semen street...

Don't make assumptions...

....Just because I scratch me bamblesquatch

Oh Donkey, Oh Donkey, Oh Johnny Depp, Johnny Deep inside me* etc.....

It's sad, on my Tesco DVD rental thing I get the likes of Derrida (didn't Malcom Bradbury have a short story about people making 'Derrida The Movie'?) and The Year of the Sex Olympics which I 'accidentially' burnt to coin a phrase and then never watch yet I've watched 'A Bear's Tail' on DVD about twice. I know it's no doubt universally reviled, but I have a soft spot for Leigh Francis. When me and Badbrute saw the first episode ever of Bo Selecta! we did genuinely think it was hilarious...it may had something to do with all the hard drugs, booze and porn but what can you do it was funny. Mind you that was on seeing the first episode not thinking the same characters and catchphrases would be strung out for three series. Hey it not Spaced or Jam or anything, but it does make me laugh and it's not as bad as some of the things I watch on DVD.

*It's a quote from the show, trust me, you'll have to watch it.

We got motherfuckin's snakes....

Well...I'm very cynical as you know Ted...

'Snakes in a Plane' ...that is one tasty title....

I sometimes think that imdb's news department is taking the piss out of me when I read it first thing in the morning, I mean do I really need to knowing things like this on a daily basis.

Recently, there was news of a film that takes the b-movie biscuit... Snakes on a Plane...so soon after St. Patrick's Day? what the fuck is going on. These recent film titles and concepts sound like they have been copied from some lost episode of Father Ted where Dougal (in the manner of the Spider Baby debacle) recounts seeing a movie about snakes on this plane and the plane was crashing and the snakes had to learn to fly the plane but they couldn't in time so they ate it....'

I have a horrible feeling that we all, as a general of cyberdiddlers, will remember precisely where they were when they heard the film title 'Snakes on a Plane', there's already a good blog and some funny cartoons see above and the official site here. I have a bad feeling about this, like it's all some big joke at our expense adn then we get there it'll just be actors in their pants in a disused warehouse playing with themselves and staring directly at the carmera for an hour and half, actually doesn't sound too bad.

It's enough to make it seem to future generations that The Matrix is the most awe-inspiring and intelligent movie ever made and not a load of old teen-boy-wank...shit shit shit that's already happening.

Do you have 'scary, bouncing ugly balls'?

Your 'cube' a bit rusty...do you need some cube lube?

Tales of the Teen Titans

Where it's at?....

Luckily as a sexually frustrated teenager
trapped in my bedroom, as opposed to a sexually frustrated adult trapped in my bedroom, comics led the way in sex education over which areas to direct one's attention to as Starfire from the Teen Titans subtly demonstrates here from Tales of the Teen Titans 65 during one of their impromtu picnics.

'You're coming in loud and clear but I can't reply as my head has come loose from my body due to my massive fucking chin....'

Bad Supes....

So, I recently went home to Ireland and for the plane on the way back grabbed a handful of old comics from the Homunco-archive...and found this monstrosity from Superman The Man of Steel, 1992 Annual. (Which reminded me of this clamnuts post as supes' feet are convienently covered by some sort of gas, the sign of a shite artist perhaps?) Name and shame bit: Pencils Chris Wozniak, Inks Brad Vancata. What's up with his head? any perspective? what size is he meant to be here 12 feet?

















I mean, who the fuck is this lummox, this chump? Is this meant to be Clark Kent? Will DC allow anyone to draw their flagship character. Apparently so.

yah feckless gobsheens...

Top Ten Heroes of Irish Comedy

Had planned to get this up before Paddy’s Day but Guinness got in the Way! The celebration of ‘Orishness’ often overlooks Ireland’s more alternative comedy voices. Although we have a great tradition comedy on the page from Jonathan Swift to Lawrence Sterne to Flann O’Brien, getting decent Irish comedy in other media has always been a struggle as the likes of Leave it to Mrs. O’Brien will attest. So I’ve compiled a wee list of my top ten heroes of Irish Comedy, in no particular order:

1. Podge and Rodge. One of the best Irish comedy shows of recent years is Podge and Rodge: A Scare at Bedtime. It is the demented brainchild of They have a current show on RTE but I haven't got to see it yet.

2. Scrap Saturday. Dermot Morgan's biggest breakthrough before Father Ted, great political satire like a radio version of Spitting Image.

