We're Goin' To The Insane Creationist Zoo, Zoo, Zoo, How About You, You, You?

A couple of weeks ago, I was given a letter by my 6 year old son's teacher, highlighting a school trip to Bristol Zoo. Only a fiver. They requested I go along too so I could look after him and his asthma. Okay, another fiver. Since it coincided with my day off, I asked if I could take my 3 year old daughter along too. And so on. I was looking forward to it; it's almost like a rite of passage as a father, as I was my son's age when I was last taken there. There are photos. If I manage to get my folks to find them, I may share one day.

So, on Monday, my son boarded the coach with his classmates and a few other parents and teachers, and Keira and I were relegated to the back seat of a crappy little minibus, sat behind a chavvy mother whose features were so distorted, she might as well have been looking into a spoon. As we rattled along the motorway, this woman kept banging on about holidays she's been on and stuff that she owns, and, on one of the most sweltering days I've ever experienced, she decided to close the only window on the minibus, without asking anyone, "'cos it's blowing". Selfish fucking idiot. Oh well, Ahmed's mother opened it back up again half a minute later. Nice one, Ahmed's mother.

Anyway, whilst crossing the Severn Bridge, the teacher who was driving was asked by someone if it was Bristol Zoo we were going too. You know, Bristol Zoo, like it said in the letter, very clearly. "No, we're not going to Bristol Zoo, but we're going to a zoo." Ah. Foiled again. So, where were we going? I wouldn't know until we got there. Looking at the signs along the roads, I could tell we were moving away from Bristol slightly.

So, Somerset, then. Not too far out. Still, any zoo that was there would be slightly misleading if it had the "Bristol" prefix. We finally arrived, and my Spider-Sense started tingling as soon as I saw the sign. Here's a flyer.

Something was bothering me, and it wasn't the absence of a possessive apostrophe. Noah's Ark. Noah's fucking Ark. Why was that triggering such a bad feeling? Surely this couldn't be that place I'd heard about? The one from the BBC investigation? The UK's only Creationist zoo?

What were they thinking, letting me go along?

The first problem I've got is that had I not gone along, I wouldn't have been any the wiser as to where my son was. The permission letter clearly said Bristol Zoo, not Insane Anti-Darwinian Religious Zealot Zoo. But that's an issue I'm raising with his school, so we'll leave that one there for now.

Now, I'm not a fan of zoos for the usual reasons, so I won't go into that, but I wanted at least for my kids to see some exotic animals, which they did. Walking past the gibbon enclosure and seeing a poster highlighting the differences between Man and Apes in a Creationist context was now making my Spider-Sense cause a severe migraine. This is an example of the sort of thing I'm talking about:

My son has an extraordinary gift for reading and writing, but I'm not overly bowled over by the thought of him, at the tender age of six, reading about clitorises, so any of this religious propaganda that I saw, I steered my kids away from. I'm all for religious tolerance and understanding, being a balance-minded atheist and all, but to have this kind of voodoo, which falls down when examined by cold, hard, scientific fact, anywhere in modern society, is irresponsible at best, dangerous at worst. Some people are very easily swayed and believe anything they read. Those people are either children or Sun readers. It's the reason we have the government we've got, after all.

Further research reveals that this place was expelled by the zoo industry's regulatory body, BIAZA, for bringing the association into disrepute, following the BBC investigation, and alleged links to the Great British Circus. Amongst other things, following the death of a tigress a week after giving birth to three stillborn cubs, her head was filmed by the BBC in a freezer, and, against DEFRA regulations, the carcass was buried illegally on the Farm's land, except for the paws, skin and aforementioned head, kept for the purposes of display.

But still, somehow, my son's school either thought that all of this was okay, or they didn't do their research. All will become clear either way.

My kids enjoyed themselves nonetheless; I'll let them decide on their own path as far as religion or atheism goes, scientific fact or arrogant superstition which places Man above Beast, and the cruelty of zoos. I'd be a bad parent if I didn't give them that opportunity first and humiliate and ridicule them later whilst tutting disapprovingly.

If it turns out that somebody at my son's school has a religious agenda, leading to this particular trip, I'm going to suggest they take the kids to Techniquest or something next time, to even the balance between fact and woefully inept fiction. I admit that religion does have a place in the world, but I don't think that that place is a zoo.

Oh, and the chavvy mother, who blows the whole Creationist theory apart, was going to spend an hour under the sunlamp when she got home, if you're interested.

