Berthing Room

I have horrid non friends and one is sitting here betting me i cannot tell 2 jokes and keep it simple and stop faffing and just let the tale tell itself.

she is french and so are the two jokes, anti their silly frog accents ...

joke 1 - so im in hongkong and PR for this mega french construction company where no one emotes and its de rigueur to be cool and oozing sang froid.

I handle the groundbreaking ceremony of a port godown, meanwhile my wife is in hospital giving birth to our 2nd child.

I am back in the office going thru the press shots of the ceremony, the boss looks in and asks "How did the berth go?" and i assume in his ignorant frog-accented way he means how did the ceremony for the berth godowns go. I answer with macho calm that it went ok, no big deal ...

"And your wahf?"

My wife?? What on earth has she to do with it?

Mon Dieu you english and you call *us" chauvinist pigs!!

he meant of course how did the birth go. b'boum

Next joke please:

where i worked once for the greatest CS team ever, we set up a system of grading reps. I can't remember who came up with the grade - and i think i did since i wrote the first draft - but there was an ultra tactful score of "Room for Improvement".

As we grizzled QA types sat round grading emails and calls, we'd often growl "Room!" as abbreviated score.

I stole a few of those tricks for a company here in Greece who like the idea of QA and I introduced the Room for Improvement ploy. It's not a Greek company - heaven forfend that a Grik company should even know of QA - but a smart French hoteliers.

So we're sitting round judging some waiter skills and bar savoir-faire and the Food & Beverage manager is hacking and coughing away but suddenly scores an atrocious bit of ham-handed waiting as merely displaying 'room for improvement'.

"Mais tiens!, Vincent," I tiens, "that's very mild of you. I thought it was awful. You'll lose all your clients if your staff behave like that."

Quoi? Eez terrible peRRfoRRmonce ... for zee shurve, non?

Well why score it mere 'room'?

Quoi? What you talk about, you crazy?

Another 15 seconds of toing n froing franglais cross bating.

He had been complaining about his wretched cold and i picked up 'rheum' for Room.

ok, not so funny,i give you but i'm getting arch frogette eyebrows of approval for whizzing thru it so fast.

Casse-toi!

Sarkozy on walkabout pressing the flesh.

Some berk refuses to shake hands: "But no - don't touch me!"

"Casse-toi, pauvre con," beams Sarky sans missing a beat.

From Cathay... with Love

1980 and I was newly wed to the most wonderful woman (she still is).

I'd been poached from worthy-but-penurious book publishing and whisked out to Hong Kong, there to promote my home island as part of the finest angelic tourism touters ever assembled on the head of a chopstick, I give you the Hong Kong Tourist Association.

Accommodation was paid, car was paid, it was hard to find entertainment that wasn't elegible for expenses.

Everyone was young and dynamic. *I* was young and dynamic, and wed to a woman everyone loved on sight.

*And*, with Cantonese learnt from birth at my amah's knee, I was totally, irrefutably, odiously bashably cool.

And all through those days, a background melody to our happiness, ran Barry White's Love Theme, the corporate jingle of our 'national' airline and partner company, Cathay Pacific.

I still can't hear it without my chest contracting.

Cubicle Decor

For my Amazon buds, who will "relate". Decatur Redux.

The sleeping bag one will "resonate".

(Who says I've lost all my Merkan phrases?)

Dept of D'Oh!: One St Paddy's Day - March 17, get the green Guinness ready - I had been 'misled' by Julie's wing-gurl who secretly let me know that O'Vick was as Oirish a colleen as they come and v proud of her Emerald ancestry.

I festoon her cubicle in t' Green.

Enter that adorable dragon.

Bafflement.

She hadn't a drop of the Liffey coursing thru those Colorado veins.

Humiliated. Felt like slitting mine.

DVD RENTAL STORE SHOCK HORROR

See how brutalised I've become in the land of the Olive?