3. Flann O’Brien 'nuff siad, apparently sales have been going up beacuse of Lost, who'd a thunk it!.

4. Clamnuts this picture never fails to make me laugh.

5. Sean’s Show Criminally unrepeated and almost forgotten Channel four TV show from Sean Hughes no sign of it on DVD either.

6. Hall’s Pictorial Weekly

7. Graham Linehan and Arthur Matthews. Best known for Father Ted, they deserve an entry on their own. They have contriubted to Big Train, Brass Eye, Jam, Black Books and many more. I loved Linehan's 'Filmgoers Companian' in much-missed film mag Neon--couldn't find any scans but here's a nice bit in The Idler. Especially the one about the ill-fated passengers of the 'Iceberg Desdemona' which was tragically sunk by the Titantic. Read Linehan's Livejounral here.

8. Ding Dong Denny O Reilly. One of the alter egos of Paul Woodfull aka Paul Wonderful, a sort of spoof versions of patriotic outfits like The Wolfe Tones. He does great songs like 'The Craic we Had they we died for Ireland' and 'The Potatoes Aren't Lookin' the Best'.

9. Toasted Heretic.

10. Frank Kelly’s Christmas Countdown. The folks had this on vinyl with tracks by the great The Ayatollah Ceili Band


Any other suggestions?

"It's for people who don't switch off the news"...David Lloyd.

much as didn't want to like it, a good movie...

V for Value Judgment....

Curse my fanboy hide, it’s stopping me from enjoying a decent movie. When I first heard about V for Vendetta I was informed by snippets like the first announcement from Variety that it was to be set in an alternative history where ‘Hilter Won World War II’ the starting point of much lacklustre sci-fi. Thankfully, this was not the case and a world where Britain could easily slip into fascism by its own accord, not by some parallel dimension ploy, is portrayed. Then I read a Web report that it included a character talking about ‘eggy in a basket’ and I freaked out, thinking it would include some sort of Jack the Ripper view of olde Laaawdaan town where huddled masses would eat some sort of concoction that actually involved eating scrambled eggs and chips in a basket and say things like “aaaw I luv a bit ole eggy in the basket when I’s wotchin’ the queen on the telly, I ‘ope saaam terrooorist character don’t displace ‘er….”

Thankfully this is not the case ( I’ve just been to see it with the great HH where we discussed the 'eggy in a basket' conundrum, yes we have both had a situation where cutting a circular hole in a slice of bread, I normally use a highball glass, and breaking a egg into in and then frying the thing is quite common, but calling it 'eggy in a basket' is insane...ps you can fry the little remaining circle for the craic and have a little tiny round bit of French bread as well, how cool is that?).

Whatever Alan Moore’s problems with the film, I’m so glad David Lloyd got his moment of celluloid glory. I agree with Alan Moore’s problems, but he is in a relatively more comfortable position in comparison with most comic creators. He’s had his name up there twice on the screen (with From Hell and The League of Extraordinary Gentlemen) and has refused to have it up there for this one, where folks were practically begging for his approval.

It seems ironic that Siegel and Shuster had so many problems regaining creative control over Superman and just getting their names attached to a creative property, yet, churlishly, Moore wants his name taken off a creative work. He sold the rights, I can’t believe that Moore even in the 1980s was naïve about what that entailed. Although I did enjoy a 1988 ‘puplishorial’ from Jenatte Kahn on the back cover of Doom Patrol 9, yes kids the ole patrol did exist before Grant Morrison, where see gushes over Joel Silver’s credentials for making Watchmen as a movie, a meeting with Moore and the fact that she had pitched Watchmen as a movie when it was only three issues in!

As Moore himself said, and Stephen King has quoted this many times: "Apparently, someone asked Raymond Chandler once what he thought of Hollywood ruining all of his books. And he took them into his study and pointed up to the shelf where they all were, and he said, "Look, they're there. They're fine. They're okay."

As Warren Ellis recently noticed, about half of the hipsters in San Francisco now have a copy of V under their arms. This can’t be a bad thing. The movie reminded me of starting Media Studies for the first time and getting all hot and bothered about how news is put together, how the chaos of daily existence of the world is packaged into manageable stories. I hoped that V will get some current undergrads creaming themselves with geeky excitement over the possibilities of this area rather than trying to get the best mark with the least work. Ahh whatever, I'm a bitter geek but I think that whatever burgeoning comic intelligensia there is seems to treat Alan Moore like some mystic magical wizard from neverwhere, forgetting that he's the guy who burped Skizz onto this world. His word is not gospel, the introduction to the original V for Vendetta DC reprints implied he was so scared of living under Thatcher he was going to leave Britain, now he is going to stay in England forever and ever. The mystical treatment of his work belies that the simple fact that, when it comes down to it, he's a guy from Northampton that writes amazing stories.

