“The Scaryduck Official New Year Message”

Your humble scribe will be spending his New Year’s Eve stone-cold sober on a train somewhere between Reading and Weymouth. With a bit of luck and a following wind, I may even make it home before midnight. Woo.

While we’re all wishing each other a “Peaceful” New Year, may I draw your attention to a couple of statistics. Number one: the number of people killed by war in the twentieth century: one hundred and eighty million, the vast majority being non-combatants . Number two: the number of weapons of mass destruction possessed by the United States Strategic Air Command: far too bloody many.

A Happy and Peaceful New Year to you all, even if the odds are somewhat stacked against you.

After that little slice of misery, here’s something that came to me via the author Neil Gaiman’s weblog. Dead Ringers is a BBC comedy show that hasn’t quite survived the transition from radio to television. One of the highlights of the most excellent radio version is a series of spoof phonecalls by someone pretending to be Tom Baker of Doctor Who fame.

So, what happens when “Tom Baker” calls Tom Baker? A cataclysmic matter/anti-matter collision that brings about the end of the universe, that’s what. Or just a shedload of laughs in which the real Baker's the one having the most fun.

Catch you on the other side. Bring pie.

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"There's a guy works down the chip shop swears he's a Marxist-Leninist Revolutionary"

“A revolution is not a dinner party.” - Mao Tse-Tung, 1927

“Big bag of chips, please.” - Scaryduck, 1982


"So that's Cod and Chips twice and a pickled egg"

Your conventional view of history says Chairman Mao died in 1976 after a long, distinguished life at the forefront of the Chinese Communist Revolution. That is, as we all know, a load of old cobblers. In reality, Mao Tse-Tung tired of running a country of one billion citizens and all their petty, personal problems, faked his death and ran off to run a fish and chip shop in the South of England.

Now don’t get me wrong. He was a lovely bloke. You’d find it vey hard to believe that this was the man who had led his people on the Glorious Long March, had overthrown the corrupt government of Chiang Kai-Shek and saw his country re-born in the red-hot crucible of the Cultural Revolution. No wonder he wanted the quiet life. He cooked the best chips in Henley, too, as the long queues out of the shop door would testify.

With decades of Marxist-Leninist revolutionary leadership under his belt, it wasn’t long before the other chip shops in the area withered under Mao’s Great Leap Forward. Only the capitalist running dogs of The Brown Trout (surely the worst name for a restaurant ever) survived, the long queues out of the door of this chip shop testament only to the fact that he cooked every single portion to order. One at a time.

We all loved Chariman Mao, and if he gave his Little Red Book of Fish Recipes away with every packet of chips, the entire population of Henley would have been card carrying reds by now, and not under the jack-booted powers of capitalist oppression that is Michael Heseltine and...err... Boris Johnson.

I actually went to college with Mao’s son Andy, a youth who worshipped the music of Phil Collins rather too much to be completely healthy. He once filled an entire C-90 cassette with "Easy Lover", back to back, over and over to listen to in his car. This was shortly before I bludgeoned him to death with a frozen haddock. When pushed on the matter and threatened with the withdrawl of our trade for the pedestrian delights of the Brown Trout, he finally revealed the one great secret of the Chinese Takeaway.

“Andy,” we asked, “When someone comes in and orders just chips, do you all come out of the kitchen holding meat cleavers and stare at them?”

“Yup. It’s part of the job description.”

“What do you say?”

“I go for the lyrics to ‘In the Air Tonight’. My mum and dad run through the shopping list.”

Rumbled.

Clicky for part II of this epic tale of mirth and woe.

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"Apropos of Nothing"

It's no good, I can't go on like this. I want to be a Ninja, leaping from tree to tree, talking with animals and ...errr... hang on. Obviously, I am in need of expert tuition from a Ninja Master.



Aren't faceswaps great?

Straight from the Scaryduck spam files, two beauties I received today:

Your Bowels Cleaned: A disturbing treatise as to why I should send some bunch of spammers $51.50 for a bottle of washing-up liquid and a funnel. I'll give that one a miss, it sounds a complete washout. Most disturbing of all is the last line: Currently available only in the U.S. and Canada. Seeking Distributors to meet high demand."

See a Horny Teen Girl Do a horse with a 31 inch C*ck it's FREE: Why oh why oh why do these people insist on sending me all this bestiality, sodomy, buggery and all kinds of unspecified sexual deviancy through my mailbox? I can get all that at home, thank you very much. And thirty-one inches? That's a bit on the small side, isn't it?

N3wt: comes with the Scaryduck seal of approval.

