Spot the difference.
Firstly, this from Monty Python and the Holy Grail:
MORTICIAN: Bring out your dead!
CUSTOMER: Here’s one — nine pence.
DEAD PERSON: I’m not dead!
MORTICIAN: What?
CUSTOMER: Nothing — here’s your nine pence.
DEAD PERSON: I’m not dead!
MORTICIAN: Here — he says he’s not dead!
CUSTOMER: Yes, he is.
DEAD PERSON: I’m not!
MORTICIAN: He isn’t.
CUSTOMER: Well, he will be soon, he’s very ill.
DEAD PERSON: I’m getting better!
CUSTOMER: No, you’re not — you’ll be stone dead in a moment.
MORTICIAN: Oh, I can’t take him like that — it’s against regulations.
DEAD PERSON: I don’t want to go in the cart!
CUSTOMER: Oh, don’t be such a baby.
MORTICIAN: I can’t take him…
DEAD PERSON: I feel fine!
CUSTOMER: Oh, do us a favor…
MORTICIAN: I can’t.
CUSTOMER: Well, can you hang around a couple of minutes? He won’t be long.
MORTICIAN: Naaah, I got to go on to Robinson’s — they’ve lost nine today.
CUSTOMER: Well, when is your next round?
MORTICIAN: Thursday.
DEAD PERSON: I think I’ll go for a walk.
CUSTOMER: You’re not fooling anyone y’know. Look, isn’t there something you can do?
DEAD PERSON: I feel happy… I feel happy.
[whop]
CUSTOMER: Ah, thanks very much.
MORTICIAN: Not at all. See you on Thursday.

Secondly, this from the BBC:
“I’m standing here, in the vatican, in the final few hours of the Pope’s life.”
N.B. This is nearly 24 hours since he was given the last rites.
With all the prayers that people are saying for him, through waterfalls of tears, I confidently expect him to live forever! Go Go The Pontiff!
Excuse me, an atheist, for asking such a “naive” question, but, why are people praying ?
To keep him alive ? Surely not! Whatever happens is God’s will! He’s God’s chosen chap, so what can prayer do at all ? Answers on a bogroll please.

Here’s a random anecdote that I’m including for posterity. A while ago, Nedene had a hen night. Being girls, they managed to get to the station late. In fact, just in time to see the train leave. Rather than put up with it and wait in the cold, Nedene stuck out her fishnet-stocking-clad leg…and the fucking train stopped and reversed, probably breaking several laws and Railtrack regulations! Really! The driver clearly felt their plight, or wanted to, and they got on!
It’s not fair; that wouldn’t work for me.

Easter’s coming up which means yet more paid leave! The public sector rocks! However, this bloody project is still eating up my free time. But, I’m going to go and see Brodie, wander down to Greenwich to check out a new hotel to assess its suitability for my father-in-law and try to relax before my heart and lungs give out. Random things:

• We might even get a chance to address the 14,000 sheets of paper sent to us by the U.S. immigration service about my visa to live in the U.S.
• It’s been a year since we temporarily moved in to halls. How depressing. At least they’ve been kind to us thus far.
• We didn’t pay a deposit
• I have a sleepy parrot on my leg and she’s lovely.
• Thanks to Ella, I have rekindled my love of Fairport Convention…ahh
• My broken laptop has returned from the menders after about 10 years…dear laptop. How I’ve missed you. Humph too.
• On saturday I went to a big “troops out” demo with Dave H’s family. God has clearly changed his mind about the left, because the sun stayed out.
• Probably other things…

All over the world, March 17th was a day to celebrate a great Brit who rid Ireland of Snakes (or Druids, depending on your beliefs): St Patrick, the patron saint of Ireland. Don’t panic if you thought he was Irish; the patron saint of England, St George, was probably Iraqi and is also the patron saint of syphillis. Ho Hum.
Anyway, the traditional ritual used to celebrate St Paddy is heavy drinking, dancing, and singing, so what could we do ? We started off at the SU and enjoyed cheap red wine on the balcony as we watched the glorious sunset over New Cross (pictures to follow). Then, after one of our number had stumbled home to convince her boyfriend she was “shober ash a judge”, we headed off to The Walpole where the traditional, Guiness-sponsored, pastiche of Irishness was well under way. The landlord, Brendan, did everyone proud: an Irish themed Karaoke; Guinness merchandise; free boiled bacon and cabbage; two Jameson for two quid; loads of drunk people dancing about like fools etc.
When it became obvious that I had to leave before something regrettable occurred, I proudly and happily staggered off up the road.
Beck (a freid of Vic) thought it a good idea to send me an SMS consisting of the words “Nice Pants”, which related to an earlier converastion that I won’t go into.
Being in a state of tired emotionality she initially got the number wrong – luckily it was a land-line, and therfore incapable of receiving text messages. Pity, because that would have made a good anecdote.

