Pointing North

oddbeautiful

2009-09-26T12:28:00.001+01:00

I don’t usually cover that sad vale of tears we know and love as reality; indeed I do my best to avoid the bloody place/state like the plague. I love the abstract. One day I hope to retire there, to a fractured cluttered bungalow on Alzheimer’s Lane.

These following images, however, are of that realm…and some other place inside someone’s mind - conterminously. I took them on a mobile phone, so the quality is not great. I make absolutely no apologies for their size; in fact I wish that I’d had a better camera with more pixels. If you can’t see them properly, then click to view them on their own, or save them with a right click and zoom in with your chosen image viewer.

This was once the Havelock Hotel in sunny Sunderland. Passing through one day, I spotted its demolition-in-progress. I’m glad that I did. I made a cursory search on the net to see if anyone else had caught this moment, but it seems not. I ought not to keep these to myself. They are truly oddbeautiful.

I don’t know whether it was a shabby B&B, or a bail hostel, or something worse before it closed, but whoever occupied these half-rooms above and below left his or her mark. It’s odd because it was an insane ranting jumble that hadn’t ever been painted or papered over. Beautiful because it was only revealed to the daylight (and my mobile’s camera sensor) for a short while. Fanciful, I know, but I saw parallels between the half-wrecked state of the building, and the psyche of the unknown author.

Like I said, these may only exist here, and in some demolition company's records. Probably not though. The chance image is almost universal in these days of the dea( r )th of the word. I just couldn’t keep them to myself any longer. I wonder what was on the walls already taken down, what it was like to stand in those rooms, and how it felt to write those words.

The Birds Eye Mystery Fish Fillet Adventure

2009-09-25T13:19:00.001+01:00

My mam (not mum – I’m an unashamed barbarian, and I storm from the north) gives me food parcels regularly. I do not discourage this; she likes to look after her children, and I like to eat. Sometimes these care packages contain surprises. These are often pleasant - like the Cherry Bakewells that I foolishly wasted in the previous post; and sometimes not - salad cream (that I quietly use as tile grout) comes to mind.

It is not often, though, that she provides me with confounding mysteries that require investigation as well as scoffing down like a starved wolf. Until this week. When I found these lurking near the bottom of the carrier bag.

On the surface all looks well. She likes a bit of fish. It’s good for the brain. My curious (the bong one) eye was drawn, however, to the circled (alright. ~~ellipsesed~~ ~~ellipsified~~ ell-oh, fuck it, never mind – you know what I mean) areas.

i) Where the hell was the captain? Usually he gazes down upon the serving suggestion – either with the bearded sagacity of the older man, his kindly smile belying the tattooed hairiness of his unseen matelot’s arse; or with the handsomely chiselled mum-friendly features of the younger man, who you just know could choke the life out of you with one strong hand (if he knew that you only bought a fish product once a month) while simultaneously pleasuring your wife to a degree you never thought possible with the other…AND…

ii) What? What kind of fish? What kind of fish fillers fill this captainless rectangular unseaworthy vessel? Fugu? Angler fish? Those frightening fucking creatures that lurk on the Discovery channel at the bottom of some trench that hasn’t seen daylight since the first rains fell upon the infant Earth?

My curiosity, if not my appetite, was suddenly aroused. Perhaps I would find the answers on the back of this now slightly defrosted puzzle box? You would think so, wouldn’t you?

Oh, come on! It’s not as if I spend my days trying to track down Chinese sleeper agents or cracking codes for the military! All I want to do is find out what kind of fish is in here, Birds Eye. You occlude the path to the truth, sirs.

1) That’s twice you’ve told me about the cheese and herbs. Are you trying to hide something? And don’t go trying to jokingly tell me that they’ll be our nutritious secret from the family; I am neither amused nor deterred by your chummy familiarity.

2) Aha! Ingredients. Here’s where we get to the…oh, you have to be kidding me! An asterisk? Look, Birds Eye – it’s only the fact that all my wanksocks are in the wash that keeps me on this quest, and well you know it. Alright. I’ll play your little game, my frozen friends.

3) It took me twenty minutes to find my magnifying glass, you bastards. If it says ‘caught off Sellafield’ down here then I’m suing. [Here, dear imaginary reader, I will reproduce the tiny, tiny text that had me peering myopically under a rare and valuable 150 watt bulb for a donkey’s age]:

*Depending on season and catch area we use one of the following types of fish. For our fish dishes these are either; Alaska Pollock ( A ) from the North Pacific, Hoki ( C ) from the South-West Pacific, Hake ( D ) from the Pacific Ocean or Basa ( P ) farmed in Vietnam. Each of this whitefish species has an aromatic, mild taste and a tender texture and is therefore an excellent choice for our Birds Eye Fish Fillers. You can identify which type of fish we used for this product by the letter printed after the best before date (see side of package/side flap).

Jesus! This food container is turning into a Dan Brown novel – except the english is slightly better here. Like an Indiana Jones of the kitchen, I turned my prize over to reveal the final clue…

So! I finally get to the bottom of your little mystery, and fortunately I haven’t starved to death in the process. It was Pollock all along. Given that I’d spent this long on the damn things (and the dryer hadn’t finished yet) I decided to cook them, if only to justify the effort that I’d put in.

They were fucking horrible.

He’s got Cherry…(sorry Kim Carnes)

2009-09-25T10:19:00.001+01:00

I had to lie down to do this. It took fourteen goes, and and a box of Mr. K’s finest (most of which were lost to the floor) – and I think one of my contact lenses is now round the back of my eye…

But it was worth it to lift me out of this foul Friday mood.

I give you my interpretation of the last line of Kim Carnes’ chorus most popular…

My next target today is the late Captain Birdseye. This time I won’t be so reverential.

The swansong that wasn’t

2009-09-15T03:00:00.001+01:00

This, my argent tongue

This, my argent tongue, distilled

of rough mercuric thought;

acerb dagger tang instilled,

forge and foundry wrought

These, my agile wits, enclosed

steel facts and silver lies;

tributes paid to king reposed

above, behind these eyes

But oh, this argent tongue,

is bitten, swollen, stung;

and my, these agile wits,

are spun of starts and fits

The king is long deposed,

usurped by ague violent;

the forge is cold and closed,

the foundry fallen silent

Now this, my argent tongue,

is stilled; and I am done

My incalculable fortune lost in the crash, my loyal retainers dispersed to the wind, my teeth sold for pasties – it was the worst of times…but now I’m BACK. From Outsize space (please continue making up your own lyrics to disco classic ‘I will survive’ from this point while I try to get a broadband connection to this cave complex in the Maldives up and running. and ~~WATCH~~ PAY SCANT AND DILATORY ATTENTION TO…THIS SPACE.

I thank you.

Me, myself and I (really need a year on a good diet)

2009-04-15T12:08:00.001+01:00

For once – once, mind you, in the last 20 years or so – I have a picachewer of me that almost makes me look human. Instead of the claw-handed sallow internet Morlock that I truly am. Look ye. Look ye.

Yes, I know that I still look like a crack addict/hillbilly Wendigo, but that’s what ten years of poor to no sleep does for you.

Why is it here? Why now? Is it vanity?

Well, I am terribly vain - but that’s my problem, not yours. Hopefully.

No, the reason is that I plan to go all multimedia on you. Only ten years behind the rest of the Interwebsphere, I’m going to try out a podcast. For starters.

(Maybe a Half-life 2 webcomic or two, to boot. I’ve got Garry’s Mod, and there are only so many times you can launch Professor Kleiner from a makeshift cannon at a wall before you have to justify the cost to yourself. That would leave me only about five years behind the rest of you, wouldn’t it? Wouldn’t it? I’m trying to catch up, honestly.)

It’s actually so you’ll be able to put a face to the voice (which has been likened to an angel’s fart) when you hear my Northern twang in full flow. Which is coming next. Which is coming soon. Be aware. Or beware, if you prefer.

It’ll probably be about Britain’s Got Talent. Unless something else irritates me more in the meantime, which is unlikely.

p.s. For Sweet Hairy Jesus’ sake, don’t go upping the gamma on the image. Not only will you see the dark shadows and huge bags under my eyes – but you’ll be able to make out the ghostly imprint of Thanatos’ hand reaching for me in the background. Hey, I’m near the halfway mark in my four score years and ten. I’d be elderly a millennia ago. Just remember that.

p.p.s. Yes, I do live inside a featureless magnolia cube. It’s not as bad as you’d think.

p.p.p.s. My face and voice are not CC licensed. They’re mine, I tell you, mine - and you can’t have them. Even if for some bizarre reason you wanted to.

p.p.p.p.s. I can do the Roger Moore eyebrow on both sides. How’s that for fucking talent, Britain?

The dream that I awoke from this morning

2009-03-23T15:00:00.001Z

No apologies for the lack of formatting, editing for readability, etc. It was a dream. They generally play out unformatted, unedited and stream of (sub) consciousness.

I had been taking to someone in the internets (a chap called Percy, a shroom blogger and excellent wit, but whom I have never met or seen, so in the dream he was about 35, tall and black – I don’t know if he really is) but we were actually lying down in the middle of a road in a ‘next instant’ kind of thing. As I got up a van ran over my companion, temporarily stunned he took a while to groggily get up while complaining that his legs tingled. We were both spattered with his blood.

When he felt better he insisted that we go to this nearby amphitheatre/coliseum/arena where he climbed down onto a rocky promontory and threw himself to his death in front of me. I went to a futuristic police station that was more like a bus concourse – with those sexy robots that certain Japanese artists draw all wandering about, up until the point more of them arrived by coach and then they all stood at the windows and watched them disembark.

In my questioning and forensic examination I noticed that I had been wearing surgical gloves and gave them to the investigating officer to inspect. He, a pretty policewoman (who may or may not have been one of my exes) went back to the amphitheatre to retrace my steps. To do so we had to walk over displays of live crocodiles which clacked their powerful jaws at our ankles - and boxes of snapping turtles, frogs and other amphibians set into the floor around the walls of the amphitheatre, and gingerly cross yawning crevasses (like climbing out of lofts onto loft ladders where you have to swing yourself onto them from a seated position) as the investigating officer helpfully put his boot in my back to hasten my movements.

