Planet of Bastards

Archive Of Bastards

octaeder — Fri, 31 Jul 2009 16:29:14 +0000

Between 2005 and 2007 I ran a blog over at MSN Spaces chronicling my university exploits. Unfortunately Microsoft is consistently brilliant at making things that don’t work and what is now known as Windows Live Spaces had somehow managed to make anything other than the first page of the blog completely inaccessible.

Through some xml trickery I’ve managed to rescue the posts (unfortunately the comments were lost) and the majority of the pictures and have put them up here as a somewhat more robust preservation method.

Why bother archiving them at all? Firstly because the first time I attempted to delete the site I got complaints from some of my friends mentioned in it… God knows why, no one comes out of this thing looking particularly good. Also as I get older it’s nice to look back at some of the things I got up to and think “How the fuck was I never arrested?”

Hopefully the statute of limitation on most of the crimes detailed has now expired.

Curator: Phil

(Public) Houses of The Holy

octaeder — Tue, 20 Mar 2007 17:11:06 +0000

[In this post I became unusually distressed by the slowness of which certain members of a group were drinking their pints. Now this is unlike me so I'd like to defend myself by pointing out that my friend I keep mention heading to meet up with was actually a girl I fancied the shit out of. -Curator]

Today’s show is brought to you by “CONFUSION” and “THE NUMBER 17″!

CONFUSION!

It’s the feeling that best describes seeing a man in town pulling along an old folk’s canvas shopping trolley with music blaring out of it… It’s the feeling that you see on the face of the gypsy Big Issue seller that stands by Tesco and only knows the words “Big Issue please” when you give her a Big Issue in a delicious display of pragmatic incompetence. It shouldn’t, howe’er, be the feeling that commonly defines ones St. Patrick’s Day celebrations. That feeling should be the feeling of being about to fall over and be sick on someone’s shoes.

CONFUSION!

It was the feeling that predominantly presided over our St. Patrick’s Day celebrations which, due to the fact that there were no Irishmen with us this year, can also be described as Chris’ Birthday pissup. As usual I’m willing to concede to the possibility that it was partly my fault. Staying up drinking beer and vodka till seven a.m. the morning of St. Patrick’s Day didn’t leave us in a good position to be entirely ready for the path which the Gods had chosen for us. Hell perhaps if we’d of all got more than a couple of hours sleep we could have managed but instead we had to snatch what little we could before making the trek into town to play the PS3 that HMV had set up in store. Either way later that day Adam and I were all geared up for more drinking when I received the text message, “My mum has just dished me up some noodles.”

CONFUSION!

I should explain… But I can’t. Essentially Chris was sacrificing getting a start on his St. Patrick’s day, nay his BIRTHDAY, celebrating for some noodles. We did the only thing that good friends can do in a situation like this: Start his birthday without him. An hour later and we decided that these must be the best noodles known to man or Chinaman (because as every American knows: Communists don’t have souls). Eventually he shows up and even brings a couple of budding drinkers along with him. It was time to get this night going!

DUMBFOUNDMENT!

The general definition of a “pub crawl” is the act of getting drunk by imbibing large quantities of ale while moving from one pub to another. The quantity of ale part is important. It’s why they don’t refer to it as a “pub stroll” or simply “going to a different pub”. In order to drink a multitude of alcoholic drinks when on a pub crawl you need to move quickly between each pub. To do that you need to drink quickly. The reason I explain this in such gut-wrenching detail is because there is obviously some CONFUSION. There sure was the night of our pub crawl when Chris chose to bring along somebody who could not for the life of him drink quickly. Even after a slew of subtle nudges on my part ranging from “I don’t think there’s much point getting another pint here, we should be moving on soon,” to “OH MY FUCKING GOD STEVEN YOU LITERALLY COULD NOT DRINK THAT FUCKING PINT ANY SLOWER IF YOU WERE TAKING IT THROUGH THE EAR!” we still found our pace to be full of woe. Eventually, through sheer brute British persistence, we managed to make it to the Oyster Bar. Only to be told by two cunts that they were too busy to let us in.

BEWILDERMENT!

And fucking anger I might add. This was the place Adam and I had waited for all night… The place we kept saying “Oh it’s OK we’ll get drunk at the Oyster Bar. They’ll ring for last orders and we’ll buy three pints each.” In order to stop my self from prizing a paving slab from the ground and going to work on Steven’s skull I tried to appeal to the bouncer’s sense of reason… A sense of reason, it transpired, they didn’t possess. I pointed out that four people were just leaving and that was handily just how many of us there were (there were actually five of us but I was relying on the fact that a bouncer generally needs one of those click counters just to count simple numbers) but they countered by saying it was late anyway. Adam tried pointing out that we were quick drinkers but they just gave him a “look”… Frankly they were right to, because one of us clearly wasn’t a quick drinker. We moved to another pub.

PUZZLEMENT!

Throughout the night I’d been communicating with another group to try and organise where we were all going to meet up. It was a toss up between “Fift Ave” as Chris would call it or Rock World. I was quite proud of Rock World being in contention because it was only really me and Paul that could claim to like the music, and no-one really gave a fuck what Paul thought… None of us having met him before. Except Steven of course, Paul being his brother, but people cared even less about what he thought. The point is though, that I was communicating with what had been described multiple times as a ‘group’. So I wasn’t expecting a call that went along the lines of “Phil, all my friends have abandoned me, where are you?”

BEFUDDLEMENT!

Adam hadn’t finished his pint! We were ready, nay eager, to move onto the club and meet up with the admittedly diminished second party but Adam was only halfway done. I mustered all my motivational skill and shouted “FOR SHIT’S SAKE ADAM WILL YOU HURRY THE FUCK UP!” only to hear, “Hey! That’s one of your friends! Don’t be mean.” Oh I’m sorry… Is that the sound of somebody poking their unwelcome nose into other people’s business? It was you know… They didn’t seem happy. They seemed even unhappier when I burst into laughter halfway through my ‘heartfelt’ apology to Adam… Luckily Steven came good, for the first time all night, and whispered in her ear… She seemed taken aback for a second and then says “Sorry love I’m engaged”… She then leaves… Quickly… Later when we asked Steven what he’d said he couldn’t remember.

