The Waste of Space Awards: January

Greetings, Internet adherents,

In a vain attempt to increase traffic to the long-forgotten outpost of the Internet known as the Waste of Space, the powers-that-be have decided it is necessary to introduce a few gimmicks that will hopefully introduce some much-needed humour to what is fast becoming a tedious dirge of poorly thought out jokes, long sentences and phrases that only make sense to a few of the best-versed advocates of Red Andy's peculiarly bizarre sense of humour. (I could talk now about sadistic equine necrophilia, but that would just be beating a dead horse.)

As such, it has been foisted upon me to introduce the Waste of Space Awards. This monthly award is awarded every month (circular reasoning, I know) to the person, group or entity that is considered by Red Andy to be the biggest Waste of Space of the month. Each monthly award "ceremony" will consist of four Honourable Mentions, followed by the recipient of the Award. Everyone taking part will receive a short blurb on what they have done to receive such a prestigious honour.

This award ceremony has the advantage over other award ceremonies in that there are no washed-up celebrities presenting the trophies (in fact, there are no trophies), no week-long acceptance speeches and no tables to negotiate when you take to the stage to accept your award. So, without further ado, let's give a round of applause to our Honourable Mentions for the month of January, 2007:

HONOURABLE MENTIONS:

The Home Office

Once again, everyone's favourite governmental department has been the pinnacle of bureaucratic incompetence. Whether they're refusing to jail sex offenders on the basis of overcrowded prisons, or failing to restrict the travel of convicted drug traffickers, the blunders of the Home Office would have been hilarious if they didn't have such grave implications for our quality of life. Hats off to Mr. Reid and the gang, whose ill-thought-out attempt to deflect attention from the latest spate of escaped murderers from open prisons by proposing a schism in the department was barely sufficient to cover even a day's worth of news. We thought we'd better include them now, as by next month the whole thing could have been renamed the Prisons, Immigration and Security Service, with hilarious consequences for all.

George W. Bush

Even by the normal standards of Washington, January has been a particularly foolish month for the Commander-in-Chief of the "War on Terrrr". While popular opinion at home and abroad seems to advocate a "strategic withdrawal" (read: run like hell) from the hornet's nest that is Iraq, Bushie's solution has been the same as it was last time. And the time before that. And the several times before that, too; namely, to send in more troops. Rumours that Bush's military strategy was being dictated to him by someone with an abnormally high chromosome count were unable to be verified, so we couldn't award Bush our highest honour. Yet.

Jade Goody

While the Waste of Space officially despises reality TV and has nothing to do with it, the debacle that is Celebrity Big Get Me Out Of The Idol Factor hasn't escaped our notice. In particular, the antics of a so-called "celebrity" (whose status, ironically enough, stems from a lack of success on a previous reality TV show) have been deplorable at best. It would be unkind to exploit the negative press this individual has been receiving for a few cheap laughs, but thankfully cheap laughs is our business. Not only that, but destroying the credibility of any "reality TV star" is something we're more than happy to do. Congratulations, Jade, for first-class idiocy.

The Catholic Church of Britain

This minor religious fringe group has been causing trouble this month, in protest against new laws preventing discrimination against homosexuals. The Catholic Church, who run several publicly funded adoption agencies in the UK, have pointed out that this new legislation will impede their freedom to berate homosexuals and condemn them to Hell. Worse, it will compel them to give away innocent children to households of ignorant sodomites - all of whom will now doubtless be queueing at the door of their nearest adoption agency, clamouring to exploit this blatant discrimination against the Church. The Waste of Space says: Why are we letting a church run an adoption agency anyway?

THE WINNER:

All of our Honourable Mentions strived (strove?) very hard to achieve great levels of incompetence and idiocy over the last month. However, their foolishness pales in comparison to this month's winner. It is our great pleasure to award the inaugural Waste of Space Award to the individual who has, by far, been the biggest Waste of Space of the month. The award goes to:

Kent Hovind

For the uninitiated, Kent Hovind is a Christian evangelist whose Creation Science Evangelism ministry tours the United States, teaching children and adults alike the truths that the miserable and nasty Richard Dawkins has been trying to hide from us for so long: the world is six thousand years old, there really was a global flood in the time of Noah and dinosaurs did coexist with humans. Kent wins our award for his services to incompetence: this month he was jailed for ten years for tax evasion. He should think himself lucky - the maximum sentence the judge could have imposed on him was 288 years.

