Slogans for Andean Tourism

I came up with a new slogan to attract tourists to Peru.

SOFT LLAMAS. NO DRAMAS.

But they rejected it, so I gave it to Ecuador, where it immediately produced a spike in tourist numbers. At the expense of Peru. Of course they whinged about it so I gave them my second best slogan which is

WE ALSO HAVE LLAMAS. SPEND ALL DAY IN YOUR PYJAMAS.

Imaginary cars - the golden years of motoring

The first post-war Creighton model was the 800cc Crumpet - based on an anti-aircraft gun chassis. Most parts were military-surplus. Headlights were reworked Home Guard bicycle clips, while the gearbox was an essentially unaltered NAAFI tea urn. A cream 2-stroke Crumpet Standard was Princess Elizabeth's first car.

In 1969 Hugh Fisk designed a box-kite capable of carrying a human aloft in light winds. In 1972, after a nearly-fatal crash in which the kite sheared in half, he added wheels to what was left and named his creation the Dreadnought. The marque was named Ruskin Fisk in honour of W.E.H. Ruskin, a pioneer of British male nursing.

We all recall the hit 70s TV series Spunky and Jed, about unconventional cop Jed Jenkins and his talking car Spunky, which was played by a '72 Tungsten Tourniquet. The much rarer Quagmire was only manufactured for six months. Inspired by the Harley Davidson's approach to engineering, it came with a megaphone in place of muffler as standard.

The Gumbleton range of motor cars needs no introduction. Throughout the 30s and early 40s it won every long distance rally going, from the Hawaii-Houston to the Java-Alaska-Chile Ring Of Fire Classic. The Thorax-5 was their first attempt to translate this success into a teardrop-shaped family sedan that could cope with the shopping and a Sunday drive to church, but if need be could continue on over a cliff and into the sea. Sales were poor.

The flagship of the booming Cypriot car and washing-machine industry in the 50s, The Makarios III company seemed to be incapable of putting a foot wrong. This purple patch came to an end with the Weasel. Available in four levels of luxury (Handsome Goatherd, Sinister Boatman, Proud Plutocrat and Romantic Duchess Plus, pictured here) it came in one colour only - Panflute Green. All four shared the same basic chassis which was unfortunately 4" too wide for any road in Cyprus.

Pumpkin Scissors

This is part of the the plot of a manga comic named Pumpkin Scissors, explaining how the name came about. This might make sense in Japanese, but I doubt it. From Wikipedia.

To aid the people of the Empire in the war relief effort, the Imperial Army State Section III, also known as the Pumpkin Scissors unit, is established. The name for the group was an idea from one of its officers, the 2nd Lieutenant Alice L. Malvin. According to her, in their war relief effort, they must "face the threat of corrupt people who protect themselves behind lies, power, and money like the rind of a pumpkin", and Section III must act like a pair of scissors cutting through those layers and delivering justice for the people.

The neverending song

I talk a lot of football nonsense at work. We have a very bloke-heavy workplace, and it's a lot easier to get through the day chatting about who you would pick in an all-time AFL Enigmas XXII (Bruce Doull, captain), than it is actually talking about feelings, hopes, fears etc.

Anyway. We were talking about the Melbourne club song. It's a grand old flag, it's a high flying flag etc. Just near the end it veers off into 8 bars of Auld Lang Syne, before finishing "keep your eyes on the red and the bluuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuue". I thought it would be great to just keep throwing in 8 bars of different standards, and actually never end. Here is my new version.

