I’ve had various jobs over the years. The ones that I have despised most have been the ones based in an office or factory. Those were the kinds of jobs that I was soon fired or laid-off from (one of which i was fired from after falling asleep head-first on a conveyor belt).

One thing I’ve learned is that it’s not always about the job role; it’s also about the people who lead you. In that respect, some of the dullest jobs I’ve ever had have turned out to be some of the most rewarding thanks to decent supervisors who both appreciate and respect people as human beings. Little moments of thought and care can really turn around a bad job for an employee into something enjoyable.

But for every one of those great leaders, there were countless more jobs where I had to report to [what felt like] the worst of humanity.

Last night, I dreamt that I had never worked for my current employer. Instead I was living the life of myself in a parallel universe where I’d taken some crappy office job instead and was working for some ass-hat in a suit.

But in this parallel universe, I wasn’t afraid of any repercussions. What followed was a sequence of things that I did to provoke and get revenge upon my fictional boss for being a complete jackass to me all the time.

This is a survival guide based on some of those things:

The Tacks

The thumbtack; a short, flat-headed pin, used for fastening things to a wall or other such surface. They also serve as unsuspecting traps.

To start with, you lay out a large number of them around your cubicle with the pins facing upward.

You then place a sign by your cubicle which states that Trespassers Will Be Forced to Tap-Dance.

Your boss, being the ass-hat that he is, will eventually cross the boundary of your cubicle in order to tell you that you’re not allowed to sleep at your desk or some other such nonsense. In doing so, he will stand on all the thumbtacks which will then perforate the bottom of his soles.

Once he walks outside, he will then hear the tinging clunk of the thumbtacks against the pavement. He will then have to waste a butt-load of time removing them.

Bonus points are available if you sneak into his office and tape thumbtacks to everything; including the office chair, the light switch, and every button on the Boss’s phone keypad.

The Magnifying Glass

This one requires a bit of planning and good weather. It’s short and simple; covertly place a magnifying glass between the window and the desk (depending on the office you may need to place the magnifying glass outside the window).

Once the sun comes up and your boss is working, the desk and/or any paperwork on it should hopefully combust and set the building on fire.

The Pets

What’s that? No pets allowed in the office?

Then it’s time to bag yourself a crocodile with tranquillisers and leave it in his office. Hopefully it will have awoken by the time your Boss starts his shift.

Other suitable animals include; lions, tigers, polar bears, Barbara Streisand, anacondas or colossal squids.

Bonus points for making his office water-tight over the weekend and filling it with water and piranha.

Sounds Like Fun

This one’s simple in execution, but requires some coding experience. Or a friend with coding experience who’s willing to help you out at the cost of a packet of double chocolate-chip cookies.

Get a bunch of different clips from various homosexual pornographic movies. Write a script to automatically play the clips at various intervals throughout the day on full volume; loud enough for the entire office to hear.

Executing the script at a specific time may not be as useful as doing it remotely. However, it is possible to write a script that activates upon receipt of an email with a specific keyword. So have a report ready to email to your boss, and set the script to initiate as soon as that email arrives.

Call his wife and say that there’s been an emergency and that she has to come to her husband’s office QUICK. Once she arrives, hit that send button.

Bonus points available if she screams “You’re watching gay porn AGAIN!?”

Extra bonus points if you’ve also hired a male stripper to then burst out of the Boss’s office cupboard. Naked.

When You’ve Gotta Go

Five words; Urinate on his desk. Twice.

Rub-a-Dub-Dub

Your Boss reveals that he has a big meeting planned with some top executives and you’re not invited. He’s worried that you might make a scene or fall asleep during the meeting and make him look bad.

Would you ever do such a thing? Really?

Of course you would. That’s why minutes before the meeting you’re going to hit him over the head with a lamp and knock him unconscious. You’re then going to inject him with tranquillisers so that he stays asleep for a long period of time.

“But if you’ve got tranquillisers then why did you have to hit him over the head?” Because it’s more fun this way. And if you tie his shoe-laces together you can make it look like he tripped and then hit his head. Like one of those accident things.

You personally greet the top executives and apologise that your Boss can’t make it, because he’s busy doing coke with some prostitutes. You, however, have been asked to conduct the meeting on his behalf.

Prior to this, you have also managed to get hold of a copy of an internal company video of your Boss talking about future strategies. You decide to present this to the execs as a message from your Boss to help kick-start the meeting.

Of course, you’ve already re-dubbed it DJO-style, like this;

Bonus points for making it as rude, racist, and sexually degrading as possible.

Super bonus points available if the execs report him to the police for cocaine abuse and prostitution.

