Ads

This is clever --------------------------------------->

Ads by Google analyses these words and conjures up adverts that are relevant to the text.
If you click on any of the fast food experiment posts it brings up KFC ads and franchise opportunities in the UK.

However, it suffers from Ask Jeeves-itus, relating products for unknown or at least obscure reasons.
For example, it associates loyalists with car insurance, which is odd. They haven't used car bombs for ages. Perhaps it's the joyriding.

England

England 4 - 0 Northern Ireland

Did you know that Tina Turner is associated with the UDA?
Her song, "Simply The Best" has been adopted as an unofficial anthem for the paramilitary organisation. If you find yourself in a pub in Northern Ireland (or a pub elsewhere with a lot of Northern Irish within) and this song is played and enthusiastically welcomed, it is likely that you will be surrounded by loyalists.

If the men are bulked by steroids, sport poorly needled patriotic tattoos, and there's an unsettling suspicion they may be aggressive predatory closet homosexuals, then they are definitely loyalists.

Circuses

Wild beasts, acrobats, strongmen, dancing girls, music troupes, comedy, tragedy. No, not the circus, but a modern day pro NBA game.

Well, to be accurate the basketball game was more of an obtrusion to the two and a half hour variety show laid on for our entertainment. The Atlanta Hawks appeared embarrassed to be there, even before the match had started: a humiliating video of the team singing along to The Black Eyes Peas "Let's Get Things Started" was just one part of the opening festivities, which also included Spirit The Hawk, a REAL BLOODY EAGLE flying around inside the Phillips Arena, a massive firework shooting drumming band and turns from not one but two mascots: Harry the breakdancing hawk and Skyhawk the trampoline-bouncing acrobat (acro-hawk?). Gunnersaurus Rex should hang his useless fuzzy head in shame. And then there's the Atlanta Hawks Dance Team... awesome. I lost count of the amount of costume changes they went through. Almost as good as the Junior Hammerettes.

Anyway... back to the sport. There was no hooter to announce play had started, and the crowd expressed little interest that their team was playing. The action mainly consisted of the teams taking turns shooting and defending, the flow of play rhythmically switching from end to end approximately every 30 seconds or so. Occasionally there would be a lazy whoop or holler if someone pulled off a slam dunk, but the constant drip feed of points seemed to lend itself to settling comfortably into your padded chair, munching on your tray of nachos, supping on your 24 ounce beaker of Bud Light and belching "Go Hawks!" at inappropriate moments. The loudest outpouring of emotion from the crowd comes from the loss or gain of the lead, but at a volume only fractionally louder than that of an elaborate score. The "aww" of disappointment is only expressed at the loss of a well established lead. When comparing it to football there is the complete absence of the explosive orgasmic joy of a great goal or the head grasping near misses that automatically bring you and the rest of the crowd to your feet. But I suspect that in basketball there aren't the dire 0-0 games between mid-table malingerers that supply the dark troughs that accompany the giddy peaks of football. Perhaps that's the trade-off a sport makes for providing the equivalent of a high calorie diet: lots of points mean an easily consumed, comfortably predictable unsurprising event, as opposed to the unpredictable opportunist diet of the hunter gatherer footie fan. Hmm. Quite a laboured food/sport analogy there. Sorry.

There is a man, however, who does his best to engage the crowd with the action. He has a keyboard and pounds out ominous sounding discordant notes when the opposition are on the offence, and uplifting sing-a-longa-riffs from everyone's favourite pop songs when the Hawks are on the attack. He is accompanied by a VJ who displays fitting images, video clips and slogans in an attempt to get the crowd to chant along. It works when the opposition are taking penalty shots- he'll shout "Scream!" and clips of Neve Campbell and Drew Barrymore getting chased by that ghost will play, or he shout "Thundersticks!" and clips of Godzilla will encourage the crowd to beat their inflatable tubes together.