Tomorrow (or the day after - it's all very much down to the "I can't be arsed" variable) sees the publication of my latest Scaryduck Nearly True Tale - the unmasking of Marxist-Leninist Revolutionary Mao Tse-Tung working in a chippy in Henley-on-Thames. Very large bladed weapons will be on display for your delight.

That is all.

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"Excuse me sir, do you have a licence for zis minky?"

I got socks this Christmas. Homer Simpson. In sock form. We also got a whale. A great big stonking Minky Whale that swam into Portland Harbour and tried to kill itself by ramming itself up the beach near to Scaryduck Towers. Repeatedly.Opinion is divided in the Scary household as to why it would resort to this kind of behaviour, but the arguments have boiled down to the following:

* Depressed over the prospect of war with Iraq and North Korea, coupled with a poor selection of Christmas presents
* In-laws coming to stay, forever
* Kurt Cobain in another life
* Repeatedly buggered by Georges the Randy Dolphin, who just can't leave it alone

The RSPCA have done their best for the poor chap, but things just aren't looking too good, and it appears we'll have a dead whale stinking the place up for the New Year. God, I hope they blow it up. We haven't finished the Turkey yet.

Pukka festive Weebl and Bob story HERE.

And finally, let us pray for Our Lord Wil Wheaton's burning wang. Now wash your hands.

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"A Christmas Tale"

Isn’t Christmas lovely? It’s that time of year when families get together, united in love and understanding, to get outrageously drunk and blow each other up. Sounds perfectly reasonable to me.

We always used to go to my Grandad’s for Christmas. He lived in Basildon, a horrible concrete mess on the other side of London where Cockneys go when they’ve had enough of the East End. My dad’s brother and his family also lived there, so you could always guarantee a full house and a pretty lively Christmas.

Grandad was a pretty practical chap. He had a garden to die for, and won horticultural awards all over the place. He also made his own wine, and his spare bedroom was alway filled with huge demijohns (look it up) bubbling away with his latest brew. The peapod wine was his speciality, and had a variety of uses as a paintstripper, patent cure-all and weapon of mass destruction.

Scene: Grandad, Gran, five of us in our family, four of Uncle Dave’s mob, one over-excited dog, all in a kitchen-diner the size of a postage stamp. If one of us wanted to get up, at least four others had to move. If the dog wanted to get up, we all had to go out into the garden. So Grandad opened the front parlour, a room that hadn’t seen human life since 1963 apart from the comings and goings of his gardening trophies and enormous stock of homemade booze.

Ah, but it was Christmas! Gifts were exchanged. My cousin Andy gave his dad a marvellously fat Cuban cigar. Quite where an eight-year-old kid got it from is another matter, but in those days you could send your bairns off to the cornershop for twenty Bensons and a bottle of vodka without the shopkeep even batting an eyelid, but there you go.

What Uncle Dave didn’t know was that Andy had also been to a joke shop on the seafront at Southend, and his cheroot was positively brimming with exploding cigarette ends. Before the day was out, there would be hell to pay.

A quick aside - Andy is the most accident-prone person I have ever met. He was always falling down stairs, off ladders, out of trees or over the handle-bars of his Raleigh Chopper. He had a season ticket for the local Casualty department, who’d always wave him off home with a shout of “See you next week”. He once caught his Johnson in his zip on the beach at Southend and spent the rest of the day having it frozen by hospital staff who could barely stifle their laughs. When he got married, the car broke down on the way to the church, so he arrived on the back of a tractor, with the heap of junk towed behind. He is, of course, a most excellent individual.

The Christmas dinner came and went, Gran catering for the assembled masses like she’d done it for her entire life. Grandad let us kids have one thimble-sized glass of his homemade paint-stripper, and we all toasted the Queen, family, friends and the downfall of the Bay City Rollers. And that was enough for most.

But not me. As the rest of the family snoozed in a post-dinner stupor, I sneaked into the front parlour and helped myself to another glass. And another. And another. Before long, my ten-year-old head was spinning round like a spinny-round-and-round thing, and I was feeling more than a little queasy. It was round about then that my body decided it wished to part company with Christmas dinner.

Page 374 of The Thoughts of Chairman Mao says “You can’t hold back puke”, and how right he was. In panic, a darted around looking for somewhere to spew. The room was filled with Grandad’s best furniture and an impressive looking carpet which was his war-loot from North Africa. If I chundered on that I would be dead meat. Only one thing for it. The Laindon and District Horticultural Society Challenge Trophy. It brimmed. And by God, I felt better.

Holding the cup above my head like a drunken seventies footballer (which wasn’t too far from the truth), I staggered up the stairs and flushed the diced carrots down the bog. I would have got away with it too, if, in my drunken state, I had remembered clean the thing out.

