Eddie's Humorously Titled Blog

Lament

2012-07-22T15:08:00.003-07:00

I've spent a long time trying to work out exactly how to start today's blog. This isn't going to be a collection of loosely related dick jokes nor is it going to a one of my highly entertaining rants. If you've never read this blog before then you should know that I'm a geek. I am also a Batman fan. As such I cannot let the recent tragic events in Aurora, Colorado without comment. Chris Nolan has stated that all we know for sure is that these people were there to watch a film. I disagree. This was a midnight showing of The Dark Knight Rises. These people were Batman fans. If this had been Dark Knight then I would concede that some people were there for the Joker but with this film they were there for Batman. That means that at the very least these people were fans of a certain type of dark and complex storytelling but also in all probability they believed in what Batman stands for.

You see it's easy to dismiss comic-books and super-heroes as a bit of silly fun but it is also fundamentally wrong. Each of the characters within this medium has something to teach us. Spider-man teaches us that with great-power comes great responsibility. Iron Man is about overcoming your inner demons to become something better than you once were. Wolverine is about redemption. All of these stories have endured so long because the core of them they are about important things. Batman is one of the most influential, iconic and loved of these stories because it's core concept is the strongest. It is a story about what is right, what is wrong, having the strength to make a choice between the two and making a stand to defend that choice. The people in that cinema loved Batman because they believed in what the story had to say.

I've avoided scouring the internet for details of this story because it leaves a bitter taste in my mouth. I cannot say with certainty but I believe I am feeling something akin to what people of certain religious groups feel about the sectarian attacks in the middle-east. This was an attack on what I hold sacred. The people there were people I, happily, identify with. People who booked a day off of work months ago so they could be there to see the end of a journey they had loved. Instead of them having the simple pleasure of seeing a cinematic master-piece they instead were struck down by someone who represented the exact opposite of the hero they had come to see. It is utterly impossible for me to imagine the pain that the families of the victims have gone and my heart and, for want of a better word, soul go out to those who have been effected by this horrifying event.

There will now be a huge investigation into exactly what the motivations of the killer were, as there rightly should be. Normally under these situations the media attempts to link the details to the event. I hope that this event is not used to tarnish the good name of a medium that whilst filled with criminals, murder and evil is fundamentally fixated on those who put their lives on the line to defend the weak and innocent. I'm not saying that these stories haven't influenced people. I'm certain that through-out the years a fair number of people have made huge decisions based upon these characters. However I am completely certain that most of the influence that these stories have had on the world have been incredibly positive. All of this though is a discussion for another day.

What I really want to say is that the victims of this horrible event were part of a community. We are not a community that was forced together by geography or genealogy. We found each other. We were pulled together by shared loves and our shared beliefs. If I'd met these people the foundations of friendship would have already existed. So today I would ask that we take a small moment to lament the long geeky conversations that we will never have, the silly jokes that will never be laughed at but mostly the friendships that must now forever remain unmade.

eddie <peace and love>

Christmas Tales Part 4

2012-07-19T12:06:00.002-07:00

Another christmas story I wrote and now you can shove into your eyeholes. Alan isn't on the internet but he looks like Cillian Murphy and lives in Chelmsford... pester him if possible.

Alan Powell

Stuff Blows Up!

As the remains of the tower rocked and swayed Alan crouched below the window clutching his M4. Every couple of seconds there would be another crash and a deep tremor would be sent through the building, pouring another handful of dust on to his girly face, less regularly but not infrequently entire sections of the ceiling would fall down, usually with a significant amount of the wreckage from the many floors above him. He risked another peak out of the window. There were still at least twenty of the alien tanks across the river, maintaining a steady bombardment of the human positions. Above the sky was an indecipherable mass of plasma and ordinance, below the river was nearly entirely hidden by the vast swathes of laser and tracer fire. He felt the impact before he heard it, a vast explosion ripped across the bridge turning the barricade and those who manned it into so much shrapnel. Within seconds the invaders had started to pour across.

Alan turned and ran across what remained of the offices he'd holed up in. The assorted wreckage made crossing the room no easy feat and on more than one occasion it was only good fortune that stopped him from being flattened. He reached the stairwell door and kicked it open, because that's how you're supposed to open doors when your holding an awesome gun and you have to take these opportunities when life presents them. He got only two steps through the door before he heard the door at the base of the staircase slam open followed by the horrifying snarl of one of the creatures. Alan stepped back from the door taking aim at the opening as he did so. The creatures were fast but not faster than bullets. He knew he'd only been standing there a few seconds but adrenalin had a strange way of turning time to treacle, he was sweating profusely, making him look exceptionally like Cillan Murphy in the movie 'Sunshine'. Suddenly the door was filled with the skeletal shape of one of the creatures and Alan had his finger on the trigger, the creature let out an ethereal shriek as the bullets ripped through it's dark skin. As the creature toppled backwards, Alan heard a series of satisfying clunks that indicated the creatures corpse had not descended the staircase elegantly. He lowered his gun and readjusted his stance. There was a loud creaking noise.

A second later Alan was falling through the floor, surrounded by wreckage and confusion. Seconds later he was slamming into the floor, below but something wasn't right about the angle and before he could stop himself he was sliding along the half collapsed floor towards a huge hole in the wall. Without thinking he reached for his belt and pulled loose one of equipment clips, he snapped onto an extruding piece of re-bar and found himself dangling out the side of the building still a good ten floors clear of the ground. He stopped for a moment in the relative safety. However the enemy had other ideas and seconds later several plasma shots slapped into the wall around him. Frantically Alan reached for his pack and pulled loose a length of rope, it was the work of a few seconds to get himself tethered of and he soon found himself repelling down the side of, what by now, could only charitably be described a building while enemy fire sizzled through the air around him. Fortunately the alien invaders were bad-guys and therefore missed constantly while still shooting close enough to maintain an air of tension.

Alan had descended to exactly the height that he'd be largely unharmed if his chord broke when a stray shot ripped through the chord. Alan fell the remaining distance only to land on a pile of rubble that left him miraculously unharmed. After a moment or two of dramatically groaning and holding on to injuries that would heal as soon as something interesting started to happen Alan pulled himself to his feet and pulled his gun to the ready position, as he looked up he saw he'd actually landed a level below the main roadway and that the vast mass of the enemy troops were swarming by overhead, heedless of his presence. Alan jogged under the roadway and found a set of stairs leading up.

Huddled behind a recent attempt to make the city look nice through the aggressive use of shrubs Alan surveyed the situation, the main mass of the troops, including the tanks and larger weaponry were still on the bridge but would be at his present location within a few minutes. Alan reached into the pockets on the straps of his pack to check his C4, two loads, remained, not enough to destroy the bridge. Alan glanced around under the main road way looking for something more explosive. Then he saw the car park.

It took no time at all to hot-wire the cars because it never does and by the time the main bulk of the enemy force where close to his position he'd parked up three cars around each of the pillars supporting this section of the roadway and had put a tiny amount of C4 on the gas tank of each car. He knew that the cars would explode but he wasn't sure of how big the explosion would be. Detonator in hand he retreated as far as he could without being seen from overhead and hoped that the vehicles didn't go full Michael Bay on him. He wouldn't be able to see when the tanks were in position but he could see the dust falling from the base of the roadway as they moved closer and closer. Finally when the dust was falling about six foot three past the makeshift demolition kits Alan clicked the switch. The explosion was huge but Alan was far enough away to not feel even the slightest shock-wave. He glanced out from behind his cover in time to see the supports start to twist and buckle, and then almost instantly the entire section of bridge came slamming into the ground bringing with it one the invaders tanks. It was reduced to a crippled mess by the force of the impact. As Alan looked at his handy work, he started to hear a faint whining sound, it was difficult to place at first but then he realised it was the sound of hugely advanced technology makes just before it explodes.

“That's not a good sound...” Alan said before turning on his heel and running as fast as he could from the remains of the tank. As he ran everything seemed to go into slow motion, that's when he knew he was in trouble. Then the tank exploded, unleashing and unholy sea of blue fire that chased Alan down the street like an small explosion would chase a man down a corridor in a lamer story. As he ran he couldn't help but feel he was going to make it to safety, if he could just make it to the inlet up ahead and dive, dramatically, through the air and into the water just after the explosion engulfed him. When he got close enough to the inlet he dove dramatically through the air and was engulfed by the explosion... moments later he slammed into the water.

A few moments later Alan pulled himself out of the the water on the other side of the inlet to find himself face to face with one of the creatures. As he looked up at he reached for his gun but the creature kicked the gun to one side. It then decided to utterly ignore the vast array of highly advanced weaponry it had at it's disposal and grabbed Alan by the neck and lifted him up in the air. No-one knows why vastly powerful alien warriors do this, it must be included in basic training for some reason. As he held Alan in the air with his legs flailing, it tilted it's head from side to side to examine his face almost as if he was studying him, which, again, is really weird when you think about it because there's no way you launch a full-scale interplanetary invasion without gathering a lot of intel about, and briefing your troops on, what the enemy looks like. Alan consulted his own training and tried to decide which of the standard “I'm about to kill an alien” lines to use as he reached for his combat knife.

“Stay away from her you bitch!” He shouted as he rammed the knife into the creatures face. The creatures grip loosened as life oozed from the gash in its face. Alan stopped for a moment to catch his breath and was shot in the face by a sniper.

***

“Fuck!” The control pad shattered into pieces as it slammed into the wall leaving Alan slouched bereft on the sofa covered in a fine dusting of cheesy snacks. He reached for his beer and drank the dregs that remained still consumed by frustration. “Vik!” He shouted.

“Yeah!” She called back from the kitchen.

“I'm going to buy another controller, do you need anything from the shops?”

Christmas Tales Part 3

2012-07-17T12:56:00.001-07:00

I don't have much of an excuse today, but fuck it here's another story I wrote for one of my friends last Christmas because I'm creative and cheap... Alan isn't on the internet so I can't link to him but he lives in Colchester and has long blonde hair and looks like a wizard feel free to question him or follow him should you see him around.

Alan Bolster: Time Wizard

First there was nothing. Of course, as anyone with a advanced understanding of the entropy can tell you, nothing is almost exactly the same as everything but for the sake of basic scene setting, there was nothing. The nothingness had been there forever. Unfortunately the concept of time in an infinite sea of nothing, or everything, is truly meaningless, the nothingness may have been there for billions of years or for a fraction of second. Observed from the outside the nothing barely existed for a few milliseconds but from within it was infinite. At some point the nothing would become something, or perhaps it already had been something or in fact everything. After several infinities or less than a second there was something in the nothing it was a complicated something but no more complex than the vast simplicity of the nothing but it was complicated enough to talk and it gave voice to the first, or possibly the last, or even the only, word that had ever been.

“Fuck.” Said the something. The something was most accurately described as a collection of fundamental particles coalesced in a way to give the appearance of mass. It was more simply described as a man. However it was best described as Alan Bolster, time traveller, wizard and competitive beard growth regional semi-finalist. A more specific description of would have included the words perplexed, curious and pine-scented. He glanced at his watch only to see it reading all times simultaneously before giving up and just showing the face of a particularly confused gazelle, this was particularly baffling as it wasn't a digital watch. Alan shrugged his shoulders and pulled out a small video camera and after some fumbling began to record.

“I have arrived some point before the beginning of the universe, I can't be more specific than that as time is problematic when dealing with near infinite entropy. However, I believe my presence in this space as a low entropy state should get time running from this point onwards. Now that time has begun running I intend to remain here as long as possible and witness the commencement of the universe.” Here Alan paused, he pulled the camera close to him so as not to drop it before realising that it was literally impossible for anything to happen to it and left it hanging whilst pointing towards him as he reached inside his pocket and removed the necessary accoutrements to create a joint. “Now it is my belief that what I'm doing here will be the only act of creation that occurs today... well not day but you catch my drift.” After an incredibly difficult to specify amount of time he had finished creating the small stick. “Now if you are watching this then and find this troublesome.” He said holding up, although again direction is a bit vague as well, the freshly prepared drug delivery system. “Then I will remind you that the planet earth isn't going to exist for roughly nine billion years and as such it is impossible for me to break any laws... even the physical laws of the universe do, as yet, not apply.” With that he popped the joint in his mouth and lit it with a snap of his fingers. “Now I have no idea how long it'll take for the universe to start, as time doesn't exist yet.”

***

Time resolutely failed to pass

***

After what seemed like a vast amount of 'time' but could even have been before Alan had actually arrived he'd run out of both weed and Subway sandwiches. The situation was starting to become desperate, well not massively desperate as the complete lack of physics meant leaving would be incredibly easy, it could be accomplished with little more than a thought, although it would be an unusually complex thought. However to leave without definitive proof that the universe was not created, that no booming voice had shouted “let there be light” at the nothingness and called forth the multiple facets of reality, evidence that life and a place in the universe was just a cosmic lottery prize, a place only held on to by those with the tenacity to fight for it was not an acceptable outcome. The idea of returning to what some laughably referred to as creation without the all time trump card in the history of human debate was not to be considered.

This mission had been embarked upon not just on a mere whim but with a nobler purpose. Freedom. To finally be able to show, empirically, that religion was a horrifying lie would be to un-tether mankind's scientific advancement in a way that had never before been seen, and that would be the only way to save the human race.

***

Alan had learnt mastery of the wizardly arts many centuries ago and had used his powers to unlock all manner of advancements, eternal life, cold-fusion and a way to create an iron-free shirt that didn't actually require any ironing, but it was only recently that his attempts to create a working time travel device had succeeded, although in truth he'd cut out a lot of the really hard work by travelling back in time instantly and helping himself with a lot of the development. As soon as he'd justified his own curiosity on the subject of Jesus, a third rate con-man, JFK, shot by a jilted ex-lover of Marilyn Munroe and the Tunguska Incident, crashed space ice-cream truck, he'd decided to see what the future held for humanity. What he'd discovered was chilling. Every single time he visited he saw the latest scientific ideas destroyed by the faithful, always under a different guise be it the Christians, Mars Worshippers or the out of control remnants of the Church of the Flying Spaghetti Monster. He'd seen it a thousand times over, until finally his journey into humanity's star-spanning civilization had brought him to Terra Omega.