Here *I* am under the impression of posting a *terribly* amusing tale of a lady from Pueblo, Colorado being incensed by the juxtaposition of posters in my local DVD family store.

And there's you already chundering into the sick bag and vowing

"Right that's it. He's gorn too far this time.

Where's that unlisted number of the president of Blogger? I'll have Holmes de-listed if it's the last thing I do.

No darling, no closer, I beg you ... yes it IS from Chris but nothing you'd want to see ..."

Yes, indeed. This is our local friendly community DVD shop - akin to the Village Pump of old - where we gather to prattle and let the Ya-Yas (granny) get their babysitter fix as we compare notes on what's good ("Ooh! There's a poster for that Ratawotsit movie - that come in yet, luv?") and the sweet young thangs behind the desk field our questions and fix our probs with the automatic DVD provider.

I must ask them if the 'wrong' movie ever popped out - like Monsignor Callaghan ordering some scriptural text from Amazon and receiving instead thru the mail - or worse, his rural dean opening it - some lascivious pamphlet ("Rats! It's the one number I've actually read!").

Everyone just gets on with life and the kids giggle and gurgle and look at the pretty pics in the mags on the table in front of the sofa - porny catalogs.

So there I was with this pulchritudina from Pueblo, and I said I just wanted to swing by and change my DVD - the not very good "Empire" spoof - and she said OK, I'll come in with you ... and she was SHOCKED.

Aye, she could not get over the fact that there were mums and dads milling around and the children all nonchalant before this flesh.

"But my gahd, look, they're right next to posters that are ... well, they're practically pornographic."

"They are pornographic," I rumbled. "Why do you think that lion down there looks so panicked by the pneumatic chick massaging her embonpoint just behind his right ear?"

"Well for heaven's sake!"

All I could do was laugh at how brutalised and insensitive I must have become since leaving Seattle, to take it so for granted.

As I said, *look* at me, posting these pics as if the whole thing was a joke.

10 quid licence to smoke

i can hardly get myself to pronounce the name of the wretched verminous country that manages to humiliate itself with idiot ideas like this - a required licence to smoke, deliberately complicated to complete, to boot.

words fail me - which will be good news for most of my readers.

Can't people like this slip on pavements or walk in front of buses or catch colds that get mysteriously worse or involved in that catch-all, a mugging 'that went badly wrong' (ie right) or look the wrong way or not mind the gap or be in the wrong place at any wrong time or ... surely the god of freak accidents can't be *that* busy not to be able to pop over to Legislation Hall and meddle with Fate.

Honestly, this is a country doomed to mockery and contempt, or just doomed ....

clever

Ask Men

Ha ha, I've just realised that this itself sounds like something out of the Askmen advice column: "Ladies love men who make an effort to find out how to woo them."

Reading Askmen.com shows you care and will have them perching on your lap as you surf the pages. Oh, and why not go through letters from other lovelorns and answer them together?

I'll probably take it down in a few days but here goes.top

I'd come from another site (yeh, that's what they all say) and flipped thru the pages and scoped some of the beauties and then just left - no, it was in my History.

Now, we live off the beaten track and are en route to town for a number of unwired types here, including wimmin who have taken to popping in and using my 'puter because I work upstairs and leave it on all day.

The other day a lady came to look up some cookery thing and jokily said OK let's see what porn you've been surfing, and hit History. Boy did I bellow her out - I mean, supposing I *had* built up a wealth of hits, I would have looked a right lecher. Silence in the back row. As it is, I have been around young ladies long enough - I mean really young, I mean like 13, ok? - and I know the default action they perform when they visit each other (at least round Queen Anne and Ballard) is to have a giggle over respective Dads' visiting habits.

Anyway, there was Ask Men and she raised an arch brow and said "You surprise me - why do you need to read this sort of thing?" which is terribly flattering if you think about it and also a bit of a come-on because she's basically saying you're cool. I mean, if she didnt think you were attractive she'd go like Yeah, that figures.

