Friday 14 August 2009

122 HUMANS/ANIMALS/1980’s POP ICONS

What are they doing now? Well most of them are getting together to do reunion concerts in order to save the world from the Credit Crunch. The better question is what have they been doing up until now?It is widely appreciated that the legends of 80’s pop such as Nik Kershaw, Gary Newman, Rick Astley, Phil Oakley and Joe Dolce are musical prodigies the like that has not been seen since Mozart. Indeed some commentators remark that they are better than the classical legends, the main NME magazine argument being ‘Did Wolfgang play Live Aid? No! Kershaw did.’
Having contributed a vast legacy of influential, uplifting, world uniting and not forgetting catchy tunes, the Paladins of Pop all jointly decided to give further to mankind by joining mediocre local level bands. And such is their humility they also agreed to take on the minor band roles that no one really wants.
Astley plays third triangle in Shropshire based 10 piece triangle band ‘My Lumpy Triangle’.ABC front man Martin Fry is roadie for Christian Folk group ‘The Jumping Jesus’, despite his preternatural ability to nail the tricky bit in Kumbaya. And the genius that is Nik Kershaw unpretentiously plays the drums for Dad Rock Band ‘Papa Snax’.
Unfortunately ‘Papa Snax’ is managed by evil mastermind Lucius Von Sprout. Lucius plans to infiltrate society by booking gigs at schools across Britain. Starting by playing the glorious power ballads of the 80’s they will be come the darlings of young society and the most popular band in Britain. Slowly, imperceptibly Von Sprout will change the bands direction by slipping a few subversive protest songs into the set, such as Pink Floyd’s ‘We Don’t Need No Education’ and ‘Small Town Boy’ by Bronski Beat.
Over the course of years the band will evolve into the genre of Doom Metal and mentally influence the children of the nation, without anyone noticing. If Mr Sprout has his way the traditional heart warming Nativity Play will become a gore fest, with primary school children dressing up as bleeding Jesuses and playing Obscura Arcana Mortis by Forgotten Tomb.
The boy Kershaw knows of his plan, as he was told by Saint Jimi of Hendrix in a dream. This is why he joined the band. Evil shall not prevail. No one except Kershaw knows how to stop Lucius Von Sprout. But we do know it involves the snood, seven pairs of fingers gloves and the lyrics to ‘The Riddle’.

Thursday 6 August 2009

121 Transport/Drivers/Post Office Vans Drivers

Post Office Van (POV) drivers wrote the 'Highway Cvnt', the variant of the Highway Code used by Bus drivers (see 1 Transport/Public Transport Buses).
Taxi drivers have 3 posters on their bedroom walls; Oswald Mosley, Eva Braun and Gupta Singh, Post Office Van Driver of the year 2005. A POV driver is the only thing a taxi fears.
There is no engine in the Post Office van, that burnt out long ago. Instead it is fuelled by the drivers squealing anger. The raging fury at having to do the menial task of delivering parcels while they wait for their genius to be recognised. Most POV drivers are failed magicians, novelists or golfers. They are all bagpipe playing Freemasons.
They have only one skill: to drive a van with such erraticism and speed as to cause Beelzebub himself to papper his snacks in appreciation of their dedication to mayhem.
Nothing can survive inside a POV and so God created the parcel pixie to mend the damage.
The shrill, shrieking cocophony created by the POV was voted the second most terrifying noise in the Universe by the Council of Accousticness. The first of course being Cold Play.

Tuesday 4 August 2009

120 Animals/Humans/Japanese Women

Japanese women were put on the earth by God to give paedophiles something legal to do. And it almost worked. Until 1994, most youngsters outside of a church environment could skip around quite freely in playgrounds and shopping centres without the fear of an unknown uncle offering them a lift to see his latest litter of Afghans. The soft skin, cute silliness, partiality to gym-slips and virtually hair-free bodies of Gods newest creation kept the youngster-obsessed social outcasts confined to oxygen bars in Soho and ordering their evenings entertainment directly from the internet. All that changed however in the early spring of 1994 when the rather horrid Dr Wu’s Hairy Asian Beaver website opened its domain to the masses. Such was the utter disgust at Linda Chu from Osaka’s unkempt downstairs areas that instantly all the worlds paedophiles switched straight back to their original preferences. It would seem then that the Japanese woman had no further use on the planet and Pope Geldof the 3rd was given his instructions to deal with the situation. And that would have been that, had it not been for a rather unfortunate incident in Splitlipskis Gentlemens venue in Prague the following day, where a particular worse for wear God was so impressed with the accuracy in leggy Sun Pok’s use of her creators carefully crafted reproductive organs to fire ping pong balls at St Peters head from the stage that he instantly issued a statement to the pope that he should stop the cull immediately. To this day, Japanese women continue to thrive in all areas of the world such as niche internet porn genres, all thanks to a little-known stripper in Eastern Europe and her incredible powerful vagina. Although it is rumoured that God does now admit in his upcoming autobiography ‘Bible 2: I Can’t Be Everywhere at Once You Know – HaHa’ that Yoko Ono was indeed a mistake.

Monday 3 August 2009

119 Singers/Female Singers/The World's Best

The World’s best female vocalist is 14 year old Sandra Argentaria. Streisand, Dion, Beckham: all pretenders in comparison. Unfortunately her audience is only one person; her father, M25 corridor travelling salesmen Arthur Argentaria.
Arthur took custody of Sandra in 1995 because his obsession for satellite navigation gadgetry drove his wife mad and into the local lunatic larder.
Arthur’s only skill was selling SatNav and so he had to continue his pointless job in order to provide for his family. Sandra would accompany him on his jobs learning her songs from the car stereo. Her voice grew in timbre, melody and assonance in the back of his Ford Focus, bringing joy and comfort to Arthur. Arthur soothed became a better salesman and promotion followed. As his car upgraded it seemed Sandra’s voice would upgrade too; with the Ford Focus Coupe came deeper resonance, the C-max brought diapasonal consonance and when the 5 door Mondeo Titanium X arrived she managed to nail the tricky bit in that Titanic song.
Unfortunately because of the SatNav in those cars and because Arthur was a huge fan of the Terminator films, the songs would be interrupted by the Arnie TomTom Voiceskin.
Not having the common sense guidance of a mother, Sandra would faithfully replicate Mr Swarzenegger’s guttural Austrian dialect. Halfway through Whitney Houston’s ‘I will always love you’, Sandra would sing ‘I will always take the 3rd exit on the left at the next roundabout’. Meat Loaf’s power ballad ‘I’d Do Anything for Love (but I Won’t Do That)’ became ‘I’d Do Anything for Love but I wont follow the road for another 8 miles’ Even with Sandra’s beautiful voice, Sinead O’Connor’s ‘Nothing Compares 2 U Calculating a New Route’ and Barry White’s ‘You’re The First, The Last, The Next Turning on The Right’ would lose some romantic appeal when punctuated with Arnie’s deeply terrifying voice . The world is simply not ready for Teutonic-voice punctuated, road related, instructional love songs.
Of course Sandra could be retrained and wipe the floor on X-Factor, she would become an international superstar bringing joy, exalted bliss and serenity to the world. Her mother’s sanity would be restored at seeing her daughter achieve her true potential. But Mr Argentaria’s gadget obsessed, blinkered world view prevents him from seeing the abundance available to him. Fortunately, most men are not like Arthur Argentaria, other wise the world be full of missed opportunities and in a right mess.

Sunday 26 July 2009

118 Emotions/Feeling/Love

Many think the concept of love is not amenable to one authoritative definition. Philosophy and Religion have speculated for centuries, and recently psychologists, biologists, anthropologists and neuroscientists have added to the debate and made it as complicated as a transvestite's make up bag.
Curiously this is the most appropriate definition for love. Like a Tranny Bag, love contains mystery, colour, illusion, and an enormous amount of chemicals.
The possible combinations of the ingredients are colossal. Most people's love ends up looking like Jordan (aka Katie Price); all the bits are there but deep down you still know it's a bloke. Often love is a Danny La Rue or a Lilly Savage; a passable definition, strangely attractive, but wont stand up to meticulous scrutiny.
Occasionally things can go really wrong and you get Norman Wisdom in a dress with only crudely applied blue eye shadow as a concession to femininity. This is disastrous as only the very cruel and terminally mean could kick the hapless Wisdom out on to the streets. And so this loves endures until one party dies, and we all know Norman is indestructible.

Saturday 25 July 2009

117 Humans/Jobs/Prostitution

Rimington Smyth-Knismesis is the gentleman's gentlemen and the best paid hooker in the world. Remington specialises in the needs of the urbane, well-healed individual and is in constant demand. He has exacting standards of his clientele, and they must be immaculately turned out before they can enter his chambers. His manservant, Nickleby Nonce, is there to provide last minute grooming for punters who arrive slightly dishevelled. Spit and polish shoe shining, wet shave, manicure and fluffing are just some of Mr Nonce's services.
Rimington will greet his customers with a firm handshake and a pithy comment concerning the weather. Hand relief and oral are they only utilities he supplies, and is expert in both. The whole messy business is over in seconds. His real skill lies in the mop up operation as any stray flying semen is quickly cleared and banished to his patented 'seed incinerator'. Awkward silences are smoothed over with his masterful knowledge of cricket and adroit prediction of England's chances in the latest test.
Unsurprisingly Rimington is not popular with the ladies. He thinks a clitoris is a type of fruit to be found in New Guinea.

