Psychic Octupii, Rapist Whales and Gender Bending Trout
By Anth Ginn
The country is gradually recovering from the embarrassment of our performance in the World Cup. A man was found unconscious in the gutter in Soho, after drowning his sorrows. He had a bridle and reigns around his shoulders, a tennis ball stuffed in his mouth, and was wearing fishnet stockings, suspenders, a skimpy, lacy basque and an England shirt. The police removed the England shirt to save embarrassment to his family. A record number of people took time off work during the competition, including Wayne Rooney and John Terry.
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All is not gloom and doom. England did win something however, thanks to Paul—from Weymouth. Paul, is an octopus who emigrated to Germany and embarked on a highly successful career as a psychic. He correctly predicted the results of all Germany’s games, and when Germany were knocked out in the semi-final, correctly forecast Spain as the winners. His failsafe method was to pick a mussel from a Perspex box displaying the flag of his chosen team. Paul’s handlers rewarded him by dropping a small replica of the Jules Rimet trophy into his tank. The eight-legged oracle has four times as many Facebook friends than Angela Merkel, the German Chancellor. One bookmaker has offered odds on Paul’s future career: 8-1 that he will become a bookmaker himself, 20-1 he will release a record, 100-1 he will unveil his own brand of calamari, 250-1 that he will return to the UK to advise the Chancellor, George Osborne on economic policy, and 1,000-1 that he will become part of a paella. After predicting Germany’s defeat, Paul received death threats, and after the match, over three hundred thousand people in Berlin began singing anti-octopus songs. The Spanish government have offered Paul asylum, and guaranteed his safety should he decide to move to Spain. Paul, worried that he may end up as a tapas, declined the offer.
Staying on a nautical theme, Daniel Hammond, aged 21, found himself in court recently after claiming he’d been raped by a whale. Hammond, who phoned the emergency services to report the crime, gave his name as Ben Dover and his address as Dr Who’s Tardis. The prosecutor claimed Hammond enjoyed wasting the emergency services’ time with his bizarre stories. On a previous occasions he’d dialed 999 to report his penis dropping off because he’d smoked too much grass, and on another occasion, claimed he was Saddam Hussein and had planted a bomb in Sevenoaks. His lawyer confirmed Hammond had indeed smoked too much grass, but said he didn’t appear to be missing any body parts, although she couldn’t personally verify this.
Staying on a nautical, disappearing-penis theme, all is not well with our native male fish. They are changing into females. Research has shown that a third of male fish in English rivers are changing sex due to “gender-bending” pollution. Female hormones from the contraceptive pill and HRT are being washed into our rivers and causing them to produce eggs.
The Environment Agency study looked at the health of more than 1600 roach found in 51 rivers and streams around the country and discovered that a third of the male fish were changing sex. In one particularly polluted waterway more than 80 per cent of males were developing female characteristics.
Tests showed the males developed female sex organs and were producing eggs. Such fish also produce less sperm and the sperm that is produced is of low quality. Researcher Professor Charles Tyler said that the fish are swimming in a soup of oestrogen-like compounds, found in the Pill and in HRT. The hormone, which is also produced naturally by women and found in industrial waste, is released into our waterways after surviving the sewage treatment process.
The Exeter University professor said it is too early to say what the long-term implications will be for Britain’s fishlife. While it may not initially have a big impact on stock levels, a reduction in the number of breeding males could lead to all sorts of genetic problems in later years. The professor said, “In five years’ item, the whole system could go belly-up.”
As anyone who has ever been to the pantomime, a fancy dress ball, or even a run of the mill party, knows, the British like gender-bending. Little excuse is needed for an Englishman to stuff tissues into a bra, grab hold of his wife’s makeup, hop into a dress, daub his face and become female for a few hours. Nobody ever thought the gender change would become permanent, but, due to the oestrogen, this may become the case. The hormone changing male trout and roaches into females could have a similar effect on us.
Although there is no conclusive proof, it is thought the hormone could be partly to blame for falling sperm counts in men. British men’s sperm counts dropped by almost a third between 1989 and 2002, and one in six couples now have difficulty conceiving.
Prof Tyler said: “There is certainly the potential for it to have an effect in humans, and possibly a marked effect.”
In conservative UK, where the favorite position for sex is the missionary position, there is a fear that in five years time, the men could all be going belly up too. And maybe the transvestite drunk, in the gutter in Soho can blame his fate on oestrogen in his beer, as well as England’s dismal performance in South Africa.
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