World = Scary.

So I went into the Spar to buy some tobacco, as is my habit, and wouldn't you know it but there's an attractive lady at the till. Lovely, she was. Good hair, pretty eyes. Boobs. So, plastering on my nicest smile, I got ready to use my best and most effective opening line ('12.5 grammes of Cutter's Choice, please.' Never fails) when she beat me to it, saying 'Hello. What can I get you?'...

...in the deepest, bassiest voice I've ever heard issue from a female mouth. She sounded like Ray Winstone. Suitably freaked out, I grabbed my baccy and scuttled out into the night.

It's shit like this that makes me want to not leave the house.

Jingle Balls

If you check your calendar you'll see that Christmas is but a week away, with all its attendant horrors and turpitudes. I (surprise surprise) hate the whole bastard festive period, and can usually be relied upon to spout curmudgeonly bullshit at the slightest provocation. This year, however, I'm almost looking forward to it, although God knows why; maybe I'm pregnant. The fact that I've got all my shopping done already might have something to do with it. That's never happened before.

Anyway, it turns out that Santa (or at least one of the legion of under-employed middle aged men who stand in for him in dingy shopping centres) has decided to buck tradition and forgo the fat suit this year. This health conscious St Nick reckons that being trimmer and leaner will set a better example for the kiddies, and the shopping centre concurs.

"It is time for a change and as Santa is a role model for children, then his body shape is where it should start."

Hang on a second. Back up a bit. Santa? A role model? For children? Really? Leaving aside the fact that he's Western culture's most well-liked trespasser, and the fact that his famous red suit is made from inverted, bloodied deer skin, and that Amnesty's report on the working conditions for elves at his North Pole retreat famously made Kofi Annan shit himself... leaving all that aside, can you think of a single child who actually wants to be Father Christmas? In the same way that other kids want to be, say, astronauts, or ballerinas? Is this conversation likely to occur?

Adult: 'And what do you want to be when you're grown, little man?'
Child: 'Please mister, I want to be Santa!'
Adult: 'A fine profession, young sir, and a growth industry at that. Have a florin, you apple-cheeked rapscallion, and be off before I have you horse whipped and summarily fingered.'

No. Personally, if I had a kid and it expressed a desire to be Santa I'd have it on Ritalin before you could say 'secure unit'. Luckily, kids couldn't give two craps about who Santa is or what he looks like; it's the presents that they're after, the cut-throat little mercenaries. As far as they're concerned Santa could be an eight foot tranny circus performer who farts mustard gas and dances the Lambada so long as he makes with the goodies, and that's all fine and healthy. It's the magic of childhood, and any child who looks up to Santa as some kind of aspirational role model is off their fucking rocker.

Movie Review: The Octagon, starring Chuck Norris.

The Octagon is a low budget 1980's martial arts flick featuring Chuck Norris as Mimsy Fandango, transsexual hairdresser and wandering ex-ninja. Glyn, Denyer and I settled down with a couple of beers on a quiet Monday night to see what Chuck had to offer us. Here's the trailer.



OK; If you're looking for a movie that'll make you piss yourself laughing for all the wrong reasons then look no further, my son, for you have struck unintentional comedy gold. Chuck Norris, tired internet meme that he is, plays a fucking blinder in this one. You want chest hair? Inept ninjas? Whispered internal monologues?



Then you're in the right place. Chuck is on the trail of a international cadre of terrorist ninjas, or possibly ninja terrorists, and I'm probably not spoiling the movie for anyone by revealing that their leader is Chuck's old training partner gone bad. Really Chuck shouldn't have too much problem since this lot look like they couldn't ninge their way out of the proverbial wet paper bag.

'Hello, is that Crap Henchmen Ltd? Could you send over some more black-pyjama clad palsy victims? Oh, I dunno... 25? Yes, I'm afraid so. No. No, it was a girl with a sharp stick. No, Chuck's not even here yet. Ok. Bye.'

The general crapness displayed by the terror-ninjas is presumably why Chuck can afford to spend so much time whispering to himself inside his own head and indulging in playful banter with his lovable yet ultimately expendable pal AJ. AJ is just trying to live up to Norris' mighty legacy until he goes and gets his throat cut (but not before escaping from his captors something like twenty times. Crap ninjas!) thus providing further impetus for Chuck 's climactic organ crushing death rampage. But as AJ says: 'Come on, Scott; you saw much worse things during the war.'

