Binks

A long, long time ago, in a place far, far away
There came a prequel that should not have seen the light of day
A maudlin moody hero and a spoiled stilted minx
But worse - the great abomination known as Jar-Jar Binks

They took our childhood memories and they crushed them with their greed
And the plotless, pointless outpouring was very poor indeed
Yet with so much to criticise there's no reviewer thinks
There's any thing that's even near so bad as Jar-Jar Binks

One film would be quite bad enough - but that was just the starter
The careless, clueless cash-in merged and morphed to a three-parter
Across the nerveless narrative the only thing that links
This tear-stained trilogy of tripe: You guessed it - Jar-Jar Binks

So what's the problem with this guy? Why does he cause such hate?
The casual racism of his role and voice are quite third-rate
He sucks more than the film - and the film, quite frankly, stinks
His mere appearance makes you feel sick - that's Jar-Jar Binks

Who was it caused our throats to vomit bile and hate and mucus?
That hero of our youth, now steeped so low - George Walton Lucas
So gorged by George's greed the whole of Lucasfilm now drinks
Upon their worship of pure profit - they are worse than Jar-Jar Binks

I don't know what dumbass designed week and month lengths so that months always start on different days but I reckon they need some sort of reorganisation... how about this:

Ten days to the week:
Monday
Tuesday
Wednesday
Chillday (no work)
Pooday
Cheeseday
Thursday
Friday
Saturday (no work)
Catday (no work)

Three weeks (3 x 10 = 30 days) to the month:
Splurgeweek
Brokeweek
Payweek

Twelve months (30 x 12 = 360 days) to the year:
Firstuary
Deuceuary
Tertuary
Quads
Penton
Sexy
Juicy
Octust
Nonember
December
Elevenember
Twelvetember

Plus an extra five (or six, in leap-year) days at the end of the year which are all non-working days and are called:
New Year's Eve Eve Eve Eve Eve (or Coolday)
New Year's Eve Eve Eve Eve (or Wootday)
New Year's Eve Eve Eve (or Awesomeday)
New Year's Eve Eve (or Niceday)
New Year's Eve (or Newyear'seveday)
{in leap-years} Surprise Bonus Extra Holiday Day!

New Year's Day is a Monday, but also a non-working day.

This fabulous arrangement would still give 251 working days a year, whilst also making sure you work alternately three and then four days on the trot (because five is really one too many), and get a guaranteed eight-day break at the end of the year.

http://www.justgiving.com/atheistbus

LOL

"LOL" is not an acceptable substitute for a full stop.

Nor is "lol".

That is all.

How Banking Works

Let's suppose you agree to lend me £10. For some reason you trust me not to spend it on hookers and crack cocaine, at least not in your absence. I promise that if you lend me the money for a year, I'll give you an extra £5 back at the end of it. I'll make this extra money by carefully investing the money you lent me.

Now let's suppose that Bill, Fred and Jim each want to borrow £10 to finance some potentially-profitable venture. If I agree to guarantee them £10, they each promise me £20 back at the end of it. I only have your £10 at the time so, picking randomly, I make a private arrangement with Fred to lend him the £10, which I do by writing him a cheque promising to pay it to him if he needs it.

Once this works out, I'll get the £10 back with an extra £10 profit. I'll give you back your £10 plus the £5 I promised you, and I'll get £5 for arranging everything.

Pay attention; here comes the clever bit:

"But wait!", I think to myself. "Only Fred knows that I committed the £10 to him. I could make money three times as quickly if I simply pretend that I still have that money, and write a £10 cheque for Bill and Jim, too. So long as two of them don't actually need the actual cash at the same time, I can always pay out the money if I ever need to!"

Plus, if I don't mention this brilliant scheme to you, I can keep the £10 profit from each venture all to myself, thus enabling me to acquire greater quantities of hookers, crack cocaine, &c.

So now I'll make three times as much money by pretending that I have a lot more money than I actually do... and because I got lucky the first few times and the ventures didn't fail, everyone trusts me! Ha ha ha ha, now I'm filthy rich and can look down my nose at all of you! Ha ha ha ha!

Oh, except if several things do go wrong at the same time... oh I don't know, let's suppose that Bill, Fred and Jim each decide to lend their money on to, hmm, some not particularly rich people to, hmm, let's say, buy huge houses that they can't really afford, and then [sarcasm] entirely unpredictably [/sarcasm] all those people default on their loans at the same time, and then I have to pay out the actual money to Bill, Fred and Jim at the same time.

Then I'd be pretty fucked, wouldn't I?

As, indeed, would you, if you wanted your tenner back.

And that, children, is how banking works. Or, rather, doesn't.

Adverts, again

"Are you looking for a better way to save money on your car insurance?" asked the man on the TV.

And yes, I was. Most people sit around thinking about football, or showbusiness, or - occasionally - the world and how to fix what's wrong with it, but there was me, that evening, thinking to myself, "Well, there are many means by which I could save money on my car insurance; however, somehow I don't seem to find any of them quite satisfactory. I wonder if there's a way that's, you know, similar to those ways but in some sense better."

Fuckwits.

Going the Distance

My annual appraisal changed a while ago from requiring people to "go the extra mile" to merely going "the extra kilometre."

This is excellent news as it means I only have to do 62.1369949495% as much extra work as before.

However, it's worse news for my German colleagues. Previously we were required to do the same amount of extra work, however the German legal metre is 1.000013597 of a standard metre, meaning that now they will have to do nearly 0.0014% more extra work than me.

They thought they had a better metre, but who's laughing now, huh? Huh?