[blogfocus] the quirky the pithy and the downright strange

Continued ... Well, that seemed promising, so to continue the food theme, I visited Bryan Appleyard: I have just had two cups of tea and a bowl of Quaker Oat Granola. The tea was nice, the Granola wasn't. It looks as though it is going to be a sunny day. I have a headache......The above is my entry for One Day in History.

Next stop was Sam Brett, who was considering pole dancing at the time: Me? I'm an outdoors jogging kind of gal. Yet after reading about the benefits of pole dancing for quite some time, I decided it was time to brave the pole and see what all the fuss was about. Brave the pole. Yes.

Reactionary Snob puts the male point of view on this with his sensitive piece: I will announce that I am no fan of sodomy. I couldn't imagine anything worse than being buggered.

Daily Propaganda wasn't so much strange as head-spinning: According to British Airways, a 747-400 plane burns 12,788 liters of fuel per hour.If we assume that a 747 flies, on average, 18 hours per day (two 9 hour flights), 365 days per year and last 25 years. That makes 164,000 flying hours and 2.1bn liters of fuel. Each liter of fuel produces 2,5 kg of CO2, making 5.4 million tonnes of CO2 emitted in the aircraft's lifetime. Dilloworstallish.

Serf, not usually strange, didn't let us down here with this mildly quirky piece of brevity: Like an out break of bird flu, the best way to improve the EU would be to eliminate it.

Why? Who? Whom? Whose? Why was this woman employed by a Christian School? Why was she employed as a teacher? Why was she employed to teach English when hers is so poor? These were just some of the questions asked by the inquisitive Prodicus.

Stephen Pollard can normally be relied upon for at least one strange comment but this was the best he could manage this time round: He quoted Lord Harries, who said: It is wrong, he said, that the over-fifties are denied a procedure made available to younger women. After all, "Men can conceive at a vast age."

Norman Geras got us back into the groove with the ever reliable Ahmadinejad: We shall win... One day I will be asked whether I have been in touch with someone who told me we would win, and I will respond: 'Yes, I have been in touch with God'. That's Ahmadinejad talking. What he fails to report is that God apparently also said, 'Hey, you wouldn't happen to have a light, would you?'

Quinlan noted: Type ‘Ahmadinejad’ in the Google search field and Google it and it comes top of the list… Er ... yes?

Mr. Eugenides added a slight edge to the game with his: The family of the first patient in a Tory seat to die because their local hospital has closed should sue Patsy Hewitt's arse off, at the very least; personally I would prefer to see her head smeared with elderberry jam and then shoved into a sack full of African fire ants, and savour the screams as her eyeballs burst and her tongue was gnawed off. Death by a thousand cuts, you might say. Interesting mind, Mr. E. has but you only have to look at his banner to see that.

Melanie Phillips continues the Peckinpah theme: The reliability of Blunkett’s views can be gauged by a further reference to me. He writes: This reminded me of the famous phrase she used on a previous occasion when she didn’t agree with me, suggesting that I should be put in a concrete overcoat and dropped down a well. I do get sick of all the whingeing sometimes, particularly in the education journals.

Clive Davis helps her out and surprises in the process: Asked if she would like to have a delicate haemorrhoid operation performed with a rusty pair of pliers, [Patricia] Hewitt replied: ‘I think if I was in pain, I wouldn’t care what the doctor used, but you can also be sure that the government is committed to provide every doctor in Britain with their own pair of pliers and that is a real improvement, in the surgery, for real patients...'

Too many people fail to think like economists, began Chris Dillow, surprisingly. Boniface Mandere of Eye of the Child [said]: "You cannot buy a child as if you are buying a house." Why ever not? Good point, Chris and Minette Marrin agrees with you [isn't that strange bedfellows].

She came out with: Baby trafficking may not be all bad, which is a point which must be considered, I suppose.

Neocon looks at it from the point of view of the child himself, writing of his Dad: What he for sure did not expect, was that my mother, who may or may not have felt dad was a bit of a hardass, would sneak money out of his wallet while he was in the shower, so me or my brothers could go grab a sixpack, or my sisters could buy makeup, or a subscription to teen magazines. Not that we didn't do stuff like that, there just wasn't any expectation that dumb ole dad would have to cough up for our expectations.

