Guys, just squint. It's totally Neo-Manhattan. Totally.

Can you tell that I really, really love Katsuhiro Otomo’s Akira?

Fanboy wank aside, Akira is in no way perfect. Not by a long shot. Like I said, it’s a bitch to understand, it’s over two hours long, and the manga is a fucking epic piece of work in itself. Don’t try and tell me that it’s easy to read because it’s a picture book. I will slap you upside the goddamn head. Akira is riddled with mistakes, and its fanbase is rabid. A bunch of mental, rabid lunatics. It’s fine for me to say that though, as I am one of those mental, rabid lunatics. I love Akira. I still remember the first time I saw it, and even though I didn’t know what was going on, I fucking loved it. As I got older and watched it more, I started to understand it – just a little though, it’s a pretty difficult film to get your head round. Akira – set in Neo-Tokyo in 2019 – tells the story of Shotaro Kaneda, leader of the biker gang the Capsules (he’s the one with the pill on his jacket and the cool bike), and his best pal Tetsuo Shima. One fine night, while picking a fight with rival biker gang the Clowns, Tetsuo crashes into a wee green midget with superpowers and gets his ass hauled off by the military to be experimented on. Kaneda doesn’t put up with shit like that, so he gets on his bike and tries to save Tetsuo from his uncertain fate. Unbeknownst to Kaneda, Tetsuo has acquired superpowers akin to the god-like Akira, a wee boy who accidentally blew up Tokyo 31 years before the story started. Tetsuo decides that he doesn’t need saved, goes a touch mental and decides to hunt down Akira for a showdown of epic proportions (destroying everything in his way), and Kaneda’s not cool with that, so in turn, he goes after Tetsuo to get his own epic showdown on. It makes you laugh, makes you cry, and although I make it sound like Tetsuo’s the film’s antagonist, he really isn’t. It’s got more themes than I’ve had hot dinners (cyberpunk, how the world will rebuild and regrow after a nuclear holocaust, corruption, the will to power and idolatry to name but a few) and is just generally good fun and fucking cool.

I would be surprised if you hadn’t noticed how much I love Akira by now. So you might not be entirely surprised to learn that I wasn’t particularly pleased with the announcement of Warner Brother’s live action remake/re-imagining that was slated for a 2013 released.

I just wanted to take this opportunity to show you how cool Kaneda's bike is. That is all.

Talks first began in 2002, and everything got worse from there. Gary Whitta (Book of Eli, Undying) was originally set to write the screenplay. Later, we learned Mark Fergus and Hawk Ostby (Children of Men, Cowboys and Aliens) would be helping Whitta in this mighty task. We heard Leonardo Di Caprio would be in it, Joseph Gordon Levitt, that Keanu Reeves would be Kaneda (then 11 days later, we heard otherwise); we heard Helena Bonham Carter had taken the part of Lady Miyako, that amongst others James McAvoy, Andrew Garfield, Paul Dano and Michael Pitt would audition for the part of Tetsuo and that Ken Wanatabe will play The Colonel. But worst of all, we heard the plot.

This live action remake/re-imagining/whatever of Akira is set to be a two parter, the first part of the film focusing on volumes 1-3 of Otomo’s manga, and the 2nd part to focus on volumes 4-6. This is good. This would mean that the film would, if done right, be a comprehensive and complete translation to screen of the original manga, unlike the ’88 film. What are the chances of it being done right, though? By the looks of things – minimal.

Not long back, some bright spark noticed this post on Acting Auditions which gave away a bit of the film’s plot:

Kaneda (Garrett Hedlund) is a bar owner in Neo-Manhattan who is stunned when his brother, Tetsuo, is abducted by government agents led by The Colonel.

Desperate to get his brother back, Kaneda agrees to join with Ky Reed (Kristen Stewart) and her underground movement who are intent on revealing to the world what truly happened to New York City thirty years ago when it was destroyed. Kaneda believes their theories to be ludicrous but after finding his brother again, is shocked when he displays telekinetic powers.

Ky believes Tetsuo is headed to release a young boy, Akira, who has taken control of Tetsuo’s mind. Kaneda clashes with The Colonel’s troops on his way to stop Tetsuo from releasing Akira but arrives too late. Akira soon emerges from his prison courtesy of Tetsuo as Kaneda races in to save his brother before Akira once again destroys Manhattan island, as he did thirty years ago.

