Zen 327: Mwah ha ha ha ha haaa!

We just arrived back from a week away. Now, we live in a pretty low crime area, but we are plagued by a group of rascals who like to rob stuff from people's sheds. For the sake of convenience, we'll call these scallywags Thieving Pikey Fuckers, or TPFs for short.

TPFs have turned over a number of our neighbours more than once, but until now we've been left well alone. One of the reasons for this must be the devastatingly shambolic state of our shed. If you aren't killed by the initial landslip of crap, there are any number of poisons, badly secured bladed objects and elderly pressurised containers to prematurely snuff the unwary.

Then there's the back fence, which is a monument to decrepitude - a veritable deathtrap of friable planking and tetanus-inducing rusty nails.

Whatever the reason, we'd never been TPFed. Until now. Wisely, the TPFs avoided the fence and came in over the innocuous looking shed roof. They gathered their stash on the roof of the kids' fort and then they exited - again, via the shed roof.

Happily, the shed roof is marginally less safe and stable than the fence. So the little bastards fell through it. I don't know if they broke anything. I hope so. I hope, genuinely, that they were skewered, poisoned and exploded, and that they subsequently dragged themselves home, where even now they are sweating out the sepsis and Waferin, unable even to order out for Dominos, or reach the Sky remote.

Either way, the stuff they tried to nick was still on the roof of the kids' fort when we got back. I literally laughed my arse off.

Zen 326: AWOL

Apologies, should have mentioned it earlier, but Otter Zen has gone on retreat for a week to learn how to knit afalfa and massage baby whales. Or maybe not. Have just spent the first of eight days in the surf and am currently cooking the fuck out of massive chunks of Welsh cow while getting tanked off my nuts on bad rum. Life is sweet.

Zen 325: This seems callous at best...

Zen 324: Flying donkey shocks beachgoers in Southern Russia

The headline really says it all.

No donkeys were hurt in the making of this video. Except for this one, which died. I kid. It didn't really. Or did it ..? etc

Zen 323: Check out the funk on these cows

Check it out. Seriously. They have funk to go round.

Zen 322: Sachin Tendulkar's bloody biography

Reports just in that the Little Wizard's new official biography, dubbed the 'Sachin Opus' will be hitting the bookshelves soon. Whereupon the bookshelves will collapse under the strain.

The $75,000 book weighs in at 37kg, contains 1,500 pictures and every page is edged in gold. OK, so that's a lot of book, but why the mammoth price tag?

Because every page of this very limited edition (10 copies only) has been made using droplets of Tendulkar's blood.

Yes, you're right, that's really fucked up. But there is a rational explanation, according to publisher Carl Fowler.

"Some may think it's a bit weird," he said. "But the key thing here is that Sachin Tendulkar to millions of people is a religious icon. And we thought how, in a publishing form, can you get as close to your god as possible?"

Coming soon, the Tiger Woods Opus. No prizes for guessing which bodily fluid went into his pages. That's a lot of wedge to fork out on a book when you can't prise the pages apart.

Zen 321: The Mel Gibson of goats

Here's a loose translation of what's going on in this conversation. The guy has just told the goat, live on TV, that they are breaking up. The goat takes it badly and says stuff like "you make me want to smoke" and "just smile and blow me, because I deserve it". Ptooo!

Zen 320: The Underground of Hate

The Poke has done an inspired 'Underground Map' of the Daily Mail's "secret editorial formula revealed". It is inspired.

The coloured tubelines correspond to the Daily Mail's regular editorial themes, like 'Medical Scares', 'Media Scum', 'PC Gone Mad' and 'Cancers', while the individual stations represent the specific targets of the loathesome rag's ire, including 'Lesbian Teachers', 'Russell Brand', 'Facebook Cancer' and 'Gay Bishops'.

I want this as a poster. (Click on the image to enjoy in all its glory.)

Zen 319: She's a maniac, ma-a-a-a-niac on the floor...

You know the song? From Flashdance? The highly convincing movie about a girl who's a dancer but also a welder? Yeah, that one. Just heard it again for the first time in years after accidentally tuning into Camp FM. Oooh, it took me back.

It's a splendidly crafted example of Eighties synthpop nonsense, which boasts the lyric "and she dances like she's never danced before". I beg to differ. Having seen the film, she dances like someone who has not only danced before, but has probably done it a lot more than she has the welding, and to this end is probably well justified in seeking a career switch with a 'long shot' at professional dancing.

