Unfortunate Last Lines
I sometimes think about death; not in the "ooh, I feel in the mood to write some poetry nobody will ever read" way, but rather in the "ah, yes, one day in the future I shall be no more and the world will miss me even though it pretends it won’t" manner. I’ve thought about what my last words alive might be. My preferred choice is: "Wow! I outlived every person and species in the entire universe!" but I’m rational enough to appreciate that this probably won’t happen. Not certainly though. There’s always hope. In any event, I’ve also considered things I shouldn’t say too. Although it’s not that important – you’ll be dead anyway so who cares? – it would be nice to have a last line that wasn’t ironic or imbecilic in some manner. May I recommend, therefore, that you never say any of these in public or private. "I’ll prove there’s no poison in this coffee." "I’m fairly certain you defuse these things by cutting the red wire." "Yes, of course I deactivated the snakepit trap." "The odds of this being ebola are astronomical." "This cliff’s been here a thousand years; it’s not going anywhere." "I’m not worth the attention of a ninja assassin." "That sounded like a bear but why would one be in the bathroom?" "I’d hardly start poking around with a screwdriver if I hadn’t switched the electricity off at the mains now, would I?" "I hope I’m not the only person in the world allergic to butterflies." "Thank God this volcano is extinct." "For one second I thought that giant, plastic spider was real." "You’re sure this is just a starting pistol, right?" "Dick Cheney’s invited me out quail hunting!" "What rhinoceros?" "There’s no need to worry about me spontaneously combusting." "I think I can survive one night in a haunted house." "Why on Earth would the soviets want to nuke Torquay?" "Nobody ever died from poking a squirrel with a stick." "Can anyone else smell cyanide?" "Myxomatosis shouldn’t affect humans though." "They’d shut off the rope bridge across the chasm if it wasn’t safe." "Let’s switch the Large Hadron Collider on...
Martial Arts For Secretaries
When it comes to people in the office workplace no other group is more victimised – often quite fairly, to be brutally honest – than the humble secretary. Oh, other than temporary staff, of course, but who the hell cares about them? While it’s true that some secretarial staff are perfectly able to defend themselves from all manner of office-based assaults – sexual advances from the chairman, or a barrage of requests to run the payroll early this month, for example – for the vast majority of secretaries the flip-side of being the lynch-pin in the running of the organisation is the burden of vulnerability to attack after attack. Sales people, delivery people, people who wander in wanting to leave leaflets offering to valet cars every day, junior managers (shudder); each one knows it must defeat the secretary, and the secretary has no defence. Until now! Are you a secretary? Do you know a secretary in need of assistance? Do you want to know the secrets of secretarial martial arts? Are you skipping over all these words simply to get to the pretty pictures? Then read on! Rubber Band Hold If a debilitating attack isn’t deemed necessary then there are a number of holds that can be performed by the secretarial martial artist, the most popular of which is the Rubber Band Hold. If seated then an assailant’s hands may be the better choice, otherwise the head should be your target. Pull out a handful of rubber bands from your desk’s top drawer where you’ve been keeping them for some unknown reason alongside the nineteen opened boxes of paper clips, numerous loose thumb tacks, those three rolls of sticky tape, and collection of assorted biros, most of which no longer work. Use sweeping motions with your hands to apply the rubber bands to your attacker, instantly immobilising him or her. Filing Cabinet Shin Stab Lure your assailant next to a filing cabinet; a pretext of looking at some flowers or holiday photos atop the cabinet works well so long as they are actually there, otherwise you’ll come across as a bit of a loon. Drop into a crouch (keeping your back straight for health and safety reasons) and pull open the bottom drawer of the filing cabinet with as much force as possible. The upper edge of the cabinet drawer should shatter the shin bones of your attacker rendering him or her helpless and less likely to keep pestering about the printer ink cartridges. Double Handed Staple Slap A good secretary always makes sure he or she has at least two, fully-loaded staplers to hand. Although the stapler makes...
Evolution Of The Races
This week at work I found myself encased in the state of being stunned by a stunning statement from a colleague – a decidedly not stunning colleague – who stated his statement thusly, and with utmost sincerity: "The problem with evolution is you have to question how the different races evolved from different types of apes at the same time." This statement, sincerely stated, subsequently – and quite suddenly – stunned me into a state of stupefaction. I humbly confess that my mouth dropped open for several seconds and I beg the forgiveness of the intelligent people of the world for my lack of an immediate rebuttal and/or attack with an axe. I gathered my wits swiftly from where they had spilled out over my desk and educated him (through the power of mocking) for several moments until he left. Then I did the thoroughly modern thing and Twittered the event. I received a reply almost immediately from GorillaSushi (that I then didn’t spot until it was far too embarrassingly late to respond) which claimed that he himself was a direct descendant of the spider monkey. I did not find this particular statement to be as stunning or even, really, mildly surprising. He has, after all, eight arms and a love of bananas, a trait shared by the simian in question if memory serves. Nevertheless – and fortunately as far as this post goes – this got me thinking. Was there something in this bizarre notion of racial evolution being linked to varying species? The obvious answer of "careful now, there’s probably an axe attack imminent you buffoon, racial characteristics are clearly genetic adaptations to environment" seemed just a little bit too obvious for my liking. So, while I embark on funding requests to further examine this question I have begun compiling some likely test candidates among the world’s people and creatures. I’ll need to be careful to avoid offending any creatures. Race: The Swiss Description: Drawn to geometry and mathematics; the simple triangles of a Toblerone, the round holes in their cheese, the large numbers of their bank accounts and the sums of money therein. Likes to claim neutrality but certainly wouldn’t mind running the whole show so long as there was no physical risk, despises cuckoos and has fostered a national industry designed to incarcerate the animals within the madness-inducing, always-ticking tombs of miniature clocks. Most Likely Evolved From: Crows. Intelligent, drawn to shiny things, cautiously aggressive, long-running feud with cuckoos over nesting rights. Race: Canadians Description: Tolerant. Very tolerant. Maybe too tolerant. Who else would willingly live in close proximity to Americans and allow the French...