Saturday 11 July 2009

116 Humans/Inflictions/Ability through Disability

Deaf people have a very valuable skill in lip reading. They get to 'hear' all the good swear words that are 'beeped' out of You've Been Framed. Similarly lip people can deaf read; mutes can read ears to find out what is going on. This is a very specialist skill as most mutes can hear, and deaf mutes can lip read anyway.
These skills are usually developed through cruel necessity. However, Smudge Deaf people have a very valuable skill in lip reading. They Maxwelton, a spy for MI6, developed them out of boredom. Smudge was a preternaturally gifted individual. Double first from Oxford and Cambridge in 17 subjects (per University), holder of running, jumping, throwing, shooting, swimming and snuggling World records, Grandmaster martial artist of all 1023 known styles and 2541 unknown ones, Grandmaster chess player, Grandmaster Soduku, Grandmaster Reiki and Grandmaster Flash (he DJs at weekends). Eventually, Smudge ran out of things to learn and turned his attention to ear reading.
He quickly became a Grandmaster Ear Reader and it became his obsession, discovering new principles, techniques and minutiae he took the art to new levels of understanding. One of the effects he discovered was ‘Sensory Interference from Earlobe Micro Waggle’. Whilst spying on arch nemesis Otto Von Lucifer from the obligatory position of apparent safety, he failed to notice Otto shout ‘Get that Cnut!’ point to his hiding place and the dozen armed-guards descend upon him. This was due to Otto's earlobes vibrating at very high frequency interfering with his normal sight and hearing senses. Smudge was caught and quickly dispatched, Otto being efficiently ruthless and not giving the spy the usual sporting chance to escape. This is cited as the best example of disability through ability.

Wednesday 8 July 2009

115 Humans/Speech/The Great Vowel Shift

No one really knows why or how the first vowel shifted. Some speculate that it was because of fashionable imitation of an admired or powerful person as is alleged to be the origin of the Spanish lisp. This is in fact the correct answer. People love to imitate and pretend to be something they are not.
The Spanish were lucky. Many now extinct tribes have copied some terrible and pernicious traits. The Hen people of Ailsa Craig, Scotland had a glorious and fabulous leader in Morag. She was kind, beautiful, intelligent and benevolent, but had a habit of pecking people on the head. One person doing this would have been fine, but the entire population decided to emulate their Queen and soon became extinct from brain aneurysms.
The Tabbies of Farne Island, England looked up to Peter the Cheetah for his wisdom, sense of justice and lithe graceful movements, but soon died out for copycatting his preponderance for late night wailing and territory marking sessions.
On Samson Island, UK the Barnetmen followed a priest named Michael Bolton to their deaths for spending too much time on their preposterously elaborate hairdos.
Perhaps the most senseless waste of life was witnessed on Goat Island, New York. The most admired person here was Brentford Ulysses Brentford Xavier Brentford Nylons the Third. He was the islands top Bladder Ball player and charming, generous and gallant to a fault. But Brent had the nasty habit of getting drunk after games and making animal shapes with his scrotum. The Bat, Bunny and Rattlesnake were great crowd pleasers but the Goat was his trademark. This involved tucking his entire package between his legs so that his member and scrunched sack could be seen protruding from his backside, vaguely resembling an annoyed ram. Once again the people of Goat Island imitated the wrong trait and soon the male islanders as a source of pride and prowess would walk about with their tackle trussed up. This severely damaged sperm production and they were wiped out within a generation.
If history teaches us anything (and it doesn’t) then it is to be yourself.

Tuesday 7 July 2009

114 Emotion/Controlling Emotion/Revenge

Apparently revenge is a dish best served cold. And with this in mind biochemist Kenneth Bumford paid a visit to his unfaithful boyfriend Harry Monk, armed with a canister of liquid nitrogen and administered his own ‘special frosty enema’. This was not the first time slightly dodgy advice had been misinterpreted. The surprise rimy, rectal injection caused Harry to enter a partial cryogenic suspension. Fortunately the Leidenfrost effect had Mr Monk skittering around the room on his exposed backside, like bunched drops of water on a hot frying pan, and warmed him up enough to defrost him back to life. In a freak coagulation event, bright blue ice hexagons dropped out of Harry’s chapped bottom. Intrigued by the phenomena Ken analysed the cerulean shapes at the lab and correctly identified them as the Aids virus that Harry had caught from his illicit fling. Ken had saved Harry’s life. Harry overjoyed vowed never to stray again. Ken forgave Harry and the two homosexuals adopted 7 children and lived happily ever after.

Friday 3 July 2009

113 The Bible/Gospels/The Lost Gospel of Keith

It is not well known that many gospels did not make the final Biblical cut. There are at least a dozen gospels, including the Gospels of Thomas, Peter, Nicodemus and Mary Magdalen. The reason for this was that they contained stories that were even more embarrassingly implausible than the 4 that made it past the ecclesiastical censorship.
The worst offender was the Gospel according to Keith. Jesus and Keith were great childhood friends and inseparable. He would persuade Jesus to cause mischief with his divine powers.
Nails to rubber was one of their favourites, and they very much enjoyed running away from an irate, hammer wielding Joseph, who could never quite finish the wardrobe he had been working on for years.
Speaking in Lungs abused the power of omniscience and voice throwing. ‘Cut out the Rothmans Granddad!’ could be heard emanating from the rib cage of bronchitic pensioners. This was particularly unnerving for the sufferer not least because they had possessed chests, but also because they had absolutely no idea what a Rothman was 1,890 years prior to the invention of that brand of cigarette.
Walking on Daughter would see Jesus hovering above the women at the local synagogue, especially at Bat Mitzvahs.
Water to swine was one of Keith’s too.
Keith laments in his gospel that Jesus changed for the worst when he found religion and their fun loving relationship was lost forever. He also gripes that Jesus never gave him due credit for the ideas that he later developed and used to convert people. Especially the Healing Pig Tree. Not surprisingly Keith’s writings were ‘mislaid’ along with the Women Are Better Than Men Scrolls.

Wednesday 1 July 2009

112 Law/EU Bureaucracy/Song Lyrics

After 31 December 2009, it will become illegal to make any mention of feet and inches, pounds and ounces, pints and gallons in activities relating to economics, health, safety, administration and song lyrics. This is good and bad news. The ever emotive ‘the pounding of my heart’ becomes the sanitised ‘ the 453.59237 gramming of my heart’. However the Rolling Stones are ‘pleased in principle’ at their future name change to The Rolling 6.35 kilograms, and the Italian crooner Paolo Conte will provide great hilarity as he tries to get his latin tongue around ‘Happy 30.48 centimetres’.
The band ‘Nine Inch Nails’ has had a mare. A nail is 1/16th of a yard. They are not happy and have asked if they can combine and round up to the slightly more simple 0.04 metres.
The front man of the Pogues, Shane McGowan, is furious. He is no longer allowed to say firkin and has to use 318.2 litres instead.
The esoteric post rock madness art band ‘Bushel Bovate Barleycorn and the Butt Hundred Weight Ounce Pints’ are as pleased as Punch, as their name works out to be the very cool ‘Mega Mole’, which saves them loads on printing costs. By extraordinary coincidence, Mega Mole’s imperial unit obsessed lyrics translate into beautiful sonnets that have been hailed as the modern Shakespeare and sales of their 16 concept albums are set to soar in 2010.

Tuesday 30 June 2009

111 Sport/Dangerous Sports/Extreme Explanation

Explaining the rules of cricket in Japanese to a scaffolder on his tea break is one of the most hazardous things a person can attempt. And for this reason it attracts only a limited number of danger junkies. The idea is to have the worker put down his brew and say ‘Ah-So!’ in an exclamation of far eastern enlightenment. However, ‘Ar5ehole!’ and a beating are more usual.
Extreme Explanation (EE) started with Richard Taut to help him get through the terrors of teaching at inner city schools. Dick’s speciality was ‘Agro Algebra’ and he could easily get across the salient points of quadratic equations whilst dodging phlegm and sharpened compasses. At the height of his game he could make even the most delinquent pre-pubescent understand axiomatic algebraic systems and their topological applications. This later caused Billy ‘Battery Acid’ Bateman great consternation as he suddenly started contemplating the axiom of the empty cash register as he held up the Welcome Break at South Mimms service area at junction 23 on the M25 Motorway.
Like all extreme sports there are casualties and the EE community are praying hard for Jacob Funt who attempted the ‘Pain’ gambit. The task was to explain to his wife why biologically women can endure more pain than men and so are best equipped to give birth. He undertook this 18 hours into her protracted and very unpleasant labour. The ensuing verbal torrent would have made a Regimental Sergeant Major dressed as a Goth blush, and caused severe psychological scarring to the Midwives present. It is unknown what the effect on Jacob was, due to the coma it induced. Mother and baby are doing fine.

