Countin' Flowers on the Wall

Good evening, this is the news.

Just like everybody else in Britain, I recently went to see the latest James Bond biopic, Skyfall. If you haven't heard of James Bond, he's a very old schizophrenic who is quite good at shooting henchmen, but very bad at shooting masterminds, which isn't very helpful because masterminds are constantly trying to ruin his life. 

His latest personality has manifested itself as a man called Daniel Craig. His blue eyes are sharp enough to piece right through your soul, so be careful when he looks at you. The photograph below illustrates his stunning good looks.

As you may have noted, he has very large shoulders. He is currently engaged in talks with the African government who would like to build schools for blind children there. Daniel Craig will probably say yes because this is the kind of thing James Bond would do as a means of forgiving himself for things that happened in the past that he had no control over.

The film also stars Dame Judi Dench. As everyone knows, Dame Judi Dench, along with Dame Maggie Smith and Dame Julie Andrews, is the best bit of cream offered by a crop of corn when it comes to acting, which means she is out of this world because there is no cream in a crop of corn - at least not on this planet. Here she is being photographed on the red carpet, as usual.

The main plot of the film centres around Daniel Craig trying to find out why Adele wrote a song called Skyfall. I think what Adele meant to write was a song called Piefall, because she is a Londoner and Londoners bloody love pie and mash and jellied eels, NOT because she's fat, which is what you all expected me to say. Tut. 

In the end, we do find out, which makes for a good film. If we didn't find out, there wouldn't be a lot of point to it, would there?

I really enjoyed this film for a number of reasons. You'll find them all out when you go and see it. I give it 9 Michael Caines out of 8 Ray Winstons.

The Culture Section

Today I've been really cultural, having gone to the cinema AND the theatre, as well as having a yoghurt drink. While the yoghurt drink was disappointing - basically just yoghurt with a bit of water in it, my other cultural excursions were fabulous, darling! (Now that I'm cultured, I have to say things like "excursion" and "darling". It is the law and while I may be a bad ass, I will not let Lady Justice down.)

Firstly, I saw ParaNorman at the movie cinema picture screen house. If you haven't seen it, DO. It starts off with me desperately trying to find the toilets in the underground caverns of the cinema. I then battle with the hand dryer for a good 3 minutes because it keeps switching itself off and I MUST have dry hands before I can leave the toilet. 

When I get back to my seat, I find out Norman has been sat watching a zombie movie with his nanna but it turns out NANNA IS DEAD. Now I'm comfortable, I see Norman's dad chastising Norman for pretending to talk to dead people. But the twist is, he really CAN talk to the deads among us!  

Obviously a storyline follows from this initial set up, but after a series of complaints and letters of fiery hatred pertaining to my lack of spoiler alerts when discussing films I've seen, I won't go into it. What I will say is, Bruce Willis is a ghost. But that's all I'm going to say. 

The film is really well shot, a super mixture of stop motion (which EVERYONE should love because it's AWESOME) and CGI. The good thing is that the CGI doesn't look *too* CGI, because that would detract from the roughness of the stop motion. So for this I say, well done Gavin Bumhorner (<< A genuine name I spotted in the credits*) and the rest of the team! I give this film 7 corpses out of 11 graves.

Then I drank my yoghurt. 

My final bit of culture today came in the form of The Phantom of the Opera. Because I'm a major blogebrity**, I got free tickets. Anyone who knows me knows musical theatre is  my one true love****, so getting free tickets to see the Phantom is definitely up there with my wedding day and the birth of my children*****. 

The sets were fabulous, darling and the performances were, for the most part, excellent. However, I came to the conclusion after many years of research, if I were Christine, I would NOT have chosen Raoul. He's pushy and possessive and has an -extremely- nasal singing voice. Songs that he doesn't even write for himself. The Phantom is all kidnap and romance. I mean, isn't it every girl's dream to be abducted by a deformed, obsessive stalker who lives in the sewers where he writes very sexually charged music and sits clapping along with a monkey music box?****** I know it's mine!

High points included: 

Wishing You Were Somehow Here Again - the girl playing Christine (let's call her Lucy Bumhorner) belted that mother out and brought the glimmer of a tear to my stone cold eye.

The Phantom's weep-sing voice. It was very emotional for us all.

