Expect reduced Zen activity this week. I'm doing some Black Ops testing of my new Cobb stove, deep undercover on a Welsh hillside. The steak went pretty well, despite the intervention of Spicy Rum, and we're now running the Bacon Trial. Dogs torn between sunning themselves and slavering unashamedly. Further progress reports as required and/or possible (bearing in mind 3G coverage in Wales is provided by a man standing on his roof holding a coathanger - be strong Dafydd, the Interweb needs you).
Nothing in Saudi law says women can't drive, but whenever anything in Saudi law doesn't fit with the neolithic prejudices of the beard-stroking ruling class, they issue a fatwa,or religious edict, saying that Mohammed wouldn't have liked it.
Quite how Mohammed could have arrived at the view that he doesn't like women driving, several centuries before the invention of the internal combustion engine, remains a thoroughgoing mystery. Maybe that's what makes him special. Or maybe Mohammed wouldn't have held that view at all, considering that he appears to have had a reasonably enlightened attitude to women*.
I know this may have been purely pragmatic approach on his part, given that it was his rich wife's income that allowed him to go off doing his prophet-of-god thing. Or maybe what Mohammed actually thought is entirely irrelevant, because lots of ignorant, reactionary, bigoted old men don't really give a fig, they just like to invoke the big fellah as justification for giving women the sort of rights normally reserved for livestock.
So when one woman stands up to this monolithic edifice of monstrous stupidity and says she's going to go for a drive, we should rightly applaud and back her to the hilt. Not only that, but the woman in question - Manal al-Sherif - has called for women to go driving en-masse on 17 June in an automotive day of protest. Could this be the start of Saudi Arabia's own little Arab Spring? Certainly hope so.
Here, Harry Enfield and co. are being funny. I know, you thought they'd given up doing that years ago. But this is actually how Saudi men think, but worse.
* Oops. I've been pulled up on the 'Mohammed's enlightened attitude to women' comment. Intriguingly, I'd never heard the story (see comments) that Mohammed had a 6 year old bride called Aisha. Mohammed was apparently 54 at the time. According to one hadith the marriage was consummated at 9.
Interestingly, online scholars take three main arguments when defending this otherwise repellent marriage.
1. 'It's a lie. She was really 19.' Who can say, other than the earliest source, which quotes her as being 9. You can't be all hot and heavy for the scripture on one hand, then on the other disregard the bits you don't like.
2. 'You can't judge ancient cultures by the standards of today.' Not in everything, I'd agree, but even by the standards of the time that is *way* young. Puberty was usually the marker of when a girl was ready for a marriage to be consummated, even though marriages could take place at any age. Nobody seems to have much of a problem judging ancient cultures on topics like human sacrifice or cannibalism. Why so coy all of a sudden?
3. 'It happened 1400 years ago. Why is everyone getting excited?' Yes, well, you've just undermine the entire justification for your religion old chum. Nice work.
"Evil Bob would love to find the perfect home as I have put up with him for nearly ten years and can’t take much more ... He is probably the worst dog you will ever meet. He started life as a failed mountain rescue dog – probably peed on the climber and stole their Kendal mint cake ... He looks older than his years, has wonky teeth, bad breath and a bad attitude. He is terrified of cats, snaps at horses’ heels and nips pigs ... He should not be left unsupervised indoors as he steals food off the side, licks the cooker and pees at terrier height so as not to get the blame."
I have to resist the temptation to blog every TED talk I watch, otherwise this blog would be all TED with little room for my usual inane ramblings. And if a blog has no inane ramblings, can it truly be said to be a blog? Discuss.
This TED talk, however, by Thomas Heatherwick, the visionary founder of architecture and design house the Heatherwick Studio, is so chock full of stunning and inspirational ideas that I couldn't let it pass. He's clearly not a natural public speaker, but the quality of his work speaks eloquently for itself.
Style-wise, he's a bit like a latter-day Gaudi, but without the god-obsession and decades of terrible procrastination. If I could make my house look even a bit like some of the stuff he does, I think I would. With an organically beautiful concealed machine-gun nest to keep out the stalky loonies.
You have to consider that going up against the West is a bit like mixing it with the Mafia. The West has a long memory for the people it falls out with, and recent history has shown that it doesn't matter where you run to, or how well you hide, we will eventually hunt you down and take you out of circulation.
