The Pin Factory Blog

Two restaurant robbers in Melbourne have shot to international fame this week. After mistaking a bag of bread rolls for the day's takings, they made for the wrong get away car before one robber shot the other by mistake. In the buttocks.

Sometimes truth really is stranger than fiction... 

The most ridiculous story in the news has to be the move by councillors in the town of Rochdale to decrease the number of holes in saltshakers at fish and chips shops from 17 to 5. The move has been rightly condemned as a proliferation of the "nanny state" and a waste of taxpayer's money running to thousands of pounds.

Added to this is another important concern that should be raised: the risk of your chips going cold in the process of trying to get a decent amount of salt on them.

A young brunette went into the doctor's office and told him that her body hurt wherever she touched it.
"Impossible," said the doctor. "Show me."
She took her finger and pushed on her elbow and screamed in agony. She then pushed on her knee and screamed, pushed on her ankle and screamed, and so on. No matter where she touched, her agony was apparent.
After some thought, the doctor said "You're not really a brunette, are you? You're really a blonde".
She sheepishly admitted that indeed, she was a blonde.
"I thought so," said the doctor. "Your finger is broken."

"A Nevada brothel is encouraging its customers to give their tips to the Ron Paul campaign. How did this endorsement deal slip by Bill Clinton? He must be getting old."

– Jay Leno

Since it came to power, the Labour government has introduced 2,685 pieces of legislation every year. And each has been either ill-conceived, draconian, bonkers, bitter, dangerous, counter-productive, childish, wrong, thoughtless, selfish, or designed primarily to make life a bit more miserable for everyone except six people in the BBC, 14 on The Guardian and Al Gore.

– Jeremy Clarkson tells it like it is in The Sunday Times. 

Given the jitters across financial markets it is nice to see that an entrepreneurial German airline is offering a nudist flight from Erfurt to the Baltic island of Usedom. A gap in the market if ever there was one. It reminds me of Seneca’s observation that "the good things which belong to prosperity are to be wished, but the good things that belong to adversity are to be admired" (but from a distance, of course). 

According to a survey of 3,000 people commissioned by UKTV Gold, a satellite TV channel, Britons are increasingly confusing fact and fiction when it comes to their historical knowledge. While 58 percent believed Sherlock Holmes was a real historical figure, 23 percent believed Sir Winston Churchill was fictional.

On seeing the results of this survey I assumed that I had overslept and woken up on April 1st but, alas, no. It appears to have been a real survey of real people – something which, humour aside, is very worrying indeed.

Education reform, anyone?

A company here in Los Angeles is making dolls of all these current political figures. ... They're not like normal dolls where you pull the string and the dolls talk. These are a little different. These, you have to make a large donation to their campaign and then the dolls will say and do whatever you want.

–Jay Leno 

In light of the possible compensation claims with regard to the recent emergency landing at Heathrow, Francis Charig reports that, "The landing was a little heavy but I've been on numerous other journeys where it has been almost as bad."; and, "... the landing was so unsurprising that it was insufficient to stop me working on my Sudoku puzzle." As well as, "I doubt if you've had to go down a chute before but it was damn fun; I would have loved to have had another go but we were being taken well away from the plane to safety."

She has seen what was so painfully obvious to most of us, that this was nothing more than a slightly bumpy landing. And the natural reaction is not to seek out someone to blame, but to dust oneself down and get on with life. There is no better therapy than that.