This year, give him something he really needs

It's like living in a Catholic country, almost everyone I know is reproducing themselves. I have in the past stated that while I have no personal interest in continuing the Fastrousers dynasty, other people should be allowed to repopulate the world with their verminous offspring if they so choose. Enough is enough though, and if people aren't prepared to have more care with their semen or ovaries then it's time to make a stand.

My first impulse was to pollute the LA water supply with oestrogen to try and lower sperm counts, but it seemed a bit extreme even for me. I wasn't bothered too much by the lack of hegemony engendered in this policy, but I was concerned by the risk of growing man-breasts. Plus, it's already hard enough to get hold of decent fish around here as it is, despite living 500 yards from the ocean.

Instead, I've decided to launch a pro-vasectomy campaign, with the slogan It's hip to snip. Consider it a call-to-arms for all males to take back control of the whole birthing process. After all, no man really wants the responsibility of parenthood, it's just a postmodern ruse to give women something to obsess about other than the diameter of their thighs. I'm putting together a Home Vasectomy Kit (for limited time only $19.99, which if you think is steep you should check out the latest mothercare catalog). It's got everything you need - sharp scissors, a clothes peg, a few elastoplast and a duel aneasthetic/disinfectant (a half bottle of Bell's - in early trials we tried Guinness but the disinfecting properties weren't as good, and the patient's propensity to urinate after 30 minutes caused a few complications). You'll need to provide your own bucket, and if you've got a decent carpet it's probably worth putting some old newspaper down. All this is covered in the easy-to-follow instructions though.

All it takes is a steady hand and some balls (no pun intended). No doubt there'll be complaints from the medical profession when they have to stitch up some cretin who was reading the diagrams upside down and can't tell his arse from his appendix, but that's an economic drop in the ocean compared to the cost of 15 years per child in state education.

By this time next year, America's men will be firing more blanks than a National Guardsman.

A message for Saint Nicholas

Dear Santa

First of all, I'd like to apologise for any offence, real or imagined, that I may have caused you in the past. Your long-running commercial links with the Coca-cola company represent an incredibly forward thinking Public-Private Partnership (the Tories didn't catch on for another 50 years), and are absolutely not the actions of yet another bloated institute whoring itself out to corporate interests, as I may have implied. However, lets just be clear on where we stand. You and I both know that you have absolutely nothing but the purest motives when you break into peoples homes whilst they're asleep and appeal to the basest materialistic instincts of their vulnerable offspring. It would be a shame in these paranoid times, though, if someone in the popular media, (someone with their own website perhaps) was to let slip the real reason you live in the North Pole - a region not noted for stringent enforcement of child sex laws. I'll do for you what I did for the Catholic Church, you dirty old sod.

Now we understand each other, let's get down to business. My list this year may seem a little unconventional, but if you can break the theory of relativity to the point of visiting 60 billion homes in 24 hours then this lot should be a doddle.

First of all, I would like an induction coil. Hand-cranked is fine, but it must be portable enough to fit in a small bag, and capable of inducing a satisfyingly painful signal from, say, 7 metres, into the headphones of any anti-social git who insists on polluting my morning bus-ride with the tinny aural fallout of their faux-latino pop music.

Secondly, I would like one of these. It's true that I don't spend much time clearing anti-personnel mines these days, but I am so heartily weary of scrummaging my way past a gaggle of undergraduates whenever I have to walk down a busy corridor - the ability to explosively clear a path 1m wide and 45m long would certainly help me get to meetings on time.

Finally, I've had my eye on a taser for some time now. No particular reason, I just think it would be fun to painfully incapacitate people without even getting up from my chair.

So there you have, not outrageous list by any means, but then I'm not a greedy man. I know it's usual to leave a scotch on the mantelpiece, but the local filth have been right on the case with drink-driving this year and the last thing you need right now is to lose your license.

Yours,

F. Fastrousers (Capt)

Ps Don't even think about involving the filth. I know people.

A message to the NSF: FAO G.W. Bush esq

Have you ever wanted to tell George W. Bush exactly what you think of him? Thanks to the NSA, you don't have to bother! (Well, you might, but as a foreign national living in the USA I don't). They'll simply listen in on all your phone conversations and pass them on to George. Just in case you're reading Shock & Awe chaps, feel free to post a comment and join the party - although I'd appreciate it if you didn't mention the details of that phone conversation the other night with my Filipino 'friend'. What a man does in the privacy of his own home is a matter for himself alone (and of course the NSA, the White House, and the man who sweeps the floor at Langley). Enough said.

All this canvassing of the world's opinions seems to be paying off. George admitted this week what the rest of the world has been saying for five years, that his intelligence is deeply flawed. I have been commenting on Bush's intelligence for some time now.

Angry young men

Normally I'm pretty good at avoiding the hectoring activists that loiter around campus trying to secure easily-duped but well-meaning students for their cause. I think that comes from having done my degree at the arse-end of Thatcherite Britain, students were a lot angrier then in my opinion. Today though, I made the mistake of being distracted on the thoroughfare outside the student's building, and was collared by someone wanting me to boycott Del Tacos. I have no problem boycotting Del Tacos since the 'food' there is unrelentingly wretched, all soggy tortillas and sorry lettuce, but I was curious to know why he wanted me to.

'They exploit their workers! Sometimes they have to work up to 10-12 hours a day!' (Note the exclamation marks, he really was terribly excited about this).
'That's my normal working day. You'll have to do better than that to impress me'
'Well, their workers are paid a pittance'.
'Still not good enough, keep going'
'These people have no future, all they have to look forward to is years of mindless drudgery'
'So what your saying is that we should boycott Del Tacos because they treat their staff like the University treats PhD students?'
'Ummmm.....'

