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).