1/30/2003

Money for old hemp and the one minute CEO :  This guy has been commissioned to create a one minute firework 'event' in London tommorrow. What a great job. Make a firework display, only one minute long. Some bloke wrote a bunch of books about the "One Minute Maager", in which he described how to manage, funnily enough, in one minute. The guy was a genius - make loads of money based on a ludicrous notion that you wrote on the back of a fag packet in a strip bar in Dallas once.

I want to be a one minute CEO. Walk into a company with all the staff lined up and waiting and give the company a new strategic operational vision target, based on the time of day, the look of the people, and a vague guess about what the company may or may not produce:
"Sell pork bellies!"
"Sell a new line of singing birthday cards for the Chinese - there's loads of them."
"Heat the Indian Ocean, and plant underwater rice."
posted by Garreth at 1:25 PM

Property Ladder :  "Get on the property ladder," they say. "It's an investment - cheapest way to borrow and make money."
Now, clearly, money isn't real. Owning property isn't real. So you can buy bits of the moon from the septics because they put a pin in it first. Big deal. Can you buy a section of King Harold from the french because they shot an arrow into his eye? No, exactly.

So you're supposed to mortgage yourself into oblivion so that you can buy property, take those first faltering steps to being trapped on the property ladder. "My friend bought a house for two packets of crisps and a mars bar at the bottom of the property slump, and now she's sold it and has eighteen Lear jets and hand blown glass sex toys."
"The Rothschild empire is built on buying cheap land in war torn Europe and then flogging it many years later."

But what if you have to buy another property - it only works if you buy low and sell high, then live on a beach, waiting for a war to decimate property prices again. Now there's a thought. It's a trap otherwise. And when you die in your property, it'll be worth so much money that they'll be able to bury you in a fancy casket. Only there's no room, so they'll probably have to put you in a liquidizer and feed you to fancy pigs instead.

No siree bubba. Get into as much debt as you can while you're retired and young, then work until you die I say. The reverse of the "die with money principle". Here's how you do it. Get a credit card. Fraudulently if necessary - all you have to do in the UK is rifle through someone's garbage, and find a utility bill, and then fill in some forms and bingo. Get another credit card. Maintain a good credit rating with these fake cards over three years. Build your credit rating. Then get more credit cards, each with a slightly larger limit. Buy a boat. Sail it away. Sell it. Sit by a warm pool with lots of fancy drinks.

I have about six credit cards now, and more in the post. The amount of money I could borrow is rediculous, and enough to buy several small islands - allbeit in Canada.

But that's not the point. The thing about the property ladder is this - it's a con even if you want to get out. "All that money you spend on interior decorating will be a great investment when you come to sell your home."
Nonsense. I worked for eight hours yesterday. ("worked from home" but that's another story involving a Land Rover and a flat battery...). I then spent four hours painting. That's a day and a half's work - and what for? A day and a half's pay? No. I'm not a painter - I'm not even good at painting. It makes my eyes swell and my head hurt. And it is therapeutic, like bread-making. But my bread tastes cack, and I'd hate to be a baker. And all of the silly tools you have to buy - I'm sure the economics don't add up. See I can't even type straight any more. Paint fumes have reduced my brain from semolina to jelly. Ugh.

posted by Garreth at 1:10 PM

1/28/2003

Insomnia problems solved :  Simple. Take half a pint of vodka, about 40mg of Valium (available in the UK by telling any GP you are afraid of flying - you don't even need a flight ticket), 100mg of Dramamine (available in airport shopping to combat travel sickness), and as many melatonin tablets as you feel you can live through (available in US airports to counter the effects of jetlag), and half a pint of ginger ale or mixer of choice.

Add mixer to booze in pint glass, place by side of bed. Put concoction of pills down your neck, and slurp back cocktail. Lie down. Fret awhile that nothing is happening.

Awake sixteen hours later, and try to move. Relax, with a strange floaty sensation that not being able to move is okay. Awake two hours later. Succeed in sitting up.

Get out of bed two hours later. Exercise. Hallucinate mildly - try to ignore the little embers of ash flying at your eyes, they're not really there.

posted by Garreth at 10:03 AM

Guilty as charged :  Someone invented paint. Just as people suddenly decided that breadmaking machines were a grand idea, and that they should all be purchased one of them as a gift. The timing of this was fortuitous to say the least. The manufacturers of bread machines had only just completed their four year research, development, production, marketing and distribution cycle in time to get them on the shelves so that we could buy them as gifts.

