So hurry down the chimney tonight...

After several discussions over the festive period with certain family members, most of which were held over several pints of ale, we are yet to come to a conclusion with regards to one of life's eternal questions..."When and how should a child be made aware that Santa Claus doesn't exist?"

To bring you all up to date, several theories have been batted about so far and even some serious suggestions, believe it or not. A common age that keeps being brought up is 7. At 7 you have been at school for 2 years, have made the break out of reception and free playtime milk and are firmly on course to learning joined up writing, pasta art and your 9 times table, which lets face it are all the life skills you will need to cope with learning that Mr Claus isn't real. By the age of 7 you have lost that facade of innocence that allows children to repeat the rude word their Grandad said when he stubbed his toe and be found cute and adorable. It has been crushed out of you by the realisation that you have at the very least 10 more years of school, homework, detentions, playground politics, 'see me' comments and lumpy mashed potato before you can start making something of your life.

Equally, by the time the child gets to 8 or 9 shockingly, they are only 1 or 2 years away from going to High school. High school leads to Teenagers which as we all know, leads to Hoodies, weed and ASBO'S. 8 or 9 is also the age where you realise that belief in Ol'Kringle is inextricably linked with the quality and indeed quantity of the presents that you receive. At this age the more switched on kids have seen the episode of The Simpson's that deals with the existence of Santa Claus, or some such TV programme and have continued the pretence in order to make the most of his bounty. It wont be until they hit High School or a year before, where it becomes 'uncool' to believe in St Nick that they give up the charade and call you down.

So, we have established the optimum age to disclose the lie you have been telling your child for all of their short life. But hang on, there is a worry here, something we haven't taken into account. What if the child finds out before you tell it? His (for the sake of this argument, the child is male) whole life you have been telling him not to lie or cheat, whilst at the same time continuing to insult his intelligence year in year out at Christmas, Easter and every time one of his teeth falls out. Oh the irony!! No wonder we have bred a generation of Hooligans. Myself, I was told when I was 6 by my parents whilst I was still young enough for it to hurt, but not old enough to associate the realisation with my parents telling me lies every Christmas. Had I been older however, it would almost certainly have been different. If they had waited a couple more years before they either told me or I found out through the Box, there would have been hell to pay...

"So you are telling me, Mummy dearest, that in actual fact a fat old man wearing red pyjamas with a penchant for having small children sit on his knee pleading their case as to whether they have been a naughty boy or not, does not creep into our house either via the chimney or as smoke that passes through the letterbox and dish out the huge mounds of presents that you have actually been buying me because you feel guilty for lying to me my whole life? So I assume the fairy that builds castles out of my teeth in exchange for a 50 pence piece's and the giant bunny who shits Easter eggs all over the lawn every spring are out of the window as well?!?!?!?!" I would of course be livid, as would any child, so timing is crucial.

The next question is, how? How do you tell them? The best suggestion I have heard so far (apart from the ethnic cleansing of all make believe children's annual characters by some evil tyrant (if you want to indoctrinate your child further then make the bad guy something that will reflect on him in later life; Graham Norton, Gordon Brown and Jim Davidson for example, would ensure that you child grows up to be a Heterosexual, ethnically friendly Tory)) is 'The Car Accident'. The Reindeer are tired after a hard Christmas of flying, the global population of children is increasing and Rudolph is getting on a bit. Santa has dropped them off at home and is the designated driver for the annual Make Believe Christmas Party and has picked up his good friends, the Tooth fairy and Easter Bunny. On route, they are all having a sing song, with the Bunny providing some chocolate snacks and the tooth fairy paying for the red bull at the service station with a big stack of 50 pence pieces. From nowhere an 18 wheeler full of Petrol driven by the Bogeyman ploughs into Santa's car, killing the lot of them in a blazing inferno. This achieves two things - No more midnight calls to check under the bed and in the wardrobe for signs of the Bogeyman, as 'no one could have escaped that crash son' and most importantly in a kind of Ocean Finance style lie; it cancels out all of the little lies you told your son and replaces it with one big one. Here's hoping your son doesn't cotton on until he is old enough to realise the irony in this and think kindly of you for creating such a humorous story. Otherwise he is going to hate your guts. And rightly so.

I suppose one thing is fairly obvious in all of this. Belief in these characters is linked to innocence and naivety, a quality that soon disappears from our children these days to be replaced by Hood's and WkD drinks on a park bench. If you let it take its natural course, I assume the idea of a rabbit that not only defecates chocolate, but does it in egg form as well, would be the first to go, closely followed by the Tooth Fairies dental turrets. Santa will always be the last one to go, and whilst he is perhaps the strangest and possibly most disturbing idea of them all, his death will also see the death of your young, smiling happy child and will be the dawn and herald of the terrible teens.

He's the most tip top - Top Cat...

