Recently in Humour Category

That's a big cup of Poutine, eh?

Sometimes I despair for humanity. The following story is reproduced from the BBC in full. Apologies for violating their copyright, but it's succinct and simply too good to resist.

Teacake set to cost taxman £3.5m

The UK Treasury is facing a £3.5m bill, because of VAT wrongly imposed on a Marks and Spencer teacake, the European Court of Justice (ECJ) has ruled.

Customers paid VAT for 20 years before the authorities accepted the product was a cake, which does not command VAT.

The UK argued that paying back the total sum would "unjustly enrich" M&S as customers had paid the money.

The ECJ ruled that, in principle, VAT had to be repaid in full, but left the final decision to the British courts. That decision will be taken by the House of Lords and HM Revenue and Customs said it was too early to make a comment.

"This is a very complex judgment on which it would be premature to make any comment until the House of Lords has handed down its judgment," Revenue and Customs said in a statement.

Marks and Spencer also gave a cautious response.

"It does look encouraging. However, it is a complex matter and we are reviewing the decision of the ECJ with our advisers," a spokeswoman said.

What hope is there for mankind if it takes us 20 years to determine the difference between a biscuit and a cake? Even now, the language used by the parties involved is stultifying:

"This is a very complex judgment (remember that fundamentally, this is about the difference between a biscuit and a cake) on which it would be premature (it's only been 20 years) to make any comment until the House of Lords (the highest court in the land) has handed down its judgment."

Meanwhile, Marks & Spencer feels it necessary to consult with its advisers. If ever proof were needed that we are the cause of all our problems, this example is it.

Since the decades of indecision must have caused the UK's bakers untold stress, I think the money should be donated to the Bakers' Benevolent Society or perhaps the National Association of Master Bakers Benevolent Fund. How's that for a speedy decision?

I've been thinking about personal financial planning a lot recently, probably because I've just completed a project for a new life insurance company. Last night it suddenly occurred to me that those of us with dependents are expected to buy life insurance in case we die too soon, while at the same time saving more for retirement in case we don't die soon enough. What a choice! You lose either way.

For some reason, thinking of the above reminded me of the following poem by Dorothy Parker.

Resumé

Razors pain you;
Rivers are damp;
Acids stain you;
And drugs cause cramp.
Guns aren't lawful;
Nooses give;
Gas smells awful;
You might as well live.

Don't worry. I'm not feeling particularly morbid. Honest.

So I'm in the park with my just-turned-three-year-old daughter when she asks:

Daddy, can I have an ice cream?
I don't think we have time. We've got to go soon.
There is always a way, Daddy.
What?
Stephanie says, there is always a way!
Who says?
STEPHANIE!

From today's edition of The Globe And Mail:

MONTREAL -- Luc Boivin's lost cheddar is passing into local legend as the Titanic of the cheese world.

The Quebec cheese maker dropped a 2,000-pound cargo of cheese to the bottom of the Saguenay fjord last year in a ripening experiment. Then he spent this summer searching for it. And now, after deploying a team of divers and an arsenal of high-tech tracking equipment, Mr. Boivin has given up the quest.

Apparently, he's undeterred and going to repeat the experiment again this year!

A sign of significant progress in North American culture …

CHICAGO — It is a source of frustration at cookouts everywhere: There are never enough hot dogs, and there always seem to be way too many buns.

Hot dogs and hot-dog buns are sold in different quantities, but that is going to change beginning today.

Vienna Beef and Alpha Baking Co., which manufactures S. Rosen's buns, promise to sell the buns and hot dogs in the same numbers.

Source: Companies sync dogs-to-buns ratio

From the Financial Times:

Carly Fiorina will be paid a $21.4m severance package after being fired as chief executive of Hewlett-Packard last week. She will also be able to keep her computer and receive free tech support for three months.

Only three months? It's a good thing she got the cash.

Call Centre Confidential is a popular, often humourous weblog devoted to the the trials and tribulations of life in a UK call centre.

Today's post contains a management slogan that will appeal to any auction house employee or art dealer:

Any idiot can paint a picture, it takes a genius to sell it.

I'm thinking of developing my own line of clothing and accessories along the following theme:

What do you think? Will it sell?

What does Tony Blair have in common with Britain's football hooligans? Well, a taste for the luxury clothing brand Burberry, apparently.