STUPEFACTION!

As we finally get to Rock World only to be asked by the bouncers if we did, indeed, know we were at a rock club. I indicated that we did… Trying my hardest to avoid making reference to the blatant sign above his head that stated this to anyone within the same county. “So why did you come dressed as Townies?” He asked. Now many city folk don’t understand townies… They have scallys. I come from a small town… I know what townies are… I knew at that moment none of us were dressed like one… Even Steven in his stupid shirt. Despite having gone completely white with rage I managed to keep my voice calm while explaining, politely, he was talking out of his arse and that if he didn’t mind he could get over the fact that his father refused his sexual advances for a second and just let us in… Apparently my indignation worked, because he did.

FURORE!

As Chris and Adam tried to find “Room 3″ the one room that I promised them would play music they liked.

PANDEMONIUM!

As my friend revealed that she was in a different rock club and I had to try and persuade her to come to the one we’d spent over £5 to enter… With no battery left on my phone.

PERPLEXITY!

At the contents of the strange drink that looked like the mouthwash which they give you after major dental surgery.

VEXATION!

When the night was over and we realised Adam was gone. Now I’d been travelling around the different rooms, only stopping off every now and again to check back on Adam and Chris and, to a lesser extent, Steven. They had all stayed put at the room that did house the music they liked though. And it wasn’t a very big room. Still they’d managed to loose Adam… Who is ginger… And not exactly inconspicuous. Did I mention I had no phone battery? Well turns out between no credit and no battery we had no way of getting in contact with him. So the night ends and me and Chris go back to my flat to further investigate. I plug my phone into the wall and call him. “Don’t fucking ask me what happened… I’m in a taxi. Will be back at your place in 10 minutes.”

You guessed it… CONFUSION!

Here’s Adam’s story:

Adam went to the toilet and on his exit bumped into some girl. Being the polite and upstanding member of society that he is, he apologises to her. She replies with “I’m really horny”. Being the degenerate sexual deviant he is he decides to leave with her without telling anyone. Adam then finds himself all the way in Moston, only to be told “Oh my boyfriend will be back soon, he’ll not be too happy to see you about”. Adam thinks NO FUCKING KIDDING and attempts to make his way back to Salford! His £17 taxi fare would turn out to be the most expensive unnecessary charge of the night, but not of the weekend. But that story was less one of CONFUSION and more one of comedy… [I have no idea what this story might have been. This turned out to be the last thing ever to be posted on Planet of Bastards. Think of it as an end of season cliff hanger to a series that never got re-commissioned. -Curator]

Clarity: Phil… Yeah, right.

Planet Of Bastards III

octaeder — Thu, 04 Jan 2007 16:55:54 +0000

After six months of darkness, here is what you’ve all been waiting for. Here is the first official post of the third incarnation of Planet of Bastards!

Obviously the first thing you have to be wondering is how often are updates going to be happening. Sorry, the FIRST thing you have to be wondering is WHY GOD WHY!? WHY HAST THOUST FORSOOK ME SO?!! Well I’m not really in a position to answer that as I’ve not received a reply to the application I sent off for the position of God. It would be just my luck if they went and gave the position to a bloody Catholic… “Affirmative Action” indeed… What I will do is answer the first question with a non-committal “I’dunno”… This is because I’ve got a lot on my proverbial plate at the minute. Between work, drinking and shouting at badgers because I’ve quit smoking and I’m angry at everything, providing you anonymous people in internet land with insane ramblings on a regular basis isn’t high on the priority list. You’ll have to be patient… Or fuck off… Either way is fine by me mi’laddo.

For those of you who have either never been here before or have paid a hired psychiatric doctor enough money to rid you of your memories, I’ll be recapping and reintroducing some of the people who make this sacred ground what it is.

THE INHABITANTS

Phil: That’s me. Many adjectives have been placed in sentences that have also contained my name. Sarcastic, alcoholic, bastard and fuckwit to name just four. Just like last year I still work as a minimum-wage retail monkey. If you’ve ever been refused a refund on a toaster because of your grotesque appearance then it could have been me responsible. If it happened at an Argos store in the Manchester region, then it probably was. My long term aim in life is to have Manchester-based construction firm owner Eric Wright exposed to the world as a paedophile. He isn’t one as far as I know, but I don’t like him and, whether he is aware of it or not, he is my mortal enemy so it just seems like the thing to do.

Fitzy: My flatmate and the only other permanent inhabitant of Flat 80. (long-term readers may recall that we struggled to get along with the majority of other people we lived with…) His alcoholism and anger have almost semi-legendary status among the hallowed halls of the Sainsbury’s produce aisles. Despite this accolade being coupled with the honour of co-starring in a low-key, seldom-read internet blog, it wouldn’t be an unfair judgement to say that Fitzy probably isn’t the most successful of his Northern Irish friends. For example Kyle and Francis are currently travelling Malaysia and Thailand because they needed a holiday after living in Australia for a year… And as for David, a man who once cleaned our oven in House 34 because he couldn’t stand how dirty it was, well he has his own radio show for Essex university’s student radio station that he can use to voice his racist views to the public… Well Essex students at any rate.

David Garland: Tough on Jews. Tough on Baked in Grease.

