Hands up for the Lord

It seems I may have misjudged the gravitas of this curious ritual. Ever since my breaking revelation others have been harnessing its power for all manner of purposes.

Here we see last night's The Apprentice ejectee, Joy, summoning the strength to have her voice heard over the melee of squabbling toddlers at the 'design a beach accessory' conference.

Was she communicating with god, or a more potent deity? Lord Sugar perhaps? We may never know. If only she'd had a spare 12 years to dedicate to the gesture she may not have been fired.

Being buried underground in a Chilean mine for 69 days wasn't going to stop Yonni Barrios following our surface-dwelling zeitgeists either.

He was finally rescued yesterday, but may well wish he hadn't been seeing as the affair he'd been having with his mistress for several years came to light during his captivity.

If anyone needs some help of the ethereal variety it will be Yonni when his wife gets hold of him.

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I said you could go to the bathroom 12 years ago

This just goes to prove that spiritualism isn't big or clever just because it doesn't make sense to you. Funny how this is becoming a running theme.

The guy to your left was featured on episode 2 of 'An Idiot Abroad', Karl Pilkington's Wonders of the World travelogue of sorts now showing on Sky 1.

That's not a deformed arm he appears to be making some kind of freedom fighter gesture with. I expect it was perfectly normally when he decided to hold it aloft, and KEEP IT THERE FOR TWELVE YEARS!!! TWELVE!!!

I'm sure my arm would begin to look a bit withered and frail too if the blood had failed to circulate around it properly for so long.

What's the point???

Oh yes, nearly forgot. When Karl asked the translator, "Can you explain the reason why he's decided to do this?", he replied on Deranged Loon's behalf, "He has chosen this as a part of his way of communicating, and his way of reaching to the god".

Never has the old metaphor of religion as mental illness been more apt.

I'm sure Ganesha, Shiva, Vishnu - or whoever floats this guy's boat - will be delighted with his achievements.

On reflection, it's not exactly the Sistine Chapel though is it?

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Something for all the family

If you've ever been sitting at home at a loose end wishing there was still one last bastion of animal cruelty sport left to enjoy in America, and cursing the foundation of PETA and all those pesky laws relating to humanitarian standards of basic decency, this one's for you.

There's no need to traipse all the way over to Spain to witness a camp clown in a silly hat winding up a bull; it turns out you can get your fix in Yellville, Arkansas. The town's entertainment pièce de résistance is its annual 'Turkey Trot' which involves flying live turkeys 1000 feet into the sky and ejecting them over a throng of baying festival goers.

Seeing as turkeys aren't the most aerially adept birds to begin with - and having had their wings clipped won't help - unsurprisingly many of them splatter on the ground, dying instantly. The unlucky ones survive to endure a fate worse than death; being harangued by a bunch of slaw-jawed hillbillies who get their jollies from stamping the living daylights out of their broken bodies.

According to the wholesome, clinically sanitised web site Arkansas Kids nothing remotely like this goes on any more *nudge, nudge, wink, wink* and the official Yellville community page fails to mention it at all. Such a relief to know the authorities clamped down on that barbaric, third-world practice.

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