Wednesday 28 September 2011

The Infestation

Thunderdomes are one of the few
underrated upsides of the coming
Zomb-o-calypse
It happened slowly. So slowly that no-one noticed. Steadily there numbers grew. Before we had time to adapt they were everywhere. Our resources can't support them. They're presence is crippling our species and raping our planet. Everyday as a result of this unstoppable swarm children are dying. Species are being wiped off our world, a world that is being irreparably scarred. Lakes run dry and crops are devastated. They spread disease. They destroy the environment. They are an unstoppable force of pure destruction. There is no way of reasoning with them. They will never stop until our planet is an uninhabitable desert. A wasteland in which only the strong survive and people battle for glory in the Thunderdome.

 I'm talking, of course, about people.

Vermin.

This is kind of a good metaphor for Planet Earth... if it was
also going over a rickety bridge, on fire, while on it's way
to Auschwitz... and more people were still climbing on.
That's right the human race, is a fucking plague. Oh what's that you don't agree? Do you think a locust thinks of itself as part of destructive swarm? Of course not all life-forms on earth act according to their nature. Of course all other creatures on Earth are kept in check by the forces of nature. Rabbits over-breed and foxes eat the rabbits. The foxes eat to many rabbits and the foxes die out. You eat too much food, you go to the shop and buy more. Human's as a species are cannibalising themselves. Over a billion people on this world are currently going hungry, another billion are obese. Try and pretend that your part of a rational, empathic and intelligent species all you want but if you live in the west every other bite of food you've ever eaten was pretty much snatched from the mouth of someone in the third world. Did you know that if the all agriculture in the world was organic the planet can only support four billion people. So the human race is currently sitting at about 2.8 billion over capacity.

So what can we do to get the numbers down?

Other than the obvious?

I'm pretty certain that this guy
isn't going to cure cancer 
Well I'm not about to propose a cull or anything as mental as that but we're the only species on the face of the Earth that places anything other than absolute value on our own lives. So you know what? Lets take away the safety-net. First up no more warning labels and safety notices. You want to make toast in the bath? Go ahead, you are surplus to requirements. You want to drink bleach and have no idea why that's a bad idea, fucking do it man. Next up let's stop trying to make it illegal to endanger your own life in the name of fun. I've never seen anyone try to bounce from one skyscraper to another via trampoline... I want to see that and you know what if someone want's to do that fair-play. Do you want to put the extreme in extremely fucking stupid? I salute you and your continued efforts to entertain me.


Next up TV and Sports are nowhere near as entertaining as they could be if you removed the health and safety element. I want to see Total Wipeout with actual death-traps, UFC with weaponry I want F1 to be more like Deathrace ... basically I want to watch the Running Man live via a satellite. I want the human race to cull itself for my entertainment.

Except without the jumpsuits, because seriously fuck jumpsuits.

In  the future there will be a monuments to
this man and those of his heroic ilk.
I also want all governments to stop subsidising breeders. You want to have kids fine, feel free your genitals and their waste products are your own business but you should not be receiving preferential treatment for that decision. Social housing, government hand-outs and tax-breaks should be a reward for not contributing towards an ongoing problem not an incentive for adding more creatures to the swarm. Seriously you contribute to the ongoing consumption of the human race then you should pay more tax to help clean up the fucking mess. In fact fuck I want tax-breaks for smokers and drinkers and anyone else speeding up there exit from the show, and let's ban all fertility treatments seriously you want a child, adopt and prove your worthy of the honour of parenthood. Look I know a lot of people who read this post are going to say that I'm wrong for hating on the human race but not a single one of you would be complaining if I was talking about a global plague of cats would you?

Don't adopt the ginger ones though
just leave them somewhere cold to die
However I'm not one of those people to just sit here and bitch into my computer so here are some practical tips to assist you in making the human race less populace. First-off get your tubes tied, I know that the biological imperative to reproduce is at the very core of your being but if you must spawn do so only once, it takes two to do it so that's a 50% reduction. You want more than one kid then fucking adopt, those kids already exist so your not adding to the problem. Stop voting for anyone who talks about the importance of family vote for those who want to get wasted with you and your buddies. Engage in tax evasion, this will leave less money to support schools and shit like that. Push for more chemicals in food and more nuclear power, this will increase infertility. All of these things are important measures you can take to help stem the ravenous swarm of humanity.