So that’s two of us. But if this site’s going to be about more than just watching DVDs of 24 and playing Pro Evolution Soccer 6 we’re going to need some more people. Luckily, fortune took a big man-turd over our faces in that respect:

THE REPROBATES

Adam: Before I spend the next year making fun out of Adam I should, in all seriousness, mention that Adam is the main reason why this sight could well amuse you over the coming months. You see in Adam we have once again found a Nick. You see Nick, one of the original cast of Planet Of Bastards was both a bit of a thicko and a big daft racist. Adam on the other hand… Well he’s a bit of a thicko… He’s a big daft racist… And he’s ginger! Not just ginger, but one of those gingers who insists on being called “strawberry blonde” as if that is in some way better. Wait, lets get our tangent on for a minute: Why the fuck do gingers think that being “strawberry blonde” could ever be in any way better… It sounds gay… And conveniently Adam also hates gays. Now obviously racism and homophobia are abhorrent but they make for fucking great storytelling. See now I can make fun out of Adam and the stupid crap he does all I want and you wont care because he’s a bigot. And that, my friends, is just great.

Chris: The first night I met Chris he crashed a Skoda into wall after he’d parked it and then proceeded to be the second person to throw up in our flat (Adam was the first.) That meant he had a lot of work to do on his part in order to stop me stabbing him with a fork. Unfortunately for me, he is actually a sound enough person. He’d have to be because he is both a menace to the road network of the United Kingdom (I’ll have to get Fitzy to post one of the many near-death experiences he has had as a result of being in a car with Chris) and a person who can’t pronounce the word “fifth” properly. He says “fift” despite apparently knowing that it’s wrong and having had me throw an Argos catalogue in his face over the matter. Still he was born in Salford and educated in a catholic school so we should probably cut him some slack.

The Rest

Philippa: When Nick left Philippa became the main target of our mocking. Needless to say she doesn’t actually visit us very often any more. That said I assume she is still alive and living in the Salford area so you never know when she’ll get the urge for more punishment. Whether she does or not, this chart says she looks like the Dalai Lama:

To my horror the Dalai Lama picture was deleted when an old website went down. Instead I'll post this picture of her being fed. -Evil Curator

James: A former flatmate who posts here sometimes. At this point I need to take a moment to say a big thank you to Mark Croft, a man whom I have never met. To be perfectly honest I hope that I never do meet him, because I have managed to see an impressive number of free gigs with James thanks to Mark’s inability to turn up to concerts that he has already bought tickets to. So Mark, here’s to a long and prosperous career of being rubbish at travelling.

Dom: Star of the legendary rum picture diary. Dom likes nothing more than to get stoned and spend an evening being unable to answer questions… Or blink. With any luck he too will at some point be making another ‘Special Guest Star’ appearance around here.

So there it is. A motley cast of characters worthy of any bland American sitcom from the 1980s. Coming Soon: These people participate in and react to events and actions in ways that will be documented by me.

Prehashed: Phil

These Are The Armies of The Bonfire Night

octaeder — Sun, 10 Dec 2006 17:07:44 +0000

Know thy enemy and know thyself, find naught in fear for 100 battles. Know thyself but not thy enemy, find level of loss and victory. Know thy enemy but not thyself, wallow in defeat every time.

And so with the teaching of Sun Tzu firmly in mind we marched to from our headquarters. With three years spent as a student, we were in with a chance. With 22 years spent as me… We couldn’t lose.

November 5th. The battle lines had been drawn. Our camp was a motley bunch. A ragtag assortment with varied battle experience. Our enemy… Citadel Bramall. The almighty complex in league with Citadel Matthias to the west. Armed only with a box of explosives secured from the black market of Cheetham Hill and a fridge packed to capacity with moral building liquor the campaign had begun.

A military operation involves deception. Even though you are competent, appear to be incompetent. Though effective, appear to be ineffective.

As we let our explosives rain harmlessly onto empty patches of ground, our enemy became complacent and unknowing of our true motives. Feigning interest in the names of our arsenal, “Ooh a ‘Haunted Castle’… ah a ‘Noise Pack’” we tested the more mundane of our munitions and, safe in the knowledge that the target was unaware of their fate, prepared the rockets.

The smiling face on the packaging belied the intentions we harboured. And so Captain Dan set aim, Sergeant Becky readied the explosive and up I stepped, lighty stick in hand, to ignite the war.

The enemy was caught unaware. Scrambling to their battle posts, the sentries of the night came to see what had befallen their beloved citadel. Mistaking us for mere Bonfire Night revellers they shouted out “What the fuck do you think you’re doing?” and “Stupid Twats!”. We compounded their misunderstanding by steadying another of our harmless 16 shot ‘cakes’ to fly harmlessly into the air.

If words of command are not clear and distinct, if orders are not thoroughly understood, the general is to blame. But if his orders ARE clear, and the soldiers nevertheless disobey, then it is the fault of their officers.

Disaster strikes us at a crucial strategic point. As the first of our cake’s shots flies into the air, the unexpected force knocks the unsecured firework sideways to the ground. Panic and mayhem ensued. Our camp, forever to its shame, contained undisciplined soldiers untested in the trials of war. As they fled the shots being fired toward us from our own artillery they are blinded from the flashes of gunpowder exploding around us with the fury of the gods’ own wrath. Amid the chaos a casualty was sustained. Seaman Apprentice Adam was jostled by an unseen brother and lost grip on the bottle of lager he had taken under his wing. Caught in the timeless moment of knowing it is irretrievably beyond his grasp he can only watch helplessly as it careered into the ground, shattering upon impact. A tragedy had befallen our number and retreat was called so that we could regroup and restock.

The good fighters of old first put themselves beyond the possibility of defeat, and then waited for an opportunity of defeating the enemy.

With due respect paid to a fallen comrade, our resolve was redoubled, for this enemy had cost us dearly. Ingenuity was the name of the game, and using a shard of glass that our complacency, and thus our failure, had readily provided we sought to bring fear to the hearts of those that would destroy us. The bottle fragment was placed over the rocket and the fuse was lit with giddy anticipation. Our efforts were not rewarded, however, as the weight of the glass caused the rocket to curve downward away from the students and to harmlessly explode into the path of an oncoming vehicle.

