Category: Posts

7 Reasons That Attacking A Train With A Bag Of Stones And Excrement Is A Bad Idea

It is said that everyone remembers where they were when they heard that JFK had been assassinated. Similarly, that everyone remembers where they were when Princess Diana died. I don’t know about that. One thing is for sure though, I will always remember where I was when I heard that a train had been attacked using a bag containing stones and excrement suspended from a wire. Here are seven reasons that it’s a bad idea.

1. It’s Unfriendly. I admit, sometimes we’ve had houseguests that have overstayed their welcome and I’ve wanted them to go and I’ve become fractious and my conversation has become terse and curt, and my wife has rebuked me for that by suggesting that I’m, “…not being very friendly”, but never, ever have I considered attacking a houseguest with a bag of stones and excrement. This would be the level of friendliness you could expect if your enemy’s enemy was Uday Hussein. On the Hitlerian scale of unfriendliness (which, having just thought of it, I’m going to begin work on right now), this will rate quite high.

2. It’s Mind-Boggling. What do you hope to accomplish by attacking a train with a bag of stones and excrement? If we consider it as an act of vandalism, I can understand the use of stones*. But excrement? Why would anyone do this? What is the point of this? It’s so mind-boggling that it defies both rational and irrational explanation (which is a shame, as that’s one of my “gifts”). My mind is officially boggled.

3. It Serves No Purpose. While, in major cities across the nation, there are people committing antisocial acts for personal gain and ending up owning iPhones and Tesco Value Basmati Rice, what happens in Yorkshire? A train is attacked with a bag of stones and excrement. But it’s hard to see the benefit of covering a train in poo. While Londoners are sitting back and watching their new, free HDTVs (or HD ready if they nicked the wrong one) what does the perpetrator of this act gain? The satisfaction of having got poo on a train? You could just visit the restaurant car for that sensation. There is no rational motive.

4. It Causes Temporary Homelessness. When I saw the headline Vandals attack train with bag of stones and excrement yesterday, I have to say that it caused me to laugh. Rather a lot. In fact, I laughed so long and so hard that I woke my wife from her afternoon nap and she banished my son and I from the house. It was raining so we had to go to the pub. This is not a complaint, by the way, it’s an observation.

5. Seriously, It’s More Mind-Boggling. PC Gary Shepherd of the British Transport Police said: “A lot of planning must have gone into this…”. He’s right. Where do you get a bag of excrement from? Is it something that the culprit found lying around? Did they have to shit into a bag for several weeks until they had enough? Did he** solicit the help of friends and family? Did he offer to buy the poo from strangers? Did he steal the poo from somewhere? Outside of a blaxploitation flick, where the hell do you get a bag of shit from?

6. Frustratingly, It Hints At Greatness. What begets greatness? Usually a fusion of innovation and endeavour. No one can deny that attacking a train with a bag of stones and excrement is innovative: Infinite monkey theorem suggests that, “a monkey hitting keys at random on a typewriter keyboard for an infinite amount of time will almost surely type a given text, such as the complete works of William Shakespeare”, but could a monkey with a bag and some stones living near a railway line ever conceive of this act? I think not. It also shows dedication. Not only was the bag meticulously rigged, but the act of gathering (or producing and collecting) all that poo shows dedication, self-motivation and commitment to the cause. This person could probably produce work of greatness and real cultural and social worth. If they weren’t a vile and abhorrent weirdo that gets their jollies by spattering trains with a cocktail of turds, that is.

7. What If You Get Caught? It’s an oft-repeated maxim that “if you can’t do the time, don’t do the crime.” But what is the time in this case? It’s a life sentence, because anyone being convicted for attacking a train with a bag of stones and excrement would surely receive a massive amount of publicity. International publicity. Every last person in the world would know who this person was, and there’s only one nickname that would be bestowed on him. Shitbag. People will point in the street and shout “Shitbag”. People in the pub will greet him by saying, “Evening, Shitbag”. It will become so ingrained that his family will probably address him as Shitbag: “Can you pass the gravy, Shitbag?” “Don’t forget it’s the PTA meeting this evening, Shitbag.” “Oooh, look into my eyes and tell me I’m your little panda-bear again, Shitbag.” That’s a proper life sentence. Shitbag.

*I can’t really, it’s just a lot more conventional.

**It’s a he. While I’m a firm believer in equality, this is too weird for a woman to be involved in.

August 11, 2011
7 Reasons Joey Barton Is Modern Day Liverpudlian Confucius

We don’t usually give much time to footballers on 7 Reasons – unless we’re using our satirical skills to make they look silly – but today we are dedicating an entire post to Newcastle’s very own Joey Barton. Now, I’ve always thought Joey Barton was a bit of an idiot. And, indeed, a thug. But in recent times – via the medium of Twitter – he has started to change my mind. I now consider him a modern day Liverpudlian Confucius. Here’s why:

Hi Mum! Five Retweets Today Already!

