My Happy Place #2

Do You Want Flies With That?

Come lunchtime, I often sit down in the local caff with a nice cappuccino and a filled roll of some description, get out my little mowbli and browse my fave blogs while I munch. If you're doing the same right now, I recommend that you move along. This story is not for the squeamish.

Ok, that's got rid of those of a nervous disposition.

This story came to me, as it were, from the horse's mouth. Or, considering its origin, the springbok's mouth. Anyone who's been following this blog for more than a couple of weeks needs to get a life will know of my love for the Wild Coast of South Africa. And that, my friends, is where The Horror happened.

There's a little hotel, really small and unobtrusive, tucked away in a cove known as Morgan Bay. With great restraint, or perhaps just a lack of imagination, the owners named it, er, Morgan Bay Hotel. Back in the days before the local authorities found out about this jewel sitting on their doorstep and bulldozed a fuckoff great highway to replace the 100km of dirt track which once protected it from the riff-raff, it was a cosy wee place to get away from the hurly, and indeed the burly of urban living.

Except in August, that is. What with it being on the upside-down side of the planet, the sun goes the wrong way across the sky (Apos, this will confuse your subconscious Aussie mind when you come up to the top side - be warned) and the seasons are all A/T. When it's the height of summer in the civilised world, it's bitterly cold midwinter¹ in Darkest Africa and all points south. So that's when they used to shut up shop and give the staff a month off for their own holidays.

Now this one year, the manager came back early. Perhaps it was a premonition, perhaps she just loved the place so much she couldn't bear to stay away. Like me. Any road up, the moment she arrived, she realised something was not quite as it should have been. Then it dawned on her that there was the faintest smell of something rotten.

A quick check confirmed her worst fears. There had been one of the many power cuts for which the country is famous, a circuit breaker had jumped in the hotel's junction box and when the power had come back on, well, it hadn't. And the fridge freezer² had thawed.

Even in as small a hotel as this one, you'd be surprised at how large the walk-in fridge freezer² is. They cater not only for the hotel's own guests, but for some of the locals and of course, the many hikers who frequent the well-trodden path above the shoreline to Kei Mouth in one direction and Double Mouth in the other. That's a lot of mouths to feed, so it's a fecking big fridge freezer². Well-stocked, too. The fish may be fresh-caught by the chef, who is also a keen angler; the oysters are "pick-your-own" at low tide, but the beef, lamb, chicken and that are bought in bulk and frozen. Oh, dear.

So, taking a firm grip of her nose in one hand and the door handle in the other, she gave an almighty heave. And then gave an almighty heave.

The butter had melted first, forming a large, shallow puddle across the width of the floor before turning rancid. The vegetables were not so much green as mostly black. With white fur. And the meat was crawling with maggots. Need I go on? Let's just say it could have walked out under its own power. Oh, and did I mention the smell? And the flies, and - ok, I think you get the picture.

Now, do you think that's bad? It gets worse. Oh, yes. Much worse.

Once she'd got her stomach under control and called in some staff to help clear up the mess, hosed out the fridge freezer², sprayed the place liberally with disinfectant and re-ordered the entire stock for the new season, she contacted the environment agency to see how best to dispose of the, um, leftovers. There was far too much to simply burn it, as the smoke would present a health hazard and the neighbours would, to coin a phrase, kick up a stink. Tossing it in the sea never even occurred to her - this is a beauty spot FFS. Which left burial.

As luck would have it, the hotel owns its own digger, so off they went to the local dump, dug a trench six feet deep as per environment agency standards and gave the sorry mess its last rites. Dumped the lot, covered it up with topsoil, ran the digger over it a few times to compact the dirt and went back to the hotel to prepare for boarders. And that was the end of that. Or so they thought.

A couple of weeks later, one of the staff went up to the dump with the rubbish. The sight that met his eyes...I wish I had a photo to show you. Then again, maybe not.

The less discerning members of the local community had observed the entire episode above and, not to put too fine a point on it, decided "waste not, want not". They'd exhumed the corpus delicti, (possibly) cleaned it, cooked it and scoffed the lot. I don't know what their stomachs are lined with, but it must be stronger than cast iron. Not so much as an upset tummy.

And I've just thought of a suitable title for this post³.

¹ In India, "cold weather" is merely a conventional phrase and has come into use through the necessity of having some way to distinguish between weather which will melt a brass door-knob and weather which will only make it mushy. --Mark Twain

² I am a numpty. It's a walk-in freezer, not a fridge. I've seen it. Definitely a freezer. They keep ice-cream in there. For the Dom Pedros.

