The *Next* Best ebay Auction Ever?

So, how do you follow on from the eBay phenomenon that was the stuffed squirrel in a radio-controlled dune buggy?

How about...

A stoat on a motorcycle!!!

"Wild stoat on a Silver and Ivory Custom motorbike great for someone who likes motorbikes or stoats....... Created by an experienced Taxidermist."

Methinks I'm beginning to detect a pattern here

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The Walrus and the Carpenter were walking hand in hand. If only, said the Carpenter, the Law would understand...

And in case anyone missed it, here's a link to the latest Labour Party political broadcast...

If I met Tony and Gordon

If the laws of this land offered any genuine protection to children and the feeble-minded this would never have been broadcast; featuring, as it does, scenes taken straight out of some Bizarro fantasy land where rows of government ministers sit at tables waiting for calls from the general public 'to hear what the people have to say' and a smiling Tony Blair and Gordon Brown travel around the country together in a cab like bestest-ever friends

Given everything that's happened over the last ten years, the thought that the Nu-Labour wankers behind this piece of crap could think that anyone is going to swallow it is truly baffling.

The makers also forgot one of the Universal Laws of advertising - the Three Man Rule - originally discovered by pioneers in the field of beer advertising...

• A man on his own looks like a loser or an alcoholic
• Two men together look a bit Gay
• Three men together don't look like losers or gays (but, if they are all the same colour, might be mistaken for a group of racists - so include a token Black, non-threatening Bounty Bar)
  

The Three Man Rule in action

I was so impressed by 'If I met Tony and Gordon' I took advantage of You Tube's 'Post a video response' option to submit a link to a video of a Walrus masturbating

'This is what the internet is for'

In hindsight, I now realise that this could be interpreted as some subtle allusion to the Lewis Caroll poem; comparing Blair and Brown to the Walrus and the Carpenter and the ordinary people of this country to the poor, exploited and eventually consumed oysters.

But no, I just thought that watching a Walrus having a wank was simply a better way to spend your time that watching Tony and Gordon

Whatever, my response was (unsurprisingly) rejected

Boo

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Best eBay auction ever?

At the time of writing this post there's only 1 day and 1 hour left on this baby...

"Squirrel in a radio control Dune Runner Car 6.0v Power, Fully Directional Full Spring Suspension, Impact resistant bumper. In working order. Batteries supplied. Great for someone that likes squirrels or Dune Runner Cars ... Created by an experienced Taxidermist"

So, if you're interested you'll have to put a bid in quick - I would myself but I've already got one


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Keyboard Macro

Now that all that good Spring light is seeping into the flat I'm starting to notice one or two things that could do with a clean. Starting with...




... my PCs keyboard

I turned the thing over immediately after taking this photo and managed to collect enough ingredients for a fair-sized sandwich and maybe even a delicious and nourishing bowl of Ramen style noodles

Some of the more little-used keys such as '{' and the ever-popular 'alt gr' are so encrusted with residual dried coffee I reckon I could scrape a couple of mugs' worth of Nescafe off them

Oh dear, I've just realised I've just touched those keys for the first time in a couple of years. I think it's best to wash my hands now...

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In the long run ...we’re all dead

Spare a thought for the lonely Killer Asteroid

Ten years ago it ruled supreme.

It killed the dinosaurs and it was, almost certainly, going to kill all of us – provided we waited around long enough...




But now, faced by unrelenting competitive pressure from the Global War on Terror, Global Warming and Excessive Global Toilet Paper Consumption, the poor old Killer Asteroid barely gets a mention these days.

Sheryl Crow's personal comfort station - for other insights into Ms Crow's carbon-neutral and hypocrisy-positive lifestyle see here

As well as no longer being the scariest thing in our future, the killer asteroid is no longer even the scariest thing in our past. The grant money and the newspaper space is all in Climate Change these days. So, if your going to do research into past global cataclysms you’d better make fucking sure that there’s a Global Warming angle in it somewhere.

