Page 13

The ramblings of an old git

Bloggoth Mission Statement:

We aim to never raise our sights above the gutter and preferably to stay much lower

Bad career moves - 1

It was only when he attended his first brainstorming session of the product improvement committee that Kevin began to wonder if joining Acme Butt-Plugs had been a wise career move for a talented young designer

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Local news

Bloggoth has learned of a series of bizarre disappearances of vans and lorries in the area of the Winnersh Triangle. The police have so far failed to find any clues to the eleven disappearances so far and inevitably parallels have been drawn with the incidents in the famous Bermuda Triangle. The latest disappearance involved a Boxer van loaded with confectionary bound for the local supermarkets. Last week a lorry disappeared taking over 300 thousand pounds worth of mobile phones to the Carphone Warehouse depot.

Bloggoth has interviewed a prominent local business man who owns a number of warehouses in the area to ascertain the depth of local concern. "I don't mind telling you, these mysterious disappearances have got every businessman around here spooked" he said "in all of these incidents, the lorries set off for their destinations and just never arrived. Worst of all, nobody has seen or heard from any of the drivers since. Their families are distraught"

The same businessman did suggest an explanation as he was showing us out through the lush lawns behind his large warehouse. "I think it may well be down to abductions by aliens" he said, there have been some very strange sightings around here lately. By the way, can I interest you in a mobile phone? we have the latest models for a very reasonable price. Tell you what, buy one today and I'll throw in a box of Mars Bars"

It is always nice to get a bargain and the phone is great. We do hope the police make some progress soon for the sake of those drivers' families but until there is some indication of a more mundane explanation we feel we should endorse that businessman's advice and advise goods vehicle drivers in the Triangle and in the Reading area generally to watch the sky very carefully.

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Public announcement

We at Bloggoth are always happy to receive the occasional comment (provided it is not remotely critical of course) especially from the bloggers listed at left, but at risk of appearing fussy yet again we must make one more restriction. Will anyone who admits to being a Guardian reader please email ahead before posting so that we have time to put some newspaper down. Thank you.

The three Rs

While on the subject of bloggers at left, we should all be exceedingly grateful that at long last Wolfie has taken time out from his hectic round of skying and diplomatic parties to actually post something on his. We were beginning to think that that Christmas picture (which went up some time in late August) was going to be left to serve for next year. A two line quote from Einstein! Hey! I don't know how you found the time Wolfie!

Timely as it happens because it is a good feed. Albert extols the virtues of enthusiasm. You may have noticed that we have three Rs here on Bloggoth, Rants (35%), Rude (45%) and Rubbish (75%). They do not add up to 100% because they are not mutually exclusive. Wherever possible we manage to rant in a sexually depraved and completely idiotic way! But one thing we insist upon! We do not do Raves! Enthusiasm is a lamentable condition that should be resisted at all costs.

What if, after Hitler had decided that Jews were responsible for all Germany's ills, he had thought a bit about the transportation problems, the organisation needed to distribute yellow arm bands or the cost of Zyklon B and though "Ah sod it, I can't be arsed" and gone to the pictures with Eva instead?

What if Napoleon had woken up and thought "I can't be bothered to invade Russia today, perhaps I'll get round to it next year" and gone back to sleep?

Pah! Einstein was an idiot! What would he know?

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bloggoth DIY special - how to hang a picture on the wall

We at bloggoth feel that blogs should try to be instructional and we are, as you may have noticed, always very inclusive. Home improvements are something that everyone needs to do regardless of race, creed or culture, so what better subject is there for trying to bring people together than a bit of DIY? We have managed, at enormous expense, to engage the services of two famous men to provide instruction for both infidels and believers.


Instructions for infidels Here is the first expert, a household name, please give a warm welcome to The Ghost Of Barry Bucknell:
	Hello Bloggoth readers, Barry here, here is how to hang a picture on a wall. Use a 3/4" long tapered standard 3 gauge rawplug. With a 3/8" masonry drill drill a hole slightly deeper than the rawplug. Tap rawplug gently home with a hammer until flush with wall. Screw in 3/16th" screw. Hang picture on it. Until we meet again in heaven that is now spendidly arrayed with plywood shelves, goodbye for now, Barry
Well, well, splendid! let's give a big hand to Barry ladies and gentlemen!
Instructions for true believers in the prophet Here is the article from our second famous contributor. It isn't what he is best known for, but he is a dab ~~hand~~ hook at DIY and in any case, if you Infidels weren't miserable blasphemers you would realise that the important thing is not the result but doing it in a way that brings proper glory to Allah. Please give a ~~cold hook~~ warm hand for our next guest expert, Sheikh Abu Hamza.
	In the Name of Allah, Most Gracious, Most Merciful. We give thanks and praise to Allah and all blessings to His Messenger. We pray to Almighty Allah to guide us all to understand the teachings of Islam. The greatness of the blessed Islamic Shari`ah provides that there is no matter, big or small, that it has not addressed and has not instructed us how to do. There are many things you must consider. Firstly, look into your hearts and consider your motive in inserting a screw into the wall. The planned use of the screw must be fully in accord with the teachings of Islam. Screws or any other form of wall fastening (Like hooks? Ed) must not be used with the intention of hanging a depiction of any living thing for that, by the words of the prophet (peace and blessings be upon him) in the Qran 45.2, may lead to idolatry. It is permissible to hang a representation of a ziggurat or indeed many representations of ziggurats, for lots of coloured zigguats are most pleasing to Allah, Most Gracious, Most Merciful. Most colours are permitted for the zigurrat, or at least not haram, excepting the colour pink, which is that of the unclean animal, the pig. We know this from the story of Neswen Merudi (may Allah be pleased with her) in the "Hadith Of The Dining Room Redecoration". Neswen had hung many ziggurats upon her wall and the prophet (peace and blessings be upon him) had touched her cheek and said unto her "These ziggurats are quite tasty Neswen but I don't like the pink one much." And from this we should know that the prophet (peace and blessings be upon him) did not like piggy zigurrats. We must consider too the direction in which the wall is facing for one should not drill in the direction of qiblah, nor even worse, bang things in the direction of qiblah. This is out of respect for the Ka'aba and for the symbols and rituals of Allah, Most Gracious, Most Merciful. Should the direction of the wall be unsuited to proper respect then we may need to abandon our endevour and either use another wall or just stick up a poster of a ziggurat with BlueTack. (Refer to para 97, chapter 58, volume 312 of the Concise Fatwah Encyclopedia on the subject of using BlueTack. Ed). Another alternative is to use a much longer screw that will pass through the wall and to do all drilling and banging from the other side of the wall, leaving the sharp end of the screw sticking out that you may hang your zigurat picture upon. If it is a partition wall and your neighbours are strong in the faith you may go to them and say peace be upon you and upon your children and ask that you may insert your screw to the glory of Almighty Allah (Most Gracious, Most Merciful). If they be infidels then you must give them dawa, inviting them to accept the truth of Islam. If they will not accept dawa then kill them and insert the rawplugs anyway. If all is satisfied in these matters then the first decision is where to buy your Rawplugs and screws. You will find all guidance concerning screws and rawplugs in the "The Hadith Of Screws And Rawplugs" which has come to us from the Umayyad period and which tells us of the time when the Jews and other idolaters were putting up shelves and other wall fixings in a Haram and blasphemous manner and were rebuked by Allah's messenger (peace and blessings be upon him) who showed the peace, mercy and forgiveness that so characterises our faith by offering them the chance to embrace the home improvement methods of Islam rather than suffer death. Alas, many turned their faces from the true path just as the Crusaders and other enemies of Islam do today, but the Ummah (Islamic Nation) can be patient, in the final conquest of the unbelievers, all men will hang household equipment from their walls in the manner laid down for us by Allah (Most Gracious, Most Merciful) or will know their ending. Screws and Rawplugs should for preference be brought only from the shop of a true believer, Mohammed's Halal Hardware In Sparkhill for example, although a store owned by a proprietor who is a child of the book is permitted if there is nothing better nearby. However, if you buy from a general store you must ensure that the proprietor does not indulge in fahesha (shameful deeds) such as selling alcohol or "top shelf" magazines. Should such a store be run by a Muslim, he is a blasphemer and it is permitted to stone him to death before taking your business elsewhere. If he is an infidel then give him a choice of dawa or death as above before taking your business elsewhere. Choose your Rawplugs and screws carefully. The tapered Rawplugs which are of red plastic are Haram as are the ones that come in little sets with plastic connections that you have to break off. The yellow or blue Rawlplugs or any which are not tapered and which come either lose or in little cardboard boxes are Halal and may be used. Use screws with a plain slot head. Do not buy screws which have cross heads. This is in part because they look like the eyes of certain small Chinese rodents and this resemblance may encourage idolatry, but mainly because the cross is the symbol of the crusader faith. Forbidden also are those decorative sorts with little chrome domes that you screw in as these are on the list of 576 prohibited DIY items (which also includes screwdrivers with red handles and those little plastic things you put between wall tiles to get the spacing right. Ed) in the "Hadith Of The Prophet Waking Up In A Bad Mood". It is not for us to question the word of Allah (Most Gracious, Most Merciful) conveyed to us by his messenger. You are now almost ready to hang your picture. Before you do, you should bow six times facing qiblah and ask forgiveness for any trangression which you may inadvertently make in your endevour. Before you drill in to the wall it is good manners to heed the advice of Mosab Alzarqawi (May Allah (Most Gracious, Most Merciful) grant him martyrdom) and say "O Allah! I seek refuge with You from male and female devils”. When you insert the Rawplug, you should say "O Allah! Deliver me from the works of the blasphemers (accursed be their souls)”. When you screw in the screw, you should say "O Allah! May this screw deliver upon us all the justness of the Caliphate”. Finally, when hanging the picture you should say three times “Ghufranak (I seek Your forgiveness).”