When we got to the point that Percy had killed himself, his body was gone – as if it had never been there - someone from a Cirque du Soleil type performance rehearsing there gave me a flyer with a message to meet someone else on the floor of the pit. Accompanied by the policewoman who entered into banter with a friend waiting in a queue about their past exploits in their student days, the cirque du s employee balled up the flyer and threw it away. I was crestfallen at this as I wanted someone's autograph on it. Instead of being taken to meet a performer we were led a a booth of people sitting cross-legged swami-style with needles sticking out of their skins, one of those people was a complaining ninny from the suicide scene who had complained that watching my companion die had ruined the show for him.

He was sticking syringes into his neck and face in some sort of reverse smackheadery/drug addition. As he blustered at us that he should be left alone to enjoy himself the scene changed and the policewoman and I were in a stationery shop buying pens and paper for my statement. Outside she waited for a lift back to the station as I hugged her and told her I’d see her later. Then I realised that my dead companion had given me his ability/curse of seeing into the future. I had a vision of bank robbers in pink Mack trucks trailing pink containerised loads behind then(yeah, I know. Freud would have had a fucking field day with it) and a double-decker bendy-bus were driving en-masse into an intersection further into the now darkened/night-time town that we were in.

Running to the intersection I climbed aboard the back of the bendy bus and faced off a grim Teutonic female robber dressed as a bus conductor and her male friend who was dressed as a chef. I threw them both off the bus. moving down the aisle - which was bordered by vol-au-vents individually set on small square metal platters, another robber came out of a glass-walled area near the front of what was a bus and now became more of an underground station. As he tried to escape through a door marked ‘recycle’ I threw (ninja-like) one tray at a button near his head which locked him in – then another at a switch that presumably mangled or crushed him from the screams. The driver himself, a driver no longer, but a passenger on the underground, I tussled with on the platform before he fell into the path of a train.

and that’s when my alarm went off.

Note to self – while cheese, peanut butter and baked bean toasties may be a delicious and rewarding experiment, they probably make you have really freaky dreams.

I wish that alarm hadn’t gone off though.

The Conspirinterocitor #3 – Looking up at stuff turns you into a subservient zombie

2009-03-21T16:07:00.001Z

Hey there. One of my hobbies is making up conspiracy theories. You know - just to see how wild you can get on the possibility that some swivel-eyed madman somewhere will cut-and-paste the bits in between the piss-takings and disseminate the information among a network of other swivel-eyed lunatics. Probably via the medium of tin-can telephones…because every other avenue of communication is being listened to by the government and lizard-aliens.

Anyway, here’s the latest faux fevered fanatical fulmination.

LOOKING UP AT STUFF TURNS YOU INTO A SUBSERVIENT ZOMBIE

Looking up at shit makes the blood flow to the brain change, thus affecting how the brain balances supply of blood, causing globally protective changes in neurotransmitter types and amounts that have a negative effect on our willpower while saving us from braindeath.

Throughout all walks of life we are encouraged by religion, design, architecture, our peers, etcetera to LOOK UP

Children look up to their parents

Congregations look up to the image of God

We all look up at Apollo, Ra, Helios (name him how you like, we all look up to feel the sun on our faces)

We are encouraged by our peers to keep our chin up when we are down

We look up at the screen in the cinema and now in our homes at wall-mounted televisions

We have to look up at road signs to save ourselves from accident

To look up is to OBEY!

To look up is to bare your throat.

I love making this shit up.

Previous Conspirinterocitor communications:-

The Conspirinterocitor #2 – Where’s your balls man?

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

My anti knife crime poster

2009-03-11T07:03:00.001Z

Version 2. Version 1 had the word ‘use’. Carry sounds better.

Spanglox Sally the call centre robot takes a call

2009-03-05T08:07:00.001Z

Spanglox is always there to help you. That’s why we have a customer care line for all of our products.

Spanglox is constantly being sued for damages. That’s why you can’t have the number.

My profile page now has an audio clip that gives a brief glimpse into the hard work our call centre robots do to provide you with complete product information.

Below you will find any tenuous links to claptrap I already spouted and should have buried deep within my psyche alongside the memory of those terrifying days I spent wandering around Skegness that one time.

The ads they’d love to make – Spanglox dishwasher detergent

I tried to post this on my Posterous three bastard times. It doesn’t seem to understand that an outgoing Googlemail address is the same as an incoming Gmal address. Bah!

A troika of pictures that I’m lumbering you with

2009-03-05T05:53:00.001Z

In the jetstream of data that is the internet we are constantly buffeted by forces that threaten to send our blogs plummeting downward into the sea of forgotten sites below. Today, my passengers, we are shaping our metaphorical airframe for a burst of speed and lift. it won’t help of course,…but I’ve got all these buttons and levers here and I’m damn well going to use them all. Even the one marked ‘DO NOT PRESS’.

All that has nothing to do with what you are going to see below, which is just stuff I scanned, our took photographs of. I just wanted to pull some levers I’ve never used before.

Tayto don’t seem to make these any more. I wonder why? Oh, wait…it might be because because they sound like they taste of sweaty workman’s scrotum. Their Flash games and stuff on their website ( http://www.tayto.com) are fun though if you have had a series of devastating head injuries or are blind drunk. Fortunately, both applied to me when I visited. Five fucking stars, Tayto.

I should bloody well think so. I won’t tell you which branch of Thorntons I saw this in. Zero stars, Thorntons.

The day when the inkling I had that my workmates in my old firm didn’t like me became a certainty. Not really. I actually had to move it outside while we cleaned up a chalk outline and some blood. We had a tontine-style pension plan, so it got a little bit competitive at times.

Hey, I could have given you a big block of text instead.

I’d be the worlds worst bingo caller

2009-02-28T23:03:00.001Z

I’m not very good at brevity. I also have a problem with preventing the mental artist who paints the mental pictures inside my head from embellishing them endlessly until what should be just a funny internal visualisation of an event, a tiny vignette perhaps, becomes a bloody trompe-l’oeil triptych behind my eyes.

I’ve long suspected that this might hamper any real-world activities or professions that I might otherwise enjoy and excel at. So I tried to practice brevity and simplicity in the comfort of my own home using a time-honoured method.

I tried my hand at being a home-brew bingo caller.

Not wishing to lessen the experience any I made a bingo machine from a hairdryer (on cool) blowing into the bottom of a Rainy Day Cricket box with a straw sticking out of the top of it. With a disk pen and a magnifying glass I marked polystyrene bean-bag balls with numbers in accordance with the Gaming Act of 1968.

I wore a waistcoat. A spangly one I found in the attic. I did not fasten it however, as I have somehow put on weight in the twenty years since I wore it last.

Then I had to fashion a long tube for the bottom of the Rainy Day Cricket box (from a vacuum cleaner hose that I still own despite throwing out the machine years ago. No, I don’t know why) so that the polystyrene balls would stop bouncing off the ceiling. Then I had to make a stand for the whole assembly from bent wire coat-hangers and blu-tack so that the hairdryer wouldn’t burn out or the box fall over. I considered giving up, but armed with the knowledge that my task was both onerous and completely fucking pointless I knuckled down. Magnifying glass at the ready, and thumb over the end of the straw I began.

Four seconds later (or thereabouts) the whole fucking shebang fell to bits. The Rainy Day Cricket box was seemingly unhappy with its new, dual role and flew apart at the seams - spewing my tiny balls everywhere.

So I emptied out (by which I mean ate) the contents of a box of miniature Coco Pops from a Kellogs Variety pack and tried again. Success! Hammering a lump of blu-tack flat on the desk as a bingo board that I could embed the balls in, I began to test my calling skills.

“Two identical positive pregnancy test pens that your youngest daughter has held up in front of her; at which she is looking back and forth in growing horror and panic – like a spectator at a tennis match being played by zombie strippers…eleven.”

Not good. I tried again.

“Sheila and Melanie over there by the bar – who between them have enough liquid grease surging through their veins to fry a thousand sausages and still have enough left over to lubricate all the moving parts of a fleet of ocean liners…eighty-eight.”

Hmmm. Okay, one more try.

“The act of coitus that involves you and your husbands lying top-to-tail and stimulating each others genitals orally…but lets face it ladies…they’re not getting any younger, so at some point you know you’re going to have to stick an unspecified number of fingers up their bums and stimulate the prostates within that have enlarged over the years - to the point where they now resemble a goat’s kneecap…sixty-nine.”

It was at this point that the realisation dawned that I wasn’t cut out for this line of work.

Next time: I’d be the world’s worst flotation device.

Hater – the word the internets loves

2009-02-28T15:29:00.001Z

From shrieking teens to respected bloggers, the word ‘hater’ is all over the internet. Not with a qualifier before it. Just sitting there on its own.

Hater.

“You are a hater!!!!!!1”

“Its haters like you that make the internet a horrible place”

etcetera.

Take a look – in the comments of satire sites, in raging wars between fanboys of opposing gaming technology, everywhere.

At least lover means something (many things) on its own – but ‘hater’ is a lousy word.

Definition? Hater: Someone who hates.

Fuck that.

I loathe the word. It is pointless. It attempts to dismiss the opinions of those with whom its user disagrees – without the need for a cogent argument against whatever the ‘hater’ is saying. It’s on my list of internet numbfuckery alongside ‘OMG’ and ‘WTF’.

So, for those who can’t stop using it, I’d like to consign you to ‘L’ over and over.

L over

Lover.

There. I feel much better now.

Nostalgiorgasm: The Sup of the Gods – Half and Half

2009-02-26T01:58:00.001Z

I was sixteen years old. It was the summer of 1985. Kate Bush was still do-able, even though she kept running up hills away from us. Prince and Michael Jackson fought the chart-fight among the scattered gaudy shreds of New Romanticism. I still had lots of hair on my noggin and lamentably fine ‘tash bristles that would make a Baleen whale’s teeth look like mammoth tusks.

