Google’s crime map carves up Africa

When not snooping on us through the internet, recording pictures of the outside of our homes for Google.Maps, Street View and generally gathering as much information as they can about you and I so that they can offer us products and services based on our internet activity and worse the content of our emails, Google try to cover their less than savoury business practices by producing ‘interesting’ information, daft doodles on their home page, and all sorts of fluff.

Google is very keen to show how their ‘wonderful’ maps can be used to demonstrate all manner of things, the manner of things they had on their minds yesterday was odd, to say the least, as you can see below in their map that completely redraws Africa’s boundaries.

Ladies and Gentlemen and dear cuddly readers I give you the “Britons arrested abroad mapped,” map; for what it is worth which is slightly less than nothing I imagine.

One of Googles odder maps

Google released this ‘very informative’ map to show where Britons are arrested abroad? Quite why they wanted to do that I have no idea this was their little explanation.

“Data blog: More Britons are fleeing the long arm of the law to other countries. Find out how many and where.” (As if anyone is interested).

Well thanks for that Google the map was very enlightening, just one question! Since when has Africa been almost completely sub-divided by what Google label as the “Gulf of Guinea?” Beats me, but then I am only a Cat and not half as clever as the ‘intelligent ones’ at Google.


About the Author

The Cat Portrait2

The Cat is one of the most successful feline authors in the history of Catkind. His sharp elegant wit has produced the bestselling book ‘Getting Out – Excerpts from a Cat’s Diary’ and of course the much plagiarised gag of the same name which appears on all of the funniest joke sites on the internet.

Copies of the Cat’s masterpiece of feline literature ‘Getting Out – Excerpts from a Cat’s Diary’ and his latest wonderful book ‘The Cat’s Travelogue’ can be purchased at a bookstore near you or from the internet at Amazon.com and here for the Travelogue The Cat’s Travelogue Paperback Edition or at what The Cat calls his www – wickedly wonderful website here www.thecatsdiary.com where you can not only learn more about me the genius Cat but also play my games they are all paw picked by me and have been described as “exactly what free on-line games should be, fun, free and fantastic.”

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We all have dreams!

It is one of the fundamental truths of life we all have dreams! Here is a version of the American Dream from Colorado.

We all have dreams Colorado

At first I though that this dream was simple but the hard, agonising truth, is that the more you think about wanting clean dirt the more impossible it is to make that dream a reality. Just as the folks who ran nuclear power stations around the world that have had accidents have probably discovered and will be striving for ‘clean dirt’ for hundreds of years to come.

Did you know that since 1961 until now there have been 99, yes 99 (what a shame you can’t put numbers in capitals) nuclear accidents! Staring with Idaho Falls, Idaho, United States in January 1961 and ending with the disaster at Mihama Nuclear Power Plant Fukushima, Japan in 2011.

Though not responsible in any way for the accident at Three Mile Island, here is a picture of President Jimmy Carter on the scene, I think he looks a bit guilty, but that could be shock! Couldn’t it?

Pres Carter 3 Mile Island

You have to wonder just how strictly rules and procedures were enforced back in those days , and of course now, because nuclear plants can “go up” at any time.

Why am I asking that pointed, or to some pointless, question well the sign above the President’s head says “UNNECESSARY PERSONNEL STAY BEHIND LINE” clearly in the picture the radiation bootied Pres has both feet over those all important lines.

Oh sorry I forgot the Three Mile Island did “go up” didn’t it! Which I suppose answers my question doesn’t it!


About the Author

The Cat Portrait2

The Cat is one of the most successful feline authors in the history of Catkind. His sharp elegant wit has produced the bestselling book ‘Getting Out – Excerpts from a Cat’s Diary’ and of course the much plagiarised gag of the same name which appears on all of the funniest joke sites on the internet.

Copies of the Cat’s masterpiece of feline literature ‘Getting Out – Excerpts from a Cat’s Diary’ and his latest wonderful book ‘The Cat’s Travelogue’ can be purchased at a bookstore near you or from the internet at Amazon.com and here for the Travelogue The Cat’s Travelogue Paperback Edition or at what The Cat calls his www – wickedly wonderful website here www.thecatsdiary.com where you can not only learn more about me the genius Cat but also play my games they are all paw picked by me and have been described as “exactly what free on-line games should be, fun, free and fantastic.”

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There is something very special about Chesterfield, UK

As you can see from the picture and the title of this little blogette there is indeed something rather special about Chesterfield in the UK and that is the existence of Humped Puffins, yes that is right apparently Chesterfield has a thriving community of Humped Puffins and is as far as I know the only place in the world with any Humped Puffins at all.

Chesterfield England where Humped Puffins are rather common

To be honest I didn’t know that there we such creatures but what do I know there are, and it would seem (again from the picture) that they enjoy crossing roads. I wonder if they have other hobbies?