Well! how about that! Inspiring stuff from Abu there! Please put your ~~hooks~~ hands together once more for our guest contributor. It has been a great honour for us here at Bloggoth, and in the same spirit of friendship, just as soon as we can purchase another couple of Gb from our webhosters, we intend to provide a few more bits of advice from true believers on all those little things that we know that true Muslims cannot do without checking in the Koran or Haddiths for guidance on the righteous way, such as tying shoelaces or cleaning the teeth.

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Insomnia

Think it was driving back to Somewhere-In-England-Town late at night last Monday that kicked it off by getting me all wound up before bedtime, mainly as I am the sort who gets into a totally towering shouting rage whenever I get behind the wheel, but I had really bad insomnia this week and did not get any sleep at all before 4am.

Coincidentally, as I did not mention it, a chap mentioned he suffered frequent insomnia this week and that he had to get pills for it. Pills, smills. Here's my tip to insomniacs, just don't worry about it, if you stay in bed and relax you actually don't feel any worse in the morning. Contrary to all the nonsense you do not become psychotic and neither does the world get smaller and smaller until you disappear into nothingness as happens in Sci Fi stories either. Pills are addictive and they screw you up. You think it's hard getting to sleep now? Try it after being on sleeping pills for a few months and they no longer work.

Back to normal last night (i.e I woke up at 4 AM instead). During the restof this week I spent my time thinking about total bollox including rubbish for xoggoth tales and this blog. Have you ever kept a little notebook by your bed so you can jot down ideas that occur to you? I would have more things to post this w/e but unfortunately translation was a problem:

Tavern over it towards RPT (?) tower PUB RT Bells Knightsthorpe(?)
Hindu clown/worship
Uncomprehending not Denis Norden???
Gout learning initiated music
Etc guitar Osama Bin Laden
Ill fitting false teeth countess
Hitting wall goes unnoticed with chronic (?) alcoholics
Careers advisor + pig molesters

If I could have figured out what I had in mind at the time, these posts would have been extremely witty, wise and informative as are all bloggoth posts. As it is, I post these framents here so that you can sort out the brilliant things I would have said. Must I do everything myself?

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A Good Licking

A thread on CUK today is about how to stop a cat licking its arse. Why? Once again this is a case of animals showing their superior intelligence. Human hygeine prefers to ruin the environment with millions of tons of toilet paper, creams and soaps and yet all this could be avoided if we kept ourselves clean by licking our arses and other bits as well. Not only that but if we had been in the habit of licking our arses from an early age, think how marvellously supple we would be, I bet we would not have millions of man hours lost to back trouble.

PS: If there are any ladies out there who cannot manage it we at bloggoth would be only too happy to help out.

I've got a blow up dinghy in the attic somewhere

I was planning to have a rant on the way our real security has been compromised by the run down of the navy reported in the Sunday Times which has been accelerated by the "hidden costs" of Iraq. Surprise! I thought it was a "bit" more than the supposed £1bn scaling down from the estimated US costs. However, even though I really was prepared to be arsed on this occcasion, I find that Nobody's Friend has beaten me to it.

The last article from the Vented Spleen was also about the way that money which should be spent on our defence has been frittered away by this government in conflicts which did not begin to be in the UK's interests.

Breeches of conditions

A while back we graciously put a few links to what we thought were adequate blogs at left and have been disgusted to find that this great honour has been repaid by serious breeches of our terms and conditions. First PooterGeek had a video of some bastard killing bees. Then Ratatak, after commenting on the distasteful hanging of SH, posted pictures of CUTE KITTENS as a supposed antidote!!!!

Disgraceful!"!! You have been warned!!!

Gay Sheep

The Sunday Times reports an outcry over research at Oregon State University into biological causes of homosexuality using sheep. Some gay men see this as an attempt to use eugenics to eliminate homosexuality.

Naturally we at Bloggoth heartily concur in condemning this research. Conducting experiments on NICE little sheep? The bastards!!! Haven't they got some Mexicans or something they could experiment on?

Leaving aside the major CRUELTY TO SHEEP issue (the BASTARDS!!!) the problem that gays seem to have is not with the research itself but with the expectation that it will be used to try and "treat" homosexuality as though it is a genetric disorder. They are probably right, but in a saner world of 6 billion people, about 5.9 billion too many in my view, it would be used to treat heterosexuality.

Or make us all fancy sheep, that would work too. Some of us do already of course.

PS: While looking for a picture of a gay sheep bar on the net I came across this item. This is truly awful! It seems that sheep in Australia have bits of their little botties cut off to reduce egg-laying by flies attracted to their tagnuts, klingons or dingleberries. What a disgrace! Why are we sending goats to Africa when the money could be better spent buying toilet paper for Australian sheep?

PPS: Why didn't anyone send us a goat for christmas? We would have liked a little goat and would have been very nice to it fnaar fnaar.

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Statues

Also in the Sunday Times,news that Britain's greatest statues are to be lined up along an avenue from Westminster to Downing Street.

