A quick personal review of 2007:

At the start of the year I was seeing V. but the relationship fizzled out by May - basically we had run out of things to say to each other; we didn't really have that much in common.

My job as a community worker finished in March - it was a six month, fixed-term contract. I'm still attending the group therapy sessions and am hoping to arrange some sort of placement with the local authority, based in one of their offices in town.

My health has been good, although I've probably gained a few pounds.

I don't think I've travelled more than twelve miles from my home this year.

Q: How do you embarrass an archeologist?
A: Give him a used tampon and ask him which period it came from.

There was a man who entered a local newspaper's pun contest. He sent in ten different puns, in the hope that at least one of the puns would win.

Unfortunately, no pun in ten did.

There are currently two Welsh poppies flowering in my garden; one orange and one yellow; not bad for the end of December. Compared with a lot of places I would say that the English climate is very benign.

Last week, whilst I was travelling on the bus to visit my parents I noticed how many plants are actually in bloom at this time of year in people's gardens; primroses and roses are the only ones I could identify from the bus though, but there were several more varieties. There are also quite a few impressive yucca plants in the Doncaster area as well.

More proofreading errors.

A quick guide to writhing in the social and physical sciences .

Most men make the mistake of not washing their faces thoroughly with hot soup and water before they begin shaving.

If we would only send young American tenors to stud abroad, they would return immensely improved.

He heard himself assailed as a self-centred financial executive who buttered his own beard.

He is visiting our town with the bitter half.

Mr. and Mrs. Chester Lynes, of Philadelphia, are pictured here in Delphi, Greece, where they exploded antiques.

He received his graduate degree in unclear physics.

During the current fiscal year, Kinney plans to increase the number of uninformed sergeants to a total of 42.

It is said that there are more golf curses per square mile in North Carolina than anywhere else in the world .

The best treatment for shock is to rape the patients in blankets.

The commander had a firm but genital hold on his men.

Would She Climb to Top of Mr. Everest Again? Absolutely!

Alexander Hallilton was George Washington's closet companion.

David Cone's one-hitter was all but overshadowed by his rookie teammate's shitting.

He is a charismatic speaker and a major farce in politics

Texatron is to get $1,500,000 via the Northern lreland Office to keep the textiles and carpet factory open for another seven moths.

US dog lovers are paying £200 for prosthetic testicles for their castrated pets.
The 'Neuticles' are implanted in the dogs' scrotums to make them appear "anatomically intact", reports Sky News.
Louis Schwartz, chief of staff at the Overland Veterinary Clinic in Los Angeles, said: "What I find is the vast majority (of customers) are men.
"I can only think of one woman who has come to me to have the procedure on her pet. She was an animal control officer whose husband, because of his religious beliefs, did not want the dog to be neutered
"One weekend while he was away she came to me with the dog and years later, this man has no idea."
At Mr Schwartz's clinic dog lovers can also buy acupuncture treatment and medicine for separation anxiety and depression for their pets.
Pet care is now the fastest growing retail sector after electronics in the US with dog and cat owners spending about £20bn on their pets in 2007.

Hole in the wall for smokers

A German bar owner has got round a smoking ban by cutting holes in the wall so customers can stick their heads out to have a cigarette.
Michael Windisch, owner of the Maltermeister Turm bar and restaurant in Goslar, Lower Saxony, cut three holes next to tables in his restaurant after local authorities introduced the ban on smoking in all eating places.
Customers who want to smoke can stick their heads through the large holes and their hands through the other two so they can have a cigarette. A curtain has been mounted to keep out the cold.
Windisch said: "Now my customers can legally enjoy a cigarette without having to leave the comfort of the restaurant."
Local media have claimed the idea is likely to catch on in other parts of the country where blanket bans in smoking in restaurants are to be introduced from the New Year.

A guy sits down in a café and asks for the hot chilli.
The waitress says, "The guy next to you got the last bowl."
He looks over and sees that the guy's finished his meal, but the chilli bowl is still full.
He says, "Are you going to eat that?"
The other guy says, "No. Help yourself."
He takes it and starts to eat it. When he gets about half way down, his fork hits something. He looks down sees a dead mouse in it, and he pukes the chilli back into the bowl.
The other guy says, "That's about as far as I got, too."

The other day I was removing my leather belt from one pair of trousers and using it with another pair and noticed that I'd put it on the other way round - with the buckle now at the opposite side. This got me to wondering if there are separate right-handed and left-handed ways of wearing a belt.

(I've just checked on Google and didn't find anything - but I did discover that there's a left-handed way of kissing though…I can't imagine how that works.)

