Cameron - Twat or what?

I don't think I've seen anything more embarrassing recently that CallMeDave popping up every thirty seconds on any news channel that'll have him spouting off on yet another topic de jour with some knee-jerk rhetoric aimed at pleasing everyone and systematically pissing off the entire world and probable amoebae on Saturn. "Ohh... murdered kid in Scallypool... errr... video games, violent movies, dangerous dogs yes we'll ban them, that'll work. Right, immigration, appeal to core tory voter... it's too high! Appeal to foreign people... we like your culture."

For fucks sake, if this is the Tory Surge that's going to beat the "Brown Bounce" then gods help them. They just seem to be running around like blind lesbians in a fishmongers, throwing out policies that aren't so much half baked rather are still bags of flour sat in the kitchen cupboard. On one hand you've CallMeDave trying to sound all old fashioned Tory with his "Tough on crime, tough on immigration, tough on what can I be tough on next" and then utter wankers like Yeo banging on like Polly Toynbee about taxing domestic flights out of existence on the basis of the new religion which is global fucking warming. These guys are smeared all over the political spectrum like roadkill across four lanes of motorway.

What can they be thinking? Surely the British electorate isn't going to fall for this all things to all men bollocks?

Oh hang on, this is the same lot who kept re-electing Bliar.

We're so fucked.

"If you were there, you would have said, 'What hypocrisy'"

Yes I probably would have.

Turns out that soon to be saint, Agnes Bojaxhiu, better known to you and me as Mother Teresa, didn't so much suffer a "long dark teatime of the soul" but rather a full on loss of faith, pretty soon after founding her so-called "hospital" in Calcutta in the 1940's.

So many unanswered questions live within me afraid to uncover them — because of the blasphemy — If there be God — please forgive me — When I try to raise my thoughts to Heaven — there is such convicting emptiness that those very thoughts return like sharp knives & hurt my very soul. — I am told God loves me — and yet the reality of darkness & coldness & emptiness is so great that nothing touches my soul. Did I make a mistake in surrendering blindly to the Call of the Sacred Heart?

Quite frankly Agnes, yes you did.

So why did she carry on? Well why do I carry on being a computer programming bod after twenty years? Quite simply this is what I know what to do and it's a bit late to suddenly make a change into being a ship's captain or a painter and decorator. I had a long chat once with a vicar who admitted that he's lost his faith years ago. When I asked him what made him continue working for the church he said "It's a comfortable life, nice house, don't have to work too hard and the pension is terrific".

Trouble with Agnes was that I think that the brainwashing had taken too much of a hold and though it was apparent to her that nothing was there, "I look and do not see, — Listen and do not hear", she just could not help keeping on keeping on. Maybe she reasoned if she went out all balls to the wall and tried really, really hard and stuck really, really firmly to the doctrine of Mother Church she might start hearing the little voices in her head again. She certainly believed in that most pernicious of lies that suffering is somehow virtuous; conditions in her "hospital" have widely been reported as dreadful and the treatments, cold baths for everyone, aspirin the only treatment for cancer patients, useless or worse than useless; added to this that she spent her whole life vehemently arguing against letting women take control of their bodies (the one thing along with education that's been proven as a cure for poverty).

Mind you she could just have realised that it was all complete arse and decided to milk it for all she could get. Over the years she received millions in donations but conditions and treatment stayed the same at her flagship "hospital" although up to 500 other such "hospitals", all bearing her name, were set up with the money (very modest and humble, not!) and that money sometimes came from some very dodgy sources including the Duvaliers of Haiti and corrupt banker Charles Keating (in the latter case when the auditor wrote suggesting that maybe Agnes would like to return some of the money stolen not a single cent was given back). Gullible twerps like that simpering cunt Malcolm Muggeridge and latterly Diana Spencer giving her the oxygen of publicity were, quite literally, a godsend. Come to think of it she's about as saintly as the Borgia Popes.

