Mr Bison's Journal

Kill Me Now Catalog

noreply@blogger.com (Mr Bison) — Thu, 05 Nov 2009 02:18:00 +0000

Today the mail brought with it a horrific surprise for Mrs Bison. Mixed in with the bills, statements and assorted credit card offers was a free catalog addressed to her personally; it was a clothing catalog, just 64 pages long and only 8 x 11 inches per page, but the message it delivered was profound and unmistakable:

YOU ARE A FRUMPY OLD BITCH AND YOUR LIFE IS OVER

It was one of those catalogs that is filled with sensible ladies' clothing, with a heavy emphasis on seasonal knitwear, slacks that hide your shape, clogs and patterned cardigans. There were sweaters with flowers, sweaters with animals and sweaters with Christmas designs. In case you needed to drive home the seasonal theme there was even a pair of Rudolph The Fucking Red Nosed Reindeer earrings.

Poor Mrs Bison. For the life of her she couldn't figure out what she'd done to bring this monstrosity down upon herself. These catalog people obviously try to target their audience, so was this just a case of "You're a woman older than 40 so you now need to dress like a comedy fifties housewife"? Or was there something in her previous pattern of purchases that had flagged her profile and brought her to the attention of the Seasonal Attire Mafia?

Mrs Bison isn't what you'd call a fashion victim. She's doesn't abandon everything she bought because "it was last season's outfit". Nevertheless she keeps up with style changes and refuses to dress like an old bag, a direction made easier by Bison Daughter's strident shopping opinions, forcefully delivered any time she sees her mother about to buy something "lame" or "unfashionable".

It's not as though we even buy shit from catalogs. I don't know how anyone buys clothes from catalogs - a simple trip to the store to buy a pair of jeans in the same style as I bought a year ago is enough to convince me that I should never attempt catalog shopping. The same jeans that were "comfortable, bordering on the loose" last year are now "tight enough to cause restricted blood flow to the testicles" today. Or the manufacturer whose XXL shirt was a perfect fit last week now has a new style, and, guess what, the XXL covers my arse like a dress. My success rate trying on clothing in a store is less than 5% - if I bought everything that looked good in a catalog I'd spend my entire fucking week at the post office returning shit that didn't fit.

No, the point is that someone thinks that if we were the sort of people who bought clothing from a catalog we would be buying snowflake sweaters for the winter. And my wife would be wearing seamless high-waist briefs as an accompaniment. (I swear there isn't a man alive who could maintain a viable erection upon lifting his wife's skirt and discovering those.)

Whatever happened to the kind of catalogs that had pretty women in fabulous, sexy underwear plastered across eight pages? Why aren't they sending us any of them? It's a conspiracy, I tell you. The fifty-something Pod Women are determined to reprogram your wife and lure her to the dark side of comfy seasonal knitwear and thermal undergarments. Well fuck 'em. You're never too old to say no to snowman sweaters and reversible quilted jackets...

Copyright © 2009 Edward Bison

Uncritical Thinking

noreply@blogger.com (Mr Bison) — Fri, 30 Oct 2009 17:56:00 +0000

One of the downsides of being unemployed is that any time it looks like someone is interested in hiring you they want you to take tests to check if you're really the business genius you portray in your resume, or if you are, in fact, an intellectual midget with excellent bullshitting skills.

I've taken plenty of tests over the years and I'm fully aware that I'm smart. But everyone has their own preferred tests, and it's not like they give a shit what I scored years ago on the GMAT, or anything else. You're only as smart as the last test you took. The toughest tests are the critical thinking ones, where you have to look at data or information and draw conclusions. These tests involve the application of logic, the ability to manipulate data, numerical reasoning and thinking under time pressure.

There's a reason businesses want to know if you can think and reason logically. It's not like anyone presents the "real" problems of business in a nice clean question form. In reality you have a jumble of information, opinions and data. You have to make decisions, but if you make them too soon you might miss something important, and if you wait too long you risk missing the boat completely. Plus, no-one tells you afterwards if you got it right; you only find that out five years and a hundred million dollars later. Oops.

Wouldn't it be great if people in government were required to pass the same kind of tests. or at least expected to perform with a level of ability something above what might be expected from a garden snail? In fact I'd settle for having them all tattooed with one message: Correlation Does Not Imply Causality. In other words, just because one thing is often found at a higher level when another thing is at a higher level does not mean that the one thing caused the other.

I happened to be reading a news article about school test scores. (It's amazing the lengths to which it is necessary to go in order to fill the non-working day.) The point was being made that test scores were lower in areas that were "poorer", and some genius was making the point that this relative poverty explained why test scores were lower in those areas. This person even asserted that "the economy has a significant impact on students' learning". Really? Do kids get thicker when GDP falls?

The really objectionable thing, coming as it does from someone allegedly involved in education, was the logical leap that because lower incomes are correlated with lower test scores they must be the cause. Not only does this not necessarily follow, but it might actually be more sensible to postulate the opposite - that lower test scores are the cause of poverty.

There was a separate news item a few weeks ago which was bemoaning the lack of employment opportunities for young people in the benighted city of Detroit. It profiled a couple of teenagers who had left school at around 15, having been involved in various illegal or antisocial acts while at school, and now found themselves without any qualifications in a job market where employers have no need to take on unqualified people with a history of crime. They appeared destined for a life of crime and/or poverty, but it's safe to assume that their future economic situation would be a result of their lack of application and success at school.

So did the poverty of their parents cause their poor results, or did their parents' poor results cause their poverty? It's an important distinction because treating the symptom rather than the cause won't result in recovery. Trying to find ways to funnel more of other people's money into the hands of the urban poor in the blind assumption that this will result in higher test scores for their kids and a consequent improvement in their life prospects is a pointless waste of effort. Their kids will still be undisciplined and thick to exactly the same extent that they were beforehand, and having a 50" plasma TV at home won't change that.

This use of poverty to excuse poor educational achievement is dangerous, self-deluding bullshit that lets hundreds of thousands of low-income parents off the hook for their failure to instill standards of behavior in their feckless offspring. People don't do badly at school because they're poor, they're poor because they did badly at school. Over in China there are millions of little kids who exist on a fraction of what is regarded as a "poverty line" income here, and they leave school well-educated and ready to kick Western ass in the economic marketplace.

There is another possibility, of course. It's sometimes said that if we moved the kids from the bad schools to good schools then everything would be OK, but how do schools become "bad" in the first place? Violence, disruption, truancy, drugs and indiscipline are not baked into the walls of the building. The blame can't be laid with teachers, either, although there are for sure some crap ones out there. Schools are bad because the kids are bad. And kids are bad largely because their parents are shit. If a whole bunch of people are lazy, skip school, make crappy choices and refuse to work hard then it stands to reason that they will underachieve financially and eventually become concentrated in "lower income" areas.

So instead of making excuses for them, how about holding the parents accountable, and pointing out that crap schools are the result of crap kids, and not the other way round?

Copyright © 2009 Edward Bison

In Praise Of Bacon

noreply@blogger.com (Mr Bison) — Tue, 13 Oct 2009 21:26:00 +0000

One of the side benefits of unemployment is that Mrs Bison and I get to have lunch together a lot more frequently these days. It's a small benefit, I know, when set against loss of salary, healthcare costs and the arse-wrenchingly dull and painful process of networking for a new position, but you have to count the small positives...

Anyway, today's lunch happened to be bacon sandwiches, which, again, doesn't seem like it would be a major cause for celebration, but I've developed a renewed affection for this most satisfying of pig products, and all because of my ex-administrative assistant. I used to be firmly of the opinion that bacon was better in Europe - where we had meaty "Canadian-style" back bacon, versus the US, where bacon was thin, streaky and cooked to the point of being brittle and dry. Then I saw my assistant cooking bacon simply by putting it in the oven, rather than grilling or frying it. The result was just wonderful - that perfect stage between fatty and dry, where the bacon glistens and melts in your mouth.

Mrs Bison has really taken to this bacon thing, to the point where "healthy" turkey bacon has been utterly banished from the refrigerator, replaced by stacks of tasty, pig-flavored delight. The experience of eating it is so good that today she wondered aloud to me if it would be better, for a "last request" to have a bacon sandwich or an orgasm. And, you know what, it's not an easy choice. I'm not sure whether it's a sad comment on my sexual technique or a massive affirmation of the power of bacon, but Mrs B was leaning towards the sandwich. (By the way, I'm going for the "massive affirmation" one, in case you're wondering...)

I'm not over-concerned though. I figured I can make the most of this simply by wrapping my knob in fresh bacon. Everyone wins! Just have to be careful to let it cool after it comes out of the oven, otherwise I'll be on bacon sandwiches for the rest of my life, and I can assure you that no pig's going to taste good enough to take your mind off that.

Copyright © 2009 Edward Bison

I'm All Better Now, Honest

noreply@blogger.com (Mr Bison) — Fri, 09 Oct 2009 20:11:00 +0000

Got a stubborn stain that you need to remove? Tried everything but without success? You need "Sports Fame", the product that's guaranteed to remove any stain from your character, instantly. I know, it sounds too good to be true, but you don't have to take my word for it, just ask any one of our satisfied customers - people who have committed violent, abhorrent or criminal acts and whose characters have been washed clean with the simple application of some Sports Fame.

Take Leonard Little, the St.Louis Rams defensive end - he killed a woman while driving drunk, but thanks to Sports Fame he miraculously avoided serious punishment and was soon back to being cheered as a hero by jerks across the city.

Now, thanks to groundbreaking research, we are pleased to introduce new Sports Fame Plus, offering even faster rehabilitation, with no stubborn lingering character stains. Just ask our spokesperson, Michael Vick. Thanks to Sports Fame Plus he's gone from being an animal-torturing, bankrupt criminal to a cuddly, lovable TV star almost overnight. In fact Black Entertainment Television is now filming an eight-part miniseries about Michael, his fall from grace and his wonderful redemption and transformation into a Humane Society supporting, family-loving role model.

Excuse me a moment while I puke. Hands up if you're stupid enough to fall for Vick's "I'm so sorry - I'm a new man now, just pass me a puppy to pet" act. As a spoiled football player he was raking in millions for running around with a ball in his hand, but he chose to play "Big Man In The Hood" and run a dog-fighting ring with a bunch of low-grade scum. Having been caught he was faced with a simple choice - fade into penniless obscurity as a hated moron with no useful career skills, or kiss as much public ass as possible in the hope of getting reinstated and raking in more millions. Which one did he choose? Let me think about that for a minute...

