Mmmmm... kumquats

My spambucket floweth over yet again (and yet again kudos to Gmail for having such good filters). This choice gem in Chinese came in yesterday and Altavista had a bit of fun with it... I think they are trying to sell me a holiday of some sort. The tour itinerary sounds fascinating:

Broadcasts the cultural building -> kumquat village flavor meal -> Jiayi brewery -> Tropic of Cancer world square, the visit country lantern festival day the lantern festival unfolds, Jiayi chicken food, return trip. Goes against the vegetable garden local cultural building -> east stone fisherman wharf seafood western-style food -> browsing mystical drum to watch the wild bird ecology -> groundnut processing factory -> visit country lantern festival day the lantern festival -> Jiayi chicken food, the return trip.

Well the brewery sounds fun but I think I'll pass on the groundnut processing factory. But wait, it gets better!

Visit Che Timin the male phoenix, the milk pineapple, visits the husband's mother honey ecology plantation again. * Flavor lunch (earth kiln chicken). * Visits the wonderful treasure orchard, knows entire unique Shui?, the tree grape (fine valuable fruit), the Chinese cassia tree, Jin Kuo and so on the precious water. (May pay own expenses purchase); The evening leaves the orchard, goes to Guan Tzuling, enjoys global unique putty oar keeping in good health hot spring

Ooooh... phoenixes... dragons like them. Not sure abut the milk pinapple and earth kiln chicken and I'm bloody well not paying for my precious water, even it it is from tree grapes.

And what's that about putty?

Mind you, even the tour company doesn't think much of the rooms.

Sleeps Guan Tzuling the hot spring hotel (4 people of one room anteroom) each to make up 1,000 Yuan room to be bad

1000 Yuan and the rooms are still lousy, sheesh.

Guess I'm going to Skegness again this year

Blobby, Blobby, Blobby

Thar she blows Capt'n - 'tis the great white whale lardarse of Wallsend

Ye Gods this is just so fucked up on so many levels I really don't know what to set fire to first.

Where the hell is it written that you can take someone's kids off them because they're fat! I know our Beloved Leader has got a bee in his bonnet about us all having crappy diets but who went and instigated the Lard Police when I wasn't looking. What next, you can be taken into "protective custody" because you've just wiped your arse in a non government-approved manner? Look I've met cookoos with better parenting skills than those of Master Gutbucket here but it we start taking every kid whose parents couldn't parent their way out of a wet paper bag then we'd have a children's home crisis that would make the prison places fiasco look like, well like a prison places fiasco.

Speaking of the parents, hell you couldn't make this stuff up:

Ms McKeown, 35, told the BBC: "Connor had a mouthful of apple once and he didn't like it. "He refuses to eat fruit, vegetables and salads - he has processed foods. When Connor won't eat anything else, I've got to give him the foods he likes. I can't starve him."

He weighs nearly 100 kilos you stupid cuntstain! How the fucking fuck is he going to "starve" if he misses a meal or eight? Also if he liked sticking his knob in the electrical socket because he "liked it" would you let him because "you have to do what he likes". Course you wouldn't! Keep serving up apples and nothing else to the blubbery cunt for a few days and I guarantee that after the first couple of tantrums he'll be so fucking hungry he'd be wolfing down granny smiths at a rate that would make my horse envious. You've got a spoilt little brat on your hands Ms McKeown and you need to remind him who is boss.

As for Connor McFatgit... how about we kill a whole flock of birds with one stone; we float him off the coast of Japan, they harpoon him instead of a whale, everyone happy.

"From Hell's heart I stab at thee" (but as you're so fat it's not making much of an impression)

Wizard Wheeze

Dumbledore was becoming concerned that Harry's interest in the school pegasus may not be entirely innocent.

One of my work colleagues came into work today brandishing a gift for his kid's birthday which turned out to be issue one of the Harry Potter "learn how to play chess" partwork.

Oooh look, it's got a special magic wand (a.k.a. a lump of plastic with magnet in it) with which you can move your first chess piece (a rook with another magnet in it) and a book with lots of pictures of Daniel and his pals (though none fondling equines I suppose) that teaches you how to play chess. Bargain at £1.99 - future issues priced at four quid.

