Tuesday 30 June 2009

111 Sport/Dangerous Sports/Extreme Explanation

Explaining the rules of cricket in Japanese to a scaffolder on his tea break is one of the most hazardous things a person can attempt. And for this reason it attracts only a limited number of danger junkies. The idea is to have the worker put down his brew and say ‘Ah-So!’ in an exclamation of far eastern enlightenment. However, ‘Ar5ehole!’ and a beating are more usual.
Extreme Explanation (EE) started with Richard Taut to help him get through the terrors of teaching at inner city schools. Dick’s speciality was ‘Agro Algebra’ and he could easily get across the salient points of quadratic equations whilst dodging phlegm and sharpened compasses. At the height of his game he could make even the most delinquent pre-pubescent understand axiomatic algebraic systems and their topological applications. This later caused Billy ‘Battery Acid’ Bateman great consternation as he suddenly started contemplating the axiom of the empty cash register as he held up the Welcome Break at South Mimms service area at junction 23 on the M25 Motorway.
Like all extreme sports there are casualties and the EE community are praying hard for Jacob Funt who attempted the ‘Pain’ gambit. The task was to explain to his wife why biologically women can endure more pain than men and so are best equipped to give birth. He undertook this 18 hours into her protracted and very unpleasant labour. The ensuing verbal torrent would have made a Regimental Sergeant Major dressed as a Goth blush, and caused severe psychological scarring to the Midwives present. It is unknown what the effect on Jacob was, due to the coma it induced. Mother and baby are doing fine.

Monday 29 June 2009

110 Humans/Needs/Drugs

Humans have been using medication to lift their spirits for millennia. More people die in one day from alcohol abuse than the combined annual deaths from pot, shrooms, ecstasy and acid. About the same number that die in 1 week from cocaine. Obviously the government’s war on drugs is working by reducing the menu of drugs available and encouraging people to take the more destructive and expensive substances.
On the plus side certain species are getting high for free. Jaguars, lemurs and bees love getting mashed. They chew bark, suck on millipedes, and even eat each other’s wax in pursuit of getting wasted. No fancy cocktails and dwarfs carrying bowls of processed coca leaves for these hardcore party animals.
In short we have forgotten how to do it properly. The media fill our heads with images of exotic bars, glamorous rock stars and gorgeous coke whores. People need a lesson from Agues McCatheter, Scotland’s premier tramp. No one knows the age of Agues, as he has always existed, but he looks about 59. McCatheter is completely resistant to the usual effects of alcohol and often uses it to sober up. His favourite tipple is his own urine; generations of Trampdom has produced a self-reliant species, his internal organs having evolved so as to turn any liquid into an intoxicant. On particularly heavy sessions Agues can be seen sobering up on the Diamond White and Tallisker at his local wine shop, Thrashers. Soon his golden elixir is flowing and mayhem ensues. On his last binge he was able to be ‘Best Pals’ with the whole of England and half of Wales, an incredible feat for a Scot. So intense was his experience that he completely skipped the ‘domestic violence’ and ‘the self-loathing, I love you, I’ll never do it again’ phases and settle nicely into reminiscing about 70’s television programs. Not since the Sag brothers (See 82 Humanity/Vanity/Plastic Surgery) has a town witness such bizarre high jinx. In 5 amphetaminesque hours he had shrunk 14 Churches and with ingenious application of super glue replaced them with 40-foot high ‘Towers of Cow’. He still had time to thrill the Turkish population of Aberdeen by eating a year’s supply of doner kebabs; the resulting ‘Tower of Salad’ exceeded the cows by 8ft. When the fight stage finally took hold, McCatheter created a mini Amsterdam in Scotland with loads of nakedness and windmills.

Wednesday 24 June 2009

109 Attributes/Bravery/Hero

People need heroes, even heroes. Geriatric 95-year-old bare-knuckle champion Sally Shingles is the hero’s hero. The British government have been trying to decorate Sally since 1914. She has so far turned down 14 Victoria Crosses, 26 Military Crosses, and a Blue Peter Gold badge. She doesn’t think she is particularly brave. She just loves fighting. When asked what was her biggest regret of World War II, she replied ‘When it ended.’ Her favourite weapons are her hands, followed closely by her tartan shopping trolley.
In the 1950’s she got cancer and simply told it to get out. She beat Winston Churchill in a ‘Who Has Got The Most Testicles Competition’. By four.
Sally’s biggest test was capturing Osama Bin Laden. Shingles was deep undercover in Afghanistan and one of the few people who look good in a Burka, so was ideally placed to attempt the honey trap. Unfortunately, Sally got carried away and took out all of Bin Laden’s elite guard whilst experimenting with the application of the veil as a deadly weapon. Fortunately, Laden was so impressed with the shapes she was pulling, the devastating moves and lightening reflexes that he instantly fell in love and agreed to become one of her house husbands. The reason that there is mystery as to whether Bin is a live or dead is because he his in fact retired. He lives happily in Kilburn with Sally’s collection of dictators and testicles. Osama’s duties are feeding the cats and tucking Hitler in at night, reading him his bedtime story while Ms Shingles is away on missions.

