Category Archives: United Kingdom

Ask Jack

November 9, 2008 David Gerard 5 Comments

I’m thinking of buying a netbook as a second machine for net access and mobile broadband. Should I get one with XP or can I run Linux and not worry about what’s “under the bonnet”?
M Shuttleworth

Linux-based netbooks have apparently friendly front ends, but are very demanding if you go any deeper. Linux is like the Mooncup: a nice idea, but messy and not for the squeamish. In fact, Linux can be likened to a Mooncup-using redhaired hippie girlfriend who lives in a house in the country she built herself from twigs and has very strong ideas on how everything should be and has all her original body hair. The sex is fantastic, but only if she thinks the astrological conditions are perfect. And the house has a hand-dug latrine, so she’s propped a toilet bowl on top and thinks that’s “user friendliness.”

No, no. You would far prefer Windows. That’s like a nice normal bottle-blonde girlfriend who has a proper office job and dresses cleanly from Primark and has a sweet smile and lives in a proper bedsit and knows everyone and how to act normally and is accepted in society. She gets headaches a lot and fits of rage where she smashes everything and there’s an odd smell of decaying human flesh coming from the drains and the toilet backs up every now and then filling the entire block with sewage and bits of bodies, but this is entirely normal and nothing to worry about.

My four-year-old PowerBook G4 is putting itself into sleep mode and refusing to wake up. It gives a very unfriendly beep and a black screen when it is turned on. Taking out and replacing the memory will eventually bring it to life.
S Jobs

This is a known fault in the Macintosh line, where the keyboards were dipped in vats of herpes virus before being shipped. Mac OS X is well known to induce symptoms similar to tertiary syphilis in long-term users — ask anyone with Mac-using friends. The G4 has an old PowerPC chip, and is obsolete because Apple has long since moved to Intel chips. So at least you can run a proper operating system like Vista on the new ones.

I have a PC bought from Dell, a proper computer company, and am running Microsoft™ Windows™ Vista™ Service Pack 1. It’s the best operating system ever in the entire universe and I can do anything those annoying Mac users and Linux nerds can. And Windows 7™ will be even better! I don’t have a problem, I just wanted to tell you this to piss off those annoying anti-Microsoft trolls who keep commenting on your Guardian column.
J Schofield

This is an excellent start to a perfect computing experience. Make sure you have only genuine Microsoft software on the system, and don’t ever use Firefox in case your penis shrinks — Internet Explorer 8 guarantees you will get many useful email offers for a greatly increased penis with incredible sperm production capability. Also, Google will invade your privacy and put pictures of you masturbating on Google StreetView, so only use Windows Live Search. Happy surfing!

Entertainment, United Kingdom

“Sex on the job” policeman blames video games, TV

November 7, 2008 David Gerard Leave a comment

MANCHESTER, San Andreas, Friday (NNN) — Police constable Gary Bayldon, 48, who admitted having sex with one woman while on duty and propositioning another after she had been arrested, blamed the influence of the Grand Theft Auto video game series and the BBC TV show Life On Mars for corrupting his mind.

Bayldon had a poster of Gene Hunt from Life On Mars on his locker and was known for preferring to drive his patrol car using a video controller, while telling those protesting “you so much as belch out of line and I’ll have your scrotum on a barbed wire plate.” His habit of calling himself “Claude,” ramming other cars and shouting “SCORE!” every time he hit a pedestrian also worried fellow officers.

Bayldon met one of the women after arresting her in a domestic incident involving her boyfriend at her home in October 2005. “She was as nervous as a very small nun at a penguin shoot,” said a fellow officer. “It never did click that wasn’t a way to meet a good girlfriend.”

“Despite being corrupted by the evils of the popular media, you as a police officer have very considerable power and the respect of the community you serve in,” Judge Charles Tilling said, passing sentence. “Your use of cheat codes and hacks is an abuse of that trust.”

“You’re not the one who’s going to have to knit himself a new arsehole after twenty-five years of aggressive male love in prison,” said Bayldon.