Which… doesn’t sound too bad. Ok, so Kirsten Stewart’s (apparently) going to be in it, and they’ve made Kaneda and Tetsuo brothers, and they’ve set it in Manhattan after some manor of attack, so it will inevitably have something to do with 9-11, because FUCK YOU WE MADE THIS FILM IN THE LAND OF THE FREE AND WE ARE ‘MURRICANS AND WE HATE TERRORISTS, etc., and most of the actors will invariably be white, but…I mean…it could be…be worse. Couldn’t it?

What really fucks me off, and why I really don’t want Akira made is that Warner Brothers are pissing on my biscuits, figuratively speaking. Imagine, if you will, that I love biscuits (which I do), and that I want to continue enjoying the same lovely biscuits I’ve been eating for years. Warner Brothers want to piss on those biscuits. They want to piss all over my lovely biscuits. They want to change the movie that I love, and I don’t want that, because I really don’t like change – especially change that looks like it’s going to be for the worse. They want to take Akira out of Japan, they want to fill it with Caucasian Americans, they want to cast KRISTEN “FUCKING FACE LIKE A SKELPED ARSE” STEWART. They’ll make Kaneda into a James Dean Rebel Without a Cause wannabe, they’ll turn Tetuso into the villain when he’s really just a kid overwhelmed by power; they’ll make Kai eye candy, or even worse, KRISTEN STEWART. They want to fuck with something I love, and if I could be assured that this wouldn’t be such a mess, I might not be so skeptical. But Americanizing foreign films is something that has rarely, if ever, gone right, and I don’t want to see a film I love being associated with such a massive piece of steaming dog shite.

But, thank the Gods, the film has been put on hold. For now, we are safe.

For now.

This is Nathan “Rad” Spencer, protagonist in Grin’s 2009 “re-imagining” of the classic NES title Bionic Commando:

Hi Nathan

Nathan’s a bionic – a man with a radical artificial limb. Nathan’s bionic is basically a fancy claw attached to a bit of rope. He can fire the claw into things and swing about, or pull stuff off walls and that. It would be comparable to Spider-Man’s webbing, because they basically act in the same way, except Nathan’s bionic arm has a total disregard for the laws of Physics.

This is his wife, Emily:

Hi Nathan's wife.

Nathan is a bit pissy, because he’s been in jail for ages and he can’t find his wife, but he knows his superiors are aware of where Emily is. So while he’s swinging and falling and becoming an irradiated puddle on his quest to kill Hitler or whatever the plot of this game is, Nathan will occasionally stand on a roof, raise his muscular fists like antennas to heaven and shout “WHERE ARE YOU EMILY I LOVE YOU I WILL FIND YOU AAAAAAAAAAAAAAANGST” like he’s living in a Linkin Park music video.

So, we piss about in Ascension City after it’s been nuked or some shite, pimpslap Hitler (or his pal, it might be his pal) with our claw hand and occasionally whinging about Emily, and we get to the end of Bionic Commando. The very last bit. The final boss fight (which, incidentally, is a fucking QTE and a total gyp). We stride up to the final boss, and this happens (don’t worry, you only have to watch between 4.04 and 5.30):

Just in case you didn’t catch it, we find out that Emily, Nathan’s wife, has been with him the entire time he’s been swinging about and pimpslapping and flinging bitches. She’s been with him the whole time – the entire time - because…

NATHAN’S ARM IS HIS WIFE.

HIS WIFE BECAME HIS ARM.

THEY NEEDED SOMEONE WHO ACTUALLY LIKED NATHAN TO DIE SO THAT THEY COULD BECOME HIS ARM BECAUSE THAT’S HOW BIONICS WORK SO NATHAN’S WIFE BECAME HIS FUCKING ARM. BECAUSE IT NEEDED A FUCKING SOUL OR SOMETHING.

NATHAN’S ARM. IS HIS WIFE.

ARRRRRRRRRRRGH.

