There's a story in today's ParentDish about a head teacher who told his primary school kids that World War III had started, led them to a cellar and simulated a bomb explosion, then acted all surprised when they suffered nightmares about it.
Nobody in their right mind should subject young, impressionable children to that kind of mental torture. It's worse than exposing them to the X-Factor. Arguably. Depends how many weeks he kept them in their improvised bomb shelter. And how many of their classmates they had to eat before he 'fessed up.
I'm shocked, outraged and shocked.
Flashback
When we lived near the prison back in the '60s, we'd often play out in the street (this was before X-Boxes and Wiis and shit) with our pals, one of whom was four-year-old David. If one of Her Majesty's guests took an unscheduled leave of absence, they'd set off an alarm that sounded remarkably like an air raid siren. We took great delight in telling David that the Germans were coming and we'd have to run for cover. He's probably still in therapy now.
Er...
But we were only kids ourselves. A head teacher really should know better.
On the other hand, it's good practice for the Zombie Apocalypse.
The fine city of Edinburgh hasn't always been the pristine jewel in Scotchland's crown that you see today. Situated slap bang on top of a coal seam, it's perfectly sited to take advantage of Nature's bounty with a roaring fire in every house, sometimes every room, for centuries. Not for nothing is the town still affectionately *cough* known as Auld Reekie.
Well, until the Clean Air Act and all that, when coal fires were banned in the city and we were all forced onto gas or that new-fangled "electricity". Some of us got quite a shock when the sand-blasters started their decades-long clean-up program on our buildings and we discovered that the natural colour of sandstone isn't black, as we'd assumed, but sandy. So what follows must have happened sometime before the switch.
There I am, sitting by the fire in the living room reading a book that I have bought with my own money. In walks my brother. Perhaps he's just been stung by a bee, or maybe he's on his period. Whatever the reason for his bad temper, he walks up to me, snatches the book from my hands, rips out the last several pages and throws them on the fire!
Well, it was all a long time ago and I've forgotten not only what that book was called, let alone who wrote it, but it still irks me that I was prevented from finding out how it ended by a selfish, insensitive twat. However, with any luck I'll come across another copy one day so no spoilers please. I'd like to find out for myself if his Merrie Men managed to spring Jesus from jail.
A new study in The Lancet has proven what many of us have suspected for years: criminally insane nutjobs have been blagging their way back out of secure units into 'scare in the community' programs by 'telling lies' to their psychiatrists.
Typical phrases seen over and over in the psychiatric evaluation reports include: "I feel fine now, doctor", "No, really, it was just that one episode" and "I hardly ever get the urge nowadays to run amok with a meat cleaver in the local shopping centre".
Closer examination of the data leads to the earth-shattering conclusion that out of 2500 violent lunatics who went on the rampage after their release, all of them without exception would, if locked up indefinitely, have only been able to harm themselves or other schizos. Who don't count.
Shrinks have been quick to defend their profession, claiming that they never expected loons to be able to string more than a few words together, never mind come up with a coherent argument for why they should be allowed near sharp objects.
"So tell me again," said leading trick-cyclist Albrecht Schadenfroher, "what's this thing you call a 'lie'? I can't quite get my head around it."
As has been reported heavily in the press, plane bomber Umar Farouk Abdulmutallab was reported to US authorities a good six months before the attack. Some insight into the Merkans' lack of enthusiasm to follow up the matter at the time can be gleaned from this copy of an email sent by the would-be bomber's father to the CIA:
Lagos, Nigeria. Attention: The CIA.
Dear Sir,
Confidential Security Proposal
Having consulted with my family and based on the information received from Nigerian Secret Service, I have the privilege to request your assistance to transfer a Verified Member of Al Qaida into your custody. The above request resulted from many years of intelligence gathering, internet Deep Packet Inspection and other means which I cannot discuss in an open forum such as this with your good self in case of Eaves Dropping.
We are now ready to transfer the suspect overseas and that is where you come in. It is important to inform you that as a former Chairman of Nigeria's FirstBank, I and my family are forbidden to operate a foreign Bank Account; that is why we require your assistance. The total reward will be shared as follows: 70% for us, 25% for you and 5% for local and international expenses incidental to the renderition.
If you find this proposal acceptable, we shall require the following documents:
(a) your banker's name, telephone, account and fax numbers.
