Just like Christmas we've abandoned the true spirit of Halloween and turned it into a commercial free for all. It seems like every year Halloween begins earlier and earlier.

My birthday is in August for fucks sake and I distinctly remember going to the Co-op the morning of my birthday and there were shelves and shelves full of bloody sweets. In August!! Just once I'd like us to rediscover the true meaning of the festival.

Forget about sending our kids - who attend Government subsidised Faith schools during the day time - out in the evening dressed as the devil to beg for sweets. Let's reserve the entire day for appeasing evil spirits in order to guarantee a generous harvest. In this current economic climate people we're going to need it.

There's a job search website being advertised on telly at the moment called 'Job Site.' I don't doubt it's an effective facility for seeking out employment opportunities, but every time they say 'Job Site' all I hear is Gob Shite. I can't be the only one. Imagine being in an interview for your dream job and they ask you where you heard about the position and you reply, "gob shite." You've blown it haven't you. You may as well show up with your flies undone and a few drops of dried cum on your trouser leg.

The end.

Fucking hell. All those non-football people out there - women and blokes whose parents are cousins mostly - you can wonder all you want about why people get so emotional over what is essentially just a game. Just a game it may be, but the emotions it provokes are very real and there's no other experience I can think of that can take you by the testicles on a roller-coaster ride of emotions and leave you at the end of it with either a gestalt persecution complex born of frustration, anger, resentment and incredulity or a sense of euphoria synonymous with a lottery win or a sexual encounter with a randy Felicity Kendall wearing only wellies and covered in runny custard.

As I've matured, my ferocious intellect has demanded more sophisticated diversions than football, consequently I've adopted a more and more laissez-faire attitude towards the beautiful game. There was a time when I hated every other team but Arsenal. My weekends were ruined when Arsenal lost and they were ruined frequently. My summers were pointless if they followed a trophy-less season and going to jail in Paris before the 1993 Cup Winners Cup Final seemed like a small price to pay for the cause. In retrospect I have no idea what that cause really amounts to..but anyway..while my growing older has assuaged these confrontational and over zealous sentiments, I still to this day hate Tottenham. Fucking hate them I do. There's very little I can do to address this, even though I have and have had close personal friends who follow them. Despite my political compass pointing me in Ghandi's direction and the very essence of my soul being the antithesis of partisanship, I want them all culled. I want their stadium to collapse around them.

So with this in mind it's no surprise I vomited my very soul up against my living room wall last night after about 92 minutes of the North London derby. Now, I am an atheist. Or at least I am agnostic, but agnostic about God to the same extent I am agnostic about garden fairies and the Loch Ness Monster, but it's experiences like these that prevent me from declaring myself a hard-core 100% atheist. You see, within the virtual pages of my blog I've not been very nice to God and it's this sort of thing I'd do to me if I was God to exact my revenge. If God is omnipotent, he can read my thoughts and would have known I had plans to compose a post about Gael Clichy and how much I admired him. Consequently God would, if he were feeling particularly ruthless and vindictive, make Clichy just fall over for no apparent reason with a couple minutes to go in the game and from said inexplicable loss of balance allow Tottenham an opportunity to salvage a point from the game by cutting Arsenal's lead to one goal with about 5 minutes remaining.

If I was God I would also make Manual Almunia a laughing stock for having a silly tash by hitting him in the face with a shot that would then land straight at Darren Bent's feet. I'd also let an ex-Arsenal player score from about 45 yards. That's what I'd do if I was God and I was so fucking pathetically insecure that my ego couldn't cope with a dude from a small Cotswold town in the middle of nowhere making suggestions that I didn't exist and was a petty cunt even if I did.

Well God showed me didn't he. We're playing Stoke at the weekend. I'm terrified of what might happen there. If only I could ignore it. That's the problem with being indoctrinated into football at a young age. Unlike religion, once it's a part of you you can't escape it. One can't question the rationality of it one has to just endure it. Ours not to wonder why, ours but to do or die.

I felt shit anyway tonight even before the game. I have an 'orrible sore throat. It's my own fault though, not Gods this time - I mean that God, I'm not blaming you - don't give me fucking rabies in my sleep. I stood outside on Toosday night in the freezing cold cause I had a headache and thought the cold would reduce the swelling in my head that I thought was causing the throbbing pain or something. I don't know...what the fuck was I thinking? I could have won a Darwin award had I stayed out there much longer. I showed no more logic and intelligence than if I had just drilled a hole in my temple to relieve the pressure.

I can't sleep now, cause I can't swallow and I'm sore and I'm haunted by football and I've run out of lollies too. I'm done for. I don't think there's anything anyone can do for me now. Go now...just go. Save yourselves.

Not for nothing, but for some reason I think it's important I confirm Devon Loch was owned by the Queen Mother, not the Queen. Just saying. Nothing else to discuss as I can't remember what I did tonight. I took some pills a Chinese bloke gave me and the whole night's a blur. Happy days.

What a delightful collection of over-privileged chinless inbreds. This is the annual photograph of the Bullingdon Club taken in 1992 just before they retired to a private room to wank each other off.

An official ultra-exclusive "dining" club of Oxford Univeristy, the Bullingdon exists to offer it's members an opportunity to hire out private rooms so they can get very pissed and then smash the place up, safe in the knowledge that their parents are so wealthy as to make them above the law and therefore not accountable for their actions. About 150 years ago it was also a cricket club, but I think they found the cricket got in the way of the smashing things up.