Politics, United Kingdom

People “can’t wait for ID cards”

November 6, 2008 David Gerard Leave a comment

THE MEMORY HOLE, Whitehall, Thursday (NNN) — Home Secretary Jacqui Smith has hailed spectacular, record-breaking public demand for identity cards and will allow people to pre-register within the next few months.

“I regularly have people coming up to me and saying they have nothing to hide and want me personally to have every detail of their lives and pressing ten-pound notes into my hands for their very own precious pink and blue card,” she said, taking another hit of her salvia bong.

The first biometric cards are being issued this month to foreigners who can be forced into it. They will be issued to young people on a voluntary basis from 2010, per every teenager’s dream of having their every movement tracked.

People applying for cards and passports from 2012 will have to provide fingerprints, photographs and a signature, which Ms Smith believes will create a market worth about £200m a year by the “mended windows” theory of economics. “It takes money that was being wasted on food and rent and puts it into circulation for the betterment of the whole economy, particularly our dear friends at EDS Capita Goatse.”

The Home Office is talking to retailers and the Post Office about setting up booths to gather biometric data. “We’re sure everyone would be happy with having their fingerprints taken at Tesco when they get their shopping.”

In her speech, Ms Smith rejected claims handing enrolment over to private firms would compromise security. “We’re introducing new certification authorities and so forth, which will mean that masses of data never leaves our offices and the BNP never gets a database of every immigrant in the country or anything like that.”

Defence, United Kingdom

Defence minister refutes claims of inadequate equipment in Afghanistan

November 2, 2008 David Gerard Leave a comment

DEPARTMENT OF PUBLIC-PRIVATE PARTNERSHIP, Whitehall.co.uk, Saturday (NNN) — Defence and equipment minister Quentin Bailey has said he is “horrified” by accusations the government has been “cavalier” with soldiers’ lives by not giving them proper equipment.

“I recently visited Afghanistan,” said Mr Davies, “and 100 per cent of those selected to speak to me said they were now satisfied with their equipment.”

Recent advances include the new EDS Capita Goatse Stinger™ Kill-O-Tron™ Personal Missile, a simple yet effective device consisting of a sharpened point, a long thin shaft and stabilisers at the back. “We use only ‘green’ renewable power for the device, which is propelled using energy from the operator.”

The new “Flintstone” Land Rover, driven by sticking one’s boots through the floor and running, is current standard equipment. The canvas canopy has been especially strengthened for Afghan conditions.

The Ministry has also recently unveiled its new close-combat weapon, the Personal Lithic Projectile, for dispatch at the enemy on a direct hand-to-hand level with comprehensive individual control and discretion. Similar wooden projectiles are also available.

“The notion that the Ministry of Defence is indifferent to the need to get the right kit into the theatre is a travesty of reality. Next you’ll be suggesting that we provide whatever rubbish our PFI suppliers want to sell in the hope of a juicy consultancy after 2010.

“To show our bona fides, we shall be sending Jonathan Ross and Russell Brand over for an entertainment tour. The Satanic Sluts declined, for some reason. Please don’t feel you have to send them back, of course.”

Health, United Kingdom

Pregnant women encouraged to drink up this month

October 31, 2008 David Gerard 2 Comments

2ND FLOOR, 25 Gordon Street, Friday (NNN) — Researchers from University College, London have found that light drinking during pregnancy does no harm to the baby. This contradict NHS advice in recent years that expectant mothers who look at a glass of wine will have a child with two heads, no head, extra arms or a tail or who risks sleeping with Russell Brand.

“It has to be the good stuff,” said Dr Yvonne Kelly. “Merlot does well. A real ale child will be a beardy geek, though with a shorter beard if a girl. Vodka and smoke machines induce Georgina Baillie. Carling causes what we used to call ‘foetal alcohol syndrome’ but is actually just perfectly normal blithering stupidity and ugliness. Dom Perignon will produce an obnoxious braying lackwit and may explain Otis Ferry.”

Pregnant women across the land told the researchers to shut up and get out the bloody way as they bloody needed a drink bloody now and waddled off to the pub.

