I'm Spartacus!

I’m on a health kick after gaining almost twelve hectares over the Xmas (that’s short for “Christmas”) period. My wife says it’s because I ate too much hair, but personally I think it’s all that luxury carpeting I ate on Boxing Day. Anyway, whatever the cause of my dramatic gain, I am now fully committed to a strict regime of diet and exercise.

After careful research, and on the advice of my local mortgage specialist, I am adopting the Perkins Diet. It’s a simple set of rules telling you what you can eat, when you can eat it, with whom and wearing what sort of hats. I’m complementing the diet with a program of rigorous exercises designed by the Disney Corporation.

Here’s a typical day:

Breakfast: Rack of lamb, 200 litres of Umbongo & a boiled egg, to be taken in the garden of Leeds Castle with the kids from Fame, wearing a trilby

Lunch: Chapters 1-12 of Children of Dune, accompanied with a white wine vinaigrette, to be eaten in Paula Abdul’s basement in the presence of Her Majesty Queen Elizabeth II, wearing a balaclava

Dinner: 128 Mb RAM, served medium-rare, followed by a nice, juicy lemon, to be consumed within 30 metres of the Post Office Tower under the supervision of Joel Schumacher, wearing a fez

Exercise: (To be performed twice daily equidistant between meals)

20x leg spurts

15x face crunches

10x hair thrusts

Followed by 15 minutes of rigorous staring

It’s only been two days, so nothing to report as yet.

Dear Movie Mogul

Prof Sir Steven Spielberg
DreamWorks SKG
100 Universal Plaza, #601
Universal City, CA 91608

10/11/2005

Dear Top Hollywood Movie Director and/or Producer,

RE: APPLICATION TO BECOME HOLLYWOOD MOVIE MOGUL

I would very much like to become a top Hollywood movie mogul, so I can direct blockbusting moving pictures and maybe even get to meet Jim Belushi.

I believe I have many fine qualities that would make me a top movie mogul, including:

• Advanced cycling proficiency
• In-depth knowledge of the entire Police Academy series, including Police Academy XVII : Mission To Mumbai
• A 94% complete chess set, left to me by my great aunt shortly before the dogs got to her
• The ability to memorise the names of as many as 3 cast members of Friends, up to and including:
• Matthew Parris
• Mel le Blanc
• Courtney Love-Baguette
• 20-20 vision in my left hemisphere
• A signed photograph of Dame Kiri Ti Kanakiwaka
  

I have enclosed my résumé, which I hope will give you some idea of my background and why I would be perfect for the role.

I look forward to hearing from you.

Yours sincerely,

Arnold V. Sputnik III

PS. I have a very weak bladder. Would that be a problem?

Dear NASA

Astronaut Training Program
NASA Headquarters
Suite 1M32
Washington, DC 20546-0001

10/11/2005

Dear Sir and/or Madam,

RE: APPLICATION TO BECOME NASA ASTRONAUT

I would very much like to become one of your astronauts, to explore space and help in the fight against the evil Ming the Merciless, whose deadly missiles move ever closer to our sleepy Earth-bound shores.

I believe I have many fine qualities that would make me a top astronaut, including:

• The ability to hold my breath under water (my current record is 32 seconds)
• An extensive collection of Star Wars memorabilia – possibly the largest in the South London area
• The ability to memorise any 4-digit number
• 20-20 vision in my right eye
• A signed photograph of Bruce Boxleitner
  

I have enclosed my résumé, which I hope will give you some idea of my background and why I would be perfect for the role.

I look forward to hearing from you.

Yours sincerely,

Arnold V. Sputnik III

PS. I can’t do Wednesdays. Would that be a problem?

Can You Guess What It Was Then?

