|
|
Ok, I don’t usually do politics, but seeing as they’re still counting up the votes from yesterday’s General Election, I thought I’d take the moment to do something unusual and talk about it. I’ve got a number of issues with the current government and with that in mind you’d probably expect that I’d be the first to the polling station to try and fix the world. Unfortunately though I had a number of similarly important jobs and I was unable to prioritise them so just worked though them in order. Yesterday I had to do the following;
- Empty the sea with a bucket
- Spit into the wind
- Go to war with Iraq
- Put out a fire with petrol
- Give Sysiphus a hand
- Have dinner with Tantalus
- Cast my Vote
As you can see I had a lot on, all as equally pointless as my vote. Now a lot of people have told me that ‘people died for your vote’. This is partly true, A lot of people died so that I could exercise my right to or not to vote. I’ve voted by not voting, given that no party particularly inspires me with great confidence I’ve withheld my vote from all of them.
For example, lets start with the current bunch of useless bastards, The Labour Party… What *have* they done for us? Fucked the economy through greed, sent us into an illegal war because they didn’t dare say no to their adopted, ginger brother, the United States of America, and pretty much drained every last drop of blood and hope out of the populace (except those fanatical, red flag waving lunatics and scrotes on benefits, who get paid for sitting on their arse and watching Jeremy Kyle over a case of Stella or Pikey Cider and a 20 pack, squeezing out illiterate, illegitimate spawn at every opportunity in the hope of getting on the afore mentioned TV show.)
Secondly of course there’s The Conservative Party, who in my opinion are probably only vaguely aware of what day it is. I imagine they determine this by seeing which of their servants bring them breakfast (of virgin’s blood on toast and small fluffy forest creatures in school milk), and remind them just how much money they have and if there’s a fox hunt today. From what I understand (in my ignorant and belligerent way) they want to give the rich people more money and let the poor people eat cake. I seem to recall this happening before at some point in the Land of Cheese and Surrender… I don’t think it ended well for the rich people. Seeing as I’m poor (shock horror!) I’d be first in line for execution under this detatched regime.
Next would be The Liberal Democrats, who somehow rose to media sensation with their new poster boy Nick Clegg. They’re the yellow party. That’s all I have. They are halfway between Red and Blue (which should make them purple!). The general impression I have of the Lib Dems is that a vote for them is a wasted vote. Maybe they had good policies, but unfortunately their promenading and dick waving didn’t filter through to me so they lost out on my vote through crap marketing.
I’m not going to talk too much about the independents because they’re far too numerous to count and probably insane. I will make a cheap gag at the expense of Nick Farage of the UK Independent Party who was involved in a plane crash yesterday. He sustained some degree of injury including several broken bones, but is otherwise ok. The black box recorder in the plane reported the crash was caused by a problem the right side aerilon. Yes folks, there’s something wrong with the right wing! /COAT
My parting (cheap)shot is aimed at everyone’s favourite knobhead, Nick Griffin. Favourite here being used very loosely, very much in the same way that I tell people that my favourite mass-murdering nazi fuckhead is Hitler or that my favourite sophisticated serial killer is Ed Gein or that Coldplay is my favourite band. Favourite being covered in so much sarcasm it looks like a Texan pancake/maple syrup breakfast and would need a whole roll of Bounty to wipe up. I honestly cannot see a single vestige of good in that bigoted, one-eyed thug posing as a politician. I wouldn’t vote for him and his lot if my life depended on it. Not even in Room 101.
I will poke fun at the pumpkin headed troll though…
 Nick Griffin, Boglin, I can't tell the difference!
Well my plan was almost right yesterday. What I hadn’t counted on was just missing the train out of Dewsbury in the morning thus having to nip into the pub on the platform and chugging down a tasty pint of Apistus, a fine honey brewed ale, while I waited for the next train back to Huddersfield. Once I got back home I quickly shoved a sandwich into my facehole before nipping out to the post office to pick up my dad’s birthday present… the one day I’m out is the only day the parcel delivery guy turns up early in the day. Typical! From there it was back home, quick shower, and off to town. Late.
I met Ad in the Head of Steam and enjoyed a couple of overpriced pints of Guinness before jumping on the train to Manchester. As predicted, we went to the Picadilly Tavern to sample their usually excellent range of ales. You can probably imagine my disappointment upon arriving to find they only had one moderately interesting sounding pint. It wasn’t very good, but it got drank anyway. I’m pleased to report that the toilets this time were zombie free, weren’t ankle deep in stale beery piss and the cubicle doors had been replaced. They did still smell like a sun baked, roadkill skunk.