The Meal

I own a copy of a book of various life rules. Of all of them, this one is one of my favourites;

“It never hurts to suck up to the boss”

- Ferengi Rule of Acquisition, #33

My dream’s interpretation of that was to cook a nice meal for the Boss and his wife. So this is what you do;

Firstly, you prepare two lots of meat – my personal recommendation would be rump steak, because your Boss is an ass. “But what if your Boss is vegetarian?” I hear you ask. Who cares! He’s your guest; he’s supposed to be respectful and eat your food. “And if he refuses?” Well at this point, is lying beneath you? Of course not; just lie and say that it’s some of that meat-free Quorn stuff that vegetarians normally eat.

The plan is that you cook the meat properly for yourself, but deliberately under-cook the second batch of meat for your Boss.

Just wait a little while and BOOM!.

Your Boss now has a tapeworm.

You can then look forward to some Boss-free days at work whilst he’s off at home suffering from one or more of the following;

• Abdominal Discomfort
• Diarrhea
• Constipation
• Malnutrition
• Muscle Weakness
• Neurological Damage
• Seizures
• Weight loss
• Tapeworm Segments on Clothes or in Feces

First-Aid

First-Aid is a valuable life lesson to have. It’s also advantageous to a company to get some of its staff trained up, so that Doris in Marketing doesn’t die from choking on her lunch and Phil in HR doesn’t die from falling off a ladder whilst replacing a company lightbulb.

For this trick you’ll want to position yourself as an available candidate to go on a First-Aid course to become certified.

Once you’ve completed the course and finished making-out with Resusci Anne, it’s time to return to work to put your skills to good use and make your Boss glad that he sent you off on training. But the only way to make him truly appreciate it is if he sees you saving someone’s life.

So what you need to do is hide under his desk during his lunch break. When he returns to the office, you tie his shoe laces together and then wait for him to stand up and trip over.

Once on the floor, you can stop his heart beating by zapping him with a defibrillator. Then you can use it again to bring him back to life.

Bonus points if your only reason for bringing him back to life is so that you can shock him again!

Watch Your Step

1. Sneak into your Boss’s office and peel back the carpet
2. Place landmines
3. ???
4. PROFIT!

Skynet Is Your Friend

Procure weapons. Storm the building in a large robotic suit along with an entire army of Terminator endoskeletons. Take the building hostage, loot every office, vault and dungeon for gold and then declare armageddon.

Bonus points available for actually pulling this one off in real-life.

As a spaceman, I would most likely leave my space pets to a space nanny and – with my space trident – ride off into the final frontier on my space horse.

It’s a dangerous universe out there (hence the need for a space trident). Even the space birds would eventually have to sign a non-aggression treaty with the space foxes so that they could team up together against the tyranny of the space cats (who can often be found curled up in front of a roaring star).

I know what you’re thinking; “But Al, why don’t the space birds side with space dogs? Aren’t space dogs the natural enemies of space cats?”

Well that might be the case if it wasn’t for the fact that space dogs are incredibly stupid and spend most of their time chasing asteroids into black holes. Space foxes are far smarter and more cunning, both of which you’ll find are necessary traits when going up against space cats.

There’s also another minor problem with space dogs; they’re pretty messy. They poop everywhere. Thankfully this isn’t much of a problem as it could be, thanks to the vacuum of space.

That’s a Hoover joke, right there. Buh-dum-tschhhhh!

But as I was saying; I was always quite the space nut when I was a kid. I always dreamed of exploring strange new worlds, seeking out new lifeforms and new civilisations, and boldly going to wherever sold packets of space ice-cream.

As such I get excited whenever there’s a new development in space exploration that could lead us closer to colonising a new world.

This also makes me sad though, because in my lifetime I might only just live long enough to see people colonise the moon. If I’m lucky, advances in the medical sciences could allow me to survive long enough to maybe see Mars get colonised.

But these are not the planets I want to move to. Whilst Mars has the added advantage of having slightly longer days, there’s still not enough hours in the day for me. I would prefer to live on a planet such as Mercury. One day on Mercury is the equivalent of just over 58 days on Earth. Can you imagine how epic that would be!? It means that I would have enough hours in the day to get everything done that I needed to do, and I would also then have enough hours at night to sleep and not have to get out of bed for ages.

Mercury is also closer to the Sun. In fact, it’s the closest planet to the Sun, which means that it will always be warm (for my own peace of mind I’m ignoring exactly how hot and how cold Mercury can get). It doesn’t have an atmosphere, but I’m sure that by that time we’ll have either terraformed the planet or we’ll be living in a giant glass dome (hopefully with better air conditioning than that found in the London Underground).

Admittedly, shifts at work would probably be longer on Mercury, but then again that means that the Post Office might actually be open long enough to be useable by people.

But as a spaceman with a space trident riding through space on my space horse all the way to Mercury, just one thing sticks in the back of my mind – something that makes me question whether or not any of this is actually a good idea…

Space pirates. If there’s gonna be spacemen and space pets, then there’s gonna be space pirates. And you can’t trust space pirates – because they have absolutely no regard for life in the Milky Way.

