Another Little Disappointment

To some people, the 80s were all about the rivalry between  Duran Duran and Wham!

People talk of the playground being divided by a huge tennis net, and long lunch hours spent with their faces pressed against the mesh, their snarling maws hungry for the flesh of the enemy. Geography lessons dominated by the constant slinging of sharpened 45 records, like saw-wheel shuriken. Midnight atrocities committed on the all-weather pitch, atrocities that still replay themselves in the dreams of the victims.

Well, here’s what you can do with your old pop rivalry. You can take it, and you can fold in into a paper aeroplane. Then you can hop onto your back, thrust your legs into the air, and stabilising yourself with your left elbow, launch  the paper aeroplane directly upwards. Then – quickly, you don’t have much time – put your hands on your hips, and manouevre your bumhole into the path of the plane, so it goes right in (hint! You can teal little rudders into the rear of the wings, and it’ll make it look like you have a superior understanding of aerodynamics).

Fuck ‘em. The real battle for the hearts and minds of British schoolchildren (by which I primarily mean me) was between Jennifer Lynch’s tale of amputation beyond the call of medical duty, Boxing Helena, and the moral comedy Eating Raoul, in which a pair of “straights” invite dogfucking dwarves into their home and kill them.

To say I’ve never seen the films until this week, they’ve had a lifelong disproportionate hold on me. It’s the titles. Even though Eating Raoul is a bit of a spoiler, what with the killing and eating of Raoul being the punchline of the entire fucking film, and even if Helena spends close to no time in a box (and even spends the first forty, long minutes of the film with all four arms and legs), that didn’t stop those two titles sitting in the spit on the tip of my tongue.

PAUL: What do you want to do tonight
ME: Well at 7 we’ll be Eating Raoul, but after that I’m free if you want to pop around Helena’s, she needs boxing.
PAUL: Dirtboxing?
ME: Don’t be childish.

ANYWAY RIGHT, I’ve just watched both films, and this is what I’ve learned:

1) I have rewritten my life to believe that Boxing Helena came out when I was in school. In fact, it came out in 1994. So that conversation wasn’t me being a charmingly precocious twelve year old, it was me being a subnormal twenty-something. Then again, I just did this in Tesco, and the most remarkable thing about this is the fact I’m 36.

Also, what the fuck is Tarragon? It sounds like a robot from the seventies. Who buys this shit?

2) Because I’d been told the shock summary about Boxing Helena – “it’s about a man who cuts off a woman’s arms and legs, and keeps her in a box,” I’d imagined a very different movie. The other line that people always said, to demonstrate a profounder understanding of human behavious, was “but the thing is, she’s always in control“. Naturally, I imagined Helena riding her surgeon around the house, guiding him with the reins in her mouth, and being quite rude.

3) Speaking of people pretending to have a deep insight into movies, my childhood friend John Cosgrave once told me that “Star Wars isn’t a story of good and evil – it’s cleverer than that. They let you make your own mind up”. I see on Facebook he’s joined the group “ENGLAND IS FULL – NO MORE IMMIGRANTS”. I guess I should have seen that coming. This doesn’t have much to do with Helena or Raoul, I’m a bit bored with the format though

4) It’s OK to keep a woman hostage as long as a) she eventually likes it, b) any sex scenes have the limbs momentarily restored, and c) it was all a dream anyway so like what the fuck.

5) It’s OK to kill and eat Hispanics as long as they’re taken with a decent wine

Now to put my life lessons into practice – if I’m not back in three hours, split my possessions amongst yourselves.

So we all know about the basic Hanky Code, right? It’s the failsafe method that gay men use to find a husband. If you’re straight, here’s is how it works:

1. Choose the colour that represents the thing you like.

2. If you like doing it, but the hanky in your back left pocket. If you like having it done to you, put it in your back right pocket.

3. Go to a gay bar. Press your bum against the bum of a man you find superficially appealing. If two similarly-coloured hankies meet, a small klaxon will sound. Stay perfectly still and a pride march will begin to happen.

It was invented in the 1920s, when web design looked like this, and we’ve invented loads of sex since then: so here’s the July 2009 update, which you can print out and insert into your gay manuals immediately.