Terra Omega was the end of the human race and they knew it, on a single near-lifeless planet there was a solitary city clinging to life beneath the last days of the final star in the entire universe. When it collapsed in on itself all that would remain was a near-infinity of decay followed by the actual infinity of the heat death of the universe. All of human achievement was there, recorded in the city's vast database. He'd helped the city's finest minds try to discover a way out, a way to open a doorway to another universe or ascend to a different plane. Failure would render every single thought of every single human utterly meaningless, success would mean that every single nano-second of human existence would have been another step on the way to something so much greater, but even as they worked there was strife in the city. There was a faction who believed that God would save them if they only showed faith.

War had come to the city that quicker than Alan could've possibly imagined and within days the last of the scientists was dead. God never came for his 'chosen' people and Alan had been forced to watch from a distance as every future hope for his species had disappeared in the blink of an eye. He'd left downhearted and tried to return to a more hospitable time to live the rest of his life in a state of contentment, but peace of mind had never come, even when he was spectacularly high. Then one day the idea had occurred to him. If he could prove that religion was a falsehood it would derail the time-line and remove religion from the city at the end of time.

He'd decided that the early twenty-first century was the best time to make the attempt, with the Occupy movement that would see the reformation of human society was at it's height and the support for organised religion would soon enter a dip that would see it almost die out over the next fifty years, only to suffer a huge re-emergence during the first inter-stellar war. So here he was with nothing to lose and everything to gain.

“Oh just fucking start already!” Alan proclaimed. Almost instantaneously there was a huge deafening roar and a feeling that was indescribable in the purest sense of the word. Suddenly everything just happened the and Alan was bombarded by the vast waves of particles that until seconds ago hadn't existed. There was a vast wave of light, the brightest that would ever exist and then suddenly he was hanging there watching the cosmos begin to be. He looked into the camera.

“It seems that I may have inadvertently just started the universe. Not massively inexplicable really, outside the realm of physics the existence of a consciousness could well turn thought into physical action.” He paused to think for a moment. “I'm definitely not a God though and I will be really angry if anyone wastes time worshipping me. It's actually possible that seeing as time has no meaning once times arrow has stopped that this is exactly how the universe was always going to start.” He turned off the camera slipped it into his pocket. As he turned away from the beauty of the newly formed cosmos he could only think how much he was looking forward to posting the video, all of his papers on time-travel and a personal memoir on rationalskepticism.org... but maybe he'd stop off at the Vatican first. Smiling Alan winked out of existence.

Bitches Whining About Feminism.

2012-07-15T03:19:00.001-07:00

I am a white man living in a first world country. It is fundamentally impossible to fall into a better cared for demographic. That’s not a statement of opinion it’s a statement of fact. There is not a single metric that exists by which we are not ahead as a group. The average white man will earn more over his life-time than any other demographic. When you live in a money-centric society, such as ours, that means everything. There’s a reason that Daniel Craig can promote a movie in a suit and Scarlet Johansen has to do it in her pants. The point I’m making here is that we are pandered to on every conceivable level. As a group we have so little to complain about its ridiculous. To quote Louis C.K. “You can’t even hurt my feelings.” I’m thoroughly aware that I no longer have the good fortune to live in a world where I would by this point of my life have been sold a woman to clean my house, cook for me and fellate me on demand but life’s still pretty great. The best thing is that due to the way the world is developing I will never have to settle for anything less than equality. That’s one hell of run being in first place for the entirety of recorded history dropping down to exactly the same as everyone else without a single moment of punishment. We didn’t even have to fight for it. None of my forefathers had to leap in front of a horse and get trampled to death, no-one has had a water cannon fired at them, I’ve had rights enshrined in law since the signing of the Magna Carta… plus I can pee standing up, it’s ridiculous how much the universe is apparently on my side. So when I see one of my number whining like a little bitch about femi-nazis and beta-males one simple phrase springs to mind. GROW THE FUCK UP!

Emily Davison had balls twice as big as most men.

Over at the fantastic law blog popehat.com it recently kicked off in the comment section after a post about the culture of sexual harassment at conventions. I’ve never been to a convention so I cannot vouch for the truth of these allegations but the debate that sprang up was very much not about whether or not the allegations were true but rather about whether the complaint was valid. Now I’m not going to say that feminism is a flawless movement. I actually think that it’s fairly redundant as every argument about equality should cover discrimination across the board rather than focus in on one particular facet. However if a man is going to act like a creepy sleaze-ball then he shouldn’t expect a free-ride and he shouldn’t expect his behaviour to go without comment. What does strike about most of the criticism against women who’ve been victims of sexual harassment consists of an assertion that if a woman finds something offensive she should toughen up. The argument they put forward is that men take the things people say about them on the chin and so should women. They do this whilst going to great lengths to explain why the woman in question should never have said that, that the woman has crossed a line and offended them and boo-hoo-hoo. If you are going to complain about how women aren’t tough enough try to do it without sounding like a pussy.

Women don't need to toughen up any more than they already have.

When women are complaining about men treating them in this way it isn’t a sign of weakness. It’s a sign of strength. It’s a woman drawing a line in the sand and saying this behaviour is unacceptable and I will not stand for it. This is the strongest stance any member of the human-race can ever take. I’m going to run through a list of men who’ve taken stances like this in the past and you can tell me which of them was weak. Winston Churchill. Abraham Lincoln. Martin Luther King. William Wilberforce. Fidel Castro. Joseph Stalin. I don’t agree with all of these people but weak they were not. So let’s imagine that we lived in the halcyon days of man’s dominance of society. Let’s imagine that it’s the late 18th Century and you went up to some young lady in the local public house and acted towards her in a thoroughly lecherous way. The “men” who believe this is acceptable behaviour would have quickly found out that the lady in question had a father or a husband or a brother who would promptly punch his face in. Obviously this didn't apply in polite society... no they had duels over this sort of thing where people got stabbed and shot. It was called conduct unbecoming of a gentleman.

I think Andrew Jackson had about twelve duels
about this kind of thing whilst president

The womens rights movement that started way back with the likes of Emily Davison was really two separate struggles. The first was to ensure that women would be treated equally by society with regards to rights and pay. The second was to ensure the protections that had been stripped by banning men from kicking the crap out of each other for acting like dicks were enshrined in law. To make sure that the woman who had no brothers could sit in a public place unmolested by unwanted advances from dick-heads. If you ever find yourself rushing to defend the men who behave like this and attack women who complain, with every justification, then just apply the Batman test. You see there are many criticisms you can fire at Batman. He's insane. No really. There is absolutely no part of his mental make-up within waving distance of healthy. However he is not weak, he is not a 'beta-male' and he is nothing less than completely and totally awesome from the moment he wakes up in the morning to the moment he falls asleep with the Jokers blood dripping from his hands. Now ask yourself would Batman get drunk and at a conference and harass an attractive red-head? Now ask yourself would you like to be trapped alone in a lift with Batman after he'd just seen you do that? Of course not he'd punch you and when Batman punches you, you stay punched. I'm not saying that being a drunken rapey lech makes you a criminal but it damn sure doesn't make you a good guy and no-one else has to tolerate a single ounce of your tedious bullshit.

eddie </rant>

Christmas Tales Part 2

2012-07-11T22:52:00.000-07:00

You know what I'm going to be completely honest here. I've got nothing. I've got about three half formed ideas. There was something about the fact that the word rapist is being thrown about online as an insult rather than being reserved for people who'd been doing rapes and the like. However if I go any further into that I could wind up sounding like one of those 'equal rights for men' twat monkeys so once again I am forced to offer up on of the tales I wrote for my friends last Christmas. This one is about my friend Bobby who (sometimes) blogs here.

Bobby vs ROBOTS!

The forest was silent. Well, obviously not silent, forest are never silent as anyone who has ever been in one will tell you, between the noise of the wind soughing through the trees and the various wild-life fighting, fucking or dyeing, forests are usually a fairly noisy place to be. There were no people though and as such poets, most of whom don't spend time in forests, would have described it as silent. So it wasn't silent but for the purposes of this we'll pretend it was. The forest appeared to be unoccupied by human beings, is really the take away point from this.

“FUCK!” Yelled the forest. We'll assume it was the forest because as was previously stated the forest appeared unoccupied. Although now I come to think of it I wouldn't have said 'appeared' if I wasn't going to turn the entire thing on it's head. So, yeah, there's totally a person in the forest. Let's join them.

Bobby was sprawled across the forest floor as a result of the 'fuck' exclamation related incident of seconds before, she'd grazed her hand slightly and had some twigs tangled in her <insert current hair colour> hair. Within seconds she'd pulled herself to her feet and continued to silently prowl through the woods. She'd travelled for several days to reach this point and was damned if she'd let a little trip damage her resolve now. If she let this injustice stand then it'd only be a matter of time before every other gang on the planet started stepping on her toes.

Within an hour she'd completed the twenty minute walk to the edge of the forest and found herself on a rocky outcrop above the robot outpost. There were several silver buildings but from up here it was impossible to tell which of them contained what she sought. She'd once been told that the robots painted all their buildings silver even though they were actually made of fairly flimsy timber, there were many theories as to why they did this, most believed it was to trick there enemies into believing there bases were much harder to destroy. Bobby thought it was because even robots realised that a robot in a log-cabin just looked really, really silly. After looking down at the base for a moment Bobby had formulated a plan.

A few hours later found Bobby straddling a large tree that she'd managed to haul to edge of the outcrop and holding here favourite mecha-atomic-laser-death-cannon, it was hot-pink with neon stars plastered over it with green hi-lighter pen and played show-tunes every time she pulled the trigger as well as unleashing a steady stream of hot laser death. She started to rock back and forth on the precariously balanced mass of wood but the tree refused to move

“Fuck this!” She exclaimed and throwing caution to the wind pointed the hand-held WMD at the rear of the tree. Seconds later the forest was alive shaking from the blast of a vast explosion and the strangled tones of Cabaret by Liza Minelli. Bobby was travelling down the mountainside at a furious pace, the rear of her make shift transport wreathed in flame as she loudly warbled along to the musi in a display of what only the excessively kind hearted would refer to as singing.

Within seconds of the initial blast, the air was filled with a million different coloured lasers as the robots opened fire on the bizarre and unexpected attack. Half way down the slope Bobby started to return fire, her cannon belting out random snatches of show-tunes like John Barrowman's iPod, if it had epilepsy, vast beams of laser energy sliced through huge swathes of the camp turning the robots to piles of molten metal. She giggled with joy as she continued her manic descent toward the robot stronghold. Seconds later the tree slammed through the outer wall of the compound and started to grind to a halt. When it did finally finish grinding to a halt Bobby hopped off her timber steed to find herself surrounded by a crowd of angry robots.

“Hey, guys! What's up?” She enquired as one of the camps many buildings exploded behind her. A flaming robot ran from the building screaming while flailing it's arms comically.

“The robotity.” One of the nearer robots exclaimed putting a monstrous robot claw to its mouth hole. Bobby glanced at the carnage around her, then at her gun... the charge bar showed it was empty, it'd be a few minutes before she could fire it again.

“Erm... I know this looks bad.” She began.

“Looks bad! We were minding our own business and you've just reduced half of us to slag.”

“He-he, slag!” Bobby chuckled throatily.

“Oh it's funny is it? You killed Jim and he was only two days from retirement... what am I going to tell his grand-bots?” Here the robot dropped his head into his hands.

“To be fair Tim... slag is a pretty funny word.” Said one of the other robots. Bobby pointed at him dramatically and nodded in agreement.

“Hold on... Tim? That's not very... ya' know robot-y” Bobby said giving the little robot a curious gaze.

“Well what's you're name?” Tim replied

“Bobby.” She returned.

“That's a blokes name.” Tim responded only to find himself quailing beneath the gaze of intense hatred that she'd fixed on him. “Oh fuck it, shoot the bitch!” Tim declared pointing his own laser towards her.

“Oi! There's no need to get all aggressive.” Bobby declared looking at the sea of whining lasers. “You started it!”

“What are you talking about?” Tim shouted. “You just threw most of a tree at us.”

“And you stole my jelly!” Bobby shouted in response. Here the crowd of automatons went quiet and there was a lot of down-turned heads and shuffling of feet. “See you're not denying it are you!” She said wagging an accusing finger.

“Regardless of whether that's true or not...” Tim said authoritatively.

“It is” Bobby interrupted sarcastically.

“... it doesn't justify you committing, what is basically, a war crime.” Tim finished.

“We obviously have very different views on the importance of jelly” Bobby said glancing at her gun, just a few more seconds and she'd be able to finish the filthy jelly thieves off. “Give me my jelly back and we'll say no more about it.”

“Say no more about it! That's a school you blew up.” Tim yelled pointing at the ruins behind her. It was now Bobby's turn to look at her feet.

“Sorry.” She said quietly.

“Oh she's sorry! I don't give two fucks” Tim advanced towards her as the mecha-atomic-laser-death-cannon let out a small beep. Within a heartbeat Tim was vaporised where he stood.

“Any of you slags want some?” Bobby yelled rhetorically.

***

Bobby dropped down on the sofa later that day she flicked on the TV to see some boring news report about a bunch of dead robots or some shit plastered all over every channel.

“Boring!” She exclaimed and tucked into her jelly with gusto.

Jelly addiction is a serious issue. If you or anyone you know have been affected by the

issues raised in this story please contact the National Jelly Addiction Hotline on 08001234567

The Conservationist (Part 2)

2012-07-08T05:51:00.004-07:00

This is the second part of a short story the first part of which can be found here.

