Feck, I missed a good riot....
Tuesday, February 28, 2006
Feck, looks like I missed a good riot...
Dudes, much as I admire the 'love across baricades' mentality what in sweet fuck did you think would happen if you bus loads of Orange Men down to Dublin! As always Indymedia has some great reports and amazing pictures. I don't pull the 'I'm from a border county' stichk much, but I know the mooks in Dublin don't know shit about Northern loons and Northern loons don't know shit about Dublin loons. They both think they're as hard as each other and putting them in the same fucking city is madness.
Go! Go! Go!
Would love to stay up til all hours and write more but have to teach 24 unlucky/lucky* souls everything I know about Superman in less than 8 hours time and I'm just back from seeing The Go! Team at UEA. They were fucking excellent and are immediately in my top 3 gigs I've ever seen in UEA (the other two? Frank Black and the Catholics and Radio Soulwax).
In Ninja, the Go! Team have a black, female, young and beautiful version of Iggy Pop! think of that! imagine the energy and the high-kicking insanity.
*delete as applicable.
Monday, February 27, 2006
What is the worth of a man?
Well if you're Vernon Kay, the UEA ents team have inadvertently developed a formula that answers this existential poser. Last week Vernon was supposed to preside over a Pyjama Party Sleep-over style affair. I can only imagine what such events entail (and I have in great detail). Entry to this nocturnal debacle would have set you back £5, but because he cancelled the fee was only £3.50.
So a simple 'How much is Veron Kay Worth?' equation would be:
Vernon Kay=whoever went to a UEA pyjama party X £1.50.
It was probably a very tough decision, whether to watch some Norwich oiks stumble around in PJs or do some more coke off of Tess Daly's backside....probably. I don't want to give the impression that I actually go to such events, I only know about them because I have to put the bar's empty bottles into a recycling thing out the back of UEA (actually near my old 'home' Waveney Terrace) and usually grumble to myself at all the shite events and look over at the demolished parts of Waveney and gloat over surviving the 1970s prison-style environment* and the gruesome times that were had by all within.
*have been hearing this urban legend for over 13 years now, in every college I've ever attended or visited and am too old and tired to argue with the wide-eyed alarmists who tell you in all honesty that their halls were 'based on prison designs' that were not used because they did not pass 'Geneva Convention' regulations.
Monday, February 20, 2006
Sunday, February 19, 2006
Bootleg toys from hell
The great Bob Byrne over at Clamnuts celebrated Valentine's day in style by discussing bootleg toys. This gave me the excuse I've been waiting for to show pics of the scariest toys ever (see below). My camera couldn't quite pick out horrific details like their bright red lipstick or 'Buzzinski's receeding ginger hairline. It was also an excuse to look up some great sites like Bootleg Toys: The Undiscovered Playthings.
I don't know what it is but I always end living near sources of insanely scary bootleg toys. Back in the day, Badbrute, oldgrom and I used to scour the dodgy discount emporia of Portrush for horrific examples of toymaking brian wrongs. There was "Spatank" that could change from a box-shaped robot to a "tank" that looked suspciously like a box-shaped robot. There was also "Troll Force". Man, whoever worked in whatever toy warehouse that spawned "Troll Force" deserves some sort of prize. Picture the scene, they've got lots of unwanted Troll dolls and loads of unwanted wrestling action figures why not take all the troll heads and put them on wrestlers' bodies...and low, Troll Force was born.
Although I have a soft spot for my "Supercop" action figure (not to be confused with Robert Cop 3), the monstrosities pictured below are prized in my collection of cheap knock-offs. What demented child slaves had to paint these things with toxic paint? Why does the Buzz doll have no space helmet? a more burning question is why he looks like a Tor Johnson in drag. These little fellas have accompanied me to every desk job I ever had, guarding it with their bizarre black eyes, which follow you around the room. I suspect they are coated with toxic paint that has slowly eaten away at my nervous system and may perhaps be the explanations for my bizarre opinions and cantankerous ways.
Friday, February 17, 2006
Magnificant Sevens...
Thankfully the sevens meme that McManus sent on has faciliated some top procrastination musings from the likes of Urban Ramblings' Royston and the Long Moths Of Boredom rather than annoyance.
Tuesday, February 14, 2006
Feck Valentine's Day one year on...
Has a year passed already, it doesn't seem that long ago I have a two part rant on hating St. Valentine's Day. A year has passed and my opinions remain exactly the same. I couldn't resist putting up my 'Feck Valentine's Day' alternative card design (with apologies to Evan Dorkin.).
I will be spending my St. Valentine's day with a 30 foot Cyberdemon as I try to finish Doom 3 and will probably watch some Justice League: Unlimited, Star Trek: Enterprise and Mighty Boosh episodes I procured off Limewire. I'll probably spend of the rest of the day writing, reading comics and, I don't know, spending some time with my action figures (for once, not a euphemism) and playing a bit of old-school Half-Life for the laugh on my PC, just to have every sad geek base covered. This will be puncuated by making obscene hand gestures to any couples I see walking past my window as I intend not to leave the house, or with any luck, my room, until this vile day is over.
At least I'm not alone on mid-air attack-dog killing....