Congratulations, Kent, for defrauding the American public with your lies about science, and then defrauding them again by failing to pay your taxes. We salute your stupidity, and remind you of that famous Biblical verse:

Render unto Caesar the things that are Caesar's, and render unto God the things that are God's. But for those things that are neither Caesar's nor God's, feel free to write them off; for yea, they be deductible.

- The Gospel according to Red Andy, 9:21-22.

It's a shame the IRS didn't think your income was deductible.

This was the least smug-looking picture we could find of Kent Hovind. Really.

From all of us here at the Waste of Space:

Revolutionary and award-giving regards,

Red Andy

If a Tree Falls in your Back Garden....

....and nobody is looking, does it make a sound?

Apparently the answer is yes, about which more here.

Greetings, Internet nomads,

It may not have escaped the notice of those of you living in the United Kingdom that it's been a bit - well - windy over the last few days. I like to think of myself as the observant type, so it wasn't too much trouble to take note of the somewhat violent weather conditions this week and wonder if it would have any effect on me.

At about midday today, my dad was apparently sitting in his study, safely locked away from the howling gale outside, when he heard a mysterious creaking sound. Not too perturbed by it, he was surprised to look up a few minutes later and discover that the tree in our back garden had fallen over on top of the shed, as well as on top of another oak tree in the garden backing onto ours. Understandably he was a little surprised at this, and after ringing my mother, the insurance company and a tree surgeon, he went off to the people in whose garden our tree had carelessly landed to apologise. Not that it was his fault, of course - but it seemed to be the polite thing to do.

He returned home about half an hour later and went back to work in the study. By the time the tree surgeon arrived, however - at about half past one - the job was twice as big as he had been expecting. Unseen by my dad, another tree had fallen over from our garden into somebody else's. Once again, he had heard the noise of the tree falling over, but put it down to the tree that had already fallen finally crushing its way through the oak tree on which it had landed. Instead of this, we now have a fence broken in two places, two fallen trees in our garden and a big hole where the first tree was uprooted. "Never mind," my mum apparently said when she heard the news, "we've got room for that pond we've always wanted now!"

I didn't know about the tree incidents when I was sat in my Maths exam this afternoon, struggling over the first question: "If the inverse sine of x is equal to the cosecant of x multiplied by the square root of seventy-seven, find the exact value of x, where x is a real number between zero and pi." Or something equally horrendous.

I wish back to the good old days of GCSE Mathematics: "If Balthazar has 12 sweets and Jane has 47, by what percentage is the teacher who has given out the sweets intrinsically racist?" At least you could understand what those questions were asking you, even if the answer occasionally alluded you. Not only that, but you got to smile at the characters with silly names like "Balthazar."

One thing that GCSEs and A Levels have in common, though, is the hilariously useful "Advice to Candidates" printed in stern-looking lettering on the front of the exam paper. It's not too difficult to imagine some anal-retentive semi-retired civil servant with a monocle and a wooden leg dictating these instructions to his overworked, multi-challenged assistant of questionable species: "Yes, yes ... put that in bold .... No, bold. Like this. That's better. Now, how about a numbered list? No, no, you're right .... that would be stupid."

For your entertainment, I quote a list of advice I was given for this maths paper, which may have been revised slightly for comic value. Or I could have made the whole thing up. The point is, the "Advice to Candidates" is thoroughly stupid and deserves satirising on this blog:

ADVICE TO CANDIDATES:

1. Answer all questions in blue or black ballpoint pen, except for questions stating "use pencil for this question" or "all colours accepted, except for yellow or white." Candidates are advised not to attempt any question asking "Cap'n, art thou sleepin' thar below?"
2. Candidates are strongly advised not to attempt to write on both sides of the paper at once.
3. Extra credit will be given to candidates who randomly write parts of their answers in bold. Italics not accepted.
4. This paper will be marked by bored undergraduate Market Gardening students with nothing better to do. Show all working, preferably alongside a recipe for a delicious cheesecake.
5. Candidates who do not write their full name, candidate number and centre number on the front of this exam paper will have humorous names assigned to them by exam board staff, such as "Mike Hunt" or "Sue Flay."

