While watching a film with Jen last week:
J: Is that a tortoise?
R: Yes.
J: I didn’t know tortoises have tails.
R: Well they do.
J: Well I didn’t think they’d stuck one on just for the film!
The tortoise’s tale
11
Monthly Archives: June 2005
Immaculate misconception
Talking of pub lunches, yesterday Stense and I paid one of our occasional visits to our favourite second-hand bookshop in Llangollen, followed by lunch at a nearby pub. The food was excellent, and delightfully light in the salad department.
Now, as you might already appreciate, I’m not one for religious mumbo-jumbo and all that crap, but half way through my omlette and chips, the strangest thing happened: I experienced a holy vision!
Until now, I have poured scorn on people who claim to have seen the face of someone else on some floorboards, but yesterday my scepticism was rent asunder like a temple curtain: I saw the Virgin Mary eating a vegetarian lasagne!
It must have been the Guinness. It took me almost two seconds to realise my mistake.
A freak alignment had taken place: Stense had inadvertently positioned herself in such a way that a brass plate on the wall behind her appeared to form a halo around her head. She looked for all the world like one of those totally cool religious icons you get in some of the more ostentatious sects of the Christian religion (St Herman be praised!).
I absolutely insisted Stense let me take a photograph for posterity. Compare and contrast:
Stense
Iconic Virgin
I’ll bet this is how Lourdes got started. This could give a major boost to the Llangollen tourist industry.
Toss the salad
Hey, forget about boring old Wimbledon Fortnight, I’ll tell you what’s a really great British institution:
The pub lunch.
British pub lunches are, on the whole, pretty damn fantastic—particularly when accompanied by a pint or two of our world-beating, unchilled, unfizzy ale. Wonderful!
And they’re such good value for money too: a few quid for some unpretentious, tasty, wholesome grub—can’t say fairer than that, can you? I wouldn’t want to eat pub lunches every day, but they’re great as an occasional treat.
If anything, pub grub seems to have got even better over the last few years. I think we have the TV chefs to thank for that: we’re more interested in quality food these days, and the publicans have risen to the challenge. Very well done indeed!
But I fear we’re in danger of taking things a bit too far:
It started with the menus. In the good old days, you could order plain old chicken in a basket from the laminated menu at your table. Nowadays, there’s the inevitable Specials Board, offering you pan fried chicken (well, what else are you going to fry it in?) and marmosets of lamb with saffron and broccoli spears, or some such bollocks. Do us a favour!
Then came the family-friendly pubs, where stressed-out parents can tuck into their vegetarian chillis and get pissed on their half pints of lager shandy, while their little brats use the pub as a bloody playground. Next (thanks, presumably, to the influx of kids) came the Health Nazis, with their “Oh, you can’t smoke in here, there are people eating”. Remember where you are folks: you’re in a bloody pub.
But worst of all is the salad.
Don’t get me wrong, I like salad. I like salad a lot. I like it in sandwiches, and I even like it as a main course (occasionally). But what I most definitely do not like is being given salad with my fish and chips.
SALAD DOES NOT GO WITH FISH AND CHIPS! IN FACT, SALAD DOES NOT GO WITH ANYTHING HOT (WITH THE POSSIBLE EXCEPTION OF LASAGNE)!
And they have to put the totally unnecessary salad in those stupid little bowls, don’t they? WHERE DID THEY COME FROM? And have you noticed how some pubs have started putting the salad bowls on your plate, rather than to the side of your plate (where you can conveniently ignore them)? You know what that means, don’t you, boys and girls? That’s right:
FEWER CHIPS!
The sneaky bastards!
Have you ever stopped to analyse a pub salad? I have. Do you know what the main costituent of a pub salad is?
Cress!
WHAT SORT OF PERSON IN THEIR RIGHT MIND EATS CRESS IN ANYTHING BUT AN EGG SANDWICH?
And then there are the onions, and that weird purple stuff that you’re not sure what to do with, and the lettuce with the ragged edges. WHAT THE HELL ARE THEY ALL ABOUT?
And while I’m at it, WHAT SORT OF TWISTED PERVERT PUTS GRATED CARROT IN A SALAD? AND HAVE YOU EVER TRIED EATING BLOODY WATERCRESS WITH A KNIFE AND FORK? IT CAN’T BE DONE!
Whatever you do, don’t get me started on those godawful mixed vegetables with their NASTY, NASTY LITTLE CORNS ON THE COB!
