If only I could turrrrn baaaack tiiiime

So science, in its infinite wisdom (sorry, ‘finite’ wisom, otherwise why would it bother doing science anymore if all the science has already been done? Hmm? HMM? Answer me that, poindexter) has gone and reversed the ageing process on some mice and is hoping to try and make it work on people.

I have decided this means I will, in about, say, six months (science works fast, I’ve also decided) be able to go back to any age I want and try again with the knowledge I have now.

As such I have decided to go back to when I was three years old and remember to not fall off the harbour wall, thus saving me years of people cutting my hair and remarking “oh! You have a scar on your head!” as if I don’t know.

I will head back to all the points I was ever embarrassed or made to look the fool (there’s lots of them) and eliminate anyone who laughed at me. WITH HAMMERS.

I’ll make a trip back to when I was about 12 or something and my dog got attacked by another dog and I just stood there and cried while my brother tried to beat the shit out of it, only this time I’ll bring a shotgun. I’ll also probably cry again.

I’ll make a quick stop off in my uni days and point out there is no wall on the other side of that fence, thus avoiding my annoying broken finger. Oh, and a swift jaunt to November 2008 and remember to not launch into a jumping tackle against the fat guy because it will destroy my ankle.

Basically I’ll use this breakthrough to avoid all of my major injuries. That sounds about right.

Then I’ll go to all the ages of major sporting events and bet on all the winners and be a billionaire when I get back to this age.

Oh shit wait no I just got it mixed up with a time machine. My mistake.

The idiocy of (my) youth

Someone, somewhere, just mentioned a car wash. This instantly conjured up wonderful memories for me; taking me back to a happier time where life was simple and – as I’m sure we all did – I actively looked forward to going through the car wash.

Now you can make all the complaints you want about kids these days and not going outside and knife crimeing each other and hoodies and how it’s their fault for the recession even though they’re 11 years old, but the fact of the matter is I had a lot of creature comforts in my childhood – I lived in the future, after all – and yet I still got a thrill out of going through the car wash.

Odd, how the mind works. It’s clear why it was that way – you were perfectly safe inside a comfortable, familiar environment (unless the car was owned by your kidnapper who had just nabbed you and decided to make the rapemobile sparkly clean) and you get to go through massive machinery that’s all like WHIRR and GRIND and BZZZZ and you’re all like YEAH and WOO and then your mum’s like SHUT UP and you go OKAY and then it’s over.

There were a few things I look back on now and feel it was bizarre I looked forward to them in any way. I mean, I looked forward to going into certain shops when we went out shopping, but I would never say I wanted to go in them, then I would get annoyed when we didn’t go in them. I still have a hangover of this condition to this day, simply assuming people will be able to read my mind then getting unreasonably irked when they don’t.

Idiot non-brain-readers.

Plus there was how I always wanted Iced Gems from the supermarket, even though every time my parents told me “you don’t like them” but then I convinced them I did like them and they were remembering it wrong and then I opened the bag, ate one and remembered I didn’t like them. Too chalky.

Fuck me, I was a weird kid. Still am.

My comedy shows (please don’t steal)

There have been vague discussions* today with my best friend** about writing a comedy show of some sort – perhaps a sitcom, maybe just a direct rip-off of Jake and Amir, but something that would be so hilarious your brain would just up and leave.

Sort of like how Homer’s does on the Simpsons. I might write that joke in and claim it as my own. Nobody watches the Simpsons, right?

Anyway, as a creative exercise – as well as a power play that shows you all who is King Of Laughing Making (it’s not a good title, I admit) – I’m going to provide you with a handful of ideas for sitcoms or other such comedy shows that you might well see myself and my bessie bud making in the next week or so.

Maybe two weeks, if it’s a long-term thing.

Glazed Ham
One of the Man Utd-owning Glazer family (undecided as to which), through unfortunate personal circumstances, has to move in with a struggling actor in a flat above a butcher’s shop. The flatmate’s acting is hammy. At some point, a meal of gammon is consumed, with one character remarking “my word, this is salty!” (possible catchphrase).

