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Monday 01st February
Did you fall over at work?
Did you have a slip or fall anywhere?
Were you not wearing the correct protective clothing while swimming through acid?
Do you owe more than you can afford on personal loans you took out without reading any of the small print saying 2178% APR?
Did you feel slightly insulted when the woman behind the post office counter called you Miss instead of Ms?
Did you order the wrong thing on your sandwich?
Do you get easily confused by everything and try and brush it off by ignoring all common sense arguments?
Is absolutely nothing your fault, never was and never will be?
Then you could be entitled to free money*
Shotgun, Bastard and Dribble are a team of lawyers dedicated to shafting those that have hurt you, degraded you or even looked at you funny.
Thousands of people are hurt every day and there are millions of people hoping to cash in on that. If you have absolutely no reason to complain but would like to jump on the bandwagon then you should get in touch with SB&D, NOW!
To apply for money that you have absolutely no entitlement to, then follow the simple procedure listed below.
Follow these simple steps and your case will be considered on a no-win, no-fee** basis, especially since we don't bother to read anything anyway, we'll just send you monthly bills and letters to let you know how your case is doing. Letters may be the same photocopies we send to everyone.
Remember : It's never your fault!
(*though the chances are very much against you).
(** fees will be refunded if we ever close the case, which will be unlikely)
Tuesday 9th February
Hello All
Just a quick update to let you know that i've not completely dropped off the face of the planet. Though one thing I thought was worth mentioning that notes from the seminar I gave a couple of weeks ago are now available for you to read.
They're not here though, they are on a completely different website that I also now write for, Alltern8.com.
Follow this link to read my new stuff.
Allright, new-ish.
Tuesday 16th February
So I've been looking to get more qualified.
Not by using education or anything silly like that, I mean really, who has the time? No, I'm more interested in having letters after my name without actually having to do any of the work involved.
I think I can still count my B.S.C. and S.S.C. from when I was at school. Bronze and silver swimming certificates for those of you that don't know. As far as I know, I'm still Pope within the Discordian religious sect even though I've not been a practising Discordian for many years. Let's not forget that I am the Evil Overlord of VAGUE too.
Now I can't call myself a Doctor or a Professor or such until someone awards me a doctorate for something, but I'm expecting them to call any day now. What's more important is that those are restricted titles, you've got to do something to get to be called that.
Nutritionist is not a restricted title.
Anyone can call themselves up as a nutritionist and call themselves such. You don't need a doctorate or even the ability to write. Alright, so some credentials behind you might be useful, but you don't need them.
So I am now a registered Nutritionist. I took my name in the register this morning at roll call and decided that out of the entire class of one, only I deserved today's new title. I shall go out and about and declare my status and advise people on health issues and eating habits.
I have so far concluded a few significant trials. I have used a wide range of test subjects (to the number of one, me) and can conclude a great many things.
See? I can do this job. And I've already done three trials. And I've published them right there. So I can claim to have done numerous published trials, I can even take questions about my trials in case anyone wants to do follow up trials on them.
I won't be running any trials on poo though.
That's just nasty.
Monday 22nd February
Is there a plural for apocalypse? It seems a very singular noun, what with it being the word for the end of the world. What happens when a multiverse collapses, would that be a case of multiple apocalypsii, or apocalypses? Well my spell checker alone is voting for the second one. Which means that someone has sat down and thought about the case of multiple cases of the end of the world, pretty much what I did on writing this and what you're doing now reading it and then sending his results to the oxford English dictionary.
Is that how it's done? Do you just come up with a word and send it in? can anyone just sit and ponder something like that? Let me put it another way, can we between us come up with a new word and we'll try and get it into the dictionary, ok? I'll do the creative stuff, you set up the facebook group and spread the word, sounds like a deal to me.
Erm, how's about this?
Rumlet. (Noun) A small bit of paper or the back of a shampoo bottle you find in the toilet when you realise that you are going to be there a while and there is nothing else to read.
So spread the word, literally.
We can actually have a pointless quest that we can achieve.
Tuesday 23rd February
The world is a messy place since that nasty apocalypse.
I've been playing a lot of Bioshock, Fallout 3 and Borderlands and in each case the world is just a messy dank and depressing place after each individual apocalypse*. When I've been playing something keeps niggling at me and I've finally figured out what it is.
[* See yesterday's post]
The whole place is a mess, I mean really it's disgusting out there in the wasteland. Now I understand that wasteland is a bit of a clue, but can we really not do anything about it? We've got the ability and the technology to create vast weapons of ultimate destruction and vapourise things, we can build great vehicles and underground bunkers and we can even enslave people and destroy minds, but we can't figure out a simple mop?