Oh and before I forget congratulations to my brother and his wife on the good news. I'm looking forward to being an uncle. 

Eddie <I hate sharing a planet with you people>

Tuesday 27 September 2011

Obey The Laws Of Physics

Genius so scary his hair is trying to escape
E=mc2. That's right readers physics. That is the work of one of the most famous scientists of all time, Albert Einstein. Not only a great mind but also a great man famed not only for his efforts to wrestle with the loftiest concepts of the cosmos but also for his quick wit, inspiring quotes and mad scientist hair... Let's be honest, I say Einstein and the hair is one of the first things that  comes to mind and that's because as a species we're idiots. E=mc2 is one of those things that we all assume is complicated and hard so we ignore it and focus on the hair but E=mc2 isn't overly complex it's actually pretty simple. It translates as follows, the energy contained within a single atom is equal to it's mass times the speed of light squared. It's great way of explaining that the amount of energy used to create matter is simply vast, so vast that it's possible to annihilate entire cities with just a few grams of matter. You see, to quote Bill Hicks, matter is just energy condensed to a slow vibration. 

That equation forms the basis for the last hundred years of scientific advancement and is based on one simple little fact.

You cannot exceed the speed of light. 

Speeding costs lives... and may destroy the fabric of space-time.

Some children are marked for greatness, you were marked
as 'Exhibit A' in a courtroom with a crying 9 year old.
Why? Fuck you that's why. Look it's pretty simple really it takes energy to move, right? If you don't believe me do some star-jumps. You finished doing star jumps yet, you sweaty twat? Right well that took some energy didn't it. Well the faster you move the more energy is required and the faster you get the harder you have to fight for every scrap of extra acceleration. That's why a Bugatti Veyron costs over a million pounds and the van you were conceived in only cost forty quid. The closer you get to the speed of light, actually the speed of something with no mass if you want to be exceedingly technical... light is made of photons which do have minuscule amount of mass... anyway the closer you get get to the speed of light the more energy every tiny increase costs. If you were to increase your speed to just below the speed of light and plough more energy into the affair because your to stubborn for you're own good that energy goes towards increasing your mass. I know what your thinking. That's fucking weird. Yes it is, it's also true and it means breaching the speed of light would take infinite energy which would create infinite mass which would result in your mum/destroy the universe. This theory underpins everything we know about the universe. It's at the core of our calculations of distant galaxies, it's crucial to explaining the existence of black holes and it helped early astronomers calculate the structure of the universe.

"... and the one on the left looks just like your mother's
arse after I was finished with her" "Shut up Dad"

The fact that you could easily use such a device for
unspeakable evil is just one of the many reasons I'm
not allowed to visit CERN
This brings us to CERN. CERN is where the world's greatest scientific minds assemble, usually inside the bodies that house them, to ponder the mightiest questions that the universe has to offer. Oh and occasionally they build vast machines that could end the entire world for shit's and giggles. It is home of the Large Hadron Collider, which has been built to collide ordinary sized hadrons on a large scale. It lies in a 27km tunnel and fires particles into each other at close to the speed of light and theoretically could have destroyed time when they turned it on... don't worry it didn't, score one for human curiosity. However that's not the particular piece of mad science that I want to talk about.

I want to discuss the OPERA experiment. The OPERA experiment was set up to fire a beam of neutrinos over 730km from CERN to the INFN Gran Sasso Laboratory in Italy. Now that path is a straight line going through the earth because neutrinos can do that for reasons that you wouldn't understand... because I fucking don't. Anyway 3 years ago they activated the experiment, with the intention of seeing what happened to the neutrinos over that distance, I'm assuming that this was all handled by a cackling mad man in a white lab-coat. The results came in and they were startling. The neutrino's had arrived early i.e. faster than the speed of bastard light. A quick look at the results revealed that the neutrinos were about 60 nanoseconds faster. This was to big a difference to be an instrument glitch and as a result, science started happening.

