Written Yesterday Evening:

The production of SKUNK Magazine has hit a major problem. On the face of things it shouldn't be a problem at all...but it is...and a major one at that, as I'm rapidly discovering. Everything was going fine. I'd laid out the pages, resized the cartoons, cropped, edited and arranged the articles, designed the cover and, basically, constructed the entire forty-page magazine without a problem. Then I'd had a proof copy printed up...just the one...there wasn't any need for more at this stage...checked it through, checked the quality of printing inside and out (much higher than the usual crappy magazine quality I have to admit) and even bartered the printer down to a price that wouldn't disturb the moths hibernating in my wallet too much. Four weeks of hard but satisfying work. A job well done. Hang up the bunting and crack open the Scotch.
And then the simplest of things happened to bugger everything up.
Fucking staples!
After several attempts with a stapler that Michelle had borrowed from work (a stapler that will now have to remain borrowed as I ended up snapping it in half with sheer determination) I discovered that ordinary staples aren't capable of holding two thin sheets of tracing paper together let alone a magazine of forty quality pages and a glossy card cover.
Industrial strength staples then...in an industrial strength staple gun as opposed to one of those cruddy little office stapler type things that works with a hinge. They're no good. They can't stretch across the pages. So...a decent sized staple gun with good, fat staples and everything would be hunky dory!
Three days ago I was looking at the prices of such things in the local stationers. They ranged from £12.50 to £23.50. Quite expensive but, hey, no expense should be spared in the production of great art.
However...
For some unfathomable reason known only to the stationers on Lord Street...the solitary, single stationers, I should point out, for at least thirty miles of this God forsaken, remedial, stagnant, compost heap of a town...a town so cretinous, so isolated, so pointless in its miserly existence that they can't be arsed having an alternative stationers...for some fucking reason there wasn't a single staple gun in the whole fucking shop! They'd all gone! In the space of twenty-four bastard hours every staple gun, every large staple, every fucking God bollocking damned fucking item that I needed to finish this stupid, stinking, festering, poxy magazine had fucking vanished leaving only those pissy little stapling machines behind that are no fucking use to man nor mouse!
So...bear with me folks. SKUNK Magazine will be available at some point in the future, just as soon as I can find some way of keeping the pages together without having to force the stationer at gun point to hand sew the fucking things!

Written this Morning after a trip to Fleetwood Market.

Have found a cheap staple gun with big fat staples and everything. Trouble is it's no fucking good. In fact every staple gun in the world is no fucking good! Apparently the gun-type of staplers don't actually bend the staples round at the ends to secure the pages like normal staplers because they just tack things to other things! So they shouldn't be called fucking Staplers then, should they!? They should be called fucking Tackers! This is ridiculous! All these months of grinding my bollocks to a pulp over this magazine, for what?!! Just so the manufacturers of bleeding bloody bastard big fucking bollocking buggering bum fucking staple guns can bum fuck and bastard around with their smegging hairy knobsack bastard bollocking knob cheese covered products and ruin my arse cracking bollock of a life!!!!!!!!!!!! (Hic!)

Written This Evening After a little less Whisky:

SKUNK Magazine back on track. Stapler no longer required as the local printers will staple, bind and crop the magazines for us at a little bit extra in cost. See...I told you all to stay calm and not get annoyed by such a minor set-back.

While we breathlessly await the launch of SKUNK, the Deputy Editor directs the attention of the reader to previous publications (each now in their 15th. reprint) by the Editor of the ROTW. Available at all good bookshops whose owners are partial to a spot of bribery and judicious product placement.

  
  

Oh God, it's back! The fourth series of Big Bastard Brother starts tonight and I can only wonder what freaks, pimps and council-estate dwelling cretins that cross-section the arse-end of British society they'll be flinging together for this one. After all, what could possibly top Jade Goody's sophisticated wit, charm, intelligence and virgin-like demureness from the last series?
Last year's 'magic moments', such as Jade's unrelenting tit, arse and front bottom fest, Johnny and Alex's naked groping in the showers and P.J.'s constant chain of spurious gobshite, actually left me convinced that the American television executives had it right with their ludicrous censorship for once.
The gossip is that, in the hopes of jollying along murder, anal penetration and tabloid attention grabbing excesses of inferior indulgences, this season the producers will be combining an eclectic mix of characters (one orthodox Welsh minister, a former member of the Ku Klux Klan, a large, black, Jewish homosexual, three naked lesbians and a bucket of custard, one down syndrome child with a terminal illness and a farmer who fucks chickens to death) with a sub machine gun and fifty bottles of whisky.
Sounds like fun?
You bet! I'll be glued to the screen every night hoping to see a bit of fat nipple, a blow job between two ugly, retarded cockneys or the ghostly imprint of Vanessa Felt's fanny on the kitchen table. With a bit of luck I might even overhear a conversation between three moronic but desperately competing pillocks about their terminally dull sex lives and their somewhat misguided ideas about politics.
Why would I want to, you might ask?
Because I'm thinking of taking an anthropology course at college next summer and this'll make an ideal foundation.

