Everything I write will be unintelligible in five years (if it isn't already).

I was reflecting on the transience of existence (procrastination), when I realised it's no longer a lifelong concern, but a day-to-day thing. Soon writing about current events will mean nothing to anyone, because the current events will be in the past, and no one knows nothing about the past no moar. It occurred to me that everyone of my generation knows what the 1950s-1990s were like, but we might be the last ones. A whole generation is coming for whom "The 50s" will mean the future. Everything fades into the mist. "The 20s" is only five years away. Now, when people think of "The 20s", they'll think of the retro dubstep revival or the One Direction reunion tour, and not Harold Lloyd or Clara Bow. What's worst of all is that in five years' time, noone living will even know what that sentence means.

I most likely won't be able to play VHS tapes to my abducted grandkids, and that makes me sad. Kind of like how in Victorian times they used to burn mummies from Egypt for firewood. When the mummies ran out, a lulzy tradition disappeared from the face of the Earth. Nowadays we have to make do with grandpas and grandmas. Once something is gone it's never coming back.

The bank of knowledge I have about the recent past seems sort of definitive of recent history. When that's gone, events such as the 2015 election or World War 3 will take the place of Vietnam or McBusted as cultural touchpoints for the upcoming generation, and soon people like you and I will be as irrelevant and forgotten as the Georgians, and our maymays and fashions as incomprehensible and pointless as theirs.

Bastard role models: Basil Fawlty

Everyone knows Basil Fawlty, the lovable hotel owner who violently beats his staff, locks guests in cupboards, and otherwise lays down the law. But did you know he was a Korean War vet who killed four men? Basil Fawlty has a magic wound that flares up if he needs to cover for something. This is exactly how an injury should be employed (see Stephen Hawking).

Basil, like all of us at a certain point in life (birth), derives joy only from intense greed and Schadenfreude (this is Germanic for Bastardry). Look at how his little eyes light up when he gets to screw someone over. I do the same. I dance around my room with glee. Malice, hostility and bile are Basil Fawlty's motivators. They are guaranteed 40% better than coffee (source).

Basil Fawlty's greatest and best moment in bastardry is when the guy died in the hotel, and he was trying to get the body out. Basil Fawlty hid in the laundry basket and escaped, leaving everyone to deal with the fallout of a great big corpse all over the lobby. Basil Fawlty is my hero. I wish I could drop a corpse on everybody and escape. I'd start a new life in France, where they love me.

In defence of cowardice

"I taught you how to read you psychopathic ingrate. Go to your room"

Why is this girl always asking her poor dad what he did in the war? Every time I look at this picture she's harping on this stupid question. Here's what he did, General Ripper: he's still alive (although looking at his pained expression, maybe he regrets it).

Note that the guy's hair is dark, while his kids have blonde hair, which is statistically impossible. They're not even his, and they're mad at him because he didn't die fighting their real daddies: the Nazis.

Being a coward is an evolutionary advantage because cowards rarely get killed, as we're too good at running away. There is significant reason to believe if our ancestors weren't pussies, we never would have made it past the sabre-toothed-tiger-food stage of our development. This would have meant no Beatles, and no Return of the Living Dead. Nowadays there is little imperative to survive, due to our declining entertainment media. Time will tell whether cowards will be thinned out of the herd accordingly, but probably yes.

Bastard role models: Edmund

WARNING! This post contains spoilers for several 500-year-old plays.

Edmund is the best character in King Lear, a play about a king who goes fucking insane and starts talking to trees.

Edmund is the original bastard. He coined the famous "Now gods, stand up for bastards" line. Edmund is the best character in all of William Shakespear's Sister. First he tells his idiot brother that their dad is coming to kick his ass. Then he cuts his arm and cries to the dad to make him think the brother attacked him. Then he spends the rest of the play banging King Lear's daughters behind each other's backs. Edmund is so good at playing other people that he even manages to get the two sisters to whack each other before him. Even though he ends up getting killed, it probably works out for the best, as King Lear was written in Shakespear's Sister's goth phase, meaning everyone who ends up living wished they hadn't.

Edmund is by far the most successful villain in the whole Shakespear's Sister oeuvre. Claudius never got to enjoy himself because he was always worrying about fucking Hamlet killing him, and Iago got caught in the end, and lived out his days as a prison bitch. Edmund is to Shakespear's Sister villains what the Joker is to Batman villains: even when he loses, he wins.

We can all learn a lot from Edmund: firstly, if your family are dumbasses, you can exploit them for personal gain. Secondly, always use protection when you sleep with a chick named Gonorrhoea. Thirdly: if you give two of your daughters names that sound like diseases, those are the ones who are going to plot against you. Fourthly: Francis Bacon wrote all Shakespear's Sister's albums. Fifthly: 91% of Shakespear's Sister is codpiece jokes. Sixthly: Shakespear's Sister invented ska.