Arguably, the most arrogant looking toff in this picture is the chap numbered 1. Unfortunately for us, that's George Osbourne - the Shadow Chancellor. Five years previous David Cameron and Boris Johnson appeared in a similar picture. It's comforting that in a couple of years the three most powerful men in this country: the Prime Minister, Chancellor of the Exchequer and the Mayor of London will all have been members of a club which exists specifically for the purpose of destroying things without accountability.

So last night I adjust the clock on my Mac and iPhone as we're now on GMT again and my life will now be shrouded in darkness for a good six months, but when I wake up this afternoon, I find said clocks are both an hour behind all the other clocks in the land!? What in the name of fuck is going on here then?

I make inquiries and the clocks did indeed go back 1 hour at 1am October 26th. I can only assume that after adjusting my Apple clocks manually, they then went and adjusted themselves automatically too. Silly me, for not allowing my Appletrons to take care of this sort of thing on their own. I was confused, but it was no less than I deserved.

It's the Pigeons quiz tonight and lordy we better win. My mummy made me a roast dinner today - it was lamb and it was covered in mints sauce which makes me crazy. As we speak I'm getting my learn on. By tonight I'll know fucking everything...except what time it is.

Boomp3.com

I was on Ramos at 8/1 in the manager heave-ho market. Easiest 8/1 shot I ever backed. They really ought to alter that market in future to not include Tottenham's manager. The bookies must lose millions. Not happy about Redknapp taking over just as Arsenal are about to play Totterington though if the truth be told.

Oh my Gah, how long until these are available on the NHS? Think of the possibilities. I could take a couple before I went to bed on a Sunday after an another appalling display at the Pigeons and wake up on Monday never having felt so alive. I could erase the latter part of the George Graham era - Chris Kiwomya need never have existed in Arsenal's history.

It could completely cure my post-traumatic stress disorder brought on by the sexual pummeling I received in the Glitter Gulch. This drug could liberate me from my earliest childhood memories of living in Germany and the time I had to do country dancing with Heidi Flaxman. Eeeeew!

I've bought myself some pretty unhealthy foods to help me through game 3 of the World Series tonight. I hadn't planned to watch the games, but the first two efforts were jolly good to watch and have aroused my hunger for more.

I think we can agree the opening confrontations provided proof if proof were needed that Philadelphia's sporting franchises were put on this Earth to engineer defeat from promising positions.

The Phillies have excelled themselves so far, going 1-28 with runners in scoring positions. That's astonishing choking even for a Philadelphia team. One has to hark back to the Flyers' disastrous Stanley Cup finals capitulation to Ottawa in 2002 to find comparable scoring impotence - 2 goals in a five game series - but that can be bested by the Phillies if they don't address their inability to drive in runs.

Unlike the Flyers, who tried to change their entire system a few hours before game 4, the Phillies don't need to perform open heart surgery on themselves. Just one or two tweaks ought to see the scoring opportunities converted into runs - splitting up lefties Utley and Howard so they sandwich a right handed hitter for example might take away the advantage Tampa Bay have of bringing in left handed pitcher David Price to bust them up. Jimmy Rollins also might want to start batting with his eyes open.

With their stadium being more hitter friendly that Tropicana Field we may have a high scoring game - hopefully over 9.5 runs. I have no financial interest in seeing Tampa win but I want them to succeed none the less. While those Philly cheese steak sandwiches are awesome, I just have an irrational dislike of Pennsylvania.

It's bordering on prejudice really, as I've only been there once. I think it's those Amish people that freak me out, that's what it is. Tampa Bay is nice, I'm pretty sure I went there once when I was about 7 or 8.

That was possibly the first time I ever went on holiday and experienced beaches that didn't have donkey's on them and I was also able to purchase a silver Kennedy Space Centre jacket which to this day remains the most awesome item of clothing I've ever owned. That's reason enough to want the Rays to win in my opinion.

Also, I'll be watching on NASN not channel 5 as the presenters on channel 5 wind me up. Johnny Gould must surely have been the inspiration for Tim nice but dim. I hate public school boy types and his voice is so awkward and daft. As for Josh Chetwin, well he frightens me.

The end.

Do you recall those annoying Budweiser adverts from a while ago where people just shouted waaassup at each other down the phone? This newer one is funnier. The last bit is a bit schmaltzy for a UK audience, but the rest is amusing.

A woman confessed today that she made up the story that a mugger attacked her as she withdrew monies from an ATM machine and carved a "B" for Barack on her cheek after he saw the McCain bumper sticker on her car.

Off the record, a police dude working the case told one of my flying monkeys, "initially our suspicions were aroused by the fact that the 'B' was backwards which may have indicated that she had scratched the letter on her own cheek using a mirror and was too much of a dumb ass to reverse it.

"Our suspicions were further aroused by the fact that she supports John McCain which would indicate an unstable psychological profile and confirm what a dumb ass she is." Apparently it didn't occur to 20 year old Ashley Todd that the police might not just take her word for it and take steps to cancel the election on the grounds that anyone voting for Barack Obama is a potential mugger.

Instead, to her chagrin, they investigated her story (they watched the bank CCTV tapes) and found it to be total bullshit. She will remain on McCain's staff in order that Sarah Palin not be the dumbest member of their campaign team.

This photograph was posted on the intrawebs today showing the Republican Party VP pick Sarah Palin wearing a vote Democrat scarf, handed to her at one of her rallies by a photographer.

