Category Archives: *Rants/Politics*

Culture Jamming Gallery – Pt1

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Culture Jamming emerged as a response to the dominance of brand advertising on our streets and in our culture. It’s basically a form of politically-motivated vandalism, through which the often false sentiments and claims promoted by ads and logos can be manipulated to reveal the horrible truths that lurk beneath.

The most popular targets of this sweeping movement are those large, ruthless, multi-million-and-billion pound corporations that permit sweatshops to operate in their name; that put children to work making gaudy trainers and stitching logos on T-shirts for 20 hours a day for a pound a week; that ignore human misery, hardship and death so long as their cash registers sing and their shareholders can buy second homes; that despoil and pollute the environment; that support fatally-corrupt regimes and brutal dictators; that silence, threaten and sue those who attempt to expose their callousness; that lie, cheat, swindle and pillage their way to the top of the FTSE in the name of liberal capitalism and expect us to be grateful for their efforts: and that will attempt to obscure their evils with an innocent shrug, a reassuring smile, a slick slogan or two and a dazzlingly colourful ad campaign.

And sometimes, just sometimes, it’s simply funny vandalism. Here’s a selection of some of my favourites:

 

 

 

 

 

Jamie’s Guide to Politics Pt2: The Labour Party

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It took a while for Al Jolson to get it right.

Broadly and historically speaking, the Labour party is the party of the working class. Unfortunately, there’s no longer a working class. All of the coal-miners and their descendants are now working for Scottish Power, working eighteen hours a day in cramped conditions down t’call centre, just waiting for George Orwell to write a book about them.

That’s if they work at all. Now that the steel, maritime, coal and gas industries have gone the way of the Dodo, Labour’s traditional supporters – people with tattoos who enjoy cheese sandwiches, swearing in polite company and beating their wives – are now mostly to be found signing on the dole, or having their bollocks shot off in Afghanistan.

'The next woman who takes me out is gonna light up like a pinball machine, and pay out in silver dollars.'

That’s why Labour was forced to advance and embrace the ideology of New Labour, which merged Thatcherism with a commitment to giving free money to work-shy scumbags who wanted operations for nothing, White Lightning, drugs and fags. Tony Blair was the first face of this brave new way of thinking. He was posh enough to appeal to Tories, but he called people ‘mate’ and had an ugly wife.

If John Smith was still alive, he’d definitely be bitter. Ed Milliband is the next generation of Labour leader. He was created in a laboratory by splicing the DNA of a 12 year old boy with one of those psychic aliens from Star Trek with the gigantic throbbing skulls. His vocal and oratorical capabilities were modelled on Sylvester the Cat after a horrific brain injury.

The Future

There’s been a radical re-think in recent years. Most labour supporters want to go ‘more literal.’ That’s why the existing politicians and councillors will be replaced by women who are actually in the process of child labour. Work has already been commissioned to fit hundreds of stirrups into the parliament building in Westminster.

‘Yes, the entire Labour Party will consist of women, and specifically women who are just about to give birth,’ said some guy who I think said his name was Andy, ‘This will ensure that we remain a fresh political force with a constant stream of new ideas and policies, because once one of our MPs actually gives birth, it’s out the back door and another one gets wheeled in. By a smiling Eric Joyce.’

Cherie Blair lending her support to the new initiative.

The new leader of the opposition, who will be a different person every 3 – 36 hours, will spend her time in parliament screaming abuse at the Prime Minister, and demanding morphine. ‘Do you think David Cameron will be so keen to come out with his usual smart-alec remarks when the grip of just one of these deeply hormonal, pain-ravaged women would be enough to crush the neck bones of a rhinoceros?’

Prime Minister’s Questions will now involve the speaker sitting ashen-white with terror as the hundreds of women surrounding him wail like dying animals; ‘THIS IS YOUR FUCKING FAULT YOU BASTARD DON’T FUCKING TOUCH ME – ESPECIALLY YOU, ED BALLS!’, the only phrase decipherable through the tumultuous din.

Jamie’s Guide to Politics: The BNP

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In his high-school yearbook, Nick Griffin was voted ‘Most Likely to Make a Career Out of Racism’

At root, all the BNP wants to do is make sure that people ‘get back to their home’, which is why the organisation is so popular with taxi drivers.

Nick Griffin is the party’s current leader. When he’s not indulging in his favourite hobby of racism, Nick likes to enter look-a-like contests, and has recently come first-place in a variety of different competitions: most like Morn from Deep Space 9; most like Greenback from Inspector Gadget after a stroke; and most like David Cameron after an over-eating disorder and a motor-bike accident.

Aryan Family Guy

The BNP attracted a lot of media interest last year when it took over production of the American animated series ‘Family Guy’, and substituted Nick Griffin for Peter Griffin.

‘This is how we’ll reach the kids with our message,’ said Griffin. ‘Speak to them through popular culture; let them see me as the Fuhrer…em, the father. Like the time Hitler put himself into Mickey Mouse cartoons.’ {roll sketch}

A memo Nick Griffin sent to the production team, intercepted by news teams, spelled out the new direction he felt the show should take:

‘I’m not having a Jewish wife. Get rid of her. The baby, too. Nick Griffin doesn’t father fags. And I’m not happy about the daughter, Meg. She’s obviously a lesbian communist. Have my character send them off to camp, if you know what I mean. On the plus side, my son is a big, dumb blonde and the dog is white. I’m digging that. A final word on the neighbourhood. That neighbour of mine, the one in the wheelchair? Make it clear he was wounded in combat, or in the line of duty. If he was born that way it wouldn’t be realistic to have him survive to adulthood. As for my black neighbour and supposed best friend, Cleveland? Either kill the family off, or give them their own spin-off show to get rid of them.’

Controversy

‘Das balustrades are a fucking disgrace.’

The future of the BNP now looks uncertain. A German historian, Herr Grosse Busen, has discovered that Hitler, the party’s hero, wasn’t a racist, genocidal maniac after all.