1. Philosophy. There is no doubt about it, Joey Barton is a burgeoning philosopher. While it would be easy to point at his retweets of Nietzsche, Orwell and Morgan* one should not be so fast as to ignore his own work. Yesterday he tweeted, “If this was nipped in the bud in London, with plenty of beatings for these knobheads. It wouldn’t be happening elsewhere. #bringbackthebirch“. It’s important to understand that in the modern age, with a 140 character limit and millions of other people vying for attention, getting your message heard is difficult. But Joey Barton, through his Confucius-like choice of language, finds a way. If he had said, “Naughtiness should be followed by a smacked bottom”, I just don’t think he’d have got his message through.

2. Disciples. It’s unknown exactly how many disciples Confucius had, but it is believed to have been somewhere around the 100 mark. One hundred people believed in him enough to follow him and repeat his work to the world. Currently 280,000 people follow Joey Barton and at least 250 people are sharing (RT’ing) everything he says. That must make him about 5,000 times greater than Confucius. Incredible.

3. Well Read. My formally uneducated view of Joey Barton was that he would sit down of an evening and watch The Football Factory or Green Street or Sesame Street. How wrong could I be? Staggeringly is the answer. Joey Barton doesn’t watch Big Bird having his head kicked in by Elijah Wood. Oh no, instead he reads foreignpolicy.com. Seriously, this guy is the William Hague of the Premier League.

4. Arrest. Like Confucius, Joey Barton has also spent a bit of time at Her Majesty’s Pleasure. (I mean they’ve both been arrested and spent time in jail, not that they’ve both slept with the Queen. That would be weird). Joey Barton spent 77 days of his six month sentence behind bars. Confucius spent five days of his 12 day sentence behind bars. That means they were both released having only completed 42% of their respective sentences. The coincidence is too much.

5. English. Interestingly, both Confucius and Joey Barton had/have problems with the English language. Barton struggles with the concept of grammar and spells words such as dismantled, ‘dimantled’, while Confucius just doodled. This is his attempt at dismantled, 拆除. Pathetic really. One has to say, at least Jory tried.

6. Tea. Tea! Joey Barton likes tea! In fact, he says, “you cannot beat a cup of tea.” How right is that? This boy is a genius.

7. Riots. He’s talking a lot of sense. Joey Barton! Sense! So much so that he’s saying what I – and probably you – have been thinking. The media – by showing these rioters chucking bricks at Police and looting so easily – is not helping. In fact, it’s probably inspiring others to do the same. If they showed more coverage of these people being arrested then maybe, just maybe, that would act as a deterrent. Ladies and gentlemen, Joey Barton. The voice of a nation.

*Yes, Piers Morgan. Don’t look at me, it’s not my fault.

August 10, 2011
7 Reasons That It’s Not As Bad As You Think

Okay! This is a humour site and my country’s been on fire for the last couple of days, so there’s only really one thing that I can write about today, so let’s be funny about the riots. Except, no. That isn’t really going to work, is it? There are people out there losing their homes and livelihoods as a result of them and I’m sure we all have friends and family that are affected, so writing a lot of nonsense about how good the coverage of the riots will look on a brand new (and free) HD television, or how phoning 999 to report themselves will be so much easier now that everyone with a hooded top has an iPhone would seem trite and foolish. Fortunately, though, while events may have saddened me and affected my sense of humour, they haven’t affected my spirit, my love of humanity and my wonderment at peoples’ innate capacity for good and their astonishing ingenuity. Accordingly, here are seven reasons that it’s not as bad as you think.

1. Innovative Brilliance. “Necessity is the mother of invention” said Plato (in Greek, probably) and our brave and hard-working police force need tea. These lovely people have taken the time out to make them some. They’ve also devised the absolute best way to use a riot shield. Is there an image that captures Britain’s spirit better than this?

2. Collective Brilliance. The riots have demonstrated the country’s capacity for collective brilliance. Many, many people decided that they weren’t going to let their (our) streets be wrecked by the mindless idiocy of a few. The Twitter account @riotcleanup was set up and it now has almost 80,000 followers. That’s more people than have been involved in rioting and looting. People have got together in overwhelming numbers for the power of good. This picture by @lawcol888 is wonderfully uplifting.

3. Individual Brilliance. Oscar Levant said that there was “a fine line between genius and insanity” and, from that very line, this woman bravely berates rioters and looters. That there are people in this country courageous and brilliant enough to stand up to a mob so eloquently is wonderful.

4. Expectation-Altering-Brilliance. Stan Collymore (What? Wait, he’s gone mad. He’s been lauding examples of brilliance and now he’s writing about Stan Collymore!?), former Premier League footballer and someone that I have occasionally thought of as a bit of an idiot over the years tweeted this earlier:

Now, professional footballers (and former professional footballers) are often pilloried – sometimes rightly – for behaving poorly and setting a bad example to people and this was unexpected, but it was a cheering and most welcome thing to see, even if he did make me feel like a git.