Happily, it seems we're living through a golden era of bagging the worst of the worst. Saddam found his way to the end of a rope. Milosevic died in custody. Karadzic is awaiting trial. Bin Laden is full of holes and feeding fish. And now they've apprehended Ratko Mladic, the man who masterminded the horrifying slaughter at Srebrenica in 1995.
Bearing in mind this kid is still in high school and obviously really into physics*, this is a really funny presentation. Marvel as he dissects the physical impossibility of the Sonic Rainboom, the See-Saw Catapult and the Butterfly Cushion. The idea that the butterflies might be made of dark matter is an intriguing one and should be further explored in future MLP episodes. I will be writing to the producers.
In just under three minutes, this enlightened gentleman will help you understand that you've been inadvertently cocking up a simply daily task for as long as you've been able to do it. And I thought bow ties were a bitch.
New date set. "Merciful god" has postponed his righteous destruction of the Earth until 21 October. Harold Camping says he got his sums wrong, so we're all going to hell on Trafalgar Day instead.
Maths is tricky. Maths derived from a cabalistic interpretation of a mostly made-up book is even trickier. Especially if you're a cheap huckster, it seems.
Of the ten species listed in this brilliant Wired gallery, the fish has the best name by a country mile.
But there's also a jumping cockroach, an underwater mushroom, a luminous fungus, a steel eating bacteria from the Titanic, a leech they found up someone's nose, a bloody great fruit eating lizard and a new species of deer found in an African meat market.
But my favourite is Darwin's Bark Spider, which spins the largest orb webs in the world and whose silk, at 10 times the strength of Kevlar, is the strongest biological substance yet discovered.
It's at the forefront of studies into "size dimorphism, mate guarding and self-castration" and has, of all things, a symbiotic species of fly.
Mother Nature, we salute you and your quest to ensure no evolutionary niche goes unexploited.
Great cover story for the Evening Standard tonight. Apparently, a host of celebrity tweeters could face legal action after vaguely alluding to Ryan Giggs being the gormless, baboon-faced soccerball chaser who tried to sue the Internet over some alleged shenanigans with a part-silicon, part rubber-plant pseudo celebrity trollop. Or something. I didn't even read the damn story.
Similarly, an asteroid could strike the Earth in the next 24 hours, belatedly saving the reputation of Harold Camping. An elephant could mate with a dog, creating the first creature that will not only roll over for a banana, but can lick its balls and play the Last Post at the same time. Osama bin Laden could be alive and cracking off to Whitney Houston-alike skin flicks in a suit on the Dorchester Park Lane.
Could, but isn't, can't and won't be. This story is a plant designed to warn off future super injunction abusers the world over. It may even go to court, but given that none of these celebrity tweeters were the first and neither were they particularly explicit, it would be a monstrous travesty if they were singled out for special treatment
That said, the prospect of Piers Morgan rooming with Boy George in a 12ft by 8ft cell for the rest of his born days is a strangely alluring one.
Bang 'em up, I say, then round to my club for a celebratory extramarital threesome with a Turkish ladyboy and a buttered German Shepherd.
This is the same man who produced a record budget deficit. The man who oversaw not so much an explosion in debt as a an entire Bikini Atoll's worth of explosions. The man who sold the nation's gold reserves at the bottom of the market. The man whose vicious vendettas against friends and colleagues were legendary. The man who mortgaged the nation's financial security while apparently being asleep at the wheel (how's that for a mixed metaphor). He's the prick who's made sure that if you're middle class and English you will continue to experience declining income and expectations for the next decade at least. This is the sack-suited bag of fuck who produced such a cancerous atmosphere in Westminster that everyone now looks and sounds a bit like Tony Blair. He's a klutz. A cretin. A moron. A wrongheaded tit. The mere prospect of him holding public office again should be greeted with howls of derision and righteous anger. Petty and small minded? I don't care, as long as we keep the miserable, dour camel-faced twonk out.
So we weren't all condemned to eternal damnation by a colossal sequence of shattering earthquakes on 21 May, although I have to confess to my head feeling for most of today like mega-douche Howard Camping's much-mocked Rapture was kicking in just a few hours late and in a very localised part of my hurty brain.
