highway

1: A main road. When it goes through the countryside, it is often lined the various dead animals. I recently saw a badger lying there inert.

2: A lamp post made by Concrete Utilities in the sixties. Later replaced by the Highway X, which had a slimmer, rounder-shaped base to its column and therefore took up less room on the pavement.

Mrs Ford: Had a good day, Jim?
Mr Ford (who has just arrived home): I was driving along the highway at a steady 50 mph when this stupid toffee-nosed arsehole came tearing along at about 80 or 90, practically rammed my backside for a mile and a half, hooting his horn all the time. When he overtook, he shouted something I couldn't quite understand due to the fact he spoke as though he had his bollocks in his mouth. I naturally did the sensible thing - gave him the finger and told him to f*** off.
Mrs Ford: That's nice, dear.

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spider

One of evolution's greatest success stories. There are spiders all over the world, and the oldest known fossil spider is 380 million years old. Spiders are eight-legged and carnivorous, use silk in a variety of ways depending on the species. Many spin cobwebs to catch prey, larger spiders line the edge of their burrows with web. The bolas spider is named because it throws a line of web ending in a sticky lump to catch prey. Spiders inspire fear and revulsion, quite undeserved, but probably not helped by years of movies telling us spiders are humanity's enemies. Schools are not much more helpful. I still remember a science teacher telling us a black widow was the size of a human hand, which is rubbish. There are some dangerously venomous spiders, like widow spiders, funnelweb spiders, brown recluse spiders and brazilian wandering spiders, but they are a tiny minority of the huge number of spiders in the world. Just to drag some widely-held beliefs into the light of reality:
1: Spiders are not watching you. Most, apart from some jumping spiders, have very poor eyesight.
2: Spiders do not come out of plug-holes. A spider in the bath has fallen down there and can't get out due to the bath's slippery sides.
3: Large hairy spiders are not automatically dangerous. In fact nobody has ever died from a tarantula bite.
4: Women are not automatically scared of spiders. In fact most of the calls the British Tarantula Society gets regarding fear of spiders are from worried men.

Hysterical person: Help! I saw a spider! I'm not going to bed! It might be there waiting for me!
Other person: What makes you think any self-respecting spiders would want to get into your bed?

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eastenders

A soap opera which used to be unmissable entertainment, but since about 2001 it has completely lost the plot. All the interesting characters have gone, replaced by people who are either irritating, obnoxious or both. I've lived where there are a lot of real eastenders and they're nothing like the ones in this soap opera. Albert Square is now populated by patronising working-class stereotypes (who are usually criminals, wife-beaters, serial killers etc). Nobody can keep their trousers/skirt on for more than five minutes, and Dirty Den suddenly rising from the grave shows how desperate the series has become, having exhausted all possible storylines years ago. Only continues because soap operas are so cheap to make. Once you've built the sets, you can use them forever, and you only need to go on location for a week twice a year and have a special effect once in a blue moon. And you can use the same storylines over and over. Eastenders always has an extra-depressing storyline at Christmas. Ho-ho-ho to you as well. By the way, Eastenders is now on four times a week, so that's even more padding to enjoy.

To hell with decent plots and characters. What we want in eastenders are headline-grabbing gimmick storylines, no matter how ridiculous they are. Lol! Eastenders was always larger-than-life, but surely there must be some limits.

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blotto

Drunk. Other terms which mean 'drunk' are: intoxicated, pissed, smashed, Oliver Twist (rhyming slang), potted, soused, in your cups, off the wagon, slaughtered, hammered, wasted, shit-faced, squiffy, legless, sozzled, plastered, sloshed, inebriated, tipsy, tiddly, paralytic, tanked up, on the booze, on the piss, on the sauce

Wife: "You were the one who ended up blotto last night and introduced your dinner to the 'welcome' mat. You can wash it and then wring it out".

Man: "Right now I feel like it's my brain that needs wringing out".

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George Bush

George W Bush is a man who has made more false claims about his past than Jeffrey Archer. When he was governer of Texas he sent the state police out to arrest peaceful demonstrators. His company 'quietly' bought up over 200 anti-Bush Internet domain names. He has given large amounts of state money to repay certain people for contributing large amounts of cash to his campaign and to repay others for making him personally rich through insider business deals. He made personal profits from failing oil companies, sold 60% of his oil stock for over $840,000 two months before Kuwait was invaded (how very well timed!) and he used government coercion to make him a private fortune. He and his lapdog Blair have between them brought us to the brink of global war, have taken away rights in the name of anti-terrorism whilst doing nothing about the real terrorists. After the capture of Saddam (whose trial is a ridiculous farce, with the ex-dictator running rings around everyone), it's now been realised that Saddam was the only thing keeping Iran in check. Let's be honest, the only mistake Saddam made was invading a country which supplied America with cheap oil. Our 'allies' in the Gulf Wars themselves have terrible human rights records and have invaded other countries. Every time Bush opens his mouth I wonder what half-educated Stan Laurel-type blitherings are going to come out of it next. George W Bush is the final proof, if any were needed, that the world is run by big business and not politicians, and big businessmen don't want anyone with an IQ in power in case he starts thinking for himself.