I dance like someone who has never danced before. In fact, I dance like someone borrowing someone else's body, and that someone has definitely never danced before, probably due to a nasty injury of the lower back.

That's not the only weird lyric of course. There's also "she's a maniac, maniac at your door" which conjures the image of some sweaty mad bint frugging furiously on your front step.

Wikipedia, the fount of all mostly correct knowledge, reveals the source of this particular gem. Turns out lyricist-performer Michael Sembello originally wrote the song about a serial killer, and the line was meant to be:

He's a maniac, maniac that's for sure,
He will kill your cat and nail him to the door.

Which I feel has a certain ineffable magic to it.

Zen 318: Bum, bum, bum, bum, BUM, bum, bum, bum, bum, BUM, etc.

Mystery Guitar Man does epic multicut acapella version of Carmina Burana. It's kind of addictive, clever and annoying all at the same time. With, of course, a lot of bums.

Zen 317: The ordination of women bishops - does anyone really care?

So the Church of England is likely to ordain female bishops by 2014? So what? This surely has about as much relevance in this day and age as suddenly announcing it's OK for midgets to read Harry Potter to kids at bedtime.

I'll explain.

Imagine I've made up a story about a magical boy, who we'll call Harry Potter. Randomly, fans of my imaginative tale declare that people who like different similarly made up stuff, for example, Percy Jackson, can't come to their magical eternal birthday party unless they say they really love Harry and hate Percy. Furthermore, certain groups of Harry Potter fans that other Harry Potter fans think are a bit inferior, like midgets, can't read Harry Potter to their kids at bedtime. Other people who might like to be Harry Potter fans are told they can't read the books at all because they are completely beyond the pale. These people are called gays, many of whom are not only reading Harry Potter, but reading it to kids at bedtime already. All the other Harry Potter fans know about them, but sort of agree not to talk about it.

Anyway, 2,000 years later, the people who now run the Harry Potter fan club on one small island decide that it's actually irrational for them to ban midgets from reading Harry Potter to kids at bedtime, but lots of fans are still really unhappy about it, despite not really being able to form a cogent argument as to why.

Meanwhile, everyone else knows this stuff is all made up anyway and couldn't give a damn.

Zen 316: F35 Lightning II: 'Probably the last manned fighter ever developed'

Lockheed are currently showing off their new F35 Joint Strike Fighter, dubbed the Lightning II. Shit name (it sounds like the sequel to an Eighties action movie), but a great aeroplane.

It has been variously villified as a ludicrously expensive 'pork barrel' project build "for the wrong sort of war" and adored for the fact that it can do really cool stuff like take off vertically and render itself invisible to the enemy ("we can get in and out and do our business without even the most modern missile systems knowing we're there", but there's no denying this is an awesome piece of engineering. Just check out the YouChoob vids if you don't believe me. I mean, the pilot can see through the aeroplane using a head-up display projected onto the inside of his helmet. How cool is that?

All that aside, probably the most interesting thing about the F35 is that it may be the last fighter developed for a pilot who actually sits in the plane, which - like the horseless carriage - feels entirely wrong to a generation raised on the plucky adventures of Johnnies flying Spitfires against the Hun. I'm imagining that when they remake Top Gun in 2050, Maverick will be a wise-cracking fat kid with a bespoke gaming chair. Goose will still die, but probably from diabetes. Or inhaling a Cheeto. War is hell.

Zen 315: 'Daddy, when can I get a tattoo?'

That's my daughter - the Cupcake - asking me that this morning. She's FOUR.

The answer is the same, apple of my eye, as for when I'll accept and/or like any of your boyfriends.

Never.

Zen 314: Kids using internet to jack up as well as jack off, apparently

There's a "alarming new trend" on the Intertubes and it's called i-dosing. Yes, digital drugs are here and they are "yet another reason for parents to be proactive" in the war against things you should probably be laughing at rather than taking seriously.

A breathless report by Kansas News 9 tells us that "websites are luring kids with free downloads of ... audio files that are designed to induce drug-like effects" by "using binaural or two-tone technology [i.e. headphones] to alter your brainwaves and mental state."

