Cherry 2000 to Blade Runner 2049: The Decline of Western Civilisation in Two Robot Waifu Kinos

This smudgy, low-res piece of shit was the only copy of the film I could find, but trust me, it's kino.

As you know, yesterday's scifi is today's reality. Cherry 2000 is a 1980s motion picture starring Melanie Griffith and some guy in a highly 80s neon and synth-obsessed dystopia in which romantic relations between the sexes have deteriorated to the point men are turning to sex robots while """"real"""" women are exacting contracts before sex and dating can commence. It's set in 2017, making this literally the most accurate prediction of the future in any B-movie, ever. Coincidentally or otherwise, 2017 was the year another neon robot waifu kino, Blade Runner 2049, was released. In my ongoing effort to replace academia with shitposting, I offer you a comprehensive breakdown of these eerily similar films and what they say about our IRL dystopia.

Don't you hate it when your wife short-circuits?

So the plot is kicked into motion when our bland everyman hero's robot waifu gives out during foreplay in the suds from an overloaded washing machine. She's the eponymous Cherry 2000, a high-end model powered by the latest technology: a mini-disk. Our protagonist, who I'd swear had a name but whatever, sees his relationship with her as real and meaningful, even though she basically repeats a few phrases monotonously with a smile on her face. Maybe the subtext is that he's as boring as her, so he can't really tell there's anything missing. To be fair though, this relationship appears to be better than the alternative.

What if I told you I was in Apocalypse Now? No really, I was.

Yes, that's Larry "Morpheus" Fishburne (again, eerily presaging his later role by wearing these reflective sunglasses. IRL Matrix confirmed) as a lawyer/pimp/chaperone who arranges dating contracts like in that one Chappelle Show sketch between men and women at a bar. Do you think Hollywood comes up with these ideas because they think the rest of the world are as degenerate as them?

Anyway, Protagonist resolves to get a new body to house his waifu's mini-disk. There's only one problem: the only waifu bodies left in that make and model are in storage in Las Vegas, deep in Zone 7 which has descended into the sort of neo-wild-west setting you'll recognise from 800 Mad Max ripoffs. The major difference is that the villainous gangs that run this wasteland are preppies instead of punks:

The feared warlord Lester (yes).

This idea is funny, and it's just one of a number of imaginative quirks that make Cherry 2000 kino. So to help guide him through this hazardous desert, Protagonist enlists the help of "E" (Melanie Griffith), a manic-pixie-dream-girl-haired qt who I guess is like a Stalker from the movie of the same name, but for preppy post-apocalyptic California instead of Bumfuck USSR. Not, however, before visiting this hotel, where they have a cat in a bottle on the front desk:

Yes.

So E leads Protagonist into the Zone where they're picked up by a large magnet on a crane and shot at with rocket launchers, presumably to avoid damaging the road surface, which makes this a more forward-planning-oriented gang than most.

>tfw no rocket launcher having post-apocalyptic mpdg qt gf

Naturally E and Protagonist Guy fall in love, but a romantic comedy contrivance has them fall out and press on to find the robot body and more hijinks ensue. Eventually they go to Vegas, just like in BR 2049.

Vegas is always a e s t h e t i c after the world ends.

Of course, this is two human beings going in search of one robot, whereas in BR 2049 it's two competing replicants (K and Luv) and a hologram (Joi) going in search of a lone, aging human man in hiding. Quite the demographic reversal in the 32 years between 2017 and 2049.

In both movies the male protagonist has a choice between an artificial relationship with a "real" woman (the prostitute in BR 2049 and the bar thots with the contracts in Cherry 2000) and a relatively real relationship with an artificial woman (Joi/Cherry). Of course in Cherry 2000 he ends up with E, but this only adds another layer of depression to the experience, because E, as a manic pixie dream girl, also represents something that doesn't actually exist. Real-life "random" women with unnatural coloured hair are far closer to the contract thots than to E in the movie.

What do you mean I'm not the girl of your dreams, cis-pig?? This is hash tag why we need SocJus!

What both movies recognise is that a Cherry or Joi is just going to be the go-to choice when the alternative is this Lego-eyebrowed Boris Karloff looking turbothot and others like xir. Cherry 2000 cheats by offering the possibility of a good woman as an alternative, but as Mark Sandman once said, a good woman is hard to find*.

However there is a a teeny tiny whitepill to be found in this morass of depression, in the form of best girl Luv.

