Cops Intervene to Curb Fowl Play

COLOMBO, Sri Lanka -- Sri Lankan state run television yesterday reported the valiant efforts of local law enforcement in the raiding of an illegal cock-fighting bookie joint. Everyone at the joint had reportedly chosen to flee on seeing the law headed in their direction, but three chickens were taken into custody. ["Soodu poley sitapu siyalu denaama palaa giya athara kukulan thidenek polis baarayata gannaa ladi" as originally reported.]

It is reported that the prisoners are now being tortured into revealing the identities of their masters. The RSPCA who intervened in the matter reported the fowl conditions in which the captives were being held. They had been locked up in a cage and shown explicit photographs from The Great Chicken Cookbook, whilst an endless stream of KFC ads played on a nearby giant video screen.

The three grumpy prisoners however refused to make any comment apart from the fact that they were in quite a soup, and when our reporter attempted to get further details he was rudely told to "cluck off"...

Unquotable Quotes - Part 6

Well, is Ecuador South America or Central?

- St Vandoofus, enquiring on the geographic location of his proposed destination.

You are not helping my packing.

- St Vandoofus, objecting to Kahuna’s travel advice involving active volcanoes.

You think there is GSM in the middle of the Amazon?

- St Vandoofus, defending his missed deadlines to Kahuna.

You may refer to me as Darth Ching, and I will refer to you as Darth Pokemon.

- Darth Ching, attempting to establish protocol with Kahuna.

Did you take your inflatable lightsabre?

- Kahuna, enquiring upon Darth Ching’s ceremonial attire for viewing Episode III.

Always two there are: a master and an apprentice. If once you start down the Dark Path, forever will it dominate your destiny. Consume you it will, as it did to Obi-Wan's apprentice.

- The Monster, at One with Yoda.

A messenger porcupine have I sent. Greatly inconvenienced you will be.

- Kahuna, declaring his intent to make the Monster Minus One with Yoda.

Gordon Steps Up Offensive

GANEMULLA, Sri Lanka -- It has come to light that crackpot inventor and arch-electrician, Professor Gordon has successfully fabricated a working power supply unit, a milestone in his quest to convert GITT into a mobile theater system.

However, in a media release issued a short time ago, Kahuna declared that it was a dark day for the planet and accused Gordon of secretly attempting to construct an Explosively Pumped Flux Compression Generator (EPFCG).

Kahuna added that He would organize a resistance movement and promised swift action to rectify the situation and incapacitate Gordon's latest weapon. He did not rule out reversing the polarity of Gordon's capacitor bank or swapping his primary and secondary windings in a transformational solution to the problem.

The arch-electrician was unavailable for comment having knocked out the communications of greater Ganemulla during a test run of his power supply.

KNN continues to monitor this developing story.

The Blare GITT Project

GANEMULLA, Sri Lanka -- KNN has uncovered a sinister plot by Kahuna-wannabe, Professor Gordon to convert his flagship automobile, the Gordon Industries Ten Thousand (GITT) into a mobile theater system.

Dissatisfied with his home theater system, the portly one plans to convert GITT into a fully functional THX-certified cinema experience with Dolby SR Digital surround-sound. This is expected to raise surround-sound to an entirely new volume with nearby motorists also immersed in the acoustics. It is believed that a highly-modified muffler will deliver the Low Frequency Effects (LFE) channel, while GITT’s xenon headlamps would drive a quasi-holographic regular free space display that would appear to hang in mid-air in front of the vehicle. It was not immediately clear if Gordon intended to charge motorists for sharing his cinema experience.

According to sources close the crackpot inventor, Gordon has already begun retrofitting GITT to realize his raucous vision. The core architecture will include a Fibre Channel Storage Area Network (SAN) consisting of redundant switches and disk subsystems. Though redundant, Gordon’s disk arrays are understood to be expensive. Frustrated with RAID 5, Gordon is believed to be implementing a stripe-mirrored (RAID 1+0) solution using 2-Gbps 73.4 GB (15K RPM) Fibre Channel disk drives. The system—with capacities exceeding a terabyte—is intended to store his music and movie collection for instant rendition through a voice-activated interface sourced from the foul, dark depths of Redmond.

