Zen 56: Climate chief confirmed as breast man

The controversial chair of the United Nations' Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change, Dr Rajendra Pachauri, has just published a 'smutty' book. Now clearly the Nobel Prize-winning scientist had no idea that his fictional romp was going to hit the shelves at the precise moment his meticulously cultivated credibility was under media scrutiny, but the timing is rather special.

Astonishingly, it's just been revealed that the source for the dodgy IPCC claim about the world's glaciers disappearing by 2035 was an article in a climbing magazine, a journal with all the scientific standing of the Argos catalogue. As the man ultimately responsible for quality control in the IPCC reports, Pachauri has egg on his face, but the derision heaped on him for such an awful academic blunder is as nothing compared to the cyber-shoeing he is receiving over his appalling tit-flick.

The book, entitled 'Return to Almora', details the spiritual journey of an Indian climate change academic in his 60s who hails from Nanital. So nothing autobiographical about this one, other than the "Indian climate change academic in his 60s who hails from Nanital" bit.

There is, by all accounts, a lot of shagging in it. Really badly written shagging. And not only that, but an awful lot of really badly written shagging accompanied by an awful lot of breast fixation, especially of the heavingly voluptuous variety. As the Times of India put it, the hero, Sanjay: "... is always noticing breasts and masturbating." Lovely.

Nonetheless, our not-remotely-autobiographical swordsman is no slouch between the sheets:

"She removed her gown, slipped off her nightie and slid under the quilt on his bed ... Sanjay put his arms around her and kissed her, first with quick caresses and then the kisses becoming longer and more passionate ... Afterwards she held him close. ‘Sandy, I’ve learned something for the first time today. You are absolutely superb after meditation. Why don’t we make love every time immediately after you have meditated?’."

Why indeed Rajendra. I mean Sanjay. Phwoar.

Dogs of War 2: IED dogs

The US Marines are using dogs to detect improvised explosive devices (IEDs) in Afghanistan. Up to 15 dog units are assigned to any one battalion.

The dogs are better than metal detectors because insurgents are increasingly using non-metal containers to cook up their little batches of death.

Labradors are apparently favoured because they have 'good focus' and don't need as much water as other breeds. And presumably because labradors will take an objective interest in anything they associate with food, even if it is a big pile of gravel with a bomb under it.

Word of the Day 18: Bunny ears

(Noun) The state of having imbibed far too much caffeine, the result of which is exhibiting hyper-alertness more commonly seen in rabbits grazing open ground in eagle country.

Usage:

Guy 1: "Jesus, you look terrible. Are you about to have a seizure?"
Guy 2: "Nah, I just had my third triple-shot grande mocha latte fredo of the morning, and I've fully got my bunny ears on."

Source: A word was needed, so I made one up

Dogs of War 1: Aussie Tracker

For me, a photo of a happy dog in some horrendous war zone is always mesmerising. Not much in the way of reportage from a war zone engenders instant feelings of unqualified affection. And nothing does it quite like the sight of some cherished hound, carrying out his job with a joyfully oblivious dedication, all for the love of his human buddies - a rock of absolute canine certainty in viciously unpredictable world.

Got to love a war dog. Which is why this occasional series on dogs of war.

This charming mutt, an Aussie tracker team dog from the Vietnam War, has much of the Hawkeye Pierce about him. Australian tracker teams were used to hunt down enemy units after a 'contact'. Basically, two dogs, two handlers, two human trackers, a signaller and a machine gunner would hop in a helicopter and go find the bad guys, who as we all know were very adept at melting back into a jungle. The tracker doggos would follow the scent and point when they found an enemy hidey-hole.

And yes, apparently, the dogs did stick their heads out of the side of the helicopters and let their ears flap in the wind.

Zen 55: Discredited MMR quack gets further discrediting

Dr Andrew Wakefield, the doctor who 'demonstrated' a completely bogus link between the MMR vaccination and autism back in 1998, acted "dishonestly and irresponsibly" in carrying out his research, according to the General Medical Council.

In a ruling released today, it found that he acted with "callous disregard" for the kids from whom he took spinal fluid and blood, procedures for which he lacked either ethical approval or the correct qualifications (but he did pay them a fiver). As scientists go, this guy isn't even a hack. He's a punk.

And what's worse, his reckless bullshitting has done untold damage to a vaccination programme that in the UK had all but eradicated childhood measles. This is the latest lurch earthwards for his nosediving credibility (having had his 'findings' ruthlessly and comprehensively demolished by proper scientists) but even so there was still a cohort of the feckless and the gullible in court swearing undying loyalty to the man. There's no helping some people.

