Hilarity ensues

1. Paula Bennett the Social Development Minister has set up a Welfare Working Group to give her independent, objective advice that the social welfare system is suddenly in crisis and urgently needs to be disbanded in order to preserve it. In particular she has appointed "freelance consultant and independent author" Professor Peter Saunders.

That would be this Peter Saunders, from the Centre for Independent Studies:

It is "immoral ... to take money from people who maintain themselves and families ... and redistribute it to people who have no intention of even trying to achieve self-reliance".

2. Questioned about Saunders' views, she praised his academic standing and referred MPs to his book Welfare to Work in Practice.

3. This confused MPs who read the book because it promotes diametrically opposite views:

"There may be advantages in allowing those with the weakest attachment to ... work to 'opt out' and live on an 'unconditional basic income' financed by the rest of society."

The author turns out to be a different Professor Peter Saunders.

4. The latest statement from Paula Bennett insists that she has appointed the Saunders she wanted, i.e. the rightwing hack on wingnut welfare,* and it was only her rationale for appointing him that was confused.

Journalists are not sure which Paula Bennett issued this statement.

There is nothing I could add that would improve this story so instead here's a Muybridge animation of a zombie "Stuporous Melancholia". I would be stupefied and melancholic too if someone stole my clothes and took photos of me.

* Believes that the working class are poor because they have inherited lower intelligence. Lauded by the Murdoch Press. Dropped out of Australian academia to write a novel about the Islamic Apocalypse featuring a failed Australian academic as the hero. Good enough for advising the NZ government.

Robots in the house: Kindly or killers?!?!

The BBC is warning of killer robots in our houses which might be just trying to help and then everything goes black, your worship.
Also they note that after a special system is turned on the robots became sub lethal in their helping.
1) read books by an certain Dr Asimov to see how to get robots into the house
2) maybe if you didn't try to jump on the robots bones alla the time it wouldn't try to kill you
3)they will just learn to turn off the "Mustn't kill the masters" programme.
All in all, it will be like having a slightly stronger Mrs. Cat around with the added point that it might be helpful occasionally, just before it cuts your arm off.

Walkin' on the beaches, Pluckin' off the leeches

Tyrannobdella rex is Latin for "tyrant leech king."

"Tyrant Leech King" is of course the best bootleg King Crimson album EVAH.

Not satisfied with describing a hither-to unknown Peruvian Nose Leech, the researchers reconstructed a phylogenetic tree and concluded that various other leeches around the world that "specialize in attacking mammalian mucous membranes" form a distinct family, the Praobdellidae:

T. rex is most closely related to the Mexican leech, Pintobdella chiapasensis, which parasitizes the nasal passages of tapirs. Another close relative, known as the Terrible Ferocious Leech, Dinobdella ferox, feeds on mucous membranes in the rectum, vagina or upper airway in humans and other mammals.

A moralist given to speeches
Against porn stars who use anal bleaches
Amended his views
In Peruvian loos
Where he learned about mucosal leeches.

BONUS: Report on the New Zealand leech Hirudobdella antipodium.

While leeches may not have the public appeal of colourful birds or the liquid-amber eyed fur seal, they are a distinctive and unique part of New Zealand’s biodiversity, a taonga, and require protection.

Camouflage *

These three kangaroos are trying to disguise themselves as tigers.
Quite frankly they're not fooling anyone.

* This was an awfully strange Marine.

No expense spared to bring UK results TO YOU, because you're worth it.!

Kids today don't know how easy they have it

Back when AK and I were young, bars were rife with White Slavers drink-spikers poised to dope any unattended glasses with tasteless, untraceable Asiatic poisons that would rob female victims of the power to resist their vile intentions.

The phenomenon was not restricted to New Zealand, and research reveals that in UK bars you could buy spike-preventing clip-on nipples for your RTD bottle. If you were worried about your beer they would probably serve it in a sippy cup.

