-Artemiseum Line - service suspended due to the wrong kind of Persian triremes on the track. A replacement minotaur service is in place.
- Passengers are politely reminded to stand on the right side of the escalators, and not to get in a huff when someone hurrying down the left side politely asks you to move. Thank you.
- Escher Line - returning to abnormal service following a part-suspension between Obtuse and Abstruse due to emergency mindfucking work.
- Northern Line - poncing off parents and staying home all day playing Grand Theft Auto. Needs to get job, seriously.
- No no, the RIGHT side. Really, it's quite simple.
- Little Bighorn - heap congested due to many white double-tongues dead by tomahawks of Lakota and Cheyenne braves. Travel by alternative bloodbaths wherever possible.
- Kentish Town and Colindale are no longer speaking, due to Kentish Town finding a pair of Old Street's knickers in its laundry.
- Central Line is strawberry flavoured, Northern is blackcurrant. District and Circle, as lemon and lime, are least popular and will be left over in large quantities when all the nice tasting lines have been eaten.
- Arnos Grove - in service, but perilous. They delved too greedily and too deep. You know what they awoke in the long dark. Shadow and flame.
- The left side of the escalators now carries a passive electric charge. Hope you're wearing rubber soles, fuckface.
Wednesday, September 17, 2008
Wednesday, August 13, 2008
Three Perfectly Reasonable Requests
I turn 23 in three days' time, an only slightly less terrifying prospect than turning 22 was. The blow of having to add an essentially meaningless digit onto the end of my age is softened somewhat by the knowledge that I have a TOP NEW JOB lined up, and the financial depredations of the past few months will soon be a hazy memory which will be noted in the histories as "The Age Of Not Affording Shit". And the job isn't even a horrible one! It's actually very nicely located directly across the street from the British Museum, so I can pop in there on my lunch break and marvel at the product of three hundred totally rockin' centuries of the British Empire beating up everyone else and filching their religious artefacts. Haha, fuck everyone that isn't us!
Now, when I near a birthday, two things happen. One, I begin to labour under the apprehension that I am getting Old and feel self-conscious about the aspects of my personality which are ostensibly rather childish (like for instance, most of them). Two, I completely forget all the stuff that I've wanted for ages and am now in a position to ask for as gifts. The simple question "so, what do you want for your birthday?" suddenly assumes a dreadful aspect, as I realise that my mind has been wiped clean, (possibly by the malevolent ghost of Hitler) of the mental checklist of crap wot I want.
What I never forget, however, is the stupendously extravagant stuff that I'd never ask anyone for, on account of its exorbitant price, impractical size or plain old uselessness. Here are three of those things. Of course, if you're an eccentric millionaire with a generous streak, I'd gladly accept any of these as compensation for getting older. There's still time left.
ITEM: Headcrab Hat
WHY I WANT IT: It's a cute little head-humper! A plush friend for (half) life, who doubles up as a fetching headpiece for cold winter days! Once I have a headcrab, all I need is a ripped shirt, white lab coat and a few capsules of fake blood and hey, ladies - say hello to Zombie Scientist Benneth! Lurching blindly down the dank hallways of your local secret underground research facility or shopping centre. I'm not sure where to find the lab coat, maybe there's a Science warehouse shop tucked away somewhere, a place like Builder Centre but with more beakers and antimass spectrometers. And crowbars. They must get all that stuff from somewhere. Besides the marvellous opportunities for fancy dress and Halowe'en shenanigans, a zombie scientist outfit would also be great for staging cruel practical jokes on people who habitually play Half-Life in the dark for hours. So, people exactly like myself. Actually I'm working on my blood-curdling 'skinless zombie' scream as we speak!
REALITY CHECK: It's thirty fucking quid for a bit of stuffed fabric! And that's before you factor in the stupendous cost of shipping things from America, which is where the little darling would be coming from. The headcrab farms of West Texas, I believe. Besides this, I would look like I had a dead chicken on my head to anyone who doesn't have an intimate understanding of the Half-Life universe, and I understand this is a group which counts "most normal people" amongst its members. And within that group exists a small but vocal substrate known as "people who beat up people that look hilarious".
ITEM: Zorb
WHY I WANT IT: You're shitting me, right? It's a person-sized hamster ball. That you can get inside and roll around in. How could anyone NOT want it? It'd have a thousand everyday applications - rolling down hills, rolling up hills, rolling to the shops, rolling to work, rolling to criminal court to stand trial for rolling over all those pedestrians... not to mention its limitless potential as a crimefighting tool. I'm no physics expert, but I'm fairly sure that a person ensconced in this ball would be completely impervious to all damage. I'd be confident in rolling it down a mountainside into a tank with nary a bruise. Criminals would learn to fear the inexorable approach of Human Hamster, or at the very least think twice before conducting their criminal activities on sharply inclined planes. If taken to a very hilly location such as the Welsh valleys, it is very possible that one could position oneself at the top of a hill, start rolling, and never, ever stop.
REALITY CHECK: Besides the fact it's a thousand quid, where would I keep it? That is, if I could ever get the damn thing inflated. I'm not sure if you have to do that yourself, but I think I'd go through several foot pumps trying to get my ball erect. And while I don't normally suffer from motion sickness, I can think of nothing more horrible than being entombed inside an uncontrollably spinning, bouncing translucent ball that's full to bursting with litre upon litre of your own putrid, yellow-brown chuck. Well, besides being forced to share a single bed with John McRirrick.
ITEM: Aliens pulse rifle
WHY I WANT IT: Because I got nukes, I got knives, sharp sticks... and this would be a nice addition to the arsenal. It comes in kit form so you have to build it yourself, but in my years of experience as a sad, sad model-building spod, I have accrued the requisite skills to make this a moot point. The pulse rifle is without a doubt my favourite science fiction dingus. Solid, reliable and distinctly more macho than fiddly lightsabers or those emasculated little phasers that emit a hypo-allergenic beam of yellow energy and go "weeeeee". It's an example of why I prefer 'ARD sci-fi - if you point this at a gibbering, ravenous xenomorph and pull the trigger, does the offending party politely go "arrgh" and fall backwards with no visible wounding? Christ no, the bastard erupts into a shrieking, bleeding orgy of corrosive acid blood and shards of splintered exoskeleton, and job's a good'un. It's a classic piece of production design work, and I'd love to have one lying around, set against the day my house is colonised by imaginary gribblies. Or gypsies.
REALITY CHECK: The fact that I might actually end up buying and building this if I should happen across the required disposable income bespeaks my status as a huge, flaming nerd of the basest order. However, I like being a huge flaming nerd, so shut it. At least I don't go around stabbing people. Lately. Anyway, I am sure the initial novelty of owning one would be quickly be dampened by the fact I couldn't actually spray explosive caseless ammunition at stuff with it. And it wouldn't make that fantastic "b'doop-b'doop" sound effect. I suppose it could be converted to shoot little plastic BBs, but that would make me an Airsofter, which is truly the lowest genus of nerd.
Now, when I near a birthday, two things happen. One, I begin to labour under the apprehension that I am getting Old and feel self-conscious about the aspects of my personality which are ostensibly rather childish (like for instance, most of them). Two, I completely forget all the stuff that I've wanted for ages and am now in a position to ask for as gifts. The simple question "so, what do you want for your birthday?" suddenly assumes a dreadful aspect, as I realise that my mind has been wiped clean, (possibly by the malevolent ghost of Hitler) of the mental checklist of crap wot I want.
What I never forget, however, is the stupendously extravagant stuff that I'd never ask anyone for, on account of its exorbitant price, impractical size or plain old uselessness. Here are three of those things. Of course, if you're an eccentric millionaire with a generous streak, I'd gladly accept any of these as compensation for getting older. There's still time left.