"The science will continue in earnest," said Wakefield on leaving the hearing. Yes it will, which is why snake-oil salesmen like him will always eventually be exposed for the charlatans they are. Enjoy your imminent retirement doc.

Word of the Day 17: Rabbit Hole

(Noun) Descriptive term for any long, intellectually satifsying serendipitous journey that you didn't mean to go on; the act of Googling something trivial and re-emerging five hours later having visited 42 websites as you pursue a chimeric and ever-changing point of interest; in pre-internet days, doing the same thing but in a library, an encyclopedia or a record collection.

Usage: "I'm sorry I missed the wedding, but I went online to look up directions and fell down a rabbit hole. It took me until Sunday evening to find my way back."

Source: Alice in Wonderland

Zen 54: Jim 'The Hammer' Shapiro

Got hit by a garbage truck the other day while cycling to work. I'm contacting this guy.



And this one is almost avant garde theatre. Samuel Beckett couldn't have done it better.

Zen 53: Random facts about the French itch, and some famous sufferers

I was recently intrigued to read in a back issue of The Week that Henry VIII definitely suffered from syphilis. He was a right shit in his later years (that's an academic designation) and a dose of rot may well explain, if not excuse his despotic behaviour, but I'd never heard this stated as a flat-out fact before.

As it turns out, there is no way of telling whether or not the rumour is true. But in reading up about H8's health, I found out some interesting stuff about one of the most prevalent deadly diseases of the last 600 years.

Syphilis, also rather charmingly known as 'the French itch', 'Chinese ulcer' or 'mal de Naples', in fact probably had its origins in the 'New World' of the southern Americas, according to a massive archaelogical analysis of ancient skeletons during the 1990s.

The name 'syphilis' itself was coined by a poet. Girolamo Fracastoro wrote his epic cautionary tale 'Syphilis Sive Morbus Gallicus' ('Syphilis, the French Disease') in 1530. In it, a shepherd called Syphilis contracts the horrid pox as punishment for defying Apollo. So popular was the tale that the name stuck.

In reality, syphilis first reared its fabulously ugly head at a startled Europe in 1495, when the French invaded Naples. Having taken their fill of pox-ridden doxies (themselves infected by sailors returning from the New World) the French then proceeded to shag their way across the known world, spreading it sufficiently far that by the 19th century, a full 15% of Europeans were thought to suffer from it.

And a surprising number of famous people are believed to have been fully clapped up. Here's a handful for your edification: Ivan the Terrible, Abraham Lincoln, Ludwig van Beethoven, Friedrich Neitzsche, James Joyce, Oscar Wilde, Vincent and Theo van Gogh, Guy de Maupassant, Franz Schubert, Al Capone, Scott Joplin and Leo Tolstoy.

There's even a theory that syphilis may help explain the colossal bastard that was Adolf Hitler, although that doesn't wash with serious historical opinion. In fact, given the tendency to cover up if you did have syphilis, there's a question mark over everyone listed before Theo van Gogh. Or is there? No, there is. Or is there? ... (etc, ad nauseam).

Zen 52: Wikipedia deprecates wiki knowledge

Web geek warning. This will be of no interest to you unless you are in some way a web geek.

While hunting out new words for word of the day, I Googled 'neologism'. This throws up the Wikipedia style guide, which has the following advice: "Avoid neologisms".

Wikipedia explains:

"Support for article contents, including the use and meaning of neologisms, must come from reliable sources ... Note that wikis such as Wiktionary are not considered to be a reliable source for this purpose." [My emphasis]

Heresy!

As the Good Book* says: "Do not hate your brother in your heart. Rebuke your neighbor frankly so you will not share in his guilt. Do not seek revenge or bear a grudge against one of your people, but love your neighbor as yourself." (Leviticus 19:17-18)

Hang your head in shame, Wikipedia.

* The Bible

Zen 51: The worst two-for-one deal in history

On 6 January this year, a unique human being died at the surprisingly advanced age of 93. He was a Japanese man named Tsutomu Yamaguchi and he holds a singular record as the only person recognised as having survived both the atomic bombing of Hiroshima and Nagasaki.

He was in Hiroshima on business with colleagues when 'Little Boy' was dropped on 6 August. He had made it as far as the station when he discovered he'd forgotten his 'hanko' (signature stamp) and returned alone to collect it, putting him just 3km from the centre of the blast. Mr Yamaguchi suffered burns, but was well enough to return to his home town of Nagasaki on 9 August, where apparently he was halfway through a bollocking from his boss (who thought his stories of an American superbomb were defeatist rubbish) when 'Fat Man' went off.