‘The Fuhrer was actually a decorator hired by the Reichstag to brighten the place up,’ explains Busen. ‘and he was a lovely wee bloke. We know what caused the confusion. Hitler was in the main chambers, surrounded by politicians, and shouted out: “I’m going to fill all the interior spaces with colour, and widen out the mews.” But everyone thought he said: “I’m going to kill all the inferior races and coloureds, and wipe out the Jews,” and they were well up for it. Hitler only started WWII because he was too embarrassed to point out their mistake.’

Breakdown

Floella Benjamin

Nick Griffin’s nervous breakdown may serve as the final nail in the party’s coffin. He appeared on ITV’s Loose Women, and sobbed into the breasts of Floella Benjamin. As Floella stroked Griffin’s head, gently rocking him back and forth and saying, ‘Shhhhh, baby, it’s okay, it’s okay’, Griffin apologised for being a meanie and admitted that ‘he actually quite liked black people and muslims.’

Griffin is set to relaunch the BNP as the ‘Be Nice to Pakistanis’ party.

Toast tae the Lassies

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This is the full text of a ‘To the Lassies’ speech I wrote and read out for a Burns’ Night my friend held at his house two years ago. Most of the assembled laughed, and understood it was all in the name of tomfoolery; one middle-aged woman sat and stared at me in the hope that she could make me die with the power of her mind. 

Toast Tae the Lassies

Women. Pffttt…

That’s all I’ve got. 

‘Does my thought-pattern look fat in this?’

That certainly won’t shock you, because traditionally men are more taciturn than women. That’s a polite way of saying that they never fucking shut up. A woman can talk for three days without getting a dry throat, without threat of an empty mouth, and on subjects as diverse as ‘blah blah blah’ and ‘shoes’.

Women don’t transmit on our frequency. That’s when they bother to speak in our language in the first place. Science has proved this. A study was done comparing communication and language between the sexes, looking at what we say, how we say it and how we are received and perceived, and it found that what a woman says, the content of their speech, isn’t NEARLY as important… as the size of her tits.

‘Do you know how hard it is to get four comfortable pairs of Jimmy Choos?’

Women project their voices like missiles. Let’s put it this way: if the female black widow could talk, it wouldn’t need to murder its mate after sex. In fact the human female’s recourse to conversation appears, to the black widow, an unspeakably savage act. A woman won’t so much argue that black is white, but that both of these are wrong, and who do they think they’re talking to?

It wasn’t always like this. We never used to have to listen to women speak. It used to be legal to hit them with a frying pan, or water-board them in a vat of warm piss. We miss those days.

For some enlightenment on the subject we have to journey back to pre-Enlightenment times, and to a man named Institoris who wrote a medieval guide to identifying and prosecuting witches. I’ll quote the preface in the Malleus Maleficarum, which reads:

Wooooooooooooooo Bo-dy Fo-horm, Body Form for yoooooooooooooo!

“Why is the treachery which leads to the practice of harmful magic and all that entails found more frequently in women than in men? Institoris lists women’s usual weaknesses – they are backbiting, vengeful, lascivious, impressionable and intellectually inferior (those are the GOOD ones) – before saying that wicked women (the qualification is important) are particularly ruled by three moral failings (just three?): infidelitas (defined as a lack of adherence to the probable truth of the reality of things invisible – you know, like men’s faults) ostentation and lust.” 

I don’t think there are many here tonight who would disagree with those sentiments. Most of this can probably be attributed to hormones, with the emphasis on moans. Yes, hormones, and the dreaded ‘P’ word, that only five men in the history of the planet have been brave enough to utter. 

Periods are like the Kaiser Soze of biological processes. The greatest trick that women ever pulled was in trying to convince the male world that periods didn’t exist. So when a woman, light and electric from blood loss and mood imbalance has stabbed you through the heart, ripped it out and fed it to you – recognise this, men: it’s your fault. 

‘Flesh, chocolate. It’s all the same to me! Nomnomnomnom!’

Anyone who’s ever worked with a group of women knows that, as a group, they’re a deadly force to be reckoned with. Throw a puppy into their midst, and get ready to make dog soup with the bones. Women working in packs are like piranhas, but with better shoes.

And then there’s the connected danger and mystical horror that is cycle synchronisation. Like when the planets align and some evil wizard uses the formation to open a Gateway to Hell. Cycle synchronisation is like a Mexican wave of hatred.

‘All this fuss over a few fucking shepherds?’

Western culture has fooled us about women. We’re raised with the image of the nurturing, peaceful mother. The kind with big loving bingo wings that would make a flying squirrel grey with envy, and a pendulous, blobby bosom that could double as a wrecking ball. A lot of people, despite overwhelming evidence to the contrary, believe that if women were to rule the world it would be a happy, fluffy, lovey-dovey place with no war, struggle or strife. Then along came Margaret Thatcher. Lacking a heart, Thatcher was all cunt, and the monthly blood flow was suitably redirected. The Belgrano was torpedoed, in a metaphorical sense of course, by Thatcher’s tampon. 

Women cry. This has also fooled men, who equate crying with caring, and also see crying as a last resort, like suicide, or films starring Renee Zellwegger. But crying does not equal caring, because women, rather alarmingly, cry when they’re confused, startled, hopeful, ambivalent, guilty, ticked off, jealous, happy, furious, clumsy, dopey, sneezy and horny. Maybe that last one’s just me. They never actually cry when they’re sad. No, that’s what shouting’s for.

So how did women become so powerful? What went wrong? Women’s faces not being as soft as the hands that do their dishes? Women NOT doing the Shake and Vac to put the freshness back? 

John McCririck’s favourite wanking picture.

We can trace alot of it back to the suffragette movement. Back at the turn of the twentieth century, one woman’s desire to be heard was so strong that she hurled herself under a horse. If only more women would follow this example.

They burned their bras. Why? Didn’t they realise that their resulting bad back would have to be treated by a male chiropractor?

They started to play sports! The cheek. A little tip: stick to gymnastics, or naked jelly wrestling, or we’re not fucking interested.