5. Technological Brilliance. It’s been a while since Britain has seen rioting on this scale and there’ve been a lot of technological advances in the meantime, so it’s fair to say that any online response to it was going to be breaking new ground. The innovative use of social media as a response to events has been staggering. Almost as soon as disturbances began in Birmingham yesterday, the rather brilliant @caseyrain set up a Birmingham Riots Tumblr account to document events in the second city while the attention of the national media was focussed on London. There have been many, many other wonderful examples of innovative use of social media, with Facebook groups (,http://www.facebook.com/londoncleanup), Tumblr accounts (http://catchalooter.tumblr.com/) and websites (http://www.londonrioters.co.uk/identify/) used to promote various causes and to mobilise people into various types of action. That people have used the internet and social media so effectively to mobilize themselves into making our streets better and catching the looters is both marvellous and demonstrative of a laudable degree of collective will and creativity. Oh, and the looters are helping by using Facebook too.

6. Just Utter Brilliance. Don’t want the rioting and looting to ruin your evening? Simple. Just pretend it isn’t happening. “Riot, what riot? I say, could you pass the port, my good man?”

7. Historical Brilliance. The oft-cited high-water-mark of societal unity, sacrifice and collective accomplishment was the way that Britain dealt with the blitz during World War II. The blitz spirit is something that is often mentioned in articles that decry modern society to illustrate a decline in standards and unity, and many commentators on the current situation have spoken of the riots as being symptomatic of a breakdown in society. But rioting and looting are nothing new. During the blitz – that exalted time when our society is seen as having been at its strongest and most cohesive – with a war-depreciated police force and abundance of opportunity there was widespread looting and criminality too. The truth is that there has always been a sociopathic minority in our country ready to exploit any weakness (lack of police cover, evacuated streets etc) for their own personal gain, regardless of the consequences to others. That we don’t let the looting during the blitz affect the high regard in which we hold the selfless sacrifice of the majority during the second world war speaks volumes about us. History tells us that it’s possible to have a strong, dynamic and caring society despite having a minor element that riots and loots. And the way that the majority of Britain has reacted today to the events of the past few days suggests that little has changed. That is heartening.

August 9, 2011
7 Reasons Dangling From A Tightrope Is A Good Place To Be

If anyone knows what’s been put in the water in Hunan Province of late, please tell us. The other week we had two men getting naked and covering themselves in bees and this weekend we’ve had Saimaiti Aishan clinging on to a steel wire for dear life after he slipped while trying to walk across a tightrope – 100m above ground – with no safety net. Were it not for a performance of pure idiocy in North London this weekend, Hunan Province would surely be crowned the bonkers capitial of the world. Or would it? Let’s be honest, isn’t hanging onto a steel wire, 100m above ground, knowing that if you let go you’ll die, actually a rather wonderful position to be in?

1. Time. You’re not going to be going anywhere in a hurry – unless you let go – which means you have time on your hands. Time to think. Time to reflect. How’s your life going? Are you happy? Is your job so boring that you need to play chicken with death? Would this challenge have been more exciting if you had tried to cross the tightrope while carrying a chicken? In this world, where everything and everyone seems to move so fast, it’s good to find some time to yourself.

2. Fitness. This is probably the ultimate test of your strength and fitness. While out running it’s too easy just to stop and walk the final mile home. While on the exercise bike it’s too easy to listen to your quads and decide five miles is enough. While skipping it’s too easy to be embarrassed by the school children who seem to have so much more co-ordination than you. When faced with a 100m drop, however, you won’t let go. You will push your body to the absolute limit trying to save yourself. Only when you have done this will you find out that you are a far more capable human being than you previously thought.

3. Views. Assuming you don’t choose to dangle over Bradford, this is the best view of the world you are ever going to get. Unlike any other form of mid-air hovering, dangling allows you a 360 degree view. Try getting that in a plane.

4. Friends. If you ever wanted to find out who really cares about you, this is the stunt for you. You probably think you know who your best friends are, but this really will separate those who like you for who you are and those who think they might get a drink out of this if they help you. Generally speaking, if someone positions themselves underneath you, looking like they will try and catch you if you fall, they are your best friend. However, if someone is waving at you and taking photos for their Twitter followers, you may delete them from Facebook immediately. Which is why it’s always a good idea to take your iPhone with you.

5. Talent. If the last time you tried gymnastics (and cried when you got stuck atop a climbing frame) was at Tumble Tots, this is the perfect opportunity to see how your Beth Tweddle skills have evolved over the years. Okay, pretending it’s a pummel horse probably isn’t the smartest idea, but using it as one of the parallel bars is certainly achievable. Not only might you find yourself a star of YouTube, you could also earn yourself a year’s supply of Lycra.

6. Peace. No phone calls from Barclays trying to sell you a debt. No Jehovah Witnesses trying to sell you religion. No former youth detention centre attendees trying to sell you dusters. No charity workers trying to make you feel guilty. Just peace. And quiet. So much so that you might even fall asleep and never get interrupted again. Beautiful.

7. Back To Earth Without A Bump. I know it’s probably a bit early in the morning to try and baffle you with science, but this needs to be said. A tightrope is a rope. Which is brilliant because it means when you have had enough of hanging around you can scurry along to one and cut it. Or, if you don’t have a Swiss Army Knife with you, you can gnaw at it. Eventually it will snap and you’ll swing towards the ground.* You couldn’t do this if you were dangling from the underside of a plane or hanging from the balcony on the 88th floor of a building could you?

