Looking for meaning over the dinner table

Toronto: uncaring public laugh at sleeping TTC ticket collector

The Amalgamated Transit Union competes with the soporific ticket collector to see who can be funnier:

The Amalgamated Transit Union says it is ‘‘discouraging’’ that TTC riders did not check on the well-being of a collector at the centre of a media firestorm after he was photographed apparently asleep on the job……. The reports that passengers were laughing at him as they passed by the booth makes this even more disturbing.

The Amalgamated Transit Union want to reassure the public that the tram drivers never fall asleep on the job and are disturbed that anyone would have the effrontery to suggest it.

Advertisement

Church fetes ‘radicalising Anglicans’ claim

Anglican extremism in action:

An extremist Anglican group is infiltrating church fetes and vicarage tea parties in a plot to radicalise churchgoers, according to the anti-terrorist squad.

The group, MoreT4Uvicar, is believed to have close links with Al-cester, with some members allegedly attending training camps in the town.

But the group says that the training camps only provide religious instruction, choir practice and bell-ringing classes.

It’s alleged that the money raised at the events is laundered and used to build and maintain strategically placed fortified stone towers throughout the country.

‘We’re concerned about MoreT4Uvicar and the paramilitary infrastructure being built right under our noses,’ said the head of the anti-terrorist squad. ‘We want to ensure that innocent church-going folk understand the dangers of paying 20p for a slice of Victoria Sponge to these people.’

Bishop Michael Bird preaches on eggsellence in ministry

What atheists need is a sense of humour

How times have changed

I’ve never liked ties much, but this antique advertisement for them tickles my fancy:

Chasing bubbles

This is how we cure our dog’s bad breath:

This morning’s sermon

The most pernicious phrase of the month

The winner is a staple of all authentic Anglican Machiavellianism. It is:

The Listening Process.

The winning phrase combines all the necessary qualities:

• It beguiles the naïve into taking it at face value; really, no-one is listening because they are either asleep or talking.
• It is more disingenuous than Fred Hiltz’s smile.
• Its potential to stun is rivalled only by a taser.
• After half an hour it causes a nose-bleed.
• Like any phrase ending in “process” it is designed to prevent the previous word of the phrase occurring.

Directions to an Anglican church close to you

Isabel redux

We are not amused:

Had she known, Windsor Castle’s most famous resident would not have been amused.

A couple were caught having sex on a grass bank outside the Queen’s residence yesterday – as hundreds of shocked tourists looked on in horror and amusement.

Apparently unable to control themselves, the drunken pair stripped naked and began having sex in front of the Castle’s Garter Tower in full view of a busy road and shops.

Amused Japanese tourists jostled for position as they filmed the couple.

Clement Freud (24 April 1924 – 15 April 2009). R.I.P.

One of the funniest men on BBC radio.

Garden gnomes for the prurient rustic

A gardener in the West Midlands, UK is inspiring licentiousness in the population of the tiny village of Hunnington by displaying naked garden gnomes. The town council, in a last ditch effort to prevent the village sinking into a slough of Rabelaisian orgiastic abandon, has ordered that the gnomes be robed.

Friendly, unassuming and often cheeky, garden gnomes delight visitors to gardens all over the country, and are rarely a cause for complaint.

But widow Sandra Smith has had to go clothes shopping after a neighbour complained her gnomes were showing just a bit too much bare-faced cheek.

The naked gnomes – which have been pride of place in her West Midlands garden for 15 years – now sport an extra layer after a call from a council officer.

The gymnophobic neighbour has complained:

‘They are childish and I think it pathetic that they are in a front garden in full view of everyone.’

That may be so, but the real question is, is the censorship of nude gnomes a threat to cultural diversity?

Me Church

The Fashionable Vicar

The latest fashions among the clergy were on display as local priests swapped pulpits for the catwalk.

Fred, trying not to look too butch, strutted confidently along the catwalk modelling his flowing vestments in Winter White with blue accents by Wipple of Exeter.

When a bright-eyed, breathlessly flushed Fred was interviewed later, he confided that “Canadian clergy are no longer willing to put up with dirty, worn-out robes.” Gracefully twirling, he told us that “our women clergy have brought a fresh new look to garments. We call it Fresh Expressions.”