Bastard role models: Tezcatlipoca

Tezcatlipoca was the troll god of the Aztecs and would periodically destroy the world, mostly by trolling other gods so hard they deleted fucking everything. In other words, the hero we deserve and need.

>ywn be as /fa/ as tezchadlipoca

Tezcatlipoca was so dedicated to trolling, he created the world by using his foot as bait to lure in Cipactli, a giant fucking crocodile fish space monster, which was then rekt and turned into the world by the combined gods of the Aztecs. He gave up his own foot just to make a Sims game he would then spend the rest of eternity fucking with and destroying, like a cross between a Bond villain and God.

One time, Tezcatlipoca thotpatrolled Chalchiuhtlicue, goddess of water, making her cry so much it flooded the world, forcing everyone to turn into fish in order to survive. No reason, he just liked doing things like that.

Tezcatlipoca in The Warriors (1979, colourised)

The other thing Tezcatlipoca is known for is that every year a Chad tier Aztec would be elected to LARP as him for one year leading up to his feast day, when he would be ritually killed and his heart offered up to the troll god. During this year he would get mad puss. Considering the alternative was to be a peasant til you dropped, this was a pretty sweet deal.

007 Dreams: Goldfinger

Is Goldfinger the best Bondkino? Because I am a gay nerd I ran the numbers and it's pretty much a three-way (snicker) contest between this one, You Only Live Twice and The Spy Who Loved Me, although Live And Let Die, The Living Daylights and Tomorrow Never Dies are also personal favourites.

Let us consider how Goldfinger is the best Bond: in the first place, it has the best villains. While many will argue that Blofeld is the definitive Bond enemy on the strength of his first three appearances, his batting average is let down by On Her Majesty's Secret Service and Diamonds Are Forever, in which he falls prey to bad writing and ends his run a tiresome buffoon. What's more, none of his henchmen were half as good as Oddjob*.

I think Oddjob is the only henchman to get his own musical theme, which is pretty based.

One of the rare joys of Goldfinger is that the beef between Bond and his archenemies is developed thoroughly over the film's runtime, with Bond and Goldfinger each gaining the upper hand at one time or another, rather like John McClane and Hans in Die Hard, lending their eventual reckoning a certain pleasing weight. Compare and contrast the SPECTRE agent from From Russia With Love who seems to have an entirely one-way hate-on for Bond in his talking-killer train scene. Hipsters love From Russia With Love for the wrong reasons, but plebs and patricians alike love Goldfinger for the right ones.

>tfw no solid gold gf

Moreover Goldfinger is a fantastically eccentric villain who takes such special delight in his evildoing that you sort of want him to succeed at least a little bit. The mutant organ in my chest cavity can't help but inflate with approval at a villain who, at the first sight of US Army troops approaching him, immediately sheds his outer garments to reveal a military uniform and guns down the accomplice nearest to him, effectively switching sides just long enough to get behind the real troops and gun then down in turn.

Your villain may be evil, but is he stolen valour in the middle of a heist evil?

It's such an ingeniously rotten contingency plan it makes me smile everytime. That this occurs just seconds after he locks his loyal manservant in a vault with Bond and a nuclear bomb just makes it even funnier. If Goldfinger had been in that Guns and Roses video where that guy dives through the wedding cake to get away from the rain, Goldfinger would have thrown him through it, hidden himself under a replica bridal veil, shot three bridesmaids and pissed in a homeless man's cap on the way out. A patrician bastard!

This will never not be funny to me.

Dullards have taken to complaining about this filmographeme because Bond doesn't do anything after being captured, but this is precisely why it is great: his efforts to escape or get word out to Felix Leiter are consistently foiled up until he finally manages to flip Pussy Galore (snicker), which demonstrates the effectiveness of Goldfinger's containment methods. So ingenious is Goldfinger he even assigns Pussy (snicker) to watch over Bond because she is a lesbian (confirmed in the b**k and implied in the kino), little realising that there are no such things as lesbians where Bond's BBC (Big British Cocc) is concerned.

The name's Bond. Chad Bond.

