Woof, woof, tap, tap
This dog is blind. Ahhh. He even has a guide dog.
Lead on
He also has a cat that reads books to him. Thedog likes murder mysteries. But that cat lies. She tells him the wrong ending to books. According to the cat, Miss Marple often turns into a blood-thirsty pirate or deadly robot; who always murder dogs.
At night the dog crys tears from his blind eyes. And the cat laughs.
A house that looks like Hitler
Oh my days, a house that looks like Hitler! Thank heavens the Daily Mail has brought this clear and imminent danger to the nation’s attention!
Really Daily Mail? A house that looks like Hitler? Wow.
This must be stopped! How long until we are affronted by the sight of a garage that looks like Mussolini? Or a garden wall that looks like Stalin? And then how long until they form a new, inanimate axis of evil? Don’t say you weren’t warned.
Gather now brothers and sisters. We shall fight them on the driveways, and in the gardens. And throughout suburbia!
But for now, maybe we should learn a lesson from history and take early action against this evil house? I hear David Cameron is suggesting a no-fly zone and posting some fiery faeces through the letter box.
Read the idiocy here.
Charlie Sheen is the answer
Charlie Sheen is not drinking tiger blood. Charlie Sheen is not winning. Charlie Sheen is having a nervous breakdown. Still though it would be wasteful not to make use of such an impressive meltdown, so I suggest we use him to sort out the Middle East.
Crazy and crazyer
All we need do is send Charlie Sheen into Libya. Let Gaddafi see the true face of madness. And while he stares in horror, and tries to comprehend the mind-meltingly awesome outcome of Western society's most capitalist democracy, the people will have a chance to re-assert themselves.
Failing that he can take his machete to him; or pretend Gaddafi is a tiger and drink his blood. That I'd like to see. Charlie Sheen on top of a building, machete in one hand and a bottle of Gaddafi blood in the other.
The worst case scenario (or best, depending on your point of view) is that they mate. They would spawn a creature so crazy it could only exist in a dimension made of avocado, in a house made of lemon thought, on an island that is only divisible by 17, in October, which is not a month but a type of religious cheese.
The Pope and the truth
Let me ask you a question. If you were a crime-fighting vigilante, where would be the best place to hide? In a tree trunk? Maybe. In an enormous hat? Perhaps. But the correct answer is, of course, in plain sight.
I have been wondering if sometimes, just occasionally, when the Pope looks at the Popemobile, he thinks about the Batmobile and wonders what might have been. But I now realise that's not the case. He doesn’t have to wonder. His whole life is modelled on Batman's. Here are the facts:
1. We all know Italy is full of corrupt politicians. Rome's a dirty town and it needs cleaning up. Just like Gotham.
2. He's got a special car although this is perhaps the most pathetic part of his attempt to be Batman.
Pathetic wannabe Batmobile
3. The Vatican is basically a huge mansion, beneath which there are huge vaults and crypts, equivalent to a cave. And don't tell me he doesn't have the money to deck them out with the latest equipment.
4. He's deliberately in the public eye. Like Bruce Wayne.
This is all the stone cold, undeniable truth, which strongly suggests he leads a double life as 'The Cross', "Doing God's work, one filthy secular criminal at a time". I'm sure he has throwing stars in the shape of a crucifix. His papal cap is probably detachable and able to decapitate enemies when thrown. He probably baptises children in a single bound and says mass faster than a speeding Anglican. His main weapon, of course, is making criminals feel very guilty, although this just makes them call their mum more often.
If you think all this is just rhetoric, remember, he's already got the military style training. And he wears a cape.
It’s all in my head. Isn’t it?
Waiting to board the flight to Helsinki for a friend’s wedding, I know I’ve made a terrible mistake. I was warned. I knew there would be consequences. In my defence I had recently read a prize winner. I felt I was owed the treat. I should have known.
Standing in the queue for the gate, staring at the black information board; a boy runs his fingers over the ticking digital clock next to our flight number. Every few seconds the digits change to show the date, 16th July. I realise I’m staring at nothing.
Can a mind stare? Mine does, it’s a blank sheet with occasional spikes of colour, odd shapes and disjointed memories, some of which may be dreams. Apparently this is what happens when I don’t sleep for two days, I'm no good at it.
It was the perfect honeymoon, tropical sun, amazing sites, the chance to really bathe in each other’s company and, of course, to read.
