No Respect For The Dead

SpaceSquid and C are changing following their calisthenics programme, which is very manly and makes women love them. Our awesome masculinity is marred, however, by the sudden arrival of rubbishy classical music.

SS: Why the Hell are they piping this crap through in here?

C: You have an objection to Handel?

SS: I'm just uncomfortable listening to him while I take my clothes off. I feel like I'm in a Stanley Kubrik film.

C: You have an objection to Kubrick too?

SS: Are you kidding? If I end up in his oeuvre I'll be bored senseless, and possibly hacked up with an axe.

C: Maybe the axing will come as some sort of relief. Unless Kubrik does ghosts. Does Kubrik do ghosts?

SS: In The Shining, yeah. I like that you didn't know that but you haven't questioned that whole axe thing. What's your point?

C: That you'll spend eternity haunting a Kubrik film.

SS: Ah, Christ; you're right. I hope it's Full Metal Jacket. That's only half total shit.

C: I couldn't interest you in 2001? You could freak out the apes.

SS: Pffft. I can't help thinking prehistoric primates wouldn't fully appreciate the terror of being visited by a furious ghost from the distant future.

C: Erm, the orgy scene in Eyes Wide Shut?

SS: Sigh. I guess that's the best I can hope for. Sold.

Fun In The Pool

Our hero and his witless foil take time out from their busy drinking schedules to hit the swimming pool for some manly exercising.

SS: I'm sick of this pool. There's never any action. Maybe we should try the new leisure centre they've opened.
C: We should have gone when it was doing that promotion and a swim was 5p.
SS: And have ourselves crushed to death by hundreds of tight-wad fatties fooling themselves that they're turning over a new leaf when really they're just disgusting me with their cellulite and their jiggling?
C: You don't want to see fat people swimming? Thank God this pool isn't mirrored.
SS: I don't want to see anyone swimming, to tell you the truth. I wouldn't bring you along if the people who ran this place would let me in unsupervised.
C: Have you considered anything as radical as just closing your eyes?
SS: I don't want to not see people. I want to see no people.
C: I don't understand the difference.
SS: Imagine my surprise.
C: What if everyone agreed to swim behind you?
SS: I also want to hear no people.
C: What if they were all ninjas?
SS: What the hell are ninjas doing in our new leisure centre?
C: We could hire them.
SS: Hire ninjas? To fill a swimming pool? That can't be economically viable, surely?
C: I guess that's a good point. Maybe pirates would be cheaper.
SS: Not really known for their stealth, though, are they? Mainly it's all raping and pillaging and "With a yo-ho-ho". It isn't really the silent death that comes in the night, y'know?
C: Yes, but if we hire pirates then ninjas will automatically gravitate towards the pool, in order to give battle to their ancient enemy.
SS: So now I'm swimming in the middle of a pitched battle between pirates and ninjas? It sounds pretty dangerous.
C: What if we kill the pirates ahead of time?
SS: So we're inviting the ninjas to come to the funeral? In the local pool?
C: Of course not. We just fill the pool with the pirates' blood. Then the ninjas will be paying us so that they can bathe in their hated foes' vital fluids.
SS: So, just to review. You want to fill a swimming pool with pirate blood, and have me swim in it, hoping that ninjas will join me in order to bathe in their enemies internal juices, but that they'll swim silently and always behind me so that I won't notice them?
C: What could possibly go wrong?
SS: Wouldn't the blood coagulate?
C: Only in the same sense that custard would.
SS: That makes no sense but I don't think I want further details. Anyway, my main problem is that having that many ninjas in one place is just an invitation for another ninja in a different coloured costume to show up and then beat the crap out of them all. You've setting me up to be an obstacle in an Eighties sideways-scrolling beat 'em up. Why would I want to take that chance?
C: No fatties?
SS: SOLD!

Our hero departs to swim a length that breaks the world record and makes all women everywhere swoon at the very mention of his name.

A Ghost Story

Our Front Room is retiring for bed.

