Busker/Beggar/Bum/Cuntrag

I have just witnessed something with my very own peepers, that has left me in a state of limbo somewhere between wide eyed disbelief and incandescent rage.

On my daily circular trudge to town and back in search of passable sustenance, I pass through the Moss Eisley Space Centre otherwise known as The Bear Pit. There amongst the various living stages of evolution on display are people who usually ply their musical abilities amiably in the hope of meagre reward. Buskers.

This has been going downhill recently, well more of a mild rolling from a very low hill to a lesser hill really as I can’t recall it ever reaching a particularly heady altitude of any steep gradient in the past. Apart from a wonderful always smiling Hungarian man and his accomplished accordion accompaniment and once a soul filling rendition of the late Lou Reed’s  “A Perfect Day” from a young girl who heartbreakingly looked like she had not seen enough of them.

Alas today, they were not there, and in their place was a young lady of dishevelled yet not impoverished appearance and a couple of her cohorts, dressed in similar festival fashion, sat happily swigging lugubrious low cost libations, dancing to music, laughing carelessly and generally wiping their asses on the very fabric of modern society.

There was I, tired and unwontedly returning to work, the work that I go to not out of choice but in order to earn money to feed, clothe and shelter my family at the ever dwindling cost of my own soul and sanity, and here they are, this special brew/Rum Bunch having a regular old Hoo-Haa!

This would all be a merely irritating yet everyday occurrence that I imagine many of you suffer  BUT the part that really made my shit itch, the part that tightened my teeth and made me growl crude and depraved things like Muttley with Tourette’s, was….

Down on the floor in front of them was a small speaker attached to an iPod, this speaker was perched on the edge of a hat, within the hat lay coins of various denomination, and by the hat….(breathe, breathe) was a sign.

The sign said “Need Money for Laundry”.

Immediately, mental images of this wrongful picture were swooshing towards my mind as if I were watching the titles to Superman in reverse. The laughing: life is tough at the bottom, the drinking: at 1 in the afternoon, how continental, the iPod: You know, like every discernable Tramp worth a damn has these days, the hat: a bloody hat, and the sign, THE FUCKING ASS RAPING CHEEK OF IT SIGN!!

Laundry? Not “Please spare change I need shelter for the night”, not “Home repossessed, kids going hungry”, not even “Cold, Alone and scared” but “Need Money for Laundry”.

In a mind montage I unleashed a almighty torrent of verbal violence upon them and then grabbed and hurled each one in different directions like BA Baracas in a bar fight,  but in reality, like a true English person I mildly waved my raised clenched fist once a sufficient distance away from the riling rabble and made my way back to my cell/office.

I had every mind to pull out my iphone, play a song through it's tinny speaker and start asking for money to redecorate my lounge, or stock my liquer cabinet, or pay the exsorbitant energy prices that rape my wallet monthly in order to keep my own vestments clean.

A busker is a musician that applies his trade in the street for appreciation and donation, a beggar is someone who usually through no fault of thier own has fallen through the cracks in society and is trying to climb back up, a Bum is a person who has made the choice to live life outside of the rules of convention, most likely with the aid of crack and White lightning.

What I saw today was a piss taking bunch of bonafide trustafarian 24 carat Cuntrags.

As the day wore on, I found myself dwelling on their audacious belief that blasting some shitty ditty though a smartphone, that no doubt was bought as a last ditch attempt by Daddy to lure their little princess back to finish her architecture degree, whilst masquerading as down at heel forgotten-abouts was somehow a splendid creative offering, a dazzling display of unfathomed musical showmanship.

A staggering achievement of naivety and incomprehensible thought processes, that the world somehow owes them a living for their awful audible contribution, and that sharing their considerable gift with us is worthy of our appreciation and kind donation to the most heart felt of causes, clean clothes.

The whole sorry spectacle was put into perspective on my journey home as I saw the nice Hungarian accordion man wearily lowering his instrument into its case, his overworked cold fingers twitching from the days duress, whilst the deluded digital minstrels of malevolence had seemingly moved their party elsewhere...perhaps to the laundromat. Perhaps to the seventh level of hell.

Time

Lets face it Time is a cunt. As an abstract construct installed by God or some other wanker to try and measure our pitiful inconsequential existence from point A "Birth" to point Z "Death" it has become increasingly obvious that Time is indeed a complete fucker.

My absence from this very site is accredited to the slippery little piss-weasel as my current life is being so utterly derailed by it's devious tomfuckery that it feels like I'm trapped inside Christopher Nolan's mindrape of a film “Memento” or I'm watching his film “Inception” without the part where they vaguely explain what the hell is going on as I slip and slide in a dreamlike state between unrelated consciousness with places and faces familiar yet unfamiliar blending and blurring into one continuous stream of events.

