... About Making Fudge

1. Making fudge sounds rude but sometimes just means making fudge.


2. Making fudge sounds easy:
   Take all the butter you have in the house add it to all the sugar you have in the house and melt it in some evaporated milk, then boil it, then cool it.


3. Making fudge is NOT easy.


4. Making fudge yourself is almost certainly not worth the effort especially as the quantity you make is likely to be large enough to give you a sugar rush more powerful than any drug known to man!


5. Making fudge is probably best left to the professionals, I can recommend these guys but there's plenty out there!

... About Scorpions

Everybody knows that cockroaches will survive the apocalypse, but if they want to run planet earth they'll have the scorpions (not the band) to answer to and those guys don't mess about! In the post-apocalyptic wastelands I'm siding with the scorpions especially because by then they will probably have mutated into 8' goliaths (just like their Uncle Jake).

Scorpions belong to the arachnid family and are the cooler more deadly older brother of the spider - who don't have razor sharp claws or venomous stingers and lets face it are a bit dull.

As well as being able to withstand nuclear radiation scorpions can survive without breathing for 3 days, without eating for a year, being frozen sold, and being set on fire - which they often do for fun at parties. Other party tricks up the scorpion sleeves include glowing fluorescent under UV lights, being able to detach their penis, and not actually having sleeves! Unfortunately they don't handle strong liquor well and should be kept on beers if possible.

Currently scorpions are creating a cure for cancer just because they can and they're that cool.

...about Naming Things in Australia

When Captain James T. Cook invented Australia he gave some of it names to make conversation easier, he had two systems:
- either he would name it after one of his mates - Point Hicks named after Dave, of course, and Port Jackson apparently Cook was a big fan of Thriller.
- or he would "state the blindingly obvious" - Botany Bay (which he originally called Stingray Bay), Point Danger, Cape Tribulation, and of course there's Booby Island named after its attractive native birds.
It's unclear as to whether Port Stephens was named after one of his mates or because there where lots of people called Stephen

Since his death, in Hawaii mediating (poorly) over troublesome locals, the people of Australia have continued his naming traditions but with the first option the only name the use is Cook examples of these wondrous post-cook namings include Cook island, Cook Strait, the amazing Scenic World, The Awards awards, and the perfect example of both methods in action is the James Cook University in Townsville!

If Cook's methods are not enough to name the place you've discovered you can use these back up methods:
- steal a really good name from somewhere else like Putney, Beaconsfield, Carnarvon or High Wycombe!
- make something weird up and claim that's what the natives call it such as Yagoona, Woolloomooloo, or Yallabatharrra.

And then of course there's New South Wales which I'm sure I don't need to explain to you!

... about Famous Author Toby Frost

Toby's second book is out! It's as good, if not better than the first you can get it from Waterstones or Amazon.
Here's a synopsis:

Tea...a beverage brewed from the fermented dried leaves of the shrub Camellia sinensis and imbibed by all the great civilisations in the galaxy's history; a source of refreshment, stimulation and, above all else, of moral fibre - without which the British Space Empire must surely crumble to leave Earth at the mercy of its enemies. Sixty per cent of the Empire's tea is grown on one world - Urn, principal planet of the Didcot system. If Earth is to keep fighting, the tea must flow. When a crazed cult leader overthrows the government of Urn, Isambard Smith and his vaguely competent crew find themselves saddled with new allies: a legion of tea-obsessed nomads, an overly-civilised alien horde and a commando unit so elite that it only has five members. Only together can they defeat the self-proclaimed God Emperor of Didcot and confront the true power behind the coup: the sinister legions of the Ghast Empire and Smith's old enemy, Commander 462.

...about Online Gaming

It is not possible to explain online gaming. You must experience it. No, sorry, that’s the Matrix, which was a big computer game that many people played at once. The first online game was called “Have you got any teabags, old chap?” and was played between two programmers on an Enigma machine shortly after the Second World War. Since then, online gaming has taken vast steps forward, to the point where one fifty-sixth-level warlock can enter an entire virtual world, summon an army of skeletons and demand of another “Have you got any magic bags of tea, dude?”

