Happy Rare Disease Day!!!

♪ Iiiit's the most wonderful tiiiime of the yeeear...♫

Did you like this video??? Don't forget to Like Und subscriBe (L.U.B.E.).

Can anyone help me with this Penguin joke?

The joke is:

Q. What do you call an angry Penguin?

A. A Pengrrruin

At first I thought this was a typo, but Penguin jokes would never let that slip past quality control. I tried to understand the punchline. Was it a pun? Is there something in the world that sounds like "penguin", but with an "r" in it? Or, was the intent to combine the words "penguin" and "ruin"? If that were the case, why the extra "r"s? Was it intended to sound like a primordial growl, like that of some strange beast from time immemorial? Whatever its nature, that word haunts me.

Please help...it's been days now...I don't get it.

Have a bastardly Valentine's Day!!2

Today is absolutely no one's favourite holiday, Valentine's Day!!!! This is a day for all the single losers* like myself to contemplate suicide!!!!!

Inexplicable though it may seem, I once had a girlfriend, and she was the best girlfriend ever. We laughed together, travelled together, and made fun of TV shows together. We taught each other so much about life, love, and growing up.

Then she left me because I "suck" (source), and I became a bastard. Coincidence????????{()}

So now I wander the streets on Valentine's Day, looking for happy, smiling, laughing couples to disdain. Why shouldn't I be happy? Don't I deserve love too? No? Because I'm an evil piece of shit who laughs at other people's misfortune and makes fun of everyone? I doant think that's very fair >:(

Here's what we can do to ruin this special day for happy, loving couples: if you have a friend who's going on a date with their long-term significant other (SOS), offer to drive them. "You don't want to get rained upon, and thus be wet, do you?" you'll say. Then when you've got them in the car, drive them deep into the woods and leave them.

I expect a Nobel Prize for this one.

*All the Single Losers is my new single and music video. Look for it on Bastard Records.

Thank God It's Friday The 13th: 13 facts about Jason

Hello campers! Let me tell you a story of a young boy who overcame deformity and retardation to become one of history's most beloved mass murderers. His name was Jason, and today is his birthday the day after which his biopics are named. This contains spoilers for all the Friday the 13th movies, if such a thing is even possible.

1. Jason wore six masks over the course of the original series. In Part 2 he wore a bag on his head, which led to him falling off a stool and getting kicked in the nuts because he couldn't see properly. In Part 3, he took his first hockey mask from a guy named Shelley, whom he whacked. This mask lasted until Part 7, weathering an axe blow and a boat propeller before getting pulled apart by Discount Carrie. They even buried this one with him, just in case he needed it when he rose from the grave in Part 6, which was very considerate of them. Knowing how attached he was to his mask, it's fortunate that in Part 8 the very first boat to come along and wake him from the bottom of the lake had one on it. That one was lost in the sewers of New York when he dissolved in toxic sludge and turned into a child (yes), but then in Part 9 he was just back with a new mask. In Part 10 he got upgraded into a cyborg for some fucking reason, giving him a new and shiny mask, and in Freddy Vs Jason he just woke up with a mask on because fuck it.

   

   Axe sold separately.

2. Jason can only be killed by whatever plot bullshit comes into play, but can consistently be revived by electricity, as shown in Parts 6 and 8. This is handy, as it means you can jump start your Jason just by shoving his pinky in a wall socket.
3. Jason suffered from hydrocephalus as a child. That is why his head is swollen and weirdly shaped. All the kids at Camp Crystal Lake bullied Jason for his appearance.

   

   Strangely, the camp counsellors sing Kum Ba Yah even when there are no kids around.

4. In Part 9 Jason is revealed to be activated by a Mini Boglin that lives in his heart and possesses people. This was discovered after he was blowed up by the FBI (yes). Like the sludge turning him into a child in the previous movie, this was deemed so stupid it was never mentioned again. Freddy Vs Jason took the same approach to Jason going to space in Jason X, making an unbroken trilogy of movies that were too embarrassed to acknowledge the one before them.
5. In Part 2, Jason lives in a shack in the middle of the woods. This shack has an indoor toilet, which suggests Jason is an adept plumber, like Mario. If the douchebag kids had not let Jason drown as a child, this indicates that he would now be fixing your pipes, and probably making more money than them.

   

   Jason's toilet. There's probably a toy of this.

