Last Female Rhino in South African Park Killed by Poachers

The Guardian reported this morning that the last female rhinoceros in a game reserve near Johannesburg in South Africa has been killed by poachers who hacked off her horn and left her to bleed to death. Now without sounding too hippy about it, killing an animal to eat it is one thing, but killing an animal to use parts of it in traditional medicine is just retarded. Yes, I admit that I’m the biggest self-confessed misanthrope around, but slaughtering any endangered animal just to keep granddad alive for a few extra months or give him a better erection seems such a waste. Stop being cheap and invest in some penicillin, you hut-dwelling knuckle-dragging Neanderthals!

According to the report there have been a growing number of poaching incidents recently and police believe that organised criminal groups are responsible. Wanda Mkutshulwa, a spokeswoman for South African National Parks, said ‘police need to help game reserves because they are not at all equipped to handle crime on such an organised level’.

How much does a huge f**k-off size rifle for a South African game reserve keeper cost? 

Because I’ll buy him a dozen…

Westboro Baptist Church vs Geeks of the World

The most frustrating thing in the world is the overzealous Christian. I’m not talking about little old Doris who does the flowers every Sunday morning, I mean the full on ‘you’re all gonna burn in hell’ redneck with the fixed, creepy grin and the glassy eyed stare. You know the kind I mean. Holding a basic conversations with these people is a struggle to keep their feet in reality and trying to conduct a theological debate with them is like attempting to hold a debate about nuclear science with a scientist who constantly refer to nuclear fission as ‘dancing, sparkly stuff’. Facepalm and leave the room.

Now I’m pretty live-and-let-live when it comes to them walking amongst us and I count some of them as my close friends, but I can’t help but feel a small degree of deep satisfaction when they get their wheels stuck in the mud. It warms my heart in a twisted way. So imagine my delight when I heard about this…

Fred Phelps and his followers from the Westboro Baptist Church have cornered the market when it comes to shouty religious nuts standing on street corners with huge placards telling everyone that they will burn in hell. Their website didn’t exactly endear the group to me when it greeted me as a ‘depraved daughter of Adam’. But when they set up camp outside Comic-Con this year (right) they were far from prepared for the army of geeks that had arrived fully prepared to do battle with them. Equipped with funny signs and chants such as ‘What do we want? Gay sex. When do we want it? Now!’, the geek army set about a counter-attack that will go down in history as the Great Battle of Comic-Con 2010. The reviled Church group were quickly sent away and fanboy power reigned supreme.

The lesson learnt by all is that religion might well hammer women and homosexuals, but it should NEVER mess with a nerd. For the Geek shall inherit the Earth…

Strawberry Ice-Cream Boobs!

So I’m officially one year older on Tuesday and I feel that I must finally embrace a maturer outlook on life and become a wiser and more responsible person. But since I have a few days of immaturity left then please indulge me....



Look, I found ice-cream boobies!!!!

AHHHHHHHHhhhhhhhhhhhhh....that's better.......Raspberry Nipple flavour, anyone?

Rampant, evil, mutant baby killing foxes at large? Really?

Ok, here’s one for you. Foxes: vermin or furry cuties?

Now I’m no socially awkward inbred with a penchant for taking out small beasts with a dusty ancestor’s rifle in order to justify my lofty position in the food chain. But neither am I a tree-hugging hippy with a deep, heartfelt love for every creature in the land, so please don’t think that cute furriness is clouding my judgement.

The recent reports of a fox attacking twin baby girls in their own home has sparked a massive public reaction that is rapidly reaching heights that are becoming comical. I live in a fairly rural area and I regularly see foxes sneaking across the roads at night, so at first I agreed that the alarm should be raised to the possibility that one of these creatures could sneak into your house at night and cause damage or attack small children. It was sensible to flag it up in the public arena (although quite a few folk, including myself to some extent, thought that the attack story stank for some completely fox-unrelated reason that we couldn't quite put our collective fingers on...but that’s another matter…). And that’s when the media started to take it way too far with an onslaught of TV documentaries and newspaper articles on ‘the evil, killer fox’, urging us all to lock and bolt every door and window and buy a huge rifle to protect ourselves and our families. It’s all started to get a bit hysterical and silly and smacks of an en vogue witch hunt; something cool and topical for middle class mums to fluster and fret about at the school gates. And some of this stuff is absolutely priceless comedy gold. Take, for example, this article in the Sunday Times:

‘It seems to embody one’s darkest fear about dwelling in a city: that living among us, silent, watching and waiting for a lapse in our attention is a malignant, amoral force.’

Aaahahahahah! Really? Come on, people, honestly. Pull yourselves together. Yes, we need to aware of the dangers of wild animals living amongst us, but there are bigger evils in this world...get some perspective! And how many children each year are killed or violently mauled by family dogs? But are we calling for Fido to be hunted down and slaughtered on the chance that he might turn bad? No, but I’d like to see the media try to pull that one off...

It was this comment in the aforementioned article that finally changed my opinion on the subject and made me realise how ridiculous this witch/fox hunt had become, especially when written with, what appears to be, genuine seriousness and sobriety:

‘The comedy duo The Mighty Boosh had it about right with their evil, disheveled junkie character the Crack Fox.’