… This is also the only time we get a decent look at the actual colouring of the birds. They won't develop their trademark flame covering until they first take flight. Although they have to ability to breath fire right from the off. Both the males and females have a distinctive flame red beak and bright yellow feathers forming a crest around their face, but the bodies of the males are a shimmering gold in colour whilst the females are a charcoal black. The males have a tendency to attack on sight whilst the females are incredibly docile and actually seem to enjoy being handled but this does necessitate changing from climbing gloves to fireproof gloves on the cliff-face. Even with protective gear it's entirely possible for the chicks to burn you, we believe that their base temperature is it's highest at this stage I think that this is because they can't release the heat by flaming at this point.

In addition to cataloguing the new members of the species we also have to spend a lot of time making sure that the location remains secure. In addition to regular patrols around the area, a few of us take jobs working as guides which allows us to steer walking groups and the like away from the area. Fortunately the cliff itself faces out towards the sea so we only have about a mile and a half of forest to keep clear of visitors, we can't risk anyone seeing a gout of flame on the cliff-face and investigating or worse calling the authorities. We've considered putting up signs and fences up around the site but it was decided it risked attracting more attention than it would dissuade. So we keep roaming the area in an ongoing attempt to keep the secret.

This cycle of surveillance and study continues for three months. In that time the birds develop their full plumage. The feathers on the males are incredible. The half closest to the birds body retain the golden shimmer of the hatchling whilst the rest of the feathers are covered in an intricate pattern of white, blue, yellow and red, the effect is to make each feather appear as if it is wreathed in fire. Most of the people I work with believe these to be some of the most beautiful things in the world but for me they pale in beauty when compared to the feathers of the females. I've heard them described as black but that's not really accurate. They look black under a normal light but if you take them out of the light and view them in total darkness they reveal white speckles. These tiny points of light make the feathers look like the sky on a clear night. They are, in my opinion, the most startlingly beautiful things on this planet.

It has been hypothesised that the darker colouring of the females has developed to allow them to avoid detection during the nesting period, this would fit with the fact that most of the hunting excursions made by the birds are made undercover of darkness whilst the birds are nesting. Prior to the hatching of the eggs the birds mainly hunt other birds, pigeons and such that they snatch on the wing with unerring accuracy. This tactic changes dramatically once the chicks have hatched with the birds hunting more like an owl. Sweeping through the foliage under cover of darkness and hunting mice, voles and other small creatures. These smaller creatures are a lot easier for the chicks to feed on. Where some birds regurgitate predigested food for the phoenix allows their young to tackle each meal themselves this is made quiet easy by the razor sharp beaks the birds hatch with. The chicks are cared for right up until the night of the Autumnal Equinox.

The females leave the nests during the day and won't return for at least six months although most will not be back for at least eighteen months and some will wait another year on top of that. We have no idea why there is this variation but that's an aside. The chicks remain in the nests until darkness. Around midnight the nests fill with flame, not of the same intensity of the hatching but it's still a fairly intense sight. Then within a few seconds of each nest setting on fire the birds launch themselves skyward with an stream of flame tailing behind them. Like a dozen tiny Apollo space rockets. Once they are gone our work is done for another six months. It takes us a week to wind up the operation and then I head off to the Caribbean... This job pays quite well.

Ideas For A Better Tomorrow

2012-07-07T14:34:00.002-07:00

The other day before I got all distracted by science, bosons and invisible spiders I mentioned that I had recently spent some time pondering exactly what sort of policies I would find more palatable at the polling station. Anything would be a nice change of pace from the current debate over exactly what type of knee-pads would be the best to wear as big-business salty shaft is lolling on our collective tongue. Well I actually have a fair number of policies I think would make this country a better place, some might work some ma well be bollocks but then I'm not actually a politician, I have morals. So without further ado let's run through them.

Ban tax-havens. Obviously that's not something you can deal with at a national level... except of course that it very much is. If any company wants to do it's business in this country and it's based in a tax-haven they can either transfer it's base to the UK and pay all their tax here or pay a flat 40% on all profits made in the UK. Those are your options, stop being a greedy dick and pay your way or fuck off and make nothing. On a related note tax evasion would be punished with each £100 avoided would equal day in prison. These measures would plug up the gap in funding the UK's welfare state with complete ease. I'd also cut the amount of money required to run the most of the countries infrastructure by introducing national service. Not military national service, unless that's the option you want to choose. I'd just like to see an extra year added on to the education system regardless of whether you choose to leave at sixteen, eighteen. This work-force would be put to work in hospitals, nature reserves and where-ever charities and the like need man-power but also to help with science.

Brian Cox recently pointed out that in one year of economic bail-outs the UK government gave the banks more money than we've spent on science since Jesus. I'd want to see that figure increased to approximately 15% of total government spending. This is easily achievable by simply relinquishing our position as Americas side-kick. If someone else wants to jump in and make themselves a target for fundamentalist Muslim terrorists feel free. Britain worked very hard to make sure we had a dog in every fight for the last thousand years it's about time we sat a few turns out. I don't want us to rid ourselves of our navy and he like rather use those resources as tools to further this nations scientific advancement.

In the global economy every country needs a niche and I feel that the UK has an unique place in the history of science and should therefore be focusing on making ourselves a big part of the future of science. The benefits to our nation would be immeasurable. We would attract the brightest minds in science from across the globe resulting in huge leaps forward in our infrastructure, healthcare, defence and overall quality of life. The idea would be to spark a new wave of high-tech manufacturing industry in this country as well, meaning a drop in unemployment. China is a great place to get you're lead painted toys made but the UK would be a better place to get your hydrogen fuel cells. Now onto some other random bits and pieces.

I want the National Curriculum to include gardening. Seriously everyone should be able to grow their own fruit and vegetable, it'd be a great solace in tough economic times to know that you wouldn't be going hungry. Also give everyone in school the same level of basic medical training as you give to the army. I want more spending on the police-force but not on more police I want better training and equipment. If you're a police constable in the UK I want you to be a trained MMA fighter, covered with gadgets and constantly plugged into a central super-computer... basically I want all coppers to be low-level Batmen. I want a one time huge cash injection into the BBC for the specific purpose of getting the entire BBC back-catalouge available on iPlayer, I'm including all news in that, it'd make a great educational resource. More public artworks. More benches. Allow people to sell organs, their my organs if I want to sell one to a rich guy I see no-reason why I shouldn't be allowed to.

Another thing I'd like to see is a massive reinvestment in libraries. Turn them into what the fucking well should be. Get rid of all the fusty quiet rooms and make places that have the books, sell coffee, have spaces give over to making stuff throw in decent computer labs with a half sensible porn filter and you have a space that might attract young people. Hell whack a skate-park on the outside and you've gotten a massive chunk of 'youths' off the street. How about an online bill of rights so that I don't have to e-mail my MP once a year to protest against the latest attempt by the entertainment industry to destroy the internet to protect their out-dated business model.

I genuinely could go on for ages here but it's occurred to me that it might be worth actually writing up into some sort manifesto for a genuine alternative to the current system... I might actually consider making it as a DRM free e-book and attempt to create an open-source political party. That idea is not as mental as I first thought actually. This has a real possibility of actually turning into a genuine thing... hmmmm.

eddie <providing political ideas without political leadership>

Higgs Boson

2012-07-04T15:34:00.000-07:00

So I've spent the last few days ruminating on today's post. I've spent an awful lot of time here criticising the way our little species is governing itself but I've also made it clear that criticism without alternatives is pointless. If I have a mission statement, which I don't because I'm not that kind of cunt, it would be to suggest a better world. So I decided to spend a lot of time and thought writing up a manifesto. The policies I want to see put forward the kind of things that I would vote for and that I think would make the world a better place. It was an exceptionally well thought out piece of writing that had real potential to make a difference. Unfortunately you won't get to read it just yet because holy jesus-balls on a cracker they've got all sorts of Higgs up in my boson.

This is the man who is going to win this years Nobel Prize for physics.

Today the LHC announced that they've found what appears to be the Higgs particle. I say appears because this is science bitches and we don't just stamp a fifth sigma on something and prance off into the night like a religionist. It has all the hallmarks of a Higgs and was found exactly where we last left the Higgs so it's got a definite chance of being a Higgs. You know, if it looks like a fundamental particle, walks like a fundamental particle and quacks like a fundamental particle it's probably a fundamental particle. Anyway I'm going to try to break down what exactly a Higgs is.

This is the image that'll be the front cover of the next decades science textbooks

I recently mentioned that some religious types use the lack of scientific understanding of gravity and mass to justify the existence of the Jesosaur. Well the Higgs, if it is what it is, is why we have gravity. First of I want you to imagine the universe is all 2D because it's just fucking easier that way. Now imagine that it's also a massive spiders web, and that the web is covered with invisible spiders. When a fly lands in the web the spiders flock towards it. This causes the web to sag. Are you with me so far? The slumps in the web of the universe are what causes gravity, stuff just rolls into the dips and what not. The Higgs particle is essentially like the fly and the Higgs field is the spiders. Also the fly is invisible as well. Up until now we've only been able to guess at the existence of both spiders and flies due to the fact that gravity happens. However we've now found evidence of the fly. We know we were right. By we here I of course mean all people who subscribe to the Standard Model of Physics, I did very little on this project other than come up with the bitching spider analogy. So what next?

I mean, I guess you could have a wicked game of laser-tag there.

Well these experiments will have to be replicated a whole bunch of times, because that's science, until everyone's all like. 'Yep! Definitely a Higgs. Huzzah!' Because some things just deserve a huzzah. It will also be a period of intense focus in the physics community. There's a new toy... we need to find out what it does. How does it react to being bombarded with gamma radiation? What happens if we fling a whole bunch into the heart of a reactor? What is it's relationship with cats? This will generate a massive leap forward in the understanding of how the universe works, anyone working on non-Higgs related theories of quantum mechanics will refocus their energy in what we now know is the correct direction. By the end of the next decade Brian Cox will have a whole new bunch of reasons to stare wistfully into the sky.

This is the man who'll be explaining this for the next four years

The real important thing though is that now we know what it is that controls mass we can start messing with it. This is fucking awesome. You see we went from knowing what an atom was to blowing up Japan with them in less than 50 years. If we master the Higgs as quickly it'll be astonishing. You see the speed of an object with no mass is c. As in E=mc2. As in the speed of light. With a Higgs nullification field Mars is a four minute trip away. Alpha Centauri is less than 5 years away. All of this without having to worry about the effects of acceleration and inertia because we'll be plugging zero into the mass field on all of the relevant equations and seeing as it's nearly always multiply by mass it'll take most calculations down to zero.

I hope that our ability never catches up with our imagination

Look I know I'm babbling about the distant end of human scientific advancement but this breakthrough lets us know where that distant end is. It informs fantasy because it lets us know exactly what the first barrier to getting of this rock is... it's that bastard Higgs particle. Quantum theory gave us an understanding of electrons that in turn gave us the transistor and by extension every piece of technology that exists. This might be the next jump, where it'll land us we have no idea and that's just so exciting it actually makes me slightly nervous. Maybe it's not going to help us get to our nearest neighbouring star but maybe it'll bring the stars another step closer to us.

Lets just get the fuck out there.

I'd like to finish up by echoing the sentiment of Fabiola Gianotti, leader of the ATLAS team who made this discovery and a person very likely to have something important named after her, by simply saying “Thanks nature.”

eddie <last one to europa is a rotten egg>

Dealing Death

2012-07-02T15:09:00.002-07:00

In my last blog I touched briefly on the subject of the death penalty. Now I'm guessing that those few of you who actually bother to read this have probably assumed that I am on the left wing of the political spectrum. This is in fact not true. I'm a pragmatist. If I believed that the war on drugs was a winnable and good for society, I would have no option but to support it I'm against it because there isn't a single measurable metric that indicates that it's a worthwhile endeavour. Equally if it could be shown that the death penalty had a single positive effect I would be forced to support it. It does not.

Those who support the death penalty site three primary arguments in favour of their position. I'll run through each of these in turn.

The primary argument put forward is that the death penalty acts as a deterrent. The evidence from this is at best inconclusive. The problem is that it's very difficult to gain a clear idea of the figures due to the fact that the only real-world testing ground is America. It's the only place where states with similar laws and social-economic factors but with different policies on capital punishment rub shoulders. Unfortunately every state in America is very much it's own barrel of parsnips. There are so many other variations that it's hard to see what might be causing variances in the crime rate. Even those studies that tend towards supporting the death penalty estimate each execution as saving roughly 18 lives. Even in execution happy Texas only clocks up 1 execution a month that's only 216 lives saved a year. Subtracting from that the twelve who you have to kill that's only 204 lives total saved. Texas has a population of 25,674,681 according to the latest census data. That's 0.000794557% of the population saved each year. Not strong support for a major policy decision. Add to that the opinion of Steven D. Levitt of Freakonomics fame that:

“if you do back-of-the-envelope calculations, it becomes clear that no rational criminal should be deterred by the death penalty, since the punishment is too distant and too unlikely to merit much attention”

You've pretty knocked that argument on the head.

Second up is the the belief that it is significantly less costly to simply kill criminals than to imprison them. Well it's also cheaper to set up a Escape From New York style prison island and just drop in food once a week that doesn't mean it's a good idea. Leaving that idea, which is a fantastic idea until someone inside the manages to kidnap the presidents daughter, to one side lets examine the actual costs. It costs the same to keep someone in prison for twenty years whether they are on death row or not. Now the average life sentence doesn't extend much beyond 30 years. If you're imprisoned at the age of 30 by the age of 60 you're probably not considered much of a threat to society. So obviously your basic costs will be higher for the lifer than the dead-man-walking. However if you get life in prison you are probably going to settle with the verdict of your first appeal, especially if you are guilty. On the other hand even the most blatantly guilty will fight tooth and nail to overturn a death penalty the cost of all these appeals will amount to a small fortune much more than life in prison. Of course you can give them less appeals but then you've increased the chances of killing the innocent which in the long term will just undermine the authority of the justice system.