And now there are women in the military. Great. Whose smart idea was it to teach them how to kill? And will somebody please ask Gordon Brown much it costs to produce Kevlar vests that can accommodate pairs of breasts? Not to mention the expense of military-issue tampons. No wonder they can’t afford any fucking helicopters over there. 

‘Want to see my big vessel, Punk Space Whore?’

They’ve been in space, too. How long before we see a fatal accident due to a woman shuttle-pilot trying to reverse park behind the Mir space station? Women have no business being in space, unless it’s to get shagged by Captain Kirk.

A lot of people say that women are just good for cooking, cleaning, shagging and gestating young. This isn’t true. They’re quite good with curtains, too. But it is true that the new power that women hold, especially in employment, is dangerous.

Allow me to expand.

  • A chick Doctor in Harrogate lost a false fingernail in a man’s lower intestine, causing his bowel to fall out.
  • A female bus driver in Darlington caused a twelve-car pile-up reading Woman’s Own while negotiating a roundabout. The drivers of the twelve cars hadn’t the time to react, as they were all doing their make-up at the time.
  • A female pilot lost control of a Boeing 747 because she was crying about a hungry cat she’d seen in her garden that morning.
  • A female soldier shot half of her own battalion as she stumbled across hostile terrain wearing stilettos.
  • In France, a bint can kill you if she can prove to the court she was on her dabs.

Sobering stuff.

I hope you don’t think I’ve been chauvinist or misogynistic tonight. This is not misogyny. It’s self-defence. Because although we love women – those deliciously mad, sexually-sociopathic Hell-dogs with tits – we must handle them carefully – like bombs, or rabid ferrets. We must love them like blow-up dolls filled with sixty per cent cotton wool to forty per cent sharp but rusty potato peelers.

Let’s raise a glass to the fairer sex.

Here’s tae ye!  

Do it the George Gallo-Way

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What’s the difference between Tony Soprano and George Galloway?

One’s a tough-talking, narcissistic, sociopathic, cigar-smoking adulterer, and the other one’s from New Jersey.

There’s a scene in ‘The Weight’, a season 4 episode of HBO’s The Sopranos, in which mob boss Tony Soprano covertly directs one half of a telephone conversation between Ralph Ciffaretto, one of his underlings, and Johnny Sack, a New York mob family underboss. Tony wants to make sure Ralph says the right things – and avoids saying the wrong things – to prevent further escalation of hostilities. Tensions are high between Ralph and Johnny: Ralph made a crack about the size of Johnny’s wife’s ass; somebody told Johnny; and now Johnny’s looking for blood.

Ralph: sorry seems to be the easiest word

Tony counsels Ralph to deny the allegations vehemently, and warns him that under no circumstances should he apologise. Ralph ignores Tony’s advice and, while still protesting his innocence, decides to apologise to Johnny in the interests of harmony and goodwill. That decision sets Ralph and Johnny on a course that puts both of them in mortal danger, and risks losing Tony a lot of money.

The moral is clear: never apologise. It’s weak, and makes you look guilty: especially if you are. This simple strategy worked for Tony Soprano, and it’s certainly doing the trick for ‘Gorgeous’ George Galloway. One stray ‘I’m sorry’ from the lips of the Teflon Don-donian at any point throughout the last few decades could have sunk his entire career.

'SPUNK LOVING SLUTS!'

Galloway knows that the world loves a larger-than-life character; a fighter; a righteous rebel. Where Winston Churchill – another famous cigar smoker with attitude – held two palm-facing fingers aloft to symbolise peace, Galloway prefers them flipped around to spell out ‘Fuck you’ with his fingernails. A large part of his appeal – and strength – is in his utter refusal to back down from any opponent, to answer for his actions or to show any contrition whatsoever for his apparent misdeeds.

And, let’s not forget, Galloway is the only politician ever to have uttered the words ‘spunk-loving sluts’ in parliament, and for that alone I will love him forever. Go on, Google it. Youtube it.

They say that great men become great by standing on the shoulders of giants. Galloway’s managed to keep himself astride the world of politics by standing on the shoulders of the underdogs. First, he spoke for the working class masses of Glasgow, then he gave a voice to those affected, both ethically and actually, by the occupation of Iraq, and now he’s championing the UK’s arab and muslim minorities. Galloway denies that he’s a demagogue, but it’s hard not to view him as Dundee’s answer to Gaius Baltar, a man ready to shed or cultivate any allegiance that will secure him power and a public platform with which to showcase his tub-thumping.

That being said, I’ve got something of a soft-spot for the little firebrand, and I even find myself agreeing with him from time to time…

And I’m not going to apologise for that. But, then, neither am I going to apologise for this:

GALLOWAY FUN FACTS

1) Galloway smokes a cigar. This makes him cool by default, because Winston Churchill, Tony Soprano and Che Guevara all smoked cigars, too, right? Wrong. Jimmy Saville also smoked cigars.

 

 

2) Galloway’s support for the Palestinian cause was lent extra credibility through his ability to look the arab world in the face and proclaim: ‘Of course I’m pro-Palestinian. I’m fucking one, aren’t I?’

 

 

3) Eric Joyce looks at George Galloway with envy. ‘Galloway’s shagged his way through just about every nationality on earth, cheated on his pregnant wife and enjoyed cavorting with younger women. If only I hadn’t apologised for MY behaviour I could have bounced back like him.’ When Eric Joyce thinks this way about Galloway, he gets much the same feeling as Gary Glitter gets when he thinks about Michael Jackson. In a nutshell, Glitter thinks he’d be on T4 if he’d fucked boys and danced better.

 

4) Born in Dundee, George Galloway is a big fan of The Broons.

 

 

 

5) George Galloway went on Celebrity Big Brother to teach Britain’s youth about politics, which he successfully achieved by pretending to be a robot and licking invisible cream from Rula Lenska’s fist.

 

 

6) On the same programme, George Galloway championed the great British underdog Michael Barrymore by harnessing all his powers of rhetoric and being right mean an’ that about the entertainer’s alcoholism and mental illness. Barrymore’s not bitter, though. He’s still invited Galloway to his ‘CBB 2012 Reunion Pool Party’.

