I Wanna Be The Very Best

Sometimes when I've been drinking I make life altering decisions that I should not be making, fortunately when I sober up I quickly readjust back normal. Unfortunately for me I only sleep for four to six hours a night, which isn't enough time for my liver to have sobered me up. When you combine that with my genius invention of vodka shampoo... I'll be honest it's just a shampoo bottle duct-taped to a vodka bottle... These bad decisions can last for weeks. My most recent downward spiral into drunken mayhem started when I made the very sound three pint decision that you can learn a lot from song lyrics and ended with the realisation that you should never live your life by the tenets of the Pokémon Theme Song.

If you can't name at least 50 then you're a loser.

It started understandably enough. The opening line is a pretty fucking strong.
“I wanna be the very best, like no-one ever was.”
Unfortunately I'm already 27 and I'm heading towards thirty with near terminal velocity. The odds of me being the very best at anything that I'm not already pretty good at are slim to fucking-non-existant. So I needed to select a past-time that I already have a pre-existing talent for. Fortunately the song provides me with more advice in the second line.
“To catch them is my real test, to train them is my cause...”
I think that it's pretty obvious that this is telling me to become a Pokémon trainer. I know I'm pretty good at that already. I beat the Elite Four, I never underestimate my plant-types and I got my Pikachu to level 100... Oh yeah I had Pokémon Yellow bitches.

If you didn't have this then your parents didn't love you... My mum bought it by mistake.

“I will travel across the land, searching far and wide.”
Now Britain is a small island nation and as such has a deficit of both far and wide. However it wasn't long before I discovered some nearby long grass... I'd had a few more drinks it was around about 3am. Lurking in the long grass I discovered an unusual Pokémon I'd not encountered before. It was a black and white stripy creature and due to fight it put up as I wrestled it into a sack... Well, do you know where to buy a pokéball? No? Then don't fuckin' judge me... I'd wager it was some type of fighting-type, although later it revealed digging skills akin to a ground-type. Either way I was avoiding water and psychic types. I named my new-found companion 'Fuck-Hammer' and started looking for battle.

Britain's largest natural predator, America has big-foot we have badgers.

“These Pokémon to understand the power that's inside”
The way the sack was shaking, combined with the scratches, which I'd later learn were TB infected, I figured I had a fairly decent read on what this particular Pokémon was all about. So I just needed to try it out. That's when I had the good fortune to stumble across another trainer who had a was walking his Pokémon on a leash! I challenged him to battle me and flung my pokésack at the bastard. The Pokémon wasn't keen on obeying my commands but quickly managed to defeat the other creature. It's at this point I discovered that Pokémon don't instinctively know to stop when the enemy has passed out... As I look back on this with a degree of sobriety I think I may have killed a dog.

NEVER DO AN IMAGE SEARCH FOR DEAD DOG

“Pokémon... gotta catch them all!

It's you and me...”
There were sirens. Me and the Pokémon started to run... well I did the running he was in a sack. We were two peas in a pod. If one pea was fighting aggressively to escape from a sack... look at this point I was pretty bleary eyed, but I vaguely recall a helicopter, and running... lots of running.

When you're in that state of mind everyone chasing you looks like Tommy Lee Jones.

“Pokémon... Oh you're my best friend,

In a world we must defend.”
I'm gonna be honest this is the part where this article loses all conceptual cohesion. It was dark it was late my clothes were shredded from the woodland I'd been running through. I was still clinging to the sack that by this point, due to multiple impacts with branches, contained a large amount of dead mammal.

I wish I could pretend this was from an online search.

“Pokémon... gotta catch them all!

A heart so true, our courage will pull us through”
There was no courage... I was weeping like a altar-boy in a therapy session. It came as something as a relief when the police finally found me. I'd resorted to eating Fuck-Hammer for sustenance. I put up only a limited fight until I was tazed into submission.

My old nemesis.

“You teach me and I'll teach you.”
Is what the large man called 'Miriam' whom I'm sharing a holding cell just said to me. My only hope is that I can finish this post before the brutal punishing rape hopes and it will act as a warning to others. DO NOT LIVE YOUR LIFE BY THE POKéMON THEME TUNE

“Pokémon!

Gotta Catch 'Em All!

Gotta Catch 'Em All!

