Leg to stand on? Me?
My almost nine-year old was wondering when she might be allowed to get her ears pierced.

She was understandably miffed to learn that she has to wait until she's twelve. She can have her nose pierced when she's sixteen and if she wants any tattoos I'll take her to a reputable studio when she's eighteen and not a minute sooner. No child of mine is going to be wandering the streets looking like a refugee from a 1992 illegal rave. Not on my watch.

I have fifteen piercings, seven tattoos and pink dreadlocks. If I do the school run the other mothers look at me like I'm King Herod come for their first born.

Hypocrite? Nah - I'm a grown up. Makes it alright, innit?

Ahem.
(surlygirl spanked your monkey on, Fri 20 Feb 2009, 10:27, 7 replies)

Me, the dead-eyed sell out.
Because I'm sitting here seething inside at all these boring bloody students banging on about vegetables, politics and the environment, how the biggest hypocrite of all is the corrupt capitalist system, "Maggie stole my milk" and all the crusty old hemp-shirted, Levellers-soundtracked, weed smoking, cycle riding, plane avoiding rest of a chasm of self-righteous QoTW answers.

Sitting here, that is, being paid a generous salary to occupy a plush office with a comfy chair - perks of a job I only got because of my three years smoking weed, cycling and railing against capitalism at university.

I genuinely don't know whether I am more disappointed in my current self or the young me. Looks like more coke and hookers needed tonight to drown out the nagging voices.
( Scrumper, Fri 20 Feb 2009, 10:24, 1 reply)

Poacher turned gamekeeper...
The miserable, short-arsed, daytime tv addicted barman at my local who'll refuse service to those he considers have had too much to drink, yet he's invariably pissed on the three bottles of wine he gets through per day (and any waste beer he can get his hands on), often rendering him unable to pour a decent pint. He ruins a good pub.
(Haywood Manley, Fri 20 Feb 2009, 10:10, Reply)

Meedja
Nick Ferrari on LBC just commented on how distasteful the public interest in Jade Goody is. And he's inviting calls on it.
( browser still relating boring anecdotes into a void on, Fri 20 Feb 2009, 9:50, 6 replies)

This takes some topping
Afghanistan

When the Societ Union imploded in the early 1990's, the Russian de facto invasion - and support for the puppet government of - Afghanistan collapsed. Although this might be seen as a good thing, in many ways the problems ere only just starting. Tribal militias and warlords - the Mujahideen - had been bankrolled and supplied with weaponry by the US for years (to the tune of US$30m in 1977, rising to US$300m in 1991) and they simply turned these resources to the more traditional Afghan pastimes of tribal feuding, banditry, and cultivating opium.
In the southern, Pashtun, regions, a group of local religious students (the word Talib means student, hence Taliban) grew tired of a local warlord with a penchant for male rape and decided to take up arms to oppose him. Sadly, they didn't have the resources to do so until a local Pashtun tribal leader made a gift to them of US$50,000 and a load of weaponry. This was enough to start the ball rolling. The Taliban expanded rapidly, attracting fighters tired of the banditry and warlords who plagued the country and also attracting devout Muslims from other countries who supported the idea of creating a Muslim state in Afghanistan. The expat soldiers largely passed through a clearing house in Pakistan called "the Base" - that translates as Al-Queda to you and me.
The tribal leader who made the initial donation was rewarded by first becoming a close advisor to Mullah Omar (the Taliban leader) and then, after most of Afghanistan was ruled by the Taliban, he was offered the position of Taliban Ambassador to the UN.
The name of this tribal leader who bankrolled the foundation of the Taliban, was a close member of their inner council, and was their putative UN ambassador?
Hamid Karzai, the US-backed, pro-Democracy, anti-Taliban President of Afghanistan.

It's a funny old world, isn't it?
(davywavy, Fri 20 Feb 2009, 9:47, 2 replies)

People who answer QOTW are idiots

(Dazzorifik is bored of b3ta, Fri 20 Feb 2009, 9:46, 1 reply)

Using my time machine...
I travelled to the future in the post-apocalyptical world.

Despite the gloomy outlook for civilisation, I took great pleasure watching vegetarians eating meat in order to stay alive.

