Zen 191: i can haz tweets @ #dictator LOLZ

Venezuala's famously long-winded and dictatorial president has just launched himself on Twitter, a medium he'd previously described as a "platform for terrorists".

Given that he once broadcast himself on every TV channel in the country, uninterrupted, for nearly nine hours, he seems to be adapting pretty well to the restrictions imposed by 140 characters. His maiden tweet went something like this:

"What's happening dudes? All your base are belong to us! ROFL! Hanging out in Brazil. Laters!!!"


Seriously.

Zen 190: Kittens in a bag

As performed by Boothby Graffoe, a comic genius named after a field in Lincolnshire next to where I grew up. (Although I don't think me growing up there had anything to do with him choosing the name. Or did it? An holistic view of the universe can't rule it out.*)

Anyway, funny song.



* This loosely posits that you can divine the answer to any question from anything, you just have to make sure you're asking that thing (whatever it is) the right question.

Zen 189: Peculiar lift conversation

I just caught the lift. Moments before the lift doors closed, a slightly scatty looking woman nipped in.

Scatty woman: Phew! Caught it!
Me: It's all about timing.
Scatty woman: Oh yes!
[PAUSE]
Scatty woman: It was very German timing!
[PAUSE]
Scatty woman: They'll be taking over next!
[PAUSE]
Scatty woman: The bastards!

People don't normally say this sort of thing where I work.

See also: Zen 101: "You got Coldpray?" [LINK]

Zen 188: Hitler meme eats itself

Warning: Web geek posting. Move along. Nothing to see here.

The Hitler parody meme that's been gumming up YouChoob since the release of Downfall in 2004 has finally been shut down, which has resulted in the inevitable - a meme that cannibalises itself.

For six years now, YouChoob has been host to a variety of takes on the climactic scene where Hitler (played by the awesome Bruno Ganz) ferociously chews out his generals as it finally dawns on him that the jig is up. It takes the form of creative subtitling, with Hitler apparently ranting about everything from Tiger Woods' wood to the launch of the iPad and all points in between.

The reason I'm telling you this instead of showing you is that the production company that owns Downfall has finally pulled the rug out from under, meaning all the Hitler parodies are no more - except for one. This one: YouChoob: Downfall Parodies [LINK]

You guessed it, it's a rant about Constantin Films taking down the clips. Of course, YouChoob being a many headed Hydra, the video pirates have simply jumped ship and used a different clip of Hitler ranting. Expect the name 'Fegelein' to seep into your consciousness anytime soon.

(In fact, the number of Hitler rants is only exceeded in Downfall by the number of Nazi suicides. But Nazi suicides are no loss, right? Almost makes it a feelgood movie...)

Zen 187: Britain braced for invasion of cock chafers

Seriously. Now, I know cockchafer sounds like something you might contract round the back of KFC in Woking in the early hours of Sunday morning, but it's actually a beetle that's going to kill your lawn. Or something.

Anyway, it has a funny name.






.

Zen 186: A whole window full of Jamie's kok

Watched a bit of Jamie Oliver in 'Jamie does Sweden' this evening. The fat-tongued mockney was actually pretty entertaining. It reminded me of the discovery a few years ago (taking up the entire window display of a Stockholm book shop) that the Swedes have a very specific anatomical interest* in Jamie. Presumably with a little drizzle of olive oil...


























* Harvey won't find this funny at all.

Zen 185: Stop press: Brown even more unpopular shock

News just in confirms that Gordon Brown has plummeted to hitherto unplumbed depths of unpopularity after been caught on tape calling a harmless old woman "bigoted".

"I'm going to see how low I can take this fucker," said Brown, simultaneously poking a baby with a stick and tossing a bag of puppies into the Thames.

Mr Brown recently dipped below diabetes and the Black Death in a Times list of the greatest social ills to have afflicted Britain. He narrowly lost out to Adolf Hitler and Jedward for the second year in succession.

Zen 184: Eat your shoes

...or at least something that looks very like them.


















For other examples of creative sandwiching, have a butcher's at Delicious Examples of Sandwich Art [LINK]

Zen 183: Map of US states where you can marry your cousin

Ever wondered what it's like to be royalty? Well, you too can enjoy a similarly shallow gene pool if you migrate to one of the US states indicated in red on this map and marry your first cousin.

