All posts by David Gerard

Entertainment, United Kingdom

Mark Owen of Take That gets drunk and laid a lot

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TIN ARM ALLEY, Public NME, Friday (N! News) — Take That star Mark Owen last night sensationally confessed to having been caught by The Sun shagging his dick off and getting stupendously pissed in the process.

Take That with naked bottomsThe “squeaky clean” multi-millionaire singer opened his heart to his tabloid blackmailers in a bid to wipe the slate clean and start afresh with Gary Barlow. He broke the news of his cheating to Barlow, surrogate mother of the band.

“I am deeply disappointed,” said Barlow. “On the other hand, it’s not like he’s that Williams cunt.”

The singer blamed enormous sums of money and huge fame for the opportunity to shag most things in a skirt with a pulse, leading millions of the chart-topping band’s adoring fans, who are now generally of legal age, to conclude that a bit of Take That cock is actually an achievable possibility.

“I have been an idiot, a dickhead,” said Owen, “to let a tabloid catch me at it. On the other hand, advertising my openness to several bits on the side will be good future marketing for when I’m in the mood for a handy bit of disposable totty. Also, I can afford much higher quality alcohol than almost everyone,” he said, raising a glass of shipwrecked 1907 Heidsieck champagne. “Drink?”

Owen and wife Emma married in a Scottish castle last October, watched by smiling bandmates Gary Barlow, Howard Donald and Jason Orange, Robbie Williams having been left gaffer-taped naked to a lamp post with his cock painted red on the buck’s night.

Health, United Kingdom

Working for a living against religion, says pharmacist

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PAY GRADE, Jobsworth, Monday (NTN) — A Lloyd’s pharmacist has complained of being expected to fill prescriptions brought in by paying customers, as actually working at work is against her spiritual beliefs.

Bayer Heroin bottleThe pharmacist, Brenda Busybody, 53 (IQ), of East Cheam, is a Bri-Tish, a group who believe that members should show up at places of employment and look fantastically busy while achieving nothing whatsoever and, if possible, driving the business backwards. Many achieve quite senior ranks in industry, particularly finance.

“This woman came in actually expecting me to fill her script. Well! What does she take me for? I’m not there to wait on people hand and foot, you know. It’s an insult to our fair and equal society. I talked to my boss and she was thrown out of the chemist and we called the police, saying she was a kiddy-fiddler. Well, she probably was. People who expect you to work might as well be.”

The case follows on the heels of an earlier ruling concerning a registrar who was grievously discriminated against by a local authority expecting her to do the fucking job taxpayer’s money was being given her for, and another in which an executive successfully pleaded that expecting competence violated his human rights.

“Making people work when it’s clearly against everything they hold dear is an affront to the human spirit,” said Mrs Busybody, “and their rights as a Briton. Next they’ll be shipping in them Polish asylum seekers, who’ll take all our jobs and then do them. I heard they ate a swan once! At a fair price for the day’s effort in doing so!”

In other news, Gordon Brown announced today that the recession would last a good few years yet, for some reason.

Ireland, Religion

Irish bishop: “Sexy kids should pay”

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KINGDOM OF HEAVEN ON EARTH, My Trousers, Tuesday (Vatican Rag) — Bishop Dennis Brennan has asked that the €10.5 million bill for clerical child sex abuse cases in the Ferns diocese be paid by those responsible: “Those damned sexy children.”

The doctrine of original sin notes that Adam was handed the apple by an altar boy, requiring the sin to be expiated by direct application of “the body of Christ, or representative on Earth thereof.” The impossibility of resisting the tender loins of a choirboy is well known to theologians, as detailed in the Papal encyclical Caritas in Sodomitica concerning the knowing and malicious efforts of sultry underage boy-Jezebels deliberately targeting the sanctity of the priestly vow of celibacy.

Bishop Brennan noted, however, that he knew of no such cases happening in his diocese, “and also I wasn’t there when they happened, and you can’t prove I was.”

