"You know the Bobby Moore"
Channel-hopping last night, we caught the end of the video for Feargal Sharkey - now doing some pointless government music czar job - singing "A Good Heart". The song is now stuck in my head, the warbly-voiced, long-haired get.
"That must be great," says I.
"What?" replies Mrs Duck, knowing full well there is lunacy to come.
"Being so famous that your name is cockney rhyming slang."
"Oh, really."
Really. Unfortunately, I could only come up with obscene ones - James Hunt, Eartha Kitt, Jimmy Knapp, etc - and what with it being Nice Week, I found it difficult to come up with anything, you know, nice.
"How about Lionel Blair?" asked Mrs Duck.
Gah! Help me out here, people.
Token Nice Week content: Kittens! Kittens in Mittens!
Express Delivery
It's great to see yesterday's Daily Express (prop: Richard "Dirty" Desmond) have a go at the BBC over the number of repeats shown by the Corporation over the Bank Holiday weekend: "Fury at BBC's 16 hours of repeats". As if there wasn't enough real news about illegal immigrants, house prices and cancer scares out there.
Now excuse me! Apart from the usual arguments to refute this cheap front page - finite BBC resources, traditionally slack Bank Holiday viewing figures and, contrary to popular opinion, requests for repeats outnumbering complaints five-to-one - there's one thing about the whinging Express headline that really sticks in my craw.
And it is this: The BBC - legally bound to inform, educate and entertain - being lectured on its output by an organisation that lists amongst its assets such informative, educational and entertaining TV channels as "Red Hot 40+ Wives" and "Red Hot All Girl"*.
The BBC, as far as I know, doesn't offer a "ten minute free view", nor does it charge its viewers four quid a night for the privilege of watching some old slapper having her back door kicked in. If it did, there'd be a public outcry, no doubt led by the Daily Express (prop: Richard "Dirty" Desmond), followed by a record surge on the national grid.
It doesn't stop with the TV channels, where the same generic humping can be shown several times a night across Dirty Desmond's six channels of output. As Manic points out, Desmond's scud-mags are notorious for recycling images from shoots from as far back as the 1970s, a trick they'd never get away with in the Radio Times.
Mr Kettle, I'd like to introduce you to Mr Pot.
* I was sorely disappointed to find that "Barely Legal" was not a hard-hitting Esther Rantzen-fronted consumer programme. Desmond - I want my four quid back!
Tuesday, August 31, 2004
Monday, August 30, 2004
Nice Week
It's Nice Week at Scaryduck
After the excesses of the previous seven days, I'm going to try to go a whole week without swearing, mentioning bodily functions and banging on about my frankly brilliant idea for a celebrity reality show involving Natasha Kaplinski, David "The Duke" Dickenson and a BDSM dungeon*. Hello trees! Hello sky! Hello flowers!
Any road up, strange goings on at Scaryduck Towers this weekend. Mrs Duck tells me that our family should celebrate Christmas at Lap Land this year. That's very broad-minded of her, but I for one don't think the kids are quite ready for a pole dancing club, festive season or not. Or maybe the spirit of Nice Week hasn't quite got through my iron-clad cranium just yet.
More niceness tomorrow. Regular readers may wish to return next week for the September Swear-a-thon.
* Channel Five are going to bite at any moment - all I need is a snappy title
After the excesses of the previous seven days, I'm going to try to go a whole week without swearing, mentioning bodily functions and banging on about my frankly brilliant idea for a celebrity reality show involving Natasha Kaplinski, David "The Duke" Dickenson and a BDSM dungeon*. Hello trees! Hello sky! Hello flowers!
Any road up, strange goings on at Scaryduck Towers this weekend. Mrs Duck tells me that our family should celebrate Christmas at Lap Land this year. That's very broad-minded of her, but I for one don't think the kids are quite ready for a pole dancing club, festive season or not. Or maybe the spirit of Nice Week hasn't quite got through my iron-clad cranium just yet.
More niceness tomorrow. Regular readers may wish to return next week for the September Swear-a-thon.
* Channel Five are going to bite at any moment - all I need is a snappy title
Friday, August 27, 2004
Manky - Hot Bag woe
Yes, I've noticed it too - over recent weeks, these pages have "enjoyed" a terrifying descent into Dante's Inferno with a bombardment of swearing, cheap insults and filthy tales of bodily functions. The following story, then, is the Ninth Circle of Hell (change at Baker Street), and with any luck, we've hit rock bottom. Hold your breath...
It was first thing Sunday morning, not so long ago. More recent than I care to admit, in fact. I'm already up and about, emptying the dishwasher and scratching my bollocks in front of News 24. Mrs Duck is in the bathroom ,and by the sound of things, she's washing her hair, a process that can, and usually does, take several hours.
Which is bad news for me as although we are an two-bog household, the second toilet is still in a box in the garage, waiting for our builders to finally get around to installing the plumbing. Worse, the previous evening had seen some particularly heavy red-hot curry action, and now it is time to pay the price with a ringpiece of fire. I am, in fact, busting for a crap, and it is only outstanding sphincter control that is preventing me from redecorating the living room, and as I hammer on the bathroom door, the upstairs landing. This one is a code red.
"I'll only be a minute or two," I am told, and I wait as patiently as I can given the circumstances. Presently, the most urgent need subsides, and I am able to gingerly descend the stairs to the kitchen, knock out a cup of tea, scratch my bollocks a bit more and head outside to feed the dog.
It is at this point that I am overtaken by the most sudden, uncontrollable urge to empty my bowels, and judging from the pain, the previous poo has come back with a few friends. The turtle's head is touching cloth, and the bathroom is clearly occupied. Doom.
So here is my confession. You know what they say in the Round Table: Adopt, Adapt, Improve. Make the most of the situation you find yourself in with the tools available to you. Situation: a biblical flood set to erupt from my anus. Location: Back garden, miles away from the nearest unoccupied lavatory. Tools available: one Asda carrier bag, a garden shed, a pet hamster. I know what you're thinking, and yes, small, fluffy Ryan Minogue survived.
Those of a nervous disposition may wish to look away now, for I have no shame in what I did. A man's shed is his castle, so they say - a small foul-smelling castle made of wood, notable for their lack of toilet facilities. But for this I cared not. Dashing headlong into my shed, garden tools and kids' scooters flying in all directions, I dropped my kecks and took the mother and father of all curry-powered craps into a plastic bag and wiped my arse on a handful of hamster bedding.
It was then I realised that Adsa put little holes in their bags to stop idiots from suffocating themselves and preventing normal, sane people from using them as squirty poo receptacles. And the dustbin was at the other end of the garden. Ideal for icing a cake, perhaps; but not for early morning comedy dashes, spraying path, feet, dog with something nasty. Hot-bagging, it seems, is not all it's cracked up to be.
"Scary - why have you got the hose out at this time in the morning?"
The Hot Bag ended up in the dustbin, where it was pecked open on bin day by seagulls, fuck my luck for living by the sea.
Thursday, August 26, 2004
The Magic Vote-o
The Magic Vote-o
Yesterday I learned that Scaryduckling's schoolteacher has resigned from the profession. Instead, Mr Payne has decided to use the skills he has acquired in his years in front of the blackboard for a far more rewarding job. Sick of being called Mr Payne-in-the-Arse, he is now Bongo the Magnificent, Stage Magician.
Any road up - choose-o tomorrow's Scary Story, if you please:
* Duke of Kent
* Leaflets
* Glider
* Paint
* Ceiling
* Presto
My short-term memory being what it is, I'm certain I wrote another one last week, but not having the file to hand, I have completely forgotten. In which case, you may also vote for "Magical Mystery Story" and take your chances that it might be crap, or not exist at all, even.
Yesterday I learned that Scaryduckling's schoolteacher has resigned from the profession. Instead, Mr Payne has decided to use the skills he has acquired in his years in front of the blackboard for a far more rewarding job. Sick of being called Mr Payne-in-the-Arse, he is now Bongo the Magnificent, Stage Magician.
Any road up - choose-o tomorrow's Scary Story, if you please:
* Duke of Kent
* Leaflets
* Glider
* Paint
* Ceiling
* Presto
My short-term memory being what it is, I'm certain I wrote another one last week, but not having the file to hand, I have completely forgotten. In which case, you may also vote for "Magical Mystery Story" and take your chances that it might be crap, or not exist at all, even.
Wednesday, August 25, 2004
Unprepared
Unprepared
So, where's my Preparing for Emergencies leaflet then? What if the terrorists attack now? I'm naked, unprepared. In a word - doomed.
If Blunkett wasn't so busy getting his end awa with other bloke's wives, I'd have my copy by now, and I'd bee happily panic-buying non-perishable foodstuffs, digging a nuclear shelter in the garden and drinking my own urine by now.
Is this the kind of tardy response I can expect from this government when Osama bin Laden comes marching up my front path with his dirty bomb and huge bucket of rabies? With only an antique copy of Protect and Survive to protect my family against this hardly made up at all menace, I only hope that "Shagger" Blunkett can get his clothes on fast enough to save us all from disaster.
Memo to Dave: Socks on, martial law NOW! Or, by popular request, use your l33t Big Brother powers to root out those naked Kirstie Allsopp pictures. It's what Echelon and MI5 is there for.
This rant has ben brought to you by Megiddo Nuclear Shelters - the hole in the ground for the whole family - and the Daily Mail
The Scaryduck Archive. But what's the point? We're all doomed. DOOMED!
So, where's my Preparing for Emergencies leaflet then? What if the terrorists attack now? I'm naked, unprepared. In a word - doomed.
If Blunkett wasn't so busy getting his end awa with other bloke's wives, I'd have my copy by now, and I'd bee happily panic-buying non-perishable foodstuffs, digging a nuclear shelter in the garden and drinking my own urine by now.
Is this the kind of tardy response I can expect from this government when Osama bin Laden comes marching up my front path with his dirty bomb and huge bucket of rabies? With only an antique copy of Protect and Survive to protect my family against this hardly made up at all menace, I only hope that "Shagger" Blunkett can get his clothes on fast enough to save us all from disaster.
Memo to Dave: Socks on, martial law NOW! Or, by popular request, use your l33t Big Brother powers to root out those naked Kirstie Allsopp pictures. It's what Echelon and MI5 is there for.
This rant has ben brought to you by Megiddo Nuclear Shelters - the hole in the ground for the whole family - and the Daily Mail
Tuesday, August 24, 2004
Workplace Confessional
Workplace Confessional
Caught short on a night-shift and too far from the gents to be absolutely bothered, I have been known to relieve myself in plant pots. It's full of essential nutrients, and in a dry office environment they're thankful for any moisture they can get.
Alas, there was one occasion where a tea overdose and a lack of pot-plants led to my taking extreme measures. I feel that I should confess to wazzing in a coffee cup and throwing the contents out of the window. There was a lot of it, too - I filled the cup three times. All well and good, after all, it was three in the morning and no witnesses.
As the final golden shower slooshed its way down to the car park there was a cry of shock and alarm.
"Ooh!" it went, shocked and alarmed, "Ooh!"
What kind of security guard does his rounds at that time of the night* ?
Before I am forced to torture you with the comfy chair and the soft, soft cushions - what's the mankiest thing you've ever done at work?
