Alan the Brilliant Professional Human Statue Entertainer

...Or so say his proud talent agency, Xanadu. Anyone need a human statue for any kids parties?


If that doesn't warm the cockles, check out his other creation, Charlie The 10ft Inflatable Clown, perfect for all of those cheeky unassuming molestations. I would like to say I'm being a bit harsh. but just stare into those badly painted, naked eyes and tell me your very soul isn't terrified.

See Alan and the other bountiful talents of Xanadu by clicking the phrase, Saw IV.

Just Gotta Celebrate

... or Jut Gotta Celebre as they've rebranded themselves.

I love this place. I like to think the paper in the window is for privacy rather than because it's empty. From my reckoning it's stood exactly like this since 1998 - 12 years and counting.

So, come, take a trip to the otherwise pleasant Cotteridge, Birmingham and bask in pure tragic irony of 'Jut Gotta Celebre'!

*edit. It seems this derelict gem has been turned into a respectable house now. Take off your novelty hat and burst your gay looking balloon. 'Jut Gotta Celebre' is no more.

Naval Gazing

Naval fluff amazes me. ‘Why?’ ‘How?!’ Lately I’ve been able to present my girlfriend with some pretty hefty blue balls of lint thanks to a new T-shirt of mine – she’s not so enthusiastic. I started to get less mysterious about it when I realised it nearly all came off my T-shirt. Bright blue shirt – bright blue fluff. Easy.

But according to Dr. Karl Kruszelnicki (an evil supervillian’s name if ever I heard one) and his ‘systematic survey’ I’m wrong! Based out of the University of Sydney in Australia, his findings, amongst many, were that ‘contrary to expectations’ navel lint appears to migrate upwards from underwear rather than downwards from shirts or tops due to frictional drag of body hair on underwear.

This sir, I will not swallow and hopefully you will join me in petitioning for the return of his 2002 Ig Nobel Prize for Interdisciplinary Research. However one of my favourite statements on the matter is this:

‘The most disturbing story to emerge from the survey concerned a woman who used her brother's electric toothbrush to clean her exposed belly button, causing him to develop a fungal infection in his mouth. ‘

Possibly a contributing factor to why hairless women don’t get naval fluff.

I’m also quite willing to accept his theory that ‘Navel lint's characteristic blue-gray tint is likely the averaging of the colours of fibres present in clothing; the same colour as clothes dryer lint.’

Clever guy.
So let’s compare one time-wasting, resource-hogging layabout with another. How long can one man (almost exclusively apparently) play around in their belly button? According to Graham Barker, 25 years and counting. Finally someone from the street who’s actually on the frontline of this matter!

The depth of Graham's blog and his personal research is almost nauseating.

But even Barker admits, ‘...that there were still mysteries surrounding the origins of belly button fluff.‘ Added with the fact that his website has been garnered with 'useless site of the week' I persevered. A personal highlight is his '2005-7 fluff displayed as a stereo pair' (Best enjoyed using the 3D cross-eye method).




Actually, on even further inspection the extra-curricular activities of this obsessive, beard hording, God-fearing hospital worker is becoming increasingly amazing in my expectations.



To conclude, Graham proverbially rams the Ig Noble prize down Dr. Kruszelnicki's throught when he states:

'The fluff I collect is always the same colour... I almost never wear red clothing, so where does the red fluff come from?'

To learn more on this subject see Graham's research or ask in at any well stocked haberdashers.

Running Wild - Part I

After finishing all five seasons of 'The Wire' and an end to the long cycle of weddings and numerous preceding stag does, I have found there is a void in the 'hobby' section of my life. The highly personal goal that everyone apparently needs to keep them fulfilled as a functioning human being, or at least to have something to lord it up over acquaintances and homeless people alike. So what have I found to keep me off a life of violent crime, the Tour de France? The Gloucester cheese rolling competition? Speed balling? Close but no cigar, I've enlisted in the most prestigious sporting event of our generation, the 2009 Birmingham Half Marathon.

