Awesome or Off-Putting is a weekly delve into cryptozoology, ufology, aliens, medical marvels, scientific wonders, secret societies, government conspiracies, cults, ghosts, EVPs, ancient artifacts, strange facts, odd sightings or just the plain unexplainable.

If you stumbled across the body of an alien, what would you do with it? Other than taste it, we mean. We’re a bit dog-like that way. If you ever see us in the park gnawing on a squirrel leg, that’s why.

After we’d given that alien body a good chew, though, we’d see if we could sell it somewhere. For millions in Chinese dollars, whatever those are called. We definitely wouldn’t keep it in the freezer portion of our cheaply made Russian refrigerator. That’s what Marta Yegorovnam did when she found one.

And now she’s ready to tell you all about it.

Every now and again somebody somewhere finds a very well preserved alien body that they won’t let anyone see, touch or sniff. Remember the one found in the Andes that we told you about a while ago? Well another one just popped up.

A woman found the body a few years ago – we’ll let the Daily Mail tell you about it:

“After other claims of extraterrestrial life turning up in Siberia, the latest is from a Russian woman who says she kept a frozen alien corpse in her fridge. The mysterious ‘lifeform’ was reportedly kept by Marta Yegorovnam in her fridge in the western Russian city of Petrozavodsk for two years, while she took five pictures to prove its existence.

“The ‘body’, the third alien sighting in Russian in recent months, was reportedly retrieved by Miss Yegorovnam from a UFO crash site near her summer house in 2009. She says she approached the flaming wreckage and crumpled metal which she described as ‘unbearably hot’ and near the twisted hulk lay the dead alien. The ‘creature’ is two feet long, has an enormous head, large bulbous eyes and an appearance somewhere between a fish and a humanoid. It also appears to have what looks like a string-like arm protruding from its body.”

And there you have it. You should really scoot on over to the previously mentioned website if you want to see more pictures. If you want to see the actual body though – forget about it. It was confiscated by some goons from something called the Karelian Research Center of the Russian Academy of Sciences.

We don’t know what that is, and we’re too lazy to Google it.

The point is – Yegorovnam brilliantly built in a piece to her story that will keep her little frozen friend from being examined.

Whether the body is real or not – it sure looks like it’s be fun to chew on. If it squeaks with every bite we’d be all the more sold.

Russia and America haven’t ever really got along have they? They’re both giganto land-masses that just love antagonising each other with spies, wars and lousy impressions of each others accents.

At least the news is always impartial, eh?

Like hell. Have you seen Fox News? And Fox & Co (not a Top of the Pops dance troupe, sadly) have got competition in the form of Tatiana Limanova who made her feelings on Barack Obama perfectly clear in a news bulletin.

In a moment, presumably thought to be off-camera, commie-swine Tatiana flipped the bird at the mention of Barry Obama just before the bulletin switched to a VT.

Of course, this will wind up the Yankee Doodles no end and we’ll probably see Bill O’Reilly bearing his arse with the words “RUSSIA SUX” written on in marker.

Naturally, you wouldn’t get the wonderful British news organisations being so partizan would you?

Nooooooo.

Anyway, here’s the video of Limanova giving a big up yours to America. Let us all pray for another Cold War as a result, eh?

We like to cause trouble here at hecklerspray. You knew that right? That’s why you’re going to vote for us at the Cosmo Blog Awards isn’t it?

Inspired by that guy who did a pretty lousy job of hitting Rupert Murdoch with a custard pie (he did a much better job of getting smacked upside his head by Mrs Murdoch mind you), we thought we’d jape one off in a formal setting.

Behold! The video of a flying dildo in Russia!

That’s right!

We made a vibrator fly! We did you know!

We’re totally not making this up. Nope. Not one bit.

Over in Russia, at some cruddy press conference about the length of queues, we decided to liven up proceedings with a flying dildo.

Observe how EVERYONE wakes up on its entrance.

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Russia. It’s a fabulous country isn’t it? It’s got spies with poison-tips umbrellas poking people ’til they die, amazing architecture, cool accents, an often baffling news channel (Russia Today is occasionally AMAZING) and, best yet, mental and powerful people.