Players of such games are often stereotyped. The joke goes that the gorgeous elf-maiden with whom you stormed the Citadel of Urk is actually a pimply fat man named Barry. This is untrue. The truth about online games is this: none of the other characters is a real person. You only think they are.

Think about it. A ZX Spectrum with a hangover could programme a little man to run past you gibbering nonsense, weaving like a drunken fly and occasionally shouting “lol”. Just think how many other gibbering fellow-players could be created by a vast mainframe in Stockholm able to process enough pornography to turn China blind. The only exception to this is Second Life, an attempt to recreate venture-capitalism with Lego men. The players of Second Life actually are wizards and gorgeous elf-maidens, who have grown tired of smiting the Unliving Horde and have embarked on an epic quest to buy a poorly-drawn settee.

...about Women's Lit.

The following is an extract from the hit novel "Love Craft"

Wednesday 10th June
Drink - none (vg!) Calories - 440Cigs - 3
1pm. Went over to see Sharon. She says I ought to have it out with Ben about all these trips away he's been having. "Bridget," she said, "He is so obviously cheating on you! Look at him - he's a man, for God's sake!". So I decided to check, and pretending to be from the firm, rang up their office in Zurich.It turns out he wasn't there at all last week! Bastard!

9.30 pm. Went to see Ben to demand explanation. "You weren't at a conference at all last week!" I said angrily. "I rang up your office and they said you didn't go there at all! And I found this airline ticket with R'Leh written on it!" Of course, being a man, he couldn't come up with a good answer. For a while all he did was go "R'Leh F'Ghagn Cthulu N'Gah", but then he cleared his throat and said, "Bridget, there's something I have to tell you. When you said I came back from business smelling of seaweed last week - you were right. And the Star-Spawn of Carcosa that I went to see aren't a management consultancy firm. I'm not really called Ben Porter. My real name is Cthulhu, the Crawling Chaos. When the stars are right, I and my fellow great old ones, Hastur the Unspeakable and Glaaki of the Spines will rage across Notting Hill and do battle with Shub-Niggurath, black goat of the woods with a thousand young. He's that chap you met at Sarah's dinner party last week, the one who looks a bit like Hugh Grant. Not only is he the foul destroyer of the Great Race of Yith, and master and progenitor of the Shoggoths, but he was giving you the eye. Job in publishing or not, he's definitely got it coming."

Friday 18 July
Calories - 1200 Cigs - 1 (vg!) Hideous experiences of cosmic horror - 3 (vb!)
Went round to Sharon's to discuss men and drink Chardonnay. She says I shouldn't be surprised that Ben is really a malevolent star-god from the abyss bent on the destruction of mankind. "Men, all the same," she says. "They promise you the world - several worlds, actually - and then it turns out they've got a wife or they're seeing someone else. Look at Chris for instance. 'That which is not dead may eternal lie, and with strange eons even death may die', he once said to me. And did he mean a word of it! Did he bollocks. The only good ones are gay, of course. Take that Yog-Sothoth. I'd have him, if only he wasn't chasing men and the annihilation of the universe all the time."

...about Mary Poppins and disturbing the peace

"On the date in question, I was called to Hyde Park, where I had been informed that a disturbance was taking place. On arriving at the location, I observed the Defendant, who was in charge of two young children and a pram, singing and dancing with a dishevelled man equipped with a large brush, later identified as the gentleman over there. I issued a warning and requested that they desist, at which point they attempted to encourage me to join them in their merriment. On asking the gentleman to cease, he observed "I does what I likes and I likes what I do," in what I considered was a weak attempt to imitiate a Cockney accent. PC Smith and myself saw that they were unlikely to co-operate, and arrested them.

"In the police station, a small quantity of sugar was found on the woman's person - I would estimate about a spoonful's. When asked about this, she claimed it was for "medicinal" purposes, and that it affected her in "quite the most delightful way". This, and earlier comments regarding dancing penguins and floating down from the sky, was sufficient to convince the arresting officer and myself that a serious drug offence was taking place. Miss Poppins was remanded on bail, pending a hearing.

"In any event, I do not believe that the law allows for a plea of supercalifradulisticexpialidocious."