So the verdict is in, and the Obama & Biden (Biden? Who's he?) dream team are in, with the biggest democratic vote % in, erm, lots and lots of years - 364 vs 162 electoral college votes, and 52.5% vs 46.2% of the popular vote. Whoop. But that's still no license to let Palin ride easy. After all, she may not be on the verge of presidency any more - well, not for 8 years or so, but she still is in control of something one imagines.

Let's laugh at her for a bit. A couple of comedians from Quebec managed to get on the phone to Ms Palin her very self, and using their best dodgy French accents made out that they were indeed President Sarkoz. He runs France, for any non-Europeans. Check it:

Mayor Molony: attracts the unattractive

Stereotypical Australia isn't exactly known for its female-respecting culture. The mayor of Mount Isa over there is not doing his best to improve their reputation. But it's all in a good cause: satiating primitive male desires whilst bring a smile to the (ugly) face of love-non-stricken laydeez.

Mount Isa is a "testosterone town" full of male miners. In fact, there's about 5 men to every 1 women out there. Annoying, and not great for the reproductive prospects of that town either the Poorhouse is sure. So, what's the solution?

Now we live in a world where high-speed Internet access is almost as essential to modern rich-guy life as say water, net neutrality is a potential hot topic. Net neutrality refers to the historic practice of your ISP granting (kind of) equal access to the internet, no matter what you do with that access – subject to legality au naturelle. From Google's – who of course have a vested interest in this – guide:

Network neutrality is the principle that Internet users should be in control of what content they view and what applications they use on the Internet…the broadband carriers should not be permitted to use their market power to discriminate against competing applications or content.

Shock! Horror! Evil! etc. as the Telegraph splashes the following headline in massive print over its front-page a couple of days ago.

Children of nine may get sex advice packs

Imagine the expressions of fear on the Tory-inclined readers' faces as they read that kids are getting nigh-on-pornographic books promoting going out and getting their fellow 9 year olds diseased and pregnant (well, maybe, read the sex advice pack for possibilities). No doubt it includes graphic illustrations of "dirty sanchez" et al. How on earth could a responsible Government allow this?

Welcome readers. In the first of what probably won't actually turn out to be a series of cartoony but educational excitement, the Poorhouse is setting out to learn about the birds and the bees from none other than the uber-authoritative source that is the Usborne book of "How Your Body Works". We have previously seen how stupid abstinence based programmes like the Silver Ring Thing are ineffective and probably dangerous, so let's see if this book teaches us a bit more about the inner workings of...snigger snigger...sex.

The military does like to play around with vast sums of tax-payers money with little apparent gain to be sure. No matter how stupid, unethical or needless a scheme is, if it can have the word "weapon" attached to it then it's a winner with the warmongering classes.

The Berkley Sunshine Project, a watchdog organisation particularly into biological weapon investigation, recently used the Freedom of Information Act to get the great minds at the Pentagon to 'fess up to having a go at creating that most sensible, credible and mature of weapons....the Gay Bomb.

The Poorhouse previously ranted about the failures of the US-led Silver Ring Thing abstinence-only sex "education". Now it seems some more results are in regarding the $176,000,000 Federally-funded abstinence programmes that George "it's worked when it's tried" Bush et al. so favour.

Mathematica Policy Research Ltd have recently published a survey study carried out under instructions from the US Congress. Whilst the study itself runs to a rather humoungous 164 pages, in summary they split a bunch of the US kids that these abstinence programmes target in two and gave one of the halves a pile of abstinence counselling a la the Ring Thing, and left the other half to get on with it as they see fit.

Upon review, the 16 year old respondents who had not been given the abstinence treatment lost their virginity at a rather low - and rather illegal - age of 14.9. So is the Poorhouse going to have to swallow the anti-ring words previously spat out and learn to love the wisdom of President Bush?

More in the world of wild 'n' wacky experiments...first we learned how to make the world's finest bacon sandwich. Now it's time to concoct an experiment that involves making "volunteers" sit down and watch an especially filthy episode of one of the few TV programmes so bad the Poorhouse doesn't avidly watch it - Sex in the City.

A few days ago we saw an international reporter refer to British television as "mostly purvey[ing] low-grade pornographic entertainment, so-called 'reality' shows of stunning banality..." by which the Poorhouse assumes Big Brother in particular was meant. Every season, it seems to get less innovative, more tedious and as a last resort dwells on smut an extra little bit. That's not of course to say that the Poorhouse doesn't watch it. Who doesn't like watching insane people fight with each other?

Anyway, that might soon become the pinnacle of high-brow entertainment compared to a certain new "reality" gameshow being made in America called "Virgin Territory". Can you guess what it is yet? Clue: the name of it is in no way cryptic, and it's being produced by Kevin Blatt, the guy who sold Paris Hilton's "special" videotape.

Modern art is a curious beast. A nice painted landscape just doesn't cut it any more. No, you need something more like Tracey Emin's famously filthy bed or Hirst's bits of dead animals stuck in formaldehyde to gain kudos in this day and age. Indeed it seems a terrible travesty happened last year when the Turner Prize was actually won by Tomma Abts - an artist who actually does paintings, albeit ones where "the internal logic of each composition unfolds forms are defined, buried and rediscovered until the painting becomes 'congruent with itself'" rather than delightfully represents your pet dog.

Fear not though, the weirdness is still out there. What, in the name of art, do you think the illustration to the left is?