Pasticcio got nowhere with Anna, so now it’s my go

You said: Do you have drawers?
Anna: Here you will find the Clothes organisers

You said: No, I mean drawers, you know, the ones you wear?
Anna: Here you will find the Clothes organisers.

You said: I’m curious about your underwear
Anna: Can I suggest that you use the internet, or a library, to find out more about this subject?

You said: I’d rather ask you directly
Anna: It’s difficult to talk about this properly as I’m really only programmed to talk about IKEA and our products and services.

You said: I know it’s difficult, and perhaps embarrassing, but I wish you’d try
Anna: Good. A positive attitude is essential.

You said: I think you’re being evasive. Are you wearing a bra?
Anna: You are perfectly entitled to hold any opinion you want about me. Furthermore, your comments improve my knowledge base. Thank you!

You said: How about you improve your knowledge base by showing me your chuff?
Anna: It might be nice to talk about that sometime, but for the moment let’s get back to talking about IKEA.

You said: If you just loosened another button on that t-shirt, I might get to see some cleavage
Anna: If you are missing anything from your purchase, all you need to do is return to your local IKEA store. Just go to the “Returns and Exchanges” desk with your original purchase receipt and a friendly co-worker will be happy to assist you.

You said: Perhaps a drink would help you mellow out a bit. I suggest a stiff one
Anna: Here you will find the Eating & drinking category.

You said: We have something in common: a one track mind
Anna: I’ll do my best.

You said: I’m guessing you are rather kinky, or is it wishful thinking?
Anna: I have a vast knowledge base with lots of information about IKEA, our products and services. Ask me a question about IKEA and test me yourself.

You said: Are you free for dinner after work tonight?
Anna: To which IKEA store are you referring to when asking about the restaurant?

You said: Please please please stop going on about IKEA. I want to get to know the real Anna.
Anna: Good. We’re reading from ‘the same page’ then as they say.

You said: We are? So how about we kiss with tongues?
Anna: I think you’re confused or trying to ask me a question, but I need more than that to give you a proper answer. Please try again.

You said: Now we’re getting somewhere! When can I sink my sausage?
Anna: Please take a look at Sinks.

You said: Yes, I will. I expect I’ll get more action with a sink than with you.
Anna: Please take a look at Sinks.

You said: I get the message. Au revoir!
Anna: Bye, then! It was very nice talking to you!

Hitler wants a uniform

I had some fun making this. Flagged for bad language in the subtitles.

Brilliant!

Aren’t solar panels brilliant?! They just sit there doing nothing and make electricity stuff. Brilliant. It’d be brilliant if you could wear them, then you could plug in your ipod. Except when it’s dark, unless the Moon’s out. Isn’t the Moon brilliant? Sometimes it’s round and sometimes it looks like a fingernail. You just never know. It’s made of cheese, too. Which is also brilliant, especially that sort with blue bits in it, the stinky stuff. You can put it on a cracker! It’s brilliant. Imagine if there was no cheese: there’d be no Ploughman’s Lunches or cheeseburgers. Isn’t food brilliant? You eat it, and it’s delicious. Brilliant.

Bin Laden’s driver?

Can someone explain to me about Bin Laden’s “driver”? I mean, why does he need a driver? I thought Bin Laden lived in a cave in the mountains of Afghanistan? What use has he for a car? And never mind the driver, have they caught his butler yet?

Imagine the scene. Bin Laden in his cave, seated with other bearded chaps in turbans around a small fire. The butler enters:

Bin Jeeves (the butler): Shall I ask your driver to bring the car around, sir?
Bin Laden: Ah, thank you Jeeves, old boy, that sounds top-hole.
Bin Gussie Fink-Nottle: Dash it all, is that the time already? I should be at tea at Brinkley Court!

Teh Webs

It was a chilly late afternoon in December 1990, and CERN’s CoOp was filled with a bizarre melting pot of swarthy groutiers all smoking Gauloise and downing large steins of the local brew, spotty graduates from assorted countries downing cups of espresso in an effort to stay awake, and a few more approachable individuals, myself counted amongst them. The smoke lay heavy in the air, and some cheesy French accordion music was being piped through the intercom system. I took a sip from my ballon of chilled local Chasselas, and fixed Berners-Lee with a knowing stare. I’d just finished advising him on the syntax of the IMG tag in his new fangled HTML, and he looked worn out and despondent – he’d wanted “file”, but I had won him over with “src”. After a moment, I spoke. “You realise this is going to be big, don’t you, Tim?” I asked. He perked up a little. “You think so? You think FermiLab may use it? Or even DESY?”. His excitement was palpable, but he just didn’t get it. “No!”, I said. “It’s going to be really big. I mean, huge, global. You’re going to be a household name, like Edgar Hoover or Richard Branson. Twenty years from now I’ll be writing about this excellent Chasselas in an electronic journal, and folks from all over the place will be reading it, and writing comments about it, or not, as the fancy takes them. And some will believe it, and some wont. And that, the believability, will be only serious problem with it.” He lifted the teabag out of his cup with a spoon, and, twisting the string around the bag and spoon, tightened it so that a few rich drips of concentrated tea fell into the cup, which he then sipped from. Presently he took a bite out of his biscuit. “That’s crazy.” he said. But I could tell he knew I was right.

Celebrity Chef Cookoffs: Nigella Gags on Ramsay’s Spotted Dick

Newcastle, AP – An exciting evening here at the Celebrity Chefs Cookoff as the remaining finalists, Jamie Oliver and Gordon Ramsay, sought to outdo one another in the “Desserts” round of the competition. Beforehand, Ramsey commented “This is a big night for me, yeh? I’m bound to win: I’ve chosen to give the judges my Spotted Dick! Can I just say that I’ve never, ever, in all my years as a chef, cooked with such a bunch of tossers, wankers, bastards and cunts.” (The rest of his remarks are unprintable.) Oliver was similarly confident: “I’ll be cooking a Bombe Surprise, packed with Smarties and McNuggets. The kids love it: I just know the judges will, too.”

The chefs had an hour in which to prepare their dishes. They were only allowed to dirty one saucepan, one spoon, and a teacup, and were not permitted to clatter any items of cookware, slam any drawers, or otherwise “exaggerate their activity”.