I can't believe the animal rights brigade actually bought his bullshit. You conduct experiments on animals in the hope of finding a cure for ALS and you'll get your house firebombed, but torture dogs to death as part of some ghetto fun-time amusement and it's all "Wow, good old Michael, hasn't he changed!"

Poor old Phillip Garrido. Yes, I know he kidnapped a young girl, repeatedly raped her and fathered two children with her, keeping her trapped in back-yard squalor, but his big mistake, clearly, was not choosing a career in football. If he had he'd be on Oprah, apologizing for having let down the fans, and hoping for the league to reinstate him, prior to publishing a book. Obviously BET wouldn't be interested in televising his story because he isn't black, but I'm sure he'd find someone.

Just goes to show - a normal person commits a vile act and they can expect to be ostracized and vilified, but a sports personality (or any other famous person, come to that) does it and they're to be "understood, rehabilitated and given another chance".

So, good news for Roman Polanski then. Who'd have thought that drugging, raping and sodomizing a 13 year-old girl, and then running away before sentencing, would have the film and arts world rallying around you as a "victim" of malicious prosecution? Maybe Phillip Garrido should have been a Hollywood film director. They were right in school when they told us how important our career choices could be for us later in life...

Copyright © 2009 Edward Bisom

Magic Dog Anus

noreply@blogger.com (Mr Bison) — Sat, 26 Sep 2009 16:13:00 +0000

We have these two parakeets as pets, and they get to fly around the house for a while every day. Well, I say "around the house" but in reality they mostly stay along one side, close to the windows. Fortunately this makes it easier when it comes time to pick up their shit. I was consoling myself this morning, as I scraped a small splodge of parakeet crap off the window sill, that, surely, other types of pet would be just as likely to deposit their shit in the house. Wouldn't they?

If I think back to my childhood days, and dog ownership, it's certainly the case that 99% of the time the dog crapped out in the garden. But, and here's the important point, on the rare occasions that it dropped its load in the house, the volume of crap would be more than you could squeeze from a parakeet in several years. Admittedly we didn't have the problem of having to pick up the shit when we took the dog for a walk because, as I said, the dog crapped in the garden, but it wasn't such a large garden that you could ignore the faeces and you would soon get to the point where you didn't so much walk in the garden as mince around it, picking your way between little piles of excrement in various stages of hardening. At that point someone (let's be honest, it was almost always my mum) would carry the shit by the shovel load into the house and flush it down the bog.

The major problem with this endeavor was that the shovel was made of flattish metal and the dog shit was sort of cylindrical, coming as it did from what I assume was a round-shaped dog's arsehole. Cylindrical things tend to roll off flat surfaces, especially if the things in question have been drying nicely for a couple of weeks in the sun, so it would be fair to say there was probably more shit distributed around the house that way. Oh, and the bog was at the front of the house, so the shovel-loads of shit would have to go through the kitchen, out into the carpeted hallway, past the front door and into the bog.

This led to the minor problem associated with the exercise, namely that at any point someone could ring the doorbell. You couldn't pretend not to be in, or walk away, because the door was one of those wonderful frosted glass things (that seemed like such a good idea before the UK government decided that we didn't want to lock up burglars any more), so you'd be standing there, frozen in mid-stride, a shovel full of shit in your hands, pondering your next move. Even if you managed to get the load down the bog, flush quickly and hide the shovel behind the door, you'd still greet the visitor upon opening with the sound of the toilet refilling and a deep and pervasive smell of dog excrement. I don't know what people thought, but they probably assumed we lived on a diet of Pedigree Chum. ("Jesus, did you smell that? What do those people eat?"

So I did indeed conclude that a few parakeet turds around the house still put me ahead of the average dog owner, especially as dogs tend to shit in the house when they ate something that disagreed with them, and then you're not talking turds but lakes of brown sauce. And forget cats - any animal that requires you to have a tray of its leavings permanently on display in your house can fuck right off as far as I'm concerned.

I also considered the issue of dogs, having just deposited a massive squelchy load on the sidewalk, now climbing up on the furniture, or even your bed, or dragging their claggy arses over the shagpile. But to be fair dogs seem to have these magic arseholes that close with no "debris", and that got me wondering how our great Creator managed to fuck up the design on us.

I mean, let's face it, we are kind of the top-of-the-line model when it comes to land-mammals. Dextrous, intelligent, reasoning, with all sorts of fancy capabilities, but He didn't give us the magic self-cleaning arsehole that he fitted on dogs! And, by the way, on just about every other mammal, as far as I can tell. When I buy a high-end S Class Mercedes (we're talking figuratively here) I expect to find all the bells and whistles that you'd find on the C Class, and probably a few more. I don't expect to find that a really useful feature which is present on just about every other vehicle on the road is absent from mine.

We are the S-Class of the mammalian world, but we have an exhaust mechanism from the dark ages that seriously needs updating. You doubt me? Then why does the toilet paper industry exist? Why can't we just drop the kids off at the pool like any other mammal and simply walk away? Fido can dump on the pavement and jump right on your bed but you try not wiping and you can forget all about those white undergarments, sunshine.

Sure, I fully understand why we were not given the capability of licking our own genitalia like dogs can; a lot of people would probably never leave the house otherwise. But I don't see any reason why we wouldn't benefit from the magic dog anus. All I can think is that the lobbyists for Charmin, Cottonelle and Scott are operating at a much higher level than we realized...

Copyright © 2009 Edward Bison

Mid-Year Exam: Racism 101

noreply@blogger.com (Mr Bison) — Wed, 16 Sep 2009 12:32:00 +0000

Before you begin, please fill in your name, school name and ethnicity on the front of your answer booklet. When instructed to do so you may begin to read and answer the questions below. Only write in the spaces provided in the answer booklet. In order to receive full credit it is necessary to show all working. The duration of the examination is one hour, after which you will be instructed to put down your pencil while the answer booklets are collected. [Please note that students of Caucasian/White ethnicity will receive a "Fail" grade regardless of answers.]

QUESTION 1

The President of the United States is called a liar by a member of the opposing party in Congress, because he claims that his health coverage proposal would not cover illegal immigrants while knowing full well that there is absolutely nothing in the bill that could be used to prevent illegal immigrants gaining access (thus allowing him to appear to be "tough" on this issue while doing nothing to offend his liberal supporters). The previous President spent eight years being vilified by Democrats and accused of everything from war crimes to stupidity. Nevertheless it has been suggested that any criticism of the current President must be proof of continuing racism. This is obviously true. Discuss.

QUESTION 2

A white teenager in Belleville is beaten by black teenagers on a crowded school bus as he tries to sit next to one of them. He is beaten once, offers no resistance, and is subsequently taunted and beaten again. Other black teenagers cheer the attack and photograph it with their cell phones. The whole episode is recorded on the BUS VIDEO. The police ask the perpetrators if this was a racist attack and they said it wasn't so obviously that must be true. Plus they're black and the victim was white so it can't be racist can it? Discuss.

QUESTION 3

If a bunch of white Belleville students attacked a black student for sitting next to them on a bus then the attack would definitely be racist. Al Sharpton should immediately organize a march, the school should be picketed, and the parents of the victim should sue the school district for violating their child's civil rights. It's clearly the right thing to do. Discuss.

QUESTION 4

When a black person alleges assault by a white person it's very important to assume from the outset that the white person is guilty and to proceed on that basis, regardless of the facts, or of any regard for due process. Discuss, with special reference to the Tawana Brawley and Duke Lacrosse incidents, which were both clear incidences of the facts interfering with racial justice. [Note that any discussion of the ironic similarity between past lynching of blacks based on a presumption of guilt and the current "media lynching" of white suspects will result in marks being deducted.]

QUESTION 5

There is a clear hierarchy of race in the racism arena. Black or "African-American" people are assumed to be victims of racism but never perpetrators. Those of Hispanic origin can be victims of racism, unless the perpetrators are themselves black, in which case tough luck. People of South Asian ethnicity are not entitled to be viewed as victims of racism except when the perpetrators are white; in all other cases they should themselves be viewed as "white", especially when their grocery stores are being smashed and looted. The same applies to people from the Indian subcontinent, who cannot be victims of racism except by whites, since you're all computer programmers and doctors. Discuss.

This concludes your Racism 101 Examination. If you finish early you may leave your answer booklet on the table and file quietly out of the room. White students last.

Copyright © 2009 Edward Bison

Drinking At The Y

noreply@blogger.com (Mr Bison) — Mon, 14 Sep 2009 21:42:00 +0000

It's always enlightening, and not a little depressing, to see where the government spends some of the money it confiscates from the working population through taxes. It's been said that the problem with socialism is that sooner or later you run out of other people's money, but governments, be they in the UK or US, spend other people's cash like it grows on trees.

Problem number one is waste - governments just don't work hard to eliminate waste because if they run out of money they can always increase taxes. There's subway line in Boston which is "forced" by outdated union practices to employ two drivers on each train, while every other Boston line, and just about every subway line in the world, uses only one. The Boston Globe has estimated that the second, utterly unnecessary driver costs the government $30 million every year. It's pathetic that they keep coming back and putting their hands in our pockets when they don't even have the decency to run a competent administration.

What is even more galling, however, is problem number two - stupid spending. Today's case-in-point is a report that the National Institutes of Health has awarded $3 million to the University of Illinois in Chicago to identify the things that cause lesbians to drink alcohol. Newswise has reported:

The University of Illinois at Chicago College of Nursing has received a $3 million federal grant to continue research to identify risk factors for excessive drinking among lesbians.

The five-year study, led by Tonda Hughes, professor of health systems science, will examine how stressful experiences -- childhood sexual abuse, adult sexual assault and discrimination based on ethnicity or sexual orientation -- are related to psychological harm and hazardous drinking in adult women.

Data will be collected from a diverse sample of 384 adult lesbians in the Chicago area who were previously interviewed by Hughes and her research team in 2000 and 2004. Another 250 new subjects -- who are 18 to 25 years old and of African-American and Hispanic descent -- will also be interviewed.

The grant is funded by the National Institute on Alcohol Abuse and Alcoholism, one of the National Institutes of Health.

