Spare Room Be our guest…

Republican Senator Rick Santorum of Pennsylvania has explained how the Iraq war helped America avoid terrorist attacks by using LOTR. The US senator said America had avoided a second terrorist attack for five years because the “Eye of Mordor” had instead been drawn to Iraq. Santorum used the analogy to put an increasingly unpopular war in Iraq into terms any school kid could easily understand. “As the hobbits are going up Mt Doom, the Eye of Mordor is being drawn somewhere else,” Santorum said, describing the tool the evil Lord Sauron used in search of the magical ring that would consolidate his power over Middle-earth. “It’s being drawn to Iraq and it’s not being drawn to the US,” he continued. “You know what? I want to keep it on Iraq. I don’t want the Eye to come back here to the United States.” (Source: The Herald Standard)

Who’s next? Santa? LJ Hooker’s marketing tool, Mr Hooker Bear, has been replaced by a slimmer version, caving to the hysteria about child obesity. Children in the focus groups said the bear was looking a bit saggy and baggy, which the LJ Hooker marketing people interpreted as needing to lose 10kg. Brett Robinson, general manager for LJ Hooker says, “We decided to make the teddy bear version a bit slimmer and more appealing, a model of a fit and healthy lifestyle. Mr Hooker bears are given away to customers who buy and sell a home through LJ Hooker.

It appears Peta (People for the Ethical Treatment of Animals) is trying to divert us from evil dairy products by persuading drinkers of non-human milk that if the Virgin Mary’s human milk was good enough for Jesus, it’s good enough for all of us. Trouble is, once you’re over a certain age it’s not really socially acceptable to latch on. Peta obviously would prefer to live in a society which has breast-fed 12-year-olds, rather than enslaved cows.

Truss tomatoes are grown on the vine, but ‘trust’ tomatoes? A super-reliable variety, maybe …

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Billionaire casino owner and art collector Steve Wynn accidentally put his elbow through a $140 million Picasso as he gesticulated while talking about the painting to guests. Wynn has an eye disease that affects his peripheral vision. “I made a gesture with my right hand,” he told the New Yorker magazine. “My right elbow hit the picture. It punctured the picture. There was a distinct ripping sound.” He told his guests, “Well, I’m glad I did it and not you.”

Auckland City Council has decreed that bland grey concrete is preferable to the red chip footpaths, which are now banned

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How about this for a sick scam? For a donation of $5 a word, a website called Afterlife Telegrams will deliver telegrams to your dead relatives with the help of terminally ill volunteers who memorise messages before passing away themselves. The site claims the money is either “given to a relative, donated to a charity or used to pay for medical bills … Since we cannot guarantee delivery nor prove that a message has been delivered successfully, our customers do not pay for ‘deliveries’. They pay for ‘delivery attempts’.”