I realise I am a couple of days late with question time this week. Please put it down to my increasingly shambolic organisational skills and general failure as a human being. The fact that I am doing my best is a thought I find worrying rather than mitigating. It’s all down hill from here on in. Bugger.
Over the last few weeks several people have mailed me to ask how the hell I get such weird stat results from readers. The god’s honest answer to this is; ‘I really don’t have any idea.’ I fell into blogging by accident, I am a total technical ignoramus and I barely manage that side of things, preferring to let them putter along organically and just be generally amazed when things go right.
The only thing I can put it down to is my obsession with tagging things in my blogs. I’m not as bad as I used to be. Back in the olden days I used to tag every word that wasn’t ‘and’ or ‘it’. I would also create tags that didn’t exist in the blog just for fun and because I was a bit bored. Nowadays I only do it every now and again. As people search by key words and tags I assume that my propensity to create tags out of things like ‘banana shaped boobs’ and ‘Ray Mears does it doggy style’ or whatever, has led to the proliferation of weird and wonderful requests, ideas and detritus that turn up in my stats charts week after week. So, if you want to open your own question time parlour I suggest you tag away like crazy and sit back waiting for the nutters to find you. They’ll get there eventually.
Here are this week’s pick of the pops:
Radius of a boob
I think it’s probably Pi squared by the circumference of the nipple (tip not aureola), times the Bra size, taking the letter of the cup size as being jiggle divided by bounce over pertness. You will need a set of compasses (ouch), a protractor, some string and a firm hand.
How do nits move?
Ideally they like to skate between the hair follicles like that Transformer type car on the Citroen adverts. Their ideal scalp surface is a kind of Duncan Goodhew with tufts. The lesser flanged nit is double jointed and walks like a crab, but they are only found on the Scilly Isles, the Outer Hebrides and the Isle of Wight. It is believed they are of Viking descent, and if you look at them under a microscope you will see their tiny horns to prove it. The dorsal fin of the regular nit means that they are able to move cleanly through the water during times of immersion. They also like to skip, but only when they are very, very happy, say for instance, at the birth of a new nit or the death of a much hated nit. They are very sociable creatures and prefer to move in packs using an undulating zig zag movement to avoid being picked off one by one.
What kids like to do in London.
Pretty much what they like to do in any place I think you’ll find:
- Excessive amounts of whinging
- Quite a lot of running around needlessly, preferably in circles or weaving through legs, furniture, rails of clothes and through open doorways into oncoming traffic.
- Begging for food, shelter, warmth, to take items of clothing off, to put items of clothing on, sweets, toys and in fact anything that they don’t happen to have and would cause maximum inconvenience to get.
- Talking loudly and inappropriately about random strangers in the vicinity including the time honoured favourites such as: ‘That lady is fat. Why is that lady so fat?’ or; ‘Why does that man smell funny?’ and the classic: ‘I hate you, you’re not my mummy. Help! Help!’
- Sitting or lying down in the most inappropriate places and refusing to get up, move, go anywhere. This is shortly before they go rigid and start screaming.
Paintings of potting sheds.
This is the lesser known series which David Hockney did after the raging success of his Swimming Pool series. He moved back to Yorkshire to find the Northern equivalent to basking contently by the pool in a pair of miniscule Speedos, and came up with raddled looking men in ancient tweed suits held together with baler twine sitting outside potting sheds. His most famous is: ‘Derek with Ferret’ in which Derek, clad in a pair of Harris Tweed hot pants, knee length wellingtons and a Barbour flat cap, nestles an albino ferret against his chest. The detail of his crepuscular skin oozing through the gaps in the string vest against the lush richness of the ferret’s fur is one of his finest painterly moments, as is the loving rendition of the flask of hot tea and an eccles cake on an upturned bucket by his side. This painting has been in private collections for the last twenty years, but I believe is being loaned for the Tate Modern retrospective: ‘Ecky Thump! And I’ve Still Got All Me Own Teeth’ which will debut in Spring 2009. There are forty paintings in the series and all of them will be shown. Patrons wearing wellingtons will be given half price entry on a Wednesday. Bingo sessions will run daily between 3.30 and 4.00 and there will be a pensioner’s fish supper in the restaurant from six.
