President Bush congratulates Bono on the discovery of a lost napkin
Reuters P.A.: President Bush today congratulated the legendary singer, Bono Vox after Mr. Vox found a lost napkin during a presidential lunch.
Bono was meeting the president as part of his recent "Send a Wok to Every Child in Finland" campaign. The duo were on the cusp of tucking into a large bowl of spaghetti when presidential aids noticed that Mr. Bush was without a napkin. Sources state that, on hearing the news, Bono dived under the table and began searching. Half an hour later, Bono still hadn't found what he was looking for.
It was only when President Bush fell to his knees and led the gathered news circle in spontaneous prayer that Bono emerged victorious, clutching the napkin, an old fork and a small portion of stale bread roll. Bush kept the napkin. The other items were donated to charity. President Bush later read out the following statement, live on television:
April 12th, 2006. | 12:00 pm cet. | Thoughts: 4 | Phylum: Thnup | Permalink
I.C. Suckers spots a horse!
Tags: business model emerging markets
Well I woke up this morning. I thought, the morning, the beginning of the day, it's like a new customer fresh off the bus. You've got to squeeze it for all the juice you can get. Some people don't like mornings. Not me. Heh heh.
I threw myself out of bed, jumped out the window and went for a Supremacy Stroll around Bucharest. OK, so the place is a little shabby - actually, I'd say well south of shabby - but the important thing is that EVERYONE has carrier bags. And they're using 'em too. Using 'em to carry stuff in. It got me thinking about the carrier bag mind-word-brand-concept, but I can't remember what I was thinking about now.
OK, so I'm out there and I see these guys with a horse and cart. One of them is shouting something. It sounds like "Fiaaaaarebleck Bleeeaaaaarooooh", and I'm curious. So I whip out my portable Geiger translator (I never go for a Supremacy Stroll without it) and it reads out that these guys are looking for iron. This is what they do: They go around the streets, with a horse, shouting out for iron.
Straight away, without losing one second, I thought: "What in the heck kind of business model is that?".
I mean, if, and I'm talking IF here, I happened to have some old lump of iron laying around the house, I don't think I'm going to wait for some guy with a horse to chance along and maybe take it from me. No, I'm just going to bury it in the garden. So these guys are loosing out because they haven't discovered my super dollop number 3: Pull Your Customer.
One word: Pamphlets. These guys need to get their act together and print up some pamphlets that say something like:
Am I wrong? Tell me, am I wrong?
April 11th, 2006. | 8:30 am cet. | Thoughts: 4 | Phylum: I.C. Suckers | Permalink
Romania: Kleptocracy or Plutocracy?
Tags: Romania kleptocracy plutocracy
Romania: kleptocracy or plutocracy?
In a recent interview on the subject, Toddy Jungfrau, Professor of International Relations at the University of Zurich stated that corruption in Romanian society has reached such levels that the state itself may be considered kleptocratic. Or at least he would have done if someone hadn't nicked his chair.
In a letter of response, Ghinion Spaga, a representative of the Romanian House of Reclamations stated that if anyone else suggested that he was a Kleptocrat, he'd have to challenge them to a fight, because this would be the same as if they'd insulted his mother or horse.
Later that week, Toddy and Ghinion squared off against each other in a field at the back of Ghinion's house. Everyone took bets on the fight which was broadcast live on national television in a special programme hosted by Stefan Banica. Ghinion won and got to dance the tango with Andreea Marin as a special reward. Toddy was thrown into a giant bowl of mamaliga. Everyone appluaded.
If I had to choose between a kleptocracy or a plutocracy, I'd definitely choose a kleptocracy. I mean, who wants to be ruled by Mickey Mouse's pet dog? He can hardly even string a sentence together, let alone run a complex fincancial transaction involving concerete and Mercedes Benz. Him and his cronies: Fifi the Peke, Dinah the Dachshund, and Ronnie the St. Bernard Puppy - they're just a gang of illiterate thieves. No one would want them in charge.