<3

For while Joi (Jerk Off Instructions) and E (ecstasy) are both essentially fake stimulants, Luv (love) is real, and love hurts, and the relationship between K and Luv is the realest one even though it is largely antagonistic, because at base she wants Ryan Gosling's BAC (Big Autistic Cock), making her what weebs call "tsundere". Although a replicant, Luv has internal conflict and this makes her more human than the basic bar thots and the mascots such as Joi and E. Luv represents the SYNTHESIS between the loving waifu and real (complex) wahmen. This is what is meant by her catchphrase, "I'm the best one".

Now That's What I Call Kino (Vol. 344)

Despite the crieing of many, this is NOT at all an unattainable standard for wahmen to aspire to. You can even keep your straight bangs.

Do you like how I solved dystopia??? Leave a comment!

*Note that when your entire sex gets BTFO by Morphine you can never recover because Morphine is the best 90s-core band, at least tied with Hum. If anyone still clings to muh feminism in the face of the Morphine argument, they may be dismissed as irreparably basic and broken down for spare parts.

Thank God It's Friday The 13th: Friday the 13th Part 2!!!

Every Friday the 13th two things happen: Jason goes on a killing spree, and I write an article in tribute to him. This time our subject is arguably the best film in the entire series, Friday the 13th Part 2. This article contains spoilers and gluten.

The movie opens with Alice, the sole surviving camp counsellor from the first instalment, who is still haunted by nightmares of her ordeal at Crystal Lake. This seems to have been done mostly to pad the movie out to feature length, which is always a good way to start. Alice gets a call from her mother, who is as concerned as you might expect. This is an interesting point because the dialogue suggests she still has unfinished business at the lake, setting her up to be the protagonist again. This is, of course, an effective fake-out which, like the mystery element from the first film, is sadly no longer effective. Nowadays, we all know she's about to get whacked.

Another story tragically cut short because it would require character development.

So Jason kills her with an ice pick to the temple, which presumably he found in her abode, since it's unlikely he keeps one in his shack in the woods. Had she been staying in a hotel he'd have had to order room service to get something to kill her with. But first he pranks her by leaving his mother's rotting head in her fridge, the absolute madman.

I've got worse in my fridge tbh

With his mother's killer now avenged, Jason returns to his woods to live a quiet life of contemplation and ease. Unfortunately a new batch of camp counsellors decide to set up shop by Crystal Lake, so he pretty much has to kill them all too. I mean, it was that or not kill them, and keep being a hermit in peace, and, really, what kind of choice is that?

Given the state of Jason's cabin, his motive may just be the search for new piss bottles and cum socks.

Sack-wearing Jason aside, one thing that elevates this movie above the pack is the Final Girl, Ginny Field, played by the legendary Amy Steel.

Literally waifu tier.

Ginny is by far the smartest and most resourceful of the Friday the 13th Final Girls, and beats Jason with an uncanny knowledge of psychology the writers made up. It's her analysis of Jason that basically sets the template for our understanding of the character: he's a child trapped in a man's body, unsure what to do without his mother's guidance. You can kind of argue that the reason she is able to survive is she's the only one who cares to try to understand Jason, which is a pretty interesting idea. She also wails on him with a chainsaw at one point, which is pretty sweet.

She also pisses herself during the final chase scene, but nobody's perfect, unless you're into that.

But then there's also the fact that Part 2 is scary, which puts it in rare company with Part 1. Zombie Jason was never scary and from Part 5 or 6 (depending on how much you credit Part 5 for intentionality) the series became more of a broad comedy with gore. Part 2 uses the innate scariness of the woods to good advantage and the hallucinatory atmospherics of the ending are still effective.

Next Friday the 13th we'll cover Part 4, which isn't really scary but is atmospheric and the last "good" instalment. After that things get real retarded real quick, but as the 80s wore on, the distinction between retardation and brilliance wore, at times, extremely thin.

my first gondola :)

Gondolas are an island of peaceful contemplation in our times of trouble. I have made a Gondola to try to bring some comfort to my introspective brothers and sisters.

If everyone watched a daily Gondola, the world would be a more thoughtful place.

UNHINGED is KNHO!

Many and varied are the slasher flicks that thick-rimmed-glasses-bedecked bloggers will claim are the great overlooked classics of the genre. Some will cite The Initiation, with its apparently hilarious penile costumes. Others will proclaim the impeccable gore effects of The Prowler/Rosemary's Killer, or the masterful twist ending of Happy Birthday to Me. But they are all objectively wrong, because the greatest slasherkino you've never heard of unless you are a virgin at 47 is Don Gronquist's 1982 masterstroke Unhinged.

