RADIOFACE

As if in answer to my post yesterday - and I assume it is because I am AN ONLY CHILD AND THE WORLD REVOLVES ARRRRROUND MEEEE - there is this interesting episode of a new British webshow called Radioface.

Armstrong & Miller

A marvelous discovery that was passed along to me today...



The song's seem a cornerstone but they do more than that!

Shameless Pilfering

Good old Stephen Fry is at it again, this time with a game show where the points don't matter but you do win said points for not only giving correct answers but also being interesting. It's a great premise and the first episode is a great watch, partially because his old comedy partner Huge Laurie (who most folk enjoy in House these days) is one of the players. You could do a lot worse than to give this a watch.

(I shamelessly pilfered this from that scientifically proven reprobate...Marc)

If haircuts could kill...

I'm blatantly stealing this from HarvestBird, but it had to be done. You don't meet folk like Stephan Fry's character often, but you meet people who come close more often then you might think.

As my Uncle Phil would put it....

...I am cream crackered. The last little while has been ten kinds of stressful for reasons I didn't bring up here lest it become one of those blogs and this afternoon it finally caught up with me. Try as I might, any attempt to progress past what I got made me feel like a dickless man trying to fuck his way up a mountain.

I....I think I just coined that horror.

As partial means of compensation I put forward these two offerings and a humble promise of a comic on Wednesday.

Hollywood (Monkey-Dust style) takes a crack at the Ivan O'Dobsky story...

...and then again, with The Crusades.

More English Guffaws you may not be aware of

Monkey-Dust was an animated series that usually hops quickly between loosely connected skits. But then they did the following epic which follows a fine arc of great comedy into a conclusion of utter horror.

Enjoy!


More clips from the show can be found here. It's also notable for great background music, most of it contemporary (I discovered this show through a link-go-round that started with the group Goldfrapp).

Travels and travails and PAEDOPHILLIA?

Well, I've had a long conference with Old Man Money and it looks like visiting Canada will have to be a December/Christmas thing. Though recent events have upgraded a June trip from implausible to plausible, it has not yet graduated to wise. In short, I'd be cleaning out my savings account and leaving myself in a precarious position for when I returned to London. Plus I've lately been having crazy thoughts about "planning for retirement" and "not living hand-to-mouth". Sorry, to those who were hoping to see me sooner rather than later. If I had the ability, I'd visit in both June and December - with smaller trips all over Europe as well.

So now I am presented with the truly First World Problem of deciding what I want to do for a little vacation to celebrate my birthday and cap off what I sincerely hope to be the end of my "career" in data entry (it almost goes without saying that even though it's a month until this Network Rail contract finally ends, I've started hunting for a new and more stimulating job). On the one hand it's tempting to spend a modest wad of cash visiting Rome (before it crumbles) or somewhere in Greece for four or five days - seeking thrills and sights then coming back to London to decompress and recover from making the most of a few days somewhere exotic.

Or do I retreat to stay with my friends in Uffington/Oxford, take a few days off from hustle and/or bustle as well as the Internet (gasp) in order to seriously relax while focusing on writing and drawing in-between long country walks? Cheaper and more productive by far, but not as exciting or exotic - I certainly would miss seeing the Coliseum or the Aegean sea.

Perhaps I could be cheeky enough to do both, back-to-back?

In other news, here's an interesting artifact from recent British history which could be filed under the What's Got Us Whipped Up Into Hysterics Now? column. In the late '90's and very early 2000s's, up until terrorism stole our hearts and minds, paedophiles where the boogey-men supreme in England. Chris Morris, a father of two children and the man behind Brass Eye, got fed up with how the British people were being whipped up into absolute brainless terror so as to further the agenda of several newspapers, TV stations and politicians. Thus, though Brass Eye had been off the air for a few years, he resurrected his old show to produce a special entitled "Paedogeddon". You can find it on Youtube, split into three parts (1 - 2 - 3).

This article, What happens when you satirize hysteria?, does a good job of chronicling that brief period and the various reactions to the show. Here is a rather telling quote from the three page article, the italics added by yours truly:

"...a moral panic of gargantuan proportions has swept the land. Last summer in the English coastal town of Portsmouth, egged on by English tabloids running a "name and shame" campaign, mobs of vigilantes roamed the streets like medieval peasants. But instead of pitchforks they carried knuckle dusters and baseball bats, and rather than hunchbacks they were seeking "kiddie fiddlers," who existed only in the minds of the mob.

Dozens of people were wrongly accused, and one man, a pediatrician, had to leave the area after some of the protesters were confused by the term and torched his house. The pediatrician managed to keep his name out of the press, for fear that more crime might follow him. Another pediatrician, 30-year-old Yvette Cloete, had to leave her home in Gwent, South Wales after it was vandalized: Cloete arrived home from work to see the word "paedo" daubed all over her walls. Police say "the astonishing ignorance" of local anti-pedophile protestors forced her out. "

Bahahahahwhahahawhahwwhaa......oh lord I've wet myself

I've had this marvelous, marvelous show put under my nose - Brass Eye, a fine satire of alarmist news programs if there ever was one! The second clip has Simon Pegg as a militant pedophile - a Milipede.