ROLLING STONES FAREWELL CONCERT

From Bartcop

RABBIT ATTACKS DOGS

Fascinating story from Norway, a large and aggressive hare jumped in the middle of dog sled team and the dogs were so astonished, they backed away slowly. The hare biffed one or two of the dogs on the nose, gave a giant leap and hopped away into the sunset.

I suppose it’s hard to hold a camera when it’s 40 below, but I would’ve liked to see a photograph of that. It’s not that I don’t believe them or anything, but there are those northern lights, and insomnia from the midnight sun, and all that white around, which has to be having an effect. Apparently some sledders enjoy smoking it up before they go on a run to get the full effect of flashing sky and dazzling white.

Well, someone was tokin’, maybe it was the rabbit.

FREAKING GREAT INVENTIONS

IOL hosts Patentdata which invites people to submit their brilliant invention in the hope of finding a backer and the untold riches that come with a lucrative new idea. Some of the ideas are quite useful, like the gel pocket that heats in the microwave and slips into a special “panty”, to keep us chicks from garroting our men when we have menstrual cramps. Not a bad idea and it’s nice to know that someone’s feeling our pain and more importantly doing something about it.

Another great one for women, if you’ve always wanted to pee standing up, now you can, with the nifty Femme Plus. It’s a type of funnel made from water-resistant cardboard, which you place over the “flow area”. Stand with your feet apart, straighten your knees, push your bottom back so the spout is aimed and off you go. When you’re finished, you throw it in the bin or “put it in your pocket”, a fanny funnel, how brilliant is that?

The fucking cleaning, how come nobody has invented something that removes the dust without any intervention from me. Here’s a step in the right direction, a vacuum cleaner that chugs around the floor, its dirt sensors seeking out and eliminating those elusive dust bunnies, like a terrestrial Kreepy Krauley. It even “remembers” the layout of your living room so it doesn’t keep bumping up against the furniture. You switch it on, go to work, when you get home, it’s as though the fairies have been. You can even get one that washes the floor.

It gets better you may never have to clean your bathroom ever again because it will never get dirty, yay, it’s an environmentally friendly coating which can kill bacteria. It repels water, so the dirt just washes away. No zims, no Handy Andy, now that’s what I call a freaking great invention.

This is brilliant in a creepy way, it’s a sonic teenager deterrent, it gets rid of loitering teenagers. by emitting a high frequency noise that doesn’t hurt the tender ear of the teenager, but makes him uncomfortable enough to move on and bother someone who doesn’t own one of these.

A few weeks ago, someone submitted an invention that involved pantyhose to the knee. Knee-hi’s been done, you chortle, but no, these come down from the waist and stop just below the knee, it’s something to do with thighs rubbing uncomfortably together, crap product, but then here’s Madonna wearing them.

Nope, my thighs can chafe away, I wouldn't be seen dead or alive in this.

MAN GETS 4 YEARS FOR GROPING WOMAN’S BUM

Watch out gropers, pinching a woman’s arse is becoming a perilous business, a man was sentenced to 4 years in jail for grabbing a woman’s arse as he cycled past her on the street. Here’s the good part, in Columbia, the woman gets to decide what’s going to happen to the perpetrator, she can charge him, let him go, or SLAP him.

I’m totally anti violence of any sort, but I don’t see anything wrong with a timely slap on the nose with a rolled up newspaper. It’s instantly satisfying and ends the saga right then and there. Court proceedings drag out endlessly, whereas a swift klap over the ear gets the message through in no uncertain terms. A kick in the shins, delivered with a ladylike demeanour will hammer the point home better than any subpoena, and if he really has a hard head, a sharp twist of the nuts is the furthest you’ll ever have to go. If all else fails, reach for the lawyer, but the quick answer to sexual harassment, is a punch to the nose with sufficient force to make it bleed.

Harsh? I don’t think so, four years is a long time.

DANGEROUS IDEAS

It’s the crack cocaine of the thinking world, the annual Question that gets academic propeller heads and your average blogging punter all worked up in a frenzy. Every year The Edge asks a big question and the responses are compiled into a book. Last year’s question was “what do you know to be true but you can’t prove?” This year “what is your dangerous idea?” In the tradition of Galileo and Copernicus, the best ideas are preposterous in their time, but ultimately accepted as blindingly obvious.

