Mirth and Woe: Still Ill

Still Ill

What's the most ill you've ever been?

I've been fairly lucky with my health in that I've never found myself in hospital for anything more serious than a dental operation and, of course, to allow a complete stranger to plunge a blunt fruit knife into my groin until the jizz supply dried up. A 'vasectomy' they call this. 'Havin' a laugh', I would counter. I only went in to have my wanker's cramp seen to.

No, I have never been horribly, life threateningly ill, not even following a couple of gallons of heavy ale and chasers which resulted in a New Year of sweating, puking, crapping and weeing all at once for three days solid. Self-inflicted doesn't really count.

Not that the self-inflicted excuse gets me off the hook for the worst I have ever felt in my life, ever.

It was this bad: terrible. Really, really terrible. I bet you've had worse, though.

I remember it well. I had been to some bloody awful first division football match in which Reading had been roundly thrashed by Ipswich Town, and on the way back to the railway station I had decided on something to eat that would lift my dampened spirits. It was a Big Mac and large fries from a certain fast food chain that rhymes with FuckingAwfulCrapDonalds. I wolfed it all down on the 1742 to Twyford, and within an hour of stepping through my front door, I was bent double with pain and begging for death.

"Frep!" went my bottom, a portent of the horrors to come.

"Frep!" it went again.

"FreeeeEEEeeEEEEeep!" Oh.

I believe we burned the trousers in the garden in the end, just to make sure. Although we should have just nuked 'em from orbit.

Before long I was simultaneously crapping through the eye of a needle and bowking rich brown vomit, firstly into a bucket, and once that was brimming with something terrible, into the hand basin. Anything that I ate or drank rapidly came out again, only converted to some sort of green mush containing dead mice and body parts.

I may have eaten rhubarb and sausages at some stage because I remember both featuring heavily.

This only seemed to encourage the cycle of awfulness, but God, I needed to put something back in before I died.

My mother, ever the attentive nurse, came up trumps with a diarlyte, a drink designed - and I quote - "to replace lost liquids and minerals in those suffering from the effects of diahoerra."

It tasted like seawater, and it probably was.

"Yaaaaaaaaaaarch!"

This lasted for three days, after which only dust came out. On the bright side, I had lost well over a stone in weight, and despite a rather pasty complexion and an unnatural body odour, I must say I was looking pretty bloody buff.

"Never again", I said to myself, and I vowed that I would never, ever step inside a FuckingAwfulCrapDonalds ever again.

I switched to Burger King, and was bowking rich, brown vomit again within a week.

That is the most ill I have ever been. I don't know I'm born.

Crap on Toast

Crap on Toast

I am indebted to the fragrant Aunty Marianne, blogger and gastronome, who posed the question "What's the worst thing you've ever eaten?"

OK, so I've crapped through many eyes of many needles following losing arguments with various takeaway kebabs, burgers and meat pies banned under the Geneva Convention. However, these were generally fucked up for me by other people making a career out of widespread poisoning.

So: something I cooked myself...

A self-made curry, where I used rather more than the single spoon of curry paste required. Used to those easy-to-cook stir-in sauces where you brown some meat, pour on the contents and cook for a bit, I blindly piled on the paste. The whole jar, in fact.

It was like gargling battery acid. In fact, it was like battery acid with added broken glass and barbed wire, while Frank Bruno gamely pummels you in the chest for good measure. I went several mouthfuls trying to kid myself that it wasn't as bad as I thought, while Mrs Duck countered with "My God - are you trying to burn me to death?".

My bottom, some fifteen years later, has only just forgiven me.

This is mild, I expect, compared to your horror stories. Tell! Mainly because I can't be arsed to hold a Thursday vote-o today: TELL!

Also A week too late for Talk Like A Pirate Day: A bountiful treasure chest. Oh, Misty.

We 'heart' you, Ann Noreen Widdecombe!

We 'heart' you, Ann Noreen Widdecombe!

Next Wednesday, the 4th October marks the 59th birthday of the one person that unites us all as Scaryduck readers: Ann Noreen Widdecombe. So, we thought, in this new age of being vaguely nice to members of the Conservative Party, because we can't entirely blame them for their life choices, it would be A Good Thing to send her a lovely present for her birthday.

We thought long and hard about this, because - let's face it - what do you get for the woman who has everything? A woman who, in her time as Prisons Minister, visited every single jail in the country and still didn't get bummed in the showers. Alas, our plan to send Miss Widdecombe a brand new goat hit the buffers early on, as it appears she has all the caprine companions she can eat.

So. Whatever you think of the Member for Maidstone and The Weald - saviour of modern society through common-sense values, arsed-faced Tory harridan, or the face that launched a thousand ill-advised boners - please suggest what we should be sending A. N. Widdecombe to make her day.

Me, to help her with her burgeoning career as a writer, I'm going to send her a somewhat heavily thumbed ring-binder with the words "Ann Widdecombe Slash Fiction" scrawled on the front which I …err… found in the alley behind our house. That's right. I found it. Yes.

Degree of difficulty: No 12-inch Black Mambo Super Kong Anal Intruder. She's already got one.


Also: More Duck-authored crap HERE.

Txt Woe

Txt Woe

Sunday, 1130 after a thrilling evening of The Royal and Midsomer Murders, my phone bursts into life with "A message to you Rudi" telling me I have a text message. This late. On a Sunday. W T, and indeed, F?

I flip open the phone, Captain Kirk style.

