Saturday, February 18, 2006

Super Fluous


Just took that Superhero Test that every other blogger in the world seems to be doing, but I feel there must be some sort of malfunction, it hasn’t come out right, not sure what to make of it actually.

Your results: You are THE INDIGO GONAD

You are overrated, overweight, bone idle and terrified of women, especially ones with pickaxes.

The Indigo Gonad ----------------------- 98%
Velux Man ------------------------------- 86%
WonderWimp ---------------------------- 71%
The Sheathed Poltroon ----------------- 65%
Captain Retentive ----------------------- 50%
Ultra Capon ------------------------------ 32%
Vacillator --------------------------------- 28%
Halitosis Girl ----------------------------- 19%
Coelacanth -------------------------------- 16%
Wibble-o-tron ---------------------------- 7%
Beast of Batley --------------------------- 0.005%

Click here to take the Superhero Personality Test

Click here to end it all

Knight in (possibly white) satin

It seems only yesterday I was hailing the achievement of Peter and Caroline in bringing the Toasty’s Futon sidebar to the attention of the world via the Bloggies Awards.

In fact however it was Monday January 30 2006 and the world may already have forgotten, being the scatterbrained wee scamp of a planet it is.

So well done Peter for getting himself nominated in the Satin Pajama Awards in not just one category but two – Lifetime Achievement and Best Personal.

This was exactly what we needed to keep the Toasty’s Futon sidebar in the public eye. No one would ever have heard of Naked Blog if it wasn’t for Toasty’s Futon, you know.

A touch disappointing that Caroline couldn’t be bothered to get herself nominated in the Satin Pajama Awards too, but she’s a busy woman with 400 children and 8,000 pigs to support and apparently New Zealand bloggers aren’t eligible in any case though I’m sure she could have found a way round that if she’d really tried but who am I to cast aspersions, particularly as she’s bigger than I am and a mean wielder of a knuckleduster?

I will now crucify myself with croquet hoops on the Wilton Park bowling green, Batley. Look, here I go!

Thursday, February 16, 2006

Chess Problem

At last you’ve achieved what you’ve always dreamed of: your opponent’s king is at the exact centre of the board, checkmated simultaneously by all sixteen of your pieces.

Suddenly an asteroid smashes into South America, destroying all life on earth.

How do you persuade Argos to refund the price of your chess set, which has no obvious defects?

Kindly contributed by the Batley & District Chess (and Women’s Underwear Theft) Club

Friday, February 10, 2006

Valley Of The Bats


Right, then. What to say to all these moaning minnies who keep emailing me about this blog’s alleged ‘Oxford bias’? – apart from suggesting they’re probably the same dead-end dickheads who spent last year emailing me about its supposed ‘Edinburgh bias’? Never satisfied, some people.

In point of fact I don’t give a stuffed weasel about either of those poxy, overrated Kentucky-Fried-Chicken-holes.

The only place I care about is Batley, Yorkshire, and to prove it we’re going to have a special Batley Month on Toasty’s Futon, revelling in the North Country delights that swivel around me in all directions as I sit here proudly in Batley, Yorkshire, which is where I am, as I’m sure we all agree.

For example, did you know that Batley is the second biggest town in the Heavy Woollen District?

Now, be honest here: could you name the biggest town in the Heavy Woollen District?

Course not. Nor could I. Which just goes to show that Batley punches more than its weight, doesn’t it?

Were you aware that the word ‘Batley’ derives from an Anglo-Saxon name meaning either valley or homestead of bats or, alternatively, the homestead (or, presumably, valley) of a person named Batt?

Come to that, is your name Batt?

If so, then who knows, perhaps this was originally your valley (or homestead, or whatever). But for your own daft reasons you unwisely chose to naff off, so it’s mine now, and don’t come crying to me asking for it back, either.

Furthermore, it’s time you all got it into your heads that by 1870 Batley was the centre of the shoddy trade, which involved turning rags into something even more boring than that, so boring in fact that no one ever managed to stay awake long enough to find out what it was.

This was the foundation of the town’s enduring prosperity, and the only reason the government injected £37.5 million into Batley between 1993 and 1998 was that they were very silly people with more cash than sense, and NOTHING to do with Batley not having two bent ha’pennies to rub together after people found out that shoddy was a load of, well, need I go on?