In case you were wondering, that's thirteen whole English miles, 21 European kilometres or a staggering 42,000 half metres. In essence, it's quite far. To make life more difficult for myself I've also set a target of finishing the race in under two hours (the duration of around two episodes of the wire). This seemed to make complete sense at the time, until I signed up that is and I was struck by the sheer insignificance of my task when put into the context of human existence. Moments of soul searching followed and resulted in a serious rethink of my strategy in which I found my motivation; I have to win it.

You heard me right, I'm going to win the EDF Birmingham half-marathon 2009 on the eleventh of October. Apart from the glorious kudos one would receive from the small Birmingham based papers for winning, the champion also walks (or runs!) away with a handsome sum of pocket wedge, in the region of £30,000. For a man who's strapped for cash that's a hell of a lot of mullah, so it therefore stands to reason that my ambition to win far outstretches those doing it for reasons of health, charity or professional competition. I want thirty grand ergo I will run faster, it really is that simple. Just look at Paula Radcliffe, I'm pretty sure she doesn't just piss in the street for the fun of it.

I also have an ace up my sleeve, surprise! If you were to think of runners you would usually conjure up images of tall and slender individuals who can run for days with their veloceraptor like strides. I on the other hand am short, wide and indifferent. However I intend to flip reverse this disadvantage that nature has given me and turn it into an... good thing, by using my stature to nudge the more waif-like competitors out of contention in a Ben Hur chariot race sort of style. I'm unsure as to the rules on the use of physical contact/violence in long distance running, but I figure that a moderate/severe jostling of fellow runners may escape the glare of the dreaded marathon police.

So there you have it, physically, mentally and logistically I am prepared for victory (Disappointment training features later on). I shall update regularly with my progress, thoughts and running related paraphernalia. Wish me luck.

Reid: Does the Recession

Is it just me or is everyone else just about pissed off with hearing the term 'in the current climate', "In the 'current climate' you're lucky to have a job in the first place", "in the 'current climate' you should be happy with what you're earning. In the 'current climate' our Johnny's just thankful that he's still got his legs."

Of course the times are tough for the majority, but what annoys me is the decision makers who are more than happy to use the recession in order to shit on people from a great height. For many of them this is a great opportunity to get away with fiscal murder, as they now have the perfect alibi to dismiss and heavily underpay their employees. So how did this happen?

As all of you who already know me are aware, my forte happens to be macroeconomics and international reactionary monetary solutions, so let me explain the whole situation to you, IN RAP FORM:

DRUMS...
#It all started out with American banks,

Spunking money up the wall like they were having a wank,

But the mess they created was their mortgages,

And now the ordinary people can't afford-to-jizz.

Then it spread across the pond to the Northern Rock,

Then the money situation was truly focked,

Up. and. beyond belief,

Then the government was called in for fiscal relief,

So they bailed out the banks to save peoples savings,

But for Gordon Brown no, they never forgave him,

He spent all our money on quantitative easing,

He thought it would be good but it wasn't a’ pleasing,

So we're still pissed off about those toxic debts,

A fact that the general public never forgets,

And now we're faced with high figures of unemployment,

Something that's giving us no enjoyment,

But I’m bored now of this mother fucking recession,

So I’m off now to have a huge brain-storming session,

WORD.

After giving you such a concise and accurate context to the global recession, I'd like to discuss my practical ideas regarding the 'current climate'. It has become apparent that after the initial hype, mass suicides and Armageddon warnings have subsided, we have now come to terms with how powerless we are in the face of this problem and have accepted that our government is merely a limp dick on the feeble financial body of the world. So with that in mind, I have worked up a list of suggestions which reflects general public opinion, if not solving the problem altogether.

1) By legal decree, force all those in the financial sector to change their job titles from 'bankers' to 'wankers', a petulant and obvious amendment that will be enjoyed by 95% of the population as trips to the bank will be made comical and eerily representative. "Hi I'm James, I'll be your investment wanker for today..." or "Hello there, I’m your general wank manager, let's take a look at this wank account you've got with us. Well aren't I just a big fucking wanker."

