Nursery rhymes are an insult to intelligence

#Jack and Jill went up the hill to fetch a pail of water....

up a hill....

UP A HILL?!

Surely the most amateur of writers would think a little more than this eejit did. But no, the poet decided that it was not important why they went up a hill, but merely that they were on the top of a hill at some point for a millinery/pail tumbling incident to occur.

Jack and Jill went up a hill before they realised what a complete pair of muppets they had been to expect that the best place for water to settle is in a LOW area of land, such as a valley or crevasse. Realising their mistake, Jill in a fit of rage struck Jack around the head with her pail, sending him tumbling to the ground.

"How could you do this to us you idiot! This is the last time you mess me around. DIE!". Jill swung the pail down towards a confused Jack's head. Jack threw himself to his left, the metal bucket narrowly missing his temple. His foot raised swiftly and landed into Jill's stomach. Buckling in a scream, Jill fell backwards, her hands already reaching down to her ankle holster as she fell. She drew and let loose 4 rounds, hitting a shrieking Jack twice in the leg. Jack drew his hunting knife a threw it towards Jill. His throw was true, and the blade shot deep into her chest. Her torso hit the ground with a heavy thump, before rolling slowly down the hill.

"You should have listened. You should have trusted me. Oh God, what have I don’t. WHAT HAVE I DONE!!!" Jack dragged himself to the used revolver, now soaked in his former lover's blood. Two rounds, good. He would only need one. One to take this pain away for ever. Gun pointed towards his ear he squeezed the trigger.

As Jill's body reached the bottom of the hill, a trail of her blood lining her path down, Jack came tumbling after.

The moral of the story is, if you're going to lie, don't lie about the rules of physics, because sooner or later, that person will find out. And they won't be happy about it.

Alternatives for the 5th "Planeteer"

As we all know, the fifth captain planet kid (Little "Heart" kid), was rubbish. Plainly, inarguably awful. Now yes he was weedy, foreign and young, but shouldn't that mean that he gets the most powerful ring? But no, he gets heart.

For those who have totally lost what the hell I'm talking about:

Congratulations!

You clearly didn't spend your Saturday mornings in front of the telly shouting "Go Planet!" and learning that all corporations are evil and are trying to pollute the world because its a bit of a laugh (I can not remember one episode in which a company polluted because the overall net profit could increased to the point where they could invest in better pollution controls in the longer term and bring increased standard of living to the local population and more jobs. Perhaps this is because it was aimed at kids who had just eaten sugar coated glucose breakfast products and couldn't concentrate on anything that wasn't exploding).

But for the benefit of these few non-TV'ers, a brief synopsis: Captain planet was the (American) superhero who could be called upon to beat up polluters of the world, thus solving the problem. Think of superman who had just had a big, messy fight in a primary colour paint factory. He had 5 disciples that each had an element of the earth to use as a weapon.

Unfortunately there are only 4 elements, and we FINALLY get to the point of this particular ramble:

Surely they could have picked a better fifth element than "heart".

I think what they were going for was that whole "fifth element" notion of human spirit being the fifth element in the world. But they really got a pretty poor power from it. From what I can tell, the writers sat around in the Ideas office in complete silence for about an hour until one of the staff said "Sod it, lets just rip off Mougli from the Jungle Book, no-one will notice; they'll all be looking at the explosions". Everyone else applauded and the man got a $20,000 bonus. And so the kid (whose name escapes me), had a slight "talking with animals" ability and that was about it. The other planeteers must have hated him. Whilst they were blowing stuff up or drowning it or making it collapse in an earthquake (by the "Earth" kid. Hmmm....racism anyone?), the stupid heart kid had to follow them around because they couldn't call captain planet without him. What a jerk. Why didn't he just give his ring to one of the others and go home to the jungle?

Perhaps a better power is needed, one that would complement the other ones. How about the power of finance? A big blinging $ ring that can summon millions of dollars to fall on people. Given that they were fighting evil capitalists, I reckon this would have been a pretty effective weapon. Plus given that the rest of them did sweet FA when they weren't saving the world, he could have paid for somewhere to stay and perhaps even a change of clothes (or maybe some paint-remover for Mr. Planet).

Why captain planet anyway? There was previously a Sgt. planet, but the army of the universe promoted him after the battle of Alpha Centari about 20 million years ago for bravery in the face of apocalyptic meteorites.

Maybe a ring of apathy? One shot and ZAP! You suddenly get no real satisfaction from killing sea lions and just go home.

My favourite is the ring of inevitability. One shot of this and any bad guy realises that they are the "bad guy" in a children's program, and have no hope of victory. Most likely they will have their stuff destroyed (an overlooked plot hole in many episodes where the fire kid helps blow up the evil oil refinery....hmmmm). So the bad guys just apologise and just go home.

Heart in deed...he must have turned up late in the ring giving out ceremony and been pretty damned pi**ed.

Scumm and Riffraph

DI Scumm and DC Riff-Raph. Two hard-nosed, crime fighting men of the law. Whose complete disregard for the way things are supposed to be done, not to mention disregard for presentability and fashion-sense, has had them kicked out of the force.