“Get the fuck over here!” Lieutenant Fitzy had spotted and called in reinforcements returning from another campaign. As we prepared the final onslaught, the traditional battle cry of “Get a fucking job!” was echoed through the deserted streets as our remaining rockets rained down upon the heads of the sentries that had braved the initial attack, forcing their retreat. With victory claimed we returned to our settlement, secure in the knowledge that the first surprise attack had been declared in our favour with only the minimum of collateral damage.

By the grace of the gods, the war will yet be won.

General Disarray: Phil

The Summer Retrospective

octaeder — Sun, 10 Dec 2006 17:05:15 +0000

A change has occurred. Test subject appears to have shed the behavioral patterns that categorised his life over the last few years. Select diary enties attached.

17 June 2006
Today I ceased to be a student. The initial mind spasms of joy at this realisation have now been replaced with a vague aura of emotional discord. The problem, as usual, seems to be the rest of the Universe. Celebration led to drinking; led to joviality; led to more drinking; led to music. The night glowed copper from the output of a hundred electric street lights. Opening a window to ease the passage of the sound waves emitting from the stereo, we took to the quiet streets with beer firmly clenched in hand. Much merryment ensued until from a window emerged a face aged and hardened from long hours queuing to collect a dole cheque.
‘Fucking students. Turn that fucking music down. Some of us have to be up tomorrow.’
Politely we explained that we were no longer students, that we were now paying for him to mug old ladies and impregnate teenage girls and that, while getting up early may seem important, missing an episode of Trisha was not going to be the figurative end of the world. Alas, our pleas fell on deaf ears and vocal chords expressing that they were going to petrol bomb our house.

02 July 2006
Yesterday we moved into our new flat. The front is almost an oasis in the uninhabitable wasteland of Salford. The back is overshadowed by the two ominous towers of Salford University’s student accommodation. A permanent concrete reminder of the world we’ve left behind. So far Fitzy’s not had to vacuum up his own sick, the traditional means of christening a new house. This should be considered a stroke of luck as we don’t yet have a vacuum cleaner.

22 July 2006
Seen no sign of the neighbour’s recently. I can’t help but wonder if our behaviour at the accidental street party last week in some way caused offence. I’m fairly sure we were well behaved, but one thing I’ve learned is that I have a knack for offending people without realising it. In hindsight the Tequila may have been a mistake.

15 August 2006
Something strange has happened. We’re actually getting on with our neighbours. We’ve integrated into their community. We go drinking with a married couple. We discuss the tribulations of life with a Polish guy who lives upstairs. I have no idea what his name is because Fitzy forgot it and felt it would be rude to ask again. He was right, it would have been rude… But helpful. Still, we’ve taken to referring to him as ‘Martin’.

03 September 2006
Today Fitzy’s workmate Adam came round and we decided to visit Phil and Kelly, the aforementioned married couple. After a few drinks Adam spilled beer over their floor, and Kelly’s foot. He then fell into a shrub. May have to watch his alcohol intake in future.

09 September 2006
Today I awake to find that Fitzy’s workmate Adam has been sick over our sofa. This marks the first time bile has been excreted in this house since we moved in. He blames the outburst on the burgers he bought from a Kebab shop, the staff of which he racially abused some weeks previous. While not unlikely that they would wish to poison him, should watch his alcohol intake even closer in future.

23 September 2006
Disaster. Everything ruined. Too busy monitoring Adam’s alcohol intake. Should have realised a Chris would ruin everything. Chris only had three drinks. Oh it was all fun and games when he drove his car into the wall AFTER he’d parked it perfectly, but now we have the luminous green vomit patch to contend with. It’s destroyed Fitzy’s favourite chair and stained the laminate flooring. Worse still, Martin saw us burning the mop used to clean it up. He looked… Perplexed. Not heard from Phil or Kelly since Adam made a dent in their bushes. [Despite the initial first impression Chris is now my current flatmate. Currently he has not destroyed any more furniture. -Curator]

08 October 2006
Saw Martin for the first time since the ‘incident’ a few weeks back. He didn’t seem as comfortable in my company as he had done before he’d seen us burning a mop on the street. Last night I dreamt that I had booked a holiday to Japan. Also that a couple of horses pulling a carriage were hit by a train with such force that the horses exploded in a shower of guts and brains. Woke up annoyed that i wasn’t going to Japan. Felt indifferent to the fact that no horses had been killed.

Observation will continue…

A Brief Conversation With My Brain

octaeder — Sun, 03 Dec 2006 14:05:42 +0000

[My brain needn't have worried. It wasn't long before the blog would be closed down for good. -Curator]

Brain: Oy. Oy you. What are you doing?

Phil: I’m reopening the site.

Brain: …

Phil: You remember… Planet of Bastards. The primary depositary of hijinks and prankary within the University of Salford.

Brain: Yes I remember. I remember well. I am your brain after all

Phil: I know… We’ve met before.

Brain: I thought did away with this place like a vet cutting off a homeless dog’s gammy leg.

Phil: I did. But that was back in the turbulant geopolitical climate of last year. This year things to be returning to the more normal state of getting shitfaced with a few friends and acting like a moron… You know, stuff that’s fun to read about.

Brain: Are you sure this is a good idea… Do you not remember how angry some of the events you chronicled and some of the people who left comments on this site made you? I do. I’m your brain.

Phil: Yeah I know… You said already. And I don’t care, the world once again must know about the things I do, lest they themselves are somehow forced to live my mistakes.

Brain: But the anger… I find it unpleasant

Phil: I care not lots. My mind is made up on this.

Brain: Remember that scene in 24 when Jack Bauer shot Nina Myers?

Phil: Ooh… Jack Bauer… Hey, wait a minute… Don’t try and distract me with your cheap tricks. It won’t work. I’m doing this and there’s nothing you can do to stop me.

