ZD

Fitter than Thora

2011-11-06T00:13:00.000Z

Picture your average stairlift owner. Old? Blue rinse? Incontinent, but with a penchant for cats and Werther's originals?

I'm thinking Thora Hird — or perhaps Brian Potter — but if this advert is anything to go by, young pretty flamenco dancers are the key demographic for Stannah buying...

It's almost the world's first upskirt on a stairlift as well (or at least I hope it is).

Toilet Trees

2011-10-23T23:16:00.000+01:00

Welcome back. We've all been rather busy here at ZD Towers and can only apologise for the woeful lack of new material, but don't worry: normal service will resume soon. In the meantime, you should check out this work of art snapped by one of our reporters at the Yorkshire Sculpture Park. In fact, read the whole of the Privy Counsel while you're there. It's weird. It's wonderful. It's a bog blog.

How I Invented Wikipedia

2011-06-25T18:21:00.003+01:00

Jimmy Wales "founded" Wikipedia in 2001.

Not only had I invented Wikipedia by that point, I'd also developed the mobile version too. Members of the jury, I give you Exhibit A: my sketch of a portable electronic encyclopaedia from 2001. The 'ZD Knowledgeometer' came preloaded with millions of articles and could be updated by connecting to the internet, where anybody could contribute. I should be a fucking millionaire.

If I had a time machine, I'd go back to 2001 and manufacture the Knowledgeometer. That's a stupid name though, so I'd call it the ZDpedia. Or the iPedia, which would annoy Steve Jobs. I'd make sure the first article was about Jimmy Wales and that it said "Jimmy Wales is the man who didn't found Wikipedia. What's Wikipedia? Exactly. Better luck next time, Jimbo."

The ZDpedia would also keep me out of trouble, because if anybody caught me hiding in the bushes at the bottom of their garden again, I'd be able to say "don't worry, I'm from the Internet", and that would reassure them for long enough to let me escape.

"Look, I've found his wig!"

I'd also visit 2050 to see if Justin Bieber and Rebecca Black were king and queen of the world. If they were, I'd go to the 1990s and abduct baby Bieber and baby Black. I'd then take them back to the Triassic period and feed them to a dinosaur, just to confuse the paleontologists.

If Miley Cyrus were queen of the world, I'd be okay with that. She makes Middle Reality (MR) look cool. If I've understood her world correctly, Miley Cyrus is a real person in Upper Reality (UR) who plays Miley Stewart who plays Hannah Montana in MR. Her UR friends turn up in her MR world and there's no boundary between the realities. Similarly, I am a real person in UR, and I play the Legend who plays the Bellend in MR. It makes perfect sense.

Robinson May Ball 2011: Sabine Still At Large

2011-06-21T22:43:00.001+01:00

He committed an unspeakable crime and we enjoy shouting his name at him.

He's the one who isn't Natalie Portman.

ZD Newcomers, meet Sabine. You might be unfamiliar with this feral creature - in a way, we all are, given the number of pseudonyms he's used over the years - but all you need to know is that it's really, really fun to shout his name at him when he's least expecting it. And pronounce it wrong. He could be in the library, on the toilet or minding his own business in his bedroom, but he's never out of range of a "Sorbeen!"

A sighting of Charlie Sabine at Robinson College's 2011 May Ball has led officials to believe that he may soon be captured after being sentenced to death last week. A specially convened court, consisting of Lords Spencer, Virgo and Boredom, found Sabine guilty in absentia of gross sabining, sabining without a licence, failed to stop when "Sabine!"'d, being moody, sabining in the presence of a minor and impersonating a tramp. Lord Boredom seemed fuzzy when questioned on what laws Sabine had actually broken, but he said he was certain that the death penalty they passed down was the correct verdict: "He committed an unspeakable crime and for that he must be punished. Nobody remembers what he did, but it must be bad, otherwise why would we go to such lengths to stop him?" Sabine has been on the run ever since.


Happier times: Sabine endorsing sardines. He attributed his long luscious locks to fish oils.

The trail ran cold until a glimpse of Sabine at the Ball on Friday night. An eyewitness, who has identified himself only as 'Jarney', said "I spotted somebody who looked and scowled just like him. I shouted 'Sabine' loudly at him and then stood very still - I've heard his vision is based on movement - but he disappeared into the bushes before I could grab him. In hindsight, I should have reported it but I was thinking only of my own safety at the time."

Sabine's parents, who spoke to reporters outside their home in leafy Ryecroft Close, Woodley, said that their son had been misrepresented by the press. "He isn't a criminal. He just couldn't deal with complete strangers shouting his name at him all the time," said Mrs Sabine. Her husband described how Sabine's protagonists deliberately messed with his surname to tip him over the edge. "It's sah-byne. Not SAY-byne, not sa-beenay, and definitely not sabinet blanc," he explained, before breaking down in tears. "I just want him home."

Inspector Barnes, of Robinson College Police Department, took a different view: "Nobody wants to have their name shouted at them when they're using a public toilet, especially if it makes them sound like a famous brand of malt loaf. Yes, Shuai might find it funny, and yes, a Soreen may be delicious and fruity, and full of squidgy energy, but Mr Sabine is none of those things, and he shouldn't need to be. Nevertheless, what he did - whatever it was - was completely unacceptable."

"He can't keep getting away with it," he added menacingly.

10 Years

2011-06-16T00:01:00.003+01:00

bbc.co.uk, June 2001.

On 16 June 2001, the interwebs changed forever. Back in those dark days of 56k dial-up modems and wires trailing across the living room, when YouTube was still four years away and the BBC site looked like this, we founded our first site and the internet entered the ZD Age.

In the intervening ten years, we've moved around a bit - geocities.com/zdlaxdsmip, /zdsystem, zduk.tk and now zduk.co.uk - but our loyal audience (all twelve of you - yes, even you at the back!) have followed us every step of the way. You have helped make us into the global powerhouse we are today: ZD is now the 7th biggest Middle Reality site in the world.

How we used to look.

To celebrate our anniversary, we've trawled that young-whippersnapper-of-a-website YouTube and brought you three classic videos from the Archives. Enjoy...

Ronaldo v Corsa - A Cristiano Ronaldo lookalike racing a car in his CK boxer shorts: what more do you want?

Yeoh Technology - ZD's greatest achievement? This critically acclaimed reworking of Ayo Technology tells the tale of a doomed love story and a hungry Singaporean's quest for food.

The Hirst Rat - no fancy cinematography on this one; it's just cousin Dingly trying to retrieve his flip-flop ("gaming thong") from a river and failing terribly.

ZD's Guide to Flirting 3

2011-06-14T22:55:00.002+01:00

Lesson 3 - Boring Flirting

At Cambridge, we used to have 'swaps', where a male drinking society from one college would invite a female drinking society from another college over for a formal dinner and sex.

Not pictured: orgy.

I was sat at the end of a long table on my first swap with a pretty girl, a girl with a nondescript face and my friend Lord Boredom, who has a nondescript personality. I said hello to the pretty girl and then ran out of things to say. She asked me what I studied but I mistook her attempt at small talk for a genuine interest in my subject and started to tell her - at length - about my recent essay.

My story trailed off as she gazed in open-mouthed horror at my social ineptitude, and I finished with the immortal chat-up line "but Lord knows more about law than me. Talk to Lord about law." She had realised I was a no-hoper by this point, so she started to talk to Boredom about everything except law while I just got drunk by myself.

I didn't sleep with her, but Boredom had even worse chat than me (the clue's in the name) and I helped myself to her food whilst she was crying, so it worked out okay in the end.

Lorraine is Cambridge Bedder of the Year

2011-06-12T22:33:00.000+01:00

Robinson College bedder Lorraine has won Swiss Laundry's Housekeeper of the Year competition 2010.

Lorraine's 'patch' includes A Staircase, home to the famous Romsey Tower where a number of notable ZD members resided in 2008-09. Lorraine is awesome and this award is well deserved. Jane, Romsey Terrace bedder during ZD's time at 35 Romsey in 2007-08, came bottom of the rankings.

Lorraine pictured with her favourite Romsey Tower residents.

Bellend's Guide to Flirting 2

2011-06-12T17:25:00.009+01:00

Lesson 2 - Introductory Flirting

I have a friend who is only interested in finding a girl that he can play war games with, to a high standard, but so that he will always just win in the end. He also has the feet of a hobbit. For these reasons, he is unlucky in love.

In Freshers' Week 2007, he decided to take advantage of the fact that he was now a second year by chatting up a fresher called Catherine. I wandered over, aiming to ruin his night, but he seemed to take my presence in his stride and began to introduce his new found ladyfriend to me:

"Wanna play footsie?"

(drunken slur) "Bellend, this is Chesca."

"No, that's your sister's name."

(visibly panicked) "Er, no, er, I meant Chloe."

"No, that's my girlfriend's name."

(desperate flailing) "Catherine! Her name's Catherine! Oh, she's gone."

He turned around to stop her, but she had walked away very quickly. He then turned back around but I too had walked off.

The next time he tried to flirt with a girl, he ended the night by vomiting over a gay doctor whilst sprawled over a mobility scooter in the entrance to a chapel, so perhaps his time with Catherine should be considered a relative success.

Bellend's Guide to Flirting 1

2011-06-12T12:33:00.004+01:00

Lesson 1 - Aggressive Flirting

I was once in Life, a nightclub in Cambridge that is now called the Venue or the Place or something equally stupid, watching Tim Westwood DJ and talk about big dogs and his Uncle Snoop. I don't know how Life got such a big name DJ to play but Westwood lives in Norfolk with his mum and it's not very far home so maybe he did it for a reduced price.

I was walking over to the toilet and noticed that two attractive girls were stood between me and the toilet door. They were looking at me and smiling, and as I got closer they moved so that I couldn't get to the toilet very easily, so I squeezed past - unsure if one of them had tried to trip me up - and went to have a wee and tell the Freshen Up Guy that I didn't need any counterfeit aftershave or urine-soaked chewing gum.

If I hit them at pace I could probably take them both out.

I left the toilet and the girls were still blocking my path. They were smiling but I couldn't work out if they were flirting or being dicks so I didn't take any chances. I sped up and dropped my shoulder so that I bodychecked one of the girls as I walked past, but as I was a successful rugby player and rather drunk I hit her harder than expected and she smashed against the wall before sliding to the floor. Her friend shouted something at me that may have been "clucking banker" but it was loud and Westwood has just dropped the bomb so I couldn't hear her properly.

I didn't sleep with either girl that night.

Jobs for black men: update

2011-06-12T12:26:00.000+01:00

Last year, ZD mused on why certain jobs only ever seem to be carried out by black men, and discussed the "toilet freshen-up guy" (or bog wog, according to Urban Dictionary) and his famous phrase, "fresh-en up, fresh-en up, for punani". Variations heard recently include:

No spray, no lay, no soap, no hope

Wash your fingers for the mingers

Spray the Armani, get the punani

Splash the Diesel, see the weasel

No cologne, you're going home alone

I then Googled it and found:

Wash your Fingers for the Mingers!

Wash your Nuts for the Sluts!

Wash your Pole for the Hole!

Wash your Toes for the Hoes!

No Splash, NO GASH!

No Spray, NO LAY!

No Joop, NO HOOP!

No Gucci, NO COOCHIE!

No Davidoff, You don't HAVE IT OFF!

No Fendi, NO WENDY!

No Boss, NO BOX!

No Paco, NO TACO!

No Calvin Klein, NO SEXYTIME!