I arrived back downstairs just as Uncle Dave lit up his Chistmas cigar. Laying back in his easy chair, he inhaled deeply, drawing in the sweet aroma of the Cuban tobacco, puffing out smoke rings to the general amusement of the massed throng of the Scary family. In the minutes before the Queen’s Speech and the afternoon’s Bond movie, it was a most tranquil moment. As a matter of fact, even Andy had forgotten about the timebomb waiting to go off.

BANG!

There was a flash, and Dave was thrown halfway up the wall behind his easy chair with shock as an entire packet of expolosive cigarette ends went nuclear.

Gran screamed “It’s the blitz!”, realised the Anderson shelter had been dug up thirty years previously, and hid under the kitchen table with the dog. Grandad dashed off for his war-loot gas mask and German bayonet. The rest of us collpased in fits of laughter at poor old Dave.


Uncle Dave: An artist's impression

The cigar looked like he’d just walked into a door as part of some Groucho Marx film stunt. A pathetic smoke ring curled up from the end, a wisp of tobacco clung to his nose. He was livid.

“Right, who's been playing silly buggers?" he scowled, scanning juvenile faces for guilt.

There was only one thing for it. We shopped Andy to him. It was a fair cop, and Unlce Dave eventually managed to see the funny side as a second non-exploding cheroot was produced.

After all the excitement Grandad decided that we deserved some more home-made wine to calm the nerves. I politely refused, finding a nice warm corner to curl up and die.

Two days later, with my hangover still raging, they found the dried up huey in the gardening trophy. Whoops.

Let Uncle Dave be the bringer of the moral to this tale: “Oh yes, it’s all fun and games until somebody loses an eye.”

Unfortunately for me, I still had both my eyes, it’s just that they were hugely blood-shot and refused to look in the same direction for weeks. Kids! Just say “No” to paintstripper!

"Ho. Ho. Ho. Ho. Ho. Ho. Ho-tiddly-Ho."

That's it, this duck is away for a Christmas break with Mrs Scary and the Scaryducklings. And just to show that this is the season of goodwill, I've even got a present for my arch-nemesis Moderately Evil Penguin. Have a Merry Christmas now, y'hear?


"A fish is for life, not just for Christmas"

Back to Festive Scaryduck

"Ho. Ho. Ho. Again."

It's that time of year again. Children roasting on an open fire. Drunken neighbours giving little chance of a Silent Night. And that's before you get trampled underfoot by Christmas shoppers in your endless quest for a PS2, snotty little kids in puffer jackets singing "We Wish You a Merry Christmas" at the front door and forgetting half the words, the abject fear of receiving last-minute cards from people you haven't sent greetings to. No wonder the world's going mad.

Then we got this. It's twenty minutes of a crazy nutty bonkers Christmas tape sent in by one of the more remote employees of a small company as a Christmas gift. It's a four megabyte download, but by God it's worth it. Bear with it - it gets better as it goes along. My mind has been left indelibly scarred by a scary, scary version of "Walking in the Air". Karen's Kristmas Kraka - the gift that keeps on giving. I just want my mind back.

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"Ho. Ho. Ho."

I've made you all a rather nice, but ultimately sweary Christmas card. And people call me a Scrooge. Make your own here.

And if you're looking for that ideal present for an aunt or a grandmother - oh my good God, I've been turned into a clockwork cucumber! (Adult site - possibly not safe for work, says the duck who's got a big pink picture of a nob on his page). Thanks to Lou for the spot. You can get a three dollar discount here, along with a definately-not-safe-for-work picture of me and a close personal friend.

Shiiit n' shit: See this page as written by Snoop Doggy Dogg. Know what I'm sayin'? Tell the truth, it actually makes more sense that way. Get yo' ass over to Ask Snoop and mess wit' your own site.

Find of the Day: TTR2, bursting to the gills with all the junk that's floating around the net. They've turned their crap filter up to eleven and have the only the best and funniest viral stuff for your viewing pleasure. Comes with the all-important Scaryduck seal of approval.

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"Runaway"

Ah, the 1970’s. An age of innocence. We didn’t have kiddy-diddling coppers back in those days, and Gary Glitter was still a laughable pop star. You could stilll leave your front door unlocked, and it was safe for kids to play in the street without ending up a red smear across the tarmac. And your parents never got divorced.

Geoff’s parents did. He lived in the house at the end of our street, and one day, after a lot of shouting and banging, his father finally had enough of his mother and went to live in the flat above his furniture shop with someone a little less ugly. It was a bit of a tragedy for Geoff who worshipped his dad, but this was more or less bought off with the number of “guilt presents” his dad would send. He had the biggest and best Action Man collection in the street, including the Holy Grail - Sky Diver Action Man.