³ This post was originally titled "Do You Want Fries With That?", but I had a flash of inspiration and changed it. I'm allowed, it's my blog.

Underground Skiing

A BBC News Report describes a Norwegian chap who went skiing on the London Underground. As you do. Perhaps he was practising for when global warming melts all the snow in Norway.

I should point out at this juncture that:

• Skiing on the London Underground is dangerous. You might be mistaken for a Brazilian and shot by police marksmen.


• Skiing on a real ski slope is also dangerous. A French twat barged into me last time I was pissed on the piste and broke my thumb. Thanks, Pierre!
  

Three In A Bed

Tagged by Kissme. I've never been kissed tagged before, so I'm quite nervous. Not. I saw one tag last week that ran to 150 items, feck that. But this is quite short. Except that I'm making it unnecessarily longer by yammering on about it.

Three Things That Scare Me:

1. Ghosts.
2. George W Bush.
3. Bungee Jumping.

Three People Who Make Me Laugh:

1. Phil Kay.
2. George W Bush.
3. Non-Working Monkey.

Three Things I Love:

1. Farting.
2. Mrs Farty.
3. Choclit.

Three Things I Hate:

1. Them green things, wossname? Vegetables.
2. George W Bush.
3. ICBMs.

Three Things I Don't Understand:

1. The Inflationary Theory Of Cosmology.
2. QED.
3. Women.

Three Things On My Desk:

1. Cuppa tea.
2. Shortbread crumbs.
3. Speakers.

Three Things I'm Doing Right Now:

1. Writing this fecking post.
2. Listening to The Beautiful Corrs.
3. Farting.

Three Things I Want To Do Before I Die:

1. Swim with dolphins. I've watched them surf. Wow!
2. Dance on George W Bush's grave. Or Margaret Thatcher's.
3. Discover the secret of immortality.

Three Things I Can Do:

1. Can you guess?
2. Play Go. Badly.
3. Make people laugh. Knickers!

Three Things I Can't Do:

1. Stop farting.
2. Learn To Stop Worrying and Love The Bomb.
3. Put up with intolerance.

Three Things I Think You Should Listen To:

1. Music. Any music except rap.
2. Your heart.
3. Me farting. Ahhhh!

Three Things I'd Like To Learn:

1. To fart The Flight Of The Bumblebee.
2. SCUBA diving. See dolphins above.
3. HTML, so I can pimp my blog. Getting there.

Three Favourite Foods:

1. Banoffee Pie.
2. Choclit.
3. Pasta.

Three Shows I Watched As A Kid:

1. Captain Pugwash. Arrrggghh!
2. Dr Who. William Hartnell was my favourite right up until David Tennant arrived.
3. That one with the two numpties with the idiotic expressions, the jerky, drunkard's walk and the unintelligible flob-a-dob speech, flanking the pretty-but-shy one in the middle. No, this one.

Three Things You Should Never Listen To:

1. Rap music.
2. George W Bush.
3. People who tell you it can't be done.

Three Wonderful People To Inflict My Meme On:

1. Non-Working Monkey.
2. Apos-itivepessimist.
3. Cheerful One.

Aye Thang Yew.

International Talk Like A Pirate Day

It be only six months until International Talk Like A Pirate Day, so I be thinkin' I'd better be startin' to getting ready^*. So here be somethin' to educate yez, with the three four five R's.

It all be startin' with the Flying Spaghetti Monstaaarr!


His chosen people be pirates. Arrr!

Mrs Farty and I always be takin' it in turns to walk the plank. Ah-harr!

Then there be the lovely wench Tasha Yarrrrr...


And A Vast Behind were just a bonus. Aaaarrrrrgggghhh!

Now keel-haul the mainsail, belay the demon rum and buckle that swash^**!

^*If the Christians can start preparing for X-mas in August, for FSM's sake, why shouldn't we start early too?

^**Erm, anyone know where I can get a decent swash?

Serious Post

Where do I start? At the beginning, I suppose...

Forty years ago, I remember my closest brother sticking pins in my mum's cigarettes to make it harder for her to poison herself. She must have got through twenty a day, easily. 'Cancerettes', he called them. And 'coffin nails'. This was in the days when the killers were still blithely claiming that fags were good for you, but everyone with half a brain knew the truth. Still, she claimed, she'd rather lose five years off her life than spend those years missing the joy of fags.

