Coño is an example of a swear word in Spain that has been de-semanticized - ie it is no longer a vulgar c word. Cacking was invented and semanticised from day one as a profanity suitable for British TV; and hostia, the innocent holy communion wafer, has taken on a vulgar meaning in conversational catholic Spanish. Go figure the wonders of semantics!

De-semanticise coño

In real English, de-semanticised means that words that were once profane, have become shadows of their former insulting selves.

If you ask an 18 to 80 year old male what coño means literally, they will probably smile and say the c word. 18 to 80 women will either blush and tell you not to be so rude, or point to a patch down south. A grandma will slap your face!

In Spain you will hear everyone, from toreador to toddler utter the word coño, a sort of cross between exasperation and bloody hell. It is amazing how those 4 letters were a complete taboo for hundreds of years, but have been incorporated into the everyday language of innocence today.

Semanticised - hostia and bollocks

On the opposite side of the profanity coin, simple, innocent words can be made vulgar!

Hostia which, in Spanish, is literally the wafer at a communion, is nowadays incorporated into every working man's conversation on every building site and in every bar in Spain. It is hard to translate its meaning exactly, because the tone and emphasis of a word makes a big difference in meaning in conversation. Let's just say the biscuit has given way to the bastard.

On a similar vein, in the 70's, The Sex Pistols released an album, Never Mind the Bollocks. Their record company probably did their homework better than the civil liberties people who tried to get the title banned for being offensive. According to the judge, the Anglo Saxon b word is per se, not rude at all, it is good old English. It is only well spoken poorly educated civil liberties folks in the 20th century who saw it that way. ie the "good guys" semanticised the innocent word into an oath.

Invented swear words - cacking

Last on this linguistic list, in a category, (or is it a world), all of their own, we find made-up swear words. Cacking is a weird English word, because popular mythology says it was an expletive invented for TV - cacking crap TV at that!

There is an horrendous soap opera set in Liverpool, called Brookside. It was baaaaad. In order to convey the Liverpudlian propensity to swear, without getting the program banned, the writers came up with a supposed substitute for fucking. So, Cacking hell, mate, wa sa abou' ? spoken with venom, was rude and threatening on TV but not in real life.

The program's catch phrase should have been, Brookside is fucking crap, and it should have been taken off the air in a blink, but instead, they insisted on cacking well pimping the culture of a dockland city with about as much class as a cacking turnip.

How to swear politely

When you next decide to insult someone bigger than you, try a new approach. You cacking gollicker will not get you punched in the mouth, but it will make you feel good when venting your spleen. Win-win, coño!

If you have any thoughts on such a rudely educational post, please fire away with comments and posts.

Not quite sure if this Create Your Own Pee-Mail card is adult humor or childish humor, so we will leave it to you to decide.

I was stumbling around Strachild at Stumbleupon and found this mind-blowing video clip, featuring an all-talking, all-mimicking parrot. At first it was mild parrot talk, hello etc, but when it crowed like a rooster, that got everyone's attention.

Of course being a cynic, I thought that it was very suspicious never to see the owner's face when the parrot performed a command. Was this just a case of a bad impressionist able to project her voice, relying on cameras always being focussed away from her contorting lips and on the parrot? Yes and no.

The owner obviously gave it a signal and the parrot produced yawns and dance moves, wolf howls and head shakes. But to be fair, it certainly looks like the act is down to the parrot's ability to follow her lead.

On a closing note, ever noticed how owners end up looking like their pets?

Watching Dr Phil's House of Hatred a few months back made us feel like we were witnessing a modern day satire of the Rise and fall of the Roman Empire. We thought it was worth doing this re-run.

He was fat

Picture one of those fat grotesque lumps slumbering on their reinforced beds between doughnut feasts. You know, those 700lb whales, and 1000lb frankensteins of the food chain, the symbol of all that is human weakness. The Dr Phil guest was a prime example of the obesity on the rampage in the Western worldwide. He was there to solve his issues. After viewing his tears and lazy boy approach, I suggest that lazy minds lie at the root of this out-of-control weighty issue. Get your head in gear and the pounds will fall away.