I had the last laugh (in their faces).

Oh, and Arnie did get to be president (just like in Starship Troopers).
( brown-wings Made with three kinds of butter, Fri 20 Feb 2009, 9:42, 1 reply)

Vegetarians
I've got no problem with vegans, if that's what you believe, fine and good luck with that.

Vegetarians on the other hand: where do eggs and milk come from? They are a by product of the meat industry. You are not saving animals, you are contributing to the wealth of the meat producers and keeping them in business.

Cunts.
( stopmeandslapme Cometh the hour, cometh your mum, Fri 20 Feb 2009, 9:34, 9 replies)

Love thy neighbour

Number of people estimated to have died during loving Christian crusades 9 million.


Number of people estimated to have died during evil Satanist crusades 0.
( Naked Ape call me Caitlyn, Fri 20 Feb 2009, 9:02, 8 replies)

i take back what i said about animal right nutters
i just read this morning that some were sending death threats to an 18 year old who microwaved his kitten. i guess they do serve a purpose.

so what if that makes me a hypocrite.
( fuck shit up the best you never had, Fri 20 Feb 2009, 8:30, 10 replies)

Misinformed vegetarians and vegans...
... because they come out with all manner of crap that they read on the PETA website without bothering to check if any of it is true or not.

Male chickens aren't slaughtered at a few days old. They get eaten too.

Calves do not get shipped off for veal at a few days old, or (mostly) at all. Cows continue to produce milk for a long time after calves are weaned, and produce about 25kg of milk at night when they're lying down, because that's about how much milk a calf will drink - about half of it in the morning.

What happens to all the waste is this - it gets sprayed onto arable land to act as fertiliser. Without that, we would be wholly dependant on petrochemical-based fertilisers. Herein lies the hypocrisy. In most of the world, livestock farming is a vital part of agriculture. You cannot grow crops without putting something back into the soil (of course, in some parts of the world, like the north of Scotland, you can't grow much in the way of crops at all - it's too rocky. Grazing animals do well, though). You've got a choice here - you can put shit on it, or you can put potentially harmful chemicals with a massive ecological cost on it.

Your call. Shit or chemicals?
(gordonjcp, Fri 20 Feb 2009, 8:28, 10 replies)

Christ
Some people don't half post shite on here.
( Bert Monkeysex is waiting for the mods to delete him, Fri 20 Feb 2009, 7:50, 4 replies)

i wont be posting this week
i don't approve of people writing long winded elaborate accounts of their personal lives and expecting others to be interested

*flounces*
( spimf ™ is whoever you want him to be, Fri 20 Feb 2009, 7:48, Reply)

He tries to keep it a secret, but a lot of us know.
I have a coworker who smokes.

I work in the Harvard Cancer Center.
(jessemoya, Fri 20 Feb 2009, 5:02, 2 replies)

The Physicist's Cookbook
As a graduate student I have a fair amount of "study time". On a completely unrelated note, I baking a lot at roughly the time I started here. Grad. school is one of those places where you meet some "interesting" (to put it mildly) cats, especially in Physics: from the weird, lanky Germans to the countless far-too-friendly-for-their-own-good Chinese students to the ones whose you just know it's better to steer clear of, without really knowing why. Andrew (I'll let you take bets on whether that's his real name) is one of those bizarre creatures that actually seems to be a nice, normal (by Physics student standards) guy. By-the-by, he's a vegetarian. Bear that in mind.

Anyway, getting back to the baking: there's only so often you can make regular cookies, sponges or carrot cake - awesome as these things are, there does come a limit. You can spice them up - make the cookies into double-chocolate coconut ones etc. But again, there comes a point where you're just re-hashing the same old stuff. As such I've strayed a touch from the usual limits set in cookbooks, meaning I've baked things mentioned in - say - the newsletter. Now, cast your minds back a few months and you might remember a cookie recipe that made the newsletter. It came about from a discussion the author of the recipe had with her husband about whether a certain foodstuff improved anything it was added to. Apparently said foodstuff, while maybe not an improvement to the humble chocolate chip cookie, certainly wasn't detrimental to it. "Funking awesome!" thought I, "I'm gonna have to make them!". And I finally did make a decent batch a few months ago. People I told about it were either disgusted or intensely curious, no-one was ambivalent. Have I drawn this out enough yet? Maybe not quite - just hold on a minute more.

