Practically the definition of ironic

Perhaps I should forward this story to Alanis Morrisette...if only he'd been on his way to the party!

A Dutch trucker was involved in a crash three days before he was due to hold a party to celebrate one million kilometres of accident free driving. Marinus Boogaerts was driving from Holland to France when he was in collision with another lorry on the motorway, near Brecht. A Danish trucker hadn't noticed a traffic queue and ploughed into the back of Mr Boogaerts's lorry after he hit the brakes too late. Two people were slightly hurt. Mr Boogaerts' lorry was badly damaged but he said he was more upset about having to cancel his party. "After driving nearly a million kilometres without having one single accident I wanted to celebrate," he told Het Laatste Nieuws.

Dutch trucker crashes three days before party to celebrate accident-free record, Ananova, 31 October 2002

If he saw the Danish trucker in his rear-view mirror, did he shout "Shhtop!"?

The McCartneys' Christmas

Paul McCartney and his wife Heather are chatting about what they are going to do for Christmas.

"Well.." says Paul, "I've decided I'm going to buy you a plane"

"That's lovely" says Heather, "but I'll still need to use a Ladyshave for the other leg... "

Skinny

They had a visitor last night. She was almost as thin as me, with funny red coloured hair, and she kept trying to talk to me. At one point, he picked me up and tried to present me to her. No chance. I bolted! It's bad enough having to be nice to the Dynamic Duo without having to be nice to their lunatic friends.

I retreated to the bedroom until they staggered to bed. Then she closed the door on me, which meant when I had to do my ablutions at four in the morning, I had to make a right old racket to get out. Then she shut the door behind me. How rude!

Just like John Cleese

In a move fraught with danger, he decided to make dinner the other night. Nothing complex: fishcakes, baked spuds and beans. What could go wrong?

Well, it all went swimmingly till he tried to remove it from the oven. Then he managed to tip the spuds and the fishcakes off the back of the oven shelf. He then started screaming two words one after another. The first rhymes with 'ducking'. The second rhymes with 'hunt'. Then he started beating the oven door with a tea towel.

It's terrible to see a grown man reduced to this kind of behaviour, but it is not without precedent. Not least when Basil Fawlty starts hitting his car with a tree branch. Perhaps it's cathartic. Occasionally, it is true, I have been known to bang my head against their bodies in frustration at their stupidity, but they're so stupid they misinterpret it as affection. Aaargh!

Strangely enough, the fishcakes were fine.

Secret squirrel

In the sleepy Cheshire town of Knutsford, there is apparently a vicious squirrel on the loose. It has attacked grown men and small children. Forget al-Qaeda, this is the real reign of terror.

Frankly, I always thought that the whole goofy-toothed, nut-munching image was spin and concealed a malevolent streak. Now we know: squirrels are animals.

Squirrel Terrorizes Town, Yahoo News, 13 November 2002

A woman of good taste

Thank you to Niki aka Hot Water for linking to this site. And for calling me "Exalted Feline" in her email. The quickest way to a cat's heart is to kiss ass.

And I liked this little vignette:

"The Dreamboat and I were having a conversation with his dad about how parochial the media coverage in Australia can sometimes be. He said, "We Scots had the most parochial news headline ever written." He went on to relate the story of how, in 1912, an Aberdeen newspaper ran a front-page story with the headline "Aberdeen Woman Lost At Sea".

In fact, a lot of people were lost at sea on that particular occasion. The missing woman had been a passenger on the Titanic."

Read Hot Water