Still, that shouldn't stop you from enjoying Eclectic Method's rather jolly and brilliant 'Apocamix'. A cream bun to the first person to spot the Hitch Hiker's Guide to the Galaxy clip. I never really thought of H2G2 that as being of the apocalyptic genre, but I guess the planet does get blown up by Vogons to make way for an intergalactic bypass...
Bought a new dinner suit last week, the last one having been purchased for a May Ball during my first year at university. Since then, it has suffered several major catastrophes that make it no longer viable as a garment, so a replacement was required. This is no small undertaking for someone of my build, hence the helpful suggestion from Lord Jim that I try a theatrical outfitters. I was mildly offended, but I see his point.
This momentous undertaking complete (without recourse to Mongo's Circus Store) I decided that wearing a pre-tied bow tie was no longer the done thing. It's a bit like having velcro on your trainers, not as a fashion statement but because you haven't learned to tie your shoelaces yet. Only bouncers and people in the catering industry have any excuse for wearing pre-tied or clip on bow-ties, and then it's only because they are contractually obliged to wear the damn thing. It's a form of cruelty in which they should not be required to be complicit.
New bow tie purchased, I followed the instructions that came with it and was quickly reduced to a foaming rage of frustration, only exceeded in its intensity by the searing pain in my upper arms brought on by having to hold my elbows out parallel with my shoulders for 10 minutes at a time while a wrestled with the intricacies of the fiendish knot.
Next stop You Tube. At the third try, I found the reassuringly camp-yet-matey tutorial that finally cracked the secret (below). And the secret is? You poke the fat bit closest to the knot through the final loop, not the thin pointy end, otherwise you have no tension in the knot. But of course you knew that already.
I can now tie a bow tie relatively quickly and painlessly, although it still looks a bit like a pork pie when I've finished. I am reliably informed by the style editor of American GQ that this is all part of the charm and will cryptically notify the illuminati that I have tied it myself rather than clipping it on. Which, in the final analysis, is really all it needs to do.
Everyone's been having a lot of fun with the widely publicised apocalyptic ramblings of odious religious nutbag Harold Camping, who says that today marks the beginning of the end of days.
Apparently, 200 million good souls will be "raptured" up to heaven starting 21 May, while everyone else dies horrifically in a series of terrible disasters, which will all be done and dusted by 21 October.
As far as I can make out, to qualify as a good soul you must a) like Howard Camping and b) hate gays. Heaven is evidently not all that fabulous.
But while we're having a few yucks at the whackjob bible-basher's expense, someone else is making money.
Businessman and avowed atheist Bart Centre has set up Eternal Earthbound Pets, which kennels the pets of those who are to be raptured, charging a $135 (£83) downpayment for the service.
Mr Centre says rapture-ites stand to be disappointed twice, "Once because they weren't raptured and again because I don't do refunds."
This is a new craze sweeping Mexico - cowboy boots with huge, curly, Aladdin-style toes. You have to hand it to the Mexicans, they rarely do anything by half measures, and these things are just weirdly brilliant. The clip is raw AP footage with no commentary, unfortunately. The only other YouChoob I could find had some Indian news anchor ranting over it in foreign tongues, so this will have to do.
I don't speak Spanish, but as far as I can make out, the blokes in the boot shop are explaining how this guy called 'Cesar of Huizache' came in and requested they make him a pair of shitkickers with outrageously long toes. Then the other guy later on in the Mesquit Rodeo nightclub is explaining how Cesar of Huizache set the whole of goddam Mexico on fire by dancing in his new boots, bandido-style with a neckerchief hiding his lower face. Epic.
This landslide is currently taking place at a place called Snake River Canyon in Wyoming. The slip of mud, debris and boulders is progressing at a leisurely 50cm an hour - so slow that they had to film it in timelapse. Rather brilliantly, you can see tiny little guys in orange safety jackets walking around on it as it crawls like a huge brown slug over a local road. It's sort of hypnotic.
A man called Don Gorske has just eaten his 25,000th Big Mac. Don has OCD, but he's not hurting anybody (except maybe himself). He makes notes on every Big Mac he eats and he keeps the cartons. Like I said, he has OCD. And very low cholesterol, which I guess is by luck rather than good management.
He buys his Big Macs in bulk then microwaves them. Which can't be normal. But like I said, he's not hurting anybody (except maybe himself). Don has set a new world record. Apparently people care about this sort of thing. Presumably people like the marketing department at McDonalds HQ.