Low points included:

The idiot bitches sat behind us, talking the ENTIRE way through the first half. But don't worry, I sorted them out.

(Insert one of my classic photographs that I can't quite be bothered to draw I mean take at this hour of night. It depicts me shooting the bitches in the tits.)

WOW, I've really gone on here! Well...I guess you should stop reading about six paragraphs ago if you're bored by now.

Peace out.

x

*This is not a real name, though very similar to one I genuinely did spot in the credits, a name in which the word BUM strongly featured.

**Celebrity blogger.***

***I'm not a blogebrity in any way. I just made that word up. And no one reads my blog.

****For any lovers reading this, firstly, thanks for tuning in. Secondly, I'm not going to apologise for this statement, you knew the situation when you signed up for this.

*****I've had neither a wedding nor a childen. Until those things happen I'm totally allowed to claim that any minor but lovely event in my life is on a par of excellence with them.

******BTW, spoiler alert!

Islands in the Stream

Oh Aunty M G! Hasn't it been a long time since last my words crept across your eyeballs like the death that creeps across us all? Yes. Yes it has. And do you know why? Well I'll tell you.

A few months ago I went to the doctor.

“It would seem your personality is in remission. I genuinely hate having to tell you that,” the doctor said, smiling.                  

“I see,” I said. “Is there anything to be done?”

“Negative. If I bleed you, it would finish you. Best to make what little time count and all that.”

I left the surgery feeling like wool unravelling. At home I lay on the sofa. The sun licked its way across the carpet, enveloping the extension of my foot with a scar of honey. Before too long, my legs were entirely ablaze. I thought about how fast I'd be able to run if my legs were on fire. Probably really fast.

Sleep ate me.

I found myself standing in a maze of pavements holding an artisan roll shaped like my face (yes, it was really massive). The baker who had made it was standing in front of me. I took a bite.

“Your chewing sounds like an alien invasion, dear, but that doesn't mean I love you any less than I did this morning. Far from it,” the baker said.

“How far?” I asked.

“Walk with me and I’ll show you.” We set off down the street, the houses leering like rowdy workmen. The doors wolf whistled as they opened and closed.

“You could wear this day, dear,” said the baker. “It’s just your colour.”

I wasn't sure whether he was speaking in flattery or foolery, but I tittered like a lady in waiting nonetheless.

We crossed a golf course. The place had been abandoned for years. The ghosts of golf balls winged over our heads. Children sat in the bunkers building sand châteaux.

“If a chateau is not old, it must be grand,” he said impatiently. “Children can be so juvenile sometimes.”

We walked to the pier. The baker slotted a clean 50p into the mouth of the binocular viewer and invited me to take a look.

As was to be expected, an island loomed. It was made out of Dolly Parton and Kenny Rogers.

They relied entirely on one another to stay afloat.

Distracted as I was, I didn't notice the baker pushing me into the water. I woke up, drowning.

There’s nothing quite like a near death experience to cure all ills. After that I was fine, but then I had to do my dissertation and a Fringe show, so I've been really quite busy. I did have another thing I wanted to talk to you about, but I'll save that for next time since my true life story has already taken up so much of your precious time << LOLJKS! You clearly don't count time as a worthy commodity if you're browsing the internet at this time of night...loser.

LOTS of Real Love!

A Brief Excerpt

Good evening one and all.

Just a quick one here because I don't have anything exciting to say, which is highly unusual, as I'm sure you are by now aware. I've got a little poem for you instead. ENJOY!

It's called


Mr P


Mr P crawled up into his bumhole
and made it a home for himself.
From there he sent out his letters,
asking everyone to act a little nicer.

"If you could all be more like me;
if you could all journey inside yourselves
as I have done,
you could look your spirit right in the face
and the world would be a better place."

When I received my letter from Mr P,
I replied with a brief note scrawled on a napkin:
"Mr P, your spirit is a bolus of turd,
and the eye with which it looks
is a nubbin of stinky corn.
While I agree that corn is probably the answer
to the Third World Starvation crisis,
I think somebody should point out,
you're living in an anus."

A few weeks later, Mr P replied stating that,
"A man's home is his asshole."

"Dear Mr P," I said.
"You're full of shit."


---FINI---

Back in the Rattle

HIYA LOVE!

