Humour

I had a decidedly weird experience on Wednesday night, involving a conversation on the night bus that made me wonder if people are a bit too quick to judge one another. With the possible exception of juries in armed robbery cases.

I was coming home after a gig on Wednesday evening, it was about quarter past midnight and I was sat on the top deck of the 344. I was minding my own business, with my iPhone set to shuffle. A bluegrass song happened to come on, something that I probably hadn't listened to in years. Just as I was remembering how much I liked the style, and was contemplating listening to the whole album, a gaggle of tipsy revellers jogged up the stairs and one sat next to me. This made me a little uncomfortable for two reasons: firstly, the bus was practically empty so why share seats? Second, he sat right on my coat, pinning me so I couldn't move.

Somewhat uncharacteristically for me, I decided to draw attention to it. I took out my headphones and turned to the guy, "Sorry, mate, you're, um, on my coat."

He looked at me blankly for a few seconds, before a woman who I can only assume was a friend of his appeared, leaning on the seat in front.

"You're on his coat", she said, pointing and shooing the poor bloke, who still seemed dumbfounded. When he finally realised, moved and offered an apology, his accent suggested English wasn't necessarily his main language.

I was just about to put my headphones back in, when the woman - whose name I later found out was Helen - suddenly became very interested in my music collection.

"Oooh, what are you listening to? Can I have a listen?"

I couldn't see any harm, so I agreed to Helen's little social experiment and offered my left headphone.

"What's this? I like it." She said, bopping her head.

"Its a bluegrass band."

"Very catchy."

Helen then engaged in a strange a cappella imitation of a banjo, before offering a pearl of wisdom.

"I'm going to take a guess about you. Are you very religious?"

"Not in the slightest." Was my honest reply. Helen seemed more than a little surprised by this. But I began to think about all the coincidences that had led her to this assumption. I was coming back from a gig where I portrayed an office worker, and was thus dressed in a manner akin to a Bible salesman. I just happened to be listening to music stereotypical of a certain part of the southern US big on conservative christian values. And I happened to have my coat sat on by her friend while she was in earshot. All these things came together at exactly the right time to make her first impression of me entirely fake.

Makes me wonder about first impressions. Should we trust them? For all I know, Helen might be pretty quiet and non-judgemental when she's sober.

Just when you thought you had enough time to catch your plane, another terrorist nutjob has a go and ruins it for the rest of us.

You've probably heard about the Christmas Day underwear bomber, whose aborted revealed another dangerous weapon in the terrorist arsenal: homemade pants.

We complained about having to remove our shoes for security checks after another famous failed attack, but imagine how long the queues at security will be when you have to remove your boxers for inspection. Not to mention the additional questioning:

"Did you pack your bags yourself, sir?"
"Did anyone ask you to carry anything, sir?"
"Is that an improvised explosive device in your pocket or are you just pleased to see me?"

But undergarment humour aside, this does seem to leave us in an unfortunate vicious cycle. Another failed bombing every few years and hastily designed restrictions are put in place. Leaving us in an even longer security queue, and mentally accusing the guy sat next to us of being a terrorist based on ever flimsier generalisations. Blissfully unaware that he thinks you're a potential bomber too. 

However, we might be spared from airing our dirty laundry in public due to the arrival of full body scanners. Through the magic of electromagnetic waves, these devices can take a picture through a person's clothes.

Upside: we won't need to take off any clothes
Downside: a complete stranger sees what your privates would look like painted blue.

The demonstration photo from the BBC is less than flattering:

I get the feeling this won't so much discourage a future toupee bomber, as it will encourage travellers to stick to their January diet.

Sadly, there is now little use arguing with growing airport restrictions, as most people are resigned to the belief that we're marginally safer with them in place. Particularly as flying is now the only means of getting between some parts of the world.

Which makes me wonder if there isn't a vast conspiracy. Everything has been building to this point, with full-body scanning technology putting self-esteem and body image at an all time low. Maybe the entire war on terror was engineered by a coalition formed by the makers of Alli, and spammers selling penis enlargement drugs.

If you'll excuse me, I'm off to the gym.

With Silly Season in full swing, the big lighter-side story of the last few days (narrowly beating an item on penguin couture) has been the revelation that a man who starred in a Swine Flu prevention campaign has now himself got Swine Flu.

We should probably take this as indication that Swine Flu is now well and truly not scary anymore. Were it still a threat to the human race, this ironic twist would be a tragedy, rather than an excuse to come up with amusing pun headlines. Although once we've stopped chuckling over the guy's interpretation of the word "catch" to mean "contract", we might be slightly less inclined to trust Government warnings.

Take food scares. I can't recall any food item that hasn't had some scare levied against it, and I sincerely doubt that a recent recommendation to get tough on ham sandwiches will convince anyone to change their child's diet. This being akin to the boy who cried wolf...who then claimed that the vast majority of the townspeople's favourite foods would attract further wolves.