Someone must have done the same with paint, many decades ago. "Why don't we have green walls instead of plaster? Instead of brick, instead of wattle and daub?" And now generations of dumbstruck unoriginal fools gladly lap up five litres of Dulux's finest and smear it all over their houses. For god's sake people, we used to do this with piss and trees, now we have to do it with brushes and walls. Where will it all end?

Too much paint fumes.


posted by Garreth at 3:58 AM

A little less conversation, a little more painting :  Now today children, we are going to look at functional alcoholism. Can anyone tell me what that means? Anybody? No? Well, functional alcoholism is a special gift that some people have. It means that they like to drink beers, wines and spirits, but can still carry on with their everyday duties, unlike the people who drink beers, wines and spirits and spend their time reeling from pub to pub fighting and shouting. Now, does anyone know anyone who fits the former description children?

Yes? Your uncle Ron you say? Can you give me an example of one of his everyday duties he has done while under the influence of the devils own brew? Painting the hall of his house? Really – and did the alcohol impair his painting skills? Ah, he said that he didn’t think so at the time did he. And what do you think of your uncle Ron’s painting? He painted six foot phalluses on the walls, and pictures of the sun and swear words? Actually the plural of phallus is phalli. And do you think painting six foot phalli on his walls is a good thing for your uncle Ron to do while necking cider? You do, do you? Well, I suppose it makes a difference from the usual magnolia, doesn’t it class.

posted by Garreth at 3:53 AM

1/24/2003

Worries End :  I figured it out – the inability to go to sleep, the tendency to make bad decisions all week. It all came to me when a fellow Friday reveller asked me if I knew a cure for insomnia. That was it – the Friday post-midnight Buckfast sharpener. Friday was going so well – I’d only had a double espresso to perk me up before the charade that we passed off as a pool playing evening began. One double espresso may not sound like much, but given that I’d been off caffeine for about three weeks, it certainly did the trick.


Coupled with the bargain jugs of nasty lager in the dodgy pool bar, the caffeine worked wonders for my wit, spit and repartee. As more combatants surrounded our table, the rules began to change. Each player seemed to have their own unique game swinging twists to be tossed into the ring of rules like so many car keys at a wife swapping party. Not the kind of regular pool cheat rules – like “two shots on the black”, or the method of breaking known as “the Loughborough stir”. My favourite new rule was introduced at a match winning point by Dipsomaniac Jim. DJ had both introduced the term dipsomania into my vocabulary, and proved his life-long membership of the Dipsomaniacs Unanimous club, aka the Successful Alcoholics by having a few solo jars before meeting us at the venue. The new pool rule he introduced involved only using one hand to pot the black.

A full-bodied meal followed, and some of the more adventurous tykes in the party partook of what can only be described as a devilishly hot curry. It was described on the Spicy World menu as “a devilishly hot curry”. All that can be said of the satanic sauce was that I was glad that not much passed my lips. And also glad that unlike some of the party there assembled, I did not much later in the early morning attempt to insert any stimulant suppositories where the sun not only refuses to shine, but doesn’t even send Christmas cards.

Remembering student days, I managed to inexplicably lay my hands on Spicy World’s only can of aerosol adhesive. This I pocketed with the simple intention of detonating it in an amusing, eyebrow singeing incident. Thanks to a few bottles of the finest house wine, this notion fortunately escaped my mind for the remainder of the evening cum early morning.

After a small ruckus concerning an evident lack of chocolate mints, orange segments were served to cleanse our palettes. Presumably a chocolate mint drought had been caused by overfishing by rogue Spanish chocolate eaters, or by the assembled party’s previous visit to Spicy World. A visit which in an obnoxious anglo-saxon type had previously suggested that the number of coins in the tip would be represented proportionately by the number of chocolate mints wrapped in shiny paper that were inserted into the palm of the said anglo-saxon type.

Reeling from the orange segment / chocolate mint debacle, the team split up, with the hardy perennials being forced to an un-licensed, late-licensed, off-license. There, the price of strong continental lager for the trio remaining made it economic sense to invest in a bottle of the abbots' foulest mix of (their own words) “inert ingredients” and a fortified wine base. Time’s winged chariot marched ruthlessly on, so that the well-meaning friends did not notice that they had violated the seldom spoken law that surrounded the drinking of Buckfast after midnight. Luckily, Victoria station staff shifted the gibbering mass, one of whom came out of the closet as being allergic to caffeine, from their less than comfortable perches on a train station bench.