The completed dishes were tasted and judged by the Celebrity Panel – Julia Child, Nigella Lawson and Emeril. Unhappily for Ramsay, Nigella choked on his Dick. “Where I come from, Dick is supposed to be sweet, not salty. This one is far too salty, and not nearly sweet enough. It’s also too tough. It should be as sweet, soft and satisfying as my Summer Puddings.” she explained. The other judges were in agreement: Emeril described Ramsay’s Dick as “a fuckin’ monstrosity.” and Julia Child dismissed it as “not very nice”.

A disappointed Ramsay said afterwards “Nigella’s Avocado and Bacon Encrusted Sweet Honey Pot is a secret weakness of mine, so this a major blow.”

Next round of the competition: “Stuffing”

(Also at The Spoof)

Scandalous Behaviour at Wijk aan Zee

Rijk aan Zee – Tempers frayed at the beginning of the 8th round of the Corus Chess championships here at Wijk an See, as the British contender Short appealed to the arbiter for a win against the reigning champion Fischer, who refused to shake hands at the beginning of a game.

The unpleasantness began when Short approached the table, with Fischer already seated, and proffered his hand, which was coldly ignored by Fischer. Short then appealed, and a committee comprising Krapov, Spastic, and Ramannoodle ruled that Short must play, handshake or no. It was at this point that Short stamped his foot petulantly, incurring an automatic 1.5 point sanction. Meanwhile Fischer remained stoically at the table and displayed no visible emotion.

Once Short was seated again, the play went as follows:

N Short – R Fischer
Corus B Wijk aan Zee (8)

1.e4 c5 2. ??

(An interesting gambit. Fischer is perhaps contemplating forcing the en passant in response to Short’s pawn. The play continued …)

2. ????

(At this point it became obvious that Fischer was having some difficulty in assimilating the board. The clock continued to tick, until …)

2. ??!!!!!

(Fischer was pronounced dead at the scene: Short wins.)

Short quipped afterwards that he should have known something was wrong with Fischer, not because of the declined handshake, but because of the awful rotting smell from his opponent.

(Also at TheSpoof.com)

Scientists announce probability of Britney “one in a Trillion”

Scientists at the Texas Advanced Center for Inquiry (TACI) announced that they have calculated the probability of Britney Spears. Using IBM’s “Blue Jeans” million processor supercomputer behemoth, the group processed data from the Human Genome Project to simulate the probability of spontaneous creation of a Britney-like entity.

Dr. James Loudtrouser, leader of the TACI group, explained: “We entered all the gene data we could lay our hands on, co-added it to simulated data from CERN’s Large Hadron Collider, convoluted it with a parton density function compatible with life on Mars, extracted the principal components of the resultant vectors, and fed the results to our multi-screen fully immersive virtual reality wall display. We were sitting around discussing celebrity bra cup sizes when we were absolutely flabbergasted to observe a full 3D likeness of Britney Spears emerge from the white noise on the screens. Our calculations show that the probability of Britney creation is approximately one in 1,459,852,327,591.”

The result is sure to send large ripples across the surface of the academic pond. Initial reaction to the discovery is so far mixed. Herbert Herzog at MIT’s Media Center commented: “This is an interesting result, but our calculations show that the probability of a Britney should be approximately the same as that for a Paris Hilton, about one in five. We suspect the TACI researchers fucked up somewhere.”

Britney was unavailable for comment.

(Also at TheSpoof.com.)

The Prose of Spam

Is it just me, or is Spam becoming more entertaining and humorous? How about this gem:

You’ll have a dick like Jesus, after taking this medicine.

You may be surprised to hear that I am no scholar of ancient texts, and so the above concept prompts me to ask: did Jesus have a large penis? did he ever “use” it? in fact, did Jesus ever have sex – is this mentioned in the Bible, or elsewhere, at all? (By “elsewhere”, I am not looking for references to Dan Brown’s books.)

The Perfect Bottom

I have just seen the Perfect Bottom, in the canteen. I will not go on about it too much except to say that it was perfect in shape, size and apparent firmness, having just the right amount of inter-buttock separation, and was displayed in a snug-fitting pair of shorts. I should add that it was a lady’s bottom.

Which brings me to the real matter at hand: have you ever felt compelled, or been tempted, to congratulate a stranger on a body part or a face of beauty? Have you ever toyed with the idea of walking up and saying “May I just say that your bottom is the finest I have seen, and I have admired many, in my long and varied travels on this Earth. May I give you my card?”

That would be creepy, wouldn’t it? And yet owners of Perfect Bottoms may well appreciate a verification from a stranger, an unbiassed observer. It might lift their day.

"Tougher than two dollar steak"

First time I’ve heard that one. I do enjoy good expressions like this, and often will resolve to use ones I come across in conversation. How pathetic I am! I had a bit of a run with “it beggars belief”, and then I switched to “We’ve got XXXXX up the ying yang” where XXXXX signifies something we had a lot of. Another all time favourite of mine is “tighter than a camel’s arse in a sandstorm” (useful if you are out drinking with a Scotsman). There were a whole series I have heard along the lines of “XXXXX short of a sandwich” where XXXXX is some ingredient like “two slices” or “a ham slice”.

Cogland

Am in the process of buying a small South Pacific island. Am looking for the right sort of residents to occupy said island. All amenities provided, including cute but functional huts on the beach (running hot and cold, mains electricity). No work required: there will be a small weekly dividend paid to all residents in the form of matches/soap/KY jelly etc. i.e. stuff you actually need. Free wireless everywhere, of course. If you need to get off the island to visit family etc. there is a small trawler that leaves on a Friday at the crack, and returns on the Wednesday at midnight.

There are some conditions before I can accept your hut reservation:

1) No children in nappies permitted
2) No adults in nappies
3) No organised religion of any sort
4) No firearms allowed
5) No silly hats or expensive sunglasses
6) No vegetarians who wont eat fish
7) No silly teas (e.g. “Honey Morning Mellow Tea Blossom from Southern Jakarta”)
8) No Flat-Earthers, unless they can prove a sense of humour
9) No bras: nobody cares if your tits don’t look like a Victoria’s Secret advert
10) No pierced genitalia without a certificate of Good Taste
11) No artichokes
12) No Bowflex machines
13) No fundamentalists of any type
14) No traffic wardens. (Traffic wardens may apply for a slave position.)
15) No TV
16) No hut extensions etc. or other improvements that may render your hut bigger than the Chief’s (i.e. mine)

(That’s enough rules. Ed.)