The flight back was 12 hours. A tube home to pick up smart clothes and then a wide-eyed, steering wheel-strangling drive back to the airport. Now we’re awaiting another economy cabin, cacophony of children and close encounter with people yet to discover the mysterious secret of deodorant.
So I'm slack-jawed in front of the screen, like a Doberman learning plumbing. Something starts to feel wrong. I'm looking at the numbers flip around the screen. A fingernail scratches across my brain as it involuntarily does some maths. A whisper from my starting-to-sicken stomach says, “You deserve this”. The numbers are starting to mean something.
The time is 5:56. One six. Add five, five, and six, you get 16. That’s two sixes. It's rare for my mind to fixate on numbers, knowing they make my head hurt I usually avoid them. Suddenly it seems I can't, but why are the two sixes important? They aren't. Then the screen switches from time to date. And suddenly those sixes mean more – today’s date, the 16th. One more six, 666, the number of the beast.
“That's dull coincidence,” the few shreds left of my rationale brain tell me. I half smile at my own foolishness and then the screen changes again. The flight number is AOY666. A cold shiver runs right through me and shimmers off across the polished floor.
A glimmer of reason remains, murmuring, “Fluke...chance...ignore it.” Further along the reflective black screen, a demonic face stares back at me and mocks. Refocusing my bloodshot eyes I'm reminded exactly where our plane is going, Helsinki the capital of Finland. And as airports describe London as LON it's crystal clear, we're flying straight to HEL.
This is what happens. I've no one to blame but myself. These are the consequences, of entering his world. For all the short-term cheap thrills I thought could be laughed away, that I thought wouldn't affect me, these are my just desserts, for reading a Dan Brown book. This is our fate, mine and yours, this is his dark legacy.
You’ll count the steps to old buildings as you walk, to find the Masonic pterodactyl number. Bank notes become a part of a conspiracy, as you wonder why, when folded they show a picture of Michelangelo’s body with the head of Medusa. And one day, you’ll look in the same mirror you stare at every day and the lines on your face will be revealed as a map to sacred goblet, or something.
Worst of all, you’ll start to lie to yourself. You’ll promise you won’t read another. But you will, next time you’re on holiday. Yes you will. For he wills it. And so do I.
Real Vampires. Real Fear…and Twilight
Vampires are real. Yes they are. This is not some online conspiracy theory. Nor is it a tall tail. It is a simple fact.
I'm not telling you that UFOs are abducting people. I'm not trying to convince you that people are turning into wolves underneath a full moon, I won't insult your intelligence. However, there is one who walks amongst us, a spectral creature of the night, who likely feasts on blood and disappears as smoke in the night. He is come.
Bee keeper or Vampire? You decide. No, actually I decide. He's a vampire.
Granted he doesn't look like your typical vision of a vampire. No sharp teeth. Conspicuous lack of cape. And I suspect, a somewhat underdeveloped ability to attract impressionable young virgins with his raw, sexual energy. But the fact remains, he is a vampire.
He may not have been seen drinking blood or turning into a bat for japes. He may be fine with crucifixes. However that proves nothing, as over the years numerous cultural interpretations of vampires have shown us a huge variety of differing, often conflicting, abilities, strengths and weaknesses. The latest incarnation being from the Twilight films, in which vampires are pretty teens with nice sharp teeth that are slightly whiter than usual, who brood occasionally and quite like forests but not parents. I'd like to put one of them in a locked room with Christopher Lee or Max Shreck. Then we'd see who's the real vampire and who is a stain of fear, tears and excreta that no-one could can bothered to wipe up.
Anyway, the boy pictured is a proven vampire, not because of his fear of holy water (Simon Cowell), or sleeping in a coffin (Peter Mandleson) but because he can't be out in the sun too long or his skin burns JUST LIKE A VAMPIRE. In fact he constantly has to wear Factor 50 sun cream - EVEN INDOORS. That clearly proves it. He is truly one of the un-dead. I imagine the local pitch fork and fiery torch businesses are booming in his home town, which can only be good for the economy.
So there you have it, concrete proof. And the story of a little boy with an unusual skin condition, used as a weak excuse for some tedious ramblings. I think we all know who the real monster is here. The boy. Obviously. He's a bloody vampire.
Read about it here, if you really must. But don''t blame me for how dull life really is.
The Call of Death. Maybe.
Yesterday I was driving behind a white van with a sticker that said "How's My Driving? 020 8446 8547."
I couldn't work out what disturbed me about that at first. Then I realised the number is a land line.
