Desert Safari Bollocks Part 1

It is cool how no matter what your country is blessed with in terms of natural resources the locals will invent a way to use them to get money out of tourists. Take New Zealand. As a country we are fully onto this. Our rivers are full of high-speed thrill seekers in jet boats and the wimps can go by raft. We’re blessed with tall bush covered mountains. So what did we do? Build bridges between them and push people off attached to thick rubber bands. We also have millions of acres of grassy hills. In the 70,s a few visionaries tried to take advantage of this with grass skiing. Never really took off. But in the 90’s a kiwi invented a big plastic ball you could climb into and roll down the hill in. Brilliant. In Cambodia, entrepreneurs want to offer tourists the chance to go digging for antique landmines. Hey, you work with what you’ve got.
In the UAE it’s sand. Lots of it, so it was natural that he tourist operators would look here for their inspiration. The Desert Safari is the classic UAE tourist trip. A work conference lunch buffet of sand themed delights.
First stop was the Camel Farm. Lucky we had a guide because if we hadn’t been told we were at a camel farm we might have mistaken it for simply a herd of camels standing near a couple of old sheds in the desert. There weren’t a lot of fences, but I don’t think camels have a lot of motivation for doing anything. Camels are a lot like dodgem cars at the Easter Show. If you take your foot off the accelerator and hop out they just kind of roll to a stop. The highlight of the camel farm stop was watching two camels doing their bit to boost the herd numbers. Ever wondered how a daddy camel climbs aboard mummy camel with her big bloody hump sticking up into his chest? With great difficulty and a lot of moaning and groaning it turns out. If someone in the porn industry ever makes a film for the hard of hearing they should record two copulating camels and use that as the soundtrack. I can’t imagine that getting it on in front of 18 Russians, two Germans and 4 kiwis is anyone’s idea of fun. Even if it was a threesome. The third party was the young guy (presumably young because the old guys pulled rank and made him do it). You know how those special forces troops hide near a target and guide the missile fired from the plane in with a laser pointer? Well this guy had a similar job. He had to guide the Camels ‘missile’ into the ‘target’. But instead of a laser pointer, he had to use his hands.

From the Farm of Fornication we were taken deeper into the desert for Sand Hooning. If you ever see a white second hand 4 wheel drive for sale and it turns out it was used in desert safaris. Don’t buy it. They get thrashed. The highly trained men behind the wheel make those vehicles do things and go places you suspect cars aren’t meant to go. I say highly trained because sitting in the back belted in and trying not to smash my head in the roof I was really hoping that our driver was highly trained.
There are no road marking out in the desert. They tried once but the wind kept blowing the sand away and it was just a big waste of spray paint. We traveled in a convoy of 4. We were second which meant we got to see the 4 by 4 in front of us go straight off the top of super steep sand dunes and then with the sound of the screams of the middle aged German lady filling our truck I got to turn and watch the group behind us roll down in our tracks. Imagine 7 mice in an empty beer can. 2 German mice, 4 kiwi mice and an Indian driver mouse. For the purposes of this analogy the beer can is one of those big super sized ones that used to be popular in the early 80s in Australia. Now imagine that can is tossed into the surf at Raglan. That was kind of what it felt like.

The desert safari is a precision operation, timed to the second, which I think the Germans really appreciated. We skidded to a stop at the top of a particularly large dune just in time to watch the sun set and from there it was on to part 3. The Desert Camp.

Stay tuned for the exciting wrap up of the Vegas Desert Safari. But I am off to the Dubai 7’s for 2 intensive days of booze and something else……. Oh yeah, rugby. So it might be a few days till I get back here.

Righto.

Speed Wump.

It is the little ideas that can make a big difference. There was this guy who worked for coke and he came up with a tiny change in the design of the can that meant each one used a fraction less aluminum. Saved the company millions.
Well, I have come up with the equivalent for the roading industry concerning the matter of speed restrictions. It is simple, and when you read it you will think either A. That is genius I wish I had thought of that. Or B. That guy has too much time on his hands.
Why a speed bump? Why not a Speed wump. A speed hump is a hump and speed wump is a dip. But I called it wump because it sounds catchier.
With a speed hump you have to add stuff. With a speed wump, you take it away.
And that ‘s it. A simple idea that cuts down on road building costs. Mother nature has been doing it for years. A speed wump is just a series of potholes in a line.
Good news for major cities with roading systems that are outdated, over used and under funded. That must be about every city on the planet.
Well, I am off to patent my incredible new road safety device, but first I need to make sure I haven’t ripped the name off from a Doctor Suess book.