Still it didn't do any good. The little voice in her head never came back, even when lying in a nice, expensive Californian hospital (no backstreets of Calcutta for her) at the end; once you lose it it's gone for good.

Join the Russian Cavalry, our horses are *really* friendly!

My Russian Orthodox friend Leah often starts her posts with a picture of a soviet-era poster. Somehow I don't think she'll be using this one any time soon.



This is a genuine Soviet stamping, I think the idea was to show the heroic red army to the peasants (who were most likely illiterate but, given they were familiar with the icons of the church, used to getting stories from pictures. One can't help but speculate if the effect of this was a sudden upsurge in volunteers for the cavalry.

On a side note, I wonder if I could teach my horses to do that?

On second thoughts, having seen what short work they make of carrots, maybe not.

(Hat tip to BoingBoing for that one)

Taunting the fundies, British squaddy style

This is absolutely hilarious. Some dickwad of a fundy xtian "pastor" who runs a blog for some presidential candidate no-hoper made a very grumpy post about the "Cowardly British" and how uncristian we all were for pulling out of eye-rack.

Unfortunately for this chap it got picked up by the forumites at the British Army Rumour Service ("AARSE" to its friends) and a bunch of jolly squaddies weighed in to merrily extract the urine from the rabid god botherer and his friends in the most hilarious fashion, especially as the "Pastor" decided to invoke God, Jesus, The Archangel Michael and the spirit of Ronnie Reagan to cast out the British from his website.

The whole thing starts here but the real fun gets going around here.

I'm reading this still on the train and keep getting looked as as I burst into fits of giggles... here's an example.

“Lord Jesus Christ, I place myself at the foot of Your cross ans as me to cover me with Your Precious Blood….”

AHAHAHAHAHAHAHA

I’m pretty sure that if Jesus is reading this, in between bidding for a batch of “no more nails” on EBay, I’m fairly sure he wouldn’t share his holy **** with you if you were one fire.

And the Catherine The Great Safe Sex Award goes to...

Ouch, now that has got to hurt!

A woman in Australia has been killed by her pet camel after the animal may have tried to have sex with her... It knocked her to the ground, lay on top of her and displayed what the police delicately described as possible mating behaviour.

Needless to say, in the great tradition of Rose the Goat, this has been the number one item in the BBC online news' "Most Emailed" list ever since the story broke.

I haff nommed yr pork buns. I go home now

Well that's the trip over. Presently I'm sat in the biz class lounge at the airport making full and free use of the free internet as getting on the net this week has proved more of a challenge than expected given the utter pantsness of the work lappy which refused to talk to the hotel's network - I found the hotel had two (I counted them, twice) PCs for guest use only last night when I made the "Tired and Emotional" Wan Chai post... it actually wasn't that bad really but I'm leaving it up as an object lesson in not to post when bladdered.

The trip has actually gone very well to be honest (see work blog soon for more details if you can be arsed). Met plenty of nice folks and went out most nights to places a lot more congenial than the Neptune bar of last night. Scored a very nice camera for a lot less than I'd have paid in the UK too.

Only think I didn't have was any chinese food; I had pretty much everything else and it was all good. I did manage to finally get a pork bun and some noodles... in the noodle bar of the Cathay lounge about 15 minutes ago.

Not sure that counts.

Travel blog over... Your favourite green scaly dragon will return to swearing at politicians and throwing rocks at the McCanns next week.

Dracunculus
Chep Lap Kok airport
Honkers.

Wan Chai

So it's all going really well.... and then they take me to somewhere called Wan Chai.

Now I am no prude... in my time I have slept with pretty much anything that has a pulse, but where I went tonight was just, well too freaky for this little dragon. Sure the band was hot, the beer was cold, but there were just far too many ladies of a Phillipino extracton stood around on their own.

"I take it these are ladies of negotiable virtue" I ask my local friend who has brought me to this den of vice.