The inability to distinguish between Donkeys and Elephants indicates terrifyingly high levels of cerebral spastication and there is still no bottom in sight as we sink lower and lower into the abyss that is Sarah Palin's stupidity.

The TV dudes in the US of States are predicting rather poor ratings for the World Series which begins this evening. Tampa Bay v Philadelphia isn't too appealing really is it.? Everyone who gains from TV revenue was hoping for an L.A. Dodgers v Redsox series, but never mind it still has the potential to be an exciting series.

I'm backing Tampa Bay. I must confess although I predicted they would beat Boston, I made all the stuff about Nate Silver's advice up. I'm afraid I did not in fact receive one of his carrier pigeons.

It's not even clear if he was backing Tampa Bay, his website is subscription based and I don't care enough about baseball to invest in it. My endorsement of Tampa was a mixture of the very briefest of researching and a comment Nate Silver made about them on the Colbert Report.

I'm right about Philadelphia being cloaked in failure though, I was just a round too previous to illustrate the point with my previous prediction. In order to truly fail and let down those who care the most, you must first actually make the final. It's not a true let down if you fail in the semi's.

I might be wrong of course, but I feel Philadelphia may just get their bell rung in this series. In order for them to have any chance, they must win one of the first two games in Tampa. The home field advantage Tampa enjoys has fueled their season and having that advantage for four games in the World Series gives them a huge advantage.

I'll predict a comfortable Tampa Bay victory. A 4-1 win possibly 4-2 series win followed by another one of those dog-piles where you wonder how someone doesn't snap their spine.

I've put together a random wager this evening based on nothing but instincts. So, do not invest any of your own monies in these selections and in fact, do not invest any of your time reading this post. I'm just killing time until something interesting happens in my life.

So, I'm backing Atletico Madrid; Overs for PSV v Marseille and Panathanaikos v Werder Bremen; and finally, the fourth selection of my accumulator will be a lay of Bordeaux after a text from one of the cheeky girls who I assume is a keen Cluj fan.

Her text read simply "Bordeaux Lay" - I assume she was referring to the Champions League fixture and not suggesting in an abbreviated and slightly presumptuous manner that we share a glass of wine or two together tonight and then have some sex.

If it was the latter, I'm not a piece of meat you know missy. Pop over still, but just for future reference respect the fact that I'm not a piece of meat.

So I'm looking out of my window this morning and it looks warm and sunny. It is of course in actuality, windy and cold. Damn you deceptive sun. Damn you. I commit to going outside though as I need a sandwich and one of those Wispa bars to bed down a craving that developed for them in the early hours.

My drive to the shops is halted however by a woman in a purple polo shirt standing in the middle of the road. She displays no obvious credentials giving her authority to stop traffic and I'm fixing to tell her so when I notice a party of little dudes waiting on the pavement and it becomes clear she's a Primary School teacher and is preparing to ferry her class across the road.

They have small legs so it takes a few moments for them to negotiate the distance but it gives me time to appraise the system she's employed with her two other colleagues in order to see the 15 strong class of wee ones safely across to the other side.

They're tethered together with elastic possibly nylon chord, which is fair enough, but she and her two colleagues, who are also females I hasten to add, have employed the standard boy-girl-boy-girl tethering system. This immediately sends horrendous memories of my own experiences with this deplorable system hurtling forward from the deepest darkest parts of my childhood to the present day.

Why do Primary school teachers impose this hell on the children whose safety and psychological development is entrusted to them? I know for a fact that boys hate this system cause I was one and I knew then as those poor boys know today, that girls of Primary school age have the "lurgy." It makes no difference that the dreaded lurgy is a fictitious infection, because the fear is very real and it's the fear we associate later in life with women in some circumstances.

I can't speak for girls, but I can see no obvious plus sides for them either. Whatever the reason, I don't doubt that those teachers are convinced it's a good idea, but if they would only stop for a moment to consider the long term implications of this system.

My research has proven that being tethered to a girl, especially a dorky girl with greasy hair and glasses who is prone to wetting herself without warning, can have long term psychological consequences for the boys involved. The most obvious being an almost phobic uneasiness with long term commitment in relationships in adult life.

Ask any single ostensibly normal man who isn't unreasonably repulsive why he has never married and the response will almost certainly be associated with a fear of being "tied-down" metaphorically speaking.

This is the subconscious fear of exposure to the "lurgy" carried by the girls they were literally tied to as children and since everything in the adult world is bigger and scarier than in infancy, "adult woman lurgy" becomes a terrifying enough prospect to keep measurable percentages of the male population in fear of marriage for their entire adult lives.

Their entire lives!

I'm officially on a poker sabatical. I've become impotent, I'm shit and there's no use.......no no no let me finish, let me finish...look, we've all had a drink, but there's no use pretending otherwise. I've been useless for some time now. Being crippled by Tim at the Pigeons with a pair of fours was my rock bottom. I'm off to live in a commune in Borneo where I'll eat raw opium every meal, renew myself and learn the true nature of aggression from the Orangutans.

Stoke City 2-1 Totterinton

Boston will you please just bally well naff off and stop winning. Given that it's baseball and their opponents are from Tampa Bay and the LA Dodgers were the team I had a financial interest in and they have now been eliminated, one may wonder why I'm so loathe to see the Red Sox winning.

My need for them to lose is three fold. I don't want to give young Paul any money, I don't like Boston Red Sox because of my New York Yankees affiliation and I don't like the city of Boston. as a whole. But why Rich, why do you so loathe the city of Boston? Why?