 

7) Galloway’s represented the Hillhead constituency in Glasgow, campaigned and conquered in Bradford, and toured the war-torn, bomb-savaged Middle East, and he still hasn’t found anywhere as shit as Dundee.

 

 

8 ) Galloway has his own show on TalkSport, where he can reach that all-important demographic of medicated housewives, racist taxi-drivers and truck-driving serial killers.

 

 

9) Galloway said the address he made saluting Saddam Hussein’s ‘indefatigability’ was taken out of context. ‘It’s like when two lorry drivers from the same haulage firm pass each other and toot on the motorway. It’s respect. I wasn’t saluting HIS indefatigability, but the indefatigability of his smashing moustache.’ Galloway claims that only one other moustache on earth has moved him in this way: that belonging to Denny-born comedian Bob Graham.

 

10) George Galloway has eleven testicles.

 

 

 

 

11) Galloway vowed he would ‘never become a Conservative’ because ‘their birds are well ugly.’

 

 

 

12) The only nationality of woman that Galloway has never slept with is an Eskimo. And he’s working on that.

 

 

 

13) Galloway was born and raised a Roman Catholic, but his last few wives – and weddings – have been Muslim. So which is he? On the one hand, he’s a sex-obsessed hyopcrite. On the other hand, he’s a complete bastard to women. I guess he’s both. 

 

 

14) George Galloway thinks the relationship between Tony Soprano and this article was incredibly tenuous. I’m sorry about that.

 

 

 

Space Raiders Killed My Son

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This is a letter I (as Alison Tuvoices) wrote in 2003, and genuinely sent to KP Foods. I’ve always regretted not using a real name and return address. What did I think they would do? Hunt me down? Sue me? Sick the Space Raiders on me? They probably just smirked and then shredded the letter. The ‘fun facts’ mentioned in the letter now no longer appear on the backs of Space Raiders’ packets; they haven’t since 2010. What can I say, I’ve really got my finger on the pulse. Anyway, the cannibalisation continues… – Jamie

Dear Sirs

Space Raiders re: Intention to Sue

It is hard, in this day and age, to cushion your offspring from the horrors of the world. This task is made all the more difficult by sick companies such as yours (KP? What does it stand for? May I suggest ‘Killer Produce’?) with absolutely no regard for the sanctity nor the sanity of the consumers you seek to damage, exploit and murder. I thought my son was safe. I thought I’d done a good job of protecting him. Enter KP foods, stage left.

Just try to imagine my surprise when I returned home from a hard day’s work as a crack-whore to find my son lying in his bedroom amidst a nest of empty crisp wrappers, crying his eyes out but unable to stop himself from shoving clammy-handfuls of crisps into his fat gob!

‘What’s wrong, little Timmy?’ I asked. But Timmy is far from little, I can assure you. Thanks to the evil actions of your criminal empire, my eight year old son weighs as much as a couch. In fact, the whole suite.

‘It’s the aliens, mummy,’ he wailed, through a mush of crisps and a veil of tears. ‘I have to stop them!’

‘What on Earth do you mean, little Timmy?’ I asked. And that’s when he pointed at an empty bag of Space Raiders and implored me, through a glob of beef snacks, to read it and share his pain. And so I did.

Now, I am fully aware that you will know your own sickening mantra cum promotional evil off by heart, spawned as it was by your own vile and Hellish minds, but, in the interests of clarity, allow me to repeat it:

They came… From the darkest depths of the uncharted cosmos… THE SPACE RAIDERS Brightly coloured, bug eyed, bad guys with really big brains and easily enough technology to take over the planet. The only thing that can stop the Space raiders imminent invasion of the Earth is the sound of munchin’ crunchin’ snacks! So finish off this pack and go get another… before it’s too late!

Before it’s too late! So, in my Sumo-son’s effort to both save the known universe and stave off a multitude of panic attacks he has, to date, spent almost four and a half thousand pounds of his pocket money, my drugs-and-whoring money, and a great deal of my credit card limit on Space Raiders. To pour more salt (and, indeed, sugar) into the wound, he developed a form of diabetes so severe that he has to inject himself with insulin more times a day than I do myself with heroin.

What kind of a world is this we live in where people like you can warp the minds of impressionable youths and destroy their futures with complete and Satan-sealed impunity from prosecution? If only the torment had ended there! May I direct you to the ‘fun facts’ printed on each of the flavours of your disgusting product. Perhaps ‘Hellish facts designed to drag your weak and vulnerable children down deep into the fiery bowels of Hell to be disgorged and dismembered by the Lord Beelzebub himself’ would have been more appropriate, although I appreciate it probably wouldn’t fit on the packet.

Let me turn your attention to the ‘fun fact’ printed on the packet of your Beef flavoured ‘snacks’. It reads as follows:

ALIEN FUN FACT There is no such thing as a grey alien, in fact they are all bright colours, usually red, yellow, blue, green and purple. They only turn grey when you feed them with Beef-flavour snacks. So, go on, take the colour out of their faces and feed them as many Beef snacks as you can.

It may not take a vast leap of intelligence to see the relationship between cause and effect once I begin my heart-wrenching tale of horror. My crippled mother, moaning and gasping her last on her urine-soaked death-bed, let it be known that she wished to bequeath something to me that was very valuable to her. Unfortunately it was not her Bentley, as I had hoped, but something of an altogether more sentimental value. Since my mother has never given me anything but beatings and a strange fetish for silk stockings, you can imagine I was moved to tears by the old bitch’s intended legacy. She left me Geoffrey, her forty-five year old red, green, blue, yellow and purple parrot.

Are you a step ahead of me now, you evil swines? So, my demented son, believing Geoffrey to be a multi-coloured alien on a ruthless mission to enslave the human race, dutifully stuffed that feathered bastard full of five hundred and eighty-seven packets of Beef flavoured Space Raiders. And, do you know, much as your Beef-mantra predicted, Geoffrey did turn grey? He was fucking dead!

‘Mummy, the packet was right!’ Timmy cried, as I hit him with a snow-shovel.