* I should point out that this episode was in a previous employment, and was nothing to do with my current job. The place where I work now used to be a boarding school. It's got the graves of three former pupils in the grounds. Now that's what I call strict.
The Scaryduck Archive
Caught short on a night-shift and too far from the gents to be absolutely bothered, I have been known to relieve myself in plant pots. It's full of essential nutrients, and in a dry office environment they're thankful for any moisture they can get.
Alas, there was one occasion where a tea overdose and a lack of pot-plants led to my taking extreme measures. I feel that I should confess to wazzing in a coffee cup and throwing the contents out of the window. There was a lot of it, too - I filled the cup three times. All well and good, after all, it was three in the morning and no witnesses.
As the final golden shower slooshed its way down to the car park there was a cry of shock and alarm.
"Ooh!" it went, shocked and alarmed, "Ooh!"
What kind of security guard does his rounds at that time of the night* ?
Before I am forced to torture you with the comfy chair and the soft, soft cushions - what's the mankiest thing you've ever done at work?
* I should point out that this episode was in a previous employment, and was nothing to do with my current job. The place where I work now used to be a boarding school. It's got the graves of three former pupils in the grounds. Now that's what I call strict.
Monday, August 23, 2004
"If lines are busy, please dial again"
If lines are busy, please dial again, but do call
God I love infomercials. Many a night shift has been spent watching these thirty minute slots of idiots trying to sell insomniacs, TV addicts, drunks and shift workers the answers to non-existent problems. I think they were mainly aiming at the drunks, whose defences are down after a night on the tiles.
Pretty soon, with the rise of digital technologies, and the price of uplinking your channel to a satellite falling through the floor, every shyster and his dog now has one of these channels, broadcasting 24 hours a day to the gullible of this planet.
Now I've got Sky Digital, they're everywhere. There's about 100 of these channels, pumping out crap to the easily amused. Hours of the highest comedy, some of the best unintentional laughs you can get. After months, nay years, of studying, in which my credit cards have been kept chained up in a casket at the other end of the house, I have concluded that infomercials fall into three distinct categories:
* Torture equipment
* Useless tat
* Cubic Zirconium
Why the bloody hell makes people buy gym equipment by mail order? You get thirty minutes of breathless hype, and before you know it, postie's doing himself a hernia getting it to your front door, and then, two weeks later, you do yourself a hernia putting it in your loft. Join a gym. Better still, for those freakish machines that simulate taking a walk (and yes, they must sell or they wouldn't advertise them) - go for a walk.
Useless tat. Our airwaves are full of people selling us useless tat. Thirty quid for a couple of bottles of car polish that you can get for 50p down the market, from a guy bearing a striking resemblance to the guy on the TV. Perfect nails. Perfect teeth. Perfect skin. If you want perfect teeth, try brushing them. And if that doesn't work, try painting them with Tipp-ex. A foam rubber mat you put on top of your mattress for "the perfect sleep", which costs more than the mattress.
Jebus, I just love the household cleaner ones. Obviously filmed by some guy whose done his dues, being turfed off every doorstep in the country, he's found you can get past the doorstep and into the front room via the TV screen, and he's still doing the same patter. The guy from the market, selling his set of steak knives as if he's got a crowd of old grannies in front of him on their way to the cut-price shonky butcher's for a slightly out of date turkey leg.
For years, I used to watch the two Mockney geezers in bowler hats and bow ties selling "Astonish" to gullible Americans to clean their kitchens. Then I saw them looking broke, selling crates of the stuff out of the back of a car at Tadley market, along with one of them suction things for cleaning your car. How the mighty fall.
A game! Flip onto a random advertorial channel. Take a look at what they're selling, and then guess how much they're going to try to sting you for something you'll never use and are too embarrassed to send back. Keep a score - a game the whole family can play! Just for the record, the foam rubber mattress cover weighed in at one hundred and fifty pounds, and two bottles of car polish (plus complementary mitt!) at twenty-five. It's keeping someone, somewhere in caviar.
And a final word from our sponsors:
Guy with tan, muscles and mullet: "And of course, the TortureMeister III gives you all the benefits of a workout, without the need of having your legs painfully amuptated by a mad Nazi surgeon."
Over enthusiastic-Barbie doll: "I like that a lot!"
The Scaryduck Archive
God I love infomercials. Many a night shift has been spent watching these thirty minute slots of idiots trying to sell insomniacs, TV addicts, drunks and shift workers the answers to non-existent problems. I think they were mainly aiming at the drunks, whose defences are down after a night on the tiles.
Pretty soon, with the rise of digital technologies, and the price of uplinking your channel to a satellite falling through the floor, every shyster and his dog now has one of these channels, broadcasting 24 hours a day to the gullible of this planet.
Now I've got Sky Digital, they're everywhere. There's about 100 of these channels, pumping out crap to the easily amused. Hours of the highest comedy, some of the best unintentional laughs you can get. After months, nay years, of studying, in which my credit cards have been kept chained up in a casket at the other end of the house, I have concluded that infomercials fall into three distinct categories:
* Torture equipment
* Useless tat
* Cubic Zirconium
Why the bloody hell makes people buy gym equipment by mail order? You get thirty minutes of breathless hype, and before you know it, postie's doing himself a hernia getting it to your front door, and then, two weeks later, you do yourself a hernia putting it in your loft. Join a gym. Better still, for those freakish machines that simulate taking a walk (and yes, they must sell or they wouldn't advertise them) - go for a walk.
Useless tat. Our airwaves are full of people selling us useless tat. Thirty quid for a couple of bottles of car polish that you can get for 50p down the market, from a guy bearing a striking resemblance to the guy on the TV. Perfect nails. Perfect teeth. Perfect skin. If you want perfect teeth, try brushing them. And if that doesn't work, try painting them with Tipp-ex. A foam rubber mat you put on top of your mattress for "the perfect sleep", which costs more than the mattress.
Jebus, I just love the household cleaner ones. Obviously filmed by some guy whose done his dues, being turfed off every doorstep in the country, he's found you can get past the doorstep and into the front room via the TV screen, and he's still doing the same patter. The guy from the market, selling his set of steak knives as if he's got a crowd of old grannies in front of him on their way to the cut-price shonky butcher's for a slightly out of date turkey leg.
For years, I used to watch the two Mockney geezers in bowler hats and bow ties selling "Astonish" to gullible Americans to clean their kitchens. Then I saw them looking broke, selling crates of the stuff out of the back of a car at Tadley market, along with one of them suction things for cleaning your car. How the mighty fall.
A game! Flip onto a random advertorial channel. Take a look at what they're selling, and then guess how much they're going to try to sting you for something you'll never use and are too embarrassed to send back. Keep a score - a game the whole family can play! Just for the record, the foam rubber mattress cover weighed in at one hundred and fifty pounds, and two bottles of car polish (plus complementary mitt!) at twenty-five. It's keeping someone, somewhere in caviar.
And a final word from our sponsors:
Guy with tan, muscles and mullet: "And of course, the TortureMeister III gives you all the benefits of a workout, without the need of having your legs painfully amuptated by a mad Nazi surgeon."
Over enthusiastic-Barbie doll: "I like that a lot!"
Friday, August 20, 2004
Wrong Funeral: A tale of woe
Wrong Funeral
Roger's dad died.
Roger's dad was a lovely bloke, but smoked like a chimney, and alas, this was to be the end of him. A charitable type, he helped out at our Air Cadets squadron, teaching the lads the ins-and-outs of engineering, the meaning of hard work and the definition of a choice few words into the bargain.
One day, his heart decided that he'd had one fag too many and he keeled over and died, roll-up still sticking out of the corner of his mouth, the poor old bugger. The only consolation was that he didn't die at work. He was a bus driver.
Still we were invited to his funeral, which was a nice gesture, and seeing as he was an instructor at the space cadets (a name given to the ATC by regular Air Force crew, as "they do nothing except take up space"), it was an all-uniform job. Black armbands, the works.
We got time off college, got changed in the back seat of a Renault 4 (a major achievement in contortionism that hinted at a future as a circus act) and headed off to Bracknell Crematorium, officially the most depressing place on Earth. It's like regular Bracknell - which is depressing enough as it is - only with the addition of gravestones and a wrist-slashing Garden of Remembrance. There is a shooting range just behind the ovens. Once in, you're unlikely to leave.
We arrived there in good time, joined up with a few of the other lads and a sombre officer corps, black arm bands making us look like the Hitler Youth on a social call. As casually as you could among the fake plastic flowers of a municipal crematorium, we mixed in the waiting room with tearful friends and relatives, making small talk about "such a wonderful person" while we waited for Roger and his mum to arrive.
And boy, they were taking their time, probably taking the bus driver's prerogative of turning up when they felt like it. Following the hearse, we surmised. In retrospect, the funny looks we got from the assembled friends and relatives should have told us something.
With the polite cough of a man used to working with the recently deceased and the near-dead, some bloke in a black suit ushered everybody from the waiting room into the chapel, and the coffin was carried in and placed on the dais. Still no sign of Roger. Maybe he's at the back. Maybe he couldn't face it. The vicar started the service, and it was only when he referred to the deceased as "she" that the alarm bells started ringing. We thought we knew him pretty well, but we would have noticed if Roger's old man had been a woman.
The eulogy was a clincher. "Call her mum, gran, or just plain Shirley..."
"Oh bollocks!" cried the Commanding Officer just as the opening bars of "The Lord is my Shepherd" rang out on a Bontempi organ. Bollocks indeed, the entire congregation turned and stared as one, the impostors unmasked.
We legged it. I'd like to say we crept out like stealthy ninjas into the night, were it not for some thoughtless bastard scattering the pews with heavily embroidered prayer cushions exhorting us to "Praise Him!" and reminding anyone who noticed that "He is Risen!" Shed, tall and gangling, was the first to go down, like a big ginger tree in a gale; and with the rest of us in a blind panic, bundling over the top of him like a horde of mad Belgians on It's a Knockout, there was no way he was going to be risen for quite some time.
As the singing started, all dignity was lost.
The Lord’s my Shepherd, I’ll not want - "Get your foot out of my face"
He makes me down to lie - "You bastard, that hurts!"
In pastures green; He leadeth me - "Get your hand off my arse"
The quiet waters by. - "Christ on a bike, who's farted?"
We hid in the Garden of Remembrance, cremating a few cigarettes and swearing too much in the presence of the recently scattered, until an hour later, Roger arrived for his old man's funeral.
"I did tell you they changed it to THREE o'clock, didn't I?"
"Oh yeah, yeah. We went to the dress rehearsal an' all."
Shirley, wherever you are - we're really, really sorry.
Want more?: The Great Badger War has begun, and the rabbit gets a reply. Strange goings on at the Circle K.
The Scaryduck Archive - "Guranteed not to give you the clap"
Roger's dad died.
Roger's dad was a lovely bloke, but smoked like a chimney, and alas, this was to be the end of him. A charitable type, he helped out at our Air Cadets squadron, teaching the lads the ins-and-outs of engineering, the meaning of hard work and the definition of a choice few words into the bargain.
One day, his heart decided that he'd had one fag too many and he keeled over and died, roll-up still sticking out of the corner of his mouth, the poor old bugger. The only consolation was that he didn't die at work. He was a bus driver.
Still we were invited to his funeral, which was a nice gesture, and seeing as he was an instructor at the space cadets (a name given to the ATC by regular Air Force crew, as "they do nothing except take up space"), it was an all-uniform job. Black armbands, the works.
