Gruts

BBC News: Rich 'must pay to save nature' [23-May-03]

Look, I'm sorry, I'd really love to help—but I honestly don't think I can afford it. And, besides, why are these charity cases always picking on me?

National Geographic: Tall As a Deer, Huge U.K. Bird Staging a Comeback [06-May-03]
…As tall as a deer and weighing up to 45 pounds (20 kilograms)—equivalent to over two wild turkeys—the great bustard is set to return to its old stomping ground.

As tall as a deer, eh? Presumably, its beak is as long as a piece of string.

From Of Moths and Men by Judith Hooper:

…The third of the great population geneticists, John Burdon Sanderson Haldane, was the brilliant, idiosyncratic, polymath son of the prominent Oxford physiologist John Sanderson Haldane. As a teenager he took up the breeding of guinea pigs with his sister Naomi…

Yes, I reckon that counts as fairly idiosyncratic.

BBC: Springsteen gig gets go-ahead [09-May-03]
Bruce Springsteen's first UK concert for 10 years will take place after a court dismissed protests from residents living near the venue in Manchester… [Trafford Magistrates Court said,] "[W]e have given a great deal of consideration to the profile of this particular artist and the maturity of the support which he attracts."

So stick that up your arses and smoke it, Trafford busybodies! Ha! Loooooosers! Loooooooooooosers! We won and you lost! We're gonna see the Boss… We're gonna see the Boss!

BBC: Trapped climber amputates own arm [03-May-03]
A US rock climber used a penknife to amputate his own arm and escape to safety after a boulder pinned him down for five days in a remote part of the western state of Utah… Officials said that his condition was serious but that he would fully recover.

Fully recover? Do you really think so, doc?

I've submitted my first photo to the strangely excellent Mirror Project.

Daily Telegraph: Great physicists 'had Asperger's' [01-May-03]

No they didn't; they just used autistic licence.

The first drop of rain in yonks, and I spot my first slug of the season. Let the slug slinging commence.

I don't believe it: two of my predictions come true in a single news story: "Fact: gnarly rhino" and "Frantic horny gal"…

East African Standard: Joy as endangered rhino gives birth [12-Apr-03]
Kenya's Meru National Park is celebrating a rare arrival of a new-born white rhino… One of the nine endangered white rhinos translocated to the park in March has given birth to a healthy calf - the first one in the park in 20 years… [P]hoto journalists who accompanied wardens in the search of the new born calf were, however, disappointed when the mother rhino vehemently refused to welcome them close to her baby.

Yes, it's a fact: a female rhino (i.e. a horny gal) has given birth and is now vehemently (i.e. franticly) defending her offspring.

So where's the gnarly? It's a bloody rhino: they're all gnarly, for Pete's sake!

…And, while I'm in the business of special pleading, how's this for yet another prediction that came true:

BBC: Radcliffe raises the standard [14-Apr-03]
In the space of 12 months, Paula Radcliffe has catapulted women's marathon running into unimagined territory. Since her debut win in last year's London Marathon, Britain's distance queen has improved her own best by over three and a half minutes. And in taking 1min 53secs off her world record on Sunday, Radcliffe ran more than two minutes quicker than Britain's legendary male marathon runner Jim Peters.

Well, she's a woman (or, if you'll forgive the expression a girl), she certainly ran, and she must have been bloody hot by the end of the race… And, to cap it all, she's British - fancy!. (Hot girl ran. Fancy! Geddit?)