More than 160 people claimed 'double survivor' (nijyuu hibakusha) status according to a 2006 TV documentary, but only Mr Yamaguchi was recognised by the Japanese government as a genuine double survivor, and even then it took them until March 2009 to do it. Fair to say, they've alway had an issue with compensation...

Image: Nagasaki, before and after.

Zen 50: Pancake animals

Pancake animals I have made. You'll notice that it's not the canonical list. I think the whale and the llama are on my old phone.

Zen 49: Is Osama bin Laden losing his touch?

As far as dastardly terrorist plots go, the Christmas Day scheme to blow up an airliner using an inadequate cry-baby with plastique in his underpants has to rate as a dud. Would-be jihadi Umar Farouk Abdulmutallab was disarmed aboard Northwest Airlines Flight 253 by Dutch film director Jasper Schuringa after doing little more than set his own genitals alight.

Full credit goes to Mr Schuringa for an act of selfless heroism, and it was no doubt a nasty shock for the passengers and crew, but really? A bloke with a bomb in his jocks? Is this an act destined to overthrow the Great Satan a.k.a. the Crusader Empire a.k.a. the good old United States of A? I think not. This is surely the sort of inept stunt that would get you laughed out of IED 101 at the International College of Fundamentalist Nutbags.

Apparently not. No lesser Fundamentalist Nutbag than Osama bin Dunnit himself recently crept out of the dank cave in which he is living the Mahdi dream and claimed responsibility for this latest "attack".

And did we uproariously laugh him back into his dank cave, perhaps wildly impersonating a man with his cock on fire? Did we perchance make unfavourable comparisons with more competent pyschopathic terrorists while gurning and fanning an imaginary conflagration in the ball area? Did we?

No. We raised the terror alert level to "Ooh crikey" and put our 12-year-old Foreign Secretary on TV to explain how, actually, we really were all jolly scared by a bloke whose trouser department now looks like the bits of the barbecue you give to the dog.

Wouldn't it be altogether more British to view these wild-eyed, beard-stroking Medievalists and their tedious footstamping with the blithe, yet condescending indifference they deserve, while calmly reassuring the denizens of this Sceptred Isle that we can sleep safe in our beds at night thanks to our vigilant, stout-hearted protectors both here and abroad?

For while our terrorist chum is shivering arse-deep in goat shit and fantasising about the global Caliphate, the infidel is relaxing with a pint in a nice warm English pub and enjoying the Test match cricket. And crucially, while you at home have a greater probability of being struck by lightning than dying in one of his increasingly silly outrages, he has a much better-than-even chance of running into the wrong end of a batey Welshman, or a perhaps a Predator drone piping a special kind of sunshine up his backside.

So remind me again - just in case I do encounter a man with hate in his eyes and Semtex round his testicles - who is meant to be scared of whom?

Word of the Day 16: Seori

(Noun) Scrumping; the harmless purloining of delightful food by cheeky young scamps; a Korean custom indulged since the Joseon Dynasty, a period when any other sort of thievery would get your head cut off.

Usage:

Father: "Where's all my beer gone?"
Child: "I cannot tell a lie father. It was me."
Father: "You're for the high jump."
Child: "But it was seori, dad."
Father: "You're FIVE."
Child: "Rules is rules. You can have this one, but it's mostly spit now..."



Source: The Host

Zen 48: Dirty Harry meets Rain Man

The web's premier geek strip has been pretty lame recently, but I rate this a return to form.

Word of the Day 15: Brat

(Verb) To brat; to nag, whinge at or otherwise berate another in the manner of a small child.

Usage: "I'm exhausted. The kids have been bratting me all morning, so I've locked them in the airing cupboard while I have a glass of Chardonnay and watch Neighbours."

Source: There wasn't a word for it, so I made one up.

Zen 47: Apology

I'd like to offer an official apology for the preceding blog post. It deviated unforgiveably from my usual modus operandi of cynical piss-taking and as such has 'disturbed' my regular readers. (Yes, both of them.) Plus, I really know sod all about art. I won't do it again, promise. My bad.

Zen 46: The artist and his mother

Came across this painting 'The Artist and His Mother' by an Armenian painter called Vostanik Adoyan a.k.a Arshile Gorky (1904 - 1948). He was a big noise in abstract expressionism (apparently) and developed a theory that in order to become a great artist he should first 'inhabit' the styles of other great artists and try to go beyond them. For this reason, he ended up doing a lot of stuff that very cleverly riffed on the stuff of other artists.