This raises (snicker) the other objection dullards have about the film, which is that Bond raeps Pussy (snicker), because how else can their play fighting in the barn be interpreted, except in any other way than that because that's fucking weird and nasty, what the fuck dullards? Have you never play fought with your partner prior to (or during) secks? If you raeped your partner, do you think that would have the effect of making them more likely to help you, or less? If you answered more, I think you are a danger to society.

ppl who call bond a raepist be liek ↑

Because I am not a creepy soyman, only one thing used to bug me about Goldfinger: the plot holes, which are both abundant and egregious. One is that you don't die from body paint, which makes the offscreen scene in which Oddjob methodically paints Jill Masterson gold even more ridiculous than it would otherwise be. The other is that Bond only finds out about Goldfinger's masterplan by overhearing him briefing a room full of hoods who he then immediately kills, making a major plot point hinge on a completely pointless exercise.

I like to think he spent many an evening playing out Op Grand Slam with toy soldiers on this board.

Both these objections, however, also crumble when exposed to not being a neckbeard for a few moments. In the first place, the skin suffocation is symbolic of the suffocating grasp of the possessive and vindictive Goldfinger, and the gold paint is an iconic calling card reflective of the superior art direction that has gold and goldish colour saturate the picture, right down to the uniform blondeness of Pussy's (snicker) squad of pilots, and Goldfinger's elaborate briefing is just another outlet for his prodigious ego. He wants his peers to appreciate his supreme artistry in the field of crime. You know, like he says he does.

The revolving plates covering her mouth are a nicely creepy touch. Of course she isn't saying anything - she's dead.

Another nice touch is that the pre-title sequence has nothing whatsoever to do with the main plot of the film. While it's often mistakenly believed that this is a common thread in the James Bond films, nearly all of them tie into the main plot in some way, but not this one. It's like the cartoons they used to show before the main feature back in the days when people went to cinemas because they used to show good movies. It's very pleasing, daydream stuff.

I'd watch these movies just for the sets 2bh my fams.

*The Spy Who Loved Me has the opposite problem with a great henchman in Jaws but a relatively underwhelming mastermind in Stromberg, although fun fact: he was originally meant to be Blofeld before the McClory lolsuit put a stop to it.

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.

Doctor Bastard

The first weeks of your therapy went better than expected. You would easily recommend this guy to anybody, unfortunate name withstanding. No one ever seemed to get inside your head so quickly, or with such polite detachment. Deft with words, like a surgeon with his hands. The things he could elicit from you practically without any effort, it was almost disconcerting even as it reassured you. In the first hour you cried. The next time you went back the weight was lifted, and you felt you could get down to some real talking. By the third session that ticking clock went by unheard, and you were surprised, even a little sad, to come to the end of your immersion in that little room.

At some stage you began to really think of him as a surgeon, so clinical and so precise with where he took you, doing light exploratory work on your half-open mind with God knows how many other cases to juggle. You know how they say those experts make it look easy?

And then there's the funny smell coming from his desk some days, and those surgical gloves in the bin over in the corner. At first you thought maybe a surgeon used the room sometimes for whatever reason, but given your read on the guy, maybe your first instincts were right.

You asked him about it once, trying to keep it casual. He said he practises surgery every once in a red moon. Dropped the old joke about leaving his watch in a patient, maybe to play it off. But he didn't really laugh about it like it was a joke - more like when you're remembering a story from your college days or some shit. It's a cautionary tale against the pace of modern life I guess. The guy doesn't know something's wrong until he finally sits down in the quiet of his own home, and he hears it deep inside himself.

Tick, tick, tick, tick...

You can picture this guy walking around like the fucking crocodile from Peter Pan. Whoever heard of a surgeon practising therapy in his spare time? Or the other way round?

People talk about a sixth sense. Everything appears to be well, but there's a voice in the back of your head insisting it's wrong. It's paranoia, and it doesn't want you to get better. You've got to keep telling yourself that. Voices in your head and talking to yourself too now. Wasn't this supposed to be going in the opposite direction? This is the best progress you've made in years and you're starting to feel like he's not a real doctor.