If one thing strikes me from the evening (aside from being blighted by insmonia), it is that you should always follow the advice of any off-licence staff who sell you Buckfast. The advice we received saw us at Pacha – not the hip, loved-up pleasure club that we had possibly visited in Ibiza – but the haven for paedophiles that School Disco really is.

Presumptions about School Disco were shattered when we entered the doors with a set of brank spanking new polyester ties, and a complete lack of school uniform. Not the dirty old men (aside from us) that we expected at all. In fact, between the professional dancers shepherded on the diminutive stage by preposterously overlarge bouncers, and the obstreperously drunk men in shorts there were in fact, lots of people in their current school uniforms. They would even admit, when not even pressed, that they were underage drinkers from a given school. Or again they could have been professional school person imitators, paid for by our polyester tie donations to a school disco club that I am now apparently a member of.

Were it not for the mystical properties of Buckfast Tonic Wine, (although the monks diligently scribe that the word tonic in no way implies any medicinal properties on each bottle label with their ancient quills), I doubt that the circle of whirling limbs on display by our dancing team would have been quite so effective in clearing a circle, nay, a theatre of dance, amongst the schoolie gyrations.

Suffice it to say, after throwing out time at the club, a confused cab ride home followed to get into more trouble. A ride in a vehicle that afforded us sun roof access to the sixty mile per hour winds that the speeding taxi-bus generated. Somewhere around 4am, we arrived at a suitable place to spend the next three hours in and out of consciousness, babbling with the zeal, caffeine and "inert ingredients" of the Buckfast.

Damnit. It’s a week later and I still can’t sleep. Despite my appeals to ‘Cadet Claret’ which I figure must be better value than wine from far-off lands. A five GBP bottle of French wine must be better than a five GBP bottle of wine from Chile. Have you ever worked in logistics? It costs a shed load to move anything anywhere. So I figure they probably import wage slaves from places like Chile to France to make them work in the vineyards, and then make them work off their passage fare through debt bondage. Hey, maybe that’s unethical. And neither the wine, nor the exploitation help me sleep at night.
posted by Garreth at 8:56 AM

Betcha :  How big would the bet at Ladbrokes have to be on a war (or as Ian Wilson might say ‘an attack’) on Iraq starting after a certain date, to make sure that the gambling mafia would nobble ‘president’ Bush and feed him something that would slow it down?
posted by Garreth at 8:18 AM

Errata martyr :  According to the feedback the management received from some of the more attentive readers, Big Bill Werbeniuk did not slip down a mere 24 pints of super strength lager in his last professional snooker match, as was stated yesterday. Apparently it was 28 pints. Heck, give us a break - most people have difficulty figuring out how many drinks they have had on a given session, probably topping out at between five and fifteen pints. But the difference between 24 and 28 is surely a tough one to remember. Except that because Bill was a professional snooker player, aided and abetted by booze to allow him to stop shaking enough to perform his sport of choice, he could write his lager off against his tax bill. Imagine trying to keep all of those receipts on a 28 pint bender. What a guy.
posted by Garreth at 3:47 AM

1/23/2003

Famous quote of the day :  "I've had 24 pints of extra strong lager and eight double vodkas and I'm still not drunk."

Which professional sportsman who passed away recently uttered these immortal words, and once claimed to have drunk 64 pints in one session? According to Popbitch's weekly newsletter, it was Big Bill Werbeniuk, one of Canada's finest exports. What a guy.
posted by Garreth at 6:35 AM

Don't Worry, Be Happy :  When I was lickle, I had a book for collecting autographs. It wasn't my idea. Neither was collecting the autograph of Harvey Smith, a celebrated show jumping man in a red blazer. Heck, show jumping is pants. Harvey Smith was good at something pants, big deal. And he can sign his own name on demand. Whoopee. So, as the most important person in my life, I started signing my own autograph book, with witty and amusing poems. I even let my sister sign it, despite her being a girl, and liking show jumping, which is pants. She signed it:

You die if you worry
You die if you don't
So why worry at all?

Wise words for a seven year old. But did I heed them? My arse, did I. Last night, I couldn't sleep. I was worrying about the fact that my mind was racing. I was, in fact, worrying that I was worrying. "Why am I worried? Is it work?"
I like to think it isn't work. I had an appraisal at work last week. There were boxes on a form that asked what my one, two and five year career goals were. My appraisor and I agreed that I should leave them blank, as I didn't have any. In the box labelled "Where do you want to be in six months time?", my appraisor suggested, "On a beach?". I nodded my complicity. So I figure I can't be that worried about work.