SS: Make sure you turn the video off!
INP: Still frightened a ghost girl is going to crawl out of the television and brutally kill you?
SS: As I’ve told you many times, I fully intend for my death certificate to attribute my demise to sexual misadventure.
INP: You could… have sex with the ghost, I guess.
SS: Dude! That Ring chick was minging. Also a little girl. That second one should probably have come first, actually.
INP: We could always find an attractive woman of appropriate age, kill her, and then have her haunt you.
SS: Ooh, that’s the best idea you’ve had since that Velcro/cat thing! Write that down for my Christmas present: “Kill hot chick and have her haunt Squid. With sexy results!”
INP: Feh, I’ll never remember it. “Kill Squid” is about as far as I’m likely to get.
SS: Fine. I guess I’ll have to settle for socks again.
INP: Maybe I'll kill you with the socks.
SS: Can’t it be a Kashmir scarf? Only they feel so soft against my skin.
INP: Are you sure you want the murder weapon to be so effeminate?
SS: Because being strangled to death by a pair of socks just screams masculinity.
INP: Real man’s man sort of socks, made out of scratchiest wool. The sort of sock Vikings wore to put them in the killing mood.
SS: You’re still strangling your male housemate on Christmas day with his present. Tongues are liable to wag.
INP: If you keep throwing up objections I’m just going to go back to setting bear traps around the flat and baiting them with cider.
SS: That was you? I thought it was Lord Mothington’s revenge for stripping him of his title.
INP: Just how big do you remember Lord Mothington being?
SS: Shut up! It’s your fault I don’t have feet anymore! That’s why I’ve been sitting at this damn chair for forty-eight hours!
INP: I hadn’t noticed any difference whatsoever. Wait, what’s this? An entirely unguarded can of cider stood inside an oven that no-one could possibly have switched on!
SS: Yay! Stand asi-OOOWWWWW!!!!

OFR vs Ninja Gaiden

The tranquility of a Sunday afternoon in Our Front Room is suddenly shattered by a blood-curdling noise.

SS: Why can I hear the howling of killer dogs?
INP: My fault. There's something wrong with a game in which you play a hellspawn-slaughtering ninja who goes down like a dick to a few bad-tempered canines.
SS: You could try making a noise like a bee. Although that might only work with Storm.
INP: Your dog is afraid of bees?
SS: I think a lot of them are. That's why they don't like vacuums; it just sounds like a huge bumblebee.
INP: Well if normal bees scare you, giant bees must scare you much worse. That is science, my friend!
SS: I wonder how much thought the dogs put into it. Do they just think "big bee", or do they look at the hoover and freak out. "Holy shit, a giant bee encased in armour!"? A bee tank, basically. Which seems a reasonable thing for a dog to be afraid of. Hell, I'm a little afraid myself now.
INP: Hah! You who would mock the dog! Don't seem so stupid now, do they?
SS: Seriously, is our Dyson twitching?
INP: I always thought "Dyson" was a fairly good name for a megalomaniac. Clearly he has formed an alliance with the bees and is hoping to dominate the world with his arthropod Panzer Corps.
SS: You betray yourself as a bee-racist! For perhaps the bees have mobilised their tank divisions only in the defence of their homes. You can't blame them, really; what with all of their mates disappearing because of suicides or Daleks or whatever the hell it is this week.
INP: Would you mind keeping the ranting down? Only I'm trying to not get eaten by dogs.
SS: If only Bee Goering would unleash the Bee Luftwaffe and teach those pooches a lesson.
INP: Well, that's - shit! Some kind of giant-bat-demon-thing! And my face appears to be entirely visible!
SS: I think we've had this conversation before.

We sneak out quietly as our heroes collapse into a recursive loop.

Copy Errors

Since I'm still without my trusty mechanical demon, I'm having to transcribe this from my somewhat unreliable memory. To the best of my recollections, this is the exact conversation Isnoproblem and I had, but mistakes may have crept in during replication.