We’ve already showed you why Vladimir Putin is much, much better than you… but what about the business magnates?

While we have Richard Branson messing around in his balloons and the assembled gargoyles of Dragons Den, Russia have people like Alexander Lebedev who likes to punch people spark out on televised debate shows. Seriously. Watch it over the jump.

Some Russian chatshow invited Alexander Lebedev – who owns the Independent and the London Evening Standard – to shoot the breeze with property cheese Sergei Polonsky.

Alas, when debating with an ex-KGB agent as Lebedev is, he might not bother with all those words and instead, prefer to smack you in the gob.

The Leb says of it:

“In a critical situation, there is no choice. I see no reason to be hit with the first shot. I neutralised him,”

And here, we can see Alexander cracking Sergei in the face, leaving us to ponder a world where British television has the nuts to resolve debates in such a manner.

Just imagine Paddy Ashdown roundhouse kicking Dimbleby in the head while a horrified Harriet Harman looks on, hoping no-one has noticed the smut that her husband just texted her.

WATCH.

via: Bitterwallet

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In Victorian times, a lady flashing just her ankles as she walked down the cobbled streets would send men and closet lesbians in to a wild frenzy. As time evolved, so did the styling of female clothing seen on a Friday or Saturday night. Off went the figure hiding gowns and flowing full length dresses. Out came hot pants, boob-tubes and not a lot else.

According to our calculations, you’ll just need to visit Newcastle city centre in 2017 to see its inhabitants literally wearing takeaway menus to cover their bits and bobs.

So what’s the problem? Those observing people who choose to reveal a lot of flesh instantly label them as whores and slags, which of course, isn’t always the case. However, the Girls Aloud PR team will be trying to rebut such slurs as an early shot of the band has been picked up by none other than a Russian escort website.

Frankly, we’re appalled by the offending image (which you can see here). None of the members of Girls Aloud look remotely Russian. Yes, they do give off the impression that for a packet of chips and a blue WKD they’d perform a sex act on you behind a bin, but that’s beside the point.

Thanks to years of moulding, the original rough five piece have been transformed in to role models for scores of young women around the UK. Especially Nicole Roberts who is literally the most famous ginger person we can think off. Apart from that one from Harry Potter.

The Babylon Moscow Escort Agency must have split several pairs of pants as their perverted erections almost smashed through the computer screen. If wet-dreams could be created for agency’s looking to capture lonely desperate men with money to burn, then this picture must have been gold for them. Sarah Harding in particular seems to have baps that never seem to end where Nadine Coyle appears to have been dressed by a stylist who was either on work experience or just stopped caring.

No doubt that five successful women won’t want to be the face of a Moscow escort agency. Especially when all five members have flourishing careers still ahead of them, however, part of us believe it would be a better move than selling your soul and advertising woeful supermarket junkfood like Kerry Katona. Obviously, an anonymous source was at hand to tell The Daily Mirror:

“It’s an embarrassingly old picture of the girls, so the company figured they might get away with using it. But they failed to warn the band’s record label they were using it and, theoretically, could get sued.”

Suffice to say, if a career as an escort ever did happen then we’re sure they’d all be Love Machines. Oh Christ, we’ve become everything we didn’t ever want to be. Cheesy pun writers [speak for yourself! - Ed.].

It’s not like Cheryl Cole has the XXX-Factor at all. Just ask her ex-husband why he (allegedly) sent pictures of his knob to other women.

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Awesome or Off-Putting is a weekly delve into cryptozoology, ufology, aliens, medical marvels, scientific wonders, secret societies, government conspiracies, cults, ghosts, EVPs, ancient artifacts, strange facts, odd sightings or just the plain unexplainable.

Normally in this space we tell you awesome stories of space-aliens, ghosts and monsters eating your mom’s gross boobies on an A-1 covered platter, and then we provide multi-angled video to prove it true.

Today though – today we spin a tale that’s a tad different from those we normally tell. You see – today’s story is one of political aspiration, hurt childhood feelings and crazed Russian scientists that have probably only recently stopped trying to create super-boxers to destroy Rocky Balboa.

