THE WHACKED OUT BIRTH

Life begins at 40. Have you heard this?

Life begins at 40. That's 39 years of your life wasted right at the start there. 39 years, 364 days you're sat around, just waiting for your life to get going. "C'mon, let's get started already. I've been here hours." Sorry, it doesn't begin until you're 40. Until you reach that benchmark, really, you're just cooling your heels, chum.

It had to be someone pretty old and bitter that came up with that phrase. Life begins at 40? No, really, that's the middle ground you've reached when you're 40. There's no beginning then, my friend. Failing eyesight, hearing loss and going bald are the things that begin at 40. Back strain, muscle cramps. Not understanding modern music. These are all things that kick in at the 40 part of life.

No one's life begins at 40 unless they've been in a coma for 39 years. The idea that life begins at 40 - that's a youthemism.

THE IT GIRL OF NERDTOWN

In today's news, the IT industry has launched a calendar to try to dispel the image that IT people are nerds. According to the press release, "the calendar's makers hope to challenge the perception that IT is a nerdy profession and encourage women to join the industry." So they've got some women who work in IT to dress up and pose as "screen goddesses" from the movies.

Thus, to discourage this dreadful fallacy that IT women are nerdy, Jane has chosen to dress up as Princess Leia... in full Jabba the Hutt's slave girl mode from Return of the Jedi. Meanwhile, Sarah has opted to pose as Catwoman (and not just any Catwoman, my friend, that's the loss-making Halle Berry turkey film version of Catwoman).

Now, Krusty has no problem with women dressing up as Princess Leia or as Catwoman. I am, however, pretty certain that dressing up as sci-fi babes and comic book heroines isn't the number one way to dispel the image people have that you're a nerd.

(And Sarah, have some self-respect - Julie Newmar, Lee Meriwether, Michelle Pfeiffer, there are plenty of good Catwomans to choose from. Never Halle Berry. It's the rules)

THE TOO HEARTY ENDORSEMENT

Is it necessary for anyone who doesn't wear fur to also not wear clothes?

That's the campaign, isn't it?

"I don't wear fur" - picture of model naked.

And this has been the campaign for 20 years now. "I don't wear fur" - naked model. "Wearing fur is wrong" - naked actress. "Please don't wear fur" - naked, naked, naked.

You know what? I don't wear fur. I don’t have a stole. I don't own a mink coat. There is no man-fur in my wardrobe. No giant furry klown slippers. Really, I have no fur products in my life. I am not wearing fur right now.

But, I can still wear clothes. I am aware that the negation of fur from my wardrobe does not mean that I must automatically wear no clothes. I can put things into two piles - fur that is wrong to wear, and non-fur that is okay to wear. That way, I can just choose from the okay pile. When it comes to the wearing or not wearing of fur, I can solve the equation - no fur, wear other clothes. To me, that's simple.

But these PETA people and their naked campaigning. What are they thinking? "Is there fur in this? I'd better not wear it, just in case. I don’t want anyone to catch me out."

THE WHY-FI

What is this obsession with getting music downloads free? Why is there this element of society who are convinced that music should be free?

Let me explain it to you - music is free. If you want free music, drum your fingers on your keyboard, start whistling. There's your free music. You can carry that anywhere, friend.

What? You want the freakin' Beatles to provide the free music? Now, it seems to me what you're asking for is something entirely different. Not just a little bit different - entirely, do you see? What you want is not free music, what you want is specific, studio produced, successful music that cost money to create, by the greatest artists in the world to be free. Stop me if I'm going too fast for you here.

Would you like me to resurrect the corpse of Roy Orbison and send him round to sing you a lullaby? Is that what you feel you deserve?

If everyone took illegally mined gold, would iGold be available on the internet free, too?

Today's Klown College speech was provided by me, Krusty. What, did you think I'd stop speaking forever!?!!

THE INVASION

Kia ora and why hello there fair citizens, my name is Bob.

I have just completed displaying at the IFA 2006 Consumer Electronics Trade Fair here in Berlin, where I had the great pleasure to unveil my company's new innovation in clothing – the light-emitting t-shirt.

Light-emitting t-shirts are the ingenious result of integrating LEDs into the garments' fabric, enabling patrons to wear a t-shirt that will fashionably light-up at the flick of a small hidden switch. Soon we can expect our fine English language to become a little brighter too, with new phrases like:

"Bob my misunderstood and entirely trustworthy muffin, does my backside appear to be overly luminous in this?"

and "You're flashing."

and "I'm sorry, I can't come out tonight – my batteries are low."

