The previous post was the one I'd planned for February and I'd delayed posting it as I saw it as my equivalent of Prince's Black album. I want to include it now as I want to say how much I do now enjoy having Sky especially as I got it just in time to catch the second season of the glorious, ludicrous, sweary vampire series True Blood. (Not in time to catch Being Human though... Hang on, letter to the Beeb coming up - "Come on, BBC, time to repeat it now, surely? It's been Bloody Ages (excuse the pun). I for one am very pleased about the amount of vampire programmes being made now and I'm wondering if there are any plans to make a vampire soap? If Albert Square in Eastenders became overrun with vampires then I would even start watching that tired old miserable wank. Thanks, WD".)
My favourite TV guilty pleasure, though is Monster Hunter- ( Known in the US as Destination Truth - Sorry, I can't tell you what day it's on in the UK, or what channel - I stumbled across it by accident and series-linked it). It's a bit like Ghost Hunter but instead of not finding any ghosts they don't find any monsters. I bloody love Josh Gates,though- the Kermit-voiced Monster Hunter of the title. It is his job to travel the world, take the piss out of locals, fuck about for a bit and look for things that don't exist. I so want his job!
The series is as enjoyably formulaic as an episode of Scooby Doo . Josh leads his trusty team halfway across the world, takes a broken down jeep along a dirt track to the middle of nowhere in search of creatures with names like Wazzat or Hoojaflip. There he finds a starey-eyed local with teeth like piano keys who informs him that the Yazoo, an enormous bat-like creature which makes curious 'whoo' noises, has been terrorizing the local village and once arse-raped his brother. (I am constantly amazed just how he finds these mouthbreathing fucktards - these people look like they've only just been toilet trained and worked out that their pants don't go over their heads. I suspect that none of them are actually locals and that they are specially flown in by the TV crew. )
Armed with such valuable inside expert knowledge, intrepid Josh finds a likely hangout for the mythical creature and sets up infra red cameras at nightfall to capture it on film. Cue lots of Blair Witch/ Derek Acorah bollocks and close ups of frightened team members getting startled by random noises or creatures showing up on heat monitors. It is usually the girl member of the team's job to scream wildly at something just before it cuts to an ad break. Sometimes it can be genuinely suspenseful but other times less so,such as when they went to investigate Icelandic Elves ( I shit you not).
So when they have picked up the sound of a jungle twig snapping or a thermal image of a passing mouse, they head back to their studios in Los Angeles to analyse the data. By this stage I am yelling at the TV 'Of course you picked up something on the thermal camera, you were in the middle of a fucking jungle at night.' Using state-of-the-art equipment, the blurry pictures caught on camera which don't look like anything are sharpened up to reveal ...blurry pictures which don't look like anything. 'GET FUCKING BETTER THERMAL EQUIPMENT! I am bellowing now " YOU TRAVEL HALF WAY ROUND THE FUCKING WORLD, BUT YOU COULD'VE PASSED A DOZEN APEMEN AND DINOSAURS ON THE WAY AND YOU'D NEVER FUCKING KNOW ABOUT IT BECAUSE YOUR CAMERAS ARE SO SHIT'
If something is revealed, it is usually just a passing bat or a hippo and the results are unsurprisingly inconclusive and the programme lurches to a halt. All it really needs is Josh Gates to unmask Mr.Crawly the butler ( "I'd have gotten away with it too, if it wasn't for you pesky meddlin' cryptozoologists"), make an unfunny joke and crow "JoshyWoshyDOO" in to camera and the whole thing would be perfect.
Friday 28 May 2010
Thursday 27 May 2010
Blue Sky Thinking
Having Sky installed, especially after about six months of terrestrial channels , made me feel a little sordid. Not just because it was created and controlled by Evil Mediatyrant Uberbastard Rupert Murdoch - ( a kind of Napoleon from Animal Farm for the Digiwank Generation.) But also because of all the sex channels - there are loads. Far too many fucking channels!
Everyone who has ever had Sky installed must've idly (and one-handedly) flicked through these channels at some point and wondered stuff like 'Why is that girl wearing black tape on her vag?' It is actually quite depressing flicking through and seeing channel after channel of garishly made up topless women and there are a lot of close ups where you might as well be watching a couple of blancmanges on a trampoline. Admittedly, most of these channels you do have to pay extra for but there are more than enough freeviews and ads and gyrating women wobbling their buttocks, sucking their manicured fingers and fellating their mobile phones to satisfy any casual tosser. Especially ones who can lipread.
But whoa! There's way too much- surely it's a saturated market (could've worded that better)- and it's one I often feel quite uncomfortable about in certain areas (could've worded that better too). Even if I did pay out for one of these multichannel packages, It's not all that exciting to watch , really, is it? I mean a few minutes of slurping followed by a lot of huffing and puffing ? It's all just in-out, in-out, turn around, in-out, in-out, Sploort, isn't it? Just the pork tram pulling into Grimsby? It's just one set of reproductive organs... slamming... repeatedly... into ... another... again and ...again... ooh, excuse me, a moment ....
