IRA-RIP - 'Meh' say Britons

The IRA are no more. Whatever is right.

In a historic move the IRA, who older readers will remember as some kind of non-Islamist terrorist group, has announced that it would put an end to years of sectarian violence in Northern Ireland, citing a general lack of interest in the group's activities and political goals.
The Provisional Irish Republican Army's dull campaign began in 1970, with the meaningless and impossible aim of reuniting Northern Ireland with Southern Ireland. For some reason.
IRA spokesman Flannety O'Flannerty told reporters: "Looking back it was kind of stupid. I mean, if we really wanted to be Irish we could have probably emigrated. I'd actually forgotten about being the official spokesperson, I only found out when I was cleaning out my garage and I found my old membership card in a drawer."
Flannerty went on to say that he was proud to have served in the group that provided inspiration for the films Patriot Games, The Devil's Own and the Crying Game. Though he later admitted that buying one pair of the night-vision goggles used in the climactic scene of Tom Clancy's thriller Patriot Games would have cost a year's budget.
The public's reaction to the announcement has been muted. Exeter resident Steve Chav told this website: "I'd forgotten about them, what with the bombs in London and everything. It's not like they were on 24 or anything."
Norma King, Reading: "They tried their best to be scary, but it's a bit hard to take them seriously when they've been outshone by a Shemale's cock."

Harry Potter and the Throbbing Wand

As many of you will now be aware, the new Harry Potter book, Harry Potter and the Half-Blood Prince, is upon us. While the title is clearly a reference to author J.K Rowling's well publicised hatred of race-mixing, fans have been clamoring for plot details or 'spoilers'.
If you don't want to know which Snape-like character dies, go to another page now.
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Somebody called 'Snape' dies.
Now this didn't mean an awful lot to me, since I don't really know who Snape is, nor have I read any of the books or watched the films. Nevertheless I had a journalistic obligation to review this book, despite having no interest in reading it nor time to read it in.

Availability

Adults, actual grown up adults with lives and jobs and who have probably had sex and everything, stayed up until midnight on the day of release to get their copy. Some of them were dressed as characters from the books.
This gets an availability score of 0 because there's no way I would actually buy it.

Graphics

There's like this kid on the cover, and Gandalf is there, and they're on fire. In the adult edition there's a book on a desk.

Sound

As with many books of this size, Harry Potter and the Half-Blood Prince makes a pleasant percussive sound when thrown at something. The sound a page makes when turned over is the finest since Voltaire's Candide.

Gameplay (+free R.E.M reference for no good reason)

Okay, so there's Wizards right, it's a fantasy book so you have to suspend your disbelief and believe that there are actually Wizards. There's some bad ones and some good ones... Muggles... Death-Eaters... Dumbledore... yeah yeah yeah yeah... Malfroy... Hermonie... a Gryphon... yeah yeah yeah yeah....

Totally Hot Slash Fiction

Having not read the book I decided to browse the internet for fan-fiction, in order to really get inside the minds of the characters. Good Slash is the literary equivilent of Modding, but when I really don't care about the characters, hot Slash Fiction really doesn't do it for me. Here's a sampling of Harry Potter slash, taken from a novella called Irresistible Poison, about a budding romance between Harry and his archenemy, Draco Malfoy:

"His hands moved up to hold Harry's startled face, and in the space of a next heartbeat he was kissing Harry, hard and full on the lips, his manner deeply passionate, hopelessly desperate ...

"What just happened?

"He knew bloody well what just happened. He just kissed Harry Potter, that's what happened. The thought of it made him nauseated, even though at the very same time an entrenched part of him yearned for the perverse, forbidden pleasure of it all over again."

Utterly tame.

Harry Potter and the Half Blood Prince gets my lowest rating ever:
Minnie Driver.

I make everyone believe that I like to be different, but really I just don't know how to fit in.

Postsecret is probably the most beautiful thing I've ever read.