Well done Don, you've reached a milestone that so much doesn't matter that it's actually quite impressive. Don plans to keep on eating Big Macs until he dies. Which should be about Thursday week, if the nutritionists are right.
Synesthesia is fascinating. It's a condition (disorder?) best described as a 'mixing of the senses'. Colours have flavours, numbers and letters have colours, days of the week have personalities - that sort of thing. Here, director Terri Timley attempts to creatively explain how it feels to have synesthesia through the medium of short film. Stick with it. It starts like some sort of French art house toss, but works up to something interesting.
Doug Zongker makes a point about how much information we usefully absorb from bad presentations. Chicken is a dominant feature. I suspect you probably don't have to watch all 4 minutes.
And here's the preso as a pdf. Just in case you didn't get enough chicken first time around.
The defence secretary, Dr Liam Fox, has challenged the government's commitment to enshrine in law the spending of 0.7% of gross national income on overseas aid. His comments were apparently motivated by concern that the UK could leave itself exposed to legal challenges, or lose control over where aid money is spent.
Others suspect that he is voicing grassroot Conservative anger that overseas aid is to be protected from cuts while local services at home are being slashed left, right and centre.
Bono: dick
But there's a much better reason to oppose such an uncritical commitment to overseas aid. Aid doesn't work. Demonstrably. More than $500 billion has been poured into Africa in direct aid since the Second World War. The result, as Wikipedia's Poverty in Africa article puts it, hasn't been that great:
"In 2009, 22 of 24 nations identified as having 'Low Human Development' on the United Nations' (UN) Human Development Index were located in Sub-Saharan Africa. In 2006, 34 of the 50 nations on the UN list of least developed countries are in Africa. In many nations, GDP per capita is less than $200 US per year, with the vast majority of the population living on much less. In addition, Africa's share of income has been consistently dropping over the past century by any measure. In 1820, the average European worker earned about three times what the average African did. Now, the average European earns twenty times what the average African does."
In fact, if the views of Zambian economist Dambisa Moyo are anything to go by, aid not only doesn't work in Africa, but it's actually part of the problem.
I've just finished reading her book 'Dead Aid', which is a meticulous and carefully reasoned hand grenade lobbed in the lap of the casual assumption that aid is a good and helpful thing. Her argument, illustrated by 60 years of empirical evidence, can be boiled down to the fact that aid "severs the link between individuals and their ability to hold their governments accountable" and therefore radically hinders development.
She also doesn't like Bono, for which I can only recommend her all the more.
Watching some of the coverage of the Queen's visit to Ireland today, one was given occasion to ponder what an arrant load of old balls some people are prepared to speak in the name of filling air time.
First, the privations and brutality visited upon the Irish by the British are only equalled by those visited on the Irish by the Irish. The greenwashing of history is not helpful.
Second, Bloody Sunday was not the greatest atrocity in the history of humanity. It wasn't even the greatest atrocity of the Troubles. That was carried out by Irish Republicans. In fact, the reason Bloody Sunday sticks in the memory is precisely because it was such a massive anomaly.
Third, yes the Irish do have a long memory for history, but judging by the vox pops from Dublin this morning, only the history they want to remember. For example, not many of them seem to recall the 1998 referendum in which they overwhelmingly voted to renounce their claim to sovereignty over Northern Ireland (or the simultaneous referendum in Northern Ireland confirming that they wanted to stay in the United Kingdom).
I think it's charming that the Queen has agreed to drop in on the Irish and it can only be a good thing for the ever-strengthening peace process. But please - Irish people - ditch the shibboleths already. It's time to move on.
I could have watched this little sucker rolling around, happy as Larry in his little tank, for hours. He had a sweet ride and nowhere in particular to go. But then they had to go and spoil it by getting all apocalyptic on our ass.
Note to the fat guy with the bandana. Draw your pistols before breaking cover. Amateur.
"OK, so there's this guy, right. He's not a banana, but he does have banana hands. And a banana moustache. Oh, yeah, and he can fire bananas out of his nose ... but wait, this is the crazy bit..."
I'm loving the story about the veritable pornucopia found in a locked trunk under Osama bin Laden's bed. Seems like the beardy psychopath just couldn't wait for paradise to claim his 72 'virgins'. Even if it isn't true, it's a genius piece of black propaganda, and there can be no more richly deserving candidate.