Who'd have thought it but some of my dodgier answers on the 7 things meme have been shared by young Caddy Powers read his hilarious answers here. Plus his mention of the Green Lantern corps gives me an excuse to include pics like the one above. Damn Wikipedia! once you start you cans stop. A simple wee look up about the Green Lantern corps after watching Justice League episode 'Hearts and Minds' leads to looking up The Question and trying to figure out who all the different Manhunters in the DC Universe are.
Saturday, February 11, 2006
Oh Tesco, I know you're trying to take over the world but you know not what you do....
My great sisters got me Tesco DVD rental for my 30th birthday! It's amazing, I can now get to see every insane film I remember from my childhood and half-arsed trailer I saw at three in the morning. So far I've rented The Suicide Girls: The First Tour, Eve of Destruction, They Might Be Giants documentary Gigantic: A Tale of Two Johns.
But there's the kicker, and how my sisters' gift just keeps on giving, Tesco email me and say 'hey, do you want to write a review of the DVD you have just received?' and I, like Jeremy in Peep Show on his wedding day, say...."Do I?"
Well yes I do, since, you, Tesco have asked, I would like to rant insanely about the obscure films that no one other than me would want. I mean it's my own fault, I requested these movies...but still I didn't make these movies, it's not entirely my fault if they are steaming piles of shit. And it is also your fault Mr Tesco to ask me to review them, is that what you want? coz that's what's gonna happen'?....
so far, my Tesco DVD reviews:
Suicide Girls: The First Tour The first tour? Let's hope it's the last...
27th January, 2006 Lorcan McGrane from Norwich I had been really looking forward to this title, so it is understandable that I was ultimately disappointed. The problem is one of projection. The Suicide Girls book and Web site projects an image of the participants as arty, sexy, hip and intellectual--one imagines them supping Absynth while reading Bataille and listing to Peaches. Seeing them in the flesh and hearing some of the idiotic things they say had my stomach churning. These aren't sexual revolutionaries these are spoilt rich Americans (all white too, although the Web site is more diverse) with too much time on their hands. Let's face it, behind every occupation like 'part-time tattooist/piercer' or 'burelesque artist', there is a rich parent back home facilitating this facile inanity--hoping some day they'll settle down. There is a difference between having a an intellecually stimulating reason for being 'alternative' and seeing someone on a Web site and thinking I want to be just like them. Although they play at lesbianism, true sexual trangression seems to not exist in the universe of the Suicide girls. Lowlights include: One of the Sucide Girls laughing as she recounts almost biting the nipple off a guy at college and him needing nine sitches: 'And the funniest thing was he never came back to college!' I'm sure he thought it was Hi-lar-ious. The Suicide Girls harassing an Indian cab driver at four in the morning saying they'd pay him ten dollars to lie naked on his cab. A game of 'truth or dare' with no truth beyond what male audiences want to hear and no dares that don't involve society-endangering public nudity. Vague Highlight: The Probot video, although this is not far removed from old Motley Crue ones. Thank feck renting this from Tesco didn't set me back the 18.99 it costs to buy! I din't realise the 'suicide' part of Suicide Girls referred to their intellect
Eve of Destruction Ah jeez, I've got to stop renting films on the basis of video covers I saw in rural Ireland when I was 15! How could one resist the story of a female scientist who creates 'Eve' a female cyborg...in her own image. 'Eve of Destruction'...do you get it yet? It's kind of like 'The Good Life', do you remember the family was called 'the Goods' was it with an 'e'? 'The Goodes' maybe it was...anyway this scientist creates a female cyborg and wouldn't know, it's powered by a nuclear device in its womb. To add insult to insanity, not only does the cyborg have nuclear bits, its brain is fried with the repressed memories and trauma of its creator. Anyway it goes on a crime spree exploding all in its wake...it's up some Hollywood action type to stop it...who ya gonna call? Well, in this case it's Gregory Hines, that famous hard-ass action hero. Suffice to say it's pretty dull. Hines is okay but his tap-dancing skills are hard to equate with saying things like 'shut up bitch!', firing big guns and hanging on that bit that goes below helicopters, you know that bit? I'd love to hang off that bit. Dutch actress Renee Soutendijk has a good stab at the dual role as wallflower scientist and sex-crazed cyborg but she does not seem to get the idiom of American action movies.
Gigantic: A Tale of Two Johns. I slavishly watched the trailer for this movie on the Internet before it was released, knowing in the back of my mind that it would never be released in the UK. Low and behold, it wasn't. This is an entertaining, well-researched solid documentary about alternative U.S. band They Might Be Giants. Famous in the UK for 'Birdhouse in your Soul', which, as I remember jostled for chart space with the Stone Roses' Fools' Gold and Jeff Wayne's Eve of the War. Anyway, it's good but with a few disappointments. First up: Although Harry Shearer and Micheal McKean (of Spinal Tap and much more besides fame) and Janeane Garofalo appear prominantly in the trailer, they merely read out They Might Be Giants' lyrics out rather than discussing why they like the band. Second, and maybe it's the film geek in me, every interviewee talk about the band name 'They Might be Giants' as if it's some sort of existensial riddle. These are all media-savvy intellectual Americans, don't they know it comes from that 1971 movie of the same name where George C. Scott plays a lawyer who thinks he's Sherlock Holmes.
