SAUSAGE LIFE

SAUSAGE LIFE
The column which is currently experiencing an unusually high volume of calls

MYSELF: You have the puzzled look of someone who has swallowed a spider in the mistaken belief that it will catch the fly you ate earlier. Why so?

READER: I've been listening to the radio and I'm baffled. Why have politicians, pundits and most interviewees suddenly started to prefix the answer to every question, however anodyne, with the unnecessary phrase that’s a very good question?

MYSELF: That’s a very good question.

READER: Here we go - very witty, very droll. How did I just know you were going to say that?

MYSELF: That is also a very good question.

READER: I’m not going to get anywhere with this am I? Why do I even bother?

MYSELF: Those are two very good questions.

READER (covering ears): Lalalalalalala...!

ALBUM OF THE MONTH

Rick Wakeman: Help Me Out I'm Down To My Last Three Million (Unicycle Music Group, CD, vinyl, cassette, wax cylinder)

The composer of King Arthur on Ice, and The Six Wives of Henry VIII hammers out all your favourite musical fragments on a reproduction 16^th century electronic spinet furnished by sponsors Amahay Music Corporation of Japan. The custom instrument is finished in Rainforest Green and features genuine ivory keys made from the tusks of sustainably harvested free-range African elephants.
Rick, author of One Hundred Favourite Fishing Lures, is clearly not preparing to hang up his rock 'n roll clogs anytime soon, as he demonstrates on this stomping 200-track selection of well-loved classics, scientifically remastered to their smallest atomic size.
Download these tracks:
Dvorak's Humoresque (bars 28-32), the hummable bits from 4'33" by John Cage, Hey Big Spender (chorus only) with guest appearances by Shirley Bassey and Elton John.

WAITER, THERE'S A GULL IN MY SOUP

Hastings' most eminent inventor, Professor Gordon Thinktank, has come up with a brilliant solution to the town's escalating herring gull problem. Hot on the tail of his innovative NoShit seagull diapers, the Patent Office is currently considering an application for The Gullflap, a decoy litterbin designed to entrap the always-hungry seabirds. The invention is based on the council's classic recycling unit design, The Birdfeeder which has successfully fattened the local gull population for many years. Thinktank’s version will appear perfectly normal to the birds, that is to say overflowing with pizza boxes, half-eaten cheeseburgers, and decomposing chicken remains and surrounded by old mattresses and prams. Once inside, the lid slams shut, and the unlucky seabird's only exit option is via a 40 kilometre tunnel which terminates at Brighton.

DICTIONARY CORNER

Robust (n) Reinforced sports bra developed by Playtex in 1948, for the British Olympic Ladies Coxless Fours......

Conflate(v) to masquerade as a balloon sculptor in order to get work at children's parties.

Aplomb (n) a soft fruit of the genus Prunus prunus.

Example:

Little Jack Horner
sat in the corner,
eating a Christmas pie;
He put in his thomb,
and pulled out aplomb,
and said 'What a self assured confident boy am I!'

SWEET FA CUP EXIT

Hastings & St Leonards Warriors FC 0 - Chiddingly Pharaohs 8

The Warriors, who must wait until the January transfer window before they can benefit from the recent takeover by Mexican drug cartel Steenkin Badges, suffered yet another embarrassing 1st round FA cup exit last Monday, this time inflicted on them by lowly Chiddingly Pharaohs, 200 places below them in the Bob's Corner Shop 'n Nail Bar League (south).

Warriors’ new Irish manager Alabaster Tipperary was visibly upset as he spoke to us, post-match, in the back room of The Tortured Sole, the S&M bar and fish restaurant owned by the club's Russian-born chairman, Oliver Gark. "We was robbed so we was," he told us, "and the club have tendered an official objection to the FA. Apart from the fact that all 8 goals were offside, my lads, who are 100% toxically masculine, were inhibited by The Pharaohs' garish pink bustiere away strip with black lace edging. The shock tactic was enough to prevent fearsome central defender Nobby Balaclava from applying his legendary vicious but fair two-footed tackle on the grounds of gallantry. On top of that, groin-kick specialist Ruud Van Smoot was sidelined with a broken jockstrap, and we are still waiting for the X-rays on Bert 'Pinocchio' Lampwick whose girlfriend’s father’s attempt to castrate him the night before the game was fortunately thwarted just in the nick of time."

Did anyone else receive this worrying email?

VIBRALIFE INTERNATIONAL CUSTOMER SERVICE DIVISION

Hiding Behind A Wall of Science
Dear (fill in name of valued stakeholder here),
We are sorry to hear that you have been experiencing issues with some of our software. The problem you describe is a very common one, caused by a serial driver conflict inside the extensions manager in your byte portfolio. Here is the simple fix: If you open the folder marked "do not open", you will be presented with the following options. First, tick the box marked Yes, I would love to receive informative emails about the many purchasing opportunities offered by Vibralife International, then simply enter your bank account number and sort code on the form provided. For the next step you will need a small phillipino screwdriver, a tank of oxyacetaline, a stout arc-welding mask, and some plastic explosive. It is vitally important that you place the
SORRY, AN ERROR TYPE -233 HAS OCCURRED.
YOU HAVE BEEN DISCONNECTED

GOTCHA!

After weeks of exhaustive research, I have finally tracked down the guy who decides when supermarket "soft" fruit is "Ripe and Ready-to-Eat"

PASTA POSER

In answer to an enquiry by Mrs Iona Fischzupper of Glasgow; the Aureola is a type of portable music box, popular in the Victorian era. Manufactured in Italy by revered Florentine instrument makers Mangiare Strumento, it produces musical notes by striking ribbons of tagliatelle which have been stretched between two pieces of Parma Ham, with a wooden spatula.

POETRY NOW

It is nowhere near the anniversary of the death of ex-PM Lady Margaret Thatcher; nevertheless I have commissioned this poem from myself, at my usual rates, as a small symbol of personal remembrance. All stand please:-

NO MILK TODAY, OR TOMORROW

She died at the Ritz
her life slipped thru her mitts
surrounded by minions
who loved her to bits.
A lady of iron (though irony free)
she incanted the mantra of
me me me me.
In the far northern poles

all the ungrateful moles
who regret they are no longer gouging out coal,
will be sorry she's burning,
she wasn't for turning,
they'd surely prefer her interred in a hole

Sausage Life!

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