Well my reasons are four fold. First of all I find the huge percentage of the city's population who pretend to be Irish most ridiculous. Most of them couldn't point to Ireland on a map and have an even more tenuous link to Ireland than the Irish football team.

Secondly, those claims to an Celtic heritage are stupid anyway. Stupid stupid stupid. Boston was founded by English puritans. ENGLISH. PURITANS. Not Irish Catholics. It's named after the Boston in Lincolnshire in honour of John Cotton.

The whole damned place was colonised in the first place by dudes trying to escape the Church of England's dangerous flirtations with Catholicism and they hardly ever ate potatoes, it was a corn based diet.

Just cause they had cabillions of Irish immigrants doesn't mean they should go ahead and paint the place green and give the basketball team an Irish moniker. It's a city founded on English values and don't you forget it.

Thirdly, I got my arse whupped in Boston during my one and only trip there. What kind of a peoples would savagely attack me? ME! I mean OK, I may have had a little drinky poos and I may have wandered the streets blaring out the English national anthem to anyone sporting green clothing and I may have tried to use my penis as ID at some of the bars, but that's just youthful exuberance and high jinks.

Finally, when I went to Cheers Norm wasn't there. In fact, none of the Cheers people were in there and it's not even the same bar. It's a tiny place that looks nothing like the bar on TV, AND they asked me for ID..a photo ID this time! You're supposed to know my name already according to the theme tune. Everyone is supposed to know my name in there you faux Irish bollock jockies. Lying bastards.

No, I'm afraid it's an awful city and we must all encourage the defeat of their sporting franchises. The end.

Colin Powell has just endorsed Barack Obama's candidacy live on Mercan TV!? I spat my tea out all over my screen when I heard that. The last bastion of hope for the McCain campaign was an assault on the Mercan people's conscience and insecurities and now it's gone. GONE! Hahahahaha etc.

Through cabillions of pre-recorded "robocalls" they've been trying to persuade the voters that Barack Obama is an associate of domestic terrorist Bill Ayers. It's kinda difficult to do that now a four star general has endorsed the other guy.

Any questions now about Obamarama's lack of foreign policy experience and naivety are an incredibly hard sell with a dude in his corner with 35 years of soldiering on his CV, who was Reagan's National Security Advisor, the Secretary of the Joint Chiefs of Staff for Clinton and Bush and the Secretary of State for Bush. Even if McCain's suggestion was true that Obama was getting his foreign affairs information from children it doesn't matter now.

I find it amusing also that McCain has been banging on about his POW experiences to anyone who'll listen and it all becomes irrelevant the second a dude who's last name begins POW endorses Barack Obama. A deliciously ironic icing on a karma sponge cake.

I was just researching Karl Marx's the Communist Manifesto when I somehow got diverted to a website about Samantha Fox. Do you remember her?

Apparently to celebrate being voted the greatest ever Page 3 girl by Daily Star readers, she got them out again a few weeks ago for old time's sake. I'd have liked to have seen that. That's what I get for being a snooty Guardian reader.

She may not have been Carol Vorderman when it came to equations, but no one could deny she had a special pair of bouncers. Some of my earliest stiffies were hardened by pictures of Samantha Fox's poonts and I'm sure yours were too if you're from my generation.

Ooooh happy days, innocents days. I hear she's a lesbian now though. Completely off cock she is. I can't say I blame her. I'm the same with chocolate mint ice-cream.. ..had so much of the stuff as a kid, I can't go near it now. Anyway, cheers Sam here's to you.

I'm not sure how Tampa Bay managed to snatch defeat from the jaws of victory a couple of days ago in Boston, but let's hope they finish the job tonight. My interest in Baseball has now been reduced to just wanting Boston to lose cause I don't really like them. A World Series contested between Tampa Bay and Philadelphia has no more appeal to me than licking a female table tennis players arm pit and you can quote me.


The Blackhawks have built on the foundations laid after a great end to last season by firing their coach Denis Savard four games into the new campaign. Awesome thinking. This is the sort of thing Newcastle or Spurs do, I see no logic in this sort of behaviour, particularly when the next game is a road trip to St Louis.

This rivalry is Arsenal v Spurs in equivalence and I'm not confident. I allow myself to wager on Blackhawks games which is strictly taboo where Arsenal are concerned, but I won't be touching this game. I'll just watch it on JustinTV and wince every time the Blues score and the season goes tits up before it's even begun.


The tits of Arsenal's season have been quite up also the last couple of games. Everton are usually a banker though and with David Moyes, who has no eye-brows, using words like "hope" and "faith" in his interviews, we really ought to be able to thrash out three points today.

When a manager uses that kind of language he's essentially saying I'm not in charge, I canny do nothing about how shite we are and maybe God will throw us a bone. If we can't beat a team whose tactics board just has a prayer on it I resign from football.


What's wrong with kids these days? Why don't they play conkers anymore? Can you get conkers on the Nintendo Wii? I happened across a row of Horse Chestnut trees recently and on the ground were cabillions of huge conkers. That's a sight that would never have been seen when I was a nipper, no sir.

Whenever I went conker picking on a misty autumn afternoon all the bestest ones had already been had away by the local urchins and I'd be left scavenging amongst the prickly shells for something that might be competitive in the uncompromising full-contact school playground conker fights. They don't know they're born you know, kids. Don't know they're born. I have a feeling though that parents will be introducing their wee ones to conkers in these tough economic times.

