Why Part 1? Because there's a lot of terrible music out there. And by next week, there will be even more. All we can really hope to do is tackle it in little chunks of awfulness, a bit at a time.
In a bid to go a bit multimedia, I have created a playlist on Spotify, so, if you have Spotify and are feeling masochistic, you can listen to the crap discussed in this article at Pony and Tracks - I was going to call it "Now That's What I Call Pony vol 1", but instead opted for "Pony and Tracks". That's right. It is a terrible, terrible pun.
If you don't have Spotify, just print off this list and give it to the "DJ" next time you're at a wedding. He will have all of these songs, guaranteed, and will be more than happy to play them for you, although he will babble incomprehensibly far too close in to the microphone at random intervals, like the guy from Phoenix Nights who goes "Shabba!". Everybody will thank you, because at least none of these songs actually have their own special dance...
This first list only goes as far back as the mid nineties. As I said - little chunks of awfulness, a bit at a time.
Track 1: Girlfriend - Billie Piper
What is really fucked up, and what a lot of people forget, is that when 15 year old Billie Piper brought out the truly awful track "Because We Want To" in the mid nineties, which somehow got to number 1, a then unknown from the States was about to release a single called "Baby One More Time", and she was billed in the paper as "America's Answer to Billie"... Now you have to admit, that is fucked up.
Billie's records were all, without exception, dreadful, and with the horsey teeth and denim, and the weird black eyebrows (she still has those), she was no match for Britney as slutty jailbait either, which explains why she went a bit fucked up long before Spears did.
OK, so she didn't lose the plot quite as spectacularly as Britney, but she did marry freckly ginger Chris Evans, spend all her time in the pub, and get a bit fat. I suppose actually that's not really that bad or that interesting. Not in the age of Winehouse. But still, the songs really were turds.
The one I have selected is "Girlfriend". This is about Billie trying to chat up some boy by going "Do you have a girlfriend? You're looking real cool!"... Yeah, about as cool as my arse. You could make a mash-up, if you had mad mixing skills, of this with "Girlfriend" by Avril Lavigne, and make a song basically so bad it could probably be used to train attack dogs.
If you look at the Spotify playlist you will see that the album this comes from is called "The Very Best of Billie Piper". Not just "The Best", but "The Very Best", as if there were a load of other Billie Piper songs that were really good but not quite "The Very Best", this is la creme de la creme, the first pressed extra virgin, special reserve of Billie Piper's music. Bollocks.
Track 2: Chasing Cars - Snow Patrol
Hey everybody! It's Self-Harm Sally's favourite song!
This turgid, miserable thing was on the damn radio all the time. At Christmas, as well. There would be like, Wizzard, then that horrible cover of Santa Baby by Kylie that makes you feel dirty and wrong, then this.
It sounds all depressing and that, but if you actually listen to the words it's utter nonsense. Like, to the same degree as David Bowie when he used to make up lyrics by getting random words out of newspapers. "Let's waste time chasing cars around our heads" (yes, it does take about thirty seconds for the whiney gimp that sings it to get that sentence out, but that is what he says). Chasing cars you say? Like dogs? Only in our heads? What the fuck are you talking about you cunt? Can't we waste time by, I don't know, going on the XBox or Googling ourselves instead? Christ even Farmville sounds more fun than what you're proposing there.
"If I just lay here, would you lie with me and just forget the world?". No. I would kick you to fucking death you lazy shit for brains twat. Now get up, this is fucking Primark (honestly, in the video where he's just lying in places. What a fucking knob).
Track 3: Dance The Night Away - The Mavericks
In putting together this list, I listened to most of the tracks, you know, to remind myself how bad they are and to help me think of things to write about them. This one I couldn't make it past the intro. If this song comes on I get that same horrible sense of panic one gets when one's head is stuck in something. Like all that matters in that moment is making it fucking stop. Neutralising the situation. I once shoplifted from Asda because it came on and I ran out of there, still clutching a bottle of Diet Coke. THERE WASN'T TIME TO PUT IT BACK.
OK so it was only a bottle of Diet Coke from Asda, but it could have been anything of any value and I maintain no judge in the land would have sent me down for that if my defence played him this song.
What is quite so bad about it I can't quite put my finger on, I mean, sure, it's really annoying, but so are lots of things, and for some reason I would rather have three hours of the Crazy Frog, the Macarena or even "Teletubbies say 'Eh-Oh'" than three minutes of this. Honestly, it makes me want to bite people.
Track 4: 3 Words - Cheryl Cole and Will.i.am
If you've read this blog before, you are probably aware of the fact that I would really like it if Cheryl Cole wasn't fucking everywhere, all of the fucking time, but that isn't actually the reason this song made it onto the list.
Her first solo single, "Fight for this Love", I don't really have any beef with. It was catchy pop for the kind of people who like that sort of thing, and if you didn't like that sort of thing you could just make jokes about the fact she's a geordie singing about fighting (guess what I did?). Also she wears this fucking stupid sequin tiger skin hoodie at some point in the video and I reckon some wardrobe guy is still sitting pretty on the money he won betting a mate he could make her wear that.