2) Make all politicians wear happy face masks everywhere they go in order to reassure us proles that the situation is 'OK'.

3) In the spirit of quantitive easing, make Monopoly money legal tender for exactly one day.

4) Decimation of the wanking executives: Line up all of the CEO's in a random order and execute every tenth man or woman.

5) The dream factory of savings: Enforce a Deal Or No Deal type policy into Northern Rock and other state aided banks. With this government guaranteed savings goes out the window in favour of high drama. In this shit or bust game customers get to risk their entire life savings on one chance with 22 identical sealed boxes and a now publically owned Noel Edmunds.

6) 'Bring a homeless to work day': an adaptation of the TV programme Wifeswap only with tramps, it's basically a Marxist model of wealth sharing.

7) Pay everyone in loose change: Everyone will want to throw it back into the Economy as soon as possible.

8) Claim your own debts to be toxic thereby forcing the government to buy them off you; an easy way to get you back in the black.

9) For all those in abject fear of moving on to the property ladder, take yourselves and your loved ones and move into a ditch. Ditches are often overlooked as primary residences, but contrary to popular belief cost very little in upkeep and heating bills.

10) If all else fails suicide is ALWAYS an option.

I hope I’ve been of help to you in these most troubled of times. I’m off now to put my plans in to action before the economy turns around. Ta ta.

Words in the 5th Dimension - Hello Officer

Closed in. Grey. Kitchen table. Door handle. Rain. Colours? Textures? Rhubarb? Ouch! Sharp in oh so many ways. Oh the pain! Stop mocking me! Bush russle. Faster. Hup. What a day to climb a fence in mother's underwear. I hope I don't - I'm snagged! How do you explain something like this? Maybe the police station will have a leaflet?

Hello officer. No, this isn't my house, no. Oh.

Midi and Me

For most of us music is an essential ingredient to the broth of life, reflecting our deepest emotions and representing who we are as individuals. It can move, excite, enrage or even conjure up vivid memories. As listeners we use music to echo the mood of a time and give us the soundtrack to our existence.


Short Shorts - Royal Teens

There are those among who us who are the songsmiths, crafting out the music from nothing but lyrics and notes. These are the true talents in our world, stars who are rightly admired and respected for bringing wonderful sounds to our ears. Then there are those whose talents slip under the radar of normal society. These true artists are misunderstood in their own time. They are often left to their own devices in secluded pockets of the cyber world. They are the ground breakers of sound, they are the masters of melody, they are kings among men; they are the individuals who convert ordinary songs into low quality midi files.

For those of you who are unaware of these gems, midi files are faithful adaptations of regular songs, performed by people with a good musical ear and far too much time on their hands. With the help of nothing more than a Casio keyboard these melodic nuggets are the perfect way to listen to your favourite tunes in a completely new light.

I know what you’re thinking. 'Where are these midis?' 'Who do I have to kill to get my hands on them?' Well don’t fret. I was once like you, alone, incomplete, but then Louis pointed me in the direction of Gary’s midi paradise. 

The name is no exaggeration as I discovered upon my first visit to this surreal wonderland of crazed unreality. With its dazzling nocturnal background and its phenomenal three dimensional graphics, I was immediately blown away by the prospect of the fun which was in store for me.


Folsom Prison Blues - Johnny Cash

The convenient A-Z library is bursting with recognisable classics performed in Gary’s own inimitable way. Just pick a song at random from this curious selection and you’ll understand why this musical pioneer is akin to the likes of the Beatles, David Bowie and Bobby Brown.

Feeling raucous, irresponsible and wild? Well nothing captures the balls out rock and roll feeling of Steppenwolf’s ‘Born to be Wild’ quite like this version, as the heavy guitar riffs are ousted in favour of some camp keyboard work that’s reminiscent of a week in Butlins. If you’re a fan of Johnny Cash I strongly recommend this take on ‘Folsom Prison Blues’, with its swinging bass line and jazzy upbeat lead, the prospect of a long stretch in prison never seemed more exciting.