Scientists say that there is only a slightly increased risk of birth defects, hereditary disease and banjo strumming as a result of 'consanguineous' marriage. But let's face it, if you feel the need to marry someone who's just a genetic bodyswerve away from being a sibling, you're not really trying hard enough, now are you Cleetus?




















Quite a lot of trad redneck states in there (the sort where you'd stereotypically expect people to be boffing their relatives), but what the hell are the supposedly enlightened urban elites of California and New York doing on that list?

Zen 182: Boobquake

Last week an Iranian cleric said that immodest women caused earthquakes. To test the claim, an American student set up 'Boobquake'*, which asked women to wear their most revealing tops for a day.

The result? A 6.9 magnitude earthquake in Taiwan. Ladies, don't play with forces you don't understand.

* Weirdly just discovered Boobquake is in my predictive text. I know iPhones are good, but can they really see the future?

Zen 181: Humping dog USB key

My good friend Ichi the Fat Ninja recently sent me this 'Humping Dog' USB key. You plug the little bugger into the side of your laptop (the dog, not Ichi) and off he goes, banging away like the deranged canine IT-fetishist that he is.

But this being a Japanese humping dog USB key (they are the world leaders apparently), it doesn't stop there. Oh no. You can use your mobile phone to control his humping speed via Bluetooth. Turn the volume down and he's Barry White on the verge of a hypoglycemic coma; turn the volume up and he's a 16-year-old speeding chav round the back of Woking KFC in the early hours of Sunday morning.

Even the packaging is deranged. Those aren't hills in the background. They're breasts, leading you to wonder what manner of bestial fantasist dreams up this sort of stuff. I don't know.

I also don't know why Ichi the Fat Ninja sent it to me all the way from Tokyo, but I do know that next time he comes to stay, we're locking Boz in the shed at night.

Zen 180: Clegg at least as posh as Cameron shock

It's been well-established already in this election that unless you grew up on a sink estate and have since personally experienced every negative aspect of growing up in modern Britain, including getting squirrel Aids and finding out your alcoholic dad is also your alcoholic brother, you are totally unfit to run the country.

David Cameron is, by default, an absolute no hoper on the grounds of his upbringing in a stable and responsible yet very, very wealthy family. Couple that with his first rate education at one of the country's best schools, followed by a degree from one of the country's best universities, and it's surprising that he hasn't been hounded into an early grave like the filthy posh dog that he is.

Compared to Nick Clegg*, the British Barack Obama, you can see why the population prefers the Liberal option. Clegg has that straight-shooting, down-to-earth, man-of-the-people thing going on.

Clearly this is because, as the great-grandson of Russian nobility who attended Westminster School and Cambridge University by virtue of his dad running the United Trust Bank, he has so much in common with the rest of us.

* "There is simply not a shred of racism in me, as a person whose whole family is formed by flight from persecution," says Clegg, whose family was, more accurately, formed by the flight to somewhere safe to put their money.

Zen 179: Raise a pint of Guinness - it's St George's Day!!!

What is it with the English and St George? For some bizarre reason, we're perfectly happy to go out swilling Guinness and embracing all that twee fictional Irish bollocks on the 17 March, but we come over all bashful and feel like closet BNP activists the minute we acknowledge our own saint's day.

OK, so it might have a lot to do with saints being a big Catholic gig and not so popular in the Protestant Church of England, but St Patrick? Really? Come on. For starters, he was probably Welsh, was sent to convert the English and just didn't cut it with us so cleared off to Ireland. There he spent 33 years doing such a good job of it that the whole country has been obsessed with religion ever since. Thanks for that Paddy.

And it's also worth mentioning, while we're tearing into Paddy's Day, that 'dry' a.k.a. 'Irish' stout is an English invention. The earliest description of stout anywhere in the world is in the writings of the Earl of Bridgwater (Somerset) in 1677. The earliest mention in Ireland is in the early 1800s, when the Guinness family started brewing it. So the 1759 you see proudly emblazoned on every glass of Guinness is also blarney, because they'd spent the first 40 years of the business brewing ales and porters, not stout.