(b) your private telephone and fax numbers — for confidentiality and easy communication.
(c) your letter-headed paper stamped and signed.
Alternatively we will furnish you with the text of what to type into your letter-headed paper, along with a breakdown explaining, comprehensively what we require of you. The business will take us thirty (30) working days to accomplish.
In Pittsburgh, there's a new education policy that "sets 50 percent as the minimum score a student can receive". So you could theoretically turn in a test paper for political science that simply says: "Teecher is a twat" and hey presto, you're half-way to a pass mark.
In fact, if your teacher agrees with this hare-brained idea, you might even get a merit for factual accuracy.
Now that the Embra Festival is drawing to a close once more, the weather has, naturally, taken a turn for the better. In fact it's been downright sweltering. I'd love to be able to strip off my top and do a bit of Naked Blogging, but those pervy neighbours would just totally get off on my beautiful man-boobs. What to do?
Aha! If I hunt around, I can emulate Adam and Eve and cover my modesty with, er, ivy leaves.
Sorted!
Er...
Sorry if you were drinking tea, coffee or wine. Just send me the dry-cleaning bill.
If this doesn't win me a prize at the Village Fête, well, I won't be at all surprised.
What did surprise me is that Anna is moving to San Francisco. Blimey!
Mummy, there's a man at the door with a bill! Don't be silly, dear, it must be a duck.
Redneck: What a Scotchman gets when he goes skiing in March, if he thinks the only protection he'll need is a pack crate of condoms.
Jabba the Hutt off Star WarsTM has a gay uncle Zero. Why not have a gay, purple, tattooed, 500-kilo alien? Maybe people will stop complaining now about Jar-Jar Fucking Binks. But I doubt it.
A woman had to be cut free after impaling herself on a statue of Kali, the Hindu goddess of destruction. Allegedly she "fell onto the statue while staggering around". Is it bad for my karma if I laugh?
Z-list sleb Jade Goody, who created a Big Bother a couple of years ago by referring to a Bollywood icon as a "dog", "The Indian" and "Poppadom", is to appear in "Bigg Boss". This is some kind of Indian TV show where people are locked up in a house together; wonder where they got that idea from? Did I mention it's hosted by Bollywood icon Shilpa Shetty? Can't wait till it's repeated on Dave...
"Day three hundred and twelve, four am. The fat white bitch is in the kitchen with her head in the oven, but we've switched the gas and water pipes. Vote now to choose between blasting loud Indian music into the house and putting curry powder in the milk again. Who goes mad? You decide." Viewing figures should go through the roof.
A Tory think-tank says that northern cities such as Liverpool, Sunderland and Hull are beyond revival and that millions of northerners should migrate to London and the southeast of England, following a massive building program to house them all.
Rather than ruin what's left of the southeast landscape with three million new slums, I would respectfully suggest that we could:
- Build a huge, fortified wall north of Oxford to keep them out. Or move Hadrian's Wall a bit further south.
- Inundate the North of England, drowning the northerners. Work in hand, have you seen the news?
- Jack up the cities of Liverpool and Hull and drive them south. Except that the thieving scousers would nick the wheels.
- Abandon the North to the rats and wolves. There are no wild wolves in the UK, but we're working on that.
Sometimes I think I ought to get my head examined, the weird stuff it comes up with.
It's my birthday, again. Whatever. See my profile if you're interested.
Oh, looky, 20,095 hits since I started counting. All them rude words must be helping. Yay for pont neuf bridge cheeky!
TV presenter Mark Speight has committed suicide. Apparently he went into Paddington railway station a week ago and flung himself onto the tracks. Poor bloke died of exposure waiting for a train.
A friend showed me this sign he spotted on holiday in Mozambique: Click to enlarge.
I'm thinking of doing that "Song Titles as Diagrams" things as a regular Friday thing. Assuming you can keep me fed with ideas. Those in favour?
Who will ever forget the terrifying events of 25/2?
At precisely 9:45am, a crack team of tree-huggers shambled across the Heathrow tarmac and climbed the steps of an empty A320 Airbus.
The only impediment to their attack on the Boeing 777 came when one of them briefly stopped to retie his natural fibre organic spaghetti shoelaces before rejoining his fellow vegetarians.
On reaching their target, the hippies strung a banner whinging about saving the whale across the tailfin of the Cessna 172.
