Thanks to The Whinger for highlighting this to me. I’m not one for bothering with this sort of shit, but some bits made me laugh and I had to share them.

There’s an American website that’s run by some friendly fundamentalist Christian organisation (I’m being a coward and not even MENTIONING their name because I’ve had enough of arguing with wankers). Anyhoo, this lot are blaming recent natural disasters in the US on the unholy peddlers of unnatural and disgusting acts: queers.

Here’s a taster (apols for the length, but they don’t half go on a lot):

PHILADELPHIA – Just days before “Southern Decadence”, an annual homosexual celebration attracting tens of thousands of people to the French Quarters section of New Orleans, Hurricane Katrina destroys the city.

“Southern Decadence” has a history of filling the French Quarters section of the city with drunken homosexuals engaging in sex acts in the public streets and bars. Last year, a local pastor sent video footage of sex acts being performed in front of police to the mayor, city council, and the media. City officials simply ignored the footage and continued to welcome and praise the weeklong celebration as being an “exciting event”.

However, Hurricane Katrina has put an end to the annual celebration of sin.

On the official “Southern Decadence” website (www.SouthernDecadence.com), it states that the annual event brought in “125,000 revelers” to New Orleans last year, increasing by thousands each year, and up from “over 50,000 revelers” in 1997. This year’s 34th annual “Southern Decadence” was set for Wednesday, August 31, 2005 through Monday, September 5, 2005, but due to massive flooding and the damage left by the hurricane, Louisiana Governor Kathleen Blanco has ordered everyone to evacuate the city.

“Although the loss of lives is deeply saddening, this act of God destroyed a wicked city,” stated director Michael Marcavage. “From ‘Girls Gone Wild’ to ‘Southern Decadence,’ New Orleans was a city that had its doors wide open to the public celebration of sin. From the devastation may a city full of righteousness emerge,” he continued.

New Orleans was also known for its Mardi Gras parties where thousands of drunken men would revel in the streets to exchange plastic jewelry for drunken women to expose their breasts and to engage in other sex acts. This annual event sparked the creation of the “Girls Gone Wild” video series.

Furthermore, Louisiana had a total of ten abortion clinics with half of them operating in New Orleans, where countless numbers of children were murdered at the hands of abortionists. Additionally, New Orleans has always been known as one of the “Murder Capitals of the World” with a rate ten times the national average.

“We must help and pray for those ravaged by this disaster, but let us not forget that the citizens of New Orleans tolerated and welcomed the wickedness in their city for so long,” Marcavage said. “May this act of God cause us all to think about what we tolerate in our city limits, and bring us trembling before the throne of Almighty God,” Marcavage concluded. “[God] sendeth rain on the just and on the unjust.” (Matthew 5:45)

This is like something somebody would write if they were asked to write a comedy sketch about fundamentalist Christian fruitcakes. Absolutely brilliant.

Anyway, they invite comments at their website (link via The Whinger’s). I’m quite sure that they keep all comments without censoring them because there’s a whole spectrum of views on show.

Idiots.

I’m almost addicted to checking out the visitors to this blog: you can see most IP addresses and the ISPs using the site meter thing. It’s quite good fun and you don’t get too depressed when you realise that, on your best hit day, 78 of your 84 visitors were only passing through – Page views 1, Visit length 0.00.

Shame.

Then you look one day and you see this (apols for crappy alignment):

Cakesniffers beware!Recent Visitors by Visit Details
Detail Domain Name Visit Time PageViews Visit Length
81 mail20.nhs.uk Sep 25 2005 9:09:45 pm 3 9:25

“Oh fook!” I thought when I saw it. That’s the ISP/IP address for the NHS (that I work for), although I doubt it’s the organisation that I work for.

I always get really paranoid when NHS types read this blog.

I could be a lot worse about my colleagues here, in fact I don’t actually do work in this blog – just the annoying shit that colleagues get up to and examples of what utter farts some of them can be. It’s just that, although anybody who knows me would instantly recognise this as being mine, I’d rather that the vast majority of folk who know me never read this. This is mainly out of fear that they’d they’d think I was a sad fuck for doing it, but also because it would probably affect stuff that I’d think about doing in the future.

Hrrrmmmm.