"Home safe. You were great tonight. Best fuck ever. Thanks for everything. x"

Right.

This news comes as no surprise, because I am excellent every day, but to receive texts about my prowess from random strangers is rather disconcerting to say the least. Especially when the only lust I have felt tonight is towards Wendy Craig in a nurse's uniform.

Mrs Duck: "So, who's texting you at nearly midnight, then?"

I don't know, I say. I don't recognise the number.

"What did they say, then?"

I tell her.

Mrs Duck is not amused. Not amused in the slightest, as frankly, wrong number or not, people just can't go round saying that I'm excellent.

So, to defuse the situation, I send a text in return:

"Cheers. Smashing. Great. You were rubbish."

I await a reply.

On Inappropriate Crushes and Unrequited Love

On Inappropriate Crushes and Unrequited Love

Love. It's a wonderful, wonderful thing. Birds sing, happy smiley bees flit about your head, and you bang your end on doors even though you are a good foot away at the time. Love, everybody!

But love! You're English (or Canadian, but imagine, eh?) you couldn't possibly tell her your true feelings because she'd laugh, tell all her friends that you're a first order spacker and the humiliation will kill you... Oh!

Unrequited love, then. It's shit, isn't it?

For me, it was my dentist Mrs Allison. Not my regular dentist, mind you, although she was not without her latex-gloved charms - Mrs Allison was the pneumatic *cough* relief dentist that came in on Fridays to do root canal work. Heaven.

Mrs Allison, you see, possessed the most enormous pair of lady-bumps that squished into the side of your head while she hammered away at your tooth with a Black and Decker cordless drill every Friday for two months. Bargain basement thrills, they were too, and the best sixteen pounds I ever spent. These days, no dentist in the country would press their cleavage into your face for less than a couple of hundred.

Just Fridays? I'd have given her a filling any day of the week.

It was, looking back on those halcyon days of oral torture mixed with the finest sensual pleasure, an experience that has made me the fine, upstanding individual with a grey tooth that I am today.

I'm over it now. Why bother with pointless, doomed crushes when you can ride round and round on the Circle Line all day with a mirror superglued to the toe of your shoe?

OK officer, I'll come quietly.

"Done a poo"

"Done a poo"


More of this lunacy HERE

Mirth and Woe: A Terrible Cult

A Terrible Cult

"Haven't seen that Eddie Reynolds for a bit," said Balders, sitting in the Old Devil, putting away his fourth pint of the night, simultaneously shovelling home a triple chocolate gateau.

"Mmmf!" said Martin the Hippie, who shared a house with Eddie, and might have been in a position to give us a few clues as to his whereabouts, had his mouth not also been stuffed full of beer and cake.

"Mmmf!" he eventually managed, "He's gone somewhere. On a course, or sumfin'. Findin' his head."

I was unaware that he had lost it; but face full of beer, cake and dry-roast peanuts, I was unable to give my drunken chums the benefit of my wit.

"He's got an Afghan coat an' everything," said Martin the Hippie.

And we were none the wiser for at least one hour, when the pub door creaked open, and in walked Eddie himself, several stones lighter than the last time we had seen him. Not bad going either, for he was as skinny as a rake at the best of times. He was wearing what appeared to be a dead badger, a badger which had shuffled into the next life by a passing lorry several weeks previously, if the smell was any clue.

"Bloody hell, Ed - you've lost weight! Where the hell have you been? Prison?"

"I've been on a course, man," he said, without a trace of irony on his voice. "I've been finding my head."

Oh. God. No.

"An' I got this Afghan. I traded it for my guitar."

"*Bowk* And I know who got the better deal *bowk*."

And: "Hang on. That was my Gibson."

"Don't be such a bread-head, Martin. Possessions are for The Man, man."

Naturally, we had to find out more. This looked particularly serious as one of our beer buddies appeared to have been kept prisoner in a barn and starved for several weeks.

"So - where the hell were you?"

"In a barn, guy."

Right. This was going to be a long, long evening.

It turned out that poor Eddie had signed up for a course he had seen advertised in the back of some Hippie fanzine. It was all about finding your inner self, your place in the universe, and discovering that "We're all perfect, man, in our own imperfect way", a mantra that appeared to have been hammered into his head by some kind of brainwashing technique that involved sitting in a barn for a fortnight living on watered-down cardboard. The American government are using a variant in Guantanamo, we gather.

Cut to the chase: "How much did you pay for that load of bollocks, then?"

"Three hundred pounds, and there were twelve of us."

How much?!?!?!

"Come to think of it, we didn't see much of the people who ran the course. I'm beginning to think they might be some bunch of chancing bread-heads. Know what I mean?"

We knew what he meant. The whole enterprise had been corrupted by the grabbing hand of capitalism, and it didn't take long to do the maths.

"Fucking hell's TEETH!" shouted Pat, "That's three and a half grand!"

And: "Let's do it!"

So, being a bunch of chancing bread-heads ourselves, we decided to set up much the same thing, and put some adverts in all the Glastonbury- and Avebury-based 'zines we could find, roped in a friend with a spare barn (you'd be surprised) and bought in bulk from Lentils-u-Like.

By shining a bright light into Eddie's face for several days, and copying out whole pages from all the Glastonbury- and Avebury-based 'zines we could find, we soon had a pretty passable Find-Your-Head, Man course worked out.

