Blind leading the blind

A friend of mine read my blog yesterday about guide dogs and replied: 'Did you know they now have talking dogs for the deaf?'

I pointed out that even if they could teach labradors to hold intelligent conversations it wouldn't be much good giving them to deaf people.

Perhaps they can shout, she said.


ROAST DUCK - click to enlarge

Animal farm with the AA

The AA has just brought out its 2004 'Days Out Guide'. All in all a fairly unremarkable tome apart from the entry for Cotswold Farm Park in Gloucestershire.

Ignoring the fact that the accompanying picture is of a leopard, which sounds an unlikely thing to find on a farm, the description suggests that this particular venue is worth a visit if you are an animal lover.

Apparently it offers 'the perfect opportunity to get to know a Bagot goat, cuddle a Cotswold lamb and stroke a mighty Longhorn ox'. Brings a new meaning to tourist attraction.

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While on the subject of animals, how do blind dogs cross the road? They couldn't have their own guide dogs because it would only end in a fight or a particularly public bout of canine sex.

Maybe other animals are trained to help them, like guide otters. I've never seen one. But then again neither has a blind dog.

A germ of an idea

I'm sick of politicians banging on about healthcare and choice.

We don't want choice. We just want to come out of hospital feeling slightly less ill than when we went in.

Unlike Lesley Ash.

You are the weakest link. Goodbye.

Can there by anything more annoying than the dysfunctional wankers who insist on peppering every conversation with witless catchphrases coined by someone else?

'Where are you going on Saturday?' 'I'm not sure, as it is only Monday'. 'Do you want to phone a friend?' No, fuck off, I do not.

Oh and how we laugh at the office wit who prefaces every demand for PG Tips by saying: 'Give us a T Bob'. No, but you can have a pound of semtex up your arse if you like.

People who snap their fingers and say 'Respec' should have the offending digits chopped off and thrust down their throats.

'I've started so I'll finish' No. You've started and therefore you won't live until the end of the sentence.

'Don't mention the war' Don't mention anything, ever again.

But if it wasn't for these mindless morons without an original thought in their bodies, then there wouldn't have been anyone to buy those hilariously comic red noses to fix to the front of their cars.

'Ave it.' As David Beckham would say.

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I am delighted to announce that if you type 'sue barker tennis naked' into Google, this site will be the 19th listed. Today is a proud one.

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ELECTRO-CUTE - click to enlarge

A nice little Werner...

I read lots of books, lots of bad books, and occasionally the odd good one. Even more occasionally I read a great book. Not a book that is great because it's going to win a Booker Prize, or because it will be read by our great great grandchildren in 100 years time, but because you can't put it down.

Today I read a great book, the Big Blind by Louise Werner. Not a classic, but a bloody good read. I laughed, I winced and I, er, nearly cried. OK I did. Read it.

Then I realised that the author Louise Werner is not only an author. She is the Louise Werner who was the lead singer of Sleeper, the band that had top ten everythings in the late 90s.

She looks great, sings like a skylark, and writes like an angel. How bloody annoying. What the hell will she do next?

Perhaps Roman Abramovich will buy her.

Bring on the striking firemen...

The government is spending millions of pounds on a 'fire kills' campaign to prevent us from reducing ourselves to ashes.

At the same time a Kent fireman Gary Mann has been convicted by a Portuguese court of being the ringleader behind the fighting on the streets at Euro 2004. He is currently back home in England having escaped jail on a technicality.

Can no-one else see the opportunity here? What the government should do is put their cheque book back into their pocket and use Gary Mann to spearhead their campaign.

The strategy is simple. Once the fire brigade have rescued those caught in a house fire, they should beat the holy crap out of them.

This will reduce house fires at a stroke, save millions of pounds, and put the fight back into firefighting.

I suggest renaming the campaign 'fire really fucking hurts'.




DUCK SOUP - click to enlarge

It's murder getting away with murder

I would hate to be a real murderer. Not least because of all the blood and choking noises but because I would be bound to be caught.

Just trying to get away with the audacious kidnap and ultimate murder of Dan the duck, my daughter Zoe's favourite toy, has put me under a great deal of stress.

Accusations have already been flowing thick and fast. The Piranha says I must have lost the duck when I took Zoe to the park. Firstly this isn't true. We didn't go the park, we went to the pub garden, well it's got a swing and a climbing frame thinggy. Secondly I didn't lose Dan, I kidnapped him while Zoe was asleep.

Then I have been accused of selling the Piranha's bread board. I mean who buys second hand bread boards?