They’ll attack you from the side, board your spaceship and will analy probe their way through your space crew, eat all your space food and read all your space logs until they find your space gold. The only hope left in the galaxy would be the space ninjas; hiding against the cold black darkness of space, forever hidden, striking without warning.

But if that fails then we just have to hope that the space pirates are allergic to space nuts. Because someone has to be allergic to space nuts, right?

I call dibs on not cleaning up their space vomit!

Thankfully, most blog systems (be they WordPress, Tumblr, Blogger, etc) generally have pretty good spam filters these days. They’re often either built-in or available as a plugin which means that the majority of spambots will never see the light of day on your website.

It’s well worth having a blog just to see the hilarity they offer. Most are written in English which is so broken, the likes of which hasn’t been seen since Henrik Teigen! Do Google even know their translator is being used to assist such nefarious practices?

Most of the ones we receive are so funny that I just had to share them with the Choad reading masses, complete with my own brand of colourful commentary. If you do have you own blog please comment with your own examples of spam comments, perhaps even create your own spam comment parodies with grammar resembling a badly translated 90s japanese Mega Drive game.

good desain of website, are you created that web or you get help from web designer. thxz

When you try and say “desain” you sound Scottish.

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Thanks a pantload Chet….

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Borat’s a Choad reader apparently.

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This was in response to the post “fridges are cool”, but you guessed that right?

Once I came over to this blog post I can only see part of it, is this my internet web browser or the internet web site? Should I reboot?

I think its probably his interwebs actually. Or the fact he came over it…

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People are coming in buckletloads to our site!

Well thats but a selection of the insanity lurking in our spam filter. The real good shit lives in the search terms people use to find us. Lets just say the words “Heskey” and “rape” appears a lot. In the same sentence.

But thats for another post.

Now I know that I don’t always come up with the best ideas or solutions to a problem, and I love koalas as much as the next guy, but even to me that idea sounds retarded.

In a world where I was mistakingly under the impression that chains and a padlock would suffice, I asked him “How? Seriously, how do they use them? And why!?”.

Apparently koala bears – in addition to emitting cuteness – are also excellent huggers; so much so that they can hug bicycles through the wheel spokes, rendering it impossible for thieves to steal them.

I had a few holes to pick in that theory.

My first was that they could be coerced away from the bike with food or female koalas. I was then told that they would all be female anyway. But then surely it makes it easier for thieves as then they know that they just need to carry male koalas around with them at all times? Or to hope that they find a lesbian koala?

I was then informed (and I’m assuming reliably so) that these creatures are trained, at which point another friend pointed out that the koalas could therefore be coerced away by presenting them with another bicycle;

“Here you go, Koala. Hug this one!”

The other problem is that as much as we don’t want them to; koalas die. It’s sad, but they do. Sometimes it’s through old age, disease, falling from a tree, but it can also be from less honourable actions such as murder.

I’m sure that if someone is low enough to steal a bike, then it’s probably not much of a stretch to imagine that they’d be capable of harming a such a cute furry little creature. Especially if it’s in order to get resources to support their drug habits or to cook one as a delightful afternoon snack?

After googling for a short while, he was unable to produce a single photo of a koala bear hugging a bicycle. He did find a couple of pages which referenced using koala bears as bike locks, but I had to point out that they appeared to be in reference to something a comedian somewhere said one time as a general joke about Australians.

Ultimately, I think that using koala bears is a flawed idea.

However, Facehuggers from the Alien franchise would be perfect. For starters, they have an incredibly tight grip, they can’t be coerced by food, other bikes or the opposite sex, and if you were a thief who tried to cut them open then they will bleed acid all over you!

And if that’s not enough of a deterrent, then they will rape your mouth and impregnate you with a xenomorph alien embryo which will eventually burst out of your chest and massacre all of your friends and criminal acquaintances.

Alternatively, hiring a homicide maniac with a gun to guard your bike could work too.

Or maybe you could just use a chain and a padlock?

I am convinced that my body is trying to kill me and make it look like an accident.

When listing all the things that have happened to me in just the last month alone, I’ve begun to realise that my accidents (or “accidents”) are all from normal, average every day things rather than reckless behaviour.

Take my most recent major injury for example; I fell from a ladder and landed on the side of my right foot. At first I thought I had simply twisted it, only to find out from doctors 6 days later that I’d been walking on a fractured ankle for a week.

After being given crutches (with no form of padding) my hands got so wrecked from the solid plastic handles that they couldn’t support my weight anymore. Heck, it was sore enough just holding my phone in my hand.

I called work to say that I wasn’t going to be in. It was one of the most challenging calls I’ve ever had to make. I mean c’mon, how the hell do you explain to your employer that you can’t come in to work because you can’t walk – and the reason you can’t walk is because you’ve hurt your hands!?

Some padded exercise/training gloves fortunately helped as time went on to protect my hands.

But since the accident I’ve made things worse for myself. I once fell asleep in my chair. A few hours later when I awoke I grabbed t crutches, attempted to get up and then tripped over the shoes that were on the floor beside me, causing me to twist my bad ankle.

