When Christmas Decorations Attack

Just for the record I absolutely fucking hate Christmas (but then again I fucking hate everything) and I utterly, utterly loathe those people who festoon their house in sodding light bulbs sometime in November in what they think is a marvellous son et lumiere tribute to the Son Of Man but in reality is a LED shitstorm of cheap tackyness.

However over on The Paramedic's Diary I read a wonderful story of one chavtastic disfunctional family who probably won't be draining the National Grid with their blinking cack next year...

Then a 2am call came in for an 18 year-old who’d fallen thirteen floors after an argument with his mother... I could see the ambulance inside a small courtyard below a very tall block of flats. It was eerily quiet as I approached the figures standing around the crew... They were looking down at the body of a young man - he lay like a starfish, arms outstretched, on the concrete. Blood had gathered in a think dark pool under his head. His eyes were shut and he was very still.

So what had caused this tragedy?

The boy had argued with his mother about a trivial matter. He had a habit of climbing over the balcony of the flat and standing on a thin ledge on the other side, holding onto the balcony itself. From there he would threaten to jump. It was emotional nonsense and he never carried out his threat, so when he did it again tonight, nobody in the flat took him seriously.

His fatal mistake was to hold onto the Christmas lights that were wound round the balcony on the outside. He used the tubular light strip for support but it came away in his hands and he simply slipped down it, like he’d grabbed a greasy rope. I looked over the balcony and the light strip was waving about in the wind, flashing happily away. Far below it was the body of the boy who’d used it to threaten his loved ones.

Awesome! Truly world class fuckwittery! This guy surely is a shoo-in for The Darwin Awards. I do love it when twats like this do themselves in as it saves me having to breathe on the fuckers. I nearly pissed myself laughing.

The only downside to this is I feel sorry for the poor bastards who had to scrape him up off the pavement. If I were in charge Stuart and his colleagues would have been able to chuck him in the bins round the back of the flats.

Do go and read the whole thing - I defy you to keep a straight face.

And don't eat too many nuts. See you in the new year.

The Real Leonard Cohen

You know in all the media kerfuffle about what was, to be fair, not one of the miserable Canadian's best tunes but the one everyone knows because it was in Schrek when Dragon and Donkey rediscovered each other and some talentles twatess sung it in a talent contest you could have overlooked that said miserable Canadian actually was a pretty grumpy dragon in his day.

For me this is his finest hour. I really hope what is in those suitcases is very, very nasty.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=tFBKV0zVXSE

The other Lapland sounded funnier.

By now you must have seen the story about the craptastic "Lapland Experience" down in the New Forest and probaly if you are like me you had a giggle at the mural, the log cabins that were just garden sheds painted green and what has to be the best quote ever on the BBC's website...

"One of the elves got smacked in the face and pushed in a pram."

I would gladly have stumped up the 25 quid just to see an elf get worked over. Pointy eared bastards.

Anyway it turns out that there is a "proper" Lapland theme park somewhere down in Kent that is at great pains to point out that their Tunnel Of Light is more than just a couple of fairy lights in a tree and so our pals at Pravda went over and did a road test.

Mind you I think for shits and giggles the one that got closed down sounds funnier, this one just sounds barf-inducing.

An information board at the entrance explains the "flight" will be one of the imagination, travelling down the magical pathways that elves have used to get around for centuries, and which have been specially opened up for the lucky children invited to come.

Be still my churning stomach.

We are greeted by people dressed in traditional Sammi costume, some with husky dogs, although others are in tackier Rudolph costumes.

Something for the furries then. However then they go and stand in the reindeer shit...

and the trip begins with a lecture on recycling from an "eco-elf".

Fucking hellski!

About the only thing they got right is their name

I am referring of course to "Plane Stupid", the Eco pressure group who decided to bolt themselved to Stanstead airport this morning. I did catch one of them whittering on about "our parents generation have failed us so we have to take direct action". Well you lived up to your name by firstly making fatuous wank statements like than and also in one fell stroke alienating tens of thousands of people who might have been sympathetic to your cause and now might just take a look deeper at the guff, quite frankly dodgy science and vested interests in Global Warming climate change. {hint: follow the money}

If it were me I'd have hopped into the left hand seat of a handy 737, taxied round to where they were, pointed the tail at them, popped the park brake on and then opened up those Pratt and Whitneys to about 60% of N1

How's that for Local Warming you cunt-trumpet hippy freaks.

First Dhimmi of Winter?

At last I've spotted my first "Christmas cancelled because of the muzzies" story over in the Torygraph here (Hat tip to Frank Chalk)

What's the form with these, do you write in to The Times like you do when you hear the first cookoo of spring?

Santa has a proposition for you

FROM THE DESK OF ST NICHOLAS

SANTA'S GROTTO
THE NORTH POLE

THIS E-MAIL MAY COME TO YOU AS A BIG SURPRISE BUT DO NOT BE ALARMED AS IT IS THE TIME OF YEAR FOR BIG SURPRISES. I FOUND YOUR CONTACT IN MY BOOK OF WHO HAS BEEN GOOD BOY AND GIRL THIS YEAR AND KNOW I CAN TRUST YOU. I AM WRITING TO YOU AS MATTER OF URGENT NECESSITY AND ASKING FOR YOUR HELP WITH A PROBLEM OF WORLD IMPORTANCE. AS YOU MAY BE AWARE THE SEASON OF YULETIDE JOY AND HAPPINESS WILL SOON BE UPON US, BUT THINGS ARE NOT WELL HERE IN THE NORTH POLE. DUE TO THE CURRENT WORLD CREDIT CRISIS WE HAVE HAD TO SELL OFF ALL OUR FAMOUS REINDEER FOR DOG FOOD TO MAKE END MEET. THIS IS UNFORTUNATE BUT IT HAD TO BE DONE TO SAVE CHRISTMAS THIS YEAR. AS YOU CAN IMAGINE THEY FETCHED A VERY GOOD PRICE
AS EVERYONE HAVE HEARD THEIR NAME. WE DID FETCH $3,000,000 (THREE MILLION DOLLARS USD) EACH FOR DASHER, DANCER, PRANCER, VIXEN, COMET, CUPID, DONNER AND BLITZEN. AND WE DID GET NO LESS THAN $10,00,000 (TEN MILLION DOLLARS USD) FOR RUDOLF ON HIS OWN BECAUSE OF HIS SHINY RED NOSE. THIS BRING THE TOTAL SUM TO $34,000,000 (THIRTY FOUR MILLION DOLLARS USD).

AS I WAS TOO DISTRESS TO DO THIS THING MYSELF I SENT THE HEAD OF MY ELVES NAME OF ASKASLEIKIR TO MARKET TO DO THIS FINAL ACT FOR ME. HE DID IMMEDIATELY DEPOSIT THE MONEY IN NIGERIAN SECURITY COMPANY IN HIS FAMILY NAME AND IT REMAIN THERE IN SAFE KEEPING UNTIL THIS DAY. BUT WHEN HE TOOK OFF IN HIS SLAY TO COME BACK TO MY GROTTO IN THE NORTH POLE FROM WHERE HE PARKED IT ON TOP OF A HIGH BUILDING, HE DID FORGET HE NO LONGER HAD MY MAGIC REINDEER PULLING IT AND HE DID FALL OUT OF THE SKY AND DIE IN SUDDEN CRASH.

WHAT I NEED YOU TO DO IS TAKE THE PLACE OF ASKASLEIKIR'S LONG LOST BROTHER NAME OF BJUGNAKRAEKIR AND HELP ME RECOVER THE MONEY BY ACTING AS NEXT OF KIN. I WOULD DO THIS THING MYSELF BUT AS MY FACE IS KNOWN ALL OVER THE WORLD I WOULD NEVER BE ABLE TO GET AWAY WITH IT AND I NEED TO THINK OF MY GOOD REPUTATION. FOR HELPING ME GET BACK WHAT IS RIGHTFULLY MINE I AM WILLING TO SPLIT THE MONEY 30% FOR YOU AND 70% FOR ME. MY SHARE OF THE MONEY WILL BE USED TO ORDER TOYS FROM SHOPS AND HAVE THEM DELIVERED BY POST TO ALL THE GOOD LITTLE BOYS AND GIRLS AROUND THE WORLD IN TIME FOR CHRISTMAS.

LET ME ASSURE YOU THIS IS 100% RISK FREE AND WILL NOT PUT YOU IN ANY DANGER. ALL I ASK IS YOU KEEP THIS INFORMATION SECRET AND TO YOURSELF AS IT WOULD CAUSE WORLDWIDE PANIC WITH ALL THE LITTLE CHILDREN IF NEWS OF THIS TRAGEDY WAS TO GET OUT.

PLEASE GET BACK TO ME URGENT SO YOU CAN BE INSTRUCTED HOW TO HELP ME WITH THIS WITHOUT FURTHER DELAY.

REMAIN BLESS.

SANTA. (Father Christmas)

I should give a shit because?

Ok so in Browns Bankrupt Britain lots of people are losing their jobs. A bunch of twathead traders and their bigger twathead bosses royally fucked up and the rest of us are paying for it, sometimes with our jobs and meanwhile in the interests of "fairmess" those of us still in gainful employment are being gouged even further to cough up to "help the needy".