That about does it for tonight. But before I go, I'll leave you with the amusing (but rather vulgar) limerick that was engraved on my desk in the exam - just for your entertainment:

There was once a young mouse called Keith,
Who circumcised boys with his teeth,
He didn't do it for leisure,
Nor sexual pleasure,
But to get to the cheese underneath!

Revolutionary and thoroughly treeless regards,

Red Andy

New and Horrifying CJD Epidemic

Greetings, Internet disciples,

Those of you who have read some of my previous blogs at the old Waste of Space will be aware of the terrible disease spreading through towns near you. CJD, as it is known - an abbreviation of Cornershop Jackass Disease - has flared up again, and will be infecting grocery stores and supermarkets in your area very, very soon.

The disease is caused by tiny parasites afflicting the head of the sufferer, transmitted from person to person by close physical contact. The parasites burrow into the sufferer's cranium and attack the brain, particularly enjoying the areas affecting higher motor functions, balance and IQ. The condition is not fatal, although it can lead to sufferers becoming very unpopular with the proprietors of local shops. For reasons unknown to science, the parasites appear only to be active when the sufferer is inside a shop purchasing food or other essential items.

Please remember that CJD is highly contagious and members of the public should be very wary of individuals in corner shops, grocery stores and supermarkets suffering from the following symptoms:

• Disorientation (e.g. an inability to find the eggs, despite the fact that they are where they've always been.)
• Confusion (e.g. mixing up names of fairly different products, such as "honey" and "onions".
• Poor motor skills (e.g. an inability to negotiate displays of tin cans.)
• Dulled mental capacity (e.g. counting out money for twenty minutes before realising it's the wrong currency.)
• Slurred speech (e.g. incomprehensible garbage about beetroot.

Sufferers may exhibit some or all of these symptoms. There is, sadly, no cure for CJD, although upon leaving the store the symptoms are often alleviated immediately; however, relapses will occur as soon as the store is re-entered.

Sufferers will often be seen approaching members of staff for assistance. Often a smile and a helpful pointing in the right direction will be sufficient to deter them from infecting staff, but occasionally the symptoms are so marked that sufferers need to be physically directed to the correct place. In the unlikely but possible event that one must actually make physical contact with a sufferer, scrub the infected area immediately with bleach and a Brillo pad. It'll probably dissolve much of the infected area, but the parasites that cause the disease cannot work in conditions of extreme alkalinity such as those found in bleach. (It is believed, although not empirically proven, that the parasites denature similarly in acidic conditions: if you find yourself without access to bleach, replace with hydrochloric or hydrofluoric acid.)

Given the nature of the disease to flare up in grocery stores, retail staff in these positions are particularly vulnerable to the disease. The best method of prevention is to avoid customers at all costs, although given the high-risk nature of the job this is sometimes impossible. In this case, there are three golden rules that, if followed, will usually prevent the contraction of CJD.

1. NEVER touch another member of the public who may be suffering from CJD.
2. If a sufferer (or suspected sufferer) asks you for assistance, never look them directly in the eyes, do not approach them too closely and try very hard not to breathe.
3. When speaking to sufferers, direct them as far away from you as possible (regardless of whether the product they are looking for is right next to them.

Cornershop Jackass Disease is, in conclusion, one of the most dangerous afflictions affecting our society today. Please be extremelt vigilant next time you visit your local store, and remember - that dear old man shuffling around with a confused look on his face may be suffering from more than just senility.

Revolutionary and grave regards,

Red Andy

Bonvenon al la Sarkindaĵo de Spaco!