Fortunately I’m off my crutches now and walking okay, but that hasn’t made me any safer. I have also tripped over my shoelaces, fallen off a kerb, fallen up some stairs and accidentally whacked my ankle against my door because I forgot that it was locked. Yesterday morning I also stubbed my toe on the same door, tripped over in pain and subsequently fell to the floor.

And those are just my recent foot-related injuries.

I’ve had plenty of bruises and cuts in my lifetime. Two days ago I even managed to cut myself on a cardboard box whilst opening it. Even now it’s still mildly sore. But of all the accidents that I’ve ever had, the fall from the ladder has surprisingly been the first and only one to cause any damage to one of my bones.

This concerns me somewhat.

During my life I have also been in some serious accidents, including multiple car and motorcycle accidents. Not all were my fault but one did involve me riding my motorcycle right into the back of another motorcycle. Apparently my aim is that good.

One of the other accidents involved my mother losing control of her car on the motorway and spinning until we ended up in a head-on collision with the car coming up from behind us. I was the only person to emerge completely calm and without any injuries.

Earlier this week I had left the gas running in my oven because I was trying to get it to ignite, only to remember that the built-in igniter was broken. I eventually managed to get an electric lighter, opened the gas-filled oven and reached my arm towards the back.

*Click*

The spark ignited the gas and the back of the oven roared with flames.

For me it was a stupid risk. My friend – who should know me well enough by now to know that I’m clumsy – shouldn’t have allowed me to do it. But fortunately nothing bad actually happened and I was completely safe.

I’m beginning to notice a pattern; the more dangerous the situation, the safer I appear to be.

If my body is indeed trying to kill me, then a car crash or a fire is too obvious. What it seems to intend to do is kill me during some mundane task like walking down the street, getting out of bed or buying milk; something less obvious. Something that could be classified as an accident; possibly even the kind worthy of a Darwin award.

Of course there was also the time that I burnt my chest whilst trying to iron my shirt and tie whilst I was wearing them. That one was admittedly my fault, but it seemed like a good idea at the time.

I think that what I need to do is figure out a way to transfer my consciousness out of my body into another vessel of some sort (possibly a robot, maybe a DeLorean). Of course I’ll have to do it whilst falling out of an airplane without a parachute and with explosives and barbed wire strapped to my chest – otherwise it won’t be safe for me.

Alternatively I’ll just eat everything in sight so that I can’t physically move. That’ll probably be the best thing.

I just hope that I don’t impale my face with a fork.

It’s interesting to read the various reviews of the Avengers, because when tackling the subject of Whedon as director, they fall into two camps.

1. Hurrah, we love Joss, he’s so awesome! Everything that was good about Buffy/Firefly/Dollhouse has been magically interspersed into the Avengers dialogue!

or…

2. Whedon sucks. His shows got taken off air, and now he’s using the franchise of The Avengers to raise old ghosts. Blah blah blah.

Interesting how irrelevant these comments are….(even though I am a fan). So, now we’ve got past the fact he directed (and co-wrote) The Avengers, I’m gonna go back to talking about why he’s cool.

He was writing a long time before he was writing Buffy, but the emergence of the Buffyverse showcased Joss’ sense of humour and smart thinking. Then there was Angel, Firefly, and Dollhouse (the last two were cancelled early). Now, cynics could say that shows will get cancelled if they don’t have good ratings….but, it should be noted, we live in the internet age. And it is likely that a lot of the fanboys and fangirls of these series downloaded them. The fan base helped get Serenity made, and Whedon is still going at full force. (even if everybody still wants to see series 2 of Firefly) 

Whedon’s characters are always funny, his women kick ass…

I don’t think I need to convince anyone very much. The man is just…down to earth – it comes across in his writing and the characters he creates. There’s no ridiculous edge to it; it is, and probably always will be a healthy dose of cynicism wrapped up in a humorous manner.

One of his most recent films, The Cabin in the Woods did exactly just that, levelling with the horror genre, whilst providing a good deal of entertainment at the same time.

Plus, he uses the same actors across his works, probably because he recognises the appeal and talent they have (I’m specifically thinking of Eliza Dushku and Nathan Fillion here)…if you’re actually interested, there’s a whole section on his wikipedia page about frequent casting. He’s even got a Shakespeare film in the works, Much Ado about Nothing, starring Fillion amongst others…

If you look at what he’s done, what he can and still has yet to do, I think you’ll agree that the man knows the formula for awesome. I salute you, sir!

I’ve been to a lot of weddings in the last few years and it’s often amazed me about how much people tend to panic. There’s always those busy and stressful moments with people panicking and running around like crazy to ensure that everything runs smoothly for the happy couple. If things aren’t on schedule, or not enough official photographs are taken with everyone and their dog then people worry that it will all be one big mess.

Not Penguin Tom.