The special edition comes with a free copy of another, better, movie.

Yeah Chuck. Remember that time in 'Nam when the Viet Cong made you eat your own bollock? That was way worse than this.

4/5

The rise of the machines.

My place, yesterday.

Yesterday I had to go out and buy a new mobile phone, as my previous phone had met with an unfortunate accident. We won't go into the whys and wherefores, and there's very little point in apportioning blame. In a world as cold and unfeeling as this injustices can and do occur and scapegoating individuals, while it may feel good at the time, provides scant comfort in the long term. These things happen. We need to learn acceptance, be more Zen.

All right, fine; I dropped it in the fish tank. While it was plugged into the charger, no less, so I just count myself lucky that Little Dan wasn't flash-fried into the bargain, poor misfortunate bastard that he is. That would have been unfortunate, although at least the little sod wouldn't be able to ruin another night's sleep with his barking. Barking and predicting the future.

Anyway. I went out and bought a new one, as the old one was irretrievably waterlogged and generally fucked. Here it is:

Satan's own handset.

And here's a review where it gets a handsome slagging at the hands of someone who knows what they're on about ; I, on the other hand, have not the faintest clue what I'm on about when it comes to mobile phones, a fact that I forgot in my lust for digital cameras and very small joysticks. My old phone was the telecommunications equivalent of a yoghurt pot on a bit of string. It was simple to use and easy to understand. It had Snake on it. I liked Snake, so what madness descended to make me choose this fiddly piece of shit?

I can't get it do anything. It's got the internet, but I'm never going to use it. It's got an mp3 player, but I can't find it. I tried sending a text message today and it took me the best part of half an hour. I've spent the last day staring at it like, well, like a chimpanzee that's been given an overly complicated mobile phone, scratching my arse and grunting in puzzled bewilderment. Whilst eating a banana.

It's especially pointless as nobody ever calls me, because I have (wait for it)... no social life! There are Buddhist hermits up Tibetan mountains who have more interesting Friday nights than me. It was the bloke in the shop, that's what it was. I was taken in by his sharp suit and matey patter. I got burned. I want out.

And, as if that wasn't enough, I now have this bastard to deal with:

You will not best me, doctor.

Yes folks, it's Dr Kawashima of Dr Kawashima's Brain Training, the DS phenomenon that can apparently improve your mental agility by a factor of whatever. The idea is that you perform his little mental exercises, jump through his hoops for ten minutes every day, and you will magically become smarter. Glyn came home with it yesterday and now I've been sucked in. When you start the game works out your 'brain age', which is basically a tool for the good doctor to tell you that you're stupid so you'll continue playing, lest your brain turn to mush in your skull. Last night my brain age was 46; today it's 64. If I carry on at this rate I'll have trouble retaining bladder control by Christmas.

So you do the exercises and fare really badly at them, feeling like a complete fucking idiot, and all the while the disembodied bastard offers words of patronising 'encouragement'. He let slip that he doesn't like coriander, and that if you say the word 'coriander' into the DS he'll pull a face. Which he does, so Glyn and I have taken to saying 'coriander' repeatedly and at length in an effort to gain some small measure of revenge as we watch his polygonal face screw up in distaste, over and over again. But it's a tiny victory, especially when you consider that the real Dr Kawashima is in his Japanese mansion, swimming about in his money like Scrooge McFuckingDuck and probably paying people to eat coriander for him. We, meanwhile, are spending our weekends arguing with a disembodied head on a hand-held games console, our brains becoming older and more decrepit with every minute that slips through our fingers. There's a real winner here, and I'm guessing it's not us.

There were these two guys in a lunatic asylum...

Man, I love being a geek. It's great. OK, there are downsides; school wasn't much fun, for example. Neither is writhing under the blank, pitying stare of a girl who has just learned that you're a grown man who enjoys reading stories about be-tighted, superpowered folk.