Monday 29 June 2009

110 Humans/Needs/Drugs

Humans have been using medication to lift their spirits for millennia. More people die in one day from alcohol abuse than the combined annual deaths from pot, shrooms, ecstasy and acid. About the same number that die in 1 week from cocaine. Obviously the government’s war on drugs is working by reducing the menu of drugs available and encouraging people to take the more destructive and expensive substances.
On the plus side certain species are getting high for free. Jaguars, lemurs and bees love getting mashed. They chew bark, suck on millipedes, and even eat each other’s wax in pursuit of getting wasted. No fancy cocktails and dwarfs carrying bowls of processed coca leaves for these hardcore party animals.
In short we have forgotten how to do it properly. The media fill our heads with images of exotic bars, glamorous rock stars and gorgeous coke whores. People need a lesson from Agues McCatheter, Scotland’s premier tramp. No one knows the age of Agues, as he has always existed, but he looks about 59. McCatheter is completely resistant to the usual effects of alcohol and often uses it to sober up. His favourite tipple is his own urine; generations of Trampdom has produced a self-reliant species, his internal organs having evolved so as to turn any liquid into an intoxicant. On particularly heavy sessions Agues can be seen sobering up on the Diamond White and Tallisker at his local wine shop, Thrashers. Soon his golden elixir is flowing and mayhem ensues. On his last binge he was able to be ‘Best Pals’ with the whole of England and half of Wales, an incredible feat for a Scot. So intense was his experience that he completely skipped the ‘domestic violence’ and ‘the self-loathing, I love you, I’ll never do it again’ phases and settle nicely into reminiscing about 70’s television programs. Not since the Sag brothers (See 82 Humanity/Vanity/Plastic Surgery) has a town witness such bizarre high jinx. In 5 amphetaminesque hours he had shrunk 14 Churches and with ingenious application of super glue replaced them with 40-foot high ‘Towers of Cow’. He still had time to thrill the Turkish population of Aberdeen by eating a year’s supply of doner kebabs; the resulting ‘Tower of Salad’ exceeded the cows by 8ft. When the fight stage finally took hold, McCatheter created a mini Amsterdam in Scotland with loads of nakedness and windmills.

Wednesday 24 June 2009

109 Attributes/Bravery/Hero

People need heroes, even heroes. Geriatric 95-year-old bare-knuckle champion Sally Shingles is the hero’s hero. The British government have been trying to decorate Sally since 1914. She has so far turned down 14 Victoria Crosses, 26 Military Crosses, and a Blue Peter Gold badge. She doesn’t think she is particularly brave. She just loves fighting. When asked what was her biggest regret of World War II, she replied ‘When it ended.’ Her favourite weapons are her hands, followed closely by her tartan shopping trolley.
In the 1950’s she got cancer and simply told it to get out. She beat Winston Churchill in a ‘Who Has Got The Most Testicles Competition’. By four.
Sally’s biggest test was capturing Osama Bin Laden. Shingles was deep undercover in Afghanistan and one of the few people who look good in a Burka, so was ideally placed to attempt the honey trap. Unfortunately, Sally got carried away and took out all of Bin Laden’s elite guard whilst experimenting with the application of the veil as a deadly weapon. Fortunately, Laden was so impressed with the shapes she was pulling, the devastating moves and lightening reflexes that he instantly fell in love and agreed to become one of her house husbands. The reason that there is mystery as to whether Bin is a live or dead is because he his in fact retired. He lives happily in Kilburn with Sally’s collection of dictators and testicles. Osama’s duties are feeding the cats and tucking Hitler in at night, reading him his bedtime story while Ms Shingles is away on missions.

Tuesday 23 June 2009

108 Humans/Skills/Conmen

Good conmen never get caught. Charles Ponzi, Kilroy-Silk, Princess Di: all off to a good start, but eventually found out.
The best conman is currently 24-year-old Frank Kosher. At his birth he had the ‘Extra Milk Scam’ working, persuading the midwives in attendance to lactate, including the male nurses. By 2 he was grifting his old worn dummies, exchanging them for baby strollers and cabbage patch dolls in what has since become known as the ‘Great Mothercare Swindle’. At the age of 9 he had graduated to the long con and his version of the ‘Fiddle’ involving donkeys and circus dwarfs was raking in £20,000 a week.
When puberty struck Frank was ready to take confidence trickery to a new level and invented the Tate Stone Fence. Inspired by the audacity of the Brit Art movement of the mid 90’s, he erected a barrier outside Tate Britain made entirely from marijuana resin, coated the structure with a granite composite, erected a sign announcing ‘Stoned Fence’ and stood by dressed as a dishevelled Rastafarian policeman, complete with dreadlocks and truncheon. The critics saw a work of genius, the criminals an opportunity. Attracted to the installation by the chance to off load their stolen items at a good drug induced price they were immediately confronted by the metaphysics and warping implications of the piece. Confused they handed the items over in exchange for an ‘Evening All’. The best cons are legal cons, such as the Insurance Industry or the Royal Family, so Frank would return the items to their owners and claim the reward. He scaled the business by opening branches outside every major art gallery including the Le Louvre, Guggenheim and the Setagaya.
On his 18th Birthday Frankie retired and donated his entire fortune to charity by setting up the Kosher Foundation. KF did a lot of good work in its first year but attracted the usual hoard of embezzlers so Frank came out of retirement and taught them all a lesson by fleecing his own philanthropic enterprise, quadrupling his money in the process.
Frank Kosher is the 3rd richest man in the world and good mates with Benedict Farse (See 30 Animals/Humans/Bill Gates, 93 Finance/Money/Hierarchy of Charities, 98 Employment/Jobs/Lawyers and 104 Humans/Power/The Power Behind The Throne). Bill Gates is unaware of this relationship and the 2 friends often giggle at the futility of Billie’s situation.

Monday 22 June 2009

107 Humans/Skills/Being Moronic

On the last Monday of October in offices everywhere someone will comment that it is getting dark really early in the evenings. Less depressingly they may note that it is good to see the mornings getting lighter. In reality Daylight Saving Time has played its trick on the thick. The evenings have been getting shorter since the Summer Solstice in mid June, and only the dense point it out 4 months later. It is the same mutton flaps that wearily whine ‘not too bad for a Tuesday’ when asked about their disposition. Or as the weekend approaches ‘TFI Friday!’ thus triggering the revolting association of bespectacled gingerness with forced fun.
Why are these people tolerated, indeed positively encouraged with weak laughter as they spout their astoundingly bereft observations? By rights their irritating catch phrases and tiresome mewling should induce cathartic violence leading to their death. However, they provide an invaluable service and are in fact a spiritual lubricant.
They shake us from our dream state and make us notice sunset and sunrise, stopping
us from trying to make sense of life by solving riddles but instead make us see life, in light streaming through clouds, trees and water, in wind waving in trees and hair, and in the imagined blood pouring from their imagined broken noses.

Thursday 11 June 2009

106 Relationships/Flirtation/Philandering

Casanova was an amateur next to Carlos Portion, the Stepney born libertine. Abandoned as a child he just wanted to be loved, and people found him irresistible. At any one time he is being tailed by at least 17 private detectives, hired by Carlos’s various jealous lovers. Half of the investigators will fall in love with Carlos and report back complete fidelity, the rest would be consumed with jealousy as they witness him fraternising with their own partners.
At the height of his prowess Mr Portion filled the Royal Albert Hall. In 1997, at a Sarah Brightman concert, 5543 people came to see him: his date for the night and 5542 private investigators. Ms Brightman was ecstatic as the previous night only her mum and Andrew Lloyd Webber had turned up.
During ‘I Lost My Heart To A Starship Trooper’ Mr Portion needed the lavatory and so the only people left in the auditorium were 2 Brightmans, 1 Lloyd Webber and the surviving members of 70’s raunchy dance troupe Hot Gossip. Detectives are cunning and so as not to appear suspicious didn’t return at the same time but queued for the latrine instead. Five and a half thousand detectives fed on a diet of doughnuts, coffee and ready meals relieving themselves continuously put a huge strain on the RAH plumbing and blocked the sewers. The stench from the drains in the Kensington area caused a temporary but not insignificant drop in local house prices. The auditorium gradually began to fill up as the PI’s returned.
The sudden emptying and subsequent slow trickle of people returning to their seat that night was rather like the action of a cistern and is often cited as the most succinct criticism of any Lloyd Webber production.

Wednesday 10 June 2009

105 Construction/Building Materials/Lego vs. Stickle Bricks

Lego is a vulgar nonsense compared to Stickle Bricks. The Stickle Brick is purity and Lego the painted whore. Only a Danish company could be pretentious enough to use a French word to demonstrate what they are all about: L’ego.
When the young want to construct an aeroplane, 2 colourful plastic oblongs and an imagination are enough (1 fuselage and 1 wing). You don’t need propellers and ‘minifigures’ to get your vision across. To a creative a roof is 2 interlocking slanted rectangles, or if gifted, 4 interlocking triangles which then transforms into the Great Pyramid at Giza. A shaped plastic Lego piece complete with chimney and painted slates doesn’t come close.
LEGO boast that just three eight stud bricks can be put together in 1,560 ways. Not nearly as impressive as a single stickle brick, a fertile mind and an infinite number of creations from a simple flower to a galactic battle cruiser.
A sure sign that it has all gone wrong for Lego is the business consultancy ‘Lego Serious Play’.
Teams are invited to build metaphors of their organisational experiences using Lego. They then work through imaginary scenarios using the visual device of the models and explore ‘possibilities’ in a ‘serious’ form of ‘play’. Meanwhile the Stickle Kids are looping the loop around an event horizon and bringing Elvis back to life.
There is no such thing as Stickleland because wandering around a model village for a child is very frustrating. A kid sees a 6ft Big Ben and wants to knock it over. There are no explosions, no fires and no rockets taking off, just adults telling them not to touch. Pointless. Legoland would be much more impressive if it was designed and built by children. This will never happen because the youngsters untainted by rigid play parameters are too busy saving the Universe from the giant blue Stickle-O-Tron.