No Dior, NO WHORE!

No Dune, NO POON!

No Escape, NO GAPE!

No Cologne, You go Home ALONE!!!

No Tissue, NO ISSUE!

No Stink, NO PINK!

No Money, NO HONEY!

No Lolly, NO JOLLY!

No Stench, NO WENCH!

No Lotion, NO MOTION!

No Wash, NO NOSH!

No Stuff, NO MUFF!

No Gum, NO CUM!

Let us know if you hear any more in the comments below.

Srebrenica to Shameless: Karadzic's Wife Found in Manchester

2011-06-11T21:33:00.001+01:00

EXCLUSIVE

Ljilana Zelen-Karadzic, wife of Serbian war criminal Radovan Karadzic, has finally been tracked down to the Chatsworth Estate in Manchester. Ljilana, or Lillian as she's known to locals, had evaded authorities for many years despite frequent television appearances on Channel 4's Shameless. After the dramatic on-set raid, Ljilana told our reporter that she has not seen her husband for 11 years, and that she chose to live in inner-city Manchester as it reminded her of her home town of Sarajevo circa 1995. Ljilana is the second high profile Serb to be captured in recent weeks, following Ratko Mladic's arrest in May.

(L) Manchester brothel owner; (R) Serbian genocide wife.

Her husband, best known for orchestrating the Srebrenica massacre and for having the hair of an eagle owl, was unavailable for comment this week, possibly because he's on trial for war crimes in The Hague. Frank Gallagher said something about a "fhookin' parrrty" and then passed out.

(L) Bubo bubo; (R) Radovan badman.

Hit Your Wife, Get a Cheap DVD: Happy Father's Day!

2011-06-11T15:08:00.000+01:00

"You didn't hit her hard enough, Dad; here, watch Rocky for some tips."

This unfortunately placed advert was brought to you by Chris Sewell.

Boy sells his kidney for an iPad

2011-06-04T18:20:00.005+01:00

I've always thought that people sell their souls when they buy Apple products, but even ol'Mephistopheles himself couldn't have dreamt of a 17 year old boy selling his kidney to buy an iPad 2.

Look Faustus, this one comes with 3G!

The Chinese youth apparently received 20,000 yuan (around £1900) for his organ, which he promptly spent in the nearest Apple shop. His mother's suspicions were aroused when the idiot returned home with a bag full of shiny gadgets and a whopping great scar across his abdomen, and the police were duly informed. Personally, I'm of the opinion that if you're going to sell your body - quite literally - for a gadget, at least get something good like an Android tablet!

It's the first I've heard of consumerism actually consuming a consumer, but I suppose it illustrates the efficiency of the free market. Jokers have said that Apple should release an iDialysis app, or that the kid should've waited for an iPad 3, but he's still got another kidney to sell - and a couple of livers in case he fancies an iPhone 5. Oh, wait.

Not pictured: a good deal.

What would you sell? Your kidney for a Kindle? A toe for a Nokia 3310? Or your mother for the HTC Desire? Comments below, people.

Diddy needs to pee

2011-05-30T13:20:00.001+01:00

Between changing his name (he's "SWAG" this week, apparently) and advertising Ciroc Vodka (sample tweet: If you in the club and they aint Got no Ciroc! You in the wrong club! Run for the EXiT!!! Ruuuunnnnnn!!!!), the artist formerly known as Sean Combs/Puff Daddy/P. Diddy/Diddy sometimes needs the toilet. Nothing wrong with that; but did you know he sometimes chooses to queue? With us normal folk?! OMG.

Why does Gary Busey look so weird?

2011-05-29T23:03:00.003+01:00

Gary Busey is an American actor who appeared in Walker, Texas Ranger (with Chuck Norris!), Law & Order and Entourage. He received an Academy Award nomination for Best Actor in 1978 for his role in The Buddy Holly Story.

He has also eaten his own face.

Gary Busey's teeth are larger than his head. How is this possible? At some point in the past, he must have started to eat himself from the inside out. He has now eaten all of the muscle and tissue inside his own head and all that's left is skin and a giant set of teeth on the outside of his body. Somebody needs to stop this man before he eats us all.

Gary Busey ...

... has already eaten himself ...

... and will eat us all ...

... if these riot police* don't stop him first.

*they're actually firemen, but don't let that ruin a good story.

facesitting Inc.

2011-05-29T00:33:00.004+01:00


We'll sit on your face(book). For a fee.

ZD's entry in Cracked's
"Awful Inventions We'll Probably See This Decade" competition.

When Obama met Jedward

2011-05-25T00:13:00.001+01:00

Twitter, by its very nature, is ephemeral. Tweets hang around for a day or two and then disappear into the ether. More information is created now than at any time in history, and yet there are fears that we may be living in a digital dark age and that no record will be left of our time on Earth.

Well, not today. Some things should never be forgotten. Humanity hinges on epoch-defining moments - the start of the First World War, the Moon Landing, 9/11 - and to that list can now be added Barack Obama meeting Jedward, and them (it?) tweeting about it. @PlanetJedward's tweets are below, and they brilliantly expose how deep the Jedward has descended into Middle Reality; it's in its own little world!

The Leader of the Free World is baffled by the "Irish High Kings of Irritation".

They look like identical aliens, they spell his name "Barrack", and they're probably the only people who've ever met Barack Obama and then gone on Youtube to do a "jepic" impersonation of him; you'd imagine that the Secret Service filter those sort of people out long before they get to meet the Chief.

Anyway, without further ado, here is the...

Jedobama Twitter Archive

"this time he was Real and he moved"

"going to the white house to meet her daughters"

"Jed we can"

Amazing.

Les Mis II

2011-05-22T22:09:00.003+01:00

EXCLUSIVE

Victor Hugo died 126 years ago today. Esteemed in his native France for his poetry, he is better known to the rest of the world as the author of Les Miserables and Notre-Dame de Paris (The Hunchback of Notre-Dame). Less well known is the fact that, shortly before his death, he began work on a sequel to Les Miserables which lay forgotten until the unfinished manuscript was discovered in a Whitwellshire attic in February 2006.*

ZD can today exclusively reveal a preview of the forthcoming musical adaptation of this work, Les Miserables II: the Revenge of Valjean, which includes an excerpt from one of the principal songs, "I Can See Valjean Through the Window", and a tantalising glimpse of the pivotal battle between Valjean and his nemesis, Javert.

Link: http://youtu.be/slGf5UzED2U

* Les Mis II is not to be confused with the non-canon sequel Cosette, Or The Time of Illusions.

Naboo of Nazareth

2011-05-15T00:23:00.001+01:00

At office parties, people like to photocopy their backsides.

If you're going to photocopy your face, make sure you're the first in the queue.

Is Obama a Horcrux?

2011-05-14T17:25:00.000+01:00

It is now well known that Osama bin Laden split his soul into seven horcruxes, the first six of which are generally accepted to be those listed below. All of these have been destroyed by coalition forces, with our very own ZD troops responsible for blowing up the fourth in the caves of Tora Bora in 2007.

1. Richard Reid's shoe

2. Bert from Sesame Street

3. Bin Laden's first video camera

4. Helga al-Hufflepuff's cup

5. The diary bin Laden kept as a young insurgent during his first bombing on the Gold Mihor Hotel

6. The wedding ring of the US Ambassador present at the 1998 United States Embassy bombings in Kenya and Tanzania

7. ???

Controversy remains, however, over the identity of the one remaining sliver of bin Laden's soul, as this report from the Uncyclopedia explains.

3 May 2011

ISLAMABAD, Pakistan -- As the United States of America braces itself for a new age in terrorism following the death of Osama bin Laden, concerns have grown over just how dead bin Laden truly is. The lack of public photographical evidence and the burial of the body in international waters have only spurred mild-mannered, level-headed conspiracy theorists to question the reliability of the American government's reports.

Accordingly, potential 2012 GOP contender Donald Trump called for greater transparency and disclosure from the Obama Administration regarding bin Laden's ultimate fate.

"We have reliable sources reassuring the American people that Osama's body has been shot, killed, and disgraced in every way humanly imaginable"," Trump said. "What we do not know, however, is the current location of the remaining fragment of his soul. The good, fair, and unquestionably attractive people of this great nation deserve to know what, or who, is Osama's last Horcrux."

Trump was referring to the famous counter-terrorism breakthrough in the summer of 2006 that revealed that bin Laden had used dark and powerful Muslim magic to split his soul and place a piece of himself into an object following his most prominent terrorist attacks. Bin Laden would have been able to use these Horcruxes to revive himself from the dead, effectively granting the infamous terrorist immortality.

American intelligence revealed nearly five years ago that bin Laden is expected to have produced seven Horcruxes, a number considered to carry additional magical properties within the Muslim occult. To date, the CIA has located and destroyed six of the Horcruxes, including the diary bin Laden kept as a young insurgent during his first bombing on the Gold Mihor Hotel and the wedding ring of the US Ambassador present in the 1998 United States Embassy bombings in Kenya and Tanzania.

The identity, let alone the location, of the final Horcrux remains elusive to American intelligence. It is almost universally agreed upon that the seventh Horcrux would have been made following the 9/11 terrorist attacks, but the CIA continues its search for the last remaining piece of Osama's living soul without a single reliable lead.

Trump, however, alongside members of the fringe right-wing "'Cruxer" movement suspect that the current Commander-in-Chief, President Barack Obama, is the last Horcrux.

Concerns over Obama's status as a Horcrux date back to the earliest stages of his political career...

"Since the 2008 presidential campaign, the pressure has been placed on Obama to prove that he is not a Horcrux," said Trump. "Where was Obama on September 11th? What definitive proof is there that he is not Osama's seventh Horcrux? This is the issue on the minds of every true American. After all, a Horcrux cannot be president."

While the language of Article II of the American Constitution does not specifically reference the case of a Horcrux president, it does clearly state that the president must be a natural-born American citizen. Since part of bin Laden's soul would be infused with Obama's if he was a Horcrux, most Constitutional scholars agree that Obama would not fully qualify as an American citizen.

The White House refused to respond to Trump's recent statements, although Obama has repeatedly reiterated that he is not, and has never been, a Horcrux for a prominent Jihadist.

Releasing an official statement early Tuesday morning, the Obama Administration did indicate that they now believe that bin Laden made his pet snake, Ayman al-Zawahiri, his seventh Horcrux. In the statement, Obama assured the nation that he was fully committed to tracking down the last remnants of bin Laden's magically fractured soul and that the "lightning bolt-shaped scar across [his] forehead would not cease throbbing until America and her allies are safe and the mission is accomplished."

Geoff Evans of Stanfree

2011-05-14T16:12:00.005+01:00

Geoff Evans is somewhat of a local celebrity in Whitwellshire, where he can often be seen cycling around the countryside. His letters to the Worksop Guardian have become infamous over the years for their strange syntax and esoteric subject matter, and they now been collated and published on the Hub. He also looks like Bodger from 'Bodger and Badger'. Read, enjoy, and click 'Like'!

Many of his earlier letters are missing from the Archives, so if you have any older material please send it to zd [at] zduk [dot] co [dot] uk.

I'll leave you with one of his finest letters, dating from 2005 or 2006, in which Geoff defies the cycling ban, admires black pheasants, disputes that they actually are black, compares them to Notts County FC and then ends on an unrelated note about cycling. This is why I love the man.

Become a fan of Geoff on the Hub (Facebook)!

