The Future Grave Detector

FUTURE GRAVE DETECTOR

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The Modern Miracle of Nechromatic Waves!

You!Are in business.
You! Are doing deals with TOP PEOPLE in high-pressure situations.
You! Are staring money in the guts and asking it to shove itself in your face EVERY DAY.
You!Need every EDGE you can get.

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:

• Unease
• Disturbance
• Chills
• Palpitations

...and on some rare occasions INSTANT DEATH.

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:

Vivian McReady
Future Grave Detector
1926 to 1979
Beloved father of Dave and Sandy, brother of Trish and Fran, unrelated-to but an admirer of Sir Edmund Hilary, and the much missed owner of Daisy the three-legged wonder cow.

Our Founder

* For a larger remuneration I can reveal the location of the terminal resting place of any partiular target. Such contracts by negotiation only.

Thomas Jerome Newton - exclusive interview

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 !

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

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)

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

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 !

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...