So the third and final argument I want to deal with is a simpler and more emotional one that is usually worded simply 'hanging's to good for them'. Now I'm not denying that some people deserve to be killed, but they mostly sit behind desks in suits. However it completely ignores the simple question of whether or not we deserve to kill. Stop focussing on how much paedophiles aka the mentally ill (if you don't think it's mentally ill to fuck kids... get help) deserve to die and focus on how much the state deserves to kill. Do you trust the government with the power over life and death? If you live in the modern world you either live in a developing nation with a horrifyingly corrupt government that is in cahoots with the military, business interests and the media to maintain a grasp on power. Or you live in a developed nation with a horrifyingly corrupt government that is in cahoots with the military, business interests and the media to maintain a grasp on power. Do you really believe that these fuckers would hesitate to kill an innocent man through negligence or malice. I don't. I find it concerning enough that these people control the economy to their own nefarious ends. Watch any science fiction movie that starts out with a system only slightly more corrupt than the one we live in and tell me what happens to outspoken critics of the government... Exactly! Don't give those fuckers anything close to that option.

eddie <death to death>

Stupid Arguments

2012-07-01T11:00:00.000-07:00

I recently wrote, here, about the ridiculous twaddle that preachy carnivores have a tendency to trot out whilst they are persecuting Vegetarians, all the while never spending any time focussing on the fact that we leave more bacon for them. Like most of my articles it engendered a lot of thought, debate and comment. Like most of my articles it was only me it engendered this in... Come on people pimp this blog to your friends... What it mainly got me thinking about was other ridiculous arguments. So here I am going to present some other arguments I find stupid. I'm not going to tell you where I fall on these topics because I broadly agree with some and broadly disagree with others but these particular arguments are absolutely terrible.

“We can't get rid of the monarchy they're great for tourism”

If you happen to live anywhere other the United Kingdom then you probably don't have to regularly hear people discussing the pros and cons of abolishing the monarchy unless you live in 16^th Century France. This debate does have merit on both sides but this argument is stupid. If China was to start running the Hunger Games it would be phenomenal for tourism that doesn't mean it's a good idea. I chose China because they could pull it off. If tourism is your primary concern then abolish the monarchy and build a Harry Potter theme park on the site of the Buckingham Palace. No scratch that you put, Diagon Alley, Nocturn Ally, Gringotts et al there and build Hogwarts at Balmoral and link 'em by the Hogwarts Express. That'd make us millions.

“Scientists believe in things that they can't see as well”

This argument is largely trotted out by religionists and is there way of pointing towards dark matter, dark energy and the like as being equivalent to believing in god. Now there are a whole ton of reasons to believe in a deity... none of them persuade me but that's a separate issue. You see Scientists don't want Dark Matter and Dark Energy to exist it's a theory that exists to explain the world the universe works. That is to say that the theories of Dark Matter and Energy only exist because they are the best explanation of things that we have witnessed, removing them from the equations stops the maths that underpins the workings of the universe stops working. Physicists working in this field know that the maths does work because it make testable predictions and explains observable facts. If you come home find your door kicked in and your TV missing and you say 'a thief has been here' it is not akin to believing in god. I can't see the atmosphere I know it's there though.

“There are a lot of holes in the evidence for evolution.”

This is one of the stupidest things I've ever heard. There is more evidence to support the theory of evolution than any other theory to explain the origin of life on earth. Not just some more. Fuckloads more. Evidence has been gathered and amassed that supports it for 150 years. This argument further more is presented by people who's only evidence for there theory is two chapters of a book that was written approximately 1800 years ago and of whose author we know literally nothing. It's very much like a naked man point out a hole in your t-shirt.

“You've read a lot of books but the real world doesn't really work like that”

This is less of an argument in itself and something that is more used to dismiss any argument backed up by statistics or facts. The reason it's so fundamentally flawed is that it assumes that any degree of 'book-learning' is gained at the expense of real-world experience, when it's not it's gained at the expense of real-world experience it's gained at the expense of watching sports, reading the tabloids and having terrible taste in television. People who have a decent understanding of science, statistics and social issues still go down the pub and have as many anecdotes about the funny thing Dave did as those who don't. They just also know that the death penalty doesn't act as a deterrent due to the facts that US states with and without it still have similar crime-rates, and psychological experiments that prove criminals don't think about punishment before committing a crime.

“Only humans have war.”

This is an argument put forward by those those on the left-wing who are usually also members of PETA or some bollocks. The argument basically being that we are inherently a worse species than most of the others. Utterly failing to understand the way the world works. We are the top predator on this planet and if we weren't whatever had developed to take our place would have been as warlike as us. Without war and struggle you can't rise to this level you'd just end up as a ig lizard until a giant space-rock killed everyone. Also only humans have romance and medicine so it's not a great argument. In addition to these points animals are constantly fighting with each other for food, mating rights and territory.

“Scientists don't know how it gravity works so it must be god.”

Richard Dawkins calls this the god of the gaps. It's one of those ridiculous arguments that renders debate futile. You see scientists don't understand how gravity or mass work... YET! They're working on it as we speak. You've basically set a limit on you're belief in god. As soon as science works out gravity you've lost the argument. It's the argument that was used thousands of years ago except then it was 'we don't know why the sun rises so it must be god.' Well we know that now and we'll know a metric fuck-ton more in the future. Arguing that science hasn't unravelled a mystery yet therefore god is as stupid as it is ridiculous.

Once again I try to see the merit in all points of view but these arguments are just pathetic enough to undermine your entire point.

eddie <all for intelligent opposition>

Christmas Tales Part 1

2012-06-28T14:31:00.000-07:00

Unfortunately today I'm going through some personal stuff so I'm not going to be able to present a new blog today so here in it's place is a short story. Last Christmas due to the fact that I am caring, creative and cheap in equal measure I wrote a series of short stories starring my friends. What follows is one of them. I will eventually upload all of these. This particular story is about my friend who blogs here.

Hayley Stanbrook: Dinosaur Hunter

Hayley Stanbrook, adventurer, dinosaur hunter and notorious cupcake thief, was standing in the hall way of her newly built town house, the last one had been damaged beyond all repair after what most of the folk in Ole London Town called 'The Mammoth Incident'. Above her Milly the maid and Hermen Gestault the butler, whom she'd won from Lord West in a game of snap, were directing a team of men to position a mounted triceratops skull above the fire place.

“Left a bit” Hayley said exasperatedly, what should have been the simple operation of rehanging the trophies of her various previous engagements had been turned into an elaborate palaver by Hermen's insistence on hiring a team of winsome cockney urchins rather than the burly professionals she would've preferred. “I've got to meet the Prime Minister for cake and medals at three” She said glancing at her pocket watch, it's single hand was slowly moving away from 'Early' towards 'Late'. It wouldn't do at all to miss such a prestigious event especially when she was also hoping to win a pardon for her last spate of cupcake thefts. “Look it'll have to do where it is!” She shouted as the head swung further to the left than she wanted.

“Sorry Miss.” Hermen replied with a hefty sigh, he'd been hoping that the urchins would be cheaper and better and knew his failure would result in him having to wear the bunny costume his mistress use in the place of the corporal punishment preferred by the more conventional members of high society. “I'll get the costume”

“You'd bloody well better.” Said Hayley turning and striding towards the study to collect her blunderbuss. The PM did rather dislike her bringing it to official meetings but had softened to the idea ever since she'd saved his life from a trained assassin raptor sent on orders of the German Chancellor. The German's had learnt a costly lesson about dinosaur attacks on her turf that day and shortly afterwards had stopped parachuting dinosaurs into the capital entirely. Thinking about it brought a smirk to Hayley's face, that little escapade had increased her total count of deceased lizards to the highest the London Esteemed Dinosaur Forum had ever seen, earning her portrait pride of place in the clubs main lounge. Even Old Lord Pogo whom she'd replaced had the good grace to compliment her on the kill. As she was lost in thought she heard the sound of footsteps and steam behind her. She turned to see Little Jimmy Steam-Legs, the most famed urchin courier in all the empire sliding to a halt in the middle of the room. He was casting his eyes around agape at the surroundings as boiling water dribbled from his eight mechanical octopus legs.

“Cor blimey, Miss, they ain't 'alf done a lovely job in 'ere and no mistake.” Jimmy exclaimed. He was right of course but then Hayley had paid top dollar to have the ancestral home returned to it's pre-mammoth glory.

“Is there a reason for this visit Jimmy, or were you just stopping by to comment on the décor?” Hayley enquired with a raised eyebrow.

“Lord Barnaby's pet Tyrannosaur is on the loose in Hyde Park. It's causing a terrible scene if it pleases ya' miss.” Jimmy exclaimed. Hayley had told the blasted fool time and again that he couldn't keep such a beast as a pet but he'd assured her he'd trained it to only eat marmalade on toast. She felt like a fool for believing him. Hayley grabbed her blunderbuss from the mantel and ran out the door without stopping to grab her hat and overcoat.

“Jimmy,” she turned her head to the side to see that the Jimmy's freakish mechanical legs were easily keeping pace with her, “Get to the Zoo and tell them Lady Stanbrook needs her cat.” Jimmy replied with a nod and took the the next side road, his odd collection of limbs kicking up a trail of dust behind him as he became a blur of steam and urchin charm.

***

Hayley leapt from the roof of the Hanson Cab as it pulled to a halt outside the parkland, She'd have like to have gotten closer but the gallimimus were spooked and besides the cab would make little headway through the throng of people fleeing the area. She tried to push through the crowd at first but made little headway, she gave a frustrated 'hurrumph' before shooting her gun into the sky, it made a noise like thunder and the crowd parted like the red sea. The gun was of her own design and no sooner had she fired than the small clockwork monkey concealed in the butt of the weapon scampered up the barrel and started reloading it with fresh shot. She'd gotten the idea for it from the man she was courting whom was said by others to have the looks, brains and dexterity of a monkey and was a dab hand at basic weapon maintenance.

After a few moments she found herself standing alongside the frail frame of Lord Barnaby, who was clutching a small dinosaur whistle in one hand and the tattered remains of a small leather leash in the other. He had the decency to look ashamed of himself as she glowered at him.

“I'm terribly sorry to trouble you Miss.” He said shuffling his feet like a naughty schoolboy. “Clementine's never normally like this, I'm afraid I let her wander to close to the Marmalade Toasty Stand. She ate the thing in one bite, Mr Owagnu with it.” Hayley shook her head.

“Well this is very bad I'm afraid my Lordship. First if all Mr Owagnu made the best Marmalade Toasties in all of England and I was exceptionally partial to them myself. Secondly I will have to kill the beast now it's tasted human blood.”

“But why?” his Lordship asked plaintively

“Have you ever tasted human blood? That shits delicious.” She shook her head and strode towards the vast lumbering beast. When she got close to the beast she let off another shot and caught the beast in the back, it had little effect but got the beasts attention, it swung it's vast head towards her, unintentionally pelting her with oranges from the tattered remains of food stand which was still attached to it's face. Hayley held up a finger for a moment and the beast halted while she cackled at it's ridiculous predicament. After she had regained her composure she looked back to see the creature giving her an impatient stare and tapping it's foot. “OK, I'm done.”

“GRAAAAAAARRRR!” Said the T-Rex in reply... although some people later said it was more of a “RAWRRRRR!” It didn't matter to Hayley, as by this point the monkey had repacked her weapon and she was fired a hefty load of shot into it's mouth. It was a perfect shot and would've signalled the end of the beast if most of the shot hadn't been entrapped in the vast amount of marmalade that the beast had in it's maw. Before Hayley had time to react the beast had turned and swiped at her with it's tail.

The impact knocked the wind out of her, but she managed to keep the blunderbuss gripped in her hands, and the clockwork monkey managed to keep a firm grip on the blunderbuss. Instead of impacting on the hard grassy earth she found herself hanging from the jaw of a great Sabre-tooth Cat.

“Milo!” She exclaimed slinging her arms around her favourite pet, and London Zoo's most famous resident. Within seconds she had clambered on to his back and was taking aim once more at the great destructive lizard. Milo pounced towards the beast in a series of tremendous bounds that would have shaken off a rider without her experience and prodigious thigh strength. She gently pulled on his fur and he leapt to the right just as the huge orangey jaw snapped shut behind them. As he landed she pulled his head to the left and in one epic leap he was claw deep in the lizard's tail. Hayley hung on for dear life as the tail snapped back and forth but Milo slowly clawed his way up the great colossus. A T-Rex is a fearsome beast from the front but once on it's back there is little it can do due to it's tiny arms, which are great for humorous dance routines but sadly for little else.

Once they were high enough Hayley hopped down from her mounts back and pressed the blunderbuss to the back of her foes head. A second later the park was silent save for the echoes of the thunderous shot. The creature slowly slumped forward and Hayley slid into a mess of brains and marmalade which made her vow that she'd only eat smooth marmalade from that day forth.

***

What with all the fuss it had slipped Hayley's mind that she was supposed to be meeting the Prime Minister, but she needn't have worried as he'd heard about the trouble and hurried down to the park himself. He'd awarded her an extra medal there and then. Lord Barnaby had been inconsolable but had agreed to sell the remains of his favourite pet to the Royal Society and give the proceeds to Mrs Owagnu whom, Hayley was delighted to hear, knew the secret of her husbands marvellous toasties and promised her a free supply for life.

The pictures of Hayley shaking hands with the PM in front of the slain beast had made the front page of the Metro, a clipping which Hermen had framed and hung on the wall beneath the triceratops head. She was glad he'd chosen that page and the not the page about the cake shop on the other side of the park thought Hayley as she munched on a cupcake with a sly smirk.