Now despite dragons not being the most philanthropic creatures in the world even I am prepared to hand over a few coins from the hoard to help out those who, through no fault of their own, find themselves in dire straights and in need of a bit of help to keep them going and get them back on their feet again.

So why the fucking hell is the money I pay for this express purpose being spend on cunts like Elizabeth Malcolm, an utter waste of DNA that the beeb have decided to feature in their "Unemployment - not very nice is it" series being run on their website.

Elizabeth Malcolm, 43, has never had a job. She lives in a two-bedroom council flat in Glasgow with her three children, one grandchild, two cats and a hamster.

Now I am 43 and I've never (technically) not had a job from the moment I left university in '86, never claimed a penny in benefits from the state, have two cats and I did have a hamster until the Pet Shop Boys came round my house one day and it mysteriously disappeared. So why have I got a job and Liz hasn't?

But she concedes that she doesn't really know why she didn't get a job, and that there was an element of just "not getting round" to it.
...
Without any qualifications she assumed she wasn't able to follow her chosen path and join the Army. She never actually made it to the recruitment office to ask.

Hang on you went to school at the same time as me, as I remember it was free and you just had to turn up and avail yourself of the teachers and books provided, they even paid for you to take exams and stuff so what happened to you?

She ... used to bunk off a lot.

Fucking hellski! You just could not be bothered could you you cuntrumpet. We just made if far too fucking easy for you. Can't be bothered to go to school, can't be bothered to get a job or even go and ask about one. Just lie back in the arms of Mother State and pick up the fucking dole, fat, dumb and happy. Let me guess you'll get yourself up the fucking duff so you can claim the child benefit next...

By 17 she had met the father of her three children and by 22 had their first son William. ... Now a lone parent, she shares her bedroom with her son Jon, 13, daughter Danielle, 17, and Danielle's son Rhys, 11 months.

Yep. I even see you've taught your fucking slag daughter the quick route to the state's coffers too.

The family survive on a combination of Income Support and Child Tax Credits, claimed by both Elizabeth and Danielle. Both also receive the universal Child Benefit for one child each. It all amounts to about £270 a week between the five of them.

Survive? Survive? You do not fucking survive on a tax-free salary of over £1100 a fucking month, accommodation paid for, free this that and the fucking other because you are on "income support"; that's an annual take home salary of around £13,200 so a gross salary of, say, 18k. Sure not a fortune but I would posit that this is hardly "surviving".

She's having "panic attacks" though because even a government as fucked up and dependent on the votes of pond slime like Liz realise that they are utterly taking the piss..

"They said I'd be better off if I was out working because Jon's at an age now where the money I'm getting will stop soon. I'd need to sign on [for unemployment benefit] again and I don't want that because I think I'm too old to sign on."

Fafnir give me strength. Sure Liz you look about sixty odd in your picture but that will be the booze, fags and deep fried mars bars, you are not too fucking old to work at fourty sodding three otherwise I would not be heading to work and freezing my fucking tail off crammed into a cold train with hundreds of other people who seem to be here solely to fund your lifestyle choices.

Liz goes on to have a good old moan about her circumstances and it's all not her fucking fault boo hoo feel sorry for me. Go read it all if you really want to raise your blood pressure.

She does have a bit of insight mind...

Elizabeth is aware there are some who would criticise her life.

Liz you have no idea how much. You are what is wrong with this country, you are a parasite, a mouth breathing drain on the rest of us. The only way you could be of use would be if you voulunteered to be rendered down for cat food (you like your cats, they would appreciate that)

"I'm sorry they have to pay tax money to me. If I could get a job... give me a job then and I'll work, and then they won't have to pay me."

No you fucking cunt we will not "Give you a job". With scum like you it's always "give" isn't it. It's the only thing you know. Give me this, give me that, the world owes me a fucking living so give, give, give. Elizabeth Malcom, you have never for a nanosecond taken any responsibility for your life and you expect me to pay for your lack of giving a flying fuck.

But pay I will until one of our lying, corrupt politicos grasps the nettle of welfare dependancy and rips it out by the root.

Selfish Twat of the Month

Goes to Laura Williams, 18 who a couple of days ago in what probably cost a small fucking fortune in specialist medical costs gave birth to twins. Twins that are fused together laterally for about 60% of their torso length and which although having seperate hearts probably share a shitload of other organs and the necessary plumbing compatible with life.

Apparently Laura went against all medical advice to abort the freakshow exhibit she's just had yanked out of her by c-section and according to some neighbour:

"Laura was in bits to start off with but she's a good mum. She's got an older daughter.

Hang on she's fucking eighteen and she already has a kid. In vain I searched for any mention of a father in the newsreports so I am assuming he is (a) different from that of her first kid and (b) has well and truly fucked off and is probably shagging somone else on the Nelson Mandela estate.

OK so I'm pissed that my tax money is being spunked up to keep this cunt who can't keep her legs crossed in dole money and child allowance and even more pissed at the fucknuggets in government who continue to reward people for breeding and which, in any world ruled by rationalism rather than sentiment would have gone "sorry love, you want to keep that freakshow alive then you're coughing up the medical bills, not the state, here's a bottle of dettol and a coathanger, do the right thing there's a pet". How many grannies are going to wait in agony for a hip replacement or kids go without dialysis because precious funds have been devoted to hacking this should-have-been abortion into tow bits.

But what really gets the breath weapon turned up to thermonuclear is how fucking selfish do you have to be, against all medical advice, these poor fucking kids into the world, all they have to look forward to is a short life of pain, misery and another kid bawling in their ear. What sort of diseased freakery, aside from the fact that "well the social will pay for everyhing, innit" is going on inside this selfish twat's head to want to make her inflict such suffering?

Laura Williams, 18, from Shrewsbury, Shropshire, gave birth to the girls, named Faith and Hope, at University College Hospital, London.

Ah, the sky pixie and that chap that got nailed to some wood. Only thing that would account for it.

Incinerate the lot.

A friendly warning

This is a friendly warning to anyone in the media who may be reading this blog.

The first one of you who uses the phrase "Strictlygate", "Seargentgate" or any other portmanteu expression ending in "Gate" in connection with the utter and complete non-story of some political hack leaving a dancing "competition" will be breathed on.

No Exeptions.

I trust I have made myself clear.

No they haven't

This summary is not available. Please click here to view the post.

Your tax dollars at work

Apparently at the same time as John Sargeant is utterly taking the piss out of a dance competition the only people who take seriously are the four pompous arseholes on the judging panel* there is some sort of glorified karaoke and talent show over on ITV.

Turns out that there was a "shock eviction" last week and somebody who might have won it got kicked out of the show. OK so just another night of lowest commen denominator celebretoid dogshit for brain-dead proles to watch on their 46" plasma cunt-tubes before the bailiffs reposess them (and I get to pick one up piss-cheap at an auction)

So why the fuck do I read this...

Even the Culture Secretary, Andy Burnham, had something to say about the show in Parliament. He said White, who lives in his constituency of Leigh in Greater Manchester, was "wonderful and talented" and the decision to axe her was "very harsh".

Excuse me, excuse fucking me!! The fucking culture secretary, his second home, expensed travel and kickbacks to his family for "secretarial duties), paid for out of my fucking taxes, thinks it is important enough to vomit up his opinion on some cuntsnotting "talent" show aimed at epsilon minus sub morons? So what now - is a ZaNuLabour comittee going to have to scritinise every eviction from one of these shows now? You know what even the most brain dead of chavs is going to sodding notice when the next season of "Strictly Come Maria X-Brother Can Do" starts and Bruce/Davina/That Camp One comes on and says "You know what, all twelve of you have won, after all that's only fair".

I dispair, I truly do.




* I only watch it waiting for "Merlin" to come on - I have the serious hots for John Hurt's Great Dragon - would not be chucking him out of bed**.

** The dragon, not Mr Hurt, obviously.

Entertaining Mrs Sunshine

Just when you thought ZaNuLabour fuckwittery could not get any more stunningly fuckwitted they pull stunts like this.

Cat and dog owners are to be told to provide "entertainment" and "mental stimulation" for their pets under new government advice.

Jesus fucking Christ on a pogo-stick! I swear not even in some kafkaesque fever and LSD dream could I come up with something this freaking dreadful. These people truly are world class twunts.

Of course these are just "advice" and "guidelines"...

Owners will not be fined for breaking the rules

and

DEFRA said it wanted to remind pet owners of their responsibilities under the 2006 Animal Welfare Act.

...but you don't have to dig very far into this report to see the state's goon-squad kicking in your door at 4 in the morning because you failed to take Fido for walkies one evening last week...

failure to comply may be used in animal cruelty prosecutions.

and

"It is your responsibility to read the complete Code of Practice to fully understand your cat's welfare needs and what the law requires you to do."

Ihr Katze ist nicht in Ordnung. Kommen Sie bitte mit uns.

So I guess we can look forward to some council Stazi wannabe snooping round our houses checking that our cats are not bored in the very near future, all paid out of my taxes, natch.

Wonder if they will want to check my ponies too?