We got time off college, got changed in the back seat of a Renault 4 (a major achievement in contortionism that hinted at a future as a circus act) and headed off to Bracknell Crematorium, officially the most depressing place on Earth. It's like regular Bracknell - which is depressing enough as it is - only with the addition of gravestones and a wrist-slashing Garden of Remembrance. There is a shooting range just behind the ovens. Once in, you're unlikely to leave.
We arrived there in good time, joined up with a few of the other lads and a sombre officer corps, black arm bands making us look like the Hitler Youth on a social call. As casually as you could among the fake plastic flowers of a municipal crematorium, we mixed in the waiting room with tearful friends and relatives, making small talk about "such a wonderful person" while we waited for Roger and his mum to arrive.
And boy, they were taking their time, probably taking the bus driver's prerogative of turning up when they felt like it. Following the hearse, we surmised. In retrospect, the funny looks we got from the assembled friends and relatives should have told us something.
With the polite cough of a man used to working with the recently deceased and the near-dead, some bloke in a black suit ushered everybody from the waiting room into the chapel, and the coffin was carried in and placed on the dais. Still no sign of Roger. Maybe he's at the back. Maybe he couldn't face it. The vicar started the service, and it was only when he referred to the deceased as "she" that the alarm bells started ringing. We thought we knew him pretty well, but we would have noticed if Roger's old man had been a woman.
The eulogy was a clincher. "Call her mum, gran, or just plain Shirley..."
"Oh bollocks!" cried the Commanding Officer just as the opening bars of "The Lord is my Shepherd" rang out on a Bontempi organ. Bollocks indeed, the entire congregation turned and stared as one, the impostors unmasked.
We legged it. I'd like to say we crept out like stealthy ninjas into the night, were it not for some thoughtless bastard scattering the pews with heavily embroidered prayer cushions exhorting us to "Praise Him!" and reminding anyone who noticed that "He is Risen!" Shed, tall and gangling, was the first to go down, like a big ginger tree in a gale; and with the rest of us in a blind panic, bundling over the top of him like a horde of mad Belgians on It's a Knockout, there was no way he was going to be risen for quite some time.
As the singing started, all dignity was lost.
The Lord’s my Shepherd, I’ll not want - "Get your foot out of my face"
He makes me down to lie - "You bastard, that hurts!"
In pastures green; He leadeth me - "Get your hand off my arse"
The quiet waters by. - "Christ on a bike, who's farted?"
We hid in the Garden of Remembrance, cremating a few cigarettes and swearing too much in the presence of the recently scattered, until an hour later, Roger arrived for his old man's funeral.
"I did tell you they changed it to THREE o'clock, didn't I?"
"Oh yeah, yeah. We went to the dress rehearsal an' all."
Shirley, wherever you are - we're really, really sorry.
Want more?: The Great Badger War has begun, and the rabbit gets a reply. Strange goings on at the Circle K.
Thursday, August 19, 2004
La voix-o de jeudi
La voix-o de jeudi
Bonjour, my petits frou-froux et grands fromages d'internet pompt-de-pompt-pompt! Maintenant, choosez-vous le plus grand histoire de gaieté et ennui pour le conte effrayant de Vendredi. Votez-moi vers le haut !
[Trans: Vote for tomorrow's Scary Story, there's a chap. Allow my good friend Sherlock Holmes the fictional detective to present the evidence.]
* Duke of Kent - How I foiled the dreaded case of the Curzon Club spit-roast
* Leaflets - Arch-fiend Professor Moriarty plans to reveal Queen Victoria's dangly bits come to a sticky end
* Glider - Tuesday, and once again it is Watson's turn to wear the panties
* Wrong Funeral - A mysterious stranger leads to peril and one of those "Dear Fiesta" letters
* Paint - Off my tits on cocaine, I solve the case of the trans-sexual dwarf
* Ceiling - The Hound of the Baskervilles, or, my Devon Dogging Adventure
* Presto - The celebrated wit and poet Oscar Wilde engages my services, while Watson watches
Remember my Padowan learners: Once you have eliminated the impossible, whatever remains, however improbable, must be true. Except for all that shit about crop circles. And bored housewives. And those stories about my fruit fetish. Lemon entry, my dear Watson.
And while the barrel's being well and truly scraped...
Health News: Medical experts have said that the endorphin rush caused by orgasm can be used to combat a migraine. A handy thing to know if you are ever caught masturbating, and is far better than claiming you have Parkinson's. However, if discovered whacking one out during a job interview or at your Aunt Hilda's funeral ("She was one fine, fine woman!"), you're on your own.
Boiler News: Did someone request an update on the Kirstie Allsopp saga?
I ain't fightin' it till I 'ear it talk News: Enjoying the coverage of the Olympic Games on the television then? Allow me to spoil it for you. And I'm not going to apologise. This one can't be right, either.
Bonjour, my petits frou-froux et grands fromages d'internet pompt-de-pompt-pompt! Maintenant, choosez-vous le plus grand histoire de gaieté et ennui pour le conte effrayant de Vendredi. Votez-moi vers le haut !
[Trans: Vote for tomorrow's Scary Story, there's a chap. Allow my good friend Sherlock Holmes the fictional detective to present the evidence.]
* Duke of Kent - How I foiled the dreaded case of the Curzon Club spit-roast
* Leaflets - Arch-fiend Professor Moriarty plans to reveal Queen Victoria's dangly bits come to a sticky end
* Glider - Tuesday, and once again it is Watson's turn to wear the panties
* Wrong Funeral - A mysterious stranger leads to peril and one of those "Dear Fiesta" letters
* Paint - Off my tits on cocaine, I solve the case of the trans-sexual dwarf
* Ceiling - The Hound of the Baskervilles, or, my Devon Dogging Adventure
* Presto - The celebrated wit and poet Oscar Wilde engages my services, while Watson watches
Remember my Padowan learners: Once you have eliminated the impossible, whatever remains, however improbable, must be true. Except for all that shit about crop circles. And bored housewives. And those stories about my fruit fetish. Lemon entry, my dear Watson.
And while the barrel's being well and truly scraped...
Health News: Medical experts have said that the endorphin rush caused by orgasm can be used to combat a migraine. A handy thing to know if you are ever caught masturbating, and is far better than claiming you have Parkinson's. However, if discovered whacking one out during a job interview or at your Aunt Hilda's funeral ("She was one fine, fine woman!"), you're on your own.
Boiler News: Did someone request an update on the Kirstie Allsopp saga?
I ain't fightin' it till I 'ear it talk News: Enjoying the coverage of the Olympic Games on the television then? Allow me to spoil it for you. And I'm not going to apologise. This one can't be right, either.
Wednesday, August 18, 2004
Society: Doomed - part XXXVIII
Society: Doomed - part XXXVIII
The Daily Telegraph is now accepting death announcements for pets. It has been suggested in certain quarters that I should apply for the post of editor of this vital page in our national mass media. I will, of course, do my best in this important job, and treat the bereaved blue rinsers with the utmost respect and dignity as they part with their cash.
Tricky Woo: Beloved companion, now feeding the starving millions in the Philippines.
Mitzi: She was a good dog, there is no heaven for those that can lick their own arse.
Pinky: The best cat in the world, filed under "vetinary waste."
Scaryduck: Lovingly roasted in a delicate orange sauce.
Crap Music, again
Unless my memory has failed me, this site once hosted a low-quality What's-the-worst-song-ever vote. Whatever the outcome - if it even existed at all - after listening to a drunken pensioners' sing-a-long coming from next door, I've changed my mind. The worst song in the world ever ever ever is:
Joe Cocker - With a Little Help from my Friends. The most overblown wanky pile of bollocks ever committed to tape. Words cannot describe my hatred for this performance - it's everything that makes we want to go round to his house, kick out all the windows and crap through his letterbox, and any decent judge will let me off for committing an essential public service. A crime against the musician's art. Paul McCartney ought to be spinning in his grave.
This narrowly beats The Carpenters' Calling Occupants of Interplanetary Craft into second place, a tune I'll lift from Mrs Duck's collection and play at extreme volume if I'm ever in need of a laugh. Funnier than the Barron Knights, The Wurzels and The Krankies all rolled into one.
So far ahead of the field are this pair, I'm at a loss for a third example of similar crapness, short of The Streets' A Grand Dont Come for Free this time next year. You know the form by now - suggest-me-up!
The Scaryduck Archive
The Daily Telegraph is now accepting death announcements for pets. It has been suggested in certain quarters that I should apply for the post of editor of this vital page in our national mass media. I will, of course, do my best in this important job, and treat the bereaved blue rinsers with the utmost respect and dignity as they part with their cash.
Tricky Woo: Beloved companion, now feeding the starving millions in the Philippines.
Mitzi: She was a good dog, there is no heaven for those that can lick their own arse.
Pinky: The best cat in the world, filed under "vetinary waste."
Scaryduck: Lovingly roasted in a delicate orange sauce.
Crap Music, again
Unless my memory has failed me, this site once hosted a low-quality What's-the-worst-song-ever vote. Whatever the outcome - if it even existed at all - after listening to a drunken pensioners' sing-a-long coming from next door, I've changed my mind. The worst song in the world ever ever ever is:
Joe Cocker - With a Little Help from my Friends. The most overblown wanky pile of bollocks ever committed to tape. Words cannot describe my hatred for this performance - it's everything that makes we want to go round to his house, kick out all the windows and crap through his letterbox, and any decent judge will let me off for committing an essential public service. A crime against the musician's art. Paul McCartney ought to be spinning in his grave.
This narrowly beats The Carpenters' Calling Occupants of Interplanetary Craft into second place, a tune I'll lift from Mrs Duck's collection and play at extreme volume if I'm ever in need of a laugh. Funnier than the Barron Knights, The Wurzels and The Krankies all rolled into one.
So far ahead of the field are this pair, I'm at a loss for a third example of similar crapness, short of The Streets' A Grand Dont Come for Free this time next year. You know the form by now - suggest-me-up!
Tuesday, August 17, 2004
Naked Darth Vader
Last Night's TV
You won't see this on Media Guardian...
I watched Naked News last night (10.30, Get Lucky TV, Sky 235), which is causing a bit of a stir in the media news community with its much-lauded transfer to British television and right-down-to-the-flanges wardrobe policy. I was rather disturbed by the amount of silicone on display to be perfectly frank, it just ain't natural. Norks are supposed to wobble, and they shouldn't come with a small printed label which reads "Inflate to 60 psi". Rumour has it that Moira Stewart's put in for a transfer.
You can't fault the news content, however. It was rather pleasing to see an item on press freedom which used the same quotes as a near identical one written by our office, only their one comes with the added advantage of nudity. And believe me, you don't want to see Kevin with his kit off. It's bad enough watching him, coming over all shouty in his Portsmouth FC shirt. We don't want to encourage him. Keep your kit on, Kev.
The Naked News team even cater for the aesthetically challenged - why else does one of their extremely talented newsreaders look like a horse? I didn't know where to look. Those teeth follow you about the room. And already they've reached their greatest challenge - how to cover the Blunkett pregnancy without causing mass vomiting. Move over CNN, your time is up.