How Hard Is It To Lose An Election

2012-06-25T11:51:00.002-07:00

Hello, readers. I thought that today I might write about a subject that irks me, irks me something hard. Over the course of this blog I've made a good many allusions, some subtle some not so subtle to the fact that my homeland of Great Britainshire is slowly drifting towards becoming a filthy repressive police state. I mainly fear this as I'm already to old to be the courageous hero who ends the corporations grip on this nation, I'm much more likely to be the inspiring underground leader of the rebellion who dies just before giving all the secret plans or whatnot to the beleaguered hero. Like that thing in that guys chest in Total Recall. I don't think that I'm massively exaggerating the risks with my rhetoric and I have a single great reason for believing that. It's the fact that I live in a country where it is impossible for the vested interests of those corporations to lose.

This is very much the best I can aspire to.

There are three main parties in my country, he scoffed there are two and a bunch of losers whose foolish backstabbing has rendered them a worthless political force. Those two parties are both so deep in the pockets of the likes of G4S, the world's second largest employer and a security firm that will take literally any job regardless of morality, News International, Rupert Murdochs propaganda-for-hire machine, and anyone else who feels like pushing them around. The list of corporate tax-dodgers is far to long to go into here but includes the likes of Vodafone, Top-Shop and Tesco. Like I say it is literally impossible for the corporations to lose out not just because both parties refuse to do anything to challenge their all powerful might but also because it is very near impossible to lose an election in this country.

This idiot won... How hard is it to lose.

For those who don't have the benefit of a british education allow me to explain our ridiculous system to you. We don't have a chance to just vote for the leader we think is best. We instead vote for a local MP who once elected throws his support behind the leader of his respective party. This means that most people ignore there local candidate and just tick the box of the part with the least objectionable cunt. There are 650 seats available in the UK parliament meaning 326 seats is the minimum required to win a majority this also means that 326 votes is the minimum number required win an election.

Actually three more people than
are required for a proper pub fight.

So lets look at how hard everyone tried to lose the last election. For starters the political figures of our nation are such an uninspiring bunch of losers that only 65% of our population turned out to vote. 35% of our people are so disaffected with our political system that during a mass recession and two wars over a third still didn't give a fuck, but then why would they there is nothing to distinguish any of the parties from one another. Seriously that is pathetic enough without going into any more but fuck it let's plough on. Our current leader managed to secure 306 seats (all data is available here) that's an absolutely unconvincing 47% of the seats. If you had cancer and were told the treatment was 47% effective you'd be waiting for death. That's not all though, because our system unfairly exaggerates swings in the vote Mr Cameron's party only achieved 36.1% of the vote, not the electorate the vote. No of the total number of votes available Mr Cameron got 36.1% of 65% for those not great at maths that equates to 23.465%.

The Tory is the always the one who grabs the first slice

The man currently running this entire country was not only forced to form a coalition to trick his way into power but also was voted for by less than one in four people. That is not democracy and anyone who tells you it is, is a fucking idiot. This is the position of authority from which this man sells of the NHS, privatises the police-force and lets his corporate buddies chum up to his ministers. There have been occupying forces with more support than that, I know that because they were us. How did this all happen?

"Say what you like about them but they make the
trains, which they invented and installed, run on time"

Well it's simple those corporations don't want you voting. News International is only one of a dozen distraction engines that work tireless around the clock to keep you from spending any time from actually realising that you are fucked. If those figures came out of a small oil-rich middle-eastern country that were rethinking there energy policy they'd be front page news everyday until they were replaced with pictures of the same country after a sustained bombing campaign. However as long as it serves the interests of the ruling class to have these puppets dancing to their jig they will make sure that you don't give a fuck.

Love 'em or hate 'em as long as you don't focus on the Leveson Enquiry.

The real problem with this kind of thing is that the entire thing is completely fine right up until the point it's terribly wrong and the only hope we have as a nation is that when that happens the ruling classes won't have gotten so much of what they want that rebellion is impossible.

eddie <power to the people, up the tooting popular front>

The Conservationist (Part 1)

2012-06-24T16:37:00.002-07:00

(Today I present the transcription of a man I met recently met on my travels)

Turning up in the pub at the end of the day with a fresh bandage wrapped around a finger, arm or on the less fortunate days my head, it's a sure fire way to get asked some questions. After a while climbing accident, whilst technically accurate, doesn't cut it any more, so I learned to shrug and say 'Work'. Of course there's only so many times you can say that before you get asked the what exactly it is you do for a living. It turns out that like with most truly unbelievable things the best option is to go for the truth. Conservation. It's a broad word covering a lot of areas it also explains the climbing and the injuries, the worlds most endangered creatures are rarely it's most harmless, it explains all manner of cuts and bruises. As long as no-one ever looks under the bandages they'll never see the burns. Which is for the good, if you think poaching is a problem for people trying to restore the Golden Eagle population can you imagine how bad it would be if they got wind of a genuine phoenix population nestled in the highlands of Scotland.

It's one of only half a dozen or so nesting sites left in the world. I say left but we're fairly certain numbers have never been historically that high. The colony here is the seasonal home to over twenty breeding pairs, that makes it the largest colony in the world. Managing the population calls for a particular set of skills. It's not just enough to be an expert in the field of conservation, top of my class at Oxford, you've also got to combine the skill set of a ranger, guide, spy, paramedic and firefighter.

Some of that is self explanatory some of it might be a little harder to follow. Most conservation sites are set up specifically to make the work done there as easy as possible, unfortunately we don't have to option of building anything that would be permanent and therefore visible. The need for secrecy is of course paramount. If you think poachers are a problem for people who are trying to increase the world tiger population then you can imagine how bad it would be if they caught a whiff of the fact that we had a population of genuine mythical beasts. I think I can best explain the nature of my work by telling you something about the creatures I work with.

The Pheonix (aquila aviaduro) nests high in the cliff-faces of the scottish mountains. They make their nests by perching on the edge of the rock and letting out a concentrated stream of flame. The heats generated vary from bird to bird but all adults of breeding age can produce enough heat to melt rock and they use this to make a small hollow in the rock-face. After leaving the rock to cool they stuff the newly formed opening with collected twigs. These are then burnt to ash by another blast of flame, the birds are very good at regulating the temperature of the blast. On average this will be done a dozen times before the base of the hollow is filled with enough ash to form a soft base on which the eggs may rest. All of this work is done by the male, who arrives at the nesting site about a week before the females.

The females arrive after dark on the vernal equinox every year which has led some of us to hypothesise that phoenix largely navigates by the position of stars, sun and the moon as opposed to having an internal compass. As they arrive the males perch on the edge of the nests and shoot flame into the air. The females are looking for the most powerful flame, there then follows a brief scuffle as the females fight over the male with the largest flame with the winning female and the male taking flight together. They then engage in a mating ritual that is almost indescribable. The two birds take to the air and engage in something that is part aerobatics and part fireworks display. When this is done the male takes flight and disappears. All attempts at tracking where these magnificent creatures go during the rest of the year have resolutely failed, it's not that feasible to attach a tracking device to a creature that can simply burn it off. The females, now impregnated, return to the nests.

We don't get much of a chance to get close to the nests whilst the males are present due to the high temperatures and the much more aggressive nature of the male birds. Once they depart we go to work almost immediately. At first light after watching the whole mating display unfold we start abseiling down the cliff-face to the nests and check on the females. The eggs won't be laid until a few days later but we need to check in on the females to check that they haven't injured themselves during the mating process. The females are much more docile than the males and allow us to do this work, we also take substantial notes and photographs at this point. Without the ability to tag the birds this is the only way we have of comparing the birds from one mating season to another. We find that the females tend to return every two years, sometimes as long as three. For the next three days we will spend a lot of time monitoring the birds. As they will spend this time in the nests preparing to lay.

Each bird will lay a single egg approximately the size of a golf ball, the birds themselves are about the same size as a peregrine falcon. The eggs are almost completely round with a very slight point to it black in colour but with a metallic sheen to them, the birds leave them on their own whilst then go hunting. Whilst for most bird species this would be a death penalty for the unhatched young the phoenix egg is scalding to the touch. Strangely this isn't due to heat but rather due to the icy cold. The egg is cold as it's funnelling all available heat in the area into the heart of the egg. The eggs will not hatch until the Summer Solstice. This time is when we do most of our work studying the birds although we're working on a very incomplete level we do know that they are definitely nocturnal.

I could write pages and pages on the habits of the birds but this is supposed to a quick overview so I'll just jump ahead to hatching day. The birds hatch on the shortest night of the the year and each nest becomes a beacon of light. The entire cliff-face turns into a wonderful light-show from a distance. At this point we have to stop venturing too close to the nests for two weeks as the early stages of the birds lives are spent at an incredibly high temperature. After that time we feel safe to venture down the cliff again to catalogue the new birds. This is when most of the injuries to the team take place as we have no idea if we are approaching a docile female or an aggressive male.

Part 2

(I'll be publishing the rest of these notes next weekend)

I Am Not A Number I Am A Free Man

2012-06-21T14:36:00.000-07:00

I've been recently ploughing through Abraham Lincoln: Vampire Hunter this, naturally led to me thinking about the subjects of freedom and humanity and what-not. After all it's difficult to read book that contains both the Great Emancipator and hellish devil-creatures that would like nothing more than to destroy the human race and not start to ponder those subjects. This train of thought collided with another one that was sparked off by the fact that yesterday Britain's druids... yes foreign readers we have druids... gathered at Stonehenge, the world's best henge in my opinion, to celebrate the Summer Solstice. The result of this idea tragedy... it was a train crash after all... was one simple thought. Fuck me am I glad I'm an atheist.

Either there is no god or he has terrible aim.

Odd thought I know but please allow me to explain. It's not really crucial for you to allow me this is a blog not a democracy, if anything I operate on a sort of benign feudalism. I was thinking about how I don't hate the druids or more accurately how I don't hate the Druidic faith. As an atheist... and I recently saw Slash play Sweet Child Of Mine, I bring it up because if that didn't make me believe in God nothing will... I feel a fair amount of disdain, disgust and disco fever (couldn't think of a third thing beginning with dis) towards all religions. However all religions are not created equal and I feel no real issues with certain groups. Buddhists for example are all kinds of laid back and groovy. Shintoists gave the world Sumo and for that alone get a bye. Druids are awesome as such I like them a lot.

When you're main religious festival looks like a
Led Zep concert your religion is all right by me

You see druids have a lot to recommend them over other faiths. Firstly they worship nature. I'd like you to go to the nearest window, have a look out of it and then come back. Sorry for the specifics but I don't want to leave my slower readers stuck standing by a window. Now even if you found a view more aggressively urban than Dr Dre you will still have seen some nature. That's pretty much a win for the druids. When you believe in and worship something that you can point to it gives you a good deal of credibility. Secondly the druids are all about being good to the environment and shit and that's like six kinds of awesome. If your beliefs can be directly linked to the concept of 'more bears' then you rock. Finally I really love the way that these mother-fuckers celebrate real shit. People have written fuck-loads about when the Jesosaur was born but the Summer Solstice is a factual event. Anyway whilst I was pondering this I basically decided that while all religions are equal, some are more equal than others. I then vaguely recalled something that Dr Richard Dawkins had once said about not taking a graduated approach to religion.

This man has received death threats for saying that magic is silly

That is why I love being an atheist. You see if you are a catholic, and I've chosen the cathols because I know exactly how there hierachy works (hint: its largely hat based), and the man in the pointiest hat says something it's true. It's called papal infallibility and it's in the bible. It basically means that God has the popes back. So if El Popo decides to declare that the sky is blancmange then God's all like... “Sure is little buddy” … and all caths need to accept the general dessert like nature of the sky. I however am free to say this.

“Whilst I agree with Dr Richard Dawkins on many issues, acknowledge his undoubted expertise in the field of evolutionary biology and of course accept that his role as a leading figure in the atheist community is well deserved I disagree with his view that all religions are equally in need of abolition.”

You see I am not a Dawkinite, nor am I a Darwinist or a follower of the Church of Hitchens. I am an atheist and my opinions are my own, free from interference and tyranny. I am free to assess every single thought a person seeks to articulate on it's own particular merit even, nay especially, if it's a person I largely agree with. The religious cannot say this. If the Church of England, a church founded entirely because someone wanted a divorce wants to say letting gays get married will destroy the sanctity of marriage their followers have to tow the party line. Muslims aren't allowed to go out a read a copy of the Satanic Verses no matter how good it may or may not be and Born Again Christians are forced to cruelly inhabit a universe where christian-rock is seen as a legitimate form of musical expression. I instead get the simple joy of knowing that I am always free to choose.

Free the slaves, murder vampires or both?

That is why being an atheist is frikkin' awesome because freedom of thought must always be the preference of the intellectually bold.

eddie <freedom isn't free>

Crop Circlers

2012-06-19T12:01:00.000-07:00

Whilst there are many conspiracy theories floating around very few people have considered the terrifying consequences if they are all true... Read on, gentle reader, read on.

There had been much debate over whether or not silence was a big enough word to describe the kind of noiselessness found away from planetary atmosphere. Some had maintained that the silence off a world, made up as it was off a cacophony tiny sounds, could never approach the stillness of the vacuum that some other, bigger word was needed. Others said that there was no need for another word, that the universe was mostly silent and the planets were far to noisy. Yet more said that the conversation was a pointless debate over terminology and that everyone should shut up and get on with what they were being paid for. However even those voices would after a few bottles of the local poison admit that out in the black there was something suffocating about the complete stillness of it all. It was this silence that flooded the bay as the shuttle drifted in from the star-flecked blackness.

The awaiting crew felt a faint rumble transmit through the floor as the doors slid shut. Shortly after the room was flooded with rich breathable atmosphere accompanied by a near deafening roar. The shuttle was a rhapsody in gleams and shimmers the occasional strip of lights blinding the unwary viewer. Much has been written on the phallic nature of space-ship design and whilst there have been many wonderful arguments put forward regarding the the overall aerodynamics of such designs. Most of these arguments fall apart in a vacuum. The designer of this particular vessel had either ignored the fact that wind resistance wasn't a factor in effective space-ship design or just really liked penises. Either way it was less than a second on the ground before the ground crew started to swarm all over it like so many pubic lice. It took slightly longer for the an opening to appear in the tip of the craft and ejaculate forth it's passenger.

