The Edmondson Blog

Here are some new proposals that mandate the conspicuous placement of suitable warnings on the packaging of all products offered for sale in the European Union to reflect current scientific thinking:

WARNING: This product warps space and time in its vicinity.

IMPORTANT NOTICE TO PURCHASERS: This product will attract every other piece of matter in the universe, including the products of other manufacturers, with a force proportional to their masses and inversely proportional to the distance between them.

CAUTION: This product contains the energy equivalent of 3 million tons of TNT per gram net weight.

HANDLE WITH CARE: This product contains electrically charged particles moving at velocities in excess of a thousand million kilometres per hour.

HEISENBURG DISCLAIMER: Because of the "Uncertainty Principle", it will be impossible for the consumer to know at any given time precisely where this product is and how fast it is moving.

THIS IS A 100% MATTER PRODUCT: In the unlikely event that this merchandise should contact antimatter in any form, a catastrophic explosion will result.

QUANTUM TUNNELING DISCLAIMER: There is an extremely small but nonzero chance that this product may spontaneously disappear from its present location and reappear at any random place in the universe. The manufacturer will not be responsible for any loss that may result.

BEST BEFORE DATE: According to certain suggested versions of the Grand Unified Theory, the primary particles constituting this product may decay to nothingness within the next four hundred million years.

THERMODYNAMIC WARNING: Any use of this product, in any manner whatsoever, will increase the amount of disorder in the universe. Although no liability is implied herein, the consumer is warned that this process will ultimately lead to the death of the universe.

READ THIS BEFORE OPENING PACKAGE: The most fundamental particles in this product are held together by a "Gluing" force about which little is currently known and whose adhesive power can therefore not be permanently guaranteed.

INGREDIENTS: Despite any other listing of product contents found hereon, the consumer is advised that, in actuality, this product consists of 99.9999999999% empty space.

GRAND UNIFIED THEORY DISCLAIMER: The manufacturer may technically be entitled to claim that this product is 10-dimensional. However, the consumer is reminded that this confers no legal rights above and beyond those applicable to 3-dimensional objects, since the other dimensions are too small to be detectable.

PLEASE NOTE: Some theories suggest that when the consumer is not directly observing this product, it may cease to exist or will exist only in a vague and undetermined state.

COMPONENT EQUIVALENCE ADVISORY: The subatomic particles comprising this product are exactly the same in every measurable respect as those used in the products of other manufacturers, and no claim to the contrary may legitimately be expressed or implied.

HEALTH WARNING: Care should be taken when lifting this product, since its mass, and thus its weight, is dependent on its velocity relative to the user.

PRODUCT LIFETIME: The entire universe may one day collapse back into an infinitesimally small space. Should another universe subsequently re-emerge, the existence of this product in that universe cannot be guaranteed.

Caller: Hi, our printer is not working.
IT Dept: What is wrong with it?
Caller: Mouse is jammed.
IT Dept: Mouse? Printers don’t have a mouse you idiot.
Caller: Mmmmm…….... oh really?... I'll send a picture.

A friend of mine was sat in a top London restaurant with his wife of 36 years, when a tall, very attractive lady in her 20s walked up to him, gave him a long lingering kiss on the lips and walked off.

His wife was stunned. “Who on earth was that?!” she demanded.

“Oh, that’s my mistress.”

“Your mistress?!! You rat! I demand a divorce!”

“Take care, dear. If we divorce we’ll waste millions on solicitors. We’ll have to sell our big grand house and we’ll both end up living in tiny flats. The Rangerover, the Merc and your Porsche will have to go and we’ll both end up driving round in little second-hand cars. You won’t see the kids and the grandchildren as much as you do at the moment. Neither of us will ever holiday again in far off exotic places or take cruises any more. We’ll never…”

“Who’s that with George?” interrupts the wife, pointing to a neighbour walking through the restaurant with a young lady.

“That’s his mistress.”

“Hmm. Ours is prettier.”

