F A X 2 1

Watchmen Prequels Internet Test, claims DC

2012-02-05T13:41:00.002Z

In a spectacular climb-down, DC Comics has claimed that it never intended to publish prequels to Alan Moore's and Dave Gibbons' seminal graphic novel, and that the whole thing was a ruse designed to test the reliability of the internet.

"Just to be clear, there will be no prequels," said DC's Dan Didio in a statement today. "We knew fans would be angry at this decision, but the whole thing was just a test of the internet, honestly."

In what appeared to be a hastily worded press release, Didio stated that DC had been contacted by the Internet Engineering Task Force (IETF) who had been concerned about the internet's ability to survive the phenomenon known as “nerd rage”.

"The IETF has known that nerd rage is a problem for a while," said Didio. "When George Lucas re-cut Star Wars to show Greedo shooting at Han Solo in the cantina scene, a whole lot of nodes serving California threatened to blow. The entire internet could have caught fire!"

Representatives from the IETF were not available for comment. Didio, however, was prepared to expand on the topic at length.

Didio referred to studies that show the increasing threat that concentrations of nerd rage pose to the internet. "The number of important announcements held back for San Diego Comicon has meant that ensuring the internet can survive sudden surges of nerd rage is vital."

Didio further pointed out the importance of nerd rage for DC's marketing strategy:

"Nerd rage is one of our key marketing strategies. If it hadn't been for nerd rage, no one would have read any of our New 52 re-leaunch books. So we have a real interest in making sure that the internet is able to cope with the most extreme shit storms."

He added, "We've got some big announcements coming up that our fans are going to find intolerably stupid – honestly, Before Watchmen will look like a storm in a tea cup when you see what we've got in mind for our headline characters. We wanted to make sure the internet was ready to cope with the collective howl of outrage that's going to greet our increasingly idiotic and morally bankrupt creative decisions."

ARAB SPRING -the board game.

2011-12-01T19:28:00.007Z

Close followers of the hit Iraqi sit-com “Dictators” (see Fax 21 review here) may remember Saddam Hussein’s four loveable look-alikes playing a board game called “Arab Spring” in episode 7 of series 3. What started out as an in-joke on the part of the scriptwriters of the cult series, has now apparently materialised into a real board game made by Wadiingtons and available in the shops this Xmas.

Traditional board games seems to have taken something of a back seat in recent years due to the explosion in computer games sales, but Wadiingtons are hoping that the festive season will remind people of the wholesome social benefits of “real interaction” where children, adults and dull visiting relatives alike can find something in common to titter about, for a few hours at least while waiting for the turkey. Did I say Turkey? The designers have modelled the new game on old family classics like Escape From Colditz, Monopoly and Risk, and emulating the latter, have opted for a board which is a rather educational map of the middle-east/north African area. Each player gets to “go” a dictator, whose face-card is modelled on the original “Cluedo” avatars of Miss Scarlet and Professor Plum etc, except that this time the smiling faces above the black polo-necks belong to the likes of Bashar al-Assad and Mahmoud Ahmadinejad. Controversially, Benjamin Netanyahu of Israel is also there, and the deluxe party-pack version of the game includes full costumes that each player can dress up in. One for the younger kids perhaps, but what adult wouldn’t also relish the prospect of impersonating Colonel Gadaffi for an afternoon?

The aim of the game is to build up oil reserves, buy arms, exclusive residential properties in London, nuclear technology, and WMD (in that order). Like Monopoly, players must roll the dice and progress around the region (using little gold statuettes of themselves) and collect $200 every time they pass Mecca. The “chance” cards that one is obliged to pick up every turn include amusing eventualities like “Mossad commando raid, your nuclear assets are voided”, or “UN Weapons inspection, 50% arms reduction”, or “Pro-democracy riots, your assets are frozen by international banks”.

The ultimate goal is to achieve a critical mass of WMD then win the final asset of “Delivery System” and blow-up Israel, by means of a “Buckaroo” style Heath-Robinson gantry (the Arab Spring of the game title) that fires yours WMD spectacularly across the room while everyone wets themselves with laughter.

Like “Escape From Colditz” (remember that one?) there is even an equivalent of the “Appelle” card, the “Armageddon” card that instructs everyone to line up their pieces at “Megiddo”, a specially enlarged section of the Israel map and roll the dice for a sudden-death play-off.

Arab Spring isn’t as easy as it sounds, and players will need many hours of practice to become truly adept at hoarding power and subjugating their populations through misdirecting them towards hatred of their neighbours. My own favourite chance cards were “Geo-political shift, CIA commando team arrive to help bolster your regime against communists”, “Amnesty International report, lose three points of international standing due to evidence of torture”, “SAS team make botched landing, gain 2 points covert support from China”, “Three Kudos points: interview with Jeremy Bowen”, or “Four Kudos points: Hello Magazine wants your wife’s recipe for pizza”.

Many players will become overwhelmed by the all-too-frequent Pro-Democracy Riot cards, infiltrated by Al-Qaeda, crippled by international sanctions or a mixture of all three. Festival of Eid and Ramadan cards compel the player to miss a turn (Passover and Yom Kippur for the Israeli player). If Netanyahu wins, he gets to hurl his WMD at Iran.

Early signs indicate some negative press reaction, with accusations of poor taste levelled against Wadiingtons, but their marketeers have been quick to point out the US Military’s erstwhile use of a “deck of cards” to identify member of Saddam Hussein’s regime targeted for capture. “What’s the fuss?”–their spokesman Wal T Al-D’sni told me, “Every guy of a certain age still fondly remembers playing with his toy soldiers, even as wars still rage in the world. Life on earth is a sick joke, and until we admit that to ourselves, how can we hope to change it? The first step to recognising a joke was laughing, last time I checked…and ridicule in many ways has been the first nail in the coffin of each middle-eastern despot. These are the guys that execute you for laughter or spraying disrespectful graffiti over their portraits, remember, humour should be our weapon of choice…” he smiled then his eyes flared in a sudden flash of unexpected rage, “but who are you to criticise me anyway, who d’you think you are, dictators?”

Grain Trade Pegs

2011-09-26T14:11:00.002+01:00

Even Before They Begin

Grain Trade Pegs

Prognosis Records PRA-158739

This final ‘chapter’ in the Single Currency trilogy approaches concept album theatrics just like the marketing–friendly publishing phenomenon of those overblown fantasy–novel sagas which influenced its origination five years ago. Grain Trade Pegs have not outdone themselves here, or done their pop career any favours - failing to commit like a kamikaze veteran. In a musical medium where common sense is as rare as rocking–horse shit, this album boasts gibberish lyrics, about proverbial goodness knows what, in such a freeform hypocrisy against visionary composition that deciphering meaning of any sort is problematic at best, an inducer of apocalyptic headaches at worst.

New drummer Fatality Conundrum (formerly with Postcode War Zone, and Ultimate Restorative), brings her veritable cacophony of electronic percussion to a rock ‘n’ roll rhythm section that’s driven to distraction by nuke powerhouse bass guitarist Johnny Parallax (once upon a time acerbic front-man of Glasgow’s legendary ecto-punk outfit Indomitable Sprites), new champion of the indefinite riff and zinger of the lost chord. Lead guitarist and singer Roxbelle Dozer (whose twin sister Roxbeth, former guitarist with Blingdom Cum, owns Prognosis Records), is ably supported by keyboard player/ backing vocalist Goldie Commencement, maestro of hairy monster piano and bastard accordion, onetime Alternative Eurovision winner for composing the world’s greatest piano dirge, a noise later used as the theme tune for short–lived TV series Uruguay’s Got Talent.

Even Before They Begin is a Faustian compendium of broken promises, and reneged upon pacts, almost as ethically dubious as serving curdled milk preschoolers. Ground breaking as the proverbial pneumatic drill, first cut Reassuring Architecture is made of ore sum. Apostle Logic results in spreadsheet evangelism of mercenary preachers, highly reminiscent of the mostly agnostic band’s earlier antireligious material Still In Transit or Dog Almighty. A sporty cover version of Reckless But Pretty’s millennial #1 hit, Twizzlestick Delights marks a departure for the ’Pegs, going against the grain, so to speak, in more ways than one. Languid humour is not their usual musical mode, but here they trade-up from morbidity to mirth with a tremendous skill.

Airmail Viva Java is lyrical waffle; a companion piece to Maladroit Intellectual from the ’Pegs first Single Currency album - the much reviled Merely Beloved. There’s not a lot to be said in favour of salty tongue-twisting bayou jive in Shoulda, Woulda, Coulda, Rudder Judder Shudder, but energised pomp of Shot For Mooting offers a cautionary tale cataloguing the dangers of presenting legal problems in kangaroo courts. Raised By Wolverhamptons, could not possibly be any worse than it is, I suppose, but that’s hardly the point, really. It’s Easy To See Why lambastes any simple-minded reviewers who frequently assert their opinions as if such individual viewpoints are the only way to interpret a work, critically.

Venerable Forecast, Terrible Whispers contrasts markedly with Commodity Hugs & Thumb Sucking in the pandemonium stakes, much like the ’Pegs own alternative jazz foray, Vituperative Extracts. A firm favourite here is Dreaming Up, Dreaming Down - a gem of delinquent whimsy about the “fantasy of nosebleeds” and “myths of obesity,” which parallels this band’s all-time-great ‘signature’ classic, Ask Willy Wonka (heard at its very best in the ‘ta-ta 4 now’ remix). Waylaid Horizons is juicily funky, with its staged conversational exchanges of movie dialogue quotes embedded in the lyrics.

There’s certainly no mistaking the gruelling churn of Snogged To Death (Death Snog III, reprise) for any kind of love song, even of the sparkling vampire variety. No One Currently Likes This, offers a tirade against the faceless vacuity of social networking websites, bringing the ’Pegs assumed technophilia into question. Fiendishly complex or just a load of old cobblers..? Temporary Password is another track about people’s online presence and website activities – a largely satirical diatribe on impermanence, anonymity, and cyber–bullying. In the dark end, Even Before They Begin is wayward creativity unleashed.

National Looto Live!

2011-08-20T10:10:00.006+01:00

I’M SOCIALLY DISADVANTAGED, GET ME OUT OF HERE!
The government have today announced a new money-making scheme to get the sluggish British economy going, whilst simultaneously clamping down on recent civil disorder.

Teams of looters and protestors, and gangs of disaffected youths, are to be organised, trained and armed, then pitted against each other in televised pitch battles, the television rights for which will be sold to BskyB and CNN Sport.

Prime Minister David Cameron elaborated on the scheme at a press conference outside parliament, inexplicably dressed in a Batman outfit, with Nick Clegg attired at his side as sidekick Robin. As Cameron spoke, Clegg slapped his gloved hands together eagerly, exclaiming “Holy loopy looters, Cam Man, that’s dynamite!” Cameron explained:

The world-wide media interest in Britain’s recent rioting and looting has been overwhelming, and part of our “Big Society” ethos is to look for ways to make fresh opportunities out of everything, but particularly out of human stupidity, which is of course an even more reliable and inexhaustible resource than wave or wind power. Nick and I, as the lead caped crusaders of this government, have drawn up a scheme for a national three-round rioting tournament.

First round is hand-to-hand combat, second is sticks, stones and bottles, the third will be light firearms and explosives. All play offs will be sudden-death and the final will be fatal, not a single man to be left standing. Instead of National Lotto, this will be National Looto, and the stakes will be life and death. Live mega-violence, the ultimate reality-TV experience, beamed into a billion homes around the world. Britain will become the live looting violence capital of the world, second to none. Just look what happened to Las Vegas when it legalised gambling. This one’s a sure-fire winner.

Teams will include Tottenham-Molotov and Salford-Sackers, pitted against old favourites like G8-Renta-Riot and Ulster-Bigot-Boys. The winners in each round will win a chance of a pitch battle against mounted police units with water cannons.

Quizzed over possible venues for these spectacular events, the Prime Minister smiled broadly and produced a list of the nation’s football stadiums, while his excited sidekick floated the possibility of rioting and looting becoming recognised as Olympic sports events in time for the 2012 games in London.

"Easy chum….." Cam Man grimaced behind his black face mask, hand on the shoulder of his eager young crusader. "Isn’t that Commissioner Boris I hear on the big red telephone…?"

The Future Grave Detector

2011-08-15T23:02:00.004+01:00

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YOU NEED THE FUTURE GRAVE DETECTOR

Using the time-bending qualities of nechromatic rays, I am able to pin-point the precise funereal location of any man or woman on this planet currently on this side of the veil. When I have detected this terminal plot, I shall (for a modest fee*) at a time appointed by my client, stride back and forth across said deathly sward. By this means I can induce in my target that uncanny sensation we call:

WALKING ON ONE'S GRAVE!

Immediate symptoms can include:

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The Effects of the Grave Walker's Art!

In this way you can gain that crucial advantage in a business negotiations, in the courts of law, at the tennis club or even IN MATTERS OF ROMANCE. For a consultation with no obligation to purchase, contact:

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Thomas Jerome Newton - exclusive interview

2011-06-26T22:01:00.005+01:00

The Scary Creep Who Fell To Earth

He was here way back then, he’s still here now.