Today we tell you a tale of a woman who was tired of being short – so she paid to be painfully heightened over the course of a year.

Normally when looking for a politician, we like to vote in somebody with a legal dwarf status in at least some countries. If nobody fitting that criteria is on the ballot, then we’ll usually opt for a woman with a history of weird, erratic decisions.

It’s a shame then that we don’t live in Australia, because there we could have found someone with both of those qualities proudly displayed on their resume.

Until fairly recently that is. Hajnal Ban is a woman who used to be quite short, but decided she’s rather have hideously scarred legs and metal plates attached to her bones that would all but guarantee rare forms of arthritis in her future. That’s why she saved up tons of money and went to Russia seeking out wild-eyed communists in dingy lab coats.

And this, according to the Daily Mail, is what they did to her:

“…she saved up £19,000, flew to a clinic in Russia and had her legs broken in four places. Doctors inserted stainless-steel pins in the bones, fixing them to metal frames around the legs and rotating the screws each day, to stretch the bones apart.”

That sounds awful, right?

But it was worth it – now when she stands on her left leg she’s 5′ 3″, and when she stands on her right she’s 5′ 3 3/5″. Or something like that. It probably feels pretty good after a life ‘hilarious’ people giving her poofy white smurf hats every birthday.

Want to know what she thinks about it? Here you go:

“From the time I flew to Russia to the time I was able to wear high heels again was about a year in total, but at least nine months of that was excruciatingly painful.”

What we think is odd is this – why’s she wearing high heels at 5 foot 3? She’s really tall now. She doesn’t need them.

She sounds like a good, stable politician. We hope she uses her experience to get some sort of leg breaking program into the public school system.

The kids would only benefit.

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Awesome or Off-Putting is a weekly delve into cryptozoology, ufology, aliens, medical marvels, scientific wonders, secret societies, government conspiracies, cults, ghosts, EVPs, ancient artifacts, strange facts, odd sightings or just the plain unexplainable.

The world of the paranormal can sometimes seem to be stuffed with mundane monsters. Anytime Bigfoot sees a camera he high steps it out of range. And Nessie – she’ll occasionally allow her floating-log looking hump to be photographed from a distance, but she’s far too shy for a close up.

Not so for the Brosno Dragon! It’s best known for eating Mongol armies and swallowing Nazi warplanes.

Until recently we’ve hated Russia with a deep resolve – what with their hours-long breadlines and throaty dialect. Can you blame us? Suddenly, however, we’re realising that as paranormal things go they seem to be the hub of everything great. Case in point – the Koranic kid and the crazy footage of the Communist army milling about the remnants of a crashed UFO.

Yes, awesomeness like that almost Earns Russia 15 minutes alone with Obama‘s secret nuclear code briefcase. If anyone in authority can make this happen, we really think they’ve earned it.

Keep in mind it’s only OK because they’ve been such an Awesome or Off-Putting hotbed of late. We already gave you the two recent examples – and now let us present you with a third: The Brosno Dragon.

The locals lovingly refer to it as Brosnya, and as we understand it the thing is basically Nessie with a taste for musky human flesh and fine tuned German engineering. Confused? Wikipedia shall clarify:

“Rumors of a strange, giant creature living in Lake Brosno have existed for several centuries. One legend says that the lake monster scared to death the Tatar-Mongol army that headed for Novgorod in the 13th century. Batu Khan stopped the troops on the sides of Lake Brosno to rest. Horses were allowed to drink water from the lake. However, when the horses ventured down to the lake, a huge roaring creature emerged from the water and started devouring horses and soldiers. The Batu-khan troops were so terrified that they turned back, and Novgorod was saved. Old legends describe an “enormous mouth” devouring fishermen. Chronicles mention a “sand mountain” that appeared on the lake surface from time to time. According to another legend, some Varangians (Swedish mercenaries) wanted to hide stolen treasure in the lake. When they approached the small island, a dragon came to the surface from the lake and swallowed the island up.”

Now compare that, if you will, to this recent Nessie sighting:

“We rounded the corner and saw [Nessie] taking a dump and reading the sports section. Most unexpected.”

