Coming Soon:

The University of the Bleeding Obvious: Volume Two

New T-Shirts, Old Books

Our newly-appointed head of merchandising, Mr Rodney Plunkett, would like a few words with you all on the occasion of our shop relaunch.

Yes, hello, Plunkers here, and I must say that this is a bit of a turnip for the old books, or however the expression goes. Old Rodders, who the fellows back at my old school once voted ‘Chap Most Likely to Accidentally Flush Himself Down the Toilet’, being made head of merchandising! And they said that I’d never amount to anything.

I must confess that the route to this present exalted position has been somewhat circuitous. After Cambridge, the Rodmeister was fast-tracked into a cushy little number at the Foreign Office, but I made rather a hash of it, I’m afraid. When a chap gets caught with his hand in the till, his nose in the personal affairs of the Ambassador for Lugash and his finger in a rather pretty little secretary called Janice, there’s really no option but to whisk him out of the way before the press can get a whiff of his aftershave.

Subsequent to this trifling setback my Aunt Jemima formed the opinion that a spell in the teaching profession might do me a world of good and, more importantly, keep me out of harm’s way. Aunt J being in a position to pull a few strings - and a formidable sod to boot - she soon obtained for me a cosy little post in a prep school, miles from civilisation in the wild and woolly badlands of East Anglia. I have to say that old Roddington really took to the life of a schoolmaster: drinking tea in the staff room, supervising rugger matches and occasionally scrawling ‘could do better’ in the odd exercise book. But for the incident of the albino donkey, the margarine and the industrial strength suction pump, I would have been there still.

There followed similarly ignominious stints in the South African police, an animal charity, as headline writer for the Bbc ‘news’ website, and as a solicitor. In this last post yours truly very nearly earned the distinction of securing the first hanging in Britain since 1964, for a man I was defending on a parking offence. I was also a merchant banker for a while - that didn’t end well.

Not to worry. When a fellow has a CV like that to his name, it’s only a matter of time before someone comes a-knocking. Happily, the people doing the hammering on Roddypoop’s door were those jolly chaps from The University of the Bleeding Obvious. Actually, Aunt Jemima was instrumental in this instance as well - apparently she has Polaroids of that Farnsworth fellow. I haven’t seen them myself, but Uncle Steven says they’re pretty racy stuff.

But so much for all this flim-flammery. The point is the UBO chaps have relaunched the shop, with the books that they brought out years ago, and some spanking brand new T-shirts, which I’m told is what the kids really go for. And they wanted the Rodulator to generally ‘big it up’, get the word out, so to speak, and drum up a bit of trade. And of course, my first response once given this awe-inspiring task was obvious: sandwiches.

T-shirts and books are all very splendid, but in my experience what the baying public really wants is somewhere it can get a really good sandwich. Not as easy at it sounds, once you’ve looked into it. It’s the packaging that really taxes the old bean – just can’t seem to get the hang of it. Most of the more fragile concoctions don’t survive in transit, and anything involving mayonnaise just trickles out of the envelope. We’re experimenting with crease-resistant lettuce and reinforced chicken, but until we get it right, you’ll just have to be content with the more traditional fare.

TTFN.
Plunkers
UK Shop
US Shop

Kicking and Screaming

The latest update, Kicking and Screaming, has now gone live, and it's frankly too late for anybody to do anything about it. Sorry.

For your viewing pleasure it comes in two distinct flavours - the web version which you can visit here and a shiny downloadable extended pdf version, with extra articles, which is here: pdf. You can also download wallpapers and posters, and there's one or two other twiddly bits tucked away in there. So, off you go then... why are you still here?

17.09.10

The University of the Bleeding Obvious is pleased to announce that its new update, Kicking and Screaming, will be unleashed upon the planet on Friday 17th of September.

Now, we recognise the difficulty - perhaps even the futility - of trying to interest people in original material on the internet. We all know, of course, that when Professor Heinz Wolff invented the worldwide web in 1973, it was specifically designed to allow characters of limited personality to air their pointless opinions on the latest vacuous celebrity to grace the supermarket tabloids, to debate the finer details of TV programmes they ought to have stopped watching twenty years ago, or to post pictures of their cats.

This poses a problem. I don’t have a cat, I couldn’t give a stuff about Sapphire and Bleeding Steel, and the news that this week Kerry Katona is fat, thin, on drugs, off drugs, divorced, engaged or has been struck by a meteorite whilst shopping in Iceland rarely keeps me awake at night. Nevertheless, in the interests of publicity I realise I’m going to have to bite the bullet, and so without further delay I can now reveal that the forthcoming Kicking and Screaming will be a tribute to Katie Price. Yes, that’s right, Katie Price. Hello search engines.