The alien who fell to Earth, and stayed. So what

happened to THOMAS JEROME NEWTON since

DAVID BOWIE played him in the biopic

‘The Man Who Fell To Earth’?

At last, ANDREW DARLINGTON can reveal the truth

in this interview exclusive to ‘Fax 21’…

‘There are secrets and lies. Then there are bigger lies. There is reality, and there is truth. Then there are scary monsters and super-creeps.’ In a darkened room, temperature at low chill-level, he folds his angular frame neatly into Louis Quinze velveteen-upholstery with all the grace of a long-legged flamingo. Behind him, a wall of silent TV’s swarm collages of squirming movement in a low-level luminous glow that outlines him to black. This figure is unable to see the colour red. But he can see X-rays. His exotic air of androgyny and his near-transparent ‘snow-white tan’ combine to betray his alien origins. He was the nazz. Now he’s below the radar. But he’s still here.

‘Yes, I am Thomas Jerome Newton, the Thin White Duke. On good days, my life is tolerable. I live by the ocean, and watch its endless rhythms. It’s something I still find wonderful. All that water. The stuff we hoard and ration on drought-stricken Anthea. So much of it here. I walk the beach, 198cm-&-a-bit tall. But I have long thin fingers with no natural fingernails, which makes it awkward, it necessitates prosthetic implants like translucent coins. I can also blend in by wearing false nipples. But having four toes means no sandals, and some degree of concealment. And my retinal membranes conceal screwed-up feline-eyes. There are traces of accent I work to disguise, the tendency to enunciate too precisely, too formally. Then there’s the weight of this place. The pain in my gravity-sensitive joints and the bird-frail bones at the small of my back. Caused by gravitational pull on my own slight weight.’

He has the sickly appearance of a consumptive poet. Look into his eyes and they are blue, but no-one’s home. For his pensive gaze is detached from his surroundings. And it took a long convoluted search to track this Cracked Actor down. His visibility is deliberately negligible. As though he’d like to come and meet us, but he’s afraid of the consequences. On both parties. He works by stealth, learned by cruel experience. ‘They say you can never be too thin, or too rich. I’ve been both’ he comments softly, in hazily dismissive cosmic jive. ‘There’s this idea about a twenty-first century person thrown back in time to the Paleolithic, and revolutionising Cro-Magnon society into premature techno-geekery. Except of course, it wouldn’t work out that way. Far from churning out proto-versions of micro-waves, iPods and Blu-Rays he wouldn’t cut it with the most basic survival skills. Without a lighter he couldn’t even make man’s red fire. He can’t program the DVD timer without the manual anyway, never mind build one from bits of sharpened flints. Cro-Magnons might take pity on him and toss him the occasional bit of Mammoth, because he’d be lost without the gastro-Pubs where he usually grazes. It doesn’t work that way. It works this way. You adapt to your environment before you can begin adapting it. Same with me. I’m here. I’m the twenty-first century person thrown back into Cro-Magnon society. Washed up on the reefs of space. Like Icarus, the boy who fell from the sky. And it takes time. I began with existing technology. Rudimentary baby-step patents, such as self-developing photographic film. That’s the way it had to be. I couldn’t leap directly into digital because the infrastructure wasn’t there to support it. So instead I tweak TV antennae and transistors, cheap junk-trinkets to amaze the natives. Ten-thousand years of Anthean technology to draw on, but I had to introduce it gradually. Through my ‘World Enterprises Corporation’ conglomerates. But that takes time. And time inflicts other changes.’

‘Trouble is, you can adapt to your new environment a little too far, making it less easy to begin adapting it. I live among clever, devious apes. A man surrounded by animals long enough becomes more of an animal than he should. Have I ‘gone native’? There are moments I think that’s so. I had Earthling pets, lawyer Oliver V Farnsworth who first negotiated my entry into marketing, Betty-Jo Masher who – loving the alien, introduced me to the numbing intoxications of Beaujolais and Gordon’s gin. And fuel-technician Nathan Bryce who was smart enough to work out my extraterrestrial origins. They age. I don’t. How human have I become? I’m not human. But human enough. Where do I belong? I no longer know for sure.’

This Space Oddity sips from a glass of clear water. His biographer, Walter Tevis, attempted two novelisation of his story, with ‘The Man Who Fell To Earth’ in 1963, then revised in 1978. More high-profile there’s Nicholas Roeg’s movie-interpretation (March 1976) with the ‘starman’ who whirled the soul played by David Bowie, and the novel’s plain Betty-Jo prettied-up as Mary-Lou in the luscious guise of actress Candy Clark. There’s even an MGM-TV pilot by David Gerber (1987) featuring Lewis Smith, Will Wheaton and Robert Picardo. They all cover the same span of years from slightly altered perspectives, but they all end with Newton’s extraordinary-rendition ordeal at the hands of FBI & CIA government agents. Hitting an all-time low. Since then, there must have been changes? He gives little more than an enigmatic smile. ‘I now realise how much brutality lurks beneath the face of your liberal democracy. I’d been too trusting. Too open. In time, my eyes regenerated. Slowly, over a painful period. But they did regenerate. For years I assumed the guise of ‘John Dory’, a reclusive hermit. A man apart. A Greta Garbo, Howard Hughes, or a JD Salinger. Now, chastened, I find it’s more efficacious to operate through shadowy behind-the-scenes manoeuvres, using entrepreneur front-men. So ‘World Enterprises Corporation’ operates more covertly, through avatars. I’d come so far. Achieved so much. But I was impatient, so impatient for more. These smart-chimps are so slow. So mired in their social-inertia. So intent on looting, plundering and irresponsibly over-breeding Earth into premature-extinction. Not all humans are insane. But many of you are. Enough of you. It’s also become apparent that, within the political dialogue about asylum-seekers and illegal-alien migrants, that I’m far from alone in my unfortunate predicament. The ‘Men In Black’ movie (1997) and its sequels – for which I acted as adviser, played it as comedy. ‘Alien Nation’ (1988) treated it slightly more sympathetically. Now there’s NBC’s on-going ‘The Event’ with its aliens interned in a kind of Alaskan Guantanamo. But yes, there are other extraterrestrial scary monsters and super-creeps here with their own agendas, which sometimes conflict with my own. Sordid details following… at least one totalitarian dictator I know for certain is a Sirian shape-shifter. A devious secret clique of Kreggari pod-people engineered the financial credit-crunch meltdown for their own acquisitive motives. My objectives are more benevolent.

‘For me, stage two of my project began with searching out Steven Wozniak. As with Bryce, I intuited potential. He was a high school drop-out employed by Hewlett-Packard, dabbling in computer-design, but with guidance, with nudges and prompts he had potential to inch it further. Yes, he would suffice. My networking also turned up his high school buddy Steven Jobs. He was with Atari, another project I’d nursed into being with low-grade gadget-toys. Through one-to-one tutorials they became my fine-tuned tools. With me as the third corner, the invisible partner injecting fairly basic Anthean upgrades – user-friendly interface, windows, drag-and-drop file moveability, and plug-in-and-play compatibility, evolving into velocity-engine and simple 128-bit-wide architecture, we went hot-tech start-up April 1, 1976. A slow development curve for me, revolutionary for the newly wired-world I’m stranded in.’

Behind him the wall of silent TV’s blare their chaotic news-feeds from around our troubled globe. Can he be trusted, can the words of this strange Man-Insane be believed? ‘That my initial mission failed is a tragedy, for us all. Now, it might be too late. Together we might have saved the Earth. I’m closer now. Closer to the next phase that will prod this monstrous, beautiful, terrifying planet another paradigm step towards my objective. If only things hang together long enough for me to complete. That’s what I’m most unsettled about. I fear this is a race we might lose. It’s a race between time… and time-out.’ He waves his hand dismissively. A pale ghost now, ethereal. Obviously tired by the exertion. Signaling that he’s winding down. He’s talked so much. Time for just one more shot.

So why are you divulging this now? Why grant this interview after so lengthy a silence? ‘Why not? Who will believe it? No-one will accept that this is not a spoof contrived to amuse. That this is not the desperate fabrication of a hack with an Apple lap-top…’

BY ANDREW DARLINGTON

For the full Thomas Jerome-Newton back-story check out the helpful DVD review of The Man Who Fell To Earth on the excellent VideoVista website…

Dictators !

2011-06-02T22:33:00.009+01:00

Dictators –Series One, -reviewed by Alexander Stark.

Perhaps we shouldn’t be surprised about good television coming out of Iraq, after all its neighbour Iran has been a producer of award-winning films for the last decade. But who would have thought that the world debut of Iraqi creative talent in the post-Saddam era would be a sit-com? And what a sit-com!

The writers of “Dictators” seem to have avidly watched and digested the soap operas and situation comedies of America and the UK through years of repression and now their belated response is an eruption of free speech and irreverent humour.

The plot for “Dictators” is genius in itself: a household of four uncouth young men living together, “Young Ones” style in 1990’s Iraq, except that these men all share one unusual profession: they are each identical body-doubles for Saddam Hussein himself.

Current affairs, the invasion of Kuwait, Gulf War One and in the next series Gulf War Two: are all seen to take place casually in the background, as the constantly bored stand-ins watch television and compete and bemoan over who will be next to be given a public engagement role. The four characters, Hassim, Ali, Tariq and Youssef, all wear different outfits about the house, Goodies-style, expressing their wildly differing and ill-matched temperaments: Hassim is hugely patriotic but a bit stupid, Ali is obsessed with the secret police and conspiracy theories, Tariq is effeminate and lazy, lying around the house painting his nails like a supermodel, while Youssef longs to pick up girls but is conflicted over his parents Muslim faith, and more to the point basically shy.

Needless to say, hilarious and excruciating scenarios constantly unfold between these four, like when Hassim is selected to meet Gaddafi (making a special guest star appearance as himself in episode 7), but being too stupid to remember his lines has to take Tariq with him disguised as a woman. Tariq then gets embroiled in a lesbian scenario with one of Gaddafi’s butch female body-guards, leaving Tariq hopelessly exposed as the cameras start rolling. All works out well in the end of course, because Gaddafi is out his face on mescaline and totally bonkers.

Ridiculous schemes to blow up Israel using super-guns get repeated airing, Ali taking on the role of mad inventor among the group, his best shot seeing the four of them landing in The West Bank in light aeroplanes made out of toilet rolls and getting loaves thrown at them by Palestinian women in a bread queue.

The boys get roped into assisting at a biological weapons plant and end up growing extra limbs and heads, one of which looks like Dick Cheney, and spouts right-wing psycho babble.

Youssef, constantly sexually frustrated goes out on an urban babe-pulling mission with Saddam’s sons but is too embarrassed to buy condoms. On the strength of a television story about American troops using them over their gun barrels, he crosses the desert to negotiate and inadvertently brings about a ceasefire, on his knees, weeping, with his shoes off. The cameo role of Robbie Coltrane as General Stormin’ Norman Schwarzkopf (episode 9) at this point, is worth the DVD price alone, and rumours that Jack Nicholson has been contracted to play Donald Rumsfeld in Series Two are appetite-whetting to say the least.

Not since Father Ted, has there been so much fun to be had the expense of figures of dubious authority. Our four Saddams are never less than loveably dumb-assed, but always full of hilariously ill-founded hope, standing up at public gatherings and getting their hats shot off, and trying to score Speed off Chemical Ali.

The theme tune and end-titles are a joy in themselves: the tune from “Neighbours” sung in Arabic with subtitles: Dictators, everybody loves Dictators, with a small misunderstanding, you can meet a sticky end… That’s why Dictators don’t make good friends…

The Fly 3sum

2011-05-31T13:45:00.003+01:00

Spoiler Alert!

After the final credits have scrolled, there's a teaser-trailer for the next cross-franchise movie... as cobwebs fill the screen, and the shadow of Spidery-Men appears.

It's the End of the World as we know it (and I feel fine)

2011-05-23T14:02:00.005+01:00

A Pop Song on the radio? The prediction of a

deranged prophet? Or a new condition pervading the

multiverse? A special report from the CERN Large

Hadron Collider by ‘FAX 21’ correspondent

ANDREW DARLINGTON

A strangely volatile atmosphere pervades the plush PR suite of the CERN Large Hadron Collider. The kind of hush the tabloid hacks usually refer to as ‘expectant’, as the assembled multi-platform representatives of global media gather in feeding-frenzy mode. In truth, they’re mostly technical correspondents from academic journals and dedicated sites, anticipating the long-awaited announcement. High-profile in their limited fields, their numbers are swelled by popularisers from the more mainstream titles hoping for a sexy angle. As they sip complimentary wine, monitors and wifi’s are given fine-tuning tweaks and the panoramic glassed-in walls overlook the tranquil Franco-Swiss border countryside, with a few high white clouds in the sharp still air as dusk falls over Geneva. The first stars just visible. In every way, it seems very much a normal evening. The tall bespectacled Dr Harold Camping of the facility’s theoretical physics discipline opens proceedings with the deceptively simple prepared statement that the most recent particle acceleration sequences have finally yielded evidence of the elusive Higgs Boson, with data-files recording the creation of the nano-particle – and the release of related phenomenon, a condition existing for a billionth-of-a-second, yet confirming the twelfth-dimensional quantum nature of Einstein’s final enigmatic equations, and the teasing enigma of the Mass of elementary particles.