He was an Armenian and survived the genocide. Sadly, his mother didn't. She died of starvation in 1919. Vostanik Adoyan moved to the United States, where he hid his Armenian origins, even to the extent of changing his name to Arshile ('Achilles') Gorky.

What I think is striking about this painting is that - despite the fact he spent most of his adult life dressing himself and his painting up as someone else - it couldn't have been done by anyone else but him. This is the real him, expressed in a single painting. I'm not sure if that's an insight, but I was struck by it.

It took him more than 10 years to finish. The site I borrowed the image from has butchered the colours of the painting, but in the original his skin tones are healthy and alive, while she looks deathly pale and reproachful. Paired with the original photograph, it becomes strange, sad and unsettling.

Zen 45: Starship Troopers 3

I just caught Starship Troopers 3. I wasn't expecting anything great, I just needed somewhere to put my brain where thinking wasn't required for an hour or so.


Dear God. What a film. Most of it is pretty procedural, i.e. if you saw the posters for Starships 1 and 2, you pretty much know what you're going to get. That is until the heavy religious symbolism gets ladled over the closing 20 minutes. The Lord's Prayer, guns as crosses, halos of searchlights, choirs of angels and even a Virgin Mary reference involving a blonde in a blue towel. I was so caught off guard, I forgot to switch over and was momentarily worried I may be the subject of some weird thought-control experiment.

Anyway, it was shockingly bad, but I still enjoyed it more than Synecdoche, New York.

Zen 44: And a photo of some baby otters

Just look at the little fuckers. Have you ever seen anything that cute in your life? No. This is ultimate cuteness. You shall never know cuter.

Zen 43: Crikey, that was all a bit heavy. Here's a catchy pop song with a fun video to make up for it.

OK Go - This Too Shall Pass from OK Go on Vimeo.

Zen 42: Is global warming actually all bollocks?

I love science. It's clean and elegant and has nice lines. The scientific method gives us a complete and logically unimpeachable system for investigating the universe and all things in it. It doesn't deal in absolutes. It deals in probabilities. It takes the approach that most of what we take to be 'true' today will, like as not, be proved wrong tomorrow.

I don't love the climate change debate. It's silly. It's dogmatic. It's emotional. Basically, it's unscientific. Worse still, it seems to be taking some good scientists down with it.

To summarise the problem: First, the climate is an inherently unknowable thing. Because climate is an infinitely complex and chaotic system, it will reveal patterns and express parameters, but it is inherently unpredictable unless you have a perfect unstanding of the starting conditions. We don't.

Second, you can't really experiment with the climate. You can't, for example, switch off all global CO₂ emissions for a year to see if they actually do have the effect that is claimed for them. So climatologists rely on computer models to help them draw pictures of our infinitely complex and chaotic climate system. From these they predict what the future climate will do, so in reality they have more in common with economists trying to call markets than true physical scientists. And we all know how accurate the economists have been.

Third, the empirically-derived data is poor. You know how you get the occasional news story declaring that archaeologists have found evidence that ancient Britons were all cannibals, and you think: how do they know that? The answer is, they don't. They've found two human bones with flint scrapings on them in Staffordshire. If, however, they'd found systematic caches of hundreds of bones from one end of Britain to the other, bearing teeth marks and buried in cooking pots, that would be compelling evidence. So it is with ice cores. They are occasional oases of indicative data in a vast desert of ignorance. Add to that the fact that we've only been measuring the temperature of the planet in anything approaching a systematic fashion since 1945, and suddenly an observed increase of 0.7°C since the start of the 20th century doesn't seem all that threatening. Or reliable.

Fourth, where politics and science mix, the science always suffers. The difference with climate change is that the scientists aren't all the victims this time. Many seem to be complicit in muddying the waters. Take Climategate - the leaking of hacked emails from the University of East Anglia's crack Climatic Research Unit. The emails reveal apparent attempts to supress sceptical scientific papers about anthropogenic global warming and block freedom of information requests for climate data. In the scientific community, this is the equivalent being caught beating your wife. Only today the IPCC has admitted to publicising the wrong forecasted date by which all the glaciers will have melted. They said 2035, when 2350 is a more realistic figure (if, indeed, it ever happens at all).

So when someone tells you the 'science of climate change is settled' you can, with confidence, tell them this, if nothing else, is complete bollocks*.

