As George W. Bush ponders the failure of his twin missions to terminate ancient local cultures in Afghanistan and Iraq and seeks to understand why his highly trained and expensively equipped forces have failed to subdue resistance from raggle – taggle militias Boggart Blog can reveal the answer.
Instead of looking to Al Qaeda, The Mahdi Army, covert Saudi operations and a conspiracy between the cheese eating surrender monkeys and the Chinese, President Bush need look no further for the culprits than The Pentagon.
To paraphrase what Bill Clinton once said to Pappy Bush, “Its the Bullets Stupid.”
Were I the Commander in chief I would be asking WTF the Department were thinking of when they awarded a contract to supply arms and munitions worth $300million to a one man company named AEY run by a small time con – man and fraudster out of a mail drop address in Miami.
Efriam Diversoli (22) tendered for the contract to supply guns and bullets to the U.S. military and on being awarded the contract managed to fulfil the requisition by supplying hardware sourced from stockpiles in former Soviet republics that he found for sale on the internet.
The equipment was poorly made, obsolete and had deteriorated badly after being stored in unsuitable conditions. The guns didn’t shoot straight and the bullets often didn’t fire.
This goes a long way towards explaining many things I think.

I have not been going on very well for a while now so the new Andrew Lloyd Webber TV showbiz talent thing has only dawned on me gradullay.

In the same way he found his Maria for The Sound of Music and his Joseph for Joseph and the Amazing Technicolour Dreamcoat Lord Andy L-W is now getting a lot of pre publicity for a new production of Oliver by holding a televised elimination contest to find a Nancy for the production.

But with Graham Norton and John Barrowman involved in the TV series aren't there already more than enough Nancys?

An interesting statistic has caught my attention.

23 males per thousand get married every year.

Fair enough, but then comes the interesting bit.

20 females per thousand get married every year.

It doesn't compute does it?

Good news for insomniacs!
The BBC (Television station not BoggartBlog's Cub reporter) has regained the rights to Formula One.
Now you will be able to nod off for an uninterrupted ninety minutes on a Sunday afternoon. No more ad-breaks to startle you into semi consciousness, just the gentle drone of the commentators to soothe you on your way.

For the 1.2 of you who care I thought the first race boded well for an exciting season, however whether it is the lasting effect of Herr Schumacher or whatever it was a struggle to stay awake after lap 10 this week. In fact the most exciting part of the program was on the podium when Kimi Raikonnen suffered a mild trauma caused by the champagne spraying in his face, and instead of celebrating his victory above the ecstatic fans spent most of the time doubled over rubbing his eye.
Perhaps there will be recriminations in the next podium ceremony, with corks being fired. One thing is for sure...it's going to get really exciting in the next few weeks.
Or not as the case may be.

BBC: What are we doing tomorrow, Mum?

Me: What do you want to do tomorrow BBC?

BBC: We could go for a walk round Langsett and then go
to the cafe.

ME: Ah. The cafe has changed hands. The bacon butties
aren't as good as they used to be.

BBC: Oh. Why not?

ME: Well for a start they don't fry the inside of the
bap anymore. And they butter the inside of the
bread.

BBC Oh. You could ask them not to butter the bread.
Tell them you're Jewish and it's not Kosher.

It is a peculiarity of the Americans, I feel, that they see significance in odd shaped objects and even more so that they think said objects are of value, whereas we Brits are more likely to note the odd shape of something for it's humour - "a turnip shaped just like a willy, Baldric?", or Esther Rantzen sniggering away at the carrot that resembles a complete set of male genitalia.
The latest item of interest for sale on e-bay is a frosted cornflake shaped like Illinois. Aren't all cornflakes shaped like Illinois? Or they could be given that Illinois is a cornflake shaped state, unlike,say, California which is definitely not cornflaked shaped. The Illinois shaped cornflake had attracted a bid of over $1000. How gullible can you get?
Boggart.Blog decided to test the market so I dashed off a batch of pancake batter and set about trying to cook a pancake with the face of Jesus on it, it being Easter and everything.
The first attempt wasn't too bad, you could have imagined there was a face on the pancake, with a beard, however it was winking rather lasciviously, definitely a no-no for a religious pancake.
Further attempts yielded less good results, however if you look on e-bay you are welcome to place your bids for a series of pancakes with maps of the moon on their surfaces.