Now don't get me wrong here -I'm not about to come over all Mary Shitehouse (must amend that sentence) and bang on about 'thrusting sex down people's throats' or similar (hhmm, this is proving difficult trying to phrase things for this one). I like seeing pretty girls taking off their clothing as much as the next person. Unless the next person is Dale Winton. But what I think I'm uneasy about is that it's there without asking for it. It's like opening a book by your favourite author and realising that at the back is 50 pages of writhing nekkidness. Or going to the cinema to watch Sex in the City (not that I would ever advise anybody to do such a fucking horrendous thing) and getting an extra half an hour of something tawdry called 'Sexing the Clitty'. I'm not saying it's any worse, just that it's an out-of-context distraction and it doesn't quite belong. You should have the option to activate the channels, but they shouldn't already be there automatically.
It's like reading The Sun- (if anyone actually does that and doesn't just ogle and collect the holiday coupons.) I don't WANT Zoe, Young-enough-to-be-your-daughter of London, parading her newlyformed paps as if she's only just discovered them alongside some hack bullshit comment about David Cameron 's politics making her feel sexy . FUCK RIGHT OFF! It's a newspaper. GIMME NEWS THEN YOU LAZY JOURNO CUNTYBEARS. You want to see a ladies' rudie bits in printed form? OK-buy a porn mag. Want to see them on video performing naughty acts? Get a DVD from a sex shop or go to Red Tube or similar (er... so I'm told). At least these things are honest about what they are. I don't want titties in my face when I'm just trying to watch tv or read a paper. I don't want them there. I want to get on with my life,thank you very much. As a human man, I am penis-powered enough - I don't need to be encouraged to think filthy thoughts when I don't want to.
Everyone who has ever had Sky installed must've idly (and one-handedly) flicked through these channels at some point and wondered stuff like 'Why is that girl wearing black tape on her vag?' It is actually quite depressing flicking through and seeing channel after channel of garishly made up topless women and there are a lot of close ups where you might as well be watching a couple of blancmanges on a trampoline. Admittedly, most of these channels you do have to pay extra for but there are more than enough freeviews and ads and gyrating women wobbling their buttocks, sucking their manicured fingers and fellating their mobile phones to satisfy any casual tosser. Especially ones who can lipread.
But whoa! There's way too much- surely it's a saturated market (could've worded that better)- and it's one I often feel quite uncomfortable about in certain areas (could've worded that better too). Even if I did pay out for one of these multichannel packages, It's not all that exciting to watch , really, is it? I mean a few minutes of slurping followed by a lot of huffing and puffing ? It's all just in-out, in-out, turn around, in-out, in-out, Sploort, isn't it? Just the pork tram pulling into Grimsby? It's just one set of reproductive organs... slamming... repeatedly... into ... another... again and ...again... ooh, excuse me, a moment ....
Now don't get me wrong here -I'm not about to come over all Mary Shitehouse (must amend that sentence) and bang on about 'thrusting sex down people's throats' or similar (hhmm, this is proving difficult trying to phrase things for this one). I like seeing pretty girls taking off their clothing as much as the next person. Unless the next person is Dale Winton. But what I think I'm uneasy about is that it's there without asking for it. It's like opening a book by your favourite author and realising that at the back is 50 pages of writhing nekkidness. Or going to the cinema to watch Sex in the City (not that I would ever advise anybody to do such a fucking horrendous thing) and getting an extra half an hour of something tawdry called 'Sexing the Clitty'. I'm not saying it's any worse, just that it's an out-of-context distraction and it doesn't quite belong. You should have the option to activate the channels, but they shouldn't already be there automatically.
It's like reading The Sun- (if anyone actually does that and doesn't just ogle and collect the holiday coupons.) I don't WANT Zoe, Young-enough-to-be-your-daughter of London, parading her newlyformed paps as if she's only just discovered them alongside some hack bullshit comment about David Cameron 's politics making her feel sexy . FUCK RIGHT OFF! It's a newspaper. GIMME NEWS THEN YOU LAZY JOURNO CUNTYBEARS. You want to see a ladies' rudie bits in printed form? OK-buy a porn mag. Want to see them on video performing naughty acts? Get a DVD from a sex shop or go to Red Tube or similar (er... so I'm told). At least these things are honest about what they are. I don't want titties in my face when I'm just trying to watch tv or read a paper. I don't want them there. I want to get on with my life,thank you very much. As a human man, I am penis-powered enough - I don't need to be encouraged to think filthy thoughts when I don't want to.
Friday 7 May 2010
Feeling Louse-y
Kids!
