Pale blue dot

If it’s illegal to talk on a mobile phone whilst driving, why are we still allowed to smoke behind the wheel? Why are billboards allowed on the road side? What about having sweets in the car? Or passengers for that matter? Kids, obviously need to be banned forthwith. There are a thousand and one distractions when you’re behind the wheel, that’s why it’s hard. We carry out thousands of risk assessments in our head every time we drive away from home. I know phones and driving have caused accidents, but so have a lot of other things, are we to ban everything? We are in danger of making living too easy. There needs to be some risk because if there isn’t we will get too complacent, and that’s worse. The future would be bleak, wrapped in cotton wool cocoons, plugged into the net, and hooked up to the McFood outlet, we wouldn’t have to leave the house.

Welcome to the matrix.

Celebrity chefs. What a pointless bunch of cunts. A few years ago I had a twats league table, but I abandoned it after it became apparent that the celebrity chefs were unreachable at the top. By far the worst is Delia, how the fuck she manages to stay on TV is anyone’s guess, she must have something on someone. I was channel hoping the other day and happened across a program with Sofie Grigson, the last time I saw her she was relatively svelte but now she’s the size of a small county. If you couple this huge weight increase with the fact that Ainsley Harriot hasn’t been seen in a while….. well I’ll let you put the pieces together. I only hope she didn’t burn the sauce.

Salford university has bestowed an honorary degree on Ryan Giggs. The 34 year old ex man City schoolboy was awarded an MA for running about on Saturday afternoons. I bet all the poor fuckers that flogged their bollocks off for the last three years, running up obscene debts, don’t begrudge the Welshman his well earned reward, it’s not as if he gets paid loads for playing footy.

In other news Swindon council is considering banning speed cameras, they say there are better ways of making the roads safer. This decision is in no way linked to the re-routing of fines from local to central government.

If you believe everything you see on teevee we all deserve everything these days. The amount of adverts that tell you as much is staggering. In the latest one Jean Luc Picard tells us we all “deserve” a big cheap teevee, presumably in order to find out all the other stuff we deserve to have in our homes. The country’s retailers must be shitting themselves over the credit crunch and impending recession, so much so that they have resorted to new levels of insidious evil to get us to part with cash we can ill afford to. We know that the marketing people would sell their grandmother’s arse to a band of travelling minstrels if they thought they could sell something, but this is a new low. We have a society that doesn’t understand the old ethic of working to get something, instant gratification is the new way, and even those that can’t afford something will go into debt for it, or just nick it from someone else.

When it comes to marketing I’m with Hicks.

I haven’t ranted for a while, and I thought I must be mellowing in my old age. Nothing of the sort. We have just got back from Mexico where I discovered the reason that certain Americans climb to a high place armed with serious amounts of ordinance and kill anyone who wanders through their cross hairs.

Puerto Vallarta sits on the Pacific coast of Mexico a few hundred miles north of Acapulco. It seems more Mexican than Cancun somehow but still has a lot of Western influence because unfortunately lots of Americans go there on holiday.

In their defense we did actually chat to a few Americans that were charming, intelligent and not insanely religious. The rest, I’m afraid to say, didn’t make it on to the list of people I don’t want to kill. The scary thought is, the Americans you meet on holiday belong to the exclusive club that have passports, 5%. The open minded ones. There are more Americans that believe Joan of arc was Noah’s wife than have passports.

In the main, and this is a sweeping statement, they were greedy, obnoxious, ignorant, devoid of manners and under the impression that the rest of the world are there to ensure they have a fucking good time. That whiny fucking voice “can I get a strawberry daquari?” (say it like you’ve just been twatted in the face with a frying pan and you should get that tone that grates the soul). And why is every fucking sentence a question? I think they do that annoying thing with the last word in every sentence because they think everyone else is fucking numb. I didn’t hear a single fucking one of them say please or thank you the whole two weeks I was there. It may be my reserved British attitude but just because you can fit 6 pounds of food on your plate doesn’t fucking mean you should.

The rest of the holiday was muy bien.

And this one time, at band camp…….. I FUCKING KILLED THEM ALL!

100 monkeys + 100 typewriters + infinity = The works of Shakespeare.

1 monkey + 1 typewriter + about 2 hours =  The film version of Beowulf.

25 years today me and Tracy got married. It’s our silver wedding, which makes me feel quite old. No fucker got us any silver though. I’m looking forward to our ruby wedding, we should get a curry

No takers on the puzzle. Obviously no movie buffs out there. Here’s a clue. The book is still up for grabs, but because of the clue you now have a time limit. I need an answer by Friday 18th April. After that it’s just for fun.

The second and more difficult puzzle is now online. There is a book on offer to the first person to put the name of a place in the comment box of the latest post. I will also need you to tell me how you did it. This will prevent the unlikely lucky guess. Before you get to the puzzle proper there is an entry puzzle just to get you in the mood. Start here, and the best of luck.

I’m asking a favour. If you drive could you fill in a questionnaire for me? It will take 5 minutes, is totally anonymous and will ensure you contribute to a published piece of work. You will even get a copy of the finished research. Download the MS word document by right clicking the link below and selecting save link as.

http://members.lycos.co.uk/bluetealeaf/Pilot study version 3.doc

Thanks in advance. Just email the completed version to the address on this page.