Other good evidence supports the fact that even the Guinness recipe comes from England, inasmuch as Arthur Guinness, the founder of the St James's Gate Brewery, was inspired by a London brewer called Harwood who had developed a beer he called “Entire”, using roast barley and high temperatures in the brewing process. It's the roast barley that produces the distinctive black colour and white, creamy head.

Anything else? Well yes, as it happens. While you're swilling your glass of the black stuff and bizarrely toasting some sort of ersatz, glamourised Irish nationalism, consider this. Arthur Guinness came from a Protestant Irish landowning family. As such, he was radically opposed to anything that would shake up the status quo and staunchly supported union with England.

So based on this evidence, you can, with a clear conscience, raise a pint of good old fashioned English Guinness on 23 April and toast the splendidly fictional St George. He may have been Turkish if he existed at all, but at least he fought a bloody dragon, and that trumps an itinerant Welsh snake-chaser any day.

Update on Zen 174: Naughty, naughty driver

So I completed the speed awareness course and that's four hours of my life I'm not getting back. What did I learn? Next time, take the points. God it was awful.

The torment was heightened by the trainer, who had clearly learned no cautionary lessons at all from three series of The Office. Blessed with David Brent's tin ear for comedy, he produced a 240 minute masterclass in forced levity, witless homilies and tediously patronising anecdotes. That coupled with his Gordon Brown-alike ability to wield his puny authority like a man who believed he could control the tides and summon the birds from the air, and you had the perfect storm of ticks and mannerisms that make other human beings unbearable.

The 'course' itself was a badly put together powerpoint of dodgy statistics and slanted scare stories. The correct answer to everything was obviously intended to be a combination of "Really? I didn't know that" and "Gosh, we really should have more speed cameras". The more obvious objective answers were "I honestly don't care" and "Can I go home now?"

Our trainer also had Brent's gift for baffling, context-free statements, some of which I've preserved for posterity.

"They used to say Thursday night was curry night. But I bet you're not having curry tonight."

"You walk into a nursing home and come out in a box. You may not like it. I wouldn't like it. But that's it. Reality."

"Schumacher? Damon Hill? Rubbish on real roads. They'll tell you that themselves."

"If your other half doesn't know you're here, that's fine. I won't tell them if you don't. Trust, yeah. Important."

But my favourite was the exchange between him and the van driver in the front row:

Trainer: "What gear are you usually in going through town?"

Van driver: "Jeans, t-shirt and workboots usually."

Zen 178: Barbershop quartet sings the Ewok celebration song

Seriously. Does what it says on the tin.

Zen 177: How to play just about any hit of the last 40 years

Crikey. That was a bit heavy. Here are Aussie larrikins the Axis of Awesome showing how most of the cannon of Western pop-music can be played using the same four chords. Thanks to esteemed barrister and elephant wrestler Yutakun for this one.

Zen 176: Oh my god! They killed South Park!

OK, they didn't, but there's definitely an implied threat to their wellbeing.

South Park recently did the unthinkable and depicted Mohammed. Well, sort of. Depictions of the prophet are forbidden in Islam, but I'm guessing the Koran is hazy on depictions of Mohammed inside a bear suit. Which is what South Park did.

This sparked an angry reaction from radical Islamists, who as we know have a track record of failing to find pretty much anything funny. Irony, and especially not the post-modern, in-on-the-joke kind, certainly has absolutely no place in their intolerant, hate-filled, medievalist world view.

Full credit to South Park creators Trey Parker and Matt Stone, who have always been pretty resolute about facing up to religious bullies. Following the Danish cartoons furore in 2006, they had plans to include Mohammed as a regular character, but these were vetoed by Comedy Central.

In reaction to the latest furore, the fun website Revolutionmuslim.com said: "We have to warn Matt and Trey that what they are doing is stupid and they will probably wind up like Theo Van Gogh for airing this show. This is not a threat, but a warning of the reality of what will likely happen to them."

Not a threat? Theo van Gogh, a Dutch film maker, was shot eight times, repeatedly stabbed in the chest and decapitated by an Islamic fundamentalist in 2004, for making a film that projected verses of the Koran onto the bodies of naked women. Not Mohammed. Verses.