In the classic ‘Dock of the Bay’ we can clearly see Gary’s sensitivity and piercing vision shining through, as he is able to capture the melancholic reflectivity of Otis Redding’s song writing, whilst at the same time retorting “Cheer up mate, you’re at the seaside!” A must listen for any fan of music is this delightful romp on Jackie Wilson’s ‘Higher and Higher’, which to me sounds like the perfect music for a class A drugs party aimed at children.


Higher and Higher - Jackie Wilson

Looking for a midi for that special someone, well nothing epitomises romance more than this take on George Harrison’s ‘Something’. Perfect for Valentine’s Days, anniversaries or the first dance at a weddings, this is a perfect example of midis at their most tenderest. So go on, surprise your other half with this, you won’t regret it till they leave you.


Something - The Beatles

Midi music files have undoubtedly changed my life in a very minute way, when listening to music now I can’t help but think, what would they sound like played on a cheap keyboard accompanied by a bank of badly sampled instruments? I can only hope that in some smal way this post will help to remember these forgotten geniuses and convert people to this most majestic of art forms. The future’s bright, the future’s midi.


YMCA - Village People

http://www.garyrog.50megs.com.

It's 176 past 289... or 4:20am last Thursday

Whilst planning for a trip to New York and the implications of time zones, we got thinking about time as whole, or more precisely, the Gregorian shackles that are the UNITS of time that surely should have been chucked out the window with the shilling.

Why have 'they' never brought in metric time? Possibly for the simple reason that for the next 100 years everyone would be asking each other, 'What's that in seconds?'. 10 also isn't as round a number as you think. It only feels like it because we run out of numbers when we get to 9. What makes clocks catchy is the fact that you can divide them into quarters, 'Oh, it's about quarter past 5'. Easy! Can you divide ten into such a socially convenient shape. NO! If 'Ten' had 12 numbers in it (i.e. we added the additional numbers 'Gwek' and 'Pif') we'd be on course for a much more rounded 10. Now we can start making some sense with blowing down Greg's Old Dusty Calendar. 

Now that we've established that '10' is officially not-that-good, we can go about cracking into shape these crappy days, weeks, months and years we've been putting up with. Most things we base these units on are stuff spinning round each other, and what’s good for measuring circles? Degrees. We already measure heat and angles with them, it's seems crazy we're not already measuring time with it!

So, 360 degrees in an hour, day and year? Can it work? Can We handle it? Of course not! That's the beauty. Human's have got to a stage where we've avoided evolution. 360Time^TM is a Darwinian kick start. What's more, 12 divides into 360 in many nice socially convenient and overly precise ways! What the newly proposed Ten^TM's affects would do to that harmony, I'm not going to consider, neither should you. If that's not already good enough for you, our years are already 365.25 days long. That means we all get to keep the ideal 360 day whilst GAINING a 5 and a quarter day shut down every year. It's the dark, cold, secluded holiday people just don't make time in their busy hussle-bussle life styles nowadays. 

So, most things not considered, degrees hold the key to a universal system that makes EVERYONE better off, even if that means dead. The immense upheaval required for everyone to learn the new system would only be beneficial to tomorrow's stupider generation. The only question unanswered is, what name should this new, partially beneficial system have? A name that would suitably reflect its practicality and the confusion and pain it would cause. An unrelated stream of alpha-numeric code? Maybe with a skull and crossbones character? Or no name at all, so people would have to stay inaudible when they meant the word?       

May my thoughts be with you and those that fall in the 360 Days War.

TV and Shit

There are many things in life which we know are bad for us if not respected; kebabs, booze, drugs, sticking your head out of moving trains etc, but all of these are eclipsed by the addictive power that the mighty television has over us all. So much so in fact, that I’m not sure we even care about what we’re watching anymore, as long as it involves ‘real people’ and a sense of competition, we’ll stare at it like shagged out crack monkeys. I’m talking of course about reality television.