"GREAT SCOTT"

"Right when I say 'GO' you fire the neutrino"
Right I'm now going to start gushing about why I fucking love Science. You see I spend some of my time recreationally arguing with creationists, new-agers and super-naturalists, and they often come out with a similar line, which is basically this "You're just brain-washed by what you've been told all your life." The central idea behind this is that Science is constantly ignoring the evidence that supports the bullshit assertions these people erect. Well here is my evidence to the contrary these scientists had found something that had the possibility to destroy a century of work and advance. Here's what they did. They retooled the experiment. Fuck the changing states of neutrino's they said we've discovered a flaw in our understanding of the universe. They installed the most accurate clock they could find and ran over 16000 different instances, hunting down and removing every possible error in their measurements. They worked tirelessly and after three years they came out and published there results. That's the scientific equivalent of going "Seriously dude you have to try this out." There are no conclusions as yet and that's because it hasn't been double-checked yet, because science demands that you check, check and check again until you can say with certainty that something has happened. IF it turns out that this data is accurate then a century of scientific advancement will have to be discarded and new theories will have to be developed. 

So let's take off the overly scientific blinkers off for a moment and embrace the madness of what this MIGHT mean. Well first up time-travel is on the cards... It always has been but up until now the basic laws of science meant you could only travel back as far as when the first time machine was built. It's more like a time-door and needs another door on the other side but with the speed of light being pissed out the window we can just flit around how we please, if we can get passed the barrier ourselves. Obviously the idea of faster than light travel is appealing for those of us who plan to retire to a star system with more green-space women and less Conservatives.

If this doesn't do it for you then find your own damn planet.

Quantum Foam: If  this pictured doesn't creep you out
then you are ready to time-travel if it does then, gutted.
Now one theory that's been put forward is that the neutrinos aren't breaking the speed of light but are taking short-cuts through other dimensions by using wormholes found in the quantum foam which makes up the universe. Now the quantum foam is a constantly fluctuating field that is filled with constantly forming and collapsing black-holes, micro wormholes and tiny unicorns... look I'm not a physicist there comes a point where I just have to make stuff up. Anyway this is better for us. You see we're not neutrinos so we can't travel like them, but we could make something small enough to use these techniques to shoot across space and then assemble one half of an apparatus that could stabilise a bigger wormhole allowing us to basically Stargate across the universe and thus relegating Kelly Lebrock to the spot of second best thing science has ever done.

1: Stargates, 2: Kelly Lebrock, 3: Smallpox Vaccine 
Or it could turn out to be a mistake but another mistake that'll prove doubt and uncertainty are the best tools to help us understand the universe because, to quote the awesome XKCD,

"Science, it works bitches"

eddie <fought the law lost>

UPDATE: 04.07.12
Should have got this up sooner but it did in fact turn out to be a GPS calibration error.

Sunday 25 September 2011

We're going to need a bigger...


Ever since I was a young lad I've been obsessed by the trivial and unimportant, this has led to my acknowledged status as a masterful conversational partner. However, because I'm so meta it hurts sometimes, I'm also obsessed with other peoples obsessions with the trivial and unimportant. This takes us to the fabled city of Alexandria... Indiana where local eccentric and nineties sitcom neighbour Michael Carmichael has spent the last 34 years of his life creating the worlds largest ball of paint. That baseball in his hand is what started the entire affair. One day he decided to paint a baseball, let's not over-analyse that urge. Anyway over the years this "project" has grown and grown. Anyone can turn up and add a layer of paint. You can check out the website here. Now I feel it's important to note three things about that link. Firstly that website was clearly designed at least 6 years ago, seriously the other guys in the unusually large objects game are laughing at you. Secondly the paintball is a road-side attraction. Thirdly Mike is married... like really, when did he bring up the giant paintball in garage?
Anyway, I love shit like this it is one day my dream to drive across America and visit as many of the world's largest item's as I can. Why America because it's always America, Egypt had it's pyramids, the Greeks had the Parthenon and America has roadside crap. So without further ado here is my top 5 ridiculously large roadside attractions.
The Worlds Largest Ball of Twine
This one is awesome yet bizarre, you see if you should wish to see the worlds largest ball of twine you'd think that options would be limited. Oh you simple-minded fool. Don't worry I'm here to be your guide to the world of massive balls. For those of you who like your obsession combined with mind-numbing despair there is the world's largest sisal twine ball created by a single person. Located in Darwin, Missouri and the work of Francis A Johnson back in 1950 it is 12 foot in diameter and took 4 hours a day for 23 years to create. That's a really long time to not ask the question of "Why the fuck am I doing this?". Check out the website here. Now for me this is really the complete giant twine-ball experience. It has it's own museum, giant twine-ball starter kits and the world's largest pair of hand-carved multiple pliers thrown in at no extra charge. Although if you are going to visit I recommend holding off until the second Saturday of August as that's the towns Twine-Ball day. It's not the biggest over-all though for that you need the world's largest ball of twine built by a community. 
That's right Darwin, Missouri you may have had a crazy whack-job back in the 50's but Cawker City, Kansas is all crazy all the time. back in the 50's, which was apparently the golden age of giant balls of twine, Frank Stoeber started a twine ball that now has a 40 foot circumference... In other words you can repeat the word "Why?" over 50 times in the time it takes to circumnavigate. You know what it just occurred to me that both of these twine balls may be incredibly elaborate ways to hide a body. Again this has annual day... but in this one you can actually add more twine yourself, and help bury Stoeber's dark secrets even further.
Now I know that established twine-heads will rip me to shreds if I don't at least mention Lake Nebagamon, Wisconsin which has the honour of being the worlds heaviest twine-ball and was made by a man who calls himself JFK thus rendering it the only thing on this list that will have even the slightest connection to someone of value. I've not mentioned the ranson, Missouri twine-ball controversy, and I'll stay away from the way I believe Ripley's Believe It or Not has cheapened the name of the giant twine-ball business.
The World's Largest Rubber-Band Ball
Because nothing says street like a massive ball

