|
|||||
|
It is good that Perry has supplied us Samizdatistas with a category called How very odd! to describe our oddest postings, because how else would you describe the calculation that England are now, still, the second best test match cricket side in the world? On the other hand, England really are that bad at one day cricket. January 11th, 2007 | 4 comments - (Comments are closed)
 It is fair to say not many Englishmen live in the more remote parts of Russia. Thus when someone gets an e-mail from an Englishman called Tim Newman, living in Yuzhno-Sakhalinsk, who is an oil business professional discussing the Royal Dutch Shell’s operations, and there is a Tim Newman working for Shell in that part of the world, it will be one and the same person, right? Nope. Take a look at this for a real life comedy of errors. January 10th, 2007 | One comment - (Comments are closed)
The PM has a new gimmick. We are invited to petition him via the interweb thingy. Now I think it interesting in itself that a Prime Minister should so wrap himself in the purple to invite petitions, as if he were sovereign and we the petty subjects whose wishes he might deign to consider. But the content of the petitions themselves is getting quite weird. Leading the pack is a petition to repeal the Hunting With Dogs Act 2004. But there is also one to “ignore the petition to repeal the hunting act 2004” and another (which no-one has signed) to “to ban the signing of petitions asking to repeal the hunting act 2004”. Some are gloriously vague (“change renting laws in UK”); some insanely specific, requiring arcane knowledge and an odd personality to understand, let alone support. (E.g. We the undersigned petition the Prime Minister to require A-G energy-efficiency ratings to make explicit the A+ and A++ categories (and any future, higher categories), so that consumers are aware that energy efficiencies greater than ‘A’ can be achieved with products so rated.”) Some are both vague and specialised at the same time. Some founded on malapropism. There are numerous semi-duplications, where individuals who might agree with an earlier, simpler, better-supported proposal, have added their own refinements, not caring that it may be a distraction from the main cause. In short, all the faults of that fetish of radicals, participatory democracy, are on display. As are pretty much all the green-ink political obsessions. My favourite: “We the undersigned petition the Prime Minister to replace the national anthem with ‘Gold’ by Spandau Ballet” – I urge you to support it. But there is something to give joy to everyone. November 21st, 2006 | 12 comments - (Comments are closed)
As regular readers here all know, the state is not your friend… but sometimes its petty tyrannies and inanities are bloody funny:
A quick check and sure enough, these people fail to mention their sausages are not in fact made from dragon meat (which I had assumed was ‘self-smoking’). Hell, I only bought them because I thought they contained the ultimate in ‘endangered species’. November 19th, 2006 | 22 comments - (Comments are closed)
Today is Remembrance Sunday, and outside Westminster Abbey there is a Field of Remembrance. The field’s crop consists of young men, each commemorated by a wooden cross. I took photographs there last Thursday. The most effective pictures for evoking what it all looked like were those which hinted at the sheer number of wooden crosses, which in their numbers of course only hinted in their turn at the number of young men killed in war in recent decades.  Who, I wonder, is that particular young man, who was, like me, taking photos? Probably, also like me, just going for an effective shot, rather than remembering anyone in particular. He is (as I later did in the exact same spot) photographing the backs of the crosses nearest to him. The nameless dead. Other photographers focused tightly in on one particular name and one particular cross. The oddest photograph I took that day was of a car number plate, on what looked like an official, government, chauffeur-driven Rolls.  At any other time, and with no poppies on the front, that would be a good laugh. But with poppies everywhere, it seemed very peculiar. Here, alas, is another relevant BBC story. November 12th, 2006 | 7 comments - (Comments are closed)
South Korea finally surrenders to one of the finer features of modernity and legalises the miniskirt! 
Legal! November 4th, 2006 | 14 comments - (Comments are closed)
This anecdote from Ian Brown is just too much fun not to share: Killer wasp brings passport office to halt. Any wasp-trainers out there? Your country needs you. October 24th, 2006 | 8 comments - (Comments are closed)
And the reason? Simple, the USA has banned Vegemite! I expect to see RAAF strikes on US targets by late this evening and Aussie SAS teams boarding US shipping and dumping cargoes of Skippy Peanut Butter into the sea. More seriously, it is just preposterous that the state interferes in the most picayune aspects of life. Next time I am in the US I intend to smuggle a jar in disguised as Marmite and smear it over the door handles of the first US federal government building to see. October 22nd, 2006 | 39 comments - (Comments are closed)
Overheard in a hospital earlier today:
And he was not joking, our informant insists. October 18th, 2006 | 5 comments - (Comments are closed)
“Purchaser shall not sell or transfer any Cat purchased hereunder to anyone other than an immediate family member, and shall not offer to any person the purchase of a Cat or any genetic material from a Cat, the rights Purchaser may have under this Agreement, or any other right related hereto, without the Company’s express written authorization.” – An extract from the click through licence one is required to agree to when ordering a genetically modified hypoallergenic cat from a company named Allerca. (Via Boingboing). October 7th, 2006 | 8 comments - (Comments are closed)
I was mildly amused to see that there is a book published in the USA called ‘Why mommy is a democrat’. Presumably it teaches children that just as ‘Mommy’ looks after Junior and makes him share his toys with the kid next door, if the kid next door refuses to share his toys with Junior, Junior should threaten to lock him in the attic and take the toys he wants by force… just like the nice Democrats use the threat of jail for people who do not ‘share their toys’ like they are told. Just a guess. October 7th, 2006 | 15 comments - (Comments are closed)
Such as, how to pack and ship a hippopotamus…  I find the idea of life without the internet is just unimaginable. September 29th, 2006 | 16 comments - (Comments are closed)
|
   |
||||
All content on this website (including text, photographs, audio files, and any other original works), unless otherwise noted, is licensed under a Creative Commons License. |
|||||