There are similar guidelines for horse owners under the proposals, which are subject to an eight week consultation period.

Yep, thought there might be. How do you entertain a horse exactly, show it carrot porn?

But what are these orders and dictats guidelines and reccomendations from ZaNuLabours ministry of fucking over the middle classes? Well it turns out that you should feed your cats properly, ensure they have somewhere to have s shit and maybe consider letting it wander around over your shelves kocking over your picture frames. You know all the things that normal, responsible people who have animals in their homes do already without being ordered to do so by Central State Command.

Now what about the pond scum on the Nelson Mandela estate, what do you reckon to their chances of reading 28 pages of Pussycats For Dummies is? Yes probably about the same as their chances of cleaning up after Tyson their pitbull takes a dump. Do you think that our lords and masters will be going after them - course not, but you can bet that a nice soft easy prosecution of some frail old dear who can't really walk the pooch so well any more will be following on swift wings following the "consultation period".

And what about the *real* cruelty that happens. The pikeys who drown their horses, the muslim halal slaughter of conscious animals, the racehorse industry that cripples hundreds if not thousands of horses each year by riding them hard when they are too young for all their bones and joints to have fully formed. Any chance of tackling those instead of going for a nice soft option of putting the jackboot into the ordinary Joe? Let me see: ethinic minority (violent), religious ethnic minority (insanely violent), organisation with lots of money and bought-off politicians. Thought not.

Incidentally if you go over to the Defra website good luck on finding the document. There's no link so you have to search for it. I'm currently pulling down the horse welfare one as I fancy a bit of "consultation" with Hilary Benn, the current minister of state for picking up dogshit. I'll try not to use too many swear words.

Quick, dig a hole

Because sometime over the next four years we will be hit by an asteroid.

No seriously, you look at all those movies where we get hit/are about to be hit by an asteroid and there is always a black guy as president of the USA.

We're doomed, doomed I tell you. And he's not even as good looking as Morgan Freeman!

But seriously thank fuck that's the Bush era over (although I guess we should not discount his halfwit brother Jebadiah - seriously, that's his name although he shortens it to "Jeb" because he loses concentration and wanders off if he tries to sign the whole thing) and thank even bigger fuck that the cerifiable whackjob that is Sarah Palin is back off to Alaska where all she can do is upset some moose.

Now how about letting me enter your country without fingerprinting me like a common criminal?

O Tempora! O Mores!

As you may already know being a dragon I am moderately well versed in Latin; the rules for being a dragon say you have to be I think. Back in the day a knowledge of your second and third declensions was regarded as a mark of an educated gentleman. If you didn’t know your locative from your dative you were regarded as a bit of a thickie.

Now of course in ZaNu Labor’s brave New England that will never do so certain councils have instructed their staff under no circumstances to use Latin phrases in speech or writing because

using Latin is elitist and discriminatory, because some people might not understand it - particularly if English is not their first language.

Well boo fucking hoo! Look you morons Latin was used for years as a lingua franca (see, see what I did there) to enable people who spoke different languages to communicate, it greased the wheels of politics and learning for centuries. The whole point of using it was that you didn’t need to know the other guy’s first language.

But what are they talking about, are council officials writing huge tracts of Plutarch and Pliny to Mrs Scroggins of 27 Mugabe Avenue and expecting her to understand it…

Several local authorities have ruled that phrases like "vice versa", "pro rata", and even "via" should not be used.

Fuck me, if you don’t know what these mean then you really are too fucking thick to live. I bet even most of the pond scum of this septic isle know what these mean even though they don’t know where they come from. Are we going to have to remove the “v.” between names of people in boxing tournaments or football teams in next Saturday’s fixtures now as well?

Course we are, it’s elitist and discriminatory. So in the spirit of anti-elitism shall we get rid of words from other foreign languages that people won’t understand. How about all those Arabic words: algebra, azimuth, zenith, nadir. That’ll do for starters.

What was that Mr Inclusive Councellor, we don’t want to upset the mussies? Thought so.

Final word on the subject has to go to the morons at the Plain English Campaign:

A Campaign spokesman said the ban might stop people confusing the Latin abbreviation e.g. with the word "egg".

Can I suggest that anyone who does mistake “e.g.” for “egg” have several ostrich eggs rammed forcibly up their rectums? Antiquis temporibus, nati tibi similes in rupibus ventosissimis exponebantur ad necem!

Varsity Dragon

Some time ago your scaly green friend forgot the first two rules of working for a corporation:

1) Never volunteer for anything
2) Especially anything to do with graduate recruitment

and answered an email asking for volunteers to turn up at the various milkround events that the company holds to try and get the "brightest and best" talents of esteemed seats of learning to come and lay down their lives work for Banco Di Haggis. As one of these was the capital of Swampland where I live I figured that at least I'd get home early enough so I put my name down.

That was months ago so it came as a bit of a shock when on Monday, as the perfect shitstorm was breaking around me as the realisation that I and my colleagues now worked for the bushy eyebrowed monocular cunt who calls himself prime minister, I got a reminder that I needed to be in Cambridge on Wednesday afternoon to pimp my employer.

"Hmmm...." opined my co-workers, "Tough sell little dragon."

"No shit," I replied as I wondered about faking tail-rot on the day. Ah well, might as well go, at least I can blag a few pens.

Anyway Wednesday comes so off I trundle to some grey concrete building down by the river out of view of all the really nice colledges; it sort of looked like someone had glued a load of square concrete egg-boxes onto the side so having spent a goodly proportion of my student days living here...


County College, Lancaster. As seen by a dragon after several pints.

... I felt right at home.

The gig kicked off at one in the afternoon and in trundled the keen students... well keen enough to be awake and moving at 1pm which rather lets the side down student-wise I thought and they all go off to talk to JP Morgan, UBS, even the fucking Bank of England; anyone but us whom they give a wide berth in case they catch a bad dose of government intervention and loss of bonuses. In the end I started humming the old Milwall FC chant that goes to the tune of Rod Stewart's "Sailing"

We are Banko
Banko di Haggis
We are Banko,
From Auld Reekie
We Are Banko
Banko di Haggis
No one likes us
We don't care

Spot the dragon

In the end we did get a few people come up and have a chat about what we had to offer and were we actually going to be hiring anyone? I had got myself all prepped up with clever words like "good capitalisation", "sound foundations" and "being a civil servant isn't so bad you know" and despite being a dragon and thus having all the sales skills of Gerald Ratner I got a few people enthused enough to say they would come along to the evening do we were having in a few days time. Usually the conversation went something like ...

"Go on, we have an evening presentation round the corner soon, why not come to that!"
"Oh I don't know..."
"There will be food."
"Er..."
"Free booze."
"Well..."
"Dwarves in mankinis having sex with live halibut!"
"Eh???"
"Chainsaw juggling lepers?"
"Oh go on then."

Regrettably I found out after a couple of conversations that it really did help if I prentended be a Cambridge aliumnus rather than having graduated with a 2.2 in Mud Studies from a northern redbrick so I started out with a maths degree from Trinity. I think by the end of the event it had become a double first in PPE and Quidditch from Gonville and Caius. Hate to think what I'll be saying at this evening do when I will have had the benefit of some free booze.

One thing that never changes is the coffee in student refectories. There was a nice view...




...but the coffee tasted like hot gritty water. Utterly foul.

The best bit of the event came towards the end when all the employees from the organisations who had been shanghaied into the event ignored the few remaining students (the sensible ones having all repaired to various alcohol retailing emporia) and started trading swag. The going rate was one tube of Banko di Haggis jelly beans to a pen and two to something worth having like a USB stick or I-pod amplifier (got both - happy dragon!). I even blagged a squeezy "stress bull" from my former employer Merrill Lynch which, now that they don't exist, will be worth something in a few years time.

Come six pm we all slope off with sore feet and pockets stuffed with as many pens, highlighters and packets of jelly beans as we can manage to carry.

I snapped this of King's on the way back to the bus station, very nice.



Anyway I'm at Loughborough in a few weeks... come and say hello to the Grumpy Dragon if you're in town. I'll be the the one with the wings and tail stood at the stand with nobody around it.

Civil Servant Dragon

As I work for Banco Di Haggis, one of the formerly proud and independent Scottish banks ZaNuLabour are about to nationalise, does that make me a government employee; a civil servant if you will.

If so can I have a copper-bottomed final salary pension, Nelson Mandela's birthday off as a holiday, 5 Whitley Days* a year and, if I feel like it, a couple of years on full salary sick pay sitting with my feet up at home because I have "stress". Oh and a straight 9 to 5 with an hour for lunch. And being able to go on strike at the drop of a hat.

I guess there will be some extra forms to fill in but otherwise it sounds like a sweet gig.



* Unrecorded sickness days - named after the brewer Greenall Whitley as they were used when you had a 5 star hangover and work was simply not an option.

Some words of comfort from a rich, well dressed cunt

OK so all over the world people are beginning to struggle because of the various financial crises: pension values are falling to levels that mean we'll all have to work longer and harder, people are having their houses reposessed, it's very likely that the fall out of this will make the unemployment of the 70's and 80's look like a walk in the park and even your little green scaly chum is not sure if he'll be gainfully employed come the end of the year if my company's share price continues not so much as to go down the toilet but is rapidly heading into the sewers and down the outfall pipe to the sea.