That ball is the work off Joel Waul of Lauderhill Florida and I think we can all agree is the coolest thing in Florida... you know except everything in Orlando. I'd love to tell you that Joel has kept it real and stayed street, but no he sold it to Ripley's... buster.

The World's Largest Motorbike

What's the point of owning a motorbike? You may argue that it's the manoeuvrability that such a vehicle offers, you could say it's the feel of the wind in your hair... or you can be honest and say you just want to look cool. The advantages of tank ownership are less open for debate and consist entirely of the smug satisfaction of watching those around you soil themselves in terror. I know what you're thinking, "Eddie is there some vehicle that combines the impracticalities of both these vehicles?" Well look no further. 

The work of "Wild Bill" Gelbke, this monster hails from Chicago, Illinois and of course Gelbke's shattered psyche. Harder to see this one than the others on this list as it actually works and therefore spends most of it's life on tour... that said it's hard to freaking miss. Gelbke is also the holder of the world record for the smallest penis. All joking aside though come the zomb-o-calypse I call dibs on any device that can crush a tank. Althouh I have a real issue with Gelbke's choice of name "Roadog"... It should obviously be call "Thundercock".

The World's Largest Rocking Chair

The Route 66 Rocker is located in Fanning, Missouri... Missouri is also known as the show-me state, I'm guessing that's short for show-me what you've been doing with your time? Speaking as someone who's never been to Missouri and isn't an American I'm really curious as to what the priorities of this State are, seriously this is the first interesting thing I've ever learnt about Missouri. Hold on I'm going to Google Missouri Trivia... right first successful parachute jump, invention of Ice Tea aaannnddd, nope nothing else. Well yeah well done on the big chair front. Well big rocking chair anyway the biggest chair in the world is in Italy. 

I have to point out that nothing I've read about this supplies anything approaching a reason for it's construction. There is only one possible answer to the question of "why?" and it's that Fanning must be locked in some kind of feud with the town of Lipton, Texas. You see Lipton, Texas is home to the Lone-Star Rocker... currently the world's second biggest rocking chair. Come on Missouri what the fuck, do you think Lipton hasn't got enough on it's plate. If you Google Lipton, Texas the town doesn't even make the first page and now it doesn't even come up when you type in world's largest rocking chair. The keen-eyed will have noticed that the sign on the front of the Lonestar Rocker reads "World's Largest Cedar Rocker" that's marketing genius right there although I'm willing to bet I know what Fanning, Missouri started work on the minute that sign was hung. FUCK MISSOURI!
The World's Largest Collection of World's Smallest Versions of World's Largest Things

They should have sent a poet for I have no words

This is an actual thing. Hailing from Lucas, Kansas and the work of Erika Nelson who is the only person on this list I think is an actual genius. This entire concept is mad genius from beginning to end and it shames my obsession with the world's largest objects... Seriously look at this stuff yes that really is a tiny version of the Darwin Twine-Ball. The level of obsession here is frightening it's one thing to make a large ball of something but to actually do just the research here, let alone the construction is astounding.