Now I'm worried that I don't know what I'm worried about. Neurotic? I don't think so. But the only way to stop worrying is to stop thinking. And the only way to do that is, as Will Self, Phil Temples and Ramon Salter put it:

"Over the past couple of hours a lot of rebarbative, ulcerated and embittered people had been working hard at bedding their resentments down in sensory-deprivation tanks full of alcohol."
posted by Garreth at 4:44 AM

1/22/2003

Moans, Phones, and Bones :  Sometimes, your mobile phone is so bad that you want to leave the country. Not in the kind of "I'm ashamed of my mobile phone because it's three months out of date" vanity mobile phone usage, but in a "It works so unreliably that it is ruining my social life" way.

But sometimes vanity phone hits even the most cynical, neo-luddites. A few days before Christmas, whilst out shopping, I bought one of those fancy Nokia phones. Word on the Santa grapevine was that it was better to give than to receive. Not wanting to miss out on the pleasure of either, I bought the phone and gave it to myself. A huge exercise in post-rationalisation followed the totally unnecessary purchase: the phone was cheap, my old one didn't receive calls, it was a great excuse to switch service provider (because T-Mobile have dreadful customer service, a crap web site, and obscure pricing). And a phone that isn't even splash-proof would be an asset on the beach, so that women in bikinis can take photos of me frolicking - like in the adverts.

The fact of the matter is that the phone was only dirt cheap because the guy at the phone shop kept urging me to harangue T-Mobile customer service - a top tip it turns out. With just a few well timed complaints, three phonecalls, and a bit of judicious lying, T-Mobile were begging me with pounds to stay on their network. (see? I'm still making excuses for buying a toy phone that takes photos, sends email and lights cigarettes)

The best reason (apart from being able to take photos of your genitals in the toilets "by mistake") for having a camera in your phone is that it can help jog your memory of what the be-jeesus you were up to the night before. For example, I found an entry form for a competition in my trouser pockets today. This simple piece of paper reminded me that I was pissing several bottles of wine against the porcelain (second most inexpensive on the list - stops you looking too cheap) in a pub on Sunday where there was a competition at some point in the afternoon.

However, Sunday's photo evidence from my phone is more compelling: I can tell you that I was in the toilet of the Bush Bar wearing a nightie on my head just before 9pm. I started writing a text message at 10:07pm when I had absent-mindedly lost my drinking companion between bars. And I was on Uxbridge Road at 11:30pm, admiring a street cleaning truck. It really does help to piece together the puzzle of where the time and money went, without having to wait until your bank statement comes through.
posted by Garreth at 6:25 AM

1/21/2003

Open letter from the Right Honourable President of the Democratic Republic of Hoton: :  As democratically elected president of the “Invade France Now!” party, it seems that minor changes must be made to party policy. Now, cynics amongst you may heckle and hackle, saying that this great party always revises its policies after being chosen to represent you all, and never keeps the promises upon which these elections are won. Well let us be quite clear in this matter – you cynics can piss off and go and live in France, wear onions around your necks, and cut the delicate tissues of the roofs of your mouths on crunchy baguette crusts. We don’t care for your 'black hat' thinking.

The policy in question, and some would say, one of the fundamental policies upon which this great party was founded, is clearly written on page two of the party manifesto (right after the childhood photo of me firing cloves of garlic at Calais from a helicopter gunship). The policy I refer to, is of course is that at every decision point in the process of governing the lives of the people of this republic we must ask the question: “Does this decision affect our ability to amass an army and invade France at the earliest possible opportunity?”

Now the party acknowledges that this question should still be employed as the sharpened analytical scalpel which shaves bad decisions from true justice. It is clear to see that the question provides tremendous insight to both the state and the individual when faced with a dilemma, such as, “Should I hang bloody cattle carcasses in the centre of large hoops above the ocean in an attempt to coerce great white sharks to perform entertaining aerobatic feats in case the dolphins get tired?” Clearly, performing sharks detract from the war effort, and as such can be dismissed as an unnecessary extravagance. Cattle carcasses are much better employed as snail food, giving rise to unusual diseases and psychotropic organisms in the food chain. This kind of subversive food chain warfare can be likened to chemotherapy – it may be killing us slowly every time we scoff a snail, but it kills the French people faster as they gorge themselves on mutant invertebrates.

This founding anti-gaul policy has to be perverted for once though. We have a more serious threat to the nation than the non-invasion of France. It has come to the attention of our intelligence operatives that weapons of mass destruction are being produced in England. It would be folly to label the English folk as evil treacherous villains, when they themselves are largely ignorant to the devil in their back garden, disguised as he is, in the robes of the clergy.

