Sincerity Reaches Horoscopes

As mentioned in the BBC’s Radio4’s Friday Night Comedy show The News Quiz on Oct 9, 2009 (25m47s): this text has been published in free newspaper “Metro”‘s horoscope section (Virgo):

You’ve been held back by too many what-if’s and and maybe’s, Virgo. You can’t foretell what’s going to happen tomorrow, next week or next year, so…why waste your time wondering?

The United States Of Larger-Than-Life Media Savviness

The Greatest

The Great Communicator

The Greatest Communicator

Oops!

Pornography As The Root Of European Art

It is clear, isn’t it?

Venus of Hohle Fels

One can only imagine if the above were accepted at face value, how much spicier the National Gallery would become…

Overheard On The Swine Flu Hotline

Grunt!

Unfortunate Assonances

Paul Potts

Pol Pot

Scotland Yard Reveals: Pope “Not a Catholic”

“The Metropolitan Police confirmed Mr Green was arrested by members of its counter-terrorism command, thought to be Special Branch officers, at his home in Kent and searches were conducted at his homes in London and Kent and at two offices in Kent and London. It said the investigation was not terrorism related but did fall within the counter-terror unit’s remit and thatit was made without the knowledge or approval of ministers.”

If you don’t hear from Yours Truly for a while, please send cake with obligatory hand-file to Belmarsh Prison, Thamesmead, London (UK)

Obama’s Challenge: What To Do When Unemployed At 56?

Poor Barack Obama…he may find himself unemployed at the tender age of 56, in January 2017. What to do? And how to top the job of President of the United States of America?

Two solutions spring to mind. Obama may move into the entertainment business, as a rock or movie star. I am sure people will scramble to buy tickets no matter how good or bad he would be with a guitar or on a cinema screen.

The other possibility is to become Pope. All he’ll have to do is a “Tony Blair” and convert to Roman Catholicism after leaving office. That’ll make him eligible to be elected as successor of Benedict XVI, most likely by popular acclamation like the Popes of old.

If anybody cannot believe in the above: just imagine telling anybody in 1951 that the main actor in “Bedtime for Bonzo” was bound to become one of the most beloved Presidents in history. Ah, and that a 15-year-old in Kenya was going to be the father of the 44th President.

Obama Ahead…In Google Too!

In Google too, Barack Obama appears ahead of John McCain, most of the time…

For example: searching “obama 666” one gets 1,380,000 pages. “mccain 666” returns only 848,000 results.

Or “McCain eats babies” = 1,460. “Obama eats babies” = 3,050. One wonder how much exercise is needed to avoid getting fat after having eaten all those little children.

The only search where McCain is just a bit in front: “McCain is a nazi” = 5,610. “Obama is a nazi“=5,130.

No page had ever mentioned “McCain and Obama are nazis” as a single sentence until I wrote this very blog 😉

Signs of Hope Among White Supremacists

who would have guessed…white supremacists (eg Neo-nazis) can be surprisingly self-aware…

“There’s a real problem,” [Bill] White [head of the American National Socialist Workers Party] said in the interview last month, “in what’s called the ‘white movement.’ One, there’s a lot of people who are just mentally ill, and we deal with those a lot. No. 2, there are people who have serious sexual problems.”

Greeks Win the Diagram of Diagrams Prize

The winner of the Diagram of Diagrams Prize has been announced: “Greek Rural Postmen and Their Cancellation Numbers“.

That is supposed to be the book with the oddest title in the last 30 years.

My favorites were the “Lesbian Sadomasochism Safety Manual” (who would have thought that was an issue?) from 1990, and “Bombproof Your Horse” from 2004 (another post-9/11 book, one suspects).

Obama’s Swift Riposte to McCain’s Challenge

NOTE ADDED SEP 8: Gov. Palin’s Vogue cover below is a fake

Denver, Aug 31 (MNN) – Sen. Barack Obama, Democratic Nominee for the 2008 US Presidential Election, has recruited today two well-known characters to fight back the unexpected challenge from the youth/women side by Sen. John McCain and his VP choice, Gov. Sarah Palin.

Sen. Obama said he was very glad to introduce, in the newly-created positions of Vice-Vice-Presidents, Betty Boop and Swee’Pea.

His remarks may cause controversy though (“Betty would look better on Vogue!” and “Swee’Pea’s got much less experience in foreign or any other matters“) .

According to uninformed sources, Sen. McCain is planning to up the ante by revealing that he himself years ago was in a Hollywood blockbuster (the second episode of Jurassic Park), playing a character named “Kelly Curtis Malcolm” …

Novel System for Improved IT Support Efficiency

A novel IT Support Call Handling Scheme guaranteed to improve efficiency:

1. Having received a support call or e-mail, do nothing about it
2. If there is no further contact —> the issue is solved
3. If the user calls again, pretend you care. Keep doing nothing about it
4. If there is no further contact —> the issue is solved
5. If the user calls again, provide assurance the problem is being looked at. Once again, do nothing about it
6. If there is no further contact —> the issue is solved 
7. If the user calls again, repeat from step 5
8. If the user acts unreasonably and calls your boss, look busy and go to step 5
9. At this point, the issue is either solved, or an absolute emergency
10. In the latter case, start dealing with it

The above is based on the established fact that most of the time issues solve themselves, because the user gives up, moves to another job, or finds a way around the problem out of frustration.