“The most dangerous idea of all is that we should all share our most dangerous ideas”
W. DANIEL HILLIS

Mick Jagger's lips

JACOB ZUMA’S LOVE CHILD – I DON'T HAVE ONE

In light of the fact that Evita Bezuidenhout has denied she has a love child by ex-deputy president Zuma, I feel it incumbent upon me to state unequivocally and with no ambiguity whatsoever that I too have not mothered any child and/or children by ex-president Jacob Zuma. It’s nothing to do with my attractiveness I assure you, I am quite acceptably sexy for most men, however the life paths of Mr. Zuma and myself have never met in any meaningful way, therefore the aforesaid love sprog, either real or imaginary, did not materialize in any way, shape or form, now or in the past, or indeed in the future.

I’ve absolutely nothing against Jacob Zuma, I always thought him a good solid, honest man, until I heard otherwise, and perhaps in another time and place, we might have got together in a meaningful way, but as of this time, our celestial destinies have not brought us into sufficient proximity for the exchange of body fluids (or solids and semi-solids) necessary for the production of zygotes, embryos and in fact, living miniature human beings.

Therefore I wish to categorically state, I am not currently in possession of any love child of any person known now (or henceforth) as Mr. Zuma, whether it is possible to possess any child or cat for that matter, but no matter, the fact remains, that I am minus one child of Jacob Zuma, and the way things are going, I will never, ever have the love child of one Mr. Jacob Zuma.

And perhaps that’s for the best.

Zapiro from Sunday Times

PETA POWDERS PARIS (IN LONDON)

In a change of tactic against pelt hags, PETA recently pelted Paris Hilton and designer Julian Macdonald with flour for their sins against creatures with nice fur.

MCDONALDS ANNOUNCES ITS BURGERS CONTAIN NO ACTUAL MEAT

In a series of candid admissions forced by new FDA rules on food labelling, fast food giant McDonalds has admitted its burgers contain nothing that bears any resemblance to anything which we have come to know on earth as meat. Furthermore, their ice cream contains neither ice nor cream and their lettuce is made from a slurry of liquidised and reconstituted flurorescent pigs.

In the past few weeks, McDonalds has been forced to make embarrassing admissions about the nutritional content of their “food”. Their totally vegetarian freedom fries, it turned out, are cooked in beef tallow, and contain enough trans fats to keep the earth’s heart surgeons busy in perpetuity. Now they’ve admitted their fries also contain gluten and dairy products which can be toxic to those with celiac disease or gluten allergies. They hasten to reassure those with nighshade allergies that the fries contain absolutely no actual potato either.

By contrast their buns and cheese contain neither gluten nor dairy products, and their bacon is a cunning mix of “autolyzed yeast extract and hydrolyzed corn”, their buffalo sauce contains no actual buffalo, and their apple pie is made up of L-cysteine, sorbitol, dextrose, sodium citrate, sodium alginate, and didalcium phosphate, just exactly the ingredients your mom used to use.

VALENTINE’S DAY – WHAT RHYMES WITH CUPID?

If you think you’re going to toss the missus a box of Nutties to keep her quiet this Valentine’s day, you can forget that shit, according to this, we want a surprise island holiday, thank you very much. Only six percent thought a bunch of flowers was appropriate, and four percent of us were happy with a card. One staggering finding was that (choke) only two percent opted for a pair of diamond earrings!

It seems the Valentine’s day ante has been upped to ridiculous proportions, no wonder so many people are anti-valentine. Watch the movies, buy the T-shirt, send the e-cardand the rest of the crap. To get you in the mood, go and look at the art at Fuckvday. If you absolutely have to fork over some something in a box and you want to make a statement, get some of these Bittersweets.

If you’re having an affair it’s even worse for you, because it’s the one day of the year when everyone is expected to do something romantic for their partner, singular or plural. It’s a particularly busy time for private investigators who know their mark has to make contact with his/her illicit sweetie, and all they have to do is ensure they are around to record the evidence. Don’t ever book a business trip over that period, it’s dead suspicious, and remember, the more expensive the present, the more serious the relationship, so watch those credit card slips.

Be careful out there all you hopeless romantics, as the wag said “you can cheat on your wife, but don’t ever cheat on your mistress”.

THE NEW KEN – HE’S GAY!

Here he is, brace yourself girls, here’s the guy that’s going to revive the fortunes of Mattel, manufacturer of the perennial Barbie, who has been dallying with an Australian surfer boy for the past two years.

Challenging the interloper on his own turf is the new super-duper improved Ken, his body is more ripped, his chiseled features have been toned down, he looks almost pretty in a Beckham type of way, with his hat on backwards. Looks like he needs a boyfriend more than an ageing blonde with fake tits. Add a moustache, the old Ken will do nicely.

WHALE FRICASSEE ANYONE?