*Yes, I appreciate that if you reached the end of the rope you could just haul yourself to safer ground. Like a hot air balloon. Or a building. But what if one of them was on fire? Here at 7 Reasons we make sure we think of everything.

August 8, 2011
7 Reasons I’m Not Going To Win A Nobel Prize Anytime Soon

On Tuesday evening this flyer popped through the letter box. It is fair to say I nearly fell off my half of the 7 Reasons sofa. ‘Entrepreneurs Needed’. Entrepreneurs! That’s me. ‘Groundbreaking Nobel Prize Winning Product’. Groundbreaking! Nobel Prize Winning! Product! They are all me too. Well, not the Nobel Prize bit. Not yet. But it could be me. ‘Call NOW’ Okay! Only I didn’t. I went back to making my spaghetti omelette. But yesterday… yesterday I gave them a call. And this is how it went.

*Now, before you press play I need to tell you something. In this phone call I’m a bit sarcastic. I was expecting this groundbreaking Nobel Prize winning product to be something like a new kind of penis pump or a tulip that sings forty-six national anthems. With a Jamaican dialect. (And, be honest, who wouldn’t like a penis pump with a Jamaican dialect?) Thing thing is though, this product is neither of those. In fact, it’s a very serious product relating to health issues and is inspired by the death of someone’s father. Something I only discovered a couple of minutes into the call. So, while I wouldn’t say what you are about to hear is in any way offensive, you may find my comments and subsequent reasons insensitive. If you think that could be you, my advice would be to just ignore today’s piece and come back tomorrow.*

[soundcloud url=”http://api.soundcloud.com/tracks/20360733″]

Yes, I cut him off. I was bored. But more than that, I was frustrated. Five minutes I’d been on the phone and I still didn’t know what the product was or what I was needed for. And there was something else. A number of things this man said alarmed me. Let’s take it from the top.

1. As Heard From 0:46 – “If you’ve ever wanted to be involved in the early stages of a proven success story that is about to experience dramatic growth throughout the UK (and Europe) please continue to listen.” It’s not the proven success that bothers me here. Or, indeed, the promise of dramatic growth*. It’s the use of Europe. (The continent, not the band. Though the use of ‘Final Countdown’ as a backing track would have been apt). Europe, in this case, is very much an after thought. As if he doesn’t really believe it. And it’s silly. I wouldn’t go around saying I’ve got this great product that is going to be popular in Maidstone and the World would I? Maidstone (at least some parts of it) is already in the World. As the entrepreneur this man is seeking, I am left with severe doubts. I’m suspicious that he was going to try and charm me with the allure of freshly baked croissants. Well sorry pal, but you’ve picked the wrong man.

2. As Heard From 1:30 – “If you are keen to develop a significant residual income…” Hello! He’s played the money card straight away! I’ve watched Dragon’s Den too many times to know that this is too good to be true. Start off with the money card and three things happen. Firstly, the promise of profits are vastly exaggerated. Secondly, the product is abysmal. And thirdly, you start dreaming about Deborah Meaden with a giant gherkin on her head. Oh, my goodness. It’s happening already***.

3. As Heard From 1:47 – “It is estimated that someone has a heart attack every two minutes.” Well what the bloody hell are we doing on the phone then?! Let’s find this person and help them. They must be in all kinds of trouble. I’m sorry, but anyone who wants to chat about Nobel Prize winning products instead of helping those who are suffering is not the business partner for me. Shame.

4. As Heard From 1:50 – “More than 1.4 million people have a gina [pronounced gyna].” Well this is factually incorrect for a start. Without wishing to beat around the bush, I would suggest at least half the population have a gina. Even I used to have one. And understandably so. Gina G was tremendous. Anyway, the point is, I can’t work with someone who doesn’t know their facts.

5. As Heard From 2:21 – “Now, for most of us we need to look no further than in The Mirror…” And you’ve lost me. Right here. Any product that can in any way be traced back to Piers Morgan is a no-go area for me.

6. As Heard From 4:07 – “This discovery [the role of the nitric oxide molecule] was so significant that one of these Nobel Laureates in medicine subsequently wrote a book.” What?! This scientist discovered nitric oxide could prevent heart disease so he wrote a book! What? Why? Why didn’t he get on and get this stuff on the shelf in Boots and Superdrug? The Piers Morgan association lost me, this has just baffled me. Save lives or write a book? Tough decision that.**

7. As Heard From 4:31 – “The President of the American Heart Association, Dr. Fell On Him Pushed Her…” Oh, come on! Dr. Fell On Him Pushed Her?! What a total stitch up this was. And I bet the call wasn’t free either. Gits.

*You can see why I thought it might be a penis pump now.

**This takes nothing away from the fact that you won a Nobel Prize. Well done that man. (Though you are a bit dopey.)

***

August 4, 2011
7 Reasons That Men Shouldn’t Wrap Birthday Presents

Did I give this the title 7 Reasons That Men Shouldn’t Wrap Birthday Presents? I didn’t really mean that. I meant 7 Reasons That Me Shouldn’t Wrap Birthday Presents. Or I, to be correct about it. Because I’m sure that there are some men out there that are good at wrapping presents. Neat, methodical men that actually welcome the task; men that positively enjoy it, in fact. The thing is though, that I’m definitely not one of them. And I’m sure that somewhere there must be other people (most likely men) who are as ill-suited to wrapping gifts as I am. Possibly. Here are seven reasons I shouldn’t be allowed to wrap stuff.

