Weird use of the word 'warned' Not only does this Guardian article start off more like a Zen Buddhist koan than a news story, it also finds something new for us to be afraid about:

"Human beings are making it harder for extraterrestials to pick up our broadcasts and make contact, the world's leading expert on the search for alien life warned yesterday."

Oh no (..?)
  ¶ posted by the leech at 1/27/2010 0 comments

  The next mission So Clyde, that was a highly successful round of Modern Warfare 2 on Sunday morning. Ridiculously early on Sunday morning, I should add. And having checked out the competition I believe that our numerous successes, particularly in the Terminal stage, were quite an accomplishment. Certainly our tactics were far superior to those exhibited in this video:



Sure, he was playing solo, but I bet he had had a good night's sleep before playing through this stage, rather than a full day rushing around London followed by six hours of gaming powered by tea and Jaffa Cakes.

And so on to the next challenge. With the possibility of a rapidly increasing cash reward in mind, prepare yourself - to arrest Blair.

(This shouldn't be too hard - I don't think he sleeps so easily these days either).
  ¶ posted by the leech at 1/25/2010 1 comments

  Oooh, regulating sarcasm. What a useful idea... Where has this indispensible piece of punctuation been all my life? I can't for the life of me think how I survived without it:


A cartoon of a pierced ear designed to denote sarcasm - so useful, so necessary, so exquisite. I suppose the Nobel Prize for Literature is a forgone conclusion this year. And on a personal level, what a joy for me. After years of flailing in the dark for meaning my friends can now see when I'm being sarcastic and follow my instructions to act as I deem appropriate, ultimately allowing them to empty the storage space in their brains clogged up with data accumulated through them getting to know me. In truth, I would have preferred some kind of written disclaimer, maybe: ''The following sentence is a product of sarcasm, please do not take it literally; please do feel stung and diminished.'' But no, I'll take this accessible symbol and clasp it to my bosom. After all, where's the fun in making sarcastic statements if you cannot telegraph them in a nice, orderly, obvious manner.

This sainted device is intended for written sarcasm, but it shouldn't be limited to this medium, no sir. One can blunder with sarcasm and make faux pas in spoken conversation too. Perhaps I should print my very own Sarcmark, blow it up and make flashcards to hold up so I can draw on its powers in conversations in the real world too. I could even plaster it across my chest and rip my shirt open to reveal it, so that whenever someone asks me my opinion about the proposed Bad Boys III, I can reply ''yes, it will certainly be a work of genius to match the first two. A work of the High Renaissance'', and onlookers will comprehend that my thoughts belie my words and that in fact I am slightly less than favourably inclined towards another round of that crap. I could stamp the Sarcmark on my forehead. That certainly would aid communication. That would make me more likeable.

TV executives could use it too. A flashing Sarcmark could pop up in the corner during those snooty comedy shows like Curb Your Enthusiasm and The Office, where a studio audience has not been granted to viewers to signpost the laughy bits. Look, here's birthday boy Tim, evidently pleased with his new hat. He's even saying so. We should all feel really happy for him, despite that odd tone in his voice. But, uh-oh, with Sarcmark flashing in the bottom right corner of the screen you can see that...hehe...Tim is in fact, not pleased with his new hat. Audience, commence laughing now.

And look at me - being sarcastic about the Sarcmark, that's original. Pretending to overreact to generate meta-sarcasm. I trust no one else on the internet will do that. And I do hope nobody abuses the Sarcmark, attaching it to statements that are not intended to be sarcastic, therefore using the Sarcmark in a sarcastic manner. The multiple layers of sarcasm would build on each other and propel us into a black hole of sarcasm. But if used sincerely...well, the Sarcmark could raise our collective state of being, end wars and propel us to a brighter future. Oh thank you Sarcmark, thank you, THANK YOU. THAAAANNNKKK YOOOOUUUUU

(Seriously, thanks a lot...)

(Seriously, seriously, I really am very happy about this idea, and eagerly anticipating the first signs of it in my inbox)

(But seriously...)



  ¶ posted by the leech at 1/20/2010 0 comments

  These turtles aren't reptiles; they're am-fib-ians I don’t keep a diary, I don’t jot down all my inspired, important thoughts and I don’t have a hilarious sitcom to work them into, so this site will have to bear the responsibility of filing my random thoughts. This one concerns a theory that I recently put forward to a small group concerning the Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles. And pizza. And how the Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles didn’t love pizza that much at all.

As one would predict, this bold thesis was initially shot down. The Turtles loved pizza! Remember? They couldn’t shut up about it. Yet my memory of how the Turtles behaved rather than what they said gave me cause to believe that there was something to this theory. Vague recollections from the show had given me cause to shoot my mouth off, but before doing so any further I needed proof. And, lo and behold, having checked the archives I think I was right. With an admittedly small data sample and research conducted by nothing more scientific than watching a few episodes of the cartoon and drawing the logical conclusions I can conclude that if anything, the turtles couldn’t stand pizza.