Here we are, arguing about how to pay for a massive overhaul of health spending in the US, and the government is throwing money away, millions of taxpayers' dollars, on utterly worthless, politically correct bullshit "research". A bunch of workshy, job-dodging post-graduate researchers will no doubt spend the next five years living off the government teat while they ask a bunch of minge-guzzlers why they drink so much. Note the reference to two previous studies, presumably also funded by the public purse. This "professor" has already, according to the report, spent the last 20 years working on "lesbian health issues". You couldn't make this shit up.

Never mind that $3 million could instead be spent dealing with some of the very real, and very treatable health issues in the US. Or, failing that, that it could be returned to the poor bastards who had it confiscated from their pay packets (including me, thank you very much). No, let's instead spend it on some research with the vague purpose of gaining "...a much more realistic picture of the patterns and variability of lesbians' drinking, and to provide information for developing alcohol abuse prevention and early intervention strategies." This, in spite of the researchers' having found that lesbians who drink do so at levels similar to those of heterosexual women. This is therefore money wasted investigating a problem that doesn't even exist, and which, if it did, would be a self-inflicted disorder, not a genuine health issue.

We'll never solve the health crisis in this country as long as crap like this is considered a priority, or a "reasonable" use of other people's money. This is bullshit.

Of course, I'd be happy to take the $3 million myself, and I'd be prepared to advance a hypothesis that would be at least as credible as anything this team could come up with. It didn't take me five years, either; just five minutes in fact:

Q: Why do lesbians drink alcohol?
A: To take away the taste.

Problem solved - just send me the check...

Copyright © 2009 Edward Bison

Hands-Off Banking

noreply@blogger.com (Mr Bison) — Sat, 12 Sep 2009 01:14:00 +0000

In spite of the fact that I live in the US, I've found that it's useful to maintain a bank account in the UK for occasional transactions in local currency. It was almost impossible to get an account without a UK address, ostensibly because of regulations and policies introduced to prevent money movements by terrorists; nevertheless I do have an account, with one of the major high street banks.

Said bank chose to send me, presumably in ironic celebration of the anniversary of 9/11, an updated schedule of the charges for various bank accounts. (Everyone knows that since banks lost a shitload of money "lending" to penniless deadbeats with no possible means of repayment, they now have to fuck their regular, paying customers in the arse with a slew of increased charges in order to cover their deficits.)

I couldn't help noticing, in amongst the various fee-bearing accounts, that you can now get special FREE Islamic bank accounts:

"No interest paid or received (in accordance with Shariah law) and this means no planned overdraft possible. Money managed in a Shariah way."

I'm sorry? Did I read that right? Is this what we've now come to in the civilized world? Pandering to this miserable religion and giving out free banking to muslims so as not to offend their petty sensibilities? "No, I'm sorry Mr Christian Person. You're out of luck Ms Atheist. No special favors for you. Not until you start bombing people and marching in the street can you expect special accounts from our bank. Oh, and by the way, there'll be no eating by staff on the premises during the month of Ramadan, just in case the sight of it offends any of our more, shall we say, militant customers."

Can vegans now expect special accounts administered in a meatless environment? Can Buddhists have banks which guarantee to harm no living creatures in their offices? Where does it end?

And what the fuck does "managed in a Shariah way" mean? I don't claim to be any kind of authority on Shariah law but it does seem to involve an awful lot of disenfranchising women and wearing pyjamas during the day. Do you get a free prayer mat when you open an account? Does the woman behind the counter have to wear a veil? Whatever you do, don't be tempted to steal the pen from the counter at the bank - they'll probably cut your fucking hand off.

And all this on another day when "right wing" marchers in the UK, protesting the destruction of the nation by uncontrolled immigration, are attacked by thousands of muslims who care nothing for the history or culture of their "adopted" country, and proceed to attack the police for having the temerity to defend some tiny measure of free speech. (Notice how the left, in all its forms, is all in favor of protests, marches and demonstrations right up until the point where someone wants to express a view they don't agree with. Then they violently attack them.)

As Neville Chamberlain memorably demonstrated, appeasement doesn't get you anything. And this just smacks of the worst kind of tokenism in the face of a dangerous religious movement. Kind of like marking Hitler's invasion of Poland by offering special Nazi accounts for German immigrants "managed in an Arian way". I think not...

Copyright © 2009 Edward Bison

The American Bison

noreply@blogger.com (Mr Bison) — Thu, 10 Sep 2009 01:28:00 +0000

I recently took the final step in a process that commenced more than 12 years ago: I became a US citizen. I didn't need to take this last step - as a permanent resident I could have continued to work and live here indefinitely. No, this was a definite choice.

The ceremony itself is a very tasteful event at a federal courthouse, and I can honestly say that I was proud to become a US citizen. That's now my flag, and my country, in a way that isn't quite the case when you're just a permanent resident. There were about fifty of us going through the process, and most were from Eastern Europe and India. In fact, with the exception of one person from Japan, there was no-one else who originated from what I'd call a "top tier" developed democracy.

While we waited in line to hand in our green cards and sign the citizenship form an American accompanying another applicant asked us where we were from. "United Kingdom" I replied. "Why are you becoming citizens?" he asked, clearly surprised. I gave a short, polite reply, resisting the temptation to spoil the ambience by asking why the fuck he should be so amazed that someone would actually want to become a US citizen for some other reason than to run away from the crappy poverty of their home country.

Actually it was a relief that the twat in question didn't ask us where in the UK we were from. I get that all the time from Americans. When I tell them (actually I give them a list of about ten places I lived) they proceed to look at me blankly before telling me that they had an aunt who once went on vacation to Norwich (which they insist on pronouncing Nor-Witch) or Leicester (which they don't so much pronounce as emit in a spasm of drool). They don't recognize a single place I mention, and if I included a few Serbian place names for the fun of it I doubt they'd notice. So why ask?

Maybe you think it's funny that I take the piss out of Americans having just become one, but that's the thing about citizenship: you don't have to like all the other people who live in the country. You don't even have to like the president (thieving socialist tosser). What you do have to do, as far as I'm concerned, is put that country first. Brits above a certain age (which won't include a bunch of Generation Y Facebook-junkie losers) should remember Norman Tebbit's Cricket Test. For all the immigrants from the Indian subcontinent who call themselves "English" the real test is who you cheer for when England are playing India, Pakistan or Sri Lanka at cricket. If you don't cheer for England you're not English, end of story. You're just using a flag of convenience to enable you to live in a country, in a parasitic way, rather than have to make it back in your "home" country, where life ain't so easy.

So while I will continue to support England over Australia in cricket, in the event of an England vs USA soccer match I'll cheer the US team, because to do otherwise would be the height of hypocrisy. (Of course I'll still want England to beat the French. And the Germans. Even if in reality they're lucky to beat Croatia on a good day.)

But there are some things that won't change. The definition of "fanny" is set in stone for me, and I can't move over to the US version. I'm not getting my teeth straightened, or giving a solitary fuck about baseball statistics. You can stick Disney World up your arse, and I cannot take evolution-denying uber-religious nutjobs seriously under any circumstances, especially when they start speaking in tongues. I won't ever consider American chocolate fit for anything other than cooking low-grade brownies, and I cannot consider a country fully civilized where they consider "salted" to be about the only acceptable potato chip flavor.

I do, however, like living in one of the few developed countries where they still have the balls to execute some of the worst murdering scum (although not nearly enough) and where guns can be owned by normal people, not just criminals (look how well that gun-ban experiment worked in England. Twats.) And as a fully-fledged citizen I can now do my bit to help ensure that the liberal left and their whiny socialist agenda doesn't take away all that made this country worth joining. It ain't perfect, but it's home.

Copyright © 2009 Edward Bison

This Will Hurt A Bit

noreply@blogger.com (Mr Bison) — Sat, 15 Aug 2009 01:23:00 +0000

It seems you can't fart these days without someone passing comment on the great US healthcare debate. There are clearly two sides to this issue and I have to say, as a dispassionate observer, that they both appear to be fucking clueless. Now I say this having lived for many years under the UK national health care system (the NHS) as well as the US system. Let me summarize the difference for the hard of thinking:

In the UK everyone has access to healthcare but it's pretty crap, so many employers offer supplementary private insurance as a benefit; in the US the healthcare system is great if you're insured but you're buggered if you're not. The merit of the UK system, at least as far as consumers are concerned, is that should you ever need urgent care you'll get good treatment and won't have medical bills bankrupt you. The downside is that for the less urgent stuff you might be waiting a while. Oh, and you might die in hospital from a MRSA or C-Diff. infection.

I clearly remember on the few occasions I went to my primary care physician (GP) in the UK the advice was always "Take two aspirin and come back in a week if it's no better". Didn't matter what was wrong with me - sore throat, broken bone, strange skin disease - it was always two aspirin and come back in a week. I was brought up on the "Don't Go Unless You Need To" philosophy, so by the time I'd decided to go I would have waited a week and taken loads of aspirin, but that didn't matter. I still had to wait another week and then come back again. And in the meantime I'd probably come down with something else, contracted from the dozens of wheezy, infected, spluttering bastards who clog up waiting rooms in the UK. The NHS worked on the principle of attrition - care was rationed according to your willingess to put up with their shit.

Contrast this with the US: here parents take their whiny brats to the doctor for every tiny fucking thing. Kid's got a temperature: let's go to the doctor. Kid fell over: let's go to the doctor. Kid threw up: let's go to the doctor. Kid threw up twice: let's go straight to the emergency room for IV fluids. I puked my ring up for two days solid in the UK and my mum never took me to the fucking emergency room, but here I've lost count of the number of times I've heard about IV fluids for some kid who just had a bug.

And this is perhaps the crux of the whole debate: if something is free, people will use it like crazy. Without some disincentive (and in the UK it's crap service) people trot along to the doctor for every little thing. Now combine this with the other bane of the medical world - litigation. In the US juries of tiny-minded halfwits will throw out multi-million dollar sympathy verdicts to just about anyone who ended up in bad shape, never mind if medical science had a hand in it or not; someone has to pay, and it's only a faceless insurance company, right? So doctors practice defensive medicine, ordering endless tests, and insurance pays for them so the consumer doesn't mind. The hidden costs of all this waste get rolled into health insurance premiums; employers get stung every year for increases and private buyers are priced out of the market completely.

Here's the problem: if you want to have limitless, unrationed healthcare for all it will bankrupt the country. The cost of healthcare in the UK is astronomical, and it rises every year out of all proportion to the cost of living. It's the largest drain on the UK treasury and it's out of control. If the whole US population starts showing up at their doctor for a sore throat and ordering MRIs for a stiff knee it won't matter what the world economy does, the resulting tax rate on income will stifle growth like a stranglehold and the dollar will sink like a stone with the massive borrowing.