Mates
Thinking in the Friends mould, this would be a British version – a good British version, of course. It would reflect actual friendships in real life in that nobody actually likes each other and flatmates bitch at one another because of a fork left out next to the sink and a missing potato waffle. The first series will end with a horrific car accident in which one of the main characters is left a vegetable, and the remaining, cogent Mates have to make the decision as to whether it is right to keep the fallen Mate alive – is it really living, like this? Or is it the more merciful act to just pull the plug and walk away, safe in the knowledge your memory of the friend will be happy and free of suffering? And then, like, one of them will fart or something. I don’t know.

Hilarity, Inc.
An ensemble piece, possible vehicle for Russ Abbot, Hale (NOT Pace) and one of those famous fat blokes – I forget which. It would follow the exploits of the lead characters as they try to battle through reams and reams of bureaucratic red tape while trying to set up their own business. Said business will deal in selling factory reject power tools. Business will be run honestly and fairly, should it ever get set up – I see a lot of traction in red tape-based comedy, after all!

Donkey Racers
Self-explanatory. Donkeys race, people bet large sums on it, losers get the biggest laughs. If I have to say anymore I’d just be insulting your intelligence.

Don’t-Look-a, Feel-appy
Based around Gianluca Vialli (it’s a hilarious play on his name, the title), this would be a Candid Camera-style show where members of the public try to avoid the gaze of the Italian footballing legend. Should they manage to do so, only half of the game is complete – they then have to remain genuinely happy while knowing full well Gianluca Vialli is staring at them. I predict 0 winners for at least 12 series of it.

Deaf Leopard
A one-armed drummer (victim of a big cat attack) strikes up an unlikely friendship with a sentient, though hearing-impaired, Macintosh operating system. They go on adventures; mirth follows.

Will.am.I?
After he is twatted around his twatty head for being a twat, the twat who does whatever he apparently does for that pop group suffers amnesia. The show follows his hilarious encounters with people he’s forgotten from his old life, and his ongoing, burgeoning relationship with a scallop-seller from the Denford Ash area.

*It was mentioned, once, and immediately forgotten about.

**In the whole world.

*** In the wholest entirest world.

Billy West is my hero

One of the sillier fantasies of mine – not in that way – is that I some day become a voice actor. Think about it: on a scale of jobs I want to do, it’s up there.

I have no idea why I prefaced that with ‘think about it’, as if you’d be thinking the exact thing that’s in my head, but there you go.

Anyway, I’ve always been decent (read: not good) at doing silly voices. Well, I’ve always been able to make people laugh using my voice. Well, some people laughed when I said things like Kenneth Williams. Well, one person laughed at how I said something once and she might have been drunk and had a head wound and oh now I sound like I brutally assaulted a drunk woman.

I can categorically state for the record: she was not drunk.

Anyway, I can go high, I can sound like a weird child/baby thing, I can be angry, I can do a decent Blessed, there’s the aforementioned Kenneth Williams, I can do one accent quite well, I know how to spell too.

Basically I’m the perfect voice actor, and as such should take over from Peter Cullen as Optimus Prime.

I’ll be awaiting your calls, casting agents. I have my own microphone and I just downloaded the latest version of Audacity, so I’m good to go whenever you are.

Seriously though, I might record a demo tape. Except not on tape because it’s not 1983. If it was I wouldn’t be able to talk. Actually if it was this date in 1983 I wouldn’t even exist for another month and a bit. Weird.

BYE. Happy 900^th entry.

Later, man

Latterman are apparently touring Europe later this year, so here’s a song of theirs I adore (also I’m tired and don’t feel well, so I can’t be bothered thinking of a proper topic):

I think I just need to sleep for about 13 days.

Kill kill kill kill kill the poor

Thankfully we finally have a Dear Leader who knows what we – the common people of the nation – want in our lives. We all live as we do, be it aimlessly, with passion and drive, frugally, idiotically, boring..ly, sexily, even sexierly – whatever. People are different, and people are disparate, and people are, as a result, a confused mess.

But thanks to Davey Boy Cameron, we have something we can unite together against: The Poor.