I used to actually quite like our feline friends. Cat's, I've found tend to fall into two categories, those who spit and scratch at you and those who like to wrap themselves around your legs as you are trying to walk down stairs.

Crazy cat lady has killed it for me. If I never hear a story about her Cats again it will be too soon. Now, pictures like the above leave me in fits of giggles. After the 4Th morning in a row with nothing but endless, 'You'll never guess what Molly was up to last night, or Tilly has chewed through my Christmas tree wires again..." I have had enough. She seems to have spent huge amounts of money constantly buying new mobile chargers and Christmas tree lights because her cats have chewed through them. As they were pedigree cats (which I assume means they are even more stuck up and up their own arses than normal cats) and cost £600 each, and, I have heard her mention 3 new sets of lights plus 4 phone chargers, I estimate that with food, injections, insurance and toys / collars etc these cats cost her over £3,000 a year. THREE GRAND A YEAR!?!?!?!?!?!?! (Insert your own Pussy related joke here). If you want to spend £3k a year on something that will give you undying love, constant dependence and undying affection then have a baby. Or are you too socially inept, fat, ugly and jaded to find someone that is crazy enough to want to conceive a child with you in the same house that is covered with tiny cat Santa outfits and bits of chewed wire, where you can never charge your phone and have to put up with constant cat facts and miaow based ring tones?

So, in order to channel my anger into something useful - here are my 'top 5 ways to kill a cat'

(5) Impaling Stick - What kind of an Impaling Stick Aficionado would I be if I didn't make sure the Stick made an appearance in this list. The only difference being that It would be 3 meters high and I would rough up the side so there was maximum splinterage on impact. You could get about 30 on there if you tried hard enough...

(4) Psychology Matters - A vaguely remembered Psychology A-Level lesson in which Kittens were put on minimal surfaced plant pots in a bathtub full of water and kept constantly away to test the results of sleep deprivation. If the cat fell asleep it fell of its perch and drowned. One of the key hypothesis was - "Will cats learn from their fellows mistakes".

(3) Chicken - Put a cat in a basket. Take the basket to the side of the M1 motorway. Spin the basket around as fast as possible whilst placing bets with your Friends on how many lanes of busy rush hour traffic the cat will make it across when you suddenly sound a fog horn and open the basket...

(2) Herro? Chi-neese Tek-away? - Quite simply, tie the cat up to a bush outside a Chinese takeaway. Come back the next day. In the meantime order a Sweet and Sour Chicken. When you come back, if it has survived, take it to the next one. Have bests on how many it will last.

(1) Real Life Whack - attack - What it says on the tin. Plus you can take out more than one. I recommend a sledge hammer.

Of course, I genuinely do like cats. But I couldn't eat a whole one.

Weekly Impaling Stick (back to normal)

This week, after mixed reactions when I changed the format to people only, I am going back to general annoyances:

Christmas Ringtones: ARGHHHHHH!!!!!! When the revolution comes, Christmas Ring tones will be banned. Its the usual suspects...Remember Crazy Cat Lady from a few weeks back? She's got one. Jingle Bells, as sung by her bloody cats. All your Gay friends? Walking in the Air. The receptionist? Slade. Even normally sane and cultured people succumb to it and spend £3 downloading their favourite Christmas tune onto their phones and then attempting to foist it off onto Friends through bluetooth. NO! I have noticed a new trend this year as well. One that has shocked and appalled me to the core. You know the dial tone you get when you pick up your phone and dial a number? On their side, the person you are callings phone is belting out 'All I want for Christmas'. In your ear instead of the normal dial tone you get, all you can hear is a chorus of "When the snowman brings the snow". Those of you who spend their days ringing people will no doubt have heard this new phenomenon, where people aren't content for only those around them to hear their ring tone, they also need to inflict it on the person making the call. These people need shooting.

Bernard Madoff: He has just timed it wrong. Obviously in the eyes of the law, that's the least of his crimes, but in my eyes it was genius. Had we not been in recession and up to the eyeballs in doom and gloom over the constant direness of the current economic climate, then I think the general view regarding this once respected co founder of the NASDAQ would have been one of 'fair play'. The higher you are the harder you fall. He has managed to screw the vast majority of the worlds 'leading' financiers out of BILLIONS of pounds. Private Investors, Celebrities, Charities, Councils, Banks, Corporations and even Government's have fallen victim to his scheme. It has become officially the worlds biggest fraud. And it was a master stroke of genius. You just timed it wrong Bernard, that's why you are on the stick.

Reunions: Take That did it. Spice Girls did it and failed. Boyzone did it and failed. East 17 tried to do it and couldn't get over the fact that they were far to Chavy to do it. And now, glory amongst glories, S Club 7 are doing it. Sort of. They are now S-Club 3. Talk about jumping on the 'band'-wagon. Blue are talking about reforming, as are Stone Roses. We all know there is one that everyone is waiting for, the comeback to end all comebacks - Shawoddywoddy.