He is one of the most laid-back people I know, which is fitting given that that’s a common trait of penguins.

That’s not to say that he doesn’t get stressed. I’ve seen him get stressed by deadlines, by non-stop action at work and at a few of my trolling attempts which involve his personal possessions being relocated without his knowledge.

But not when it comes to weddings. Especially his wedding.

So let’s start at the beginning, which takes place sometime between the big bang and a few months ago.

After four years of dating, Tom had asked Katie to marry him. If you haven’t already gathered by now; she said “yes”.

It wasn’t long until he got permission from her to do something for the wedding; to get Bodean’s to provide the catering for the wedding reception.

I already knew that it was something Tom had already planned, so in my mind that question had come about probably quicker than it had in real life. In my mind, the proposal went something like this;

Katie: This has been an absolutely wonderful day.
Tom: I know. And I’d like to ask you something.
Tom flaps his arms excitedly like a penguin, then gets down on one knee to present a box containing the ring.
Tom: Katie, will you marry me?
Katie: Yes! I will, yes!!
Tom: Fantastic! And please can we have Bodeans cater for the wedding?
Katie: Ye… Wait, what?
Tom: Bodean’s. They need to cater. It will be full of so much win.
Katie looks at him blankly.
Tom: Pleeeease…?
Katie: Okay.
Tom: Yay! And the wedding cake needs to have penguins on top.
Katie: Fine.
Tom: YER PENGUIN!!

I’m almost certain this is exactly how it happened.

For the uninitiated, Bodean’s is an amazing Kansas City-style American BBQ diner in London. I don’t think that I’ve ever consumed more meat from a single location than I have in Bodean’s. The one that I frequent most is the one in Soho (pictured below in a photo I took shortly after first discovering it).

It’s insane; from BBQ ribs to beef and chicken burgers, it’s all rather spectacular. I even have a membership card! And if you ever do get a chance to visit, I highly recommend that you order the Soho Special.

If you want a sense of the kind of food they usually offer, feast your eyes on this 16oz Prime Beef Burger;

Bodean’s is of course not to be confused with BoDeans – the band who had two good songs featured in the 80s hit movie / extended Nintendo commercial ‘The Wizard’, starring Fred Savage, Beau Bridges and Christian Slater.

A while later, Tom started talking about how we were going to have to get me a suit for the wedding. I was a bit perplexed and confused to be honest, as this sounded like I was in the midst of something that was being organised. What Tom didn’t realise – and was the basis for my confusion – was that he had forgotten to ask me to be one of his ushers. He had simply thought that he had already told me and erroneously assumed I knew.

The ironic thing about him telling me to get a suit (besides the challenge that I had in simply getting measured for a suit for Dave’s wedding) was that Tom wasn’t going to wear a suit originally. However one of his parents (I forget which, but it was probably his mother) encouraged him otherwise. And for his first time wearing a suit, he looked marvellous in it. And it had Penguin cufflinks!

When I was on my way to the wedding, my train app said that I should have arrived at Woking (where the wedding was taking place). But I wasn’t even half-way there. Panicking that I was going to be late, I informed Tom that I might be on the wrong train. [Those of you who know me will know that this isn't much of a surprise].

Then I got a call from Tom asking me to look out the window. “Do you see a bunch of green fields?” he asked. “Yes”, I replied. “Then we’re on the same train”.

I walked through two carriages and there he was with a friend and the Best Man. It was amazing. I’m never that lucky with transport.

Aside from Tom getting confused over which hand to put the ring on his beautiful new bride, the wedding itself went superbly. It was followed by some fantastic cakes (which you can imagine I promptly devoured) and his wedding now holds the record for the quickest and least stressful photo-shoot ever. It’s just one of those weddings that you couldn’t fault.

Plus it goes without saying that the two of them looked absolutely fantastic together on their special day.

By the time we got to the reception (I admittedly almost got my friend Sharon and a few others lost on the way) I immediately found myself face to face with the definition of squeee! For there in front of me, was this;

As I said; squeee!

My friend Diego and I also attempted to troll the Best Man by writing “The Game” on the top of the second page of his Best Man Speech. We got him, but sadly whilst he was rehearsing shortly beforehand, not during the actual speech itself. Pity.

When it came to the food, it was later decreed by the Best Man that rather than go by table order, tables would be allowed to grab their Bodean’s catered meal (essentially a smoked hog roast) by having the table number drawn from a hat as opposed to going in table order.

Considering that we were on table 11, I was rather happy with that decision after our number was called out quite early on.

A girl also gave us cards to write a message to the happy couple. Considering that Tom is a software engineer – and I’m a huge nerd – once the idea had popped into my head, I simply couldn’t resist doing the following;

And thus, I have invented the Nom-Loop. Epic Nom-Loop is epic.

So, all in all a good day. And I had three servings of Bodean’s. Although I suppose that it could be argued that I had four, as I managed to talk them into giving me two helpings for my second serving.