Invited questions follow the rapturous reception of the news, as events take a stranger turn. From the display of eagerly raised hands Camping stabs the air with his pen to indicate Ms Persson of the ZEN website, perhaps expecting an easy ride. She stands, brandishes her iTablet, and asks ‘in the statement, you refer to the ‘release of related phenomenon’. What is the nature of these phenomena?’ Camping hurriedly confers with his colleagues. ‘Dealing with highly exotic particles there’s an integral element of indeterminacy. What occurred happened within the same billionth-of-a-second time-frame, but involved the creation of spontaneous bubbles of micro-singularities that nevertheless set up a ripple-cascade of consequences percolating across, and annihilating a series of parallel or alternate continuums.’ There was a pause of perhaps ten long seconds of perfect silence. Then a low hum of confused comment. Camping makes as if to move along to the next questioner. But Ms Persson persists, ‘would these alternate continuums have been inhabited, and if so, would they have been aware of what was happening to them?’ Camping squirms in his seat, obviously agitated. ‘We are entering highly conjectural terrain here. If I can hazard theoretical data I’d suggest yes, each parallel universe is both superimposed on, and separated from each other, by the slightest step apart, like layers of an onion. Certain individuals are more sensitive than others, it’s not impossible some may have picked up advance tremors of what was happening. In all likelihood they would fail to understand what they were sensing, and interpret it through some simple superstitious belief-system. Now perhaps we can move along to another questioner…?’

There’s a scuffle at the back of the hall. Camping carefully removes his spectacles, and cleans them with a precise circular motion. But attention continues to focus on the tall ZEN scribe. ‘Dr Camping, if these parallel continuums duplicate ours so exactly, how can we be sure they’re not also carrying out particle acceleration experiments that will leak over and annihilate our universe?’ ‘Ms Persson, we can’t be sure. In fact, this might already be the case, and even now we are existing in a highly attenuated echo-state, which will only continue to become yet more tenuous.’ ‘You mean, as in the movie ‘The Sixth Sense’, we’re all dead but don’t realise it yet?’ ‘To a lay-person, yes.’ ‘And what can we do to stop this happening?’ ‘We can’t. It’s already happened. The Higgs Boson data is time-coded 18:00hrs on 21st May 2011. So it’s already happened….’

There’s a strangely volatile atmosphere pervading the plush PR suite of the CERN Large Hadron Collider. Outside, the stars are winking out…

Apocalypse Postponed

2011-05-22T08:42:00.005+01:00

Well, it’s official. It’s all over, folks. The supposed “End Of The World” and “Rapture” as heavily advertised by fundamentalist Christians, failed to happen on 21^st May, and disappointment is palpable. Human beings and deadlines just don’t go together. Look what (nearly) happened with the Millennium Dome and most other Olympic stadiums constructed by third world countries… time ran out and we cocked it up. So why should Divine Beings be any different?

Usually as notoriously taciturn as Clarence House and the Vatican, The Press Office Of God was yesterday moved to release a statement, by the heartbreaking sight of thousands of disappointed Christians waking up to find themselves still alive:

“God wishes to express his heartfelt apologies to patient and long-suffering followers who were eagerly waiting to be obliterated on the advertised date of May 21^st 2011, but due to excessive pressure of work we regret to announce that the Final Apocalypse has had to be delayed. This has already been a busy year, with Fire, Flood, Famine and Locusts (Yes, they’re back, a homely old-fashioned touch, hope you’re enjoying them? –G) all to be rained down on my disobedient and wayward children, and something just had to give. There’s also been a lot of so-called man-made disasters such as exploding nuclear reactors and massacres of political protestors, and it’s easy to forget that as Supreme Being, none of these can happen either without considerable logistical support from The Office Of God. It all takes up time. Nonetheless, God wishes to reassure the public that He remains fully committed to an ongoing programme of spectacular and wrathful demonstrations of Divine Power, and endeavours to meet all His deadlines on time, as regulated by the independent monitoring body “Off-God” who currently rate His efficiency on catastrophe delivery at 87%. Customer satisfaction is continually monitored under the Worshiper’s Charter, and heavy penalties will kick in for every ensuing week in which God continues to fail to deliver the Apocalypse. Of course, prayer rates are falling, and these penalties could eventually become spiritually crippling, at which point the contract for the Apocalypse would have to pass to another Catastrophe Provider, such as Lucifer. Customer complaint forms can be found at all local churches…”

So there you have it. The press has been rife with rumours recently, that with the discovery of habitable planets within the Gliese 581 star system, God may be being lured or head-hunted, for a new more lucrative position on a planet with more promising spiritual assets. Leaving Jesus in charge of Earth as an unelected despot unrecognised by Jews and Hindus would be likely to leave him with all the popularity of one of Gaddafi’s sons, and a recipe for unrest, so we’re on the horns of a dilemma.

The Archbishop of Canterbury, never one to steer clear of controversy, weighed into the debate over the weekend:

“I can fully understand the disappointment of Christians waiting for the end of the world yesterday, at finding themselves still alive. I know fresh air, good food, and the sound of birdsong in the morning, can be of little comfort to them, at this difficult and testing time. I can only suggest that they seek out other means to relieve themselves of their burden, and while suicide of course remains a sin, today’s world presents countless opportunities for putting yourself in harm’s way, for instance by becoming evangelists in Islamic Fundamentalist countries. Failing this, of course, in just a few decades in most cases, Nature will take its course, and can be hastened somewhat I believe by chain-smoking or living and working near a Nuclear fission reactor.”

Bun Laden !

2011-05-10T17:37:00.015+01:00

No sooner has the white-shrouded body of Osama Bin Laden, the bête noire of the West, “slipped” (they make it sound like a careless accident) off an American aircraft carrier into the Arabian Sea, than his image has been re-born as a marketing brand. Yes folks, you heard it here first.

New Pakistani burger chain “Bun Laden” look set to announce a major expansion of their highly successful franchise next week, with numerous new outlets opening in middle-eastern economies over the next six months.

Fax 21 caught up with their CEO Alza Wiri, during a rare break in his packed business schedule, over lunch at one of their flagship “Fatwa Food” restaurants in Islamabad.

Was expansion into America, Europe or the UK on the cards next, I wondered?

“Why not?” –He smiled broadly from behind his disarmingly vast Ray-Ban sunglasses, in white casual polo T-shirt and jeans. “Sure, Americans have problems with French Fries or Freedom Fries, but our chips are labelled Friendly-Fire Fries, and make an excellent side to go with our Jihadi Burgers and Semtex Quarter Pounders…”

I wondered aloud if issues of taste would be a problem, as I admired the two life-size fibreglass statues of Bin Laden flanking the entrance, Planet Hollywood style: one in camouflage mountain-goat look, the other in white-robed prophet mode, both toting plastic AK-47s.

“Taste?” –he puzzled, thinking I meant flavour, before the penny dropped. Then he laughed: “But isn’t ridicule and high cholesterol food the best possible aid to stress-relief after a hard day at the office fighting the global War on Terror?”

For Dessert, he went on to explain (labelled “Operation Dessert Storm” on the menu boards), Bun Laden serves Afghan Opium-Browns (Hash Browns are seasonal and have to be imported from Lebanon apparently), or glow-in-the-dark Depleted Uranium Flurries, washed down with a large Coke Bush-Puppy).

“Think of all the work involved (any graphic designer will tell you) in establishing a new brand on the world market, but with Bun Laden all the legwork has been done for us already by a deranged mass murderer. Isn’t everybody happy? Why not just take something horrible like this and divert it into good food and fun, where’s the harm in that?”

“Relatives of the victims?” –I reminded him, as a little boy ran by kitted out with a sherbet-shoe-bomber pack and full-body suicide-burger vest. Or maybe he was just overweight.

“Okay, okay. Our flame-grilled Smokin’ Twin Towers double burger deal might have to go, but the Rumsfeld Rum Babas are here to stay.”

It was hard to argue with Alza Wiri, particularly when he pulled out a chocolate hand-grenade and lobbed it at me. Instinctively, I ducked, but the man behind me from CNN caught it in his teeth. “Man down” I joked, but everyone seemed to be cheering up already...

Summer Of Guff

2011-04-16T13:54:00.013+01:00

Summer Of Guff
The Paedophile Priests

Polymorphous Pervert Records

Review by Alexander Stark

The well-known phrase ‘difficult third album’ might well have been invented for the much awaited new release Summer Of Guff from controversial Swansea cult indie rockers the Paedophile Priests, but for all the wrong reasons. Just before Christmas, iconoclastic front-man ‘Bald’ Archie Canterbury was rumoured to have left the band to concentrate on his new side-project Joan Bakewell & The Tarts in collaboration with Des Lynam, Julian Assange, and a broken lawnmower, and drummer Tutu Bishop was arrested on drugs charges during a charity concert in Timbuktu. With guitarist Ike Davis in much-publicised rehab for model addiction after his public split with girlfriend Kate Moses, the Priests’ disarray and disintegration seemed complete and completely dismal.

But in characteristic style they have returned just in time it seems to re-take their place at the apex of Brit pop, enthralling fans and virgins alike with their usual blend of acerbic lyrics and ear-ripping aural bricolage. But did I say ‘usual’? Of course, nothing is ever usual with the Priests, and that is the essence of their power to shock and spring eternal from the jaded and dusty fountainhead that is the flagging heart of the British musical scene. Indeed, with the whole country on its knees economically, Summer Of Guff feels like the morale-boosting breath of foul air that we’ve all been waiting for.

As ever, instrumentation runs the gamut of invention: from detuned violas and retro-wrecked harpsichords, to eviscerated goats guts miked-up to back-firing motorbikes, didgeridoos and recordings of NATO night-time bombing raids. Particularly topical as events have subsequently unfolded, is Muammar Gaddafi (now how did they pull off a coup like that?) providing guest vocals on two of the tracks Oil, My Ass and: I Fly Pariah International. Despite numerous attempts at imitation over the last few years, no other band have even come close to the originality and influentiality of the Priests since their seminal release Father Tolled Me Off With The Bells, and its astonishing follow-up Get Behind Me, Satan.

The heart of every song is still Canterbury’s hauntingly ecclesiastical vocals and wry observations on the world, like a sermon from some sort of drunken Jesus who survived the cross, sold his story to The Sun then got busted by Interpol on his way over to Al-Jazeera. “There’s always time enough to repent/ Time enough to tell you what I really meant” he laments in the stirring Tony B. Liar’s Confession Cubicle, and after an appealingly vile zither solo from Ike Davis, he rounds it off with “Nail me to your floorboards/ I’m so sorry I made you cross/ Vote me a penance baby/ I’ll take the street and a dodgy doss.”

But the Priests save the best for last, with the last three tracks on the album amounting to an impassioned lampooning of all things Royal and British. Patriots beware. Prince Andrew Junket Junkie blows us sideways with coronation trumpets overlaid with the sound of yelping corgis (“No royal family members or equally dumb animals were harmed during the making of this record”, the sleeve notes helpfully tell us). Duke Of Anywhere But Here, mercilessly berates the Queen’s Consort with a meticulous list of diplomatic gaffes over the years: “Slanty eyes and golly wogs/ Swiss cuckoo clocks and Dutchman’s Clogs/ Prejudice ’gainst nations diverse/ I get my views from Taxi Drivers/ Closeted, moi?”

The Paedophile Priests are the urban troubadours of our troubled age, bringing an inane smile to even the most inane of our kingdom’s weary serfdom. Archibald Canterbury is a true poet of the modern world. I’ll leave you this from the magnificent closing track Organise Your Own Street Riot, in which we encounter the edifying spectacle of BBC Royal Correspondents Jenny Bond and Nicholas Witchell being entombed alive with the Queen Mother in the manner of an Egyptian Pharaoh:

In patriotic royalty haze
Street parties in the good old days
Were timed to set the minions free
To celebrate the Jubilee
Or even better when a wedding
Tabloid froth and see-through bedding
Diana’s fringe and Charles’ bald pate’s
Been swapped this time for Wills and Kate
Let’s all forget the nation’s fate
To watch two people copulate

Blessed by God as from above
He pours down cocktails Molotov
A recipe from Jenny Bond
Right royal advice to correspond
To Nick Witchell’s prime hot air
We wonder what he sees up there
Gazing up the royal pudenda
To postulate the day’s agenda
Two silly poodles we should have smothered
The day we lost the old Queen Mother
Sealed up like Pharaoh with her slaves
Alive inside the Dowager's grave
Endless commenting on putrefaction
We’d hate to miss out on the action.

Strange Currencies

2011-04-12T17:33:00.002+01:00

STRANGE CURRENCIES

By Jake Elliott

Something is apparently happening to money. Not that we will notice overnight changes in the actual cash we carry, however, for the shift is occurring in the rarefied world of abstract economics. As Professor M.B. Drapier of the London School of Economics explains, "While there have always been alterations in the form money takes these are usually so slight as to give the illusion of stability. What it is suggested we are seeing now is quite different."