The Department of Health still maintains that avoiding alcohol altogether is the safest option during pregnancy. “We firmly believe that the female of the species should be assumed to be far too foolish to sensibly moderate its own behaviour,” said Sir Liam Donaldson, “and anyway, our arses are covered if we can blame the patient.”

Newspaper proprietors were most pleased to be able to run even more pictures of large breasts on apparently serious news stories, as long as there was a large belly in there too. Or not, if they couldn’t find a file photo in time.

Entertainment, Media, United Kingdom

Jonathan Ross and Russell Brand collide with delayed journalistic August

October 29, 2008 David Gerard 3 Comments

TELEVISION CENTRE, W12, Tuesday (NNN) — National outrage was sparked by a moment’s idiocy on the part of Jonathan Woss and Wussell Bwand a few weeks ago when the newspapers ran out of stories about Big Brother contestants, skateboarding ducks and what your breasts mean to fill the spaces between pronouncements of economic doom.

The incident occurred when, in a terrible lapse of judgement, a radio producer let Mr Ross and Mr Brand behave on-air in the manner they had been hired to. It is understood that Brand made the slanderous suggestion that he had in fact managed to get it up at least once whilst going out with Georgina Baillie.

“I am mortified,” said Ms Baillie, “at the number of half-page photos of my smile and cleavage in the papers and the many impending offers of work. Just mortified.”

The BBC has suspended the two presenters for embarrassing director general Mark Thompson.

“In these dark, Maddie-free days,” thundered all papers, “this sort of obscenity against a member of the Satanic Sluts cannot be countenanced. Suspension is hardly sufficient. The British sense of justice and fair play will not be satisfied until they are castrated by a baying crowd, pursued through the street on horseback with dogs, hanged by the neck outside White City until dead and their foul corpses left there to fester for at least a month. We pay our licence fees!”

“I denounce these despicable demagogues of dull-wittedness, whoever they are,” thundered Gordon Brown, with a Prime Minister’s sense of what it means when Luscious Lucy, 19, of Sheppey comments on a public issue from her editorial column on page three of The Sun. David Cameron blamed ten years’ financial ineptitude from Labour and vowed that the Tories would be tough on Brand and tough on the causes of Brand.

Chancellor Alistair Darling counseled caution, however, warning that the credit crunch would almost certainly lead to difficulty in securing sufficient teapots for a really good tempest.

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Education, Technology, United Kingdom

Teenage cyber-criminals run riot

October 28, 2008 David Gerard 2 Comments

YOUNG ADUWTS, Nozin’ Around, Monday (NNGadget) — A new generation of “online hoodies” is wreaking havoc in cyberspace, Internet security touts are warning.

The hackers, some as young as 12, begin by breaking into newspaper production systems and replacing news of substance with ridiculous headlines such as “Scientists discover breasts cause cancer,” “Sexism confirmed by evolutionary biologists,” “Sarah Palin exists” or “Online hoodies stalking the web” in an attempt to outrage people into clicking on them.

When they do, the ridiculous message promptly causes a buffer overload in the reader’s brain, filling it with an overflow of nonsense and causing them to think such ideas are reasonable, sane and even interesting. In the final stages of an infection, the victim clicks repeatedly on TMZ, hoping for upskirt shots of Britney Spears or Paris Hilton.

Hacker “wins” of late have included breaking into the Republican National Committee and replacing its phone scripts with patently insane slanders and mudslinging against Barack Obama, and engineering the hilarious placement of an idiot Alaskan redneck as a Vice-Presidential candidate.

“We need them out on the streets,” said Kevin Hogan of Symantec, “using their energy and practicing their running, route-planning and knife skills, not sitting at home getting obese.”

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Health, Science, United Kingdom

Science reveals evolutionary origins of gender stereotypes

October 23, 2008 David Gerard 11 Comments

WELL I NEVER, See I Told You, Morning Commuter Time (NNN) — British scientists have uncovered why little girls like pink toys. “Women are hardwired to like pink,” says Professor Gene Hunt of the University of Metro, “because their cavewoman foremothers spent their days gathering red leaves and berries amongst the trees.” Later, women needed to notice red-faced babies and blushing boyfriends. Men are attracted to blue because of the colour of the sky as seen when hunting.

