There are deformed Hummers and Lincolns driving around turning heads, and maybe even a Scion Xb or two has been doubled in length with 10 cents added to the value too. Now there is a duck that has gone through the stretch limo process. Courtesy of Cliff Michaels, satirical photographer extraordinaire.

Many of Cliff Michaels' satirical photos appear in the looping photo album in the imaginatively named Photos section of the Pisstakers. I love his renditions of Buster, a bright and cheery lad with a missing chromosone. A shame the American Idol moneython didn't ear mark anything for that young man. Maybe next year.

I wrote a couple of pieces on What's in a name? I explore the name game a bit further, looking at the credibility, or lack of it inspired by a name.

Rent a wreck is clearly a joke name, right?

As a tactic to attract attention to a reliable car rental company, Rent a Wreck is a winning name. It can't be literal! Who, apart from diving schools actually rent wrecks? But there must be lots of potential customers who take one look at the name and walk on by. They are the losers.

The Pisstakers suffers from misinterpretation too, judging by the reaction of many linguistically challenged (or is it prudish) souls who assume that we extract urine, literally. Relax, just check Wikipedia and you will see that we do in fact extract the michael - reliably.

Bodgit and Leggit detractors misread the self deprecation

Many believed that the name reflected an unreliable window installation service. (As if you would say, hey we are crap, unreliable, give us your money and watch us run like hell!)

It is the same here at the Pisstakers ie many visitors think you couldn't possibly read anything valid, enlightening or serious, especially about subjects like tech or news. To put the record straight, we couldn't possibly satirise or ridicule topics that aren't true, else that would be called creative writing. There is nothing creative about the posts here!

Credibility comes at a price

Rent a Wreck clients get a good deal, but the folks who need the peace of mind that comes with renting from straightforwardly named companies pay a premium. Hertz, Avis and "The small print requires us to charge you for every possible extra" Budget take their clients for every penny with a credible corporate smile on their face.

Likewise, for seekers of news, there is a price to pay for taking the easy path to reliable news sites - you get to read articles from experts that wreck the truth with mind-numbing accuracy and correct journalism.

Names that backfire

Sometimes attention grabbing names generate shocking results. As they say at games.net:

Would you buy a video game console called the Wonder Swan? How about the Turbo Duo? Or the Vectrex?

Not that they are bad products, but if Wii and X Box sales are anything to go by, the public thinks they are flaky.

In an article about business names, I highlighted a debate at Ask Pud where it was argued that offshoots of recognised brands should make a stand and have a completely different name to that of the parent company. So Flickr works well, whereas Yahoo Photos may not have enjoyed the same success. That argument made sense until Google came along and blew the theory sky high with the abandonment of Froogle, their shopping division. (Thanks to techboggle for that lead.)

I never realised Froogle was a play on Frugal, my bad, but now the credibility of froogle has been restored with a new name. The purpose of Google Product Search is as clear as day - a dull, rainy, frugally creative day. I say, live a bit, even if it confuses your customers - like Bacon Products.

What's in a credible name when it comes to people?

Parents, choose your kids' names well! How credible is the word of a guy called Dick? Would you follow a vice president called Vagina? Read Legend of the "kid named Eczema" and others to see some faux pas extraordinaires..

There, that is your dose of educational hypothesising for another day. You can go read Fox News and Wikipedia (Watch)for more believable stuff than found at The Pisstakers.

And cautious car renters, we at The Pisstakers salute your wise choices and sense of adventure, from the bottom of our self deprecating ass.

Out in the wilderness, no contact with anyone, what else do you do but nibble away at a sleeping bear's jugular with a pair of clippers!

I am not taking the piss here! This was the last ditch effort of a conservation officer in Canada, locked in a cage with a tranquilised grizzly and just a pair of nail clippers to save him from impending death.

...20 minutes cutting and clipping away at the bear's jugular vein. He had to clip through a thick layer of fur, and then an even thicker hide, to find the vein.

You have to read the full story from Kai.

I came across horsey blog, Everyday Rider, It caught my attention, not as a Pisstaker, but as someone whose wife is getting into horse training. I should point out that I too am happy to participate in the merry dance being led by the most frustrating smart and obstinate Arabian horse unhung. Or to be more accurate, hung! His knackers are intact only by the grace of me not knowing how to castrate the bastard.