The earliest money is understood to be electrum coins issued in Lydia in Asia Minor around 4,000 years ago. The practise of substituting a representational artifact for all goods and services spread as the system of bartering became impractical due to increasing complexity and population growth. Precious metals - notably gold, silver and copper - became the accepted standard for hard currency (or 'specie') because of their durability, manageability and their steady use value which maintained an equally steady exchange value. This hard money became standardised sometime in the 7th century. By the Middle Ages 'credit currency' arose to obviate the need to move large quantities of coins involved in major transactions. The system of credit currency developed into paper (or 'fiat') money initially in China before France introduced it to Europe in the 18th century.

Standardisation did not emerge without alternatives to metal and paper being tried out along the way: more diverse types of money have been recorded at various times. Primitive cultures sometimes used a system of coloured pebbles as a rudimentary currency. Similarly, marked stones have been excavated in Egypt. The 18th century radical pamphleteer Noah Mounte describes an area of Bohemia in the Middle Ages using dog’s teeth as a form of currency, although this failed after the infiltration of other animal’s teeth into the supply, in an early example of Gresham’s law which states that bad money drives out good. Possibly the strangest type of money was the ‘dhun’ circulated by a Viking tribe: this was actually made from animal dung baked into bean-sized ingots. The tribe was apparently virtually wiped out by disease. "A possible etymology of the term 'paydirt'," says Professor Drapier, smirking.

What is changing with money now is a result of two recent innovations. Firstly there is the introduction of electronics into the money supply in the form of credit and debit cards, which means that the distinction between real and nominal money is superseded by the new category of 'virtual money'. The second, and more important factor, is the move away from the gold standard. When the dollar, the dominant currency after World War 2, was severed from the gold standard under Richard Nixon’s economic policies in 1971, international currency values became linked by a system of floating exchange rates. This decoupling from a real-world equivalent is the core of the problem.

Economic deconstructionist Galia Devoto suggested recently in her essay Buy By Cash? on postmodern perceptions of money, that “the unhitching of money from even the most symbolic of ontological manifestations may bring us to a point where money itself is ultimately abstracted out of the economic exchange cycle.” Others view this extremist speculation as of little value. Canadian economist Daisy Garside, a former colleague of Devoto’s who is now one of her fiercest critics, responded to this claim with an abrasive article called Love Your Money, in which she accuses Devoto of “scaremongering with scant regard for real facts and figures.” Garside asserts “we will always need money in our hands, whatever form it takes.”

Drapier concedes that the break with the gold standard has led to some curious and unforeseen effects that have only recently come to be addressed by researchers. He likens the upheaval to the inflationary crisis caused by the Romans’ sudden circulation of cheap money, or the similar problems experienced in Europe by over-issuing when paper money first became common. “There is more to discuss than observe,” he says.

Most widely acknowledged is the ‘black hole effect’. This controversial theory, first proposed in America over 10 years ago, operates in an incredibly complex area of purely abstract economics which some, such as Garside, claim is entirely illusory. The ‘effect’ suggests that as a consequence of the floating value, exacerbated by EU attempts to draw members’ currencies together, all money is gradually moving towards parity. Writers such as Devoto have elaborated the theory, postulating that eventually the hyper-liquidity resulting from virtual money, whereby finances can be whisked around the world and pass through numerous currencies in a matter of seconds in an effect called ‘fiscal osmosis’, will have a potentially catastrophic effect. As Devoto warns, “The inherent instability of virtual money, an effect of the white heat of technology and the instantaneous nature of electronic financing, has forged a sort of persistence of vision. The global economy rests on monetary values that are simply not there.” The prediction is that all currencies will become aligned in such a way that monetary value will become subject to rampant entropy and, in effect, buy itself out.

Professor Drapier responds to the idea with a smile. “Even advocates of the theory state that it can only happen imperceptibly slowly. Even if it is accurate it will be many years before we see substantial evidence of such a phenomenon.” Could it be true though? “Personally I don’t go along with it,” Drapier says, shaking his head. “I don't buy it, you might say.”

Portilloo

2011-04-04T15:57:00.002+01:00

After years of extensive research, covering everything from cheek tendons and Botox-2 tests, geneticists of LabCentral’s biotech division, working with other experts at the famous Lightman Institute, have found a ‘definitive’ cure for Michael Portillo’s sneer. Now, with a special DNA treatment, the British politician (a Tory shadow chancellor) turned broadcast TV media pundit is expected to make a full and lasting (if not quite permanent) recovery from his unsightly and - it must be said - rather annoying facial condition.

On the mend after a successful psychic surgery in Wackhampton’s Clinic, in the heart of Wessex, Portillo himself was unavailable for comment (other than one disgustingly slurred ‘uhm’), but a spokes-flunky confessed that “everyone associated closely with” ‘RH Portaloo’ (the man who admitted that, since Conservatives lost the 1997 election, his name was “synonymous with eating a bucket-load of shit in public”), was pleased, at last, to finally be rid of his “insufferably smirking disfigurement.”

Listening to Music and Silence

2011-03-31T22:56:00.005+01:00

Album review: M.C.T.U - Listening to Music and Silence
RCA, 2011
CD, Download, Vinyl, pianola roll, braille

Alt-folk punk art rock collective M.C.T.U are reticent even by the standards of their beardy, duffle-coated skinny jeans and trendy shoes wearing genre. Early in their careers, they were known for playing with their backs turned to the audience, such was their disdain. Later they took to playing in another room from the audience altogether, and then in another room and with their backs turned, just for good measure.

Their first album – Owls (Murk) – was a critical hit in 2005, but largely ignored by the public, much to the band's relief. Their second album – 2006's Jeff's Nuthatch (Murk) – reached number 79 in the charts over the summer, and the band were signed by RCA. However, the band's creative powerhouse, Graham Sibley was still unhappy with their direction, and told NME in 2007 that recording and writing music was limiting to the band's musical potential.

This signalled the beginning of a hugely experimental period for the band beginning with their controversial Silent Album (RCA), released in the spring of 2008. While critics were initially unsure how to take the album, the public embraced it, helped along by the DJ Shadow remix of the track “Track Six”.

The follow-up - Second Silent Album (RCA) - was a product of the same sessions as Silent Album and is in many ways a companion piece, embracing the themes of lack of communication, alienation and stillness. The agony behind these tracks hid betrayed the creative rivalries that would finally destroy the band.

Saxophone player Doug Roper left the group and put out a solo album – Dreams of a Reed Player (Geffen) – of recordings of him asleep dreaming about playing the songs. It was a commercial hit, but critics and hardcore fans claimed that Doug had betrayed the M.C.T.U. ethos by snoring on several of the tracks, and at one stage loudly shouting “Not me Rover!” several times in his sleep.

Third Silent Album was recognised by critics and the record buying public alike as a failure, as if what had initially seemed such a deep and vibrant sound was suddenly just a blank CD or empty space on your iPod. For all his creative fire, Sibley somehow needed Roper's popular instincts to keep the music on track. The group fianlly disbanded in 2010 and Sibley is now rumoured to be a children's TV presenter in Canada or Australia (or perhaps an Australian/Canadian co-production).

This live recording captures them at their mercurial best, during their campus tour of the US in 2008 when they played in entirely different venues from the audience. The rocking energy of Sibley, Roper and the others resonates against the apathy and murmuring boredom of the crowds. This catches one of the most innovative bands of the noughties in their full, silent glory!

Bushfire Season

2011-03-31T08:53:00.007+01:00

Supposed To Be Contagious

BUSHFIRE SEASON

Agglomerate Music

bfseason.com

Review by Chris Geary

The band’s previous album, Let’s Not Do That Again, was a complete flop, even in those overseas markets where kitschy or awfully dated pop music styles are often successful. Now, under new management, and reduced from a five-piece to just a trio (their other band-mates having returned, perhaps disconsolately, to their respective day-jobs), Bushfire Season are very much in downsizing/ turnaround mode – but it’s clear, right from the opening track, that the process of reconsolidating/ artistic transformation still remains on-going...

Synthetic Oysters is a rather twee composition awash with cutesy tones in a song that’s purportedly about virtual sex. Is it aimed squarely (and I use the word ‘square’ only advisedly here) at the Japanese salary-man end of the Asian market? Who knows, or cares? Myth Of The Good Cop concerns itself with amusing little pokes at stuffy academic texts: recently published intellectual diatribes against formulaic American TV shows by snobby critic Jandy Hutchbliss. While it’s patently obvious that “big city detective series as broadcast entertainment” are not actually causing the downfall of all US societies, there’s really isn’t much to be said in favour of them, either.

Just Chirrup, And We’ll Come For You, My Wee Bonny Lassie appears to be a spoof of M.R. James’ spooky fiction. However, it seems like the lyrics are inspired mostly by watching old BBC adaptations, not by reading the ghost stories. Oh, and it probably doesn’t help much that atmospheric rumblings in the background overuse echo chamber effects. Industrial grade pseudo instrumental Where The Fuck Art Thou? has - perhaps thankfully - nothing at all to do with Shakespeare.

Power Gossip is this obscure band’s contribution to a current barn–dancing revival in Wessex. Quaint jazzy riffs on Deficit Empire lambaste the British coalition government’s mismanagement of economic recovery from a grim double–dip recession. New Labour instigators of an almost nationwide ruin are further damned yet with faint praise, in Consumer Society Breakdown. It’s anyone’s guess what Butter My Iceberg is really about. Mentioning the ‘crystal magician’ of a ‘toffee republic’ applying ‘sardine brakes’ to a ‘piano coronation’ evokes only the absurdities of nonsense verse...

The lead ‘singer’ (well, the only singer, nowadays!) of Bushfire Season is one Daisy Pimples, who boasts a voice that can melt earwax at 50 metres, and grate even the hardest cheese known to man. For the band’s previous album, she bought bloody teardrops to many a listener’s eyes with some direly graceless warbling on tracks like Kitchen Zebra and Hairy Dolphins. Here, in solo control of the front–channel microphone, the sound is likely to provoke terminal migraines for any unfortunate sods in hearing range. What utter madness drove this particular Miss Daisy to the belief that she could actually sing? It is most perplexing. I hope this strange madness is actually not contagious.

Vermeer In Mirrorburgh

2011-03-25T09:42:00.011Z

(The Search For The Last Unfamous Man)
“During the 1960s, I think people forgot what emotions were supposed to be, and I don't think they've ever remembered”. -Andy Warhol.

When an anonymous caller tipped-off the Mirrorburgh Herald, I eagerly agreed to join the press pack on their next big manhunt: the search for the last nobody. The word was out, a sighting had been made, the location vague but the media bloodhounds were onto a still-warm trail and it could only be a matter of days or hours until our helpless quarry would be run to ground.

Rumour was, he was some kind of intellectual, a classical music freak, a reader of books or maybe he wrote them. Who cares? He was odd and that was the point. Maybe he really would turn out to be the last weirdo that hadn’t had a documentary made about him. Well, we’d put that right soon enough.

There was all the surveillance footage to go through from the cameras in every shop and on every street corner. I mean the guy had to buy milk or drive to the corner shop now and again didn’t he? His fingerprints, his iris-scan, his DNA, his bank cards, his store transactions, driving licence, passport, health care – he had to need a doctor or a dentist from time to time, right? We’d find him, everyone was sure of it.

Andy Warhol. That’s as far as my Art and Culture go by the way. Saint Warhol said that in the future everyone will be famous for 15 minutes, and now that day has come. I’ve been on TV, you’ve been on TV. Hell, even my mum’s been on TV. Quiz shows, focus groups, street interviews, Big Brother, House Swap, Wife Swap, Changing Rooms, Property Ladder, A Place In The Country, pet swap, job swap, semen swap. Reality-TV-Presenter Swap. I’ll trade you Lawrence Lewd Bowen and some bad curtains for a diminutive dietician to rake through your faeces with a fork. Even my hamster’s famous. He has his own talk show. He lets all his guests just be themselves and really let their hair down while he runs around on his wheel and looks interested. My sofa’s famous, its photo is all over eBay. My penis is all over the internet too, but let’s not go there right now…

Back to our manhunt. The Search For The Last Unfamous Man had gone national and now there was a big clock ticking and bets were being taken. Pundits and precision-wafflers had been drafted into all the news studios to waffle precisely about precisely nothing, just as they’re paid to. Johnathan, you’re an expert on unfamous people, or at least you sat next to someone on a bus once who you overheard say they were an expert on unfamous people, so who do you think this guy might be and where he might be hiding? Well David, I was talking to someone off the record about this yesterday… Uhhhh… who were they Johnathan? Err, I can’t say David, they were off the record. And what did they say? Well I can’t remember David, because I didn’t record it. Well what can you say Johnathan? Well David, I can say that I was talking to someone off the record about this yesterday…

I could go on. They did. But we had our first lead on the second day. Story went our man had bought ten copies of The Big Issue from a homeless gentleman then burnt them all in front of him. The stunned vendor had asked him why and apparently he had said because you’re bloody irritating and now you’ll have to do something else all afternoon. It sounded like classic, un-mutual and free-thinking behaviour, the trademark of an eccentric. One of our reporters had been informed and an attempt duly made to follow and interview our subject, but when approached he had said he ‘shunned’ publicity – a dead giveaway that, using an old-fashioned word like ‘shun’, obviously a closet-intellectual. A TV reporter then caught up with him a block later and our fugitive had pulled the Reporter’s trousers down and shoved his microphone up his anus, quite literally. It had made great television for a rival station arriving on the scene, but in the general confusion and excitement our man had got away again.

