Keep Your Shed Secure

Those of you not on Twitter may not have been aware that Farty Towers was burgled over the weekend, hence the not-keeping-up-with NaBloPoMo. Sorry.

Yes, they caught him and no, it was too late, he'd already sold our stuff. Jewellery, camera, ice axe (really), baby clothes (WTF?), booze. Weird thing was he'd picked up and moved, unopened, a bag labelled "Barclays Diamonds" containing LMF and DB's wedding rings. Those are now in a bank vault.

Anyway, the Crime Prevention Officer was here today and as part of his security advice, mentioned that garden forks and that are handy tools for breaking into a house, so you need to keep your shed secure too.

On the leaflet he left with us it says, "Recommend hostile/aggressive plants around perimeter fences and boundary walls".

What do you reckon?

Half and Half

The UK government is shortly to vote on the Human Fertilisation and Embryology Bill. This would, if passed, allow scientists to create half-human, half-animal cybrids.

How cool would that be? We could cross humans with fish (fishes?) to create people who could breathe underwater through gills, feed off krill and plankton and release some of the population pressure on the land surface of the planet. No more worries about global warming inundating the cities - just live under the sea!


Or we could cross humans with horses to create people that could eat and digest grass. Cut out all the time and effort of beef production. Forget about raising and killing cows for food. That would keep even the vegans happy!


Or if you just love the taste of steak, at least you could give the creature a fighting chance. I'm astonished nobody has thought of this before!



Or if it's just sport you're after, why not have a human-lion hybrid that's just as interested in hunting you down for lunch?


There's also human-goat hybrids (I'm starting to wonder how people got these ideas in the first place).


The possibilities are endless. We could probly even cross a sleazebag with a rug to create a slug. No, wait. That's been done.


Whatever next? I suppose we could even cross humans with trees...

Those Pesky Pests!

"Eeeeek!" screamed Mrs Farty, "a spider!" Yet again, Mr Farty was obliged to interrupt his life's work (ok, his blogging) in order to dispatch the eight-legged freak.

"That does it!" she exclaimed. "I have had it with these flipping spiders in this flipping house!"¹ Picking up the paper, she riffled through to the small ads.

"Here it is! PestXit^TM. We need it. Right now! Besides, the Joneses already have it, and I'm not about to be outdone by those snooty snobs."

<clickety click> "Have you seen how much these things cost?" asked Mr Farty, one eye always on his wallet.

"I don't care, it'll be worth it to get rid of the little monsters once and for all." And it was settled. The order was duly placed.

A few days later, the box arrived and the decision came, which room to put it in? "The range appears to be wide enough to cover the whole house, let's plug it in the bedroom for maximum effect."

And sure enough, for a few weeks the house seemed remarkably clear, not just of spiders, but also flies, bees, wasps, bluebottles², sparrows, lions, elephants and whales...although we were still plagued by giraffes.

But then evolution must have kicked in, because before you could say Shelob, nature had filled the vacuum with the biggest, hairiest spider Mr Farty had ever seen. And guess where it had spun its web?

Yep, right on top of the PestXit^TM. The bastarding critter was right in the middle, basking in the glow of the "operational" light. It was almost as if it was laughing at the irony of the situation.

Wonder if Mr Farty can get his money back?

¹ Or words to that effect.
² In the UK, these are like big, noisy flies, not to be confused with the nasty stinging jellyfish.