Pope Francis' Religious Struggle Against Easyjet

Just after the new Pope was elected I was watching BBC news and a journalist said that the new Pope, Pope Francis, was sitting with an unused return ticket to Buenos Aires, and he speculated that the Pope must be very happy to be elected as the Pope, which I think is to seriously underestimate the frustrating and bureaucratic nature of Easyjet's refunds policy. You can't just get a refund on a Rome to Buenos Aires flight a matter of days beforehand. That must have cost the Pope almost 300 pounds.

We can only estimate just how many hours Pope Francis spent on the phone with Easyjet's customer services, but I imagine the scene from Francis' papal chamber was something like this:

[Pope Francis, on the phone with Easyjet.] “Yes, the name's Pope Francis, that's P-O-P-E Francis, or if you want you can just call me The Pope...... I'd like to cancel my return ticket to Buenos Aires please...... Well I know it's due to leave in six days, but the thing is, just last night I was actually elected as the head of the Catholic church...... yeah, that's why my name is Pope...... You're right, it would otherwise be a very eccentric name to give a child...... So can you see why I need to get a refund?...... Company policy? Do you not think in this case there are some extenuating circumstances?...... Do you not have a sub-heading under your terms and conditions in the case of papal elections?...... You're right, they should have a section for that...... Look, I know I'm the Pope, yeah, but I could really do with that money; it's almost 300 pounds. We're renovating the Vatican this summer, we're going to cover up some of those rubbish old paintings. Damien Hirst is doing a nice mural for us and we're going to have old Benedict soaked in Formaldehyde....... Well I like him and I think you need to get over your artistic elitism....... Look, the point is, that money is going to go a surprisingly long way, so.......

“What's that? You think that Pope Francis seems like the kind of guy who would have anticipated this sort of bureaucratic inconvenience and, just to be on the safe side, would have purchased a single from Buenos Aires to Rome and planned to get a single back home if he needed it?....... You should know that you actually realise quite a substantial saving if you buy a return ticket, so buying two single tickets would have been awfully wasteful if I didn't get the job...... You're right, this is more wasteful, but I didn't think I'd get to be Pope...... You're right, it was very humble of me. I suppose my humility may have been the reason why I was chosen. I suppose if I had bought a single, that would have revealed a certain degree of arrogance, which would have kept me from the papal throne, hence meaning that I would in fact have needed a return ticket.”

[At this point the Pope realises that he is implicated in a beautiful, religious and bureaucratic paradox. He is struck by the aesthetic brilliance of God's work, and realises the Easyjet refund policy is in fact undeniable proof of His almighty existence.]

Meanwhile the board of executives at Easyjet congratulate themselves on hijacking the third successive papal election, once again earning themselves almost 300 pounds.

Chortle Student Comedy Award

I took part in the Warwick heat of the Chortle Student Comedy Award, and this is a video of the full thing:

The rest of the heat is also on Youtube. Sarah Kendall won the heat, and I'd also recommend checking out Chris Purcell and Michael Kehinde, who are Warwick students and were among the smartest and funniest of the acts that night.

A fictional rumination on calendars containing boobs

“Seriously, why do you have one of those?” asked Nick, pointing to the Nuts Girls 2013 calendar nailed to Peter's bedroom door.

“Don't act all high and mighty Mr. Germaine Greer, you like boobs too.”

“Yeah but I don't keep a certificate on my wall to prove it, like, “This is to certify that Nick Taylor does enjoy looking at boobs, signed, The Society for the Verification of Boob Enjoyment. P.S. A tastefully photographed buttock has also tickled his fancy on occasion.””

“There would probably be a separate certificate for that.”

“True.”

“But anyway, if you got a certificate you wouldn't even hang it on your wall, you're too ashamed of your mammary voyeurism. At least I'm honest about my penchant for nipple gazing.”

“It's not about honesty, it's about being considerate to the people who come into my room.”

“The only person who ever comes into your room is yourself.”

“What, like, I stand in the doorway with the door propped open and propel my bodily fluids through the threshold?”

“Yeah.”

“Nice. But my point is, I don't have my masturbatory aids plastered to the walls because I want to spare my visitors the visual reminder that I wank.”

“To be honest, once I'm four days into the month I'm pretty much finished with the calendar for the next twenty-six days or so. So it's really only a mental image that you have to deal with if you come here when the month is still young.”

