Month: January 2011

The Book of Aaron

Aaron, Russian icon from first quarter of 18th...
Aaron, Icon from the Land of Rus

The “Book Of Aaron” is part of the Usenet Apocrypha, a number of books written by me in the 1990s satirising the soap opera that went on in various Usenet discussion groups or newsgroups, some of whose participants were real people airing their linen, and others where personae there to troll or participate in the rough and tumble of Usenet discussion (read: “flamewars“). Some of the flamewars were productive of quite creative writing, and in this case I used the Jacobean English of the King James Bible (no disrespect to the Bible itself intended of course, it is merely the humour to be had from juxtaposing this classical and religious form of English on the life and views of a handful of eccentric guys and girls living in modern America) to produce some Usenet Apocrypha celebrating and combining some of the amusing stories that had been discussed on the group over recent months, in particular those of usenet legend Aaron Kulkis, described by many as the Ubertroll. Whether he genuinely believed his chauvinistic beliefs nobody can say, but he was a real person who came to see me in London in 1998. For those who don’t know the people involved, I have know idea whether the book will still be a laugh or not, or make any sense or not. You tell me!

Chapter One

1. This is the history of the prophet Aaron son of Kulkis, which beginneth when he was yet unborn.

2. In the land of Po the LORD looked over the people to see if there were any righteous and not sunken in iniquity.  And behold, one Kulkis of the ancient tribe of Lith did walk uprightly.

3. And the LORD came unto him in a vision by night and said unto him ‘Gird up thy loins and betake thee and all thine house unto a land which is afar off, a land that I, the LORD thy God will shew thee’.

4. And Kulkis did exceedingly fear and shake before the countenance of the LORD and great were the movements of his bowels. Continue reading “The Book of Aaron” →

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I’m still getting the hang of doing galleries…

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This doesn’t look like I thought it would, but what it is is actually four photos from the International Business Forum website – the Christmas party event at which I was asked to be the auctioneer for the evening’s charity auction, so you can see me here in the best bib and tucker. I just took the ones with me in but you can see more on the site http://www.ibforum.cz

What I found gratifying was that the shots of others taken while I was talking as auctioneer looked as if people were enjoying the humour. They had completely different faces to the ones during the serious bit before where the people running the Pink Crocodile charity talked about the difficult conditions of the kids they are helping. People looked a bit stressed by that, nobody likes suffering, much.

But people gave generously in the auction, we sold everything for good prices, and I hope my jokes didn’t upset too many people!

Some footage from my actual auctioning should be coming up in the not too distant future on video too!

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Poolside by Day (CUV)

The fifth in a series of about 20 quite varying videos from our Summer holiday this year, currently uploaded to YT.

A Hummingbird Hawk-moth
Hummingbird Hawk Moth

You won’t believe the insect in this film – I really had to stop and think whether it was a moth or a hummingbird!

The location is not being disclosed at this time. It may be disclosed in a passworded post later on.

This is because it’s too good. If people knew what good value for money this was, I wouldn’t get a look in.

It’s near Tours, that’s all I’m sayin’. Knawm sayin’?

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Last minute post – and a picture challenge

Today has very nearly been the day I broke my postaday2011 challenge – after all, it’s coming up to the time when the VAT and the books for the year end have to be done and there are audits and accounts to be done left, right and centre, so this can’t be a long post. I have barely been able to follow the news, which is a good source normally for things to write about, and although I said I would soon write about these animal die-offs, this isn’t the time for that either as it needs a bit longer.

So what can I do with this post? Maybe a few photos just to check out the gallery possibilities on here…

Recognise it?

Now where do you think that is? Do you recognise it? Any guesses? Answers in the comments, please!

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ICMTSU #3 Google Translate has put the fun back into Nigerian Scam Spam

The official poster of the movie I produced, &...
Co? Czy nie ładnie mówię po polsku?

For the last year or so the broken English of the scammers has now become so broken once it goes via Google translate into other languages, that sometimes the results are nothing short of hilarious.