Nessie is a stupid pussy. If that quote is true at all Nessie is a stupid pussy. The Russian monster is way better – and to top it all off, Wikipedia goes on to say this about her:

“It is said that during WWII the beast swallowed up a German airplane.”

This is a fact that becomes all the more compelling when you note that a National Geographic photo-shoot of the incident clearly shows the propellers were still spinning.

That’s so neat.

We can’t actually say that the most noble NG was on site. In fact, we can definitely say that they weren’t. We can say that other people claim to have scientifically looked into the matter – as found on the site Unknown Explorers:

“In the summer of 2002, Experts from the Kosmopoisk Research Association along with members from Karavan Magazine, went on an expedition to Lake Brosno and did deep echo location sounding. Vadim Chernobroiv, the Kosmopoisk coordinator said in an interview to the Moscow newspaper that the sonar research registered an anomaly. There was a huge jelly like mass the size of a railway car roughly five meters above the bottom of the lake. The mass stood motionless, until the group decided to throw an underwater petard, a low capacity explosive devise, at the mass. When the device detonated the mass started going up and although nothing ever surfaced resembling a monster the test did return some interesting results.”

Now that Russian science has once and for all proved that they are good at things besides just making two-headed dogs and gorilla hybrid super soldiers, well, we really think they’ve earned a crack at that briefcase.

C’mon Obama. You’re just being stingy.

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Awesome or Off-Putting is a weekly delve into cryptozoology, ufology, aliens, medical marvels, scientific wonders, secret societies, government conspiracies, cults, ghosts, EVPs, ancient artifacts, strange facts, odd sightings or just the plain unexplainable.

Roswell’s big problem is it’s all word of mouth. There are these tremendous claims of what went on there, but why believe a low-brow farmer? The same goes for Kecksburg. Sure, we’ve heard the military hauled out a tarp-covered something-or-other that was shaped like a gigantic acorn, but show us the pictures.

That said, there’s finally a UFO-crash discovery that was caught on film – and we owe it all to commie-riddled Russia!

There are only two pieces of news that ever come out of Russia. The first is that Joseph Stalin‘s nipples used to bleed every Easter. Some say it was a heavenly reminder of his parents’ religion that he so casually cast aside. This news re-breaks every two years or so. Wait for it – you’ll see.

The second news story that always breaks from the formerly red country is that their babies are born with temporary-but-reappearing Koranic tattoos. They’ve got some crazy stuff going on over there – we’re tellin’ ya.

Imagine our surprise then, when we discovered this third story came out of the country where we thought they only had a two-template newspaper. It happened in 1968.

No doubt you’d like us to cut to the chase. Here it is as All News Web puts it:

“The Soviet Defense Ministry wrote in March 1969, Order No. 481 addressed to the Commander of the Air Defense Forces in the Sverdlosvsk Military Region Lieutenant General A.G. Ponomarenko. He was ordered to assist in every way the local KGB authorities in the operation “Sverdlovsk Midget” (small aliens), signed by the Deputy Commander in Chief of the USSR Air Defense Forces, Colonel General S.D. Lebedey, Seal stated, General Staff of the USSR Defense Ministry.

“In a second letter from November 3, 1969 on the KGB letterhead addressed to Deputy Chief of the Scientific Research Department KGB USSR, Colonel Grigoriev. The letter stated that on March 5, 1969 information was received about discovery of the unidentified object wreckage, 3 meter high and 5 meter in diameter with remains of small unknown human like creature, Operation called “Sverdlovsk Midget”.”

 

We’re going to start doubling up on these Eurovision profiles again. Not because we made a fundamental calculation error, but because we love you.

What’s the big Eurovision news of the day? Only that bloody rehearsals have started in Moscow. And from these we can tell you that the woman from the Ukraine is a dirty girl, that the girl from Albania is energetic and sexy and the man from Lithuania is a git. You’re welcome, readers.