Unironically kinography

What makes Unhinged kino is the same thing that makes Kwaidan kino: it is so slow and boring that when something finally happens it's twenty times as shocking because the film had lulled you into near-sleep. I mean this entirely seriously: the film is not le-so-bad-it's-good in the usual sense. Rather, it is so bad it's actually really good.

Unhinged is mostly known for being one of the infamous video nasties banned by the risible joke of a country known as the UK. There's a fair amount of gore but, let's be honest, it looks faker than a Kardashian and in any case is no worse than most Friday the 13ths. I wish someone would ban the UK.

The inspiration of Psycho and The Shining are evident throughout, and I can only assume 90% of the budget went on the helicopter shots of the protagonists driving endlessly through woods. This was a good decision because it lends the picture a ton of style and sets it apart from the other micro-budgeters of its day. The lack of funds to go around also keeps the action limited to a couple of locations, which play perfectly on the combination of claustrophobia and isolation you experience when stuck in a creepy old house in the woods in the middle of nowhere.

Since almost nothing happens in the filmographeme, it would be impossible to say much more without spoilers, so I will leave you with this demonstration of the masterful artistry of the much underappreciated Gronquist, who in the Berenstein world is regarded in the pantheon of greats.

Don Gronquist made this shot scary 8 years before David Lynch.

Thank God It's Friday The 13th: Friday the 13th Part 3: 3-D!!!

It's that time of year again: October. Unrelatedly, it's also Friday the 13th, which means I'm going to be wildly autistic about one of the greatest film series about a fellow retard ever to exist*. I was going to write about parts 1 & 2, but I'm already doing a writeup of another slasherkino so let's delve into one of the dumb ones instead.

Friday the 13th Part 3: 3-D is chiefly noted for being the one in 3D, and consequently the one where the guy's eye pops out towards the camera (despite sounding potentially horrific, this is actually hilarious). My copy of the DVD only includes the 2D version, but you can still tell it was filmed in 3D because people keep shoving crap right up into the camera for no plot-related reason.

The magic of 3D: annoying everyone by invading their space like the worst kid in school.

The movie starts with a disco theme that sounds straight out of Prom Night, which instantly kills the still-effective atmospherics of the first two movies and sets the stage for the increasingly gimmicky and only sometimes intentionally funny sequels to come. The cast of hippies and other degenerates are introduced, and set about killing time at their holiday home near Crystal Lake, ignoring the warnings of everyone's favourite Eyeball Guy.

The fact that everyone forgets about this guy five minutes after meeting him proves they were never going to make it anyway.

Aside from the 3D chicanery, what makes this movie super funny is the plot (of sorts). It took me a couple of viewings to confirm this, but this is the movie in which Jason hides in a barn and people keep disturbing him until he snaps and kills them all. Because in those early days of the franchise, the writers still thought they were telling some kind of rudimentary story, Jason has things like motivation in this movie. He starts off stealing clothes from a local couple (whom he kills, because why not?), and heads to the barn to lay low, knowing the cops will be looking for him after last night's massacre (Part 3 takes place the day after Part 2, making it definitely not Friday the 13th, not that anybody cares).

Damn kids, get away from my barn!

The problem for Jason is that these kids show up at the house opposite his barn, and one by one they just keep coming in. They even incur the wrath of a local bike gang, who are also drawn into the barn. The movie is much funnier if you watch it with the understanding that Jason isn't trying to kill anyone else. He's actually for once doing the smart thing, laying low until the heat blows over and he can return to his shack in the woods. But everyone trails through his barn, and he kills them to keep from being discovered.

Finally Shelley, a fat, annoying nerd who plays practical jokes so everyone will like him, little realising that this is the reason no one likes him, enters the barn carrying a certain hockey mask. At this point, Jason has had enough. He kills Shelley, takes the mask, and wipes out everyone until the Final Girl stops him (for now).

Not many know that Jason stole his iconic look from a fat kid with a Jewfro.

The other thing that's odd about this one is that the Final Girl has a flashback to encountering Jason the year before (which would be before Part 2). In her flashback, Jason didn't wear a mask, and attacked her but didn't kill her, neither of which are behaviours we associate with Jason. Final Girl narrates Hemingwayesquely, "he had a knife...and he attacked me with it!" but if he did, he doesn't seem to have been very successful. This raises the intriguing possibility that this was how Jason learned to kill people - by trial and error. Did he knock her out and hammer her legs with the handle of his knife?