Bruce Willis and Ben Affleck doing their bit to save the planet by dressing up as recycling sacks

But Mr Global Killer Asteroid hasn’t gone away. He’ll be back and he’ll get us all, probably … if we wait around long enough.

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What will you bring back?

Here's a picture I should have attached to that earlier post about drug supermarkets in Lambeth...


... an advert for Air Jamaica, printed on the back of The London Paper last week, extolling the virtues of AJ's generous baggage allowance policy and which includes the strap line...



Methinks a very sophisticated sense of humour may be at work here

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Not so clever Trevor pt2

There’s one curious aspect of the domestic Islamic terror threat that a few of us out here can’t help noticing.

And that is, even though we are repeatedly told that there are countless thousands of Islamic nutcases preaching for and organising Holy Jihad across the country, the television and newspapers only report the antics of the same handful of people.

This small group of people also seem to have an uncanny ability to turn up at public meetings and make complete tits of themselves, and by implication all British Muslims, in front of TV cameras precisely at times that are extremely convenient to our present government’s agenda.

The fact that this small group includes several recent converts to Islam is, I’m sure, entirely coincidental.

Now the problem for our government is this…

If you’ve only got a handful of assorted nutcases and possible spooks out there giving a face and a voice to the bullcrap that is the domestic War on Terror how do you best manage such a scarce resource?

You want them out there talking the kind of hate that scares everyone but on the other hand if they do talk that kind of hate sooner or later you really are obliged to arrest them

And if you do arrest them it is not as if there are thousands of other people out there who could take their place as the face of British Islamic extremism.

And so we are treated to the farce of our government, police and newspapers using the antics of an ever-diminishing number of people to justify claims such as we are facing a threat greater than that presented by Nazi Germany in WW2.

Yup, that's what the head of the Metropolitan Police said, with a perfectly straight face, a few months ago.

For fuck’s sake…

So much for British unflappability and the stiff-upper lip.

Let's all just piss ourselves instead

I mention all this because the police have just pulled Trevor Brooks, one of last of the small number of Islamic nutcases and shills still out there.

By my reckoning the Establishment is now having to collar the extremely limited supply of British-based 'Islamofascists' faster than it can find them.

So who are they going to put on Newsnight from now on?

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PS the pictures used in this post were taken from the quite unaccountably excellent Monkey Dust – which ran to three series before a) its producer died, and probably more significantly b) the 7/7 bombings happened.

Series’ Two and Three heavily featured the antics of two incompetent Jihadist terrorists from the West Midlands and their dubious controller ‘Omar’. All of which proved far too near to the knuckle in the wake of 7/7 and the Official Narrative of what happened that day. A sample clip of Abdul and Shafiq’s adventures can be found on GooTube here




Unsurprisingly, Series Two and Series Three of Monkey Dust have yet to be released on DVD by the BBC (their availability as torrents is an entirely different story). The surprising thing is that the Beeb actually broadcast the series in the first place.

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A (Drug) Tourist's Guide to Lambeth

A slight update to an earlier post which included a rubbish picture of the Archbishop of Canterbury personally apologising for slavery in Kennington Park a few weeks ago…


One thing I neglected to mention was that the Bish was making his apology whilst standing in front of the largest crack house in Europe.

OK, it not actually in the picture. It's hidden behind the blue tent on the right. Here’s the view from the other side…

"Scores of "drug tourists" from all over the capital flocked to the temple, at the hub of an area which has seen several recent drug-related murders"

That's not one of my pictures as there is still a police cordon around the place, over a week since it was raided.

Stef's Living With Junkies Tip #17 - One of the delights of living near to a large crack house is regularly finding junkies shooting up, sniffing up or lighting up whilst sitting behind your dustbin at all hours of the day. I've tried a variety of pest-control remedies over the years and I've found that it's best to treat them like unwanted cats and pour a bucket of cold water on their crack-addled heads.

Sadly, I was still in Italy at the time of the raid and missed the chance to witness 250 police storming the building, tossing stun grenades on the way in.