Ferns Diocese has around 100,000 Catholics and 80 parishes. “Those unable to make a cash donation will of course be able to contribute in kind,” said Bishop Brennan somewhat breathlessly and flushing slightly.

The Appeal Appeal was launched last night on RTÉ, with a gala telethon featuring international guests the Cappella Giulia of St. Peter’s Basilica, led by Angelo Balducci, and the Regensburg Boys’ Choir, led by the Pope’s brother.

The Roman Catholic Church is the world’s largest and longest-running organised paedophile ring.

Entertainment, Media, United Kingdom

BBC Trust happy to leave Mark Thompson twisting in the wind

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WREATH NETWORK, Television Outskirts, Wednesday (MSBBC) — BBC Trust chairman Sir Michael Lyons has said “public concern” over 6 Music and the Asian Network may give the Trust a golden opportunity to throw director general Mark Thompson under a bus.

Kill your televisionPlans to close the stations, available via download, DAB Radio, tooth fillings, necromancy and the rantings of schizophrenic tramps on street corners, have outraged millions of Britons (reported by Sky News as 80,000), approximately five times as many as have mastered the technical wizardry and sequence of Masonic handshakes necessary to actually listen to 6 Music.

The music industry has also spoken out, though 6 Music staff thanked Lily Allen for her comments in support and asked her to please stop trying to be “helpful.”

The proposals will go through a public consultation before the Trust tells Thompson he is a drooling incompetent and that the Tories won’t like a crawler either. “Like Murdoch will actually give the twat the Sky job he’s after,” said Sir Michael. “Christ, why didn’t we keep Dyke. At least he didn’t actually try to actively sabotage the place.”

Mr Thompson is expected to meet with union leaders later, who say 600 people could lose their jobs. There is concern that Marc Riley could start making records again.

Asia, Entertainment, Technology

PlayStation 3 trounces Xbox 360 for reliability

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GUTEN TAG, Wii Geht’s, Monday (NTN) — Sony has proudly announced a Playstation 3™ Holiday™, where all users are advised to go outside and play in the sunshine. “Have some fun! Talk to a human! Party like it’s December 31st, 1999! Amazing 3D rendering!”

The company had long battled in public perception with Microsoft’s Xbox 360 and its enthusiastic customer base, many of whom were onto their second or third 360. “Their turnover has been incredible. Doing at least as well is a matter of honour.”

Sony has also given the PlayStation Network a well-deserved break, its fifteen subscribers being encouraged to partake of the joys of meditation and deep contemplation of the nature of reality and solitude. “Cancelling your Trophy Data teaches that all is maya, or illusion. Through reliving the 2000s on your PlayStation again, you have been given a fresh chance to attempt to transcend this immaterial plane and reach … Nerdvana.”

The Full-Motion Vacation™ has been extended to developer debug console machines. “There’s enough games. Really, how many games do you need.”

Sony have not announced an end date for the “much-needed” break, but hope people will enjoy it. “Read a book! Watch TV! Count on your fingers! To 8,001,050! Or whatever it is you people do! … How about a nice game of chess?”

Asia, Technology

Apple admits using subtle and precise child labour

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PROFESSOR JOBS’ SCHOOL FOR GIFTED YOUNGSTERS, Shenzhen, Sunday (NTN) — In its annual supplier report, Apple has admitted that its Chinese factories have employed children to build its gadgets. “Ones with a particularly refined sense of aesthetics.”

Apple revealed the sweatshop conditions inside the factories it uses. The child workers were found in a facility with high vaulted ceilings, elegantly crafted marble work benches and a classical quartet playing in the background in a corner of the floor. Young geniuses sat in their Aerons and levitated components into place with the powers of the mind, burning the famed Apple logo into the back of the assembled device with but a glance of terrifying but controlled power. Some lunches, with only an hour’s break, would involve wines of less than ten years’ vintage.

Competitors were outraged. “We are shocked, shocked to hear of Apple’s ruthless exploitation of the chilll-drennn,” said Steve Ballmer of Microsoft. “But then, what do you expect when they actually ask their suppliers about this stuff. Don’t ask, don’t tell! That’s what made the 360 great!”

