Ivan's Site of the Week

Think you’re going to get a lot done today? Think again.

“She really over-reacts whenever she catches me wearing her underwear”

I defy you to leave that site without finishing it or bookmarking it for later…


Mrs Mil Millington, yesterday. Her significant other thinks she’s a bit of a loony. Well, of course she is. She’s German.

Incendiary device

The Age of Unreason comes another step closer as Sri Lanka teeters on the brink of renewed civil war, not the least depressing feature of which is the concept of Buddhist terrorism. Can there be any more complete betrayal of everything Buddhism stands for than deliberate slaughter? It’s utterly beyond satire.

Far better in the good old days, when all they did was to come around and set fire to themselves at you. And ultimately far more effective too. After all, just when you'd got the carpet replaced, they’d re-incarnate, come back, and do it again...


An angry Buddhist makes his point, yesterday. There’s no school like the old school.

Old Dad’s Hatband

A new member joins one of the global virtual teams I run on behalf of Vertucon. He is a fresh-faced young analyst assigned by his management to be thrown into the fiery volcano of my latest program as a sacrifice on behalf of his organization. I get to abuse his virginal form, in return for which my organization leaves his alone until he’s all used up or they take pity and replace him with a new one. Thus are the senior executive gods appeased so that the sun rises and the rain falls in our little corporate paradise.

As I pride myself on knowing my people, I do a little checking on him in case I need to fake an interest later. His online entry in the company directory includes an extremely ill-advised link to his blog. He’s only been out of college a few weeks and, while the latest entries are fairly anodyne, many of those among the archives constitute a master’s degree course in the more bizarre practices of the modern gay scene. All that was missing was a glossary. Thank God there were no pictures.

I’m amazed that he listed it, really. Perhaps he’s just forgotten what wonders he shared in his college posts. I suppose someone should warn the poor boy to clean his blog up, or at least stop listing it on the company intranet. But knowing modern corporate culture as I do, I am certainly not stupid enough to start any conversation that is going to end with me saying “and that’s why I think you should censor your gay blog”.

It all goes to show how useless my gaydar is. Lispy as he was on the phone, the word “gay” simply didn’t occur to me until that bit with the three Moroccans and the bucket of hummous on June 5th 2004. It wouldn’t be the first time I’ve been caught unawares either. On at least two occasions in the past I have gone out for a pint with a colleague only to discover about halfway into the evening that I’m actually on a date.

With my accent I suppose I’m asking for it, especially over here in the US. But it is a little tiresome to keep having the same conversation over and over again in the showers at the gym:

“No, I’m not gay – just British.”
“Yes, there’s a difference - gay people have better teeth.”
“And no, that’s not my soap on the floor, thanks all the same.”

How’s your gaydar?


Gaydar – now only $14.99 plus tax, from Radio Shack.

Joined-up thinking

The laws of Murphy and unintended consequences come together to comic effect in Norway, as the local environmentalists’ shiny new wind farm promptly slices the local endangered eagle population into so much salami (link courtesy of our friend Desargues).

One minor detail seems to have escaped the notice of those gallant eco-warriors who sited nearly seventy sets of hundred-foot-tall whirling knife blades in the middle of the white-tailed eagle breeding grounds on the island of Smola. As an RSPB conservation director patiently explains:

“It seems these birds are flying around a lot of the time.”

Wind farms, by the way, produce energy at a cost between six and eight times higher than regular power stations, without in any way reducing the number of coal- or gas-fired generators: as the wind can never be relied upon, the other plants must always be running to ensure the power supply.

However, although utterly pointless, wind turbines are both “new” and “green” and so have become yet another worthless secular idol at the feet of which the white-tailed eagles of Smola are accumulating in sacrifice. It all has a certain pleasing symmetry…


A white-tailed eagle, yesterday – bravely taking one for the team in the fight against cheap electricity. Did I say “cheap electricity”? I meant “global warming”. Sorry.

