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Andre the BFG sets gob

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Tuesday, November 03, 2009 

Current mood:not welsh
Fucking Yahoo just shut down their free webhosting service Geocities, the bastards. All the pictures on my old blogs have gone up in smoke. I should have used Photobucket like normal folks. Aye well, I got overconfident, and when you get overconfident you start making mistakes, as Fabio Capello is no doubt drumming into the lads right now.

 All is not lost though. I had them all backed up and I've been compiling the "Best of BFG" into a series of little humdinger volumes and archiving them on esnips.com. Which will probably be burnt down soon as well. I've about finished volume 4, and volume 5 will bring me almost up to date. It's a labour of love so it is that's taken me ooh all of 20 minutes to compile. 

Here's links to the previous volumes. They've been bubbling there for a good year now, making me piles and piles of money.

Andre's Adventures in MySpace: Vol 1 (Blogs 1 to 50 raked into one steaming pile and sprayed with selected comments)

Andre's Adventures in MySpace: Vol 2 (Blogs 51 to 100 (or so) bulldozed into one foetid pit and disguised with chocolate sprinkles)

Andre's Adventures in MySpace: Vol 3 (Blogs 101 to 150 (or so) puked as a technicolor lump on the pavement and autographed by Tracey Emin)

 Any road, to start the ball rolling again I've got me a spanking new Photobucket account and started regurgitating some of my summer holiday snaps into it.




 They're a tough breed in the Highlands. Here's a crofter drying out a batch of traditional condoms. Scottish lasses need to have durable fannies to withstand these, but you can eat these aromatic little buggers afterwards so at least they get a free feed out of it. Note that this is the height of summer and the poor sod still has to wear an overcoat.


 

They got some funny ideas about Halloween costumes round here.  This is Mrs MacAllister from the Co-op on her way to the Methodist Church Hall for the ceilidh. There are at least two smoked haddock in that handbag on her arm. How do I know? Well that would be telling...




 It was probably a mistake to let the Union Street Lesbian Feminist Society do the barbecue.




 The Nanny State in action. You cannot walk down the street in our fair town without being warned or cautioned every step of the way. Mind you some of these two-wheeled fascists think they own the fucking pavement. My dear old granny knows how to deal with them though. She shoves her walking stick in the spokes when they fly by and takes bets with her cronies on how many minutes it will take for the ambulance to arrive. And if it's getting dark she might do a bit of organ harvesting, for the barbecue.




 I got this one off the news and couldn't resist it. I was going to put it into one of my "The difference between France and America" riffs, but it makes a nice matched pair with the next pic. Does the look on Michelle Obama's face, as she examines Carla Bruni's nostrils, say "slag" or what? You're too human Michelle. Try practicing the plastic grin, like Laura Bush.


 

And I couldn't resist these contrasting expressions from the tennis  circuit either. It's just not fair, is it? Ana not only won the tournament, but she's tall, she's cute AND she's got sweaty nipples. Beeeyatch!




 There's no story to this one. It just made me laugh like a drain. Batman's a humourless Waynker at the best of times.
5:49 AM 
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Friday, October 30, 2009 

Current mood:As welcome as a tampon in a teapot
No. I haven't been in jail. If I'd been inside one of Her Majesty's emporia of social retribution I would have been blogging myself silly, night and day. 

I was doing what I do every summer for the past couple of years - trying to get by with as little graft and as much fun as possible - an occupation which nowadays involves wandering about the west coast with my van and my trusty banjo, pulling the occasional pint when cash gets short, or putting the hard word on Glaswegian (and occasionally Norwegian) drunks when they get overly rowdy. 

And now I'm back in the land of grey granite and huge dysenteric seagulls, being force-fed the wisdom of the ages and trying to figure out how to recreate a figment of my supervisor's imagination with 1s and 0s.  

It's taking me a while to get back into the swing of things though. Something happened to the MySpace  bloggocosm while I was away. Like some of the life-force was drained out of it. Like the Gordon Brown government had taken it over.

