Ragtag Giggagon

  The label says it all. You don't just eat em. They look a little bit like reconstituted vomit, right? That's a clever marketing trick. But you don't just eat em, because they also make you feel a bit sick, and they go through your system and cause spasms along the way. Then you wake up the next day and you have a hangover and you weren't even drinking. As with any powerful recreational substances, if you're trying them for the first time, always eat your addictive chips with other trusted people present so that you can be observed and monitored while having a fun night in! Also, your friends can eat some of the chips. Don't be greedy - they are addictive. So don't be greedy.

I got into a Twitter spat with a chap who is more into the organised religion than myself. A Muslim writer colleague ( Yusuf Toropov ) said that he would be praying for a mutual writer ( Paul Kater ) scheduled to undergo a big but routine operation requiring general anaesthetic. (Routine for the medical establishment, but perhaps a first for Paul.) I told Yusuf to have his seance on his own time. His response - "In our circles, in our circles..." - jokingly suggested the beginnings of necromantic shenanigans. I was holding my cat when the tweet came in. I responded in a similar jocular fashion, maintaining my intolerant, know-it-all secular, atheistic stance as I slowly typed back my reply one-handed. But then the cat looked at me to get my attention, and cleared his little throat and declared: "But the Prophet loves you, peace be upon him."   I wasn't that alarmed at the time. In fact, I've been filled with nothing but love in the few days since the ev

Are you one of these negative cynics who scoffs when people talk about the "Miracle of Life"? Well, take a look at all of the pips produced by one small satsuma orange I ate.  Then THINK ABOUT HOW PISSED OFF I WAS!

Did you know? In days of yore, Mothering Sunday - celebrated today in certain parts of the world - was often followed by Smothering Monday. Mothers are of course the fabric of society, the "social anchors" of any community. But until the seventeenth century, mothers who had raised all of their surviving babies to at least their teenage years were regarded as a burden and strain on the village.  These women had served their purpose, so their "just-reareds" (as their teens were called) would feign respect for their mothers with a Mother's Day celebration.  The following morning, however, the teens would either drown these "social anchors" - who were dragging the rest of the village down, through their burdensome infirmities - in the nearby river, or suffocate them at home. Mother's Day was regarded as a celebration in the same way that the fattening of the turkey is at Christmas, or the lamb at Easter. Hundreds of thousands of mothers died in this fa