Women are also predisposed to backstab one another in the workplace and cry in the boardroom, just like the social structures in the cave population as extrapolated from these two bone needles. Being too successful will increase women’s testosterone, giving them hairy nipples and male-pattern baldness. Females joining the hunt may also explain the end of the Neanderthals.

IQ test studies show that women have lower IQs on average than men, undoubtedly from lesser need for environmental variation while taking care of the cave. Tests on little boys prove that testosterone correlates with a sense of humour, which is why women just can’t take a joke. Housework has been shown to cut the risk of several fatal diseases, and dressing up nicely around the house is psychologically healthy as it uses the Homo erectus clan maintenance abilities of the female of the tribe.

Men are naturally predisposed to sleep with as many women as possible, as proven by lions, whereas women are naturally predisposed to stay loyal to their man and their spawn. Women who sleep around are at increased risk of parasites and death, as proven by cheetahs, who are a pack of catty sluts.

In a final crowning achievement, the team has shown that daily fellatio greatly reduces the incidence of breast cancer. Furthermore, regular sexual intercourse is essential to feminine health, but may be injurious if prolonged for more than two minutes or conducted while the man is sober.

“In conclusion,” says Professor Hunt, “all of this is top-notch science that you can absolutely rely on. Now get your knickers back on and make me a cuppa.”

Technology, United Kingdom

Children’s exposure to disturbing net pics curable by sending the NSPCC money

October 20, 2008 David Gerard 2 Comments

CYBERSPICE, Brass Eye, Monday (NNN) — The National Society for the Prevention of Cruelty to Children, a leading charity promoting the cause of itself, has released a survey showing that nearly 75 percent of kids in UK have been disturbed by images they saw on the Internet.

“Children are just a few clicks away from innocently stumbling across upsetting or even dangerous pictures and films,” said NSPCC policy advisor Zoe Hilton, “such as NSPCC telly ads about how your parents are going to punch the shit out of you, or documentaries of NSPCC claims that satanic ritual abuse existed. And also, give us money or you’re a paedo. Paedo. Paedo. Paeeee-do.”

Ms Hilton also stressed the need for manufacturers to incorporate advanced parental controls and protection mechanisms in computers. “Children can best be protected by installing a meter that takes 20p per page viewed and sends the money to the NSPCC. Or you might as well be raping and killing them yourself. You sickening shitbag.”

Ms Hilton added that video hosting and social networking sites should monitor content posted on their sites and remove all offensive material immediately. “That this is impossible to enforce worldwide means we’ll just have to keep demanding it and sending out press releases asking for money. You filthy bastards, molesting children through their eyes. You vile noncey fuckers should be lynched. But bung us twenty quid and we’ll say no more, eh.”

Health, United Kingdom

Reward scheme for pregnant smokers to quit

October 19, 2008 David Gerard Leave a comment

PARK HOSPITAL, Bevan, Thursday (NNN) — Mothers-to-be are to be offered gift vouchers and beauty treatments to encourage them to give up smoking, the NHS has announced.

“Simply highlighting the dangers of smoking in pregnancy is not always enough,” said Help 2 Quit director Kevin Lewis. “In one focus group of pregnant smokers, 13 out of 15 women suggested vouchers would be a good incentive to give up. They were quite specific on the selection of shops.”

Smoking in women of fertile age has since risen 25%. “We was gunna go to Lakeside,” said Chardonnay Pleb of Chelmsford, “but they said I’d drawn the second line on my stick. Cheeky cow! Just ’cos their test’s broken. Or I had a spontaneous miscarriage at one week, between my test and their one. Gi’s my fackin’ vouchers!”

The NHS is also considering a voucher scheme as incentive for hospitals to clean sufficiently well that attending will be less hazardous to mothers and babies than smoking would be.

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