Result: half a dozen dreadful hippies, all, it turned out from extremely well-off, middle-class homes and showing classic signs of Hippie bread-head guilt, who paid us far too much money to sit round in a barn for a week, getting their heads together, man. We found repeatedly telling them "You're all perfect in your own imperfect way, guy" worked best.

We are certain that they are now all merchant bankers and internet entrepreneurs, and exhibiting very few lasting effects, and we only came close to burning down the barn on three seperate occasions.

Funnily, the four-figure profit we turned also went some way to getting our heads together. I got myself a) an Austin Allegro and b) outrageously, boot-spatteringly drunk. Easy come, easy go, as they say.

On having the house to one's self

On having the house to one's self

A certain lady of the female persuasion recently told me that she had the house to herself one evening, while the rest of her family was away. She spent the entire evening terrified that all the world's burglars, villains and axe-murderers were beating a path to her door, so she sat up all night watching the music channels on Sky until the sun came up.

Crap.

And that's the difference between men and women.

Getting the house to himself, any bloke in the world will be cooking the biggest, greasiest fry-up imaginable, before mincing about in the wife's underwear with the curtains closed and all the doors bolted. The connosieur would have had at least three enormous wanks by midnight, watching the ten minute freeviews on the pr0n channels, hoping beyond hope that they accidentally forget to flick the switch and encrypt it once the low-quality free stuff is over.

And they do. Naughty Suburban Grannies VII. Any port in a storm.

Even broadcast in the clear, it's crap. You can tell they're not doing the proper sexussss - it's like those awful German 1970s scud movies they used to show on RTL and 3Sat on a Friday night with the lederhosen and oompah-oompah soundtrack.

So I gather.

Said too much.

Again.

A vote-o! Yes!

Choose, then, from this manky quartet, one of which may well appear on Friday.

But first, a few items of late news:

* Take a Break: The Thailand coup leaders appeared on TV and told an expectant nation the best of good news. The ladyboy industry shall continue, with a special offer: bi now, gay later.

* Still Ill, or, Sti2 3, if you insist: Ann Noreen Widdecombe stood up, and with a dreadful slurping noise, Lord Archer fell out. He had been missing for three months, but, until that moment, nobody had noticed.

* A Terrible Cult: "I do wish you'd get my name right", the Liberal Democrat leader railed at the attendant press corps on the final day of his party's Brighton conference. "It's Minge. MINGE! You cunts."

* Disney: The Football Association has appointed Graham Norton to front their ongoing bung probe. "He's ideally suited," said a spokesman, "He's been probing bungs for years."

Oh-ho!

And it's goodnight from me...

Conventional Wisdom (Challenged)

Conventional Wisdom (Challenged)

And I put it to you, thussly:

Angelina Jolie - she's a bit crap, isn't she?

Let me examine the evidence:

* Two Lara Croft movies (pants)
* Alexander, possibly the worst miscasting in cinema history, where Ms Jolie (aged 29) "played" the role of Alexander the Great's mother. Alexander was played by Colin Farrell (aged 28), and Jolie's role allowed her to mope around with some snakes, mug at the camera and change her accent throughout the film, until she eventually sounds Welsh.

She trades on just two things: Those enormous lips and her …ah, OK four things. There's got to be more than freakish eye candy, though.

Messrs Gaiman and Zemeckis seem to have the right idea for the forthcoming Image Capture version of the Norse classic Beowulf, though: dressing Ms Jolie up in a skin-tight rubber suit adding costume and background electronically later.

I shall repeat: dressing Angelina Jolie up in a skin-tight rubber suit. This is why Neil Gaiman is certainly the most excellent man on the planet. He gets to do things that we mere mortals can only dream of, mostly involving skin-tight rubber suits.

There is, of course a downside: Anthony Hopkins in a skin-tight rubber suit. Ewww.

And the nub of this argument. Am I right? Has fish-lipped A. Jolie flown in from the Planet Terrible, or do computer enchanced norkery really save the day? Who can tell?

So: Is there any other conventional wisdom that needs a right old challenging and fresh rubber-wear?

Alexander the gr8

The bestest thing Scaryduck Jr has ever done, ever

"Dad - can I take your book to school?"

"Err... the nice one about the penguins that live in a fish and chip shop*, or the sweary one with all the swearing in that you're not allowed to read until you're old enough, on account of all the swearing?"

"The second one."

"Riiiiight."

"I want to show it to my teacher."

"Riiiiight. No. They'll kill me. Kill me to death."

I am not entirely surprised, then, to see the young Duck coming out of school last week, thrusting a copy of my sweary masterpiece under the noses of his classmates with the words:

"See? I told you my dad's famous."

The teachers liked it too, I am told.

* A charming trilogy in three parts about some penguins who live in a chip shop in Weymouth. Will send A4 printouts for cold, hard cash.


Txt = bllx

As I have said many times before - people who use text speak should have their genitals slammed in a car door to prevent them from furthering the human race. Harsh, I agree, but fair. Steps should be taken to wipe out this curse on our society, with the use of automatic weapons and battery acid if required.

Ming, in another place, tells me "My sister is a teacher, and says she often has to correct essays that contain text speak."

Poor the school teachers, faced with crap such as this:

* Alexander the gr8

* "2 B r nt 2 b, tht is the ?" - Hmlt, Wllm Shkspr

* F3ll0wsh1p of teh R1ng by jrr tlkn

Plz 2 sggst txt vrshuns ov teh clssx

Translation: Your suggestions, please dear readers, of text versions of the classics. Better out than in, I say.

Also: Talk like a Pirate Day - Oh go on then, if you must.