The likes of Robert Peel and Churchill will be there but predictably there have been calls for less emphasis on upper class white men and a more inclusive approach. I have no problem with that in theory, Emily Pankhurst deserves to be there in my view, the real problem is that because our history has been so determined by upper classwhite men to date, the others mostly haven't actually done anything significant politically. Watch out for a line of statues depicting gay, black or disabled men and women who did memorable things for the nation like introducing parking meters to Hounslow or negotiating trade agreements with Botswana.

There is more concern that new statues would be added which would be controversial. Lloyd George for example, a great man in many ways but tarnished like the current PM by an honours for sale scandal*. Yet again we at Bloggoth have the perfect solution, why not take a leaf out of Madame Tussaud's book and follow the Chamber Of Horrors idea? We can have two lines of statues, one for the greats like Churchill, the other for the sleazy money-wasting war-mongering egotistical bastards like {He Whom It Would Be Morally Justifiable To Stab Although I Am Not Personally Calling For His Stabbing}. Each would have a plaque outlining all their mistakes and misdeeds and generally inform future generations what total C*NTs they were! The choices of statues would be determined by popular vote.

You never know, since the prime concern of these power hungry egomaniac PMs is their place in history and they would be obliged to pass the statues at least twice on many days it might even force them into a little humility or democracy.

*Note: The comparison only extends to the tarnish, I am not suggesting the current PM is a great man in ANY way.

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So why not divide it?

Cyprus is always seen as one of the world's great diplomatic failures and true enough it remains a potential cause of conflict, but those of who grew up thinking of EOKA and Enosis as common words will have noticed how little the Island has figured in the news since forced partition other than in connection with Turkey's EU membership.

Being now above the age of ten I perfectly well realise it would turn out to be a corrupt ineffective money wasting political football but I have always thought that the most useful UN organisation we could have in theory would be UNCFER, the United Nations Council For Ethnic Cleansing. Not an organisation to carry out genocide or to herd minorities into grim camps, but one that could act to oversee a disengagement where history had proved that political and cultural differences were too wide to bridge. The duties of this new agency would cover both the physical and political, facilating equitable swaps of land and sharing of resources, transporting people, helping them settle in and addressing the many concerns such as secure borders and safety of those minorities that did choose life in the other side.

It is safe to have such theories because it will never happen and it will never happen because we live in a dream world where, no matter how wide the divisions, there is always some way that they can be healed. Eventually, I suppose that is generally true but we may have a long time to wait, for example, some sources date the start of the Shiah-Sunni divide as going back almost to the prophet. I do wonder about the motives behind the total refusal to even contemplate any suggestion that Iraq might not be better off divided along the obvious ethnic lines. Possibly there have been discussions or studies that have rejected the idea as unworkable due, perhaps, to the impossibility of negotiating a shared ownership of Iraq's enormous actual and potential oil resources or to objections by Turkey to a Kurdish state.

Being slightly cynical, I doubt that those discussions have been held or that those studies exist. It is simply not in the nature of politicians and leaders, would-be or actual, to voluntarily give up power.

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Somalia

The Guardian on the Invasion of Somalia by Ethiopian troops. I am somewhat dubious myself about automatically backing the Ethiopians simply on the grounds that the other side are Islamists; is it not a valid point in the article that this action may promote Christian-Muslim conflict in Ethiopia itself and further destabilise the region? Doesn't conflict and lawlessness also provide rich breeding grounds for terrorism? It's just the language that is so Guardian.

...the Bush administration has opened another battlefront in the Muslim world. With US backing, Ethiopian troops have invaded Somalia in an illegal war of aggression.

But this brazen US-sponsored bid...

Looking at that first couple of paragraphs one would be forgiven for thinking that the invasion is not simply approved by the US, but that the US are financing it and supplying weapons and advisors if not troops.

The Islamists are not angels. But their collective pool of terror acts is dwarfed by the terrorism of the warlords...

As in other Muslim-western conflicts, the way to secure peace is to engage with the Islamists to ensure that they have no reason to turn to terror.

Not angels? Aren't those sentences very confused about what we mean by terrorism? The warlords certainly commit numerous acts of violence and this criminality is exported around the world as the UK prison population and rather too many recent news items in the UK show, but when Somalis are involved in organised terrorism abroad it is not as criminals but as Islamists.

Engage with moderate Muslims and the more moderate Muslim states yes, but I had not noticed we didn't do that anyway. But according to some reports these Islamists include extremists with a harsh vision of Islam and the US believes the movement to be under the control of an Al-Quaeda cell. The Bush administration saying it doesn't make it wrong.

What is undisputably true is that the movement is bent on imposing Shariah on Somalia. Wake up! Shariah is not democracy and if any group believes it correct to impose its views on others by force, why on earth would we assume that its ambitions have national boundaries? If a fundamentalist Islamic government is imposed on Somalia, how long will it really be before it is aiding Islamic groups in neigbouring countries and further afield? Most dictatorships are strictly national because they have no possibility of power elsewhere but that does not apply to global movements like Nazism, Communism or Islamism.

Faced with conflicting reports it's hard to know for sure but given all that has happened over the past few years I find the current US view on the region rather more convincing than the curious world inhabited by Guardianistas where fundamentalist Islam is a peaceful and tolerant movement and those who are prepared to engage in terrorist acts are basically jolly decent fellows who will be only too happy to desist if somebody would speak to them nicely.

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Musings on films old and new

To be completely honest we at Bloggoth do get a bit emotional at times and sometimes over entirely fictional things, like the film "Silent Running" for example.

First the little robot called Louey gets lost in space and then the second little robot called Dewey gets crippled in a collision with a space buggy and in the end gets blown up. The really saddest bit is at the end when Huey, the last little robot, is left all alone to tend those trees in the space station. It must have been so awfully lonely! Every time there's a repeat, we at Bloggoth howl for hours afterwards over all the really sad bits with those little robots. I think there's some people that get killed in it too.

A scene from the fim with Huey and Dewey and some bloke.

Oh goody. A Mel Gibson film about the end of the Mayans or something called Apocalypto. Wonder who was to blame, the British or the Jews?

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Oh super! Another WONDERFUL gimmicky government initiative!

Now it's extra funding for selected local governments (which we can safely bet will just happen to be in Labour marginals by some curious coincidence) in what are to be called RESPECT AREAS. It is only a short while since the last fabulous initiative of the SUPERNANNIES.

Funny, but I could have sworn that that TV SUPERNANNY says we should punish or ignore bad behaviour and reward good behaviour, not the other way round. Would it not be a better idea to cut off income support and other benefits from parents who fail to control their children? To stop handing a free flat and an income to any young woman who gets herself knocked up?

Something else occurs to me about nannies too, let me think, erm, oh yes! - nannies are for TODDLERS, kids too young to understand about wider issues. What are the consequences of raising a generation with the expectation that anything they do, even when it is in their own long term interests or in the interests of their society/nation, should bring about an immediate personal reward?

It is the year 2035 and Britain has its back against the wall. France has fallen after a valient struggle (it took them almost 5 weeks to surrender this time around) and the invasion armada of the Iranian axis powers is just a few miles from the coast.

Inspiring leader: We shall fight them on the beaches! We shall never surrender!
Troops: Oh yeh? what's in it for us then?
Inspiring leader: Our freedom, our democracy, our values!
Troops: Freedom schmeedom! Nah! I mean, what's in it for us? show us the readies first. We want 10 big ones each for fighting and everyone gets a medal and a nice big certificate saying how brave we are that we can hang on the wall and show to our mates!
Inspiring leader: Ok! Ok! Now we must march!
Troops: Ok. As soon as we get 'em, we can be off, but we ain't walking mind, you gotta lay on some decent buses and if any of us get 'urt, the deal's off. Nobody said nuffink about getting 'urt.