About the Author

The Cat Portrait2

The Cat is one of the most successful feline authors in the history of Catkind. His sharp elegant wit has produced the bestselling book ‘Getting Out – Excerpts from a Cat’s Diary’ and of course the much plagiarised gag of the same name which appears on all of the funniest joke sites on the internet.

Copies of the Cat’s masterpiece of feline literature ‘Getting Out – Excerpts from a Cat’s Diary’ and his latest wonderful book ‘The Cat’s Travelogue’ can be purchased at a bookstore near you or from the internet at Amazon.com and here for the Travelogue The Cat’s Travelogue Paperback Edition or at what The Cat calls his www – wickedly wonderful website here www.thecatsdiary.com where you can not only learn more about me the genius Cat but also play my games they are all paw picked by me and have been described as “exactly what free on-line games should be, fun, free and fantastic.”

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Germany in all its literary glory

As followers of my blog may remember this weekend I followed in the footsteps of the Red Army and progressed through Poland, into the old GDR (East Germany sans Erich Honnecker obviously) and then on to Berlin.

Unlike the Red Army, after the war, I returned home, but I have come back with some great pictures.

Here is one of Görlitz, a medieval town that lies on the banks of the river Lusatian Neisse. Today they say that Görlitz is opposite the Polish town of Zgorzelec but actually they were the same town until 1945 but that doesn’t detract from its beauty.

Gorlitz

The town is so picturesque that several movies have been shot there, ‘The Reader,’ ‘Inglourious Basterds’ and ‘Around the World in 80 Days’ to name the only three I know, mind you I can dazzle you a little and show I was listening to the chap who was telling me all of this and now mention that Quentin Tarantino shot the movie-in-a-movie ‘Stolz der Nation (Pride of the Nation)’ for ‘Inglourious Basterds.’ Unfortunately for Görlitz the location of the story is Sicily!

The folks who made ‘Around the World in 80 Days’ used Görlitz as a location and shot the ‘Paris’ footage there, if you see what I mean.

So now onto the sign which I thought was rather jolly! It’s in German, a language that likes to bolt words together like oh I don’t know um… ‘Schwangerschaftverhütungsmittel’ which means contraceptive or even better ‘Unkameradschaftlichkeit’ which is a form (as if there are different types!!!) of unsporting-like behaviour!

Don t miss this in Germany

Yes you read it correctly and no I am not going illuminate here, I think it’s sufficient to say that the Germans have a ‘place’ for people who are old and a little unsavoury – must be all that sauerkraut I imagine!


About the Author

The Cat Portrait2

The Cat is one of the most successful feline authors in the history of Catkind. His sharp elegant wit has produced the bestselling book ‘Getting Out – Excerpts from a Cat’s Diary’ and of course the much plagiarised gag of the same name which appears on all of the funniest joke sites on the internet.

Copies of the Cat’s masterpiece of feline literature ‘Getting Out – Excerpts from a Cat’s Diary’ and his latest wonderful book ‘The Cat’s Travelogue’ can be purchased at a bookstore near you or from the internet at Amazon.com and here for the Travelogue The Cat’s Travelogue Paperback Edition or at what The Cat calls his www – wickedly wonderful website here www.thecatsdiary.com where you can not only learn more about me the genius Cat but also play my games they are all paw picked by me and have been described as “exactly what free on-line games should be, fun, free and fantastic.”

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Putin and Vodka the truth at last!

There has been talk recently that Comrade Putin is, even at this early stage in his dictatorship, planning for his retirement and investigating the possibilities of launching his own brand of Vodka.

Comrade Putin

I would like to here and now put the record straight on this and tell you what he told me in a slurred telephone conversation recently. He “is not thinking just yet about anything but running Russia.” So I suppose you could say he was “Putin it off!”

Putinoff Vodka

I am, I have to say not convinced and if you happen to live in Europe check out the supermarket shelves of Lidl and tell me that this is not a clever bit of trial marketing!

PS.

Sorry about the old photo Vlad, but doesn’t it remind you of the old days?


About the Author

The Cat Portrait2

The Cat is one of the most successful feline authors in the history of Catkind. His sharp elegant wit has produced the bestselling book ‘Getting Out – Excerpts from a Cat’s Diary’ and of course the much plagiarised gag of the same name which appears on all of the funniest joke sites on the internet.

Copies of the Cat’s masterpiece of feline literature ‘Getting Out – Excerpts from a Cat’s Diary’ and his latest wonderful book ‘The Cat’s Travelogue’ can be purchased at a bookstore near you or from the internet at Amazon.com and here for the Travelogue The Cat’s Travelogue Paperback Edition or at what The Cat calls his www – wickedly wonderful website here www.thecatsdiary.com where you can not only learn more about me the genius Cat but also play my games they are all paw picked by me and have been described as “exactly what free on-line games should be, fun, free and fantastic.”