Finished! At last!

1. Loathing. I fundamentally dislike wrapping gifts. I’m not good at it and I don’t enjoy it; much like dancing a ballet or sketching a bowl of fruit, I’m temperamentally unsuited to it and it’s much better when done by others. This affects my whole approach to the burden of having to wrap presents. I will procrastinate; I will obfuscate; I will participate in the most mundane or bizarre displacement activities to avoid it. I would literally rather do anything (photograph my belly-button fluff; listen to Jedward; fellate a baboon) than wrap a present. This leads to problems.

2. Delay. It means that I will leave performing the odious task until the last possible moment. And then, when that arrives, I’ll leave it for an hour or two more. Then I’ll have a beer or two, which I may follow with some gin or – as preceded one spectacularly disastrous present-wrapping session – absinthe. I will not wrap a single birthday present until I am so tired that I absolutely have to go to bed on the eve of the birthday. Only then is it time to start wrapping.

3. Practice Makes Perfect. It’s then of course, that I am reminded of how epically, stupendously, mind-bogglingly bad I am at wrapping presents. It’s something I get to do so rarely (thankfully) that I believe I may be getting worse at it with every passing year. I only do it rarely, not because I am ungenerous, but because I am forbidden to do so. My wife – having seen many examples of my wrapping – would rather allow Prince Phillip and Pete Doherty to mind our baby for a weekend than let me wrap a gift that anyone will see (feel, or even be within the same postcode as). This division of labour suits me fine as it leaves me in charge of hammering stuff and assembling things, but it leaves me ill-equipped for the four occasions per year on which I am called to wrap presents.

4. Wrapping Is Dull. There are few tasks duller than wrapping presents. Probably. I’ve been trying to think about something duller than wrapping a present for several minutes now and have so far failed to come up with anything that tops the unremitting tediousness that is covering things for other people in paper. So I would be better off if I had a distraction from the wrapping. But I can’t watch television or listen to music while I’m wrapping because of the hour and because rustling wrapping paper is the loudest sound known to humankind outside of Muse and Vanessa Feltz being sucked into a jet engine. When you are wrapping presents, you are wrapping presents. There. Are. No. Distractions.

5. Sellotape. But there is Sellotape. There’s a fundamental flaw with Sellotape; one that renders it almost all but unusable to me. It has two sides; one of which is smooth and presents me with no problem, and then there’s the other side, which is sticky. The sticky side adheres to everything: It sticks to me, it sticks to itself, it sticks to the table, it sticks to the floor, it sticks to anything that has fallen from the table to floor and retains it in the form of a visible mass of crumbs, dust, fluff and (always) a single pubic hair stuck between the Sellotape and the wrapping paper. The only thing that Sellotape does not do – in my hands – is affix neatly and evenly to the edges of wrapping paper. One birthday, I got this reaction: “Thank you for the present, Darling. Why is there a tortilla chip stuck to it?”

6. Paper. Because I am emphatically not in charge of wrapping anything ever, I am often presented with a problem when it comes to paper. I buy wrapping paper all the time. Lots of paper. Because of this, I always expect to find an abundance of wrapping paper when I – with heavy heart – am obliged to wrap a present. But because my wife spends her entire year wrapping presents in my absence, by the time I need wrapping paper, there’s none left. Things I have been forced to resort to using in the past include: tissue paper, newspaper, plain brown paper, white A4 paper and lined A4 paper. I have also given the gift of a small and delicate bracelet presented in a large metallic red bottle bag. Last night I had to resort to using Christmas wrapping paper to wrap my wife’s birthday presents. Fortunately I was able to talk my way out of the situation this morning: “Those? Those are birthday trees, Darling…Merry Birthday!”

7. Apology. There are also many apologies involved in wrapping presents: Apologies for waking the household up by bellowing obscenities at an odd-shaped overnight bag (or Sellotape, we can’t be certain) at 0330 in the morning; apologies for affixing a dead woodlouse to the wrapping of a tub of handcream that bore the words “Be My Valentine”; apologies for the (unaccountably) ginger pubic hair that was stuck to the tube of Pringles; apologies for the “Birthday” trees line that seemed certain to work and apologies for arriving in bed with a ball of Sellotape stuck to my arm which eventually transferred to my wife’s back when she rolled over. It turns out that wrapping birthday presents is a sorry affair, as well as a messy one.

*I would, of course, like to wish my wife a very happy birthday (if not a well wrapped one). Happy Birthday, Darling.

August 1, 2011
7 Reasons The Flying Car Has Issues

Well, we might not be getting our hoverboards anytime soon, but it looks as if the flying car could be on our driveway as soon as next year. This is the Terrafugia Transition®:

Hunktastic, huh? And this is what it looks like when it’s taking you to work:

That’s a slice of heaven right there. The concept is undoubtedly genius. We have all been sat in traffic wishing we could take-off then and there. In reality though, the Terrafugia Transition® poses a number of problems. Seven of them.