Anyway, a few weeks ago these magical cookies were mentioned again around Andrew, he'd never heard them mentioned the first time round and - despite the warnings of some nay-sayers - was one of those in the "intensely curious" camp. I warned him about their special contents and he was still adamant on trying them. So I whipped up a batch over the weekend of January 24th/25th (this is important as well) and took them in on the Monday. I proffered one to Andrew and he bit in, looked mildly quizzical, then started noddling satisfactorily. "These are good," said he, "really good."

He's just taken a bite from one of my choc-chip BACON COOKIES. Yes, real fried-dead-pig-in-little-strips BACON. Now, I know that bacon is food of the Gods and it's one of the main hurdles for vegetarians to overcome, but still - I felt proud. Still, it was an easy victory - tempting a vegetarian with bacon, so I could actually forgive him that and not call him a hypocrite (much). However, remember the date I made these cookies? Despite living ~3500 miles away I do still feel the need to tend to some of the rituals of my Scottish homeland. See if you can guess what leftovers I had as my lunch on Monday January 26th. Right, got it?

No sooner had Andrew finished the cookie than I (still eating said lunch) offered him a bite. Having never tried it before Andrew gladly took the fork and grabbed a big forkful of minced, spiced and boiled sheep innards. "Not bad" was his verdict on this delicacy. How the hell can you call yourself a vegetarian and happily munch on haggis, ffs? Not that I mind, of course. Now I just need to find a tee-totaller in the Physics Dept. to try the Jack Daniels brownies that are just out the oven. Somehow I think they'll be harder to come across than a vegetarian.

Just in case anyone's interested in the cookies - here's a link:
physicistscookbook.blogspot.com/2009/02/bacon-cookies.html
(This is a slight variant on the original, tweaked to my particular taste in cookies. That and I've lost the link to the original site - if it still exists - and can't be arsed trawling through old newsletters, I do apologise.)
(warmidea, Fri 20 Feb 2009, 4:33, 1 reply)

I'm well confused
so do hipocrites eat hippos or are they opposed to the eating of hippos ?



never eaten hippo but allegedly they kill a lot of people in alaska every year... perhaps if we ate more hippos the eskimos would live in less fear. In addition hippos are bigger than cows, in fact

hippo = cow x 3

therefore for every hippo we consume 3 cows will be saved.

also cows eat grass which is a scourge for farmers and rocks, in fact the average cow eats about 2.562 million bits of grass in its lifetime.

therefore

eaten hippo x 1 = minus 7.686 million bits of grass

which is roughly the area of lichtenstein..

therefore if we consume more than (hippos x 47.83) in any given year the entire land mass of all of the earth and quarter of mars will evapourate while cows become a plague and the proverbial 'elephant in the room' that no one will be prepared to discuss (bit like the big fat flappy eared motherfucker thats wheezing away and sipping loudly on his bovril in the cubicle next to mine as I type) . . .

I may had eaten something queer earlier.....
(The Cats Twat, Fri 20 Feb 2009, 4:00, 7 replies)

Picture the scene, an English class several months ago...
The teacher, one of those "young, inspired" ones who likes sitcoms and lives in Brighton with her vaguely gothic boyfriend and genuinely *enjoys* teaching. Shudder*.

We were looking at the play A Doll's House by Ibsen, and it's use of power between genders, etc.
The teacher poses us the question of "Which gender do you think interrupts more, men or women?" Every student in the room (girls included) say that women interrupt more.
"Ah, you see, everybody THINKS it's women. But actually, it's really men."

"Like fuck it is" is what I would have said if she wouldn't have told me off for swearing so I said "hell" instead. "I can think of loads of situations where -"

"No, it's definitely men, it's been proven," she says, interrupting me.

*Yes, she is normally a good teacher, but this was bloody stupid.
(The Artist Formerly Known As &c You can order curries ONLINE these days., Fri 20 Feb 2009, 2:45, 2 replies)

In a prior incarnation
I worked for a company spun off from the BBC and basically funded by them almost totally at the time.

During this period did I own a TV license?