Anyway, I was happy to read Everyday Rider. and my ears pricked up at a post entitled Needles, herbs and Horses - about acupuncture on horses. Bloody mad, I hear you whinny? What is wrong with good old Western treatment?

Western medicine 0 Eastern 1

Well, firstly, good ole vet wannabes with access to all the medication under the sun, couldn't cure a horse's bad back. And neither could all the drugs in the cabinet cure another dodgy horse's eye. But the acupuncturist cured both conditions!

Just because we don't understand why a hot liver would make a horse's eye go bad, doesn't mean it isn't true. And when an alternative practitioner pokes a load of Oriental needles on a horse's face to back up the liver treatment, who are we mere Westerners to argue with needles and herbs? Even the horse with its back feet wrapped around its face believed that whacky treatment was worthy of praise, so I am not going to argue against acupuncture and co. But most people in the West do!

East v West - neither is best.

Alternative medicine is by default different to the norm, else it wouldn't be called alternative! And why do we turn our nose up at so called whacky practices anyway? Can 4 billion Easterners really be wrong. If it was an unhealthy way to care for folks, there wouldn't be 4 billion of them.

As someone whose doctor nearly ex-communicated me for asking for homeopathic asthma treatment (that had worked!), and then prescribed some years later a totally brilliant asthma drug, I suggest that we should just accept that everything has its place, noone can cure everything all the time.

I should just point out that stallions are lovely animals that only misbehave when they are confused by humans or aren't being treated like stallions. And no animal was hurt in the writing of this article.

I have only ever known Michael More as a chubby, comfortably commissioned documentary film maker. He had a makeover though and this is the result.

There are some really clever people out there armed with photoshop, and plenty of stars who make perfect candidates for slimming down. Check out Fasting Time.

The rental company are called Rent a wreck. Apparently the van is yours for no money down, zero engine, unlimited mileage, no fuel costs and nothing to pay on termination of the contract.

We are trained by Mother Marketing to be dubious of snappy self-deprecating names for companies. Bodgit and Leggit, are one such business that springs to mind. At first glance you assume they will do a rough job, cut corners and then run like hell when they get their money. However, the double glazing people rightly get a lot of repeat business, because they are good.

By and large, though, most names are inaccurate when you analyse them. After experiencing endless examples of dubious behavior at a certain chain of hardware stores, I refer to them as Screw It and Go. The removal firm we had should be called Hump and Dump, after all the skid marks they left on the walls and the local baker has no right to call himself Master, unless he changes his k to a t.

Got any good name changes?

.

According to this spam email, it looks like we won't need to work again, at least till next week. (High overheads and a penchant for gummi bears takes a lot of finance!) But remind me, how did I acquire a UK lottery ticket, exactly?

UKlottery 2007 promotion. We are happy to inform you that your email address have emerged a winner of £691,252 (Six hundred and ninety one thousand, two hundred and fifty two pounds sterling). NOTE: to file for your claim, please contact the claim department below,Email: infodept_101@yahoo.co.uk infodept_102@yahoo.co.ukclaims agent Rev Eddie James

Feel free to email spam Reverend Eddie back and ask if you are a winner too!

I have had enough of these charlatans. I already gave this guy some credit for his "system". Got my hopes up, and dashed 'em straight afterwards.

Has anyone ever won anything like a lottery, as in 5 figures or more?

I was driven to write this article of dubious merit by a simple question from Say no to Crack humor blogger extraordinaire, Anita. Why do they call it meme anyway? or something like that (Emails are confidential right!)

The root of all meme's

As a Pisstaker with 2 years of French, I would hazard a guess that the blogging term Meme originates from the French word même. In certain circumstances, même, as in moi-méme, can mean "myself". This makes perfect sense, as memes are an excuse for people to blog about themselves in some contrived list-oriented way.

However, history is a strange story teller and all is not as straight forward as it seems in the world of words.

Meme même moi-moi

Rumor has it, you see, that in France, même (pronounced mem) was originally Moi Moi, but noone inside or outside of France could pronounce it without sounding stupid, so même it was for centuries. In fact, it was like that until quite recently. (ie before le blogging took off in la France!)