Maybe I should stop putting mescaline on my cornflakes but even on the days I don't I have come to a definite conclusion that Old Man Time is fucking with us all and laughing as he watches us helplessly trying to save, spend, chase or control it to no avail.

If you're reading this at work you're probably already experiencing the long drawn out hours it makes you spend looking at its various faces of display as the seconds chime away like hours and the hours seem to fall as languidly as the flipping date on an antique clock, with every tick and tock slamming down like a bookcase falling on the floor of a empty sports hall.

When that snoozefest ends, you are then made to wait for a bus or train that either takes forever to turn up or you have to run with all your work paraphernalia looking like a charity runner who's chose to do the marathon dressed as a comedy ostrich. When was the last time you turned up and it was simply there as you casually strolled on or pulled up just as you got to the stop?

Fucking never because Time is being a Prick.

However, when you get home, the tempo inexplicably speeds up as 5.30pm becomes 6.30pm before you even hang up your coat. You sit down briefly and let out a deflating sigh and contemplate making a cup of tea but as you slouchily drag your tired carcass off the sofa and make your way to the kitchen you pass a clock that now reads 8.30pm!

All of these glances at the smirking digital metronome amaze and befuddle you but yet simply get passed off with a simple “what the fuck!” as investigation into such matters would only prove more consuming of your ever dwindling evening.

The weekends too take an eternity to arrive but seem to slip through your fingers like grains of sand pouring from an hourglass that mocks your fevered tightening grip as you fumble to capture any left as it inevitably falls out of reach.

You barely take a sip of that first Friday pint and before you know it , it's not “Time” being called at the bar but the chime of the swinging pendulum's master as it strikes midnight on Sunday and you begrudgingly make your ascent to bed. I've even noticed the slowing of Sunday's later hours as if it was getting ready for the seemingly 72 hour day of Mon and the trudging week that ensues.

Left unchallenged this abuse of continuance will probably result with us eventually dying straight after we're born with our only vague memory being one of making a cheese and pickle sandwich at some random point in time which on devouring was all rather disappointing.

The only hope is that Dr Emmett Brown and his Flux Capacitor can make its move from celluloid to real life and that finally we could start to give Time its due payback and kick it right in it's arse by turning every weekend into a summer long festival of joy and continually setting the working week to fast forward!

Until then my fellow slaves, we shall have to keep up the good fight and chase Time as if it were a speedy child in a playground, running in front of you and turning to taunt your feeble efforts of catch up in order to make it trip on its own arrogance and fall into a massive pile of well deserved shit!

Then we can all stand around it and collectively chant “Ha Ha! Fuck You Time!! look at you now you shitty little grazed weeping cuntrag!” and we shall all laugh...

We shall all laugh for as long as we fucking well like.

For The St Patrick Day Hungover

The Lonesome Death Of The Catch Up

There is something disappearing. Something that is decreasing at a trouser shittingly alarming rate. Covering an area that dwarfs the desecration of the worlds' rain forests and is at a red alert level risk of becoming extinct sooner than any Polar Bear or Panda. A global catastrophe in the waiting and it is man at the helm and yet man who will suffer when this weary wordy ship finally hits the jagged rocks of social meltdown.

The Catch Up: The quintessentially civilised beginning of any conversation in which one has not seen another for a measured period of time, be it a week, month or year, is rapidly vanishing from our everyday conversations.

Remember the times when you'd arrive for the Easter holidays at your cousins' house and those awkward stilted first moments where you could only talk about your journey there, which was unfortunately void of any danger or excitement of any kind, so you would would sometimes have to elaborate on a hairy moment near the Milton Keynes bypass, until you were suddenly and magically transported into the familiar living room of normal relaxed conversation with people you knew perfectly well and wondered how or why you ever had to have these strange little epilogues every time you met, similar to each time you'd go ice skating after getting rather good the last time, only to find yourself back at square one, scrambling round the ice like a Chuckle Brother on mescaline.

In the following dialogues proceeding that oddity of Englishness, one would normally set about talking to everyone about what they've been up to since last they met. Holidays, Birthdays, Deaths, marriages, happy news, sad news, new arrivals, new acquisitions and so on but these small introductory news bulletins are in serious jeopardy due to the multitude of modern day communication networks such as Facebook, MySpace, Twitter, Blogs and other assorted interweb interfaces.