It's all a question of perspective. Since the craven failure by most Western governments and a lot of our press to stand up to the fundamentalists over the Danish cartoons, it has become acceptable to issue death threats whenever Islamist sensibilities are piqued. If, back then, we'd defended the time-honoured right to freedom of speech, rather than going down the ludicrously dangerous path of defending the non-existent right not to be offended, Mohammed in a bear suit probably wouldn't even have flickered onto our radars.

Here's an example. In 2001, a popular animated series produced an episode called Super Best Friends. It featured a number of deities, including Mohammed. That's Mohammed in plain sight, not in a bear suit. Because it happened pre-Danish cartoons furore, the episode aired without any controversy and is repeated on a fairly regular basis, again without anyone really noticing.

Name of the series? South Park. I rest my case.

Zen 175: Man wipes backside with French flag

While many a red-blooded Englishman may feel that the only suitable use for the Tricolor is as a ready Andrex substitute, a photograph of a man apparently actually polishing his nought with the French flag has reduced Gallic types to a frenzy of shrugging, gesticulating and saying things like "pof" a lot.

In brief, they are outraged.

The "specially commended" image appeared in the 'politically incorrect' category of a photo competition run by a popular music store and a free-sheet called Metro (no relation).

It's really got the dander up of the French justice minister, Michele Alliot-Marie, who has demanded that everyone involved is prosecuted and in all probability subjected to the guillotine in the time-honoured tradition.
"Presumably the law has the legal means to punish such an intolerable act against the French flag," said her spokesman. "If the existing law proves incomplete in this regard, it should be revised."
I can see that such an act of desecration could be offensive to many groups, including veterans (no cracks about proud memories of taking said flag down and handing it to the Germans, please). But what's probably more offensive is that statement, which really typifies the knee-jerk stupidity that Western lawmakers currently resort to almost by default these days, i.e.

"Is it illegal? It must be illegal? It isn't?! Then we must make it illegal, and retrospectively punish you for what was a perfectly legal act when you did it!"
Faced with that sort of reaction, who exactly is wiping their arse on what?
Pictured right: An unfunny and unfair French stereotype that the author in no way condones. Shocking.

Zen 174: Naughty, naughty driver

OK, not that sort of naughty driver* (right). But I have been a very, very bad boy. Trapped doing 37 mph in a 30 mph area, I was given a choice: 3 points and a £60 fine, or genuflect at the altar of re-education and submit to the horrors of a "speed awareness course".

I opted for the course, because it involves tedium rather than endorsements. It's a four-hour shindig and it's tomorrow (Thurs). Apparently there's an opportunity for a Q&A, so I'm taking this opportunity to throw it open to you.

Is there a burning question you've always wanted to ask an AA Drivetech trainer? Is there any minutiae of road law about which you are unsure? Can you rustle up a suitable poser to leave even the best briefed educator stumped like a Bangladeshi tailender?

Add your helpful suggestions and questions in the comments below!

* I reckon she may have exceeded the recommended PSI on those lips. No gags about blow-outs please.

Zen 173: Plymouth woman wakes up with Chinese accent

A Plymouth woman who suffered a severe migraine has woken up with a strong Chinese accent. Foreign accent syndrome develops as a result of damage to the brain's speech centre and is so rare only 60 people have ever been diagnosed with it.

"The first few weeks of the accent was quite funny, but now it's starting to get me down," says the victim, 35-year-old Sarah Colwill, who's normally broad West Country.

"I've never even been to China. It's quite frustrating."

(Meanwhile, it turns out that press reports of a Croatian girl waking up from a coma speaking German are, basically, balls. There is no single verified case of linguistic parthenogenesis anywhere ever.)

Zen 172: Let's bomb Bucks Fizz!

I don't know what's sadder. The ropey production values? The hopeful 'Exclusive!' in the title? The lame mime-alongs by some serious Z-listers? The maladroit idiots dragooned into impersonating the Bucks Fizz dance routine, but so badly that it is rendered entirely unrecognisable as dancing, let alone dancing by someone imparticular? The stodgy reveal that it's actually Bucks Fizz doing the proper dancing? That Bucks Fizz nowadays look like an advert for some bargain basement knock-off of Saga? That this was such a bad idea they could only get two of the original members of Bucks Fizz, when all four can be had for a six-pack of malt stout and some Vicks Vaporub? Or that someone somewhere thought this might actually encourage people to vote?

