Wednesday, 21 November 2007

Homonymphobia

Life throws up so many trends and styles these days that we've ran out of words to describe them. The result is that other normal day-to-day phrases are under fire, nay, being bummed by the hippety-hop definitions that have now been attributed to them. Of course, in our wonderful world dominated by sex, drugs and wanky pop "punk" (and who the shitting shit are +44?), they only really tend to carry those themes. Well, not wanky pop "punk" (seriously though, who the shitting shit?).

Below is five of these which have been popular of late.

Waxing lyrical

Singing whilst engaging in sexual intercourse with a candle.

Ant 'n' Dec

Literally "Ant on Deck", by which "Deck" means "penis" and "Ant" means "ant". A major trend, apparently.

Kill two birds with one stone

The male gets catastrophically spliffed up, has sex with two women (or ducks) then murders them. A niche market.

Boning

Simulating sex with a laboratory skeleton that is dressed like Bono whilst eating Bonio dog treats, listening to Radiohead's "The Bends", watching an ongoing crime series featuring David Boreanaz and wearing clothing similar to Dr. Leonard McCoy of Star Trek fame. Widely practised in the Home Counties.

B.B.C.

Ingesting a dose of amphetamines, then taking Mandrax (or Ritalin) and closing by smoking cannabis. Supposedly makes you more racist and, strangely, London-centric.

Is your child doing it? Or your gran? Or you, accidentally, as a slave to trends?

Sunday, 18 November 2007

Dirty Sods

Remember when punk was the Sex Pistols? & Buzzcocks? & Siouxsie and the Banshees? Nope, neither do I—I was born in 1985. But I'm aware of the fact that this was once the case.

I've seen too many TV cock-up clip-shows not to know about when the Sex Pistols went on Bill Grundy's mild-mannered daytime chat show (with Siouxsie Sioux among their entourage) and used a naughty word. Then, prompted by a none-too-sober Grundy, used it again.

The nation was shocked, appalled and outraged at these nasty, rebellious punks with their brightly-coloured, stupidly-shaped hairstyles. “God Save The Queen” did dirty things with the top of the charts (which, at the time, meant something), despite—or perhaps partly thanks to—being banned by the BBC and all self-respecting broadcast institutions (which, at the time, included ITV).


Fast-forward twenty-odd years: wanky pop bands like Fall Out Boy and +44 jump up and down a lot, make vacant-looking faces and use the odd swear-word in an effort to distance themselves from their prospective fans' parents' sensibilities. (& occasionally name themselves after countries' international telephone dialling codes.)

“Omfg loool”, the kids say to their friends; “there well cool”. And so—apathy of “there” versus “their” versus “they're” aside (the former is easiest to type)—the kids become enamored by the wanky pop “punk” bands and buy their records. Or download them, or something. But then they buy their hoodies. Upshot: wanky pop bands get money, fame and all the hair gel they could ever want.

Hooray for cynical marketing!

And I have proof (or evidence at least) that this is just cynical, child-embezzling, marketing spiel designed to line the pockets of the music cabal: The Honda Civic Tour.

The Honda—fucking—Civic—fucking—Tour! (The previous sentence was an attempt to express my incredulity at the entire concept; this sentence is an acknowledgement that it probably failed.)

Now, it may be funkily styled and actually look quite cool; the young-uns of today may actually be buying them in droves; & it may even give your granddad a little fright the first time he sees one; but it's still a fucking Honda Civic. Rebellious it is not. Honda are no free-spirited, authority-eschewing, The Man-it-to-sticking automotive Guy Fawkeses.

I'd even be so bold as to say that they are The Man.

And that where self-proclaimed “punk” bands should be sticking it to The Man, instead they're playing a series of bloody concerts paid for, organised by, & advertising The Man. And that they should have the piss taken out of them for doing so. So:

Aaaaaahahaha! ...Pillocks.