---

Deputy Editor reports on Oz Big Brother. This stuff is really rivetting ... please try to stay awake whilst reading.

Reportage stripped directly from the official OZ BB site ... and believe it or not, NOT edited, enhanced, mocked or embellished. Milton me lad, your parody's lost.

12:20: Pat, Jo, Belinda and Reg talk about the film The Truman Show over the kitchen table. Conversation turns to body types and the girls compare belly buttons and stretchmarks before talking about their breasts.

Belinda admits, "I haven't seen my boobs since I've been here". She considers looking at them under the blankets at night, "Pat will join you' I'm sure" Jo teases. Pat reassures Belinda, "I'm sure their still there".

12:33: After Pat leaves to take a seat in the sun, Belinda, Reg and Jo discuss how he should become a model after leaving the house. "I think all the boys are a bit jealous", Jo says of the attention Pat gets from the girls.

12:58: To compensate the HMs for the disturbance this morning BB has provided a BBQ lunch. While some of the HMs are still getting up the others have congregated in the yard under the warm sun.

Saxon tells Leah and Dan about his dream last night. He imagined he was portrayed as the worst person on Big Brother "but then I woke up and I was like, whew, still here".

13:13: Leah joins the HMs outside. She's still sore at Saxon for waking her up, "Lover's tiff!" jokes Reg. Leah then heads off to the kitchen where she prepares breakfast with Saxon.

Outside Jo sorts out her bikini line.

13:30: In the pool Saxon asks Jo about her magazine article, Jo mentions finding some questions difficult, particularly when they asked about her fantasies. "I don't have any" Jo says. "Is it alright if we make one up for you?" shouts Chrissie.

YES! Please God make something up before the BB audience becomes comatose ... errrrr .... the BB audience IS comatose. (There are some who would have us believe that they watch it out of some sort of perverse academic interest. Yeah, just like the Japanese hunt whales for scientific research!)


Note to Editor (who only watches BB out of a commitment to bringing the reader of the ROTW the latest news on any and every event no matter how worthless.) Is this picture not almost identical to the one of Jade cavorting in the swimming pool in the British BB 3? If so, doesn't this sort of plagiarism undermine the creative integrity and credibility of the Oz BB? My shock and disappointment is palpable.

Editor's note: A remarkably similar image except for two counts. 1) She hasn't got her tits out. 2) She doesn't appear to be in wide-screen.

1) Yes she has ... didn't want to post this picture for fear of being accused of gratuitous fleshicality.
However in the interests of honest reporting I feel I must.


(This however IS gratuitous fleshicality.)

2) Correct. The east coast of Australia is still recovering from Tsunami Jade.

I'm sick and tired of that bastard Ford advert. You know the one...
Shot of moron lounging on couch wearing head phones and listening to loud music.
Voice over: "Hey! Get out more!"
Cut to shot of a group of equally moronic knobheads listening to same loud music but cramped up in a tiny yet expensive car whilst driving pointlessly round a boring city.
It strikes me that at least the bellend in his living room can stretch out his legs and have a drink. And he doesn't have to fork out on insurance or petrol or stuff just to indulge in his passion for shitty pop songs.
The Ford Completely-Out-Of-Focus...trying to sell cars to middle-aged tossers regretting the demise of their youth. "Hey! Get Fucked Morons!"

Troop pre-deployment a success: PM

Prime Minister John Howard has reiterated that pre-deploying troops to the Middle East prior to the war in Iraq proved to be a good idea.

Mr Howard is heading to Townsville this morning to welcome home the 5th Aviation Regiment and an RAAF squadron from Iraq.

He has told commercial radio in Townsville the early deployment played a part in the safety of Australian troops.


Prime Minister welcomes back troops. Not only were there no casualties but more soldiers returned than were sent.

"It's a miracle that you can go through an operation like this and escape any casualties and it's an enormous tribute to their training," he said.

"I think it also means that sending them early was the right decision."

This is one of the rare instances when I am at one with the Miniature Rodent. Sending the Oz troops to Iraq before the trigger happy myopic Amerkins arrived was a gene of strokius.

Oh yes ... a little footnote for a little Prime Minister. The Holy Crusade in Iraq has stopped terrorism dead in its tracks, conclusively proving the link between Iraq and Al Qaeda. Now we can all sleep secure in our beds.

Thanks to George, Tony and John I'm at last able to undertake my backpacking tour of Saudi Arabia without fear for my life.