The trouble was, he hated living with his mum. We understood. We hated his mum too. She hated us playing football in the street, and would often come running out of her house to try to steal our ball. She looked like the battleaxe’s battleaxe Mary Whitehouse, only with a vindictive streak a mile wide. Geoff decided he had to get away. The poor bastard, we were 100% behind him.

He decided to run away and try out life on the road as a hobo. He reckoned he could get a job in a shop and make enough money to buy food and a roof for the night, and who knows, he might make a bit of a success of it. Pretty grown up thinking for an eight-year-old. Failing that, he could always try his luck in showbusiness.

We all got together - me, Nige, John, Matt and Squagg - and raided our parents’ kitechens for stuff he might need. We got matches, tins, a couple of cigars and a torch which he stuffed into his school bag. He slung it over his shoulder and hit the road.

Being the nice guys that we were, we decided to go with him on the first day, just to see that he’d be alright. We were all heart. And besides, those cheroots were too good to miss out on.

We got as far as the local park, a whole two minute’s walk away. We all ducked behind the hedges and made a camp between the undergrowth and the wall. This was to be Geoff’s first base for the night.

First things first. Fire.

You can’t be a proper hobo without a decent camp fire.

We got together some twigs and paper and lit a fire. Within thirty seconds, footsteps could be heard coming down the path, so the fire was stamped out. And relit. And stamped out. In the end, we’d used up nearly all the matches becuase we couldn’t light a fire in the park without someone noticing. This was going to be a bit of an inconvenience when it came to cooking.

And that was when we noticed a rather small, yet vital detail. Geoff had the best part of our kitchen larders in his bag. But no tin opener. The ring-pull was still two decades away. I was sent home to “borrow” one.

By the time I got back, the lads had had one more go at lighting the camp fire. And how. They’d got it lit all right, but the flames had got hold of an overhanging branch, and had refused to let go. The whole hedge was ablaze, and they were running for their lives for the safety of the coal bunker in John’s garden. I was trampled in the rush, but regained my senses enough to join them.

We hung around a bit trying not to look at the pall of smoke rising over the park. Then we went to watch the fire brigade sorting the whole thing out for us while planning where Geoff should stay the night. We settled for the railway arches, even though no-one thought that he should have packed blankets. Or spare clothes. Or a coat.

It was all pretty academic, anyway.

At four o’clock Geoff went home. His mum was cooking his tea, and she’d kill him if he was late.

He kept the cigars as well. The bloody ingrate.


"Lost Consonants"

Our tribute to the work of Graham Rawle. Let's face it, I don't think The Guardian would print this one. I'm only posting it because it had enough hummus to get me a multiple "Woo! Yay!" on b3ta. The easily offended had better look away now.



"The crowds would flock to sunny Weymouth to marvel at the Jubilee Cock on the seafront, a magnificent erection built to honour Queen Victoria."

I'll get me coat.

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"Boosh!"

After the triumph of Am I an Otter or Not?, a eureka moment on the toilet has brought you this: Am I Pie or Not? I'm really, really sorry. Please. Add. More. Pictures.

Your regular blogging will return tomorrow after a much-needed injection of hummus. This will include, at some stage, a festive Christmas Scaryduck tale. The purists will be pleased to learn that this will include a) vast quantities of home-made alcohol, b) explosives and c) the phrase "Right, who's been playing silly buggers?".

Something worth knowing: If the archives on this blog are knacked (as they are now), there is a "Best Of Scaryduck" page here. Say "thank you" to your Uncle Scary. That's quite alright.

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"Spicy Brains"

Mittens the psycho kitten returns with a most excellent new animation here. This cat has issues.

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"Bike"

I’ve got an A-Levels in Applied Mathematics and Physics. They taught me all kinds of stuff about forces, angular motion and the use of Newton’s Laws. Like for example, what would happen to a bicycle being towed down a steep hill and round a sharp bend at the bottom. If only they’d taught me that about ten years earlier...


PHWOOOAAARGH!

Regular readers will know that I grew up on a street that was perched on the side of a hill. Being a dead-end, there was hardly any traffic, and we were pretty much free to bike, rollerskate and stakeboard to our hearts’ content without the fear of ending up a red smear on the tarmac at the hands of the maniac from number thirty-eight. Which only ever happened to me once.

Any road up, the fashionable thing to do was to meet up at the top of the road on our bikes, and race down as fast as wee could, only braking at the last second, several hundred yards away just in front of John’s house. No-one wore helmets. It wasn’t as if we were going to fall of or anything...