ITEM: Headcrab Hat
WHY I WANT IT: It's a cute little head-humper! A plush friend for (half) life, who doubles up as a fetching headpiece for cold winter days! Once I have a headcrab, all I need is a ripped shirt, white lab coat and a few capsules of fake blood and hey, ladies - say hello to Zombie Scientist Benneth! Lurching blindly down the dank hallways of your local secret underground research facility or shopping centre. I'm not sure where to find the lab coat, maybe there's a Science warehouse shop tucked away somewhere, a place like Builder Centre but with more beakers and antimass spectrometers. And crowbars. They must get all that stuff from somewhere. Besides the marvellous opportunities for fancy dress and Halowe'en shenanigans, a zombie scientist outfit would also be great for staging cruel practical jokes on people who habitually play Half-Life in the dark for hours. So, people exactly like myself. Actually I'm working on my blood-curdling 'skinless zombie' scream as we speak!
REALITY CHECK: It's thirty fucking quid for a bit of stuffed fabric! And that's before you factor in the stupendous cost of shipping things from America, which is where the little darling would be coming from. The headcrab farms of West Texas, I believe. Besides this, I would look like I had a dead chicken on my head to anyone who doesn't have an intimate understanding of the Half-Life universe, and I understand this is a group which counts "most normal people" amongst its members. And within that group exists a small but vocal substrate known as "people who beat up people that look hilarious".
ITEM: Zorb
WHY I WANT IT: You're shitting me, right? It's a person-sized hamster ball. That you can get inside and roll around in. How could anyone NOT want it? It'd have a thousand everyday applications - rolling down hills, rolling up hills, rolling to the shops, rolling to work, rolling to criminal court to stand trial for rolling over all those pedestrians... not to mention its limitless potential as a crimefighting tool. I'm no physics expert, but I'm fairly sure that a person ensconced in this ball would be completely impervious to all damage. I'd be confident in rolling it down a mountainside into a tank with nary a bruise. Criminals would learn to fear the inexorable approach of Human Hamster, or at the very least think twice before conducting their criminal activities on sharply inclined planes. If taken to a very hilly location such as the Welsh valleys, it is very possible that one could position oneself at the top of a hill, start rolling, and never, ever stop.
REALITY CHECK: Besides the fact it's a thousand quid, where would I keep it? That is, if I could ever get the damn thing inflated. I'm not sure if you have to do that yourself, but I think I'd go through several foot pumps trying to get my ball erect. And while I don't normally suffer from motion sickness, I can think of nothing more horrible than being entombed inside an uncontrollably spinning, bouncing translucent ball that's full to bursting with litre upon litre of your own putrid, yellow-brown chuck. Well, besides being forced to share a single bed with John McRirrick.
ITEM: Aliens pulse rifle
WHY I WANT IT: Because I got nukes, I got knives, sharp sticks... and this would be a nice addition to the arsenal. It comes in kit form so you have to build it yourself, but in my years of experience as a sad, sad model-building spod, I have accrued the requisite skills to make this a moot point. The pulse rifle is without a doubt my favourite science fiction dingus. Solid, reliable and distinctly more macho than fiddly lightsabers or those emasculated little phasers that emit a hypo-allergenic beam of yellow energy and go "weeeeee". It's an example of why I prefer 'ARD sci-fi - if you point this at a gibbering, ravenous xenomorph and pull the trigger, does the offending party politely go "arrgh" and fall backwards with no visible wounding? Christ no, the bastard erupts into a shrieking, bleeding orgy of corrosive acid blood and shards of splintered exoskeleton, and job's a good'un. It's a classic piece of production design work, and I'd love to have one lying around, set against the day my house is colonised by imaginary gribblies. Or gypsies.
REALITY CHECK: The fact that I might actually end up buying and building this if I should happen across the required disposable income bespeaks my status as a huge, flaming nerd of the basest order. However, I like being a huge flaming nerd, so shut it. At least I don't go around stabbing people. Lately. Anyway, I am sure the initial novelty of owning one would be quickly be dampened by the fact I couldn't actually spray explosive caseless ammunition at stuff with it. And it wouldn't make that fantastic "b'doop-b'doop" sound effect. I suppose it could be converted to shoot little plastic BBs, but that would make me an Airsofter, which is truly the lowest genus of nerd.
Wednesday, June 18, 2008
I've Been Thinking About
The new Gladiators
At the moment, my laughable Internet connection is being slowed to a near-halt by a rudimentary but inexplicably bandwidth-intensive Flash advert for the new re-upped version of the Gladiators, featuring a hetrogenous manbaby dubbed "Atlas". It is on a web page I am obliged to keep open, so I am being repeatedly treated to a jerky vertical panning shot of what must be the biggest homo in history since Quentin Crisp mistook a pile of growth hormones for Smarties, and went on to devestate Coventry.
Above: Penis. I have seen this approximately sixty
times in the past 30 minutes.
Atlas is a mountain of chemically-induced musculature, utterly hairless apart from a lustrous golden-blonde head of hair framing the pinched, underdeveloped face of a Down's sufferer. A nightmare vision of the average British worker after an energetic program of interbreeding with Schutzstaffel officers following a Nazi victory. Or maybe Gerard Depardieu's mongoloid bastard, forever consigned to a sound-proofed attic to prevent an outrage.
It's a shame Atlas is a typical example of our Gladiators. When you compare our lot with American Gladiators or pro (guffaw) wrestlers, one can't help but notice something of a disparity in how representative of their nations the two groups are. Steroid-pumped, ridiculously dressed trailer park scratchings to a man, American Gladiators and wrestlers are unmistakeably American. There is no doubt as to which genetic bargain bin they have been fished out of. Conversely, our Gladiators are anonymous airbrushed cyphers apparently hand-reared for lack of personality traits and thereby potential offensiveness to tedious busybodies, and this new crop of 'em are actually dressed up as Italian people.
Rumour has it that in the mystery-shrouded past of ancient Albion, (okay, when my older brother was a kid) we had our own proper televised wrestling, which featured homegrown, morbidly obese arse-kickers like Big Daddy and Giant Haystacks. These men were real salt-of-the-earth Englishmen, clad in enormous Union Jack leotards and subsisting on a diet of beer batter and pasties. You could look at these men and really see something you recognised from your everyday life. They were your overweight uncle with an unsophisticated sense of humour, or a lorry driver or serial killer. People you could identify with. I wouldn't give the Gladiators a showball's chance in hell against the old guard. They'd be sat upon.
If we were just allowed to harness our two greatest natural resources - abject lunatics and extreme violence - we could do a damn sight better than these airbrushed nancies. If the world does indeed rest on Atlas' shoulders, then we are fucked as soon as he works out how to wank and lets go of the globe.
John Darwin's Bogus Journey
Or, to give him his proper media-bestowed title, 'Canoe Man'. Seriously, with all the fucked-up aspects of the John Darwin 'saga' to choose from, the media latched onto the bloody canoe. Not the hilariously half-hearted attempt at faking his own death, not the deception of his children, not the amusing irony of the surname that the clot shares with one of history's most revered intellects. No. Darwin is Canoe Man. Or at a stretch, Back-From-The-Dead Canoeist. Anne Darwin gets even worse treatment, being referred to exclusively as Canoe Wife, ensuring that her legacy in our collective memory will be the fact that she was married to a bloke who was really, really bad at pretending to be dead. In only a few months, the word 'canoe' has cropped up in headlines more times than it does in an entire year of an Inuit's social calendar.
I find myself wondering what they'll do when they get out of chokey. I fully expect them to gravitate towards reality TV (see Neil and Christine Hamilton for precedent), and naturally John's talent for failing to die in a canoe will make him well suited to one of the eight billion shows that feature a tropical island inhabited by thick shirtless cunts with an unwarranted sense of entitlement. Either that, or he'll find work as a really shit superhero - Canoe Man©! The innocent need not fear, as long as their peril happens to be occurring on or directly adjacent to a sufficiently deep body of water!