But all this is coincidental: there are three breaks between the quarters and each team has up to six timeouts to use, so there are potentially 15 intervals that need to be filled with entertainment, gawddammit! There are quiz shows, blind date games, more acrobats, mascots running around with t-shirt firing bazookas, dancing competitions and much more. During one timeout, Harry the breakdancing hawk repeatedly challenged one of the linesmen (or whatever the basketballing homologue is) to a dance-off. Mr. Linesman appeared to be having none of it, but cheekily stirred the pudding pot when Harry wasn't looking. After much pantomimic prompting from the crowd, Harry eventually caught Mr. Linesman at it. He shrugged his shoulders and bizarrely started an MC Hammer freak out, cumulating in him ripping his shirt off and caterpillar-flopping off the court! I was sure he was a stooge, but there he was officiating when play resumed. Crazy... you'd never see Paul Durkin topless and spinning on his tits. Nor would you want to.
These sketches often ran on for far too long, with all kinds of shenanigans going on after the hooter had gone and the players were back on the court, reinforcing the idea the game is merely coincidental to the show.

The best piece of filler were the sporting gaffes- these were You've Been Framed style home video clips of people hurting themselves while participating in some form of activity. The universal human desire to laugh at someone falling over was accentuated by the universal expression of stupidity: Homer Simpson's "Doh!" was played every time someone was smacked in the face. It worked so well: the entire area was in stitches laughing, myself included.

In fact, this experience of mainstream America presented so much of a common bond between my fellow human beings that I felt compelled to return. Twice. I think that speaks for itself.

Grits

Grits are a slightly lumpy paste suspended in cheap vegetable oil.

Don't eat them. They ming.

Popeyes

The second fast food experiment: Popeyes

Here you get the standard Southern Fried Chicken fayre, but Popeyes (no apostrophe) gives it a Cajun twist. Options include:
Blackened catfish (catfish seems to be a southern staple)
Southern fried southern fries (not even the Glaswegian chippies have tried battering chips, have they?)
Biscuit (imagine a scone without raisins fried)

I had the special: 6 Southern Fried king shrimp, biscuit, fries and drink. The lady behind the counter forgot my order and added a cinnamon apple pie. The biscuit, as you might expect, was nearly inedible, and the apple pie was coated in so much brown sugar that it sucked all moisture from mouth and lips before a bite could be taken.

In conclusion, Popeyes is marginally better than what was tried at McDonald's, but better in the way a black eye is better than a broken nose.


However, Popeyes scores extra points for the grandstand view of the melodrama played out in the parking lot: drug dealers attempting-to-be-subtle-but-appearing-more-than-conspicuous; the convoy taking this man to City Hall East; and the pimp beating his crack whore in the parking lot.
Crack whores... toothless, bruise and scab covered, missing hair and breasts... what kind of punter is daft enough to endanger their health with these skin-wrapped disease blobs? No doubt the same punter that eats McGriddles regularly. Have they no regard for their lives?

Homeless

The homeless congregate around public libraries in the morning in Atlanta, awaiting entry upon opening. These are the long bearded, unbarbered homeless that emit a wretch inducing acidic stench and leave greasy stains on furniture. They play internet pool and Flash role playing games all day, giving keyboards and mouses a lustrous sheen of human sebaceous secretions.

Atlanta libraries stink. I have no idea what the solution is, but these libraries are the least inviting public buildings in the city.

McGriddle

Emperor Augustus managed to keep the people of Rome happy by adopting the strategy of "bread and circuses", i.e. enough food and entertainment to keep them happy. In these days of the American empire, and in the pseudo-intellectual spirit of adventurism, I decided to investigate the modern-day equivalent of Roman bread within the ubiquitous symbol of imperial dominance: McDonald's. Not any McDonald's, oh no- McDonald's in the land from which it spawned.

This morning, some unfamiliar on the menu caught my eye: the McGriddle. The novelty of experiencing the unknown could not be suppressed, so $2.85 was forked out, the hash brown set aside and the bundle eagerly unwrapped.