Now you may think that’s a hasty definition of an individual, never mind a group. You may think it’s difficult to accurately judge what makes someone poor compared to, say, what makes someone happy with their lot. You might think it’s unfair to lambaste a subsection of society for not earning ‘enough’ money, or for requiring benefits to help them actually survive.

But you’d be wrong. Why? Well, because they’re poor.

As we all know, Poor People are worse than the Normal people (that’s you and I). Poor people smell bad, they look weird, they probably steal (it just makes sense). They don’t speak properly, they’re usually northern, they have the temerity to claim benefits from a system set up to help them out in times of need.

Basically, they’re the lowest of the low and they need to be eliminated.

So I’m over the moon at the fact David Cameron has fired the first salvo in his war on poverty. Not in the namby pamby, Guardian-reading loony left drivel way of ‘helping’ people and ‘getting them out of the rut’. This is war as in war. We are going to unite as one – we are going to unite as the Normal people we are and we are going to eliminate the scourge that is The Poor.

Once they are all dead, our society will be cleansed and we can all come together as friends, living forever in perfectly wealthy harmony.

And those of you that say ‘yeah, but surely if you eliminate the entire bottom rung of the wealth ladder you actively create a new bottom, thus redefining what it is to be ‘poor’ and beginning this whole sorry cycle of pointing the finger of blame at those less fortunate than the Normal people. Surely the entire concept of ‘poor’ is something dictated by societal norms, and societal norms are something that are changeable, malleable and constantly redefined – just like morals. Surely attacking one subsection of society for being different to Normal is the exact sort of behaviour that would come back to bite you on the arse in the future when you end up on the receiving end of the scorn, when you’re unable to defend yourself and nobody seems to want to defend you (because, as it stands, you’re no longer Normal). Surely it’s a bunch of lazy, hypocritical and disgusting behaviour encouraged by a bunch of out-of-touch rich cunts who have absolutely no interest in your well-being at all but will tell you they do if only to distract you from paying attention to just how cunty they are for a few days/weeks/months so they can carry on being pure evil’ can just shut up, because you’re wrong.

Dave said so.

Fake meat feat

So it turns out that my mind is about 20 years ahead of where it should be, as I assumed they’d already be able to create meat in laboratories. I have no idea why – maybe it’s down to all the sci-fi I ingest and all the videogames I play that are about… scientists… with vats of meat… or something.

Well it turns out they can create meat in labs, but not as well as I’d have assumed. Read this, or at least a bit of it if you can’t be bothered with all of it, and come back here. Or don’t – I mean, the Grauniad is a good read anyway so I understand if you prefer it to coming back here. Try Cracked.com while you’re going, too. They do good internets over there.

Anyway, lab-grown meat. It’s a reality, but the tech isn’t there to make it commercially viable. Yet. Later this year Heston Blumenthal will be cooking a burger of lab-made meat that will have cost about £200,000 to make. That’s a lot. But hey, DVD players cost about £500 at the turn of the century. Now you get them free with your chips that you eat every single day of your life.

Barring an oil industry/electric car-style crackdown on the development and tech behind fake meat – feat – we’ll see it available to buy and eat and throw at people in… I don’t know how long. But at some point.

Would you eat it? I would. Though having said that, I’d eat most anything as long as it isn’t an onion.

But what about veggies and vegans? It takes a lot of the cruelty complaints out of the equation, true, but an animal does have to die at some point in the chain for the science bods to be able to create hundreds of tons of meat. Does that make it more acceptable to those who are opposed to meat on cruelty grounds? Is it still too much if there’s even one death to feed hundreds – thousands – of people?

Genuinely quite interested in this, I have to say. And I do hope they sort it so we can reclaim our fields and turn them into large, faceless shopping centres or something.

Tidy tidy moth moth

It began like any other day: a leap from bed, a quick wazz and, almost shaking with sheer motivation, the big chore began. I would tidy my room today, and it would be like every other time I’d done it in that… wait, what?

No, it began like no other day has ever began in this flat. The place wasn’t a total shit tip, but I hadn’t actually properly tidied it. Ever. Since moving in April 2010.

Yeah, I’m a scumbag whatever get over it.

