Prognosis Negative

I wonder how much the advertising agency was paid to come up with those adverts for WKD. You know the ones: they show a man abusing his wife, or shitting in a nun's hamper, or raping a children's ward, and it finishes with the slogan - "have you got a WKD side?"

I bet they got paid quite a lot. Too much, I'm sure. Reading between the lines, the slogan is actually: "Are you a cunt?".

Are you a cunt? Then drink this disgusting blue piss. WKD: a cuntish drink for cunts. Do you humiliate your friends to alleviate the constant self-hatred the dominates your stinking life? Do you abuse your pets and enjoy giving smart-alec replies to your ignorant, downtrodden girlfriend? Do you think your behaviour is cheeky and charming, when in reality everyone hates you?

Do you enjoy drinking a drink so repugnant that tabloid readers view you as a homosexual, and broadsheet readers view you as a chav?

You are the lowest of the low. The company that makes this "drink" might as well forego all pretensions and call it STD. Have you got an STD side?

Are you a cunt? Are you?

Are you?

You are. You are a cunt. Buy this drink, you cunt. Drink it like the cunt you are. Drink it. Down it. Choke on it, you piece of human waste. Do us all a favour and drown in bright-blue satan spunk.

You are a cunt.

...

And I don't get paid anything for that. Where's the justice?

Hey, remember a while ago I decided not to swear as much on here? That didn't really pan out.

***

I used to be a Kevin Smith fanboy. I think sixth-form was the peak of my fandom. I remember buying the Clerks animated series on our media studies trip to New York. I found him very funny, and all View Askew DVDs are packed full of fun features.

I know opinion is mixed about the man and his work. Clerks and Chasing Amy are generally well respected. The rest, less so. But I liked him. I still think he's a funny dude. His commentaries and Q&As are consistently entertaining.

But I sort of lost interest in him sometime after Jay and Silent Bob Strike Back (which was fine).

I missed out on Jersey Girl (and I can't say I regret that). But in a flurry of nostalgia, I decided to give Clerks II a try, and we watched it on DVD last night.

And wow. That is one terrible film. It's difficult to think of a more ill-judged film. It made Mallrats look like Chinatown.

So many cliches (I almost turned it off at the 'girl-I-fancy-teaches-me-how-to-dance' scene), such inconsistency in tone. Rosario Dawson is much too attractive to be in the movie, let alone be interested in Brian O'Halloran.

Well, the flaws are too numerous to mention, but the most important one is: it's not funny. At all. And Smith can usually be relied on to be funny some of the time.

So, if you're faced with the option, say no to Clerks II.

I'm sure it's just an aberation. His podcast (with producer Scott Mosier) is good, and his new film looks like it might be funny:



But I don't know if my fanboyism will return. It's probably for the best. In-depth knowledge of Walt Flanagan is probably taking up brain-space better spent on literature or fire safety.

Jan! Jan! He's our man!

It has been nice walking to work this week (except for the occasional apocalyptic downpour), because it has been half term. This means that we don't have to do the usual complicated business of avoiding manic kids and stressed out parents on our way.

Children get everywhere. They flicker like old film stock. They're like insects with stupid hats. And in the mornings I'm even slower than usual. I lumber along, half asleep, with all the gracefullness of that rock giant in The Neverending Story. The contrast makes me nauseus.

I'm glad I don't have to go to school anymore, I don't think I'd be able to following the flahing colours and words and sounds.

The strange thing about modern children is they're all on those little scooters. I don't know when this fad began, but they're everywhere now. It's like some terrible contagious disease. The scooters make kids even faster - mosquitoes on wheels.

With all this scootering (scooting?), in twenty years time we're going to have a whole generation of society whose legs have been warped. They'll have one massive, muscly leg (the scootering leg) that looks like one of those meat carousels in a kebab shop. It will be hugely powerful. The other, standing, leg will be long and thin from lack of use, but will be strong and supple like bamboo. The foot will have evolved into a suction-cup that can adhere itself to any surface.

These flamingo-elephant people will lumber around, and with no scooters to ride (I will have burned them all) the human race will collapse.

***

There's a new Southampton manager. His name is Jan Poortvliet.

As well as having a name that I can't even consider pronouncing, no-one seems to know who he is. This could be another Ali Dia. No-one who's name contains the word 'poor' can instill too much confidence.

On the other hand, maybe we can create a Dutch microcosm in St Mary's. The players can play in clogs. We can convert one stand into a giant windmill that will adjust the flight of the ball at crucial moments.

And there can be free pot for every spectator. I think it would make for a more pleasant atmosphere.