BUT

there was one small thing she had neglected to take into account. A while ago she signed up for a very useful service that will relay text messages to land-lines using a computerised voice!

The next day, she dragged herself out of her hangover and into the school she works at as a teacher. On arrival, a worried secretary intercepted her to ask about a strange message left on the school answerphone by a strage computerised voice:
“A message has been received from Rebecca XXXXXXXX at 12:02. Message reads: Nice Pants”
Hearing that story instantly cured my hangover and caused an impromptu visit to the bog.

It’s been a struggle to avoid quoting from this superb book while I’ve been reading it. Every page deserves to be printed out, blown up and given out in the street. But I can’t take it any more. So here is the first quote…unfortunately there will be more to follow:

The new irrationalism is an expression of despair by people who feel impotent to improve their lives and suspect that they are at the mercy of secretive, impersonal forces, whether these be the Pentagon or invaders from Mars. Political leaders accept it as a safe outlet for dissent, fulfilling much the same function that Marx attributed to religion- the heart of a heartless world, the opium of the people. Far better for the powerless to seek solace in crystals, ley-lines and the myth of Abraham than in actually challenging the rulers, or the social and economic system over which they preside.

A lot of nice stuff went on this week:

• We managed to sort out the ongoing Aries load problems. Aries is one of our poor old servers that is still doing a sterling job. By his age he should really be in a bath chair, in the country, with loads of other aging servers and a tartan blanket over his power supplies. Good Aries!
• Me, Dave Harvey, Dave Harvey [not a typo] and Ian went down to see Brodie in his last week managing the lovely cricketers. Under the surface I think we all found the event a tad emotional; I did anyway. Nonetheless the overriding emotion was happiness. Such a good day. It’s odd when you find a truly friendly pub: when you are away for a long while and then come back, nothing appears to have changed and the locals all seem just as happy as they were the last time. Brodie’s pubs are always like that. We has some lovely bitter (Fullers – don’t knock it, it was the best bitter I’ve had since the last real ale festival). A lovely chinese meal and lots of laughing in the country. Should be on the NHS.
• Friday was typical, but all the better for it.
• Today I worked at Daydream. Again, it’s nice to work somewhere else from time to time, especially with Ralph. We managed to achieve a lot and when I left I went for a micro-explore: Ely place. Ever since I heard an excess baggage about it, I was obsessed with going there. Despite being located in central London, it is, or possibly ‘was’, part of Cambridgeshire. Apparently (although this is probably tourist bullshit) the city police still need permission from the Cambridge constabulary before they can enter it.
• Work managed to replace my aging phone with a 6230. 6230 – how bland does that sound ? If I were Nokia’s marketing manager I would start using cliches like “paradigm shift” in relation to this masterpiece. It looks bland too! but it’s a digital camera; digital video recorder; FM radio; MP3 player; diary; wap browser; bluetooth device; infrared devide; emailer and all round geek pacifier! Listening to Radio 4 on the way to work and some Carpetface MP3s on the way back on my phone really did it for me. How bloody annoying then that I have lost my bluetooth dongle. So annoying that I’m going to buy another one tomorrow. If it turns up, and it surely will, then I’ll sell it! Nyeh!
• Other nice stuff

Let’s not even begin talking about Michele’s parrotastic day 🙂

Good night.

So, the Vagina festival is still going on at the SU. Today I saw a leaflet advertising forthcoming events, one of which was a raffle. A list of predictable prizes (a copy of the Vagina Monologues; a sextoy from Sh! [sic] etc ad nausiam) included the following:
“Mooncup, the healthy and environmental solution.”

Solution to what I wonder ? Of course, the answer is periods. This is female emancipation: you can bang on about vaginas, write the word all over the street, stand on stage and talk about it….but just avoid the subject of periods…
Why are they scared to mention it ? As a 33 year old man who has lived with a few women, periods really don’t bother me any more than peeing.
So why are these radical feminists scared of the ‘p’ word ? Answers on a *ostcard *lease.