More to come!.
Missives from the abstract mines...
Back in the day, I worked in the 'abstract mines' of Dublin for shadowy Mr. Burns types based in Harlem. They figured those there Irish would be good at the auld visual speech type stuff. Our job was summarize American consumer magazines in bit-sized abstracts to make them palatable for Yank libararies (especially in the case of Rosie, this was no mean feat! this magazine was pure gold, sure start a magazine, but appear in the background of every fucking cover even almost choking your star to do so). Anyway my old boss at this job who channels his considerable literary talent into Counago & Spaves and may or may not also know Joseph McManus , who may or may not be a member of the CIA. He sent me this meme after this fine post, how could I refuse!
Seven things I must do before I die
- Build a Robocop Chair (that’s a chair made of individual VHS copies of Robocop (original rental versions for the back and main bit, narrower sell-thru covers for the arms). Connected projects are a Robocop 2 coffee table and a Robocop 3 foot stool.
- Rip the throat out of an angry dog in mid air before it attacks me for some reason…with my bare hands…I am imagining some sort of post-apocalyptic scenario here)
- Dress up like Batman.
- Make a decent porn film (I know it’s impossible, but it would be fun trying) .
- Open a comic/film studies theme bar.
- Write a sitcom/comedy novel.
- Paint pictures of the stuff that’s actually in my head.
Seven things I cannot do:
1. Hold on to money in the vicinity of bare breasts.
2. Go to bed at a reasonable hour.
3. Drive a car.
4. Stop rewinding Kinky John speechs in my head.
5. Sleep properly: it’s either too much or too little.
6. Stop watching shite movies
7. Stop comparing everything that happens in real life to some 1980s shite movie or 1990s comedy.
Seven things that attract me to a city:
1. Its comic shops
2. Its minky lady microgoth hangouts
3. Its secondhand book shops.
4. The amount of shops that end in ‘land’ (poundland, iceland QD er land)
5. Its universities and libraries, I just can’t get enough of post apocalyptic arhcitechture.
6. Good off-licences with baskets of cheap, out-of-date beer.
7. Its porn shops.
Seven things I say:
1. like
2. aw for fucks sake
3. hello there, how’s it going.
4. good luck now see ya later
5. aawww She Hulk
6. aw man, this is such a fucking pain in cock.
7. aw cunty bollix
Seven books I like:
1. Tristram Shandy by Lawrence Sterne.
2. The Watchmen by Alan Moore
3. The Man in the High Castle by Philip K. Dick
4. The Sirens of Titan by Kurt Vonnegut
5. At Swim two Birds by Flann O'Brien.
6. The Encyclopedia of Bizarre Sex Practices by Brenda Love.
7. The Psychotronic Video Guide by Michael Weldon
Seven movies that I’ve loved:
1.Robocop
2.Buckaroo Banzai
3. Videodrome
4. The Man in the White Suit
5. The Wicker Man
6. Get Carter
7. The Big Lebowski
(oh I’m already imagining watching them all in row)
Seven people to tag:
Dumb Riffs, Badbrute, Lauratooth, Moths of Boredom, Caddy Powers, No one you know, Ernesto.
Thursday, February 09, 2006
Getting old, the big 3-0: Cock and Bull Story
I didn’t think aging and the whole turning 30 thing would affect me, but I was in the library the other day and noticed that some books I wanted were on the lowest shelf and I momentarily couldn’t be arsed to bend down and get them. I imagined my viva where someone was asking “why didn’t you quote such and such's work on…?” and I was there saying “hey! It was on the low shelf, I’m an old man, I’m not reaching down to the low shelf to get some ‘shouldn’t-have-been-published-in-the-first-place’ wank just to say prove I’m aware of it’s presence, my trousers my rip or I might fall over or something'.
The other age scare I had happened the other Friday. These days I teach and do office hours* from 9 to 5 on Fridays. So by the time I’m finished there’s no places on campus open for food and I can never eat before class--nerves and fretting, whether I'm doing well or not. So anyway, I normally go up to the sports park where's there's good food. I ended up on the loo there (see: nerves) the other week and the lights go out in the cubicle and I can’t see a thing. The logical side of me (the lights are on some sort of automatic timer) gives way to pure panic after a few minutes (…maybe the lights haven’t gone out, maybe something biological has finally keeled over in the ‘Jimmny H 3000-a-tron’ and that’s it, I’ve finally gone blind! No more Film Studies for me, I’ll have take music appreciation or something).
Luckily the lights eventually came on and I was alright to go about my business. Which was a good thing because it was the weekend I choose to celebrate my 30th (again!) I managed about three 30th birthday parties. These included Friday night madness in Grad Bar and going to see Cock and Bull Story on Saturday and more pints on Saturday and Sunday, no wonder I feared going blind. Thanks to all who put up with the charade and made an old man very happy: Labhaoise & Pete, Hannah, Lawrence, Neil & Shelley, Karl, Joe & Jen, The Belgian Monk crew and many more.
*This is where you sit in your office waiting for nonexistent students, I don’t feel bad sitting there doing nothing expect putting up my weirdo certificate and pictures of She Hulk and drinking coffee because we don’t get paid for it anyway.