X-mas Greetings - Pass this on...

The world, apparently, is a better place since the Internet was conceived. You can now access your email, invest money into a fraudulent hedge fund, buy a useless USB cup warmer and sell your old football stickers at any time of the day or night from your laptop. You can look up the winner of the 1972 World Darts Championship, learn the fate of the last fishing trawler to be lost in the Bermuda Triangle or find out who had an international hit single with 'Hold Me Now' in 1983 (It was Thompson Twins) - all surreptitiously from your mobile phone under the table at the Sunday Evening Pub Quiz. There are millions upon millions of educational sites and the internet doesn’t sleep, drink cups of tea, suffer from stress, demand pay increases or take industrial action because of longer working hours, so teachers could soon be on their way out.

So, what could possibly be wrong with such a wondrous invention? One word. Christmas.

That’s right, as if the festive holiday hadn’t become commercialised enough, we now have 'E-Cards'. The polo neck wearing clean air yoghurt knitting mob have said "Enough, no more trees will be cut down in order for me to write Christmas Cards and letters to my loved ones, no longer will our leafy brethren suffer at the hands of a worn out tradition! Christmas has become too commercialised and impersonal anyway!" They drew together as a collective consciousness and came up with a way to blanket spam their entire contacts list with tacky, obnoxious festive greetings cards. I am receiving up to 3 or 4 a day, and it seems in their haste to save a tree, the only made 3 versions of said card, Jolly Santa, Frolicking Reindeer and Sparkling Christmas Tree. You know the ones I mean. They say 'Xmas' instead of Christmas. They utilise a similar technology to those musical birthday cards that the clean air mob haven’t gotten the mitts on yet, to belt out a horribly scratchy 'We wish you a merry Christmas' in the time honoured tradition.

Yet, as bad as they are, its what they herald that is the real crime this Christmas. You know that once you receive that first E-Xmas Card that you are almost certainly about to receive the Christmas period chain letters.

I am sure that like me, you will no doubt have received several of those chain letter emails this year. They fall into 2 categories, the 'money scam' or the 'quick pass this on'. Either a rich old man in Botswana died and his lawyer, unable to locate any next of kin, has selected your good self to act as a broker in order to transfer funds, which you will be able to keep 20% of. Or a poor little boy in eastern Mongolia who was born with 5 extra lips and feet instead of ears needs to have corrective surgery in order to stop the people of his village sacrificing all their animals to him in the hope that he can make the rains come back. Then there’s the 'quick pass it on' style. They are perhaps the most annoying. It will be a series of pictures of various baby animals, all of which would look far more appetising on a plate with some chips and gravy, followed by a message saying something like, 'If you pass this on to 10 people you will get a surprise'. The surprise is that the next time you email these 10 people to see if anyone wants a drink, you find that you are on their ignore list because they were sick of receiving that bleedin' spam off of you. Or it's the other way around, 'If you don't send on this chain letter that was started by Winston Churchill in 1945 in celebration of the end of the war, but was actually carried in secret throughout the war by children who were members of the French Resistance that were captured and sent to POW camps where they had to keep the letter in their arse for 5 years before being rescued and presented to old Churchill, then you will be murdered in your sleep by the ghost of these children...'

There is always some berk who compiles a list of these and sends them out to everyone saying - "Remember these funny ones..." Like you weren’t annoyed the first time they went around. The one that gets me every year is the one that goes, "A recent scientific study found that men with small penises are highly likely to have read the whole of the above with their hand on the mouse...To late to take it off now" It just got you didn’t it?

The internet was created by the American Military as a way of connecting all their bases. It has evolved in something much bigger. I don't know which I would prefer, an entity that would allow every Nuke in the Americans' ballistic cupboard to be synchronised and fired at Russia in one swoop, or something that facilitates the sending of E-Cards.

Christmas is cancelled due to technical difficulties...

Is it only me that is full of nothing but absolutle respect, admiration and something close to awe, for the Jail Bird who set up Dorset's 'Lapland' this christmas?

In a culture of get rich quick schemes, Americanised 'where there's a blame there's a claim' and constant boundary pushing by Marketing companies targeting Kids and Old people, has this chap really done anything wrong? It could be argued that what he has done is merely an extension and a result of this society. It probably has nothing to do with him being a hardened criminal. Maybe.

So what exactly has he done? Put aside the righteous fury of parents who were fooled by the marketing, put aside trading standards' shutting down of the park, forget about the ethical and moral issues of the whole thing, THIS IS ABSOLUTLY HILARIOUS. It is funny on so many levels. First, lets look at what 'Englands Lapland' actually entailed. Described on the website as:

'An enticing and magical Christmas Wonderland, home to Santa Claus and all his little helpers, the English lapland has everything you need to make this Christmas extra special. Santa himself will be on hand to give out presents, make your way to his mystic grotto through our magic tunnel of lights where you will be surrounded by Santa's friends. For the parents there is a bustling Christmas market where you can get some last minute shopping done and there is fun for all on the Christmas Ice Rink."

