spiritof76

On Charlie Brooker's new show You Have Been Watching, one of the most bizarre segments was where they featured a US show Deadliest Warriors. This includes a not-at-all-in-bad-taste simulated battle between the Taliban and the IRA, to see who's the hardest.



My favourite bit is where the IRA guy locks the Taliban guy in the bus and waves the bomb remote at him through the window.

Also, strangely, they seem to be using the Red Hand of Ulster as symbol for the IRA, despite it being more associated with Loyalist paramilitaries than Republicans.

I was sufficiently appalled/fascinated with it to download the whole episode from torrents, just to see what the hell else was going on in it. It does contain a whole variety of "what the shit?" moments, complete with some impressively wild historical inaccuracies. Such as, "After Ireland lost the War of Independence in 1920" - er, no. They actually won it. In 1922.

There's also lots of scenes of re-enacted firefights between the IRA and some soldiers whose uniform bears virtually no resemblance to that of the British Army. Plus there's commentary from "IRA historian" Skoti Collins (also appearing in Alvin and the Chipmunks: The Squeakquel), who repeats lots of tubthumping slogans like, "You cannot defeat the IRA. it’s literally impossible, or it would have been done already" and "The IRA’s never been beaten by anybody, and they never will be" - maybe, but apparently they can fight for 30 years, achieve none of their political goals, then call a ceasefire and disband themselves.

Next week on Deadliest Warrior: Cardiff Chavs vs Drunken Public School Rugby Players

My glasses broke, so I went out and got me some...



...emo specs!

I think I had the bad luck to be of an in-between generation, when it comes to growing up wearing specs. Too young to reference the Smiths, too old to be an emo kid. When I was growing up, wearing specs was simply an invitation for every twat to shout "Four-eyes!" at you in the playground. As a result I grew up to be self-conscious and embarrassed about wearing glasses, and so I find the fact that it's become fashionable in recent years strangely ironic.

Oh well, I'm fashionable now. Or am I? If I've missed the zeitgeist yet again, feel free to drag me behind the school gym for wedgies and to steal my lunch money.

missdisco pointed this out to me:



What would happen if homeopaths ran the A&E.

Not only funny, but also surprisingly accurate.

You know, I haven't had the chance to fly into a homicidal rage lately, so I think I'll pay a visit to Comment is Free.

What's this, an article by the Audit Commission's Steve Bundred advocating lots of public sector spending cuts?

let's dismiss the notion that spending on health and education will be protected. There are good reasons why they won't and shouldn't. One is that, at a time when inflation is likely to be between 2% and 3%, a pain-free way of cutting public spending would be to freeze public sector pay, or at least impose severe pay restraint....

Okay, as a public sector worker in the NHS, I'm starting to twitch...

...ministers will correctly assume that as public sector workers have done well over the past decade, they will tolerate some modest real reduction in earnings...

*twitches harder*

My own experience is testimony to this. When I joined Camden Council in north London in January 1992, its financial position could only be described as dire. With the support of councillors, the following month I presented a budget which cut £25m from net expenditure of around £220m. In July, I cut a further £10m. In November I raised £47m from asset sales. The following February, I cut another £30m. Within 18 months, the council's workforce had shrunk nearly a third, from around 9,500 to fewer than 6,500. The result was that staff morale and service quality improved.

Okay, I'm still twitching, but I'm not feeling the full rage. Sure, he fired 3000 council workers, but maybe he did succeed in giving Camden residents value for money? Oh wait, here's the money shot.

Local government’s top watchdog is paid more than the prime minister, a survey by the Taxpayers’ Alliance pressure group has shown.

Audit Commission chief executive Steve Bundred was 67th on the alliance’s ‘public sector rich list’.

He was paid £246,000 - including performance-related pay of£15,000 and pension benefits of£38,000 - while Gordon Brown, at position 143, received £188,849. The commission declined to comment.



Public sector worker SMASH!

Okay, so the Head of MI6's appearance on Facebook didn't actually betray any state secrets, but still, let's take the piss anyway.


Sir John Sawers iz hed ov mi6 lol

CIA likes this.

Mahmoud Ahmedinijad "DIAF. kthanxbai"

You have been poked by Osama bin Laden. Would you like to poke them back?

Daily Mail "omg u wear speedos Sir John lol"

David Milliband MP "stfu Daily Mail ur just trollin"

Somalia wants to play Pirates with you.


etc.