Given the circumstances you would think that the leader of one of the world's major religions would have a few gentle words of comfort for his flock and the wider world, just to show he cares. Sure your dragony correspondent would probably sneer and call them platitudes but you think that given his position the Pope would actually give some sort of a toss that the financial crisis would lead to family breakdowns, even suicide and have a kindly word of support or two to those feeling the night close in around them.

In your fucking dreams.

Nope, it's all your fault for wanting to, well, better yourself, have a career, earn some money so you could support and educate your children and give your family a measure of comfort.

The global financial crisis is proof that the pursuit of money and success is pointless, Pope Benedict XVI has told a meeting of bishops in Rome.

The head of the Roman Catholic Church said that the disappearance of money as banks collapsed showed that wealth meant "nothing".

Jesus fucking Christ on a pogo stick. And this comes from someone we know has a taste for Prada shoes, Ferregamo shirts and judging by the piccie accompanying the article...



... he's not exactly skimping on the vestments and solid gold walking sticks.

But blind to the hypocricy he carries on...

Speaking to the bishops assembled at the Vatican, Pope Benedict said those who seek "success, career or money are building on sand"

Yep, all human progess is worthless. Want to make something better of yourself and his invisible friend in the sky thinks you're a twat. The answer is of course.

The Pope said that people should instead base their lives on God's word.

That would be God's word as interpreted by a Prada loving former Hitlerjungend member in a skirt I take it.

If I was in Rome right now I'd shove that gold walking stick so far up his arse you'd be able to see the glitter every time he fucking spoke to utter his next stream of banality.

Don't worry Obersturmgruppenfuhrer Ratzinger, I'm a dragon and I would breathe on it to make sure it was nice and warm first.

Scribbles on the bog door

On my travels back from the land of sheepshagging and close harmony singing recently (I think the two are related) I stopped off at a motorway service station to the south of Birmingham in order to top up the caffiene levels and take a dump. I don't know if you recall this but going to the lav in a service station 20 or so years ago was a journey into some Stygian abyss where you were met at the door to the bogs by a ferryman who would carry you in his coracle across the River Styx of urine that spread from a blocked loo across the floor.

Not so these loos which were, generally speaking, clean and reasonably pleasant, the hand driers worked and my cubicle was secured by a proper lock with a handle rather than a 2 inch screw hammered into what remained of the locking mechanism.

Now back in those dark and distinctly malodourous days the back of public bog doors seemed to be used as a general bulletin board. I am surmising that back in the days before the Intertubes came along people used to nip to the netty in order to post a message on topics of the day, mainly the status of their favourite football team or lack of form of a rival, politics - usually concentrating on the subject of The Troubles (such as "Fuck the Queen and the UDA", to which the considered political response was usually "Fuck off you Feinian bogtrotting cunt") and of course what everyone else uses the intertubes for, sex.

Specifically soliciting sexual encounters, normally between members of the male gender as, I assumed, that women of the heterosexual persuasion didn't tend to frequent the male loos, not even when there was a queue (and there would be) for the ladies.* I was never entirely sure what to make of these: I mean it seems a pretty odd way to advertise and I often wondered if they were all practical jokes truckers used to play on their mates - you know so Steve who had just got back from hauling a shitload of steel from Newcastle to Bristol was just bedding down for the night and gets a call asking to meet up at Forton services tomorrow evening for "Hot botty action".

Anyway back to 2008 and the interweb has triumphed; there isn't a scribble, no crude drawings of willies, no political slanging matches, no invites for participants in anal intercourse when, tucked up a corner, I spot this...



Not the best picture in the world but I didn't exactly want to turn the flash on did I! It was actually scratched into the veneer of the door and reads "Sicko wants to be bitch for large dogs"

Now I'm leaning towards "prank" for this one given the use of the word "sicko" but, even though there must be dozens of websites and forums for people whose interests encompass "being a bitch for large dogs" it is nice to see that even in this wired age there is still a place for the scribbes on the bog door.



* incidentally the one time I saw a queue for the mens bog and not the ladies was at the geekfest that is Microsoft TechEd.

Araf

Right, that's the blogging fatigue out of the way so here is your friendly neighbourhood grumpy dragon back on the intertubes and flinging bile at everyone and everything, especially if you happen to be a sattelite broadband provider called Tariam whose fucking system has gone down leaving me without warez and pr0n for the past four weeks and necessitating me dispensing more baubles from the horde to upgrade my kit - but I get promised 2Mb/sec (yeah like that's going to happen) and a free virgin every three months so long as I stay a subscriber. They are based in Gloucester so good luck finding those virgins guys.

And Vodafone, don't you sit there looking smug because if your GPRS sucked any harder than it does I'd probably enjoy it. And how about erecting a 3G mast anywhere north of Cambridge sometimes before the next millenium, eh?

Anyway I just spent last week getting back in touch with my inner fire-breathing lizard by walking up and down large hills in Wales. I quite like Wales, sure the locals can be a tad on the neanderthal side but the scenery is pretty.



and the local good-time girls are friendly



and a big up for the Black Lion in Hay on Wye



for good beer, good food and comfy rooms and being very, very close to England.

However one thing bothers me a lot about Wales and it is all the money wasted on writing "ARAF" as well as "SLOW" on the roads. Now I know if you kill a language you kill a culture but for crying out loud is it really necessary to write down something that sounds like the yelp you would get it you accidentally trod on a fox's tail?* I mean it's not as though there is anyone in the whole principality who can read who does not know what the English word "Slow" means? But it's not just that it's everything in the public space, parking restriction signs are twice as big as they need to be to allow for the random collection of consonants underneath the English bit and even my fucking bank is wanking away my share dividends (such as they are) by having special posters printed offering loans at 8% in Welsh.

So I got to wondering, who pays the extra for painting the road twice. Don't recall taxes being double in Wales so they can pay for their linguistic willy-waving?

Somehow, I suspect that all that cash to print fox-yelps on the road is coming out of my pocket.

There's lovely.




* I have a fox here and indeed it did go "Arraff" when I trod on it just now.

Up the garry...

Sod arresting him for being a nonce, he should be locked up and the key thrown away for inflicting that fucking idiotic beard on the world.



Stupid Cunt.

Pretty Prancing Ponies

Over here I see that the dressage events in the Olympics have not exactly been going down a bundle with the population of Honkers.

Many of the initial 10,400 spectators, more used to the excitement of weekly horse races at the same venue, fell asleep during the dressage events, sometimes referred to as 'horse ballet.'

One of them told the city's Sunday Morning Post newspaper she was 'deeply bored.' 'The horses just walked from one side of the arena to the other and then back again,' she said.

'I thought they were just going through the warm-up exercises but the commentators said the round was over ... I really don't think Hong Kong people will be interested in this.'

Obviously no-one had bothered to explain haute école dressage to the locals. We've also had some PETA numpty over on the Grauniad bleating on about how dressage is cruel (and dull) - no link as if I read the Grauniad I have to go and scrub mysef with carbolic to remove the taint and I can't be arsed right now.

I've seen this happen every time the Olympics roll around, let's have a go at the equestrian sports and usually the boot gets put in against the most impenetrable one which is invariably dressage. Usually the bleat is "well the olympics should be about what people can do, not horses" to which my response is "fine, then dump all the sailing events then", after all sailing is about the wind and your skill in manipulating it to make a boat do something, not that much different from manipulating a different motive power source to do something. Sure the argument would open the doors to, say, rally driving being in the Olympics and to be honest I've got no problem with that - be more interesting that watching a bunch of lycra clad twats going round a wooden circle. That and the fucking beach volleyball - I mean that's what you arse about doing for 20 minutes on holiday before going "fuck it's hot" and retiring to the poolside bar for a Heineken or six.

I have to 'fess up a bias here as when I used to ride competitively dressage was my main discipline and the one I enjoyed the most as (a) it was the one that got you and the horse really communicating, any fool can learn enough riding to get a horse over a jump - dressage you had to really work at understanding what the horse was "saying" and (b) you were a damned lot less likely to die and / or kill your horse than doing cross country

And the bloody beeb only showed the dressage section of the eventing anyway (which is a bit dressage 101) and not the Grand Prix section, or rather they did, online without any sound according to one of my horsey friends who managed to find it. And I'll lay money that we'll have wall to wall coverage of the synchronised drowning when that comes on. Well at least that's funny; the way they waddle to the pool looking like they've just shat themelves is fucking hilarious.

Anti Dhimmitude reqested

Now we all know that the government takes about as much notice of those online polls they host as they do for, well, any opinions expressed to them by the British public who by and large just want them to fuck off. However some fuckwad islamist has stuck a petition up to make Mohammed's (piss be upon him) birthday a UK national holiday.

Fortunately someone with an ounce of sense has launched a counter-petition which is here.

Of course the chances of a holiday on Big Mo's birthday happening are about the same as there being 72 virgins waiting to give me a blow job when I get to my office this morning but just to put the raghead's noses out of joint do go along and sign.