Anyway, the media shitstorm has died down a lot, because THIS husband and wife team of death-faking, fraud-committing HOODLUMS had a plan for everything... except GETTING CAUGHT! And now they're paddling off... all the way to the COUNTY JAIL!
I'm Sheriff John Bunnell, and these are the World's Most Poorly Executed Scams.
New X-Files Film
Yesterday I happened to stroll into a shop, whilst looking for some muscle oil for my incredible physique. Also on my shopping list was a copy of Gorgeous Yet Masculine Bastard magazine (to see if I was on the front cover yet again), some double-plus-sized condoms (although most men of my size prefer to use a length of fire hose with a knot tied in one end) and some beautiful-woman repellant spray (they're like moths around a candle lately). I discovered, however, that I had in fact wandered into Forbidden Planet on Shaftesbury Avenue, London's premiere cult entertainment outlet for total sadsacks and virgins. Before I laughed in all the stupid nerds' faces and did not at all go downstairs and purchase the special double-size finale edition of Garth Ennis' Dan Dare comic series, I noticed that the shop was being visited by none other than Chris Creator, the carter of classic sci-fi series The X-Files. He was there to promote the new film, which critics are already hailing with such terms as 'humdrum', 'lackadaisical', 'pabulum', and 'insipid bog-quality pap that fell out of Michael Barrymore's distended anus'. One critic has gone so far as to say he will kill every tenth man who buys a ticket.
Naturally, I threw a breeze block at Carter, scoring a direct hit to the forebrain that so lazily vomited forth the final few unwatchable series of The X-Files, and now a film which looks just as poo. Don't get me wrong, I haven't seen it or anything. I didn't need to, because the trailer told me all I needed to know. Yes, The trailer for the new X-Files has the rare, unwanted honour of being the single most unappealing piece of marketing of recent times. It is the pure diametric opposite of the Watchmen trailer. Its evil twin, if you will, complete with dodgy 'stache.
Hey what's this? A bunch of very cold people in a field of snow! And look, there's Gillian Anderson, who admittedly still looks absolutely gorgeous, and David Duchovny, who looks like he belly-flopped into HMS Invincible's huge deep fat fryer after the final season and fucking well stayed there for the past six years!
I couldn't find an image that adequately conveys Duchovny's new-found
rough-as-fuckness, so here is a computer-generated artist's impression
of him another six years into the future.
Seriously, what the hell happened to him? This bloke had better have been mainlining heroin every day of the intervening years until filming started, because I honestly can't think of any other valid reason why his face looks like what happens to your fingers when you stay in the bath too long. Give it another couple of years and he'll be able to carve out a lucrative career as a stunt arse for Keith Richards.
Anyway, back to the horrible trailer. It seems an FBI agent has gone missing under spooky circumstances, and the only ones that can help are the agency's two most embarrassing, hilariously accident prone goose-chasers, Stan and Ollie. Sorry, Mulder and Scully. But this mystery may prove too impenetrable even for them, so it's a good job they've got this man on hand to render assistance:
Yeah that's right, the Big Yin is a major player in this film.
"But wait," I hear you cry! "Billy Connolly is awful!"
And I reply: "I know! This film's going to be SHIT!"
So yeah, we have lots of snow, a pudding-faced Mulder and Pamela Stephenson's significant other as a psychic paedophile priest, who follows in Sean Connery's footsteps as a Scottish actor who disnae bother wi' tryin' tae dae an accent for fear of being branded a teuchter ba'heed.
Add to this the fact that several fairly major elements of the show's story (I refuse to use the term 'mythology' because I am not Wiki-sodding-paedia) seem to have been discarded without mention, and the general Intrigue-O-Meter© reading of the film's plot comes across as significantly lower than a below-average episode of vintage X-Files.
So yeah, if that's the most exciting footage they can cobble together for a trailer, I am not seeing this film until it shows up on ITV1, ham-fistedly edited for swears, with the news in the middle of it. Happily, a much better X-Files film was released this May, and as a bonus it had Indiana Jones in it.
The London Zeppelin
Ah, Zeppelins. A society can be judged on how it treats its Zeppelins. And I judge our society to be lacking something fundamental. For so many years, they have been relegated to flogging Goodyear tyres, and those little blimps can hardly hold a candle to the massive aerial cruise liners that used to hang effortlessly in the air whilst still giving battleships size issues. There might still be a booming airship industry today, had they not become victims of bad PR ("oh the humanity!" will do that to a product) and the increasing pace of life which favoured smaller, uglier but quicker modes of transport.
But ah! What's this flying over my house? Daily? It's only a sodding Zeppelin isn't it! And it's a Zeppelin NT, built by the Zeppelin company, thus completely authentic. Granted, it's a svelte number that doesn't even approach the size of its lumbering forebears, but it's a bloody good start and it could easily beat up the goodyear blimp. Rides over London are available, starting at the bite-your-fist-expensive price of £189 for a half hour flight. Ow.
Zeppelins tend to feature a lot in speculative 'what-if' sci-fi stories. This is because they are a great lazy visual shorthand to show that the history of your alternate world took a left turn where ours took a right. Oddly, nobody ever chooses to depict their tangential universes by giving all their characters Sinclair C-5s. All too often, the airships' presence is gratuitous rather than logical, like in that Dr. Who episode where the bastards are everywhere for no apparent reason. Another such offense crops up in somewhat-recent FPS game Turning Point: Fall of Liberty, where New York finds itself beset on all sides by NAZI BATTLE ZEPPELINS, despite the game being set in (an albeit alternate) 1953, where the lumbering beasts would survive for roughly an eighth of a second if attacked by a couple of tiny supersonic jet fighters. I'm all for Zeps, but I hate to see them squandered in such a lazy fashion.
Back in reality, a further glimmer of hope seems to exist in the Manned Cloud, a 'floating hotel' proposed by a French designer as a low-emission method of air travel. On top of having just the best name ever and being designed by a French mental case, it also looks like a massive flying whale, which will add to the irony factor when I buy one, outfit it with a Pyroclastic Vengeance Cannon, and descend upon the Japanese whaling fleets like a divine wind. Bonsai! I think.
George Carlin Died
I have only one thing to say about this unacceptable turn of events. To quote George:
Fuck.
At the moment, my laughable Internet connection is being slowed to a near-halt by a rudimentary but inexplicably bandwidth-intensive Flash advert for the new re-upped version of the Gladiators, featuring a hetrogenous manbaby dubbed "Atlas". It is on a web page I am obliged to keep open, so I am being repeatedly treated to a jerky vertical panning shot of what must be the biggest homo in history since Quentin Crisp mistook a pile of growth hormones for Smarties, and went on to devestate Coventry.
Above: Penis. I have seen this approximately sixty
times in the past 30 minutes.
Atlas is a mountain of chemically-induced musculature, utterly hairless apart from a lustrous golden-blonde head of hair framing the pinched, underdeveloped face of a Down's sufferer. A nightmare vision of the average British worker after an energetic program of interbreeding with Schutzstaffel officers following a Nazi victory. Or maybe Gerard Depardieu's mongoloid bastard, forever consigned to a sound-proofed attic to prevent an outrage.
It's a shame Atlas is a typical example of our Gladiators. When you compare our lot with American Gladiators or pro (guffaw) wrestlers, one can't help but notice something of a disparity in how representative of their nations the two groups are. Steroid-pumped, ridiculously dressed trailer park scratchings to a man, American Gladiators and wrestlers are unmistakeably American. There is no doubt as to which genetic bargain bin they have been fished out of. Conversely, our Gladiators are anonymous airbrushed cyphers apparently hand-reared for lack of personality traits and thereby potential offensiveness to tedious busybodies, and this new crop of 'em are actually dressed up as Italian people.