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The recession starts to bite in China

You have to hand it to the world’s future overlords, now that the west have stopped buying the electronic rubbish that the Chinese make so badly, so quickly and that last for such a short amount of time when you take them out of the box, they are starting to rely on their more traditional skills such as running a Chinese restaurant.

Desperate for your custom

It is such a shame that their advertising reads like the written instructions that come straight out of box with their broken electronic gadgets isn’t it?

Or, and this idea might just make your brain tingle, have the Chinese finally worked out that their, oh let’s call it “Chinglish” has a certain charm and should be used in advertising? I hope not because they are wrong surely.


About the Author

The Cat Portrait2

The Cat is one of the most successful feline authors in the history of Catkind. His sharp elegant wit has produced the bestselling book ‘Getting Out – Excerpts from a Cat’s Diary’ and of course the much plagiarised gag of the same name which appears on all of the funniest joke sites on the internet.

Copies of the Cat’s masterpiece of feline literature ‘Getting Out – Excerpts from a Cat’s Diary’ and his latest wonderful book ‘The Cat’s Travelogue’ can be purchased at a bookstore near you or from the internet at Amazon.com and here for the Travelogue The Cat’s Travelogue Paperback Edition or at what The Cat calls his www – wickedly wonderful website here www.thecatsdiary.com where you can not only learn more about me the genius Cat but also play my games they are all paw picked by me and have been described as “exactly what free on-line games should be, fun, free and fantastic.”

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Delicious “Lamp” and other Turkish delicacies

Lamp how yummy Istanbul

I believe that “Lamp” is something of a delicacy in Turkey and as you can see this restaurant in Istanbul offers not only “Lamp Chops” which I am sure are wonderful, but also “Lamp On Skewer” which has to be sublime and just perfect for a light lunch – sorry couldn’t resist that!

You know in Uzbekistan they cook “Lamp” on a skewer but like us, and unlike the Turks, they call the meat ‘Lamb,’ in fact to be absolutely correct they call the ‘dish’ (if that is what you can call meat on a skewer of course) “Shashlik,” and the meat қўй гўшти.

Actually it was the Uzbeks Imperial overlords (the Russians) who ‘encouraged’ the Uzbeks to call қўй гўшти – ‘Shashlik’ using latin characters as us westerners would write it or ‘шашлык’ in cyrillic letters. To be honest the Uzbeks have always called Shashlik ‘кабоб’ which doesn’t make it taste anything less than wonderful. It just makes it very confusing, doesn’t it?

Shashlik

When you eat Shashlik, шашлык or кабоб you generally eat it with Lepyoshka, (I think we won’t bother with the Russian and Uzbek translations for the sake of the writer’s sanity it should be enough to say that) it is a wonderful ‘solid’ bread baked in a stone oven. The dough is usually stuck to the inside of the oven, on the walls.

Lepyoshka in Oven

The oven above is a very modern version of a tradition Lepyoshka oven, as you can see by gas lines on the floor. Tradition Lepyoshka ovens are usually more cave-like because it’s rather likely that they have been hacked out of rock and have a receptacle under the floor for a fire.

Here is a Lepyoshka I nibbled earlier!

Leprocha

I could of course provide you all with the ingredients for the marinade that you coat Sashlik in before you barbecue it and the recipe for Lepyoshka then go on to describe how and why there is a pattern of ‘dots’ on the surface of the Lepyoshka and their significance, but I don’t want to come over all ‘Jamie Oliver’ on you do I? That would be awful.


About the Author

The Cat Portrait2

The Cat is one of the most successful feline authors in the history of Catkind. His sharp elegant wit has produced the bestselling book ‘Getting Out – Excerpts from a Cat’s Diary’ and of course the much plagiarised gag of the same name which appears on all of the funniest joke sites on the internet.

Copies of the Cat’s masterpiece of feline literature ‘Getting Out – Excerpts from a Cat’s Diary’ and his latest wonderful book ‘The Cat’s Travelogue’ can be purchased at a bookstore near you or from the internet at Amazon.com and here for the Travelogue The Cat’s Travelogue Paperback Edition or at what The Cat calls his www – wickedly wonderful website here www.thecatsdiary.com where you can not only learn more about me the genius Cat but also play my games they are all paw picked by me and have been described as “exactly what free on-line games should be, fun, free and fantastic.”

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Being ‘made’ to enjoy in India

Quite often you see a sign and it speaks for itself, I have a feeling this one from a restaurant in Mumbai doesn’t know when to shut up don’t you?

We will make you have a good time India


About the Author

The Cat Portrait2

The Cat is one of the most successful feline authors in the history of Catkind. His sharp elegant wit has produced the bestselling book ‘Getting Out – Excerpts from a Cat’s Diary’ and of course the much plagiarised gag of the same name which appears on all of the funniest joke sites on the internet.