Anyway, here are the Eurovision 2009 rundowns for Elena Gheorghe from Romania and Anastasiya Prykhodko from Russia…

Romania · Elena Gheorghe, The Balkan Girls

Before we go any further, we’d just like to make it clear that Balkan girls are lovely. Almost embarrassingly lovely. And intelligent. Intelligent and lovely. But The Balkan Girls, the Romanian Eurovision entry this year, is the exact opposite of that. It’s stupid and whatever the opposite of lovely is. It’s less of a song and more something you’d hear a pimp chant outside a grotty Bucharest brothel – “The Balkan girls they like to party like nobody, like nobody/ For crowd delight, we’ll shine all night,” it goes, and it doesn’t stop until it’s broken you down and you agree to get a miserable cut-price handjob off one of them. Also, rhyming ‘kiss’ and ‘prince’ is beyond ridiculous. And no amount of writhing models in a pop video is ever going to change that.

Russia · Anastasiya Prykhodko, Mamo

About now, Russia is probably starting to realise that hosting the Eurovision Song Contest isn’t all it’s cracked up to be. There’s the cost of the operation to deal with, not to mention the vast, life-draining pointlessness of it all. The old aversion of wanting to win Eurovision again is probably the reason why Russia has decided to enter Anastasiya Prykhodko this year – a funny-looking woman with a voice that, let’s not beat around the bush here, sounds like a man. And it’s also the reason why Mamo has no discernible melody to speak of. Still, Mamo does have one thing going for it -  two minutes in, Anastasiya hits one massive sustained note. So, if nothing else, at least we know what she’d sound like if she fell down a well. See? We’re all about the positive.

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The two big beauty contests on the planet are Miss Universe – where everybody openly hates America – and Miss World.

Miss World doesn’t hate America. Or if it does, at least it’s clever about it. For instance, just look at who won Miss World 2008 this weekend – America’s arch enemy Russia.

Russia’s Kseniya Sukhinova has been crowned as the new Miss World, and she’s a worthy winner. Not just because she looks good in a bikini, though – Sukhinova also excelled in the ‘fashioning a small boat out of raw materials’ and ‘kicking footballs’ rounds. Honestly. Truly she is the pinnacle of humanity.

Hey Russia, we’re getting a little bit sick of you and your monomaniacal insistence on winning every single ridiculously outdated, culturally-irrelevant talent show this year. It was bad enough when you won the Eurovision Song Contest earlier this year, but now you’ve won Miss World 2008 too. Seriously Russia, if you even think of entering a team of ruthless professionals in the Gloucestershire Cheese Rolling Festival next year we won’t be held responsible for our actions.

But in a way it’s completely fitting that the new Miss World should be Russian. After all, Miss World is a hopelessly anachronistic throwback to a more casually sexist patriarchal age, where women were happy to objectify themselves in front of a panel of sneering men who were only there because they knew they’d probably get a Vaseliney blowjob out of it.

Or, in short, a throwback to the last time that Russia made a decent bid at being a global superpower. We’re not joking – chuck in a round where the contestants have to swallow a microfiche capsule and make off on a jetpack and Miss World would be a perfect replica of the James Bond novels.

However, that’s not to dismiss the efforts of the new Russian Miss World, Kseniya Sukhinova, who managed to win the judges over with her sparkling personality, dedication to charity, obvious intellect and the way that her tits looked in a bikini. And, obviously, her boat-building skills, as the Press Association reports:

“I am so happy to be here,” she said of South Africa, which was hosting a record-breaking sixth Miss World final. “I am so excited. It’s amazing.” In addition to the swimsuit and modelling segments, the 109 contestants competed in a “pentathlon” that included building a small boat and taking football penalty kicks; a talent show; and an event showcasing their charity work.

So congratulations to Kseniya Sukhinova, not only for being crowned Miss World 2008, but also because she chose to enter that contest and not Miss Universe – a beauty pageant so full of pratfalls and booing and drug-fuelled sex orgies that it’s basically Jackass with boobies.

But, of course, the real winner of Miss World is host nation South Africa because, by putting on Miss World without a hitch, it has shot down doubts that it’s ill-equipped to host the 2010 World Cup. Although we’re not so sure.

After all, Miss World is a competition full of drearily monosyllabic jumped-up preening idiots who can’t go more than ten paces without stopping to check their hair or bursting into tears for no reason, and the World Cup is…

No, we take it all back. South Africa will be brilliant at hosting the World Cup.