But what amused me most was probably the semi-awkward conversation I had with Tom’s grandmother, who wasn’t aware that Tom has an addiction to penguins.

Of course, she does now.

Sorry Tom.

April the 11th 1992.

I was the ripe old age of 8 and Nintendo finally got around to unleashing their 16-Bit beefcake of a console onto the unsuspecting UK masses. I remember the first time I saw one, I was watching a weekend kids TV show on BBC called Parallel 9. This aired in the summer months before the Phillip Schofield/Sarah Green fest that was Going Live took over in the autumn. Anyways, they briefly did a feature on the Super Nintendo and demoed some games, F-Zero springs to mind. It was supposedly amazing because it was “all 16-Bit and shit”.

The Essex outpost of Frinton-On-Sea where I lived was a Sega stronghold. Overall the UK was pretty much enamoured with the Amiga and ST at this time. Games consoles were a smaller market (hard to believe these days), with the Sega Master System the most popular, and the just-over-a-year-old Mega Drive (aka the Genesis for our friends in the US) gaining a foothold. The NES was waaaay behind – hard to believe if you’re American – but I didnt know anybody that had a NES. If you had a games console you owned a Master System.

The video game crash of 1983 never really happened in the UK. We were too busy going apeshit over the ZX Spectrum and Commordore 64. A healthy industry had sprouted to support them. Gamers weren’t interested in the NES when it landed in the UK in 1987. Why buy a games console when I could get a C64, program my own games as well as play them? Games consoles were for kids. Fuck games consoles. So…the great games crash never happened here.

In fact I think the SNES was the first successful Nintendo console in the UK. Well, maybe the Game Boy actually was, but the SNES was the first one that you popped into a telly. As I mentioned earlier, Essex was a Sega stronghold and I’m ashamed to say I never owned a SNES in its heyday. I was a big Mega Drive fan, but deep down I knew the “Snintendo” was superior. The first thing that struck me was the colours! 256 of the bastards! On screen! At once! The Mega Drive could only do 64 colours at once, resulting in a duller, grainier look. Then the SNES came out and developers dithered the shit out of Mega Drive games to generate the illusion of more colours. Even the music on a SNES sounded better; it sounded more like ACTUAL music, instead of the Mega Drive bleeptasia.

Games like Starwing (Starfox for our American friends), Street Fighter 2 and Mortal Kombat 2 made the Snintendo seem almost like a generational step up from the Mega Drive. To be fair though SEGA stepped up their game after the SNES came out. Using “blast processing” and creating games like Sonic The Hedgehog helped it to catch up somewhat.

Nintendo responded by cramming fucktons of support chips into game carts to make the SNES do crazy shit. The most impressive being the legendary Super FX chip in Starwing, amongst others. It was kinda like plugging another console into your SNES that just passed through the controller ports and video output to produce better looking games.

Enough from me. Get out there, buy a SNES, throw away that Modern Warfare bullshit people are playing these days and rock some serious Mario All-Stars / Final Fight / Mega Man X / Super Castlvania 4 / Starwing / Street Fighter 2 / etc. You wont regret it.

Happy birthday SNES!

256 colours!

On screen!

At once!

What I found confusing was that right next to the title was a guy. From what I could make out, he was not a girl – although I’m willing to accept that he’s not the one who’s lost. So instead of an island this time, I’m assuming that this show is about one man trying to find a girl he’s accidentally misplaced; someone who might be a lover, a daughter, or someone who he’s never met but is being paid a butt-load of money to find.

Which brings me to a huge philosophical question; What exactly is the value of a “butt-load of money”? Just how much cash could one theoretically shove up there? And is it customary to measure that volume with coins or with notes? Cheques are obviously cheating in this scenario, as are WH Smith gift cards and McDonalds discount vouchers.

I suppose it also depends on the size of the ass. Which begs the question; is there a specific standard by which we measure the size of someone’s ass to ascertain the maximum amount of money that it can hold?

To me that’s a more important mystery to solve than to bother looking at IMDB for what Lost Girl is about (and like most new things these days – it’s probably about aliens).

I would argue that it’s been a while since we’ve had a good long run of decent movies coming out. That’s not to say that we haven’t had a few epic films appear on the big screen recently, but it’s been a long time since I’ve looked at the list of upcoming movies and gone “I want to see that one. And that one. And that one. That one, that one, that one and that one. And that one. That one I’ll rent. That one I’ll take someone to just to piss them off because it’s obviously going to be shit. BUT OH MY GOD I HAVE TO SEE THAT ONE! …Naked.”

Of course, there’s a couple of “Why the frak are they remaking this?” moments, but on the whole we have a decent line-up over the next couple of years or so. Here’s some highlights (in no particular order) of what I’m looking forward to most and why.

But before we start, I know that I could easily mention The Avengers (which gets released tomorrow in the UK), but I think it’s safe to say that it’s pretty much already a given.