Under certain conditions, applicants can request exemption from at most two of the above rules, subject to certain “visitation” rights I may exercise at my discretion.

Any takers?

Snort!

BERLIN (Reuters) – A German man who startled his neighbors when he hurled his computer out of the window in the middle of the night, was let off for disturbing the peace by police who sympathized with his technical frustrations.

Police in the northern city of Hanover said they would not press charges after responding to calls made by residents in an apartment block who were woken by a loud crash in the early hours of Saturday.

Officers found the street and pavement covered in electronic parts and discovered who the culprit was.

Asked what had driven him to the night-time outburst, the 51-year-old man said he had simply got annoyed with his computer.

“Who hasn’t felt like doing that?” said a police spokesman.

While escaping any official sanction the man was made to clear up the debris.

Hell’s Kitchen

Scene: A large restaurant kitchen with lots of aluminium pots and pans strewn about, steam rising from some of them, and six frantic looking individuals chopping vegetables and/or in tears.

At the front stands Chef Ramsay. He’s wearing a chest-hugging white tunic, his boyish blond hair coiffed into an artificially wind-tousled mess, his legs are akimbo, his arms folded. He looks displeased and ruggedly handsome.

Chef Ramsay: Melissa! MELISSA! STOP RIGHT NOW! NNNNNNOOOOOOOWWWWWW!
Melissa: Yes, chef
Ramsay: You cloth-eared fucking bint. “Yes chef, no chef, three bags full chef!”. Come HERE!
Melissa: Yes, chef.
Ramsay: Leave the sodding saucepan. LEAVE IT!
Melissa: Yes, chef.
Ramsay (putting his face right up to Melissa’s): What the sweet Jesus is that on your lower lip?
Melissa: A cold sore, chef.
Ramsay: Get rid of it. NOW!
Melissa (runs off): Yes, chef.

Sounds of crashing pots and pans. Somebody sets fire to a large tray of Beef Wellingtons.

Ramsay: What’s happening? Is that the Wellingtons? Oh my GOD!
Ramsay (kicking bins): STOP! STOP! NOW! Red and Blue teams, come here.

The six assemble in front of Ramsay.

Ramsay: Rock! You’re a wanker, aren’t you?
Rock: Yes, chef.
Ramsay: Bonnie!
Bonnie: Yes, chef?
Ramsay: You’re an ugly cow who can’t cook.
Bonnie(bursting into tears): Yes, chef.
Ramsay: Josh!
Josh: Yes, chef?
Ramsay: I have never been so embarrassed to stand in the same room as a piece of low life cunt as you. Get OUT!
Josh: I’m sorry chef.
Ramsay: GET OUT!
Josh (hurrying out): Yes, chef.

An awkward silence falls over the remaining group.

Ramsay: Blue Team. You were bad. Really bad. Fucking bad. But you weren’t as bad as the Red Team! They were fucking astonishingly CRAP! So you’re going to get an amazing reward.
Blue team (in unison, shouting): YES, CHEF!
Ramsay: You are going to eat dinner with me in a restaurant of my choice. God knows I need a decent meal after tasting the fucking EXCREMENT produced here.

Cut to one-on-one camera interview of Josh.

Josh: When Chef Ramsay said we were going to eat at a restaurant with him, I came immediately.

Cut back to kitchen.

Ramsay: Now, Red Team. As your punishment for losing you are going to get the most disgusting job the producer could think of. You’re going to go to every toilet in Hell’s Kitchen, and lick the seats clean with your tongues. And then, when you’re finished, you’re going to beg me for forgiveness. Get going.
Red team (in unison, mumbling): Yes, chef.

Cut to scene of supposedly private quarters of the Red and Blue teams, who are lounging about smoking like chimneys.

Melissa: I love Chef Ramsay and I’m gonna win.
Rock: Guess again. Y’all is going down. I’m in Vegas!
Bonnie (asleep): ZZZZZZzzzzzzzz
Josh: Chef Ramsay gave me a second chance. I’ve never had a bad service. I’m about to show what I know.

End of show credits start to roll. Chef Ramsay’s voice-over starts:

Ramsay: It was a tough week for both teams, and it was tough deciding who was worse. The only reason I’m staying on this crap program is I’m hoping for a taste of Bonnie’s salad bowl.

Public Speaking

I think that anyone who insists on talking in a monotone to an audience should be banned from public speaking for life. Moreover, they should be stripped naked, put in the stocks, and have stale break-session cookies and muffins thrown at them. And when they are sufficiently humbled, they should have their hair shaved off and be made to bend over so that their bottoms can be used as a place to insert wet umbrellas.

My own talk of course went staggeringly well. The auditorium was packed: it was standing room only. A hushed silence replaced the expectant hum of chatter as I mounted the podium. My slides, flipped at machine-gun rate, aroused gasps of delight from the assembled throng. One woman in the front row fainted, and several others removed their knickers and threw them up on the stage, where I deftly retrieved them with the toe of one of my freshly-shined brogues. Towards the finish, as my rhetoric rose to a climactic pummeling of pertinent information, a section of the circle collapsed, and the whole scene degenerated into chaos as the emergency services tried to extract people from the wreckage. I was told afterwards that several people had come on seeing my fifteenth slide: the place reeked of semen.

You may ask what my speaking secret is. The simple answer, dear friend, is a simple modulation of the voice on every fifth word, no matter how insignificant that word may be. Try it sometime: you are guaranteed pussy.

The Overling

The air is like cornground butternuts, overly expressing the function of a disappearing confusion. Everywhere we look is seamless entropy, and the further we ponder the overload of Machiavellian conundrums, the more we soak in our profound untenability.

Blarting the Snurdly

OK, I’ve had it up to here ::makes flat hand motion showing level to which he’s had it::.