...or, how to use up all of your luck for the next ten years all in one go.

The communal supply of condoms at St Edmunds Hall, Oxford, have been found vandalised.

The condoms, which were kept in the welfare room for members of the college, were found to have holes in them.

John Pierce, a student at Teddy Hall, claimed to have discovered the vandalism when using the condoms to make jelly ice cubes. “I had jelly and water in them,” he said. “I went to check on them and every single one of them had a sort of spurt out the top.”

This is a clothing label from a small American company that sells their product in France. The French language part of the label translates as:

Oxford University researchers have discovered the heaviest element yet known to science. The new element, Governmentium (symbol=Gv), has one neutron, 25 assistant neutrons, 88 deputy neutrons and 198 assistant deputy neutrons, giving it an atomic mass of 312. These 312 particles are held together by forces called morons, which are surrounded by vast quantities of lepton-like particles called pillocks.

Since Governmentium has no electrons, it is inert. However, it can be detected, because it impedes every reaction with which it comes into contact. A tiny amount of Governmentium can cause a reaction that would normally take less than a second, to take from 4 days to 4 years to complete.

Governmentium has a normal half-life of 2 to 6 years. It does not decay, but instead randomly undergoes a reorganisation in which a portion of the assistant neutrons and deputy neutrons exchange places.

In fact, Governmentium's mass will actually increase over time, since each reorganisation will cause more morons to become neutrons, forming isodopes. This characteristic of moron promotion leads some scientists to believe that Governmentium is formed whenever morons reach a critical concentration. This hypothetical quantity is referred to as a critical morass. When catalysed with money, Governmentium becomes Administratium (symbol=Ad), an element that radiates just as much energy as Governmentium, since it has half as many pillocks but twice as many morons.

The 228ft spire of the Church of Saint Mary and All Saints in Chesterfield is both twisted 45 degrees and and leans over southwards by over nine feet. It moves a little further every year, but it is still a long way from falling over. Built around 1400, it was straight for a number of centuries before it began to twist, probably as a result of the original wooden shingles being replaced by much heavier lead and slates.

However, local tradition maintains that the spire was so shocked to learn of the marriage of a virgin in the church that it bent down to get a closer look. Should that happen again, it is said that the spire will straighten and return to its true position.

Suppose that every day, ten men go out for beer and the bill for all ten comes to £100. If they paid their bill the way we pay our taxes, it would go something like this:

• The first four men (the poorest) would pay nothing.
• The fifth would pay £1.
• The sixth would pay £3.
• The seventh would pay £7.
• The eighth would pay £12.
• The ninth would pay £18.
• The tenth man (the richest) would pay £59.

So, that's what they decided to do.

The ten men drank in the bar every day and seemed quite happy with the arrangement, until one day, the owner threw them a curve ball.

"Since you are all such good customers," he said, "I'm going to reduce the cost of your daily beer by £20". Drinks for the ten men would now cost just £80.

The group still wanted to pay their bill the way we pay our taxes.

So the first four men were unaffected. They would still drink for free. But what about the other six men? The paying customers?

How could they divide the £20 windfall so that everyone would get his fair share?

They realised that £20 divided by six is £3.33. But if they subtracted that from everybody's share, then the fifth man and the sixth man would each end up being paid to drink his beer.

So, the bar owner suggested that it would be fair to reduce each man's bill by a higher percentage the poorer he was, to follow the principle of the tax system they had been using, and he proceeded to work out the amounts he suggested that each should now pay. And so:

• The fifth man, like the first four, now paid nothing (100% saving).
• The sixth now paid £2 instead of £3 (33% saving).
• The seventh now paid £5 instead of £7 (28% saving).
• The eighth now paid £9 instead of £12 (25% saving).
• The ninth now paid £14 instead of £18 (22% saving).
• The tenth now paid £49 instead of £59 (16% saving).

Each of the six was better off than before. And the first four continued to drink for free. But, once outside the bar, the men began to compare their savings.