Like it or not, fairly soon we can expect to see this wondrous new idea literally change the face of our world. Already our talented and hard-working engineers are adapting the technology to embed multi-coloured sequences, animations and even televisions into the new fabric. The phrase "watching the boob-tube" is set to take on a whole new meaning.

But lest history miscast us as fools, let us also be wary, brothers. Eventually it will become possible to attach a live webcam to one's back, project whatever it sees onto one's front, and become effectively invisible.

And when that day comes, friends, the crime rate in our country is liable to increase exponentially. It will become child's play to, say for example, break into someone's home, wait for them to fall asleep, and then make that smart snivelling spikey-haired Bart Simpson WISH HE'D NEVER HEARD THE NAME OF SIDESHOW ROBERT UNDERDUNK TERWILLIGER. (cough) Just for example.

Right now, it seems to this impartial commentator, that the only practicable way to defend our loved ones from such entirely hypothetical promises, will be to pay an extremely reasonable fee to purchase such invisible fabrics for ourselves. Ultimately, we will all disappear, and in doing so we'll usher in a peaceful new age, free from the folly of judging each other by fickle appearances. I urge you, yes you, to join me in embracing this brave new world.

Thank you. I'm Sideshow Bob – and I'm listening.

Thanks Sideshow Bob for filling in for me today. Hey-hey-hey, kids. What say we blast my guest host into orbit with a cannon?

MY SIDESHOW PLEDGE DRIVE

What is the deal with charities thanking the sponsors? When did this start? Did I miss a meeting?

Isn't the whole point of charity, surely, that they need the cash more than we do? I've got some spare change, some free time, a little something to give. This is not a tax. I'm quite happy to do my run, or walk or dress inappropriately for work and then I pay the charity of my choice so that I feel less guilt about the plight of the world - or usually smugly satisfied that whilst I'm not actually doing anything constructive about it myself, I've played a small part in making the world a better place. Ah!

So I don't need a letter telling me this.

I especially don't need a poster from Blue Peter with three grinning young people and a speech bubble saying, "Thank YOU!"

And, you're not telling me they posed specifically for that shot are you? In all honesty, are we even pretending that the Blue Peter presenters have the time or inclination to pose for charity posters when there are spaceships to be made from plastic bottles and ridiculous stunts to be performed somewhere near Leeds.

It is the natural state of being for a Blue Peter presenter to be smiling like it's Christmas morning and this year they know they've got a new bike. They can't help it. Maybe they're getting some... Erm... artificial help for this state of mind, who can say?

The picture I'm waiting for, the picture I'll send them a thank you letter for is the stern photo. The one that says, "I'm disappointed in you. You've let Blue Peter down, you've let the children down... But most of all, you've let yourself down..."

Today's Klown College speech was provided by Sideshow Ivanskavinski, in between other assignments. That man's a workaholic. Eurgh!

THE CAPTAIN PLANET

Do you hear that sound? Those quiet scratchings. That’s the noise of millions of schoolbooks being rewritten, now that Pluto has disappeared from the diagram. Well, not literally, not in a doomsday weapon demonstration kind of way. "Heh heh, Mr President - Imagine if this little planet had been your West Coast? I give you one hour to comply!"

No, Pluto has been demoted by an astronomy conference, which is a bit more impressive as a convention achievement than just taking over the hotel bar on a Saturday night and singing rude songs about astrologists.

How did it happen? Was it like Pete Best, quietly asked into the office and told he wasn’t going to be in the Beatles anymore. "The thing is, Pluto, you’ve just not got what it takes to be a planet in the 21st century."

Maybe it was really formal, Pluto being marched down a column of raised telescopes, then getting its planetary epaulets torn off. Poor old Pluto, one minute orbiting with the big guys, now pushed in with a bunch of C-list asteroids. Spending its days opening office crèches and considering a presenting offer from a shopping channel.

Fact is though, this planet is far too distant to really worry about what a bunch of Earth astronomers think, even when they called it a planet in the first place. It's like me hearing that I've been voted Funniest Man in the Ukraine by Ukraine Fishermen's Weekly. It's nice n'all, but not really something that makes a whole lot of impact in my day.

"What? That blue dot thinks I'm not a planet? Talk to mah dark side cause the sunny side ain't listening!"

Today's Klown College speech was provided by Sideshow Gaz. Angry, angry young man.

THE STREET JIVE

It amazes me how far the technology of communication has come in the last few years.