Skint
Times are hard for everyone these days. In a Universe just round the corner from ours, the Galactic Empire is struggling to come to terms with budget cuts:
"Gentlemen," said Darth Vader striding up and down the room with purpose as the collected generals twitched nervously in their seats, "It is fair to say that our unsuccessful experiments with the Death Star have pissed the Empire's annual budget up the wall for the next twenty years. If we are to stay competitive in this cut-throat market of Galactic dominance, we should be looking at a policy of belt-tightening."
"You mean..."
"Exactly. That's no moon. That's a beach ball painted grey with 'Death Star Mk III' scrawled on the side with Mrs Vader's laundry marker. Not exactly impressive, but it'd fool Admiral Akhbar three times out of four."
"Yes, but, Lord Vader, but can we compete with the Rebels' X-Wings with these... these... scooters of yours?"
"Silence, fool! You question the dark side? These are no mere scooters - look, they have bells on them, too! What say you Lord Emperor?"
"We're fucked..."
And...
What the bloody hell's that at the top of my blog? I'm scared.
The Scaryduck Archive
You won't see this on Media Guardian...
I watched Naked News last night (10.30, Get Lucky TV, Sky 235), which is causing a bit of a stir in the media news community with its much-lauded transfer to British television and right-down-to-the-flanges wardrobe policy. I was rather disturbed by the amount of silicone on display to be perfectly frank, it just ain't natural. Norks are supposed to wobble, and they shouldn't come with a small printed label which reads "Inflate to 60 psi". Rumour has it that Moira Stewart's put in for a transfer.
You can't fault the news content, however. It was rather pleasing to see an item on press freedom which used the same quotes as a near identical one written by our office, only their one comes with the added advantage of nudity. And believe me, you don't want to see Kevin with his kit off. It's bad enough watching him, coming over all shouty in his Portsmouth FC shirt. We don't want to encourage him. Keep your kit on, Kev.
The Naked News team even cater for the aesthetically challenged - why else does one of their extremely talented newsreaders look like a horse? I didn't know where to look. Those teeth follow you about the room. And already they've reached their greatest challenge - how to cover the Blunkett pregnancy without causing mass vomiting. Move over CNN, your time is up.
Skint
Times are hard for everyone these days. In a Universe just round the corner from ours, the Galactic Empire is struggling to come to terms with budget cuts:
"Gentlemen," said Darth Vader striding up and down the room with purpose as the collected generals twitched nervously in their seats, "It is fair to say that our unsuccessful experiments with the Death Star have pissed the Empire's annual budget up the wall for the next twenty years. If we are to stay competitive in this cut-throat market of Galactic dominance, we should be looking at a policy of belt-tightening."
"You mean..."
"Exactly. That's no moon. That's a beach ball painted grey with 'Death Star Mk III' scrawled on the side with Mrs Vader's laundry marker. Not exactly impressive, but it'd fool Admiral Akhbar three times out of four."
"Yes, but, Lord Vader, but can we compete with the Rebels' X-Wings with these... these... scooters of yours?"
"Silence, fool! You question the dark side? These are no mere scooters - look, they have bells on them, too! What say you Lord Emperor?"
"We're fucked..."
And...
What the bloody hell's that at the top of my blog? I'm scared.
Monday, August 16, 2004
"What the fuck does WTF mean?"
"What the fuck does WTF mean?"
I am indebted to forum posters at another place for a link to bash.org, a depository of the best of IRC. Now, I never quite reached the levels of geekery to understand quite what IRC is*, let alone install it on my machine; but if what I've read at bash is anything to go by, I think I'm better off on the outside looking in.
A horrifying couple of hours was spent making strange noises and bellowing is laughter. Much is made in interspazz parlance of ROTFLMAO and coffee/screen interfaces, but this, dear reader, the shining wit of IRC, is the real McCoy, and I don't mean the doctor out of Star Trek. You still here? Get in there!
And I quote:
"Tell your mother to stop changing her lipstick. My dick is like a friggin rainbow."
"The problem with America is stupidity. I'm not saying there should be a capital punishment for stupidity, but why don't we just take the safety labels off of everything and let the problem solve itself?"
"I'd like to donate sperm to the helpless supermodels - they're starving, you know."
"Cows would live a lot longer if they weren't made out of steaks and leather"
calin: we had a guy at school that wore black lipstick.. and was all gothy.. and then one day we caught him buying an assvibrator
ecoli: ew.
ecoli: wait, you "caught" him?
ecoli: like, you were behind him in line at the assvibrator store?
Aero: he doesnt answer
*** Quits: calin (No route to host)
Freezer_Burn : how do i removed a burned in image from my monitor
seamuso : buy a new monitor
Freezer_Burn : i cant
Kornchild : how did you burn an image into your monitor?
Freezer_Burn : i set it to full screen at high brightness and fell asleep
Freezer_Burn : there is a faint outline of a naked lady with her legs wide open showing her privates
Freezer_Burn : and i have to remove it before my mom comes home tomorrow night
Hey you, stop laughing at the back there. This is a serious study into youth slang and cross-culture diversity in the context of international communications. Oh, who am I trying to kid?
DemonEater: wtf
DemonEater: ESPN is showing 2003 national jump rope championship
DemonEater: who the hell watches jump rope competiti--- ooh bouncy
*Actually, I do, but I just couldn't be arsed.
The Scaryduck Archive
I am indebted to forum posters at another place for a link to bash.org, a depository of the best of IRC. Now, I never quite reached the levels of geekery to understand quite what IRC is*, let alone install it on my machine; but if what I've read at bash is anything to go by, I think I'm better off on the outside looking in.
A horrifying couple of hours was spent making strange noises and bellowing is laughter. Much is made in interspazz parlance of ROTFLMAO and coffee/screen interfaces, but this, dear reader, the shining wit of IRC, is the real McCoy, and I don't mean the doctor out of Star Trek. You still here? Get in there!
And I quote:
"Tell your mother to stop changing her lipstick. My dick is like a friggin rainbow."
"The problem with America is stupidity. I'm not saying there should be a capital punishment for stupidity, but why don't we just take the safety labels off of everything and let the problem solve itself?"
"I'd like to donate sperm to the helpless supermodels - they're starving, you know."
"Cows would live a lot longer if they weren't made out of steaks and leather"
calin: we had a guy at school that wore black lipstick.. and was all gothy.. and then one day we caught him buying an assvibrator
ecoli: ew.
ecoli: wait, you "caught" him?
ecoli: like, you were behind him in line at the assvibrator store?
Aero: he doesnt answer
*** Quits: calin (No route to host)
Freezer_Burn : how do i removed a burned in image from my monitor
seamuso : buy a new monitor
Freezer_Burn : i cant
Kornchild : how did you burn an image into your monitor?
Freezer_Burn : i set it to full screen at high brightness and fell asleep
Freezer_Burn : there is a faint outline of a naked lady with her legs wide open showing her privates
Freezer_Burn : and i have to remove it before my mom comes home tomorrow night
Hey you, stop laughing at the back there. This is a serious study into youth slang and cross-culture diversity in the context of international communications. Oh, who am I trying to kid?
DemonEater: wtf
DemonEater: ESPN is showing 2003 national jump rope championship
DemonEater: who the hell watches jump rope competiti--- ooh bouncy
*Actually, I do, but I just couldn't be arsed.
Friday, August 13, 2004
Trench Warfare
Trench Warfare
Matty lived next door to me. His house was on the corner of the street, so he had a huge garden, mostly laid over to mud and a half-wrecked caravan which doubled up as a death-trap when attached to the back of their car. One summer this all changed - Matty's gran was coming to live with them. She was selling her house, and Matty's dad was to build a granny annexe on the side of the house, the garden turning from muddy bomb-site to muddy hole in the ground.
To save on money, Matty's dad did away with professional builders and spent weekends and holidays on the vast project - an entirely new granny-friendly wing on the house. The first thing he did was hire a digger and spent a day or so excavating the foundations. Then he had to go back to his real job, leaving the back garden closely resembling the trenches of Belgium in the First World War.
So that's what we did, Matty, Nige, John, Squaggy and I. We played war, running around shouting "ner-ner-ner-ner-ner!" with toy guns, and taking his little sister hostage. And I thought I'd grown out of all that. It was also good for setting up stunts on your bike, which we did until we were told to stop by Matty's mum.
Then it rained. It must have rained for a whole week, because I looked out of my bedroom window one morning to see the contents of Matty's garden slowly floating downstream on a tide of mud. If the building site resembled WW1 trenches before the storm, it was now like the Somme, with his Dad losing one of his boots in an impromtu site inspection, which he never saw again. Also missing was the cement mixer, swallowed up by the quagmire.
With our main avenue to the Planet Fun now blocked off, we passed the days in Matty's bedroom playing computer games on his Commodore 64, and typing in random "peeks" and "pokes" to see what colour the screen went. There was a rumour going round that if you typed in the right numbers, you could mess up a C64 for good, and how I tried.
Totally engrossed with trying to bugger up Matty's computer in the name of sane, upright BBC Model B ownership, we were totally unprepared for events out of doors. Above the sound of the rain hammering on the windows, we heard a scream. A terrible, blood-freezing scream of horror and despair that seemed to go on forever.
"Oooh!" it went, "Ooooo-ooo-ooooo-ooh!" For quite some time. "Ooh!"
"Did you hear that?"
"What?"
"Oooh! Ooooh-ooh-ooooh!"
"That."
"Oh. Wonder what it is."
We drew straws to see who would go out into the deluge to see what had happened, expecting severed limbs at the very least, and I grudgingly edged out of the front door, under cover of the porch and poked my head round the corner to see the cause of the Banshee-like wailing.
It was worse than my worst nightmares. Far, far worse. Terrified, I called for backup, and I was joined in the lashing rain by Matty and John. We were confronted by a blackened spectre rising from the swamp of the flooded garden. It was filthy, it smelled like death, and from its almost human lips came a not-quite-human groan.
"Help me out of here you bastards!"
It was no monster. It was Squaggy, taking a short-cut across the garden, forgetting the small detail of the flooded foundations. Running like a short, fat dervish to escape the rain, he had fallen in head-first, thrashed about screaming, before scrambling up a plank to safety.
If that wasn't bad enough, an even more dread thought crossed his mind: "Me mum's gonna kill me."
We saved his life, dragging him down the Launderama for a quick wash and tumble-dry. If only we'd thought to bring some spare clothes with us...
The Scaryduck Archive
Matty lived next door to me. His house was on the corner of the street, so he had a huge garden, mostly laid over to mud and a half-wrecked caravan which doubled up as a death-trap when attached to the back of their car. One summer this all changed - Matty's gran was coming to live with them. She was selling her house, and Matty's dad was to build a granny annexe on the side of the house, the garden turning from muddy bomb-site to muddy hole in the ground.
To save on money, Matty's dad did away with professional builders and spent weekends and holidays on the vast project - an entirely new granny-friendly wing on the house. The first thing he did was hire a digger and spent a day or so excavating the foundations. Then he had to go back to his real job, leaving the back garden closely resembling the trenches of Belgium in the First World War.
So that's what we did, Matty, Nige, John, Squaggy and I. We played war, running around shouting "ner-ner-ner-ner-ner!" with toy guns, and taking his little sister hostage. And I thought I'd grown out of all that. It was also good for setting up stunts on your bike, which we did until we were told to stop by Matty's mum.
