Americans Still Not Entirely Clear On Definition Of ‘Insanely Dangerous’

Preserving aviation heritage, USA-style

As three Americans paid the ultimate price - with scores more suffering injuries - for standing under irreplaceable 70-year-old aircraft and watching highly-experienced idiots slam the throttles of their vintage engines into the red and cheerfully haul their fragile historic artifacts into maximum-G turns, a shocked America is asking itself whether its current definition of ‘insanely dangerous’ might possibly need some revision.

“In the field of aviation history, there are two prevailing schools of thought,” explained Wing Commander James Bigglesworth of the RAF Museum, Hendon. “One holds that, with the exception of careful demonstration flights by lavishly-maintained examples of the more common types, these priceless relics of the epic struggle against Nazism and unprovoked aggression should be preserved in climate-controlled buildings for future generations to appreciate and understand. And the other says let’s thrash these fuckers until they break.”

“For the non-technically minded, imagine that you are fascinated by the 18th century tableware of Josiah Wedgewood,” he explained helpfully. “You are accustomed to seeing delicate examples of china being kept safely in glass display cabinets, but then you go to Reno Museum and are horrified to see its exquisite Wedgewood collection being employed in a reckless attempt to smash the world record for simultaneous plate-spinning.”

“Hell, shit happens,” commented a spokesman, on this black day for the US warbird-wrecking industry. “But what the heck, we still got 203 Mustangs to play with.”

Backlog Of Lessons To Be Learned Now Expected To Require 1000 Years Of Study

This is just the lesson to be learned from eating too many pickled onions

As the Health & Safety Executive predictably added the lessons to be learned from the Welsh coal mine tragedy to Britain’s enormous backlog of unlearned lessons, education experts warn that it will take generations of scholars 1000 years to absorb, understand and act upon the vast pile of terrible mistakes.

“As the government has, predictably, handed the initial inquiry into the flooding which caused the deaths of four miners to the South Wales Police, rather than to anybody who might reasonably be expected to have any sort of clue about mine safety, I think it’s safe to say we probably won’t be gaining any life-saving knowledge from this unfortunate incident within our lifetimes,” observed Professor Myfanwy Strangelove, curator of Britain’s ever-growing lesson mountain.

“Let’s face it, successive governments still haven’t really got to grips with picking out any tips on best practice from Harold Godwinson’s futile attempt to fight battles on two fronts, and that was way back in 1066. With a bit of luck, we should get around to safer mines just in time for the next millennium.”

“Right after we come up with a viable alternative to unrestrained global corporatism, in fact,” she added cheerfully.

Discovery Of Wookiee Homeworld Tantalisingly Close Now, Say Media Idiots

Idiots with degrees in journalism are sure that the long-awaited discovery of the legendary planet where Chewbacca came from will soon be within our grasp, following today’s sensational announcement that brainy telescope men have managed to track down Luke Skywalker’s insignificant desert homeworld, Tatooine, in a galaxy far, far away.

The holy grail of science

“Given the fluctuating electromagnetic and gravitic conditions which pertain to binary star systems, Kepler-16b is most likely to be a lifeless gas giant like Saturn in our own solar system,” top NASA telescope bloke Randy von Braun told a clamorous press conference. “And before you ask: no, it can’t support an intergalactic civilisation of little green man. There’s nothing solid to stand on because it’s just GAS, for fuck’s sake.”

Von Braun also insisted that the chance of finding Luke Skywalker, Obi-Wan Kenobe or the droids we are looking for there was so remote that it could, for all practical purposes, be discounted entirely. However, leading theoreticians in the field of media studies say there can be no doubt whatsoever that, since these beings lived so long, long ago, Tatooine’s present gaseous state must surely be the terrible aftermath of vengeful Death Star activity.

Speaking for Earth’s millions of faithful Jedi Knights, they went on to urge the brainy space people to devote every telescope to the urgent search for the mysterious Wookiee planet before these magnificent - but tragically rare - beasts are driven into extinction.