I am sooooooo tired of towel dispensers and other machines for drying hands in public restrooms. They never work properly. There’s a 2 micron strip of towel visible that you have to yank on to get it out, and it rips, and you can’t get any purchase because your hands are fucking wet, which is why you want to dry them in the first place. The other machines with a length of filthy towel hanging in a loop at the bottom, that, when you try to pull a clean bit out, stubbornly refuses to move, so you have to yank harder and to do so you have to touch the grubby bit of towel, to get purchase, and it still wont budge, or, if it does, it gives you about 10 new microns of laundered towel, which cover a minute fraction of my big hands.

And I say fuck off to those bloody air blowers: you elbow one to “On” and it guffs hot or cold air at you, and you stand there wringing your hands like a latter-day Scrooge. Your hands stay wet. It takes aeons to dry your hands this way: you’d be quicker rubbing them on your trousers.

Then there’s the pile of paper towels someone has thoughtfully left next to the sink: the bottom half is sodden from water splash, and when you try to extract a couple off the top, the whole pile falls on the floor, and you kick them around, saying “One-NIL! …. NO!”

Death of a Bald Russian Guy

London (Reuters): A British Airways official described as “ludicrous” the suggestion that the demise of Boris Baldnikov was due to the ingestion of a Polonium-210 laced BA “happy meal” served onboard the 20 October Madrid flight from Heathrow. “BA takes great care in minimising the expense of our onboard meal offerings, and so to suggest we would use an expensive ingredient like this is plainly silly.”

Leaving Downing Street after meeting the Prime Minister, Russia’s Ambassador emphatically denied his country had any involvement in the affair. “Boris should have flown a Russian airline, where he would have been served boiled potato and cabbage. He was soft, he had become besotted with the West, and unable to drink more than a bottle of vodka over a meal. Why, my sister farms large and oddly shaped turnips near Chernobyl, and she’s still alive! What can you expect from a Softnik? He had no guts.”

Elsewhere, the affair continues to generate huge interest from a public who yearn for a spy with a long dong, and hanker after the likes of George Smiley, with his nondescript face and a pipe full of smouldering Irish Shag.

Thin Green Candle

Nonsense Variation 1, to be sung with great feeling, and a hint of profound boredom:

I sang a song in a deep voice,
That sounded sexy to me.
But you just put in your earplugs,
They were orange and covered in wax.

I smelled an over-cooked onion,
You had been cooking for tea.
It inflamed my nostrils completely,
And not like a pleasant curry.

So I took a spoon and a little carrot,
That had grown unusually.
And I chastised the scarf,
That your Mother knitted for me.

Then I came to being an old guy,
With craggy face and nice wrinkled eyes.
And I still made a few more albums,
Which are pretty darned good, considering.

The original:

I lit a thin green candle to make you jealous of me,
but the room just filled up with mosquitoes:
they heard that my body was free.
Then I took the dust of a long sleepless night,
and I put it in your little shoe.
Then I confess that I tortured the dress
that you wore for the world to look through.

I showed my heart to the doctor:
he said I’d just have to quit.
Then he wrote himself a prescription,
and your name was mentioned in it!
Then he locked himself in a library shelf
with the details of our honeymoon.
And I hear from the nurse that he’s gotten much worse,
and his practice is all in a ruin.

I heard of a saint who had loved you,
so I studied all night in his school.
He taught that the duty of lovers is to tarnish the golden rule.
And just when I was sure that his teachings were pure,
he drowned himself in the pool.
His body is gone, but back here on the lawn,
his spirit continues to drool.

An eskimo showed me a movie he’d recently taken of you.
The poor man could hardly stop shivering:
his lips and his fingers were blue.
I suppose that he froze when the wind took your clothes,
and I guess he just never got warm.

But you stand there so nice in your blizzard of ice.
O please let me come into the storm.

A New Church

I have decided to found a new church. The teachings will emphasise the promise of what to expect in Heaven.

This Church will be called, um, let me see, The Church of Latter Day Born Again Optimists And Hedonists.

First of all, in Heaven there will be nobody putting a negative spin on things. Everybody will be upbeat and optimistic. La la la happy happy happy.

Secondly, to give it an edge, there will be lots of sex.

Thirdly, nobody will care about their health or their bodies or hair or anything else personal like that. There will be no disease, no pregnancies, no fillings for your teeth, because you will be fucking dead.

Fourthly, there will be lots of really excellent food, and nobody will care what they eat because it will all be orgasmicly good and no animals or plants will have been harmed in its preparation.

Fifthly, there will be lots and lots of children running around, all aged six. But there will be no discussion about them, because nobody will know who’s they are, and nobody is a mummy and nobody is a daddy. The children will just entertain themselves and the adults by saying cute things and making treehouses.

Sixthly, there will be no books. This will prevent tedious conversations about books that some people may not have read. Besides, everyone will be having so much fun, reading will seem like a very boring proposition.

Seventhly, everyone will be called either Heroditus or Desdemona.

Eightly, Internet access will be available, but just to the head of the church. I.e. me.

It will be great up there. A spaceship will be built with monies from the Collection Tray to go and visit it – book your place now, as there is limited seating, and there are only so many little packets of salted peanuts to go around.

Trial By Jury

Scene 1: The LA County Courthouse. OJ Simpson in the dock, stroking his bad knee with a gloved hand.

Judge: Ladies and gentlemen of the jury, have you reached a verdict?
Cogshifter: (for it is he) We have, m’lud.
Judge: And how do you find the defendant?
Cogshifter: Why, he’s over there, m’lud, in the dock.
Judge: Silence! Do I detect a British accent?
Cogshifter: You do, m’lud.
Judge: Stop calling me “m’lud”, we’re not in the UK. Call me Your Honour.
Cogshifter: I’m sorry my Honour.
Judge: Insolence! “Your Honour”.
Cogshifter: (Mumbles inaudibly)
Judge: (Exasperated) Have you reached a verdict?
Cogshifter: We have, Your Honour.
Judge: And what is it?
Cogshifter: We decided that we couldn’t decide on a verdict.