*Also worth noting that sea level rise is negligible, polar bears are not endangered, the Met Office can't predict the weather and major rivers are not drying up.

Word of the Day 14: Nerdsquealing

1. (Noun) The noise made by enthusiasts of a niche pursuit when roused to excitement by a positive new development in their sphere of interest.

Usage: "The announcement that the Phantom Menace was to be remade with an actual plot and would feature the ritual slaughter of Jar Jar Binks over the opening credits was met by such collective nerdsquealing that it could be heard in the ionosphere."

Source: Does the Internet make you dumber?

Zen 41: Who is Britain's biggest advertiser?

The Central Office of Information, that's who. The COI is the British government's "centre of excellence for marketing and communications" a.k.a. the very especially annoying department in charge of prising open your brain during the gaps between programmes and cramming patronising and/or terrifying shit into it by turns.

In 2008/09, this Orwellian behemoth increased spending by 35%, pissing a biblical £211m quid up the wall to put Moira Stuart in a broom cupboard and warn children about the dangers of sticking biros in their eyes. (Tax doesn't have to be taxing, but apparently adverts about tax have to be so taxing you want to barricade the cupboard door shut, pour lighter fuel under it and light the bastard using a self-assessment form as the taper.)

In between beating us all over the head with doom-laden intonations about how exponentially dangerous the world has become - apparently exacerbated by us all suddenly becoming so seismically stupid we're incapable of tying our own shoelaces without a 15 minute explanatory video starring Graham Norton lecturing us on the dangers of shoelace asphixiation - the COI hasn't stinted on promoting itself and will blithely claim credit for everything from cutting smoking to reducing road deaths.

But interestingly, there's nothing in the COI's annual report to suggest that any of it is working. In 2008 they 'reached 30 million people' with their Smoke Free England campaign. Another way of putting this is 'the law was changed and we all had to abide by it irrespective of the accompanying wanky campaign depicting demographically diverse individuals breathing freely against a backdrop of blue skies and fluffy clouds - weather, incidentally, that we hardly ever get in England, hence the crowd of pissed off looking tabbers huddled in the doorway of any given British pub on any given evening of the year'. It's rather like saying that you reached a lot of girls when you were at university. You still probably graduated a virgin.

The COI reports that the proportion it spends on advertising is actually shrinking compared to direct marketing, research, PR and events like the 'tit in a jar' (pictured). But consider this. We as a nation are served somewhere in the region of 10,000 government adverts a day (based on Nielsen's estimate of 3.7m state ads shown per year, divided by 365 days = 10,137 a day).

That's 10,000 little bullets of nagging death. Watch your salt intake, don't climb scaffolding when you're pissed, look out for motorcyclists, wear a condom, join the Army, get a skill, don't have small accidents, talk to Frank, switch to digital, eat a balanced diet, love your local council, don't boil your baby, stupidity kills, oh look, Kelly Brook can drive a truck.

Big Brother is watching you, but he isn't some cold-eyed commie dictator type. Oh no. He's a sharp-suited media agency ballbag who's just blown a cool 5 million on an ad campaign to tell you how to find your own arse in a well-lit room.

Word of the Day 13: Facepalm

1. (Verb) To cover one's face with one's palm upon realisation of something one has done that is monumentally stupid and/or a total fuck-up; to do this empathetically on someone else's behalf. See also: 'double facepalm' - perform a gesture akin in some cultures to taking your own life out of shame for your own interstellar cretinousness; to do this empathetically on someone else's behalf.

2. (Verb) To express exasperation at the interstellar cretinousness of another.

Usage: "Since June 2007 when Gordon Brown became prime minister, the Labour party - and indeed most of the nation - has been in a permanent state of facepalm."

Source: facepalm.org - shaking our heads in disgust since 2007!

Zen 40: Islamic Solidarity Games called off due to acrimonious dispute

Brilliant. Just brilliant. The aforementioned games, intended as a expression of Islamic unity, have been called off because the partipating nations couldn't agree what to call the Gulf.

The Iranian hosts wanted to call it the Persian Gulf. Everyone else wanted to call it the Arabian Gulf. So the Iranians went ahead and minted the medals with the words 'Persian Gulf' anyway.

A special sort of irony is leant by the following quote from the Islamic Solidarity Games website:

"In two last decades, there were valuable and acceptable changes and evolution that have been happened or is forming among Islamic Countries ... Holding these competitions with high quality will cause Muslims have a good memoir during several years and have honor about this sport event."