“What's the date today?”

“The third. We're just about in the dangerzone still, although not for long.”

“So then what, she's just like, on your wall for the rest of the month, judging you for what you've done to her?”

“I link to think of her more like a clingy ex, begging for more and muffling her sobs when she has to witness me and my new lover. It's a real confidence booster.”

“That's probably the worst thing you've ever said to me.”

The Batventures of Batman's Batboner

“I'd like to thank our servicemen and women for their recent efforts in the light of this catastrophe, but I think the real hero in this situation was Batman,” said the Mayor. Batman smiled, quite arrogantly. No-one asked him to make a speech, but that didn't stop him delivering a 45 minute pre-prepared explanation of how he thwarted the Joker. Everyone was bored and wanted to go home, apart from the Mayor, who listened intently to Batman's tale, and bit his lip seductively. Batman shot the Mayor a cheeky wink. “Get a room you dirty bum bandits,” thought the surprisingly homophobic detective. Robin looked on, seething with jealousy, but also slightly stimulated by the frisson aroused by the thought of Batman's infidelity. He tried to hide his lumbering hard on, but it's exceedingly difficult to conceal an erection when wearing nothing but pants and tights on one's bottom half, or so I imagine. “And so in conclusion,” concluded Batman, “I think that not only am I the hero that Gotham deserves, but also the hero that Gotham wants to shag.” Every applauded politely. The Mayor was a bit annoyed that Batman stole his finishing line, although he couldn't possibly stay angry at those pecks.

This Blog Post is None of Your Business

As I've mentioned on this blog before, Chris Brown (or Christopher Brown as he likes to be called on the streets) is an awful human being, and his offensively terrible pop music is overshadowed only by a rich history of domestic violence. Now he has teamed up with his former victim Rihanna on her latest album Unapologetic to record the controversial track Nobody's Business, and like a shit Midas that turns everything he touches into shit, Christopher has helped Rihanna create a track that is, well, shit.

Have a listen:

First of all, it would be unfair to disseminate this song without a look at the worst two lines of the song:

Every touch becomes infectious,

Let's make out in this Lexus.

What is it that's so irresistibly romantic about a Lexus? Sure, Lexus do generally make reasonably nice cars, but they are hardly the auto-mobile equivalents of a heart-shaped, rose-petal-strewn bed in a dimly lit room. A Lexus is probably about the connubial equivalent of two single beds pushed together in a Travelodge: the facilities are adequate for all your love-making needs, but you probably wouldn't choose it as the location of a surprise anniversary gift. Do you really want to make out in a Lexus, Rihanna, or are you just saying that because it rhymes with the word “infectious?” I suppose it is quite difficult to find rhymes for “Jaguar.”

“Ain't nobody's business” is the defiant refrain repeated ad nauseum, or at least that's what it says in the lyric booklet (if it comes with a lyric booklet that is; it's probably just pictures of Rihanna's boobs or something. I don't know you can't expect me to do any research.) because those certainly aren't the words Christopher and Rihanna are singing. Instead they repeat the words “ain't nobody bid-na” at you like some strange and disorientating form of Dada-ist high art. This I don't really understand. I mean I know in pop music language is de-formalised and you can expect the odd 's' or 't' to be dropped from a few words here and there, but the word “business” in no way resembles the word “bid-na.” Was it Christopher or Rihanna who came up with the idea of replacing the main word of the chorus with another, completely unrelated and meaningless word? It must have been something that they sat around and discussed. When planning that song someone must have said “hey you know this word “business?” Well, how about we replace half of the letters with a random assortment of vowels and consonants from this game of Boggle?” It must have been something they discussed, because there is no way in the world the two of them could have simultaneously decided to replace the exact same word with the exactly the same Dr. Seuss-esque nonsense word at exactly the same time. There's more chance of SpikeMilligan's “On the Ning Nang Nong” being an attempt at Agricultural Reform that miraculously encountered a string of eighty-eight consecutive typos.

Let's put the aside surreal pronunciation and awful lyrical content for the moment however and focus on the message of the song. It's quite a difficult song to unpick and I'm sure it is loaded with ambiguities and nuance, but I think what Rihanna appears to be saying is that her and Chrissy's relationship is none of anyone else's business. It's interesting that if her relationship with Chrissy is nobody else's business that she would choose to write a popular song about that relationship for an audience of literally millions of people. It seems somewhat contradictory, and possibly even dishonest towards her true feelings (can you believe it?). It seems like what the song should really be saying is not “our relationship is none of your business” but “if you disapprove of our relationship then it's none of your business, but if not then please show your support by buying this song, learning the words and singing along at performances costing £60 a head.”

