Paul McCartney - Memory Almost Full.

A Review.

Whenever I hear an ageing star touting their new album as 'as good as their old stuff', I get nervous. And so it was when I found out about the new McCartney album while reading an interview with McCartney in which he said that there was a lot of vintage Wings sound on there.

However, to my surprise he was right, and there is. It's just not the good stuff. Whenever I think of Wings, I think of Band On The Run, Venus & Mars/Rock Show, Jet, Junior's Farm, Hi Hi Hi, Helen Wheels etc. What we have here is an album full of Silly Love Songs, Let 'Em In, and other similarly forgettable b-side detritus. There's not even anything like Maybe I'm Amazed, My Love or Mull Of Kintyre; songs which lyrically i'm a bit ambivalent on but which admittedly have a power and majesty all of their own. And heaven forbid we might have seen another Admiral Halsey or Picasso's Last Words.

But for all that, it's a nice inoffensive listen. I can see it hanging around in the car. There's nothing jarring or out of place, it's just the side of Wings I wished hadn't happened. If you liked that, you'll love this. It'll probably grow on me.

DC's Mailbag

Dear Mr White,

Recently I was shocked and apalled by an article appearing on your so-called 'blog', pertaining to a man who wipes his arse on cats. I find this behaviour morally reprehensible and completely indefensible for a rational human being. When oh when oh when will standards on the internet rise? You are obviously a very sad excuse for a human being whose right to live is lower than that of a weasel. I demand that you remove this article immediately or I for one will not be reading this excremental excuse for journalism again. You are sick, sir, very sick, and I would only hope that you will seek treatment for your many obvious degradations. I can only assume that you will never have children and I am heartily thankful for that, as are the rest of the as-yet unborn generations.

Yours,

Mum.

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I Don't Write Sketch Comedy

And there's a reason for that:

A man enters a pet shop.
Man: Good morning.
Assistant: Good morning sir, may I help you?
M: Yes, you may. I should like to return this cat, as it is unsuitable for the purpose.
A: Unsuitable, sir?
M: It tickles.
Pause
A: I'm sorry, but did you just say that it tickles?
M: Yes. It tickles my testicles. Or rather, I should say, it's tail does.
Pause
A: How, exactly?
M: It lightly brushes them when I wipe my arse on it.
A: I beg your pardon?
M: Don't look at me like that! I'm not a pervert.
A: Yes you are.
M: How dare you sir! I bought that cat and i'm entitled to do as I like with it.
A: We don't accept 'soiled' returns in any case.
M: Don't worry, it's perfectly clean now. It washed itself in the car.
A: Oh dear.
M: That's why I bought it. Saves on water, don't you know.

Hang On A Minute...

Lord knows i'm not one to get hung up on inconsistencies in fictional tales, not at all. However, something has been bugging me for the last day or so, and it concerns Star Wars.

In A New Hope, when the Jawas try to sell C3PO to Owen Lars, he tells him that he has no need for a protocol droid. Yet we know that for some time, Owen (and his father Jack Thompson) owned C3PO. If they didn't need him, why did they own him?

The answer, of course, is that he came with Shmi Skywalker when Jack Thompson bought/married her under what seem to me to be rather dubious circumstances. But Shmi only owned him because Anakin built him 'to help Mom'.

How on earth would a protocol droid do that? If he was so completely unsuitable for farm labour that he was instantly dismissed by a farmer, why did Anakin think he'd be able to help Shmi? Surely Anakin would have been far better off building a multi-armed lifting/carrying droid, or something that could offer Shmi some form of transport, instead of something obviously regarded by the working class as essentially useless. Lucas then tries to disguise this by having C3PO be 'programmed' for other tasks, but that still doesn't escape the fact that Anakin could have, starting from scratch like he did, built his mother something of a far more practical nature.

George Lucas, if you're reading this, I could do way better than that. Please get in touch and we'll talk ideas for the next trilogy.

A Word Of Warning

Now, I don't want to worry anyone, but people may not have realised that today is Wednesday the 13th!!!!!!!

While not as famous as it's younger brother Friday the 13th, Wednesday the 13th holds a special place of dread in the Unlucky Days Pantheon. Did you know that*...

...more beer is unwittingly spilt on Wednesday the 13th than any other day?
...anyone born on Wednesday the 13th is mysteriously retarded?
...98% of all people who die in  tweezer accidents do so on Wednesday the 13th?
...Stalin, Hitler, Pope Benedict, Vlad the Impaler, Sweeney Todd, Pol Pot, Margaret Thatcher and Richard Nixon all started Kindergarten on Wednesday the 13th?

...Christmas NEVER occurs on Wednesday the 13th?
...the US Department of Defence routinely upgrades it's DEFCON status one point every Wednesday the 13th?
...the Grand Age of Pirates ended on Wednesday the 13th?
...all biros made on Wednesday the 13th have no little holes halfway up them?
...Alan Alda refused to film MASH on Wednesday the 13th, after the episode in which McLean Stevenson died was scripted, filmed and released on successive Wednesdays the 13th?

*all of these facts are absolutely true and were not in any way made up by me just then. No, really.

Observations on life (Random)

1. I have been a devoted atheist for more than 6 months now, and remain resolutely unsmited.

2. Have you ever noticed how the addition of a trucker's cap can make absolutely ANYONE look like a trucker, regardless of ethnicity, age, or height?

Thank you, Jim Croce.

Which way are you going and whose side will you be on,
Will you stand and watch while all the seeds of hate are sown,
Will you stand with those who say that His will be done,
With one hand on the bible and one hand on the gun.

Which way are you looking, is it hard to see,
Do you say "what's wrong for him is not wrong for me"
You walk the streets of righteousness but you refuse to understand,
You say you love the baby but then you crucify the man.

Every day things are changing,
Words once honoured turn to lies,
People crying, can you blame them,
It's too far to run and too late to hide.

Now you've turned your back on all the things that you used to preach,
Now its "Let him live in freedom, if he lives like me",
Your line has changed, confusion reigns, what have you become,
All your olive branches turn to spears when your bibles turn to guns.

All your olive branches turn to spears when your bibles turn to guns.

Random Doobings

Captain Doobie, Goodtime Slim, and the Curse Of The Jade Scorpion.

Captain Doobie walked through the door, flung the tattered remains of his shopping bags onto the dining room table and flounced down into a chair. "What a day. I've been almost hit by 3 buses, a woman dropped a vase on me from out of a window, I slipped on 7 banana peels, the shopping bags broke twice, an ostrich attacked me in the middle of Coles and I had my chiko roll stolen by a gang of maurauding possums."

Goodtime Slim looked at him over his Phantom comic. "Did you get rid of that jade scorpion like I told you?"
"............yes. I mean, of course."
"Then what's that lump in your back pocket?"
"What, this? This is..um..a...mint scorpion! That I bought at the shop, to replace the jade scorpion that I definitely got rid of."

"Mint scorpion? Well, I expect you'll be wanting to eat it, won't you?"
"Um, now?"
"Yes."
"Actually, i'm not feeling all that peckish..."
"NOW!"
Captain Doobie executed a difficult swallow, then turned into a scorpion.
"And that," said Goodtime Slim somewhat snippily, before returning to his comic, "Is what happens to people who tell fibs."

This Country Is Stuffed.

Why can a man not exchange the current numberplate on his car for another in the same sequence? Why? If I want to have the numberplate VDR501, which is perfectly legal, within the current numbering system and Just Plain Cool, why shouldn't I be able to?