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Emmanuel Add A Byelaw and CROWS!

At the gym yesterday, I was watching the Arsenal v Reading game. My gym is actually within spitting distance of the new Arsenal ground (not that I'd recommend testing this out on a match day), but there I was, watching it on a tv with the sound turned down and the subtitles on. I love live subtitles, mainly for the excellent spelling mistakes. Highlights were 'Adebayor' appearing on-screen a couple of times as 'Add a byelaw', which is just poetry, and the surprising revelation that the commentator had, in his time, seen Robin Van Persie 'explode three kids into the back of the net'.

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As you probably know, I'm crowphobic*. My therapist, the reassuringly expensive Dr West Coast-Mainline, suggested that to overcome my fears, I had first to confront them. So I did: the bastard crow knocked me to the floor and pecked me in the face. Well, at least I tried that before I confronted my fear of aggressive drunk rugby fans and my fear of drinking bleach.

*I just looked on the internet, and there doesn't seem to be a technical term for 'fear of crows'. I can only assume that this is because fear of crows is such a rational and universal state that it's taken as read.

[photo from Tommy Martin's Flickr page]

Glastonbury Tickets Simulator

Upset that Glastonbury tickets have probably sold out? Disappointed that you won't be able to waste a whole morning trying to buy tickets? A fan of instant nostalgia? Desperate to click on anything you can find, such is your clicking frenzy?

Then you'll be glad that I've set up the Unofficial Glastonbury Tickets Pain In The Arse Simulator. Have fun. Remember, you'd have to be pretty fucking stupid to think that this will get you tickets.

Snowübermensch

Above are photos of the snowman my brother (aged 26) made at the weekend. So terrifying, I've lost my fear of the scary, scary crows.

Crows - the Facts

Walking through my local park, I've noticed that every time I go, there are more and more crows. Sinister, evil crows. In honour of this, here are some...

...Crow Facts:

• Crows are the only species to have been inducted en masse into the Rock & Roll Hall of Fame, back in 1993, along with ZZ Top and The Pretenders.
  
• Crows are forbidden to stand for election under the Representation of the People Act (Crows in Parliament, Never Again Amendment) 1864 although they are permitted to operate as election agents.
• The old nursery rhyme goes as follows: "One for sorrow/Two for joy/Three for a girl/Four for a boy/Five for a - Christ, I'm being attacked by fuckin' crows, help me, Jesus help me, they're pecking at my eyes, mercy, the pain".
• Crows are incapable of feeling pity, shame or the simple joy of tickling a baby under the chin and hearing it gurgle.
• Lily Allen invested the profits from her single, "LDN", in a crow farm near Haverstock. For what dark purpose, we can but speculate wildly long into the night.
  
• Crows be whack.
• Following research by Glasgow University in the late 1970s, crows were found to be intolerant to eight of the major active ingredients in Kia-Ora, leading to disclaimers to be added to all advertising materials for the soft drink.
• Crows are disdainful of Mozart's later work, except for 'The Magic Flute', which they really quite like.
• Crows, if left to their own devices, will eat upwards of 600 blue tits in a sitting.
• Legend has it that if the crows ever leave the Tower of London, it will give the ravens a bit of bloody peace, what with all their caw! caw! noises and that.
• Crows mate for life, but still advertise in the personals columns of newspapers as they are all bastards.
• Crows only received two stars out of a possible six when reviewed by Time Out London recently, prompting furious debate on the letters page. An apology from the editor was printed after it was pointed out that crows weren't in fact a new French restaurant in Hampstead whose entrees left the reviewer and his dining partner wondering whether the chef could even locate France on a globe.
  
• Shakespeare incorporated at least eight rude puns about crows in his plays.

[Crow photo by Cukimuki]

Tom the Dancing Bug

Jim here. Just a quick recommendation - check out Tom The Dancing Bug (a comic). It's always good. As it's on Salon, you might have to watch an advert first, but it's well worth sitting through any any amount of eyefuckery to look at good comics, eh? And if you agree with me, subscribe to this feed which I've set up with just this comic on, so you'll always know when a new edition is available. Jim out.

Alan Shearer: a Joke

Here's a joke I made up about Alan Shearer. Well, I say joke; it's more a thinly veiled outpouring of hatred. With a punchline.

Alan Shearer was tragically killed in a freak punditry accident on Match of the Day (Alan Hansen escaped with minor burn-marks to his v-neck jumper). On his way up to heaven, he meets St. Peter at the pearly gates. St Peter says, 'Alan, we've been watching your good work and sharp shooting here from heaven, and God would very much like you to sit at his right hand. What do you say?'. Shearer, though, refused to say anything, but friends of Alan Shearer later made it known that Alan would not consider being anyone's number two, and that after he'd completed his deity coaching badges, he would be in the running for the top job.

Human Rights, Human Wrongs

At work, I've been sent a copy of the Ministry of Justice's new publication, Making Sense of Human Rights. Unsolicited. Anonymously. I've got to worry about my reputation at work if someone thinks that I'm likely to break any of the following articles: right to life, prohibition of torture, prohibition of slavery, right to marry, etc. Oh well. Probably time to disband the forced-labour factory I've got going on in the basement, producing humorous parody books based on popular bestselling books. The nation will now sadly not be receiving such satirical thought-free gifts for its birthday as My Autobiogwaffy by Russell Braahnd or the significantly less harrowing A Child Called Twit by Dave Bestselzer. It's political correctness gorn maaad.