Cat Pee
How do you stop a cat from peeing in the house? No, that’s not the start of a joke. You see, I have a cat and that cat – being an animal – expels fluid waste from its body using its teeny, tiny cat penis. Okay, maybe compared to other tabby cats the penis is a monster both in length and girth but I’m not prepared to do any research in that area. Suffice to say: it’s smaller than mine. Really. Beside the point, though. The point – if I remember correctly and dispense somehow of the image of cat genitalia in my mind at the moment – is that fluids, when they aren’t being regurgitated or drooled at the speed of light from one end of his furry body, instead prefer the option of ejection via the teeny, tiny penis. In itself, not a problem and I believe the method recommended by leading doctors. However – and the opening sentence may have given this away – he’s doing it in the house. He’s not crapping in the house. For that he goes outside the back door roughly where a typical human might step should he or she decide to risk an excursion into The Garden Of Unearthly Horror™. He makes use of the cat flap we installed at great traumatic and sweary cost to ourselves. But peeing: he’s taken to peeing just inside the cat flap. It’s a strip of concrete flooring so it has a few benefits: it’s not carpet like the now-torn-up and discarded dining room flooring ruined in a similar manner by his brother last year, it’s not a duvet cover like the one that was peed on last month by Feline Assailant Unknown But Very Much Suspected, said urine flowing with the power of gravity through the duvet, through the sheet, through the mattress, and onto the bedroom floor over the course of the day, it’s marginally less gruesome to clean up than that time one of my little darlings had a bad dream while sleeping on my lap and peed himself a little while digging one very sharp and probably infected claw through the tracksuit bottoms into a very sensitive area of my person as he shrieked himself awake. I’m a cat lover. I’ve seen some of the search terms people already use to visit this site so I’ll just clarify that my love extends as far as warm feelings but no erections! This means I’m a good person. I don’t want to lock my cat outside the house. Our garden is not a pleasant place to be. I understand his reticence in...
NFL Post-Season Preview
We’re about to enter the post-season period of the current American Football season right about now which means there’s no better time to examine the teams who’ve made it through to the knockout phases. NFC – Seattle Seahawks It’s always a tough season when you have to play San Francisco and Arizona twice so hearty congratulations to the Seahawks of Seattle for earning top spot this year. Head coach Mike Holmgren’s decision-making on the field has been more-or-less eclipsed by his sellout Broadway revue as one half of The Amazing Walrus Twins with fellow coach Andy Reid but with several suspicious fires destroying their venue over Christmas he’ll be free to concentrate on the important games to come. Key To Winning: Holmgren has reportedly wrestled a magic challenge flag from the grasp of a leprechaun this week granting him the power to overturn one field decision. Use it wisely Mike. NFC – Dallas Cowboys It’s been a season of soap opera-proportions for the Cowboys with all the newsworthy team changes – Romo for Bledsoe, Gramatica for Vanderjagt – and the awful cheerleader combustion incident in week three but veteran coach Bill Parcells has maintained a cool head throughout thanks to the ultra-high reflective hair he sports these days. In a tough division, that may have proved the key factor in their success. Key To Winning: There is no specific rule limiting the size of gloves so Terrell Owens will need to sport giant foam hands in a bid to improve his catching rate. Watch out other teams! NFC – Chicago Bears The Bears were the first team to qualify for post-season thanks largely to playing in the same division as Detroit and Green Bay and in no way at all thanks to superior offense at the hands of Rex Grossman. If their pattern of luck continues through to the NFC playoff final Chicago will tie a 60-year NFL record for non-mountain-based teams undeservedly winning games with a quarterback whose first name is a latin word, without the use of a machete, not dressed in a mauve uniform, who don’t play on concrete, having less than a thousand team mascots, on home field, in a planetary system with a yellow dwarf sun. Key To Winning: Lovie Smith will need to counteract the anti-Bears gypsy curse that my girlfriend found in her Christmas cracker this year. Good luck with your five-legged cat hunt Lovie! NFC – New Orleans Saints Nobody was more surprised than me to see New Orleans have such a successful season because I was brainwashed into believing the city had been scooped off the surface of the Earth...
