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When trapped in an avalanche the sight of a slobbering St. Bernard lolloping towards you must seem like an angel sent from heaven. A booze carrying angel; as it is well known that the little barrel attached to the collars of mountain rescue dogs contains brandy, but how does a 70% proof digestif help a stranded mountain climber? After all brandy is usually served at room temperature not alpine blizzard temperature! So I've devised a perhaps less enjoyable, but considerably more functional solution:

Don't turn to booze when you're in a tight spot. Stuck in an avalanche, you need Rescuing. Stranded Mountaineer, plus St Bernard, plus miniature barrel of Bach Rescue Remedy, equals problem solved.

The vast majority of jobs involve some form of cooperation. This means that virtually anybody who has been employed for any meaningful length of time has ‘experience of working in a team’. So why do employers insist on all applicants ‘demonstrating’ this? The below is a theoretical CV of someone who may lack team working experience. For everyone else it should be a given:

Artist (Abstract/Landscape)
Responsibilities:
Intense periods of introspection. Working with a variety of mediums and subjects excluding people.

Lighthouse Keeper
Responsibilities:
Turn on light, turn off light. Feed cat.

Soloist
Responsibilities:
Playing musical instruments without accompaniment.

Truck Driver
Responsibilities:
Honk honk!

Prostitute
Responsibilities:
Servicing clients individual needs, avoiding police. (No threesomes).

Professional Gambler (Online)
Responsibilities:
Playing online poker ad nauseam.

The Paralympics start today. Huge pressure on some of the athletes when you consider the billions the government has invested in sending them to Afghanistan to train with the Taliban. Toughest, most explosive, paralympic training programme in the world. Blood, sweat and tears. Lots, and lots, of blood, sweat and tears.

Dr Rowan Williams, the Archbishop of Canterbury’s massive ornate eyebrows precede him. Blindly they sweep through the air filtering out particles of theocratic detritus and funneling these morsels of God plankton into the mind of Britain's most eminent clergyman. They stand alert as antennae, constantly twitching faster than the human eye can register, searching for resonance, then audibly humming as they sing like the reed of a piccolo with the mysterious song of the creator. They rise and arch, undulating with the knowledge bestowed upon them. As the wave of a magician's wand precedes a trick, so the flourish of the Bishop’s brow proceeds a doctrinal proclamation. But unlike the magician’s blunt stick the Bishop’s brow is sharp, like a cheese wire brush. Sharp enough to slice a schism in the very fabric of the Church. God’s horns are not the horns of the goat, but the feathered horns of the wise owl. If the bishop were to ram you, these horns would tickle, not penetrate. They are not worn on the top of the head, like the owls, but on the face sitting either side of the mind’s chakra, pointing the wearer forwards. They are not designed for violence, but guidance, like the whiskers of a cat. They are a spiritual sixth sense bestowed upon only the most divine of men.

Every gun that is made, every warship launched, every rocket fired signifies, in the final sense, a theft from those who hunger and are not fed, those who are cold and are not clothed. This world in arms is not spending money alone. It is spending the sweat of its laborers, the genius of its scientists, the hopes of its children. The cost of one modern heavy bomber is this: a modern brick school in more than 30 cities. It is two electric power plants, each serving a town of 60,000 population. It is two fine, fully equipped hospitals. It is some 50 miles of concrete highway. We pay for a single fighter with a half million bushels of wheat. We pay for a single destroyer with new homes that could have housed more than 8,000 people. This, I repeat, is the best way of life to be found on the road the world has been taking. This is not a way of life at all, in any true sense. Under the cloud of threatening war, it is humanity hanging from a cross of iron.

Dwight D. Eisenhower - The Chance for Peace Speech - 1953

Here's what we can do to change the world, right now, to a better ride. Take all that money that we spend on weapons and defences each year and instead spend it feeding and clothing and educating the poor of the world, which it would many times over, not one human being excluded, and we could explore space, together, both inner and outer, forever, in peace. Goodnight.

Bill Hicks - Revelations Tour - 1993

To say that I'm not very good at remembering birthdays, friends or family, is probably disingenuous. The truth is I'm not very good at caring. I don't much like presents and I find birthday greetings too generic to be meaningful, so I tend to not bother about my own birthday and not bother much about others either, but that can upset people, so what to do?

I recently came up with a solution. I came across an app called boomerang. It is a plug in for Gmail. It allows you to schedule email messages to send in the future. I quickly realised that I could easily programme this app to send emails to my friends and family members every year on their birthday removing any future requirement for me to send birthday greetings, simply download the app and programme it to send the below message:

Dear [insert name of friend or family member]

Happy, the current year, minus the year of your birth, th birthday.

This is an automated message set up to send you birthday greetings every year for the next fifty years. This might seem a little impersonal, but rest assured it is in fact the opposite. Your birthday is so important to me that I cannot bear the thought of failing to send you a birthday greeting on this special day. Automating this process removes the risk that some day in the future I may be incapacitated in such a way that would prevent me from sending you this greeting. I cannot live with this risk. Now that I have set up this message I know that I will always complete this important task, so without further a do:

HAPPY BIRTHDAY (unless you're dead)

Best wishes on this special day

Mjohnson

P.S. below is a list of names, email addresses and birthdays. Please find your name in the list and forward this message on to the next name on the list on the appropriate date. Thank you.

Daisy how are you I haven’t seen you in, how long!

I’m good, I’m good, how are you?

I’m great. Still at the dairy, bit samey, but you know it’s suits me for now. How’s Lotty?

Slaughtered.

Oh I’m sorry to hear that. How is her daughter coping?

Slaughtered.

