DISINVENTIONS

You have to have a lot of imagination to enjoy a scientists convention because, most of the time, what these people have invented is junk. Even the greatest inventions looked pretty rubbish to start out with.

Scroll back about 150 years. All the scientists are meeting up for their annual shindig, and you've got the guy who discovered penicillin and the chick who's just invented stainless steel, and they all turn to Professor Jeffrey Isaac von Photograph.

"So, Jeff - what have you invented this year?"

"Well, I call this little box the camera. It can take a picture of anything you want and then creates a print. Say you wanted a record of what was going on in this room right now - snap - and we're ready to go."

"But waitaminute here, bunkie. I see the world in colour but... Well, what the hell do you call this?"

"Umm, I was thinking of calling it 'black and white'."

"Shyeah, great invention, doofus!"

BY GEORGE, INEVITABLY

That's Star Wars over with. Huh.

If anyone needs a trilogy of movies to sort out his issues it's Chewbacca. His on-screen story arc begins in Episode III (Revenge of the Sith) where he's seen fighting alongside Yoda the Jedi master and the clone armies of good. By Episode VI (Return of the Jedi) he's making a mock Tarzan holler as he enters battle alongside teddy bears mostly armed with cute. He was just as vital in blowing up that Death Star as Han Solo, but he didn't get a medal.

Forget Anakin Skywalker - Chewie's got to be the one repressing anger by now. He could Wookiee-out at any time. Arise, Darth Hairy. Episodes VII-IX await.

THE PROSECUTION CALLS - COCO, THE SIGN LANGUAGE MONKEY

The Michael Jackson trial keeps getting weirder and weirder.

Wasn't Elizabeth Taylor a character witness in the first week? Since then we've had testimonies from Macaulay Culkin and, this week, Jay Leno and Chris Tucker. There are hit movies with smaller, less well known casts than this. You have to be wondering who's next? Look, it's Jade from Big Brother. Bob Carolgees and Spit the Dog. The Real Milli Vanilli. Dana.

There will come a point when anyone who's not been called as a witness at the Michael Jackson trial will be considered strictly B-list. Careers will be built on this trial.

(Note to lawyers - Krusty is available throughout the month of June. This gig pays, right?)

COUNTER EARTH

I really disapprove of people who tell others they "ought to try living in the real world." Blame my klown college education if you will, but as far as I recall, there's just the one world, the real, which we're all sharing.

Okay, so there's the dream world that the Australian aborigines and Native American Indians put their faith in.

And, of course, there's the exact mirrored version of our planet that exists in precise opposition to us on the far side of the sun, popularly known as Counter Earth.

Oh, and there's the world in the Matrix, where it's really a big simulation.

And I'll grant you that political theorist Antonio Gramsci maintained that this world was a dream to experiment within.

And then there's Leather World, Disneyworld, Wayne's World and Elmo's World. Ghost World, the Lost World, Spice World and the World of Tomorrow. There's the mad, mad, mad, mad World, the World according to Garp, the Brave New World and PC World.

Okay, start again...

Those examples - and countless others - aside, there's just the one world, isn't there? What is up with these people who insist I try living there? Where do they think I live? Where are they living? Do they get tax breaks for living there?

"You want to try living in the real world, Krusty."

"And miss out on the duty free on the trip home?! Are you kidding me?! Eurrrgh!"

SAFETY MATCH OF THE DAY #3

Adam West Bromwich Albion versus Burt Ward.

PIGISM

We are institutionally piggist.

If someone is a glutton at the dinner table we say that they eat like a pig. If their house is a mess we describe it as a pig sty. And do we think they will clean it up? Sure, and pigs might fly. And even if they promise to clean it up we suspect that they are telling porkies.

Yet, scientifically, pigs are the proven intellectuals of the animal kingdom. They're not quite up there with the dolphins, I'll grant you, but they still get invited to cocktails with them and rarely embarrass themselves.

So how did pigs get associated with all this negativity? Has a pig ever tried to cheat you? Broken something it borrowed without asking? Woken you up in the middle of the night with a drunken phone call? Stolen your girlfriend?

I could go on, but overstressing the point would only make a pig's ear of it.

NATURAL SELECTION

Vending machines are the closest modern man gets to his primitive hunter-gatherer ancestors. The food knows it's trapped but it's determined to use all of its food acumen to stop you from getting your hands on it.

The vending machine offers maybe 25 different sections filled with chocolate bars and crisps and maybe some gum. That's a difficult way to start - once you've settled on having trashy food, which do you choose? And then there's the added complication that, once you've chosen, say, cheesy Doritos, they have them in two different sections, north east and south west of the machine. Despite being the same, it's a dilemma which one you choose, and, since it's all behind glass, you have no tactile aid for your selection.