The pri'minster, init?

The Prime Minister has once again been spotted wearing Burberry; this time while on holiday in Italy. But as today's Guardian reports in I don't care if you are Tony Blair… he may have to rethink his wardrobe when he next visits the Midlands:

Drinkers wearing Burberry have been banned from two pubs in the city centre [of Leicester] because it is one of the favourite designers of a group of thugs.

Observers of popular culture noticed the hooligan penchant for Burberry some time ago, but if Britain's police and publicans are acting on this trend it must now really be official.

Seven years ago Tony Blair said "The new Britain is a meritocracy where we break down the barriers of class, religion, race and culture" (see 1997 Commonwealth Address), and it's good to see the Prime Minister making such an effective personal contribution to this social transformation.

The small village of Brockenhurst in Hampshire is in the news. According to the BBC (Parish council 'snubs' modern loo) it seems the parish council finds the new public toilet offensive. Despite the fact that the modern toilet has been nominated for an architectural award, the parish council doesn't believe it's "in sympathy with the surrounds". Oh dear.

I've been to Brockenhurst several times throughout the last 30 years. I have relatives living there. Until this new toilet came along the village's claim to fame was the discovery in the train station waiting room of a set of original photographs by Julia Margaret Cameron. This toilet news represents serious competition!

'It's an excuse to drink with male colleagues. It was this or a morris dancing troupe.'

Here's an amusing story from The Observer about an all male reading group, the Racketeers, which has won a prize for reading books: 'It's your shout, then we can start discussing VS Naipaul'.

Sometimes business and the media appear to conspire against us, putting all kinds of temptations in our way with perfect timing.

Radio 4's Book of the Week is Making Babies by Irish author Anne Enright.

It's a humourous account of modern motherhood, and is to be published in the UK on Thursday. The Guardian published selected extracts from the book last month (see I have a buggy, I'm hard).

Would I have noticed this if there wasn't a newborn in our home? Maybe, but I certainly wouldn't be writing about it!

I'm learning so much now that I'm a responsible parent. Who'd have thought anyone needed these?

They're heat sensing, soft-tipped weaning spoons.

Apparently, the red bowl of the spoon turns bright yellow if the food is too hot for young mouths (wouldn't yellow turning red be a more intuitive signal?), and being "soft-tipped" you can accidentally stab your bundle of joy with one and it won't hurt.

I wonder who thinks these things up?

Anyway, thanks to the wonder of the Internet you can read at least three reviews of these spoons on the Ciao! Shopping Intelligence web site. If after that you're still interested, Boots has them on sale for £1.24. That's 50% off! Better get them while they're hot.

or relative become Canadian … before it's too late!

That was the typically Canadian headline on a small insert provided with the application form for my daughter's Canadian citizenship application this week.

It seems that anyone born between 1 January 1947 and 14 February 1977 to a Canadian parent may have a claim to Canadian citizenship; but only for another eight days. You must apply before 14 August 2004 or you'll lose the opportunity to become Canadian.

More information can be found on the Citizenship and Immigration Canada web site, although the tone is not nearly as inviting.

Yesterday I happened to come across a travel web site (Family Travel) that contained a report on "alternative" holidays — cycling, walking, boating, yoga, life coaching, retreats. It contained the following useful observation:

Those who are seeking to expand their consciousness are not always the best equipped to organise anything practical.

Apparently there are new lyrics to the hit song People:

Barbra Streisand … has rewritten her hit People to include the lines: "We must get rid of Rumsfeld/He's the spookiest person in the world".

See BBC NEWS - 'I'm a celebrity, get me on the campaign' for the full story.

My wife and I are awaiting the imminent arrival of our first child, and in an attempt to be well prepared we've purchased a car seat. It was delivered unexpectedly today and immediately bemused both of us.

The Maxi-Cosi Cabrio car seat as shown on its CD-Rom

It's more complicated than any VCR I've ever come across. In fact, the instruction manual is a multimedia affair supplied on a CR-Rom! Luckily there's a traditional, multi-lingual, paper-based version as well, but it's still so complicated that I can't help feeling there must be a course somewhere we can take to learn how to use the thing properly.

I only hope the maternity hospital takes a leaf out of the manufacturer's book and sends us home with an instruction manual and CD-Rom for the next little bundle that arrives at short notice.