Could not have put it better myself

Well actually I probably could. This gem is from a comment in the Daily Hate on an article on the continuing internal squabbles of the Anglican church as it tears itself about over the amazing power of bottysex.

hi what would god think if someone wanted to marry there pet dog who they loved very much would the church change its views and except them

- richard shepherd, moonta south australia, 7/8/2008 7:53

Actually I think he's probably a bit too bright and articulate to be a Christian.

Incidentally I used to know one vicar who, whilst probably not up for conducting a marriage ceremony for you and Fido would be quite happy to give you a blessing.

In case you thought a Tory government would be better

No they won't...
"Lad mags" encourage irresponsible behaviour among young men and promote a negative image of women, a leading Conservative has said.

Yep, nothing to do with irresponsible behaviour having no consequences, it's all down to some tits and bums in "Zoo". Fuckwit.

And speaking of zoos I guess this means that a new tory government won't be re-legalising my horse porn collection any time soon.

Explosion in a springs factory

Oh what joy, the Olympic Games are upon us, a three week extravaganza of people running about very fast and jumping up and down broadcast live at three in the morning from some polluted hell-hole somewhere in China; a showcase of the best that Totalitarianism has to offer not seen since one Herr Hitler had a knees-up in Berlin in the 30's. I can hardly fucking wait.

Of course my compulsory TV tax will be being used to bring every grunt, groan and wobby-boob-in-the-beach-volleyball right into my living room whether I want it or not and just so we get the message that there might be some sport on in China this summer they have thoughtfully given us a trailer to let us know. And here it is...

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=7mlGSwmHwrE&feature=related

... fucking hell it's Money, Pigsy, Sandy and that monk who I could never work out if it was male or female as done by that "Gorillaz" animator and set to a soundtrack of someone screetching in a language that sounds like an explosion in a factory that makes springs set to a backing track composed on a Casio VL-Tone

I really don't know where the beeb are coming from here, certainly it's quite an impressive work but the Monkey and his mates are drawn to look like the sort of hoodies who would work you over with a muck-rake as soon as look at you.

Bet that's a fun read

Seen today as I logged on to Blogger...




Like I'm going to click on that link on the 7:20 from Cambridge.

Bangles Vs. Unicorn Horns

Oh fuck here we go, some silly fucking cow with God on her fucking side has got a gin-sodden high court judge to pander to her family's "Waaahhh! You are insulting our religion" bullshit: http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/uk_news/wales/7529694.stm

Given all the panic about knife crime right now I wonder if the other "K" which Sikhs are supposed to carry, the Kirpan or dagger, is going to be allowed and we can look forward to schools where all the kids in turbans are wandering around tooled up? Didn't think of that one did you you fucking cunttrumpets.

Look this is quite simple, school says "We are giving you a free education out of Little Dragon's taxes. This the the dresscode, like it or fuck right the hell off and pay for your own schooling." no arguments.

I suggest a fightback here folks. All parents should immediately take up the worship of her most Holy Pinkness, none other that the Invisible Pink Unicorn (PBUH). To show proper and devout devotion to Her Holy Horn your children should be equipped with a foot long spiral horn made from the finest Sheffield steel and sharpened to a point. If any one asks the spiral represents the wandering path we all take to Her Blessed Meadows and the point represents goring in the stomach of anyone who dares to insult our faith.

Your children must wear this at all times but especially during rugby practice. Anyone who argues against and we just point to this tuling and intone the Nu Labour prayer "Waaaaah! My Huuuman Riiiights".

Hiding the kids from evil peedofils

Your scaly green correspondent was out shopping last week for a new motor vehicle as the present tank is getting a bit tatty and long in the tooth so time to get something new with which to annoy the eco-weenies.

As is normal with my car purcasing forays I already know what model and spec I want before I go to the shop and invariably see something shinier and buy that and this trip was no exeception as I was after a Toyota Landcruiser LC4 and ended up with a four month old fully tricked out Invinvible (piccies to follow when I pick it up later in the week).

Anyway I tootled around in it, in lieu of off-roading I drove it over a couple of speed bumps and flapped my dragony wings in joy when, on parking it back at the dealership, found it had a camera in the back so you can park the fucking thing. I also noticed that all the rear windows were darkly tinted (which, to be honest, made it look a bit like a pimpmobile) but I didn't give it much thought. Anyway Mrs D and I were back at the dealers on Saturday to sign the papers and make it quite clear to him that I did not require the optional Wombat Protection Insurance or the additional Beluga Whale Towing option so please take those off the bill you commission junky. A little hiccup happened in that we realised that the MOT* had expired on the car I'm trading in so being as I'm about to spunk 30-odd thousand on the new thing they booked us in then and there and leant us a Verso for a couple of hours. Quite a nice medium sized family runabout with a start button which was cool and a dashboard that looked link Bang and Olufsen has designed it. But yet again it had those tinted rear windows.

It was only that evening over dinner Mrs Dracunculus says "you know what, those tinted windows they're doing now are really sad."

"How come?" says I.

"Well you notice the two cars we'v ebeen driving have lots of seats for sproglets in the back? Well the tinted glass is there to stop evil nasty peedofils looking at your kids on the school run."

Bloody hell she's right. This is EXACTLY what its for and there is obviously the demand for it - I also notice that its only fitted to the more expensive models for each marque so it's also a subtle marketing ploy of "if you want to protect your kids then you should really by the LX instead of the L model". The sales guy obviously never brought the glass issue to our attention as we quite clearly did not have little hatchlings in tow.

Now how utterly fucked in the head to you have to be to think that peedofils are waiting to look at your kids through your car window, not only that but it is such a threat you need to have smoked glass in the back of your motor!

On the other hand top marks to Toyota for spotting that gap in the market.




* roadworthyness document for my non UK reader.

Wishes sometimes come true

From a blog post made last May on the subject of a certain Mr Murat, resident of a certain town in Portugal:

I really, really hope that he is as innocent as a day-old lamb and that he sues Ms Campbell and her tawdry hack rag every which way to Christmas and back.

From today's BBC news website:

Expat Robert Murat has settled a claim for damages over allegations in 11 UK newspapers that he was involved in the disappearance of Madeleine McCann.

Happy Dragon!

Another twatty priest excels himself

OK so you are on your way into a public building and you see a Harold Ramp dossing down in the doorway, probably stinking like a public lavatory in Lagos and surrounded by syringes indicating that he's a junky (and therefore odds on has every kind of Hepatitis not to mention TB, HIV, the Ague and Viral Equine Encephalopathy) and also probably not 100% of sound mind right now. You're not going to go and wake him up and offer him a cup of tea are you.

Well if the tramp was a knobcheese of a vicar in Wales and he was testing his flock you should do.

Mr Rigby said he had intended to communicate a "serious message of acceptance in an emotive way", and used the example of the Disciples not recognising Jesus on the road to Emmaus after his resurrection.

Well yes but there's a bit of a difference between recognising someone walking around who you are convinced got nailed to a plank the other week and avoiding a pissed up junkie.

He said he had tried a similar stunt twice before in Newport and London - where the congregations had been more generous.

And more stupid, obviously.

Hop aboard the Atheist Bus

This is a cracking idea. If you live or work in London you can't have failed to notice that when buses are not advertising the latest Hollywood celluloid wankfest there is some sappy message about "Believe in Jesus or you're going to burn, sinner."

So what if the atheists had an ad?

Well for a pledge of just five measly quid, we can. http://www.freethinker.co.uk/2008/07/06/atheism-on-the-buses/

Go on, you know you want to.

And for your further reading pleasure, this website has been cracking me up for the last 2 days, the (admittedly old) blog of an american teacher of "special needs" kids, or as she puts it... TardBlog

Oh, Bum.

Turns out Cambridge station has a newly installed automatic gate line I didn't know about (or could see from where I was).

No wonder they didn't care.

Jammie Dodgers

My train company have started promoting their new wizard wheeze which fits right in with the police state that Britain is rapidly turning into under the auspices of ZaNuLabour. Apparently if you "suspect" someone of not having paid for their train travel you can send a text message starting with the word "dodger" to a phone number.

Wonderful, so how the fuck does that work then? Well let's have a go picking the first random fucker I see who looks like they are going to get off at Cambridge. First of all I'll fire up the baiting phone* and so we go "DODGER old mn in rd drs on {time} Lon Cambrdge"

Now I will just strategically position myself so I can see the platform entrance at Cambridge.

Oh my phone went beep. Auto ack from the SMS reciever at National Distress Party HQ.

10 mins later we're at Cambridge and old lady in red dress gets off train... walks straight out of station without being challenged.

Marvellous. It doesn't work. That's me sleeping soundly tonight knowing that no matter how much stazi-like surveillance they will put in place humans will still be running it and cock-ups win out every time.




* unregistered handset and free sim from O2 topped up using cash - mainly used in my 419 baits.

Belgium

Why is Belgium so ugly?

I've been travelling around Europe for a while and there's something about Belgium that I could not quite put my finger on until yesterday when I had to cross it from The Netherlands to France and it came to me; the country is just plain butt ugly. Everything seems to look tatty, a casually thrown together mess of overhead power cables and concrete, all the buildings are either brown or grey, the road signs on the motorway are horrible to look at and what is with those tatty red number plates on the cars?