6. Also in his shack is a shrine to his dead mother, in which her head is the centrepiece. This means Jason took the head after Alice cut it off in Part 1, and nobody thought it was strange that they found a decapitated body with no head at the murder scene.
7. Kane Hodder declared that Jason would not kill a child or a dog. While this is consistent with his portrayal in the four films in which Hodder starred, it makes the scenes in 4 where Jason chases after Tommy kind of strange. Rewatching them, we can only conclude that Jason wanted to tickle him.

   

   Warning: a noogie from Jason can cause skull fractures.

8. Parts 1, 2 and 4 are actually good movies.
9. Jason's ability to regenerate makes no sense and was clearly just made up as the series dragged on and got lazier and lazier. However, it allows for the hilarious scene in Jason X where they try to explain why he was frozen: they literally couldn't execute him.
10. Jason is the only horror icon to make a Final Girl visibly pee herself (Part 2).

    

    Don't lie, you would have too.

11. Jason can kill people with everything from a weed whacker to a party horn. He is also strong enough to punch a guy's head clean off. What this means is that he uses weapons only for the lulz, a fact which is supported by his swapping out weapons constantly for no reason.
12. Jason has been missing an eye since Cory Feldman impaled him through it with his own machete. After having both his eye sockets gouged out by Freddy in Freddy Vs Jason, he is later seen closing an intact eye, meaning that he can totally regenerate eyes, he just doesn't.
13. Jason's personal theme song is "He's Back (The Man Behind The Mask)" by Alice Cooper. This song is so 80s it will literally spray your hair.

Did I miss anything??? 8 years of school??? What am I doing with my life?????

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.

Pat Bastard's Top Ten Most Bastardly Songs!!

Put this on your play list. Be sure to play it backwards until you can hear my voice. I'll tell you what to do.

1. Anything by Anal Cunt (the best band in the world).
2. "Now It's Dark" by Anthrax. This is the anthem of the best character ever from Blue Velvet: Dennis Hopper. In the song he sings his best lines from the movie, such as "don't you fucking look at me" and "I am ONE FUCKING WELL DRESSED MAN!", a sentence only Dennis Hopper can yell at people.
3. "No Man's Land" by Alice Cooper. Alice Cooper has many songs that could qualify, like "I Love The Dead" (about fucking corpses), "Sanctuary" (asking everyone to fuck off so he can sit in his room), and "Blue Turk" (about fucking corpses). But instead I went for the best bastardly song in his whole storied catalogue, which is about the time he abandoned his gig as a mall Santa to go fuck some chick.
4. "Maxwell's Silver Hammer" by the Beatles. This is where Paul McCartney temporarily went insane and wrote a song about a guy who murders everyone with a hammer. That's why, even though John was always the one who gave Ringo shit and trolled religion and let Yoko record music, Paul was secretly the best bastard in the group.
5. "It's Gonna Get Worse" by Catherine: a song about how much you suck.
6. "I'm Destructive" by Dr Octagon. This song starts with everyone's favourite Juvian gynaecologist murdering someone with electric wires. He then asks how the listener would react if he violently assaulted them and their pets. Finally the song devolves into rambling such as "Like a green red blue reindeer, dead lying down with a fawn/Copulating, having sex/Mating with a baboon with buffalo wings/Hahahahaha". This is awesome, and great.
7. "Bastards on Parade" by the Dropkick Murphys. This is all about an asshole who pissed away his life, but now he's going to own it and be awesome. This is an inspiration to the rest of us who are presently awful.
8. "Let's Have A War" by Fear. "Let's have a war/So you can go die". Sufficient said.
9. "I'm Sick Of You" by Iggy Pop, in which the legend himself follows someone around for nearly seven minutes telling them he's sick not only of them, but of their mom and dad, for extra spite flavour.
10. "If I Had" by Eminem, in which he reveals that even if he had all the money in the world, he'd just spend it on stupid shit to spite people. I know how he feels, and I'm a 60-year-old man with Crohn's disease.
11. "Lovey Dovey" by Local H. This is where Scott Lucas reveals that he hates it when his friends are in relationships that make them happy, and derives glee from watching them fail.
12. "Last Caress" by the Misfits: definitely the best song of all the time, this is where Danzig has something to say, and it turns out it's that he whacked your baby.
13. "Run Shithead Run" by Mudhoney. This was written for a movie soundtrack. They put the lyrics in to force the filmmakers to use the instrumental track instead. They didn't. Hilarity ensued all over the place. Easily the best song ever to play at the gym.
14. "Beat On The Brat" by the Ramones, about wailing on a child with a baseball bat.
15. "Waving My Dick In The Wind" by Ween, about the titular activity.