Rumour has it that in the mystery-shrouded past of ancient Albion, (okay, when my older brother was a kid) we had our own proper televised wrestling, which featured homegrown, morbidly obese arse-kickers like Big Daddy and Giant Haystacks. These men were real salt-of-the-earth Englishmen, clad in enormous Union Jack leotards and subsisting on a diet of beer batter and pasties. You could look at these men and really see something you recognised from your everyday life. They were your overweight uncle with an unsophisticated sense of humour, or a lorry driver or serial killer. People you could identify with. I wouldn't give the Gladiators a showball's chance in hell against the old guard. They'd be sat upon.
If we were just allowed to harness our two greatest natural resources - abject lunatics and extreme violence - we could do a damn sight better than these airbrushed nancies. If the world does indeed rest on Atlas' shoulders, then we are fucked as soon as he works out how to wank and lets go of the globe.
John Darwin's Bogus Journey
Or, to give him his proper media-bestowed title, 'Canoe Man'. Seriously, with all the fucked-up aspects of the John Darwin 'saga' to choose from, the media latched onto the bloody canoe. Not the hilariously half-hearted attempt at faking his own death, not the deception of his children, not the amusing irony of the surname that the clot shares with one of history's most revered intellects. No. Darwin is Canoe Man. Or at a stretch, Back-From-The-Dead Canoeist. Anne Darwin gets even worse treatment, being referred to exclusively as Canoe Wife, ensuring that her legacy in our collective memory will be the fact that she was married to a bloke who was really, really bad at pretending to be dead. In only a few months, the word 'canoe' has cropped up in headlines more times than it does in an entire year of an Inuit's social calendar.
I find myself wondering what they'll do when they get out of chokey. I fully expect them to gravitate towards reality TV (see Neil and Christine Hamilton for precedent), and naturally John's talent for failing to die in a canoe will make him well suited to one of the eight billion shows that feature a tropical island inhabited by thick shirtless cunts with an unwarranted sense of entitlement. Either that, or he'll find work as a really shit superhero - Canoe Man©! The innocent need not fear, as long as their peril happens to be occurring on or directly adjacent to a sufficiently deep body of water!
Anyway, the media shitstorm has died down a lot, because THIS husband and wife team of death-faking, fraud-committing HOODLUMS had a plan for everything... except GETTING CAUGHT! And now they're paddling off... all the way to the COUNTY JAIL!
I'm Sheriff John Bunnell, and these are the World's Most Poorly Executed Scams.
New X-Files Film
Yesterday I happened to stroll into a shop, whilst looking for some muscle oil for my incredible physique. Also on my shopping list was a copy of Gorgeous Yet Masculine Bastard magazine (to see if I was on the front cover yet again), some double-plus-sized condoms (although most men of my size prefer to use a length of fire hose with a knot tied in one end) and some beautiful-woman repellant spray (they're like moths around a candle lately). I discovered, however, that I had in fact wandered into Forbidden Planet on Shaftesbury Avenue, London's premiere cult entertainment outlet for total sadsacks and virgins. Before I laughed in all the stupid nerds' faces and did not at all go downstairs and purchase the special double-size finale edition of Garth Ennis' Dan Dare comic series, I noticed that the shop was being visited by none other than Chris Creator, the carter of classic sci-fi series The X-Files. He was there to promote the new film, which critics are already hailing with such terms as 'humdrum', 'lackadaisical', 'pabulum', and 'insipid bog-quality pap that fell out of Michael Barrymore's distended anus'. One critic has gone so far as to say he will kill every tenth man who buys a ticket.
Naturally, I threw a breeze block at Carter, scoring a direct hit to the forebrain that so lazily vomited forth the final few unwatchable series of The X-Files, and now a film which looks just as poo. Don't get me wrong, I haven't seen it or anything. I didn't need to, because the trailer told me all I needed to know. Yes, The trailer for the new X-Files has the rare, unwanted honour of being the single most unappealing piece of marketing of recent times. It is the pure diametric opposite of the Watchmen trailer. Its evil twin, if you will, complete with dodgy 'stache.
Hey what's this? A bunch of very cold people in a field of snow! And look, there's Gillian Anderson, who admittedly still looks absolutely gorgeous, and David Duchovny, who looks like he belly-flopped into HMS Invincible's huge deep fat fryer after the final season and fucking well stayed there for the past six years!
I couldn't find an image that adequately conveys Duchovny's new-found
rough-as-fuckness, so here is a computer-generated artist's impression
of him another six years into the future.
Seriously, what the hell happened to him? This bloke had better have been mainlining heroin every day of the intervening years until filming started, because I honestly can't think of any other valid reason why his face looks like what happens to your fingers when you stay in the bath too long. Give it another couple of years and he'll be able to carve out a lucrative career as a stunt arse for Keith Richards.
Anyway, back to the horrible trailer. It seems an FBI agent has gone missing under spooky circumstances, and the only ones that can help are the agency's two most embarrassing, hilariously accident prone goose-chasers, Stan and Ollie. Sorry, Mulder and Scully. But this mystery may prove too impenetrable even for them, so it's a good job they've got this man on hand to render assistance:
Yeah that's right, the Big Yin is a major player in this film.
"But wait," I hear you cry! "Billy Connolly is awful!"
And I reply: "I know! This film's going to be SHIT!"
So yeah, we have lots of snow, a pudding-faced Mulder and Pamela Stephenson's significant other as a psychic paedophile priest, who follows in Sean Connery's footsteps as a Scottish actor who disnae bother wi' tryin' tae dae an accent for fear of being branded a teuchter ba'heed.
Add to this the fact that several fairly major elements of the show's story (I refuse to use the term 'mythology' because I am not Wiki-sodding-paedia) seem to have been discarded without mention, and the general Intrigue-O-Meter© reading of the film's plot comes across as significantly lower than a below-average episode of vintage X-Files.
So yeah, if that's the most exciting footage they can cobble together for a trailer, I am not seeing this film until it shows up on ITV1, ham-fistedly edited for swears, with the news in the middle of it. Happily, a much better X-Files film was released this May, and as a bonus it had Indiana Jones in it.
The London Zeppelin
Ah, Zeppelins. A society can be judged on how it treats its Zeppelins. And I judge our society to be lacking something fundamental. For so many years, they have been relegated to flogging Goodyear tyres, and those little blimps can hardly hold a candle to the massive aerial cruise liners that used to hang effortlessly in the air whilst still giving battleships size issues. There might still be a booming airship industry today, had they not become victims of bad PR ("oh the humanity!" will do that to a product) and the increasing pace of life which favoured smaller, uglier but quicker modes of transport.
But ah! What's this flying over my house? Daily? It's only a sodding Zeppelin isn't it! And it's a Zeppelin NT, built by the Zeppelin company, thus completely authentic. Granted, it's a svelte number that doesn't even approach the size of its lumbering forebears, but it's a bloody good start and it could easily beat up the goodyear blimp. Rides over London are available, starting at the bite-your-fist-expensive price of £189 for a half hour flight. Ow.
Zeppelins tend to feature a lot in speculative 'what-if' sci-fi stories. This is because they are a great lazy visual shorthand to show that the history of your alternate world took a left turn where ours took a right. Oddly, nobody ever chooses to depict their tangential universes by giving all their characters Sinclair C-5s. All too often, the airships' presence is gratuitous rather than logical, like in that Dr. Who episode where the bastards are everywhere for no apparent reason. Another such offense crops up in somewhat-recent FPS game Turning Point: Fall of Liberty, where New York finds itself beset on all sides by NAZI BATTLE ZEPPELINS, despite the game being set in (an albeit alternate) 1953, where the lumbering beasts would survive for roughly an eighth of a second if attacked by a couple of tiny supersonic jet fighters. I'm all for Zeps, but I hate to see them squandered in such a lazy fashion.