Anger is only one letter away from danger

A one-letter mistake can turn:
Friend into fiend,
Lots of talent into loss of talent,
Hire into fire,
An engaged girl into an enraged girl,
Comely into homely,
Married into marred,
Milestone into millstone.

President Vladimir Putin said on Monday he was keen to use Russia's planned global positioning system GLONASS to look after his black Labrador Koni.
"When can I buy hardware to equip my dog with so that she won't run away too far?" Putin was quoted as asking First Deputy Prime Minister Sergei Ivanov during a briefing on progress towards developing a competitor to the U.S. GPS system.

A teacher in Atlanta asked her students to write the words to their favorite Christmas Carols. Here are some of the humorous lines she received:

Deck the Halls with Buddy Holly

We three kings of porridge and tar

On the first day of Christmas my tulip gave to me

He's makin a list, chicken and rice.

With the jelly toast proclaim

Olive, the other reindeer. (all of the other reindeer)

Frosty the Snowman is a ferret elf, I say

Sleep in heavenly peas

You'll go down in listerine

Oh, what fun it is to ride with one horse, soap and hay

O come, froggy faithful

'One thousand' contains the letter 'A', but none of the words from one to nine hundred and ninety-nine has an 'A'.

Pay No Attention To the Condom-Fingered Googler Behind the Curtain

I just had to read further when I came across this headline.

Did you ever wonder how Google is scanning all of those books that are going in their massive Google Book Search project? Well, you can get a pretty good clue by looking at the second and third pages of The Gentleman's Magazine: the scanning is being done by taking ordinary pictures of the pages, and the pages (at least some of them) are arranged by a lady wearing red fingernail polish, a couple of gold rings, and latex covers on her first and second fingers—covers that look notably like condoms.

All these proofreading errors are from US newspapers.

Horace Mann School for the Dead and Hard of Hearing.

The report was signed by five faulty members of the university.(faculty)

The parking meters will permit parking for ten dents per hour.(cents)

The bride collapsed killing five people. (bridge)

The president, who has been sick for several days, is now in bed with a coed. (cold)

Each evening will consist of a four-curse menu.

Advanced Life Painting Studio. This group grows out of a need for professional artists to have an opportunity to paint from the model. Tuition includes model feel. (fee)

They were married and lived happily even after.

The new Miss America will be drowned later before a nationwide television audience. (crowned)

Mr. Ballard, who has been very ill the past week, is still under the car of Dr. Goldman.

A Census Bureau report revealed today that Southern girls do marry at an early urge.

James and Phoebe Cummings celebrated their 50th anniversary on May 26. They renewed their rows at St. Patrick's Cathedral.

This morning the second most prominent headline on the BBC teletext news is 'Millions celebrate Christmas.' Well, that's a surprise!

I don't know why the BBC even pretends to be a world class broadcaster any more.

I'm really a bit of a news junkie; I'm always watching the rolling 24 hours news stations, or documentaries, or discussion programmes. I'm able to watch BBC News 24 and Sky News on my Freeview box and CNN, Al Jazeera, ABC, Russia Today and France 24 online.

I don't like this time of year though because the channels are always broadcasting their 'Review of the Year' programmes; in other words, repeats.

On Sky News yesterday they were mentioning all the data that the government has lost this year and I didn't know whether to feel relieved or sad since none of it affects me: I don't have children so I'm not claiming Child Benefit and neither will their medical records have be lost, I'm not claiming a crisis loan from the DSS and I can't drive - so details of my driving test haven't been lost either.

St John's Wood is the only London tube station that doesn't contain one of the letters of the word 'mackerel'.

