First World War As A Pub Fight

Genius pinched from Theo Spark.

Germany, Austria and Italy are stood together in the middle of the pub, when Serbia bumps into Austria, and spills Austria's pint.

Austria demands Serbia buy it a complete new suit, because there are splashes on its trouser leg.

Germany expresses its support for Austria's point of view

Britain recommends that everyone calm down a bit.

Serbia points out that it can't afford a whole suit, but offers to pay for cleaning Austria's trousers.

Russia and Serbia look at Austria.

Austria asks Serbia who it's looking at.

Russia suggests that Austria should leave its little brother alone.

Austria inquires as to whose army will assist Russia in compelling it to do so.

Germany appeals to Britain that France has been looking at it, and that this is sufficiently out of order that Britain should not intervene.

Britain replies that France can look at who it wants to, that Britain is looking at Germany too, and what is Germany going to do about it?

Germany tells Russia to stop looking at Austria, or Germany will render Russia incapable of such action.

Britain and France ask Germany whether it's looking at Belgium.

Turkey and Germany go off into a corner and whisper. When they come back, Turkey makes a show of not looking at anyone.

Germany rolls up its sleeves, looks at France, and punches Belgium.

France and Britain punch Germany. Austria punches Russia. Germany punches Britain and France with one hand and Russia with the other.

Russia throws a punch at Germany, but misses and nearly falls over. Japan calls over from the other side of the room that it's on Britain's side, but stays there. Italy surprises everyone by punching Austria.

Australia punches Turkey, and gets punched back. There are no hard feelings, because Britain made Australia do it.

France gets thrown through a plate glass window, but gets back up and carries on fighting. Russia gets thrown through another one, gets knocked out, suffers brain damage, and wakes up with a complete personality change. **

Italy throws a punch at Austria and misses, but Austria falls over anyway. Italy raises both fists in the air and runs round the room chanting.

America waits till Germany is about to fall over from sustained punching from Britain and France, then walks over and smashes it with a barstool, then pretends it won the fight all by itself.

By now all the chairs are broken, and the big mirror over the bar is shattered. Britain, France and America agree that Germany threw the first punch, so the whole thing is Germany's fault . While Germany is still unconscious, they go through its pockets, steal its wallet, and buy drinks for all their friends.

** It was at this point that I choked on my beer.

UPDATE: A brilliant epilogue.

And when Germany wakes up, it goes out to it's car, gets the gun out of the glovebox and heads back inside...

Anti-Smokers On The Couch

I'm seriously beginning to believe that fanatical anti-smokers suffer from some kind of severe mental imbalance.

Earlier this year they were sent into a clucking and flapping frenzy at the sight of a barcode on a Ferrari F1 car.

John Britton, a Fellow of the Royal College of Physicians and director of its tobacco advisory group, said: “The bar code looks like the bottom half of a packet of Marlboro cigarettes.

Odd, that. The bottom of the Marlboro packets I've seen look a bit like "SMOKING KILLS".

"I was stunned when I saw it. This is pushing at the limits.”

Pushing at the limits of our credulity, John. Or pushing at the limits of your quite stunningly authority-obsessed mind. But whichever way you cut it, there is no possible way that a barcode is going to somehow induce an irresistible urge to smoke in the minds of thousands of 14 year olds.

As Anna Raccoon ventured at the time.

Does the prancing Ferrari black horse make you want to rush out and put all your money into Lloyd’s TSB?

The same silly charade is now being played out over the pond after Obama's administration oversaw a ban on the words 'light', 'mild', and 'low'.

WASHINGTON — A US law banning the selling of so-called "light" or "mild" cigarettes took effect Tuesday, but some anti-tobacco groups say the makers are sidestepping the rules by using color-coding packaging.

Some say that color-coding packs and switching to terms such as "gold" and "silver" instead of "light" and "ultra-light" are efforts to continue misleading consumers.

"With a wink and a nod, the tobacco industry has found new ways to continue their deceptive marketing practices to circumvent the new regulations," said Charles Connor, president of the American Lung Association.

"For example, they must drop the word 'light' in their packaging, but have already made it clear to their customers that if they want lights, they just need to look for a package in a specific color, such as gold.

That's right. Anti-smoking nutters now want colours banned.

They have had their heads buried in so many self-congratulatory reports and studies; read so many articles on the evils of the tobacco industry; allowed confirmation bias to erase their grip on reality; that they are simply unable to grasp the idea that different cigarettes can offer a different flavour.

In their seriously deluded brains, smokers only smoke lighter cigarettes because they believe they won't die if they do.

Let's apply the same crackpot reasoning to Doritos.

There are packets with the words "super hot" or some such on them, and others bearing the tagline "cool". Doritos, in our analogical world, have been banned from using these words (on the daft premise that all Doritos are unhealthy and some purchasers may believe that the cooler ones are less so) but their customers - who are quite happy to accept the 'health risk' - would still like to know which flavour is gentle on their tongue, and which will require them to pre-load the fridge with bog roll. So the spicy ones are marketed with a red bag, the mild ones in a blue one.

Oh no, say the bansturbators, this is scandalous! Doritos are still telling their customers which is the flavour they enjoy. The evil bastards.

The FDA asked for documentation from the cigarette maker to determine if it was deliberately circumventing the law.

"We applaud the FDA's action," said Matthew Myers of the Campaign for Tobacco-Free Kids.

"We call on Philip Morris to go beyond the actions called for by the FDA and immediately stop" using these materials, Myers said.

Materials? Isn't this torturing linguistics by some considerable degree? They are colours. Colours which are all around us. Everywhere. Every day.

With this kind of thinking (I use that word loosely), we may as well ban Barclaycard from producing credit cards in pastel shades as it implies less danger of fucking your life up by hitting Harrods with only £12.37 in your bank account.

Put these people on the Freudian couch and I'm sure we'd discover that a fair percentage are certifiably bonkers.**

**Talking of which, check out an example of such a person over at F2C's comments, starting here.

Analogy Of The Week

From Ian B over at Charlotte Gore's place.

I think the single biggest problem libertarians have is that we can only talk about liberty abstractly because most people have never really experienced it very much. It’s like offering freedom to the inmates of an institution… you open the doors and beckon them outside, but they stay inside, scared that leaving means nobody will make them jam roly-poly on Tuesdays.

The problem in a nutshell.