Lesbian Bed Death

2011-05-11T21:41:00.000+01:00

You say tired,
I say headache.
The vibrator won't venture out of the bottom drawer.
Mustering a kiss is torture,
and your clitoris is untouched.
Let's just be friends.

Lesbian Bed Death by Nancankerous.

Alexis Jordan : having her cake and eating it...

2011-05-10T21:44:00.007+01:00

Alexis Jordan, Good Girl. Catchy song, fit video. But what are these lyrics?

I like tight jeans, dark shades,
When I walk the ground shakes (boom)
Like an 808 (boom)
You appreciate my lean
Body nice shape,
Wanna take me on a date (move)
You've got what it takes (move)
You better have some cake.

You better have some cake. To those in the know (who get down low and call shorty a ho), cake is drugs or money. Or her ass. But to the uninitiated honky, this is rhyming for the sake of it, and it doesn't even make sense: either he's got what it takes and he can take her on a date, in which case cake would just ruin his appetite; or she's questioning if he has got what it takes, and is telling him to to tuck into a slice of lemon drizzle whilst she thinks it through, but how is cake going to help? It'll make him fat and sticky, and girls with 'lean body nice shape' don't generally go for fat sticky cake-fiends. Unless she's lying about her body, and 'when I walk the ground shakes (boom)' just means that she's a leviathan gorging herself and this guy might as well tuck in as well. Shit lyrics, shit advice, Alexis, you fat bastard.

Boom.

BOREDOM

2011-05-08T13:15:00.000+01:00

Ode to Boredom

Boredom, you say? Beats me...

Oh ... him?

Remember how he used to skulk to the library on Saturdays and

Every minute he got he worked?

Duncan went to his room once, only to forget him instantly.

Only ever saw him with Nitish and Pheaves, or

Maybe that was Carl Jones.

Moral Compass

2011-05-07T21:39:00.004+01:00

I used to have a friend whose hobbies included mocking those who couldn't afford good clothes and tormenting a girl with a speech impediment. He also shot a swan.

He is now a policeman. His hard work has clearly paid off.

Compare the meercrap

2011-05-02T18:05:00.002+01:00

Compare the Meerkat...

... with the Sheer Tat.

Compare the Market, Compare the Meerkat.

Nuclear Dawn

2011-05-02T17:54:00.000+01:00

Funny article from David Mitchell on the naming of the nuclear security programme (December 2010).

MTV success for Context MC

2011-04-27T12:34:00.004+01:00

BBC article on Context MC's 'Off With Their Heads' being snapped up by MTV.

BNOCh Powell

2011-04-27T10:42:00.000+01:00


Absolute Lad.

Bnoch Powell, Rivers of Beer - 20 April 1968.

Great proofreading, Xxxfirstname

2011-04-26T22:04:00.001+01:00

The Independent, xxxdaymonthyear.

4chan, law and epilepsy

2011-04-26T16:11:00.003+01:00

Sometimes, you've got to love 4chan. Sometimes, such as when they turn a site for epilepsy sufferers into a flashing strobe gif, not so much (but the idea's still pretty funny).

"the /b/ board on 4chan is renowned for having a soft spot for cats. It hates and derides everything else, but it will pursue cat abusers to the ends of the earth."

More info on 4chan/Anonymous.

Brad Pitt and time travel

2011-04-25T16:00:00.001+01:00

Brad Pitt is currently working on 28 films. 28 full-length, women-wet-in-the-cinema feature films. I'm a busy guy, but even my to-do list has only 20 items on it and six of them just say "make a video about Dingly". Brad Pitt working on 28 films is interesting in its own right, and is in fact the third most interesting thing I learnt yesterday (after "horses can't vomit" and "Ewan McGregor considered injecting himself with heroin to better understand his role in Trainspotting"), but it also explains a major part of Pitt's acting career: he's always eating in films because it's the only fucking chance he gets.

His work schedule is even more astonishing when you consider his home life: between being married to crazy sexcase Angelina Jolie and raising their horde of ethnically challenged children, his life must be a whirlwind of fragging and adoption papers, so how does he fit it all in?

Time travel, that's how. It's the only answer that makes sense. Brad Pitt has the ability to manipulate time and relive each day, cramming in those extra hours like a voracious Phil Connors or Hermione Granger. Those aren't special effects in Meet Joe Black and The Curious Case of Benjamin Button, it's just Pitt chronoshifting when the director needs him to age differently. It even answers the theories surrounding Twelve Monkeys: Bruce Willis actually was travelling through time, helped by Jeffrey Goines played, of course, by Brad Pitt. As if that wasn't proof enough, he was even meant to play Henry DeTamble in the Time Traveler's Wife, with Jennifer Aniston playing Clare Abshire, but then along came Jolie and her lips and Aniston was doomed to a life of singledom and being the best thing in crappy movies.

I'm so stunned by the success of my own theory that I don't really know how to finish this article, but I'll leave you with one thought: nobody knows where Troy was filmed. Could it have been during the Trojan War itself? I wouldn't rule it out.

First sleep, second sleep.

2011-04-24T11:03:00.000+01:00

Read this and this.

Sexual content, followed by weather.

2011-04-23T01:34:00.000+01:00


Newsnight's getting horny in its old age.

(Picture courtesy of Kathryn Watson on the Hub).

Sugarhands fail

2011-04-20T23:49:00.001+01:00

Sugarhands fail.

2 a.m., Cambridge Travelodge. Sugarhands fancies some TeamTeasers, overpriced at £1.80. The Legend leaves the bag hanging in the slot, the Sugarhand yanks the bag out too quickly and his precious sugar goes everywhere. An ethnically challenged child then came and stole the floor-food.

Cambridge tripos exam instructions: heavy stuff

2011-04-10T19:15:00.000+01:00

IRRELEVANCE WILL BE PENALISED.
EXTERMINATE, EXTERMINATE!

Simon Katich's face

2011-01-03T11:32:00.002Z

The saddest moment of the Ashes was when I learnt Simon Katich was injured and would play no further part in the series (the happiest moment has been most of the series, so far). He never looks pretty, and he scuttles back and forth along the crease like a crab, but I absolutely love watching him bat.

Anguish personified.

It's his face. I just love his face. Some batsman showboat and dazzle, others get their head down and stick around, but watching Katich at the wicket is something else. He's tenacious. He's tough. He's the loneliest man in the world. It's entrancing to watch; you realise you're witnessing inner turmoil live on television, that you're watching a man stand in the middle of a field while another man throws a small hard ball at him and that he's dying inside. He's an opening batsman, so you know he's going to be tough, but I've never seen such a lone wolf: he's looks like a condemned man, a prisoner on the run, with the three day stubble and long dead stare of a man who can hear the bloodhounds howling in the distance. He's determined, he's gritty, and he even throttled Michael Clarke over a song. I once saw an interview where he smiled, but I immediately banished it from my memory – it was like hearing an old lady say “Dr Shipman was always alright with me” and starting to think differently of him. Simon does not smile. Simon says... nothing, but behind the eyes he's pleading for his life.

It's all about Stew, it's all about Stew baby...

2010-07-19T10:31:00.000+01:00

Hello, and welcome back. We're currently enjoying "It's All About Stew" Week here at ZD. Stew, better known to many of his fans as Boredom, often picks fault with Legendary statuses and profile boxes on the Hub. In an effort to appease him, ZD has dedicated itself to Stew this week and will be publishing the many funny things said about him, along with the many objectionable things said by him. This one's for you, Boredom.

#1 "Stew is an unmemorable and forceful lover."

#2 "All your friends think I'm ugly, but 90% of them would sleep with me" - Stew.

#3 “Stew has a vanilla personality. I don't remember him very well.” - 'Bley

#4 "I'm just a weak, weak, weak man" - Stew, Feb 2008

#5 "Last night was so much fun, but YOU made me want to slit my wrists" - Le Terick to Stew, Feb 2009

#6 "I have no qualms about battering ducks" – Stew, June 2009

#7 "There's no such thing as objectivity. It's all bollocks" - Stew. and yet...

#8 “Outside cricket and swimming, if someone disagrees with me on sport they're wrong" - also Stew.

#9 "You're entitled to your opinion - it's a free country - but your opinion may be destroyed" - Freddy to Stew during a supervision. (Stew: "as always...")

#10 "An extra hour of work!" - Stew 'Van Wilder' Walker on the clocks going back.

#11 "The rash is back" - Stew's 12 year old 'mate' at the STD clinic
#12 ""I'm smug in the way beer is smug to alcoholics" – Stew (Stew is generally pretty good at analogies)

#13 - "Let's go and sit in the Romsey car park" - Stew's default 'fun' activity suggestion in third year.
#14 - "Why do you try to ruin my life? What have i ever done to you?" - Stew to Ian, Nov 2008

Social Grenades: BOOM!

2010-06-16T18:15:00.000+01:00

We posted about Bley being a social grenade a couple of months ago.

It looks like the concept has gone global...

5 tips for running a successful nightclub

2010-06-08T13:50:00.001+01:00

"How to run a successful nightclub" by Uncle Bellend

1. No knobhead bouncers

Those suffering from "small man with a little bit of power" syndrome are invariably found in one of three jobs: traffic warden, civil servant or bouncer. Of course, some bouncers are okay. For example, Sidney, a huge black guy on the door at Soul Tree in Cambridge, was hilarious when we deliberated over paying to get in: "it's a quid... and if you say no, I say you a cheap motherfucker". But for every Sidney out there, there are ten absolute twat-necks who just want to look hard and ruin your night - and nine of them work at Revs.

"Your hair looks wank, mate. Got ID?"

I don't know if "can you be rude to our customers?" is a box you have to tick on the application form to work at Revs, but their bouncers are universally prickish. I've heard of a guy who worked at their Leeds bar being bussed up to the Newcastle one when they were short of morons, and even out of his natural territory he was a complete and utter shit: more flying fuckup than flying picket. Queuing to gain entry to Revs is always a tense affair as you wait your turn to be insulted:

"ID, mate... Tom, that's your name, is it? Tommy Tom Tom - well I never! That shirt looks shit on you, mate - you look like a fucking poof. Go on, get inside..."

2. Loads of Strobe

If you have strobe lights, use them. Continuously. Most people are ugly and can't dance, but everybody looks good under strobes. You might lose a few people to epileptic attacks, but at least they'll look cool when they go down - especially if there's some sick dubstep playing, in which case they'll just look like they're dancing.

3. No racism

I've explored the issue of "toilet freshen-up guys" always being black in a previous post and nothing's changed since then. I think the time has come to diversify this role: every club needs to have an equal opportunities employment policy. Sure, not everybody can look cool when singing "fresh-en up, fresh-en up, for punani", but there's no need to be racist about it.

4. "No knitting" signs

These are essential. Jacob-Bard Rosenberg (more about him in a later post) was thrown out of Cindies* for sitting in the corner and quietly knitting a tea cosy. The Bard protested that there weren't any signs forbidding knitting; the bouncer told him "we don't need any 'no knitting' signs".

Yes, you do.

5. Air conditioning

A practical point to finish on. It's always too hot. Install more air conditioning.

---

* Cindies is "Ballare", if any Cambridge town-folk are reading.

Collective nouns for chavs

2010-06-08T11:24:00.000+01:00

I stumbled across @CollectiveNouns on Twitter the other day. One of the words for which they were compiling entries was 'chavs', with the most popular currently being 'a sovereign of chavs'. ZD thought of a few - a rogue of chavs, a reprobate of chavs - before settling on 'a hood of chavs' as our entry.