I’m a staggeringly sensitive person. I’m perfectly attuned to humanity, and the energy that human emotions transmit along the fibres of the universe. When someone is sad, their sadness consumes me – unless someone is standing between us laughing, in which case I’m struck by a serene sense of balance, and can resume shopping.

But when a force as powerful as Michael Jackson is suffering, it’s like a spear landing in my chakra, and my response is an unearthly spiritual howl, a reality-shearing scream that cuts directly into the higher dimensions. You might have missed it: it’s easy, when your mind is full of the nothing mush of the physical world, to not notice someone screaming in the sixth dimension.

This is why I stood outside, screaming. People need to know what is coming. I am the only one that knows Michael Jackson is going to die.

This is my vision: a shadow spreading over the Kingdom of Pop. A child’s face in the sun, her tears extinguishing the flames. A suddenly-visible moon, presiding over the baronies and feifdoms of pop’s subgenres, basked the peasants tending the paedofields in a ghastly unlight.

The world is coming apart, Pop is ending, and there’s nothing we can do. It’s already happened in my head, and you cannot change what has already happened (in my head).

I give him two days. And that Farah Fawcett looks like she’s got a dicky tit, too

I’m always hearing amazing conversations. Other people say they don’t overhear any great conversations at all, so the only logical explanation is that my threatening presence makes everyone put in a bit of extra effort. It’s certainly true that spikes of conversational excellence occur at that precise time I shake my fist, drop my trousers, and make huge snarling whoops. Take this conversation, that I overheard on the bus, this very morning.

Son: I hope this bus does a loop the loop
Mother: If it does, I’ll park a tit on your leg

Bouyed by this warm cross-generational interchange, I disembarked and entered my regular morning newsagent. It is here, that I always cast my eye over the Pork Farms pasties. I imagine them in my mouth, and try to work out whether that would be a thing I’d be happy paying £1.79 for.

This is my benchmark of acceptability: every day that I decide not to buy and eat a Pork Farms pasty at 8:30am, is another day I have passed the human test. Imagine my surprise when I overheard this!

Customer: My hand’s stuck in this bag of Monster Munch.
Shopkeeper: Have you tried taking it out?
Customer: Tried for a while, but now I quite like it. It’s like a crunchy mitten.
Shopkeeper: A mitten… of monsters!
Customer: Yes!

Cheered immeasurably by this stolen banter, I wandered out of the shop, where I overheard a homeless gentleman trading bon mots with his carrier bag.

Man: Did I tell you about my time at the Danish Embassy?
The carrier bag billows out an unearthly gasp, and paisley swirls envelop the man.
Man: It was the grooviest year of my life.
The bag catches a gust of wind, and rockets into the stratosphere, where it is struck by lightning
Man: And I haven’t stopped dancing yet!
The man snakes himself around a lamp-post, where he remains perfectly still, but for the wild muddling of a lazy, prehensile erection.

Even at work, the people around me have incredible conversations, which I overhear with overstated reaction shots. Cupping my hand to my ear, blinking six times and saying “whu-uuu?”, or simply hooting like a maniac: everyone knows when I’ve overheard something, because I’m standing up, and repeating it word for word. This is a conversation that I’m overhearing right now. I’m piping directly from my ears to my fingers. It’s coursing through me like cake batter, and you are my ovens.

Gelatinous Cube: Man, HR are being such dicks about this tribunal hearing.
Halfling: Dude, I heard about that. You shat out a skeleton soldier in the atrium lift?
Gelatinous Cube: Fuck, when you put it like that, of course it sounds bad. He came out as he went in. Undead.
Halfling: He says you shat the helmet into his face. He says you did it with such deft comic timing that it could only have been deliberate.
Gelatinous Cube: Haha! I totally did that. I thought “he’s just done a double take and collected his thoughts, long enough has passed for everyone to think it’s over, now’s the time for a strong visual punchline”. The Beholder cracked up, it was awesome.
Halfling: Don’t come out with this shit at the tribunal, man.
Gelatinous Cube: You worry too much.
Halfling: You know what, I’ve always wondered why skeleton soldiers carry gold around. Why do the undead need money?
Gelatinous Cube: You still working on that open mic set?
Halfling: Fuck you.