"I only got a pound out of the £20 saving," declared the sixth man.

He pointed to the tenth man,"but he got £10!"

"Yeah, that's right," exclaimed the fifth man. "I only saved a pound too. It's unfair that he got ten times more benefit than me!"

"That's true!" shouted the seventh man. "Why should he get £10 back, when I got only £2? The wealthy get all the breaks!"

"Wait a minute," yelled the first four men in unison, "we didn't get anything at all. This new tax system exploits the poor!"

The nine men surrounded the tenth and beat him up.

The next night the tenth man didn't show up for drinks, so the nine sat down and had their beers without him. But when it came time to pay the bill, they discovered something important. They didn't have enough money between all of them for even half of the bill!

And that, boys and girls, journalists and government ministers, is how our tax system works.

The people who already pay the highest taxes will naturally get the most benefit from a tax reduction.

Tax them too much, attack them for being wealthy, and they just may not show up anymore.

In fact, they might start drinking overseas, where the atmosphere is somewhat friendlier.

Alfa
Bravo
Charlie
Delta
Echo
Foxtrot
Golf
Hotel
India
Juliet
Kilo
Lima
Mike
November
Oscar
Papa
Quebec
Romeo
Sierra
Tango
Uniform
Victor
Whiskey
X-ray
Yankee
Zulu

Gordon Brown was visiting a Scottish primary school and the class was in the middle of a discussion related to words and their meanings. The teacher asked Mr. Brown if he would like to lead the discussion on the word Tragedy. So our illustrious leader asked the class for an example of a Tragedy.

A little boy stood up and offered, "If ma best freen, wha' lives on a ferm, is playin' in the field and a tractor rins ower him and kills him, that wid be a tragedy."

"Incorrect", said Gordon, in his best trying-not-to-sound-too-Scottish-accent, "That would be an accident."

A little girl raised her hand, "If a school bus kerryin' fifty children drove ow'r a cliff, killing a'body inside, that wid be a tragedy"

"I'm afraid not," explained Gordon, "That's what we would refer to as a great loss."

The room went silent. No other children volunteered. Gordon searched the room. "Isn't there someone here who can give me an example of a tragedy?"

Finally, at the back of the room, a wee lad raised his hand and, in a quiet voice, said: "If a plane kerryin' you and Mr. Darlin' wiz struck by a freendly fire missile & blawn tae smithereens, that wid be a tragedy."

"Fantastic!" exclaimed Gordon, "And can you tell me why that would be a tragedy?"

"Weel", says the lad, "It has tae be a tragedy, because it certainly widnae be a great loss, and it probably widnae be a f*cking accident either!"

• Nobody ever eats more than one mouthful from a plate of food.
• Every platoon has at least one person who can play the mouth organ.
• All young boys can reach their bedroom by climbing a convenient tree.
• Restaurants offer at least six different kinds of toast for breakfast.
• Nobody ever locks their car.
• The bedroom curtains are always left open at night.
• If there's a storm, the bedroom window is left open as well.
• Everybody goes to school until the age of 30.
• When people fall in love they go shopping in the local street market.
• Paper boys never need to get off their bicycles.

Sing a song of Parliament, pockets full of cash,
Fraudulently claiming, and adding to their stash.
With their scams discovered, they said they'd give it back.
If you or I had done the same, we'd surely get the sack!

Sing a song of freebies, snouts deep in the trough.
Returning their ill-got gains, is just not good enough.
Sponging off our earnings, with a feeble tale,
If working folk had done the same, they'd soon end up in jail.

Sing a song of fraudsters, counting out their money.
They smile and look quite unashamed, as though they think its funny.
Sitting in a secret place, counting out their dosh,
On plugs for baths and cleaning moats, for crisps and orange squash.

Sing a song of conmen, who took us for a ride.
It's up to us at polling time, their future to decide.
It's gone too far to bring back trust of anyone in power.
To most of us they'll always be, a shifty crooked shower!!