We also thought of an update for an old phrase: "the haves and the have nots". This should now read "the haves and the chavs", although the 'have' must refer to something other than having money nowadays if the de rigeur designer labels and bling bling are anything to go by; perhaps it's having the ability to function properly in society without spitting everywhere, or having the sartorial sense not to wear manky trackie bottoms tucked into football socks.

Look out for more chav news in future, when we'll be discussing the many and varied 'diverse' inhabitants of Mill Road, Cambridge.

* another inspired entry on CollectiveNouns was "a wunch of bankers" - here's looking at you, E5.

Cheryl Cole: "I want to be Cheryl.i.am"

2010-06-02T14:31:00.000+01:00

Pictured: Cheryl Cole, Cheryl Tweedy, Cheryl.i.am or Cheryl.we.are?
Make your mind up, love.

EXCLUSIVE The Nation's Official Sweetheart Cheryl Cole has denied rumours that she intends to revert to her maiden name of Tweedy. Speaking exclusively to ZD after her tour date in Newcastle, Cheryl remarked that "it's a pretty crap surname and just look at my family - would you want to be associated with that lot?"

She was more coy when questioned about her relationship with Black Eyed Peas star Will.i.am. "Obviously, I like black men - it's only skanky black women I have a problem with - and Will's a really close friend." Although Cheryl filed for divorce from famous footballing gay Ashley Cole earlier this month, she said it was too early to discuss marriage plans with Will.i.am: "He's helping me through a tricky time. I don't want to say any more than that. I wouldn't rule out becoming Mrs Cheryl.i.am though - or even Will and Cheryl.we.are."

Robbie Lozenge & Uncle Legend - ZD Newcastle
This article is entirely fictional and must be read in a Middle Reality context.

Cannons & Trebuchets

2010-05-25T18:22:00.000+01:00

Years before Liam Fedus*, Iain Barr and the rest of Twadams built their fuck-off-massive trebuchet in the gardens of Robinson College, Rich Harris and Jeff "Ambiguous" Birchall managed to construct a working cannon. The Senior Tutor had this to say on the matter:

Dear Jeffrey and Richard,

I'm aware that the Porters on duty yesterday afternoon have for the time being taken your device. The reason that they were interested in what you were doing, in the first place, was that it was extremely noisy -- it could be heard right across the garden. In some ways I think your invention is rather enterprising; but if you could build in a silencer, or at least something to muffle the sound, it would be even more so!"

Liz Guild

soon followed by...

Dear Jeffrey and Richard,

Since contacting you earlier today, I have now had a chance to look at your device for myself, and in the light of what I have seen, I have to revise my earlier position. This is because what becomes clear to anyone who sees the scale and nature of your device is that you have unwitttingly designed a weapon.

Liz Guild

---------------

*(Wil)Liam Fedus is a bona fide Hero of ZD. He was already pretty cool in general, but his reputation was cemented by missing a flight home for his sister's graduation so that he could build the aforementioned trebuchet. Desh and Stoker spent their time desperately trying to impress Fedus; he was unfazed by this.

Lunge York

2010-05-24T22:42:00.000+01:00

I stumbled across a group on the Hub called Lunge York. The object of the group appears to be posting pictures of people lunging. In York.

The origins of this group are amazing, and are shared here in full. I absolutely love this:

Legends of the Lunge: The Hunter

There have been many great men and women of the lunge. Alexander the Great, Julius Caesar, Genghis Khan, Elizabeth I of England, William Shakespeare, Sir Isaac Newton David Hasselhoff:– all are well-known to have mastered the principles of the lunge. Animals too can be great lungers – The Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles and Dogtagnan and the Three Muskehounds being swift and excellent lungers, for example. But one man towers above them all in his lunging genius. He is known only as the Hunter. This is his story.

It was a classic night out. My friend Tim Vanderpump (a fellow aficionado of the lunge also known as Lungerpump or Vanderlunge) and I had been drinking down in Clapham. There were several notable incidents in the early evening – I found a sachet of lubricant down the side of an armchair, and a Russian guy called Vlad gave us a novel hissing interpretation of the ‘Scorpion’ posing move invented by Rob’s friend Billy. Yet these are just footnotes to the history of the Hunter. Our drunken friends decided to go home before twelve – Tim and I, who lived in Angel at the time, also decided to go home, but via whatever clubs were open on Upper Street first.

We ended up paying £5 to enter Kinky Mambo’s, where the bouncer warned us there was only an hour and a half to go before close. But what an hour and a half it was. We chased down our beers with spirits, and, given that there was more space than earlier, opted to perform a few lunges in the classic style. I was only on my second when there was a commotion in the club to my right. I peered into the darkness. A man approached us. He was a big man, around 6’4 in height and strongly built, like a bear or a badger. If he had a small beer belly, it merely added to his impressiveness. His eyes twinkled in the spinning disco lights, and his smile gleamed with mischief. He talked to us with enthusiasm for our lunges, abandoning the girls he was squiring about the club. He then performed some strong, deep lunges, with perfect form and balance. I could see he had done them many times before. He seemed like a great guy, a lunger par excellence. But the girls distracted him, and he wandered away. Tim and I felt a little sad to have lost such a superb lunging companion. But a few minutes later, the big man caught my eye again. He moved surreptitiously into the shadows of a small doorway in the wall separating the drinking area from the dancefloor. Slowly he lunged out of the darkness into the light, drawing an imaginary arrow from behind his head, and notching it to an imaginary bow, which he held firmly in his left hand. As he reached the nadir of his lunge, he drew the imaginary bow, then pivoted his upper body nearly ninety degrees to his left so that he was facing me. His eyes fixed on mine. He released his imaginary arrow, striking me in the heart, then smoothly, as if nothing had happened at all, withdrew back into the shadows.

It was the best thing I have ever seen. In that moment, from being a mere enthusiastic dabbler in the lunge, I decided to dedicate my waking hours to lunging, in the hope of one day being able to inspire others as the Hunter had inspired me. I practised my lunges for the rest of the night, but he left us regretfully in friendship, walking away with a trio of beautiful girls on his arms. We never saw him again.

Some say he is waiting, somewhere out there in the wide world, a gold-mine of banter, good cheer, and some really cool lunges that no-one else knows about yet. Others say he forgot everything he ever knew about lunging, and settled down for a quiet life as an accountant called Brian. But some say he was transfigured into a beam of light, and ascended to the sky like a lunging god, where on clear nights he can be seen as the constellation of stars known as Orion the Hunter, fixed eternally in the heavens in a mighty celestial lunge.

Roland O’Leary

Optimus Lunge

ninety five

2010-05-19T15:10:00.001+01:00

per cent hate (see what I did there?) has featured some excellent posts recently. It's maintained by an angry individual who - when not mocking people or running around London at extreme speeds - is a sporadic contributor to ZD. He also just happens to be Uncle Bellend's son in Middle Reality.

It's definitely worth subscribing to his rants.

Edit: ninety five per cent hate has now been taken off the internet. Of course it has. (April 2011)

Bellend on Mothers

2010-05-19T13:50:00.001+01:00

Get a grip.

Few things are more annoying than new mothers who think that they are being useful to society simply by virtue of being a mother. You know the sort; they're often mistakenly described as having a maternal 'glow'. This is in fact heat radiating smugly from their faces, fuelled by the self-satisfaction at having fulfilled their manifest fucking destiny to have children. Buoyed by the retarded belief that everybody is happy for them and wants to coo over their baby, such mothers waltz through life completely oblivious to the fact that the majority of people within 50 yards want to kill their noisy, filthy, misshapen sprog.

The last thing the world needs is more people: you're not doing anybody a favour by having a child. Nor, surprisingly, do you deserve special treatment. I don't want to hear about your baby. I do not want to see it. It should not be allowed near restaurants/cinemas/planes. Piss off.

The Childhood of Uncle Bellend

2010-05-12T20:03:00.001+01:00

Extracts from Dr Liversage's reports, 1995-1996. Uncle is approximately 8 years old:

"Uncle is quite capable of convincing himself that the scrapes he gets into have come about by accident and he expresses complete indifference to any punishment which is imposed upon him. His parents also described him as 'rigid' and arrogant' dominating his games with other children."

"He has developed the habit of ignoring his father which he knows upsets him and pretends that he has not heard him call."

"They described him sitting in a 'cupboard' in the classroom ... If he sits with other children, he appears to tap them and torment them persistently and will shout out his answers before the other children have a chance."

"He has no inhibition in telling his teachers why their punishments may be inappropriate or ineffective."

"For instance, on a recent trip to the supermarket, he made a bee line for the books, but started fighting with another child, because of some misunderstanding."

"Uncle accurately perceives himself in the volatile 'Coleric' group on the Eysenck Inventory"

Eysenck Personality Inventory (percentile scores):

Extravertion - 65th

Neuroticism - 77th

Lie Scale - 1st (i.e. Uncle is less likely to lie than 99% of the population)

"Uncle eschews deceit, as apparently, he sees no need for it in trying to enhance his image. One might suppose that he has little awareness or sensitivity to the opinion of others and therefore does not seek to disguise his short-comings."

"He also showed some obsessional symptoms, having an aversion to wet grass on his clothes, lining up cars in straight lines and drawing pictures with excessive detail which persists even now."

"Occasionally, about once a month or so, Uncle will give sudden incoherent cries from the back of his throat which appear to have no meaning but once again appear spontaneously."

Polite Chinese Guy (part 2)

2010-05-03T20:27:00.001+01:00

Below is an open letter sent by Tse/PCG to Robinson College. As you can see, he doesn't have high expectations at all:

Dear Robinson,

I would highly appreciate if you are able to help on this.

I am conducting my recent composition, Symphony in Polite Chinese Guy, at its premiere performance at Robinson on FRIDAY 7th MARCH (6:30 pm). The following instruments are cordially REQUIRED. If you play one of them to good standard, please would you get back to me ASAP?

Flutes (Two), Oboes (Two), Clarinets in B-flat (Two), Bassoons (Two).

Horns in F (ONLY TWO – We’ve got a good team out. NOBODY ELSE COME).

Trumpets in B-flat (Two), Trombones (One part doubled by two), Tuba (One).

Timpani.

First Violins (Twelve or more), Second Violins (Ten or more), Viola (Four or more), Violoncello (Eight or more), Double bass (Two or more).

Thank you so much for your attention. I look forward to hearing from you.

Best wishes,

Daniel Tse
RCSA Polite Chinese Guy 2007-8

Polite Chinese Guy (part 1)

2010-05-02T13:40:00.001+01:00

Polite Chinese Guy is not actually that polite, and he may not even be Chinese. The name stuck after he was heard referring to Yeoh as "Mrs Yeoh", rather than the standard "Beckyyy" or "Qing Ru".

PCG became an immediate fixture at Robinson College, both figuratively and literally: he was always, always, in Front Court organising concerts on his phone. Some students swear that they have never walked through Front Court without seeing him there. Postcards of the college typically picture the Chapel (with its famous stained glass) and the whale fin, with PCG stood between the two.

Once the Red Brick Cafe (RBC) opened, PCG had a second haunt. Those who panicked at not seeing him in Front Court would be reassured on entering the RBC; there he would be sat, immaculately dressed and nursing an americano. Scientists at the Middle Reality Institute of Theoretical Physics are investigating the tantalising possibility than PCG occupies both spaces at the same time, like a Bose-Einstein condensate in a smart jumper (although PCG is yet to exhibit wave-particle duality or interfere with himself, at least not in public). This would be a remarkable shift from the orthodox Tse Doctrine, which says that there are two separate PCG entities, PCG and Daniel Man-Hon Tse, with PCG occupying Front Court and Tse the RBC. The situation grew even more confusing when Daniel Tse was appointed RCSA Polite Chinese Guy in 2007.