"No, just ladies out for a good time."

After a while one of said ladies was "invited" to it with us. Being the gweilo she foldled my leg first...

our eyes met

You know those veitnam wartime photos of refugees fleeing their villages being napalmed.

It was that look.

I necked my Heineken and left. On my way to the exitI was fondled and touched up a dozen times.

I want to go home.

Dragons on a Plane

Ni Hao Gweilos

Well your scaly green friend has made it to the departures lounge at terminal 3 and is currently hiding in the business area of Cathay Pacific's business class lounge where we have free (and very fast) internet.

They also have beer (yum) and little chinese cracker things (more yum) and probably some more beer proper dutch brewed Heineken too; happy dragon!

All very nice and civilized. The only way to travel (when someone else is paying). This is my first biz class trip in absolutely ages and I'd quite forgotten how pleasant travel could be when you don't have to queue up with the lumpen proletariat to get your boarding card, have your own dedicated "Fast Track" bits through customs and security and a nice quiet room to wait for your flight in with Sky TV, free beer and hot and cold running flunkies.

Plane is on time too and I nabbed a left hand side window seat so with any luck I should see the Perseid meteor shower once it gets dark. On the subject, just so you don't think I've gone all soft, I did a quick Google on the perseids and the news item that came up was this piece of horseshit from Fox News. They could just not resist getting some ....ing Xtain angle in could they, tears of St Lawrence my arse. Gods I hate that news channel, wankers the lot of 'em.

I'll try and keep you all up to date on fun and games in the far east assuming that I'm not behind the "Great Firewall of China" and can keep off the TsingTao's long enough to post. Might even do you some piccies you lucky people.

Right... more beer.

Suspect

Madeleine McCann's parents have called on police to tell them about evidence that reportedly contradicts the belief that their daughter was abducted.
...
In a BBC interview, Mr McCann acknowledged that there appeared to be a shift in detectives' thinking running contrary to what he and his wife had always been told.

"I had a fairly strong belief that there was a lack of evidence, certainly initially, that there was no evidence of serious harm and I do not know of any specific evidence now that alters that. I think, as parents, if there is evidence then we need to know about it."

Last I looked it was not normal police procedure to discuss detailed evidence with a suspect.

That's why they're not telling you.

You know those people who are trying to get you to leave Portugal. I would if I were you; preferably to somewhere that Portugal doesn't have an extradition treaty with.

The Government - Fucking up an InterWeb near you soon

There there little person, you can't look after yourself, you see you're not clever enough, just let your big brother the state look after you.

The government must do more to protect internet users from the threat of e-crime... "You can't just rely on individuals to take responsibility for their own security. They will always be out-foxed by the bad guys."

Just fuck off will you. Look if I go out and leave all my doors and windows wide open and some scrote makes off with my TV then I'm culpable. I'm responsible for the security of my computer in the same way.

The Lords Science and Technology Committee said the internet was now "the playground of criminals". The report criticised the government's current "Wild West" approach of leaving internet security up to the individual as "inefficient and unrealistic".

This is the government whose statist policies of disempowering the individual to act against criminals and emasculating the guardians of law and order have made the whole fucking country the playground of every sort of thug and criminal; don't believe me - go down to any town or city centre of a Saturday night if you dare. What the fuck makes you think that the government could do a better job of protecting individuals on the net that the individuals themselves? You can't protect us in our homes and on the streets, why is cyberspace any different.

Incidentally if we did have a bit more "wild west" citizens empowerment to protect their lives and property, say I could wrap a pickaxe handle round the head of anyone robbing my house, then we'd have a bit less fucking crime let me tell you.

The committee suggested that a kite-mark should be set up that would identify internet service providers that guaranteed a secure service.