Arnold V. SputniK III

Summary
	I am the world’s leading authority on shoes, with more than 13 years’ experience across a wide range of industries. Outside of my professional duties, I have been published in leading journals such as What Badger?, Telephone Handset Monthly and The Animal Husbandry Gazette. I live in South London with my wife and her accountant, Brian.
Experience
	2001–2005 African National Congress Africa, Obviously Vice-President of Spoons n Introduced new standards for spoon-related operations, leading to a 25% increase in spoons n Spoke at conferences on the benefits of spoons, and spread the spoon message as far and wide as Tokyo and Antwerp to eager audiences of up to 256,000,000,000 people n Recruited top managers, including Sheryl Crow, Mr Roboto and Batman, and built a world-class strategic spoon management organisation
	1999-2001 Disney Corporation Disneytown Regional Donkey Forecaster n Prepared and presented the morning donkey forecast, which was watched by more than 256,000,0000,000 by the time of my departure n Worked closely with the British Donkey Association, and increased donkeys by more than 25% n Organised the world’s biggest game of Cluedo (It was Professor Plumb, in the present-wrapping room, with a donkey)
	1980–1984 British Telecom The Shire, Middle Earth Chief Funchitect n Funchitected £256,000,000,000 customer service system, based largely on soft fruit n Managed team of top funchitects, ranging in height from 4’10” to 6’4” n Wrote The Jazz Singer (in the orginal Sanskrit) 1833–1764 Easyjet Luton Airpot, Next To The Carpark Female Impersonator n Impersonated over 256,000,000,000 females, including Bette Midler, Baroness Thatcher and Buffy The Vampire Slayer n Provided training and coaching to trainee female impersonators, raising the standard by 25% n Invented the tomato
Education
	1973-1977 University of Tooting Tooting, London n B.A., Business Administration and Interpretive Dance
publications
	Now That’s What I Call Muesli! 1964. Oxford University Press. Queue Here for Robotic Dancing. 1939. Penguin. Sea Monkeys: Who Knew? 2001. Pan Books.
Interests
	· Keyhole Surgery · Quantum Electrodynamics · The Spice Girls

Dumpty & Makeshift

I’ve just got back from the 2005 film awards, and before I say any more, here are the winners:

· Best bloke who was in that thing – The one who was in that war movie

· Best bloke who was also in that thing – The bloke who did that thing about the bat

· Best music from that thing – The one from the car advert

· Best special effects – the bit where that thing blows up and he falls about 100 feet onto a thing

· Best lass who was in that thing – the one who married that bloke who’s in that band

· Best lass who was also in that thing – the one who had the boob job

· Best bloke who made that thing – the guy who made that thing about the shark

· Best thing– the one where he’s a lawyer or something and she pretends she doesn’t like him but actually she does and so does he

Who Ate All The Flies?

Space travel is not as easy as it looks. First of all, there’s only processed cheese in space, so you have to develop a taste for it before you blast off. Secondly, despite what you may have been told, the various moons and planets are actually very far apart, and there are virtually no petrol stations in between, so you’re going to need a pretty substantial tank. (I usually borrow Grant Mitchell’s tank while he’s off on some beekeeping conference.) Finally, and arguably least importantly, in space no one can hear you scream, so if you’re a heavy metal-style singer looking for a suitable venue, you’d be barking up the wrong tree. It is for this reason that Metallica were infamously forced to cancel their tour of the asteroid belt in 1833.

Getting in to space is a bit of a rigmarole, too. Bus services are infrequent, to say the least, and the trains are always packed. You should book your ticket at least a month in advance, and don’t forget to take a packed lunch, because – as I mentioned earlier – there’s nowhere to buy food once you’ve left Earth’s atmosphere. (Okay, so there is a Starbucks on the dark side of the moon that sells sandwiches, but who wants to pay those kinds of prices?)

Once you get out there, you’ll meet some pretty interesting people. Gary Numan runs a moped rental business on Jupiter’s fourth moon Thebe (as you will recall, Io came first, with Europa and Callisto tied for joint second place. Io goes on to meet Ganymede in the final.) And rumour has it that Michael Caine and Ant Out Of Ant & Dec - to give him his full name - co-own a chain of trendy hair salons stretching from Venus all the way to Neptune, though I imagine business is pretty slow that far out.

Last time I was in space, I bumped into that bloke who was in that thing. We had a good old natter, and I was able to glean some juicy movie news: apparently he’s signed up to do a remake of that thing about the you-know-what. I’m a big fan of the original, but I’m looking forward to seeing how the updated version turns out.

Finally, a word of advice about space travel; do not, what ever you do, attempt to communicate with alien probes. I know from bitter experience that all they ever talk about is Frankie Goes to Hollywood. It’s true, they’re all Frankie mad! “When are they getting back together?” “Why did Holly Johnson really leave the band?” “What was your favourite Frankie song?” Blah blah blah blah blah blah blah. You’d think a civilisation advanced enough to send a probe tens of light years through space would have had the forethought to pack more than one CD. I heard about one group of colonists who, after a 2,000-year journey to Betelgeuse, made Cliff Richard their god. Honestly, hasn’t anyone heard of iPod?