These growing behemoths of chattering tit bit are crushing the possibility of having anything new to learn of someone what so ever that hasn't already been divulged in a news flash style communiqué of some sort, trespassing onto your computer like an Ebola virus attacking your immune system.

Those ingenious programmes and systems that were no doubt designed to bridge the gap in global communication are now being used for such menial and pathetic situations and tasks that it probably has the staggeringly rich cyber boffin inventors crying into their Sim avatar's digital porridge.

In this age of celebrity pointlessness these things have managed to persuade the everyman and woman that if a star can be born from nowhere on such programmes as Big Brother, X Factor and the multitude of 'Fly on the Wall' docu-dramas then they too should be transcribing the chronicles of their every thought and wim to the entire planet.

Resulting in people using space bound technology to make sure that the whole pissing galaxy knows that they're 'having Pasta for tea' or that a man on the bus is 'wearing a funny hat' or that you're on the fucking holiday you told everybody you were going on ample times before you left just to make sure they don't send such titillating information as Wagner's possible departure from X factor or that your mate Tommo just followed through in the cab home from Wagamamas as you couldn't carry on filling your face with over priced Paella if you missed out on that life changing info-fucking-mation.

I am now so fully informed of everybody's whereabouts and daily shenanigans that i meet friends out on a Friday night after work and sit in absolute silence until someone pipes up with someone else's news that they've recently read to which the writer of which can only simply acknowledge with a “yeeeaah!” and retort with a similarly quoted piece of recent gossip which everybody in earshot already knows 'cause they fucking read it already too!!

I'm now surrounded by iPhone obsessed drones that look like they've lost all the muscles on the back of their neck who peruse the inner world as they ignore the outer one, begrudgingly bowing to the small glowing once bitten Apple god like a drugged up Mooney cult and the only people that aren't subscribing to this geek revolution are outside polluting their outlaw rebel lungs with cancer sticks probably swapping actual stories of things that actually happened to real people that they didn't put on fucking Twitter earlier that day!

I'm thinking of starting up my own site called “Twatter” and what it cleverly does is tweets anybody who Twitters anything saying “Nobody cares what you're doing you egotistical delusional Fuckwit! Get on with your silly little inconsequential life and stop bothering us!”

Then maybe one day soon on a hopeful, brighter day, people will be skipping through the parks laughing, gayly swinging round lamp-posts, singing of the joys of spring, cigerettes will be proved to be vital to good health and bans will be lifted to the sound of triumphant trumpets and iPhones will be made illegal after being proven that they turn you into a unsociable 24 carat cunt and i will finally be able to sit in a pub filled with smoke, drinking my pint out of a straight forward non branded pint glass and chat the kind of shit i'm now driven to only writing down to my attentive friends who are filled to the brim with all their news and gossip, unheard, unspoken, unwritten, un fucking facebooked until it all goes deathly quiet....

...and then we'll all start talking about how we miss it all! Arse.

When Penguins Turn Peado

Emoticons

What kind of star spangled cunt nugget invented emoticons? For thousands of years humans have been developing expansive, complicated and highly evolved languages and have been writing these down in a multitude of ways including ink, blood and even stone and chisel over the centuries. For the past 8000 years or so people have have to make do with using these 'words' to convey the message they wished to get across by simple arrangement and with the forethought of making the message clear and precise in order to not be misunderstood or misconstrued.

These jumbled and bundled assortments of alphabet have given us the worldly wise philosophy of Socrates, the poignant poetry of Pablo Naruda, the dark twisted tales of Edgar Allen Poe, the exquisite wordplay of Shakespeare and of course the fantastical autobiographies of Katie Price.

Then some clever piss biscuit invented the 'Text Message' and all that went to shit.

Whereas before, they had to think of lots of words  to use in phone calls and responses to questions and sometimes even mild chit chat, they could now syphon down their word usage to it's most economical form in order to save valuable time not having to do things like talk or get in touch with friends and family.

But due to the great greed of mankind these new character limited bulletins soon also became too laborious for our ever dwindling attention spans and the bastardised language of 'Text abbreviation' was born.

Cries of “I can't waste precious time typing in an ,E,E,Y,O,U,A,T and a fucking ATE! I've on level 6 of Super Mario Bollox on my Nintendo Gameboy! and then Eastenders in on!!” emanated across the land.

And so “See you at 7 mate!” became “C U @ 7 M8” but it didn't stop there and soon this abrupt new street dialect became so hard to decipher that you had to employ an 11 year old street urchin to translate the covert dyslexic transcripts as if you were a top code breaker on the trail of a madman.

Then in a cross pollination from email etiquette and Internet forum geekdom, acronyms of phrases from camp teen fodder programs became common practise but all the while, one problem persisted. One obviously colossal omission from modern day communication.

