I just thought of a really crap joke:
Q: What do you call a lazy mountain guide?
A: Shirka Tensing.
Ha-ha-ha-ha-ha-ha-ha-ha-ha-ha-ha-ha-ha-ha!
Dream?
BBC:
On the contrary: I think you'll find Michael Howard has something of the nightmare about him.
Woof!
Conversation with my friend the farmer yesterday:
(Me) "I think I'll light a fire tonight."
"We had a cracking fire last night. It was really roaring."
"They're good when they're like that."
"It was so hot, I burnt the cat."
"What, you're not going to try to get me with that old joke!"
"What old joke?"
"How do you make a cat bark?"
"I don't know, how do you make a cat bark?"
"Throw it on the fire and… WOOF!"
"Ha-ha! That's a good one! No—I really burnt the cat."
"Serves it right. Did it get too close to the fire and a spark hit it?"
"No, it was dead, so I put it on the fire. It went up a treat."
"You're a sentimental, old fool at times!"
"I thought you'd be pleased."
Cathedral Game
I was in Winchester last weekend. I did the full tourist bit: King Arthur's Round Table, Jane Austen's rectangular grave, King Canute's box, the statue of Alfred the Cake.
While visiting the cathedral, I decided to kill time by playing my favourite cathedral game. This involves finding a large, echoey section of the building, then suddenly barking out a single, loud, strangulated cough, as if choking on a cat. As the echoes die down, I start looking around, as if trying to work out where the cough came from, while the cathedral's ushers frantically scour the vicinity in search of the irreverent trouble-maker (or the poor soul choking on a cat).
I must say, the Winchester ushers (unlike their slow-coach colleagues at Ely, Durham and York) were certainly on their toes. Two of them were on the scene in seconds. I only managed to throw them off my scent by pointing out a suddenly remarkably interesting memorial plaque to Jen, while she informed me that I was a fucking idiot.
Glutton
SeattlePi.com: A guide to veg-friendly living in the Northwest
The book includes a list of famous vegetarians, such as Charles Darwin…
That's the Charles Darwin, founder member of the Gluttons (a Cambridge University-based gentlemen's club, dedicated to the consumption of unusual animals), who is known to have eaten (amongst all things wise and wonderful) a putrid owl, giant tortoises, a large, flightless bird previously unknown to science (since named Darwin's rhea), guanacos, and—brace yourselves—a puma foetus.
That's one hell of a strange vegetarian.
(Mind you, aren't they all?)
Discrimination
And another thing about the gents' toilets at work: today I noticed a discreet little sign stuck just above the mirror saying SHAVERS ONLY.
As a proud beard wearer, I wish to state that I resent being discriminated against in this way.
I suppose this is how it all started in South Africa.
A moving experience
The lights in the gents' toilets at work come on automatically as you enter. If you stay very still for a while, they turn off. If you jump up and down, they come on again.
Yes, my friends, the toilets at work have motion detectors.
In Odds We Trust?
Guardian: Odds on that God exists, says scientist (08-Mar-04)
A scientist has calculated that there is a 67% chance that God exists.
Unfortunately, I have calculated that there is a 100% chance that this so-called scientist is wrong.
Let's face it, either God exists or God doesn't exist. In other words, there is either a 100% chance or a 0% chance that God exists—and there's nothing that this scientist or anyone else can do to say which is right.
Mind you, I know which one I think satisfies Occam's Razor.
Untitled
BBC: China ends Great Wall space myth (12-Mar-04)
China is changing official thinking about a common misconception relating to its best-known ancient site. For decades, elementary schoolbooks have maintained that the Great Wall of China could be seen from space - but now the books are being rewritten. The Wall, China now admits, cannot in fact be seen from the heavens - a fact proved by China's own astronaut Yang Liwei, who became the country's first person in space last year.
…Which is pretty odd, because, when I was on the Great Wall of China, I could definitely see space.
Pseud vs. Dude
Pseud: Andrew O'Hagan (LRB: 04-Mar-04):
… D.J. Enright offered a nicely disgruntled definition of postmodernism in Injury Time, his posthumously published memoir: 'All it suggests,' he writes, 'if that isn't putting it too strongly, is that something comes after something else - as indeed most things do.' What Morrissey does as a lyric-writer and a singer is to make this coming-after a matter of homage and nostalgia, as well as a matter of self-revelation, for him and then for his audience.
Dude: Thomas Jones (LRB: 04-Mar-04):
I never was a boy scout. Not because I had anything against camping, making fires, tying knots, reading maps, climbing trees, playing at soldiers or pretending to be a spy, but because the idea of doing all those things in uniform, under the supervision of a middle-aged man in short trousers, threatened to take the fun out of them.