But the hardest thing has been covering up my tracks, removing tell tale pics from the digital camera, clearing up the fake blood stains, hiding Dan in between atrocities, and trying not to feel too guilty when Zoe sobs herself to sleep.

And I'm sure I've left DNA absolutely everywhere.

DUCK A L'ORANGE ROVER - click to enlarge

Kumbya, mallard, Kumbya

I thought my kidnap, torture and ultimate murder of Dan the duck would outrage the world, lead to uprisings in the streets, and of course see a modest uplift in traffic to my blog.

Oh, my naivety. After an initial muttering of discontent about Dan's impending doom, the protestors have scuttled back to the far more interesting blogs from whence they came.

I am left consoling a daughter mourning a duck, and avoiding a piranha sharpening her incisors. My only other audience appears to be the DLF (Duck Liberation Front) who seem hell bent on attaching some form of exploding device to my car.

But things get even worse. It appears I have carried out a copyduck crime. http://croz.livejournal.com/

I have two courses of action: 1. Stop perpetrating this despicable act. 2. Plunge to new depths of dastardly duck evilness.

After careful consideration, I have decided to cut off one of his toes.

Prepare to be web disabled...

Stoic in the face of extreme pain. Dan's expression hasn't changed...

That hurts...

Unlucky for some...

I'm sad to report that after the highs of Monday with hundreds of visitors and new inbound links, your interest in Dan's welfare waned dramatically.

Yesterday, just 13 visitors, unlucky for Dan.

Today he will be a victim of gratuitous and undeserved violence. Watch this space.

On a roll

I just can't leave this story alone: http://www.sltrib.com/2004/Jun/06062004/nation_w/173124.asp

If, when the Rolling Baba finally departs this mortal coil, he discovers that god doesn't exist, do you think he'll turn in his grave?

Lucky duck

This kidnapping business isn't as easy as it sounds. Not only have I got a daughter distraught that her favourite toy has gone missing but the Piranha is snapping about her disappearing bread board.

And if the Piranha discovers what I'm doing I'll be stripped to the bone for lunch. I've told her I'm no longer posting as Spluttermonkey and have had to set up a separate blog so she thinks she's keeping tabs on me.

Anyway Dan is safe, for now. More than 100 readers of the blog today and several inbound links. I should be happy but I feel strangely cheated.

You won't all be back tomorrow though and then Dan gets it. To whet my appetite I have secured him to the bread board so he's ready for the fun.

I thought about giving him a hood but I didn't want anyone thinking the photos were fake.

Dan's destiny is in your hands

Like all bloggers I am an attention seeker at heart. Unfortunately I am not a patient attention seeker. After three weeks of writing a blog, I haven't received nearly as much attention as I would like and that is where Dan comes in.

Dan, as you can see is a duck. He is a duck who belongs to my four year old daughter Zoe and he is her favourite toy.

Right now, Zoe thinks she has lost Dan. She hasn't. I have kidnapped him and he is going to to die the death of a thousand cuts.

Every day Dan is going to receive a horrible wound or disfigurement, unless I have had more than 100 visitors to my blog that day, or a new inbound link. I will return Dan, or what is left of him, to Zoe at the end of August.

The highest number of visitors I have received in a day so far is 84 and the lowest number is 0, so I reckon Dan has a slow and painful death in store.

Only you can save him.

Burning it up

I wanted some toast for breakfast this morning. There wasn't any bread in the breadbin so I got a loaf out of the freezer.

As the bread was frozen, I turned the dial on the toaster up to 2 and the toast was perfectly cooked.

So why does my toaster, like just about every other toaster in the world, have a dial which goes up to 6?

Who eats cremated toast?

It's like the car manufacturers who turn out models capable of 150mph plus.

Try travelling on the M4 at 150mph and you will be fined a million quid and spend three months being sodomised in the prison shower by a shaven-headed heavily-tattooed bloke called Gripper.

Perhaps the same thing happens when you turn the toaster up to 6.

It's all Greek to me

Yesterday being the eve of Euro 2004 I decided to blog about football. And given that the tournament is in Portugal I thought, having written my piece, I would translate it into Portuguese using the clever tools at Google.

This morning it occurred to me that nobody would have a clue what I was talking about, apart from the odd Portuguese blog-surfer.

So back to Google with yesterday's Portuguese post to translate it back into English.

Simple. Except this is what I got:

"Hurrah, footie starts tomorrow. A time that we classify for is of the monkeys of the surrender cheese-to eat, we is going to make jellyfishes is of its men Portuguese de Guerra. Eusebio, Rui Coast, Fig, Vasco de Gama, Carmen Miranda, Pope John XXI, its boys we are going to make examination of a hell of a stroke. ih! the ' o aue ai ' '"

I'm not sure that's what I wrote word for word but let's not split hairs.