Then it rained. It must have rained for a whole week, because I looked out of my bedroom window one morning to see the contents of Matty's garden slowly floating downstream on a tide of mud. If the building site resembled WW1 trenches before the storm, it was now like the Somme, with his Dad losing one of his boots in an impromtu site inspection, which he never saw again. Also missing was the cement mixer, swallowed up by the quagmire.
With our main avenue to the Planet Fun now blocked off, we passed the days in Matty's bedroom playing computer games on his Commodore 64, and typing in random "peeks" and "pokes" to see what colour the screen went. There was a rumour going round that if you typed in the right numbers, you could mess up a C64 for good, and how I tried.
Totally engrossed with trying to bugger up Matty's computer in the name of sane, upright BBC Model B ownership, we were totally unprepared for events out of doors. Above the sound of the rain hammering on the windows, we heard a scream. A terrible, blood-freezing scream of horror and despair that seemed to go on forever.
"Oooh!" it went, "Ooooo-ooo-ooooo-ooh!" For quite some time. "Ooh!"
"Did you hear that?"
"What?"
"Oooh! Ooooh-ooh-ooooh!"
"That."
"Oh. Wonder what it is."
We drew straws to see who would go out into the deluge to see what had happened, expecting severed limbs at the very least, and I grudgingly edged out of the front door, under cover of the porch and poked my head round the corner to see the cause of the Banshee-like wailing.
It was worse than my worst nightmares. Far, far worse. Terrified, I called for backup, and I was joined in the lashing rain by Matty and John. We were confronted by a blackened spectre rising from the swamp of the flooded garden. It was filthy, it smelled like death, and from its almost human lips came a not-quite-human groan.
"Help me out of here you bastards!"
It was no monster. It was Squaggy, taking a short-cut across the garden, forgetting the small detail of the flooded foundations. Running like a short, fat dervish to escape the rain, he had fallen in head-first, thrashed about screaming, before scrambling up a plank to safety.
If that wasn't bad enough, an even more dread thought crossed his mind: "Me mum's gonna kill me."
We saved his life, dragging him down the Launderama for a quick wash and tumble-dry. If only we'd thought to bring some spare clothes with us...
Thursday, August 12, 2004
The return of the Thursday Vote-o
Oh Lordy! It's the return of the Thursday Vote-o!
"Oh Scary!" you say, voice dripping with mid-price Elizabeth Duke jewelry dipped in gravy browning, "With these Thursday vote-oes you are spoiling us!"
And indeed I am, humble reader, as I present this week's selection of mirth and woe for tomorrow's Scary Story - more fun than buggering Ronald McDonald with a rusty scaffolding pole while singing La Marseillaise in the original Bulgarian. Students of the craft may realise by now that the descriptions offered below may or may not be entirely truthful. What are you waiting for then? Vote me up!
* Trench Warfare, in which several rolls of clingfilm are needlessly wasted on youthful experimentation
* Leaflets, in which our hero discovers exhumation of the recently deceased for fun and profit!
* Glider, in which several scenes from the film "Deliverance" are re-enacted outside York Minster
* Wrong Funeral, in which Princess Diana finally returns from a seven year holiday asking "So, who died then?"
* Paint, in which Ann Widdecombe suddenly realises what she's been missing all these years, with devastating results
* Ceiling, in which Ronald McDonald is buggered within an inch of his life by a singing Bulgarian-French scaffolder
I also have a rather good one lined up co-starring the Duke of Kent. It's what he would have wanted.
Catching up with Scaryduck
Recent mentions on other sites seem to have upped the traffic to this festering corner of the interspazz, so I thought that while you're pondering which story to choose for tomorrow the newer reader (and boy, I hope you realise what you've let yourself in for) may wish to acquaint themselves with a brief summary of previous posts:
1. Sigmund Freud, "the father of modern psychiatry", died in an enormous wanking accident that they had to cover up.
2. Man's existence on planet Earth is solely to impress half-naked female sunbathers.
3. The first thing Neil Armstrong did when he took his giant step for mankind was to stand on - and break - the piss bottle in his spacesuit.
4. TV celebrity Kirstie Allsopp is the leading exponent in the hobby of weasel-greasing, and often has the charming Sarah Beeny round for tea.
5. The so-called "Dirty Bomb" was invented by Benny Hill in a doomed attempt to poison the nation with low-grade smut.
6. "Dear Fiesta, you won't believe the most amazing thing that happened to me the other day" is a legitimate opening to a letter.
7. First editions of PG Wodehouse's "You fucking cunt, Jeeves" and Barbara Cartland's "Shit on my tits" both command huge prices on ebay.
8. The phrase “Profanity is the literary crutch of the inarticulate motherfucker” can be found on page 1,079 of "The Wit of Oscar Wilde".
9. Samantha Fox Strip Poker is the greatest computer game of all time. I would, however, like to point out that my brother bought it. I just used it more than he did. And hacked the picture files.
10. The words "unprecedented premier league muppetry" should ALWAYS be used in letters of complaint.
11. In his memoirs, Denis Thatcher revealed that once, after traditional sex with his wife in the missionary position, he suggested they try anal. But apparently the lady's not for turning.
12. Plymouth Hoe is a well-known Westcountry landmark where Sir Francis Drake famously rolled his bowls, and not a group of all-female rappers from Devon.
12 and a bit. Sorry, this list started off well enough, but just got sort of out of control. Um. Can I go now?
Oh Lordy (again) - Pengor's back.
Archive-Me-Do
"Oh Scary!" you say, voice dripping with mid-price Elizabeth Duke jewelry dipped in gravy browning, "With these Thursday vote-oes you are spoiling us!"
And indeed I am, humble reader, as I present this week's selection of mirth and woe for tomorrow's Scary Story - more fun than buggering Ronald McDonald with a rusty scaffolding pole while singing La Marseillaise in the original Bulgarian. Students of the craft may realise by now that the descriptions offered below may or may not be entirely truthful. What are you waiting for then? Vote me up!
* Trench Warfare, in which several rolls of clingfilm are needlessly wasted on youthful experimentation
* Leaflets, in which our hero discovers exhumation of the recently deceased for fun and profit!
* Glider, in which several scenes from the film "Deliverance" are re-enacted outside York Minster
* Wrong Funeral, in which Princess Diana finally returns from a seven year holiday asking "So, who died then?"
* Paint, in which Ann Widdecombe suddenly realises what she's been missing all these years, with devastating results
* Ceiling, in which Ronald McDonald is buggered within an inch of his life by a singing Bulgarian-French scaffolder
I also have a rather good one lined up co-starring the Duke of Kent. It's what he would have wanted.
Catching up with Scaryduck
Recent mentions on other sites seem to have upped the traffic to this festering corner of the interspazz, so I thought that while you're pondering which story to choose for tomorrow the newer reader (and boy, I hope you realise what you've let yourself in for) may wish to acquaint themselves with a brief summary of previous posts:
1. Sigmund Freud, "the father of modern psychiatry", died in an enormous wanking accident that they had to cover up.
2. Man's existence on planet Earth is solely to impress half-naked female sunbathers.
3. The first thing Neil Armstrong did when he took his giant step for mankind was to stand on - and break - the piss bottle in his spacesuit.
4. TV celebrity Kirstie Allsopp is the leading exponent in the hobby of weasel-greasing, and often has the charming Sarah Beeny round for tea.
5. The so-called "Dirty Bomb" was invented by Benny Hill in a doomed attempt to poison the nation with low-grade smut.
6. "Dear Fiesta, you won't believe the most amazing thing that happened to me the other day" is a legitimate opening to a letter.
7. First editions of PG Wodehouse's "You fucking cunt, Jeeves" and Barbara Cartland's "Shit on my tits" both command huge prices on ebay.
8. The phrase “Profanity is the literary crutch of the inarticulate motherfucker” can be found on page 1,079 of "The Wit of Oscar Wilde".
9. Samantha Fox Strip Poker is the greatest computer game of all time. I would, however, like to point out that my brother bought it. I just used it more than he did. And hacked the picture files.
10. The words "unprecedented premier league muppetry" should ALWAYS be used in letters of complaint.
11. In his memoirs, Denis Thatcher revealed that once, after traditional sex with his wife in the missionary position, he suggested they try anal. But apparently the lady's not for turning.
12. Plymouth Hoe is a well-known Westcountry landmark where Sir Francis Drake famously rolled his bowls, and not a group of all-female rappers from Devon.
12 and a bit. Sorry, this list started off well enough, but just got sort of out of control. Um. Can I go now?
Oh Lordy (again) - Pengor's back.
Wednesday, August 11, 2004
With age, so comes wisdom
With age, so comes wisdom
Knocking about on a discussion forum recently (Tagline: "It's a football forum, not a degree in being a ponce"), someone started a thread on films you once thought were great, but now that you are older and wiser, suddenly realise are shite.
This set me off trawling through not only my DVD and video collection, but also music, books and my unreliable memory for previous favourites now well past their sell-by date. Oh, what a litany of woe:
Music: Tears for Fears - Songs from the Big Chair. I worshipped this album when it first appeared, but slapped it into my CD player recently only to find that the years have turned it into MOR wank. With saxophones. Strangely, The Hurting remains an electronica masterpiece.
Film: Party Party. Brit ensemble comedy featuring Billy Mitchell out of 'Enders and him out of the Flash liquid adverts, involving loads of drunken antics and traces of norks. Accidentally saw it a few weeks ago, about as funny as pulling your own teeth.
TV: Blakes Seven. Ridiculed at the time for wobbly sets, wobbly plots and wobblier acting, but teen sci-fi fans lapped it up. I must have been mental.
Books: Dr Who, Star Trek and X-Files novelizations. What was I thinking? I didn't even get them cheap from charity shops - I paid FULL PRICE.
Music: Sex Pistols - Never Mind the Bollockss. Controversial one this. A few sparkling tracks - Anarchy, God Save the Queen and Pretty Vacant, but the rest is just over-rated shouty bollocks played by vaguely talented session musicians. The same, unfortuntaly goes for Adam and the Ants - Kings of the Wild Frontier , the first LP I ever bought, recorded in the back of a transit van.
Music: Neil Diamond's Twelve Greatest Hits. Come to think of it, I quite like this. Perhaps it's my age.
Passing the buck - now it's your turn...
The Scaryduck Archive
Knocking about on a discussion forum recently (Tagline: "It's a football forum, not a degree in being a ponce"), someone started a thread on films you once thought were great, but now that you are older and wiser, suddenly realise are shite.
This set me off trawling through not only my DVD and video collection, but also music, books and my unreliable memory for previous favourites now well past their sell-by date. Oh, what a litany of woe:
Music: Tears for Fears - Songs from the Big Chair. I worshipped this album when it first appeared, but slapped it into my CD player recently only to find that the years have turned it into MOR wank. With saxophones. Strangely, The Hurting remains an electronica masterpiece.
Film: Party Party. Brit ensemble comedy featuring Billy Mitchell out of 'Enders and him out of the Flash liquid adverts, involving loads of drunken antics and traces of norks. Accidentally saw it a few weeks ago, about as funny as pulling your own teeth.
TV: Blakes Seven. Ridiculed at the time for wobbly sets, wobbly plots and wobblier acting, but teen sci-fi fans lapped it up. I must have been mental.
