Listen carefully, because after this short lecture, we shall be stopping you in the street and asking questions. Just like the police.
January 31, 2010
January 30, 2010
What’s That on Your Skin?
Remember we told you about these little creatures? The demodicids? Well, they weren’t the worst things that live on you… oh no. They were just on your eyelashes. These other beasties — they’re all over ! In bed with us! Urrrggghh! Will we ever be able to sleep again?
Are YOU an Evil Overlord?
Do you have secret ambitions to take over the country — the planet — the entire Universe? Others have tried and failed… Attila… Alexander… Lex Luthor… George W. Bush. All of them made the same old elementary mistakes, mainly through pride. It’s going to take discipline to avoid all the traps.
The Top 100 Things I’d Do if I Ever Became An Evil Overlord
1. My Legions of Terror will have helmets with clear plexiglass visors, not face-concealing ones.
Evil Overlord
2. My ventilation ducts will be too small to crawl through.
3. My noble half-brother whose throne I usurped will be killed, not kept anonymously imprisoned in a forgotten cell of my dungeon.
4. Shooting is not too good for my enemies.
5. The artifact which is the source of my power will not be kept on the Mountain of Despair beyond the River of Fire guarded by the Dragons of Eternity. It will be in my safe-deposit box . The same applies to the object which is my one weakness.
6. I will not gloat over my enemies’ predicament before killing them.
7. When I’ve captured my adversary and he says, “Look, before you kill me, will you at least tell me what this is all about?” I’ll say, “No.” and shoot him. No, on second thought I’ll shoot him then say “No.”
8. After I kidnap the beautiful princess, we will be married immediately in a quiet civil ceremony, not a lavish spectacle in three weeks’ time during which the final phase of my plan will be carried out.
9. I will not include a self-destruct mechanism unless absolutely necessary. If it is necessary, it will not be a large red button labelled “Danger: Do Not Push“. The big red button marked “Do Not Push” will instead trigger a spray of bullets on anyone stupid enough to disregard it. Similarly, the ON/OFF switch will not clearly be labelled as such.
10. I will not interrogate my enemies in the inner sanctum — a small hotel well outside my borders will work just as well.
You want more advice? Go to Peter Anspach’s Evil Overlord List. Follow all 100 rules and you’ll be Master of the Cosmos by Michaelmas.
Turn the News on, We Need to Sleep
Why is television news so bloody boring? Here’s Charlie Brooker, showing us why…
Thanks Bits & Pieces
January 28, 2010
How to Buy a Pair of Pants
So true, so true… (Re-blogged from kitty@16)
This way to Gap
We Have a Winner!
Your editor is literally reeling, having just endured all three of the opening speeches in the London Conference on Afghanistan. Though not the kind of event normally covered by the Daily Moaner, we were keen to discover which of the three main speakers would be the most boring.
Gordon had first dibs on speeches, and did his usual superb job of pompous cliches, the sonorous phrases rolling on endlessly like the Thames, though with less content. Even in the first ten minutes, several members of the audience were stifling yawns, and Bob Ainsworth, sitting in the front row, had trouble controlling his wig, which does the thinking for him.
Gordon Speaks!
Next up was Ban Ki Moon, who is nothing at all to do with the Moonies, but rather works at the UN. He spoke for about ten minutes and, much like Gordon, said nothing at all. However, he managed to sound vaguely humanoid, unlike the Brown robot delivery we have come to expect.
Last on the bill was Aghan Puppet Prez Hamid Karzai, whose speech was even longer but said even less. He wore his Karakul fold-flat woolly hat for the occasion, though the audience were far too well bred to titter. Like many a Mozart piece, his speech contained false ending after false ending, and just when we were wondering whether we might all die first, he abruptly sat down to polite hand-claps, though the applause was less for the speech than for the ending of it.
It was generally acknowledged by those still conscious that Gordon had been an easy winner in the contest. If only Gordon could be obtained in tablet form, for insomnia.
However, Mr Karzai had addressed us all for at least four hours twenty minutes in fluent English, leaving us to ponder whether a Gordon Brown speech in the Pashtun language would have added something to the occasion.
One remembers Lord Archer’s opening words to the Kurds which, when translated, turned out to mean “Bastard Kurdistan “.
They don’t write speeches like that any more.