Brain: Oh I wouldn’t be so sure of that. I’m your brain. I control you.

Phil: Cocky little fucker aren’t you. You’ve got less power over me than you think my friend.

Brain: What… What’s that you’ve got there?

Phil: Oh this? Why it’s just a 1000ml can of 5% Faxe lager beer. Here try some.

Brain: Hey. No. No, stop that!

Phil: Oh I don’t think I’ll be doing that any time soon. Have some more.

Brain: Stop it. You’re making me feel not good.

Phil: Don’t fight it. It’s inevitable. Just welcome the feeling and things will be more pleasant for all concerned.

Brain: Buh…

Brain: Um… What were we talking about?

Phil: That’s the spirit.

Brain: …

Phil: Good stuff. Now that he’s out of the way we can get this metaphorical show on the road.

The Flaming Lips

octaeder — Wed, 17 May 2006 16:28:07 +0000

“Generals gathered in their masses, just like witches at black masses. Evil minds that plot destruction, sorcerers of death’s construction…”

Recently the world’s top bookmakers employed the use of a bank of supercomputers the size and depth of Uganda to give them the odds that I’ll manage to make it through this review without resorting to sycophantic gushing… The results are in… They don’t look good.

So lets start by making things more palatable for the digestion by starting out like this: The support act for The Flaming Lips’ performance of April 25th at the Manchester Apollo were The Go! Team… And they’re just shit.

First off I’d just like to say that any band that references their name in their songs should be shot on site. It’s pathetic. “Hey guys why waste time and effort thinking about conveying a message or feeling within the subtext of our music when we could just moronically chant G. O. Exclamation Mark. T. E. A. M. over and over again while whatever the hell our drummers name is ‘tards out to his own insanity ridden twitching and the rest of us pretend we know what a guitar chord is?” So what’s left is a combination of completely pointless and unnecessary vocals shouted by some woman with an odd disorder that completely prevented her from controlling their movement in an alarming display of what we’ve termed post-feminist lesbian crap out of respect to Becky and her sometimes staggeringly godawful taste in shitty shouty indie music from some woman or another.

Perhaps it was for the best. We’d all bought drinks and having a shit act on avoided the awkward moment when the band finishes playing and you need to get your plastic glass in to some ridiculous position that enables you to clap without spilling fermented wheat and yeast liquid all over your clothes.

Previous excursions to the Apollo meant we could now find it with only a 30% margin for error. This was fairly lucky because our usual patented technique of ‘following the indie-kids’ wasn’t going to work… Don’t know what they were up to that night but they sure as hell weren’t spending it with the ‘Lips. Also Dom had come up for the gig and we’d have looked like knobs getting lost in a city we’d spent three years living in.

The Flaming Lips have been around for 23 years and spent a large portion of the early years at least on tour. Recently they’ve had numerous festival appearance and toured with the likes of Beck and The White Stripes. Surely at some point, during one of these gigs, at some moment someone could have explained the concept of a roadie to them. The poor lads are up on stage bringing out their gear when most bands would be safely backstage drinking and injecting heroin.

Many bands will struggle to get to grips with the concept of audience participation. They either don’t bother, do bother but realises that nobody cares (hello to the support bands for Pitchshifter’s last tour), or reduce themselves to shouting about how they ain’t being loud enough. Wayne Coyne’s solution is this: Get into a giant inflatable bubble and have yourself rolled on top of the audience for a few minutes.

Not sure what it is about the human psyche but you seem to warm to a band after the lead singers rolled over you in a giant bubble. Then there were the balloons. Hundreds and hundreds of large red balloons bouncing around over the audience. Amusing at first it did get a bit annoying after a while, but was worth it to watch someone in front of me carefully lining up a picture on his camera phone only for a balloon to twat him on the side of the head making him drop his phone. God that made me chuckle… Wayne himself had a plethora of even larger balloons to try and attempt to throw up into the stalls… A plight that the audience got behind with vigour.

Then there was the talking. Dear God when that man starts off on a train of thought you know you’re in for the long haul. Cutting edge topics ranged from how much he was enjoying himself to George Bush being a bit of a tosser when all’s said and done. Can’t argue to much because unlike some of the other great talkers in music history, namely pretentious self-centred toss-monkey Bono, Wayne was quick to admit that he wasn’t going to change the world, he just needed a bit of a rant… And that he then followed the rant with an amazing cover of Sabbath’s War Pigs is all the justification I need.

Music and visuals were expectantly playful, with the highlight of the gig potentially being the song written around the duck and cow noises from kiddies play toy ‘Animal Band’… Or perhaps the super-chilled rendition of ‘In The Morning Of Magicians’ that would have inevitably yielded many lighters were it not bound to play havoc with the balloons. Visually the standout moment was probably the odd cartoon that was barely visible from behind the wall of epileptic inducing light boxes, or perhaps the videos of Japanese women being terrorised by lizards in some game show that played behind ‘Free Radicals’.

On a final note: Michael Ivins cheer up. Life can’t be that bad… You’re making a fair amount of money I’d imagine. Just give us a wave or a smile every now and then… Try some crack, might brighten things up for you a bit.

Returning: Phil

Thought For The Week: Google Special

octaeder — Wed, 29 Mar 2006 13:43:21 +0000

“They have begun, building their complex construction, intended from the first to sacrifice the Universe…”

Lets all just sit round a table for a second and admit something. Call it an intervention. Now we’re all friends here and we all care very much but it has to be said: Google isn’t very good.

Now I know what you’re thinking: But Phil, when I type the word tits into Google and press the image tab I get tits!

Well sure you do! I never said Google wasn’t useful. It just isn’t very good. I mean Waffles are useful: You can put them with practically any meal in some for or another. But at the end of the day what are Waffles? They’re Siamese Chips… That’s all.