The Zombie in the Toilet
Last year, as Ad and I were enjoying drinks in the Picadilly Tavern, sat on the sofas above the top of the stairs, we witnessed a VERY drunk man attempt to make it down to the toilets. As he was about halfway down he took a tumble, clattered and bounced all the way down the rest of the steps. Being responsible grown ups we both had a good laugh about it (I’m allowed to laugh at people falling down those stairs, I’ve done it too) and drank our drinks instead of going to see if the old boy was ok. He never did come back up so our drunken logic made the leap that he’d died from his injuries in the toilets and come back as a zombie. We weren’t going to go and investigate, partly because it’s fucking weird to go look ’round the gents, and partly because he might actually be a zombie and we didn’t want eating.
Eventually though the pints worked their way through my system and I was left with two options. Piss my pants or brave the toilet. Of course I decided to go to the toilet, so down the stairs I went into the rank, zombie infested bathroom. There was no blood on the stairs, no trail of blood leading into the gents and no sign of the stair tumbler. Satisfied it was all clear I started what I’d come to do. I was happily pissing away, trying not to inhale, when all of a sudden from one of the cubicles behind me there’s a shuffling and moaning… just like there would be if there was a fucking zombie in the fucking cubicle!! A wave of panic hit me!
I finished up quickly, I wasn’t going to be a zombie wandering about with my bits poking out the front of my keks! No sir! I have to confess, I scampered out of there like a girl before the living dead drunk guy could creep up behind me and take a chunk out of my head.
From the Tavern we wandered on, as expected, to Witherspoons to see what tasty ales they had lying around. The absorbent, drinky spill mat on the bar boasted an ale festival currently featuring over 50(!) guest ales available right now! Unfortunately, as is usual in that particular, sticky establishment, their boast was 49 guest ales too ambitious and we wound up ordering 2 pints of Brown Dog, which to give it credit, tasted like a brown dog.
From there we stalked off in disgust and a not entirely straight line, to The Old Wellington Inn. Upon getting to the bar I was filled with glee to see that they had Spirit of Spring on tap… Spirit of Spring is delicious and more importantly, it’s GREEN! Here’s a picture to prove it…
We enjoyed a couple of this verdant brew before thinking we really ought to head on to the venue, via Burger King, so we did. At this juncture I’d like to apologise to whoever had to clean up the wreckage I left behind in there… no, I didn’t need all those napkins, or that mountain of salt I felt it necessary to pour out on to the table, and frankly you should have known better than to give me SIX sachets of ketchup. I’d like to apologise, but I’ve just rationalised it so it was thir fault, so I won’t. Bugger’em!
When we reached the venue (without me getting confused, but having to sneak into the fucking awful KrO Bar for a piss en route – damn that supersized coke) we were confused to find[spunge] playing already, us having timed our journey as to miss Face to Face who we thought were on first. Sadly we were wrong. We caught the end of the [spunge] set and they played the three tracks I wanted them to (Ego, Jump on Demand and Kicking Pigeons) and then went off stage to make room for Face to Face. To help make room for the next band, we went to the bar for their whole set… because they’re rubbish. Eventually they finished and it was time for the Dropkick Murphys… HURRAH! Only trouble is, which ever sound monkey set the desk up clearly hadn’t mixed for a live band ever and decided the best way to balance it was to turn everything up to 10 and then turn the master volume up to 10 too just to be sure. It would have been an awesome show had it been balanced right. Seeing as it wasn’t, it was a good show, but could’ve been better.
 This is how the Dropkick Murphys show was 'mixed' The gig finished and we stumbled out, telling the bootleggers that it was a ‘dark day when bootleg shirts cost a tenner’ – I haggled one down a bit, but he wouldn’t go lower than £8, which is a shame, because I’d said ‘Five and done” – I don’t have a nice green Murphys Slamrock bootleg shirt, and he doesn’t have my £5, so I guess it balanced.
We were lucky enough to arrive at the station just in time to see the train slinking away into the night leaving us stranded (as per fucking usual!) in Manchester. Our initial investigations into the next train turned up one at half past bastard four! Four and a half hours later. Luckily I’d mentioned our predicament to Helen who very kindly looked online to find us an alternative route home. From Manchester we were to go to Leeds, and from Leeds to Huddersfield, and we’d arrive back home before the half four train was even pulling into the station.
