bow-lingual

We've established before here at A Million Miles from Normal, that pet owners can be a little on the crazy side.

Yes you, lady with forty cats who all sleep on your bed with you at night, and you chap who talks to your dog, and you lady who wants to marry your dog. You're all barking mad! I mean please don't be offended, you're not mad in a bad, you should seek medication and be locked up kind of way. More mad in a kooky, slightly crazy, loopy kind of way.

And here's proof. Back in 2002 a Japanese company invented this:

It's called The Bow-Lingual.

It's a dog translator. You whack that small receiver device onto your dog's collar and you hold onto the walkie-talkie piece. Then when your dog barks the microphone records and transmits the sound to the hand-held unit for computer analysis against a database of thousands of dog barks. The computer then translates the bark and tells you what your doggie is trying to say to you.

The computer categorizes the bark into one of six distinct pre-programmed doggie emotions. Those emotions are happy, sad, frustrated, on-guard, assertive and needy

I reckon it's missing a few emotions though. It should also translate all the other obvious doggie thoughts like: 'I want to lick my own balls', 'I want to sniff your crotch', 'I'm hungry' and 'I hate it when he blames me for farting, when it's actually him'.

And then it should also have a special set of translations for dogs like Lassie. Things like; 'Quick, Timmy is stuck in the well!' or 'Hurry, the barn is on fire!' and 'Please, please, please just throw the fucking stick already!'




Puppy says, 'Dude, if you blowdry my hair one more time I'm going to bite you on the ankle!'




And; 'Oh bugger, not dog biscuits for dinner again!'



After the success of the Bow-lingual, in around about 2004, the makers of Bow-Lingual brought out the Meow-lingual, for cats.

But since cat's really only say one or two things, like; 'Bring me my food, biatch', and 'Stop staring at me, or I'll eat your face while you're sleeping'...

...and since cat's four main moods include; indifferent, cynical, sleepy and unimpressed, as you can imagine, the Meow-lingual was slightly less successful.

Everybody knows it takes a lot more than a little piece of Japanese techno-crap to impress a cat.

i heart this.

to celebrate that it's a friday, i found this wonderful thing, over here.

i like it so much that it makes me exceedingly, ridiculously happy.

i want to shack up with it, and have it's little poetic illegitimate babies.

Meet Gerald.

This is Gerald:

For the last week he's been hanging outside my office window.

I've been watching him. Gerald is madly, deeply, passionately in love, and so he's spent the entire week cooing, and cocking his head and acting spacey. Love will do that to a chap.

Not rain, nor sleet, nor snow has put him off his quest. (Okay okay, it doesn't snow here, i'm just using that for poetic effect.)

Who is he in love with? You may ask, if you have very little life and no friends and therefore take an interest in the life of a pigeon, as I have this week.

Well, it took me a while to figure it out, but I get it now, basically for the last five days solid he's been looking at his own reflection in the one way glass window. And let me tell you, he really likes what he sees. Gerald has gone and fallen madly, deeply, truly, passionately in love with himself.

I feel kind of bad for him, Gerald's going to be so disappointed when he realises that there are no other birds hanging out at that window, other than himself. It must be hard being in love with yourself as a pigeon. I'm not sure that pigeons have the ability to you know, to please themselves, being that they don't have hands or opposable thumbs. I mean when a human is in love with him or herself, it's not such a train smash, but how can it have a happy ending when you're a pigeon?

I also worry that he's spending so much time wooing himself, when he really should be getting out there, meeting other birds.

Every now and then i tap on the window to try jolt him out of his passionate gaze, but he is

steadfast in his absolute desire for himself. Poor Gerald.

He did get me thinking though...

I wonder what pigeon tastes like?

And would I eat it? Would you?

keep calm and read this blog post

is it just me or are things particularly mad right now?

so the crazy state of life in general got me thinking about this poster:



i'm sure you've seen it before.

according to Mr and Mrs Wikipedia it was produced sometime around 1939 at the beginning of WWII by the Ministry of Information (not related to the Ministry of Sound - i checked).

don't worry, this will be a short history lesson. and i will spatter it with dirty words to keep things interesting.