One of the most popular tracks, available free on the YouChoob, is called Gates of Hades. This is utterly ridiculous. Hades doesn't have gates. It's boundaries are rivers. Hell has gates. And contrary to the cover art depicted, Hades isn't a place of eternal punishment and damnation, it's the abode of the dead - everyone goes there. The place they were probably thinking of is Tartarus, which is used to inflict torment and suffering on evil-doers. That doesn't have gates either. So let's not get our classical mythology mixed up with our Abrahamic monotheistic traditions now. We have to maintain standards, even when we're talking about legions of crack-whore zombie teenagers who are coming to eat your eyeballs (but coming no further than the length of their headphone cables, presumably).

I digress.

Digital drugs are out there. Be unafraid. Be very unafraid.



Hold on. Has Chris Morris been in the States recently? Thanks to Craig Christ (who knows nothing about drugs of any kind) for this one.

Zen 313: Dumb sh*t drivers responsible for 'sudden acceleration incidents'

Remember earlier this year when suddenly the world and his neighbour's Toyota started accelerating madly off on its own, inflicting death destruction and misery on the occupants? Remember how it was the fault of the car, not the driver? Remember how Toyota was forced to recall thousands of cars at a cost of millions and millions of dollars? Remember?
Well, now the US Department of Transportation has completed an initial study of the 'black box' data recorders (yes, apparently cars have them too these days) for vehicles stricken by 'sudden acceleration incidents'.

Their conclusion?

The drivers were dumb shits who didn't know the difference between their brake pedal and their accelerator pedal. In all but one accident, data shows that the throttle was wide open and the brakes were not applied. (The exception was an accident that killed four people when the driver got the accelerator stuck under the floor mat.)

"In spite of our investigations, we have not actually been able yet to find a defect," said the investigators.

Even so, plaintiffs in the multiple lawsuits faced by Toyota are sticking to their guns, presumably because they don't want to be exposed to the world as dumb shits who can't drive. (Easier to let the Jap take the rap.)

The Wall Street Journal quotes one such individual, a Myrna Marseille of Wisconsin, who crashed her Toyota Camry into a building. She swears blind she had her foot on the brake, but a review of surveillance footage from nearby CCTV shows the brake lights didn't come on until AFTER she'd planted her car balls-deep in the local library.

"It makes me very angry when someone tells me, 'She probably hit the gas pedal instead,' because I think it's a sexist comment, an ageist comment," says Miss Marseille.

Well, angry or not, you probably did hit the gas pedal instead, you silly old woman. You and thousands of other dumb shits. Now give me the car keys and get back in the kitchen.




Too much?

Zen 312: The All Blacks' Kapo O Pango 'special occasion' haka

Charmed to discover that the New Zealand rugby team has a 'special occasion' haka called the Kapo O Pango (literally 'All Blacks'). Traditionally they perform Ka Mate, which is the story of a Maori chieftan who escapes a rival tribe trying to kill him by hiding in a grain store under the skirts of a woman. As he ascends the ladder to freedom, he walks smack dab into another chieftan who happily turns out to be friendly. Yeah, weird.

The Kapo O Pango, by contrast, is basically about how really great the All Blacks are. When they unveiled it in 2005, it contained a controversial throat-slitting gesture. After a review by the NZRFU, they came up with the unlikely explanation that the gesture wasn't throat-slitting at all, but an ancient Maori gesture replete with deep meaning that is intended to convey the drawing down of air into the lungs. Bollocks it is. Anyway, the gesture has since been dropped.

Here's the Kapo O Pango being performed before the recent test versus South Africa at Eden Park. The All Blacks are available for bar mitzvahs and weddings.



I discovered while looking this up that the New Zealand basketball team is called the Tall Blacks. And the hockey team is called the Black Sticks. And that the skydiving team is called the Fall Blacks. I made at least one of those up.

Zen 311: You, your girl and your Johnson

Maybe I find this funny because I was abandoned as a child and raised by wild Americans. Britons, know ye that 'Johnson' is Septic slang for your old fellah. No, not your dad. Your schlong. See. Funny.

Zen 310: Man savaged by Fatso lives to drink again

A punter turfed out of an Aussie pub for being "too drunk" (in Australia? Really?!?) has narrowly survived being savaged by an 800kg saltwater crocodile.

How did the poor man come to be bitten, I hear you cry. Was he ambushed by the cunning croc? Did he meander from the safety of the path? Was he overcome by the stealthy stalking of a superior predator?

Errr, no.

What he did was climb over a fence into a reptile sanctuary and attempt to ride the 5m long primeval behemoth. Keepers say the only reason he survived was because Fatso was "feeling a bit sluggish" due to the cold weather.