I love how bad it was. We have all seen the pictures. In essence it is a muddy carpark in Dorset. Even the sign at the entrance is bad - It is a traffic cone, with a bit of card taped to it that says "Lap Land this way --->"When you enter, the first thing you see is a badly painted Christmas Nativety scene nailed to a fence. Santa's grotto was a shed and a fat man. The tunnel of lights was, literally a tree with fairy lights on it. The bustling Christmas Market was a 12 x 12 Marquee with some trestle tables and tinsel and the Ice Rink was out of order.

The owner had paid some agency staff £5 an hour to dress in poorly fitting elf, reindeer and polar bear costumes and built sheds which housed chained up huskies and reindeer. The best part for me was the line on the website that read "Look how cold and real the snow looks". As you can see from the picture, unless snow in Lapland is actually mud in texture and colour then this is really pushing the boundaries of 'poetic license'.

I suppose the best thing to come out of this is that in defiance of the great long held British tradition of not complaining and stiff upper lipness, some parents actually ended up punching some of the staff. As if their crying kids beautiful vision of Christmas wasn't destroyed enough by the state of the Christmas Wonderland they were promised, they then had to witness Daddy punching Santa Claus in the face before running amok amongst his little helpers. Merry Christmas.

Does not compute...

Each year billions upon billions of yen, dollars and pounds are spent on the development of robotics and the advancement of A.I (artificial intelligence). Japanese scientists, working 95 hour weeks, living in their white coats and going months without seeing the light of day have bent their incredible talents towards producing the most advanced, intelligent and cognitive machines in the world. Thus far, it seems that the crowning achievement to come out of the worlds greatest minds is the little black box that wheels around your front room and hoovers up by itself. From what I can tell its basically a hoover, with parking sensors. Brilliant. life changing.

STOP THE PRESS!!!!

A Japanese man in Canada has built the worlds first fully operational female woman replacement robot. In his basement. From spare parts. She has been built without the aid of huge governmental backing in fact Le Trung, the hapless inventor sold his house and car to pay for her - in the process nearly killing himself through a heart attack at the age of 33. And his motivation for producing this female robot? He was too busy to find love. Of course you were too busy, you've spent 5 years of your life holed up in a basement, making a robot!!!! Perhaps if you hadn't have started the robot, you could have had time to socialise.

Irony aside, the robot is potentially the most advanced bit of robotics the scientific community have come across, which in itself is impressive, when you think how limited his resources were. 'Aiko' as she is known, can recognise and respond to over 13,000 Japanese and English spoken sentences. She can perform household duties such as cleaning and washing. She can read out loud from written instructions and books. She can do your accounts. And importantly for a small, rather strange bespeckled scientist who, as a child genius at 8 years old built his first robot then spent the vast majority of his adult life in a small dark basement developing 'Aiko' at the expense of any kind of 'human' social interaction - she could potentially be developed into a machine capable of initiating and responding to sexual advances and indeed, actually getting down and dirty complete with audio and physical responses. She is 99% of the way there at the moment as any sexual advancement made to 'Aiko' is answered with a curt no and a open palmed slap. No wonder he is investing so much time and effort into it. Rather strangely, as you will see from the picture, 'Aiko' has the appearance of a 12 year old girl.

Eat my shorts...

A man in Australia was recently convicted of possessing child pornography and indecent photos of children. He was fined, sentenced to a jail term and put on a 'good behavior' register. All well and good, and if anything a rather lax punishment for what is a sadly more frequent and sickening crime. HOWEVER the pictures he possessed were of Simpson's characters Bart, Lisa and Maggie.

The Judge in this case had to decide whether Cartoon Characters in essence classed as people. He did. Therefore, this chap has had his life ruined for having what some would class as 'funny' cartoon pictures. I am not defending showing images of children in this nature, but come on - I've been sent joke emails with worse content on than that. It was a misjudgement keeping them on his computer and for all we know he was sent them as a joke email. You can type in 'Simpson's sex' to Google and the first 50 images are (A) Explicit, openly sexual and degrading and (B) Attached to joke / comedy sites.

I tell you what though, somebody had better ring the RSPCA about the Simpson's too. The Itchy and Scatchy show violates every single covenant of the cruelty to animals act. Surely there is a case to sue the creators - Cartoon Animals are real animals too!!!

Weekly Impaling Stick

A change this week - as people have suggested that instead of any annoyance I focus primarily on annoying people So here goes:

Jo Brand - That's right the fat, humorless banshee who graces our Television Sets a couple of times a month either on Live at the Apollo re-runs or QI. Why not do something a bit different this time Jo? Tell another man joke or poke fun at being middle aged and overweight. She has the ability to turn an otherwise fantastic programme (QI) in to a farce.

