Live Longer

Not that my life is as empty as an Ethiopian's colon, but have you seen the new Calgon advert? No? I have.

In case you don't know what I'm talking about, Calgon is the water-softener tablet thing that you put in your washing machine/dish-washer so that it doesn't get limescale.

It is not the most exciting of products.

In fact it is dull as dishwater (do you see what I did there? No? You see, there's an expression 'dull as dishwater' that is applied when something is very dull indeed, because dishwater itself is often grey and quite colourless. The word 'dull' can apply to both something that lacks intensity of colour, and also to anything that arouses little interest. Something tedious. What I've done is apply this expression to a product that is both boring in itself, and is also relevant to dishwater. Do you see? No really, do you? Excellent. Moving on...) and must therefore have proved quite a challenge to the advertising agency tasked with selling it. Now, what sells? Sex obviously, but it's tricky to make a connection between limescale and lovelysweatypantingorgasms, so they opted for the other thing that sells: FEAR.

Fear sells brilliantly, all you have to do is shout "this might happen and our product is the only, repeat ONLY way you can prevent it" enough times at the viewer and you're selling your company for billions and retiring to a supermodel's loins before you can say 'Barry Scott'. It's not just product of course, adverts warning against STDs do this very well too (though I still believe that viruses would be cut by half if they simply showed somone picking up a 21 year-old underwear model in a nightclub, taking her home and discovering she has a penis so huge it has a Sky-dish bolted to the shaft). Calgon however, may have over-egged the pudding.

No sooner has the advert Mum's washing machine broken down than a repair man has appeared in her kitchen, pointing her with an icy bespectacled glare whilst cradling a heating element in his hands like a driver guiltlessly presenting a cat he's just hit to the child owner as he solemnly intones that it was really the child's fault for owning the cat in the first place. The advert Mum, horror of horrors, has been using a cheap water softener. Do you remember the commercial in Tim Burton's 'Batman' where the Joker points to a gagged fellow and says that he's not happy because "he's been using brand X" and the words 'OH NO!' flash repeatedly on the screen? It's like a doom-laden version of that.

"Cheap water softener is only HALF as effective!" shouts the engineer, somehow resisting the urge to shake the woman like a furious masturbator. "Half protection is like no protection!" he rages, the Mum flinching at the spit mist settling on her eyballs. "It's like him [frantically pointing at a boy cyclist, inexplicably pedaling around the kitchen] going out with half a helmet!".

Well...no it isn't actually. Besides, aren't they rather overstating the dangers of limescale? to take them at their word the slow build up of chalky deposits is a disaster of biblical proportions (only not fictional). Nations have fallen to it. Countries' topography radically altered by the sudden appearance of vast mountainous peaks of calcium. Continents absorbed as if consumed by a very hungry caterpillar. Planets burst like over-ripe pimples. Galaxies folded in on themselves like exotic origami. Universes perished like fruit at a Weightwatchers buffet, and realities voted out of existence by deities outraged by a lack of limescale prevention.

On the other hand, the plumber did seem to know what he was talking about.

Madonna with the Big Babies

"So" you say, "Madonna or Angelina?"

Well, assuming you're talking about a baby flinging contest (and you almost certainly are) then it would be pretty close but my money would rest on Angelina's bonce, since she has more ammunition. This news has clearly worried Madonna so she's decided to start stockpiling for the final clash of the succubi.

Until recently their stocks were as follows:

Angelina - 6
Madonna - 3

But now Madge (not to be confused with the tomb-voiced ex-wife of ex-Neighbour Harold Bishop) has finally been allowed to adopt little Mercy. Phew. This won't improve her odds of toddler-splat victory by much, but as Tesco is so keen to remind us, every little helps.

The main aspect of this news that I find a little disturbing is the line "Madonna spotted Mercy at an orphanage three years ago, but waited...[etc]".

She waited.

Lurking in the shadows.

Biding her time, before driving her wagon into town whistling 'Kiddie Widdie Winkies' and sniffing the air unnervingly…

I suppose one should feel sorry for them. If only there were orphans/unwanted children available for adoption back home then these ladies wouldn't have to trot across the globe in order to increase their urchin armada. Mind you if they existed anywhere else they probably wouldn't resemble a Thorntons Comic Relief special edition, and who would want that?