In the run up to Easter I loked forward the the new television adaptation of the crucifixion story for one reason. I could not wait to see Jimmy Nesbit as Pontias Pilate. His portrayal could never compare with that given by Michael Palin in The Life of Brian but he was good value for money, not attempting to hide the accent even if he did not give the role the full Ian Paisley Treatment.
"Ah its good o' yer toy come all the woy up here Ciaphas, so it is," I heard him say (I'm sure that is what I heard him say,) "but yer had no need to, Oy would have sent moy mon doyn toy the Temple. Noy what are we goyin toy do aboyt yer man Jaysus?"
Jesus is of course a wimpish version of the single source myth of the deliverer, a cousin of Hercules, Gilgamesh, Arthur, Seigfreid and Cuchulinn, the Hound of Ulster.
So casting an Ulsterman in the role of his nemesis is not as bizarre as it seems.
"Oy wash moy honds of the business, " said Pilate, toyk him and doy what yer will with him."
You can almost hear Tony Blair saying something similar as he tried to negotiate a peace deal.
Another fascinating regional accent was that of Dean Lennox Kelly (Kev from Shameless) as a Mank James.
"Yer wha' Jezza? Going to yours fer some bread and wine, Ah'm mad for it mate, well bangin'.

A&Cpart1

The American author Carl Hiaasen writes hilarious books set in Florida, where he was born and raised. Mr. Hiaasen obviously cares a great deal for his native state and its wildlife. In his books the anti- hero gets his come uppance at the hands of nature, along with a little help from some truly off the wall characters who, like Hiaasen, care very much about the effect of the tourist industry on the landscape and wildlife of this area.
Generally the anti-hero is some unsrupulous, money grabbing scumbag, but the message is clear that the tourists are to blame too.
How Hiaasenesque then to read of the woman who was killed in a freak accident aboard a private yacht cruising the Florida Keys.
Apparently a 75pound eagle ray leapt out of the water and collided with the unfortunate tripper. The impact knocked her backwards and resulted in her death, despite frantic efforts from those on board to revive her.
Brent Winner, a research scientist said,"They are beautiful fish, very graceful and there is ordinarily no danger to the public. In fact, if you see one you consider yourself lucky." Obviously not when you are traveling in excess of 40kph and said ray is flying through the air rather than beneath the waves, as the family of the deceased would no doubt agree.
The truly sad part of the story though is that the ray also ended up dead, although whether this was from the impact or otherwise was not made clear.

Thanks to the special skills of Jenny, our editor in chief, BoggartBlog is able to bring you some of the unique musings from the ex Mrs. whoops sorry, Lady McCartney.

It really is just so unfair on my daughter Beatrice. She is going to be brought up in poverty because that tight, freeloading bastard of a father won't give me what I'm entitled to as his ex-spouse and mother of his only child. I know he claims to have other children, but between you and me he bought them in Oxfam, just like Madonna and Angelina did.
Honestly that judge was so biased, all boys together and let's make fun of the girl with only one leg. He probably thought it was funny that Paul wouldn't let me use a commode during the night and made me crawl to the loo. He did, I swear he did. In fact he used to hide my prostethesis.
And that lawyer of his, she was a bitch too. She deserved that drenching. I bet she hangs out with the boys. The names she called me. Me, confined to a wheelchair, just trying to do my best, scrimping and saving to provide a future for my poor, poor daughter. I didn't go to court with an army of fancy lawyers, did I?
I had to do my best and represent myself. In fact I think Paul probably got his lawyer to tell all the other lawyers not to help me. Spiteful I call it. He's just jealous of my fame.
They're all jealous of me cos I'm just a poor little rag doll made good. They can't take that see. My family was so poor they had to make me out of hand-me- downs, and then there wasn't enough left to make all of a little girl so I was left with just one leg, just like 'The steadfast Tin Soldier' in that fairytale.
And my life has been like a fairytale. My family was so poor I was thrown out to earn a living even before I was born, or sewn if you'd rather. But I worked hard and I grew up to be beautiful and clever and earn loads and loads of money and then all these men started fancying me and little did I know that the one I thought was my handsome prince, just for his good looks, would actually turn out to be the biggest gold digger ever. He only wanted a free ride on my coat-tails, soaking up the glamour and fame not to mention the money he earned and all because he was married to me! £800 million in just over two years! Isn't that incredible, and all down to me. He wasn't worth a penny before he met me, never done anything with his life, just a scouse waster. He only got his knighthood because the Queen was so impressed with how he'd turned his life around after he met me.
Still, I didn't get where I am today by wallowing in self pity, just cos my daughter will only be able to fly B class whilst I'm up in A class and that bastard -gold - digging husband will probably have his own private jet.I can get through this. I will survive. I will survive. As long as I know how to love I know I'm still alive. I've got all my life to live, I've got all my love to give, I willl survive.
Hey maybe I could turn my hand to songwritng. That sounded rather good, and I thought of it all by myself. Hey hey.