Erika Nelson I salute you.

"You should never give up on your dreams... but what if they're stupid dreams?" - Stephen Colbert

Eddie <you wouldn't believe how much porn I found researching this>

Sunday 18 September 2011

Fuck the Pope

Let me begin by posting my official stance on religion.

Whilst I personally believe that organised religion i.e. The Catholic Church, Scientology and the NAZI Party, are responsible for some of the greatest evil ever perpetrated on this earth i.e. The Crusades, 9-11 and WWII, I also hold it true that personal beliefs and convictions are exactly that, personal. I will happily debate the merits of any philosophical stance and, as long as you don't choose to ignore a wealth of scientific evidence about the natural world, your choice of whether or not to believe in a supernatural deity is entirely your choice. However I do not believe such beliefs deserve/have any form of special protection from scrutiny, if you are homophobic, you are homophobic and your justification is unimportant. This applies to all opinions you hold.

Cunts.

As such I want to make it clear that my musings on His Holiness Pope Benedict XVI are purely based around the person and not the religion he represents. You see the Bible has been tinkered with by the Church many times through out the centuries, remember there was a time when the Bible was written in Latin and the only way to learn Latin was from the Church. Now regardless of your thoughts on God, anyone who is willing to trust that between the year 1 C.E. and the 1604 C.E. publication of the King James Bible in English no single ounce of corruption spread into the Church and the Bible isn't showing faith but a fundamental misunderstanding of history and human nature. 

An artist's representation of the time Pope Stephen VII dug up
the corpse of Pope Formosus and put it on trial... Popes are dicks.

One of the things that the sneaky Pope's have, allegedly, put into the Bible is the concept of Papal Infallibility. 

"Whatever you hold to be true on earth I will hold true in heaven." - Jesus (citation needed)

This means that if tomorrow morning the Pope came out and said the sky is purple, then as far as God is concerned the sky is fucking purple. This is a wonderful idea... No, really. It means that whoever was responsible for the early edits and rewrites of the Bible realised that future scientific advancements may discredit the text and gave the leaders of the Church a 'Get Out Of Jail Free' card. Sadly the Church doesn't use it this way instead it uses it to deny Scientific advancement. The day Copernicus worked out that the movements of the planets were due to the Sun being the centre of our Solar System, the Pope could have came out and through P.I. made it a doctrinal truth of the Catholic Church, same for Evolution, Medicine and a million other scientific advancements that could've helped the citizens of Earth.

Alternatively you can use it build this worthy
tribute to the humble son of a carpenter.

So with all of that made clear what is my problem with sinister former member of the Hitler Youth who is now head of the Catholic Church. Well first up let's address the Hitler Youth aspect, obviously it was a matter of law that every young person had to be enrolled in the Hitler Youth, no exceptions... except that there were. The Edelweiss Pirates are something of a forgotten footnote of history, it was made-up of people who had evaded the Hitler Youth by leaving school at 14 whilst still being below the conscription age of 17. They took as symbols those things banned by the Nazi Youth Movement and flouted many of the rules and restrictions, even the name was chosen to be a corruption of something Hitler loved the Edelweiss being his favourite flower. Yes, Hitler had a favourite flower... faggot. While I'm not going to pretend that these children were making much of an ideological stand, or helping the Allied War Effort or anything like that, they were an act of rebellion against Hitler... an act of rebellion that Pope Benedict XVI didn't take part in. To do so would have been brave, bold and fraught with danger but the core teachings of Jesus say nothing about right and easy being the same thing.

Join up and maybe you can be a despot too!

Now we've moved past the little Hitler Youth distraction let's move on to the serious issue, of whether or not God thinks it's OK to fuck children? Well you see this is were P.I. rears it's ugly head again, if the Pope holds true that it is OK then God has to. Well unfortunately the Pope does think it's OK. You see back when he was just plain old Cardinal Ratzinger he was responsible for discipline within the Church. Usually this consists of just making sure no-one starts making up Bible Quotes, flicks Holy Water at the Nuns or accidentally opens the Arc of the Covenant... most of my religious knowledge comes from films.