Polite Chinese Guy (right) pictured with Terrence Grimble.

In 2009, a rogue scientist claimed to have spotted PCG outside of his natural habitat, allegedly sat in the gardens sipping tea under the shade of an umbrella. An attempt to determine his precise location, however, rendered his momentum unobservable and PCG diffused up G staircase and into Front Court. This unconfirmed sighting is probably attributable to experimental error by the Nat Sci. A third year student, who wishes to remain nameless, dismissed this heretical rumour as "in very poor taste".

When not organising music with a Stakhanovite devotion (see part 2), PCG is busy ghostwriting Daniel ‘Man-Hon The Moon’ Tse's highly anticipated third book in his series, Never Tse Never, titled Some Might Tse (More-lett, December 2008 issue of The Brick, page 4). PCG lives in Front Court with Timothy Ng and their snare beatboxing son, Context Ng-Tse-Ng-Tse-Ng-Tse.

Snarr face, or "how our fan video got its own fan page"

2010-04-30T20:04:00.000+01:00

35 Romsey are big fans of Napoleon Dynamite - it's probably the best that I know of.

In particular, we fucking love Don, who's played by Trevor Snarr. As well as the most hilarious actor of all time, Snarr is also the son of the Mayor of Murray, Utah and once fought a burglar who had broken into his home. He's an absolute legend.

Don's default expression is the Snarr face, a dismissive, incredulous expression, often coupled with an expulsion of air. He often deploys the Snarr face when ridiculing Napoleon. We loved it so much that we made a video showing every Snarr face in the movie, which we uploaded to Youtube in July 2009. Imagine our utter joy when we found a Facebook fan page, "doing the snarr face", dedicated to our video; whoever made that page, I want to build you a cake or something.

Good comeback

2010-04-30T19:39:00.000+01:00

Old response to good comeback: "ah, touché."

New, improved response to good comeback: "ah, deloitte."

(explanatory note: Deloitte Touche is one of the Big Four audit firms)

Sabinewatch

2010-04-24T01:05:00.001+01:00

Sabinewatch Update

The last we heard, Sabine was using the pseudonym Charlie Macquarie and hiding in a safehouse along with E5, Jonathan from Spotify and Howard from the Halifax (who moved in after the kid from the Frosties advert committed suicide).

Why do we keep letting him get away with it?

Recent leads suggest Sabine may now have left the safehouse disguised as a Hasidic Jew, possibly accompanied by Natalie Portman. He may or may not be using the alias Sabineberg. Any sightings should be reported immediately to your nearest ZD representative.

5 fun games to play in the car

2010-03-31T22:22:00.000+01:00

Directions: pull over and ask a passerby for directions in a hurried, panicked voice. Wait for them to start talking before looking over your shoulder, shouting "shit they're onto us" and driving off rapidly. You'll leave them mightily confused and looking around for the police (or possibly the mafia).

This game went very wrong when we asked this one guy for directions to the A14 from Robinson College. Not only did he gave us completely wrong directions, he repeatedly told us that he only had one arm, and then demanded money for his disability and for giving us (useless) directions. We drove off pretty quickly.

Trailing: find a car, pretend to be a gangster and trail it around town until the driver gets nervous. It's super effective if you switch your lights off. We made the mistake of following a BMW with blacked-out windows, and it was only when he started to double up his route and take us down one-way streets with no escape routes that we got worried and realised that he actually could be a gangster. Again, we drove off pretty quickly.

Adverse Camber: this game relies on the fact that a lot of people aren't entirely sure what an adverse camber is. Find a stretch of roads with an adverse camber (we used a bridge with roadworks) and, as you drive across it, frantically warn passing cyclists and pedestrians to watch out for the adverse camber - "be careful mate, watch out, there's an adverse camber ahead!". If they don't look worried or confused enough, all lean to one side of the car to emphasise the point.

The Yes/No Game: this one's simple. Wind the windows down and drive around rating members of the other sex. It's especially amusing when you come across, say, a group of 5 girls, and Rob leans out the window and picks them off individually: "No... NOOOO.... She's a definite Yes.... You at the back, NO .... Yes!" The game can be spiced up by rating out of 10, rather than just a simple yes/no.

Don't make the same mistake as Dingly, who insulted a cyclist just before we pulled up to a red light. Cue the hilarious image of him frantically trying to hide under his seat and wind his window up as the cyclist approached.

Official Race Car Game: Find a jogger, put your hazard lights on, slow down and shout motivational slogans at them: be their official race car. Ian and Rob accompanied Horrocks (down Burrell's walk!) in Romsey 3.

Dingly not drinking milk (NEW VIDEO)

2010-03-29T22:50:00.000+01:00

Typical Dingly: lies and a milk belly.

New video below, or click here.

Democracy Alive and Well in Robinson College Law Society

2010-03-29T22:39:00.000+01:00

On Oct 27 2008, Dr Isabella Alexander wrote:
Subject: RE: Consultative committee

Dear all,

You may remember that some time ago I emailed asking for a volunteer for the Staff-Student Consultative Committee at the Law Faculty. Nitish responded first, so I was minded to give him the job. However, Carl also responded and apparently there have been some concerns that appointment to the committee is not democratic (not in this college, as far as I know, but from other students). If you would like to hold an election, please let me know!!
If I don't hear from anyone seeking to exercise their democratic rights by the end of the day, then Nitish can be our representative.

Best wishes,
Isabella

-----

Hi, no problem with letting Carl take the post on the consultative committee.
No need for an election!
Nitish

-----

Stew, Hirst and I would rather there was an election, to be honest, but we're prepared to let it go on this occasion.
Ian

-----

Dear all,
Since everyone is being so diplomatic, perhaps we should have an election. To make life easier for all, I shall put a voting slip in each of your pigeonholes. It will have a number on it but I won't correlate the numbers to the person so voting will be anonymous. Anyone who wishes to vote should fill it out and give it to the porters to be put in my pigeonhole by 9am on Thursday morning (30 October). Obviously there is still some room for
vote-rigging but I am sure everyone will be honest! Let me know if this sounds like it might be a problem.
Best wishes,
Isabella

-----

In the circumstances perhaps we ought to have manifestos (let's keep them short - say 3000 words max) and hustings?
Jim

-----

I may be going mad but who is Hirst? And why is he on my list?
Isabella

-----

Hirst? He's a third year lawyer, sits with me and Stew. Changed over from Nat Sci I think.
Ian

-----

Well, he'll have to go back to nat sci. I can't handle any more lawyers - especially if they're friends of you and Stew! And the same goes for Rob Ward, who also seems to have miraculously appeared on my list.
Isabella

-----

How strange, there must be a virus in the email list or something! I'll tell Hirst he can't change. He was so looking forward to studying Civil Law II as well...
Ian

-----

Dear all,
After campaigning resembling that taking place currently across the Atlantic, we have a close-fought electoral victory of 7 votes to 6. Hereafter, Robinson shall be represented on the Staff-Student Consultative Committee by Nitish Upadhyaya. God bless democracy.
Isabella

-----

... recount?
Jim

SNE5

2010-03-29T18:49:00.000+01:00

Bley Day (and a new video)

2010-03-25T23:26:00.000Z

To celebrate the momentous occasion that is Bley's birthday, ZD Studios has released a video in his honour (see below):

'Bley
aka: the Social Hand Grenade, the Grenade, the Social Trebuchet, Trebu-bley (and Crummers to a select few).

Bley is an absolute weapon in a social situation. If not carefully supervised, he's liable to go "BOOM" at any moment. He's not even a cool weapon like a flick knife or a neutron bomb. No, he's more like a landmine detonating during a kid's party: conversation comes to a standstill and small children are left traumatised and limbless. Hence the inspired naming of Bley as "the Social Grenade", which quickly evolved into "the Grenade" and even "the Trebuchet" when he's on devastatingly bad form.

Bley, never one to mince his words, came to a memorable (and accurate) conclusion about Lord Boredom's character, saying "Stew has a vanilla personality. I don't remember him very well." He had more luck with Ian, another reprobate who's not adverse to social detonation. As is his way, Ian added Bley on Hubclub months before actually meeting him in Upper Reality. After hearing the "vanilla personality" story, Ian said "Bley remembers me, and I've never even met him!". Ward replied "that's because you make a nuisance of yourself on Facebook and invite yourself to his house." When they finally met at Desh's birthday, they both remarked that it was as though they'd known each other for years. Thus two weapons were beautifully fused together, like a bayonet fixed atop a rifle, or a pitbull equipped with throwing stars: Happy Bley Day everybody!

Ethics and the Criminal Law: Euthanasia

2010-03-22T18:30:00.000Z

This essay* was published by ZD MMP in April 2009. It was instrumental in persuading the Director of Public Prosecutions to change his policy in respect of cases of encouraging or assisting suicide and has since being cited with approval in the higher courts (in Middle Reality, naturally).

Ian Sadler, the author of the essay, is a regular contributor to ZD.

*full title: Does A’s earnest, considered and rationally understandable request to be killed (or helped to die) make the criminalisation of B–who provides the requested assistance–impermissible?

dureX Factor

2010-03-15T17:53:00.000Z

ZD has an exclusive, behind-the-scenes video of Tom Hirst (who nearly got to the first stage of auditions for X Factor 2008!) chillaxing in the garden with fans and working on new material. Hirst is one of the more successful musicians in the ZD stable, with a string of hits including The Way I Hirst, Bohemian Hirstody, 50 May Ball Tickets and backing vocal credits on the worldwide phenomenon Yeoh Technology.

It's viewable now on youtube and at Hirst's hubclub fan page.

A brief update.

2010-02-27T21:07:00.000Z

Just to say that the ZD blog will be quiet for the next week or two, but there will be a LOT of new content added after that - we're getting it ready for publication right now.

Click Follow (it's on the right) and you'll know when all the exciting new stuff arrives!

More from Uncle Bellend

2010-02-18T20:27:00.000Z

Road names that change
So there's a slight bend in the road. That is not a valid reason to change the name! We're not in The Curious Incident of the Dog in the Pissing Night-time here - no autistic kids are going to lose it just because a road that isn't perfectly straight keeps the same name. I bet the Royal Mail's behind this - it'll be a union thing - or (more probably) it's due to grafting modern town planning on to medieval settlements. But it's not acceptable in any case.

Church Street and "Church Road", Warsop? I'm looking right at you. And don't even get me started on King's Parade and "Trumpington St" in Cambridge. Ridiculous.

Absolutely vile.

"Miscellaneous Musings" by Uncle Bellend

2010-02-18T00:56:00.002Z

Uncle Bellend is one of Middle Reality's more unstable characters. We occasionally let him out for some fresh air, and recenntly he has had this to say:

Jobs for black men
ZD FOTD: There are two jobs that I've only ever seen black men doing, namely "carwasher" in supermarket car parks and "toilet freshen-up guy" in nightclubs. It's actually illegal* for anybody other than a black man to perform one of these roles. As well as overpriced aftershaves and hair gel, it's customary for the toilet guy to supply you with witticisms, such as a tuneful "fresh-en up, fresh-en up, for punani".
*it's actually not
** This post isn't racist, by the way. Just in case you thought it was. It's not. So that's okay then.
UPDATE: June 2011's new sayings.