Movie Houseplant Appreciation Day Presents: ¡Streets of Fire!

What do you get when you smush together a western, film noir, action flick, rock and roll musical, and set it in the Blade Runner city of the 50s? If you answered "the best movie ever", you'd be home by now.

Streets of Fire stars some guy named Michael Paré as the hero, and Willem Dafoe in a vinyl vest and Misfits-like hairdo as the villain.

"I can fit my whole head in my mouth"

Paré has to save the singer Ellen Aim, played by Diane Lane, from Willem Dafoe’s evil biker gang, the Bombers, who abduct her while she's onstage, singing original songs by Jim Steinman (Bat Out Of Hell). Along the way he recruits a band in their touring bus and Rick Moranis (Jagged Little Pill). Other rock and/or roll cameos include the Blasters and Lee Ving from Fear. After The Breakfast Club, this may be the most 80s movie ever to come out of the 80s.

"This song is called 'Holy shit these shoulderpads make me look like a Space Marine'"

Even though it's a weird, unrepeatable bomb, Streets of Fire is one of my favourite movies because it has such a unique style. The director, Walter Hill, said he wanted to make a movie featuring everything he thought was cool as a little kid, so the personality really comes through. That’s probably why the film ends with a sledgehammer duel: the perfect way to solve disputes.

Objectively the best thing ever filmed.

Have you seen Streets of Fire??? Have you seen streets on fire??? Have you seen beets on fire??? Leave a comment (in another time, another place).

Sour Flush: The candy crapper you wished you had as a kid.

Look at this shit.

A reasoned case for going back to the 1920s.

This is something no one argues about (yet), so stay ahead of the curve with this fabulous argument for going back to the 1920s. By the way, does anyone else get sick of writing these intros that are covered by the title? Next week: a reasoned case for abolishing intros, possibly followed by everything else.

1. In the 1920s everyone dressed like they were from ancient Egypt or something.

   

   The first rule of the 1920s is Theda Bara is typical of everything in the 1920s.

2. Tech company fanboys hadn't been invented.
3. Jazz.
4. Everything was in black and white, making it colourblind-friendly.
5. The Charleston, which is the only dance I know the name of (but still can't do).
6. That guy flew round the world.
7. Lon Chaney.
8. It was permanently boom time.
9. Tommy guns are 40% cooler than modern guns.
10. The Great Gatsby. What's so great about the Gatsby, you ask? He was from the 1920s.
11. Everyone loves the 1920s.

I think you'll find this a compelling case for going backwards and reversing everything to what it was like in the 1920s. That would make me way less suicidal.

Bastard role models: Dr Octagon

Dr Octagon is a pink-afro'd, green-skinned, skull-faced gynaecologist invented by stark staring batshit loon and genius Kool Keith. The good doctor dresses up as a woman so he can fuck his patients, and spends the rest of his day cross-breeding animals and conducting experimental surgery on everyone. He is so absent-minded that he lets a horse wander into the hospital while he's not looking ("General Hospital"). He cheerfully admits "I have no tools, my hammer's done, my drill is broke", but don't worry, as you probably won't even make it to examination, since anyone who's been waiting since the morning while he's banging female patients gets summarily dismissed ("Waiting List").

His 208-year-old uncle is half-shark-alligator, half-man ("Halfsharkalligatorhalfman"). He also has a song about himself, "Dr Octagon". Not only is it named after himself, but it doesn't make any sense and is full of William Burroughs-esque phrases like "gamma ray toilet" and "Government chemical voodoo man miracle/Super disease". All this might sound like cause for concern, but don't worry, as he assures a "Dr. Ludicrous" (possibly himself) that he "[turns] into a octopus", which presumably puts an end to his medical career. On the other hand, he was later seen in a sequel trying to save the universe from a gorilla. It is not known at this stage whether he was still an octopus at the time.

Because he is fucking bonkers, Kool Keith periodically kills off Dr Octagon in a fit of rage, generally at the hands of his other persona, Dr Doooooooom (all his personae are not to be confused with the incredibly similar-sounding Marvel Comics characters). Dr Octagon is my role model for several reasons: he's a time traveller, he loves his work, and, like Freddy Krueger, Michael Myers and Jason Voorhees, he can just come back to life for no reason. These are all things I aspire to, and you should too. I wish we could time travel back to the 90s, when Dr Octagon was there. He'd tell me what to do.

Thinking Barbarian 5: Think Again

Have a bastardly new year!!!