If Only The Rest Of The World Would Follow Our Recession-Busting Lead, Says Clarke

The sanity of Mr Clarke

Politicians in Europe and the United States are ‘paralysed’, according to justice secretary Kenneth Clarke, when they ought to be following Britain’s shining example of how to burst out of economic disaster.

“You have paralysis in Washington, and paralysis in large parts of Europe because they are incapable of agreeing and everybody is fighting short-term politics,” observed the former Chancellor of the Exchequer from Britain’s glory days under John Major’s inspired, decisive leadership. “The collapsing pack of cards that is the eurozone is facing the stark economic nightmare of just 1.6% growth - while, here in booming Britain, we can look forward to enjoying a soaraway 1.1% by the end of this year alone.”

“And we can thank our political unity for this,” he boasted confidently. “The Conservatives, our Liberal Democrat allies and even the previous Labour government are all in complete agreement that the only possible path back to the salad days of universal wealth and happiness for all is to scrap the failed communist experiment in collective social responsibility for the welfare of the poor, the sick and the elderly.”

“Why don’t you all just come out and admit it? The world was simply better off all round back in the 18th century, wasn’t it, when we were running things,” crowed Mr Clarke to the west’s perplexed finance ministers as his colleague, Work and Pensions Secretary Iain Duncan Myth, was handed a P45 as the government was now within sight of achieving its dual target of no more work and no more pensions.

Naked Intruder Relives Nightmare Of Finding Nicolas Cage In His House

Eek!

A naked man has told reporters of the shock and revulsion he once experienced when, to his horror, he suddenly discovered a lurking Nicolas Cage in the house he had broken into.

“I was tiptoeing around this house in Orange County, wondering who on earth would fill a freezer with Fudgesicles,” said the naked man. “I opened a door and saw a bed with what appeared, in the dim light, to be a gigantic spoon tucked up in its folds, apparently reflecting an amusingly distorted image of my own genitals.”

“But as I stepped forward for a closer look it suddenly let out a terrible, reverberating snore – and, in a moment of stark terror, I realised I was trapped alone in a house with Nicolas Cage and his awful, unnatural proboscis,” he continued in a quavering voice. “I know it sounds funny, but I was horrified.”

The naked man said his ordeal only ended after he sang ‘Rock-A-Bye Baby’ for six nerve-wracking hours until the sun eventually came up and the stable-boy arrived with Mr Cage's breakfast in a nosebag. He added that he did not press charges, as the horse-faced actor was clearly afflicted with nasal problems, but said he could never break into a house again after the shattering experience.

Gaddafi Seen Strolling Down Tottenham Court Road

Like the bad penny

Fugitive Libyan tyrant Colonel Gaddafi has been seen by several thousand London shoppers and tourists, strolling down Tottenham Court Road looking for the best deal on an iPad and a bulk discount on rocket launchers, after Britain repealed a law that allowed ordinary citizens to arrest foreign politicians suspected of war crimes.

Under the old law, private individuals could start criminal prosecutions, including for international war crimes, simply by applying to a magistrate for an arrest warrant. Under that system, tiresome activists who insist on taking some sort of an interest in the world apart from football and trying to look sixteen forever had vowed to arrest former US secretary of state Henry Kissinger, Chinese Communist Party official Bo Xilai and Israeli foreign minister Tzipi Livni.

Justice secretary Ken Clarke explained: “Clearly, with Britain confirmed as the second most lucrative weapons dealership in the world, it’s bloody inconvenient for foreign murderers to shop here if they’ve got to drag around some dreadlocked soap-dodger who’s taken it upon himself to handcuff himself to their ankles.”

“Or worse, Peter Tatchell,” he added grimly. “Back in 1999 the police had to prise the bugger off Robert Mugabe with a crowbar, and the upshot of that little incident saw Zimbabwe’s white farmers having to suffer the double indignity of getting beaten to death with bloody French riot batons.”

Taser Had No Effect On Raoul Moat, Claims Police Marksman, Apart From Him Blowing His Head Off

The 500V bolt shot into Raoul Moat from an unlicensed X-12 Taser as he was holding a loaded shotgun to his head had no discernible effect on the cornered gunman other than him blasting his skull apart as its electrical discharge overloaded his nervous system, according to the firearms officer who fired it - known only as Z-is-for-Zebra 2+2=4 – in his evidence to the inquest into the fugitive murderer’s death in a Northumberland field last July.