As the end result is that everybody in IT support works on emergencies all of the time, their jobs will be safe for the foreseeable future, and users will just be grateful whenever any issue is actually solved.

Is that “maximum efficiency” or what?

Police Rounds Up Mladic Suspects After Karadzic Arrest

Airport Security Explained (sort of…)

As reported in the current issue of “Private Eye“, the British satirical magazine, there is a rather interesting clarification on post-9/11 airport security procedures, coming from New Zealand:

My brother-in-law went through security at Auckland domestic airport and witnessed a passenger having to fish out her nail scissors from her handbag and leave them behind. He went through security and then boarded his plane. After being seated he could smell petrol. He knew you shouldn’t be able to smell petrol on a plane, because planes don’t use petrol. The smell got worse and eventually he got the attention of one of the flight attendants. They started to look around to see where it was coming from. They found in the overhead compartment a chainsaw in a bag that was leaking petrol into the compartment. His plane was delayed as the owner was identified and the chainsaw removed and put with the main luggage. The owner of the chainsaw said security had stopped him but had let him through because it wasn’t one of the things on their list to confiscate.

Well, that’s good news for Klingons at least…no need to leave their Bat’leth at home any longer!

Obama’s True “Dream Ticket”

How can Barack Obama win back the core Hillary Clinton voters, namely hispanics, women and “white men without a college education”?

It’s easy, because the question contains its own answer: just select as candidate VP a hispanic woman able to elicit interest among white men of whatever schooling.

If Obama wants a “Dream Ticket”, his dilemma is therefore quite simple…

…Salma Hayek, or Eva Longoria?

Weather Men Get the Better of Naughty Girl

Peculiar story from Dr Joe Sobel’s US Weather blog at Accuweather:

The AccuWeather Forensic Team has worked on thousands of very interesting cases over the years. Most of them involve slip and falls, automobile, marine or aviation accidents and damage to buildings caused by wind, rain or snow, but every now and then a unique and different case comes along. One such case awhile back involved a divorce dispute.

What, you ask, could weather have to do with a divorce? Well in this case our couple was obviously not getting along very well and one night, after a prolonged argument, the wife threw the husband out of the house. Not only did she throw him out of the house, but she also took all of his stuff … electronics, clothing, correspondence, etc and piled it up in the backyard. That night it allegedly rained and all of the stuff outside was ruined, amounting to tens of thousands of dollars of damage. The husband’s attorney smelled a rat and called the AccuWeather Forensic Team and asked us to determine how much it really rained that night. Well, we gathered all of the weather observations from all of the surrounding weather stations and we also looked at Doppler radar and highly detailed lightning strike data to fill in the holes between the weather stations. We needed to do that to make sure we wouldn’t miss an isolated thunderstorm that might not have shown up at the weather observation stations. As it turned out … it didn’t rain a drop at the site in question that night and the wife had quite literally “hosed” her husband. She took the garden hose and thoroughly soaked all of his stuff!!! Our report went a long way to helping the husband receive a favorable judgement in this case.

Is your SUV Destroying the Universe?

Is your SUV destroying the Universe?

Supernovae data from the 1950’s to 2007 show trends very worrying for the fate of the whole cosmos.

The Magnitude (brightness) of observed explosions, after hovering for several decades around the 20 mark, has recently dropped to 15 (i.e. towards brighter supernovae).

Furthermore, the number of observed supernovae has been increasing at an exponential rate, again after many decades below 50 per year, to 95 in 1996 and a little less than 600 in 2007.

The fact that this is happening exactly as anthropogenic greenhouse-gases emissions are on the increase, cannot be just a coincidence. If this will not convince Governments about the importance of stopping CO2 emissions, nothing will!

UK: 42-day Terror Limit Explained

London, 6 December (MNN) – Uninformed sources far from the British Home Secretary have finally explained why Jacqui Smith is going to recommend to Parliament to give the Police 42 days to hold terror suspects without charge.

“The number is magic“, our informant explained. “Apart from the Douglas Adams connection, it is the number of seconds the Prime Minister dedicated to the well-being of the electors during the whole of last month. It is the number of privacy-data-containing disks actually lost by HMRC. It is the number of sleaze scandals left to discover in the life of this Government“.

In unrelated news: new analysis have confirmed that the average IQ of a Labour Government Minister is in the region of 42.

Also, the Tories have stated their “terror limit” is 28, whilst the LibDems are still debating, all meeting in the back of the usual cab.

Temptation for Kinky Dentists

“in case anyone thinks the robot is too real, it also has a sensor on the breast area that keeps track if it has been touched inappropriately, an engineer said.“

Masqued Finland Resident Arrested in HMRC Privacy Fiasco

London, 25 November (MNN) – The Metropolitan Police has announced today the arrest of a notorious character living in Finland for the recent disappearance of two discs containing the details of 25 million United Kingdom residents.

The elderly looking man, of whom only the first name is known (“Claus“), has been implicated by his interest in the personal behaviour and whereabouts of children all around the Kingdom.

The initial alibi (Mr Claus says he has “a big job to do in exactly a month’s time“) has been dismissed as “feeble and unproven to say the least“.

An assistant constable has further declared: “When I have been a naughty boy in my youth, this dodgy bearded guy gave me no presents at Christmas. It’s only just for me to take revenge upon him with all sorts of made-up accusations“.

ps In unrelated news, police have revealed Claus’s nickname among low-lifers such as helpers and elves to be “Santa“.