Category: Aquatic

Avatar Newsboost – Mecha Chris attacks!

News just in! Tokyo has reported a mechanical monster on the outskirts of the city. When questioned as to what it looked like, experts merely shrugged and mumbled something about some berk from France.

Mecha Chris appears to be the combination of a giant 100ft machine and our very own Christopher Marshall who unwisely posted the details of his genes on the website. Seemingly innocent, this has caused most of the dark web to steal his DNA and weave it into a multitude of diabolical projects. We’ve also heard rumours of a giant octopus off the coast of Italy sporting his viso/volto and a hive of bees in Washington DC, buzzing about roadworks and a string of road closures on the A47 in Norfolk over the summer holidays.

“It must be a synthetic mesh of man and machine,” gushed monster expert, Dylan Stretcher, “DNA on its own is useless, you’ve gotta mix it in with a bunch of other goo to make life. If you then take that goo and stick it in a humongous robot then we’re all doomed. I’m surprised Eamonn Holmes didn’t think of it sooner. Science is a cruel mistress.”

Recently qualified Kevin Hill, science master, was unavailable for comment, possibly due to laziness and things.

Though jovial in his appearance, Mecha Chris has already crushed several sandcastles, one ice cream van and a sushi hut as he emerged from the sea. People have been unable to buy overpriced iced lollies for over an hour. If he continues along the same path, he is expected to crush most of Tokyo by 6pm today.

We can only hope that some equally large competitor can emerge to stop the menace before it spreads to the rest of the world.

What else will happen now that the world has access to his life pulp? Will Chris ever learn from his mistakes? Can we expect to see dozens of clones of him running security at a Spice Girls tribute act? Only time will tell how long this joke will go on.

Avatar Amphibian/reptile brag

Guess what? My parish has more native species of amphibians and reptiles than yours.

Sometimes when I take the dog out I pass this little statue of a toad, but I hadn’t actually stopped to look at it properly until the other day. It turns out that it relates an important fact about my local area that I didn’t know until now.

The plaque underneath says this.

Whitehill is the only parish in the UK to claim home to all 12 of our native amphibians and reptiles, including this, the rare Natterjack toad. Only 7cm long with a distinctive yellow stripe down its back, it favours sand and heathland and breeds in shallow pools. It eats insects, worms and small reptiles and can live up to an amazing 15 years.

Twelve. Twelve native species of amphibians and reptiles. Your parish certainly has some of them, it might even have quite a lot of them. But it won’t have all twelve. I don’t know why amphibians and reptiles are measured by the parish, which seems an odd choice of geographic area to use for this, but that doesn’t matter.

What matters is this.

My parish has more native species of amphibians and reptiles than yours.

In your face, sucker.

Avatar Gooseboost

Good morning and welcome to this week’s edition of Gooseboost, reporting on all the goose-based news in your area and a little bit more elsewhere. I’m your host, Bruce “The Goose” Winterburn.

The headlines:

  • New shade of dark orange paint colour renamed ‘Boss goose’ after tense voting process over the weekend
  • Kentucky restaurant’s popular ‘Geese Feast’ menu item dropped to $14.99 for the whole of October
  • Hysterical goose celebrity impersonater Dwayne ‘The Flock’ Johnson set to dazzle at 2024 HSJ awards next month

The top story today though involves locked doors, unsightly men and a gaggle of the most unusual guards you’ve ever seen in your entire life.

A prison in South America decided to change from guards dogs to guard geese in a switch that has sent most people into a flap.

Since December last year, a group of geese have been patrolling the perimeter of the Sao Pedro de Alcantara prison in Brazil’s southern state of Santa Catarina. The honking hoodlums dubbed “geese agents” are in charge of patrolling the green space between the prison’s inside fence and main outer wall. The staff of the prison remain convinced that the vigilance of the waterfowl species of bird is what makes them excellent guard animals and continue to use them in lieu of the more traditional canines.

This follows on from our May editorial, ‘Geese, please! Are they really that bad?’ where we set out to debunk some of the common misconceptions of the common goose. It is all to do with how territorial they are, especially when protecting the young. It’s very rare that humans will be attacked, but it can happen. They are capable of causing serious injury by biting or smacking you with their marvellously strong wings. A serious injury is not always guaranteed, it depends what kind of day they’re having. If you catch one on a Monday before they’ve had their morning coffee then you may want to get ahead and phone in sick at work.