And a lot of the people who used to make a difference have turned their attention somewhere else. Some of them have set up their own blogs outside MySpace - after all, why should Tom get all the benefit? But it's going to take me a while to put all the feeds together so I can peruse them as easily as I used to do on MySpace.  I reckon they'll be struggling for an audience until they make the breakthrough into their own niche of unputdownability.  

And some of them have just vanished into the ether, leaving behind empty shells of profiles like erm discarded chrysalids. People have always disappeared unexpectedly from MySpace, but they usually got replaced by like-minded new buggers. Nowadays they just don't get replaced.  

Fuck me, I sound like a nostalgic old gadgie. It probably goes in cycles. Maybe there'll be another resurgence in a few months time. The average age of the first wave of MySpacers was a lot higher than the second wave, who were mostly schoolkids. A lot of those first-wave MySpace bloggers are still around, cynically tutoring us second-wavers by example. I wonder who the third wave will consist of? I hope it's not fucking drama queens.  

I was looking at my blog-counter from time to time (surreptitiously, from anonymous IP addresses in internet cafes, wearing a bag over my head and trying to not, y'know, LOOM distinctively) and it was vaguely interesting to see that I got almost as many hits as used to do when I was blogging regularly. Are they perusing my ancient passages, agog, or did they just take a quick dismissive glance after googling the word "fuck" in combination with the name of a celeb?

Who knows.  And who cares? I've said it before and I'll say it again: I only do this to keep my imagination loose and my scribbling muscles in trim. And to be able to say things I'm not allowed to say in real life (at least not without being barred). There are social advantages to living a double life. Now, back to Facebook to say something encouraging about cousin Sharon's puling brat's birthday, the little chav bastard.   

xxBFGxx
5:50 AM 
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Sunday, October 25, 2009 

Current mood:Subcutaneous on Sundays
Aye well, I were reading one of them urban vampire books that line the shelves in WH Smiths the other day, trying to figure out the formula for me next bestseller, when I thought "I wonder if it’s the same for other nocturnal tribes?"

You know how new vampires are made, don't you?  The victim is forced to drink the blood of the vampire that's sucking on them and they turn into a vampire themselves, and have to obey every command of the suckee. Well maybe it’s the same for nerds. Maybe if some poor bugger is forced to light the farts of an ubernerd they become a nerd themselves. A gruesome elongation of the pens in their shirt-pockets occurs, their eyes become too sensitive to read fine print without glasses, and they shrivel when exposed to the harsh glare of the opposite sex. They have to live in darkened bedrooms and sleep in the soil of their birthplace. 
Then I thought "naah". Someone's got to have done that one. We got goths and emos already. I need to find a NEW formula to earn my next huge advance. That's why they call it "the novel"  for fuck's sake. 

So I sat there in front of the screen twiddling my thumbs and other bodily parts until it struck me. Why not combine all the popular genres into one? Why confine yourself just to horror, detective, science-fiction, chick-lit or gay porn? Why get stuck with one subculture? 

So I got this great plot worked out. It's going to be set on this interstellar police cruiser manned by a couple of lesbians who hate each other and a guy who likes shopping. They argumentatively roam known space hoping to administer rough justice to this mysterious serial killer - "The Poisoned Fist" - who strikes seemingly at random around the galaxy. Usually at an advertising agency or Australian embassy. I won't tell you how it goes - you'll have to buy the book - but I can reveal that when they unravel the clues and discover him, the killer is a horrific supernatural entity who joins the team and they flit off into a never-ending series of sequels with their powers for delivering "rough justice" considerably enhanced.   

Would-be publishers may wish to form an orderly queue right now.  

7:51 AM 
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Monday, August 03, 2009 

Current mood:w3lsh
I see my erstwhile sparring partner Billy Bragg has been lambasting poor old Dawko in the august pages of that learned philosophical journal Q - the organ of the British music industry.  He says that, "as a scientist Richard Dawkins refuses to believe in anything he cannot observe and measure", "and yet to Dawkins people who believe that an intangible reality really exists alongside spiritual reality are 'stupid'".
 