Stephen Fry - "Why are Male Black Widow spiders particularly careful around their pregnant spouses?"
Jo Brand - " Why don't men have mid-life crises? They stay stuck in adolescence."
Stephen Fry - "OK...ha...and what about the Black Widow Spider?"
Jo Brand - "You know what, I know Ive become middle aged because..."
Stephen Fry -"Yes if we can stick to the question Jo..."
Jo Brand, realising she has no talent or intelligence and cant answer the question, sticks to what she knows - "Why do black widow spiders kill their males after mating? To stop the snoring before it starts. "
Stephen Fry - "Excellent 10 points"

I wouldn't mind but with the advent of Dave TV, Jo now appears on our screens all to regularly with her routine of sexist, irrelevant and boring gags.

Terry Wogan - The Eurovision Song Contest has been in steady decline in 'the naughties'. The general standard at Eurovsion was always bad, but Terry's constant sarcastic and deprecating commentary made for great watching. The last 10 years have seen a rise in the political vote, to the point where Terry and his regular audience could accurately account for around 60 points for 3 or 4 ex eastern block and certain western European countries. England, always a nation with mixed fans around the world regularly manages to receive next to nil poits, with even the 'home nations' passing us over in favour of Finish Rock groups or Israeli Transvestites. Perhaps the worst result to come from the War in Iraq is the effect it has had on our points in the Eurovision. The whole show has become a political minefield, and those countries that do not make a politically motivated vote instead vote for the gimmick. And Terry kept the whole thing together. He was the rock over witch waves of Europop and rock crashed, our guide through the shambolic contest of European popularity. And now he's gone, Eurovision can expect nil poits in terms of viewers.

Lewis Hamilton - I can forgive him his pop star girlfriend and multi million pound salary. I can forgive him his jet set lifestyle, permatan and sports cars. I can forgive him his sponsorship deals and tax free lifestyle in Switzerland. What I can't forgive is the fact that he has ruined the BBC Sports Personality of the Year award, because it isn't in doubt now. The one redeeming feature is that he will stop that inspiring, hugely entertaining pinnacle of entertainment that is Andy Murray from winning....snore.

One is cutting costs...

The Queen gave her annual speech recently and as expected, she stressed the need for calm and careful steering through the financial crisis. She spoke at length for 10 minutes about the economic downturn, from her gold throne, wearing a gold and jewel encrusted crown, surrounded by paunchy landed gentry and all the hallmarks of a fabulously wealthy institution.

No wonder 64% of the public don't take her seriously or see the need for a royal family. She should have worn an Adidas shell suit, had her dole ticket in her top pocket and a rolled up copy of The Sun instead of her sceptre - maybe she would have been more at touch with the masses then.

Winklepickers were a bad choice...

After a traumatic, snow and ice filled escapade yesterday morning, which involved a terrifying bus journey through 6 inches of frozen precipitation and turned what is normally a 20 minute journey through the pleasant back streets of Leeds into a horrendous Scott of the Antarctic like trek through hell frozen over – I thought my return journey couldn’t be any worse. How wrong I was.

Leeds city centre at 5:30 pm was a slushy mass of back ice, frozen pavements and slippery side walks, which I negotiated mainly by slipping and sliding. I had an event free train journey home and the fun didn’t start until I disembarked at Horsforth. There, things started to get ‘interesting’.

There is a small incline to get off the platform onto the main road, which was completely frozen over. Foolishly, I had ignored the advice of my better half that morning to wear trainers and instead attempted to make the rise of the hill in my flat soled, low heeled, very pointy, freshly polished winkle pickers. I got perhaps 2/3rds of the way up dais slope before gravity took over. I came to a standstill, every muscle tensed, I knew that I was going to fall, it was inevitable, but I didn’t want to accept it. I could hear angry murmurs behind me as a queue began to form. Finally, I tried to turn my feet to the side in a vain attempt to try and dig my heels in. What resulted was one of those comedy falls, where I took 5 or 6 sliding steps in the same place, gradually become more and more horizontal before and slipping further and further before ending flat on my back spread eagled and slowly sliding down the hill. The contents of my briefcase, including a mouse I had pilfered from work and various Tupperware boxes, forks and spoons were scattered in the chaos. My arms, which I had been wildly flinging around trying to latch onto anything that would stop the fall, managed to fetch a sharp blow to the side of Lady who was queued up behind me. As she walked past me she looked down despairingly and said ‘you stupid idiot’ and shook her head. Already blind with rage at the embarrassment and idiocy of my shoe choice, I was now fully geared up to go completely ballistic and the stupid cow who had picked the wrong time to express her feelings.

