Friday 24 December 2010

God Bless us, Everyone!

Well I'm signing off now so that I can finish up at work and get to my mum's house where there will be warm mince pies awaiting my arrival (cooked by my evil brother no less, so will probably contain poison)

I hope you all have a great Christmas or if you're not Christian, I hope you enjoy some time off at the expense of someone elses religious beliefs!

Good luck to all of you who get presents you don't want! I know I've been practicing all year to hide the look of utter disgust that can appear when you receive something that isn't what you wanted. I jest of course, I'm happy to get anything, even a slap in the face as long as it's wrapped, but I know some of you will be opening presents, dreading the thought that your family will be able to read the look of disappointment that will consume you when that 3D TV you asked for is actually another pair of socks, so good luck with that.

Also, remember whilst you eat your Christmas feast with all the trimmings that there are people all over the world suffering, who can't have a nice cooked roast. I always find it makes my dinner taste even sweeter!

Merry Christmas one and all

Tuesday 21 December 2010

Surviving in a Winter Wonderland

9
Surviving in a Winter Wonderland

I'm taking a break from writing about my pas exploits for the moment as I'm just getting to the horrible bits. So instead I'll tell you what I did today.

It's Christmas... well, at least according to the official Gray Republic Calendar it's Christmas, and it looks like it's going to be a White Christmas as it has started to snow (deadly deadly snow)

Celebrating Christmas, like any festivity, is usually not a good idea as it distracts you from all the things that are trying to kill you. I went to a wedding, and that ended stickily for all involved! But I've come to the end of my tether with the world as I know it so I figured I'd try and have as traditional a Christmas as I can get in a post apocalyptic land of death.

Of course, I'm on my own these days. The cats, my friends and my long suffering lady wife Louise (or what's left of her) aren't here with me, so I'm feeling pretty lonely. Now I know how the guy out of Mud was feeling!

Before the end, they used to say that the holidays are the most depressing time of the year. Now add to that fact that the world I now live in is depressing all year round, which makes the holidays even worse than they were before The End. But there's still a part of me that tries to add some semblance of normality to the ever confusing world that is now my day to day life.

As I don't have anyone to give presents to (they're either dead, insane, or held captive as of writing), I decided to skip that part of Christmas, and instead focus on decorating the abandoned shack that I am currently calling home. As most things that run on electricity try to kill you thanks to some strange artificial intelligence they have inexplicably developed (seriously, a toaster nearly killed me once) I didn't really fancy lighting my shack up with fairy lights, also lighting may advertise my presence to those who are after me, which wouldn't be a good thing.

Instead, I thought I'd start with getting a tree and maybe some tinsel to throw about the place, so I set off for some trees that I had passed earlier, armed with a fire-axe that I had found lodged in a friend's corpse not so long back.

Up to this point, I had thought the expression "Tree's have feelings too" was just something hippies used to say, however when I swung my axe deep into the trunk of a tree, it cried in pain and began to attack me. Not many people can say they've fought a tree to the death, but I can now add that to the ever growing list of things that I've done that should never have been. The tree didn't really have much power behind it, what with the huge gash in it's midriff, and it didn't take me much effort to finish it off with the handy fire axe.

After murdering the tree, I dragged it back to my abode and propped it's corpse against the shack's one good wall, whilst a pool of sap formed at the trunk's base. I'll be honest, the fact I had to kill the tree in cold blood kind of took away a bit of the magic of Christmas for me.

Thanks to Blue Peter (a person I met, not the old TV program) I knew how to make Tinsel from clothing, so used my last good pair of underwear (good is a great overstatement) to create some pretty dull tinsel. It looked pretty awful, so I used some broken glass for baubles and put a dead bird on the top instead of a star.

It was the worst Christmas tree in the history of Christmas trees, but it was my Christmas tree.
The tree brought me some happiness, but deep sadness at the same time. I shouldn't be alone, I should be with my friends and family, none of this should have happened, but crying about it wasn't going to help, especially as the scent of tears attracts the Darkness.