Yes or no? Now edited with my preferences
Squids: FUCKIN’ DELISH!!! Can’t get enough of it, but it makes your poo smell very odd
Olives: FUCKIN’ DELISH!!!! All varieties, but the big, fat, green mothers with herbs and garlic are supreme
Piccalilly: FUCKIN’ DELISH!!! Or is it???? Sweet piccalilly is vile. However Haywards is THE BEST (especially with crumbly Lancashire cheese)
Twiglets (been discussed elsewhere): FUCKIN’ DELISH!!!!
Nose-picking: Disgusting, but I’m sure we all do it in private (I like the big ones that feel like they’re pulling bits of brain with them too)
Quick cook pasta: No
Chinese-style spare ribs: Yes on the flavour, no on the messiness. Can’t stand messy food.

Musical interlude – I just KNOW you can’t wait for the rest of the lyrics, so I’ve added them too.

Hand on your heart, Kylie Minogue 1989

[INTRO:]
Put your hand on your heart and tell me
That we’re through, ooh
Oh, put your hand on your heart
Hand on your heart

Well it’s one thing to fall in love
But another to make it last
I thought that we were just begining
And now you say we’re in the past
Oh, look me in the eye
And tell me we are really through
You know it’s one thing to say you love me
But another to mean it from the heart
And if you don’t intend to see it through
Why did we ever start
Oh, I wanna hear you tell me
You don’t want my love

[CHORUS:]
Put your hand on your heart and tell me
It’s all over
I won’t believe it till you
Put your hand on your heart and tell me
That we’re through, ooh
Oh, put your hand on your heart
Hand on your heart

They like to talk about forever
But most people never get the chance
Do you wanna lose our love together
Do you find a new romance
Oh, I wanna hear you tell me
You don’t want my love

[CHORUS:]
Put your hand on your heart and tell me
It’s all over
I won’t believe it till you
Put your hand on your heart and tell me
That we’re through, oohOh,
Put your hand on your heart
Hand on your heart

Poetry. She hasn’t done anything better since.

Pet food comes in all sorts of flavours and combinations of flavours. A selection box of Felix or Whiskas will have varieties such as beef, chicken, lamb, duck and heart, rabbit, tuna, plaice, etc.

Cat food never comes in pig flavour. I don’t think dog food does either. In all the years I have shared my home with cats, I have never come across pork, bacon or ham flavoured cat food.

I’ve no idea.

Is it the result of a feline taste-test over at Pedigree Masterfoods? Well, no. My cats eat pork and ham, they love it.

Is there a world-wide shortage of porkers? No, it’s not as if pigs are rare – we’re not talking about squid or lobster, it’s pork. Surely rabbits are harder to stuff into a can of Felix than a bit of pork loin. Lamb is more expensive, as is beef.

I can only conclude something disturbing and this is that there are simply no bits of pig left after it’s all been used for chops, sausages, pork pies, bacon, ham and the rest.

Either that, or it’s something to do with religious sensitivity. But why? Some people are vegetarians yet they still feed their cats meaty things. Some people object to killing Thumper and friends, but they don’t mind giving it to their cats. And surely if it was related to religious regions then all cans of cat and dog food would be declared Kosher or Halal and there’d be no shrimp flavoured varieties either.

Pet owners need an explanation NOW!

I wonder if you can get seal and grizzly bear varieties in Canada?

I hate cyclists – this is something that I’ve never hidden. For a lot of motorists, cyclists and buses are a complete pain in the arse; they take up too much of the road, keep stopping, cyclists swerve in and out of traffic, they don’t obey the rules of the road – I could go on.

Anyway, I’ve taken to pondering of late and I’ve decided to buy a bike. I’ve got one on order, I could be dead within a fortnight, having not ridden a bike in over 20 years. I’ve never ridden a bike that had gears. I have never ridden a bike on the road. This is the bike I’ll be getting (I wanted a black or red one, but it only comes in blue):

What sort of cyclist should I be?

Lycra-clad Nazi on two-wheels
These are the ones that direct the traffic, banging on your window if you’re turning left at a junction to make sure that you’ve seen them (they should fucking wait if they’re that bothered about not being pulverised). They’re the ones that organise into groups to lobby local councils. They wear all the gear, includng ridiclously tight cycling pants, day-glo high-vis vests, goggles, face masks (you never see pedestrians wearing face masks), super speedy helmet, even cycling shoes that clip into the pedals.

This sort of cyclist often rides a racing bike and the razor-like saddle clearly cuts them so hard that their sense of humour flows out. They’re in so much pain that they race the traffic to get to their destination for much needed relief.

They’re even worse when they travel in packs, often cycling two or three abreast while engaging in conversation about the latest in fabric technologies from Du Pont.

I’d never cut it in this gang. They seem quite wanky.

