I Am Livid

So another year has passed us by.  2008 has been a pretty good year, unless you are Heather Ledger or a major shareholder in Woolworths.

Tonight sees us drift serenely, and somewhat inebriated, into 2009.  But this New Years Eve is slightly different.  It is different because we get to take advantage of a leap second.

The extra second we are getting this year is something to do with our orbit around the sun and other sciencey things about which I know very little.  You can read more here.

More importantly however is the fact that we have been gifted an extra second in 2008, and it is our duty to use it as best we can, otherwise we might as well have let Space keep it.  And you just know that Space would have wasted it.

A lot of things can be accomplished in a second at midnight.  You can double your foreplay efforts, listen to James Blunts Greatest Hits, or even spend time thinking about those less fortunate than ourselves.

So how will you be making the most of your extra second?

It is that time of year again where people give gifts and presents and hope against hope that the presents received this year are not total shite.  I am beyond that of course, as I recognise that at twenty-thirteen it is unlikely I am going to be very excited by any present I receive.  Unless I develop an overnight sock fetish.

Anyway, this is a quick seasonal greeting to all the loyal (I use the term loosely) readers of I Am Livid.  I hope you are having a better time than I am, as the last hour has been spent discussing with relatives why a satsuma should be considered a Christmassy fruit.  I will be back in the New Year, or maybe sooner, as I have just remembered an interesting Fat Jim story from a few weeks ago that I had somehow completely forgotten.

So, Merry Christmas and that.

Like a phoenix thinking about maybe getting of it’s arse to do some rising, Cliff joins me for this week’s slightly delayed podcast through the magic of TELEPHONY!  Due to Cliff’s lung-based illness, the show is a bit shorter than normal, but we still have time to discuss the pros and cons of calling your son Adolf Hitler, and why Tom Jones is a bit of a Christmas sex pest.  We play the tune in question, so you can make up your own minds.

As always, you can get the podcast feed here, find us on iTunes here, or join our Facebook group here.

 

 A Christmas Podcast - "Showing threws" [26:23m]: Play Now | Play in Popup | Download

Outgoing US President George W Bush’s recent flying visit to Iraq was dramatically improved by a brief incident during a press conference.  An Iraqi reporter threw a shoe at him.  Technically, I suppose he threw two shoes at him, but it was the first one that got most people’s attention.  In fact, as he missed with the second one too, he might as well have not bothered throwing it.  It was all a bit embarrassing for him by then, a bit like watching women play Cricket.

I could not help but chuckle at the hilarity of a plimsoll based attack, but as I am not from the Middle East, I was surprised to learn that shoe throwing, and showing the soles of your feet, is just about the most offensive thing you can do in that part of the world.  Yes, shoes.

I must admit that I think us Westerners are having our legs pulled a bit here.  In the land that invented the suicide bomber, they claim the worst thing you can do is throw a shoe at someone?   If it really is the biggest insult of all, then why aren’t Al Qaeda arming themselves with racks upon racks of Flip-Flops and Espadrilles?

I feel a bit sorry for Muntadar al-Zaidi, the shoe thrower, as shoes cost real cash money.  However, a bag of your own excrement, does not.  A bag of shit would have made an even more entertaining clip, as would a bit of throwing practise.  If there were concerns about sneaking in a bag of faeces then he could simply have headed in a bit early, armed with an empty bag.

All in all I praise his efforts, as once again people are taking an active interest in Middle East politics, which can only be a good thing.

Unfortunately, Cliff has come down with a debilitating lurgy which I am in no hurry to catch, so the recording of this week’s podcast has been postponed until he recovers.  Or I find a replacement co-presenter, though don’t hold your breath, as good help is hard to find.

In the meantime, I have put together this brief Christmas video for your viewing pleasure.

Yes, yes I realise that technically I didn’t put the video together.  But that should not lessen your enjoyment of some fine disco moves.  Be safe in the knowledge however, that in real life I am a much better dancer.

There is a new advertising campaign under way aimed at preventing people downloading illegal films.  It centres on an individual known as Knock-off Nigel.

In the advert, a man dressed like a 70’s porn star serenades an office with tales of this despicable man, Knock-off Nigel.  Nigel, it seems, likes to download films from off of the Internet.  According to the porn star’s song, this makes him a ‘grubby little man’ who also commits other heinous crimes against his colleagues.  Such as stealing money from whip rounds, and taking your food from the fridge.   I can only assume he mentions these crimes in the song because these crimes are EXACTLY the same as downloading a film.

I actually see this advert as a sign of success for the anti-piracy campaigners.  This move to target slightly grubby office workers who must mean they have beaten their previous foes, as they are no longer telling us that counterfeit films “Support terrorists and drug dealers”.

It is a bit of a step down from terrorists, drug dealers and organised crime, to focussing on people who take your sandwiches from the fridge, but I admire their community minded campaign.  Linking crimes such as lunch-theft and ’sneaking coins out of the whip round’ to ‘downloading films’ takes a certain level of skill, and possibly years of studying criminology.  I think it only fair that the advertisers tell us what else we should be looking out for, after all, they have done the research.