Now I'm not saying there's anything bad about the games, but it irritates me that they're so dirty to begin with and after you've cleaned them up, they're still dirty. In fact, all that clearing them up means is that you've killed a load of people and animals for variously dubiously moral reasons and then left. Even if you have a homebase there's sod all you can do about it, it's not like you can upgrade from corrugated iron sheets to maybe a nice bit of plasterwork.
And let's not forget the bodies lying about everywhere, who's going to deal with them? Obviously it's another job for the zombie cleaners but why can we not get in on the action? They must be well paid for the amount they do without being seen so where's the application form for that service?
It's not like I'm suggesting anything too dangerous or difficult to do. I'd even recommend it being implemented into the next hack for World of Warcraft, there's billions of pointless activities in that game, but none involve the four basic premises of cleaning, building, repairing or cleaning away bodies.
Let me put it this way, you've just spent a good half an hour clearing out a settlement full of bad guys. They're obviously bad, they shot back at you as you came into town blasting anything that moved. Now you're left with an empty village that's no use to man nor beast and a large pile of bodies. The warrior in you might loot the bodies and move onto the next village down the road, but just for a minute listen to the greedy bastard inside of you.
The greedy bastard might strip the weapons and clothes off the bodies and leave them to rot too, but the cunning greedy bastard knows just which medical school in the big city might pay a decent price for the bodies. He also knows where he can get his hands on a crapload of grass seed, a few tins of paint and one of those repair-anything spanners that the handymen carry. Couple of hours work (or seconds depending on the devices you're carrying) and you've transformed a broken collection of hovels into a picturesque village where them there folks from the big city could pay good money for a weekend getaway. Plus, for those people that come live there you know a chappy who can fix them up with some workable farming equipment and saplings if they want to work on the surrounding land.
I'd love that.
I'd so play a game where that was part of it. Yes, you've got the rampant slaughter for those that want it, but you can end up with a world that looks fixed at the end of the game too. I don't even really give much of a stuff about the killing, but I suppose it would liven up the time between decorating jobs.
Look back at any post-apocalypse game you've finished. Can you honestly say that you've made any sort of difference at the end of the game other than the large number of people you've killed during your so-called adventure? Wouldn't it be better to walk around the wasteland afterwards and see the world getting back into shape, purely down to you?
It wouldn't actually take that much game design technology to do, either. For the most part the decorating and landscaping would just involve a texture change from 'dirty' to 'fixed' and if the repairing wouldn't have to be too involved either, take the LEGO series of games as your example, go buy wood and stone and metal, turn on zapp-o-max fix-it machine, watch it build back up to being a regular building. Of course, saving all of the good stuff for your own private fortress.
You wouldn't want to waste it, would you?
Sunday 28th February
Alright, here's a treat for you.
I generally don't share these things, but I've decided to say why the hell not. I'm an actor and I feel like showing you some of the stuff that I've done over time, and in case you're curious then some of these are available on DVD.
Let's start with the biggie.
Faintheart - The Trailer. Pause it at 0:28 and there I am on the far left. Then again at 0:42 I'm on the far right. Look for the big purple coat on the tall feller. I even blogged about it when I made it back in November 2007. Read That Here. In fact, why not buy it Here.
Then we move on to a little tiny bit on Shameless for channel 4 many years ago, back when I had hair. Shameless Series 2 Episode 10 and the bit you're looking for is around the 41:40 mark, before I teleport and vanish completely.
A couple of years later you'll find me as a rioting city fan on Life on Mars, Series 1 Episode 5. Watch around the 7:55 mark and you'll see me as the first popping out of the van.
Until you get to my finest hour. I finally get to swear on TV. My first talking part on a programme and I get to swear at someone. No Angels, Series 3 Episode 2. Again wait until the adverts are done with and then zap it forward to the 10:00 mark and you'll see me. The only thing I'm sorry about is that I didn't get my name on the credits. I'd have passed up on some of the fee for a credit on that one. Oh well.
I've done other bits and pieces for things like Coronation Street and Emmerdale but those are a touch harder to find and if you're really desperate then you can even watch the entirety of Prince Valiant on YouTube though you'd have a hard time finding me on that, I've not been able to see me yet.
I did get to work with Ron Perlman on that. I'm still proud of that. I was one of the tree people and he was our King.
Acting gets you into some weird places sometimes.
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