Weapons of mass destruction is a slight misnomer – the chemical weapons produced by a gang of retched renegades are only active on humans – it would take a vast amount of the gloopy liquid, known as BTW, to do any collateral damage to buildings. Instead, it destroys the sanity, society, and possibly even the salinity of people who come into contact with a critical dose. When our operatives tried to penetrate the veil of ignorance which disguises BTW, they found a folklore and mythology surrounding it, akin to a substandard plot from a 1980s horror film:

“Never drink it after midnight”
“Someone I know drank more than the one bottle limit, and ended up in a mental institution”
“Someone in Manchester drank some and it made him chop off his leg and break shop windows with it”
“It’s made by mad monks who live until they’re 150 years old, and they make it taste like Ribena so that they can stomach three bottles a day”


There is some scientific truth which could have been the basis for some of these rumours. It is made by people who live at an Abbey, and dress as monks. BFT does contain more caffeine in a single 25ml shot than an entire can of Red Bull – and it does come in 750ml bottles, so drinking it after midnight or in large quantities will make the ingester quite likely to go postal. Lastly, it’s common name – “Buckfast Tonic Wine” gives it an air of respectability which allows it to be dispersed into the wider off-licence network alongside authentic tonic wines such “Sanatogen Tonic Wine”. This dispersion avoids a build up of the critical mass of BFT in any given location. (also known as "Buckfast Toxic Mind", "Bucky", and "Vluck" when combined with vodka)

But the situation could easily turn to disaster. All it would take is for the fundamentalist monks to collect 226 bottles of BFT in one place, open the tops, and boom – mass insanity would spread to a radius of 26 nautical miles – as fast as an average person infected with BFT could run in around 40 minutes.

We must stop these monks by any means necessary. And then invade France.

posted by Garreth at 7:03 AM

1/20/2003

Ebola outbreak in Shepherds Bush, London :  Now, Sunday is definitely the new Friday, and from what evidence we have of yesterday's festival of drinking, we can be sure that fun was had. Here are the pieces of the puzzle that we have so far:

• No scarf, but a negligee keeping my neck warm (empty)
• Photos of a street cleaning lorry timestamped at 23:35 - over an hour after public house closing time
• A strange, but well lyriced Bloodhound Gang song going round my head (
• Ebola suspected as agent of putrefaction in my innards
• An inability to get out of bed for three hours after my alarm clock started chiming - curiously enough from downstairs
• Money in my wallet - most mysterious
• Complete inability to remember anything about getting home
• Missing lemon pie from kitchen
• Missing skin from knuckle of left hand

1/17/2003

Three feet high and rising :  Brown is the new black. Black is the new brown. Heck, black is the old black, black is going to be the new black, whatever. Put it this way, you don't film things in brown and white, and expect them to be classics. Regardless of this, Sunday is the new Friday. Only you can start earlier, and it lasts longer. And getting PD Mulhooned on a Sunday somehow feels more decadent, dangerous, demonic. And rather than having a huge hangover on your own time, i.e. on a Saturday, you get to have it on someone else's time (assuming you work a Monday to Friday job). Maybe I was unobservant, but I never noticed teachers with hangovers on a schoolday. And one hopes that commercial airline pilots aren't hungover and sleepy.The shocking revelation that American Airlines starting salary for a domestic commerical pilot is 16,000 USD made me wonder whether they try to pull double shifts for extra bucks though.

If you were a military pilot, hangovers might not be a problem - you get free 'go pills' to keep you going. More accurately, you get free 'speed pills' to keep you speeding. Many young folk want to be fighter pilots when they grow up. I know I did. But if they'd have said that you get free narcotics too, well no-one would ever want to be a fireman would they?
posted by Garreth at 10:57 AM

Load Tray 2 Plain A4 :  Vocoders in songs are crap. Anyone who has a pop memory that reaches back to Cher's "Do You Believe" will no doubt agree. And without being too bigotted, not many of the people I know can think of any great French pop, apart from the Vanessa Paradis rendition of "Jo le taxi". But I just heard Air's "Sex Born Poison", and my preconceptions have been shattered.
posted by Garreth at 8:17 AM

1/15/2003

Burma Lions? Rumba Loin? Unarm Boil? Guess whos been at the anagram machine :  Now the good thing about being a beginner in a full contact martial art such as Wu Shu Kwan must be the being kicked in the head. So much so that one pays for the privilege. Last night, there were some new punters at the Hammersmith class. People who didn't pay heed to the barked words of the instructress, "Don't hit them too hard!"

