Yes, yes, two months and all I do is post crude Japanese toilet humour. I know- but I've been busy.

Lazy blogger

Been a bit slack blogging recently. This is mainly to do with the fact that:

a) Work is busy
b) I've been to two (excellent) weddings, one of which was in Ireland
c) I've got nothing to say

On that final theme all I can post is a story about a woman suckling a monkey.

But hey, isn't that enough?

'Barrister got willy out'

Well, if you're going to get your cock out you may as well get hanged for a sheep as for a lamb:

"A DRUNK barrister stunned wedding guests by whipping out his willy, then beating up a man who complained, a court heard yesterday."

Creative output

While singularly failing to achieve anything solidly creative this year, I have managed to put the artistic equivalent of a revision timetable together. Therefore:

My next book will be entitled 'The Pointless Farm'. It will be billed by my (no doubt thrilled) publishers as 'The Archers' meets Fyodor Dostoyevsky's 'Crime and Punishment'.


Dostoyevsky above: Beating a horse to death with an iron bar or Pointless Farming?

My next album will be entitled "Mining for Nickel" and will be less of a musical experience and more of a aural technical overview of the difficulty in extracting nickel ore from hazardous deep shaft mines.

My next painting will be called, rather poetically in my opinion, Dr Strontium's Jaw, and will offend the vast majority of people with its crass avoidance of taste and form.

Right, now to get to work. Oh look, Big Brother's on tonight....

Ashes to Ashes

Seems Keith Richards did snort his father's ashes after all. However:

"The cocaine bit was rubbish. I said I chopped him up like cocaine, not with", said Keith before confirming in an interview on NME.com that the rest of it was 100% straight up legit.

"I pulled the lid off (my father's urn) and out comes a bit of dad on the dining room table. I'm going, 'I can't use the brush and dustpan for this'.

"What I found out is that ingesting your ancestors is a very respectable way of ... y'know, he went down a treat."

Cained

I read with amusement that Michael Caine is releasing an album of chill out music eponymously (well, sort of) entitled 'Cained'. WTF?

"Not a lot of people....er....know...what were we talking about again?"

Reid it and weep

As moste peple (reading this anyway) will be aware, Mike Reid has passed on. I love the BBC's final summary of his life:

In the late 1970s, Reid hosted the ITV children's TV quiz show Runaround, remembered for its incomprehensible rules and the incongruity of him as presenter. "

Der Untergang von Sheffield Utd

This is very puerile but rather amusing:

Submarine race

Not a spectator sport.

All in a spin

Listening to Campbell on Radio 4 yesterday morning brought back a whole lot of repressed anger I thought I'd suppressed effectively to deal with later, perhaps in therapy. Most of it was just mildly enraging, and in some areas I found myself agreeing with him. For instance, I think the public's cynicism about politics is engendered by the media although most politicians, like some celebrities, try to bend it to their own agenda and are therefore complicit.

What got my proverbial goat was the talk again of the run up to war in Iraq. This faux indignation Campbell adopts that he could actually have 'sexed up' the evidence in favour of war. The chutzpah! The very idea! That a man such as Campbell or, heaven forefend, Tony Blair would actually do something like that!

Which is, of course, precisely what they did. I think I'm more offended by the fact he takes us all for eejits more than the act of duplicity itself.

Needled

I have to applaud Doug on his latest Star Wars salvo. Most impressive. Almost too good. In fact, could this be you Doug?

Animal Baths

An oft-posited cause for the First World War was the mental state of the Kaiser. By all accounts he was a vain man with a real inferiority complex, especially with regards to the British. Hence his building of a fleet of Dreadnoughts to rival our navy's own, causing an arms race and adding to the unbearable tension of the pre-war years.

Well, given the fact the Kaiser was as a child forced regularly to endure something called an animal bath who can blame him? The Kaiser had a difficult birth and, as such, suffered nerve damage to his arm. He was forced to immerse aforesaid arm into a freshly slaughtered hare in the medieval belief that it would somehow cure him.

Helpfully, I've drawn a graph to chart the potential effect of animal baths on renowned people as a warning to physicians. As the Kaiser is the only famous person I know to actually undergo the animal bath procedure there is, admittedly, some conjecture in the individuals chosen.