INP: Look out! A moth! It will fly into your face! My hair is stupid and looks stupid.
SS: That is no ordinary moth, my friend. That is LORD MOTHINGTON!
INP: That isn't Lord Mothington, you fool; Lord Mothington was a slightly lighter shade of ecru. Your idiocy burns like the bites of my many pubic lice.
SS: What are you, gay for moths? It's a fucking moth. And anyway, Lord Mothington is a title. I can bestow it upon whichever moth I choose. SUCH IS MY POWER!
INP: You're arbitrarily granting yourself the ability to bestow peerages upon insects at random?
SS: I may not be far up the ladder of society, my friend, but I'm fairly sure I'm high up enough to bestow honours upon invertebrates. Just last week I made a cuttlefish into the Third Marquis of Widdershome.
INP: Didn't the Second Marquis mind? I want to incite a war between puppies and babies.
SS: That was Orson the Wasp. He's dead now. Cut down in his prime by the fact we could never be bothered to feed him in case he stung us.
INP: I miss Orson.
SS: We all do, my friend, we all do. Maybe that's why I'm so invested in Lord Mothington. I consider him my closest friend.
INP: Until you find a newer, shinier moth and make him Lord instead.
SS: I am fickle and capricious.
INP: Among other things. I had sex with a turtle and gave it Jew AIDS.
SS: Don't take that tone with me, pal, or I shall not gift your pubic lice with those OBEs they've been hoping for.
INP: I never said anything about pubic lice.
SS: This is the problem with recalling these talks from memory. There's bound to be mistakes.
INP: So long as you include the part about me having sex with a turtle.
SS: Done.

Not All Superheroes Are Equally Impressive

SpaceSquid and isnoproblem are wandering home in the wee hours after a bender of such epic proportions the minstrels will sing of it centuries hence. There's no time for contemplating our debauched legacy, however, because isnoproblem chooses this moment to reveal his secret identity.

INP: I have a face that is invisible to bats.
SS: My God! It's you! You're Transparent-To-Chiroptera-Visage-Man!
INP: Scourge of the pipistrelle and the flying fox alike!
SS: Not to mention my spell-checker. How did you acquire this formidable power?
INP: No-one knows for sure. Some say a mystical shaman carved my features in another dimension to be immune to sonar. Others suggest I was bitten by a radioactive bat, which was also invisible for some reason. Still more have blamed gamma radiation, but then don't they always?
SS: And now you use your powers to combat crime?
INP: Such is my destiny. Not a single winged mammal in this city dares cross the line into illegality. No long-ears mugging old ladies. No vampire bats breaking into your house and swiping your stereo.
SS: It's not massively impressive, though, is it? You can't exactly fight any useful crime, can you?
INP: Why would I want to? Surely useful crime is a good thing, isn't it? Or does the end not justify the means?
SS: Gasp! Such philosophical complexity! Have we become morally grey?
INP: I am now Frank Miller!
SS: Not without three hundred suspiciously well-oiled soldiers, you're not.
INP: Fine. WOOOOOOH! I AM ALAN MOORE! I WAS GOOD THEN I PISSED IT ALL AWAY! WOOOOOOOH!
SS: Why is Alan Moore a ghost?
INP: Er, karma?
SS: Fine. Wait, what's that noise? It is the distinctive sound of a horseshoe bat attempting to hot-wire a car!
INP: To action!

Our hero exits, determined to defeat the furry miscreant by the simple expedient of it not being able to see his face.

International Adventures

Nero's Coffee Shop has begun selling a new flavour smoothy, pineapple, banana and orange. This fact must be discussed at length!

