According to a paper published in Applied Cognitive Psychology (which I read religiously on Monday mornings to recover from the weekend)  -  doodling is good for you, performance-enhancing even.

They looked at whether doodling improved or hindered attention to the primary task at hand, such as answering questions on a telephone or taking notes during a lecture.

To answer this question, 40 participants monitored a monotonous mock telephone message for the names of people coming to a party.

Half of the group was randomly assigned to a doodling condition where they shaded printed shapes while listening to the telephone call.

The doodling group recalled 29% more information on a surprise memory test.

This is interesting, because while writing this blog I have doodled:

• Chef from South Park attending a Scientology picnic naked
• a dancing, but dying, bear in a hunting scene, prancing around in high-heeled boots and a lovely feathered hat
• a pianist performing a brief solo while wearing a cock-ring, surrounded by flowers, and being re-birthed to erase some very painful childhood memories.
• a biblical version of the enlightenment of Karl Marx contemplating the theory that individual human choices count for nothing, though not completely dismissing the problematic existence of God, destiny or DNA, while Pablo Picasso gives him a blow job (see above)

My doodling seems to swing wildly between the topics of pornography, philosophy, religion, gender confusion, art, pop culture, and a dash of animal slaughter.

Yours, while still coming last in the rat race and laughing my way to defeat – but heaven forbid, I don’t want to imply it is anybody’s fault.

Righteous

p.s. For all their vaunted powers of strategy, Grand Masters of Chess tend to be a skittery and quite insane lot. When I confront them with notions like the ‘logic of the facts’, or the ‘march of history’, or the ‘laws of nature’, all I get in response is random gunfire and angry chants. These people need to re-adjust to the fact that not every problem is solvable by a game of chess.

Brad Pitt and Angelina Jolie last week began a privacy action against the News of the World over a story that alleged the couple were separating.

Pitt and Jolie commenced action through the High Court in London against Rupert Murdoch’s News Group Newspapers, the News International subsidiary that publishes the News of the World.

Meanwhile in the real world………..

Rupert Murdoch would not tell a whopper.

No, no, no, no, no, no

He would not fib or tell a porky.

No, no, no, no, no, no

He would definitely not be involved in deceit, mendacity or fabrication.

No, no, no, no, no, no

Curiosity is a form of lust, and Rupert is simply a very curious, lusty old man.

Whatever the real contradictions might be in his newspaper’s reporting, they are certainly over-ruled by the Murdoch Doctrine of Biblical Authority and Superiority granted to him personally by God – and this gives him the right to be a complete buttfuck arsehole.

And in that respect, he is a good Christian – following God’s instructions to the letter.

You are free to write till you drop Rupert – and to continue your shredding of journalistic standards.

Case dismissed. Drinks anyone?

Yours, while wondering why ethical journalism couldn’t hit the broad sheet of a Murdoch newspaper.

Righteous

Young lovers in Victorian England, forbidden to express their affection in public and fearful that strict parents would intercept their notes to each other, sent coded messages through the personal columns in newspapers. I wonder if Brangelina was kicking it old skool communication-wise, and Rupert noticed the coded messages of  ‘Fuck you slut, I did not re-pork that slag Anniston”, “Did too”, “Did not”, “Man whore!!!” in one of his newspapers. He may be smarter than he looks.

Hundreds of baby loggerhead turtles were rescued in Australia last week after they streamed along a road instead of heading for the ocean.

Police cordoned off the road, while local residents and staff from the local zoo helped to gather the small creatures.

There was one casualty  – a baby turtle flattened by a car (pictured above).

Resident Trish Simpson lives in the area and says the turtles may have been confused by a bright street light.

This seems to be a loss for the intelligent design folks, since any designer worth their $500 day rate would have created thoroughbred loggerhead turtles, so fast and so agile as to duck and weave between on-coming cars.

Either that, or the creation of turtles happened on Wednesday, and the creation of GPS systems was delayed until Friday, due to the creation of streetlights on Thursday.

