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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Amiga remakes database turns 1000!

Yes, because that's how it works in database years; one entry for every anniversary. I'm not sure if this is a testament to the dedication of all the die-hard Amigans out there who wouldn't let it lie, or how disturbed I must be to have obsessively recorded their progeny to this extent.

In any case, the proud (I'm sure) winner of the frenzied scramble to secure this coveted footing in Amiga remake history goes to ClockworkBytes for his remake of Gloom, XGloom.

Gloom - developed by Mark Sibly and released in 1995 - was the first commercial Amiga clone of the first person shooter Doom. According to the author, the revamp will be a cross-platform re-implementation of Gloom's engine, initially using the original Amiga data files, though will in time be fully moddable in 3D.

You can follow the game's development over on the Amiga World forum.

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I Can't Believe It's Not Custard

In case you missed the pick of the day, the latest series of Harry and Paul started last night on BBC 2. While most of it merely plundered and rehashed their back catalogue of old ideas and characters, I thought the Dragons' Den sketch alone was worth tuning in for.

The scene opens with a couple of quivering entrepreneurs attempting to pitch their brainchild; a pudding supplement called 'I Can't Believe It's Not Custard'. The idea is trounced and they're unceremoniously ejected from the Den, only to return dressed as Rastafarians to hawk the same idea (clearly a thinly veiled reference to Levi Roots and his Reggae Reggae Sauce). This time the Dragons can't wait to throw money at 'Me Kwan Believe It Nat Custard', their motivation being to 'out PC' each other by backing a pair of ethnic minority candidates. The deal goes pear-shaped when they're exposed as blacked-up impostors, but that's not the point.

I did think at the time that Levi's sauce wouldn't have got off the starting blocks if he'd been a dull, middle class, white, corporate type with a neat hair cut. Let's face it, the product is no more special than any run-of-the-mill jerk/barbecue sauce; it's essentially Asda's own brand variety delivered by a Bob Marley clone with a large dollop of Caribbean 'soul' ...and a few creepy crawlies if the production line workers all wear dreads!

What's more, it doesn't "put some music in your food" at all. I've seen it slopped onto a pile of chicken and veg and it didn't make so much as a peep. So that's a fib. The claim that the 'secret' recipe for Reggae Reggae Sauce was passed down by Levi's late grandmother has also been disputed... and anyway, it's hardly an enigma when the ingredients are listed in black and white on the jar (as stipulated by Food Standards Agency labelling regulations).

It just goes to show how easily public perception can be swayed by presenting an everyday item as exotic; as a corollary it becomes more alluring, mystical, and ultimately superior to an equivalent home-grown product.

This is apparent in adverts we see in British newspapers for supposedly revolutionary new medical treatments. Emblazoned in bold letters they'll often vociferate, 'developed in the US!!!', as if that somehow lends the technique unmitigated credibility. For balance they should point out that 'My Therapy Buddy (TM)' and George Bush were also 'developed in the US!!!'.

Eastern philosophies are another example. By movies in particular we are led to believe that the more steeped in vague mysticism and spirituality a culture is, the wiser its protagonists must be. Strangely enough if a local nutter cross-leggedly gazes skyward, arms outstretched reciting gobbledegook mantras to summon inner strength and chi equilibrium, he's considered just that.

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