Shit jobs

#5: Glaswegian milkman

Site of the Week

This week’s winner, paradoxically enough, is Failure Magazine, with its ever popular “This Day in Failure” feature. At last – a site where I have an outside chance of an honourable mention. One day it’ll be my name in lights up there…

It’s gripping stuff, not just for the halfwits’ parade of losers and cock-ups on display, but also for the incredibly warped pathologies of some of those featured, such as the pathetic Les Knight and his Voluntary Human Extinction Movement. So much does he despise his fellow man that he had himself neutered at the age of 25, to avoid all chance of his accidentally producing any more of them.

On closer examination of the text, one notices that it is American humans in particular he objects to, bemoaning the fact that the average Yank will consume 310 times as much as the average Ethiopian. Strangely, it doesn’t occur to him to urge Ethiopians to start drowning their own mewling litters in a bucket, and we get the distinct impression that this is because he doesn’t think of them as human.

It wouldn’t be the first time someone on the left followed their own logic right over the precipice of eugenics:

“Before long, birth-control may become nearly universal among the white races; it will then not deteriorate their quality, but only diminish their numbers, at a time when uncivilized races are still prolific and are preserved from a high death-rate by white science…

If, however, a world-government is established, it may see the desirability of making subject races also less prolific, and may permit mankind to solve the population question.” Bertrand Russell.

One cannot help but come away consoled for one’s own shortcomings, when there are so many people in active and deliberate pursuit of futility.


Les Knight, yesterday. A man with the courage of his own convictions – in this case: “If you don’t try, you’ll never fail…”

If you go down in the woods today…

Childhood takes a turn for the worse thanks to the good folks at Blue Bear Wear, with the release of the Bottle Hugger Bear.



“The bottle hugger will capture your infant’s attention!” the manufacturers explain cheerfully. I dare say they are right, in much the same way that a car wreck draws every eye on the freeway. I simply doubt whether that offers sufficient justification for handing your child food in a form resembling some sort of horrible industrial accident…

“We have both kinds – Country and Western…”

I get a haircut.

My personal stylist is in a state of high excitement. She and her boyfriend have tickets to see Faith Hill and husband Tim McGraw that evening.


This pair are the Posh and Becks of the parallel universe that is Country & Western, except that Faith can sing and Tim can play. The girl hacking back my greying locks gushes inarticulately about how much their music means to her, speaking of a shared experience of poverty and suffering. I point out that the happy couple now own half of Tennessee and make more money on a single concert than she will see in her entire life, but years of hairspray fumes have done their work too well, and she continues clipping away on automatic pilot without pausing her idolatory drivel.

I can’t say I care too much either way, but it does seem a bit like cheating to me. After all, as with the Blues, how can you sing C&W when you’re rich?

“My wife done screwed the poolboy
She done wreck ma Merc”

Somehow it’s just not the same…

Johnny Cash and June Carter always seemed a more authentic couple to me – but maybe that’s a quality that can only be recognized posthumously.


Johnny and June, yesterday. Now that’s the real thing.

Better late than never

Spotted yesterday on Site Meter:

Domain Name ntli.net ? (Network)
IP Address 82.1.208.# (NTL Internet)
ISP NTL Internet
Location Continent : Europe
Country : United Kingdom (Facts)
State/Region : Redbridge
City : The Hyde
Lat/Long : 51.5833, -0.25 (Map)

Time of Visit Jun 18 2006 7:32:14 am
Last Page View Jun 18 2006 7:34:22 am
Visit Length 2 minutes 8 seconds
Page Views 2
Visitor's Time Jun 18 2006 12:32:14 pm
Visit Number 15,000

Visit 15,000.

I suppose I should be celebrating, but somehow this seems less exciting than our previous milestones of 5000 and 10000.