Cinderella is now nearly 70 years old. After having a fulfilling life with the now dead Prince, she happily sat upon her rocking chair watching the world go by from her front porch with a cat called Gizmo for companionship.
One sunny afternoon, out of nowhere, appeared the Fairy Godmother. Cinderella said “Fairy Godmother, what are you doing here after all these years?” The Fairy Godmother replies “Well Cinderella, since you have lived a good, wholesome life since we last met, I have decided to grant you 3 wishes. Is there anything for which your heart still yearns?”
Cinderella is taken aback, overjoyed and after some thoughtful consideration and almost under her breath she uttered her first wish. “I wish I was wealthy beyond comprehension.” Instantly her rocking chair was turned into solid gold. Cinderella was stunned. Cinderella said “Oh thank you, Fairy Godmother!” The Fairy Godmother replied “It is the least I can do. What is your second wish?” Cinderella looked down at her frail body and said: “I wish I was young and full of the beauty of youth again.” At once, her wish having been desired, became reality, and her beautiful youthful visage had returned. Cinderella felt stirrings inside her that had been dormant for years and long forgotten vigour and vitality began to course through her very soul. Then the Fairy Godmother spoke again “You have one more wish, what shall you have?” Cinderella looked over to Gizmo, who was now quivering in the corner with fear. “I wish for you to transform my old cat, Gizmo, into a beautiful and handsome young man.” Magically, Gizmo suddenly underwent so fundamental a change in his biological make up, that when he stood before her, he was a boy, so beautiful the like of which she nor the world had ever seen, so fair indeed that birds begun to fall from the sky at his feet.
The Fairy Godmother said “Congratulations Cinderella! Enjoy your new life.” With a blazing shock of bright blue electricity, she was gone. For a few moments, Gizmo and Cinderella looked into each other’s eyes. Cinderella sat, breathless, gazing at the most stunningly perfect boy she had ever seen.
Then Gizmo walked over to Cinderella, who sat transfixed in her rocking chair, and held her close in his muscular arms. He leant close to her ear, and into her ear breathed as much as whispered, blowing her golden hair with his warm breath, “I bet you regret having my balls chopped off now, don’t you?”

British doctors have made a tongue-in-cheek complaint to a chocolate manufacturer after the firm changed the shape of two sweets that could be used to measure testicles in pubescent boys.
The problem focuses on wrapped chocolates called Teasers and Truffles, whose 8mm oval shape was a dead ringer for a bead used in an orchidometer -- a gadget that measures testes to ensure they are developing normally.
But Teasers' and Truffles' unusual contribution to public health is now doomed after their manufacturer, Masterfoods UK, changed the shape of the chocs, leaving them bigger and flat-bottomed.
"This is a major setback to paediatric endocrinology," say Gareth Williams of the medical faculty at Bristol University and Poonam Dharmaraj, a paediatrician at the Royal Victoria Infirmary, Newcastle.
"Clearly, the original design should be reinstated.
"With skilful marketing, this could play to the manufacturer's advantage: by including a simple package insert with clear, easy-to-feel instructions, young males could self-evaluate their pubertal status (while pointing out that this should ideally not be done at the point of sale)."
It would provide "a rare opportunity for the chocolate industry to become palpably involved in public-health promotion," suggest the pair.
Their letter appears in the end-of-the-year issue of the British Medical Journal (BMJ), a traditional moment for publishing humorous items in the medical profession.

When a man attempted to siphon petrol from a motor home
parked on a Seattle street, he got much more than he
bargained for. Police arrived at the scene to find an
ill man curled up next to a motor home trying to steal
petrol and plugged his hose into the motor home's
sewage tank by mistake. The owner of the vehicle
declined to press charges, saying that it was the best
laugh he'd ever had.

Who to marry ...

If you want someone who will eat whatever you put in front of him
and never says its not quite as good as his mother made it ...

Then buy a dog.

If you want someone always willing to go out, at any hour,
for as long and wherever you want ...

Then buy a dog.

If you want someone who will never touch the remote, doesn't
care about football,
and can sit next to you as you watch romantic movies ...

Then buy a dog.

If you want someone who is content to get up on your bed just to warm
your feet and whom you can push off if he snores ...

Then buy a dog.

If you want someone who never criticises what you do, doesn't
care if you
are pretty or ugly, fat or thin, young or old, who acts as if
every word you say is especially worthy of listening to,
and loves you unconditionally, perpetually ...

Then buy a dog.

But, on the other hand, if you want someone who will never come when you call, ignores you totally when you come home, leaves hair all over the place, walks all over you, runs around all night and only comes home to eat and sleep, and acts as if your entire existence is solely to ensure his happiness...

Then buy a cat!

Australian Police have been unable to recommend a prosecution for the following scam:

A company takes out a newspaper advertisement claiming to be able to supply imported hard core pornographic videos. As their prices seem reasonable, people place orders and make payments via cheque

After several weeks, the company writes back explaining that under the present law they are unable to supply the materials and do not wish to be prosecuted. So they return their customers' money in the form of a company cheque.

However, due to the name of the company, few people will present
these cheques to their banks. The name of the company:
"The Anal Sex and Fetish Perversion Company."

MPs have been issued with a 10-point guide on how to change broken light bulbs in the House of Commons.

Tory MP David Davies had asked "what guidance has been issued on procedures for cleaning up and disposing of environmentally-friendly light bulbs which have been broken".