Jason is not one of life's great thinkers.

Sadly, this would be the last time in the series that the character of Jason was developed at all, even if it was in a way that made no sense. Getting the hockey mask effectively turned him from a character into a full-time icon, and in some ways that is sad. On the positive side, his wacky antics would continue to amuse for decades to come.

*I can say this because I am in fact retarded. Also, because it's a funny word and it's OK to admit that.

Event Review: Slowdive, Manchester Albert Hall 10/10/17

I saw Slowdive live, completing my life.

This is my photographemes from the show :)

Pros:

• literally saw beyond the universe
• pure musikino
• 10000% better than whatever stool you listen to

Cons:

• >tfw no sunshine girl gf

Would you like to see more music reviews??? Y/N

Evolution of the OC

Some may remember when I single-handedly saved the world from Moloch with my dank OC. Well, today I stumbled across an evolution of the original:

This is clearly in reference to the fact that professional liars and debate-question-givers CNN just went full Cosa Nostra by threatening to dox some kid for making a gif making fun of them. No, I'm not kidding.

As CNN are worthless and contemptible slime, I consider this a righteous updating of my OC, and thoroughly commend the artist. Boycott CNN!

I'm going to update my blogue!

APRIL FOOL'S HAHAHA

benis

xddd

1982's "The Snowman" is a Cosmic Horror Christmas Kino!

If your parents weren't disgusting crackheads, you will have grown up watching short animation kino The Snowman at Christmas time. No doubt your young heart will have thrilled to the innocent joy of creation, the bravura flight around the world, and the whimsical dance sequence.

But it will also have been cruelly punctured by the ending, which I will spoil for the crack babies (the snowman melts), because it's far too late for them now. I'm here to rectify that, by revealing that the snowman is a servant of the dark Elder God Cthulhu, who even now slumbers at his cyclopean house in sunken Rl'yeh.

The first sign something is amiss is when the snowman turns his head as the young boy observes him through the glass of his front door, in what horror film viewers will recognise as classic horror film grammar. Compare the moment in Scream (1996) where Drew Barrymore sees Ghostface from behind through the window and he turns around to face her. Something-seeing-you-from-behind-glass is horror grammar, and the animators know it, as they are professionals. This is why only patricians can appreciate art.

This happens at the witching hour, by the way.

The snowman then proceeds to gain the boy's trust so he can take him as a sacrifice to his dark master. The second clue to his true nature is that the cat shits its pants when it sees him. As we know from Stoker's Dracula and others, animals can sense the presence of the uncanny. In fact all the animals in the picture run away from the snowman or behave wildly in confusion, except for the owl, and the owls are not what they seem.

One day I shall write at length on the connections between the Lovecraftian and Lynchian branches of cosmic horror.

The snowman then takes the boy flying around the world, and we get the only lyrics in the whole picture (silent cinema, as you will know, is preferable wherever possible). These include the following:

Suddenly swooping low on an ocean deep

Rousing up a mighty monster from its sleep

That sounds like Cthulhu to me. The kino shows a whale, and the plebeian will interpret that as the "monster" of the lyrics, but it's evident to me that true kinographers know to suggest the presence of the true horror through environmental signifiers. Consider Spielberg's use of the water ripples to suggest the T-rex in Jurassic Park; Park is a very good film, but it would be kino had he never shown the dinosaur at all.

In other words, the presence of the whale indicates the forces arising far beneath the surface: it is driving even massive creatures to the surface in flight.

Absolutely eldritch.

Given just one more day, when the stars were right, the snowman would have sacrificed the boy to bring about Cthulhu's rise. The day is still coming when he will rise up from the sea. His vast wings will black out the stars, and all the Earth will tremble in horror and terror as he walks upon the land!

Iä! Iä! Cthulhu fhtagn! Ph'nglui mglw'nfah Cthulhu R'lyeh wgah'nagl fhtagn!

Star War The Third Gathers: Backstroke of the West!

As you know, Star Wars Rogue One: A Star Wars Story is out now. I have seen the webm of Darth Vader killing people with his laser sword, and it is much as you'd imagine.

Since any Star Wars post-Jedi fellates prostate, I suggest you watch, instead, the massively improved Episode Three dub, Backstroke of the West.

I know this has been around literally forever, but I never bothered to see it until recently. It makes that /tv/ prequels-as-kino meme real.

In which I reveal the dankest of my OC

This is the OC that won the election.