I was in a Working Men’s Club. It’s gone now, but back then it was still a hub of excitement, activity, ridiculous dance moves from the middle-aged and SERIOUS DRINKING. It was a family do – and like at all family do’s I just tried to keep my head down. I’d found a corner to wait for my then girlfriend and sat with my pint, quietly sipping it as I watched my kin – close and distant- celebrating a wedding in the traditional noisy way. I wasn’t alone for long.

Parting the revellers on a bee-line for my quiet table was a wizened apparition clutching two pint glasses close to his chest. Two pints of the darkest liquid I had ever seen that wasn’t Guinness. He reverentially set the twin pints down on beermats on the table and squeezed in next to me. A deep, grumble grew in his chest as his gap-toothed maw worked slowly on an invisible blockage. Eventually the grumbles became words, and he spoke to me.

“Son….son…son…sunna…sunna, man…sunna.” he said, insistently trying to get my attention.

“I fear thee ancient man in here.” I mumbled back at him. (Yes, I was just as much of a pretentious fuck then. I was just cuter with it.)

“Wha’?” he replied, his confusion turning his entire face into a knot of pallid flesh.

“Never mind, mate.” I responded, hoping to get this encounter over with. “What can I do for you?”

“Whatcha drinkin’?” he asked, nodding down at my pint a few more times than was necessary for me to understand the gesture. I think his head was loose or something.

“Trophy.” I replied quickly. Trophy Bitter was my tipple then and I loved it as much as someone who has never tried more exotic things loves their egg and chips.

“Try this man.” he wheezed. As he held the untouched dark pint up for me I noticed that he was already half way through the other, even though he’d only just started supping a minute or two ago.

Slightly afraid of this octogenarian shambling creature I complied…and had my young mind blown in a way that drugs would struggle to better years later. A rich, delicious, nutty, oaky, hoppy flavour flooded over my taste buds. You know they say milk is a food? Well so was this. Not thick, or over-heavy – just satisfying and somehow filling and warming at the same time.

“My God! What is this stuff?” I gasped, the hairs on the back of my neck standing on end. I licked the brew from my nanofilament tash hairs. They too were standing on end. If I’d taken the time to look at my pubes, I suspect that they – for an instant – would be poker straight. It was THAT good.

“It’s half and half.” he chuckled back, before succumbing to paroxysms of pleurisy-style coughing that would put an Elizabethan consumptive to shame. When he had recovered, he swigged down the rest of his pint and took the glass from me again. Still laughing, he took a deep draught. “Half Exhibition and half McEwans Best Scotch, sunna…and there’s nowt else like it.”

He was right. I’d tried Scotch on its own and liked it, but this was another thing altogether. This was fucking NECTAR. Somehow the Scotch had been transformed by the mix with Newcastle Exhibition Ale into a binary propellant that shot my senses into orbit. The shambler told me that it was a bit of an old man’s drink these days, but you could still ask for it in pubs and clubs and only the most clueless barman wouldn’t understand your desire.

“Trouble with it is,” he went on amiably “it either preserves yer forever or kills yer before yer fifty. There’s the wife now. I’m off to the bar. See yer later sunna.”

As he moved off into the crowd I shouted after him.

“I’m sorry, but I can’t remember who you are.” I explained sheepishly to this elderly gadgee who had opened my eyes to this amazing brew.

“I’m yer Uncle Bob’s first wife’s brother, Davey.” he informed me, not unkindly.

“But that would make you about…” I halted, unsure of my maths (and family tree too – I didn’t even know he had a first wife).

“Aye, sunna. I’m forty-six. See yer later.”

I sat there stunned. Just then my beautiful blonde beloved walked in and, after greeting my family, came over to me. Smooch greetings ensued and when we were done she asked me if I wanted anything from the bar seeing as she needed the loo.

“Yeah.” I said without hesitation. “Get me a pint of half and half. The barman’ll know what you mean.”

As she wandered back to me with the drinks, the Kershaws man came in the door behind her with his basket of cockles, mussels and assorted snacks.

My joy was complete and overwhelming.

They don’t make Exhibition any more….and yes, I wiped away a little tear when I finished this post

Reflections on the weaponisation of children

2009-02-25T10:45:00.001Z

Pester power through your telly

Toys and games and foam bath jelly

Their idols shill for soft drink firms

Buy their crap on easy terms

The charities don’t think it funny

that doe-eyed kids beg for our money

Sad songs sung in monochrome

Battered, in a broken home

Adopt a puppy, horse or kitten

Look! They’re cute! Your kids are smitten

Open your wallet, sullen dad

The pets are actors, you’ve been had

“My dad smokes. I wish he’d stop”

“Mum buys gin from down the shop”

“The internet’s a dangerous place”

“Come on in and book my Face.”

Units. Cancer. Paedo fear

Legislate’s the way – it’s clear

CCTV in our schools

Comply! You must. These are the rules

Government. Charities. Companies. Stop using our fucking children against us. When they no longer listen to us, they will turn on you.

I’m reading Alfred Bester’s The Demolished Man again. That’s what being cut out of the web 2.0 feedback loop will be like for some people: not being an Esper any more. Mind you, being completely immersed in it would be like demolition. Wiped of personality and uniqueness, but all your skills are left intact.

I don’t sell T-shirts, but if I did…

2009-02-22T14:13:00.001Z

I don’t sell T-shirts, but if I did…

This would be the first of them.

What? I’ve seen worse.

magnetite Industries recommend Spanglox laundry detergent for use on its line of imaginary clothing.

SPANGLOX – Don’t worry about the smell from the washing machine – and, yes, your skin is supposed to burn for a while after you don your clean clothes. That’s the acid working.

Playlist

2009-02-22T13:37:00.002Z

I have Winamp – and I’ve just discovered that it keeps a list of most played songs. This, God help me, is the top 50 most played on my machine.

1. Camera Obscura - Lloyd, I'm Ready To Be Heartbroken
2. Mark Lanegan - Hit The City
3. Primal Scream - Come Together
4. stellastarr* - My Coco
5. Kate Nash - Foundations
6. Andrew Bird - Scythian Empires
7. Cyndi Lauper - I Drove All Night
8. Ed Harcourt - All Of Your Days Will Be Blessed
9. Massive Attack - Teardrop
10. Cocteau Twins - Bluebell Knoll
11. Elbow - Forget Myself
12. Mark Ronson - Stop Me
13. Cocteau Twins - Pitch The Baby
14. The Associates - Those First Impressions
15. The Sundays - Wild Horses
16. Swervedriver - Rave Down
17. stellastarr* - Somewhere Across Forever
18. Camera Obscura - Tears For Affairs
19. The Undertones - Julie Ocean
20. Pixies - There Goes My Gun
21. Camera Obscura - Come Back Margaret
22. Cocteau Twins - Lorelei
23. The Polyphonic Spree - Soldier Girl
24. The Motorettes - We Are Solution
25. Camera Obscura - I Don't Want to See You
26. Deftones - The Chauffeur
27. Dusty Springfield - I Just Don't Know What To Do With Myself
28. The Arcade Fire - Wake Up
29. Pink Floyd - Speak to me
30. Pixies - Debaser
31. Blue Oyster Cult - Don't Fear The Reaper
32. Fun Boy Three - The Lunatics (Have Taken Over The Asylum)
33. Take That - Shine
34. Lloyd Cole & the Commotions - Rattlesnakes
35. Oasis - The Importance Of Being Idle
36. The Wonderstuff - Unbearable
37. Camera Obscura - Country Mile
38. Jamelia - Something about you
39. The Cranberries - Linger
40. David Bowie - Maid Of Bond Street
41. Aretha Franklin - It Hurts Like Hell
42. Pink Floyd - Any colour you like
43. Camera Obscura - Let's Get Out Of This Country
44. Roxy Music - Virginia Plain
45. Japan - I Second That Emotion
46. The Stone Roses - She Bangs The Drums
47. The Beach Boys - God only knows
48. David Bowie - Heroes
49. Parliament Funkadelic - Maggot Brain
50. The Killers - All These Things That I've Done

The most obvious conclusion that I can come to based on this list is that I appear to be a girl.

A girl with deep psychological problems and FUNK in her heart.

I just woke from a zombie nightmare. They're scary those things.

2009-01-27T00:06:00.003Z

I know just what particular flavour of zombie is going to fuck us over. I mean ROYALLY. Really royally fuck us over. It's not going to be fast zombies (but thanks for making them seem soooo plausible Charlie Brooker). It's not going to be clever zombies, who can lead groups and work weaponry. They've got teeth and implacability - they don't need guns.

You know what it's going to be?

Zombie puppies and kittens.

Because you just KNOW you'd still stroke one if your mind wandered even for a second.

My nightmare featured no zombie puppies or kittens. I was overrun by normal (if you can say that) zombies because some idiot left the hospital outpatient doors open. If zombified versions of us keep any kind of horrific self-awareness, I'm going to hone it into revenge brain-eatin' plans just in case I'm back in the same nightmare when I drift off again. That won't be for at least two hours though, in the hopes of my next unconscious event being either a dream or a nocturnal emission. I'm not a fucking glutton for punishment.

Reflections on my television screen

2009-01-21T06:18:00.001Z

There's a sort of barely visible shifting
of minutely lighter patterns
in the phosphor of my television set.
Only when its on one of the digital radio channels,
mind you.
Not when it's off.
I am not crazy.

An Aurora Televisualis, writhing smokily away.
Is it the faint patter of the universe?
Bombarding silent radiation on our noisy population,
while we shout back and wave our fist in the radio spectrum.
Loud and wide,
all day and all night,
like neighbours from hell.

It's nothing like the bright spiky sparks
Of RF from a car's engine, passing by unseen.
Granting teeth-sparkles and snowflakes
to the unsuspecting,
undeserving, unresisting
characters on the screen.

It can't be the odd visual component
of the mobile's call - that's just straight lines.
Bands microwave across and jump about
and, temporarily,
you're watching Casualty
through horizontal blinds.

It's not poetry. It's not prose. I'm not sure what it is, but for some reason I can't stop doing it. Perhaps there's a helpline I can call?