January 26, 2010
Credulous? This Way please…
Irony struck in Irkutsk while local people were celebrating Epiphany last weekend. Over a hundred of them were hospitalised after drinking holy water which had gone bad.
The holy water in question was scooped up in buckets from a local lake, which was stagnant. Presumably lots of tadpoles and plankton and green wriggly things were also scooped up. Maybe the priest blessed them, thus converting them to holy status.
Bible Class?
Later, the water will be bottled for consumption, though the Daily Moaner believes it more likely that the water will cause consumption. But Russians don’t care — they consider any water obtained on Epiphany is holy. And anyway, the tap-water over there is undrinkable.
Is there any limit to the unbelievably stupid things which humans will believe? Even chimps don’t seem to be this credulous. Though they do grieve for the dead, as shown here…
So who’s smarter? Them — or us?
January 21, 2010
Drink, drink, drink!
Former useless wanker postman Alan Johnson, our hapless Home Secretary, has been babbling pompously to the Beeb about a “raft” of new measures, which will be approved by the spineless puppets of Parliament (if they know what’s good for them!) later this year.
We Have a Winner!
Among the sooper-dooper new rules is one to ban drinking contests, which up till now we all had the freedom to decide for ourselves. This is a feeble attempt to “tackle Britain’s boozy culture”. Every hour of every day, young people are engaging in speed-drinking bouts, during which they averagely consume a week’s alcohol in seven minutes, after which they fornicate with each other for three hours non-stop. Ah to be young again!
Liam Donaldson, our soon-to-step-down Chief Medic, reckons it would cut crime by 45,000 crimes a year, and reduce annual hospital admissions by 100,000. (Figures courtesy of the Dept of Made-up Statistics .)
Another knee-jerk reaction to Daily Mail-type stories. Another headline for Mr Johnson. Another “crack-down” which will be impossible to police, and which would have no effect if it could be policed.
Drink Makes Your Eyes Go Funny
These drinking contests provide a valuable service to society — they occasionally remove a spare idiot or two from the gene pool. These people should be encouraged to break the world record for the highest number of Bacardi’s drunk inside an hour. We should be cheering them on as they down their twenty-seventh pint. They are natural winners of the yearly Darwin Awards.
What is the government worried about? We’re unlikely to run out of idiots. Especially Mr Johnson.
America Becomes Even More Corrupt
For a hundred years, American law has held back big corporations and unions from pouring almost limitless cash into political campaigns. There’s a reason for this. Even though most Congressmen and Senators are a waste of valuable space, election results tend to have a correlation to the amount of money spent on the campaigns.
Here’s the way it works. Put more cash in… get your people elected… get the laws you want… make a lot more money… and round you go again. The rich get rich and the poor get poorer.
Feeding Time at the Trough
Now the American Supreme Court — noted to be distinctly right leaning – has struck down these safeguards, by allowing corporations — noted to be distinctly right-leaning – to support candidates indirectly. Anyone spot a similarity here?
And very soon, there will be more pigs, better fed, at the same time that universal health-care is going down the toilet.
January 19, 2010
Pooh and Piglet are Potty!
This is old news now, and comes courtesy of Futility Closet, but it seems the Daily Moaner just wasn’t paying attention. Ten years ago, a team of shrinks put the Hundred Acre Wood mob through their shrinking machine, and published the results in the Canadian Medical Association Journal. You can read the horror here.
Piglet is suffering from an anxiety disorder, Eeyore is dysthymic, whatever that is. Rabbit has a personality disorder and is narcissistic. (I think we always suspected that). Tigger has ADHD, and is a hyperactivity-impulsivity subtype. But Pooh –
Very Little Brain
Pooh’s got the lot. He’s an inattentive subtype of ADHC, and the team diagnose him as borderline in his intellectual functioning. Or, in layman’s terms, he’s a bear of Very Little Brain. He is also fixated on honey hunny, leading to ursine obesity. He may suffer from Obsessive Compulsive Disorder, as evidenced by all the repetitive counting. There is a possibility that he will develop Tourettes in the future.
Bump, bump, bump...
All this may be the result of rough treatment at the hands of Christopher Robin.
“Early on we see Pooh being dragged downstairs, bump, bump, bump on the back of the head”, the authors say. “Could his later cognitive struggles be the result of a type of Shaken Bear Syndrome?”
I think we’ll take that as a yes.