How the hell do you "guarantee a secure service" if you're an ISP? That's like saying "My telephone company guarantees that I'll only ever hear good news on my phone when someone rings me up." This is the level of utter misunderstanding these wankers have and they have the temerity to tell me they are going to protect me on the net. Mind you I bet to get a "kite mark" you'll have to install government approved filtering and snooping systems; won't make you safer but the Department of Citizen Surveillance will be happy.

This was important in cases, such as happened in March this year, when hackers stole the credit card details of 45 million TK Maxx customers. "Potentially any one of these cards, belonging to innocent individuals, could be used online for illegal purposes in transactions relating to terrorism, or to purchase child abuse images," the committee said.

Yep, I was wondering when "terrorism" and "child porn" were going to be wheeled out. You say those words and you become immune from any form of criticism; you're against our reccomendations? Ah you must be in favour of terrorism and kiddy fiddling then. Ihr papieren ist nicht in ordnung, commen Sie bitte mit uns. You can guarantee that anything that invokes those two modern demons to scare people into compliance is morally bankrupt and its authors candidates for a good dragon ass roasting.

Look you cunts, it works like this. I work for a bank and all we have is our reputation and a half way decent savings rate. If people lose confidence in our reputation for keeping their pennies safe online then they'll take their custom elsewhere to someone who can. It is this which drives internet security forwards, not this...

It also said that steps should be taken to establish legal liability for damage resulting from security flaws found in hardware or software.

... which just stops software development in its tracks as we're all petrified of getting sued to Christmas and back.

You've fucked up my country now leave my fucking internet alone you wankstains, you'll break it.

My brain hurts

I've been on a course this week called "Very Hard Sums for Dragons", well OK its really a course of derivatives pricing theory but it basically consists of hard sums - the piccy at the top of this post is one of the more sedate examples. It's been interesting though and I'm getting to use mathematics I haven't done since my university days when I used to do a lot of sums like that and harder to build models for solving fluid dynamics problems (modelling seawater intrusions into freshwater aquifers if you're interested).

It did get me to thinking though, especially as I've been chatting with a few religious types recently, why people still continue to believe in the crap churches of every stripe pump out when it is clear to anyone who really cares to string a bit of logic together that the evidence for a god who (a) created everything and (b) listens to what you say and (c) intervenes in your life is on a par with the likelihood of the Invisible Pink Unicorn (PBUH) living in my stables.

Now I'm aware of the current ideas of self-replicating memes, of religion being a "misfiring impulse" of a trait that is or was useful to us in our evolutionary past I'm going to postulate another one.

Science is inherently hard to understand and it gets harder the closer you look. Trust me those sums at the top of this post are an absolute doddle when you start mucking about into quantum theory; when you get to it there are probably only a handful of people on the planet who really fully understand what actually happened in the first femtosecond of the universe and why. When you combine this with seeming contradictions like an electron being both a particle and a wave and never knowing exactly where it is then it's easy for a person with a religious predisposition to dismiss much of science as just as unbelievable as their own "faith" in a invisible, omnipotent God so they might as well stick with what they know.

This is however an error. You can join in the science side if you want, it'll take some effort and to really, really understand it you're going to have to learn a lot about maths, physics and a whole host of other disciplines but you can start small; maybe read that book by Steven Hawkins or something. The thing is that you can participate and see that the logic works and even if you can't devote the twenty odd years it'll take you to get that astrophysics PhD you'll at least be on the way; you'll also have confidence that, because of the scientific method, that what the clever handful are telling you about the origins of the universe will be as correct as it's possible to be because a whole host of people have spent their lives trying to pick holes in what these guys and girls are saying; it's called "peer review". There's simply no way you can do the same with religion, you have to take what you are given on faith alone as religions assertions are impossible to prove using logic and reason. You have to go on faith alone, what someone tells you to believe, you can't participate because when you look at the faith critically and try and apply reason it doesn't work.

