Avatar REM Covers Album

What was that? It was a bad idea to begin with and now you’re going to run it into the ground like you always do? You clearly know me so well.

Hi, I’m Ian, I recently turned 37 and I still retain the intelligence of someone a quarter of my age. I used to take song lyrics, change them into something else and then hand them to my friend to upload onto our website because that was “funny” even though most of the time it really wasn’t.

Do you remember ‘Slut Call Girl’, a “hilarious” reinterpretation of Billy Joel’s ‘Uptown Girl’? Probably not. It was one of my better efforts. The others are better best forgotten.

In the spirit of this though I have decided to drag all of my showbiz mates out to record a covers album to end 2020 the way it began; awfully. It’s even worse, it’s a funny covers album. I will be taking some of the moved beloved rock songs from the last 30-40 years by one of the most amazing bands from within our very own lifetime and I will be turning them into a one joke joke about curling one off.

(I can hear you groaning already)

Let’s take a look at the track listing:

Everybody Poos
The One I Shove
Shiny Happy Faeces
Nightshitting
It’s The End of The Roll As We Know It (and I Feel Fine)
The Sidewinder Shits Tonight
Strained Currencies
What’s The Excretion, Kenneth?
The Great Pee-Pond
Imitation of Shite

I feel as though I may have crossed a line that I can never recover from; please forgive me Buck, Berry, Mills and Stipe.

Avatar Newsboost – Zany Zoo Zig-Zag

Thailand has opened a brand new zoo and it is one that has garnered the attention of the world’s media for offering a different kind of experience.

The ‘Khop Khun Animal Sanctuary’ based outside of the city of Phuket is revolutionary in its approach to animal captivity, if you can even call that. The entire park is open with no walls or barriers keeping the animals in one singular place. Instead, in order to keep visitors safe, every member must wear their very own human cage, placed around their head, body and legs to prevent any unwanted attention from the most rambunctious of residents.

Originally the idea of billionaire John Cho, it was fully realised, albeit with the help of Cho’s money, by Anastasia and Lloyd Botham, a couple originally from Milton Keynes. It was these forward-thinking biologists who designed the layout of the attraction with the animals in mind, more than the people.

“We wanted it to be outside inside, or more appropriately, we didn’t want the animals to know they were being kept inside something,” wittered Lloyd, “Their sense of freedom is much more important than anything else. They need to believe that nothing is stopping them from living their best life and though it may not be the habitat they are normally used to, it is much more humane than tiny cages in dingy corners of draughty warehouses.”

Anastasia was the one who crafted the “human cages” as they have come to be known as. “I was inspired by robots. I love the movement of robots, the style and look of robots. It then occurred to me that when people get close to sharks they lower themselves into the water in a giant cage for protection. Why not do the same thing on land? Not with sharks though because they’d die, unless they were put in a giant tank. I reckon it wouldn’t be the same though.”

After ten minutes of waffling she returned to the point. “We have several cages available for use. The family cage (AKA the “Bernard Manning”) is our most popular, allowing two adults and two children to wander through the park in tandem. The couple cage (AKA the “Howard and Marina”) is another favourite, for those who don’t want to chance it on their own. The solo cages (the “Katie Hopkins”) are also available although you’d be surprised at how often they are not used. People would prefer to travel in groups.

The controversy surrounding the sanctuary was deepened when several of the animals took it upon themselves to try and eat the paying patrons by pushing the cages over and clawing at the people like they were trying to scoop the last of the Pringles from the very bottom of the tube. Mike Sore and his fiancee, Klara Onspott, barely made it out alive.

“It was the most terrifying experience of my life,” rustled Mike, his wife-to-be shaking nervously at his side, “you never expect it to happen to you. There we were, laughing at the marmots when these two gorillas pushed over our cage and viciously swiping at us. Had we not flattened ourselves at the very bottom and called for help we wouldn’t be here today. Thank God gorillas have never had a box of Tic-Tacs.”

It’s fair to say that once the animal kingdom does learn about shaking that last chocolate-covered raisin from the bottom of the packet into the mouth in one seamless movement, the human race is doomed.

