Wednesday 30 January 2008

Queer Fish In God's Waiting Room

My friend, online PR guru Lee Henshaw has written his first novel.

It's called Queer Fish In God's Waiting Room and it was launched at the Riflemaker Art Gallery last night. In Lee's own words, "I wrote this book to ask a girl to marry me. It contains instructions on how to build a blackcurrant bath bong, and features a talking fanny... and she still said yes."

I'm already halfway through and am absolutely loving the tales of three lads as they journey through New York and Mexico.

You can buy a copy for yourself from Amazon.

What the internet used to look like











Here's a collection of websites from the mid-90s. Compared to the slick websites we're familiar with nowadays, they look pretty awful. What were Lego thinking?!

Link to the whole gallery

Tuesday 29 January 2008

Cat with five legs

Babygirl, a stray cat with five legs, will soon have surgery to remove her extra limb and another that is non-functional so that she can walk more easily.

Babygirl is currently living at the Washington Area Humane Society in Pennsylvania.

Click here for a video of Babygirl

Middlesbizzle vs. Da Lanca$hire Athleticals

This piece just gets more and more perfect.

"Just as da bigg boss dogg predictizzled, Middlesbizzle wiled out on them Mansfield niggas. Yo, I was chillin’ wit my main nigga Nate Dogg watching that game while we wuz smokin’ a bag of sess, but I swear I saw some crazy shit in that game."

Link

Monday 28 January 2008

London Evening Standard headline generator

Randomly assemble your own sensationalist headlines at The Surrealist.

Link

Letter returned 15 years later.... by fish

A letter that a young Japanese girl sent into the sky in a balloon over 15 years ago has been found on a fish hauled from 1,000 metres below the Pacific.

"A fisherman found the still legible piece of paper sitting on a sticky flatfish in his catch on Thursday, along with a torn-off string and the fragment of a red balloon.... The sender, Natsumi Shirahige, and her friends released letters as part of events to mark the school's 120th anniversary, which was in 1993."

Link

Friday 25 January 2008

Film Review: Sweeney Todd

Not being a homosexual, I don’t often watch musicals.

But, despite the serious missteps of Sleepy Hollow and Charlie & The Chocolate Factory, the hope that Tim Burton and Johnny Depp would use one of London’s greatest urban myths to finally live up to their joint career high of Ed Wood was enough to entice me to a cinema seat.

The movie follows Christopher Bond’s 1973 version of the tale, which eschews the original 1840s premise of Todd being in it for the money, and instead turns it into a violent Jacobean revenge tragedy.

Corrupt Judge Turpin falls in love with the beautiful wife of happy-go-lucky London barber and father-of-one, Benjamin Barker. As his obsession grows, Turpin has Barker tried on trumped-up charges and the barber is carted off to Australia. This, of course, was back when a trip down under was a form of punishment and not a feat religiously performed by work-shy graduates.

Having had enough of barbecue, Jack Johnson, arrogance and whatever else passes for entertainment in Australia, Barker returns 15 years later calling himself Sweeney Todd, and with murder on his mind. He’ll kill as many as it takes to have his revenge, but there’s only one throat he’ll take pleasure in cutting.

That throat belongs to Alan Rickman – at his Prince Of Thieves cruellest as Turpin – who, in the 15 years since he passed sentence, has superseded his obsession for Todd’s wife with a perverted passion for his daughter.

The other members of the support cast all excel. Sacha Baron Cohen proves, as the mountebank barber in an outfit that leaves only slightly less to the imagination than his infamous Borat bikini, Signor Adolfo Pirelli, that when he’s not running his own one-joke characters into the ground, he’s actually a great comic actor. Timothy Spall is diabolically grotesque as the louche Beadle Bamford, Helena Bonham Carter’s Mrs Lovett is delightfully demented, while Ed Sanders is magnificently mischievous as Tobias Ragg, the indentured 10-year-old slave with a taste for gin.

All of which would mean little if the songs weren’t any good, but Stephen Sondheim’s optimistic hummables sit in perfect contrast to Burton’s gothic grisliness, with Pretty Women (thankfully not a version of Roy Orbison’s risible piece of shit) a particular highlight.

The singing doesn’t always match the quality of the music, and it’s obvious why Johnny Depp left the vocal duties to The Butthole Surfers’ Gibby Haynes in their short-lived band, P. While he makes his disgust and loathing clear on A Little Priest and My Friends, Depp too often sounds like he’s auditioning for a role as David Bowie on Stars In Their Eyes.

That quibble aside, Depp impresses as a protagonist so consumed with hatred that his only real relationship is with his razors. So much so that, despite her corseted cleavage, he only really notices his partner-in-crime, Mrs Lovett, when she suggests cannibalism as a means to dispose of the corpses.

The film is cruel and misanthropic, displaying spectacular sanguinary ultra violence that Takashi Miike would be proud of. Everybody is doomed. Everybody dies. This is not just a musical, it’s opera.

