Church merch

Holy water, they should bottle this stuff… hang on, they do. When I found it in the church shop I wished I had come in dressed as a vampire, but I guess they see that gag played out all the time. I spilt someone my wife to see if the stuff was for real. It didn’t make he skin burn so I think the stuff could be fake.
The Catholic Church is right into its merchandise; I haven’t seen this much stuff for sale since I went to a Rolling Stones concert. I also got a cool little bracelet. Funny thing is it looks very similar to the Hezbollah bracelet I bought the day before. Almost looks like they come from the same factory. Now that’s an interesting though isn’t it?

Shootin in Beirut. But not bullets

I’ve been in Beirut for a few days now and I got to say, it is a cool town. The town that wouldn’t die they called it on account of all the fighting that has gone on here over the years. Every third building looks like it has a bad case of acne, but it’s not. They’re bullet holes. A plasterer could make a lot of money here touching up buildings. Or maybe not. Perhaps no one bothers because they know their walls will only get pocked again. I hope not.
If Beirut were a person it would be the really friendly cool guy or girl that everyone likes, but who has had a long run of real bad luck but who everyone hopes is going to be able to get back on his or her feet.
Like a lot of Middle Eastern towns this city looks like it could do with a good clean and a new coat of paint, but if they painted it now it would probably be camouflage. The army is all over the place, manning roadblocks and generally looking really bored. That’s on account of the recent troubles with Hezbollah and the fact they have a new president. Dangerous job, being president of Lebanon. 6 days one of them lasted before he was assassinated.
I was surprised to see tanks and armored vehicles parked round the city, but after being on the roads for a while you see why. Nothing quite says ‘get the hell out of my way like a tank appearing in your rear view mirror. There are way too many cars in Beirut and nowhere to park, but if you’re in a tank, you can park anywhere, on anything.
Apart from the cool people, cool bars, great food, amazing weather, great shops and general cool vibe, you know what I really like about this place? Everywhere you go you see little plastic chairs outside on the footpath. Sometimes there’s just one, but usually there are two or three. And men sit in them from early in the morning, till late late at night and they sit and watch the world go by and shoot the shit. Which is probably something they couldn’t do back when there was real shooting go on.
If you’re wondering about the photo of the tank, I wasn’t trying to be arty. They army get funny about you taking pics of them and they have guns so I didn’t want to argue. I think they also have maps because they were really helpful when it came to giving you directions.

So long you old bag

Goodbye plastic shopping bag. Yes, you’ve been helping to pollute our environment, you use our natural resources and consume energy in your creation and yes, you fill the land fills and clog our waterways with your bad impersonation of a really really big condom.
But I choose to remember the goodtimes. Your usefulness. Oh how you were welcomed with open arms in the late 70’s and early 80’s. The look of the future. A giant technological leap forward in the transportation of grocery items. You were stronger, lighter and more efficient. As the CD was to vinyl, you were to the old brown paper bag. As I plonked you down in between the microwave and the kitchen whiz, I could feel the winds of change on that formica bench top.
Mum loved you. She used to roll you up into little balls and put you in a draw beside the kitchen sink, When I needed something to collect dead crabs in, I turned to you. Sure I couldn’t put you over my head, cut out holes and make a mask, like I had with the old paper shopping bags. But I ‘d grown out of that shit anyway. You were water proof and for a kid, that is a useful product benefit.
You got involved in charity work. When mum had old clothes to give to the Salvation Army, you were there to hold them. When we needed something to hold all the newspapers for recycling. You were there. How ironic.
But it wasn’t all one big joy ride home from the super market in the back of mum’s Honda civic was it?
Throughout the 80’s and on toward the end of the millennium, there was one fraternity that steadfastly refused to acknowledge you. You never got the respect you deserved from the TV and movie industry did you? Despite all your hard work, those arty film types acted like you had never been invented. Time after time the props department would whip up an old brown paper bag for the scene where groceries were being carried. Why? Who really knows. Some say the clean straight lines of the paper bag were more ascetically pleasing. I know it hurt you and now your time is over.
The very people you served so well for all these years are turning against you. You and your kind are being run out of town. You’ve become the ABBA of bags. Loved intensely, then tossed aside in embarrassment with claims that you were never really liked that much anyway. I know it hurts you; this is a pain you will take to your grave and mull over during the decades it will take for you to break down.
If there is one consolation for you, it’s that inner city dog lovers will have to find something else to pick up dog with.

It isn’t Iran that has wiped Israel off the face of the earth. It’s Ikea

Maybe the pen really is mightier than the sword.
Check out this is giant map of the world I found on sale at Ikea in Abu Dhabi.
Now take a close look at the in-house modifications they’ve made. With a flick of the wrist, Israel has been removed.