Saluton, Internet trawlers,

For those of you who are unfamiliar with the words in the title and greeting of this blog, don't worry - I haven't gone completely insane. Well, maybe I have. You see, I have decided, in a fit of what could possibly be the beginnings of the teenage equivalent of a mid-life crisis, to teach myself the wonderful language that is Esperanto.

Esperanto, for the uninitiated among you, was developed in the late nineteenth century by "Dr. Esperanto," real name Dr. L.L. Zamenhof (honest). His grand design was for his language to be used as an international language, so those who met each other, whose native languages were different, could converse with one another on an equal footing. The idea never really took off, but ten out of ten for trying, Zammy. According to the fountain of all knowledge that is Wikipedia, there are 1000 native speakers of Esperanto. How any language can acquire 1000 native speakers when it was invented just over a century ago is beyond me. But we all know how reliable Wikipedia is, and you just can't argue with truth.

It remains to be seen how far I'll actually get with learning Esperanto before I give up and convert to Mormonism, which was the other thing I briefly contemplated doing. But I'm currently very impressed with this language, more so than German - since Esperanto does away with all those irritating things like word order, verb endings and gender of nouns that cause me to perform so poorly in written pieces of German. So, here's hoping that I will be able to join the two million who can apparently speak Esperanto. That probably makes it more popular than Swahili. And it definitely makes it more popular than French. I think.

Well, that about does it for this time, largely because I just dropped in to let you know about my latest idiotic scheme. I'll be back soon with an update of a more orthodox nature. Expect a bus-related anecdote sometime soon.

Revoluciulo kaj dulingva kontemplio,

Rugxa Andy

BRIEF TRANSLATIONS

Bonvenon = welcome

al = to

la = the

Sarkindaĵo = waste

de = of

Spaco = space

Saluton = hello

Revoluciulo = revolutionary

kaj = and

dulingva = bilingual

kontemplio = regards

rugxa = red

"You're listening to SPAR Live, and the only way to make it stop is to CUT YOUR OWN EARS OFF!"

Greetings, Internet friends, Romans, countrymen.

Lend me your ears (well, eyes, actually - unless Microsoft Sam is reading this to you, in which case there is a certain broccoli-related phrase you could make him say for your own amusement. But that's another story.) Somehow I think I may have gone off track a little bit, and I haven't actually started.

First let me start by apologising for disappearing for a little while over the festive period. Suffice to say my temporary absence involved large quantities of Tetley's and John Smith's, as well as the predicted visit from the Hangover Monster (you know, the one who creeps up on you at night, defecates in your mouth and then bangs on your head with a sledgehammer) on a few occasions. I hope that all the readers who have gotten this far had a reasonable Christmas and New Year.

Now that the trivialites are over with, let's moan about something. At some point before Christmas, the good people at my place of work decided to install a radio system within the shop, so that customers and staff alike could enjoy the tuneful melodies emanating from the speakers, and possibly be influenced by the subliminal messages that are doubtless hidden behind every song. ("You know you need some more cooking oil .... come on, it's only £8.95 a bottle!")

The unfortunate thing about this newfangled radio is that it is permanently stuck on one station - SPAR Live, the grocery store's equivalent to the pre-recorded messages that blast out every time you go to Tesco. Only this has music, which one must imagine is good for the wallets of the record producers. The main problem with SPAR Live is that the quality of broadcasting is almost unimaginably bad. Think about a radio station where the presenter has the charisma of a small, slightly burnt cake, where he (yes - it's a he) is given a job only slightly easier than trying to melt sand with a cigarette lighter - having to introduce songs at the same time as plugging completely unrelated products at criminally high prices. Add to this the somewhat repetitive advertisement announcing the "No-Repeat Work-Day" (now there's irony for you), and the constant adverts for Terry's Chocolate Orange, and you're somewhere near how bad it is. But it isn't. It's worse.

I am searching in vain for the tuner so I can put something on that is less likely to drive me clinically insane within twelve minutes of entering the shop.

Failing that, there is an axe under the counter.

Revolutionary and somewhat destructive regards,

Red Andy