Danny: Christ, that sounds awful.
SS: Actually, I think it sounds like some form of pseudo Um-Bongo.
Danny: Um Bongo! Um Bongo!
SS: They drink it, I believe, in the Congo.
Danny: Do you think that's true? Are there tribes deep in the rainforests around Kinshasa hunting for prey with stone-tipped spears who periodically whip Um Bongo cartons from their loincloths?
SS: You do know that the song is almost entirely ficticious, right?
Danny: You take that back!
SS: The jingle says that parrots paint the packets!
Danny: They could hold the paintbrushes in their claws!
SS: Danny, if anyone paints the packets manually, it'll be blind Congolese children trying not to smudge the pictures of cartoon animals with their hot salty tears. Where the Hell are all these amazingly artistic macaws hiding out, huh? Wouldn't someone stumble across their operation sooner or later?
Danny: They wouldn't do it on the ground, obviously.
SS: What, they paint it on the wing?
Danny: Don't be ridiculous. They'd just take all the relevant materials up into the treetops.
SS: Well, makes sense, I guess. They'd be safe from predators.
Danny: Absolutely. How annoying would it be if you were in the final stages of colouring in the mandarins when a lion lopes up and bites your head off.
SS: How the hell has a lion ended up in the jungles of a Congo?
Danny: Fine; a tiger then.
SS: A tiger? Fine, forget it, let's just say it's a lion.
Danny: And then it bounds up to this poor parrot, swallows him whole, and then drinks the Um Bongo.
SS: Why would a lion want to drink Um Bongo? Plus, how will its mighty paws manage to remove the straw from its plastic wrapper?
Danny: Think about it, Squid; it would just use one razor-sharp tooth to puncture the foil circle, and then suck out the innards with its massive lion chops.
SS: It is the ultimate insult, isn't it? Some big cat, presumably lost after being separated from its tour guide, eats your frail, feathery body, and then drinks your delicious fruit drink. Unless...
Danny: What?
SS: Maybe the parrots could bribe these horribly misplaced lions to allow them to live in exchange for a percentage of the weekly Um Bongo supply.
Danny: Dude! That's completely unacceptable!
SS: Yeah, you're right. The pythons would be furious over how many of the passion fruits they'd picked were being used to buy off lions that should all just fuck off back to the Serengetti anyway.
Danny: Isn't this getting pretty close to the Congolese wildlife equivalent of a BNP rally?
SS: Yeah, maybe.
Danny: I really do want to know whether they drink Um Bongo in the Congo, now.
SS: Well, we should find out. Hire a plane, assemble a crack team, and get ourselves over there. Obviously the very first thing we'll have to tell the locals is that we're in no way going to help them overthrow the tyrannical regime that rules their brutish lives with an iron fist. "Nuts to the local despot, Johnny Foreigner, do you by any chance drink a tropical fruit blend popular in the nineteen nineties?"
Danny: This is a strangely attractive plan.
SS: And why stop there? We could travel the entire world, seeking out the most troubled and miserable of countries to ask irrelevant questions about products that entered the cultural zeitgeist over a decade ago.
Danny: We could go to Mexico and quiz them about Kia-Ora!
SS: Well, we'd need a time machine rather than a plane, since I think you've confused Mexico with pre Civil War America, but I'm fine with it in principle. "Put down that cotton, boy, and tell me: is this drink too orangey for crows?"
Danny: Sold!

Our heroes leave, arguing the cost of chartering a plane versus the difficulty of lashing together a functioning time machine.

Admittedly A Week Late

How that conversation in the TARDIS should have ended.

Donna: Hang about, why would people still be reading books in the year five billion? Shouldn't this be on a computer pad, or beamed into my brain, or something? At the very least the cover should be, like, a magic eye picture, surely.
Doctor: Well, if you assume constant technological progress, maybe. But there's been plenty of set-backs along the way. Ice ages. Dalek invasions. Uprisings of vicious yet firmly-toned homosexuals.
Donna: Oh, you're kidding!
Doctor: Well, about the last one, yeah. Be good, though, wouldn't it?
Donna: You've been referencing gay culture a lot recently.
Doctor: Doesn't male a lot of sense, does it?
Donna: Not really, no. Leastways, not with your faintly suspicious obsession with nubile young women.
Doctor: I picked you up, didn't I?
Donna: I don't count; I'm famous. As I was saying: why do you have a book from a year in which by rights we should all be faintly unconvincing and ludicrously overused wibbly-wobbly special effects? Wouldn't all those disasters make it a bit tricky to keep Waterstones ticking over.
Doctor: Well, I like to think I play my part. Useful things, time machines. A book here, a book there, eventually you get all the classics back into circulation.
Donna: Classic? It's not even one of her better books. It just happens to have a wasp on the cover, which now I think about it is a hell of a coincidence.
Doctor: You don't think I should be seeding the ruins of post-apocalyptic Earth with mediocre offerings from fairly well-known writers?
Donna: Oh, no; I'm sure they'd definitely prefer that to fridges and penicillin. Did you make sure they got ahold of Digital Fortress, too?
Doctor: Digital what?
Donna: Thank you; my point exactly.

Pause.

Doctor: Ah, Sycorax and Shadow Proclamation, I remember when the one-dimensional, bolshy, middle-class-vision-of-what-the-working-class-are-like were actually attractive. Rather than just picked arbitrarily from a pool of one-trick ponies who are temporary household names?
Donna: Am I bovvered?
Doctor: Thank you; my point exactly.