To Truly Spite Your Face

A little while ago I mentioned the man who escaped from prison through the sacrifice of his foreskin. Now I look at that sentence it does seem as if he and his foreskin were escaping independantly. They might have been in the process of climbing the fence when suddenly twenty guards spilled out of the building waving dogs whilst batons growled at their feet. The foreskin may have looked at his comrade and his comrade may have looked at him.
"It looks like this is the end for us, old boy" says the prisoner.
"It certainly seems that way" says the foreskin, the words leaking from his mouth like droplets of unshaked urine. It is at this point that his creased face changes, as if he has been confused all his life and is only now experiencing clarity.
"Tell Frances I love her"
"Fanny? But how will I...no wait!"
But he is too late, Foreskin has already flopped to the ground and is scurrying towards the advancing guards and their baying hounds. The prisoner raises a shaky hand to his temple and offers a misty-eyed salute to his friend, before heaving himself over the fence to short-lived freedom.

This sacrifice, whilst bold, is swiftly forgotten in the light of a 25 year old Egyptian man who, when his family wouldn't let him marry his beloved, opted to cut off his own penis. Presumably by way of protest.

This is bizarre for many reasons, most of which involve the words 'he cut off own his penis'. There is also the slight issue of him choosing to protest in this manner. You see he has been trying to persuade his father to let him marry a girl from a lower social class for two years, but his father remained resolute. It was time for action, so out came the knife, off came the winkie, and 'hello' said the understandably perplexed hospital. For his sake I really do hope that the protest was as unsuccessful as the hospital's attempts to reattach his little flesh-fez. Imagine the disappointment if he relented.
"Aziz, what are you doing?"
"I'm...cutting...off...my...penis"
"Why?"
"I'm...really...upset"
"Because you can't marry Fukayna?"
"Yes"
"Well if she means that much to you, feel free"
"What?"
"Marry her. I mean, I thought she was after your money but if you're willy to risk it then, well, go for it"
"What was that?"
"If you're willing to risk it"
"It sounded more like...actually, never mind. Can you call an ambulance? I'm feeling unusual".

He is currently resting in hospital with a jar next to him containing what appears to be a depressed frankfurter. I honestly hope his protest didn't work. That would be an awkward phone call.
"Hey honey, I've got good news and I've got bad news. The good news is that you can come off the pill..."

Zippy, George and Boyle

And so on Saturday night, the vast disco ball of 'Britain's Got Talent' finally rolled to a close, declaring a group of black dancers (curiously named 'Diversity') to be the the most talented people in all the land.

And forcing Bungle from Rainbow into the Priory.

Without a Padel

Mistakes are so easy to make. That's probably why that phrase rhymes. I once put a glass on the end of my bed, then knocked it off whilst thrashing my way through cheese-fuelled nightscapes. That was a mistake. You see I placed something in an apparently safe location without really considering my nearby nocturnal flailings. I once had a length of Sellotape (other brands are available) that I was asked to hold, but thought a far easier way to keep safe was to place on the edge of a nearby plate and the other on a nearby door handle. The door was opened and the resultant crash saw me visit the 'I'm a twat, where are the plates?' shop. This was also a mistake.

Ruth Padel was running against Derek Walcott for the not-at-all-pointless position of Oxford Professor of Poetry. In this role you are paid in the region of £4,500 a year plus three lots of £40 travel expenses for the three lectures that you give each year. No wonder she fought so hard. Unexpectedly, Walcott stood down after Padel emailed the press with claims of sexual harrassment by him to his students. These emails were also a mistake you understand. She must have been so frustrated with herself. [taptaptaptaptaptaptaptaptaptaptaptaptaptaptaptaptaptaptaptaptapttaptaptaptaptap...SEND] "Oh bugger, you'll never guess what I've just done"
"What?"
"Emailed the press with details of my opponents sexual harrassment towards his students"
"Oh no"
She has since apologised and stood down herself after unexpectedly getting the job.

The reason I bring all this up is her statement of apology "for anything I have done which can be misconstrued as being against him". Misconstrued? Well I suppose it really depends upon why you emailed them doesn't it.

"Don't vote for me, I'm just here to make up the numbers. Vote for Octopus Derek. Good ol' Wandering Hands Walcott.
Hang on...oh no , instead of taking my emails (remember, the ones where I detail my opponents sexual harrassment towards his students?) and used them to enhance his campaign message, they've made it seem like I'm attempting some sort of character assassination. How did that happen? What's that you say? He's stood down? Oh no, this goes from bad to worse. Hmm? I've got the job? Oh for f....".