I jumped to my feet and the sudden movement caused me to slide 3 or 4 feet back down the hill followed by a 180 degrees two footed fall that saw my legs end up above my head . By this time I could hear a ringing in my ears and laughter all around me. A kindly old man, in his 70’s and obviously sensible enough to wear walking boots, helped me to my feet and with the aid of his wife, physically pushed me up the slope…”Don’t try to take a step” he said, “we will slide you up”. There were grinning faces all around me. I only had eyes for the woman who had insulted me, who was a good 50 meters down the road by this point. I got to the top of the hill and set off at a run after thanking the kindly man profusely. I had taken 5 steps, ignoring his cries of “What about your Tupperware?” before gravity caught up with me again. This time I slipped forwards onto one knee and in quite a graceful way considering the circumstances, did a 6 foot curling slide down the pavement, coming to rest in a puddle of oily slush. Thoroughly humiliated, I shuffled back to the scene, by which point the old man’s wife had collected by damp briefcase and Tupperware that had been scattered around the hill. Thanking her, I called a taxi and beat a hasty retreat.

I’ll be keeping an eye out for that woman tonight, and this time I have trainers on.

Where have all the Pirates gone?

The recent hijacking of the huge oil tanker and its 16 crew was followed by news channels and papers around the world in avid detail. Apparently the team consisted of 2 fishermen who knew the waters, 5 ex soldiers and a negotiator / spokesmen. Not a parrot, wooden leg or eye patch among them. No ship, cannons blazing and grappling hooks spewing forth to capture its stricken prey, followed by its crew being made to walk the plank. No hook handed Captain pointing a pistol at the tanker owners daughter demanding dabloons...Instead - we watched in a shocked and somewhat reverent fascination as the Pirates, bedecked in Le Coq Sportif shell suits and AK47s managed to steal a 3rd of the Middle Easts daily Oil production with the aid of a Dingy and a loud hailer.

What gets me is how easy it was for them to do it. You would have thought that with $100US worth of oil at stake, the Sheiks would be able to scrape together a bowl of rice and $2US a day to pay some guys with a few guns to protect their cargo? Maybe all their money is invested in building ridiculously large towers in Dubai...Perhaps now that recession has hit the Middle East, they can use some of the out of work construction workers as Navy Seals?

Every country that can float a boat and call it a navy has been quick to jump into those waters and start pounding away at any dingy that looks vaguely like it should have a skull and cross bones waving from its mast. The Indian Navy, believe it or not, sank a 'Pirate Mother ship'. Either Captain Hook has had an extraterrestrial experience and decided that names like 'The Foul Lady' and 'Davy Jones' Locker' are old hat, or Pirating just got modern when every one wasn't looking.

Speaking of which, when the news broke I was at work. I rubbed my hands together in glee, 'Its been ages since there was a good hijacking' was mentioned. Looking into it i more detail, around 2 of these happen every week in that part of the world - there are still over 250 crew member being held hostage pending the outcome of negotiations, from 2 years worth of hijackings. I'm obviously in the wrong game.

Weekly Impaling Stick

Louis Theroux and his 'weird weekends' - What a wet and cowardly look at the gang culture in Philadelphia. Normally I like this chaps somewhat quirky and irreverent questioning of of 'Fag' hating suburban Cults and Gay for Pay Porn stars, his complete out of placeness and hilarious use of the lingo of his given subjects make for a funny show. However, Louis Theroux in Phili was very much like watching a staunch Vegan getting paid to go seal clubbing. He was incredibly out of his depth and laughably insulting to his subjects. As he admitted in a BBC interview recently, the whole experience was very far removed from the lakeside strolls and fine food and wine of his normal life. Ross Kemp on gangs he ain't. Every stereotype of the bespeckled English gent, strapped firmly in to an over sized bullet proof vest with his sweater carefully knotted over his shoulders was realised by the streets of Phili. He failed to illuminate further into the reasons behind the drugs and violence in Philadelphia and his inept, softly softly approach to questioning both the police and the criminals made for a rather boring and mundane set of answers along the lines of 'we don't snitch white boy'. He should stick to quirky, off the wall subjects, rather than grim reality, his self deprecating and subtly sarcastic questions were completely lost on this show.

Americanisms - In this case, going to a restaurant and being called 'Doll' by the waitress, who is quite clearly a scouser.

Dungeons & Dragons 2 - Very rarely does a sequel live up to the reputation (if there is one in the first instance) of the first. Kill Bill did it well, Men in Black didnt. Ace Ventura (arguably) did, Zulu didn't. Scream didn't, and they continued to 'didn't'. D&D2 fits into the category of 'Didn't and didn't even come close, in fact merely watching this sequel completely ruined the first film'. Ham acting, Ham CGI, Ham plot and Ham bad guys. Pure and unadulterated swine.

Killing Spree

So I introduced the Impaling Stick idea to a couple of colleagues at work and as is usually the case, it descended into uproar. People were impaling respected celebrities, Gordon Brown suffered numerous agonising deaths, Michael Jackson has got a whole host of new orifices and even the Moon Pig didn't not escape unscathed. It was carnage.