The conventional wisdom goes that the US has learned more about al Qaeda and OBL in the last 10 days than they have in the last 10 years. The very nature of OBL's hermit existence meant that everything he owned in the whole world was in that compound in Abbottabad, and that it was already packed and portable. For the Navy Seals it must have been like hitting the motherlode and not even having to dig it out.
It wouldn't be the first time that men who have done monstrous things in the name of Islam have subsequently been found to have private habits that expose them as terrible hypocrites. You have to suspect that anyone that tightly wound about stuff has to have some significant personal issues.
But it's interesting that the discovery of a porn stash, in the eyes of moderate to moderately-extreme Islam, is likely to do Osama's reputation more damage than all of the senseless killing, maiming, torture and brutality put together.
For such is the gigantic mysogyny within a certain strand of Islam that the slaughter of innocents in the name of your faith is considered a lesser crime than spanking the cleric to some naughty ladies on Red Tube. If you needed some pointers as to why this specific brand of militancy is morally and philosophically fucked, you could do worse than start here.
This Japanese gentleman has created an ultimate machine with a clever enhancement. In essence, it throws a tantrum. While this seems to be entirely in keeping with Arthur C Clarke's original vision for the thing, I'm pretty certain this could only have been invented in Japan.
The You Tube user who posted this is called henchan001, which I think loosely translates as 'little strange one' or possibly 'strangey'. Know your market.
AKA the world's most useless machine. The idea originated with Arthur C Clarke who wrote:
"Nothing could be simpler. It is merely a small wooden casket, the size and shape of a cigar box, with a single switch on one face. When you throw the switch, there is an angry, purposeful buzzing. The lid slowly rises, and from beneath it emerges a hand. The hand reaches down, turns the switch off and retreats into the box. With the finality of a closing coffin, the lid snaps shut, the buzzing ceases and peace reigns once more. The psychological effect, if you do not know what to expect, is devastating. There is something unspeakably sinister about a machine that does nothing - absolutely nothing - except switch itself off."
A bunch were made in the 1950s for AT&T executives. They were suitcase-sized and featured what was indeed a very creepy mechanical arm that emerged slowly, flicked its switch and slammed the lid shut again.
Since then, it's become something of a craze amongst hipster 'makers' to expend sizeable amounts of time and effort making one of these things. Which in its own special way is rather brilliant. It's certainly a step or two up from, say, happy slapping.
Dan Bull has churned out yet another of his cheerfully irreverent raps, this time about the legal evil that is the super injuction (which he somehow manages to rhyme with dungeon and truncheon). Marvel as he visualises an unholy union between Carter Ruck and an unlubricated cactus. Worth a listen.
In a statement, apparently released by OBL's fourth son Omar, his family said:
"We maintain that arbitrary killing is not a solution to political problems and crime's adjudication as justice must be seen to be done."
Which is pretty fucking rich coming from the children of a mass murdering bastard.
The statement "also said the US decision to bury Bin Laden's corpse at sea had deprived the family of performing religious rites," according to the BBC News site.
Which, again, is pretty fucking rich coming from the children of the same mass murdering bastard who killed vast numbers of people in such a way there was no body to bury.
Frankly, the only thing we've been deprived of by not knowing where the beardy prick is buried is a grave to dance on.
The Fine Brothers (of the mind-numbing 6 minute synopsis of all eleven Dr Whos fame) run an occasional series called 'Kids React'. Usually the kids in question react to silly viral videos or lofty topics like the uber-public implosion of Charlie Sheen's psyche, which is fun. You can even subscribe to their YouChoob channel.
Here they react to the death of OBL with a maturity and appreciation of the issues that gives lie to the myth that all Americans are lumpen, insular morons with one hand on the remote and the other in a KFC bargain bucket.
Here's a question: if that were ever the case, and America really was a nation of lumpen, insular morons with one hand on the remote and the other in a KFC bargain bucket, but they were nonetheless still the most powerful nation on Earth, what does that say about you, Mongo?
The first ever bombing mission was carried out by an Italian airman called Giulio Gavotti, who flew a flimsy Taube monoplane over Ottoman troops in Ain Zara, Libya, and dropped three bombs on them. All this happened on the 10 May 1911, just eight years after the Wright Brothers' first powered flight.
"It will be very interesting to try them on the Turks," said Gavotti in a letter to his father just before the raid.