A woman arrived at our village Hall for a social evening and while scanning the guests, spotted an attractive man stood alone.

She approached him, smiled and said, "Hello, my name is Carmen."

"Thats a beautiful name," he replied, "Is it a family name?"

"No," she answered, "As a matter of fact, I chose it myself as it represents the things that I enjoy most - cars and men, therefore I chose Carmen. So, what's your name?"

"B. J. Titsengolf."

A few thoughts from George Bernard Shaw, the curmudgeon who was considered the greatest English playwright since Shakespeare.

• I often quote myself; it adds spice to my conversation.
• No man can be a pure specialist without being, in a strict sense, an idiot.
• Youth is a wonderful thing. What a crime to waste it on children.
• There may be some doubt as to who are the best people to have in charge of children, but there can be no doubt that parents are the worst.
• When a stupid man is doing something he is ashamed of, he always declares that it is his duty.
• A perpetual holiday is a good working definition of hell.
• We should all be obliged to appear before a board every five years and justify our existence...on pain of liquidation.
• A government which robs Peter to pay Paul can always count on the support of Paul.
• The fickleness of the women whom I love is only equalled by the infernal constancy of the women who love me.
• I am a gentleman; I live by robbing the poor.
• The power of accurate observation is commonly called cynicism by those who have not got it.
• If all economists were laid end to end they would not reach a conclusion.
• The trouble with her is that she lacks the power of conversation but not the power of speech.
• There is no satisfaction in hanging a man who does not object to it.
• Life does not cease to be funny when people die any more than it ceases to be serious when people laugh.

Foster's, wine in a box, Neighbours, the barbie ... Australia's contribution to world culture is staggering, but nowhere is Australian ingenuity better expressed than in its massacre of the English language.

Known universally as Strine, this Australian patois is a constantly evolving linguistic stew of cast-offs, inventions, corruptions, contractions, taunts, threats and one-liners.

Having mastered the mysterious Antipodean argot, English-speaking migrants often describe themselves as being bilingual - that is, fluent in English and Strine. But the price of Strine is eternal vigilance.

For instance, when an Australian male asks "How you goin', youse old bastard?" he's being affectionate, not asking to see your birth certificate. And if someone tells you his wife is "in bed with a wog", he is not being racist, nor is he casting aspersions on the moral rectitude of his partner - he simply means a bad case of the flu. In Australia, it is bad manners to discuss your personal life in public.

Personal abuse, the cornerstone of Strine, is equally confusing. Being called a bastard may be a term of affection - but a whingeing Pommy bastard should definitely pull in his (or her) head. The shorter Pommy bastard is a tautology.

Of all the terms of abuse, perhaps wowser (killjoy) is the worst. In the land of the long weekend, where drinking, betting and vomiting are all celebrated national pastimes, strait-laced puritans and their sub-species - do-gooders (social workers), sky pilots (priests) and teetotallers - are treated with derision.

By contrast, being mentally unstable or even insane is treated with mild amusement - "He's got kangaroos loose in the top paddock" or "He's one sausage short of a barbie".

But more than anything Australians enjoy baiting foreigners. It is their way of making you feel at home. And yet, racial abuse in Australia is often cloyingly innocent. "Gone are the days they used to fight us," warbled Barry Humphries in a poem about the Japanese. "Now we think of them as little Aussies with hepatitis."

Visitors should observe rule number one: never criticise Australia. Any foreigner who fails to embrace godzone (God's own country) is likely to cop an earful.

In Australia's most remote Outback pub, the Birdsville Hotel, a notice on the wall warns patrons: "Anyone wearing a baseball cap round the wrong way is fined $5. This is bloody Australia. All proceeds to the Royal Flying Doctor Service."

Despite the inroads made by political correctness, women and homosexuals remain favourite targets. "Get back in the car and bark at strangers" is one taunt made at women. Gay men are always poofters or shirt-lifters - in fact, Australia, a country where mateship is a cultural icon, has more terms for being gay than the Eskimos have for ice.