1. Branding. We have already had a look at some of the worst product names out there and while the Terrafugia brand probably wouldn’t quite make that list, the name still worries me. ‘Terra’ obviously means ‘ground’, but I think of it just as it sounds. ‘Terror’. Would I get in a Virgin Nightmare? Or a Qantas Shock? Or a British Airways Screamer? Not a bloody chance. So would I get in a Terrafugia? Not a bloody chance. And sadly I am probably not alone. Why didn’t they call themselves Smoothflight or something equally camp, cliched and assuring?

2. Take-off. The take-off speed of this thing is apparently over 100mph. Its max speed on the ground is 62mph. I used to think I was good at maths.

3. Enough Room To Swing A 6-Iron. On the Transition® page of the Terrafugia website it gives you a list of conveniences. There are six and mostly things you’d want to hear. Rear-wheel drive and automated electromechanical folding wing being two. And then we get to the end of the list. And you start reading. And then you read it again. And again. And then you realise you are reading it correctly. You realise it does say, ‘Cargo area holds golf clubs’. Not ‘cargo area holds 50kg’ or ‘cargo area holds eight thousand pairs of pants’, but ‘cargo area holds golf clubs’! Why? Why would you do that? You have just alienated everyone who needs somewhere to put their cricket bat. Or a suitcase.

4. Landing. Maybe, just maybe, there is a reason this aircar has been designed with the discerning golfer in mind. Once you’ve taken off, you need to have somewhere to land. In fairness you could probably have worked that out for yourself, but there’s probably no harm in me helping you out. Where the hell do you land this thing though? You need a fair bit of room. You might get squashed by a 747 at Gatwick and fields might be a bit bumpy. The last thing you need is a scarecrow entering your cockpit. So the obvious alternative therefore are the lush, smooth fairways of a nearby golf-course.

5. Dizzy. There are naughty people around. Naughty people who steal wing mirrors. I don’t think they would need too much convincing to nick a non-mirrored wing. The problem is though, just as you might not notice a missing wing-mirror when you get in the car, you might not notice a missing wing. You’d end up flying around in circles.

6. Time. This is a bit like the Aesop fable, The Tortoise and The Hare. Just a modern version for modern times. The Hare is the plane. It’s clearly quicker. As the crow flies, it would get from A to B in twice or thrice the speed of the car. But only if it was a crow. The problem is that the plane needs to use an airfield to take-off and land (they’re not really allowed to land on Royal St. George’s). Which means first the plane has to be a car to drive from A to an airfield. Then it can do its funky flying bit. Only its funky flying bit will take it to an airfield miles away from B. Then the plane needs to be a car again. Meanwhile the car can be a car and get stuck on the M40, M25 and M23 and still beat the plane (which is now a car) back to B. It kind of defeats the object of having a propeller.

7. Always Take The Weather With You. The manufacturers advise you not to fly if the weather is inclement. I can go down to Poundland (and ask someone to go inside for me) and get a kite for £1. A kite flies beautifully in inclement weather. I would therefore expect a £180,000 aircar to fly 180,000 times more beautifully in inclement weather, not crash to the earth because it got whacked by a hailstone. Unbelievable.

July 25, 2011
7 Reasons To Get A Winter Beach Body

It’s the summer, and chances are that, right now, your thoughts are turning to holidays, with all of the indolent ease, languor and sheer carefree bliss that they entail. Unless you’re standing in a branch of WH Smith and gazing at a magazine stand consisting of dozens of covers featuring airbrushed pictures and article titles such as “How To Get The Perfect Summer Beach Body”, in which case you’re probably experiencing something akin to terror. But don’t panic, you don’t need the “perfect summer beach body” for your holiday; in fact, it’s infinitely inferior to the winter beach body. Here are seven reasons why.

1. A Winter Beach Body Is A Safer Option. And safety in the sea is important. When I was a svelte child, learning to swim, one of the things that all of my friends and family spent many hours teaching me to do was float. “It’s simple”, they would say, “you just stretch your arms and legs out and relax”, and then they’d just lie there, on top of the sea. Then it would be my turn: I’d stretch my arms and legs out, relax, and soon I’d find myself floating serenely. To the bottom of the sea. I would sink like a stone every time. But if you have a winter beach body, you’ll be difficult to sink and, should you get into trouble and find yourself floating away from the shore, you’ll be easier to spot from the beach or a helicopter. Your chances of surviving your beach holiday will be manifestly better than those of summer-bodied people.

2. A Winter Beach Body Makes A Statement. Getting a summer beach body is easy, anyone can do it. But getting a winter beach body takes a considerable investment of time and money and requires technology too. You can use it to flaunt your wealth and status. What does your winter beach body say about you? A winter beach body says that you can afford to dine well; a winter beach body says that you’re a car owner; a winter beach body says that you live somewhere modern festooned with lifts and escalators; a winter beach body says that you can afford twice as much suntan oil as anyone else on the beach; a winter beach body says that you might own a Segway. A winter beach body signifies affluence and ease.

