Halloween party tonight. I just bought a beard and a herringbone jacket. Going as a member of the Sinn Fein executive.

COLOMBIA

Elections this weekend, which means the bars and whorehouses were all shut, and none of the shops would sell drink. All over Latin America they ban alcohol during elections in case people get drunk and vote for the communists.

I’m not allowed to vote or get drunk, which strikes me as bleeding monstrous, if not an abuse of my human rights. But they do it to try to keep the violence and looting to acceptable levels. All it takes is a small sherry before luncheon and they’ll come pouring down from the slums in an enraged mob, hacking up the middle classes with machetes. They always try to pass it off as Latin exuberance.

You would think the mobs could simply go to the supermarket a day early and buy Saturday's sherry on Friday, but that would require a level of organisation which in our case we have not got.

QUOTE OF THE DAY

"There's so much shit to do. But really, why bother with any of it? You're going to die eventually. Then you're going to wonder why you bothered with all that shit."

Sir William Gladstone (1809–1898)

SAY IT WITH HADDOCK

"Sniek up an slip id down teh back of is neck or levae it on his chaire — its up to u!"

It just occurred to me that I haven’t sewn a herring into anyone’s curtains for nearly a decade. Getting old.

O, WHAT A NOBLE MIND IS HERE O'ERTHROWN

Our generation’s Orwell has had his gonads waxed.

“The fanglike teeth are what is sometimes called "British": sturdy, if unevenly spaced, and have turned an alarming shade of yellow and brown…”

These fat stupid Americans sure do love their stereotypes.

LIST OF THE DAY

Five people not from Dundee:

1. Christopher Columbus
2. Otto von Bismarck
3. David Blaine
4. Ho Chi Minh
5. Mariah Carey

(The first letters of each name spell, “Cod, hm?”. This is an excellent way of remembering the list.)

TOSSER STRUCK ON CHIN BY VEGETABLE SIEGE WEAPON

Like most Britons, I am in the habit of looking up at the sky when I leave the house to see if I am about to be killed by a pumpkin. So this story made my blood run cold:

“The first weekend of pumpkin flinging season ended abruptly Sunday... Chuck Willard of Hancock hit on the chin… medieval weapon called a trebuchet… it can toss pumpkins 300 yards... He was treated and released and said to be anxious to start tossing pumpkins again.”

When a man fires a pumpkin 300 yards, he becomes as a wrathful god, raining death and plagues from the sky. He can smiteth the heathen on the other side of a car park, like a thunderbolt of Zeus. Can such destructive power be harnessed for good, or will it fall into the wrong hands, is the question we now must ask.