Poor lady, it must be terrible to have your actions be so misunderstood. Hopefully noone will read this and misconstrue what I'm saying and get the idea that I think her apology is a bit fake. A bit hollow. A bit forced. Maybe even a little "scooped out".

I think I'll risk it.

[SEND].

Whack a Jacko Mole

Some rather good news today, assuming you are Michael Jackson, as it turns out that you don't have skin cancer. Well done you. Those decades spent reclusively running a waiver-riddled fairground have paid off and you're as healthy as a horse. An extra-terrestrial horse that appears to have more in common with a cranefly than a Grand National winner, but a healthy example of one nevertheless.

But this isn't a skin test that has come back negative, he didn't discover a concerning mole on his back in an area previously only occupied by his overstretched eyelids. No, this was a story that appeared in the true paragon of journalism that is 'The Sun' newspaper...and yet it turned out not to be true. How did this happen? They were told that doctors had found spots on his face, and they gleefully printed it, rubbing their greasy paws together and rehearsing their 'periodical of the year' acceptance speech. They are so far down the gossip road that they very idea of seeking facts are a distant memory. Ask a Sun editor about filling their front-page with something they didn't simply overhear whilst queueing in taxi-rank and they frown at you like your head is a Rubicks cube and they've been tasked with re-arranging it through the power of mental arithmetic.

I realise that previously gossip has been printed, vehemently denied and turned out to be true, but this is Michael Jackson's face we're talking about here. Yes he may look like the result of Salvador Dali paying homage to Picasso, but despite curiously re-positioned features his face has fewer blemishes than Nicole Kidman's buttocks. As far as growths are concerned, landscapes don't get more hostile. If his doctor found something on his cheek then the news would be that upon inspection it turned out to be a miniature face of Jesus, because divine intervention is the only way it could possibly happen.

So for Jackson good news about the news not being news, and therefore good news for the thousands of fans that are financing his 50 night squat who may have been worried the concerts would be cancelled and the £10,000 ticket-price they paid on ebay would end up being a slight waste of money. Also, any potential concerns that they may have about the King of Pop's ability to live up to his own legend (assuming he makes it onstage without a Rorschach test appearing on his face) can also be put to rest by the knowledge that he is "keeping up with dancers half his age". This is hardly surprising since people have said for years that he chases people much younger than that, so if he can summon the enthusiasm to chase someone half his age it should be easy as 1-2-3.

There's Something About Shawshank

Prison dramas are often great life affirming experiences. 'The Shawshank Redemption' in one of the finest examples of such, with 'Escape From Alcatraz' coming a close second. In Shawshank, Tim Robbins' character Andy picks away at his cell wall over a period of years in order to reach a waste pipe, through which he crawls for a mile through all manner of bowel-originated unpleasantness to finally plop to freedom in a (not so) nearby stream. In Alcatraz, Clint Eastwoood's Frank picks away at his wall and escapes on a make-shift raft having left a dummy of himself in his bed. True, the dummy would win no prizes, but then it's a dummy so you wouldn't expect it to. Can you notice a pattern here? That's right, they are both set in prisons.

This is how people escape in real life.

I guess the true price of freedom is sacrifice. In this case, his foreskin laid down its life so that the rest of him could escape. It's a bit of an assumption on his part that the foreskin felt strongly enough about escape that it would be willing to give up its life so that the rest of him could run away with itself. Maybe it quite enjoyed prison life. Maybe it was a kind of foreskin Ronnie Barker, teaching the young foreskin cellmate the ways of prison survival, all the while running foreskin rings around the guard foreskins. Alternatively maybe it was more of a foreskin Papillon, spending every waking hour planning a route out of its Dartmoor hell. Either way the sacrifice proved to be a pointless gesture, as sadly the rest of him turned out to mainly consist of arsehole and the first thing he did upon tasting freedom was assault a woman and steal her car. There may be honour among thieves, but hoax bombers are a right cunch of bunts.

On the plus side they are planning to make a film of the escape. It is the tale of a foreskin that lives on the wrong side of the law and is eventually imprisoned for its crimes, then later sacrifices itself so that the scrotum it had grown so close to may escape. I hear they are talking to Zak Efron.