Look, there’s no particular logic to it, but that’s just the way it is. Is this unfair? Yes - yes it is. Life is unfair. Get over it. No prizes for you, Mr Johnny-Come-Lately from Hyde. So there.

Maybe 20,000 will be better…


A cheery Hydean revels in his home town’s big day, yesterday. What do they want – a frickin’ medal?

Shit jobs

#4: Kennedy intern.

Ivan’s Site of the Week

Another deserving winner this week in the shape of pigs4ever.com. “A Pot Belly Pig Gift and Information Center” is the tagline, although “For people who like their pot-bellied pig a little too much…” might be more appropriate.


Among other attractions, the site includes a Potbellied Pig Photo Gallery, where ill-advised and vaguely disturbing holiday snaps are distressingly common. Maybe it’s just me, but it all begins to smell dangerously close to the old joke holiday advert from Zeppotron...


The current centrefold on pigs4ever.com, yesterday. Any attempt to post pictures of bacon sandwiches is met with quite intemperate abuse.

Googlewank

Recent searches that have led people to this blog (with ranking in brackets):

“woman getting humped by a horse” (#9)
“jumping jews of jerusalem” (#1)
"stupid pet tricks" (#1)
“as gay as dad's hatband” (#3)
“and the lion shall lie down next to the lamb” (#3)
"He is risen indeed" (#3)
"in 1900, 1/3 of all automobiles in New York City" (#1) – a suspiciously exact quote, ‘til I remember the source (Snapple Real Facts)
“piccalilli circus” (#3)
“spartan boy let fox eat internal organs” (#3)
"elevators are for democrats" (#10)
“everyone has the face he deserves orwell” (#4)
“streichholzschächtelchen” (#4)
“Couvade Syndrome” (#4)
…and last but not least
“australian digaradoo” (sic) (#2)

I must say, I’m particularly proud of “woman getting humped by a horse”. And with this post I have a fair chance of number one spot with “jumping jews getting humped by gay circus lion”. Always a popular topic in my neck of the woods.

My work here is done. I think I’ll take the rest of the day off…


Catherine the Great, yesterday - Google’s #8 reference for “woman getting humped by a horse”. Poor dear – it’s all anyone ever remembers about her…

Valley Forgery

A refreshing alternative take on the greatest of our Founding Fathers, George Washington (via Dylan).

Seems a little rough on the British kids, but there you go – it was war.


George Washington, yesterday. He’s coming…

Out of the mouths of babes…

An innocent search for tongue-twisters on kiddies’ BBC raises some awkward questions of appropriacy as we stumble across news of a remarkably gifted young fraulein:

German schoolgirl Annika Irmler has licked her way into the Guinness Book of Records with her whopping seven centimetre tongue.

"My friends always said I had an incredibly long tongue - I could make lots of money with it one day," said Annika.

Don’t tell me that that quote passed unremarked in the copy editor’s crypt.


By my reckoning, that girl turns sweet sixteen this year. Time for a “Where are they now?”-style follow-up, surely? Earn your licence fees for once, you sad lefty pervos…


The painfully naïve Ms Irmler struts her stuff, yesterday. I bet she regrets that quote now.

“There is always more spirit in attack than in defence.” Livy

Apropos of nothing, my wife complains that I have left the shower in a bit of a state. So I tell her that she should cut me a little slack. After all, I don’t complain about her peeing in it every morning.

Naturally, she hotly denies this outrageous charge (tho’ perhaps with the merest flicker of consternation and guilt?), but I am nothing daunted. All Hungarians pee in the shower, I say, stating it as scientific fact. There’s no shame in it, I add, patting her arm in consolatory fashion. It’s just the way God made you.

She is still spluttering her objections as I finish my coffee, pick up my laptop bag and slip out the door. She may well be telling the truth for all I know, but that’s hardly the point.

The best defence is a good offence.


Titus Livius, yesterday. As relevant today as he’s always been.

Shit jobs

#3: Paris Hilton’s pony.