Anyway, it's part of a twofer deal with the last post for anyone who missed me. Can't think why.

And, yep, I do indeed still have a CRT TV. And I wipe my arse with tree bark. That's how ~~old-fashioned~~ ~~poor~~ ~~cheap~~ retro I am.

Barak Obama now 44th US president. Would-be assassins lurk. I have a solution

2009-01-21T03:44:00.001Z

Now that he's been sworn in - and afeared as I am about the rise in gun sales in the US when he was elected - I'm concerned that the poor chap will be dodging bullets all the way up until his second term in office (yeah, I want him to have a second term. That's if he doesn't screw up, of course).

There are obviously going to be a lot of disgruntled Americans wanting to take a pot shot at the lad. Right-wingers disgusted that their team lost. Most of the old Confederacy. Sarah Palin. Also Dick Cheney's going to have a lot of spare time on his hands now and that, if at all possible, might be worse than him being actively occupied in destroying humanity.

So why don't we declare Obama's first year in office a free-fire but president-safe assassination period.

Would-be assassins! Under my guidelines (shortly to be submitted to the Senate and Congress) until the 21st January 2010:

1) You MAY be permitted to legally take one shot at the president. PROVIDING that you ONLY use NERF weaponry. President Obama will, in turn, play fair and not wear a helmet or cup of any sort. He IS allowed to run about yelling "Ner-ner-ner-ner-ner. You can't hit me!". You MAY NOT step up close and aim directly at his goolies. That's a no-no. NOR MAY you hold him down to administer pink-bellies. You MAY NOT administer Chinese burns or wedgies - atomic or otherwise.

2) You MAY knock on the door of the Whitehouse, then run behind a pillar to wait with your water-bombs ready to throw. You MAY NOT use fizzy mineral water in the aforementioned water-bombs - that stuff stings the eyes like a bugger. You MAY NOT use a non-standard balloon size - I'm looking at you over there with the Sodastream and the Space Hopper. If Mrs. Obama answers the door, you MUST immediately run away yelling "Oh, crap! She's seen us!" President Obama IS permitted to make an armoured suit from taped-together cereal boxes, OR wear a Sou'wester, mac and galoshes to answer the door. You ARE NOT permitted to mock him for doing so. It costs a lot of money to clean those clothes, and your mums will only have to chip in for washing powder if you take it too far anyway.

3) You MAY launch an attack upon the Whitehouse - but ONLY with toilet roll. You MAY NOT use that industrial-sized blue stuff that's always just standing on the window-sill above the sinks in the toilets at work. You MAY NOT use that kitchen roll with pictures of bunnies or characters from Disney cartoons on it. You ABSOLUTELY MUST NOT use those moist toilet wipes for people with piles. Those things leave a slimy film that just makes you feel like your arse-cheeks are mounted on gimbals. This film makes you feel like you're running when you are merely walking after using them - and that's just wrong. Besides, I think moist wipes have been banned for use as weaponry under the Geneva Convention.

4) You ARE permitted to call the president the following names. President Doody-head. Barry Kerblammo. Commander-in-Chuff. Any other names MUST be submitted to the Federal Name-Calling Committee for approval five weeks in advance of your teasing/NERFsassination attempt.

A year of that should get the resentment over a black man in the most powerful job in the world out of the systems of even the thickest rednecks.

America, you may thank me later.

As I have stated (and proved here) before, I am not an artist (unless it's the piss variety) so a long-overdue site redesign will have to wait for a bit. I am researching the next instalment of the Kingly Spoon of Death, but I'll probably slap more of stuff like the above up long before it is finished. All hail writer's block! It's saving you from my fecklustre, ham-handed attempts at prose for a little longer! Yay!

Merry/Happy (insert religious/commercial festival of your choice here) to all, and to all a good night

2008-12-22T14:02:00.001Z

I'm taking a break (ahahahahahahahahaha...as if that's not what I've been doing all this time) and returning after the New Year with a minor site redesign, a resolution to get up orf my arse and actually DO stuff here more regularly, and The Killer Spoon To Beat All Killer Spoons. La Cuillère De La Mort Royale.

Ooooooh.

Oh, and I'm going to Hell. Literally, probably, when my liff is over, but also in this story arc - which is now less like trying to pass a bus tyre through a knotted urethra and more like trying to shit a breeze block past a handful of engorged haemorrhoids. I think that's an improvement. If not, you'll be able to hear the screams from nearby countries.

Be well. Have a good religious observance/buyfest. Don't do anything I wouldn't do. Don't do anything I would do either. Just don't do anything, okay?

[M]

Drying spoons, mint cake and rumours of my death being greatly exaggerated. Twice

2008-11-24T02:31:00.002Z

This wasn't good enough, even by my low standards.

The Ads they'd love to make #1: Dishwasher detergent

2008-11-19T08:16:00.001Z

You wouldn't wipe your behind with a piece of shit, would you?

You wouldn't brush your teeth with a dead TB infected badger either, would you?

So why are you still washing dishes in your filthy dishwasher, you base creatures?

Your dishwasher contains more disease than 12th century Europe. FACT!

A dirty dishwasher will probably explode while you sleep, killing you all in your beds. FACT!

New! Improved! Spanglox Dishwasher Detergent will not only make your glassware sparkle more than a thousand stars viewed by a migraine sufferer with compound eyes through a kaleidoscope full of diamonds, but every box purchased counts toward your reincarnation as a human being (or at least a high order of primate) no matter what heinous crimes you may have perpetrated in this life*.

But don't take our word for it...

"My cutlery shone so brightly that the glare transformed my husband into a Hiroshima Shadow. Thanks Spanglox!" Mrs. P Watson, Dover

"I now have to wear a welding mask when emptying my dishwasher. I'm so happy." Doug, Walmington-on-Sea

"I don't even need to eat any more. I just look at my super-clean plates for satisfaction and sustenance." Mrs R., Mexborough

"Spanglox products definitely do not make us die. At all." Millions of aquatic creatures

*Failure to maintain a regime of using our products may cause dandruff, molten lava kidney stones and depression in kittens worldwide.

I meant one of your Saturn days. Anyway, here's some filler above. I'm working my way toward animation and video. Scheduled for 2024 with a good wind behind me. 'Pologizing soon. I promise.

[My apologies to Terry Pratchett for the (mis)use of the Weatherwax sign. Don't sue me. Ah fuck it, you've probably forgotten by now anyway.]

Just so you know - I did a Weatherwax...well...sort of...

2008-11-17T01:03:00.001Z

Explanations and apologies forthcoming within one of your earth days. Here's a hint. It's something do do with uselessness...

Reflections on a particularly unstable and one-sided relationship

2008-10-08T00:40:00.004+01:00

Another irreparable breakdown

Oh God, look at you.

You’re a mess

I knew this was coming for some time

but why did it have to be now?

Not now of all times.

You get like this all the time now.

I hate it when you just sit there.

Not saying anything.

Not doing anything.

I can’t communicate with you any more.

I don’t mistreat you do I?

I constantly give you things.

Expensive things

And you look better now than you ever did.

I know you’re always busy.

I know that you need your own space,

and you seem to have the right

to change at any time.

You’re just so bloody unreliable.

Always forgetting things.

Important things.

And now you’ve gone and done this again.

Well, I’ve tried as hard as I can to save this,

but it isn’t going to work, is it?

Goodbye, you bitch.

Click here to restart your computer, eh?

Righto

Where’s that Windows CD?

>FORMAT C:

[See what I has done there? I is all highbrow now. All just because I couldn't save a document, and the computer locked up]

Well it beats a fucking picture doesn't it? Google thinks my sister site is spam. Boo. Little do they know she's as tough as nails, and a nasty drunk to boot.

[Here's a quandary for all you Humor-blogs.com visitors...if you vote me down I shall only become stronger. If you vote me up against my wishes, I only become strangely aroused and wriggle in my seat a bit in a mildly disgusting manner. What to do? What to do?]

Farming With Dynamite - found stuff, not a band

2008-10-05T12:45:00.001+01:00

Hello. This is a picture of the first page of Du Pont Chemicals 1910 pamphlet 'Farming with dynamite'. I saw it at Fourmilab a while back and greedily, selfishly chuckled to myself - hugging the concept to my chest like some Gollum of the Internet. Now I want you to see the whole thing as well as the rest of John Walker, founder of Autodesk, Inc. and co-author of AutoCAD's unassuming but superb site. I use Home Planet to find stars and satellites and suchlike. Also to watch the tiny moon move over the manse. I had all the windows bricked up you see, in readiness for a new Window Tax. Fourmilab has articles on hacker diets, books, anagrams. And software coming out the wazoo. Whatever one of those is.

Fourmilab has nothing whatsoever to do with Fermilab. Don't go looking for high energy physics there.

This is the kind of thing that Pointing North's sister site (already set up so you can't pinch it, you fiends) will be featuring. I know that after my outraged rants on web-trawlers just linking to stuff they found makes my doing it now quite cheeky to say the least. It makes me the cunt that I am to say the most. This will also make me some kind of bitch - or beatch - or biotch - or beer hatch - or something. The site is called The Supermodel Overlord Hierarchy, and will contain stuff about free stuff that is clogging up my hard drive and my bookmarks and my mind. It is unlikely to be funny - but it may be useful/helpful/illuminating. I signed an NDA with the real SOH, but I'm always one to push my fucking luck whenever I can.

Nothing to see here. Move along. Move along.

There's no point me adding the traditional and necessary link to Humor-blogs.com here, but I am a creature of habit. This will no doubt help the authorities find me if I ever get off my arse and start serial-killing]

Somalia - It's Africa's pirate hook

2008-10-03T07:10:00.002+01:00

This is the kind of thing that happens when I remember that I have a graphics tablet in the desk drawer...and a GCE 'O' level (grade B) in Art...and time on my hands...and I experiment with painting a dry wipe marker moustache onto my top lip. You deserved this for voting me up at Humor-blogs, you sods. It wasn't reverse psychology, damn it!