And for those of you lucky enough to be going to see it this week; I hate you.

(Please can I have your ticket?)

Man of Steel

Henry Cavill is set to be the first Superman actor to wear his underpants on the inside. The new costume obviously fits in with the new art direction of the new comics and whilst I’m still not entirely keen on the new wardrobe, I am however absolutely psyched about the movie itself.

Do I know much about the plot?
No.

Do I care?
Of course not.

It’s Superman. Superman is epic. Even if it sucks I’m still going to watch it because I think Superman is awesome. And if you don’t agree then you can go suck General Zod’s…

Iron Man 3

If a third outing for the man of iron in The Avengers wasn’t enough, he’s making a return appearance to complete the trilogy of movies – assuming of course that they don’t stretch it into a quadrilogy later on.

I haven’t read much about the premise of the movie, but given that the film is still in pre-production and I’ve yet to see The Avengers, I don’t really care.

All that matters is that it’s coming out pretty much one year from now and I’m going to need to see it.

The Amazing Spider-Man

Really?

REALLY?!

Don’t get me wrong, whilst I was always predominantly a DC fan growing up, Spider-Man was quite easily my favourite of the Marvel characters. What I don’t understand though is how they’re rebooting this franchise so soon after the previous reboot.

I’m fine with the fact that they’re basing it on a different series of comics, but… REALLY!?

As much as we may all protest, we all know that we’re going to see it at the cinema.

The Dark Knight Rises

The epic conclusion to Christopher Nolan’s Batman trilogy; Christian Bale returns to end the legend.

I saw the trailer for this once. I never want to see the trailer again. I just want to walk into a dark theatre and have this amazing spectacle burst through my eyeballs, out through my retinas and then blow my mind out of the back of my skull without any foreknowledge about what’s going to happen.

I only have two further words to say on the matter; IMAX BABY!

Dredd and Total Recall

Arnie and Stallone are both finding their previous movies are being given a huge reboot up the ass.

Total Recall has Colin Farrell playing the role of Arnie’s Douglas Quaid character in a far more serious-looking take of the movie. The trailer looks interesting, but the original was pure 90s Arnie fun thanks to the direction of Paul Verhoeven. From what I’ve seen of the new trailer; it doesn’t look like there’s going to be much humour, it doesn’t look like there’s going to be many Arnold-esque one-liners, and I don’t think it’s likely that we’ll be seeing any three-breasted mutants this time around.

In addition, Judge Dredd has been keeping a low profile upon his return, this time being played by Star Trek’s Karl Urban. I was never into the comics but Stallone’s portrayal of Dredd was pretty enjoyable. If it wasn’t for Urban’s fantastic performance as Dr McCoy, I’m not sure I’d be nearly as intrigued about this movie as I currently am.

Brave

I’m a huuuuge Pixar fan. I have never once been disappointed by anything they’ve made. As far as I’m concerned, not only are they fantastic at computer animation but they’re also absolute masters of storytelling.

And this time their story is set in Scotland, featuring their first female lead. And I’m half-Scottish and like females, so this is a win for me.

Prometheus

Ridley Scott pretty much created and defined this entire genre with movies like Alien.

Originally set to be a prequel to Alien, this movie now stands alone in its own right, albeit in the same fictional universe. It’s being billed as a whole new groundbreaking mythology in which a team of explorers discover a clue to the origins of mankind on Earth, leading them on a thrilling journey to the darkest corners of the universe. There, they must fight a terrifying battle to save the future of the human race.

If there are people out there who aren’t even remotely excited about this movie then I don’t want to live on this planet anymore.

Untitled Star Trek Sequel

Quite possibly the one I’m most excited about on this list and it doesn’t even have a name! It’s a difficult thing to come up with though, because we already have a “Star Trek 2″ in the form of Star Trek II: The Wrath of Khan.

The first movie was titled Star Trek: The Motion Picture and when Abrams came along to start off a whole new timeline in the franchise, his first movie dropped the suffix and was simply titled Star Trek. So I’m curious as to if we’ll even continue to have numbers and instead just go with a simple numberless title?

Only time will tell. As for the plot, Abrams has tried to keep everything under wraps. There’s talk that Khan is involved, which would no-doubt require the film to borrow some elements from the Original Series episode Space Seed (which was the first time we were introduced to Kirk’s eventual nemesis).

But do you need a reason bigger than the fact that the legendary Benedict Cumberbatch is playing a villain in this movie!? Abrams is being very tight-lipped about exactly which character it is that Mr Cumberbatch is playing. We’ll probably have to wait until production has been completed before we find out if it’s Khan that he’s playing or not (my bet is that it’s not Khan – but I guess we really shouldn’t speculate on such things).

All I know is that when this movie gets released I’ll be at the IMAX cinema quicker than you could beam a tribble into a Klingon warrior’s underpants.