This song, 3 Words, is just weird though. Weird and boring. And a bit creepy. Weird, boring and creepy - not good features to have in a song.
I don't think we need to go into the quite obvious and cynical reasons for collaborating with Will.i.am (who I am going to call William in any future mentions because Will.i.am is a fucking stupid name), who is the guy from the Black Eyed Peas, or one of the Guys from the Black Eyed Peas, I don't know how many of them there are that aren't the woman one.
Would you like to "break America", Cheryl? Oh, yes please pet, I'd reet like that, pet. Seriously? We'd never have fucking guessed...
I think we can expect a lot more collaborations between Cheryl Cole and American artists, who I think we can safely assume will all be black (she carries a little card around with her now reminding her not to call, say, Kanye West, a jigaboo), but don't worry, American readers (ha! Fuck you Cheryl, they like me!), if the standard is as poor as this monotonous offering she won't be troubling you any time soon.
Track 5: Virtual Insanity - Jamiroquai
I know what you're thinking. How do you pick just one song by that madcap cunty hat wearing retard Jamiroquai, given that they all sound the exact fucking same? All in his special brand of withered twatfunk?
Well, I went for this one because this is one of his more preachy ones. Preachy about some sort of sci-fi shit that isn't even actually happening.
"Now every mother can chose the colour of their child, well that's not nature's way"... Well, I can only assume with the rest of the song being about "twisting of their new technology" he means that in some sort of genetically modified babies sort of way, as opposed to just having a pop at inter-racial couples, though I could be wrong. Maybe he is actually just a big old racist. He did go out with Denise van Outen (why, Denise, why?) and she is pretty Aryan master race looking. Hmmmmmm, could we do a collaboration with Cheryl Cole, maybe? It'd be a grand thing, it could be called "I ain't Gonna Bump no More (with no Jigaboo)". Nick Griffin could use it as his theme song for the election like Blair did with "Things can only get Better" by D-Ream. Maybe that should have been on the list, thinking about it, it was diabolical. Anyway, I digress.
Jamirocunt does get a bit carried away with the old sci-fi at the best of times. Singing about cosmic girls from another galaxy, and having to live underground because of roaming herds of Godzillas. It's his third biggest interest after sulking about not having been the fastest celebrity on Top Gear for about ten years and twatty hats. But in this song it's like he's warning us. Take a fucking peek at yourself, people on Earth. All this crazy shit you're doing. It's bad. Jamirocunt has seen the future, and it's bad. Godzillas, man, I'm telling you.
Lay off the drugs, son, and maybe they'll let you have your license back.
Track 6: Heartbeat - Scouting for Girls
There were a few bands like this a couple of years ago. This shower of bastards, The Hoosiers, The Ordinary Boys. Irritating sub indie twatpop. Scouting for Girls annoyed me most because their songs were somehow a bit more gay. It was a toss up, and I mean it, between this piece of dreadful catspunk and "She's so Lovely". That was always on TV, whenever there was a woman who had just had a makeover by Gok or somesuch, or just whenever there was a woman (if there was more than one woman it would be "Here Come the Girls").
This one came out a bit later, when you thought "She's so Lovely" had gone away, and it was, if I'm not very much mistaken, the very self same song! It's about a lovely girl! It has an annoying a-rinky-dinky-dink sort of sound! A shit video of some scruffy art school looking prick playing a piano! It's the same song! It was back!
And it has the same name as that really crap TV show that was on ITV on Sunday nights. It might even still be on, I don't know.
Track 7: Life for Rent - Dido
Are you a boring, slightly frumpy single woman in your thirties, who thinks Bridget Jones's Diary, which was a made up story, is about you? You'll be wanting to listen to Dido then.
Oh, my stars. How dreary is her voice. It's like she's had a stroke and can't annunciate the consonants in the words. If she has, then I'm sorry, fair play to the woman for selling all those records with stroke face, but really, it is not a nice sound, all those words just blurring together like melted cheese. She looks about as dreary as she sounds too. Like some woman that might live alone in the flat upstairs from you who always has a big cardigan on and who you imagine wears pyjamas with animals on in bed might look when she's going to the corner shop. Only she's not going to the corner shop, she's performing at fucking Live 8. Make an effort you bland, bland lump of plainness!
And the song itself. Fucking miserable. She's bored, she's depressed. Her life is going nowhere. She'd like to go travelling but she can't be arsed. Blah blah blah blah blah. This would be boring if your best friend was saying it to you after too much wine, it's even worse coming from someone who you know is actually, for reasons you can't fathom, a multi million selling multi millionaire. Is there also some sort of subliminal new Labour theme here about how if you don't get on the property ladder you "deserve nothing more than you get"? Fuck you Dido. Fuck you trying to get me into negative equity with your dismal song.