Fair enough, Mum, I thought, it's your choice and your funeral. And yes, it was her choice. Of course, had I known about passive smoking in those days, I might have made more of an effort to persuade her to give up. Or at least open a window. We had to paint our living room ceiling twice as often as the kids' bedroom, to hide the smoke stains.

Well, Mum's funeral was five years ago. But there's a parallel going on on a much larger scale right now.

Thirty years ago, during the "energy shortage" of the mid-70s, James Burke had a tv show where he asked members of the public to try to predict the future. One prediction, generally agreed upon, was that the private car would be a thing of the past by 1982, an unaffordable luxury. Even then, it was recognised that cars cost a lot to make, a lot to run and a lot to maintain. And they contribute to atmospheric pollution.

Twenty years ago, climate scientists announced that they were a bit worried about global warming and perhaps we should, you know, do something about it? So the oil companies trotted out their own scientists who said that there was no such thing as global warming. There may not have been as many naysayers as doom-mongers, but they were far better financed and people like a positive message.

Ten years ago, it really looked serious. All the major players got together in a city called Kyoto and signed an agreement to cut their carbon emissions to below 1990 levels by 2008. Except that the US and Australian governments refused - and still refuse - to ratify the treaty. Their own published reports showed that although global warming does indeed exist, it's mostly due to circumstances beyond our control and there's nothing we can do about it.

Now, it turns out that Dubya has been in the pocket of the big oil companies all along. Who would have thought it? A major government forging official reports to make it appear that all was well? Shock and indeed, horror.

Of course, it's what comes next that worries me. Climatologists are saying that we're rapidly approaching a tipping point, beyond which no power on Earth will be able to prevent the tundra from thawing, the polar ice caps from melting and the oceanic conveyor belt from shutting down, plunging Europe into a new ice age while Atlanta becomes the new Atlantis; small islands will disappear forever; Waterworld, blah blah blah.

Any bets on how long it takes Big Oil to come to the conclusion that: "We've already passed the tipping point, so we might as well eat, drink, drive, fly and be merry, for tomorrow we shall die"?

There is still one hope, if we act now. It has been proven that there is a link between global warming and the number of pirates on the seven seas. As pirate numbers have fallen, so average global temperatures have risen. Bobby Henderson is trying to negotiate the purchase of a ship which his Pastafarians can use as official missionary transportation to spread the word and boost pirate numbers. Please lend your wholehearted support to this worthy cause.

I love messing about in boats, me.

Return of the King

Yes, Steve has returned triumphant after conquering Mount Kilimanjaro. A little short of breath, but he made it all the way to the summit. Hurrah! The final push began at midnight, so he arrived at the top of the world in the wee small hours. For some inscrutable reason, he didn't wait around for dawn but headed straight back down, picked up Damion (who had only made it part-way up on account of a mild case of pulmonary embolism and fluid in the lungs) and hit the sweltering jungle a few hours later. Where else can you get frostbite in the morning and malaria in the afternoon?

Well done, chaps!

It's Not Rocket Salad

WTF do we pay these people for?

On Thursday, I learned that a Science Teacher says farts can't be lit. Did you think that picture to the right - no, the other one, underneath the Shaggy Blog Stories - had been Photoshopped? Or that this was simply another Hollywood Myth like U-571?

FYI Mr/Ms Science Teacher, the active component of farts is methane, with a side order of hydrogen sulphide to make them smelly. When you ignite them in air, the reaction goes:
CH4 + 2.O2 => CO2 + 2.H2O

Mind, it's highly exothermic, so don't try this at home, kids!

And now I hear of a nurse who thinks tomatoes aren't acidic. If you're trying to find something to settle your stomach, then fruit such as plums (pH 2.9), strawberries (pH 3.4) and tomatoes (pH 4.0) are best avoided. Bad nursey.

While we're at it, strawberries are, botanically speaking, not berries. And hands up who thought tomatoes were a vegetable?

Next: Evolution vs. Flying Spaghetti Monsterism.

Shaggy Blog Stories

It's out.

I'm not in it.

So all the stories that are in it must be even funnier than mine.

So buy it.

Here.

Now.

Then tell all your friends to buy it.

That is all.

Merkan-English Dictionary #2

Many years ago, when I was even younger than I am now, I heard that Dustin Hoffman

wore elevators. This, I thought, was a trifle odd, since surely elevators are those hulking great monstrosities that have helped to make the Merkan Midwest the breadbasket of the US of A.