Books: Dr Who, Star Trek and X-Files novelizations. What was I thinking? I didn't even get them cheap from charity shops - I paid FULL PRICE.
Music: Sex Pistols - Never Mind the Bollockss. Controversial one this. A few sparkling tracks - Anarchy, God Save the Queen and Pretty Vacant, but the rest is just over-rated shouty bollocks played by vaguely talented session musicians. The same, unfortuntaly goes for Adam and the Ants - Kings of the Wild Frontier , the first LP I ever bought, recorded in the back of a transit van.
Music: Neil Diamond's Twelve Greatest Hits. Come to think of it, I quite like this. Perhaps it's my age.
Passing the buck - now it's your turn...
Tuesday, August 10, 2004
100% of SCIENCE!
100% of SCIENCE!
This week, I have busied myself with questions of a philosophical and scientific bent, and for good reason.
Saturday 7th August 2004 was an auspicious day in the Duck household. The first ever asking of that greatest of philosophers' questions at Scaryduck Towers, a question first put by Aristotle to Socrates in 487BC, and pondered by the finest minds of humanity ever since.
This is a question that has defined the very shape of our world, the fragility of the human psyche and has caused the rise and fall of great empires. Not just a question. The question.
Did not Our Lord ask this of Judas Iscariot at the Second from Last Supper? A question asked, forsooth, by Lady Macbeth of her husband in Act II Scene I of The Scottish Play; revisited as part of Abraham Lincoln's famous Gettysburg Address, a theme eventually taken up by Martin Luther King in his stirring "I have a Dream" speech. And now, with our lives at a crossroads, our very future in the balance, it was the turn of Scaryduckling. So it goes:
"Are you a Benny tied to a tree?"
I answered, naturally, in the negative.
Scientists and thinkers have struggled with the Benny Controversy and its implications for humanity for decades. In his now famous experiment into Benny Theory, Erwin Schroedinger demonstrated that the very act of ascertaining whether the subject is tied to a tree or is a Benny on the Loose causes the so-called Deacon Field to collapse, risking widespread contamination with Benny germs. Because of the dangers, the Schoedinger's Benny experiment is never likely to be attempted.
Albert Einstein spent many of his later years pondering the so-called Loose Benny problem. In an elegant solution proposed in his "Special" Theory, he realised that the curved nature of the universe allows the subject to be simultaneously one the loose and tied to a tree. The implications of this proved devasting for the people of Vladivostok, when in 1954 an uncontrolled Benny leak at the city's Pacific Fleet naval dockyards left several square miles completely uninhabitable, a disaster which still contaminates the population today.
Indeed, much modern thinking in the field of quantum mechanics is based around theories of multiple dimensions, parallel universes and free-radical Benny particles, where all solutions to the Loose Benny Problem can exist, including the so-called Humphries Dimension, where scientists theorise that there are no trees and is populated by nothing but Bennies on the Loose. However, as Schoedinger's Benny points out, merely attempting to view these events may even bring about the end of our universe through destabilizing the time-spazz matrix.
Professor Stephen Hawking has neatly sidestepped this problem and the potential threat to our existence posed by a rampaging critical mass of Bennies by instead devoting his energies to an entirely different question. Hawking boils it down to a succint four words in an updated edition of his classic "A Brief History of Time": "Have you got Skill?" Alas, even Hawking's enormous intellect cannot answer the unanswerable, and we must resign ourselves to the fact that Bennies will always be on the loose. And they've got African Bum Disease.
The Scaryduck Archive
This week, I have busied myself with questions of a philosophical and scientific bent, and for good reason.
Saturday 7th August 2004 was an auspicious day in the Duck household. The first ever asking of that greatest of philosophers' questions at Scaryduck Towers, a question first put by Aristotle to Socrates in 487BC, and pondered by the finest minds of humanity ever since.
This is a question that has defined the very shape of our world, the fragility of the human psyche and has caused the rise and fall of great empires. Not just a question. The question.
Did not Our Lord ask this of Judas Iscariot at the Second from Last Supper? A question asked, forsooth, by Lady Macbeth of her husband in Act II Scene I of The Scottish Play; revisited as part of Abraham Lincoln's famous Gettysburg Address, a theme eventually taken up by Martin Luther King in his stirring "I have a Dream" speech. And now, with our lives at a crossroads, our very future in the balance, it was the turn of Scaryduckling. So it goes:
"Are you a Benny tied to a tree?"
I answered, naturally, in the negative.
Scientists and thinkers have struggled with the Benny Controversy and its implications for humanity for decades. In his now famous experiment into Benny Theory, Erwin Schroedinger demonstrated that the very act of ascertaining whether the subject is tied to a tree or is a Benny on the Loose causes the so-called Deacon Field to collapse, risking widespread contamination with Benny germs. Because of the dangers, the Schoedinger's Benny experiment is never likely to be attempted.
Albert Einstein spent many of his later years pondering the so-called Loose Benny problem. In an elegant solution proposed in his "Special" Theory, he realised that the curved nature of the universe allows the subject to be simultaneously one the loose and tied to a tree. The implications of this proved devasting for the people of Vladivostok, when in 1954 an uncontrolled Benny leak at the city's Pacific Fleet naval dockyards left several square miles completely uninhabitable, a disaster which still contaminates the population today.
Indeed, much modern thinking in the field of quantum mechanics is based around theories of multiple dimensions, parallel universes and free-radical Benny particles, where all solutions to the Loose Benny Problem can exist, including the so-called Humphries Dimension, where scientists theorise that there are no trees and is populated by nothing but Bennies on the Loose. However, as Schoedinger's Benny points out, merely attempting to view these events may even bring about the end of our universe through destabilizing the time-spazz matrix.
Professor Stephen Hawking has neatly sidestepped this problem and the potential threat to our existence posed by a rampaging critical mass of Bennies by instead devoting his energies to an entirely different question. Hawking boils it down to a succint four words in an updated edition of his classic "A Brief History of Time": "Have you got Skill?" Alas, even Hawking's enormous intellect cannot answer the unanswerable, and we must resign ourselves to the fact that Bennies will always be on the loose. And they've got African Bum Disease.
Monday, August 09, 2004
Peff
How I'm going to make my fortune
I've spotted a niche in the market, and this time next year, Rodders, we'll be millionaires. I have devised a type of self adhesive yellow notepaper which can be used to jot down short memos and aides memoire and left where they can be seen. And here's the twist - each one will be over-printed with a large pair of ladies' norks. With these Post-Tit notes I'll be rich! RICH!
The further wit of Scaryduck Jr
I'm beginning to have misgivings about my parental influence over my son. Not only does he - worryingly - describe me as "the best dad in the world", but he's also started to think like me. Still disappointed over not capturing his brain-jarring collision with Sandsfoot Castle on videotape, thus netting us a fortune on You've Been Framed, his suggest was simple: "Dad, you get the camera, I'm off to my room to invent a time machine."
He has since invented a new word: peff.
Peff: 1. Noun. Vomit. "Good grief, did you see all that peff by the bus stop this morning?" 2. Verb. To vomit. "Don't eat all those sweets, you'll peff lumps."
Funnily enough, the day he invented this word, which I shall endeavour to use in everyday convseration, he ignored the advice about eating too many sweets, and spent the evening peffing multicoloured vomit well into the night.
I'm so old...
...having finally caved in to the hype and bought "A Grand don't come for Free", I remember The Streets being famous the first time around. Except, way back then, he went under the name "Jilted John".
"Gordon is a moron..."
Slattern
Meanwhile, over at Robber Rabbit, a few problems with a frighteningly pushy and lightly-oiled Kirstie Allsopp.
The Scaryduck Archive
I've spotted a niche in the market, and this time next year, Rodders, we'll be millionaires. I have devised a type of self adhesive yellow notepaper which can be used to jot down short memos and aides memoire and left where they can be seen. And here's the twist - each one will be over-printed with a large pair of ladies' norks. With these Post-Tit notes I'll be rich! RICH!
The further wit of Scaryduck Jr
I'm beginning to have misgivings about my parental influence over my son. Not only does he - worryingly - describe me as "the best dad in the world", but he's also started to think like me. Still disappointed over not capturing his brain-jarring collision with Sandsfoot Castle on videotape, thus netting us a fortune on You've Been Framed, his suggest was simple: "Dad, you get the camera, I'm off to my room to invent a time machine."
He has since invented a new word: peff.
Peff: 1. Noun. Vomit. "Good grief, did you see all that peff by the bus stop this morning?" 2. Verb. To vomit. "Don't eat all those sweets, you'll peff lumps."
Funnily enough, the day he invented this word, which I shall endeavour to use in everyday convseration, he ignored the advice about eating too many sweets, and spent the evening peffing multicoloured vomit well into the night.
I'm so old...
...having finally caved in to the hype and bought "A Grand don't come for Free", I remember The Streets being famous the first time around. Except, way back then, he went under the name "Jilted John".
"Gordon is a moron..."
Slattern
Meanwhile, over at Robber Rabbit, a few problems with a frighteningly pushy and lightly-oiled Kirstie Allsopp.
Friday, August 06, 2004
Mirth and Woe - a duck's brother writes
Crime and Punishment
A tale of mirth, woe and unspeakable agony by guest writer Nigel "Scary's brother" Coleman
I have a new injury (readers may wish to update themselves on our hero's last brush with death here), sustained in such bizarre circumstances that I though I'd write it all down. Some background information:
* Alcohol was not a factor
* My postman is a lazy fat cunt
* My neighbours are all cunts, and I hope they all get testicular cysts (I know that's not very nice, but in my defence, I know how cunty my neighbours are; you don't).
Anyway:
Sandra (the soon-to-be third Mrs Nigel) and I were to spend a week in Jersey. This would (I thought) lead to may hours spent on the beach. Women can sunbathe for hours without getting bored, a bit like those little lizard things you see in hot, shit countries. Men, on the other hand, get bored and will fidget after about three minutes, due to a higher level of brain activity, probably. I decided to order some books from Amazon. And a CD, while I was there.
After the books were four days overdue, I constructed a scenario in my head as to what had happened:
My postman (fat, lazy, and as previously advised, a cunt) no doubt arrived, sweating, at the front door to our block of flats. Having buzzed my flat and had no answer, he then had two choices - take the parcel back and leave a card for me to pick it up from the sorting office, or press all of the other buzzers and lob my parcel onto the foot of the stairs for any fucker that happens to pass through. In my scenario, he chose the latter, a choice he routinely makes, judging by the stuff that I walk past most evenings.
Now, if I lived in Knightsbridge, Hampstead or Blackheath, say, this would not be a problem. However, I live in Chelmsford, Essex, as a result of circumstances that are too lengthy to detail here. Suffice it to say that I stick out like a sore thumb in my block of flats. I am the only person over the age of 30 and I'm the only one who owns the flat they live in (and by definition, the only one that gives a fuck about the state of the place). I am also the only one who wears a suit to work, whereas the only time any of these white-van larvae put on a suit is to go to court.
What I'm saying is that a big thick parcel with Amazon on it must have been well tempting - not that they would have been able to read the enclosed books, and none of them look like Radiohead fans to me either.