Such a pretty house, such a pretty garden
BBC: Radiohead’s album scoops accolade
Radiohead’s album OK Computer has been named the best of the past 20 years by US music magazine Spin.
A very satisfactory result. OK Computer is undoubtedly one of the great albums of the last 20 years—although, for what it’s worth, my favourite Radiohead album happens to be Amnesiac.
Actually, I have a theory about OK Computer. It’s rather profound. Do you want to hear it?
I think OK Computer is about mowing the lawn.
I came up with this theory last year as I was mowing the lawn while listening to OK Computer on my personal minidisk player. I can’t explain why it’s about mowing the lawn, it just is—although I will say that the bit in Paranoid Android where Thom Yorke sings:
Rain down, rain down
Come on rain down on me
From a great height
From a great height… height…
Rain down, rain down
Come on rain down on me
From a great height
From a great height… height…
Rain down, rain down
Come on rain down on me
is a bit of a dead giveaway. Thom Yorke doesn’t want to be mowing the lawn either.
No one knows who they were, or what they were doing
I hate the summer solstice. I hate it for two reasons:
- it means that summer is already on its way out, even though it hasn’t even got going yet;
- it means that a whole pile of new age idiots, and people with made-up religions (is there any other kind?) will be up at the crack of dawn to clamber over England’s most famous ancient monument:
Guardian: Thousands celebrate solstice at Stonehenge
An estimated 21,000 people today gathered at Stonehenge to watch the sun rise above the ancient monument on the longest day of the year…
Before dawn, King Arthur Pendragon, 51, the head battle chieftain of the British Council of Druids, led a troop of warriors—all anthropology students from the University of East London—in a dance honouring mother nature, whose effigy was held aloft and illuminated by fiery torches.
That’s right, some bloke who thinks he’s King Arthur and a bunch of bloody anthropology students have been titting around at Stonehenge. I bet they were carrying bloody crystals too, and feeling each other’s auras.
I wouldn’t mind (well, no, actually I would), but the so-called Druidic religion was invented by a bunch of misguided Victorians who fell hook, line and sinker for the invented poems of the invented ancient Gaelic bard Ossian (real name, James Macpherson). The real druids died out in Roman times (with a lot of help, it has to be said, from the Romans). We don’t know much about them (other than what Tacitus wrote, and he was hardly impartial), but one thing we do know for absolute certain is that they didn’t bloody well build Stonehenge—that was waaaaaaaaay before their time.
So what gives these modern-day impostor-druids and other assorted weirdos the right to descend en masse on one of our most iconic landmarks and act the goat?
Answer me that.
Medieval
Did you hear about the weird religious cult in a land to the east, whose members were convinced that one of their initiates was possessed by a demon? In a bizarre ritual, they bound the young woman to a religious totem pole, and left her gagged in a cold room without food or water for three days. They were, they said, trying to drive out evil spirits.
The young woman died from asphyxiation.
No, this wasn’t something that happened centuries ago, before people knew any better. It happened last week in Romania. The young woman suffered from schizophrenia. The cult was the Romanian Orthodox Church.
When questioned, the priest responsible stated:
God has performed a miracle for her, finally Irina is delivered from evil… I don’t understand why journalists are making such a fuss about this.
At the Cheese Shop, part 2
“Hello, I’d like to buy some of your strongest cheddar, please.”
“Well, we’ve got this stuff from the Isle of Mull. It’s got a real kick to it.”
“You mean it has a kick like a Mull?”
“…?”
See also:
Meet me in the crowd, people, people
Right, I’m off to Old Trafford Cricket Ground to see REM. If anyone else is going, I’ll be in the corner, in the spot… light.
Postscript: Excellent concert, despite the pair of pissheads behind us who knew all of the words, but none of the tunes (I had to have a word with them). The Zutons were great in support too.
Erm… excuse me, this is total bollocks, isn’t it?
BBC: New model ‘permits time travel’
If you went back in time and met your teenage parents, you could not split them up and prevent your birth—even if you wanted to, a new quantum model has stated.
Researchers speculate that time travel can occur within a kind of feedback loop where backwards movement is possible, but only in a way that is “complementary” to the present.
In other words, you can pop back in time and have a look around, but you cannot do anything that will alter the present you left behind.
Hands up who thinks this explains anything.