OK so lets work this out. Thirty two peices in a chess set at four quid a pop comes to over 125 quid, even allowing for the fact that you get the first one half price, plus it's going to take you over seven months to collect all the bits so you can actually play your first game, by which time any normal child will have lost the first rook, the wand, three of the pawns and the "neighing knight" will be full of sand after being taken to the beach one day and will be mightily disinclined to neigh, whinny, whicker or say "Oooh Harry, I love it when you talk dirty. Why don't you bring that owl of yours next time and we'll have a threesome". After seven months I think your child's interest in chess will have long since waned, assuming of course you can track down anywhere selling the part-work after issue 10, so you're probably just going to keep treading on "exploding pawns" and "glowing queens" for a couple of years until you move house and throw all the tat away.

Look chess is a great game, I learnt it when I was a hatchling and even got good enough to play for the school (not that we won anything!). It teaches you strategy, logic, problem solving and even how to lose and restrain yourself from inserting a bishop up your opponent's nose in a fit of pique. However there are I am sure there are cheaper and better ways to learn than spending all that money on a novelty chess set - bloody hell you can buy marble ones for less! But then I guess J.K wouldn't be able to buy another castle or that carribean island would she.

When laughing gas attacks

Blimey, and I thought that my little thing with the swimming pool full of lard and the dolphins was wierd.

I love the line "The couple had been going through a divorce and were sleeping in separate rooms."

You don't say.

Ebay scumbags

OK so as a dragon I do occasionally have to fly through some pretty rotten weather and so being a modern kind of dragon I have an aviation GPS which I've just upgraded and so I now have an older but perfectly usable one to sell.

So like anyone these days in the age of the InterWeb I pop onto Ebay to try and flog it.

And I get the shit spammed out of me, mostly with emails like this:

To: Dracunculus12345
From: RandomJumbleOfCharachters
Re: Question for Item "Dragon's Whizzy GPS unit"
Dear Dragony Person. We be WhangWhang electrical biggest wire and box emporium whole of China import export special! Much cheap bargains yes! Look! Look! Much cheap taiwanese shit we in our shop are having. Log onto chineseclappylectric.com! Red button is no turn delightful!

Being a good dragon I reported the first couple of these through Ebay's "Moan about a member" service but gave up in the end as I was getting two or three a day followed by an automated drone sending a "you got spam" email - great, so instead of one spam I get another spam telling me that I've been spammed!

Funny. I never got this on any other auctions (large collection of second hand knight's armour, one warhorse - used - slight singeing around the saddle area) so I guess WhangWhang and his pals just hoover up and down the GPS and other high-value electricals section trying to flog their wares. Not sure what Ebay could do about it to be honest but how about making it a small sum of money, say $10, to "join" Ebay and you get that back after you've bought or sold 5 or so items. Bet that would put the scammers off. Failing that send them round my house and I'll choke them to death on a rare "Magic the Beanie Baby Dragon" (with stupid little poem tags intact, see my other listings for more tat)

Oh some guy in Iceland won the GPS in the end.

Vultures

I see Dick Dastardly, Muttley and the gang have got themselves a new gig...


Catch that hedge fund, catch that hedge-fund

Not so much vulture squadron, more vulture fund. Awww, poor little Zambia, well not that poor as it happens, being rich in copper, cobalt, zinc, lead, coal, emeralds, gold, silver and uranium (all things that people want and will pay good money for), but a bit poorer as they have to cough up 42 million dollars to what is in effect a debt collection agency.

Look, this is very simple. Let's say that I buy a nice shiny new plasma TV on tick from Dixons to replace the last one that I breathed on when Tony Bliar came on screen but omit to pay back the loan. Now Dixons can't be bothered to chase down that loan as it's a lot of work and no guarantee they'll succeed so what they do is sell on this "distressed credit" (as it's called in the business) at a discount (which can be quite high, up to 90% in cases where there is a snowballs chance in hell of getting the money back) to a company that specialises in distressing the people who owe money. These people then would send large burly men to my lair to remonstrate with me into paying up and they may take me to court to get the money back and ultimately would probably send in the baliffs.