That’s all I’ve overheard today. If I hear anyone saying anything else, I promise you, you’ll be the joint second to know.

I thought going freelance would be the kickstart I needed to maintain the blog. It turns out, I’m only really productive when I’m in a job I hate if I get paid regularly.

Does anyone have a job where I can just sit there, silently fuming into the internet at the cunts on the next desk? And it has to be in a company where no-one knows how to use the internet, or Google their own name.

In the meantime, I’m trying to develop a non-offensive Tumblr habit, so look at that if you like.

http://disappointment.tumblr.com

OK so let’s just take it as read that I am the new Doctor Who. Here’s the title card, which will show on the telly while a posh bloke says “And coming up next, Dr Who will kick the cocks off of some Go-Bots or something”. My mate who is a real Dr Who nerd says I have spelled Dr Who wrong. I couldn’t think of what to say back until three days later, so I phoned him up and said it was only concept art so fuck off.

I have written a new opening sequence. K-9 is flying around in space. There is a close-up on his ears, which spin around, and he says “DOCTOR, I HAVE DETECTED AN EPISODE IN THE SPACE-TIME CONTINUUM” and then I jump through a paper hoop and say “Let’s get ON IT!” I kick K-9 into the sun, then it’s the usual opening sequence only with me waving my arms around like I’m going dead fast. 

The music is Bob Marley’s Jammin’, but the last line of the chorus changed to “We hope you like Doctor Who”. My assistant, a sarcastic parrot with a monocle and the voice of Brian Sewell, squawks “Sure do!”, lands on my shoulder, and we jump into the Tardis.

(On the Dalek episode, the Daleks have a verse, too. They come in, singing “We are the Daleks, we love the disco sound” and I wag my finger at them and they say sorry)

So the action starts, and I’m on a NEVER BEFORE SEEN BEFORE new planet, where time is BACKWARDS. I shoot a monster in the face and a doctor (not me) appears and issues it a birth certificate. I actually say the word “WHURGH?” and the doctor says “I don’t know what planet you are from Mr Who but on this planet we issue birth certificates when people die and everyone smokes cigars”. He hands us both a party popper. My parrot shrugs and makes a “doi-yoi-yoing-g-g” sound that it learned off the telly. I decide to investigate.

Before long Ted Danson arrives, and tells me I have to get off his planet. I wrestle with him in a void dimension for twelve episodes, and everyone is astonished when it turns out he is full of Daleks and it was them all along, not Ted Danson. But THIS TIME, the Daleks have all got human noses because they thought perhaps it was the fact we could smell them coming that made us keep winning.

The Daleks say “I smelled YOU coming Dr Who, how do you like them apples” and I raise my eyebrows so far that they fly off, and tickle the Dalek’s noses. They all sneeze their plungers off, except for the supreme dalek, who I have to wrestle in a void dimension for a couple of episodes. Eventually I throw him into a wheelybin, rip his plunger off and stick it up my shirt like I have got a tit.

Then I regenerate SIX TIMES, which is a record for Most Regenerations In A Single Episode Of Doctor Who, and everyone is really pumped up. Then my parrot says “I’ve got cancer” and pretty much bums everyone out for the season finale. “Shit man, I just killed all the Daleks, why are you bumming everyone out,” I say, and the Parrot just dies. I spend two more episodes wrestling its dead body in a void dimension, then Kylie Minogue walks in and we make out, forgetting that in my latest incarnation I am a woman, which causes 30,001 complaints and the removal of BBC1 from the space-time airwaves.

THE END

(HEY RUSSELL T DAVIES IF YOU WANT ME TO WRITE AN EPISODE OF SARAH JANE ADVENTURES I’VE GOT AN AWESOME IDEA WHERE LUKE IS OLD ENOUGH TO DO GAY STUFF)

What is going on in the world where this kind of thing is made, and sold to children. How dare anyone do this. It is a disgrace. Also how is it that this photograph is clickable in six different places. I simply want no part in a world where this is allowed to happen. Even if it does take ages to load so that people just think it’s a big white space.

Please complain about this fucking thing to someone, thanks.