Track 8 - Haven't Met You Yet - Michael Buble
Michael Buble was originally know for doing hacky covers of old swing songs, and for being someone your aunt might fancy. He has a pretty good voice, nobody is disputing that, but no one much in the UK gave a shit about this because Robbie Williams had done all those songs years ago, and then so had bloody Westlife.
In 2009, when the X Factor went two nights a week (just so Cheryl Cole could be fucking everywhere, all of the fucking time a bit more, I'd wager), it became compulsory, for reasons I could never quite figure out, to have some act on on the Sunday night show that either hadn't been heard of in years (Whitney Houston, Mariah Carey, Bon fucking Jovi), or that nobody gave a rat's tiny arsehole about (Buble). The contestants would make out that the act was their biggest hero and influence, even though they were 16 and had had to ask Dannii Minogue (the shit Minogue sister - honestly, would you bank on that woman to make you a star?) what a Bon Jovi was backstage.
Buble's appearance on the show was to plug the release of this single. Not, as the world was accustomed to, an old song we already knew, just with Buble singing it as close as he could to the original, but a new song, a new song just for Michael Buble to sing, all of his very own. Seemed like a good plan.
Trouble is, it is fucking rubbish, isn't it?
It's a love song, but with a twist! He doesn't know the girl yet! He's desperate for a bird! He's gone a bit match.com with the whole thing! He's got so much to give, but he hasn't met her yet! That is a stupid idea for a song, for a start. Then, there's the plinky plonk pianos. Did the guy from Scouting for Girls fucking write this for him? It was always going to do alright, because as I said, he does have a decent voice, but if you are going to take someone who is a big star in certain circles for singing covers and try and branch him into doing new material then is this cheap, lightweight crap the best song they could find for him? And that video with the shopping trolley and shit? Crap. Total crap.
Track 9: Wild Horses - Susan Boyle
This song was also debuted on one of those Sunday night X Factor shows, to pad out the bit that only needed to take five minutes where they tell you who has been booted back into obscurity that week to a full hour long programme. But was I the only person thinking, "fuck me, Susan Boyle singing the Rolling Stones? Was that not in the book of Revelations as one of the harbingers of the apocalypse?"?
A lot of the appreciation for this, and I may be being a little harsh here, mess of a woman's voice really came from the shock value. It was some sort of mad cat lady from Scotland with a face like melted Lego that had been rolled on a dog blanket to pick up fur. It claimed, and nobody for a second disbelieved the claim, that it had "never been kissed". You were just waiting for her to do some crazy, scary thing on the Britain's Got Talent stage, maybe some sort of nightmarish magic trick that would make Piers "the cunt" Morgan's head turn 360 degrees, or just some very bad puppet theatre. But no, she sang, and the sound wasn't actually hellish. It made Amanda Holden cry, but then she did that when those fat Greek people did some comedy Irish dancing as well - woman needs to get some fucking help if you ask me.
Su-Bo, as she became affectionately known, didn't win the show, and there were some reports that she had gone a bit mental from the fame (but nobody told us whether she had got laid yet, which I felt was most unfair on the public), so it seemed like that was the end of the crazy ride on the Boyle train for Britain as a whole. But then this, the X Factor appearance, and the Rolling Stones song.
The trouble with it was, apart from the fact it is a very fucked up and bizarre choice of song for someone who had only ever done some old thing out of Les Miserables on TV before, that it got played on the radio and sold as a CD and download. It got played in situations where you couldn't see how ugly she was when you were hearing it. And if you listen to it without that whole, wow, it looks like a manatee thing, her voice is pretty mediocre. This is possibly the only case ever of someone's ugliness launching a music career that they would not otherwise have had...
So, that was volume 1 of the most terrible music ever made. Please feel free to make suggestions of tracks you hate. Volume 2 will be released soon.
Monday, 5 April 2010
Sunday, 4 April 2010
Local Tourist Attractions
It's still Easter. Everything was shut today, because some people are still labouring under the misapprehension that this day is somehow significant. Well, everything apart from the pubs, happily, and those off licenses with the blue carrier bags that never, ever seem to shut. That's the backbone of Britain right there. Pubs, and blue offy bags.
As a result of this, you are now either off your face, or bored out of your mind, and there's more of it to come tomorrow.
One way you could spend the Easter Bank Holiday Monday, is going for a lovely wholesome day out to a local tourist attraction. This is easier if you have access to children (no, not in the "show me on the doll where he touched you" sense, I just mean like, you have kids or nieces and nephews or whatever), because they are easily impressed and if you suggest any of this to your mates and none of you are high they're just going to mug you off. That crate of Stella Asda are doing for a tenner isn't going to drink itself.
You could go to Alton Towers or Chessington World of Adventures, or if you're in London one of the many pretty cool things they have there, but odds are that'll seem like a bit of a mission what with the hangover and the fact the kids, if you've managed to commandeer any, are going to be unbearably sugared up having spent all weekend gorging on chocolate. You don't want to actually do anything exciting because you will all be sick, so you are more likely to end up heading out to a more low rent local alternative.
