around the table who will land on your hotel in Northumberland Avenue and in a hysterical rage will burst into tears and throw the board, his dog, your iron and all your dad’s houses into the fire.

In theory Scrabble is much better and yet it, too, is flawed. Well, it is for me because I always end up with seven vowels. So while my opponent is writing “underpass” across two triple word scores and claiming it’s a game of skill, I’m getting five for “eerie”. Again. And they are looking at me as though I might be a simpleton. ...


Whenever I've played scrabble, I wind up with nothing but Qs and Xs and no vowels. Were it really a game of skill, I would have been able to win instead of constantly passing. scrabble hates me, but it might hate me less if Jezza were my partner and we pooled our tiles. We'd get words like 'exequies' and 'exquisite' and 'quorum.'

Mike Thompson - Detroit Free Press
12 January 2009




Go away, Palin!
Mike Thompson - Detroit Free Press
12 January 2009