Mr. McCartney was sleeping fitfully in his lonely bed, drifting in and out of dreams, taunted by memories of how insanely wrong his life had gone.
As he tossed and turned he suddenly became aware of an image forming in his mind. It seemed as if he was looking down a long dark tunnel at the end of which was a pinpoint of bright white light.
The light gradually grew larger as if he were floating down the tunnel towards it. As he drew closer he could discern a figure, plae and slender, clad in a white kaftan.
The figure had long dark hair and a beard.....and round pink-lensed spectacles. When it came close to Paul it began to sing:

Imagine there's no Heather,
It isn't hard to do,
you really are well rid of
that gold digging cow,
She wanted your posessions
and half your total wealth
she used your name to carve out
a career for herself......

An article and susequent comments on the Letters page of the Times attest to the fact that it is going to take more than a 4p a pint increase or 35p on a bottle of wine or a £5 gallon of petrol to make Times readers mend their binge drinking ways, or junk their planet killing, gas guzzling vehicles of choice. To echo whichever babyfaced gordon ophile uttered it, the reaction seems to be So what?
They appear to be missing the point, or are more gullible than I would have expected.
He doesn't want you to stop drinking, or smoking, or driving 15mpg cars.
He doesn't care aboout your health, the future cost to the NHS - he hopes you're all going to die young anyway - or the carbon emissions from those Chelsea tractors

HE JUST WANTS YOUR MONEY

The response from critics to former Prime Minister Tony Blair’s literary efforts has been on the absolute zero side of lukewarm.
Mr. Blair is certainly no Terry Pratchett. In fact he has a long way to go before he can be ranked alongside Jeffery Archer.
There are good reasons though for this verbal ineptitude as will be revealed in a book out this week. Former Downing Street aide Jonathan Powell will reveal in his memoir that “Blair used to get up at 4 a.m. and write in his underpants.

Were people so in awe of the former Prime Minister they dared no tell him it was much easier to write in a notebook?

Limerick Limerick
(It’s said the Limerick for originated when someone declared it was impossible to rhyme the word Limerick)
Paddy said “Now here’s a trick,
I’ll set out on a trip from Limerick,
travel northwards to Lerwick,
returning via Berwick.
Now who said the Irish are thick?

No Benediction

Father Murphy was saying High Mass,
When a flea bit the priest on his ass,
“Oh feck,” he exclaimed
(though recently ordained)
and forgot Benediction alas.

Leprechauns

Though Leprechauns are seldom seen
we all know their hair is bright green.
They eat Irish Stew,
Drink too much mountain dew
and their language becomes quite obscene.

The Black Stuff And Better

There’s little an Irishman won’t do
for a pint of The Black Stuff or two
but on St. Paddy’s night
its their special delight
to sup poteen, a more potent brew.

The Lord of Bute

The Lord of the Island of Bute
thought excessive drinking a hoot,
he drank gallons of stout
(even though he had gout)
then threw up all over his suit.

Sex and the Sidhe
Caer Sidhe (pron. shee) is the overworld of Irish legend

The folk who dwell in Sidhe
are known for their bonhomie.
when they’ve had enough
of the rare owld stuff
They will bonk total strangers with glee.