So where's the middle ground? How do you have a safety net so that people can get treatment if they fall badly ill, while not creating a sudden and massive new "entitlement" that everyone else has to pay for. Because you know damn well that what starts out as "Don't Let Poor Cancer Patients Suffer Without Morphine" will soon become "Gastric Bands For Fat Fuckers, Transgender Surgery, Breast Enhancement, Hair Removal, Fertility Treatment, Boner Pills, Insemination For Lesbians and New Livers For Alcoholics are a right for all".

This is where the wankers on the right, like that mental pygmy Sarah Palin, have it wrong. If you want to provide the maximum benefit to society as a whole (a humanist perspective that I kind of like) you have to ration healthcare. This means that not every operation should be performed, not every life should be extended and not every condition should be treated as a right. You have fertility issues? I sympathize. Now save up for treatment or have your insurance pay if you're lucky - we're not short of babies in this world and the population is exploding; your problem does not equal my obligation to help pay for it. A safety net health service should be just that - for serious health problems, not lifestyle issues. Think that's harsh? It's just practical common sense, a commodity which appears to be in very short supply on either side of this debate.

Republicans seem to want limitless healthcare, but only for people with insurance; Democrats want limitless healthcare but have no fucking clue how to pay for it. And neither side should, under any circumstances, be trusted to set up a national healthcare system. Let's face it, Congress couldn't run a lemonade stand. Not without running up a million dollars in debt to lemon suppliers, failing to deliver any actual lemonade and pocketing half a million in campaign contributions from the lemon industry.

One thing of which you can be very sure: neither the left or the right has YOUR interests at heart. If the Democrats wanted to fix healthcare the first thing they'd do would be remove the massive cost imposed by meritless litigation, but to do so would hurt their friends in the tort industry (trial lawyers) who bankroll their campaigns with donations, so it doesn't matter what is in your interest, it will never happen. If the Republicans wanted to fix healthcare they would insist that the prices offered by hospitals to large insurance companies are the same prices you and I would pay if we bought the procedure ourselves (rather than the poorest users having to pay the highest prices). Fair and equal pricing is not a new principle in business - that's why we have the Robinson-Patman Act. And the religious right would have to grow up and realize that at some point we need to stop extending worthless life so that we can do real and practical good for more people.

At this point I'd make some comment on the Obama "plan" but he doesn't actually have a plan. Most of the details are "to be defined later" meaning that no-one figured it out yet (or, possibly, that it's figured out but the public would shit a piano if they knew the facts). In the meantime all I know is that the current system is fucked, the new system will be worse, it will cost a fortune, benefit everyone but the working taxpayer and be larded with right-on new lifestyle entitlements that the rest of us will have to bankroll. Just see if I'm wrong.

Copyright © 2009 Edward Bison

Walk Or Ride?

noreply@blogger.com (Mr Bison) — Sat, 08 Aug 2009 21:38:00 +0000

I've spent a fair amount of the last week meeting people for lunch or dinner, all in the noble cause of "networking". The venue has varied, according to where the other party is driving from and what we feel like eating, but it's amazingly easy to eat a lot of crap in a week. Sure, I tend to go for sushi a fair bit, and I'd happily eat it every day, but there are a couple of problems. Firstly, there are some people who can't get their minds around raw fish or, indeed, anything that doesn't come with fries. And secondly, sushi comes in unsatisfyingly small portions or, if eaten in decent quantity, is ruinously expensive.

It's easy to see how people can pile on the pounds eating out. There are some very nice restaurants around, but if you want "convenient and reasonably priced" in this area then you end up with a lot of chain restaurants, where the emphasis is on heavy, carb-and-fat dishes, bread, fries, glutinous salad dressings, pizza, pasta and batter. You could blame the restaurants for offering all this shit, but they're not stupid - they sell what people want to buy. At the end of the day, unless you're getting your meals through a tube, you're directly responsible for what you put in your stomach.

Look, I've got nothing against fat people per se ("some of my best friends are fat") but there are degrees of lardiness. Most of us are technically overweight, and are none the worse for it; obsessive food nazis and nutrition weenies can fuck right off - if you want a piece of cake you should have it. But there has to come a point where you figure that you crossed the line. Different people might draw the line in different places - for some of us it might be a pant size, or being able to run after your kids without a sharp pain in your chest, a bright light and the voices of dead relatives in your ears, but regardless of this I'd hope that we could all agree that once you can no longer walk, you should step away from the buffet line and sort your fucking life out.

So why is it that WalMart is so infested with obese fuckers on mobility scooters? Surely the last people who should be riding around on their arses are those fat wankers who can't walk anymore. This is nature's way of telling you that you should eat less and GET SOME FUCKING EXERCISE. Rather than pander to their self-inflicted flabbiness and lazy self-indulgence, perhaps we'd be better off if society expected them to get off their fucking backside and walk to the cheesecake aisle.

Don't give me any of that whiny crap about glands, or heredity, or "I tried dieting". I don't want to hear about how it's not their fault - of course it is. At some point on the path between eight pound baby and six hundred pound bloated lardarse, surely you considered cutting back on the donuts, or maybe going for the occasional walk? No-one did this to you; you were free to slow down at any point. You CANNOT get to be that big without MASSIVE overeating.

But no, society doesn't just fail to criticize, it has become a blatant enabler of this gross over-consumption. Not only do we accept that fat bastards can now ride through a supermarket, we also classify obesity as a disability, and employment legislation can be used to force companies to buy scooters just so their fatarse employees can ride around instead of doing their job properly. If you want to know why America keeps getting lardier, how about the fact that enabling lardiness has become government policy; I'm only surprised that the stimulus package doesn't have a special donut credit for anyone over three hundred pounds.

Maybe it would help if fast-food chains were forced to use someone other than skinny teenagers in their commercials. How about the next time Pizza Hut advertises its foot-long, one pound, pizza dough, cheese and meat P'Zone, the person chowing down on it is a four hundred pound balding man with an oxygen tank to assist with his breathing? Or the woman buying the P'Zone rides away from the counter on her mobility scooter? Yeah right.

Copyright © 2009 Edward Bison

Vertical Challenge

noreply@blogger.com (Mr Bison) — Wed, 05 Aug 2009 01:51:00 +0000

Apparently one of the things you have to do as an unemployed person is have networking meetings, where you attempt to make a good impression with someone who is in a position to introduce you to other people, one of whom might be willing to offer you a job. This makes good sense, at least in principle, so today I found myself driving to such a meeting. Obviously the "make a good impression" part is kind of important - if you're going to come across as feckless, irresponsible twat I would imagine you'd be better off staying at home.

So, step one in the making a good impression stakes is showing up on time. I once had a boss whose motto was "five minutes early is ten minutes late", and while I thought the axiom was a bit wanky I do agree that allowing a bit of extra time for the unforeseen is a good plan. I also believe in making sure you know where you're going, and where you'll park when you get there: in this case no problem since the parking lot was underneath the building where I was meeting.

So all went according to plan and I pulled up outside the building in my (coincidentally freshly washed and surprisingly shiny) truck. That's when I noticed the sign on the ramp down to the parking lot that said "No full size trucks or vans", along with a height limit of 5'9". Being unfamiliar with that part of town I had no idea how long it would take me to find somewhere else to park, how far away it would be, whether I would be on a meter that would expire (resulting in tow away), or how much of a sweaty bastard I would be having hiked six blocks back in the summer heat. I watched two mid-size SUVs drive down into the parking lot and decided, on the basis of no calculation whatsoever, that I would chance the height limit. After all, I could see where the roof line was and it didn't seem that tight to me.

I drove down the ramp and turned to begin looking for a space. Oh fucking hell. Above me was not a simple roof but a maze of hanging pipes, beams and rafters that seemed to be about an inch above the top of my truck. Something snagged my aerial and twanged it back. All the spaces on that level were occupied and so I drove around very slowly, now wondering if at any moment something was going to pierce the top of the cab and peel it back like a large sardine can. It also occurred to me that this would be a great introduction: "Good morning, I'm here to see Reginald Arbuthnot. Oh, and I just got my truck wedged immovably in your car park, so no-one's going home tonight. Is that a problem?"

As I turned the corner in the car park the floor began to slope down to the lower level, temporarily opening up some headroom, but at the bottom it bore down on me again, only this time even closer; I got out to check if I had any room - there were literally a few inches at that point, but it was impossible to tell if any of the pipes or other hanging impediments would pierce the top of the truck further down. But What was I going to do? Back up a full-size pick-up? There were already people behind me, driving regular cars, unconcerned with the risk of roof removal and obviously wishing I would drive faster. Faster? Fuck, I could end up in the very first GMC Sierra cabriolet.

About fifty yards further on I found a spot and managed to back into it. I could have used a small scotch to recover but I doubt that gives a good first impression either. "It's 9am and he smells like he just got off a park bench after necking a bottle of supermarket own-brand whisky." After the meeting I retraced my route, at least with some hope that I could exit the parking garage damage-free, but the exit was on the other side, necessitating the negotiation of a new stretch of hanging pipework, and more aerial twanging.

Eventually I got out in one piece and went home. When I got out of the truck I couldn't help noticing that it was about as tall as I am. That's 6'2". And when I checked the specs for the thing the height was confirmed at 74". In other words "Nowhere near 5'9", you dumb shit."

Effective job hunting is all about emphasizing your strengths. I'm going to point out in future that I'm "a bold decision maker, comfortable taking risks and not afraid to challenge perceived limitations". And I'll take Mrs Bison's car next time. And I'm going to have that scotch now.

Copyright © 2009 Edward Bison

Can I Have A Free Car?

noreply@blogger.com (Mr Bison) — Mon, 03 Aug 2009 00:19:00 +0000

So the "Cash For Clunkers" money has run out, and members of Congress are running around like headless chickens trying to get more of this "stimulus" money to give away. But before they do, it would be nice if they thought a bit about where this money comes from.

Lesson One: It doesn't grow on trees, fuckwads. All that cash you're giving away in the name of "stimulus" has to be earned by the rest of us and paid in taxes. (I say "has to" rather than "was" because the US Congress is addicted to spending money it hasn't collected, putting off the day when someone somewhere has to cough up.)