If a prison is using geese to keep prisoners in line then surely it’s only a matter of time before they’re wheeled out for use in the police force. Expect CCTV footage from future Saturday night scraps in city centres around the UK to feature both man and beak. You have been warned.

Avatar Holiday picture

I am on holiday, but I still need to make one more post this month to earn a bean. The obvious thing to do is to post a massive gallery of holiday photos and be all smug about where I am and what I’m doing.

I respect you both too much to do that. Instead I will post one carefully chosen picture, which is a self-portrait I took using an underwater camera while I was wearing a snorkel mask. The rest of my smugness can be inferred from this if you wish to experience it.

Avatar Shrimp!

We have fish, we’ve had them a while but recently we had to move the tank out of the playroom to make room for Lego to be displayed. We didn’t really have anywhere else for them to go, so they went into the kitchen, and because its a kitchen the only place for them is in the window.

Apparently in a window isn’t the ideal place for a fish tank, as there’s too much light so christ knows how fish cope in nature. After a few weeks, sure enough we’ve started to get some algae growth in the water… whats the best way to deal with algae in a tank? Move it out of the sunlight? Chemicals? Nope, apparently its shrimp.

More impressive when you look up how to buy shrimp, is that you can buy them off eBay… through the post… alive.

I know, its mental. So say hello to “Wiggles” and “Swimmy Shrimpy”, named by the kids naturally…

Avatar Sharkitect

I had a vision last night. It was clear and it was pure.

As I lay in bed staring at the ceiling, I imagined a world where things were made from sharks. Not from shark meat or shark skin or anything weird like that, no no, everything is made from sharks. Buildings built from sharks, stacked metres high, riding up into the sky and beyond. Cars made from sharks where drivers wrap a luxurious shark tongue seatbelt around themselves and pull away in the latest Ford SHARK, a marked improvement from the previous year’s model, the Ford Shark.

Who would build these marvellous machines and inventions? Who would have the skills with which to satisfy the demands of the general public? I would be their saviour. I would be their sharkitect.

How gutted was I then when I looked into the matter and discovered that the majority of sharks are currently endangered? There’s not enough of them to build anything with. If I so much as tried to stack a few to make a shopping trolley the WWF would come down on me harder than an elephant after a long day at the office. My dream was in tatters before it had even got off the ground.

The sharkitect must now only live on as a theoretical job. If someone wants a creche made out of sharks I could design them something funky on a computer, on a piece of paper maybe, and that is all. The chances of finding someone who is willing to pay for this nonsense is unlikely.

I didn’t want to kill sharks. I didn’t want to hurt them. I wanted to turn them from something thrilling and amazing into something beautiful, even more thrilling, even more amazing.

Avatar Water faff

Where is your water meter?

In this post, likely to be the first of many where I talk about things to do with my new house, because that’s what my life is like these days, we’re going on a journey of discovery to find the water meter.

The electricity meter is easy. That has a special meter hutch in the hallway, so you can see it as soon as you walk in the door.

The gas meter is also not too difficult. Look under the stairs, where the boiler lives, and there’s the gas meter, sheltering underneath it. Excellent.

The water meter? Last time I had to find one it lived on the outside of the building, mounted quite low on the wall. Must be around here somewhere. The water company tell me it’s electronic so it can be read by a water meter detecting robot passing within fifty metres or some such futuristic nonsense.

One place it definitely can’t be is underground, because I’ve checked all the manhole covers and other gratings and none of them are either watery or metery. One is a big inspection hatch for the drains. Another is a smaller inspection chamber where a drain turns a corner. Some are gratings into the drains. And the other is labelled SEW, presumably short for SEWER, and I’m damned if I’m going in there. It sounds gross. So that stuff is all drains.

Lucky for me, after making further inquiries it turns out SEW doesn’t stand for sewer, even though that is completely logical. No, SEW stands for South East Water. Underneath the SEW manhole cover is a foam block covered in mud, and under the foam block is four inches of freezing cold stagnant water, and under the four inches of freezing cold stagnant water is my electronic bluetooth enabled water meter.

Let’s hope it’s waterproof.