Best comedy news story of the week has been the downfall of New York politician Eliot Spritzer this week reminds us how a name can affect a persons behaviour, what path they choose in life and ultmiately their fate.
Mr. Spritzer, who shares his name with a drink favoured by yuppies, totally embraced the yuppie lifestyle. Clean-living, almost puritanically health conscious and totally driven by ambition he carved out a niche in the political establishment by cleaning up prostitution and corruption in the public sector.
So thoroughly entrenched in the lifestyle did he become, he even paid for his high class hookers on his gold card probably thinking cash would seem vulgar.
To use plastic for such a transaction was an act of the grossest stupidity. It enabled Spritzer to be indentified as Client 9.
If only he had been named Eliot Beer he might have had a firm enough grip on reality to know it is always wise to pay for our little pecadilloes in cash.
That way the evidence does not show up in a financial audit or anywhere your wife may see it.

Good news today for Welsh miners after bits of copper were found at the bottom of Snowden.

*I know it's bad taste but when did that ever stop Boggartblog?

Wichta, Kansas
Sheriff Bryan Whipple said it appeared a 35-year-old Ness City woman's skin had grown around the toilet seat in her boyfriends apartment after she refused to move from the toilet for two years. She initially refused emergency medical services but was finally convinced by responders and her boyfriend that she needed to be checked out at a hospital.

"We pried the toilet seat off with a pry bar and the seat went with her to the hospital," Whipple said. "The hospital removed it."

Whipple said investigators planned to present their report Wednesday to the county attorney, who will determine whether any charges should be filed against the woman's 36-year-old boyfriend.

"She was not glued. She was not tied. She was just physically stuck by her body," Whipple said. "It is hard to imagine. ... I still have a hard time imagining it myself."

He told investigators he brought his girlfriend food and water, and asked her every day to come out of the bathroom.

"And her reply would be, `Maybe tomorrow,'" Whipple said. "According to him, she did not want to leave the bathroom."

The boyfriend called police on Feb. 27 to report that "there was something wrong with his girlfriend," Whipple said, adding that he never explained why it took him two years to call.

Police found the clothed woman sitting on the toilet, her sweat pants down to her mid-thigh. She was "somewhat disoriented," and her legs looked like they had atrophied, Whipple said.

"She said that she didn't need any help, that she was OK and did not want to leave," he said.

She was taken to a hospital in Wichita, about 150 miles southeast of Ness City. Whipple said she has refused to cooperate with medical providers or law enforcement investigators.

Authorities said they did not know if she was mentally or physically disabled.

Police have declined to release the couple's names, but the house where authorities say the incident happened is listed in public records as the residence of Kory McFarren. No one answered his home phone number.

The case has been the buzz Ness City, said James Ellis, a neighbor.

"I don't think anybody can make any sense out of it," he said.

Ellis said he had known the woman since she was a child but that he had not seen her for at least six years.

He said she had a tough childhood after her mother died at a young age and apparently was usually kept inside the house as she grew up. At one time the woman worked for a long-term care facility, he said, but he did not know what kind of work she did there.

"It really doesn't surprise me," Ellis said of the bathroom incident. "What surprises me is somebody wasn't called in a bit earlier."

BOGGART BLOG wonders what he did when he needed a crap.

More new humour every day.

Oh how we are betrayed!
Apparently some official bods have determined that homework is a waste of time, particularly for primary school children and they and the ATL (Assoc of Teachers and Lecturers) have published calls for it to be abolished.
Why did they have to tell evrybody? What fun we could have had as our unsuspecting pupils clamoured for their daily fix of extra-curricular irrelevance.

"Oh, I'm sorry kids, I left it at home."

"My mum didn't put it in my bag."

"I left it on the bus."

"The baby was sick on it."

"I had to go out to a rave last night so I didn't have time to prepare any."

"The dog ate it."

A chance to get our own back on the little bastards and they pull the rug out from under our feet. Gits.

It used to be said that when policemen started to look like kids it was a sign you were getting old.

Totally by accident I saw a few seconds of a Nick Clegg speech on the TV news yesterday.

When Lib Dem leaders start looking no older than twelve, you're fucked.

To be published this week, a new scientific study of sleeplessness lists amongst its findings that one common cause of sleeplessness is watching a television news bulletin before going to bed.

The reasoning is, I guess, that the news will report all the crapiness that is going on around the world and we will all lie awake worrying about it.

This is a strictly personal observation, I can’t speak for anyone else, but if I watch a particularly crappy news bulletin before going to bed I do not think “Oh woe,woe, how have we built this foul world that has such copious amounts of crappiness in it,” (I always think in a pastiche of a Shakespearian monologue before going to bed) Rather I think, “Tomorrow and tomorrow and tomorrow I’ll get started on doing my bit to change things. But there’s eff all I can do about it right now.”
And I sleep like a baby.