Pokémon!”

eddie <the pain... the pain!>

Life Modelling

So my oldest friend has decided to stand around naked. Yep I think that's the most uncomfortable way I can word that sentence. Now the part that renders the whole thing much clearer whilst also rendering the entire thing considerably less uncomfortable for you and by extension much less humorous for me. When I say oldest I mean the friend I have known the longest not a terrifyingly old individual and when I say stand around naked I mean, no, actually that bit requires no disambiguation. Whilst having a few drinks at a local watering hole, me and my friend were discussing our plans and dreams, I was discussing how I think it'd be fairly good fun to be a long distance lorry driver. Which it would be. You whack on some unabridged audio books and before you know it your widely travelled and well read. He then told me that he'd been looking into nudity.

Haven't used this picture in a while, don't say I never do anything for you.

Now this is the internet so I'm fairly certain that we've all done a fairly prolific amount of research into that subject. I think nudity actually outranks cats as the internets favourite thing... Oh I'd like to see the Google Analytics on that one... although I don't think anyone is using Google as a gateway to their pornography anymore. We all know the sites. Anyway I've wandered well away from my original “point”. My friend has been looking into the world of life modelling. Now I'm never more than ten feet from my moleskin, so when one of my friends says something weird like that I switch into full on Rita Skeeter mode and within a few seconds my Quick-Notes Quill was flying across the page.

Nudity and and an obscure Harry Potter reference... where else do you get that.

So here is the important information from the world of standing around naked. First of all this profession has it's own governing body. They're called RAM. RAM. Yep that's what they are called. Apparently we're living in a fucking Carry On film. So if you're a RAM registered model it's a bit like being a CORGI registered plumber. There are rules to this peculiar profession, first and foremost, erections are frowned upon. So unless that's your thing you'll want to keep your tallywhacker in check. The most important piece of advice they can give you is watch out for perverts. You know the kind of people who want to look at you naked for there own filthy, filthy reasons. However if you're willing to look past those two possible pitfalls then you can actually earn £10-£15 an hour for a newbie. To stand naked for a few hours. However you might have to do the first few gigs for free. You need a portfolio to prove that you can both stand and be naked. Really.

It's black and white... that means art.

It may worth doing though because you can earn up to £100 an hour for semi-erotic poses... I don't have a clue either. Maybe standing with one hand lightly grazing a teste. It's important to note that you can refuse any psethat is either to difficult or awakens a deep sense of shame and self-loathing without being de-RAMmed... snicker. You can actually earn a real fuck-ton doing this. If you work as a model for a sculpture you can earn £700 a day, there will be photos taken and contracts signed to say that the artist won't put the pictures on the internet, because why the fuck not.

... but they can display the statue anywhere.

The strangest thing about this whole thing is that there are people advertising for these models on gumtree and craigslist. I won't use those sites to by a fucking sofa out of fear of being turned into a cut-rate organ farm and yet there are people advertising for naked people to come to their house and apparently it's successful enough to be a viable tactic. This is simultaneously alarming and frustrating mainly because all of my craigslist adverts to get naked people to my house have been incredibly unsuccessful. Do you want to know the weirdest thing about life-modelling? Why did I even ask. Of course you want to know the weirdest thing about professional nudity if you didn't you wouldn't be the kind of deviant that is my target audience. Well here it is, the most sought after models are old fat men. I've been thinking about that and all I can think of is that much like the Japanese whaling community they like to go for sheer tonnage.

Only non-depressing image I could find for whaling.

So there are my insights into the strange and peculiar world of standing around naked in front of large groups of people for money... which, and I can't stress this enough, is very different from the less strange and much less peculiar world of dancing naked in front of large groups of people for money.

eddie <I have the weirdest pub conversations>

Friend-zone

There are a lot of differences between men and women... and yes, like every stand-up comedian ever I have decided to mine this rich vein of comedy gold. I think that accepting this fact is frankly fucking key to ever finding happiness, because it's only when you learn what these differences are that you have a hope of surviving the emotional battlefield that is dating without needing a lot of counselling. Before I even start writing this column though I would like to make a few things clear. Firstly; it is not my intention to slight either gender. Secondly; as a man I am going to be drawn to elements of female behaviour that make little sense this is not meant as an attack it's just my natural bias as a writer. Thirdly this blog is first and foremost humorous... it's in the title, so if I accidentally offend you please try and have a sense of humour. Right so that should placate the rabid feminist bull-dykes, he's why women are evil and mental... Calm down, that was a joke.

