Now they're on to us

In a huge development, the government of the United Kingdom has blown our cover.

Gov.UK has issued a warning to parents about their children's use of vintage internet acronyms including, Keep Parents Clueless. Which of course what KPC has been all about these last 8 years!

UK youth can still keep using FBI to great profit though as Gov.UK is not hep to that one (yet).

Hat tip to loyal KPC reader (and hep internet cat) SR.

Seeking investors for my new business venture

If Ikea thinks they can sell solar panels in England, I can damn well sell ski equipment in Oklahoma! Check out the cool logo that RKG dug up for me:

Liberty

Had a great time working the green screen to get this done for the Jack Miller Center.



It's kind of long, 20 minutes, but there is a lot of good content there.  My worry is that you have to be pretty interested in the subject to stick it out.  So our political theory friends might use it.  But it's going to take some fireworks to reach the high school kids.

This is our competition, I'm afraid.  Pretty darned fun to watch...



Still, the Miller Center vid holds up pretty well, in SPITE of giving me the narrator role.  Next time:  music.  And, an EPIC VIOLIN SOLO!  

Tosser v. Wanker

Okay, so the above sounds like a legal case, perhaps where a sociologist is suing an English prof.

But it is a serious question of "dicktion." (Apologies; couldn't help meself)

Both names are insults, clearly, and both refer to Onanism. (I assume that women are never called tossers / wankers, yes?* I mean, they can technically do the analogous thing, but it's just not the same. Brits, or Tommy the Brit, feel free to join in here...)

My impression is that calling someone a wanker implies total dismissal, not just an insult but saying the person wanking is beneath contempt.

Tosser is in relative terms more jovial, less insulting. The tosser is perhaps a pompous and useless idiot, but a wanker is not serious, someone who is just fooling around. In short, then, Andrew Lansley is arguably a tosser, but Justin Bieber is clearly a wanker.

Of course, I probably have this wrong. Since I am going to London soon to visit Tommy the Brit, I need advice.

Wanker, or Tosser, for the well informed visitor looking for just that right holiday insult? Some other possibilities...

*I found some references that would claim that a female tosser is a "strummer." But that misses the point. The goal is not to find a word for a woman pleasing herself (as the '80s Franklin-Lennox anthem said, "Sisters are doing it for themselves!"). Rather, the question is what is the analogous INSULT. I also found "bean flicker." I wish I hadn't found that, but I did.

Don't park illegally in England

Not even if you have a pretty good excuse....(note action in circle on left)

Voting on How to Vote

The Brits are thinking of ending their FPTP voting system.

Perhaps the experience of the Liberal Democrats is the reason.

(nod to THE Chelsea)

Not From the Onion

Though it ought to be from the Onion only.

Check this video. As far as I can tell, the two giant, big brotherish EYES are the symbol of British nanny-state intrusiveness. They got cameras in their bloody RUBBISH TIPS, after all.

(Nod to Mike G)

How Cool Is This?

Electoral reform? You mean it is not impossible?

Wow.

Consider the sequence of events.

1. Third party candidate allowed to participate in debates. Does well. Polls show third party might matter, might have good ideas.

2. Election takes place, where third party gets hammered, because of crooked election laws.

3. But because neither of major state-sponsored parties has a majority, third party is able to extract promise to make election law more open and less crooked.

If it happened in England, could it happen in the US? Answer: Probably not, because in the US we can't even get to step 1. Voters can't like what they can't see.

(Nod to Anonyman)

Well Hung Parliament

Brit Labour Gov Goes Up in Flames, Down in Seats!

Actually, Labour lost, and should have lost power, but the districts are so distorted in terms of seats/votes ratio that I don't see how the Brits even call these things elections. Also, the LD surge turned out to be just puff, no real blow.

And so the pound gets pounded.

Nine bins, no waiting

England is screwed. We even have a label that says so.

But.... what the heck? Anyone want to play a little "Nine bins"?

All resources are either substitutable, or renewable, except.... ONE. Our time. That's the one thing we can't get more of. Yet the envirophiles want to waste all our time on religious ceremonies to worship Gaia.

(Nod to the NCM)

Man Pulled Over Driving Barbie Car

And, yes, alcohol was involved.

(Nod to Anonyman, who still has some Barbies in his closet, I hear)

Boob Tube

40-LL. Double L? As in what the HE-Double L? "One of my boyfriends?" She suffocated the poor man.