No good memoir this year chaps. And presumably no have honour either. Shame.

Zen 39: Does the Internet make you dumber?

Canadahoovian clever channel TVO has launched a new podcast about all things web. If you like web and you like funny, you will probably like this. It's funny web. And they use the term 'nerd squealing', which I love. It's evocative.

Zen 38: Local lad fails to set new air guitar world record

Chertsey boy Chesney Hawkes has dramatically failed to set a new world record for the number of people simultaneously playing air guitar. He managed 600, which is 836 short of the current mark. They strummed along to his 1991 tub-thumper 'The One and Only'. Remarkably, this half-arsed attempt at an entirely meaningless world record still made the front page of the BBC News website.

But here's a more important question. Has anyone ever seen Chesney and Lisa Kudrow (Phoebe from Friends) in the same room together? I think not.

Zen 37: Synecdoche, New York (is cock)

Hired 'Synecdoche, New York' to watch this evening. It's by cinematic wunderkind Charlie Kaufman. I was encouraged to rent by the raft of glowing reviews on the cover and its description as a high-brow "smash-hit comedy of the year", plus the absolute dearth of anything else in the shop that wasn't either a frat comedy or about vampires.

It had eight - read 'em, eight - maximum star ratings from various august publications, although I should have been put on my mettle by the fact that one of those was the London Lite. Still, the following puff gives a flavour of what the more 'serious' press thought about it. Here's the New York Times: "To say that [it] is one of the best films of the year or even one closest to my heart is such a pathetic response to its soaring ambition ... It’s extravagantly conceptual but also tethered to the here and now."

Ooooookay. Maybe it's because I'm British, but I didn't get it. It was slow. Really slow. And unpleasant. But not in an interesting way. And so self-consciously intellectual it made you want to nail your face to the table to stop the cringing. But intellectual in the sort of opaque and inaccessible style that is often used to cover up what is actually superficial bollocks.

The synopsis of the film, which could only be considered a comedy in the sense that, say, Schindler's List is a comedy, goes like this: "the incredible story of one man's seemingly insane mission to create a miniature version of New York..." (etc, blah, hyperbole, hyperbole).

I have an alternative.

"Charlie Kaufman rose to prominence with the smash hit 'Being John Malkovich', which involves people disappearing into John Malkovich's brain. In 'Synecdoche, New York' he extends the theme by actually disappearing up his own arse."

Needless to say, I didn't like it.

Word of the Day 12: Bakkushan

(Adjective) Bakkushan. A word used to describe a person who is attractive from the back, but repellent from the front.

Usage: (From Oscar Wilde's 'The Duchess of Padua')

Enter two gentlemen of the household, the younger of them newly arrived.
Maffio: "Hark, the duchess is upon us."
Guido: "Ah, the duchess. I have observed her pert carriage from the non-horse end and I would heartily wish that the duchess were genuinely upon me!"
Maffio: "You jest prematurely, young Guido, for observe as the duchess steers her horse-and-four towards us."
Guido: "Crikey. The old bird's boat's not up to much."
Maffio: "Aye Guido, 'tis so. She's Bakkushan, no mistaking."
Exeunt.

Source: Bakkushan: BBC Japanese word of the day

Zen 36: Happy Father's Day!

More mobile phone stuff from the real world, courtesy of Pintoo. Great phone skills, Little Horse. (You may have to click on the image to see the gag in its full majesty.)

Zen 35: What the freakin' Jesus was that all about!?!?!

I've just watched this video. It's easily one of the weirdest things I've ever seen, but also really quite entertaining. It's like a jingoistic, psychedelic Chinese version of Cars but with dogfighting aircraft quarrelling over airbourne refueling.

Rumour has it that a couple of Chinese students knocked it together for laffs, while others believe that it contains encoded mind control messages from China's military-industrial complex. You decide, comrades. Death to the running dog capitalists. Do you like my new Mercedes?



Here's a translation courtesy of byx86, a commenter on YooChube. No idea if it's right. It's not important:

Title: Plane Story
0:22 J-8: 10,10, I'm out of fuel.
0:24 J-10: Roger. Go for fuel.
0:29 OH-6(Sign): Fueling ahead
0:47 KC-10(Sign): Welcome and enjoy
1:08 OH-6: No smoking
1:17 J-10: Approaching Mama No.1. 12 o'clock!
1:19 J-8: Yahoo!
2:23 J-10: Queue-jumping?!
2:53 J-8: Try next one?
2:55 RF-4: Yoshi! (Jap for "OK!")
2:56 J-10: Let's go
3:16 J-10: Ah! It's Mama No.2!

