What this blog isn't

It's not a Leeds-based exploration of the joys and challenges of shaping the mortar between house-bricks so that the rain runs off without undue damage.
Nor is it about looking at, achieving, or maintaining erections of the male variety. That's what the rest of the internet is for.
It's also not about drawing peoples' attention to the beauty of the Aurora Borealis by indicating it with an extended forefinger
It probably isn't SFW[Safe For Work] either (especially if you work in a church) thanks to the liberal sprinkling of profanities, heresies and blasphemies.

Thursday, August 28, 2008

Oh my God, I'm sick of the OMG phenomenon (definitely NSFW)

This is going to sound like a petulant whine, and it probably is, so I'll make sure it puts on its nicest Pantagruelistic dress and does its hair especially for you - just so you know I'm at least 'passionate' about the subject.

I love my language (English, obviously) - it's the best tongue in the world by a long chalk, probably because we stole all the most delicious words from every culture we ground into the dust under our Imperial bootheels. I even delight in all the terms being coined by successive generations - every patois, argot, jargon and cant springing from the foreheads of our yoof culture and burgeoning immigrant workforce. I am not a linguistic purist, like so many of my peers - the English language is a beautiful, organic fluid entity that rightly shapeshifts around our expectations and limitations; a good thing too, or it would end up dead like Latin and Classical Greek. Or boring, like French.

I cannot, however, take any more of the inappropriate overuse of those three little words. No, not 'it wasn't me' or 'I'll pull out'. I'm talking about OH. MY. GOD. Usually from those denizens of our wayward colony. Usually spoken with punctuation stressed, just like above. They've infected us with it. They've even reduced it in the crucible of banality to a sad acronymic quintessence.

-OMG, look at her shoes!

-OMG, I love that!

-OMG, you're a douchebag. (I've never really understood why this is an insult, unless it is highlighting the fact that the bag section of douching equipment gets the least fun job of the whole process)

Imagine being God. All day long you hear the prayers, hopes and fears of your children below. At least you would if it wasn't for countless twats lazily shouting your name in capital letters, or vocalizing it in staccato AQI, every single second of the bloody day. I'd be shrugging off my benevolent creator outfit and donning my smiting garments like a fucking shot. There's a time and a place for the utterance of those three little words. Here, let me give you a couple of examples.

You come home to a darkened house. Flicking on the living room lights, you take in the dreadful tableau of a gang of piratical midgets with diphallic terata queuing up to take turns double-fucking the empty eyesockets of your murdered parents - as your male family members stand around the edges of the room posh-wanking wildly into sheaths made from half-empty jars of baby food mixed with broken glass. Meanwhile, and centre-stage, your paternal and maternal grandmothers make and use strings of anal beads from mum and dad's eyes and optic nerves while singing 'don't it make your blue eyes brown' to each other in a comic falsetto.

OR

You awake from a routine operation to discover that the surgeons have not only replaced all of your limbs with live chimpanzee heads, but said medicos are also merrily eating liquid shit fondue from your exposed colon with used tampons on the end of decaying heron's leg fondue forks.

THAT'S what they should be saving all their Oh my God's for; but they've used them all up in forum threads, inane chatter and comment posts at the end of celebrity news pages - the simple fucks.

I need a lie down now.

 

[Naming and shaming my pimp: Humor-blogs.com]

Tuesday, August 26, 2008

The Conspirinterocitor #2 - Where's your balls, man?

Heads up conspiracy theorists! You! Yes, you! The guy watching repeats of the X-files through his spirals-for-eyes. I'm talking to you, pal! It's time for The Conspirinterocitor to be tuned to your wavelength.

Did you know...that cholesterol is necessary for the production of the magic ball-juice that makes you a man? That means (by a stretch of logic that can only be described as fantastical) that the good people who are trying to lower your cholesterol level are trying to unman you, unmake you, destroy you.

Gloria Hunniford is obviously trying to take over the world. Maybe not by herself; she may be just the face of demonic/government/alien powers, but I wouldn't put it past her. Allow me to explain.