A, like, totally meaningful introduction to Waldo 'D.R.' Dobbs and Ernie Quinch

A, like, totally meaningful introduction to Waldo 'D.R.' Dobbs and Ernie Quinch

Splundig vur Thrigg, Earthlets.

Allow me to ask you a question: D.R. and Quinch. Are they the best, funniest, most violent cartoon characters ever?

Yes. Yes they are.

A creation of that genius of the comic book, Alan Moore, these lovers of frighteningly gruesome student pranks have gained a cult following over the years, even though their entire story canon troubled 2000AD's printers for no more than a couple of months, plus another story tossed off for a holiday special.

It was until I met fellow blogger and Friday Thing writer Chicken Yoghurt in a London pub, that I'd forgotten how much I loved D.R. and Quinch. So much so, that I immediately went out and bought D.R. and Quinch's Guide to Life, perhaps the funniest, best, downright sickest comic book, ever. For God's sake don't let Mrs Duck found out I've been pissing my heard-earned up the wall on comics (again), for this this could end in a Crazy Chrissie moment.

Waldo "Diminshed Responsibility" Dobbs is a teenage criminal mastermind into death, destruction, horror, torture and "offences so unusual and horrible that they do not have names"; Ernest Errol Quinch of 8 Gotterdammerung Crescent is his hulking and violent side-kick. Together, they destroy the planet Earth by way of an unfortunate student prank, destroy most of civilisation, and most notably run their own summer camp. And none of it is their fault. Society is, like, entirely to blame, man.

As I highly impressionable nineteen-year-old who still lived with his mum and bought comics which the local newsagent put aside for me (don't ask), I honestly thought D.R. and Quinch Get Back to Nature was the funniest thing ever committed to paper in the name of comic art, and I still do.

S'Right.

There's very little I can do to convince you of my argument, except to prod you towards this here page thoughtfully provided by my entirely excellent employers, reproducing the epic D.R. and Quinch Have Fun on Earth. Read. Enjoy. And then tell me Dangermouse is the acme of comic invention. Oh yes.

Wants it.

Mirth and Woe: The Drugs Do Work

The Drugs Do Work

I have mentioned on these pages in the past that drugs have absolutely no effect on me whatsoever. I am doomed - or blessed, whatever your perspective - to watch as friends get utterly off their faces on recreational substances whilst I remain as sober as a bishop. A bishop that doesn't take honking great swigs off the communion wine. I am possibly the only person in the world that goes slower on speed. I'm wired up wrong, and the guarantee's run out.

However, dose me up on proper prescription drugs signed off by a doctor and bought from a real, live chemist - as opposed to a blob of black crap wrapped in cling-film from some geezer called "Steve" - then there is only one outcome: woe.

Take, for example, the time I would rather forget at the age of 14, some time in the summer of 1980. We went, as a family, to visit incredibly posh friends at their huge house somewhere is deepest Hampshire. My recollections on this front are sketchy, but I believe it may have been one of my father's work colleagues, and I am afraid that actual money-earning promotions and important social interactions may have hinged on this particular visit.

I had, take pity, recently recovered from some hideous virus that had left me looking red, blotchy and swollen. The doctor had prescribed penicillin, and after that had left me yellow, blotchy and swollen, I was switched to something less dreadful.

The new drugs came with a warning: avoid operating machinery, alcohol. As if that was going to be a problem. After all, at the age of fourteen, the chances of my getting arseholed and attempting to drive home were this: zero. Less than zero, in fact.

Inevitably, as this sort of occasion dictates, lunch was a full-blown al fresco affair on the croquet lawn, and, forgetting the dread warnings from genuine medical professionals, I, and the other children in our party, were allowed wine. Woe.

I went absolutely ape-shit bonkers.

My recollections of subsequent events are understandably hazy, but contemporary witness reports state that my behaviour became "increasingly raucous, foul-mouthed and leering", which being not entirely different from my usual behaviour as an adult, was not the kind of thing you'd expect from a quiet, sensitive young teen.

The rubicon was crossed when I was caught red-handed staring down the voluminous cleavage of our host's young wife, who might, these days, be referred to as a "Yummy Mummy". The clincher, I am afraid to say, was the Sid James style 'Phwoooooar' that involuntarily escaped my lips as the booze swum around my head, and the only dry land I could make out was the sweet, sweet pink valley of her cleavage.

"Scary! Get to the car!" said my mother, meaning it.

So I did, and I sat, sulking, disgraced and feeling awful in the back seat of the car on a stranger's drive for the best part of two hours, whilst everybody else had the most charming of times.

Bored stupid, not entirely sane and wishing I was somewhere else entirely, I suddenly realised I had the power to make this a reality. I had been packed off to the car along with the car keys, and told not to show my face again until it was time to go home.

So: I would go home. I'd seen people drive. Good Lord, I had even driven motorised Go-Karts on a race track. How difficult could it be?

Very, it turned out.

I put the key in the ignition, waggled the gear stick a couple of times, just like I'd seen my mother doing whenever she had her lead boots on, and turned the key.

Ker-CHUNK!

Handily, the car had been left in gear, and three-quarters of a ton of Renault 18 lurched up the driveway towards the participants of a game of croquet. John Prescott would have been so proud.

Once again, my recollections of the following events are particularly unclear, but I was dragged from the car like an IRA knee-capping victim and chastised most roundly as Mrs Hostess's perfect peaches flitted across my field of view once again.

Then I was sick in a hedge.