Webby, who lived at number one, had a speedo on his bike, and we would take turns trying to get the top speed. There was some supreme bullshitting going on, with peope claiming to have recorded speeds in excess of sixty miles per hour. With my legs pumping furiously, I got up to thirty-six. Or fifty-six, as I triumphantly declared when I got back to the top of the hill.

But you know kids. No matter how fast we went, we had to have more. We had to rack up the danger. This was when Matty produced his old bike out of his garage. It had been ravaged for spare parts and had no mud guards, chain or brakes. Apart from that, it was sound.

So how to make it go? Easy. Matty had also produced a rope. He’d tow the little blue death-trap behind him down the hill. It would, he declared, be the thrill of a lifetime. A very short lifetime.

The bikes were prepared. Matty mounted his steed, and with the rope tied firmly to the handbars of the death-trap, like a fool, I jumped on behind him.

Matt pedalled like fury, and as the rope went taut, the rest of the lads gave me a hearty shove-off, chasing us down the hill whooping and shouting.

And this is where those lessons in maths and physics might have come in handy. With the ninety degree bend in the road fast approaching, I suddenly realised I had absolutely no control over the bike. I couldn’t slow down, and with Matty already disappearing round the corner a good thirty feet in front of me, I couldn’t steer the thing either. I was a projectile, under all kinds of forces outside my control. Up in heaven, Sir Isaac Newton was rubbing his hands with glee...

Matty shot round the corner, doing a good seventy five miles per hour by his own reckon. My bike shot round in a huge arc, rapidly approaching the speed of sound, fully obeying all sorts of laws of angular motion into the bargain.

That didn’t last for long. I let out a blood-curdling scream as the bike swung round and smashed into the low wall in front of number fifteen. Angular motion gave way to projectile flight. I was airbourne, proscribing aperfect arc through the air, sailing over the flowerbeds filled with prize-winning roses.

I landed face first on the lawn, creating three yard-long furrows in the grass with my chin and knees. It hurt. A lot. I was carted home with concussion, where I spent the rest of the day hurling my guts up.

The old guy from number fifteen was in apoplexy. He’d spent the last hundred and seventy years cultivating that lawn, just for me to turn it into a landing strip for retards. I was lucky to be alive. He was planning on using me as fertilizer.

The next day, covered in bruises, Matty showed me what was left of the bike I’d been riding. It was so smashed up you could have carried it home in your pocket, and used was was left over as iron filings.

There was a lesson to be learned from this whole affair. Oh yes. It was: Don’t play silly buggers. And did we learn? What do you think?

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"Tyre"

Our junior school of the 1970s was incredibly forward thinking. We had our own school buses while other schools still had a man walking in front of a horse and cart with a red flag. We had a swimming pool while our nearest rivals were still jumping in puddles. We also had our own Outdoor Activity Centre, halfway up a mountain on the Welsh Borders years before they became fashionable.

All of this was down to the head teacher, the God-like David George, who loved his school, the kids and the village, and I was stunned to learn he’d died recently. Top, top, top fella.

As far as I can remember, Mr George had bought Oakdale - a clapped out old farm house - for the school around 1970 at some ridiculously low price, which may have included the bartering of some sheep and a pile of scrap metal. He’d done the place up, quite possibly out of his own pocket, in his own time and produced a homely little centre which could comfortably accomodate fourteen kids and a couple of teachers to do the kind of stuff you can’t get insurance for these days.

So, on any given Monday morning, a bunch of kids aged between eight and eleven asccompanied by a couple of teachers would pile themselves and their luggage into a converted ambulance and cart themselves off up the M4 to the Wye Valley.

Our parents tearfully waved us off at the school gate, before running off home for a “Thank God they’ve gone” party. The minibus had wooden bench seats, no seatbelts, and we all piled in on top of the bags, cases and junk. One lucky kid - judged the most likely to puke up - was allowed to sit up front, belt-less, with the teachers. It would be enough to give any solicitor a heart attack.


Wurzels: Words cannot describe my agony

Mr Morgan - our Welsh wizard of a form teacher - slapped the school’s only music tape into the slot, and we would be treated to a “Now That’s What I Call Fucking Awful” musical compilation for the first of fifty-eight times that week. To this day, I still have nightmares about The Wurzels singing “I’ve got a Brand New Combine Harvester”, surely the work of Satan. And don’t get me started on JJ Barrie “singing” “No Charge”, the kind of saccharine-sweet bollocks that can only drive you to commit murder.

By Monday teatime, following an afternoon’s diversion at the SS Great Britain in Bristol we descended on the house. Seven to a room, be bagsied beds and settled in. Giggling could be heard and an eye appeared just above floor level.