I haven't provided any links because I'm so lazy I've basically melted, but you've got YouTube, so go listen to the scientifically most bastardly songs ever.

Some argue you can totally say "some argue".

"Some argue" means "it might be argued". People don't say that because it makes you sound like a tool. You can say "some argue", and if people ask who (which they should), you can say "me", or "Herman, the hypothetical hippo". So much time has been wasted, and questions avoided, by bitching about this. If you pooled that time and gave it to me, I could learn to play the banjo and speak Japanese. I probably wouldn't tho.

Movie Whatever Presents: Prom Nighte§æÕ±*þƒ?ø▓<♥éSÐ

Prom Night is one of the all time classics of the slasher movie genre. It has all the classic elements you need for great success: the title is a day, Jamie Lee Curtis, and Leslie Nielsen is just randomly there.

The thing I like the most about Prom Night is the killer, who wears a ski mask and kills people with a shard of glass, and later an axe. I like him because he's the unluckiest killer ever, taking moar pratfalls than the average Laurel and Hardy. After spending the movie's best action sequence getting his ass kicked by a partially sighted fat guy in a van...

He's also high as fuck.

...The killer then sneaks into the girls' bathroom to off his next victim. To avoid being spotted in the mirror, the killer turns off the lights...and misses, because he can't see what he's doing!

He then forgets his axe and has to come back for it. This really happens.

Then near the end of the picture he decapitates the wrong person and electrocutes himself.

You'd think all this stuff would happen to Jason, since he's the one who kills on Friday the 13th.

Besides the killer's lovable antics, the best reason to watch Prom Night is still the disco score and dance routines, which are HILARIOUS. Like, I mostly laugh at other people getting sick and stuff, but this is SUPER funny.

If you went to a pretend-American Canadian high school in 1980, this was your life.

Despite being way moar funny than scary, Prom Night is worth watching and still has its creepy moments. It's not the kind of movie you admire so much as the kind of movie you would like to kick back and watch sitcoms with. Prom Night is a pretty cool guy.

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!!!

Money (it's a crime).

People keep telling me money can’t buy me happiness, but I'm becoming suspicious of this claim. Here’s what I’d do if I were rich, and you can tell me if it sounds like something that would make you happy:

I’d live somewhere warm, like an island. If an island couldn't be found with the right climate, I’d have one airlifted nearer the equator, because I’d be rich.

Every morning I’d waterski behind a speedboat driven by my butler. Then I’d discipline him for splashing me, and getting my tuxedo wet (I’d wear a tuxedo when I waterskied, because I’d be rich).

Then in the afternoon I’d recline on a marble statue of Diane Lane and watch my Sopranos boxset end-to-end.

I think that would make me happy, but I guess I won’t know until I try it, so donations are appreciated.

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.

Movie Tuesday Presents: ¿Onibaba?

Onibaba is the best movie ever.

When most people think of Japan, they think of squids banging schoolgirls, Godzilla, Sumo wrestling, sushi, and samurais, in that order. I've never been to Japan, but if it’s not all like that then I can’t imagine not being disappointed. Anyway, whatever. Onibaba is the best Japanese movie I've seen, and I've seen at least five.

Onibaba is about two women who live in a field of super tall grass and ambush samurais who stop by, so they can sell their stuff. They toss the bodies in a pit that goes straight down but doesn't lead anywhere. How did the pit get there? Did someone dig straight down until they couldn't get out again? What a dumbass.

Onibaba sort of feels like two movies. The first part has a guy come home from war and try to get in the younger woman’s pants (they don’t have names, because that makes them more universal. Names are for popcorn movies). It all seems to be playing like a drama with the younger woman torn between her mother-in-law and this guy’s affections. Then at some point, with a sort of dream logic, it switches to a horror movie, as this guy with a mask appears. I won’t spoil what happens but it’s pretty sweet. You should definitely see it. The word for this movie is: “atmosphere”.

Where's Wallie in the Garden of Earthly Delights

Click on image to view.