My current favourite piece of Government nagging has to be the new drug-driving campaign (they're against it, I checked). In a new multi-million pound ad, a group of youngsters in a car are nabbed by the police as a result of their massive frigging eyes. At first glance, this might seem to condone profiling based on genetic mutation, but as it turns out, pupil dilation is apparently a dead giveaway that you've been taking illicit substances.

There has been much criticism of this campaign, based on fears that it might be taking funds away from technological investment to improve roadside drug testing - which, being based on pupil dilation, currently suffer from false positives near bright lights. However, I foresee a more damaging side effect. A nation of children will sit, hypnotised by the TV and think "If I take drugs, I'll turn into Manga...WOW!"

Soon an entire generation will degenerate into a mass of addicts, hooked on a cocktail of amphetamines, hallucinogens and Pocky. British civilisation will fall to its knees, followed the revelation that the actor featured in the drug-driving campaign has several drug-driving convictions to his name. The Government will be forced to resign amidst a storm of mild irony and we will descent into anarchy! Or maybe we'll just stop watching Japanese cartoons. I still shudder when I hear Mungo Jerry's In the Summertime.

The summer is officially here: days are as long as they're going to get, we're in the grip of an unprecedented heatwave (unprecedented as in "first one this year"), and people who normally couldn't care less about tennis are watching it avidly just because it happens to be going on in South West London.

It seems as if everything that happens over this fortnight is somehow related to Wimbledon. This morning's headlines were all of the form "Centre court roasts at 41 degrees!", as if the weather were somehow localised to a patch of grass 78 feet by 27 feet. I guess it is something we can relate to, the headline: "Dave's flat roasts at 41 degrees" probably wouldn't sell quite so many papers, except possibly to Dave's family and friends.

Of course, it wouldn't be such a big deal to everyone if there wasn't someone to support avidly in a fury of national pride we would otherwise be denied in a year when there's no international football tournament. And this year, we have a contender who fulfils both the criteria of having a chance of maybe actually winning, and who can be called British so the pubs have something to play on their expensive plasma TVs - although if he loses, he'll be back to being Scottish, so its win-win for us Sassenach.

As with any sport, I've been somewhat excluded from office banter (I was convinced that "Murray Mound" was some kind of innuendo) and after the recent Grand Prix debacle, I was determined to at least have something to say about the tennis. So in between cooking and dealing with household paperwork, I tuned into Murray's fourth-round match...and suddenly realised I had no idea what the score was, nor who was winning. Rather than hop over to wikipedia to quickly learn the rules of the game so I could figure out what the heck was going on, I tried to judge what was going on based solely on the cheering of the crowd. I think Murray won, but I'm not sure.

So, my valiant attempt to get "into" a sporting event thwarted, I resigned myself to another week without much to talk about in the office. I eagerly await next week, when banter can return to the latest political scandal, and how fantastic the new Mitchell and Webb series is (it is fabulous, by the way).

The weekend before last, I went along to the Rubber Chicken Club and managed to get an open mic spot. Had a great time, the other acts were great and the audience was fantastic, plus they were taking video: 

I hereby issue a challenge to the internets! See how many jokes you can tell in one minute. My current best is 28.

The rules:

• Use any jokes you wish (but keep it clean!), they don't even have to be good.
• Aim for a minute, but don't worry if you overrun a second or two.
• Reply to the above video with your best shot
• Winner gets respect

Happy joke-telling!

This little piggy went to market,
This little piggy stayed home,
This little piggy is sneezing,
He's got Swine Flu! We're all going to die! Quick, run for the hills, not those hills, the other hills! Agh! Its the end of civilisation as we know it!

This is the scenario that the media would have us believe is happening all over the world. A few cases of a new-ish strain of flu, and all of a sudden, words like "pandemic", "armageddon" and..."Mexico" are being thrown about with gay abandon. It seems as if every news outlet is dominated with tales of the most recent outbreaks, despite the worldwide death toll allegedly hovering around 100 - less than the annual rate of golfing umbrella accidents.

This media hysteria, which I will call "Swine Flu Fever", has somehow managed to avoid causing panic and mass rioting. Most of the people I know have been completely unphased by the growing number of cases worldwide - we survived Bird Flu, SARS and Fat Duck virus, so we feel mildly impervious to such things. Besides, Swine Flu is a perfect excuse to drag out all the worst pig puns with a completely new context: "I phoned NHS Direct, and all I got was crackling". Finally, I personally am unable to hear "H1N1" without thinking "You sunk my battleship!".

So why have the news media latched onto this situation like a Jack Russell clamping onto your unmentionables? There is of course the old adage that "Bad New Sells", but the Credit Crunch has provided plenty of bad news over the last 18 months, so there seems to be little reason to move onto something new and untested. There, however, is the possibility that the health correspondants have been getting jealous of Robert Peston and wanted a shot at the limelight.