Yours, while educating chooks in the finer aspects of share-trading, and they are proving to be gifted at it. I’m getting the hang of this creationism.

Righteous

p.s.  A police report from an 1875 issue of The Grant County Herald in Silver City, New Mexico said: “We learn that on Friday, Jose Garcia, who lives at the Chino copper mines, caught his wife in flagrante delicto – we leave the reader to guess the crime. Jose, then and there, gave her the quietus with an axe.”

She obviously needed more hope than Jose, or the copper mine, could give her.

Business as usual, humanity travelling well.

And now, let some big men rolling around in close quarters tickle your fancy.

Another blog as part of my one-man campaign to send Brock Lesnar back to the World Wrestling Federation.

It looks like five-time World’s Strongest Man Mariusz Pudzianowski has intentions to pick on someone his own size, when he changes his career from lifting heavy things such as tractor tyres, to fighting in a cage.

The 6′1″ Pudzianowski walks around near the 300 pound mark and recently made his successful mixed martial arts debut in December of 2009 where he TKO’d Marcin Najman in less than a minute.

He is being groomed by the UFC to take on current pretend heavy-weight champ, comical fat-man and serial steroid abuser Brock Lesnar – the man on everyone’s “The person who I would most like to take it in the neck’ list.

Pudzianowski is so uninviting that it’s hard to imagine anyone else venturing out to be smothered in his ample thighs.

And speaking of his thighs, go to 1 min 6 secs of this video and watch him squatting a bizillion plates with perfect form.

Mariusz Pudzianowski training video

I’m going to hunt him down and make a citizen’s arrest for crimes against Pilates classes.

Yours, while getting my inner Dick Cheney on – with incorrect data, slippery language and slapstick facts. I’m feeling dangerous, and scary.

Righteous

p.s. I am experiencing the difficulties of caring for a parakeet, which, let out of its cage for an airing, has escaped through the door suddenly opened by Mrs. Lucas the cleaning lady – and he does not appear to be suffering from homesickness. This damn parakeet seems to be trying to assert its authority over me.

This is a trailer for a film with a lot of hot looking lesbians doing stuff.

It seems churlish to say this movie looks beautiful, is richly allusive, elegant, Proustian in tone and mode – when these qualities are the last thing that any male in the audience will appreciate.

Because it’s got hot lesbians in it.

Itty Bitty Titty Committee Trailer

Yours, while worrying about the climate change that is happening in my jockstrap.

Righteous

p.s. To me, this movie seems to be more the scheming of someone craving attention and the approbation of her tribe, than an act of social revolution. But then again, I am an ignoramus, and I know nothing about social politics. Oh one last thing, did I mention it has hot lesbians in it?

The pizza producers of Naples this week succeeded in getting their local speciality, the Neapolitan Pizza, given the Traditional Speciality Guaranteed label by the EU bureaucrats.

The label is designed to stop pesky outsiders, such as your local pizza store and Pizza Hut, from using the word ‘Neapolitan’.

The French also achieved the same rights for the word ‘Champagne’.

More obscurely, Cadbury recently won the rights to a certain shade of the colour purple for their chocolate products.

Virtually nobody at the trademark office noticed that I got the rights for the phrase ‘talentless buffoon’ last year.

I now make a nice living from licensing this phrase to journalists, who then use it to describe Sarah Palin.

Her speech at the Tea Party convention this week was a great licensing success for me, and has brought in an intoxicating amount of cash.

Her message might be wrong, but the money hits a sweet, sweet note.

Yours, while tap dancing like an old hoofer, because I’ve finally located my inner dancer. It had slipped down behind my knee.