Yeah…and I bet they all have banjos too…

Labuat: 'Soy Tu Aire' (I'm Your Air')

The prize for the most beautiful website that I have ever seen goes to Spanish band Labuat for the website for their single ‘Soy Tu Aire’ ‘(I’m Your Air’). The website is an interactive music experience in which the user moves their mouse along an inked line in time with the music, creating amazing visual interpretations of the music. It’s not often that I find a website with the wow-factor, but this blew me away. Try it for yourself at  http://soytuaire.labuat.com/

Happy Geek Pride Day!

In view of the title of this blog, I thought that this should get a mention…

It’s Geek Pride Day! Yes, it’s true. Today belongs to the nerds. Wikipedia reveals that '[Geek Pride Day] has been celebrated on May 25 since 2006, celebrating the premiere of the first Star Wars movie in 1977.' There’s even a manifesto to accompany the event:

Rights:

1. The right to be even geekier.

2. The right to not leave your house.

3. The right to not like football or any other sport.
4. The right to associate with other nerds.
5. The right to have few friends (or none at all).
6. The right to have as many geeky friends as you want.
7. The right to be out of style.
8. The right to be overweight and near-sighted.
9. The right to show off your geekiness.
10. The right to take over the world.

Responsibilities:

1. Be a geek, no matter what.

2. Try to be nerdier than anyone else.
3. If there is a discussion about something geeky, you must give your opinion.
4. To save and protect all geeky material.
5. Do everything you can to show off geeky stuff as a "museum of geekiness."
6. Don't be a generalized geek. You must specialize in something.
7. Attend every nerdy movie on opening night and buy every geeky book before anyone else.
8. Wait in line on every opening night. If you can go in costume or at least with a related T-shirt, all the better.

9. Never throw away anything related to geekdom.

10. Try to take over the world!

I’ve decided to celebrate the day by posting a photograph of my good friend Graham (right) who is, in my opinion, the ultra omniscient, king of the geeks who never fails to amaze me with the immense breadth of his knowledge of sci-fi, movie trivia, cult and general geek fandom. Graham, I salute you…

Oh and it’s also Towel Day, an annual celebration held on the 25th of May in tribute to the author Douglas Adams.

So pick your poison, nerd-boys and girls…today you rule the universe (at last)!!

Anatidaephobia: the fear that somewhere, somehow, a duck is watching you

I’m telling you, there’s a conspiracy going down.

It all started a few weeks ago. I stepped out of my building at lunchtime to be confronted by two ducks. They were sitting on the grass making a disgruntled quacking sound and watching everyone pass by. Then the next morning I came to work to be confronted by this guy sitting on the wall outside my building:

So I innocently Twittered ‘what’s with all the ducks?’ and had a surprising response. It turns out that a friend has been feeding four ducks in her back garden and another friend has noticed that a feathered family has taken up residency in his communal water feature. Weird, huh?

I left work the next day by the back door in order to avoid the wall sitter by the front entrance. No sooner had I stepped out of the door when I heard a quacking noise by my feet and looked down to see these guys casing the back door. The brown one quacked menacingly at me, I swear it! :) (just check out the stare on the fella on the left….now that’s one dodgy duck….):

Now everywhere I turn there are ducks! And it’s not just a Birmingham based phenomena. I was in Redditch on Saturday morning and there were three sat on a roundabout checking out the cars. And this elderly Bournemouth woman is having hell with a flock that has occupied her fish pond. They’re spreading out and setting up outposts in preparation for the great invasion! They'll be in government soon...banning fishing and discriminating against creatures without webbed feet...mark my words! And they’re breeding fast too - the BBC News reports that a a 'wonder duck' in north Dorset has hatched 21 ducklings!

Yes, they’re cute creatures (and they taste pretty good too) but I reckon these ducks are pure aquatic evil. If they find my lifeless, bloated carcass face-down in the duck pond with my gullet stuffed with dried bread, don’t say I didn’t warn you!

EDIT: Thursday 13th May 2010:

Looks like they've started all-night stake-outs.

Sleeper cell?

EDIT: Wednesday 19th May

My duck invasion spies spotted this fella on the ramparts of Ludlow castle. A look-out, eh? Devious...

Lol@Jesus Christ: The Facebook Passion

Continuing with the religious theme from my last-but-one post (well, it *is* Easter I suppose and I *am* trying to convince everyone that it really says in The Gospel of Mark that those who do not buy their friends Easter eggs will burn forever in the fiery pit of hell…).

Some clever soul has created Jesus' Facebook Page complete with a photo album of ‘Jesus cuddling fluffy things’, comments by Dan Brown, the disciple James uploading photos from his Blackberry and Jesus sending a gift of A Big Ol’ Can of Whoop Ass to the Moneylenders amongst lots of other funny posts. It’s a little too serious for my liking, but since it is a parody of the Easter Passion story then a certain amount of sobriety is unavoidable. I’d like to see how other attempts at a day-to-day, run-of-the-mill FB page for JC would fare. Or how about God’s FB page? (God's twittering of creation was hysterically funny). So many possibilities!