"Up to six hundred customers a day…"

Well, that’s definitely being added to the little walking tour I give to friends and family to show off my neighbourhood

And if our government ever shows enough vision to legalise and promote Super Crack Houses along with the new Super Casinos I think we here in Lambeth could put together an absolutely superb bid.

Failing that, I reckon a new Kennington-based TV series called Celebrity Crack Den would capture the 2007 London zeitgeist perfectly

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100% pure shite - courtesy of the Sunday Times

And whilst on the subject of c^nts

There's a cracking piece in the Sunday Times today...




AL-QAEDA leaders in Iraq are planning the first “large-scale” terrorist attacks on Britain and other western targets with the help of supporters in Iran, according to a leaked intelligence report.

Spy chiefs warn that one operative had said he was planning an attack on “a par with Hiroshima and Nagasaki” in an attempt to “shake the Roman throne”, a reference to the West.

Another plot could be timed to coincide with Tony Blair stepping down as prime minister, an event described by Al-Qaeda planners as a “change in the head of the company”.

The report, produced earlier this month and seen by The Sunday Times, appears to provide evidence that Al-Qaeda is active in Iran and has ambitions far beyond the improvised attacks it has been waging against British and American soldiers in Iraq.

There is no evidence of a formal relationship between Al-Qaeda, a Sunni group, and the Shi’ite regime of President Mah-moud Ahmadinejad, but experts suggest that Iran’s leaders may be turning a blind eye to the terrorist organisation’s activities.

The intelligence report also makes it clear that senior Al-Qaeda figures in the region have been in recent contact with operatives in Britain.


which just about ticks every box when it comes to (apparently) confirming all of the hyperbole our politicians have been spouting...

• The existence of Al-Qaeda as a supremely capable and organised opponent - TICK
  
  
• ... in Iraq - TICK
  
  
• Implication that Al-Qaeda in Iraq is a threat to mainland Britain - TICK
  
  
• ... and therefore an implicit endorsement of our continued occupation of Iraq - TICK
  
  
• Iran involved too - TICK
  
  
• mention of a probable nuclear Armageddon - TICK

... without clouding the clarity of the dangers facing us with anything approximating to any actual proof or naming anyone who owns up to disseminating this horseshit.

Though I personally suspect this bloke is the man fabricating all the high-level intelligence MI6 and British newspapers want to report these days ...

"Listen very carefully. Everything I am about to say is true..."

It's hard to look upon the kind of 'yellow' journalism being practiced by the Sunday Times and all the others as anything but plain evil. After all, if you make a living selling hate and war on the flimsiest of evidence, or even no evidence at all, and people die as consequence doesn't that make you complicit in murder? What should the penalty for that kind of behaviour be?

OK, it's no longer a surprise that our mainstream media is being used as an outlet for war-mongering propaganda like this. But what I don't understand is why people are still so fucking stupid as to actually pay for this merde. It must be for the free DVDs every paper is giving away now or maybe the TV listings, or what? ... is it for the sudoko?

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Things I've seen written on walls in the last 24 hours

Whilst standing on tip toes in a pub toilet in South London last night, wishing I'd worn wellington boots, I spied this notice stuck to the wall, high above my head...



And whilst on the subject of extreme urine encrustation, this example of stenciled graffiti on a staircase/ al fresco toilet in Clerkenwell I saw today tickled me for some reason



I think the vibrancy of the colours has come out really nicely in that shot.

And finally, some words of support for all people thinking about going on a diet, as seen on the Central Line this afternoon





London ... there's nowhere else like it.

Which is a probably a very good thing indeed

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Back in Town pt2

I’m still sorting through the pictures I took in Italy earlier in the month.

They get sorted into three piles

1. Crap – (by far and way the largest)
2. Shots that might be worth cleaning up in PhotoShop
3. Crap shots that I’ll keep anyway because they amuse me or remind me of something

A selection of my recent Category 3 shots...