Flimsy reasoning powers...GO!

1) Your liver makes cholesterol anyway, no matter what you eat; but if you eat foods high in cholesterol then your own body feels the need to produce less.

2) They want to replace your good old eggs and bacon cholesterol with PLANT sterols instead. So your testosterone will be replaced by plant-osterone (or something) and when's the last time you saw a plant win a war, a gold medal or even a fight over a girl?

3) Your girl isn't safe either 'cause cholesterol is basic to the production of oestrogen too.

So...Gloria Hunniford is the weathered face (or the head) of a conspiracy to make us breed less and fight like wimps.

What demonic/government/alien plot would be complete without turning us into meek, ball-less pussies who can't even remember (cholesterol helps memory too, see) what we are supposed to be fighting or breeding for? Oh, and because we are cheerfully doing it to ourselves (on the urging of so-called experts) then it MUST be a conspiracy.

Fight low cholesterol, you demented easily-led lunatics! Shove pies and quiche down your necks as if they're going out of fashion! Your planet (and your balls) need you!

[My cholesterol number is 42.6 - I practically shit eggs and shortcrust pastry in the form of fully intact flans. That wouldn't be so bad, but my body has somehow begun producing the fluted tins they come in as well - and they're havoc on the piles.]

 

n.b. I do not believe any of the above and, being fictional anyway, it wouldn't matter if I did. So don't go gunning old GH down in the street outside the T.V. studio, eh? Thanks awfully, old bean.

p.s. I used the word 'cholesterol' a full nine times in this post. Damn, that's ten now. I'd better stop while I can. No wonder they fucking shorten it to HDL and LDL. Though I do love the word 'lipid'.

Saturday, August 23, 2008

The Conspirinterocitor #1 - I bet this comes back to bite me on the arse

If this image of an interocitor is copyrighted by your film studio, please let me know and I'll take a fucking age to knock one up out of maths in POVray - but I'll resent you forever you bastards I love conspiracy theorists. Not conspiracies themselves, of course. What sane man could contemplate such wild and improbable Jenga towers of delusion as exist now, and have existed in one form or another since man stopped being too busy running for his life from fanged beasts; or breeding like fuck to up the population enough to fight same beasts instead. Well, at least enough to ensure that the murderous trip that you execute on Ug, your rival for Rachel Welch's affections, goes unnoticed in the mass panicked rush away from them. Come on, you'd do it. She's the only cavewoman around here with two names, for a start. That's prestige, that is. Fucking prestige.

They're fantastic they are. Poke 'em and off they go. Conspiracy theorists that is, not cavewomen.

A favourite activity of mine is the concoction of such wild and improbable Jenga towers of delusion as would have them frothing at the mouth. Here's the first...

The internet is a method of storing humanity's achievements, skills and knowledge for the inevitable migration of the social elite into space. (That's in bold so they notice it)

Flimsy reasoning powers...GO!

1)  We're not ALL going to be able to go now, are we?

2)  Those (the wealthy, the powerful, necessary whores, etc.) who do escape the coming bio/nano/religio-apocalypse will need the stored knowledge of mankind.

3)  That's what the internet is for - so the rest of us can enlighten future generations of spoilt people long after our starvey/grey gooey/smote-by-God deaths. Bastards.

So what can we do to fuck up their plans? Nothing we need to really. We've already done it. They'll wind up a few generations on being a mad society based on quasi-religious flame wars on message boards, or so ensorcelled by all the pervasive hard-core porn that they die out from such terrifyingly evolved STD's as would make the transformation into a zombie look like a fucking makeover. As their generation ships ply the spaceways, they'll be crying 'WTF?' at each other as they desperately try to Google the manual for the engines and come up with 380,000 hits for 'hot spicy engine sex'. Ha! Take that, escaping social elite!

That's it. Poked. See 'em go...

 

p.s. I do not believe any of the above. It is for the benefit of the credulous.