(Hey, let's just ignore the fact that the Pistols have recently performed on many a mainstream late-night American chat show to promote their current attempted come-back, shall we? Or at least let them off this once—even punk legends have to pay for the electric.)

Wednesday, 7 November 2007

It was so nearly called a “kirn kru”

It's been a busy month here at The Twaddle HQ... what with all the... stuff happening.

...OK, apart from Sir Jean Charles de Menzies resigning as leader of the Liberal Democrats, it's actually been pretty dull (and even that was quite tedious). And so it is to August that we must turn to provide an entertaining narrative, when, despite usually being located just off the A19—a few stops away from the Batcave on the number 23 bus—El Twad HQ found itself in Edinburgh, right in the middle of the Fringe Festival. (OK, maybe not quite right in the middle.)

One of our beloved El Twad dinnerladies had gone out to buy supplies for the El Twad canteen; much to her surprise, though, upon opening the HQ's grand oak front door, the luscious pastures of the HQ's front lawn were absent. In their place was a big road, full of Scotsmen, Scotswomen and Scotschildren, in addition to one or two Scotsrickshaws. Dashing back inside to inform us of the news, she noticed a large sign above the door, reading “Bank Of Scotland”.

—which was weird, because we don't have a large sign above the HQ's front door. Perhaps we should get one.

Intrigued, we decided to take a stroll down the Royal Mile, to peruse the many, varied street performers plying their wares for public enjoyment. But, we thought, a mile's a long way. And we're lazy. So instead, we headed to the garage and fired up the Twadmobile.


The Twadmobile's an old VW van that's been running on chip fat ever since we saw an item on Top Gear explaining that you can basically just shove a barrel of vegetable oil into a normal diesel engine and it'll still go.

As usual, we had the dinnerladies cook us copious quantities of chips, and shooed the bloody Hoobs out of the back. They seem to think it's their Hoobmobile and insist on borrowing it all the time to interview children about everyday phenomena for their “Hoobopedia”. It took us a while to figure out quite what they were doing—for ages we thought “we're off to see the tiddlypeeps!” was a confession of their mental health status. We still reckon they've just got a cute name for Wikipedia.

Tip: with copious quantities of chips available, Hoobs are easy to lure.


Whilst driving down the Royal Mile in the Twadmobile, we came upon an old Scotsbloke, who was singing a traditional Scots song, about Scots, and Scotsness. Intrigued, we pulled over to listen, much to the relief of the pedestrians sprawling all over the road, many of whom we'd run over, and of the police, who were keen to prevent the Twadmobile from driving along the supposedly “pedestrian” street (though we were quite enjoying the entertainment and found it far from pedestrian).

The Scotsbloke regaled us with the ancient tale of how the kilt, traditional Scots non-skirt attire, was invented: one fateful morn, many a century ago, a Scotsman (possibly an important one—we're not really sure) was visited by the King of Scotland. Unfortunately, when His Majesty arrived, our plucky hero was in the shower: “Aw, craaap!”, he exclaimed in his entertainingly broad Scots accent. Quickly, and not wanting to annoy the King (for fear of beheadings and such) he donned the only thing he had to hand that remotely resembled clothing—a towel.

When the King inquired of him “What the hell's thaaat? Is that a skerrrt?!”, our hero resorted to his love of Lilt to concoct a suitably believable nonce word to describe his alleged garment. (It should be noted, however, that the Lilt of the time wasn't quite the same “totally tropical” carbonated beverage we know and love today—it was primarily a non-alcoholic variation of grog.)


Enlightened, we performed a textbook three-point-turn, deftly proceeding into roadspace no sooner had the pedestrians eagerly relinquished it, and headed back to the HQ. Once we'd negotiated the snaking, velvet-roped queue that had inexplicably formed in the garage, we parked the Twadmobile, emerging just as the Hoobs scoffed the last of their chips. They listened intently to our story of the Lilt-loving, towel-wearing Scotsman, then scurried off to add to their Hoobopedia.