I would have forgiven one particularly light-footed combatant his deafness. But his luck sure ran out last night, oh yes buster. After he'd got tired of beating me about the chin, he had a go at kicking seven shades of sunday out of me. After his deafness, that was to be his second, and final mistake. A mistake that I could not forgive.

Suffice it to say that the bout had to be stopped shortly afterwards, and it was my unwitting opponent that was struggling to walk away. Ha! He played right into my vulnerable defenseless beginner trap. He'd hurt his foot after kicking me too hard.

I must admit, my abdomen and legs hurt a fair bit today, but it was a victory nevertheless.

"Oil rub man," as my anagram machine would say.
posted by Garreth at 11:51 AM

Dr. Dictionary Word of the Year: Dipsomania :  If you, like me, are keen to improve your vocabulary, you might have joined a 'vocabulary building daily email list' such as the one provided by Dr. Dictionary. You may even have joined it with friends and exchanged emails, testing your new vocabulary:

Dear Madge, you slugabed in your manse, I hope you are not still a dudgeon about my querulous behaviour in the gloaming

Despite all the efforts of the good Doctor (and believe me, I've tried non-doctor sets and they're not as good), I find out the best word ever from a school chum - dipsomania:

Dear Client, I apologise for my tardy arrival at our project kick off meeting, but I had an attack of Dipsomania while travelling to your premises, as I passed a popular public lounge.

posted by Garreth at 4:22 AM

1/14/2003

New offer :  Due to the overwhelming success of the "I'll be your house-sitter in London" campaign, I have now tired of living in other people's luxury london lofts and apartments.

An all new offer, for you the lucky reader is to offer me accomodation in any of the following places anytime after March 2003: Guatemala, Honduras, Cambodia, Antarctica, New Zealand.

In return for offering me a place to stay, you will get: someone to get drunk and shout at the sky with, this journal broadcast from your house, and a guest spot in the sports pages at the back of the site.

Offers by email to the address on the left.
posted by Garreth at 1:06 PM

When two tribes go to war :  Remember Frankie Goes To Hollywood? Relax, don't do it, when you're going to bomb? Looks like another vi-et-naaaam sir. Quite an interesting article about US War Games being lost by the evil empire.
posted by Garreth at 4:34 AM

1/10/2003

Fraud - it's all a cruel trick anyway :  The 'world's biggest frauds' were documented in a television programme last night. The narrator detailed how the heads of WorldCom and Enron had been engaged in covert and unpleasant deals. These deals, it claimed, were designed to push up their companies' share prices. The company heads were given options as incentives. The value of these options increased with company share price, so the heads would try to artificially boost the share price to pocket more cash.

Enron made money out of moving gas about or something. The narrator showed how money was moved from Citibank to a bogus company. The money was then used by the bogus company to buy gas from Enron - seemingly increasing Enron profit and turnover, and hence boosting Enron share price. The money was later given back from Enron to the bogus company, and from there to Citibank, with interest. The narrator explained that most people would understand this as a loan, whereas these transactions were actually fraudulent. The transactions were disguised as gas sales. The narrator complained that money changed hands without gas changing hands. He continued, saying nothing was actually produced, yet something was sold. This was a very bad thing.

This is where I take issue with the story. The world is full of people making money without producing anything. Look at currency traders. As far as I can see, their job is to make money by swapping things back and forth - yen in one hand and dollars in the other. How ridiculous is that? Imagine trying to teach children about money:

"Okay class, imagine many centuries ago, you could swap five ducks for one pig. Money is like that only it's green. So today, this little girl can give this boy five ducks and the boy will give back fifty pieces of green paper to this litle girl. Money is bits of green paper. Now. Some people are allowed to print green paper..."
"Miss, can I print green paper?"
"No, Raphael, only certain countries' banks are allowed to print money..."
"Miss, can I be a country?"
"No, Margeret, you can't be a country.."
"Miss, the Vatican's a country, and my dad says that only the Pope and his cronies live there."
"Barnaby, you're dad is almost right, but before you ask, you can't be Pope..."
"Can I be Pope, miss?"
"No, Margeret, only old men can be Popes. Back to money. Money is about allowing people to trade..."
"My dad's a trader. He makes money out of swapping yellow money for green money. Did people use to do that centuries ago? Cos if they did, they could just keep swapping ducks and pigs. So if a man took five ducks, he could get one pig. Then swap that for six ducks, and then swap that for two pigs. Then those two pigs could be eleventy ducks..."
"Not exactly, Margeret..."
"Does there have to be two people to do the swapping, or could one man do it on his own in a field? He could start in the morning in his field with one pig, and by noon-time, he could have generated hundreds of pigs. Where do they all come from?"
"No there has to be more people for that to work. You also need a market."
"What's a market miss? My mummy says that a market is where some people go in with six ducks, and come out with only four ducks."
"Yeah, my daddy says that markets need losers for there to be winners, and nowadays, we call them share holders."
"Exactly Gemima. That's why your teacher is an anarcho-syndicalist."