Avatar A Tunnock’s tragedy

As you almost certainly know, last year I made the fatal error of joking to Ian that what I wanted for Christmas was a bucket of Tunnock’s Teacakes. For Christmas he got me a bucket of Tunnock’s Teacakes.

Despite eating a lot of Tunnock’s Teacakes – including, on more than one occasion, eating three of them as “breakfast dessert” – there were still some sitting in the bucket at the end of March.

At the end of March, of course, I was forced to abandon my usual residence on top of the exploding mattress emporium, and among the many belongings I left behind, I foolishly failed to cram a bucket of teacakes into my suitcase.

A couple of weeks ago my flatmate Steve “Stevey” Stevingtons was kind enough to fly overhead in a sort of psychedelic biplane and airdrop some of my belongings, including several t-shirts, a few bits of post that I would have been happy never to receive, and a bucket containing precisely five Tunnock’s Teacakes.

I ate one and I won’t be eating any more.

The passage of a further four months has caused them to deflate. Inside, the chocolate is now strange with white bits in it, and the marshmallow has turned sort of hard and chewy. The biscuit is virtually inedible.

The last four teacakes from that epic gift are now, as a result, in the bin. A sad end to a brilliant Christmas gift.

Avatar Random Sandwiches

Let us address the elephant in the room. You are so predictable. You are so absolutely boring when it comes to food and you know it; each and every time you wander into a supermarket, a corner shop, a Subway you purchase / order the same thing. They have a full menu of sandwich fillings and all of them are ignored so you can eat the same dull slice of nourishment.

You need to buck your ‘chude up, sunshine. You think your good lady wife is going to stay with you and your sluggish Ham ‘n’ Cheese forever? No way. Both of you are teetering on the edge of a marital precipice and the only way to tip it in the direction of the future is to fill your plate with something different. Grab your raincoat and follow me.

Nestled in the wonderful corner of the world that is somewhere nearby, Random Sandwiches offers a world of culinary perfection unseen in the rest of the country. Their list of fillings would blow your mind if you saw it in person and so everyone who wanders into the shop must wear a blindfold, and have it read to them by a woman with a posh voice.

The most popular flavours at the moment are as follows:

  • Jagged glass and American irony;
  • Rubber dingy, yeast and sun-bleached afternoons;
  • Heron and scotch egg;
  • Two lemons encased in a pagoda of dreams;
  • Swordfish eczema on naan bread, smothered in forgotten dances from the 1920’s’;
  • A fresh pair of stressed socks under a splodge of elk light bulbs and mayonnaise.

I don’t know about you but my mouth is already watering as I finished typing this. I can’t wait for them to re-open after the lockdown so I can grab a patronising handshake on rye and crisps for lunch.

Avatar When soup explodes

Here’s something I didn’t know was possible until it happened.

Apparently, if you have a can of soup, and some part of the soup had gone off or was rotten when it was canned, it can ferment inside the can and expand. Eventually the pressure will cause the can to open.

When the can opens it will be spectacular, in a horrible sort of way, looking and smelling like someone has projectile-vomited across your kitchen cupboards. It will literally explode.

We emptied the cupboard and cleaned it three times to get rid of the smell, and then found the lid of the can several days later. It had blown off the right side of the can, bounced off the wall of the cupboard, and landed between some other items in the far left corner at the back.

Avatar The More You Know – The Chris Explosion

It’s been floated around for some time now and there’s been an awful lot of confusion as to what happens. You know what I’m referring to; that urban myth that has been haunting this website for as long as I or anyone else can remember. Legend says that if Chris Marshall watches a film, any movie whether short, black and white, foreign or animated, he will explode.

You may laugh at such a premise but it is true. A genuine medical condition that only affects one in twenty million, ‘Brewster Explodius’ came to light during the middle of the twentieth century. The first recorded case was a Clarice Mucklesniff, a 26 year old waitress from North Dakota. She was going to the movies with her boyfriend and less than five minutes into the opening credits she exploded. Her bits were catapulted across the theatre, landing mostly in the aisles bar her arms which landed in the lap of an elderly couple towards the front. Since then there have been multiple cases all over the world of this unfortunate illness.