So I did my pathetic moue thing and asked Whadyamean why do i read it? Because I get *nowhere* with the ladies and this has bags of good advice.

"Oh poor diddums. Like what good advice?" so we went thru it and it was pretty dreadful advice and clearly aimed at *Americans* because no self-respecting Britisher (or Britette) would take it seriously.

So this lady was critiquing the answers and telling me what would work for *her* and it got pretty intimate, except that we're not on those terms but it would be nice to be.

So I got to thinking that it would be amusing to add 'Ask Men' as if I took it seriously (it's for a friend) and also casually leave it open from time to time to see who thinks "Aah the diddums, the guy needs help.

Is true!

World's Smallest Bodybuilder

I can't do more tastelessly than run this pitiful pic of Romeo, the mini-Arnie, and from his sad expression, nor can he.

Hardly worth reading about - title and pic say it all - but here it is if you're determined to suffer.

The Unsatiable Stump

This blog has never skirted the tasteless route or detoured from delight in lack of decorum.

The McCartney barney is a doozy.

Former model, harridan Heather appeared Monday in the High Court to settle her whang-clang divorce battle with Sir Paul.

I love the idea of the uni-limbed hottie being "insatiable" in bed and laughing about being "pursued" by Macca even while 'romancing' that tattle-tale film editor.

Of course Ms Mills was an 'enthusiastic lover' - the gutter press allows of no other kind - and it's only natural that she showed off text messages from future tunesmith hubbie.

I do hope the forthcoming grilling in court focuses with utmost energy on Heather's "unusual erogenous zone — her stump".

Oh and do let's have high-definition Youtube sharing of that private home video of their time in India.

But you know what's going to get Paul's goat more than anything and this whole sordid business going to the mat? Hearing himself dissed as an "old bloke" with whom Stumpy was only in love for what Paul could do for her.

Let battle commence. This one has legs.

"Truthful" Banner Ads

Sad to say, I like this sort of thing, including the how-they-did-it exposés linked on the right.

SEX, LIES AND DVDs

And I was so hoping to keep it away from y'all and maintain the myth I've been peddling about lolling in the cradle of democracy and all things honest and good.

Now it's #1 popular story on the Reuters site.

Oh lawdy, we're all *over* the place. You name it, we've scandalised it.

Let me go with the sex one and leave the dodgy stock sales for another day ...

Lady sleeps with boss for government ministry job. Boss reneges (beeg mistake, Hell hathing no whatsit ...), lady tapes liaisons and commences blackmail proceedings.

Goes to Greek media with the film but they show her the door, then one hack makes a copy and plonks it in the prime minister's office. Feydeau Moliere ain't in it.

DVD arrives in PM Karamanlis' office, whereupon the official in question - General Secretary of our soi-disant Culture Ministry, hippo-sized Christos Zachopoulos - resigns and then chucks himself off a high (but not high enough) balcony. He is now recovering in hospital and my bet he is prolonging the recuperation.

Read the rest for yourself ...

Reviewer Blues

I have been asked if I would "consider reviewing the occasional book" - a gloomy prospect given the low quality of prose that somehow finds print on this island.

Never mind, I like being horrid and if I can discourage, offend or depress just one scribbler out there, I will have earned my meagre fee.

Apart from free books, the other thing I like is reading other, skilled reviewers for ideas and phrases to pass off as my own.

Look at this corker from the FT's Catherine Czerkawska on Carol Gilligan's Kyra.

"It is a truth universally acknowledged among writers that every other professional seems to want to write a novel ... American feminist psychologist Carol Gilligan, celebrated for her 1982 'In A Different Voice', is no exception.

The story is familiar: woman loves man, man leaves without saying why, woman goes into therapy at somewhat tedious length. They meet again. Can they resolve anything? Possibly. This is all very much like life and I enjoyed the novel's lack of neat resolution."

Brilliant, concise. No need to even open the Gilligan tome.

"In case of an emergency, the person sitting next to you may act as a food source"