So now, a sniper in the Parachute regiment ventures forward from his platoon's position in order to get a clearer shot at his targets, but because the maps he's been given don't highlight the fact that the area he's entering is a mine field, he gets his leg blown off when he steps on one of them. His platoon don't realise it's a minefield either cause they have the same maps and set off to rescue him and a couple of them get blown up too.

Now they realise they're all marooned in a minefield they radio for a helicopter to winch them the fuck out of there, but none of the UK forces helicopters are equipped with such fancy things as winches so they send a fuck off huge Chinnock instead which they intended to land in the minefield and recover their soldiers. A plan with no flaws. Except for how they'd all have died had it been able to land.

As it happens, the downwash from the rotors was powerful enough to set off more mines and kill one of the Para's - Cpl Mark Wright. Eventually three hours later a US Blackhawk helicopter with a winch rescues the rest of the party who by this point have no more than 5 or 6 limbs between them.

Now whoever laid those mines is ultimately responsible for the carnage and for the death of that soldier, but our own MoD and Gordon Brown's habitually incompetent and negligent Government can surely be awarded an assist each.

Meanwhile, this same Government who assisted in the death of Mark Wright and countless other soldiers in Iraq and Afghanistan by not issuing them with proper equipment, are fixing to press criminal charges against the parents of a guy who they helped travel to an assisted suicide clinic in Switzerland.

After being paralysed from the chest down in a rugby accident he decided he didn't want to live his life imprisoned in his own body and made his decision to end his life such as it was. As this isn't legal here our Government think it right and proper that they charge the guys parents who have essentially lost their son twice now and wanted to see an end to his suffering. Although what the fuck it's got to do with the Government they are yet to explain.

So while Daniel James' parents will be held accountable for an incredible act of mercy, Gordon Brown remains completely unaccountable for any of his collection of fuck ups from this past ten years which have cost thousands of lives in two wars and will soon see people starving to death in the affluent home counties cause no one has an money - and Tony Blair also remains immune from prosecution and is busy hiding in America and collecting about £250,000 a year from Yale University for teaching courses on faith and globalisation.

This sort of hypocrisy bothers me. It keeps me awake at night. It's no wonder that poor bloke decided his daily fight to remain motivated enough to stay alive wasn't worth it when you have people running the planet who are pathological liars, not responsible for the consequences of their actions and completely remorseless anyway.

The fight in Afghanistan is even more futile because there never was a reward at the end of it for those doing the fighting, which makes Gordon Brown and the MoD even more culpable and their decisions wholly indefensible. Unfortunately they know they'll never have to defend them or any other decisions they make and since we're on the brink of a depression there's any number of opportunities for them to saddle us all with even more immeasurable hardship and suffering while they exist in their own little world feasting on dolphin cutlets and baby seal hearts stuffed with dove pate and blame everything on the Americans.

FOXWORTH, MS—Despite obeying the posted speed limit and having all inspection, registration, and insurance documentation up to date, Sen. Barack Obama's campaign bus was stopped for nearly four hours by Marion County deputy sheriff Dewey Clutter while en route to a Jackson, MS speech, sources reported Tuesday.

According to those on board the bus—including various journalists, members of the Secret Service, and Obama campaign staffers—several minutes passed before Clutter exited his cruiser. Witness statements all mention hearing the sheriff's jackbooted footsteps along the gravel roadside as he slowly approached the vehicle's passenger side. These reports also assert that, prior to reaching the front of the campaign bus, the sheriff paused momentarily to smash the right rear taillight of the bus before dragging his still-drawn baton along the entire length of the vehicle.

"Where's the fire, son?" Clutter, 42, was overheard saying to the Illinois senator and 2008 Democratic presidential nominee. "Driving like that in these parts, what with a busted taillight and all, fella like you liable to get hisself into a whole mess a trouble."

Obama protested briefly before Clutter interrupted the graduate of Columbia University and Harvard Law School, brusquely informing the senator that he could "detain [Obama's] uppity ass for 48 hours without charging [him] with shit."

"Huh. Illinois," Clutter said while scrutinizing Obama's driver's license from behind a pair of mirrored aviator sunglasses. "You a long way from home, ain't ya?"

"Now Barry, someone 'bout your height, 'bout your skin color knocked over a Piggly Wiggly up in New Hebron just a coupla hours ago," Clutter continued. "But you wouldn't know nothin' 'bout that, now would you?"

Clutter then turned to Obama's wife, Michelle, looked her up and down, and wiped his mouth with a handkerchief.

After questioning the New York Times best-selling author and presidential frontrunner for several minutes about his business in Mississippi and politely asking the Caucasian women on the bus if they were all right, Clutter claimed that he smelled marijuana smoke and initiated a search.

According to Clutter's police report, the sheriff then ordered everyone to exit the bus and to place their hands on the side of the vehicle. Clutter then reentered the campaign bus, emerging a few moments later with a stack of documents.

"Well, well, would you looky here. If it ain't Barry's comprehensive plan for withdrawing U.S. troops from Iraq," said Clutter, setting the proposal on fire with a lit cigarette while blowing smoke in Obama's face. "Smart, well-dressed boy like you, I'd a-thought you'd take better care of your things."

"Now ain't that a shame," Clutter added.

Following the search, witnesses said that Clutter allowed everyone back onto the vehicle with the exception of the senator. Twenty minutes later, a visibly agitated Obama climbed aboard the bus. He reportedly refused to discuss what had happened, and instructed the driver to continue on to Jackson.