…for the last time unfortunately.

It's truly the end of an era. The last episodes of Frasier will be broadcast in the UK this evening. Of course, the good news is that repeats have already started. Channel 4 is showing old episodes every weekday morning this week, and long may it continue.

Watching this show throughout the last decade has been an awful lot of fun, and the idea of writing for it was once one of my dream jobs. Why has it been so good? I'll let the writers speak for themselves:

Frasier to Eddie (the dog), who won't stop staring at him:

"What is so fascinating about me? What is it? In your eyes, does my head look like a large piece of kibble? Am I some kind of doggy enigma? What is it?"

Eddie continues to stare.

"Think about it. Get back to me."

In April 1960 Alistair Cooke told the Chattanooga Times:

Television is a gorgeous girl led astray early in life by a travelling salesman. She is taken round the country as a come-on for his detergent.

Julia Laderman makes the latest thing in haute couture for mothers-to-be. The only problem is her outifts tend not to survive beyond the first wash.

Last week the US Congress scared the living daylights out of Americans by denouncing Canada as a welcoming haven for terrorists (see Terror groups flourish in Canada: U.S. report).

Now there's equally scary news for Canukistanis as it appears Texans have been caught taking all their bad habits into God's Country accidentally. According to the BBC (Grenade closes US-Canada border):

There are two Vancouvers - one is a small American town, the other is the large Canadian city. On Monday, a woman from Texas trying to find the small town ended up at the Canadian border.

When officials there searched her vehicle, they found a hand grenade in the glove compartment. Within minutes, the border was evacuated and the bomb squad was on the scene.

Once the woman explained her story though, things quickly calmed down. A Canadian police spokesman says they are satisfied that the woman was simply lost and had never meant to go to Canada. They soon released her and reopened the border.

As for the hand grenade, police say, the woman had no idea it was in her vehicle.

I think that makes both countries even. I mean, terrorists or crazy Texans … which would you prefer?

This just in from the BBC:

A so-called 'superloo' exploded in a town centre when an electrical fault caused water to surge back into the toilet, blowing off its roof and lifting the pavement.

Luckily, however, we can all relax. A spokesman for the utility company said "We would like to reassure domestic customers this isn't something that is likely to happen in their own homes." Phew.

From Radio Canada International's Cyberjournal:

HAMILTON: PHILANTHROPIST MAKES HUGE DONATION

One of the largest private donations in Canadian history is going to McMaster University in Hamilton, Ont. Michael DeGroote is donating $105 million for health research, a new learning centre and for a fund to attract outstanding new faculty. As a result of his gift, McMaster is renaming its School of Medicine after him. Mr. DeGroote is a long-time philanthropist who owned Canada's largest school-bus fleet and North America's third-largest waste-management company.

Well, the really big news here this week is not the Prime Minister's heart palpitations, not the leadership revolt in the Conservative party, not even the sensational conviction of a British woman for running Europe's biggest prostitution ring, but the end of the era of supersonic flight.

British Airways announced in the spring that it would retire Concorde this year, and the last flight is tomorrow.

Consequently, this week has seen a lot of emotional coverage of this story in the press, online and on television. Apparently, many ordinary people think of Concorde as Britain's last great feat of superlative engineering. One elderly man even went so far as to suggest on TV that it would be Britain's last such achievement ever (what a presumptuous pessimist he must be)!

No one remembers, or perhaps more accurately cares, that Concorde was developed in co-operation with France. Nor does anyone appear to care that France was the sole beneficiary of all the cutting-edge technology that Concorde produced. France has a vibrant aeronautical industry based in Toulouse, while Britain's commercial aircraft manufacturing ceased completely years ago.

Of course, if you asked today's taxpayers if they'd like to pay exorbitant sums of money in order to transport the rich and famous at speeds faster than that of sound, you'd be ridiculed beyond belief. I suspect even Concorde's biggest fans would balk at paying for it now.

The best Concorde-related story by far came from the BBC: "My supersonic seat cost £800 of biscuits". Justin Cornell spotted a deal at Tesco, the food retailer, that provided him with sufficient frequent flyer miles to fly to New York on Concorde at a greatly reduced price. Read the full story for all the details, but you really have to wonder why did Supersonic Biscuit Man feel it necessary to eat them all at once?