Something funny did emerge though...How about taking it a step further and in the time honoured American 5th Amendment, mans right to own a lethal weapon and purchase ammunition whilst doing his weekly shop for Redneck Beer and steak at the local K-Mart tradition - go on a killing spree...

So, if you were allowed to go on one killing spree, where / who and why would you choose your targets?

Rather disturbingly, one of my colleagues had already meticulously planned his spree out. I'm thinking about checking his car boot for Molotov Cocktails. His target would be Euro Disney of all places. I shouldn't have done, but I asked him why. This opened a door that has still not shut as I am typing this. With some kind of feral light in his eyes he began to explain his plot in great detail:

"Euro Disney. No question. I took my kids there last summer, the whole trip cost me nearly 5 grand. I loved Mickey Mouse when I was a kid and now that my nippers are the right age, I thought they would enjoy it too. Bloody Mickey Mouse speaks bloody French at Euro Disney! So does Daffy, Donald and every other bugger. Whats up with that? They ain't French! I couldn't understand them. The kids couldn't understand them. 5 grand down the crazy."

I can understand his disappointment, but he has taken it one step further.

"I'd need a sniper rifle, 2 molotov cocktails, a smoke grenade and a machete. Oh yeah, and a sawnoff shotgun for crow control."

Crowd control?!?! It gets worse.

"It'd all start on Space Mountain. That was the only ride I went on, so I know the route. As you go around the final corner it takes you past the staff room. I would lob the smoke grenade through the staff room window as I went around the corner, that would flush the buggers out. As I got off the ride I would lob one of the molotov cocktails at Daffty Duck. He go up like a hay stack and in his blind panic, still disorientated from the smoke he would run around catching the other toons. I reckon I could take a few of them out in one swoop. I would run past the staff room and lob the last cocktail in to clear out any of the buggers that tried to hide in there. I'd get away in the smoke and confusion, nobody would be any the wiser. Security have a 3 minute response time, which would give me enough time to get onto the sky train and get off at the hotel stop."

Security have a 3 minute response time?!?! Jesus, how does he know that??

"My room would be on the 6th floor. The odd numbers face out to the park, and the balcony is shaded at mid day, which would give me a perfect vantage point for the mid day parade. I could take out all the princesses, Beauty and the Beast, the Little Mermaid, Snow White and the 7 Dwarfs and that smug git Mickey before my ammo ran out. By this time the alarm would have been raised. I would balcony hop down to the ground floor and pound away with the sawnoff. I would use scatter cartridges, for maximum spread, if a few french people were caught in the uproar, all the better. I reckon I would get a good 2 minutes before they took me down. Well worth it though."

Wow. The guys got issues. Surely. It sounds like he has put some real thought into this! I think from here on in, I'll keep the impaling stick (which now seems hugely tame) to myself.

Weekly Impaling Stick

Crazy cat ladies - We've all got that colleague, you know the one, she has a framed picture of her cat on her desk, cat mouse mats, cat coffee cups and cat wallpaper on the desktop. She could be prone to ringing her home phone voicemail at lunch times so the cats can hear her voice and every morning when she comes into work, there is always some new drama involving the cats. And why oh why do these women always talk about people in their lives as if the rest of the office knows who they are? "Alison said that the cats had chewed the carpet, so I rang Irene and she said that when her Iris chewed the shag pile she called Mavis the vet who suggested that her cats had stopped doing it if she left a blanket with her perfume on in the house..." Who the hell is Alison??? I wouldn't mind if crazy cat ladies looked like Halle Berry's cat women, but invariably they are overweight, mindless, cat addled cabbages.

The Gorilla Cadburys advert - As controversial as this sounds, I've grown to hate it. Cadburys have ruined what was a monumental piece of television advertising. An ape playing along to Phil Collins raised the bar for all advertising in the 21st century. Cadburys have taken this away from the British public by giving us a shocking re-run, with the same movements, the same action and the same everything. All they have done is dubbed a new song over the Phil Collins one. Poor Phil, not only did the advert sell millions more Cadbury bars, raise the standard by which all other confectioners had to advertise and make an entire generation of TV viewers wait with baited breath for advertisement breaks in our programming - it revitalised his career. That song sold more copies the week the advert hit our screens than it did the first week it came out...Some how I cant see it doing the same for the new incumbent.

PC World - Because where else in the world could you spend £300 on a new computer, hand over your card and commence the payment procedure having spent 30 minutes negotiate a 'deal' on Norton and Microsoft Office as part of the package, only to be told that "By the way, these PCs don't come with CD Disk Drives." I was shocked. "So why have you just spent the last 30 minutes trying to up sell me two pieces of software, that I wouldn't even be able to install on the computer when I got home?" "Oh, actually that's a good point". And guess how much the external CD drives start at? £65. Ridiculous.