I like that there are several clear-cut Dutch stereotypes. There's no messing about with nuance. They're just there: windmills, clogs, drugs, porn, tulips.

And euthanasia. But who'd want to die if you lived in a place with all that?

Swordfish

I think I have to write something new, because the cartoon below makes me look like a computer-illiterate child. Anyone with any sense would have made it less blurry, yet I did not.

Maybe I should just begin every post with a naked woman's breasts (or a woman's naked breasts, or a woman's breasts naked). Then at least I'd be sure of attracting attention. Attention from perverts still counts as attention. Just more clammy.

I wonder why we decided on the clam as our symbol of moistness. Surely any undersea creature would have done. Plus, the clam doesn't seem as clammy as, let's say, a hake. The clams are being slighted. They should speak out against this injustice, but whenever anyone asks them about it they just clam up.

Hahahahahahaha.

Ha.

I'm the king of clam puns. And that's without even straying into clam-as-euphemism-for-vagina territory.

And that's a rich vein of thought. I'm still trying to get my own vagina euphemism: 'the dustpan and brush', approved by the Innuendo Advisory Board, but they're all backed up with penis variants. Dicks.

Of course, that's a richly veiny area also, but I don't want this entry to get too low-brow.

Quick, talk about something sophisticated!

***

Knife crime! It's a big issue. People are getting stabbed all over the place. Stabbings are bad.

Everyone carries a knife these days. I know I do. Well, it's more of a fish slice (we're back on vaginas again [who am I, Roy Chubby Brown? I may be chubby and brown, but I... where was I?]).

"You can't ban knives!" they say.

Bollocks.

Knives are like the fire brigade: utterly unnecessary. I don't use knives. I see Lucy eating with a knife and fork and I laugh in her face. Ha! I just use a fork. One utensil will do. Some will see me pathetically hacking away at a bit of sausage with the edge of my fork and call me naive. You may say I'm a dreamer. But I'm not the only one.

All you need is fork.

And no-one will get stabbed with a fork. Unless they do. In fact, that sounds even more painful.

Screw it, ban forks too. That's all we need.

And I find it hard to believe that afterwards the papers will be describing a string of fatal spoonings. That's insanity. You're insane. I don't understand you.

Frank55

For the first time in about seven years, I bought some comics. In tribute, this blog will be in comic form. Enjoy!

Calligraphy

(The first portion of this was written this morning)

And after, two hours and seven minutes of Friday morning…

I'm done.

My brain has officially given up.

It did well, though. I'm not knocking the brain. It felt like Friday on Wednesday, so today is the equivalent of Sunday. Tomorrow is Monday, but as there's no work, all bets are off. Everything probably resets at the weekend, and Monday is Monday again, until its day status alters based on circumstances. Are you following this?

Five days is too long for a working week. I wonder what would happen if we had a four day week (Monday, Tuesday, Wednesday and Friday would be best)… I'll tell you what would happen:

Binge Drinking = down
Violence = down
Work Satisfaction = up
Courtesy = up
Abortions = unchanged
Haircuts = more avant-garde
Chickens = fluffier
Ricicles = more prevalent

In short:

Four day week = ideal society. Maybe I should send this to old Tony Blairs and see if he takes any notice.

And as for a THREE day week…

forgetaboutit.

***

I think I'd like to try my hand at calligraphy.

I've got rubbish handwriting, but I'd probably be better if I studied it as an art.

Calligraphy is a bit like quantum physics: it focusses on the small constituent parts of the things we take for granted every day. It's the art of the building blocks. It must be fun to look at things at that level. You can examine physical attributes of an object, by reducing your study to the attributes of those tiny bits that make up an object.

I'm sure there's some kind of meditative function to caligraphy, as it detaches you from your ideas of the world, and makes you look at things in a different way. Like Buddhism. And magic mushrooms.

I like thinking of letters as individual works of art, where each line and curve is part of some grand inky narrative. Each story is composed of millions of words; each word has a complicated and beautiful evolutionary history. And each word is made up of constituent letters; each one having gone through a similar process.

Of course, each letter is made up of millions of tiny particles that are themselves mindblowingly interesting. Physics is at the root of everything I suppose, even calligraphy.

Our letters aren't as pretty as Chinese characters, I suppose. Maybe I'd need to learn Chinese. Or maybe the simplicity of our alphabet is a sign of true advancement.

I can never work out if evolution is a process of simplification or complexification (yes, that is a word; a word whose definition is its own creation). I suppose evolution does both. It's a crazy multi-layered, multi-directional process of simplicity and intricacy and beauty and functionality.