Original image/map by the Central Intelligence Agency of the US, apparently. You learn something new every day.

original image in likkle for comparison - and so you can see just how useless at this I really am. This took four fucking hours. The dry-wipe giggles didn't help of course.

I know. I know. Stop trying to fucking do art. Stick to words magnetite. You can barely manage with those fuckers anyway. This whole wearing two hats thing just isn't going to work. You are undoubtedly a cock of the highest order.

(A sample of my internal voice there, folks. This is why I silence him with the gin...and now with the dry wipe marker 'tashes)

I can heartily recommend the Sanford EXPO Bold Color Dry Erase marker. (Certified AP non-toxic - conforms to ASTM D4236)

[update: It's actually quite difficult to remove from skin. I understand that this is because skin has different properties to the average whiteboard. They should probably mention that on the barrel of the pen itself. My recommendation still stands though]

[If I'd wanted to be highly ranked at Humor-blogs.com, I'd have pretended to be a woman. I don't know whether to thank you all or strangle you all. Both I think. First the stranglings, then the thankings]

The give and take of giving directions

2008-09-28T03:24:00.003+01:00

Why is it that in this day and age - when you can practically get a sat-nav free in your fucking breakfast cereal - do we still get people asking us for directions when we are happily minding our own business pootling about on our own two feet, without need of mechanical aid?

Even in the pouring rain. Car pulls up. You momentarily have a flashback to childhood when your parents told you never to speak to strange people in cars, but you shrug it off. You're a grown-up now, and - as far you are aware - haven't angered any mafia-types in your locale. You are not a sleeper agent for a now-defunct spy network. You are unlikely to be a prostitute. A car pulling up next to you is therefore probably not going to be the precursor to a kidnapping, a silenced bullet in your treacherous heart; or an opportunity for you to make a quick couple of quid out of some married businessman from Stirling, in town for a couple of days for a conference on waste management. Okay, maybe that last one - Stirling isn't exactly the French Riviera so any freaky fun the locals can get when out of town can't really be begrudged them - but it is usually just some cunt asking for directions.

I ventured out from the manse yesterday, briefly - as always. I loathe the idea of having food, toilet rolls, newspapers and suchlike fucking brought to me like I am some God-King in a jungle palace deep, deep in the heart of a lush, lush rainforest filled with the calls of strange, strange creatures. It pisses off the tiny remnant of hunter-gatherer left within this civilised, pussified shell. I itch to get out and bring SOMETHING home. An atavistic call from the hindbrain, maybe. Whatever it is - if I don't do it I get irritable. Even though going out just makes me bloody angry most of the time as well.

So I perform a balancing act of efficiency versus laziness, of need versus want. I plan my hunting trip to some extent. I know where the shops that sell the stuff I want to buy are. A typical man, my purpose is to get there, get the goods, get home...job done. If I have to go somewhere else I find out where it is and when it is open. I am directed. I am focused. Like the arrow of shopping loosed into the heart of the stag of consumer need. Straight and true. Pretentious, poncey and prone to claptrap - I'll give you that, sunshine...I'll give you that; especially with that last sentence about arrows and stags - but straight and true nevertheless.

So when a car worth around 25 grand pulls up next to me and the window rolls down, and the driver leans across his wife slightly to ask for directions to a house number in a residential street, like so: "Can you tell me how to get to..." I noticed one little detail about the car, and something inside me snaps - just a little. I probably shouldn't listen to Bill Hicks on my mp3 player during these little trips out - things never go well for the rest of humanity when I do. Glorious, clever, misanthropic dark poet that Bill was, he's not conducive to good-natured helpfulness toward strangers who couldn't be arsed to think about what they were doing.

The first thing that went through my mind was: 'What makes you fucking think I even know where I'm going, let alone where you're going?' I did not say that however. That would have been rude. What I said was: "Yeah, but...How many moons does Jupiter have?"

A palpable wave of puzzlement came out of the window at me. I was enjoying this.

"What?" he asked in a voice pitched higher than when he first spoke. I repeated the question. He shook his head, looked at his wife and asked me again if I knew how to find the place he wanted. I told him that yes, I did - but I had questions too. Burning ones.

"What was Captain Mainwaring's first name in Dad's Army?" I asked him. I wasn't being an abstruse cunt just for the sake of it, mind you. The little detail that I had noticed was the sucker-mark left on the inside of his windscreen where his sat-nav ought to have been. He asked me again if I knew how to get to his destination, his voice now becoming angry.

"Yes," I replied with a smile, which was directed toward his wife, who was holding in a giggle. "If you can tell me the day on which your wedding anniversary falls this year."

Well, he couldn't have pulled away fast enough. I swear that there were marks on the road from the tyres and the scent of burnt rubber in the air. As I pressed play on the mp3 player I saw, further up the road, his car pull up by a young couple walking hand-in-hand. As the dark poet's half-mocking, half-caring tones started up again I hoped that the answer he got from them was in the form of a question.

I came home with forty cigarette, the ingredients for a variety of omelettes, assorted alcoholic beverages - and a steam cleaner. Well, they do say the journey is better than the destination half the time. I shall probably go out again tomorrow.

[updated to linkify Bill Hicks, Stirling, Henry Kuttner and Holly Willoughby. Getting the hang of this tech-know-low-gee, bit-by-tiny-bit. Baby steps old boy. Baby steps]

As well as listening to Bill Hicks far too much for anyone's own good, I have been reading Henry Kuttner's The Proud Robot - short stories about a drunken inventor (who can never remember how, or even why, he worked when he finally sobers up) and his very, very, very irritating robot. That bloke never really stood a chance, did he?

I have also been forced to watch far too much reality TV - specifically The X-Factor - by people who supposedly care about me. I'm not so sure. When told that I could just watch Holly Willoughby for eye-candy ogling purposes, and simply ignore everything else, I replied that it would be like visiting an art gallery full of beautiful works - but having to stand waist deep in shit and used syringes while doing so. I'm surprised I didn't key that chap's car, to be honest. I really am.

[Just a thought - if I manage to get voted down to last place on Humor-blogs.com, I'll have to petition them to put a 'LAST' link on the members list page so I don't have to click through all the mere failures and half-arses who just stopped updating and who aren't attempting my epic Lucifer-like fall from grace. Bollocks. Now I need an 'UnDigg this' and a 'StumbledAwayFrom' button. More fucking work.]

Bagsies Kirk! - The end to violence worldwide

2008-09-24T22:57:00.002+01:00

Let me explain bagsies Kirk.

To 'bagsies', 'bagseye' or (presumably the progenitor term) 'bags I' something is to stake a claim on it, especially when choosing from a selection. Specifically used in English children's games of make-believe to choose your favourite character. Got that? Right, I can go on.

In the Shatner-era Star Trek episodes, he would frequently get into a fight with some saboteur, brain-washed compatriot or alien interloper. Even though there was apparently an inexhaustible supply of security officers there to prevent this kind of thing from happening. Regardless of how these mano-a-mano bouts came to be - they would always be settled with Kirk having a tear at the neckline of his tunic and a little bit of a cut on his face. No more injured than the average old lady wrestling for a cracked teapot with her best friend at a jumble sale.

In any fight, be it knife, gun or fisticuffs - I'd like to bagsies Kirk. The tailoring repairs may get a little costly, but you'll never see me on life-support weakly asking all the relatives I've pissed off over the years for that kidney they weren't using. If this works on the individual level then maybe, just maybe, we can scale it up.

Chess is apparently a symbolic representation of war. Well, if a lengthy game like chess can sit in place of horrific bloodshed and destruction, then why not Bagsies Kirk? I see all the members of the United Nations filing in to sit at their little desks, behind their little nameplates. They make sure their translator can be heard and then they - as one man - cry BAGSIES KIRK! - tear their necklines slightly and nick their cheeks with a pair of UN branded nail scissors. Plasters are on hand of course, and to speed things up they all have velcro fastenings on their clothing.

Hey Presto! The business of keeping the peace is concluded and it's still only ten past fucking nine in the morning.

Everyone can go and have some cakes or buy the wife a present or something.

[The only downside to this is that I may at some time have to engage in a disturbingly homoerotic duel with Ricardo Montalban. I suppose that's the price you pay for assured safety in today's angry, violent world.]

Nothing serious to stick in this bit this time around. Apparently there's been some sort of world financial collapse or something; and some little country is having an election. Well Great Grandpa Magnetite made sure we would all be taken care of when he installed hydroelectrics in 1899 - and I've never voted on anything more important than the names of the pets on Blue Peter. 'Fucking Cunt Cat' never got picked, to my eternal disappointment.

Anyway, I've noticed that almost everyone else links to shit on the Intertubeweb instead of coming up with their own crap to spout about - so I'm going to see just how good the suspension on that particular bandwagon is. Here's a link to an early Woody Allen stand-up routine in which he shoots a moose. This may even be topical in some twisted way. Don't expect it to fucking happen again.

[That's right - keep voting me down on Humor-blogs.com - it only fucking encourages me]

Space, God and porn

2008-09-12T08:48:00.001+01:00

Imagine, for just a moment, that Erich von Däniken was totally, bang-on right about our origins and the extraterrestrial nature of God. Imagine God IS a spaceman. It might explain why he never seems to be very quick on the ball when it comes to helping out by preventing misery, war or famine. The Bible tells us that God is Light.

Well, on that basis if God lives, say, 23 light years away from us (Fomalhaut is about 24.2 LY - I reckon that's where he lives. It's just as likely as any bloody where else) he'll see Bob Geldof and Midge Ure and Band Aid pretty soon. The first time round of course. So God says “Look at the state of that place! I’d better do something about this, quick-smart.”

“Ah, but then there’s the 50 year round trip, and by the time I get there...”

We are chucking all our radio and television signals out into space, in all directions, all the time - willy-nilly. So it's only a matter of time before he sees what we’ve been up to all these years and it won’t be long before he waxes WELL wrathful.

He’s there in his celestial throne and it all gets too much for him. He shoots to his feet, and drop kicks the remote into a nearby star , making Jesus jump from his cross-legged position in front of the telly.