This break down of language meant people sometimes didn't quite get how you meant something and would sometimes leave you waiting for minutes for their witty riposte whilst they tried to work through the possible double meanings of your ill worded communiqué. The timing of responses became as important as the messages themselves, with a 10 minute wait meaning something entirely different from a 2 day interval.

Multitudes of random possibilities began firing through the fevered craniums of textees and the paranoia would grew by the hour to the point where hypothetical situations of people gathering to laugh at your incoherent scribblings whilst ignoring you on a day out visit to Alton Towers deliberately organised without you became full gone conclusions.

Pretty soon, handbags were swinging in the streets, names were hastily being scribbled out from address books and even the leaders of the great super powers had a moment where their hand quivered over the red button in incandecent rage at the 17 minutes it took Boris Yeltsin to text back “LOL” to George Bush's fart jokes he made at his recent climate change conference when anybody used the word “Emissions”.

So in order to solve this growing global pandemic, some no doubt be-specktacled NASA schooled fucknut went and invented something that alleviated the receiver from having to work out how the message was intended by reverting to one of man's most primal instincts - Facial recognition.

Yes, by using all the now rendered pointless keys around the everyday keyboard that used to be used for varied punctuation back when we could remember how to write properly, we then starting using them to make a variety of face shapes like :) and ;( and ;0 to display our intended meaning.

Then people starting thinking their phone was simply on the blink so the fucking “Emoticon” was wheeled out like some demented Transformer baddie and the world was saved.

Now when i get a message with a little smiley face I simply take it that the cheeky cunt that sent it assumed i'm such an incredulous moron that i wasn't capable of working how he meant what he said by merely reading, computing and then judging the text to the best of my ability. Should a cheeky wink face not suddenly appear at the end of "I'm gonna bloody kill you!" then obviously we should all run around screaming and franticly dial the police should we?

My feelings on the matter are that we should try and devolve back to using proper language before we end up back at grunting and angrily shaking a stick to make our points but until i can persuade the whole feckin' emoti-conned universe to do so i have come up with some of my own to join the smiley,cheeky,happy gang!

( ! ) = a normal woman from a gynaecologist's point of view

( ? ) = a women who's had a baby with complications from a gynaecologist's point of view

( @ ) = an Anal gape

( # ) = Arse like a broken cat flap (i.e after a very hot curry or prison gang rape)

I'd work out more but i've got some texting to do and it takes bloody ages when you spell out all the words and that!

C U L8ER M8 :/*

Garfield Minus Garfield - One man's slow decent into madness

A Trip To The Flicks

Now I am a new Father I don't get the chance to visit the Celluloid Shit-box formerly known as the Cinema/Picture House/Theatre Of Dreams as much as I'd like to these days but one film I've read about recently stands out a mile in terms of cinematic bravery and originality and then i find out it's even based on a true story? Amazing!

I very nearly enjoyed Danny Boyle's last outing "Slumdog Millionaire" which was only spoilt when he decided to make the film such a condescending comedy pastiche of every other film there's ever been about similar subject matter! Ripping off pretty much everything from City Of God and The Kite Runner to ..er ..The Railway Children and Chris Tarrant's 'Who Wants To Be Millionaire' he thoroughly redeemed himself though with the Bollywood dancing at the end (Well done Danny?....Well done!) which almost completely made me not think of the bit of the story where the Fagan character poured boiling acid into the children's eyes and in no way made light of that horrible disfiguring scene!

"127 Hours" from what i gather stars James Franco (he the Green Goblin!) as an extreme sports fanatic with anti-catholic sexual proclivities, that likes to try new and dangerous things, and by some strange and unbelievable run of events that I'm sure the movie goes into in much more depth, ends up getting his whole arm up to his elbow stuck in “The Rock” (Former WWF Wrestling star Dwayne Johnson of “The Scorpion King” fame and other films you haven't ever seen and never will unless you are trapped on a plane and have had too much coffee).

This terrible anal ordeal then apparently goes on to last for a cheek clenching 127 hours (The film's Title! Genius!) which I'm informed is told in 'Real Time' (so it definitely can't be made up, Right?) note to self: bring plenty of snacks and water and perhaps inform loved ones of your whereabouts for the week.

Then after the marathon 5 day fist-fuckfest, he decides the only way to escape his bum deal alive is to cut off as much of his arm that is inveloped in The Rock's crushing grasp and then bloody stumpedly ride him back to the Hospital / new arm shop. Obviously when i say “ride him back” i don't mean more arse tomfoolery as poor Mr Rock at this point still has the freshly severed forearm stuck right royally up his chugger! I'm assuming that The Rock simply accompanies him back to have the foolishly investigative limb removed and sewn back onto Green Goblin bloke.