Scientists working with chimpanzees have reached a startling conclusion. Apparently, so little separates the chimps genetically from human beings that, from now on, they are to be classified in the 'homosapien' genus.
"This does not imply that Julian Clary needs to be reconsidered as a chimp," commented Dr Marilyn Ballcrusher of the American Research Studies Enterprise (A.R.S.E.). "However, the Bush administration are extremely relieved at the news. They can now ignore the countless legal threats from Animal Welfare Activists that they've been receiving. Law suits that claim the administration's treatment of President Bush has been appalling."
"See...I told ya!" responded Robin Cook at a press conference inside the giraffe compound at Knowsley Safari Park this morning, where he's been shovelling shit since he resigned from Tony Blair's closet cabinet. "Nobody was in the wrong putting Dubya in a suit and making him perform like that. My only hope now is that Dubya himself decides to reclassify the Arabs and put them in with the rest of us homosapiens."
Christopher Biggins, former star of 'The Jungle Game' and overweight gay boy, was unavailable for comment as he was rearranging Cliff Richard's bottom with his fist at the time...allegedly.

GARDENERS' CORNER WITH ARTHUR MARROW

It's that time of year again when the annual Royal Horticultural Show at Chelsea is in full bloom (bad joke copyrighted and cliched by Giles Brandreth 1967). And once again the green fingered, brown nosed equivalent of spoilt, inbred, psuedo-intellectual contemporary artists have turned their attention to stainless steel balls and concrete monstrosities. For the last three thousand years the Chelsea Flower Show has been no stranger to controversy, starting in 1067 with William the Conqueror's "Harold's Rotting Head and Limbs" garden mobile and continuing right up to the present day with the ever-popular "Dimmocks tits-like-cannon-balls-in-old-socks patio swing."
But perhaps the most outrageous horticultural display this year came from the Republican Design School of Applied Economics with their "Queen Mum Memorial Tribute" garden, consisting of a large patch of brown earth, one underwatered and slightly manky dandilion symbolically placed in its centre, and one crusty dog turd (Blanchette Granulatum or, to give it its more common name 'one of those crumbly white ones') placed sureptitiously in the corner next to a rotting bin bag.
So, which of this year's eclectic designers caught the queen's eye? Hopefully the one with boat hook.
Next week: "Bollocks to the Monarchy" Say it with crocuses and cat shit.

SADLY THIS IS A TRUE AUSTRALIAN STORY

On Thursday, 24 January 2002, Derek Guille broadcast this story on his afternoon program on ABC radio.

In March, 1999, a man living in Kandos (near Mudgee in NSW) received a bill for his as yet unused gas line stating that he owed $0.00. He ignored it and threw it away. In April he received another bill and threw that one away too. The following month the gas company sent him a very nasty note stating they were going to cancel his gas line if he didn't send them $0.00 by return mail. He called them, talked to them, and they said it was a computer error and they would take care of it.

The following month he decided that it was about time that he tried out the troublesome gas line figuring that if there as usage on the account it would put an end to this ridiculous predicament. However, when he went to use the gas, it had been cut off. He called the gas company who apologised for the computer error once again and said that they would take care of it.

The next day he got a bill for $0.00 stating that payment was now overdue. Assuming that having spoken to them the previous day the latest bill was yet another mistake, so he ignored it, trusting that the company would be as good as their word and sort the problem out. The next month he got a bill for $0.00. This bill also stated that he had 10 days to pay his account or the company would have to take steps to recover the debt.

Finally, giving in, he thought he would beat the company at their own game and mailed them a cheque for $0.00. The computer duly processed this account and returned a statement to the effect that he now owed the gas company nothing at all.

A week later, the manager of the Mudgee branch of the Westpac Banking Corporation called our hapless friend and asked him what he was doing writing cheque for $0.00. After a lengthy explanation the bank manager replied that the $0.00 cheque had caused their cheque processing software to fail. The bank could therefore not process ANY cheques they had received from ANY of their customers that day because the cheque for $0.00 had caused the computer to crash.

The following month the man received a letter from the gas company claiming that his cheque has bounced and that he now owed them $0.00 and unless he sent a cheque by return mail they would take immediate steps to recover the debt.

At this point, the man decided to file a debt harassment claim against the gas company. It took him nearly 2 hours to convince the clerks at the local courthouse that he was not joking. They subsequently assisted him in the drafting of statements which were considered substantive evidence of the aggravation and difficulties he had been forced to endure during this debacle.