Zen 34: Canadahoovian Rock Blog launch

Once upon a time, I knew a Canadahoovian who by day was a social media whizz and journo par excellence, but by night prowled the gig venues and backstages of the land, fraternising with obscure but incredibly cool rockstars and the occasional rockstarlet. (We preferred the stories about the rockstarlets.)

Then, sadly, she went back to Canadahoovia, got married (to a bloke) and took a Serious Job. Now, happily, she's over the Serious Job phase and is back to rawkin'oot with happily much less obscure rockstars (no knews on the rockstarlets just yet, but give it time...) and has launched a new website: The Backstage Rider.

OK, so it's about the Canadian music scene and will probably be about as relevant to you as a tennis racket is to a walrus, but I say All Hail to those who follow their star and full power to her ligging elbow.

And for old time's sake, here's a little information film about Canada, its inhabitants and its wildlife. "The beaver is a truly proud and noble creature."

Word of the Day 11: Sleeveface

(Verb) Sleeveface: To obscure or augment any part of the body with a record sleeve, creating a photographic or video illusion.

Usage:





Source: Sleeveface [LINK]

Zen 33: Tim Minchin's "Storm"

A nine-minute 'beat poem' recounting Tim's verbal duel with a hippy: "You know what they call alternative medicine that's been shown to work? Medicine." Marvel at the clever bastard's dexterous wordplay!

Zen 32: Two cock gags and a couple of things that don't make sense

More random crap from my mobile. The world is imperceptably richer for them.

That's Jamaican cock, mind...

Surprisingly, not the instructions on the exit door at a facility for sex offenders, but it probably should be.

But it wasn't. Strange.

Word of the Day 10: badvice, badvise

Badvice
(Noun) 1. Bad advice.

(Noun) 2. Unwelcome advice that can be either good or bad, but in any event really irritates the shit out of you.

Usage: "My mother-in-law has been giving me badvice about the baby all day."

Badvise
(Verb) To offer someone unwelcome advice that can be either good or bad, but in any event is guaranteed to really irritate the shit out of them.

Usage: "Well, your honour, you see my mother-in-law had been badvising me about the baby all day and finally I just beat her to death with a shoe."

Source: I needed a word for it, so I made one up.

Zen 31: Revenge. Best tasted cold.

I built a snowman with my five-year-old boy outside the front of my house earlier this week, courtesy of Britain's EXTREME SNOW EVENT. Predictably, the next morning someone had kicked it over. And stamped on it.

Hey, that's OK, I thought, that's what some young scallywags like to do. But then it irked me somewhat that something that had brought my little boy so much pleasure had been wantonly destroyed by some passing oik. Britain is clearly broken. There's no respect for the old values anymore. It was a symbol of moral decay in a world that had forgotten common decency. Cold vengeance flickered in my eyes.

I rebuilt the snowman. Then I poured a litre jug of water into it, every hour for the ensuing 12 hours. By nightfall, it was a tower of solid, unforgiving ice, masquerading as a snowman. About 10pm, I was watching TV when I heard some young scallywags passing the house. There was a dull thud and the air was rent in twain by a piercing yell: "Ow! I've broken my fucking foot!"

Then I laughed like the Sicilian from the Princess Bride.

Zen 30: Rubbish phone shots of Chertsey in the snur

It's an exclusive! Fill yer boots!















She has been sent from the future to destroy you.
















See work, I wasn't lying.





















He comes awake at night and slays people.




















Oymyakon in summer.

Zen 29: The coldest place on Earth

A BBC News an article about Oymyakon in Siberia, officially the coldest inhabited place on Earth with average winter temperatures of -45°C, has a lovely factoid worth sharing:

"Oymyakon's solitary school shuts only when temperatures fall below -52°C (the school has only enjoyed the luxury of an indoor toilet since 2008). "

Bloody tough, those Russkies. The bloke in that truck, he's still in there. He's just going to sit the winter out.

Zen 28: Ha ha ha! Stupid celebrities saying stupidness about science!

Celebrities know things. They are more famous and probably prettier than you and this means they are better than you. So when they talk, listen, OK, because otherwise you run the risk of becoming an even shabbier, uglier, poorer and less significant person than ever. Celebrities are especially clever and brilliant and things when it comes to science, which is easy. So easy, in fact, that a charity called Sense About Science has taken to publishing an annual report about the especially winning science words that fall from the freshly botoxed lips of our celebrity overlords.