And you can tell the anxiety's kicking in again, cause there's that clock on the wall creeping into your consciousness, driving you crazy. It was all going so well, like you were scaling the heights, and then you backslid halfway down the fucking mountain again. You don't need this shit in your head, and now you're thinking that your therapist is leaving shit inside his patients for real. Well why couldn't it be possible? He's doing open surgery on your deepest trauma centres every week, right there under the lights. Who knows what could've slipped in?

Tick, tick, tick, tick...

One day you'll find yourself heading to the twins' room with a kitchen knife in your hand. You'll do a double take, and stare at it in horror. You don't remember anything for the last couple minutes. You're a parent now. You can't be blacking out and listening to commands left rattling inside your head. You start to hope your dreams were dreams. You had to physically stop yourself there. You don't know what the fuck is up.

So you call in to the hospital and they talk to you like you're some fucking kid asking to see Hugh Jass. You're getting madder and panicking now. You swear to them you're not fucking around. You drive for miles on nothing but muscle memory from the times you used to drive there every week, you're fucking shaking so much.

You practically march up to the reception desk. She's looking over those glasses at you like it's the reason she bought them. But her attitude changes when she learns what you're there for. Her face turns grey, and she mutters something about checking with her boss. Then in the quickest time you've ever waited in a place like this, she's back with an administrator saying you'd better leave. Since February they've been getting these calls in from people asking for a Doctor Bastard. No such person works there. There's no one named Bastard in any hospital in the county. It's starting to scare them.

Everything you've read for months there's something in the margins, links or targeted ads, like creatures milling at the limits of your vision, all about surgical malpractice. Lawyers. Tales. Stories about people with live animals and infant forelimbs sewn up inside them. Somebody was admitted down in Kettering. They found a baby's arm was pressing on his lungs. Another lady had a mother rat inside of her deliver a litter. She came in shitting blood from what they'd gnawed out from inside of her.

Tick, tick, tick, tick...

Every night you sleep later and later. Every corner of your room there's someone's shadow. In your dreams a man in a white coat stands there, in your kitchen, in your home, watching you, smiling. You don't want to sleep. You won't go to the twins's room. You hear them crying in the night and pull your knees up like you don't trust your feet not to go. Everything's plastic in your kitchen now. You eat with sporks and shit. Takeout every night you can get it, and he's still at that conference in Chicago, totally unaware. You want to turn yourself in, have someone open you up, take off the top of that head. Maybe you'll do it yourself. You don't know what the fuck you'll find in there. Maybe no one should be exposed to it. Doctor Bastard? Was he a symptom of this madness? Or did something ancient as fuck find a new way to fuck with the sad world? There's a wailing from the room you never step foot in, down that corridor you walked every day before you ever thought to open up your mind.

The Poughkeepsie Tapes!!!

Thought you ran out of good horror movies years ago? Never seen a good found footage movie after The Blair Witch Project? Under 6 feet tall? Then you might just be a disgusting manlet that should be exterminated from the gene pool.

The Poughkeepsie Tapes was never released, lending credence to the conspiracy theory that Hollywood is this bad intentionally and scuppers anything good on purpose because Hollywood hates you. This theory is true, but fortunately you can probably find a copy on line. The first version I saw I immediately realised this was the horror movie I had been missing all these years, but the uploader CUT THE GOD DAMN ENDING OFF. Anyway, it was really good. WATCH IT.

For those of you PEASANTS who don't know, The Poughkeepsie Tapes is about a serial killer in New York State who seems to be loosely based on Ted Bundy (who even gets a shoutout in the movie), the Zodiac Killer and the fictionalised Henry Lee Lucas from Henry: Portrait of a Serial Killer (like whom he switches up his MO to confuse everyone). He videotapes all his kills (for he is in the 90s, I think), and wears this beaky mask thing just for jolly wouldn't you?

But perhaps the most interesting part of the movie concerns what I'll call his favourite victim. I won't give away what happens to her, but it's quite unlike what happens to most characters in horror movies, and confers a note of poignancy which makes the whole experience more interesting. Watch The Poughkeepsie Tapes, and sort out your life, in either order.