Subjects were selected using guesswork, the Delphic pronouncements of nearby birds and bits of the Evening Standard read out randomly by candlelight in a pentagram until the individual was named, and their souls dedicated to Asmodeus. Mostly the first one, though.

Terrifying dummies

Inspired by Antonia's experiments I came across this rather disturbing item.

What gets me is that it has 'As seen on TV' writ large across the packaging. On what programme? Presumably the US equivalent of Dispatches.

iPhone

States within a State

I read with interest today that the sleepy, vaguely hippy dippy town of Totnes is adopting its own currency.

On that note I'm thinking of declaring my own house an independent state. The fun part is deciding what form of government to adopt. A republic is too boring (everyone's a republic nowadays) and so is a constitutional monarchy (who wants to sit around signing off other people's laws, ffs?). An empire, unfortunately, is too grandiose (I'm talking about a house in York after all). Which is a shame, as being an emperor would be cool.

So, I'm left with some kind of grand duchy (which has a pleasant sound to it) or maybe a militant theocracy (which would probably and amusingly annoy the Anglicans. They're quite the thing in York y'know. But despite this, I'm not really fired up with any kind of maniacal religious zeal as, perhaps, the infrequency of my blog postings might indicate).

I've also considered some form of ancien regime absolutist monarchy but I think the survival chances of my new state-within-a-state hinge on a cordial relationship with my erstwhile ruler, Queen Elizabeth II, and I figure her government may not be as tolerant of an absolutist king living in one of her archbishoprics than a less controversial ruler, like a margrave or something.

So, lacking marches to be a grave over, I have decided on Landgrave of South Bank. Now to convince the wife to live under my benign munificence. Maybe I'll do the washing up first (that often helps with things like this).

Navman

I have a Navman. It's an ingenious invention for the directionally challenged (i.e. me) as it helps me find where I'm going to. Or it least it should.

Travelling to Warwick from York yesterday I noticed that, rather than driving along the road as my primary senses were telling me I was, according to the Navman console, drifting eerily across fields and rivers, lakes and woodland near to, but not on, my supposed route. A strangely liberating but wholly inaccurate reflection of the true sequence of events unfurling on the M1. Puzzled, I let the matter pass once it seemed to right itself.

I was trying to get to IBM which is, allegedly, on Warwick’s Birmingham Road. Except Navman questions the existence of a Birmingham Road in Warwick. It doesn't even accept there could be one (the German word 'Unbestimmtheit' or 'Uncertainty' in quantum physics terms would have been reasonable and I would have reluctantly nodded in compromise). But no. Point blank, categorical refusal. I eventually ended up in an industrial estate nearby and found my way to my true destination by good old fashioned aimless driving.

And then on my return journey human error came into play. I was exorcising troubling memories of the morning’s Navman weirdness by listening to the radio turned up very high and I couldn't hear the lilting, ethereal commands emanating from my computerised navigator. So I missed a turning. Ok- my fault. But that soon set Schrödinger’s Cat amongst the pigeons. I had, according to Navman, ceased to be. I was an ex-car. My Citroen was drifting, like so many dark matter particles, amongst the vastness of space. Well, I wasn't on an M40 tributary at any rate, or anywhere else according to Navman’s understanding of the UK road network.

I solved this existential crisis through the expedience of turning the thing off and on again, which saw me abruptly de-cloak, apparently driving towards some form of sports complex near Leamington Spa. Soon, my newly conscious Navman was able to calculate my route again pretending coyly the whole incident had never happened.

This brush with the space-time continuum has not destroyed my faith in my Navman. Without it I would never have even got there at all and would be still driving forlornly around Coventry, screaming my frustration hoarsely though several days of beard growth, given up for lost by kith and kin. Rather, this Damascene experience has highlighted that one should never entirely place one's metaphorical John Thomas in the hands of a gadget as it could be periodically and utterly deranged.

Rabid Monkeys

If Death has a monkey suit then who has his robe?

Joy Division

The launch of a new film about the Ian Curtis, Control, reminded me how much I like the Joy Divison. YouTube, inevitably, delivers. What a sound. What brilliant dancing:

Star Wars round up

Lots going on in the world of Star Wars. Thanks again to the Sith Guards of my blog content, Andy and Doug. You're welcome to an afternoon of Sarlacc feeding aboard my pleasure skiff anytime.