There are a lot of pictures like this, a lot... it's almost as if women are angry a lot.

I'm a man of a scientific bent and as such I try to understand most behaviours through the lens of evolutionary biology. Now before you start arguing I am fully capable of linking any aspect of human behaviour to evolution. Do you think autumn leaves look nice? Well that's because there was a point when going a-gathering in the last days of autumn for nuts and berries and what not could be the difference between life and death. Hence those with a genetic predisposition towards enjoying those hues were more likely to survive, cycle forward a fuck-ton of generations and everyone likes autumn leaves. It's important to note that men and women were both under and incredibly different set of evolutionary pressures during the development of our species. Men evolved as pack hunters, whereas women evolved as social creatures. This meant that men's ability to survive was based on our hunting and teamwork abilities whilst women survived on there ability to manipulate and control social situations. As such women fear unpopularity much more than men, watch any high-school movie and you'll see the popular girls and the jocks. The men have attained popularity through there mastery of traditionally male activities, team-sports are a modern stand in for pack-hunting, whereas the women have attained popularity through strong social skills. As such women will always embrace a 'kinder' approach to awkward situations... this brings me to the friend-zone.

Google Image Search: Patronising: First Page

Whilst men prefer a concise and cruel 'fuck you' approach to those who we wish to cease socialisation with, women naturally look for the way that is kinder, or at least appears so. Friend-zoning someone is not kind. From a male perspective it is a hellish limbo place completely devoid of sex. Friend-zone 'friendship' is an entirely one-way system. You see men and women define friendship differently, women define a friend as someone who provides emotional support, whereas men define a friend as someone who helps them get laid. Unfortunately this attitude sickens women so guys in the friend-zone, operating on the false hope that comes from a lack of clear rejection, try to conceal this side of their nature. As a result a guy in the friend-zone will be incredibly emotionally supportive but the girl who friend-zoned him will rarely, if ever, throw an emotionally vulnerable younger sister his way. I'm certain that a few women are reading this going, that's not true of my friend. It is. Unless he's gay. If you want a true friendship on equal terms for each time the guys comes through on an important emotional level for you, get one of you friends to go on a date with him. Balance.

I have no idea what other picture to use for balance

I think that the whole friend-zone thing comes from the fact that women view sex and emotions as linked and men don't... Don't have a pop at me for generalising, I hate ALL sweeping statements. Look... evolution again... there are two ways to be genetically successful as a male, loving relationship and nailing everything in sight. For women on the first one of those works that well. As such a large portion of men are disgusting sex-criminals and a equally large portion aren't, whereas women tend to be less slaggy overall. So if a man doesn't like a women, he'll probably do a runner as soon as he's fucked her, whereas women don't do a runner and don't fuck the guy. I'm not saying which ways better but one involves people having sex and the other doesn't. You see because women view sex and emotions as linked they don't put a lot of thought into the emotions of those they haven't played hide the sausage with, as such they friend-zone guys in order to protect themselves whilst not putting to much thought into the emotional midden they've left their 'friend' in.

This will from now on be my go to image for 'friendship'.

In conclusion. Men; the minute calls you a friend be up front and honest. Ask for a clear answer on future relationship options. Women; the minute you decide to friend-zone a guy start sounding out your girl-friends to find someone who will touch you friends penis. I'm know I'm going to get a lot of flak for the perceived sexism of this but I think it's a small price to pay for the knowledge that I may have in some small way helped reduce the misery of my fellow man.

eddie <this post is the internet equivalent of a brick off an overpass.>

Anders Breivik: A Man Of Integrity?

Honest, upstanding, truthful. All words that haven't been used to describe Anders 'I Shoot Kids' Breivik. I don't know if your aware of Anders Breivik. I don't like to assume. If you aren't aware of him he's the raging twat-bag who exploded two bombs in Norway on the 22^nd of July 2011, killing 8 people, and then went on a shooting spree which killed another 69 people mostly teenagers. In conclusion he is, what is commonly known as, a dick. Yes I'm grasping at the incredibly low hanging fruit of throwing insults at a mass murderer. Has anyone got a problem with this? I mean I know it's an easy target but it is topical and also I reckon I can make a decent run of it, so here we go. Anyway the key to this entire little rant I'm about to go on is the fact that Anders Breivik is a slimy lying coward of a man.