I'm also guessing he had to stop/watch this kind of thing

However Ratzinger resided over this job while reports where flooding in of Child Abuse. Acting as Jesus would want him to do Ratzinger made sure every single one of these reprobates were handed over the police without del... oh sorry, I got a bit confused there, what he actually did is help orchestrate a massive cover up. His signature appears on multiple documents linking him directly to the attempts to keep this information from leaking. As of yet the Catholic Church has not turned over a full list of it's child molesting priests. Christians have a phrase they like to use, What Would Jesus Do? Well if you know the story of the Money Lenders in the the Temple, if the church was doing something wrong Jesus would smash the place up. So that's how you should be reacting to the church until they, by which I mean the Pope, deal with this. You see I can only think of ONE group who would help paedophiles evade justice, and that's other paedophiles.

We have no way of knowing if his penis is in a child.

This is all coupled with the Catholic Church's rampant homophobia and the continued stance against the use of contraception to stop the AIDS pandemic. I know what you're thinking, those things are in the Bible. However the Pope has Papal Infallibility, remember, if he so choose he could just scrap these parts of doctrine and massively increase the quality of living for thousands of people on Earth. What I'm about to show you is uncomfortable and I apologise in advance.

There is nothing funny about this.

The Pope has the power to do something about this. If you believe in God and believe that he is a compassionate being then you must be against this kind of suffering or how about this...

In Africa being gay can still get you killed.

The Pope has the power to make a significant difference in the world... instead he uses his power to protect an unfair doctrine that is not the word of God but the result of hundreds of Pope's previous power plays. If you believe in God feel free but know that his representative on Earth is a cunt.

In conclusion FUCK THE POPE

Tuesday 13 September 2011

Rob Da Bank: Genius.

Hello Readers, yes I'm a few posts in and I'm getting a feel for the entire affair now so I shall refer to you as Readers should the urge take me... later this may manifest even further as I try and groom a private army to fulfil my many varied and nefarious wishes. I'll be honest this post is going to be somewhat meandering as I'm still fighting off the epic depression of no longer being at Bestival. I will do this by jabbering on about Bestival.

I think it is fair to say that Rob Da Bank is a visionary genius for putting together the events I have witnessed. To try and put this into any form of sensible discourse would not be in keeping with the events I've seen so instead I'm going to just try to do the entire festival in single disjointed sentences. Let's see how that goes.

"BESTIVAL! I'm so in the mood". It was actually surprisingly easy to get on top of this giant Bestival sign. Where's my hat gone? "That's not a knife it's a spoon". "Was that David Attenborough introducing Bjork... why doesn't he do more stuff like that?" "I don't think he wants to get known as an MC". According to the Construction Worker the "M" in YMCA is done with a downwards point not the over the head thing. I'm not actually certain whether or not Brian Wilson did anything during his set. Zane Lowe was DJing... constantly, it was quite hard work to avoid him. "Sorry for the shit maracas but we lost our tambourines in Berlin." I met Scroobius Pip in the Ambient Forest, that's an odd sentence to write. Tim Westwood went to Prep School with Mr.B The Gentleman Rhymer. My urge for fire can be defeated by fireworks. Is that Brass Band playing Deeper Underground by Jamiroquai... they are good I was worried I was coming over slightly odd. Marcus Brigstocke turned down 'Dancing on Ice' but he did piss in someone's handbag during The Cure. If something in a newspaper is in inverted comma's rather than quotation marks it's not a quote. We should all read Flava Flav's book, even if Chuck D looked pissed off every single time he mentioned it. "The know what is what, but they don't know what is what, they just strut. What The Fuck." MORE FROGS. So the Roller Disco, is past the Bollywood Bar near the Helter Skelter, but if you duck through the Ambient Forest Chill-out Session you can get to the Band Stand and the Tomorrow's World Tent. "The only thing this place is missing is a Ferris Wheel" "There is a Ferris Wheel" "I stand corrected". The children of Vicars know how to party. Is this a whaling shanty? It makes me feel excessively Irish. "She must be a lesbian". Bjork, I love you, you crazy Icelandic nut-case. Fuck it, next year I'm bringing a full tea set. Every band I saw looked like they were really enjoying themselves... well except for the Cure. Just Fuck Off Katy B. "When I say Magnetic..." I go see Mogwai. I tripped balls to Mogwai. DJ Shadow has a Deathstar. Holding a phone over my head for Noah and the Whale. Dancing like a twat to Groove Armada. Two men doing battle with lightning, and no matter how I describe it I won't do it justiuce. What's the Afterburner stage like? It's like being in fuckin' Mordor. Jive's making a comeback... seriously watch this space. Torrential Rain, 70mph winds and I felt like I was in Ibiza. GET BETTER.