The multi-angled split screen 24 style depiction of such graphically catastrophic fist-fudge packery has apparently proven too much for some movie goers stateside with reports of audience members fainting and some people leaving the cinema's to simply “wash their eyes!” and then “run to the nearest church!”.

Though this is not my regular kind of film i look forward to what I hope is going to be a refreshing and thought provoking piece of drama about male bum love in the desert much like the misty eyed memory of how much I thoroughly enjoyed “Brokeback Mountain” once i finished throwing up.

I will review the film on my return from the local Multiplex.

"Alright I'll be in fucking 'Spiderman 4'! Christ I'll even make 'Pineapple Express 2'

Just get my fucking arm out this greased up Cunt Nugget!!"

The Fund

With Christmas looming on the horizon like a drooling rapist waiting at the top of a steep hill ready to take full advantage of the tired and weary shell of a human left after the arduous inclined journey that was 2013, I'd like to bring to light some high level corruption that hasn't even been unearthed in the Wikileaks dossiers.

Rather like countless 70's conspiracy thrillers I have suddenly come round to the chilling realisation that the company i work for, along with the colleagues that beam ever so brightly at me at the mornings start, are secretly being run by a new breed of Mafia.

When i started here I was asked politely, but now come to think of it quite firmly cajoled, into joining a Tea Fund. This seemed innocent enough and I tight fistedly obliged even though they all drink 27 cups of the stuff a day, to my mere 1 or 2. This was swiftly raised to encompass the biscuit and cake supply and before I knew it money was freely flowing out of my ever lightening pockets into this voluminous office pool quicker than it took to snap a Kit kat.

Eventually the overly elaborate outbursts of sighs and tuts and all round general stare led arm bending, led me to make my first gargantuan Tea round involving the kind of planning and execution usually reserved for the on set catering staff of such behemoth productions as 'Ben Hur' or 'Cleopatra'.

This routine soon became a habit which quickly sent me spiralling into the dark depths of addiction as my 1 to 2 cups became 3 to 4 and then 7 to 8 or more as the Tea Rounds slowly sucked me into the rapid swirling hot broth of my colleagues dark world of libation, and who's rabid thirst knew no satiety.

Much though I fought it, the caffeine withdrawal took me into double figures by only my 5th week and this was when the feeders stepped up their game. Offering just biscuits at first and cackling maniacally at my defence of 'being on a diet'. The stakes were soon raised to fondant fancies and the like and before I knew it I was waiting on the daily cream cake delivery with a fevered sweat, fighting my way to the front of the cue to desperately snatch at the days sugar frosted bounty.

They had me in their control for sure and as the seasons changed so did my empty pocketed size 32 jeans to a breezier, easier 34 waist. I was so dosed up in a saccharine dream that unbeknownst to me they were hitting me left, right and centre for Birthday gift and leaving present money while Tea Fund collections came more frequently and with increasing menace.

It was the sudden introduction of lottery and charity collections that set my alarm bells ringing and it was then i decided it was time to blow the lid off this Kitty of injustice and break this Party Ring of vice for good. I swapped my Tea for hot water in the rounds and poured my colleagues offered infusions into a nearby plant. The biscuits and cakes were carefully hidden about my person and discarded in the yard at break times.

It was only after a few days of being clean that my eyes were truly opened to the sheer cunning and size of this covert underground operation. The Tea and Cake fund monies being taken added to up to far too much for the paltry Asda Smartprice Bourbons and discount out of date cakes and when I delved deeper still I managed to track the spare funds from this shake down up the food chain as high as number 10 with some of the cash even going to some evil mastermind living in London named Simon “Bear Head” Cowell who was ploughing it into shameless fake TV shows to make even more money off unsuspecting hypnotised fools in the  infamous old “This Shit is Gold” scam.

The money for birthdays was being taken for people who i didn't even know! They were never seen and neither were the gifts or vouchers. The people supposedly “leaving” turned out to be people who had questioned or tried to opt out of 'The Fund' and I have a feeling it was more than the office confines they were escorted out of on their 'final day'.

All of the confectionery i saved up was enough to buy me a friend on the outside who managed to get me out in a fake secondment role but when I went to the papers with the story I was greeted with the familiar glaze of a sugar doped drone who said they'd get right on it and then had me followed home. I managed to lose him at a Dunkin' Donuts.