The present you leave behind includes a (continuous) past where you didn’t go back in time. So, as of, say, a week last Thursday, you had never gone back in time. So how come this past that you go back to doesn’t have to be “complementary” with a week last Thursday too? But, to be complimentary with a week last Thursday’s history, you can’t have gone back in time… HANG ON, WHY AM I EVEN DISCUSSING THIS NONSENSE?
Of course, we know the real reason why the BBC chose to publish this silly story today: it’s the end-of-series, Dalek™-laden grand finale of Dr Who tomorrow.
Can’t wait! See you behind the sofa!
Brogging
BBC: Microsoft censors Chinese blogs
Chinese bloggers posting their thoughts via Microsoft’s net service face restrictions on what they can write. Weblog entries on some parts of Microsoft’s MSN site in China using words such as “freedom”, “democracy” and “demonstration” are being blocked.
But those canny Chinese bloggers have already thought of a get-around. Instead of writing the word freedom, they’re going to write French.
Time for a cull
Sunday Times: Dangerrrr: cats could alter your personality
They may look like lovable pets but Britain’s estimated 9m domestic cats are being blamed by scientists for infecting up to half the population with a parasite that can alter people’s personalities.
The startling figures emerge from studies into toxoplasma gondii, a parasite carried by almost all the country’s feline population. They show that half of Britain’s human population carry the parasite in their brains, and that infected people may undergo slow but crucial changes in their behaviour…
The [Stanley Research Medical I]nstitute has already published research showing that people infected with the toxoplasma parasite are at greater risk of developing schizophrenia and manic depression…
[Professor Jaroslav Flegr of Charles University in Prague] also discovered that people infected with toxoplasma had delayed reaction times—and are at greater risk of being involved in car accidents. “Toxoplasma infection, could represent a serious and highly underestimated economic and public health problem,” he said.
Would we put up with this shit from any other species?
Remember the recent British foot and mouth crisis? Millions of animals that were no direct threat to human beings were slaughtered. So why treat these parasite-infested, bird-butchering moggie vermin any differently? They are a menace to society, and to the environment.
Someone should do something.
See also:
- A Modest Proposal
- Saving 120 million birds and animals with one stone
- Miaow again!
- Alergy
- Feline stressed?
- One lump or two?
- Ruddy hell!
(Do you spot a theme developing here?)
The word is out / You’re doin’ wrong / Gonna lock you up /Before too long… Who’s bad?
Or, to put it another way:
Billy Jean is not his lover,
He went to bed with her little brother…
Yes, that’s right, Michael Jackson has moonwalked out of court an unconvicted man. Who’d have thought it? I certainly didn’t: I had a Wacko Jacko Stir Tally all set and ready to go.
Hey-ho!
Anyway, talking of Michael Jackson, I somehow forgot to tell you about the following conversation which took place between my dad, my mum and I late one Tuesday evening last November:
D: That Michael Jackson was a talented lad.
M: Yes he was.
R: Pity he turned out the way he did—barking mad and everything.
D: Isn’t it sad about his brother?
M&R: Which brother?
D: Merrill, or something like that—he’s wheelchair-bound these days.
R: Is he?
D: Yes. I saw him on the telly.
M: No he’s not! You’re thinking of the Osmonds!
Top that
CBS News: Pizza Ransom Paid At Aussie Prison
Officials bought 15 pizzas to secure the release of a guard who had been held for 42 hours by inmates at an Australian top-security prison, police said Monday.
Pieces, I said we wanted pieces, you drogo!
Putting the ‘mental’ into fundamentalism
BBC: Pope rejects condoms for Africa
The spread of HIV and Aids in Africa should be tackled through fidelity and abstinence and not by condoms, Pope Benedict XVI has said.
What a pity Pope Benedict XVI’s parents didn’t exercise a little more sexual abstinence.
This deranged old fundamentalist will—just like his predecessor—be personally responsible for the deaths of hundreds of thousands of human beings in African.
Fucking nuts, if you’ll pardon my Anglo-Saxon.
I’m no Christian, but the Jesus they tried to indoctrinate me with at school—the one who let his disciples eat wheat on the sabbath [Matt: 12:1]—didn’t have much time for outdated religious dogma: “Don’t be so fucking stupid,” he would have said (if you’ll pardon His Aramaic), “wear a bloody condom!”
Here endeth the lesson.
Moving the goalposts
BBC: Liverpool get in Champions League
Liverpool have been given the chance to defend their Champions League crown after Uefa handed them a place in the first qualifying round for next season.