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Awesome or Off-Putting is a weekly delve into cryptozoology, ufology, aliens, medical marvels, scientific wonders, secret societies, government conspiracies, cults, ghosts, EVPs, myths, ancient artifacts, religion, strange facts, odd sightings or just the plain unexplainable.

The Tunguska Blast may not have been a big deal had Bruce Willis been alive to save the world from it. Well, we say the world, but really we mean over 80 million trees, a bunch of wildlife, and definitely anyone who was out jogging in 1908 Russia miles away from the closest anything at all.

You see, on June 30, 1908 in Russia there was a huge explosion way out in the middle of nowhere. It leveled 2,150 square kilometres (830 square miles) of trees – and for the longest time nobody knew what happened. Even after all this time nobody’s absolutely sure – but science has a pretty good idea. And they don’t think it was a temporary miniature black hole, an exploding alien space ship or Paul Bunyan with something to prove.

The Tunguska Blast was a major catastrophe in Russian history, one that can only be solved with educated scientific guesses and endless hypotheses.

And eyewitness reports like this one from a person named Chuchan of Shanyagir tribe:

“We had a hut by the river with my brother Chekaren. We were sleeping. Suddenly we both woke up at the same time. Somebody shoved us. We heard whistling and felt strong wind. Chekaren said, ‘Can you hear all those birds flying overhead?’ We were both in the hut, couldn’t see what was going on outside. Suddenly, I got shoved again, this time so hard I fell into the fire. I got scared. Chekaren got scared too. We started crying out for father, mother, brother, but no one answered. There was noise beyond the hut, we could hear trees falling down.

“Chekaren and I got out of our sleeping bags and wanted to run out, but then the thunder struck. This was the first thunder. The Earth began to move and rock, wind hit our hut and knocked it over. My body was pushed down by sticks, but my head was in the clear. Then I saw a wonder: trees were falling, the branches were on fire, it became mighty bright, how can I say this, as if there was a second sun, my eyes were hurting, I even closed them. It was like what the Russians call lightning. And immediately there was a loud thunderclap.

“This was the second thunder. The morning was sunny, there were no clouds, our Sun was shining brightly as usual, and suddenly there came a second one! “Chekaren and I had some difficulty getting out from under the remains of our hut. Then we saw that above, but in a different place, there was another flash, and loud thunder came. This was the third thunder strike. Wind came again, knocked us off our feet, struck against the fallen trees. “We looked at the fallen trees, watched the tree tops get snapped off, watched the fires.

“Suddenly Chekaren yelled ‘Look up’ and pointed with his hand. I looked there and saw another flash, and it made another thunder. But the noise was less than before. This was the fourth strike, like normal thunder. “Now I remember well there was also one more thunder strike, but it was small, and somewhere far away, where the Sun goes to sleep.”

The strangest thing about the blast is there was no resulting crater. There was no impact, there was no ground zero and there was no smoking volcano. Nothing. Nobody – and we do mean nobody, knew what it was. The blast was 100 times more powerful than the one that leveled Hiroshima, yet it had no obvious cause. Confusing, right?

Here’s what a CNN article said of the matter in an article 100 years later:

“Despite countless investigations, the so-called Tunguska Event remains one of the 20th century’s greatest enigmas — seized upon by mystics, UFO enthusiasts and scientists as evidence of angry gods, extraterrestrial life or the impending threat of a cosmic collision.

“But says Stanislav Krivyakov, who has spent the past 35 years investigating the Siberian blast, despite intense interest in the event — which has featured in several episodes of “The X-Files” — no conclusive evidence has been found to support any theory.”

Like it says there – paranormalists have seized on the blast claiming it to be evidence of aliens, teleportation or something worse. Some, however, believe the whole thing was caused far more locally – by Thomas Edison‘s rival Nikola Tesla. According to ArmageddonOnline.org:

“It has also been suggested that the Tunguska explosion was the result of an experiment by Nikola Tesla at his Wardenclyffe Tower, performed during Robert Peary’s second North Pole expedition. Tesla had claimed that the tower could be used to transmit electromagnetic energy across large distances. The Wardenclyffe Tower was designed to utilize the largest version of Tesla’s patented magnifying transmitter, popularly known as the Tesla Coil, to transmit electrical power into the earth as well as the upper atmosphere.