Um... that'd be a no.

So while 251 of you paid my salary I wasn't one of them.
(bill, Fri 20 Feb 2009, 1:44, Reply)

For my sins
I worked at Royal Mail one Christmas. There were hundreds of us at a time, beavering away directing post, in six rooms across the building. In the room I worked in, there was a large group of Asian men who, naturally, chatted away to each other in (if you'll forgive my ignorance) whichever language they spoke.
Sitting near them was a mother-daughter combo. The daughter seemed quiet enough, but the mother always had something to complain about.
And on this particular smoke break, it was these men.
'It's a disgrace, they shouldn't be talking in their own language, they could be saying anything about us!'
Her rapt audience mmm-hmmed and nodded and 'they could be saying anything!' as if they're the fucking choir to her soloist. 'I mean, I talk in German to my daughter, but that's alright.'
(and now for someone completely different, Fri 20 Feb 2009, 1:14, Reply)

Work, bunch of fucking hypocrites
Because we access financial data, we're not allowed mobile phones, paper or pens, magazines (even when the computer is restarting) or other peoples' login details.

There is text behind the 'press ctrl, alt and del to begin' listing out endless punishments for giving out your logins or using other peoples' login details, mostly ending in immediate written warning, or the sack.

There's five people working in our department, serving the whole of the UK and ROI. Some of us had issues with another system, that we couldn't do certain, necessary things.

I let somebody use my main system because they were highly trained and professional, for about 20 mins whilst their access was sorted. I got a disciplinary.

On a busy day, I told my manager I couldn't do a thing because my system was broke, and he said 'oh, just use somebody else's'.

Then reported me to HR to arrange a disciplinary when I flat-out refused to.

Yes, I won that one.
( Methylene Blue - electrohead, Fri 20 Feb 2009, 1:02, Reply)

diogenes has my back on this one
example of hypocrisy?

All
OF
HUMANITY
ALL
THE
FUCKING
TIME*

* me too.
(Fuckpig "That's not even a pound a midget.", Fri 20 Feb 2009, 0:55, 1 reply)

My co-workers
have been venting a lot lately about the production scandals from china, swearing that they will never ever buy something made from a 3rd world country. as soon as that rant is over i hear "i got these shoes at wal-mart, aren't they cute? they were so cheap, i love wal-mart!"

*grrrrr
(opiska, Fri 20 Feb 2009, 0:36, Reply)

On the subject of vegetarians....
Now vegetarians do piss me off a little bit. If you're veggie because you don't like the taste of meat then fair enough, it's your choice what you put in your mouth. However, if you're veggie because of any slight animal welfare or environmental inclination and you continue to eat eggs and dairy products then you are being monumentally hypocritical.

In order to get eggs, even happy chicken free range ones, you only need lady hens. The male hens, even in the happy chicken free range farms, are all slaughtered at a few days old.

In order to get milk, you need a cow that has just had a calf. Now, if the cow keeps the calf, well, there won't be much milk left for the farmer to sell. So bye bye calf, off you go for veal.

Any sort of animal product is going to lead to exploitation and death and massive environmental impact in some way, so all these vegetarians who claim to be doing their bit for animals and who think they are so much holier than the meat eaters, are either knowingly or otherwise deluding themselves.

For a bit of perspective on my opinions, I am a vegan.
And not because I don't think that animal flesh doesn't taste delicious, because it does (especially bacon....).
And not because I think that we aren't 'designed' to eat animals, because we are.
And also not because I think it is a crime against nature for a human to kill another animal to eat. I mean ffs in that case get rid of all predators! I think it is easy to forget we are part of the food chain, and animals in our own right.

No, my issue with eating animals and animal products lies in how far removed modern livestock farming methods are from nature; a farmed animal will suffer so much distress throughout its life from being bred to exaggerate a particular feature (fancy carrying round 25kg of milk in your udders all day?) and having their natural instincts stifled (fancy being a pig in a cage unable to even turn round?). Also, what do you think happens to all the waste? There are lakes of slurry from livestock farms which have the potential to sterilize the water courses around them, with an enormous impact on the ecosystem.