Kirby, the cute little pink marshmallow that floats around Dream Land is a violent, carnivorous, murdering little bastard and HAL Laboratory should be utterly ashamed of his existence. He is so powerful that he can defeat creatures that apparently are powerful to take down worlds, and what does he do with this power? Does he use it for good? No! He goes on genocidal rampages, marching through the countryside, killing and subsequently digesting everything that stands in his way. As if that wasn’t bad enough, Kirby eventually developed the ability to consume one of these innocent creatures and steal its very soul in order to use the poor thing’s powers while on his disgraceful journey. Kirby is such a hideous beast that all it takes for him to go on one of these rampages where he kills hundreds, thousands maybe even millions of poor, defenseless Waddle Dees and Waddle Doos is the misplacement of one single, solitary piece of strawberry shortcake! I bet those Waddle Dees and Waddle Doos are endangered by now! PROTECT THE WADDLE DEE! SAVE THE WADDLE DOO! KILL THAT BASTARD KIRBY AND MOUNT HIM ON YOUR WALL ABOVE YOUR FUCKING FIREPLACE! PROTECT THE WADDLE! PROTECT THE WADDLE!

Also, HE HAS NO THUMBS BUT HE CAN HOLD A PARASOL! HE’S UNNATURAL! HE’S THE DEVIL!

Obviously, I don’t think Kirby is Satan. That would be fairly mental. If you’ve ever played any of the Kirby games, you’ll probably know that Kirby is more likely to have an eating disorder than to be a near omnipotent beast that even gods fear. Plus, he’s Kirby, for God’s sake. He’d never intentionally harm anyone – he’s just too adorable and innocent. All he wants to do is save Dream Land and eat cake. What I was trying to show in the above paragraph (although I’m wary of just how successful I was) is that it’s dead easy to wrongly interpret something and come off looking like a total headcase.

If you’ve been following the various press adventures of PETA recently (of course you have; you always keep up to date on what that bunch of ragtags and miscreants are up to), you’ll know that they recently went fucking mental over the latest game in the Super Mario series, Super Mario Land 3D, and not because it looks like a tonne of fun, but because they believe Mario encourages kids to wear fur. You see, in Mario games, you can find power-ups that give you cool and often very handy powers that will greatly aid your progression in the game. One of these power-ups is called the Tanooki Suit, and it allows Mario to fly, and transform into a statue. PETA decided that this meant Mario was psychopathic eejit who hunted down, skinned and wore Tanookis, and Nintendo deserved a slap on the wrists for this. It’s not a new power-up to the series, but PETA really rather enjoy media attention, so it’s likely they’ve been saving this one for just the right moment – when there’s a big lull in their press coverage.

What I enjoy most about this image is the frankly obscene amount of blood they've strewn left right and center, which makes it look more like a modern Ninja Gaiden game than anything else.

It should be absolutely no surprise to you that I harbor an intense amount of hate towards PETA (which I’ve mentioned before), and reading the article about this farce on Kotaku made me want to punch someone in the face. PETA have tried shit like this before – what immediately springs to mind is their “Your Mommy Kills Animals” campaign, which was, for lack of a better phrase, fucking idiotic – but I think this is one of the few times where they’ve actually realised that they were being fucking morons and tried to pass the whole thing off as a joke, which in the beginning, this most certainly was not.

Let’s have a wee look at what a Tanooki is. A Tanooki (also spelled Tanuki), according to every student’s bible, Wikipedia, is a small, raccoon-like animal from Japan, known as the Japanese raccoon dog. While it is a real animal, the Tanooki that the Super Mario series is referring to is the Tanuki of folklore – a mischievous and jolly Japanese raccoon dog who can shapeshift, has a tubby belly and massive bollocks (which we can be forever thankful Nintendo decided to omit from the Tanooki suit’s design). So, how Mario gets the Tanooki suit can be easily explained – the Tanooki shapeshifts into a suit for him to use and grants him its powers. I doubt highly that he catches and skins a Tanooki, in the same way I’m pretty certain he doesn’t catch and skin a penguin to use the Penguin Suit, or murder and climb inside the still-warm corpse of a frog to use the Frog Suit. Actually, when I think about it, I shouldn’t have to explain it at all. It’s a video game aimed at kids, not to be taken seriously in the least. In that case, want to know how Mario got the Tanooki suit? Wizards. A wizard did it. There we go.