This I found highly amusing. Star Wars Toys that were never made:

Granny grows horn

All a bit weird, really.

Rugby Silence

Whilst enjoying the rugby World Cup and Six Nations, I only take an interest in day to day domestic/European games when Andy's team Gloucester crashes and burns. After singing Te Deums to their progress up until this weekend, there is now a crashing silence resounding on offmessage.

Don't worry, you can twist the knife if Forest or Shrewsbury (or both) don't make it in the playoffs, Andy.

Taiwan legislature- get ready to rumble!

Taiwan is an unusual place. It's a small island off mainland China and is actually called the Republic of China. It's where U.S.-backed Nationalist Generalissimo Chiang Kai-shek fled after being defeated by the Communists on the mainland. So U.S. backed, in fact, that it even occupied the Chinese seat on the U.N. Security Council until 1971(!) when the Communists got it, courtesy of Nixon.

One thing the Taiwanese do really very well is have massive kick off brawls in their parliament. In fact, there was another one just the other day. Why not sit back and watch a compendium of the very best fights Taiwan's MPs have to offer:

News just in- married goat dies

Earlier, we talked about man/goat love and the joy and misery it can bring. A seemingly happy story was relayed of a caprine marriage in the appropriately named Horn of Africa. News has reached The Still that the goat has died.

This tragic demise was caused by it "choking on a plastic bag she swallowed as she was eating scraps on the streets of Juba."

This, surely, is riddled with euphemisms?

Whilst we're talking about human/animal love...

...a man being pursued by an amorous mule:

Music and blasters and old Jedi masters

Many thanks to Doug and Andy for these. Firstly, wookie suits for kids (would that make them Ewoks?) . Then an R2D2 projector- sweet. Time to try and get that ordered for the boardroom.

And sorry but...

...Man slept through multiple stabbing.

At last...

...a jet powered bog.

Leeds to nowhere

Looks like Leeds FC are in freefall. I'm not a Leeds fan but, living close to the city as I do, I know lots. I think it's really sad. It's the result of horrendous management decisions, and a crazy approach to finance which has seen them sell their ground (and even their training facilities) and are still paying wages to players years after the event (I think Robbie Fowler is still on their books ffs).

No doubt everyone responsible will go unmolested to pastures new while lifelong fans try and pick up the pieces.

Still, that will teach them not to support such a crap side.

Police brutality

So, I saw this sign walking past the news agent yesterday saying "York Rape Arrest". I mean Jesus- what happened to handcuffs?

Pope Hope Dashed

Like many red blooded men of my age I was cruelly disppointed not have been elected pope when John Paul II went to meet his boss face to face in 2005. However, I discovered how I might have been here.

Seems like my CV would have been thrown out of the window, being an aetheist who's never joined the clergy. Which is a shame as I'd have called myself Urban, which I think is a pretty 'street' name. Ah well, will have to revisit my ambition to become Emperor of China.

I found the Monkey (cult, must-see Japanese TV programme from the 70s for the uninitiated) opening credits on YouTube and I think it's still really exciting.

I will steer clear from painting a broomstick black and gold and run around hitting things, which I did first time round:

Prussians, Siam and autogyros

A rather funny bit in The Simpsons is when Mont Burns is in the Post Office and asks:

"I'd like to send this letter to the Prussian consulate in Siam by aeromail. Am I too late for the 4:30 autogyro?"

Suffice it to say I checked and Prussia did have a consulate in Siam and autogyros were used (they were just completely bloody useless).

Sudan man forced to 'marry' goat

Marital justice "goat news" for caprine lover:

"When I asked him: 'What are you doing there?', he fell off the back of the goat, so I captured and tied him up."

Reminds me of another story a few years ago about a chef seen having sex with a goat by a trainload of passengers:

"Stephen Hall, 23, lassoed the female goat with a belt and proceeded to have sex with it. A packed Hull to Bridlington train looked on in amazement. Police switchboards were jammed with horrified commuters calling in on their mobiles."