Movie Thursday Presents: Point Blank!!?

Point Blank is the best movie ever.

I saw Point Blank by accident during a period of watching every movie on TV. And people said I’d never amount to anything that way. Well I proved them wrong: I saw Point Blank.

Point Blank stars Lee Marvin as the best character ever: WALKER. Walker is betrayed and left for dead during a heist in the classiest thriller location ever: Alcatraz. The rest of the movie is Walker hunting down and murdering everyone who betrayed him, except most of them end up killing themselves and each other in their panic over Walker.

In one scene he takes a car salesman out for a test drive and rams the car into everything, smashing it to bits. This scene probably (source) inspired Walter Hill’s movie The Driver, which you also should see. Oh yeah, and another time his girlfriend or whatever tries to beat him, so he just stands there until she tires herself out, and then goes to watch infomercials. Walker: 1, domestic violence: 0. Then she goes insane and runs around the house turning on all the appliances and hits Walker with a pool cue, but when he wakes up they’re already making out, because even unconscious Walker is the best.

The movie has witty socio-economic commentary too, like the scene where Walker tries to get his money out of someone who can’t pay him because it’s all tied up in overly secure investments. The movie explores the corporate nature of organised crime, and thus, by extension, the criminal nature of business. Even better, every shot in it looks super stylish, because it was the 60s. Point Blank makes your favourite movie look like bullshit.

In defence of tl;dr

Circumlocutory assholes on the interwebs are getting upset that nobody wants to read their pontifications, a point of view expressed since time immemorial by "tl;dr". tl;dr is, of course, Vietnamese for "too long, did not read" (source).

The reason people call tl;dr on your epic literature is because you can nearly always say the same thing using fewer words, which is considered common courtesy because no one's got time to listen to every idea you've ever had, especially not by way of a response to a two-word YouTube comment, like "this sucks", or "you suck".

There's a very complex algorithm modern homo sapiens sapiens use to determine whether something is too long to read. First, do they care what the conclusion is? Second, do they care more than they care about reading the next comment, or clipping their toenails? Third, is your writing entertaining? Why not? Didn't they teach you to write good at school? Why not?

tl;dr is an exhortation to write better; to be more efficient; to leave out the backstory about your dog.

If I were a literary critic (boring) I would call tl;dr on everything. Movies too. Drive was tl;dr as fuck. He didn't even drive that much. It's a soundtrack, not a movie. The Gone Girl was tl;dr too. The Hobbit? Too long for anyone to read. The book was like eight pages.

Anything tl should be dr.

Thinking Barbarian IV: The Final Thought

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James Bond is the worst special agent ever.

Since the title of the new James Bond film has now been released (SPECTRE), it seems like a fine opportunity to recap on the series so far. The doctors say this will be good for me ("whatever" was the word they used). This article will contain SPOILERS for the last three James Bond films.

Since Daniel Craig took over the role of James Bond in the 1967 comedy Casino Royale, starring Woody Allen, the world's most famous spy has failed to complete any of his missions, making him the British government's version of Team Rocket. Despite this, MI6 continues to employ him, sending him on mission after mission with all the dogged determination and shit-eating optimism of a gambling addict.

So in Casino Royale, Bond's first job is to capture a bomb-maker, which he seeks to achieve, Tom and Jerry style, by chasing him up a construction site. This chase ends when the terrorist hops a wall into a foreign embassy. Understanding the need for diplomacy, Bond backs out and informs M, who puts the squeeze on the ambassador to remand the terrorist into British custody. O WATE KNO. Instead, he hops in, murders the guy, and then flees like a buffoon. Presumably for several hours the foreign country gears up for war with Britain, until M is able to placate them.

Realising he nearly started a war just to kill a guy he was supposed to bring in alive, and therefore needs to stay on M's good side, he does the only appropriate thing, and breaks into her house like a burglar.

It's not even as if the screenwriters didn't realise that Bond was a colossal fuckup, as they then have M chastise him for these very reasons. Except rather than fire his incompetent, felonious ass like any normal person, she then gives him an even bigger mission. There's no reason for this: he isn't even James Bond yet, as this was his first mission. Is M supposed to be senile in the script? You or I could get fired for being late one time. James Bond can start a war, kill the guy he was supposed to capture, ensuring that an entire terrorist network goes free, and go on his merry way. What the fuck, M.