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What I would have said if I could be arsed - continued

Yet again, it's The Devil's Kitchen, this time on state funding of parties, and on a link from that, John Redwood's Diary. As politicians go I quite like The Vulcan but it certainly isn't his comments I would have made myself (if I could be arsed) but those of most of his respondents.

PM unhurt - again!

I see that the PM's plane overran the runway in Miami today. Wasn't there a similar scare a year or two ago? Oh yes,here it is! His plane was struck by lightning. Both very minor incidents really and the PM was unhurt.

Oh well. Third time lucky Eh?

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That's the sort of government initiative we need!

Have you ever thought? Although the government is good at idiot ideas to reward those who have never contributed a damn thing to our society, e.g. school leavers for bothering to find a job or foreign criminals to go home, it never provides incentives for good behaviour by those of us who have made a decent contribution to society, only disincentives for bad.

We work much of our lives to pay taxes, we don't commit crimes, we spend our spare time and/or money helping out with charities or local society but when it comes to all our little failings, like smoking, drinking or eating too much, do they ever help out with tax off nicotine patches or subsidy on gyms or grants to AA or Weight watchers? Do they FUCK! Their only response is to continually hit us with more bloody laws and taxes and lectures paid for out of our taxes and withdrawal of services that we have paid for. For us mostly decent citizens it is always sticks and never any carrots.

At least the South Korean government is on the right lines with their idea to discourage men from visiting prostitutes Why can't we have that?? Look here! you bastards! I haven't been to a prostitute for years! Will my award be backdated? As it happens I will have to fill in my boring tax return this holiday, is there a space on there to say I have significantly cut down my vodka consumption this past two months? Is there a box that says I have lost a few pounds and my tits do not wobble as much when I go for a run? Will being a non-smoker reduce my tax bill? If not why not? If I do not get a big increase in my tax allowance for all this sacrifice I will want to know why.

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You ain't yawned at nuttin' yet!

To any who have occasionally passed through here and thought "Good grief! he's going on about slugs and wasps again!" Be warned! you ain't seen nothing yet! Sons got me a USB microscope for me birthday and the only reason this blog has not been taken over by short videos of spiders, greenfly and other NICE little bugs, is that this is Winter and there seems to be nowt about. Even those spiders with the long thin legs seem to have disappeared.

In the meantime here are loads of great videos of spiders from someone else, much more professional than mine will be I daresay, even if not made with the same barking affection!.

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Some of the world's conflicts are good

I would sooner have my kneecaps scooped out with rusty spoons than listen to the queen's speech but according to the news, one of the items among all the predictable crap was a plea for understanding between generations.

Why? When did we last have a suicide bomber blowing up an old people's home because his granny had knitted him a disgusting purple sweater for christmas? When did we ever have a young girl tortured by geriatrics for not thinking Val Doonican was lovely? The point is, this is a totally casualty free conflict which is thoroughly enjoyed by both sides. The young love moaning about us old farts, especially authority figures who affect their lives, it feeds their well developed sense of persecution. Most old farts love to complain about their irresponsibility, it makes us feel smug because were never like that in our young day. Most of all, what utter pleasure it is to embarrass the young! Ah, great days! I recall wandering down many a crowded High Street singing stupid songs while my two walked ten feet behind pretending they had nothing to do with me.

Mine are now at the age when they are not so easy to embarass although I still manage on occasions. Some are excellent. The other night, at a fairly mixed age pre-xmas do, the talk turned to motorcycles and one girl said she had given up after an accident. Being a sympathetic sort I said I had fallen off a few times myself and asked if she had hurt herself badly, to be told she only had a bit of an ankle injury. "Yeh! that wasn't much" said her dad, "It was really those petrol burns, wasn't it love?"

Significant petrol "burns", as her dad then clarified, are apparently an injury suffered only by ladies when the petrol spills out of the tank without igniting. If the generation war had medals that chap would have had a VC for embarrassing beyond the call of duty. I do suspect that sooner or later she will get her own back in kind.

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Alternative realities



	Of all the alternative Xmas realities the magic amulet had taken him to, Xmas tree world had to be the worst. He said the magic words, knowing it had power for just one more trip.		AW! NUTS!

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Entertainment news

The BBC has abandoned the showing this week of the much awaited first chat show with the deceased since reliable technology to communicate with the spirit world became available. The BBC have blamed technical problems with the new spectral cameras.

In what was billed as a Christmas Peace special, John Lennon and Mahatma Ghandi were to be among the guests on Michael Parkinson's show. Bloggoth has learned that the real reason for the cancellation was friction between these noteworthy peacemakers. When asked what was most important to world peace Ghandi apparently replied that "it sure wasn't lying around in bed with ugly Japanese bints and singing dreary songs full of platitudinous crap". Lennon responded by calling Ghandi "a smelly old nappy-wearing snake charmer". The show ended in uproar with a huge fight between the two spirits.

Meanwhile, Adolph Hitler has proved to be a surprise hit with the kiddies as a regular reader on Jackanorie.

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The reservoirs are filling

Had a spare hour this morning and was going to moan about the crime news, but sod it, it's Christmas. I shall save it all up and then, near the end of the week, when I am thoroughly depressed at the thought of starting three months of what will probably be one of those living death sort of contracts, I will release a huge tsunami/avalanche/tornado of moaning, whining and general ranting upon the net. Until then I want to try and finish my Christmas ghost story that I have been trying to finish for the last three years.

Anne

In our local town I often pass an inscription on a stone en route to the car park via the footpath through the churchyard. It is a memorial to the last woman in England to be burned at the stake.

Anne Tree and two others were burned in the High Street for refusing to renounce their Protestant faith. It is almost incredible to imagine being burnt alive rather than simply comply and I am not sure we get that sort of committment in the Christian Church anymore. Nowadays, most would pretend to comply while assuring themselves that god would see into their hearts and such outward declarations were not what really mattered.

An admirable woman? In a way but I can't help feeling that choosing an agonising martyrdom for one's faith and being prepared to light the fire to consume a heretic are but two sides of the same coin. It is the sort of fanatical and intolerant faith that, until recent decades, most of us had hoped we had seen the back of in England.

I think I will stick with the decent natural humanity of the fudgers and the cowards.

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What a fuss over nothing

I see another blogger has got himself into trouble over something posted on his blog.

A chain of confectionery shops has been forced to make a grovelling apology and dole out free chocolates after one of its managers referred to the town it posted him to as a “s***hole”.
...
Enraged locals laid siege to the shop, staff feared for their safety and the police had to be called in to keep the Barrovians at bay.
...
One employee said: “We have had to deal with abuse all day and threats from people who saw the story. A colleague of mine has been reduced to a nervous wreck after one woman pointed him out as the manager, which he is not. I think many employees will not return after what has happened.”

So that's how this town reacts to a few comments by a bloke a bit depressed at being away from home and finding his shop's windows broken on the first day? I can't really recall if I have been there or not but my conclusion about Barrow In Furness from now on will be - It's a s***hole!.