April 8th, 2006. | 8:42 am cet. | Thoughts: 4 | Phylum: Life in Romania | Permalink
The women, they will love you like drunken bears
Tags: Antonio Banderas Diavolo
Hi there! My name is Antonio Banderas and I want to talk to you about my bodily fluids. Too many men are ashamed of their fluids. They are right to be. I say to these men, you are weak, you are pathetic, just like your fluids. Is no surprise. But I can help you. You can buy my fluids for a special discount. Women will love you like crazy wild mice. Believe me.
Every morning, when I wake up, I have a group of virgins scrape off my fluids with a trowel. The resulting slime is put into a bag and sent to my big factory in a lorry. At the factory, it is processed and purified and distilled down to its pure essence of liquid magnetism. This is put into a bottles with some alcohol and tree bark and sent to chemists all over the world so that all men can enjoy my body’s emissions as much as I do. I enjoy the feeling of immense power this gives me. It is like holding so many little eggs in a bag, but the bag ... it is mine.
Some of you might be thinking that this Mr. Banderas must be a bendy kind of man to let other men cover their bodies in his fluids. Perhaps, you think there is something wrong with my brain? Perhaps you think I am some kind of slug? Huh? HUH? Well, let me tell you, Mr. Big shot, I am the one with all of the women in MY wardrobe, NOT you. You get the picture? Maybe I should just keep all my fluids to myself, no? I should just let cheap bastards like you rot, alone in your little rooms, huh?
Enough. This is no time for war. You buy my fluids and maybe I forgive you. We play a game of football some time and drink a little beer and then you can thank me for changing your life. Women will love you like drunken bears. Believe me.
April 6th, 2006. | 11:20 am cet. | Thoughts: 6 | Phylum: Thnup | Permalink
The Master and Margarita
Tags: The Master and Margarita Mikhail Bulgakov
If the devil were to take a holiday, he'd probably choose Moscow. That's the basic premise of Mikhail Bulgakov's book 'The Master and Margarita'.
One has to admire Bulgakov's book, not only because it works brilliantly on so many levels but because he wrote it in the Stalinist Moscow of the 1930's. At that time, doing anything other than sitting in a chair was highly dangerous and writing especially so. Bulgakov knew that the book would never be published in his lifetime, so he wrote whatever the hell he wanted to and generally got away with it.
The devil, as a character, has got to be interesting. It's not advisable to call the devil Graham and make him an accountant with an interest in hub caps, for example. The greatness of Bulgakhov's devil is that he's not just evil, he's ironic. If there was one thing that Stalin's Moscow couldn't take, it was a joke.
Unreason is always at war with the rational, and justly so, for if the war ceased then both would find their continued existence somewhat pointless. Bulgakov's book charts the battleground and is, unsurprisingly, biased towards the irrational. If you spent your life surrounded by filing cabinets, you would be too. So that's the book in a line: a smiley face drawn on a filing cabinet. Read it and sleep.
April 4th, 2006. | 9:30 pm cet. | Thoughts: 4 | Phylum: Books | Permalink
The Lithuanian Creeping Badger of Despair.
The happy-go-lucky Danish philosopher, Johannes Climacus, coined the expression 'Angst' to describe that profound and deep-seated spiritual condition of insecurity and despair which is felt, of necessity, by every free human being. Before this, nobody knew what to call it. Most people just called it 'phhhhhh....'.
In the 20th century, the psychologist and entrepreneur, Toddy Jungfrau, took out a patent on angst and charged everyone in Germany a 10 pfennig angst tax. He used this income as a source of funding to build a huge underground cave and fill it with scientists. Their job was to isolate the bit of the brain that causes angst. In 1934 they announced that it was called the 'Jungfrau Globule', that it was shaped like a peanut and that it hopped all over the table when they filled it with electricity. But most people were too worried about their taxes to care.
Needing a more profitable use for angst, Toddy decided to turn it into a range of supermarkets. Some of them can still be found in what is today called 'Romania' but these are not really supermarkets at all. They are actually part of a huge experiment run by Lithuanian scientists to see how the human being reacts in conditions of extreme terror and confusion.
