My childhood can best be defined by listing the things I did not have. I did not have any toy guns. I did not have any toy weapons, period. I did not have video games or a video game console, although I consoled (good pun, I think) myself by abusing Ataris and Nintendos at my friend's houses. I did not have a computer, although there were a few years in which I busied myself with a TI-99/4A. And, I continued my practice of abusing things that belonged to my friends, although I did much less "damage" playing Zork on an Apple IIE and dialing up BBSes on an old Wintel clone than when playing Pitfall or Contra.

So, in the cruel world of childhood politics, in which the winners are those with the best toys, why would anyone be my friend? It helped that I had the foulest mouth on the block. But, it also helped that I had the coolest Star Wars toy ever made...the "full-size" Millenium Falcon. You could seat Chewie and Han in the cockpit and stuff Luke and the ambiguously gay robot duo in the back. Over time, Star Wars figurines were not enough to entertain me and the Falcon. Many a GI Joe got to ride on the Millenium Falcon before facing an inevitable firecracker death in my neighbor's yard.

Why all the reminiscing? My memories were sparked by this awesome casemod. I have neither the time, the patience, nor the understanding wife to do something like this, but at least I can enjoy reading about it.

Dude, the folks at Blogger might have done a good job on the new UI, but the mechanics still leave something to be desired. I've got four posts sitting around since Friday that have not showed up on the actual published site yet. In fact, I'm just writing this message to see if this one will actually get posted and published.

Lord knows I've been associated with some buggy-ass software, but I always wanted to give the stuff a good strong round of testing before foisting it upon my clients. Reprobates could be the only blog with problems, but I doubt it.

UPDATE: Old posts have posted...but some bugs still remain...

For some reason, the three postings I made earlier today are simply not showing up on reprobates.blogspot.com. I don't get it. And blogger.com must be having some problems as well now since the XML keeps puking every time I try to get to the Discuss pages.

Another prank for today. This is from a good friend of mine and one of the people that convinced my wife and I to buy a Prius.

This one is a real shocker. 80,000 volts...in a jacket?

I really enjoy silly little pranks. And they are doubly satisfying if they exploit weaknesses in the systems that manage our everyday lives. This one is the next on my list of things I must see for myself. It will be so much easier to just sign with a grid from now on.

Well, when you're a small, midwestern Canadian city who has lost your prime source of entertainment (in the form of a once-proud NHL franchise), your winters are brutal, and you have such a problem with mosquitoes that you have a city-sponsored bugline, there's not much left to promote tourism. What better idea than to make Homer Simpson an honorary citizen? D'oh!

This is just so wrong on so many levels:

1. Insurance? Against your husband leaving you?
2. For becoming ugly?
3. As judged by a panel of builders?

I wonder what she did with the money ...

What every office needs (especially mine) is a good, solid, offensive office linebacker.

Got a sick kid? Wonder what'll cheer them up? Try a soft toy...

Last week, I had the luck to get "invited" to work the NDIA show in Baltimore. More specifically, I represented my company by trying to explain biometrics, RF tags, and wireless technology to government bureaucrats and blue shirts (rank and file of the Coast Guard) for 10+ hours straight. It wasn't all bad, though.

After having discussed mobile apps with one blue shirt in particular, he invited me to come over to his booth to play with the toys he was showing off. About an hour later, I was looking through the sight of a shotgun, having a chain gun targeted on my chest, and taking a look at this. Afterwards, they handed me a pretty neat giveaway.

And, only a few booths away from where I was working, was this beautiful thing. It was just sitting there, all alone, begging for some attention. I looked for a price sheet or an order form, but I couldn't find one.

They speak English in South Africa, right? To quote Inigo Mantoya - "You use this word a lot. I do not think it-a means what you think it-a means".

I'm sure it's not 'cool' to admit it, but I have followed Amazon's product recommendations on music several times ("People who bought this bauble you just looked at also purchased the following gewgaws ...") and the results have usually (though not always) been rewarding.

As a result, I have travelled from Tortoise and Hooverphonic to Blue States and Boards of Canada and beyond.