These days, you can't walk down a busy street without seeing at least one person talking on their mobile phone. And yet, barely ten years ago we mostly seemed to manage without them.

Go back another ten years, and even the cordless home phone was a wild bit of future tech that you'd only seen on news reports and oddball science shows.

What really brings this home is when you hear Marvin Gaye singing "I Heard it Through the Grapevine." That was 1967. Yes, less than 40 years ago, people were getting daily information through the branches of a plant, people. You couldn't make too much wine in case it affected reception. This is the primitive world these people were living in.

Who says this isn't the 21st century? Do you know who? Confused time travellers, that's who.


IMPORTANT ANNOUNCEMENT: Coming next week on "Klown College, Please", Krusty hands the reins over to some of his greatest sideshow pals in a feature I like to call - What does that say? Bring it closer so I can read it - "Krusty's Run Out of Material Week". Wait, I kid! It's called "Krusty's Guest Hosts Week". Join them. Eurgh!

MY EVIL CLOWN FRIEND

When it comes to Batman villains, you're hard pressed to find one half as terrifying as the Joker.

The Joker spends his days forcing people to smile. He's obsessed with seeing those teeth, beaming back at him. He pumps people full of weird chemicals to create these bright, shiny smiles. Or, he'll spray people with laughing gas to keep them incapacitated.

The reason that the Joker is such a frightening foe - the bright smiles, the weird chemicals, the laughing gas, the inappropriate suit - he plays on mankind's genetic fear of dentists.

THE WARNING

There are two things about the DVD warning that I really like.

Firstly, when they make it really specific. "If you watch or copy this illegally we will fine you $302,000 and 50 cents." That's great. I like to be clear about the exact depth of the hot water I could find myself in. Sometimes they throw in some vague connection to a government agency, like the FBI. I'm pretty sure the FBI have better ways to spend their day. You know - matters of national security, that sort of thing.

Even worse is when they just make up some agency that's apparently dedicating vast resources to the capsizing of video pirates: "FACT - the Films And Crime Team". This is really just the film companies saying "If you do something wrong I am telling my Mum."

The second type are the warnings where they run in a dozen different languages, one after the other. If it's a really popular film there are languages in there that you never even knew existed. What is Suomi? Who's checking stuff in Norskt?

No matter what language the warning appears in there's always one bit you can recognise... "DVD - Digital Versatile Disc". Don't other languages have their own words for "Digital", "Versatile" or "Disc"? Do they need to steal our words? Isn't that some kind of piracy they're doing there before they even start? Shouldn't they have someone looking into that crime before they start accusing me? All I did was bought a Rockford Files box set here, these guys are stealing whole words.

"That French guy, he stole my word for Digital! Come back here, you garlic munching freak!"

The trouble with the DVD warnings is you usually can't skip past them. You actually have to sit through them before you can watch the film you paid for. That's one problem you don't have with pirate discs. They let you get straight to the film. Which would you really prefer?

THE KLOWN CAR

Watching Knight Rider you got to see a car that could do anything. That car could park itself, drive itself, it could even tell you where it was going and how it was going to get there.

"Yes, Michael, I plan to take the Hayes Bypass to avoid congestion."

At the time, this all seemed very cool to me. Owning a car like that was something to aim for in adult life.

As I look back now, I start to think that maybe Michael Knight was just a very bad driver. Why else would he need a car that could park itself, drive itself, tell him where it was going and how it was going to get there? I think there's an outtake somewhere where KITT broke down and we see Michael Knight trying to slip it into the right gear, doing that kind of kangaroo style stop-start with the clutch as he pulls away from the lights, then parking the car across two spots outside the supermarket. The show was essentially a shadowy journey into the world of a man who just couldn’t drive.

When seen in that light, Knight Rider suddenly doesn't seem half as cool.

MY LIFE ON MARS

I'm having some trouble getting my head around the living in outer space thing. NASA are in the news this week, once more promising we'll be all over Mars and the moon before we know it. All over them. Won't be able to move for the people.

And yet, whenever there's a space shuttle launch it always seems to get called off three times before they actually find the right "launch window". Those astronauts must feel like they've bought stand-by tickets... "What, we're not going today either? Oh man! You promised us yesterday..."

And it doesn't seem to be a big catastrophe that stops the shuttle launching. The reason seems to be that there's maybe a bit of rain in the air or the wind is picking up a little.

Are we really supposed to be colonising planets when we can’t make a spaceship that launches in inclement weather? Come on, NASA, fit some windscreen wipers to that baby, let's get into the stratosphere already. What are we waiting for?