Taxi Drivers - a portable wikipedia

Why is it that taxi drivers are always the most enlightened of folk? It doesn't matter what race / creed / religion they are, they are always in the know. True, they do a lot of listening. A particularly accomplished taxi driver can discern my deepest and darkest political / economic views with a few well placed questions - "So what do you do for a living mate? Construction? Are you quiet at the moment? Did you watch I'm a celebrity last night?" I would imagine that they pick up people from every walk of life, each with their own views and need-to-know information.

I live near an airport, the taxi drivers regularly pick up incoming / outgoing businessmen, which turns out to be a veritable goldmine of information. Last week one driver reliably informed me after picking up a 'banker' that the current economic recession was a farce driven by the government to lower high street prices. The same driver picked me up yesterday morning, and told me that actually, the economic problems were the fault of the eastern markets for not responding quick enough to the rise in oil prices, combined with the US Senates initial disdain for Bushes rescue package. I assume he had picked up some kind drunken investment banker, still reeling from the shock of receiving his marching orders after recommending his companies biggest client invest 99% of their portfolio in an Icelandic Bank...

A gem this morning though...My driver had seen the same report as me on Calendar last night - a 57 year old shop keeper stricken with arthritis so badly that when he did the obligatory walk-by that every news programme interviewee has to endure, he looked somewhat like John Wayne after a heavy night on the Vindaloo - whose shop has been attacked by yobs 6 times in the last 3 months. This pillar of the British nation, this man mountain, this brave, brave small business owner, crippled by arthritis had fought off every single Hoody in these attacks with nothing but his walking stick. 6 attacks by hoodies wielding baseball bats, knives and even Samurai swords had yielded nothing. They had not managed to take a dime. HUZZAH!!!!! Good for you Mr Shop Keeper, there should be more people like you out there. He was amazingly stoic when he was interviewed. "You cant let the buggers beat you...Why should they be allowed to steal something so they don't have to work...that's whats wrong with this country, no discipline, no values..."

He never said a truer word.

Inaugural Impaling Stick...

As promised in the Blurb, one feature of my Blog will be a 'Weekly Impaling Stick'. When the revolution comes, this weekly event will allow the great British public (those of us still possessed of our faculties) to (in literary terms) dispose of 3 annoyances of the week. These could be figures from the news, a new product, a band, an animal, a work colleague - anything that has annoyed you in the previous week can be disposed of on the impaling stick...Think Room 101 meets Vlad.

So, my first 3 victims:

Ant & Dec - Unlike a fine wine, these two idiots seem to get worse with age...I must say though, its not really them that I dislike, its what they represent, which is hole in the head, mind numbing, over played, stale reality TV. I'm a celebrity continues to annoy me, as you cannot escape it no matter where you go or who you speak to. I was on a tube this morning and not only was every newspaper bedecked in pictures of foliage and bikini clad wannabes covered in insects, but people were actually chuckling to themselves about it.

Yogurt Knitters - I am using this loose term to apply to those clean air breathing, ban fox hunting, Volvo drivers who studied Sociology at university and therefore feel the need to defend a BNP members right to teach a class room full of kids who are just waiting to be indoctrinated. Now don't get me wrong, some BNP views could make sense if they weren't wielded by such an arrogant and self absorbed man such as Nick Griffin then dragged through swathes of far right racist Sun reading lunatics to the point that they appear to be mainstream views. BUT what I do resent is these Far right views coming to light and people defending their right to hold front line roles such as teaching and policing, whilst claiming to be impartial. Sure, people are entitled to their own opinion and I am sure there are teachers out there who are slightly racist and there are policeman who would rather shop a black person than a white person. BUT if you actually have such a strong view that you JOIN a political party as right wing as the BNP and give up you personal details, you obviously believe so vehemently in that ideology that it is impossible for you to be impartial. Therefore you shouldn't work in teaching / policing / clergy roles.

Public Toilets - Because I got caught short in a train station and had to get a £20 note changed in order to pay the 30p that is required to use a distinctly smelly, unhygienic hovel of a facility that was obviously home to several addicts who needed a place to 'cook up'.

In the beginning...

So, akin to a university radio presenter staring at his media desk, wondering hopefully if his collection of 80s music and 'stoic' ramblings is being listened to by a wider audience than his house mates whom he had to coerce into listening, I am making my first foray into the world of blogging.

And, like said student, I will obviously be utterly dependant on feedback of any kind, positive or negative...So anyone who happens to stumble on this collection of rants, prose, literary farts and one sided speculation - feel free to blog back...

I suppose there should be some semblance of order to this Blog, so for those of you that wish to know what will appear in the forthcoming weeks and months - expect the following...

• Commentary on current events.
• General rants about the times.
• General questions of why and who.

That's all I can think of for now and I am sure this will evolve as time goes on. As to whether this is original - I have know idea as I have never read / written another blog before.

Happy reading,
Joe.