It doesn’t take long for the evidence to trickle in. In their first appearance in the very first episode one of them orders a pizza coated with ice cream while another goes for a jelly bean topping. Maybe they do like pizza. And maybe people that gorge on Terry’s Chocolate Oranges enjoy fruit. It doesn’t even look like pizza. It’s like alien roadkill. Look at that shimmering, sickly paste spread across the surface. What is it exactly? And why do they need salt, or whatever condiment is inside that salt-shaker, to accompany it?

Just as strange for would-be pizza obsessives, they repeatedly gorge on the pizzas, with their disgusting toppings, but leave the crusts. They never ate the crusts, but tossed them away with the box. So not content with adding extra ingredients to warp the concept of a pizza to a level that Willy Wonka would find disturbing, the turtles actually dispense with one of the fundamental parts of the original pizza. They want a dough-based product without the structural constraints of thick crusts or the flavour constraints of a cheese and tomato base. That’s a sandwich. Or a cake. The turtles liked sandwiches and cakes. They probably couldn’t have given a shit about pizzas.

Even in the later episodes, the really, awful ones, the implausible, nonsensical free for alls, we consistently see the turtles slavering over pizzas with overpowering, inhuman, anti-pizza toppings, hankering after them like a dog hankers over his worms medication provided that it’s buried deep in the centre of a rolled-up ball of tripe. Fast forward to 3:00 in this disappointlingly half-arsed installment to see what gets them excited. And at the start of this episode they reject free pizzas as a “punishment” because they are too small. Sure, a likely excuse. Coke addicts can snort it off the seats of public toilets, yet these picky bastards don’t want their free bite-sized pizzas? There’s obviously no pizza fixation here. Perhaps what none of them were prepared to admit is that they hated pizza. Perhaps the pressure of living up to their inappropriately selected Renaissance names and fitting in with New York City forced them to shovel pizzas down their throats, just like it compelled them to wear those unconvincing trench coats and spout their trendy catchphrases. They're living a lie, fibbing just to fit in. They’re not fooling me.

To finish, here is a special fruit pizza I endured in Colombia. No, of course it doesn’t work. I had to scrape the strawberries and blueberries off to enjoy it. That’s because I actually like pizza. The Turtles, on the other hand, liked cakes.

PS: Lots of Turtles episodes are available on YouTube

  ¶ posted by the leech at 1/16/2010 0 comments

  New Moon: If ever there was turd at the box office... ... This one would be sinking right to the bottom.

Have you ever seen a poster for a movie promo and immediately thought "that looks like a shit film"? If not, there's always a first time and a poster for The Twilight Saga: New Moon might inspire just such thoughts. Here it is.



Ok, perhaps the poster does not fully sway your opinion without at least some idea of a synopsis. It is essentially a romance drama (I find the Rotten Tomatoes categorisation as "Action/Adventure" very, very unlikely.) that centers a love triangle between a young woman and two young men. One's a werewolf and the other a vampire.

Is it just me or do authors and movie writers nowadays love taking classic storylines and shitting all over them with their cheesy teeny romance... That's right, what young teenage girls need more of these days are movies and books about superficial relationships with superficial men in a romanticised take on the vampire and werewolf.

Hollywood took a big dump on the Terminator franchise with the Sarah Connor Chronicles with enough she-bots to make my iMac look inadequate. And Smallville, which I actually enjoyed for the first season or two before tiring of the teenage drama, also was responsible for possibly intiating this trend of heroes/villains regurgitated into something for the mass of hormonal teenagers.

And yes, if you have read all the books to the Twilight series, watched the movie and find yourself somehow infatuated with the idea of a love triangle between a woman, a bat and a dog, then you are a bestiality empathiser. It is what it is no matter how many tight fitted t-shirts you want to slap onto those once unruined concepts of werewolves and vampires.  ¶ posted by Jon at 1/13/2010 0 comments

  No more lies It's a new year, and time to reassess some of our core beliefs. Having looked out of my window on several occasions, and having seen all those pictures of Britain on the news, something has jumped out at me, and as a result I have come to some pretty radical conclusions. These conclusions mean we must to rethink one of the most persistent theories propogated by the media, we must reassess our hysteria and all the money we have wasted on it. I know that the press, our elected officials and those bloody self-appointed experts have spent years rabbiting on about it, but the evidence from these pictures is irrefutable. So far only a brave few have spoken up, but the fact is we cannot fool ourselves and I for one refuse to be taken in any longer...



  ¶ posted by the leech at 1/12/2010 2 comments

  Frosty Tumbleweed! Second only to its TV guide so far, is this week's article from the Daily Mail Online which reports a phenomenon occurring in Somerset amidst the freezing temperatures and iced up British islands.