Oh hi, I'm drinking a cocktail although it will no doubt short circuit my innards and oops! hehe I need some help with my swimming suit...imagine putting some boxer shorts on a washing machine...hot ain't it?

ohhh I'm a robot lady and my shoe's come off for some coquettish reason although I'm sure they are welded on.

MySpace Robot Ladies: I/We think you b cuty boy look fr marriy?

Prelude, back in the days of Donkey Kong, Superman III and Acorn Electrons, there was a sordid pocket of geekdom where one imagined having some lady love with a lady robot (listen to him! Like this was some sort of nationwide thing and not yet another personal peccadillo). What were we to do with films like Blade Runner, Cherry 2000 and Weird Science, which was on once in Ireland and my mam sent be to bed and wouldn’t let me see it, in retrospect a good decision. Anyway, she did let me stay up and watch David Cronenberg’s The Fly the night before my Leaving Cert English exam, which is what I attribute categorically for getting an A1 in it....anyway some current ennui...

Along with the auld podcasts, I'm loving the Myspace thwang*. It does allow one to keep in touch with old pals like the Dawn of the Replicants lads Roger Simian and Mike Small. It also allows one to project the impression of, you know, having friends. One of the sideeffects of Myspace is 'friend' requests from supposed ladeees. These messages appear to be randomly gendered horrorgubbins from fat sweaty bastards with too much time on there hands that will robably sell you panites down the line for like £5 a pop, proabably, I don't know the current rate of excahnge for auld ladies' drawers these days. I don't know waht women on Myspace have to put up with, probably fat sweaty bastards who don't have the decency to pretend to be hot bisexual/single/rich/models who are inexplicably single and wanting to meet cantankerous shuts ins like your dear narrator.
I thought I might do some textual analysis** of these 'requests'
First up, there's Janey with, count 'em 14 'i's

hiiiiiiiiiiiii
hello sweet how u doin am janey from usa livei n alaska,i saw ur profile and must tell u that i love u ,baby am singel seaching for my lifepatner ,am 32 years old ,am carring loving truthful ,i heat lie coz i have been hurt before by my own boyfrirend i dont know if ur intrested in meeting me this my mail adress janeyjulian4love@yahoo.com,hopeto hearfrom u soon ....janey

She's 'singel' and seeks a 'lifepatner', whatever that is, despite the fact that has a 'boyfrirend'....hope not to hearfrom you soon janey

Next up there's Rose 234, who sports a lovely see-through blouse, what a nice name! Is she one of the Wexford 234's? I can't wait until I hear the patter of tiny feet of all the little 234 McHomunculoids we might spawn if she wasn't a robot lady:

hello cute....
am rose from usa.. am 26 years old... i we like to known you more... then this..i really love the way you perform on your profile.i we like to meet you.....i want you to meet me...on yahoo messager...this is my id rose4allhuman@yahoo.com.. am glad from you...i really like you speck.. i love you too..you are too cute man i we onlin.. so fine cute add me bye...see you.. nice to meet you there..

I/we would love to meet you too because that yahoo id 'allhuman' really sets one's mind at rest. I love the way I perform on my profile too, although it's mostly eating 10p 'Nobbiy's Crisps' from Budgens and listening to the 'Spaced' soundtrack. I think I really like your 'speck' too but I don't know if we're talking about the same thing...


*I was going say the ole Myspace yoke, but I did not want to keep the the slang too Irish, 'yoke' being whatever random thing you have at hand but can't think of what to call it, like 'that yoke over there' although it did become slang for 'Es' as in 'get that yoke down yer neck' and 'those yokes were a bit dodge last night'.

**hey, it's my only marketable skill, I have to make it sound like looking at things and saying things about them is some sort of skill.

Happy drokkin' Paddy's Day, creep.

What no Leprechaun porn? What's the Internet coming to?

See, I tried to find a nice pic for Paddy's Day, but the auld ethergut didn't have 'owt.

The 'wireless' headphones that allow me to wander about the house dancing to Peaches and listening to podcasts and such...

...and all the motherfuckin' wires that come with them, which trip me up like that women in Evil Dead, it's like being attacked by Swamp Thing every morning.

Podcasts: More feckin' voices in my head.