Back in reality, a further glimmer of hope seems to exist in the Manned Cloud, a 'floating hotel' proposed by a French designer as a low-emission method of air travel. On top of having just the best name ever and being designed by a French mental case, it also looks like a massive flying whale, which will add to the irony factor when I buy one, outfit it with a Pyroclastic Vengeance Cannon, and descend upon the Japanese whaling fleets like a divine wind. Bonsai! I think.
George Carlin Died
I have only one thing to say about this unacceptable turn of events. To quote George:
Fuck.
Tuesday, May 06, 2008
About the Author
Born in 1837, the son of a nymphomaniac woman and any one of a group of fourteen sailors, Benjamin Zacharias Euphemia Rainbird was a stillbirth. However, people were made of stronger stuff in those days and, pulling himself up by his bootstraps, Rainbird won a scholarship to St. Asmodeus' College Oxford, studying taxidermonomy. This led to a job dusting the Royal Society's extensive collection of stuffed owls. His place in the world seemed secure, But things took a downturn at the age of 22, when it was discovered that he had been supplementing his income by taking rubbings of the owls and selling them to Hebrews.
"Rendering likeness or likenesses of Her Majesty's owls unto the licentious Jewry" was a High Treason offence at the time (comparable to the modern crime of failing to pay your TV license) and he was sentenced to death. Rainbird spent an unspecified number of months awaiting execution at Newgate prison, enduring many depridations, including the loss of his nipples in a horrific Badminton accident. Fortunately, a contemporary fad for extremely tall and spacious top hats meant that he was able to smuggle himself out of the gaol in an accomplice's headpiece over the course of several visits, gradually replacing himself with an albino simpleton who would go on to be executed in his place.
Although believed dead by the Crown, he decided it was best to leave the country until the shit had cooled off, and so enlisted in the Army, joining Rear Colonel Willie Long-Pinkshafte's legendary "Coventry Double-Enders" regiment, and going on to distinguish himself in the Glorious Welsh Punitive Bloodbath of 1851 by killing eighteen Chinamen and one duck, having evidently boarded the wrong train at Paddington.
Over the following year he continued to carve a one-man bloody swath across Asia, nobody having the heart to tell him to stop, as people were a lot more polite in those days. Eventually word reached him that the infiltration of the Zionist Global Conspiracy into the British government had caused a change in the law, and he was able to return home and reveal his true identity. Even better, albinos had been causing a lot of unrest in London at the time, and killing one by treachery now carried a substantial financial reward, so he claimed the bounty for the man he had duped into dying in prison.
This money, added to a windfall from decades of incapacity benefit fraud (he claimed inability to work due to laziness brought on by French ancestry), provided him funding for a successful campaign to take over the prestigious post of Professor Emeritus of Incorrect Shapes at Uttoxeter Polytechnic, a position he would occupy for the rest of his life.
He married his office bureau, and they had three medium-sized desk chairs together before he found his glasses and realised his error. He quickly obtained a divorce and married his assistant, as he had originally intended to, and together they had several mostly human children. It is not known what fate befell his bureau, but it likely ended its days peniless in a Temperance House for Fallen Furniture. Rainbird only once expressed any remorse for this, when he was heard to wistfully remark; "it was a very nice bureau". He continued to teach, and published several important papers including the now-famed Absolute Wrongness of the Quadtrapezohedrix.
Benjamin Rainbird died in 1903 in a Turkish whorehouse, after losing a long battle with obstinacy, and a rather shorter battle with fifty-eight stab wounds to the groin and anus. This was ruled to have been suicide, bought on by feelings of guilt for his office bureau. He died again in 1954, this time for publicity, and was not heard from again until 1996, when his bestselling autobiography, Life Ain't Nothin' But Bitches And Money, was intercepted by SETI as part of a garbled and extremely weak radio message, which had apparently emanated from an unknown point outside our own galaxy, at a time roughly sixty million years ago.
To date, Rainbird's autobiography is still unique among such works in that it can only be "read" by trekking deep into the desert and having it screamed at you by a maniac sitting on top of a pole, while savage Bedouin hill nomads try to blow your head off with antique rifles.
Now officially retired, he lives a simple, pastoral life in Hell with only his vast ego and seventy-two insatiable wives for company. He enjoys collecting mildew and his favourite food is the red Smarties.
PRAISE FOR THE AUTHOR
"In a very real sense, Rainbird is the unsung villain of his age. A 19th-century dry run for the true monsters that were to come in the 20th, every bit as vile and self-serving as Stalin or Pol Pot, only loads better looking."
- TV Historian the Historian David Starkey (Historian)
"Avaunt! Here laid before us an inveterate poltroon, gad-about and lecchour, who verily doth still owe me fifty fucking quid!"
- William Shakespeare
"This is an incredibly safe car specified to a very high standard, but we could have expected that from Honda. The Legend’s real X-factor is the car’s handling ability which should put a smile on the face of most drivers."
- Adrian Higgins, Auto Trader (quote unrelated to the author)
"Last night was incredible. For the first time in my life I know what it feels like to have a real man. Please, please call me."
- Allyson Hannigan.
Thursday, May 01, 2008
The Work I've Done With Hoover
Zero Punctuation, Ben Croshaw's weekly video game review thingy on pretentious video gaming site The Escapist, is one of the few reasons why the Internet is worthwhile. It's a weekly three-to-five-minute session of unadulterated joy, topped only by my other weekly three-to-five-minute session of unadulterated joy, the one involving a secluded location, three long distance lorry drivers and your girlfriend.
When I finished watching this week's edition, however, I suddenly found myself watching an advert for a documentary titled "Where Did Ian Huntley Go Wrong?". Personally I'd say he went wrong right around the time he abducted and murdered two small children, but then I'm not a criminal psychologist or lazy documentary maker. If I was, I would be doing coke off of someone's tits in between brief sessions of half-heartedly writing sensationalist drivel for my tabloid exploitatainment, rather than sitting in my living room complaining at the Internet.
Speaking of detestable media cocksuckers, BBC 6Music's George Lamb show tomorrow will be infinitely improved by none other than the Internet's Delightful Claudia, who will be appearing at the beginning and end of the show, which runs from 10am to 1pm. Make a note in your diaries, Claudia fans!
There is now a functioning Hoover in the house, and today I used it to give my bedroom the first good-an'-proper vacuuming it's had in about 15 years. Now I am free to put down any object without fear of it being instantly leapt upon and devoured by a carpet of dusty grey goo, and I am an instant convert to the Hoovering Way. The Hoover extends life. The Hoover expands consciousness. And if you are one of those tedious bastards who likes to point out that 'Hoover' is a company trademark and shouldn't be applied to 'vacuum cleaners' made by other companies, then the Hoover will shortly be used to remove your nipples. Be warned.
I have recently been making ends meet by doing gardening for Will's mum. It is a great source of work as her garden is huge, like space. Unfortunately, also like space, it is inhabited by monsters, and chief among them is her dog Boo. Boo is huge, in love with me, and expresses affection through random violence. Last time I was there, I was strutting around the garden minding my own business doing incredibly manful things like ripping out stinging nettles WITH MY BARE HANDS and sweeping the FUCK out of some leaves like Conan the Barbarian would, when I turned around to find the great shaggy bastard bearing down on me with inexorable forward momentum.
I have always had slight issues with dogs, as they in turn seem to have with me. What concerns me about dogs is that they don't know what size they are. What concerns them about me is that I am there, and they are either very angry about this, or far too overjoyed by it. This means a small, yappy dog may attack me ferociously because he thinks he's a giant motherfucker, just as a massive dog like Boo may hug me to death because he doesn't realise he's grown way past the point at which "giant motherfucker" ceases to be appropriate, and now is more in the category of "cave bear" or "Welsh person" or "Space Ork".