Apple’s Chinese manufacturing facilities were the site of controversy last year when one young worker at Foxconn, who had teleported an iPhone home overnight, was found to have committed suicide by leaping from the top of the building, first breaking his own neck, and tearing out all his own fingernails on the way down. He was found with Apple logos carved into his back, obviously also self-inflicted. “A tragedy,” said the report.

Technology

Jaron Lanier: Why people should pay more attention to me and not Web 2.0

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When I noticed myself getting mean online I thought, “Something has gone terribly wrong.” It was obvious the rest of the ARPAnet had a social problem, not just me being some sort of asshole.

My book You Are Not A Gadget: A Manifesto is ruffling virtual feathers across the ARPAnet. And so it should, because I invented virtual reality. Wikipedia, which is a tissue of lies, says so. Prospect magazine’s Top 100 Public Intellectuals Poll lists me. Also, my hair is much better than yours. And I’m fifty. According to Wikipedia, so I’d better change my birthday.

Today, the web is a bland place. It’s all user-generated content — silly clips on YouTube, spiteful anonymous comments on blogs about my books, endless photographs of people at a bar with their friends or up a mountain with an ironing board. It was much better back in the early days of the ARPAnet, before we let the commercial users on. These words will mostly be read by numb mobs composed of people who are no longer acting as individuals. You know, the peasants. Virtual reality is far more ennobling, but you never hear people talking about that any more.

The ARPAnet only creates banal mashups of old culture. Salvagers picking over a garbage dump. Only the old-world economy of books, films and newspapers creates original content like Lawnmower Man or Battlefield Earth. Everyone knows that real artists have no influences. This stuff the kids are into these days is just noise!

The ARPAnet is also killing music, according to my good friends at the RIAA. Did you know there’s no music in Spain any more? It’s true!

Will we — meaning I — be able to live off our brains in the future, or will we just have to give our creative works away for free? If we can’t live off our brains then we’ll need a form of SOCIALISM just to survive. WIKIPEDIA IS COMMUNISM! Until the Wikipedia Corporation finally builds a good interface, for goggles and power-gloves.

Open source and open content are a cancer. The dogma I object to is composed of a set of interlocking beliefs and doesn’t have a generally accepted overarching name as yet, so I’m going to call it Digital MAOISM, which is COMMUNISM. Update, five years later: Here is a detailed retcon explanation of why I was not just trolling for headlines by calling Wikipedia COMMUNISM, but was speaking precisely and you just weren’t thinking hard enough: [snip 10,000 words]

Also, you should get into virtual reality more.

You Are Not A Gadget: A Manifesto is published on papyrus scroll and hand-illustrated by monks. You cannot have a copy until you have fought your way up the mountain and proven yourself worthy.

Politics, Religion, United States

Socialist Muslim Obama meets Atheist hate groups to destroy US

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DEATH PANEL, American Heartland, the End Times (NTN) — As part of ongoing efforts to destroy everything America stands for, foreign-born election stealer Barack Hussein Obama openly conspired at the White House on Friday with his liberal Atheist masters.

I, RobotRepresentatives of the Secular Coalition for America, an umbrella group which includes American Atheists, the Council for Secular Humanism and a bloodthirsty coalition of Communists, Feminazis, Homosexuals, Evolutionists, Readers and other unAmericans, visited the White House Friday, in “the first time in history a presidential administration has met for a policy briefing with the American nontheist community, so as to better ruin the economy, your lives and your community.”

President Barack Obama was not scheduled to make an appearance at the meeting, but it is understood that he was to take clear direction from his French controllers.

“It is one thing for Administration to meet with groups of varying viewpoints,” said Council Nedd of In God We Trust, “but it is quite another to sit down with one we disapprove of. These are some of the most hate-filled, anti-religious groups in the nation. It is clear that Mr Hussein Obama will send all good, true and decent Americans to concentration camps, where those failing the literacy test will be sent to the gas chamber. The bankers who destroyed the economy were Atheists! Well. Jews. Same thing.”