I think Dave Brown would just suggest that you make that "wubbawubbawubba" motorboat sound, to make some airspace.

And the ladies on the "The View" talk about upgrades. But not Double L. My lord.

(Nod to Tommy tWBB)

I'm On a Plane. I Can't Complain.

Brit Law Prof Snoozes, Air Canada Loses!

"The last thing I remember was taking off from Calgary," Mr. Lines, who was en route from London, told Canada's National Post. "I knew I was safely on board and there was no further destinations and it was all good. ... Somebody would wake me up at the end."

That the "somebody" would be a plane mechanic in an otherwise empty aircraft came as a shock to Mr. Lines.

"If I'd been a vulnerable passenger, a young girl or elderly, it could have been a lot worse," he said. "The other implication is that if I was a terrorist, then I've got an hour-and-a-half after the plane's landed, all by myself, in a secure area on a plane."

After complaining to Air Canada, he was told that the flight attendant who should have checked the plane was instead assisting passengers in wheelchairs. By way of apology, the airline offered Mr. Lines 20 percent off the cost of four future flights.

I laughed, at first. But he's right. You can't just leave a guy on the plane, in a secure area. Even if he is asleep.

The Main Thing We Stand For is Reelection

(Nod to Tommy the Brit. Careful with the video camera in the rubbish bin, Tom!)

England = Scary

Popehat gives some details about England.

Tommy, you okay, man?

Lord Gaia Himself

Prof. Lovelock..."Lord Gaia himself..."

Why Did They have to shoot the POPULAR Teacher

This is messed up.

My questions:

1. It was a "science lesson"? What in the world was the lesson?
2. Why the obsession with school shootings? These are actually extremely rare, even in the U.S. School shootings in the UK are almost unheard of.
3. This did make me want to listen to "I don't like Mondays," by the Boomtown Rats, written by Bob Geldoff before he became a total goofball. So I did.
4. As Anonyman points out, the best part is the claim that the students were only upset because they "shot" one of the popular teachers.

(Nod to Anonyman)

UPDATE: Read Ross's comment. EXCELLENT links.

Bondage dungeon in Devon.

One guy showed up during the search. He was questioned. But he claimed, "But I have an appointment!" Perhaps he thought all the burly men in police uniforms were a new wrinkle in the show?

And check this list of contraband:

The sex dungeon was then found in a converted room filled with "hundreds" of items including whips, gas masks, wooden bats, handcuffs, clothes pegs and shackles.

Police also discovered bondage chairs with straps, straight jackets, sex toys, gimp masks, S&M outfits, shackles, cattle prods and car batteries used to power the toys.

Um, that's "straitjacket," please, unless you are some illiterate product of the failed British school system.

(Nod to Tommy the Brit.)

Icelanders: "No way, We won't pay!" Hey, We Don't WE Get to Vote on the Bailout?

So a bunch of goofballs in Europe put their money in a phony bank in Iceland, and lost a lot of Euros.

Then the European "We passed a law against risk" doofuses, (okay, the Brits and the Dutch) decided that making citizens take responsibility for being goofballs is just too harsh, and used taxes raised at gunpoint from non-goofball citizens to pay off the goofballs.

Not surprisingly, the non-goofballs were miffed about this. Though I think in Britain and Nederlands there are laws against independent thought.... still, some people said, "why?"

So, the European government thugs decided to use extortion: Iceland, you can't play in our EU sandbox until you tax YOUR citizens to pay back OUR non-goofballs for having bailed out OUR goofballs who should never have invested in YOUR fake bank in the first place.

The Iceland government agreed, of course. It's not their money. The money belongs to the citizens of Iceland, who already took a giant hit because (as far as I can tell) every citizen of Iceland is a giant goofball in his/her own right.

But losing money because YOU are a goofball makes sense. Having to pay other people because THEY are goofballs....I don't see that. The Telfarssons and Helgotsdottirs of Iceland appear to agree, voting "NO" quite emphatically.

On the plus side, at least Icelanders get to VOTE on their dumb bailout. In the US, we are even worse: we don't have votes, just back room deals and payoffs to Democratic senators.


(Nod to Anonyman)

Roasted Euro-Weenie

"You have the charisma of a damp rag, and the appearance of a low-grade bank clark."

Nobody can ream you a new one like a Brit MP. Even a Brit MEP.

Well played, sir.

(Thanks to Tommy the Gotta Be Brit)