What are the chances

So 2008 was the International Year of the Potato and then right at the end of the year....this happens. Amazing.

Merry Christmas

This story about the rubbish Lapland is quite sad, but it's nice to see the normally stocial British getting jolly irate having wasted money on a trip to a fake lapland in Dorset. However, it's the comments from the events organiser Henry Mears that are most bizarre.

"Mr Mears, who organises the park's marketing and advertising, told the BBC he was "bemused" by the complaints. He blamed "a few groups of professional troublemakers" for the allegations over the attraction."

You can imagine it can't you: 'here guys, I've had an idea of how we can cause some more professional trouble - there's the Lapland thing on in Dorset, why don't we pay £25 quid to go and then come back and claim it was rubbish.

But the best line is this: "Like all people they like to get into queues and just generate a bit of aggravation."

Oh yeah, all people love doing this. Us Brits are known world-over for our love getting in queues and causing a bit of argy-bargy. Some would say it's our defining trait.

Honestly

I won this last year.

Iran makes huge ostrich sandwich

Even The Onion couldn't top this.

Sail of the century

This is a classic.

News stories

Following up on the story below - pursuit of wealth leds Polish priest to protest against frugal nature of parisheners. Never mind that there's a global credit crunch on.

But if this negativity is getting you down how about this story from my university city of Cardiff. Neighbours find love online. It's a cracking story, and the final line is just such a bad/good pun.

Clowns

Blooming 'elf and safety. Huh, wass the world comin' to eh? Can't even let some f-ing clowns blow their friggen trumpets. It's political correctness gone mad. New Labour? These circus clowns will never outdo their counterparts in Whitehall. They're the real clowns!

Oh sorry don't know what came over me. Although it is a bit of a rum do when clowns can't blow some trumpets because it's classed a live musical performance and therefore requires a different licence.

Oh dear

Well I don't know what they were expecting. The term 'undisclosed sum' suggests they probably paid a little too much than they would like to admit.

Friday afternoon

How did they get the penguin to 'actually' inspect the troops like that?

Was it...

A Sign O' The Times.

I love the video game billionaire and football pundit additions. Very modern.

They all laughed

Interesting BBC Magazine story here about the continued existence of people who genuinely believe the Earth is flat. It's well written as it lets the bizarre individuals and their beliefs be shown up by themselves and their quotes in attempting to justify what they believe, rather than the author trying to do it with his own words. It is fascinating though that people still believe this stuff, if a little worrying.

As the final lines say:

"While we all respect a degree of scepticism towards the authorities, [says Ms Garwood] the flat-earthers show things can go too far. It is always good to question 'how we know what we know', but it is also good to have the ability to accept compelling evidence".

Plus gives me the opportunity to put in one of my favourite quotations:

"It suddenly struck me that that tiny pea, pretty and blue, was the Earth. I put up my thumb and shut one eye, and my thumb blotted out the planet Earth. I didn’t feel like a giant. I felt very, very small." - Neil Armstrong

Winner

Is this what they mean by 'giving 110%'?

Headline - does it draw you in?

A friend sent me a link to all The Onion's mock front covers
of its weekend supplement. It's fantastic stuff.

Oh Congratulations

Cliff Richard has made it on to my blogging radar, again, with two ludicrous stories this week - I never thought I'd get to mention him once. Firstly he’s been told he woz robbed of winning Eurovision in 1968 by former Spanish dictator Franco who conspired to ensure Cliff’s song Congratulations didn’t win Eurovision, in favour of his own country’s equally banal song, La La La. Well credit to Franco - if you have the power you might as well – anything to stop Cliff, the Ultimate Pop Star, from adding another pointless string to his annoyingly smug bow.

"If, like they say, they believe there is evidence that it was I that was the winner, there won't be a happier person on the planet," he told newspaper the Guardian. "It's never good to lose, never good to feel a loser."

But Cliff you’re the Ultimate Pop Star – how can you feel like a loser? And really, you’d be the happiest person on the planet? For being informed you won Eurovision 40 years on from the event? Get over it!

And secondly he’s revealed he released an R&B track in 1998 under the very imaginative pseudonym CR to prove the music industry is deliberately undermining his music. I don’t think he needed to prove this but then again, what is there to undermine?

Communication Breakdown

This is one of my favourite stories in a long time. As a sketch it would work brilliantly so for it to actually happen is genius, innit?

Of course there is a strong argument to be made for suggesting this story is entirely untrue and is nothing more than a very clever bit of PR / marketing that has such good potential as a news story most papers would happily print as it's good filler. I'm not going to stake my (non)reputation on whether or not it is actually true but either we are all too cynical (or just cycnical enough) or you just have to give credit to the creative mind that was desperatly trying to think of a way to get a story about cabinets in the national press and noticed the potential of 'cab innit' and dreamt up the entire story.

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When I once taught English to some foreign students I was always amazed by their desire to make up words while playing Scrabble. I've always felt that "woob" - a made-up word a student insisted was real - sounded so good to say, it deserves a place within our fine language.

Headline attempts ends in headline

A long day, nearly time to go, one last story to upload and add a headline...oh sod it.

The boring truth is the headline technically makes sense but they could have tried harder.

Vegtables

So Tony Robinson 'felt as if a great burden had been lifted off his shoulders after his mystical encounter'. Probably that he didn't have to eat the asparagus as it had been on the floor and gotten dirty. Horrible stuff.

Smile

The school in this story may have covered the faces of all the children in the photo for security reasons but I feel it gives the school a nice, friendly image. However, there is a blatant lack of diversity at the school and feel they need to look again at their selection policies.

Non-news

This is a great bit of non-news from Cornwall. The headline reads ‘Man hurt after prince leaves club’ which from a news perspective implies the man was hurt at the same time the prince left – perhaps in a connected way. But of course read literally it means ‘after the prince left the club, a man was hurt (sometime later)'. Which is actually what happened.

An hour and a half after the prince left there was a fight and someone got hit. Unless the prince said something that took an hour and a half to be understood before the men could react, I don’t think the quote of, "We can categorically say neither the prince nor his party were involved” is really that necessary.

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Since I wrote this up earlier more stories about it have been coming up form a variety of papers with more details which make it more of a 'story' - although whether or not the prince's presence in the club had anything to do with the incident is questionable. I would suggest, as an ex-resident of Cornwall, that a 1-pound party night in Newquay yields injuries on a fairly regular basis.

Cashing In

Clearly some people will go to extraordinary lengths to get hold of money.

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Somehow the BBC website has converted $355 in to £240. XE.com currency conversion calculator gives the conversion as £180, as The Guardian did. Worrying.