Mad Max Ripoffs: Doomsday

2008's Doomsday is technically a ripoff of Escape from New York, 28 Days Later, Aliens, and, I guess, King Arthur as well, but I'm counting it as a Mad Max ripoff because all the most interesting stuff is in that style.

Doomsday is set in the future in which England has followed Trump's lead and built a wall to keep Scotland contained (ostensibly this is due to a virus but I think we all know it's to keep the bagpipes out). Unfortunately this does little to make England great again, because it's being run by an incompetent PM who's little more but a puppet for the main villain. And therein lies the twist: this movie isn't post-apocalyptic, only Scotland is.

And who's gonna pay for the wall? Scotland!

This sounds like a great comedy premise, and if the movie was as balls-out silly and retarded as that premise would imply, it might have been the greatest of all the ripoff movies. Sadly, it strikes out in two directions at once, trying to be lolrandumb 80s redditry and grimdark Alien Cubed Sci Fi at the same time. Like a Tarantino movie, these two completely contradictory tones are never reconciled, and so the movie doesn't really work.

This is a pity, because Doomsday is pretty much exactly the kind of movie I'd be making if I had the budget to work with. Since I don't, I'm doing this instead. But Doomsday has a special little place in my black, desiccated heart despite its shortcomings.

Aye aye, cap'n.

Our heroine is Kate Beckinsale from Underworld, but with one eye missing (because she's Snake Plissken geddit XDXDXD). She's tasked with going into Scotland to try to find a cure for the disease that's popped up south of the wall. She gets a team who are the marines from Aliens, most of whom get offed in short order.

Kate is then captured by our Mad Max-ian cannibals, who want her to lead them back I guess blah blah whatever. There's too much plot in this movie. More importantly, they have a sweet party where men in kilts dance to the can can and this chick, Viper, sets some dude on fire.

tfw no post-apocalyptic qt to set me on fire :(((

This is the best part of the movie, because it is hilarious, which is what the rest of the picture should have been. Unfortunately Viper gets bumped off too early in the proceedings and Kate and her buddies go to chill with Malcolm MacDowell in a castle (really).

After the awkward detour into the Middle Ages, we finally get a car chase, which is pretty good but rips off too many beats from The Road Warrior. Ripping off the aesthetic is cool, but ripping off the beats is kind of lame. The vehicles are good though.

 

One of these things is not like the other things.

How to make Doomsday a 10/10 movie

Although Doomsday kind of sucks, it is very close to being my ideal for a movie. I believe with these simple changes it would be 10/10 kino:

• Cut out all the boring government intrigue stuff. Nobody cares.
• Cut out the whole King Arthur sequence and replace it with more car chases.
• Give Kate a personality.
• Don't kill off Viper like five minutes after she first appears. Have her survive into the final chase.
• Have her ride into battle on her cookmobile:

Instant kino.

If you followed these simple steps, this would be the best ripoff movie ever made. I should totally be a script doctor.

Post-apocalypse checklist:

MOHAWKS: several. Sol has one.

SHOULDER PADS: the goodies have them as part of their body armour and some of the baddies too.

CUSTOM CARS: several, pictured.

MUTANTS: none, but the disease kind of makes it up.

GOGGLES: a couple on odd baddies.

TOTAL: 5/5 - what Scotland looks like now.

I Just Wanna Be Your Disco Bitch (Love Theme from Pat Bastard and the Spurious 5)

For those times when all you want is to be someone's disco bitch. Enjoy:

????

The Thing in the Fridge is now a video.

FILLER!

Original here.

The yeti crab looks made up, but isn't.

Look at this yeti crab with its great big long monkey arms. It looks like a video game boss, not a real thing.

However, the yeti crab is real, and that is great. Sadly you can't have one as a pet, because they live around volcanic fissures in the ocean.

It is my dream to some day live among the yeti crabs.

Bring back megafauna.

The titanoboa was a 40-foot-long snake. The longest snake recorded in modern times was 25 feet. I bet the 40-foot snake could eat the 25-foot snake for breakfast.

100% accurate size chart

You'd never go swimming in those times, because there were megalodons everywhere. If you think sharks today are scary, you're a pussy. Megalodons were so big they could eat a helicopter. If we had megalodons today we'd have invented planes much earlier, because no one would be stupid enough to take a boat out on the sea. You'd get eaten and killed by the megalodon.

Even if you stayed on land, you'd probably get knocked the fuck out by one of those giant dragonflies or something. If you were really slow, megatherium the giant ground sloth might eat you, although I think it ate tree branches or something but whatever, I bet it would totally kill and eat you.

