6 degrees of separation.

It’s a small world. Don’t get me wrong I wouldn’t want to be in charge of mowing the lawns, but it is small. For instance, I met a guy whose girlfriend’s ex boyfriend went out with Amy Winehouse. Now my friends will able to say ‘My friend met a guy whose girlfriend’s ex boy friend went out with Amy Winehouse. This got me thinking about my other 6-degree stories.

Like my friend whose wife once went out with a guy who had gone out with the chick who was in The Style Council.

I also met a guy whose girlfriend stayed in the house that was the house of the ex girlfriend of Seal, and she got to sleep in his old bed.

I work with a girl who had a flat mate who took a course with a guy who worked in a furniture design company near where Brad and Angelina lived and one day they walked in.

I work with a bloke called Habib and his sister is married to a guy whose brother used to date the daughter of the wife of the current President of Lebanon, before she was his wife.

And I once worked with another guy who used to know a guy who flatted with the dwarf who was the Ewok who jumped on the storm trooper who fell off the speeder in the chase scene on the Ewok planet in Return of the Jedi.

You just couldn’t get stories like this if you lived on a planet that was any bigger.

POST APPOCALYPTIC PRESSURE

People wonder why I moved to the Middle East. Well, there are 11 reasons but one the one I wanted to bang on about here is number 6. If WW 3 kicks off chances are this part of the world will get fried extra crispy crispy in the first few hours. That’s my hope anyway because I don’t want to live in a post apocalyptical world. I’ve seen the movies. I know how it pans out. The clothes you are wearing on the day the nukes hit are the last decent ones you’ll ever have. They just get dirtier and dirtier after that till they rot and fall off and after that you have to go round dressed in fur and animal skins.
The survivors always end up being ruled by a black lady with big hair or an ex school teacher who is like into peace and love and getting along or an angry man with a Mohawk who is into violence and shooting cross bows. The only people who have any petrol are the Mohawk man’s mates and all they drive are dune buggies and motorbikes all over the place looking for people to kill. As if that wasn’t bad enough there is no TV no Internet and very few Mc Donald’s outlets are likely to survive. Apart form the daily struggle of trying to find food. Protect your family from the bands of marauding Mohawk men you will constantly have to explain stuff about the old world to the children born after the apocalypse. There will be shit lying around everywhere and the kids will want answers. Daddy what is a microwave oven? What were mail order brides? What was liposuction? You’re gonna have to explain all that stuff while you sit around the crappy little fire you have built in the ruins of an old hardware store while you make a spear out of an old broom and a garden trowel. No thanks. Take me out in the first wave. When that nuclear blast washes through the city I wont be one of those loser trying to outrun it. They always get squashed by a car that the blast has blown through the air anyway. Or their skin gets melted off their face as they cower in a doorway.
I’m gonna be in my deckchair sunbathing on the top of my apartment building without sun block and drinking really expensive champagne with friends and family when this particular chapter of our history comes to a climax.

BOG BLOG The Toilet Paper Topic

In this consumer driven society where there is a constant need for bigger, better, newer.
SO WHY IS THERE ONLY ONE SIZE OF TOILET PAPER SEGMENT?
Around the world the standard length for a segment of toilet paper is about 11.5 cm.
No one ever only uses one segment do they? So why not make the segments twice as long? We are all time poor these days. With longer segments you would be able to pull less on the roll to get your required and desired amount. And while we’re on the subject (and lets face it, we probably wont get to talk toilet paper again today) why is there only one standard width of toilet paper?
The world is full of arseholes. They come in all shapes and sizes. Why not recognise that with a wider brand of toilet paper ‘For a more secure, efficient wipe’. I’m talking deluxe width, Handy Towel sized toilet paper. It’s just a thought.

There have been some advancements in toilet paper technology. The move from one ply to two-ply. After two the scientists said three could never be done. But, using technology from the space program they managed it and then went on to four.
We’ve got toilet paper with pictures on it and scented toilet paper. We know they have the technology to make longer, wider segments. So why have they remained the same? Did a consortium of the world’s most powerful toilet paper tycoon’s meet somewhere back when the business was first taking off and agree to standardise the size? If they did why hasn’t a rouge toilet paper entrepreneur broken the rules and gone out on his own. Or have they tried, Maybe it is like the water-powered engine. Invented, but ruthlessly suppressed by powerful men with an interest in hiding the invention from the public. What are the toilet paper tycoons trying to prevent exactly? A more comfortable satisfying wipe experience? Going in the other direction completely, I am sure that not everyone needs toilet paper as wide as it is now? Why don’t the titans of toilet paper also offer bog rolls with a smaller width. It would use less trees and appeal to the greeneys. And it would be a bit cheaper.
All I want to achieve here is stimulate some debate among the biggies in the bog roll business. I know a lot of them read visit this site, so if there are a few new ideas they can pick up and run with as a result of this bog blog then my job is done.