It all takes work however and it's probably unsettling to have to do all that questioning and so I think a lot of people, especially if they're not too bright or well educated, prefer to stay in the comfort zone of a religious faith that was handed down to them in childhood. "I'll never understand this science, all those equations scare me; better stick with my invisible friend."

Just an idle thought on the train home this evening. Comments from god-botherers welcome as ever.

"Townsend Category Child Porn User"

ACTOR Chris Langham is expected to quickly revive his showbusiness career after being classed as a "Townshend Category" child porn user. Experts say the star is likely to be forgiven by society because of his involvement in such cutting edge programmes as The Thick of It and People Like Us.

A spoof of course, from the UK's answer to The Onion over at The Daily Mash. Scary thing is they're probably right.

Of these, hope.

From The Indy I see that following on from the departure of our former closet catholic leader who god told to go forth and smite the saddam-ites our MP's are maybe, just maybe, trying to put all that theist nonsense behind them.

Top holiday reading for MPs includes Richard Dawkins "The God Delusion"

At fucking last. Maybe when they get back in the autumn we can look forward to a legislative programme based on logic, reason and a desire to increase the common weal of Man rather than a childish belief in some bearded bloke living in a cloud telling you what to do.

We can but hope.

Cantonese for Dragons.

Well it's definite. I'm off to China next week, well Hong Kong to be precise. Got the official go-ahead today and booked the flights, hotels, airport transfers and special socks to stop you getting DVT. I even picked up this handy book at the local branch of Waterstones:



Neat huh! Here are a few choice entries that I'm sure will come in handy.

No, I really am a dragon. It's a very bad passport photo.
不, 真正地我上午龙。这是一张非常坏护照相片。

My hotel room had bad Feng Shui so I set fire to the bed.
我的旅馆客房有坏水因此我放了火对床。

I can torch you together or one at a time, up to you.
我能一起烧成灰您或一次一个, 由您决定。

Point that lance at me once more and you'll be extracting it from your colon.
指向, 长矛在我更加和您从您的冒号提取它

Can I have something to eat that is recognisable as food in the western hemisphere?
我可以需要某事吃是可认识的作为食物在西半球?

Sausages! I demand sausages!
香肠! 我要求香肠!

Oh OK, some dim-sum and a bottle of Kirin then.
噢赞成、某一昏暗总和和一个瓶啤酒然后。


Travel is all business class, five star hotels and limo transfers of course; your scaly green friend does not rough it when someone else is picking up the tab. Just for shits and giggles I went to have a look what my carbon footprint was for the trip. 2.16tonnes of CO2 apparently.

If I leave the courtesy reading light on do you think I could add a few grams to that?

As they say in China "什么是全球性变暖?" <sup>1




1</sup> That's supposed to say "What's global warming?" but altavista thinks it says "What is the global change in sexuality is warm?" Well it makes about as much sense as carbon offsetting!

McCanns - Close but no cigar

Did I mention that I can't fucking stand the bloody McCanns? Yes I think I did. Not content with screwing their own lives up and being culpable in the death of their kid (let's face it people, that kid isn't going to get found) thier constant harping and whining is leading to the ruination of some other poor bugger's life.

You can bet your life that the reason el ploddo portuges have been digging up this guy's garden, after previously detained and questioned him for days, drained his swimming pool, confiscated his computers and generally made his life a living hell is because they are shit scared of being seen to be "not doing anything" by the media which is constantly being prodded and poked like an angry tiger by the fucking McCann tribe.

Publicly the police have not commented on the results of the weekend search but the BBC understands it revealed nothing to link Mr Murat to Madeleine. Over the weekend British and Portuguese detectives scoured the property using hi-tech scanning equipment and a British sniffer dog.

Why are our plod getting involved here in an operation on Portuguese territory? And just how much does it cost to fly sniffer dog, handler and a 10kg bag of doggie-bix over? Do the Portuguese not have dogs then? And all this expense, paid for my me and you remember, revealed nothing. Look they have been through this guy's life with the finest of fine tooth combs and a range of equipment that would give the people in CSI stiffies just to think about it. You're not going to find anything, there's nothing to find. Even if they did find the tiniest fragment of forensic "evidence" what chance does he have of anything approaching a fair trial; we'd be looking at another Barry George case here.