Anyway, all of a sudden Boo was upon me, running around me in circles, enthusiastically headbutting my kneecaps and attempting to climb on me, so as to bring me down like a gazelle. I picked up and threw a nearby ball to attempt a distraction, but Boo simply watched its trajectory in a half-interested manner and then returned his gaze to me, EXACTLY like the little dinosaur that kills the fat bloke in Jurassic Park, which only served to freak me out more.
Boo continued his good-natured but psychopathic asssault on my person, while I awkwardly tried to fend him off without actually doing anything violent to him. I was very aware that if my employer were to emerge from the house and find me beating the shit out of her beloved dog, my future would contain substantially less money and potentially a lot more imprisonment. In the end, I staggered back into the house with his vast bulk more-or-less riding piggyback on my shoulders. After Boo was apologetically removed from my person, I had a nice sit down and booked some sessions with a post-traumatic stress counsellor.
I may be returning tomorrow, so wish me luck - since my awkward battle with Boo, I feel only pity for any poor sod who might try to burgle that house. If that's the kind of treatment you get when Boo likes you, then you can expect nothing short of dismemberment should you make an enemy of the great beast...
When I finished watching this week's edition, however, I suddenly found myself watching an advert for a documentary titled "Where Did Ian Huntley Go Wrong?". Personally I'd say he went wrong right around the time he abducted and murdered two small children, but then I'm not a criminal psychologist or lazy documentary maker. If I was, I would be doing coke off of someone's tits in between brief sessions of half-heartedly writing sensationalist drivel for my tabloid exploitatainment, rather than sitting in my living room complaining at the Internet.
Speaking of detestable media cocksuckers, BBC 6Music's George Lamb show tomorrow will be infinitely improved by none other than the Internet's Delightful Claudia, who will be appearing at the beginning and end of the show, which runs from 10am to 1pm. Make a note in your diaries, Claudia fans!
There is now a functioning Hoover in the house, and today I used it to give my bedroom the first good-an'-proper vacuuming it's had in about 15 years. Now I am free to put down any object without fear of it being instantly leapt upon and devoured by a carpet of dusty grey goo, and I am an instant convert to the Hoovering Way. The Hoover extends life. The Hoover expands consciousness. And if you are one of those tedious bastards who likes to point out that 'Hoover' is a company trademark and shouldn't be applied to 'vacuum cleaners' made by other companies, then the Hoover will shortly be used to remove your nipples. Be warned.
I have recently been making ends meet by doing gardening for Will's mum. It is a great source of work as her garden is huge, like space. Unfortunately, also like space, it is inhabited by monsters, and chief among them is her dog Boo. Boo is huge, in love with me, and expresses affection through random violence. Last time I was there, I was strutting around the garden minding my own business doing incredibly manful things like ripping out stinging nettles WITH MY BARE HANDS and sweeping the FUCK out of some leaves like Conan the Barbarian would, when I turned around to find the great shaggy bastard bearing down on me with inexorable forward momentum.
I have always had slight issues with dogs, as they in turn seem to have with me. What concerns me about dogs is that they don't know what size they are. What concerns them about me is that I am there, and they are either very angry about this, or far too overjoyed by it. This means a small, yappy dog may attack me ferociously because he thinks he's a giant motherfucker, just as a massive dog like Boo may hug me to death because he doesn't realise he's grown way past the point at which "giant motherfucker" ceases to be appropriate, and now is more in the category of "cave bear" or "Welsh person" or "Space Ork".
Anyway, all of a sudden Boo was upon me, running around me in circles, enthusiastically headbutting my kneecaps and attempting to climb on me, so as to bring me down like a gazelle. I picked up and threw a nearby ball to attempt a distraction, but Boo simply watched its trajectory in a half-interested manner and then returned his gaze to me, EXACTLY like the little dinosaur that kills the fat bloke in Jurassic Park, which only served to freak me out more.
Boo continued his good-natured but psychopathic asssault on my person, while I awkwardly tried to fend him off without actually doing anything violent to him. I was very aware that if my employer were to emerge from the house and find me beating the shit out of her beloved dog, my future would contain substantially less money and potentially a lot more imprisonment. In the end, I staggered back into the house with his vast bulk more-or-less riding piggyback on my shoulders. After Boo was apologetically removed from my person, I had a nice sit down and booked some sessions with a post-traumatic stress counsellor.
I may be returning tomorrow, so wish me luck - since my awkward battle with Boo, I feel only pity for any poor sod who might try to burgle that house. If that's the kind of treatment you get when Boo likes you, then you can expect nothing short of dismemberment should you make an enemy of the great beast...
Monday, March 24, 2008
Climb aboard my Doom Zeppelin!
Yes, you there, lad! You look a canny cove, with brawn to match! What say you join me on the adventure of your lifetime?
Who am I? Why, my identity is of no import. I am, shall we say, an renegade technologist with unorthodox views that have made him a pariah to his fellow men of reason. But as I said, this is of no consequence. Come now, What say you climb aboard my Doom Zeppelin?
Aah, She is a fine vehicle, is she not? But O, she is so much more than a mere dirigible! She represents the ultimate zenith of this Scientific Epoch's destructive technology! I am sure you will not be surprised to know that her construction cost me the whole of FIFTY English pounds! But the Doom Zeppelin shall soon pay for herself! How? Why, it's quite simple, my man. We shall hold the world to ransom! The great men of old Europe shall quake in their beds at the thought of my mighty vessel heaving out from between the clouds, hanging tumescent above their cities, ready to spurt fiery pandemonium upon their heads if they do not accede to our demands! Be they Englishmen, French or Prussian, whether they bow to the Kaiser or the Tzar, they shall not be safe from our crusade of plunder and debauch, for the Doom Zeppelin flies no flag but my own! Their crude and outmoded empires shall crumble before my blunt implement of science and reason!
Come, I shall give you the grand tour of your new home...
THE ENGINE ROOM
Here, good fellow! Ear mufflers! They will stave off deafness from the thunder-roar of the Doom Zeppelin's mighty, opium-powered engine! Thanks to this sixty-ton symphony of pistons and flywheels propelling us through the heavens at nothing less than eight miles per hour, we shall be soaring gracefully over the city of Paris in a matter of mere weeks, and striking fear into the hearts of its cowering inhabitants! But ah, these mighty throbbing organs could not function were it not for my hearty crew! Let us proceed to their dwellings, that you might meet your shipmates.
CREW QUARTERS
Whist, hearty crewmen! This is your new comrade! And these, m'lad, are the most disreputable and scurrilous coterie of vagabonds, vandals, Visigoths, the most putrescent poltroons, pirates and pederasts you'll ever see assembled! All the finest scum of the world, all united by the common love of good, hard booty! These are my lads, and I love them just as a man of the cloth loves his altar boys. And all of them, in their turn, shall love you! Now, onwards and upwards...
THE WEAPONS DECK
Here is the most fearsome array of weaponry man has ever seen! Rack upon rack of machine-pistols, bomb bays swollen with ton upon ton of high explosive, enough to sink a dreadnaught ten times over! Here you see why Kings and Emperors will BEG to empty their pockets at the sight of my mighty arsenal! And so too will they empty their very bowels, when they lay eyes upon its centrepiece - the Pyroclastic Vengeance Cannon! Using Science, I reverse-engineered this implement of destruction from an ancient Chinese siege weapon which so utterly vanquished an entire civilisation that it is now only known by the half-remembered name of... Atlantis!