So that's how it works for individuals. And so why should that not apply to countries as well. Look Zambia, you borrowed all this money, why the fuck do you think you should be excempt from paying it back same as I have to. You can show us all the pictures of hungry brown children you like but it doesn't alter the fact that you borrowed a shitload of cash and now we'd like it back please. Sure I can show my bank manager a picture of a dragon who hasn't had a chicken jalfrezi in the last month but it doesn't cut any ice with them either.

"Oh but we give all this aid to these countries and it all goes to line the pockets of these rich fat cat businessmen". Yes well maybe we should stop giving out all this aid then. Or rather if our governments want to help (we'll leave the fact that I think they should be sorting out the very real and manifest problems in their own contries rather than squandering my tax money on foreign countries out of it for a while) then they should say "OK, we're sending over a bunch of policemen, forensic accountants and sundry civil servants to sort out your corruption problem and get your governments working properly." Let me tell you that would in the long term feed, clothe and educate a shitload more brown children than sending the container ship loads of cash to sub-Saharan Africa that we do at the present. But oh no, that would be "Imperialist" wouldn't it, best to let the Africans run their own country. They are doing brilliantly at it; Zambia's president, Levi Mwanamasa¹, launched an anticorruption task force in 2002, but the government has yet to make a prosecution.

Never mind, we'll just have Bono do another one of those concerts for you and send you another freight train full of cash.


¹ Remember that name, it will come in handy if you're ever playing Scrabble.

Happy Children (taste better)

I love children... I just couldn't eat a whole one.

So it was with interest that I spotted earlier in the week that The Netherlands is rated the top country in the world to be a child. Being something of a cynical dragon I assumed it was down to the easy availability of pot and porn but reading a bit deeper it turns out that, in a way, it is.

Here's a Miss Fox on the issue:

Laura Vos, a 16-year-old schoolgirl from Amsterdam agrees. "In this country, it's very free, you can do anything you want," she told the BBC's Newsnight programme. "You can smoke at 16, you can buy pot in the store next to the school. You can do what you like and because it's not illegal, it's not that interesting for us to provoke our parents with it."

And on matters of a fleshy, wobbly nature:

"I think in England, for example, there is a lot of pressure on teenagers. There is something on MTV called Virgin Diaries. Girls of 16 and 17 worry because they are still virgins. It's like they have to have sex to be cool," she says. "In Holland, it isn't that important - it doesn't matter to anyone."

See, you get all this stuff out in the open, don't make a big deal out of it and it ceases to be an issue. It's there if you want it and if you don't want it that's fine too.

Smashing people the Cloggies. If I spoke the language better and their country wasn't so crowded I'd emigrate in a heartbeat. Hup Holland!

Weeeed, Weeeeed

Flobalob FlobAlobAlobalob¹



Well at least Cameron inhaled I guess. Look I really could not give a monkeys whether the future (in his dreams!) prime minister smoked crack, worshipped Satan or enjoyed the carnal company of hippopotomi whilst at Oxford² so long as he's honest about it. However all this "Oh I have the right to a private personal life" is utter shite.

Look you dickwad, it's not as though its bad enough you acting like a cheap knock-off Bliar but you clearly fail to realise that you will be representing us poor bastards in parliament and will be passing laws that directly affect how I live so I think that we have every right to know just who you are, and yes that means knowing about your past. It's going to get found out anyway so you might as well come out and say "Yes, I smoked a bit of weed when I was a student; everyone did. The fact that I know what it's like to get stoned out of my box and go on a munchies binge at 2am means that I can at least speak from a bit of experience when talking about drugs." Hell you never know you might even get a bit of respect.

Hmmmm, "Respect". Do politicians still know what that word means?



¹ Translation "Where did you hide the Pringles and peanuts you stupid bloody daisy"

² I know I did.

Cold

Your dragon is typing this on the 7:15 from Cambridge to London.

There is no heating due to a "technical problem". It is -1 outside and my back paws are very cold. I have tried breathing on the but they just aren't getting warm. In fact the restof me is gradually getting colder and colder as our little mobile fridge winds it way through the frozen, foggy Essex countryside.

Dragons do lot like being cold, it makes them grumpy. I am a very grumpy dragon this morning.

I'm just hoping that One Railway will send a ticket inspector through the train - we can set fire to him and that might make us all a bit happier.