Now they must fight crime in their own time, between working for Co-Op and night security companies, they team up so they can once again hand out unreasonable force for the sake of keeping the streets safe.

This week, former DI Scumm finishes work as a security guard in his Local Co-Op, only to discover that one of his staff has been stealing cigarettes from the shop and smoking them round the back on their lunch break. Grabbing their crime fighting Ford Capri battlemobil, Scumm races towards the port authorities, where his former work partner, Riff-Raph is in the middle of tucking in to a Bacon and Egg Baguette and a styrofome cup of coffee. Kicking down the door to the office, Scumm bellows his war cry of a catchphrase:

"Come on you layabout scruff maggot, we've got crimes to beat on!". 10 minutes of driving montage later (including jumping the toll bridge queue by ramming several cyclists off the road), they're back at the Co-Op, baseball bats and half finished cans of special brew in hand, Riffraph and Scumm are ready to demonstrate why crime doesn't pay.

Alcohol - The hungoverd's guide

Alcohol. Love or hate, drink or abstain, we are all surrounded by it. I say this because last night, I got hammered. Not one pint more than I should have, but full on hammered.

I was on an empty stomach, in a late closing, cheaply priced pub and decided that the best course of action would be to drink as much as humanly possible.

And now as I sit here, wallowing in the repercussions, I'm force to admit one thing. I've been here before. A lot.

This is one of those moments when I have been sipping coyly at a cup of coffee and thinking "why?". We don't seem to directly benefit from drinking. Nothing incredible happens. In my experience though, its often the fallout of drunken acts that make life so interesting. Its those times you sit down with someone you got drunk with and take turns reminding each other of embarrassing moments and saying things like "oh god, I can't believe I did that". And here's the weird thing. We like to do this. Its actually enjoyable. And I can't figure out why. In any other situation that we fell in to a bush, made a hash of chatting someone up, threw up in someone's garden or stole government property we would try to cover it up. We would never speak of it again and pretend that it never happened. But not when we have been drinking. These moments become the centrepiece of anecdotes, where everyone else laughs along. If I had said to you "Yesterday I fell into someone’s hedgerow", it might make you say something like "Oh dear, were you okay?". But if I change the story to: "Yesterday, whilst so drunk that I couldn't see more than 5 feet in front of me, I tripped on my own feet and went head first into a bush and didn't even have time to raise my hands to break my fall", this suddenly becomes very amusing (and yes that's what happened).

Alcohol gives us a license to treat things differently. Not just what we do, but how we judge others who have had drunken revelries. Its an excuse, a reason behind stupidity. And it's socially acceptable. My parents if they ever read this (lets hope that they never do), would probably just tut and laugh.

We actually use alcohol. Not to get us drunk, but to allow us to do these things. How many of you have done something stupid when drunk and just thought "well I was drunk"? Its a free pass to the land of inhibitions. People often say that alcohol lowers your inhibitions, but I don't believe that its a chemical thing. You are actually expected to behave like a tit when drinking, so of course this is what you do.

Now that I have finished writing this, I feel much better. I have justified stupidity, and so I'm probably going to go out tonight and do it again. Because life without misfortune is just plain boring.

The Over-analysis of Jelly Babies

When people talk about Jelly Babies, they often discuss how terribly important and informative the way you eat them is.

Perhaps by eating the head first, you are being kind, and giving them a swift death. A limb-chomper may instead be considered sadistic, torturing the anthropomorphasised sweets. I find this all rather odd. To be able to tell what kind of person you are through your actions on the sweets would mean that there has to be some sort of relationship between the sweet and you to begin with.

Perhaps there was a falling out, an undercurrent of hate and mistrust. Perhaps you were overcharged in the shop, or perhaps you were disappointed that the bag was only half full when you opened it. It’s rather hard to believe that your relationship with the sweets goes much beyond this. It’s not a "you murdered my entire family, and now I will have my revenge!" type affair. Though the spin off TV series would be awesome.

D.C RiffRaff, a disgruntled cop, has an outstanding vendetta against the one criminal who he never caught; the one that never felt his cold justice. "Bigheart" Blackcurrant Jelly baby. Now its his last week in the force before his well deserved retirement, and he's got just one case left assigned to him. Someone murdered a young family on the West side, the MO...jelly overdose.

But perhaps I think that we're missing the point. Even if we anthropomorphise these sweeties to the point where they stand on par with our other relationships, we forget to take in to account what they would want. They have been put on the earth for just one reason. It is their goal, no their destiny to be eaten. To be enjoyed and to cause mild feeling of regret and nausea after eating an entire packet. To hate them, to really get at them, one only has to not eat them. Simply take them out of the packet, place on the edge of the table next to your bin and announce "You don't deserve to be eaten" and prod it off the end of the table to tumble into the bin. Make sure that as you do all this, the packet of Jelly Babies is open, so all the other ones can watch. Perhaps you could eat a bag of crisps in front of them too.

So next time some 2:2 psychology student asks you how you eat them, so that they can show off what they learnt in the last 5 months of full time education, just say: "I don't. I buy entire bags of them, then make sure they all watch whilst I throw them one after another into the nearest bin, laughing 'you're not good enough for my mouth, you sugary whores!' ... What's your analysis of that one Sigmund?"