One eco-terrorist described the hijack as "an act of defiance against the industrial-military complex ... neo-fascists ... police state ... line in the sand ... God I feel so weak ..." before being led away by men in white coats.
Police were said to be force-feeding the dangerous criminals on cheeseburgers and fries in order that they could stand up unassisted.
That bloke in the skirt - no, the other one, the Archbishop of Canterbury - has gone completely bananas (no offence intended, GB!) and demanded 1 that the UK should immediately adopt Sharia Law. Because Britain is an Islamist state and the British people demand the right to have innocent rape victims jailed and given a taste of the lash.
Of course that could never really happen here. Can you imagine the uproar if someone in the UK, say Aberdeen, was arrested and thrown behind bars simply for having a bad dream? Oh. Right. What do you want to bet she's a Muslim?
Anyways, if Islamic law is to be given equal footing with our own laws, then there is every reason why FSMism should also be given legal status. I demand the right to wear Full Pirate Regalia to work every Friday. Arrr!
1 In the sense that he didn't really. But it sells newspapers.
Update: John reckons that the pirate wench above looks like Heather Mills McCartney. Admittedly they're both gold-diggers with big boobs and wooden legs, but really?
She first moved out when she decided to move to the Big Sprawl at the tender age of sixteen, to live with her SMS boyfriend. I still vividly remember her wee arm waving out the window of the removal van as they drove away. But after a year or so spent in 'Nam (Tottenham), working as a checkout girl, she was back. London didn't suit her, so she waved goodbye to bf and caught the train back to the Burgh.
Then there was a brief stint in her best friend's flat. Sleeping on the floor suited her a lot less than a bed, so back she came - after just a couple of weeks this time.
That was followed by a council flat. She had to claim that we'd thrown her out so that the council would move her to the top of the housing list. I think it was a council employee who let her in on that trick. She stuck it out for a year in what my Dad would have called a "multiplied flat", better know to the rest of us a a multi-story tower block: full of druggies and their dealers, schemies, neds (non-educated delinquents) and assorted riff-raff, so that she really wanted to leave, but the council had promised that they would knock it down and rehouse the tenants in some really nice new houses.
So she held on there for a second year, suffering a burglary in the process, but still there was no sign of the promised demolition. Occasionally a girlfriend would move in for a while, but they always fell out with each other eventually.
Then came the terrified phone call - a drunk/nutter was trying to batter down the door, looking for his girlfriend Suzie, who LMF had never heard of. We arrived just as the police were dragging him away, but it was scary enough that she decided to go. Not back to us this time, but close by, to a private landlord. And then the council confirmed thay're pulling down those flats after all.
Sure enough, within a few months she'd fallen out with yet another flatmate and decided to move to the Kingdom of Fife, north of the river Forth, because it would be more convenient for her job in, er, Embra - south of the river. Go figure.
Still, by this time she'd decided to become a nurse and started training, so at least she was/is making something of her life. And then she met D.
D is mental. D is a drummer in a band. D is divorced. D is nearly five years older than LMF. D is bald. D is not afraid to wear his girlfriend's clothes. D is quite possibly the best thing that has ever happened to LMF. From the very moment they met, they just clicked. Within a week, she introduced him to us and we just clicked.
They hunted together for a place they could call their own. And found it. It was perfect. It was near both her work and his. It didn't need to be redecorated right away. It had rooms and that. But their mortgage provider, unusually for someone in his profession, told them that they couldn't afford it. He didn't want them to get thrown out into the street when the bank foreclosed. Three days later came that sub-prime mortgage collapse. Whew! That was close.
So they moved in with bf's mum and dad to save on the rent. Then they got engaged. Then they started getting on each others' tits. And now, this week, LMF is coming home again.
What is the world coming to? I cannot believe that the very foundations of Christianity are set to crumble into dust because of a simple children's story, yet that seems to be the jist of the argument coming from Catholic fundamentalists, who are now running strolling amok in the streets calling for author Philip Pullman to be publicly executedflogged given a severe ticking off and for his movie The Golden Compass to be burnedbanned boycotted.
Thank goodness for the voice of reason. Tory MP Boris Johnson has rightfully described these reactionary forces as "utterly bonkers". He then went on to say, "Crikey, I didn't expect a kind of Spanish Inquisition!"