The more generous among you might say that, well, at least they are trying. Honestly? I don't think so. I think better not to try. Better not to waste 2 mins 46 secs of my life. Better, really, to have no-one voting at all than have to endure tripe like this. Don't watch it. You'll only regret it.

Zen 171: Let's bomb Russia!

Kenny Everett's bravura performance at a Conservative election rally in 1983. They just don't do politics like this anymore.

Zen 170: Freshly ground black people

Publishers Penguin Australia have withdrawn their Pasta Bible after discovering that a recipe for tagliatelle with sardines and proscuitto called for "salt and ground black people".

It's not yet clear if the recall is to avoid allegations of promoting cannibalism, or because of the implicit racism that only ground black people are good enough to go with your pasta. I think we should be told.

Zen 169: Britain's Got Retards on Otter Zen shock

I curse myself for having stumbled across this clip for two reasons. First, I've felt compelled to blog a clip from Britain's Got Retards, a cavalcade of the halt, lame and simple, presided over by a gimp, a witless troll and a twat. Second, after just over a minute-and-a-half of actual talent, I had to listen to Amanda Holden speak - a woman so utterly, gawpingly, mind-bendingly credulous it requires every sinew of your being to prevent you from ripping your own arm off and beating yourself to death with it just to make her facile, bubble-headed drivelling stop.

Kill the clip at 1.47 to avoid a similar fate. The body popping prior is worth a watch though.

Zen 168: Volcanogeddon

Freaky-ass shot of the Icelandic volcano from directly above. Eyjafjallajökull will eat your plane.

Zen 167: Volcano porn

So it might be costing the airline industry billions and fucking up the lives of just about anyone who's trying to get somewhere more removed than Milton Keynes, but there was something strikingly bucolic about this weekend's clear blue skies. It harked back to simpler times when, sure you might be dead from an easily curable disease by the time you were 35, but at least you didn't have to put up with all that incessant jet noise.

(I love the BBC's line about it being the "greatest disruption to air travel since the Second World War", prior to which there was negligible commercial air traffic and during which, air travel was quite literally booming.)

Anyway, the Big Picture has once again pulled out an awesome selection of eye candy for your delectation and pleasure. They're so darn pretty, it's almost volcano porn. Here's Eyjafjallajökull in all its glory [LINK].

Zen 166: Idiot falls off ladder

A Bolton man has successfully sued his employers after he was seriously injured falling from a tree. The fact that he fell from the tree because he placed his ladder against a branch, then proceeded to saw that branch off seems not to have been a consideration in the case. Darwin had a theory about people like him.

In mitigation, the defence brief said it was a "Laurel and Hardy" thing to do.

(And you have to admire the Daily Telegraph's ad serving sound the story - a banner for Stihl power tools and five Google ads for personal injury lawyers underneath - presumably just in case any other morons were reading.)

Zen 165: Remixed balls

This remix features the excellent Ray William Johnson who does the colossal You Tube video blog, Equals 3. I really like Equals 3. You may not. Anyway, check out his Sandy Balls*.



* Ray didn't do the remix, but he does have a winning way of rolling Sandy Balls around his mouth. If you see what I mean.

Zen 164: Black ops

Zen 163: Let him who is without blame cast the first stone (cock)

This Pope fellah has a real gift for controversy. He can't even take a trip to uncontroversial Malta, without it turning into a huge cock-up. Quite literally. (See what I did there? Satire. Satire I tell you.)

Every schmuck with a blog has covered this one. There's this statue, see, erected (snigger) in 2006 outside Malta's airport and it looks quite a lot like a penis (chortle). Judge for yourself. It's called the 'Colonna Mediterranea' and was created by artist Paul Vella Critien, who took inspiration from ancient Egyptian symbolism (which means, in essence, that it almost certainly is a huge blue cock).

A huge blue cock, say the devout Catholics of Malta, is no way to greet the Pope when he arrives on an official visit this weekend. They want it taken down. Mr Critien, quite rightly, points out that the statue's detractors are immature jerks. It's art, say its fans. And anyway, the Pope is a grown-up, sophisticated individual*.