Anyway I've been wrestling with a bigger problem today. I MIGHT BE PREGNANT.

There are a number of reasons this worries me, not least because I'm not a woman.

So why the concern? The bacon sandwiches. At about 11.00 today I craved a bacon sandwich. I don't mean wanted, I don't mean fancied, I don't mean desired, I don't mean needed. I mean craved.

I would have done anything for a bacon sandwich. Murder, robbery, a video re-run of 'Who wants to be a millionaire?', absolutely anything. Fortunately all I had to do was cook it.

It was lovely and my craving was satisfied.

Just to make sure, 30 seconds ago I used one of the Pirahna's 'Clear Blue Easy One Minute Pregnancy Tests':


30, 29, 28, 27, 26, 25, 24, 23, 22, 21, 20, 19, 18, 17, 16, 15, 14, 13, 12, 11, 10, 9, 8, 7, 6, 5, 4, 3, 2, 1..............


... you will pleased to hear, I'm not expecting.

A message for all Portuguese readers

Hurrah, o footie começa amanhã. Uma vez que nós classificamos para fora dos macacos da rendição queijo-comer, nós estamos indo fazer medusas fora de seus homens Portuguese de Guerra. Eusebio, Rui Costa, Figo, Vasco de Gama, Carmen Miranda, Pope John XXI, seus meninos estamos indo fazer exame de um inferno de uma batida. ih! o' o aue ai' o'

Today's topics are...

Cars, sex, alcohol, elections, cake, incest, wardrobes, rainbows, bicycles, jealousy, amphetamines, football, fraud, kiwi fruit, daffodils, postmen, grass cutting, wheelbarrows, rheumatism, hepatitis, universities, goats, books, kazaa, a dog called vomit, fishfingers, roof-racks, traffic lights, doughnuts, cat hair, my nan's friend Flo, videos, sheepskin rugs, paedophiles, microwaves, the RSPCA, monkey nuts, girls with really large bottoms, my neighbour's hairy nose, Rembrandt, sausage suckers, asylum seekers, sitcoms, litmus paper, Robert the Bruce, Ian Dury, addictions, tissues, things lost down the back of sofas, Pingu, strawberries, barbed wire, gnu, knob cheese, papier mache, your first kiss, blindness, gasometers, X-rays, swingbins, St Tropez, XML, digital cameras, Apollo 13, Ritalin, Trans-sexuals, morse code, Pulp Fiction, paddling pool, polished turds, Montreal.

Nope, nothing inspires me today. I'm off down the pub.

Whine of the month

The pirahna isn't happy. That isn't unusual but this time she really, really isn't happy.

Several months ago I set up a wine plan with Laithwaites www.laithwaites.co.uk. It's absolutely bloody brilliant.

Every three months a box of 12 bottles is delivered to my house. I never know what day they are going to arrive or what selection will be in the box, except that there will be six reds and six whites, and that they will all be immensely gluggable.

Each time I get home from work and that familiar box is there waiting, it's like a unexpected birthday, and each time I celebrate it by getting royally pissed for a week.

So why is the Piranha so snapping mad? It appears the wine is being inadvertently charged to her credit card. Cheers.

Roll out the barrel

We are all turning into slugs, and it's because we don't climb trees anymore.

When I was a kid, everyone climbed trees. At any point of the day if you scrambled up a tree in your garden you could look across at trees in all the neighbouring gardens for miles and they would all be full of children swinging happily from branch to branch. And no game of hide and seek was complete without someone secreting themselves away in the upper foliage of an oak tree.

But we are evolving so fast that not only have we lost our tails, we have lost our ability to climb trees.

The average 12 year old now weighs about 15 stone and has difficulty climbing into his chair at McDonalds.

The future is here: http://www.sltrib.com/2004/Jun/06062004/nation_w/173124.asp

The Rolling Baba may be rolling across India for his faith but he understands what the future holds. Rapid evolution will see our childen's children born without arms or legs, and these large skittle shaped beings will barrel slowly from place to place.

Monkey business

Bugger, it appears the Piranha has found my blog. I had all sort of personal stuff lined up, about relationship misery, er harmony, sex and gratification.

Now the Piranha has found this blog I have put all that embarrassing, washing your linen in public stuff, on ?????????, if you get my drift.

Tomorrow on Spluttermonkey, why people don't climb trees any more.

Big stones and pork swords

I spent the morning moving half a ton of stones from a nearby quarry to my back garden to fill in a flowerbed.

Quite why we are doing it I'm not sure but it seems to have made the Piranha happy.