“That’s it! I’ve seen enough! It’s not as if they’re a bad lot. I quite like Moonlighting, Brookside, and Scooby-Doo. Well, before Scrappy anyway – but it’s the wall to wall porn that I can’t take anymore.”

“I’ve seen Adam’s children getting stuck into every creature under the Sun. Even the weirdest ones I could think up and a Granddad can only take so much!”

“Holy Ghost! Make 25 years worth of sandwiches, grab the kid and get in the Car. I’m getting changed into my Smiting gear and then we’re off!”

And Jesus says “Where are we going Dad?”

God says “Earth, son. Earth.” and Jesus just puts his head in his hands.

Yes, that's right. I'm still banging on about PROTEIN FOLDING. Don't tell me you have something better to do, because you're fucking here reading this. I wouldn't worry though, the next post will probably have an advert for edible knickers or something. For the moment though, why don't you just humour me - and go and have a look at how you can help fight some of mankind's present horrors. Come on, wouldn't you want to live in a world where there is no Alzheimer's, Huntingdon's disease, CJD..etcetera? The fact that you can help save humanity from it's own wayward building blocks while sitting on your arse must appeal to you.

http://folding.stanford.edu/English/Main - Help some boffins to help you and your loved ones. Go on, you know it makes sense.

[Paid to strangle kittens, but only on a Tuesday by: Humor-blogs.com]

DNA, I hate you - so this is a torch song for Ribonucleic acid

2008-09-06T14:19:00.002+01:00

Allow me to introduce to you two people. Except they're not actually people. They are in fact chains of nucleotides, fundamental to life on earth, but let's go back to looking at them as people for a while.

Denny is a fat, lazy bastard who thinks he knows everything but is mostly just full of shit. Renee is his little sister, her light is hidden under a bushel. A bushel that stands in the massive shadow of her torpid brother. She's lithe, clever and secretly the star of the family.

Trouble is, Denny is the media darling. His name is bandied about everywhere from taverns (even though they haven't existed since about the nineteenth fucking century - it's a PUB; if you must do so you can call it an inn or a bar - mention the word tavern around me again and we'll see just how much you love archaic things by allowing me to stick a couple of leeches on your eyeballs, and letting me stuff half a lime up your arse*. Jesus, you might as well call it a taphouse and be done with it) to Parliament to the press to bloody car advertisements.

Everyone is kissing DNA's backside like doing so bestows one with eternal life or something - which of course is promised. I am not, I should point out, one of those who believes that DNA is God's patent, signature and Magnum Opus Dei. I'm just sick of RNA getting the shit end of the stick.

Type DNA into your favourite search engine. Hundreds of millions of hits, spanning the whole range of human experiences.

Now do the same with RNA. Dry, dusty scientific Acrobat documents that read like they fell out of a mad scientist's briefcase on the train. Yet she's the one we should be paying a little overdue attention to.

DNA might have a bloody good memory, but most of what he knows is useless bollocks (including the code for making useless bollocks - all the way back to primitive life-forms). RNA is the cutter and paster, the editor who turns a bloated confused novel into a slim brilliant gem that you just can't put down; the one who prevents DNA from accidentally giving you and your descendants useless bollocks. Probably on your forehead.

Let's hear it for Renee. The day I hear her name on CSI (insert name of city here until about 2052) instead of her shitwit brother's, I'll jump for joy.

*Supposedly a cure for malaria before they discovered quinine. Didn't work. Imagine dying anyway, but with half a lime up your arse.

Do you want to give DNA a well-deserved kick in it's own bollocks? Well, we'll have to find those tiny plums first, somewhere deep inside that twisty bastard's innards. As a welcome side-effect we'll probably be able to find a cure for a lot of nasty shit that happens to us people too - sooner rather than later - and the best part is your computer will do all the work. All you have to do is sit back, grin and take the credit.

Help research PROTEIN FOLDING and maybe we can get shot of horrors such as Alzheimer's disease, Huntington's disease, cystic fibrosis, BSE, CJD, an inherited form of emphysema, and even many cancers - as well as learning enough about that little shit Denny to help those suffering from the DNA of nasty fucking bacteria and viruses to boot. Everybody fucking wins. Find out how you can help and see what progress has been made by clicking the link below. You owe it to Renee, yourself..and everyone you've ever loved, or ever will...

http://folding.stanford.edu/English/Main

[Still trying not to be disheartened by being ranked in the thousand-and-odds on: Humor-blogs.com]

The death knell of blackberry picking

2008-09-05T18:43:00.003+01:00

Apparently Enid Blyton does not rule all England any more. No more middle-class interfering kids ruining your smuggling operation. No more joyful picnics with nary a drop of white cider and no knife fights to mar the occasion. We have stopped using the dying days of summer to remind our kids that they've got to trudge back to school soon by dragging them out into the middle of fucking nowhere and picking blackberries.

Ah, the blackberry. Nature's Mars Bar. Eat about a hundred of these and you too will be dragging employees of McDonald's over the counter in a fructose-powered frenzy. Pack about a hundred of them into your loinfruit's smaller frames and that's a recipe for projectile vomiting, cage-fighting across the back seat and fractured sentences full of expletives spat out at passing police cars by your likkle ones.

We don't take our kids out blackberry picking for another reason too. How on earth do we explain England's countryside full of corpses?

-Dad, I just tripped over a mound shaped like a man.

-It's okay son, that'll just be another unsuccessful small-time dealer who thought he could spend the money his supplier kept demanding with menaces.

-That's alright then...aaaaaaaaargh! What?

This was why dad and son fishing trips have fallen by the wayside too.

-Catch a fish there son?

-Nah, just another limb wrenched from the submerged corpse of a petty criminal who got too big for his boots...aaaaaargh!

-Calm down, son. Just chuck that soggy white-fleshed lump onto the pile over there. We'll tell everyone it's Hoki and pass it off as just as good as cod.

We must continue to take our children fishing AND blackberrying, even in the face of a green and pleasant land that has disturbing surprises just beneath the surface. How on earth else will we wind up with a Tupperware tub half full of a disturbing black liquid that's still in the crisper drawer of the fridge six weeks from now?

[Still taking it from foreign sailors on the orders of: Humor-blogs.com ]

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

2008-08-28T14:31:00.001+01:00

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.

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]

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

2008-08-26T10:29:00.001+01:00

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'.

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

2008-08-23T19:24:00.001+01:00

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)

2008-08-23T19:22:00.004+01:00

"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.

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

2008-08-05T14:08:00.003+01:00

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!

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

2008-08-01T00:46:00.003+01:00

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.

"Where've I been? I'll tell you where I've been. I've been to Hell and back. No, I didn't bring you anything. What would you want a souvenir of Hell for?"- The confinement (part 2 of 4)

2008-07-31T02:34:00.002+01:00

A blurred and hazy image of an arched tunnel ceiling, all striplights and bared cables. Low thrum of generators and hiss of powered ventilation. Scent of perfume, sweat and cheese pasties. Those were my only impressions after blacking out in the van. When I awake I groggily came to the conclusion that they were brief snatches of consciousness from my arrival here. Wherever here was.

Here turned out to a a roomy cell with stone walls, a bunk and a sturdy looking metal door. I was alone. There was just the one bunk so it looked like I wouldn't have to fight off the affections of a cellmate. Also real prisons don't have roughly hewn stone walls. Or the Dolce & Gabbana mining helmet and overalls that hung on a peg. There was no time to investigate further as a clank of keys heralded a visitor.

"You're either the worst transvestite I've ever seen, or you've been crawling through makeup for hours." I told the man who came through the door.

"I've been crawling through makeup for hours." he replied curtly, handing me the uniform hanging by the door and propelling me out of it. "Welcome to the cosmetics mines. You are now a mole. Get used to it. There's worse things to be down here."

Indeed, before me lay complicated and sprawling underground mine workings. I saw legions of tired looking men toiling carts over rickety Temple of Doom style scaffolding. There were stunning female overseers patrolling here and there, tasers at easy reach on their exquisitely tooled Italian belts. Finally, incongruously, there was a branch of Greggs.

My guide was Hakim, a taxi driver from Bude who had been snatched two months earlier, in much the same manner as I had been. He explained to me that all makeup was in fact mined from the bowels of Mother Earth herself - the three largest and oldest workings being under London, New York and Paris. These mines were staffed and ran by models (who were also useful in recruitment as I had already found) under the executive control of super-models; who only ever passed on their orders by telephone, being much too busy to toddle off down here for every little thing.

"And the Greggs?" I asked. I had to. It was there, after all.

Turns out man only requires baked goods to live, at least for the short time we hapless prisoners were meant to. The ubiquitous bakers had also been determined (by model-scientists, or scientist-models, which they preferred) to be the only thing other than cockroaches to be capable of surviving a nuclear blast, so a simple cave-in should be a doddle to shrug off. Then Hakim told me why I was here.

We were truly moles, he and I. Our task? To dig out raw cosmetics from the rich deposits buried in Gaia's belly-folds and to transfer them to the carts for the 'donkeys' to raise up to the packaging plants. Hakim was right, there were worse things to be. Rabbits, for instance. The reason why it proudly boasts 'not tested on animals' on makeup now. The first time I saw the unfortunate victim of an apricot facial scrub eye bath I decided that I wanted to stay a mole. Before he blindly ran over the edge of the shaft entrance into nothingness - plummeting fourteen floors to a wet, red noisy death with the tops of his femurs sticking up through his shoulders, he had screamed "I could have told them it would bloody hurt, but it's the law. It's the friggin' laaaaaaaw. SPLAT!" There were also Fruit Flies, of whom no-one would speak. Ever. Even in hushed tones.

The months passed slowly, and with little incident. Our overseers were not unkind, though they were highly resistant to all attempts at socializing. When I was told by one of them that they had ways of making me work harder, I grinned broadly and nudged her suggestively. When I recovered from the massive taser-induced electric shock, I agreed with her wholeheartedly and got right back to work. Hakim and I got to know each other better, swapping tales of our home lives an indeterminate distance above us. We were completely institutionalised and gave no thought to escape. Until one fateful night.