We at Bloggoth virtually never mention work, depressing enough being there, who wants to talkabout it? I really would love to do an illustrated item on all the nice little bunny rabbits that are always hopping about in the grounds when I leave at night but unfortunately it's a secure site and cameras are banned. Who knows? Maybe the Iranians or Russians will have the technology to examine shadows on the rabbits' ears and figure out the contents of all the documents in the nearby offices. Come to think of it, half the rabbits are probably fitted with secret surveillance equipment anyway.

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Sometimes we have what passes for a soul and scorpions know best

Ranting Stan (link at left) often has some poetry on his blog, and not to be outdone:

"Porphyria's Lover" (Part) (Robert Browning)
Be sure I looked up at her eyes
Happy and proud; at last I knew
Porphyria worshiped me: surprise
Made my heart swell, and still it grew
While I debated what to do.
That moment she was mine, mine, fair,
Perfectly pure and good: I found
A thing to do, and all her hair
In one long yellow string I wound
Three times her little throat around,
And strangled her. No pain felt she;
I am quite sure she felt no pain.
As a shut bud that holds a bee,
I warily oped her lids: again
Laughed the blue eyes without a stain.
And I untightened next the tress
About her neck; her cheek once more
Blushed bright beneath my burning kiss:
I propped her head up as before
Only, this time my shoulder bore
Her head, which droops upon it still:
The smiling rosy little head,
So glad it has its utmost will,
That all it scorned at once is fled,
And I, its love, am gained instead!
Porphyria's love: she guessed not how
Her darling one wish would be heard.
And thus we sit together now,
And all night long we have not stirred,
And yet God has not said a word!

Ah yes! but fair's fair, in the great scheme of things we males must get our own back somehow. The habits of certain type of female spiders, scorpions and praying mantises is well known. Lesser known, after mating a type of fly known as Serromyia femorata sucks out the body content of the male through the mouth. That's real romance that is. Porphyia should have counted herself lucky.

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That horizon that starts before the end of the nose

For some reason this appears to have been missed by the bloggers I would have expected to seize on it, but it was reported by the OECD yesterday that Britain's public spending is about to overtake Germany's.

A great find by Nobody's Friend demonstrates the incomprehensibly nonsensical nature of so much the government is spending all this money on. There is this thing called horizon scanning. What is that? You may well ask, one has to look long and hard to find any comprehensible explanation among all the gobbledegook, but as far as I can gather it means forward planning, attempting to anticipate things that will be relevant to the UK in the future.

Forward planning?

From the government that reduced corporation tax for small companies and then put it up again because it NEVER OCCURED to them that many would incorporate to reduce their tax bills?
which has had three goes at making family tax credits even vaguely workable?
which went to war in a country where the Shiah/Sunni conflicts go almost back to the Prophet himself and is now ASTONISHED that they are not getting along famously?
which has engaged in a record number of overseas wars while simultaneously reducing our armed forces?
which still thinks it sensible to encourage enormous rates of immigration to a country with shortages of water, housing, power and road space?
which made predictions about migration from Eastern Europe that were 50 times out?
which in this year's pre-budget speech reversed a pension change brought in just last year?
which, unlike Norway, has squandered all the money we ever got from North sea oil?
which, unlike those in other European countries, has left the UK with almost no reserve supplies in case of gas and oil disruptions?

Spending our money on Horizon scanning? From the forward planning apparent so far, one would think they had been unable to afford the backs of a few envelopes.

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Where did the last barman go?

Almost every bar, restaurant and garage you go to now, you hear Eastern European accents from the staff. It's the same with the cleaners at my current work site and at other places too I have heard. Certainly these Poles, Hungarians et al do seem to be a very decent lot and do not present the social, criminal and health problems that immigrants from some other countries do but what exactly is the point of it?

These are low paid jobs and while it may be true that they work harder than too many Brits after decades of welfare, it is also true that that benefit will be negated or reversed because a significant proportion of their earnings will be sent abroad and will not be spent here to stimulate our own economy in the way that British earnings do. There is no point expanding the economy as a whole, what we want is an increase in our standard of living and these people are mostly on lower than average wages. LOWER than average wages do not raise the average standard of living, it's a mathematical absurdity. This ever increasing number of people is diminishing our quality of life while giving us nothing in return.

Ah yes! I hear the cry (or would if anyone ever read this blog) but they do all the essential jobs that the British won't do! Leaving aside the argument that a better solution would be to reform our welfare system and force people into employment (not just some tiny figure officially out of work for six years) I have one serious problem with this argument, simply this, I do not recall that similar or often the same establishments appeared to have any serious lack of staff BEFORE these countries joined the EU. Come to think of it, I do not recall we ever had a shortage of cab drivers before it became almost exclusively an Asian occupation a few decades back either.

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A whole lot of cods

I see that opinion is divided on the latest EU fish quota deal. Those thinking it is a good deal are the scumbag politicians. Those thinking it is another awful fudge that may see fish stocks in the North sea wiped out are the scientists, AKA the ones who actually know what they are talking about. It is hardly necessary to ask which side Bloggoth is on.

The greatest regret is that we or rather that late unlamented bastard Heath, without any reference to the British people, ever handed our fishing waters lock stock and barrel to the EU in return for absolutely nothing. Without plundering of the stocks by France, Spain and others we could have had our fish and eaten it.

Still, no use bemoaning past betrayals, that is the way of things with politicians, we must look to ways to cut fishing quotas and still provide something to go with our chips in newspaper. We at Bloggoth will continue to promote the obvious alternative, SLUGS!. People eat whelks and cockles, so why not slugs? Who at some time or another has not accidentally eaten a slug with their salad and thought afterwards, actually, that wasn't bad?

The missus was watching one of her interminable cooking programs earlier with Rick Stein. Always banging on about great British food and inclined to like squelchy things eaten virtually raw. Also not utterly irritating like Jamie Oliver who makes any sane person want to feed his kids a steady diet of lard and gobstoppers on principle. Stein is just the chap to promote the great British slug and if I was the Min Of Ag And Fish* I would hire him straight away.

We at bloggoth are not great cooks I'm afraid so we have asked this chap, a blogger who posts some great looking recipes, if he would care to contribute to our cause with some suitable slug recipes. Until then, you may care to try this one which is really excellent.

Great Black Slug Spaghetti

Serves one. Lightly fry 4 to 5 Great Black Slugs in a tablespoon of olive oil and a little water with basil and half a crushed garlic clove for about four minutes and toss with spaghetti prepared as for spaghetti carbonara.

PS. One serves red wine with the Great Black Slug, white wine with the Garden Slug.

*Note: Or whatever it's called these days, we refuse to demean ourselves by bothering to find out the correct name of a government department, a bunch of wasteful useless plonkers by any other name would cost as much.

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Oh no! it's started!

The Christian loonies have been warning us that the second coming is nigh and I never believed it. What a fool I was! It's happened! Another virgin birth!. There is no other explanation! Jesus has returned as a Kimodo Dragon. Repent before it is too late!

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All together

It is mostly a miserable moaning world in blogland. But for me, and probably many others, this is the start of more than a week off.

Wheeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeee!

PS: Rant rant shoot them all

Most politically incorrect word

It seem that the most politically incorrect word in the States is 'Macaca'. Who/what the hell is a Macaca?