Normally I have to provide my own bizarre voices of geekdom*, but the new medium of the Podcast allows fellow maniacs and enthusiasts from all around the world beam their thoughts straight into one’s demented noggin. For me, it started with the much-publicised Ricky Gervais Show, with the comedy genius that is Karl Pinkerton.

Sinead’s Tent of Blue post on atheism led me through some procrastinating browsing firstly to this great espoual of humanism Penn Jillette’s great podcast.

Of course there is a great supply of geekcasts like The Signal that discusses Firefly and Serenity, Bill Jordaine's Golden Age of Superheroes and Lene Taylor's great I Read Comics, Ben Howard and Dan Auty's Mondo Movies, which is kind of likelistening to two Mark Kermondes (that aren't pricks) riffing on bizarre movies after a few pints. Oh and there's the geek news of Wired's podcasts featuring Momus's column (how apt) iMomus.

Music wise there's loads too, like the great They Might Be Giants and Erol Alkan podcasts

As regards visuals, I've been loving Kyle Baker's recent run on Plastic Man and his animation podcast Kyle Baker presents The Bakers

Violet Blue’s Open Source pointed me towards the Evil Angel’s delightfully entitled, ‘Pudcast’ (basically dvd trailers of their 'wares'). Worth downloading for a bit but it doesn’t get updated much and when it automatically updates you get duplicates of each title which sucks, I mean how many times can one stomach Jules 'there ya go' Jordan’s horrendous modern art mirrors.
Has the Jimmny thinking I should commit some of my demented ramblings to a podcast.

*Things I say within my own heard:

1. Whenever I put on my snood, I always pull it over my nose and say "You become a legend, Mister Wayne" in the manner of Liam Neeson in Batman Begins, it is amusing to me perhaps only.

2. Often before leaving the house for a night of carousing, oh so seldom these days where I repeat in head the following line from Blade:
Blade: There are worse things out tonight than vampires. Dr. Karen Jenson: Like what? Blade: Like me.

Thoughts for the real wonder women.

The real wonder women....

I spend a lot of time studying fictional wonder women, but I doubt very much that I would have ended up the way were it not for the real wonder women that have formed my thoughts, given me so much of my humour and intelligence and been there for me so many times. It's always a shock when these women face problems of their own when they seem so effordtlessly funny, intelligent and courageous. Hera help them.

Nicky Hambleton-Jones....so wrong it's right.

The current dark obsessions of Jimmny Homunculus

Howdy All,

Due both real life (i.e. teaching) and non-real-life concerns (i.e. playing Half-Life 2 until I can't see and my hands don't work) I haven't done some proper posting* in a while. So here's some of the my current dark obsessions** :

Reality TV: You Are What You Watch?..I hope not. Forgot to mention Ramsey's Kitchen Nightmares, it's good.

Half Life 2: Better than sex, more addictive than crack* What will I fill my days with now? oh yeah ard work, drats.

Obscure Comics: Hanging with Booster Gold. (according some, wearer of one of the worst superhero costumes of all time) I do like comics, I may have mentioned it before.

*Don't know what a 'proper post' of The Life and Times of Jimmny Homunculus would entail.
**Aren't they all.

"Fantasy Comics"

"Reality TV"

'Straight-talking nutritionist Gillian McKeith'

Some sort of Scottish toilet Boglin?

Reality TV: You Are What You Watch?..I hope not,

Whenever I escape from my room to get something to eat, whenever I cook I turn on the TV and always seems to be some emotionally cruel Reality TV show. You know the ones You Are what You Eat and 10 Years Younger. Gillian McKeith never seems to see the irony of her position, sure these folks are fat and lazy as fuck but they don’t look like a wretch and they don’t go round smelling little lunch boxes of other peoples’ shite. I thought, Christ! She looks like a Boglin (you know the things rubber troll-like puppets) and then imagined creating a line of ‘Gillian McKeith’ Toilet Boblins, little rubber likeness of her scrawny face that you could leave in your toilet and they’d float round reminding you to produce, as she would say ‘healthy poos’.

Then there’s the emotional dominatrix that is Nicky Hambleton-Jones is it wrong to find her hot? I think some of it to do with her actually wearing proper glasses and not being one of those folks that wears glasses because they think they’re cool rather than actually need them—kinda like that Bill Hicks bit where he says coughing deliberately in front of smokers was like dancing in front of a wheelchair user. .. going 'hey mister wheelchair man...I'll race ya'

Half-Life 2, 'my kingdom for a crowbar....'