I took Amazon's advice and checked with my sorting office, just to cover that particular base. Perhaps the person at Amazon would like to actually go through that experience one day. I will spare you the details, but when I arrived at the front of the queue and explained that I wasn't actually there to pick up a parcel per se, but merely to see if one exists, you would be forgiven for thinking that I'd stuck my cock in his hand instead of one of those 'sorry you were out' cards, from the look of perplexity followed by annoyance on the counter bloke's face. So, home to Chav Towers, and Plan B.
I've had stuff nicked before (which will probably make you wonder why I don't get stuff delivered to work - I don't know, is the answer), so I decided that enough is enough. I'm going to catch the guilty little twat.
I got my complimentary tyre-changing gloves out of the back of my car (it's the one in the car park with the number plates in a legal type-face and without neon washer-nozzles and plate-sized speakers) and started searching the communal bins for my Amazon packaging. How good is it going to be to find my package with my name on it in some low-life's bin bag along with one of his Ocean Finance final demands with his name and address on?
At this point I am kidding myself that once I have found the incriminating evidence, I will merely hand it over to the guardians of law and order, the Essex Constabulary. However, as I delve deeper into the remnants of countless Iceland frozen Lasagnes and Chick 'n 'Ribs boxes (what passes as world cuisine in Chelmsford), my sense of indignation is deepening. Having fitted extra locks to my front door (well, wouldn't you?), I know how many blows of my highly-sharpened Chinese cleaver it would take to break through the wood of the Rat Boy's first line of defence.
I'm now leaning right into the final bin. There in front of me is the last bag. There's cardboard in that there bag; I can see it. My gloved hand isn't quite getting hold of it, even if I tip the bin. I bunk myself up on to the edge of the bin, so as to lean in with the edge across my midriff (or what passes as my midriff these days). Unfortunately, I am 37, not 17. I'm also nearer 14 stone than 10. I 'landed' with the edge of the bin across my ribs and I felt rather than heard a snap from within my chest. I involuntarily flew backwards across the bin shed and couldn't breathe for what seems like minutes but was roughly half a second. One broken rib. Arse. Plan abandoned.
The next day I'm on my way to Jersey (in what might as well be a fucking Sopwith Camel, incidently), 30 quid worse off after buying replacement books, and really looking forward to getting on that hired bike waiting for me at the hotel. I spent a week walking around like an old man and as you can guess it curtailed the old bedroom antics no end.
And the best bit? When I got home, there's this little card in my post box: "Sorry you were out. We're holding a parcel for you." Cunts.
Do you know anyone who wants to buy some paperbacks? I've had a great idea that I could sell them over the Interweb thingy and send them to people in the post. What? Oh.
I have suggested a foolproof way to track down the culprits: leave an Amazon parcel filled with dog turds in the communal hallway. Then sit quietly and wait for the screams. Killer bees would work just as well.
You too, your name is going in ze Scaryduck Archive
A tale of mirth, woe and unspeakable agony by guest writer Nigel "Scary's brother" Coleman
I have a new injury (readers may wish to update themselves on our hero's last brush with death here), sustained in such bizarre circumstances that I though I'd write it all down. Some background information:
* Alcohol was not a factor
* My postman is a lazy fat cunt
* My neighbours are all cunts, and I hope they all get testicular cysts (I know that's not very nice, but in my defence, I know how cunty my neighbours are; you don't).
Anyway:
Sandra (the soon-to-be third Mrs Nigel) and I were to spend a week in Jersey. This would (I thought) lead to may hours spent on the beach. Women can sunbathe for hours without getting bored, a bit like those little lizard things you see in hot, shit countries. Men, on the other hand, get bored and will fidget after about three minutes, due to a higher level of brain activity, probably. I decided to order some books from Amazon. And a CD, while I was there.
After the books were four days overdue, I constructed a scenario in my head as to what had happened:
My postman (fat, lazy, and as previously advised, a cunt) no doubt arrived, sweating, at the front door to our block of flats. Having buzzed my flat and had no answer, he then had two choices - take the parcel back and leave a card for me to pick it up from the sorting office, or press all of the other buzzers and lob my parcel onto the foot of the stairs for any fucker that happens to pass through. In my scenario, he chose the latter, a choice he routinely makes, judging by the stuff that I walk past most evenings.
Now, if I lived in Knightsbridge, Hampstead or Blackheath, say, this would not be a problem. However, I live in Chelmsford, Essex, as a result of circumstances that are too lengthy to detail here. Suffice it to say that I stick out like a sore thumb in my block of flats. I am the only person over the age of 30 and I'm the only one who owns the flat they live in (and by definition, the only one that gives a fuck about the state of the place). I am also the only one who wears a suit to work, whereas the only time any of these white-van larvae put on a suit is to go to court.
What I'm saying is that a big thick parcel with Amazon on it must have been well tempting - not that they would have been able to read the enclosed books, and none of them look like Radiohead fans to me either.
I took Amazon's advice and checked with my sorting office, just to cover that particular base. Perhaps the person at Amazon would like to actually go through that experience one day. I will spare you the details, but when I arrived at the front of the queue and explained that I wasn't actually there to pick up a parcel per se, but merely to see if one exists, you would be forgiven for thinking that I'd stuck my cock in his hand instead of one of those 'sorry you were out' cards, from the look of perplexity followed by annoyance on the counter bloke's face. So, home to Chav Towers, and Plan B.
I've had stuff nicked before (which will probably make you wonder why I don't get stuff delivered to work - I don't know, is the answer), so I decided that enough is enough. I'm going to catch the guilty little twat.
I got my complimentary tyre-changing gloves out of the back of my car (it's the one in the car park with the number plates in a legal type-face and without neon washer-nozzles and plate-sized speakers) and started searching the communal bins for my Amazon packaging. How good is it going to be to find my package with my name on it in some low-life's bin bag along with one of his Ocean Finance final demands with his name and address on?
At this point I am kidding myself that once I have found the incriminating evidence, I will merely hand it over to the guardians of law and order, the Essex Constabulary. However, as I delve deeper into the remnants of countless Iceland frozen Lasagnes and Chick 'n 'Ribs boxes (what passes as world cuisine in Chelmsford), my sense of indignation is deepening. Having fitted extra locks to my front door (well, wouldn't you?), I know how many blows of my highly-sharpened Chinese cleaver it would take to break through the wood of the Rat Boy's first line of defence.
I'm now leaning right into the final bin. There in front of me is the last bag. There's cardboard in that there bag; I can see it. My gloved hand isn't quite getting hold of it, even if I tip the bin. I bunk myself up on to the edge of the bin, so as to lean in with the edge across my midriff (or what passes as my midriff these days). Unfortunately, I am 37, not 17. I'm also nearer 14 stone than 10. I 'landed' with the edge of the bin across my ribs and I felt rather than heard a snap from within my chest. I involuntarily flew backwards across the bin shed and couldn't breathe for what seems like minutes but was roughly half a second. One broken rib. Arse. Plan abandoned.
The next day I'm on my way to Jersey (in what might as well be a fucking Sopwith Camel, incidently), 30 quid worse off after buying replacement books, and really looking forward to getting on that hired bike waiting for me at the hotel. I spent a week walking around like an old man and as you can guess it curtailed the old bedroom antics no end.
And the best bit? When I got home, there's this little card in my post box: "Sorry you were out. We're holding a parcel for you." Cunts.
Do you know anyone who wants to buy some paperbacks? I've had a great idea that I could sell them over the Interweb thingy and send them to people in the post. What? Oh.
I have suggested a foolproof way to track down the culprits: leave an Amazon parcel filled with dog turds in the communal hallway. Then sit quietly and wait for the screams. Killer bees would work just as well.
Thursday, August 05, 2004
Thursday Stuffpile
Thursday Stuffpile
Tomorrow sees a Scary Story by a special guest writer, so there is no Thursday vote-o today. It's a cracker with absolutely tons of swearing, so I'm certain that it will go down well. Instead of the vote-o, it's been ages since we've had a stuffpile, so here goes:
Political correctness gone maaaaaaad!
Ofcom bans the Renault "Shakin' that ass" advert as it "mocks people with Parkinson's Disease".
"An advertisement for the Renault Megane 225 featured a number of people in a supermarket, on the street and in a swimming pool, shaking uncontrollably as the car passed by. Ten viewers contacted us because they believed the commercial mocked people with illnesses that resulted in body tremors."
Win free stuff!
I did. Write five hundred words about knives and fifty quid's worth of gadgetry is as good as yours.
Democracy in action
Tories in Turmoil - vote for the next leader of the Conservative Party. I went for Tessa Jowell, the haggard old tramp.
ALL teh intarnet!
Available at last: ALL teh intarnet.
Worst product name ever - I really, really, hope this is ironic.
Worrying search results
We heart Vork
Has anyone seen Mike Hunt?
As a journalist, I'm always being nagged to use the bastard spellchecker.
Dictionary corner
SPPANG: Onom The sound made by hitting an executive of South West Trains around the head with a shovel when arriving late for work for the third time in a week. "Your SPPANG job SPPANG is SPPANG to SPPANG make SPPANG trains SPPANG run on time SPPANG SPPANG SPPANG.
Finally...
Join the madness --- Kung Fu Madness!!!
Now go back to your constituencies and prepare for the Scaryduck Archive
Tomorrow sees a Scary Story by a special guest writer, so there is no Thursday vote-o today. It's a cracker with absolutely tons of swearing, so I'm certain that it will go down well. Instead of the vote-o, it's been ages since we've had a stuffpile, so here goes:
Political correctness gone maaaaaaad!
Ofcom bans the Renault "Shakin' that ass" advert as it "mocks people with Parkinson's Disease".
"An advertisement for the Renault Megane 225 featured a number of people in a supermarket, on the street and in a swimming pool, shaking uncontrollably as the car passed by. Ten viewers contacted us because they believed the commercial mocked people with illnesses that resulted in body tremors."
Win free stuff!
I did. Write five hundred words about knives and fifty quid's worth of gadgetry is as good as yours.
Democracy in action
Tories in Turmoil - vote for the next leader of the Conservative Party. I went for Tessa Jowell, the haggard old tramp.
ALL teh intarnet!
Available at last: ALL teh intarnet.
Worst product name ever - I really, really, hope this is ironic.
Worrying search results
We heart Vork
Has anyone seen Mike Hunt?
As a journalist, I'm always being nagged to use the bastard spellchecker.
Dictionary corner
SPPANG: Onom The sound made by hitting an executive of South West Trains around the head with a shovel when arriving late for work for the third time in a week. "Your SPPANG job SPPANG is SPPANG to SPPANG make SPPANG trains SPPANG run on time SPPANG SPPANG SPPANG.
Finally...
Join the madness --- Kung Fu Madness!!!
Wednesday, August 04, 2004
"Dear Dr Scary"
"Dear Dr Scary"
Warning: This post has been rated "Utterly Manky" by the Women's Institute Naked Calendar and Jam-Making Committee. Continue at your peril.
In my all-action life as internet guru and role model to millions, people are constanty asking me "Scary, why can't I be like you?" And, dear reader, with very little application, and for a small fee, you may.
The number one question I am always asked is one of relationships, and how to keep your partner sweet to your rugged, manly affections. "What shall I do?" I often hear, "I've got the house to myself, but my girlfriend wants me to tidy the place up and get the ironing done before she gets back. All I want to do is mooch around the internet and have an enormous wank over Sarah Alexander out of Coupling. What's it to be? Housework or hand shandy?"