The taste for invective infects every strata of society. Australian sportsmen, for instance, are judged not only by their on-field performance but their ability to sledge the opposition. "Call that a serve?" your tennis opponent may shout. "You're playing like a big girl's blouse."

Australia's most popular politicians are the ones who can turn it on for the television cameras. Paul Keating, the former prime minister, once described Australia's Senate as unrepresentative pig swill. Reflecting on life in the federal capital he said: "If you want a friend in Canberra, get a dog."

Strine is infectious. It is not unusual for European migrants to refer to themselves as bloody wogs and even pukka English settlers fall into the habit of shortening every word. The nation of utes (pick-up trucks), unis (universities), smokos (tea breaks) and long arvos (afternoons) at the footie (football) hasn't finished with the English language quite yet.

Anyway, time to knock off. I'm as dry as a Pommy's towel.

“There’s absolutely no sense of humour at American check-ins nowadays, and for a while I was quite scared,” Dave Rogerson told reporters after landing at Philadelphia airport. “I tried to explain that it was just a toy, but they told me that it had produced the highest reading for explosives they’d ever encountered, and took it very very seriously. They were very jumpy, and were utterly convinced that there must be something explosive in the dog.”

Rogerson, a page designer from Leeds, was explaining what had happened to him at Norfolk Airport in Virginia, prior to boarding his flight. “When the security staff began examining my luggage, they came across my novelty toy dog. It’s an hilarious life-size mechanical terrier that farts when it bends over, then belches while its eyes revolve and light up, and for some reason the gas inside registered as high-explosive TNT on their equipment. I couldn’t believe it when the FBI arrived wearing rubber gloves and began taking swabs from the animal’s rear end, and I was really scared when they took me away for questioning.

What made things worse was that I’d placed my passport and boarding card under the dog before it went on the scanner, and that had been placed in an isolation zone under suspicion of being a bomb, so I couldn’t even give the agents my papers when they demanded them. I got a real grilling from the FBI over several hours, but eventually they decided that the dog was harmless, and let me go.

They even let me have the dog back, although it doesn’t fart anymore.”

"Frankly, my dear, I don't give a damn," is a line from the 1939 film Gone with the Wind.

It was spoken by Rhett Butler, in his last words to Scarlett O'Hara at the end of the film when Scarlett asks Rhett, "Where shall I go? What shall I do?" if he leaves her. The line is memorable because of the profane use of the word damn which was forbidden in films of the time.

In the novel Gone with the Wind, Rhett does not say "Frankly," but simply "My dear, I don't give a damn." The context is also different; he is speaking quietly to Scarlett in a room, not storming dramatically out of the house.

Prior to the film's release, censors objected to the use of the word damn in the film, a word that had been prohibited by the 1930 Motion Picture Association's Production Code that began to be enforced in July 1934. However, before 1930 the word damn had been relatively common in films.

Although legend persists that the Hays Office fined producer David O. Selznick $5,000 for using the word damn, in fact the MPA board passed an amendment to the Production Code on November 1, 1939, a month and a half before the film's release, that forbade use of the words hell or damn except when their use shall be essential and required for portrayal, in proper historical context, of any scene or dialogue based upon historical fact or folklore … or a quotation from a literary work, provided that no such use shall be permitted which is intrinsically objectionable or offends good taste. With that amendment, the Production Code Administration had no further objection to Rhett's closing line.

It is actually the second use of damn in the film. The term damn Yankees is heard in the parlor scene at Twelve Oaks.

A banned "claymation" cartoon based upon Mark Twain's unfinished novel The Mystertious Stranger, where Satan gets Tom Sawyer, Huck Finn and Becky Thatcher to construct small clay people to bring to life and live in a small kingdom together before Satan destroys them through fighting, plagues and natural disasters, depicting the futility of mankind. The scene also quotes Satan's last line from the book.