Category: Uncategorised

  • Why I don’t get invited to many parties

    An Italian restaurant in Glasgow, a few weeks ago. I’m there with my wife to meet friends I haven’t seen for months, and their friends who I haven’t seen for a few years. One of the latter group asks me about my dog, Megan. Me: She’s a monster. She eats shoes, digs up the lawn,…

  • “A guy who can take buttholes, midgets, and fried fish, and make a love story”

    This is a fantastic bit of journalism: David Foster Wallace goes to the Adult Video Awards. It’s a very long piece that’s hilarious and depressing in pretty much equal measure: Alex Dane is now telling Harold Hecuba about a stray dog she found and has decided to keep. She is excited as she describes the…

  • How to beat the banks

    You may be aware of this already, but if not: it might be worth suing your bank. If you’ve never paid a penalty charge in your life then you can ignore this post, but if you have then you might find this interesting. The Office of Fair Trading recently investigated credit card firms’ penalty charges,…

  • Flickrs of talent

    One of the reasons I stopped playing in a band (other than the obvious ones: geography, a face only a mother could love and the increasing feeling that once you’re over 30, you’re too old to rock) was frustration: while a lot of the stuff we did was really, really good, I never felt it…

  • Science finally catches up with my lifestyle

    Good news part one: For many men, a finding by Oregon researchers sounds too good to be true: an ingredient in beer seems to help prevent prostate cancer, at least in lab experiments. The trouble is you’d theoretically have to drink about 17 beers a day for any potential benefit. And no one’s advising that.…

  • Naked Civil Servants

    Prescott’s a lightweight, if this BBC story is anything to go by: Civil servants on Tyneside are under investigation amid allegations staff romped around naked in offices and had sex in toilets. One person at the Rural Payments Agency (RPA) in Newcastle has been sacked after officials began an investigation. The antics emerged after some…

  • Burns night

    There I was: sitting in the pub, minding my own business, when my leg started to burn. I hadn’t dropped a cigarette on it (smoking ban, remember?), nobody was using a magnifying glass to focus the sun’s rays on it, and it was safely esconced in a pair of jeans. Nevertheless, my leg was burning.…

  • One more from the archives: one of the Net’s best sites

    I’m not always nasty about sites… “There is a lot of blood in a human,” writes Rob Cockerham. “But not a huge, gruesome lake of blood. Just a small red pool.” Rob Cockerham of Cockeyed.com is interested in the big questions. Questions such as, how much fizz is inside a bottle of Coca-Cola? How much…

  • More archive silliness: God’s other cartoonist

    Most fighter pilots’ careers are fairly predictable: after a spell in the military they move into commercial aviation, or perhaps swap piloting planes for piloting a desk. However, Larry Van Pelt has taken a different road: with years of flying experience (including a spell as a test pilot) under his belt, he decided to spend…

  • Slagging off Jack Chick

    More from the archives: Cartoonists have brought us many wonderful things: superheroes and super villains, pets smashing each other with frying pans, and people who turn green when they’re angry. However, Jack Chick cares not for these things; instead, he wants to save us all from eternal damnation with his magic cartoon power. He means…