To fill the void that Geoffrey’s terrible death had left in my heart, one of my Johns bought me a beautiful, fluffy Persian cat. I named it Cecil, after Cecil Parkinson. Perhaps I should have thought to consult, like some twisted Horoscope, the blurb on the back of your pickled onion snacks before welcoming another life-form into my home. May I direct you this time to the filthy pish you have splashed across the back of these Hell-snacks:

ALIEN FUN FACT Many people claim to have been abducted by aliens. This is a myth – Space raiders only abduct cats. They make them really fluffy, put little aliens inside their heads and then send them back to earth to spy on us…we call them Persian cats. You’ll never see a fluffy Persian cat eating Space Raiders snacks.

And so as I wandered out into the back garden to toss off my thoughtful John as a show of thanks, imagine my dismay at catching little Timmy bent over Cecil with a rusty hacksaw, the poor beast’s head lying meaowing and bloodied on the ground, as Timmy proceeded to slop out the goo inside.

‘But mummy,’ he said as I raised the spade, ‘he was one of them! He wouldn’t eat the Space Raiders!’

As Salt and Vinegar is my favourite flavour of crisps in the whole wide world I found it doubly difficult to accept that you could both warp my arsehole of a son even further and sully the good name of Salt and Vinegar at the same time. Since the ‘fun fact’ contained on this packet does not directly advocate the murder of animals, but instead opts to distort and violate the authority of Timmy’s history teacher {…they (the Space Raiders, of course!) built them (the sodding Pyramids!) out of bits of giant plastic and made them look very old just to confuse us humans!}, I’ll curtail my venom in this instance.

Ms Tuvoices

Suffice to say, Timmy was expelled for becoming unruly and hitting Mr Gilhouley in the ghoulies infront of the school bullies with a bottle of Dooleys he’d bought from Woolies, and now no other school will accept him because, and I quote, ‘…he is a complete piece of skum with the brain of an alcoholic maggot on acid.’ I’m quoting myself, of course.

I have since had to have my son put down. I hold you accountable for both the vets bill and a damage pay-out somewhere in the region of forty million pounds. I have arrived at this figure through consultation with my schizophrenic alter-ego, who assures me that the sum is a modest one given the circumstances. You will, of course, be hearing from my lawyer.

And you can tell the Space Raiders to expect a call as well. If they think they’re going to get away with this, they’ve got another thing coming.

Yours dementedly,

Alison Tuvoices

PS Tonight while you sleep I will suffocate your pets with a Bag-For-Life from Lidl’s. Incidentally, they’re only about thirty pence and are pleasingly durable. Worth a look the next time you’re popping in. Take care now.

I’m Dead… I’m Dead… You Know it… I’M DEAD

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I’m still cannibalising material from the previous incarnation of this website; hence why the following is my review of a television programme that aired more than three years ago. Still, it involves ‘getting it roond’ Derek Acorah, and there’s no expiry date on that. Enjoy. – Jamie

The Michael Jackson Seance – Sky 1

“If Michael was here, would he call you crazy?”

So asked presenter June Sarpong of David Gest moments before the big Michael Jackson Live Seance kicked off. This was a bit like asking Nick Griffin: ‘If Hitler was here, would he call you racist?’

June had just appeared on an hour-long programme preceding, and building up to, the main seance. She ratcheted up our sense of anticipation by reminding us that she had ‘got quite close to Michael’ during her LA quest. Hmmm. Close perhaps only in the sense that when I stretch my arm out as far as it can go, I get ‘quite close’ to the fictional planet of Cuntypandy in the entirely made-up Sookyermaw galaxy, fifty billion light years away.

‘He was a weird-faced, sinister-looking, child-like freak,’ said Michael Jackson.

David Gest was there to lend June a hand. Good choice. Gest himself is a man no stranger to planets billions of light years away. He cheerfully name-dropped his way through just about every celebrity he’d ever met thanks to Michael, careful to turn even the most bland and innocuous questions about Michael’s life into a story somehow involving himself and Stevie Wonder. And if it’s a tinge of credibility you’re after who better to have in the studio than a man who actually states that he’s ‘crazy’ live on-air, and then tells you that ‘he believes in leprechauns too’? If only he’d gone for the bampot hat-trick and started battering himself over the head with a hammer. Incidentally, top marks to the Sky controller who saw fit to run a Sky Real Lives’ promo about dwarves and little people immediately after this segment. Pot of gold for that man.

‘I’m bad.’

Still, who am I to mock? I’ve been waiting for this super-duper, supernatural event for months; salivating at the thought of King of Pap Derek Acorah getting his hammy gnashers into the King of Pop.

The venue for the seance was an Irish cottage in which Michael Jackson once stayed when he was putting together a new album. Already we could tell Derek loved a challenge. Never has the old cliche ‘looking for a needle in a haystack’ been more aptly analogised: in this case, looking for the ghost of one dead paedophile amongst a legion of dead pederast priests. I guess it would be more apt to say: ‘It’s like looking for a needle in a needle-stack.’

These cunts can vote and have children, you know.

Still, ‘renowned medium’ Derek Acorah was up for the sift. Alongside him at the seance table were four emotionally-unhinged Jacko fans, two of whom were King of Pop impersonators. The readiness to believe among them was running so high even before they’d formed their circle and sought spiritual protection, that if Derek had brought out a box of Weetos and claimed it was an incarnation of Michael Jackson they probably would have asked it to do the moonwalk. And then fucked it.

Sarpong asked the ‘superfans’, looking collectively like they’d fought in the Christmas Panto regiment of the Whackjob’s army, how they’d coped in the months after Jackson’s death.

‘You’ve just got to keep going, meditate, think through it,’ said the loony female one that looked a bit like The Joker’s even crazier sister.

‘I feel like a part of me has died,’ said another, ‘I miss him every day.’

‘It hasn’t sunk in that he’s passed away,’ said one of the impersonators. I thought to myself, ‘May I suggest that you let that particular nugget of information sink in quickly, son, because you’re about to raise him from the fucking dead.’