And even if you had no interest in animals or their welfare, the human cost of intensive livestock farming is ridiculous. The majority of farms are owned by multinational corporations providing cheap produce for supermarkets and excluding independent farmers, particularly in developing countries. And it's so inefficient! Grow acres and acres of grain and soya to feed to cattle at a 10% conversion ratio, that's 10kg of grain to make 1kg of beef. I mean, you could solve world hunger if you just ate the bloody grain!

Anyway, to near the end of my ramble, massive kudos to those who go out and hunt wild animals. I believe the answer lies in rabbits, pheasants and deer. In order to have these animals you need good quality woodland and grassland, so the environment is preserved, every organism has their place in the food chain, the animals reproduce rapidly enough so that everyone can have them, and problem solved. However this will only be successful if the population is halved. Or if we get over our ridiculous meat addiction and start treating it like a rare treat to have once a week and seriously enjoy, rather than cramming down tasteless mass produced chicken and ham at every meal.

So, meat eaters, at least you're not pretending to be anything else, but hypocritical vegetarians really do my nut in.
(miskatonic, Fri 20 Feb 2009, 0:18, 13 replies)

thanks again Viz

why oh why is it that Puff Daddy can use the 'N' word repeatedly in his so called 'Gansta Rap' and he gets showered with awards while I just use it once at my sons football match and get told to leave...

Tis clearly one law for the rich and one for the poor . . .


bloody hypocrisy
(The Cats Twat, Fri 20 Feb 2009, 0:07, Reply)

The Halal Sandwich
I don't know what it is with me living with other people; I just seem to attract contradictory lifeforms in whatever area I inhabit. Needless to say, it makes rented student accommodation a bit of a bastard to manage when you have 4 very different people all throwing out double standards.

My current dilemna is an ongoing 12 month sentence with an awkward Muslim, who for the sake of reinforcing any typical racist thoughts you may inhabit I might as well refer to as Mohammed. As I'm sure the readers are aware - and the Daily Mail has protested in big black African American letters, those following the Qur'an cannot eat non-halal meats. In particular, pork is a big no-no on the 'Things you shouldn't do if you wish to enter the Kingdom of Heaven' list.

For Mohammed, this orthodoxy couldn't have the line drawn at a simple 'don't feed me bacon or it'll be like that scene from Gremlins'. His upbringing dictates a seperate collection of utensils and his own personal fridge in compliance with his religious restraining order. In a student house, let's summarise this as an entire kitchen devoted to these ideals. It's definately getting in the way, but shared cohabitation is all about compromises, right?

Alas, this is not to be. After a blissful evening on the tiles, my tastebuds awoke to the distinct craving of all that which is fried and unhealthy. Your author required a fierce combination of black pudding, sausages, bacon, eggs and beans and would violently garrote all those that stood in his way of such a bountiful treat. To check the contents of the fridge:

Beans
Check
Eggs
Check
Bacon
Missing
...
Wait, missing? Such luxuries were purchased mere hours ago (thank you 24 hour Tesco stores, the Nirvana of the pished). What's going on here?

Finally my meats were found. In the bin. Skulls were going to be broken as soon as I was sober enough to do such a thing without vomiting. Many angry wakeup calls pointed me firmly in the direction of Mohammed. As his fridge was full, he explained, he needed to offload his supplies into the other chilled storage areas. Naturally, as these foods couldn't be near pork, the fairest way to approach the problem was to remove all offending goods from his sight so no sins were committed. A good tenners worth of loveliness thrown away for Allah. My tenners worth of loveliness.

And what foods, may you ask, was so important that my weekend was subsequently binned? Mohammed's pack of wafer thin ham he was using for sarnies that week.

My lords and ladies, I'm going to commit a hate crime.
(FoxyBadger (try saying it backwards), Thu 19 Feb 2009, 23:57, 7 replies)

If you get offended by something I say, that's your fault for being over-sensitive.
But if I get offended by something you say, that's because you're a racist, a misogynist or otherwise politically incorrect, and as such should be incarcerated without trial straight away.

These two axioms are what drives most internet users, particularly those on the BBC's "Have Your Say" forums.
( The Mock TurtIe ™ --- Thinks you are a cunt, on, Thu 19 Feb 2009, 23:47, Reply)