Half Life 2: Better than sex, more addictive than crack*

Before I came to Norwich I spent about 4 months at home in my teenage bedroom while writing my abstracts and going down to Dublin each Friday to pass them over in a plain brown envelope to John of Counago & Spaves fame. It was a good short-term arrangement. I saved up a bit of money by avoiding the rents of Dublin for a while before embarking on my current academic folly, could read as many Model Rail Roader, The Humanist and Ebony articles as I liked. The only problem was running an office from a wee bedroom. One of the ways I maintained my sanity* was by engrossing myself in the crowbar-swishing scary as hell first person shooter Half-Life. Who can forget a game in which the climax is jumping from ledge to ledge trying to drop grenades into the open brain of a giant floating foetus thing that keeps chanting and blasting you with stuff that sends you into another dimension.

Anyway, in another example of the greatness of the auld blogs, a regular-reader and secret first person shooter aficionado ‘JR’ read my recent mention of waiting until I had enough to purchase Half-Life 2 and lent me his copy. For about a week I did little else besides preparing for class, teaching, eating and playing Half-Life 2. It is one of the greatest looking and playable games for the xbox. The real-life physics are amazing, the gravity gun is a lot of fun to use and the characters are extremely believable. It is hard to describe the happiness of getting a crow bar thrown at me with the words ‘here, I think you forgot this in Black Mesa’. Like a lacklustre Hollywood action movie that is great for its duration but makes no sense, however, Half-Life 2 does have a bit of a story lack, but it does leave a fair bit to the imagination and leaves you waiting for Half-Life 3, maybe that's the intention so I can all read stuff like this in the meantime. In any event any Half-Lifers who are reading this can raise a glass in a sort of virtual toast and say feck you, you fucking G-Man.

*Not that I would know about either of these things.
**The jury may be still out on whether I did.

Ah the Shamrock, my favorite obscure superhero, maybe I will dress up as her for Paddy's Day....

Booster Gold gets revenge for all those years of obscurity...

Obscure Comics: Hanging with Booster Gold.

Whereas some comic fans are completist and rush out to buy their monthly titles when they come out. I’ve always taken a cheaper and more obscure path*, maybe it’s quantity over quality but I do love my bizarre comics**. The majority of my comic collection was bought for a price range of about 25p to 75p per comic (over a pound’s pushing it, although I recently bought Blue Beetle number one for £1.50). Rather playing exorbitant fees for the ‘cool’ comics of the late 1980s/early 1990s like X-Men (when the Jim Lees and Rob Liefelds of this world were stinking up the place) I was reading the likes of Marvel Comics Presents, DC Showcase, She Hulk, Wonder Man, Damage Control, Spider-Man 2099, Justice League International, Justice League Europe etc. Apart from cheering fro the underdog, I bought these comics because you could normally pick up 10-12 issue runs and story arcs of the lesser-known superheroes for the same amount of money as one issue of a brand new X-Force or something.

I have recently been repeating this madness (my life is one of constant returns) in Norwich comic emporium Abstract Sprocket. Where I have been picking up the likes of Manhunter, Justice League Task Force, Blue Beetle, The Heckler, Firestorm: The Nuclear Man, Captain Atom. Thanks to Wikipedia I can now fall further down the big geek hole and get enraged once again over things like the true identity of Monarch during the Armageddon 2001 Crossover. Thankfully I can go onto campus and rant to ‘Fabes’ (seen here with his Living Tribunal Series) about it as he is an aficionado on the highest order of things like The New Universe and Quasar (and alerted me to this series that has started to feature Miguel O’Hara aka Spider-Man 2099, I used to like him because he was half-Irish and once did a lino print of his logo for an art project and my art teacher worried that I was into something occult to my mam at a parent teacher meeting!)

*Don't I always.
**Christ! is this some sort of 'understatement post'

Jaysus lads would you get Guard Padraig's face back on before these townies figure us out....

Dublin riot round-up

Before drawing a discreet veil over this tawdry affair (and so I can continue using this site a place to foisting my bizarre obsessions on people and not deal with real-life things) thought I'm better alert ye to some Irish bloggers who were there! First up there was a certain Dumb Riffer, who profiles on the spot analysis. Small Bag of Anger has a eve longer post here, and the precociously talentes Bob Bryne provides a look at what the Gardai are really like under them hats....are you the owner of this cyborg ve-hi-cle.

The like of myself and Caddy Powers had to observe from the sidelines, maybe I can start a St. Patrick's day riot by myself in Norwich...anyone with me?