Anyway, there was no time to lose as Derek got word from his spirit guide, Sam, that Michael was almost ready to join them. I liked how everyone at the table seemed reassured of Derek’s abilities once his invisible friend had given the nod that Jacko was in the building.

Mad Hatters’ C.U.N.T Party.

They all joined hands, although Derek did allow them to connect with one of Jacko’s hats that he’d placed in the centre of the seance table. One of the spangly-gloved superfans seemed reluctant to stop touching it, long minutes after the rest of them had decided to salvage what little dignity they had left and keep their hands to themselves. Even when Derek was rabbitting on about ‘residual energies’ and ‘thought pattern residues’ and ‘love giving us the power to go on’, this guy was still stroking the brim of Jackson’s hat in an incredibly intimate, sexual way. It was like glove porn. Hot glove-on-hat action. Extreme brimming.

‘I just can’t believe that’s his hat,’ said another of the wide-eyed psychopaths. I just can’t believe, I thought, that you daft, ugly cunts are sitting there with a half-daft Scouse maniac thinking you’re about to chat to a dead, dancing paedophile with a melted face.

A digested Ghost Kebab threatens to tear Acorah’s arsehole apart like a chicken.

So, finally, to the seance itself. Derek’s channelling technique is a joy to behold. Strained and sweating, he looks like a heavily constipated man who occasionally sees a moth flying past his head. And can somebody please explain to me why every spirit Derek channels talks like a Shakespearian character? ‘Hang on, my aunty Betty never sounded like Ophelia.’

Sam, of course, is always there to help him. He’s the ghosty go-between. ‘Sam… Sam… Sam..,’ Derek kept saying. If he had any sense of humour at all, Derek would have shouted out: ‘Who the Hell is Sam Wheat?’ He didn’t, unfortunately. It is funny, though, how Derek can reel off these big, wordy, stage-script-like speeches – stuttery yet fluently – yet when he tries to evoke or decipher a person’s name it takes him about ten minutes and twenty attempts.

Derek eventually uttered the predictable names ‘Samuel’ and ‘lovely Crystal’. Wow, Michael Jackson’s grandparents! How could Derek possibly have known about them? Oh, Wikipedia. I see. Still, it’s quite uncanny how some of Jackson’s first words were ‘journalists…journalists…journalists… they tell lies upon lies upon lies (tomorrow, and tomorrow, and tomorrow, oh where for art thou etc.)’. What, was there some recent tabloid controversy surrounding Michael Jackson or something? How could Acorah have divined such exclusive knowledge? How wholly and completely unpredictable for ‘Jackson’ to have come out with that.

The Thriller Who Became Vanilla. And then fucking melted.

There were many, many highlights during the seance. Derek channelling Michael Jackson with laryngitis being one. One of the idiots at the table breaking down in a flood of tears as Derek/Michael tells him that love ‘oozes’ from him was another. But the best was when Derek, clearly struggling for things to say, got ‘possessed’ by Michael and pointed to one of the superfans and said: ‘You, say hello to Quincy Jones for me,’ and the superfan looked Derek square in the eyes, all serious faced, and said: ‘Hello, Quincy Jones.’ You daft, deluded cunt-rag.

A triumph, then. A wonderful piece of entertainment. I haven’t enjoyed a television programme so much since one of the contestants on Countdown got the word ‘WANKER’. And I doubt I’ll enjoy one this much again until the day they broadcast Stevie Wonder and David Gest wrestling oily, disabled midgets for cash.

A closing word from Michael? ‘He’s going to go very close to his beloved children,’ Derek told us.

It’s a shame that Heaven hasn’t reformed Jackson.

He never asked about his fucking monkey, either.

THE END

 

 

Vote for the Dinner Party

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'More jelly and ice-cream, Sir Rich Cunt?'

So, a rich, elitist politician in a corrupt capitalist society offers rich CEOs and horrid right-wing sister-fuckers the chance to influence governmental policy for money? The only thing surprising about the recent Cam-for-Cash revelations is our surprise.

Here we have David Cameron, a man whose face tells the story of a weird genetic experiment to meld Buzz Lightyear with a posh monkey-nut, preaching about the Big Society at the same time as he does his utmost to dismantle it. Well, the peasant part of it, anyway.

Goodbye, NHS. It’s OK. Poor people don’t need hearts or kidneys, anyway. That’s a scientific fact. Cheerio, provisions for the old and skint. Want to keep warm, working-class OAPs? Why not make a fire and burn all of your old copies of ‘The Socialist Worker’? You’ll be feeling your fingers and toes again in no time. Auf weidersehen, rights of disabled people on benefits. I know one thing that will help your broken back and crippling depression: a little stint stocking shelves for free down at Tesco, your local, friendly greengrocer.

'Gonnae nonny nonny no dae that?'

Cameron’s been robbing from the poor to give to the rich (and extorting the rich to make the rich richer) from the start. This Cash-for-Goujons debacle is the least of the coalition’s misdeeds. You know a regime’s got a problem with image when its antics begin to make Tory-punching, problem-drinking, schoolgirl-shagging, nutcase’s-nutcase Eric Joyce look like a folk hero by comparison. And, worst of all, I’ve just imagined Eric Joyce decked out in green tights prancing around a forest.

What will we, the people, do? I know what they’d do in France: start burning sheep until Cameron stepped down. But not here. We are the sheep, and we’ve not the wit to realise that the whiff of lamby barbecue in the air drifts from our own scorched backs. We’ll forget this story, and the next one, and the one after that. That’s if we’re watching at all. Isn’t Eastenders on?

That's the smell of you being fucked.

We live in a country where vile politicians who trade in misery are re-elected time and again, while the people who play baddies in soaps get soup cans hurled at them in the street by angry old women years after their career has ended. ‘How could you cheat on oor wee Deirdre, ya animal!’

Politicians have the power to decide how we live and die, but we all find it… well, pretty bloody boring. Certainly not as exciting as the prospect of a nutty slut getting her jubblies out on the next series of Big Brother. But keep an eye on live updates from the Big Brother house in Westminster. Once those old men and women in suits are certain that the TV viewers have fallen into a tedium-sponsored coma, they’ll stop talking about agricultural quotas and caps on this, that and the other, and they’ll turn their attentions to the REAL order of business: building a Death Star.