Still on that side of the pond, Gates of Vienna are not normally noted for their quirkiness and this is their contribution to the world of childhood: In our little fiefdom over here we have a weird tradition: children have piggybanks, sometimes with their names on them. Usually one can buy them in toy stores with the most common Danish names already painted on them, such as Mikkel (Michael), Lucas, Peter, etc…

It took a great deal of searching through texts before I came up with this one from Oliver Kamm: Since the defeat of the Taliban, there have been constitutional achievements, notably the constitutional loya jirga that led to the democratic election of a president of the new Afghanistan. Well, all right. That was the best I could find.

DK chips in with his little ditty: There once was a bruiser called Reid; Who followed the Communist creed; After sinking a skinful He decided it sinful And resolved thence to follow his greed. Which, as he indicates, is not half bad at all.

Dave Hill helped out with this little logical mind-straightener: I am some-or-other sort of an economically left-wing social libertarian. I am also an atheist: OK, I'm on on the atheistic wing of agnosticism if you want to be picky. So that's now clear.

Last Ditch's own play on words came out this way: Meanwhile, Gordon Brown has got away Scot-free (oh how we wish we were Scot-free) with more than 100,000,000 from the nation's pension funds. Those are the words of a man who knows the Glasgow and Edinburgh mob can't get to him ...

While Scepter'd Isle's contribution to this genre was: But one downside to this ongoing media exposure is the creeping spread of Islamofatigue where people are becoming fed up with the stream of reports about certain elements of this minority community taking every opportunity to take offence about something. That is something that the Islamists have got down to a fine art. Trouble is, he lacks an effective ocean between himself and fatwah.

On safer ground is Iain Dale, who says: ConservativeHome reports via the BBC... All new religious schools could have to offer at least 25% of their classroom places to "non-believing" children, the BBC has learned. Seems to me that Iain is drifting away from the stipulation in this Blogfocus that 'strangeness' is the criterion for the posts.

Gavin Ayling, quite frankly, disappointed with his serious posts on relevant subjects. All the dirt I could get on him was: Michael Crichton’s State of Fear... I don’t want to say too much about it because, I have discovered since I finished reading it yesterday, people don’t want to hear what you have to say when you’re talking about it.

Tim Montgomerie [please blogroll me, I pathetically grovel or at least answer even one of my pesky e-mails] did somewhat better: Black Labour MP Dawn Butler has made a formal complaint about former Tory Minister David Heathcoat-Amory, claiming he insulted her and a group of ethnic-minority visitors to Parliament, telling them: "The place is going to wrack and ruin. They are letting anyone in these days."

Another crew I've been grovelling to be accepted by is the Select Society, who says [3rd person singular]: Just as nature abhors a vaccum, it appears that the film industry abhors the reduction in the activity of Chevy Chase. 6/10 for that effort. If I bought a disreputable smoking jacket and hitched my way to Edinburgh, might I just? Do you think it would be possible? I nearly got in at Hemden. I bought a second-hand apron.No matter.

The dilemma for Tim Worstall is that one always expects something quirky, expects some Worstallism or other. This is pretty tame by his standards [but not by Gavin's]: In 1996, four women were acquitted of conspiracy and criminal damage after disabling a Hawk jet which was due to be sold by BAE to the Suharto dictatorship in Indonesia. Problem with Worstall is he's forever quoting facts and figures and making eminent sense.

The wild child of the blogosphere, Ellee Seymour, comes out with this sexist number: One would imagine that the Latin screen legend Sophia Loren would be on all the A-lists for star studded parties in her home country. So I can understand why she was disappointed not to have been invited to Rome’s first Film Festival at the weekend, the organisers somehow simply forgot and she declined their last minute invite. Entertaining piece, actually.

Vox Day is a pedigree Mensa Quirk and this ain't a bad one from him: Iron Mike is coming back: At a news conference at an Italian restaurant, Tyson said he would likely go just four rounds and that future stops on the tour might include bouts with women, possibly professional boxer Ann Wolfe.

3rd last today is Johnathan Pearce, who finds the solution to the ID card human rights abuse: This looks like a decent website on where to get these machines. [Those more fortunately blessed with space can of course just chuck this stuff on the bonfire.] He's referring, of course, to shredding machines for all your documents before they get them.

Stuart A does absolutely nothing as usual and that, in itself, is his contribution to the Strange Blogfocus.

I've saved a choice morsel for the end - L'Ombre's: Mushroom Porn. She Who Must Be Obeyed and I are both dedicated fungi fans. One of the attractions to going to Japan in the autumn is to eat dishes with maitake, shiitake or occasionally matsutake (the truffle equivalent of Japan) or some of the other varieties. E.g. the maitake soba and the assorted mushroom soup pictured below ... And he does picture it in pornographic detail, photo after explicit photo of it.

More on Sunday.