Load o’ Ballog

Musing #48

Men don’t bat an eyelid when another man gets his willy out in a public toilet, but when he does it at bar, they freak out. Double standards.

To shave a monkey

To shave a monkey

Concept: any effort put into producing an unconvincing fake is wasted effort.

It takes a lot of effort to shave a monkey because they don’t like it and they are very nimble. The result, even with a perfect shave, is clearly not a man, so the effort is wasted. Analogous to “polish a turd”.

Let’s not waste any more time on that project – we’re just shaving a monkey.

Dear God…

After observing several religions over the course of time I have concluded that you, the alleged all powerful and ever-living creator of the universe, care mostly about:

• What gender one is
• What type of hat one wears
• How one trims one’s beard (or not)
• How long one’s hair is
• One’s tailor
• What one eats
• What one does not eat
• How one kills what one eats
• What day of the week it is
• What arbitrarily-boundaried country one was born in
• How many buildings one erects
• What style of building one erects
• How fancy the paintings are in the buildings one erects
• How much skin one has on one’s penis
• Whether one’s mother was the same religion as one

However, to judge by the actions of your followers, you care less about:

• Whether or not one kills other people
• Whether or not one causes other people to starve
• Whether or not one subjects other people to the tyranny of one’s views
• Whether or not one molests children
• Whether or not one abuses the planet which has been around for billions of years, yet on which one exists for less than one hundred years

I don’t pimp my friends

I don’t care if you are UNICEF, I don’t pimp my friends.

So I donate a fixed amount to UNICEF every month, it’s no big deal and I am not some playboy philanthropist. That being said, I do expect the minimum of respect from UNICEF for my gesture. Respect means, for example, not phoning me up and asking me for the phone numbers of my friends. There is an unwritten law about the contact details of friends and acquaintances, which is that you don’t give them out without permission from the friend in question. If you didn’t know that, then you are a bit of a gobshite (see definition 2 here) and you need to read the unwritten book.

Seriously, UNICEF, you do great work, but what kind of a bollocks (see definition 3 here) would I be to hand out my friends’ phone numbers to any company or charity who wanted to grab their money?

That’s right: a big, fat bollocks.

So I don’t care how many babies you are trying to save, when you call me up to ask me for my friends’ phone numbers, I don’t hear:

Could I speak to Mr. T.G. Nobby, please?

I hear:

We think you are a BIG FAT BOLLOCKS!

This is just not me!

Thierry Henry out of the World Cup?

Rumours abound that Thierry Henry has been declared unfit to play in the World Cup finals due to a hand injury.

In an exclusive interview with Load o’ Ballog, the cheating Frenchman explained that he had been going through his morning routines of hand exercises when the injury occurred.

“I ‘ad been going sru my routine of morning ‘and exercises when ze injury occurred,” he said, “Every morning I must ‘andle my balls.”

When LoB pointed out that his sport is called ‘football’” and that his hands were not needed, Henry laughed pseudo-good-naturedly, as if patronising a small child. LoB went on to point out that using his hands might even contravene the rules, Henry suddenly turned serious.

“France did not get to ze world cup finals by playing according to ze rules,” he said, leaning forward and with a hint of menace.

“‘owever,” he continued, “a true asslete rises above adversity and I can always use my right ‘and.”

When asked how his injury might affect his sponsorship deal with Gillette, the Frenchman, known for being a cheetah on the pitch, shrugged philosophically: “Do I look like I need ze monnai?”

Thierry Henry reveals his plan for winning the World Cup for France, while French supporters belt out a rendition of the Tom Jones classic "With These Hands"

Ash, sure it’ll be grand!

With the fiendish people in Iceland planning to spew ash into the air for the next several years, governments have put their highest-paid “worst-case-scenario” thinkers to work.

The highest threat to freedom and the security of the civilised world is now:

• Weapons of Mass Destruction
• people blowing up airliners with Lucozade bottles (I had a bottle of Lucozade in an airport yesterday and it was fine)
• people trying to blow up their shoes
• people trying to blow up their underpants
• exploding breast implants for women (Seriously!)
• men replacing their testicles with C4 (OK, I made that one up but let’s see how long it takes before Rupert Murdoch puts it forward as a credible threat)
• ASH CLOUDS

That’s right, ash is now considered the greatest threat to world peace and profiling at airports will no longer include brown people, but will target instead hardy, blonde, blue-eyed types with rosy cheeks.

Passengers wishing to carry ash in their hand luggage will be limited to ten 100 cc, clear, plastic containers of ash, presented in clear, plastic bags (available at a profit to airport management companies).

On a related note, in response to the terrorist threat from the North, France is considering banning the wearing of Icelandic sweaters in public.

“Zeir wooliness and ziggy-zaggy pattérn are clearly an affront to Liberté, Égalité and Fraternité,” Nicolas Sarkozy might have said.

You have been warned.

See their beady, terrorist eyes!

You wouldn’t steal a car

So I’m in the departure area of the airport and I’m browsing around, waiting for the boarding time. I wander in to a digital entertainment store (no, I am not going to give free advertising by saying “HMV”) and I peruse the DVDs.

It takes me half an hour, but I eventually find three to make up my “3 for €20″ selection and I make my way to the cashier and I pay. Before he hands me my purchase (which is now legally mine), holding it teasingly just out of my reach, he says with a smile that makes me want to set fire to his dog:

“You wouldn’t steal a car, would you?”

“What?” I reply.

Continue reading You wouldn’t steal a car…

Pay no attention to that man behind the curtain!

Misdirection.

It is the tool of illusionists, confidence tricksters and those in power.

Illusionists are not always confidence tricksters, but confidence tricksters are always illusionists to some extent.

Confidence tricksters are not always in power, but those in power are always confidence tricksters to some extent. They have to be because those who seek positions of authority want to keep those positions. Of course they do, they are human. Very few people who take, or are given, power have the strength of character of Cincinnatus.

Continue reading Pay no attention to that man behind the curtain!…

Musing #47

Destiny is forged by our actions.

Death Star Plans on YouTube

I was thinking about Star Wars last night and it occurred to me that although they were able to invent hyper-space travel, light-sabers and battle stations that could blow up an entire planet, they did not invent the internet.

Imagine how different it would have been if instead of many Bothans dying to get the Death Star plans to Princess Leia, one Bothan had simply uploaded the plans to YouTube.

The plans would instantly have been made available to the Rebel Alliance, Darth Vader would not have had to hunt down Princess Leia. Obi Wan Kenobi would not have been the Alliance’s only hope. Princess Leia would not have needed to send him the droids (thus avoiding the inconsistency of his not recognising them, despite their key roles in Episodes I to III). Luke Skywalker would have remained on Tatooine, living the tedious life of a moisture farmer and having unfulfilled dreams of becoming a star pilot. Han Solo and Chewbacca would have continued their lives as smugglers, probably dying in a brawl in some seedy cantina somewhere.

Once the secret weakness of the Death Star became public, the Emperor would have sold it to an entertainment consortium as a theme park (and Alderaan would have been spared), and would have recouped the cost of building it tenfold, thus having the money to build up a conventional fleet with which to defeat the Rebel Alliance, which would have remained on Yavin until its merciless crushing and not have moved to either Hoth (thus depriving us of the excellent Episode V) or the forest moon of Endor (thus depriving us of the ridiculous Ewoks).

Although none of this would have spared us from Episodes I to III.