Boycott the dollar I say. See what happens.
posted by Garreth at 9:46 AM

1/08/2003

Press releases Ron Malibu Labs January 2003 :  EatMeNot Patches

Tired of New Year resolutions petering out before the end of January?
Desperate to shift that Yuletide girth, and shed those pounds?
Hey - I know you've tried crash diets, magazine workouts. I know you've joined clubs, but let's face it: food is too nice. So allow me to introduce the revolutionary development from Ron Malibu Labs:

It's exactly like a topical nicotine patch - which tests have scientifically proven can help reduce the number of cigarettes you need to get you through the day. Only with food. There are two variants, depending on the results you want to be enjoying in less than seven days, guaranteed.

EatMeNot Foodfree - this is the starter patch, which decreases your appetite by slowly releasing a blend of sugar and harmless herbal narcotics through the skin

EatMeNot Ferocious - this is for people who want the most out of their January weightloss regime. Through a combination of slow release amphetamines and nutrients, you'll be teeth-grinding your way through those pounds, and subconsciously tapping your feet until those thighs are like tensed steel. And with some users experiencing rhythmic abdominal convulsions, they can get those washboard abs they've only seen on television

We all know that nicotine patches release you from a cycle of cigarette dependency, and wean you onto patches. EatMeNot is the same. Give up eating and feeling slothful, and just slap on an EatMeNot patch today - remember the sooner you start, the richer we get.

PickMeUpSlapMe

Headache? Tired? Hangover? Don't fancy going to work? Try PickMeUpSlapMe - the analgesic coffee from Ron Malibu Labs.
posted by Garreth at 8:56 AM

1/07/2003

New competition :  Open to everyone with the weird-ass plugin that this movie needs. What is this blushing bride doing a charade of? Oh you might need to turn your computer on its side to figure it out. Answers on a postcard to the usual address for a surprise prize.

Any tips on how to get the movie the right way up and not requiring the plug-in gratefully received too. Ta.
posted by Garreth at 4:53 AM

Someone needs to Shepherd Bush :  Talking of North Korean president (King Kong 2?) to the Washington Post, 'President' Bush declared, "I loathe Kim Jong Il! ... I wonder how the civilised world can allow Kim to starve his own people and torture his critics in prison camps." Ha! Given that people in the civilised world are starting to learn to read - how can these same people allow Mr. Bush to feed his own people fast food, and torture people who aren't even critics in Guatanamo? (Although torture by air-conditioning is not what the movies lead me to believe is the limit of sadistic prison guards with shiny boots and personality disorders). A recent survey (I won't quote my sources, because Mr. Bush doesn't have to either, and no, that claim won't be substantiated either), shows that consumption of fast food is the best corellated indicator of poverty in the US and Europe. So stop torturing all those people in trailer parks.

Conspiracy theory of the day: The growing resentment of Mr. Bush US foreign policy (it's not terribly big or clever to single out people to hate - just effective) is probably some measure by the people who run the world to cause some sort of bloody global revolution in which the middle class and non-slave labour of the world can be annihilated. Face it, everyone knows that the world is over-crowded (well they tell us it is). And the people who worship false idols like Texas Tea / Black Gold are running out of places to run their third cars, so we should mow down a few civilians, and crush their bones to make tarmac. Maybe I grew up on too many (post- ) apocalyptic visions, but I thoroughly expect people to be building shanty towns on deserted highways before long.