I don't know, but I might still have been in which a chance even at that late stage in the day.

The next day, my mother read aloud from my medicine bottle: "Avoid operating machinery, alcohol."

And then: "Oh."

How we laughed and laughed.

ScaryVision, Episode Two

ScaryVision, Episode Two

Plz to stand by for the second low-quality episode of ScaryVision, which took me literally minutes to film, prepare and upload for your viewing displeasure.


Quite. If you haven't quite recovered from that particularly hideous ordeal, you may wish to pull yourself together and vote for tomorrow's Friday tale of mirth and woe, from this spunker of a selection:

* Take a Break: "Despite the boos and the jeers from the TUC delegates, Tony Blair knew one thing those lefty idiots didn't. He was addressing the conference, the nation, the whole world wearing a pair of panties lifted from Cherie's knicker drawer. Crotchless, too."

* Still Ill: "As Judge Cherie Blair sent the whining chav down for six years, she knew something the twelve in the jury didn't. She was passing sentence with the help of a butt-plug, lifted from Tony's knicker draw. Vibrating, too."

* The Drugs Do Work: "As Gordon Brown sat down in the House of Commons after addressing a packed chamber on future fiscal policy, he knew something that his so-called equals didn't. See that ceremonial mace? It's been up my arse."

* A Terrible Cult: "As David Cameron faced down a smug looking Chancellor across the floor of the House of Commons, he knew something that members of the government didn't. Black Rod, was in fact, pink. And, as they say in the trade, hung."

* Disney: "As Ann Widdecombe stood naked and sweating from the previous hour's exertions, admiring her body in the full-length mirror, she knew something her detractors didn't. She wished, though, that Tony wouldn't keep turning up in those crotchless panties."

*bowk*

Sorry, I mean 'Vote! Vote-me-up!'

*bowk*

WAR! Yahoo vs The Internet

WAR! Yahoo vs The Internet

An e-mail glides into my inbox, on gilded wings, lodging itself between offers for TEN MILLION DOLLARS from Mrs Miriam Abacha and all the V1@GrA I will ever need. A refreshing change, then.

"Yer archives, mate", said an eagle-eyed reader of these humble pages, "They're gone. All I get is a message saying 'Yahoo says No'."

And by God, so they had. For the best part of the weekend and not a sausage from Yahoo, my web behemoth of a service provider, who are actually receiving genuine cash money to host my annals of filth.

"So," I ask them, "Where's my website, then?"

Them: We deleted it.

Me: WTF?!

Them: Oh yes. It breaks the terms of service, so we deleted your account. No warnings, squire. Tough.

Me: O RLY?

Them: YA RLY!

Me: NO WAI!

Them: WAI! (And I quote) The GeoCities Terms of Service states that you cannot use your GeoCities page to link any other page, whether inside or beyond Yahoo! and/or GeoCities. Also: BUTTSECKS?

Me: No. No thank you. Hang on - you're telling me I can't use hyperlinks on my website?

Them: Darn Tootin' right. You could be sending people *anywhere*.

Me: Surely that's the entire point of the internet, and dare I say it, your own Yahoo search engine.

Them: Err….

Me: In fact, your terms of service say (and I quote) 'You agree not to use the service to use your home page (or directory) as storage for remote loading or as a door or signpost to another home page, whether inside or beyond Yahoo GeoCities'. I have over 250 active pages on my website, and ONE link to my blog. A blog which generates over 200 visitors BACK to Yahoo. Are you *trying* to lose a paying customer?

Them: OK, have your website back, then. See if we care. But remove the link.

Me: You're so kind. Can I leave the URLs in as text?

Them: *deafening silence*

Wanted: Nice, cheap pop-up free home for 6.2MB of files with easy-to-use web-based interface. No arseholes or timewasters, please. Happy finish guaranteed on first date. I'm rather hoping Voltan's Evilscope is web compatible.

Update: Enormous thanks to The Rikaitch for transferring my entire archive site onto his webspace. Truly a God amongst men. I have pointed my scaryduck.co.uk domain in the general direction, so once the upload is complete, it's a big "Fuck you!" to Geoshitties, and "Hello Swansea!"

The End of the World: A 25th Anniversary commemoration

The End of the World: A 25th Anniversary commemoration

Twenty-five years ago today - September 12th 1981 - the world ended in the white-hot furnace of nuclear Armageddon. Billions perished as Reagan and Brezhnev fulfilled the prophecy of Mutually Assured Destruction, boiling the seas and burning off the atmosphere in a radioactive hell of mankind's own making.

All life on Earth was wiped out, as thousands of megatons of explosive force and the subsequent nuclear fallout spelled the end of even the most persistent of life-forms. Even the cockroaches.

It wasn't all over with one big bang, however. Those that survived the initial assault succumbed over the following days breathing the poisonous atmosphere, cursing world leaders for their blind nuclear folly. Ronald Reagan, Leonid Brezhnev, and the Whore of Bablyon whose reckless warmongering started it all, Margaret Thatcher

Still, you've got to laugh.

I remember the end of the world like it was yesterday. I went to a Battle of Britain Day airshow at RAF Abingdon, where nuclear war unaccountably failed to break out, waking up the next day in an alternative reality where all was relatively happy in the world, Whore of Babylon notwithstanding.

I mention this for one very good reason. I spent much of my teenage years crapping myself over the inevitable nuclear war, not helped in the slightest by a school friend's assertion that September 12th would mark the end of civilisation as we knew it, and that I would die a virgin. He walks amongst us now, and posts in my blog comments.

