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