I was hungry, and no Christmas would be complete without a turkey dinner with all the trimmings. Unfortunately turkey are one of the deadliest birds in the world as I know it, I mean, I've seen a Turkey take a man's arm off and then beat him to death with it. Poor old Jon.

So with that in mind, I took my hunting gear out and went in search of something to replace the deadly festive foul. After a few hours using all my hunting and tracking abilities, I was able to catch... a rat. Yeah, I'm still pretty shit at hunting to be honest. I was born without the ability to stalk and this particular rat was actually already dead.

I got home and prepared the rat, by skinning it and spinning it round over a cigarette lighter. When it came to the trimmings for my Christmas feast, Vegetables are all but inedible so I had to make do with a can of mushy peas I found. (when I say found, I mean took from a neighbouring hermit's corpse)

So there I was, sitting in front of the dead tree, eating un-dercooked rat and mushy peas, hoping the snow wouldn't gain sentience again and try to kill me like last time. I caught a glimpse of myself in the reflection of one of the glass shards I used as baubles, and realised that this was the most depressing Christmas I have had up to this point.

If anyone is reading this, I hope that you aren't alone whenever you decide to celebrate whatever festival is important to you. Life is fleeting, and you can have all the tea in what used to be China, but you've got nothing if you've got no one to share it with. Grab a friend, grab a loved one, hell... grab a stranger as long as they aren't totally deranged, and revel in companionship, because that's all the counts at the end of the day, something I painfully realise now.

If I'm alive after Christmas, I'll continue my journal, if I died, then be happy that I'm at peace and with any loved ones that I had to put out of their misery. But either way, I wish you a very merry Christmas, and I hope you're safe and well.

Thursday 16 December 2010

Class Dismissed

8
Class Dismissed

So there I was in a classroom full of dead children with their teacher, a close friend, who had no concept of reality or proper toilet etiquette, my two speaking cats and standing in the door was a creature so freakish that it would have made Pete Burns look normal!

The thing watched me from the door, as Hagley stood up from her desk and whispered into my ear.
"I know she doesn't look great but be kind, she lost Irish a while back."

My heart skipped a beat and my stomach sank as I realised that The End had somehow, like Shav, mutated another friend of mine. The creature that stood before me was Molly, one of my oldest and dearest of friends, who now looked like the result of some strange human-frog cross breeding experiment.

Of all the fates of all my friends I think that Molly had the worst of it. Sure, Hagley was "FUBAR", what happened to JP was pretty terrible, The Grays made the best of their situation and you'll be finding out soon enough about the horror that was "Panto Season", but Molly's fate was one of the worst.

Molly you see, was my Celtic friend, who'd been living in sin with her charming boyfriend Irish. He was called Irish as he was Irish, and it goes to show how un-imaginative our collective group of friends had been when it came to nicknames.

Irish and Molly had been going out for years and Molly had finally after years of trying, gotten Irish to propose to her. They were due to be wed at a large purple castle in Cork, however that was before The End, so the fact that Irish had been "lost" presumably dead, made things even more tragic for the weird purple-tinged monster that stood in the door frame.

Molly looked like she was happy to see me, but I couldn't tell if that was just how her deformed face looked normally or if it was genuine happiness, till she put her arms around me... those horrible leathery arms.

Her arms, like her neck, were elongated, and I knew then, what it would have felt like to be the victim of a boa-constrictor, as her arms wrapped round me twice and squeezed me into the small frame that was her body. I shuddered and kept my face away from hers for fear of catching something or being devoured, the same way a kid does when an aging relative wants a kiss.

"Master, what in the name of Kentucky Fried Chicken is that thing?" Professor Humperdink asked me, his voice a little shaky from fear.

Molly released me and looked down at my cats, who began to hiss when she approached them. They tried to run, but her long arms grabbed them and she began to stroke them both. I say stroke, but it was more like abuse. Their eyes nearly popping out of their skulls as her hands roughly stroked back the fur and skin on their heads.