You think you're just going off to collect a couple of little 'uns back from school, when what you're actually doing is collecting a couple of hundred little 'uns back from school. Most of these (unless you really are taking a whole load more schoolchildren back home with you (#notgoingthere #hopeitsforabirthdayparty) will be tiny, microscopic bastards known as Pediculus Humanus Capitis AKA Headlice AKA Nits AKA Ohfucknotyoufuckingtossbagsagain. These bugs are a bit of a bugbear and I can't buggering bear them.
I'm sure we never had them like this when I was little. True, we had Nitnurses that came to the school, but I can't remember any of them ever finding anything. Now they've mutated into evil, super-resilient beasts (the nits not the nurses) and they're everywhere. Every town, every school, every classroom, just about every head. Makes me itch just thinking about it.
They really are the most persistent little shitters in the world, discounting Jehovah's Witnesses and Jedward, obviously. And, as I'm gradually discovering NOTHING GETS RID OF THEM. So far we've tried and failed with Hedrin, vinegar, vodka and Nitty Gritty combs. We even poured jars of mayonnaise on our heads (which makes your hair feel quite luxurious but you do smell of egg). Try it yourself, it's fun for all the family.
I don't tend to get them but the rest of the family is usually riddled. I think I must be immune or have really unpleasant, substandard foul-tasting hair, the hair equivalent of Asda Basics. But I have to be deloused along with the rest of the family just to be on the safe side. And you can't just try vanquishing the lice once, either, because the chances are they've laid eggs in your hair and then you've got the next generation to deal with. It's probably best done at least 3 or 4 times to make completely sure.
So this Sunday it's the usual 'Spending All Day Sunday Trying to Get Rid of Headlice ' ritual. We will all be once again be pouring Listerine mouthwash on our hair, which seems to work best so far (also good for athlete's foot, apparently, though I don't advise gargling with Hedrin). For added amusement we will also be sporting plastic shopping bags on our heads with circular holes cut in them for our faces. Last time I had two pointy ends of a Sainsbury's bag sticking up in the air so I looked like a poorly animated orange cat. I tried to work it best I could, but it wasn't a good look and I don't expect it to catch on any time soon.
Frustratingly, it's all probably all for nothing anyway because of course the kids have to go back to school and mix with other children. And you can always tell who your kids' best friends are : they're going to be the ones whose hair is visibly on the move, the ones who have them crawling all over their faces because the lice have ran out of head space.
Excuse me, I think I need to scratch my head a bit now....
You think you're just going off to collect a couple of little 'uns back from school, when what you're actually doing is collecting a couple of hundred little 'uns back from school. Most of these (unless you really are taking a whole load more schoolchildren back home with you (#notgoingthere #hopeitsforabirthdayparty) will be tiny, microscopic bastards known as Pediculus Humanus Capitis AKA Headlice AKA Nits AKA Ohfucknotyoufuckingtossbagsagain. These bugs are a bit of a bugbear and I can't buggering bear them.
I'm sure we never had them like this when I was little. True, we had Nitnurses that came to the school, but I can't remember any of them ever finding anything. Now they've mutated into evil, super-resilient beasts (the nits not the nurses) and they're everywhere. Every town, every school, every classroom, just about every head. Makes me itch just thinking about it.
They really are the most persistent little shitters in the world, discounting Jehovah's Witnesses and Jedward, obviously. And, as I'm gradually discovering NOTHING GETS RID OF THEM. So far we've tried and failed with Hedrin, vinegar, vodka and Nitty Gritty combs. We even poured jars of mayonnaise on our heads (which makes your hair feel quite luxurious but you do smell of egg). Try it yourself, it's fun for all the family.
I don't tend to get them but the rest of the family is usually riddled. I think I must be immune or have really unpleasant, substandard foul-tasting hair, the hair equivalent of Asda Basics. But I have to be deloused along with the rest of the family just to be on the safe side. And you can't just try vanquishing the lice once, either, because the chances are they've laid eggs in your hair and then you've got the next generation to deal with. It's probably best done at least 3 or 4 times to make completely sure.
So this Sunday it's the usual 'Spending All Day Sunday Trying to Get Rid of Headlice ' ritual. We will all be once again be pouring Listerine mouthwash on our hair, which seems to work best so far (also good for athlete's foot, apparently, though I don't advise gargling with Hedrin). For added amusement we will also be sporting plastic shopping bags on our heads with circular holes cut in them for our faces. Last time I had two pointy ends of a Sainsbury's bag sticking up in the air so I looked like a poorly animated orange cat. I tried to work it best I could, but it wasn't a good look and I don't expect it to catch on any time soon.
Frustratingly, it's all probably all for nothing anyway because of course the kids have to go back to school and mix with other children. And you can always tell who your kids' best friends are : they're going to be the ones whose hair is visibly on the move, the ones who have them crawling all over their faces because the lice have ran out of head space.
Excuse me, I think I need to scratch my head a bit now....
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