PETA also had the great idea of making a flash game for the occasion in which you play a skinned Tanooki who is chasing after Mario in order to retrieve his skin. Apart from the game looking like a rejected level from Splatterhouse, being picky about when it decides to register the player pressing buttons and the game sometimes outright refusing to acknowledge that you’ve landed on the ground, thus giving it controls almost as bad as some of the shite you find in the very depths of Newgrounds, if it were a real Tanooki, it’s likely that the pain it would be in from having been skinned and its exposed muscle would render it unable to chase Mario. Oh, and if you scroll right to the bottom of that page, there’s a lovely wee picture of some skinned Tanookis lying in a pool of bloody. How fucking delightful.

It’s not like PETA have anything better to do, you know? Like trying to convert everyone to veganism using their own special brand of militant stupidity, or playing Super Tofu Boy. Or,  I don’t know, actually doing something worthwhile to get into the press for once? Regardless, I’ve heard about as much shite as I can take about PETA this year. I think I’m going to have to start trying to ignore it from now on, which will be a hell of a lot harder than it sounds…

Thank you,

Have a nice day.

I think, having watched that video several times to make sure it’s real, and not the world’s greatest piss-take, the only question we all want Cher Lloyd to answer is this: who told you it would be a good idea to wear foundation over your lips in this video, you daft cow?

Alright, fuck, slight exaggeration. But you’ve got to draw your readers in somehow, right? I didn’t almost die, really, but I thought I was going to. I really did. While we were flying over Nova Scotia, we hit an absolutely massive pocket of turbulence (right after we’d been given our bloody dinner, no less) that caused the bread roll of the woman at the end of my row to bounce into her glass of coke and fizz about until it completely died down about 45 minutes later. It was like being on a rollercoaster, but being on a rollercoaster 31,000ft in the air and being unable to get off said vomit-inducing, shaky, horrible, bastard rollercoaster for another 5 hours. I am attempting to make light of this, but I was shitting it. Absolutely fucking shitting it. I absolutely hate planes at the best of times, as you probably know, and was a bit over-confident having not needed my Valium on the flight out to New York, so was left panicky, unable to sleep, light headed, and absolutely ganting for a beer. What was even worse was that just before this happened, I’d decided to turn off the film I was watching (Cedar Rapids – crock of fucking shite) and listen to my iPod. The first thing that came on shuffle was Peggy Sue by Buddy Holly. As you may or may not know, Buddy Holly died in a plane crash when he was 22. I therefore assumed that Holly was punishing me from beyond the grave for being a total bastard and sent forth the most vomit-inducing turbulence he could muster to get me. I’m hoping that’s not the case, but just to cover myself, fuck you Buddy Holly and your motherfucking turbulence.

So aye, just back from New York. Went with my mate Natalie and our Mums, who were taking us for our 18th (which was last year – in fact, I’m 19 at the end of the week). It’s quite a surreal place – wonderful, magical, and has a bit of an American Psycho-like sinister vibe to it. The trip itself was eventful, however, I’ve spent the last week or so disorientated as fuck, so I’ll just tell you the interesting stuff. We both have lives to get back to anyway, so I’m sure you won’t mind.

It's really difficult trying to make this whole photo thing work because I'm taking these from my Mum's Facebook, and she has no idea how the "rotate photo" function works. So bear with me.

We saw the Flat Iron building. The only reason that’s cool is because this is where Peter Parker works and where The Boys’ hideout is. Super cool. We also saw the Statue of Liberty. She was tiny. And a bit gash:

I swear to God, that's Natalie with the Statue of Liberty. She's just really fucking small.

We were each to pick things that we wanted to do while we were in New York, and they’d be done without fuss or complaint. I wanted to go to a comedy club, everyone else wanted to go to Tiffany & Co., and Natalie wanted to go on the Sex and the City tour. I’ve never watched Sex in the City, because it’s one of those things I’m almost 100% certain I’ll hate. A TV series about four middle-aged slappers wandering around New York being slappers and dinning al fresco? Fucking no ta. But the rule was no complaints, so I went with it, Plus, it meant we got to stop at the world-famous Magnolia Bakery, so I wasn’t too alarmed. And it was all going grand – the four of us got on the bus, the tour guide introduced herself, cracked a few jokes; we drove around New York for a bit looking at where the various slappers had done slappery things or tripped or whatever the fuck they do, then we got off at the first stop of the tour.