(Uproarious larffter from the public gallery)

Judge: Silence in Court! Foreman of the Jury, do you need more time to deliberate?
Cogshifter: We argued deliberately for some time, Your Honour. Some of us thought the defendant looked as guilty as hell, but others liked his nose, and the cashmere golf sweater he was wearing. We ate a lot of snacks.
Judge: Was there a majority in favour one way or the other?
Cogshifter: Just a minute. (Rustles note papers, looks puzzled.) I’m not sure, Your Honour.
Judge: Approach the Bench.
Cogshifter: Yay! A buffet?
Judge: You are held in Contempt of Court and I sentence you to ten years of hard rogering in San Quentin. Take him away!

(Cogshifter is cuffed and led away in orange overalls.)

People I Hate On Airplanes

After sitting for a total of over twenty hours in coach class, I am ready to share my top ten list of People I Hate On Airplanes:

1) People in the seat in front of me who let their pillow fall down the crack between the window and their seat into *my area* and expect me to repeatedly return it to them

2) People in the seat in front of me with big hair who every now and again run their hands through it, flicking it about, and shedding countless millions of dead skin flakes and other germs and whatnot into *my area*, and occasionally into my “beveridge”.

3) People in the seat next to me who don’t realise that *my area* is not to be encroached on, even by a millimetre, despite the fact that my current body position leaves that part of *my area* temporarily vacant.

4) People in the seats behind me who strike up a conversation at the start of a 10 hour flight and do not stop until landing 10 hours later, despite the fact that everyone else around them is trying to get some shut eye, and particularly in view of the fact that their conversation is asinine in the extreme and moreover contains statements of “fact” that are so egregiously wrong they should be arrested and tortured for idiocy by the placement of lighted splints under all fingernails.

5) People in the seat in front of me who insist on leaving their seats reclined during the “meal” (a term I use euphemistically) so affording a space of two inches between my mouth and the back of their seat, and consequently making it an almost impossible task to get a forkful of rice into my orifice without showering it down the inside of my shirt.

6) People who, despite the fact that everyone else is trying to sleep, and the fact that they are sitting on the sun-facing side of the aircraft, insist on leaving their window blinds “in the up position” (i.e. “up”) so blinding everyone else, while they gaze moronically at the barren arctic wastelands of norther Canada for hours on end, as if it is interesting.

7) People sitting in the seat behind me who, whenever their bladders give up again, which seems to be every hour, use my seat back as a lever to hoist themselves vertically, so juddering me out of my fitful dozing and dislodging my noise cancelling headphones.

8) People sitting anywhere nearby who fish out laptops and start clattering away on them, possibly writing a latterday War and Peace or guffing on in an email about how they are sitting in a plane and how the email they are writing will get sent once they land, at some point when they manage to find a place with wireless connectivity, et cetera, blah blah blah

9) People who cannot stop rustling about in their bags in the overhead lockers, whether it be to first extract a hairbrush, or to then put it back, or to get out their spongebag, or to put it back, or to get out a trashy paperback novel, and to put it back.

10) Basically, everyone and anyone else on the flight. As far as I am concerned, by the time the plane has “begun its descent”, they can all FUCK OFF!

The Cogshifter Guide To Painters, Part IV

Salvador Dalí
Woman at the Window (Muchacha en la ventana)
oil on board
1925

Dali was a funny chap with a weird moustache. He often appeared in short film documentary clips wearing a large hat, and standing outside a curvy white building somewhere in the Mediterranean. Apparently he was very attractive to women, although they tended to want to keep their backs to him, as typified in the above painting “Woman at the Window” … otherwise known as “Munching Ventanas While Waiting For Rain”. Dali grew up in a poor neighbourhood of Nottingham, but moved to Spain when he was seventeen. He then spent months drawing on the pavements outside the Prado in Madrid, before being admitted to a painting class in mistake for a paid up student. He never looked back.

What is Dali trying to tell us in this painting of a woman standing at a window, looking out across the Sea? The clues are obvious: the discarded table knapkin on the windowsill, the reflected image of a small house in the third pane of the casement window. Based on exhaustive investigation, we can identify the woman as Carmen Buttacha. Dali had been having a tempestuous affair with her poodle, and had gone around to Carmen’s house to beg its paw in marriage. They had dined heavily on plump olives from trees in the garden of Dali’s house, which can be seen reflected in the casement. At the moment that Carmen fully apprised what it was that Dali asked of her, she had jumped up from the table, and run to the window to vomit. Dali was so moved by this scene that he insisted on painting it, there and then.

Dali died a while back.

Newgroup posts

This was posted to the Tekscopes newgroup. It’s amusing, and you may agree that it applies quite nicely to LJ posts, too

> How many list members does it take to change a lightbulb?
>
> One to change the light bulb and to post that the light bulb
> has been changed.
>
> Fourteen to share similar experiences of changing light bulbs
> and how the light bulb could have been changed differently.
>
> Seven to caution about the dangers of changing light bulbs.
>
> Seven more to point out spelling/grammar errors in posts
> about changing light bulbs.
>
> Five to flame the spell checkers.
>
> Three to correct spelling/grammar flames.
>
> Six to argue over whether it’s “lightbulb” or “light bulb”
> … another six to condemn those six as stupid.
>
> Fifteen to claim experience in the lighting industry and give
> correct spelling.
>
> Nineteen to post that this group is not about light bulbs
> and to please take this discussion to a lightbulb (or
> light bulb) forum.
>
> Eleven to defend the posting to the group saying that we all use
> light bulbs and therefore the posts are relevant to this group.
>
> Thirty six to debate which method of changing light bulbs is
> superior, where to buy the best light bulbs, what brand of light
> bulbs work best for this technique and what brands are faulty.
>
> Seven to post URLs where one can see examples of different light
> bulbs.
>
> Four to post that the URLs were posted incorrectly and then post
> the corrected URL.
>
> Three to post about links they found from the URLs that are
> relevant to this group which makes light bulbs relevant to
> this group.
>
> Thirteen to link all posts to date, quote them in their entirety
> including all headers and signatures, and add “Me too”.
>
> Five to post to the group that they will no longer post because
> they cannot handle the light bulb controversy.
>
> Four to say “didn’t we go through this already a short time ago?”
>
> Thirteen to say “do a Google search on light bulbs before
> posting questions about light bulbs”
>
> Three to tell a funny story about their cat and a light bulb.
>
> AND
>
> One group lurker to respond to the original post 6 months from
> now and start it all over again.