The Japanese are now getting fat

The Japanese once had the healthiest diet in the world. The American Indians were quite fit as well, in their day. There was also a time when the average American immigrant weighed the same as his Polish or German ancestor languishing back home in misery. And according to a major 1990's survey, even though the British were leaner in the second world war than in modern times, they had in fact become considerably more healthy overall. None of this applies any more!

No red herrings here, please!

Please don't get diverted by the high and mighty fat lobby claiming the half-ton lardies on Dr Phil are predisposed to enormity. The hell they are. Just count the calories and the lack of will to say no! 12000 calories a day and no exercise - therein lies the reason for vast girths and umpteen rolls of fat hanging by the hundred weight over underused genitals.

A beached whale

The huge lad featured on Doctor Phil was consuming 12000 calories per day. If you have no concept of what that means in real money, the average trim and active male tucks away 2500 calories on a good day and stays at a stable weight.

Going up a notch or two, imagine Sir Ranulph Fiennes, that crazy polar explorer. He is a big athletic guy, and in the height of his efforts to drag a huge sled across snowy Antarctic wastelands, he was tucking into 5000 calories of food per day. Despite that huge food intake, he came home looking skeletal! And here we have a dormant inactive supine dollop munching his way through 2 and a half times more food than the loony explorer, and he says it is his metabolism. Come on, do the math!

Unhealthy body, unhealthy mind

Of course, these jabbas wallow on the extreme tip of the flabby iceberg, but they are illustrative of a growing global mindset among millions of inactive people who do neither the math nor the right thing. They don't say, "No, I have had enough today, mother, put that 12-pack of jam rolly poly puddings on hold." Instead they feign surprise at why they can't get into the suit they were married in - a week earlier!

Mega consumers of all things fattening are shocked to their roots that they can no longer see their dicks. Women are mortified that their asses are bigger than their huge bellies. And the big eaters are amazed that the fire service has to take a wall down and winch them from their beds so they can go for a piss. And what do they do in their stupor? They keep on eating.

SAPiens eateritus

These poor people are a mess because of their mind, not because of a "predisposition to putting on weight". I mean poor in the emotional sense, not the financial sense. Dr Phil tries hard to show lower income fatties that it is cheaper to eat healthily rather than sloppily. A lettuce and tomato salad washed down with water is far cheaper and healthier than a pack of doritos and a gallon of coke. The problem is, though, watery salad isn't very comforting, whereas 2000 calories of junk makes depressed people (both rich and poor) feel good - for a few minutes.

It's the economy, stupid

The pace of life and growing pressure to maintain the economy on an upward curve lies at the root of obesity, I believe. It is a pattern, a seductive pattern that at the top end of the scale and at the bottom, the system is taking no prisoners with fat overload.

For example, when you overextend yourself financially, you are required to overwork and/or over-stress, to pay bills and keep up or get ahead. Under pressure, people are prone to not do the right thing. The first or easiest thing to neglect is yourself! An early casualty is the diet. Pile on the pounds.

Then there are less well-off folks who have fallen behind the rat race pace and have given up. They have no hope, apart from solace in doritos and coke. That is the excuse, whether you buy it as a justifiable one is up for debate. I am just saying, it looks like a pattern.

Most of us have the choice to be fit

The gargantuan folks waddling around started life slim and potentially active. All that fresh air and exercise is there on their doorstep for the taking - free to rich and poor alike. In addition to open spaces, the better-off have access to space-age facilities, and opportunities aplenty to get fit. In theory there is no reason for any of us to get down and slothful. No justification for not taking the world by the lapels and giving it a good healthy shake. Hell, we can detox, de-MacDonald, de-caffenate everything now. But the lifestyle gets in the way and the weight piles on and health care goes up.

And this fat ass pattern is being repeated all over the world.