So, as I have taken this journey into the ambient/trip-hop/IDM/illbient "post-rock" netherworld, I have noticed something: the names of the bands, the albums and the songs all have a curious sameness about them in their infinite abstract "weirdness" and variety. Consider this selection of track names from the Tortoise album TNT:

I Set My Face to the Hillside
A Simple Way to Go Faster Than Light That Does Not Work
In Sarah, Mencken, Christ, and Beethoven There Were Women and Men
Almost Always Is Nearly Enough

or these album names:

Born into Trouble as the Sparks Fly Upward
He Has Left Us Alone But Shafts of Light Sometimes Grace the Corners of Our Rooms
Slow Riot for New Zero Kanada
Music Has the Right to Children
Goodbye Enemy Airship The Landlord Is Dead
Lift Your Skinny Fists Like Antennas To Heaven

or these band names:

Godspeed You Black Emperor!
The Silver Mt. Zion Memorial Orchestra and Tra-la-la Band
Do Make Say Think
Explosions in the Sky

Don't get me wrong, I love this stuff. But, jeez, could we get some track/album/band names that aren't so, aah, pretentious? That so visibly strive to be "different" and "memorable" that they end up merging into a forgettable sameness?

Maybe like The ABC Song?

IROQ!

Animals, computers, and excrement. Sounds like the makings of a great story to me.

Turns out that monkeys would probably never write a play, let alone a copy of one of Shakespeare's works. Although, they seem to have made their own version of "Urinetown".

Don't dismiss monkeys just yet. A small, tree-climbing, monkey-like animal known as a Luwak does have some interesting uses for its own poop. And people seem to like it.

Got this in email:

"This gave me a chuckle so I thought I would share.

Apparently this kid videotaped himself practicing his Star Wars fighting skills on a school camera and left the tape when he was done. Now the video that he left behind is spreading over the net.

Somebody also did a video with special effects and lightsaber noises that is also pretty fun."

Y0 - w3 ridin d@ PH@T Bu5 to 5k00L!

Further proof of racial profiling. Are you going to try and tell me the police would have stopped the guy if he weren't "an ethnic Albanian from the Serb province of Kosovo". For shame!

Exhuming McCarthy

"Let us not assasinate this lad further, Senator. You've done enough. Have you no sense of decency, sir? At long last, have you left no sense of decency?"

Plane hijacked by terrorists? You're about to crash into a national landmark? Don't want to look, or get an annoying crick in your neck? Try one of these.

Also, while I'm here, more wacky shit from Japan. Strangely, these don't appear on J-List. Yet.

With Mother's day coming don't you think you should pick up the phone and thank your Mom for not abusing you the way these poor slobs were? Don't forget to tell her you love her. We'll wait....

And what could be a better Father's Day gift than one of these?

MAKE.MONEY.FAST!!! (by suing telemarketers)

Is "Inul" Indonesian for "Elvis"?

What's next? The rest of the 50's and 60's? Indonesian Beatles? Tropicalhardwoodstock? Megawati Sukarnoputra's Presidential motorcade arriving in Dealy Plaza, making the slow turn at the triple overpass in front of the Texas School Book Depository?

I'm going to stop now before this turns into a bad Billy Joel song ...

Honda Accord...by Rube Goldberg

You know how most theaters insist that you silence your cell phone before the start of a show? I wouldn't recommend it at this play .

This chap (the one fondling the nymph's ass of brass) is my old school mate Tim Walkup, in Singapore's "Bot"anical Gardens.

He's on his way round the world in the Clipper 2002 race.

Having completed the "third leg" (fnarr fnarr) of the race, they're on leg 4. Leg 6, the final 7,100 mile segment of the odyssey will bring them to New York, where I hope to meet up with Tim, an Original Reprobate from Back In The Day, for the first time in twenty years, some time around the end of August.

"The ridiculous tale of me trying to surrender is a lie made up by the infidel invader. In fact, it is they who are trying surrendering to me!"

He wasn't heavy, that was his brother.

