Day 7...

Good afternoon!

Just got back from seeing my son in his Xmas concert. He played 3rd Shepherd, and was brilliant. He got a couple of laughs too, so I'm feeling immensely proud, and in a great mood.

Oh wait, I've got to do today's Dystopian Advent Calendar... who did I line up for today? Oh, shit. Him.

Well, that's ruined my mood.

Without further ado, let me introduce you to...

Derek Brockway.

Most of you, hopefully, have never heard of him. He's a local weatherman for BBC Wales, and every time I see him on the telly, I punch a wall.

You know those local media types who, for whatever reason, think that they're a major star? This complete arse is the flabby embodiment of it with his fake tan and camp presentation. Just look at this video to see what sort of man we're dealing with here:

Ugh. I can't help thinking that that entire piece was not about Children In Need, but... him. He's the sort of weatherman that loves receiving your snow pictures. Amongst other things. Here's a recent bit of a weather forecast I managed to film. Note his cavalier use of the word "penetrating". The thing that made my skin crawl was the use of "Brrrrrr..." on the graphic behind him. The patronising cunt.

You can thank your benevolent stars that he's unlikely to ever go national, the odious fucker.

Join me again tomorrow for another unpleasant individual.

(If you've got a minute, pop along to my web comic. I've added a few new pages lately. Oh, and click on "Follow" whilst there. In fact, why not click "Follow" on this site too? Ta.)

Destinauts.co.uk

Advent Calendar Day 6...

And a very good afternoon to you.

Time for another advent calendar window, then? Yes, let's do that.

In all honesty, I wouldn't have become overly aware of today's subject had it not been for Twitter. The great thing about Twitter is that people in public office are very capable of showing themselves as the self-serving liars they are (particularly if they throw slander and libel around on their blog which you can't comment on).

Ladies, gentlemen, other, I give you...

... Nadine Dorries MP. 

Who?

You may well ask. She's the Conservative MP for Mid Bedfordshire, and there's a long trail of lies, deceit and self-serving, self-promoting nonsense glistening behind her like a narcissistic slug.

Amongst her pearls of wisdom are that “Tridents are not weapons of mass destruction”. Her anti-abortion campaigning was based on incorrect information; she doesn't let a thing like cold, hard science and fact get in the way of a good bit of self-promotion on issues bigger than her. I don't follow her on Twitter, but I read enough about her and her childish games and slander. She, of course, is utterly blameless, maddeningly unable to admit wrongdoing. Just like most MPs, really. The worrying thing is that her constant media-hungry furore might one day get her a ministerial position. This is a woman who has been compared to Sarah Palin in the past, and recently praised said numpty on her vile blog.

Oh god, they let her on Question Time again this week...  She's a frigging lightweight, dancing around issues without providing a substantial answer, and comes across as clueless on here. Trying to avoid questions with double talk, she gets rightly torn apart. Very amusing amidst serious questions. She flatly refuses to accept responsibility for her party's decisions, tries to insert spin and rhetoric, and oh my word she's never ceases to amuse in her quest for self-promotion.

For more Dorries gems, click here, here, here and here. Oh, and watch this, which sums it all up nicely.

One of the highlights of her tawdry blog in recent months was that people claiming disability benefits should not be using social media. Read this for the full story. She was forced to admit that 70% of her blog was "fiction" during a sleaze investigation.

Well, perhaps it is. She is definitely 30% Michael Winner, either way.

Hopefully, we'll have a less vile person tomorrow...

Advent Calendar Day 5...

I love cartoons, me.

Actually, that's a bit of a generalisation. That's a bit like me saying I love the British, whereas we can (unfortunately) count Gary Glitter and Chris de Burgh amongst our populace. What I should say is that, by and large, animated series can be extremely enjoyable, particularly if you have a team of visionaries behind them. They may have fallen out of fashion in recent years, but Ren and Stimpy and Beavis and Butt-Head were the products of twisted genius, as much as Tom and Jerry and The Flintstones before them.

Animated television shows have come a long way, and though you have The Simpsons, Family Guy and Futurama for an adult audience (despite what Channel 4 listings shows would have you believe), first and foremost, cartoons will find their natural home on children's television. From your standard comedy cartoons (the entire Looney Tunes and Silly Symphonies back catalogues, all beautifully animated and wittily written, along with Animaniacs, a modern day classic), to action/adventure fare (the list I could write here would extend for some time, taking in everything from Battle of the Planets to Dungeons and Dragons, Transformers to Visionaries, Spider-Man and His Amazing Friends to Batman: The Animated Series), cartoons will always have a special place in my heart.

But then this cunt comes along.

I had a choice today between two distinct entities. For sheer crimes against all that's decent and good, Special Agent Oso narrowly beat Kim Jong-Il to become the fifth choice for the calendar. It's a poor state of affairs when the once great (but often grating) Disney allow their branding to be attached to this soulless cutscene from a Net Yaroze game. Being a father to two kids, I've had to watch a lot of preschool TV in the past 7 years, and my daughter's channel of choice right now is Playhouse Disney. Okay, it's for preschool kids, but it's fucking insulting to their intelligence. The more I have to watch it, the less intelligent I feel. It saps you with its empty computer generated event horizon.

Let's break it down. Firstly, it's ugly. It truly is. It's perhaps the ugliest looking programme I've seen since Keith Chegwin got his winkle out on Channel Five. It's the endless Bond-themed puns ("To Grandma With Love", "Fly Another Day" and so on). It's the fact that the title character has perhaps the most punchable cartoon face I've seen in many years. It's their cavalier abuse of time. "Quick, Oso! You have 9 seconds!" Cue a countdown, with exposition between each second, making it actually last around half a minute. Seriously, my daughter's sense of time has been fucked by this programme. It's eyeball-gougingly irritating and infuriating, and I want its creator shot.