Suddenly out of Nowhere, Pennsylvania, the whole Wawa phenomenon blew the "stupid mnemonics with too many vowels" theory out the window. Millions of Americans happily sounded off like reverberating guitars at least twice a day. Wawa, Wawa cawfee, wawa wait in line... Repetitive word sounds were becoming socially acceptable in the North East's convenience mini mart coffee store of choice.

Lose the "e" losr

Rapidly, linguistically challenged techs, living off of Wawa coffee and banana nut muffins started to experiment with names for their web 2.0 software applications. Instead of celebrating the vowel, they hit on the idea of dropping the "e" as far as was humanly possible. So Flicker was born without an e, revver without an e, beggr, fuckr, suckr, and so it went on, all e-lessly acceptable.

At that point, even new verbs got invented ie you could google. So logically, if you could Google, you could do anything to the Nglish language. It seemed as if every word was under potential attack, even même.

Meme survives web 2.0 holocaust

Luckily there are always checks and balances in language. Be thankful that the Web 2.0 deal is still young and only marginally influential. If not, this whole article would be unreadable and we would now be seeing a blogospheric explosion of "e"-less memes, MM's as it were. And we would have to learn a new form of Nglish.

"Come join in at MM Monday. Xprimnt with other bloggrs writing maninglss drivl about 5 things thy hat about thmslvs, or 5 bloggrs who irritat thm."

For students of language, like moi-même, that would have been catastrophic too, as we would be struggling to even guess where many terms came from. But, now, language has come full circle, e's are back and we are back to même without the hat, aka Meme.

Post Script

May I take this opportunity to state that Pisstakers blog fans should join me in launching the next revolution of linguistic nonsense based on French haute couture. Henceforth "we" refer to these silly Meme's as mems. Mercy. And here is my 5 obsession meme.

No chicken should be forced to suffer a documentary from Pamela Anderson. PeTa have a point of course, highlighting the mal practice of Kentucky Flayed Chicken, but wouldn't they have been better advised to choose a spokes person with credibility? She is about one staged removed from Ronald MacDonald, with all that make-up and a penchant for beef cakes.

If the guys at Highena are the originators of this math teacher arrested article, then they have a future, indeed. Brilliant spoof.

Cowboy builders are a menace to society

It got me thinking, but before the punchline, a little background!

In the UK, they call people who just picked up a hammer and now I'm a contractor - cowboy builders. And instead of purchasing supplies from recognised trade stores, they frequent DIY superstores. You know, the places that sell home owners a half-price hammer that breaks in half in half a week; cement mixers that don't mix, paint brushes that shed hair for fun...all served by retirees and demotivated sales staff with their names written by hand on their orange aprons. And now, the punchline groan.

Imagine an American cowboy builder with a long gray beard gets on a plane. He starts talking into a voice recorder - and is immediately arrested as a potential Home Despot dictator!

If only the authorities would take these menaces to society out of circulation on a more regular basis.

Got any more variations on a theme?

Apparently, as China's affluence increases, so the flood of Chinese tourists to Britain grows. As with all new trends, there are growing pains, and it seems the visitors from the world's most populous country are making a bad name for themselves. They are deemed loud, rude and obnoxious travellers, by hoteliers. So the Chinese Government is stepping in to stop the rot.

Ever alert for an opportunity to exert control over their own, and build up a good name for their country at the same time, China's leaders are issuing tips to travellers: on how to behave in Britain.

Talk to the dog!

The advice for China guys and their travelling dolls: remember to address the dog when asking for directions to the latest greatest UK tourist attractions.

It makes sense too! If you ever go out for a stroll in the park or along the street, it is interesting to observe how Brits behave when they encounter a friend or acquaintance out walking their dog. They will both invariably lower their gaze towards the dog and then start the conversation.

"Hello, Fred, lovely day for walking the dog, isn't it!"

"Yes, Daphne, a lovely day. And how is your husband, er ..."

Stroking the dog's head, "Oh, him, the same as usual."

Crouching down, rubbing dog's ears, "Oh that's good," he replies. "Good bye."

"Good bye."

Then without even making eye contact, the two move off in different directions, feeling all the better for having broken down some of their British reserve. See, it makes sense to conduct any conversation via a dog!

Don't ask where your fellow diner is going!

It is typically British to eat a hearty lunch of eggs, baked beans and chips, and before the last mouthful, feel an urge to go to the bathroom. Rather than just say, "I'm off for a pee." they will carefully put down their cutlery, catch the attention of the host, mouth their need to go to the loo and silently glide towards the door.