So then he's sent to bring in another guy, the guy that bleeds out his eyes. How does this guy not die all the time? I don't know. Anyway, again, it's essential to the mission that he bring this fucker back alive. The government also spot him a bunch of money to bet at poker, in what is easily the longest and most boring sequence ever filmed. Long story short, Bond loses all the money, gets the target of his operation killed, fails to spot that his lady friend is a double agent, and gets her killed too before she can tell him anything about the people she works for.

Why the fuck is this goober still employed? But to be ridiculously fair, this was his first two missions. So maybe he'll have gotten better by the second filO WATE KNO.

Quantum of Solace has our Inspector Clouseau stand-in bring home his one prize, a Mr White, to be interrogated. Instead of taking this dangerous criminal to a secure holding cell, he hauls him up in front of M. If M were as smart as, say, the mayor from The Naked Gun, she might well say, "are you crazy? Why have you brought this bleeding-ass terrorist into my office like a dummy?"

But she's nowhere near that smart, and in any case it doesn't matter, as her secretary then reveals himself to be a double agent and starts shooting everyone, allowing Mr White to escape. Did M hire this guy as well as Bond? Did she hire the double agent lady from the last flick? Is there a pattern we can discern here, like one of those magic eye puzzles, if we just stare at it for long enough?

So anyway, in the confusion, Mr White escapes, and Bond is powerless to overtake this limping gunshot victim. Possibly to get rid of him, M then sends him to Bolivia or some shit, where he has to uncover QUANTUM, a secret organisation whose name stands for BORING. Once again the film ends with Bond choosing for no reason to kill the bad guy who could have told him all he needed to know about the terrorist organisation. Is FUCKING BOND A DOUBLE AGENT TOO? At this point that would make more sense.

Then in part three, Skyfall, Bond has to recapture a device that gives the bad guys full knowledge of everyone in MI6. I don't know why such a device exists, but anyway. Naturally, he fucks up and gets shot in the heart and falls into the river, which counts as a pretty good day for him in these movies. The rest of the movie is spent trying to protect M from another agent she hired; a task at which he also fails, not only letting M die, but destroying his own mansion in the process.

I'll be honest with you, when I first saw these movies, I thought they sucked. But looking at them in a different light, I think they're brilliant. As a satirical portrayal of systematic incompetence they're up there with 4 Lions and Dr Strangelove. Maybe M's hiring practices are based on nepotism or something. Anyway, here's hoping Bond gets even one thing right in SPECTRE. That would be so unexpected I might just stop huffing CO2.

Who thinks this is weird?

I was standing in a queue with my bestfriend (guaranteed better than yours), and a thought occurred to me. Feeling I should share this thought, I told her: "what if we lived in a world where the only vowel sound was 'O'?"

"We'd count like: one, tow, thro, fo, fove, sox, sovon, oght, none, ton, olovon, twolve, thorton, forton, fofton, soxton, sovonton, oghton, noneton, twontogh".

She informed me that was weird. Is that true? Was my thought weird? Let me know (using only "O"s).

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.

Moar phun with travel.

Many years ago I wrote a piece about how travel broadens the mind (and Warrington kills it). Looking back through my travel pix I noticed more unusual things worth sharing, so here it is.

This is literally the equivalent of show and tell, using the stuff you find in your pockets. I'm so burnt out :(

Sideways DVDs on sale in Spain.

So far as I can tell (after literally some research) this is only happening in Spain, and perhaps Spanish speaking countries. Why make sideways DVDs? Well, why make vertical ones? And for that matter, why put the North Pole at the top of the map? Why not the bottom, or even the side? And then it hits you: in the whole wide universe, which way is up? The way our magnetic north faces? But why? And then you picture rotating the universe on its head, just because of a weird promotion in a Spanish mall. When I said travelling expands your mind, I meant it in the drugs way.

Things I learned from Berlin:

-Their little green crossing man wears a hat

-At least one mall has a toilet that rotates and cleans the seat

-There's a man dressed as the Predator (or the Predator himself) outside the Brandenburg Gate:

The best clock in the world: as the man's sword arm drops, the globe rotates, leaving the monkey pointing to the current hour.

See that strip of green in the distance? That's the fabled Green River melon fields.