And in any case, say I, those who are without blame should be the first to cast stones. Check out what the sunlight does with a carved walkway outside the Basilica of St Paul in Rome. You're not telling me that's just a slip of the chisel.














* With a complicated past. "Oh, this Hitler Youth uniform? I'm just wearing it for a friend..."

Zen 162: How to make sandy balls sound highly desirable

Tell me I'm wrong.

Zen 161: Socialist firebrand

Annoying gobshite actor Ricky Tomlinson has announced that he is no longer standing for MP of Liverpool Wavertree. Tomlinson was going to run for Arthur Scargill's Socialist Labour Party, but has withdrawn due to "contractual commitments".

How very capitalist of him.

Zen 160: Dogs in super slo-mo catching cookies

As the owner of Chertsey's champion tidbit catcher, I approve this message.

Zen 159: Vote for me!

More satirical election fun inspired by Labour's manifesto cover.

Zen 158: Like a homo, I was born to walk alone

Was looking for stuff in the attic and discovered a box of old CDs. Among them was the seminal poodle rock classic 'Here I Go Again (On My Own) by Whitesnake. But this wasn't the mid-Eighties re-release, it was a review copy of the remastered original. Had to have a listen.

Turns out that the lyrics changed. Not hugely. One word in fact. "Like a drifter I was born to walk alone" was originally "Like a hobo I was born to walk alone". Why the change?

Turns out people thought Whitesnake were singing "Like a homo I was born to walk alone". But the exact reason Whitesnake changed the lyric remains shrouded in mystery.

Was it the fear that their spandex-clad fans with fabulous hair would be worried that people would think they were gay? Or revulsion at the inadvertent promulgation of such a Neanderthal perjorative? Or, as I like to think, Whitesnake were tacitly acknowledging that all the gay people they knew were simply too fabulous to be seen dead without an entourage?

I think we should be told.

Zen 157: Pulitzer the other one...

America's sleaziest rag, the National Enquirer, is causing outrage yet again, but this time because it's just bagged a Pulitzer prize nomination for scooping the story on presidential hopeful John Edwards.

Edwards, you will recall, was cold busted for having an affair with a campaign worker and fathering her child, while his cancer-stricken wife campaigned for him to be president.

He nearly got away with it too, because even though the Enquirer ran exclusive after exclusive about the grubby little ballbag's illicit goings on, no-one believed them and none of the other papers picked the story up.

The Pulitzer is the highest journalistic honour in the land. Having the Enquirer win it would be like ... like some Texan guy's alcoholic playboy younger brother becoming president. And what are the chances of that happening?

Zen 156: Is this for fat girls?

I'm so ashamed of myself for cracking that gag.

Zen 155: Rope

Satire.

Zen 154: Oh the irony

On a standard job description template at work. Can you spot the deliberate mistake?

"To maintain excellent standards of writing and consistent editorial tone and style for multiplatform content, sub-editing colleagues work as appropriate."

That's irony Alanis Morissette. Not ten thousand spoons when all you need is a knife. That's just weird. Who the hell has 10,000 spoons and no other form of cutlery? And she only wants the knife so she can kill your bunny and leave it boiling on the stove...

Zen 153: Evil kitty nom nom noms on your soul

Tell me I'm wrong.

Zen 152: What did you learn, Tiger?

Tiger Woods features in this new Nike ad. He stares, doe-eyed and contrite, directly into the lens while his dead father, Earl, intones solemnly in voiceover.

"Did you learn anything?" says Dead Pops Woods.

Tiger doesn't reply. But presumably "Don't stick your dick in every waitress you meet" is fairly high on the list.

Zen 151: If it wasn't so depressing it would be funny

Minister for 'Digital Britain' Stephen Timms (winner of the 'Beaker' lookalike contest 2003-2010, see below) has written a letter to a fellow MP (the "complacent, vaguely derisive and self-satisfied" Emily Thornberry) discussing the Digital Economy Bill.

For those of you not keeping a close eye on 'wash-up' legislation being steamrollered through before the dissolution of Parliament, the Digital Economy Bill is one such piece of legislative tat that will basically allow masked goons to storm into your house, shoot your dog, beat your children and disconnect your interweb at the merest hint of illegal file sharing. Or something. Anyway, it's bad and shouldn't have happened, but has.