3. A Winter Beach Body Is Practical. You might be holidaying in Britain and for that, a winter beach body is the better option. On British beaches, where people consume ice cream to warm themselves up, you’ll at least stand half a chance of not dying of hypothermia or exposure. What’s the last question that any family in the UK asks before they head off to the beach? “Have you remembered to pack the blanket”? In this country, insulation is most important thing that you can take to the beach. Winter beach bodies have more of that, built-in.

4. Getting A Winter Beach Body Is More Fun. You don’t need to starve yourself or drink eight litres of water a day to get a winter beach body. You won’t have to visit a gym either, unless you’re going there to use the horizontal bar (the one with the bottles on it). You won’t have to spend the months leading up to your holiday eating only beetroot during daylight hours (except for every second Tuesday, which is miso soup day) and you’ll never, ever have to eat celery.

5. A Winter Beach Body Requires Less Hair Removal. As the possessor of a winter beach body you’ll be less inclined to wear a bikini made from a shoelace or a pair of budgie smugglers so small that they can barely contain your budgie. This means that there’ll be less hair removal, which is good as hair removal is the most painful experience known to man (and the second most painful known to woman). I would sooner break my fingers with a piano lid than tweeze a nose hair, let alone pluck one from down there, beneath my trousers. A winter beach body means less pain. Or fewer pain, to be correct about it.

6. A Winter Beach Body Frees You From The Beach. With a winter beach body, you might find that you’ll want to spend less time on the beach, away from all of those preening show-offs. This is brilliant, as no one actually likes the beach. It’s uncomfortable, being made of either stones (which hurt) or sand (which chafes). It’s boring, as the number of people busy ignoring it and burying their noses in their books demonstrates and it’s frustrating, as your chips will be stolen by a seagull. If you spend less time on the beach, you’ll have more fun, and you’ll get to eat all of your chips yourself. Unless you’re a man. Your winter beach body will liberate you from the beach.

7. It’s Too Late To Do Anything Else. Having blithely ignored every magazine at the supermarket checkout and every other daytime television programme telling you how to get the perfect summer beach body for the past five months or so, there’s very little time left. This is good, as getting a winter beach body is quick and easy. It won’t be the perfect summer beach body as depicted in magazines (which are only ever perfect in the mind of the beholder, and never in the mind of the owner), but it’ll be your body. Take it to the beach and enjoy yourself, or even better, take it away from the beach and enjoy yourself. Oh, and don’t read magazines.*

*Do, however, read websites.

July 22, 2011
7 Reasons Not To Wear A Bee

Something odd happened in Hunan province the other day. Two men wore bees. Why? No one is quite sure. What we do know is that it is a jolly silly thing to do. Here’s why:

Marc went to extremes not to have to deal with yet more rubbish guest post submissions

1. Fashion. Hardly the outfit retail buyers want to see buzzing down the catwalk is it? It makes some of the outfits Naomi Campbell wears look quite normal. And that comes from a man who has always thought they’d look stupid on me. Naomi Campbell’s outfits I mean, not bees. Bees wouldn’t look stupid on me. They’d probably make me look like a high-street honey.*

2. Survival. What I haven’t worked out here is how you survive. Once the bees are on, how do you eat and drink? It’s not like a nine to five job. The bees don’t turn up, do their eight hour shift and then fly back to their hive for the evening. Once they are on, they stay on. Which is why there are two, bee-covered, thirsty men walking around China and no one is able to help them. They have got to be regretting that chat in the underground pub the authorities didn’t know existed until about now. (It’s disguised as a fake Apple store).

3. Mass Murder. As I am sure we both know, bees die once they sting.** So what happens if you make a sudden movement? In all likelihood the bees are going to get angry. And angry bees sting. Before you know it you are going to be standing atop a mountain of dead bees. It’s not a great look and you’d probably have to answer to some little madam from the NSPCBee***.

4. Ambition. Wearing bees can not be the pinnacle of achievement. For insects that sting you, they are relatively friendly when you consider other buzzy, stingy things like wasps and hornets. To only want to wear bees is a bit like only wanting to play cricket against Bangladesh. Or baseball for the Baltimore Orioles. There is so much more to achieve. Which worries me significantly. A man who tries to wear hornets is a man who should only do so in downtown Paris.

5. Sitting Down. Oooh, tingly.

6. Modesty. As an item of clothing goes, bees are hardly reliable. I can easily foresee the embarrassment now. There you are, walking down the road covered in your bee onesie only for the Queen Bee to die. Then what happens? Yep, you guessed it, all the other bees fly off. Leaving you completely starkers on a zebra crossing. Not a pretty sight. Especially as you didn’t ‘honey’ comb your hair.****

7. Car Mechanics. Not only would being covered in bees hinder your ability to do your job properly (I expect – though Kwik-Fit weren’t covered in bees and yet still failed to fix the squeaky wheel on my skateboard), you’d also get constant heckling. “Oi mate! Who put a bee in your bonnet?!”***** It’s probably not worth the hassle.

*Sorry. I’m not proud of that.

