Zen 1075: Mystery of the giant North Korean soldier mourning Kim Jong Il

In amongst all the Photoshopped footage of Kim Jong Il's funeral is this apparently genuine oddity - an eight foot soldier at the end of a line of mourners. At this height, he'd be on for the tallest living man, but no-one seems to know who he is. Maybe he's some sort of mutant super soldier carefully positioned to rattle the Capitalist Yankee Running Dogs.

In Communist North Korea, even the mourners are on a heroic scale.

Zen 1074: What are you doing New Year's Eve?

...ask Zooey Deschanel and chum Joseph Gordon-Levitt. Why? Who knows. I don't think they're planning on inviting you round. But, hey, they make a good sound, so what's not to like?

Zen 1073: Essential Christmas skills - how to wrap a cat

No really.

Zen 1072: Not ronery anymore - a bumper year for dead bastards as Kim Jong Il checks out

According to official reports, he poked it due to "mental and physical overwork". Whatever the real reason - more likely the product of years of overindulgence as millions of North Koreans died of starvation - the important thing is that the world is one pampered pigmy fuck short this morning.



A Kim top 10. He really was a proper fruitloop.



And here's North Korean TV treating his death with a big more reverence than I have.

Zen 1071: So this bloke comes running up to me and says: 'My mate wants to fight you...'

I was walking back to my hotel, it was about midnight and I was mildly hammered.

I took my headphones off.

"What?"

"My mate wants to fight you," says the lad. He looks about twentyish. Judging by hairstyle and dress, he is probably an estate agent.

I look back up the road to where his mate is standing. I look at the estate agent.

"Well, I don't want to fight your mate."

The estate agent looks offended, like I've turned down an offer of hospitality.

"What's he saying?" says the mate up the road.

"He says he doesn't want to fight you."

I start to walk off, but the estate agent steps in the way.

"Look, I really don't want to fight you either, so if it's all the same could you just fuck off?" says me.

"How much do you weigh?" says the estate agent.

I'm wondering where he's going with this but decide that talking is probably preferable to fighting. It's been a long night.

"I'm about 17 stone."

"What's that in kilos?"

I am exasperated.

"About a hundred and something."

"Ah Jesus," says the estate agent, "He's too big."

"He's too big. More than a hundred kilos," he shouts to his mate.

"He's never," his mate shouts back, "He's lying to you."

"Have you two finished?" I ask.

"Yeah. I suppose," say the estate agent, taking an executive decision, "It's a shame Shane's not here."

"Yeah," says I.

"Goodnight mate. Happy Christmas," says the estate agent.

"Yeah," says I.

Belfast is a strange place.

Zen 1070: Google's Year in Review - the world of 2011 in search terms, which is much more interesting than it sounds

Apparently you win a billion dollars if you can name everyone in it.

Zen 1069: The cure for the common cold is to have an angry Japanese capsule aggressively mate with your face ... apparently

Advertising, as only the Japanese can do it. You have to click on the link to watch it because this is inexplicably not on You Tube. Via Craig Christ.


杉の木課長篇‐CM情報　: コンタック [LINK]

Zen 1068: UPDATED: UVF 'B' Battalion welcomes you to South Belfast, and all for a Hello Kitty Cool Cardz maker

Back. Still have kneecaps.

Here's a tip for urban survival: Google "Starbucks" then navigate back via. Safe as houses. Posh, even.

********************

I thought it would be a nice thing to do. My little girl wanted some ghastly branded plastic tat and I found a shop on the Interweb which said they had it on the shelves. Naff all else to do, so I walk the three miles to the shop. Only, the thing is that postcodes in Belfast sometimes don't even manage a passing flirtation with the place you're trying to get to. One dodgy estate full of sectarian graffiti and an altercation with some evil looking geezers in a knackered Sierra later and I finally get to the shop. No Hello Bastard Kitty Cool Cardz Maker. By this point, rational considerations had departed and getting the damn cat had become an article of faith. Happily, an excellent fellow in a red polo shirt sensed my air of manic determination and basically turned the store over until he found one. Hail fellow, well met. I have my gaudy plastic tat. Now all I have to do is make it back again.

And bloody Santa Claus is NOT getting the credit for this one.

