stormsworder's definitions

justice

Something only people who can afford it ever get. This generally involves lawyers in court playing word games and generally twisting everything the accused/victim/witness says. That's assuming the case even reaches court. Thanks to the Con party, the UK legal system is burdened down by the CPS (that's Criminal Protection Service) who tie the police up with red tape, give them countless pointless forms to fill in and generally make sure as few cases as possible reach court.

Mother: "It's about time you stopped believing in Father Christmas, the Tooth Fairy, fairies at the bottom of the garden and monsters under the bed".
Son: "But they're all real!"
Mother: "And then there's justice".
Son: "Oh come on. I stopped believing in that when I was about four and a half.

by Stormsworder November 23, 2006

snout

1: An animal's nose. Also used as an insult for someone with a big nose, or to describe a greedy businessman (eg: snout in the trough).
2: A cigarette (other slang terms for this include fag, cancer stick and coffin nail).
3: A police informant. The term presumably derives from the informant 'sniffing out villains'. Other slang terms for a police informant include grass, stool-pigeon and copper's nark.

"Getting snout in jail is a nightmare if you used to be a police snout".

by Stormsworder June 7, 2007

creationism

This is a belief which was invented to explain why we are all here. Basically it states that the world was created by some greater being (God). But then who created God? The theory of Creationsim falls flat through stating the Earth is thousands of years old, despite the fact it was proved to be billions of years old through scientific research. Creationists mock the theory of evolution and condemn the teaching of evolution at school. Evolution seems like the most sensible theory to me. Ah, but then howcome there are so many gaps in the evolutionary pathway? For one thing, it is a real fluke that an animal survives in fossil form, a billion-to-one chance requiring exactly the right geological conditions. Yes, we have a lot of skeletons in museums, but they are nothing when you consider how many animals have existed over the history of time. For another thing, it has been suggested that evolution takes place in jumps rather than gradually (a new, more evolved species suddenly starts appearing, gradualy takes over the older species). As for the teaching of evolution at school, it is taught as a theory. You don't have to believe in it. On the other hand, teaching Creationism at school involves indoctrinating children. I still remember being told that "God is always watching us and can punish us if we act or think wrongly". It makes me laugh when certain Creationists complain about CCTV cameras everywhere or the government spying on us all. Beliefs like Creationism were the Big Brother and the CCTV cameras of their day, were used to control the working classes. Now George W Bush is talking about teaching Creationism in schools in the USA instead of evolution. I can't help feeling all he really wants to do is create a brainwashed army to fight a religious war against Muslims.

A certain Creationism-believing journalist equates anyone who believes in evolution with genocidal murderers, tells us how narrow-minded they are. That's funny, because the religious people I've met are some of the most narrow-minded, snobbish, hypoctrical bigots I've ever had the misfortune the come across.

by Stormsworder December 7, 2006

education

Education is what the current UK government and its puppet-masters want only the children of the rich to have. Britain is in very real danger of ending up with an entire generation of uneducated underclass. The middle school I went to years ago was practically a borstal, where bullying went ignored, where teachers either blamed the victims or carried on smoking their cigarettes. The deputy headmaster was a stroppy, loud-mouthed oaf and the headmistress was a poisonous old witch who threw people out of assembly for not standing up quickly enough. People were reprimanded for being late, but I can remember being sent to see the deputy head who told me off (naughty boy, arriving late indeed, etc) and then arriving at class for registration to find out the teacher hadn't arrived yet. Said teacher was forever late, and we had to stand outside the building waiting for her to arrive to let us into class no matter what the weather was like. Once she turned up, tardy as ever, saying "you're late, class". In another school everyone was called to assambly once to be given a stern lecture about bad language. That had real moral authority, considering more than one teacher used the f-word in front of the class. I don't know quite what those schools are like by now. I shudder to think. I know of teachers who say how impossible to teach anyone. What with the 'rights without responsibility' culture which goes hand-in-hand with New Labour, no teacher is allowed to reprimand any bully or disruptive individual.

So I'm sure school teaches us. It teaches us that authority is a case of hypocrisy and double-standards, that the guilty are rewarded and the innocent made to feel they are worthless scum.

These days standards have fallen to the point where this country's education system is the laughing stock of the world. Once it was the envy of everyone. People with the money to do so all used to come to the UK to be educated in our universities. Now, thanks to a succession of useless governments, everyone in the UK with the money to do so goes abroad to university. Tony Bliar and his masters con the public into thinking the UK's children are educated by making exams so easy a 5-year-old can attain a dozen A-stars (despite calling for education to be down to the lowest denominator, New Labour ministers send their own children to expensive private schools). And only the rich can go to university. Anyone else will find themselves in debt for the rest of their natural lives.

