Category: that’s a bit mad

PistoriusBalls 16

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Ah yes. We return, following a month or more of psychological assessment for the defendant. And the first and most important order of business is, of course, that psychological report… Right after we’ve dealt with the Pistorious family’s scent choices, that is:

 
It’s like some sort of twisted reunion:


And we’ve missed your insane ramblings too, Charl. Almost as much as we’ve missed Barry “Oscar gives me followers” Bateman and his incisive and detailed commentary:


Not everyone in the class can concentrate that hard and that long though.
There’s always that one class clown, isn’t there, ruining things for everyone else?


It’s your own time you’re wasting, Phillip. *teacher sighs*
Why can’t you be more attentive, like David?


Was this ring binder the blue file? Why didn’t Bateman tell us about the highlighting? What colour was the pen? What model is the iPhone?

Find out all this and more, tomorrow, in the next thrilling installment of PistoriusBalls!

New recipe idea

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This via @Dr_Rousseau.

Slow Cooker Giant African Land Snails

Sounds delicious. As they say here in SA “local is lekker” and we see plenty of these ingredients snails around the cottage, as you might have seen from my flickr stream:

The link provided above doesn’t actually take you through to the recipe (that’s actually here), but rather to the charming story of someone following the recipe. The twist in the tale comes as our protagonist used to own an African Giant Land Snail as a pet and it takes her a fair amount of sherry to overcome her reticence to… er… “begin” the creative process.

Go, be brave, hold the contents of your stomach and learn the ins and outs of cooking big molluscs.

BREAKING: FIFA announce Suarez ban

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NOTE: There’s a more serious take on the calls for a lifetime ban for Suarez here.

But first, read my scoop on FIFA’s report on the Luis Suarez incident:

In an effort to limit the damage done to the otherwise shining reputation of football, FIFA instructed its Disciplinary Committee to move fast in considering and announcing the punishment to be given to Uruguay striker Luis Suarez after the apparent biting incident in the game against Italy on Tuesday.
This order seems to have come from the very top, where Sepp Blatter took time out of his busy schedule to begin throwing stones in his predominantly windowed mansion overlooking Rio de Janeiro to hurry things along. Unsurprisingly, given the gravity of the situation, the outrage across social media worldwide and the necessity to be seen to be doing… well… something, it appears that the footballing body has come down hard on Mr Suarez.

Herewith the important bits of their statement.

We have reviewed the video footage of the latter stages of the Uruguay versus Italy game on Tuesday in Natal, specifically the apparent bite by Uruguay’s Luis Suarez on the left shoulder of Italy’s Giorgio Chiellini. In considering any disciplinary action (and the severity of that action), we have taken several factors into account, these being:

  • The injury suffered by Mr Chiellini and the effect on his future ability to play football.
  • The damage this causes to the image of football worldwide.
  • The baying for blood of the ‘pitchfork mafia’ lynch mob on twitter and uninformed people in the USA generally.
  • The fact that once, in the 1994 World Cup, we banned an Italian player for 8 whole games after he deliberately smashed an opponent in the face with his elbow, breaking his nose, leaving him concussed and meaning that he lost over a pint of blood on the pitch; a punishment which gives precedent and a benchmark to this committee’s decision.

We would like to make the following points regarding this incident:

  • Firstly, this was a wholly unjustified, unwarranted and heinous act. There can be no excuses for biting an opponent during a game of football. I know it’s fairly commonplace in rugby, but this isn’t egg-chasing, is it?
  • Secondly, due to this incident, Mr Chiellini’s career is at an end. He will never be able to play football agai… what?… he did? Oh, apparently, he was able to get back up and play on immediately, but surely only once he’d mopped up all the blood off his shir… sorry? …no blood? oh… right.
    Anyway, the mental scars and the slight, rosy dimples on his shoulder will possibly haunt him forever. At least he can get them treated promptly and locally as he arrives back home in Italy with the rest of their squad later today.
  • Thirdly, we’ve had loads of correspondence from well-informed fans around the world, on Twitter and then on Facebook when they caught up with the news today, telling us that we must ban Mr Suarez from football for a season, two seasons, two years, and/or forever. We’ve also had a lot of people telling us that Qatar is a really stupid place to hold the 2022 World Cup, but we chose not to listen to them.

Herewith the sanctions imposed by the Disciplinary Committee:

THESE SANCTIONS ARE BROUGHT TO YOU BY THE TOURISM BUREAU OF QATAR.
“Qatar: it’s a great place to be. (Unless you’re a migrant worker trapped in a poorly-paying,
dangerous job and your passport has been taken by your employer.)”

  • Luis Suarez will be banned foreverever. And ever. Seriaas. He will never be allowed to play football again in any professional capacity. Or any unprofessional capacity. Neva, baas! It’s over!
    Nothing less than this will placate the baying hordes, and we need to placate them so that they continue to supply us with viewership and advertising revenue.