The man who emerged was eight feet of matt black fury. His hat was a master-class in severity that allowed no room for compromise beneath it two dark red eyes the colour of the blood of betrayed children burned forth with the kind of gaze usually reserved for those who have discovered grammatical errors on the internet. There was no nose and almost no mouth, only a near invisible line in carved from the chiselled onyx that passed for flesh on this strange creature. The rest of his body was a shadow a skin-tight black suit clinging to an aggressively muscular frame all enshrouded in one of those long black coats that the bad-guy always wears. Beneath all of this were a pair of fierce stomping boots that appeared to only meet the ground with extreme displeasure. The figure achieved a kind of stillness akin to the silence mentioned two paragraphs previously. It was the kind of stillness that demanded attention far more than any raging tempest a complete lack of movement that screamed murderous intent. Within seconds a smaller scurrying creature had rushed towards the weapon, for there was no better way describe the recent arrival.

“Grand Prefect” The small beige creature gasped as his small white robes flapped around him in everything about this one screamed bureaucrat he was therefore in his own shallow way infinitely more dangerous than the man who's entire being screamed death and rage. “We weren't expecting you so soon.”

“No it appears not” The Grand Prefect replied in the voice of Alan Rickman... thus making him instantly even more menacing. “Indeed it appears that you weren't expecting a single review of your progress” Here he stopped to remove his gloves in one of those completely unnecessary little touches that none the less made him appear even more deadly.

“If you have any luggage you need depositing...” The small pencil-pusher tried to reply before he withered beneath the intense and deadly gaze.

“I have no intention of staying longer than it takes to rectify this catalogue of failures.” He said pulling a small data-pad from within his coat and casually throwing towards his subordinate. “Now that someone competent is here.” With that he swept towards out of the bay pulling the now extremely flustered beige being behind him like a cork bobbing in his wake.

Every corridor of the ship was half walkway half maintenance corridor half walkway. For reasons that no-one has ever been to reasonably explain designers of larger and more expensive space-ships feel that this kind of look gives a ship such an edgy and dark feel that it complete negates all of the horrible disadvantages. Higher maintenance costs were just a small portion of this. The number of crews that the Grand Prefect sent scattering as he made his way through the ship was truly preposterous. It would have angered the Grand Prefect if he had not already been simmering away at approximately 90% of his maximum rage capacity. He did take time to kick a small repair robot directly at one of slower moving crew. As per standard science fiction protocol all of the repair staff where slovenly blue creatures with New York accents and matching New York attitudes. There was lots of establishing shots and small snatches of banter before the Grand Prefect tore past as is standard for this early in a story of this nature.

The internal doors of the central command were twenty-foot high and ominous, they were literally dripping with om, this was another another cost that could've easily be avoided if the whims of the designers had been ignored in the face of practicality. By the time the doors slid open with a satisfactory shu-thunk word had spread of the Grand Prefects arrival and the senior staff had hastily assembled around the large circular table that all futuristic settings must have due to intergalactic architectural regulations. The Grand Prefect reached the table in two long strides and slammed his fists down on the table with such force that the over end of it flew up and knocked one of the tiny bureaucrats flying across the room.

“Gentlemen.” He yelled. “I am the tyranny. I am the rage. I am the terror that lurks deep in your hearts and I am here to say enough is enough.” He grabbed the nearest subordinate and without even a grunt of effort flung them bodily across the room into a control panel. There was a flicker in the air in the middle of the table which flickered and, with a noise that sounded suspiciously like an old cathode ray tube TV turning on, a hologram of the planet earth appeared, taking the audience massively by surprise. Yeah I know. Well let's stay with this and see where it's going. “This tiny orb has managed to rotate around it's home star fifty times since you arrived and still they have yet to surrender to the might of the Transian Empire.”

“Grand P-P-Prefect” One of the bolder underlings stammered. “We've done everything that standard procedures indicate. The humans refuse to even send a reasonable negotiator.” He continued before quailing beneath the powerful death-stare.

“I've read your reports.” The Grand Perfect sneered. “You've been to earth. You've mutilated the carcasses of their primary food beasts, sending a clear message that we are willing to destroy their very way of life. Following that you have left clear understandable messages in the heart of there arable land. When you attend the meetings to discuss their surrender in place of there leaders the send out a bunch of, what was it...” Here the Prefect stopped and pulled out his pad and glowered at as if it was anger sensitive. “...genetically questionable hill-folk. What hypothesis do you put forward to explain all of this.” He asked with a sweeping gesture around the room and began to pace around the table forcing his subordinates to actively flinch as he passed behind them “What grand ideas do you put forward?” He held the pad into his eye-line. “The humans don't understand our messages. Ha. The humans are not aware of, or open to, the possibility of other intelligent life. Preposterous. Food production is not considered vital by most humans and as such our efforts should be consigned to the more developed urban regions of the planet...” He halted behind one of the bureaucrat who tried his best to sink into his chair. “What sort of drivel is this... I should have each and everyone of you taken to an airlock flung into space and use you as target practice. That way you will at least accomplish one useful thing with your worthless lives.” Where some would have shouted the Grand Prefect's voice never wavered from its Alan Rickman monotone.

“The humans have one of our ships. Due to someone's spectacular incompetence in leaving the wreckage at this...” He glanced at the pad “...Roswell place. They are storing it in... Area 51. Every attempt to negotiate with them has been met with derision. The time for soft words has passed gentlemen. I want a full attack to be launched within the cycle. Wipe that smug rock from the face of the universe.”

eddie <i hope you enjoyed it>

An Apology

2012-06-17T12:13:00.000-07:00

Those of you who read my writings with any degree of regularity will be aware that from time to time I tend to get a little angry it's not usually a problem as it's when I find it easiest to get into full flight when my rage engine is cycling at full spin. However it does mean I've been known to make outlandish and ridiculous statements based on theories that rely on access to fairly limited data sample. For example I have said that Harrison Ford and Sean Connery struck a deal during the shooting of Last Crusade so that Ford would do all of Connery's ageing in exchange for a large stipend. I've also put forward the theory that the executives at the Fox Network can only survive on the shattered dreams of Joss Whedon fans. I have also regularly called beloved director and definitive story-teller of a generation Steven Spielberg a massive racist.

This is the face of hate.

It's that last one I want to talk about. You see over the course of my life I became fairly certain that Mr Spielberg had an unreasonable hatred of the british. Now I realise that whether this is bigoted or racist is very much a matter of opinion however I chose to call it racist. I wasn't just pulling this out of my dick either I had a fairly reasonable amount of evidence to support my opinion. The piece of information that first sparked this theory was the rumour that Spielberg was lined up to direct the Harry Potter films. That was a pretty exciting piece of news at the time. I then heard that Spielberg wasn't going to be involved. I was disappointed. Then I found out that the reason it had fallen apart is that Spielberg wanted to set the films in an american high school with Haley Joel Osment as Harry.

We'd never have heard of her... Fuck you Spielberg

I looked into this and read that Spielberg believed that american audiences wouldn't be able to relate to an english character. This statement was made after the books had already become the massive worldwide publishing phenomenon that we all know and love thus proving his point more or less entirely wrong. It then occurred to me that Spielberg had directed War of the Worlds. Instead of that being set in the Britain of the late 1800s it was moved to modern New Jersey... I mean it's a timeless tale and it kind of works and it does make sense as a choice on it's own there's nothing racist about this but it's part of a worrying pattern of behaviour. Then you look at Saving Private Ryan a movie about the Americans coming over to save us helpless Europeans from the evil Nazi scourge... although now I come to think of it I don't think you see a single European at any point during the entire film. All of this occurred to me at once, but I didn't want to believe that he hated my homeland so I racked my brains, he must of worked of at least worked with someone British... H had. Once. In Schindler's List both Ben Kingsley and Ralph Fiennes appear. However Fiennes plays a Nazi so that is very much a wash.

Once you beat them, you get to keep their uniforms.

What always bugged me about this is that Spielberg is definitely an educated man... he is also a Jew and as such he should feel some slight gratitude towards the one country that didn't wait to be attacked before they told Nazis to fucking do one. I'm not including the French because when you shout it over your shoulder whilst retreating toward Paris at full pelt it doesn't really count. I know that argument is filled with holes and doesn't really work on any substantial level but Spielberg started it with his needless hatred of all things tea loving.

Pictured: Britain

However recently Mr Spielberg seems to have changed his mind about my small sceptred isle. I noticed this whilst watching Tin-Tin, which by the way is an awesome film certainly one of the high-lights of my ridiculous Oscar-thon. That movie stars Jamie Bell, Andy Serkis, Daniel Craig, Simon Pegg, Nick Frost and McKenzie Crook and was written by Steven Moffat, Edgar Wright and Joe Cornish. That's a pretty fucking british. This was the same year that he cracked out Warhorse... but that movie would have been utterly impossible to adapt to use American's as the yanks brought very few horses across the Atlantic with them. I'm not sure if I was wrong about Spielberg or if he recently realised he was wrong to be such a massive racist but either way in light of this recent change I feel like I should apologise for all the cruel and horrible things I've said about him.

I'm sorry Steven... You Rock.

I will not however retract my statements about him wearing baseball cap... grow up. You look like a child from the Make A Wish Foundation.

eddie <and stop hanging out with lucas he's a dick>

Bronies

2012-06-14T15:41:00.001-07:00

I've spent most of my adult life, hell most of my entire life, skulking around the depths of the internet. I've visited the dark and twisted corners of the collective human psyche and seen things you wouldn't nay couldn't conceive. Through my life I have happened upon a simple truth, that everyone has there own unusual appetites and everyone is entitled to them. If you wish to dress up as a teddy bear and throw custard at women feel free to do so. I see nothing wrong with furry food fights between consenting adults, it's not my particular brand of vodka but you have at it. I can even see how ones mental development may take them down that path... cartoons have a lot to answer for. Equally I'm not the kind of person who wants to spend twenty hours a week engulfed in the realm of Azeroth... is it Azeroth? I dunno whatever the place in World Of Warcraft is. However I can utterly see the appeal of it but I'd rather keep some of my free time for my other gaming commitments. Again I'm not the biggest fan of religion but I also don't want to disappear back down the rabbit hole of creationist debate websites, they may be fun but I don't want to waste hours of my life on it when I could be doing something productive. I understand that it's a bit rich for me to say that whilst blogging. The point I'm drifting towards is that I have a passing knowledge of a huge number of human quirks and I those that I cannot understand I can at least accept. Except Bronies.. fuck bronies.

Bronies, for those of you fortunate enough to have avoided contact with this subculture, are grown-ass men who straight up fucking love My Little Pony. Specifically they love the animated series My Little Pony: Friendship Is Magic. Now in the interests of journalistic integrity I have of course watched a couple of episodes of the show and can report... hahaha of course I haven't watched it. As much as I hate people who judge things without watching it and as much as I dismiss people who write off Harry Potter and Skulduggery Pleasant as 'for kids' My Little Pony is for kids. Kids is of course an exceptionally broad term though, so let's be clear. I dismissed My Little Pony as being 'for kids' about the same time I first went to school which is almost the exact time that I stopped dismissing it as 'for girls'. I know that my love of things like Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles and Transformers is based on a heavy dose of nostalgia but I also know that shit was tight. Now if by some weird chance you were raised on the world of My Little Pony then you might be a bit weird but I would understand a bond you might feel to the show. However Bronies are coming at this from the angle of being ostensibly adults who sat down to watch a show aimed at people who as of yet cannot fucking read.

The only reason I can think of for a man who is not the father of a small girl to have any knowledge of the goings on of... I was going to look up what the name of where the My Little Ponies live is but then realised that is way more effort than I want to put into this subject. Anyway the only reason for knowing anything about it is if you are the father of a small child, girl or boy I don't discriminate, who loves it. Other wise the only possible reason for cultivating an interest in the subject is if you are researching for your paedophilia. I've spent a fair amount of time mulling it over and trying to work out what it is about this particular niche is that pisses me off so much and I think I've narrowed it down to one thing. It's My Little Pony. That's really all it is.

You see I know that right now there is a possibility that someone is reading this and thinking, “No dude you have to watch it.” No, no I fucking don't it's a TV show about brightly coloured tiny horses teaching children to share and what-not. At no point will the plot startle and amaze me, the artwork and animation is not going to blow my mind and at no point is a train made of neon lights going to derail and de-res... Watch Tron: Uprising... I'm willing to give everything a chance to surprise me, I mean I've watched the first Twilight movie... it made me want to claw out my brain and go on a killing spree but I watched it none the less and gave it it's chance. However this is where I draw the line. This far and no further say I. If anyone you know admits they've dabbled in MLP then slap the ever-loving shit out of them until they regain the ability to handle reality and shows an interest in stuff aimed at the over fives.

eddie <fuck that shit>

Carnivore/Herbivore

2012-06-11T23:04:00.000-07:00

There are some strange correlations in mental traits that I have never been able to quite understand. Why do people who drink real ale also believe the neck-beard is a reasonable style of facial hair? Quick-tip if it's not on your face it's not an acceptable look. Why do conspiracy theorists always have a laissez faire approach to personal hygiene? Is there a conspiracy about showering? Why do people who want to in the countryside also think that 'antiquing' is both an acceptable activity and an acceptable word. It is neither. However the link that I really wanted to talk about is the bizarre and frankly inexplicable link between whether or not you eat meat and how preachy you are. It's a subject that does require something of a dissection. So why is it that carnivores are so preachy?

"Have you heard the good news about Jesus?"