Keep voting for Shit Britons! See previous posts for details. Closing date for votes is 30/6/10. I'm getting votes for Amanda Holden, the Krankies and Cheryl Cole at the moment, still no votes for Paul Daniels, quite surprisingly, Geri Halliwell or Tess Daly. Vernon Kay's only had one vote that I can see. Vote as many times as you like for different people; James Corden's still 'winning', so if you want that changed, there's still time.

The Graphics Card of Death

Good day. Y'know, I've never reviewed a game before. I'm going to give it a bash.

You may have noticed that the BBC have made a Doctor Who downloadable game available, City of the Daleks. They've advertised it quite heavily after episodes for the past few weeks, and as a Doctor Who fan for many, many years, I thought I'd give it a look.

The first obstacle of the game is to get it downloaded, and you do this by checking to see if you meet the minimum requirements. Getting bored of waiting for that, I decided to download it anyway. What could go wrong?

After a few hours, I got to the title screen.

As you can see, they've been very faithful to the TARDIS design, and just to make sure they've hammered the point home, they've used the image several times over. I'm guessing that in the storyline there's been some sort of temporal crash that has resulted in the Doctor's TARDIS smashing into itself several times over, damaging its Chameleon Circuit. It's this kind of fan-pleasing attention to detail that is sometimes lacking from the parent show. I tried entering DystopianFuchsia as a name, but had to drop a T to get it to fit. Bah.

In order to appease old gamers who experienced long loading times in the 80s, you have to sit through the loading screen featuring the unpopular new Daleks for about quarter of an hour. They've thought of everything; realising that it won't just be new fans downloading this game, but older fans who've not played anything since Way of the Exploding Fist or Sweevo's World, they've kept a loading screen firmly in place for that length of time so as not to scare anyone by new fangled technology. 

Finally, the game itself loads, and there's a cut scene voiced by Matt Smith and Karen Gillan. It's choppy and sporadic, again enforcing my suspicion that there's something afoot in the time vortex. Half-sentences cropping up in seemingly the wrong order; it's a bit like the Red Dwarf episode White Hole. 

They've done something very clever here. By showing the Doctor constantly mid-regeneration, but voiced by the current Doctor, the player can decide which Doctor he's playing, but new fans won't be isolated. The companion is forever blending into the background and its skin changing, obviously a nod to 80s robotic failure companion Kamelion. Again, the TARDIS interior is as jumbled as its exterior. There is definitely something wrong with time. Can the Doctor sort it out? Let's get into the game and find out.

The gameplay is quite interesting, and again is geared at older fans; as you move the mouse to turn the Doctor, it pauses for about 3 minutes, designed no doubt to emulate the pacing of a seven-part Jon Pertwee epic. The backgrounds are, we're repeatedly told in the game, representative of a devastated 1963 London, and to further tie it into 'classic' Who, they do indeed look like mismatched Chromakey effects. Brilliant stuff!

It is a tough game; the Dalek-created desolation has rendered the landscape very difficult to traverse or make out, making it one of the Doctor's biggest challenges yet. As you can see, I didn't last very long. This indicates a longevity that's rare in games nowadays. I just pity the poor saps whose PCs aren't powerful enough to portray this game the way the programmers intended.

Doctor Who: The Adventure Games Episode One: City of the Daleks is available to download for free now on the BBC website, if you own a supercomputer with massive tape-to-tape reels like Bond villains used to have.

Don't forget to keep the votes coming in for Shit Britons. Post a comment on this post or the previous one to nominate. 

Coming up later this week, my adventures in the UK's only Creationist Zoo, more Children's Television: The Re-Imagining requests, and something about Pearl Jam, providing I manage to get there intact. Stay tuned!

Oh yeah, thanks to Michael Legge and James Hingley for plugging Shit Britons (and indeed Dystopian Fuchsia) on Precious Little Podcast #37. At the very least, Keith Lemon/Leigh Francis has been added to the nominations now. Some very interesting votes so far. Vote as many times as you like. Why not, eh?

Shit Britons - Vote Now!

I promised this days ago, but work and that, blah de blah de blah. Anyway, those who follow me (@IanHewett) or Mirror Universe Me (@DystopianF) on Twitter, or are friends with me on Feckbook will already know about this. "Hurry up folks! Not much time left to cast an inconsequential vote on a subject no-one with a mind gives a fuck about!" as one person put it. With an unconvincing wink. Fucking emoticons. I hope the person that invented emoticons is British so I can vote for him. Or her.