Porn Fatigue: I must be getting old.
One of the delights meeting up with friends you haven’t seen in a while is continuing conversations. I don’t know what it is, but when ever me and certain dumb riffer, the conversation usually turns to bizarre subjects like “Simon Brett stories” everyone we know in Norwich has one, hey if you have a Simon Brett story, please send it in! I’m sure there’s a few we’re missing…I need the full set for my scrapbook.
Other than that and The Big Lebowski, and Spaced and Will Ferrell, the conversation often turns to ‘porn fatigue’ an affliction that I have also discussed with yon Bad Brute(….there’s been some stirrin’s in his quarters but I’m missing the brutes technoprose.)Anyway, ‘porn fatigue’ could be defined as an undue interest in everything other than the explicit sex. Things you say when you’ve got porn fatigue might include:
* That computer is sooo out of date.
* I wonder what books are on that bookshelf (turning head at 90 degrees not to observe something perverse but to see if you have any of the same books as the pornographer, unsurprisingly, yeah I do.)
* When you know far too much about a porn directors interior décor, like ‘oh…there’s Jules Jordan’s chaise longue again…. Oh he’s bought some hideous modern art mirror since the last movie I saw….and a horrible leopard couch.’ man that guy has more money than sense look at the state of his flat (I know it's populated with horny sluts but still he's making a mess of it, it'll look so unhip in ten years etc..)
* When, even though you can’t see their faces you can identify male porn stars by their catch ‘phrases’ (the latter word credits some sort of linguistic construction which these guys)
Here’s your cut out and keep guide:
Rocco: ‘You nasty girl?’ (I think it may be a fair assumption, you don’t need to ask her like 200 hundred times)
Jules Jordan: ‘There you go’ about 100 times
Erik Everhard: ‘arrrrghgh uuuuuuhhh’ etc. (hey Erik, I know you're doing unseakable things, we all know, because, like, it's being recorded but you don't have to rub it in!)
Vanishing Shite! 1970s remakes good and bad....
On New Year’s Eve I perused the listings for some fine post-pub movie and spied Vanishing Point, great I thought, what could be better that one of the finest films of the 1970s. Back when action movies didn’t need characters tortured by familial angst, or if they did, they didn't moan on and on about it, they just had a wacky gimmick like they just will not stop driving for some reason. Like Point Black, Vanishing Point is one of those action flicks with a protagonist on a simple-minded quest that bends to no logic or societal demand.
Imagine my disgust when I turn on and find not bushy haired Eliot Gould—alike Barry Newman but Viggo Mortensen. Hey, I know that’s not too bad, but I’m leading up to the real travesty…Super Soul the character so well played by Cleavon Little was played by…no wait….first up, think of some names, if you were to cast Super Soul now, who would you choose? Jamie Foxx?, Chris Rock? Chris Tucker even? All possible but the choice for hack TV-Movie director Charles Robert Carner is obvious….Jason Priestly of course, Jason fucking Priestly mangling of the most stirring lines of 1970s cinema ‘The question was not when he was gonna stop but WHO was gonna stop him’ mangled in a southern-moustachioed drawl by this teen-soap dewy-eyed retard. Don't get me started, the naked lady on the motorbike has a bikini on and instead of nihilism and explosions we get redemption and happily ever after Gladiotor-style shite.
Luckily I had a good 1970s remake to fall back on, Rockstar games’ The Warriors. It’s great although frustrating when you’re trying to do a 'burn' on some enemies 'turf' and you keep getting’ 'bopped' by the Moon Runners or something (sounds almost perverse, although in the world of Jimmny, everything does). In my occasional urge to matchmake fictional characters, I always felt DJ Super Soul from Vanishing Point and the amazing and sorely missed Lynne Thigpen as the Radio DJ in The Warriors would make a great couple.
One more fucking thing to blame Tom Cruise For!
Along with The Warriors I have recently also been consigned to bowels of hell (as if Norwich’s post-apocalyptic architecture wasn’t enough!) by playing Doom 3 on the Xbox. My recent computer game history (apart from the Alex Kid in Miracle World on the Sega Master Sytem II years) has been Doom on the PC, Half-Life on the PC and Halo on the Xbox so I do demand excellence from my first-person shooters. Doom 3 is great in parts and manages to make the funny versions of the original PC game genuinely terrifying. Anyway, I was looking up Doom on Wikipedia and came across this gem from Doom developer John Carmack:
"There is a scene in "The Color of Money" where Tom Cruse [sic] shows up at a pool hall with a custom pool cue in a case. "What do you have in there?" asks someone. "Doom." replied Cruse with a cocky grin. That, and the resulting carnage, was how I viewed us springing the game on the industry."
Christ is there no element of popular culture that gurning, possible murderer Cruise does not touch. Imagine! Doom 3 could have been called 'Sometimes you just gotta say fuck it' or 'You Complete Me' or 'Everybody Runs'.