Hagley turned to me again and whispered to me whilst Molly was distracted by the cute fluff balls that were my cats.

"After things went dark, Molly and Irish were staying with me and Myke... we tried to get out of town, but the roads were blocked by these large insects. A flying one... like a wasp... took Irish and stung Molly. She started to change... I know what she looks like, but she's the same... just... quieter. The kids here don't seem to mind her..." she looked back at the dead classroom and smiled.

"Anyway, Myke decided to go after Irish whilst I took care of Molly. He told us to wait at the school... that he'd come back for us when he found out where Irish had gone... but... but that was nearly a year ago now..."

I felt that someone needed to shake Hagley out of the insane funk she was in, and as her only non-mutated friend, I felt that that someone was me.

"Hagley!" I said, as I grabbed a hold of her "Snap out of it, the children are dead, Myke and Irish probably are too, and Molly... we'll she's as good as dead. Look, I need to find my long suffering lady wife Louise, why don't the two of you come with me, you'll stand a better chance with me than you will waiting here for whatever it is you're waiting for."

"But who will teach the children...?" she cried

"I'm sorry to have to break this to you Hagley, but not even the national curriculum can help these kids now" I replied.

Hagley looked sane for a moment, just a moment, and then ran as fast as she could out of the room, barging past the freakish Molly who dropped the cats and whirled round to see where her friend was going.

In the state that she was in I was worried that she'd do something stupid, so I decided to run after her, leaving my cats in the care of the repulsive Molly. So as I stated, I ran after her, thinking that she would go for the main door to leave the school and maybe try to find Myke and I was correct on my assumption.

I found Hagley in the entrance, being held by two youths in hoodies, and the rest of the lobby was full of them. Shav's Chav's had found me! It seemed they wanted revenge for what I had done to Ray and Shav and as Hagley was with me, she'd be included in my fate...

Edward Lobe in Dead Before Dawn

Well last night Alex and I sat down and we started the editing of Lobe, which is a mammoth task! We're going to have to be very clever with some of the shots as people who aren't supposed to be in the scene are visible or the camera loses focus!

But it'll all be worth it in the end as what we've come up with for the start looks great!

Anyhoo, being a fan of Jap Horror, I cobbled another teaser together, this time in the style of said Jap Horror.

Nothing particularly scary happens, it's just the visual imagery and music have been altered to make it seem like it's not a comedy at all. My favourite bit in it is a bit with a character standing still then a split second before it cuts to black he goes to move, this is a technique I've seen in a lot of jap horrors.

Anyway, here's our youtube, take a looksee!

http://www.youtube.com/user/Addyace#p/u

Wednesday 15 December 2010

Xmas Break!

Well it's nearly Christmas and apparently I enjoy stating the obvious. I hope you're enjoying the story on the blog and sorry that there's been a lack of half arsed movie revies, but due to time I've not had chance yet.

There are only 2 more JOAPAOD's before Christmas! Then you'll have to wait till the 7th of Jan!

Also, tonight will be the beginning of the editing for the Edward Lobe remake, it's going to be tough, but hopefully the end result will be worth it all and Friday is my last Cracker FM show! 87.9 FM if you get a chance to tune in!

I'm not really in the Christmas spirit this year, well not as much as normal, but I think that will change by Christmas Eve!

This year has FLOWN by, I'll be dead before I know it! :(

On that cheery note,

Ciao for now

Adamicus the 3rd

Friday 10 December 2010

Teaching the Dead!

7
Teaching the Dead!
The classroom full of mummified children stared back at Hagley in silence.

I wont lie, it was a very awkward moment, probably in my top 10 awkward moments of all time.

Hagley however, didn't sense this awkwardness and instead believed that the children had responded to her asking them to say hello to me, the crazy bitch.

Before The End, my friend Hagley was a bit of an enigma. She was both quite posh yet at the same time quite common. I try to remember my friends as much as I can, like they were before the terrible circumstance befell them all. Hagley wasn't deformed so it was easier remembering her as she was before The End, and she didn't try to kill me after The End, which was a nice change of pace.

