Australia is a Long Haul

Not Chicken Stuff

Like many people, I’ve made the stomach churning, buttock clenching decision to pack up my belongings into a burlap sack and emigrate to Australia. Statistically, 60 people a day move here. From my own experience, another statistic is that at least 20 people a day will ask you ‘Why are you bothering?’. For some people, the decision to start a new life with my partner of 5 years is the equivalent of shitting on the Queen. During her Christmas speech. Whilst blowing raspberries to the tune of God Save the Queen by the Sex Pistols. I’ve found I’ve had to be selective about how I explain why I’m going. Mention the weather  and I’m told it’s too hot in ‘bloody Australia’. Mention the potential to live a better way of life, I’ve inadvertently brought down the entire infrastructure of Great Britain and it’s glorious empire.

That said, it was during the second of the two long haul flights that I started to side with the pompous arses.

It’s been about 4 years since my last long haul flight and I think I sweetened the memories over the years. Oh it was lovely. Quantas economy seats are very spacious. You dine off gold trays. You get rude massages off the stewardesses. The very fact I thought these things suggests to me that there is something fundamentally wrong with my cognitive processes and I should seek immediate attention with a bonce specialist.

This year, within two hours of the first flight to Australia, my brain sent signals to all interested parties in my body that there was no way on God’s feted Earth I would be sleeping despite it being an overnight flight. As such, I entrusted my very being with the in-flight entertainment system.

As with all in-flight systems, most of my enjoyment comes out of trying to spot all the instances of editing that come with watching films on a plane. Back in the day, we would all sit on a plane, with orange headphones attached to ears like cybrmen headsets and watch the same episode of Some Mothers Do ‘Ave ‘Em as everyone else. Nowadays, you can watch what you want when you went within certain predetermined rules. What these rules are, I’ve yet to work out. For example, during the recent summer blockbuster The A-Team, I was allowed to see guns fired, people punched, but no actual explosions. Swearing was cut down to comedic  dubbing.

‘Sir this is chicken STUFF.’

‘You think this is chicken STUFF. When I’m done they’ll think this chicken STUFF is chicken salad.’

Meanwhile, watching my 12^th episode of the Simpsons in a row, I was treated to a scene of Bart Simpson, dressed as Johnny Rotton, dispelling everything as being ‘Bollocks’. Okay, yes, they were using bollocks in that way Americans tend to do when they want to use what they think is typical British slang – Alright, you wanker, this here is bollocks now slag off! – however, the irony that I got more swearing in 22 minutes than a whole action movie was not lost on me.

At first it was amusing, then annoying and then like everyone else I became a drone to the system. Clutching the remote in sweaty palms, I mumbled the mantra as everyone else on the plane; ‘Ooh, that’s only just come out. FIVE episodes of Friends?!  Oh Ambassador, truly you are spoiling us’. I watched Shrek 4 for Christ’s sake.

Done with the goggle box embedded into the chair in front of me, I begin to spy on my fellow passengers. The passenger I took the most interest in was the lady two rows in front who was watching the remake of the Karate Kid. Why did this take my interest? Because she was ALWAYS watching the remake of the Karate Kid. I must have looked over every half hour or so to see Will Smith’s precocious little brat waxing on and off. So, suggesting that it’s about 2 hours long and the first part of the flight was 7 hours long… She’d already seen it 3 and a half times! Does anyone need that much Jackie Chan in their life? Evidently so.

Anyway, the point of the matter is that all my brain farts about how amazing it is to travel in economy made me realise I had been thinking absolute toss about flying and, as such, I began to resent Australia for being so far away. Stupid dumb red country. Ridiculous distance away. No frigging water or Government to speak of (which was true whilst I was in the air). Wail. Knash teeth.

And yet if I hadn’t done the flight, I wouldn’t be here now and, despite the fact I’m presently homeless, living in a room at the back of my mother-in-law’s house, I wouldn’t change this for a thing. So, suck it non-believers.

Ripper, bonza, etc. The end.

How to start an internet meme and not be Kanye West

1) Be a furry.

2) Write a somewhat dubious story about Pokemon sex. Have it end up on Topless Robot as part of his Fan Fiction Friday. Click here for that. Please note: Said story is completely NSFW.