Monday, February 06, 2006
Meeting of the blogs
Christmas was a chance to meet up with young Karl of Dumb Riffs fame, whenever we met though we always end up pulling similar faces, compare the above gurning with this from last Paddy's Day. This was in The Village, which used to Mono*, which used to be The Mean Fiddler in Dublin, which used to be a cool place to hangout but this time around it was full of twats in suits singing along to the Kaiser Chiefs (in my day it was full of people in T-shirts singing along to the Pixies). we also went to Carnivale, which used to be called Nasdaq! do Dublin club owners just flick through newspapers to come up with names?
Was good to check out my old haunts the IFI (where I once watched 17 horror films in two and a half days, a personal best/worst depending on your point of view), Forbidden Planet, Sub City, The Secret Book and Record Shop (where I purchased this fine album good job too before they burn them all). I loved seeing the new Dublin-based comics there some truly amazing works lke the demented humour of Bob Bryne who has produced a free small press yoke of genius called The Shiznit which should get seen more outside Ireland as it's amazing and gives me the warm feeling that Scrap Saturday does when I'm in this heathen land. He's got a blog too and was interviewed by SilverBulletComics, no mean feat.
*I can see why they might have changed this, at the time it had a retro hi-fi feel to it but now it just reminds one of Mono. "Missed parties. Postponed exams. Sitting out a season of team sports. And loneliness. These are a few of the ways that scourge of high school and college students known as "mono" can affect your life"...I had all the latter without contracting shit.
Bye Bye death labia: The end of a glittering catering career
By some bizarre quirk of fate, I to avoided the firing fanny that was gunning for me at my kitchen job and managed to give my notice, work it all and get my last paycheck! These may seem like given events for normal jobs but anything can happen in the wacky world of kitchen portering. Although I can't say I miss the rancid bins, 12 hour days, 6 hour stints standing with no break, getting hit with hot plates and being called a stupid Irish twat with a regularity that I can't say I was pleased with (i.e. more than once), I do miss the humour of the kitchen. In these shit jobs you do have to laugh at everything, cliched as it sounds. Whenever need for a 'butternut squash' was mentioned, I always had to say in the manner of some decrepit old man* 'oooh don't squash my butter-nuts' no I can't stop saying it to myself and giggling. You may think that kitchen's run on skill and percision but they actually run on swearing, very very sugary tea, bacon sandwiches, burning yourself repeatedly, flirting and pounding pounding techno music. I did learn to cook a bit better and daydream of having a nice kitchen and some kick-ass cooking equipment someday. I also met some of the best, most-hard-working people I've ever encountered and have new hatred for rude costumers who take the piss of waiting staff and now tip a lot more, so all in all--apart the bhroncitis and the working every single day-- not a bad time. See below for pics of our staff party, bowling and eating were involved somewhere but I mostly remember/misremember the 12 hours of drinking.
*Not much of a stretch impression wise as this is what I am.
In your face bhroncitis-kitchen-porter hell: Jimmny Lives!!
Howdy all, it's been a while but it's finally time to poke my wee head into the blogosphere. Details above (with festive photos) but in summary: I survived bhroncitis and the threats of the death labia, getting to leave my kitchen job without getting fired. Had a great Christmas and New Year and turned 30! My folks got me a laptop, which goes some way to explaining my blogging absence. All my blog stuff was on my desktop PC which seemed to get jealous from the amount of time I was spending in bed with my laptop watching and burning DVDs and listening to podcasts. So it took a while to slowly coax my old stand by desktop PC into cooperating by trying to ignore my brassy tart of of a black, sleek and fast laptop. Still feel like a cheating boyfriend when I watch Justice League: Unlimited on the laptop after all the happy hours I spent watching it on the desktop.
Wednesday, December 07, 2005
Sockamagee! I’m Living on Soup and Comics.
Due to fecking bastard bhroncitis I have been sleeping, working and reading comics and doing nothing else for like the last three weeks, it's been shite, apart from the comics bit, that was great I read a lot of Keith Giffen era Justice League stuff and the new She Hulk, more comic geek posts soon.
At odd hours of the night and morning, though, I would get the urge to scrawl demented rants while listening to Bill Hicks on my headphones. So you're in for a treat/unimaginable boredom* with four posts from the black hardback book of Jimmny's vile soul:
1. Fistbiter Blues: The Tides of Lust.
2. Outbreak Blues: Head filled with literal rather than figurative gank.
3. Vendetta Blues: Twitch of Death Labia.
4. ‘Slow Bus to Thetford’ Apocalypse.
I have also included some 'afterthoughts' in italics.
*delete as applicable.
Tuesday, December 06, 2005
Fistbiter Blues: The Tides of Lust
Academia's a strange path, you spend most of your childhood in room reading books and comics, thinking to yourself...'hmmm there must be people out there on the same wavelength as me, maybe if I keep at this I'll meet them. Then as a PhD candidate you find that you've got to spend most of your fucking time in your room reading books and comics anyway....arse.