We're still here, Richard! Wrong on both counts, guy!

Still: if the world were to end, a benevolent yet destructive deity would let us choose the manner of our own demise. This would be much like much like Gozer the Gozerian falling somewhat short in his destroy-the-planet scheme when he manifested as the Stay-Puft Marshmallow man in the highly prophetic Ghostbusters film.

Plague. War. Supernova. Head in the gas oven. Planet Earth swallowed by Jade Goody's bucket-like chuff. How would you like the world to end? I'm plumping for a gigantic pair of killer space norks. I'm so predictable.

Edit: This has absolutely nothing to do with me.

The War on Stupid

The War on Stupid

OK, so from next summer you won't be able to smoke in pubs. Some people may like this. Others, I am pretty certain, will not. Whatever your opinion, it is a continuation of an ongoing government policy that works from one simple assumption: We're stupid.

We, the government says, are stupid. Too stupid to be able to decide what's good for us and what isn't. We know smoking is dangerous, but many people still choose to do so. I know that eating a pudding that contains five Snickers bars will probably do me in over a long period of time, but why the moral outrage? I can make up my own mind.

But then, people would still vote for Teflon Tony even after he's resigned, so maybe they've got a point about this whole stupidity thing.

If you ask me, the government should be taking a more pro-active stance. We know, in the long run, what will kill us, and we don't need to be told. However, the public still needs protecting from itself, and I propose an official list of things that people need to avoid for their own good:

* Chris Moyles
* AOL
* Alcohol free lager
* Chrysler PT Cruisers
* James Blunt
* The word "poontang"
* "An evening with Derek Acorah"
* "The Sun Says" editorials
* Voting
* Personal responsibility

You know what I'm going to say. Discuss! Suggest-o! Swear!

Mirth and Woe: Venice

Mirth and Woe: Venice

You'll never believe me, but I'm a romantic at heart. OK, perhaps I overdid it a bit on the eyeliner in the 80s as a New Romantic, but under this rock-hard, unfeeling exterior, I am a bit of a softie. That's why, then, I took the soon-to-be Mrs Duck to Venice, the most romantic city in the world so I could propose marriage to her.

In fact, we were already engaged, as she had badgered me non-stop for several weeks, until I finally got down on one knee in the kitchen and said the magic words. Then I biffed my brains out on a cupboard door as I stood up, and bled all over the happiest day of her life.

This time, then, we would do it properly.

Pissing a month's salary up the wall, we bought a holiday in Slovenia, and finding ourselves the only non-Germans in the hotel, sat on beaches for much of the time. In fact, we sat on so many of those Adriatic beaches, that I developed a rather nasty case of sunstroke, the day before we were to take a hydrofoil trip across the Venetian Riviera to the city itself.

Buggered if we were going to miss this once-in-a-barely-adequate-lifetime opportunity to get fleeced by street vendors and hideously expensive cafes, I drunk about seven gallons of coffee before we set off and took far too much Nurofen to dull the pain in my head.

Woe.

That's what the trip was: woe.

I'm not the greatest of sea-farers at the best of times, and I had unfortunately left my sea-legs in a small flat back in Reading. As the Soviet-built hydrofoil bumped and buffeted across the Adriatic, my chin bumped and buffeted against the rim of the hideous ship's toilets, as I bowked rich, brown vomit all the way to Italy.

I had barely recovered by the time we got to St Mark's Square in the City of Venice, and it truly is the most awesome of sights. Awesome too was the café bill for just a couple of glasses of Coke, as Mrs Duck tried out her Italian on the fawning, yet simultaneously money-grabbing waiters "How much?!?!?!"

After the obligatory guided tours round glass factories and the Basilica, during which I kept vomiting down to a bare minimum, we were left to our own devices. I grabbed my chance - the whole reason for dragging my almost-official fiancée to this place. Find somewhere romantic, get onto one knee and pop the question properly.

The Rialto Bridge, that's where!

The Rialto Bridge is on the Grand Canal, utterly beautiful, and possibly one of the most romantic places in the whole world. Unfortunately, to get to it from St Mark's, you can either go by boat (and, frankly, I'd had enough of that for one day), or walk down dozens of narrow, alley-like streets following painted signs on walls saying "A Ponte di Rialto". It's just a shame, then, that two of the most beautiful vistas in the whole world are joined by streets that stink like all the shit on the planet is buried just below the surface. Which it probably is, in some ill-advised scheme designed to prevent the city sinking any further into the lagoon.

By the time the Rialto hove into view, the strains of the day were beginning to catch up with me, and I confess that there are times I have felt better in my life. The heat. The smell. The crowds. The ill-advised slice of pizza from a street vendor, containing meat products from at least one named animal. What could possibly go wrong?

I led my intended to the bridge, and in an overly extravagant gesture, as loving, and hugely ripped-off couples drifted under our feet on gondolas, my plan swung into action.

I sunk to one knee, and landed in the biggest, foulest Italian dog turd I had ever seen.

At least I thought it had come from a dog. You can't tell with these foreigns. The dervishes will crap in your airing cupboard given half the chance.

"Squit!"

So, instead of "Will you marry me?", I said this:

"Yaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaarch willyou yaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaarch marryme yaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaarch."

In my defence, I hardly got any on her.

She said yes, eventually.

You can't take me anywhere.