Don’t know what they’re doing, off and on the pavement
This is more likely to be me, but I’m not going to be causing a nuisance by riding on pavements. When finding themselves in traffic, this lot really don’t know what they’re doing; they run red lights, ignore junction priorities, weave in and out of traffic. This lot really piss people off. I’m quite unlikely to be in this group because I haven’t a clue what I’m doing, and I don’t have the “just go for it” confidence/deathwish to carry it off.

Old people on bikes with shopping baskets
This is where I want to be; pootling along serenely, fully in tune with the goings on around them yet carrying on with a delightfully confident “I’ve seen it all, done it all and I don’t care anymore” air. They’ve ridden the same bike for 50 years and still use its little shopping basket to carry their groceries. It’d be nice to be able to just pootle along with the assumption that other road users will be kind enough give you a bit of space when you need it, I’m not sure that’d happen round here.

Why oh why oh why???
The reason I’m getting a bike is just to have one in should I fancy going for a ride. There’s the slight problem of not being able to go for a ride without negotiating major roads, busy junctions and gangs of horrible kids who take the piss and worse. I fear I may be trapped, only being able to ride it round the avenue or perhaps down the woods. At least such activity might engender me to the local kids, or I may be accused of being a child molester for hanging around with them. There’s also the problem of security – how well can I lock the thing up in the shed, how long before it gets nicked? Will the thing fit in the boot of my car for when I go on holiday?

These apprehensions are on a par with booking a foreign holiday then deciding that I’m too worried to travel. The hassles far outway the benefits, but it’s something that I must do.

Now, can anybody tell me how the gears on a bike work? Is there a clutch?

People make mistakes, it’s human nature. There’s nothing particularly wrong with this and, likewise, there’s nothing wrong with holding your hands up and admitting that you’ve cocked up, or that you’re in the wrong. You fuck up while driving – you hold your hand up and apologise. You fuck up at work, well, I won’t go into that.

Of course, this doesn’t apply to the parents and grandparents of unruly children, who are of course immune to all admonishment.

I shall recount the tale of last night’s trip to that beacon of retail wonder, Costco (heavenly choirs sing out at the mention of its hallowed name).

While wandering the aisles, I couldn’t help but notice a young family, their two young boys (about 4-6 years in age, probably named Kyle, Callum, Connor, or Ryan – they had gelled hair) who were accompanied by denim-clad, hip-chick grandmother. The boys were excited and become more boisterous; they were being egged on by their grandmother. They started running around the aisles, with “Nan” calling them to run back to her. Then they made one.big.mistake: after a particularly long full-pelt run down the pickles and sauces aisle, the younger of the two boys ran into me.

I stopped, eyes raised in prayer to God, begging Him to show a sign of His existence by striking down this family – if not with a bolt of lightning, then at least with a dramatic collapse of shelving. It didn’t happen, but at least the boy’s mother said “Sorry”. I pointed out that the chldren shouldn’t be running around the store and this is where Grandma stepped in:

Her: “It’s not as if they’re running around, out of control.”

Me: “If they were under control, they wouldn’t be running into people.”

Her “Blah. blah – not causing any trouble – blah, blah, blah” (the red mist was rising in me at this point and it automatically engages aural cut-off)

Me: “You’d be screaming blue murder, blaming me or Costco and seeking compensation if they ran into a pallet or shelf or trolley and hurt themselves.”

Her: “Blah, blah, blah”

At this point an employee stepped in and pointed out the sign, right next to them, that said that children must be kept accompanied at all times because it can be dangerous when they’re moving stuff about on pallets and trucks. She then tried to start an argument with him.

During this time, the parents of the boys were actually quite reasonable: they told the children off, told them to calm down and insisted that they held their hands. Good on them.

I was waiting, almost begging her to come out with the classic, “I bet you haven’t got kids”, or “Can’t you remember what it’s like to be a kid?”, but she let me down and I’d already walked off after the Costco man had intervened. However, my response to such provocation would’ve been:

“Please take a moment to explain what relevance that has on the behaviour of these particular children, because it has none whatsoever. Besides, I do remember what it was like to be a child and I remember that we were never, EVER allowed to run around in shops. And yes, I do detest children, lots of people do and some people aren’t as controlled as me, so you should bear that in mind when you’re out with these two. Now fuck off you four-eyed, wrinkly, mutton-dressed-as-lamb cunt!”

I think a lot of the bad behaviour of children can be attributed to lack of parental control. However, grandparents are complete and utter cocks.

A hypothetical question that might only really apply to the UK (and perhaps Ireland), but give it a go.