Oh, no! Her father was slaughtered last year as well. It’s hard to understand sometimes isn’t it. Why are some cows so unlucky. How are your kids?

Slaughtered.

Oh really, oh that is difficult. You’ve got to stay positive though. I'm firm believer in staying positive. I always say it. I’ve had a calf every year for the last eight years, all slaughtered, but I’ve still got my udders. You keep going.

Do you still get a touch of mastitis every now and again?

I haven’t, I haven’t had anything like that since I started taking grass. It amazing stuff. Lotty recommended it to me actually. I take it every day now. And, you know, touch turf, I haven’t been suffering lately.

Well I must be going.

Yes, yes, grass won’t eat itself. If you’re ever up my end of the field you must say hello.

I will.

Bye now, and remember, grass, it does wonders.

Bye

Bye.

Two cows having a chat.

I went to a family planning clinic today. It was slightly disappointing to be honest. We didn't really plan the family. There were no sketches, no blue prints. We didn't do a computer simulated walk through of how the family could look.

If you're planning a kitchen you choose the units, the taps, the fake plastic granite work-top and if you have the dimensions of your kitchen you can computer-rate the data and generate a 3D picture of your kitchen. How else are you supposed to realistically visualise yourself making toast in your pants? That's planning!

All we did was a look at an ovulation chart. I want to know more than that. I want to choose my babies eyeballs. I want an eyeball chart. I should be able to choose skin tone on a chart that looks a bit like this. LINK. Get to work science.

I interviewed some bloke, here's what he had to say:

1) Which of the following groups best describes you: a) White Irish b) Black Russian c) Stripey Pole d) Lonely Asian e) Sitting Down f) Other

My Mother preferred to sit down while my father would pace the room like a lonely Asian, so I suppose I'm mixed heritage. Ethnicity is always a hard one to define precisely. I’m British, but colour wise - I’m not white exactly - if I had to choose I’d say I’m somewhere between Sumatran Melody 6 and Jungle Ginger 5, perhaps Other: Autumn Fern British.

2) Upon seeing Chris Waddle’s World Cup 90 semi final penalty miss Schopenhauer remarked ‘talent hits a target no one else can hit; genius hits a target no one else can see’ - my question - have you ever stood next to Schopenhauer at a urinal?

No, Kant say I have!

3) As the Secretary General of the United Nations Ban Ki Moon is the world’s most senior office administrator. Can you tell me what title is awarded to the highest rank in the catering industry?

Celebrity Chef.

5) Mark Twain once said: ‘An expert is a person who avoids small error as he sweeps on to the grand fallacy.’ Have you ever swept a grand phallus?

I once polished an enormous bell.

6) What is your answer to question 4?

I would do anything for love but I won't do that.

7) The following is an extract from the writing of John Donne:

‘never send to know for whom the bell tolls...’ why?

Is it:
a) the bell tolls when the boy shepherd has seen a wolf, but that particular shepherd is famously unreliable
b) the poem is about a man frustrated by his butler
c) all of humanity is connected, if one man is injured all of humanity is injured, therefore, it tolls for thee

Anyone familiar with Downton knows, the correct answer is b.

8) If you were asked to name a spade what would you call it? Please try to keep your response to less than 4000 characters.

I’m a straight talking guy. I called my first child Human Infant, so I’d probably call a spade Force Multiplying Soil Extraction Device.

9) Mike Tyson famously offered a zoo keeper $10,000 for the chance to fight a gorilla. Which CITES protected species would you like to fight?

I’d like to fight a two toed sloth, for reasons of cowardice. If Mike Tyson ever gets the opportunity to fight a gorilla will CITES permit trade in what is left of his body parts?

10) Which is the best value widely available cleaning product for removing stains from ones character?

New and improved shame - lasts a lifetime.

Since Paul the Octopus rose to international fame during the 2010 World Cup psychic animals predicting the results of football matches have become all-too-common, so it was refreshing to see a psychic animal feeding session in Ukraine enlivened by a topless feminist.

"Topless feminist disrupts psychic pig's feeding time"

The group carries out topless protests to highlight the growth of the sex industry in Ukraine and has targeted the championship - which it says feeds sex tourism - and UEFA president Michel Platini.

It's a nice idea and it got me thinking. Could this be a way to reinvigorate the now passée psychic animals genre. I envisage a topless feminist being dropped into the Kiev fan zone with each breast painted with the flag of one of the competing teams. The outcome of the game is then predicted by noting which breast the beer swilling fans grope first. It's psychic animals with subtext. Topless darts meets the Vagina Monologues.

There is a story running on the BBC news site about William Shatner apologising for something he said on Have I Got News For You about prostitutes in Cornwall. What I like about this story is the Related Stories section:

I like to think this is just a small selection of the BBC news' Cornwall archive:

Anger at Cornish 'befuddlement' fun-making
Anger at Cornish 'hang around tin mines' observation
Anger at Cornish 'lost in a supermarket' laughter
Anger at Cornish 'one sardine short of a shoal' comment

Unpopular whale dissecting scientists have recently discovered something to help popularise their discipline. It appears whales have a previously undiscovered organ located in their mouths.

Whale organ unlike anything we've seen. LINK

I always thought Whale-Song was kind-a folksy.

If death is, as Tom Stoppard described it, the absence of presence then we have all been dead already. It is curious to me that so few people tend to consider this fact when they consider what might come after. My youngest brother, who was the youngest of four, is the only person I recollect having openly struggled with this concept. When we were boys we would, or more likely our parents would, occasionally reminisce about events that had occurred before his birth. It seemed to fascinate him and I remember him asking on more than one occasion what was it like before me? It was the same, you just weren’t present.