Album review: LIE: The Love And Terror Cult, by Charles Manson

Hey folks it's that time of year again!!! The time when I review an album of music for your listening pleasure. Today's album is a bit of a classic, yet sorely overlooked by the music press due to its singer/songwriter being involved in some interesting side projects. Charlie "Jesus Christ" Manson was a hippy who auditioned for the Monkees and squatted in one of the Beach Boys' houses, before breaking away from show biz to develop his own sound. I used to own his live album too, but I sold it because it sucked balls. It was recorded in a prison and the main instrument was the toilet flushing in the background. But LIE: The Love And Terror Cult, an album released to help fund his trial expenses, is his real artistic statement.

Sadly, Charlie's image was a little too unorthodox for the mainstream charts.

The album starts with "Look At Your Game Girl", which would letter be covered by the Guns and Roses. This sets the standard that will be maintained throughout the artist's oeuvre, in which the lyrics start off coherent and flatten out into a repetitive drawl like something a crazy wall-slapper would say over and over. He then lurches into "Ego", an uptempo meditation on Freudian theory with a nice string break for variety.

In fact there's quite an impressive variety of sounds on this album, though almost all anchored to this cool-ass chunky guitar sound. Charlie's vocals are similarly varied, as he tries on different personae on the various tracks. "Mechanical Man" he sings like a mechanical person of some sort, and relays the sad story of his pet monkey who died, although this may not be entirely autobiographical.

Charlie also lets the Family girls chime in on "I'll Never Say Never To Always", which sounds exactly like the kind of slightly-off nursery rhyme type melody they used to put in horror movies in the 70s, so maybe Charlie invented the trend.

The production is a little rough around the edges, but that's good because it allows Charlie to spread out his ideas, which often seem like sketches and half-finished musings, but are always tuneful and intriguing.

It's a shame Charlie didn't pursue his music more successfully, because you could slip some of this stuff into a playlist of late-60s standards like Buffalo Springfield and Jefferson Airplane and Crackerjack Fuckface* and you'd never know. In a parallel universe somewhere Charlie is remembered as a rock star like Jim Morrison, instead of a crazy-eyed cult leader who cut a guy's ear off and his hangers-on killed people.

9/10 very good album.

*This is not a real band.

Bastard role models: Lee Ving

Lee Ving was the lead singer in Fear. Fear is a band about beer and hating people. Fear is awesome. They have such varied and interesting material as "Let's Have a War", "Fuck Christmas", and my personal favourite, "New York's Alright If You Like Saxophones".

Fear probably laid the groundwork for such sonic pioneers as Anal Cunt, and such intrepid bloggists as Pat Bastard and the Spurious 5. Everyone likes Fear.

Go away.

Bastard role models: Dave Wyndorf

You're looking for the one who fucked your mom? It's not him.

Dave Wyndorf is the guy from Monster Magnet. Monster Magnet is so rad. Dave Wyndorf can wear sunglasses all the time, even though he's from New Jersey. Dave Wyndorf reminds us of a better time (the 90s), when everyone looked like The Dude and no one gave a shit. Dave Wyndorf shares a habit of taking his cues from Marvel Comics characters with fellow bastard role model Dr Octagon. He coined the phrase "what would MODOK do?" (WWMODOKD), and really, this is a very good question. Remember when comics didn't suck (the 60s)? Me neither. Not because I'm not that old, but because I got Alzheimer's.

Monster Magnet videos were also very good. They looked like music videos back in the days when rock bands could afford to make real videos, instead of standing in a warehouse or a hipster bar in ironic suits. Monster Magnet rules a bit.

Dave Wyndorf is my role model because he doesn't afraid of anything. He likes to write about drugs, not going in to work ("Powertrip"), and being based as shit: "I cut off my own head/I don't need it where I'm going". Like everything in the 80s was repurposed from the 50s, so everything in the 90s was repurposed from the 70s, and Monster Magnet is no exception, because it's Sabbath plus Hawkwind plus a bunch of trippy-ass Marvel retro cosmic superwank. Dave Wyndorf's lyrics capture a very specific type of person: the indolent intellectual who crashes planets into one another while he lies on the floor in a bedroom full of Heavy Metal magazine posters, weed paraphernalia, and UFOs. I'm sure everyone in the 70s and 90s was like this, and it was awesome.