Zen 1067: Never mind the god particle, CERN used Comic Sans in their presentation, the losers

NMA World Edition treats the latest report from CERN on their hunt for the elusive Higgs Boson 'god' particle in the way that only NMA World Edition can. The funeral scene in particular is a lesson in popular newscasting that the BBC would do well to learn. Who says science communication can't be fun?

Zen 1066: I can't begin to express how much I want one of these

Frankie Zapata is the man who invented this thing. He calls it a 'Flyboard', despite it not being a board and having more to do with diving. I don't care. It looks like an amazing way to hurt yourself.

In translation, the girl is saying: "Zis sing is making me hot in ze pants for crazy Frankie Zapata ... like French women in all ze films, ah 'ave an irrational attraction to men 'oo step outside ze cultural norms, especially if zey smoke Gitanes and treat me like sheet."

To which Frankie replies: "Bof. Zut Alors. Ennui. Citroen Picasso."

Zen 1065: Bye bye Jonny, we'll miss you

Legend.

Zen 1064: You know what? Fuck pandas. They are the vegans of the animal world and a gift to creationists.

Pandas are bloody annoying. Normally, I'm in awe of majestic Nature and particularly in awe of the elegance of evolution, a principle of breathtaking simplicity that nonetheless describes the complexity of every living thing that ever was and ever will be.

Yeah, yeah, cute. Now do everyone a favour and die the fuck out.

Well, every living thing with the possible exception of pandas. I suspect only an intelligent designer could come up with something as flawed and utterly pointless as a panda. It's the Ford Edsel of creation. The fly in evolution's otherwise perfect ointment. It openly and brazenly defies Darwin.

The defects of the panda are well rehearsed. It can only mate on one-and-a-half days a year, and then only if it's within range of a receptive mate, which is itself a slightly rarer occurrence than someone with taste and decorum winning the National Lottery. (Seriously, when you're relying on a handjob from a Chinese guy in a lab coat to save your species, wouldn't dignity be telling you it was time to throw in the towel for the good of you both?)

It's slow and lazy. So lazy, in fact, that when confronted with one of the very few predators that can harm it, it will only attempt to escape if there is a downhill slope and it can frankly be arsed to fall down it. And the camouflage. What the hell? I live in a forest. It's very green. Sometimes its brown. Therefore I will adopt a coat that will conceal me only if hiding on a pedestrian crossing or in footage shot before the advent of colour.

But perhaps the most wilfully ridiculous thing about Ailuropoda melanoleuca is its diet. It eats bamboo. Nutritionally speaking, bamboo is in the same category as Samuel Johnson's cucumber, namely, it should be "well sliced, and dressed with pepper and vinegar, and then thrown out, as good for nothing." The stupid animal has to eat tonnes of the stuff to even approach the amount of calorific intake a creature of its size needs to absorb.

And here's the kicker. The panda has roughly the same dentition as other bears, which means it could be chowing down on juicy flesh, or rummaging through the bins for leftover doughnuts and chicken wings. In other words, it could be eating well and as Nature intended, but it chooses not to. I know what you're thinking. It's a fucking vegan. So frankly, the sooner it shuffles off into oblivion and lets the fundraisers get on with saving proper animals like tigers and elephants and blue whales, the better*.




* No, polar bears do not need saving. They are about as endangered as you are.

Zen 1063: I am on UR internets degradin' UR language with my apathy and ignorance: An academic guide to LOLspeak

A really super very jolly good little chat about the emerging linguistics of LOLspeak. It has much to do with cats and deliberately mangled grammar, and little to do with witless noobs who end every status with LOL (!!!). Observe.

Zen 1062: Europe veto - it's irrelevant why, there was only ever one option

Lots of fluff in the papers today about David Cameron grovelling to his rabidly Eurosceptic backbenchers in vetoing a new EU treaty designed to save the Euro, thereby sacrificing Britain's place at the top table and forcing us to watch from the sidelines as they stride into a brave new future.

Cameron maintains he was protecting Britain's interests by seeking guarantees that would protect the City, which, like it or not is very important to our future financial health, even if they are largely responsible for fucking everything up in the first place.

Just to recap, the proposal he vetoed was a wholly undemocratic lurch to a federal Europe using existing treaties as the instrument of change, with absolutely no guarantee that it will work. It required a massive and far reaching surrender of sovereignty, the like of which hasn't been seen since the last time Germany marched on Paris.