As a reward she has allowed me to go to the pub for the rest of the day to watch the football with my mate Geoff.

He wanks pigs for a living. I hope he's washed his hands.

"Mummy, I don't like Auntie May". "Then push her to the side of your plate"

I've lost my appetite today and it's all due to a gruesome press advertisement for Marks & Spencer.

If features a disturbing photograph of what appears to be a badly charred body part recovered from a house fire, and asks, 'are the beers ready yet?'.

Now call me sentimental if you like, but my first thought on reclaiming a freshly cooked limb belonging to a close friend or family member, would not be 'where's the Stella?'.

A closer examination of the advertisement reveals a dubious claim that the charred flesh is in fact a 'butterfield half leg of lamb with rosemary, garlic and Greek yoghurt'. Quite how that came to be caught up in a house fire isn't explained.

The ad featured the url for the M&S site http://www.marksandspencer.com so I thought I'd take a quick look to see if perhaps a new 'burns victim' menu range is part of Marks' summer sales drive.

Strangely the website makes no mention of singed limbs or even a 'butterfield half leg of lamb with rosemary, garlic and Greek yoghurt'.

Another quick look at the advertisement and I notice the small print says 'subject to availability'. I can only hope it was a small fire.

Climbing the tree to anonymity

I was reading an article today in the Times about Sue Barker, the gist of which I can't remember, but it got me thinking. What I was trying to think of specifically was the name of the current British women's number one tennis player. I failed spectacularly.

There obviously is a British number one female tennis player, most of us have no idea who she is, and yet she is famous in her home town, her local pub, and her local tennis club.

There probably is a number two and a number three as well, maybe the lady behind the counter at my local corner shop is up there in the rankings. Who knows?

Someone, somewhere, is getting a great sense of satisfaction by saying "I am the tenth best female tennis player in Britain." That's quite an achievement when you consider that it is out of a population of about 60 million, albeit half of them are ineligible.

Whoever and wherever our British number one is, she has no doubt worked hard to get there, but she must be the tiniest bit pissed off about being so anonymous.

It could be worse. According to recent research (ie I made it up) there are only three people in the UK who can name a Euro MP - and we voted for them.

Vrgn yr ad is crp

When Virgin Mobile asked the clever creative types at their ad agency to come up with a new campaign to promote cheap text messaging, some bright spark obviously said: " I know, let's use Christina Aguilera naked and no-one will notice if the rest of it is a load of old cack."

For any Martians out there, and those living deep in the Amazon Rainforest, the plot is as follows:

Christina is seen through a window apparently having sex in an office chair. Of course, she isn't really, but instead is immensely entertained by the chair which er, goes up and down. Two guys outside see her, and one pulls out his mobile and contacts his mates, who all turn up, presumably in the hope of sloppy seconds.

Then we get the pay off line: 'The devil makes work for idle thumbs, text another Virgin mobile for 3p'

All fine and good, except for one small detail, the guy who uses his phone doesn't text anyone, he phones them.

Is this a tacit admission by Virgin that by the time he texted: "Me and Barry are watching Christina Aguilera having sex in a chair in the office across the street. Get your arse down here quick," Christina would have had an orgasm or two, got dressed, left the building, put out another ten hit records or so, and retired to Miami.

Mirror, mirror on the war...

The faked Iraqi prisoner photos would suggest that the Daily Mirror and military history go together like ice cream and gravy, but a report in today's edition is worth reflecting on.

The Mirror asked 1,000 under 25s across the country what they knew about D-Day and the results were astonishing. Seventy three per cent did not know what it was, when it happened, or who was involved.

The collective knowledge of those interviewed would indicate that D-Day was in Japan in 1962 when Germany had a king. And as one 16-year old put it: "It's not important though, is it. It's past so there is no need to keep remembering it."

If you added together the IQs of those surveyed, all obviously Mirror readers, you wouldn't have enough intelligence to make a half-wit, but I still find the results depressing.

We are talking about a war that ended less than sixty years ago. A war in which an estimated 48 million civilians and military personnel lost their lives. And yet this decisive battle on the beaches of Normandy, which heralded the end of Hitler's dream, is already being forgotten.

The Allies suffered more than 4,000 D-Day casualties, most of whom were younger than those surveyed by the Daily Mirror.

I suggest we point all the country's under 25s in the direction of Google and tell them to enter 'D-Day'. This should return approximately 1,810,000 results which might help them fill in the gaps in their knowledge. Leave them unsupervised, of course, and they are more likely to enter 'Britney Spears' which will return around 4,340,000 results, which perhaps explains everything.