So, the advice for China guys and their travelling dolls wishing to observe correct table etiquette: play fair, and please don't ask people who leave the table before the end of the meal where they are going!

Ever met a real Chinese tourist? What were they like?

Have you seen our humungous list of questions on the aptly named Good Questions page

According to the Beeb, the UK Education Secretary has said

it is "ludicrous" to believe that mothers going back to work could damage their children.

Right on, Mr secretary, a very wise statement. Delinquency has nothing to do with the lack of parental care offered to so many kids. It is good for kids to be around other kids. Child care is a great environment to learn about life. Much better to learn from other little people who know nothing about the world, beyond play and a feeling of abandonment. Adults have so little to offer youngsters. Right on Mr Secretary!

Long-hours threat to parents too.

Parents aren't getting screwed up, either, by long hours of work away from the home. Mums love the freedom of getting up 2 hours earlier than non-mums, driving and dumping their kids at a place they hope is doing them good. Working under the threat of phone calls to leave work to deal with problems with little Johnny, that is cool too. And mums must love to come home tired to tired dad and over-excited kids clamouring for parental attention.

Bring on boarding schools

Cool, Mr Secretary. I guess the next logical step is to promote boarding schools as the next big thing. That way parents don't have to think about the kids getting in the way of work, at least not till the holidays, when they can do the child-care thing, just to remind them of how lucky the whole family is, not to go through that shite, not to work distracted, all year round.

Supporting the economy is the threat to kids and parents

Crazy man. Just admit that the world is falling apart under the stress of a mental economic model, where parents work longer hours for less pay to have more things and less time to enjoy them. And that isn't even accounting for the need for a continual flow of fit and healthy and brainy kids - the next generation of hard-working consumers.

A solution

Well-rounded consumers are needed to keep the machine going. However old fashioned it may sound, family life does have a few advantages that will ensure the people at the top keep earning loads of the backs of the proletariat, comrades!!!!

Families with happy and well-balanced parents offering proper adult guidance to kids is one way of farming the next crop of economic miracle workers. And to be balanced, lets go with the old maxim that dad has to work or hunt, and let's allow for modern thinking too, saying it is OK for mums to work. But put some sort of parameters in place, so the family life and quality parent-kid interaction time is possible. I don't know what the formula is, but there is one, somewhere.

And, most important, let's accept that most kids don't really want to be shipped off out the way. Any benefits of being with other kids in a happy, primary-colored holding pen are far outweighed by the disadvantages of perceived rejection.

At least, that's how I see it. What do you think?

Digging through the archives , I found this story about a part of my October honeymoon in France. Have I been married that long already!

We had an invitation to go to Saint-Tropez to see a regatta of 350 boats. It was pretty cool as it included the biggest tall ships in the world - from Penduick 1,2,3 and 5 (4 was sunk in a storm) to a maverick sailor in a 12 foot row boat with a sail that looked like it doubled for a bedsheet. There was also a group of boats called Wally, a high-speed Australian plastic pig. It was hideous and did nothing to dispel the idea that Aussies can be flash but tasteless.

Don't play it again, Sam

The multi-million dollar procession took several hours to arrive and it certainly portrayed how the other half live. Some pretentious guy in white pyjamas was playing a haunting saxophone number aboard a 125-foot schooner. He was no Gerry Rafferty.

Not far behind him were a couple of formula one "cigarette" jet boats. These are capable of lift off if you set them on their tails. When they revved up they instantly drowned out all ambient noise, which was much appreciated by those of us that didn't appreciate the saxophone. The downside was the vibration that was powerful enough to jigger your bones. No fun for those still digesting their lobster lunches.

The rich scene

Talking of rumbling tummies, the dockside was lined with loads of over-weight, 60-something botox-ed playboys accompanied by their young tanned dolly birds. Do they have no shame, or is it, no brains? I had to question what was lodged between their ears, when for some reason, the land-lubber jet setters waved back at the equally privileged twats standing on their poop decks grinning and waving shorewards.

There must be some appeal in being a self-appointed king of the French seaside resort. I can't see it appeal myself, so they are welcome to their piece of paradise. Having said that, I would be happy to be part of the community populated by guys in 12-foot bath tubs with a sail. First one to the bar wins a beer and a bag of chips.