So that was Bestival a heady experience that I'll be looking to recapture next year I'd like to say you're all invited but it's really nice and frankly it doesn't need any riff-raff.

I'll finish with two quotes one from a guy I was camping with called Dan "The proof is in the pudding and this is a damn fine pudding" and one from Bjork: "Thank you Isle of White."

Eddie <I'm the king of the swingers> 

Monday 5 September 2011

American

Bill Hicks isn't a hero of mine.

I have far to much respect for the man and his message to idolise him in such a way. If I didn't think it would be disrespectful to his memory the man would be my own personal Jesus Christ. You see I recently watched the amazing documentary American: The Bill Hicks Story, it should be up on iplayer still, go watch it I'll wait... You back? Good then I'll continue. I'm on about my fourth attempt at starting this post, because it is very difficult to put into words what I feel about Hicks without going into a bit of detail about how my mind works, or rather how Bill Hicks made my mind work.

I loved comedy as a child, I'd encountered Monty Python at about the age of 6 and had been marked for life as a follower of the comedic arts. These were the days when internet access was a luxury if it was available at all so my comedy appetites were left to starve feeding only when the 4 (later 5) terrestrial channels allowed it. This combined with bed times and so forth meant I was about 14 when I first stumbled across Bill Hicks. It was late at night I was in my room watching the small TV, that to this day remains an important possession for the sentimental attachment I formed to it, and Revelations was on. I cannot overstate the impact that it had on me.

Stand-up is, in my opinion, the greatest art-form that exists. There is no disconnect between a performer and his audience. The person on stage is solely responsible for what occurs in the show, the ideas, actions and words are purely his. There is no room for misinterpretation. On stage you stand alone. I know some of you are reading this are thinking that Comedy can't be the greatest art-form regardless of the format but it's the only medium that can bypass your natural defences. Laughter is not voluntary and once you're laughing that's when someone can start planting ideas in your head. I realised all of this within the first five minutes of Hicks's act.

To call Hicks fearless is to massively understate the case, but that's not what made him special. To call Hicks honest is again incredibly accurate, but that's not what made him special. Committed... Fuck yeah, but again that's not it. The thing that made Hicks THE Greatest Stand-Up Comedian of All Time was that he was always, always just so, fucking, RIGHT. Hicks had an unerring ability to just see past the bullshit of humanity and realise that the truth of the universe was incredibly simple.

Good People Should Be Angry.

If you can take a serious look at the world we as a species have created for ourselves and not feel at least some rage then you are in all probability not a good person. Let me be clear constant rage is absolutely the worst idea for anyone who wants to have even the slightest quality of life but through the other side of that rage lies a kind of serenity. You see the way to change the world is to laugh in the face of its folly and try and make the world a little bit better. All of this I got from one Bill Hicks show. He grabbed my mind by it's lapels and kicked the shit out of it until I thought I couldn't take any more and then he rebuilt it not the same as it was before but slightly better. He did this not through violence or malice but with words and laughter.

He had already been dead for four years. Without the influence of this modern day prophet I wouldn't be who I am. That is what Bill Hicks means to me the man who would be my own personal Jesus Christ... if he wasn't the man who taught me to hate people who get turned into idols... because idols are a marketing guy's wet-dream.

Bill Hicks's legacy is currently be protected by those who knew him best, his family and his close friends... but one day they won't be around and his image will start to be exploited twisted and turned into something it wasn't meant to be and that'll be the day when the revolution starts... because that's what he would've wanted.