Why Advertising is so Full of Shit

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'I'm chokin' it.'

Advertising: the art of taking something ordinary and building a mythology around it : the art of masking the brutality and nonsense behind the money.

Adverts. I wish they’d all just front up. Show us the whipped and weeping Chinese kids crying bitter tears over an assembly line of Barbie dolls. Show us an alcoholic drink-driving past a school with a bottle of Budweiser in his hand, swerving to avoid a mass of talking frogs and crashing into the school bus. Show us Ronald McDonald rabbit-punching an injured abattoir worker in the kidneys. It makes my head spin.

But it all makes me laugh, too. While shopping in Spar I came across something that made me guffaw uncontrollably. It was a slogan on the front of a Super Value Pack of KittenSoft toilet roll: ‘Irresistibly soft,’ it said.

'Itty Bitty Shitty Kitty.'

Has anyone ever found their toilet paper to be irresistible? ‘So Soft, You’ll Wipe After Every Fart,’ it seems to entreat. If we follow this line, it won’t be long before daddy is blowing his wage packet on luxury toilet roll items instead of heroin. Psssst. Want some Andrex, mate?

Ah, yes, Andrex: the crap-paper manufacturer that chose the puppy as its brand mascot. Puppies FIND the paper deliciously soft; the product is not AS soft AS puppies, a trap into which KittenSoft appears to have fallen. The implication from their packaging seems to be that using their product will have the equivalent feel to picking up Tiddles and sliding him between your arse cheeks like some kind of miaowing credit card. In fact, the little kitten on the packaging wears an expression somewhere between terror and hope, praying that today will be the last day he gets used as a BogMog.

Or a ShitKat, if you’d prefer.

'Go on, motherfucker, I dare ya.'

It makes me wonder whether the scientific wing of KittenSoft experimented with different creatures before settling on the kitten. Could we have had Total-Chinchilla-Comfort? HamsterWipe? Never mind if animals were harmed during the process: were any scientists harmed? ‘Can we just say a few words of remembrance for brave Ronald before we have a little re-think on HedgehogHeaven?’

And what criteria were used? Did they have a little check-list, sub-divided into animal groups and species, measuring things like fluffiness, absorbability, prickliness, and likelihood-of-biting-back-iness? And call me far too liberal-minded and PC for my own good, but things seem to be disgustingly mammal-centric over at toilet paper HQ. Kittens, puppies, tribbles. For once I’d like to see: ‘New SharkWipe – Something to Get Your Jaws around’; or ‘PythonWipe – For When You’ve Snaked One Out’. And why not give the amphibians and reptiles a chance to shine: ‘FrogComfort – So Tough You Won’t Ribbit?’ ‘Chod-in-the-Hole’?

I’m not even going to broach the subject, ladies and gentlemen, of Gerbil Lil-Ets.

New Stella-flavoured Deodorant a steaming success.

Ah, I really should have gone into advertising. A final word on deodorants. It seems that not smelling like filth isn’t good enough for us anymore. We have to stare at rows of peculiarly labelled scents ranging from the sublime to the ridiculous. On the shelves in Asda the other night (yes, I really do spend my free time skipping from shop to shop, frantically scanning the aisles for amusingly-named commercial products to brighten up my suicidally depressing existence) were deodorants called Java, Surge, Cool and Miami.

Java? Who the fuck wants to smell like a computer programming language? And what in Christ’s name does it smell of? I’ve seen computer programmers, and they don’t look like the kind of guys you’d want to be within sniffing distance of. As for Surge… I’m sure the smell of the surge rather depends on the kind of surge you’re talking about. Whatever the explanation, I’m pretty sure I don’t want to walk into work smelling of it.

A snapshot from Falkirk's premier nightspot.

And Miami? Hello? Did they huddle seven thousand Floridians into a warehouse, spraying chemicals at them from a giant shower-head until they all agreed on what Miami smelled like? ‘I couldn’t smell enough sunshine in that blast!’ ‘Give us a whiff of Mickey Mouse!’ ‘That one smelled far too much like Detroit!’

Where will it end? Scents called ‘One-Legged Welsh Gay’; ‘Recently Mouth-Raped Kangaroo‘? ‘Dead Peruvian’?

Next week, look out for the launch of my new toilet paper: ‘ARSEWIPE – You Can Clean the Shit From Your Arsehole With It’.

Derek Acorah is a Mentalist Pt 1

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The following is a TV review/rant I cobbled together after watching one of medium-extraordinaire Derek Acorah’s shows a few years back. More deliciously fun Acorah poo-pooing to follow over the next week or so – Jamie 

Snakes on an Astral Plane

Derek Acorah and his invisible psychic side-kick, Sam, in happier times.

Most parents keep their children away from gory, overtly disturbing, sexual or horrific TV content: explicit war films; late-night pieces of a pornographic nature; violent gun-and-monster flicks, and anything that has a hint of the red stuff or even a soupcon of rough language. All well and good.

But there are some programmes that slip under the radar, which many families actively encourage their children to watch. Happy, feel-good shows that seem innocent upon brief inspection, but if explored in any depth turn out to be more insidiously destructive and psychologically scarring than a back-to-back late-night marathon of Vampire Gore Splat Anal Destruction Nympho Whores in Trench Warfare Hell.

Welcome to Derek Acorah (broadcast on Sky 3 in the UK), a regular hour-long delve into the spirit world with the eponymous Derek Acorah, ‘Britain’s best-known medium’ – an accolade bestowed upon him by the Daily Mail. ‘Best known’? Yes, he’s ‘Britain’s best-known medium’ in the same way that AIDS is the world’s ‘best known’ sexual infection, and Adolph Hitler is Austria’s ‘best known’ Jew-killer.

'Your gullibility is THIS big, screaming woman.'