Let’s try an unscientific survey. What personal strategies have you evolved for getting to sleep after hearing that civilisation as we know it is on the brink of collapse.

If someone tried to tell you God is a tea pot you would laugh, or I hope you would; most of you at least.
But how can we possibly know that God is not a tea pot?
A twentieth century philosopher, I’m 90% sure it was Bertrand Russell, compared faith in God to believing a giant tea pot is orbiting the sun, which is one of the best ways of summing up religion I have ever come across.
If people are prepared to believe in the magical genie of a tribe of ignorant, semi – literate goat fiddlers then why not in a tea pot? Or for that matter a Flying Spaghetti Monster that is due to smother us all in boiling hot tomato sauce in The Last Days? Or for that matter The Soup Dragon which lives on the dark side of the moon and has the job of feeding a clan of small furry hominids who communicate in Swanee Whistle sounds, by breathing into their feeding bowls soup from its nostrils (The Clangers - with video clips.)
Its all delicious nonsense of course, so imagine my surprise on hearing that last month a Sharia court in Malaysia sentenced a woman to two years prison for being a member of a cult that believes a tea pot.
Cult members worship a 20 foot high effigy of a china tea pot which, they claim, symbolises the outpouring of goodness that is the love of God.
So now you know.
That story must lead us to conclude there are people out there who live in fear of the flying Spaghetti monster and the Soup Dragon.

BTW just to put you wise, the left nostril delivers chicken soup, the right lentil. I recommend the lentil, which has bits of crispy fried bacon in it.

Silent Radio is a completely new concept in news and entertainment media. Absolutely nobody has ever done it before this week.

We have had Silent Theatre of course, mime artists were one of the earliest forms of theatrical entertainment; we have had Silent Movies, a sensation in their day but now something of a niche form found mostly in French Art-House theatres, we have silent TV occasionally, usually a show called “We apologise for the temporary loss of sound; we have even had silent classical music.
Silent Radio however is a totally new idea.
The station that has pioneered silent radio broadcasts is not some avant garde technology venture aimed at geeks who insist on listening to digital radio even though the sound quality is so crappy the experience becomes painful after a few seconds. Radio Teesdale, a UK local station has been around for years broadcasting music, news and chat on AM and FM bands and with a web feed. Very run of the mill.
On Wednesday (5 March) however, a busy newsday, the flagship breakfast show went silent for an hour.
As presenter Andy Greener chatted about results from the Primaries in Texas and Ohio, the crisis brewing in Palestine, the resignation of a British politician, football (soccer) results and trivia and kept up a running joke about paranormal phenomena at 900 year old Barnard Castle nearby nobody was hearing him.
It was the Barnard Castle thing that prompted his unscheduled experiment in silent radio. Aha you may think, but Andy is not Alan Partridge and it was not a case of spooks invading the studio and messing up the electronics. What happened was the producer did not want to interrupt Andy while he was chatting about serious news (do you notice a case of not thinking things through properly here?) and only tried to call him on the intercom when he was doing the Barnard Castle drivel.
Andy on the other hand was so intent on his surreal flights of fancy he completely failed to notice the red light on his console flashing.
The story, because you are dying to know, concerns a dungeon in the ancient castle in which there is said to be a portal that leads to the nether world. What Andy was telling his non-audience was that people can only pass through the portal into a parallel universe if they are wearing nothing but striped undershorts and a woolly hat with a little bobble on top like one of the characters in South Park wears.

Every time the producer tried to raise Andy he was further into his story about the terrible fate of people who tried to pass through the portal while not appropriately attired. Eventually he noticed the warning light however and switched on the intercom channel.
“For God’s sake hit the red button,” the producer yelled, “ nothing has gone out for an hour.”
Andy had forgotten to switch from automatic overnight mode, which plays bland, easy listening music when the station is not broadcasting live. And the tape had ended on schedule.
So Radio Teesdale was back on the air and the great silent radio experiment was pronounced a failure.
Alas we shall never know the fate of those people who passed through the Barnard Castle time/space portal. Did they return safely or are they still wandering the nether world dressed only in striped undershorts and bobble hats.