Katie Price was born in Jordan in 1978. A child prodigy, by the age of twelve she had already written five piano concertos, published a highly-acclaimed thesis on the application of fluid mechanics in cheese production and, with Shaun Ryder, revolutionised the field of wind turbine design. However, her first love had always been quantum mechanics, and it was her work on the spin properties of muons that led to being awarded the Nobel Prize for Physics, made a Knight Commander of the Order of the British Empire, and offered a two-year contract to get her baps out three times a week on page three of a popular British newspaper. She once went all unnecessary in a supermarket in Hull.

So, to recap then, that’s Kicking and Screaming - A Tribute to Katie Price, going live on 17th September, 2010. Lovely.

A Learned Doctor Writes

In advance of the exciting, and indeed dangerously imminent, new instalment of The University of the Bleeding Obvious (not long now, kids - don't get too excited!), we have great pleasure in announcing the appointment of our new medical officer, Dr A Bongo (whom God preserve) of Hampton Wick. He has been kind enough to send us this brief address:

Stop right there! Have you ever seriously considered what would happen if a piano fell on you as you were reading this? No, of course you haven't - that would be mental. And yet laboratory tests prove that in ninety-nine percent of all cases, falling pianos can be extremely nasty.

Good evening. My name is Dr Adolphous Bongo, and I don't want any of you thinking that there is the slightest reason to doubt my professional integrity, just because you've read my name in the national press alongside certain allegations of misconduct. The bottom line is that the British Chiropractic Association have their way manipulating the spine, and I have mine. Hell, if you're going to crack bones, do it properly. The fact that my method involves the application of power tools only serves to illustrate my progressive take on the matter, and any suggestion that the permanently 'folded' state of Mrs Eileen Trumpton is the result of malpractice is entirely erroneous. Trust me, you should have seen the old bat when I first met her, she was like a bleeding concertina.

Anyway, the reason I mention the piano thing is because as a result of new legislation, falling gold reserves and the shifting of the Gulf Stream, those Bleeding Obvious people have found it necessary to appoint me to the position of Chief Medical Officer. You know, like that chap with the craggy face in Star Trek. That's a point - how come the Star Trek Enterprise gets its own doctor? In my experience, most organisations of that size make do with some mouth-breathing teenager who wanders around aimlessly with a first aid kit on his belt, and whose only experience of medicine is a a three-hour course in first aid, a succession of dead goldfish and a box set of House. And yes, I did say 'Star Trek Enterprise'. Get over it.

Of course, my relationship with The University of the Bleeding Obvious goes back some way, so when they approached me to help them out I naturally bent over backwards to come to their assistance - which I can't help but feel is one more triumph for my particular brand of chiropractic treatment. Incidentally, my interest in the subject was the result of a fortuitous accident - I wanted to do a course on feet, but wandered into the wrong evening class.

I should point out that the risk of being hit by a falling piano in your own home is minimal, although ultimately it does depend on your particular lifestyle. By and large, most people don't have bulky musical apparatus suspended from their ceilings, and if you do then you can expect to shoulder the burden of the blame just as much as you can anticipate withstanding the impact of the instrument. Nevertheless, it is my job to consider such risks. And now, thanks to my diligence, my experience and my dogged pursuit of backhanders, I am in a position to say that 'Kicking and Screaming' is quite probably safe for public consumption and that the danger of anyone succumbing to an overdose of falling pianos is relatively slight.

Bongo

Decisions, Decisions

It's going a bit wrong now. The pool of articles that I was in the process of whittling down has grown from twenty to about twenty-six. Some of the newer ones actually have real proper actual jokes in them - not very funny ones, but jokes nonetheless. Do people really want to know about Pigmongering, I ask myself? Is the Ministry of Factular Informations worthy of inclusion? And should I really unleash Mrs Wilberforce and the River on the world, even though the world is likely to maintain an irritating display of indifference towards it?

In my desperation I turned to dark and ancient arts, conferring with practitioners of forbidden knowledge from the dawn of time. I paid particular attention to Madame Fatima who announces her predictions to the faithful through the astrology column in the Evening Bugle. She seemed to think it was a good day for me to meet new people, and that my lucky number would be five, but otherwise refrained from commenting on my particular dilemma.

And then it struck me - does it really matter? Onwards then, and don't spare the horses! And as for Mrs Wilberforce - I like it, so she's in.

Coming September 2010

It's been a while, but this September will see the first first new collection of material on The University of the Bleeding Obvious since regular updates ceased in 2006. Basking under the title "Kicking and Screaming: A Tantrum in 12 Movements", this collection of articles will not only continue the glorious tradition of silliness and nonsense, but also aim a satirical swing at the issues of power and responsibility. And all that without being pompous, pretentious and embarrassing. Oh yes.

About twenty articles have been written. These will be whittled down to a dozen (I'm currently taking advice - the sentence "Yeah, that's crap, lose it" is one that I'm getting to know and love). In addition to the web pages, there will be a downloadable PDF with extras! Gosh! Possibly even a free mystery gift if I can figure out a way of transmitting Dairylea triangles over the internet. Oh, I've given it away now...