Imagine how good this all would have been if it had been written on parchment with fancy ink and a fine brush. I could perform flourishes and take an age to finish each sentence, and complain about the pace of the modern world whilst drinking bitter green tea.

I'd be a good calligapher (or is it calligraphist?)

A FUCKING good one.

That's How I Roll

I can't believe how infrequent my posts have become. The problem is, I'm both tired after work and entirely lacking in interesting tales to report.

The only thing left would be to describe dreams or thoughts. As I've said before, people talking about their dreams is generally tedious (unless it reveals some serious psychological warping, or contains some explicit sexual content - and it's been a while since I dreamt about rimming Abraham Lincoln, honest).

I can't remember having any good thoughts, either. Usually I come up with good policies that I would put in place if ever I become Prime Minister, like random public holidays that would only be announced the night before, or fingernail recycling.

But nothing springs to mind at the moment.

Oh, Lucy and I had an interesting conversation about eye-rolling recently. I always roll my eyes the same way (left-to-right) and wondered if everyone did the same. But Lucy doesn't really roll her eyes, she just looks up. If she tries to roll them, she doesn't look indifferent enough, and just seems to be following the trajectory of some background projectile.

Of course we came to the conclusion that, being spheres, all movement of the eyes is technically rolling. It would be good if we could shift them from side to side. We could have three eyes, with only two showing at any one time, unless you got bored and carved out an extra socket.

We then tried to ascertain the rules of winking, but didn't get very far because when Lucy winks she moves in an unsettling fashion, like an animatronic pirate.

And that was our conversation over lunch. I suppose you had to be there. Of course if you had to be there, you must have actually been there. You should have said hello.

Maybe you were put off by our crazy eye movements.

***

I was reading an article about the most hated public figures today. Here it is.

(To be honest, I didn't read it all. I got bored. Hey, I'm a busy, busy man. Busy and with a short attention span.)

I don't want to get too stereotypically bloggish, but I started thinking about which famous people I hate. There aren't many. I'm generally quite a positive and tolerant person. Except when it comes to cunts.

But the first people that sprang to mind, in terms of most hated figures, are:

1) Alex Ferguson (top of the list, his death would be greeted with a smile)
2) Louis Walsh (I'd chuckle if Louis was in the same car as Fergie)
3) ---

Hmm, I can't think of anyone else. I love almost all the peoples of the world. Apart from Ferguson, Walsh, women, the Japanese, and the elderly.

And the deaf.

I'm a lot like Jesus.

We both have facial hair and enjoy bread.

Desolation

I had a terrible day at work, for no reason I can identify. I went through several stages or boredom and depair. In an effort to channel my feelings, I wrote the following emails to myself.

The first is a conventional blog entry.

The second is something I thought would be funny, but probably isn't (I can't be bothered to re-read this shit). I thought a diary in the style of a war journal, but describing office work, would be good. Was it? You decide.

***

From:	FUNG, Paul (paul.fung@oup.com)
Sent:	07 May 2008 10:56:35
To:	paulmfung@hotmail.com

At about 11 o'clock every morning, I find myself in a stupor.


It's not necessarily a stupor derived from tiredness (I recently realised even on work nights, I get much more sleep than the average Joe, or Jane, or Crispin). It seems to come from staring at a computer screen for two hours without thinking or moving or blinking.

Once, in my last job, I went to the toilet, and there was a woman in there, washing her hands. She had obviously mistaken the Gents for the Ladies (as the urinals were somewhat hidden, this was understandable). Anyway, I was in such a work-foggied trance, that I didn't express the required amount of surprise at seeing her there. I should have paused. I should have done a double take, perhaps looking back at the door, trying to see if I'd made some mistake myself.

But I didn't do that. I was so out of it, I just vaguely acknowledged there was someone else in the room, and wondered towards the urinals.

I'm sure she found this unsettling. Being in the wrong toilet is distressing at the best of times. But seeing a seemingly unconcerned member of the opposite sex go about their business (in a metaphorical sense) must have freaked her right out. She may have thought I'd lured her there by replacing the signs on the door, like someone from a Warner Bros cartoon.

Luckily she made the first move, asking: 'isn't this the ladies?'


I, of course, said: 'I don't think so".


This suggested an element of doubt, which wasn't accurate. I knew if was the Men's toilets. But you don't want to sound too certain. I didn't wanted to sound condemnatory (is that a word?). But my glazed look can't have helped her perception of my reliability. I think she checked the door, to see if I was right.