Frankly, it was a rubbish plan. It really wouldn't have mattered if Cameron vetoed because he believed it was a plot by space aliens. Or because he's a crypto-fascist in league with the Illuminati. Or because he was feeling peaky and just wanted to get off home quickly for a lie down. He had no other choice. The point is moot. The dice were loaded from the start. If you can prove any different, I'll give you a multi-trillion Euro bailout.

Zen 1061: Japanese Supergrind - it's skateboarding, but not as we know it

From Daisuke Takahashi's 'Subspecies' apparently. Whatever. The guy can do unreal things with a rail and a skateboard.

Zen 1060: 'Father Christmas?' 'Yes, son?' 'I want to kill you' - it's The Doors' undiscovered festive album

This is a true story.

Zen 1059: Wooden ties. Well, why wouldn't you?

Ties are stupid. Why not make them out of something stupid? Hence wood ties from woodthumb.com. Wood Thumb aren't stupid. But their ties are. Because ties are stupid. See where I'm going with this?

Zen 1058: Join the petition to pardon Turing, the man who saved Britain, invented the computer and described artificial intelligence

Alan Turing was beyond brilliant. In 1936 he wrote a paper called 'On Computable Numbers, with an Application to the Entscheidungsproblem' which described a simple machine that could do any calculation as long as it could be represented algorithmically. This is the theoretical basis of the computer and represents such an astonishing and utterly original idea that this alone would place him in the pantheon alongside the likes of Newton, Darwin and Einstein.

During the Second World War, he worked as a cryptanalyst in charge of Hut 8 at Bletchley Park. The machine he created to work out Enigma cyphers - the 'Bombe' - arguably shortened the war and prevented Nazi Germany from choking off the convoys between Blighty and the United States. Not only that, but the basic components of the Bombe are still essentially the basic components of any modern computer. It's the forerunner of the whole shebang. He did a bunch of other stuff as well, but for the full skinny on him, you're better off going here: Wikipedia: Alan Turing.

The reason you may not have heard of him is, bluntly, because he liked boys. This was still illegal back in the early Fifties, so when Turing reported one of his lovers to the police for burglary, the police charged him with gross indecency. Rather than go to prison, Turing agreed to 'chemical castration' - treatment with female hormones designed to kill off his 'dodgy' urges. It might seem a backward and stupid thing to do to such a fine servant of his nation, and you're right. It was. Monstrously stupid. But also monstrously tragic, in that Turing ended up killing himself with cyanide in 1954.

In 2009, saggy-faced walking clusterfuck Gordon Brown actually did something right as prime minister and apologised for Turing's "appalling" treatment. But it would go a small way to correcting a terrible wrong if he were actually pardoned, hence the epetition currently underway. To add your name, click on the link below.

e-petition: Grant a pardon to Alan Turing [LINK]

Zen 1057: Bum, baccy and tinsel: Merry Christmas from the sailors and airmen of HMS Ocean

Sent away for seven weeks training, HMS Ocean was redeployed for Libya and is sailing back to the UK seven-and-a-half months later, just in time for Christmas. When the crew found out, they made this video. Mariah Carey apparently tweeted was the best thing she'd ever seen, thereby immeasurably elevating her in the estimation of millions. Outstanding. Especially the sailor in the bath. Aye aye.

Zen 1056: Critics' choice: Lyne and Longcross School redefines theatre with daring Nativity

The theme was traditional - a children's fairytale exploring the traditions of Christmas. The production, however, was a searing Brechtian polemic that dwarfed the limited creative space and permitted the actors to wrestle with their immediate environment even as they grew beyond it.

One does not invoke the unquiet ghost of Brecht lightly, but here there is little doubt what the directors - a quite deliberately raggle-taggle cooperative that achieves every creative decision through painstaking negotiation with the cast - were seeking to achieve.

Like Brecht, it is their absolute determination that you should never be in any doubt you are watching a play. No coy flights of artifice and illusion here. From the sparseness of the set - nought but stage blocks and a humble tin foil star suspended above - to the homemade feel of the costumes, one never truly leaves the here and now, even if one is occasionally transported to another, perhaps surreal, place by the performances. Indeed, the actors constantly wrestle with their costumes, ceaselessly fidgeting and fretting as if to escape even these small concessions to theatrical tradition.