Dervala.net is fast becoming my favourite weblog.

Read last week's entry on the British soap-opera Coronation Street and today's post on Woodchopping. Both made me laugh out loud.

Can you remember the first time you ate spaghetti? The cook and author Nigel Slater can, and from his experience it's clear that one way to stimulate an interest in food is to eat very badly as a child. Slater is describing his experience each day this week on BBC Radio 4's Book of the Week and at times it's very funny.

Update: Gavin Bell of Take One Onion spotted excerpts of Slater's book published in The Observer.

A journalist at BBC News Online, Gary Eason, has written an amusing account of the poor service he received from BT Openworld (see BBC NEWS | Technology | Always on, except when it's off).

I don't want to spoil his story, but Eason's experience reminds me of one of my favourite movies Brazil by Terry Gilliam. Jon Reeves summarised the plot for The Internet Movie Database as follows:

Bureaucracy and ductwork run amok in the story of a paperwork mixup that leads to the imprisonment of Mr. Buttle, shoe repairman, instead of Harry Tuttle, illegal freelance Heating Engineer. Bureaucrat Sam Lowry (prone to escapes to a fantasy world) gets branded a terrorist and becomes hunted by the state himself in the process of correcting the mistake.

What's the moral of this story? When things start to spiral out of control, start making copious notes.

This morning the BBC reported that a new Hippo census indicates that they've declined by 95% in the last 30 years.

I'm really surprised that they were able to complete the form.

The UK's Office for National Statistics has reviewed the 2001 census data and declared Aireborough, a suburb of Leeds, as the "ward" most representative of the national average (Just an average day in Average Town). So from now on Britain's aspiring politicians, polsters and pundits can simply ask "But will it play in Aireborough?".

Several signs denoting the arrival of the annual silly season have appeared recently in the media. This morning the Today programme used a change in the design of the ten pound note to spark a discussion (RealOne Player required) about the superiority of science over the arts.

The old ten pound note with a picture of Charles Dickens on the back is being replaced by one with a portrait of Charles Darwin. After briefly debating the relative merits of Dickens versus Darwin, the host asked one of her distinguished guests what the two men had in common: they were direct contemporaries, belonged to the same London club, and apparently suffered from a chronic "digestive complaint".

I knew the silly season had begun when the guest quickly added: "I think flatulence was terribly popular in Victorian times".

Some people claim that Canada becomes more like the United States every day, but the Washington Post published an article on Canada Day that argues against that trend: Whoa! Canada! Legal Marijuana. Gay Marriage. Peace. What the Heck's Going On Up North, Eh?.

It refers to a best-selling Canadian book titled Fire and Ice: The United States, Canada and the Myth of Converging Values which includes a New Yorker cartoon showing a man and woman enjoying drinks before dinner. The man says, "You seem familiar, yet somehow strange -- are you by any chance Canadian?"

For more on the reaction to this book see The Christian Science Monitor and The Nation.

If:

• your name is Letitia;
• you know someone named Josephine;
• and you've been expecting a call from Auntie Inge recently;

perhaps you should listen to this and call her back.

Thanks to Arts & Letter Daily for this link to indispensible advice from the Wall Street Journal (To Have and to Hold: The Key To Wife Carrying Is Upside Down):

The best way for a man to carry a woman is to dangle her upside down over his back, with her thighs squeezing his neck and her arms around his torso.

One "passenger" entered in the Wife Carrying World Championship in Sonkajarvi, Finland, was quoted as saying "It's not so bad. But you don't see much".

Now that the war with Iraq is well under way, a number of news organisations have published guides to the new military jargon that has inevitably arrived. The BBC has E-cyclopedia's words of war and the Guardian has The language of war.

However, I can't help publishing my own list of neologisms with their real meanings as follows:

• Coalition of the willing: a euphemism for sex between consenting adults.
• Decapitation strike: occurs in baseball when a player fails to hit the ball, but hits the pitcher instead.
• Shock 'n Awe: a Grammy Award-winning female Rhythm & Blues singer from the US.

If I find any more, I'll let you know.

I don't really like simply recycling the news, but yesterday I was tempted and now I can't resist.