Bouncy Castle Bollocks

It’s hard being a parent. As well as remembering to feed them and check on them when you leave them locked in the car out in the pub car park, you have to find things to do with them at the weekends.
Time waster of choice in our house at the moment is the bouncy castle, and the sprog and I fit in some bounce time most weekends. But here’s the thing. It isn’t a bouncy castle; it’s a bouncy teapot. Whoever heard of a bouncy teapot? No one. That’s why we all still call it a bouncy castle. Luckily Frankie hasn’t asked me why we refer to it as a bouncy castle, but what if she does? That’s something they haven’t covered on Doctor Phil or Oprah. And it does beg the question why someone felt compelled to bother creating another bouncy object when the castle has served the children of the world so well.
Was it an entrepreneurial bouncy castle employee who spied a niche in the market? Did he talk to some kids and find out that while the castle and its princess and dragon connotations were all well and good, what they really fantasized about bouncing inside, was a teapot? Did he take this idea to his boss in the form of a power point presentation? Was he laughed out of the bouncy boardroom? Or bounced out??? Did that propel him to go out and form his own bouncy business. Is he the apple to Microsoft in the bouncy shit for children to play on world? Just seems like a waste of time. Especially when there are so many untapped opportunities in the bouncy castle world. For example, why not build houses the way they make bouncy castles? In earthquake prone places, like china, you wouldn’t get horrific body counts. The buildings would wobble around, which would be fun for the kids, and then it would be all over. In a hurricane the houses wouldn’t blow over and debris wouldn’t blow around and hurt people. The houses would just blow away. Come home drunk to a bouncy house and it doesn’t matter is you fall over on the stairs. Drive home drunk and run into the side of your house and you just bouncy off. Next morning when the wife throws the toaster at you that will hurt like hell, but when you hit the floor unconscious, you don’t end up with secondary injuries.
I guess what I am getting at is the bouncy castle industry needs to stop jumping around and have a good think about what they already have. There is so much unexplored potential with the castles; I just don’t see the need to go off designing teapots.

Instruction book bollocks

You know that feeling when you buy something electronic and it comes with a really big, thick instruction book and you think ‘shit, I didn’t realise this half toaster half fax machine was going to be so hard to earn to operate’ and then you open the book and it turns out there is only one page of instructions but it is translated into 85 other languages and that’s why it’s so thick…… I love that feeling. I wish you could get that in a pill (legally) or a drink.

Love pub quiz? The answer is yes!

I think the pub quiz was thought up a couple of weeks after the pub was invented. Brendon* noticed that the crowd seemed to drop off Mon, Tue and realized he needed a way to get the punters in.
The guy was clever. He didn’t need a bunch of focus groups to work out that the big problem for a lot of people was that it was tough trying to justify to themselves or loved ones, that they should get on the piss, right after a weekend of doing just that.
The answer? Make it a little more like work than a night at the pub.
Instead of, ‘Honey, thought I might go for a few beers with the boys tonight.’ It was transformed into. ‘Babe, gotta go to pub quiz tonight. The boys really need me. I’m the go to guy for music trivia. Can’t let them down. One more win and we are in the draw for the electric powered weed trimmer.’
Genius. Not a night at the pub, a night of intellectual stimulation… in a pub.
And because Brendon was so smart he probably wrote all the questions for the first quiz himself.

*someone told me the guy who invented the pub was called Brendon. But we were at the pub at the time and they were drunk, so it could be bollocks.

Tears of progress

V1 – Does that hurt?

V2 – Yes.

V1 – Does that hurt?

V2 – Yes.

V1 – Does that hurt?

V2 – Owww! Yes.

V1 – Does that hurt?

V2 - Yes

V1 – Does that hurt?

V2 – Yes.

Taken from the tests for Johnson & Johnson’s No more tears, kids shampoo.

Stickmen – the ones they tried to ban.

As you may or may not know I’m the artistic genius behind the stickmen series of books. Stickmen 1, 2, Stickmen Guide to life and the soon to be released Stickmen Bumper Edition. Anyway, not all of my great drawings make it into the books for one reason or another, so I thought I might share a few with you on me blog. Here are two. One was a bit rude the other was a bit cerebral I guess.
Stay tuned for Oprah, posh Sice, JFK and many more.

Dude looks like a lady

‘Ronaldo under probe’ that was the headline in the paper when one of the world’s most famous footballers was busted after going to a motel with 3 transvestites. I think the first hint he had that they were lady men, was when he caught sight of one of their ‘probes’. No this wasn’t an Eddy Murphy situation, where the boy knew what he was buying. It is a great ad for the Brazilian transvestite community. A better class of tranny. Hats off. But even if they had been real ladies, wasn’t it a bit greedy of Ronny to take 3 back to his room? Isn’t that biting off more than you can chew or are football layers allowed to bring on a substitute in bed if they get a bit knackered?
Lucky for Ronaldo, he didn’t end up chewing on anything. But with the story all over the world’s newspapers his ego must be fairly limp this morning.

Ikea push a better body image

I was pleased to see the assembly plans for the shelf I bought from Ikea the other day had fuller figured stick figures in them, rather than a uber skinny ones we see so often (in my 3 stickmen books for instance) Look at these happy chubsters, ok so they have no fingers and they're building a shelf in the nude, but hats off to Ikea for breaking away from the furniture assembly industry stereo types. I'm going to eat another another pie and put a desk together.

Big Penis Problems

I get like an email a week from my mum saying hi, but I get 30 asking if I want a bigger Penis. I don’t. I have never really thought it was a Problem but can 25 million sPam messages be wrong? Maybe I should get it enlarged, or engorged or lengthened or whatever it is they do to it.
If I did, if I have a few more inches wacked on, I wonder if the sperm spam would stop? If someone with a really large Penis had it made bigger wouldn’t that be dangerous? I wonder if the Society of Penis Enlargment ExPerts has a code of conduct. Some kind of database where customers can be listed so they stoP receiving the spam. Infact, that could be a good angle for the Penis enlargement spammers. ‘Get your Penis enlarged and we will stop spamming ya. Mind you, if there was a database of blokes who had had the treatment we’d all be on there sneaking a Peak wouldn’t we…. ‘Oh look at that Paul had a couple of inches. He needed it.’
If you’re wondering about the capital P’s in this entry it is because my P key on me keyboard is broken so I copied a P and am just Pasting it in as a type, should have used a lower case P I guess but didn’t realise till I was half way through this. I tell ya, not having a P key is a Pain in the arse. Its not till you don’t have it that you realise how often you use the letter P. Should have saved this blog about Penises till after my keyboard was fixed I guess