Declaration of interest here I'm a vegetarian. If you choose to eat corpse feel free to do so. Seriously have at it I don't give to much of a shit. I'm not a big believer in trying to win people over to my side of an argument by reason, yelling or knife-fighting... which is a real shame because I am very very good at all three. I prefer the method of calmly explaining my own philosophy and then exhibiting why it's the best way to live by being continuously awesome. I'd say that it's an exhausting way to live but I'm far to awesome for that. As such I occasionally find myself in a position where I have to decline an offering of charred flesh. A little shake of the head which is usually met with a with a puzzled expression forcing me to explain “I'm a vegetarian”.

This is what you look like... right down to the cold dead eyes of a killer.

There are three reactions to this simple explanation. The first is a shrug, this is by far and away the best reaction. The second is the bizarre need to explain that someone else the carnivore knows is also a herbivore, I have never understood this one... do they think I'll be all 'Oh you mean Dave! I'll tell him I met you at the next meeting' or is it supposed to make me feel at ease, some form of proof that they won't eat the leaf eater. However as weird as that is it's nowhere near as bad as the third reaction which is to become a preachy a-hole about the entire affair.

This is what you become... Just let that sink in.

This might come as a shock to most of our, admittedly omnivorous, species but I've met meat eaters with an alarming amount of regularity. As such the sermon on the virtues of bacon that you wish to launch at me isn't a fresh experience for me. I don't want to hear you're wonderfully well thought out speech on why exactly you are not just allowed but in fact have a responsibility to devour less intelligent creatures because like all other overly preachy speeches I've heard it a million times before. For that exact reason you don't want to give me that speech because I've heard it enough times that I can demolish your argument so hard and so fast that it'll physically hurt your as yet unborn grandchildren. Unless you've already got grandchildren in which case you might as well just go throw a shoe at them.

Your choice of shoe should be directly linked
to how much you love your grandchildren.

I feel it's important to point out that I think it is completely and utterly wrong to preach at anyone about there choice of diet unless it is dangerously unhealthy... so you know if someone is eating a tub of lard or something. So here are the most common components of carnivorous sermons and why they are stupid as fuck. “If I'm not meant to eat animals why are they made of meat?” So are babies. “We have teeth that have evolved to eat meat.” Your appendix evolved to help digest grass, your body is filled with stuff that evolution gave you that you choose not to use. “We're more intelligent than animals.” I'm more intelligent than you doesn't mean I'm allowed to kill you and eat you... I checked. “If we stopped eating these animals then they'd go extinct.” So all the animals will die... they were going to anyway, at least future generations wouldn't. Also agricultural animals account for a huge percentage of global warming. You know what argument for eating meat is acceptable, “I like meat... I want eat it” Well done and fair-play. I don't want to eat meat and I don't want to be preached at for that decision.

Same way I don't want to get preached at for bringing an M4-Carbine to a BBQ

Let me be absolutely clear I actually think there are a whole bunch of good arguments for eating meat, but most of them could be used by hyper-intelligent aliens to justify eating people and when that happens I want to at least die on the moral high-ground. I also think that there are plenty of great arguments to be made for tons of stuff that we now look back on as being objectively morally wrong. I'm not saying that eating meet is wrong... but I'm not cool with it so I don't do it, much like working for a bank. I also happen to believe that in the distant, distant, distant future we will as a species look back on eating meat the same we look back on a whole host of other bad things we've done. I also believe that most people don't give the slightest nano-shit. I just want to be left to eat my plant-life in peace.

eddie <herbivore in a leather jacket>

Lady Luck Is Only A Lady When She's Not A Bitch

2012-06-07T05:55:00.000-07:00

(Sorry for the lack of humorously captioned images... I forgot I wouldn't be able to write this over the weekend because of Download Festival. So instead I just pulled something out of my arse during my lunchbreak on thursday... that's part of my commitment to excellence)

Luck is the most powerful force in the universe. Anyone who says otherwise is either ignorant of how the world works or alternatively very lucky. The CEOs of major corporations for example will constantly hold forth on how they got were they are due to an insane amount of hard work. That’s probably true but it completely overlooks the fact that they had the good fortune to be born in a time when their particular talents were linked to such a high financial reward. Were they born in the Medieval period of human existence then they would never have reached the top because that system didn’t allow it. Equally prisons are filled with people who, had they been born four thousand years ago, could’ve have been tribal leaders of great power and importance. I myself believe I would have been more suited to a period either in the past or future where fucking off and exploring was a much more realistic option, basically either actual piracy or space piracy… I think I’d be good at it.

It’s not just about having the good fortune to be born in the right time-frame, it’s about being born in the right place. I’m not speaking about those that have the good fortune to been into an affluent Bel-Air family… or at least be born the nephew of a successful judge who lives in Bel-Air. I’m speaking about the fact the Google guys had the good fortune, not just to be born at a time where their particular brand of genius could be applied but also in the right portion of the planet for them to use those skills. There’s not much of a tech start-up scene in the

Congo

. Equally those born in the Congo who excel at guerrilla warfare and merciless slaughter are lucky they weren’t born in South-East England where that kind of thing is very much frowned upon.

Then there’s the fact that the most successful people you’ve ever heard of got there because they met the right people. Che Guevara would be nothing if his life hadn’t brought him into contact with Fidel Castro and the same goes for Castro. John Lennon never went into a special centre slapped his hand on the counter and said give me two musical geniuses and a drummer. Instead the universe accidentally threw those three crazy geniuses together and later they met Ringo. Hugh Laurie was one of the highest earning television actors, clocking a million dollars an episode, of the last decade but you’d never of heard of him if he’d not gone to university with Stephen Fry. If Kurt Cobain hadn’t killed himself Dave Grohl would be the drummer from Nirvana and it’s only because of Walt Disney’s wife being in a funny mood that Mortimer Mouse became the infinitely more marketable Mickey.

None of this is to denigrate these people’s achievements. Unless you’re new here you’ll know that I’m big on Darwin, but if his friend had just published his paper without sending him a letter you’d never have heard of him. That’s not to say that Darwin isn’t a genius but genius is nothing without luck. Think about the people in your life. We all know at least one person that should be much more successful than they are and one guy who finds everything easy. There may be real reasons for that, maybe one’s a raging alcoholic and the other only made his business contacts through the furry scene but if different things had happened to each of them early in life they might have swapped vices and therefore lives. I’m not saying that hard-work won’t reward you but just remember a lot of unlucky people worked really heard to make Yahoo the best search engine, a lot of people worked really hard to make flying machines before the Wright Brothers beat them to the punch and a lot of Polish people worked very hard to make a go of it before the Nazis swarmed across the border and destroyed everything they’d worked at.

The world is filled with people who have become rich and successful at things that in logical world have absolutely no right to pay-off look at the people who took crazy long-shots that brought them success. Hell Gabe and Tycho, of Penny Arcade fame, shunned getting real jobs to professionally make immature jokes about computer games and dicks. They have personally warned others off of following in their footsteps because and I quote ‘there is no way this should have worked.’ Every success story is the tale of someone who rolled the dice just right and then made the most of that and a lot of every other story is the people whose roll of the dice went terribly and then they made the most of it. Hell I’m not a professional writer despite the fact that it is literally the only thing I am good at that doesn’t take place in the fictional city of San Andreas. I’m far from alone in this and the plain truth of the matter is that for most of us the universe never gets out of the way long enough to let dream-following become an option.

The simple truth of the universe is to hope that if and when your luck changes you bet as big as you can… unfortunately you usually won’t know if it had changed until just afterwards.

eddie <good luck and god speed>

God Hates... A Lot Actually

2012-06-06T15:52:00.003-07:00

So I was having a little trouble sleeping the other night, this tends to happen when I get crushed under the weight of my own intellect, so I went for a little midnight stroll through the back-streets of Wessex. This is usually a fairly uneventful jaunt and this one looked to be following the same boring and predictable pattern. I was pondering some of the more puzzling aspects of quantum physics, i.e. all of it, having given up on the much more taxing problem of women, bitches be crazy, sometime earlier. You can imagine my surprise when, upon rounding a corner, I found myself in one of the many crack alleys that the area boasts, that's not the surprising part, and found myself looking straight into the face of god.

“What are you doing here?” God barked. I have to admit the question took me somewhat by surprise as God has always seemed fairly omniscient in our previous meetings. I quickly surveyed the scene and saw that both God and Jesus were standing in front of a flip chart. Jesus gave me a glance and the little half wave he sometimes does before turning back to the chart and scrawling 'Flood New Orleans Again'

“What are you guys up to?” I asked, as it seemed like the most pertinent question giving the circumstances.

“Just working out new ways to punish America” Jesus replied without turning.

“Oh. Because of the gays?” I asked. God pivoted on the spot all afire with the incandescent rage of the Old Testament.

“FUCK OFF! I am sick and tired of every single fucking punishment I visit on that fetid empire being blamed on the faggots. Of course I hate the faggots they are a filthy, but fuck me is that far down the list.” God was shaking with rage. “I gave them a fucking list of rules and I mentioned the faggots once but every single time I give a baby AIDS or get a soldier shot in the face everyone assumes it's because I'm hating on the queers.” At this point god turned and shot an ineffectual kick at the flip chart. “Do you want the list?”

All I could do was nod dumbly whilst I shot Jesus a sympathetic look, parents can be so embarrassing. “KEEP HOLY THE FUCKING SABBATH is it that fucking hard to shut Walmart for one day of the pissing week. THOUGH SHALT NOT KILL yet the fuck-monkeys have two wars and the death penalty. There are tons of fucking tattoo parlours all over the fucking place.” I gave him a blank look “Leviticus 19:28, Do not cut your bodies for the dead or put tattoo marks upon yourself. I am the Lord. So while we're on the subject fuck fucking coroners the ghoulish mother-fuckers. Except Quincy I fucking love Quincy. Leviticus 19:27 Do not cut the hair at the sides of your head or clip off the edges of your beard... how many of the fat bastards do you see obeying that one?” I ran a finger through my ringlets as I tried to think of a notable yank with facial hair to match my own.

“Well most rabbis...”

“Fuck those Jew cunts.” Jesus interjected forcefully. “Nail me to a bit of fucking wood... dick-heads.”

“Wasn't that technically the Romans?” I asked trying to calm the situation down a little bit.

“Meen't meh memememe me momans?” Jesus replied incredibly sarcastically.

“Jesus Christ, there's no need to be like that” I snapped back at the messiah, who by the way is only like five foot three and something of a little bitch. Jesus hung his head in shame.

“BLASPHEMY!” God shouted at me whilst pointing.

“No it's not. I was saying his actual name to him.” I replied.

“OK but those cunt-thumpers blaspheme to high heaven. Mel Gibson released a film that made millions of dollars trading off of the death of my son!” God was shaking with rage. “They fornicate, they watch pornography, they eat the wrong animals and they wear clothing made from more than one fabric. They allow their women to talk back to them and fail to stone adulterers. They eat pork and they don't keep woman locked away whilst they are menstruating... don't they realize they are unclean. I will raise there country to the ground and each and everyone of my hypocrite followers will spend the entire time saying I'm punishing them for not making the gays miserable enough. Cunts.”

It was at this point I made my excuses and quickly left because despite having a few good points God is one crazy diety.

eddie <another late night walk ruined by a ranting diety>

Calm Down... Cocks

2012-06-05T04:55:00.000-07:00

So the CDC has recently released a statement saying that there is, currently, no zombie outbreak in the mainland United States, side-note: I told you so, which leads me to ask a serious question. When did people in charge of important things start taking our bullshit seriously? Speaking as a self styled expert on the undead menace, I've watched the right films and read the right books, I don't want to live in a world where the CDC has to release a statement like this every time the internet engages in some form of ridiculousness. For those that don't know the Centers For Disease Control are the branch of the US infrastructure responsible for stopping horrific outbreaks from ravaging the american populace. These are the people who in addition to stopping outbreaks of things like ebola, bubonic plague and all manner of horrible diseases from killing tens of thousands of people every time there is a case in a built up area also have to be prepared for a biological attack launched by a terrorist group. So I am understandably pissed off that they've released this statement.

It made me put me murder face on.

You're probably wondering why it would bother me. I mean one of there guys just sent out an e-mail or something, right? Well actually there is no way the CDC would release a statement like that unless they'd actually checked. No really. Everyone who works at the CDC has seen the same films as us. Have you ever seen a denial given by an authority figure who didn't at least check which didn't come back to bite him the... well on this occasion face I suppose. I'm not saying that the CDC set up a lab and pissed away a whole bunch of money on this, in all probability they rang the coroner of record and had a very brief conversation.

“Dude. Zombies?”

“Fuck no!”

“K Thanks”

That is absolutely all that would be required. The reason that this pisses me off is that even that tiny amount of effort, fuck it even releasing a gorram statement is to much time for a supposedly serious person working in a genuinely important job to devote to something so fucking stupid.

Pictured: Fucking Stupid.

Let me explain I spend a fair bit of my spare time preparing for zombageddon, I also resolutely refuse to accept that dragons have never existed. These are both major parts of the bizarre pop-culture collage that makes me the fascinating chap I am. They are also the parts of me that get completely and totally shut down on the rare occasions where I have to be a fucking grown-up. Thanks to the fact a large part of the internet has developed into a playground I rarely have to behave that way but it's fucking worrying to find out that the grown-ups are taking our games seriously.

"I don't know why Mr Dinosaur can't fix the economy... I'll call the president"

Chuck Norris exists in two very separate forms. There is the real Chuck Norris who is at best an above average action star who's only real claim to fame is getting his chest hair ripped off by Bruce Lee. Then there is the internet Chuck Norris a towering behemoth of a god-man who shits tanks. As long as those two forms remain separate all is good. If however the US Army felt that they needed to release an official statement explaining why they weren't using Chuck Norris to end the afghan conflict I think that we'd all feel justified in telling them to fuck off back to work.

Fuck Chuck Norris.