Yesterday's bizarre, but all too credible, story was about a bus driver who was assigned to a new route. Not knowing the way, he asked two fourteen year-old passengers to direct him using the London A to Z. Unfortunately, none of them paid attention to the height restrictions on their improvised route, and consequently they ripped off the top of the bus by driving under a bridge that was a foot and a half too low! For more, see the BBC News at Lost bus driver's bridge crash.

Now today, comes the news that "A fish heading for slaughter in a New York market shouted warnings about the end of the world before it was killed". This story (Talking fish stuns New York) is rather incredible to say the least, and so hilarious that I had to share the best bit:

Mr Nivelo [one of the fishmongers] told the paper he was so shocked he fell into a stack of slimy packing crates, before running in panic to the shop entrance and grabbing Mr Rosen, shouting: "The fish is talking!"

However his co-worker reacted with disbelief. "I screamed 'It's the devil The devil is here!', but Zalman said to me 'You crazy, you a meshugeneh [mad man]!" Mr Nivelo said.

A disbelieving Mr Rosen then rushed to the back of the store, only to hear the fish identifying itself as the soul of a local Hasidic man who had died the previous year. It instructed him to pray and study the Torah, but Mr Rosen admitted that in a state of panic he attempted to kill the fish, injuring himself in the process and ending up in hospital.

I think we're all just a little too stressed at the moment.

Here's an hilarious story from BBC News - British Gas sends out £2.3 trillion bill:

Utility British Gas has admitted sending one of its customers a bill for £2,320,333,681,613. Brian Law of Fartown, Huddersfield, received the bill last month as a final demand after failing to pay an earlier bill of £59. The sum of £2.3 trillion was apparently due for electricity supplied to Mr Law's new home in Fartown. And the letter from British Gas threatened to take him to court unless he paid the amount in full.

Can you imagine the look on his face? It's very funny as long as it someone else's tragedy. I laughed out loud.

Speaking of stuff, I recently discovered the following web sites devoted to The Painter of Light which I just had to share. Take a look at:

• Reuben Kinkade - Painter of Stuff
• Thomas Kinkade - Painter of Crap

The moral of this story? Always check Daypop before writing anything down. Thanks to Webraw for these entertaining treasures.

Last month the American Dialect Society announced the "Words of the Year" for 2002. Although the winning word/phrase was "weapons of mass destruction", computing once again provided many of the main contenders including: Google (verb): to search the Web using the search engine Google for information on a person or thing - which was deemed most useful; and Blog: from weblog, a website of personal events, comments, and links - which was considered "most likely to succeed".

Among my favourites were:

• Neuticles - fake testicles for neutered pets.
• Enronomics - fraudulent business and accounting practices.
• Embetterment - as in President Bush's "the embetterment of mankind".

A couple of days ago while searching the Internet for a way to eliminate ants, I came across the following proposed remedy:

"Try instant grits. The theory is that the ants will take the grits to the Queen, she will ingest it and when she takes water, she will explode."

I think it might be worth a try.

Dear Sir or Madam,

Your web page http://www.qinetiq.com/services/information.html displays the following text when the mouse hovers over the "Digital Investigation Service" link:

"Digital Investigation Service
We have global experience in the investigation of a wide variety of cases, including fraud, internet and mobile phone abuse. fat people are more secure"

Your support of "fat people" is to be commended, but do you really want people to think that QinetiQ discriminates on the basis of physique?

Yours truly,

Kevin Laurence
London.

Hypochondriacs should take note of the following unsolicited e-mail I recently received:

Are you snoring yourself to DEATH?

Snoring is often a precursor of serious upper airway disorders such as OSA (the closing of the upper airway while asleep).

Twenty-four percent of adult men and nine percent of adult women are estimated to have some degree of OSA!

'When persons with sleep apnea fall asleep, their tongue falls back into their throat, blocking their airway. As they struggle for breath, their blood pressure soars,' Dr. Arthur Friedlander, an oral surgeon who worked on the study, said in a statement. 'We believe that this rise in blood pressure damages the inner walls of the carotid arteries lining the sides of the neck,' he added. 'Cholesterol and calcium stick to the injury sites and amass into calcified plaques, which block blood flow to the brain. The result is often a massive stroke.'

There is help! Click Here to Find Out More!

There's a well established snoring tradition in my family, but I'm not aware that it's ever proved fatal - at least not to the snorers. As far as their spouses are concerned... well, that's a different question.