Lesson Two: If you designed a program to create 250,000 new sales, surely you should be happy that it succeeded, and move on. Just because more people out there want free cash (there's a novel concept) doesn't mean that you should give it to them. If it was such a good idea for more people to get a handout, why didn't you design the program that way in the first place? This just smacks of opportunistic politics from people who just LOVE to give away other people's money, so long as it buys them popularity.

So 250,000 vehicles at $4,500 a time means $1.1 billion in cash given away like candy. Hey, I'd like some of that cash please! On what basis did the twats in Congress decide that those people with the most worthless, crappy cars should get free money from the rest of us? Socialism, that's what. "From each according to their ability, to each according to their need." This is the very antithesis of the American way, the philosophy whereby you work for what you want, rather than getting it via redistribution from other people.

If you really wanted to get 250,000 extra cars sold, why not give the money to anyone? Why only target the shittest cars? I imagine the idea is that at that end of the car-buying spectrum the people involved would otherwise buy pre-owned cars, so now you get them to buy new. On the other hand, the free cash from the government helps the car industry sell cars at higher prices than they would otherwise have to: without the extra handout they would simply have to increase the amount of incentives to get regular people to buy. So in that respect this is as much a handout of a billion dollars to the auto industry as it is to people who own ultra-shitty cars. And no-one has had their hand deeper in our pockets than the auto industry, so this represents yet another Socialist propping up of a weak industry that has been hijacked by unions.

Don't get sidetracked by the hype about getting gas guzzlers off the road - this is pure gesture politics, to dress up for the green lobby what is just another handout to the auto industry. What's so special about that sector of the economy? You could just as easily have pumped a billion into some other part of the US manufacturing economy (what's left of it) and spurred demand there.

Bottom line is that I'd find it a refreshing change if some of the relentless taxation found its way back to the people who paid the taxes, rather than continually being siphoned off as free cash to people who didn't earn it. Every dollar the government gives away has to be earned by us, and the interest burden has to be carried by us, just so fat wankers in Congress can play fucking Santa Claus and buy votes for next time around among people who aren't paying the bill.

Breakfast Sausage

noreply@blogger.com (Mr Bison) — Sat, 01 Aug 2009 23:23:00 +0000

It's a week now since I returned from vacation in Oregon, and the joy of falling asleep to the sound of the sea has been replaced by the irritation of trying to sleep under a ceiling fan that whines if you run it in one direction and clicks if you try the other. Piece of shit.

It was a good holiday, meaning that there was no planning, no list of things we had to do or see, and lots of relaxing. We also ate a lot of good holiday food, including a few cooked breakfasts; there really is nothing quite like bacon and eggs in the morning. Sucks to be a vegetarian, because, let me tell you, fried tofu is not going to get the job done. Sorry. Strips of dead fatty pig, with eggs, fried bread, mushrooms and sausages. Only thing missing was the black pudding and HP sauce.

We ate most morning and evening meals in the house we'd rented, which had a great booth-style table which looked out over a neighbor's garden, towards the sea. And almost without fail the neighbor's overweight labrador would amble down into the garden and take a massive shit in front of us just as we were sitting down to eat. Didn't matter if we ate early or late, the fucking thing adjusted its schedule so that it could curl down its load for us, twice a day.

Down on the sandy beach there were a few families clustered where the steps descended from the road, and quite a few surfers. The beach was blocked off at that end by a rocky point but in the other direction it curved round to a distant lighthouse. We walked along the beach one day, doing pennance for a pizza and some mint Oreos, I think. The tide was in so you could only walk about a mile, to a stretch where the tide washed right up against the sandy cliff above which was the main road. At that point there was also a stream running down to the sea, under a bridge which carried the road. Obviously there was some kind of campsite up there because, in contrast to the completely empty stretch of beach we had just walked, there were more than a hundred people clustered around this stream.

I can remember as a kid how we'd go to the beach, and no sooner had we got on it than I'd want to get out my bucket and spade, or go in the sea. My old man would insist that we walked further along the beach, to where the people thinned out a bit (they never thin out that much in the UK - fucking people everywhere), and it would irritate me, because I was a kid and I just wanted to play. Now.

So it bothered me that here were maybe two hundred people all stuck together in one of the least attractive parts of the beach (road noise overhead, rocky stream, no dunes, trees or scenery) all practically falling over each other as they staked out their tiny piece of sand. There were several blokes trying to fly kites over the heads of other people (without much luck), and absolutely no-one was in the slightest bit inclined to walk a few hundred yards along the beach to have a space to themselves, with driftwood logs to sit on and clean sand.

And they were fat. Not all of them, but for the most part they were chunky bastards, and there were a fair number of absolute bloaters - you know, the kind of people who should have been walking along the beach, or just walking anywhere (other than a donut store). Fat families with grossly overweight kids, all piled together because they couldn't be bothered to walk a few yards further down the beach where it was deserted for a distance of about a mile. What the fuck makes people do that? I mean, it was great that they couldn't be bothered to walk, because we had a mile of beach to ourselves, but there had to be something wrong with them.

In many respects they reminded me of the labrador. I'm sure each day they walked down to the same piece of beach, turned around a few times and just sat down. I guess I should be grateful that they didn't actually take a shit there. Now that would have put me right off my breakfast...

Copyright © 2009 Edward Bison

20 Years Ago Today

noreply@blogger.com (Mr Bison) — Wed, 29 Jul 2009 01:53:00 +0000

The cake above bears witness to a notable anniversary: 20 years ago today the future Mrs Bison and I met, at a party. We lived in sin for years before marrying (and the sin was great, by the way) so we never really got round to marking the wedding anniversary, preferring instead to remember that original date. I am therefore one of the few non-single men who does not get shit about forgetting his wedding anniversary. (Most of the others probably being married to women with Alzheimer's.)

This event gave us the opportunity to look back and take stock of how far we've come in 20 years. When Mrs Bison met me I was unemployed, and driving a ten year-old car. Now, 20 years later, she's married to a man who's unemployed and driving a ten year-old truck. Big progress!

To be fair to myself (which I fully intend to be, since no other fucker is likely to take the trouble) I've only been unemployed two weeks. I could write for a long time on that subject. In fact I could go on for the next x months about the struggles of the executive job seeker, the highs and lows, the daily challenges and the deep insights I would receive into my personal psyche, but no-one is going to give a shit, because, frankly, it's going to be boring. So let's skip over the whole job-loss thing. Suffice it to say that I worked my arse off so hard over the last 6 months that I've neglected my writing, disappointing my (possibly) one remaining reader, and the only moral I can take from my story is "Don't Work Your Arse Off".

Mrs Bison has been very supportive. She's taken to referring to me as Dole Scum, a reference to the funny Job Seekers sketches with Pauline from the League of Gentlemen, an example of which which you can SEE HERE. She keeps asking me to let her know if it's starting to piss me off, presumably in case I snap and end up burying her in the garden, in a shallow grave, but it's very unlikely, especially if I keep getting cakes made for me.

No, let's focus on the ten year-old car. I remember the piece of shit I had when I met my future spouse: it was an orange Talbot Avenger with a black vinyl roof, and like most cars of that era (it was made in 1979) it was a rust-infested nightmare. Avengers were renowned for the way the brackets around the headlights rusted away to nothing, and the front fenders always rusted too. The sills and the suspension mounting points were hotbeds of rust, and of course the exhaust system was designed to rust through and fall off at the most inopportune moment, giving the vehicle the sound of a jet engine coupled with the torque of a singly-occupied hamster wheel.

I once went to the scrap yard (which was where I obtained all the replacement parts I ever needed for my POS Avenger) looking for a front fender (or wing to UK readers). The scrappy informed me that unrusted fenders were "as rare as rocking horse manure" but I looked anyway. And there it was: not only was the fender in great condition but it was orange, a perfect match for my car, which was uncanny because the car it was attached to was uniformly red on all other panels. Not only was the fender orange but it had the same double-black pinstripe which ran down my car (mine had clearly been resprayed in a past life, and it was probably only the paint that held much of it together). Unfortunately it was the right side fender and I needed a left. Life has a habit of crapping in your lap sometimes, just for the fun of it.

So a ten year-old car in 1989 was a fucking rolling disaster, literally falling apart as you drove it. Now, in 2009, I have a ten year-old GM truck on which I have replaced only the battery and tires from new. I had to top up the fluid in the air conditioner this year but, let's be fair, the only air conditioning in my Avenger was courtesy of the hole in the floor. Cars last a long time now, and look pretty damn good while they do it, which means that today's feckless youth know little of the joys of welding around the suspension mounts to get their car to pass annual MOT inspection.

On this auspicious occasion I would say that my 20 year companion compares better to my 2009 truck than my 1989 Avenger. Bodywork in good shape, low maintenance, and the airbags don't need to be replaced. That, along with the cakes, is the secret of a happy relationship, so I'm going to celebrate by buying her some furry dice to wear later...

Copyright © 2009 Edward Bison

Nutritional Bisonomics

noreply@blogger.com (Mr Bison) — Sun, 07 Jun 2009 00:10:00 +0000

Here's a couple of statistics that might just be related, although which causes which is up for debate:

Illegal immigrants in the US: 12-20 million
Recipients of food stamps in the US: 30-33 million

Yes, that's right, at least one in ten of the US population is now getting free food paid for by the rest of us, according to Associated Press estimates (although others figure it's now more like one in nine). The federal government has creatively re-branded the food stamps program as the Supplemental Nutrition Assistance Program, which is a piece of timeless lefty euphemism. It would better be described as the Free Food Giveaway Program.

Now, maybe I'm a bit slow, but I'm always hearing about how we only have illegal immigration because of all the jobs that legal US residents won't do. ("It's a victimless crime - without them who will pick the fruit or cut your lawn?") Meanwhile there are thirty million US residents getting free food because they don't work. Excuse me, but that is utterly fucked up.

Let's allow for the fact that some of the thirty million SNAP recipients are children. (Given the high incidence of single parenthood and the unselective breeding habits at that end of society, let's face it, it might be quite a lot.) There are still probably around eight or ten million potential workers getting free food, paid for by taxpayers, while not doing the jobs that illegal immigrants end up doing. Why don't they get out there and get jobs? Because they're better off staying at home and sucking on the public teat than busting there arse cutting lawns, gutting chickens or replacing roofs.