You damn fool! Talk about getting your priorities wrong. The basis of a stable domestic relationship is to ensure that the chores are not only shared, but that she sees that you are doing your bit to keep your house running smoothly. If a tree falls down in a forest, but there is no-one there to hear it, does it make a sound? The same applies to all housework done by men. You can scrub and polish for all you are worth, but if there is no female witness, you may as well be sitting in front of a freshly culled internet looking at pictures of young ladies in various states of excitement. Which is what she thinks you are doing anyway, so why let the side down? The correct approach to your dilemma, therefore, is thus:
1. Spend five minutes tidying the house. Make the bed, dust the TV, do the washing up to an almost hygenic standar and tidy away all the old newspapers. Cleaning the pipework behind the bog (a place where ALL women look when inspecting men's housework - 100% of FACT) takes no more than two seconds and scores no end of brownie points. She may even do that thing with the baby oil as a result.
2. Enormous wank, after sitting on your hand for twenty minutes so you can imagine you've just paid some skanky old slapper for a posh one.
3. Time the ironing so that you've done exactly two shirts and a sock when she walks in the door. Such will be the amazement, she will offer to finish the job for you, and then do that thing with the baby oil, if she hasn't already offered after step 1.
Note: Start step 3 too early and you may consider repeating step 2 before all the ironing runs out, but this is not without its dangers. On no account should you allow yourself to be caught undertaking step 2 when she arrives home, particularly if you are wearing her underwear and are paying a skanky old slapper for a posh one, your eyes bulging in a mixture of horror and ecstasy, fountains of spooge ruining the duvet, as you realise, far too late, that the name you have called out is that of her twenty stone mother. This doesn't tend to go down too well, and contrary to what you may have read in certain adult literature, an invitation to join in a filthy threesome may end in disappointment.
4. ???
5. Profit!
Simple really, although I'm damn certain that Freud would have a field day with me, if he hadn't been killed in that enormous wanking accident they had to cover up. You may wish to learn more about my exciting celebrity lifestyle in my new publication "How to be a conniving bastard", available from all good book stores. And quite a few bloody awful ones, too.
The Scaryduck Archive
Warning: This post has been rated "Utterly Manky" by the Women's Institute Naked Calendar and Jam-Making Committee. Continue at your peril.
In my all-action life as internet guru and role model to millions, people are constanty asking me "Scary, why can't I be like you?" And, dear reader, with very little application, and for a small fee, you may.
The number one question I am always asked is one of relationships, and how to keep your partner sweet to your rugged, manly affections. "What shall I do?" I often hear, "I've got the house to myself, but my girlfriend wants me to tidy the place up and get the ironing done before she gets back. All I want to do is mooch around the internet and have an enormous wank over Sarah Alexander out of Coupling. What's it to be? Housework or hand shandy?"
You damn fool! Talk about getting your priorities wrong. The basis of a stable domestic relationship is to ensure that the chores are not only shared, but that she sees that you are doing your bit to keep your house running smoothly. If a tree falls down in a forest, but there is no-one there to hear it, does it make a sound? The same applies to all housework done by men. You can scrub and polish for all you are worth, but if there is no female witness, you may as well be sitting in front of a freshly culled internet looking at pictures of young ladies in various states of excitement. Which is what she thinks you are doing anyway, so why let the side down? The correct approach to your dilemma, therefore, is thus:
1. Spend five minutes tidying the house. Make the bed, dust the TV, do the washing up to an almost hygenic standar and tidy away all the old newspapers. Cleaning the pipework behind the bog (a place where ALL women look when inspecting men's housework - 100% of FACT) takes no more than two seconds and scores no end of brownie points. She may even do that thing with the baby oil as a result.
2. Enormous wank, after sitting on your hand for twenty minutes so you can imagine you've just paid some skanky old slapper for a posh one.
3. Time the ironing so that you've done exactly two shirts and a sock when she walks in the door. Such will be the amazement, she will offer to finish the job for you, and then do that thing with the baby oil, if she hasn't already offered after step 1.
Note: Start step 3 too early and you may consider repeating step 2 before all the ironing runs out, but this is not without its dangers. On no account should you allow yourself to be caught undertaking step 2 when she arrives home, particularly if you are wearing her underwear and are paying a skanky old slapper for a posh one, your eyes bulging in a mixture of horror and ecstasy, fountains of spooge ruining the duvet, as you realise, far too late, that the name you have called out is that of her twenty stone mother. This doesn't tend to go down too well, and contrary to what you may have read in certain adult literature, an invitation to join in a filthy threesome may end in disappointment.
4. ???
5. Profit!
Simple really, although I'm damn certain that Freud would have a field day with me, if he hadn't been killed in that enormous wanking accident they had to cover up. You may wish to learn more about my exciting celebrity lifestyle in my new publication "How to be a conniving bastard", available from all good book stores. And quite a few bloody awful ones, too.
Tuesday, August 03, 2004
The Joys of Fatherhood
The Joys of Fatherhood
This week, I have been mostly prizing Scaryduck Junior away from his Playstation and teaching him to ride his bike. And what progress he has made - going from "Aaaaaargh!!! Don't let go!" to semi-confident trail-blazer in less than half an hour. It was all done in the accepted manner as laid down in the Eddy Merckx Big Book of Bike Riding* - sit the tyke at the top of a hill and push him over the edge, leaving him to face any hazards on the way down. My God, it worked for me, and it was going to work for him, too.
Down, down, down the grassy sward he raced, legs pumping at the pedals, half-naked sunbathers suitably impressed at the energy of his rugged tutor. There was no stopping the lad as he thundered onward - the wind in his hair, the cries of joy, it was utterly beautiful. If only Henry VIII hadn't built a bastard great castle in the way, then.
It was the most impressive crash, and I swore to his mother that it was only a flesh wound. The half-naked sunbathers were even more impressed at the rugged charm and l33t first aid skills of his tutor, and the castle was hardly damaged at all. His first words when he came to were: "If only you had the video camera, dad - we'd be rich!" Once again my stab at "You've Been Framed" fame thwarted by a lack of forward planning.
I'll be teaching him about the brakes next week. One step at a time.
* May contain traces of bullshit and pictures of muscly Belgians on bicycles.
Archive, sir?
This week, I have been mostly prizing Scaryduck Junior away from his Playstation and teaching him to ride his bike. And what progress he has made - going from "Aaaaaargh!!! Don't let go!" to semi-confident trail-blazer in less than half an hour. It was all done in the accepted manner as laid down in the Eddy Merckx Big Book of Bike Riding* - sit the tyke at the top of a hill and push him over the edge, leaving him to face any hazards on the way down. My God, it worked for me, and it was going to work for him, too.
Down, down, down the grassy sward he raced, legs pumping at the pedals, half-naked sunbathers suitably impressed at the energy of his rugged tutor. There was no stopping the lad as he thundered onward - the wind in his hair, the cries of joy, it was utterly beautiful. If only Henry VIII hadn't built a bastard great castle in the way, then.
It was the most impressive crash, and I swore to his mother that it was only a flesh wound. The half-naked sunbathers were even more impressed at the rugged charm and l33t first aid skills of his tutor, and the castle was hardly damaged at all. His first words when he came to were: "If only you had the video camera, dad - we'd be rich!" Once again my stab at "You've Been Framed" fame thwarted by a lack of forward planning.
I'll be teaching him about the brakes next week. One step at a time.
* May contain traces of bullshit and pictures of muscly Belgians on bicycles.
Monday, August 02, 2004
Fashion Police: A game for all the family
Fashion Police
Let's play Fashion Police - an almost harmless game for the whole family.*
Play either individually or as a team and score points whilst sniggering at the general public to liven up even the dullest of shopping trips.**
The rules are simple my Padowan learner - you are the Fashion Police and it is your job to seek out the sartorially challenged as you go about your everyday life. Score points as you spot fashion faux pas, and the player with the highest score at the end of the day gets to be a smug bastard. Score points for the following, or just make it up as you go along (I do, and that's why I'm such a smug bastard):
Men:
- Socks and sandals - the English dullard's concession to hot weather, and photographed here by way of a handy guide: 5 points
- Socks and sandals and shorts - it's really hot and it's pension day, so here are my legs. Feel free to compare them to Gandhi's: 10 points, plus a bonus if the socks reach the knees.
Women:
- Crop-tops revealing navel piercings - it's fashion, I'm suffering and by God, I'm going to make you suffer too: 5 points
- Crop-tops revealing navel piercings with beer belly - put it away woman, in the name of all that is holy: 10 points
Bonuses:
Add extra points at the judges discretion for the following:
- The minger bonus - Piercings, beer belly, furry moon boots, Pat Butcher's earrings, tattoos and a face like a slapped arse: the sky's the limit
- Bingo wing bonus - flabby upper arms as if they're on the way to the bingo hall. 5 points per wing, double if they're under the age of twenty.
- ManU/Burberry bonus - only scores points in this lethal combination
- Family multiplier - Your score increases exponentially for each family member who offends you
Remember- all scores count as double if you are within earshot of a Peruvian busker playing the theme to "Titanic" on the Pan-Pipes. High score to beat: 12,750 on a particularly horrifying trip through Weymouth town centre at the height of the holiday season.
Now get out and clean up those streets. It's hell out there.
* Unless told to "bloody grow up" by Mrs Duck.
** Until beaten to a pulp by a passing Burberry-clad gorilla for laughing at his moose of a girlfriend.
Archive me up, Scary-o!
Let's play Fashion Police - an almost harmless game for the whole family.*
Play either individually or as a team and score points whilst sniggering at the general public to liven up even the dullest of shopping trips.**
The rules are simple my Padowan learner - you are the Fashion Police and it is your job to seek out the sartorially challenged as you go about your everyday life. Score points as you spot fashion faux pas, and the player with the highest score at the end of the day gets to be a smug bastard. Score points for the following, or just make it up as you go along (I do, and that's why I'm such a smug bastard):
Men:
- Socks and sandals - the English dullard's concession to hot weather, and photographed here by way of a handy guide: 5 points
- Socks and sandals and shorts - it's really hot and it's pension day, so here are my legs. Feel free to compare them to Gandhi's: 10 points, plus a bonus if the socks reach the knees.
Women:
- Crop-tops revealing navel piercings - it's fashion, I'm suffering and by God, I'm going to make you suffer too: 5 points
- Crop-tops revealing navel piercings with beer belly - put it away woman, in the name of all that is holy: 10 points
Bonuses:
Add extra points at the judges discretion for the following:
- The minger bonus - Piercings, beer belly, furry moon boots, Pat Butcher's earrings, tattoos and a face like a slapped arse: the sky's the limit
- Bingo wing bonus - flabby upper arms as if they're on the way to the bingo hall. 5 points per wing, double if they're under the age of twenty.
- ManU/Burberry bonus - only scores points in this lethal combination
- Family multiplier - Your score increases exponentially for each family member who offends you
Remember- all scores count as double if you are within earshot of a Peruvian busker playing the theme to "Titanic" on the Pan-Pipes. High score to beat: 12,750 on a particularly horrifying trip through Weymouth town centre at the height of the holiday season.
Now get out and clean up those streets. It's hell out there.
* Unless told to "bloody grow up" by Mrs Duck.
** Until beaten to a pulp by a passing Burberry-clad gorilla for laughing at his moose of a girlfriend.
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