Police stoked the moral panic with an advertising campaign, warning about the rising prevalence of such crimes,* although they could never make up their minds whether the drug most deserving of concern was Rohypnol or GHB. When hair and blood samples from victims were tested for both drugs and the results remained stubbornly negative, this merely meant that the White Slavers drink-spikers were staying one step ahead of forensic pharmacology, with their access to novel designer molecules only going to show how perfidious and insidiously menacing they were. Little was said about the presence in many beverages of an inhibition-lowering, oblivion-hastening chemical called 'ethanol'.
These days, however, when robots from Venus** want to change the minds of nice Earth ladies and turn them into Leopard Women, they have the Operating Cave to do all the work for them.

But you try telling young people what it used to be like and they don't believe you.

* A skeptic notes: There is a lot less work involved in publicising and investigating imaginery crimes than real ones.

** If you look closely, the rivets on the robots spell out POOP in Braille.

Dominance... submission... radios appear

Anyone fool enough to pay good money over the interlattice for the full one-hour session of "strict discipline" from "Madame La Tex" on the basis of the pictures on her web-site should not go running for legal redress when her actual presence fails to fulfill all their expectations. I have no sympathy for them.

UPDATE: Retitled on the insistence of ZRM in comments.

Outsourced Skull-Blogging

He walked back to the dresser, opened the lower part of it, and took out a little chest till he put it on the table for my inspection. Never in my life did I inspect anything more ornamental and well-made. It was a brown chest like those owned by seafaring men or lascars from Singapore, but it was diminutive in a very perfect way as if you were looking at a full-size one through the wrong end of a spy-glass. It was about a foot in height, perfect in its proportions and without fault in workmanship. There were indents and carving and fanciful excoriations and designs on every side of it and there was a bend on the lid that gave the article great distinction. At every corner there was a shiny brass corner-piece and on the lid there were brass corner-pieces beautifully wrought and curved impeccably against the wood. The whole thing had the dignity and the satisfying quality of true art.

'There now,' said MacCruiskeen.

'It is nearly too nice,' I said at last, 'to talk about it.'

'I spent two years manufacturing it when I was a lad,' said MacCruiskeen, 'and it still takes me to the fair.'

'It is unmentionable,' I said.

'Very nearly,' said MacCruiskeen.

The two of us then started looking at it and we looked at it for five minutes so hard that it seemed to dance on the table and look even smaller than it might be.

'I do not often look at boxes or chests,' I said, simply, 'but this is the most beautiful box I have ever seen and I will always remember it. There might be something inside it?'

'There might be,' said MacCruiskeen.

He went to the table and put his hands around the article in a fawning way as if he were caressing a sheepdog and he opened the lid with a little key but shut it down again before I could inspect the inside of it.

'I will tell you a story and give you a synopsis of the ramification of the little plot,' he said. 'When I had the chest made and finished, I tried to think what I would keep in it and what I would use it for at all. First I thought of them letters from Bridie, the ones on the blue paper with the strong smell but I did not think it would be anything but a sacrilege in the end because there was hot bits in them letters. Do you comprehend the trend of my observations?'

'I do,' I answered.

'Then there was my studs and the enamel badge and my presentation iron-pencil with a screw on the end of it to push the point out, an intricate article full of machinery and a Present from Southport. All these things are what are called Examples of the Machine Age.'

'They would be contrary to the spirit of the chest,' I said.

'They would be indeed. Then there was my razor and the spare plate in case I was presented with an accidental bash on the gob in the execution of me duty...'

'But not them.'

'Not them. Then there was my certificates and me cash and the picture of Peter the Hermit and the brass thing with straps that I found on the road one night near Matthew O'Carahan's. But not them either.'

'It is a hard conundrum,' I said.

'In the end I found there was only one thing to do to put myself right with my private conscience.'

'It is a great thing that you found the right answer at all,' I countered.

'I decided to myself,' said MacCruiskeen, ' that the only sole correct thing to contain in the chest was another chest of the same make but littler in cubic dimension.'

-------------------------------------------

Zombie readers might have ideas of their own about what could go in the chest.