According to Obama insiders, this is not the first time on the campaign trail that the former president of the Harvard Law Review has had to deal with this type of treatment. While attending a rally in Savannah, GA, Obama was closely followed around the town hall by several armed guards to ensure that he didn't steal anything, and the senator reportedly had trouble canvassing voters in Baton Rouge, LA after everyone he approached crossed to the opposite side of the street.

"Sen. Obama has been incredibly patient and courageous during this election," campaign chief of staff Jim Messina said while looking nervously over his shoulder. "Despite some setbacks, we feel that we've made incredible progress."

"It's a new day in America," Messina added.

Is this Barack Obama signing the perky bosom of a young voter? Notice the flirtatious holding of hands and his lustful demeanor. That's certainly the expression I wear on my face when I'm out signing tits. I bet these photo-ops make Bill Clinton mad as hell.

I thought I'd give those Potato Dippers a try at McDonalds this day. Never again. In fact I'm boycotting McDonalds now cause they tried to cheat me. The bottom half of the box of "Dippers" was just regular fries! Yes, you heard me correctly, cheeky bastards. I think they only gave me about ten proper Potato Dippers, the rest was just their regular pencil thin fries and boy am I mad and still hungry.

I'd have been better off with a box of McCain's micro-chips, and I mean the box too cause they taste better than those chips. Micro-Chips are potato snacks' lowest common denominator, I think we can all agree on that.

They're a good metaphor for their namesake John McCain's supporters too. It's the last of the three Presidential debates tonight and lord ha' mercy I want this thing to be over. The CNN's of this world may be selling this election as a close race, but it isn't.

They have ratings to consider, no one will watch gayest Anderson Cooper with a string of sex balls up his poo-shoot talking about an election that was over as a contest three months ago, but make no mistake about it dudes, we're deep into landslide country now and I just want John McCain to slip away into a deep public and political life coma, if not an actual coma and for Sarah Palin to be unmasked finally Scooby-Doo stylee as French right-wing nutjob Jean-Marie Le Pen.

When you're really really suffering from the hungries on an evening, but you haven't been shopping for ages and the cupboards are bare, you have to force yourself to eat whatever you can find in the back of the shelves and covered in an inch think layer of frost in the bottom compartments of your freezer.

Most often it's either a Chicken and Mushroom Pot Noodle and a brown lemon or a box of McCain's Micro-Chips. This is essentially the state of the McCain campaign as we speak. Everyone even remotely decent and capable of independent thought on the Republican side has either gone on holiday for a month somewhere nice or have declared their support for Barack Obama - even Colin Powell is about to endorse Obama.

This mass Palin induced exodus has left McCain with no option but to appeal to the most Neanderthal, bigoted, ignorant and toothless demographic - America's pot noodles, brown lemons and Micro-Chips - to try and prevent his campaign from starving to death. While a student might be able to survive on this mess, the globe's beacon of democracy cannot and I look forward to witnessing its final death throes via an incredibly painful internal collapse.


Almost as pathetic as John McCain, but not quite, is France's declaration that all friendly international football matches will now be forfeited if the French national anthem is booed. This in response to the treatment the La Marseillaise received from the Tunisian crowd on Toosday.

Now I can just about countenance their bat-out-of-hell manoeuvre when the Nazi's invaded, but to do a runner cause the away team boo and hiss at your national anthem seems petulant and craven even for the French, especially when the team you're playing is an ex-colony.

How do you expect them to behave? Generally speaking countries don't like being colonised and they bare grudges. I'm British, I know whereof I speak. You have to man up a bit and expect a bit of resentment at the football matches.

If the crowd were burning the Tricolor and filling pan-au-chocolat with shit and lobbing it at the players, then you have a case for not playing, but if everyone started sulking and refusing to play because of booing there'd be no sport at all. There'd be no pantomimes either, so come on now France, if you won't do it for the sport, do it for the kids.

I can definitely recommend eating ham, cheese and tomato toasted sandwiches before bed. I had an awesome dream last night where I was best mates with the Queen! Her Majesty has a very dry sense of humour. God bless you ma'am.

Note to self; do not eat canned spaghetti before going to bed - or hellish nightmares endure. Soon after dabbing up the remaining tomatoey spaghetti goodness of my 3am supper with a slice of Warburtons I dreamt I had been roped into a bare knuckle fight above a pub. Scared I was.

I arrived at the pub early (which took great courage in itself if you ask me) and was shown to a seat in the corner. My opponent was pointed out to me and I stared in horror at a figure standing roughly seven feet tall shuffling across the floor towards me supported by a walking stick, his huge black cloak and hat concealing his identity.

Dear gah, is this the product of a marriage twixt Ebenezer Scrooge and Frankenstein's monster? The ghostly figure stopped at the bar and removed his hat and in his unmistakable feminine lispy twang ordered up a, "gin and tonic please Daphne." He took the tiny glass in his claw like hand, turned his sinister countenance towards me and downed it in one. It was John Pertwee! It's ham sandwiches for supper for me from now I can tell you.

A mélange of sports wagers, current affairs and sexual aspirations have occupied my thoughts today. None of them of any real importance so let's discuss them shall we.

DIY enthusiasts and admirers of ample bouncers may have tuned into the afternoon of Property Ladder repeats on More 4 this afternoon. I find Sarah Beeny to be a formidable sexual opponent and I'm sure you do too.