Predicting Animals
As 2006 draws to a close it’s nice to finally see a story about my most favourite subject in the world making it to the BBC website. That subject – as regular visitors will know – is "animals what can predict things and do amazing stuff" and that article is called Snakes in China ‘predict quakes’. The BBC have finally confirmed what I have been telling everyone for years: put snakes in a room and when they hit the walls there’s an earthquake coming. You all thought I was mad and that my slaying spree during August was unjustified. Well, who’s mad now? Snakes aren’t the only creatures put on this Earth by the Many Legged Moon God to help us survive our daily lives through some form of sixth sense. Everyone accepts as fact too that cats can tell when a storm is coming or when you’ve bought them a new flea collar and are surreptitiously trying to put it on without having your flesh torn into strips by pretending you always creep around with your hands behind your back casually staring at the ceiling as if it were the most normal thing in the world. But it’s not just our feline friends and ophidian acquaintances who revel in a world of precognitive abilities over which we can only cry ourselves to sleep in jealousy. The Spotted Newt Spotted Newt Facts Newts can regrow appendages if they are cut off and their blood is injected into the veins of U.S. Marines regularly to see if it will help them in a similar way in the Unending War on Terror. The ability to regrow a limb was probably the inspiration for the myth of the Hydra and quite probably some horror-porn movie too if I had to guess. Newts can secrete toxins through their skin to keep predators away but sometimes it keeps away others of their species too and that can make life tough and lonely for a newt. Spotted Newt Powers Newts will tie themselves to the ground using pond reeds twelve hours before a tornado touches down. The Giraffe Giraffe Facts The camouflage pattern on a giraffe is to help it blend in against a backdrop of more giraffes such as a giraffe mural on the Great Wall of China, perhaps. Giraffes once had short necks and ate bushes but there was a falling out between the two lifeforms and the bushes became trees leading to a necessary evolutionary adaptation in response. Scientists believe that trees will next start growing neck shears and giraffes will counter this by covering their bodies in granite. A giraffe could...
Carbon Credit Cards
Say what you like about them – and be as derogatory as you like – but the Labour Party in England certainly know how to stick to their roots. Traditionally, Labour was the party of the people; the socialist party that wasn’t actually a Socialist party; the party that put the individuals and communities ahead of businesses and money-making; the bearded ones, and not just the men. Yes, they’ve been accused of standing up on their back trotters and becoming indistinguishable from their suited nemeses on the other side of the House of Commons in recent years, but every now and then they show that they’re still the same old party they once were. Sure, they’ve epilated their beards, but that’s a 100% natural cardigan they’re wearing. Labour cares about the people. The people live in the environment. Labour cares about the environment. They do. Long before the Conservatives thought of adding a tree to their logo they had a rose! Admittedly a thorny one standing in steamy manure, but it’s still a bloody plant. Take that Cameron! Where was I? The latest caring, sharing, touchy-feely, aah-inducing "idea" to help Mother Nature is carbon credit cards. No, they’re not made from carbon, silly! They’re made from non-biodegradable, polymerised chemicals. The proposed "idea" is this: every person will be rationed to a certain amount of carbon usage per year. Each year the usage will reduce meaning that people will gradually become more environmentally-friendly. Planet Earth’s a winner! Everyone’s a winner! Naturally, there are questions that need answering. Environment Secretary David Miliband wants me to answer them for you. David, you warm and friendly man, how could I refuse? How will the carbon credit cards work? They won’t! Haha! No, but seriously, there’s an outside chance they might so let’s all play along. Ideally, just like using your credit or debit card when you go shopping or using your new fake ID card when you’re stealing someone’s identity you’ll simply swipe your carbon credit card whenever you buy something or use some service. Services could include driving your car, using public transport, using a public restroom, eating in a cafe, having a pint, talking, sleeping, thinking, or deliberately not thinking. In a similar manner to supermarket loyalty card schemes your carbon usage will be added up on a year-by-year basis and you will be rewarded for being good. In Heaven. What happens if I go over my yearly allowance? No more carbon for you! You win a trip to the Disintegrator Booth. Is the Disintegrator Booth carbon neutral? Not yet, but sales of your constituent chemicals following disintegration will go towards...