To prove my point here are the top three searches that people have genuinely made into Google that have resulted in them coming across this site and hence them getting, probably, exactly what they didn’t want. Bare in mind that I’ve only taken these from the last few days and while it has been a particularly bizarre week for Google searches, there have been some extremely disturbing ones in the past. I’ve just never written them down. This site, then, also isn’t very good. It’s also not useful so you have to ask why the fuck is it here?

#3: “Cunts at Microsoft”: Jam it into Google and we’re the fourth site you come across. However more than that, look down the first results page. Not one of these links will actually take the user to the thing that he/she wanted: The contact details or webpages of all the employees at Microsoft who are actually cunts. Google failed them. [I admit to still maintaining a great deal at pride that I once ran a site that was the #4 stop for people searching 'cunts at Microsoft'. -Curator]

#2: “Steve Coogan dissertation bag of shite”: Ok this one is only as high up the rankings as it is because this site comes top of the search list. In fact it gets the top two search results. I’m not entirely sure that that’s a good thing, but it is, at least, an important thing. To be honest I’m a little confused as to what the searcher was actually trying to find. I can envisage a Steve Coogan dissertation (because we all know there are some people who are doing pointless ‘fake’ degrees… you know, like art and stuff) [Or Politics, Phil... Or Politics. -Curator] and I can full well imagine a bag containing shite (personally I’m imagining a brown paper bag containing shite but if you’re thinking of a satchel or a holdall then by all means keep that dream.) Putting the two together confuses me. As far as I can work out the bag itself must be made of the Steve Coogan dissertation. I can forgive Google for not finding this to be honest, there’s just too many variables. Is the dissertation itself about Steve Coogan or by Steve Coogan? I think we’d better all just stop thinking about it and move on.

#1: “Paul McCartney is a money grabbing bastard”: Now this one is a disappointment. Google should’ve been able to handle it. The last two entries had an heir of a lust for knowledge about them. Take ‘Cunts at Microsoft’ which conveys far more of a quest for knowledge and information than if it had just been ‘Microsoft are Cunts’ (which this site is search position 3 for!). This search is all about imposing your belief on people. Paul McCartney IS a money grabbing bastard: See, if the searcher is trying to find someone with that belief either to share OR to oppose they don’t want to come across this site in eighth position bitching about the band Wings. Come ON! The internet is all about imposing your belief on other people… Fuck, that’s what all of life and existance is about! And, if you put quote marks around the search, you’ll see that Google thinks not one place on the internet is of the belief that Paul McCartney is a money grabbing cunt. PAUL MCCARTNEY IS NOT THAT FUCKING SAINTLY THAT NOT ONE PERSON ON THE WHOLE FUCKING INTERNET THINKS HE’S A MONEY GRABBING CUNT!

Unsurprisingly: Phil

St. Irish Day

octaeder — Mon, 27 Mar 2006 18:13:41 +0000

“The roof, the roof, the roof is on fire, the roof, the roof, the roof is on fire, the roof, the roof, the roof is on fire. We don’t need no water let the mother fucker burn, burn mother fucker, burn…”

Life can be full of disappointment.

Take the Salford branch of McDonalds as an example. Every time I go to get a McFlurry I know that the Salford McDonalds staff wont put it through the McFlurrinator. Now I don’t plan on wasting my time bitching about McDonalds Staff, I mean everyone does it… It would be as obvious as saying: “The Bush administration in 2003 effectively gutted the ‘no net loss’ of wetlands policy initiated during the administration of the elder Bush.” Even so, surely the best part of working at McDonalds IS the McFlurrinator. Frankly it should violate trading standards rules to even call it a McFlurry: Without McFlurrination it’s just sub-par ice cream drowned in an annoying layer of chocolate sauce.

Another of life’s disappointments, for us at least, has been St. Patrick’s Day. Take our first Uni year. Me and Fitz shared a can of lager. Now I know what you’re thinking: “Well then surely it was a two gallon can?”… It wasn’t. “Surely it was a magic and wondrous infinite can that never ran out, procured one day from a half-crazed old crone running a mystic stall in an Arabian bazaar you were browsing around during one of your many travels to Ipswich?”… It wasn’t. “Well how in God’s name did you get drunk then?”… We didn’t. “Ah…”

Take our second Uni year. We’d saved money, we’d invited people to join us and we were going on a pub crawl. Now pub crawls are not always everything they’re made out to be. Sure if you live on Pub Street, Pubsville then you’re probably in for a good time. If, however, you live in Salford and you plan to crawl to Manchester then you may find that your crawl to lager supping ratio is somewhat off whack… Especially if you stop to have a bit of a shout at Eric Wright when you pass his headquarters. Sure we drank… But we didn’t get drunk…

And so, third year St. Patrick’s Night, we were prepared. We had a pub crawl route that included many pubs, we had a small collective of people consisting of me, Fitz and David, so as not to have to think about the welfare of others and most importantly we had good ol’ fashion British determination. The grim-realisation that we had a job in front of us and the fate of the world, and our bladders, rested solely on that tasks completion!

**********

Life can be full of disappointment.

Meet Gemma: The bossy fat one, Robyn: The attractive one and Daniel: The worryingly camp one that can’t hold his drink.

These three friends have just left Stafford. Actually friends may be a little strong. Acquaintances might be a better word. Stafford, however, is a place malnourished of entertainment and so if a chance to leave presents itself then you’d better believe you’re gonna grab it by the short and curly hairs. These adventurers decide that for this night of nights they would go to the Mecca of binge-drinking: Manchester.

As is common in these situations, disaster was not far away. Robin on perusal of her personal belongings realises she has forgotten her ID. Panic quickly ensues, a panic completely justified when, pan forward to the future, it was revealed they wouldn’t even be granted entry into 5th Ave. The most evil and detestable of all God’s Manchester based indie and alternative music club venues.