She's all woman is young Sarah, but I think I'm equal to the challenge - providing of course I have my inhaler with me and some Lucozade tablets handy for afterwards in case my blood sugars nose dive, as the love making promises to be physically quite demanding. She can handle my erections any time that's what I always say...eh eh eh lads? Eh?


Now then....good new for North Korea. They've finally been removed from America's list of states sponsoring terrorism. They didn't go as far as to explain why they were on it in the first place though.

Who in the name of all things that explodes, have North Korea sponsored? They don't have any money at all. They don't have the scratch to sponsor the cubs during bob-a-job week let alone contribute to the vast networks of Al-Qaeda and Hezbollah.

The North Korean textile industry have only just started using the Spinning Jenny and Flying Shuttle. The notion that they're on the cusp of developing a nuclear weapon is a bit paranoid to say the least.

During my research today I came across this picture of the Korean peninsula at night. South Korea is lit up like a Christmas tree as any developed nation is at night, but North Korea is shrouded in darkness apart from a tiny localised region which I assume is Pyonyang.

If they don't have the power or technology to light their streets I don't think America has to worry about them educating the various rogue states on nuclear weapons development.

Why such an aggressive policy towards them though if it's not because of the potential threat they pose to Merca? I think it's because George W. Bush never really forgave CBS for cancelling M*A*S*H in 1983 and has decided to take it out on North Korea. In real terms it's more justification than he felt he needed to invade Iraq. Only a few months now though.


Sports wagers today have been successful. An intriguing punt on the Blue Square Conference North following a tip from young Paul which was included in a double with the New Jersey Devils' game last night has afforded me a few re-buys at the Fox on Monday and financed a cheeky double this evening which I hope will see Jerry beat the Russians and San Jose beat the L.A. Kings.

As we speak Germany are 1-0 up so that's encouraging and I really can't see San Jose having too much trouble against the woeful Kings. Famous last words and all, but L.A. are a bottom feeding mess and San Jose are more than likely going to exceed 100 points for the fourth consecutive season.

There were a few juicy looking 2/5 shots in the NHL tonight, but as San Jose have Jeremy Roenick on their roster I let sentiment sway me. At the age of 38 he is still contributing despite his face and body being rebuilt throughout his career from titanium and various carbon compositites. He was my favourite Blackhawk when I started getting into the sport. I loved how he would regularly have his face shattered by pucks and still smile about it.

I just noticed Joerg Haider has died in a car crash, ironically when his car veered off to the right. Not too much about that in the news although Sarah Palin will probably respectfully ask for a minute's Seig Heiling at her rallies today.

Can't imagine why no coverage on the news though. He was harmless enough surely? I mean how divisive can a small town ultra-right wing Austrian be? It's not like he could have caused a world war or anything.

OK so his parents were members of the Nazi party and essentially made slaves after the war as punishment and they may have harboured a grudge or two which may have influenced the way their son was brought up, and OK little Joerg had posters of Hitler on his wall as a child, but he was a man who stood up for what he believed in and no one could deny his charisma and patriotism.

So however unpalatable his ideologies may have been, I remain a staunch advocate of freedom of speech. I didn't agree with his views, but gosh darn it I would have fought for his right to voice them. The fact I won't have to now that he's had his head stove in and his chest crushed to bits by his own dashboard is neither here nor there.

Yes, I've got a question for you. Why the fuck have you got the Bishop of Rochester on the panel? Most of the questions are focused on the banking collapse the rest on other political issues. What does a Bishop know about politics or economics anymore than my milkman or the dude who works in my local butchers who still sends Margaret Thatcher birthday cards? Unless he's suggesting God will see us right there's no justification for him being there. And if he does suggest that, I hope someone asks why he put us in this position in the first place.

God is meant to be omniscient so should have seen this coming and taken the appropriate steps to prevent it - one or two heart attacks amongst the finance community for example. You may as well have a staunch believer in Astrology on there, because unless the questions are specifically regarding monotheist religion, the presence of this bloke on the panel is inappropriate. This is one of my biggest bugbears; high ranking members of the Church given an exaggerated level of respect not afforded to anyone else in any other walk of life.

They do this on news programmes too. Get Rowan Williams on to talk about Iraq or the level of crime in West Bromwich. You're an authority on these issues how exactly? You're not actually an authority on anything except the regurgitation of Chinese Whispers from a couple millennia ago.

If he must be on there please someone ask him why God is letting us all pay so much for petrol and why is he still keeping John McCain alive. Thumbs down from me Mr Dimbleby. Thumbs very very down indeed.

While the global financial mess may be in the saddle and riding man kind, since I was able to take the prudent step some years ago of crafting a life for myself outside the loop, I now have the luxury of stopping and grazing a little during these troubled times. So my focus at the moment while the rest of globe tears it's collective hair out over economics, will be on Baseball.

Tonight is game one of the National League Conference Series and while the pundit dudes have this one as pretty close - I think Joe Torre's Dodgers are destined for greatness this year. The facts - the black and white tangibles - point towards a Philadelphia win.

They have home field advantage and during the regular season swept the Dodgers 4-0 at home. But people, but, the regular season is the regular season and it's the intangible that determine the outcome of these series'.

The Dodgers swept the Cubs in the last round - the Cubs had the best regular season record, so LA are peaking at the right time. Also Philadelphia is a city cloaked in failure. All of their teams across the four main North America sports are under achievers.

One reason for this might be the mentality of their fans. They're the loudest when their teams are winning, but the first to turn on their own team when they're showing signs of losing - also the city stinks of bad AIDs if that Tom Hanks movie is anything to go by and that can't be an inspiring atmosphere.