Ivan’s Site of the Week

A worthy winner this week in the form of Inside Cheerleading Magazine, the reading of which should probably be an arrestable offence for any male over the age of 20.


Want to know what it takes to make the national championships? Need tips on praising the Lord through pom-poms? Unsure of the best technique for getting your ankles behind your ears in a standard bathroom cubicle at the after-game party? Then “Inside Cheerleading” is the magazine for you.

If only there were more wholesome publications like this, presenting positive role models to those impressionable young females just starting out in life. Then perhaps these poor girls might not have gone so spectacularly astray…


The Nov/Dec 2005 edition, yesterday, with a Coach’s Corner special on “Motivating the Cheerleader who says NO”. In the NFL, that usually comes down to either a slap or a glass of rohypnol.

Keeping it in the family

My wife buys the original (un-“Special Edition”-ed) Star Wars trilogy on video, to share the magic with our boys so she says, or more likely to revisit her teenage crush on the young Harrison Ford. Trying to enter into the spirit of the thing, I watch the last one, Return of the Jedi, which for some reason I have never got around to seeing before.


And an eye-opener it is, too. So Luke and Leia are brother and sister, eh? Good thing they never went past third base then. Or so one hopes, anyway.

“You’re my sister, Leia!”
“Crap. What are we gonna tell the kids?”

Compared to that nightmare scenario, the odd topless hand shandy pales into insignificance, really.


Apart from the dated special effects and the peculiar eyebrows on the dying Vader, what really stands out for me is what a bunch of utter bastards the rebels are. What the hell are they playing at with those Ewoks, eh? They con a bunch of Stone Age teddy bears into worshipping a gay robot, and then send them off to fight a vicious high-tech battalion of Imperial Stormtroopers, who promptly turn them into gonks. Call that very ethical? ‘Cos I don’t.

Where’s the Enterprise when you need it? The Federation would have Luke Skywalker behind bars before you could say “Prime Directive”…


“Manipulating physical laws by means of some intangible Force? That is illogical, Captain…”

You can take the boy out of Britain…

*sigh*

My only consolation is that there is very little left in that description of Britishness that still holds true, at least among those who govern the UK. Which is why I left.

Not so sure about that “soppy romance novels” bit, tho’. Does The Girl count?

Take the test yourself here if you like…

Hexakosioihexekontahexaphobia

Fear and suspicion stalk the land as Devil’s Day dawns.

Any date containing more than its fair share of sixes has traditionally been a red letter day for Satanists, who are unaccountably keen to take all their clothes off and have sex in graveyards on the flimsiest of pretexts. Today, being 6/6/06, is no exception. However, so far as I know it’s a first for the opposition to take a hand, as is the case with the Dutch evangelicals organizing twenty-four-hour pray-ins at churches around the globe.

Pre-emption is the name of the game for these worthy souls, as their spokesperson, Mathijs Piet, explains:

"666 is the number of the Devil and we know that on this date, Satanists will try and do many things, so we Christians try and do the opposite,"
"We know the Devil hates it when we worship God."

“Dutch evangelicals”. You can almost taste the humourlessness. But then one reads that 20th Century Fox has chosen the same date to launch its remake of The Omen.

If it came to a lame-off between these clog-hopping bible bashers and a cutting-edge Hollywood marketing department, I know who I’d rather spend twenty four hours with…


Some Satanists, yesterday. The big black dog with orange eyebrows is on back-order.

Freedom on the March!

The Sunday Telegraph provides a timely insight into the progress of secular democracy in Iraq, with a list of recent fatwas issued with impunity by murderous headhacking shits in the Sunni areas of Baghdad. And it’s not just old favourites like shooting women for driving cars or riding public transport this time. The boys in the beards have begun casting their nets in new and unanticipated directions.