There are some pretty staggeringly shit places out there. Usually the prime hunting ground for crap tourist attractions is the kind of places those weirdos who go to another part of England on holiday go to (even though it's cheaper to go to Greece or Spain where you won't have quite such a horrible time and can make the holiday pay for itself by bringing back a load of fags). Places like the South Coast. Places like that. These places, Cornwall, Devon, Dorset etc., are absolutely fucking teeming with really bizarre "attractions". Not bizarre as in they have a cat with three heads and a bearded lady (though if you want to see a bearded lady there's one who hangs around the bus station in Guildford - it's a proper, ZZ Top style beard as well, not just a bit of fuzz), but bizarre as in, why the fuck did they build this?
Cornwall has a place you can actually go to, seriously, I went there when I was a kid and I've checked I didn't dream it and it is somehow, over 20 years later, still in business, called Dairyland. It's a theme park, where the theme is cows. That's right, those big animals that do fuck all. One of the attractions boasted on its very shit, early 90's looking website includes "Milking Clarabelle". Am I just a very disgusting person for thinking that sounds like some kind of very niche porno?
Honestly, there are cultures in the world that believe cows to be sacred and worship them, and even they don't put up fucking theme parks in their honour. How much interest can a child really be expected to have in a bunch of steak stuffed in a leather handbag, crapping, mooing and having milk squeezed out of its weird boobs? It bloody stinks as well, undoubtedly. So, you could go there.
Another thing that they have in Cornwall, the arse end of nowhere, is a place called Flambards, which, again, has been there, somehow surviving, for my entire life. You know a theme park is going to be pretty crap when they boast on the TV about having Britain's "Most Southerly Rollercoaster". How far south it is within the UK is not really a statistic that is important when discussing rollercoasters, is it? Is it the biggest? Hell no! It's fucking tiny! Is it the fastest? Noooo, in fact it is incredibly fucking pedestrian, that is why we put an old lady on the advert riding it. OK, so, er, does it go upside down more than all the others? No, that it does not do, not even once - there is a bit where it stops quite suddenly and you hurt your groin, but we didn't think that "Most likely to render you infertile" was snappy enough so we're going with "Most Southerly".
It's called the Hornet. The only way they could make it scary is to place an actual hornets' nest in each of the little cars. Then, when you collected the photos at the end of the ride (yes, they actually bother with that, as if it's something good that you are going to want to remember happened to you), instead of everyone looking underwhelmed, some people would look all sort of red and puffy as they go into anaphylactic shock from the stings. I'd be scared of that. I fucking hate wasps and shit (another reason why these places all suck, they get very waspy on account of all the ice cream and whatnot. There is usually a candy floss machine with wasps actually crawling around inside of it. Do not want.).
Moving out of Cornwall and the realm of awful theme parks, though these are by no means restricted to the region, you can find something just as piss poor anywhere round the entire coast of the UK I would wager, what if you fancy a bit of nature?
From Poole or Bournemouth in Dorset you can take a day trip by boat to a place called Brownsea Island. The name doesn't sound appealing, does it? Brownsea? Brown sea? Why is the sea brown? Is it sewage? Nice.
The main selling point of this small island as a tourist attraction is, get this, it has squirrels that are ginger.
There aren't many places you get ginger squirrels in the UK. This is because the normal ones, sorry, I mean the grey ones, kill them or some shit. Whether this is squirrel racism or whether some sort of evolutionary thing has just meant the normal ones, sorry, grey ones are somehow better equipped to survive, perhaps better camouflaged, than the ginger ones I don't know. It's probably the latter, although a squirrel race war would make a great cartoon. In any case, if you want to go and walk around some woods looking for genetically inferior squirrels that can't survive on the mainland, and which look exactly the same as the ones in your office car park if they'd been Tango'd, this is the day out for you.
Incidentally, I know someone who thinks ginger people have no souls and when they die they end up in limbo. Even that cute little girl off of Doctor Who and my mate Sarah. A lot of people just say they smell of fox piss. Not me, just you know, other people.
The National Trust also offers a wealth of other nature walks and boring stuff like that. I can see why that might be fun in other countries where they have bears or snakes or fucking tigers and stuff, cool animals, but in England all the wild animals are boring and brown, apart from badgers which are fairly cool and apparently dead vicious, but you only ever see them when they're dying by the road. I don't think they're hard at all, or they would come out and fucking face us like men.
You are probably just going to see more squirrels, some ducks, and if you are most especially unlucky a fucking swan. The swan is an evil bastard. Why the queen loves the fuckers and won't let you kill and eat them I have no idea, she has obviously never had one chase her making that devil sound they make. It's a shame, because it does look like there is good eating on one. Whether killing a swan actually constitutes treason, the only offence you can still be executed for in Britain, I do not know, but I'm not risking it no matter how good I reckon its leg would be. Kentucky Fried Swan. Omnomnomnomnom.
A mate of mine did once get told off at work for bitch slapping a swan across the face because it was blocking his entrance into his office (which was next to a big pond, it wasn't just a random swan). I would love to see that. A man slapping a swan across the fucking face. Break my arm would you? You fucking reckon? Come on then, let's be having you, you long necked bastard! THWACK!
