Monday, July 23, 2007

Waterworld

Addressing the nation from a Royal Navy frigate moored at Stonehenge, the Queen evoked the spirit of the Blitz and urged people not to panic buy at the branch of Tesco that has been hastily assembled on the summit of Ben Nevis. Meanwhile, housing minister Yvette Cooper-Balls, speaking from her Toyota Prius bathyscaphe off the Pennine coast, said she was grateful to Kevin Costner for his advice on conserving soil, underwater housing and the evolution of gills. Boris - the Tory's answer to John Prescott -  said that, as Mayor of London, he would be relocating his offices to Zermatt and promised that the bloated body of his predecessor, Ken, would lie in state on a barge drifting aimlessly in the Hampstead Deeps. Gordon Brown cannot, at this point, be found. Meanwhile, the Met office says that, once the jet stream relocates itself to the north, the tourist industry of the British Isles - a sun-kissed archipelago off the coast of Switzerland - will boom.  Breaking News: Gordon Brown still cannot be found.

12 comments:

  1. Yvette enjoys swimming and portrait painting. Do you think that's an exhaustive list? Not much of an existence if it is. Despite having three kids in as many years she doesn't mention sex. Poor old Ed.

    leaking news: It's still raining and B&Q has sold out of gopher-wood.

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  2. Sex, Ian? She worked with Bill Clinton.

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  3. This kind of humor is why I love, love, love you guys. Bryan, much as I enjoy disagreeing with you, I love you too.

    Keep on rockin' in the British Isles (long as they're above sea level).

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  4. Sticking to writing about a subject I know something about, I shall note that I attended high school with Kevin Costner. He was much shorter then. His best film portrayal to date remains that of the corpse in The Big Chill.

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  5. I gather he varies in height quite a lot, Ronin. What was he like at school apart form short?
    And, thanks, Susan. We are rocking as instructed. Its' what boats do.

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  6. Is Denis Howell still alive? I seem to remember him being made minister for one natural disaster after another back in the seventies and being redundant within days. Surely a government of all the talents could do with such a man.

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  7. Denis Howell! Cometh the man... but, alas, a natural disaster on april 18th 1998 took him from us.

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  8. If I say forgettable, Bryan, I might be accused of jealousy. But he was not a stand-out. In fairness, our graduating class had about 1,000 people in it, so it was tough being outstanding in one's field. (I dimly recall, however, that he later starred in a movie largely about him out standing in a field.)

    I do remember someone referring to someone else to as "Costner" on more than one occasion, which probably means that he and I had the same PE class, roll always being called aloud by last name. Then again, he was a minor after-school sports player, I wrote for the school newspaper, and the sports editor, as was the wont of sports editors everywhere then, referred to all the athletes by last name, usually quite loudly, in the forlorn hope that the rest of us might take in an interest in whatever story he was writing or at least ask what he was going on about.

    The truth is I never connected the name with the actor until I read about another classmate who reported attending high school with Costner and college with Bill Gates as his closet brushes with both fame and fortune.

    As I understand it, Costner grew 2-4" while in college. It was at Cal State Fullerton, I believe, that he first tried his hand at acting.

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  9. A very full answer, Ronin. I suspect you did not get close enough to check on the gills. I was always impressed by the way in Robin Hood he managed to walk from Dover to Nottingham in a day, a feat never since equalled.

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  10. I thought Costner was famous for attending (but not graduating) from the U. of Kansas in Lawrence.

    He's fairly cute, but he has the worst voice -- so flat and dull. That first movie that made him famous -- the one about Indians -- was one he narrated and it was worse for me than listening to someone scratching a chalkboard.

    I'm voice activated and the best voices have British accents: Alan Rickman, Bill Nighy, Tom Hollander. Sigh.... Wish I were over there, even if I have to swim around Stone Henge.

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  11. Our B&Q is flooded out - one day after the refit - the new (wet) look B&Q!

    My father used to often cycle from Brighton to Birmingham and he probably still could (still don't understand why always only one way) and it was nothing unusual. But I dare say, KC's only got little legs.

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  12. No, Bryan, to my eternal regret I did not. As for his covering the Dover to Nottingham run faster than a speeding locomotive, I understand that a small skiff or skill at walking on water is de rigeur at the present moment, sans duffle coat, of course. May it soon pass (the water, not the coat).

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