Having had his leg half bitten off, he rescaled the fence and went back to the pub "with bark and stuff hanging out of the chunks off his leg".

As the old proverb says, a fool and his limbs are soon parted.

Zen 309: The truth about 'squeal piggy, be my favourite animal'

Just watched Rich Hall's 'The Dirty South' on BBC Four and learned something about the movie 'Deliverance'. Hall tells is that James Dickey, author of the original book 'Deliverance', was a keen canoeist, who did in fact get lost while navigating a river in Georgia.

Turns out that he was rescued by the locals, fed, dried off, had his gear picked up and was even driven the two hours back to pick up his car. On the way, he began to "reimagine the story, as writers will," says Hall.

"Only in his version, they butt- raped him."

History is rarely served well by novelists, but this seems particularly unjust.

Zen 308: Media frenzy over fugitive gunman summarised in two sentences

Raoul Moat was a violent steroid junky who killed one person and tried to kill two others before taking his own life in a police siege. His sordid life is otherwise unremarkable.

Can we move on now?

Zen 307: Springbok suspended for nine weeks for dry humping All Black scrum-half

Now we all know that Bakkies Botha is basically a psychotic goon whose a danger to himself and those around him, but this act of frottage on Jimmy Cowan, live in front of millions of TV viewers, simply goes beyond the pale. He has rightly been banned for nine weeks and has been ordered to "find a room" next time he feels the urge to mount another international rugby player. (There's a suggestion that he also threw in a headbutt during this manoeuvre, but next to the crime of attempted surprise butt-seks, it seems barely worth mentioning.

Zen 306: Don't put your lighter in a blender. Or do. I don't care

There are lots of very, very slow motion, hi-def montages on the YouChoob, from dogs catching hot dogs to people having lots of things thrown in their faces, like water balloons and ...errr... punches. Usually, the producers try to chuck in some stuff about the scientifikness of what they're doing, something that DiscoveryNetworks kind of did for about 20 minutes before jacking that in and just doing it for larks. To whit, a lighter in blender. Observe.

Zen 305: Invisible bike

Can't get enough of them lolcats.

Tell me you didn't laugh. You didn't laugh? Damn your eyes.

Zen 304: Never go full retard

"Check it out. Dustin Hoffman, 'Rain Man,' look retarded, act retarded, not retarded. Counted toothpicks, cheated cards. Autistic, sho'. Not retarded. You know Tom Hanks, 'Forrest Gump.' Slow, yes. Retarded, maybe. Braces on his legs. But he charmed the pants off Nixon and won a ping-pong competition. That ain't retarded. Peter Sellers, 'Being There'. Infantile, yes. Retarded, no. You went full retard, man. Never go full retard. You don't buy that? Ask Sean Penn, 2001, 'I Am Sam'. Remember? Went full retard, went home empty handed..."

I want this t-shirt. [LINK]

Zen 303: Tired Gay succumbs to Dix

Don't even try to tell me that whoever filed this at Reuters did it with a straight face.

Zen 302: Allah do anything

So there's this full-on reality TV show in Malaysia called Imam Muda, in which go-getting young Muslim coves compete to become God's agent on earth, rather than the apprentice of some poorly shaved grubby little ex-street trader from Bermondsey.

The winner becomes the imam of a Kualar Lumpur mosque and gets an all expenses paid trip to Mecca. In episode one, the candidates have to prepare a corpse for burial. Sounds like a cinch? Here's the kicker - the dude's been dead for over a month! Ha ha ha ha ha!

"Seeing and handling a dead body is the most difficult ritual they could face as an imam," says exec producer Izelan Basar, adding, "The ten boys were brilliant, but the crew was not so good. The producer fainted and several crew members vomited."

What larks.

Still, I think they really missed a trick with the name of the programme, especially given the rich canon of reality formats they have to riff on. How about 'Allah Do Anything'. Or maybe 'Come Die With Me'. Or perhaps 'How Do You Solve a Problem Like Sharia?' Or even 'Pop Idol(ators will be mercilessly stoned to death)'.

I'm wasted blogging. I should be in telly.

Zen 301: Standing up for the little guy

This just happened.

Enormous fat man sitting on the train. The geezer is covered in monster tattoos and when I say fat, he's epic. He's sitting down, and next to him is a sturdy stool, a big, solid hefty thing, just like him. I'm guessing he's just bought it, or is picking it up after getting it reinforced. Probably the latter.