But the Epic Brecht is also here, fervidly wringing the immense tract of history from every gesture and utterance. The themes are prosaic enough. The innkeeper cannot sleep. But this is no introspective story of the fleshly travails of the insomniac. Here, insomnia is the vehicle upon which is laden the collective burdens of humanity.

Why can the innkeeper not sleep? He cannot sleep for the seemingly endless procession of visitors at his door; sinister in their nocturnal perambulations and yet strangely naive in their humble requests, first for board and lodging, later for directions to a mysterious "new arrival".

More than a nod is given to Beckett, such that this is less Looking for Jesus than it is Waiting for Godot. Consider the weighty, excruciating pauses; the broken dialogue; the sotto voce mouthing of one another's lines; and the uneven delivery - sometimes frighteningly blank, at other times wrought with violent emotion. "Round the back!" roars the innkeeper as yet more strangers assail his door in the depths of night.

What do these strangers want? What does it all mean? I am but a humble critic, but I would hazard that this play is about nothing less than world peace. Humanity is constantly roused from dumb slumber by the interjection of conflict. But it is the slumber itself - the somnambulant failure to deal proactively with the base, warlike instincts of men - that is the metaphorical elephant in the room.

Seasoned theatre-goers may find such lofty ambition too idealistic - nay, trite even - for their blood, but for the extraordinary denouement. For, in the end, the innkeeper and his long-suffering wife (here played as a withering satire on the changing-yet-permanent roles of women in post-industrial society) succumb to their curiosity and do go "round the back".

For a moment, you are dangled in suspense. What will they find? Some hellish Bacchanal; a bloody injunction against the interventionist, militarist tendency in Western political discourse? A crashing termination of hope on the altar of intolerance? The void?

No. Rather, the play discerns a brighter future for us all through the power of collective will. What this play says is that all it takes for war to end and dictators to fall is for us to join together and speak the words. There is an unspeakably powerful moment at the finish when the marvellous ensemble cast join together in a song, some waving to individual members if the audience; all smiling; inviting you, the passive viewer of the piece to interact; to leave your innkeeper-like slumber and feel the awesome potential of this theatrical Arab Spring.

It is rare indeed that this hardbitten theatre critic finds nothing to criticise, but let it be said that this production, so deceptively simple yet so breathtaking in scope and ambition, was nothing short of perfection. Bravo.

Zen 1055: 'Do you have any daddy butter?' - shopping for idiots

I found the Michael Stipe guy's habit of laughing a bit irritating to begin with, but stick with it - they nail it in the end. Use video 1 as a sort of "concept setter" before moving onto videos 2 and 3. Stove Babies?  A Teeny Weeny Mussolini? Dr Normal's Condoms for One? You're in the right shop.

Zen 1054: Santa trumps God, Spiderman and the Spanish Inquisition - the definitive proof

You can't say it ain't so. It's so so.

Zen 1053: Charlie Chaplin's speech from the end of 'The Great Dictator'

It's probably a bit melodramatic for modern tastes, but Chaplin's speech is one of the greatest moments in cinema. The movie was released in 1940, with the US still uncommitted to the fight against fascism, and features Chaplin in dual roles as the eponymous dictator and the oppressed Jewish barber who, in a case of mistaken identity, ends up making this eleventh-hour speech. Not bad for a boy from Bermondsey.

Zen 1052: Lovely compilation of one-in-a-million shots

All done by some guys called A Normal Day with apparently no trick photography, which is cool. I love the studied boredom.

Zen 1051: Satanic Mack, the devil dog

According to ancient lore, if you rub a Wire-haired Vizsla on a German, you can raise the Beelzebub. And no, that's not a euphemism. Although they do both look quite happy.

Zen 1050: Bobby McFerrin literally plays the audience to illustrate a point about the pentatonic scale

You'd have thought that, musically speaking, crowds don't come much tougher in singalong terms than a starchy academic audience at a psychology conference, but Mr McFerrin (yes, he of 'Don't Worry Be Happy' fame) succeeds in rocking the room.

Zen 1049: Star Wars AT-AT made from gingerbread - how cool is this!?!

I have cake envy.

Zen 1048: You vill enjoy ze Hamburg Miniatur Wonderland vezzer you like it or not

The voiceover literally made me LOL then ROFL. Like, literally. I defy you not to lose it at around 2 mins 15 seconds in.

You didn't? What are you? German?