It's a simple fact that with a nice cosy welfare safety net people don't have to go out and find work. Meanwhile, immigrants from countries where the taxpayers won't feed you while you sit on your arse are only too happy to come here and work hard. When I had my roof replaced the workers were all Hispanic. I have no reason to believe they were illegals, but they worked hard from early morning to evening. Meanwhile, in some public housing project, hundreds of thousands of people will have been whining about the lack of job opportunity for them, explaining that this is why their kids are selling drugs, moaning about poor schools and tucking into free food provided at someone else's expense.

In theory you could just send all the illegals home and then have the unemployed do the work. Ten million illegal workers replaced by ten million food stamp recipients. It's easy, right?

Here are some more statistics to brighten up your day:

Average cost of food stamp program per person: $113 per month
Number of recipients: 33 million
Total annual cost: $45 billion

Number of US taxpayers: 90 million (135 million tax returns, less 45 million that pay no federal taxes)
Annual cost to each taxpayer of providing free food to other people: $500

That's right, if you pay federal income tax you're coughing up five hundred bucks out of your paycheck so that other people can spend their money on beer, cigarettes, cable TV and other "essentials" while you buy their family's food. That's fucking bullshit. I've heard from a firefighter, working hard and economizing to make ends meet, who got pissed off continually seeing people in public housing with big flat screen TV's that he couldn't even hope to afford, all paid for with other people's money. Their "entitlements". It's amazing what you can afford when your food comes free, your rent is paid by the government and your kids' clothes are given to you.

Something's wrong here, people. It's fashionable to compare the current economic downturn to the great depression, but that's laughable. Back then people would criss-cross the country, willing to do anything to earn a crust. Nowadays you can just sit on your arse and wait for food to drop in your lap. There are, we are told, so many jobs available that we have to let illegal immigrants come here. So why are more than ten percent of the population getting free food then?

It's enough to make you puke, but bear in mind that you'll be replacing that meal with your own money if you do...

Copyright © 2009 Edward Bison

Crap No-one Needs, #16

noreply@blogger.com (Mr Bison) — Mon, 25 May 2009 16:07:00 +0000

The Art Establishment

Have you ever thrown up on the pavement? You might be an artist. Ever spilled some paint on the floor? Yep, sounds like you're an artist. Ever cut a cat in half to see what the insides look like? You could possibly be a psychopath, but you probably have a great future as a famous artist. The whole art establishment is so infested with useless wankers who wouldn't know real art if it crawled up their anus and tickled their spleen, that there's really no qualification required anymore.

Remember the "Piss Christ" photograph? Some moron pisses in a glass and puts a plastic crucifix in it, takes a photo and calls it art. The National Endowment for the Arts, a $155 million Congress-created boondoggle for worthlessness, puts this and other similar shit on exhibition at the taxpayer's expense and calls it art. If there was ever a sector of human endeavor that exhibited the Emperor's New Clothes phenomenon it's the art world: if you think some dozy tart's unmade bed, half a cow in a glass case or someone's crude painting with their own excrement isn't real art it's because "You're just a middle-class drone who doesn't comprehend the artist's deep appreciation of the human condition, communicated through a complex medium in order to bypass our natural emotional filters". In other words, if you think the emperor is naked, you must be stupid.

If all these wankers were just running around on welfare pissing on crucifixes then I wouldn't care, but they're doing it on our dime. It's not the business of government to be subsidizing the arts - if something is good enough then someone will pay to see it. Those that clamor for government arts funding (which, let's face it, means arts funded by taxes expropriated from working people against their will) realize full well that given a choice the working public will not voluntarily pay to support someone who spends his day pissing in a glass and taking pictures of it. Without government intervention art would have to survive on its merits, which would immediately condemn half the liberal arts establishment to get a real job.

Yeah, I know, people pay millions for Damien Hirst so-called artworks. which doesn't mean they have any artistic merit, but that's an entirely different phenomenon: art collection. The whole point of that is for people with more dollars than braincells to buy stuff so they can show off to other such people how wealthy and "enlightened" they are. It doesn't have to be good, only "desirable", an attribute conferred by an art establishment so removed from what the real world thinks as to have rendered their opinions meaningless.

Here's some art rules to live by:

1. If The Bloke Down The Pub Could Do It, It's Not Art

When we watch professional sports we know that the quarterback, sprinter, tennis player or goalie is performing at a level that we couldn't; that's why we pay to see them. They demonstrate excellence. It's the same thing with art. When I see a Bruegel painting I know I couldn't have done it, plus it's interesting to look at. Half of what passes for modern art requires no real talent other than the art of self-promotion and the ability to talk bollocks, which brings me to:

2. If You Have To Explain It, It's Not Art

If you could walk right by the so-called art and have no idea that it was art at all, then it isn't. Notice how modern art requires a soundtrack of interpretation and commentary to help the observer "understand and appreciate" the artist's message. This is a clear sign that it's a load of old bollocks; the number of accompanying words is directly proportional to the speed with which it should be consigned to the dumpster.

3. If It's Not Painted Or Sculpted, It's Not Art

Since music and dance are their own categories, art is a term for things of beauty that are static and to be looked at. This includes pictures, sculptures and maybe certain photography. That's it. It does not include "art installations" which consist of crap just thrown together, or people engaging in "interactive art". This is just bollocks. You know it's bollocks because normal people, uncontaminated by art indoctrination, would walk up to it and exclaim "What a load of old bollocks". Living in a room for fourteen days is not art.

4. If It Needs A Famous Name Attached, It's Not Art

What's the chance that if I'd pissed in a glass and put a crucifix in it, I would have got it into an exhibition in New York? If I cut a dog in half and put it in formaldehyde would I get my own show and have someone pay a million for it? Fuck no. If you took a Constable picture and took the name off you'd still walk past and think "Fucking good picture of a haywain, that." If you walked past the glass of piss you'd think "Jesus, I think someone pissed in that glass. Is there a tramp in here?" So just imagine it's not Tracy Emin's unmade bed, or Damien Hirst's half a cow, or Andres Serrano's glass of piss. What if Albert Bloggs or Dave Brown had done it? Would it still be good enough for an exhibition? Of course it wouldn't - it's not real art, it's just a bunch of art establishment wankers crawling up each others' arses.

Fundamentally the art scene is infested with pseudo-intellectual wankers, and if it that's what makes them happy then good luck to them. Except when the government, laboring under the biggest deficit in history, finds it essential that they confiscate money from working people to hand out to so-called artists who are just climbing over each other to be more "shocking" and "controversial" while not being required to exhibit any real talent.

Here's a suggestion to all those cutting edge art tossers: the Piss Christ is old news - if you want to be really "out there", why not take a dump on the Koran and photograph that? No, I didn't think so. Not so brave when some Islamist would cut off your tiny balls and make an exhibition out of you?

Copyright © 2009 Edward Bison

A Horse's Head For Chrysler

noreply@blogger.com (Mr Bison) — Sun, 24 May 2009 15:03:00 +0000

There was this old mob technique which was employed when they wanted to take over a bar or other such money-making establishment. They'd send in some boys to trash the place or rough up the staff and then offer the management the opportunity to buy protection. The thing is, the cost of protection tended to go up, and to come with other strings attached, so that eventually the owners would just give in and sell up for a fraction of the real value of the business. This is called extortion.

Chrysler is in bankruptcy. The real owners of the business are the secured lenders, since they have first call on all the assets of the business. This is what was agreed contractually when they made the loans. However, the deal being offered to them is to sell up for approximately 20% of what they are owed. Guess who gets 55% of the value of the "new" Chrysler? Yes, it's the UAW autoworkers union.

There are lots of theories about why US automakers went in the toilet, many of them referring to "poor management" or "unattractive product". There's even been a chorus of wisdom suggesting that they lost money because they weren't offering fuel-efficient vehicles, making a neat link with prevailing eco-weenie sentiments while neatly missing the point that the only vehicles they made any money on were trucks and SUVs. No doubt they had poor management, but if the product has been weak it has to be related to the fact that they've been losing money for years. How can you put A-grade vehicles in the market if you make a loss on every one, and would make a bigger loss if you tried to make them better?

Let's cut through all the bullshit: the reason the traditional US automakers are losing money is the gold-plated, over-the-top, extortionate pay and benefits that the UAW has extracted over the years with threats to strike and shut down operations, plunging the companies into insolvency. For years management has chosen to pay off the thugs at the UAW rather than face them down, and just like the poor bar owner faced with the goons from the mob it's hard to pass judgment on them from the safety of your armchair. Any normal company shuts down plants when sales fall (and remember that US automakers have lost share every year), but in the twisted world of the UAW, the automakers have to pay all the workers even if there are no jobs to do, or pay them a small fortune to fuck off, and then pay their medical costs, pension costs and those of their families, forever.

What really pisses me off is Obastard's government brokering a deal where the union gets to walk off with most of what's left of Chrysler, in spite of them having no secured position (unlike secured lenders) and completely missing the fact that the UAW is what caused the whole mess in the first place. They should be grateful that there are any jobs left for their members at all after what they did. Obastard has been bought and paid for by the UAW (campaign donations anyone?) and has pressured the rightful owners of Chrysler to sell out cheap.

Tell me what's so different between the UAW crippling the automakers and then walking off with most of what's left, and the mob running down a bar and then buying it for a song. The labor laws over here just encourage this sort of large-scale extortion (remember the unions did the same thing to the airlines, bleeding them dry until 9/11 came along to finish them off) and it's no accident that the non-union auto operations in the US are growing.

In the twilight world of left-wing ideology we're supposed to look the other way as union thieves take other people's property, since it's all "in the interests of the workers". But what else would you expect from a government determined to confiscate ever more of our money to hand out to its cronies to buy votes?

Copyright © 2009 Edward Bison

A Simple Explanation...

noreply@blogger.com (Mr Bison) — Thu, 21 May 2009 14:25:00 +0000

I was sent the following explanation of the financial crisis, rendered in simple terms:

Heidi is the proprietor of a bar somewhere in Europe. In order to increase sales, she decides to allow her loyal customers - most of whom are unemployed alcoholics - to drink now but pay later. She keeps track of the drinks consumed on a ledger (thereby granting the customers loans).

Word gets around and as a result increasing numbers of customers flood into Heidi's bar.

Taking advantage of her customers' freedom from immediate payment constraints, Heidi increases her prices for wine and beer, the most-consumed beverages. Her sales volume increases massively.