Or sterile monoculture, depending on your point of view.

But then I remembered that Merkans refer to our own humble lifts

as elevators, and that Dustin's odd clothing items were also known as lifts, and all became clear. Er, not. Still couldn't quite picture which part of your body you might adorn with a box that goes up and down. Mind you, people do wear the oddest things on the oddest parts of their anatomy.

Finally, a kindly soul explained that they're what short, self-important people wear inside their shoes to make them appear taller than they really are.

The twats.

TV Phone-in Ripoffs - Culprits to be Charged

£1.50/min + standard network rate for mobile customers. Terms & Conditions apply. Must be over 18 and/or get owner's permission. Offer closes January 1st 2006.

Pervs

Eww. Just going through my statmeter and found someone had arrived here after searching for Beth+Ditto+bum. Dorty booger.

See she's in the top ten for a second week. Bless!

And she does have a nice bum.

Quiet Day in Embra

Not much going on at Farty Towels this weekend. Silver Wedding party went without a hitch. I think I may have accidentally brushed my hand against Favourite Niece's bum every time she sashayed past, but in fairness it took a massive detour to pass our table on the way from FN's chair to either the bar or the dancefloor. And she was up and down a lot. Mmmm. And the cake was nice.







Elsewhere on the planet, Steve and Damion should be reaching the summit of Mount Kilimanjaro on their charidee trek about...now. I'm half-hoping one of them will have wee accident so that I can conclude my wee trilogy with "Return in a Sling." Break a leg, guys!

But Shock! Horror! I play back last night's semi-final of Dancing On Ice to find that the gorgeous Louise off Emerdale, I mean Marilyn off Home and Away, er, actress Emily Symons and her professional skating partner Daniel Whiston have been bumped from the competition by the judges. How could anyone find fault with that lovely couple? :'(

Shaggy Blog Stories: a collaborative blog-stunt for Comic Relief.

Troubled Diva is assembling a book of funny blog posts for Red Node Day. Or even Red Nose Day. Sorry, still getting used to these fingers.

Anyway, go here:

http://troubled-diva.com/labels/rednoseday.html

Er...

That's it.

The Two Twats

Journey to the Crossroads

Dam: Oh, master Stevo, I'm so tired. We've been stumbling along for hours and we've gone no further than when we set out.
Stevo: Yes, it feels like we've been going round in circles. Let's ask that kindly-looking stranger over there for directions.
Security Guard: Could you step down from the carousel, please? You're damaging the other passengers' luggage. Now, you need to make your way through that dark and mysterious portal. No, that's the Ladies'. Over there to the left; the one marked "Exit".

***
Dam: Wow! Oliphants! I've never seen Oliphants before! They're amazing!
Stevo: If you've never seen them before, how do you know they're Oliphants? Anyway, those are giraffes, you idiot. You can tell by the stripes.
Dam: Oi'm so glad you're here to keep me straight, master Stevo.
Stevo: Think nothing of it. Anyway, we'll take two stuffed giraffes and four of those Amusing Monkeys. With the Fez and the Small Clay Pipe. And CAN! YOU! DIRECT! US! TO! MOUNT! KILIMANJARO?
Shop Assistant: No worries, mate. You take a left as you leave the airport terminal, two blocks along and you come to the bus station. There's an hourly service, tickets are twenny bucks each. You wanna coupla tinnies of FourEx to wet your whistle?
Stevo: Er, no thanks, but do you have any canned lager?

***

Wiilob's Lair

Wiilob waits patiently in the gathering darkness. Wiilob has waited a long time. She can wait a while longer. She hears footsteps approaching. Soon there will be a tasty snack.

***

Dam: The sun sets really fast in these parts, master Stevo; it's almost pitch black and there's still no sign of a Travelodge. We'd better pitch camp for the night while we can still see what we're doing.
Stevo: Fair enough, Dam. Hey, Tembe! Can you tell your boys to set us down here and put up the tents and that? We're off to scout around for totty; I remember seeing a group of Kiwis up ahead of us; they might be worth investigating.
Tembe: Sure thing, Bwana. {turning to the team of porters carrying the sedan chairs} Kiri-Te-Ka-na-wa!*

* Translation: "Wait until these idiots are out of sight, then leg it with their gear. This lot should fetch at least thirty bucks on eBay."

***

Closer come the footsteps and closer yet. Wiilob can hardly contain her excitement. Just a few more moments and then she can plunge her sting deep into the soft, yielding flesh of her unsuspecting prey. She would salivate at the thought if she had saliva glands. But she doesn't; so she won't. Just a few...moments...more...