Melvin's younger brother

It's all bollocks you know Billy. Scientists are quite capable of believing there are things that they do not know, and even that there are things that are unknowable. The only thing they have trouble believing is in things that contradict the balance of the evidence.

 I've seen footage of some of Dawko's early gigs and he started off being all sensitive and turning the other cheek, pleading with people just to look at the facts, but the poor bugger got nowhere with it. So he's started calling a spade a fucking spade, just like the God-botherers, and suddenly the liberal-minded are up in arms against him.

 I've just searched through my pirated e-book copy of "The God Delusion" and nowhere does he describe people who believe in god as "stupid". He describe one argument against abortion - the "Beethoven fallacy" - as stupid, but that's because it self-evidently is. Like using the birth of Hitler as an argument FOR abortion.

No - the God Delusion doesn't call god-believers stupid. The main idea that Dawkins was dimly groping towards is that religion is hard-wired into the human brain. That we have a predisposition to believe in god/s, just as we have a predisposition to see optical illusions. Our unconscious filters and processes what we experience, and feeds the classified results to our consciousness in a simplified form - a form that we can act on quickly without having to deal with a lot of irrelevant data. There are certain experiences that are best shunted into the "god box" and left up to the shamans to deal with.
 

as CJ Michiels gaily (or should that be grayly?) points out, squares A and B are exactly the same shade.  

It takes a conscious effort to break out of those hardwired coping mechanisms. It doesn't mean you are stupid if you haven't realised that they are there. I would however submit, your honour, even if Dawko won't, that it would be stupid not to believe that these unconscious religiosity algorithms couldn't possibly exist.  

So, the main thing getting up the capacious Braggian neb is not that Dawkins logic is flawed, nor that he has become a hard-assed son of an illusion-destroying  bitch, but his assumption that Dawko is calling his favourite prison chaplains stupid, which these guys don't deserve because they're doing some great pastoral work in rehabilitating the poor buggers who may have strayed from the path of social righteousness (there but for the grace of ineffable sensory input go I).  

Aye, well, grow up Billy. You don't have to be religious to be good. Why should anyone have to take on a load of religious baggage just to get a bit of succour? Sure these chaplains aren't thrusting their succour down your throat, but don't think the pressure isn't there.  

Currently listening:
Betjeman's Banana Blush
By Sir John Betjeman
Release date: 1995-09-04
12:26 PM 
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Monday, June 29, 2009 

Current mood: wry as a slapped arse
Category: Travel and Places
Humour eh?

There's some as reckons that a nation's sense of humour can be defined, and even that one nation's humour is funnier than another.

Well bollocks to that. It's like saying that the British are less intelligent than the Germans, or that Brazil is richer than Liberia, or that America's space program is more successful than Fiji's. Or erm ... maybe we need to examine this a bit more closely.

First off, no nation can judge its own humour against others. I don't want to hear hordes of Americans claiming that American humour is wittier and less cruel than the British. And I don't want to hear the British agreeing with this. We need an OBJECTIVE MEASURE. And if we can't get an objective measure then we need an independent opinion by a third party.

I reckon a good objective measure would be a reciprocal audience test. This limits us to only people who speak the same language, but what the fuck. Get a bunch of British comics or sketches and show them to an audience of Americans. Then get some American comedy and show it to the British. And measure the laffs (decibels, anal probe, whatever).

That's going to be expensive though, flying Eddie Izzard across to San Francisco. Oh he's there already is he? Even so, it'll still be expensive. You can't set up a scientifically rigorous national humour league based on one sample.  And it might not measure the funniness of different national humours at all. It might just measure the miserable wowserliness of different national audiences.