Flying fish tonight

The Japs were big on fish, now they are turning to chips, and their diet is turning to shit. You can imagine the last 30 years of affluence has been like a closely matched wrestling match between the old guard, and the new. (Samurai v Big mama san). Fish and rice v fish and chips. The old regime of health has finally given way to the new, and not surprisingly, the waistlines of weaker minded and driven Japanese are burgeoning accordingly.

Molly coddle and chips

The Brits are about 5 years behind the US, like an obedient bitch rolling over for its master, willing to give in whenever the master feels like it. MacDonalds got popular in the UK when something like the 5 billionth burger had been sold in the US. And now Blair's boys have been studying kids in America, and he has blanched at the findings. He compared them to the waistlines in the UK today - and found he already had a few hundred thousand fat gits on his own doorstep.

Society there has been going to pot ever since Thatcher set Tony Blair's wheels in motion in the 80's, so the minds of Brits have been getting weaker and weaker over time. The invasion of the fatty snackers is on its way.

No reservations here

And of course there are no fit American Indians any more. The few remaining braves are gambling magnates with huge bellies and triple burger chins. Like Guam islanders whose diet increased to 5000 calories a day, for "no apparent reason", the same pattern is there for all to see. Times get good, then those good times become normal for a few and then life gets steadily harder and harder for the masses dragged into the race to sustain the good times. People start to lose focus under pressure and eat and eat and eat that crap processed food that has become a symbol of good times.

Right, it is time for breakfast. Care to subscribe to our blog? it is free and suitable for dummies!.

Priceless.com is a window on the world of Mastercard. One of the features of the geo-tagging based site is the ability to produce a Google map from a search item. As an example, input "Cupertino" and a map of Cupertino appears. I tried Santa's grotto and hell and saw some bizarre results.





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A while back I found some evidence that owners always end up looking like their pets, and you can't buy class. This horse looks stunning dressed in full Arab garb. But what was the rider thinking masquerading as the Queen of Sheeba in jeans and a curtain?

The costume was sold on eBay for $399 AU ($311 US) excluding horse and owner.

Birds navigating by roads, free cats, and donkeys left out on the mountains for the eagles - a fun article for animal lovers!

Birds don't get caught in traffic

It seems that instead of using rivers and natural landmarks to navigate by, migratory birds are relying on tarmacced road systems now. There is no clue as to how we know, but it is official and as you sit in a traffic jam, take solace that those swallows are zooming along nicely overhead with an inbuilt GPS.

Donkeys are great snacks for eagles

Old donkeys in Spain don't go from sanctuaries to donkey heaven straightaway. Their carcasses are dumped on the mountainside for local birds of prey to feast on.

But as an optimistic aside to that, the donkey is dying out, so if you want to make money, set up shop as a donkey breeder.

Puppies and kittens are for life, not just Christmas

I never had a puppy, couldn't eat a whole one, but I am living with the results of 2 kittens that grew into cats and are spending Christmas after Christmas tormenting me.

It is quite interesting how 2 cat brothers can be so different. One is actually quite amiable and nice, but the other one. Why can't it be the one that escapes and gets lost somewhere we can't find it? But no. The cute one runs away and we spend hours peering into neighbors' yards, ending up perched on a tower with a stool on top, reaching into someone's balcony. Don't mind us.

Got any dead donkey or stray pet stories, drop me a line.

I like this guy's photo work. So here it is again. Also he is heavily featured in our nifty satirical photo section.

This canvas, painted by a now forgotten student of Leonardo da Vinci in 1508, was recently unearthed from the basement of an ancient convent in Florence, Italy. It offers a tantalizing suggestion that the relationship between the titan of the Renaissance and the enigmatic woman was more than just painter and subject. Giorgio Vasari, the near contemporary biographer, also offers some justification for da Vinci's paternity, writing that da Vinci "immortalized her eyes in paint and flesh." (translation by E. Gromaldi)

Text and photo originally uploaded by master photoshopping satirist Cliff Michaels

Yesterday I came across Zazzle. They are a big shot in the web 2.0 world, a sophisticated version of Cafe Press (Although it is not hard to be slicker than a company that makes a big deal out of black tees!) Here is an article about some famous t-shirts available around the 'net.