"In a moment we'll take a look at one of the more creative uses I've seen for power tools. But first, let's take a moment to talk about shop safety..."

I think this probably looked like a great idea on paper. No doubt much hilarity would ensue if one tried to, say, get it past airport security. Worst of all though, and somewhat surprising, in the complete absence of visible cameltoe in the accompanying photographs.

The TidalForce ShockTrooper is a high-performance, all-terrain folding electric .... bicycle? ...

This sounds like the joke that ends with the punchline "Answers to the name of Lucky"

News coverage in the UK is different than what we get here in the US.

CNN, for example, by comparison with BBC News, is difficult to watch - flying graphics, a heavily-windowed look and feel (crawler across the bottom of the screen, weather forecasts on the left-hand middle, a story-related graphic in the top left, and a small video area in the top right which incorporates its own graphics, captions, subtitles, etc) and the screaming rock-guitar "War in Iraq" special-news-story theme music.

What's interesting to me is that BBC News and CNN International (which seems to be mostly run out of the UK) share a common, comparatively stripped-down look and feel - a newsreader sitting at a desk, reading from the TelePrompTer, and a single crawler at the bottom of the screen - which is almost the polar opposite of CNN's all-ADD-all-the-time presentation.

The same stylistic differences exist between the web sites, too. Look for example at CNN.com (admittedly restrained by comparison to the TV broadcasts) and news.bbc.co.uk

The funniest difference in coverage that I saw, however, is that former Iraqi "Information" Minister Mohammed Saeed al-Sahhaf is almost universally known in the UK press as "Comical Ali".

This combines more Reprobate interests into one URL than I have seen in a while. Sex, motor vehicles, violence, Freud... the list goes on.

Eric Taziz, the Apple Information Minister:

Q U O T E D

"Do not believe the lies of the PC infidels. The PC chips have not reached 3GHz. It is Apple that is at 3GHz. Our initial assessment is that the PC is still at 250MHz, and we will slaughter Microsoft in the server market and in the home. Our market share is at 90%."

"We are in control. The PC users are in a state of hysteria. They do not even have control over themselves! Do not believe them! Losers, they think that by building fabs and plants and chips and trying to distort the feelings of the people they will win. I think they will not win, those b@stards."

"NO! We have retaken the education market! The infidels attacked the education market but we have killed them all with bullets and shoes. There are NO PCs there. I will take you there to the public schools and show you. IN ONE HOUR!"

Me and the old lady finally got a Prius, but I won't waste your time describing my love for this car. What I will do is share some more information on environmentally friendly fuels...

As great as it would be to power a car on refined fast food waste, it would be even cooler to simply dump all sorts of junk into a machine and create fuel in an environmentally friendly way. Heck, according to this article, if a 175-pound man fell into one end of a machine like this, "he would come out the other end as 38 pounds of oil, 7 pounds of gas, and 7 pounds of minerals, as well as 123 pounds of sterilized water".

"Sex in a Palace and Sex on the Street--the Taste is the Same" - does your religion tell you things like this?

Mind you, the same dissertation also contains the following pearls of wisdom:

"You'll find the bats, they are hanging down the head, and they're passing stool. Sometimes man also does so, when there is strangulation. That is very dangerous disease. What is called? Intestine strangulation. Then passing stool through the mouth. In Bengal sometimes they curse, "You'll pass stool through the mouth!" Yes, sometimes they do. Sometimes they eat through the rectum. Do you know that?"

and

"You are thinking that I will be very much happy if I enjoy sex like the dog."

So - get this - not only do the Hare Krishnas know the ins and outs of oral & doggie style, they'll also tell you to eat shit & die. Now that's a religion I can get behind!

Is this for real? If so, it could qualify for the title of Coolest Software Ever. All it would need is for some bright spark to make it into a worm and everyone's computer woes would be over ... forever ... Bill Gates forced into abject poverty ... Steve Ballmer forced to look for work as an open source (altogether now) "developer, developer, developer, developer ..."

If a company is listed on FuckedCompany, where would you expect to find its help wanted ads? Why, FuckThatJob of course!