It was intimidating. The greaseproof paper had been defeated by the volume of grease in this baby and had become translucent. Not only could fat be wrung out of the bread, there were dark foreign objects within its matrix, which upon further investigation turned out to be little globules of maple syrup. The egg was like no egg I have ever seen: it had the appearance of a oleaginous floppy styrofoam sheet folded twice over into a perfect square. A familiar cheese slice and sausage patty finished off what was essentially the ingredients of an entire Big Breakfast (including pancakes) assembled into the handy approximation of a burger. In a final flourish, the stack was branded top and bottom with the McDonald's "M"-blem, just to make sure you had no doubt who concieved this chimera.

Initially, it was not unpleasant tasting, as it hits all the spots that grease, meat and carbohydrate naturally strike within the hungry. But by the second or third bite you begin to realise that this is really not good for you: the syrup globules explode like heart-attack inducing bombs when chomped; the liquid fat condenses within the mouth, depositing an unpleasant paste upon the tongue. It's hard to believe that something sold as food can leave you feeling so ill once consumed; it feels like the more you eat the sooner you will die.

Conclusion: don't eat this. It's for poor people who don't know this kind of food will kill them. Yuk.



Watch out for the upcoming update on "Circuses", featuring the worst team in the NBA: the Atlanta Hawks- fresh from a 12 game losing streak. Go Hawks!

Guantanamo

Harry Wong, United States Customs Officer and Defender of Homeland Security: I salute you!

When your underling refused to accept that anyone would voluntarily travel to Atlanta for the purpose of vacationing, he scanned fingerprints and sent me packing; not in an orange boiler suit, but with all my documents in a bright orange folder. He may as well have clapped me in irons and commenced flogging in front of the herds of law-abiding legal visitors. The walk of shame ended at the Category Orange Clearance Centre where officer Wong proceeded to interrogate. He was well trained, repeating the answer to every question with his slow southern drawl, a raised eyebrow and a sirely suffix. Finally, he began rubber-stamping furiously upon documents, paused for dramatic effect and said:

...

"Welcome to the United States of America"

BANG! Passport stamped and returned.


God bless America, and all who believe they live in a cop show!

Gatwick Airport

There is a shower in the North Terminal, near the check-in desks in Zone A.
It is clean and hot, and useful after a long delay.

Belfast City Airport

Someone at the bookstore has a brave sense of humour: "Sinn Fein: 100 Turbulent Years" is filed under 'True Crime'

Slasher

The slasher is a tool used primarily for clearing briars and the rough pruning of hedges. When swung by a right-hander, it is guided and accelerated by the right hand, which should be holding the shaft around its mid-point. It pivots at the wrist of the left hand, which should be holding the base of the shaft. This action is sufficient to clear medium density vegetation.

When vegetation is light, the right hand can release the shaft when maximally extended, allowing the slasher to pivot at the left shoulder. This allows the blade to swing in a greater arc, producing a wider swathe. This method is can only be employed in light vegetation that allows the slasher to be returned to the right hand with a flick of the left wrist; if vegetation is too heavy, the blade will become caught up and will require extraction with both hands, which is not energy efficient.

When dealing with heavy vegetation, the right hand is slid down the shaft after the initial guidance and acceleration. Both hands are at the bottom of the shaft, and both wrists used to accelerate the blade further. The upper torso is also twisted to contribute extra force. The net result is similar to a baseball player swinging hit bat in an attempt to hit a home run. This method is tiring yet satisfying.

Warning! If slasher users have spent the previous 5 years leading a sedentary existence, say, sitting down in front of a computer, they may notice stiffness and pain in the multifidus muscle the following day.

It will hurt a lot.

Testing

Length of time for aptitude testing a Staff Officer for the Northern Ireland Civil Service: 6 hours.
Length of time for aptitude testing a Crime Scene Investigator for the Police Service of Northern Ireland Support Team: 28 minutes.

The conservative (small c) leaning within me is puzzled: people responsible for evidence collection for prosecution are tested for one twelfth of the length of time of a person responsible for bureaucracy. Staff Officers must make very important decisions. More important than trivial matters such as justice and liberty.

Some interesting figures (than need verification, to be honest): of the 600,000 workers in "tha pravince", 200,000 of them are employed by the government. One third of all working people are involved in the operation of a non-functioning legistature. Is it part of a scheme for full employment?