So what’s my beef with Acorah and his ilk? Surely it’s all a bit of harmless fun? Doesn’t Derek Acorah bring people comfort and closure, say ‘please’ alot, and thread love, peace and happiness into and around all of his dalliances with the spirits and their living loved ones? Well, yes. But this is why he’s so insidious. What gives a man like Derek Acorah, with no demonstrable psychic powers – certainly none that would stand up to any scientific scrutiny – the right to take people’s raw feelings of loss, hurt, fear and confusion, and attempt to exorcise them with flimflam and lies? Not to mention to extort these peoples’ feelings for money?

There are a few possible explanations for his conduct. The first is that Derek knows he has no psychic powers, and is cynically employing his theatrical tricks to make money from vulnerable punters, or else to satisfy some insecurity or Messianic complex whereby he feels a surge of self-worth or grandeur through ‘curing’ people – even if it is by a sugared deception. The second is that Derek actually believes he possesses both ESP and the ability to commune with the dead, in which case he requires some urgent and far-reaching mental help.

What's it watching? The Hissssss-tory Channel, of course! Belter!

In the episode of Derek Acorah broadcast yesterday (Friday 21st August) Derek brought out a woman and her pet snake. He attempted to read the reptile’s ‘thoughts’ and translate them for its owner.

‘He’s not been himself,’ said the woman. Excuse me? How can you tell that a snake hasn’t been himself? A drop in witty repartee? Not dressing as smartly?

Anyway, Derek was able to meld with the snake and went on to dispense some real psychically-gleaned pearls of wisdom. ‘You’ll need to take him to a vet,’ he told the woman.

Later, Derek added that his long-time spirit guide Sam was sure that the snake wanted to watch more television. The woman looked enthralled. During her own straight-to-camera moment, away from the studio audience, she made excuses for Derek. ‘It can’t have been easy reading a snake. I think he tried his best.’

Derek did little better when he moved on to bipedal mammals; although the audience didn’t share my assessment. He appeared again to have convinced them that he was a spiritual savant and all-round psychic miracle worker. This despite the fact that any person with a little common sense and a lot of balls (or a psychological condition) could come up with an achingly similar ‘reading’ and enjoy a chorus of oo’s and aah’s from any number of poor misguided souls. I’m being diplomatic here.

Derek after being told how much he gets paid for this shit.

His subject was a woman called Sharon, aged between 50 and 65. He amazed by asking if she knew anyone called Jack, Betty or Anne. She did. Incredible. Who would have thought that a woman born between 1945 and 1960 would know people with some of the most common names of that era? He moved on to wow her with such startling and specific questions as ‘Do you know someone who died of breast cancer?’ and ‘You’ve had to counsel someone recently who’s been through a break-up, haven’t you?’ Shockingly, she had. Who would have thought, given how long she’d lived, that there would be a statistical chance of those two things having happened? Certainly not Sharon or the tearful studio audience.

‘You’ve not had an easy life, have you?’ oozed Derek, staring at her like some demented hypnotist.

‘No,’ she agreed. I was almost out of my seat by then. This was getting spooky.

‘But you’re a star,’ he told her, almost on the verge of sobbing himself, ‘I know you’re a star. And they (the gaggle of dead communicating with him) know you’re a star.’

Who knows what frisson of sexual excitement was zapping through his balls at that moment as he held this deluded woman’s happiness in his huckster’s hands. He was probably thinking: ‘Ha! Jesus can suck on my big Liverpudlian throbber.’

Don't let your children watch Derek Acorah.

Have you ever heard noises in your house late at night? Probably just the pipes, or the radiators, or wood or cement expanding or contracting, right? WRONG, DICKHEAD! It’s ghosts. They’re there to talk to you, silly. Only they’re not going to make it easy for you. If your death has been foreseen by your loved ones on the other side, what are they going to do? Simply tell someone like Derek Acorah in plain, uncluttered English so that you can do something to prevent it? Rap out a warning in Morse Code? Use telekinesis on the fridge magnets to spell out ‘GO TO HOSPITAL’? No. They’d really rather prefer to make pots fall on the floor until you get the message.

Sharon had heard things in her house at night.

‘You’re confident you’re psychic, aren’t you?’

‘Well, yes, I’ve heard things. But I’m not scared.’

‘You’ve got an innate receptiveness,’ he told her. ‘You’re sensitive to spirits.’

What I like most about Derek Acorah is how he listens to all the facts, forms a hypothesis, looks at it from all angles, contemplates everything deeply, conducts a thorough investigation, follows through with an experiment, and then arrives at a wholly logical and scientific result. Inspiring.

The best part of the show, however, was when he grilled an old lady (not literally, although that really would’ve been entertaining) and claimed to have one of her acquaintances from the other side jabbering in his ear. The old lady had no idea who the person was.

‘Not someone in your family?’

‘No.’

‘Someone you know?’

‘No.’

‘If anyone in the audience wants to jump in, if you know them, please raise your hand.’

"You know someone called Morag, don't you?"

Even that little bit of fishing never made the audience in the least suspicious. Even when he moved on and left the old lady on spiritual call-waiting to entertain another spook they were still on his side and in full support of his miraculous powers. And still no one raised an eyebrow when he pretended to be in conversation with the spirit and said: ‘What’s that? You’re saying someone here does know who you are? OK, but we’re going to have to move on now, please. Step to one side, please. Thank you.’ Yeah, fuck off, ghost, nobody likes you!

It’s quite telling that after the end credits roll a message flashes up that reads: ‘All views and messages relayed in the show are for entertainment purposes only.’

Wouldn’t it be reasonable to expect someone who sincerely believed himself to possess genuine supernatural powers to fight the government and the media regulators tooth and claw to remove such a disclaimer from the end of his television broadcasts?

Just a thought. I’d like to lobby to have the message displayed throughout the entire show, in huge block capitals at the top of the screen. And force Derek to shout it at the end of each reading.

If you’re looking for something mildly diverting and inspiring for your children to watch on television as you organise lunch or dinner, don’t be tempted to expose them to Derek Acorah.

In the true spirit of the medium, simply go over to the other side. Or put on a DVD double-bill of the Hostel films which they can watch while you beat them with a fucking spade.