But why stop there?  By the same crime escalation logic whereby committing Crime A means you also commit Crime X, the guy in the office who smacks the secretary’s arse is probably a closet rapist who bums dogs in his spare time.  I think they should tell us everything they know.

Any of you that read this site via the RSS feeds probably won’t be reading this, as they have stopped working. This also applied to any podcast subscribers.

The emails between myself and my host discussing the issue are, at best, incomprehensible. They tend to begin with, “We think it might be…” and end with “we’ll let you know when we’ve tried that.” Everything in the middle is essentially gibberish.

Until the issue is resolved I won’t be putting up any proper posts, which is a relief as I hadn’t planned on writing any.

Anyone who has listened to even a few minutes of one of the podcasts will know that I can not resist making a cheap knob gag.  It is the way my brain is wired.  Some people can complete Sudoku puzzles after looking at them for moments, whereas I can spot a cock joke in just about any situation.  It is not that I can not do high-brow cutting satire, I can, and in fact did at least twice in early 2007.  Yet still, aged twenty-thirteen, I can not pass up the opportunity to revert back to my thirteen year old self and go for the easy bum/fanny/knob (delete at appropriate) gag, whilst offering myself a virtual high-five across a twenty-year rift in the time-space continuum.

So my thirteen year-old self was quite excited to notice that my local pub had replaced the normal toilet sign with an A4 sheet of paper adorned with a hangman style matchstick man.  The matchstick man was underneath the word ‘GENTS’ in large lettering, and I admired their thoroughness in preventing any embarrassing accidents for their illiterate visiting guests.

I was excited to notice the sign because my first though was, “Wouldn’t it be be funny to draw a cock on it.”

This is not grafitti by the way.  I saw it as extra clarification for the illiterate visitors.  Technically, the matchstick man could also be a matchstick woman as he was missing any sexual organs of any kind.  I suppose it would have been funny to add a vagina to the matchstick person (as a lesson to illiterates to go back to school), but I really do not know to draw a convincing cartoon vagina, and I did not want to draw an unconvincing one and add more confusion to the situation.

So I decided to draw a cock.

But then, as I approached the sign I noticed that someone had beaten me to it!

The drawing (click for the full size) is somewhat juvenile in that they have depicted an erect penis in the process of ejaculation, which would normally call for the addition of a ‘cum face’ to the matchstick man, but it is not my place to adjust someone else’s work (I do not live in a Daniel Powter video).  At least they had included the testicles, so it was anatomically correct.

I have yet to find out the identity of the phantom knob-artiste (it is difficult to conduct such an investigation without drawing unwanted attention), but I will keep looking, as I get the feeling we would get on very well indeed.

This week the Angry & Cliff podcast creaks it’s way into double figures with tales of intelligent sperm, how you can literally kiss someone to deaf, and we bumble our way through our first quiz, with Cliff tested on a selection of diagrams from the book, Venn That Tune. Only he doesn’t get to see them, I describe them to him. Badly.

This week also saw our first ever edited blooper, with Cliff losing his rag with himself and me pissing myself at his self-loathing. It’s right at the end, if you ever get that far…

I nearly forgot.  You can get the podcast feed here, find us on iTunes here, or join our Facebook group here.

 

 He's half the Viking he used to be [30:27m]: Play Now | Play in Popup | Download

My friend TOWTAL (The One Who Talks A Lot) somehow convinced his girlfriend to marry him. This means she will endure a life of barely getting a word in, but she seems happy enough.  It was also a great excuse for a massive party with friends I haven’t seen in many years.

As we sat to dinner that evening, the caterers brought out a large steak pie that was to be cut at the table by our table’s ‘Pie Master’.  This was a very responsible job, which I did not get.  Not that I want to go on about it, or how good I would have been in that role.  I thought Quasifrodo did a perfectly acceptable job in the end, with lots of verbal encouragement from me.

There was however a single vegetarian on our table.  Fortunately, it was not one of those mental conscientious ones who claim that meat is ‘murder’, otherwise I would have had to make my ‘why don’t you eat animals that have died of natural causes then?’ argument.  The plant-devourer on our table was simply someone who did not like the texture of meat.  Which is just as mental if you ask me.

As we awaited our perfectly proportioned pie segments, the waiter brought out the vegetarian option.  A frankly enormous vegetable pie.  Easily the size of three of our portions.

“Hang on, why are you favouring the vegetarians?  That is much bigger than my portion.” I asked, perfectly reasonably.

“It’s just that the single pie dishes were this size.” replied the waiter.

It was disappointing.  One of the joys of being a carnivore is mocking the bowl of leaves your vegetarian friends are forced to eat whilst you tuck into a massive rare steak.  Us meat eaters are not designed to envy the plant eaters.  It is so very, very wrong.

