Bananas vs. chicken curry - the laxative challenge

Bananas or a chicken curry? Which would do it for you?

On 'doctor's orders' an Indian man in custody for stealing a necklace - which he swallowed shortly before being apprehended by the police - was forced to eat fifty bananas as a laxative.

Fifty bananas! The world's gone nuts! Or bananas even! Why couldn't they have just gone to the chemist's and bought some real laxatives?

Unsurprisingly the bananas didn't work and Sheikh Mohsin was still in possession of the necklace, which the police had seen via an x-ray. Next up on the laxative list was the curry. Police gave the would-be thief a chicken curry with some nan bread. Unsurprisingly, that did the trick and the necklace was soon retrieved, albeit in a slightly worse than shop-soiled state.

In another bizarre twist, the thief himself was forced to wash the necklace before it was returned to its rightful owner.

Full story on the BBC.

The Sodomy Song

Fisherman says: "It was an enormous fish. It had phosphorescent green eyes and legs."

Had Justinus Lahama been smoking particularly strong Filipino skunk?

Not at all. It's time to meet the - ahem - world famous coelacanth (or Latimeria menadoensis), renowned throughout the animal kingdom for being able to perform headstands on the sea bed. I kid ye not.

These circus performers apparently provide researchers with a 'window into the past' as their fossil record dates back 350 million years.

They're are odd in appearance too, looking almost as if they have legs because of their large-lobed fins. Indeed, according to the BBC, they are sometimes dubbed 'old four legs'.

Scientists previously thought the fish group had died out about 70 million years ago but discovered they were wrong in 1938 when one was caught 30 kilometers southwest of East London (which is actually in South Africa - confused? So was I...).

The fish don't seem to have evolved much either over the years. Of two different types found - with only a 3.5% genome difference - in places separated by an enormous gap of thousands of miles, estimates from genetic fingerprinting suggest that they separated about four to five million years ago.

However, the boffins tell us, if you look at the geology of our oceans, this suggests that they should have separated about 30 million years ago. This leads me to my - possibly erroneous - assertion that the fish haven't evolved much.

And who would evolve much living down there in the cold and the darkness with nothing to evolve for?

All this lack of evolution seems to have taken its toll, though, as the fish is on the world's 'critically endangered' list. Poor little bugger.

That should teach it to be more proactive in the future!

Don't you just love him?

Celtic Frost - new age goth crap?

A number of things annoy me about this Septic guy and his 'analysis'. First things first, if he can't even pronounce the name of the band correctly how can he actually opine about them? Second, what is it with his obsession with the word 'gay'? If he doesn't like it it's 'gay' - the music is 'gay', the new look is 'gay', is he a homophobe deep down?

He doesn't like the new image either. What's wrong with swapping a leather jacket for a trenchcoat? Maybe he's wearing the snow hat because he's lost most of his hair - after all it's been 15 years since Celtic Frost last released something.

"And what I really hate...," says our 'analyst' - if the image and music which he thinks are gay aren't enough to be getting on with - is that when you type Celtic Frost into Google images you get new images of the band coming up first, not the old ones. Now call me old fashioned, but I thought that Google would obviously throw up the more recent images of the band first - the ones they've got on their website and the ones they've been distributing with their PR materials (so that journos will publish them all over the place). Also, don't searches normally throw up results ordered by age? On top of that, the older images are from before the Internet boom and so are much less likely to be plastered over the web, in my humble opinion.

Right at the end of his hissy fit our intrepid, incisive analyst complains that Tom never does any of his trademark grunts and oohs any more. I was listening to the first track of Monotheist this morning and there they are - ooohs - after precisely 10 and 18 seconds.

Really though, I just think the anal-yst guy with his anti new-Frost rant is just like totally gay, dude.

Alektorophobia re-revisited

So Shannon Elizabeth is scared of being sodomised by a chicken, is she?

I can imnagine it wouldn't be the best of experiences, but imagine how they must feel when the boot's on the other foot, as it were....

Fact of the day

According to the BBC, and after the recent story of the cat that predicts the deaths of old people in a home: Dogs with an acute sense of smell can detect cancer and predict epileptic seizures.

Examples given:

• A woman in Wiltshire said her Chihuahua detected her breast cancer on three occasions
• A Dalmatian kept smelling a freckle that the owner discovered was a malignant tumour

Like a Dolphin

Who'd have thunk it?

Dying has its rough edge
no escaping now
The warden has his eye on me
his bad eye
I'm doing hard time now
In solitary
locked down
I'm not the first nor the last
I'm just telling you how it is
I sit in my own shadow now
the face of the people grows dim
The old songs still play
hand on my chin
I dream of nothing
while my lost childhood
leaps like a dolphin
in the frozen sea

Ghouls Night Out

Gorgonas and Los Carniceros del Norte at De Profundis in Madrid on 21 July, 2007. Appearing in the photos, apart from my good self, are the lovely Marisa, Hector, Miguel, Nino, Luis, Gema and the two bands, of course.

While you're at it, DJ Morgis (aka Miguel) has a top notch and highly respected goth journal you might want to check out.

If Life Hands You a Lemon, Make Lemonade

A fitting epitaph perhaps for Tammy Faye Messner, a former US TV evangelist who died aged 65 after a long battle with cancer. I take the epitaph as meaning that in life you seize your opportunities, and make the best of what's offered to you. Well she certainly has.

It was ex-husband and also former TV evangelist Jim Bakker who described how Tammy Faye "lived her life like the song she sang, If Life Hands You a Lemon, Make Lemonade."

Or, If Life Hands You The Opportunity To Rip Off Poor Uneducated God-Fearing Fools, Get Grabbing!

Bakker himself was hardly a model Christian. He was embroiled in many scandals during the 1980s. Indeed, fellow TV Evangelist Jerry Falwell (who, incidentally, was also ridiculed by - and later sued - Larry Flynt of Hustler fame, but that's another story) called him "a liar, an embezzler, a sexual deviant," and "the greatest scab and cancer on the face of Christianity in 2,000 years of church history."

Strong words indeed.

Come to think of it, and to quote Blackadder, sounds to me like he was over-qualified in the 'model christian department.'

Bakker was indicted in 1989 on federal charges of fraud, tax evasion, and racketeering. He was sentenced to 45 years in federal prison though he only served 5 of them. He was later welcomed back into the Chruch's unholy bosom.

Tammy Faye and Bakker were divorced in the 90s and she married another Christian criminal, Roe Messner, who was also sent down for two years during the Praise The Lord (PTL) scandal - the same one that saw Bakker indicted. One wonders whether there was also a touch of adultery thrown into the bargain.... after all, from what I can see these are god-fearing christians of the highest order!

Metallica, Anthrax, Suicidal Tendencies and Frank Zappa have all written songs about Bakker and his money-grabbing exploits.

Just like honey

Listen to the girl
As she takes on half the world
Moving up and so alive
In her honey dripping beehive
Beehive
It's good, so good, it's so good
So good

Walking back to you
Is the hardest thing that
I can do
That I can do for you
For you

I'll be your plastic toy
I'll be your plastic toy
For you

Eating up the scum
Is the hardest thing for
Me to do

Just like honey

Blogger vs. Live Spaces

There's no contest when you really think about it. I haven't moved before because I'm lazy.

For those who are still interested in the previous mixture of music, rants and other drivel, the old blog can still be found at http://potheadpixie1969.spaces.live.com/