“In 1908, Tesla allegedly sent a cryptic communication to the American explorer, Robert E. Peary, advising him to be on the alert and make notes of any unusual auroral phenomena encountered as he attempted to reach the North Pole. Allegedly Tesla fired up his transmitter for a trial run and attempted to generate and direct his ethereal oscillations toward the North Pole in the hope of stimulating the polar aurora and perhaps attracting world attention to his invention. It is alleged that Tesla’s trial run coincided with the Tunguska event in Siberia.”

This theory is quickly discounted by the scientific community, but it seems as good as any other explanation, if you ask us. The point is nobody knows exactly what happened, and no inquiring scientific minds bothered to check it out until years after the explosion occurred.

In a side note – did you know the Tunguska Blast was mentioned in Ghost Busters? Dan Aykroyd refers to the demise of Gozer and all that accompanied it as something like the greatest paranormal event since the Tunguska Blast of 1909.

His quote was a year late. That’s all we remember.

Fact: every conversation about Eurovision in recent years will have included the phrase “Oh, but it’s so political these days” at least 500 times.

That’s because it’s true. The Eurovision Song Contest has got so political these days. The proof? The UK hasn’t won Eurovision for over a decade, regardless of whether we’ve entered a rubbish holiday camp cabaret act or a hamfisted reality TV show runner-up. It’s a flipping disgrace.

But Eurovision won’t be political for much longer, because Eurovision bigwigs are bringing back national juries in a bid to end the tactical voting that’s destroyed the contest’s credibility in recent years. At last! Now when the UK comes last at next year’s Eurovision we’ll know for certain that it was because our entry was genuinely awful and not because everyone’s quite scared of Vladimir Putin.

Another fact: the UK was robbed at this year’s Eurovision Song Contest. No, we were. Andy Abraham’s song Even If came joint last out of 43 countries, when everyone knows that turgid rehashes of I Believe In Miracles sung by binmen with all the charisma of wet toilet paper deserve to come at least 39th.

Instead of watching Andy Abraham lift the Eurovision trophy we had to watch in disgust as Russia won – not because they entered a globally-renowned heartthrob who’s sold tens of millions of records and whose song was produced by Timbaland and featured a dance routine by a world champion figure skater, but because of tactical voting.

Oh you know. Tactical voting. It’s where all the Scandinavian countries vote for each other, all the former members of the USSR vote for Russia and nobody votes for the UK because we’ve spent the last decade humping America’s leg like a randy dog instead of concentrating more on countries like Andorra.

Tactical voting has destroyed Eurovision to the extent that Terry Wogan even threatened to quit earlier this year unless it was nipped in the bud.

And, terrified that a red-faced Baileys-stinking old Irish bloke would quit his commentary job, Eurovision has decided to do exactly that, by reintroducing national juries – the process of electing a panel of experts to judge each country’s Eurovision entry rather than letting it become a public phone-vote free-for-all. Ruurd Bierman, chairman of the Eurovision reference group, said:

“We strongly believe in televoting as a way of measuring the opinion of our millions of viewers across Europe. After the public debate about neighbour and diaspora voting, we decided to give the national juries a say in the outcome of the 2009 Eurovision Song Contest.”

That’s perfect in principle – it means that next year the continent’s finest scholars, taste-makers and musicologists will be able to detail exactly why the UK is so staggeringly bad at Eurovision – but let’s think about this seriously.

If, say, Russia wanted to win Eurovision again, wouldn’t it be far easier and more cost-effective to go and personally intimidate the national juries of its neighbouring countries, rather than maintaining a vaguely menacing military threat over the entire east European/central Asian region?

But now’s not the time to be cynical. Perhaps by bringing back national juries, Eurovision can restore itself to its former glory. True, not winning Eurovision might cause Russia to lose its temper and nuke the entire continent into the boiling sea, but compared to the thrill of seeing the UK come sixth or seventh at a singing contest that nobody really cares about anyway, it’s definitely worth the risk.