This thing is so much bigger than I thought. There is widespread con-manship afoot out there and It might be happening in your very office? You might be reading this just as someone in 'The Fund' places a hot sweet brew down with a couple chocolate hob nobs on the side? They might even be suckering you into a false conversation of “How did that thing go at the weekend Bob?” whilst they peruse this very post you're reading, meanwhile Doreen in 'Accounts' is downloading your emails and bank details whilst packing her bag for Switzerland?

Either way, 'Beware the Eyes of Mars' and all his covert confectionery cohorts and start planning your break out now, god damn it!, now!

*This post is abridged and printed with permission from the book "Three Days Of The Kit Kat" by Randy Pumper.

Muppets

It's been a long 25 years or so since they were the number one show across the world and that kind of infamy has a price to pay as its hard to live a more ordinary life in the public eye once you've scaled the dizzying heights of A list stardom. I did a little bit of investigative journalism and looked into what our old furry friends are up to now.

Those of a fragile emotional attachment to their youth should probably stop reading now.

Kermit lives in a one bed Pad in Manhattan. Its on Broadway but not the bright lighted end as one might imagine, but the lower half where his small corner apartment, bought with his last big royalty check, overlooks the Washington Square Park where he likes to stare down at the fake watch sellers and the shady drug deals going down in the shadows of late night New York.

His outgoing nature sadly faded with the death of his partner and long time collaborator Jim, and he now cuts a reclusive and disenfranchised character as he sits in his dimly lit apartment in his tatty lazyfrog chair, flicking through the pages of Variety magazine to see who from the old circuit has passed away.

He now passes through the busy streets with minimal interruption, as the flashing bulbs of yesteryear are now replaced with the florescent street signs of all-you-can-eat buffets and late night peep shows. This picture was taken as we passed the NBC studios tour shop window and I think it paints a very powerful picture of a lonely performer that used to be in the living room of every child in the world on a weekly basis but who's fractured heart simply gave up when he lost his beloved Jim to cancer and then Fozzie's overdose coming so soon after.

I caught up with Rolf in Boston, where he now plays piano into the early hours of the morning at Ray's Late Night Liquor Emporium. He doesn't like to talk about the old times much but if a stranger puts enough money in the jar or enough whiskey in his glass, he can still recount a story or two from those heady days when the house lights went up.

It's a long way from Miss Piggy's current stint in Las Vegas, bolstered by the now infamous sex tape and her rebirth into internet stardom from the huge Fan-base in Japan.

The rest of the gang were harder to find but from bits and pieces I managed to scrape together news of the others. Scooter now runs a reasonably successful IT company in San Francisco where he lives with his husband Raul. Swedish Chef is now sous chef at Jamie Oliver's 15 but spend his nights I'm told, throwing darts at pictures of his blubber lipped boss and finding new and dangerous ways to destroy his multitude of condescending cook books.

We all know Sam the American Eagle is still recovering from the stroke he had after the whole scandal of the unsavoury images they found on his hard drive whilst he was running for governor or California but the massive success of Sweetum's online dating business for the oversized was a welcome high point in this troubled age.
 

Whilst you'll still see Gonzo now and again on Letterman or Leno, you'd have to say the sparkle has dulled from seeing him eat a rubber tyre to the sounds of Flight of the Bumblebee for the 73rd time.

 

Many column inches have been filled with the off the rails antics of Animal, and most could honestly say they saw him heading the same way as the late great Fozzie but after the Doctors had finally correctly diagnosed his ADHD, and with the help of Ritolin to suppress his outbursts, he know currently resides as an Executive Office Manager at Waldorf & Statler after being offered the role by two elderly gentlemen that used to come to watch the show on occasion. On team nights out, all the staff are often entertained by his tall tales of rock'n'roll band life.

Dr Teeth now runs a studio in the Valley churning out a steady stream of new Disney channel ready teen tripe for the masses, with old hands from the electric mayhem still wheeled in to lay down the hollowed teenybob nonsense we get bombarded with on a daily basis.
 

Dr Bunsen and Beaker now own nearly half of the San Fernando Valley real estate market after the success of selling their infamous discovery Viagra to Phizer in the early nineties and their faces regularly look down on you from the billboards of downtown LA.
 

The rumours of a reunion seem to hang constantly in the air but nothing ever seems to come to light for a major project but as Kermit told me on our last meeting "People may have come and gone but the memories of those nights behind the red velvet curtain will live on for eternity."

So until it's again time to start the music or light the lights this is Goodnight for now.

Fozzie Bear RIP

1957-1992

Shreddies

I now realise how they came to name these tiny, diuretic, septuagenarianly woven, square, malty blankets. I've only had a breakfast bowl weeks worth of the carpet like fibre parcels and it's been making me shit like a broken tuba.