But this morning I genuinely awoke with some motivation to tidy the place. And for once, rather than letting said motivation slide by the wayside as I occupied my mind with other things, I actually followed through.

Now it’s taken a while and the results aren’t what I’d call brilliant – I’m not one of nature’s tidiers – but I now have a cleanish flat. To the point I’m less embarrassed for people to come around.

That’s not an invite, as I hate you all and I want to play Binary Domain for the rest of the day.

One thing though: seems the ton of little moths in my room isn’t just because I have had my windows open for two years. Seems the little buggers have been going through one of those whole ‘circle of life’ things I’ve heard so much about.

What this means is there are now patches of moth-eaten carpet in my flat. Which is… odd. Shall have to get some green spraypaint to hide the fact.

Also: I fixed my camera and my wardrobe, the latter of which involved hammering. Yes folks: today I was allowed to use my hammer legitimately.

A good day. Now: coffee.

Read lots

When you read advice from authors about how to ‘become a writer’ or write a book of your of your own or whatever they always offer one nugget of advice: read lots.

Well, actually they offer lots of similar-sounding chunks of information, be it helpful or not. They also say write lots. And things like ‘do it or don’t do it’. Also: don’t try. But yeah – read lots pops up a lot.

I think I’ve just figured out why. I’ve just finished reading The Death Of WCW – something I’ve been meaning to read since it came out in 2004 – and it’s really hammered home the ‘read lots’ ethos. It’s simple enough: a fact-based look back at one of the most spectacular implosions in entertainment business history, seeing a company being the biggest and best in the world at what it did to being an abject failure worth next to nothing in the space of two-three years.

It’s interesting, it hits all the right spots (HA HA WRESTLING TERM) and it told me things I didn’t know.

But it’s also taught me that if I do ever get around to writing a book of any kind, especially a fact-based one, I will read it back to myself a few times. Because it seems the writers of this one didn’t. Either that or they’re so devoid of anything actually different to say that they feel the need to repeat themselves a dozen times through the book.

“Who would have guessed that Ted Turner wouldn’t be there to save them in the end? Certainly not Eric Bischoff.” (not verbatim) or something similar is repeated far too many times. The general skeleton of what happened – failing business lucks out, goes good, egos and idiocy gets in the way, loses loads of money, folds – is repeated far too many times. Pull-back-and-reveal ‘but he wasn’t a good enough businessman!’ paragraphs are repeated far too many times.

It repeats far too many times.

So, thanks to reading lots, I now know how I will write my first fact-based wrestling book. Or not write, as the case may be, because I don’t want to repeat far too many times.

Still, good book. 7/10

Tekken 2 ha ha ha

So they’re making a sequel to Taken, I see. It’s called Taken 2, which proves imagination certainly isn’t in short supply in the wonderful world of movies, and it once again stars Liam Neeson dealing with the fallout of a member – or two – of his family being kidnapped.

While in Europe, I should point out. That’s important, because you have to remember that Europe is very dangerous and you should never go there – Liam warns his daughter of this before she takes her fateful French trip in the original movie. Damn Europe, full of scummy Europeans. This time it’s those damn “ohh, we bridge the gap twixt two continents” Turkish bastards stealing his family.

Europe – who’d have it?

But the news this film exists fills me with mild joy – not the same level of joy you would find were Crank 3 to receive its first trailer treatment, or the delight that would accompany the announcement that Dumb and Dumber 2 is still coming with Jim Carrey attached…

…I like high brow films too, shut up.

But still, some joy accompanies this trailer. Because I like Luc Besson’s simplicity and minor insanity, and he’s involved again. I like Liam Neeson, because he’s Liam Neeson. I like action films. I liked the base levels the original Taken tapped into – revenge; the need to protect those you love; massive violence; beating up foreigners. I liked it all a lot, and I can already see I’m going to like the second movie.

Even if it’s shit.

Also: I really like how the reason his family gets fucked with this time is revenge for the quest of destruction Neeson went on in the first film. It’s like a feature-length version of the original Austin Powers’ ‘nobody ever thinks about the henchmen’ skits.

Really, though – can we get Crank 3 any time soon, please?