Tuesday 9 June 2009

104 Humans/Power/The Power Behind The Throne

Who is the most powerful man in the world? Bill Gates? Benedict Farse? Media Moguls? These people are in fact all puppets of Arthur Skreeb.
Arthur is 2467yrs old. He was great mates with, and shared the same bicycle as Hippocrates. Hip was the first great physician, the ‘Father of Medicine’ and a very clever man. Arthur was also good chums with Plato and could have him in an argument. In fact it was Plato who taught Arthur sophism, the art of winning a discussion even when you are wrong, but because Plato was a bit la-di-da and valued the pursuit of truth above all else, he inadvertently provided Arthur with the perfect foil with which to perfect his insidious persuasive techniques.
Hippocrates discovered the secret of immortality and told Arthur all about it. Screeb seized the opportunity and persuaded Hip that to live forever would be tedious, no one really needs more than 90 years to have a full life, and it would be wise to keep his trap shut about all the healthy living nonsense.
And so everyone was denied the right to live forever and Arthur Skreeb evolved into the repellent, insipid weasel he is today. Arthur is a shadow, the power behind the power behind the throne, completely invisible. He often gatecrashes funerals naked except for a giant 2-foot red and black hornet covering his tackle, shouting ‘I love wasps me!’ and dancing like Heather Mills at the end of a divorce, and no one notices. He has persuaded everyone to look the other way, that they are free to believe what they choose, read what they want to read, view what they decide to view. He has done all this for the sake of power.
But is he happy?
Oh yes.

Tuesday 2 June 2009

103 Humans/People/The Unluckiest Man

Born on the 13th of January 1313, Brother Unctuous Sack of the Order of Beard Huggers is widely considered to have been the most unfortunate man in history. Not blessed with looks, folk would often mistake him for a large ginger pigsty and throw scraps of left over food into him. He could be seen shambling along a path, irritably removing turnips from his cassock and picking nettle soup from his meagre beard. Another curse was extreme intelligence and he was plagued with wonderful ideas that he had no way of realising as no one would listen to a soliloquising swine shack. More frustrated than Gary Glitter on a bouncy castle, he took up the hobby of partridge pickling. Vinegar soaked fowl gave him chronic flatulence which only added to his loneliness. No one in the order could find the compassion to hug his beard and Unctuous found it difficult to hug theirs when his love was not reciprocated.
Things got worse when in an act of desperation he converted to Islam so that he could claim he was born on the 15th of Ramadan 712, a Tuesday, instead of the supposed unlucky date of his birth under the Gregorian calendar. But Lady Luck has no appreciation of common superstition and on his first pilgrimage to Mecca he became know as ‘The Man Who Gives Succour To Pigs’ and was repeatedly stoned for his association with the 'filthy animal'.
Miserable, alone and bruised Brother Sack had a rare moment of clarity and decided to embrace his talents. He invited a piglet named Elizabeth to take up residence within his person. Pigs have no prejudice and Betty loved her new home. Unctuous was ecstatically happy that something needed him and cried uncontrollably from emotion and worried that the bliss would end. The dehydration weakened his immune system and he died 13 days later from swine disease.
As ginger people rarely decay, Betty continued to live all her natural life in Brother Unctuous, happily gorging on the nutritious scrapes that folk continued to throw.

Friday 29 May 2009

102 Humans/Misunderstandings/Oxymoron

Most think that an oxymoron is a conjoining of contradictory terms. Examples often cited are United States, military intelligence or a funny Jew. All of those examples by that definition are not oxymoronic; the States are united in their love of massacring the English language, military intelligence is very clever but often misguided, and there are funny Jews; Woody Allen and Leet Fabric are just 2 fine examples, both annoying yes, but also funny.
Oxymoron is actually a chemical compound yet to be discovered. It is a combination of oxygen and a super heavy element that will eventually be synthesised called Moron. Moron is a radioactive noble gas with an atomic number of 150 and a half-life of 10-44 seconds. The Planck time is 5.4 x 10-44 seconds, the earliest time after the Big Bang that theoretical physics can describe. But as discussed previously they are wrong (see 83 Entertainment/Comedy/Urban Myths). There is only one thing quicker than Moron’s half-life, Leet Fabric opening and closing his wallet at the bar.
Moron is so named because you would have to be a total mental defective an utter Planck to try and detect it.

Wednesday 27 May 2009

101 Control/Social Management/Invisible Policemen

The quaint religion of Catholicism has 37% of the world’s population following its musings. The confessional, a small, enclosed booth, is a fabulous invention and a very powerful invisible policeman. People will enter and under the ruse that no one but God and his representative need know, sins are confessed.
However, the priests were missing 63% of the world and were convinced the flock were holding back on the really lurid stuff. They craved deeper sordid titillation and so invented the ultimate confessional, the Internet Search Engine. The suggestive ‘Go Ogle’ was the original engine, and the initial success at extracting confessions was remarkable. Not even the Spanish Inquisition could get people to admit they had a penchant for www.slutsinburkas.com. However, there was a problem, the number of closet homosexuals and cross dressers it revealed was alarming. The clergy thought it had controlled those problems by inviting known miscreants to join their ranks. Keep your friends close but your enemies closer.
The shear numbers unearthed by Go Ogle presented a very big problem. There simply was not enough room to house them all. Advertising executive Brandon O’Yeah (see 57 Pastimes/Rituals/Sunbathing) partially solved the problem by inventing New Labour and thus creating a large number of public servant and administration jobs with time consuming but wholly pointless occupations like Cornish Language Officer, Problem Otter Counsellor and Lesbian Ham Carver in order to distract them from thoughts of frocks and bottoms. Some were squeezed into the all ready over burdened entertainment industry and more still were shoe horned into Human Resource Departments. Diablo Ex Machina. Throngs of deviants are being discovered every day and the Church is despairing.
On the plus side people have become more honest.

Monday 25 May 2009

100 Puzzles/Mysteries/The Answer to the Ultimate Question of Life, the Universe and Everything

In 1977 the genius Douglas Adams deduced the answer to be 42. Leet and Fabric have since performed a more detailed study using the techniques of neutron particulation, slepton stretching and graviscalar baking and have found the more accurate answer of 42.001656. They expect the Noble Prize for Comedy for this discovery.

Saturday 23 May 2009

99 Linguistics/Conversations/Marital Arguments

Arguments can start for the silliest reasons and quickly escalate. Couples that have been co-habiting or married for 25 years can stab each other to death over whether Greenshield shopping stamps were better than Co-Op Blue Chip. The point of cataclysmic failure, the straw that breaks the feltcher’s rehabilitation attempts.
It is fortunate these couples haven’t got nuclear weapons and a real grievance. Even better that they are not generally mad. What would happen if say they had an imaginary friend to which they prayed for guidance, 10,000 nuclear warheads and some one threatening their philosophy and way of life?
The first exchange would be in the bedroom, a tactical nuclear strike right where it hurts. Not a big explosion, just enough to take out the genitalia and leave a message. The retaliation would be swift and just as brutal, in the bathroom replacing the Colgate toothpaste with chemical tactics, mustard gas in the bidet and anthrax in the Optrex eye drops. The children will then be asked to take sides with bribes of sweets and toys and the chance of going to heaven. A savage and pointless ground war will follow, involving ingenious conversions of KerPlunk! and PlayDoh Hairdresser into weapons of mass destruction, such a pity that a cheap and renewable source of fun can be used for such horror. When it is realised that neither party can win the house will be destroyed and the garden scorched, leaving nothing but a playground for the cockroaches. And all because of a trivial disagreement over collectable shopping stamps.
Fortunately no one is that mad.

Monday 18 May 2009

98 Employment/Jobs/Lawyers

Some view lawyers as cripples that hate dancers, old serpents who cannot shed their skin and call others naked and shameless, oxen that love their yoke and deem the forest deer a vagrant thing, vampires that turn their back to the sun and see only their shadows, and these shadows are their laws. But to most they are simply venal molluscs in league with the Devil.
The most repellent Lawyer is Maximally Von Lucrative the inventor of Jurisprudence- Jurisprudence. The philosophy and theory of law is Jurisprudence, and is complicated enough. Max created the philosophy and theory of the law of the philosophy and theory of law. So labyrinthine that the definition alone could make Albert Einstein’s ears bleed.
Philosophers are a subclass of magician - concept magicians, and so deserve the same scorn as magicians (see 56 Jobs/Entertainment Industry/Magicians). Lawyers are a type of magician too – word magicians, and so also deserve contempt.
Essentially Von Lucrative is a magician four times over. Ordinarily this would mean that the whole of nature and its laws would shun Max. No creature would be able to stand his presence; no light would reflect from him, no strata would support his passing, he would be banished from the Universe. However, Von Lucrative managed to find a loophole. Nature has appealed, but there is nothing natural about Law so will fail.
Max is currently working for Bill Gates trying to outsmart Benedict Farse.