These are just some of the brain-rupturingly interesting facts about Batley, Yorks, and don’t give me any of that ‘You’re not really in Batley’ stuff because look, here’s the Batley Town Centre Webcam, and there’s me, right there, just in front of the Old Town Hall, waving my invalidity card at you, only you probably can’t see me due to the ongoing riot, smog, and camera malfunction.

And here’s the website of the Batley Buggy Club, and as you can see they’re looking for someone to write their ‘New To Racing’ section (‘Fancy yourself as a bit of a writer?’) so off you go then, don’t mind me, and isn’t that a better use of your time than sending me all these emails with dead polecats attached to them, hmm?

Thursday, February 09, 2006

Post Hock Ergo Proctor Hock

Okay, gang, are you up for the big one?

According to today’s edition of the Oxford University Gazette, there are shortly to be Elections of Proctors, with all the heart-in-mouth suspense, all the pulse-pounding excitement, that such events invariably stir up.

And would you Adam-and-Eve it? The Master of Balliol College, Dr Andrew Graham, whose dad created Poldark (a tasteless canned meat, popular in wartime), is flinging wide the doors and pleading with us all to join in.

Yes, at 1.45 pm on Wednesday 8 March it’s come-one, come-all, to Balliol’s Old Senior Common Room – the scene of so many historic events that no one has ever heard of – and we can roll up our sleeves, spit on our hands, get stuck in and elect more Proctors than there are grains of sand in a college pudding.

To be precise:

All members of Balliol College entitled under Council Regulations to vote (Council Regulations 21 of 2002, Gazette, Vol. 132, p. 1419) are hereby invited to attend.


Ignore that waffle about ‘entitled under Council Regulations’. It seems to me that the criteria of entitlement specified in Section 13 of Council Regulations 21 of 2002 are capable of more than one interpretation, especially if you don’t read them, which I certainly don’t intend to do.

As for having to be ‘members of Balliol College’, how the hell will they know who’s a member of college and who isn’t? It’s not like they have a list or anything.

From what I can gather, all Oxford tutors are off their faces on cheap white cider by half past ten in the morning. If a brigade of Nazi stormtroopers came charging in with guns blazing, they’d probably just mumble ‘Ah, nice to see you again, Smithington-Smith, isn’t it’ before slumping unconscious to the Axminster.

_________________


Which brings me to this brilliant idea I’ve just had. Why don’t we improve this potentially dreary occasion by dressing up in surprising, unorthodox ways?

How about a Brazilian carnival costume, or a sexy French gravedigger’s outfit? Why not come as Hattie Jacques, or Pharaoh Rameses II, or a bouncy castle, or a rogue mammoth, or a giant vermilion axolotl? If there are five of you, and you’re capable of standing on each other’s shoulders making roaring noises and discharging coloured smoke, why not come as the Red Arrows?

And what’s wrong with a few streamers, party-poppers, squirty-cream canisters, aerosol cans of scarlet paint and gratuitously-discharged fire extinguishers?

A scattering of concealed amplifiers pumping out the Red Army Chorus and the Mormon Tabernacle Choir should complete an unforgettable tableau.

Shan’t be there myself, unfortunately, as I shall be detained in bed on very urgent business. But I know I can rely on you all to uphold the honour of St Futon’s.
The countdown starts now…

_________________


(REAL) DEATHS IN JANUARY 2006
8 January: Lord Stratford, who tabled a parliamentary motion condemning the entire human race and looking forward to ‘the day when the inevitable asteroid slams into the Earth and wipes them out, thus giving nature the opportunity to start again’. 13 January: Alistair Sampson, author of Don’t Be Disgusting. 23 January: Emilie Muse, who was buried alive for 97 hours at a marathon dance contest in Pennsylvania in 1932, and subsequently in other places. 24 January: Marion Wrottesley, whose husband-to-be, at their first meeting, locked her in the lavatory at the Bag of Nails nightclub until she agreed to marry him. 27 January: Phyllis King, who won the women’s mixed doubles at Wimbledon in 1931 and was still playing tennis in her nineties.