The World is a Wonderful Place but Not Safe For Work.

Things are really starting to look up for me. Today, for instance, I recieved a fabulous e-mail, asking:

Have you ever stepped on a landmine before? Look at these Breasts!

This e-mail fascinated me, exposing the cruel dichotomy between indisciminate slaughter and Huge flopping Breasts. Did you know that there are between 15,000 and 20,000 new casualties caused by landmines and unexploded ordnance each year? That means there are some 1,500 new casualties each month, more than 40 new casualties a day, at least two new casualties per hour. In Cambodia, for example there are almost 40,000 landmine survivors recorded between 1979 and 2002. These are the survivors. Some 18,000 people were killed in this period. More than 60 % of the total casualties, numbering some 57,000, were civilians. (Source: The International Campaign to Ban Landmines)
The e-mail went on to explain that:

These tites (sic) are explosive!

I hate you all.

I'm stuck in prison with Michael Jackson

Hi everybody, I've just recieved my first letter from my prison-penpal in America, and I thought I'd share it with you:

Hello G, my name is Adam and I'm serving 15 years for vehicular manslaughter and driving under the influence of drugs at San Quentin prison. Life here sure is tough! It's everything you've seen in TV shows like Oz, except for anything you saw in that show that didn't make you ashamed to be a human being.
My cellmate, Larry, was shanked recently so I'd been feeling a little down. Larry's face had been altered to look like fundamentalist Christian puppet "Li'l Markie" using a sharpened toothbrush and the wall of D-wing and that's the kinda image you can't get rid of no matter what you smoke.
I was assigned a new cellmate yesterday morning and told that if I could insure that nothing happened to him then I would be out while there are still ice-caps. Okay, so I don't have any particular reason to leave since my girlfriend sold my stuff and is now dating my sister, but when you're inside it's important to have goals.
It wasn't hard to recognise my new cell-mate, in fact if there was a way to recognise him before I first saw him then I probably would have. Now, I'm not supposed to say who it is exactly, and it's 50/50 about whether I can mention his chalk-white skin, bat-like inhuman features or the fact that he walked into the room backwards while making it look like he was walking forwards. I'm gonna name him 'M.J', after one of the fifteen drugs found in my system when I was arrested. And his initials. M.J gave me friendship bracelet.
The warden took me aside and explained that the new guy had used what remained of his fortune to film the judge delivering an 'innocent' verdict and broadcast it all over the world when it became apparent that he was a child-molesting monster. That said, I sold his name to the Aryan Brotherhood for three bars of the good soap and then to the Crips in C block for a picture of that girl from the Doritos commercial cut from a three year old copy of Maxim magazine.
I showed M.J where everything was and which turf to stay away from, which was pretty much all of it. I knew that unless he found a crew then he wasn't going to last the night so I introduced him to the other child molesters. They really got on.
"I really identify with the innocence of children" he told them.
"They scream" mentioned the East River Strangler "They always scream..."
"You have a rollercoaster in your back yard too? Hooray!"
M.J gave the East River Strangler a friendship bracelet and sung a song about a magical journey on a rollercoaster, which the D-wing Angelito gang interpreted as the signal to start rioting that the Gambinos were supposed to send. Three inmates and a guard died in the ensuing fracas.
The excitement was a little too much for M.J, so I showed him back to our cell.
Some people find it hard to sleep in prison. I had it pretty much under control. Sure it was hard at first but once you get to know people you don't have to worry about them stabbing you with a piece of broken glass and wearing your face.
I was midway through a dream where I was both Dukes of Hazzard and we just snorted Boss Hogg, who was made out of painkillers. Daisy Dukes was just getting out of those little denim shorts in the back of the General Lee. Something about the way her arm felt around me felt a little too real, and my brain went into panic mode and booted me back into conciousness. I awoke to find M.J's hideous vampire face an inch from my own, with a contented little smile on his lips.
I jumped out of bed screaming, waking M.J and half the cellblock.
"It's okay." he told me "sharing somebody's bed is a beautiful thing. The most loving thing you can do is share someone's bed. The whole world should share beds, then there would be no more war or hunger. You're being ignorant. Don't be ignorant."
This made little sense, so I beat him into a coma with a bar of soap inside a pillow case.