That's how I imagine it went.
So, there's a few options for you anyway. Let me know if you find anything else really pony to do and see near you. I know you won't let me down.
As a result of this, you are now either off your face, or bored out of your mind, and there's more of it to come tomorrow.
One way you could spend the Easter Bank Holiday Monday, is going for a lovely wholesome day out to a local tourist attraction. This is easier if you have access to children (no, not in the "show me on the doll where he touched you" sense, I just mean like, you have kids or nieces and nephews or whatever), because they are easily impressed and if you suggest any of this to your mates and none of you are high they're just going to mug you off. That crate of Stella Asda are doing for a tenner isn't going to drink itself.
You could go to Alton Towers or Chessington World of Adventures, or if you're in London one of the many pretty cool things they have there, but odds are that'll seem like a bit of a mission what with the hangover and the fact the kids, if you've managed to commandeer any, are going to be unbearably sugared up having spent all weekend gorging on chocolate. You don't want to actually do anything exciting because you will all be sick, so you are more likely to end up heading out to a more low rent local alternative.
There are some pretty staggeringly shit places out there. Usually the prime hunting ground for crap tourist attractions is the kind of places those weirdos who go to another part of England on holiday go to (even though it's cheaper to go to Greece or Spain where you won't have quite such a horrible time and can make the holiday pay for itself by bringing back a load of fags). Places like the South Coast. Places like that. These places, Cornwall, Devon, Dorset etc., are absolutely fucking teeming with really bizarre "attractions". Not bizarre as in they have a cat with three heads and a bearded lady (though if you want to see a bearded lady there's one who hangs around the bus station in Guildford - it's a proper, ZZ Top style beard as well, not just a bit of fuzz), but bizarre as in, why the fuck did they build this?
Cornwall has a place you can actually go to, seriously, I went there when I was a kid and I've checked I didn't dream it and it is somehow, over 20 years later, still in business, called Dairyland. It's a theme park, where the theme is cows. That's right, those big animals that do fuck all. One of the attractions boasted on its very shit, early 90's looking website includes "Milking Clarabelle". Am I just a very disgusting person for thinking that sounds like some kind of very niche porno?
Honestly, there are cultures in the world that believe cows to be sacred and worship them, and even they don't put up fucking theme parks in their honour. How much interest can a child really be expected to have in a bunch of steak stuffed in a leather handbag, crapping, mooing and having milk squeezed out of its weird boobs? It bloody stinks as well, undoubtedly. So, you could go there.
Another thing that they have in Cornwall, the arse end of nowhere, is a place called Flambards, which, again, has been there, somehow surviving, for my entire life. You know a theme park is going to be pretty crap when they boast on the TV about having Britain's "Most Southerly Rollercoaster". How far south it is within the UK is not really a statistic that is important when discussing rollercoasters, is it? Is it the biggest? Hell no! It's fucking tiny! Is it the fastest? Noooo, in fact it is incredibly fucking pedestrian, that is why we put an old lady on the advert riding it. OK, so, er, does it go upside down more than all the others? No, that it does not do, not even once - there is a bit where it stops quite suddenly and you hurt your groin, but we didn't think that "Most likely to render you infertile" was snappy enough so we're going with "Most Southerly".
It's called the Hornet. The only way they could make it scary is to place an actual hornets' nest in each of the little cars. Then, when you collected the photos at the end of the ride (yes, they actually bother with that, as if it's something good that you are going to want to remember happened to you), instead of everyone looking underwhelmed, some people would look all sort of red and puffy as they go into anaphylactic shock from the stings. I'd be scared of that. I fucking hate wasps and shit (another reason why these places all suck, they get very waspy on account of all the ice cream and whatnot. There is usually a candy floss machine with wasps actually crawling around inside of it. Do not want.).
Moving out of Cornwall and the realm of awful theme parks, though these are by no means restricted to the region, you can find something just as piss poor anywhere round the entire coast of the UK I would wager, what if you fancy a bit of nature?
From Poole or Bournemouth in Dorset you can take a day trip by boat to a place called Brownsea Island. The name doesn't sound appealing, does it? Brownsea? Brown sea? Why is the sea brown? Is it sewage? Nice.
The main selling point of this small island as a tourist attraction is, get this, it has squirrels that are ginger.
There aren't many places you get ginger squirrels in the UK. This is because the normal ones, sorry, I mean the grey ones, kill them or some shit. Whether this is squirrel racism or whether some sort of evolutionary thing has just meant the normal ones, sorry, grey ones are somehow better equipped to survive, perhaps better camouflaged, than the ginger ones I don't know. It's probably the latter, although a squirrel race war would make a great cartoon. In any case, if you want to go and walk around some woods looking for genetically inferior squirrels that can't survive on the mainland, and which look exactly the same as the ones in your office car park if they'd been Tango'd, this is the day out for you.