This isn’t a problem during summer where there are only lunatics around and it's probably better to stay in your room. Norwich has a Quantity Theory of Insanity vibe about it. It has a certain amount of craziness shared equally among it’s denizens. So when all the students leave over the summer, all the craziness gets equally distributed among all us poor mooks that are left behind. October and November, however, saw the usual influx of students from all over the world and the unseasonally mild weather made for a scantily clad perkfest well into winter months that would usually require winter coats: all hail global warming. Yet again one is struck with the afflictions of being a ‘lustcripple in norksville’ A phenomenon was observed by myself and the Badbrute as we happened upon the UEA Angels* cheerleading training 'routine'. Even this was enough to have us buckled in the throes of lust. In this freshers period my cranial fluids get consumed with the tides of lust. Everyone's so perky and friendly, they do not realize they are talking to someone who has been stuck here far too long and is just about to keel over.
Norwich is a pretty small place but every year there’s this influx of smart, arty hot American ladies, which are my only weakness, you know, apart from all the booze and porn. The size of UEA and Norwich also means that if you’re wandering around town/campus and see someone who’ve got the hots for, it’s only a matter of time before you get introduced them at a party at like 2am or something. If this happens, I generally go all diddums and talk really fast. I talk fast anyway** worse if I’ve had a few pints, in which case I talk faster and faster until I reach a sort of critical mass where I can’t speak any more and a friend has to prop me up against a wall where I just gurn to myself for a while and then go home and watch Office Space, or Henry Fool or The Big Lebowski or Spaced something. I don’t know what would happen if I went to live in America, I’d probably explode or something.
Anyway, this tongue-twisting horniness now occurs even without extensive alcohol consumption. A coworker recently had a great party that went on for like 24 hours, it was insane with fireworks, decks and goth type poi excitement. One of ladies at the party was an amazing amazonian goth who seemed about 7 foot tall if you counted the heels and heair do (with a not just a boyfriend but, as 'CS' put it 'a full-blown' husband...drats). Anyway as she passed I couldn't contain myself and crouched down and bit my fist in what I can only describe as a 'lust crash position'. (badly recreated here: you could always try and do better and email them to me and I can do a 'fistbiter gallery') . It became a sort of unofficial salute in the kitchen every day when I came in for a while. It was one of those Monday morning conversatiosn in the kitchen, the head chef goes 'do remember bit your fist behind that amazing goth girl?' and there 'no'....oh wait a minute...'yes'.
*A friend of mine recently said he was going to the UEA Angels 'slave auction', and I thought to myself what? you bid on amounts to pay them to stay the fuck away from you? The Americans just do certain things better, cheerleading's just one of them. Some even combine cheerleading and religious fundamentalism! check out The Christian Cheerleaders of America: Building people before pyramids they're priceless: "The true purpose of cheerleading is to be a really awesome source of spirit and support and when done correctly can make a big difference in the morale, spirit and sportsmanship of a ball game". These guys are more my style.
**In the new year, I'll be TV talking about Vic and Bob, I talked for about two hours with my ranting media studies spiels. Afterwards the producer goes, 'amazing stuff, but it will be a nightmare to edit", I recounted this to the Badbrute, "story of your life" he presciently replies.
(I wrote this a while back and the sheen of going out and the fresher influx has been knocked off by my illness a bit. Plus the fact that Norwich has a habit of sucking the perky enthusiasm out people pretty damn quick. I'm quite happy to stay in now and read comics. As I said to 'FI' on the bus, 'I am retreating from the salon.. I've had my fill'...I momentarily had a terribel vision of a future where there were letterboxes big enough to accept pizza boxes and Taschen hardbacks so I wouldn't need to leave the house, epecially when my RealDoll* arrived. Three years of the grad bar means three years of the same sort of people doing almost identical courses, which means they have the same fucking arguments. I'm like don't drag me into it and give out because someone 'dissed' your favorite writer. I literally could not give a solitary fuck if you think writer 'X' is far supererior to writer 'Y', and I don't think they care either, they're probably up in heaven...riding.)
*On second thoughts they look a bit creepy, knowing my luck I'd probably get a haunted one..they're doing a discount fro christmas though, which is nice, some gentlemen will get to spend Christmas with 'company'. As Laura The Tooth has pointed out there's only one man doll! I'll just stick to my dodgy books.
Outbreak Blues: Head filled with literal rather than figurative gank.
And so it goes, you can only stand so much of working shit jobs and staying up until 5am almost every night. The cold I had lingered and has now developed into bronchitis—which I never got when I smoked, proving that kitchen work is more dangerous than smoking. One minute you’re going to Pendulum until three in the morning, going to top parties and watching three films in a row, the next your squirming around in your bed in jogpants and a UEA hat with a head full of phlegm blubbing along with the LCD Soundsystem song ‘Losing My Edge’. And wondering how many days it would take someone to discover your bloated corpse. The indignities of age! I had to whip out the boring type of ribbed rubber again and wear jogpants in bed, it’s far too close to pyjama wearing to me. Men’s pyjamas, I mean, sure they look great on ladies but they are slightly head-wreaking*: It’s like hassle enough getting dressed every day without having to get dressed again in a special little fluffy outfit to go to beddy byes, the only thing adults should wear in bed is each other.
(I was literally just sleeping, eating soup and working at this stage, my only enjoyment was watching the odd episode of Justice League: Unlimited. The Booster Gold -centred episode, The Greatest Story Never Told, had particular resonance as it concerned Mordru generally fucking up things, including making buildings come alive and attack people. In my darkest hours, I often feel that the grim buildings of Norwich have some sort of personal vendetta against me, like the city itself is trying to kill me but I'm too stupid to die...happy thoughts all round, roll on spring so I can remeber what daylight looks like.)
