One woman's horrific story

Definitely the best thing i've seen on the front of a women's magazine for a while.


mp3: 14 Year Old Girls —"Grand Theft Auto 3"
mp3: Don Caballero — "Slice Where You Live Like Pie"

Ba da ba da ba da ba DA DA!

Rooster morning call 'too loud'

Rocky the rooster has ruffled a few feathers in a Hampshire village with his early morning wake-up calls.

Neighbours living in Marchwood complained to environmental health officers about his loud cockadoodledos.

Owner Paul Wilton has had to black out the windows of Rocky's home to keep him quiet or face a fine of up to £5,000. [BBC]

mp3: Ivor Cutler — "Cockadoodledon't"

PS: Oh hey! Life Just Bounces is now on Hype Machine. Feel free t'drop by, follow us, etc.

redemption. And fina/ redemption. And fina/ redemption. And fina/ redemption. And fina/ redemption. And fina/ redemption. And fina/ redemption. And fi

This is a video clip someone¹ took of a glitch on a Christian radio station in Indiana (WQKO 91.9), where a fragment of what sounds like an advertisement or sermon (though it could really have been anything) gets stuck on loop for just over half an hour.

By turns, it's strange, magnificent, hilarious, and unexpectedly musical.

i can't get enough of this sort of thing. In the increasingly tight control of the digital age, it's a little reassuring to think the ghost in the machine can still bide his time, waiting for the opportunity to prevail.

¹ Actually it was graphic designer Dustin Hostetler. A lot of his designs are pretty cool.

Apparently the Royal Mail have trademarked the colour red™.

Got a card from the Royal Mail in the letterbox today, informing us about their convenient new Christmas services. These include waiving collection charges for sorting office visits, longer opening hours over the Winterval period, and free redeliveries if you're out, etc. Pretty good stuff, i thought, although i wondered how they were funding such helpful new measures. Then i saw the back.

bigger:

Gotta say, that's a pretty audacious way to raise money, alright, and especially around Christmas! i forsee an appeal on behalf of Father Christmas to (my favourite commission) the Competition Commission.


MP3: Yoko, Oh No! — "Reds for the Blue Sun"
MP3: Nick Cave & the Bad Seeds — "Red Right Hand (album)"

A man ate this

Jamie Oliver is currently weeping into his watery health-chicken.

After losing the title of "world's biggest burger" to the Clinton Station Diner in Clinton, New Jersey, which introduced a 12.5-pound hamburger called "Zeus" in early 2005, Denny's reclaimed the crown a few months later by unveiling the "Beer Barrel Belly Bruiser", a monstrous 15-pound burger featuring 10.5 pounds of ground beef, 25 slices of cheese, a head of lettuce, three tomatoes, two onions, a cup-and-a-half each of mayonnaise, relish, ketchup, mustard and banana peppers. On a bun.

In October 2008, Brad Sciullo of Uniontown, Pennsylvania, became the first Denny's Beer Barrel Pub customer ever to polish off one of their "Beer Barrel Belly Bruisers" in one sitting, consuming the 15-pound burger (20.2 pounds with bun and toppings) in 4 hours and 39 minutes.

On a similar tip, cheers to Miles for putting me up on the Heart Attack Grill of Arizona, taking the whole thing just that bit further by offering you side-orders of "soft drink of elite hackers" Jolt Cola and unfiltered Lucky Strikes. Awww yeh! The nonchalant combativeness of their press coverage/skirmishes page fills me with great joy, as do their non-medically trained nurses.

Finally, who knew an ostrich burger looked like this?


MP3: Judi Chicago — "Burger Joy"

News in brief (scanning thru Beeb website)

Concern over Katona TV appearance
An erratic appearance by former pop star Kerry Katona on ITV1's This Morning caused viewers to call in with concerns about her health.

The singer's slurred words prompted host Phillip Schofield to say: "You don't seem right to me... Your speech is a bit slurred, how are you feeling?"

Katona seemed surprised by the question, but blamed prescription drugs she had taken to help her sleep.

Former pop star does drugs, you say? Gosh, This Morning viewers are an incisive bunch. Still less of a concern, i'd say, than the continued pollution of our screens by tossers like J. Oliver, J. Clarkson, J. Kyle, Heston "Jellyfish and Banana Quiche" Blumenthal* et al.