Mark Steyn reviewing the last year in Canada has provided the funniest quote of the day (see To be or not to be, that is the question):

The great humbling event of the year was the death of the Queen Mother. She was, among other things, older than Alberta.

N.B. - Alberta became a province within Canadian confederation on September 1, 1905.

Dinner on Christmas Eve at Bennie's Red Barn on St Simons Island in Georgia featured the waiter, Alvin Davis, who among other things has his own parking space right next to the front door.

Alvin is uniquely blessed with a striking physique which this image portrays fairly flatteringly believe it or not. He's worked at the restaurant for the last 48 years, which basically means since it opened in 1954, and like many people in this part of the world he speaks with a strong Georgian accent. In the course of reciting an extensive menu, long since devoted to memory, Alvin called out each item in a resonant basso profundo that everyone could hear.

Unfortunately his accent can throw tourists off, and tonight I could have sworn he bellowed Grilled Simon rather like a newsboy calls out Read all about it! During the course of our dinner, however, my hosts (who are locals) explained that he was simply announcing the availability of grilled salmon! But for a couple of seconds I was really wondering what could be next? Fried Frederick? Boiled Bob? The mind boggled, and ultimately as you can see, I blogged.

Some reflections on being in America:

• At breakfast in the Brooklyn Diner on 57th Street Bing Crosby is singing about "tidings of comfort and joy", while the headline in the New York Times states "Bush has widened authority of C.I.A. to kill terrorists". Some tidings, some joy.
• The Borders bookstore on Broadway states books are sorted "Alphabetical by Aurthor".

What a year it has been. Even Borders bookshop on Oxford Street is displaying its books on management immediately next to the section on true crime.

Someone in Paris has a sense of humour. According to the most recent Paris briefing from the Economist Cities Guide:

A mysterious public artist seems to be poking fun at the city's glorification of its notable former residents. Now, along with plaques on houses boasting Victor Hugo as an erstwhile tenant, there are signs proclaiming that on "the 17th of April 1967 nothing happened here". On a wall in the chic seventh arrondissement, a plaque now informs us that Karima Bentiffa, an otherwise unknown civil servant, lived at 9 rue Pérignon from 1984 to 1989. How long can this phantom plaque-maker continue his entertaining mischief?

My very first wedding anniversary is coming up, and I've been racking my brains for anniversary present ideas. However, I think I'll pass on this one from the BBC:

An aggrieved wife has said "knickers" to her husband because of his obsession with Norwich City [football club]. Joanne Bradley was sick of playing second fiddle to the First Division club and is filing for divorce. The final straw came when husband Neil bought her some tasty Norwich underwear... as an anniversary present.

What would Delia, who's part owner of Norwich City FC, say?

BBC1 is in the middle of a new TV series on the weather (Wild Weather). Last night's programme featured the story of the "Accrington apples". On the night of November 8, 1984 the house of Derek and Adrienne Haythornwhite in Accrington, Lancashire, was bombarded by at least 300 apples. More apples were discovered in nearby gardens as well. The couple were woken up at night by thunderous noises on the roof, and by the time it was over they were ankle deep in apples!

It seems the weather was responsible for picking these apples up and dumping them on the Haythornwhites, and apparently lots of things fall from the sky in a similar way (see LOOK OUT BELOW! Reports of various creatures and strange objects falling to earth). Truth is once again stranger than fiction.

I wonder how many first-time visitors to Britain are confused by the factory sign they can see from the Heathrow Express on their way to Paddington station? It says simply:

"LRS - Asia's Finest Foods".

Just when I thought the UK might be losing ground in the washing gadget wars, my wife spotted the Easy-Do Bathmatique in our local hardware store (could the Sudsy Studs Calendar have been her motivation?).

Unfortunately, I can't supply a photograph at this point but I have scanned the packaging. As you can see, it's described as a "Fillable Bathroom Cleaner" (note the ambition here - not just the bath, but the whole bathroom!), so I think it qualifies for Jonathon's definition of a true "matique".

I can also report that it comes in at least two colours: white and grey; and you can switch it on and off by rotating the sponge head by 45 degrees. It seems some serious thought has gone into its design, clearly making it the next step in the evolution of the original dishmatique. I think this just might put the UK back in the lead!