But fortunately he’d let slip a vital clue before he disappeared: he’d said to someone that he didn’t even have a television. Absurd? A ridiculous claim, or a shocking admission? In any other case we would have presumed the first explanation but the more we learned about our man the likelier this sort of thing seemed. Now it would be a simple matter to turn the TV detector vans on his neighbourhood and flush him out.

Problem was, we discovered that TV detector vans don’t exist, they’re just a ridiculous story made up by the BBC to scare students into paying their licence fees. In fact they’re a plotline even more far-fetched than anything in EastEnders if you stop to think about it. So we had to invent a TV-Detector van, which delayed us for a full two weeks.

But sure enough, once we had built one and tested it we did a sweep of the whole neighbourhood of Mirrorburgh he had last been seen in, and after a couple of false alarms breaking into flats where lonely old people had been partially eaten by their own dogs, we stumbled in on our subject.

The room he was in looked very old-fashioned and stagey, but weirdly familiar even to an ignoramus like me. Chequered black and white floor, tapestries for curtains. Our intellectual fugitive, dressed in medieval costume, was seated at an easel with a paintbrush in his hand. He greeted us casually, scarcely looking up never mind getting up, then proceeded to enlighten us all without the slightest encouragement.

Is this a…? - I began to ask.

Vermeer Painting, yes, a perfect re-enactment of one of his compositions, in a replica of the studio in his house in Delft, circa 1668. Come in and sit down, I knew you’d all catch up with me in the end.

I would have sat down, but all the ornate Dutch chairs in the room were currently occupied by women in period costume who were suspiciously static: a milkmaid, a procuress, a maidservant, a woman in blue, a girl interrupted, a laughing girl, a girl reading a letter at an open window, and a girl with a pearl earring.

Are they…? I began again.

Dead, yes quite. – he drawled calmly, without stopping painting. Stuffed, taxidermied. I did it myself in the next room but only once I’d put down a lot of newspaper and got my parents permission.

Your parents…?

Yes, that’s them in the corner dressed as an Officer and a Lady At A Virginal, they’ve held that pose for the last six years.

Why do you keep…?

Finishing your sentences for you? It’s a cheap directorial device contrived to condense retro-narrative, but your copy editor will love it, especially if there’s pressure on feature length.

No I mean, killing, you’re a…

Serial killer, yes of course, and one of the best around, though I say so myself. We’re all on the government payroll these days. A good state-sponsored murderer can earn anything up to £150,000 a year.

That’s almost as much as the prime minister…

Well, he’s one of us, in a manner of speaking, and maybe the best of the bunch since he goes on getting away with it. You see, after the 2012 attacks and the introduction of biometric identity cards the murder rate fell to dangerously low levels in the UK. They hushed it up. The Great Entertainment Crisis it was called. You see, we humans like to pretend that murder is a really bad thing but 80 percent of our nightly televisual entertainment of choice is based around murders and ageing socially-dysfunctional police detectives trying to solve them. Don’t you see? These dramas are called gritty, but how can they go on being gritty if there’s nothing like them happening in the real world anymore? And of course serial killers have to be acting out pages of the bible, or moves on a chessboard or some such other far-fetched bollocks. It’s a tradition. I’ll let the police catch me next week and then British television will be good to go with another ten years of ludicrous-but-gritty serial-killer drama-porn. You’ll see. And you’ll thank me. I guarantee it. Face it, murderers have a socially indispensable entertainment role in human society. You’d be lost without us.

Then he eviscerated my friend and colleague Bob from the Daily Mail with a palette knife. I should have expected this, all the subtle clues were there in his little lecture, and after 30 years of watching crime dramas I should have seen him rising towards the chillingly gentlemanly denouement scenario. He was half way through taking my other colleague Philip from the Guardian’s left arm off, when Peter from The Sun shot our serial killer straight through the head with a harpoon gun.

Whoooah. What are the chances of that?! –I wailed, dripping with second-hand blood and brain tissue. Were you on the way to a Sub-Aqua Club or something?

I know, Peter grinned, admiring his handiwork (ear to ear) and throwing up simultaneously. It just goes to show you… He stuttered… – that maybe God himself is a really poor screenwriter and a cheap hack.

It was hard to disagree.

Before the police arrived, we went through Vermeer’s address book and found the names of the government’s other Entertainment Agent-Provocateurs: undercover commandoes sent out to cause weekly riots on inner city housing estates to make episodes of The Bill seem less ridiculous. Bisexual models sent out to insinuate themselves into the affections of engaged couples in order to precipitate last-minute cold-feet scenarios on wedding days, essential for soap-operas. Secret sociologists sent to train even menial hospital staff in stress-counselling and intrusive psychology so they can pry into their patients’ private lives in a style reminiscent of Casualty.

So don’t worry readers, we’ve got our teeth into something really big this time (our own tails/tales?) and this story is going to run and run until it drops from exhaustion and we all tear it to pieces. Your favourite bloodhound, you can rely on me.

*For the benefit of readers from foreign shores or the future: The Bill, EastEnders, Casualty, Holby City etc are long-running soaps or semi-soap dramas on British terrestrial television. Conceived to accurately portray real life, they have in fact each digressed over time, in pursuit of higher viewing ratings, into their own patronising parallel realities. Constantly discussed by every socially-acceptable adult under the age of 35 in buses, trains, and offices, they are thus a self-enforcing, self-fulfilling corrosion of all cultural values by the power of cliché. Their only conceivable ultimate outcome is the complete reduction of the populace to couch-morons robbed of the language with which to articulate their own emotional lives.

On the other hand, I have for some time harboured the hope that through some kind of televisual short-circuit the worst of our television will begin to overlap and consume itself in creative and spectacular ways. For instance while that American-spoken ‘House Doctor’ woman is busy tearing some family to shreds for their poor choice of sofa fabrics, Trinny and Susannah might burst in and begin attacking her for her lack of dress sense. The cat-fight moves out into the street where Chief Inspector Meadows from The Bill is driving by and accidentally runs over Trinny. They all adjourn to the accident and emergency wing of Holby City where a junior nurse turns out to be one of the miserable cast of EastEnders who overhears a private conversation about Meadow’s drink problem then begins to entrap Meadows into a miserable blackmail situation he can only solve by visiting the miserable Queen Vic pub and being leered at by everyone. Fortunately and as usual, the entire staff of Holby City appear to double-up as freelance social workers with time to burn who take to counselling everyone about everything, including sofa fabrics. (I first made this projection last year but it was then almost instantly pre-empted by the announcement of ‘Holby Blue’ an expansion of the hospital drama into a police side-series. Life imitating art indeed).

ProFraction

2011-03-24T19:57:00.006Z

Most Responsive To Change

PRODUCIBLE FRACTION

Condensation Records

profraction.com

Review by Chris Geary

Recorded in a hailstorm, this fifth clamorous album by uncivilised but semi-confident Uzbek bagpipe and cello rockers Producible Fraction, offers a sinister compilation of auditory pratfalls led by Barbary Flannels, whose reedy vocals are basically stand-up comedy routines instead of proper song lyrics, with only an unrequited attachment to tunesmith melodies, orchestrated largely by vagabond composer Kirks Pumpkinseed on the pipes.

Devilishly handsome drummer, Lobs Slantwise, makes his presence felt even in your transplanted bone marrow on the first track, Resentfully Yours, which peters away to impish tapping while the warbling choral arrangement of backing singers surges back into screeching range with fruitful indulgence. Thenceforward, this certifiably barmy Asian band’s piercingly abrupt tempo changes dominate typically Turkic rhythms and truculently off-key jingles. Further musical mayhem essayed with Flannels’ stuttering alliteration ensures that single release Fluttering Vindication presents its catchy bass guitar and fluid keyboards with something approaching blasé impudence.

There are fine tweaks and expostulations to be enjoyed in both Aquaplane Uncoiling, and Shiny Misconception, while Benchmark Wheeze boasts a glorious epic structure. Tallyho Wherewithal is a monumental abstract of pulsating synths but underscored by resounding industrial blasts from Lobs, with Kirks’ uniquely squelching pipe-work as a wholehearted counterpoint. Unobjectionable Credo ends this bellowing rebellion of sublime intransigence with a highly quotable heehaw chorus, ghost-written by that legendary bobble poet Buttons Morden (of Calcified Flange and Slang Muckrakers).

Most Responsive To Change is not quite a triumph, but its acidic swelter of atrophied bleeps and bloats with collusive binges of bifurcated cello playing manage, somehow, to comment, albeit obliquely, upon the philandering upswing of recent developments in Uzbeks toady rock scene.

Slow death

2011-03-22T11:50:00.005Z

Ponderous but mighty, the gigantic mutant spawn of that nuclear accident on the Galapagos Islands continue to wreck havoc across South America. As you know, the infamous Great Tortoise Invasion began in Ecuador, shortly after the crash of half a squadron of USAF atomic bombers in 1951 made an entire chain of Pacific islands uninhabitable. But when a batch of irradiated eggs hatched into gargantuan beasts, vast swathes of tropical territories in the southern hemisphere were overrun by a new species.

Gigantortoise menace in 1950s

A veritable army of unstoppable semi-aquatic reptiles with heavily armoured shells and a penchant for carnivore feeding habits that soon overwhelmed their placid herbivore cousins, whilst breeding with giant sea turtles resulted in the population explosion which dominates the Caribbean and many regions of central and south America, today. Slow but deadly; these flightless gameras have bought a new reign of terror to citizens of every nation from Belize down to Paraguay.

Monsters are still a threat in 21st century

US military efforts to corral and contain the fierce creatures have intensified in recent years, but their conquests of Peru, Colombia, Bolivia and Venezuela, their occupation of central Brazil, and most of Argentina, and the bloodthirsty monsters’ increasingly frequent ‘surfing’ appearances along beaches of the Baja peninsula, alarms strategic authorities in Mexico and California.

4D Hits Cinemas!

2011-03-16T22:35:00.000Z

As 3D hits the high streets and the digital airwaves, movie makers are moving with the times to add another dimension to the cinema going experience for those willing to make a drastic change to their look. A third eye made out of the revolutionary 4D Matter© uses quantum entanglement to allowing viewer to not just see the movie, but to see all the other movies that the film makers might have made if they hadn't been working on this particular movie.

Julie Designerjeans enjoys the inifnite alternative endings to the latest Harry Potter movie

“This really takes movies to the next level,” chronic early-adopter Julie Designerjeans told me after a screening of James Cameron's latest sci fi epic, Megalomania 2. “Oh, the movie was rubbish, but in another version of reality, the catering company was involved in this really terrific drama with Helen Mirren as a feisty, no-nonsense Queen and Christopher Lee as a wise-cracking robot. It was amazing, the best movie Cameron never made!”

The 4D technology works by wiring an extra eyeball that's been constructed entirely from exotic 4D Matter©, into the viewer's optic nerve. The process has been developed by high tech start up company, Godel-Escher-Bark Enterprises.

GEB's head of marketing, Jeorg Wensleslas explains: “4D Matter© picks up photons emitted by light sources excluded from our universe by quantum wave collapses. Every time Tom Cruise agrees to do a film, he has to turn down another film. In another universe, however, the decision went the other way, and he was in – say – Inglourious Basterds instead of Brad Pitt. Wouldn't you want to see that? Of course you would! Well now the 4D Matter© viewing system allows you to see all these movies at once!”

On the small matter of having a third eye implanted in one's forehead, Wensleslas is dismissive. “A public that can accept wearing those silly 3D glasses is surely ready for major brain surgery. It's not that big a step.”

Julie Designerjeans agrees. “It's quite a fad, and all the girls want to know about it! On the other hand, it does make choosing dinner a nuisance. I'm never quite sure what I'm going to get.”

So far, movie studios have been lukewarm on the idea, but legendary cult film director Geezer Weinberg has high hopes for the new technology. “Look, I don't even have to make a movie at all anymore. Just hire a bunch of nobodies sitting in an empty room for two hours and release it uncut. The audience get to the see the movie I might have made if I gave a crap. Let some schmuck in another universe go to all the trouble of actually making the movie!”

Interocitor

2011-03-11T01:21:00.009Z

Remember the recent social craze for ‘mobile phones’?

They were such tiny little gadgets that were always getting lost – just like all those silly remote controls for televisions (before LabCentral’s patent voice-recognition circuits forever changed the way that everyone channel surfs on their new hi-def widescreen home viewing sets!), and clamshell fones were always beeping off, or buzzing so annoyingly like pickpocket flies – to interrupt your important business meetings or social occasions and conversations that you would prefer to enjoy with real people…

Wow! That 3D looks great!