The dreaded enemy! Girls! They’d found a hole in the wall of the boys dorm in the stairwell and were spying on us in the time-honoured fashion. And did we do anything to block it up? Of course not! Instead, Andy squatted down onto his haunches and let rip the most terrifying fart into the hole that only a farmboy like him could manage. It lasted for a good ten seconds and sounded like a motorbike going down the road outside.

There was a scream. “Miss! Miss! The boys are being dirty!”

Yeah, it was OK for them. They’d only been rumbled spying on the boy’s dorm, a stunt they repeated on a regular basis for the entire week. We had to live with the consequences of Andy’s pickled arse. And he didn’t stop. All week. Day or night. And the windows were stuck. In the end, he and his mate Simon were “allowed” to sleep in Mr George’s caravan out the back, much to our relief.

It was a week of doing dangerous stuff. Up mountains, through forests, down caves, over rivers, eating Miss Hilldrew’s cooking. We lived on the edge, and by and large, we escaped uninjured. Whatever the teachers were getting paid for their week of juvenile hell, it was nowhere near enough. We were wild, we were out of control, we were lucky to be alive. So, what did they do to keep us entertained of an evening? Our spartan accomodation didn’t have a TV. They took us down the pub. Corporate lawyer has heart attack...

With our teachers either cooking for the bunch of gannets nominally under their control, or just having a nervous breakdown somewhere private, we were allowed to wander the valley around the house virtually unsupervised. That was a Bad Thing. The sheep were worried, and so were the locals. They knew about us from previous visits, and we were frequently threatened with “I’ll make sure Mr George hears about this!” Did that stop us? What do you think?

Geoff led an assualt on the top of the valley to “see what’s on the other side”. Like adventurers, we followed him up and up through the bracken, heather and gorse, thrashing the undergrowth aside with sticks. Before long we reached the summit and took in the view. There was a telephone pole. And lots of trees.

“You git!” we complained. “We followed you all the way up here for this? It’s like... like... trees!”

He had to die.

Clicky for part II of this epic tale of mirth and woe.

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December's Horror-scopes

With all the gun-play that's been shattering the peace of Scary Towers, we completely forgot about this month's horror-scopes. Here we go then....

Aries: A trip to the zoo will open your mind to new horrors. Be sure to count your limbs before you leave.

Taurus: Your life will descend into a pointless imitation of the “Police Academy” movies. Especially the bit with the horse’s arse.

Gemini: Destiny foretells a meeting with flesh-eating zombies at a top-class restaurant. Best order the brains tartare.

Cancer: Your future holds the trappings of a rock’n’roll superstar lifestyle. Just the bit about the rank stupidity and the brain-rotting drugs, mind.

Leo: They say the “Death” card in tarot does not necessarily mean bad news. Not in your case, however.

Virgo: You will wake up in a Bombay Hotel room with a strange scar on your side and an inability to pass water.

Libra: Fortune finds you the key witness in a medical negligence case. Still, you can put those cross-dressing fantasies to good use.

Scorpio: You will find yourself sexually attractive to very ugly women. If you’re a girl, I’m really, really sorry about this - that’s what the stars say, and it’s more than my job’s worth to make this stuff up. Still, take a video camera with you - specialist market, you understand.

Sagittarius: The fame you have craved for all your life is just around the corner. Your night of passion with Mother Teresa of Calcutta, Princess Di, Anna Nicole Smith, and a selection of root vegetables will keep you on the front pages for months.

Capricorn: You’d have thought that nobody gets buggered to death by pirates these days, wouldn’t you? Funny old world.

Aquarius: You will be rescued from a band of gun-wielding penguin terrorists by a heavily-armed group of cockney rabbits working for the SAS. Do not be alarmed. This is perfectly normal.

Pisces: You will not get the fish that you want so desperately. You will find yourself forced into exile by a heavily-armed group of cockney rabbits working for the SAS, and you may resign yourself to a future as a novelty penguin-in-a-bowtie circus act.

If it’s your birthday: You are king of kings, saviour of the world, and you will be followed faithfully by billions. Easter, however, will be a bit of a bastard.

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"Ransom"



Greetings, human scum. There's been one or two developments on the People's Popular Penguin Revolution Front since last I wrote. First up, the message still hasn't got through about how serious we are about cooking the duck so we've had one or two pictures done to force the point home. And that's a real gun, not some plastic thing that came with Action Man. At all.

And just to prove how hard we are, here are the massed ranks of the Penguin Liberation Front (Officials) in the steely depths of our underground bunker. Aren't we cute... err.. tough?