• The BBC asks Trevor Phillips, head of the Commission for Racial Equality, to examine and comment on an Americn report into “black only” classes.
• Mr Phillips examines the report and announces that whilst he doesn’t necessarily think it’s the answer, such radical proposals should not be overlooked.
• The BBC announce that Trevor Phillips is suggesting black only classes and call for comments from every gobby, Daily Mail reading, neo-nazi they can find.
• BBC News headline: Black boys ‘segregation’ rejected.

There you have it, a news story from absolutely nowhere, cooked up entirely by the BBC, with everything in it: race, political correctness, outspoken opinions and education.

Channel 4 is currently upholding its reputation of showing gratuitous sexual, violent, and generally crap telly in the name of objective journalism or, Benn help us, art. A brilliant excuse to show penises, vaginas, tits, sex (both gay and straight), swearing (including “cunt” and “nigger”), all in the name of art!
Personally, I like to make my own mind up about what I want to watch, and so far I haven’t been offended. But, given the warning they thoughtfully provided before every segment, if something did offend me, I wouldn’t hold C4 to blame. In fact, by tomorrow I’d probably have forgotten about it. Like most people.
My only complaint is that C4 are still attempting to wrap their tawdry crap up as anything other than, well, tawdry crap. In fact I can’t help thinking they are using the same techniques as “comedy” video/audio publishers: saying things like “WARNING! This video contains SEX and VIOLENCE that may accidentally TURN YOU ON”, or “DANGER! Watching this video may cause you to become very excited in a scary way and cause stains”.

Last Friday, like most other nights last week, I went up the Union. It just so happened that the upcoming “vagina” night was being rehersed. This VAGINA night is about womens awareness and, clearly, about VAGINAS. So, obviously, they were doing extracts from the VAGINA monologues.
Now, I’ve never seen the VAGINA monologues but so many people went on about how good it was, that I assumed it was probably quite interesting.
However, from what I saw on Friday, I can only assume that it was simply a bunch of female drama students practising their American accents and saying the word “vagina” every 30 seconds. The last stat is based on the fact that every time I, or any of my friends, walked out to the khazi via the hall, we always heard the word vagina spoken in an American accent. We estimated that the “VAGINAS per minute” rate was at least 2 for the whole performance.
“I realised it was my VAGINA!”
“Heh, my VAGINA!”
“my VAGINA! has flaps”
etc ad nausiam.
I would never go to see a load of blokes on stage talk about their COCKS or BELLENDs. Purely because it would be boring shit. Penises are not that interesting, and neither are vaginas. They don’t harbour some metaphysical answer or power-source! They are simply sexual organs. Now, you combine the two and things get interesting…but really…on their own, they are pretty dull.
I sincerely hope that the whole VAGINA monologue thing isn’t based on blinkered stupidity. Deep down I really want to go and see it so that I can see how intelligent and clever it is. If it turns out that it is simply a load of dim, boring, public-school-girl actresses who still find the word “vagina” dangerous and shocking, then I pity everyone who paid to see it. 50% of the population have a VAGINA! Get over it.
The other 50% can’t get over how great their genitals are (even without another partner) but even they don’t dare get on stage to go on about it.
As for swearing, me and Michele have been reading Viz since 1987 so you can’t offend us.

Good night 🙂

Sometimes people are nice. Most of the time we don’t remember it: if someone is extremely shitty for no reason, that tends to stick in the mind more clearly than the person who holds the door for you or points out that you have dropped 5p. At the risk of veering into a trite, smug, fantasy-land I’d like to share some nice things people have done recently to me and my clan in a pathetic attempt to remind myself that not everyone is a totally anti-social bastard:

• My mum and dad get their car nicked and get offerred a new car by my aunt an uncle’s neighbour
• The car turns out to be fucked, but the people who sold it are so understanding that they give him the money back and tell him he can keep the car!
• Sure enough, the car breaks down, but the Green Flag rescue guy was incredibly nice and takes us home, together with the car, which he managed to get up the drive.
• My dad, after explaining his recent shitty experiences to a bloke from the local Nissan dealership, gets given a couple of phone numbers of some trustworthy car dealers (goldust!)
• After a week or so, another guy who has heard about my mum and dad’s shitty carkarma phones up and offers my dad a Nissan Micra
• The Micra turns out to be about 15 years old, but only 32,000 miles on the clock and only one careful old lady owner.
• Despite the previous statement sounding like a load of old shit, it turns out to be true! The seller was nice enough to drive the car up from Maidstone to Deptford to get Terry (friend of my parents who is also a top-notch mechanic) to check it out. Terry confirms it’s a pukka car!
• All weekend we have experienced nothing but helpfull, good-willed friendliness from the people of Glasgow
• I’ve had some red wine
• Michele’s mate, Louis, lent us a book (“How Mumbo-Jumbo took over the world by Francis Wheen”) which turns out to to be a superb and enjoyable read!

It’s important to spot the good things when they come along I think.
Good night.

We’re back home after a surprisingly enjoyable journey to a surprisingly enjoyable place for a surprisingly enjoyable wedding. Not that we expected any of the above to be anything less, but they were even better.

It was the wedding of Dave and Sharon and it was in Glasgow. Failing to find a train fare that was anything less than fucking outrageous I managed to find a flight/hotel package from lastminute.com that looked ok: it was a night flight to a 3-star hotel for a couple of nights. Dave had managed to scare me by pointing out that the hotel was in a “dodgy” part of Glasgow called “the Gorbels”, and as we were “the two most hated racial groups to the Scots (English and American)” we might get in some trouble. Not only was he merely joking, but it also turned out that everyone in the vicinity we met, including the little scally neds, were all really friendly. So far removed from the arsey attitude-disabled geezers in the Eltham->New Cross belt (ie my life). In fact, from the moment we stepped off the plane the whole experience was like an advert from the Scottish tourist board!
Overhearing a bloke booking a cab, I waited until he had completed the transaction and asked for his cab tip. He turned out to be a lovely bloke and only too keen to help us out. He also turned out to be an HP employee so skilled that they happily paid for him to work in Paris and live in Glasgow!
The cab he had recommended to us arrived so quickly it felt like a chauffer-driven car, and the driver was such a genial guy that once we’d arrived at the hotel he presented Michele with a tartan umbrella “to remember Glasgow” by….albeit in a slightly scary way…and albeit an unbrella with a peculiar white stain on it…hmm.
Anyway, we went into the hotel to find the bar was not only still open but would remain so until 4am! It was like heaven! A lovely warm room, telly, luxurious bathroom, tea/coffee making facility and corby trouser press (natch). We threw down our bags and went down to the bar for some nice red wine and to order a take away.

The next day, after my expensive but very filling Scottish breakfast, Tony came round so that we three could all go to the wedding together and diffuse any embarrasment we may generate. I know I’ve already said it, but everyone we met during this weekend would have made excellent ambassadors for Scotland.

We got to the University (where the wedding was to take place) early, and after bumping into Dave and Andy (best man) having their photos taken under the noble arches of the university we ran, very quickly, to the Student Union for a stiffner. Michele amused herself looking at the beautifully painted list of previous winners of the GUU drinking competition whilst we sampled a couple of gorgeous local brews. I couldn’t resist trying one of their malts and for a stupidly small amount of money I experienced possibly the most delicious-smelling whisky of my life. Googling for “highest distillery in Scotland” reveals the mystery brew to be “Dalwhinnie”. Gorgeous.

Seeing Dave get married had an odd effect on me. For some reason I realised I was crying. They both looked so happy.

To cut a long story short and a short cliche long, we had a lovely meal, and a superb reception in “The Winter Gardens” which is a hugh hot-house. There was a pretty damned good live band too, and plenty of dancing.
After witnissing the “Gay Gordens” and taking part in a ceilidh, I’m amazed that there is anyone in Scotland who isn’t either slim and super-fit, or dead. It nearly killed me! Especially after the “traditional Scottish Breakfast” which was essentially a collection of different preparations of fried lard. Lovely too 🙂

There’s loads more to say about Glasgow, but I really don’t think I can do the topic justice, so rather than blog it I’m going to hope that my memory allows it to become the material for future anecdotes. For my own memory, here is a brief list of the key points:

• Liz
• Kaneshka
• The hotel on the leaving day
• Tony and O’Brians
• Sharon, the Science Centre and the Planetarium
• The bus drivers
• Uncle Andy
• Uncle Duncan rules!
• The Glasgow Underground
• The Gorbels
• Harrison and the other kids