A year ago today, we were on post number 50

And today, we have another Bellend of the Month to shame and dishonour: Bethany Storro. You may have heard of her as a victim of an acid attack, but it was discovered this month that the bellend made the whole thing up. She gained sympathy around the world after a stranger supposedly threw acid in her face, but when the cops found holes in her story, she confessed, saying the severe burns she suffered in the horrific 'attack' were actually 'self-inflicted'. This is really nasty stuff considering hundreds of hours of police time were wasted as a result of this and the alleged attacker was described as black, and if this sort of carry-on had taken place in Iran, she would probably have acid thrown at her for real.

Will and Kate are getting married as I type

But seriously guys, royal weddings aren't really news. However, I checked the blog stats today and found out that in addition to the countries I mentioned a couple of weeks ago, there have also been some hits from Slovenia, Iran, India, and Singapore over the 13½ month period that this blog has been up. This is really encouraging news and it is a sign that at least somebody is paying attention. Keep it up.

This one-child thing needs to stop

China's population is aging rapidly, their government said today, though its leaders are refusing to relax strict family planning controls that are part of the cause. Also, the Chinese have been able to stop foot-binding but they haven't stopped dumping unwanted baby girls, and those autocrats at the top of the heap seriously need to make some changes - a good compromise may be to let couples have a second child if their first one is a girl, and if there are twins, they should be allowed to keep both. Amy Chua may be a horrible parent to her children but even she wouldn't abort either of them simply because they're girls. In fact, she has three younger sisters and none of them were aborted on account of their gender.

Who needs earthquakes?

Consumers got a different sort of jolt this week with news that the price of coffee was hovering near US$3 a pound, the highest price in more than three decades, forcing many coffee houses to consider raising prices or cutting services. This has obviously been brought on by bad weather in some of the world's top coffee-producing regions, but the price increases are just unnecessary. They could always find some other place to grow coffee, maybe an uninhabited island somewhere in the Carribbean or maybe Tahiti could claim Pitcairn Island for itself, hang all the child-molesters, evacuate the other 40 or so inhabitants, and then have the whole place overrun with coffee bushes. It's just a matter of finding somewhere good enough for a plantation.

And they call it HUMANCENTiPAD

That's the season premiere of South Park, which is set to air in the USA and Canada on the 27th at 10pm Eastern and Pacific (9pm elsewhere). I thought the episode would finally stick it to Amy Chua's parenting style, which is of the "don't try this at home" variety, what with all the forced piano and violin practice, insults along the lines of "garbage" and "worthless" if so much as an A minus is brought home (come on guys, even D is still a passing grade in the States), and the threats of burning stuffed animals or donating dollhouses to the Salvation Army. But instead, they chose to do a mash-up of the iPad and the movie The Human Centipede. Maybe they'll bring down Amy Chua's "tiger" parenting in the next episode.

Everton get burnt at Old Trafford

Yesterday morning's Man United versus Everton clash ended with the only acceptable outcome - Man United totally pwning those bellends. The final score was 1-0 to the Reds, with the goal scored in the closing minutes by Javier Hernandez, and 3 players were booked.

Hope you guys are enjoying Easter

Too bad Easter's not on roughly the same date every year. And to make matters worse for workers in New Zealand, Easter Monday is on the same date as ANZAC Day this year and our stingy government are not man enough to ask of employers that their employees be given separate days off for both holidays like in Australia. This, along with some unusual sporting code associated with Melbourne, the overall lower tax rates (for instance, 10% GST compared to our 15%), and the warmer climate, is why those cheating, underarm-bowling, descendants of British convicts are attracting Kiwis over to the Dark Side. Unless our tax rates come way down and our workforce gets a way better deal, then this exodus will continue for a long, long time to come.

It's time to retreat, Mr. Gaddafi

Libyan troops captured by rebels in Misrata said the army has been ordered to retreat from the besieged port, marking a possible shift in a two-month revolt against Gaddafi. But one city isn't enough - the rebels really need to go all out if they are to win against that scumbag. Gaddafi has been in power for 42 years, and that's 42 years too long when it comes to nutjobs like him.