I've even flown over Belgium a couple of times in a light plane and it's even ugly from the air.

No wonder this is where surrealism came from. Reality was just to hideous to paint.

Usless Wankers

So our wonderful Government has presided over a country where there is a CCTV camera for ever 14 people (and one on the train watching me now - hope it got a good shot of me getting my knob out a second ago), where you can be locked up without charge for six weeks and where I have to have my two horses Sunshine and Pebble passported and microchipped on pain of prison (for me, probably the horses too) ...

But when they actually have one of the most dangerous men on the planet, Al Quibble's number 2 honcho no less, they can't keep the fucker in prison or send him somewhere who will do what we should be doing to the fucker and attaching his gonads to the national grid. And what is the response of our rulers to this? They are "dissapointed".

Fucking hell. Still Jackoff Smith, don't worry, you can't actually seem to get your act together to deal with the people who really pose a threat so I guess you're just going to have to press ahead with your plans to criminalise anyone who draws a stick figure of a 10 year old with a lob on; that'll make us all feel safer as the next raghead detonates himself on the 7.26 Luton to Kings Cross.

Abu - if you're reading this can you see if you can arrange for someone to drink a load of nitroglycerine, walk into the state opening of parliament and jump up and down. We'd all appreciate it, thanks.

She's Got David Davis Eyes

Well a small helping of Crow was served with my large bucket of milky froth with a coffee in the bottom of it as I have to admit that not every politician is a complete and utter foetid lump of dickcheese. That said if he was in some marginal constituency with a real chance of not jumping straight back on the the gravy train after his by-election I would have been more impressed but as it is at least he's actually partly put his bollocks on the chopping block for a cause he believes in.

Now if the rest of the Tory party would care to stand four-square behind him and back his stand rather than the rather pathetic dicking about displayed yesterday they might, just might, make me think for more than a couple of nanoseconds about voting for them but if you scratch not too deep you see that they are nearly as illiberal as the other lot. Conservative Home was all for 42 days and the only reason the Tories in the house were whipped through the "No" lobby was because they saw a chance to give Gordon a bloody nose, underneath they, like all big governments, are control freaks and historically the Tories will give ACPO anything they ask for.

Still, good luck to Davis, at least there is one member of the house who isn't a complete and utter tool.

Bye to BT

I did something I have been meaning to do for ages today. I cancelled my BT line. Living in the middle of a swamp as I do it’s never worked well and, being 10km from the nearest exchange means broadband is a non-starter (hence the reason my roof has a fucking great satellite dish on the roof with a lurid “Active radio installation” hazard warning sign on it* despite peak output is one measly Watt)

The process was relatively painless but the BT numpty on the end of the line seems to be paid on a keeping people commission basis as I got the real hard sell to stay.

"You are a valued customer, what can we do to make you stay?"
"Nothing, the line quality sucks and I never use it, I have three mobiles**"
"I see you have the Super-Friends-And-The-Takeaway-On-Speeddial-Weekend package, I can give you that for free"
"Can you give me free line rental?"
"Er, no"
"So I still end up giving you eighty quid a year"
"Yes"
"Not much good then is it."
"How about I come round and give your horse a blow-job, will you stay then?"
"My horse is a mare"
"Damn"

Made me think though it is definitely worthwhile when any sort of subscription is coming to an end ringing up and telling them that you don’t want to renew. Apparently Sky are great for this and you can often get upgrades to your packages giving you yet more shit to surf through before you inevitably settle for some disaster porn on Discovery. I always do it with mobile phones and get some ace tarrif deals.

Wonder if it’ll work with the Northern Rock?





* Well it did until I took it off in case some nimby council droid came round.
** Which, according to ZaNu Labour, makes me a terrorist.

Cum Mortuis in Lingua Mortua

Please forgive me for a small IT related rant here as, thanks to some wanker at The Times, I no longer have a work blog.

For byzantine political reasons this week has seen your little green scaly friend enrolled on a course in the C++ computer programming language. Now I last used said language, briefly, back in the mid-90's and things have apparently moved on a bit since then so off I toddle into the world of void pointers and memory leaks.

Well yes things have moved on a bit. There was a time when C++ was the language of the elite coder, when to get anything to run at speed this was the language you used and only manly men with square jaws and six-pack chests were brave enough to code in it. Not any more, now we have Java and C# (the latter being my weapon of choice) and, quite frankly, they just piss all over C++ these days. Speed and being "close to the hardware" was always C++'s strength, the price you paid was a labyrinthine syntax of addresses and pointers and having to be the top of your game to avoid writing a bunch of code that leaked memory like a leaky thing. Well I ran a couple of tests on the lappy on the train home last night doing some pretty close to the metal stuff (read in file, arse around with the byte stream, write it out again) and C# was just as fast, if not faster and an order of magnitude easier to code. as I didn't need to arse about with headers, allocating and deallocating memory and all that rubbish.

I am probably going to get a bunch of flak for this but I really can't see the point of C++ any more, it's become as legacy as VB and COBOL, the only person I know who writes in C / C++ and has justification as to why he has to writes controller chips for computer controlled milling machines. There really is no reason to write general purpose application code in C++ any more.

With any luck come 5pm on Friday I can shove the course notes in a drawer for some Tony Robinsonoid to dig up in 3427 and intone "Ah yes this clearly has a ritual meaning" over.

With my luck I'll probably get assigned to maintain some legacy C++ app. Jesus some random motherfuckers are going to get torched it that happens I can tell you.

About the only thing that would get me watching Formula 1

The Daily Mash has excelled itself today... MOSLEY TO MOUNT A DONKEY BEFORE FRENCH GRAND PRIX

Given the boring parade of high-speed advertisements that F1 has become, someone shagging a donkey would probably be the only thing that would get me watching it again.

And then only if it was a pretty donkey.

Drop that pencil!

Ok so I was given to understand that photos and videos of child abuse were illegal because, well, quite simply chidren are abused to make them and even a libertarian dragon such as I realised that a person's freedom has to be restricted when it impinges severely on the freedom of another, and the freedom not to be killed or raped comes pretty high up that list. So, no problem banning kiddy porn videos from me.

Now what if someone takes an application like Bryce or RenderMan, creates a wire-frame model, renders it and it just happens to look like a small girl in a swimming pool of lard getting it on with a lizard-creature from the planet Zod? Ok so that someone has not so much got a few nuts and bolts loose but rather is missing Screwfix's entire fixings inventory but, get this, NO ONE HAS BEEN HURT. There is no victim, just a bunch of pixels pushed into place by software, therefore there can be no crime, no matter how personally appalled you might be by what the person behind the computer just did.

Well if the rabid control freaks in Za-NuLabour get their way, and they will, it will be a crime. Indeed it would seem that at least one police force during the recent "Extreme Porn" debacle wanted not only sexually suggestive drawings of children banned but also writing.

So everyone of you who has a copy of Nabokov's "Lolita", 3 years in the nick. Guess that's why they have just let out all those muggers and burglars early, they need room for you. Oh and The Koran, The Bible and Shakespeare (Juliet was under 16)... all you lot as well.

No people, I hold no breif for the kiddy fiddlers but this has gone way too fucking far. We need not to be voting these twats out of office we need to be throwing them out, via a twelfth floor window and into the paths of speeding fuel tax protesters in 18 wheel trucks.

This goes way beyond "protecting children", indeed there is evidence that this will actually put more children at risk,¹, this is pure and simple "We will control what you imagine and think. You may think of Government Approved topics only" and puts us in the shameful company of Saudi Arabia, Iran and China when it comes to freedom of expression.

Kill them. Kill them all. (and don't forget to bring lots of crimson Prismacolors so you can draw the fountains of blood accurately).




¹ There are a number of studies that show that where porn is freely available the rates of sexual assauts and sex crimes generally are lower than countries where it is not. Not conclusive proof but certainly strong evidence for a direct causation.

More Eurowibble

Looks like I was not the only one liveblogging Eurovision on Saturday, Noreen over on Emerald Bile has a nice take on everyone's favourite warble-fest and pretty much swore about the same songs as I did.

Now the dust has settled the hand-wringing as to why we came last, yet again has started in earnest. Terry Wogan is throwing his jouets out of le carrage bebe and saying he won't do it again unless the voting system changes and apparently some twat of an MP is apparently going to be tabling an early day motion to get the BBC to stop funding the competition unless we get to win or something; all of which sounds like a bunch of sour grapes.

Here's why we came last: we sent someone who could not even win a public talent show let along a major international competition. Russia on the other hand sent their equivalent of Robbie Williams who is absolutely massive in Eastern Europe and also threw in a famous Hugarian violinist and an olympic gold medallist figure scater into the mix. And as to all the whinging about "Block votes" please explain to me why Georgia gave Russia 12 points when earlier in the week the two countries almost went to war with each other! Look block voting always happened, Germany would always give Turkey 12 points (down to all the gastarbeiter, apparently) and we could usually rely on Ireland and Malta who were always good for a few points.