It was kind of a "last case scenario" thing. They printed two and a half million posters, (nipples) but they were only gong to use the poster to keep morale high, if the Nazis managed to invade Brittain. But of course (penis) that invasion never actually happened. (big-breasted twins) Nobody knows who designed the poster, but it was one of a seris of three. (anal sex)

the other two being: "Your Courage, Your Cheerfulness, Your Resolution Will Bring Us Victory" (of which they printed 800,000 copies).

And "Freedom is in Peril" (400,000 printed).

yeah, you can kind of see why those two never caught on, can't you. (bum)

so the brits weren't invaded, the posters were never really used properly. and everyone lived happily ever after. (soapy tit wank)

fast forward to the year 2000.

A copy of the 'Keep Calm and Carry On' poster was rediscovered in a second-hand bookshop in Northumberland. It's no longer in copyright, so the store owners started to reprint it and boom (butt plug) it exploded.

i suppose something about it appeals to the global state we're in or something. i dunno, i just dig it.

and of course where there's a great idea, there will always be a spoof of that great idea, and so the parodies have sprung up all over the place. I dug up a few out of the internet for your viewing pleasure:
clever friend, Sue, found that one outside a cake shop in London. too wonderful.

and another new addition from amazing Sue:

love that. it's eloquent, and simple, don't you think?

brittish? have a problem? - turn to tea.

or beer!

i love this calendar. too clever by half!

see there's even one for computer geeks.

and knitting geeks.

i want that one on the wall above my desk at work. it's awesomeness.

not sure what that's about. and anyway how can you stop yourself sneezing? it's impossible, your eyeballs would pop out!

that one's for my granny.

ah this next one is my own personal favourite:

so there you go, from the Ministry of A Million Miles from Normal, here's my advice for today:

happy thursday!

i see penises everywhere.

apparently i have a dirty mind. it's okay, i've come to terms with it. i'm constantly amazed at how, in a meeting, a conversation about readership amps can quickly deteriorate into somebody making a joke about anal sex. that's how i know i'm not the only one with a dodgy fascination for smut. the rest of you have it too!

so the other day someone on twitter, i think it was the very clever Anatinus, allerted me to the accidental penis website. it's my kind of site. apparently hurricane vanessa already blogged about it a while ago, but she's always been smarter and quicker than me, so i thought fuckit, i like it too, so i shall blog about it too.

ever look at something random and think oh my hat, that looks like a penis? well if that happens to you often then this is the site for you.

people post random images, like this one:

see it?

of course you did.

you'd be amazed at how many penises there are around, if you just start looking for them.




they're everywhere. this next one is from a car instruction manual, showing one how to work the windscreen wiper, or how to give a hand job, which ever one you're looking for instructions on.

and you'd be astonished at how many innocent logos are actually large penises in disguise:

designer's sick joke. or sick designer's joke?

penises are everywhere.

in our food:

see, that little girl, the one looking sceptically at that penis ice-cream, she's one of us. she knows.

it turns out pricks are everywhere. they're in nature:

in architecture:

and even in our toys:

aha so that's why she's called 'Dora The Explorer'.

oops wait, that's a toy that is actually supposed to look like a penis. my bad.

you'll even find the odd dick in religion:

what the? that can't be for real? *rubs eyes* am i seeing things? really? wow! forgive the blasphemy, but Jesus was hung!

um... where was i? sorry, i got distracted.

oh yes, that's right, we were talking about penises. they're everywhere, all you have to do is look.

oh Hannah Montana, you naughty minx.

dicks, dicks and more dicks. it's a conspiracy. you men are geniuses. you've been doing all this subliminal advertising for decades. in the hopes that when you do whip out the real thing in front of us chicks we're so used to the shape of it that it's like saying hello to an old friend.

sneaky fuckers!