Further Fictional Future Fun
Fun not guaranteed. Yes, as promised or, more accurately, generally hinted at previously here, it’s another entry in the Vintage Ads Of Fictional Futures competition. By Jove! There’s A Large One Here! But wait! There’s more! For a limited time only, for every one photoshopped entry posted in this post you’ll receive another photoshopped entry absolutely free!!!. That’s a saving of over nine in the scale that I’m currently using to measure savings. Wow! Look At The Size Of Little Jimmy’s Weapon! The second one’s pretty easy to identify; the first one probably less so if you’re not a fan of incredibly well-written science fiction unless someone’s gone out and invented some sort of engine that can search for information when you enter words you might spot in the advert. But I doubt that’s...
Enter The Priesthood
The Catholic Church in the United Kingdom are on a bit of a recruitment drive to increase the number of priests. People in Western society these days – by and large – are educated to a higher standard, their lives are easier and less doom-laden with threats of war, disease, and aristocratic purging whims, and religion is less the central point of their lives. For the great majority – over ninety-nine hundredths – of those who still proclaim to be religious, the proclamation itself is nothing more than a ritual (this vague statistic is supplied courtesy of My Head). Sure, some of those religious people may go to church every week but how many spend the entire time thinking "God’s watching me! God’s watching me! The urge to pick my nose is a test!" or even listen to any of the sermons they’ve all heard a thousand times before instead of merely letting the words wash over them and repeat back the responses automatically? It’s a trick question, of course: thinking doesn’t enter into religious practice. If it did, religion would never have gotten off the drawing board. Subsequently, while those who say they are religious and believe in God may be about as depressingly high as it seems to always have been, the subset who are prepared to devote time to their religion, to answer some hallucinatory call to serve, and to give up any part of their comfortable lives in favour of one of deserved, intellectual ridicule is tellingly and reassuringly dwindling. The common sense genetic trait is winning the evolutionary battle over the moron mutation. But that doesn’t mean I don’t want to help the church. I was raised Roman Catholic and educated privately in a Catholic school by an order of monks, and they did so in such an admirable way that I was able to reject the whole notion of religion as infantile twaddle; a relic of a less developed mind and some perverse necessity to control. Additionally, there are still plenty of people who are susceptible to the religious grasp that aims to answer all your questions by not answering them in the slightest, waggling the fingers, making ooh noises, and mixing the words "faith", "God", "mysteries", and "tax-exempt" into new and exciting sentences. For those people and to thank Roman Catholicism for the great job it did with me: Become A Catholic Priest Looking for a new career with global leadership opportunities? Are you ready to make the ultimate commitment? Or do people often remark that you should be committed? Can you keep secrets? Are you predisposed BECOME A PRIEST to subliminal...
Boycott China?
Boycott China! Don’t attend the Olympics! Try to douse the torch to support Tibet! Protest! Fight! Really? So, can we expect more of the same in four years time when London is supposed to hold the Olympics? Or is this just a special treatment we reserve for, you know, other people? London, England, 2011. "Britain supported invasion of another sovereign country and the subsequent killing of tens if not hundreds of thousands of civilians there! Britain oversaw the emplacement of a puppet government in that country that held a kangaroo court and executed the former leader! Britain aided in the transformation of a secular, prosperous country into a poor, dangerous shithole! Britain took away a country’s right to determine its own path! Britain imposed its will! Britain helped dictate! Boycott Britain! Don’t visit London! Piss in their teacups! Protest! Fight!" What do you reckon? Will it happen? And not just a few placards? Will our protestors protest and fight and grapple with the police so strongly when it’s us who are the bad guys and the centre of the world’s attention? Or do they only come out when they can justify their actions as standing up for the little guy. Poor little Tibet. Ooh, we don’t like a big foreign bully! We like our bullies homegrown. Let’s do something that will make us feel warm inside! Can’t come into work today. I’m protesting. You know, because we’re all one big happy world and we’ve got to do what we can to help those poor people who can’t help themselves. Get rid of all my cheap electrical goods? What! Are you crazy? What possible right do any of us have to protest against the Chinese and disrupt and vandalise for what we see them do now when we’ve still not punished the government in our own country for their actions in our names? We need to sort out our own mess and our so-called leaders before we dare criticise those of other nations. Lead by...
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