In shocking news, reported extensively today on the BBC, ITN, Sky and CNN, Michael Jackson is still dead.

Poll #1424587
Open to: All, detailed results viewable to: All

What are you not giving a toss about today?

Given that Obvious Publicity Stunt is Obvious, it's a good thing that nobody decided to feed the IRL troll by giving Burger King exactly the kind of self-righteous display of outrage that they were clearly hoping for when they created the ad.

*Sigh* Because that's all women are, just vessels, waiting anxiously to take your seven inches, any which way we can get them. Except if you look at this model closely, her eyes are widened in alarm/terror. She doesn't want your seven inches. But your going to make her take it anyway, yeehaw!

Because rape is HILARIOUS, obviously. Maybe that's an extreme reaction to this, maybe most people won't see it as incitement to commit sexual assualt. Hopefully. But what is clear to anyone viewing this advert is that women are subservient, women are here to provide sexual pleasure to men, whether they say they want to or not, women or of little value. Hey we're just a marketing tool, sex sells, after all.

Oh.

In other news, I'm idly contemplating going veggie.

Bollocks to Jacko, I'm still in mourning for Steven Wells, the utterly batshit insane music journalist who died last week.

To get an idea of why he was so ace, here's a snippet of him ranting about twee indie band Los Campesinos!

"It’s only six months since the 14-legged abortion that is Los Campesinos! released their first abomination," roars Quietus editor John ‘Duran’ Doran on the line from London, England, "and now they’re already about to release their second album."

He weeps as he speaks, and within seconds I am weeping too.

The world teeters on the brink of World War fucking three and Los Campesinos! — an exercise in reverse engineered paedophilia — are relaunching their Frankenstein's monster twee revival showband with a new fucking album and a tour entitled Wet Yr Bed — presumably a fair warning to the UK's groupies that this is what’ll happen if you take one of Los Campesinos! home. I’m sorry, I misread that, the tour’s called Shred Yr Face. Which appears to a glassing reference. Which makes no fucking sense at all.

I actually quite like Los Campesinos! Still, I can't resist a good rant, and to make the Ghost of Swells happy, here's a video of them all being killed. Admittedly they're being killed by kittens and rainbows and flowers, but he'll like it all the same.



RIP Swells. There is officially no longer a good reason to listen to music journalists.

Passengers on a new cruise along the coast of Somalia are paying to catch more than just salmonella.

A Russian luxury yacht company is now offering pirate-hunting trips that promise the chance to be attacked by real sea bandits. The yachts cruise from Djibouti to Mombasa in Kenya at deliberately low speeds in the hopes of attracting pirates.

Passengers pay $5,000 for the trip, and an extra $17.50 a day for an AK-47 and 100 rounds of ammo. The price includes free origami towels in the rooms. Former Special Forces troops are on board to make sure none of the cruise passengers are injured.

Farewell to a pop genius.

No, not that one. I'm referring to Steven Wells, the deranged NME writer who died this week.

A few years ago, I was at an 80s Matchbox B-Line Disaster concert. As we were waiting for the band to come on, I mentioned that I didn't actually know anything about them. My friend, being something of a rock-critic wannabe, commented that, "They're a bit like all the best bits of your favourite bands, minus the shit bits."

Standing right in front of us was Steven Wells. He turned around and rather grumpily said, "Yeah, they save the shit bits till last."

Ooooh, well get you Swells, being all sulky.

The following week, Swells' review of the concert appeared in the NME.

"The crowd erupts. "Fucking hell!" shouts a young lad, repeatedly punching his friend in the arm, "They're like all the best bits of your favourite bands! Minus the shit bits!"

Talk about embellishing. He wasn't shouting. He was talking normally. And I think I would have noticed if he was repeatedly punching me in the arm.


RIP Swells. And we didn't even charge you royalties.

Best! Comment is Free headline! EVEEEERRRRRRRR!!!!!!!!!!!!

I refuse to join the chorus of outrage about Bruno. It's a very moral film - despite the pygmy sex

Los Angeles Sheriffs Getting Electric Mini Coopers



LA County Sheriffs stuck driving Crown Vics are about to be left feeling tragically un-hip. Their Board of Sups just approved a deal with BMW to lease 17 fully electric MINI Coopers.

Approved on Tuesday, the Los Angeles County Sheriff’s Department will lease the MINI Es for only $10 a month. With a market lease rate of $850, automaker BMW offered up the bargain price in exchange for deputy’s feedback.