So, this guy sees a goat, gets the 'orn, whips off his belt and starts going at it. Then a train pulls up alongside, aghast holidaymakers returning to Hull from a lovely family holiday in Bridlington, faces pushed up against the misted window, staring out in horror at this bestial romp. And this guy must have just kept going, certainly long enough for what is going on to sink in (so to speak), to get out their mobiles and then to dial in their complaints. Respect.

The strange thing is he was gay and the goat was female.

Sausage misadventure

I wonder if he tried to fax the emergency services when he realised things had gone wrong, à la The Simpsons?:

Lorry driver's sausage gaffe

A German lorry driver set fire to his cab after deciding to cook himself some sausages while driving.

Walter Reckling, 46, kept the small gas cooker for roadside use but decided to use it on the road as he was late with a delivery.
He was cooking two sausages while travelling past Niederwuerschnitz in Saxony, Germany, when the cooker toppled over.

It set fire to the seat which in turn set fire to the cab of the vehicle.

Reckling was treated for smoke inhalation at a local hospital where he was also found to have been three times over the legal alcohol limit.

Thanks again Ananova.

Padwan Learner

My eldest son, Aidan, has recently got into Star Wars. It's obviously a matter of extreme pride for me, and barely disguised concern for his mother.

He doesn't call it Star Wars, of course. It's Robots (or Robotsch as he endearingly calls it). However, at the age of two he is doing Chewie and Darth Vadar impressions, mock fighting with light sabres and pretending to be a space ship (or schpasche schipschs as he refers to them as they blow each other up into fiery fragments on screen).

What's interesting is that, even as a Youngling, Aidan recognises the new films are of an infinitely lesser quality than the originals. He is less patient and his concentration flags, finding distractions in 2p pieces on the floor and unusual yellow scraps of paper on the sofa which he never would even in the poorer scenes of Return of the Jedi.

And glad that I am, I still feel that it will all end in 18 years time on a wind-swept ziaggurat with me announcing I'm his father in the midst of a light sabre fight...

Elks

Finally, a solution to that age old salt/elk problem causing deaths on the road:

Elks used as salt testers

Sweden is employing elks to test the salt used on roads to see which varieties taste the best.

Every year there are dozens of accidents caused by elks standing on the roads licking the salt.

Now the Swedish transport ministry wants to find a type of salt that the elks will not want to eat.

Head of the project Frida Henin: "We want to make sure that the new mixture does not attract elks or reindeer."

The 14 animals will have two months to decide if any of the salt varieties are suitable for road use.

Thanks again Ananova for not letting unpleasant world events interfere too much with news about fussy Nordic types.

United States of Whatever

Clutching a bottle of poor, hastily bought wine, arriving late and flustered at the house party of popular culture as I am, saw this the other day and it made me laugh:

Me so gullible

I've just read Doug's blog and he's just debunked the story about Keith Richards snorting his late father's ashes. Despite Doug's incredulity that anyone should believe that story I actually did.

Whilst it is true to say in many ways I am as gullible as Nigerian email scam victim, it sounds quite plausible to me, given that he says himself event of a nuclear apocolypse, the two things most likely to survive would be Keith Richards and cockroaches.

Sam Fox Statue Scrapped

Serbian fans of Sam Fox will be sad to learn that plans to honour her with a statue have been scrapped. Apparently she'd snubbed them after she discovered it wasn't her singing for which she was revered...

Iraq War Iraqi People's Fault

Over the last few months I’ve noticed a disturbing trend in US foreign policy statements which is slowly but surely putting the blame on the parlous and tragic situation in Iraq on Iraqis. Take the report in today’s Guardian which quotes the outgoing US ambassador (Zalmay Khalilzad, pictured right) to Iraq saying the Bush administration's patience was wearing thin and urging them to stem the bloodshed.

The chutzpah is breathtaking. The US steams into Iraq, topples the government, makes no provision or plan for the peace and when the situation unravels it blames…the people it invaded.

But, what a great historical gloss. The Iraq war wasn’t an illegal and calamitous chevauchee for oil. It was a just liberal war which only went wrong because of those silly Iraqis and their habit of killing each other. Against our wishes I might add.

P’ah. I’m going to think about Star Wars ‘What If’ situations instead….

Miniature Horses Lure Men Into Local Barn For Oral Sex

Tiny, galloping strumpets entice Christian men to farm solely to engage in ravenous fellatio.