Remember that BBC thing back a few years ago, 100 Greatest Britons? That thing what Churchill won and that? Well, this is a bit like that, but for cunts.

Hence the name, Shit Britons. Do you see?

People have already been voting using the hashtag #ShitBritons on Twitter. Taking the whole of British history into consideration, James Corden is currently in the lead. Jeremy Kyle and Piers Morgan aren't far behind. Amongst many other people, there have been votes for Katie Price, Jeremy Clarkson and "that one off Loose Women with a face like a BSkyB dish" (thanks, @Scriblit). There are loads more. Anybody you'd like to throw into the mix (or a cement mixer)? Votes for Gary Glitter, Timmy Mallett and Jack the Ripper are a little thin on the ground.

If you'd like to vote and aren't on Twitter, post a reply here. I won't publish replies on this post but will add it all up to find out who the biggest cunt the UK has ever produced is. Results in early July on this site.

I might do a podcast if I can be bothered.

Thanks to everyone who's voted so far. Vote as many times as you like. It just means there's more hatred for some than others.

Vote now!

To think I nearly emptied my spam folder.

Hello. Just a quick one. It'd be selfish of me if I didn't share this wonderful opportunity found in my spam folder. Enjoy.



From The Desk of Mr Adamu Camilu
 
Complement of the day to you and your beloved family. I apologize for this intrusion, I decided to contact you through email due to the urgency involved in this matter. Do not be astonished for receiving this mail. 
 
Please I seek your permission and would want to get my self introduce to you. I am Mr Adamu Camilu I work with Bank International of Burkina Faso (B.O.A). I need your co-operation in receiving USD( $10.5 ) Million Dollars that has been in a dormant account with my bank for over 6 years which belongs to one of our foreign customer who died along with his entire family in a plane crash that happened in Kenya, East Africa.
 
I will provide you with detailed information’s on the modalities of this operation once I have your interest but I must say that trust flourishes business. Therefore let your conscience towards this proposal be nurtured with sincerity and I will not fail to bring to your notice that, this transaction is hitch-free risk and you should keep this transaction (TOP SECRET).
 
I agree that 40% of this money will be for you as a foreign partner, in respect to the provision of a foreign account, and 60% would be for me, thereafter I will visit your country for disbursement according to the percentage indicated. Remember, you must apply first to the bank as relation or next of kin of the deceased, indicating your stand.
 
                           YOUR FULL DETAILS
(1) Full Name...
 
(2) Age....
 
(3) Sex...
 
(4) Nationality...
 
(5) Occupation....
 
(6) Private Tel.... telephone and fax number for easy and effective communication and my career as a banker,
 
I will bring you up to date with all the information’s as soon as I hear from you. If I don’t hear from you within a certain period I will assume you are not interested. Meanwhile, if you are willing, capable and honest for this transaction, kindly indicate your interest by sending a response to this mail (mr.adamu.camilu1@sify.com)

 
Regard
+22678261348
Mr Adamu Camilu

 (BTW, I'm looking for nominations for Shit Britons. A bit like that thing Churchill won a couple of years ago, but for cunts. Currently on Twitter, the hashtag #ShitBritons has James Corden in the lead, followed by Piers Morgan and Jeremy Kyle. Post your nominations here. More details tomorrow.)

Gosh, posting from an iPod is shit.

Corden? Bleurgh.

In the midst of having a fucking nightmare re-organising the Children's Television: The Re-Imagining page, so you can now go directly to the one you want to read (the latest one is The Trap Door), with Blogger inserting its own HTML, taking out bits of mine, adding gobbledegook and duplicating said gobbledegook several times over, I've become very wound up. I hate HTML at the best of times, going through a very long page full of it to find a < span > that hasn't been closed because a piece of software decided to go wrong on you is enough to make me want to punch a cat.

I decided to calm down and put the world in perspective. At least I'm not acquainted with James Corden.