I'm concerned that this is just one part of a growing trend. The ridiculously photogenic guy has been interviewed on nationaltelevision. Why? Because the internet is the most important invention in the history of human communication. Unfortunately this means that some people have made the mistake of believing that the communication that happens on it must therefore be important. It is not. Just as it has been since time immemorial the majority of human communication is at best noise and at worst word-faeces. The only thing that has changed is visibility. In the past if me and my friends wanted to spend six hours discussing, in minute detail, every single available problem we have with Skyrim, which we have done, no-one else would have to here it. Now those conversations happen online which puts it just a few keystrokes away from everyone else on earth. This does not make those conversations important.

Pictured: Unimportant Opinions

I'm certain that as a key component of the social interactions that make life worth living these conversations are absolutely vital but in the same way that I don't feel it necessary or even wanted that the president release official comment on what Tracy did to Darren in the pub last night I don't need the fucking CDC to tell me that there isn't a zombie outbreak.

eddie <plus it ruins the fun>

Impartial

2012-06-03T13:32:00.002-07:00

So I've decided that I want to punch Jeremy Hunt right in the dick. I've decided that not only is this something that I want but it is also something that is completely right and proper. I'm not a complete bastard, which incidentally is what I want written on my tombstone, so I feel it is only fair to set up an independent committee to determine whether or not I should punch Jeremy Hunt right in the dick. In addition to this the committee will be tasked with deciding the exact force with which Hunt should be punched in the dick. Obviously that will only be an issue should the committee agree with my view that Jeremy Hunt definitely needs to be punched right in the dick. In the interests of complete impartiality I will of course make sure that the decision is made by a completely impartial group, the final decision will of course rest with the head of the committee which will of course be me.

Not looking good for you, is it Jezza?

I know that some of you might be confused by this so let me just make this absolutely clear. Whilst the committee has been set up by someone who thinks that Jeremy Hunt needs to be punched right in the dick, me, and the decision will be made by someone who thinks that Jeremy Hunt needs to punched right in the dick, again me, but I will be impartial. So now I've said that I will definitely be impartial that's an end of the matter isn't it. So let's get on with punching Jeremy Hunt right in the di... Sorry deciding whether or not to punch Jeremy Hunt right in the dick. I mean I'm definitely, definitely, definitely impartial. I may have spent most of this article up to this point saying how I believe that Jeremy Hunt definitely deserves a punch right in the dick and that I would very much like to be the one to do it but I also said I would be impartial. Are you calling me a liar?

What did you think I looked like?

How dare you? That's fucking disgraceful, that's like saying that Jeremy Hunt is a liar for saying he'd be impartial well he was deciding whether or not Rupert Murdoch should be allowed to seize control of the nations news media in order to establish the worlds first privatised propaganda machine.

“Do you want to run the country? News Corp can make it happen. For the low, low price of the continued increase of our share price we will print the headlines that you want.”

Don't believe me. Look for the Sun's coverage of the Leveson Enquiry. Oh hold there isn't any. That's the nations biggest newspaper not covering the nations biggest news story. The main reason that people with fully functioning brains were against allowing, well know business-man and fairytale villain, Rupert Murdoch seize control of the nations media, in a way more in line with a Banana Republic than a first world nation, is that we were concerned he would manipulate information flow to his own nefarious ends. So when we hear that the person responsible for deciding whether or not this insanely egregious mishandling of a major nations news media has already decided that it should be allowed and has been firing off chummy e-mails and texts to the Murdochs it's understandable that we might be concerned. However Jeremy Hunt has said that he was completely impartial. That is apparently good enough for the man who runs our country.

I think it's this guy... I'll be honest I don't pay much attention

From this we can conclude that David Cameron is either fundamentally corrupt or such a simpleton that it's a shock he can dress himself in the morning. However the precedent has been set we're taking people at their word now. So when I promise that I will be impartial when deciding whether or not to punch Jeremy Hunt right in the dick that's a cast-iron, copper-bottomed guarantee that you can take to the bank. Obviously I'm not a government minister like Jeremy Hunt so obviously my word carries significantly more weight. I mean I don't have a history of being a lying scumbag. So here I am all set up to be impartial and shit so we're going to have our first meeting now.

12 Seconds Later

So we've decided that it's actually crucial that I punch him right in the dick as soon as possible... for like the economy and shit. We also agreed that I should do it hard enough to break the fucker in half. That's the completely impartial decision that we reached. There is absolutely no reason for anyone to question the process here either I mean it's not like we just rubber stamped the decision we'd already made... that would be unethical. I mean I said I was impartial loads of times, what more do you people want?

eddie <while writing this i accidentally said jeremy cunt twelve times>

God Save The Queen

2012-05-31T11:47:00.000-07:00

So for those of you who don't know there's a woman in the UK who is about to celebrate 60 years in the same job her name is Elizabeth and she happens to be Queen. As is usual in the typical medieval village, a George ARR Martin, or one of the worlds leading developed nations, apparently, there is to be a public holiday. Unlike the average medieval village the money for this entire affair is coming straight out of the public coffers. Now obviously back when medieval lords were having parties to celebrate there time at the top of monkey tree they were spending money that they had gathered from the public. Money that they had, and this is very important, they actually earned.

If you don't think Tyrion Lannister deserves to be rich you're an idiot.

Now I'm not going to say that the average medieval lord didn't have a significantly better life than the average serf however they existed in a system where they inherited not just money and lands but also all of the actual work involved in running a kingdom, solving disputes and so forth. I'm not going to pretend that some of them didn't give the slightest nano-fuck but they were encouraged to do so by the simple truth that a more peaceful land was a more profitable. The point I'm making here is that they had great power and, as I'm certain you're aware, with great power comes great responsibility that's as true for feudalism as it is for radioactive spider-bites. I'm not saying that ye olde lords deserved their comparatively vast wealth, they deserved it about as much as a modern day investment bankers. While we may all utterly despise the method by which these folk earned their money we can all agree that it is, sadly, their money. So when a medieval lord gets all the smallfolk into the courtyard rolls out load of mead and rosts a couple of boar it's very much him throwing the party. That's not what's happening for the Diamond Jubilee.

Pictured: Princess Anne

We, a country so impoverished that we're having to sell our national health service to the Prime Ministers chums, are paying a vast sum of moolah to throw a party for the richest woman in the world. She has done exactly fuck all to earn this position and all we are celebrating is that the rest of us have stopped anyone or anything from killing her. So why the fuck isn't she footing the bill for her party. The bitch could easily afford to purchase every single mother-fucker in this country a pint of their choosing but instead she doesn't do a fucking thing and we through her family their second huge party of the last two years. Some people reading this are already rolling out the old tourism argument.

It's really this retarded.

That argument, for those who have had the good fortune of not arguing with twats, states that the royal family is good for tourism so we should obviously keep the fuckers around. Turning one of our counties into a vast paedophile haven would be good for tourism but no-one thinks that's a good idea. OK that might be a bit extreme but if the only argument you have for paying for an entirely family of wasters to go shake hands with people is that it's good for tourism well then you have to be in favour of replacing it with anything that would be better for tourism. So let's get rid of the royals and turn there lands into a series of Harry Potter theme parks. Balmoral is in Scotland that could be Hogwarts and Buckingham Palace could be converted into Diagon Alley, Nocturn Alley and Gringotts. That'd be way better for tourism wouldn't it?

Obviously.

The thing is that I'm not actually massively against the royal family. I view them in the same way I view the BBC, I pay a relatively small fee year on year for the privilege of being entertained by the BBC. Equally I pay a small fee every year for the simple pleasure of watching Prince Philip being a hilarious wanker. The royals are the equivalent of owning a dancing bear, unfortunately to make the bear dance for my amusement we have to keep it a cage better than any of our homes. The issue I have is that in the relationship between us, the peasants, and the royals, the royals are very much the beneficiaries. As such they should be the ones who throw the fucking party.

Like this but bigger.

The Queen is the richest woman in the world and still gets a substantial pay out from the tax payer every year, for sixty long bastard years, she can easily afford to by every man, woman and child in Britain a beer... possibly even two. If she did that then I would have absolutely no problem celebrating the hell out of her frikkin' jubilee.

eddie <sixty years and no promotion she must be shit at her job>

Not A Real Post

2012-05-29T11:45:00.001-07:00

Today's main post is below this one... yep just down there, yep where you're looking now. No down there.. frakking idiot. However I wanted to jump in and say the shortlisted entrants from the Future of Copyright Competition are now available in ebook form, including my own entry. I highly recommend giving it a download and a read... it's free and stuff and a lot of the entries are better than the crap I shunt out thrice weekly.

Move Along Nothing To See Here!

2012-05-29T11:45:00.000-07:00

This being the internet, unless of course you’re reading one of the printed copies of this I fling my zeppelin whilst laughing at paupers, the news that a man in Miami had been apprehended in the act of attacking another man would’ve quickly faded to obscurity. However the news that a man was shot six times after being discovered devouring another man's face began all manner of zombie based theorising.. Obviously like most fans of the zombie genre… no ones a fan of the creatures themselves, they are pitiful shambling monsters… I have devoted an unhealthy amount of my life speculating, hypothesising and fantasising about the inevitable zomb-o-calypse. Being something of self-styled zombie expert I feel an overwhelming need to step into this discussion but not in the way you may expect. This is definitely not an outbreak.

Calm down it's not that shocking a conclusion... You know what I'm not
going to pretend that this picture is related, it's fucking funny though

One of the most important things the zombie-obsessed among us must learn is that there are a lot of things that at first glance seem to be zombies that you will got to prison for shooting. These include costumed party-goers, people making low-budget horror films and drunks that have lost bets. It is key therefore that you develop a keen ability to detect what is and isn’t zombie otherwise you wind up in prison trying to determine what is and isn’t rapist. So without further delay let me run you through the reasoning behind my belief that this case is not the moment we’ve been preparing for.

So... keep preparing... I guess.

First of the attacker was a naked individual. This is a key bit of evidence in allowing us to build a picture of whether this was zombie or not. Naked tells us that our zombie, if he were, would have turned in bed. This is actually the most likely place fro the infection to take hold. If you were out jogging and got bit you’d try to ignore it at first… what with America’s healthcare system... If you then started to feel some what under the weather you would head to the best place to recover from all sickness. Bed. So a man goes to sleep and the zombie awakes all pain and hunger filled with an insatiable lust for flesh. If he was located in a tower block, which is statistically likely in a built up city like Miami we are looking at a situation where he managed to find the stairs and leave the building without meeting a single other viable meal. Before you say he could’ve taken the lift, thus minimising his chances of meeting a potential snack, how would he have used the buttons… no the lift is only an option should someone have been in it or called it, either way you’re looking at a lift for of dead people. Of course we could be looking at the lone escapee from some form of secret underground facility. That notion is of course utterly preposterous. You wouldn’t build something like that in Miami you’d build it in butt-fuck-nowhere, Ohio.

The middle-of-butt-fuck-nowhere... and there's still a fucking hipster

The next issue is that this chap was gunned down whilst snacking on the face of a homeless man, who it is reported is recovering in hospital… not rapidly deteriorating into a shuffling corpse. On balance it is unlikely that this homeless man has become infected and therefore, given what we know about the viral source of the zombie-condition that his assailant was one of the walking-dead. There is also the fact the ‘zombie’ was shot dead by the police. This is almost enough evidence that our perp is not a zombie on its own. You see a competent police officer is trained to fire bullets into the kill column. This is a fancy term for the torso. It’s an easier target than the head with almost equal effectiveness whilst simultaneously resulting in fewer fatalities. The central concept being a man you shot in the chest is only slightly more likely to return fire than a man who has been shot in the head but a man who has been shot in the chest is incredibly more likely to not die. As to the number of shots fired, six in total, some view this as evidence of some form of zombism. It’s much more likely that the officer in question fired one shot, which had not effect due to either severe psychological problems or sever drugs, at that point he would fired off the remaining five shots in rapid succession. The odds that a police officer cracked off a head shot on a man whose face was right next to his victim isn’t just unlikely it relies on the cop being Mel Gibson in Lethal Weapon. It just wouldn’t happen and if it did it would be in the report.

Only from the first three Lethal Weapons though... the good ones.

The final points that indicate that this is not stage one of an ongoing outbreak are two simple facts, one is location and two is coverage. A real outbreak would be accompanied by so many cover-ups and propaganda campaigns that the surviving historians would never even hope to pin-down the beginning of it all. It’s also not going to happen in a built up metropolitan area, the first reports will start to stream in from vast swathes sparsely populated countryside. As I’ve often stated I have no desire in pointing out problems so I’m going to run through the warning signs you should be looking for.

Aborted news-cycles: If you start to hear stories about epidemics spreading that’s OK… if those stories suddenly dry-up then things are getting suppressed and trouble has started.
Excessive Force: If the National Guard are called in to deal with some form of riot it can be excessive force, or it could be a reasonable response to a threat that you’re unaware of.
Quarantine: Keep a close eye on airport closures, should a rural area have its airspace closed up for non-weather related reasons it could be a faulty radar tower… or it could be an attempt at containment.
Unusual Individual Behaviour: The Johnson’s seemed in a bit of a hurry to get away on that camping trip didn’t they? There will always be people ‘in the know’ the sensible ones among these will usually flee. Maybe it’s time to take that holiday.
‘A Spate Of Similar Attacks’: This is the key phrase to look out for. Check the similar attacks are they the work of one person or are they the work of several unrelated ghouls.
Killing Sprees: I’m not talking about high-school massacres or unhinged postal workers I’m talking about the sweet teenage girl who snaps and kills her entire family… did she snap or did she step-up to the plate and do what needed to be done?
World Leaders: The minute someone on the world stage fails to turn up to something really important you know shits about to hit the fan if Joe Biden rocks up to the G8 just head to the hills as quickly and discreetly as possible.

I hope that helps put your mind at rest I’m not saying anyone of these events should have you grabbing a baseball bat but they are the starting points for the investigations that will ultimately save you from a slow and painful death… or worse.

eddie <constant vigilance>