He should have tried hanging around the law school. They at least pretend to have a social conscience before they sell their souls to the corporate demons.

FIFA has destroyed my chances of a PhD

The moment they announced 'Group B' I knew I was screwed. My supervisor, who is from Trinidad, has been banging on for weeks about how great it is that Trinidad & Tobago have finally qualified for the World Cup Finals. Nobody seriously expects them to get past the groups, but the fact that it's England that's going to knock them out does not bode well, especially as it will be about the same time as my qualifying exams.

I love the World Cup though. I couldn't give a toss about the football, but for four weeks every few years it becomes socially acceptable to be an obnoxious, jingoistic bigot. As Burt Reynolds would say, even Fastrousers will come back into fashion eventually.

American people don't really play sports that other countries do (except for Canada I suppose, if you can call that a country), so they don't really have this wonderful outlet for mindless xenophobia. That's probably why they're so keen on starting wars.

British Tories announce latest patsy

The British Conservative Party has elected a new leader. He's an old Etonian, so he should be well versed in the rough and tumble (not to say the spanking, bondage and auto-erotic asphyxiation) of Tory Party politics. For those of you not familiar with post-Thatcherite British politics, the role of Conservative leader hinges on trying to avoid talking about Europe for four years, and then resigning quietly when they inevitably lose the election.

Mr Cameron says "People in this country are crying out for a Conservative Party that is decent, reasonable, sensible, common sense and in it for the long term of this country and that is the party we are going to build". To be honest, most people in the UK weren't alive when we last had a Conservative Party like that. The last person to enter the House of Commons with an honest motive and a workable plan was Guy Fawkes, and he had to contend with considerably more than a smart-arse answer from the Labour dispatch box. My advice to Cameron would be to appeal to the traditional party base - fill in the Channel Tunnel, declare war on the French and bring back hanging for starters.

Some things you never knew about the Tories

The top-secret 2002 policy document 'Immigration in the New Millenium - a postmodern approach' began with the words I'm not racist, but...

The sexiest ever Tory was Jeffrey Archer a diminutive peer of the realm and pathological liar who makes a staggering living writing books specifically for airport bookstands.

The second sexiest Tory was William Hague.

In the early nineties, spank-fests and sexual deviance were so rampant that the party employed its very own sex therapist to help MPs stay out of trouble. She was called Edwina Curry.

Not that the Tories aren't capable of producing a truly fine intellectual. The left and right wingers alike wither under the searing analysis of Boris Johnston.

When weapons are allowed back on board an aircraft, the pilots will be able to land the plane safely but the aisles will be running with blood

The Association of Flight Attendents are not at all happy that nail scissors are being allowed back on US flights as carry-on luggage. As they so prophetically state, "When weapons are allowed back on board an aircraft, the pilots will be able to land the plane safely but the aisles will be running with blood". I might retort that if those bitch air stewardesses would bring my scotch and water in a timely fashion then I wouldn't have need to start hacking and slicing at the other passengers.

It's a completely irrelevant argument anyway, who really needs in-flight nail scissors? If I want to do my manicure at 30,000 ft then I can use a nail file, and if I need a sharp implement with which to butcher the crew, then I just make sure I stock up with glass in the duty-free shop before boarding. Of course, that screws over any Al-Quaeda fanatic because being Muslim they're not allowed to buy Johnny Walker (to be honest nobody should be allowed to buy Johnny Walker, much less drink it, but that's a different matter). But I'm sure any prospective Jihadi could get special dispensation from their local Mullah if they want to go on a booze-fuelled massacre without damaging their chances of winning a 72-year-old virgin, or whatever it is these people die for.

Talking of in-flight affray, I'm taking the red-eye back to Heathrow on Christmas Eve, which means passing over Greenland on Christmas Night. I've already told British Airways that if there's so much as the hint of a gag over the intercom about flying sleds piloted by a senile old pedarist dressed in red, then I shall be forced to initiate a bloodbath armed only with a keyring and the zipper from my coat. They can't claim that they haven't been warned.

Bruins and Trojans

To the outsider there appears to be little to connect the Californian Bear and the Trojans, except that both were wiped out by non-native invaders a while ago. This weekend though, the two come together in the highlight of the LA academic year when the Bruins (UCLA) play the Trojans (USC).

UCLA students can't stand their local rivals, which due to their ludicrously high tuition fees is locally dubbed the University of Spoilt Children (not that UCLA undergraduates represent some sort of impoverished underclass, judging by the number of Lexus' in the student car park). The iconographic build-up has to be seen to be believed - the statue of Bruin Bear on campus has been under 24 hour guard all week to stop USC students vandalising it. Nobody batted an eyelid when hunters wiped out the last of the real Californian Bears 100 years ago, but now everyone's terrified in case a bronze statue gets a comedy penis strapped to it.

I hate college football, and not only because the money being spent on guarding a bronze bear would be better supplementing my meagre stipend. The real reason I hate college sports is that in order to be eligible to play for the University, these semi-professional sports-persons have to be enrolled students. And that means we, the PhD students (you won't see a faculty member anywhere near a lower division undergraduate class), are expected to drum an education into them.

I wouldn't go as far as saying that collegiate sports players are thick (I wouldn't dare, they're fucking enormous), but imagine trying to nurse Wayne Rooney through the first year of a degree programme. Remember, Rooney doesn't even spend every day smashing his head into people/goalposts/the ground etc (Rooney only does that on a Saturday night).

UCLA haven't got a cat in hell's chance, but if a couple of them are sufficiently bruised to miss class next week I'll consider it a victory. Even I have to admit that college football is not without some attraction.