Sometimes they send them with the untranslated parts still intact, as they have absolutely no idea of how useless a job the machine has made of translating their anyway often hopeless English into languages where the rigors of correspondence are more conservative and where the resulting mess is nothing short of alarmingly ludicrous.

Just to give you an example, I’ll take the one I received in Polish this evening :

Drogi Przyjacielu,
 
Jak sie dzisiaj i Twojej rodziny? Mam nadzieje, ze dobrze, jestem Mr.Christopher Johnson. Od Haledon, North West London, tutaj w Anglii. Ja pracuje dla NatWest Bank Corporation Londynie. Pisze ci z mojego biura, które beda z ogromna korzyscia dla nas obu. W moim departamencie, jako asystent menedzera (Greater London Regional Office, odkrylem opuszczonej sume 12,5 milionów dolarów USA dolary (dwanascie milionów piecset tysiecy nami dolarów) na koncie nalezacym do jednego z naszych zagranicznych klientów Late Pan Thompson Morrison amerykanskiego obywatela, który niestety stracil zycie w katastrofie samolotu Alaska Airlines Flight 261, który rozbil sie 31 stycznia 2000, w tym jego zona i córka tylko.
 
Wybór jest skontaktowac sie cieszyla z charakteru geograficznego, w którym mieszkasz, w szczególnosci ze wzgledu na starosc z transakcji i poufnosc w niniejszym dokumencie. Teraz nasz bank zostal czeka na którykolwiek z krewnymi, aby sie do roszczenia, ale nikt nie uczynil tego. Ja osobiscie zostal nieudanych odnalezienie krewnych na 2 lat, szukam Twojej zgody, aby zaprezentowac Panstwu jak najblizszych krewnych / Czy beneficjent do zmarlego tak, ze wplywy z tego konta wyceniono na 12,5 mln dolarów moze byc wyplacona do Ciebie.
 
To bedzie wyplacane lub udostepniane w tych procentów, 60% do 40% mnie i dla Ciebie. Mam zabezpieczone wszystkie niezbedne dokumenty, które moga zostac wykorzystane do wykonania kopii zapasowej tego twierdzenia jest uczynienie. Wszystkie w razie potrzeby jest wypelnic swoje nazwiska do dokumentów i zalegalizowac go w sadzie, aby udowodnic Ci za prawowitego beneficjenta. Wszystko, czego wymagaja teraz jest uczciwy wspólpracy, poufnosci i zaufania w celu umozliwienia nas widzi te transakcje. Gwarantuje, ze bedzie to wykonane zgodnie z prawem rozwiazanie, które bedzie chronic komputer z wszelkich przypadków naruszenia law.Please dostarczyc mi nastepujace: jak mamy 7 dni, aby go uruchomic poprzez. Jest to bardzo pilnie prosze.
 
1. Pelna Nazwa:
2. Twoje: Numer telefonu
3. Twój adres kontaktowy.
4. Wiek:
5.Core Praca / Zawód:
6.sex:
 
Po przejsciu przez metodyczna wyszukiwania, postanowilem skontaktowac sie z Toba nadzieje, ze znajdziecie interesujace tej propozycji. Prosze na potwierdzenie tej wiadomosci i wskazujac zainteresowanie, bede dostarczyc Panstwu wiecej informacji. Endeavor do let me know swojej decyzji zamiast trzymac mnie czeka.
 
Pozdrawiam,
Mr.Christopher Johnson
mr.christ_johnson@yahoo.co.uk

This is about as crap Polish as anyone could come up with and still have it recognisable as such. From the use of “Dear Friend” in the salutation, which no Pole is going to write to someone they haven’t spent a “szmat czasu” with all the way through to the use of “nazwa” – the name of a thing – to describe  a person’s full name, it is entirely hopeless. Probably written in poor English at the outset – nobody outside of subsaharan Africa introduces themselves as “Mr” – the style is just so out of synch with what the person claims to be and what they are talking about that only the lowliest naiveling could be led along by it for a second. And then on top of that a display of all the weak points of machine translation, uncritically cut and paste into an email.

I really couldn’t make this s**t up.

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