General Tagge

Until recently I had the pleasure of working with Louise, daughter of General Tagge (left)actor Don Henderson. This was obviously extremely exciting- as my brother Owen commented, only he appreciated the threat the Alliance represented to the Death Star and was quite prepared to vocalise it.

Ok, so he was relatively obscure. But, I hear you all cry, surely not as obscure as the Imperial Stormtrooper who pops up after C3PO and R2D2 have landed on Tatooine in Episode IV: A New Hope and says "Look sir, Droids”? If the length of entries in Wikipedia is anything to go by, think again.

Things George Lucas Might Have Done

I've often wondered how the original Star Wars films would have panned out if Darth Vadar had asked Luke Skywalker to help him remove his mask on their first, rather than last, encounter:

Darth Vader: Luke... help me take this mask off.

Luke: But you'll die!

Darth Vader: Nothing can stop that now. Just for once... let me... look on you with my OWN eyes.

[Luke takes off Darth Vader's mask one piece at a time. Underneath, Luke sees the face of a pale, scarred, bald-headed, old man]

Luke: You're a bit f*cking mad, mate.

The Alans

I'm reading a very good book about the fall of the Roman Empire at the moment, the details of which I shall no doubt bore you with later.

I love the fact there was a tribe of particularly ferocious barbarians who stormed across the Rhine in the early 5th century called the Alans. I mean, did they succeed because the Romans just laughed at them and were taken off guard? They were followed by the equally mundane sounding Franks.

What is also quite amusing is that the Alans were wiped out in Spain by the Goths. I imagine a bunch of gloomy teenagers destroying a bunch of used car salesmen on the Sierra Nevada.

There was also a tribe called the Gepids which simply sounds silly.

The only tribe that sounds remotely threatening is the Vandals, but they just make me wonder why the Romans didn’t just slap on an ASBO.

So, one of the greatest civilisations the world has seen was brought to its knees by Alans, Franks, Goths, Vandals and Gepids. Way out.

Thanks

For you kind words, Doug and Antonia.

I'm more pleased for Nicaragua which might also read my blog and perhaps, as a result, be warned off a protracted and ultimately fruitless military campaign against Belarus.

Check mate

And they say chess is played by dateless wonders:

"A 15-year-old Peruvian chess player who didn't come back from a tournament in Argentina has been found - living with a nightclub dancer."

The Mexican Adventure

I have no topical reason for talking about this, so apologies. It’s just that I was thinking about it in the shower this morning.

One of the more surreal events in world history was the decision by the Emperor Napoleon III (The great Napoleon’s rather less great nephew) to put an Austrian Archduke, Maximilian (right), on the throne of Mexico.

Understandably, the somewhat bewildered people of Mexico weren’t entirely happy about an Austrian with an enormous facial hairstyle being made their emperor, supported by French troops (who were presumably equally confused by this latest wheeze of their rather eccentric ruler).

Inevitably, this crazed scheme failed and Emperor Max rather unfortunately shot by firing squad, celebrated in a rather excellent painting by Manet. This drove his wife, who had returned to Europe to generate support for the deranged enterprise, completely bonkers.

The sad thing is Maximilian seems to have been a rather decent chap.

Just shows you, never attack random countries. So, if Hungary declares war on Thailand you know they’ve been warned. By me. Through the use of 19th century analogous examples that have come to me during my morning ablutions. Via a blog no one reads.

Precious little standards

This is quite old now, but still makes me laugh aloud when I think about it. Obviously it's a pretty damning indictment of The Sun's journalistic standards. But what's more funny is that it's so weird! I'd love to see the original article:

"IN an article published on The Sun website on January 27 under the headline ‘Gollum joker killed in live rail horror’ we incorrectly stated that Julian Brooker, 23, of Brighton, was blown 15ft into the air after accidentally touching a live railway line.

His parents have asked us to make clear he was not turned into a fireball, was not obsessed with the number 23 and didn’t go drinking on that date every month.

Julian’s mother did not say, during or after the inquest, her son often got on all fours creeping around their house pretending to be Gollum.