The Encouraging Voice of the Labyrinth

Aside: After The Duke Spirit, the band Autolux are probably the only artists who have recently caught my eye. Their album is called Future Perfect and I haven't gone to the newsagents since I've heard them in case they're on the front of NME. The drummer (left) is talented and also very attractive, though the above picture doesn't do her justice. Her name is Carla, and to see her in a better light you should probably watch the video for 'Turnstyle blues' or go see them when they're on tour with Nine Inch Nails and Queens of the Stone Age and white guys in vests who paid £40 to be in 'the pit' are calling them fags.

To Audience: The El Minotaur Blanco weblog is, without doubt, one of the most geniusest things on the interweb. It is the production journal of what is shaping up to be the finest Philosophical Western/Autobiographical Porno ever made. In the writer/director's own words:

“El Minotaur Blanco” is, without a doubt, the most important film being made today. Shot on HD Video, it is a Western, after the manner of the popular Westerns of Jean-Luc Godard. It features a break-dancing robot (Mr Dance-Dance Roboto, ed.). It is brilliant. It is sensuous. It is cruel, like a miracle. It is being made by myself and my friends because they recognize its importance and because they are wonderful and easily persuaded.
“El Minotaur Blanco” is already historically significant as the first historically accurate film to be made about the Old West using authentic data and acquisitions from the F1 Time Scoop based in Subic Bay. Many of the emotions and feelings that you will experience in viewing “El Minotaur Blanco” are so terrifically real and intense that some viewers will realize they have never loved. This film will change all that.

I swear, if this thing was anywhere near real I'd be camped outside Mann's Chinese Theatre right now.

Quotes from the playground

It's not often that something I find on the Interweb will make me smile, and even less often I 'LOL' (lit. 'Laugh out loud') or 'ROFL' ('Roll on floor laughing') or LSHTIPAL (Laugh so hard that I pee a little), but Tard-Blog.com actually managed to pull off the first one. I doubt anyone has actually ROFLd, and only middle-aged women can LSHTIPAL.

Heffer Hulk Smash Puny Reason!

From today's Daily Mail:

"Why are the names of the country's film censors a state secret and why did they give a 12A cerificate to The War Of The Worlds, the most remorselessly violent film I have seen in years?"

Okay, fairly standard op-ed stuff so far, and the columnist, Simon Heffer, is entitled to his opinion on whether the film was too violent. But in the space between pressing the return key and starting a new paragraph Heffer takes a big huff of aeroplane glue from a sandwich bag and writes:

"I suspect the censors are leftists in bed with the Labor Party, and support the party's policy of wrecking traditional values. I suspect too, that those who stand to profit from the biggest possible audience for such films in this country are Labour donors. Until we are told who the censors are, we won't know if I'm right."

Homosaywhat? Maybe Christina Aguilera's just silently crept in through the window, greased up the glorious expanse between her legs and written "of course I'll do anal" on the wall in lipstick, but until I turn my head I won't know if I'm right. You can make a pretty good guess though. Exactly how far out of his ass did Heffer pull that second part? Does he have a leaked dossier? A taped interview? Nope, just good old fashioned Right Wing Bullshit, the same 'well the Jews deserved it' crap that guy at the bar who was in the Falklands comes out with when he's had a few. As suspiscions go It's on par with 'I suspect wearing this tin-foil hat will stop the government stealing my thoughts'.
This only takes up a small box on Heffer's page. The majority goes towards explaining how Africa doesn't deserve charity. I'm taking a portfolio of Heffer's 'irrepressible, irascible (and) irreverent' columns with me to America so I have solid evidence to back up my shame in this nation.