How to masturbate an elephant

Lord Reith founder of the BBS said that the mission of the organisation was to "Educate, Inform and Entertain" and they fulfilled all three yesterday with a programme from the Horizon series about an artificial insemination project in zoos.

I now know how to masturbate an elephant but as it would appear that the technique is to ram your arm vigorously up its arse for fifteen minutes whilst your colleague stands by with a very large bin-bag I cannot see my using this new found knowledge any time soon (well that and I do not know any elephants). Mind you the other side of the process seems to involve fiddling around in a lady elephant's front bottom with an endoscope whilst the normal bottom poos on your head so is even less glamorous. So although it would be über-cool to have "Elephant Wanker" on your business cards I think I'll pass.

Bit easier with Rhinos - apparently you shove a modified cattle prod up their bum. Mind you we did get a nice close up of a rhino willy which was quite fascinating as it has these "wings" on either side of it which somehow allowed Mr Rhino to stay on top of Mrs Rhino for up to an hour whilst apparently he has a snooze (hint to the rhino... most blokes wait until immediately after the act before taking a kip). Still I guess it will give the boys and girls over at Zeta Creations a new template work from (link is most definitely NSFW!!)

Anyway, an utterly fascinating 50 minutes of TV - this is what I pay my licence for.

Nul Points

Ah Eurovision. I love it, no really I do, and I'm not even gay. Seriously it always is a bit of fun watching the truly dreadful entries, wondering if Turkey will give Greece any points, trying to work out what the fuck the Israeli selection committee have been smoking and occasionally it throws up something really rather good in terms of tunes - one entry that sticks is from a couple of years ago when Belgium came second with a piece of folk-electronica sung in a completely made up language - enjoy it thanks to the miracle of youtube here.

This year has already been good for some laughs already with last weekend's "Making Your Mind Up" (see, see what they've done there, putting the old winning song title as the one for the choose-the-song show, fucking hilarious already) show. My god what a parade of bloody losers and has-beens. In the heavens some fickle deity had decided these sad specimens were worth one more throw of the dice only to be humiliated as the washed-up failures they truly are on national television.

First up we had some woman who was an ex atomic kitten or something who turned up wearing what looked like her bedroom curtains and whose unique selling point seemed to be that she was from Liverpool, it certainly wasn't her singing ability. Then we had proof that whom the gods wish to destroy they first run over with a 4x4 and then humiliate on TV for on wobbled that guy whose name I can never remember, Brian something I think, but he was in East 17 (Note - don't get confused with Heaven 17 who were good). Well we know who had the talent in that band don't we and it wasn't this chap and what on earth possessed him to pick a song with notes he couldn't actually hit? After that we actually got something half way decent with a rap act who could actually sing; well OK the women in the band could, in the manner of this genre of music the blokes seemed to be there to wear lots of bling, look vaguely menacing and "gangsta", and occasionally go "Uh-Huh" or "Come-on" into the microphone in an accent from New York's Lower East Side although they are from Surbiton and the nearest they ever got to NYC was when they went on holiday to Lyme Regis as a kid. Not a bad tune I thought but all a bit yawn and not nearly gimmicky enough after Lordi raised the bar so high last year. Again though a bunch of has-beens who had a couple of minor hits and attempting to claw their way back into the limelight... but Eurovision guys? Well that's your "street" credentials down the toilet.

So that's half way through, Mrs Dracunculus is happy as she's getting to drool over John "Captain Jack Harkness" Barryman who is commenting on the songs (I haven't the heart to tell her that he's on the other bus) and I'm the best part of half way into a bottle of Aussie Shiraz so I'm well on the way to happy... so what's next?

Well we have someone from France singing a song that sounds like a mash-up between Cindy Lauper's "True Colours" and "The Bonny, Bonny Banks of Loch Lomond", i.e. pretty fucking terrible. And hang on, isn't this supposed to be the UK entry so how come it's being sung by someone from across the channel? Not that that ever stopped Luxembourg as they seem to field people from anywhere but Luxembourg, I seem to recall that they even roped in that Greek lardarse Nana Moussaka (or whatever) at one point. Ah now we get onto some over the top campness and two boys (well one boy and one boy who would like to be a lady) and a couple of girls with a cute song and dance routine and to be honest the only song I can actually remember the chorus to three days later so that's a winner if ever I heard one. Sooch's song had "Eurovision" written over it in three foot high neon pink letters and to be honest me and Mrs D looked at each other after the first 16 bars and went "That's won".