It was bequeathed to me by the ancient alchemist Nigel Trubshaw, who with his dying breath begged me to destroy it! This, my boy, is the revolver pointed at the trembling head of Civilisation! And your supple, lithe fingers can alight upon the trigger which discharges its hot volcanic load!
THE TESLA TOWER
Oh, that? No, it doesn't really do anything. It looks good though, doesn't it? All electrical.
Science-y. Mmm.
THE READING ROOM
Ah yes, we may soar above the crumbling cities of Man, but I do not think myself to be above a little light reading! Or should I say, lighter-than-air reading! Ahaha! Ha!
Ahem, yes. Here on these shelves, you will find all the great literary works of mankind. Mmm? Yes, they are all written by myself, of course. I do not hold with the classical tradition, it is an offshoot of the decaying, played-out "society" whose earthly bonds I am so glad to have slipped.
No indeed, here I have assembled something rather better - in these pages you will find the most scintillatingly lurid sexual passages ever committed to paper! Every carnal act imaginible, no matter how foul, physically impossible, or punishable by death, is here! How do I know? Why, I write from nothing but my own experience, and it is extensive indeed! And soon, my good man, we shall add great volumes to this grand work, you and I!
I... why do you stare at me like that, lad? Say, where are you going?
Wait, NO, NOT THAT DOOR!
THE BONDAGE CHAMBER
Ah... well obviously, this is my... private exercise room! Yes, that rack there is for, um, toning the muscles of chest and abdomen. Yes, it takes stamina to empty the world's treasuries! And that crewman is tied up for insubordination, and that's just... a special rubber anti-lightning suit?
Wait, come back! Don't be so close-minded! Put down that parachute! Shut that window...
Oh, shit.
Who am I? Why, my identity is of no import. I am, shall we say, an renegade technologist with unorthodox views that have made him a pariah to his fellow men of reason. But as I said, this is of no consequence. Come now, What say you climb aboard my Doom Zeppelin?
Aah, She is a fine vehicle, is she not? But O, she is so much more than a mere dirigible! She represents the ultimate zenith of this Scientific Epoch's destructive technology! I am sure you will not be surprised to know that her construction cost me the whole of FIFTY English pounds! But the Doom Zeppelin shall soon pay for herself! How? Why, it's quite simple, my man. We shall hold the world to ransom! The great men of old Europe shall quake in their beds at the thought of my mighty vessel heaving out from between the clouds, hanging tumescent above their cities, ready to spurt fiery pandemonium upon their heads if they do not accede to our demands! Be they Englishmen, French or Prussian, whether they bow to the Kaiser or the Tzar, they shall not be safe from our crusade of plunder and debauch, for the Doom Zeppelin flies no flag but my own! Their crude and outmoded empires shall crumble before my blunt implement of science and reason!
Come, I shall give you the grand tour of your new home...
THE ENGINE ROOM
Here, good fellow! Ear mufflers! They will stave off deafness from the thunder-roar of the Doom Zeppelin's mighty, opium-powered engine! Thanks to this sixty-ton symphony of pistons and flywheels propelling us through the heavens at nothing less than eight miles per hour, we shall be soaring gracefully over the city of Paris in a matter of mere weeks, and striking fear into the hearts of its cowering inhabitants! But ah, these mighty throbbing organs could not function were it not for my hearty crew! Let us proceed to their dwellings, that you might meet your shipmates.
CREW QUARTERS
Whist, hearty crewmen! This is your new comrade! And these, m'lad, are the most disreputable and scurrilous coterie of vagabonds, vandals, Visigoths, the most putrescent poltroons, pirates and pederasts you'll ever see assembled! All the finest scum of the world, all united by the common love of good, hard booty! These are my lads, and I love them just as a man of the cloth loves his altar boys. And all of them, in their turn, shall love you! Now, onwards and upwards...
THE WEAPONS DECK
Here is the most fearsome array of weaponry man has ever seen! Rack upon rack of machine-pistols, bomb bays swollen with ton upon ton of high explosive, enough to sink a dreadnaught ten times over! Here you see why Kings and Emperors will BEG to empty their pockets at the sight of my mighty arsenal! And so too will they empty their very bowels, when they lay eyes upon its centrepiece - the Pyroclastic Vengeance Cannon! Using Science, I reverse-engineered this implement of destruction from an ancient Chinese siege weapon which so utterly vanquished an entire civilisation that it is now only known by the half-remembered name of... Atlantis!
It was bequeathed to me by the ancient alchemist Nigel Trubshaw, who with his dying breath begged me to destroy it! This, my boy, is the revolver pointed at the trembling head of Civilisation! And your supple, lithe fingers can alight upon the trigger which discharges its hot volcanic load!
THE TESLA TOWER
Oh, that? No, it doesn't really do anything. It looks good though, doesn't it? All electrical.
Science-y. Mmm.
THE READING ROOM
Ah yes, we may soar above the crumbling cities of Man, but I do not think myself to be above a little light reading! Or should I say, lighter-than-air reading! Ahaha! Ha!
Ahem, yes. Here on these shelves, you will find all the great literary works of mankind. Mmm? Yes, they are all written by myself, of course. I do not hold with the classical tradition, it is an offshoot of the decaying, played-out "society" whose earthly bonds I am so glad to have slipped.
No indeed, here I have assembled something rather better - in these pages you will find the most scintillatingly lurid sexual passages ever committed to paper! Every carnal act imaginible, no matter how foul, physically impossible, or punishable by death, is here! How do I know? Why, I write from nothing but my own experience, and it is extensive indeed! And soon, my good man, we shall add great volumes to this grand work, you and I!
I... why do you stare at me like that, lad? Say, where are you going?
Wait, NO, NOT THAT DOOR!
THE BONDAGE CHAMBER
Ah... well obviously, this is my... private exercise room! Yes, that rack there is for, um, toning the muscles of chest and abdomen. Yes, it takes stamina to empty the world's treasuries! And that crewman is tied up for insubordination, and that's just... a special rubber anti-lightning suit?
Wait, come back! Don't be so close-minded! Put down that parachute! Shut that window...
Oh, shit.
Friday, February 08, 2008
Not The Bees
Hey, it seems I sort of forgot to touch my blog for about six months. I am finally bowing to public pressure, having recieved over 3 requests (4 requests) to update it.
Much has happened since last time, and unfortunately a great deal of it has been shite. One particular bit of it is so shite that to write about it in a trifling blog would rather cheapen and denigrate it, so I won't. As for the other shite stuff, I will give only a brief rundown:
- This was the illest Christmas ever, and I don't mean ill in the good, hip-hop sort of way. I mean everyone was ill with a debilitating flu virus that had most of my family nigh incapacitated for over a fortnight. It was Christmas' number 1 unwanted gift, and nobody had thought to keep the receipt.
- Slightly before New Year's, I got collared by a deeply unpleasant London Midland Railways employee at Birmingham, as I had erroneously secured a slight discount using my Young Person's Railcard, which, unbeknownst to me, had expired. This resulted in him taking me to one side, reading me my rights (he was under the delusion that he was a police officer) and proceeding to detain me for 45 minutes under "official caution", during which time he all but accused me of grand larceny, attempted murder, and cyber bullying. Anyway, for 'defrauding' (his words) the company of, oh, £3, they may take me to court, which would surely cost them more than £3, but what the hell, if they want to waste their money on bullshit, I am happy to help them. Hell, I could work as an advisor for them, I know all about wasting money on bullshit!
- So I finish reading Making Money, then literally right afterwards, I look at the news and Terry Pratchett has fucking Altzheimer's. It's been caught very early and he seems very upbeat about it, so I will be angry in his stead: Shit fucking fuck bastard cock Wankel Rotary Engine. Why him? Why not Dan Brown?