George Bush: "People misunderestimate me".
"More and more of our imports are coming from a abroad"
"That was the most logical and common sensical thing to do"

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tarantula

Originally the name 'tarantula' was given to a species of wolf spider in Italy which was blamed for venomous spider bites which locals tried to cure by performing a dance. In fact the spider bites were inflicted by a species of widow spider. But the widow spiders are small and look insignificant, whilst wolf spiders are bigger and hairy, so the wolf spider was blamed. To this day many people judge how venomous a spider is on its size, which is completely inaccurate. Wolf spiders are harmless. These days the name 'tarantula' is used to describe any spider of the Theraphosid family. This family has something like 800 known species in Africa, Mid and South America and Asia, with many more no doubt still undiscovered. The tarantulas (or Theraphosids) are the giants of the spider world, the biggest with leg-spans which could cover a dinner plate (a Goliath Birdeater with a 12-inch leg-span I think is the record). Though some tarantulas live in trees, most are ground-dwellers and the live in burrows. They line the entrances of their burrows with silk. Though tarantulas have no senses of hearing or smell and very poor vision, they have a very developed sense of touch. The hairs on their legs can detect the slightest air or ground vibration, and the lines of silk they lay down around their burrows are almost like extentions of their legs. Any small animal touching one of those threads will instantly alert the tarantula. Tarantulas feed on anything from crickets, locusts and cockroaches to rodents, small snakes and small lizards. Despite the fact they are often known as 'bird-eating spiders' in the US, it is probably very rare for a tarantula to eat a bird, though tree-climbing tarantulas can easily help themselves to a chick when a parent bird is away from its nest. With their basic webs they are thought to be the earliest form of spider, date back over 350 million years. When threatened or annoyed, tarantulas rear up on their back legs and bare their fangs. Some can even make a hissing/rustling noise by rubbing bristles on their jaws together. Tarantulas do not eat solid food. When a tarantula feeds, it injects a digestive fluid into its prey through its fangs. The prey is then gradually liquidised and absorbed into the mouth in a similar way to water being absorbed into a sponge. Tarantulas breathe through gill-like openings in the underside of their abdomens called 'book lungs'. When tarantulas mate, the male inserts sperm from his pedipalps ('feelers') into an opening under the female's body. Female tarantulas are larger and stronger than the more spindly-looking males, can live anything up to ten or twenty years, maybe longer depending on the species. Once the male has reached full size he can't hope to live eighteen months at the most. Despite the hooks on his front legs (for holding the female's fangs) he maybe be eaten after (or even before) mating. Tarantulas shed their skins, on average once a year. They can cast off a damaged limb but re-grow it gradually, the new limb becoming bigger every time their shed their skin. The tarantula skin is an exoskeleton, made of keratin (the same material human nails are made of). Despite the fear and horror they install in so many people (who've learnt most of what they know about tarantulas from the movies) tarantulas have venom which is unable to endanger human life. In fact, there is no record of anyone being killed by a tarantula bite. Some New World species have hairs on their abdomens which they can flick off with their back legs. These can cause an itching/burning sensation if they come into contact with human skin. But let's be honest, tarantulas are probably more afraid of us than we are of them, and they are a major controller of destructive pests like cockroaches and locusts. In fact tarantulas make excellent pets. They are more likely to run away rather than attack, unless they are cornered. Tarantulas are certainly not made of rubber, as some movies would have us believe. They are just as much flesh and blood as we are.

A tarantula bite dangerous? No. Its barnet's worse than its bite.

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virgin

1: An island or other piece of land which is undiscovered.

2: A person or animal who has never had sex. This could be for a variety of reasons, but if there were more virgins there might be less STDs, less unwanted pregnancies and less babies who grow up being ignored by their uninterested parents, having no chance in life at all and ending up in the gutter or on drugs. The problem is that people are so often made to feel that admitting you're a virgin is akin to admitting you're a leper.

I'm sure most virgins have had sex on their own, if you get my drift. Despite us humans claiming we're superior to animals, primal instincts are still within us.

Schoolgirls:

Emma: So, Rachel. You had sex yet?
Rachel: No. I'm only thirteen. Anyway, I'm going to save myself for the right man.
Emma and her friends laugh and start chanting 'Rachel's a virgin'.

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