Category Archives: Censorship

Teddy Teacher Gillian Gibbons Finally Freed!

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(God, I love alliteration!)

Gillian Gibbons

Controversial expat British teacher Gillian Gibbons, who was jailed in Khartoum for allowing her pupils to name a teddy bear “Muhammad,” is to be freed, having been granted a presidential pardon.

The Guardian has the hairy details:

The breakthrough came after a meeting between two British Muslim peers, Lord Nazir Ahmed and Baroness Sayeeda Warsi, with Sudan’s president Omar al-Bashir.

Lord Ahmed said al-Bashir had agreed to pardon the teacher.

Allah BearAsked whether Gibbons had been pardoned, a presidential adviser told Reuters: “Definitely, yes.”…

Reacting to the news, Khalid al-Mubarak, of the Sudanese embassy in London, said: “Congratulations. I am overjoyed.

“She is a teacher who went to teach our children English and she has helped a great deal and I am very grateful. What has happened was a cultural misunderstanding, a minor one, and I hope she, her family and the British people won’t be affected by what has happened.

There is, at this time, no word on whether the Americans now intend to place her in custody for referring to the problematic plush in question as a Teddy Bear.

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Closed when flashing

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Closed when flashing

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Please mind the gap … in your employment

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Emma ClarkeIn the latest example of inadvertently star-making sense of humour failure on the part of an organization, Emma Clarke, smooth-voiced announcer for the London Underground system, has been “de-accessioned” for recording spoof announcements and posting them on her personal website.

“London Underground is sorry to have to announce that further contracts for Miss Clarke are experiencing severe delays,” a TfL spokesman told the Evening Standard Monday.

Actually, giving the text a read-over, it appears that these so-called fakes are actually more useful and informative than the officially sanctioned announcements. See for yourself:

  • We would like to remind our American tourist friends that you are almost certainly talking too loudly.
  • Would the passenger in the red shirt pretending to read the paper but who is actually staring at that woman’s chest please stop. You are not fooling anyone, you filthy pervert.
  • Would passengers filling in answers on their Sudokus please accept that they are just crosswords for the unimaginative and are not in any way more impressive just because they contain numbers.

etc, etc. Click over to her website in a day or so to listen to the recordings, once the publicity from the worldwide stories on Reuters, BBC, etc, etc, has calmed down and the site comes back up.

what this world needs is more singing, dancing contraception

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If they could somehow work jazz hands into this, it would be just about perfect.


NSFW if your boss is really, really uptight about cross-sectional illustrations of gay sex, or maybe also wooden dildos

Here, via The Manolo, is the singingest, dancingest Bollywood-fabulousest subtitlediest condom commercial you’ll ever lay eyes on. They’re like the Teletubbies of the prophylactic world!

It’s remarkable that somehow the Third World got the jump on us in this regard, but here is the proof. Surely, surely, if North Americans had condom commercials featuring Paula Abdul choreography and Celine Dion vocals, maybe throwing in some Sigfried and Roy or Zac Efron for the boys, we could eliminate unintended pregnancy overnight! Up With People and the whole celibacy movement just haven’t got the showbiz pizazz to pull it off. I mean, what can you do when Blair from Fats of Life is the best you’ve got? We need to ramp up the production values if this is ever going to work…as they said in Earth Girls are Easy, Southern California has the cosmetology equivalent of Stealth technology. The same can be said for its entertainment. What’s the first step?

First, we sign Bob Evans. Then, we wait, baby. Then we wait.

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Fairy found alive in South Africa!

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Fairies Oberon and Titania

Long has the mystery of the elusive and entrancing fairy perplexed some of the greatest minds in the Western World.

Whether known as fairies, Little People, sidhe, elves, or Faerie(ii or y, for teenage Livejournalers only), they have fascinated our preeminent literary figures as well as those whose interests lie in the purely scientific, theists of the most extreme sort, and atheists likewise.

Truly, there is no corner of the human imagination into which they have not penetrated.

Various proofs were brought forward and each, in turn, mocked. Fossilized fairies. Mummified fairies. Even, in the ultimate legitimization that Western society offers, Retailed Fairies (free shipping to Neverland).

Each fell before the catcalls of the disbelievers.

Now, at last, positive photographic proof of the existence of fairies has emerged from the Dark Continent. This crystal-clear shot of a fairy conducting a conversation with two friendly meerkats is the first hint we’ve had of the so-called “Special Relationship” between the two species. Long have the inscrutable meerkat race been suspected of magical qualities, and now we have conclusive proof of the nature of that intercourse with the spiritual world within our own.

Let the naysayers mock if they dare!

Fairy and Meerkats

This remarkable scientific document deservedly won special commendation in the behaviour (mammals) category in the prestigious Shell Wildlife Photographer of the Year competition, hosted by the UK’s Natural History Museum, and it comes to us direct from the not-at-all-given-to-mere-sentimentality-except-Polly-Toynbee-who-can’t-think-anyway Guardian newspaper. It was taken by Shem Compion on South Africa’s Tswalu Kalahari reserve, which is no doubt shortly to become a mecca for sidhezoologists from around the globe. Book your flight now: airplane optional!

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