I do have the government after me though, but fortunately it is the government of Middle Kingdom Egypt - and they weren't much fucking use even when they were alive three and a half thousand years ago. So I reckon I can breathe easy. Oh Jesus! Is that an unmarked black dhow off the coast there - its oars muffled by rags and the slaves tongueless to best sneak silently up on me? They've found me.

Damn.

Wiping off mascara 'til your face bleeds - the escape (part 4 of 4)

"That's it! That's your fucking plan! Wait until we're alone with them and hit them over the head with a hard hat?"

Hakim wasn't best pleased. He had failed however to think of anything better so that was the plan, in the end, that we went with. We didn't sleep. Partly in a deliberate act to look as unattractive as possible in the forlorn hope than even an Oompa-Loompa woman would be turned off by the sight of the huge bags under our eyes and sallow complexions. Partly because our nightmares were haunted by fleeting semi-nude orange figures.

The cell doors were flung open at 7 in the morning. Two of our attractive captors entered, all smiles. Hakim was unceremoniously ushered out and placed in the next cell. Then my 'companion' was pushed into the cell. She seemed as unwilling to perform as I, and stood in the corner, facing away from me. When the models retreated grinning from the room I tried to strike up a conversation - trying to lull my breeding partner into a false sense of security before braining her and donning her garb. Hakim had squirreled away some particularly orange foundation from a deep vein we had struck days earlier, and once we'd done the deed and stashed the unconscious (or dead) visitors under our sheets then we were going to try and bluff our way out as Oompa-Loompa women.

As I crossed the confined room, hard hat raised to deliver the blow, something struck me as odd about my companion. Unable to resist the urge to ask, the words fell out of my mouth before I could stop them.

"Aren't you a little tall for an Oompa-Loompa?"

Before she could turn to answer me I heard Hakim's voice, shrill with fear and consternation, through the vents - asking his own burning question.

"Miss, do you know you have a monocle in your arsehole?"

I yelled at the top of my voice for Hakim to stop, knowing that my cries - whatever form they took (passion, fear, pain, "my God, it's full of stars") - would be ignored by the models. At the same time Withers threw off his green wig and joined me at the vent.  There was only silence from the next room. Withers and I stood looking at one another, too afraid for the safety of his dwarven hermaphrodite daughter to say anything more. Suddenly keys rattled in the door and we both turned to see who it was. There was no-one there when the door opened however.

"I'm down here." said a surprisingly deep female voice.

"No, further down." it said again.

"A little bit further down." one last time.

There in the lower third of the doorway stood Withers' offspring, Mathilda. Dragging Hakim's limp form. "I didn't hit him, dad, honest. He just fainted." she told Withers with a shrug. I didn't mind, and when Hakim woke up a few minutes later, he was just as happy as I was. The escape was now on.

He and I were soon at loggerheads over the route. I wanted to dig out through an eight metre layer of mascara near the surface, but he wanted to utilise a thicker layer of foundation at the same depth, arguing that it would be easier to dig through. It all boiled down to what time of day it would be when we broke ground. For now we plastered ourselves in orange foundation, dressed in overalls that Withers and Mathilda had brought, and ventured out into the mine again, locking the cells behind us.

We were ignored by all overseers. As we cautiously moved closer to the surface Withers explained how he had found me. He had, of course, been down here before - in the 80's. He'd spent thirteen weeks of his long life (I had no idea how old Withers was as he'd always been there) at the face before hiding in an outgoing lorry that had just delivered a consignment of shoulder pads. He and Mathilda had made up their differences in order to find me. He had purchased that lovely window in the village too. What a star.

We reached our penultimate goal - the two differing substrates that barred our way to freedom. I shook Hakim's hand and we parted, wishing each other luck. I looked into his tear-stained orange face one last time before we went our separate ways. Withers, Mathilda and I dug like mad orange rabbits, heaping the thick black goo behind us to hide our bright forms. Hours and hours of back-breaking effort ensued, tinged with the fear of discovery. I was just beginning to lose hope that we'd ever be free when my spade emerged into resistance-free open air.