More worrying than the PANC article Ken linked to is their actual site - newamericancentury.org. Plenty of insight into what key members of the Bush administration really want out of the Iraq conflict and beyond. Even their statement of principles basically says "We won the cold war, there's no-one out there left to stop us, let's remodel the world our way."

I own a modified '92 Land Cruiser. It has lockers, bigger springs and tyres, a big fuck-off winch on the front and the mother of all rear bumpers.

I like to take it off-road. Get it muddy. Get it stuck. Use the hi-lift jack. Break out the winch, hook up the snatch straps, and get it unstuck.

Now, here's the question - did that little description get you all hot and bothered? Yes? No? Either way, check this out ...

Project for a New American Century - via Brainwoofer

One thing leads to another.

Death squads? Ha ha! Hostages? Funny stuff, no? Torture! Stop it, you're killing me ...

Netflix seems to think so.

I can't believe someone actually named a model of sports wheelchair "The SpaZz". Joey!

Time traveller makes killing on the stock market, gets caught, reports Weekly World News

A popular middle-eastern dish from Weight Watchers of Iraq? Actually, there are plenty of other unappealing recipes from Weight Watchers circa 1974 on this site.

Whitehouse.org (see link in previous article - PRESIDENT'S STATEMENT etc) and Jason's psychedelicrepublicans.com are actually both productions of the same outfit - Chickenhead Productions. There's all sorts of goodness to be had there!

PRESIDENT'S STATEMENT REMINDING UPPITY IRAQASAURS TO LOSE THE INFERIOR ARABIAC PRIDE, SMILE PRETTY FOR THE CAMERAS, AND OPEN WIDE THE DOORS TO CHRISTIAN JDAMS OF FREEDOM

AskJeeves? Why bother? Jeeves don't know shit. Get on the AnswerBus instead.

Dog Island (WTF?). An island where you can send your dog to be a real dog. Some choice quotes:

• "Every now and then some dogs gang up and kill and then eat another dog, but this is just natural, and it's okay for it to happen now and then"


• "We apologize to not offer this to poor people but it takes an enormous amount of money to afford this type of beauty"

The Director of Imports is someone named Soong Lee. Anyone know if that's a Korean name, and this is just a big front for his other business, "DogBBQ.com"?

Aussie newpaper The Age claims that the U.S. used napalm in Iraq - a banned weapon of mass destruction. The Pentagon denies this, saying that it removed napalm from it's arsenal in 2001. Apparently, it sold it all to these guys. Interestingly, this article from theSchmews (a satire site) claims the U.S. never ratified the law preventing it's use.

One of these three links is to a true news story, the other two are links from previous Reprobates postings. See if you can guess which is which!

1) Kim Jong Il Unfolds Into Giant Robot
2) National Guardsman Changes Name To "Optimus Prime"
3) Voltron's Office of Homeland Security Is In The Heeeeeouse!

Holiday home swap available. Reeeaally available. You have to wonder about the area description though...

Shock and Awe.

Lyndon LaRouche may be mad as a hatter but this makes for, ahh, interesting reading nonetheless.

This just in from all the major news organizations on Operation Iraqi Liberation (uh - doesn't that spell OIL?) - we don't know anything yet. Stay tuned for more information we don't have, more details we're waiting for, and more rehashing of the fact that we don't know anything yet. Don't go awa

Get YOUR war on (again, or still, depending on your viewpoint).

An alternative to becoming a human shield in Iraq, should you want to get "obliterated".

Axis of Weasel: your online guide to the Newspeak for Gulf Wars: Part II.

If Good Eats (host, fan page, book)
were a cartoon, it would be Deep Fried Live.

If this had happened in Cameroon, maybe their Government would be considering a ban by now ...

Strangely, this is not the origin of the expression "taking the piss".

Fall down, go boom - redux.

Incidentally, I haven't seen it yet, but I'm waiting for some hapless US media scribe to refer to this thing as "the world's biggest conventional weapon ever". I probably won't have to wait long as not only is "The US The Greatest Country The World Has Ever Seen" but "Fifty Years Is A Very Long Time". These statements notwithstanding, the WWII "Grand Slam" designed by Barnes Wallis was not only bigger (and, at 22,000lb, therefore much badderer), but it wasn't even American.