Sanity through relativity.

Huzzahs are in order. After a rather long winded conversation in a pub the other night, I can now safely say that I am not mad. I can base this assumption on the fact that I have now met someone who is mad-er than I am, and given that they are not tied up in a padded room, or wearing their relative's skin as a face mask, it must be concluded that I am sane.

Huzzah!

The conversation itself began with (I can't quite remember exactly), a man by the name of Tudor (not his real name obviously), describing an image he had thought up the other night. The first was of the Manchester City team in a half time meeting with Stuart Pierce. A rather bland thing I hear you all cry, but his way of riling up the team is to jump out at them, naked as the day he was born, clutching handfuls of jam (I presumed strawberry), and screaming at his players.

What I should have asked (apart from if I could leave), was what the point of this would be? Would it scare the team into playing well? Perhaps this was all part of a clever satirical jape at Stuart Pierce's expense.

Stuart pierce as it turns out, is the son of Michael Pierce, who is CEO of Robinson's Jam. Robinson's Jam was sold out to Unilever at the end of 2006, leaving Michael Pierce rather out of pocket. He was, as a result, forced to declare himself bankrupt within 2 months of retiring as CEO and Stuart Pierce was forced to lend him a suit to appear in court in. The Daily Mirror did a 2 page spread on the fiasco.

Clearly that is all codswallop, but would have at least lent a certain level of acceptability to coming up with this idea of team motivation. Unfortunately, even if this was all true, and we could all laugh in that posh way philosophers do (where they kind of go "aaahh" whilst laughing), it would not justify the next colourful description.

It was of Ian Pasely with his hands covered in special fried rice.

Nothing else. Not some interesting political remark. Not some Chino-Celtic reference. Just Ian Pasely. With rice. On his hands. At least Stuart Pierce was doing something. You could imagine Stuart Pierce in mid scream. Face as red as the jam he crushed in his clenching fists. But Ian Pasely just stands there. Quietly, with a blank expression on his face, rice and cooked egg slowly dripping off of his fingertips and onto his nicely polished shoes. Its rather haunting now I think about it...

The enthralling adventures of Phillip the alcoholic ninja.

Phillip was a deadly assassin. Trained for 20 years by the most deadly martial artists, taught the art of poisons by the world's worst chefs and taught the art of war by reading Sun Tsu. He was also rather partial to a drop of alcohol. This became a problem after he ran out one night and, knowing that the only bottle of saki was owned by his master, he decided it would be best to slaughter his master's entire staff, family and friends and then strike down his master with his cold blade (which to be fair had warmed slightly due to the day's murdering).

Now he is a masterless master of death, banished from his native land, he has moved to Leicester in England. Far away from those seeking revenge on him, and just next door to the local Threshers, which has a 3 for 2 on saki at the moment.

Phillip woke to see the sun setting out of his bed sit window. Nigel, his flat mate, had come home and cooked. Good, Phillip could steal some tasty left-overs before beginning his night's work. He slipped silently out from the back of the couch which had been his secret daytime sleeping location. A clever choice of hiding place, though the decision had not entirely been of his own choosing. He had been coming in from last night's mission when he had drunkenly tripped on the couch and landed there. His instincts told him that he had found a safe place, and it wasn't worth trying to move to his bed from here.

His night's work would not be easy; he would have to move quickly over the roof tops to get in to position. He finished the dried pasta he was eating out of a frying pan before sliding the window open, he spotted a sign on the whiteboard by the door.

"Get some money, pay the rent or find a new place to live. - Nigel". A clear sign that Nigel was wishing him luck on his mission. He stealthily slipped out of the window, and onto the rooftops.

The night air was cool, and Phillip rubbed his eyes clear, and readjusted his ninja mask. He must not be seen.

Quietly he slipped over the roof tops, sensing his target was getting ever nearer, his senses beginning to heighten, the alcohol wearing off. He knew that he didn't have much time left.

He leapt from one roof to the next, never making a sound, bare feet allowing him maximum grip, his gloved hands trailing along the roof tiles, staying as low as possible.

There! He saw the silhouette in the alleyway below him. It staggered side to side, bouncing off the brick walls as it made it's way down the path. Phillip crouched, peering below him. His hand closed around the handle of his deadly ninja blade. Closer...closer....

NOW! Phillip saw the glint of glass in the man's hand as he dropped down onto him. Blade in hand, he drove it down into the man's neck. The body dropped to the floor. Phillip snatched at his prize; stopping the bottle from smashing onto the pavement. He held it up in the light. 'Morrison's Value Gin' the label read. He allowed himself to smile, it was a successful mission. His master would have been proud.

World's worst Haikus

The first one has five
Then the second has seven
Syllables that is.

3.141
5926535?
8979

I can't do Haikus
Are they not supposed to rhyme?
can't think of ending

Milk, eggs and porridge
Don't get any orange juice
got some already

The quicker red fox
jumps over the lazy brown
boa-constrictor

My love for you is...
like a cardiac arrest
You taste like copper