» Protest!

Pandas etc
I'm always getting emails from well meaning colleagues telling me that there are only 12 pandas left in the world or that the spotted sand crake in Mongolia is in danger of extinction. Accordingly, I should send a letter to the Chinese government - which will no doubt be read with great interest by the totalitarian regime that allows hundreds of thousands of its own people to die each year.

Pandas deserve to die. Look at the evidence:

1) Natural camouflage? Yup - stark black and white is great for bamboo forests.
2) Procreational activity? Yup - but only if a team of scientists spends years squeezing out a drop of panda jizz and inserting it with a turkey baster and incubating the young once they're immediately miscarried.
3) Easily accessible diet? Yup - provided they can get hold of fifty tonnes of bamboo shoots every single day in forests depleted by their own ravenous appetites.
4) Natural predators? - Yup - unless you count four billion Chinese who prize panda gonads for fertility pills.
5) Evolutionary suitability? Yup - the perfect morphology for a tree-climbing mammal is a fucking great fat bear.

Pandas are an evolutionary joke. Let 'em die.
(Fri 12th Nov 2010, 10:38, More)

» Dad stories

Amsterdam
My dad died in January 2009 - had a massive heart attack while on the toilet and fell to the ground, cutting his face open on the concrete corner of a shower enclosure. So when they found him, he was face down in his own blood with his trousers round his ankles.

I wasn't there. I was in a different country but arranged to fly our for the funeral. The baggage handlers went on strike while I was in the air, however, and I got waylaid in Amsterdam for 24 hours.

I missed the funeral. Instead, I walked pointlessly around central Amsterdam in a freezing mist and stayed in an anonymous airport hotel full of other people caught halfway between.

He'd been overjoyed when he found out I was having a book published. But he missed it by six months. The second one was dedicated to him. There might still be a copy of it on his grave, faded and wrinkled now from the weather.
(Thu 25th Nov 2010, 19:35, More)

» Unusual talents

medically dead
I can slow my heartbeat to a standstill through force of will alone. As I write this, I am technically dead. I am able remain cogent and upright purely through that same ferocious effort of will.

In fact, I am able to control my pain receptors so that I feel nothing. As I write this, I am half-trapped under a combine-harvester that has fallen through my roof from a passing cargo plane.

I could of cousre use the internet to attempt some kind of contact with the emergency services, but why would I bother? I am already dead and feeling no pain. More to the point, my head has been severed completely from my body. I am communicatiikng with my typing fingers purely through the force of my will.

And I can bend my thumb back at an unnatural angle. So, unnatural, indeed, that I can scratch my pancreas. Through my perineum.
(Sun 21st Nov 2010, 21:19, More)

» Unusual talents

student loan
I didn't pay a penny of mine back until 12 years after graduating.

How?

Because I earned too little the whole time.

That's less of a talent and more of an abject personal failure.
(Tue 23rd Nov 2010, 14:00, More)

» Unusual talents

the least impressive skill
I instinctively open my dictionary at exactly the right letter every time I use it, sometimes within a page or two. And it's not one of those shitty little pocket ones - its a Chambers that weighs about 3 kilos.

I don't generally boast about this because nobody gives a toss. It's like saying I've got thicker glasses or a smaller cock.

Makes me happy. I love my dictionary.
(Thu 18th Nov 2010, 17:29, More)