And you know what? It’s bloody brilliant.

Some niggas called Mansfizzle vs. Middlesbizzle

"Middlesbizzle done missed the chance to snatch up all three points last week, y’all. That skinny dude, Jeremie Aliadiere, is shit, for real. Always falling on the ground and shit, like he ain’t tied the laces on his Air Jordans. Motherfucker kinda looks like my cousin Warren G though, so I still got much love for a nigga."

Link

Wednesday 23 January 2008

Crocodile attack victim shot by co-worker

Whilst collecting crocodile eggs at a popular tourist sport in the Mary River, south-east of Darwin in Australia, Grant was attacked by a crocodile.

Hearing the commotion, a co-worker of Grant's sprang into action and fired two shots with his rifle; one hitting and subduing the crocodile, the other hitting Grant on the arm.

Grant is now in stable condition in hospital, but must be wondering how he became so unlucky to suffer a crocodile attack and a gunshot on the same day.

Friday 18 January 2008

Da Lanca$hizzle Half-Crips vs. Middlesbizzle

"What the hoppers on the corners tell me, my nigga Gareth Southgizzle has been trying to slam down some serious green for this Brazilian motherfucker, Alfonzo Alvizzle, even strong-arming that motherfucker round the Riversizzle pitch and letting the nigga get a feel for his territory. But it turns out that this treacherous motherfucker done already signed a contract with some Dutch motherfuckers, Azizzle Alkmizzle. I ain’t about criticise though, Big Snoop been known to prefer a little Dutch now and then, y’all heard."

Read more here

Wednesday 16 January 2008

We can hear smiles

Researchers at the University of Portsmouth have demonstrated that we can tell from voice alone whether a speaker is smiling – and even which sort of smile.

"When we listen to people speaking we may be picking up on all sorts of cues, even unconsciously, which help us to interpret the speaker," said lead author of the report, Amy Drahota.

“A voice contains a variety of acoustical characteristics" said Drahota. "It's possible that we interpret these 'flavours' in someone's voice almost without noticing."

Now, this is nothing especially new, telemarketers have been told for years that they should smile when talking to potential customers on the phone, but to detect the type of smile from a flat piece of audio.... can we, really?

Link

Monday 14 January 2008

Da Bristizzle Robins vs. Middlesbizzle

Snoop's back, dropping lyrics on the West Country fools Boro are playing this week.

"Seems like shit done turned chronic for my main nigga Gareth Southgizzle. Word on the street is, his main forward, Midizzle, who broke his cock bone from fuckin’ wit’ too many hoes, is going to recover just in time to go and represent his African gangstas all across the world."

Link

Sunday 13 January 2008

What real gangsters think of The Wire

Sudhir Venkatesh got together with some real-life New York gangsters and watched season five of The Wire.

The thugs share some unique insights into how real The Wire really is.

"The greatest uproar occurred when the upstart Marlo challenged the veteran Prop Joe in the co-op meeting. “If Prop Joe had balls, he’d be dead in 24 hours!” Orlando shouted. “But white folks [who write the series] always love to keep these uppity [characters] alive. No way he’d survive in East New York more than a minute!”"

Link

Friday 11 January 2008

Middlesbizzle vs. Liverpizzle

The best one yet? Maybe.

"Shit, we done got ourselves a big motherfucking ass match this week. The biggest team in soccer, Liverpizzle, get in they hoopties and ride on up to Middlesbrough. They such a big ass team that they owned by Americans gangsters and shit. They coach, Rafa Benitizzle, a fat Cuban motherfucker with a wispy ass moustache, is about to be dropped like he’s hot ‘cos his team ain’t shit."

Link

Monday 7 January 2008

Indian traffic

Jeremy Clarkson acts like idiot, loses money

Jeremy Clarkson, ever the loud-mouth, published his bank details in his column in The Sun to prove that privacy activists are being hysterical in light of the government's loss of CDs containing the financial details of 25 million people.

Clarkson claimed that nobody would be able to withdraw money from his account.

He was wrong.

A reader decided to make a £500 donation to Diabetes UK.

A donation to an environmental charity would've been more appropriate but thumbs up to the fraudster for making Clarkson eat his words.

Link

Wednesday 2 January 2008

Fareham Shopping Centre bans grandparents for taking photos of grandchildren

Kim and Trevor Sparshott were chucked out of Fareham Shopping Centre and called 'terrorists' when taking photos of their grandchildren.

"The couple were on a four-day break from their home in Spain and wanted to surprise their family by arriving at the centre, in Fareham, Hants, while they were shopping.

But when they went to take a photo, a security guard pounced and ordered them out.

The guard then insisted that cameras were banned because of the risk of a terrorist attack - and barred the bemused couple for life.

Speaking from her home in Malaga, Spain, Mrs Sparshott, 51, said: "I couldn't believe it. I was so shocked.

"He said we had committed an act of terrorism."

Link