Finally, a major victory for the Penguin cause, with our armed takeover of the Voice of the Capitalist Duck-Controlled Propaganda Mouth-piece Radio Scary. Thanks to the bravery of Little Flossie we were now broadcasting to the world as Radio Scary - The Voice of Penguin Liberation.

Onwards to Penguin Freedom! Give us fish or give us death! On second thoughts, just give us the fish.

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"Rugby"

In the year 1823, during a school game of Association Football, the young William Webb Ellis picked up the ball and ran with it in his hands. Not only was the cheating git immediately hauled up in front of his fuming games master and thrashed soundly, he also invented the sport of Rugby and inflicted decades of insufferable pain and wanton violence on the generations of schoolboys which followed him. The bastard.


Hold still, this won't hurt one bit

I remember a time when I was actually quite the star with the oval ball. At the age of twelve, I was Mr Prince’s secret weapon in the school team, a nippy little scrum half who could throw a mean dummy followed by a blind-side run to the try-line that suckered the opposition everytime. A scrum to the Blues invariably meant four points, and on one occasion, the joy of being carried from the pitch on the shoulders of my team-mates.

If only they had let me down before they reached the dressing room door. I’ve still got the scar above my left eye. I picked up another scar weeks later, just above the bridge of my nose. This time from American Paul, who having just settled in England was still ignorant of the rules of the game. Any game, in fact, and leathered me in the face with his great size nine boots. And like a fool, with blood streaming down my front, I played on.

Despite this, my love affair with the rugger continued. Dad had me doing all the physical jobs round the garden to “build me up like JPR Williams”, but I couldn’t help thinking this might have had something to do with the fact that he couldn’t be arsed to rake up the leaves himself.

I hero-worshipped the All Blacks, those rugby geniuses from New Zealand and JPR Williams, the flying Welsh fullback with the pork-chop sideburns. I got a real leather rugby ball for Christmas and slept with it in my bed for three months (and we’ll have no smutty comments at the back, thank you very much).

All of a sudden I wasn’t twelve years old any more. By the time me and my schoolmates reached the age of fifteen, me the late developer stayed more-or-less the same size. The rest of the rugby squad had grown to the size of brick shit-houses. Prinny didn’t have the heart to drop me from the team, and moved me further and further back, away from the bone-crunching action.

The last straw came in a practice match. Turnip burst out of the pack, ball resting in the crook of his arm, sweeping all before him. Turnip was a farmer’s boy, used to hauling bales of straw around and didn’t take any shit, not least from the skinny little full back cowering between him and the try-line.

To be fair, I did try to get a tackle in. I dived at Turnip’s thrashing legs, there was a sickening crunch, and that was the last thing I remembered of that particular day. Just like a Tom and Jerry cartoon, they peeled me up from the mud, leaving a student-shaped impression on the pitch and carried on with the game as if nothing had happened.

Prinny didn’t have to drop me from the team. I begged him to drop me down to the bottom group full of fat kids, asthmatics and One-Legged Mike who only had one leg. I could blend in with the crowd there, dodging the half-hearted tackles of full-backs shivering in the mud with their hands up their jerseys, never once worrying about where the next boot in the head was coming from. It was bliss.

And that was the end of Rugby Union for me. It was far too dangerous. Sport was for watching.

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"Send More Fish"

Morning, human scum. Moderately Evil Penguin of the newly-formed Penguin Liberation Front (Officials) here. Still taking over the world and still cornering the world fish market, even without those limp-winged bastards at the Penguin Popular Liberation Front. Splitters. And the People’s Popular Penguin Liberation Front. Splitters.

Our massed penguin army may be slightly smaller than it once was, but the six of us are more than willing to lay down our lives for the cause. Except me of course, being the leader an’ all that. Stands to reason that does.

Any road up, we’ve still got the Duck, and despite our threats, our demands still have not been met. Penguins are still wearing bowties, and that smug bastard Ben Elton is still appearing on television on a disturbingly regular basis. All we’ve had so far is one tin of sardines and some green wobbly bits garnered from a raid on the Kitty Chunks Cat Food factory that we’re saving for when we’re really desparate. Send fish! Or at the very least some of Elton's vital organs. We're not fussy.



As you can see from this photograph released through our agent Kennamatic, the Duck is alive and well and hasn't been cooked just yet. But one false move and I'll be getting out my copy of Jamie Oliver's Big Book of How to Cook a Pukka Duck, and it's orange sauce time. And I can assure you that despite what it looks like, there's no funny business going on. We were saving water. That's right. Saving water.

And finally, news reaches PLF(O) Headquarters of Agent Paddles, who has successfully infiltrated Blogjam and will be pecking an unsuspecting Fraser to death any day now and using his credit card to run up a huge mail order fish order. Good work that Penguin.