Samy is my hero appeared on many t-shirts as the result of a myspace.com prank which bagged Samy 1 million friends!
He made a lot of money - for someone else! How many $21.50 shirt sales did Google Blogoscope net for that bit of rogue scripting?

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Conspiracy theories abound on the Alex Jones videos site.

Do you really think people in caves can destroy WTC 7 like the video clips show?

No we don't, but simply because of logistics. How does a caveman on $200 a year get to America from Afghanistan? From a practical point of view though, a caveman is perfectly intelligent enough to accomplish the task - just look at the caveman on the Geiko.com adverts.

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For viewers with poor eyesight, or them that don't get out much, this is a photo of a real laid back kangaroo. It reminded us of Far Side down under.

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Trying to be chic or pretentious or damn right confusing - that is the ultimate mission of the marketers of Glacéau, Hâagen Dazs, and Mötorhead. Take a banal product, (water) plant a jarring idea about it in the mind of the consumer, (ie a dumb ass misplaced and gramatically incorrect accent) and wait for the product name to stick in the universal mindset.

Glacéau deconstructed

For anyone who cares about French, Glacé means iced in that language of sickly romantics, and eau means agua, wasser, water, but combined in that order it is back-to-front misspelt French that means almost nothing. But while the name, Glacéaú means almost nothing to French speakers, it has lots of significance to the bottom line of the US company that earns millions from the name.

More than just an umlaut

How depressing to fall into the marketers' trap so easily and spend time talking about colored vitamin water. Much more interesting to discuss made up ice-cream Häagen Dazs or heavy rockers Mötorhead with an umlaut. Go figure!

The ice-ceam guys with a made-up name are now in cahoots with Nestlé, the company with a real genuine accennt.

Once the world's loudest live band, and fronted by an ex Hells Angel, Lemmy, who would have thought Motorhead needed to be cute with a German accent.

But it worked for them, so Mótley Crüe went one umlaut better. Perlease. The next thing is Britney will try to break all the rules and become Brítnéy, the only Hispanic entity on earth with two accents in her name!

The biggest con out there is bottled water. Unless you live in Chernobyl or the Dead Sea, the water coming out your taps in the Western world is good enough. But if you do feel the need to succumb to advertising, you could do worse than pick up a bottle of Glacéau. Drink and stay hydrated, and at least have a titter at the story on the label of every bottle.

One of our "funny" quotes of the day was from a web site featuring, Evohe, a ship that sailed through the North West passage. To me the quote was more ironic than rib cracking - he was referring to fancy deep freezes, whereas I had visions of a cupboard with no door doing the same job for them in the Arctic circle.

Read Steve's story, it isn't funny, but it will make you appreciate your creature comforts, and should make you at least smile in thanks.

What did the guy who caught the world's biggest yellow fin tuna say, when describing his 300lb catch? Nothing. Greg Pickering had no need to lie. The monster was harpooned underwater, so the record-breaker just floated next to it, his arms by his sides. Kudos.

(That harpooned underwater statement sounded tautological at first, thinking that harpoons were only used below water. But of course that is plain dumb. Hello, Captain Ahab and Jaws.)

Anyway, the picture proved the size of the tuna beast and the proud hunter had no need to resort to elastic arms or embellish his story with sizes measured in factors of ten.

He made a lot of consumers happy too, providing sufficient meat for 42,000 kitty meals, or was it 300 tuna steaks?

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More people died in the First Great War than in any other conflict in history, but this unhappy death stat was not enough for some. Right after the armistice, some divine sicko decided to really rub salt into the carnage and slow down the post-war revival even further. Hey presto, tens of millions of fit young survivors were struck dead with a stupid little flu bug.

Even sicker was the need to name the virus, Spanish Flu, after a country that hadn't played any significant part in the war, whatsoever.

