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HA HA HA YOU CAN'T READ YOU RETARD!

10:56 / 14.01.05

In America there is currently a study being carried, out by the Baltimore University, into the 'recreational' learning ability of LIONS.
It has been found that, although they have a desire to learn, they can't actually read a full sentence. A lion will start to read sentence, say in a book or newspaper, but will rarely hold the consentration to complete it.
They are however very successful when it comes to more vocational activities like needle work & cookery.

If anyone has any further info with regards to this study or any other 'interesting' studies into animal behaviour, then please slap it down. Alternatively if you are outraged by this kind of carry on, then let the debate commence!

10:59 / 14.01.05

oh yeah.

I found this with the article.

11:11 / 14.01.05

in 'america' eh?

i ask you, is there anything they WON'T do?

11:30 / 14.01.05

It has been found that, although they have a desire to learn, they can't actually read a full sentence. A lion will start to read sentence, say in a book or newspaper, but will rarely hold the consentration to complete it.
They are however very successful when it comes to more vocational activities like needle work & cookery.

Rather like women, then, eh?

11:34 / 14.01.05

On a related note, I've been particularly disturbed recently by the attempts to get tube mice to write book reviews for the Spectator. Apparently, certain editorial staff hide on Central Line trains late at night, then, some time after everything shuts, they emerge with nets, traps, chocolate and a shoebox with holes in it.

It takes at least four mice to write even the shortest piece and the poor little things are so tired afterwards that they frequently expire. I'm told Boris Johnson then freezes them to serve later to his python.

Is this the sort of behaviour we should expect in this day and age?

Ex

12:17 / 14.01.05

I object to your biased description of the philanthropic project of tube mouse internships. These rodents are trapped in vicious circle, living cushy lives in heated accomodation and eating discarded Big Macs. They lack drive. The cut and thrust of literary criticism keeps them on their toes, and simulates the foraging and cowering activities they'd undertake in the wild. It's a kindness.

12:22 / 14.01.05

It is barbaric, serving reheated mice to a python. Several of the plethora of recently baptised Barbelites are in fact tube mice, which is why they appear and disappear without having a chance to post. Down the python they go before paw reaches keypad.

Both Philip Hensher and China Mieville are tube mice of course, so it is clearly possible to make a breakthrough on the literary scene in London, even when each keyboard stroke requires a somersault.

That's assuming you steer clear of Boris and the python, and you need to get a good agent. Monty the Plague Rat at Piccadilly is good, I hear.

Couldn't Boris just bang Anne Widdecombe over the head and then the python wouldn't have to eat for another six months?

12:52 / 14.01.05

It's the paucity of blind tube mares these days that worries me. The hammers must have done their bit. You could get one of them to bash out a whole professional in-house periodical before you cooked it.

STOATIE LIEKS CHOCOLATE MILK

12:55 / 14.01.05

Xoc- you have no idea how upsetting the thoughts that were going through my head between the reading of the word "Widdecombe" and my reading of the word "over" were...

...on so many levels...

13:09 / 14.01.05

Understood, Stoatie, and you have been avenged, having reminded me now of an evil, evil dream I once had involving Anne Widdecombe and a punt. I need to go and wash my brain now...

13:13 / 14.01.05

Oh pish-tosh, Sax, you are simply blaming the victim here. These unfortunate creatures are being snatched up for pure profit and thrown into the gaping maw of Capitalism, which I believe is the name of Boris' python, though it may be Eunice. As Xoc points out, many other mice have had successful careers without such intervention (though I have a feeling that China Mieville may have some vole in him) and I think you would be hard pressed to name me any mouse who has had any significant success on the back of their time at the Spectator.

I have attempted to distribute pamphlets warning mice of the dangers involved, but, in their confusion, they tend only to make natty little hats out of them, which may be creative but doesn't help them much. If any readers see a mouse on the tube wearing a small folded Napoleon hat I'd be obliged if they would explain the situation in a patient but firm tone.

cube: I blame Thatcher.

13:49 / 14.01.05

Don't you always?

14:32 / 14.01.05

Oh pish-tosh, Sax, you are simply blaming the victim here.

Pardon?

14:40 / 14.01.05

er, Ex

Jack Fear: only when I can't blame Bush

15:20 / 14.01.05

Easy mistake to make, fridge. Sax and Ex are two of the loveliest creatures on the Lith, although it has to be said that Ex has the better facial hair.

15:27 / 14.01.05

"Rather like women, then, eh?"

Christ, can women now do stuff?

What kind of sick experiment made that so?

16:45 / 14.01.05

The contribution of clever mice to literature is vast, of course, which is remarkable when you consider their physical disadvantages.

Where would tourists to London's theatreland have been for the last fifty years without The Mousetrap?

War and Cheese was as good as Tolstoy got.

The Wind in the Willows was, of course, a roman à clef; they were all mice irl.

Bruce Forsyth's career was revived when he employed a tube mouse to write his gags and thus was born, "Mice to see you, to see you mice..."

Even the Goths must surely thank our rodent chums for Poe's The Fall of the Mouse of Usher.

I rest my case.

Sean the frumious Bandersnatch

19:12 / 14.01.05

20:42 / 14.01.05

Smart-arse Rabbit shows up lazy Lions by holding marketing seminar.

Ex

21:05 / 14.01.05

That rabbit's trying to squash another, larger, evil rabbit in his book. You can see its monstrous paw protruding.

Mice may be tolerable hacks, but frogs can also read. They can't leave the pond for long, though, so they're no good for reviews, unless you give them wireless connectivity. I knew this frog, his thirst for lit was so mighty, he got his mate the rabbit to go to the library. The frog was all: 'Oooh, get me anything, anything with a good plot. Something a bit racy.'
And the rabbit hopped off over hill and vale and hollow and across a roundabout and up a multistorey carpark (by mistake) and gets to the library. Persuades the library staff to allow him to borrow something on behalf of his chum (that takes three hours and a written permission slip with some frogspawn on it). Rabbit flips through the recently returned trolley, and finds a great hunk of a novel with everything - romance, terror, intrigue, laughs. So he takes it gingerly in his mouth and hops back, o'er hollow and vale and hill, and back to the pond where his little green pal is waiting, with slimy arms outstretched.

And the rabbit spits the book out on the bank and says, 'Look, my diminutive and ineffectual comrade! See what a marvellous book I have fetched you!'

And the frog says:

'Reddit.'

Ex has the better facial hair.

Hearing that, and telling the frog joke, were the only thing I came to Barbelith to do. Plonk me down gently and lay the sod o'er me.