This must be the pigeon-racing world’s equivalent of the Olympics. There was a million dollars in pigeon-racing prize money on offer in South Africa yesterday. (It seems like the winner’s prize is actually fifth of that but, who’s counting?) The BBC tantalisingly introduced the story on Friday, but didn’t deliver on the winner yesterday.

Well thanks to the IPRR, today’s guest publication, I can tell you that

Filip Norman wins the prestigious One Million Dollar Race in South Africa, with the attached prize of no less than 200.000 dollars.
The pigeon in question is a grandchild of the World famous Zorro

You can’t say we don’t provide a public service.

A very funny post about Treet (a Spam-alike product) on Happy Jihad’s House of Pancakes moved me to investigate the “food” product Spam.

Short of being 4 weeks into a global catastrophe that wiped out all other foodstocks except canned meat, the actual substance will never pass my lips. But the high-kitsch Spam site is fantastic. It seems to be online just to mock its own product. It even tells you about a Spam Museum. The look and feel is totally consistent: “John Walters collaborates with Disney.”

(I will definitely look more sympathetically at unwanted emails from now on. )

HJHOP’s canned meat extrusion product of choice doesn’t even try for retro art status. I couldn’t find a Treet website, let alone a minor kitsch masterpiece. I did find a Wikipedia entry.

While very popular, Treet does not have SPAM’s cult following.

How good is that? A cult following for something that compares unfavourably with the cheapest dog food.

Come on, Treet. Must try harder. If Spam can get there, what’s wrong with you? You started out on the wrong foot with a brand name that makes it look as if you were too lazy to proofread the copyright application. Your produce seems to be potted meat product for people too dumb to spell a short word. (I guess the Beatles got away with it, though.)

Look at Nice biscuits. They blatantly aren’t. They went down the same route as you, but they didn’t make that crucial spelling error. Learn from their example.

Mort-ified* to hear that Terry Pratchett has the beginnings of Alzheimer’s disease.

Some parts of his Discworld series are so funny that you can’t read them on public transport for fear of cackling uncontrollably and getting taken for a crazy person. (Maybe that’s just me.)

He is taking the Alzheimer’s news with the wise and witty touch you’d expect from him.

“I know it’s a very human thing to say ‘is there anything I can do’, but in this case I would only entertain offers from very high-end experts in brain chemistry.”

He’s sold over 55 million books according to the BBC. That’s amazing. There was a Guardian interview with him once in which he complained mildly about librarians who told him that they were so pleased that so many teenagers liked his books, because they often sparked an interest in reading “real” books. 🙂

Books don’t get much “realler” than Pratchett’s best works.

Personally, I found his straight sci-fi dull, his kids’ books a bit twee, the spin-off books really irritating and the many Discworld fan-products just money-grubbing. (The Science of Discworld annoyed me no end – pop science around a discworld story that you couldn’t even follow because of having to pick it out from the gee-whizzy science stuck in by his collaborators.) I even find the cover illustrations crap, although as soon as I see one it sets off a Pavlovian dog response in me: “Must have that book. NOW.”

The books in the Discworld series can be sublime. The Discworld is like our world but in HDR. The characters are amazing. I have to stop there because I will end up sounding (even more) like the pseud’s guide to English Literature 101

The man is a genius. I hope some seriously high-end experts in brain chemistry get to work on him fast.

* Lame Pratchett pun. Sorry.

Wow, yet another ursine soft toy with political implications, though this time it’s a teddy making a gentle point about how society has been changed by anti-immigration hysteria. Paddington, the star of the long-popular children’s book series gets hassled over his immigration status in the latest book by Michael Bond.

Michael Bond, the 81-year-old writer who created Britain’s favourite asylum seeker back in 1958, returns with his first novel-length collection of Paddington stories for 30 years, and the bear in the duffel coat is confronted with what his creator calls a “very different world”. (from the report in the Guardian)

The story is that the Peruvian-originating Paddington reports a loss to the police and gets into some trouble over his immigration status instead. All works out well in the end, of course. (Don’t have nightmares.)

Nice one, Michael Bond, for the gentle jab in the fake-furry underbelly of our paranoid society.

I will forbear (argh) from mentioning that the London Underground Railway Society is about to seize Michael Bond for the name he gave his creature. But be warned” Militant trainspotters can get really obsessed……

Sponsored link (Well, I can dream……):
Gift for your Christian friends
Hold your own communion services at home and find it easier to suspend disbelief than if you’ve been handed a stale wafer and told it’s Jesus’ body.
Get the exact same amount of spiritual benefit that you’d get if you bought a Mary-faced pancake on e-bay, but you can get it fresh every day.

This is the best among the array of kitsch Christmas gifts on ship of fools, a self-mocking Christian website. It’s a a toast stamper for turning regular unholy toast into toast with Jesus’s image burned into it.

(I think this counts as both fair comment and free advertising, so bleh to any holy copyright lawyers.)

All you Yanks know this, but still I want to post good news sometimes.

The Guardian reports that Congress is “About to clash with Bush on Torture Techniques.”

Senate and House officials have included the ban on waterboarding – condemned by human rights groups as a form of torture – in their respective bills authorising 2008 spending for intelligence programmes.

This adds to the Habeas Corpus action on Gitmo and the new rules to put at least some control US “security” firms in Iraq.

Plus the apparent stepping back from a war with Iran, which is the best news of all. Thank you,Toutatis.

(Note mention of suitable Druid deity. For the Exterminator)