**The place to correct me for such factual inaccuracies is in the comments section below. I thank you.

***Sorry. I’m not proud of that either.

****Nor that.

*****That’s quite good isn’t it? Oh, okay. Sorry.

July 21, 2011
7 Reasons Not To Throw A Foam Pie At Rupert Murdoch

You probably hadn’t considered throwing a foam pie at Rupert Murdoch. Nor, I must confess, had I, until Jonnie Marbles turned up at the House of Commons earlier today and threw a foam pie at Rupert Murdoch. Then I considered it. After a half a nanosecond or so of consideration, I came to the conclusion that throwing a foam pie at Rupert Murdoch is an imbecilic act. I know that most right-thinking people will probably already have come to a similar conclusion about the merits of throwing foam pies at Rupert Murdoch, so they need read no further; they can simply retweet this piece, press the Google +1 button at the bottom of it (and share it on other social media too) and go on their merry way. For all wrong-thinking people – that’s just you, Jonnie – here are seven reasons not to throw a foam pie at Rupert Murdoch.

Don't do this.

1. It Draws Attention Away From The Hearing. Hitting a man in the face with a pie is a dramatic and attention-grabbing act. Because of that, a lot of the focus of the coverage of the Murdochs’ appearance before the Commons Culture, Media and Sport Select Committee, will be about the pie, rather than the important issue of wholesale corporate corruption that was being raised. Am I writing about the hearing? Are you reading about the hearing? No…well… yes, but only a tiny bit because I’m demonstrating how little we’re reading about the hearing because of the pie. Mostly what’s happening here is that I’m writing about the pie and you’re reading about the pie. I’ll also be reading about the pie when I edit this and eventually, once I’ve finished, I’ll be tweeting about the pie, even though the pie isn’t the point of the hearing. The point of the hearing is corruption. You’ve obscured that.

2. It Generates Sympathy For Him. With one blow of a pie, you’ve turned this man, the head of a corrupt organisation that has nefariously committed numerous despicable and illegal acts, into a victim; someone that’s deserving of our sympathy. Because, while every right-thinking person will abhor what was carried out in Rupert Murdoch’s name at the News of the World, that very same innate moral decency will cause them to see a frail, elderly man being subjected to an assault as an outrage. Because assault is an outrage, no matter whom it is perpetrated against. Even Rupert Murdoch.

3. You’ve Made Him Appear Lovable. It seems that making us feel sympathy for Rupert Murdoch wasn’t enough for you though. You’ve actually made him appear loveable. By provoking his wife to leap so rapidly and publicly to his defence, you’ve demonstrated that he is loved, and very loyally. You’ve taken a man that heads a sinister and morally-bankrupt organisation and caused us all to admire his wife’s love for him. In terms of public relations, you’ve accomplished more for Murdoch in five seconds than his own PR people have managed in the past five years. And you’re not even getting paid for it.

4. You’ll Look Incompetent. While I’m no expert on pie-throwing, I can’t help but think you’re not very good at it. You see, in my (admittedly inexpert) understanding of the act of pie-throwing, a pie is supposed to be thrown by the pie-thrower into the face of the pie-receiver, or victim as they are also known. But what’s going on in this picture?

That man appears to have been caught brilliantly smack in the middle of the face by a pie. But wait! That doesn’t look like an octogenarian media despot magnate. That’s you! You’ve attacked an eighty year old man with a pie and ended up wearing it. That’s possibly the worst throw of a pie in the history of pie-throwing. Throwing a pie doesn’t seem like a difficult thing to do, but you’re not competent to do it. You’re not fit for pie-pose (that only works if read in a New York accent). It was your big moment and you’ve ended up with metaphorical egg on your face. And actual pie.

5. Self-Publicity. It’s an oft-heard-phrase that all publicity is good publicity and this might be seen as having a certain truth to it. If you’re an idiot. For the rest of us, however, and I feel that I am speaking for the entire population of the planet here, you’re going to be forever known as the prick that threw the pie. Badly. That won’t help you with your comedy career. In fact, that won’t help you with any career, and certainly not one that involves throwing or pies.

6. The Police Won’t Thank You For It. The Metropolitan Police are reeling from the repercussions of the News of the World scandal and their reputation has been severely damaged by it, so sneaking into a commons committee that is being viewed by a vast worldwide audience and attacking a git with a pie is going to make them look feckless and incompetent right at the very moment that they probably don’t want to. Now, ordinarily, exposing institutional incompetence might be seen as a good thing, but not for you, because right at this moment, the Metropolitan Police are your landlords. They’re also your caterers; responsible for feeding you and bringing you the odd cup of tea. Probably, in fact, very odd cups of tea. Enjoy those!

7. “All The World Loves A Clown.”, according to Cole Porter. But that’s just not true, in fact, coulrophobia is one of the world’s most commonly professed phobias. What all the world hates, in fact, is a clown. A clown is a coarse buffoon who throws foam pies at people. That’s you. For some duncical, nitwitted, dunderheaded reason you decided to disrupt a long overdue attempt to make News Corp accountable for their actions by pratting around with a pie and you’ve ended up overshadowing an important hearing and distracting from the serious testimony that was being given there. You haven’t damaged News Corp and Rupert Murdoch, you’ve positively helped them. You are a clown. No one likes clowns.

July 20, 2011