Squelch!

"What was that squelching noise?" asks Dam.
Stevo replies: "I think I've just trodden in something." He fumbles around in his cloak, then proudly holds aloft the Light of Vidor that is Ever Ready. "Ew!"
"Is it edible?" asks Dam, pragmatic as ever.
"Kind of depends how hungry you are, I suppose."

***

The Fellowship on the Wing

The Fellowship Sets Out

Even before the stars had begun to fade from the night sky, Stevo and his trusty sidekick Dam had already packed their supplies for the trip into a handful of Tupperware boxes, grabbed a quick bite to eat from the magic white cabinet, prepared their steeds, thought "feck it" and phoned for a taxi. Dawn's early light found them gazing out over the silvery wing of flight LF552 bound for Schiphol.
"Tell me again, Dam" said Stevo. "How did you come to break your toe last week?"
"'T'were like this, master Stevo," replied his companion, tugging furiously at an imaginary forelock. "There I were, pruning back the hollyhocks and generally mindin' me own business, when this great black beast swooped down from the sky, its foul breath wilting all me lovely nasturtiums and - "
"Only the way I heard it, you cracked it with a number two iron at Gullane."
"Well, yes, if you want to get technical."
"This is going to be one tricky climb with your gammy foot. It's a good thing we've got my superior intelligence to rely on."
"Yessir, master Stevo. You're sure there's a Pizza Hut on Mount Kilimanjaro?"
"Of course there is. You worry so, Dam!" laughed Stevo. "And even if there isn't, I can always phone for a delivery. And you know it's free if it's not delivered in 30 minutes!"

***

At the Sign of the Non-Working Monkey

And so it was that, tired and weary after a 90-minute flight in first class, they came to the wondrous Land of Holl, known to the locals as the Lands of Nether. Although the language spoken in this country was Double Dutch, our travellers were lucky to find that the Common Tongue was well-understood, if they spoke clearly. And shouted.
"Just enough time to stock up on Longbottom Leaf," commented Dam, tamping down his pipe.
"Bugger that," said Stevo. "I'm going on another kind of trip altogether. Here, into this Coffee Shop."
Two hours later, suitably refreshed, they staggered out into the broad light of day and headed back to the airport, ready to face the longest stretch of their journey so far.
"Whit d'you reckon, Dam? Think they'll be showing Blood Diamond on ra flight?"
"Aw, bound tae, man. That or Hot Fuzz. Mebbe both."
"Quali'y, man."

Something Bad in Blogland

Oh dear.

I took up McAfee on their security upgrade at the weekend and now I can't read my own blog. Or any based at blogspot.com.

Others, like Andre, Hot Coffee Girl and Mr Angry appear to be immune, thank goodness. Dunno what I'd do if I couldn't get my Angry fix. Turn green?

And my email seems to be up the spout too, so even if Virgin had an obvious email address that I could report this to, I'd have no way of knowing they'd heard from me.

Of course it might not be a security problem.

It might have nothing to do with Virgin.

Sunspots?

It's Virgin. There's a reported problem with Telewest/NTL/Virgin and blogspot.com, which was allegedly fixed at the weekend, but some users, including me, still get "IE cannot display the webpage" for anything.blogspot.com, except of course for http://blogspot.com, which redirects me to my own dashboard. Keep posting comments, I still get them emailed to me. Not sure now which part of email isn't working...sigh...

Coke-Taking Women

So I open today's Tit & Bum to find page 3 adorned by Kate Moss and Beth Ditto. Can't for the life of me imagine why anyone would want to go out with that mis-shapen, sorry excuse for a woman. Pity the other one's a lesbian, she's a fine figure of a woman.

Oh, the title? I should have said "allegedly". For all I know, Beth might prefer Pepsi with her diet of skwerls.

Sky Minus

Well, I've had a poke around the blogosphere and nobody (well, nobody who counts) is whinging about Beardie Branson taking The Dirty Digger's channels off his cable network. I wonder why the lack of protest?

*thinks back to yesterday morning, when that fat twat Eamon Holmes was reading the news*

Ah. Right.

Merkan-English Dictionary - Addendum

Alright, enough already. Due to overwhelming demand, for your delectation and delight may I introduce the very Best of British felinity, with a slight Merkan flavour.

UK: Pussy

Cat Deeley off So You Think You Can Dance?