Every year in September Green River, Utah, hosts a Melon Days festival, during which the town swells to literally thousands of people. Highlights include a large carved effigy of a melon slice being carted through the town as a float. I was so sad I couldn't make it this year that I went to the movies instead.

The toilets in Sun Studio are shaped like guitars.

This is so cool, it makes me want to spend even more time on the crapper, preferably reading Tim Gautreux and listening to "Walk the Line" or "Mystery Train". Goddamn I love America (srs).

Have you heard the good news about Braco?

Braco, known as the Gazer, is a Croatian man who stares at people. He is way more popular than most of the artists in your music library, he has a following all around the world, and he never speaks in public.

Braco's gaze is said to have the power to heal, but it is not known by whom, as Braco states he makes no claim of any healing power resulting from his gaze. This means that thousands of people all around the world pay large fees to see a man stare at them who claims to have no special powers at all. On the other hand, his website warns that:

• Pregnant women are not allowed to attend after their third month of pregnancy due to the intensity of the energy.

• People with illnesses are advised to follow the recommendation of their doctor before and after attending a gazing session.

So, according to his own website, Braco claims to have no power, but may cause complications in pregnancy, or disease. This individual is richer than everyone you or I know put together.

He is an inspiration to us all.

Spam callers keep arguing with me :(

A spam caller just called to ask if I was my dad. I told him no, and THE FUCKER ARGUED WITH ME. He said "you SOUND like Mr. Bastard". When did Poirot get a job at a call centre?

This isn't the first time this has happened either. Another caller went through a checklist of family members before asking, triumphantly, "are you a robber in the house?" Busted.

Are spam callers bullying anyone else? Are they going to take my lunch money over the phone? Are these people deranged? I don't know. Are we witnessing an escalation of rage in society? Did I deserve it? What's going on? Leave a comment (on the Samaritans' voicemail).

Update: it is happening again.

The Thinking Barbarian 3: Think Harder

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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.

ZOMFG new Jack the Ripper theory!!!

A few years ago, I published an article about the then-current Jack the Ripper identity. I have no idea if this theory is still popular, or if it is now widely agreed to be nonsense (but it's that one), but it got me thinking about the true identity of the Ripper, and I've come to a shocking conclusion.

"A Study in Scarlet", the first Sherlock Holmes novel, was published in 1887, marking the first appearance of the popular TV detective (Dr Spock). Shortly afterwards, in 1888, the Ripper struck.

Why wasn't Sherlock Holmes, the best detective in London's history, successful in catching the killer? Indeed, I contacted the Metropolitan Police Force in a dream I had, and they denied any record of working with Holmes at all on the case. Fans of BBC ITV's Sherlock Holmes will be aware that the police, in the guise of Inspector Gadget of Police Squad!, always turn to Sherlock Holmes to help them solve their most important cases. Yet where was Sherlock Holmes during the Whitechapel murders?? Coincidence??????????????????

????????????????

I can therefore reveal, for 100% truth, that Sherlock Holmes himself WAS the Yorkshire Ripper.

Case closed.

France loves me!

I'd like to give a shout-out to my French fans. Even though I've spent a total of about a day in France when I was too young to remember much (last night), it's good to know I've made an impression. I've always been a fan of you guys' rousing yet fucking terrifying anthem about blood and violence (La Marseillaise), and your policy of keeping hunchbacks in the towers (just kidding hunchbacks; I know you're my main demographic).

I feel confident in saying French universities teach an advanced qualification in me, which is a considerable honour (source). Plans to rename the Eiffel Tower "The Bastard Tower" in my honour are expected to be rolled out in the new year, by at least one person.

Why does France love me so much? Is it because I smell like onions? PLEEZ ANSWER BEFOAH AI DAI.

Movie Sunday Presents: DEAD END!!!

Dead End is a 2003 movie starring Ray Wise (everything) and Lin Shaye (everything else). It's about a family who go to see their relatives for Christmas, but fortunately get stuck on an endless road to nowhere instead.

The movie is very cool and funny and it piles on the creepiness very nicely, with the family so distracted by typical family bickering at first that it only slowly creeps up on them: the realisation that they're the only car driving on this long road through the woods, and there's no one around to save them.

Part of the movie's genius is to situate a normal family car journey at the heart of its weird, purgatorial premise. The family are afraid to get out as they're surrounded by dark woods and nothing else, but they don't want to stay in the claustrophobic space of the car where they all have to put up with one another.

