Pictogram of the Year 2008

Remember Pictogram of the Year 2007? Well today I discovered a new set of pictograms worthy of this year's award. They came on the back of a box for a set of Nintendo DS Lite accessories made by Hori in Japan. Here they are:

The DS makes Mr. Fire sad. He prefers his PSP.

The DS makes Mr. Water sad because he read an article in the Daily Mail about how videogames make people violent. He had a go on Brain Training in a shop and now he's worried he's going to suddenly go mad and kill his wife with an axe.

Don't let your baby tap-dance over your DS, this isn't Strictly Come fucking Dancing y'know.

Pac-Man used to like eating dots but these days they make him cry because he worries about becoming obese.

'Well done' to Hori for these. I wonder who'll win the award in 2009?

Hot Anne Diamond On Resident Evil 4 Action!!!

There were a couple of noteworthy things in today's Daily Mail, primarily TV presenter Anne Diamond turning video game critic:

Anne Diamond gives her chilling verdict on the violent video games that are to carry age ratings

Anne was given some 'of the most popular games' (ie. a selection of games with significant amounts of adult content, chosen totally at random by some Mail researcher) to play and report on. She gives Resident Evil 4 a particular kicking:


Then again, I'm not sure Anne's really in any position to be making moral judgements. Why? Because she's a witch:


I don't know what kind of sinister arcane powers are work in that photo, making those games semi-disappear. But whatever powers are at work, this kind of witchcraft can only be bad for you.

I was quite amused to find that a picture included in the article of two children playing Mario Kart 64 on an old Nintendo 64 had the filename 'spoiltkid'. Yeah, I bet those little bastards are being spoilt to shit, sat there playing a ten-year-old game.

Also in today's Mail was an advert for this thing:


Only £7.90! It's called a Scare Cat and you use it to scare cats away from your garden. It made me laugh, it looks like the least intimidating thing ever. I can imagine my own cats just wandering up to it and making friends with it - that's what happened when we got a vaguely realistic fake cat to see how they'd react. I'd save the money for something else - maybe you could put it towards your next video game purchase, although make sure it's not something with violence in or Anne Diamond might cry.

The Apprentice

Yesterday saw the beginning of a new series of The Apprentice on BBC1, which for those of you who've been trapped inside a box (or just watch ITV all the time, in which case: what the fuck is wrong with you?) is a reality-ish show where several aspiring business people compete for the chance to be the apprentice of successful business-guy Sir Alan Sugar.

First up for the boot was prize cunt Nicholas de Lacy-Brown (he pinched the 'de Lacy' bit from his grandmother, apparently in a bid to make people aware that he's an ostentatious twat before they even meet him). This video does a more than adequate job of demonstrating what an utter prick the man is:



What's that Nick? You're a barrister? With legal qualifications? You kept that quiet didn't you? Never would have guessed. Ugh.

Here's some more evidence of his cunthood from the opening of the biography on his website:

It was Virgil who stated in his Ecologues: ‘Non omnia possumus omnes’ (We can’t all do everything), a statement which many have been happy to oblige. In Nicholas de Lacy-Brown however, there lies a man who is prepared to question such apathy. Undoubtedly a man of many talents, he has lived his short twenty-four years with a vivacity and boldness which few could achieve in a lifetime.

What. A. Twat.

Weekend In York

So as I was saying in a previous post, I spent the weekend in York. York is a bit like my hometown, in that it'd be a much nicer place if they rooted out the few good eggs and shunted the rest of its inhabitants off to some sort of concentration camp. A good proportion of the population are chavs. I went in the local Tesco Express thing - it was small and dirty and was apparently having a no-uniform day. This made me chuckle since one of the staff was wearing this horrible fake-leopard-skin kind of thing and another looked like he'd auditioned for Blazin' Squad (or whatever the modern equivalent of Blazin' Squad is - I don't know what such a thing would be like but you'd probably have to have murdered several old women to get in it, kids today and all that) but failed.

Out of the remaining non-chav population, a further good proportion were irritatingly old. I've got nothing against old people but too many of them and you end up being reminded of your own mortality all the time. Plus they all had a kind of smug look that I didn't like the look of. Maybe I'm just overly judgemental.