Strangely enough, exactly a century later, the Italians are back bombing Libya, although for slightly more altruistic reasons.
The bombs themselves were about the size of big hand grenades, and Gavotti carried three in a leather case and the fourth tucked in the pocket of his flying jacket. He pulled the pins with his teeth before lobbing them onto Turkish and Arabic troops. There is no record of any casualties.
Gavotti's account of the raid is refreshingly unrepentant.
"I am ready. The oasis is about one kilometre away. I can see the Arab tents very wel," he writes in a letter to his father, "I take the bomb with my right hand, pull off the security tag and throw the bomb out, avoiding the wing. I can see it falling through the sky for couple of seconds and then it disappears. And after a little while, I can see a small dark cloud in the middle of the encampment. I have hit the target!"
You can listen the the BBC World Service programme about it here. It's almost worth it for the hilarious impression of Gavotti that makes him sound uncannily like Manuel from Fawlty Towers.
How do you ensure your potato cannon is legal? You can get the local police to drop by and inspect it. Like they did mine last Thursday, after a complaint that we were manufacturing and storing firearms on the premises. Seriously.
Happily, Surrey Police said no crime had been committed and that the Bad Dad clip below showed that all due care and attention had been exercised in the firing of said cannon.
As the Bad Dad Manifesto clearly states: "...this blog isn't in any way an invitation to be reckless. If you take on one of these projects and end up hurting your kid or letting your kid hurt themselves, you are an idiot. You are an idiot because you have failed to take the basic precautions necessary to ensure nobody gets hurt. You have also betrayed the fine traditions of inquiry and observation that are your birthright as a human being."
And who made the complaint to the police? My own father. I shit you not.
This is the same man who had recorded lots of footage of myself and Thing One building, testing and firing the potato cannon without raising one iota of concern about the safety of it. This is the same man who said it was "lots of fun" and a "great project".
So when his Road to Damascus moment occured and he was visited from on high with realisation of the folly of this reckless enterprise, did he pick up the phone and express this to me directly? Did he drop by and have a friendly word? Did he perhaps as a last resort comment on the blog? Did he bollocks. He reported it to the police and social servicesfor good measure.
And for what reason did my childrens' grandfather potentially jeopardise their happy family life?
The back story is too long and involved to go into here, but needless to say that you wouldn't expect much better from a man whose edited highlights include calling in bailiffs to extract several thousand pounds of money that wasn't his and to whom I owe my cauliflowered right ear. (As the informed observer will note, most auricular haematomas of rugby players' ears appear in the outer lobe, where the ear is most exposed to attrition. Mine, however, is in the lower ear and canal, consistent with an upswinging hooked punch from a left-handed man.)
I liken this whole sorry scenario to that of the Underpants Bomber, Umar Farouk Abdulmutallab. A wicked act carried out by a flawed and mendacious individual, happily let down by poor execution. You laugh at the fact he only succeeded in blowing his own balls off, but you know that it could have been an awful lot worse. And for this he can't be forgiven.
And as with the Underpants Bomber, that's enough dirty laundry aired in public for one outing. Will endeavour to be more cheerful with the next one. At least the talking dog was funny.
Not my usual territory this, but elastic pop diva Beyonce wins major kudos for throwing her megastar status behind Michelle Obama's campaign to defeat America's Fat Whack Epidemic. Not that Michelle is calling it that. She's fighting 'childhood obesity' - porky nippers in the vernacular - with a campaign called 'Let's Move' brackets 'Your Big Salad-Dodging Ass Off the Sofa and Sweat Down Some of That Cheeto Blubber, Lard Monkey'.
The song and video below were produced specifically to support the campaign. Great video and a laudable cause , but I'd suggest that the 'easy' four minute workout Ms Knowles outlines here would a) induce massive and instantaneous coronary failure in millions of blubbery burger munchers, and b) done simultaneously, potentially throw the Earth off its axis and send it hurtling into the Sun. Caution advised.
Despite tsunamis, earthquakes and nuclear meltdown, Japanese scientists have succeeded in creating a device so fiendishly clever it could heal all of mankind's social ills and usher in a new era of peace, cooperation and understanding.
Consider the next Arab-Israeli talks. Surely just another opportunity to rehearse years of entrenched agendas, bitter divisions and institutional bigotry, you say. Ah, but put the protagonists in these 'necomimi' cat ears and I defy them to sustain their anger and bile. It's simply and scientifically impossible. I reckon they'll all be doing bunnyhugs before the first coffee break.