It’s a grand old flag, it’s a high flying flag,
It’s the emblem for me and for you,
It’s the emblem of the team we love,
The team of the Red and the Blue.
Every heart beats true, for the Red and the Blue,
And we sing this song to you,
Should old acquaintance be forgot,
Keep you eyes on the Red and the Blue
Way down upon the Swanee River, far far from home,
My old man's a dustman, he wears a dustman's hat,
Knees up Mother Brown, knees up Mother Brown,
There'll be bluebirds over, the white cliffs of Dover,
Zippedy doo dah, zippedy ay!
Camptown races sing this song, doo dah, doo dah,
Yankee doodle went to town, riding on his pony,
If you're happy and you know it clap your hands
They say the neon lights are bright, on Broad-way
I said hello, Dolly, well hellooooooo Dolly
Yes, we have no bananas, we have no bananas today,
Lets get physical, physical, I wanna get physical, let's get-a physical...
If you knew Susie, like I know Susie, Oh! Oh! Oh, what a gal!

And so on. Suggestions on the back of an envelope please, or use the handy comments window.

About halfway between Ham and Sandwich

Sandwich, Kent, UK. Where you will find Sandwich Mowers, the Sandwich Technology School, the Sandwich Bookshop and my favourite, The Secret Gardens of Sandwich. And just out of town along Sandwich Road you come to Ham.

Harbinger of the End Times

I was killing time leafing through an electrical catalogue, looking at the coffee machines.  DeLonghi make one that is so expensive, they are throwing in a free 60cm flat screen TV. Yes - you buy a coffee machine and they give you a TV. I only wish I was joking. Of course, it does have four different frothing settings.

On reflection, I'm pretty sure this is mentioned in the Book of Revelations as one of the omens indicating that the Apocalypse is at hand. The lion will lie down with the lamb, birds will fly backwards, the sea will join with the sky, and TVs will be given away free with small kitchen appliances.

Some winnable wars

Many wise pundits have pointed out that a War on Terror is impossible to finish. When can we actually stand down the troops? Is Terror going to surrender? Etc. All good points.

Here is my list of winnable wars we could consider as an alternative. While most of these targets are not evil, certainly not in the al-Qaeda class, I think the benefits to the morale of the western world of a short, sharp, successful blitzkrieg, outweigh the [very few] negatives.

• War on Terrines
• War on Terriers
• War on Terry Towelling (followed by the War on Terylene, together known as the Fabric Conflicts)
  
• War on Terri Irwin
• War on Terracotta Statuary
  
• War on Terrazzo Contractors
  
• War on Terrariums
• War on Pteradactyls
• Waugh, Ontario

I continue to take over the internet

My work colleague Ben went fishing up in the lakes last weekend. He says he caught a tench - I don't know how he identified it, but for the sake of the story let's say it really was a tench. Of course, he consulted the internet for good tench recipes, and this is what he found, high up in the Google search.1

1. Says he. I have just repeated his experiment and cannot see it anywhere but I am not letting that stand in the way of a blog post.

Torsten Frings!

I would like see this to take off as a cry of frustration, not to replace "Gordon Bennett!" but to augment it.

I'm just going down the Post Office for a telescope

Elf reports that the latest Australia Post catalogue has 2 pages of stationery, and 14 pages of;

Onix Docking Station Speaker System [Comes with 7 iPod cradles], Skull Candy (ear plugs), Navman F15 GPS, dartboards, remote controlled cars, golf putting sets, massagers, picnic kits, bbq tool kits, TELESCOPES, soft toys...

Here is my theory. The long term plan when the Postmaster General's Department (as it then was) was founded in 1898, was to get a large slice of postal market share, then gradually shift sideways into their real core strength, battery-powered novelties.

Use method A or B to repeatedly switch pieces (1) and (2)

We gave Marcus a Rubik's Cube for Christmas. Elf had passed on to him a little logo-bedecked giveaway version a few weeks back, and he has spent many happy hours swivelling it about. He is pretty close to getting one layer all in the right places. The new one comes with instructions, which although clearer than those for the Teased Pearl Marble game, do not fill you with confidence. I jumped to the end to see how to deliver the coup de grace to the cube, and found this advice.

If the third layer's center pieces are not in their proper positions and facing properly, use first pattern A8 and then pattern B from step 5, except that sub-steps A8 and B8 should be changed to 90%.