The Cracks Are Showing.

People are getting bummed out about HMV going into administration, but to be fair it is an awful shop which was only ever really useful for last minute panic Christmas shopping, and even then you couldn’t find anything anyone would really like and ended up just going with something because it looked passable. The last thing I bought from HMV that didn’t come in a 3 for £10 deal with guilt and self-loathing must be going back a good five or six years now.

I think I may have just managed to roll out of bed at 12:20 and confirm the final remaining standing ticket for My Bloody Valentine’s first Hammersmith show, although I have no idea how. This little gloat is sure going to make me feel stupid when this all turns out to be too good to be true.

On Would I Lie To You just now, Gabby Logan jokingly said that if she sees a magpie she says “Hello Mr Magpie, how’s your partner” on the grounds that saying ‘wife’ implies a heterosexual relationship and Lee Mack said in that classic sarcastic comedian tone: “It’s political correctness gone maaaad”.

But, that actually is political correctness gone mad, for comedic effect. So we’ve reached the point now where that phrase can mean nothing both genuinely and sarcastically, yet will still get the intended reaction from people. Which is good, because I need more words like ‘literally’ that I can throw into sentences when I’m worried they’re going to run a little too short.

Why does it stir man’s spirit so to gaze upon the sea

When storm or shine that boastful brine does bugger all for me

But still regret my heart’s beset by riverbeds aplenty

Who would stir and strain all year although could never change in twenty

Wait, so James Bond is 007’s real name? James Bond, son of Mr and Mrs Bond? Isn’t the threat of a terrorist hacker revealing agents’ identities lessoned somewhat in a world where MI6’s best undercover operative relishes in making a catchphrase out of his own actual birth name?

What with it being Halloween and all, and what with my not having had a fresh idea about something to post on here for nigh on three months, I feel I have ample excuse to horrify you all with the most eldritch spine-chilling image on my hard-drive.

A while ago, the TV Times used to have a puzzle in the back pages where they spelt out the name of a TV show in three cartoon pictures (kinda like Catchphrase). While often the puzzle produced was a mind-numbing and woefully unentertaining affair (kinda like Catchphrase), I was so bemused and horrified by the following image of childbirth depicted in it one day that I became briefly obsessed with it and haven’t really been able to stop thinking about it ever since.

The TV show they’re after is Born Survivor. Some artist at TV Times gets charged with turning this into three images - someone being born, some guy surfing, and Ivor the Engine. Fine, but obviously they can’t draw a cartoon of childbirth in progress in a family magazine, so probably better to opt for the moment just after birth; the magical and heart-warming scene where mother and father gaze lovingly upon their newborn and welcome it into the world they now see as a miraculous and wonderful place:

Or, alternatively, they could settle on this grotesque nightmarish clusterfuck. I can’t imagine how this could have happened. For a start, I can’t imagine how this photograph was ever selected for the base image, but I’m even more confused by the idea of the artist drawing parts of the image, drawing that mortified expression on the father’s face, and not thinking “nah, this looks fucking terrifying.” Or thinking “Well sure it would look better if I just drew him with a smile, but it would be truer to life if I left him as he is, descending into a fit of eye-popping balls-to-the-wall panic so severe he’s choked on his tongue.”

Due cause for alarm though to be fair, as the baby is crying ink out of its Texas Chainsaw Massacre style skin-mask face and the mother is reduced to nothing more than a lifeless, joyless, formless blob that cannot even bring herself to glance in the direction of her demon offspring. No wonder dad’s head is trying to physically rend itself from its host body.

And then, in the piece-de-resistance that thrusts the whole scene into David Lynch Black Lodge territory, the cartoonist has decided to cast the unmistakeable and ever-unnerving Cyclops from Krull as the midwife. Glad to see that he’s still getting work though, haven’t seen him in anything since the recurring role he had in my childhood nightmares.

Modest English graduate, no experience.