Incidentally, I know someone who thinks ginger people have no souls and when they die they end up in limbo. Even that cute little girl off of Doctor Who and my mate Sarah. A lot of people just say they smell of fox piss. Not me, just you know, other people.
The National Trust also offers a wealth of other nature walks and boring stuff like that. I can see why that might be fun in other countries where they have bears or snakes or fucking tigers and stuff, cool animals, but in England all the wild animals are boring and brown, apart from badgers which are fairly cool and apparently dead vicious, but you only ever see them when they're dying by the road. I don't think they're hard at all, or they would come out and fucking face us like men.
You are probably just going to see more squirrels, some ducks, and if you are most especially unlucky a fucking swan. The swan is an evil bastard. Why the queen loves the fuckers and won't let you kill and eat them I have no idea, she has obviously never had one chase her making that devil sound they make. It's a shame, because it does look like there is good eating on one. Whether killing a swan actually constitutes treason, the only offence you can still be executed for in Britain, I do not know, but I'm not risking it no matter how good I reckon its leg would be. Kentucky Fried Swan. Omnomnomnomnom.
A mate of mine did once get told off at work for bitch slapping a swan across the face because it was blocking his entrance into his office (which was next to a big pond, it wasn't just a random swan). I would love to see that. A man slapping a swan across the fucking face. Break my arm would you? You fucking reckon? Come on then, let's be having you, you long necked bastard! THWACK!
That's how I imagine it went.
So, there's a few options for you anyway. Let me know if you find anything else really pony to do and see near you. I know you won't let me down.
Friday, 2 April 2010
Easter
Well, it's Good Friday, so welcome to the Pony and Trap Easter Egg-stravaganza, or Sp-egg-tacular or whatever. Easter is the most rubbish holiday of the year, so let's pay tribute with a list (I do enjoy a list) of all the things that make it so very pony.
Bad puns involving the word "egg"
You see what I did there? The fucking egg puns. Have you ever seen one of these, like, in the window of Clinton Cards or somewhere (who even sends cards at Easter? Nobody fucking does. But they want you to. They make them, I've checked. But who is buying them?), something about "Egg-citement" or something, and pissed yourself laughing? Like, oh god, that tickled me, that did. It's like "excitement", but they made it say "egg", like an Easter egg. Oh, that was a good one. I'll remember that one for later down the pub. The lads will be in stitches.
I've come up with a few egg puns that could be used to advertise stuff at this time of year, but probably wouldn't be:
"Egg-stortionate prices on all our hollow chocolate shit!"
"Get s-eggs-ual thrills with the new Rampant Easter Rabbit!"
"Sweat your tits off and dance all night on Egg-stasy! Because there's no work for four days!"
"Eggs-crement!"
See, it's quite easy. Please feel free to leave your own shit Easter puns in the comments.
At least once Easter is over you don't get any more awful pun holidays until Halloween, when everything has to be "spook-tacular"...
It moves
You know where you are with all the other holidays. Same date every year. You know everything will stop happening around Christmas but that's OK, you know when it is going to be and there's plenty of warning - from September onwards you can't really go a day without a reminder somewhere. Plus it always coincides with the end of the X Factor.
Easter on the other hand moves around. It isn't always even in the same vague time span, even in the same month. I don't know whose job it is to decide on what arbitrary date it is going to be and how far in advance this is done, but I suspect, like a lot of crazy religious stuff it is done using some kind of highly Christian method like the phases of the moon.
As a result of this, and as a result of the fact Easter is shit so nobody talks about it in the weeks leading up to it, it can sometimes sneak up on you and annoy the fuck out of you. I only found out on Tuesday that it was now. That's not even a joke, or an exaggeration. I didn't even have time to make an Easter Bonnet.
The Easter Story
OK, as well as the swearing, I do do a spot of the old blasphemy as well so, er, sorry about that...
Easter is one of those fucked up Christian festivals that seems to have just sort of tacked itself on to some other thing people were already doing to celebrate some sort of natural thing, like Christmas with the longest night. It seems weirder with Easter though, somehow. On the one hand, there is all the springtime shit - eggs, bunnies, daffodils, lambs, that sort of junk. This is the main sort of imagery and symbolism that if you were to get some people to do some sort of wanky Easter "mind-map", as beloved of corporate away days everywhere, they would come up with. It's a bit primitive, I mean, eggs are pretty much a year round fixture, but it works. Celebrating the end of winter, no more of that snow and ice and shit. I can get on board with that (although spring weather is usually just rain and wind so not that much of an improvement).
But then we are reminded that the real reason for the holiday is actually nothing to do with any of that. It's a story from the Bible. It's a story that, if you are the sort of person that questions this sort of shit, starts off quite horrible and depressing and ends up just frickin' implausible. There are no bunnies or lambs gambolling in the fields, because it's fucking Jerusalem 2000 years ago (when it was probably just slightly less fucked than it is now). There is basically this Jewish guy who gets screwed over by one of his mates, who it turns out is a bit of a cunt. As a result of this the Jewish guy, who has long hair and sandals, gets humiliated and quite brutally executed - yeah, these old stories you hear at primary school are pretty delightful in how barbaric they can get, but kids love all that so it's fine - by being nailed to a big wooden cross with a couple of other local crims. That's the depressing but plausible bit.