Meerkats
I love it that somebody got a job in insurance and now gets paid to pretend to be a meerkat on Twitter! Love it! @Aleksandr_Orlov

BEP
Black Eyed Peas: "I travelled across the universe and the other galaxies." Basic astronomy fail right there.

Childcatcher
I don't understand why the Childcatcher in Chitty Chitty Bang Bang loses his disguise as soon as he's caught the kids. Why not stay as a sweet seller? No, just gallop through the streets cackling with 2 screaming children locked in a fucking cage on wheels. WHY?!

Dogs & Lifts
Fact 1: People are famously awkward in lifts: standing in close proximity to a stranger for a period of time too long to stay silent, yet too short to develop a proper conversation, results in embarrassing conversations.
Fact 2: People (especially the British) generally like dogs and will often talk to a stranger's cute dog rather than to said stranger (the same applies to talking to babies). Dogs often provide a talking piece.
Solution: Put toilet-trained dogs in all lifts.

Baby's hair
I hate it when adverts say "for baby", as though it's a unified concept, or there is only one in existence - the Baby, with a capital 'B'. "Shampoo for baby's hair" - no, it's for "a baby's hair", for fuck's sake.

Off of
Scott Mills is to blame for this one. "Heidi off of the Sugababes", "Paul off of Leicester"; no Scott, Heidi is from the Sugababes, and Paul is from Leicester. You can be "off of" a TV show - "Ross off of Friends" - and that's about it. Prick.

Tea Haiku
hot steamish fluid
flushed through leaves in blue teapots
black, milk or lemon.

Coke Zero
Coke Zero is literally that. Zero. Nada. 'Real' Coke has a great taste all of its own – completely different to any other cola – Diet Coke is dishwater, and best avoided, but Zero is like drinking a vacuum. It's not 'nothing' in the way water is - water tastes of something - it literally tastes of nothing.
When it was launched, I instantly preferred it to the diet variety, and decided that no matter how good real Coke tasted, it contained too much sugar. Zero won out, despite not tasting as good. I still think it's far better than Diet Coke, but I've reconsidered my stance in Zero's battle with The Real Thing™: it's not a patch on it. Give me diabetes any day. Put a can of Zero to your lips and you gulp at wet air, and you don't need a can to be able to do that.

Wikipedia Semen
The Google Image search result for "wikipedia wiki" is somewhat unexpected - instead of the wikipedia logo, you get a wikipedia page showing two cartoon women "snowballing" semen between their mouths. Unusual to say the least.

"She was dead when I got there!"

2010-02-17T15:11:00.002Z

"Dead when I got there" - this great phrase was coined by the Romsey boys during a McDonald's therapy visit in 2008. It was inspired by the shocking murder of model Sally Anne Bowman in 2005, in which she was stabbed 7 times as she was raped. So far, so not good. But hilarity ensues when we come to Mark Dixie's defence: Dixie, who was eventually convicted of her murder (with a minimum term of 34 years, among the longest ever imposed upon a single murderer), sought to rely on the previously unknown (and unnamed) “dead when I got there!” defence.

Picture the scene: you have been called as solicitor for the defence. It's the early hours of the morning, and you've just arrived at the police station to attempt to piece a defence together for this man. You talk to him, seeking something to work with, an alibi, anything. It emerges his defence is basically “I came across her dead body and, yeah, I raped her, I'm not ashamed to admit it. But she was dead when I got there, honest! Not that I killed her.” You put your head in your hands and weep.

To quote a report of the trial, “[Dixie] admits that he had sex with her corpse but denies killing her. Mark Dixie says he was high and drunk when he found Sally Anne Bowman’s body and took 'advantage of the situation', the prosecutor said today at the Old Bailey, adding, 'That, astonishingly, is his defence.'” Even the CPS think this defence is fucking hilarious! I don't know if I'm just hopelessly naïve, but taking advantage of a situation is helping yourself to a mate's drink while he's nipped to the loo, or eating too much at a free buffet. Raping a dead body, and then giving that as your defence to a murder charge, is so far past the line of “taking advantage of the situation”.

Nevertheless, this brutal crime has given rise to a brilliantly useful phrase. If your situation is so bad that “I raped her dead body” is the best defence you can possibly come up with, you might as well just throw your hands in the air and say "dead when I got there!". It sums it up perfectly.

For example, Rob Ward applied the phrase to the Jill Dando case, saying "anyone seen Barry George's story? He claims he couldn't have killed Jill Dando because he was stalking another women at the time. His excuse is up there with 'dead when i got there!'" The phrase also emerged on Law Revision Week during a "upa-da-poopa" drinking game, rather bizarrely, where it was used for the 'skip two people' rule (see the video at 2:45).

It's the idea that matters, not the artist

2010-02-16T00:10:00.000Z

The early 2000s saw complete unknowns enjoying their "15 minutes of fame" with the emergence of reality television. The lives of these people were briefly in the media spotlight, despite having contributed nothing of worth. As we move into the next decade, it's worth noting how measures of fame have changed, especially on the internet. Web 2.0 first went mainstream in 2006, with content shared and created by ordinary people - people who had previously been end-users only - spreading across the net as sites such as Flickr, Wikipedia and Youtube allowed for rapid dissemination of information like never before. It's arguable that, as we bid farewell to the 2000s (and ten years of Big Brother), fame is centred not on the individual but rather on content, concepts and memes.

Ideas now spread virally and are shared through sites such as Hubclub (Facebook), Stumbleupon and Twitter. 76 million people have viewed the Harry Potter Puppet Pals videos on Youtube, yet very few of them will know that it was created by a Neil Cicierega. Angry Hitler, Lolcats and Chuck Norris facts; millions will be familiar with these memes, but very few will know the creative minds behind them. Such a situation is unthinkable for the old media of film, television, print and music. Internet anonymity, both in terms of the creator as a person (worthy of "tabloid interest", so to speak) and the creator as a creator, is perhaps due to the wikiesque volunteering of ideas that is characteristic of the online community. Contributions are made without any expectation of monetary reward or copyright. On the internet, it's the idea that matters, not the artist.

Nazi Charities

2010-02-11T16:13:00.001Z

#nazicharities is currently trending on Twitter. Here are some of the better suggestions. Hilarious but oh so wrong:

Nazi charities

Save the Panzer
Charity Zyklonathon
Fuhrers for Jewstice
Aid For Afrikakorps
Hitler Youth Hostel Association
Global Achtung Plan
Help the Aged (into the showers)
Reich For Life
Royal National Socialist Lifeboat Institute
Heil for Heroes
Holocaustes sans frontiere
Wermacht a Wish Foundation
Führer's for Jewstice

Cheers Rogers!

2010-02-07T14:21:00.002Z

Rogers n. the act of telling a boring story that's going nowhere; also a name applied to a person with shit chat.

Rogers stories are usually long-winded and convoluted, although expert Rogers such as Fi have perfected the art of making even the shortest story boring. Most Rogers stories are forced upon their audiences unprompted, unrequested and unwanted.

Anybody who has been subjected to a Rogers will usually let the teller know they're boring with a well-timed “cheers Rogers”.

A “cheers Rogers” can sometimes be pre-empted by the teller quickly adding a defensive “true story” to the end of the tale. For Fi, the ability to add “true story” to anything she says has proven to be a useful life skill.

This concept was introduced to ZD and Romsey by Uncle Desh in early 2007, and is named after one of his Newcastle friends, Andrew Rogers, who was famed for his terrible chat. It has developed into one of ZD's most successful concepts and has spread from Newcastle to Cambridge, and then to London, Nottingham, Portsmouth, York, Leeds and Whitwellshire.

Notable Rogers: You all know who you are. I can think of at least 6...

Garden Warfare

2010-02-07T01:52:00.000Z

Garden Warfare (known as "zdlaxdsniping" pre-Romsey) - Awesome fun. First played in November 2007, in the garden at Romsey Terrace, Garden Warfare involved the Legend, Dingly and Caradosh, armed with BB guns and wearing camouflaged clothes, hunting Desh in the dark. Desh, as a civilian, wore brightly coloured clothing and was armed only with a supersoaker water pistol. Desh had the advantage that it was easier to wet somebody than hit them with a BB gun, but the gun inflicted A LOT of pain when it did hit.

No footage exists of actual full-on, night-time garden warfare, but these 2 short videos give a general idea:

The (hilarious) consequences of including non-combatants in Garden Warfare:

From: Dan Southcoat
To: robinson-undergrads@lists.

cam.ac.uk
Date: 14 May 2007 20:38:37 +0100
Subject: Shooting in College

Dear College,

We have received several complaints about the use of a BB Gun in College.
It is generally not a good idea to shoot anyone but using random,
unsuspecting people for target practice is not only alarming for
the person involved but also dangerous.

We know that exams are a stressful time and although shooting people might
release some of your tension it doesn't really do that for the other person
so please find another way of relieving your exam stress!

Dan and Clare

From the ZD Archives: Rob's List of "Things Stew Hates" - started Michaelmas 2008.

2010-02-07T01:09:00.005Z

Rob - under my constant supervision, of course - actually archived this list really well. I'm very proud of him.

(Barnaby Mollett - "This list is literally one of my favourite things ever.")

Stew is, by all accounts, a happy and well-balanced guy. He leads a good life. But there are a few things that he dislikes...

Fancy dress
Pantomimes
Massages
Sitting in the front seat
Bodily Contact (unless leading to sex)
Early Christmas celebrations
Rowers
Cricket (and the Ashes)
Brick (in Anchorman)
Match of the Day 2
Adrian Chiles
The List itself (This list)
Fire alarms
'Cambridge Christmas'
Hobbs Sports
Bananas
Mulled wine
Posthumous praise (e.g. John Lennon)
Garden Warfare
Certain football players, incl. Ian Durrant
Lawrence Dallaglio
Nigel Mansell
Certain Robinson people
Baby P inconsistency in the media
Robinson Choir
Royal Bank of Scotland
Badminton
Real Tennis
Short-sleeved shirts
Cambridge University Football Club
Cambridge University Football Club in Cindies
Rangers FC
Hearts FC
Alan Walbridge's theorising on the free market
Going to the gym
Being forced to buy gym membership for a team for which he doesn't even play
Fi getting him into trouble unwittingly
Macaroni and cheese
Notion of swaps as a match (e.g. Girton Monsters v Tit Hall Honeysuckles)
Grease, Dirty Dancing
'Cambridge' as a concept
The concept of 'Cambridge' as a concept
Concepts as a concept (very abstract)
Having flaws in the List pointed out to him
Ipod (aka Emad Zand), Emad's dress sense, Persian Swedes in general
Feet
Wrestling on his bed
Karaoke
*** CENSORED ***
Duck (the meat)
'Girls' Night Out' as a concept
Pets (and animals in general)
Freddy (the feeling's mutual)
Ian touching his neck
Ian trying to be healthy
Ian's "Work to do!"
Ian working when Stew doesn't think Ian has work to do
Ian locking his door and ignoring Stew if Rob isn't in
Scouting for Girls, The Feeling
People not splitting the bill
Next Gen gym tennis shop
Ian's puppy dog face
Flying
Swimming
Tinsel
Bono, Sting, Bob Geldof, Coldplay
Rob taking his railcard
The 4.32pm Victoria to Bognor Regis train
Adverts on the back of newspapers where you expect the sport to be
Titanic
The Beachboys
The grates on college walkways
People putting inappropriate heavy metal on the jukebox in the bar
Peaches Geldof
Yeoh reading his (supposedly) private messages
The sea
Boys with absolutely no interest in football
Hirst not letting people in his room straightaway
Ian's inconsistent hygiene habits
Sweet machines that give you "about 6 minstrels for 20p"
Robert Peston
ITV News
People who make Stew take a non-neutral POV
New Year resolutions (except for giving up drugs or smoking)
The concept of 'New Year resolutions'
Pink Floyd
Being called 'Stew' rather than 'Stewart'
Being called 'Gimpy' rather than 'Stewart'
Jamie Oliver
People who make a big deal out of being single on Valentine's day
Gypsies (but not in a racist way: Roma are fine, Pikeys are not)
David Pleat and Andy Townsend
Camouflage shorts
People wearing camouflage shorts as 'smart' shorts
People deliberately getting offended by things
Work crises
Ridiculous reactions to the CUSU LGBT news
People being in a relationship with friends on Hubclub
Shia LeBoef