3) Upon discovering the story send an email to said website declaring yourself to be an amazing author. Make sure it’s badly written and starts off with WHOSE RESPONSIBLE THIS!

WHOSE RESPONSIBLE THIS? I wanna know whose idea was this RIGHT NOW. Who did this on purpose, huh? I found this little secret and I’m so angry I wanna know who did this and why or I’ll report everyone here to the site moderaters on this website and Yiffstar and have the one responsible BANNED FOR LIFE. NOW TELL ME WHO DID THIS NOW?

This will then lead to things like this:

and this:

CONGRATULATIONS! You will now have a meme sweeping the internet. At last count there were over 83 million hits on Google.com.

Epilogue: If you get chance, threaten to ban everyone from the site you usually write for. This will make sure the meme spreads further and gets talked about on little blogs like this. Click here for that.

Now, take a deep breath and answer me:

WHOSE RESPONSIBLE THIS!

Maybe, even, someone will even write a song.

*Author’s Note: I hope no one from Topless Robot minds me stealing these images. Just had to do my bit and spread the word.*

Idiot Box Movie Ideas number 1: Glasses

Tagline: They share more than the same prescription…. They share a mother

Synopsis: Four men meet in the lobby of a cinema each wearing the same pair of black rimmed glasses. We discover they are brothers who haven’t spoken to each other for an extended period of time.

• David (Play by Will Ferrell): A brilliant journalist who has a crippling addiction to cocaine whose wife doesn’t understand him and is having an affair with Alan.
• Alan (Played by Bill Murray): A brilliant gynaecologist who has a crippling addiction to Nescafe Half and Half coffee, whose wife doesn’t understand him and is having an affair with David.
• Colin (Played by Colin Farrell): A brilliant English teacher who has a crippling addiction to Buckaroo whose wife doesn’t understand him and is having an affair with Haley Joel Osment.

After leaving the cinema and acknowledging that they are back in each other’s lives, they decide to let their mum know they are not actually dead. We learn in flashbacks that this was a prank that went horrendously wrong and led to each of their crippling addictions.

Their mother lives in Blackpool, UK, England, and so they make a perilous journey from California to the north of England via a first class ticket on Virgin Air. The flight is played out in real time and, it is here, we begin to appreciate how much their middle class lifestyle is bringing them nothing but dismay. Colin, unable to cope with his own genius, ends up having an affair with the pilot. Alan kills himself but then decides against it, comes back from the dead and tells everyone he’d been hurt in a fencing incident.

This ennui is emphasised further during a monumentally touching scene where Will Ferrell masturbates on the plane to The Darjeeling Limited in slow motion and to the tune of Jeff Buckley’s Hallelujah. See he has money, but he’s unhappy. No further explanation is needed. If you don’t appreciate the sub-text, then you clearly don’t understand what it is to be middle class. The whole scene is played out in HD and audience members will wear 3D glasses so they actually feel like Will Ferrell is crying in their faces.

When they arrive at Blackpool, we discover they remember that they don’t have a mum and they’re not related. However, in a way they are brothers. Everyone looks inside themselves, and realises they’ve learnt something. Credits roll and we play some obscure track that no one outside of the film would really listen to, but it’ll end up at number one on iTunes a week later.

Oh, and one of them writes poetry as well the whole time. Real emotional stuff that first year students will recite in the Student Union when they’re trying to getting laid.

Director: Wes Anderson

Notes: Alan’s addiction to Nescafe could lead to big bucks when it comes to sponsorship. It didn’t hurt Nightwatch.

Oh the Tales I Could Tell…

I'm in Doctor Who don'cha know... Honest.

When I wrote the Instant Doctor Who press release, I racked my brains trying to think of the least likely people who would be suggested to appear in Doctor Who. Clearly I didn’t think hard enough because had I done so, I may have predicted Mike Skinner from music’s popular The Streets.

At some point in the last 48 hours, the cheeky chappy, who encouraged us all to push things forward, put up on his twitter account that he was going to be appearing in Doctor Who. A few moments later he took down the status with a nod to The Usual Suspects – ‘And like that, the Tweet is deleted’.

Already some website sites are saying that Mike has confirmed he will be in Doctor Who and some forums have now treated the news with the same seriousness that warrants the financial crisis or swine flu.