Out of a cannon.

Into the sun.

Day 6 is nearly upon us... be back here tomorrow morning.

Advent Calendar Day 4

Every so often, evolution takes a strange turn, be it the fingerprints of opportunist kleptomaniacal koalas or the octopus's inky sac. Humankind's own path of genetic improvement has, of late, encountered some potholes. The subject of day 4 of the Dystopian Advent Calendar is proof that we, as a species, have started to devolve.

Ladies and gentlemen, please welcome...

... Piers Morgan. Please, don't vomit over my site.

A few days ago, this utter flan of a person joined Twitter. He tweeted once, and soon had 3000 followers. It was at this point that I started to think that what I thought was my species had adopted me.

The man has less fucking substance than fog, and is about as charismatic as piles. How did this turd in a suit end up with the career he has?

Let's rewind a bit. About 15 or so years ago, Piers Morgan was editor of The Sun's showbiz page, Bizarre, where he pretended to be the linchpin of current z-list slebs. He dropped more names than a Sugababes autograph hunter during his tenure, pretending to be "celebrity friends" with everyone, from that one from that thing, and that one from that pop band that nobody remembers. It was like reading copy from a radically narcissistic Andi Peters.

Then, he vanished for a bit, and somehow became editor of The Mirror. He decided to run a front-page story claiming that British troops were torturing Iraqi POWs. It turned out to be utter bollocks, and he was very publicly sacked for his money-chasing lies. Hurrah. That's the end of him.

Except it wasn't. All of a sudden, he turns up as a judge on a talent show. Worse still, he also ends up in the same position on American TV, with the audience being blissfully unaware of his very cunty past. Coupled with his ITV (well, it had to be ITV, didn't it?) chat show, the man's barely off the telly, and it makes me want to weep. I gave humanity far too much credit, but no, there he still is, pretending to be a hard-nosed judge and destroyer of dreams. If he could muster a facial expression, other than self-satisfaction, I'd like it to be the expression of a man in morbid fear of the baseball bat heading his way. But I'll probably never meet him.

In short, Piers Morgan has no more right to judge the talent of others than I have the right to perform bowel surgery with pink plastic cutlery. Cabbage Patch Kid-faced Cunt.

Please come back tomorrow for another (late) window opening of utter shitedom.

Advent Calendar Day 3

Evening.

Well, it's bloody typical, innit? Whilst the rest of the UK suffers with harsh snowy conditions, we in Cardiff get rain. It's absolutely bucketing down. I'm not complaining as such. I just feel a tad left out. My kids, at least, are disappointed. Broken fucking Britain.

Speaking of problems plaguing this septic isle, you know who's still fucking well alive? It's time for Day 3 of the Dystopian Advent Calendar.

Yep, it's Paul sodding Daniels.

This man serves no purpose, other than to remind you that you might need to buy some lightbulbs when you go shopping. Married to a woman who's never been seen in the same room as Jasper Carrott, he's still appearing on TV after 30 or so fucking years. My god, he looks like the fucking Mekon. You're led to wonder when he's going to unleash his horde of Treens against Dan Dare and Digby. Such a huge ego for a product of Jim Henson's Creature Shop, the only magic trick he seems to perform is disappearing up his own arse. The only reason nobody's ever tried sawing him in half is nobody knows if the two halves will become smaller Paul Danielses. Can you imagine that in stereo? My god, it doesn't bear thinking of. I'm hoping that someone will persuade him to perform Houdini's escape-from-a-casket-full-of-water trick, and put some breeze blocks on the lid.

Perhaps somebody should ask him where he buried Martin.

Tune in (late) tomorrow for another edition of Nature's Cruellest Mistakes.

Dystopian Advent Calendar Day 2

Good morning! Is it snowing where you are? I'm still waiting. Bah.

Well, after yesterday's arsehole, which fucker that just won't go away is behind window number 2? Go on, point at Jonathan King. Poke him in his gurning paedo face.

Christine Hamilton. Her rectangular face should make her fascinating to medical science alone. It shouldn't make her famous. The fact that she is speaks volumes about how much our species has started to decay. She and her husband (the very drippy Neil, who sometimes is allowed to wear trousers) have clogged the airwaves since his election defeat in 1997. 

Celebrity Masterchef, I'm A Celebrity... Get Me Out Of Here, This Morning... There's nothing she wouldn't appear on to propagate her self-serving media whoring. The corruption that she and her husband have been central to in the past is now buried in the fluffy comfort of daytime ITV, where her face is broadcast sideways to fit on widescreen TVs.

Horrible, horrible woman.

Come back tomorrow for more festive scumbuggery.

Aaargh! It's the Dystopian Advent Calendar 2010!

It's December! Already! The fact it's been snowing over the past few days should indicate two things. Firstly, it must be nearly Christmas, and secondly, apparently it does snow in December outside of greetings cards and comics and may not be lazy shorthand after all.

So anyway, it's time for this year's Dystopian Advent Calendar. You may remember last year that the background image for it was a fetching picture of a robin dreaming of Bill Oddie. How could I top that beautiful festive image?

Behold.

Same format as last year; each day will reveal a particularly annoying person that still plagues existence itself. The debut irritant is Russell Howard.

A man who has become increasingly annoying since Frankie Boyle left Mock the Week, more smug and self-assured with each passing episode of that and his own vanity project, Good News, using the same tired knob gags in a stupid voice all the live long day, this week he pushed me over the edge with, of all things, a Welsh sheep shagging joke (coupled with offensive accent). Why it's considered acceptable for this lazy form of racism is beyond me. Either way, he's earned the first spot on this year's calendar.

Cunt.

Come back tomorrow for the next window! Oh, what fun.