In the last few weeks, the following have all been declared haram, the prohibitions being in most cases promptly backed up by actual executions:
Selling falafels
Growing goatees
Wearing shorts
Selling ice
Smoking cigarettes
Wearing t-shirts with English writing on them
…and my personal favourite:
Eating mayonnaise

And why are falafels unIslamic? One of the threatened vendors explains:

"I said I was just feeding the people, but they said there were no falafels in Mohammed the prophet's time, so we shouldn't have them either.
"I felt like telling them there were no Kalashnikovs in Mohammed's time either, but I wanted to keep my life."

So falafels, goatees, ice-sellers and sunburnt knees vanish away one after the other, and the beardies go on to their next target. And Iraq’s civil society, twenty six million Pastor Niemollers, fear them more than they fear us.

There’s a reason that Iraq had Saddam Hussein. Barring the special case of outside intervention, people get the kind of governments they deserve. Sometimes that outside intervention is indispensible, as in the case of Nazi Germany, where we bombed their cities flat and no-one whined about civilian casualties. It may soon be necessary in the case of Iran, but it’s getting impossible to argue that it was ever so for Iraq. Giving the ballot to a population who allow a few hundred fanatics to hold them at gunpoint over facial hair is beyond futile.

It’s time to bring the boys home, and spend that Iraq reconstruction budget on ethanol fuel conversion and nuclear power plants. Let them try to finance their damned Jihad when no-one wants their lousy oil any more.


A falafel, yesterday. Not kosher, if you’ll pardon the expression…

Shit jobs #2

Comment would be probably be superfluous - but a comments box is a terrible thing to waste...

Ivan’s Site of the Week

This week’s selection is Jew of the Day. Your one-stop shop for all your diurnal hebrew needs.

Today’s Jew of the Day is Vitaly Ginzburg. But of course that’s just their opinion. You might have one of your own. Personally, I think Ginzburg sucks. Chances are that your choice sucks too, but I don’t mind. Live and let live, I say.

I would’ve gone for Jesus myself, but apparently he’s been disqualified on some sort of technicality.

Update! According to this site Jerry Seinfeld is Jewish! Wow - who knew? So’s Marcel Marceau, apparently. Tho’ I would’ve kept that one quiet, if I were them.


Vitaly Ginzburg, yesterday. You’re shit and you know you are…

Pot, meet Kettle - Kettle, Pot.

Fine French whine is on offer as Le Monde charges Britain with having stolen the 2012 Olympics from Paris through corruption. Apparently the British purchase of votes in the final lobbying round was blatant and shameless, with our noble Prime Minister personally involved.

How did a widely acknowledged French lead turn into a pro-London majority in the last few days before the vote in Singapore? Le Monde contrasts the affable transparency of Jacques Chirac with the sinister seclusion of our Tone:

"Jacques Chirac, note un Européen (non français) du CIO, a passé huit heures à Singapour, dont trois inutiles pour la soirée inaugurale. Le reste du temps, il a serré des mains, bu des cocktails en public avec des votants. Tony Blair, lui, s'est enfermé deux jours pleins dans sa suite. Il y a vu 40 membres et personne ne saura jamais ce qui s'est dit là..."

Perhaps all those guests were really just playing tennis with Lord Levy. Nothing suspicious about that.

Sour grapes aside, they really do seem convinced that Tony Blair’s integrity leaves something to be desired. I can’t imagine where they got that idea from. Tony always delivers on his side of any bargain – just ask Mittal, the Hinduja brothers, Bernie Ecclestone, and any number of recent peers. Tho’ probably best to give Dr Chai “Diddums” Patel a miss.

On the plus side, the only hole blacker and deeper than the spot where Labour’s ethics used to be is the cosmic abyss marked “Labour’s competence”. So when the whole thing blows up in our faces sometime in late 2011, there’ll be smiles all round across the Channel. It’s swings and roundabouts, really, isn’t it?


Tony Blair in Singapore, yesterday. “Pop down to the cashpoint for me would you, Seb? I’m running out of fifties…”