[see also: http://www.facebook.com/video/video.php?v=630811951000 - "...A relaxing punt down the river to Grantchester is livened up by Stew's morbid phobia of water, swans, ducks, pondweed, trees... pretty much everything you find in, on or near a river, making punting a particularly stupid choice of a day out for this gimpy Scotsman...."]
-------

Stew likes:
Law
Work
Chinese girls with boyfriends
Influencing people's music tastes
Mini Christmas trees
Hirst's black and blue Ladpants
Making up facts about camping equipment he's trying to sell
Spanish football stadiums
Sam Allardyce
Jelly Beans
Jarnold
Beckham

Ian hates:
Stew's poor quality paper
Stew saying 'huh?'
Stew coming into Ian's room and talking to him
Stew thinking everything is 'the funniest thing ever!'
People who think Stew is funny: he's just not
Stew having no concept of time or distance

Ian likes:
Stew's 'raagh' sick noise
Gleaning from Stew's notes

Nizzle v. Dingly

2010-02-07T01:08:00.000Z

35 Romsey present a clash of the titans...

NIZZLE v. DINGLY

We've often chided Dingly for being a poor man's Nizzle - Value Nizzle, or bargain basement Dove, if you will. They both sail, both are pretty posh, both ski and both have very funny friends. But after Dingly questioned whether he really was the inferior of the two, we decided to put them head to head in an empirical test. ZD statisticians have toiled on this for literally minutes, and we welcome your feedback and votes.

'LAD?': (Nizzle) Lad Lad v. (Dingly) Fat Lad
MATES: Lads Lads Lads. and the Girls. v. 35 Romsey, Mem, Steve, Stoker, Bounds. Leroy. Tit Hall: Zoe, Fari, Farfs, Dave Lock.
ACTIVITIES: Sailing, tripping Cairns up skiing, rugby, being a Lad. v. "Sailing", "off-piste" skiing, Halo 3, bonsai tree maintenance, Tithalling, pretentious jazz.
CLOTHES: Lad Casual - Lad Pants, rugby attire, Jack Wills v. Wolfmajor civvies - Teatowel scarf, Gaming slippers, burglar gear, moose.
QUOTES: "Corlett!", "Rush, Rush, get a photo, Rush", "shagging", "Lads - no, not you" (to Ian and Rob) v. "Mem, I specifically asked for chicken breast", "It's changed since then!", "I really don't have time for this, bye", "The council will pay", "Vodka revs mate"... ... ...
ACADEMIA: Land Ec., coming into the law library to look for Grush v. Made-up dissertations on T-cells, pretending to work in the library
SMUGNESS Nizzle sneer - standing over Dingly in an intimidating manner in the TV room before stroking his face v. Smug knob nod, Von Wirstisms, Silent Expert Noise
GIRLS: He's a Lad - "shagging" v. Tithalling
ACCOMMODATION: sofa, Legacy Landing, unlocked doors v. entertainment suite: Blu Ray player, coffee maker, Penn Plaza, bonsai trees

It's too close to call...

Importing a few posts from Hubclub Notes...

2010-02-07T01:06:00.000Z

Shouldn't laugh, but...

"On March 28, 2008, Wired News reported that "Internet griefers"—a makeshift term for people who cause grief—assaulted an epilepsy support forum run by the Epilepsy Foundation of America.JavaScript code and flashing computer animations were posted with the intention of triggering migraine headaches and seizures in photosensitive and pattern-sensitive epileptics.According to Wired News, circumstantial evidence suggested that the attack was perpetrated by Anonymous users, with the initial attack posts on the epilepsy forum blaming eBaum's World. Members of the epilepsy forum claimed they had found a thread in which the attack was being planned at 7chan.org, an imageboard that has been described as a stronghold for Anonymous. The thread, like all old threads eventually do on these types of imageboards, has since cycled to deletion.

RealTechNews reported that the forum at the United Kingdom–based National Society for Epilepsy was also subjected to an identical attack. It stated that "apparent members of Anonymous" had denied responsibility for both attacks and posted that it had been the Church of Scientology who carried them out."

Source:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Anonymous_(group)
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Internet_meme

----

RollonFriday.com - Judge rules sexual harassment "gallant"

A Russian judge has ruled that sexual harassment in the workplace is necessary to continue the human race.

A twenty two year old advertising executive had brought a claim of sexual harassment against her forty seven year old boss. She alleged that she had been locked out of her office after refusing to have sex with him and that he would ask female colleagues to signal "with their eyes that they desperately wanted to be laid on the boardroom table".

The judge dismissed the case stating that what the employee had seen as harassment was in fact just gallant behaviour. In his ruling the judge told the court that "without sexual harassment we would have no children" and dismissed the case as an overreaction on the woman's part.

Only two women in Russia have won a sexual harassment case since the collapse of the Soviet Union.

ZD's Guide to E5 and the Credit Crisis

2010-02-07T00:31:00.002Z

Not to be confused with Renaissance Hitler, who lived in Room E5 in Robinson College in 2008-09.

THE FACTS

E5 invented short selling (or rather discovered it)
E5 did the motion capture work for Pro Evo
E5 caused the Credit Crunch
E5 is in hiding with Jonathan from Spotify and the Frosties Kid

Think he sounds like an interesting character? Read on...

Who was the most hated man in the world last year?

Bin Laden? Mostly forgotten...

Mahmoud Ahmadinejad? Not even close...

CBBC's Ade Adepitan, MBE? - Well, I don't like him...

twat.

Nope, this dubious honour goes to a angry, bald Scotsman whom the Financial Services Authority named as “the individual at the heart of the economic meltdown”.

[[Photograph of E5 removed at the insistence of his legal team.]]

E5, also known as E6, “Stew's dad” and “the bastard who lost my money”, is widely acknowledged to have caused the global financial crisis in 2007.

E5 graduated from the University of Life in 1980 and immediately entered the Icelandic financial sector (whilst also doing a bit on the side as a bailiff). Starting work as a lowly desk clerk, E5 had his breakthrough: looking through some old documents during a mundane night at the office, he discovered 'short selling' hidden down the back of an old filing cabinet. A meteoric rise to banking stardom soon followed. E5 is also renowned for his motion capture work on Konami's series of “Pro Evolution Soccer” games.

It is believed that E5's nickname dates from this time at Konami. When the famed Romsey FC team were being developed by coders from “team E”, one generic player was left unfinished in the team, and this bald, nondescript character bore a startling resemblance to the man who to become E5. His shirt number was 5, his team was known as E, and the name stuck. Working on Pro Evo was a happy time for E5. Not only did he help launch one of the most popular football games of all time, but he also masterminded a lucrative array of so-called “urban sports”, with such titles as Derivatives Dash, Urban Bear Market, Sim Shortselling and Knock-and-go-round-the-Back 2:Modern Warfare.

However, everything began to go sour for E5 in 2007. The year started comfortably, with E5's routine shortselling and repossessing work going well: in March, he told a reporter that breaking and entering

as a bailiff had "never been more fun". It was during this period that he received an entry in the Oxford English Dictionary: “E5'ed, verb, to be evicted or to have one's house repossessed”. One notable example of E5's success in 2007 was the eviction of a cell of Greek fascists from K staircase, Robinson College, Cambridge during May Week; a significant cache of arms was seized.

E5's downfall began with the collapse of the French banking giant BNP Paribas, an event for which he has (unfairly) attracted much of the blame. However, the subsequent destruction of the Icelandic economy, and the resultant catastrophic problems for the entire global market, can be solely attributed to E5.

Rather than deal with the mess he had created, E5 took the Scottish approach and 'legged it'. An intercepted text to his son admitted his guilt: “I know it's all down to me, word is out” (2nd May 2009). He is currently under investigation by a wide array of prosecutors, financial regulators and private detectives, and is believed to be in hiding in a house owned by his brother-in-law Fred Goodwin, who agreed to take some of the blame for E5. The McAlpine family, noted construction magnates, are also rumoured to know his whereabouts, and have come under extreme pressure for information from those who seek E5, loyal fans and sworn enemies alike.

For some, his heroic shortselling and Pro Evo defensive work have defined their lives; for others, suffering under the recession, he serves as a hated figurehead for FASCIST 'fat cat' bankers living off bailout cash provided by the hard-working taxpayer. The 2009 G20 meeting was renamed the E5 Summit in his honour, and Robert Peston even referred to E5 as a “pretentious twat who wasn't that good at football and is even worse at banking”. The government-owned UK Super Financial Investments Wing Ltd, the world's largest bank, was established solely to deal with the mess left behind by E5 and Goodwin. Further controversy was also created by a recent Daily Mail article, in which it was alleged that E5's involvement with the 'cash-for-peerages' saga could not be ruled out.

A breakthrough came in early 2009, when it was discovered that E5 had been deceiving authorities and hiding under the ingenious false name of 'E6'. Evidence emerged that E5 was staying at a safehouse along with Charlie Sabine, Jonathan from Spotify and the kid from the Frosties advert.

ZD Reporter Tom Hirst stumbled across the house a few months later, only to find the Frosties kid having committed suicide and Howard from the Halifax moving in, apparently due to E5's devious plotting with the Lloyds TSB horse to pin the recession on him.

Good riddance.

Since E5 was named a 'person of interest' by the authorities, the detailed scrutiny of his life has revealed a number of financial irregularities. Forensic investigations into E5's personal accounts have revealed significant, regular transfers of money to a Singaporean national bank account. One theorist has proposed that this may be linked to his son's failed extra-marital relationship with the wife of current Singaporean president, Yi-xun Tan,

The President of Singapore (right), pictured with a balloon wearing a hat (left).

and that E5 may not be the monster the media has portrayed him to be; instead, he may just be a desperate, loving father doing what he can for his unplanned offspring (Zand; 2008).

E5 is rumoured to be the guest speaker at ZD's 9th birthday celebrations on 5th December 2009.

Napoleon Dynamite Drinking Game

2010-02-07T00:02:00.000Z

Requires: A copy of Napoleon Dynamite; Beverages

Rules - Drink every time:

1. Napoleon says “God/Gosh”, “Flip”, "Flipping", “Yessss”, "Large talons" or “Heck yes!"

2. Napoleon sighs

3. Uncle Rico discusses the past, throws something or gets something thrown at him

4. Napoleon is shown drawing, or any of his drawings are shown onscreen

5. Somebody in the room is compared to one of the characters (x2 if it's Lord Boredom being compared)

6. Rex says “Forget about it”

7. Don pulls the Snarr Face (see here for a video illustrating this)

8. Napoleon runs or dances

9. When Napoleon tilts his head back and drinks, you down your drink

If you want to play the Ultimate Rules...