If you were a teacher and, without meeting the children or their parents, you could choose which children you’d like in your class of ten from a list of names:

• Alice
• Asam
• Ben
• Bobbi-Jo
• Charlie
• Charlotte
• Daniel
• Gregory
• Harpeet
• Imran
• Isobel
• Jamie
• Jayne
• Jordan
• Joseph
• K’tee
• Kate
• Kloe
• Kristopher
• Kyle
• Liam
• Lucy
• Ryan
• Sam
• Sean
• Wayne

Which ten children would you like to choose for your class?

OK, here’s a clue. There’s more to say on this matter… tomorrow though.

You meet all sorts of people during your life. Some of them you’ll forge frienships and other relationships with and you’ll keep them with you for years. Others you meet and keep at arms length or maintain a professional relationship with them.

Sometimes, it’s better to keep a safe distance from certain colleagues because they’re absolutely off their fucking rockers mental.

I’ve had great pleasure in working with some prize fruitcakes in my time (Katherine – links above – being one of them), but I’m particularly privileged in still working with one of the best ones in my current job, right now… still…. after all these years! Let’s do her the honour of calling her “Carmelita“.

She’s lovely – great in fact – a funny one (funny ha ha AND funny stuurrrange!). This is the person that picked up all the litter from the canal bank and, instead of being the dutiful citizen and putting it in the bin, she threw it all over the local expressway. “Well, you see,” she explained, “the car drivers never see the litter that people throw near the canal so I thought they should!” To say I was gobsmacked is an understatement. I told her that it was the most insane thing I’d ever heard, and that she was a menace and a danger who deserved to be locked up.

Carmelita is the one who, after a swan that was nesting on the hospital pond was shot dead, suggested that “all the waterfowl be moved to the canal, the pond drained and concreted over to provide much needed parking”. Sounds reasonable.

But it’s the way she speaks, too. She doesn’t half rrrrrrrrrrrroll her Rrrrrrrrrs: “Oh Brrrrrrrrrrrendah, hellooooo!” But it’s not a pure “r” either, it’s said as if she closes the back of her tongue against the back of her mouth as she says it; sort of a bit throaty, but not phlegmy – bizarre. And she pronounces “re” as “ray”, so when she’s referring to a person, you always think their first name is Ray.

Bonkers is an understatement. On first impressions, she acts as if somebody would act if they asked to act “overly eccentric, mad, over medicated and slightly scary with it”.

However, she is extremely intelligent, with a keen interest in history, literature and art. I am interested in none of these things. She returned from yet another holiday today (she doesn’t half travel a lot) and another colleague landed me in it by telling her that I’d just returned from Rome. She made a bee-line for my office and II was given the third degree about the art periods on display in St Peter’s and the Vatican Museum, this after telling her that I haven’t got a clue about art, history or architecture.

Me: “Errm, up to and just after Raphael, I guess. Is that renaissance?”

Carmelita: “Would that be early or late renaissance, because I can’t stand late renaissance.”

Me: “Eerrrrm, early? And there’s some Greek stuff that the Romans pilfered too.”

Carmelita: “Aaaahhhhhhhh!!! Gooooood!!! And what about the architecture, because I LOATHE (or was it love?) Baroque.”

Me: “I’ve no idea, there were lots of domes and statues, it was very big and very grand. I think you should go and make your own mind up.”

Fuck’s sake, who the fuck hasn’t seen what St Peter’s Basilica looks like? Surely she’d bloody know. She was glued to PJP2’s demise in the spring, she MUST have seen what St Peter’s looks like.

I’m never going to go anywhere ever again for fear of her finding out about it and subjecting me to another Witchfinder General inquisition. Some people are just too clever and too interested in stuff.

Lumpy tits
Here’s a question for you: if you had a 2cm benign breast lump, would you have it removed or would you keep it and make a feature of it by dressing it up with raffia.

Went to see Mr Surgeon man today and he said that there’s no problem with leaving it or with taking it out and that it’s entirely up to me. I’m tempted to leave it, but there’s a danger of – should the moment arise – somebody freaking out if things were getting a bit thingy. Not that anybody ever gets a bit thingy with me, but I wouldn’t want the moment of the century ruining by somebody chucking a mental when things were just hotting up.

Despite the biopsy coming back as benign, the surgeon said that they only sampled from a small area of the lump so they can’t say about the rest of it. That had me brimming with confidence, but you can’t expect too much from the NHS.

I don’t mind either way, so I’m willing to be swayed by the reasoning, concerns and wishes of others.

I have four months to decide.

