E, ba gum, Charles!

While attending the Pope's funeral, and no doubt grumbling over the inconvenience of having had to move his own wedding and miss the Grand National because of it, His Royal Prince Charlesness chanced to shake hands with Zimbabwe's crazed psychopathic evil dictator Dr. Robert Mugabe.

HRH's press sec immediately issued a statement that Mugabe caught the Prince by surprise. I might venture to suggest that it does not speak well for the Prince's mental agility, that when proffered the hand of a brutal butcher the Prince immediately returned the handshake instead of immediately decking the bastard. For crying out loud, Charles, he's a lot older than you are. I bet your dad would have taken him out in spite of his age, or failing that said something really nasty about him. Boy, that would have shown him.

OBTW: Just how did Mugabe get to the Vatican anyway? HE'S BANNED FROM ENTERING THE EUROPEAN UNION. All right, so technically Vatican City is a separate state and not part of the EU....

BUT ROME AIRPORT IS PART OF THE EU, SO HOW DID HE GET TO THE BLEEDIN' VATICAN IN THE FIRST PLACE? GAH!

Whoever you vote for the Government gets in

Oh, joy. Another General Election. On 5 April our beloved Prime Minister Tony Blah announced that the Election would take place on 5 May.

Still, say what you will, the British system does have one advantage: the campaigns are nice and short. Apart from some speculative canvassing over the past few months, the electioneering will occupy a period of precisely 4 weeks and 2 days, and then we can get back to our favourite pastime of spending the next five years complaining about whichever party we happen to sweep into power.

Compare and contrast this with the American system, where it seems that the second half of every President's term is spent preparing for the next Election instead of doing something more worthwhile, like looking for a new country to fight a war for freedom in.

Incidentally, I'm reminded of the apocryphal (oh, look it up) story of a Chinese politician who asked his British counterpart if it was true that the British only hold their genital erection every five years.

So much for satire....

In the news: Prince Charles delays his wedding to Camilla Parker-Bowles by one day, in order to attend the funeral of Pope John Paul II.

"Hello, I'm a widower who's marrying a divorcee and my mater's the head of a Protestant church, and I'm here to pay my last respects to the Holy Father."

Is there anybody out there???

Cross-posted from the Pygmalion Syndrome's What's New page...

Put up the new 5th Anniversary logo in preparation for the actual event at the end of May.Well, I call it an event, but from all the feedback I get around here it could well be the non-event of the season, if not the century.

Nobody ever seems to write to me these days. Was it something I said? There’s an e-mail link on on every page. I realise that everybody’s busy and people tend to neglect e-mail. I’ve been guilty of that myself sometimes. All I’m saying is, it would be kinda nice to have a little recognition for half a decade of effort.

Here’s a suggestion. If anyone is actually reading this, please read some of my stories - even just one of them - if you haven’t already done so, and then write and tell me what you think of it. Or view some of the works of art in the site's Art Gallery section and tell me what you think of them. Or write and tell me what you think of my logos, or my page layout, or my fonts, or the weather in your home town. Just to let me know I’m not just pissing in the wind here. Otherwise I may end up celebrating the Anniversary by banging my head against the desk all day. (And no, that will not be webcast. Nor will me pissing in the wind.)

Let's We Forget. Sorry...Lest We Forget.

Some important historical anniversaries on this day:

1794: Sir Thomas McKenzie of Dundee is reported to have remarked: “By gad, sirrah, ’tis perishing cold for a spring day.” Shortly after making this observation Sir Thomas is said to have died of pneumonia, thereby achieving posthumous vindication. It is not known whether the kilt was a contributing factor in his demise.

1867: William Blatsford of Wolverhampton successfully patented his steam-powered windmill and hat-making machine. Sadly no examples are believed to have survived.

1896: Charles Wallace of Leeds demonstrated what he claimed to be the world’s first perpetual motion bicycle. Sadly this claim was never verified, because after riding off on his machine Wallace never came back. This has however been regarded by some as proof in itself.

PS Don't fail to forget to put all clocks forward by 1/27th of a second today to correct for the precession of the Equinoxes.