2 more things I am going to do when I rule the world

The first is set aside huge amounts of money for the research and development of the technology to make 2-minute noodles in 1 minute. Or less. Less would be good, but I will be happy with 1 minute.
The other thing I am going to do is make it a law that toilet doors have to open the opposite way to other doors.
You think about it. You go to use a public toilet and as you enter you push the door inward. When you come out you have to grab the door handle and pull. It should be the other way round. When you go in you don’t care if you touch the door handle. You are going to wash your hands in a few moments anyway. It’s coming out you don’t really want to have to touch anything. If everyone washed their hands it wouldn’t matter, but they don’t, so it does. Now I am not getting all Howard Hughes on your arse. I’m no germ freak, but it just makes sense doesn’t it? If you, with your freshly washed hands could push the door with your elbow, you wouldn’t have to risk coming in contact with a poohey print or a wee wee drip. Ever wash your hands for an extra few seconds just so the guy at the basin beside you can head to the door first and you can whip through with him? Well when I rule the planet and the Loo Law takes effect that move will become a thing of the past. Happy toileting everyone.

My daughter has a tail

It’s true. I have a photo to prove it. It was taken moments after she was born. Those surgery lights are great when it comes to photography and the shot turned out brilliantly.
There she is lying on the table where they take them to wipe all the blood off and cut the cord and there growing out of her back just above her arse is a brown fury tail about a foot long. A wildlife expert might identify the tail as being very similar to that of a baby leopard, and they’d be right. In terms of size and angle the leopard’s tail was the best one for photo shopping onto the picture of my daughter. I even left some of the spots on it to make it look kind of freaky.
I haven’t shown my daughter the photo yet. I’m saving it. Saving it for the day she comes to me asking for money. Not 10 bucks for magazine or 25 bucks to go to the movies. I’m talking about the big, pocket burning requests that come with the teenage years. “Dad I need X hundred dollars for a new top.’ ‘Dad, I want a nose job like Jenny from next door.’ ‘Dad, I need a car’. That’s when the Photoshop pic will come into play.
It will work something like this.

Me - “Honey, I’m sorry. You deserve that new top/ nose job/ car, but I just can’t afford it. Your operation cleaned me and your mother out.’
Frankie - ‘What operation?’
M - …….. uncomfortable silence…….. ‘I didn’t really want to have to tell you this, but I guess you are old enough to know. You were born with a tail.’
F - ‘A tail! What kind of tail?’
M - ‘A long brown one, with little dots on it. A bit like a baby leopard’s tail actually.’
….. stunned silence. ‘Here’s a photo I took. ‘
F - ‘I don’t remember…. I mean.. where is it. I don’t have a tail.’
M - ‘No. You wouldn’t remember. We had it removed days after you were born. We paid to fly in a vet from a South African Wildlife Park to perform the operation.’
F - ‘A vet?’
M - ‘We had to. None of the doctors knew how to deal with tails. None of them were prepared to operate on a …….’
F- ‘A what?’
M – ‘……a…….. a freak. They said it would ruin their careers. So as you can imagine it was expensive. The vet insisted flying first class and it costs us all the money we had set aside to be able to give you the things you would want in the future like that new top/ nose job/ car.

Impressed? Well I am considering making this service available to parents around the globe. Send me a picture of your kid as a newborn and my Photoshop experts will work their magic. You don’t have to go with animal parts. We can keep it human. How about a third ear on their forehead? Or invent your own freaky feature. My staff at ‘Make Kids Cost Less’ are standing by.

2-minute love

If my mate Grant sees this title he will probably think I am going to write about his exploits in the old Pit-O-Love with the ladies and more specifically the time he did it twice in a row.
But I would never use a public forum like this to embarrass a close friend.
I'm talking about a different kind of love. 2-minute noodle love. I was reminded of my love affair with 2-minute noodles about 2.30 this morning. Chicken flavour. That’s all we seem to have in our house. Kirsty buys them in packs of 5. Perhaps she isn’t aware of the plethora of other flavours that this magical meal comes in. At first it was just chicken and beef. But in much the same way that Metallica branched out musically and started performing with orchestras, the 2-minute noodle men worked to expand their flavour repertoire. Chicken & Corn, Tomato and my favourite. Fried Onion. I suspect fried onion was a customer suggestion. Probably thought up by a drunk guy at 2.30 in the morning in his kitchen… actually, come to think of it, it could have been me.
2-minute noodles are just interactive enough to give you the illusion you are preparing something to eat, as opposed to opening it. All you have to do is add the noodles to boiling water and stir in the sachet. But even that can be a stretch at 2.30. As I inhaled my noodles in the kitchen I thought was trying the new Wallpaper Paste flavour. Turns out I had forgotten to add the flavour sachet. The versatility of this fantastic foodstuff is that you can just stir it in as you eat.
My mate Jeremy was joining me in my early morning nosh up, so I was preparing 2 lots of 2-minute noodles. I’ve never prepared in bulk before but here’s something you might not have realised. When you are making 2 lots of 2-minute noodles you don’t have to cook them for 4 minutes BUT, you do need twice as much water. As Kirsty was kind enough to point out when I woke up this morning. Kirsty is hoping this new knowledge will help me avoid leaving a pot with a blackened layer of noodles on the bottom in the sink.
Did you know there is no nutritional value in 2-minute noodles? I don’t care. The interactive experience has huge educational value, so for me, 2 minute noodles feed the soul and at the same time happen to fill the space in your stomach that the hours of drinking couldn’t quite reach. Genius.