Environmentalists cautioned that Gordon’s latest move was a serious threat to the sanctity of the surroundings. Speaking to the media, Kahuna said that He would deploy a fleet of His active noise control units to deal with the public nuisance swiftly and noiselessly.

The False Prophet was last seen in the Pettah dressed as bargain hunter, attempting to locate shock-proof mounting kits for his disk subsystems. It is believed that he was confounded in this quest by merchants inexplicably not wishing to part with their wares.

This is a developing story and KNN will continue to provide hilarious coverage.

Vandoofus Readies for South American Tour

NEW YORK CITY, New York -- KNN learns that Senior Clown St Vandoofus will be departing on an expedition to Ecuador tomorrow, in his official capacity as the first representative from the Circus to visit South America.

According to the latest flight plans, Vandoofus will be landing unsupervised at the Simón Bolívar International Airport in the coastal city of Santiago de Guayaquil. It is understood that he will be gracing a wedding ceremony during his tour of the country. However, his intended presence during the honeymoon remains controversial.

Vandoofus will also be visiting the capital city of Quito, located on the eastern slopes of Pinchincha, an active stratovolcano. At an elevation of 9,300 feet (2,850 meters) above sea level, Quito happens to be the second-highest capital city in the world, after La Paz in Bolivia. The latent tectonic activity of the region and the high Clown Factor (CF) of Vandoofus have prompted Kahuna to issue an advisory noting a statistically significant Potential for Disaster (PFD). The conversation below is presented as evidence:

Kahuna    : Are you gonna climb Pichincha?
Vandoofus : :-S
Vandoofus : Should I?
Vandoofus : What is there?
Kahuna    : Yeah, it’s an active volcano
Kahuna    : Quito is on the eastern slope
Vandoofus : Ah
Vandoofus : Hmm
Kahuna    : "Active" being the key word here
Vandoofus : If it doesn't require strenuous activity 
            I might climb
Vandoofus : X-(
Vandoofus : So you think its going to go off when 
            I am there?
Vandoofus : X-(
Kahuna    : Yeah... Your CF might trigger it... I'm 
            calculating the odds now
Vandoofus : X-(

In related anecdotal evidence, Kahuna revealed that Vandoofus was caught smoking at high altitude a decade ago during an ascent of Thotupola, the third-highest peak in Sri Lanka.

After the close of South American tour, it is believed that the globe-trotting Vandoofus would have trampled all continents underfoot other than Antarctica. Kahuna is rumored to be evaluating a proposal to airdrop Vandoofus in his underwear at McMurdo Station.

Vandoofus—busy packing and brushing up on his Spanish—was not available for comment.

Unquotable Quotes - Part 5

If I get kidnapped, pay the fricking ransom.

- St Vandoofus, to Kahuna before leaving on an expedition to Ecuador, a nation in the throes of political turmoil.

Mention me in your will.

- Kahuna, laying down terms of ransom payment to St Vandoofus.

How about a strip club?

- Professor Gordon, on a suitable venue for his birthday gathering.

I didn’t know baboons grew on trees.

- St Vandoofus on being told the "B" in B-tree stands for "Baboon."

Anything out of Redmond is a standard only among maggots.

- Kahuna, expressing a controversial dissenting opinion of Microsoft standards to St Vandoofus.

You plug the USB in your ass and it works.

- St Vandoofus, explaining the remarkable flexibility of his new external USB hard disk drive.

Oh? Is your ass USB 2.0 compliant? 480 Mbps?

- Kahuna, raising concerns about St Vandoofus’s USB 2.0 implementation.