For example, did you know that carbonated drinks "sap all the oxygen from your body and make your skin wrinkly and dehydrated"? Shilpa Shetty does. Or that vinegar shots help digest fat and speed digestion? Cindy Crawford does, because she's a model and that means smart. Or that you can get better from a leg injury by dripping horse placenta on it? Arsenal striker Robin van Persie does because he's rich and good at footie. "It cannot hurt and, if it helps, it helps,” he says.

The alternative, of course, is to have a jolly good laugh at the expense of stupid celebrities while they wince down a cup of Sarsons, believe they are being dehydrated by water and let some Romanian bint rub horse fanny on their ankle for a massive wedge of cash. Ha ha ha! Stupids!

Zen 27: My sledging dog

Out enjoying the late afternoon snow with the kids this afternoon. In the interests of goofing about, I accosted my dog, Boz, and made her ride down on the sledge with me. She bailed out halfway down and I thought that was the end of the experiment. Au contraire. The next time I went up to the top of the slope, she raced after me and put an expectant paw in my lap. Eight rides later, looking thoroughly Calvin and Hobbes, we can confirm that my dog is a full-blooded powder fanatic who loves sledging.

We describe this state of Vizsla high delirium, depicted right, as joie de Boz.

Zen 26: It's the 'famous world famous' Harbin Ice and Snow Festival. It's famous. Worldly!

The city of Harbin in China is once again hosting its Festival of Ice and Snow. In keeping with all things Chinese and state-run, it's an understated, modest and classy affair. No. Of course it isn't. It's gaudy as all hell, but gaudy as all hell in an impressively massive and totalitarian way. This year they've been basking in -34°C temperatures, so they've taken the opportunity to really push the boat out. As one guy in the YouTube clip says: "It's like Disney World. But flashier."



And here are some stills from the Boston Globe's ever excellent Big Picture blog: Harbin Ice and Snow Sculpture Festival [LINK]

Word of the Day 9: skelp

1. (Verb) To strike swiftly across the top of the head with an open palm. (Noun) A slap across the top of the head.

Usage: "That little sod doesn't need therapy, she just needs skelping occasionally. Do her the world of good."

2. (Noun) A term used in metallurgy to describe a piece of sheet metal that is welded into a tube, from the Scots Gaelic for a strip of wood. (Scots Gaelic, incidentally, has about as much claim to being a real language as Klingon.)

Source: Free Dictionary: skelp

Word of the Day 8: pwn

(Verb) To 'own' someone, in the American slang sense of totally dominating them. The corruption came about due to a misspelling in a computer game called 'Who Honestly Really Gives a Shit?'. It then became fashionable among gamers and web geeks to use 'pwned' instead. Interestingly, this is an example of new word that has no pronunciation and is only ever rendered in print. When I say 'interesting', I mean it in the sense of negligibly so.

Usage: "Received wisdom has it that, come the next election, David Cameron will totally pwn Gordon Brown's saggy Scottish ass, but others feel that a hung parliament may be a more likely outcome."

Source: Wikipedia: pwn

Zen 25: Future War. Yeah!

The Wired 'Danger Room' blog has a cool list of 10 futuristic weapons 'that actually exist'. The coolest is the XM25 Grenade Launcher (pictured) which has smart grenades that explode as they fly past their target, effectively allowing you to frag bad guys who hide around corners. It is touted as being 300% more effective than conventional rifle fire.

The list also includes a non-lethal wall of tasers called the Taser Shockwave for use in crowded situations, and the Laser Avenger cannon which is currently only capable of taking down a drone, but may one day boast enough wattage to cook an airliner.

Dud of the bunch is the Active Denial System that uses microwaves to, again, non-lethally discourage aggressors. The only problem is that it doesn't work in the rain and needs to be mounted on a Humvee to lug it around. Fail.

Word of the Day 7: Nontroversy

(Noun) An entirely uncontroversial issue that is whipped up into a controversy through the concerted efforts of the tabloid press or other malefactors, for reasons best known to themselves.

Usage: The revelation that Prince Charles routinely called an Asian friend 'Sooty' was revealed to be a nontroversy when said Asian friend, multi-millionaire property developer Kolin Dhillon, made the following statement: "I enjoy being called Sooty by my friends who I am sure universally use the name as a term of affection with no offence meant or felt. The Prince of Wales is a man of zero prejudice."

Source: Wordspy: Nontroversy

Happy Goddam New Year

To my average of four readers a day, Happy Goddam New Year.