In addition to being a mass-murdering trundle-cunt he is
the 2008 winner of the world's most punchable face contest

I actually love when a guy like this winds up being taken alive. It's just about my favourite kind of twenty-four hour rolling news circus other than when there's a war on... I'm sorry I know that war is a terrible thing but ongoing news coverage of one is objectively awesome, few things get me more excited than the words “... and now we go live to the virtual war-room.”... I've wandered well off topic here haven't I. So anyway I love it when one of these mass murdering bag of dicks gets taken alive and put on a real live trial. You see I always worry that as these turd-burglars gets shot between the eyes, there final delude thoughts are that they have achieved their goals. It's why I'm so glad that the marines running the prison that held Saddam showed him the South Park movie before he died, just so he knows exactly where he fits in the universe.

In fifty years time this is the only way anyone will
remember this tosser... sometimes as a species we do OK.

Breivik could have died believing that he had in fact started a huge tidal wave of anti-muslim violence that would sweep the Islamic faith from Europe. As it is he now gets to see the massive pile of nothing that his actions changed and gets to have every bullshit assertion he's made ripped to shreds by a gleeful media. I rarely applaud the mainstream media but I have to say for the most part they've been fantastically great this time around.

Yes that's right mainstream media I'm paying you a
compliment don't be to shocked... I'll get over it soon

It started with Breivik claiming that he was member of a super-secret society of equally stupid cunt-thumpers called the Knights Templar, who by the way get a terrible rap in most fictitious works, never piss off a pope I guess is the moral of that one... eh. Anyway the prosecution quickly went to work ripping this notion to shreds and the mainstream media jumped all over this, because the media loves kicking someone we hate more than them. Claims made by Breivik that he is completely sane and the media start questioning that, pointing out the massive pile of dead kids that isn't really a hallmark of the well adjusted. Breivik says that he is not a fascist nor a zionist and again his manifesto is combed for stuff that contradicts this despite the fact that is a confusing mess and a nightmare to read. Most recently Breivik has stated that he trained for his attacks using Call of Duty and the mainstream media has, as one, stood up and said “Seems legit.”

... and there's the familiar feeling of hatred leaking
back into my soul. Ahhhh welcome  back old friend.

Oh look at that I went in one direction and now I've jack-knifed over to discuss a completely separate issue sometimes it's almost as if I'm clever. So seriously mainstream media we were a team here. He was a twat, we both agreed, you kept giving me information on his twattery and then he says something you agree with and you don't even question it. OK fine apparently this shit is on me. OK fine I'll handle this it's cool if you can't be bothered I'll step away from the field of humorous dick jokes on the internet and into the realm of actual journalism.

I think we can all admit that one is a job with a long history
and a reputation of moral standing and the others journalism.

So I should point that the entirety of my research on this is that I have in fact played COD. So first off Breivik said that it's obvious to anyone who has played the game that the the holographic scope turns you into a master marksman. It's a higher level scope in the game that's absolutely true but if you can find a single person who prefers the holographic scope for running and gunning, which is what Breivik did. Laser dot sight is the way to go for that, the holographic scope is for sniping with an assault rifle, you know if you want to keep the option of close-combat that the sniper rifle doesn't really give you.

Also if you are planning a massacre and you've played
COD and you don't opt for an M4 you're a fucking idiot.

COD is also “used by many armies through out the world” because nothing prepares people for war like having your health regenerate when you hide behind a wall. The Americans actually have a game called America's Army, they had it made to train on they're not wasting there time on COD. He also claims that there are “many different tasks and some of those tasks can be compared to an attack, for real.” If you've ever played COD you'll know that the only task is “Shoot man with gun”. In fact the whole cover fire approach to the entire game dynamic is based on the fact that everyone else has a whole host of guns. The kids he shot didn't. The only part of this analogy that possibly works is the Russian Airport Massacre at the beginning of Modern Warfare 2 but even that is nothing like the crimes committed by Anders.

If you want a game that really turns you into a horrifying
murderous bastard then you have to opt for the Sims.

How is it that the mainstream media can cover the trial of an admitted mass-murderer and still piss me off more than anything about the actual story? For the first time in about a decade I wasn't focussed on the fact that you guys were dicks. For the first time in a year I wasn't preoccupied with the fact that you demonstrably complete and total toss-bags of the highest order and you just pissed the whole thing out the window. Wankers.

eddie <let's all believe what want to believe even when it isn't true>

Killing Time

I recently watched the fantastic film God Bless America, excellent movie by the way, and it got me thinking about spree-killing. This isn’t that unusual though there’s a whole host of things that get me thinking about spree-killing but most of it is on the E! network. This got my wheels turning in a different way. It got me wondering why we, as a society, have such a soft spot for people with ridiculously high body-counts?