Brucie Bonus: Crikey! An obituary piece for Steve Irwin, what I wrote for The Friday Thing, that almost nearly got published. Staying just on the right side of 'You sick bastard', CLICKY-ME-DO.

Colonel Qadaffi's problem page

Colonel Qadaffi's problem page

Hi! I'm Colonel Mu'ammar Qadaffi, leader of the Libyan Revolution, and it has come to my attention that my years of experience running a nation and putting those accursed Yankee infidels (now our excellent friends of course) to the sword can now be focussed for the good of humanity.

Instead of having my masked minions shooting innocent police women out of Embassy windows, I thought it time to pay back my nation's debt to humanity in the best and only way I can. 1. By employing an all-girl bodyguard corps and 2. Answering your questions on matter of the heart. I'm a listening dictator. Tell me your troubles.

"Dear Colonel Qadaffi,

I've been a happily married housewife for twenty-seven years, but recently my husband Maurice has developed an unhealthy interest in the Salvation Army.

I wouldn't mind so much, but as a life-long accountant at Thornaby's on the High Street, he's not even religious; but these days he hardly ever misses an episode of Songs of Praise in the hope of some red-hot Sally Ann action. Recently I discovered a pile of War Cry magazines in his sock draw with many of the pages stuck together, and I suspect he might be taking illicit trumpet lessons behind my back.

Yesterday, I saw on old Salvation Army uniform in a second hand shop, and I seriously considered buying it in an attempt to spice up our frankly non-existent sex life with the aid of a ten-inch strap-on collecting tin. Help me Uncle Mu'ammar, how have I sunk this low?

Yours desperately

Mrs Brenda Rubbish

My dear Brenda,

Fear not! Your husband will soon get over his yearning for this infidel organisation once he realises that only true salvation from his life of wanton Yankee debauchery lies with the Women's Institute. Perhaps you might try to turn him in this direction with demonstrations of jam making, and perhaps posing naked for a calendar (but do, please copy any photographs to me for my ...err... research purposes).

If this should fail, you may wish to resort to planting a bomb in a German discotheque to attract attention to and punish his Zionist Imperialist ways by smiting a few infidels, or you may consider my last resort for times when diplomacy turns sour and fart in his face.

Love, Uncle Mu'ammar


Dear Colonel Qadaffi,

Is it true you've banned cartoons from Libyan TV?

Regards,

Greg Flanges

Dear Greg,

This is clearly a lie spread by the Western Capitalist-Zionist-Imperialist Military-Industrial Complex as a slight against the Great Socialist Libyan Arab Jamahiriya.

Of course it is untrue. I have personally supervised the broadcast of THREE HOURS of my favourite TV animation each and every day to the glorious Libyan masses. Qadaffi Duck.

Best, Uncle Mu'ammar


And a vote-o, too

After yesterday's F5-tastic race to the million mark (and why stop now when the two million mark's just four years away?), we're keeping the pressure up with another Thursday voye-o. Because it's Thursday, and there's a vote-o to be had.

Choose, then, from the following Tales of Mirth and Woe, as they might appear in the Daily Express

* Take a Break: "Revealed: The sordid hidden messages in Balamory"
* Venice: "Romanian Migrants to replace Royal Family by 2010"
* Still Ill: "Blair's plan to slice up Princess Diana and serve her at No. 10 barbecue"
* The Drugs Do Work: "It's true - everything gives you cancer"
* A Terrible Cult: "AAAAAARGH! We're doomed! AAAAAAAAAAARGH!"

I slaughtered an Ox earlier tonight, and the entrails say that you must vote for "Venice", or woe will rend this proud nation asunder. And the entrails never lie. Vote, or if you must, ask Colonel Qadaffi a question. He will - Amazonian Guard training sessions notwithstanding - reply to the best next week.

A cube of one hundred

A cube of one hundred

The next day or so sees the counter at the bottom of this page roll over the entirely meaningless (to you, anyway) 1,000,000 mark. When this happens, I will evolve into the next stage of human existence, which gives me an extra squirt of cream on my cappuccino, and X-Ray vision, which, I am assured, is not all it's cracked up to be.

There may be a small prize to the visitor who sends me a screen-grab of this important moment in world history. However, I shall be spending the next couple of days repeatedly hitting 'Refresh', so the odds are very much against you.

And to balance the whole karmic good news/bad news wossname, come reports that Dangermouse - number one rodent bastard - will soon be returning to television screens, proving once again that this country is going to the dogs. While a number of you may, undoubtedly, be rejoicing, I shall buck the trend somewhat and offer the following heart-felt comment:

"NOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOO!"

I understand that my irrational hatred of the one-eyed rodent might earn me the titles 'King of Wrong', 'Lord High Emperor Erroneous' and 'Pope Incorrect XVII', so I also offer the follow by right to reply:

" My blog! My blog! My blog! My blog! My blog! My blog! My blog! My blog! My blog! My blog! My blog! My blog! My blog! My blog! My blog! My blog! My blog! My blog! I can't hear you My blog! My blog! My blog! My blog! My blog! My blog! My blog! My blog!"

So there.

On T-Space

On T-Space

"You mean to say there's a factory that makes this stuff?"

I've written before on H-Space, the notion that all hotel rooms in the world are linked through some kind of multi-dimensional portal. This, of course, follows Terry Pratchett's argument that all libraries and bookshops are linked through a spatial dimension called L-Space, known only to a select few in sensible shoes and jumpers with patches at the elbows.