So we move to our current case, Christopher “Christopheles” “Sausage and Cheese Isosceles” Jimmy Jam-Jam Marshall. Poor Chris has been living with this for most of his life. It was lucky that a friend of the family, who is au fait with these kinds of medical conditions, was able to diagnose him before the worst could happen. In order for us to understand more, we need a hypothetical situation:

A HYPOTHETICAL SITUATION:

Chris has had a hard day at work. He’s taken off his feather boa and decides to relax on the sofa before making some food. As he picks up the remote to browse some channels, the TV opens on that bit in ‘Cocoon’ where the old people get in the pool with the aliens and have a pool party. 

  1. His eyes witness the film on the screen. The retinal pools record the information and turns it into some weird shapes and colours, possibly resembling cats. This makes it easier to send it up the pipe shaft.
  2. The information travels up the pipe shaft, past the nosal tubes, towards the front part of the brain, more commonly known as the Gluco-chaffinch. Here it is split into several nixtoglands and sent to the seven corners of the human mind.
  3. For a normal person this would be fine; the nixtoglands would reach their destination and everyone would feel great. Several people would do backflips. For Chris though this is the beginning of the end. When the seven corners are activated it causes the multo peak in the glorbo cells to light up. 
  4. Now it is only a matter of time. The blood pumps up into his face muscles which only accelerates the process. The glorbo cells chat to the peanuke rittles causing a chain reaction between the two, meaning a complex chemical implosion that reverses around the maypole and turns back into an explosion. 
  5. It goes off. His head catapults to the ceiling. His noses fires off into the kitchen. The eyes don’t make it that far and the ears flop to the floor. The body doesn’t move from the position, it’s still enjoying the film.

I don’t need to tell you that this cannot happen, ever, mainly for my sake because then it’ll mean I’ll be down one friend and will need to hold auditions for a new one to fill the position. Do you know how long that’ll take? Far too long. Please keep my friend safe and never show him any films.

Avatar Creamtober

As we casually slide into the middle of October, I expect it’s fair to say that everyone is too busy off enjoying ‘Creamtober’ to read this post. I will, however, carry on as it will give them something to read once all the cream-based fun has ceased in the dark and dingy recesses of November.

Whadda ya mean you’ve never heard of ‘Creamtober’? Keep your voice down, you don’t want to alert others to the fact that you are not right on the fashions. Let me run you through the basics.

‘Creamtober’ was started back in 1981 by Baron Von Creamschteiner. He decided that there were not enough occasions where the joy of cream was celebrated so he invented an entire month of it. Everything in and around ‘Creamtober’ was about his unhealthy obsession with the silkiest of dairy products. It had to be clotted, sour, whipped, poured or squirty. There were so many options that people went absolutely crazy for it. The entire milk industry went very quiet for the next few weeks as cream sold out in practically every shop in the surrounding area. At first the word was out around his home land of Bavaria before spreading into the outer reaches of Europe, Australia and eventually the USA. Now each year three billion people spread the word and life the live of the Creamtobians.

How does one join in? That’s easy; grab some cream and you’re halfway there. Grab three hundred more tubs of cream and fill your fridge to the brim. Each and every time you open the fridge pour as much cream down your trash hole as you can. Do it until you feel violently sick and then leave it for an hour before repeating the same process. You need to cram as much cream into your body as you can each day for thirty one days. You will know the others who are taking part because you will see them in the street, clothes struggling to fit around their obese bodies, unusual lines underneath their eyes and little lines of white liquid dribbling from the corners of their mouths.

At the end of Creamtober you add up how much you have managed to consume over the month and send the results to the grand high emperor of Creamtober (see the address on his website, he lives in Blackburn, Lancashire) who will publish his results. If you have managed to top the charts with your cream-based exploits then you win a year’s supply of cream.

It also means that you can then move onto the next festive month: ‘Novemb-cheese’! Whadda ya mean you’ve never heard of ‘Novemb-cheese’? Okay, sit down and let me give you the rundown on the basics…