Elsewhere in the Arab world, clashes in Syria have resulted in several deaths, and Tripoli has been bombed.

Happy Easter, everybody

I hope the Easter Bunny leaves you lots of chocolate eggs and your teeth don't rot from all the sugar.

Big Brother is watching... well, not exactly

Researchers Pete Warden and Alasdair Allan have discovered that iPhones and 3G iPads regularly record your position into a hidden file. Ever since you upgraded to iOS 4, your device has been storing a long list of latitude-longitude coordinates and timestamps. The presence of this data on your iPhone, your iPad, and your backups could have some serious privacy implications, and to make matters worse, the file with said data is unencrypted and unprotected, and it's also on any machine you've synced with your iOS device. If your device is stolen, the perpetrator can jailbreak it and easily access the file in question (called consolidated.db), and will be able to see where you've been over the last year, since iOS 4 was released. This is a very big security concern indeed, and unless Apple have a good reason for collecting this data, they should fix this in some way, maybe encrypt the file on the next iOS release.

United they stand, united they fall

This morning’s Man United v Newcastle United clash at St James Park was rather uneventful with no goals, however, four bellends were booked.

Here's a true rebel without a cause

Baltimore County police charged a 13-year-old boy Sunday night after Maryland State Police on a training mission reported being hit by a laser beam while in flight. The bellend was charged as a juvenile with reckless endangerment and laser pointer misuse. He was released into the custody of his parents, which is a bad mistake on the part of the police force because using laser pointers on aircraft can be extremely dangerous and cause blindness in the pilots, as well as crashes. A night in juvenile hall would've really set that nutjob straight because this sort of carry-on might be all fun and games when you're too young to smoke or drink or use a firearm, but not if you end up causing a crash. If I were that kid's father, I would've brought him to the police station myself.

Meat salad, yummy yummy

Yummy yummy yummy yummy meat salad! Yes, that's right. Some guy on YouTube finally has the guts to challenge Jamie Oliver and his awful-tasting school dinners, and the meat "salad" isn't the only one of their artery-clogging recipes. Check out their unhealthy recipe here.

Don't deny it, he supplied it

Evidence is mounting that Libyan Government forces are using banned cluster bombs against rebels and civilians despite denials by Colonel Gaddafi's spokesman. This new development concerns a war crime and if cluster bombs are in fact being used, that scumbag should be brought before the International Criminal Court in The Hague and possibly executed. Those weapons are banned by the Convention on Cluster Munitions and should never have been used against the rebels, or anyone for that matter (except Kim Jong-Il).

Get outta my pub!

Two gay men say their first-date kiss got them thrown out of the John Snow pub. Jonathan Williams says he and his date, James Bull, were asked to leave after sharing what they described as a "hands-on-the-table" kiss at the pub in Soho, which is normally known as one of London's gay-friendliest neighbourhoods. Anger snowballed after Williams tweeted about the incident late Wednesday, and within 24 hours, the story was on the front page of Britain's Guardian newspaper and the pair were describing their ordeal on national radio. This sort of discriminatory behaviour is stupid, especially for a pub which is in a nominally gay-friendly part of London, and the bellends in charge of the pub need to either go with the flow or relocate, possibly to some hick town in Texas where their puritanical and narrow-minded views will be shared by most of the townspeople.

FOUR HUNDRED POSTS TODAY

And now for something that doesn't make sense

To those New Zealanders who download films, music and television from the internet: beware – you could be getting a note in the mail. A new law was passed 111 votes to 11 in Parliament this morning and as a result, copyright holders can now complain about specific users downloading their material. Three warnings and it’s off to a tribunal, where you can be fined up to $15,000 – unless you can prove yourself innocent. But this is just horrible. Laws holding people guilty until they can prove themselves innocent are the first sign that a country is turning into North Korea. The laws are just stupid and I will continue downloading pirated music and movies because it's a lot cheaper and besides, once you become famous, the public owns you for life. Just because Limewire was shut down last year by those bullies working for the RIAA doesn't mean you can't get your fill, so keep looking around.