"Here's a piece of education. This school was named after a lord mayor".
"Good grief. If he was alive today he'd sue the place for every penny. Fancy having your name associated with a dump like that".

by Stormsworder November 16, 2006

tarantula

Originally the name 'tarantula' was given to a species of wolf spider in Italy which was blamed for venomous spider bites which locals tried to cure by performing a dance. In fact the spider bites were inflicted by a species of widow spider. But the widow spiders are small and look insignificant, whilst wolf spiders are bigger and hairy, so the wolf spider was blamed. To this day many people judge how venomous a spider is on its size, which is completely inaccurate. Wolf spiders are harmless. These days the name 'tarantula' is used to describe any spider of the Theraphosid family. This family has something like 800 known species in Africa, Mid and South America and Asia, with many more no doubt still undiscovered. The tarantulas (or Theraphosids) are the giants of the spider world, the biggest with leg-spans which could cover a dinner plate (a Goliath Birdeater with a 12-inch leg-span I think is the record). Though some tarantulas live in trees, most are ground-dwellers and the live in burrows. They line the entrances of their burrows with silk. Though tarantulas have no senses of hearing or smell and very poor vision, they have a very developed sense of touch. The hairs on their legs can detect the slightest air or ground vibration, and the lines of silk they lay down around their burrows are almost like extentions of their legs. Any small animal touching one of those threads will instantly alert the tarantula. Tarantulas feed on anything from crickets, locusts and cockroaches to rodents, small snakes and small lizards. Despite the fact they are often known as 'bird-eating spiders' in the US, it is probably very rare for a tarantula to eat a bird, though tree-climbing tarantulas can easily help themselves to a chick when a parent bird is away from its nest. With their basic webs they are thought to be the earliest form of spider, date back over 350 million years. When threatened or annoyed, tarantulas rear up on their back legs and bare their fangs. Some can even make a hissing/rustling noise by rubbing bristles on their jaws together. Tarantulas do not eat solid food. When a tarantula feeds, it injects a digestive fluid into its prey through its fangs. The prey is then gradually liquidised and absorbed into the mouth in a similar way to water being absorbed into a sponge. Tarantulas breathe through gill-like openings in the underside of their abdomens called 'book lungs'. When tarantulas mate, the male inserts sperm from his pedipalps ('feelers') into an opening under the female's body. Female tarantulas are larger and stronger than the more spindly-looking males, can live anything up to ten or twenty years, maybe longer depending on the species. Once the male has reached full size he can't hope to live eighteen months at the most. Despite the hooks on his front legs (for holding the female's fangs) he maybe be eaten after (or even before) mating. Tarantulas shed their skins, on average once a year. They can cast off a damaged limb but re-grow it gradually, the new limb becoming bigger every time their shed their skin. The tarantula skin is an exoskeleton, made of keratin (the same material human nails are made of). Despite the fear and horror they install in so many people (who've learnt most of what they know about tarantulas from the movies) tarantulas have venom which is unable to endanger human life. In fact, there is no record of anyone being killed by a tarantula bite. Some New World species have hairs on their abdomens which they can flick off with their back legs. These can cause an itching/burning sensation if they come into contact with human skin. But let's be honest, tarantulas are probably more afraid of us than we are of them, and they are a major controller of destructive pests like cockroaches and locusts. In fact tarantulas make excellent pets. They are more likely to run away rather than attack, unless they are cornered. Tarantulas are certainly not made of rubber, as some movies would have us believe. They are just as much flesh and blood as we are.

A tarantula bite dangerous? No. Its barnet's worse than its bite.

by StormSworder August 15, 2006

Bogey

Bogey or bogie has several meanings including:
A: Bodily mucus in the nostrils.
B: A golf score.
C: Nickname for American actor Humphrey Bogart.
D: Chassis or framework holding the wheels of a train.

"I'm a great fan of locomotives. Show me a bogey and I'm in paradise".

by Stormsworder April 5, 2009

postal

The UK postal system is, like just about everything else in the UK after the socialist/communist/annarchist revolution here (not to mention the privatisation of the postal system courtesy of some money-minded old Tory crook), the laughing stock of the world. Important parcels and letters frequently go missing. I must have lost thousands of pounds worth of goods in the post in the last seven years, and it's not really surprising given that the postal workers of today don't seem to care a fig about their customers. Last year, for example, I was out when a parcel was delivered, so the parcel was returned to the depot. But, instead of making a record of it, the postman involved had simply thrown it in some storage warehouse and nobody knew where it was. It was only through persistence that it didn't join the other items which seem to be gone forever. Whilst I was in the depot, there was a woman complaining about a postman who'd forced a parcel of hers through her letterbox and, as a result, the contents of it (photos) had all been bent out of shape. I'm forever getting complaints from irate people who've never received the cheques I've sent. One of my Dad's friends used to be a postal worker and apparently, when the sacks of letters are emptied, there's always a few left behind which are disregarded. Smaller post offices are constantly being closed as centralisation takes over. You might as well just put your letter in a bottle and throw it in the nearest river.

Seller: "Where's my cheque gone?"
Buyer: "I sent it three weeks ago, but unfortunately I was stupid enough to trust the UK's postal system, so it's probably in the bin by now".

by Stormsworder November 23, 2006