Bastard role models: Sun Tzu

Sun Tzu was an awesome bastard during the "Spring And Autumn Period" of Chinese history, because in China, Summer doesn't happen. Sun Tzu is best known for his book The Art Of War, which is about trolling your enemies. It includes descriptions for dealing with lolcows, such as "If [your lolcow] is angry, Disconcert him. If he is weak, Stir him to pride. If he is relaxed, Harry him. If his men are harmonious, Split them". The book is also padded with the bleeding obvious, like advising you to run away if you are heavily outnumbered. This proves that Sun Tzu, just like you, fudged and padded his way to a passing grade on everything he did.

The Art Of War also contains built-in protection for the author, by saying "One can know Victory And yet not achieve it". This means even if you fail, Sun Tzu's ass is covered.

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.

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.

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.

A Very Bastard Christmas

The strangest thing happened last night. I had just been fired from my job as desk clerk at Mr Potter's nuclear power plant for impersonating a clergyman, and was taking out my frustrations the usual way, by helping the blind beggars cross the road onto the middle of a roundabout, and leaving them.

Then for no reason at all, a bunch of youths started harassing me. They said "hey, that's not cool", and "don't do that", very aggressively, so I ran a safe distance and called the police. I explained what happened to a great big fat desk sergeant, who seemed to think I was joking. It's like there's no justice anywhere in the world. What if I had been violently beaten, or gored to death? It was pure typical victim blaming. Calling the police officer a fat fuck, I handed the phone back to the gentleman who'd kindly let me borrow it, and ran across the road, causing a cyclist to swerve and skid into a lamppost. This made me lel so much I started coughing, and coughed up blood all over the pavement.

I was looking for a doctor, but it was Christmas Eve and the lines were round the block. I decided if I was to get treatment, I would have to outdo some of these malingerers with their gaping neck wounds, so I hurried off to the theatre store to grab some fake blood, only to find that it had closed down and moved. Pouting in anger, I hurled a lady's small terrier at the deserted husk of a store, and spun on my heel, which caused me to slip and fall on the slick ground. Then the lady, totally unprovoked, started wailing on me with her umbrella like a dervish. I defended myself in the manner I've been taught by social media: by screaming and crying and playing the victim. A group of passing thugs heard my cries and hauled off the lady, who protested vehemently. In the confusion, I tied two of the thugs' shoelaces together and fled.

Bedraggled and potentially dying of consumption, I staggered onto the bridge, where I looked down at the icy river below. I contemplated ending it all by jumping, calculating that if I hit my head on a rock, I would probably only feel horrific agony for a few seconds, whereas if I missed I would likely die a slow death of pneumonia, unless I could remember to hold my head under the water long enough to drown, my lungs filling intolerably up with water. But no! That would be the coward's way out!!! So I had determined to live, when an angel appeared at my side. He said "no dude, you should totally jump. Heaven is totally unanimous on this".

Was he right? Should I have jumped? Fuck that, why am I asking you? The world needs me. I've seen the light! It's a Christmas miracle!! I'm going to live forever!!!!23$%*.

Bastard role models: Grey Seer Thanquol

Grey Seer Thanquol's contributions to bastardry are many and varied. Thanquol is a Skaven (rat-man) from the city of Skavenblight, in Skavendonia, in the Games Workshop Warhammer Fantasy setting. I like Grey Seer Thanquol, not least because he's blatantly The Brain from Pinky and the Brain on hard drugs. He is most well known for his brilliant plots being defeated at the last possible minute by the evil Gotrek Gurnisson and his pet man-thing Felix Jaeger, but his antics have taken him from Kislev (Poland/Russia/Czechoslovakia) to Lustria (South America) and Hell Pit (Birmingham).