A couple of days later he comes back to life - not like a zombie, he doesn't want to eat anybody's brain or anything, he just comes back from the dead. I think some hooker he used to knock about with finds him first or something. This is where it starts getting implausible. They actually want you to believe this really happened, it isn't just something they made up for a laugh. After some period of bodding about freaking people out about the whole being back from the dead thing, he flies up in to the sky, never to be seen again, although he was, it is safe to say, talked about quite a lot in the two millennia that followed.
It's not a bad story. I preferred Harry Potter and the Prisoner of Azkaban, and that episode of Doctor Who with the giant wasp that was actually a ginger vicar played by that bloke out of Game On, but it's not bad. I'd give it 6 out of 10, but it is pretty old so, you know, people were more easily entertained back in the day. Mel Gibson liked it a whole lot, at least, though I've never quite got why the whole thing was called "The Passion", that's not what I associate with the word "passion", especially in the title of a movie, at all...
The Easter Bunny
When you're a kid, if you're one of the lucky ones, there are only three entities you believe sneak into your room while you are sleeping. You've got Santa, obviously the best because he brings you the annual mother lode of all presents, the Tooth Fairy, she gives you cash but takes away your teeth for reasons unknown, so she's a bit wrong, but cash is always nice, and the Easter Bunny.
The Easter Bunny is shit. With Santa, over the years the legend has been padded out quite a lot. He's got his reindeer, his sleigh, we know what he looks like, we know he likes a drink, he lives at the North Pole with some elves who make the toys (that's right kids - the Wiis are all made by funny little short guys), and now, you can even track him on the NORAD website and Google Earth. A lot of time and effort has gone in to making what is basically quite an elaborate global lie to make it fun for the kids. But with the Easter Bunny, the adults have just gone, uh, yeah, it's a rabbit that brings you chocolate.
He hasn't even got a fucking name. What colour is he? Is he a normal sized rabbit or some kind of freaky giant Donnie Darko rabbit? Can he talk? Where does he come from? How does he get to all the children? Why does he give them eggs, when rabbits don't have anything to do with eggs? Seriously, nobody can even be bothered to fabricate him into anything, because it's that shit a concept - a magical rabbit confectioner.
Cadbury's Cream Eggs
The only Cadbury product that has a "season" (like it's vegetables and you're one of those knobs that won't eat them if they've been flown in), which is unaccountably from January (why?) to about May, after which you see them being sold off for 10p as they go past their sell by date.
They are fucking gross. That is the only word for that sickly ooze in a chocolate shell. It makes my teeth itch just thinking about it. What even is that sugary mess inside? Pure, solid diabetes in egg form?
I know someone who, for a bet, took one into a chippy and asked them to batter and fry it (he took the foil off first). He then ate it. A Glasgow style Cream Egg. For a fucking fiver. Animal.
Mini Eggs are alright though. Now they don't do those adverts with Mr Cadbury's Parrot on. He was an annoying little cunt.
The next part of the Pony and Trap Easter Egg-stravaganza, here to keep you company throughout the long (fucking interminable) weekend, is going to cover general British Bank Holiday fun... It's out there to be had, apparently.
Bad puns involving the word "egg"
You see what I did there? The fucking egg puns. Have you ever seen one of these, like, in the window of Clinton Cards or somewhere (who even sends cards at Easter? Nobody fucking does. But they want you to. They make them, I've checked. But who is buying them?), something about "Egg-citement" or something, and pissed yourself laughing? Like, oh god, that tickled me, that did. It's like "excitement", but they made it say "egg", like an Easter egg. Oh, that was a good one. I'll remember that one for later down the pub. The lads will be in stitches.
I've come up with a few egg puns that could be used to advertise stuff at this time of year, but probably wouldn't be:
"Egg-stortionate prices on all our hollow chocolate shit!"
"Get s-eggs-ual thrills with the new Rampant Easter Rabbit!"
"Sweat your tits off and dance all night on Egg-stasy! Because there's no work for four days!"
"Eggs-crement!"
See, it's quite easy. Please feel free to leave your own shit Easter puns in the comments.
At least once Easter is over you don't get any more awful pun holidays until Halloween, when everything has to be "spook-tacular"...
It moves
You know where you are with all the other holidays. Same date every year. You know everything will stop happening around Christmas but that's OK, you know when it is going to be and there's plenty of warning - from September onwards you can't really go a day without a reminder somewhere. Plus it always coincides with the end of the X Factor.
Easter on the other hand moves around. It isn't always even in the same vague time span, even in the same month. I don't know whose job it is to decide on what arbitrary date it is going to be and how far in advance this is done, but I suspect, like a lot of crazy religious stuff it is done using some kind of highly Christian method like the phases of the moon.