* (for instance)

Also, Phil Schofield is one smooth bastard. i'm definitely trying out the line "you don't seem right to me" next time i hit the town.

Police 'exaggerate demo numbers'

Police "over-egg" the number of people taking part in demonstrations to justify the amount of cash they have spent, a climate protester has claimed.

Phil McLeish, from Climate Camp, said police used to "downplay" the number of protesters at demonstrations.

But now they were "colluding" with protest groups to make demonstrations appear bigger than they were.

A police source told BBC News: "This is a bit rich. They always criticise us for underestimating the numbers."

That last sentence is like a customer in a restaurant telling the chef that part of his food is still frozen, and the chef replying with "That's a bit rich. You usually criticise me for burning it." The point being, neither are really particularly desirable.

Bad policeman, no doughnut.

Naked man found wedged in chimney
A naked man found wedged in the chimney of a supermarket in Wigan has been arrested on suspicion of burglary.

Police officers discovered him trapped in a chimney breast of a Tesco Express store on Ormskirk Road, Pemberton.

Firefighters were called to rescue the man who had become trapped in the chimney as he tried to get out.

Police said that because the man was naked he was taken to hospital as a precaution but was treated and discharged before being arrested.

A GMP spokeswoman said: "It is believed some of his clothes came off as a result of him struggling to get out of the chimney."

Not a lot to really add to the awesomeness of this one, except i quite like the idea that someone being naked is now considered a sign that precaution should be taken.

And finally, Mohammed al-Fayed may be a child sex offender. Don't worry, i'm sure it'll only be a matter of hours before it turns out to be all a conspiracy to discredit his good name, planned and executed by MI6, Prince Phillip and the Loch Ness Monster.

MP3: Aesop Rock feat. Rob Sonic — "Dark Heart News"

100 dumplings & 1,000,000 peas: the further adventures of Mr. Greedy

I used to have a tape of kids' songs themed around Roger Hargreaves' deathlessly wonderful Mr. Men characters. There were about five or six songs on each side of the tape, i seem to recall, up to a total of about twelve.

They were mostly third-person narrative tales about the adventures of the better known Mr. Men or some of their character traits: Mr. Happy's track, for instance, was a (rather soppy, i recall) paean to positivity, while Mr. Bump's chronicled his accident-prone nature. The odd few were told from a first-person perspective, a highlight being Mr. Nosey's painful account of the consequences of constantly sticking his ample nose in everybody's business.

(Thanks to this ace site for the cover scan.)

The best song, however, which ended side one, concerned (and was entitled) "Mr Greedy's Little Light Lunch".

One hundred dumplings and a million peas
Twenty marmalade puddings and a cheddar cheese
Bread and butter and a roll or two
Bread and butter and a roll or two, three, four

Then boiled beef and carrots in a casserole stew
And a bucket of custard, vanilla cake too
Bread and butter and a roll or two
Mr. Greedy is having a little light lunch

And then a treat for him to eat
It's roly poly pudding...

Apparently, Greedy also ate "ice cream in tons", "a gallon of soup", "bunches of bananas", and, somewhat underwhelmingly after all that lot, "plum duffs". Dunno about you, but to me that sounds like a hearty meal.

An unhealthy appetite was also the downfall of Mr. Greedy's namesake this week. The suitably rotund-looking Clive Greedy (right) was suspended from his job as a paramedic on the Isle of Wight after eating a stick of celery while attempting to revive a patient suffering from a heart attack.

According to the Beeb:

Darren Claydon, an emergency care practitioner... told a hearing in London on Monday: "My attention was called to Clive Greedy, by him saying, 'Nice celery'"...

This story just gets more and more improbable. Not just because at the time of the celery consumption, Greedy's partner paramedic John Jones was also "jesting with a prawn" and speculating as to whether said seafood would be cooked if the patient was defibrillated while it was on his chin; but also because, who, i ask you, has ever used the phrase "nice celery" before?

Obviously i wanted to give away "Mr. Greedy's Little Light Lunch" with this post, but my Mr. Men tape got lost about fifteen years ago (there's good money in it if you can get me a rip. More for a hard copy) so that went out the window. So here's some good general songs to go towards your five-a-day instead.

MP3: Minor Threat — "Salad Days"
MP3: Frank Zappa & the Mothers of Invention — "Call Any Vegetable"
MP3: The Vegetable Orchestra — "Greenhouse"