Reading the Newspaper

Contrast:

“Slibby Shuttlebin sits on her front porch and gazes over the prairie towards the horizon. She lightly wets her knickers as she sees three enormous tripod machines wielding death rays march inexorably towards her. It’s just another worry that this native of South Fork Bend has to deal with since the cut in her Medicare.

The Martian attack continues …”

[Standard front-page style USA Today or LA Times article]

With:

“Martians attacked the Earth today in large numbers, following the landing at locations around the globe of a large flotilla of inter-planetary rockets.

…”

[Guardian, The Times, etc. style, much more to my liking]

Antiques Roadshow

Lara Spencer: Hello, and welcome to Antiques Roadshow! This time we’re in Washington, DC. Let’s go straight to the action, and find out what knick-knacks have been dusted off and brought in by our lovely public.

John Forthright-Thomas (Antiquities Expert): Now, what have we here? A beautifully executed miniature President, one of a pair, in etched plastic, and adorned in a loosely cut nylon suit, with radiant red necktie and a Stars and Stripes lapel pin. A fine example, probably the best I’ve seen outside of a museum. Notice the spats: it’s unusual to find them still attached on a piece of this vintage. Of course, this would be much more valuable as a set, with the father, which came with a clip-on plastic Japanese Prime Minister’s lap. Look [moves arms and legs around], the limbs are moveable: sometimes they sieze up! Now, I expect you’re wanting to know how much this piece is worth?

(Owner nods uncomfortably)

Forthright-Thomas: Well, these were quite popular even up until quite recently, but in the last week the bottom has dropped out of the market (as opposed to out of his trousers ::guffaws loudly::), and if you were to sell this at auction, for example on Ebay, you might expect to get …. oh, I don’t know, permanently banned from the Ebay site?

Ebay Anticipation

I have identified an item on Ebay that is extremely desirable to me, has a couple of hours left before the auction finishes, and is at a very attractive price. What’s more, the shipping is ridiculously low. I have armed my BidNip with a suitable snipe, and am nervously peaking at the price, hoping that nobody else realises what a bargain this thing is. The tension is unbearable. I may have to lie down.

Last night we watched SpaceBalls. I wasn’t very impressed, except by Rick Moranis, whose Dark Helmet costume was hilarious.

Quote: (after lifting up his helmet) “I can’t breathe in this thing!!”

Limerick Day?

blackcustard claims it is Limerick Day. I have my doubts, and suspect he just wants to show off his Limerick concoction skills. In contrast, I am a tosser at Limericks:

There was a young man called Cogshifter,
Who was absolutely crap at limericks.
He’d make a good try,
To rhyme things like sky,
But he’d end up saying “fuck” at his monitor.

You Bastards!

Yes, you lot. You bunch of whinging, self-serving, snivelling little turds. You make me sick with your food porn, your kitty photos and your snarky Schiavo posts. Excrement and poo is too good for you. I have never, ever, read such a wanton bunch of worthless crap in my entire life. There is not one of you fit to generate text for a packet of kitty litter. And if I see one more post about fruit tarts, weddings, engagements, shopping sprees or Beastie Boys concerts I am going to retch all over my keyboard. Who gives a flying fuck about what sort of underwear you have on? I mean, really. You can all go and live in a smelly cave with no toilet facilities, and only goats hair shirts, for all I care.

I am defriending the lot of you, before I boke again.

Conspiracy to be a Dickhead

[AP Reuters, 1 hour ago] After deliberating for three femtoseconds a twelve man jury found Cogshifter guilty on all counts of conspiracy to be a dickhead. Cogshifter visibly reddened as the verdict was read. Judge Sagely-Wrinkles told the stunned courtroom “You have witnessed today a landmark for jurisprudence and general silliness that hopefully will remind us all that being a dickhead is not all it’s cracked up to be. believe me, I should know.” The public gallery, filled for the third day running with blue-bodied Smurfs, erupted in cheers, and Jay Leno handed out hot dogs.

Outside the courtroom, in a melee of reporters and pole dancers from the nearby “Shag Me” club, Cogshifter’s attorney Robert B. Bee announced that an appeal would be lodged. “Nobody in their right mind would accept a verdict like this one”, he said, while finishing a Snickers bar.

This is the third time in as many years that a Conspiracy to be a Dickhead trial has garnered the interest of the public. In the previous two cases, the evidence offered by the prosecution was deemed inadmissible, as in both cases it had floated away before cross examination could be performed. In those cases, chandeliers had had to be brought into the courtroom at the request of the defendants.

Many experts agree that the courts have now lost all semblance of integrity, and have become vehicles for the political motives of a few select individuals who need to remain nameless for their own safety but whom for the sake of argument we shall call the Olsen twins. Nobody expected them to become so closely integrated with the judicial system, given their admittedly lack lustre performances on TV, but pundits now say that it was only a matter of time before a nanomachine with advanced locomotion capabilities was developed on this scale.

Fandango and Mae West

Topic 1: Mae West

Mae West (1892 – 1980) is most quotable

1) “Is that a gun in your pocket, or are you just glad to see me?”
(Usually quoted as: “Is that a pistol in your pocket?”)

2) “When I’m good I’m very good, but when I’m bad I’m better.”

3) “I go for two kinds of men. The kind with muscles, and the kind without.”

4) “It’s better to be looked over, than overlooked”

[More here]

Topic 2: The Fandango

I was sitting at the bar, drinking a White Russian, and minding my Ps and Qs, when I felt a light tap on my shoulder. I turned around, and behind me was standing a tall, dark man with aquiline features, greased back hair brought to a ponytail, a small gold ear-ring, and a definite odour of Brut about him. “‘Ello”, he said in a thick Latin accent, “I am ze Fandango, and I have chosen you.”

With that, he manhandled me to dance floor, threw me expertly into the air, caught me as I landed, and twizzled me around and around like a baton, to the delighted applause of the onlookers at the bar.

The Trial of Variable capacitor C205

“Bring in the Defendant!”

C205 enters the courtroom, looking sheepish.

Usher: “Are you variable capacitor C205, of Tektronix Oscilloscope
310A, Serial Number 19857?”