Another roll of cotton wool to wrap your sprog in

Well it would seem that today is "Internet Safety Day" which is meant to raise awareness of the dangers kids face on the InterWeb and how to protect them against it. Your humble green scaly friend is of course happy to take part and would caution anyone under the age of 18 to stop reading right now because I'm about to say "fuck".

The Cyberspace Research Unit (CRU) at the University of Central Lancashire is the UK co-ordinator for Internet Safety Day

That would be that venerable centre of learning that used to be Preston College of Further Education then. Jesus Christ these morons were't even a polytechnic and now they are telling us how to run the fucking internet.

The scheme is being launched as research in the journal Pediatrics reports that 42% of young people aged 10-17 questioned for the study had seen sexually explicit material online. Two-thirds of those who reported seeing this material said their viewing of it was accidental.

"Although there is evidence that most youth are not particularly upset when they encounter unwanted pornography on the internet [it] could have a greater impact on some youth than voluntary encounters with pornography," said the study.

First up what's "sexually explicit" because there's a bit of a world of difference between a piccie of Janet Jackson's boob flash during the superbowl and the movies made by the late Bodil Joensen (for the Love of Fafnir do NOT click on that link if you are at work!). And can we play "spot the weasel words" here - we have "evidence" that young people are not upset or harmed or pretty much anything really when thy stumble of a bit of flesh on the web but it "could" have a greater impact. In other words the data shows it doesn't make a flying fucks worth of difference to the mental, physical or emotional wellbeing of little Johnny if he thinks he's pirated "Happy Feet" but in reality he's accidentally downloaded "Hot Penguin Lust Vol XIV" but that doesn't tie in with our "porn is nasty and should be banned because, well, people like it and men look at it" moonbat views so we'll just make up shit that it's probably bad anyway.

Mind you, what the fuck do you expect from Preston C of FE.

Oh and, icing on the cake, out comes John "I'm really tough, me" Reid who can't find all those foreign murderers, rapists and paedophiles or, come to think of it, his arse with both hands, with his attempt to hop on the bandwagon...

In the UK, British Home Secretary John Reid has said he is considering making paedophiles add their chatroom names to their other details on the Sex Offenders Register. And sex offenders could be forced to register their e-mail addresses to prevent them approaching children on the internet, the UK government has said.

Yep, that ought to do it, can't imagine that they would just go off and register a new IM and hotmail account.

Bloody hell I need a "Voluntary Encounter" with some pornography. Wonder if I have any of Bodil's movies hanging about...

Gratitude bounces.

Japanese spam...

It is [serebu] as it is called in the generally known, world. Having more than enough time and the money, boring everyday sending, it increases. When it is good, in me, isn't your time even just made to buy a little from calling?

Gratitude bounces!

Because that receives as a direct negotiation, you can communicate to “450917”? Because this [bare] does not want in the master, we ask with secret strict observance.

What

The

Fuck?

The Odious Toad Speaks

The Prime Minister told BBC Radio 4's Today programme he hoped the police inquiry would be over "shortly".

Yes I bet you do Tone, you must be bricking it you loathsome shit.

But he said he intended to "get on with the job," adding: "You will have to put up with me for a bit longer."

Oh please, do we have to. I am onto my fourteenth TV now because every time your smug little mug pops up and you grin your irritating little grin you then open your gob and spout such complete and utter loads of crap, nonsense and lies that I end up breathing on it and I have to go down to Currys for a new one.

I am not going to get into a situation where I am pleading for my integrity, not even actually in front of the public

Be a waste of time anyway, there cannot be a single life-form in the British Isles that believes you have a shred of integrity left. You are a lying mass murderer who should be swinging from a rope.

He said he had "a deep respect for the British people and it's been an honour and privilege to lead them".

Well we have none for you, you cunt and it's been a pain in the balls for us ever since you oozed your way into No. 10 in 1997.

But he had "changed" over the past 10 years and was a "different sort of person" now, who was less concerned about being "liked".

That's handy, because nobody likes you. The very sight of you makes grown men puke.

I wonder if he realises just quite how much he is loathed and just how many people would have a big shit-eating grin on their faces tomorrow if he popped his clogs in the night, ideally of something painful.

Probably not.