Think about this for a second - this bomb was used 58 years ago. It was so big (over 26 feet long, and almost 4 feet in diameter) it had to be strapped under the belly of a specially-modified Lancaster bomber. Dropped from an altitude of 12,000 feet, this thing would attain almost supersonic velocity before it hit the ground and could penetrate up to 15 feet of reinforced concrete before the eleven-second delay fuze detonated the 9,500 lbs of Torpex inside the chrome-moly steel shell ...

No wonder they called these things "earthquake bombs" ...

Dave, thanks for that touching tribute to the late, great Mr Rogers. I thought it was very classy, very understated, nicely done, and I'm sure Mr Rogers will be sorely missed by many millions of American kids who grew up watching his show.

Now, that said, and bearing in mind this is the Reprobates blog, I do have to ask:

Did Mr Rogers creep anyone else out, or was it just me? Wasn't there a lascivious twinkle in his eyes as he undid his cardigan? Did he strike anyone else as looking like a child molester?

OK, so now I've sullied the memory of a dear old man, perhaps you'd care to ponder this: Men who look like Kenny Rogers - dot com.

It's a beautiful day in this neighborhood,
A beautiful day for a neighbor.
Would you be mine?
Could you be mine?...

It's a neighborly day in this beauty wood,
A neighborly day for a beauty.
Would you be mine?
Could you be mine?...

I've always wanted to have a neighbor just like you.
I've always wanted to live in a neighborhood with you.

So, let's make the most of this beautiful day.
Since we're together we might as well say:
Would you be mine?
Could you be mine?
Won't you be my neighbor?
Won't you please,
Won't you please?
Please won't you be my neighbor?

Fred Rogers, 1928-2003

Think yo kids ain't fly? Give them the headstart they need, brutha.

In case you find the current US administration a bit bland take a look at these new trading cards sure to brighten any dull political convention.

Acid sold separately.

Kansas - where crime doesn't pay quite as well. I wonder if they get a 401K?

Ted Molczan - "thorn in the NRO's side", and "satisfied electrolysis consumer". I have in my mind's eye an image of a hairless satellite-watcher that just won't go away ...

I have no idea what I just said.

I lost count of the number times I said "Wow" out loud while reading this article about elves, sprites & blue jets, infrasound (and more here), and the Space Shuttle that, in the reversal of the normal sequence of events, apparently did a "go boom, fall down". I also went "wow" several more times while reading this article about ACE, and SOHO, and the ill-fated Space Shuttle, and an apparent large shockwave in the solar wind, and the fact that these satellites orbit ... nothing at all. Well, actually, they orbit Lagrange or libration points, but thems ain't physical objects. See? Wow. And former Shuttle astronaut Tammy Jernigan (who apparently transported the now-famous photo purporting to show a purple corkscrew lightning-bolt thing to NASA in Houston) even got in on the act with a "Wow" of her own in this article that may or may not ultimately debunk the phenonemon that may, or may not, have been photographed as Columbia passed over San Francisco.

I'm in Tokyo. It's an interesting place. I've been pondering the nature of souvenirs. I came to the conclusion that the really interesting souvenirs are not the things that are typically (perhaps stereotypically) Japanese, such as rice paper wood block prints (ukiyo-e) or Hakata dolls, since, because of their fundamentally iconic association with Japan, every time some random gallery or antique shop wants to represent "Japaneseness", these are the very things they'll offer you. Consequently, bring home one of these (admittedly, although conventionally, attractive) items and your home will resemble nothing so much as the local Pier 1 Imports.

So, what to bring home as a reminder of your time in far-away places? Toiletries. Candy. Matchbooks. Flyers. Brochures. In other words, the ephemera of daily living. Why? I think that the answer lies in there very ordinariness - these items are too inconsequential, pointless, or just plain goofy for any trend-following importer of Japaniana to bother with.