*I’m not a big pyjama fan, I'll that sort of thing to these fucking idiots, you’re liable to see me in Batman or Superman boxers at the most. I saw some great Silver Surfer ones in H&M but when I got back with the money they were gone....and when I asked the guy were they ever coming back...he said he didn’t know.
Vendetta Blues: Twitch of Death Labia.
On top of having fucking bronchitis and working every fucking day, there’s a 'firing fanny'* after me. There’s this battleaxe of a manager at work who is well known for getting off over sacking people, it’s her only outlet. She always looks like she’s having a constant heart attack and hasn’t sacked anyone in about a month. I sense her thobbing-veined, thick-headed firing–horniness grow. She’ll fiddle her “final-warning labia” until working her way to her full-firing climax. I’ll be like two minutes late or not sweep up some tiny bit of crap or something and she'll use it as an excuse. One of the last KP's got the sack for asking for his wages on a Saturday when he had a day off, a monor misunderstanding turned into a stupid argument and him getting the sack (with yours truly filling in). I could almost sense it this Monday, when I got a head’s up call from one of the kitchen guys: 'don’t be late today or you get a ‘final warning'. So before I’m even late, she’s already planning to give me a final warning for me being late, what kind of Schrodinger's cat type sacking method is that! I work in a kitchen for fuck's sake, it's not Minority Report. So you were planning to give me a final warning, which shows that you really want to sack me, but didn't get the chance because I came into work on time and will continue to do so because if I don't you'll fucking sack me? So the fact that you didn't ge to give me the warning is the reason you won't get to give a warning.
Oh yeah, the fact that I’ve been coughing up blood the last two days and still come into work doesn’t mean shit, the fact that I get kept late every day for at least an hour doesn’t mean shit...if I’m a few minutes late, I get a final warning then the sack. Hey I don’t mind, as long as I last until the staff party so I can drink my own body weight in booze at someone else’s expense whilst wearing my black suit and spider-man tie. (Have contemplated getting a Spidey mask, but I don't want to go down that road, as I might want to wear it all the time). No worries, I’ll just act as stupid as she thinks I am and drink my sugary tea.
(Christ! that post was a bit harsh, but I was quited pissed off when I wrote it, hope I got that across ok. That boss woman still isn't speaking to me, unless it's to give out. As a Kitchen Porter I am obviously subhuman. Am still hanging on in there at my place of work though-have to work every night almost until I get home for the Christmas! Am writing this on my only night off until Sunday, hoping that sleep-deprivation will step in as an intoxicant in lieu of red wine...Oh well, think of the money eyes on the prize and all that jazz.)
*More notes on slang for the overseas readers, I mean 'fanny' here in the British slang sense of furry front bottom, 'the crimson' the 'pink lettuce leaf' etc (I'm sure there's loads more here) rather than 'fanny' in the American sense as in 'ass'. Cf 'fanny pack' versus 'bumbag', which can cause confusion or embarassment to stupid tourists. To be honest though one should be ashamed of wearing a bumbag or a fannypack, 'ooh it's for security' I hear you say, what's so secure about advertising you're valuables in a garish external dayglo bladder.
Monday, December 05, 2005
‘Slow Bus to Thetford’ Apocalypse.
The first time I flew, I looked around the plane and imagined what freaks would inherit the earth if some cataclysm occurred while we were in the air and the only humans left to repopulate the planet were in my flight. Mind you, I was on Ryanair at the time, which doesn’t hold out much hope for humanity. I know this sounds a bit like Lost (still haven’t managed to see any of it) but believe me I have been mentally preparing for apocalypse since 1989*. In this year, I bought Prince’s Batman soundtrack, a big hard-backed book of mysteries and a pop-up book of evolution. The mysteries book had some stuff about Nostradamus predicting the end of the world in 1997, so I mentally connect Prince and the end of the world. I mentioned this on the school bus and some Presbyterian started giving out to me because only 'the Jesus' knows the future!
I recently went to Cambridge and had to take a bus from Norwich to Thetford. (It was worth it, got to see my sister and got to Fopp to get this and this and Galloway and Porter where I go this). Lets just say that if this mobile plague-tin of freaks inherited the Earth, the human race's days would be numbered. You know when you’re on a bus and you’ve got your seat and see someone in the queue and you think, ‘that person looks fucking insane I’d wager he/she/it will happen to sit beside me’, this was a slow bus to Thetford so everyone was the most insane person you’ve ever seen. The one who took the cake, though, was an old woman with three teeth and three strands of hair, I shit you not. Thankfully she didn’t sit beside me, but I did get her granddaughter (I think, it could have been her daughter or sister…this is Norfolk) who was literally a sphere. For an hour she eat a seemingly endless supply of sweets and crisps from magical ‘bottomless’ Harry Potter bag while I tried in vain to move my elbows far apart enough to read my fucking comics.