Philadelphia do not have a winning mentality. Joe Torre does and so does Manny Ramirez. LA are more balanced team also. Philadelphia rely on big hitting so if they mess up just once in their own park which is a hitters park, they will lose because LA's stadium is pitcher friendly and they'll need to be able to manufacture runs, which they have proven to be incapable of doing. This is LA in 6 games and no mistake and you can quote me.

* * *

In the ADLS young Paul "The Game" bless his little cotton red sox has called the series in Boston's favour. I've agreed with him in all fairness - up until last night that is, when I received a carrier pigeon message from Nate Silver.

He sent his best bird, Tampa. I was fixing myself a sammich when I heard a strange coo-cooing coming from my window sill and there the little chap was tapping away on my window with his little beak.

I unclipped the capsule on his little wrinkly leg, unravelled the little message and spat my tea out at the information laid before me. Nate Silver incidentally was someone who I first heard tell of after he appeared on the Colbert Report promoting a website called fivethirtyeight.com which predicts Presidential election outcomes. But fivethirtyeight is just a spin-off from young Nate's real bread and butter which is SABRmetrics.

SABR is an acronym for Society for American Baseball Research. He uses objective stats to predict the outcomes of baseball games and series's's's and is darn good at it too. So anyway..I won't go into the systems he uses because I don't know what they are and wouldn't understand them anyhoo, but the message he sent me clearly stated that Tampa are going to cause an upset here. You heard it right folks. Tampa Bay to beat Boston. I'll say no more.

The View From Above Looming over the library is an original Sputnik 1 satellite, one of several backups the Soviets built. At far left is a model of NASA's experimental X-29 jet, with forward-swept wings. "It's the first plane that a pilot can't fly—only computers can handle it," Walker says. On the top of the center shelves are "scholar's rocks," natural formations believed by the Chinese to spur contemplation. Behind the rocks is a 15-foot-long model of the Saturn V rocket.

Jay's Anatomy "What's so wonderful about our knowledge of the human body is how remarkably constrained it has been over time," Walker says. In the center of the table sits the Anatomia universa, an early-19th-century medical masterwork by the Italian illustrator Paolo Mascagni. At front right is a field tool kit for Civil War surgeons. Grasping the box of prosthetic eyeballs at left is the original "Thing" hand from the TV show The Addams Family, signed by the cast. In front of the 19th-century phrenological bust is a book, from about 1500, containing the first published illustrations of surgery on humans. "Pre-anesthesia, of course" Walker says. At the rear are a 300 million-year-old trilobite fossil, a raptor skeleton, and a clutch of fossilized dinosaur eggs.

Planetarium The massive "book" by the window is a specially commissioned, internally lit 2.5-ton Clyde Lynds sculpture. It's meant to embody the spirit of the library: the mind on the right page, the universe on the left. Pointing out to that universe is a powerful Questar 7 telescope. On the rear of the table (from left) are a globe of the moon signed by nine of the 12 astronauts who walked on it, a rare 19th-century sky atlas with white stars against a black sky, and a fragment from the Sikhote-Alin meteorite that fell in Russia in 1947—it's tiny but weighs 15 pounds. In the foreground is Andrea Cellarius' hand-painted celestial atlas from 1660. "It has the first published maps where Earth was not the center of the solar system," Walker says. "It divides the age of faith from the age of reason."

Inspiration Point Walker frequently meets with the Walker Digital brain trust in the seating area of the library, hoping to draw inspiration from the surroundings. Artist Clyde Lynds (known for integrating fiber optics into his work) created the intricate illuminated glass panels and many other visual elements. Walker himself designed the Escher-like tile floor, modeled after a tumbling block pattern from the Victorian age. He bought the chandelier (seen in the Bond film Die Another Day) at an auction and rewired it with 6,000 LEDs. The open book on the table features watercolor illustrations for an 18th-century papal palace that was never built. The globe has special meaning for Walker: "It was a wedding gift Eileen and I received in 1982."

Reading Room In the foreground are several early-20th-century volumes with jeweled bindings—gold, rubies, and diamonds—crafted by the legendary firm Sangorski & Sutcliffe. On the table (first row, from left) is a 16th-century book of jousting, a Dickens novel decorated with the author's portrait, and (open, with Post-it flags) an original copy of the 1493 Nuremberg Chronicle, the first illustrated history book. Second row: the 1535 Coverdale Bible (the first completely translated into modern English), a medieval tome with intricate illustrations of dwarfs, a collection of portraits commissioned at a 17th-century German festival ("Facebook in 1610!"), a tree-bark Indonesian guide to cannibalism, and a Middle Eastern mother goddess icon from around 5000 BC.

Gadget Lab A brand-new One Laptop per Child XO, far left, sits next to a relatively ancient RadioShack TRS-80 Model 100. In back, a 1911 typewriting machine and a 1909 Kent radio. The large contraption at center is the Nazis' supposedly unbreakable Enigma code machine. The book to its left is a copy of Johannes Trithemius' 1518 Polygraphiae, a cryptographic landmark. On the right is an Apple II motherboard signed by Woz. An Edison kinetoscope sits beside an 1890 Edison phonograph (along with three of the wax cylinders it uses for recording). Nearby is a faithful copy of Edison's lightbulb. The gadget with the tubes is an IBM processor circa 1960. In front of it stands a truly ancient storage device, a Sumerian clay cone used to record surplus grain.