Still, the McCann's have almost got themselves a Madelene's Law, they missed a bit so what they have ended up with is a "Code Madelene". Close but no cigar guys!

The McCanns have backed a scheme aimed at letting parents and staff know what steps to take as soon as a child goes missing on holiday.

Let me guess; it starts "Get yourself a really good press agent, get your fizzog on the idiot box and then sit back and whoop it up on the luxury lifestyle as you get free accomodation, little old ladies sending you money and trips round the world on some tycoon's private jet."

May your humble dragon suggest a text for a future Madelene's law? It goes like this:

"If you leave your 4 year old kid unattended whilst you and your mates go out and get pissed at a tapas bar and your kid goes missing you are guilty of the offence of child abandonment and are to be fed to a pool full of hungry mako sharks an inch at a time."

Burning down the house

I was in Focus DIY in King's Lynn today (buying ready mix concrete and gutter sealant if you must know).

You know all that fuss about "evil patio heaters" and "retailers should stop selling these to save the planet?" I posted about last week?

They had them on special offer... 50% off. The poor sod in the back room could hardly keep up such was the demand. So much for that then you scaremongering, killjoy wankers.

I nearly wet myself laughing.

Deep fried terrorist

I see one of the islamonutters who tried to blow up Glasgow airport before being given a good shoeing by a baggage hander has finally croaked. Mind you, as a dragon I know that 90% burns to one of your victims will normally do that, (especially if they are wearing full plate metal armour which is a terrific heat conductor). What I did find interesting is that this guy had an engineering PhD. Bloody hell, where were you studying, the University of TellyTubbyLand? You would have thought that with that level of education you'd have worked out how to detonate a fuel-air mixture.

Still it's a bit concerning that someone with that level of education in a scientific discipline can still believe in a bunch of dark-age fairy stories and think that he's going to get his 72 virgins¹ when he blows himself up.² (By the way what do women suicide bombers get, 72 bars of chocolate?) Normally a good education and exposure to the scientific method clears up the mediaeval brainwashing we call religion after a few years but I guess the indoctrination was pretty deep in his case plus he was probably the sort of saddo that could only get laid if he got his virgins for blowing himself to bits.

Anyway to any islamonutters reading this, I'm on the lunchtime Cathay Pacific to Hong Kong a week on Sunday so don't even think about trying anything between now and then or, trust me, 90% third-degree burns to your body are going to be the least of your problems.



¹ Incidentally I was reading recently that the "72 virgins" thing is, surprise surprise for a holy book, a mistranslation and what you're actually getting is "72 raisins of crystal clarity". Must be a dreadful dissapointment when your young jihadi turns up in paradise and Allah says "well done my son, here's your transparent fruit".

² By the way what happens when you make a cock up of martyrdom, do they pro-rata the number of virgins you get or something? If so I can Picture the following happening when Kafeel Ahmed rocks up to the gates of Al Bustan:

Kameel: Allah be praised, I have finally achieved martyrdom.
Allah: Well yes, I suppose technically you do count as a martyr. But you're not a very good one.
Kameel: Maybe, but I get my virgins now?
Allah: Er, well given that you didn't actually kill any infidel, didn't die in the act and actually broke my rules about suicide, I can't let you actually have the full 72.
Kameel: What then? 71?
Allah: (Shouts) Archangel Mustapha, do we have any goats left?
Mustapha: Yes boss, we've got one left.
Allah: Is she a virgin?
Mustapha: Of course boss, I never laid a finger on her! Honest!
Allah: There you go Kameel, welcome to paradise.
Kameel: Bugger.
Allah: Exactly what I was thinking.