Copies of the Cat’s masterpiece of feline literature ‘Getting Out – Excerpts from a Cat’s Diary’ and his latest wonderful book ‘The Cat’s Travelogue’ can be purchased at a bookstore near you or from the internet at Amazon.com and here for the Travelogue The Cat’s Travelogue Paperback Edition or at what The Cat calls his www – wickedly wonderful website here www.thecatsdiary.com where you can not only learn more about me the genius Cat but also play my games they are all paw picked by me and have been described as “exactly what free on-line games should be, fun, free and fantastic.”

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A end to the economic crisis

I heard that in Britain the idiot who runs the country’s finances is going to lend the banks, the very people who caused the banking crisis, between (a maximum of) 80 and 140 billion pounds sterling, depending upon the newspaper you read. The timing is probably dependant upon the rate of decline in the governments’ popularity.

This started me thinking what are other countries doing to alleviate problems with their economies? So I began looking around the world to find out and the results were quite surprising.

First I saw that Spain’s football team had rather cleverly beaten the Republic of Ireland’s team, which in itself, I understand, is not a hard task but enables the nation’s team to progress into the last ‘8,’ being just a simple Cat I have no idea what that means but I understand that it’s something that every European country desires currently and only the Germans (as usual) are assured of!

In the end my search brought me to the picture below, it comes from one of my favourite targets China, and is a menu suggestion for families trying to eek out their food budget and handed down from the very top – that’s the corrupt little fat geezers who used to wear red army style uniforms to show they were true communists, but now wear shiny Armani suits to prove that they are kleptocrats.

What is it with the Chinese

Whether the rest of the world will start tucking into Roast Bowel and Egg is difficult to say because I think only the Chinese can afford the Egg as an ingredient because they are the ones hoarding the rest of the world’s cash.


About the Author

The Cat Portrait2

The Cat is one of the most successful feline authors in the history of Catkind. His sharp elegant wit has produced the bestselling book ‘Getting Out – Excerpts from a Cat’s Diary’ and of course the much plagiarised gag of the same name which appears on all of the funniest joke sites on the internet.

Copies of the Cat’s masterpiece of feline literature ‘Getting Out – Excerpts from a Cat’s Diary’ and his latest wonderful book ‘The Cat’s Travelogue’ can be purchased at a bookstore near you or from the internet at Amazon.com and here for the Travelogue The Cat’s Travelogue Paperback Edition or at what The Cat calls his www – wickedly wonderful website here www.thecatsdiary.com where you can not only learn more about me the genius Cat but also play my games they are all paw picked by me and have been described as “exactly what free on-line games should be, fun, free and fantastic.”

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It’s ice cream, but not as we know it!

I am not kidding you ‘Wanka’ ice cream is big in China especially where this picture was taken in Shanghai and although you probably won’t believe it the Chinese have no idea that what they have called their favourite ice cream is more than a little off putting to western tastes.

This really is an Ice Cream Shanghai

But then this lack of comprehension that their sought after ice cream is a source of mirth and usually prompts westerners to ask, when they see the sign above, if “anyone wants a …” and then collapse with laughter is no surprise really. The Chinese are a nation of strange people with a strange language who if you remember managed to take offence when Coca Cola started advertising their tooth rotting beverage in China all because “Coca Cola” translated phonetically means “bite the wax tadpole.” Yummy!

Words, like signs are powerful things in the wrong hands as this Cat knows tee hee, I am something of a master of feline literature as you know if you have read my PR, let alone my peerless books and since learning some English I have progressed to other bits of languages from around the world which I mainly picked up when researching my latest book ‘The Cat’s Travelogue.’

In fact I tended, because of the situations I found myself in, to learn only commands and more often than not swear words and can now fluently swear in dozens of languages, though until recently I hadn’t learned any Chinese swear words, happily I resolved that by learning the worst swear word in the Chinese language, would you like to know what it is? Of course you would! Well it’s “Democracy!”


About the Author

The Cat Portrait2

The Cat is one of the most successful feline authors in the history of Catkind. His sharp elegant wit has produced the bestselling book ‘Getting Out – Excerpts from a Cat’s Diary’ and of course the much plagiarised gag of the same name which appears on all of the funniest joke sites on the internet.

Copies of the Cat’s masterpiece of feline literature ‘Getting Out – Excerpts from a Cat’s Diary’ and his latest wonderful book ‘The Cat’s Travelogue’ can be purchased at a bookstore near you or from the internet at Amazon.com and here for the Travelogue The Cat’s Travelogue Paperback Edition or at what The Cat calls his www – wickedly wonderful website here www.thecatsdiary.com where you can not only learn more about me the genius Cat but also play my games they are all paw picked by me and have been described as “exactly what free on-line games should be, fun, free and fantastic.”

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