All they wanted was to experience a Manchester indie club, but instead were forced to wander cold, lost and alone along the streets of a harsh and unforgiving alien city. A world in which people spoke a different language and the citizens forsook the traditional British sandwich in favour of the altogether more bewildering “barmcake”. Frightened and confused they saw in the distance the faint glimmer of salvation: three warriors boldly striding… or, to be more literal, boldly staggering to their destination. They saw hope.

**********

Life can be full of disappointment.

I’d tried to get others to come out for St. Patrick’s Day. My mistake was probably in waiting till the day before to do this, but the point is that I tried. The worst excuse I heard (and multiple times) for not going out was the classic: I’m not Irish. SO THE FUCK WHAT?! St. Patrick wasn’t just the Patron Saint of the Irish but also the Patron Saint of Cirrhosis of the Liver and Fatal Kidney Failure and THAT MEANS IT’S TIME TO CELEBRATE DAGNAMMIT!

Still, even with just the three of us we’d had a successful drink in both The Crescent and The Black Horse (although someone had completely forgotten to inform them of the day: watching ‘A Touch of Frost’ does not constitute a St. Patrick’s Day celebration.) We’d made it to Liverpool road and had more pleasingly successful drinks all the way up until The White Lion happened. On reflection the running might have been a little over the top, but there is never an excuse for Karaoke.

Now it was time to go to the Oyster Bar… But before we could get there, we needed to deal with the three random people that had just approached us.

Their biggest mistake was laughing. We informed them that if they were looking for an indie bar then 42nd Street was probably the best place to try… It’s biggest plus point: It wasn’t 5th Avenue. We also agreed to take them to the yellow cobbled road on which they would have to follow. On the way though, our naturally charming banter had them chuckling away like an Albino in a vat of feathers. That was their mistake. They fed my ego. And it was hungry. And so through a mixture of mental persuasion and physical force we dragged them to the Oyster Bar. If you ever want to impress someone who isn’t from Manchester you take them to the Oyster Bar. You then go up to the bar and you ask for three pints of lager. For some reason the act of ordering a pint of non-specific seems to have a peculiar pleasing effect on the human psyche.

We weren’t in the Oyster Bar long, it being near pub closing time. Yet in that short space of minutes we managed to establish ourselves as Oyster Bar secondary bouncers, greeting and thanking all those who walked through the door we were at. On reflection this could have been a mistake. I’ve never been accosted by so many fat, middle-aged women in all my life… And I’ve been accosted by more than I care to mention as it is. This was all accompanied by more laughter from our admirers. It was somewhat worrying and sycophantic, but it was good. We endeavoured to keep their company a while longer.

The moment when a good thing starts to get a little tiresome and trying. The moment when friendly acquaintances sour. The moment when its time to give up and go. That moment was after the Oyster Bar. That was the moment when we should have let the Stafford 3 drift into the night. Instead…

The problem was The Footage. It’s cheap and it’s open late and, most importantly, it’s not a club. What it isn’t though, is indie. Yet we persuaded them to join us there for more drinks. It was at this point we noticed Daniel was in trouble. When a man is putting all of his effort into walking into a straight line and still manages to hit a wall you know you’ve got a problem. When the fat one realises that we hadn’t taken them to a indie club and takes the attractive one to the toilets to talk for two hours about the way they’d been arguing all night you know you’ve got a problem.

Daniel sat, sulking and miserable for those two hours. It’s the sort of sight that could well ruin your night… At least it could if you were in any way a nice person. Lucky then for me that I could continue drinking and enjoying myself. Sure the laughter had stopped, replaced with tears of misery, but to be honest I was glad because the attention and the sound of Daniel’s laughter were both getting heavily on my wick and as he sat there in despair I couldn’t help but think of Karma and laugh.

And yet the hours passed and the Staffordites ended up at our house as a last refuge of the desperate and alone. I’m fairly sure my bastard gene kicked in and I made a remark about our last victims not being nearly as co-operative (by this point I was making sure to say things that weren’t going to amuse anyone but myself) and by no small coincidence they all left early the next morning.

**********

Life can be full of disappointment.

Meet Graham and Becky.

They’ve been forsaken by their two flatmates and have been left alone on St. Patrick’s night. Their night will only get worse. After sitting around in their own bitter resentment for a while Graham decides to cook a meal. Tragedy strikes and the retard burns his food, and a chain reaction is set off resulting in the fire alarm going off.

Shouldn’t be a problem though. Their flatmates explained to both of them just how to turn the fire alarm off in case of such an incident. Hell, even if they didn’t remember this, it was all written on a sticker ON the main fire alarm control panel anyway.

But who needs instructions when you can just randomly grab wires inside the panel and pull them out? Who needs instructions when you can rip the alarms off the ceiling? Who needs instructions when you can short out the whole control panel causing the fire alarm to be permanently going off unless you switched off the fuse controlling the downstairs lighting?

Someone who doesn’t want to be woken up by his flatmates at 5 in the morning as they shout at him for being such a dumb, retarded, fucking useless Southerner… That’s who.

**********

So sure life can be full of its little disapointments. Saint Patrick’s Day held many challenges for many different people. Not me though. I got drunk. Extremely drunk. So drunk I was shouting at boaters who probably weren’t even in their barges and went to stare at a bald man in a window for around 10 minutes.

And who the hell cares about other peoples problems when you’re very, very, drunk? Happy Saint Cirrhosis Day people!