I sit here in fear of squeaking out a dirty air biscuit at work in the knowledge that it might make me smell like that kid that everybody had at their primary school who constantly stank of poo.

Maybe all that poor boy had done was haplessly force down his morning bowl of brown midget coasters, under the misguided belief of his parents that a healthy child was a happy one, whilst unbeknownst to them, it was actually going to cost him years of therapy in later life to get over the stigma of repressed childhood verbal battery.

Can these things really be that good for you if all they do is alienate work colleges and clear the close vicinity of seats on the bus home like a taped off murder scene?

I'm not sure I'm reaping the benefits of its health improving claims, in not being sure of whether I'm going to fill my shorts every time i hear the low rumble of disobedience from my troubled lower intestine. All i can say, is I feel extremely bad for the poor janitor who has to clean the work toilets, who will no doubt be both disgusted and astonished by the turgid scene in the recently soiled cubical where lies in the crisp, once white porcelain bowl, what looks like one of Monet's lost masterpieces of pointillism.

1st Chilean Big Brother Is Roaring Success

As most have you have probably been made aware from all the press coverage the first series of the Chilean version of Big Brother finished yesterday, with the final winner being released to rapturous applause.

Whilst the South American version had it's budget restrictions, compared to it's glitzier and well polished international cousins, the excitement of the country surpassed any expectations from Chilean TV production company Channel 9 and the series seems to have captured hearts all over the world.

It seems like a lifetime ago, not a mere 10 weeks, that 33 unknown Chileans went into the specially dug out studio compound 600 meters underground to escape the tireless hounding of the ferocious Chilean media. The meagre budget allowed for only one camera which was introduced after the 3rd day when the high viewing figures had justified the expense of buying a camera.

The first 3 weeks tasks were not completed, so the housemates had no electricity and had to survive on 1 teaspoon of Tuna a day until week 4 when they won the "Don't Eat One Of Your Housemates!" challenge and food began to be delivered along with messages from the outside world.

The unexpected twist in the Chilean version of BB turned out to be that there were to be no evictions, and that meant with the extremely bad female turnouts of the auditions, that the 33 men were left with no women for the entire 10 weeks. This led to some interesting pairing up and bed hopping just like in the UK version but that all stopped with Pedro's gang rape in week 7.

The final was a tense affair with all 33 vying for their place to be the last man out and even the President was on hand to shake the hand of the 1st South American to win the landmark first series finale. After 32 men came out to their families, and fevered screams of fans and families and chats with Esperanza McCallio the shows brash presenter it was finally time for the last man out.

Luis Urzua was the victor, and was received by the crowd like he was the first man to shit on the moon. He wins the grand prize fund of $57 and a exclusive photo shoot spread in H'OK, the country's number one gossip magazine.

The show was an overall success, with not much mention of the group buggery in the international press and no coverage at all of the "Nasty Nicos" moment where one of the contestants was hauled out after cheating allegations and poked at long spear point for several hours of interrogation, before being told that it was just a joke for that weeks task, which won them an hour each with a pocket vagina in week 6.

Endemol and Channel 4, who have recently seen the popularity of the original UK series stoop to an all time low with viewing figures falling so low on the last series that they actually had to install Televisions in the Big Brother House and make it the task of the week to watch themselves doing nothing but watch themselves in order to make the weeks shopping budget.

They consoled themselves that it was not as bad as the french version where after the viewing numbers dropped to zero on day 33 of series 9 the crew and cameramen simply stopped filming and went home, leaving the housemates to do whatever they fucking liked 'cause no-one cared anymore.

It was 8 days before the contestants noticed and i believe they are still there now, wondering round aimlessly looking at them selves in mirrors and complaining about being bored like retarded goldfish.

Channel 4 are now looking at taking on the Chilean format to revamp the show's popularity here in the UK and an Underground Celebrity Big Brother project is underway once the nation have decided in an online poll who the lucky sub-terrainian 33 will be.

The front runners so far are Gordon Ramsey, Gok Wan, The bloke from the Go Compare advert, David Cameron, The 2 blokes from the 118 118 commercials and Jade Goody's coffin.

 

I wait with unheld breath.

Biscuits: Relic Of The Gastronomic World of Yesteryear

Now don't get me wrong, only a man crazy enough to take a shit in his
sleeping wife's handbag doesn't like biscuits. I'm not suggesting in
anyway that I have a problem with the beautiful diabeties inducing,
artery clogging, little cakey death bombs but my overall grudge is with
the makers.