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The world is full of amazing and surprising characters. We are pleased to announce that an Arab stallion named Caleyndar has brokered peace in Lebanon. In his spare time he has also counselled Michael Jackson to the point he can now be around children and not invite them under his covers. Kudos.

We are also able to report that , in between feeding times and lunging, Caleyndar also taught Michael Moore the art of balanced documentary making. A new blockbuster video, Caleyndar the wonder Arab is out now.

Under-prepared Mac users who can't see the vid will need to install this WMV plug-in.

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The Pentagon says its millimeter-wave pain ray won't be ready until 2010, despite years and years of tests.  Marines in Iraq can't wait that long.  They want the weapon -- which uses invisible waves to heat up the top layer of the skin and cause a whole lot of hurt --  ASAP, according to InsideDefense.

Well, why stop there with a wish list?

What about radioactive pepper spray fired from barrels mounted into your helmet. You think bad thoughts, and the spray fires out faster than a speeding bullet at the person(s) in your thoughts.

Or the needle gun. Fired from a special gatling gun, it fires off 3000 feet of thread per second, with a needle that penetrates the skin and literally sews together a band of rioters. Enter stage left a sky hook, which lifts the crocheted people up and drops them off in a turbo dumper straight to jail.

Yes, Marines, there is more to life then pain rays.

Update For a further humorous look at the marine's death ray news, we recommend Hot Air, where they have plenty of material for you to get stuck into.

Not to be outdone by the Army's desire for a pain ray weapon, the US Navy seems to have commissioned a company to develop a puke ray weapon. Even more stomach upsetting is the belief that it fires through walls! According to in-depth researcher, Sharon Weinberger

Basically, you're safely in your house, an invisible beam hits you, you feel dizzy, and fall over (or puke). Or so goes the promotion (Full article thrown up on Newswire:)

You have to look carefully, but be assured, this is part of a belt holding up the guy's pants and isn't something scary poking out his pants.

Successful bid to kiss 11 cobras

Snakes occasionally hit the headlines, and last October was a busy and tragic time for cobras. In Pattaya, Thailand, a whacky gent made a successful bid to kiss 11 cobras consecutively. Mad. His lips were wrapped around more venomous snakes than any person in history. What a way to get into the Guinness Book of Records. Madder still, he is the most prolific serpent-kissing human who ever lived to tell the tale, and then went back to work - as a snake charmer.

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We tried to sell our house just as the market slowed. Despite no sale, a realtor made me laugh with this true story.

Imagine an East coast realtor meets with a Venezuelan guy, his wife and her mother to show them some properties. After the first showing, to be helpful, he takes the three Latin Americans in his car, under the impression he is dropping them all off in town so the guy can attend a job interview. Afterwards, they will all meet up again and continue viewing homes. Wrong!

The realtor pulls up outside the address downtown and the guy says he will be an hour. The realtor says he will return to pick them all up and continue as planned. Before the husband can even step out the car, his wife has jumped out and screeches through the window that she is going shopping and will be back in an hour. Off she runs leaving mom in the back and the husband lost for words.

In order to keep a potential sale alive, there is nothing for it but to let him go for his interview and take a doddery 85 year-old Señora with two words of English back to the realtor office for a coffee and a quiet sit down in a back office.

Who says nobody has a heart in that business? And who can imagine the atmosphere when it came to meeting up again with the wife and husband?

"Here, Mrs So-and-So, I brought your mother back. She says you're quite the bitch!"



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Sorry, but when will the star gazers out there stop trying to drum up some excitement with outrageous claims of never before seen, rarely seen, or never to be seen again astronomic events? The latest rarity sounds so lame.

Saturday night's skies will glow with a red color, and if the night is clear it will be the perfect opportunity to see the a red lunar eclipse.

Never heard of Photoshop? Never seen the sunsets on CSI? Now, they are mind-boggling. And even without a TV or computer, you can get a red sky any night of the week. Go buy a pair of rose tinted spectacles - the sort that enthusiastic astronomers wear when trying to convince us to make astronomy an important part of our life.