It is hard to keep up. Some time back a Yank took me to task for racist language in one of my stories in the Adventures of Archie posted on Storymania because I had used the word Chinaman. Eh? It may be a bit archaic but as far as I am aware, Chinaman just means a bloke from China, when did it get to be a term of abuse? Similarly we are not supposed to mention Eskimos anymore although I am sure 99% of the UK population are unaware of it, we should call them Innuit. On a TV discussion program an elderly bloke who referred to "a coloured chap" got a right mauling by the archetypal black feminist sort for his "insulting" language. Again, archaic but I don't think any offence was intended, it was the accepted polite expression in the old bloke's generation.

Maybe the government should start an information website so we can be up to date with what we are and are not supposed to say. In the meantime we at Bloggoth, in our bid to attract attention as the UK's premier hate site are going to be as racist as possible while we still can - Macaca, Macaca, Macaca!

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This week's chainsawed head award

Harridan Harman for her comments on making paying for sex illegal.

By all means let us have proper action to protect young women and prevent trafficing. By all means stamp out carrying on the sex trade in a way that inconveniences residents and the rest of the public. Above all, let us have some proper action against drug dealers so that woman who otherwise would not are not obliged to sell themselves to fund a habit.

But Harridan's suggestions are about as workable as prohibition was in the States. What are they going to do? post inspectors at all establishments providing massage, even the legitimate high street/sports centre ones to check that there are no 'extras' going on? And would it somehow stop women becoming addicted? Without prostitution what sort of crime will they have to commit to get the money they need?

Above all, why will these bloody socialists never comprehend that transactions freely entered into by adults and which do not in themselves harm others are none of the state's damn business!

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Young people today eh? No respect for the dark forces of Lucifer

A bit further back on the one about confining the evil name of politicians, I could not for the life of me remember what is was you used to confine a demon, a pentangle? a pentagon?, so naturally I looked on the net and soon found pentagram. But what an eye opener! Almost every reference I could find turned out to be from one of these stupid role playing games where dwarves battle the sinister Sargon for mastery of the universe or some such tripe.

I was going to say how terrible that these nice young persons thought of everything spiritual as some sort of role playing game but I don't know, thinking back on my Catholic upbringing it wasn't that dissimilar. On confessing that I had been 'rude to my mother' (Translation: Wanked off twenty times while looking at the swimsuits in my mother's copy of "Woman's Own") or 'told a lie to my teacher' (Translation: wanked off 20 times while looking at horse's genitals in my sister's copies of "Horse And Hound"*) we were told to go and kneel down and say three Hail Marys and two Our Fathers and lo!, all our sins were forgiven!** Is that really so different from rolling a dice to match the Flame Card Of Wierdmon to get 5000 power points to conquer the Giant Wraith Of Iq-Har-Mun?

They also had this thing called plenary indulgences which was a sort of get out of jail free card. Not that I could ever be bothered with stuff like saying the rosary five Thursdays running anyway. I was mostly too busy wanking at the time.

*Note 1: It wasn't my fault, you couldn't get any pictures of human female naughty bits in those days, you had to make best use of whatever you could get.
**Note 2: It never occurred to me at the time that the only sins which might have been forgiven were the ones I actually confessed to. If I had stayed with the faith until the end I would probably have rolled up to the Pearly Gates thinking I was in the clear to be met by a huge pile of bills marked "Wanking off - unpaid" and another huge pile marked "Lying to mother/teacher - void".

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Admirably incomprehensible

What does this mean?

Another missing towel reappears
This time a towel that went walkabout from the towel drier at the client site reappeared dyed a light brownish colour and only slightly shrunk.
I've put them another towel I want to get rid of to see what the nissemand can do with this one.

Or this?

Stairway Denied! "Stairway denied!", I cries.
The salesman mutters something incomprehensible, so I played a few riffs of Tubular Bells on an electric piano that was in the same display.
And then wandered on.

I have not the faintest idea! But now we have started on the downward spiral of linking to other blogs, how can such gibberish possibly go unrewarded by a link from Bloggoth? We need a fresh injection of gibberish as unfortunately one of our stalwarts in this area let us down recently. The latest post from Nobody's Friend actually made sense! We trust it will not happen again, but as a warning that nobody is irreplaceble, please give a warm welcome to a fellow contractor (albeit much more successful than me* - the BASTARD!) Threaded.

*Note: So he says anyway

Trends and mindsets

I was born an engineer and have a very prosaic mind. In my view there should be logical reasons for things, effects should follow causes in a predictable way and if one can express them in a mathematical equation, so much the better. Hardly any wonder then that I can never make any sense of anything tainted by humanity, like economics.

How on earth did Hitler turn around the German economy before the war? If I was asked to sketch out a blueprint for an economic miracle I would suggest creating the commodities that people actually needed and goods one could sell abroad to trade for such things. How did putting vast numbers of men into unproductive military service, churning out armaments for future purely domestic use and removing a productive sector of the economy on ethnic grounds ever work?. If we put all our jobless to work making rubber ducks, spent huge amounts on Trident with a view to nuking Indonesia and shot the Cornish, would that boost our economy? If not why not?

Or booms and slumps? Everything is humming, everyone working, prices rising, goods selling and suddenly it's doom and gloom and soup kitchens. Yet nothing real has changed! Look at negative equity, house prices can be rocketing one year and suddenly they start to slump. Has the ratio of houses to people without a home mysteriously increased? I don't think so. One of the things I find strangest about economics is, when expressed in hard figures, how very marginal are the differences between boom and slump. Growing 2.5% a year? that's great, full employment. 0.5% a year? Catastrophe, 3 million unemployed. It's a 2% difference in an increase FFS!

This mysterious thing called confidence! Economies tend to react relatively quickly, they are dragged along by things that individuals have immediate control over, borrowing, investing, withdrawing money, saving and spending. But there appears to be some strange confidence that human societies can acquire which is altogether less responsive to individual whims, an embedded self belief, and when it is present, it is not easily removed and there is nothing that is more important to success. Intelligence? Pah! If any of my zero readers are familiar with the race/IQ correlations much beloved of the white supremicists (although they never mention this part) you will know that us whites are as thick as pigshit compared to Asians, and yet in the centuries since the Renaissance it is us second raters who have ruled the roost. It is only in the last few decades that the Japanese, Chinese and others in the East have really begun, after to so long, to show their potential.

It's not on the web but in the DT today, a Palestinian man who had met HIM on a tour of a "refugee" camp nine years ago, commenting on HIS latest Middle Eastern tour:

..I thought he was very sincere. I very much expected after what he saw that he would help" Mr. Abu al Anzayn said.

"Every day after his visit we waited, we hoped that he would do something for us, that somebody would come to rebuild our house or help to improve it. We waited for two years, thinking we were on a list."

Ah yes! Well, you are not the only one to have been fooled by a nice smile full of white teeth and an appearance of sincerity Mr. Anzyn and it was not unreasonable of you to hope that a middle ranking world leader would have used what limited influence he had on both sides to try and bring about a peaceful resolution of the conflict instead of exacerbating tensions in the Middle East as he has. But why on Earth you thought that he, or should say I the British taxpayer, should have fixed "the cracks in the wall and the water running off your corrugated rooftop" is fucking beyond me! Have you and your people got no damn pride at all?? All over the world there are losers who would rather whine about the poor deal they have been handed, about exclusion, about racism, about the injustices done to them centuries in the past, than get off their butts and really show what they can do.

What happened in the Renaissance? why on Earth did European nations suddenly flower the way they did? There are a million Nobel prizes waiting for the man who can find the secret and bottle it. Where's my slide rule?

