BBC: Pope's story through eyes of cat
The Pope has given his consent to a new children's book that tells the story of his life through the eyes of his cat.
The pope has a cat.
I rest my case.
Stense sent me a text message while I was standing at a urinal yesterday. My phone chimed in my pocket. The chap standing next to me shifted nervously.
"That's why it's called a tinkle," I explained.
… time for some more Eels:
Too bloody right, mate:
Jonny Wilkinson was the scourge of Australia again as his four penalties put England in the World Cup semi-final after a thrilling win in Marseille.
Did you hear that noise? That was the sound of the Aussies crashing out of the World Cup at the feet of Johnny Wilkinson encore une fois.
Beaut! It's like Jen's 40th birthday all over again.
BBC: Brown rules out autumn election
Gordon Brown has said he will not call a general election this autumn.
Thank goodness for that! It's Children in Need day on 16th November. I can only take so much excitement in one season.
AAAS: Something in the Way She Moves
In a particularly stimulating study, researchers have found that lap dancers—women who work in strip joints and, for cash, gyrate in the laps of seated men—earn more when they are in the fertile phase of their menstrual cycle. The finding suggests that women subtly signal when they are most fertile, although just how they do it is not clear.
You've got to hand it to those sociobiologists: they get research grants to die for. I mean, how did they pull that one off? Getting paid to study lap dancers—and all in the name of 'science'. I am humbled by their ingenuity.
Although the above study seems hardly worthy of comment, I should point out that, when I were a lad, young women gyrating in the laps of seated men was not considered to be a particularly subtle form of communication. Has anyone considered the alternative (and, to me, more likely) hypothesis that, when these women are at their most fertile, they feel more frisky and put more effort into their dancing, thereby reaping more spondulix from their discerning clientèle?
Interestingly, the woman who wrote the above piece has the unlikely name of Constance Holden—or Constant Holding, as I'm sure her friends must call her. I thought they discouraged that sort of thing in lap dancing bars. Or so I'm told.
True story: Carolyn tried lap dancing once. She didn't find it at all easy. The reindeer kept trying to lead. Next holiday, she's off to Gdańsk to try her hand at pole dancing.
Carolyn contacted me out of the blue on Tuesday and suggested we meet for a coffee: her treat. Which was nice.
"Hey," I said, as I supped on my suspiciously medium-sized-looking, so-called Grande, "I read a great joke on the internet the other day. Want to hear it?"
"Go on, then," said Carolyn, not particularly enthusiastically.
"'Doctor, doctor, my hearing is getting worse and worse.'
'What are the symptoms?'
'They're a yellow-faced cartoon family on the telly.'"
"… I don't get it," said Carolyn.
I dunno. I spend all my waking hours devising new ways to spread goodwill amongst all mankind through the Web 1.0 medium that is Gruts, and what bloody goes and happens? Al Gore wins the bloody Nobel Peace Prize. (He dyes his hair, you know.)
That medal had my name all over it, I tell you. Someone got to the judges. And we all know who, don't we, Ratzinger.
Of course, you realise this means war.
I just don't get the celebrity culture, I really don't.
Yesterday, I spotted these two magnificent specimens at the front of a long queue of people who were standing in the rain, waiting for their turn to meet Australian pop crooner and Graham Norton lookalike, Jason Donovan.
WHY?!!!!!
No disrespect to the talentless no-mark or anything, but I wouldn't turn my head to see Jason Donovan unless he were on fire. Yet these poor souls were standing in the sodding rain, waiting for the opportunity to touch the hem of his amazing technicolor™ dream coat.
Jesus!
I mean, it's not as if he's Simon Callow or anything.
New Scientist: Go nuclear for a third industrial revolution, says EC
We are on the brink of the "third industrial revolution", according to José Manuel Barroso, president of the European Commission—who believes it means nations may have to embrace nuclear power.
Europe's "low-carbon age" is the revolution Barroso spoke of last week at an energy conference in Madrid, Spain. "Member states cannot avoid the question of nuclear energy," he said, following the commission's announcement last month of a new research initiative for nuclear energy. The European Union should contribute to research, Barroso said.
How do I vote for these people?
BBC: Family want plastic pen tops ban
The parents of a County Durham schoolboy, who choked to death on a plastic pen top, are stepping up their campaign to get them banned.
In case you were in any doubt, it's plastic pen tops they want to ban, not schoolboys.
A measured and proportionate over-reaction, I'm sure you'll all agree.
16 shells from a Thirty-Ought Six:
We WON! Against all the odds, we actually bloody won! We're in the sodding Rugby World Cup final!
Your heart has to go out to the poor French.
Yeah, right! Remember your very own Baron de Coubertin, you Frogs: l'important n'est pas de gagner mais de participer.
Yeah, in yer face, Pierre! Them's the words of a looooooosssssseeeeeeeerrrrrr!
Magic mustard! Well done, our lads!
I've decided to do something about the jackdaws stealing all the nuts from my bird feeder. Jen won't let me have a gun, as she suspects (correctly) that I would use it to shoot cats. So, this afternoon, I invented Carter's Jackdaw-Resistant Bird Feeder™.
I say jackdaw-resistant because them crows are damn devious. I'm sure their cunning bird brains will eventually overcome the challenge. In the meantime, the tits should be able to feed untroubled.
Oh, and it's a hell of a lot easier to fill than the traditional bird feeders.
That's nuts and tits in the same post. Should help the ratings.
Colleague: Is it just me, or is there a nasty niff in this kitchen?
Me: Oh, I'm pretty sure it isn't you.