We had been summoned to the catwalk, from where all important announcements were made. In the flickering flashes and sound effect whirr of imitation pressmen the newest Size Zero sat dining at her table. She was very recent, this one. They changed like Number Two in The Prisoner, and she was already eyeing her waistline for tell-tale signs of expansion (though she had only taken two bites of tissue and a sip of imported Japanese sea mist) lest she be replaced by a thinner newcomer.

Hakim and I represented our team and were there to hear our orders for the coming week. I hoped it wasn't another uniform change. A fortnight in culottes is enough for any man keen to retain a grasp on his sanity. Is it a skirt with legs or some kind of broken shorts? Man wasn't meant to ask these questions on looking down at himself. Size Zero cleared her throat, thereby shedding nearly a third of her body mass.

"Our surveyors have uncovered a rich vein of shimmer eyeshadow no.4 beneath the mascara seam that your men are working on. We wish you to divert half of your resources to mining this valuable commodity. Immediately. That is all."

"But Size Zero, " Hakim blustered futilely. "That is an incredibly dangerous section of the mine. We had five collapses last month; and even those men who survived them had to be moisturised and exfoliated for a week before they could return to work!"

Malice sparkled in her beautiful eyes. "I think it is time for a species change for you two, and your insolence had decided your fate. Enjoy your rest tonight, gentlemen, for tomorrow you become Fruit Flies!" Accompanied by her mocking laughter we were led out by armed guards and left in a different cell, away from the digging and pasties. Hakim paced the room nervously, much more ill at ease than I. I should have known that it was only blissful ignorance preventing me from panic and horror. You see, he finally explained to me (in tones significantly lower than hushed) what Fruit Flies were, and what they were for.

That's when I knew we had to escape, and before the morning brought us our new and terrifying existence.

My trip into high adventure (and dudgeon) - The capture (part 1 of 4)

2008-07-26T21:54:00.002+01:00

Allow me to tell you where I have been. Permit me to open your eyes to a world unknown to all but a select few. No, not the world of Max Mosley, where the word 'Nazi' can turn a perfectly respectable sick orgy into a reprehensible activity. Sorry Max, but even if you had been taking part in a bovine-themed sick orgy it is still the last two words which anyone outside the judiciary or the press are bothered about - not the costumes. Although you may have had better luck having moo-sex with whores, as they'd then be less likely to run to the press knowing that red-top headline writers and photo archivists would have a field day (pun partially intended) with them.

No, my unknown but welcome reader(s), this is a tale of a topsy-turvy world outside even the confines of jolly Gestapo uber-romps with loose-tongued prossies. A world hidden from all of us. A world I didn't even have the choice of stumbling across. It found me.

I rarely leave the manse, but on one fateful day last year I ventured out into the village below to see the sights and smell the odours of the world outside my ivory tower. I actually have an ivory tower, but do not think me cruel dear reader - my grandfather (non-ferret) discovered the true Elephant's Graveyard many years ago and brought home enough tusks to keep Harry Connick Jr. in piano keys for a thousand lifetimes. My grandmother fashioned the tower from what was left after Grandpa Magnetite sold off enough of his hoard to keep ten generations of us in the money. Yes, tainted money it was, but at least he was a step up from Prescott Bush.

I was happily window-shopping. I'd seen a beautiful one gracing the facade of the newsagent and had made a mental note to ask Withers to pay for and carry it back home as soon as I returned. Turning to cross the main shopping street I was stopped in my tracks by a white Transit van. It had screeched to a stop beside me, all peeling paintwork and rusted sills. Slightly shocked, I tapped on the passenger-side door to remonstrate with the occupants. A grimy window was haltingly rolled down and I got my first surprise of the day.

No 'white van man' this - the passenger leant out from the cab to reveal one of the most beautiful women I had ever seen. Taken aback, my complaint stuck in my throat. It didn't stand a chance of being voiced because just then another stunningly attractive face peered out at me. Then another. Driver and both passengers were absolutely gorgeous models.

That's when I lost my sight. I had succumbed to the phenomenon of 'lass-blindness'.

[A side note on lass-blindness, which you are unlikely to have explained - even by that most unlikely explainer - wikipedia.

Lass, or woman, blindness is akin to snow blindness. In much the same way as a small patch of snow in a green pasture will not blind you, one pretty woman alone is similarly harmless. It is the wall-to-wall, field-of-vision total expanses of both of these natural occurrences that does harm. This explains why men wake up next to some dreadful horrors after a night out clubbing. The male optic nerve becomes overwhelmed by the sheer quantity of beauties in sight and fails to register grots, hags and slap-tits at all after a while. Beer goggles do NOT protect the wearer, unlike snow goggles, and some researchers have posited that they may even make matters worse.]

The next I knew, I was being bundled roughly into the back of the white van. I fell atop other male forms as the doors were slammed shut and the engine started. Blind and terrified, I cried out to Withers to save me, but my cries were cut off with a rag, reeking of cleanser and nail varnish remover, stuffed into my mouth. I tried to fight back - but the fumes soon overwhelmed me, and I fell onto the pile of slumbering menfolk with the tinkling laughter of my captors ringing in my ears.

Where I woke up will be revealed in the next part of my tale of dread and wonder, coming to a pair of eyes near you soon.

A filler piece on the origin of Man while I calm down from my ordeal

2008-07-13T04:14:00.015+01:00

I believe I have a sound theory as to why men like wanking so much. As luck would have it, it shouldn’t offend any Moral Majority types, as it’s a biblical story too.

Skip to just before the creation of Man. God’s a bit weary of it all now; it’s Saturday. He’s had to come in today. For a full day. At the flat rate.

The angels are just sitting around, being essentially jobless until they and Hell’s minions have got something to fight over. Just lounging, watching God work - occasionally shouting “You’ve missed a bit!” or taking the piss out of His builder’s arse, giggling, and then blaming each other when God rounds angrily on them.

He had to do several thousand species of bird yesterday, put two extra hours in as well. Went out with the seraphim and St. Michael on Friday night to 'have a quick go on the world, before anyone else did'. Woke up feeling terrible, created vomiting - thought “Hey, everybody should try this!”, quickly realised that there was no everybody yet, and decided to make a creature upon which to bestow this gift. So, as a consequence, He rushed a lot of the animals on that Saturday morning - stuck a couple of thousand species below ground in the dark, so He wouldn’t have to bother colouring them in - and it saved Him ages not having to do any eyes for them.

Around lunchtime He creates weather. It immediately rains. Mud forms everywhere and He’s getting up to eyes in the stuff. “What can I do with all this then?” He booms. Remembering the vomiting creature He was going to knock together, He grabs a lump of mud; a pinch here, a squeeze there - Hey Presto! Man.
A subcontractor, finally! God brings all the animals to Adam, and gets the little mug to name them for him. One less dirty job.

Adam thinks he’s on Easy Street, sitting there on his backside in a clearing, naming away like nobodies business.

“Goat”
“Mayfly”
Winks. “Duck-billed Platypus”

God resists the urge to smack the little twat around a bit.

It must have got a little bit hairy for the lad when the fish were being named though. Adam’s treading water, being unable to doggy paddle because he hasn’t seen one yet. God reaches into the sea, pulls out a something and goes “What’s this then? It’s sleek, long and pointy-toothed. Extremely angry-looking.” And He drops it into the water next to Adam.

A lot of those sea creatures probably got named from the beach after that.

Points. “Octopus”
Points. “Whale”
Points, shaking visibly. “Starfish”

Anyway, Adam at this point is still an innocent, having not eaten of the apple that God shewed him earlier, while he was doing his induction. “Pears, Bananas, Oranges, Fruit of The Tree of Knowledge - don’t eat it. Photocopier - jams all the time. Coffee machine - if you kick it, it dispenses free Bovril.”

Adam just keeps on asking stupid question. Ignorant as he is, he also ignores or forgets everything he’s told. God waxes wrathful and pins him against a Guava tree by his throat, and hisses “Listen, son. I’ve been here since the dawn of time, and all you’ve done is a little bit of bloody naming on your first Saturday job!” God suddenly calms, His grip loosens and His voice no longer splits the skies. “And sorry about the - what was it called? Oh yeah, a shark. Sorry about the shark bite.” And He lets him go, smoothing down Adam’s non-existent clothing.

Feeling a little sorry for Adam - there’s a terrible lump on the lad’s throat now - God says, “Right, I’ll make for you a helpmeet. Keep you off my back.”

And Adam replies,sniggering, “What’s a helpmeet? No wonder you let me name the animals. Fucking helpmeet.”

God says “You’re making this far too easy you know.” And He smacks Adam’s head off the Guava tree.

Adam comes to, minus one rib. Smarts a bit. Still ignorant here remember, he starts asking questions while God’s busy on Eve.

“What are those bits on the front?”
“Why hasn’t she got one of these?”
“What’s she for again?”

God wants to do a proper job this time, having essentially bungled Man, so He ponders for a while on how to distract Adam while He puts twice as much brains in this one.

No need, however. Adam has been looking at Eve for far too long, and it has had its effect. Adam looks wide-eyed down at himself. “Why’s it doing that?”

Problem solved, thinks God. He’ll never know it’s supposed to be a sin, because I haven’t invented sin yet. As long as the little idiot stays away from the tree of you-know-what, we’re laughing.

“Go and find out for yourself. It’s about time you showed some initiative. It’s got something to do with your hand.”

And off goes Adam. Into that first honeyed and idyllic night that fell upon that first, most beautiful garden in all of the world. Masturbating furiously.

Free at least!

2008-07-10T04:34:00.006+01:00

I have managed to finally extricate myself from an incarceration the likes of which would strike a white stripe down a grown man's hair. More to follow.

Charged at last!

2007-09-09T09:19:00.000+01:00

The rechargeable batteries for my wireless mouse are finally recharged after 6 hours. 6 hours of me having to use a graphics tablet and stylus as a mouse. Which is almost as much of a pain in the cheb as using a mouse for drawing. Still, it's my own fault - the box of charged batteries was getting low and the box of exhausted ones was nearly full so I should have thought ahead.