Like, for instance, when you want to go and buy some apples and there is NO ONE there to weigh the apples for you, so you have to WAIT AND WAIT AND WAIT and does anyone turn up? NO! So, you think "Fuck the apples, I'll buy some salami instead"
And then you go to the salami counter and when the girl there FINALLY DECIDES SERVE YOU, she just shrugs her shoulders and tells you that they don't have that SALAMI, and obviously doesn't care that you had REALLY BEEN LOOKING FORWARD to eating that salami for your dinner and NOW YOU CAN'T.
meeplemeeplemeeplemeeple meep meep.
April 2nd, 2006. | 7:30 pm cet. | Thoughts: 4 | Phylum: Thnup | Permalink
Bonesteed's Gamble and the World of the Future
Tags: science fiction scientists literature
Science fiction is what happens when scientists try to write. The practice is forbidden by most scientific institutions, but the long hours and strict emphasis on rationality causes some scientists to seek refuge in haiku’s, prose poems and novels. The results are almost always rejected by publishing houses and the scientists responsible sacked from their positions and ridiculed. They can thereafter only find work as janitors. At the age of thirty, their lives are terminated by big balls of electricity.
The year is 2136 and no one is safe. The world is controlled by science and all forms of art are banned except for Yanni. Hardeck Bonesteed is in trouble for having written a poem...
For writing this, Bonesteed is ruthlessly hunted by the thought police, English teachers and tax collectors. Will he be caught, or will he live on and make the world a safer place for freedom loving menfolk, their wives and their families? To know the answer to this, you will have to pay to see the movie.
"Bonesteed's Gamble" is currently in post production at Warner Brothers. Directed by Ridley Scott and starring Harrison Ford, it is tipped to be the film of the summer for 2006. In a recent interview, Harrison Ford said that he found working with Scott to be a "very confusing" process, but that this was great because Ford specialises in playing very confused people.
March 29th, 2006. | 11:59 pm cet. | Thoughts: 8 | Phylum: Media | Permalink
A short story based on a Romanian coffee advertisement
Tags: Romania coffee advertisement
George is a highly successful ball-bearing manufacturer from Bucharest. He lives for nothing but his ball bearings. That's why, as he often tells his employees, he can afford a huge apartment with lots of flowers in the center of the city - and they can't.
Apart from ball bearings, there are three things that are central to George's life: clean shirts, women and coffee. He often dreams about them, sometimes together and sometimes separately.
One day, George finds himself with a bit of free time at the factory, so he decides to put on a clean shirt and go home to make a cup of coffee. As he steps into the building he notices a young woman trying to open a confusing door. In order to assist her, he whips out his very best chat up line:
It nearly works, except that the women just babbles at him. She's a foreigner! Disaster! No wonder she finds all the doors so difficult to open. George is left alone, standing in the hall, like a monkey, as her own door slams in his face. Existential despair threatens to close in on him, as if it were a hundred thousand ball bearings running out of control down a hill from his distantly remembered childhood. So he decides to have a delicious cup of freshly brewed coffee, hand picked by shepherds from the foothills of India, freeze dried and brought direct to your doorstep, in a lorry. Yummy.
What George doesn't know is that his new neighbor has a psychological condition which renders her completely hypnotized by the smell of coffee. She's been banished to Bucharest all the way from Spain because the people of her village believe she's a witch. And while he's standing on his balcony, enjoying his shirt, she's discreetly sniffing his musty emissions.
The knock on his door comes moments later. George, who has absolutely no friends, is curious to know who is there so he opens the door. Its the babbling woman again, except this time there's a strange glint in her eye and she keeps pointing at George's trembling mug. He wonders if, maybe, she's after something.
... quips George, and in she comes, running to the kitchen and tearing open his coffee bags with all the free abandon of a wild one from Andalucia. Embarrassed, George retreats to his balcony and hopes she'll go away. But she appears soon after, and worse, she's made a cup of her own.
Three hours later, it starts to rain. George asks the woman if she likes his shirt. She doesn't understand him. She asks him if she can have another cup of coffee. He just shrugs. Both of them stare at the ground. He thinks about ball bearings. Night falls.