Finis.

Thinking Long-Term

Three intrepid adventurers set out one lunch-time to search for a Christening present.

Danny: I don't even want to be a bloody god-parent.
J-Dawg: Why?
Danny: Because if his parent's cop it I'll have to look after the little brat. And given Daddy Dearest's alcohol intake, it's only a matter of time before his liver explodes.
SS: Surely this nipper in question has other family members? A mother, for example.
J-Dawg: I'd imagine you'd have to scythe through a good many relatives to get to you.
Danny: It could happen.
SS: How, exactly? What kind of family-centric apocalypse are you imagining that this apparently indestructible child can crawl away from?
Danny: They could all die in a plane crash.
J-Dawg: Having left you with the toddler?
Danny: Yeah. And then he'll be bound to get hold of a copy of Jumanji, and it'll be rhinos in the sodding living room.
J-Dawg: Your worst-case scenario is that the child gets hold of a magic board game?
Danny: As a statistician I am highly trained in the field of long term prediction.
SS: Why not just tell your mate the truth? You don't want to commit yourself to his ankle-biter for fear of magical rampaging ungulates.
Danny: It's not just the rhinos. There's also the giant bastard mosquitoes.
SS: Man, I hear you.
Danny: And the massive spiders.
SS: Well, that could go either way. What else is going to take out the over-sized bugs?
Danny: I could attack them using the kiddie as a swatter.
SS: I think nets and sprays are the traditional methods for combating mosquitoes. Rather than, y'know, the child who is now legally your son.
J-Dawg: I'm still confused as to where this enterprising tot has got hold of a fictional board game.
Danny: You saw the film! They threw it in a river!
SS: Not the Wear, though, surely.
J-Dawg: Presumably somewhere in America.
Danny: Fine! New scenario: the whole family get on a plane to the States, which crashes on landing, so we have to go to the funeral there.
SS: Taking the child, too.
Danny: Yes, and possibly having a holiday. You wouldn't pass up a chance like that.
SS: A chance thrown up by the horrific deaths of your closest friend as his entire family save one mystically-attuned prepubescent. I would point out that you keep taking subsets of your previous worse-case scenarios, but then since we're already in the subset where magic exists, what'd be the point?
J-Dawg: You need to stop working on set theory. Or just keep quiet, whatever.
Danny: And then while we're there, he finds the game, and those drums go BOM BOM BOBBABOBBA BOM!
SS: Just so you know, you have a problem with percussion that will cost a fortune in psychiatric bills to correct.
Danny: Then before we know it we've got sociopaths chasing us around the house with automatic weapons.
SS: Isn't that a risk during any trip to the States?
J-Dawg: Political comedy with SpaceSquid.
Danny: We're not actually any closer to deciding what to get, present-wise.
SS: Given the current topic of conversation I'd suggest implanting a bomb inside Junior's torso that detonates the moment his father snuffs it.
J-Dawg: Tricky to wrap.
Danny: We'd need a trigger, too.
SS: The trigger's no problem, we just hand it to the proud father inside a pint of beer.
Danny: And the bomb?
SS: Similarly hidden within, erm, alcoholic breast milk?
J-Dawg: Alcoholic breast-milk? How the Hell would we even-
Danny: SOLD!

Exeunt our heroes, searching for drunken students in the early stages of post-natal depression.

It's Hot As Hell In Here!

It’s not easy being the student representative for the maths department; every damn postgraduate mook wants you to lobby for them. Case in point: Danny and BT, who are annoyed about how hot the office has gotten. This leads to an oddly amusing half-hour of attempting to locate the University’s health and safety policy on temperature.