No, we lost because we sent a weak song that you had forgotten by the time it finished, let along after 20 odd other tunes. Terry Wogan is pissed because he more or less hand picked the entry this year - not that there was much competition and to be honest although 200k of my television tax go to fund this every year you get 8 or so hours of telly out of it. I doubt you would get a single episode of "Holby City" for that. Send a good song and you'll do OK, send an X-factor reject with 3 minutes of formula dross you won't.

And anyway, it's Eurovision, for fucks sake stop taking it seriously.

Liveblogging the Eurovision

We start with an apology for ripping the great british public off for telephone votes that were not registered... well that makes everyone cheerful.

And the show starts with the dumpy lesbian who won last year. Hey they had a centaur who introduced the second semi final, can we not have him back?

Oooh, the frocks are half suits and half dresses, and no we have changed to hot pants... this does not bode well for the interval act.

-------------

Romania... er I worked with a Romanian once and I swear that his language when he was arguing with his mrs on the phone did not sound like that... A quick poke of the red button instant Eurovision karaoke reveals they are singing in Italian. Shame the song is a poor ripoff of Rene and Renata but without the blubber

-------------

Us ... 2nd in some UK talent show apparently
Well he can hold a tune, Mrs Dracunculus thinks he sounds like Errol Brown from Hot Chocolate, I think he sounds like Gordon Brown. To be honest its a lot of energy going nowhere fast, instantly forgettable pop. He has a wonderful future on the cruise ships.

--------------

Albania

Something about clocks. Mrs D says her frock does not fit. She seems to be stood in one hell of draft and to be honest I am wondering if we should have pressed the karaoke button as the English translation of this song is horlicks... bring back the Belgians with their nonsence lyrics.

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Germolene

Fuck me what is the matter with her hair! You are so cunting lucky you got a bye to the final as you would have no hope of getting through the semis. Hey you sent a real good swing song last year, do that again! Mrs D Thinks they look like a knock-off Power Rangers

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Armenia

Introduced by a clown... not a good start. Big folky noise... getting better... Oh its turned into a turkish belly dance... zzzzzz.... The half-halt with the "bink bink" in the verses is an interesting hook though so I think it might do well; certainly a toe-tapper.

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Bosnia & Herzegovena

Ah the knitting grannies... I like this one. Lyrics are utterly bananas (literally) but they have a big 80's stadium noise and it sounds great; barking mad in the best Eurovision tradition. Deserves to win.

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Israel

He looks about 12, but as you know he was in the Israeli military and can kill you in 127 different ways without you knowing it. One of those ways is singing off-key in your ear at concorde taking off decibel levels as he is doing now.

Still, if you insist in singing in a semitic language, Hebrew is the one to do it in (it's the rounded vowel sounds you see).

In with a chance I recon.

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Finland

It worked when you had Lordi. It will not work again. Enough with the heavy metal already.

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Croatia

Well it's different. George Melly, an 80 year old rapper and a tango tune. Now this is why we sit though this wierdness every year. Apparently the aged rapper is the "first internet ever" because he sang on cruise ships. Stupid cunt.

Vodka +1

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Poland

Well that tan is not so much from the salon more sprayed on at the local auto body shop and my horse Sunshine had prettier teeth than Isis Gee. If you melted Beyonce and Celene Deon and threw in a huge dog turd you would get this act. Utterly, utterly woeful.

Mrs D tells me to say "boob tape"

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Iceland

Techno... techno... techno... techno... FUCK OFF

I have a Korg Triton which could have written this song simply by choosing program D7 and holding down a C# Maj chord for 3 minutes. Could you not have sent Bjork?

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Turkey

Now that is more like it. Sounds like early Bauhaus.

Whoever knew you could rock in Turkish... deserves to win.

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<< And now to the green room as we are half way through and to the people who have less command of english than the twat who I am currently baiting who is supposed to be a Ghanaian barrister... jesus why do they bother>>

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Portugal

Fat lady sings. "Oh black waters, waves of sorrow"... I think she knows what happened to Madelene McCann.

Very operatic. Everyone ought to die at the end. Very good but no hope of winning.

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Latvia

Arrr... shiver me timbers... oh for fucks sake this is truly shite. I'm all for comedy entries if you can carry them off (like the Lithuanians who sang about vegetables) but this is just pants. Wolves of the sea... I have seen scarier hamsters.

Fuck off. Bring back the turkey.

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Sweden

... have entered a zombie. You know that bit in "Men in Black" where the bug puts Edgar's skin on and then drags the loose flesh back over his skull in front of his wife... That looks like Sweden's entry

And the song is sub 80's shouty action film shit.

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Denmark

Dullness presented by a Brian and Michael reject. Bodil Joensen could do better and she's been dead 15 years.

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Georgia

She's blind apparently. She can't sing either. Mrs D says its a rip of a song from Les Miserables ("Master of the House") but not being gay I cannot confirm that. Nice stage gimmick of turning all their costumes white. It's not going to help you win.

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Ukraine

Kind of turbo charged belly dance / Ibitha crossover. Loud, meaniningless, painful, vodka aquiring opportunity.

And lightning is the thing that does the striking, not thunder you thick cow.

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France

Have utterly lost the plot. Bonkers. Brilliant.

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Azerbaijan

Shreeeeeeek!!!!

Angels and Devils... who really need to get someone who is native English speaker to parse their lyrics before appearing before millions and making complete twats of themselves.

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Greece

Perfomed by fried squid. Look, you are from south eastern Europe but it absolutely not necessary to do whack a doumbek to get a hit.

That said the chorus is a bit of a toe tapper so it stands a chance

And flashing a bit of tit in the belly dance bit during the middle eight won't hurt.

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Spain

You really are not taking this seriously are you.

Lots of boos in the hall for that one;

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Serbia

No love, you are meant to do the interval act after everyone has done their song.

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Russia

This is a rip of something but whatever it is is just out of reach. Nice gimmick with the skating on the world's smallest ice rink though. In with a chance

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Norway

"... it can catch you off guard like bad crimes..." Fucking hell.

A county full of tall leggy blondes seem to have sent Tromso's biggest munter to the contest as well... they must really want to lose.

"oooh..." groan.

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Well it's over... can I be arsed to stay on line? Let me have another vodka and I'll see.

To be honest that was a weak Eurovision. Usually one wierd and addictive ditty will pop up and grab you, that didn't really happen this time but of everything from tonight my vote would be for Bosnia and Montenegro and as a reserve I would go for France because they don't give a shit.

What will win... I recon it is between Greece and Russia.

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The interval act... er Serbia, you're not really trying are you. Jesus wept, what a crock of shit. it's as though you saw riverdance and thought "Oh fuck this, we can't compete with that, just stick a folk band on".

And they just keep going... like a particularly bad fart.

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43 countries voting.... shit this will end about 3am

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Well into the voting now... looks like I predict a Eurovision winner :-)

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Half way through the voting and we're in Moscow next year. This is grumpy dragon, pissed as a newt, signing off...

Guardianistas and Eurovision

Someone over on lefty whinge-rag the Guardian we have an impassioned plea for the removal of Israel from the Eurovision Song Contest. Why? Because this year's entry is sung by a six year old clad in bacofoil? Becuase the world has never quite forgiven them for "I wanna be a polar bear"? Nope...

Last year, the Israeli Broadcasting Authority, which determines who represents Israel, ruled that Israel Defense Forces service was a condition for performer eligibility:

Cue much hand wringing and anti-Israeli bile from the pinkos, plus the predictable ignorance of "They shouldn't be in it anyway, they are not in Europe" (hint to thickies: European Broadcast Union != European Union, Algeria and Egypt could enter if they liked.)

Go read it all.

And I'll be blogging the main event live on Saturday :-)

Irelande, nul points

There is a theory going round my office that Ireland, having been nearly bankrupted by having to host the Eurovision song contest on no less than 13 occasions, have now opted to commit contest suicide by sending a song they know stands no chance of winning. Last year they were quite subtle about it by sending in an OK tune but cleverly having it sung by the one person in a country of musicians who was tone deaf. This year they decided to go the whole hog and send a puppet to shout a bunch of nonsense which worked absolutely perfectly as they didn't even make it to the finals. Well done chaps, Jamesons all round.

Mind you, given the standard of the entries this year I saw last night on the first semi final (Europe has gone through another mitosis so there are even more countries to accomodate) it could so easily have gone horribly wrong. We had three fat twats from some Baltic state shouting random words about food in some sort of post-modern ironic statement about the common agricultural policy (I had the "sing along" turned on so I could read the words you see), Finland bravely plugging away at the heavy metal angle thining "well it worked for Lordi" and Belgium returning to the path trod by the rather good Urban Trad's "Sanomi" and submitting a song in a completely made up language, regrettably failing to realise that Urban Trad only carried this off because the music was, you know, good. Oh and the Netherlands decided to justify the renaming of the capital city to "Islamsterdam" by sending something that sounded like every Turkish entry ever.

About the only thing that stood out was the Bosnian (I think, all those countries melt into a blob of balkan goo after half a bottle of Valpolicella) entry with an upbeat poppy number, sung well and with a bunch of ladies in wedding dresses knitting for some reason.

Apparently we've sent something that sounds like The Lighthouse Family on Mogadon. How can we fail.