So it is the same for seaside souvenir shops. I've lived in Weymouth long enough to realise this, and my visit to other resort, both in the UK and abroad only go to confirm my suspicions.

Whilst the guardians of L-Space use their knowledge for the good of society, this is not the case for those trapped in Tat-Space. Step into the stockroom of any seaside or big city souvenir shop, and you are drawn into the hellish reality of T-Space, where its not-quite-human inhabitants produce cheap plastic toys that break within seconds, novelty ashtrays shaped genetalia, and endless, endless guff bearing the words "A souvenir of [insert name here]". Guff designed solely to kill off any desire in the recipient to visit that place, ever.

T-Space, it is rumoured, emerges in Taiwan, and is funded entirely by the sale of dirty playing cards. There are those, however, who argue that T-Space is nothing but an entry to the Underworld, with the largest and most potent Hellmouth located in Blackpool, leading to a barren world where all the trees have been felled for lucky bingo card holders, and everyone wears t-shirts saying "My mate went to HELL and all I got was this lousy t-shirt".

It is a world to which no man should be drawn. They're always recruiting. Fudge packers.

On deadly animals, poetry

On deadly animals, poetry

To Lulworth Castle yesterday to attend the Medival Festival, which featured big cannons going bang, battles, jousting, rat-onna-stick and lots of hey-nonny-nonny.

Alas, it was there that I was attacked by an owl, which had doffculty* differentiating sunburned duck from the half-a-dead-mouse wieled by the owl wrangler.

This on the same day that poor, poor Steve Irwin is killed to death by a Stingray, a hideous accident probably caused whilst fleeing owls. All the proof we need that the animals are fighting back.

On the way home, nursing an owl-shaped wound, Scaryduck Junior told me this tale of woe:

"Mrs Sloan made us write poems about each other last term. Nobody did me because it's hard to find a rhyme for Coleman, but I did a pome about Paul Jones an' a pile of bones."

"And...?"

"She made us all read them out at the end of the lesson. Joshua stood up and said:

"Michael Sheppard
Sexed a leopard.
"It was awful. He lost his golden time for two weeks!"

You know what's coming. Write a nice poem about yourself.

Scaryduck
That cheeky buck
Had a bit of luck
And got a f.... winning ticket in the National Lottery."
What? WHAT? Who says they've got to rhyme?

* A totally cromulent word. Honest.

Mirth and Woe: "Milky Milky"

"Milky Milky"

I'm a man of the world. I have, in my time, bought the odd dozen gentleman's leisure magazine. I like to think they made me the sane, balanced individual I am today, without ever having to find myself forced to earn a living writing letters to said periodicals starting with the line "You won't believe the amazing thing that happened to me when my sexy neighbour came round and asked to borrow my hedge clippers". I was just studying the writing style, and, of course, the varied and interesting photographic techniques in the accompanying illustrated pages. Just so you know.

However, this slice of woe came at a time when I was swearing off the jazz. You see - I was young, and I was in love. In love with the lovely soon-to-be Mrs Duck, and I wouldn't be needing that kind of filth ever again, because she would take this boy and turn him into a man. A man who would have no need to save up petrol tokens from Texaco to buy a cardboard briefcase to hide his smut. Oh no!

So, I was a good boy, then, saving hard for a mortgage on a nice flat in the average end of town, and going home to my mum every evening and thinking pious thoughts. I worked, at the time, at the head office of a nation chain of tyre fitters that rhymes with "Motor Gay", who did nothing to upset me, and just let me get on with it as long as the invoices and financial reports went out on time. My only vice, apart from a lunchtime egg-sausage-bacon-chips at the excellent Rafina Coffee Bar in town, was that of popping into the well-stocked newsagents round the corner for something to read on the train home.

And what a newsagents. It was floor-to-ceiling with publications, of a diversity that Mr WH Smith could only envy. I wasn't, however, interested in the bulging top two shelves, because, like I said, I'd sworn off that kind of thing, and I was only interested in the Melody Maker, Record Mirror or any of a number of magazine for owners of musical instruments who thought - wrongly - they could play a bit. In the words of the colossus Stephen Fry: I'm not only tone deaf, I'm tone dumb too.

I remember that evening only too clearly. I had put the mainframe to bed rather later than I would have wanted, what with one of the data tapes spooling all over the floor, much to the amusement of my excellent Rastafari boss, who saw it as an important test of character. Locking the office after me - even the cleaners had gone home - I legged it round the corner to Mr Siddiqi's and grabbed a copy of the newly-arrived Sound on Sound magazine, slammed my money on the cash desk and sprinted to the station, where I knew I might *just* catch the 1812 train to Twyford.

And make the train I did, out of breath and clutching my prize to my chest.

It was only as the packed commuter service pulled out and clacked over the points that I realised that I had not picked up my usual music mag ("The World's best-selling music recording magazine"), but a publication called Milk Maids ("I'm full and squirting for YOU"), ninety-six glossy pages in praise of large-chested and lactating young ladies in various erotic, milky poses.

Well, dip me in dogshit.

Standing room only, I couldn't even change carriages to escape the pitiful stares of my fellow commuters. The guy opposite raised his eyebrows in a suggestive manner, and I took this as a hint to turn the magazine the other way round, out of the withering gaze of a number of people who I was, until then, on nodding terms with. So I did: "Splash! Milkmaids on VHS - £30" screamed a rather graphic advertisement featuring fountains of milk, naked flesh and leather in equal quantities.

I, too, was utterly disgusted. Thirty quid? That's robbery.