A young and dynamic customer service consultant at the local bank recognizes these customer debts as valuable future assets and increases Heidi's borrowing limit.

He sees no reason for undue concern since he has the debts of the alcoholics as collateral.

At the bank's corporate headquarters, expert bankers transform these customer assets into DRINKBONDS, ALKBONDS and PUKEBONDS. These securities are then traded on markets worldwide. No one really understands what these abbreviations mean and how the securities are guaranteed. Nevertheless, as their prices continuously climb, the securities become top-selling items.

One day, although the prices are still climbing, a risk manager at the bank (subsequently of course fired for his negativity) decides that slowly the time has come to demand payment of the debts incurred by the drinkers at Heidi's bar.

However they cannot pay back the debts.

Heidi cannot fulfill her loan obligations and claims bankruptcy.

DRINKBOND and ALKBOND drop in price by 95 %. PUKEBOND performs better, stabilizing in price after dropping by 80 %.

The suppliers of Heidi's bar, having granted her generous payment due dates and having invested in the securities are faced with a new situation. Her wine supplier claims bankruptcy, her beer supplier is taken over by a competitor.

The bank is saved by the Government following dramatic round-the-clock consultations by leaders from the governing political parties.

The funds required for this purpose are obtained by a tax levied on the non-drinkers.

I wish I could say that I had written it, but unfortunately I've been much too busy, what with having to work extra hard to pay all the taxes required to bail out the dumb fucks who put us in this mess. Beer anyone...?

Weight Loss

noreply@blogger.com (Mr Bison) — Mon, 20 Apr 2009 00:49:00 +0000

Like so many things, it seemed like a good idea at the time. Someone decided that we should have a weight-loss competition at work, which involved teams of five people seeing how much weight they could lose over a couple of months. When I accepted the invitation to join a team I didn't really pay much attention to the other members - after all, I wasn't about to get all psycho about weight loss. Unfortunately what I hadn't realized was that of the four other team members, three were bone-thin bastards with no weight to lose, and the fourth had already been working hard at it for a month, meaning that I was the only one who was a candidate to lose any weight at all.

Now, I'm no fat bastard, but I could probably lose a few pounds and feel no worse for it. Mrs Bison thinks about ten, which is optimistic. Bison Daughter is expecting me to end up with a six-pack, which is simply ridiculous, but represents a charming show of faith in her old man. It's not like I'm in this to win it; there are some people in our office who could - how do I say this delicately? - comfortably lose the bodyweight of a good sized dwarf and hardly notice. Nevertheless I at least want to be sure that we're not the only team to actually get fatter while supposedly trying to lose weight.

So what's my strategy? "Eat less and exercise more" is a well-established approach, but I already exercise five or six times a week, and I'm buggered if I'm going to go hungry. The thing about lifting weights is that it's important to ingest a significant amount of protein at regular intervals during the day, so I can't skip that. The only other time I decided to lose weight I went on a "no pasta, rice, bread or potatoes" regime for a few weeks. (I didn't cut out cakes or sweets.) It worked well, but I became pissy and irritable for a few days, and the aggravation of having to try and find alternatives to these starches while traveling became a monumental pain in the arse.

This time I'm going to cut back on the carbs again, reducing the starches, avoiding cakes and candy, and adding in fruits and salads to fill the space. I've been at this for a few days now and I have to say it's a fucking pain in the arse. Of course Mrs Bison decided to mark my endeavor by making her famous cherry cake, which I had to refuse, even as she repeatedly taunted me with the offer of a slice. (Does she actually want me to lose any weight?) Tomorrow I'm going to take a salad to work, complete with a can of tuna and hard boiled eggs for protein (which hopefully means I won't look completely gay).

Obviously this isn't a diet where I eat less food, only different food. If I was a bloater I might have to reconsider, but I'm only prepared to contemplate minor deprivation in the cause of pointless competition. The problem is that I just discovered Five Guys burgers. There's a place close to the office and I only got round to trying it just prior to the start of this contest. It was outstanding, no other word for it. Fabulous juicy burger, big pile of tasty fries; fuck me, I can almost taste it now. And yesterday Mrs Bison bought ice cream. Fucking diet...

Maybe there's a better way. I could just avoid wearing underwear when they weight us in at the end, that should save a few ounces. Have a haircut the day before, leave my car keys at my desk, wear lighter shoes, that sort of thing. On the other hand, Mrs Bison is now watching one of those tiresome period drama Dickens productions on public television. Watching that would bore the shit out of me. If I can only watch long enough, surely significant weight loss is guaranteed?

Copyright © 2009 Edward Bison

Male Enhancement

noreply@blogger.com (Mr Bison) — Mon, 13 Apr 2009 22:11:00 +0000

I decided to drop my car off for an oil change today before taking Mrs Bison for a gratuitously large Chinese lunch. Normally I'd wait with the car and take the opportunity to look over the new and used cars in the dealer lot, just for fun. Show me a man who can find himself surrounded by cars and not want to look at them and I'll show you a man who doesn't need a car simply because he's on the other bus. I could have checked out new cars when we came back from lunch but today my heart wasn't in it. You see, it appears that in addition to a new car I'll also need a bigger penis.

Whoa! Hold on there - I've had no complaints (he hastens to add) - but I've been reading car magazines recently, you know, things like Car and Driver, and if the advertising is anything to go by I can't get a new car without also doing something about my dick. There was this full page advert headlined "Does Size Really Matter To Your Lover?", followed by a lot of small text, the upshot of which was that I should send anywhere between $70 and $100 to purchase some non-FDA approved dried monkey jizz (or whatever the stuff is made of) which would give me a bigger, thicker more energetic manhood with "Orgasmic Thrust Activation".

Maybe it's because the advert was in a car magazine, but I can't help thinking that orgasmic thrust activation is something you'd find on a new Corvette, maybe to help you pull away quickly at the lights. Except it would be abbreviated to "OTA" and you'd have to nod sagely when the salesman told you that the car had it, even though you had no fucking clue what it did. And it would have its own little light on the dash which would come on after two thousand miles to inform you that the OTA wasn't working, and before you knew it you'd be back at the dealership every other week for them to try and fix it. But it would still be a bragging point: "Yeah, I got the Z06 model because of the OTA - you should feel your neck snap when you hit the gas!"

There was a second advert in the same magazine under a "Size Does Matter" banner, but this time you could spend more than $300. Maybe you get a really big penis with their stuff. But what if it worked? None of your pants would fit anymore, and if you got an unexpected erection at work you'd have to hide it under the desk. Fortunately the risk is low - I'm sure none of this shit works, but there must be plenty of blokes out there willing to roll the dice. And it's got to be good business for the companies who sell it. I mean, not only does it not have to work, they don't even really need to send you any pills. What are you going to do? Complain to the Better Business Bureau? Yeah, I can see that conversation happening.

"I'm calling to complain about this company. I sent them $300 because they said I could add three inches to my penis. And girth too. They definitely said girth. Now I've been taking the pills for a month and nothing's happened. No, definitely no bigger. Because I measured it. With a ruler. How long? Is that really important? It's the same as it was before, surely that's all you need to know? The girth? I don't know, it doesn't feel any thicker. No I didn't measure it - the ruler wouldn't bend. Oh, I suppose you're right, I could have used a bit of string and then measured the string. But I want to complain - they won't send my money back. My name? It's - erm - Smith. Yes, Smith. Address? I'd rather not say..."

Or maybe the company sends you the money back on a big pink check emblazoned with the words "PENIS ENLARGEMENT REFUND". Like that's ever going to get cashed.

Some of the other ads are more subtle - they don't mention size directly but instead refer to "Natural Male Enhancement", which is right up there with Around View Monitor, Lane Departure Prevention System and Electronic Brake Assist in the list of options on your new car. "I'd like it in black with the leather interior and the Natural Male Enhancement package please."

Clearly lots of blokes want a bigger dick. I'd love to be able to reassure them that "Size Doesn't Matter" but my non-scientific survey tells me that "Women Talk About Size". At least one of my colleagues claims to be getting the "short end of the stick" whenever she takes one home. My question is, are new cars disproportionately purchased by men with small dicks who are looking to compensate? Is that the real reason the car magazines are full of penis enlargement adverts? Whatever the reality I'd suggest to any bloke considering sending his hard-earned cash to some outfit promising to add inches to his member that he would indeed be better off putting it towards a new car. Not because it'll make up for the shortfall, but simply because he'll at least get some pleasure from the car. And in the meantime remember this sage advice from a noted stand-up comic:

I took this woman home and when I got undressed she pointed at my dick and said "Who do you think you're going to satisfy with that?" and I said "Me."

Copyright © 2009 Edward Bison

Life Everlasting

noreply@blogger.com (Mr Bison) — Sun, 12 Apr 2009 23:34:00 +0000

Maybe it's fitting that on Easter Sunday, when millions are celebrating the last time someone rose from the dead, I found myself listening to a National Public Radio program about cryonics. Normally I eschew NPR, full as it is of dreary arty bollocks, lefty liberal apologetics and "black-only" racist programming, but it has its moments, and today contained one of them. The program looked back to the early days of cryonics in the sixties, when some bloke called Bob Nelson started freezing people and storing them in the charmingly ridiculous hope of reviving them later. The technology wasn't there at the time, but who knows what will be possible later, and I couldn't help thinking what a horrific thing that would be.

The idea behind cryonics is that most people who die aren't really "dead" according to the "information theoretic" definition of death, since their identity and memory is still preserved in their brain tissue at the moment of clinical death. As minutes or hours go by the brain will decompose and identity would be lost, but in theory if you froze someone who died of something like a heart attack you could revive them later.

Let's leave aside all the scientific questions about how long you could wait to freeze someone, what you'd need to do to preserve the body tissue and all that other stuff. For a start it's arse-clenchingly dull to anyone who's not into cryonics, and I have a suspicion that anyone who is into cryonics is a nutter. Frankly, I couldn't be arsed to research the subject. But let's think about this for a bit. What if it worked? What if people didn't die but just went into stasis for a bit and got revived later?

For a start it's not as though the world is short of people. The population is now estimated at 6.7 billion; when I was a kid I remember being told it was about 4 billion. Even without cryonics we're going to run out of places to put them all, and land to grow food for them. About 60 million people die every year, but even if you only consider the "wealthy" ones the number isn't small. 2.5 million die annually in the US. Assuming that cryonics becomes possible and affordable just imagine the additional land that'll be given over to gigantic frozen warehouses for all their corpses. And what are the eco-weenies going to say about the huge amounts of electricity being used to refrigerate all these bodies; instead of returning their carbon to the earth they'll be using fuel for centuries. Bear in mind that it's not necessary to prove that you can revive people for there to be a market here - there's no shortage of idiots willing to be frozen just on the off-chance of future success.