The Pleasurechest.

A sex shop.

I would be visiting a sex shop with my mother.

Visiting a sex shop. With my mother.

Now, Big Linda, as she’s called when she’s not listening, is an exceptionally cool lady. I love her to pieces. She is an ace mum, and she puts up me being a bit mental without complaining or anything. I love her more than I could possibly say. But she is my mum, and I do not want to be in a sex shop with my mum. Never. Especially not to look at vibrators, just because one of them was featured in Sex and the bloody City.

But yeah, here’s Natalie and her mum pointing at some vibrators in the shop window:

Both of them wearing a look as if to say "aren't these a wee bit inappropriate to put in a shop window?"

After we’d been to the Pleasurechest, the next stop on the tour was the Magnolia Bakery. I’m quite into making cakes and that sort of pish, so I was rather excited about this one. After we were given some shitey spiel – which cut into valuable cupcake scoffing time – about the history of the shop and how one of the sluts from S&tC ate a Magnolia cupcake once, now they’re fucking everywhere, we were given a free cupcake each (!)…

Which I proceeded to cram in my gob:

Look at that technique. Beautiful.

We went to some club as well where Mr. Big did a thing and some folk cried or pissed themself or something – I wasn’t listening, therefore do not care. The last stop on the S&tC tour was a bar where they’d filmed scenes in one of the gash films or the telly programme or something – again I wasn’t listening; we’re beginning to see a pattern emerging, I know. Everyone had a cocktail except me, because I’m a mad bastard:

I've been told the cocktails were lovely, but I think they look vile.

On the same day, we went to the National Library, which was amazing. I’m quite into books, so it was cool to see things like Jack Kerouac’s diary (and his pipe, harmonica, and a packet of Valium that he’d written all over), a letter John Keats had written to Fanny Brawne, and an Oscar Wilde book that HE HAD WRITTEN ON AND ONCE OWNED. I fucking loved it, but I’m pretty sure no-one else really got it – while I was trying to explain who John Keats was, Ruth and Natalie were laughing at Fanny – but they tried, and I admire them greatly for that.

We also went to the top of the Rockefeller building. It was high.

One day, we had breakfast at the Brooklyn Diner. I had double chocolate-chip pancakes. It was the greatest thing I’ve ever tasted. Ever.

We were going for an action shot in this one, but my eagerness to eat the pancakes more or less fucked it up totally.

I sort of look like a fat Owen Wilson in that photo. Or maybe I don’t; I’m really fucking tired. Anyway. Food was quite a big thing on the trip as we’re all greedy bastards, and mum wanted to go to Serendipity 3 while we were away. Serendipity 3 is a restaurant and “general store” which Andy Warhol once proclaimed his favourite place for sweet things.

Natalie vs. The Beast

I can see why.

(We had dinner there and everything too, but ravioli isn’t half as interesting as that monster of an ice-cream, is it? No, it’s not. Fuck you for not agreeing with me.)

This is the dent we managed to make in the wee bastard:

Ignore my arm. Sorry.

The Bastard was half a chocolate cake in an ice-cream bowl – the other half filled with vanilla ice-cream – topped with an entire can of whipped cream and more chocolate sauce than I’ve ever seen in my entire life. I’m not sure what The Bastard’s proper name is, but it near killed me. Which wasn’t handy as we were going to the Gotham Comedy Club after dinner that night. The comedy club was good fun, and the comics – whose names I cannot for the life of me remember, which is absolutely terrible – were very funny.

This has to be my favourite thing that happened, however. One evening, Natalie decided that she would like her nails done while we were in New York, and I’d spotted a beauty parlor (is that what you call them?) across from the hotel, called Nina’s European Day Spa. I’ve just Googled it, and came across this in New York Magazine. It sounds about right.