Oops, I Do Apologise

Boy, it sure is windy today. I saw Mrs Jones from the charity shop being blown down the high street at more than 100 mph, before smashing into the window of Marks & Spencer; having said that, she may have been ram-raiding again. I know how partial she is to pre-wrapped sandwiches, and cat food’s pretty pricey these days.

Wind is an unusual phenomanemone; it starts at the bottom of the Atlantic Ocean as just a few bubbles, and through the relentless action of gravity and space-style radiation waves it slowly builds up to an enormous bubble the size of Luxemburg. By the time it reaches the surface, it is ready to explode, and as soon as it emerges, it does – causing wind to blow in all directions, including up. Sometimes one explodes just under the surface, which was the inspiration for the blockbuster Hollywood film ‘The Abyss’, directed by Rhona Cameron.

It humbles me to think of these powerful natural forces, over which we have no control. Take volcanoes, for example. If a volcano erupted on Lewisham High Street, it would cover an area the size of 10,000 football pitches with ash and soot. I’ve only ever managed to cover one football pitch with ash and soot (well, almost – I had to stop when the police arrived), so I have to take my hat off to nature.

Volcanoes form because of what scientists call ‘technotronic plates’ moving about under the Earth’s crust. Many of these plates are hidden under the oceans, and it wasn’t until ‘Voyage to the Bottom of the Sea’ was first broadcast in 1833 that anybody spotted one. Before that, everybody thought that volcanoes were just giant rock fondues. In Scandinavia, this myth persists, leading to hundreds of needless deaths every year.

On a holiday to Lanzarote, my wife and I were given a guided tour of a volcano. As you’d imagine, it was pretty hot near the hole where the lava comes out, and when I got back to the hotel and looked in the bathroom mirror I realised I had no eyebrows. “But you’ve never had any eyebrows” exclaimed by wife, and it’s probably just as well because they could have caught fire on top of that volcano, and in the dry heat that fire would have quickly spread across my entire body; and we hadn’t thought to bring any buckets of sand – or even any wet wipes.

Is Your Dad Home?

Driving in South London gets more stressful every day. Last weekend, my wife and I took the kids for a day out at Ikea – they love that pine-based flat-pack, and no mistake! Now, according to my A-Z, Ikea is barely 6 miles away as the crow flies. All I can say is that the crow obviously doesn’t fly through Sunday afternoon traffic in a Ford Mondeo… (At least, I’ve never actually seen one do it. I could be wrong.)

It took us the best part of 9 hours to get there, and we only stopped once to take photographs of a semi in Mitcham that had a particularly interesting gable end (in my opinion).

Women and motors, eh? My wife insists on promoting the half-baked theory that if I put the engine back in, we’d go a lot faster. Yeah, well if you know so much about cars, why don’t you drive? And so she did, for the rest of the journey. We sat in stony silence as we pulled into the car park, and she was a bit off with me for the rest of the day. Needless to say, there was no custard for me when we got home – let alone custard with hundreds and thousands!

Ikea, as always, was a delight. The kids made their usual beeline for the kebab van, while my wife and I bought our weekly supply of light bulbs. I’m still not sure how we manage to get through so many of them. I’m not 100% convinced of their nutritional value, either. But the kids seem to like them, and you know how hard it can be to find anything that children will actually eat.

Look Out, Mr Magoo!

Thanks to my wife’s thoughtful birthday present, I now have the ability to bake my own bread. She’s an absolute whiz at choosing gifts. It would never have occurred to me to go out and buy myself a pair of hands, but now I can’t imagine how I ever managed without them. Hands are not just great for bread-making: they have literally dozens of other applications. You can motion to boy scouts through the kitchen window, and extract crumbs from the back of the sofa during the half-time break. Here are just some of the things I’ve been doing with my marvellous new hands:

• Indicating my frustration to a supermarket employee
• Preventing light from entering my eyes (though, to be fair, I could already do that by positioning a horse between my eyes and the source of said light)
• Preventing objects from falling to the floor, and – in extreme cases – actually causing them to go higher than they were previously
• Examining the texture of custard for imperfections
• Symbolising any number between 1 and 10
• Estimating the relative proportions of a bowl of fruit for the purposes of artistic representation
• Artistically representing a bowl of fruit (through the medium of crayon)
• Causing household electrical items to perform certain labour-saving operations through the manipulation of “controls”
• Waving goodbye to a member of The Bee Gees who has outstayed his welcome (and polished off the Ribena, I might add)
  

There’s no doubt about it: hands are a positive boon! So taken was I with my new hands, that I used them to search on Google to learn more about the history of hands. Unsurprisingly, there are thousands of web sites devoted to hands, so I had quite a busy afternoon sifting through all the available information (not using my hands this time, but using my mind).