The Reds beat AC Milan in last season’s final but, because they finished out of the Premiership’s top four, were not guaranteed entry in 2005–2006. Uefa’s executive committee changed its rules on Friday to allow Liverpool in.
As a (not particularly ardent) Liverpool fan, I am delighted at this news for one very good reason: the prospect of the first ever all-Merseyside Uefa Cup Final, with Liverpool beating Everton 6–5 in the final minute of extra time (having knocked out Manchester United, Arsenal and Chelsea en route).
The dream result.
Smug? Us?!!
Guardian: Retail chains ‘cloning’ UK towns
Britain’s town centres are rapidly becoming indistinguishable, losing all sense of local identity as they are taken over by global and national chain stores, economists warned today. A report from the New Economics Foundation estimated how far the nation’s high streets had been taken over by a phenomenon it called “clone town Britain”…
The most extreme example of a clone town was Exeter in Devon, the foundation said. On a scale awarding points for the number of independent outlets and range of specialist shops, it scored 6.9 out of 60. At the other end of the scale, Hebden Bridge in West Yorkshire scored 48.6. This was the best example of what the foundation called a “home town”—one retaining its individual character.
So, there you have it: not only is Hippie Central the Sapphic capital of Britain and the venue of the World Dock Pudding Championships, it’s also the number one home town in the country.
Couldn’t agree more.
Hypocrisy
The hypocrisy of some of these so-called environmentalists is breathtaking. One minute they’re demonstrating about felled trees in Reddich and telling us we should stop buying 4x4s; the next they are spotlighting entire cities. How green is that?
Someone should do something.
Comforting
From an email to Stense:
…All of which brings me to the Second Law of Thermodynamics. Yes, yes, I know I texted you over a week ago, promising that I would email you to explain how I’d finally worked out why I find the Second Law of Thermodynamics so comforting, but I’ve been too busy celebrating my discovery:
I was walking through Liverpool the other week, when I saw some of those ranting religious nutters you occasionally see trying to convert passers-by to their cause by acting like total dickheads in public. There were three of them on this occasion, and one of them was holding up a banner which read:
THE INFIDEL AND THE LIAR WILL BURN IN THE ETERNAL FIRE Now, as a bearded infidel (and occasional barefaced liar), I suppose I should have felt worried or even threatened by this assertion. But then I had a Road-to-Damascus-type revelation, and I realised that everything was going to be all right:
The Laws of Thermodynamics are, perhaps, the most fundamental laws of physics. They underpin so much other stuff, and have been tested to such an extent, that it is inconceivable that they could suddenly turn out to be wrong. Einstein might eventually turn out to have been wrong (as, to a limited extent, did Newton before him); heresy of heresies, Darwin might one day turn out to be wrong (although, clearly, he won’t); but the Laws of Thermodynamics are totally safe. And here’s the nub of it:
The very concept of an eternal fire is completely at odds with the Second Law of Thermodynamics: you can’t have things that burn forever; everything eventually wears out until (ultimately) we reach the heat-death of the universe. So there is NO SODDING WAY I’m going to burn in any so-called eternal fire!
You see, I told you the Second Law of Thermodynamics was comforting.
See also:
Oh sod right off!
BBC: Open University in image makeover
The Open University—often seen as the late-night home of bearded men in tweed jackets—is to undergo an image makeover as part of a £2m campaign…
People with beards do not require an image makeover, thank you very much.
A series of glossy TV and print adverts, designed for a “sophisticated marketplace”, begins on Sunday…
And people with beards require no lessons in sophistication from those who choose to mutilate their chins on a daily basis.
To “dispel myths”, they will feature a variety of ages, races and genders.
…but, presumably, they will not feature be-tweeded men with beards.
Would it be socially acceptable for the Open University to besmirch and discriminate against any other minority group in this way?
Define ‘pedantic’
Whoa! Hold on a second!
The other day, I quoted the Israeli Ministry of Defense website. Here’s the quote again (with my emphasis added):
Israeli Ministry of Defense: Israel’s Security Fence
Terrorism has been defined throughout the international community as a crime against humanity. As such, the State of Israel not only has the right but also the obligation to do everything in its power to lessen the impact and scope of terrorism on the citizens of Israel.
Not wishing to be pedantic or anything, but is the Israeli Ministry of Defense seriously claiming that the State of Israel is a crime against humanity? I don’t believe that’s the official government line.
I’ll shut up now.