Published as IYH Blog on my Into Your Head podcast website, April 2012

I’ve always wondered what it would be like to be an elephant. And those of you who are regular listeners to my podcast will know that I am not the type to sit and wonder – instead I go out and do things.

Anyway, yesterday I took a little trip to Foto Wildlife Park. Unfortunately it’s two hundred miles away and I can’t drive, so by the time I got there the place was closed. So instead I walked to the nearest residential area and knocked on every third door until an elephant answered. And boy was I surprised.

I had always thought that elephants were huge, grey monsters with a trunk and large ears and tusks and legs and things, but apparently not. The elephant who answered the door looked more like a cat than anything else. Not that I’ve ever seen a cat, but I’ve heard about them on TV and I’ve seen the reconstructions that they make using computer generated whatsits, so I feel that I would recognise a cat if I saw one.

But that’s not the point. You see, today, my bank statement arrived, and the third item from the bottom was a charge on my debit card for a packet of wine gums. So obviously I suspected the elephant. I mean, who wouldn’t? I don’t mean to generalise, but elephants are thieving bastards. Everyone knows that. So I went round to the elephant’s house and switched off his television, but I didn’t switch it off at the main power button. Instead I put it into standby, which uses up a small amount of electricity and therefore will result in a small but definite charge on his electricity bill. That’ll teach him.

You see, I don’t like to go over the top when I’m plotting revenge. Instead I prefer to be subtle, and cause a small amount of pain in a devastingly ineffective way. That way, I have all the satisfaction of a Kill Bill style massacre, without any of the disadvantages of the subsequent police investigation, the lengthy court case and the death sentence commuted to life after I plead insanity.

And, frankly I would also be a little disappointed at how easily the court believed me when they said I was mad.

That’s not to say that I’m not mad. And I don’t mind being mad, if I am. That’s not a problem at all. Where I live, you can get a free television license and monthly butter vouchers if you’re mad, because the government cares deeply about people with disabilities or illnesses. So it would all be fine.

But that’s not the point. You see, I went to the doctor yesterday to ask for a few empty sugar pills to help cure my insomnia. However I forget to tell the doctor that I didn’t want to know that the pills were empty. The placebo effect doesn’t work if the patient knows that they are placebos. And it sprang to mind that I could have just gotten an elephant to sit on my head until I got bored with not being able to move, and fell asleep. That would have saved me forty euro in doctor’s fees.

So you can see how I am a little bitter about elephants at the moment, can’t you.

After several years experience in the world of clerical office work, and decades of existence as a human being, I’ve built up a lot of knowledge and tips about both photocopying and human existence. Here, for the first time in one place £ everything I know about these vital life skills.I

• f you point a gun at somebody to threaten them, be sure to imply that you intend to hit them over the head with it. This draws a shorter sentence than a threatened shooting.
• If you put a dog’s collar and lead on a cat, the dog is likely to escape.
• If you have five hundred blank sheets of paper, and you make two copies of each, you’ll have two thousand altogether if you count them incorrectly.
• Ladies: Saved-up fingernail clippings make excellent glue-on fingernails for that special occasion.
• If you built four tennis courts on top of each other, you’d only be able to use the top one unless you leave gaps between them.
• f you photocopy a blank sheet of paper, then fax the copy to somebody, it’s exactly the same as sending the original.I
• The letter Z is pronounced “Zed”. However, the “Z” in “Zed” is pronounced “Zee”. That ‘s what the diplomats would have you believe, anyway.
• If you photocopy a sheet of black paper with the brightness turned up really high, you’ll get a blank white sheet that you can use again.
• Contrary to popular misunderstanding, dental records rarely survive catastrophic events such as plane crashes and explosions. Always make a backup.
• If you make eight hundred and seventy-two copies of a blank sheet of paper, you’d better have a damn good business case for wasting all that stationery.
• The grass is always greener on the other side. For that reason, using a grass roller in the correct direction can make your lawn appear greener.