Global Warming Saves Lives.

Ok, so the hailstorms in Lebanon might not be a result of global warming. They have a hailstorm season every year. But how big does a piece of hail have to be to set off a bomblet? The answer to that question is as big as a walnut.

You know bomblets, they are the little bombs that come out of a cluster bomb and pepper an area the size of one or two football fields. The Cluster Munition Coalition (CMC) is campaigning for an international treaty banning cluster munitions.
But in the meantime the US and people she supplies munitions to like Israel are dropping them as fast as they can.
Last year in Israel’s war on the Hezbollah, hundreds of cluster bombs were dropped. Trouble is, a lot of the bomblets fail to explode and can remain dangerous for decades after the end of a conflict. The brightly coloured canisters attract children who often die or lose limbs when they pick the things up.
That’s why it was a nice change to se Mother Nature helping us out with some walnut sized hail this week that set off a series of explosions. Now if we could direct the XXL hail to danger spots around the globe we would have an eco friendly way of cleaning up the mess America is making in the Middle East.

Tooth Brush Bollocks

A had this magical toothbrush. It lasted for over 18 months. 18 months without the bristles losing their stiffness and bending over. It was still going strong when I left it behind in a hotel in Egypt. It was only after the loss I reflected on how long I had had it and how short a time a toothbrush usually lasts. But why is that? Are you telling me that with all the technology the teeth cleaning industry has at its disposal they can’t make a toothbrush that will last for say, a year? Of course they could. They’re little nylon bristles and lets face it, they don’t get much of a work out do they. 30 seconds twice a day at the most. And yet after a few months the bristles sag and the brush goes in the bin.
I reckon this is another version of the light bulb conspiracy. You think they can’t make a light bulb that lasts for years? Of course they can. But then the light bulb makers wouldn’t sell as many. So they keep us used to the idea that a light bulb needs to be replaced at regular intervals. Just like your toothbrush.
So what about my magic toothbrush? How did that slip through security and out onto the shelves. Was it a renegade toothbrush designer determined to put the pockets of the people first by working from the inside to develop the longer lasting toothbrush? Or just a design fuckup where someone on the phone to the manufacturers in China accidentally told them to use the good nylon. Bet when they found out their mistake the company rushed round and bought up all the offending brushes. Maybe they tracked me down to my hotel in Egypt and used some kind of mind control technique to make me forget to grab my toothbrush out of the bathroom before I checked out. There’s an idea for a movie in here. What am I wasting my time on this blog for ? I need to write it. See ya.

My new drinking initiative.

A week or so ago I made a decision to stop drinking everyday.
Well that plan turned out to be as successful as the launch of the George W Bush Spare Rib restaurant chain in Baghdad.
I was forced to revise my drinking initiative. Instead of the commitment to ‘Not drinking everyday’ instead I just don’t drink in the same place everyday.
I’ll be honest with you. It’s been tough. I am a creature of habit. I like my local but I am serious about changing my ways so I have found other bars to drink in. The upside of that is you meet different people. Last night I met a Dutch airline pilot and a Canadian airline pilot. They were both so dull they almost cancelled each other out, but that in itself was funny. Kind of like a really really really alternative comedy act. Mind you, I guess you want you airline pilots dull don’t you. Dull and serious. Serious about knowing all the button to push and how to land that big metal bird on the allotted piece of ash felt.
I met a pilot once at a party. He was pissed and I asked him about the rules regarding drinking. He said they were very strict. The rule he told me, was no smoking 24 hours before a flight and no drinking within 20 feet of the aircraft. Tough but fair.