So yeah, have those two groups of people put to death and York'd be lovely. The architecture's quite nice. Oh, and there's a weird purple statue thing. Yeah.

York is home to the National Railway Museum, which I obviously went to otherwise I wouldn't be talking about it (there's no point blogging about tourist attractions you haven't been to - down that way madness lies. Can you imagine it? 'Went to York for the weekend. Didn't go to York Castle. Didn't go to the Viking Centre. Didn't go to York Dungeon. Didn't go on the Yorkshire Wheel. What if... what if I never get to visit these places before I die?... All the experiences I'll never have... [cue quiet sobbing into hands]'. Yeah, not pretty, is it?)

Anyway, one of the attractions at the National Railway Museum is part of a bullet train from Japan. You can see it in the picture. You're able to go inside the carriage and you can even sit down in the carriage chairs and watch this little slideshow thing on a screen. Thing is most people in there, and this included me, ended up sat there stuck in a kind of melancholic trance. It was as if everyone in the drab plasticy cabin had forgotten that the train wasn't actually real. All the people were sat there with a look of expectation, as if they were expecting it to set off any minute. But it never did. There seemed to be an element of tragedy about the whole thing really. It's not even as if people were going there to have a sit down, there was seating everywhere.

Speaking of tragedy, there was a little shop dedicated entirely to Thomas the Tank Engine merchandise. Dear me, they've really ruined Thomas the Tank Engine. All of the toys are plasticy and shit compared to the ones I used to have, and the originals books are horribly overpriced. Browsing the wares there was like writing the word 'childhood' in big letters on a piece of paper and then having to watch as a businessman in a suit wrenches the paper away from you and shits all over it, before rubbing the piece of shitty paper in your face. Well... actually it was nothing like that, but you get my point.

I guess the moral of the story is that capitalism is rubbish because the end result of it is a load of chavs (using their consumer power to buy the 'wrong' things), nasty old people (who, in the olden days, would have been dead by now), depressing mass produced trains, and the rape of everything we held dear in our childhoods. Boo capitalism! Boo! Let's all live in fields and beat each other up with sticks. That'll be a better world to live in, right? Right?! No? Oh, alright then, have it your way. Cunt.

Incest

What is it with Channel 4 and incest? First we had Rhys fucking his half-sister Beth on Hollyoaks, then we had Ian fucking his half-brother on Shameless. And those are just the ones I know about. Now Channel 4 are giving us a whole programme dedicated to people fucking their half-siblings, Sleeping With My Sister.

According to Channel 4's blurb:

Over nine months, the documentary follows the lives of Nick and Danielle, in Scotland; and a couple in the US. Both couples are in the grip of a powerful incestuous love: a passion that is set to destroy marriages, and will see Nick and Danielle prosecuted for incest.

The Guardian's TV guide doesn't seem impressed though: "It's hard to understand why they decided to make this show, particularly as Tom and Stephanie [the US couple] hadn't yet told their respective spouses". I imagine they decided to make this show because some Channel 4 exec has a really, really unhealthy interest in incest. Let's hope Channel 4 never buy up the rights to Family Fortunes because I dread to think what they'd do with it.

Kick In The Face

My most hated advert at the moment is the one for Wrigley Airwaves. Y'know the one, a bunch of people are psyching themselves up, chanting some uplifting aspirational bollocks and then your jaw drops as it ends and you discover all this is somehow about chewing gum, chewing gum, for fuck's sake. "Experience the kick", the slogan says. It's just chewing gum! Chewing gum some with a bit of eucalyptus and menthol stuff in it!

I looked for a video of the ad online but, oddly, couldn't find anything. All I could find was an article on talkingretail.com about the advert which pissed me off even more - link. According to Wrigley, the "energetic ad features people in various situations psyching themselves up in readiness for a revitalising ‘kick’ from Wrigley’s Airwaves". Who the fuck needs to psych themselves up in order to have some chewing gum? I intended that to be a rhetorical question, but fuck it, I'll answer it anyway: fucking mentalists psych themselves up before chewing gum. It's just fucking chewing gum! Jesus.

There's more though:

Combining dynamism and engagement, the campaign aims to further strengthen the overall Airwaves brand popularity with consumers, which will in turn support retailers’ sales. Our advice to retailers would be to keep fully stocked to take advantage of the profit potential.