*What’s your favourite potential apocalypse? I always have to go for a massive cosmic cataclysm, the whole solar system wiped out in the blink of an eye before we know what’s hit us, none of this Barefoot-Gen style scooping up your radiated ass skin with non-existent hands crap that would happen after nuclear war. A zombie attack would be my second favourite apocalypse. Sure you might get eaten but you’d have a lot of fun before you do.
Saturday, November 19, 2005
Cutting fingers and cutting humour...
For once I've got a valid excuse for any typos...I've cut the shite out of one of my fingers (it's a prime tampering finger, but as none of that stuff's happening at the minute it doesn't really matter...post on the 'tides of lust' soon) at work. Still shaking off this cold and forgot there was a broken shard of glass in a plughole I was cleaning out. Being the double-hard bastard that I am, I screamed like a wee girl and shook my finger all over the place. The resultant blood went all over my 'station' as they say in the catering trade...ie my manky fucking sink. The head chef's there, 'ahhh! your station's looking very messy', I'm there like, 'fuck yeah it's my fucking blood and I'll clean it up as soon as my finger has stopped acting like a fucked-up oil rig'. So I had to clean up my own blood with the head chef saying..."hurry up, you've still got another hand". What a 'cunty bollix' He recently sacked one of our top waitresses for having having a pierced tongue! Honestly, I'd hire waitresses if they had a pierced anything (and tattoos) and open a Suicide Girls-style resturant...god being 'reading' this book far too much.
In kitchen work, if it doesn't burn you, it cuts the crap out of you, and if it doesn't do that, it'll chemically burn you somehow. It's great training for a life in academia, I think I'll be able to handle paper cuts after regularly patching my hands together with shitty blue plasters. Our forefathers used have great work stories about getting their arms cut off by iron ore or getting a leg staved off by a fucking printing press. What will we have?..."ohh did you hear about the time your grandad Jimmny momentarily snagged his finger on a rusty staple, ohh it was a terror! we didn't know if he'd live, it was touch and go for a while..."
Anyway, what is more cutting is the kitchen humour (wow top link Jimmny! way to go to try and cram together disparate posts because it's 3am and you want to save all the depraved lust stuff for tomorrow's post). The head chef has mastered the art of giving you just enough grief so you're always on the verge of walking out but makes it darkly funny enough so that you don't-ie making up songs about me in an awful Irish accent about me being a gay glorified tea boy at 29 while trying to do an Irish jig. The other day he was taunting 'you love me really, you want my babies, you want my babies'...I fumed round the corner to the comis-chef and all-around top dude 'CS' and muttered 'yeah I want your babies so I can take 'em out and shoot the fuckers...' The head chef was there, 'what was that?' and 'CS' goes, 'you don't want to know, it was funny though'. Some of the people are too easy as humour targets. I work with one guy, he's 44, wants to be an embalmer, he broke up with his wife (she's Irish, he always makes a point of telling me, like it's my fucking fault) moved back to Norfolk, moved back in with his parents and is going out with an 18 year-old goth...I know it's Norfolk but, dude! Now as much as I lust after the wee microgoths, in reality I could not handle going out with an 18 year old one, I mean, my 29 years of fucking crap tv trivia would be lost on her for a start. I'd be like 'man, this is just like that bit in Automan when his car could turn at a 90 degree angle', and she'd be like 'what the fuck are you on about! buy me a Nightmare Before Christmas bag and some snake-bite and black, grandad'. But I digress, anyway, he's going on about how she's bed-ridden and has sciatica and has shooting pains in her butt-ocks and then he says 'it's rare in an 18-year-old'. I have to return to CS and piss myself laughing and say, 'rare in an 18 year old? so's recieving a 44-year-old cock on a regular basis!'.
Friday, November 18, 2005
I'm coming for ya god!
I was going to post about how great everything was. The one year anniversary of 'The Life and Times of Jimmny Homunculus' came and went on a typical day, ie I worked 7 hours in the bar, went to bed at 12 got up at like 5 to write proposals for a module on superheroes I'm hopefully teaching in the new year, then worked in the kitchen from 10am to 3.30, then proposed my modules, then wandered off to buy some top tunes, got something to eat and went and saw a great film. A perfect Jimmny day you might think, and you would be right. Everything was going right for the first time in like 6 months and I was feeling great. Getting to exist in a time with top movies, great tv shows and and great music. In the new year, I'll be finally teaching modules on subjects close to my heart and will also be appearing on TV talking about such subjects!
Then, as if by magic...as if some god like figure was sitting at a switchboard somewhere going "he's getting a bit cocky, like everything's going ok...well we'll see how great he feels when he's sneezing and coughing every two minutes" I get zapped by some sort of gank cold ray. As you may well know, I'm not adverse to spending all day in bed while exuding fluids that need to mopped up with tissues, I just get pissed off when they're coimg out of my nose. I can't really take sick days...in that anyone I've seen take sick days at work gets the sack. Being sick really makes me indignant, it just reminds me of how precarious my situation is. So instead of taking a sick day at the kitchen today I come in and my sickness insures I get all the shitty jobs, which will just make me more sick? It may be from reading too much Phillip K. Dick*, but the only reason I would ever believe in a god type figure is if I could go up there and knock his/hers/its fuck in for generally being such a cunt to everyone.
*Like you can ever read too much.
Friday, November 11, 2005
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