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At last the silly award

Could not find anything silly at the weekend but today we have it. From the DT Have a very well-regulated Christmas

Not the Silly award

I can't find anything really silly this week so instead I am going to have a Bloggoth award for the most original idea. This award goes to Ratatak for his idea on the second coming, that Jesus is the internet!.

Like it! Where does all those porn and hate sites fit in though??

Purity invaded

In a sane world unconditional adoration of all that is Bloggoth would be the norm, but this is not a sane world. We are conscious that one is expected to be grateful and have therefore decided in our infinite wisdom to link to a few lesser blogs which have linked to us and since we will have already contaminated the pristine beauty of Bloggoth with reference to these works of mere mortals, we may as well mention a few others we deign to mildly approve of which do not and probably never will mention us. We are most gracious.

Those so honoured should note we will be watching carefully you do not infringe our strict guidelines which are:

No pictures of cute kittens except in the context of noting how disgusting they are and advocating immediate extermination
No nastiness to any other little animals especially those beginning with the letter w
No criticism of vans

Also having just had our, erm 30th birthday, we have decided to reduce the size of the text by 1px in an effort to pretend we do not need reading glasses to blog.

PS: What a shame

No sooner had I decided to link to Right Wing Howler's Blog than I find it has been pulled. Some of his stuff was extreme and I really can't stand Republican Christian Right politics, but the great majority of it wasn't extreme, was very humourous and the blog was a rich source of funny (and silly!) links. Also what ever happened to two of my other favourites, the Vented Spleen and Politalog?, neither updated for yonks. Is this the curse of Bloggoth? those linked to on the right had better watch out.

On a more serious note it seems to me that there is a growing tendency to censorship on both sides of the pond. I don't think SERIOUS advocacy of violence (except against politicians and kittens) should be permitted and for legal reasons hosters cannot be expected to allow illegal content, but beyond that we should have free speech. Our so recently acquired freedoms are being stolen bit by bit by assaults from the nanny state and a growing, often imported, religious fanaticism.

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Medical News

In another world exclusive only Bloggoth has grasped the significance of a small paragraph in last month's edition of The Lancet regarding several cases over the last year of a spontaneous sloughing of body tissue although there was no obvious causative agent. In the most recent case a man lost a large part of his face.

Intrigued by what it did not say, Bloggoth tracked down one of the researchers involved and obtained the true story. "The full findings were not published to protect those concerned" he told us, "but the problem appears to be an auto immune response where the body is rejecting its own tissue because of its astonishing ugliness. This last case was typical in that the man had a face like a hippo's arse. We think other cases where people's brains have become isolated and encapsulated may be due to rejection by the body on grounds of gross stupidity. It is always worrying when a number of cases of a previously unknown syndrome turn up in a short period but it is too early to say if there is any trend."

In totally unrelated news, there is still no word on John Prescott's condition after his admission to hospital last week.

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Wrong place, wrong target

Why do these damn people always always pick on prossies? If they are doing it to feed a drug habit at least they are getting their money honestly by consent of the men involved, not by robbery and burglary like so many of their male counterparts.

Why don't these cowardly serial killers go for a real challenge and earn the gratitude of all of us by bumping off some of the people who are a real nuisance? What marvellous headlines, "Westminster serial killer claims another cabinet minister". Unfortunately we all know there would never be more than one. If our lords and masters were threatened personally there would be absolutely no limit on the resources made available to protect them and hunt down the perpetrator.

Hmm. When I retire shortly I will need something to fill my time. Is there an evening course for serial killers I could go on?

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A real solution

Talking of robbers and burglars, we all have our pet solutions to criminals and the unproductive.

The lefties think we just need to throw enough money at the problem. True enough, a small proportion are helped, but mostly it's money wasted.

The religious think we need to restore good Christian/Muslim/WHY values and all will be fine. If they ever bothered to compare the religious beliefs of countries against the statistics for violence they would find that religion on its own does not do a damn thing.

Some say we need a more traditional society that people can identify with and therefore have more respect for. Sounds good but how do you do it and is it possible without sacrificing prosperity? A falling standard of living has its own consequences for criminality.

The traditional right say we need to punish more. Lots of birching, hanging and stiff prison sentences, that'll sort it. But historically, if one goes back before the end of the last century, we had those things AND a high crime rate. Can we just assume that greater prosperity changes the equation?

The libertarian right say it's about ending a culture of blame and dependence - reduce the welfare state and give people back their independence and pride in themselves. Ah yes, but is there a better example of standing on one's own two feet than being a criminal?

After watching the incoherent cretins on Road Wars tonight it occurs to me that there is only one effective solution to criminality. A damn good CULL!

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Bloggoth tutorials in HTML/jscript 2 - containing the foulness

Note:This only works in IE not in *** Firefox

Last week I showed my fellow lazy bloggers how they could increase their hits and appear to get lots of comments while avoiding the hard work, like writing something that would appeal to normal people. This week I am going to cover another serious issue. The safe containment of evil on your web page.

You may notice that right of centre bloggers never refer to senior ministers by actual name. On here, for example, the chancellor is Gordon Lying Fat Scottish Brownstuff, while the Devil's Kitchen refers to him as the Gobbling King. You probably think this is just down to our childish nature and propensity for gratuitous insult but there is a far more important reason, if we mentioned his real name the hideous evil would be released onto our web page and spread to contaminate our minds. Before you knew it we would be announcing the same increase in our kid's pocket money eight times, reversing the increase the next year, requiring them to fill in 36 page documents before they got it and demanding it back after they had spent it.

The principles of safely containing evil are well established, the name must be enclosed in a pentagram. This HTML construct automatically confines the name in the pentagram's center. Copy the pentagram image below and put it into your web directory, then paste this into your page:

<p style="width:100px; font-size:10px;">
<img src="pentagram.gif" style="width=100%;"><br>
<span style="position:relative; width:100%; text-align:center; top:-50%;">
Tony<br>Blair</span>
</p>

Apart from the required name all you need to change is the 100px and 10px in the first line to get any size you want. you will find that the name of the evil one stays right in the middle of the pentagram so that your page does not become imbued with his wickedness. Here it is in action with 160px/16px, 120px/12px and 80px/8px. As noted this will not work in Firefox and HIS name will appear on your page unfettered, but then if you are using Firefox and not a decent Microsoft product you are probably some sort of ghastly commie pinko anyway and your brain is already doomed.

Tony
Blair

PS: In Firefox replace the -50% by, in 1st case, top:-80px; float:right;. Change 80px to be half for every size. Typical! Follows standards? Yeh right! in your geeky world it does! in the REAL world, standard should mean established usage and that means as per IE!!"

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Rational debate - is there any point sometimes?

That silly award entry was found on PooterGeek's blog so I won't say anything rude about him, especially as his is a good blog considering he is a New Labour supporter, but I have to say I was with most commenters over the former's remarks on the abusive and, in his view, childish nature of some blogs.

Ah yes, let's have mature and rational debate; who could not agree with such a sensible point? But sometimes there is no purpose. The Geek dismisses justifications that a few swear words are nothing compared to Blair's indefensible actions in Iraq. So far so good, it's a non-sequitur, but maybe the reference is apt when you consider, not the actions themselves, but the way the decision was made. It was not that it was badly thought out and based on highly dubious intelligence or even that tens of thousands have died and our security worsened as a result, the relevant fact is that it was made in a way that totally discounted public opinion and much expert opinion and gave our elected representatives no influence whatever over the decision.