10. Drink every time Napoleon talks with his eyes closed.

Become a fan of this game on facebook.

The above rules were created by the Romsey boys - www.zduk.co.uk.
I originally posted it on the ZDpedia here.

Napoleon Dynamite soundboard: http://www.albinoblacksheep.com/flash/ndsound
Pedro Sanchez soundboard:
http://www.albinoblacksheep.com/flash/pedro

Rifts

2009-08-27T21:12:00.001+01:00

Rifts: A divisive item of footwear, manufactured by Nike. So divisive, in fact, that you could say they caused a 'rift' in the group! Ha ha. Ha.

Known wearers of Rifts include Ben Stubbins (who owns more than one pair), the Legend, fat black women in Weybridge, a fit lesbian in London and Brett Betts. Chloë is a notable defender of the wearing of Rifts, with their harshest critics including the rest of 35 Romsey, Stoker, and many other Robinsonians. The Legend's justification of “but Chloë likes them” was declared invalid by Desh during the great purge of 2008, along with other of his key phrases such as “what I'm saying is” and “I'm allowed!”

Dingly said Rifts made the Legend look like a 21st Century goat; on it being pointed out to him by Desh that goats still exist in the 21st Century and that, therefore, a 21st Century goat was just a goat, Dingly declined to change his insult to “futuristic goat”.

the Legend is wearing:
Lad Pant Suit;
Generic Blue poor quality t-shirt;
Rifts (model's own).

Desh is wearing:
Red (of course);
Girlfriend Pro;
Interims.

More Rifts can be seen at: http://tinyurl.com/rifts111

I can't believe they put me in charge of children...

2009-07-31T21:38:00.000+01:00

From our regular correspondent, Uncle Bellend:

For some unfathomable reason, the organisers of Whitwell Primary School's summer play scheme decided (in their infinite wisdom) that I was suitable to supervise a group of twenty-odd 7-10 year olds. It's volunteer work, so to make it more exciting I decided to conduct a little psychological experiment – think Lord of the Flies meets the Milgram experiment.

We spent the first day playing football and rounders, and a natural leader emerged: Ryan*, aged 9, was intelligent, athletic and confident. I took him to one side on the morning of the second day and told him that I was putting him in charge. He would have to subordinate to me if necessary, but apart from that he was given free rein. And a stick. A hollow metal pole was his leader's staff, handily doubling up as a tool with which to beat the other children if they stepped out of line. Ryan immediately appointed two deputies – Sam* and Luke* - and set about his task with relish. Sam and Luke were very similar in some ways; they were both popular, big for their age and less intelligent that Ryan.

The early results were fascinating. I was ready to move in to quell insurrection if necessary, but Ryan and his men had it all under control. When they wanted to play football, the group had to play football. If they fancied a game of cricket, they played cricket. One boy, Jamie*, stood up to them on the third day, but his dissent was ruthlessly crushed. In fact, I had to step in to prevent him getting a real beating! I told him to keep quiet, and if anybody asked, he got hit in the face playing hockey. Twice. In any case, I doubt his parents would believe him if he told the truth; he's an odd child.

Today was the fifth day, and observing from a distance I saw Ryan and Luke creating a flag, a white stretch of material with their initials stencilled in blue: L R S, with the R raised above the other two. Sam appeared to be creating some sort of pen or cage out of chicken wire, perhaps to keep Jamie in. Is the power going to their heads? It's absolutely enthralling to watch and there's still a week to go; who knows what will happen?

* names have been changed.
** the reality in which this is based has also been changed; the entire event took place in Inner Reality.

Jane the Bedder

2009-07-31T16:46:00.001+01:00

Jane – The endlessly entertaining bedder (cleaner) at Romsey Terrace. Bedders at Robinson College fell into three divisions: the kindly old bedders such as Lorraine (first division); the Generic Poles (second division); and Jane (third division). Jane's presence in the third division is due solely to the fact that she didn't actually clean, but rather sat on her arse all day in 35 Romsey reading the paper. It was always our house she chose, for some reason. Perhaps she liked us. Anyway, there were so many facets to Jane's (completely unintentional) humour that we always forgave her utter lack of motivation to actually do her job. She collected any change we left in our rooms and put it in a charity jar (without our consent), we're pretty sure she drank some of Stew's vodka (and refilled the bottle with water) and she never shut up about her bloody dog. Oh god, the dog. It sounded like the worst dog imaginable. Perpetually on death's door, requiring an expensive cocktail of medication just to keep it alive day from day, Jane would tell us how it would constantly try to bite her hand when feeding it. Every morning, as we were rushing to leave the house to get to lectures, she would tell us at great length about the latest near death experience or frenzied attack.


Our kitchen after Jane had 'cleaned'.

Another popular topic of conversation was her new car, which was actually pretty nice; a black sporty number, we could never work out how she afforded it, but found it hilarious when she told us that the seller recommended she should only fill it with Super V unleaded (or something similarly expensive), which meant she drove miles out of her way every time she needed to refuel to find the only garage in a 50-mile radius that stocked it. Jane had many other idiosyncracies. Her tea drinking habits, for example, were legendary. We offered her milk, we offered her a mug, we offered her a fridge, but no; Jane liked to keep her own supply of milk in a locked cupboard under the stairs (where it tended to curdle) and drank her tea from crappy little plastic cups, which would often warp–and probably degrade, releasing a whole host of toxins–when filled with boiling water. On top of this, Jane put the milk in the cup first, then put the teabag in the milk, and then added the water. This is what greeted us when we came down to breakfast every morning: our resident skanky friend, replete with greasy ringlets, sat in our kitchen, reading our paper, nursing a cup that was melting as she drank from it, filled with hot water added to a cold, wet, teabag, in milk that was probably sour, while telling us about her frenzied dying dog. Rob went right off his breakfast on 25^th April 2008, when Jane bent over and he got an eyeful of her grop (the dead, fleshy, fatty area round the sides of a waist). He sent a ZDIS reporting this incident and then went to lie down in a dark room for a while.

Jane also had a very individual approach to the English language. She liked to pronounce 'bluetooth' as “blue tuff”, and spoke in a strange Norfolk farmer dialect of her very own, in which everything ended with “didn't they?”, “aren't we?”, “in't it?” or something equally incomprehensible: “bloomin' David's still asleep! Nobody's not awake yet, aren't they?” Ah yes, David. Jane thought Dingly was called David (as does Stew's friend, Nikul). This was partly our doing: we told her in the first week that he was called David and that 'Tom' was just his nickname. This is an actual note (pictured) that Jane left for Dingly one morning. She also tended to refer to him as a “proper grumpy guts” when he shuffled downstairs bleary eyed and half-dressed in the morning. Finally, Jane wasn't a big fan of the Lads; when we raided the Legacy after exams and stole everything out of their kitchen, she told us to give them their pineapple back but said “we'll keep their clock here, eh, shouldn't we?”. Jane, you will be missed.

The Best of the Web II

2008-09-09T22:43:00.000+01:00

Just over a month ago, Google announced that their web trawl had found 1 trillion web pages: read about it on the Official Google Blog.

A Recent favourite on the ZD Studios Youtube Channel include Pac-Man: The Movie. Although it's not perfectly executed, it's a great idea and is worth seeing.

Another favourite is the Large Hadron Rap, which has been released to tie in with 'Big Bang Day' tomorrow, as the Large Hadron Collider goes online at CERN.

Three more videos: A parody of Usain Bolt celebrating early; Dan Quayle cannot spell 'potatoe' [sic]; and Boris Johnson gives his ping-pong speech at the Olympics handover. Fast forward to 2:20 to see the funny part.

That's all for this week!

The Best of the Web I

2008-08-28T22:28:00.000+01:00

A round-up of what's worth looking at on the internet this week:

SeeThru (responsible for the highly addictive South Coast Diaries Helicopter game) have released a book spoofing the internet: two of the best sites they've parodies are Amazon and Facebook (Amasszone and Crackbook).

A giant panda cub being born - the cub is tiny!

A cocky law student is put in his place by a judge in America on The People's Court.

P Diddy has launched his 'Diddy Blog' vlog, and the man is truly an idiot. Watch Diddy deconstruct his experience of running here. Scott Mills was talking about this on Radio 1 today, and there's one of his vlogs where he begins by singing 'Diddy Blog, Diddy Blog, Diddy Blog' over and over again; as Channa would say, 'hilare'.

Jill Sadler Linked to International Sex Trade

2008-08-21T18:08:00.000+01:00

JILL SADLER LINKED TO INTERNATIONAL SEX TRADE
from our Middle Reality correspondent

Jill Sadler, mother of ZD's Ian Sadler, has been linked to an international paedophile ring, ZD can exclusively report.

Sadler, 51, and her husband, Ian, went to see Gary Glitter perform a concert in Sheffield more than ten years ago. Her credit card receipts reveal that she paid £45 for the pair of tickets - the exact same amount that twisted Glitter paid for two Vietnamese child prostitutes in 2005, an act for which he received a three year jail sentence.

Mrs Sadler was unavailable to comment at her Whitwell home today.

Another Olympics video...

2008-08-21T12:00:00.000+01:00

2 Chinese gymnasts fool around for the crowd after taking gold medals: http://news.bbc.co.uk/sport1/hi/olympics/gymnastics/7573359.stm

Old Olympic Sports

2008-08-21T11:21:00.000+01:00

There are some good Olympic videos floating around on the BBC site at the moment, and this is one that's worth watching; the presenter attempts a some old sports - underwater swimming, rope-climbing, and standing jump - that used to be in the Olympic Games but haven't been seen for quite a few years.

http://news.bbc.co.uk/sport1/hi/olympics/7572038.stm

NEW ZD VIDEO: The Way I Hirst

2008-08-14T00:59:00.000+01:00

ZD have just released their latest video, a karaoke reworking of Timbaland's 'The Way I Are'. Entitled 'The Way I Hirst', 35 Romsey and ZD Studios have developed revolutionary Hirstioke™ technology that allows you to actually sing along with Hirst. From the team that brought you 'Yeoh Technology' and 'Romsey Misc.', this latest offering is sure to be another classic.

Watch 'The Way I Hirst' and sing along with young Dingly at facebook, on zduk.co.uk or at the ZD Studios Youtube page.

Good Prank

2008-08-13T21:27:00.000+01:00

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=1Cm1r3d2Qw4&feature=rec-fresh

ZDIS: An introduction to the ZD Information Service

2008-08-11T18:43:00.000+01:00

Welcome to the ZD Information Service.

Originally a 35 Romsey concept involving messages being sent between members by text or on Facebook, the ZDIS has grown into a system for keeping a global audience updated on what is happening in ZD Middle Reality. Whether its a new video being released by ZD Studios or one of our ever-popular updates from Broad Lane Island, you'll find it first on ZDIS. As of 2010, all new ZD material will be published here, on the ZD blog (zduk.co.uk), first.

Lord Boredom suggested (rather narrow-mindedly, according to some commentators) naming this news service "Team Bellend: The Updates" or "The Legend and other news", but we're pretty happy with ZDIS.

Read on at zduk.co.uk to find out more.

(Note: a full history of ZD (going back nearly 10 years) and more information about ZDIS will be uploaded soon).

ZD is founded!

2000-12-05T13:00:00.000Z