Headlines

Headlines are a bit boring at the mo.

Economy this, Expenses that, Jordan in between.

What I'd like to see are some slightly more esoteric headlines. Like these:


Short-sighted Pedophile Kicked to Death by Dwarf.

Osama bin-Laden to become America's Next Top Model.

Queen Attacks Sarcozy; Wins on points.

Jordan Promises To Stop Writing Books, Appearing on TV and Generally Being a Tit.

Apathy Sweeps the Nation; Nobody Cares.

Catholic Church Declares 'We Did It For The LOLZ'.

Thetans Discovered By Science; Tom Cruise Looks Smug.

Bear Baiting To Be Shown On T.V. Piers Morgan To Host.

Simon Cowell's Ego Collapses - Black Hole Formed.

I'm Feeling Poorly. Get Me Lemsip.

Nihilism New Religion And Th...

Brown Says Stuff - No One Gives a Monkeys.

Pope Says That The Whole Gay Thing Was An Error. Soz.

SOS To Be Replaced With OMFG!!!!!!!!!!11

God Makes Visit To Archbishop of Canterbury - He Looked Really Fucking Angry.


Feel free to add any others that spring to mind via the comment bit.


Christmassy post to come next time.

Tyger, Tyger Burning Brighter Than Downtown Baghdad

What do you think constitutes the greater story:

a) Tony Blair admitting that he would have ordered the invasion of Iraq anyway and that he would have just 'changed the arguments' to ensure the disposition of Saddam Hussein took place regardless of public opinion and the massive loss of life that it led to;

Or;

b) Tiger Woods nobbing someone that wasn't his wife.


According to the papers, it's 'b'.

The thing is there are remarkable parallels between the U.S. led invasion of a sovereign nation and the infidelities of a much loved sportsman.

'What are these..?' I hear you not cry...

Well:

§ Golf at its core is dull. Dull to watch, dull to play and even duller to talk about. The same for international politics. Both Tiger Wood's sex life and the 'will they/won't they' pre-war aperitif we experienced in 2003 brought some much needed excitement to both fields.

§ There was much talk of a sexed-up dossier which provided the justification to go to war. Sounds like Tiger's pretty sexed-up without falsifying details.

§ The aim of Golf (insofar as I can make out) is to get a hole in one. The purpose of the invasion of Iraq was to find 'one in a hole'. Initially this was for WMDs but later it was just Saddam. Which we found. In a hole!*

§ Both stories have had car related themes. The intelligence for the '45-mins and we're all fucked' came from a cab driver who overheard a conversation whilst driving. Tiger's brief experiment with late night off-road/on-road/off-road/tree/hydrant driving was no doubt the result of an overheard conversation. Possibly with his wholesale lube importers.

§ Golf/Gulf - simple.

§ There has been much talk of equipment for the armed forces. Likewise there has been has been much talk of Tiger's equipment. I'm not sure which I'd rather go to war with.

§ In the invasion of Iraq it was common for Coalition troops to listen to heavy metal to psyche themselves up before battle. The same is true of Wood's pre-coital routine in which he listens to the second half of the first verse of Holy Diver by Dio for a full half hour.**

§ Both were the result of dodgy intelligence. The Iraq invasion justification was basically a list of things that could possibly be true if you momentarily suspended all rational and logical thought. Tiger's for thinking that his wife wouldn't mind


So there we go. On the face of it it might look like a story about someone famous having an affair was just trivial nonsense but now you know better.

Mission Accomplished...



*Yes I'm aware I could make a cheap 'but he got one in a hole' joke but didn't want to. I'm mainly writing this footnote for Seb.
**'Ride the tiger/you can see his stripes but you know he's clean/oh don't you see what I mean...'

Well, it was bound to happen...

After my previous post enthusing about the joys of rugby I've been injured. In my second match. Woot.

Now it isn't a serious injury. All I have done is break my finger. Not really a big deal when compared to some of the mind-bendingly painful and dangerous things that can happen on the pitch.

But it is a bloody embuggerance. The following is a list of some of the daily activities that are now either hilariously difficult or require a serious amount of forward planning to achieve.

Writing:

I happen to be right handed. I have broken the middle finger of my right hand. My handwriting is not known for its lucidity at the best of times. Currently it looks like a half crazed widgitty grub has wallowed in ink and then, after getting smacked out of its head on a cocktail of hallucinogenic drugs, has decided to dance the rumba to happy hardcore. With a mate.

Driving:

Everytime I turn the wheel I catch the splint which creates a rather amusing amount of pain to shoot across my hand. This is followed by a less amusing (although somewhat cathartic) number of expletives to pour forth from my mouth. Fun for all until you find yourself driving behind Derek the Lipreading Nutter who thinks that you have just called him a 'fucking cunting bastard'.

Moving across the school:

Those of you who read regularly know that I'm a teacher. As such I often have to move from one side of the site between lessons. Just at the point when a thousand pupils are doing the same. They all have backpacks of the size usually reserved for climbing Everest. All it needs is for someone to turn around quickly and *bang*, Mr Fandango is on the floor weeping in agony. I suspect they do it on purpose.