Wednesday 13 May 2009

97 Entertainment/Games/Board Games

In the early 70’s before television became so unbelievably rubbish, board games were an extremely popular form of family entertainment. Ker Plunk and Buck-a-roo were the Ant and Dec of the day.
More fascinating are the ones that didn’t quite make it, the Terry Christian/Vernon Kay/Mickey from Magpie board games:
Mouse Feltch. – No one really knows what a feltch is and this game was an attempt to explain. It was like the original Mousetrap but with straws.
Ladders and Ladders – This amusement was over very quickly so wasn’t much fun. Snakes and Snakes didn’t fare much better for being impossible to finish.
Open the box – After the success of the surgery-based game ‘Operation’; ‘Open the Box’ was targeted at budding gynaecologists.
Hungry Gippos - Players have to support their incredibly large and ever-increasing brood of colourful tykes by gathering lucky heather and clothes pegs before PC Plod investigates their tarmac business.
Pat-a-Hake - like Pat-a- Cake but with fish.
Tiddlywanks – this was a game against the clock involving a twelve-inch ejaculating clockwork dwarf. Tiddlywanks has been voted the worst concept for a game ever but is never the less a collectors item.

Monday 11 May 2009

96 Entertainment/Music/Brass Bands

Brass bands used to be about colliery pit closures and harsh redundancy policies, juxtaposed with a strong undercurrent of renewed childhood romances. Since the Americans have got involved the game has changed. Now steroid abuse, exotic interpretation and horn tampering has bought the noble art into disrepute.
As usual the Americans have totally missed the point. Life is not all about being the best. A large part of life is about gritty working class unpleasantness and using a trombone as a political tool. It’s about losing your job and reclaiming your soul, smiling through coal dusted tears while contemplating suicide but instead deciding to get dressed up as a clown.
The Americans have entered a game they don’t understand. Brass Bands are more complicated than cricket and they should leave well alone.
At the recent World Brass Band Championships the Americans came a humiliating 98th out of 96. Their version of the Black Dyke Band, an all female ensemble of Afro-Caribbean decent, performed an Elgar influenced hip-hop fusion that put the girl back into Flugelhorn. The original Black Dyke band, so named after the geological basaltic vertical igneous intrusion in West Yorkshire, were horrified to see them attempt ‘Sisters Are Doing It For Themselves’ by the Eurythmics. They had no idea that the euphonium could be so versatile.

Wednesday 6 May 2009

95 Mysteries/Puzzles/Why Do Women Talk About Nothing?

Women chatter. They can talk for hours about almost nothing. Often on public transport they will gossip at one another with abandon. No information will be relayed or received by either party. It is like an idling engine, the parts are moving but the vehicle is going nowhere. It is as if they are keeping ready for something. Like a warrior will still train for conflict in times of peace, a woman trains linguistically in times of confusion.
Woman’s primary role is as a chaos maker. All the clues are there: Eve and the apple, damming the entire human race to an eternity of suffering. Boadicea gave the Romans a beating and in the process doomed the British to deep fried lard with everything instead of a healthy Mediterranean diet. Joan of Arc threw the French into shock and chaos by actually winning wars for them. Sharon Osborne enough said. And marriage.
The world is currently in such disarray that this discordant womanly skill is not needed.
It is in no ones interest to achieve total annihilation of the human race, so if it looks like the Four Horsemen of the Apocalypse are about to invite the Hoards of Hell to a barn dance, 3 billion persuasive linguistic engines will shift into gear and the soothing words ‘Leave it John, he ain’t worth it’ will be heard and the balance will shift towards peace and harmony. However, this state will never be achieved because women love shoes and chocolate. A satisfied human would only require a small piece of chocolate after a modest repast, and one pair of well made comfortable shoes. Where is the fun in that? So just as peace is about to be realised, ‘I’m happy, but something is missing’ will be uttered, sending the balance back towards war.
And so the human race is doomed to an ever-repeating pattern of war/peace/war, until someone invents the chocolate shoe to confuse women and render them speechless.

Thursday 30 April 2009

94 Employment/Jobs/Marketing

Unknown to Peter Fisher and Susan Shostakovich (see 65 Skills/Linguistic/Bartering), they had met before in 1975. At a student party they had a fornicacious fumble. The result of that union was Susan’s pride and joy Dylan. Due to his parent’s superior linguistic genes, Dylan grew up to be a genius marketer.
In 2004 at the age of 28, Dylan persuaded Sky TV to commission the impossible, a television program detailing the history of the Universe in real time. For the first several billion years the viewer will see just a blank screen and hear no sound. He sold it on the premise that in today’s frenetic world this will be soothing and extremely cheap to make. In case for some reason the subscriber misses the program he can also catch it over on ‘The History Of The Universe In Real Time +1Hour’ channel.
In a stroke of brilliance he also sold them the rights to ‘The History Of The Universe In Real Time’ series one through six. All series have a similar theme but as they are in fact detailing parallel Universes the screen displays a very slightly different black – something for the intelligent viewer to pick up on and feel rewarded by. Series 1 through 5 all approach the Big Bang in the same way, after a couple of billion years the screen will glow incandescent and a huge sonic blast will render the viewers profoundly deaf. Initially the advertisers wouldn’t go for this interpretation, but Dyl got Bose on board to give out free noise cancelling headphones with every subscription – every good TV program needs a gimmick.
Realising that after 12 billion years of the same treatment of the Big Bang the program might become a little predictable, Dylan persuaded Keiffer Sutherland to film a special middle for series 6. Instead of the usual gravitational singularity and expansion, a Russian terrorist with a nuclear bomb and Jack Bauer simultaneously spring into existence. Jack then has 24hrs to get the Universe to behave properly.

Tuesday 28 April 2009

93 Finance/Money/Hierarchy of Charities

Charities are rich. They have to be to pay all those amazingly persuasive street performers who cajole the public into ‘sparing a minute’ to look at a clipboard. Why are these workers so happy? Tackling such heavy issues as Amnesty, World Poverty or Aids and at the same time saying ‘Nice jumper mate, can I have a lick of your ice cream?’ The fickle fakers. Also bored upper class housewives run charities and just want to be paid expenses for their trouble. A champagne lunch at Bibendum doesn't come cheap.
So which is the wealthiest charity? Some say the Catholic Church, but that is a business not a charity. Some say it is an organisation that engenders the most sympathy: children, furry animals (only the cute ones though) or a horrific illness. Surprisingly it is none of these. A perverse human selection bias operates, namely the herd goes with the underdog. When presented with a list of worthwhile charities the average person will donate to the least well known, reasoning that the others are well supported and it is nice to give money to something worthwhile and unusual.
Unknown to Bill Gates (see 30 Animals/Humans/Bill Gates), Benedict Farse has a secret identity. He is also the charity Edna Stokes’ Scorpion Sanctuary. Through cunning marketing ploys Mr Farse has managed to make himself the wealthiest charity in the world. He is also the brain behind the fickle fakers, realising that people would intuitively mistrust these performers and be further persuaded to donate to the underdog. No one has ever heard of the Edna Stokes Scorpion Sanctuary but all have subconsciously donated to it. Benedict realised that he could not rely on Enya to bring in the dough and the Asian economy is too volatile and risky to win the bet. At the time of writing Mr Gates is 199.99% of Mr Farce’s income, and is looking forward to retirement. However, Benedict is pissing himself with anticipation of the moment when he can reveal the identity of Edna Stokes, and plunge Bill Gates into second place as the World’s richest man.

Saturday 25 April 2009

92 Humans/Strife/Jihad

Jihad is one of those nebulous terms like ‘fancy dress party’; it is difficult to gauge how much effort to put in. Should the Jihad be by the heart, tongue, pen, hand or sword? Should I go dressed smartly, charismatic, cleverly, normally or with the full on feathered chicken suit? The chicken suit is the lesser jihad as after the initial shock value it becomes tiresome watching a clumsy yellow puff of nonsense knock drinks over and sweat a lot.
One of the most disastrous and bloody jihads was the Girl Guide Gihad of 1956. 14-year-old genius Girl Guide Greta Gnathostomata decided to introduce a new category into the merit badge system. At the age of 8 while still in the Brownies, Greta achieved the highest award in Guiding, the Baden-Powell Challenge Award (BPCA). She then spent the next 6 years training an elite corps of high achievers. Greta and her garrison wanted more, they wanted the ultimate challenge, and with a subtle bit of interpretation of point 8 in zone 5 of the BPCA they created the Girl Guide Gihad badge. They desired to convert the World to Guiding.
All the girls had advanced badges in Camp Craft, Agility, Needle Craft and Fund Raising and most had Active Response, First Aid and Ballistics, and so were ideally equipped to wage war. The element of surprise was on their side. No one would suspect a Girl Guide. And no one suspected the first attack to be so vicious and cunning. Imagine holding a party where every guest turns up as a giant feathered chicken. Carnage.
They very nearly achieved their goal. Fortunately Marilyn Monroe decided to marry the playwright Arthur Miller on June 29th of that year, and that glamorous spectacle turned the thoughts of the Gihad from world domination to boys. If it wasn’t for Mr and Mrs Miller we would all be wearing woggles, attending Jamborees and know the words to "Ging-gang-goolie".