It's been a while since I last done a blog, so this will be a mash-up recap of all the insignificant, completely awesome things that have happened in my life that I would normally blog about but just haven't had chance.

First things first, I just found a pound. Literally just this minute. It was laid on my bedroom floor and no doubt delivered by the pound fairy last night. In fact it definitely was, because here is a photo of her dropping it off:

It's probably a reward for all the good deeds I've done like sticking with Grey's Anatomy throughout season 8 despite it being ridiculous and verging on boring.

Second things second, I went and gone and saw the H'Avengers! The H'Avengers are a really nice family with three dads and one mum and a family friend called Hawkley One Eye (who is an amalgamation of Samuel L Jackson and Jeremy Renner) and an obese green child called The 'Ulk. Here is a photograph of them being happy together:

Normally I would do a full film review, but because this is a quick recap I'm not allowed. I am however allowed to say "it was really good", and "I give it ten muscles out of ten arms", which are things that I would probably have said if I'd done a full film review.

Moving on. I was walking down the road the other day and found a secret note. Here's what it said:

Being a spy I was able to deduce that all of these things added together would equal a horrendous curry bomb likely to engulf Edinburgh in a fragrant river of chickens and sauce. I compiled my own list of potential suspects:

As you can see, they are all known terrorists. Fear not, however! I sent my findings to Scotland Yard and they're working to arrest all of these people so they can torture them mercilessly until they spill their guts, both figuratively and literally - they'll be torturing them with slightly off cheese - listeria abounds!

And that's all I have to say right now because nothing else that is equal to or more interesting than these things has happened to me since my last blog.

BYE! x

On Fruits

I'm coming down with what will be my 600th cold so far this year, so earlier today I made myself an Olbas tissue to snort on and picked out a tiny orange to up my vitamin C.

I had purchased Sainsbury's "Soft Citrus" tangerines and started peeling, assuming, from the "soft" part of their advertising, it would be easy. How wrong I was.

 THE END, KISSES.

The Hungry Games

It's movie review time once again here at Rattle Bag Towers and this month I'll be reviewing "The Hunger Games". I haven't read the books, but certainly will now that I've seen the film, because that's always the best way to do it - there can be no scary surprises that way. (I am of course joking; the best thing to do is eat the book, to really absorb the story.)

Anyway, here's a photograph that has become quite famous because it is the image used with the film for the poster:

It is a mocking jay. Mocking jays are used to good effect IN THIS FILM. I don't believe these things really exist because I have never eaten one. Find me a person that has and I will believe that they exist. 

This film has Jennifer Lawrence in it. She was also in X-Men: First Class and portrayed Mystiques therein. In this film, she is not blue. In real life, she goes out with Nicholas Holts, which is nice because in X-Men: First Vlass, both of their characters were blue, but neither one is blue in real life, as far as I'm aware. 

In this film, Jennifer Lawrence is called Katniss, but the way they say it, it sounds like Catness, which I take to mean there is an essence of cat about her. This is true, because at the beginning she is very good at hunting, like a cat, and there is a lot of talk about selling skwurls. We never see any skwurls, but I imagine they look something like this:

The fifty P represents a fifty P and can be used to get a good idea of scale. Jennifer Lawrence uses a bow and arrow, which a cat would not do, but she is still quite cat-like in terms of hunting.

Katniss volunteers to take part in the 74th Annual Hunger Games. When I first saw the adverts for this film, I naturally assumed that the contestants had to play a giant game of Hungry Hippos, because that's the only hunger game I could think of. However there is much more killing involved. Here is a photograph taken on set of some of the blood they used in the film. 

As you can see, there is a bit of bone in it. It is not real bone. It might be though, but I don't know. 

This is a really good film in a blockbuster kind of a way. I would definitely take my advice and eat the books first though, because the ending is open, which would make sense because the books come as a trilogy. You will certainly be HUNGRY for more.

I give it 8 skwurls out of 9 trees.

Preparations

I found out recently that one of my bestfriendsintheentireworldever is getting married in October, which you should all be pleased about because if not, you are dead inside.