"Thank you class" she replied "Now, open your textbooks to page 20, today we'll be learning about..." she trailed off, and simply stared for a few moments at the children's corpses propped awkwardly up at their desks, some of them missing limbs (some didn't even have a head), but she didn't seem to mind, then her gaze returned to me.

There was something in Hagley's eyes, a pitiful look of a woman who'd lost something dear to her, it's a look I recognise in my own eyes these days when I happen to catch a glimpse of my reflection in something... reflective.

She sat on her table, which had a thick layer of dust on it "I can't believe you came to see me, shouldn't you be at work?" Hagley asked, her eyes focused on me intently

"Um, somehow I don't think they'll mind" I replied, remembering what my father had told me on my wedding night about never telling a woman that she's crazy. That was good advice.

Hagley smiled at me, a smile that went from comforting to sinister in a matter of seconds "Hey, actually would you mind watching my class whilst I go to the toilet?" she asked me.

I simply nodded, and waited for her to leave. She didn't leave the room: instead I heard a dripping noise and realised that she was indeed going to the toilet right in front of me, on the desk, all the while her eyes were fixed on me. I stepped back as the pooling liquid approached me.

As I backed away I glanced down at where Professor Humperdink had been standing, he was now up on a bookshelf giving me a look that signalled he thought she wasn't just one sandwich short of a picnic, but she'd forgotten the whole picnic hamper and just turned up for a picnic with a plastic bag full of dead babies.

"So..." I began "how's your fella Myke, these days?"

Myke was Hagley's better half, and he liked two things. Cooking and Quantum Physics. Two things that go in hand in hand. He'd trained to be an archaeologist, like most people who got sucked in by archaeology's poster boy Indiana Jones. Myke had dreamed of discovering ancient treasures, fighting off Nazi's and wearing a fedora indoors, however it didn't work out as planned and instead he worked as a manager for Dynamite, a logistics company that if you asked him, he wouldn't be able to tell you what they actually did, as it bored him that much.

Out of everyone I knew, he was the most likely to survive due to a vast knowledge of survival techniques, that unlike me, he hadn't learn off of Fallout 3. (A computer game for the un-initiated)

As I asked her about him however, her smile disappeared almost instantly, and tears began streaming from her eyes that I realised hadn't blinked once the whole time I was there. She was all kinds of wrong.

"Myke will... be back any minute now. He'll meet me after class"

Another awkward silence, the kind you'd get if you farted really loud in a lift full of strangers.

It was obvious at that time, that something horrendous had happened to Myke. I wondered if he had gone the way of Shav and turned into a gluttonous mass or if he, like Hagley, had slipped into a mental minefield of wrongness. He was one of the only people I've met so far who had blossomed due to The End, but that's another story for another entry.

Suddenly, Simba (sans sick) rushed into the room in a panicked fashion. "Guv'na" he panted in his high pitched cockney voice "I just saw something coming down the apple and pears, and it doesn't look friendly"

Amazing, not only could my cat talk, but he had some concept of cockney rhyming slang, something he didn't pick up from me that's for sure. The doorway that he had ran from was suddenly masked by the monstrosity that Simba had just ran from.

Whatever it was it had a regular sized body for an eight year old girl, but it's neck was elongated ending in a very large head with bulging eyes and a mouth the size of a baby deer. The face had a tint of purple to it and the creature's skin was wrinkled like some kind of hairless cat. All in all the, creature looked like what I expected Kermit the Frog and Miss Piggy's demonic offspring would look like.

I expected that this was the end for me and my two cats, that I would never see my long suffering lady wife Louise again (with what happened to her sometimes I wish I never had) I waited for the inevitable. 

Friday 3 December 2010

School Daze

6
School Daze
Sleeping isn't the same as it was before The End; for one thing I now sleep very lightly due to being worried that something is creeping up on me waiting to kill me and use my skull as a urine cup. Also, since The End people don't tend to dream.