No surrender! Say "No" to Penguins wearing bowties! Death to the splitters! Death to the oppresive human scum, except for those who work in the fishing and seafood wholesale industries!

Oh, and have a go on this. It's penguin flavoured.

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"Rear Window"

I’ve got a very good friend in Tony. Six of us all worked in the same office, three guys, three girls, and blow me down dead if we didn’t all get married. Not all together, mind you. Three couples. Nothing kinky. We’d all go round his house for evenings in getting drunk and staggering up the road for a late-night takeaway, discussing the issues that mattered, like football, “Which Spice Girl would you like to pork”, football and what Tony’s next door neighbour would look like with no clothes on.

Tony’s neighbour was a nurse at the nearby Royal Berkshire Hospital. She had curves all over the place and Tony definately never, ever leered at her over the garden fence, something he went to great lengths to mention to Liz, all the time. The fact that she always seemed to wear a uniform that was several sizes too small didn’t help matters much. She was a nineties Barbara Windsor, only without the cockney accent or a gangster for a husband.

It was during one of these Friday nights in that matters came to a head. Tony was in the kitchen sorting out a cup of tea, a tinny and a few snacks when he suddenly became quite excited.

“Al, Rory - come and help me in the kitchen”

“No way mate, we’re watching TV. And it’s your turn to get the beers.”

“Lads. I really need your help in the kitchen. Now.”

“Piss. Off. Tony.”

By now he was jumping from one foot to the other, and it was pretty clear that “No” was not an option.

“I’ll give you a hand” offers Liz.

“No! No! No! Al and Rory only!”

There wass no point arguing, we caved in and trooped into his kitchen extension at the back of the house. The window was built on the side to accomodate another room even further back, and it gave excellent views of Nursie’s rear windows.

Tony didn’t even have to tell us where to look. There she was, buck naked and on all fours, being rogered senseless doggy-style by her current boyfriend right in front of the patio doors. Now there’s something you don’t see every day, unless you’re Ron Jeremy.

The three of us stared open mouthed as her breasts swung rhytmically to each thrust, the look on her face showed that she was having the time of her life, blissfully unaware of the Three Stooges watching on.

“That’s the first time I’ve ever seen her out of her nurse’s uniform”, muttered Tony

“She probably hasn’t got any other clothes, the poor girl” says Rory

“And look, she’s lost a contact lens” I chip in.

“Everything all right back there?” calls Liz

“Uh. Yes. Yep. Yup. All OK. No need for your help. At all. Everything under control. Jesus H Christ, look at those tits!”

Before long, Buck Naked Boyfriend appeared to be sagging, and had the tell-tale grimace on his face as he rammed home the vinegar strokes. They collapsed in a heap on the floor, exhausted from their passionate clinch. It was no good - we cheered. And like a previous voyeuristic discovery several years before, the curtains were whipped closed without even the offer of an encore.

We were called filthy perverts by our wives, which would have been an insult if it hadn’t have been so true. Tony had to put up with several months of embarrassed grins and stilted small talk with Nursie before, sadly, he moved to the North of England, and we to the South Coast. Still, if I ever plan to have an accident, I’ll make sure I get run over by a bus in Reading. You never know...

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"Who you gonna call?"

There is a small cross at the end of the garden at Scaryduck Towers, right up against the back wall. There is one word written on it: "Bobby". Who Bobby was, we have no idea as we've only lived here for nine months, but it in all certainty, he probably wasn't a family member. Not a human one, anyway.

Over the last couple of weeks, Mrs Scary and Scaryduckling have both noticed strange things in the kitchen. Twas just a few days ago while Scaryduckling was playing under the table when she saw a set of paws scamper past. It couldn't have been Molly, our neurotic lesbian cat, as she's not allowed in the kitchen so... wwwwoooOOOOOOooooooo part one.

A couple of days ago, Mrs Scary was cooking, when she turned around and saw a small Scottie dog standing in the doorway. "Woof", it said, silently. She did a double-take and it was gone. WWwwwWWwwwOOOOoooooooo.....WOOF! It appears that we've found Bobby and the Scaryducks have now been joined by Scarydog. I've looked under E in the Yellow Pages, and bugger our luck, there's not a local exorcist to be had. It looks like we're stuck with him.

If he gets ectoplasm on the carpet, I'll rub his filthy little nose in it.

"Stuff"

Forget fantasy sports, why not play Fantasy Terrorism?

It's coming up to the New Year, so why not treat yourself to a Luxury Shed Calendar? Guaranteed 100% shed.

Yarr! Bob's Week in France Part VI. Titty biscuits!

And thank you to The Weblog Review for being nice to us.

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