Exhibit A - Bottle of Pagan Man aftershave

You too can smell like a bison

Left and forgotten in a bathroom cabinet decades ago and a reminder of a time when you could sell products with slogans like ‘Brings out the Pagan in you’


Exhibit B - A photograph of my Great Grandfather’s fireplace



A reminder of a time when my ancestors took a certain devil may care attitude to the handling and storage of high explosives...

A cousin is renovating the room in the photograph and exposed the chunk of chimney directly above the fireplace. Hidden in a hole cut in one side of the chimney he found some 70-year-old coins and … half a stick of dynamite.

At least he thought it was half a stick of dynamite but he handed it to me for a second opinion. And yes, yes it was. The nitro had seeped out of it long ago (to where?) but we still got rid of the fucking thing tout suite. For some reason, I decided not to spend any time taking pictures of it

Later that day I told my mother about the find and she told me a story about someone in the village who had attempted to dry a few sacks of black powder that had got wet in the rain by putting them in front of an open fire. She pointed out where his house once stood…

She then told me another couple of stories about how challenged my Great Grandfather’s generation was by technology, including…

My Great Grandfather being astounded that you could listen to Italian broadcasts on an English made radio – ‘It can speak Italian as well as English?’

His first encounter with a telephone answering machine - ‘He said he wasn’t there but I recognised his voice’

Yet in spite of all that – the carefree attitude to firearms and explosives, the copious production of illicit alcohol, living in villages where everyone, including the village, had the same surname, and thinking that anyone who retained all ten fingers and thumbs was a bit strange – my mum still doesn’t understand why I maintain that our ancestors made Appalachian Hillbillies look like sophisticated city dwellers




Exhibit C - The front page of Liberta, the local newspaper



The reason why we were in Italy in the first place was for my nephew’s christening. And, for some reason I still haven’t got to the bottom of, the Christening made the front page of the local newspaper and a few minutes coverage on the local TV station.

Junior, a few days after being christened - definitely allergic to Church

Liberta actually covered two Christenings that day – my nephew’s and the child of a player in the Italian national football team. My nephew’s got top billing

Even better still, the story completely bollocksed up its account of my family’s history and included the memorable line...

‘in 1896 they migrated from the high Arda Valley, towards England - crossing, on foot, first the Alps, then a part of Switzerland and all of France’

Yes, that's exactly what happened

My ancestors desperately fighting their way towards England so that they could open some cafes

Exhibit D - Euro Road


Built at great expense to connect my mum’s village (Permanent Year Round Population: 2 people) with another village (Permanent Year Round Population: 8 people). I’ve spent hours walking along and around it without ever seeing a single car



And the best part is that it was built across a series of active landslips, falls down the mountain every winter and has to be resurfaced every summer. Italy is full of EU-funded shit like this. As is Ireland, Spain, Greece and God knows where else…


Exhibit E - Clock, Parma Airport

This picture includes roughly 70% of the entire floor space of Parma airport and 100% of its enormous clock

Small Airport. Big Clock

Just one question ... Why?


Er, that’s enough exhibits for now…

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Back in Town pt1

Home again after a very agreeable couple of weeks spent in the land of my forefathers eating pasta, drinking homebrew and photographing daisies



and trees



and old houses






As well enjoying all this for its own sake, it is also a useful, if somewhat extreme, reminder that there are plenty of places out there where people simply don't care about the the kind of issues that concern someone like me living in a place like London. And why should they care? (rhetorical question)

I envy them

Well, sort of...

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Intermission

There now follows a brief intermission

Sadly, I haven't been able to figure out how to get this post to play 'The Girl from Ipanema' automatically and I am therefore obliged to include this hotlink as a poor substitute.

Normal service will, all being well, be resumed in a couple of weeks.

And what an interesting couple of weeks they may turn out to be. As always at times of heightened geopolitical tension, I humbly recommend keeping abreast of what's really going on in the world by regular visits to Mel and Pat's blogs. One of which is consistently funnier and more satirical than the other, though I suspect that's not intentional.

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