Dead End is very creepy and cool, well paced and has a mysterious vibe to it. It also uses creepy vocal sound effects well, which is getting pretty rare among the horror movies of today. Compare this year's own Deliver Us From Evil, which employs dark lighting to make it dark, but then has the possessed lady talk like your aunty trying to scare a small child.

Dead End is the best. Watch it alone at night and then go for a drive on a deserted backroad. Very cool movie.

Imagine...

Being a fan of horror movies, perhaps as a consequence of an active imagination as a child, you always check the backseat of your car before you drive at night. There's never anyone there, and it's reassuring. You won't feel the sudden urge to look behind you in the mirror as you're cruising down the yellow-brown-lit motorway.

What you don't do is check the boot, of course. You're five miles into the stretch and it's dark, and you're almost starting to drift a bit in your lane, as your eyelids flutter just a little. You shouldn't have left so late, but what choice did you have? It's not like you have time to do everything. There just aren't enough hours in the day.

So when you hear a bump coming unmistakably from the boot, you're easily startled. Did you leave something in there that's got loose? You try to remember and your eyes drift just a second from the road, and you quickly lurch to correct your idle drift. It's probably nothing the first time. Then it happens again, a deliberate bang, like a fist hitting, like someone trying to get out. Is there something in there? Or someone?

You check to the side. There's no hard shoulder for another mile, and no one on the road. You wonder what would happen if you stopped. And then did what? Opened the boot? You don't know what could happen. Who would see you? Who would stop for you? You'd be alone with whoever - whatever was in there.

You keep on driving, trying to ignore it. The banging increases. Your breath's catching in your upper chest now, and you try to correct it as you notice it. You'll get to where you're going. You'll get where it's safe, where there are people all around you. Then you'll call someone. You'll call the police. This sort of thing just doesn't happen. There's no way you're opening that boot by yourself, in the middle of nowhere. You've barely seen another car since you've been gone. You can imagine it being hours before anybody stops to check out the pulled-over car with the empty boot and the empty seats...empty of you. No clue as to what happened. You imagine everyone reacting to you as a missing person, all your friends concerned, your close ones crying. Anything but what might happen to you. Focus on their grief, that's easier. You're dealing with a known quantity there.

As you've been drifting deeper into this morbid anxiety you've failed to notice that the banging's stopped. It takes you a second to realise, like all the creatures in the forest suddenly went silent. What happened? Was someone in there? Did they stop? Are they OK? You can imagine rushing to their aid to find a killer, a grinning stranger reach out grabbing for your throat. No. Don't risk it. If there's someone there, they'll wait until you get to help. That's if there's someone there - it could have been some object, something you forgot to throw out. You're tired. It's late. Maybe there was nothing. There are no warnings on your dash. The car was locked when you got to it. There's no reason to suspect something's amiss. How would someone have got into the boot in any case? Who else has a key?

You shake your head to clear it of the thoughts. This isn't going anywhere. You're tired. You're stressed. It's probably nothing. And then that barrier of silence is broken by a voice coming from back there. "Pull over". "Pull over".

Your heart beats madly in your chest. You didn't recognise that voice. It's thirty miles to where you're going. You look for a sign to somewhere there are people. You fear that you'll be missing in tomorrow's paper.

Diary entry #2

There was a face at the window. I went downstairs to get a glass of water. It was dark inside and out but I was lit by the streetlights from across the road. There was a face there, not more than two feet from my kitchen window. I had never seen that man before. I still wonder to this moment what was in his eyes? Was it anger? Pleading? Fear? Was that face afraid of something in that big night, or was he the something to be feared? I didn't know. There was no knock, and he said nothing. He just looked at me, and my heart stopped dead. I don't know who he was or where he came from. No one else on my street heard or saw anything.

I have no idea who that man was, or what terrors his expression told.

Diary entry #1

I went to the bathroom in the middle of the night and was surprised to see my mother standing there in the hallway. She was wearing a long white dress like a nightgown and had a serious look in her eyes. She said to me "did you go to church today?" I hadn't seen her all day. Her mouth opened very wide and the back of her head tipped back as if it were flopping loose from its connection to her neck and spine. I walked very fast into my room and shut the door tight. She's been out there for a long time now and I've heard nothing. That was not my mother.