Still, at least I don't have to hook it up to a waterwheel to charge it, like I would have had to 400 years ago - shortly before a midnight pitchfork-and-firebrand-wielding visit from the villagers, demanding to know if Satan himself is the blue hedgehog inside 'the box that talks', and asking how well cooked I'd like to be at the stake.

The terrifying Osama Bin Laden/Britney Spears link

2007-09-08T08:32:00.001+01:00

Is it just me, or is there a disturbing parallel between Osama's comeback video and Britney's rebound on to the scene? They both look refreshed and determined, and yet they have both made poor choices for their reappearance on the world's stage. Perhaps Osama has been in rehab too - a consequence of his earlier smash successes - after being seen stumbling out of glitzy caves at 3 in the morning, coquettishly admitting to wearing no underwear during public appearances and shaving off his trademark ZZ Top beard in a desperate cry for help.

Whisked off to a top rehab cave on the Uzbek border by concerned aides, it is already rumoured that OBL is suing his parents for custody of Saudi Arabia, considering firing his manager and attempting to recover the rights for his back catalogue. Whispers circulating in the murdertainment industry that he was planniung to cover the IRA's greatest hit 'Manchester' have been downplayed by his management team.

An insider source reported: "...the talk of him using 'Just for Men' on his beard is baseless falsehood...his new dietician, Cyndi, has worked wonders using just wheatgrass shakes and organic goat's milk baths." The unnamed source also quashed rumours that OBL was trying to buy Idi Amin's skeleton, but confirmed that he had purchased Papa Doc Duvalier's loofah on Ebay, and it looked lovely above Pol Pot's fabled fondue set in the terrorist leader's swish new cave.

Oddly, one anagram of Osama Bin Laden is 'a blonde's mania' - so we're back to Britney again.

In the wrong job...

2007-09-06T09:55:00.000+01:00

I want to work in the film industry. Not because it’s glamorous or highly paid, but because you can be crap at your job, but as long as you have worked even once you still get to see your name roll past at the end of the film you worked on. Every time you watch it. For at least your lifetime.

Even if you were a rubbish best boy or gaffer, you still get paid and you get a footnote in history.

And if you die at work, whoa! You get a dedication at the end of the film.

If you or I die at work, do we get a forklift named after us –?

“Be careful with that! That’s the Clive Marshall Memorial Laptop! Oh, you didn’t know Clive, did you? His work was exemplary. ‘Course he was killed on that last job we did. A server fell on him. No, it didn’t crush him. He starved to death waiting for the IT engineer to turn up.”

Future archaelogists. The bastards...

2007-08-31T07:15:00.002+01:00

I sometimes worry about future archaeologists finding our landfill sites, and them standing there in their pristine fusion-powered eco-friendly future.

Just standing there. Judging us.

The bastards.

I hope it’s not too far removed from now, just long enough for the bin bags to still be intact. We might fool them into thinking a landfill was the nest of some monstrous creature that stalked the lands, eating god knows what and shitting out huge shiny black pellets - the remains of their hapless prey. Whatever it was.

Envisage these archaeologists there, unshaven and groggy, and finally at work – having been dragged out of their bed in a cheap and cheesy floating motel – their polygamic future marriages at breaking point due to the stress of this project. These mystery creatures that roamed around in the early 21st century, (mostly in the north, funny that), and they didn’t even have the decency to leave a skeleton behind when they died.

The bastards.

Project head, Froop, turns to his assistant Goyp3 and barely notices that he’s picking the shreds of one of Ma Sappho’s self-inflating, self-destructing artificial sex mutants (non-kosher, may contain traces of nuts) from his pyjamas, having slept among the bin bags. He says he’s trying to get a feel for the creature, trying to know it.

His wives have kicked him out as well.

Froop says, “What did it eat? What did it eat? Our millions of binbag simulations every single minute in our fantastic future computer - you know, the one in my hip - all average out at the same basic prey. It's skeleton was mostly composed of two-litre Tango bottles, AOL CDs and rock-solid man-sized tissues. It’s blood was probably alcopop, as was the creature’s, and the only actual faeces we could find was wrapped in these bulging white parcels with cute pictures on them.”

He is beside himself with frustration and fear. “What is it we’re dealing with here? What if there is an enclave of them somewhere underground, or one waiting to be thawed out of the last iceberg at the North Pole Ice Museum? What will we do?”

His assistant tries to calm Froop, mainly because Goyp3 has only just replaced his clone-brother Goyp2 after the boss pushed him out of the window of some cheesy floating motel. “Relax, chief. We would probably hear it taking a shit from the next continent. Even if I was a massive beast, I wouldn’t want to pass some of those. They’re frequently pointy and nearly always dry on the outside. This one’s got an armchair in it, man!”

Well I suppose they’ll have it better than their descendants will. If we wait a thousand years there’ll be a good head of flammable gases building up under there, and the minute they stick their futuristic equivalent of a spade into the ground, the entire top half of the country will probably explode.

Hang on, though. I’m prepared to give our predecessors credit where credit’s due. What if the Victorians or the Romans hoped the same thing would happen to us all those years ago?

The bastards.

Learn from the past. Go on, there's loads of it!

2007-08-30T02:08:00.000+01:00

Despite my frankly idyllic lifestyle, I find myself perturbed that I may be missing out on some of the more prosaic yet welcome aspects of a normal life. Specifically relationships. I see my friends all pairing off as they get older - engaged, married, murder-suicide. That kind of thing.

Withers is always here of course; and most of the time he is in good spirits and therefore good company, barring the occasional apoplectic raving about his dwarven hermaphrodite daughter and her unseemly love of wearing monocles in entirely the wrong orifices. But helpmeet, companion and oft-time card table that he is, he's still no substitute for the love of a good woman.

So to comfort myself in moments of solitude and loneliness I have taken to reading a lot of history books. Very liberating and reassuring; mainly because their lives were so unfortunate that we don't even have a suitable yardstick to measure how badly they had it any more.

The fear of growing old alone in the twenty-first century diminishes because you know that in the past you weren’t very likely to grow old at all. If you didn’t die of an horrific condition (usually dubbed something like 'Dead Man’s Mandeath') when you were a child or a teenager, then when you did meet someone, you didn’t have to worry if they were going to have an affair, or if your marriage would be happy and lasting - because you’d both be riddled with the same Dead Man’s Mandeath you escaped dying of a couple of years back.

Also, learning from the past makes a decision like which mobile phone, car or even toaster to choose very, very easy...

BECAUSE THEY ARE ALL WITCHCRAFT, DEVILTRY AND SORCERY!

There I am at the showroom, and the salesman asks, “What are you looking for in a car then, sir?”

-Well…I’m looking for one that won’t assume its true form on the M1 when I’m taking the kids to Alton Towers.

-Have you got one that won’t imperil my mortal soul with sweet entreaties and false miracles?

-How many manifestations to a gallon do you get?

-Can I get it in red?

See? Easy! Now it's off to eat boiled pork from a plate in the form of a weevil-infested flat-cake before the King's tax collectors take all I have to pay for his crusade in the Holy Land.

US loses 190,000 guns in Iraq. Blames dog and runs out of the house, slamming the door

2007-08-07T08:20:00.000+01:00

I have to give our wayward colony credit here - technically they themselves did not fuck up this time. No, instead AK-47's issued to Iraqi police and army personnel have gone missing.

It's not like losing a textbook at school - no deadline to find it otherwise your parents would be asked to buy another, and in the meantime here's the tatty one with the odd-smelling sticky mass plastered across the front cover. These are guns. Death-sticks with only one use. They're fuck-all good for opening tins or changing the channel on the television set or easing the misery of contact dermatitis. You'd think they'd be more careful, what with them being good at war and that.

-Where's the guns we gave you guys yesterday?

-Sir, our dog ate it.
-Sir, it's in my mate's bag and he hasn't come in today.
-I thought we were doing hand-to-hand today sir.
-Sir, my mam washed it and it wasn't dry in time.

-Never mind, men - we've got millions of the god-damn things lying around. Just get another one and get ready for inspection.

NASA astronauts drunk at launch. Well, wouldn't you be?

2007-07-27T15:32:00.000+01:00

NASA is apparently disgusted and horrified & etc. at their space jockeys turning up at launch with a couple under the belt, so to speak. Considering they have to do the human equivalent of Wile E. Coyote strapping himself to a ten-storey firework over which he has no control, I'd be having more than just a couple of drinks; secure in the knowledge that it would make fuck-all difference whether I was sober or not.

The Challenger disaster proved that if something went wrong at launch, you wouldn't even have time to press a button to dump the rocket booster - let alone get off a quick text message to the wife, telling her you love her and to raise the kids Presbyterian. Hardly the long drawn-out and tense atmosphere of the 'Apollo 13' rescue is it? I can picture Tom Hanks in a studio meeting, scratching his head in that puzzled manner of his and saying exasperatedly - "The movie is only 40 seconds long, I only have one line, and that's 'Aaaaarg...'? No, it's not for me thanks."

Also, since a shuttle exploded on the way back, you could be sure that one of the pockets of my flight suit would contain a flask as big as a family-size Lenor bottle full to the brim with Chivas Regal, just for the journey home. Bollocks to NASA. If you don't want your astronauts to turn up for work drunk, stop making space shuttles out of bin lids and gaffer tape.

Floods, floods, floods

2007-07-27T06:56:00.000+01:00

One of the advantages of living at the top of a big hill, apart from the daily contests between myself and Withers (my long-suffering but faithful butler) to see who can set the best paper-plane distance flight record from the upper floors of the manse, is that I am relatively unaffected by flooding. Looking down into the village below, my heart goes out to the simple but warm-hearted folk who live down there on the floodplains. There they go now - ferrying themselves about in makeshift boats, wearing makeshift wellingtons and carrying their makeshift children above the rolling waters to school.

Such sturdy folk - unbowed by having to live the life aquatic for six weeks, unbroken by lack of food or drinking water, mostly unharmed by the ravages of disease-filled raw sewage.

My chest swells with pride in the indefatiguabilty of my fellow man and I feel compelled to call down to them:-

"Did you see how far that paper plane went, mate?"