I do have another theory, one that may shed light on a conspiracy bigger than Armstrong overexposing the Moon Landing photos on the way home and having to re-shoot everything after they got back like an episode of a predictable sitcom. The fear of Swine Flu is being blown out of proportion as a joint venture between the sellers of surgical masks and the Associated Press, their dastardly hope being that they can scare everyone into staying at home with their mouths covered, ensuring that surgical masks become an essential consumable...and journalists can get a seat on the tube in the morning.

Today is the traditional feast day of St. George, patron saint of England, but for some reason, I haven't been invited to any St. George's day parties, pub outings or given a humourously oversized promotional hat. So the question has to be asked, why isn't today as big a deal as certain other saint's days?

Maybe its just the overload of English days this time of year. We've only just recovered from the Queen's birthday, and suddenly we have to celebrate both a saint's day and Shakespeare's birthday. Its just too much.

National Pride, or a Lack Thereof

Perhaps this is an issue of national pride Maybe we don't think we need it. England was firmly in control of most of the world for a long time, until we decided resolutely that running most of the world from one of its smaller nations was a bit of a pain in the arse and gave it all back. The other constituent (and ex-constituent) countries of the United Kingdom have their reasons for disliking the English...and want to prove to the world that they're different through the medium of drinking and parades. The English have gone from being bullying rulers to "just one of the guys", and we would perhaps rather keep our heads down in case someone brings up the subject of Imperialism.

Then again, the sheer amount of white and red facepaint at football matches makes that theory fall flat. So the reason quite possibly lies with the saint himself.

That Whole Dragon Thing

Mention St. George to anyone, and the first thing they think of is probably the dragon myth. He could have been remembered for standing up to an Emperor, and being martyred for refusing to renounce his faith, but no. Instead he will forever be the bloke that stabbed a lizard.

On the face of it, the story isn't even that impressive. Animal nests in spring, villagers get thirsty, soldier kills animal, soldier gets laid. Its only because the animal in question was a dragon that anyone actually cares, dragons are horrid, slimy, angry things. He wouldn't be quite so well respected had it been a beaver damming the spring. And regardless of the species, killing wildlife isn't that nice a thing to do. A friend of mine overfed his pet iguana once, and he didn't get canonised for it.

Amusingly enough, some learned people like to point out that ol' Georgie didn't actually kill a dragon. Well, to those people I will say, we're well aware of this fact, as dragons don't exist, Sherlock! They're mythological!

Being too Patronising

St George is something of a jack of all trades when it comes to patronising things. He is patron saint of no less than 20 other nations, including a few we don't particularly get along with. Not only that, but he also saw fit to add his support to both leprosy and herpes, as well as certain other unnamed skin conditions. No wonder we can't get excited about the guy, he is both tremendously non-commital and has somewhat poor taste.

Contrast this with St Patrick, responsible for half the business of the green food colouring producing industry. Paddy was far more focused in his patronness, covering only 3 countries, 3 cities and the hatred of snakes. A bit like Samuel L. Jackson.

Of course, there is the counter-example is St David, who's patronisation list is a mere four items long. Two of these are vegetarians and poets, which doesn't really put across the image of a proud warrior. But the one country he was given will support him to the end, probably because they seem to be under the impression that George's alleged dragon-slaying antics are a thinly-veiled allegory for killing Welshmen.

Scotland as a whole has a reputation for disliking the English, so the credentials of their saint probably have little weight. Although he is the saint of Army Rangers, so probably has something of a mean streak.

Any Excuse for a Party

When it boils down to it, today is a special day. A day with a name. A celebratory day. It doesn't matter what it represents. So this evening I shall raise a glass, and say happy herpes day!

We all know the tricks that supermarkets use to get us to buy stuff - pumping the bakery smells into the air conditioning, putting basic items really far apart, or somehow making a 1% discount seem like a massive saving. And we all know how to protect yourself from their evil machinations: don't go shopping hungry, go to the back first, wear a condom.

But despite all this, I got schooled in consumerism today. I went into the supermarket with a simple goal: buy a can of deodorant and some stamps. Instead, I left with a carrier bag full to bursting point, with such unnecessary items as:

• Apples
• Some Mikado
• A frozen pizza
• Soap
• Two cans of deodorant
• And no stamps

So not only had I been conned into purchasing a full 5 items more than I intended, I also spectacularly failed at purchasing one of the items I specifically planned on getting.

I hang my head in shame, a casualty of the relentless march of consumerism and retail homogeneity. Although on the plus side, the pizza and Mikado (apparently British Pocky) were delicious, and I returned home armed with the knowledge that the checkouts in Sainsbury's don't carry stamps, and some Nectar points.

The man behind me, on the other hand, knew exactly what he was buying: 8 packs of white bread rolls and a bottle of soy sauce. I had to assume he had other things at home, otherwise he'd be making the saddest sandwiches in history. Although they'd probably be quite flavoursome...it was dark soy sauce.

From CollegeHumour.com taking a brief layover at Laughing Squid, comes this fantastic satire of internet culture.

Aside from blatantly spending waaay too much time on Digg, these guys seem to be putting out better and better videos of late. I applaud you, oh proud sopohmoric comedians!