Can you imagine being friends with that man? Humanity's very own polyp, a self-satisfied Flump who not only believes his own hype but sacrifices innocent people at its altar, basking in his own glory whilst basting his obese frame with his own self-aggrandising juices. He's on TV so much, his face has burned itself on my screen to the point where it looks like the Wonga man playing Orwell's Big Brother. It came to a head this past week; not only did he appear on Doctor Who (I mean, how dare he?), not only did he get to the top of the fucking singles chart with a football song, but he tried to upstage and embarrass Sir Patrick Stewart at an awards ceremony. From what I gather, Corden made some crass remark questioning the sexuality of one of the ultra-conservative Jonas Brothers who was sat in the audience. When Sir Patrick went up on stage to present an award, he criticised Corden for having his hands in his pockets and looking bored (though the footage I've seen, Stewart seemed to be putting on his comedy Shakespearean Actorrr voice, so I think it was tongue in cheek), and saying "I could see your belly". Corden, arrogant, uncouth Corden, got in his face, rather than being dignified in what was an embarrassing moment all round, and pointed out very loudly that Stewart was dying on stage. Oh, and then he got his belly out. As usual. Yes, Corden is clearly at that point in his career where he is allowed to badmouth a respected actor and Knight of the Realm, loudly, RIGHT IN HIS FUCKING FACE. Stewart's attempt at humour notwithstanding, I cringed at Corden's own behaviour. Of course, he's so assured of his own talents and importance, that it won't matter a fucking jot to him. This is the sort of "sleb" who shouts "DON'T YOU KNOW WHO I AM?" whilst trying to get into some swanky nightclub. I imagine.

It's hard to put my finger on why I can't stand the man so much. Having carefully considered everything, I think it's probably because he's a cunt. It's a shame, because he has been in some great televisual output in the past decade, including the sublime Cruise of the Gods (track it down on DVD, it's a fantastic piece of television), and is a very capable actor. But there is no excuse for becoming a crass, overbearing, loudmouth bully at any stage of your career (like Russell Crowe, for example), especially when you're only just out of your 20s. You should never believe your own hype, but unfortunately it does seem that Corden has done just that, to the point where he giggles and swoons like a teenage girl over posters of himself whilst idly flicking through a copy of Look-In.

It was nice, however, seeing him getting headbutted, twice in quick succession, in Doctor Who. I can scarcely believe we're up to episode 11 already. The Lodger, written by RTD stablemate Gareth Roberts, based on his own comic strip of the same name from Doctor Who Magazine, was an enjoyable episode, quite a gentle, contained tale after last week's Richard Stilgoe vs the Invisible Chicken. Much like the Doctor-lite episodes from the RTD era, this was companion-lite, a small-budgeted episode before the end-of-series two-parter. Not the best episode ever, but far and away greater than the dire Voyage of the Damned and Fear Her.

Oh, and the Doctor played football in it. Another thing you can't escape at the moment. Fucking World fucking Cup fucking Fever, something that happens every four years where everyone pretends to like football. I'm not a liar, so I won't join in. I hate football. Always have, always will. What annoys me is when you can't even escape it in work, where there's a prize for best themed whatever. It was like it in my old job as well; most of the year, you put forward incentive or display ideas to management, who, because they have no personal interest in the subject matter, will brush over it, yet whenever something football related comes along, it's forced down your fucking throat. To me, football is something that gets in the way of the fucking TV schedules. In adverts, it's portrayed as a "way of life" in a Cockney accent whilst some Britpop hit of yesteryear plays in the background. It's not a way of fucking life. It's a dull sport played professionally by dull people with dull gold-digging girlfriends. Plus, I'll always associate it with school bullies. If you like football, don't take offence. It's just that I hate your sport.

Oh, and Big Brother's back. The TV show this time, not the aforementioned Orwellian namesake. It's the final series, or so they say, so the squirrel gathers her nuts for the last time, shouts at the top of her squirrel lungs, does that mock-shocked-in-silence squirrel face and generally gets on my fucking tits. Thus far, I have managed to avoid it. I imagine it'll be exactly like this though:

Deehh Woon. Jimothy is in the die ah ree room. Gladiola's on tha shittah. Tarquin's missing his mam, and Pendulum and Spuggy have failed the Happy Slap task.

And this:

Deehh three. Spatula is in the die ah ree room. Spunky's cookin' dinnah. N'kwomo's phasing through solid mattah.

And this:

Deehh six. SpongeBob is in the dia ah ree room. Apocrypha is tryin' on a hat. Judas is cuttin' his tawwnells.