A fool proof plan, and were it not for Helen, we’d probably still be stuck in Manchester. We got the first train no problems, and all being well we’d have 15 minutes to find the next train and get on it. Unfortunately, some pikey bastards had stolen the cabling for the signals outside Leeds station and we had to be diverted via Wakefield meaning another 20mins on the journey time and an arrival 5 minutes after our connection had left. Luckily the driver drove like a maniac and we got there with two minutes to spare to find our train wasn’t on the platform it was supposed to be (15a) and we’d have to leg it to a different platform (12c). We ran… up the stairs, following the signs all the way, a hard right and a quick hurtle down the stairs to platform 12c… which was the opposite side of 15a. A bit of exercise never hurt anyone right? After an uneventful trip back along the line we’d just come we got to Huddersfield, climbed into a taxi and went home.
It was about half three when I got to bed. It was seven o clock when I got up this morning.
I’m too old for this shit!
Share
Hurrah! As they say in that *REALLY* annoying pasta sauce* advert, “Today’s the day”. For tonight I’m going to see the Dropkick Murphys in Manchester with my good buddy and partner in crime, Ad. I’m predicting that first we’ll head to the Picadilly Tavern to order a couple of cheap (really cheap!!) pints before complaining how fucking awful it is in there, and wondering if the zombie is still in the toilet – I will tell this story later if someone reminds me, it may go some way to explaining why there’s no doors on the cubicles in that pestilent shitter – before deciding to leave the tavern and wander along to the similarly cheap, nasty and surprisingly sticky Witherspoons a little further along to see what interesting ales they have for the consuming there.
I suppose after that it’ll be the Wellington, which in my humble opinion has started to decline since we started drinking in there… When we first went in they had green ale… green, as in the colour, like grass and leaves and caterpillars. It was good… very good. These days you’re lucky to get a pint of mediocre Cumberland or, if you’re lucky like me, a truly awful blonde ale that makes drinking the rainwater out of the bottom of the ashtrays look like a good way to take the foul taste away.
From there, it’s a short hop to The Oyster Bar, or as it’s affectionately known (by Ad and I at least) ‘The Brown Pub’. It shouldn’t be too big a stretch of the imagination as to how it got that name. See if you can guess. … … That’s right… it’s brown. Tastefully decorated in 2 shades of unpleasant brown, it’s a dark and dingy place with a little cordoned off area that might be the only place in the building where natural light falls on the moldering brown paint. We like to sit in there, so we can see the cars and people and remember we’re not victorians waiting to go back to the workhouse. It also feels a bit like a train carriage. This time, as every time before, I am going to select the darkest pint I can get without getting a pint of Bovril. If I get something non-newtonian, so much the better.
Once we’re good and liquored up we’ll saunter along to the venue, complaining that it’s so bloody far, and I will, as ever, get confused and insist that they’ve moved the venue another 14 miles further down the road as compared to last time. Of course they haven’t, that’d be silly.
Here’s a small diagram to demonstrate how much fun I think tonight will be…
 See how much fun we're going to have tonight... it's gonna be awesome! *Pasta sauce that if you showed to a proper italian would see you verbally abused, violently gestured at and then clubbed to death with the jar. The last words you’d hear would be “Ey! What isa theees shiit?”
Share
A long time ago… well not that long ago, not like the cretaceous period long ago but longer ago than yesterday, or even the day before that… a long time ago I used to mock people who played games on facebook (after I’d stopped mocking them for using facebook instead of myspace and adopted it myself), thinking they were like some kind of retarded monkey for spending ages dicking about farming some junk or other, or making a town out of staples and pixels, or smothering a badger in the latest animal cruelty simulator. Any way, that was the past… I, your humble narrator, have fallen foul of this pointless time sink… in a big way.
At the moment (assuming I can get facebook to stop doing things wrong and show me the bloody list instead of the error box) I have played, or am playing the following:
- Island Paradise
- Mafia Wars
- My Tribe
- Teasure Isle
- Little Rock Pool
- My City Life
- Mousehunt
- Petville
- Treasure Madness
- Superhero City
- Fishville
- Rollercoaster Kingdom
- Country Life
- Some poker thing I never actually played
- Brain Chef
- Farmville
- Café World
- Kingdoms of Camelot
That is clearly more games than necessary, and far more than any normal person who actually has stuff to do during the day should have played/play. It’s little wonder I get nothing done. Aside from that picture of Heston Blumminmental today of course… And two blog posts.
Anyway, the long and short of it is that I’ve become a retarded monkey.
Share
Last night I was watching everyone’s favourite chef-wizard Heston Blumenthal on the telly while he was working his culinary voodoo on regency fairy tales and bits of a pig you wouldn’t eat, even if you were starving to death. Personally I thought his efforts were lacklustre at best (not that you care) and thought he could do much better. I’d dread to think what would happen if he decided to do a adult themed dinner… so without further ado, I present…
‘Heston Blumenthal’s Porno Feast’
 This would be funnier if it wasn't true...