'Comics? Like Spider-man and stuff? But aren't they for kids?'
'Well, yeah, some of them, but the genre has changed a lot and there are loads of really clever writers out there who...'

At which point you trail off, realising that she's right. You're a fuckhead, a socially inept man-child, a pube clinging to the toilet bowl of life and, moreover, you were a fool to ever think otherwise. So you leg it, escaping to your room to bury yourself in old back issues of The Flash in the forlorn hope that the whole horrible world will just forget you and go away.

But then something wicked happens, like the release of the first official picture of Heath Ledger as the Joker from the upcoming Batman movie, and suddenly it's all worth it. Stuff like this shouldn't be important but, for some reason, it is. And I love it.

Also, check out his socks.

Quote of the Week

I just want to burrow into his beard and build a little cottage in there. Actually, forget I said that.

Alan Moore, from an interview about the upcoming 'League of Extraordinary Gentlemen: The Black Dossier'.

'Orwell was exactly wrong in a strange way. He thought the world would end with Big Brother watching us, but it ended with us watching Big Brother.'

Good old Alan; he's a freakin' genius. Unfortunately it looks like those of us outside the US won't get to read 'The Black Dossier' due to some very boring and irksome copyright problems. That, my friends, is a gold-plated, sixty foot high, all-singing all-dancing pisser. Interested parties can get the full story here and here. Thank Glykon for the grey market, eh?

This week Pete's eye has been caught by...

....this story about the Singaporean government banning the Xbox game Mass Effect because it features a lesbian kiss between a woman and an alien. Gameheads all over the globe have been up in arms about censorship, civil rights and so forth but I was more concerned about the implications for...

So... do you come here often?

...Captain Kirk. After all, the good captain spent the better part of the sixties cruising around the galaxy looking for - and enjoying a great deal of success with - alien snatch. I'm guessing that Singapore won't be used as a location on that new Star Trek movie they're making, lest Jim's habit of having his dirty way with absolutely any organism, be it animal, vegetable or mineral, finds him landed in chokey.

He's even making me a little bit moist.

But come on; what's an alien girl to do? Although I should probably point out that a) it was the lesbian thing that was the problem, not the alien thing and b) the ban has since been lifted. But this is the internet; since when did facts matter a damn?

And while we're on the subject of forbidden love, this frankly unbelievable story about a man who was caught having sex with a bicycle has had me scratching my head for a couple of days now. The logistics of it are completely beyond me. How? How??? The only creditable theory I've heard is that he was penetrating himself with one of the handlebars, and if that sort of thing is your bag then surely there are easier ways to go about it? If it's a bit of arse action you're looking for then why go to the trouble of booking yourself and your bicycle into a hotel room when they make dildos and vibrators specifically designed for the purpose? So that can't be it. It's a puzzler and no mistake.

There are some slightly worrying implications here, though; the guy was alone in a locked room and only got discovered when the cleaners used a master key and let themselves in. He's now been charged with sexually aggravated breach of the peace and been placed on the sex offenders register; that's right, it is now possible to commit a breach of the peace on your own from inside a locked hotel room. From a civil liberties point of view that's really not a good thing. Piss funny, though... and what a visionary! He looked at a bike and, where a more boring man would have seen a simple method of sustainable transport, instead saw a potential shag and bed partner. Amazing. Let's face it; the bloke is a sexual astronaut.

Finally, some of you may have seen trailers and adverts for a movie called Shrooms; it's your standard teen horror flick with the extra gimmick that all the characters are ripped to the tits on mushys. It is, by all accounts, toss. I saw a poster for it the other day that, as usual, featured a standard review quote, in this case: 'It's like Blair Witch on acid!'

Many people have pointed out that 'it's like... on acid!' is used by lazy journos as a way of saying that something is surreal,wacky, off the wall or whatever. There doesn't seem to be any way of preventing it. But I can't help feeling that in this case just a little bit of extra thought might have made all the difference. Maybe there's another drug that could have been substituted for acid, something more pertinent to the movie, that would have differentiated this particular review from the thousands upon thousands of indentikit write ups that fill magazine space and contribute absolutely nothing to anyone's understanding of, well, anything? Whatever could it be? Hmmmm. It's on the tip of my tongue... give me a minute....

Nearly there...