Wow, just imagine the police chases. I'm thinking The Italian Job with the shoe on the other foot.

I've just been having a discussion about Godwin's Law. For those of you who don't know, Godwin's Law is:

"As an Internet discussion grows longer, the probability of a comparison involving Nazis or Hitler approaches 1."

We've been thinking of variations of this immutable law of physics. Some of the variations we've come up with have been:

"As an Internet discussion about childcare grows longer, the probability of a comparison involving Baby P approaches 1."

"As a film career grows longer, the probability of a role playing Nazis or someone who fought Nazis approaches 1."


What other variations are out there? Over to you lot.

Hat tip to brain_opera for pointing out this Daily Mail poll.

Should the NHS allow gipsies to jump the queue?

It's just one of those rhetorical, Daily Heil-esque poll questions, along the lines of, "Should filthy immigrants be allowed to sleep with our daughters and poo in our front gardens?" Far-right propaganda masquerading as some sort of canvassing of opinion.

Admittedly it's my fault. I work in the NHS, and all the time when we're triaging patients we're like, "Okay, you're a gypsy. Go over there in the super-fast lane along with the pooves, asylum seekers, Muslims and BBC employees. Don't worry if it's getting crowded, we'll just sling some more white middle-class Christians to the back of the queue to make room for you."

In all fairness, we do it for a very good reason. It's because we're Communists.

But anyway, go to that poll and click on "yes". It'll annoy the Daily Mail, and that's what us filthy traitors love to do.

Ah, following on from my previous post, it looks like Comment is Free is now back to its nice, predictable levels of stupidity.

Beatrix Campbell announces: "Yes, yes, I may be a Marxist feminist gay activist who opposes everything the monarchy stands for, but I still accepted my OBE because it was a statement for equal opportunities."

Ah, the irony. Being rewarded by the monarchy for equal opportunities.

Look Beatrix, you could have just said, "Okay, an award from the monarchy is against all my principles....BUT I RILLY RILLY WANTED IT! IT WAS SHINY!"


Beatrix Campbell also claims to have once been chatted up by "an intergalactic film star". Zaphod Beeblebrox?

God, it's so horrible having to slate an author you usually like.

If I'm reading Comment is Free (and, as you lot will know, I do so far too much for my own sanity) and Brendan O'Neill posts an article saying, Rah, rah, we don't need to worry about silly things like climate change or peak oil cos, like, humanity is rilly great and won't be bothered by it...Then that's fine, that's just Brendan O'Neill being a libertarian fucknut. It's what he does.

And if Seamus Milne posts yet a-bloody-nother utterly humourless, shamelessly ideological Stalinist analysis of current events...Well, that's the natural order of things. The Sun will rise in the morning, autumn will follow summer, Seamus Milne will be a dreary ultra-left hack.

But when an author you actually like and admire does a horribly silly article defending the indefensible, then it's like a rapier strike to your soul. Seth Freedman is one of CiF's regular commentators on Israel/Palestine, and comes from the small-but-appreciated "Not Actually Insane" wing of that particular field. He's an island of moderation and reason in a stormy ocean of screeching fanatical halfwits.

And then he sodding well goes and writes this. An article saying how wonderful it is that WH Smith have signed a deal with Penguin so you can only buy Penguin's travel books in their shops. Yay for a large publisher forcing its smaller rivals out of business! Hurrah for monopolies!

Oh, why couldn't it have been Neil Clarke writing it? Or Tanya Gold? Or any of the pissawful writers on CiF that I've grown to feel comfortable loathing and slagging off?

The betrayal, the betrayal...

A scuba diver getting pwned by a giant octopus.



You know how it is when you're a giant octopus. You limber up with scuba divers, and then you steadily work your way up to nuclear submarines (or, "tinned meat" as the giant octopi call it).

When I am ruler of my own personal dictatorship, this song shall be national anthem, and statues of the band shall be placed in every town square.

Just because I can. And if you disagree, I'll simply have you shot.

Giant centipede vs Tarantula



AAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAH AAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAH AAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAH AAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAH MUMMY MAKE THEM BOTH GO AWAY KILL THEM BOTH AAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAH

Not so much endangered species as NOT ENDANGERED ENOUGH.

And for God's sake, stop leaking that mysterious chemical ooze all over the floor, or we'll have the pair of them battling it out across the city skyline.