Tuesday 23 June 2009

108 Humans/Skills/Conmen

Good conmen never get caught. Charles Ponzi, Kilroy-Silk, Princess Di: all off to a good start, but eventually found out.
The best conman is currently 24-year-old Frank Kosher. At his birth he had the ‘Extra Milk Scam’ working, persuading the midwives in attendance to lactate, including the male nurses. By 2 he was grifting his old worn dummies, exchanging them for baby strollers and cabbage patch dolls in what has since become known as the ‘Great Mothercare Swindle’. At the age of 9 he had graduated to the long con and his version of the ‘Fiddle’ involving donkeys and circus dwarfs was raking in £20,000 a week.
When puberty struck Frank was ready to take confidence trickery to a new level and invented the Tate Stone Fence. Inspired by the audacity of the Brit Art movement of the mid 90’s, he erected a barrier outside Tate Britain made entirely from marijuana resin, coated the structure with a granite composite, erected a sign announcing ‘Stoned Fence’ and stood by dressed as a dishevelled Rastafarian policeman, complete with dreadlocks and truncheon. The critics saw a work of genius, the criminals an opportunity. Attracted to the installation by the chance to off load their stolen items at a good drug induced price they were immediately confronted by the metaphysics and warping implications of the piece. Confused they handed the items over in exchange for an ‘Evening All’. The best cons are legal cons, such as the Insurance Industry or the Royal Family, so Frank would return the items to their owners and claim the reward. He scaled the business by opening branches outside every major art gallery including the Le Louvre, Guggenheim and the Setagaya.
On his 18th Birthday Frankie retired and donated his entire fortune to charity by setting up the Kosher Foundation. KF did a lot of good work in its first year but attracted the usual hoard of embezzlers so Frank came out of retirement and taught them all a lesson by fleecing his own philanthropic enterprise, quadrupling his money in the process.
Frank Kosher is the 3rd richest man in the world and good mates with Benedict Farse (See 30 Animals/Humans/Bill Gates, 93 Finance/Money/Hierarchy of Charities, 98 Employment/Jobs/Lawyers and 104 Humans/Power/The Power Behind The Throne). Bill Gates is unaware of this relationship and the 2 friends often giggle at the futility of Billie’s situation.

Monday 22 June 2009

107 Humans/Skills/Being Moronic

On the last Monday of October in offices everywhere someone will comment that it is getting dark really early in the evenings. Less depressingly they may note that it is good to see the mornings getting lighter. In reality Daylight Saving Time has played its trick on the thick. The evenings have been getting shorter since the Summer Solstice in mid June, and only the dense point it out 4 months later. It is the same mutton flaps that wearily whine ‘not too bad for a Tuesday’ when asked about their disposition. Or as the weekend approaches ‘TFI Friday!’ thus triggering the revolting association of bespectacled gingerness with forced fun.
Why are these people tolerated, indeed positively encouraged with weak laughter as they spout their astoundingly bereft observations? By rights their irritating catch phrases and tiresome mewling should induce cathartic violence leading to their death. However, they provide an invaluable service and are in fact a spiritual lubricant.
They shake us from our dream state and make us notice sunset and sunrise, stopping
us from trying to make sense of life by solving riddles but instead make us see life, in light streaming through clouds, trees and water, in wind waving in trees and hair, and in the imagined blood pouring from their imagined broken noses.

Thursday 11 June 2009

106 Relationships/Flirtation/Philandering

Casanova was an amateur next to Carlos Portion, the Stepney born libertine. Abandoned as a child he just wanted to be loved, and people found him irresistible. At any one time he is being tailed by at least 17 private detectives, hired by Carlos’s various jealous lovers. Half of the investigators will fall in love with Carlos and report back complete fidelity, the rest would be consumed with jealousy as they witness him fraternising with their own partners.
At the height of his prowess Mr Portion filled the Royal Albert Hall. In 1997, at a Sarah Brightman concert, 5543 people came to see him: his date for the night and 5542 private investigators. Ms Brightman was ecstatic as the previous night only her mum and Andrew Lloyd Webber had turned up.
During ‘I Lost My Heart To A Starship Trooper’ Mr Portion needed the lavatory and so the only people left in the auditorium were 2 Brightmans, 1 Lloyd Webber and the surviving members of 70’s raunchy dance troupe Hot Gossip. Detectives are cunning and so as not to appear suspicious didn’t return at the same time but queued for the latrine instead. Five and a half thousand detectives fed on a diet of doughnuts, coffee and ready meals relieving themselves continuously put a huge strain on the RAH plumbing and blocked the sewers. The stench from the drains in the Kensington area caused a temporary but not insignificant drop in local house prices. The auditorium gradually began to fill up as the PI’s returned.
The sudden emptying and subsequent slow trickle of people returning to their seat that night was rather like the action of a cistern and is often cited as the most succinct criticism of any Lloyd Webber production.