Um, it's just a movie. But if it's anything like the book, it's going to be a stonker! Anyway, they should calm down and take a leaf from Islamic tradition. You don't hear about Allah-fearing Muslims getting all hot under the collar [You've done this already - Ed.]
Released in the UK this Friday, December 7th, unless the Catholics get it banned.
What is the world coming to? I cannot believe that the entire religion of Islam is under threat from a children's teddy bear, yet that seems to be the jist of the argument coming from Sudanese fundamentalists this week, who are now running amok in the streets calling for the immediate execution of schoolteacher Gillian Gibbons.
Thank goodness for the voice of reason. Tory MP Boris Johnson has rightfully described these reactionary forces as "utterly bonkers". Mind you he also claims that "There was a time when Britain would have sent a gunboat to rescue her".
Um, Boris, old chap, Khartoum is 400 miles inland. True, it lies on the Nile, at the junction of the White Nile and Blue Nile, but that's a hell of a long way to send a gunboat. By the time you got there, there wouldn't be much left to rescue except for a pile of bleached bones.
Not that the Sudanese still go in for cannibalism, God forbid! There hasn't been a single recorded case of that since, lessee, 1993. Ok, bad example.
Still, they should calm down and take a leaf from Western tradition. You don't hear about God-fearing Christians getting all hot under the collar over a disagreement about how their children should be educated. No, wait.
Still, with any luck she'll be out of there and on her way home in just over a week.
Blue Peter are putting up an Xmas tree this year, but can't decide what to call the fairy at the top. So they've decided to have a poll amongst their few remaining viewers. Please select a name from the list on the right - we promise the winning name, regardless of what it turns out to be, will definitely be used.
The nights, as they say, are fair drawing in, and Scotchmen and Scotchwomen across, er, Scotchland have taken to wandering around with their heads tilted back and mouths hanging eagerly open. Aye, there's a nip in the air...
In the run-up to Halloween, police have been warning ordinary folks that "young people" are evil monsters and will be arrested if found in possession of flour or eggs. "We do not want to be seen as killjoys", said a killjoy yesterday, "but would you like it if some young-un were to bake you a sponge cake? Why, the chloresterol could kill you in twenty or thirty years!"
If they can avoid getting arrested while they're at the shops getting kitted up for trickle-treating, the kids will of course be buying the usual bag of nuts - "and no' too many coconuts!" I still love that one.
Good news for nerds this week. Apparently, boffins have declared that love and sex with robots are inevitable. Given the choice, which of these would you rather have?
Now where's my eye-patch? No, wait. Is that for pirates? Meh. Just click of the damned picture already. Arrr!
Venn That Tune
The perfect stocking filler. Or, you know, whenever. Birthday, Valentine's Day. Ok, maybe not Valentine's Day. Unless your beloved is a geek like you. Then it would be pretty cool, I guess.
No good can come of an emptied out finger - Lesley
My God I need a Stab-O-Mizer. Also, I need to remember to use the word "fucktard" more often - Blissfully Caffeinated
Farty, the Queen Mother of the Blogosphere - Daphne Wayne-Bough
Ha! That's hyster...waitafuckingminute - Jenny, the Bloggess
How did you get that photo of me dressed up as a pirate? - Honey
I hereby nominate you for the Nobel Prize in Explaining Stuff to the InterWeb - Memarie
I think my brain just farted! - GiGGLe
Mr Farty, you are totally filthy. It is great - Miss Tickle
Better than "The New Scientist" - Brom
Mines' a beat up old thing full of crap - John Greenwood
I'm always watching - Misssy M
You are a brilliant and weird man - Lady MacLeod
Are you in fact Stephen Fry? - Rilly Super
I fart in your general direction - Minx
Shit - you made me blow Wodka out of my nose - Spanish Goth
Bossy can see you're a real Kitchen Prize - BOSSY
Love your blog, especially the tartan borders - Babzy
And I though I was the drama queen - Drama Queen
We are distressed to see that you were less than positively impacted by your visit to our country. Unfortunately, we just can't do anything about Utah at this time - Sewmouse
Wot? No Billy Piper? - Lettuce
50 flavours of fudge get my vote - Cat
I would have said Hugh Grant was more of a twat than a fanny - Kissme
Click to enlarge
Buy it! Now!