It was a matter of only a few minutes work and we were standing, blackened to ebony, behind the bins in the loading area of a pharmacy in Nuneaton. It was night. Hakim would be totally visible. As Mathilda hotwired a nearby car I was sure I heard a yell of "Free Cornwall" and running footsteps, though. I hope he got away.

Back home at the manse and hosed off, we celebrated. There have been few sightings of the Supermodel Overlord Hierarchy and their minions since. Every now and then we hear the sound of high heels in the bushes at the edge of the grounds, but Withers just goes out with a plate of pie and mash and an electric fan. The waft of hearty wholesome fare always drives them away.

Mathilda now lives in the gatehouse and is an admirable, if overzealous, security guard. Our strange little family has settled back down to the daily life of just being us again.

[Phew! That's the tale of why I hadn't been posting for months over with, and it had nothing at all to do with Withers forgetting to pay the internet bill - leading to us being cut off for nearly a year]

Finally, a note about Loompa-Land. It is now being used by the U.S. Government for extraordinary rendition of terror suspects since Guantanamo Bay got all the bad press. The confessions extracted from prisoners there are done without the need for controversial techniques such as 'waterboarding', as they now just have to open a window and say -

-Hear that, buddy? That's a Vermicious Knid. Now tell us what we want to know or we'll let it in here to devour your terrorist ass.

Tuesday, August 5, 2008

Taking a breather before the conclusion - 'Teleportation tussles tyranny, terrorism, taxes. Triumphs'

If the boffins working on teleportation can get off their arses and send something that's a bit more substantial and entertaining than a ray of light, then we'll have the future sewn up. At least the atheists will. Since the original object is destroyed by the process of teleportation and an identical copy made at the other end, the religiously zealous would be shying right the fuck away from it. No more worrying about whether crazed terrorists will obliterate your flight to the Costa Del Mar, taking out you and that lovely couple from Preston who run a micro-brewery - Kayeda Al will be stuck at teleport check-in, in the grip of a thorny theosophical puzzle.

-What'd you mean, you can't guarantee whether my immortal soul will arrive at the other end with me? I've put a label on it and everything!

-Sorry, sir. We can't ensure the delivery of intangible items - even if they do make you more than the sum of your parts. Maybe you'd like to get a ferry instead. That's nice and safe, religiously speaking.

Terrorism would be become economically unviable almost overnight, as they struggle to save the money to fuel even the Fiat Cinquecentos that they'll have to drive overland to where you are safely holidaying. They'd also be unable to afford both petrol and semtex, so even when they finally turned up all they would be able to do is jump out of the car and shout bang. Only to find you went home a week ago. By stepping through a magnet-bedecked doorway. Ha! Take that fundamentalism!

Even the most well-funded ones, with plenty of petrol and bomb money would probably succumb to the perils and pitfalls of long-distance car journeys long before they arrived at their scheduled die-stination. Which you'd expect with four of them packed in there; the driver becoming steadily more annoyed with each passing mile - his volatile passengers getting on his tits while he tries one last time to find a decent radio station.

-Are we nearly there yet? Are we nearly there yet? Are we nearly there yet? This bomb belt itches. I need a wee.

-Right that's it! I'm turning this car around and we can all set ourselves off in the bloody house! No, I've put my foot down and that's final. You've just spoilt it for yourself and everyone else now. Oh don't start crying...

Another added benefit would be that fundamentalist neo-conservatives from the US wouldn't be teleporting either. Nope, they'd be packed onto ships that we could cheerfully turn away from our ports, or planes that we could redirect to elsewhere. Sorted. Hurry up you boffins, that's all I can say.

p.s. I will conclude the retelling of my escape from the supermodel overlord hierarchy soon. Then it's back to cracked little rants like this. Oh, frabjous day!

Friday, August 1, 2008

"You want me to do what?" - The realisation of impending doom (part 3 of 4)

Fruit flies fuck rotten oranges. Not strictly true of the real thing, Drosophila melanogaster, which will happily impregnate all kinds of decaying things; but unwholesomely apt for us.  'Fruit Fly' was our name, you see. We, the captives, chose it - unlike 'mole', 'donkey' and 'rabbit' which were the terminology of our gaolers. They called what Hakim and I had been singled out for 'Stock hybridisation programme C-One'.