The matter was heard in the Magistrate's Court in Mudgee and the utcome was this: The gas company was ordered to:

[1] Immediately rectify their computerised accounts system or show cause, within 10 days, why the matter should not be referred to a higher court for consideration under company Law.
[2] Pay the bank dishonour fees incurred by the man.
[3] Pay the bank dishonour fees incurred by all the Westpac clients whose cheques had been bounced on the day our friend's had been.
[4] Pay the claimant's court costs; and
[5] Pay the claimant a total of $1500 per month for the 5 month period March to July inclusive as compensation for the aggravation they had caused their client to suffer.

Deputy Editor challenges the Editor to top this with one with his British Gas experiences.

Editor's note: There are people out there. Good people! Helping to bring warmth and comfort into the homes of their British customers.
Unfortunately none of them work for British Gas 'cos they're all lying, scheming shits.
Several hundred people across Britain were surprised recently when they received bills for outstanding payment off British Gas. "We don't even get our gas off them," was the general consensus. Apparently they were wrong. They had switched companies to British Gas without even knowing it.
An investigation later revealed that British Gas operatives, in an attempt to swell their commission coffers, had been forging people's signatures and signing them up to the gas giant's expensive and crap utility. Highly illegal stuff...but were British Gas taken to court? No...presumably because too many politicians have their fingers in the British Gas pie. All very sad but true.
Does that beat it, Sedgers?

Beat it?! Point me in the direction of the next available cocked hat.

Bush spokesman Ari Fleischer to resign

US President George W Bush's spokesman Ari Fleischer on Monday announced that he is resigning this summer "after 21 years of doing nothing but government and politics".

"My heart tells me it's time to go," he said.

"This is a wonderful job. I love this job, I love President Bush, I believe deeply in President Bush, policies and the man. But there comes a time in public service when you have to know when it is time to go to pursue other endeavors," Mr Fleischer said.

He notified Mr Bush of his decision on Friday. The president ended the conversation "by kissing me on the head," the spokesman said.

Mr Fleischer said his immediate future plans are to help Mr Bush get re-elected, give speeches, do some writing, and eventually head into the private sector.

The Mohammed Saeed al-Sahaf, Fleischer and Goebbels Consultancy will be hanging out its shingle early in 2004. "The Japanese Whale Research and Sushi Bar Institute", "The Harp Seal Baseball Bat Corporation", "The Amazon Basin Clear Felling and Woodchip Company", "The Tony Blair Fan Club" and "The Royal Society of Fox Hunters and Chinless Wonders" have already signed up with MSaSFGC.


No charitable, humanitarian or benevolent organisation refused ... 3 chairs no waiting.

I've been studying slugs. Everybody needs a hobby. I've noticed there are two distinct types.
Firstly there's the common old garden slug, which is small in stature, generally black or dark brown, has two horns on its head and resembles one of those horrible black liquorice all sorts that's been left overnight in a glass of hot water. These annoying but generally harmless gastropods nibble my hostas and shrivel up when placed beneath a magnifying glass.
The second type is the house slug. These creatures are large and look like turds. They are light brown in colour with bright orange saddles and pointed teeth. They eat cheese and biscuits late at night as well as the common garden slugs should any of them stray into my kitchen. Some house slugs grow up to fifteen feet in length and can swallow the kitchen sink in one bite.
Last night I crept downstairs in my dressing gown with a torch and watched four of them feasting on a horse that had got itself wedged in the overflow pipe from my sink. It was a ghastly sight but a fascinating one to witness. Fortunately, none of them knew I was there. But I was. Oh yes I was. Hiding behind the vacuum cleaner with my blunderbuss, waiting patiently in the shadows, biding my time, listening to the dull thuds and wheezes of my heart as it moved about the living room...watching their movements intently, the gentle heave of their bosoms in the night, the aroma of muslin mixed with slug sweat.
Then suddenly, movement!
The shred of cupboard doors!
The crash of pots and pans and cutlery!
The screams of terror as five slimy hatchlings fresh from this season's clutch felt the might of two steaming cartridges slamming into their foreheads!
There will be drinking in the anti-slug headquarters tonight. And there will be tears down at the police station where the inhuman cadavers, shapeless and oozing, are even now being reeled in on dripping stretchers.

Somebody, who won't be named, has taken over my computer.
Somebody, who won't be named, has banished me to inane Sunday television and studying the garden in the rain with a mug of coffee and a damp cigarette.
Somebody, who won't be named, should have researched and written her archaeology thesis, due on Thursday, weeks ago.
Somebody, who won't be named, has prevented me from writing the most heartfelt blog today about Palestinian Suicide Bombers and Morroco Al Qeada Terrorists and the BBC's Top 100 Favourite Book Awards.
Somebody, who won't be named, has a lot of research to go yet.
Somebody, who won't be named, is frowning over my shoulder and looking very impatiently down my right ear.
Somebody, who won't be named, is about to pull the telephone connection from the back of