Madness: you've either got it, or you haven't

There is a good-natured-looking crazy fella in Venezuela, according to a chap called Hutton (link here).

He's not got a patch on Carlotta the Mad, wife of an Emperor of Mexico. She was firmly in your full-baked category of nut jobs: spent days talking to a life-sized doll dressed in imperial robes and when her house caught fire, leaned out of the window (ok, sensible) shouting, "That is forbidden! That is forbidden!" at the flames (mad).

Nuns as batty as thought

A batty nun.

I am a menace

Weeks ago, in thrall to an “efficiency”, I bought a return ticket from Paris to Somewhere in Rural France to see Hughes the Elder. Leaving the house to catch the plane for Paris, I left the tickets on my bedside table. Arriving in Paris Gare de Lyon, I bought a second ticket to Somewhere in Rural France. Buying a return ticket would assure me of having a ticket for the return leg. I bought a single.

I surfed the internet (a fantastic device, they say it will be a big thing) and e-bought the e-return. I will pick it up at the station when I go home. After a lovely week of fine wine, strong cheese and odd dreams, Hughes the Elder drives me to Gare du Somewhere in Rural France.

There’s a diversion and we park a few minutes’ walk from the station. The diversion is a red herring which steals valuable moments. We arrive. I collect my ticket. Do I have my reservation number? Of course not. We argue. I don’t speak French and Hughes the Elder’s hearing is poor. I buy another ticket (this is the third I have bought for the same journey). I miss the train. I panic. We think. I get annoyed. I buy a ticket from a station 200 kms away.

We must drive quickly. Allez-vites, allez-vites. We are in the car. We are lost. We are found. We are going the wrong way. We are going the right way. We are where we started. We’ve lost half an hour. We must go quickly. We need a pee. We stop, pee and continue. My spirits have lifted. I am no longer angry. The gods smile on us. The journey is fast, the conversation engaging. We bond. We arrive. Will we find the station?

We do, miraculously quickly. I have my ticket. We joke about missing the train. The train is late. It arrives. I say my goodbyes and headbutt a girl walking in the opposite direction. My eyes water; she is bruised and affronted.

The train door won’t open. I try another. Hughes the Elder worries. No problem at all! I laugh and wave affably. My eyes are streaming and my nose throbs. I board the train and find a seat.

Two and a half hours later, I arrive in Paris. An hour to cross town and I arrive at Paris Orly airport with time to spare. I drop my mp3 player down a toilet.

Nuns not as batty as thought

Vindication at last for generations of nuns ridiculed into silence for their unscientific and, during the 70s at least, downright unpatriotic belief that looking at lewd pictures makes a boy go blind.

Champion

Although the idea of a Brand Champion, Company Values Champion or Quality Champion makes me want to vomit into my shoes, "Champion", alone, unqualified and unspecified, would make an excellent job title.

"Hi, Bob Hughes, Champion, pleased to meet you."

"So what are you a champion of, Bob?"

"Oh, you know, stuff."

whut up sugar-girl?

Dang pimp done stole my moves

Well grow me a mullet and call me Max!

Two perspectives on oil running out.

According to the sobre analysis of this rational, every-day Joe who is most certainly not a nut job, fruitcake, swivel-eyed loony or crackpot of any sort, civilisation as we know it will come to an end. Soon.

Not a loony

But according to a crack team of responsible, grey-suited, disinterested analysts who have never visited La-La Land, it´s all fine, nothing to worry about, blue skies, stick another SUV on the barbie. These folks are most certainly not gouging leeches or spittle-flecked madmen. Neither are they senile.

Never visited La-La Land

Who to believe?

Easy come, easy go

The president of Thai Airways, Kanok Abhiradee, must have been cock-a-hoop when he heard, on August 5th, that he had been awarded the 2005 World Airline Leadership Award by SkyTrax Research, which conducts surveys among airline passengers. According to the company's website, the awards are "the most recognised and respected mark of quality approval for the airline and airport industries".

(scroll to bottom left)

Mr Abhiradee had only five days to celebrate before his boss suspended him for "a crisis of huge losses" as reported by the FT. Life at the top certainly is topsy-turvy.

Perhaps, though, the answer lies in a closer look at SkyTrax's website.  

Scroll down the page and, below the black and blue image of last year's excellence awards plaque, there is a link to click on. The link is called, "Award Plague". Pity next year's winner.

Political correctness gone mad

First our right to shoot burglars went the way of the dinosaurs. Now those guilt-ridden middle class hand-wringers are after our right to have a pop at mindless maniacs hurtling about the skies in helicopters, interrupting lord knows how many afternoon naps.

This have-a-go hero has been arrested! Probably a war veteran. I've no doubt the acned youths dressed up as policemen desrved a cuff round the ear with a saucepan.

Now tell me it's not a slippery slope.

Innuendo and the law of diminishing returns

Don't get me wrong, I'm as fond as the next man of easing a well-judged innuendo into a natural opening, but surely Sky has brought the art into disrepute with this blunderbuss offering.

stroke here if you are aroused,

18th earl of Pembroke in dancing dwarf romp...possibly.

He's tall, he's handsome, he's worth a mountain of money, he's not a complete twat. But I bet he nevers gets black-bearded midgets dancing for him. Not without paying for them, which he probably does, in his cellar. The seedy lowlife.