Tales of a Fourth Grade Nothing

Al Gore has won the Nobel Peace Prize for his appearance in Futurama. Congratulation to him. To paraphrase Hubert Farnsworth, it doesn't matter which prize you win, just as long they all pay the same...

OK, how the fuck do you pronounce the name of the seventh planet in the solar system? I've always pronounced it as yu-rain-us, blithely embracing the spirit of a thousand obscene jokes, while many others seem to prefer yuren-us, but until now — I'm currently listening to In Our Time — I'd never heard anyone call it yu-ran-us. I guess it makes sense given the way that words like annular are pronounced, but it still sounds pretty odd to me.

My favourite Uranus joke? The one from Futurama where, when Fry asks if he can point the smelloscope at Uranus, he is told that the planet was renamed in 2620 to put an end to the stupid jokes once and for all. What did they decide to call it? Urectum, of course.

The French are trying to encourage a higher birth rate by bribing women to have more children. This will not work. What they need is a team of super virile men scoring round the clock. What they really need is Zapp Brannigan.