Now, all of that’s going to change very soon, and for the better, thanks to LabCentral’s greatest technological innovation yet, the INTEROCITOR!

FASTER!

Global video communications at the flick of a switch and the turn of a dial

BIGGER!

No more of that fiddly web-cam nonsense to bother about. Interocitor is a sturdy home appliance that will be a magnificent addition to your designer furnishings

CHEAPER!

Interplanetary conference calls are free with every premium package

It's not my fault!

LabCentral’s Interocitor*

– in touch and in tune with tomorrow’s world, today!

* Some easy home assembly required

Exclusive Montana Wildhack interview

2011-03-07T11:12:00.001Z

To Tralfamadore And Beyond:

The Montana Wildhack interview

by Andrew Darlington

EXCLUSIVE!

She’s a legend, the subject of Kurt Vonnegut’s highly-rated novel Slaughterhouse-Five, portrayed on film by Valerie Perrine, this is the first attempt to get at the truth behind the legend, and talk to her direct…

‘What really became of Montana Wildhack…?’

(– title of a feature in Midnight Pussycats magazine)

The continuum-link from Tralfamadore is, at best, liable to glitch-ups and wavelength dropouts. So it’s a fortunate alignment-configuration of planets that gifts the station with a degree of clarity this night, of all nights. Because our guest is simply out-of-this-world! As the static clears we can see that Montana Wildhack has her auburn hair retro-styled in a Jane Fonda bob, and that when she flutters her eyelids, which she does delightfully, her lashes resemble buggy-whips. Around her neck there’s a silver chain with a heart-shaped locket. She wears nothing else. Inside the locket is a faded grainy old photo of her mother. Her mother was an alcoholic. On this direct link from distant Tralfamadore, she smiles and waves ‘hello’, and adds ‘isn’t this a nice moment?’ Then she leads off directly by enquiring “Are you guys into astrological signs? The zodiac and stuff? Me, I’m a Moonchild, a Child of the Moon. That says a lot about me. The moon rules tides and changes of the season. Although, you could say, I’m way higher than the Moon out here.”

So first, is Montana Wildhack your real name? She giggles both absurdly and derisively. “Of course not, that would be stooopid! Once you’re up for this game, it’s like the 1950s’ pop stars who became Fury, Eager or Wilde, you have to assume a new role-identity that’s expressed by your screen-name. Remember ‘Dirk Diggler’ in Boogie Nights?’

So who were you prior to the movies? “I was born California Wildhack,” she divulges.

When you say ‘game’ you mean working in soft-core porn? “Watch that potty-mouth if you very much don’t mind. There’s a difference, you know. I prefer to be called a ‘B’-movie starlet. I’m happy with that. Think, say, Valley Of The Dolls. Did you happen to see me at the drive-in as Messalina – the promiscuous wife of Emperor Claudius? One thing’s for sure, they didn’t spend a bundle on the costumes for that movie! But that’s just the way it was with them rascally ancient Romans. And anyway, like the Tralfamadorians say, morality is a quaint Earthling illusion.”

Many porn-activists, as well as participants in the wider media-domain, have enhanced their er, physical charms. Has Montana ever indulged in cosmetic tweaks? “That idea, especially out here, tends to be a little creepy,” she explains. “‘There are silicon-based life-forms in this galactic sector, which adds disturbing implications to actually having silicon injected into your tits!” she shudders in a quite delightful way. “If you catch my drift? It’s a kinda creepy idea. Anyway, I’m big up there already. Guys tend to appreciate that about me.”

Her expressions changes, like the tide, to become a little more thoughtful. “Of course, my career didn’t quite work out as I planned, I’ve got to be honest with you,” she reveals. “This, I didn’t expect. This abduction. But when you’re a Moonchild, you play the hand fate deals you. There’s a story I was rubbed out by the Mob. Obviously, I wasn’t. Although they say there’s what they call a time-dilation effect. All this science – I don’t understand, but it seems you can be away from Earth for years, yet it only takes a microsecond of time. It was 1967 when I was kidnapped, lots of people took strange trips around then. I was twenty. I was toning up for my next movie at the home of a producer friend of mine in Palm Springs, catching some all-over rays by the pool – no halter-marks you know. Next thing, there’s this flying saucer, and it’s got purple lights in kind-of port-hole things all around the rim. Big it was, at least a hundred-feet across. And it hums at me with a sound something like an owl, a melodious owl. It emits a purple light that comes in all around me, and I get this overwhelming compulsion to walk up to this snakey Ferris-Wheel kind-of ladder and climb aboard. I guess you know about them, the Tralfamadorians, they don’t speak like you and I do, they use a kind of computer hooked-up to a voice-box organ. They talk to us – to me and Billy, through that box. And I was brought here, with Billy, and we’re exhibits in this-here galactic zoo. We can’t leave the dome, ’cos they breathe cyanide out there. Can you credit that? And there’s no real night – just something like one hour of dark in every 62 hours, so they sometimes simulate night for our benefit, what they call ‘the night canopy’. But there’s nothing tacky, no sireé, we got furnishings direct from Sears & Roebuck. Colour-TV and stereo. The TV didn’t work at first, until they fixed up the continuum-link, now I get all the channels. There’s a pool table, issues of Life magazine, nice clothes – I take a ten. We’ve got mint-green bathroom fittings, a home bar with two stools, and wall-to-wall federal-gold carpet. Except, there’s no walls of course. The better for them to see. They even got tour-guides who lecture about us to the crowds. But hey, back home, could I afford stuff like this? I could not!”

Billy – that is, Billy Pilgrim, was also kidnapped to be part of your geodesic-dome zoo-lifestyle. Whatever happened to him…? “Billy was a babe. A kind of gangling six-foot-three tall funny-looking guy shaped like a coke-bottle. He was twice my age, 44, and he was working on his famous Dresden book. Come a little closer. Turn up the volume so you can hear me breathe. Like Jean-Luc Godard says, for Billy there’s a beginning, a middle, and an end. But not necessarily in that order. Tralfamadorian books also have no beginning, no middle, no end, no suspense, no morals, no causes or effects. It’s like that for me, yes, I’m the time-traveller’s wife. Or non-wife. He was here, and then he wasn’t. Time-tripping is a bitch. I guess we ‘mated’. Billy has a tremendous whang, incidentally. But he was a gentleman. You don’t meet many gentlemen in the entertainment business. We waited a full week. So it goes.”

Do the Tralfamadorians ogle porn? Do they enjoy your work? “Hey, everyone enjoys sex, after all, they’re only human – well no, in actual fact they’re not human. More like kind of green two-foot high toilet-plungers. With a single hand stuck on top. And an eye, just one green eye, set into the palm of the hand. They hold up their hands so their eye can see better, and clench into a fist if they don’t like what they’re seeing! But you know what I mean? Even species that reproduce by cellular-division have prurient imaginations about who does what to whom, and I know, ’cos I’ve met them. A dirty mind is no bad thing in this business. People like people who like sex. Look at Silvio Berlusconi. Trouble is, they – the Tralfamadorians, they see in four dimensions, and they have five sexes. So they know stuff about human sexuality we don’t even know about ourselves, and they know all this stuff before we do.”

On questions of porn past, what do you – the real Montana Wildhack, think of Valerie Perrine taking your part as her role in that 1972 Slaughterhouse-Five biopic? “There’s this game people play – who would you most want to play you in a biopic. Well, in an ideal world I would not have chosen Valerie Perrine to play me. But Tralfamadore is not an ideal world. Nothing like. So I gotta take what I can get. Instead I was thinking, maybe Lady Gaga. She could do me, do me good. A tad more attitude. A bit more out there. But don’t get me wrong, the movie was OK. If the movie told lies it told sweet cosy cupcakes of lies, so no, it was a total trip. It did me no harm. And that’s a natural fact. I saw Valerie Perrine in an episode of Burke’s Law. I really did. And did you know she was in the May 1972 issue of Playboy? That coulda been me, if things had worked out different. If things that happened to me, hadn’t happened.”

As the time-window winds down she pauses, considering her strange extraterrestrial situation. Behind her, across the alien sky, there’s the static orb of a planet that very closely resembles Jupiter in our own solar system. Finally, she concludes “Listen, think about this, sure, things didn’t work out as I anticipated, but this thing I’m in now – it’s like the biggest Reality-TV show ever, with the biggest audience on the planet. Not what I’d intended maybe, but not so bad. I’ve come out of it pretty good. So it goes…!” The continuum-link from Tralfamadore finally succumbs to interplanetary glitch-ups and wavelength dropouts. She waves goodbye. The real Montana Wildhack – ladies, gentlepeople and children. Nevertheless – don’t reach for that remote, another fortunate alignment-configuration of planets gifts the station with yet another out-of-this-world guest! Stand by, we got Jedi-Master Yoda up just after this word from our sponsors…!

Trees and Time

2011-03-05T11:37:00.000Z

It's an obvious thought, I know. So obvious that I ought to look it up and see who's said it first before I make a prize arse of myself. But why can't we catch flies?

And how come you feel a light bulb blow just a half-second before you flick the switch? How come the cat hears the phone ring and jumps up before it actually does? How can I look at my alarm clock, drift off into an hour long dream. then wake up again to find that not just very little time has passed, but no time? That's right, not a minute, not a second, nothing?

And what the hell does all this have to do with trees? Well, time is the common factor, and the philosopher Martin Heidegger got there first, just before he started sending fan-mail to Hitler, but that's another story. And Physicists have got there last, rather recently, with a little help from Albert Einstein.

You see, the head-hurting news is that Time does not actually exist. This can be proven now in the realm of particle physics, but Heidegger reasoned it out using, well: just reason, actually. And he expressed it like this: Time has no being and therefore beings have no time.

Oh shit, did you see that last bit? Just when the time thing was looking bad enough, I've thrown something else into your mental microwave. Let's clarify, let's grab a lifebelt before we drown, I'll cut to the chase:

We can't catch a fly because to it we are moving incredibly slowly. But trees, which are also alive, also appear to be moving incredibily slowly to us. Perhaps a fly concludes about a human therefore, what we conclude about trees, namely that they are not even sentient? Oh God, scary, scary... let me re-read that. Thought so. Totally logical but entirely insane. Would we know if trees have consciousness?

Well, the fact that I can dream for 14 years inside 3 seconds of the real world, and even the cat can see into the future, rather suggests that consciousness is not bound to time therefore is not measurable or existent in any normal sense. Thoughts in the brain are conveyed by electrons and electrons are exactly the particles, along with photons, which physicists have found travelling around in time like there's no tomorrow. Ho, ho, ho.

It gets worse. If slower means smarter, then the trees are a higher consciousness than us, but what could be higher than them? We begin to move towards evolutionary and geological time, and then the planet itself. Gaia as James Lovelock named it (with some help from the ancient Greeks) becomes a candidate for consciousness. Since Gaia created us, it is by definition our God (or Goddess), but even more so if the concept of sentience is considered.

So using only science and logic and philosophy, we have just proven the existence of God, time travel, ghosts, premonitions, and sentient trees. You thought those things did not exist. But it was only time that was blinding you, and it's time that does not exist, remember?

Interestingly, this also means we cannot die. Plenty of "time" to get your ahead around this post then...

Fresh Air Fares

2011-02-27T06:03:00.000Z

FRESH AIR FARES

by Jake Elliot

Nearly 3 weeks ago several large vans sealed off a 5-mile quadrate of London as Trans-Parent Enterprises bought up the inaugural test package from the sell-off of the air. Commentators quickly labelled this the 'first puff' and watched with interest prior to the scheme being rolled out nationwide.

A number of high-level complaints and protests have expressed outrage, but considerable amounts have been spent in order to explain that introducing the free market into the atmosphere will lead to immeasurably better quality. We will all notice the improvement immediately.

Picture by Toby Fearnside

The new supply will not be free, but through a particular system of rebates and credit arrangements, nobody will be in actual danger of suffocation or even left short of breath. Furthermore, there will be the recently appointed Off-Air watchdog to safeguard our interests. As the Trans-Parent presentation document, Breathe With Us, assures, “competition ultimately benefits the consumer more than anyone.”

This hasn't ended the disquiet from both civil liberties campaigners and prominent environmentalists. The air-pressure group GASP (Get Air-Stealing Prohibited) has voiced continual claims about the legitimacy and practicality of the proposals. In an ill-tempered and explosive public meeting, supporters of the plans accused GASP of picking over theoretical arguments and living in a vacuum. They could always have a go themselves and distribute it through the network for free, an irate shareholder heckled.

Opposition has also been registered in some corporate sectors. London Underground dispute the results of a report that found air quality in their trains and stations so low they would be liable for substantial surcharges. Haulage firms have questioned whether they could face import duties on foreign air. Also, the scientific community have expressed doubts. Professor Miller of the Lagado Institute believes natural phenomena could jeopardise the scheme. “Rogue air currents could play havoc with the business plans,” he warns.