Russell T. Davies’ Emails
From: Mark To: Russell T. Davies CC: Subject: New Torchwood Episode Attachments: tw_episode.zip (148 KB) Russell, Thanks for agreeing to check out my outline of a story for your Torchwood series. I’ve attached a zip containing the episode in Word format and plain text in case you’re one of those crazy anti-Microsoft people. The brief summary is: an American family visiting Stonehenge accidentally discover that the circle is a portal to parallel Earths thanks to an old piece of alien technology in their camper van, one ends up kidnapped by druids, and the Torchwood group investigate. Features chase scene and heart-wrenching decision by Captain Jack at the end because I know you like that sort of thing. Looking forward to hearing how you liked it (or not). Regards, Mark From: Russell T. Davies To: Mark CC: Subject: Re: New Torchwood Episode Hi Mark That’s really well done for a first draft. I’m still reading it now because I cannot change the font size down from 72 pixels in my copy of Word and I have to sit twelve feet from the monitor. A techy person from the BBC is coming over tomorrow to look at it. You have managed to capture most of the personalities really well and I think we’d certainly like to explore fitting your story into the next series. There are a few changes I’d like to suggest if you don’t mind. Some of these changes will be necessary due to other upcoming stories and the surprise in store for the start of season 2 but others are just to flow with the series feel. Can you expand some of the background story around the American family at the start? Try to add some unimportant, real-life sort of scenarios into their trip towards Stonehenge. Perhaps Thomas and Mike could have a lovers quarrel and then make up? Although Gwen and Owen are a couple now they won’t be in the next series (don’t tell anyone ;)). Can you rewrite their scenes as Gwen and Toshiko please. And Toshiko will only have one arm. I think it’s the left one but I’m not sure so try not to be specific. I.e. don’t let her drive or fire catapults. I’m not keen on Jack’s alien contact for details on the device. We’ll be changing his name from Gamma D’Agruz to Omega B’Ahmerz unless you’ve got any objections. There’ll be more once I get to the end of the second act. Thanks again, RTD. From: Mark To: Russell T. Davies CC: Subject: Re: Re: New Torchwood Episode Attachments: tw_episode2.zip (151 KB) Russell, I’ve made a few changes in the...
Cooling Planet Earth
Climate change is big news; at least it’s big news in the circles I keep. Just the other day I was wandering around the Climate District – as you do – and overheard a couple of kids talking about ocean salinity levels. And while buying a weather machine from Tesco over the weekend I became engaged in a frank discussion of mean temperature effects on algae and the numerous knock-ons up the food chain with the checkout operator. I believe her name was Hayley and one of her false nails had fallen off. We have to stop the mean temperature from rising or we’re all doomed. More accurately, our descendants are doomed, and that’s the major problem. Nobody wants to change how they live now and by the time it becomes really, really important to change things now we will have reached and passed the oh bugger, too late point. We need thinkers outside the box. Enter Lowell Wood … one of the Pentagon’s weaponeer scientists, champion of X-ray lasers and cold fusion, right-winger, and part-time children’s entertainer. Last year, during the annual Scientific Square Dance and Sciencey News Symposium held in Aspen, the topic of discussion was "how would you stop the global mean temperature rise right now if you had to, and you do, you’re scientists damnit!?" Lowell Wood’s plan was outside the box. It was in another box entirely. A better-looking box, because the baddies always have the best looking boxes. You can read more about Wood’s plan here but, to summarise: simulate massive volcanic eruptions by burning sulphur and despositing it into the air over the poles, reflecting back sunlight, cooling the area below, and even regrowing the ice. Ingenious with a hint of diabolicism worthy of a James Bond villain. Some people liked it. Some people hated it. Some people phoned up their stockbrokers and asked them to invest heavily in Sulphur-U-Burn Corp on the off-chance it would be embraced. Wood’s plan was cheap, would work fast, and had only an 88% chance of making the situation worse with the upside that nobody need stop burning oil, driving eight cars, or chopping down the forests. In the shadow of that bombshell of a scientific plan for climate cooling a number of other "outside the box" ideas have been submitted by scientists who had hitherto been struck down with fear of being ridiculed by their peers. Operation Guano Borrowing from Wood’s plan the idea that reflecting back the sun’s heat will bring down the mean temperature of the Earth, countering the carbon dioxide levels’ warming influence, Operation Guano proposes an alternative – yet still natural...
Recent From Retro
-
The Women Of Kilobaud Computing Sep 26, 2016 -
-
-
-
-
Recent From Entertainment
-
Dance Music Triple Nov 19, 2016 -
-
-
-
-
Recent Comments