Tired of the usual steak and chips? How about a whale burger, whale frikkadels or a delicious bowl of whale bolognaise. No thanks? That’s what the Japanese are saying, and now the Japanese government has 1035 tons of last year’s meat on its hands, plus some left over from the year before and the year before that to 1999. Seems the Japanese have gone off whale meat now that it’s not the only thing to eat besides dirt and leaves, like it was for the current generation's parents.

Whale hunting was banned in 1986, but a loophole allowed it in the name of research, which apparently the Japanese can’t do without killing the poor buggers. Every year, Japanese fishing companies kill increasing numbers of whales in the name of “establishing reliable information on whale populations and habits”. Most of the meat is sold on to the restaurant industry in order to fund the next expedition. Greenpeace says Japan has been buying votes on the International Whaling Commission, by offering coastal countries assistance with their fishing industries in return for support for their whaling policies. This year Japan plans to kill 1070 whales and it’s invented a super-harpoon to do the job most effectively. The device has a grenade attached, which hurls “shards of metal through the whale’s body to sever major nerves and blood vessels”. How convenient, mince it up while you kill it, isn’t science wonderful?

The Japan Whaling Association claims whale meat is part of Japanese culture, that they’ve been eating it for 10,000 years, but apparently tastes have changed, there’s so much of it around the price has plummeted and it’s being offloaded on the nation’s poor hapless schoolchildren.

Pack a lunch and run, kids.

I are Manto, Manto I be

Don’t come to me for ARV
No ARV!
No ARV!

Like the hat? Buy one here but they only come in red and white stripes.

Pic : Sunday Times

YOU'D MAKE A DEAD MAN CUM

Another piece of censorship slipped under the radar this week, the "volume was lowered" on two words sung by the Rolling Stones during the American Football Superbowl, held last Sunday. The NFL, twitchy about the Janet Jackson boob incident in 2004, was taking no chances and eliminated the offending words under the all-powerful mantra CHILDREN MAY BE WATCHING. The words were “cum” from “Start me Up” and “a barnyard reference to cocks” from “Rough Justice”. Futile, really, everyone knows what you imagine is far worse than what was bleeped out in the first place.

I knew it was going to end in tears, the Rolling Stones, idols of my youth, who never sold one iota of their principles, allying themselves with middle America by signing up for the Superbowl “spots and promo’s” in the first place. Whatever happened to dignity? It’s not as though Mick and the boys are eyeing out the catfood tins for their retirement, I’m sure we could send a hat around the world if they’re a bit skint, anything to spare us the spectacle of another of music’s most treasured icons muddying down with the money men.

Britney in Will & Grace Cruxi-Fixins episode

Wasting Time, Becky Kelly, USA

THE 8TH DEADLY SIN –SPIRITLESSNESS

During the World Economic Forum, a moral dilemma was debated: what is the eighth deadly sin, and could it be useful? A number of ideas were put forward, cynicism, fear, self-idolatry, rampant consumerism, but the “winner” was spiritlessness, proposed by Pekka Himanen a professor from Helsinki. It means “having no beliefs, no dreams, no vision, and therefore doing nothing”. The punishment for the new sin of spiritless apathy is to be condemned to live in a world where you could have made a difference, but didn’t. Doesn’t sound too bad really, not like being boiled in oil.

The original seven deadly sins are: lust, gluttony, greed, sloth, wrath, envy and pride, enumerated back in the sixth century by St Gregory the Great and they’re still the base motives that lead to most modern crimes, but in our celebrity obsessed culture, they’re hardly seen as sins at all. Virtue, it seems, is still its own reward.

Everyone’s got an idea of what the 8th deadly sin should be, BBC radio listeners voted for apathy, P.J. Brown says it’s using numbers as objects, Terry Pratchett thought it was the utterance of the term “core values”, it’s been interpreted as online quilt art, and is the theme of deviant art. Jessica Mann says the 8th deadly sin is being caught, Johnny Golgotha thinks it’s Cockteasing, this blogger thinks it’s spam, and if you really want to get heavy, here are the philosophers.

My pick for 8th is the cellphone, the tiny tyrant, that shrill little voice, She who Must Be Obeyed. You’re discussing an earth-shattering emotional event with a friend, the phone rings, hold it right there, THE PHONE COMES FIRST. You are forced to listen to simpering platitudes with your tears drying on your cheeks and when the call is dispensed with, the moment is lost forever. There’s also the pernicious practice of humming tunelessly along to your I-Pod, and sending sick child and Irish good luck e-mails, ditto Powerpoint presentations about angels.