Bye bye, burqas

France (home to Europe's biggest Muslim population) has officially banned women from wearing full-face veils (for instance, the burqa and the niqab) in public places. Other European countries have drawn up bans on the full-face veils but France is the first to risk stirring social tensions by actually putting one into practice. But the burqa isn't really necessary because it's actually more a part of cultural heritage than religious practice, and only around 2,000 women, from a total French Muslim population estimated at between four and six million, wear the full-face veils that are traditional in parts of Arabia and South Asia. The ban does not extend to head coverings that still show the face, and I think this ban is only fair because if even non-Muslim women have to wear head coverings in certain Arab countries, then those coverings can be banned in the West.

Almost 400 posts

And I've checked the blog's stats: we've had a rather international audience with readers coming here from Australia, Singapore, Colombia, France, the USA, Canada, China, Malaysia, Egypt, Russia, Belarus, the UK, Germany, and South Korea, among many other countries. Keep up the support, and especially keep away from Amy Chua's bad parenting.

Fulham aren't so full of themselves now

Excuse the pun, but Fulham got burnt yesterday morning in the face of none other than Manchester United, who beat them 2-0 at Old Trafford. The goals were scored by Dimitar Berbatov and Antonio Valencia, and nobody got booked.

Crucify this, Mr. Party Secretary

Hundreds of Chinese police scrambled to prevent a planned outdoor service by a "homeless" church today, shoving people into vans and buses in the latest show of the Communist Party's determination to smother dissent and protests. The Shouwang Church, a Protestant group with about 1,000 members, had urged members to gather for the outdoor service after they said official pressure forced the church out of a place of worship it had been renting. But hundreds of police officers covered the area in the Zhongguancun commercial district, where the Shouwang Church had planned to worship, deterring any effort by church members and supporters to gather for the morning service. This blatant and egregious disrespect of human rights is not on. Amy Chua hypothesised in her 2007 bestseller Day of Empire that the great empires and hyperpowers all rose because there was tolerance of ethnic divisions, and if that bad parent is right, then China is likely to fall apart like most of the Arab nations are right now due to this blatant disrespect for religious belief and freedom of peaceable assembly.

Consider the shutdown shut down

Congressional leaders reached a last-gasp agreement yesterday to avert a shutdown of the federal government, after days of haggling and tense hours of brinksmanship. Under the deal, the Republicans won budget cuts of $38.5 billion for the remaining six months of the fiscal year, far more than either party had expected a few months ago. Democrats managed to hold off Republican demands to strip funding for the new health-care law and for a range of other Democratic priorities, and provisions to cut all federal funding to Planned Parenthood of America and National Public Radio also were dropped. They could've done more, but at least there's not going to be a shutdown like there was in 1995.

Kiwi ingenuity makes life easier once again

Forget No. 8 wire and the disposable syringe - Master Brewer Ian Williams claims to have unlocked the secret to faster home-brewed beer, unveiling in Auckland this afternoon the world’s first Personal Brewer. The hi-tech brewer takes seven days from start to finish – a quarter the time of traditional brewers – and promises 23 litres of commercial standard beer that maintains its tap-fresh taste years longer than household brands.

Now it's time to take Tripoli

New advances have led Libyan rebels to regain ground, on the oil port of Brega yesterday, after Gaddafi's forces retreated. They've recovered mostly desert terrain which was lost in a pell-mell retreat from superior government firepower the day before. An oil port is a huge advantage for the rebels, but now they need to take Tripoli because taking the capital will really stick it to Gaddafi, who is becoming a rather unpopular man throughout the Arab world.

How's this yawn for "technicolour"?