Anyway, a very elderly lady gets on accompanied by a dwarf. I'm not kidding. They are obviously together, although in what capacity, I have no idea.

Big fat guy sees elderly lady and gallantly leaps to his feet to let the frail old dear sit down. As he stands aside, he deftly tucks his hefty stool under one arm and WHAM, KO's the dwarf.

The big guy doesn't know he's done it and the old dear is far too busy organising her bags to notice. Train doors shut, leaving prone dwarf on platform.

My question is, what's the etiquette in this situation? My copy of Debrett's doesn't cover it.

Zen 300: 'Video games linked to attention deficit disorder'

According to researcher Professor Douglas Gentile, "If we train the brain to require constant stimulation and constant flickering lights, changes in sound and camera angle, then ... blah, blah, blah, blah, blah."

Dunno, I sort of zoned out after a couple of seconds. Ooh, look! Shiny sparkles!

Zen 299: I am a blog failure

I've just stumbled upon an article on eHow about to improve traffic to your blog. Basically, Otter Zen is a failure, for which I can only offer a humble apology.


# Step 1:

"Design an eye appealing blog." While I understand that Otter Zen is deeply appealing to dogs and crustaceans, there is no clear evidence that it is "eye appealing" to humans. We can probably safely rule out ear, nose, throat and arse appealing too. "You want to create a comfortable place to view your writing." So that's why I've never captured the vital Abu Ghraib demographic. "...your text should be in a font that is easy to read and not a distraction." Bugger.

# Step 2:

"Give your blog a catchy and professional sounding title." From now on, this blog will be known as 'Professor O. Zen, Member of the Institute of Management'. "This shows you mean business and that the content contained in your blog will maintain the same flare as your title suggests." Yeah baby. Lap it up.

# Step 3:

"Make your blog easy to load and navigate." I keep Otter Zen in a wardrobe. It's a spacious wardrobe with pull out drawers in the Master Bedroom, first on the left, just past the Vomitorium. At last, I have done something right.

# Step 4:

"Choose the right words." I have purchased the Oxford English Dictionary, unabridged in 60 volumes. Hither to my bletchulous confabulation, yon jumentous maledicents!

# Step 5:

"Write original and quality content." Oh sodding bollocks. "The blogger that plagiarizes or copy and pastes content from someone else's blog ... is cheating themselves and the reader." Readers, I am sorry. Me, I am sorry too. "Those types of bloggers are there with one purpose and that is to make money." Egad, I can't even get that right.


# Step 6:


"Back links are also a good way to drive up traffic to your blog. A back link is usually created when someone ... is impressed with it." Can you still see my blog through the enormous pile of back links? Thought so.

# Step 7:

"Advertise your blog." Check out my blog, fuckers! The world's leading blog for boozing, swearing and self-harm. Guaranteed to make you taller and prevent erectile dysfunction, but only with livestock. Extra 10% free with every libel action. Only available in packs of six. For external use only.
# Step 8:

"Encourage readers to use RSS feeds of your blog." I'm betting you neither know nor care.

# Step 9:

"Update your blog postings." Check. "... having fresh and new content available for your readers will keep them interested in visiting your blog." I have compelling evidence to the contrary, but if you've read this far, I love you.

Send this blog immediately to your 10 closest friends or you'll get herpes.

ECXNVGTAMNK8

In case you didn't catch it in the title, ECXNVGTAMNK8.

Brilliant.

Zen 298: Stealth Ninja Kitteh

It's got ninja. It's got stealth. It's got kitteh. Unleash the fury.

Zen 297: Larry the Leveret - the cutest furry little b*stard EVAR!

Eccentric Englishman abroad and biographer to the stars, Big Jim Parton, left these sunny shores some years ago and bought a chateau in Poland, where he and his wife single-handedly attempted to reverse Poland's depopulation problem by having about a hundred children.

Not content with lots of human livestock, Jim has now become ...errr... 'Mama' to a baby hare, a.k.a. Larry the Leveret, found abandoned under a lawnmower somewhere on his palatial grounds.

Chronic missed opportunity of failing the call the beast 'Kenny' notwithstanding, Larry the Leveret is officially the cutest furry little bastard ever. Check out Big Jim's YouChoob channel (LINK: http://www.youtube.com/user/bigjimparton) for all the baby hare action you can handle.



Also by Big Jim Parton: The Buck Stops Here, Unreasonable Behaviour, Playing Footsie and Robbie Williams: Let Me Entertain You (all very reasonably priced on Amazon).