I heard somewhere that dreams keep us sane... oh who am I fooling? I heard it off an episode of Star Trek : The Next Generation! A TV show from my past that my long suffering lady wife Louise used to say was "Boring, as it's just people talking in front of a screen". So was there any truth in dreams keeping us sane or was it just something they said on a TV program for shits and giggles? I doubt I'll ever get a definitive answer, but if the TV show was right, the next person I met was proof that no dreams add to craziness!

I miss TV, now if you see a TV set, you'd better start running (They're fast). I'd say I miss theatre, but theatre after The End has left a bad taste in my mouth, especially what was known as "Panto Season"... sorry, spoiler alert!

I had sheltered in the staff room of a school, one that I was not familiar with, as the sky had decided to rain fire (one of the nicer things it decides to rain these days) It had been a good nights sleep after the events that had happened on Monday, and when I awoke I had that glorious 5 seconds of blissful ignorance where I presumed the world was how it should be, but that soon departed when the unfamiliar surroundings of the staff room and the smell of stale coffee seeped into reality.

Professor Humperdink was feeling a little worse for wears thanks to all the punch he'd consumed at Ray's house, and was throwing up all over the place. I felt a pang of guilt remembering what had happened to Ray and Shav, but quickly swept that aside when I remembered they tried to eat me.

Simba was holding Professor Humperdink's hair back for him, as he vomited into a makeshift toilet that to my horror I realised was what used to be me left shoe. The combination of stale coffee and cat sick started to make me queasy.

I couldn't stand the stench, so walked out the staff room to escape it. As I did, the school bell rang out, echoing through the empty corridors, making me jump which was not a good thing to happen when I was standing in the middle of a door frame.

This had happened to me at school once before, and I'd gotten a scar from it. But this time, there was no Mrs. Jackson to apply first aid: this time the blood that had begun pouring from a gash on the top of my head would have to be stopped by me and my first aid training, which incidentally had run out two years prior.

I grabbed hold of the wound and felt the warm claret flowing through my matted hair, and tried to think back to my first aid training. My first aid training was useless in this situation however, as all the training consisted of was making sure your "patient" was comfortable and safe, then you'd call an ambulance. This was a post-apocalyptic world where I couldn't get safe or comfortable and there were no emergency services, so icks-nay on the first aid front... I was on my own... well I had two cats.

Coming back into the staff room, the smell of stale coffee mixed with cat vomit and the shock of the blood gushing out of my cranium, finally sent me over the edge and I emptied the contents of my stomach over Simba.

He didn't look impressed, especially after I said whilst looking at him covered in my puke "I don't remember eating that." Despite my pathetic joke, Simba and Professor Humperdink noticed the blood and came to my aid.

"Quickly" Professor Humperdink cried out to his sick covered buddy, "Master is injured, we must act post haste to remedy this situation" and with that, he sped out the room, followed by me, followed by a skulking Simba.

It took us a while to find a first aid kit, but when we did Professor Humperdink sprang into action. Don't ask me how he did it, but somehow that cat was able to bandage me up. I mean, it's actually impossible for a cat to do that isn't it, well it was before what with them not having opposable thumbs, but now anythings possible it seems.

I recall that I began to think I'd hit my head harder than I thought, when I heard a distant woman's voice speaking. But Simba had heard it too, as had Professor Humperdink. There was someone else here! Without thinking, I sped off down the corridor towards the voice, with Humperink closely behind me. Simba, had stayed behind to clean himself up as when I next saw him, you couldn't tell I'd thrown up all over him.

The voice was getting louder as I skidded down the highly buffed corridors, Professor Humperdink was sliding all over the place, his claws not quite getting traction. (A little fact for you, some schools are now used as impromptu bowling alleys, but the balls are usually people's skulls, and the pins children. )

The voice was coming from classroom 2C and sounded more than familiar. It was the voice of my dear friend Hagley, who had been a teacher before The End. Maybe I was in her school... which was a bit odd as she was based in a town a long long way from where I'd started. However, travelling after The End is a lot quicker, and I had gone for longer than I had thought. I was indeed in Hagley's school.