Did you know, for example, that hands were invented in 1833 by Sir Robert Godfrey? Legend has it that he was struggling to put on his riding boots one cold winter’s morning, and said to himself “there must be an easier way”. Then, one day, he was visiting the recently-opened London Zoo and, while watching snakes trying to open a can of baked beans, he had a brainwave. The reason why snakes can’t open cans of baked beans is because they haven’t got any hands. So, if he invented hands, not only would snakes be able to open cans of baked beans, but he’d have no trouble getting his riding boots on. It was a landmark moment for British industry, and Sir Robert became one of the richest men in Croydon. There was one flaw in his reasoning, of course. Snakes will never be able to use hands to open a can of beans because they don’t have any money to buy a pair of hands in the first place.

How monkeys can afford them is one of life’s great mysteries.

Throb

Great news! Apparently there are hundreds of women in my area who are desperate for sex. Though why they would need my credit card details is anybody’s guess.

Three Kinds of Cheese

If there’s one thing I hate, it’s waiting in for deliveries. Last week I wasted an entire day waiting for a new combined fridge-freezer. How was I supposed to know you had to place an order first? There certainly wasn’t anything about that on the website – at least, not on Emma Bunton’s official web site, anyway.

These so-called “delivery men” couldn’t deliver their way out of a paper bag, in my opinion. Half the time they turn up late. If they turn up at all, that is. I think there must be a secret delivery man place they all go to, and they take all the items they’re supposed to be delivering and make a huge bonfire out of them, which they then cavort around naked to the music of “Mr Ozzy Osbourne and his Heavy Metal Players”.

That’s right, these delivery drivers are Satanists. They are the most Satanistic people around. Satanistically, they are way ahead of the curve, I can tell you. When it comes to Satanising, they’ve got it down pat.

Having said that, some delivery men are the salt of the Earth. That’s not to say that they’re actually made of salt, which would, for many reasons, be impractical. For starters, if you were made of salt, you would dissolve in the bath. Sex would be very difficult, as close contact with a non-salt-based person would likely result in their being completely dehydrated, ending up looking like a mummified corpse (but without the bandages). It is for this reason alone that I believe Ronald Reagan was actually made of salt. It would explain a lot of other things, too.

Other salt-based celebrities include George Michael, Selina Scott and that bloke who was in that thing. To give them their credit, they hide it well, and you can’t really tell until it rains, and then you get a distinct smell of brine. Most cats are also made of salt, which is why they hate water. Of course, a few cats are made of soap, but on the whole they are salt-based. It is one of the best kept secrets that “salt mines” are actually underground cat farms. Being a nation of cat lovers, if word ever got out that people have been sprinkling flaked kitty on their fish and chips, there would probably be riots in the streets – which is the best place for them, in my experience.

You Snivelling Wrench!

Is it just me, or are banks getting further away?

Miscellaneous Hand Luggage

Have you ever wondered what goes on inside your television? To be honest, I hadn’t given it much thought until last weekend, when smoke started pouring out of my set whenever I tuned it to ITV4. ITV4 is a new channel that repeats everything they show on ITV3 approximately 4 minutes later. I’d not heard anything about it causing smoke to come out of your TV, but I checked on Google to see if anybody else had experienced the same problem.

Google’s great for that sort of thing. The other week I was looking for advice on hair, and I found literally hundreds of hair-related web sites from a single search. Admittedly, none of them had specific advice on how to cook it, but they were all very informative nonetheless.

Anyway, back to my smoking TV. After several hours of searching I stumbled across a discussion board where there were about a dozen posts describing this very same problem. One person had posted:

“Every time I switch my TV over to ITV4, smoke starts pouring out of the back. Also, whenever I put my little fella in a tub of margarine, it feels really good. Does anyone else have these problems?

Posted by: desmondlynam”

One person had replied:

“Hi desmondlynam

Whenever I watch ITV4, smoke AND margarine comes out of the back of my telly. I called the manufacturer, who advised me to place a copy of Good Housekeeping on top of the TV. It seems to have done the trick, as there is neither smoke NOR margarine coming out of the set any more.