My friend, Ashley, who cannot be named for legal reasons, lives in Maine, so me and Rachel, who you also don't know and cannot be named for legal reasons, can't be there to help with any preparations, which is a shame because we've planned approximately no weddings in our time and we were really good at it. So, to make up for it, I've done some lovely designs that my friend my like to consider for her special day and wanted to share them with you just in case anyone else wanted to commission me as a dress designer for their own wedding. The ones I'm presenting here are mostly tuned to Ash's tastes and desires, but are completely adaptable if you're reading this and think, "Hey, that would look GREAT on me, except for the colour, or the fabric"; don't worry, I can do other designs as well.

Anyways, here they are:

1. The Cherokee design. This is specific to Ash, because she is part Cherokee, but we could exchange to feathers for another material, such as cheese if you're a cheese farmer, or chainsaws if you're Leatherface.

2. The 70s design. Ashley really likes everything about the 70s, especially ABBA, so I've designed this dress to reflect that.

3. The Red Hot Chilli Pepper design. Again, this is quite specific to Ash, because she is really good friends with Anthony Kiedis; or at least she used to be, before he ran off with one of our other best friends, Becky Bucktooth, but I don't want to go into that right now, because it's too upsetting to relive the memories. 

The design would be suitable for ANY RHCP fan, and I can also design a matching outfit for the groom if required.

4. The Backstreet Boys design. Again, this would be suitable for any BSB fan. 

And that's all the designs I've managed to do so far. I'm really busy, but I've made time for this because Ash is important to me. However, as I've mentioned, I'm considering a career in wedding dress design, so if you like what you see, don't hesitate to get in touch. Similarly, pass my blog address along to any of your friends who might be getting married and we'll have a chat. 

Cheers guys, you the best! x

Fields of Goldfish

Helloit'sbeenawhileI'dliketoinviteyoutotakeajourneywithmeWillyoucome?

Excellent. So the other day I was eating quesadilla bought in a newfangled establishment known as a "restaurant". Quesadillas are packaged in hexagon shapes, and then cut up into pieces. A piece of quesadilla looks like this:

As you can see from its triangular shape, it is delicious. Here is a photograph of me eating a quesadilla:

Obviously I have eaten quesadillas before, that's why I have a photograph of myself immersed in that very activity. That's also how I know that they have bits of chopped up vegistible in them. For example:

Admittedly, the second photograph is of a chicken trying to masquerade as a vegetable. I included it because chicken is another option you may like to include in your quesadilla. You can also have onions or a cheese.

Anyway, when I was in the restaurant the other night, eating my quesadilla, including all the ingredients noted above, my evening was ruined by the appearance of a rogue assassin passing itself off as an onion. Never have I ever tasted anything so violent. It slashed my tongue to ribbons, embedded itself in the wounds then sewed them up with threads of onion taste so that I couldn't get rid of the flavour for THREE DAYS.

So I think the message we should all take away from this is, "FUCK OFF ONIONS."

...kinda feel mean towards the onion now...I guess he can stay...

Sigh. "Onion, you're so inappropriate! It appears you can't be trusted, be gone!"

And that's how I banished onions.

The End.

Young Pilgrims

I feel like it's been months since last I sat down and wrote upon these ebony keys of my strange and fascinating life, but at the same time feel it was mere hours since I sat down and wrote upon these ebony keys of my strange and fascinating life and yet it has been days since I sat down and wrote upon these ebony keys of my strange and fascinating life. The words and the ebony and the keys and the life and the range and the st and the fascin and the ating of it all has clouded about my head like some kind of cloud and now I can't piece anything together, as though my strange and fascinating life is a Victorian street scene depicting rather a to do over a baker who's spilled his rolls as a rowdy dog bounds past being chased by a stream of young urchins, printed onto and expanse of wood and cut into curious shapes with some kind of motorised cutting tool I can't quite remember the name of.

The scene is then placed into a plastic bag and sealed. The bag is then placed into a cardboard box and sealed with two slithers of a clear plastic adhesive, sticky on one side but not the other. The box with the bag in it with the scene in it is then shipped out to toy shops and wayfaring merchants who tout it to children as a means of improving their hand eye coordination. However, children can often slip into a simple-minded haze and forget entirely that the small pieces of scene they are holding in their hands are of vital importance to the scene as a whole and they eat them and the scene can never be complete.

It winds up in charity shops bearing the slogan, "Some Peices Missing" and everybody cries because "pieces" is spelt wrong and the scene can never be completed. Somebody buys it anyway, thinking it will be okay but they wind up completely, utterly, heartbreakingly disappointed when they invest hours of free time building the scene piece by piece only to find that the scene can never be completed.