Rantings and/or Ravings: Phil

How To Make Enemies And Hate People

octaeder — Tue, 14 Mar 2006 18:12:41 +0000

“So we cannot know ourselves or what we’d really do with all your power…”

The train journey hadn’t been the problem. Sure it had been long… And awkward… And I’d had what could be generously described as a sackful of ‘living essentials’ to drag round everywhere I went. But a train is by its very nature a very simple thing to use. You get on it, you wait, you get off. Anything else, such as delay or explosions, is blissfully someone else’s problem. “Train caught fire you say? Well have fun with that, in the meantime I’ll just continue to sit here and try to remember that I need to change at Stockport… Stockport was two stops ago you say? Fuckbox…”

The train journey hadn’t been the problem. The problem was simple logistics: Trains rarely stop at the exact destination you need to be. Hence the period between station and destination… That was the problem. The map didn’t help. It had obviously been made by someone who assumed that they knew the area of Salford and had been given an explanation of what the concept of a map should be… An explanation they seemingly didn’t understand. If the map was a person then it was the sort of person that when faced with something that they had failed to mention, say a pathway or a road, would give you a reproachful look and say “well of course there’s a pathway there, I mean it’s been there since the War… Everyone knows that path’s there.”

I tried explaining to the map that I obviously didn’t know that the pathway was there because I’d never been there before, but I then realised I was drawing unnecessary attention to myself so I sharply cut-off my reprimand mid-sentence and settled for fixing the map a look that suggested it should think about what it had done… And it should think it long and hard.

Finally, after nearly an hour of wandering around darkest Salford with a laptop in my hand and a sackful of miscellaneous junk now surgically attached to my back, I had arrived at Castle Greyskull… I had arrived at University.

I looked enviously at all the students who had been driven from their respective homes by their respective parents. I decided I needed to have a talk with my own parents about the art of fine parenting. Leaving me to haul my things to Uni myself while they decided to drive up the rest of my belongings the next day would definitely fall under the column marked “BAD”. The main question now went something along the lines of: ‘What the fuck do I do now?’ The general consensus from everyone else was that I should be making my way to the back of a line and wait to enter a small room near the entrance of the complex. Now, while I may not be Jewish, I can’t say I’ve ever trusted long lines that lead into small unmarked buildings. Still, people seemed to be coming out of this one and enough people were giving me strange looks already because I’d just realised I could have saved 20 minutes off my journey if I’d travelled down a different road and was once again shouting at the map.

Looking back now, I don’t think that I was suitably in awe of what the building did contain.

They say that first impressions are the most important. This is bollocks. In all but the most extreme cases your first impression is completely misguided. The extreme case in which it isn’t however makes up the first Case Study of my first student home. Chris Street was ugly. Deformed ugly. By the time he arrived in our house, there was already a crowd of us in the kitchen attempting to get to know each other (by a process that would later be developed into the standard way employed by Salford students to get to know other Salford students: What course are you doing? What year are you in? Don’t you think are Union bar is a crock of shit?) We all naturally assumed that Chris had Down’s Syndrome and the girl that was with him was his SCOPE volunteer. However he didn’t have Down’s Syndrome… He was just ugly. Naturally my first impression was one of dislike. And this was the correct impression to make… Years of being freakishly ugly probably has the effect of twisting a man’s soul until he is just a hard shell of humanity with a rich, deformed, chocolaty centre. Castle Greyskull had an intercom system linking all of the phones together. One of the first nights there he would call my phone, wait till I answered and then hang up. It was obvious it was him because he found it hilarious and the walls weren’t that thick. Unfortunately stupid people never think their evil schemes through and so he found himself scuppered when I unplugged the phone. Poor kid didn’t think to do the same thing when I set my modem up to phone him every hour throughout the night.

But that was the future. I hadn’t yet entered the building. I was still stood waiting in line.

When you live with someone for a year, your first impression is almost always rendered obsolete. Take case study two: Dan Penson. Once I arrived in House 49, my first year lodgings, he was the first person I met. As we struck up a conversation my first impression was positive. When I remember Penson now my impression is one of a stupid cockney knobhead who does nothing but sit in a room quoting random bits of Family Guy and then giggling like a twat, not of someone I once had a conversation with that didn’t result in me wanting to punch him. The same can be said about Fitz’s first impression of Karl Unwin, which was proven to be very misguided after the phrase “you could get shot for that where I come from” got driven into the ground (which didn’t take long.)

I knew none of this yet. The line outside the building had shrunk and I was now inside of it and not treating the surroundings with the reverence they may have deserved.

Eventually Karl would get forced upon me and James. After a couple of weeks everyone disperses out into groups. For a while our group was me, James and Karl. We would sit around and discuss important topics about current affairs, the nature of the Universe and whether Airwolf was better than Knight Rider or Thunder In Paradise. Actually most of the year was spent smoking drugs, watching M*A*S*H and throwing Chris’ plates down the rather large set of stairs. Eventually though, we called Karl into my room, thanked him for the effort he made in being our friend, wished him well in his search for future friendship opportunities and told him that Thunder In Paradise was simply the wrong answer.

I’d not met Karl yet though… Or James. What I had done was reached the front of the line. I was given a set of keys to House 49. I was given the keys to that particular house purely on the basis of chronology. If I’d have taken that road and saved 20 minutes in getting to Uni my life would have been completely different. If I’d not had harsh words with the map that had led me astray my life would have been completely different. Your life would be different too, because you wouldn’t have been reading this. In fact you might have done something productive like cure cancer. In fact I want you to stop reading this now and not come back until you’ve cured cancer. I’m not having the thousands of people dying from tumours resting on my head just because you’re too lazy to sort it out. Still, there would almost be something deep and meaningful about this fact if I weren’t so inclined to tell the Universe and its infinite probabilities of chance and fate to just get over itself. I mean that is no way to run a place. Imagine if you went to hospital needing a kidney transplant only to be told that kidney transplants were half an hour ago and now it’s the turn of appendectomies and if you want a new kidney you’ll have to wait three days. Actually that’s not far off how hospitals are run.

And so in this quagmire of fate and chance, how was it that me and Fitz decided to share a flat over the coming years? Well, we got pissed in a pub somewhere and just decided to do it without really thinking it through…

Meandering: Phil