How our Mormon families see us

OK, let’s see… Your brothers and sisters never see you, they do not like their children being alone with you and your parents think that you are one of Satan’s minions.

What are you? A murderer? Child molester? A rapist? A convicted fraudster? No. Just a former Mormon.

When my brother found out that I was chatting with to my nephew at a family (nevermo) party whilst I was drinking a can of lager, he could not wait to run over to us at the party (knocking an elderly nevermo relation out of the way in his indecent haste. Way to go, bruv!)

Apparently he thought I was an evil influence on my nephew and would try to lead him down the pathway to Hell.

The truth was that within minutes of talking with my nephew, I had found out more about my nephew than his (sadly) rather stupid father (my brother) had in his life.

I had found out that he had been binge drinking with a mate several times and I was actually advising him to take it easy with alcohol. To avoid spirits and not to drink stuff just for the sake of drinking it. Not that my brother would believe that. But that’s HIS problem!

But of course, as I am a filthy, degenerate apostate ™ © then I can have no good intentions and no noble objectives. Of course not. Because, of course, only Mormons know The Truth ™! The Truth? Sadly most Mormons would not know the truth if it bit them on the arse...

But we sometimes feel guilty when we do something non-Mormon like drink coffee or have a glass of beer with our meal.

But this is NOT our fault, nor is it our problem.

They are, after all, the ones who are following the example of a rapist and child molester and convicted fraudster, not us...

(Edited update of a previous post)

Is your website a Slurl?

Would you book a holiday through oldmanshaven.com? Or visit ipwine.com for a bottle of wine? And would you download music from mp3shits.com?

Much more than a list of funny names, Slurls is a new book that takes the reader on a global journey from small-town America to the tea rooms of Britain, with surreal stopovers, to look at the special charms of technology and big business.

Andy Geldman discovered the joy of awful URLs in 2006. Realising he had found his true calling, he coined the word "slurl" - a badly named URL, innocently chosen by genuine businesses. Andy set up a website and devoted all his spare time to hunting down more gems. The website went on to draw thousands of visitors from around the world, bringing in over 75,000 in 2009.

Andy says: "With over a hundred million websites already registered it's extremely unlikely that a business will get their first choice of address. In fact, they'll be lucky to get their second, third or even hundredth choice. There have always been unintentionally funny names, but the internet takes it to a whole new level. It's all because you can't have a space in your URL. A business called IT Scrap is fine in the real world but not so great online with itscrap.com!"

This fascinating and humorous collection includes over 100 websites plus relevant facts, observations and Internet trivia. Chapters cover America, Britain, and the rest of the English-speaking world, business and technology, websites that sound pornographic but aren’t, hoaxes, and other website names that aren’t quite true slurls.

Andy Geldman is a self-employed computer programmer and took a break from his day job to write his first book. When not collecting slurls, Andy uses his personal blog Who Ate All The Cookies? to seek out and celebrate all that is ridiculous in the world of technology. He lives in London.