But wait… there’s more.

  • Luis Suarez will also not be allowed to watch any football and must wear a blindfold whenever he finds himself in any situation where he might reasonably expect to see a football. Except while driving.
    No. Wait. Even while driving. All the time. All of it.
  • Luis Suarez’s family (including, but not limited to his mother, father, wife, sons, daughters, in-laws, uncles, aunties, cousins, second cousins, neighbours, real friends, facebook friends, plumbers, doctors, the sales assistant in Next in Liverpool who sold him that jumper, gardener and the air conditioning maintenance engineers who worked on his house during or before the time he purchased the property) will also be banned from playing football and – just in case – tennis and possibly golf, as well.
  • Luis Suarez’s cat to be declawed.
  • Anyone with the initials “LS” will also be banned from playing football. We have also received several requests from England fans to extend this ban to anyone with the initials “WR”, too. We are happy to do this.
  • Finally, the Uruguayan Football Association must pay for immediate dental work on their entire squad, so that they no longer pose an oral threat to opposition players. This work must be carried out before the 2-0 defeat that Mr Chen has arranged against Colombia on Saturday.

We believe that these sanctions, though harsh, are completely reasonable, especially when put into context. After all, we gave Zinedine Zidane a three game ban for his 2006 headbutt, Nigel De Jong got a whole yellow card for his chest-high, studs-up, karate-style lunge at Xabi Alonso in the 2010 final and we did absolutely fuck all about Diego Maradona’s 1986 ‘hand of god’ goal.

So a lifetime ban for everyone and everything seems completely reasonable here. It’ll make us ever so popular, too.
And it’ll take the heat off (LOLZ, no pun intended) that dodgy Qatar decision for a while.

That concludes this press conference. Sorry, we don’t have time for any awkward questions.

Handball!

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I’m actually not sure that you could rightfully give this as handball, since it was less a case of “hand to ball”, as it was “437 grammes of Brazuka rocket to unfortunate teammates right hand”.

Wrist go wibbly-wobbly.

Dammit Mike! Get out the way, man! Grr. Jesus, Mike. That was SO going in.

Credits:
Shot by Ogenyi Onazi.
Stunt wrist kindly donated by Michael Babatunde.
Medical services provided by FIFA and the Nigerian Football Association.

UK animal theft stats released

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Animal theft stats have been released for the United Kingdom and GetSurrey.co.uk’s synopsis of them may contain one of the best lines ever when it comes to describing the range and scale of animal theft in the UK. But first, let me take… you through the Surrey stats:

More than 110 animals, including fish, horses, birds and dogs, were stolen in Surrey last year. According to figures released under the Freedom of Information Act, there were 118 reports of stolen animals to Surrey Police.
In Surrey, the reported thefts included one sheep, nine fish, 23 birds, 16 horses and 32 dogs.

If you’re struggling to visualise that information, worry not, because getsurrey.co.uk have provided a helpful graph to assist you. And looking at that sort of service, I think that we can all agree that here, we are soaring amongst the majestic eagles of local journalism.
118 animal thefts adds up to around one every three days (I hope this is clear as I haven’t provided a graph), but as getsurrey.co.uk then go on to point out, the figures nationwide vary dramatically, with Surrey somewhere in the middle:

The figures for Surrey are much higher than some areas – such as the City of London with only one reported dog theft – and considerably lower than other forces in the UK, with 30,593 animal thefts in Edinburgh…

So that’s an average of… wait… what? Thirty thousand, five hundred and ninety-three?!?!?

 …although 30,000 of those were bees.

Right. Even if that seems a remarkably round number in terms of apian thievery. Does this result from one single theft of 30,000 bees, or (for example) thirty separate instances of 1,000? It could, I suppose, even be 30,000 individual bee burglaries, although this does seem somewhat unlikely. Maybe the police should mount a sting operation. Maybe I should be on stage.

Maybe not.

Anyway, with the bees taken out of the equation, it seems that Edinburgh is only about four times worse to live in than Surrey, rather than the two hundred and fifty-nine times that we’d all previously calculated. Unless you’re a bee of course. Then it’s pretty much kidnap central and should be avoided at all costs.

I’d like to report 30,000 very small cases of theft, please Officer.

Now, I’m not belittling the theft of bees, but if we’re going down the route of including bees in animal theft stats, then what of ants and worms and other small things you thought wouldn’t usually be (no pun intended) considered as “animals” when it came to “animal theft”.

Hive (pun intended) really no idea who thought that this was a good idea. Surely now we’re not far from taking bacteria into account as well? And that certainly won’t make it any better for the Ancient Capital of Scotland, because in microbiological circles, Edinburgh is already notoriously recognised as a hot bed of Petri dish pilferage as well.