Janitor of Lunacy

We have received a number of complaints about Mr O'Blate's behaviour and we may soon be advertising for a new janitor for the Riddled office. He does not seem to be the right kind of person to leave in charge of our Van der Graaf generators. I would like to emphasise that I was down at the pub during not available to contribute to his job interview.

Let us know if he starts going on again about "feeling the strong planetary vibrations of Uranus".

The same thing we do every night, Pinky

The parts of Pinky and The Brain are usually played by mice, but here at the Riddled Amateur Dramatic Society we do not shy away from unconventional casting decisions.

Rule 34

Porn used to be a highly segmented field, catering to extremely specialised tastes.
The subsequent scene, in which the Leopard Women discharge comet fire from their head guns, is too graphic for Riddled.

Cutting-edge biting satyrs

Literary cross-overs and mash-ups are still popular, sez Another Kiwi, so for the next Riddled amateur dramatics evening we've decided to splice H. G. Wells with Jonathan Swift, and stage "Lemuel Gulliver, Time Traveller".

It will be all cutting-edge biting satire about NZ current events.

Gulliver will question his hosts about the report into New Zealanders' drinking habits that recently advised the excisemen to raise the tax on alcohol, and the inn-keepers to keep shorter hours. When the previous government requested this report (he will ask), did they go to a panel of eminent doctors, with expertise in whether people are really drinking too much; or psychologists, with insights into the drinkers' motivations and how to change their behaviour; or sociologists, who might point fingers at advertisers and brewers?

"What strange ideas you have, Captain Gulliver; your head is full of fancies and megrims. Naturally the government went to the Law Commission. The best group to decide on the severity and causes of a social problem is obviously an association of lawyers whose qualifications amount to success in arguing with other lawyers."

--------------------------------------------

If they had requested a report on alcohol use from the Institute of Architects, the resulting advice would have been "Fill up any open public space with buildings", but fortunately the Institute was already snowed under with similar requests from the Wellington City Council.

Below: Gulliver explores the Time Tunnel.
That figure looks somehow famil...
Shush, have another beer.

Boned like a saint With the consciousness of a snake

The finances are so tight that the [Washington Times] hasn't paid some of its bills or tended to basic maintenance issues -- such as hiring an exterminator to deal with mice and snakes sneaking into the building on New York Avenue in Northeast.
[...] "There was a three-foot-long black snake in the main conference room the other day. We have snakes in the newsroom -- the real live variety, at least. One of the security people gallantly removed it."

Our artist's reconstruction shows the secret discussions in which the director Nicholas Chiaia (right) rebuffs a request from the editor Sam Dealey (left) for an extension of the US$35 million / year subsidy that keeps the Washington Times going.


I am shocked, shocked that a US newspaper, founded to promote the right-wing political views of a South Korean billionaire conman / religious leader, turns out have buggerall readers and be commercially unviable. It is almost as if the journal's real target audience consisted of journalists and editors from other papers.

H/t Snorghagen.
Here at Riddled we have previously called our readers' attention to the threat posed by butt-snakes, but did anyone listen?!

Knowing our luck it will make olive oil

In surprise move today, The New Zild government announced that exploratory mining operations in Whangaehu National park (not it's real name) had revealed significant finds of vegetables. The photograph shows the cores of parent rock that were found, in the words of Gerry Brownlee the Minister for Wanton Destruction Mining, "quite close to the surface so that they haven't had time to turn into coal yet." 

Minister Brownlee further explained that people were finding fossils all the time and this meant that there would be oil in the parks. "Besides" he added " it's just a bunch of old trees" and that "Miners are the real conservationists".

Minister Brownlee further said that New Zild is dependent on finding it's own minerals and oil since they were not lucky like people in America who had oil washing ashore on their beaches.

"I'll have to learn the word for an irrational fear of finding a two-toed sloth in the latrine when you really really have to use the latrine"

If anyone has previously made a horror movie called AAAAIIIII that centres on a albino two-toed sloth prowling the sewers of New York City, then I'm wasting my time working on the script.

BONUS Skull Day Outsourcing.

BONUS² poope-ups courtesy of SMcG and Simba.