Wednesday 22 April 2009

91 Food/Restaurants/Michelin Stars

In recent years the celebrity of chef has become a common media phenomenon, Gordon Ramsey and his 3-star French Fusion, Heston Blumenthal and the Molecular Menu and Jamie Oliver with his Mockney Mess. All these bakers owe a huge debt of gratitude to the pioneering techniques of Bing Sinatra the worlds first and last Quantum Qook.
Bing was the son of failed pub singer Albert Oppenheimer, who wanted to give his son the best possible chance in show business. As often happens the child totally destroyed the parent’s plans and Bing became a restaurant owning physicist.
In 1984 he opened Le Manoir aux Cat Schrodinger. This establishment put the fusion into cookery. The signature dish was the Chinese influenced Special Relativity fried rice. It is well known that 30 minutes after eating Chinese food the diner will start to feel hungry again. With special relativity fried rice the diner travels back in time to the moment when he took the first mouthful, and instantaneously feels hungry again.
This was an extremely dangerous meal as it took exquisite self-control not to eat oneself to death.
Conversely, Toad in the Black Hole was popular with dieters. As nothing can escape a black hole not even light, it was extremely difficult to get the sausage and batter into the mouth.
Heisenberg’s Uncertainty Custard was a best selling novelty dessert. A normal looking apple pie would arrive covered in custard. As soon as a spoonful of custard was eaten the pie would disappear. If a piece of pie were taken the custard would vanish. You could eat one or the other but not at the same time. Ultimately it was doomed to failure as most people love a bit of custard with apple pie.
The restaurant vanished into a singularity in 1986 when the pot of String Theory Spaghetti boiled over and caused the magnetic field containing the Plasma Porridge to fail. Curiously Frank Sinatra’s ‘Let’s Take An Old Fashioned Random Walk’ was playing on the kitchen radio at the time. Perhaps parents know best after all.

Tuesday 21 April 2009

90 Humanity/Skills/Alien Abductions

Aliens are very difficult to abduct, but it can be done. They are more cunning and clever than the average human, so it takes special skills to hunt and steal them. 83-year-old Ethel Fluent is the most successful and only Alien Abductor (AA). Tired of continually being the subject of abductions during the mid 1950’s, Ethel decided to turn the tables and get even with her extraterrestrial tormentors. Her collection quickly grew and she now has well over 2 thousand specimens. She keeps them in an abandoned zoo in the town of Twatt, Orkney.
Ethel reasoned that as Aliens are an advanced race and have never been exposed to religious doctrine, they would have a very low tolerance to its effects. She then postulated that if she Christened them all Roger in an elaborate Catholic ceremony a type of Stockholm syndrome would be triggered in the alien psyche, and they would instantly become loyal and loving to her. She was right.
Ethel loves the attention and adulation, but doesn’t realise that due to the advanced alien technology and their fanatical devotion to her, the Army of Rogers she has in her possession is the most powerful fighting force in the universe.
Recently the Council of Twatt has angered Ethel with the introduction of an overly complicated household waste recycling scheme. The Roger Army sense her frustration and are mobilising. Galactic battlefield mathematicians have calculated with a 98.9% probability that a hosepipe ban in Orkney this summer would decimate Ethel’s patio plants and thus precipitate a bloodless coup of the Universe.
Ethel Fluent would be Queen of Everything.

Saturday 18 April 2009

89 Food/Cuisine/The Great British Café

A fresh cup of deep fried tea is what makes Britain great. The only place you can get deep fried tea is Bernie’s Lardorium, Shoreditch, London, where today’s special is last year’s catch of the day.
Bernard Runnymede has such a disregard for basic hygiene that Microbiologist Monthly voted the Lardorium the most toxic place on earth. It is so pestilential that not even germs can survive, and paradoxically is therefore the safest place to dine.
Bernie has eaten from his own menu for the last 20 years. His arteries furred up and ceased to function in the normal way during the first year. As the arteries narrowed his heart pumped faster. Due to the enhanced stimulant properties of deep fried tea, his heart was able to keep up and push the blood around his ever-narrowing veins at close to the speed of light. At these speeds any attempt to resolve the forces generated by the blood must take into account Einstein’s special theory of relativity, namely that the blood started to move in its own frame of reference. In other words Bernard’s blood started to move independently of the completely blocked arteries, it started to move outside his venous system, indeed outside of his body. A nebulous mist of high velocity blood shrouds him. It is moving so fast that it does not have enough time to react with oxygen in the air. This is why Runnymede is completely blue.
In an effort not to draw attention to himself Bernard wears a pair of 2 foot long black floppy ears and gave his restaurant a Beatles Yellow Submarine make over.

Wednesday 15 April 2009

88 Modern Culture/Television/Ratings

Just because many watch a television program does not make that program good. It simply implies the program is popular.
The same can be said for a religion. So with this in mind, Christianity with its 2 billion viewers is the X Factor of faiths. In second place with 1.2 billion fans is Islam, the National Lottery Jet Set. A close third is the Eastenders Omnibus Hinduism with 828 million watchers.
The least popular program is The Church of Satan with about 60,000 channel hoppers, kind of like a sinister Fred Dibnah’s Age of Steam over on UKTV Documentary.
Surprisingly the Jews are only 14 million strong, a very tiny number considering the influence they exert in the World. Judaism is like one of those programs that due to peer pressure everyone says they have watched and enjoyed but in reality watched for 5 minutes and turned over because it was tedious, Deal or No Deal with Noel Edmonds.
Having no faith at all is very popular. Encouragingly, 775 million people out of the 6 billion in the World have decided to switch off the telly and do something more constructive.

Monday 13 April 2009

87 Entertainment/Cruelty/Pantomime

‘He’s behind you!’ shout the simple kids.
‘Why are you shouting? It is clear that the man is acting. He knows the whereabouts of the other man. He toys with you’ shout the clever kids.
‘Why do I fancy Peter Pan? He looks really cute in that tight fitting green outfit. Am I homosexual?’ Shouts the confused boy going through early puberty.
It was this last question that made Quentin Length pen the Butch Panto. Horrified by his strange feelings not only for Peter Pan but also for Buttons, and fearful of the retributions from his father Tarquin Length the founder of The Barnsley Supremacists if he ever suspected his son was a lifter, Quentin set about creating the most masculine Pantomime.
Named ‘Puss in Boots’, it is about a Royal Marine platoon forced to march several hundred miles in ill-fitting Wellingtons only to arrive at the Dragon’s den with chronic foot seepage. Unfortunately Quentin’s imagination wasn’t well developed and the play consisted of just 2 scenes; 1hr of a group soldiers dressed in lederhosen and rubber boots marching to the tune of ‘In the Navy’ followed by 30 minutes of taking off boots and fighting a glamorous feathered Dragon called Devine.
Also unfortunately for Quentin the play was confused as the work of Elton John, who after the success of Tommy, had written a musical similar to but not as good as ‘Puss in Boots’. The critics claimed it as an important iconic masterpiece. An allegorical work: the hour of monotonous marching symbolised the struggle to come to terms with homosexuality, the taking off of the boots represented the release felt when a homosexual was allowed his true nature, and the fighting the flamboyant Dragon was railing against the stereotypes of society.
Fortunately for Length the Panto flopped at the box office. The lack of animals, men in drag, women looking sexily boyish and double entendre were to blame.
The play is still performed at specialist gay theatres and is secretly his father Tarquin Length’s favourite work of art.

Saturday 11 April 2009

86 Mysteries/Puzzles/Who is Leet Fabric?

Leetington Fotheringale Fabric (born October 27 1993 in Weston-super-Mare, Somerset, England) is an English comedian and musician best know for being excellent.
As a boy, Jesuit Nuns educated Fabric, at the Order of the Loose Cassock. He was expelled for the humorous defacing of school property: he had decided to make all the statues of Jesus Christ historically accurate and painted them black. His talent for comedy was only matched by his expertise in music and by the age of 13 had formed and fronted a total of 20 bands, all called ‘Keith’s got Asthma’, and to this day he remains the only person to have 19 simultaneous number one hits in Britain. All the ‘Keith’s got Asthma’ bands got one, apart from ‘Keith’s got Asthma’ which due to the corruption of the music business Madonna’s ‘Touch My Lady Giblets’ was awarded instead.
He has co-written a total of 42 sitcoms, amongst them the multi-award winning KantCant, it’s equally successful sequel CantKant, and not forgetting KantKant and CantCant. When asked about the inspiration for these comedies his reply was, ‘Always thinking of Kant mate’.
Recently Fabric has decided to give even more to society and founded the Leet Academy for Underprivileged Gays and Homos (LAUGH). The academy’s work is primarily to teach these unfortunates how to commission proper programs for television, radio and theatre, but also to keep them off the streets.

Tuesday 7 April 2009

85 Mysteries/Puzzles/Why Does the Plug Always Get Caught in Furniture When You Try to Move the Lamp?

The Coven of Dampness, a group of Satanist from Shropshire, invented the BS1363 British 3 pin plug in 1963. Their chief tenet was ‘Liberation through Irritation’, and so not being ‘Hammer House of Horror’ hardcore type Satanists, they only wanted to cause a little mischief. The original design was to cause mild annoyance to people positioning electrical appliances around the home. However they forgot to take into consideration the dreaded house move. Consequently the BS1363 has been responsible for more failed marriages and relationships since the invention of the secretary. Several attempts by the coven to recall their product of destruction brought them in to negotiations with the Cabal of Carnage, a small group operating out of Basildon. CoC had created the lazy tongued celebrity chef Jamie Oliver, and had been grooming him successfully to become the next anti-Christ. After a promising debut Jamie soon started to go off the rails and began doing unexpectedly good deeds. The final straw was his school dinner initiative, potentially the most beneficial nutritional program to mankind. Despite this monumental stroke of goodness, Jamie remained really annoying, with his mockney accent and scooter twat act. CoC got wind that CoD were trying to recall the BS1363 and saw an opportunity. They decided they could take responsibility for each other’s creations.
Since taking responsibility for the 3 pin plug, CoC have issued a statement to the various comedy acts and ‘Universal Truths’ Internet sites: ‘The most painful household incident is not stepping on a 3 pin plug whilst wearing socks, it is having your genitalia burnt by hot metal. We are developing ways to make nude ironing more popular.’
CoD have bought Mr Oliver a lifetime subscription to ‘Cockney Lambretta Monthly’, and successfully persuaded him against having speech therapy.