Quickly retailers! Get some Airwaves in stock now, or you'll be fucked! You're dealing with 'dynamism' and 'engagement' here. You don't piss around when those concepts are on the table. Just think: run out of stock and those dynamic customers'll be going to other stores to get their gum: they'll be taking it from another store's rack, handing over the money at another store's counter, spending several minutes psyching themselves up in another store, scaring away customer with their demented aspirational ranting at another store, getting shouted at and told to leave by the staff of another store... Actually, you know what? You're probably fine. Leave the 'dynamism' and 'engagement' to other people. People who enjoy selling chewing gum to the mentally challenged.

Live

The people who write The Mail on Sunday's Live magazine are obviously every bit as nice as the people who write the main publication:

Ugly bands seem to be in vogue these days - have you ever heard of Hot Chip? - and new nerd-rock hopefuls Foals aren't breaking the mould.

What's that? You want to make music but you don't satisfy some journalist's subjective criteria on what makes someone attractive? You've got a fucking nerve, haven't you? People like you make me sick. Ugh... I'm so disgusted by your sheer arrogant audacity I can barely type with the rage - so I'm going to stop, and hope that by the time I log back on to this blog all you ugly musicians will have found some simple human decency and killed yourselves.

69! Hahaha! Do you see? 69!!!

I'm really disappointed with the advert for the new Now 69 album:



Forty seconds and not one bit of '69' related innuendo. Fucking rubbish.

More Amanda Platell

I'm back at home for the Easter holiday, which means I'm stuck with the Daily Mail for five weeks. Anyway, today Amanda's sticking up for Delia Smith:

BBC chef Simon Rimmer attacks Delia Smith for using frozen mash potato in her quick shepherd's pie.

"It's the easiest thing in the world," he says, "just boil the spuds, drain them and mash with butter."

Yes, Simon, and who buys the spuds and lugs them home in the first place and who peels them?

[continues...]

I don't know Amanda, but given that he's the professional cook in the household I imagine it might be him. After all, if he let his wife go out to get the potatoes for the mash she'd probably end up buying ones meant for chipping, the daft cow. Women, eh?

Oh, and Amanda? Most people don't 'lug' their potatoes home, they put them in the sodding car and drive them back, you pillock. Have you spent your whole life dragging sacks of potatoes down the street Amanda? Have you? Do you arrive back at the house at 8PM, exhausted, your irate husband waiting for his tea? Does he get angry, Amanda? Does he beat you? Yes? Good. All is well.

Odd

By far the strangest thing I've come across this week is Duel Love, a Nintendo DS game that's just come out in Japan. I was innocently looking through an e-mail newsletter from a import game site when I suddenly went "what the fuck is that?" and ended up doing a bit of investigation which led to this post.


Duel Love is essentially a dating simulator for girls with a bit of a twist. Basically you play the role of an exchange student who finds out on her first day at her new school that the school, in fact, contains a secret fight club, where the apparently anorexic male students of said school engage in ill-advised boxing matches. By supporting one of the boys you help him get through the fights. According to the blurb, "a girl in love is truly the goddess of victory". If you say so.

The game includes a pretty subnormal selection of mini-games. Here's a diagram of one:


In this minigame you wipe away sweat. As you do. Fuck knows what's going on with that facial expression in the last picture. Honestly, video games these days. Filth.

Here's another:


Apparently the aim is to blow into the DS's microphone to make the steam go away. Um... yeah.

And one final one:


What with not eating and that, the boys bruise easily. I mean maybe it'd help if they, like, didn't go around beating the shit out of either other - honestly, anorexic boys these days! In any case, this particular minigame would appear to be futile - those bruises will never heal. At least not unless he starts eating again, anyway.

Fodder for sexually frustrated teenage Japanese girls then. Except, oddly, one the of main characters seems to be an actual proper child. That or a midget. Look:


Seriously, what the fuck? Even the character profile thing uses the word 'BOY' for some reason:


H... Hello? Is... is there anybody there? Am I the only sane person in a world gone mad? Hello? Hello?!