That raises all sorts of existential questions. How can the driver be driving and answering the land line somewhere?
Unless he's got some kind of 'Michael Keaton in Multiplicity' thing going on, which I doubt. God what a waste of multiple bodies that film demonstrated. I didn't even see the film but I know for a fact that at no point did he use a spare body as an alibi to get away with the horrifc, but entirely morally jusitfiable, torture and murder of a self-rightous politician or moaning child.
The Keatons at home
And what happens if I call that number on the back of the van to complain? I probably crash the car because I'm on the phone.
Then someone rings the number from the sticker on the back of my car that says, "How's my driving? 020 368 4688". Then they crash their car because they're on the phone. And someone else rings the number on the back of their car and...
...the cycle continues for ever.
Or something.
Vermin Wars
in a galaxy far, far away
there was a parallel universe.
In that universe: Luke Skywalker was a gerbil, Princess Leia was a butterfly, Jabba the Hut was still a massive slug and Han Solo can be seen here:
It tastes exactly like carbonite.
Yes. It's a mouse someone found in some malt loaf. Must have been a great game of hide and seek. Bad place to hide though. Somewhere there's a very frustrated cat.
I like malt loaf. It's one of those things you're not suppsed to eat until you're at least 75. Still though by that time I should at least be able to cut it with a real working light sabre (mutters silent prayer to robo-god of the future).
Tube Strike – Solved by Prostitutes?
There's going to be a tube strike.
Why? Because the RMT (Rail, Maritime and Transport Union) is sulking. They've asked for something and been told "no". In fact they've asked for a 5% pay rise and a promise of no redundancies over the coming year. In the current economic climate that's like a fat white kid, sitting in an Ethiopian dust bowl asking for a third slice of cake, while surround by living skeletons too weak to brush the diseased flies off their eyes.
Of course the problem for most people is how to get to work, so here are some suggestions:
Boris Jonson, who apparently, despite my repeatedly pinching and bitch-slapping myself, appears to be Mayor of London, has greatly increased the amount of public transport along the Thames. So I suggest everyone surf to work on the back of a nuclear submarine.
Harness the power of Bob Crow (Leader of the RMT) by strapping yourself to his back and making him fly you to work. Unless he isn't actually a crow, which I doubt. Otherwise why would he be called that?
There are going to be "escorts to lead cyclists across the capital". What a great idea. Who better to help you get to work than a high-class courtesan, with a beautiful body, cold dead eyes and nothing on her mind but the money in your wallet, and a brief break from the beatings of her pimp?
Or just don't go to work; you don't like it anyway.
Meat War
The world is changing. Countries that we in the developed world previously thought of as barbarous, and not even good for colonising, are starting to blossom. And by blossom I do of course mean, attempting to keep pace with the West, which of course must not be tolerated.
The most significant aspect of this change is that, as previously less well-off countries become richer, their populations demand the food the rest of the world enjoys. That's right, it's all about the meat. They're sick of rice or dust, or children's tears, or whatever it is they suck-up through their malformed feeding holes, and they want to eat the good stuff.
Yet as our brothers and sisters in newly 'rich' countries aim to draw level with us, our rightly bloated internet-conjoined, first-world ego demands we eat ever more unusual meat, just to remind them how much better than them we remain.
So, here are the top ten meat meals we should be eating to prove we are still best:
10. Golden-eagle burger with lion-cub-eye salsa.
9. Komodo dragon balls soup with ring tailed lemur paw cake.
8. White tiger curry with orang-u-nan.
7. Snow leopard chow mein and crispy blue whale blow hole pancakes.
6. Black rhino jerky, washed down with fresh panda essence (obtained using the extraction method favoured in the Dark Crystal).
But you know, the problem is, even when you're chomping down on the rarest meats, there's always going to be someone disproportionately rich in one of those "Look at us, look at, us we're not poor any more, (even though 87% of our population sleeps in an AIDS hat, on a crisis infested straw mat)", who can match you.
So with that in mind, we have to raise our game, go the extra mile and pull as many clichés as possible out of the virus-protected hat as possible. These are the foods to remind Johnny Third World just who is big bad ballsy best and who is a living crippled hope ....
5. Unicorn flavour Pringles, with Ewok dip
Unicorn - even comes with a free toothpick
4. Leprechaun bolognaise with shaved Obama-san
3. Ligur kebabs in pita bread made from the ground up bones of Saddam Hussein
2. Centaur au Vin
1. God and pickle sandwiches
Nom nom nom.