Having said this, of course, some kind soul will surely send me the URL to these very items on J-List, which I will promptly ignore, fuck you very much.

Finally, since I'm here for work, I have now visited a couple of IBM offices in Tokyo and was very surprised when my chaperon handed me a small packet of tissues before I went to the bathroom. Apparently, IBM (and most other large companies) have stopped providing paper towels to their employees as a cost-saving measure (yes, I know - IBM haven't quite stooped to this level yet, but you get the idea).

Help! I've been infected by <insert worm name here>

Stoopid things people do to their PCs. My favourite? The guy who has not one, but two Visa cards stuck in his floppy drive.

In response to Cameron, an iPod hack for those Microsoft lovers out there.

...since I appear to be on a bit of posting rampage these past couple of days, here's one for Ian. Should you ever want your iPod to do more than just play music, here's a guy who has ported it to Linux. It doesn't actually DO anything, mind you, but it's still "supremely cool".

The NEW IBM. Bottom right...

Harking back to Jason's post of a couple of days ago, here is a more light-hearted look at Dubya's REAL agenda... I should be careful, though, lest you guys never let me in your country again.

Ever wondered if that sexual position was actually possible? Well now's your chance to find out without risking your neck...

This is NOT repeat NOT from abovetopsecret.com.

In a project known as “Acoustic Kitty” the [CIA's] Directorate of Science and Technology sought to train a surgically altered cat, wired with transmitting and control devices, to become a mobile, eavesdropping platform. In its first test, the cat was run over by a taxi.

According to Victor Marchetti:

they slit the cat open, put batteries in him, wired him up. The tail was used as an antenna. 

They made a monstrosity. They tested him and tested him. They found he would walk off 

the job when he got hungry, so they put another wire in to override that. Finally, they’re ready. 

They took it out to a park bench and said “Listen to those two guys. Don’t listen to anything 

else – not the birds, no cat or dog – just those two guys!” ... They put him out of the van, 

and a taxi comes and runs him over. There they were, sitting in the van with all those dials, 

and the cat was dead!

This heavily redacted memo appears to express the view that cats can be altered and trained to perform certain tasks. At the same time, it notes that “the environment and security factors in using this technique in a real foreign situation force us to conclude that, for our [intelligence] purposes, it would not be practical.”

Now you too can have the enlightening wisdom of George W Bush at you fingertips every day of the year.

I am fascinated by the idea of going "off-the-grid" and powering things with alternative fuels. I am most interested in "clean" and renewable fuels for automobiles. I'd love to buy the CNG (compressed natural gas) version of the Honda Civic, but those losers over at Honda America are only making it available to companies interested in purchasing fleet vehicles. Anyone interested in forming a company?

In the meantime, the Prius will have to do, even though it is really as low-end as it gets in regards to alternative fuel technology. Sure, its the only thing truly available to consumers, but if I was a little more adventurous, I'd buy a diesel VW and power it with homemade biofuels. Yes, I know that sounds mildly disgusting. It reminds me of the scene in Red Dawn when the kids are all urinating into the radiator of the pick-up truck to make up for a coolant leak. But, I am talking about driving down the road and leaving nothing but the sweet scent of french fries in the air.

This just in...the fantasy of many young men has come true!

Got a spare Saab? Sauna!

Just in case you ever need to obfuscate a swear-word insult (why, I'm not sure), but somebody called me this the other day, and I'm not sure what it was. Now I do, and I can in turn, insult all of you asshats.

Kim Jong Il Unfolds Into Giant Robot

Firefighters free handcuffed woman in lingerie shop

abovetopsecret.com is an interesting repository of all kinds of documents, all supposedly "above top secret". Some of them are plain kooky (like this stuff about the Omega Agency or the aliens in Dulce, NM), but others seemingly offer tantalizing glimpses of the technology behind the Government's impishly named "Unacknowledged Programs".

Here, for example, is a news article from a highly respected source: the BBC. And here is an article from ats.c that might be about the same technology.

Bob Hope's nose.

This is not an optical illusion - it just looks like one. Didn't work for me, though. I took a good, long, hard look at the picture and never did see the alleged "boat". I did see somewhere to park a bicycle though ...