(sfx of a toilet flushing)

The Rolling Fossils

Researchers in Ethiopia have unearthed the fossils of a 10 million year old ape. Something that old can normally only be identified by carbon dating. But htis time the experts had a little help. Close to the apes fossil they found a copy of a RolingStones record. Incredible. I didn't even know that they used to like the Rolling Stones in Ethiopia.

Horny Thoughts

It’s funny how horns mean different things in different countries. In New Zealand if you beep your horn at another car it generally means ‘fuck you’. Sometimes it can mean ‘hi’ or ‘bye’. But 9 times out of 10 it means ‘fuck you’.
In Abu Dhabi there is a lot more horn action, but a lot less agro. The horn means many things in the UAE’s capital. ‘My taxi is empty, anyone want a ride?’ ‘How dare you slow down to turn into a side street’, ‘the light went green .0005 seconds ago get moving’. Horn use here isn’t personal. It’s simply a communication tool. Then you go to Cairo and horn use there is just out of control. I haven’t heard the Egyptian national anthem, but I wouldn’t be surprised if it’s played on car horns. It got me thinking about a way government’s could make more money. Horn credits. You get 1 minute’s worth of free horn time a year when you register your car and then you have to pay for extra. Obvioulsy people with novelty horns would get more credits as recognition for their efforts to do something a little different.

Lego and legging it.

So there I am in the lounge aged about 6, Lego all over the floor. And this was back in the day when Lego was just blocks. If you wanted to build a castle or space ship you had to build it out of blocks. Like actually think how to make it. Not like the lame, fully formed Lego they sell now where it is all done for you.

But that’s not what this rant is about.

So my box of Lego is all over the floor. The lounge looks like a bombsite. But I decide I want to go off and do some painting. Up I hop, but just as I am about to leave the room mum busts me with the old ‘Darling. If you’re finished with the Lego how about you tidy it away.’ And that was one of the things my mum taught me as a kid. Another thing she told me was that if I ate my crusts my hair would go curly. But that turned out to be bullshit. But the tidying up thing made sense.

If you make a mess you are only going to have to come back and tidy it up later, or live in the mess you’ve created and probably piss other people off at the same time. Either way you make trouble for yourself. So parents teach their kids to finish what they start or tidy up. Now the coalition of the willing didn’t heed this advice when they left the job half done in Afghanistan and ran off to invade Iraq. Pity, because now they have created two giant messes. It’s all too much for the Poms. They’re packing up and leaving Iraq. Job done. Well, not done actually. Things are a hell of a lot worse for the people in southeastern Iraq. The mission was to bring democracy and stability to them. They had Saddam and stability now they have democracy and chaos. Wonder which they prefer? The Poms will find it easier to bail on the Yanks now because they have a new PM. It’s like me tipping the Lego all over the floor then leaving it for my brother to play with. When it all gets too much he just walks out telling mum that he wasn’t really responsible for the mess because he didn’t make it. The yanks will pull the same stunt when the Democrats get their arses into the White Houser.

Of course what my brother and me really needed was an older stupider brother. One who would do whatever we said. That way when the Lego mess needed to be looked after we could have got him to come in a take care of it. Not tidy it up because he wouldn’t be clever enough to do that. Just kind of watch over it. Monitor the mess if you will. Me and brother didn’t have anyone like that. But the British and the US do. It’s called the United Nations.

A Naughty List

So a guy I worked with had this book. When I say ‘a guy I work with’ I actually mean that. I’m not going to go into the details of the book there are plenty of sites on the interweb you can go to for that kind of stuff. But the chapter headings made me laugh.

The Menthol Marinade
The Sicilian Corkscrew
The Cotton Spritzer
The Standing Wrap
Parad-ice
Walking The Wall
Mint Two-lip
The Steaming Diamond
The Dutch Drawbridge
Rescuing The Captain
The Tasmanian Jack-knife
Showergasm
Chinese Field Goal
Baby Elephant Trunks
The Indian Rocking Horse
The Venus Butterfly
Cyrano's Triangle
The Flickering Candle
Oriental Shoe Shine
The Double "V"
The Grapes Of Rapture