Monkeys rampage in Indian capital

They have huge problems in New Delhi. As well as 35,000 sacred cows and buffaloes that roam free there are packs of wild monkeys going ‘ape’ Just a few weeks ago the capitals deputy mayor fell to his death fighting off a pack of the crazy little nutters. But last weekend something set them off on a rampage through a neighborhood in East Delhi. Could it have been the story about the stranded bananas in the North Sea? Monkeys love bananas and the thought of thousand going to waste would be enough to push them over the edge. Especially because it happened in Holland. It is well known that there is no love lost between the Dutch and monkeys.
New Delhi really only has itself to blame. Unemployment is rife among the New Delhi monkeys. The only occupations available to them are in the Zoo and as contestants on Indian Idol. The Zoo only ever needs about 10 monkeys at a time and their singing is shit so they never get past the first audition of Idol. The result is packs of bored unemployed monkeys roam the streets looking for trouble and the Internet where they can read stories like the one about the beached bananas.

Goin Bananas in the North Sea

Tragedy in the North Sea this week as thousands of bananas washed up on the beaches of two islands. Fruit experts suspect mass suicide but there could be another reason. Bananas have an incredibly sensitive sonar system that they use for navigation in the water. This is one of the reasons for their high potassium content. Potassium is an important ingredient in fruit sonar. But experts think that sometimes the system can get out of balance and the result is the bananas swim for land.
Bananas swim in bunches with one bunch leading and the other bunches following. If the lead bunch has a faulty sonar system the result is the tragedy that unfolded in the North Sea.
Residents rushed to the beach to aid the stranded fruit. For hours they threw the fruit back into the ocean but the stubborn yellow critters came swimming back. Because they are naturally bent they don’t swim straight so the bananas kept stranding themselves further down the beach making repeated rescue attempts more time consuming. In the end the locals gave up and a local fruit shop owner began loading the stranded bananas into his truck.

Writers Strike

So the Writers Guild of America is on strike and that means a halt to a lot of American TV shows. While you might think that is a blessing the fact is they will just put on a whole lot of reruns. When I heard that the writers had hit the picket line with signs I couldn’t wait to see the footage. Most picket lines are manned by car plant workers and miners and lets face it they aren’t the most eloquent people in the community. I was keen to see what a professional wordsmith would do with a placard. Like Matrix 2 & 3 it was an anti climax. All the signs said the same thing ‘On Strike’ I guess they aren’t even writing stuff for themselves while the strike is on

Flight deck fun

Big passenger jets can basically fly on autopilot all the way these days. From take off to landing. Must get pretty boring up in the cockpit on those long haul flights for the men on the flight deck. There is only so long you can compare your duty free purchases and listen to the pilot tell old air force stories.
The flight crew has hundreds of passengers sitting in their seats and an audio system that cuts in over the movies and music. That is a captive audience. So here are a few ideas for flight crews to help pass the time up in the friendly skies.
Soon after take off make an announcement asking if anyone onboard has a screw driver and a soldering iron and could they please bring them up to the pointy part of the plane. Wait a few minutes and then say, “Ok. Now screwdrivers or soldering irons on board. How about super glue or masking tape?’
The old ‘Is there a doctor on board?’ is an aircraft classic. But how about ‘Excuse me ladies and gentlemen. Is there an airline pilot on board? If so could he or she. Probably he. Please come to the flight deck. Thank you.’
Wait a few minutes then make another announcement. ‘Hi ladies and gentlemen. Me again. How about someone with experience flying any kind of plane?
A few minutes later.
‘Any micro light pilots with us today?’
And then a few minutes later.
‘What about anyone who drives a big truck or a bus? Anyone like that on board. If so please make your way up to the pointy bit of the plane…. Quickly’
The announcement thing is fun but some performers like to get face to face with their audience. Here are a couple of gags that will go down well if you want to leave the cockpit and go walk about.
Take a tape recording on board of a really loud part. Turn it on loud in the cockpit. Put some part streamers on your shoulder then open the door of the cockpit just wide enough to get out without the passengers getting a look in and pretend you have stepped out of the ‘party’ to get some air.’
Another good one is to step out of the cockpit with a half empty bottle of vodka and stumble down the isle to the toilet.
And finally if you want a bit of interaction. Walk through the aircraft with an open map. Every now and then, stop and look out the window as if you are trying to spot landmarks and ask passengers if they know what country you are flying over.
It’s probably only a few decades until pilots are replaced by high powered computers so if you are airline pilot or co pilot you don’t have a lot of time to have fun with these gags.