The best bit: the cameo from the Pet Shop Boys at 0:57
I'm also, now I think about it, curious about how I missed the moment that Mike Skinner turned into Dr Tobias Funke...
And one more thing, here is one of the most explosively, diarrhoeically (sic) shocking pieces of music of all time. A massive shit sandwich, straight from the heart of the Midlands (also home to the horrible The Enemy). That noise you can hear is UB40 spinning in their grave and the bitter sobs of The Specials, crying for the death of Midlands music. AC
The Daily Mail. Supporter of the buffoon, hater of video games, and purveyor of bona fide news gems such as this. Where to start? Treason, stabbings, nibbling, public disturbances, racial tension, R.E., ludicrous user comments... this high point in the last decades of forward thinking journalism has it all covered. Now, because I feel I cannot do the piece justice (and as I am at work and briefly unsupervised), here are a few tasters of the literary gold enclasped within the Mail's Nike-ad riddled latrine of a website:
"I was hungry, I had to eat the swan. I killed it, I stabbed it."
"But vets, who carried out a post-mortem on the animal, said it was unclear whether it had been attacked by the knife or Miah had bitten the swan's neck himself."
"Using a pair of binoculars to get a closer look, Mr Cuthbert watched as Miah picked up a carrier bag and saw the head of the swan topple out."
"I hate the Queen, I hate this country."
"Whats wrong with just eating a piece of toast or something?" - Bev, Preston, England, 22/11/2006 18:50
I was confronted with this distressing information while watching BBC News last night. Mars is LITERALLY GOING TO CRASH INTO THE EARTH. Maybe. Possibly in 3 billion years. The BBC even managed to shoehorn their favorite word in by calling it PLANET CRUNCH. Like the credit crunch with millions of deaths not debts!!! The word is literally losing all meaning, just add it after any notable event: credit crunch, job crunch, generation crunch, expenses crunch, swine flu crunch, Gordon Brown crunch, Ronaldo crunch, crunch crunch, crunch crunch crunch...
Anyway this is only, as they mention in the report, if scientist Jacques Laskar (pictured below) has done his maths right.
I can only imagine that this is a computer generated image of how Jacques will cope with the Earth/Mars collision when it happens: cool as fuck. Freshly crowned 'Dynamique' of the solar system by virtue of being the only remaining human, calmly punting around on his lava-proof gondola. "I told you so". Typical smug Frenchman.
I have to say I feel slightly cheated. I love science and I like news. But when they combine it so often goes so very wrong. (for more see Ben Goldacre's great Guardian column). I got sort of semi-excited about the prospect of seeing the world end in a gigantic hot death collision. But it turns out it's billions of years away. I'm still not entirely sure what a billion is (a million million? a hundred million? a trillion million?) But I know it is a lot. Seeing as the world is only 4.5(ish) billion years old, it seems like an awful long wait. So thanks I guess to the BBC for mocking up a digital representation of the event that looks like it should grace the cover of a Sega Saturn game (why fate, you cruel mistress did you so badly want that console to fail).
Interesting as Jacque's findings may be I'm not quite sure how this made the news. It's hardly like this desperately had to go out at ten o'clock for the general good of the public. Stories like this do make it hard to defend science from the idiots who "don't care about it" and think "it doesn't affect them". Namely because this story actually doesn't affect them and even I am dangerously close to not caring about the small possibility of the world ending in 3 billion years time. Even less alarming was the more probable scenario of Mars coming "uncomfortably close" to Earth. Just like when your boss got on the same train as you and you hid in the toilets to avoid conversation. How close exactly would be comfortable? Anyway "uncomfortably close". They did a picture for that too:
The report ended with the 'stop the press' news that Mercury might also crash into Venus but that the planets would simply merge (WHAT?). "The new planet would be a little bit bigger than Venus, and the Solar System would be a little more regular after the collision, but the Earth's orbit would not be affected." Phew. FC
Due to time-consuming work commitments, and a burgeoning, yet thoroughly impotent, rage directed at so many things all at once, this will read as a rant in its purest sense: forget rationality or cohesion of argument. Any correct grammar can be taken as a bonus.
If you are a twat, then this has surely been a watershed couple of weeks for you.
Firstly, poetry twats countrywide could revel in the pointless non-story about some sad old jackass (who may or may not have starred alongside a blooming Max Branning in a 1989 Yellow Pages ad) who initiated a smear campaign against another poet. Guys, calm down - this is poetry. Nobody cares. TWATS.
Then came the dawn of yet another series of the interminable Big Brother - a veritable haven for twats and twat-lovers alike. And the first eviction is always the worst, because the preening nonce that gets the chop always says something along the lines of "I didn't want to win. I came here for the experience" - BOLLOCKS! YOU'RE LYING! YOU TWAT!
Real twats will enjoy the news of the BNP's ascension to claiming two MEP seats in the European elections. Political analysis or debate is not necessary here: the BNP are a racist, thick organisation. And their success here may ultimately be a blessing in disguise, because, with the bigger stage afforded them, they should now have to face more rigorous policy questioning, to which they will have no answers. Because they are TWATS. Just look at this TWAT's face. I wish he'd been strangled at birth. And then ground up like shitty pepper.
And when we thought there might a nationwide drying up of twats, along comes another. Bob Crow of RMT, with his ridiculous tube-striking antics. Doctors, nurses and teachers who earn far less than your salary are obstructed from doing their day's work because you want more than your 30k (min) salary, and a ban on future redundancies, in the time of a recession. TWAT TWAT TWAT.
At this moment in time, it might be nice of me to introduce some light and shade into the article, and suggest that, in the grand scheme of things, what with the reawakening of the nuclear threat, the AIDS crisis, predicted record levels of unemployment for this year's graduate students, this doesn't really matter too much.
But I'm not. Bob Crow - you are a selfish, bullying twat. Fuck off. I hate you and your childish strike. TWAT.
With this is mind, there is literally no better time to introduce/remind the reader of the majestic 'London Underground Song' by Adam Kay and Suman Biswas (...me neither)
Just to prove it's not just ne'er-do-well idiot-papers jumping on the hype here. Found this nice little inclusion in a Times article entitled 'My Top 10 Dangerous Animals Encounters'. Good work Richard Conniff, you insane lunatic. I think it's fair to say we are officially backing the man's book. TH
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