Amazon #40: Child Donkey Costume - Size Medium

5 stars - link (REJECTED BY AMAZON)

I like this costume for 2 reasons - one) with a little imagination you can apply it to all major Christian / Secular holidays; and b) it's genuinely terrifying, much like the Dummy portrayed in the eponymous episode of Nigel Kneale's Beasts.

Obviously, it's most apt for Christmas; who doesn't know of the little donkey galloping towards Bethlehem with a heavily pregnant Mary on it's back, desperately trying to make it before the wandering star gets there and the stable closes for the holidays. It's also applicable for Easter, with some slight tweaks to the tale as told - in my version, it's a Roman donkey that nails Christ to the cross (see also Lindt bunnies: they can resemble donkeys with some strategic shattering on the head and torso).

Also, on May Day a donkey is sacrificed inside a larger makeshift 'Wicker Donkey', much to the children's delight. On Halloween it makes an appearance as the aforementioned Dummy as a tribute to Nigel Kneale, swiftly followed by an appearance on bonfire night as Guy's Ass. Then before you know it, Christmas has arrived again and the whole sorry cycle of forced jollity continues.

My holiday cynicism aside; this costume is a lot of fun, highly durable and tremendous value - although it has no real educational value, as if you want to learn anything about donkey anatomy from this then frankly, you're braying up the wrong haystack or whatever the hell it is donkeys do to express frustration at others.

Animal Facts #3: The Horsey

Horses! Did you know that:

1. The horse is the only animal in the world that's been domesticated by 3 other animals? They are of course Man, Lions, and Other Horses.

2. A horse was the subject of the world's first comedy cartoon strip! (pictured right). In this 18th century Nepalese tome, you could follow the adventures of Sandy as he moves slightly and changes colour, before disappearing into the abstract.

3. A disappointed horse-lover from Montana recently attempted to sue the Seattle indie-rock combo 'Band of Horses' under the trades descriptions act. Kenny Fife, 42, was disappointed to find that they definitely do not consist of equine musicians - they are of course otters with a knack for a tremendous beat.

4. Horses are a war-like and aggressive race - in times gone they were feared mercenaries, selling their cavalry services to the highest bidder, and relishing the chance of engaging with other horses. However, due to the current credit crunch (and to a lesser extent, the development in weapons technology over the last 60 or so years) they find their places on the battlefield taken by machines. To satisfy their aggressive urges, they now volunteer themselves for free to the police force in exchange for free entry to football grounds, and the occasional opportunity to bite a felon in the ear.

5. A stunted disabled horse works in a hospital! Check out this news report from the unbelievably incompetent Shannon Perrine ("the kids getting treatment... can forget about tests, and blood work, and BEING SICK..."), on Thumbelina, a class of '02 Harvard medical graduate:

Animal Facts #2: The Frog

It's time to get animal facted. Prepare thyselves...

• Although usually perceived to be some kind of "landfish" (Charles Darwin once described them as "the hovercraft of the animal kingdom", which showed a remarkable degree of foresight, even for him), frogs are actually what is known as an 'amffibeon'.
  
• The incredibly over-used analogy of the boiling frog goes thus: "A frog can be boiled alive if the water is heated slowly enough — it is said that if a frog is placed in boiling water, it will jump out, but if it is placed in cold water that is slowly heated, it will never jump out." This is of course, utter fucking nonsense and whoever uses it should be ashamed of themselves. If you put a frog in boiling water, IT WILL DIE. If you put a frog in cold water that you then heat to boiling point, IT WILL JUMP OUT AT SOME POINT BECAUSE IT ISN'T AS DUMB AS THE VAPID TWAT THAT'S DOING 'EXPERIMENTS' WITH THE FROG IN THE FIRST COCKING PLACE.
• Even though frog rhymes with dog, these two species are actually vastly different. For example, a frog cannot be trained to lead the blind, and dogs have an intense dislike of being contained in small glass tanks.
  
• 'Frogman!' was a shortlived Marvel comic that lasted for 5 issues in the early 1960s. Although initially promising, fans of comics were repelled by Frogman's unusual super power of being able to emit his young from his mouth, and in the final issue that decided the comics fate, through holes in his skin - a record number of complaints were received, and still arrive in the Marvel offices to this day.
  
• Frogs are evolving at a terrifying exponential rate, and it is predicted by a scientist I met in a pub that they will be able to dominate humanity by the year 2026. However, according to his philosopher friend who was also in the same pub, they are gentle souls by nature so it is unclear whether they will actually do this.

In this photograph, we can see that frogs have already evolved to the point that they resemble Peter Crouch going on a date.

Animal Facts#1: The Octopus

Fun Octopus facts! Some are more true than others! Did you know that...

• The Octopus is the only animal in the world with 8 knees?
• An Octopus invented the fountain pen! George Safford Parker was an octopus fanatic, and regularly discarded his failed fountain pen prototypes into their tanks. One day, he saw his favourite pet, Caesar the Cephalopod, filling the barrel with it's own ink, and George realised that this worked much better than his own ink concoction, which mainly consisted of water, gravel and sunlight.
• Live Octopus is considered a delicacy in South Korea? Bunch o' twats.
  
• The newly discovered 6-tentacled 'Hexapus' isn't a freaky Octopus at all! It's merely the latest hatchling from the Kraken's 5000 year breeding circle, and it indicates carnage, terror, pestilence for all ocean-dwelling men everywhere.
  
• Octopus wrestling was the most popular sport in the USA for a period of time in the 1960s, until it was declared unconstitutional and revealed as a communist ploy to steal US salt water by Republican senator Mark Hatfield?
  

Here we can see a young Dennis Wise, John Terry and Frank Lampard taking part in some recreational animal torture.