Jim Parton is 85.

Zen 296: I Hate Britain Day

Stirring words patriots. Happy belated 4th of July, America.




"Nobody's bigger than Jesus. Except maybe Super Jesus."

Zen 295: Justin Bieber goes to North Korea

Disturbing androgynous teen android Justin Bieber started a thread on his Twitter feed about where he should tour next. Happily, the Intertubes have hijacked this thinly-veiled marketing exercise and selected North Korea as the horrible little corporate whore's next port of call.

The BBC, covering the story in typically po-faced fashion, pointed out that virtually no-one has internet access in North Korea, so "it is unlikely that any of the votes have actually come from within the country. " No shit, Sherlock, although this doesn't rule out Kim Jong-il using his personal web access to frantically vote again and again and again, while grasping a sticky copy of Smash Hits' Justin Bieber Special in the other hand.

It's not the first time Bieber has been targeted. His YouChoob has been hacked and redirected to porn sites, while merry pranksters pushed "Justin Bieber Syphilis" to the top of Google's hot searches list.

...and while you're at it, brush your hair out of your eyes. Little twat.

Zen 294: 'High tackles should be banned'

According to a new (ahem) 'scientific' report, rugby is jolly dangerous and some of the more jolly dangerous bits of it should be excised from the sport to prevent our little dears getting scuffed knees and cauliflower ears.

The report was commissioned, in part, by the Scottish government, which should probably know better. Not only is the sample size ridiculously small (190 matches at just five schools), it lacks any valid points of comparison against which to assess the actual dangerousness of the sport. There were 37 injuries, we are told. That sounds acceptable to me, but pretty bad to excitable academics.

OK, so there are dangers in the sport, but it doesn't really tell me how dangerous the sport is. In the same period, what were the injury rates for football and hockey? Or netball? Or falling over in the playground? If rugby is way higher, then maybe we should do something about it. Problem is, we don't know, because they didn't bother to find out. Basically, this stat on its own is entirely uninteresting.

Then we should take into account the source of the data, which is the Centre for International Public Health Policy. Basically, this is a body that does research in order to inform and/or otherwise influence policy making. Given that its funding depends entirely on finding stuff out so politicians can intervene and really fuck it up properly, it wouldn't do to publish a report saying "actually, rugby's OK and lots of kids enjoy it - sure they get bashed up a bit, but at least they're not out dealing crack and stabbing each other."

Perhaps the most revealing thing about the study is the statement of lead author Professor Allyson Pollock of Edinburgh University (who is also the director of the Centre for International Public Health Policy).

"High tackles ... should be banned," she says.

High tackles are banned Allyson. You've carried out a year-long study into the safety of a single sport, but have somehow missed one of its principle safety laws. I think that says all we need to know about the quality of your work.

Zen 293: Gah ... drunk

And on a school night too. Worst part of it is, I drank cooking lager to lessen the impact. The shame.

Zen 292: Scottish people stuck in a lift

This is a true story. So it could happen. Because it did. The horror.

Zen 291: Dog gets pwned by deer, but check out the big nuts on the cat

Seriously, though, the dog was fine after this. I mean, he died, but he was fine. I think.

Zen 290: Refund for disappointed England fans

The Nigerian government, fresh from banning their national team from playing for two years following their dismal World Cup showing, have extended their relief programme for disappointed supporters to England fans.

Government minister Abass Abayomi said, "DEAR FREnD, for take part in this special deal, you must immediately send me your bank account details and your sort code."

Expect the email soon.

Zen 289: "Failing to report a grey squirrel in your garden is technically a criminal offence"

... says Deputy PM Nick Clegg, seeking to highlight how many truly useless laws there are on the statute books.

"Always bet on black," says Wesley Snipes in Passenger 57 on Channel 5, seeking to highlight his ass-whooping superiority to his villainous white nemesis with a clever pun on their ethnological differences.

"The middle of the road is where the white line is, and that's the worst place to drive," says American poet Robert Frost, seeking to highlight that mediocrity is no compromise, but the sure road to oblivion.

It is a day of monochrome quotes.

Zen 288: More dangerous than inviting your mum round for an evening on Chatroulette

Top Gear does the Reliant Robin. There's a bloke down our road who used to collect Reliant Robins. He's dead now.



(Excuse the crap aspect ratio scrunching. The only thing worse than a pirate is a bloody amateur pirate.)