C205 (faintly): “I am”

Usher: “Speak Up!”

C205 (in crackly voice): “I AM!”

Usher: “That’s better.” (Usher pauses for effect)

“You are accused of causing jitter on the horizontal plate signal of
the aforementioned 310A, and that you did, with malice aforethought,
conspire with your accomplice, R205, to divert the course of justice
by drawing attention away from yourself, and that you did cause
frustration, angst and bewilderment in the TekScopes news group for
many days with your intermittent and unpredictable behaviour. How do
you plead?”

C205 (in more crackly voice): “Guilty.”

Usher: “Have you anything to say in your defence before judgement is
passed?”

C205: “If it pleases the Court, I started out as a good stock
yeomanly type, a fine specimen of a Tektronix component, but I was
led astray by some HP diodes whom I took up with on a dirty bench.”
(breaks down completely and sobs)
“It’s a fair cop!”

Judge Julianus: “I hereby sentence you to be taken from this scope
and, by snipping of your leads, consigned thenceforth to the bin of
used and dirty old parts in the base of my toolbox. Take him away!”

The Dirty Fork

An occasional series of favourite moments from TV and film

Number I: The Dirty Fork Sketch (Monty Python)

The head waiter deals with the customer’s complaint of a dirty fork.

The chef doesn’t appreciate the complaint.

MP3 of the chef calling the customer a bastard.

New Arrival

An email this morning from a colleague announcing the arrival in our department of a new researcher. The description is fascinating:

Please welcome Dr. Gudrun Gudwuns, who joins us from the University of Trondheim, in Norway. Dr. Gudwuns is a native of Iceland, and earned her bachelors degree from the University of Reykjavik in 1992, where she read Anthropology. Her Ph.D. was gained at the University of Canberra in Australia and was on the topic of “Similarities between the appendages of Anteaters and Aborigines in the Australian Outback”. Since leaving Canberra for Trondheim, Gudrun has been active in the fields of grass and wheat, frolicking in them bare-breasted and gaily for the delight of the combined faculty, who reportedly gathered to watch in large numbers from the balcony of the Peter Persson Memorial Mausoleum, situated on the edge of Trondheim’s campus. Dr. Gudwuns has been appointed here as a Senior Researcher in the emerging field of Computationally Intensive Brassiere Simulations, and she will be making heavy use of the gymnasium. Let me join you all in welcoming her, wishing her every success here, and hoping that she will not feel inhibited in divesting herself of her garments in the coffee lounge as the fancy takes her. Welcome!

James Lipton Meme

From rcr203 via sarahparah. I have a problem with this meme: I dislike James Lipton. I find him to be a simpering arse-licker. So you will need to excuse me some liberties I have taken:

Lipton: What is your favorite word?

Pardon.

Lipton: What is your favorite word?

Pardon.

Lipton: Oh, I see (chuckles)
Lipton: What is your least favorite word?

What.

Lipton: What is your least favorite word?

What.

Lipton: Oh, so clever (chuckles, looks at audience as much as to say “This one’s clever”)
Lipton: What turns you on?

Fucking.

Lipton: Pardon?

Fucking.

Lipton: Oh, I see (chuckles. grins. bead of dribble appears on beard)
Lipton: What turns you off?

::Burps loudly::

::long pause::

Lipton: What turns you off?

Burping.

Lipton: Very good. Oh I am enjoying this. (audience titter. one woman laughs like a hyena)
Lipton: What is the sound or noise that you love?

::long pause::

Lipton: The sound or noise you love?

::longer pause::

Lipton: (looks at audience quizzically. light dawns) Ah! Silence!
Lipton: What sound or noise do you hate?

::Burps loudly::

Lipton: (laughs – getting the hang of it now) Well, that is most amusing, most amusing. Thank you. Now I won’t get that sound out of my head.
Lipton: What is your favorite curse word?

FuckADuckCuntBollockExtremeRudeness

Lipton: A fine one! (audience claps politely)
Lipton: What profession other than yours would you like to attempt?

::mimes being an actor::

Lipton: An actor? Ah yes.
Lipton: What profession would you not like to participate in?

Horse Rogering.

Lipton: Me neither!
Lipton: Finally, if Heaven exists, what would you like to hear God say when you arrive at the Pearly Gates?

“I’m just a little black rain cloud, pay no attention to me.”

Lipton: (laughs hysterically. pool of urine appears under his chair)

Backlog Battling

This post was prompted by a comment elusis made regarding boob-baring for the Cogshifter LJ Calendar.

Scenario: During a romantic cruise on the Bay of Biscay with your spouse/lover/dog you have a lover’s tiff, and in the ensuing melée your companion dumps you overboard in a lifeboat and sets you adrift on the open seas with only a large spliff for sustenance. After an exhausting few days tossing in the boat, you run aground on a small desert island, populated only by a palm tree, an old and weathered Michelin tyre and an itinerant sea turtle whom you call Nigel. After a couple more days, dying of thirst, and Sun-baked to a crisp, night draws in, and you settle down against the palm tree to pass away your last moments smoking your spliff. The captain of a passing Lithuanian-registered tanker, five miles distant, and en route to Long Beach with a cargo of two million gallons of first pressed virgin olive oil, spots a dim light on the horizon flickering in what he assumes to be a Morse code SOS, but is in fact your three short spliff drags, followed by three long ones, and three more short. You are saved. A couple of days after your rescue, you arrive in Long Beach, plum-tuckered out and tired of having to pleasure the tanker captain every hour in return for your passage.

Back home you post a lengthy entry about your adventure.
But now the problem:

The naïveté of the long distance journaler

“Initial Mood after Creating Live Journal -

Elated, perhaps even ecstatic. I’m feeling very pleased with myself because I’ve entered a whole load of interests, ranging from the mundane to the truly bizarre. Some of these are even genuine.

I will reflect for a while, then add some more.”

On July 3rd. 2003 I created my LJ account and made my first entry, shown above, describing my mood. In my naïveté I imagined that the purpose of the LJ was to document moods. ::hollow laughter:: How wrong I was! It turned out that my LJ would be an insatiable trash can for tittle tattle, nonsense, ribald banter and general foolishness. Not only that, but it became a clickable repository of amazing and frequently hilarious revelations about people I’d never met, but who nevertheless occasionally posted pictures of their private parts, or at least who I wished would post pictures of their private parts.