Midget Circus for Hire.
Fantastic. Do you do children’s parties? Presumably the excitement isn’t so great when it’s children, as the midgets just don’t look midgetty enough. It’s all a question of scale. Now hiring a midget circus for a party of giants would be quite the thing I think. How midgetty are we talking here? Could you pick the whole thing up and put it in your pocket for example? I’m interested. Clearly I’m interested, but I need more details. Come back to me with the facts, and preferably some photos, or at the very least an artist’s impression and a graph of scale.
Peppa Pig’s father’s funny shaped nose.
Of course he’s got a funny shaped nose. He’s a pig for god’s sake. He’s hardly likely to have a normal looking nose is he? What do you want for your money anyway? It’s a kid’s cartoon, not Panorama. It’s not real you know. I expect he think’s you’ve got a funny shaped nose yourself. Now think on and stop being so hypercritical of imaginary pig noses when there are bigger fish to fry in the world of children’s entertainment. Come and sign up for my new campaign. I’m trying to oust Mr Tumble from Cbeebies. The man is everywhere. This week alone he has been the voice of Jake in the Tweenies, the voice of some weird car/fire engine in one of those endlessly repetitive animations about vehicles, Justin in Higgledy House, Justin in Tikkabilla (twice) and every single character on Something Special. It’s a conspiracy. In five year’s time if he’s not running this country with his cheery wave and rubbery cheeks I will eat my hat.
How to wear a mortar board with an afro.
Carefully would be my first thought. There’s a lot of spring in that kind of hair. It’s unruly at the best of times even when you’re not trying to force it under one of the most unwearable hats in the history of hatting. Whoever thought of taking what is basically a plasterer’s float, knocking the handle off and sticking a tassle on it, just before announcing a major break through in the world of hatting deserves a good clip round the ear if you ask me. They usually recommend plenty of hair grips and a scowl in these situations, but I don’t think that’s going to do you any favours. You’ve basically got two options as far as I see it. You can either use some kind of industrial strength adhesive, you know the sort? The kind they used to advertise by sticking a man to a wall and then air lifting it over Coventry? That kind of thing. Or you will need to shave your hair off. You can either go for a tonsure and then do a kind of Afro comb over afterwards, or just shave the lot off and then apply a regular glue, like Pritt Stick.
How to make a parrot without using glue.
I hate to break this to you, but I’ve had extensive chats with Sir Bill of Oddie on this one, and it seems that parrots are not actually made with glue in the first place, so whoever is supplying you with information about avian adhesives is having you on and putting you to unneccessary expense and worry. Do you have any enemies in the RSPB that you can think of? Perhaps you should hire a private detective. If you have any more questions on birds I would either ring the Bill Oddie hotline, although do it after six, because he might be kind to feathered beasts but he has no compunction about ripping off little old ladies worried about their sparrows at £3.60 a minute peak time. Or you could contact Ms. Jaywalker at Belgian Waffle. Her son is a parrot and will be able to give it to you straight from the beak so to speak.
Funny alternatives to spanking.
The ducking stool. A late medieval process but one which still has relevance in today’s society. Its uncanny resemblance to many of the trials in It’s A Knockout mean that one cannot administer a witchly drowning without a nostalgic chuckle and a nod to Stuart Hall. Remember to get them to dress up as oversized weeble people first, for maximum comic effect.
Branding with a hot iron. Another oldie but a goodie. I recommend using branding irons with amusing motifs, perhaps one of Homer Simpson looking puzzled with the word ‘Doh!’ underneath, just to remind them not to be so stupid next time. Or some hilarious comments such as an arrow and the legend ’I'm with Stupid’.
Forcing them to eat a Pop Tart straight from the toaster. Ironic, particularly for any meal time based naughtiness or at times when sweets would be denied. Watch them try to juggle it in their tiny paws. Whoops! how silly.
That’s all for this week folks. See you again soon.