It might help when one of them is Woody Harrelson

There are two kinds of film about people who kill large numbers of people, thrillers and black-comedies. Thrillers tend to focus more on serial killers protagonists who rarely grab a huge amount of screen-time. At bests they clock up body-counts somewhere in the low teens however there is always an extra hook to make them particularly gristly. Sometime they’ll cut the skin off, other times he might do something funny with the heads… if I ever flip I plan to leave each of my victims with a massive dildo sticking out of there chest like an x-rated version of Alien. The point being that a writer has to make a serial killer do something more crazy than just killing a bunch of people. Otherwise we’d end up rooting for them.

Yeah he made a guy knife-fuck a prostitute
but he did behead Gwyneth Paltrow.

Any time someone just snaps, a word I’ll come back to later, and kills a bunch of people we all just nod in understanding. Fantasising about opening fire on a bunch of our fellow humans is something we’ve all done. If you want evidence that people root for crazed mass-killers then look no further than the greatest pop-culture icons of modern-times. I’m talking of course about Batman. Everyone loves the Batman from the tip of pointy ears to the bottom of his ridiculous cape he is one of the most beloved characters ever, there is only really one pop culture icon who might just edge that popularity contest… The Joker.

Oh fuck I think I've attracted his attention... don't move.

We all love the clown-faced psychopath. Why? Because he, like Batman, is the personification of a deeply held belief that each and everyone of us is only one bad day away from flipping-the-fuck-out. It’s the reason we use the word snap. A word that means to break under pressure. All of us are constantly placed under a huge amount of pressure by the fact that we are good people. Bad people vent and yell and demand the universe adjusts to their requirements. Good people bury it all. Good people are placed under a huge amount of pressure because of the simple fact that every step towards civilisation we have taken is another step away from a world where dick-heads get murdered.

Vikings rarely tolerated dick-heads

I'm obviously not going to argue that civilisation is a bad thing, that would be a ridiculous position to take. I am saying that everything society has done to protect good people from the forces of evil has, unfortunately, protected raging douche-nozzles from the wrath of the righteous. When everyone carried a sword and there was no such thing as a police-force there were a lot less wankers. I'm not saying that people behaved better under those more primitive conditions, that noble savage bull-shit is exactly that, but that there were physically less of them because they were more prone to being straight up murderlised. Societal advancement can, it could be argued, be viewed as an ongoing struggle to move the line you have to cross before your murder becomes justified.

You'd go to PRISON for killing this.

I personally believe that the main reason for this is not a huge advancement made by our civilisation but rather simple population growth. Back in the 1500s you would never meet more than about five hundred people unless you were in a war. As such it was very easy for news of your dickery to be spread to all and sundry. Today tossbags are much more dilute. In the average day it is entirely possible that a spiteful, feckless toss-gargler may easily reach the point where they fully deserve to be stamped to death by a large man in knife-boots. However no single individual has to deal with as more that ten percent of it. In addition those that are exposed to them are very unlikely to be in contact with everyone else who has had this piece of shit ruin their day. Remember the last time some objectionable monkey-fucker ruined a small section of your day. Now imagine spending 24 hours with them. You're probably already imagining how you'd kill them.

I'm a traditionalist.

Our society, in it's present form forces good people to co-exist with a whole bunch of jizz-bungles that, on balance, probably don't deserve to live. I'm writing this in a beer-garden and I can count at least five of them in eye-line. That's why we relate to the central idea of going postal. Each and every one of us has our own list of who we'd take down, we've all fantasised about it... hell I'd imagine most of my readers have got the weapons selected. The world is filled with two types of people. Those who hear about a high-school massacre and react with surprise and horror and those who are surprised every single day that there isn't one.

eddie <tightly wound>

Televisual Reminiscences

I recently mentioned the fantastic TV Show Randall and Hopkirk (Deceased), possibly one of my all time favourite TV shows and my second favourite TV show featuring a ghost, Being Human (The UK Version) edges that category. It got me to pondering some of the other shows that I'm deeply nostalgic about. My own childhood televisual viewing was dictated largely by the vagaries of the british terrestrial television schedule. For reasons that have never been adequately explained to me the BBC2 had a real penchant for showing quirky obscure sci-fi in the hour that was inhabited by the 6 O'Clock News over on BBC1. As such I'm a huge fan of a lot of ridiculously old-school cult TV.

