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.

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).

1. Mary Poppins clears the scum off the streets by wiggling her nose. She then makes an audacious and wildly popular move to seize power, explaining that a spoonful of sugar helps democracy die down.
2. The army is replaced by a throng of dancing animated penguins and the police force is replaced by small squadrons of soot-faced chimney sweeps, with dubious cockney accents and hearts of gold.
3. Full financial recovery is achieved within months, as the city's bankers are given some first-hand lessons, in what is really important in life.
4. The issue of binge drinking is resolved with the plummet in alcohol sales that results  from young people realising they can get high (up) simply by telling weak jokes and laughing hysterically.
5. Umbrellas start talking.

Those are the signs of a nanny state. It is not here yet but I suggest we are all mindful. I'm sure we'd all rather have an overzealous government hell-bent on eradicating our human rights, under the guise of protection from terrorism, than have to ask Dick Van Dyke for directions.

The pillow?

Personally I don't believe that and think it's a terrible defamation of Max Clifford's unimpeachable character. I abhor all those claims and air them here only to refute them in the strongest possible terms.

I do however believe Jade got cancer deliberately, probably by sleeping inside a microwave oven, because let's face it, that makes for a better story and snappier headline than, "Talentless nothing, famed for no reason, fades back into the obscurity she had no right to leave behind."

The CD Reaper. Camp as hell to you but to CDs he's pure terror.

Of course personal digital transfer now spells the end of single track or album storage media forever, which I will stop discussing immediately, for fear of growing metal from my eyes,  wires from my fingers and speaking only in digital screams, which as we all know is the fate of people who write about such things. Yes it is.

I shall miss putting CDs into the stereo. I quite enjoyed the eager glint of the disc and the pleasant sensation of  it's sharp but soft edge snugly nestled  into my finger tips. I liked opening them and flicking through the inlay. I liked the feeling of having bought something solid from a record shop.

Though I have to admit I won't miss the scratches and the impossibly fragile cases or the fact that when you open the box and it's empty you KNOW you put it away, so it was DEFINITELY someone else and then you get really angry. You start shouting and ranting about how no-one has any respect for anyone else's property and maybe even a bit of spit comes out of your mouth and then you're hitting the CD rack and kicking at it and then the CD rack falls over and it's broken and you finally calm down and realise it's not the CD rack, its your housemate lying on the floor and those aren't CDs on the carpet, they're his teeth along with the  irreparable pieces of another friendship, which was doomed to failure by CDs.

So on reflection I won't miss CDs. They're crap. Thank god we're getting rid of them. I hate them, they're a lot like Hitler, only much worse on a very real scale.

...just ONE white glove

In case you need any more evidence, here it is:

- They have the same name
- They were both born black
- The have the same voice
- They both hang around children a lot
- Both have a lot of imaginary animal friends.

I rest my case.

What I do mind is that I missed the Secret Santa present giving. As Christ himself said, "The festive season is all about getting stuff and the more you can get the better".

I was quite perturbed to have missed out on an extra gift. I assumed that in the drunken frenzy of the party it had been opened, eaten and/or soiled by someone else, which is to be expected.

So imagine my surprise (go on I dare you, imagine it) when on my return to work in January it was given to me belatedly.
"How cool," I thought, as the holiday rusted gears of my brain struggled to turn, "bonus present!".

Then I opened it and it was like someone had crept inside my brain and defecated on my joy centre.

Fun! Like cutting out your own eyes.

I held in my hand what appeared to be a Rubik's Cube missing it's colours. Each side as ghostly white as the last. It was like someone had thought about the best way to destroy the minimal fun to be had from it and, armed only with bleach and a psychotic level of attention to detail, set about turning it albino. Clearly not content with reducing the former toy to a faceless cube, the same fun assassin had then put a number on each section. After all everyone knows how great it is to play with numbers.

I looked at it for ages, just trying to understand what it was, turning it over and over. Then I saw the legend 'Sudoku Cube' and finally understood. I understood how pointless is our existence on this planet and how we are as dust and ashes. A single tear pearled on my cheek but I wiped it away, fearing the cube would sense my weakness and kill me.

Please don’t tell the R.S.P.C.A about me.

I also believed for a long time that if you ran off a cliff you had a good 2 or 3 seconds before you fell, in which if you changed you mind you could always try and run back.

Also it turns out that if you run into a wall you don’t get a ‘you-shaped’ whole in the wall.

You get a broken nose.

I wonder if I can sue Loony Tunes? No win no fee? Any lawyers interested?

I was watching 'I'd do Anything' the other night, I'm not proud but I've got a girlfriend and she lets me watch 'Match of the Day' so fair's fair. The appropriately titled show is all about finding the next Nancy for an upcoming production of Oliver Twist. They're looking for an Oliver too. Although some rare epiphany of conscience has informed the TV execs that the shred by shred stripping of confidence and character assassination at the heart of these type shows might be frowned upon when applied to nine year old boys. Not be me but by most people.

We all know the soul destroying nature of these shows is why we like them but there is a more bleak darkness that lies within because it's overseen by Andrew Lloyd Webber. His face looks like someone was sick on it and it's slowly melting. But he can't help that. No, it's the eyes. Cold, dead eyes. It's like looking at a fish. Do you remember the noise Hannibal Lecter made, breathing air through his teeth? That's how I image Lloyd Webber breaths all the time. They call him The Lord, as if that invests him with some sort of respectability. Not in my book. Darth Vader was also a lord and he blew up whole planets.

Something is very wrong with Lloyd Webber, my girlfriend said 'there's something of the night about him' but I don't know, as I remember, when I last watched Chitty Chitty Bang Bang, the child catcher came out during the day.

The show is called 'I'd Do Anything' and I suspect it's only a matter of (very little) time until that's the true nature of the programme. Prime-time Saturday night TV will see Andrew Lloyd Webber watching one of the girls Tango naked with a shaved wolf, while two others have a toddler corpse eating competition to avoid the sing-off and we'll watch the split screen spectacle with nothing more than a familiar sense of ennui.
And some popcorn.