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.