Quarter

Quarter by Trudi

PANADURA, Sri Lanka -- I came across this photograph by Trudi on Flickr while I was researching for the last post. It depicts a quarter of the RAF roundel on the fuselage of a Spitfire.

This composition, in particular the contrasting colors and the texture of the metal is NB.

High Flight

On Laughter Silvered Wings, a painting of Magee's Spitfire V by Keith Ferris (Copyright © 2001 Keith Ferris)

High Flight

Oh! I have slipped the surly bonds of Earth
And danced the skies on laughter-silvered wings;
Sunward I've climbed, and joined the tumbling mirth
Of sun-split clouds, — and done a hundred things
You have not dreamed of — wheeled and soared and swung
High in the sunlit silence. Hov'ring there,
I've chased the shouting wind along, and flung
My eager craft through footless halls of air. . . .

Up, up the long, delirious burning blue
I've topped the wind-swept heights with easy grace
Where never lark, or ever eagle flew —
And, while with silent, lifting mind I've trod
The high untrespassed sanctity of space,
Put out my hand, and touched the face of God.

— John Gillespie Magee, Jr (1922-1941)

John Gillespie Magee, Jr was born in Shanghai on June 9^th 1922 to an American father and British mother, who were missionaries in China. In 1940, after the outbreak of World War II, he joined the Royal Canadian Air Force (RCAF) and became a pilot. Within that year, he was posted to the No 412 Fighter Squadron at RAF Digby in Lincolnshire, England.

Magee was inspired to write High Flight on September 3^rd 1941 during a high-altitude test flight of a new version of the Supermarine Spitefire, the Mk V. He sent the poem in a letter to his parents noting "I am enclosing a verse I wrote the other day. It started at 30,000 feet, and was finished soon after I landed."

Three months later on 11^th December 1941 he was killed at age 19, when his Spitfire V (markings VZ-H) collided with another aircraft in the clouds over the village of Roxholm near Digby. He is buried at Scopwick Cemetary, Lincolnshire.

The version of the poem reproduced here is that transcribed by Dave English from Magee’s letter now stored in the Library of Congress. English notes that most printed versions use "... even eagle" but the original seems to be "... ever eagle," with similar penmanship to the preceding "never."

High Flight is a favorite among aviators and others who yearn for the freedom of flight. It is the official poem of the RCAF and RAF. On January 28^th 1986, US President Ronald Reagan quoted from the poem in his poignant address to the nation on the loss of the Space Shuttle Challenger STS-51-L.

Two other poems by Magee, Sonnet to Rupert Brooke and Per Ardua can be found here.

Great quotations on aviation can be found at Dave England's website, SkyGod.com.

The Secret Life of B-Trees

NEW YORK CITY, New York – The following conversation that took place a short while ago has thrown new light into the poorly understood concept of B-trees:

Vandoofus : Are you doubting my ability to retrieve
            and transfer a simple phone number?
Kahuna    : Indeed I am... You couldn't do a simple
            index lookup without mucking up the
            whole B-tree
Vandoofus : X-(
Kahuna    : :-p
Vandoofus : What’s a B-tree?
Vandoofus : Bamboo?
Vandoofus : Boxing?
Vandoofus : Buffalo?
Kahuna    : Baboon
Vandoofus : Ah
Vandoofus : I didn't know baboons grew on trees
Kahuna    : Oh? Where did you think they grew? X-(

This is just great, Doofi! Now I’ve got a picture in my head of baboons trying to resolve a primary key constraint. Worse, how is a balanced baboon-tree going to work? Does it mean that there will be an equal number of baboons on each side of the tree?

Oh, curse my associative memory! I just remembered the Pythagorean theorem: the squaw on the hippopotamus is equal to the sum of the squaws on the other two hides.

By Codd, Doofi, I swear I’m going to thump you silly with a foreign key!