They have got plain fucking lazy.

If you think back to your hazy gay days of youth, cycling feverishly
back like a speed demon on your Raleigh Chopper in time for your Nan's
visit, knowing full well that old people always travel with a constant
endless supply of biscuits to entice children to put up with their TCP and piss
stenched, false teeth manoeuvring monologues about the war.

You'd often burst into the room like a vaudeville performer with grubby nails and grass stained
knees and tuck into the mound of confectionary delight offered on your
Mums finest China plate, only to be slapped all the way to the kitchen
sink and ordered to wash your filthy digits in honour of the delectable
delicacies.

But if you grab down the fluffy clouds of reminiscence from the edges
of that mental picture, you will recall with clarity, the sweet
butter cream filled joy that seductively glanced up from the plate is
still the same array of biscuitty badness we know and love today!

Biscuits have had what must be the most laziest marketing, the most devolutionist design arc, the most bland re-branding and slumber-some sales campaigns in the history of commerce.

Nearly all of your Nan's beloved treats were most probably the same
biscuits that adorned her mother's best china back in the late 19th
century.

You'd only have to take a look a look at some of the names to work out
how old some of them are as they're named after old revolutionaries and
ancient relics.

The 'Garibaldi', a failed Italian revolutionary and the 'Bourbon' from the
French and Spanish aristocratic family are the elder statesmen of the
biscuit world. The former has been on the side of cuppa for 150 years
and the latter a mere baby at 100 years or so. The other contenders for
the Great Grand-Daddy of the biscuit empire are the 'Nice' biscuit
first introduced around 1895, The 'Custard Cream' and
'Digestive' around 1876, 'Ginger Nuts' dating back to
Colonial times but the winner by a mile is the 'Rich Tea' which
dates back to the mid 17th century would you Adam and Eve it.

So, all have been dunked into the steaming hot brew of a billion men and
women over 260 years of wars, depressions, victories and disasters
without the merest hint of change in recipe or form.

“But you can't change the classics!!” I hear you cry and I quite
agree but what really pisses up my chugger is the fact that these giants
of the snacking industry have not offered us up anything of equal awesomeness since?

In the 60s and 70s there came 'Jammy Dodgers' and 'Party Rings', fine
additions, then came the luxury bars like 'Penguins', 'Wagon wheels' and the
like but they couldn't really be called biscuits as I feel they ventured
into the technical territory of Chocolate Bars.

The 80s brought some derivatives of the 'Digestive' and the 'Hob Nob'
assortment that remain firm family favourites but that's still 20-30 years
ago.

These companies must have thousands of employees, which must lead one to
believe that there are all sorts of executives, sales, design and
marketing people all employed at great cost, but what could they
possibly have to do all fucking day long?

The meetings must simply involve 10 besuited and bewhildered brainstormers, sitting round a
conference table, looking down sheepishly, whist dunking their very own product
into their cups of tea, nervously waiting for someone to shout
“Eureka!” and then excitedly pipe up with the new ground
breaking, global market conquering, pant shittingly awesome biscuit ever known
to man ....but the problem is, no-one has for 30 years.

Why has none of these companies or any other for that matter given us
this century's 'Bourbon' or 'Custard Cream'. The ideas seem endless but i
guess with everybody buying the same old same old and not standing up
for their evolutionary biscuit rights, we have lost our way somewhere but
hopefully with the new technologically savvy youth of today, surely
someday we are destined to find our way back.

A 21st Century taste revolution that starts with only one bite awaits
the plucky contender that sends us racing proudly into the future, to a
brand new world, with brand new possibilities, with a brand new biscuit worthy of the crown to this heavenly kingdom of bakery.

The Gauntlet, my snacking friends of be-crumbed chin, is thrown down to you.

Now onwards in my quest .....”Dear Mr McVities,.....

Toilet Cubicle Doors

Why do they always open inwards? I went into one the other day in an ironically spacious bar only to find that i had to get in tune with my inner Spiderman-like abilities and clamber like a professional mountain climber tackling a particularly tricky crevasse (Watch it!) with my hands and legs, A framed like an extra from a Village People video just to finally close the door and be left in peace to make a clay chair leg or two.

How fat people get in or out is anyone's guess but i bet it would make for a pretty fucking funny section on You've been Framed if shown to the masses.

At work i use the disabled toilet. Frown all you like but it opens out and I can walk in with dignity and leave with dignity albeit a little lighter.

A Man's toilet is his castle, so don't make me have to attepmt several tantric yoga positions just to take a dump.

Toilet cubicle makers...sort your shit (ters) out.