Upon walking into Nina’s European Day Spa & Laser Center for Men and Women (to give it its full title), we were greeted by Nina herself, a Russian woman on the wrong side of forty with relatively bad English. Ruth, Natalie’s mum, asked if they did manicures, and how much they were – Nina told us they did, and it’d be $12. I was informed that this was a fantastic price. Natalie asked if they did gel manicures, and they did – a gel manicure, in case you’re wondering, is when they put gel over the nail to harden it, then paint on top of it – and that it would be $15; also a wonderful price. Ruth and Natalie decided to get a gel manicure, while Big Linda played it safe with a normal manicure – and were asked to pay up front, which immediately struck my mum as odd. I don’t really do the whole fancy nails pish, so I oped to sit outside with the bags and read my book (John Green’s Looking for Alaska – very good).

Having not been there, I can only tell you what they told me, but the story I was told has lead me to believe they were given shite manicures by a “Russian transsexual”. The staff were rude, crap at their jobs, and a blind chimp with no training as a beautician could’ve given them a better manicure than the ones they received from Nina’s cronies.The “wide selection of colours” they’d been enticed with turned out to be a choice between red or pink, any nail varnish that got their fingers was removed by the “beautician” scratching at it with her – according to Natalie – scabby hands (for the men – you’re not supposed to do that. Nail polish is supposed to be taken off with acetone; you’re not supposed to just scratch at it, especially if it’s on your skin), and one of them actually cut my mum trying to take nail varnish off her finger. They gave Big Linda a gel manicure too, when she’d not paid for one, which would be fine if the gel manicure was a quality one, but it fucking wasn’t. In fact, my Mum said that the only good thing about the manicures was how easy the crap was to get off their nails once they’d finished. We couldn’t have gotten out of there fast enough. Natalie’s face afterwards was an absolute picture – everyone else got over it quite quickly, but Natalie is still bitter. Bitter to the point of coming up with a theory that Nina’s European Day Spa is actually a front for a brothel, and she had her nails done by a prostitute. To be honest, the idea’s got merit – you should have seen the bloke that did her nails.

Save that one hiccup, New York was great. It’s somewhere everyone should visit at least once, but for fuck’s sake, if you know what’s best for you, don’t go to Nina’s European Day Spa & Laser Center for Men and Women. I’d seriously hate to think what she’d do with a laser in hand, actually…

It’s not without its flaws, and there are many, many flaws. While Twitter makes you feel like you’re within a lovely wee community, within that community, there are cliques. I took a look at my feed earlier, having not bothered with Twitter for a few days, and saw exactly the same thing as when I left it on Saturday: the same groups of people talking to the same groups of people. Nothing ever really seems to change. It’s like being in your average American high-school comedy – you walk into the cafeteria and where do you sit? With the jocks? The cheerleaders? The nerds? While close to the worst metaphor/simile/comparison thing I’ve ever written, the point still stands. That makes me sound like I’m not part of the problem, but I am. I have a group of friends, and while they vary hugely in their interests and my reasons for following them, they all follow each other, give or take a few. Within my clique, I see other’s cliques, and I’m not sure how I feel about it now that I’ve noticed it.

What bothers me most, however, is that when I sit at my desk, thinking of something self-deprecating and stupid to say, finally post it, delete it because it’s got a large number of spelling mistakes and tweet it again, I’m amazed by how I feel. I don’t feel like I’m contributing to what is essentially the world’s biggest conversation, I feel like an attention-seeking cunt. Twitter is, in my mind, the internet equivalent of a child doing something stupid in front of you while shouting “LOOK AT ME! LOOK! LOOK! ARE YOU WATCHING? ARE YOU? LOOK!”. I feel like I’m shouting into the void, more or less. I get a great amount of satisfaction when someone tells me they found something I’ve put on Twitter to be funny or insightful. Then I feel like an attention-seeking cunt. Then I look at my 39,000 tweets, and wonder what the fuck I’m doing with my life. Then I check my re-tweets for the millionth time in an hour. Then I complain about my job. I normally repeat this on a daily basis. My followers seem to enjoy repetition.

One thing I will say for Twitter, though, is that it’s populated by some rather lovely people. There are, just as with everywhere else, cunts all over the joint – the sort of people who tweet celebrities every ten seconds to tell them they’re cunts, the irony – but if you ignore them, the morons, the spambots, the bots, and the cunts who are just plain creepy, it’s a nice place. Especially if you think you’re funny and have a desperate craving for attention, like me.