"Painstakingly animated frame by frame, the piece is all shot in camera, by real people, in the real world, using long exposure techniques," so says the unfortunately named Darcy Prendergast of the team Oh Yeah Wow who put this bad boy together.
It apparently took six months to create and I defy you to explain what the hell is going on, but it has a bitchin' soundtrack by All India Radio and it will make your eyeballs happy for three minutes and 58 seconds.
A lot of troublesome questions have arisen as a result of the killing of Osama bin Laden. Here is a handy Otter Zen Q&A to help guide you through the moral minefield.
Who is Osama bin Laden?
This is the fifth most frequent Osama bin Laden-related search request, according to Yahoo. If you have to ask this question, you may not have learned to read yet. If you can read, but still need to ask - Oooh look! Shiny keys!
Is Osama bin Laden really dead?
Yes. US Navy Seals shot him in the face and dumped his skanky ass in the ocean. He's dead in a big and comprehensive way. From now on it's just Greatest Hits compilations and obscure B-sides.
Does it matter that he's dead?
Yes. Don't buy this tosh that he was no longer in charge of day to day operations, so really his death is just symbolic. Symbols are very important to beardy cave-dwelling fascists who believe a funny man in the sky gives them virgins if they blow up women and children. For them, it's like we killed their Pele at half time in the 1958 World Cup.
Wouldn't it have been better if he had been brought to trial?
No. It's not like he'd hidden his light under a bushel about the whole 9/11 thing, unless you count repeatedly bragging about the atrocities you've inflicted on the world as evidence of diminished responsibility. So why give the prick a platform? Shoot him in the face and dump his skanky ass in the ocean.
Does it matter if they actually captured him alive then executed him?
No. What matters is that he is that he is now dead.
Does it matter if he was unarmed?
No. What matters is that he is that he is now dead.
Is the world a safer place without him?
Who can say? It's a better place and that's good enough.
Is this the end of al Qaeda?
No. But the Arab Spring probably will be, which is an altogether more satisfying result. How galling it must have been for that twisted bag of fuck to see a bunch of middle class Egyptians do with Twitter what him and his acolytes failed to achieve with 10 years of slaughter. The Arab rejection of brutal murder in the name of a merciless god will kill off al Qaeda. Literally killing off al Qaeda also helps.
Should people have celebrated in the streets?
It lacked a certain dignity, but who didn't feel a bit like cheering when they heard the news? Knock knock. Who's there? Navy Seals. We've come to shoot you in the face and dump your skanky ass in the ocean. Yay!
As is traditional, President Obama attended the White House Correspondents dinner last Saturday. The opening speech by Saturday Night Live writer Seth Myers was pretty funny, inasmuch as he let just about everyone have it in a way that was just the right side of Ricky Gervais.
The full speech is YouChoobed below for your Tuesday morning, post-bank holiday, ease-yourself-back-into-work-by-not-doing-any delectation and pleasure.
Myers even had a tilt at C-Span, the American equivalent of BBC Parliament which broadcast the speeches, repeatedly ripping on it for having no viewers. The telling line was: "People think Bin Laden is hiding in the Hindu Kush but did you know that every day from 4 to 5 he hosts a show on C-Span?"
Just look at Obama's face after that gag. He's thinking: "From Sunday night, C-Span's going to be looking for a new drivetime anchor."
This is also worth a look for the roasting Myers gives Trump, with Trump in the room. Sweet.
Forget Jamaican Blue Mountain. If you want the best coffee in the world then you need the stuff that's been eaten and excreted by the South East Asian civet.
(In case you're not up to speed on your obscure fawna, the civet is basically a vegetarian cat with Steve Buscemi's eyes.)
The reason civet crap coffee is best, apparently, is because the civet ruthlessly selects only the very best beans, and because it's digestive enzymes impart a softer, more chocolatey flavour.
That doesn't sound right at all.
Apparently this stuff can go for £500 a kilo. Idiots with too much money have been known to spank £40 on a cup.
Much as I love coffee and am hopelessly addicted to it, this all seems a bit mad. Which is why I'm launching my own brand of otter coffee that's been eaten and excreted by the rare and elusive Chertsey Otter, thereby imparting the flavour of London Pride and Vindaloo.