Anyway, that's all I care to go into. Good stuff has happened also, however. Recend goodnesses that spring to mind include taking Claudia out for face-stuffing purposes at Greenwich's famed celebrity nightspot, Noodle Time. Later we went to the market and I bought a monocle from a retro shop, for the princely sum of £1.50. It goes well with the pith helmet I got for Chrimbo, but really it needs a top hat and a devilish moustache to properly set it off. And in about 60 years' time, I will totally be able to pass for Patrick Moore, which will be brilliant, because I love that guy. He's only slightly younger than some of the stars he snoops at in his DIY observatory, and yet he manages to also maintain Hitchcockian levels of fat-blokeness. My personal theory is that his sizable gravity well (mouth) draws matter (cheeseburgers) towards him, thus adding to his overall mass. No getting wizened for our Patrick, he's far too super-massive.
Another good thing was that I worked a few days for my company at the Toy Fair in the Excel Centre, demonstrating various new games to potential buyers, which means extra moolah to inevitably waste on the awesome things I saw there, when they appear in shops. Among such things were new Airfix planes (I had an awesome, cosmically nerdy chat with one of the original company guys, still kickin' it after, oh, about 50 years), and... Indiana Jones Lego.
God DAMN that company. Every time I stash my Lego junk in the loft and fool myself that I've outgrown it, the bastards release some new, insanely awesome thing that I am morally obliged to own. There were a number of sets, all with fairly generic non-specific names, although they each clearly depict a particular Bit from the films. For instance, one, called "The Lost Treasure", nonetheless certainly seems to feature Indy and Sallah, in an underground temple, Raiding a distinctly Ark-shaped object, which had perhaps been Lost for some time. Another one features the desert truck chase, complete with honest-to-god LEGO NAZIS. Of course they are euphemistically described as "guards" but basically what you get is cutesy little figurines of Hitler's dreaded Afrika Korps, replete with a machinegun-armed Volkswagen. Totally metal. There's also the bike chase from Last Crusade, featuring the Jones boys and a dandy sidecar motorcycle for them to tool about in. Neet!
My company sells educational games and trad games such as chess and backgammon, so we generally tend to attract slightly... odd people. None so odd as the inbred-looking couple who came onto our stall, announced that they have a shop that sells nothing but chess sets, then proceeded to shoot down our every attempt to show them our chess sets with a childish chorus of "BORING". This eventually culminated in us offering them a catalogue, which the husband took, then announced "if you can only afford one catalogue, I'm afraid it's goodbye" upon which the pair of them stormed off as if we'd spat in their soup at our fancy restaurant. Like I said, odd people.
Also myself, Claudia, and The Arnolds© are soon to be going on a fabulous getaway to sunny Brighton for a couple of days, as a joint birthday venture for Claudia and Gillia. N. We will wander around the intriguing Lanes, visit that bizarre onion-topped fake mosque thing, and dine in our hotel's excellently Graf Zeppelin-looking dining room. And of course there's always the chance of an ambush by the Internet's Tetsujin "Steven" Griffo, who lives there. In Brighton, not in the dining room. Although maybe.
Anyway, I have to go now because I must get my head down, and also my keyboard has run out of letters. Hopefully the next update is less than six months away, and will be generally more coherent.
Hurr.
Much has happened since last time, and unfortunately a great deal of it has been shite. One particular bit of it is so shite that to write about it in a trifling blog would rather cheapen and denigrate it, so I won't. As for the other shite stuff, I will give only a brief rundown:
- This was the illest Christmas ever, and I don't mean ill in the good, hip-hop sort of way. I mean everyone was ill with a debilitating flu virus that had most of my family nigh incapacitated for over a fortnight. It was Christmas' number 1 unwanted gift, and nobody had thought to keep the receipt.
- Slightly before New Year's, I got collared by a deeply unpleasant London Midland Railways employee at Birmingham, as I had erroneously secured a slight discount using my Young Person's Railcard, which, unbeknownst to me, had expired. This resulted in him taking me to one side, reading me my rights (he was under the delusion that he was a police officer) and proceeding to detain me for 45 minutes under "official caution", during which time he all but accused me of grand larceny, attempted murder, and cyber bullying. Anyway, for 'defrauding' (his words) the company of, oh, £3, they may take me to court, which would surely cost them more than £3, but what the hell, if they want to waste their money on bullshit, I am happy to help them. Hell, I could work as an advisor for them, I know all about wasting money on bullshit!
- So I finish reading Making Money, then literally right afterwards, I look at the news and Terry Pratchett has fucking Altzheimer's. It's been caught very early and he seems very upbeat about it, so I will be angry in his stead: Shit fucking fuck bastard cock Wankel Rotary Engine. Why him? Why not Dan Brown?
Anyway, that's all I care to go into. Good stuff has happened also, however. Recend goodnesses that spring to mind include taking Claudia out for face-stuffing purposes at Greenwich's famed celebrity nightspot, Noodle Time. Later we went to the market and I bought a monocle from a retro shop, for the princely sum of £1.50. It goes well with the pith helmet I got for Chrimbo, but really it needs a top hat and a devilish moustache to properly set it off. And in about 60 years' time, I will totally be able to pass for Patrick Moore, which will be brilliant, because I love that guy. He's only slightly younger than some of the stars he snoops at in his DIY observatory, and yet he manages to also maintain Hitchcockian levels of fat-blokeness. My personal theory is that his sizable gravity well (mouth) draws matter (cheeseburgers) towards him, thus adding to his overall mass. No getting wizened for our Patrick, he's far too super-massive.
Another good thing was that I worked a few days for my company at the Toy Fair in the Excel Centre, demonstrating various new games to potential buyers, which means extra moolah to inevitably waste on the awesome things I saw there, when they appear in shops. Among such things were new Airfix planes (I had an awesome, cosmically nerdy chat with one of the original company guys, still kickin' it after, oh, about 50 years), and... Indiana Jones Lego.
God DAMN that company. Every time I stash my Lego junk in the loft and fool myself that I've outgrown it, the bastards release some new, insanely awesome thing that I am morally obliged to own. There were a number of sets, all with fairly generic non-specific names, although they each clearly depict a particular Bit from the films. For instance, one, called "The Lost Treasure", nonetheless certainly seems to feature Indy and Sallah, in an underground temple, Raiding a distinctly Ark-shaped object, which had perhaps been Lost for some time. Another one features the desert truck chase, complete with honest-to-god LEGO NAZIS. Of course they are euphemistically described as "guards" but basically what you get is cutesy little figurines of Hitler's dreaded Afrika Korps, replete with a machinegun-armed Volkswagen. Totally metal. There's also the bike chase from Last Crusade, featuring the Jones boys and a dandy sidecar motorcycle for them to tool about in. Neet!
My company sells educational games and trad games such as chess and backgammon, so we generally tend to attract slightly... odd people. None so odd as the inbred-looking couple who came onto our stall, announced that they have a shop that sells nothing but chess sets, then proceeded to shoot down our every attempt to show them our chess sets with a childish chorus of "BORING". This eventually culminated in us offering them a catalogue, which the husband took, then announced "if you can only afford one catalogue, I'm afraid it's goodbye" upon which the pair of them stormed off as if we'd spat in their soup at our fancy restaurant. Like I said, odd people.
Also myself, Claudia, and The Arnolds© are soon to be going on a fabulous getaway to sunny Brighton for a couple of days, as a joint birthday venture for Claudia and Gillia. N. We will wander around the intriguing Lanes, visit that bizarre onion-topped fake mosque thing, and dine in our hotel's excellently Graf Zeppelin-looking dining room. And of course there's always the chance of an ambush by the Internet's Tetsujin "Steven" Griffo, who lives there. In Brighton, not in the dining room. Although maybe.
Anyway, I have to go now because I must get my head down, and also my keyboard has run out of letters. Hopefully the next update is less than six months away, and will be generally more coherent.
Hurr.
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