08/10/11: I’ve just read on IMDB that The Human Centipede II (Full Sequence) has been given an 18 certificate, and is set to be given a release date within the next few weeks, after 2 minutes and 37 seconds of footage have been cut from the film, including the scene where the bloke wanks with sandpaper. Britain’s loss is America’s gain when it comes to watching a bloke grate the skin off his cock, so it would seem.

The BBFC today released a statement saying that they would not be rating the sequel to last year’s snooze-and-shit-fest The Human Centipede (First Sequence). You can read the statement here, but be warned, it contains a shit-tonne (Christ that was inappropriate) of spoilers about The Human Centipede II. I saw The Human Centipede last year, and again at the beginning of this year, and I’m not entirely sure what Six, the film’s director, hopes to achieve with a sequel. The plot of these films appears to more or less stay the same, and I’m not ruining anything by saying this, because if you can’t work out what the film’s about from the title, there’s a possibility that you might be a fucking moron – mad scientist abducts a group of annoying cunts and sews them together arse to mouth. That’s it. That’s the entire plot of the first film, and I can only assume the second, in one sentence. There’s other trivial things that happen, like the inevitable scene where a Japanese man shits in a whiny American girl’s mouth (how in the fuck was that girl still a moaning cunt even when she’d had her mouth surgically attached to said Japanese man’s anus? How? Alright, I know, it’s not cool to have someone shitting in your mouth for sustenance, but had the bitch never heard of making the best of a bad situation?). If the first film’s anything to go by, the United Kingdom’s not missing out on much with the banning of the second – I mean, really, how much can they really get from The Human Centipede? The third part’s already been planned – what are they going to do, make it even longer? Considering how bad the first film was, it’s reasonable to suggest they can only get worse from here. The BBFC have, in some ways, done us a favour.

It’s got to be said, however – and I’ll sound like a monster for this, I don’t think The Human Centipede II sounds as bad as the BBFC are making it out to be – in terms of content, I mean, not the actual film, which sounds pish. Of course, it sounds disgusting, (for example, the BBFC states there’s a scene early in the film in which the main character “masturbates whilst he watches a DVD of the original Human Centipede film, with sandpaper wrapped around his penis” which…I mean, that just sounds sore. I’m not disgusted, really, I just want to know if he had TCP and bandages on stand-by, because that’s going to smart like a bitch when he’s finished), but purely in terms of content, I don’t understand how the BBFC will reject this for classification, but will allow a film such as Lars von Trier’s Antichrist to go through uncut. The only reason I mention Antichrist explicitly is because it contained a scene which will haunt me for the rest of my days: the female character, She, cuts off her clitoris with a pair of rusty scissors. You see more or less everything, and it’s revolting – in the context of the film, it’s somewhat justified, but I’m looking at this, as I’ve stated twice, because I’m a boring cunt, in terms of content, and content alone.

I’m not opposed in the least to the BBFC, or any other classifications board for that that matter, but I have to say, I take issue with how easy it is for someone under the age of 18 to buy a film or game that has been rated 18. I’m rarely, if ever, ID’d for games or movies with an 18 certificate, and that worries me. What if it’s that easy for someone who’s 15, but looks older, to get their hands on a game or film that’s an 18?