If this was a comedy sketch, it would be revealed that it was the women's toilets after all. It would demonstrate the nature of my stupor. But unfortunately, I was right, which renders this anecdote unsatisfying at best.

So, at around 11 each day, in an attempt to stave off this malaise, I get a big mug of black coffee. After I drink it, I don't feel any more awake, but I think my imagination is energised. I start thinking of funny things, and coming up with theories about the world. I am bursting with creativity.

But I'm at work.


So I'm just looking at spreadsheets. I feel trapped in my own body. Shouting internally, demanding my release, but silent and frozen behind a fixed smile.

It seems like a bit of a waste.


I'm overflowing with optimism and see potential everywhere.


But I'm at work.


So, my only recourse is to waste time until the caffeine rush subsides. Or, I can write it all in an email to no-one. That at least looks like work. I hope people don't realise that my job doesn't really require any typing.

I'd better crack on with some spreadsheet work. Hundreds of rectangular boxes containing numbers and words and formulae. What am I doing here?

Does everybody else feel like this?


They don't seem to be typing as much as I am...

***

WAR JOURNAL #10

The heat falls from the sky in heavy globs, congealing like honey, caking my breathing holes; humming, buzzing, vibrating. Life here is a junkie's nightmare. The metal and wood sags and buckles under the weight of us all. The people wince and nod, and smile baited-hook smiles, and they've gotten used to it all.

I've only been here ten days, but I can't remember anything about home. Where did we keep the sugar? I just don't know. A cupboard, I guess.

The campaign is going well, they tell me. We've won victories in SAP and ABC. And AHEAD… Whew! You shoulda been there, they say. You shoulda seen the looks on their faces, they say. And I agree. Of course I agree.

The guys in the unit are alright. They were like me once. One of them seemed like he wanted to take me under his wing, call me 'kid', split his rations. But his eyes fell. My eyes fell today. I reached to pick 'em up, but they've been stomped into the dry ground, mealy shit - a meeting place for the flies.

The boys play games, but I can tell their heart's not in it. I make a bad joke and one of them coughs. We eat like we're using a little girl's china tea set, but our hands are two clumsy and bruised to manipulate the utensils.

Excel drills at sun-up. I can't move, but stumble down towards the machines. Lucky it's downhill all the way.

What Is The Deal?

A good weekend, all things considered.

Saints are safe. I didn't expect that. Although I'm an optimist in most areas of life, I'm a pessimist when it comes to the beautiful game. In the same way, I'm incredibly superstitious when it comes to football, whereas I hate superstition anywhere else.

I spent the whole game listening to Jeff Stelling, whilst playing Mario Tennis on the Gameboy, believing it would be bad luck to stop.

Clearly I was right.

I feel very sorry for Leicester, but I'm hugely relieved.

It's funny seeing scenes of such emotion on television: tears, people with their head in their hands, exultant celebration. And it's just a game.

I hate it when people dismiss football like that. Chances are, those same sceptics have been moved at some point by a book or a film or a work of art. Even though those 'aren't real'. Sport is just like art. It is a conjunction of concepts and ideas and actions that humans have invented, as a way of escaping the base nature of existence. Sport and art are celebrations and ostentatious experiments. It's stupid to dismiss one and revere another.

***

On a high from the result, we went to go and see stand-up comedian Daniel Kitson at the Oxford Playhouse.

We walked into Oxford, as it was a really nice evening. It seemed like summer had arrived (although I'm not counting my weather-chickens, believe me). We walked through the affluent North Oxford suburbs, including a house bearing a blue plaque stating that JRR Tolkien had lived there.

It feels like it hasn't been summer for ages. And it hasn't. I don't think 2007 had anything resembling a summer. I hope, if we get one this year, I'm not too tired or distracted by work to appreciate it.

The gig was really good. It was a bit of an antidote to the Johnny Vegas nonsense. It was just a person on stage saying funny and interesting things. If you get the chance, I advise seeing Mr Kitson live.

***

I've been having a few banal thoughts lately; the kind a bad observational comic would have.

One is: I wonder if people always roll their eyes in the same direction. I do. I roll left to right. It feels strange to do it the other way.

Another one is: why do they have signs in the toilets reminding you to wash your hands? I know it's important to promote good hygiene. And I'm sure there are people that don't wash their hands. But surely it's not out of forgetfulness.

"There we go. That was certainly a much needed shit. Now, to head back to the office! ... Wait. What's this? 'Please wash your hands after using the toilet'. Of course! You bonehead, Paul. It completely slipped my mind!"