Among his many admirable traits including Warpstone addiction (think red Kryptonite for everybody) and running human specimens through a giant maze (payback for white rats in real life), Thanquol is a master of the art of scrolling revisionism. This is the process, common to modern political parties and ideologies, by which defeats can be recast as victories, inconvenient allies as enemies, recent enemies as noble allies, and your own mistakes as the treachery of any nearby underling of sufficiently low status in the hierarchy to blame it on. This must be a virtue, as it informs 100% of our foreign policy, especially with regard to the Middle East. Think about it this way: if scrolling revisionism weren't a virtue, then our leaders, media, and ideological gurus, both left and right, would all be liars, incompetents and charlatans from head to toe and back to front. So, you see, it must be good to scroll.

Thanquol's contempt for any and all life makes him an ideal leader. He successfully captured an enemy tower despite only outnumbering them ten to one, and had his army burn down half a major city before escaping, leaving his bodyguards to die with the promise of "inevitable victory". OK, so he's a complete bastard, but let me ask you this: do you see someone capable of such reckless optimism failing his next interview? And isn't that why the upper echelons of our society are filled with that thing that always rises to the top? You know what I'm talking about.

Bastard role models: Tony Soprano

WARNING: This post contains MASSIVE FUCKING SPOILERS for a show you should DEFINITELY HAVE SEEN by now.

Tony Soprano is the gold standard to whom all bastards aspire: he conducts business from a strip club, smacks his son upside the head, and saved money by giving his daughter a car for a present he'd extorted from a degenerate gambler.

Some people think Tony isn't really a bastard, because he cares for his family. Which is true, except he tried to smother his mother to death, fucking killed his nephew, cheated on his wife with two Russians including one differently abled, and loudly announced that he wouldn't get a vasectomy because his son was too shitty to be his male heir, in front of his son. Tony is an inspiration to bastards everywhere.

He also mastered the art of positioning himself against even worse people, so if you were watching he even got you on his side. The fact that nearly all these people came up through his organisation is a minor detail, easily ignored. What sets Tony apart is that everyone rooted for him for seven years, even knowing about his murdering ways. I can't even get people on my side when I forget to flush.

The moral of the show is that you might as well be a fat, violent, addictive, antisocial personality, because everyone else is an asshole anyway. Even if he did get whacked in the final scene, he still had more fun than you.

How I discovered Locrian, by Pat Bastard

So I was in the nursing home, convincing the Alzheimer's patients I was their son, when I heard the sound of a car crash on the street outside. Grabbing my host's walking stick, I ran out to the street to point.

There, on the street below, were two cars smushed together like lesbians. One of the cars had a broken light and it was all crumpled up, but neither of them were destroyed very much. Seeing there was little use in pointing, I sighed with a dejected shrug and prepared to go, but just then the old lady that owned the car that had crashed into the other car and the old man who owned the car into which the other car had crashed into which hopped out and started arguing. When old people argue it's best to stay out of the way and laugh quietly to yourself, just like when people trip and fall but are still big and mean. Smirking in a bastardly fashion, I backed away obliviously into a large metal person.

I like heavy metal (the music, and also the movie), so I figured this would go well. Having bumbled into this person, I sought to diffuse the situation by clenching my fist with my little and index fingers out, and screamed "hail Satan!" Unfortunately this seemed to unnerve the guy, so he jumped back reflexively and fell over a wheelchair which was carrying a differently abled person in it.

Seeing my mistake, I decided to do the decent thing and point at the differently abled. "Hey asshole," I shouted, "watch where you're going!" "That's alright dude", said the metalhead, picking himself up and dusting off his Cephalic Carnage T-shirt. "What the fuck is your problem?" said the differently abled. I realised he was talking at me, so I did what anyone would do. "Are you gonna let him talk to you like that?" I shrieked at the metalhead. This caused the metalhead to glare at the differently abled. "Kill him!" I squealed, and ran off.

Later I hid in a bookstore, and someone there mentioned they liked Locrian. I checked them out. They're awesome. Return to Annihilation is a great album. It's right up there with Dr Octagonecologyst and Morbid Florist.

Self-portrait

They should hang this in schools.