It could all be true. Maybe Doctor Who needs one more person pretending to be cockney, but it seems to this humble writer that Mr Skinner, like a dialysis machine, is taking the piss. As I’ve mentioned in previous articles, the internet, whilst a fantastic forum for chicken vindaloo recipes and porn, is also an amazingly cheap and fast way to spread rumours. After all the furore of Lily Allen’s phantom appointment to Doctor Who, it wouldn’t surprise me if Mr Skinner had one too many and decided to see how quickly his ‘news’ could sweep across the internet.

And to be honest, if this is a scam, I don’t blame him for doing it. Yes, I’m not a big fan of people taking the slightest bit of Doctor Who gossip seriously, but I do happen to have a penchant for spreading untrue rumours myself. Back in the day, nothing would make me happier than seeing how far some absolute tosh I had made up could go. Whilst in Rock Kitchen, Manchester, I had someone tell me in all honesty that he knew for absolute fact that Fightstar had a table reserved in the corner of the room and they would be coming in after a gig. A wonderful story I had started spreading only 2 hours before. To have it recounted to me by a complete stranger was quite satisfying and strangely moreish. Whilst at university, I sent out a load of flyers to the various halls of residence in the area telling them the new rules concerning moving out at the end of term. Seeing bags of rubbish being left outside the security office on my way home made me hopeful that in some of the rooms there were bowls of vinegar to ‘reduce the smell of tobacco’ and lots of missing light bulbs that had to be removed due to ‘health and safety reasons’.

In light of recounting past glories and Mike Skinner’s tweeting, I’ve begun to wish I was famous just so I could take advantage of the fact that everything I say could be misconstrued as the truth. Even if I eventually ‘fessed up that everything I had said was complete bilge, I would probably still see my face in the tabloids with a headline declaring that a heavy period of drugs an alcohol has left me doubting myself. I don’t think enough celebrities do it aside from those that have to lie about why their latest film hasn’t been shown to the press before release.

Those that come to mind include:

• I give Linsey Lohan legal advice.
• I’m in talks with Michael Bay and Jerry Bruckheimer to make Mr Toad’s Wild Ride a 4 hour CGI epic starring Steven Seagal.
• I am the Walrus.
• I will have my first homosexual experience with Colin Farrell during the halftime of the Superbowl. At the climax of the act I would cry out the name of my favourite brand of soft drink. Would it be Pepsi or Cola? Who knows, but there would be only one way to find out.
• Any other celebrity that died I would immediately say that they were a big influence on me and the world is a sadder place without them regardless of their talent, their history or disturbing collection of tiny shoes in the attic
• I was in a remake of Shaft due to be filmed in Walford.
• I was giving the young woman in my car directions…with my penis.
• Colin Farrell has begun to stalk me. Apparently our time together during the Superbowl awoke something in him.
• I’ve come to believe that Jesus was a lizard who will one day return to tell us the one true religion and it’s not what you thought it was. I will interview him for E! network.
• I am Colin Farrell.
• My wife will have an operation that will allow us to show the gestating of our first child through fibre optic cameras via livefeed on the internet.

Keep your eyes peeled to the red tops.

It’s Spelt Ianto not Janto Parte the Second: The Proposal

Okay, I couldn’t let this go without mentioning it.

Save the Coffee Boy, an anti-Ianto’s death website, has started to put together a brief to send to the BBC to explain their dismay and get them to reverse RTD’s decision to kill of the espresso server. To quote:

The past few days have been very discouraging for everyone here, me included. However, I think we need to realise that this campaign was never going to be easy. RTD was never going to roll over and have his belly rubbed by Save Ianto fans. In fact, I it is NOW that the hard work for us all begins, because as people becoming disheartened by what is happening, they may start to leave the campaign and move onto new things. THIS IS WHAT THE BBC AND RTD ARE WAITING TO HAPPEN. They know we are upset, but they are assuming that things will die down, we’ll go away and Ianto will be forgotten. So in many ways, the real campaign starts now!

As I wrap up , I just want to say to any Ianto fan’s who may haev stumbled across this by accident. I would never stop you doing this, even if I had the power to do so. It just seems to me, that with everything else that’s happening on this planet, trying to ressurect a dead coffee boy should be the least of your problems.

However, if you are a big Ianto fan, want him back and are a (no kidding) statistician, then please feel free to head over there and lend a hand.

Otherwise, please join me for a collective primal scream.