Why do I insist on putting the wank I write near Community?

Randall & Hopkirk (Deceased) was a fairly regular feature popping up almost every couple of months. The plot concerned the goings on of diamond in the rough detective Jeff Randall and his recently deceased partner Marty Hopkirk. The central mechanic of the show was the idea that only Jeff could see Marty. This allowed a two-bit private-dick an incredible edge in most of his investigations. It falls squarely into the bizarrely demented category of low-budget british Sci-fi, whilst the Americans may have the money to destroy a fleet of cars every week on Knight Rider we had Jeff Randall driving around in a Vauxhall Victor 2000. British TV of the period knew that it's only hope to compete with much slicker american programming was to be bat-shit mental. So we end up with a white suited ghost teleporting into offices and gathers evidence of crimes, I don't think anyone is really making a lot of money off of this so why don't you download it and enjoy all 26 episodes of something unlike anything else. Avoid the remake though, I love Reeves and Mortimer but that was a rare miss.

It also taught me that sleeping with your best-
friends widow is just part of the grieving process

Another regular in this time-slot was The Champions. The Champions ran for one series in the tail end of the 1960's it only ran for one season. It was the tale of three super-powered Interpol operatives. Each had psychic powers, super strength and agility as well as many other bizarre powers. Of course as we all know a super-hero is only as good as his origin story, so what was it that gifted these agents of justice there wondrous powers? Aliens? Secret Experiments? Secret civilization of highly evolved beings rescuing them from a plane crash in Tibet, saving their lives and gifting them with inhuman powers? No really. That was an actual plot of a real TV show. One that has yet to be re-imagined on the big screen. For shame Hollywood, for shame. If you're a big fan of seeing people pretending that fake polystyrene rocks are both really heavy and easy to lift. Then you should definitely check out this masterful piece of nonsense.

If this picture alone isn't cool enough to make
you watch it then you have no sense of style

I'm going to branch out a little from these british cult-classics and talk about two of the most fantastically demented american sci-fi shows that made there way in to BBC2's cult slot. First up Buck Rogers inthe 25^th Century. I've never had it clarified whether or not there were other series featuring Buck Rogers in different centuries. The basic plot of the show was that Buck Rogers, a happening kind of late seventies astronaut is accidentally thrown forward in time by the most bitching theme-tune in the history of television... That is not even approaching an exaggeration, here have a listen...

Fortunately instead of the world being over-run by a race of highly intelligent apes, he found that the same race of highly intelligent apes were still in charge. Also robots. I'm certain there was a hawk-man made mostly of eyebrows at some point as well. I'd love to say that this show is responsible for my life-long distrust of jump-suits but there is another show that holds that honour.

Yes... that is Gary Coleman and a robot.

Space1999, started with a bold hypothesis, what if there was a base on the moon. Imagine then that a massive explosion blows the moon away from the earth at tremendous speed. With me so far? Now imagine that there are some 'space-warps' that hurl the moon further and further into unknown space. Someone convinced a whole whole team of people to actually make this... and they suggested it needed a shape-shifter. If that hasn't at least slightly intrigued you then you don't have a fully working sense of curiosity. Actually now I come to recall it this show had a rockin' awesome theme-tune as well.

Seriously, who was knocking these things out? Anyway I think I've touched on all the shows that I think you should watch... So I'm going to spend the next paragraph talking about the single greatest television show on british television when I was a kid. KNIGHTMARE. If you are one of my readers who happens to be from somewhere other than the United Kingdom, then go find a torrent and download a single episode of Knightmare... I'll wait... I know I make this joke a lot. This is not a joke. Fuck it here's a clip...