Other moooooovies

So obviously we’ll be here all day if I go through every other movie in as much depth, so here’s a quick run-through of some other movies that have caught my attention recently;

Looper
We already know that time travel and Bruce Willis are an epic combination (12 Monkeys, anyone?) so it stands to reason that this will be epic. Quite an intriguing premise too.

Men in Black III
Another time travel movie; J travels back to the 1960s to meet the younger incarnation of K. I really am a sucker for time travel movies…

Battleship
Seconds before clicking on the trailer, I thought “This couldn’t possibly be based on the Hasbro game, could it?”. It is. And it features aliens. Because nothing says “How can we get more people to see a movie about a board game” than “NEEDS MOAR ALIENS!”.

The Wolverine
Another one? Awesome Marvel character but, meh? Still gonna watch it though.

The Flash
WELL IT’S ABOUT FRICKING TIME!! (Not to be confused with the new Flash Gordon remake).

The Hobbit: Part I
Yes. Yes. Yes. My precious. Yes.

The Hobbit: Part II
I’ll have what she’s having.

ATM
Hah just kidding. This one looks shit.

Ted
Family Guy creator Seth Macfarlane hits the big screen with a story about a kid who wishes his teddy bear was alive. Except now he’s an adult and ‘Ted’ is an alcoholic stoner. Awesome.

Comic-Con Episode IV: A Fan’s Hope
A documentary of geeky proportions. Squeee!

Apparently there’s also Teen Titans, Venom, a Justice League movie (again; about fricking time), Kick-Ass 2, a Logan’s Run remake, Die Hard 5, Thundercats and a bunch of other DC and Marvel character movies rumoured to be in the works.

Over the next couple of years I’m about to become very very bankrupt.

And Finally…

Ninja Turtles

That’s right; Michael Bay is at it again, this time with the Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles.

I had mixed feelings about his live-action Transformers movies. Some things about it were epic. Other parts were equally bad (and not only because the dude doesn’t seem to know how to pan out once in a while). And so for various reasons, I really don’t have much faith in him and his films anymore.

With regards to his latest outing, rumour also has it that this new Turtles movie has an origin story that involves aliens.

Now in addition to my love of Star Trek, Pixar and pretty much anything that involves time travel, I was also a huge TMNT fan growing up. Ever since the original 80s cartoon appeared on British TV screens I’ve been hooked. Although granted, not as much as this girl;

One of the reasons why my posting has been a bit sparse on here lately is because a lot of my free time has been taken up with [what I'll loosely classify as] further research into the TMNT franchise. I’ve been having a huge Turtles marathon recently, re-visiting all the movies, the various cartoon series, re-playing some of the older video games and for the very first time I’ve even delved into the original source material.

So stay tuned because despite my prejudices against Michael Bay, I will soon be explaining exactly why I think this movie is going to be awesome. And also why I’m convinced that any alien-related story is not going to be a bad thing.

While watching Star Trek: Enterprise with my girlfriend last night, it occurred to me that there’s a large number of episodes that involve a character being captured and placed in an alien prison. I also thought that if you took all the episodes of Star Trek with this premise you could build an entire series around it. Enterprise seems to have lots of these “space prison” episodes, with Captain Archer captured for some reason every other week. Out of boredom I’ve decided to list all the Space Prison episodes of Star Trek.

Original Series:

The Cage. Captain Pike gets captured (it happens in the first fucking episode!!!).

Arena. Kirk gets captured and dumped on a planet, not exactly a prison but fuck it!

Catspaw

Bread and Circuses

The Gamesters of Triskelion

Patterns of Force. Kirk and Spock are captured by space nazis. If you make a Star Trek series, Nazis have to appear at some point.

The Omega Glory

Spectre of the Gun

The Empath

Platos Stepchildren

Whom Gods Destroy

The Savage Curtain

Okay so some episodes dont exactly involve being thrown in an actual prison, but is some capturing involved which is good enough for me.

Star Trek: The Next Generation

Code of Honour. Tasha Yar, who ironically is “security chief” gets captured! LMAO.

The Last Outpost.

Justice. Wesley Crusher breaks some flowers and is held captive by half naked people who run everywhere.

Hide and Q

The Big Goodbye. The first in a sub-genre that frequently appears in Star Trek, “trapped on the holo-deck!!!”. So technically JLP and co are captured by things that don’t exist.

11001001

When the Bough Break. Wesley gets captured. Again. Shame.

Skin of Evil. Some of the Enterprise crew are held captive by a bloke trapped in a bin-bag (Armus).

Where Silence has Lease. The Enterprise is captured by a giant face (Nagilum).

Elementary Dear Data. “Trapped on the Holodeck” No.2

The Royale

Samaritan Snare.

Fuck me, I’m only up to the end of the second season of TNG and there’s already enough episodes here to make a self contained “space prison!” series! If people aren’t bored already I’ll carry on documenting all the times someone gets captured in Star Trek. It will make for an interesting study in how often this particular premise was recycled in Star Trek.