Danny: Hurry up, it’s getting hotter!
SS: It is not!
Danny: It is! The Thai Buddha thermometer you got me says so.
SS: I wouldn’t put too much faith into that thing; it cost me one-ninety nine from Woolworths. Plus, I’m pretty sure IBB broke it last week.
Danny: Just find the damn policy, would you?
SS: It’s pretty difficult to navigate.
BT: Nothing on temperature?
SS: No, although I can tell you our policy on chemical weapon attack, if you want.
Danny: We have a policy in case we get hit with Agent Orange?
SS: Yes. Also if we contract gastroenteritis, or if we get covered in amniotic fluid.
BT: What the Hell goes on in this university?
SS: Ah!
Danny: You got it?
SS: Maybe. It’s a check-list for office safety. Say, we’re not using razor-blades instead of scissors, are we?
BT: We try to keep sharp objects out of your reach.
SS: Very wise. We can tick that box, anyway.
Danny: Are you going to read the whole form?
SS: Wait! I’ve got it. The magic number for maximum temperature is… thirty degrees.
Danny: You’re kidding! We could open up a damn sauna. This is outrageous.
SS: The policy on amniotic fluid is pretty slap-dash, too.
BT: So we can’t get the university to do anything?
SS: They did install those tinted windows.
Danny: That just make the room darker.
SS: And those fans.
Danny: They just make the room louder.
BT: They’re also a hazard to paper work.
Danny: Do you have any work on paper?
BT: Shut up.
SS: If we can focus, the key aspect to all of this is: you’re boned.
Danny: But it’s hot as Hell!
SS: It’s only twenty-five degrees.
Danny: In April. In the North-East.
SS: Come back to me in June, then.
Danny: I’ll be a shrivelled, desiccated husk by then!
SS: We could turn off the computers.
Danny: We’re not allowed to turn off the computers.
BT: We could throw the computers out of the window; claim the insurance.
SS: Hypothetically speaking, BT, what would we write on the claims form?
BT: That the computers exploded from the heat.
SS: What, exploded, levitated, threw themselves out of the window, and smashed themselves on the ground?

A pause

BT: I’m starting to come around to this sauna idea.
SS: Ooh! We could grow tomatoes.
Danny: Or pineapples.
SS: Or opium.
BT: We could be drugs dealers!
Danny: Driving around in limousines with tinted windows.
SS: Haven’t we already decided that would just make it unbearably hot? We’d be halfway through hiring our first bunch of runners before we’d spontaneously explode, levitate, smash through the window, and throw ourselves to the ground.
BT: So what do you suggest.
SS: Erm, we check ourselves for gastroenteritis?

Our heroes exit, intent upon checking the firmness of their stools.

A Plan Forms

Overheard during an impromptu showing of Silence of the Lambs. All is calm until the moth-drenched finale.

SS: Argh! A soul-searing encounter with my greatest fear!
INP: I'd forgotten your idiotic fear of small harmless creatures.
SS: There are so many. So many.
INP: Is it a volume thing, then? Would a single solitary moth freak you out?
SS: Only if it flew at my head. Or was a giant moth. Like Rodan.
INP: You mean Mothra.
SS: Yeah. That was a fairly obvious mistake, now I think about it.
INP: So you don't like insects near your face?
SS: I don't like anything near my face. Or neck. Insects, seatbelts, women trying to kiss me.
INP: That explains a few things.
SS: That's why I never wash my face, either.
INP: That explains other, somewhat unpleasant things.
SS: Beetles are the worst. Hideous arthropodic gits.
INP: What if a moth came at you carrying a beetle?
SS: Beetles can fly too, as a general rule.
INP: I suppose. Have you considered aversion therapy?
SS: Do I get to kiss a lot of women?
INP: My plan was more to keep kicking a football at your face.
SS: This is exactly why I don't like you watching this film in the house. Can't we watch Red Dragon?
INP: Is it any good? Because Hannibal was so bad I almost ate someone.
SS: Sort of. It's entirely thanks to Red Dragon that I know you can arrange for a blind woman to stroke a tiger and in return she is immediately required to perform fellatio upon you.
INP: Is this legally binding?
SS: It is. Of course, setting up some kind of big-cat-feeling session isn't particularly easy, so our secret knowledge doesn't really get us very far.

There is silence.

INP: We could use a cat.
SS: Too small.
INP: We could keep moving it around, I guess.
SS: Tricky.
INP: Erm... we could bind the cats together?
SS: I think the law would have a few things to say about stitching cats together.
INP: Velcro would be a more obvious choice, surely?
SS: Excellent! The RSPCA will be powerless to stop us! Bring me thirty tabbies and your most attractive blind friend!

Exeunt stage right, carrying twelve cans of Whiska's and two very disturbing leers.