Nowadays everything's too small, because there's not enough oxygen in the air and the temperature is way too damn low. As a long person, I want to rectify that.

I propose we free up some oxygen by planting more rainforests. To do this, we can clear a couple of cities. No one would miss Warrington, or Milton Keynes. I say bulldoze the lot and pop some rainforests in the ground there.

Then we could pollute more to make global warming happen. This would bring back the conditions for enormous animals. YES/NO?

Doctor Bastard: now a major You Tube creepypasta reading with a cast of thousands

Doctor Bastard is now available to make house calls in video format.

The original pasta can be found here on this very blogge.

Bastard Role Models: Inky the Octopus

I hope and trust you've all caught up with the most important story of recent times. No, not Lying Ted Cruz stealing Colorado from The Once And Future Don; I'm talking about Inky the Octopus and his daring escape from captivity to rejoin the ocean.

Inky's in your cereal.

Inky is a better role model than 99% of people. More impressively, he's a better role model than 99% of fictional characters. Take the movie Finding Nemo, for example. Nemo, like Inky, gets caught and put in captivity. But Nemo needs his father and mentally special sidekick Dory to come get him.

Not Inky.

Inky's escape makes The Great Escape and Shaw Shank Redemption look like child's play. Moreover, they make whatever you're doing with your life look like Seed of Chucky. Could you squeeze your whole body through a 6-inch pipe? You can't even keep up going to the gym, you fat fuck.

Inky f'taghn!

Nightcrawler is a great movie.

If you haven't watched Nightcrawler, but have watched anything else from the last several years, you should be banned from cinemas because you have shit taste. Nightcrawler is a great movie about how utterly morally bankrupt the media is. It stars Jake Gyllenhaaal as creepy fuck Lou, a petty thief whose skill set translates perfectly to the job of filming crime scenes and related human misery for profit. His character is like the Gawker of movie characters, except much more likeable and less evil.

Lou takes inspiration from online business courses and enlists Rick, a halfwit who needs the money, to help him navigate around LA looking for scenes of violence and destruction. As the film rolls on, he pushes the limits further and further by moving around bits of stuff, including bodies, to get better footage, and ultimately semi-staging the news so he can record it. As someone that's done TV shit, I know people like that are out there. Given how brazenly "journalists" sneer at the very concept of ethics, it's not even surprising that people like this prosper in this industry.

Since everyone in the media is a lying, evil, amoral, deceitful scumbag, you would think the character would not be very likeable, and apparently this was true for many people when the movie came out. A lot of people's reactions to this film were basically "it's bad because he is a bad man", by which rationale Citizen Kane, Breaking Bad, The Sopranos, A Clockwork Orange, and basically everything worth watching sucks. I can't relate to those people, and I suspect they're not really human.

Anyway, Jake Gyllenhaaaaaaaaaaaaal and Rene Russo are both really good in it and you should see it if you like movies with dysfunctional protagonists like Taxi Driver, King of Comedy, Super, and Paul Blart Mall Cop.

Happy April Fool's Day!

April Fool's Day is an ancient tradition in which people fuck with one another in the most mean-spirited ways possible. It is like every other day, except that when you get found out, you can plaster on a shit-eating grin and say "Aaapril Foool's!" and everyone will laugh despite the blood and tears.

You might think that April Fool's Day would be right up my alley, as I am a thoroughly despicable person. That's not a very nice thing to think though. It's judgemental, and that makes you as bad as me, if not worse. Probably worse, actually, because you're a good person. You should know better.

Everyone with horrible friends will of course be on the lookout for the pranksters and vagabonds among their ranks, and some friends employ a strategy of mutually assured destruction to ensure that any pranking going on will be met with excessive retaliation and the probable dissolution of the, in any case, inexplicable friendship.

This provides a good opportunity for you to exploit as a third party. Say you have a friend who has a friend you hate. You can frame the hated party for a prank on your good buddy, causing them to go to war and end their friendship. Be creative.

Another thing you can do is not prank people all April Fool's Day for years, making you look like a saint, and then offload with great brutality one year when nobody expects it. Note, however, that this will result in a loss of trust, so only do it when you've grown bored of your current circle of friends.

I was going to review the great slasher movie April Fool's Day (not the remake, of course), but I didn't because I was busy. Slaughter High is also set on April Fool's Day and invokes the Britbong tradition by which it runs out at midday. Remember this if you are ever in Bongesia, because if someone pranks you after midday the joke is on them, even though the tar and feathers may be on you.