I get my centaur after all

Yay! Another shoeing for the sky-pixie's followers yesterday in the commons where sense (and no doubt a government whip whispering things about "vote for centaurs or we will let slip the pictures of you and that mare trying to create one the old fashioned way) prevailed and human-animal hybrids got the go ahead.

What I find truly ugly though is the depths that the invisible fairy's friends will stoop to to impose their delusion on the rest of us. Let's take a look at some of the things that they said shall we...

Ex-minister Edward Leigh, who led the fight against the creation of hybrid "admixed" embryos, said they were "ethically wrong and almost certainly medically useless".

And you are qualified to make a descision about whether something is medically useless because? According to your Wikipedia page you're a member of the landed gentry, have a degree in History and qualified as a barrister. You are about as scientifically and medially qualified as a slice of toast so you can just shut right the fuck up.

He said there was "no evidence yet to substantiate" claims the work could lead to treatment for degenerative diseases like Parkinson's and Alzheimer's.

If there even the tiniest sliver of a chance that throwing babies in a blender would lead to treatment for these evil conditions then we should be supporting them. I suppose you've never come into contact with these diseases have you? I suppose you think that dribbling into your soup is God punishing you for original sin? Words are barely adequate to describe how I think of you, you utter waste of DNA.

But then he goes and says...

"In embryos, we do have the genetic make up of a complete human being and we could not and should not be spliced together with the animal kingdom."

I have a bit of bad news for you here, fucktard. You ARE a member of the animal kingdom, hard as it is to believe as you appear to display all the intellectual capacity of seaweed.

And ex-Labour minister Sir Gerald Kaufman, agreed, adding: "How far do you go? Where do you stop? What are the limits and what are the boundaries?

Ah, the "thin end of the wedge" argument, you know if someone trots this out their position is truly fucked. Well Gerald, you don't stop, you go full throttle. There's no grumpy old man with a beard there so the sole purpose of the exercise is to make life more bearable whilst we're here and getting rid of or at least mitigating the effects of disease is noble and honorable and we should persue it with all the energies and skills humankind (and dragonkind) can muster. You want to sit in a cave mumbling about how god-of-mountain-will-be-angry-rain-down-fire then off you go but kindly fuck the hell out of everyone else's chance to have a pain free old age where they can actually remember who their relatives are, you wankstain.

I also noticed this bit of reportage:

However, the majority of the Tory shadow cabinet, including shadow foreign secretary William Hague and shadow home secretary David Davis, backed the unsuccessful attempt to ban hybrids.

Same old Tories then. Time to scrawl "None of you fuckers" on the ballot paper I guess.

And in signing off I saw there was an extra win...

A separate attempt to ban "pure" hybrid embryos, that would mix a human egg with animal sperm or vice versa, was also defeated in the Commons by 286 votes to 223, a government majority of 63.

Now it's been a while since I did biology but how does that work, I thought that the chromasome counts didn't match up? Can anyone explain this to me and why we don't already have centaurs, satyrs and lots of half-man/half-sheep creatures wandering around Wales?

(And yes, getting a bit bored with baiting scammers now so I'm going to post more; anyway it's eurovision time which is always good for a post or four)

Chuggers

Have I mentioned before just how much I loathe chuggers - you know the "charity muggers" who accost you in the street demanding a direct debit mandate with menaces?

By Fafnir's tail I hate these people so very, very much, almost as much as politicians, the McCanns and the Jehovas Witnesses who knocked on the door last sunday morning when me and Mrs Dracunculus were mid-shag. I used to contribute to Amnesty International until I got accosted by one of their chuggers and realised just how much of my cash was not going to get some poor bastard who had said "Hey, this government sucks" out of jail but to some cunt with a clipboard and a mound of direct debit forms so they could pay for their fucking beer whilst taking a year out.

Now normally I can plan my route from office to station avoiding the obstacle course of earnest clipboard wielding kiwis and aussies trying to pry a few baubles from the horde. However for various reasons today I had to leave work early and take a trip down Chugger Alley.

The charity de-jour was the NCH. Now I don't much like charities at the best of times but I have a particular black spot in my heart for childrens charities ever since the NSPCC started running those glycerin-in-they-eyes-so-it-makes-the-sprog-look-like-he's-crying ads on every channel one Christmas Day and now every time one of their number gets up and starts to spout on about censoring the interweb I have to go and immolate one of next door's brood.

I also have a cold.

Rhinovirus + Childrens Charity + Chugger = One Very Grumpy Dragon.

I don't suppose having Rammstein on at full volume on the ipod-u-like was helping me into a warm and cuddly frame of mind eithier.

So when permatanned aussie neighbours extra Nolene stood right in my path, spread her arms wide into the Jesus-being-nailed-to-a-plank pose and intoned "I'm an obstacle" she got both nostrils set to "crispy"

"I'm sorry. You have obviously mistaken me for someone who gives a fuck. Now get out of my fucking way."

The look on her pathetic little stunned face made my week.

I was so happy that Chuggers 2 and 3 merely escaped with a cheery "Go fuck a goat will you" and "Piss off" respectively.

At the sound of the woman being stoned, Mecca Standard Time will be...

It's always hilarious when religious people try to use science to back up their claims to the existence of their particular brand of sky pixie but this is the first time I've seen the Muslims crawl out from under their rock only to make themselves look more backward than we thought they were in the first place.

Muslim scientists and clerics have called for the adoption of Mecca time to replace GMT, arguing that the Saudi city is the true centre of the Earth.

Right. Well if you were to cut out a model of the UK and find the place where that model would balance you find that its somewhere just outside Blackburn, Lancashire. However I don't see anyone proposing the town famous for having lots of holes and a really cheap shoe shop to be made capital of Great Britain.

So what piece of scientific wisdom have they come up with to bolster the claim of Mecca Standard Time?

One geologist argued that unlike other longitudes, Mecca's was in perfect alignment to magnetic north.

Errr.. where did this guy do his training. First thing they taught us when I did Geology (University of Lancaster, class of '86, I graduated Draco Cum Laude) was the Earth's magnetic poles move about and that "magnetic north" is different depending on where you are, it even flips round so north becomes south every so often. Ali Al Bottyburp, muslim scientist extraordinare, can't even claim that it lines up at Mecca because a quick shufty over at the US Geological Service shows that the magnetic deviation at 21°25′00″N 39°49′00″E happens to be 2.6 degrees. Here's a nice map if you want to have a look yourself.

But what's science when you can wilfully ignore history.

He said the English had imposed GMT on the rest of the world by force when Britain was a big colonial power, and it was about time that changed.

Not really. We were a pretty important maritime power but not particularly colonial at the time and I think you'll find that the world adopted the zero meridian at Greenwich because the Brits just happened to be the first to discover a reliable method of working out longditude during sea voyages. Either way most people call it "UTC" from the French for "Universal Co-ordinated Time" now.

I think it's high time we put to bed this myth of the muslim world being great scientists who discovered astronomy, chemistry and the like. They didn't. At best they managed to preserve Greek learning and just plundered the rest from places like India.

And as to adopting Mecca Standard Time, when you lot can present me with a Geologists that is acually capable of passing a GCSE science exam then I will listen to you, and will still tell you to fuck off.

They call her Slapper, Slapper, Faster than Ligtning

Sorry everyone. I've been away having fun making the lives of sundry West African gentlemen something of a nightmare, plus doing the Christians a favour (first time for everything) by turning the life of a fake "Evengelist" in India who preys on gullable Xtians (there is another kind?) for charitable donations into ass casserole - that one is still going on, he's off on what scambaiters call a "safari" next week the 1200 miles to Delhi thinking he's going to get a $20,000 compensation cheque.

Anyway that's what I've been doing instead of commenting on the latest inanity by the McCann circus and having a right old laugh at the Shannon Matthews saga. But I miss spilling my vitriol about around here so I'm back to set fire to things, always assuming I get paid as the employer of this little green dragon appears to be skint. Maybe Sir Fred will be at the front door this morning rattling a tin, "Buddy can you spare a twenty billion quid in liquidity funding?"

Typical though. Nothing really happening in the news to get wound up about. Dead MP - that's a good thing, Mugabe - yawn. Only really interesting thing is this... two pissheads go dolphin fondling and get fined. OK so how does this work? I've been swimming with a dolphin, that one in Dingle bay in Ireland called Fungus or something and let me tell you a dolphin in the sea has absolutely fuck all to fear from a couple of humans in the same element, even if said humans are a pair of pissed up morlocks from Folkestone. When you get up close and personal dolphins are bloody huge and exceptionally manoeuverable and you know that if Flipper didn't want you there it could fuck you up a treat in seconds and there would be bugger all you could do about it. All what is all this arse about "Oh it was distressed because it swam towards them" about? In my experience with animals if they are distressed or upset they move away from you.

Mind you, read between the lines of the report...

Pipe fitter Jukes, from Castle Hill Avenue, Folkestone said he had stroked its belly.

...

Mr Offord said there had been a number of discrepancies between what Buck and Jukes had told police when they were questioned initially and their evidence in court.

...

Wasn't there a guy up in Northumberland a while back who was up in court for trying to start a mermaid breeding programme with a friendly dolphin? I think these guys were having a go at that.

Dolphins... they're all asing for it you know.