See? That's what you get when you wake up tired and it's snowing and you can't find your gloves for the bike ride to work. I'm sure there was a conspiracy last year to keep waking people up in the night to make them tired and irritable so that they would overthrow the New World Order and form some kind of Old Skool World Order.
posted by Garreth at 4:16 AM

1/06/2003

Neet oot :  Top tips for going to reunions with people you use to live on a tropical island with:

• have a few drinks before leaving the house. Cider if possible
• get there early
• go to a tanning salon to make it look like you've not been mostly decomposing in dank, dark London
• Turn up at the venue about two hours before your chums and station yourself at the bar
• amuse yourself by striking up a conversation with a member of the bar staff along the lines of: "Pint of Stella, please.", "Two pounds twenty.", "Thanks"
• Try the conversation on other bar staff over the coming hours, until your chums arrive
• Drink like billy-ho, completely fail to have any kind of conversation with anyone
• Argue at length with any bouncers who won't let you into their clubs, nodding much of the time to ellicit an air of agreement, without inadvertantly being really patronising
• Go to the nearest WalkAbout just before 2am so that you can wind up some inebriate and burly Australians when one of your companions pushes them off a podium she wants to dance on
• Predictably tell the hotdog vendor outside that you used to sell hotdogs on the streets, and cajole him mercilessly for discounted dogs
• fail to stay out of bed for more than a few hours the following day

Do you, Ron Malibu, take these twins to be your lawfully wedded Daves? :  What happens at transvestite weddings? Who wears what - do people try to upstage the bride and turn up in purple satin wedding dresses? At least in a goth wedding, all the wedding dresses would be black or white. Top tip - don't innocently look up "transvestite wedding photos" if you work in an open plan office and don't want lots of chicks with dicks running around your screen. Depending on what you do in your open plan office of course. Perhaps you work in a transvestite wedding agency or something.

But I digress.

(Normally at tangents. But sometimes straight backwards in the opposite direction. Or sometimes I don't digress in any direction at all. Sometimes I digress in an outward spiral, and its only when I hit the walls that I start to regress / ingress / eagress. And sometimes it could be a strictly curving arc of digression which comes full back on itself, and at that point, progress can be once again made)

Some friends had a wedding last week, which was nice. No-one upstaged the beautiful buxom bride - the only attendee who was in the transgendered ball-park kept himself to a demur three piece suit, and no-one said anything. Weddings are a bit strange. Personally, I think being divorced suits better than being married (not for everyone of course). The main feature about being divorced is being able to travel to bars in the US, sit on bar stools and strike up slurred and embittered conversations about ex-wives with total strangers. To be fair, I don't think it's just the US that this happens in - last time it happened to me was in Moscow. Moscow, Russia. Actually, thinking about it, no-one would call a city in the US Moscow, would they? Or Baghdad. Or Washington Junior III. Except maybe the last one.

"Why do people hate America?" Not just a topic of conversation I used to break the standard social rules about not mentioning 'politics, religion' or the other one that I always forget and thus can't deliberately mention. It's a book I'm reading too. And an essay. And probably a t-shirt, and a popular global theme. However, I managed to single out the US citizen in the wedding party, and generally gibber on about religion and politics for a while. She was very understanding. But darn it, what is the third thing you're not supposed to talk about?

Anyway, Being the sort of person who has to be last person to beds at a party, the reception ended with just three of us. Having invented new dimensions to which charades can be taken too. I should have chosen "Why do people hate america?" but I had exceeded the vodka and ginger limit for useful participation in team games. More of my energy was directed at asking indiscretely about the unspoken story of the groom and the twins in the jacuzzi. He didn't marry any twins. Although it's probably possible in some places. Even if they are in a jacuzzi at the time.
posted by Garreth at 11:32 AM

1/02/2003

Bruised hands and livers :  Many would be drinkers turn into would be pugilists at the stroke of tequila o'clock (usually about three hours after beer o'clock - depending on locale). What they don't realise is that fighting is actually quite hard when you are drunk, a fact that bouncers use to their advantage in drunk-baiting. In an interview a few years ago, one bouncer described his favourite techniques for humiliating piss-artists: it relies largely upon grabbing the victim and spinning them around several times, resulting in confusion and as easy dazed target for pummeling. (This is very similar to the 'helmet grab and windmill' performed by London cab drivers on petulant motorcycle couriers. Key differences are the fact that most drunks don't wear helmets, and taxi drivers won't hit helmet wearing couriers in the face after disorienting them)

Recent studies in Stone Henge, put a series of would be aggressors through their paces with pads and gloves. Limited, and slightly slurred training was given, as the cross-dressing participants swedged and swiped at the pad holding instructor. Photos of the study are included for reference.

The following conclusions were drawn:

• drunken punching is quite tiring, but quite good
• punching should not be carried out near crockery and paintings nailed to walls of rented cottages
• wearing a dress doesn't affect punching power
• violence is a poor substitute for showing tits and ass to your friends and the camera
• Deleting pictures of your genitals is easier from a digital camera left unattended over night, than from regular cameras