To save wasting my creativity, I thought I might as well steal somebody else’s. Popbitch is a weekly e-mail digest of the latest hot gossip from Celebland. To subscribe to Popbitch, visit www.popbitch.com.

They have some excellent celebrity gossip in this week’s “Moss on the cross” digest; a selection of some of the more bizarre stories follows:

Californian sea otter Morgan was abandoned as a pup, and taken into care by the Monterey Bay Aquarium’s Sea Otter programmes, which attempts to rehabilitate parentless otters. But like so many products of the care system, it all went wrong. When he was released back into the wild, Morgan became a serial killer paedophile… of baby seals.

Morgan used to shag the seal pups and when he was done with them, hold them under water to drown them. He raped and killed about 20 seals off the Californian coast, at one time even attracting a copycat Son-Of-Morgan rapist wild otter.

After a year, naturalists finally managed to recapture Morgan. They considered castrating him but then decided that would leave him a non-contributing member of otter society, taking up valuable space in otter habitat. So they kept him in captivity, where he will only be allowed to have sex with female sea-otters. No doubt Morgan finds this rather dull.

Cute otters at Monterey last week:http://flickr.com/photos/folkestonegerald/tags/otters/

In a recent Popbitch, we alleged that a Sydney man had been arrested for having sex with, and then killing, 18 rabbits. We are now informed that, in the case of the first 17 rabbits, he merely tortured and killed them. It was only the lucky 18th that got shagged by the weirdo. And he somehow managed to have full vaginal sex with it.

Croatia has started Sheep Idol. The winner of the 10-day competition will receive poetry in its honour instead of money. Those voted out of the seven-member herd might be eaten. “I am not an insensitive bastard who abuses animals”, says organiser Sinisa Labrovic.http://www.stado.org

Central Park zoo’s gay penguin couple Silo and Roy have split. Silo left his mate of six years for Scrappy – a girl penguin.

The UK’s Health and Safety at Work Act (1974) is supposed to ensure that all business premises are safe environments for workers and visitors. It clearly became law before computer keyboards were even dreamt of.

Not long ago, Sniffy Experimentals brought you the keyboard challenge, in which anybody interested was invited to check out the crap that falls from between the keys of your tippytappybox when you upend it and give it a bash. Connie and Trillion provided me with some spectacular photos of the shit that came out of their keyboards:

#

Shocked and appalled! That shit on the keyboard that Trillion is forced to use probably contains enough biological agents to find cures to all diseases known to mankind.

Being quite obsessive about this sort of thing, I keep my work keyboard pretty clean with caustic foaming cleaner:

During a discussion at work as to the reasons for our trousers being a little on the tight side, in addition to pointing out that we’re all a bit podgy, I used the excuse that I was ovulating and that I always swell up (a touch more than usual) at the P of the pop. My colleagues claimed never to have felt themselves ovulating. And these so-called women are supposed to be in tune with their feminine sides, womanhood and all that, having sporned their offspring.

Why would a woman not feel herself ovulating?

a) She has no ovaries
b) She has no follicles
c) She doesn’t ovulate for another reason
d) She is really a man
e) She is fucking useless, with no idea what’s going on, how it all fits together or how it’s controlled

Weird.

I bet women like that have no idea how to masturbate. I bet women like that think that women can’t masturbate.

Fuck.

All those bras burned and what for??

How can you not feel when something inside you swells to up to 2cm and then pops? How can the huge hormone spikes at this time not register any noticeable physiological signs? And, what about that kind of gooeyness that happens? And the orange/brown wee? (Perhaps that’s just me).

It’s beyond me how these women manage to get themselves out of bed in the morning.

Pop goes the Data Protection Act
Some fucking numpty has just been on the phone asking whether we were interested in saving money on telephone calls. I asked him if he was interested in being prosecuted for breech of the Data Protection Act and then had to explain to him, a telesales “professional”, that such businesses are not allowed to contact anybody who has registered with the Telephone Preference Service.

Him: “Are you going to prosecute me?”

Me: “No, but the Information Commissioner may shut down your 2-bit pile of shite little operation if enough people complain about unsolicited telephone calls from you. You’re supposed to check before you phone people. Your boss should know about this.”

Him: “I understand that it must be very irritating to be contacted this way.”

Me: “Yes, it is. So, a) why the fuck do you do it? and b) why the fuck do you think we registered this number with TPS in the first place???”

Him: “So you’re not interested in saving money?”

Me: “Grrrrrrrrr.”

Him: “I’ll take you off the database.”

Me: “Good idea.”

Tossers.