"Frank Barrow, a lecturer in meteorology at the Met Office, described the exact science behind the formations and said it was nature's version of a snowman.

He said: 'They start off with a nice thick layer of snow, with the top snow just on the point of melting either because of general temperature or sunshine on the surface.

'The top snow layer becomes a bit sticky and you then need a fairly strong wind. The sticky layer can be peeled off the colder and more powdery snow underneath by the wind, forming a roll."

  ¶ posted by Jon at 1/11/2010 1 comments

  Postscript to Christmas 2 I must say, The Daily Mail Christmas TV guide was as trusty as always this year, despite there being hardly anything decent on TV for it to guide me to. In a new year I should start on a positive note and proclaim that by a distance as far as the eye can see the TV guide the best thing about The Daily Mail.

One thing puzzled me, though. For a newspaper that wails on an on about the true meaning of Christmas, incessantly pretends its being banned or reined in by the PC brigade, actively seeks out heretics that deviate from religious worship and blows its top over attempts to make it a secular and enjoyable affair, some of the wording inside was a little, shall we say, sensible:

  ¶ posted by the leech at 1/05/2010 0 comments

  Postscript to Christmas 1 You should be familiar with the pre-Christmas order:


Well, here is the new order. It should take me a while to trash all these headphones.

I just had to take a picture of this too. It's A4 in size and I still don't have the heart to eat it.

  ¶ posted by the leech at 1/05/2010 1 comments

  Dear British MPs The end of 2009 marked a special ocassion. Not only was it the end of a dramatic and somewhat important year. We saw the end of Obama's first year in Office. We mourned the death of the King of Pop, leaving us with even less to watch on MTV that we can pass off as 'talent'. And we enjoyed the temporary delights like getting an extra 22p worth of credit with every £10 of credit top-up on your pre-pay phone because of the 2.5% reduction in VAT. Or Rage Against the Machine pwning the X Factor annual turd.

But more importantly, the 31st of December 2009 marked the end of a decade, some might say the end of an era. And so I find myself in the company of others marking this joyous occasion (because one can always remain moderately optimistic for the future when on alcohol no matter how bleak the future and past may be), watching the London Eye's exploding fireworks in its glory over the Thames accompanying Londoners in their transition into the new era.

You see, aside from the alcohol, it helps to forget and perhaps forgive a little, the wrong doings of assholes like Wall Street who have indenfinitely ruined lives everywhere, Israel bombing the shit out of schools in Lebanon and Palestine, the utter FAIL that came out of Copenhagen's recent climate change summit, British police kettling G8 protesters and persecuting citizens armed with cameras, bankers and CEOs earning way too much for the mistakes they made. And of course the complete embarassment of British nation when you and your fellow colleagues were exposed for the expense claims scandal. No, it wasn't because you liked to watch a bit of porn now and then when the wife was at work. Nor was it the fact that you charged the taxpayers for phantom mortgages. It was embarassing because now the whole wide world knows that there are people in England who still think that building a moat around your luxury house is the dog's bollocks.

But I forgive all this. Because every so often it's good to restore your faith in humanity and there is no better time than when we enter a new era and look to the future rather than behind us. Maybe it was inspired by Obama's conviction in 'change' that spills into every other corner of the sociopolitical world. Sure, I don't expect it overnight.

But then, a select few of you found yourselves unable to resist the urge to have your cake and eat it too. To think you are now safer and further away from the public eye but to resist paying for your sins:

"Three labour MPs are arguing they cannot be prosecuted over expenses claims because they are protected by parliamentary privilege.

The trio – Elliot Morley, David Chaytor and Jim Devine – are being represented by a legal firm that has acted as solicitor to the Labour Party since 1990.

Their lawyers are understood to maintain that the Bill of Rights of 1689 makes them immune to prosecution. Police have forwarded files relating to the expenses claims of six MPs and peers to the Crown Prosecution Service.

Mr Morley and Mr Chaytor both claimed thousands of pounds for "phantom" mortgages they had paid off. Mr Devine submitted invoices for electrical work worth £2,157 from a company with an allegedly false address and an invalid VAT number. Steel & Shamash, a London legal company, confirmed it had instructed two QCs to consider whether the MPs should be protected by parliamentary privilege."

- The Independent

Therefore, as a long-standing resident of this country, a taxpayer of considerable contribution and a law-abiding citizen of the middle class, I kindly request that you and and any of the approximately 400 MPs in breach of expense claim rules who may wish to follow in your footsteps and avoid giving us our money back for your moat, Scandinavian porn, pool boys, bell tower maintenence etc, to assemble at the cliffs of Dover at mid-day tomorrow. And then jump the fuck off. And hopefully the currents will flush your bodies onto the shores of France, because quite frankly this land as no room for your kind around here anymore. And neither does 2010.

Yours sincerely,
Clyde
Contributor @ Bastardisation of the East  ¶ posted by Jon at 1/04/2010 0 comments