Occasionally, visitors to this site accidentally click the wrong link and leave a comment against the wrong item. Usually, if I realise their mistake, I simply move the misplaced comment over to the intended item.
Earlier this week, on the Guardian newspaper's Comment is Free website, some poor soul made a similar mistake. In an item about the ludicrous suggestion that Britain should have a national motto (politicians, huh?), a person calling themself Bleedingheart accidentally posted a comment saying:
They are the Falkland Islands, twit, and they were British long before America seized Texas, California, the rest of the "Southwest" and all the oil and minerals they contained.
They immediately realised their mistake and added a second comment:
Yikes, sorry about that, wrong thread. Ignore! Ignore!
… But it was too late: the other commenters were on to Bleedingheart.
It turns out that They are the Falkland Islands, twit would make an extremely popular national motto amongst the Guardian-reading intelligentsia.
It's worth reading the article and its comments: they made me laugh out loud at least twice. (But it should be said that I was pretty tired at the time.)
It's generally frowned on these days, but it's good to know that some of us Brits still have a certain class.
At work yesterday, I noticed that my hand smelt rather unpleasant. It was the sort of smell you get if you've been handling a lot of coins. Not very nice. So I went and washed my hands.
Five minutes later, I noticed that the smell was still there. So I went and washed my hands again—a bit more dilligently this time.
Blow me, when I returned to my desk, the smell was still there! This was getting ridiculous. So I went to wash my hands yet again.
It turned out the smell was from the soap.
Conversation over Jen's ever-excellent homemade chorizo and pepperoni pizza this evening (I made the dough):
J: Is this your favourite dinner?
R: It's definitely up there.
J: What would you choose to eat for your last ever meal, if you were on Death Row?
R: The Pope.
J: The Pope?
R: Yeah. If I'm going to die, I'm taking that bastard with me.
J: This is my game: you're not allowed to eat another human being.
R: Well he eats the body of Christ every Sunday!
BBC: England 6-15 South Africa
South Africa ended England's reign as world champions as the Springboks claimed their second World Cup victory.
The scoreline flattered South Africa, but, to be fair, they were the best team in the tournament—if not on the pitch.
The Australian television match official inflicted by far the most damage on the defending champions by disallowing Cueto's clear try early in the second half. The question has to be asked: why didn't he have access to the same video images as the rest of the world?
England were written off as no-hopers before tournament. We never expected to get to the final.
We'll be back.
Sonny Boy Williamson II: Bye Bye Bird:
A few years ago, I bought a rhyming dictionary. It was shrink-wrapped. Imagine my disappointment when I got home and opened it to discover that it was nothing more than a bunch of lists of words which rhyme with each other. I had quite reasonably expected it to be an ordinary dictionary where all the definitions were written in rhyme. You get the idea:
floater (n) sl.
A poo
In the loo
Whose buoyancy
Causes annoyancy
It seems to me there's a huge gap in the market for a proper rhyming dictionary.
(Twenty bonus points for the best rhyming definition in the comments.)
Pretty much sums up my idea of the perfect day out.
Which is just as well, really, because that's how I spent Monday. Stense was in town, and we went through our favourite combination of second-hand bookshops, cafés, and pubs.
Several stories and a brand new competition to follow.
If you're really lucky, I might even put up some more photos. (OK, Stense, so I lied: learn to deal with it.)
Remember the family hostile pub that Carolyn and I spotted last month? Well, I somehow managed to drag Stense into it on Monday. Actually, dragged is an awfully inappropriate word.
What a fantastic pub! Full of grown-up people enjoying grown-up beer and grown-up food in an altogether grown-up environment.
I was totally out of my depth.
On our way out, we couldn't believe our luck when we saw a family of four reading the blackboard outside. "Oh, it's not fair! Children aren't allowed in!" moaned one of the sprogs.
"Just like it was when I were a lad, kid," I wish I'd said.
Compare and contrast:
We have a right to know.
D/Ch.Supt Gill Templar: Find me a witness tout fucking suit!
Not even Stense could explain this one:
I'm sorry, I'm not entirely sure why I said 'Not even Stense'. But, seriously, how do you misplace something like that?
Screaming Blue Messiahs (1984):
That's NINETEEN… EIGHTY… FOUR…
Christ!
While we were out on Monday, Stense bought herself the latest edition of Men's Health magazine.
Now, believe me, I've looked: Stense is definitely not a man. So what on earth was going on there, do you reckon? Stense claimed she had bought the magazine for the recipes. Yeah, right—and I bought this month's Playboy for the Robert Redford interview.
From what I've seen of Men's Health magazine—which, you'll appreciate isn't much—it seems to be aimed at blokes who like to stand around in their underpants all day working on their 'abs'. And for women who have a thing about blokes who like to stand around in their underpants all day working on their 'abs'. Which is most women, as far as I can tell.
I haven't a clue what an 'ab' is, but I'm damned sure I wouldn't want to go showing mine off in public. Even if I could.
And what is it with those six-pack stomachs? Six-packs are for lager-sipping softies. Real men drink real ale, and that stuff comes in barrels.
I don't understand women, I really don't. They keep insisting that, when it comes to men, looks aren't important; it's personality that counts. But when did you last see a woman buying a magazine with Fred Dibnah or Jeremy Paxman on the cover? Exactly! Women are full of shit.
Jealous? Me? No way, ladies! There's nothing those muscle-bound hunks have got that I haven't got four times over.
That's how I will be referring to the third in line to the throne from now on.
What a total wanker.
It's inherited through the Y chromosome, apparently.