March 27th, 2006. | 2:00 pm cet. | Thoughts: 8 | Phylum: Life in Romania | Permalink
Charles Bukowski makes some trifle
Tags: Charles Bukowski drink trifle
i knew it was going to be a bad day when I ran out of trifle. all I'd wanted to do was drink some tall ones and listen to Mahler and watch the bugs crawl in the wallpaper. i'd been working twenty eight hours straight at the tyre factory and my muscles were coiled so tight down in the pain register that I wasn't going to see sleep until they'd docked me all the rest of my pay. i wanted trifle and i wanted it bad.
I usually fix some up using a recipe i got from the wife of some high school professor of semiotics who lives out in the midwest somewhere. she gave it to me at one of his parties. stuck it into my back with a knife after I tried to jump her on the kitchen table. i was drunk and it didn't hurt much, and now i can make trifle whenever i want.
don't listen to all that crap about how hard it is. thats all bullshit. there's nothing to it, really. they just want you to think its hard so they can sell you shit for the rest of your life.
so there's this guy Bukowski and he's making trifle in the kitchen. he's got all the bowls out and everything and he's putting some sponge cake into the bottom of one of the bowls. he pats down the custard nice and gentle and then he ladles fruit on top with a spoon. his head aches like its burning but he doesn't care. he's going to get this done.
so next thing he's adding the sherry, vodka, beer, port, whiskey, grappa, absinthe, amaretto, kalhua, paraffin, coffee, cider, gin, baileys, maraschino, blue curacao, milk, sambuca, gelignite, timers and custard. then he lights a match and tosses it in and watches the whole thing explode. so now he's got no more kitchen. life in L.A. you're welcome to it.
March 25th, 2006. | 6:00 pm cet. | Thoughts: 4 | Phylum: Food and Drink | Permalink
Hercule Poirot and the Mystery of the 192 Pencils
A reader (the reader?) discovered the mystery that I deliberately hid inside my last post, 'normal'. I claim there that Mr. Bernard Parks, who wins the 'Mr. Average' grey pencil prize every year, has 192 of these pencils on his table at home. This would seem to imply that Mr. Parks is 192 years old. He is, therefore, not average.
A paradox! One that goes to the very heart of normality! What can be done?
I decided to set Mr. Hercule Poirot, the world's most famous detective on the case. When I phoned, he said he was busy, but he offered to fax me a list of possible explanations and asked me to pick one. He then said, suddenly and dramatically, that it was me who had killed Lord Badger while wearing the disguise of a simple farm boy. So I hung up. Here's the list:
1. The number 192 is asserted by the narrator who then admits he is speculating and may therefore be incorrect.
2. The number 192 is correct, but since Mr. Parks runs the contest, he has a large number of spare pencils for promotional activities.
3. Not all of the 192 pencils are to do with the competition. Many of them are just pencils.
4. Mr. Parks did indeed win all 192 pencils because he is in fact 192 years old. He is therefore not at all normal but a liar and merely runs the competition as part of a desperate search for his lost normality.
5. Mr. Parks did not genuinely win all 192 pencils but pretends to. He is in fact very corrupt. Whether this makes him normal or not depends on your view of human nature.
6. What appear to be 192 grey pencils are in fact about 40 very long pencils cut into pieces.
7. After winning his tenth pencil, Mr. Parks realised that he particularly liked that type of pencil. He became addicted to them and now buys them in bulk, while desperately trying to appear normal to the outside world in order to keep winning the competition.
8. Mr. Parks does not exist, and the entire story is actually a coded transmission by the CIA, concerning Chad.
9. For the twenty fifth anniversary contest, Mr. Parks changed the rules so that the winner would win not just one pencil, but a whole box of them. Then he won.
10. Mr. Parks is not human. The 'pencils' are in fact secret transmitting devices sending pulses of electromagnetic radiation into the galaxy. The last message was: 'Send more pencils'
Ten explanations from the Belgian - but which one is right? The only way to decide is by voting. Vote for your favorite and tell me why in the comments. I will announce the winner some time next year.
March 24th, 2006. | 11:00 am cet. | Thoughts: 10 | Phylum: Thnup | Permalink