Essentially, the only people who think the bill is a good idea are Mr Timms, Gordon Brown and some copyright shitheads working for large media conglomerates. But given that this intrusive and stupid law allows the authorities to deny you internet access and collectively punish your family for the suspected trangressions of a single member, you'd have thought Timms would have been pretty up on his brief.

But as the attached letter shows, he apparently believes that the IP in IP address stands for "Intellectual Property". It doesn't. It stands for Internet Protocol.

These are the people running our country.

Zen 150: "Needless, useless" US Air Marshalls

Here's a great stat: "...more air marshals have been arrested than the number of people arrested by air marshals."

USA Today stated last November that: “Since 9/11, more than three dozen Federal air marshals have been charged with crimes, and hundreds more have been accused of misconduct. Cases range from drunken driving and domestic violence to aiding a human-trafficking ring and trying to smuggle explosives from Afghanistan.''

Meanwhile, the United States' special airliner police force, created as part of the War on Terror, has made an average of 4.2 arrests a year, since 2001. This is basically 1 arrest per 1,000 employees.

Congressman John J Duncan, who highlighted the stat, is opposing the earmarking of $860 million a year to keep the service running. That works out at $200 million per arrest. And they're worried about healthcare being expensive?

Zen 149: I genuinely could have gone to the end of my days and not been any the worse off for not knowing any of this

I'm not sure what's the most endearingly pointless thing about this diagram. Discovering that there is a whole subculture of hidden key nomenclature, or that someone took the time to mount it on card and hand-type the information panels, or that someone created a museum of locksmithing to put it in, or that someone visited the museum and took a photograph of it, or that they then when home and posted it to Flickr ("I would always try to visit as many museums as I could, though looking back, there are so many that I regret missing...") or that I subsequently found the image and decided to blog it?

I think we should be told.

'How to' 1: Siphon fuel from your car

An occasional series explaining how to do things.

Equipment: Jerry can, garden hose, Stanley knife, 2 litres of Dr Pepper, mobile phone (two minimum), mates who, unlike you, know their arse from their elbow.

Step-by-step guide

Siphoning fuel from the tank of your car requires first that you create the need to carry out the siphoning in the first place. Here's my step-by-step guide to the whole process.

1. Arrive at filling station.
2. For some reason unknowable, opt to fill diesel tank with unleaded petrol.
3. Phone your mate Pat, who knows all about cars, to find out how much of a clusterfuck you've got yourself into. This will turn out to be quite a big one.
4. Phone breakdown sevice provider to discover astronomical cost of getting tank drained.
5. Highhandedly declare "Sod that" and elect to drain tank yourself.
6. Get shouted at over intercom for using mobile phone on forecourt.
7. Push car off forecourt.
8. Calculate quantity of diesel/unleaded mix in tank. Reason that if you can get most of that off, you're home and dry.
9. Repair to local Halfords to buy jerry can and amusingly named 'jerk siphon'.
10. Discover that siphon doesn't work because your car has an 'anti-siphon device' a.k.a. a small metal bar across the fuel inlet.
11. Swear a bit.
12. Repair to local Homebase to buy reinforced hose and Stanley knife.
13. Suck unleaded from tank. Get really good mouthful of the stuff. Repeat endlessly.
14. Conclude that this fucking siphoning lark doesn't work.
15. Decide a slope is required to aid siphoning. Push car down slope.
16. Decide car is wrong way round. Push it back up the slope. This should ideally take about half an hour and involve at least 30 people going past without a single one offering to help.
17. Push car back down slope facing the other way.
18. Suck unleaded from tank. Get really good mouthful of the stuff. Repeat endlessly.
19. Conclude that this fucking siphoning lark absolutely doesn't work.
20. Swear a lot. Hit things.
21. Ideally, it should start raining about now in order to properly heighten the misery.
22. Concede defeat. Phone breakdown service provider and eat humble pie.
23. It is crucial at this stage to have selected an inept breakdown service provider, for reasons that will become apparent.
24. Sit in car feeling sorry for yourself. At this point, your mobile phone should also stop working.
25. Start to suspect you may be getting hypothermia.
26. After waiting 45 minutes past deadline for breakdown service provider to arrive, decide you might as well give it another go.
27. Push about 10 feet of garden hose into the tank.
28. Suck unleaded from tank. Get really good mouthful of the stuff. Repeat endlessly.
29. Discover that Dr Pepper actually masks the flavour of petrol.
30. Miraculously witness the siphon start to work. Be at a loss to explain why.
31. At this point, your mate Harvey should pitch up with dinner and a working mobile.
32. Make mental note to nominate Harvey for beatification.
33. Estimate that you have all but a couple of litres of fuel off the tank. Start to feel hopeful.
34. Speak on the phone to a very helpful Swedish engineer who you have never met before, but who your wife has tracked down.
35. Conclude, based on his advice, that you're going to gamble and fill up with diesel. If you're right, you'll drive away. If you're wrong, you're looking at a bill of £1,000 plus for tank draining, wasted fuel and knackered fuel pump.
36. Back yourself. Phone breakdown service provider and tell them to poke it.
37. Push car back to pump with Harvey's help.
38. Fill the tank. It's a 60 litre tank and you'll need to have less than 5 litres of unleaded in there if you stand a hope of getting away with it.
39. Breathe huge sigh of relief as pump cuts out at 58.5 litres.
40. Successfully start car.
41. Experience sense of triumph, despite having spent 5 hours soaked inside and out with petrol and half frozen to death just because you were chump enough to pull an amateur trick like filling your car with the wrong fuel.
42. Go to pub and drink.