The House of Commons Commission's reply was published in Hansard and came from Liberal Democrat MP Nick Harvey.

"The instructions are that the cleaning operative, using protective gloves and wearing a mask, should collect the main fragments of the light bulb and carefully place them in a sturdy box," Mr Harvey wrote.

"All splinters should then be collected using stiff card or paper. The area should then be cleaned using a damp cloth. The splinters and the cloth should then be placed in the box.

"Once the area is clear and clean, the box should be sealed and labelled with details of the item.

"The box should then be taken to the waste removal area in the loading bay and passed to the waste disposal contractor in an appropriate manner."

'Tis good for girl to meet boy in park, but better for boy park meat in girl.

Just a brief update following on from Tuesday's post about being overcharged in the supermarket.

I've just received a telephone call from the customer services department at the company's head office telling me that when I go into town tomorrow I'll be able to claim a full refund; they've phoned up the Doncaster branch and made all the arrangements.

The sooner the compulsory BBC licence fee is abolished, the better.

Team bonding at the BBC lends a fresh perspective to the term "dumbing down". This month 200 staff from all over the country spent the day wandering round the BBC's White City offices cradling robotic plastic babies and sidling up to strangers whispering: "I've got something for you." The babies, loaned from BBC3's teen show the Baby Borrowers , were programmed to scream and wet themselves.
According to Ariel, the BBC's house magazine, those present included Alan Yentob, the BBC's creative director, and Adrian Chiles, presenter of The One Show on BBC1. Unwisely, perhaps, both allowed themselves to be photographed holding a baby. In between cuddling the damp, howling little robots, they had to undertake a sensory assault course. This involved "wading through pools of raspberry jelly and autumn leaves blindfolded". Everyone who took part was asked to wash their colleague's feet afterwards.
A Buddhist monk with a key round his neck was part of the "fun". Staff had twenty seconds to get the key off him - without using menaces. Apparently the trick was to remain silent. Oh, and everyone was also issued with masks showing the faces of such luminaries as Tony Blair, Margaret Thatcher and Margaret Beckett. When not dripping with jelly or synthetic baby pee, staff had a chance to pitch programme ideas at a panel of BBC bosses including Glenwyn Benson, a bigwig in policy and strategy, and George Entwistle, controller of knowledge commissioning.

A few minutes ago I was standing behind a woman in the checkout queue who was buying a 'handkerchief in a tin.' This must be the most extreme example of over-packaging and waste of resources I've ever witnessed.

Maybe she is playing a cruel trick on someone, whose Christmas present will not be quite what they were expecting.

Sent to me by my sister in Adelaide - it just about sums up Australians.

Handle every situation like a dog.

If you can't eat it or hump it,
Piss on it and walk away.

Britons have been voting in a new survey to find the nation's worst Christmas cracker joke.
And the winner was: What is Santa's favourite pizza? One that's deep pan, crisp and even!

These are some trends I've noticed about my blog:

The posts that attract most comments are the personal ones, followed by the jokes. However, my most popular entries are the unusual lists which I was posting quite a lot of last year. Several of these archived posts are visited several times every day.

A Dutch veterinarian was fined 600 guilders (about $240)
for causing a fire that destroyed a farm in Lichten Vourde,
the Netherlands. The vet had been trying to convince a farmer
that his cow was passing flatulent gas; to demonstrate, the
vet ignited the gas, but the cow became a "four-legged
flame-thrower" and ran wild, setting fire to bales of hay.
Damage to the farm was assessed at $80,000. The cow was
unharmed.

The World's Easiest Quiz (with the answers below)

1) How long did the Hundred Years War last?
2) Which country makes Panama hats?
3) From which animal do we get catgut?
4) In which month do Russians celebrate the October evolution?
5) What is a camel's hair brush made of?
6) The Canary Islands in the Pacific are named after what animal?
7) What was King George VI's first name?
8) What colour is a purple finch?
9) What country do Chinese gooseberries come from?
10) How long did the Thirty Years War last?

- - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - -

ANSWERS TO THE QUIZ

1) 116 years, from 1337 to 1453.
2) Ecuador.
3) From sheep and horses.
4) November. The Russian calendar was 13 days behind ours.
5) Squirrel fur.
6) The Latin name was Insularia Canaria - Islands of the Dogs.
7) Albert. When he came to the throne in 1936 he respected the wish of Queen Victoria that no future king should ever be called Albert.
8) Distinctively crimson.
9) New Zealand.
10) Thirty years, of course. From 1618 to 1648.