A third-party opinion would be cheaper. And more rigorous. We could do this third-party stuff right here on myspace if we could be bothered. Someone in Oz could say whether Canadian or Scottish humour makes them laugh out loud more, or which one makes them cringe. Then someone from Cumbria could compare Welsh and New Zealand humour (it would bring some sheepshagging jokes out of the woodwork anyway). And if enough people did it we'd finally have a rigorous analysis, where everyone's different tastes balanced out, and the question could be put to bed for a while.

Personally the stuff I like best is what some analists (yes I spelt it right) call Anarchic comedy. Stuff that's skewed sideways from reality - that creates its own reality. It started with the Marx Brothers (it probably started before that, but they didn't invent the digital movie camera until 1900 - look it up: Otto Von Digital, born 1862, Stuttgart). Then the flame seemed to get carried over the Atlantic and picked up by Spike Milligan (I just downloaded the complete Goon Shows, which will keep me going for a week or two). There's more to choose from in more recent eras, but the two that stand out for me are Reeves and Mortimer, and The Mighty Boosh.

It's not sketch-based, and it's not structured around conventional plots. And its not entirely dependent on farts, sex, current affairs, nor denigrating the unfortunate for its laughs (unlike me). And oddly enough it seems to be the favourite humour of scientists and engineers, despite the fact that it has no structure and breaks all the rules. Why? 
Currently listening:
Enter Bluebottle....
By The Goons
8:11 PM 
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Friday, June 26, 2009 

Current mood:cool as a rubber chicken
 Being as I'm an unfeeling son of a radical bitch I make no apology for posting the following newspaper article in its entirety.

 http://www.cumberlandnews.co.uk/two_women_arrested_after_disorder_at_carlisle_club_1_565959?referrerPath=home

Two women arrested after disorder at Carlisle club 
Two women have been arrested following disorder during a Carlisle funeral gathering. 

Police were called to the St Bede's Social Club in Silloth Street, Carlisle at around 10.30pm on Tuesday after reports of criminal damage and anti-social disorder. 

A 25-year-old woman, from Carlisle, was arrested on suspicion of criminal damage and a 23-year-old woman, also of Carlisle, was arrested on suspicion of a public order offence. 

Earlier that day, the club had hosted a gathering following the funeral of Peter Harrison, the 57-year-old grandfather from Raffles Avenue in Carlisle who drowned in the city’s River Eden.

Most of the funeral party had left the club by 5pm. Mr Harrison disappeared in the water on May 29 while fishing with his three grandsons. 

A neighbour of the club told the News & Star: “There were three police vans that turned up about 10.30. There was a big carry on with a lot of screaming and shouting. It’s not on really, this is a family area.” 

A member of Mr Harrison's family has asked us to point out that most of the funeral party had departed from the club by 5pm that day. The incident happened at 10.30pm. 

The club has seen a troubled past – in February it was ordered to close for three months amid complaints of noise, drug-taking and sex in the street. 

Police were called to the club 15 times between April 2007 and November 2008. Incidents included an assault causing grievous bodily harm, cocaine dealing, underage drinking and complaints about noise.

Residents had complained of having to clear up vomit, urine and used condoms from their doorsteps. 
==================ends 

That was just to give you folks in the colonies over the water a bit taste of what everyday life in the United Kingdoms of Albion is really like.

I'm fed up hearing about the fucking Queen and how we all talk like toodle-pip tallyho what jolly fun and got stiff upper lips and play cricket all week in bowler hats. 

No. Your average Brit spends half her time clearing up vomit, condoms and used urine from  her doorstep, and the other half coating someone else's doorstep with same.  

Mind you, some of us still do say "It's not on, really". And some of us, if asked by a bloke with an impressive-enough  notebook and pencil, would probably describe the invasion of Iraq as "a big carry on".  In fact if there was a Cumbrian in charge they could probably put a stop to the trouble by classifying the whole of the Middle East as "a family area", and sending in the Carlisle Constabulary to close it down. Bastards.
5:44 AM 
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Andre the BFG



Last Updated: 3/15/2009

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Gender: Male
Age: 22
City: Brampton
Country: UK

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