Zen 148: Oh Christ

The General Election has been called. Six weeks of Gordon Brown's witless cum-face staring out from every newspaper. I'm not sure I can bear it*.














* On the plus side, I suppose it might be the last ever six weeks.

Zen 147: God, guns, guts and American pick-up trucks

Usually this video gets punted round in the spirit of "Hey, look at the stupid Americans! They have some hick car dealership where any idiot who buys a truck gets an AK47!" I enjoy it for a different reason, namely, the affable way the MaxMotors man unapologetically demolishes the CNN anchor* as she desperately attempts to work herself into a lather of moral superiority.



* Watch as she tries to bluff her age on live TV. Nasty.

Zen 146: Possibly the dumbest politician on Earth

OK, so that has to be a fairly competitive shortlist, but I reckon US Congressman Hank Johnson has a legitimate claim to being the dumbest of them all. He's so dumb, in fact, that the video of him expressing his fears about the imminent capsize of Guam has been posted to YouChoob more than 100 times. I hate to be derivative, but this is worth a watch.

Zen 145: This seems reckless

Zen 144: Rehab

It's amazing the effect the sheer godawfulness of Gordon Brown is having on the reputations of his predecessors. Apparently Neil Kinnock had "charisma" and Michael Foot was a "man of great vision". Next thing, we'll find out John Smith's not really dead.

Zen 143: Duelling sitars

Saw this last night on Bill Bailey's Tinselworm DVD. Happily someone has pirated it and stuck it on YouChoob for wider delectation and pleasure. Certifiably awesome.

Zen 142: West Kent Hunt

Here's Nicky Campbell making a right West Kent Hunt of himself on BBC Radio Bloke. Sweet.


Guardian: For fox sake Campbell! [LINK]

Zen 141: It's an otter Jim, but not as we know it...

Palaeontologists in northern Denmark have discovered the fossilised remains of ... wait for it ... a giant otter. Standing eight feet tall (but 14 feet nose to tail) Lutra lutra apariensis was apparently a ferocious predator who could have quite easily gobbled you up for tea.

"He would have been omnivorous, hunting and scavenging along the river banks of northern Europe. A creature of this size could easily have taken a hominid," says very un-Danish sounding dig coordinator, Bob Jones of Aarhus University (pictured left).

Dr Bob attributes the radical decline of "megafauna" to the arrival of modern humans with advanced hunting techniques:

"All human societies have tales of gigantic monsters, which one could suppose overlapped with the evolution of speech and storytelling before we drove them to extinction. Perhaps we are looking at the prototype of the Kraken, or even King Kong."

Whatever. A giant, man-eating otter? I'm signing up to see that movie NOW.

Zen 140: If you don't want to see the result, look away now...

So the date of the General Election is yet to be announced. Got a strong steer this morning, however, when polling cards marked 6 May arrived in the post. Good job. The suspense was killing me.