Bastard role models: Jabba the Hutt

My role model is Jabba the Hutt.

Some people think Jabba the Hutt is a vile gangster, but I think Jabba the Hutt has many good qualities that make him suitable to manage the Tatooine underworld and be my role model.

Jabba the Hutt managed to earn respect and live in a giant space palace despite two very significant handicaps: he couldn't speak English, and he was too fat to move. He also showed his willpower by seeing right through Luke’s Jedi mind trick, which is essential for good management. Jabba the Hutt was also an equal opportunities employer: his staff included pig-faced orcs, that guy with the tail on his head, Salacious Crumb, a blue elephant and many more.

Jabba the Hutt also took an active role in preserving the landmarks of Tatooine, like that giant mouth in the desert. Jabba the Hutt kept it well fed with his prisoners. How else was the mouth going to sustain itself? Did it just wait for space camels or whatever to wander into it? That’s just stupid.

In conclusion, I think we should all be more like Jabba the Hutt. He’s a conscientious employer, cares for the environment, and knows how to accessorise his slave girls. I wish Jabba the Hutt was my dad.

It's the Great Pumpkin, Pat Bastard!

Before I begin, I'd like to reveal to you a bit of background that will help you understand this story. You see I always identified with Linus in the Halloween special. All Linus ever wanted was to get a great big pumpkin for Halloween. All I want is someone to tell me I'm a good boy. All the other kids laughed at Linus. They called him a "silly billy" and a "shithead". Every year I plotted my revenge for poor Linus. Why couldn't those kids do like the other kids in the 60s, and play in old refrigerators? That was how my dad died*.

I was never the most popular kid. When I fell down a well, Lassie went to get lunch. As a baby, I was passed around as an emetic. Sometimes baby birds die when I walk past a nest.

One day in late October, I was being chased by a group of townspeople (as usual). They were shouting "freak!" and "scallywag!" and one of them threw a pitchfork and it missed me and hit an old man in the heart and he died.

Then I turned round a corner and saw that they were making jack o'lanterns out of pumpkins. There, in the middle of it all, was the greatest, biggest pumpkin I had ever seen, more like a pumpKING. I asked the boy who was scooping out the insides of the pumpkin, "quickly! Let me climb inside the pumpkin! I shall give you gold". Then I dove into the pumpkin and I hid inside while the  mob passed me by.

Up inside that warm soft pumpkin I crawled and nestled, until I fell asleep. I curled up in the pumpkin, warm and safe from the outside world, with its deadlines and wild animals and piers morgan. I fell into a deep, deep sleep, sleep, sleep, for hours after hours after hours.

I went to sleep bathed in an orangey glow, but I awoke in total darkness. The pumpkin was still, and a faint breeze blew in from the eyeholes and mouth. Outside it was night. Suddenly the pumpkin's sides started contracting, and I was pushed slowly, head first, into the world.

I flopped onto the front steps of a stranger's house. The pumpkin that had birthed me sat there wheezing like a squeezebox. As I looked up I was carried away by two pumpkin doctors in white coats and stethoscopes. They took me to an incubator, where I was tubed. Looking around, I saw dozens of other people incubated too. Then I saw the pumpkin doctors come and carry one away - a great big dinner lady from my primary school. The pumpkins took her out to a spot behind the building and planted her. THIS WAS WHERE PUMPKINS CAME FROM!!!!!

"Oh no", I said, looking all around me to escape. What would Linus do, I wondered? No, snap out of it; Linus is a child. I'm a great big manchild. When the pumpkins came, I would make my move. I would pick them up and punt them. I was so happy with my plan. Then trick or treaters came running down the road, dancing and prancing with their costumes. One of them was Charlie Brown.

With a sheer effort of will, I leapt from my incubator. Summoning all my wits and guile, I screamed at the nearest pumpkin doctor, his attention buried deep in a chart. "HEY FUCKSO THEY'RE OVER THERE", I yelled, and legged it into the night. The sounds of children screaming rang in my ears and I laughed manically as I fled like a coward through the night.

*I'll tell you the story another time. It's even better than this one.