NOAA Moves to Seize GITT

WASHINGTON, District of Columbia -- The National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration (NOAA) today announced that the Gordon Industries Ten Thousand (GITT), flagship vehicle of arch-climatologist Professor Gordon, would be seized in the name of science.

Explaining the basis for this unorthodox move, a spokesperson for NOAA said that there was empirical evidence of direct correlation between washing GITT and the development of inclement weather conditions. It was not immediately clear if Gordon would also be seized along with the vehicle.

The crackpot inventor was not available for comment, having washed and waxed GITT a short while ago. In related news, a thunderstorm is reported developing over the western province of Sri Lanka with the epicenter located around Kendaliyaddapaluwa, Ganemulla.

KNN will provide live coverage of this stormy story.

Tine Bhealtaine

Tine Bhealtaine^[1] by GustavoG.

GAILLIMH, Éire -- Today is Beltaine, the first day of summer according to the Celtic calendar, celebrated in ancient times by the bonfires lit by fire created afresh after extinguishing the hearths of the land. Traditionally, the cattle were led to new pastures between two such bonfires to purify them and protect them from sickness and harm.

Sources close to Kahuna revealed that He had retired from herding of any sort and was convalescing at His abode.

[1] Beltaine fire, pronounced HIH-nuh BYAHL-tih-nuh.

Gordon Hosted to Circus

MOUNT LAVINIA, Sri Lanka -- Professor Gordon was hosted to a circus beside the sea on Thursday night at the Golden Mile. Those present at the gathering were Gordon, his Autonomous Wife, the Monster, the Baroness, Huggles, the Menace and Kahuna. Felicitations were received from geographically disjoint clowns including the recently resurrected Bart the Oblivious, St Vandoofus and the Cookie Monster.

Thanks to logistical bungling including but not limited to shopping at the last moment, the corner cashier, consultation with licensed medical practitioners regarding red-eye reduction and the quest for the holy eye drops, the party of the celebrant arrived at the venue prior to the hosts. This was remedied finally, by the arrival of the hosts bearing gifts from Otara of wireless (IEEE 802.11b) hotspot fame.

In accordance with tradition, the holy chemoluminescent red and blue lightsticks were activated and presented to Gordon in the form of a collar to be worn during the proceedings. The portly one was seen glowing around the gills and later around the wrists in a manner reminiscent of Automan, albeit without the color co-ordination.

These were soon followed at appropriate moments during the meal by the rest of the buffoon vestments including the skunk cap, clown shoes and the thong underwear. A long-sleeved shirt was also thrown in for good measure. Shirt measurements, however, were bungled thanks to the Monster. Size, apparently does matter and the Monster is scheduled for a thumping at a later date. If the service layer of the Golden Mile was perturbed by the luminescent Gordon, they hid it well. Even so, the skunk cap did cause some alarm, with a waiter making a hasty retreat. Fortunately, Gordon did not try on the thong during the proceedings, thus avoiding a potential breach of the peace.

The food at the establishment was declared NB overall, despite the pepper sauce accompanying the prawns registering rather high on the Scoville scale. The orange juice, which seemed to have been concocted by running whole oranges through a blender is also best avoided, unless accompanied by a filtration system.

Among the other gifts presented were What to Expect the Toddler Years and rather incongruously, Drive Her Wild: 100 Sex Tips for Men. The Monster expressed undue interest in the former works and was advised to first consult the latter. The books were followed up with a stash of imported chocolate for personal use, which was handed around by Gordon in contravention of accepted restaurant etiquette. However, norms were suspended on the grounds that the chocolates were delicious. The proceedings were declared closed shortly thereafter and appropriate getaways were made using automobiles equipped with internal combustion engines.

Kahuna is currently convalescing after a bout of the 'flu causing conjunctivitis on the 3^rd day. In a break with tradition, days 4 to 6 have been declared days of rest and the possibility of an all-nighter on the 7^th has not been ruled out.