Wednesday 10 June 2009

105 Construction/Building Materials/Lego vs. Stickle Bricks

Lego is a vulgar nonsense compared to Stickle Bricks. The Stickle Brick is purity and Lego the painted whore. Only a Danish company could be pretentious enough to use a French word to demonstrate what they are all about: L’ego.
When the young want to construct an aeroplane, 2 colourful plastic oblongs and an imagination are enough (1 fuselage and 1 wing). You don’t need propellers and ‘minifigures’ to get your vision across. To a creative a roof is 2 interlocking slanted rectangles, or if gifted, 4 interlocking triangles which then transforms into the Great Pyramid at Giza. A shaped plastic Lego piece complete with chimney and painted slates doesn’t come close.
LEGO boast that just three eight stud bricks can be put together in 1,560 ways. Not nearly as impressive as a single stickle brick, a fertile mind and an infinite number of creations from a simple flower to a galactic battle cruiser.
A sure sign that it has all gone wrong for Lego is the business consultancy ‘Lego Serious Play’.
Teams are invited to build metaphors of their organisational experiences using Lego. They then work through imaginary scenarios using the visual device of the models and explore ‘possibilities’ in a ‘serious’ form of ‘play’. Meanwhile the Stickle Kids are looping the loop around an event horizon and bringing Elvis back to life.
There is no such thing as Stickleland because wandering around a model village for a child is very frustrating. A kid sees a 6ft Big Ben and wants to knock it over. There are no explosions, no fires and no rockets taking off, just adults telling them not to touch. Pointless. Legoland would be much more impressive if it was designed and built by children. This will never happen because the youngsters untainted by rigid play parameters are too busy saving the Universe from the giant blue Stickle-O-Tron.

Tuesday 9 June 2009

104 Humans/Power/The Power Behind The Throne

Who is the most powerful man in the world? Bill Gates? Benedict Farse? Media Moguls? These people are in fact all puppets of Arthur Skreeb.
Arthur is 2467yrs old. He was great mates with, and shared the same bicycle as Hippocrates. Hip was the first great physician, the ‘Father of Medicine’ and a very clever man. Arthur was also good chums with Plato and could have him in an argument. In fact it was Plato who taught Arthur sophism, the art of winning a discussion even when you are wrong, but because Plato was a bit la-di-da and valued the pursuit of truth above all else, he inadvertently provided Arthur with the perfect foil with which to perfect his insidious persuasive techniques.
Hippocrates discovered the secret of immortality and told Arthur all about it. Screeb seized the opportunity and persuaded Hip that to live forever would be tedious, no one really needs more than 90 years to have a full life, and it would be wise to keep his trap shut about all the healthy living nonsense.
And so everyone was denied the right to live forever and Arthur Skreeb evolved into the repellent, insipid weasel he is today. Arthur is a shadow, the power behind the power behind the throne, completely invisible. He often gatecrashes funerals naked except for a giant 2-foot red and black hornet covering his tackle, shouting ‘I love wasps me!’ and dancing like Heather Mills at the end of a divorce, and no one notices. He has persuaded everyone to look the other way, that they are free to believe what they choose, read what they want to read, view what they decide to view. He has done all this for the sake of power.
But is he happy?
Oh yes.

Tuesday 2 June 2009

103 Humans/People/The Unluckiest Man

Born on the 13th of January 1313, Brother Unctuous Sack of the Order of Beard Huggers is widely considered to have been the most unfortunate man in history. Not blessed with looks, folk would often mistake him for a large ginger pigsty and throw scraps of left over food into him. He could be seen shambling along a path, irritably removing turnips from his cassock and picking nettle soup from his meagre beard. Another curse was extreme intelligence and he was plagued with wonderful ideas that he had no way of realising as no one would listen to a soliloquising swine shack. More frustrated than Gary Glitter on a bouncy castle, he took up the hobby of partridge pickling. Vinegar soaked fowl gave him chronic flatulence which only added to his loneliness. No one in the order could find the compassion to hug his beard and Unctuous found it difficult to hug theirs when his love was not reciprocated.
Things got worse when in an act of desperation he converted to Islam so that he could claim he was born on the 15th of Ramadan 712, a Tuesday, instead of the supposed unlucky date of his birth under the Gregorian calendar. But Lady Luck has no appreciation of common superstition and on his first pilgrimage to Mecca he became know as ‘The Man Who Gives Succour To Pigs’ and was repeatedly stoned for his association with the 'filthy animal'.
Miserable, alone and bruised Brother Sack had a rare moment of clarity and decided to embrace his talents. He invited a piglet named Elizabeth to take up residence within his person. Pigs have no prejudice and Betty loved her new home. Unctuous was ecstatically happy that something needed him and cried uncontrollably from emotion and worried that the bliss would end. The dehydration weakened his immune system and he died 13 days later from swine disease.
As ginger people rarely decay, Betty continued to live all her natural life in Brother Unctuous, happily gorging on the nutritious scrapes that folk continued to throw.