White

So it looks like the BBC are starting to get a bit worried that, y'know, maybe the Daily Mail's been right all along and, like, the BBC really is, like, all left-wing and PC and that. Thus in an apparent attempt to appease all those Daily Mail sorts, they've come up with a new 'White' season, based around the question 'Is white working class Britain becoming invisible?'.

And as if expressing that question through words isn't enough, their website also expresses it with a lovely image:


It's like, OMG, all those evil darkies have, like, drawn on that guy's face. Or something.

But, alas, the BBC haven't managed to please everyone. Daily Mail columnist Amanda Platell isn't happy:

A new TV series aims to give a voice to the "forgotten" working class.

I long for the day a similar treatise is aired on the forgotten middle class - who've been bled dry by Labour, held in contempt by the BBC and mocked by the liberal elite, while providing the backbone of this nation's success. Don't hold your breath.

Imagine if the BBC did do a series of programmes on the white middle class though. If all middle class people are like the twats on the Daily Mail website then they'd probably end up with drama programmes looking like this:

[A MAN is stood in a room]

MAN: Look at me! I'm a white middle man and I'm so hard fucking done by! Boo twatting hoo, everyone hates me and I'm such a victim! Waa! Waa!

[The MAN gracelessly flops to the floor and begins to beat it with his fists, all the while shrieking like a six-month old child]

Yeah, looks shit doesn't it? Perhaps, instead of coming up with shite ideas for TV, Amanda should occupy herself with something more constructive like, I dunno, toppling down a set of stairs while I watch from the top, a cold gleam in my eye, watch her her tumble like a ragdoll until she lies still at the bottom, her neck broken, her eyes glazed and dead. I don't like Amanda Platell. Can you tell?

Another Breakfast Idea

In the unlikely event that you've been reading this blog since the beginning, you might remember this post, where I had the wonderful idea of replacing the chocolate stuff in those 'magic straw' things they sell with crack.

Well now I've had another wonderful breakfast related idea - a spin-off version of Rice Krispies, called Death Krispies. Essentially Death Krispies would be similar to Rice Krispies in content and packaging, but the traditional mascots of Snap, Crackle and Pop would be replaced with three new mascots, Smack, Crack and Jack, reflecting the new 'active ingredients' in the cereal. Kids'll hate the taste but will nonetheless come back for more every morning. At least they will for a while... eventually they'll be scoffing some down every hour until they OD and die on the kitchen floor, foamy spittle leaking from the side of their mouths. But hey! Kids can be replaced.

In the unlikely event that sales are slow, free gifts could be introduced to pull the punters in. How about "Death Krispies - now with a free HIV contaminated syringe in every box!"?

Can't fail.

Ditto

Horrible fat-ist humour ahoy!

I'm sure someone on the Internet must have already noticed this, but the similarities between Gossip vocalist Beth Ditto and Pokemon #132, Ditto, are uncanny:


Hoo. Well I feel dirty now...

Anyway, join me next time when I'll be taking the piss out of Simon Weston and some midgets.

'Adrian's Fact Of The Day' Compilation

You might remember that ages ago I started writing two spin-off blogs for about a week, before horribly neglecting all of my blog related things. One of them, Lies About Celebrities, I quite liked and might bother to update in the future, but the other, Adrian's Fact Of The Day didn't really turn out quite as well as I'd hoped. Anyhoo, since I've no intention of carrying on with that one I thought I'd do a little compilation of all the posts before I deleted the originals. So here they are, a little collection of life-enriching facts:

Adrian's Facts Of The Day

Fact #1 - 08/01/08

Pine is shit.

Fact #2 - 08/01/08

Richard Littlejohn looks like he has sex with toast and then eats it anyway.

Fact #3 - 08/01/08

Kittens are made of lies.

Fact #4 - 09/01/08

Flowers emit lethal gamma radiation if you say nasty things about their mothers.

Fact #5 - 10/01/08

Deep fried books taste like Jesus.

Fact #6 - 11/01/08

Every time a shrew eats butterscotch, a fairy dies.

Fact #7 - 12/01/08

Coca-cola is not a cure for AIDS.

Fact #8 - 15/01/08

Pandora's box actually contained a really nice pair of shoes.

Fact #9 - 29/01/08

The moon is made out of cheese, however it should not be eaten as it was not ethically produced.