Already there have been a few glitches, which have been put down to teething troubles. Somehow, a few streets around Whitechapel were overlooked. A press release apologised very sincerely and the clear up was organised quickly and discreetly. Some older people, heavy smokers and asthmatics have also experienced difficulties. The rebates don't go far enough, they gasped. Off-Air pledged to investigate. Later, they agreed that the complaints procedure had responded too slowly; however, they said lessons have been learned through this regrettable incident.

There have also been a few instances of 'air-rustling' reported. In one case, police say thieves raided a building firm and stole canisters of oxygen used in welding. More recently, breathing apparatus was taken from a fire engine responding to a hoax call. Legislation is to be prepared to tackle unlicensed air, although civil servants are said to be struggling to exempt gardeners, farmers and groundskeepers.

Lately we were told that due to warm weather and traffic fumes supplies of marketable quality were running well below capacity. We may have to enforce regulations, the industry announced, as demand has become excessively high. It was thought some people were stocking up on air, just in case. The news caused panic and bated breath on the stock markets, and even a sell-off of stale reserves to Russian states failed to stabilise the share price. Today eyewitnesses reported seeing ventilation tents being erected and breathing equipment being tested.

Critical mass

2011-02-16T18:06:00.000Z

A CRITICAL MASS by Dr Heinz Varieties

Genevapolis, Federal Europe

Tempers flared amongst elderly professors and intellectual pillars of the world’s scientific genius establishment at this week’s International Congress on Space Physics, where the main topic of heated discussion are some recently published findings by controversial American theorist, Karl Sageun, a balding Texan once shortlisted for the Noble prize when his book, 1001 Things You Didn’t Know About The Sun, revolutionised star development theory 10 years ago.

The central burning issue of this 25th conference, is the new paper by Sageun, giving the esoteric results of his five year experiment in an underground Ozark salt mine to detect the long-puzzling ‘missing mass’ - that cosmic material which scientists have claimed must exist, somewhere - and which even our galactic corner of the universe, must somewhere contain - if modern cosmology theories are correct. Sageun’s work may herald a major breakthrough in this quest, as his research appears to prove what was previously just a wild, and a few have said woolly, abstract theory.

Some have received the discovery of Sageun’s so-called ‘fancy matter’ (FM) with utter contempt, while others claim it is the divine word. Composed of energetic clouds of ultra subatomic soup scattered throughout our galactic local group, fancy matter is said to emit a fierce stream of “queerer than quark dust” particles, and has replaced the discredited theories about ‘dark matter’ as the physicist’s new grail.

“Really, we had all this fuss when ol’ Ray Davies caught his first neutrinos with a tank of cleaning fluid. Sure Karl’s results seem a mite freaky, but then, look at initial problems of cataloguing the weirdo quarks,” a supporter of Mr Sageun explained excitedly. The main detractor and lifelong rival of Sageun, Professor Pauline Coincidence, has noted on occasion that Sageun’s “absurd fancy matter” would be “unbound, even by superstrings” and “could not, therefore, exist or function… as he [Sageun] describes... except possibly in ectoplasmic form.”

The debate rages on, with neither side willing to concede a Planck length to the other, even when observers amongst my colleagues in the scientific press have reported - objectively of course - that both sides seem to be withholding crucial evidence in support of their respective claims. Highly problematical, is the sheer fantastical oddity of FM characteristics. With the curio-particles being dubbed ‘interstate’, ‘rustic’, ‘quizzical’, ‘condemnable’, ‘unctuous’, and the specially contentious ‘sacred’ – it’s small wonder that many scientifically learned folk are at a loss to understand and comprehend Sageun’s alleged, though as yet still veiled, proof positive... let alone non-physicists or the general public getting to rational grips with FM theory’s most obvious absurdities.

In layman’s terms, it appears Sageun has either breached the scienti-theologic divide and, as one wag puts it, “found god’s Lego bricks,” or he’s “playing a huge practical joke on us all, and deluding himself into the bargain, if he thinks his little scheme will work.” If Sageun is right, commented a pro-FM insider, “we’re in for the biggest shake up of cosmology since the 1990s, when they collected the first evidence of the Big Bang.”

Redrock

2011-02-13T08:18:00.000Z

The Moon has already been conquered and Earth rock climbing is for wimps

If you have a head for heights and relish a challenge why not try...

It’s the great new sport for real macho men (and tough women).

Forget about Everest and the Alps...

Why bother with dusty craters in the airless lunar void?

Come to the red planet and scale the peaks!

Mars has mountains to dwarf the pitiful green hills of Earth.

Have you got what it takes to climb Mount Olympus?

Aim for the top of a new world now…

Call your local inter-planetary travel agency and ask for Redrock Tours.

SG-TC Gotham

2011-02-12T05:07:00.000Z

Coming soon: to a holo-theatre near you!

Project: Spectrum

2011-02-10T10:04:00.000Z

In the style of brilliant documentary Thunderbirds (about those secretive heroes from International Rescue), this new Americanised big-screen remake tackles a far grander story: interplanetary defence of the Earth against illegal visitations by alien terrorists. Not since War of the Worlds has there been such a terrifyingly outrageous tale of our ‘war of nerves’ against mysterious foes - reportedly so weird they are unknowable to human science.

With its operational HQ aboard the flying aircraft carrier dubbed ‘Cloud Base 9’, the planetary organisation officially known as ‘Spectrum’ is led by elite military veteran Colonel White (succeeding Colonel Straker, top star cop and Cold War spymaster of last century’s SHADO). Primary agents from Spectrum’s cadre of astronaut warriors include Captain Eddie Blue, and his partner - the reportedly ‘indestructible’ Captain Pete Scarlet, ultimate champion of Spectrum’s heroic defence strategy against outer zone mysterians. Not since the era of Quatermass, has Britain, and indeed the world, faced such implacable enemies from space.

The mysterians (previously notorious as ‘mysterons’) are like psychic wizards with an almost supreme power over matter and energy, using alien technology which enables them (if that pronoun can be applied to what human scientists now suspect to be a hive mind) to regenerate living tissue from death, re-create wrecked machines, and any sabotaged devices, or specific objects of interest/ value, that have already been destroyed in spectacular explosions. Spectrum’s - and especially Scarlet’s - nemesis is the tortured soul of zombie maniac Captain Black (photo not available due to inter-world security concerns), who is represents the ultimate villainy of betrayal - once a Spectrum agent, identified as Conrad Turncoat, now a teleporting madman who will stop at nothing (“Nothing I tell you!”) to bring harm or doom and gloom to innocent lives of humankind. And there’s only Captain Scarlet, proving that one man can make a difference, with his famously bizarre ability of ‘retro-metabolism’ (which Dr Gold has so far failed to replicate in other Spectrum agents), to get in the mysterians’ way.

WHEN WHORLS COLLIDE

Leggy lovely Lieut. Green

has parachute trouble…

Scarlet and Blue’s mission to save the world federation by thwarting each mystery ET plot, is performed with savvy and brio, with irregular but invaluable assistance from Lieutenant Green, plus various other Spectrum agents with codenames such as Grey, Beige, Amber, Magnolia, Pink, Khaki, Carrot, Ruby, Turquoise, Ivory, Sand, Crimson, Maroon, Pearl, Copper, Ultraviolet, Mint, Cyan, Vanilla, Slate, Lime, Mauve, android helpmates Chrome and Silver, and the unfortunate Yellow bastard. Impressionable or young fans and space cadets of Spectrum are warned never to copy the heroism of the organisation’s greatest asset: “Captain Scarlet is indestructible. You are not. Don’t try to imitate him.”

All-female ‘top guns’, former Angel interceptor pilots, Destiny, Symphony, Rhapsody, Melody, and Harmony, have since been promoted to the frontline of space defence on Moonbase Alpha - where they are deployed in tactical command of upgraded Lunar interceptors (older designs of the vehicles that Spectrum inherited from SHADO were deemed “too phallic” by women pilots), despite some criticism of the special initiative for its ‘affirmative action’ - resulting in rightwing political anger (prompted by notion of “chicks with nukes”), while lefty liberals directed their fury at Spectrum command for sanctioning the boosting to squadron status of these new-fangled orbital bombers. Meanwhile, back on Earth, the Charlie agency franchise has supplied new recruits as replacement Angels, always on standby, ready for immediate launch from Cloud Base 9 action stations, using codenames: Tragedy, Parody, Jeopardy, Veracity, and Apathy.

New pilots for Angel interceptors!

Spectrum is GO!

(With sincere apologies to sci-fi visionary Gerry Anderson, a singular genius architect of TV utopian futurism, and remarkable adventures in superb technocracy.)

Gromit award

2011-02-03T22:49:00.000Z

How long is a television star and cinema idol’s career in dog years?

Gromit, the super-dog of British suburbia, finally wins overdue and rightful acclaim, for magnificently expressive performances “of quiet courage, canine determination, and supreme humility,” in such classic adventures as The Wrong Trousers (1993), and Curse Of The Were-Rabbit (2005), and last year’s documentary series World Of Invention. The long-suffering sceptical companion of that blundering ‘inventor’ and cheese-addict Wallace, beloved national cult hero Gromit leapt to instant stardom in 1989, while portraying an intrepid astronaut from Wigan, in A Grand Day Out.

Receiving his lifetime achievement award from the Royal Academy, usually reclusive Gromit remained tight-lipped, making no comment or even a sound of any answers, when accosted by reporters and well-wishers outside the academy’s hallowed halls. A blasé shrug, a poignant gesture of paw waving, the stoically resigned forbearance and air of that most gentle breed of underdog, evincing profundity from the champions’ pound, was the superstar thespian Gromit’s only response to the assembly of media pundits’ boisterous rhubarb of questioning.

In their prepared statement, read by a current Presidential Academician, the awards committee unanimously declared that Gromit was, without any doubt, “The greatest silent movie actor of his plasticine generation… and indeed, of the animated British 21st century!” The academic pres prof continued, “Never in the kennels of history…" blah blah.

All creatures...

2011-01-31T12:44:00.000Z

All creatures, great or small…

Avoid confrontations with the infamous Giga-beasts of lore and yore, of course, but also beware of their many and various tiny cousins, which can infest your homes or workplaces, and wreck even greater domestic or industrial havoc than mischievous imps and gremlins.

Often mistaken for innocuous playthings, homunculi are very fast-breeding little monsters. They are vicious killers. They are destroyers of calm and order in all human affairs. They are receptacles for purest evil, eagerly providing a physical expression or predatory aspect for long–festering vengeance. As homunculi–phobia extends its clammy grip across Europe from Prague, all British citizens are being warned against ignoring the horrific threats from such insidious creepy-crawlies, which are genuinely alarming in their fierce proficiency for mayhem, and pose a more substantial menace to civilisation than any empire’s darth, or mythically hellish demon, you can name.

shredded wheat homonculus

Beware of the formidable shredded wheat homunculus at breakfast! These crispy spry critters are cereal killers that dodge your spoon, escape from bowls of milk, and can ruin your morning repast. Never, ever, try to eat three of these fibrous ghouls at one sitting. Watch out also for chocophile ‘pod–people’, especially the bubbly aero blob (genus: cocoa nestle series), which crushes all meaning from a TV aerobics workout. It appears to be sweet and edible, yet they are really calorie monsters that eke out a confectionary existence, while accelerating your sugar dependency to addiction via quasi-supernatural means.

aero blob

In the political sphere’s draughty corridors of power, a familiar Penfield homunculus has been spotted causing a ruckus amongst bean brains in UK.gov domains, wherein tactical counter-homunculus strategies are currently subject to parliamentary debate. Several unconfirmed reports of appalling new hybrids without any hubris include the dreadful hovisunculus. This particularly nasty brown loafer scatters breadcrumbs in its wake. The general public are cautioned to be very careful never to step barefoot in any messy crusty fragments - which may be poisonous on contact with bare skin, or follow its toxic trail of half–baked horrors to your mortal doom.

Penfield homunculus makes havoc in HoP

Many of you will recall the grisly true story behind the ‘mannikins of horror’ segment of 1972’s docudrama known as Asylum, where Dr Byron is portrayed by Herbert Lom in the anthology of dark tales. It’s a further warning, should any be needed again, that Czech madmen locked up in British loony bins are particularly likely to create robotic homunculi for nefarious purposes!

Why Noel Edmunds is more moral than the Pope!

2011-01-28T21:16:00.002Z

WHY NOEL EDMUNDS IS

MORE MORAL THAN THE POPE!

Small incremental reasons why today is much better than yesterday! An attractive thirty-something lady contestant on TV’s ‘Deal No Deal’ is showing her personal photographs to the show’s host. ‘And who is this?’ asked Noel Edmunds, pointing to a lady in one photograph. ‘That’s my partner’ she says, ‘she’s there in the audience’. It seems they are a lesbian couple. Noel turns to the lady in the audience, waves and says ‘hello’, then continues with the more important business of the game. Imagine that happening on family-TV twenty, fifteen... even ten years ago? It wouldn’t happen. While the church agonises over the archaic scriptural conundrums of female ministers and gay clergy, mainstream society has long-since resolved such issues and moved on. That’s a small measure of how far we’ve come, and why today is more evolved than all our stupid yesterdays...!