Just to give an example – recently, I’ve been banging on like a mad bastard about Activision’s 2009 game Prototype. It’s a fantastic game, and I’ll probably write something extensive about it at a later date. In Prototype, you play as the morally ambiguous Alex Mercer, who’s been infected with a virus that allows him to shapeshift extensively, to the point where your arm is a fucking 5ft long sword (awesome) and you can scale the Empire State building in 5 seconds flat because of his insane parkour abilities (also awesome). You are, however, required to eat people to regain health, and do other things, like allow Alex to absorb the memories of the person he’s consuming or take on their form. In the context of the game, the cannibalism is somewhat justified (I promise, it is). The game is extremely violent – I’d go as far as to say ultra-violent – but if you look past the phenomenal levels of violence, there’s actually an incredibly clever plot and you get a real sense that the character has developed throughout, but if we forgo that, it’s bloody as fuck and needlessly violent in places, even to the point of Mercer himself stating this. I’d hate to think there were kids out there who have access to this game. I have, of course, got issues with the way the media portrays violent video games as the crux of society’s inevitably downfall into mindless depravity, violence, antisociality and of-the-charts levels of cuntyness, but it’s surely sensible to say that kids shouldn’t be allowed to play violent video games, or watch violent films? There’s a classification system for a reason. It’s there to prevent people who may be affected negatively by playing these games or watching these films from doing so. From time to time, the media will report on an incident, usually involving teenage boys and guns, and it’ll hastily be pinned on a video game. For example, there’s the case of step-brothers Joshua and William Buckner, who, when 14 and 16 respectively, stole a car, drove it down the interstate, and fired a rifle on other vehicles. They caused the death of a 45 year-old man, and wounded a 19 year-old woman. When asked, they claimed to be inspired by Grand Theft Auto III, a game which PEGI rated 18, and ESRB rated M, meaning they’d have to be over 17 or accompanied by an adult to buy the game. You’d have to be a pretty fucking irresponsible adult to allow a 14 year-old to play a GTA game. Of course, there may be other underlying reasons for those boys’ actions, but they should not have been allowed to play the game in the first place, that’s what I’m getting at. There’s a reason for boards like the BBFC and ESRB – to keep people safe, and to prevent incidents like this.

But hey. Maybe the BBFC were right to reject The Human Centipede II. I’d rather sit through that than another Vince Vaughn film, though.

There’s no two ways about it, I hate flying. The very thought of it turns my stomach to such a degree that just writing this is making me want to vomit quite profusely. Fortunately, it’s one of those things I don’t have to think about very often, and therefore often forget about. It’s not like I look at chemitrails in the sky then get the incessant urge to run in the house and cry like a bitch or anything, I’d just rather avoid being on planes as much as humanly possible in my lifetime.

I don’t see it as an illogical fear in the slightest, unlike my mother who laughed in my face several times as I tried to explain this to her earlier today. What is there to like about airplanes? They are giant metal boxes that soar 32,000 ft above the surface of the Earth. The average weight of a passenger aircraft, according to Yahoo Answers is 80 tonnes. There are 1000 kilograms in a tonne. This means that the average passenger aircraft is around the same weight as 123 1990 Mini Coopers, 2,051,282 Creme Eggs or 1600 Jenna Jamesons, assuming she moves out of the porn industry and into cloning (assuming my maths is alright, which it’s often not. I’ll leave it to the pedants to sort that one). So. This means that when you’re in a plane, which is (hopefully) the same weight as 2,051,282 Creme Eggs, breathing recycled air and eating the shit that these morons try to pass off as food, you’re 32,000 FUCKING FEET IN THE FUCKING AIR. IN A METAL FUCKING DEATH TRAP. THAT IS THE SAME WEIGHT AS 2,051,282 CREME FUCKING EGGS (I think). You have 32,00ft to FALL TO YOUR FUCKING DEATH. And it won’t be like it is in the movies – there won’t be someone who dives in from the cockpit and shouts “Does anyone know how to fly a plane? Both the pilot and the co-pilot have somehow managed to die!” then some burly twat stands up and goes “Yes, only last week I flew some supplies and fresh clothes orphans in Ghana!” and none of you die – it will not be like that. There will be screaming and plummeting and crying and last phonecalls to loved ones and breathing apparatus dangling overhead that you’ll be hyperventilating too hard to use and sobbing and babies that are STILL FUCKING CRYING and fire and all sorts of horrible sights. Because you’re 32,000ft in the air and when you’re 32,000ft in the fucking air, there is no-one around to help you if a fuck-up occurs. You are relying solely on the people around you, and I have trust issues. I don’t give a fuck how hard they’ve trained in case of emergency, I don’t want to take the fucking chance. I’d rather walk.

So yeah. I’m going to New York in about 8 weeks. On a plane. I have to endure 7 hours of sheer panic, turbulence and bullshit just to go to America so that we can go on some Sex and the City tour or some shit (I’m kidding, it’ll be fun when I get there). It’s not that I don’t want to go, I just don’t want to endure 7 hours in a metal box of death cruising at 32,000 ft, doing not much, other than screaming. No-one can understand why I’m not excited, apart from me getting excited about fucking nothing ever, it’s because I hate flying.

I hate flying.

You seriously can’t comprehend just how much I absolutely cannot fucking stand planes.