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Admittedly, not my own podcast – but this week, I was chuffed to be asked to do the twofootedtackle football podcast, as hosted by Chris Nee and Gary Andrews (very fine chaps both). Granted, I felt somewhat out of my depth as Chris and Gary discussed the finer points of the Dutch Eredivisie (to be honest, as a Nottingham Forest fan, I was also quite out of my depth talking about the upper reaches of the Championship) but I think I almost managed to hide my relative lack of knowledge. Mostly by being sarcastic about Alan Shearer.

I’ve listened back to it, and I think it sounds really good. Most importantly, it contains a great many rather wonderful (i.e. dreadful) puns – we took inspiration from the erstwhile Scaryduck’s post of songs for footballers, and ran with the theme. One of the puns is represented in pictorial form at the top of this post for your amusement.

You can subscribe to the podcast through iTunes (search for ‘twofootedpodcast‘), or you can get the mp3 direct from twofootedtackle’s post here. Do have a listen.

One thing I should note: at one point, it sounds very much like I’m implying that the USA have never beaten England at football. This is, of course, not true (1950 and 1993), and wasn’t what I meant. I merely meant to say that the USA have traditionally been a bit rubbish at football. Which they have.

I also regret forgetting to mention my pet theory that Southampton’s slump of the past few years, ending in their recent relegation to League One and the very real threat that they will cease to exist as a football club, all stemmed from the moment they unveiled that statue of Ted Bates:

But I’m not sure I’ll be able to convince anyone of that.

This, I think, goes particularly well with this one that I blogged a few months back.

*Golf clap*

My sincere apologies to the Réaumur and Rømer temperature scales – I have no choice but to unceremoniously dump them off my list of my five favourite scales. I understand that this is particularly painful for them, mirroring as it does the cruel way in which the international scientific community cast them by the wayside in favour of those upstarts, the Fahrenheit and Celsius and Kelvin scales. But I must do what I must.

The reason for this, of course, is that doing the rounds over the past few days has been the Schmidt Sting Pain Index: a scale of the relative painfulness of stings caused by the Hymenoptera order of insects (bees and wasps and ants and shit). It’s a classy piece of work, and I don’t know how I missed it the first time round. For one thing, it’s a fairly unique scale in that it applies in full to only one person in the world – its main creator, entomologist Justin O. Schmidt. It’s a scale of how badly the various insect stings hurt him, gleaned through long and agonising personal experience. While broadly generalisable to the rest of the human species, it’s really a one-man thing.

The second reason is that it is the best written scale ever. A brief excerpt:

• 1.8 Bullhorn acacia ant: A rare, piercing, elevated sort of pain. Someone has fired a staple into your cheek.
• 2.0 Bald-faced hornet: Rich, hearty, slightly crunchy. Similar to getting your hand mashed in a revolving door.
• 2.0 Yellowjacket: Hot and smoky, almost irreverent. Imagine WC Fields extinguishing a cigar on your tongue.

Glorious.

The only thing that could improve O’Brian’s majestic Aubrey-Maturin series: zombies.

The greater part of the sailors not that instant engaged in trimming the ship was standing in a circle about the mast. He followed the men’s gazes up and was stunned, although not in the least surprised, to see Stephen’s zombie capering about in the rigging.

“Mr. Pullings, my compliments to Dr. Maturin, and would he kindly retrieve his undead specimen before it does damage to the ship?”

“Sir, he’s trying to tempt it down.”

And indeed there Stephen stood on the far side of the circle of sailors, making some sort of noise that Aubrey assumed was meant to be soothing. It sounded distinctly like French.

Go read. (via Making Light)

This right here? Brings the funny.

(vBB)

Chris has already done a sterling take-down of John O’Farrell’s daft bit of self-promotion (by way of slagging off everybody else) on the BBC’s site. I feel the need to chime in to record that my immediate response to O’Farrell’s question:

So why is there only a sprinkling of obscure and erratically funny UK sites?

was

Because far too many people just tried to do lame Onion rip-offs. Just like you are.

Having now had the misfortune to actually look at his site, NewsBiscuit (ugh, hateful sub-Morris name), I didn’t realise how accurate that was. The site is arm-gnawingly dreadful. It’s a feeble dribble of Commonplace Thing Does Mild Exageration Of Normality headlines. There’s no wit or originality. There’s barely anything to suggest that whatever created it would pass a Turing test. And in every case the headline is the only sodding joke in the article. The Onion wasn’t funny because it had headlines like “Harry Potter Books Spark Rise in Satanism Among Children” (although that’s a funnier idea than anything on NewsBiscuit), it was because the articles had lines with perfect comic construction like:

“Hermione is my favorite, because she’s smart and has a kitty,” said 6-year-old Jessica Lehman of Easley, SC. “Jesus died because He was weak and stupid.”

You know – funny stuff. That they actually spent time writing well. In order to make it funny.

Satire? As I write this, the BBC are showing an utterly bonkers over-the-top bit of shiny prime-time spy drama that’s satirising the shit out of… well, everything. John O’Farrell is making tired jokes about reality TV. Well done. You are less cutting than Spooks.

And of course, what O’Farrell doesn’t realise is that his “plan is to get young talented humourists all over the world to send their stuff to me” is the antithesis of how the web works. They don’t need to send their stuff to John O’Farrell (sweet of him to offer, though). They can just do it themselves, and it might be superbly constructed comedy gold, or it might just be a picture of a willy drawn with MS Paint. That’s the fun. And if they do choose just to draw pictures of willies with MS Paint, well… it’ll still be funnier than NewsBiscuit.
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