FASHION TIP

Throw away all your clothes and buy a monk’s habit. That's what I'm going to do. I can’t be bothered with proper clothes and ironing anymore. I was just packing my suitcase and I thought what a pain in the arse it all is. In future, I’m going to travel with nothing but a monk’s habit, a toothbrush, and something to read. All the rest is vanity and vexation of spirit. Plus, I’ll never get mugged if I am dressed like Friar Tuck.

Only turkeys go to Marks and Spencer. All the years I spent buying “shirts”- I can’t believe what a sucker I’ve been. The fashion industry –that is, a racket run by French woofters- has brainwashed everyone. That’s the only reason people want “shirts”. Well I’m not going to take it any more.

Seriously, wear a monk’s habit. If you think about it, it really makes sense. When you consider all the advantages, it is eccentric not to wear a monk’s habit.

                   
                In                                         Out

KILLER FACT!

Bolivia has had 189 coups d'état.

The reason I mention it is that I think Britain is about due for one. The Blairs will be strung up above a petrol pump any day now. I won’t be sorry to see that happen, of course, but a change of rulers is the joy of fools*, and unless the army takes over, it will be either:

a) Brown seizes power
b) The Tories get back in

Both roads lead to certain ruin, yet these are the choices we face. I would slightly prefer rule by military junta on lesser evil grounds, but I agree it’s not ideal. Or we could just do away with parliament and let the Queen rule the country on her own.

Whose idea was it to have elections, anyway? If MPs were selected by competitive examination we wouldn’t be in this hole. We don’t elect airline pilots or heart surgeons, so why Prime Ministers? The idea that Mr Average Briton, walking around Tesco with his mouth hanging open, should be allowed to choose the government is superstitious nonsense.

*Romanian proverb

"NOT MANY PEOPLE KNOW THIS, BUT THE FUHRER WAS A TERRIFIC DANCER"

I was just a paper hanger
No one more obscurer
Got a phone call from the Reichstag
Told me I was Fuhrer...

What's your favourite version of The Producers?

YOU COULD CUT THE TEDIUM WITH A KNIFE

These are the highlights of my stay in the Chicago Airport Travelodge. It's a beautiful story, and yet it's true.

ARRAGH!

"Arragh! Fookin' knob head."

It's nice to see the young people enjoying themselves.

BORING FACT!

Ecuador has a higher GDP per capita than Belarus.

ANCIENT LOS ANGELES

Ivan the Wrathful has a post about odd book titles: "How to Bombproof Your Horse", etc. To which I would have added The Devil's Cloth: A History of Stripes, by Michel Pastoureau, and Michael Jacob Rochlin's Ancient L.A.

There was a thing about dull book titles in the Spectator about a decade and a half ago:

The Street Names of Thatcham
With Rod and Reel in Northern Bechuanaland
Teach Yourself Practical Concreting

...are the ones I remember. (All genuine, apparently.) Champion bore Glenn Reynolds has a new book out, but you have to admit that the title is pretty good: An Army of Davids. No doubt the rest of it is the most frightful tosh.

When I was small there was a craze for joke book titles:

The Cat's Revenge, by Claude Balls
Falling off a Cliff, by Eileen Dover
The French Chef by Sue Flay
Nail in the Banister, by R. Stornaway

Good clean fun. Kids these days are probably too busy getting high on glue and headbanging to their "skiffle music".

YOUTUBE.COM

Can't stop watching youtube.com. All human life is here. If you want to see Japanese people on trampolines, they've got that; and if you are into fist-fights in supermarkets, why, they've got that too.

I'm afraid it's let down a bit by the webcam action. All they do is take off their tops and look pleased with themselves. Sorry, girls, but this is 2006. It takes more than that to tickle our jaded palates these days. Come on!

Still, for persons requiring Colombian girls in pants, here is Andrea from Cali, whom I slightly preferred to the hilarious cat videos. The last time I danced around in my undies like that the critics weren't kind. They said, "What are you doing in my garden, you frightful little man? Clear off this instant."


"God blimey if she aint a clinker, that there bleeding tart. Blimey it makes me kind of bleeding cry, straight, it does, when I sees her cause I thinks of my old mashtub what's waiting for me down Limehouse way." (James Joyce)

NANX HEDWERP

Man, I love that Nanx Hedwerp. He funny.

Via Bogol, the Voice of the People.

FIGHT

Thanks to the communications revolution I am now able to watch a fight in a school in Ohio, or some stinking place. I have no criticism of the fight itself, which was thoroughly enjoyable, but these kids need to work on their pre-fight taunting. Do they really talk like that all the time?

“I bet you don’t even know what a suffrage is, you stumpy wee wanker.” That is what I would have said, to the kid in the white t-shirt.

American women. Jesus.

If Lincoln were alive he’d be spinning in his grave.

(Via Flagrant Harbour)

ALMOND SLICES

Man, I wish I could stop eating these almond slices. On the other hand, it keeps me off the junk, know what I’m saying? Better a fondness for cakes and pastries than an £800 a day crack habit. That’s the way I look at it.

My father died of pastries. Two tonnes of them fell on his head.

VENEZUELANS- TO HELL WITH THEM

Education is collapsing in Venezuela, just like everywhere else. The opposition blame the ministry of education, and no doubt the government blames imperialism. I blame the students.

Venezuelans are radically unteachable. They show up forty minutes late, if they show up at all, then spend the rest of the class cunting around on cell phones and roaring at each other in Spanish. I wasted two years of my life trying to teach these people English. It can’t be done, any more than you can train a cat to build a chess-playing computer. You spend an entire week trying to teach them future tenses, then you ask what they are doing at the weekend and they say, “I go to the beach.” To hell with them.

There was this young guy who got a job where I worked. He would arrive two hours before his class, all enthusiastic, and cut up bits of card to make activities for them. I took his scissors away and told him to sit down. “Daniel,” I said. “Daniel, Daniel, Daniel... these people... they aren’t going to learn English. I mean, you can’t just waltz in there with your TEFL certificate and your coloured pens and think you’re going to ‘teach’ them ‘English’. You’re not being realistic.”

When you arranged his cards in order it would spell out a sentence such as, ‘What would you have been having for breakfast, if you hadn’t had what you did have?’ Grammar, you see. The student asks his partner this half-witted question, and he is supposed to say, ‘If I hadn’t had toast, I would have had cornflakes,’ or something equally surreal. In reality he merely frowns at it for a few moments, like a baboon with a Rubik's cube, then goes back to bellowing in Spanish.

Looking back on my career, I think I can honestly say that none of my students has ever learnt to speak English, and fewer than 10% of them have made any detectable progress at all. The whole thing has been a gigantic waste of everyone’s time and money. I might use that as a slogan when I start my own business:

The Hutton School of English
Wasting your time and money

BUSH ADMINISTRATION PURSUES GUERRILLA BEYOND THE GRAVE

The US government is offering $2.5 million for information leading to the capture of FARC commander Elmer Caviedes (alias “Albeiro Cordoba”), whom they want extradited on drug-trafficking charges. He probably won’t mind that much, since he’s been dead since last October: any lawyer worth his salt should be able to get him off on the “my client is a stiff” loophole.

Anyway, if you know where he’s buried you can dig him up and cash in.

UPDATE! The Colombian army made a "funniest home video" of their raking his boat with machine gun fire. Click where it says "video"; then click where it says "banda ancha" (broadband).