Thankfully, I was able to console myself in the knowledge that any pie whose main ingredients were once capable of photosynthesis probably tasted like shit.

Facebook can be a right pain in the arse sometimes.  Endless requests to be a pirate, play poker, send a virtual hug, or join cause X due to recent outrageous incident Y.  It is exhausting.

Other times, it can be an extremely useful tool to affect societal change.  During this week’s podcast our discussion moved to these groups, and how it might be possible to unite everyone in the “whole world” behind one cause, a cause so righteous that no sane man or woman could refuse to support it.

And that is how we came up with One Million People Against DEATH!

I set up this group because every day, all over the world, people are DYING!  Literally hundreds of people are dying. EVERY. SINGLE. DAY.  This happens whilst we sit idly by using Facebook to poke each other or make sarcastic comments on our friends photos.

Well I say, “No more!”

If you want to live in a world where the broadcast news told us, just once, that NO ONE ANYWHERE HAD DIED then this is group for you!

Everyone should join this group and show that we will no longer accept the cruel hand of mother nature, and together we can rid the world of ALL DEATH!

Let us harness the awesome power of Facebook and send the Grim Reaper packing!

N.B. This group is only for people who do not want to die and don’t like people dying. There are plenty of other groups available if you feel otherwise.

It’s late on Tuesday which means it’s time for “Angry & Cliff - The Podcast!”  Episode 9 is now up on the interweb, carrying with it yuletide tales of Jesus’ salty chocolate balls, Hilary Clinton’s perfect job, and having sex to beat the credit crunch.  It’s all there completely free of charge.  If you are so inclined you can download it on iTunes, subscribe to the podcast feed here, or even join our Facebook page here.

 

 Funny for nothing and your clicks for free [30:15m]: Play Now | Play in Popup | Download

I have travelled to or from most airports in the UK.  Most of the nine London airports, Manchester, Edinburgh, Glasgow, Luton, and of course Birmingham International.

It was this last airport that had my attention drawn to it by a friend who works as a pilot after he had been reading their annual report from the website. Available by clicking here.

After reading the first ten pages of boring aviation stuff and corporate information, he got to page 11 about Safety and Security, something of obvious interest to a pilot.  That is when he noticed their choice of image to accompany the security message.  I have included it below to save me describing it (click the image for the full size view).

I appreciate him sending it to me, and it is heart-warming to know that that there are people out there, no matter how old they get, or how responsible their job, they will always be on the lookout for a cheap knob-gag.  For that I am truly grateful.

It then begs the question of what sort of person is unable to pack for their holiday without including that special set of plastic cock and balls?  Perhaps the owner of this suitcase was emigrating, and we should give them the benefit of the doubt.  But then the suitcase does look rather sparse apart from the cock and balls.  A small make-up bag?  A nail file?  A hairbrush?  Hardly the stuff with which to launch a new life on the other side of the world.  Unless you are going to find work as a very specialised beauty therapist.

There is also the possibility that it was put there deliberately by the security services as a coded warning to Al Qaeda.

“Yes, we are English, but should we suspect you of being a terrorist, we will not let our crippling embarrassment or our innate wish to avoid a scene stop us from opening up your suitcase case and waving around prosthetic genitalia.  That is how much we want to beat you!”

So if you are sat reading this in a cave in Afghanistan, whilst taking a break from cramming semtex into vibrators, think again, because we are on to you…

*** STOP PRESS ***

Tideliar has informed us below that the offending Phallus has been photoshopped out of the brochure!  I was wrong, we HAVE let our crippling embarrassment give the advantage to kinky terrorists.  We are doomed!

I do not know any men that dye their hair.  At least, I do not think I do.  I have always assumed that if a man dyes his hair, he would be quite good at it, seeing as hiding the fact that you are dying your hair is sort of the point of doing it in the first place.  After all, you do not see many elderly gentlemen with bright red hair.  It has to be believable.

Which is why I was struck by the advertising for one particular brand of hair dye at my local supermarket.  In it, the model - who I assume has dyed his hair - is looking cool and suave as you would expect, but there is just something wrong with the picture.  As you can see below.

I am assuming that you too have seen the ’something wrong’.

It is disappointingly rare to see man with hair that is an entirely different colour to his eyebrows, particularly when he is trying to conceal the fact that one of those colour is not natural.  We can forgive Alastair Darling, as quite frankly no-one is going to dye only their eyebrows, as you would have to be extremely tight to limit your purchase of dye to just that area, and if our Chancellor thinks like that when it comes to spending money, then we’re all fucked.

Can we assume that this image was placed on the front of this box of dye deliberately?  It surely had to go through some quality control process, as you do not end up on the shelves of a major supermarket by fluke.  Someone, somewhere, put a tick in the box to say that this was ‘fine’.

Which leaves just one conclusion.  Out there, somewhere, there is a market for people wanting hair a very different colour to their eyebrows.  It is obviously a very niche market as I have only seen one or two in my entire life, but they clearly exist.

Is it you?