Look too at some of the other issues that so vex the libertarian right such as MPs demanding a 66% pay rise. MPs already get huge tax free allowances and a generous index linked pension that the rest of us do not and they award themselves extra perks with monotonous regularity. Yet they do not do what they are principally paid to do, play a proper part in framing the laws of this country on behalf of its citizens. They have supinely acquiesced in allowing many of their powers over law making to be ceded to Brussels and on those issues they still have control over most of them troop through the lobbies at the behest of the whips. We might just as well send a flock of sheep to Westminster.

Or civil service pensions. Almost all of us in the private sector are now subject to the whims of the market for our pensions. Some of us have lost money through various collapses and, even if we are lucky enough to retire when the stock market is doing ok, almost all of us have seen enormous reductions on what we had hoped for due to declining interest rates. But while we have to go on working or managing on very little we do not stop paying taxes, taxes used to fund the generous pensions of the public sector. If that was not bad enough they still insist on their right to retire early.

When we engage in rational debate it is with the expectation or at least the hope that those we debate with will take some account of our viewpoint. When we engage in rational debate it is with the hope that those we debate with have at least some basic standards of decency, a sense of right or wrong, some values that go beyond pure selfishness.

When we know that nothing we say will make a blind bit of difference, when we know that anything we say will bounce off an impervious wall of self interest, when we know that those we talk to are lost in their own egos and devoid of any sense of democracy or decency or justice, what the FUCKING HELL is the point of rational adult debate?

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Take the evil test

The evil test is here

I got this. Yeh right, how can somebody who likes classical music be evil? I bet they tell everyone who does it that they are evil. Come on, not serious is it? Just a joke. Who doesn't spend much of their waking life dreaming of ways to eradicate humanity from the face of the earth because it doesn't give you the fame and riches you deserve? That's just normal isn't it?

Bloggoth Silly Award Of The Week

Take a look at these responses, clearly the work of one or two individuals as one does not get that much such admirable silliness in readers of the average local paper, to news of a marksman being hired to shoot pidgeons* in a Kingston park.

*Naturally, Bloggoth's response to the idea that anyone would shoot lovely little pidgeons is clear. Such a heinous crime could only deserve utter annihilation in the most horrible way. Further, since the willingess to perpetrate such an atrocity could only be due to some sort of profound moral disorder of genetic origin, there is no other suitable explanation, we would feel it imperative to use DNA testing to seek out all relatives and eradicate them too. Soon we would have a master race dedicated to man's proper role, the service of pidgeons, slugs, worms, woodlice and all sorts of other NICE little creatures. (Not Kittens)

Sound advice on hits and comments

Sound advice Write about topical events in an interesting way like the Devil's Kitchen does.

Bloggoth yeh but topical is hard for an IT contractor. After a day spent staring at a PC screen I don't want to spend my evening staring at a PC screen and by the weekend the news is stale. Anyway, I LIKE woffling on about pidgeons, worms and wasps. Pidgeons, worms and wasps are nice, not like people.

Sound advice Do the technicalities to raise your search profile, like creating site maps, ensuring your pages contain the necessary keywords, submitting your site to search engines.

Bloggoth yeh but I know that works as I did it for my business site, but see previous yeh but, too much like work and it's boring!!!

Sound advice Network with other bloggers, put links to their sites and get them to do the same for you.

Bloggoth yeh but I know that can work too as my site hits tripled after Islamanazi inexplicably put a link to my site from his (thanks Rastaman) but I dunno, doesn't this involve having to communicate with people? In any case our page has no space for links, for some reason we don't have as much space on our pages as others have, it's not fair!

Sound advice Treat your site as a part of your social life and use the comment facility to talk to your friends like Ms O'Hara of Wasting Words. A not unknown variation on this is for some to meet and shag a fair proportion of their commenters.

Bloggoth yeh but Social life? Friends? I would be most happy to meet and shag with anyone irrespective of age, gender, species or space-time continuum but I get no offers.

Sound advice Rise above these vanities like Nobody's Friend. We have established conclusively that he does get comments but just cannot be arsed to approve them.

Bloggoth yeh but We want to pretend to be socially accepted. We retreated from actually wanting to be socially accepted decades ago as it was an unrealistic aspiration, but pretending is good.

Sound advice Cheat

Bloggoth yeh but Now you're talking, when do we start?

Sound advice Read on

Cheating on hits and comments

Fool yourself that your blog is popular with the Bloggoth Hitaliser. All it needs is a tiny bit of jscript. For those of you who do not hard code in HTML (poofs!) open the page in IE, click view/source to open in notepad. I have assumed Haloscan commenting facility here but others will be very similar.

Hate that comment(0) under every post? This is what you do

You could just put fixed values in but you may have a problem fooling yourself. This makes it look like people are really commenting. Paste this just before where it says </head>:

Now replace the lines beneath your posts that read something like

with

<p>Comments(<span id="comment1">0</span>)</p>

Now whenever you open your page you will see a different comment total varying from 5 to 104. Just add comment2 etc. for subsequent posts and adjust numbers to suit.

Hate that pathetic hits total on your site stats? This is what you do

Use a very simple page, not one you want to edit frequently. Paste this just before where it says </head>:

Now just leave the page open and it will refresh every second generating a hit. Reduce the 1000 for more frequent hits depending on your level of self gullibility.

If you want to see these implemented on an actual page see here. If you forget to close it, generating lots of hits on my site I won't mind, really.

What about actual comments I hear you say? Well, it is perfectly possible to insert a random selection of comments into the Haloscan popup or WHY but that is a bit more difficult and will be left to another day. I am also seriously thinking of ways of stealing comments from the Devil's Kitchen and pretending they are mine, he won't miss a few.

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Understanding, excusing, condoning, explaining, explaining what? why do these things so confuse us?

When I get to be PM, which I am convinced must be just a matter of time, the first thing I will do is issue a copy of The Concise Oxford English Dictionary to every citizen, because over and over these words are confused.

Some prominent person says they understand why some group does what it does, be it young criminals, Palestinian suicide bombers or WHY and they face a barrage of abuse from those on the right who seem to think they have said condone or agree with. There is nothing wrong with trying to understand why people think the way they do as that may lead to a more permanent solution than just tackling the consequences.

Some on the liberal left are even worse because they blur the distinctions, act as if to understand something should be to partially excuse it and lose sight of what is really important. In the criminal justice system for example, they regard a poor upbringing as some reason for a lighter sentence. Regardless of any sympathy we may feel for what individuals have been through we should never lose sight of the major priorities, in this case, the protection of the public.

Then we have the explanations by those who do not seem to know what they are explaining. A classic case was the statement by one of the Iraq hostages on the BBC news this morning:

In our view, the catastrophic levels of violence and the lack of effective protection of human rights in Iraq is inextricably linked to the US-led invasion and occupation.

Certainly without this idiotic invasion the Iraquis would still be firmly under the control of Saddam Hussein who would have swiftly put an end to any such nonsense but it seems to me that the above statement goes beyond this common sense statement of an obvious fact. It appears to imply that a root cause of the current violence is the US/British presence and the failures in their administration.

If the violence was mainly directed against the US and British forces it would be a valid point. If the country had been occupied for years and children had grown up against a background of violence initially directed against the US and British forces it would be valid to blame the latter for wider violence, for war has a brutalising effect. But as it is, just four years on with most of the violence directed by one Iraqi against another? Sorry, wrong explanation.

It is undoubtably true that the US led invasion opened a can of worms, but it didn't make the worms, it only took the lid off.

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