Let's hope the idea never works - with the birth rate at 75 million per year (a net of 15 million over the death rate), even if we only revived 25% of the stiffs we'd be looking at doubling the population growth.

And what would we get at the end of it? Statistically speaking an awful lot of people die when they're old. I've seen old people: forget the problem with all the senile ones, just think about how they spend their time now. Revive them and before you know it we'll be knee-deep in wrinklies. They already retired so what are we going to do? Pay them another pension until they die (again)? You won't be able to move at WalMart, and forget trying to eat during the early bird special. The economic might of the United States will be devoted to the production of dentures, incontinence pants and arthritis drugs. The promise of cryonics is that we get to see a wonderful future, beyond our dreams, but the revived pensioners are just going to moan about how much better it was in the old days so what's the point?

That's the trouble with people - they don't think things through. Everyone wants to live forever but I'm afraid that doesn't work. Instead of people trying to extend their lives indefinitely wouldn't it be better if we enjoyed life while it lasted, embraced death when it came, and realized that millions of drooling carcases, kept alive only by advanced medical intervention, should be sent on their way? Today millions remember how two thousand years ago someone got nailed to a cross so we wouldn't have to fear death anymore. Doesn't seem like it worked, does it?

Copyright © 2009 Edward Bison

Fuck Me, It's Dwayne Dibley!

noreply@blogger.com (Mr Bison) — Sun, 29 Mar 2009 22:12:00 +0000

Mrs Bison spent about four hours yesterday taking Bison Daughter shopping, on account of the fact that she's grown out of everything. In the good old days we'd buy clothes in advance - whatever was on sale at the end of the season we'd buy it in a larger size for next season, and that way we'd stay ahead of the game. (To be fair, when I say "we", I obviously don't mean me.) However that doesn't work now because the girl has discovered "fashion". That means a shirt with no logo from Target is "unfashionable" but the same shirt with "Hollister" plastered all over it is "way cool". Never mind that they're all made in China and would fall apart if she didn't grow out of them so quickly, the branded stuff is much better.

There's a balance here - I'm not going to force my kid to be the only one with no logo gear, but I'm also not giving in to this "everyone else has it so I have to" bullshit. A few branded items amongst the other stuff go a long way.

The marketing of branded clothing to kids is an irritating way to suck more money out of our pockets but at least the clothes still look like clothes. The other night I had the misfortune to experience America's Next Top Model on TV. Have you ever seen such a load of complete bollocks in your life?

The whole fashion industry seems to be populated by freaks, degenerates and weirdos, the kind of bizarre, self-obsessed nonces that you'd cross the street to avoid in real life. Just look at what goes up and down catwalks in the major fashion shows - no-one in their right mind would ever conceive of actually wearing any of that crap, and anyone who'd pay what it sells for clearly has more money than sense, by a phenomenally wide margin.

I don't want to sound like an expert on America's Next Top Model, but it falls into the standard reality-show format, where a cast of wannabes are put through a series of tests and gradually eliminated by a panel of judges. One of the judges is a "bloke" (I use the term in its broadest possible sense) by the name of Miss J.Alexander. What struck me when I saw him on the show was that he was dressed in the kind of gear that would make anyone look like a complete pillock. The whole fashion industry is an "Emperor's New Clothes" experience; if some "high fashion" name started prancing around in a bin bag and wellies suddenly everyone else would want to. Who could believe that flared jeans came back, for fuck's sake?

But as soon as I saw J.Alexander, the famous fashion figure and catwalk coach, the first thing I thought was "It's Dwayne Dibley!" Yes, the ultimate fashion-failure character from Red Dwarf. He was the spitting image! I know everyone from the UK will know who he is, but here's a link to Dwayne Dibley for those who don't. And if you haven't watched Red Dwarf before I can only suggest that you've clearly been wasting your life to date.

At the top of the page are four pictures - two are fashion failure Dwayne Dibley and two are fashion guru J.Alexander. Can you tell them apart?

So forgive me if I'm somewhat reluctant to ponce about in whatever the fashion industry tells me is now "in". Remember, just because it's fashionable doesn't mean you don't look like a twat.

Copyright © 2009 Edward Bison

Handy Job

noreply@blogger.com (Mr Bison) — Sat, 28 Mar 2009 14:19:00 +0000

I'm not quite sure how the subject came up. There we were, sitting in a cozy restaurant in Belgium, with low ceilings and candlelight, enjoying one of those meals that you just don't get in St.Louis. It was a place run by a husband and wife; he cooked while she ran the front of the house. There was no menu - when we arrived she just explained what they were going to make for us and checked that everything would be OK. (Presumably they'll make accommodations if something would cause you to heave.) Outside the rain fell steadily, and through it, illuminated by evening streetlamps, we could pick out the classic architecture of the town square.

Early on the conversation was polite but hesitant; this was a business dinner, with seven or eight of us gathered. Gradually the conversation shifted, however, and I found myself relating the story of a television program I saw many years ago in which zookeepers were harvesting semen from a gorilla in captivity. I pointed out that the process involved sedating the gorilla and then inserting a large stainless steel vibrator in its anus to cause ejaculation. Two things struck me: firstly, a gorilla has a really tiny dick considering the rest of its physiology; secondly, there didn't appear to be much in the process for the gorilla, who was presumably going to wake up with a hangover, a sore arse and an empty sac. None of us want that to happen, do we? What do you think goes through the poor beast's mind after that? "Jesus, I must have hit the fermented bamboo juice a bit hard last night. What the hell's wrong with my arse? Oh fuck! Who was I with? Oh man, does that mean I'm gay now? I hope no video ends up on YouTube."

I only verbalized the first part of that story in the restaurant, not the imagined thoughts of the awakening primate, but you have to be careful with stories like that because if you misjudge the mood of the group you can suddenly end up with an awkward silence, and everyone studying the menu intently. Since there was no menu in this place we would have been screwed. Fortunately my counterpart came back with an even better story.

Apparently his company used to be in the pig genetics business. Like most industrialized companies they had a very active health and safety program, involving sharing learnings and improvements between different sites that would make the workplace safer. In one instance there had been a problem with the people who had to harvest the sperm from the hogs ending up with carpal tunnel syndrome, which had resulted in the development of a new tool or gadget to help them avoid this. Carpal tunnel? You mean they did it by hand?

Harvesting sperm sounds like it's a noble and scientifically justified endeavor, but at the end of the day you know that you're basically a pig-wanker. How do you live with yourself if your job involves giving hand relief to swine on a daily basis? What do you say when your kid asks what you did today? More to the point, what's the going rate for jerking off a hog? Because I have to believe that there would be more money in pulling off people, and probably less chance of being trampled in the mud while you're doing it.

Back in the restaurant, three excellent courses were followed by a fine dessert. Although the rain was still falling when we eventually stepped out into the cobbled street to make our way back to the car park, life didn't seem too bad. The weekend was coming, and there is, at present, no prospect that I will have to wank off any pigs in my immediate future. And I'm not hung like a gorilla either. Happy days!

Copyright © 2009 Edward Bison

Road Trip

noreply@blogger.com (Mr Bison) — Fri, 20 Mar 2009 20:33:00 +0000

It's Spring Break here in St.Louis so, contrary to normal practice, we decided actually to go away for a few days. Since I'd rather stick pins in my gonads than pay to be treated like shit by an airline, we set off by car for Big Cedar Lodge, down in Southern Missouri by Table Rock Lake. This is about a four hour drive from St.Louis, providing the opportunity to experience the very best of highway-side Missouri entertainment along the way.

I have to assume that the places dotted along the highway are examples of what is known as "small town America", albeit somewhat corrupted by the influence of so many passing travelers just begging to be separated from their dollars. It must be interesting to live there - it's not at all clear what you'd do by way of entertainment, unless you have an inclination to junk food, fireworks or pornography, because that's all you see along the road.

One of the large signs proclaimed "The World's Biggest Rocking Chair" was nearby, begging the question "Who gives a shit?".

One of the great benefits of I-44 is that you have plenty of gigantic billboards to help ensure that you don't miss any of the fine roadside establishments that grace the highway. On the way down we were still two hours out of Branson when we began to be bombarded with invitations to stop off for Branson coupons, or to see the big-name tacky shows that infest this otherwise meaningless town. Of course there are also many artery-hardening junk food emporia peddling their greasy wares, but by far the most entertaining signs are those advertising "ADULT STORES". The signs are invariably large and yellow, whereas the stores themselves appear small and seedy, although judging by the number of cars parked outside they weren't hurting for business, even before midday. Isn't there some sort of basic principle of decency that you shouldn't hit the scud mag store before lunch? It's like drinking - perfectly understandable if you do it in the evening, but if it's the first thing on your mind when you get out of bed then you've probably got a problem. The exotic dancers at the place next to Big Louie's apparently start at 11am, in case you're interested...

My favorite store sign was the one for what I believe was called the Lions Den establishment just outide Waynesville. It apparently offers a new video arcade, which cannot help but to conjure up images of people tugging themselves off in little cubicles. No-one watches porn unless they plan to "take Captain Picard to warp speed" do they? Can these people really not wait until they get home to rub one out? Or maybe they can't take the porn home in case the missus finds it, in which case this is less of a porn shop and more like a porn library. (Silence please!)

Anyway, this store was almost next door to the Grace Covenant Christian Center, which seems like unfortunate planning on someone's part. Maybe the Lions Den name was an oblique biblical reference, although I don't recall Daniel pulling his pud when he was thrown in with the big cats. What really got my attention was the giant bowling pin eight in front of the Adult Store sign. Maybe there was also a bowling alley nearby, but it just seemed to me like they couldn't quite get planning consent for a huge pink dildo to advertise their store, and consequently had to make do with a bowling pin.

In between the Christian Center and the Porn Warehouse was McDonalds. Now we know they don't site their stores by accident - they pay great attention to traffic patterns; clearly plenty of people frequent the video arcade. Or perhaps they just have an outlet for all the man-mess generated. What's that funny sauce they put on the Fillet O Fish called again?

Copyright © 2009 Edward Bison