ANDREW DARLINGTON

Moonfaced

2011-01-28T09:21:00.000Z

Stella(r) Moon...
Silents is golden?

DemDaleks

2011-01-26T17:12:00.000Z

FAX 21’s on-going coverage of Dalek utopia…

Beeb announced further news TV-movie biopic about Democracy Of The Daleks, which sees British ‘actress’ Gemma Arterton (schooled at St Trinian’s; a former spy – codename: ‘Strawberry’, fresh from her Persian assignment), cast in key role of the hybrid dalek empress, who was the dethroned loser of internecine AI & ‘spare parts’ wars against a benevolent pure-machine intelligence, despite her cyber-enhancements (including android human features), and stealth dalek tech.

Apathy

2011-01-25T13:09:00.000Z

Apathy PR

Marketing strategy problems?
Unmanageable lists of clients?
Sold out of what they all want?
Sick and tired of helping people?
Office job becoming a real drag?

Who needs all that damn hassle at work every day?

If we take care of all your business research and promotional work... customers will stop bothering you!

Sorted! (But no guarantees.)

Say goodbye all to your publicity & public relations problems...

APATHY PR

Afterlife proof!

2011-01-22T07:28:00.000Z

“Be seein’ ya’ll, real soon!” is the first coherent message received and decoded from the great beyond.

It began with an exhibition of historical photographs from the pioneering days of country & western railroads, selected from the archives of Dischman & Crombie, Inc. Reviews of art galleries hosting the ‘how they won the west’ touring show, sponsored by the Kubrickian Institute (NYC), had conflicting reports of where a particular figure was standing in a certain picture. Was he on the left or right of the centre..? “It was as if he was uncertain of his place in the tableau,” remarked one prescient commentator about this story of the century.

Boffins at LabCentral ‘fringe division’ examined the photograph (Warwick PX#17) in question, finding that it was taken by self-styled 19th century alchemist, Paedverton Morningside III, an experimenter and part-time dentist who was renowned amongst photography historians for adding “a few drops” of his own patent-pending ‘snake oil restorative’ (ingredients unknown!) to his developing chemicals. Time-lapse studies revealed that a figure, later dubbed ‘Survivor #1’, opened and closed his eyes over a period of 42 hours. Verification of the LC observations suggested this was ‘blinking’ but only viewed in extreme slow-motion!

The photograph was then digitally scanned, and the ‘motile’ figure used to provide an avatar for Mega-Dynamics’ VR matrix ‘Second Spin’, where a mod (accelerator plug-in) permitted LabCentral experts to match temporal velocities with Survivor #1, and so make an historic ‘first contact’ in 2Spin virtuality with “a deceased personage, now residing on the other side.”

Amongst many lucrative offers, from interested parties, global media pundits and assorted opportunists, that have been pouring in for ‘contactee’ Survivor #1… there’s an open-ended contract to appear on new reality-TV show Get Me Out Of Here, I’m Dead.

Giant Comet Sale

2011-01-19T18:04:00.000Z

GIANT ‘COMET’ SALE

The advert says ‘Giant Comet Sale’

so I go in and say

‘I’d like Halley’s Comet please’

she says ‘of course sir, we have

one due in 28th July 2061’...

Now I hear that, across the retail park

Curry’s are holding a ‘Monster Sale’...

ANDREW DARLINGTON

DreamShop

2011-01-18T04:40:00.001Z

Bark odes

2011-01-12T10:08:00.000Z

Forget about the so-called bible codes, feast your eyes on ring sonnets and bark odes!

Every schoolchild knows how bees invented television, and ants conceived telepathy, but new advanced research by the Royale Botanical Association has discovered that common trees, like the easily recognisable horse chestnut (which spawned a whole human infantile subculture of conkers), or the fast-growing walnut, have secretly been composing poetry for millennia. In forest and copse, timeless wood-wordsmiths etch lyrical prose with epochal variations, often discussing nature and entropy with a matchstick profundity that mere mortals like us could never hope to equal.

Diatribes..? Well, yes, certainly – the focus of political and social commentaries by trees is particularly fascinating. Despite the usual pacifism of trees, their virulent polemical rants about several varieties parasitical fungi are very probably more fascistically objectionable than most forms of human racism. And let’s not forget the infamous troubles of colonial ‘oppression’ between American oaks and Canadian maples (as immortalised in rock music by that Rush song), which first led curious researchers on the trail of so-called ‘vegetable panic attacks’ - detected as a subtle, almost psychically attuned, infrared mottling on bark (see picture: ‘new proverbs for old’ - translated from Aramaic), and in false colour imaging of seasonal ring patterns (pictured: ‘this is what the Romans did for us’ - abridged version).

Terror felt by trees has increased dramatically ever since humanity’s industrial revolution forever changed agricultural practices regarding forestry, so trees that once feared campfires, and felling by mankind’s primitive axes, nowadays have to contend with chainsaws and mechanical up-rooters. Dendrochronology studies, finding disturbing patterns of climate change, prompted further investigations into extraordinary upheavals in the social history of trees. Although quite immobile, the lividly roving rage of activist-poet trees is found in their classic agitprop protest anthem, ‘timber is murder’. You don’t want to know what noble pines think about humankind’s ritual barbarism of Christmastime! And yet, preliminary evidence suggests that many trees maintain a somewhat contrary respect for the supposedly civilising influence of the ‘book publishing’ industry upon homo sapiens’ typically callous banditry.

Shunned by naturally endowed trees, the forced-evolutionary leapfrog of their gene-mod vegetable cousins - the unwholesomely motile and wholly dangerous, so-called ‘triffids’; is another twig of contention between species. It’s a deep-rooted sourness (epitomised by the silent seething specificity of a standard ‘walk on by’ rejection) that resulted in triffids’ irreversible expulsion from the big society of trees, after redwood parliamentary debates, and even disbarment from regular autumnal leaf-dropping parties. Unfortunately, some of the recent ‘scientific’ discoveries concerning poetry by trees are entirely spurious, at best. There is no compelling data whatsoever that any modern trees send ‘txt’ messages.

Activity is very slow in this gym for trees...

Merky

2011-01-11T07:14:00.000Z

'Merky', the meerkat pornographer... full expose, coming soon to FAX 21. Wild kingdom goes wild!

2011-01-10T11:32:00.000Z

As reported elsewhere (see inter-world wire services) FAX 21's exclusive interview with the guru master of tantric hibernation has been postponed.

The infamous guru stayed in one position too long, and so - regrettably - his mind has retreated to an 'ice cave' located somewhere in his back-brain region.

Apparently, the renowned guru of TH will - presumably, at least - remain incommunicado while in deepest meditation, until springtime...

We must wait for the next seasonal thaw.

Dalek-utopia

2011-01-09T09:18:00.000Z

'Supporting our victorious invasion troops on the machine conquest of England!' - InfoManiac A.I.

Can of Wyrms

2011-01-08T14:35:00.000Z

PRODUCT RECALL!

After various toxicology reports from the League of Nations’ medical advisors, and World Health Protection - LabCentral investigators, Queztacoatl & Ouroboros Ltd. have today issued an urgent recall notice for their canned wyrms. The reasoning for this recall is a matter of seasoning.

Harvested from high quality eggs on free range snake farms in the Republic of Texas and New Bangkok, the affected batch of canned wyrms carries these serial numerals: MDCCCLXVI to MDCCCLXIX.

The recall applies to products sold in many European states, and all English counties except Wessex. Price tag on affected tins or cans is 1/2 shilling. In all circumstances, the general public (including those ubiquitous citizens named Joe Bloggs), are urged to remain calm. There is no cause for panic. None, really! Oh, just behave yourselves.

A spokes-shaman for Q&O Ltd announced there are no reports of similar problems with the company’s specialist lines of venom-free canned serpent heads, in brine or bulls’ blood. Lucky charms made from serpents’ teeth were also cleared of problems by the LabCentral boffins. “They are functional and should be as sharp as usual, and just as bitter as the proverbial ungrateful child,” remarked Dr Lear Speare.

News Extra:

Membership of the Snake-Charmers Guild has been falling steadily since millennium-era legislation regulated international commerce of limbless vertebrate specimens or by-products.

Cyber-yeti

2011-01-07T20:09:00.000Z

A rare sighting of the Welsh cyber-yeti, popularly known as ‘Lonesome Loathsome’ or ‘Ye Olde Mournful’ was reported last night in Aberystwyth. The hairy ‘bionic beast’ is thought to have fled the mountain heights due to this winter’s severe weather. Earlier - unconfirmed - reports suggest this delightfully eccentric British techno-creature has been lurking around Cardigan Bay for a period of several months.

Pot fab

2010-12-26T22:14:00.000Z

Special reports about 'Pottymania' continue with fable focus on new movie, Larry Potty & the Lost Tomb of the Honest Politician with further awesome adventures of the blessed nation's favourite teenage warlock, ‘Lars Pot’ embarking almost heroically on a quest for greatest Arthurian myth of long lost fabled tomb of an honest British politician (only the names have been changed to protect guilty liquorice).

Infamously expelled from Pigwerks college, after that semi-finals débâcle during international quoddisch championship and platinum goose eggcup tournament, our young hero is banned from participating in next Olympix by wish-masters tribunal. On eve of Halloween elections which threaten the honest prime ministerial candidate, manuscript codex My Magick Struggle, a philosophical autobiography - written by griffinista head-case Bumblebore while he was unjustly imprisoned in the Towers of Lun Dun, vanishes from publishouse’s safekeeping, after incumbent PM, snobby atheist Professor Dorkins, is attacked in gutter scandal press of yellow papers by scheming brokers of new coalition government austerity plotting allegedly to auction off Royal Owls Mail letter postal services.

Avoiding prequelitis, this follow-up starts with Pigwerks 10-years-after reunion of mudbloods, despite industrial action of ex-prefect interlopers, enforcing kewl curfew over students’ astral bodies. Tensions are increased by ethnic cleansing policy against muggles by styx-up secret star chamber of slithrean heirs and their saturnic majesties of slytharati cabal, who oppose an uncommon agricultural policy favouring mandrake farming, despite Mrs Grundy complaints from supernatural noise abatement society over annoying cacophony by screaming roots during pagan ritual harvesting.

This new outing also sees the return of traumatised meddlesome elf–scab labour, all-round nuisance Dobby, saved from twee years of ex-schoolboy adventurer's early days by ghostly pyreworks amidst much flapping about of spiders' wings, helping to relaunch twitchy time-wasting neo-saint scar-face Potty from dusty Dickensian privilege, into Disneyfied wonder worlds, with framing device of suburban chav wisdom and literary culture. Though it usually boasts enchanting and spectacular visual effects, Potty lacks the narrative genre complexities or witty affectionate TV humour of Charmed’s suburban American milieu.

Among the plethora of action sequences and subplots in this Lost Tomb... epic, there's a Reliant Robin vs. Ford Prefect flying cars race, Cornish pixie pasty retail, bludger arms dealers with 40-inch treasure chests, hippogriff versus werewolves warfare, parcelmouthy snake doctors, and sepulchrous competitive wizardry abounds, risking unforgivable transfiguration curses on a gibbet of flame, slaying a fierce flash dragon to steal golden eggs, for evasion of every secret society's darkest schooldays, prompting rebellions against prophesy, aided by faithful ogre and grounds-keeper Hamid.

You will believe a geek can flee flying foes' fun!

(Albeit with overmuch Freudian imagery of magicians’ wands)

Abrascadabrous!

Pipe down

2010-12-24T12:15:00.000Z

In coldest weather during the silly season, pipes are prone to breakdown - warns UK's plumbing watchers, the Pipe Down Society. Domestic pipes might burst into tears if not kept safe from chilly temps in our wintery discontent. Frosty treatment of pipes could prompt leaks or floods. Don't leave your pipes to suffer alone in silence. Lag a pipe today!

Snow Golems

2010-12-21T11:25:00.000Z

WANTED! Mobile or melted

Beware of terrible Snow Golems during severe weather...

They are made of icy cold & are not to be trusted with your children. Just like snowflakes, 'snow golems' are individually unique. Each snow-golem has an ill-will of its own. Some have hearts of black ice, others might have big snowballs.

* Do not risk sticking a carrot into any snow-golem's head
* Do not give a snow golem your hat or scarf
* Do not add more snow to an existing snowman (it could turn into a snow-golem, overnight!)

Further warnings will follow this early report...

Waste Exorcist

2010-12-21T10:18:00.000Z

Toilet Exorcist Services

Be perfectly safe on the loo...

Contact us if, or whenever, you need help with prompt & friendly disposal of supernatural or very far-fetched probems found in the little room.

* Levitation escape parachutes
* Catchall sick-bags for projectile vomit
* Demonic protection wipes

T.M.I

2010-12-21T09:42:00.000Z

T.M.I. logo

Teleport Mishap Investigations
Report any teleport mishaps to T.M.I. - the global watchdog & monitoring service for teleportation accidents & sabotage.

Post your photographic evidence here...