 I just want it to end. Another thing that ruins the TV schedules with its unwelcome fuckery. It opened the floodgates for the barrage of reality shows (which, to be fair, have nothing to do with reality, as it features members of the public who are desperate for fame, and will therefore play up to the cameras and demean themselves in any number of possible ways, awful show-offs that I wouldn't like to know in 'real' life, oh, and who also don't get paid a fucking penny, therefore very cheap telly - don't fall for the con! Oh, too late). Fingers crossed they'll be gone one of these decades.

Wow, the world's really gone to shit lately, hasn't it?

Nothing, nothing, tra la la.

Hello.

I don't know what to write about. I've barely had anything vaguely interesting happening lately, at least not since I buried my head in the sand when Puffy Man became big cheese.

I was going to write a blog about how great Ashes to Ashes became in the end after suffering from Difficult Second Album syndrome, following the sublime Life on Mars. I've been disappointed by series endings in the past, expecting (but never tolerating) shoddy, hastily strung together epilogues where loose ends have become entangled and forgotten, or the production team decides on one last almighty bound over the carnivorous fish. The finale of 5 years of Life on Mars/Ashes to Ashes was, however, beautifully realised, the mystery finally solved over whether Sam Tyler, and then Alex Drake, had time travelled, were in a coma or had gone mad. A very nice premise in the end, Gene Hunt emerging as a bizarre mix of Michael Landon and Gary Cooper. With swears. The coppers' purgatory was a great, if not entirely unexpected, solution to the story, and nice to see how Ray, Chris and Shaz fit into Gene's world. But I'm not writing about Ashes to Ashes today. Maybe another time.

I was thinking about writing about EastEnders. I wrote in a previous blog how much I admire the programme (click here for the Walford Police Archie Mitchell Murder Investigation and click here for my thoughts on EastEnders circa its 25th Anniversary show), but it's depressing me with how much it's turned into fucking Hollyoaks lately that I just don't want to even mention it. The way they've shoehorned Fat Cunt, Jar Jar and Rapey in, whilst simultaneously making every Walford resident under the age of 18 suddenly become a jive-talking gangsta rapper is laughable, ignorant and hardly cross sectional. Oh, and Ben Mitchell. Chickening out of the once-inevitable gay storyline and instead going for the lazy son-of-Phil-Mitchell-is-a-psycho motif is reprehensibly shoddy writing. When Lucas starts killing again, I'll be cheering him on. I hope he loses it just enough to bump off Chelsea, just so we can witness the masterclass of her death throes acting. But because EastEnders has troughed so badly lately, I don't want to talk about it.

Then I was thinking about talking about my job. But I don't want to. It's depressing enough facing off General Public with Major Apathy, and I don't want to bore you with the details, but it's reinforced in my mind how stupid, offensive and nasty people can be, especially when they can't see the person they're grunting at. The amount of fraud cases I've had to process in the past week is a distressing snapshot of Broken Fucking Britain. It's much the same as any customer services job, in that it's YOUR PERSONAL FAULT THAT PROBLEM X EXISTS. It also highlights the fact that people are money-grubbing scumbags when they want to be. I gave somebody £5 credit on their account as goodwill earlier, not that he deserved it due to ridiculously high usage. He said, "can you make it £30?". Needless to say, the answer was no. And it is due to this tiresome rigmarole that I won't be talking about my job. Probably never again.

In the meantime, I'm trying to write topical comedy sketches for a show. I've never written sketches before. It doesn't help when you've got writer's block and you're trying to not repeat anything that's already been said elsewhere, and you're unknown as I am, and if they're accepted they'll be performed on the other side of the country where you'll never see them. I might devote the day to it tomorrow, as every attempt I've made at it in the past week I've scrapped. I kind of fell into this by accident, after I was informed that a professional comedian was taking my Facebook status updates, word for word, and emailing them for inclusion as gags on panel shows and such. I won't go into any more detail at the moment about it, but suffice to say it's opened up other possibilities for me. Whether they work out for me or not, I don't know. But as much as I want to talk about it, I can't. Not yet.

Finally, there's Pearl Jam. I'm going to see Pearl Jam in Hyde Park on June 25th. Huzzah. I was a teenager in the grunge era, so have waited to see them for 18 or so years. There's the added bonus of Gomez being on the same bill, which is great, just because I've always wanted to recreate the Daphne and Celeste at the Reading Festival experience. I'd better drink lots of pop before I go. But I can't talk about Pearl Jam until after I've seen them.

There's nothing to talk about. Hopefully the next blog will be a bit more informative.