Gathered together in one place for the first time, here is everything I know about how to design and build things.

• If you build a floor with a ceiling immediately below it, people will think they’re upstairs, and eventually jump out a window to try to escape.
  
• If you build two floors, one right on top of the other, people will assume you’ve accidentally omitted a ceiling and thirteen feet of headspace.
  
• Make your own window: Put two mirrors back to back and place a series of peripheral mirrors in position to reflect one mirror onto the other. Alternatively, just place two two-way mirrors back to back.
  
• Cleaning the outside of a pane of glass is pointless unless you also clean the inside. This is why mirrors don’t work.
  
• Contrary to popular misconception among furniture manufacturers, a Table Tennis table only needs to have two sides, not four.
  
• If you build two walls right up against each other, the pro-agoraphobic brigade will jump down your throat like you’re some sort of evil Nazi.
  
• Because of the ease with which a passing burglar can see potential rich pickings, people who live in glasshouses shouldn’t store thrones.
  
• However, contrary to popular misunderstanding, it is not particularly risky for people who live in glass houses to throw stones, as long as it’s done outside in a large open space, away from the glass house.
  
• Building a partition wall between two rooms is always a pointless exercise, since there is already a wall there.
  
• Cleaning the outside of a pane of glass is pointless unless you also clean the inside This is why mirrors are a waste of money
  
• If you build a room that’s so big it takes up a whole continent, don’t expect any gratitude for all your hard work. That’s all I’ll say. 
  
• If you install a staircase upside down, it’s not really a problem
  
• If you build a wall that goes all the way up to the clouds, people will whinge about dampness and make assumptions about your religious persuasion.
  
• If you build an exact, life size replica of the universe, critics will pan your work as being “derivative”.

An Into Your Head podcast blog from 2012

I assume that parrots are unable to hear their own squawking. I base this on the fact that I (thankfully) have never come across a parrot stuck in an infinite feedback loop.

As a Podcaster, I find that I cannot perform unless I can hear my own voice in the headphones. I can therefore only assume that before these gadgets were invented, humans were just spouting random noises, except for an occasional, and obviously very rare, “thousand monkeys on thousand typewriters” creation, which would have to have been unsophisticated enough not to necessitate infinite time.

Therefore we cannot, when assessing history, rely on any audio recordings made before the invention of the personal earphone.

As I type this I’m listening to Bowsy II purring in my left ear and Leo Laporte on “This Week in Tech” in my right. Yet how can I trust my own brain to accurately “listen” to these sounds if I don’t even have to hand a veterinary stethoscope?

(Apparently that’s it. That’s the whole article.)

Together for the first time (as of 2012), here are some facts that I have gathered over the past couple of years about Ostriches, Eskimos and Camels.

• The Eskimos have eight hundred and seventy-six words for “snow”, but no word for “phlegm retardant cat”.
  
• An ostrich will often bury it’s head in the sand so that it looks like a fifth foot, thereby confusing predators.
  
• A camel will often sink it’s hooves into the sand so that it looks like four ostriches, thereby confusing predators.
  
• An ostrich will sometimes bury it’s entire body in the sand to look like the head of a much larger ostrich,
  
• An ostrich will sometimes bury it’s bodily waste in the sand, in the manner of a cat, thereby confusing predators.
  
• The Eskimos used to be referred to as “The Eskimo”, back when there was only one of them.
  
• The Eskimos have eight thousand words for “snow”, but absolutely no word for “I am not an Eskimo”.
  
• Eskimos have 564 words for snow, but no word for “word for snow”.
  
• At an ostrich funeral, the mourners bury their heads in the sand and wait until the deceased ostrich has been removed by vultures.
  
• People who have an obsession with ostriches and don’t know what’s wrong with them, often ignore the problem and bury their heads in the sand
  
• Interestingly, there is no information whatsoever in my local library, or those in surrounding counties, about people who are obsessed with Eskimos.