Cooking:

I love cooking ('cus I'm a new man and all that) but it is difficult to grasp anything (and patently dangerous when it's a knife) with a hand that doesn't work like it should. Of course being a resourceful type of chap I use my left hand. My left hand it transpires, is about as useful at chopping veg as using a chainsaw. On paper it should work, only it kind of doesn't.

Post fecal ablutions (or as we call it down my way 'wiping one's arse'):

I don't need to draw a diagram do I? All I'll say is that it is really difficult after 25 years of using the right hand to make a switch.

Using the computer:

I'm now like my Granddad using a computer (which in itself is a simple form of tragi-comedy). I do the 'one-finger-stab' style of typing. Using a track pad has become a battle of wills. You try to ctrl, alt, del with a finger that doesn't move. Bloody hard. I feel like a cross between Joseph Merrick and Bill Gates (without the obvious good looks or stack of cash) in that I know how to do it...I just can't.

Being a man:

We all know that men are crap when ill. Having this is worse because I feel fine. So I mope around, half-completing tasks that when fully digited I can complete in a matter of seconds. The Duchess (bless her for her patience) just rolls her eyes in pitying shame and takes over. I have been emasculated by a poxy broken finger! What has become of me?

In short having a broken finger is about as much fun as nailing your eyelids to a mountain goat during the mating season whilst simultaneously listening to Simon Cowell read the complete works of George Elliot. In Dutch.

But on the upshot I should be all better in a week so I can stop all this self-pitying nonsense and actually get on with my life.

I get the feeling I'm not the only person who'll be relieved when that happens...

Yes I am actually rubbish.

I haven't posted anything for over a month. This has put a serious dent in my plan for blogger domination. Bollocks.

There are a myriad of reasons as to why I've so unbelievably slack. Primarily due to my quite frankly laughable workload. But there is another, more personal, slightly less rational reason.

I've joined a rugby team.

For those of you who are unaware of the game of rugby allow me to explain:

Rugby is a sport played by a team of fifteen where an oval ball is carried. The only way to stop an opposing player who has the ball is to bodily tackle him. Preferably as hard as physically possible.

Now allow me (if you will) to place this into context. I weigh 11 1/2 stone (161 lb for those in the Land of Yank). I am hitting monolithic monsters who have the edge on a fully grown African elephant. Their mates call them 'Ripper'. They eat steel and drink only diesel. They laugh when they stub their toe. They think dwarf tossing is an Olympic sport. Hell, they think that the 'Terminator' films are documentaries. The only time they felt fear was when their girlfriend had her first orgasm.

Put simply I'm way out of my league.

But has that stopped me? No. No it fucking hasn't.

There are several reasons for this. Firstly, there is nothing that compares to being part of a team. Secondly, pain is merely an excuse to have a lie down. Thirdly, there is quite a lot to be said for absolutely nobbing a truck of a prop.

So despite my obvious lack of physical presence I am having a great time. If you've never played rugby and fancy it there is no doubt a team near you. Go along to a training session. Go on. You'll like it. I promise.

Blog Action Day - Climate Change

I am not a hippie. I will not descend into the idea of the Earth as 'mother'. I will not personify the poor little creatures that are affected by the effects of climate change. I will not pretend that I look whistfully into the future and imagine a post-apocalyptic dystopia where my decendents scratch a living from the bare Earth and faces turned skywards scream 'why didn't you turn the heating down one fucking degree?'

Becuase I, like all other hairless apes, don't look beyond the temporal horizon that extends one week beyond our faces.

You see the problem with climate change is that it doesn't affect us directly. Not like fixing the toaster. Or terrorism. It is a nebulous idea. Scientific in explanation that seems a million miles away. We nod and agree and recycle before jumping in our cars to drive to heated houses before turning on the 55'' plasma T.V. and watching a four hour episode of 'Strictly Come Dancing', turning on all the lights, chucking the washing in the tumble dryer, leaving the fridge door open, roasting a 56kg whole pig for two, sitting down at a computer with wireless connection to spend 3 hours writing a blog about climate change.

You see the issue of climate change exposes us at our most degraded. It seems so far away so we don't really bother. Oh, we pay lipservice to it but when anything big is done about it we fail.

I'll give you an example. About a year ago the Government suggested that it would be a good idea to monitor the amount of waste that goes into our bins using a microchip. The ultimate goal was no doubt to start to charge people for the amount of waste people threw away.

Did the fine people of this great nation accept such a forward thinking and fair way of trying to reduce the amount of waste mindlessly chucked out?

Did they fuck!

Allusions were drawn from 1984 because it was an attack on the rights of every British person to have their own four acres of landfill without the intrusion of a Big Brother government.

This is from the country with the most CCTV cameras per capita in the world.

I wish that we could change. I wish that the soviet experiment showed that we can move beyond the self interested actions and do something alturistic. Not because of any form of vicarious motivation, nor because of the threat of mass flooding, starvation and death.

But because it is the right thing to do.