The Befouled Weakly News
15 November 2009 My goodness! Doesn’t autumn arrive in a frighteningly surprising hurry? Almost all of this week we’ve had autumnal fog and mist accompanied by damp, dismal, drearily drab drizzle. Now that the clocks have returned to their normal state, driving through the dark and dreariness at the end of the day is certainly depressing. Friday evening we drove ourselves through the pouring rain and howling gales to Nick and Lucy’s to wish her a Happy Birthday for Saturday. They were having some friends over to initiate what Lucy kept referring to as “her birthday weekend” – great plan if you can get away with it. So, Penelope made a cake and we arrived clutching our birthday gift – the Beatles Rock Band. It seems that Lucy is a fan of the original version of the game but not particularly enamoured with the available music. So, our inside source had suggested that this might be an appropriately appreciated offering. I’d like to say that my previous guitar-playing experience and skill gave me a distinct advantage in playing this game however that would be somewhat at odds with the truth. Fortunately, this version does not appear to “boo” you off stage to judge by the pitiful results Pen and I achieved. Nick, Lucy and their friends Boz and Huw, who were also present, achieved scores in the stratosphere while Ms Playchute and I struggled to get out of the dressing room. Oh well. The big news this week came to us via a video conversation with Adam in China yesterday. He and Sugar were married on Tuesday! The tale he told us of the Chinese bureaucracy required to secure a matrimonial match between a Chinese subject and a foreigner was wonderfully amusing but I’m afraid I haven’t got the space in this week’s edition to relate it all. However, they were two days in securing the necessary paperwork from the “Registrar for Foreign Weddings” which involved several trips between Sugar’s home village, the town where the Foreign Wedding Registrar office is located and Guilin, the town in which the wedding was to take place (each of which is about an hour and a half’s bus ride from each other). While they were waiting to get all the necessary marriage paperwork completed, however, they also had an opportunity to visit the “Permission to Have Children Office.” After jumping through the requisite hoops, you will all no doubt be relieved and delighted to learn that they have been given permission to have not one but TWO children! (Apparently, there are elaborate rules which determine whether you can produce one or two offspring; if both partners are single children, they can have two; if either partner is from one of China’s ethnic minorities, they can have two children. Interestingly, neither of those rules apply unless, as a foreigner, Adam is considered a minority. We think it’s simply because they want to improve the gene pool with a selection of UK/US genes). I am thinking of suggesting that the government here establish a similar chain of Permission to Have Children Offices. Just think – it would eliminate unwanted teenage pregnancies at a stroke. Heck, if you haven’t got permission.... So, our heartiest congratulations to the happy couple. Of course, there is still the Family Wedding part to come (this was just the civil ceremony, i.e., the equivalent of a Registry Office wedding in the UK). They’ve not yet decided when that will be but, as you can imagine, it might mean we have to go to China again – won’t that be a drag! Apart from all that, the other “big” news this weekend was yesterday’s weather forecast which provided the shockingly depressing news that we would be swept away on a tide of floods and hurricane-force gales on Saturday. So much so that the forecast itself made front page news. Yesterday’s Guardian provides the detail:
The BBC’s equivalent is here which also contains a video clip of Saturday’s weather forecast. My goodness! Does it get any more exciting than this. Having said all that, as we awoke on Saturday morning expecting to find untold devastation all around us, the weather was grey and dreary to be sure but, at the same time, dry. To be fair, the wind was pretty brisk but one can’t help wondering whether this was a case of the weather forecasters attempting to protect their reputations once again? And now, on Sunday morning it is clear, bright and the trees outside the windows would suggest that there is a light breeze. Oh well, more or less what we have come to expect. Nick sent us a link to an Anagram generator earlier in the week. What does one do with an anagram generator? Put one’s name(s) into it, of course, to see what wacky combinations can be generated. I am sure that you will be delighted to know that Gregory Stragnell can be manipulated to become: Strangler Leg Orgy, Strangle Egg Lorry, or even Gangly Leg Terrors. The sequences it generated for Penelope Stragnell were even more apt, almost spookily spot-on: Palest Green Pollen, General Pollen Pest or, perhaps most revealing, Repellant Legs Open! You can anagram your own names here. Finally, the following was on the BBC site in the middle of the week. Not surprisingly, I thought it was a great idea:
I’ve been a great believer in pissing in the garden for years. Love to you all, Greg In a terrible accident at a railroad crossing, a train smashed into a car and pushed it nearly four hundred yards down the track. Though no one was killed, the driver took the train company to court. At the trial, the engineer insisted that he had given the driver ample warning by waving his lantern back and forth for nearly a minute. He even stood and convincingly demonstrated how he'd done it. The court believed his story, and the suit was dismissed. "Congratulations," the lawyer said to the engineer when it was over. "You did superbly under cross-examination." "Thanks," he said, "but he sure had me worried." "How's that?" the lawyer asked. "I was afraid he was going to ask if the damned lantern was lit!" There was an elderly southern widow who lived in a large mansion. She was feeling generous when it came to Thanksgiving, so she called up the local military base, and asked to speak with the lieutenant. "Please send up four nice young men to eat dinner here on Thanksgiving, but please, don't send any Jews. Please, no Jews." The lieutenant replied, "No problem ma'am, and I am sure I speak for the army when I say we all appreciate your kindness." Well, Thanksgiving rolled around, and the widow went to answer the door when it rang. She was surprised to see four of the darkest skinned men boys that anyone had ever seen, especially in the South. "But... But... There must be some mistake," she stammered. One of them replied, "No ma'am, Lieutenant Goldstein doesn't make mistakes." A circus owner runs an ad for a lion tamer and two young people show up. One is a good looking lad in his mid-twenties and the other is a gorgeous blonde about the same age. The circus owner tells them, "I'm not going to sugar coat it. This is one ferocious lion. He ate my last tamer so you guys better be good or you're history. Here's your equipment; chair, whip and a gun. Who wants to try out first?" The girl says, "I'll go first." She walks past the chair, the whip and the gun and steps right into the lion's cage. The lion starts to snarl and pant and begins to charge her. About half way there, she throws open her coat revealing her beautiful naked body. The lion stops dead in his tracks, sheepishly crawls up to her and starts licking her ankles. He continues to lick her calves, kisses them and rests his head at her feet. The circus owner's mouth is on the floor. He says, "I've never seen a display like that in my life." He then turns to the young man and asks, "Can you top that?" The young man replies. "No problem, just get that lion out of the way.
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