Also, quotes from a witness should have been attributed to Gemma Costin not Eva Natasha. We apologise for the distress this has caused Julian’s family and friends."

http://www.thesun.co.uk/article/0,,1-2005192659,00.html

Reggae Sauce

I saw this guy on the Dragons Den. Levi Roots (what a cool name? His real name is Keith) had instant brand appeal for me. He was obviously savaged by the Dragons, not least for claiming he had an order for millions of litres (it was in fact nothing of the kind).

Still, he got backing and Sainsbury's are stocking his product and it's being produced in a factory in Wales. I have to say that I can't stop snickering at 'jerk sauce'.

Britain AD: A Quest for Arthur, England and the Anglo-Saxons

I've just finished this book and I have to say found it both interesting and thought provoking (at least to a history nerd like me). It's essentially a discussion of 'Dark Age' Britain and a study of continuity from before the Romans, the occupation and the subsequent departure of the legions in 410 AD.

It seeks to explode the 'myth' of the Anglo Saxon invasions and the belief we have that the Celtic fringes are...well...Celtic and the English south and east are English.

The author Francis Pryor is an expert in Neolithic, Bronze and Iron Age history and has applied the methods used in looking at this earlier period (see, for example, the other book on this theme Britain BC) to Arthurian Britain.

Pryor argues convincingly that there is no evidence for a mass migration of Germanic peoples from the continent and that our understanding of the foundation of the English kingdom is based on a creation myth established by both English and Celtic writers in the later Middle Ages and beyond.

What he maintains is that there was a cultural invasion and that, as in the centuries before and since, eastern Britain has looked eastward to the Continent adopting some its culture, language and beliefs and integrating them with long held local practices. A good analogy is that just because I wear Levis doesn't mean I'm an American. Many of these beliefs pre-date the Pax Romana and indeed outlast it by centuries.

The book deconstructs some established views about which I had many doubts. An example is: where is the evidence for a historical Arthur? When doing my Masters degree I remember asking, with breathless enthusiasm, the eminent archaeologist (who is oft quoted in Pryor's book) Professor Martin Carver who he thought Arthur was. He replied (rather kindly I think) "whatever you wish to believe". This is Pryor's point. There is no firm evidence, historical or archaeological, that supports Arthur, violent battles with Anglo Saxons, depopulation of native Britons by murderous Germans and the imposition of a foreign way of life. Indeed the archaeological evidence suggests a gentle change and subtle adoption of continental ways in the east, and a continuation of a separate, westward looking culture in the west of England, Wales and Scotland.

Despite all this, it left me feeling a bit deflated. I liked those myths. I found the idea of heroic but doomed Celts (after all I am a Celt. Or I thought I was) fighting barbarian hordes incredibly exciting. Now it seems it's load of cobblers. My remaining doubts in Pryor's theory erode by the day. I wasn't not sure about the language bit. Until I remembered that after a bit of interaction with a few thousand British people the official language of millions of Indians is English. Definitely worth a read.

It's murder out there

Judges are saying that we're locking up people (specifically murderers) for too long. So our prisons are now filled with aged, broken people who can't remember, and can no longer engage with, life on the outside. It's blatantly obvious that this is due to the Government's Daily Mail pleasing criminal justice system, which demands mandatory sentencing when often it's completely unnecessary just so the baying horde of Middle England can relax in their 4 bedroom mock-tudor, commuter belt idyll a little more securely .

My own view is that murder should be decriminalised. Making it illegal just drives it underground and makes it impossible to police. We should have murder cafés where small amounts of recreational murder takes place in designated areas so it can be controlled. We should look to the Continent where the Dutch have tried it successfully with cannabis and Belgians with rich chocolates.

Entering the world of bloggage

Ok. I've done it. I've started a blog. I wasn't going to. I kicked against it, screaming like a drunk Tarzan. But I couldn't resist it. Perhaps I was scared about missing out. Whatever it was, the challenge is can I sustain this momentary wave of enthusiasm? Or will this drunk tarzan pass out in a breadfruit tree, to be slowly suffocated by the large boa constrictor of lethargy, deaf to the frenzied shrieks of my hirsuite friend, Proactivity, and break the heart of my civilised girlfriend, Fleeting Amusement?

Whatever happens it seems like I'll be stretching metaphors until they snap like a tired rubber band.