That's just what I think anyway, although I'm sure it's none of my “bid-na.”

The Milk Fight

15^th September 2012

Today my best friend Michael came round to play. He arrived at 2 o'clock and we frolicked in the garden for hours until we became exceedingly thirsty and had to retire to the kitchen for a cool glass of milk. Feeling sufficiently refreshed, Michael put his finger in his glass of milk and flicked a speck of the milky liquid in my face. In retaliation and with a demeanour of mock outrage I took a sip of milk, kept it in my mouth and spurted out a jet of milk like a fountain into his eyes. Michael, laughing but also blinded by the milk, took his glass in his hand and poured it over my head, at which point I kindly returned the gesture. Things quickly started to get out of hand. “That's it...” said Michael forebodingly, and he disappeared into the garden. Moments later he came back with two large water pistols. “Milk fight!” he yelled. I grinned back at him.

Filling the pistols with milk was a laborious task and in retrospect the spontaneity of our wacky antics did suffer slightly. After a quarter of an hour was spent filling the pistols I was starting to reconsider how I had decided to spend my day, but we had two great pistols filled with milk now and it seemed a shame to let them go to waste.

Michael started off our skirmish with a milky jet straight into my chest and dived behind the sofa to take cover. I took refuge on the staircase and waited for his head to pop out before shooting the creamy liquid into his temple. We carried on in this vein for about 10 minutes before abandoning these conservative measures in favour of more aggressive tactics. We jumped out from our defensive positions and pumped our milky guns until all the milk was drained and the living room was drenched in milk.

A wry smile passed between us. We knew that there was only one way to settle this battle: hand-to-hand combat. In fits of giggles we attempted to wrestle each other to the floor, exchanging a series of head locks and half nelsons. Once we were horizontal we gave up the wrestling in favour of violent tickling, before we collapsed on the milk-soaked carpet, drenched from head to toe in milk and suffering with paroxysms of hilarity.

The two of us laughed until the cows came home.

Then all of a sudden things became very serious.

*

The cows were not best pleased to witness such a wanton waste of milk.

“What the fucking shit, Dave?” said Martin. “Have you been using our milk for your cunting milk fights again? Do you have any idea how long it takes to squeeze that much milk from my fucking udders?”

Linda's tone was that of disappointment rather than anger: “the whole living room is ruined. You must have wasted at least a dozen pints of milk this time David. I'm really upset.” I tried to apologise but she cut me off: “I can't even talk to you right now. I feel so used.”

Martin was unrelenting in his abuse. He called me the foulest names, and just when I felt ready to burst with guilt he took off his large metal bell from around his neck and proceeded to beat me with it. The steel chimed against my ribs like a clock striking ten, all the while Michael cowered in fear, too afraid to speak out.

Eventually the beating ceased and I was left to crawl upstairs into my room alone, where I passed out on the bed.

*

I felt awful about what Michael and I had done. We had completely taken Martin and Linda for granted and treated their milk like tap-water. Their teats were not taps and I needed to remember that. There was a knock at my door; it was Martin and Linda. I was terrified; I didn't want another beating, be it verbal or at the hands of a steel cowbell again.

“David...” they started.

I started to apologise and explain that it would never happen again but they stopped me in my tracks.

“We know David. We overreacted, and for that we too are sorry. So sorry in fact that we made you a little something...”

I knew what this meant. I started to grin in disbelief.

“That's right: milkshakes!”

And the three of us raised a toast to the joys of milk and laughed about our day.

Dave's Faves 2 November

Track List:
1. Pavement - Cut Your Hair 
2. Menomena - Baton 
3. Slow Club - Giving up on Love 
4. Japandroids - The House that Heaven Built 
5. Les Savy Fav - Pots and Pans 
6. Albert Hammond Jr. - In Transit 
7. Girls - Lust for Life 
8. Titus Andronicus - Ecce Homo 
9. Temper Trap - Need Your Love 
10. Moldy Peaches - Anyone Else But You 
11. Neutral Milk Hotel - Holland, 1945 
12. Japanther - First of All 
13. Chromatics - Kill For Love