Ok, so I’m *VERY* pleased to be able to announce that I’ve been invited to do the artwork for an upcoming series of graphic novels by Dead of Night Award Nominee, James Bennett. I’m very excited by this because for me, this is my most important job, the break into the book illustration world I’ve been waiting for. The book itself is ‘Practical Devil Worship (For All the Family) and was nominated for Best Novella, British Fantasy Awards 2007. I’ve read it, obviously, and now I’m looking forward to getting the first of four volumes drawn and inked and lettered and most importantly, on the shelves.
The Darkstein’s. Your average American family – hardworking, patriotic and devout – the only thing that sets them apart from the God-fearing community of Goat Creek is their chosen faith. Following the disappearance of local girl Belinda Popejoy, backwater prejudices threaten to blow the tenuous neighbourly peace to smithereens.
As tension and bigotry mount on all sides, and private vendettas boil over, the Darkstein’s will have to rely on the luck of the devil in order to survive…
‘With edgy and decisive writing, Practical Devil Worship (For All The Family) is a fun read. Containing adult content it is not, as the title suggests, for all the family. Short enough to read in one sitting, yet long enough to tell the whole story, in the way Bennett wanted to. Wrapped in an impressive cultish cover, it’s worthwhile adding this book to your collection. With characters you love to hate, here’s hoping the Darkstein family will rise again.’
Karina Kantas FutureFire Magazine
That said, I should probably have a quick break (from mucking about on t’interweb), make a brew and get on with some work…
Share
It’s been a while since I’ve posted anything here, but it’s worth pointing out that GrimDesign Artworks is no longer operating from this address. If you’re looking to hire on a marketing, design, PR genius you should head on over to www.monolithartworks.co.uk. Same genius, different name.
Over the last couple of days I’ve been messing about with 3DSM and have turned out a couple of pictures which I uploaded to my Facebook only to find that Facebook has no qualms about resizing and compressing the file beyond recognition. Bloody Facebook. In light of this, I’ve chosen to also upload them here.
 - Dreams in the Witch House ©2010 Mark Barrett – Inspired by H P Lovecraft’s ‘Dreams in the Witch House’
I love this tale, it’s strange, creepy and both Keziah Mason and Brown Jenkins give me the fear something terrible.
 - They All Float ©2010 Mark Barrett – Inspired by Stephen King’s ‘IT’
I’m not a big fan of Stephen King. He goes in to far much superfluous detail for me and I get interminably bored well before the monsters come along to make things interesting. Happily it’s not the same with ‘IT’, still the same amount of needless details, but at least Pennywise is pulling people’s limbs off pretty soon in.
Share
It’s been a quiet few months lately. What with the Christmas hangovers and the declining economy I’ve had a little time to do my own work. The Twisted World of Doctor Wombat is still trundling along, but somewhere between releasing an issue every Tuesday and the current time, it’s mutated into a book which means no more sneaky releases here, or anywhere else for that matter (sorry!). Volume One is almost halfway done so fingers crossed it might see publication sometime this year.
In the mean time I’ve been painting… paintings that’ve been likened to that of Tim Burton(!!)… if only I had his hair and pay cheque too huh?
| The Boy With A Crab For A Hand
People came from across the land,
To see the boy with a crab for a hand.
|
|
| The Girl Who Gravity Ignored
The girl, who gravity ignored,
Could seldom be found upon the floor.
The best course of action,
Should you have such a feeling,
Would be to cast your eyes up,
And look on the ceiling. |
| The Girl Who Gravity Ignored 2
They tied her to a weighty ball,
When she went out to play,
Not through spite or malice,
So she wouldn’t float away. |
| The Thing in the Cellar
We keep him in the cellar,
Out of the way,
Because we’re afraid,
Of what the neighbours would say. |
| The Ghost of Crazy Legs McGee
Here comes the ghost of Crazy Legs McGee,
He always knows when it’s time for tea. |
Share
Those of you who have had the (mis)fortune of coming across me in my other interweb guises will have no doubt, at some point, been forced to sit through me talking weird about a webcomic I’ve been threatening to do for some time. The strip is, in case you didn’t guess from the title of this post is…
The Twisted World of Doctor Wombat
It’s really just a collection of the weird junk that filters through my head some/most of the time. I’ve published what few Issues I’ve done on both Facebook and DeviantArt (the link for that is over there –>) but after giving it some thought I’ve decided I’m going to publish them here first.
I’d like to say I’ll release one every Tuesday but I fear I’m not quite organised to say that and stick to it… after all I still need to write the code (without the use of MYSQL) to handle the issues in a shiny and high tech fashion. Eyes peeled over the next week or two folks, The Twisted World of Doctor Wombat is coming home.
Share
|
|