Well that only left the much talked about comeback of former Darkness front man Justin Hawkins. So off they go and it starts well with his co star Ms Brown heading up singing duties and actually sounding good with a nice enough song but then on flounces Justin looking like a poor man's Lawrence Llewellyn-Bowen and opens his gob whereupon this shrieking noise came out of his face. I'm not sure what it was but singing it decidedly wasn't. Then he "played" the guitar a bit before throwing it at Terry Wogan (you missed an opportunity for a few extra votes there Justin, you should have wrapped it around his neck) before shrieking some more and flouncing around. Thank fuck that these songs are limited to three minutes.

And I see in the news (well OK, on Yahoo) that he's got himself all upset that he lost and that the reason is that the British public are racist or stupid for not picking him. No Justin, they just know a washed up has-been pseudo glam-rock star who could not sing if his life depended on it when they see it. "But (co star) Beverlei Brown looked and sounded fantastic" he wails. Yes Justin, she did, but you looked fucking stupid and wailed like a banshee so you lost.

Can't wait for Helsinki in May!

Wick

So it turns out that due to a massive geographical error by me who thought that Caithness was somewhere to the west of Glasgow I now find that I have to go to a wedding in Wick, the most northerly town in mainland UK.

Bum.

Oh well start to have a look around at the best way to get there. Driving is out as I don't have enough time and it's a 1200+ mile round trip and a look at our crappy railways shows that it will take the best part of fourteen hours to get from where I live in Norfolk to Wick and cost the best part of 130 quid so long as I get the cheapie fares. So that leaves flying.

Ah but that makes me an irresponsible planet destroying dragon doesn't it. Taking all those budget flights and even more so taking an internal flight. Bad dragon, naughty dragon, Dave the Cameroon wants you to pay lots of tax for being such a selfish dragon and not thinking about your carbon pawprint.

Dave, just stand there whilst I breathe on you, you useless cunt. Oh and Gordon, if you could stand your ugly, blubbery, dour presbetarian arse next to him, there's a good chap.

Look I'm not a "climate change denier", it would appear from the evidence that on balance of probabilities anthropogenic carbon is having an effect on global temperatures. But taxing the wings off my back because I have to fly to fucking Wick isn't going to make any difference whatsoever. I need to go, flying is the only option so now I have to pay you cunts more money for the privilege. And what the fuck in this unilateral "we will cut carbon by blahblahblah percent" shite you've all been coming out with. Look tossers we are a pimple on the arse of the world when it comes to carbon emissions; all you'll do is pauper the country whilst the likes of China and India do bog all about it and grow their economies. Sure you can stand up in international meetings and go "Now you should all be good boys and girls and we can lecture you now because we've done it" and said nations will go "Yeah, sure, fuck off but thanks for all those jobs and industries that you let us have" and it will give you a nice warm fuzzy feeling right up until the point where you get back to the UK and are flayed alive with low-emission chainsaws by the angry jobless, penniless mob whose houses have all flooded because you spent all the flood defence money on helping Shitholestan install wind turbines and solar panels.

And this is now all three parties trying to "outgreen" each other by the brute instrument of taxing people (well, middle class people who have the money to pay taxes at any rate) to change their behaviour. Guess it's a vote for "None Of You Cunts" scrawled over the ballot paper come election time.

Non-Sequetur

From the Latin: "It does not follow".

"Hello Mr Dragon, It's Amazon here. We have some reccomendations for you based on your previous purchases. Based on the fact that you bought the first season of Rome and season 11 of M.A.S.H on DVD we think that you would like...

...The God Delusion by Richard Dawkins"

Oh, and "Snakes on a Plane" as well. My little dragony brain boggles.

Call for a waaaahmbulance

Oh no! Someone infringed the human rights of a mong! Call for the waaahmbulance!

OK so let's look at this shall we...

"Her family say the hospital staff found it hard to look after Emma, who could display challenging behaviour and struggle to express how she felt"

"Challenging behaviour" is one of those nice PC phrases that actually translates as "hideously violent and will lash out at any living being that comes within 10 metres" and she "struggles to express how she felt" because she has the mental capacity and reasoning ability somewhat below that of a rabid rat on PCP.

But doctors decided not to treat her, saying she would not co-operate with her treatment, and she was sent home.

So she could not consent to treatment so they could do nothing. I'll bet if they did do painful, invasive treatment (which cancer treatments are) the parents would have had some smartarse lawyer in and suing anyway for violating her human right to comfyness.

"Nobody talked to her about her care, although we tried to advise them what she needed." She added: "I know cancer treatment is expensive, and I feel like Emma wasn't seen as an investment."