Wednesday 1 April 2009

84 Humans/Struggle/Wealth

A good proportion of attention is spent on the accumulation of wealth. Darwin hinted at the reason why, Dawkins explained it best and Stanovich, being Canadian, made it complicated. Genes created a machine in order to carry them around safely and propagate, so they achieve a kind of immortality. They gave this machine some basic but delightful urges in order to make sure the machine obeyed. Unfortunately the gene didn’t bank on the machine becoming sentient and rebelling against its plan. Money is a powerful aphrodisiac and most people want a bit of pump action. We are now at a stage in our evolution of extreme conflict.
Gene: Go on, have a baby.
Body: No way! They hurt. I won’t get any sleep, sex stops, my hair goes grey, I’ll be tired all the time and I will die prematurely.
Gene: Ah go on, please. You will become more socially accepted, credit rating will improve, you’ll be invited to a lot of dinner parties and you get to drive a Volvo.
Body: Oh OK that sounds nice and safe and I can still have fun, right?
Gene: Good, good, very good.
Later.
Body: Gene you absolute utter sh1t! Look what has happened now!
Gene: Muuhahahaha! I win again.
Thanks to divorce, people will evolve to a stage of agreement. The genetic program will be modified so people can spend time finding the ideal partner, the type of person who doesn’t mind years of hardship and strife raising offspring in order to ensure their lovers immortality.

Tuesday 31 March 2009

83 Entertainment/Comedy/Urban Myths

The Internet is full of urban myths. One of the most successful is about a lawyer who bought an expensive and rare box of cigars, then insured them against fire. A month later, after smoking all the cigars, he filed a claim against the insurance company, stating that the cigars had been destroyed “in a series of small fires”. The insurance company refused to pay, so the lawyer sued and won $15,000. The lawyer cashed the cheque and was then arrested by the police on 24 counts of arson fined $24,000 and sentenced to 2 years in prison.
The story is clearly ridiculous. People want to believe this is true not because clever crimes deserve clever consequences, but because they believe lawyers are loathsome repellent creatures one notch up the evolutionary ladder from Magicians.
The French actuary Pense LeWeekend penned the most complex urban myth. In 1952 bored with his life of mundanely assessing risk, and inspired by the enormous number of French people that claimed they had been fighting in the Resistance during World War 2, LeWeekend set about creating the Joan of Arc lemma. Briefly stated: ‘The whole pub can not be fighting, as someone has to be shouting ‘leave it John he ain’t worth it!’’ From this he argued it was Frances duty to be the girl holding the handbags and the rest of the world to do the fighting. His complex equations and intricate propositions beguiled France’s penchant for the multifarious, and soon this myth became ingrained foreign policy. A wise man once said that the truth is simple, if it wasn’t everyone would understand it, and Pense had proved him right again. It is for the same reason the entire subject of Quantum Physics is completely wrong, anything with that amount of paradox has to be. All those Nobel Prizes should be returned and Professor Hawking told to stick to the British Telecom adverts.

Monday 30 March 2009

82 Humanity/Vanity/Plastic Surgery

Whether it is to repair the injuries of an unfortunate accident or simply to make your aging wives backside look a little less like Christopher Walken’s chin, plastic surgery is as much a part of life today as watersports or golf. You might be surprised however to learn of the rather diverse beginnings of this trade.
Edgar and Boris Sag, 18th century experts in skin graft technology and bone growth were known throughout the whole of Bavaria for their rather unprofessional but harmless practical jokes; horse burying, house painting and even wife bending were not uncommon stories to come out of the tranquil surroundings of the Alps around the festive period.
In October 1756 however, Edgar, the elder of the two brothers, took the practical jesting one step further when one night, whilst Boris slept, he surgically attached fifteen cadavers penises to his brothers back thus creating what he called ‘the worlds first cockosaurus’.
Hardly best pleased with the new addition to his upper torso, Boris spent the next three months camped at the local Jewish children’s hospital sewing together a twenty-five metre long streamer of discarded foreskin before drugging his brother one snowy January night and creating his own ‘Woolly Todgephant’. Not to be outdone and getting rather tired of dipping other peoples penis shavings into his soup, Edgar went back to work, bolting emu feathers to his brothers arms, plucking out all his hair and boring a thin hole in the top of his head creating what he labelled the worlds first ‘flying shaved vaginador’.
Utterly fed up of the brothers antics, the major of the town Klaus Bonk banished the two surgeons into the mountains, defying them ever to return.
What happened to the brothers over the next few years is a bit of a mystery but one thing is that known is that their combined remains were uncovered in 1942 by the Nazis but were dismissed as one of Reverend Hesston Cambridge’s crazy dinosaur inventions, and burnt.
Their story still continues to this day in folklore however, with the elders of the district telling their grandchildren that if they behave badly and they listen very carefully, they can still hear the noise of the vaginador swooping over the mountains looking for new material for its streamers.
As a result, children rarely misbehave in Munich these days.

Saturday 28 March 2009

81 Entertainment / Practical Jokes / Stink Bombs

Contrary to their promise, stink bombs do not resemble the scent of general flatulence, but instead reek of a rather metallic combination of bleach and dead cats. Stink Bombs were first invented as an aphrodisiac for the self-tormenting people of South Shitty in Herefordshire, the idea being that if you could still find your loved one attractive when they smelt of dead animals, it was a match made in heaven. The plan backfired over several generations though as only the offspring of the sickest self-tormentors were born, and in a rather speedy evolutionary process started to see their noses seal up at birth. The few last remaining south shitters all now secretly live in abject squalor in an area sealed off from the rest of the country, others have moved to Stoke on Trent.
The largest stink bomb ever was recorded in the now-nonexistent town of Palar, fifty miles south of Brighton, where local magician Band-aid Nobbs, sick of his obvious genius being ignored, sat next to the air-conditioning outflow pipe of an old peoples home for thirteen years storing the collective stench in a compressed air-tank in the back of his magimobile. Upon his death he insisted that his assistant, the lovely Angela Donk, transfer the entire tank into his lower colon before sealing all available orifices up with sticky tape. Although underestimating the power which lay in his slowly self-digesting corpse, he correctly calculated the time it would take for the sticky tape to give and, as the vicar laid the first crumbs of earth upon Nobbs' coffin, the once-magician exploded at such force that half of east Sussex was obliterated and washed away into the sea. Ships still avoid the deadly Nobbs Point due to tales of large brown nappy-shaped sea-monsters viciously feeding on hapless fisherman, although the area has recently overtaken Blackpool as the most popular holiday destination of the sealed-face aqua-people of west Staffordshire.

Wednesday 25 March 2009

80 Entertainment / Games / Tramps

The tramps we see wander our streets today are the unfortunate victims of an incredibly ambitious tournament dating back to the 1950s. The game was created by the Lampo brothers, Ned and Jed, notorious drinkers and wealthy inventors of the John Merrick comedy dildo. The game started when they realised that, no matter how much alcohol they could ingest, it simply wasn't up to the standards they required, so spent five years developing the remote controllable tramp-chip, the superAlcho-MD4. The chip was simply inserted under the skin of an unsuspecting commuter and they became fully under the control of the brothers from their nerve centre in their house in Chiswick. The first example of this was local chartered accountant Donald Peep who, on his way back from work to his wife and children, was 'tramped' by the brothers at Charing Cross tube station and before he knew it found himself drinking super unleaded straight from the pump at South Mimms service station on the M25. Each brother then took control of 100 tramps and battled for alcoholic supremacy of London. At the last count, Jed was slightly ahead after Ned had made a disastrous gamble on tramping a group of Fields of the Nephelin fans outside the Good Mixer public house in Camden, causing two of the younger members to instantly explode, spraying the locals with cider and blackcurrant. Over the next two weeks of goth-fuelled alcoholic chaos, four of the group were arrested for trying to drink an entire number 25 bus in the middle of Tottenham Court Road, one received life imprisonment for viciously eating the spleens of three members of an all-girl cyber-metal band during a gig at the Dublin Castle, two became church ministers and one narrowly missed out on the job of chief programming commissioner at channel 4. The battle continues.