People are aware of the convention of hand-washing. They've just chosen not to do it. A reminder is not required.

It's like the health-warnings on cigarettes. I don't really understand them. Surely by now people are aware of the health risks. They're smoking because they're addicted (or stupid). I don't think a chemical dependency, perhaps one honed for years, is going to be swayed by a snappy warning caption.

The trouble is, people divorce themselves from the bigger picture. They know smoking causes cancer, but can't quite visualise what it would be like to have cancer (even with a photo of a diseased lung to help).

I think they should set up something a bit easier to contextualise. Every smoker should have a chip implanted in their hand that keeps a record of their life expectancy. Every time they buy a pack of cigarettes, the chip gets scanned at the same time as the barcode, and it calculates the reduction on their life expectancy. (The number could be displayed in an electronic display, perhaps surgically implanted in the smoker's forehead).

Then, every time they bought some death sticks, they could see their life tick away.

"Hmm. This pack reduces my life by four days. Maybe I should give it a miss."

Then they'd almost put the pack back, but then decide to go ahead with the purchase.

"It's only four days. What can you do in four days? That's not even a full week of Countdown".

Then they cough up a tarball and leave, wheezing.

Viva Las Vegas

Well, who would of thought it after my brief review below? The Johnny Vegas gig has stirred up a significant shit-storm.

You can read an outraged article here, and then read an amazing array of outraged, ill-informed people talking about rape, ignoring the few sensible posts.

The basic debate is the writer believing that Vegas sexually assaulted a woman in the audience by brining her up on stage and kissing her and possibly touching her inappropriately. This sparked a long argument about how far you can go with art, and whether the nature of comedy is to outrage people.

Actually, that's what should have happened. Instead, it was just loads of people who weren't there repeating again and again disgust at Vegas, and asking why he hasn't been arrested yet.

So, here's what I think.

1) Johnny Vegas is a character. People don't seem to know this. But he is.

2) Whether or not he's funny is entirely irrelevant to the debate (for the record, I think he is funny).

3) The article is misleading at best. It provides quotes out of context, and suggests there was no artistic merit to his act. I think there was. I think most of the poeple there thought there was. I can't see how a large crowd of people would sit and watch a sexual assault unless they felt there was some kind of artistic justification. In comedy, context is very important. Ask Lenny Bruce (via a seance or something).

4) The girl in question seemed to be laughing. She was embarassed, but she made choices of her own free will. People have been very patronising to her, robbing her of the possibility that she could make her own choice.

5) It is annoying that people have criticised the defenders of Vegas by talking about rape convictions and the like. The low level of convictions in rape cases is appaling. Women should have the right to complain if they feel violated. They should have that freedom. But everyone is, for some reason, just assuming that an assault has taken place. The girl has a right to complain if she feels violated, but surely she has the right to not take offense. She has the right to not feel threatened. Just because she has the right to view it as an assault doesn't mean she must. This is what a lot of people seem to think.

The evidence that I saw (the context of the act, her reaction, her choices) led me to believe that she was doing this of her own free will. I have that basis to make my decision.

Everyone that wasn't there can't do that, but they still proclaim their outrage.

I think that the fact that the vast majority of people there made the same decision as me, suggests we were in the right.

Once again, context is important. It's always important for art or performance. If you weren't there, you have no context, so shut the fuck up.

***

So, tomorrow is much more important than gender relations, abuse, libel, assault, and murder. It's certainly much more important than politics (stupid Londoners have robbed us of the ability to feel smug about the ridiculousness of George W Bush, but that's by the by).

It's football. The last day of the Championship season. We occupy the final relegation place at the start of play, but the whole league is tighter than a gnat's hat on a monkey.

I feel bad about writing this now, because the outcomes will all be known tomorrow, and will render this post obsolete.

But I need to record this now, as I still have a small amount of hope left.

If things go badly tomorrow, I may forget that there was ever such a thing as hope. And laughter. And sunshine.

But there was.

It's small: just a tiny gap in the clouds. I hope it works out. I hope like Morgan Freeman at the end of The Shawshank Redemption. And he was on a bus, which is the enemy of hope.

***

I saw Iron Man on Thursday. It was pretty damn great. The source material doesn't have quite the depth of other comics, but they did a very good job. The trouble is I now have a bit of a man-crush on Robert Downey Jr. I don't need that kind of confusion in my life.

So, as an Iron Man fanboy, I give the film 4.5 Helmets out of 5. I'd go the full 5 if they's have included the ill-fated 'armour-with-the-nose' design a try.





















Good day.