Exhibit A

Reading from his incident report, a gaily-coloured poster-paint depiction of some stick men with arms growing at right angles from their lower abdomens and what may have been a big smiley dinosaur, the highly-trained weapons expert categorically denied that Moat could possibly have experienced any involuntary muscular spasms at the very start of the device’s 20-second discharge of incapacitating bolts of electricity directly into his body.

The taser-equipped policeman’s superior officer, Sergeant T-is-for-Pterodactyl 3x3x3, told the jury to cast from their minds any sensationalist demonstration footage from the X-12’s manufacturers which they might have seen, showing volunteer targets twitching uncontrollably as their legs collapsed beneath them.

“Its lick them Nisun adverts on telie wot shows cars all leepen abowt n stuf,” he read from a statement he had copied out earlier in blue and red crayon. “Yuo isnt spose 2 axiely bleev it or nuffin. Its jus asporashianle mar kitten innit. It don’t reely do nufin 2 nowun, thats wy we bort it.”

Benefit Scroungers Started First World War, Insists Iain Duncan Myth

Not content with claiming that all rioting, truancy and appalling dress sense can be solely attributed to the insidious welfare state, No Work and No Pensions Secretary Iain Duncan Myth today claimed to have uncovered irrefutable evidence that World War I’s 9,000,000 pointless casualties were the tragic but inevitable result of flagrant and widespread abuse of England’s insanely generous Poor Laws by a highly organised cadre of malingering paupers.

“Take this down, chaps,” he told delighted reporters. “I can, if required, produce incontrovertible-looking documents which purport to show that Gavrilo Princep was only able to shoot Archduke Ferdinand and his charming wife dead on that fateful day in Sarajevo because he had cynically hoodwinked some wishy-washy bunch of Manchester Guardian-reading Poor Law commissioners into granting him a crisis loan for an automatic pistol, claiming he needed it to protect himself from marauding crows.”

Of course, half the East End sported wingtip shoes the next day

Mr Duncan Myth went on to tell frantically-scribbling hacks that Broken Britain’s workshy criminal underclass were also single-handedly responsible for torching London, Coventry, Plymouth and dozens of other cities in the early 1940s and then concocting some unlikely sob-story about being provoked into committing their sinful acts of arson as a legitimate expression of their grievances concerning the so-called ‘fascist’ behaviour of officers belonging to the Luftwaffe's flying squad.

Jackie Kennedy: Martin Luther King Jr. A ‘Horrid Little Man’

The exquisitely gorgeous observations of the ineffable Jacqueline Bouvier Kennedy Oclotheshorse have finally been revealed to an adoring world, affording dowdy little people in off-the-peg tat a rare glimpse into the searingly perceptive mind of the best-dressed wife of somebody important ever to have graced the earth.

You can never hope to look this good

Jackie on Indian premier Indira Gandhi: “I suppose one might charitably begrudge her the tiniest semblance of chic in the choice of dishcloths she affects to wear, given that there probably isn’t enough money in her awful, smelly country to afford even the simplest Dior accessory; but why, why, why must she be so tiresomely middle-aged?”

Jackie on French president Charles de Gaulle: “His supercilious efforts to belittle me with snide compliments in his schoolboy French were, needless to say, no match for a Vassar alumna of my calibre. Quick as you please, I crushed him with a rapier-sharp haw-hee-haw.”

Jackie on Sir Winston Churchill: “Oh my, how he stank of wee.”

Jackie on President Lyndon B. Johnson: “A ghastly, unsophisticated oik from somewhere utterly unfashionable, compounded by the most dreadful potty mouth and an appalling taste in hats.”

Jackie on Martin Luther King Jr.: “A perfectly horrid little man, insulting the sacred memory of my darling Jack by presuming to turn up at the funeral with a skin like that. And a rapist too, no doubt; well, they all are, aren’t they?”