Tuesday 24 March 2009

79 Humanity/Achievements/The Moon Landing

Many conspiracy theorists believe the initial moon landing to be a pre-fabrication to deal America’s domination as a world force at a time of national civil unrest in the country. This is indeed the case. Due to an error in judgement by Buzz Aldrin two seconds prior to the Apollo's ascent into the first level of stratosphere, the craft caught the side of small Russian satellite and plunged back towards earth, crash landing in the beer garden of The Blacklayers Tache travellers rest in High Barnet. Correctly realising they were in big trouble back in Houston, the three astronauts decided to get drunk, play some Beatles numbers on the local up right piano and film Buzz drunkenly jumping around in his spacesuit in the car park. They were very surprised when they returned to base to find out that everyone was celebrating their monumental success, so decided to keep quiet.
Strangely, the first actual moon landing was made in September 1974 by Englishman Piers Skag, who managed to do a full descent, landing and moonwalk in his homemade craft, the Romford Feltch VI. Taking some of the most incredible pictures to ever be seen by man, Skag was hugely disappointed on collecting his pictures from his local Snappy Snaps to find 360 photos of fat drunken middle aged women pouring over a rather hideous looking stripper in an Irish working mans club.
Skags pain however, was nothing compared with that of Mrs Maureen Dockerty of the Shankley Road, Belfast as she tried unsuccessfully to explain to her newly wed husband why, on her hen party the previous week, she had ended up jumping around in a big white suit whilst waving an English flag in what looked like a north London car park.

Saturday 21 March 2009

78 Control/Censorship/Word Filters

In these days of technological advances one of the most annoying things is censorship. Particularly word filters. People now have to deliberately misspell words in order to get a feeling across. This has inadvertently thrown up some excellent words. Cvnt for example gives the original word an air of antiquity sort of a Roman feel, old vagina, and an altogether more potent insult. B0ll0x has added concupiscence, the word actually looks like a big pair of testes hanging between an erect penis. Tw4t has added gravitas, the extra 4 acts like a suggestion. The expression ‘W4nker, Ar5e, 6astard’ has a scaling quality that implies increasing annoyance. \!/ actually looks like what it is meant to imply. And people have become more creative in the use of euphemisms and conjured such delights as ‘ What a chutney ferret’, ‘She had a face like a decorators wireless’ and ‘I crashed my yoghurt cart into her spam purse’ in order to scale that firewall.
It is good to see that human creativity has once again thwarted the attempts of mind control and produced an exquisite subverted language that has more depth, texture and expression.

Tuesday 17 March 2009

77 World Peace/Moral and Spiritual Harmony/Tourettes

Humans have always been subject to one of 3 codes: that of nature, society and religion. These codes have never been in harmony and therefore to quote Diderot, ‘there has never been a real man, a real citizen, a real believer.’
If everyone suffered from Tourettes syndrome this would be different.
We would all be real people, as everyone would be completely natural and speak what was exactly on the mind.
Everyone would be a real citizen, because the world population would be in no doubt of where they stood vis-a-vis their fellow denizens.
And there would be believers of sound, reasonable ideas. When a religious spokesman comes to your door and asks you to believe in a book that instructs you to embrace a God that is prone to genocidal rages and that temporally suspends the laws of nature in order to turn water into wine, fish into more fish, and allows someone to walk on water instead of getting a boat like normal people, the usual polite response is to say
‘Sounds interesting, I’ll take a look’ while thinking ‘Why can’t he create peace and abundance for all, instead of all this David Copperfield type frippery’. If you were a Touretto you’d shout ‘Fcuk off, Cvnt, b0ll0x!’ He in turn would reflect and agree that it didn’t make an awful lot of sense and thereby end holy wars and the oppression of millions.
There would be no pointless assignations by snipers as their positions would be easily revealed by the yelps, and the accuracy of the shot would be compromised by the twitches. No burglaries, muggings, confidence tricks in fact most crimes would be hampered. Eventually a state of peace and harmony will be achieved as everyone realises each other’s positions and beliefs, and the outbursts and profanity will cease, as there will be nothing to react against. Bliss.

Saturday 14 March 2009

76 HUMANS/SEX/MONOGAMY

In the zoological sense most species are not monogamous. Ethologists claim that only 1 to 2 percent of all species are, and this is probably an over estimation. It was once believed that 90 per cent of all avian species were monogamous, but the harsh reality is that the female chooses a male to help build a nest and feed the chicks. While he is off collecting twigs, she is most likely off collecting sperm from other males. This is the full meaning of the expression ‘John, shut it! You are acting like a bird.’
None of the simian species are faithful. Orang-utans are fat and lazy so appear to be, but the truth is that they cannot be bothered to lift a finger. The Chimp, a close relative, practices a form of group marriage, the original Mormon. Our very closest relative, the bonobos, indulge in perpetual and indiscriminate orgy. So next time you get caught having a drunken snog at the Christmas party, point out to your other half that Great Uncle Bonobo would have gone through the entire HR department and persuaded Accounts to keep score.
Out of the 850 recognised human societies, 83 percent practice polygyny. Clearly, monogamy is not natural. But is it desirable? Some religions believe that only proper sexual relationship involves pairing inexperienced virgins, who then control and own each others sexual expression and needs until death do they part. This idea has caused such suffering, frustration, and broken hearts that it has to be considered the work of an evil genius. The best sex is the sex you have with the one you love. For most this is a post-polygamous monogamy, for some this is masturbation.

Wednesday 11 March 2009

75 HUMANS/CONFLICT/DICTATORS VS. ROMANTICS

Two Gods, having a day off from being Omnipotent, got to wonder who would win a fight between the artistic and intellectual movement of 18th century Western Europe and the Dictators of the 20th century. They set the battlefield by telling the Romantics that the Dictators were just about to destroy a work of extraordinary artistic beauty and intellectual merit, and told the Dictators that there was a bunch of poofs over there calling their absolute rule and cult of personality into question.
Right from the off, Shelley committed suicide at the futility of it all. This sent the Lord Byron into a murderous rage, and he took out Robert Mugabe and Idi Amin with a copy of ‘The Triumph of Life’. He then proceeded to pen such a devastating attack on the character of Stalin, that Joseph lashed out at his nearest and dearest and had Hitler and Thatcher executed.
Bizarrely Simon Le Bon had got himself mixed up in the bloodshed. Evidently one of the Gods had got Romantics confused with New Romantics. Simon was unsure which side to take: the single ‘The Chauffer’ could stand proudly next to Blake’s Jerusalem but years of survival in the music business had taught him a thing or two about genocide. The Gods quickly realised their mistake and had him replaced by the Marquis de Sade. De Sade got busy torturing valuable strategic information out of Noriega, but Castro retaliated with a Cuban cigar smoke screen. Khomeini and Hussein upped the ante by introducing propaganda in the form of persuasive religious arguments, tying the Romantics in philosophical knots, until Rousseau got them thinking about the ‘noble savage’ and reinstated reason.
The war lasted 20 blood stained lace, leather jackboot scuffed years. Finally the only people standing were Oscar Wilde and Pol Pot. Pol was a massive fan of ‘The Picture of Dorian Gray’ and proceeded to pour praise and adulation on Oscar. Being a crafty butcher (he takes his meat around the back) Wilde slit Pot’s throat. The Gods knew all along that the pen is mightier than the sword, particularly when it has been sharpened and shaped like a dagger.

Tuesday 10 March 2009

74 MUSIC/MUSICAL INSTRUMENTS/THE VAGINA

Before man became infatuated with erotica the primary use for a vagina was as a musical instrument. Procreation was a very tepid third. Various forms of vaginal instrument were available, from the stringed instrument to the percussion.
The stringed instrument was a very delicate affair, involving the ladies pubic hair being strung over the echo cavity and plucked very much like a wee harp.
The wind instrument was perhaps the most difficult to play, relying on exquisite breath control to blow into a catheter that would direct the air over the opening and extraordinary muscle mastery to alter the shape of the chamber and thus produce the different notes.
The Percussion Vagina was not for the faint hearted and special stamina training was required to handle some of the more energetic compositions at the height of Vaginal Music’s popularity.
The Kunt Kazoo was the most popular. The ladies of the orchestra would lay back wearing nothing but wax panties into which the Kunt Kazooist would hum. Kazoo solos could go on, and this is the reason that the popularity of the music died out. No one wanted to train for the more difficult vaginal disciplines when the kazoo was such a pleasure. And no one really wanted to sit through 3 hours of humming and moaning in the name of high art.

Monday 9 March 2009

73 HUMANS/CELEBRITY GLAMOUR/FATWA

Ever since Salman Rushdie was sentenced to death by Ayatollah Ruhollah Khomenei in 1989 his career has gone from strength to strength. Far from pushing up the daisies, the sale of his mediocre book bloomed. He now has a super model girl friend, attends swish parties, mixes in the right circles and is a regular feature of Hello magazine. Consequently, celebrities have eschewed the stalker and adopted the Fatwa as the glamorous accessory of choice.
It is extremely easy to get the Islamic Fatwa, just draw attention to some of their beliefs. Soon the Christianity Fatwa will be as commonplace thanks to the handling of Geopolitics by George W. Bush.
The most prestigious and valuable Fatwa will be the Buddhist. Very peaceable people, how exactly do you upset them? According to Morrissey on ‘Stop Me If You Think You’ve Heard This One Before’, it is by getting them to smash their gonads into a bicycle crossbar. But he is wrong. He didn’t think it through.
Sprinkle Super Strength Regaine hair loss treatment on their bald pates. The constant itchiness of fast growing hair and the annoyance of having to shave every half hour will interfere with their meditation. Soon whole monasteries of incensed monks with scarred bleeding scalps will be making Osama and the boys look like a Barry Manilow tribute band. The Four Noble truths will be become two: suffering and the cause of suffering. The term Dalai Lama will be changed to Dalai Camel, altogether a more belligerent animal. Buddhist teachings will still focus on ‘detachment’, but with an emphasis of limbs.