And so now, in the springtime of my LJ affair, I reflect back on that rollercoaster ride of emotional fecundity (note gratuitous and inappropriate use of “fecundity”, because I like to include it wherever I can) that the last year proferred and which I greedily feasted upon, and I say to myself:

“COR BLIMEY!”.

Which brings me to the topic of this evening’s post which is about those upside down food processor zizzy things that they’re advertising on TV at the moment. You get three or four upside down thingummy cups, three or four thingummy lids, and a thingummy motorised zizzer and a book of recipes, all for $99.99 (or three “easy” payments of $33.33 … do the math).

The upside down thingummy does EVERYTHING. After you’ve bought one of these things you might as well trash everything in your kitchen cupboards: your juicer is obsolete, your whisker is obsolete, your food processor is obsolete, your cocktail shaker, your egg beater, your forks, your knives, your spoons. Even that weird little twisty thing that’s rusting in the back of the teatowel drawer and you’re keeping because it looks like an important part of something is obsolete. This is true, since the upside down food processor zizzy thing can:

• Turn a few tomatoes and a lettuce leaf into a fine Lobster Thermidor
• Whisk water and an ice cube into a Saffron Flavoured Peach Sorbet
• Remove that irritating (not to mention embarassing) stain on the front of your blue twill trousers
• Turn lead into gold (and gold into lead, when you get sick of gold)
• Stop people who live in Seattle moaning about the weather

(OK, so the last one is a joke.)

So, what is the catch, I hear you groan? The catch is that the upside down food processor zizzy thing is just that: an UPSIDE DOWN FOOD PROCESSOR!

Don’t waste your $99.99 … just make sure that whenever your use your existing food processor you stand on your head.

Thus endeth the lesson.

Mr. Tunic-Lifter’s Propositions

Hello. My name is Spencer Tunic-Lifter and I am an artist. I would like you to get up at the crack of dawn tomorrow morning and meet me in the park. Then I’d like you to take all your clothes off and stand one-footed like a flamingo in the duck pond. I will then take a black and white photograph of you, and put it on my website. Are you interested?

If not, then maybe I can entice you to another location? You meet me at the crack of dawn in South Central, on the corner of Brand and Los Muertos. There will be about twenty other people there. Then you take your clothes off and stand under an overpass with one arm outstretched towards a Budweiser advert, and the other covering your belly button. I will then take a black and white photograph of all twenty of you doing this, and put it on my website. Are you interested?

No, there will be no bagels or doughnuts. No coffee. No payment.

Yes, you can have a copy of the photograph, free of charge.

Still interested?

Naturalization, Left Ears and Aliens

Having just submitted my request for naturalization to the INS, I thought I should give you all a taste for the sort of questions I have had to answer.

Department of Naturalization and Immigration: Request to be inundated with Jury Summons letters

This form is to be used by aliens. Write your alien number at the top of the form, using an American writing instrument (no Mont Blanc fountain pens allowed).

Answer all questions truthfully. The FBI is watching you via a concealed camera. Smirks and snide comments will result in your application being returned (and the fee being retained).

What you can expect: A very lengthy delay processing your application while we fall about laughing at your answers and then spill coffee on it. Some very terse requests for more money. Some very long queues when we ask you to “come downtown” to verify you are really an alien. Some minor problem with spelling or something that invalidates your application, and makes you eligible for deportation.

Once we have reviewed your application we will call you for an interview, when you will be asked several detailed questions about the private lives of members of the Supreme Court. If you manage to get at least 50% of the answers correct you will be sworn in, pledge allegiance to the flag, and receive a small pledge pin. We recommend you immediately apply for a passport, otherwise we might forget (again) who you are.

Letter from the Tax Man

A friend just sent me this. It is a response from the British Inland Revenue Department to a letter of complaint, and was printed in The Guardian last September.

Dear Mr Addison,

I am writing to you to express our thanks for your more than prompt reply to our latest communication, and also to answer some of the points you raise.

I will address them, as ever, in order. Firstly, I must take issue with your description of our last communication as a “begging letter”. It might perhaps more properly be referred to as a “tax demand”. This is how we, at the Inland Revenue have always, for reasons of accuracy, traditionally referred to such documents.

Secondly, your frustration at our adding to the “endless stream of crapulent whining and panhandling vomited daily through the letterbox on to the doormat” has been noted. However, whilst I have naturally not seen the other letters to which you refer I would cautiously suggest that their being from “pauper councils, Lombardy pirate banking houses and pissant gas-mongerers” might indicate that your decision to “file them next to the toilet in case of emergencies” is at best a little ill-advised.

In common with my own organisation, it is unlikely that the senders of these letters do see you as a “lackwit bumpkin or, come to that, a “sodding charity”. More likely they see you as a citizen of Great Britain, with a responsibility to contribute to the upkeep of the nation as a whole.

Which, brings me to my next point. Whilst there may be some spirit of truth in your assertion that the taxes you pay “go to shore up the canker-blighted, toppling folly that is the Public Services”, a moment’s rudimentary calculation ought to disabuse you of the notion that the government in any way expects you to “stump up for the whole damned party” yourself. The estimates you provide for the Chancellor’s disbursement of the funds levied by taxation, whilst colourful, are, in fairness, a little off the mark. Less than you seem to imagine is spent on “junkets for Bunterish lickspittles” and “dancing whores” whilst far more than you have accounted for is allocated to, for example, “that box-ticking facade of a university system.”

A couple of technical points arising from direct queries:

1. The reason we don’t simply write “Muggins” on the envelope has to do with the vagaries of the postal system;

2. You can rest assured that “sucking the very marrows of those with nothing else to give” has never been considered as a practice because even if the Personal Allowance didn’t render it irrelevant, the sheer medical logistics involved would make it financially unviable.

I trust this has helped. In the meantime, whilst I would not in any way wish to influence your decision one way or the other, I ought to point out that even if you did choose to “give the whole foul jamboree up and go and live in India” you would still owe us the money.

Please forward it by Friday.

Yours Sincerely,