Last night, I watched that episode of The Cleveland Show where they went to Hawaii. In one scene, Donna Tubbs (Cleveland’s wife) was seen vomiting what appeared to be red, yellow, and blue stripes (which, in the reverse order, are the same colours as the Romanian flag). OK, so Romania may have Dracula and Nicolae Ceausescu, but they also have actual gymnastic talent there (for instance, Nadia Comaneci), they also had quite a few of the greats when it comes to arts and literature (Mihai Eminescu and Constantin Brancusi come to mind), their national rugby team has made it to every single Rugby World Cup, and a Palme d’Or-winning director also hails from there (Cristian Mungiu with 4 Months, 3 Weeks, and 2 Days). So don’t just reject certain countries by puking out their flags. Only Amy Chua's super-strict "Chinese" parenting methods should be rejected like that.

New Zealand's gone soft

Kiwi rugby fans are less confident the All Blacks will win the Rugby World Cup this year than they were in 2003 when it was hosted by Australia, a UMR research poll has found. The results are from a nationwide poll and from answers to the same questions asked in 2003. But this is just stupid. The only time New Zealand has won the William Webb Ellis trophy was in 1987, when, quite ironically, the game was played at Eden Park. But if the All Blacks and the Springboks both make it to the final, then I hope it's South Africa that come down with food poisoning this time round.

Whoa! Double Down! What does it mean?

The Double Down is a controversial new "sandwich" that KFC are bringing to New Zealand next month. The new "sandwich" has bacon, cheese, and a "secret sauce" in between two Original Recipe fillets (no bread - great for those with the likes of coeliac disease) and it's a terrible nutritional choice for anyone, and those most likely to eat it are already at risk from obesity and unhealthy diet habits. The "sandwich" contains 32g of fat and 1380mg of sodium, and at 540 calories, would take up about a third of the average person's calorie intake per day, without providing essential nutrients.

4 in 20 minutes baked in a win

That describes a 20-minute period late in this morning's Man United versus West Ham clash at Upton Park in which Man U went from a 2-0 deficit to a 4-2 win. West Ham's goals were both scored by Mark Noble, and Man U's goals were made up of a hat-trick by Wayne Rooney, and then a single by Javier Hernandez. Three yellow cards were shown all up.

I thought that bellend wasn't going to burn a Koran

When you're scared of something different, it's best to try it because then you might like it. But not like Terry Jones did: the Florida-based pastor held a self-styled mock trial of the Koran last month in which he presided from the pulpit as judge. The prosecutor was a Christian who had converted from Islam, and an imam from Dallas defended the Koran. After listening to arguments from both sides, the jury (consisting of 12 members of Mr. Jones’s church, the Dove World Outreach Center) pronounced the Koran guilty of five “crimes against humanity,” including the promotion of terrorist acts and “the death, rape, and torture of people worldwide whose only crime is not being of the Islamic faith.” In a statement today, Mr. Jones demanded that the United States and United Nations take “immediate action” against Muslim nations in retaliation for the deaths, and that the time had come to hold Islam accountable. This is not the right way to handle the differences between religions. At least that bellend was decent enough to hold a trial before burning a Koran, but next time, I'd recommend, among other things, a more impartial jury.

CAUTION: dihydrogen monoxide about!

Dihydrogen monoxide is a very nasty chemical in, for example, our water. Stay away because dihydrogen monoxide:
*is called "hydroxyl acid", the substance is the major component of acid rain.
*contributes to the "greenhouse effect".
*may cause severe burns.
*is fatal if inhaled.
*contributes to the erosion of our natural landscape.
*accelerates corrosion and rusting of many metals.
*may cause electrical failures and decreased effectiveness of automobile brakes.
*has been found in excised tumors of terminal cancer patients.

Despite the danger, dihydrogen monoxide is often used:
*as an industrial solvent and coolant.
*in nuclear power plants.
*in the production of Styrofoam.
*as a fire retardant.
*in many forms of cruel animal research.
*in the distribution of pesticides. Even after washing, produce remains contaminated by this chemical.
*as an additive in certain "junk-foods" and other food products.
*by sportspeople as a performance-enhancing drug.
*by the CIA and the FBI during interrogations.