A Boss Sets An Example To His Staff

Today's Guardian front page:




















But wait! Who's got the prime front page byline, reporting from Washington DC on this historic occasion?





















Hats off to Alan Rusbridger, the editor of The Guardian, here exemplifying the mantra of the successful boss: "Never ask your staff to do something you wouldn't be prepared to do yourself."

Fruit

Who invented the names of fruit? I have often wondered.

I imagine there was a Fruit Naming Board. And here I am, imagining it...

INT. FRUIT NAMING BOARD - DAY

BOSS:
Right, what have we got next?

LACKEY:
There's this one, Clive. This round, orange thing.

BOSS:
Skin's a bit tough.

LACKEY:
Yeah, you peel it off. And if you squeeze it, I reckon you could sell the juice in tiny bottles in pubs for a fortune.

BOSS:
Right. So it's round, and it's orange... I think a name suggests itself. We'll call it ... a round.

LACKEY:
Won't that cause confusion in pubs, Clive?

BOSS:
All right, an orange, then. What's next?

LACKEY:
Bit of bad news on the grape front.

BOSS:
What?

LACKEY:
Swindon's already claimed it for those little round ones that come in bunches.

BOSS:
Ah, bollocks! All right, we'll call it a yellow.

LACKEY:Clive, you can't just name fruits after their colour all the time. Besides, I think Swindon's got first dibs on that for the long curved thing they found.

BOSS:
Oh, this is just stupid. I know! I know the very thing that will stop the confusion. We'll call ours a grape-fruit.

LACKEY:
What? To distinguish it from the other sort of grape that's also a fruit?

BOSS:
Ian, who's the boss here? Next?

LACKEY:
We've got this peach. It's sweet as nectar, but, and here's the thing, it's got smooth skin.

BOSS:
What? It's got no fur and it's sweet as nectar, Ian? Nectar, Ian... Hmm, I know! An alo-peach-ia!

I bet that's exactly how it happened.

Perpetual Motion Invention

I think I may have accidentally invented a perpetual motion machine.

I was testing the veracity of various rules of Sod's Law, specifically the contentions that cats always land on their feet and that toast always lands buttered side down.

Experiment to test Sod's First and Second Laws of Motion

1 Take a slice of buttered toast.

2 Take a cat (male or female).

3 Strap the toast, buttered side up, to the back of the cat.

4 Drop the cat from a two-metre height.

The opposing Sod's Law forces suspended the cat and toast one metre from the ground in perpetual rotation.

Now, all I have to do is find a way of harnessing the energy created and I'm quids in. I suspect after they read this, Exxon, BP and Shell will be getting into the cat and toast market. This may push the price of thick-sliced bread and cat food up a bit, but you can't have everything.

Lettuce Spray

Who actually likes lettuce? Who sees lettuce on their plate and thinks, "Ooh, lettuce! ... I'm saving that till last?"

Or "Ooh, I just fancy a bit of lettuce. I haven't had any lettuce for ages?"

Or "I used to love the way my mum did lettuce ... on a plate, on its own. Cold?"

Lettuce is just there to make you feel better when you go to McDonald's. That's all it's for. To make you think you're having a balanced diet. "I'm balancing a quarter-pound of beef, processed cheese, bacon, ketchup and mayonnaise with a bit of lettuce. And a slice of gherkin."

Robert Mugabe is a despot responsible directly and indirectly for the deaths of thousands of people. He balances that with the ability to make a nice cup of tea. That's the sort of balance we're talking about here.

Did you know McDonald's invented the chicken nugget? Well, they also invented lettuce, back in 1956. Look it up on Wikipedia, it's true. You find any book from before then and you'll find no mention of lettuce. After 1956, it's another story.

It's not always tasteless, though. That's because the boffins were sitting in their lab one day, scoffing some smokey bacon crisps, and one of them thought, "I know - flavoured lettuce."

So they tried lots of different flavours - prawn cocktail, Worcestershire sauce, pickled onion... And what did they pick in the end? Earwax.

Dark And Lovely

Do you know, Graham Bandage's Lovely World is so lovely that he seldom manages to post here these days. Personally, I think he's letting down the blogosphere.

But today, he has been stung into action. And here he is, acting. And speaking of himself in the third person, unable to think of a good way to shift into the first person. He'll probably have to talk about himself for the entire post.

Bandage had occasion to buy a newspaper in WH Smith's. "Would you like a bag?" asked the nice lady behind the till.

"No," said Bandage. "I'll be all right."

"Yeah," said the lady, "Save a tree."

Can anybody explain where the flip one can find a plastic bag tree? Bandage thought he saw one once in Greenbank Park, but all that had happened was a discarded plastic bag had been blown up there by a gust of wind. Perhaps the lady in WH Smith's had had a similar experience, but had failed to investigate. We will never know.

On the subject of trees, can anybody tell Bandage what the worst tree is? The answer is below*.

Tree bark, that's nice. And brown. A friend of a friend contends that brown is a horrible colour, but Bandage thinks he's wrong. Lots of nice things are brown. Just because poo is brown, it doesn't mean that brown is bad.

A List of Nice Things That Are Brown

1. Tree bark


2. Onion gravy


3. Chocolate


4. Conkers


5. Hair (some varieties)


6. A polished bookcase


7. Beyonce Knowles.

Bandage dares say he could come up with many more examples, but they'd probably be much of a muchness.

* Purgatory

Animal Cruelty

"How much is that doggy in the window?/The one with the waggily tail?"

What sort of pet shop puts a dog in the window? The logistics of such an action chill me to the bone.

I bet they put a cat next to it. And a mouse next to that. They probably think, "Ooh, it'll be just like a cartoon."

No, it'll be a bloodbath. Irresponsible idiots. How dare they? I mean, how bloody dare they? They shouldn't be glamorized in song, they should be strung up. Monsters.

I know it's an old song, but it's only just occurred to me.

Goodness me, it's nice to be back.

Browned Off

Gordon Brown must feel a little bit like the lady in this clip from the film Airplane.