Being a child is really annoying isn’t it? You’re not quite old enough to go out and enter the big wide world.

Instead, mummy still plops you in the shopping trolley at Asda, gives you a bib at feeding time and still tucks you in at night to make sure the monsters don’t attack you.

However, when you reach the age of thirteen/fourteen something magically happens! Young girls and boys develop a mini sense of direction. Granted, they’re only copying what they see on the TV and need their parents to buy all the essential clobber for them, but they are independent, cool and part of a movement. Over the years the most popular fad has been Emo.

Dressing in black and looking like a box of pins has exploded in their faces, they’ve worried councillors, coffin-dodgers and corner shop owners. It’s not just the UK that has this problem, it’s Russia too and, in a strange move, the country wants to ban Emo culture.

Whilst hecklerspray isn’t the most clued-up on historical knowledge, we get the feeling that wanting to wipe out a certain culture sounds similar to something that happened in the 1940s. You know when that bloke Hitler wanted only blond-haired blue-eyed people to rule supreme and for all Jews to perish in dodgy ways?

We’re not suggesting that a mass gassing is on the cards for anyone wearing a My Chemical Romance shirt, but they should at least try to wear a bright pink My Little Pony coat to disguise themselves with.

As the NME reports:

“The legislation was presented last month at a hearing held by the State Durma, where critics claimed that the “negative” emo culture encourages anti-social behaviour and glorifies suicide.”

We’ve listened to a few emo-sounding records and, to be honest, we didn’t feel like jumping off a bridge or licking a plug directly afterwards.

Instead, we just struggled to understand the constant shouting and laughed at some moron gushing out his heart. Aww, he misses his girlfriend, how cute. Always refreshing to see that he went and painted a new tattoo over his arm saying “H8er 4ever fook everyting.”

But if you live in Russia this is soon to be banned, well if Alexander Grishunnin has his way. This is because Emo:

“Is driven by fears that these “dangerous teen trends” encourage depression and suicide.”

Ouch, annoying stuff you must agree. Well, if you’re one of these people who steal others’ souls deep at night. Whilst Russia may be drafting plans to stop people apparently wanting to kill themselves, we all have to remember that the UK may get an import of Russians.

Russian people are pretty much an all right bunch – they bring us vodka to get drunk with. But do we really want depressed youths hanging on our street corners? Of course not, that position has already been filled by Polish people apparently.

Looks like those Russians may have to leave The Black Parade if the law gets passed.

A new week means a new flurry of Eurovision betting odds. And nothing else. It just means the Eurovision thing.

And with Eurovision now less than a fortnight away, it’s time to kick off some official Eurovision festivities, like today’s Serbian Royal Eurovision welcome party held in Belgrade’s White Palace, where one Eurovision contestant will be chosen at random and fed to the dogs as an example of the family’s all-consuming power. Fingers crossed it’s the Estonians.

Here are the Eurovision betting odds for Russia, with help from Paddy Power…

Russia (pop. 144,526,378: the largest country in the world) Dima Bilan, Believe

Although the common image of Russia is all furry hats and espionage and terminal grimness, we’re starting to get the impression that it’s actually more like a Backstreet Boys video. Every single year the Russian Eurovision entry sounds exactly like the Backstreet Boys and that’s still the case this year. But maybe the Russian Eurovision songs always sound identical because Russia always enters the same bloke. Dima Bilan represented Russia at the Eurovision Song Contest back in 2006, and here he is again with Believe, a mid-tempo ballad that’s only made interesting because Dima makes intermittent guinea pig noises throughout it. Buoyed up by the arrogance that comes from being in Eurovision twice in three years, at one point Dima starts yelling “Stop me! Stop me!” like it’s a dare to his competitors. Well, it’s either the arrogance of being in Eurovision twice in three years or the arrogance of knowing his government can get handy with the old Polonium-210 if anyone does actually try to stop him. Current Eurovision betting odds – 6/1

Tomorrow: San Marino! But if that’s too long to wait – or you feel like making more money than you know what to do with – head right over to the Paddy Power Eurovision betting odds page to see the latest, and best, betting odds.