As a result of this, and as a result of the fact Easter is shit so nobody talks about it in the weeks leading up to it, it can sometimes sneak up on you and annoy the fuck out of you. I only found out on Tuesday that it was now. That's not even a joke, or an exaggeration. I didn't even have time to make an Easter Bonnet.
The Easter Story
OK, as well as the swearing, I do do a spot of the old blasphemy as well so, er, sorry about that...
Easter is one of those fucked up Christian festivals that seems to have just sort of tacked itself on to some other thing people were already doing to celebrate some sort of natural thing, like Christmas with the longest night. It seems weirder with Easter though, somehow. On the one hand, there is all the springtime shit - eggs, bunnies, daffodils, lambs, that sort of junk. This is the main sort of imagery and symbolism that if you were to get some people to do some sort of wanky Easter "mind-map", as beloved of corporate away days everywhere, they would come up with. It's a bit primitive, I mean, eggs are pretty much a year round fixture, but it works. Celebrating the end of winter, no more of that snow and ice and shit. I can get on board with that (although spring weather is usually just rain and wind so not that much of an improvement).
But then we are reminded that the real reason for the holiday is actually nothing to do with any of that. It's a story from the Bible. It's a story that, if you are the sort of person that questions this sort of shit, starts off quite horrible and depressing and ends up just frickin' implausible. There are no bunnies or lambs gambolling in the fields, because it's fucking Jerusalem 2000 years ago (when it was probably just slightly less fucked than it is now). There is basically this Jewish guy who gets screwed over by one of his mates, who it turns out is a bit of a cunt. As a result of this the Jewish guy, who has long hair and sandals, gets humiliated and quite brutally executed - yeah, these old stories you hear at primary school are pretty delightful in how barbaric they can get, but kids love all that so it's fine - by being nailed to a big wooden cross with a couple of other local crims. That's the depressing but plausible bit.
A couple of days later he comes back to life - not like a zombie, he doesn't want to eat anybody's brain or anything, he just comes back from the dead. I think some hooker he used to knock about with finds him first or something. This is where it starts getting implausible. They actually want you to believe this really happened, it isn't just something they made up for a laugh. After some period of bodding about freaking people out about the whole being back from the dead thing, he flies up in to the sky, never to be seen again, although he was, it is safe to say, talked about quite a lot in the two millennia that followed.
It's not a bad story. I preferred Harry Potter and the Prisoner of Azkaban, and that episode of Doctor Who with the giant wasp that was actually a ginger vicar played by that bloke out of Game On, but it's not bad. I'd give it 6 out of 10, but it is pretty old so, you know, people were more easily entertained back in the day. Mel Gibson liked it a whole lot, at least, though I've never quite got why the whole thing was called "The Passion", that's not what I associate with the word "passion", especially in the title of a movie, at all...
The Easter Bunny
When you're a kid, if you're one of the lucky ones, there are only three entities you believe sneak into your room while you are sleeping. You've got Santa, obviously the best because he brings you the annual mother lode of all presents, the Tooth Fairy, she gives you cash but takes away your teeth for reasons unknown, so she's a bit wrong, but cash is always nice, and the Easter Bunny.
The Easter Bunny is shit. With Santa, over the years the legend has been padded out quite a lot. He's got his reindeer, his sleigh, we know what he looks like, we know he likes a drink, he lives at the North Pole with some elves who make the toys (that's right kids - the Wiis are all made by funny little short guys), and now, you can even track him on the NORAD website and Google Earth. A lot of time and effort has gone in to making what is basically quite an elaborate global lie to make it fun for the kids. But with the Easter Bunny, the adults have just gone, uh, yeah, it's a rabbit that brings you chocolate.
He hasn't even got a fucking name. What colour is he? Is he a normal sized rabbit or some kind of freaky giant Donnie Darko rabbit? Can he talk? Where does he come from? How does he get to all the children? Why does he give them eggs, when rabbits don't have anything to do with eggs? Seriously, nobody can even be bothered to fabricate him into anything, because it's that shit a concept - a magical rabbit confectioner.
Cadbury's Cream Eggs
The only Cadbury product that has a "season" (like it's vegetables and you're one of those knobs that won't eat them if they've been flown in), which is unaccountably from January (why?) to about May, after which you see them being sold off for 10p as they go past their sell by date.
They are fucking gross. That is the only word for that sickly ooze in a chocolate shell. It makes my teeth itch just thinking about it. What even is that sugary mess inside? Pure, solid diabetes in egg form?
I know someone who, for a bet, took one into a chippy and asked them to batter and fry it (he took the foil off first). He then ate it. A Glasgow style Cream Egg. For a fucking fiver. Animal.
Mini Eggs are alright though. Now they don't do those adverts with Mr Cadbury's Parrot on. He was an annoying little cunt.
The next part of the Pony and Trap Easter Egg-stravaganza, here to keep you company throughout the long (fucking interminable) weekend, is going to cover general British Bank Holiday fun... It's out there to be had, apparently.
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