I am a big fan of Get Your War On. You've got to love things like this:

Periodic table of haikus. Incidentally, this link and the previous one came from the message forum of British Squad, who are apparently play something called Trench Wars, which in turn is part of Subspace/Continuum which is a product of the Free Software movement which is ... oh, never mind.

Longtime Reprobates readers are surely aware of our collective fascination with heavy machinery. Even better than heavy machinery, though, is pictures of heavy machinery accidents.

Looking for an adventure holiday that is truly unique. Why not visit all the entrances to Hell in the UK?

Check out my new personal favo(u)rite site (or shordurperfav, in the original Tibetan): The Stranger.

I have been waiting for at least a year now, but it looks like e-sheep is never going to finish the Apocamon. So, if you too have been patiently waiting the next installment, you might want to entertain yourself by creating your very own holy terror. You can take it even further and live out your own version of the End Times. Just get yourself a PS2, a copy of Unreal Tournament 2003, and the Bible Blood Bath Christian Map Pack. All of this is thanks to those righteous folks over at Landover Baptist Church.

Evil has a name. It's Guthy-Renker. And a website. And a fabulous line of celebrity-endorsed cosmetic products! And an exclusive line of hi-larious set of Dean Martin celebrity roast videos!

Actually, I've been mulling over the name Guthy-Renker since it first seared itself onto my eyeballs when I was browsing late-night (or is that late-nite?) TV listings. There, in the wee small hours of the morning on Discovery or TLC or one of those channels, was those famous paired names. The first thing that struck me was, and I quote verbatim from memory: whatthefuck? There was no program description, just that mysterious pair of bisyllabic names. The second thing I thought was: G-uh-thy? G-oo-thy? G-uh-dhy? G-oo-dhy? How do you pronounce it? Does it rhyme with "toothy", or with the way a chronic lisp-sufferer would pronounce "fussy"? Does it even maybe rhyme with booth-y (as in "Man, it stinks of stale urine in here - like a public phone booth. Yeah, that's it. Kinda boothy") with a hard "th".

So, as if that weren't enough, I was at the in-laws over the Xmas break, and laughing myself silly (well, I was chuckling on the inside, anyway), poring over the videos stashed under their living room TV. You know the stuff - exactly what you'd expect unhip 60-something Americans to have - a tape from the Mickey Gilley Theater in Branson, Missouri, some random Alan Jackson video (or maybe it was some other hat act - I don't recall), and - gasp - "Bob Hope Entertains Eleven Presidents!" (yes, it was a bukkake video) Anyway, I'm looking at the back of the BHEEP tape and then I see it ... Guthy-Renker!

So - they are polluting the late-night air waves with their cult transmissions, they're putting white, sticky cream on the faces of America's women of a certain age (see, it is bukkake), and they are washing whatever remains of my in-laws brains with their video pap.

Maybe it's time for Bush to put up or shut up regarding his doctrine of pre-emption and strike at GRC before they acquire weapons of mass destruction. Oh, wait, too late.

Congratulations, Shaun & Sarah, and welcome, Aidan. A word of advice: your mother spent several hours pushing you out of the thing you're going to spend the rest of your life trying to get back into. Also, you're probably not going to get nipples thrust into your open mouth quite this regularly again, so make the most of it. Finally, for the next year or two, your public manipulation of yer meat-n-two-veg will be looked upon as "cute" and "funny". Don't be misled, kid. Soon enough, society will turn on you and the words "indecent exposure" will take on a certain significance ...

Shaun: I looked at the pictures - cute kid. Only question - who's the ugly-looking motherfucker with the beard and the ponytail who's hanging round your kid? I wouldn't let him near my kids ...

Finally, the ObLink: Black People Love Us! And it's easy to see why.

Guys, I had a little fiddle around with the template for the blog and added some buttons. What d'ya reckon? Let me know

All, please say Hi to a brand new reprobate - Aidan Phillip Lowry, who joined us at 5:35am on the 28th of December. Oh, and Happy New Year!