I can safely say without exaggeration, that Big Brother is the worst thing that’s ever happened to me in my life. Everything about that programme makes me want to go on a killing spree, the way it’s advertised, the long periods of time in the so called highlights when nothing happens and last but not least, the self-confessed ‘Wacky’ contestants. I’ve happened to catch a lot of this series, because others around me appear to have lost their marbles as well as countless hours of their lives watching it and let me tell you something, I don’t like it.

Big Brother is the programme that gave us the adorable charm of Nasty Nick, the dry wit of Chantelle and of course gifted the nation with the bastion of tolerance herself, Jade Goody. So why do I hate it I hear you ask. Well, what’s particularly harrowing for me is the way that channel four can hold on to an audience of millions for years, without seemingly doing anything.

They struck upon the formula for Big Brother as we know it somewhere in the second series, when they’d begun to phase out all that psychological nonsense, you know, that stuff that actually gave it some credibility. Now the procedure is roughly as follows: Get a small contingent of attention seeking half-wits and put them into a house. Note, must be willing to make tits of themselves. These half-wits will ideally be (a) idiotic (b) willing to get naked (c) obnoxious and (d) part of a minority in society, preferably an obscure one so they can overcome adversity and gain acceptance by the nation. Put this rag-tag ensemble into a house with dozens of cameras and let the hilarity commence, as they do the washing up, dry their clothes and shave...

What fecks me off about Big Brother the most, is the effect that it has on the people who watch it. The fact that families are content to sit in silence, watching these ignorami whilst they perform banal menial tasks is a sad indictment of our society. Another sad reflection is how easily manipulated people are when it comes to voting, its idiotic enough that they spend their money on this shite, but now the viewers are pretty much told who to vote for. For example on celebrity Big Brother a few years ago, when the viewers were coaxed by Davina into saying ‘wouldn’t it be great if Chantelle won?’ Why? Just because she’s intellectually equivocal to a peanut, it doesn’t mean you should vote for her, or vote at all.

The viewers imbecilic tendencies tend to come to a climax during the last few weeks; take this year’s Big Brother, it’s blindingly obvious (no pun originally intended) that Mikey will win hands down. What riles me is that they even question the outcome and start to pose idiotic, quasi philosophical questions such as, ‘could Big Brother really see its first blind winner?’ Well of course it bloody will, because the morons who line channel fours pockets by voting for these cretins, now feel a moral obligation to vote for a guy would otherwise just be a moaning Scotsman. What’s worse will be the patronising gloaters, who as always will doff their middle class hats in celebration for modern Britain, totally ignoring the fact that he won through a mix of pity and guilt.

I just don’t get this obsession with reality television, on a positive note however, I believe that it must be on its way out, as the reality barrel appears to have been scraped by the BBC in their creation, ‘Last Choir Standing’. This pushes the reality competition to its very limits, as the show presented by the lovely Myleene Klass and Nick ‘that bloke from the building programme with the fat head’ Knowles, seek to find Britain’s best choir, or something. What is the point of it all? The best that the winners can hope for is to make an album which will inevitably end up in Woolworths bargain bins up and down the country.

At least with this ridiculous programme the contestants were enjoying their perspective choirs before the show began, but you can’t help but feel that they must start to get swept away by notions of stardom. Imagine the poor look on those welsh middle aged faces after the show, when they are tenderly led to the back of the BBC and informed, ‘What, you didn’t think you’d be famous did you? Ha ha, you’re a choir dickheads!’ Just save them all the years of unfulfilled dreams and put them all down now, it’s the only humane thing to do.

So there, I’ve got most of it out of my system. Why can’t we have a return to quality evening entertainment after this plague of reality baloney, or at least remove the infuriating attention seeking morons who drive me to insanity. Maybe I could set up a show where I try to find people in the country with self respect, I could call it ‘Britain’s got dignity’. Well it’s something to ponder, but I’m off to watch the X-Factor.

Tom Reid