Over 13 percent of the population is considered “non-religious,” an even greater number than alleged homosexuals and evolutionists. The atheists advocate such destructive notions as separation of Church and State, considered responses rather than gut reactions to crises and a minimum fifth-grade reading level for all. In addition, they are thought to favour the use of logic, consistency and joined-up thinking.

“I was religious before,” said Mr Obama, “but you people are the best evidence I’ve ever seen that there is no God.”

Entertainment, Technology, United Kingdom

Derby commuter hell named after Lara Croft

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SOFT SQUARE, Suburban Bedroom, Friday (NTN) — An impossibly uninteresting stretch of ring road in Derby is to be named after a 3D computer animation with ludicrously-rendered breasts.

Lolo Ferrari’s somewhat disturbing First Life avatarThe new stretch from Osmaston Road to Burton Road will be named after the aristocrat and archaeologist Lara Croft from Tomb Raider, who Toby Gard of Core Design in Derby created by taking an already anatomically-dubious rendering of Neneh Cherry as Tank Girl and then “accidentally” increasing the breasts by 150%, before giggling nasally and nipping off to the bogs to masturbate himself raw.

“Lara Croft was created in Derby,” said councillor Lucy Care, cribbing from Wikipedia, “and deserves to stand with other famous icons of Derby, such as, er, I’ll get back to you.”

89% of automated poll-spamming bots run by fat, unloved, misogynistic and somewhat cat-piss-smelling gamers around the world voted for the name, immortalising Lara Croft in the form of a monument to commuter frustration and carbon monoxide inhalation over wasted hours of human life, dripping away second by second, to taunt the mostly middle-aged males stuck in said traffic with the prospect of perfect, bouncy, computer-generated jubblies, free of any defect or actual personality to get in the way. Then some idiot in a BMW nearly sideswipes you.

“Oh!” said Cllr Care, “Derby County didn’t get relegated from the second first division to the third first division last year! That’s pretty good, isn’t it? Hold on, I’ll keep looking.”

“No, actually, Derby County are shit,” said a councillor for Swansea. “We kicked their arses 1-0 last weekend. And we’re going to have an Internet poll to name our new bypass offramp AOL Blockage, Slashdot Chicane, Numa Numa Nook, Goatse Gap or Tubgirl Pass. And cachau bant ti cachu mes, as we say to the tourists from Derby looking for local colour.”

Politics, United Kingdom, United States

US builds “loving, caring” fortress in middle of London

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COGS’ HOME, Battersea, Thursday (NTN) — The United States has unveiled its new embassy in Britain, to impress visa-seekers with “the core beliefs of our democracy: isolationism, bureaucracy and deep, dark dungeons.”

“Our current embassy is fifty years old,” said Ambassador Louis Susman, “and does not meet modern office needs and security standards. We understand some visa seekers do not feel profound despondency as they queue for a third day. We have hired Guantanamo architects KieranTimberlake to construct a new embassy in Nine Elms which will appropriately reflect one of our most cherished and bilateral relationships.”

Highlights of the visual presence include a landscaped “Embassy Park” surrounding the structure, open to all Londoners. The water feature completely encircling the new building will contain authentic Florida alligators and friendly, polite concrete security staff emplacements nestled amongst the mangroves.

The building itself will be constructed upon geometric principles (“who says a circle has to have three hundred and sixty degrees?”) and decorated with a cheerful selection of armour plating and anti-aircraft “friendship mechanisms” as well as electrified wiring to decorate the local area, clearly lighting up in lavender to delight the nightclubbers of Vauxhall whenever an escapee is caught on it.

“The visual presence is that of a beacon,” said Mr Susman, “a respectful icon representing the strength of the US-UK relationship. The shining city on the hill that all can aspire to one day visit.”

Lord Mandelson, however, was reportedly somewhat put out at the US plans, muttering something about Westminster now needing a “flying monkey cage” and “sharks with frickin’ laser beams.”