Zak-n-Bur's Weblog

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Zak-n-Bur's Legjobb Weblog is our attempt here at www.ContaminatedLand.co.uk to do a 'Weblog'. However rather than trying to compete with the mainstream, our aim is to satisfy the requirements of 'The man on the Clapham Omnibus' - and you never know 'it could be you'.

We have enlisted the help of 2 cool cats who hang around the neighbourhood of Clapham, who are:-

• Zak (a golden brown Burmese who turns somersaults on stairs for kicks) and his buddy

• Bur (a chocolate brown Burmese who catches and eats honey bees for kicks)

Burmese cats (just in case you didn't know) suffer from 'Tourettes Syndrome' (like young males who have just discovered a four letter work beginning with 'f', that can be used as a verb, noun, adjective and adverb). The unfortunate side-effect is that they follow you down the street turning the air blue by 'bad-mouthing' you in Burmese !

We figured that here at 'Contamination R us' Villas, we might as well put their communication skills to use, hence the weekly newsletter. They also have somewhat diametrically opposed views of the world and where it's going. Hopefully this Ying and Yang effect and their ability to see things either in black or white (or at least chocolate and gold) means that they will cover all ends of the spectrum as regards Environmental issues (until night falls!).

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'hotlips Houlihan'

The first edition of the 'Zak-n-Bur' was published in February 1999 by the folks at Free pint. We have it here squirreled away on the site as the Free Pint guide to sources of Environmental information. We also wrote a couple of other articles for Free pint, one of them on East and Central Europe, and the other on Geographic Information Systems, which we have also hidden away on the site somewhere.

The problem with all these online electronic newsletters of course is that they have hotlinks, and just like 'hotlips Houlihan' in M.A.S.H., the material they link to may no longer be there - afterall she has long since moved out of that shower!

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Stuff the Weblog, tell us more about the cats!

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OK,OK, there's not a lot to tell. They are 'latch-key'cats, and when their owners go out to work, Zak and Bur get bored. So they either leap over the fence (flattening the poor old lilies) or else knock on the front door.

This is where the Tourettes Syndrome comes in, coz, if you don't open the door and let them in, they start bad-mouthing you. If Bur is in a stropy mood, he will leap from window-sill to window-sill until he is outside the first-floor bedroom window, and then yowl his head off.

The result is that rather than face the embarrasment of 'lace-curtain twitch' and tut-tutting neighbours (how could he do that to his cat, I'm going to the RSPCA immediately - serves him right if he ends up in a BBC fly-on-the-wall documentary about mistreating dumb animals, blah, blah, blah) you let him in. Big mistake as Zak like a shadow zooms in with him.

If cats were on drugs (and who knows what catnip really does to their brains) then Zak would have just got in from Kingston - no man not Hull - Jamaica! 'Like wow man far out, watch me do the perfect somersault down the landing stairs' - seems to be the only thing on his mind. Forget travelling overland to South Africa to find the perfect wave at Richards Bay - think bannisters!

Bur conversely is just back from from the Dome where he was clubbing with the Ministry of Sound, if ever they needed someone to replace Keanu Reeves in Speed III, he'd be your man. He is happiest when he is swatting bees. Picture the scene - the poor old bee has just loaded up with a cargo of genetically modified pollen, has been given clearance from Air Traffic Control and is about 3 feet up when 'zap' she is swatted onto terra firma.

Dazzed and confused the bee slowly staggers up, checks it's fuel-tanks, and is once again airborne, has cleared 4 foot, and whap, Bur runs 'amock', leaps into the air, claps his front-paws together, and down comes the bee, punch drunk as it it had gone 15 rounds with Mike Tyson. Fortunately the coup de grace is swift as it is flicked into the air, and swallowed. Exit Bur with a grin on his face and a strange buzzing noise in the pit of his stomach!

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So what was that about the Weblog again

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Yes well they do say that reduced attention span is linked to environmental stress, afterall who gives a monkey's about Global Warming, apart from property developers in The Maldives. We all know that cheaper petrol is the driving force of the world economy - not some stupid fizzy gas that stops your Gin and Tonic going flat !

Then again maybe, to paraphrase Joe Walsh 'The smoker you drink the Gaia you get'. Bearing this in mind Zak and Bur thought it would be a cool idea (well actually cats don't have cool ideas they just love ripping - no not CD's, carpets!) to have a Weblog running, dealing with the environment in general and contaminated land in particular.

So what is a Weblog? - well its sort of like a stream of consciousness, you know the know-it-all down at the pub who just won't shut up and drones on and on, about how easy the questions are on "Who wants to be a millionaire". No actually that's a bit unfair, it is more like a daily (or weekly listing) of items that are of interest, that can be followed up through hyperlinks if you feel so inclined.

The theory is that rather than spend time trying to format and classify the information into the website, you just throw it against the wall and see what sticks (yup thats right the same way that you check if spaghetti is ready to eat)

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Weblog, legjobb, where is the bloomin thing

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No doubt you are now asking - why the reference to a Legjobb? Well its the Hungarian word for excellent, or simply "the best". It doesn't translate too well into english, afterall Tina Turner would be sending the wrong message if she sang "You're simply the legjobb", but somehow when attached to a weblog it seems to have the right resonance.

Zak-n-Burs Weblog issue 1 was promised for the 1st week of October 2000, but you know something cropped up at the time (can't remember what exactly) so it never got done. So here is the first of the New Year's Resolutions for 2001 - the weblog will come out fortnightly, and the first issue will be in the second week of January 2001.

Now we all know that words are cheap, so in order to keep us to this New Year's Resolutions we will need a bit of Peer Pressure. Hence if you want to receive Zak-n-Bur's weblog by email, send us an email that says simply or else we won't ask HAL to open the Pod doors !

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What's new pussy cat, yeowl yeowl yeowl yeowl yeowl

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There is obviously a huge pent-up demand for Zak-n-Bur's weblog that is being censored by the powers that be, why else would no requests to receive it have been received over the last six months.

What's that, you think it is due to apathy, you cynic sir! how dare say such a thing. Yes Yes, I know that definition of a cynic as well:-

So does that mean that Oscar Wilde was talking about how to make money on the Internet when he wrote 'Lady Windermere's Fan' way back in 1892, well it seems that he was, because in the same play he also wrote:-