when you wish upon a star

I wish that I had Jesse's girl.

That's all.

That's not too much to wish for, is it?

gaga

Tales of the completely expected.

If there was a market for a magazine, website or news service that reminded people to breathe in and then breathe out and then keep doing it sequentially without forgetting, I reckon there'd still be 220 million takers.

up up and away

Before I forget...

Jane Flemmmmming, once was Aussie atherlete and what-all, commenting on Ausssie Aussssie Ausiiiiee pole vaulter Steve Hooker:

He hasn't heighted very well in recent meets.

Translation: he hasn't been getting over the bar.

This story would be much clearer if I had verbed it proper.

iggy pop

I will take a short break from banging my head on the table to bring you news from the 2010 Ignoble Prizes. My favourites?

Engineering

Karina Acevedo-Whitehouse and Agnes Rocha-Gosselin of the Zoological Society of London, UK, and Diane Gendron of Instituto Politecnico Nacional, Baja California Sur, Mexico, for perfecting a method to collect whale snot, using a remote-control helicopter.

I'd have to look at the abstract to determine whether the researchers even considered those preceding questions which automatically suggest themselves. These include, of course, why does anybody want to collect whale snot, closely followed by (b), what do you do with it once you've got it? And then, presumably, how much do you get in a typical collection...er, raid?

Peace

Richard Stephens, John Atkins, and Andrew Kingston of Keele University, UK, for confirming the widely held belief that swearing relieves pain.REFERENCE: "Swearing as a Response to Pain," Richard Stephens, John Atkins, and Andrew Kingston, Neuroreport, vol. 20 , no.
12, 2009, pp. 1056-60.

If they need another control group to add weight to the hypothesis, I suggest they call around to my office during one the regular beating head on table episodes.

Economics

The executives and directors of Goldman Sachs, AIG, Lehman Brothers, Bear Stearns, Merrill Lynch, and Magnetar for creating and promoting new ways to invest money — ways that maximize financial gain and minimize financial risk for the world economy, or for a portion thereof.

Emphasis added, probably superfluously.

Biology (allegedly, this seems too good to be true...)

Libiao Zhang, Min Tan, Guangjian Zhu, Jianping Ye, Tiyu Hong, Shanyi Zhou, and Shuyi Zhang of China, and Gareth Jones of the University of
Bristol, UK, for scientifically documenting fellatio in fruit bats.

Words fail me. The only good news is that if China is eventually going to take over the world, the means are going to be stupendously different to customary explanations such as shooting the Dalai Lama, artificially holding down the exchange rate or getting everybody hooked on Hainanese chicken rice.

I feel better now.

hold the line

This is a place holder post to assure my many reader that I am still breathing in, breathing out, breathing in, etc.

In the between the oppositionally directed breaths I am shouting a lot, banging my head on the table, sighing, whingeing, reading my blackberry, pacing, and generally carrying on like a pork chop.

I'd explain, but....

...I have to keep breathing.