We were not alone down here. There were other creatures, just as alien to this underground habitat as we men. They however had grown accustomed to life in the caverns, having come from an even less hospitable place.

Hollywood.

Set your brains to 1971. If you weren't alive then, just imagine today but with the colour saturation turned up too high and seemingly no limit on the size of male shoe heels or the apertures in the bottoms of trousers. Also women had different shaped breasts then. I'm not kidding. Go on, look at a few adverts from around that time. They slope, don't they? Enough trans-generational mammary comparisons for now, back to the story.

It is 1971 and a tour bus winds its way through the parched countryside of Los Angeles. We faintly hear singing from within. Constant repetitious singing, without let-up or deviation from what had begun as a catchy whimsical tune but now echoed in the driver's ears like a mournful dirge. Suddenly the bus screeches to a halt on a forbidding crest with a rushing gasp from the air brakes. The doors open and a once lively voice, now etched with grim fatigue and despair, shouts "Everyone off to stretch your legs!"

In the half-light of pre-dawn we see sixty or seventy Oompa-Loompas traipse from the bus, puzzled at their remote location. This puzzlement quickly turned to dismay as Gene Wilder put the bus into gear and hared off into the California morning - finally free of those annoying singing cunts.

Some of them starved, some wandered off into the bayside night; never to be seen again. Others ended up in the cast of The Streets of San Francisco. The fortunate ones just became prostitutes. These were however dark days for the remainder of the employees of the chocolate factory, and most just huddled in the undergrowth living on berries, discarded tacos and good time memories of flower power.

That all ended one cloudless California night when the headlights of a 1971 Mercedes-Benz 280SE 3.5litre convertible washed over their shivering forms, and a perfectly manicured finger beckoned from the rolled down driver's window. Those huddled figures then gladly set to work below ground.

Of course, freed from their natural predator - absolutely fucking everything - those Oompa-Loompas thrived in this new chthonian habitat. Unfortunately they were piss-poor at mining, having enough sense of direction only to perform incredibly well choreographed  dance moves. Beyond that they blundered into walls, over sheer drops and under mine cart wheels regularly. That's when the supermodel overlord hierarchy [how often are you going to hear those three words together, eh?] instigated the stock hybridisation programmes.  A disturbing cross-breeding scheme between the female OL stock and the healthiest of their male captives.

Fruit flies fuck rotten oranges.

I understood the bitter humour behind the nomenclature now - and I was scared out of my wits. Apparently the successful progeny of these unholy unions were sent 'upstairs' - my first intimation that the major, and indeed all satellite mines, were situated below department stores and branches of Boots the Chemist all over the land. Hair bleach and radio-controlled shock collars were all it took to prevent spontaneous outbursts of singing and other Loompa-like behaviour from these secret orange ambassadors, and they were a great asset in selling off the mined resources. Sadly the male offspring of these experiments either died or were considered unfit to foist off on the public above. There were terrible rumours about shouty antique expert David Dickinson being the only successful male OL-human hybrid, but these were quickly quashed. I'm saying nothing about George Hamilton IV.

Hakim fearfully explained that the 'lucky' few chosen for this opportunity invariably went mad. He himself had spoken to an unlucky fruit fly before the poor man had taken his own life.

"He told me that not only did he have to do the deed mechanically, but because the models insisted on a fully enjoyable experience for their colour-challenged sisters all fruit flies had to be considerate in bed too. " Hakim told me in between uncontrollable shivers. "The poor bastard said it was like performing oral sex on the scene from 2001 where Dave Bowman is flying through the monolith."

That was it for me. I'd been shocked, beaten, suffered terrible pasty-related heartburn and the raging disappointment that I wasn't living in a recreation of The Two Ronnies 'Worm That Turned' serial. There was no way I was going down on a bloody Stanley Kubrick film.

That night we planned our escape. At whatever cost.