"The world is like a ride at an amusement park. And when you choose to go on it, you think that it's real because that's how powerful our minds are. And the ride goes up and down and round and round. It has thrills and chills, and it's very brightly coloured, and it's very loud and it's fun, for a while. Some people have been on the ride for a long time, and they begin to question - is this real, or is this just a ride? And other people have remembered, and they come back to us. They say 'Hey! Don't worry, don't be afraid, ever, because, this is just a ride.' And we...kill those people. Ha ha ha. 'Shut him up! We have a lot invested in this ride. SHUT HIM UP! Look at my furrows of worry. Look at my big bank account and family. This just has to be real.' It's just a ride. But we always kill those good guys who try and tell us that, you ever notice that? And let the demons run amok. But it doesn't matter because: it's just a ride. And we can change it anytime we want. It's only a choice. No effort, no work, no job, no savings, and money. A choice, right now, between fear and love. The eyes of fear want you to put bigger locks on your doors, buy guns, close yourselves off. The eyes of love, instead, see all of us as one. Here's what you can do to change the world, right now, to a better ride. Take all that money that we spend on weapons and defence each year, and instead spend it feeding, clothing and educating the poor of the world, which it would many times over, not one human being excluded, and we could explore space, together, both inner and outer, for ever, in peace."
Bill Hicks

Eddie <Bush wouldn't have gotten away with half that shit if Bill had still been with us>

Thursday 1 September 2011

The Blood-letting.

I gave blood today. Look at me aren't I just so fucking nice. It's always a good idea to follow up any mention of blood donations with a line that makes you look like a prick. Why? Because the minute you mention it people assume you're being all high and mighty about your wonderful generosity. I don't believe I'm better than you because I give blood, that would be ridiculous, I believe I'm better than you for a whole raft of other reasons... but that's another post, well more of a book if I'm honest. Anyway this is about the blood thing.

This is the second time I've given blood, I started  earlier this year as part of my on going "Be Slightly More Awesome Everyday" policy, a philosophy I've been developing for a while. Now the interesting thing about the first time I gave blood is that I didn't know what my blood type was. I now know I'm O-. This is a huge deal. O- blood is similar to unicorn blood, both in rarity and magical properties. You see us with O- blood (who from now on I shall refer to as The Chosen) make up only 7% of the population, but our blood can be used by 100% of the population. This means that whenever some fucking dip-shit doesn't have the decency to have their blood-type tattooed on to their face before eye-balling a bottle of Jack and going night-driving. They have to fill them up with the blood of The Chosen. Also babies use a lot of O- apparently, I don't know if this is because they do a lot of drunk driving the literature wasn't that clear.

So now I've been made aware of my magical blood I have to donate regularly otherwise I'm just killing drunk babies left, right and centre... not a path I want to go down again. There is also one other crucial reason why I need to give blood whenever I can. You who aren't of The Chosen are literally stealing my blood. You see if you're an A, AB, A- or whatever then you get a choice of either your own type of blood or mine. I can only take the precious O- because it's magical and I'm better than you. As such I'm going to address some common excuses for not donating so that when I crash my jet pack into Canary Wharf whilst fighting of the impending Robogeddon (Armageddon with more Robots and less Bruce Willis) I will have some chance of not being dead.


  1. You can't donate if you do drugs. This is not just wrong but borderline retarded, if you're in a serious accident they'll be filling you with morphine before they even think about chucking some plasma in the mix. People in hospitals are the most drugged up people, outside of a rave, on Earth, your heavy weed use doesn't rule you out.
  2. I don't have time. Yes you fucking do. Donation is a quick and easy process, they give you tea and a biscuit as well... if you don't have time for a tea and a biscuit what are you doing reading this, you should be off attending to you're vital work.
  3. I don't like needles. Well I remember that when you've had your leg removed by an angry blogger with a chainsaw. "Oh no Mr Paramedic no morphine for them, they don't like needles." Seriously grow-up and just look the other way. No-one LIKES having a pint of blood stolen, but I bet you don't like your job either and you still do that.
Now I'm going to end by outlining a scheme that I genuinely believe would single-handedly end the shortage of donors in this country. 

Reward people for giving with a day off work. 

It's pretty simple giving takes less than an hour. You can give once every three or so months anyway so give everyone the option twice a year to go donate blood, collect a receipt and turn it in at work the next day. The rest of the day after the donation is yours... try roller-blading, go to the zoo, watch an inhuman amount of porn (although not all three at once) it's up to you you've earned it.

Eddie <seriously this would work>