Is there any logic to the order items are placed in these things? Chocolate bar, gum, gum, chocolate bar, crisps, crisps, chocolate bar... You can't settle on chocolate and just look at the top two rows, because chocolate is all over the place. It's like that 3D chess thing they play on Star Trek.

Having made your decision you come to the complicated way in which you must get the item. Despite only have 25 slots to choose from, if you want something from the top left slot you have to punch in 3-4-E-7. There are bank vaults with easier combinations to crack that these machines. Are we actually programming a robot arm to grab our selection? Maybe we're programming a robot arm to construct another robot arm which grabs our selection.

Although the food knows it's trapped, it still won't come without a fight. That metal coil that runs down the length of the shelf is an easy target for Brother Twix - he's always quick with his little claws, clinging onto that thing for dear life.

There's certain secret information that vending machines won't share. Does this one give change? Is it exact change only? Does it take five pence pieces? Does it accept pound coins? Is it always a 50 pence piece that's needed? Is the dim light where it says "No change given" on now, or is that just a reflection?

Of course, the real fun of the vending machine is the price system. A 20p pack of gum can be anywhere between 35 pence and a pound. Chocolate bars start at 70 pence. What are these prices? Where do they come from? The machine's there, there's just the one guy servicing 200 a week - what's to pay for? Is there some secret board of vending machinists who pluck these prices out of thin air each month?

I guess it took a while for primitive man to discover fire. That freezing cold feeling that vending machine food has is an extra throwback to your hunter-gatherer roots - they throw that in for free.

ZOMBIE RESTAURANTS

Refurbishment is like bringing a restaurant back from the dead. For three weeks the place is closed, then someone comes by with a ouija board and the old place claws itself out of the grave and back to life.

After a restaurant has been refurbished, the first thing you do is look around and see how much of the old décor you can spot. It's like seeing the strings on a puppet - you can’t help but look. There's a strange victory in finding the same old table when you peel back the bright new tablecloth.

The waiters are always the same though. Even though the restaurant is all shiny and new, the waiters are still wearing the same tired white shirt and black trousers they were wearing three weeks ago before it closed down. They walk around slightly dazed, confused about where the tables are now like they've lost their sense of space, and you watch them in the back room as they try to find where the wines are kept.

It's a weird transaction when a restaurant offers free drinks after reopening. No one quite knows how to ask for it - most people go for ordering the wine and then acting slightly confused as they ask "Is this one... um... free?" while pointing at the note on the menu and trying not to catch the waiter's eye. And there's always that reluctance from the waiter to actually let you have the free glass of wine, even though it's from a job lot of the cheapest plonk they could find. They feel like you're getting one over on them, somehow.

Sometimes restaurants leave that "free drink" note on the menu way too long and the waiter looks horrified when you ask for it six months after the reopening. Doing that can bring the manager out for a frantic whispered discussion with the employee, which is a source of entertainment in itself. It's always fun to be at the meeting point of those furtive glances, isn't it? Instead of a free drink, maybe restaurants should just offer the "frantic whispered discussion" as an option. Then your waiter can go through that whole conversation with the manager in front of you - it'd be like your own private cabaret.

JENNIFER ANISTON KNOWS

What is the secret agreement between the scientists and the catering staff? They're all wearing the same uniform, have you noticed this? The most educated, highly trained researchers in the world are wearing that white lab coat down to the knees, yet when they go to lunch they're being served food by canteen staff wearing exactly the same coat - and these are pretty much the lowest paid, most overworked people on the plant; chances are slim that they got the job because of their ground breaking dissertation on quantum physics.

Are the scientists wearing the coats to make the caterers feel better, is that the deal there? Or are we being hoodwinked? Is this science stuff really so easy that just about anyone can do it. Forget the eight years at university getting degree, MA and professorship - if Bob on the project into reknitting the atom wants to pull a sick day, Pedro over by the mashed potatoes can take over. It won't make a whole lot of difference.

It's the same deal in hospitals - the chief surgeon is dressed just the same as the woman serving cheese rolls. They even have the same hairnet.

Maybe there's a rota system in these places - no one really knows what task they'll be doing from day to day, so they all come in with the white coat and the hairnet and see where they're assigned by the manager. The same people who are serving liver for dinner were repairing one in the operating theatre that afternoon.

BACK TO THE FRONT

Really, nobody knows what to do with the front garden. You can watch a thousand of those garden makeover programmes, read all the books, pay the most expensive landscape gardener to design something bold and visionary - the front garden is always going to be dead space. All it's really there for is to keep the road at bay.

The basic trouble with the front garden is it's so exposed. There's no other way of looking at it - as soon as you do anything in the front garden you are putting on a show. Your next door neighbours, the people across the street, and anyone passing can watch the show, free of charge, just by looking in the right direction. And you're there, centre stage, doing your utmost to remember your lines. Suddenly everything you do is a performance.

You try trimming back that bush covering the path - suddenly everyone's a theatre critic, offering advice and telling you what they think of the garden.