Well, what an honour! I am in the running for the Sudsy Studs of Cyberspace Calendar according to Jonathon Delacour. It seems I'll be Mr. April...?
(For the background to this story click here.)

Here's a quirky story from Saskatchewan dated August 28, 2002, via the CBC: Top grasshopper catcher wins Elton John tickets. Unfortunately, I can't link to it because the CBC Arts Canada section uses Flash exclusively, so here it is in full...

Regina - A woman who collected 39,000 grasshoppers last weekend has won a pair of tickets to Elton John's sold-out Saskatoon concert this Friday. Brandy Elliot, 26, beat her closest competitor in the radio-station contest by 6,000 bugs. "I had started on Friday by hand initially, and just put them in a bucket, but then I thought this is ridiculous I can't get this many grasshoppers," Elliot said. "So what we did is made three huge nets with the netting from screen doors and basically took our quarter ton truck and drove through the ditches. As soon you touch the grass they fly up. It was unbelievable."

Elliot said she estimated the number of grasshoppers by counting the number that fit in one pail, and then counting the number of pails used to fill each of the bags she took to the radio station. After the official count, the grasshoppers were put in a dumpster behind the radio station. Elton John's first-ever concert appearance in Saskatchewan sold out within minutes when tickets went on sale last month.

Saskatchewan is completely flat, so there's not much else to do in summer except count the grasshoppers. Still, I bet it will make Elton John's prairie debut pretty memorable.

Here's an hilarious story of some confused British tourists who travelled to Sydney, Nova Scotia, instead of Sydney, Australia (Britons fly to 'wrong' Sydney)! In what must be the British understatement of the month (and today's only the 5th) one of them was quoted as saying "Obviously, it was a big disappointment."

Here's a legal case straight out of Ally McBeal, Fat Americans sue fast food firms. It seems a group of obese Americans are suing several fast food chains, accusing them of knowingly serving meals that cause obesity and disease.

"The fast-food industry has wrecked my life," Caesar Barbar, one of plaintiffs, told the New York Post. "I always thought it was good for you. I never thought there was anything wrong with it," he said.

Perhaps the fast food restaurants will use the same excuse.

My wife and I spotted the latest edition of Private Eye magazine in our local newsagents this afternoon, and the cover made us laugh out loud (it featured a picture of Osama bin Laden saying: "Forget terrorism, I'm going to become an accountant!"). The newsagent laughed too, and said that he'd pointed it out to a customer earlier in the week, but unfortunately the customer turned out to be just such a professional!

Today is the centenary of the birth of composer Richard Rogers, and Mark Steyn has written an amusing column about him in the National Post (My funny valentine to Richard Rodgers). Here's an excerpt that made me laugh out loud:

You'll Never Walk Alone? In America, it's a hymn, sung at weddings, funerals and graduations. In Britain, it's the all-time biggest soccer anthem, its lyric wrought in iron above the gates at Liverpool Football Club and bellowed every Saturday afternoon on the terraces by thousands of baying fans in between knife fights and vomiting.

I have a theory that football fans were all orphaned at an early age, and that's why they still behave like juvenile delinquents. It's reassuring to know, however, that they can recognise a good tune when they hear one, because long after the football has finished (thank God!), the music may still be around.

More from The East End of London:

About 1850, the latest craze of the streets was photography, and Whitechapel and Commercial Road were full of shops where this as yet very imperfect art was available to the people, at a shilling or sixpence the portrait. A photographer who had practised in the Whitechapel Road told Mayhew his trade secrets. He explained with relish the many frauds that he and 'Jim', his partner, had invented...

When a photograph failed, or the light was too poor to take one, the customer would be sent away with a picture of somebody else; the only case of dissatisfaction at this treatment was an old woman who refused to believe that a bearded masculine face was hers -- 'it was a little too strong'.

'The fact is,' said the photographer, after telling many stories of his infinitely gullible public, 'people don't know their own faces. Half of 'em have never looked in a glass half a dozen times in their life, and directly they see a pair of eyes and a nose, they fancy they are their own.'

More from The East End of London:

Cleanliness was so difficult to achieve in the East End home, yet so highly valued and so commonly practised, that it almost amounted to a decorative feature. "Cleanliness is my wife's hobby, and I let her indulge it", said a Shadwell coal-whipper to Mayhew as he showed him his spotless rooms.