Having said that, it has started to smell of marzipan…

Posted by: sireltonjohn”

I tried the Good Housekeeping solution, but it doesn’t seem to make any difference. Mind you, my TV is widescreen…

Sputnik Gets A Kicking

I had that Grant Mitchell (AKA Phil from Eastenders) round my house last night. He doesn’t half go on! He’s beekeeping mad, he is. Buzz buzz buzz. That’s all he ever talks about. Frankly I’m sick of hearing it. So last night I confronted him. I said “Grant Mitchell (AKA Phil from Eastenders), you are beekeeping mad. And while I’m happy that you’ve found meaning and purpose in your life, frankly I’m sick and tired of hearing about your latest beekeeping antics day in and day out.”

That certainly stopped him in his tracks. Why he insists on driving his tank in my living room is anybody’s (and/or everybody’s) guess, but at that specific moment his tracks had well and truly stopped dead, and in a moment of weakness I felt suddenly very sorry for him and gave him my South Park pencil case as a sort of peace of offering.

The gesture seemed to move him visibly. More specifically it moved him exactly 32cm to the east. I’d warned him about that before, and my temporary bonhomie was shattered by a rush of uncontrollable anger at his blatant display of eastwardness, which I directed towards him in his general direction (which was by now precisely 32cm east of where it had been previously.)

I leapt onto his tank and pulled him physically from the driver’s seat using the gift of physics. By this time, the rest of the Eastenders crowd had arrived and, seeing the events unfolding, proceeded to lay into me and give me a good kicking. Adam Woodyatt (AKA Barbara Windsor) was the worst. Not many people know this, but since 1989 Woodyatt has exclusively worn snow shoes both on set and off set (and in between sets, which can happen). Have you ever been kicked in the danglies by an actor’s snow shoe? No, neither had I until then. It bloody hurts, I can tell you.

Anyway, the evening drew on and the National Soap Award-winning kickings continued. As the blood poured down my mashed features, I heard Leticia Dean, who plays hard man Jim Branning in the show, speaking to cast members of Coronation Street and Home and Away on her mobile phone. I think she was calling for reinforcements. As the clock struck midnight, I knew it was going to be a long night…

My New Blog

Following the advice of my local ombudsman, I am starting what technology-literate folk call a “blog”. According to the Oxford Dictionary of Modern Slang, a “blog” is ‘an Internet website containing an eclectic and frequently updated assortment of items of interest to its author’. This excited me greatly; partly because I am frequently eclectic, but also because in my mind I have been storing an assortment of items of interest to me. It makes perfect sense to store them on some kind of back-up medium just in case, as happened last Wednesday, I forget who I am and what I’m like.

I read in a medical journal that doctors in Ohio were able to save a man’s mind by forcing him to read his own “blog”. He had been found wandering through the countryside, and his mind was just an empty shell (except for the bits he would have undoubtedly needed to know in order to wander aimlessly. Oh, and breathe. And see things with his eyes. In fact, come to think of it, I suspect his mind wasn’t empty at all. This story may turn out to be apocryphal; I should warn you dear reader.)

Anyway, they restored his memory using his “blog”, and he was able to find out all sorts of things about himself. Like the fact that he has a “blog”, for example. So I thought to myself, “That’s not such a bad idea, Arnold”. And you know what; it wasn’t.

So here I am writing the first ever post on my new “blog”, and it’s all about “blogging”. I should coco!

As always, I endeavoured to look into the history of the “blog” and immediately made plans to visit my local “library”. According to the Oxford English Dictionary, a “library” is ‘a building or room containing a collection of books and periodicals for use by the public or the members of an institution.’ This excited me greatly, because I am able to use books, and periodically I have been in institutions. Indeed, by an extraordinary coincidence I was once allowed to work in a library as a reward for my good behaviour. The assignment was short-lived, however. Apparently, urinating in the fiction section is considered to be something of a social faux pas in some circles.

Anyway, back to my “blog” research; here are just some of the fascinating facts I was able to glean about “blogging”:

• The “blog” was invented in 1833 by Sir Cat Deeley, who won the idea in a game of cards
• There are more than twelve “blogs” now in existence, with new “blogs” opening every year
• The world’s largest “blog” is over one hundred feet long and weighs approximately 32 metric tonnes.
• The word “blog” is derived from the Latin “blogus”, meaning ‘to labour under the delusion that people care what you think’. In his epic poem ‘Blogus Ex Terra Mater’, Apuleius writes:
  

‘Just got back from Poetcon 55BC. The session on open source imagery was most enjoyable. Thanks to Horace, Cattalus, and Brad for their excellent presentation. I will definitely be going to Poetcon 54BC.’