You put out the bins - the local wildlife are watching like it's some new garden farce.

Ever played tennis on someone's front lawn? Welcome to Centre Court!

So, unless you live in a mansion or a farm and your front lawn is so vast that the road is somewhere over the horizon, you may as well resign yourself to the fact that that front garden is dead space. All it does is makes it clear where the road ends and your place starts. Without it, strangers could confuse your house for a turn off. Joggers would be coming in off the street, wiping their shoes on the doormat and helping themselves to stuff from your fridge before you could blink. Which, I guess, wouldn't be so bad if you were an athletics fan.

NEWS FROM THE FRONT

Did you ever think that people who park their car in their front gardens are just desperate to move? There'll be no walking to where they parked for these people - as soon as they get out the front door they are out of there. They don't want to spend a single second longer near to their house than they absolutely have to. Out the door and - zoom - they're away down the street.

At what point did people start weighing up between a grassy front lawn or the back exhaust of their cars as a possible view out of their front window? And how did the car win?

The ones that really get me are the people who park a caravan in their front garden. These people are clearly desperate to get out of the house, but I guess they still like the area. You know how tempting it must be to go out the front door and just sit in the caravan for a while. You just know these people are doing that. It's irresistible. It's a little home away from home with the seats that become beds, the miniature fridge and cooker, the chemical toilet that you have to edge into sideways - who wouldn't want to spend some time in that?

MAKE A NOTE OF THIS

Have you ever seen shorthand? As far as I can make out, it's just a load of spots and dashes hovering at different levels between the lines on the page. And yet, apparently this is enough to convey all the words in the English language. And, the clincher, it's incredibly quick to write. People can take dictation using shorthand at something like the speed of light. You see secretaries telling their bosses to stop thinking about it and just say something. They're raring to go with writing out "War and Peace" there.

So, if it's so quick to write in shorthand, why aren’t we taught it at school? Really, why aren’t we all using it? Frankly, isn’t it time we ditched this longhand English language thing we're persisting with using and made the switch over to shorthand? They could start printing books in shorthand and we'd effectively get another few hours in the day. Commuter trains would be full of people knocking back two or three books between stations. Occasionally, the readers would look up and laugh at the people texting each other with their slow "What R U doing?" nonsense.

THE TEN (c) OMMANDMENTS

New religions don't seem to catch on anymore. You go back a few thousand years and it seemed like there was a new religion launched every few months, and you could always find a few pilgrims willing to give them a go.

You know what the problem is? Copyright law. As soon as they introduced copyrights, trying to get people into new religions became awkward. There's that passage in the front of books explaining how you can’t exchange, resell, hire, lend, photocopy or disseminate the text without permission from the author or the publisher. That piece of legalese pretty much stops new religions in their tracks.

Picture the scene - at the foot of Mount Sinai Moses is reading the Commandments out to the enraptured crowd: "Thou shalt have no other gods beside me... Honour your father and mother..." and so on. The crowd are really interested, taking this all in, and they decide this is great stuff. Some of them are scribbling it down in their diaries, texting it to friends on their cell phones, and Moses is, like, "Hold on there - this is copyrighted stuff. You can’t just go passing it around like you own it, guys..."

NIGHT CRITTERS

I figure that, when it comes to vampires, we're just not getting the whole story.

Do you ever wonder why vampires don't move with the times? They seem to go a lot on the capes and the cloaks and the frilly shirts, don't they? There's a certain look that the vampires have that, for everyone else, really went out by about 1810.

The answer, when you get down to it, is pretty obvious.

You see, there are two preferred ways of killing your Children of the Night types. The first is a stake through the heart. Interestingly, a stake through the heart kills just about everyone, vampire or not, and that is, in fact, pretty much the case of any large, sharp object pushed through the heart. If you don't have a stake to hand, however, you can always resort to decapitation - removing the head from a vampire's body will also, by and large, end its reign of terror. And, once again, I'm thinking that beheading pretty well does it for the non-vampires too. Okay, so we can throw in sunlight and holy water, but that's pretty much the end of the list, and those tended to be things to make them run away rather than actually bring up the "End - a Hammer Horror Production" caption.

Now you'll see that these methods, by and large, have the same effect on non-vampires as they do on the Nightbreed. But no one ever mentions, say, any methods to kill vampires that came about after 1750. Nuclear attack. Napalm. Too much salt in the diet.

By keeping the out-of-date look the vampires have fooled us into thinking they're immune to all that new stuff but I reckon it's just an error of omission. We're not getting the whole story.

"I hear Count Dracula died."

"Yeah - old age. His fangs fell out, he forgot who he was, half the time he didn't know who I was - it was terrible. We put him in a home eventually. He passed on in his sleep. Poor dear."

SAFETY MATCH OF THE DAY #2

Sheffield Wednesday versus Detective Joe Friday