Now that you've seen that tell me you wouldn't have wanted to go on that show as a kid. Hell I'm an adult and I'd give a fucking limb to go on that show. If you don't think that's a genuine statement, left-leg below the knee... I've given it a lot of thought. It's combines Dungeons & Dragons, computer games and a ridiculously sinister host. To this day the running out of time face is the thing that pursues me in my most horrifying dreams. If anyone knows what happened to Treguard I will pay handsomely for an autographed picture. It ran for eight seasons and it wasn't anywhere near enough. I just looked Treguard up and he was the Guildmaster in Fable. So there's that. To be fair it seems like the kind of role that'd follow you around.

eddie <I will pay £1000 to play Knightmare>

My Time As A 'Squatch

Let me tell you something my friend, Big Foot is Big Money. If there's ever a lesson to learn from the internet it's that a lot more people believe in ridiculous bullshit than you could possibly imagine. Once people start spending their free time on these sites a weird kind of positive enforcement feedback loop occurs and even smart people can find themselves turning from curious and open-minded to rapid conspiracy theorists. This has changed the game when it comes to the field of cryptozoology, in short for the first time ever the believers have cash. You see as recently as late nineties the average sasquatch believer was a semi-literate hill-person whose mind was trying to defend itself from memories of horrifying uncle related abuse. These days the believers aren't trying running moonshine but running Fortune 500 companies. Ever since the founding of the Catholic Church men with an eye for opportunity have been trying to part the incredulous with whatever wealth they may have. So when the Venn diagram showing wealth and a belief in big foot started to overlap, I stepped up.

People like this.

There's plenty of towns throughout the Pacific North-West that do a roaring trade in Big-Foot related tourism. Fortunately there's plenty of others who want a piece of that pie, especially in these tough economic times. The average town can only take so much of seeing the next town over coining it in off a particularly gullible type of tourist before finally caving. That's where I come in. I've been squatching for about five years now, and I say with delusion that I'm the best damn squatcher in the business. Some people will slap on a suit go for a stroll and let a partner in crime film it and shove it up on the internet. A video like that gets torn to shreds pretty quickly. To many loose ends. Those guys are usually trying to make money off the back end... 'I Saw Big-Foot' t-shirts and so forth. I get paid cash up front, usually by the local tourist board and for that they get a different level of service.

There is a lot of money in local tourist boards.

I'll spend up to a month getting to know a two to three square mile patch of forest, it's got to be easy to hide in, usually I like a there to be a lot of geographical range, say a river, a few cliffs, variation is key to my work. Now instead of hiding away in a cave or something I usually set up a camp in the midst of the woods. I carry all of the paraphernalia of a true-believer, if anyone questions my presence, I'm hunting big-foot. It's key that the chosen area has a challenging but not infrequently used hiking trail. Ideally I want someone to pas through about once a day. I find a decent diner and settle in and wait for my mark.

I have no diner related jokes.

I'm looking for a particular type of person, They've got to have a decent camera, those are easy enough to spot these days the amateurs use their phones more often than not. They've got to be slightly older I don't need any of them trying to run me down and most importantly they've got to be open minded. I usually slip the waitress a few bucks to through in a few big-foot related questions. It helps that I'm usually employed a few towns over from a somewhere that's been trading off the big-foot name for awhile. I prefer a couple, usually one of them is more of a believer than the other and they might still be bickering about two or three hours later. That's when I make my move.

The woods friend to both the sasquatch and the rapist.

It's important to note that a lot of prep-work has been done before the squatch-suit goes on footprints will have been laid, animal bones with unusual teeth-marks will have been placed nearby. I also have a blend of certain chemicals that gives an odour matching the descriptions the nut-jobs have come up with for the 'creatures' urine. Only after all this prep has been done do I engage the target. That's not as bad as it sounds, I suit up in and run full tilt towards the trail where the mark awaits, I try to cut across the path about five hundred feet ahead of them. It's very important to choose a straight bit of trail for this otherwise they won't have the right visibility. It's important to make as much noise as possible and to not break pace no matter what. Ideally the mark should have enough time to snap off one blurry shot that they will have uploaded to the internet within minutes. The photo is not the key though, the real prize is the fact that the mark is converted to a believer with all the zeal of a convert. One bad photo with a staunch defender is worth a HD quality fake without it.

Much like this thing.

It's about this time that I officially arrive in the area, just in time to appear as an 'expert' on the the elusive beast on the local news. The resulting media buzz around the town can as much as double the towns tourism earnings for anywhere up to a month maybe more if timed right. I double my fees just before the summer break. Some people would call my line of work dishonest, but these idiots are going to find someone to take their money at least I'm creating jobs in the process. Well right up until the point some fuck-weasel tags you with a tranquilliser dart and you fall down a ravine and into a river. At that point you have to hope to the fates and pray someone saves you... I my case it's how I wound up meeting Big-Foot.

eddie <only the third weirdest job I ever had>