Er... no-one talked to her because when they did they got (a)hit, (b)screamed at, (c) a reply that sounded like "Ahhh weeehhh guuur blleeeh" or all 3. And damned right she's not an investment. Look like it or not health care in this country is fucked, it doesn't work and the only way it even vaguely works is for it to be quietly and unofficially rationed. So doctors, faced with some 80 year old bloke with cancer and 20 year old bloke with cancer and one set of expensive chemo drugs are going to have to make some choices and it's hardly one that needs much thinking about. Same with your mong; no she's not an investment, she's a cost who will never contribute anything apart from breathing out carbon dioxide. Sorry to be harsh love but that's just the way it is. Personally if I had been one of God's 4.30pm on a Friday afternoon creations then I would have just liked to have been left at the side of the nest to die as I don't care what anyone from the disability rights industry (and it is an industry... keeps them all in jobs and comfy offices) says people who are this mentally fucked up not only have no quality of life they have a negative impact on the quality of life of those around them.

And finally of course we have the icing on the cake. The parents are going to sue for a large wedge of cash. Now you would think that, having seen the "failings" of the NHS caused by lack of money and manpower all up close and personal that they would realise that taking a couple of million out of it to line their own pockets will mean that treatment for future mongs will get even worse; but noooo... just keep thinking about that cruise and the conservatory, there's a good pair of parasites. Mind you now we'll have "you must treat mongs at all costs" directives which means that the rest of us suffer just to keep some drooling basket case going for another six months.

Well maybe not me... I've got BUPA

Dragons on a Boat (again)

The green scaly one is off to the land of clogs, Grolsch and ontbijtkoek again so this blog post comes to you right out of, er, well, the car park at Harwich Parkeston Quay as me and about 20 cars wait for them to load the boat up with all the freight. Only when that is complete is the lowly "self loading freight" allowed to drive on-board and find somewhere to park between all the empty flower trucks going back for more tulips (they have a rush on as its mothers day in a couple of weeks).

So, you may be wondering, how come I'm subjecting myself to a six hour sea crossing in the middle of the night rather than just hopping on a plane, after all if I'd have gone by plane I would probably be there by now.

Simple answer is that I have grown to loathe air travel. Don't get me wrong I love flying (what with being a dragon and all) and I have my PPL to prove it and have dome my share of air mile gathering. No, what I detest is passenger travel, honestly it's got all the charm and pleasure of getting a National Express coach these days. First of all you're treated like a terrorist from the moment you get into departures anything that might possibly be a weapon or explosive is confiscated - you watch and we'll all be expected to check in our clothes for those orange GITMO boiler-suits before long - you can't take more than a teeny bag on as hand luggage which forces you to wait for hours at the other end in baggage reclaim, you have to check in hours early and then hang around expensive tat emporia waiting for your flight and then you are crammed into a metal tube with several screeching, wailing, snot ridden monsters from hell (and their children) for the next two hours, assuming you're not delayed which you always will be so that's an extra two hours spent cooling your heels in some distant holding apron whilst your plane waits for the next available slot.

Yes so I get there quicker but one hell of a lot more frazzled, being able to take three ounces of luggage and now I have to subject myself to the vagaries of public transport at the other end or hire a car to get to where I need to be because, surprise, surprise, that just happens not to be next door to Terminal 2D at Schiphol.

So with the boat I get to take my own car, as much luggage as I could ever need (and I'm taking sunday dinner to an ex-pat brit - try getting that through airport security), I get a free meal (proper one, not some reheated airline muck) and a comfy bed to sleep in where I awake refreshed with time for a cooked brekky (again included in the ticket price) and a couple of coffees before trundling off to where the black and white cows come from.

You know how much better a slow-roasted Sunday joint tastes than one you shoved in a hot oven and cooked really quickly?

Welcome to the slower, more leisurely and infinitely better way to travel.



(However that said I just found out I can get a 1.8Mb 3G signal here which makes me happy as not everything that's slower is good)

Show me a motion

Dwaggin got a new lappy! Yay me!

It's a "business tool", yes definitely a business tool, look it says "IBM" on it and it has a special attachment that makes sure you're wearing a white shirt and dark blue tie before it will let you log on.... Well that's what I told my accountant.

She's called Tiamat-II and as she comes from Singapore I have picked a suitable wallpaper.



Given the rain we've had recently the watery theme fits as well - I'm currently on the train into work and it looks like we're going through a car-wash.

But you know the very best thing about it? It's not the thingie I can put my claw on to log on, the little blue button that does everything or actually getting seperate "home" and "page up" keys like my last lappy didn't have. It's the window on the hard drive shock sensor monitor which lets you watch your computer wobble about in real-time as I shudder up and down the line from London to Cambridge.

I could watch it dance about for hours.