Minus One

I came down the stairs on the bus the other day - Edinburgh buses feel safer than Yorkshire buses, which means I'm able to sit upstairs without the awful apprehension that used to plague me about descending them and falling to my ultimate demise. So I came down the stairs and saw a woman with a sleeping baby in a sling coming towards the door, so obviously I let her go first. Off she got and I followed. Then I realised that what I thought was a baby aged around a year was in fact a twenty five year old woman. Yes, that's right. A mother. Carrying her twenty five year old child. In a sling.

As the above photograph suggests, the mother had a severe spinal deformity, probably due to the fact she's been carrying a 25 year old around in a sling.

The 25 year old was asleep and looked thoroughly contented. That might have something to do with the fact she'd never been forced to use her completely non-disabled legs to do any walking because her mother is quite happy to tote her around like a great big teddy bear.

Let's bear in mind here, that it was around half past 4 in the evening. The 25 year old clearly had no kind of a routine and would no doubt be awake until the early hours of the morning, during which time, the deformed mother would stand, staring into space (because she cant straighten her back into an upright position) wondering why her child wasn't asleep.

Get a grip, middle-class parents! Your children need to walk sometimes. They also need to learn to hate you for depriving them of their sleep. I am hereby pioneering a new campaign to get middle-class children walking:

To join my campaign, you just have to sponsor a spine. It could be your own, it could be mine, it could be the spine of a seasoned hooker, it really doesn't matter so long as you're willing to pay it a pound a week and stroke it a little bit sometimes. That's basically it.

So off you go! Find your spines! LOVE YOUR SPINES!

What's That Jeremiah?

GET ME! I've been to the cinema! For the first time in months! When I used to go all the time! And now I can't stop exclaiming! EXCLAMATION MARKS!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!
SO YEAH...I have apparently figured out how to change my font size. It wasn't that hard, maybe you should try it and then you will have achieved something more than waking up and avidly watching the toaster while it makes your breads crispy so they can make your butter melty.

Back to the point. I went to the cinema! I went to see The Artist. And now I'm going to review it for you, as I sometimes do when a film impresses me or if I hate a film or if everyone else is reviewing films, because as I'm sure you're aware, I'm a major bandwagoneer. So The Artist. Here's the movie poster:

If you've read any other reviews of this film, they probably said it was amazing and that you should go see it. My advice to you would be to take the advice of all the other reviews and go and see it immediately. And you definitely have to see it at the cinema, but a really GOOD cinema, by which I mean one in a decent city/town where people can go and watch a film surrounded by other people who are there to actually watch a film instead of texting or talking or locking into coitus three seats down. Because it needs to be really quiet for this film to be effective.

IT'S A SILENT MOVIE, PEOPLE. Yesthat'sright. It's extremely well-acted, the music is excellent and the dog is my highlight of 2012 so far - I'll keep you posted if anything replaces it.

I gives it 72 pecans out of 75 pecans pies.

Which equals GOOD. And HIGHLY RECOMMENDED.

The End.

Findings

"We'll begin with a spin filled with puuuuure imaginopolation..." is how I believed this wonderful lyric went for many a-year, despite having watched Willy Wonka and the Chocolate Factory approximately 743 times. Personally I like my lyric better; it fits into the strange and wonderful world of Mr Wonka perfectly, don't you think?

Anyway, now that we've spun and begun: HAPPY NEW YAR! I say that with a depth of feeling unimaginable and hope, dearest readers, that you survived the treacherous cross over from one year to the next and are having a wonderful Janvier so far. I feel like this year is going to be fabulous because, one day in, I was foraging through the mounds of carrier bags that littered my room and

If you can't guess from this amazing photograph, then you're obviously an imbecile and ought not to be readin' this 'ere blog, 'cause it ain't for the likes o' you!

So now I weep no more for we have been reunited and, as suspected, Peaches and Herb DID write a song about our wonderful rejoining! Here's a photograph of them singing it:

There you have it, a real bit of good luck to start the new year, which means the world is VERY unlikely to end this year, thanks to me. You don't need to repay me with anything other than good will. And all your monies.

And that's all I really have to say about that.