Righteous

p.s. I commissioned a survey of my reading habits with all my new-found  licensing wealth, and found that – I am not a scholar, but I did catch swine flu off a scholar last year; I do not read,  because I can and therefore I don’t have anything to prove; I have no past-times,  and reading is not one of them; I do not to make a splash at parties by quoting Yeats, but I can make a splash in a glass of water Ron Jeremy style; and I tend to delegate reading to others – e.g. that does that say?. In summary, I know the limits of my competence and education, and I direct my choices accordingly.

A world record price for the sculpture “Walking Man I”, by Alberto Giacometti, has made it the most expensive work of art ever sold at auction.

It fetched $US104.3 million at Sotheby’s London last week.

It beat the previous record of $104.2 million for Picasso’s painting “Garcon a la pipe”, which sold in May 2004.

The buyer of the 1.6 metre stickman-like figure chose to remain anonymous.

I do so love fearless multi-million dollar art purchases by anonymous art experts.

And only the crassest ignoramus would hold to the old-fashioned notion that seeing is believing.

That which you see is the first thing to disbelieve.

Therefore, if you can’t see the artistic merit of Giacometti’s work, you must believe it is worth $104m.

Yours, while maintaining no belief in personal austerity, a desire for frivolity, and a steely cold disdain for any decision not based on excessive alcohol consumption. If you came to this space for life lessons, God knows you’re gonna leave disappointed.

Righteous

p.s.  I was a dreamy little boy, and my mother always thought my penchant for finger painting on walls might lead me to become a famous artist. Instead, I lived my life inside a kilt.

I like to think of myself as the Dick Cheney of blogging – an unyielding proponent of greater and greater hostilities between everyone.

But Bill O’Reilly of FOX News always out-Cheney’s me.

Until now.

Bill O’Reilly, the circus freak of American politics, is swept into the turbulent waters of Jon Stewart’s immense debating skills.

Stewart stays strong.

O’Reilly gets jittery, and goes the finger wagging route.

Stewart does what quality journalism has a similar obligation to do – call out men with great power who are often led to exaggerate and prevaricate.

Jon Stewart battles Bill O’Reilly video

Bill O’Reilly. Get lost.

No, really.

Yours, while despairing that I could have married the royal princess as a reward for my bravery in the war, but for the machinations of that evil Archduke somebody-or-other, and his lesbian cabal

Righteous

p.s. Nobody knows the truffles I’ve seen.

The University of Chicago published a paper in the journal ‘Earth Interactions’ that looked at the relative carbon footprints of plant-based and red-meat diets.

They found that the difference between a heavy meat-eating diet and a vegan diet was about 2 tons of carbon dioxide equivalent per person per year.

The difference between a Prius and a Hummer was 4.76 tons per year.

Note to the muppet fairies in training that are the climate change denying lunatic fringe – lacking the finer elements of conscience is not a sacred calling,  but simply indicative of an inextinguishable reserve of self importance.

But I do enjoy drawing laughter from your bottomless well of ignorance.

Yours, while printing out a picture of the Universe, taping it to the wall and throwing darts at it, but then the Universe started throwing the darts back at me. I think the game has changed.

Righteous

p.s. Forget climate change, Johnny Depp and Brad/Angelina – could anything be more terrible than this cold, windswept immensity that is the Heidi Montag plastic surgery debacle?

I know it’s fashionable to get all gooey in the crotch about Kathryn Bigelow’s ‘Hurt Locker’ – but people,  it’s just a decent war movie.

Same old cliches:

1. death wish protagonist
2. conflicted platoon leader who hates, then respects death wish guy,
3. goofy guy who becomes collateral damage,
4. authority figure with heart of gold who gets blown up
5. overblown strings that draw attention to themselves in the bonding moment over a juice

Just because every war movie for the last seven years has been crap, doesn’t mean one that isn’t crap is great.

Yours, while getting on the ‘close the gap’ bus for Friday night drive-bys and shooting Tao sex aliens. Those drugs are really starting to work, can you get me some more?

Righteous

p.s. Just pay the parking ticket. Don’t be so outraged. You’re not a freedom fighter in the civil rights movement. You double parked.