So, hoping to see a friendly face that WASN'T trying to kill me, I opened the door to classroom 2C and indeed there she was.

Hagely had seen better days, her hair was a mess, her makeup was smudged and her clothes were filthy. This was totally unlike my friend as before The End she was usually a well turned out pretty lass. The End had not been kind however, as I was about to find out.

She looked up from the class she was teaching and her eyes widened at the sight of me, then she turned to look at her class.

"Class, we have a very special visitor. This is Adamicus, he's a friend of mine. Everybody say 'hello Adamicus'"

Silence.

I looked, for the first time at the room, and was horrified by the sight of the class she was teaching.

Monday 29 November 2010

CHRISTMAS MOVIES!!! Half Arsed Review: Disney's A Christmas Carol

Last year I put up my thoughts on a selection of Horror Films around Halloween time, so this year, as I've nothing better to do with my time, I'm putting up my thoughts on a selection of Christmas movies.

Today's entry is "Disney's A Christmas Carol" which is the CGI adventures of one Ebenezer Scrooge AKA Jim Carrey.

The first thing I've got to say about this film is the graphics are amazing. Not quite Avatar, but they're really impressive, the characters look like the actors (in most cases) and at points (maybe due to me having lost my glasses) in the darker lit parts of the film I could have sworn that they were real actors. On the flip side of this was the party scene where Mr. and Mrs. Fezzywig did a dance that was physically impossible destroying the realism the rest of the film so far had built up and reminded you you were watching a modern day cartoon. Poor move Disney.

Lighting in this film was a bit of a problem for me and all of my family agreed that when Scrooge was knocking about at the beginning, there were parts you didn't know what was going on thanks to the screen being near pitch black. Sure it saved a bit of money for the studio, as nothing was happening, but it spoilt the first part of the film as I wasn't sure what I was looking at.

The horror element from the story was higher than I had expected, due to this being Disney and all, but really added to the whole atmosphere and the characters were all faithfully recreated in this adaptation.

There was a chase scene near the end that was entirely pointless and I fear that 3D was the culprit. It detracted from the story as there seemed no reason why Scrooge would run away from the ghost of Christmas yet to come, but because they wanted to charge people an extra few quid at the cinema, they added it. Another poor move from Disney.

If you want to watch a pretty faithful (except said chase) adaptation of A Christmas Carol, this is a great film. It's more adult than I imagined and think younger children could get bored. However for me, if you want to watch A Christmas Carol, even though I love Jim Carrey, I'd have to say you need to watch A Muppet's Christmas Carol, which I will talk about in more detail in a later update.

So, I'd give this 3 out of 5 baubles. It would be 4, but the chase scene and Fezzywig party really detracted from the overall atmosphere.

Friday 26 November 2010

The Ultimate Gob Stopper

5
The Ultimate Gob Stopper

So there I was, standing in front of what used to be Ray's wife Shav, but what was now, a slobbering mass of gluttony. Ray was determined that I would be next, that by consuming me, Shav's hunger would be appeased yet again.

This is where that small gooey mass that lives in my skull suddenly sparked into life and I came up with a few ideas of how to get the hell out of this basement of death!

To begin with, I simply tried to convince Ray, that due to my scrawny stature, that I would not be a sufficient enough snack for his wife Shav. This didn't work.

Then I pleaded with Ray, saying that my long suffering lady wife Louise was still out there and that I just wanted to know if she was ok. So if he let me go, I'd come back as soon as I'd found her. That didn't work.

Finally I tried to convince Ray that if he didn't feed me to his wife (I never thought I'd utter that sentence) then I'd help him lure in more people! However, he wasn't falling for that either.

The mush that I called a brain had failed me again and I would surely have been done for if it wasn't for the quick thinking/actions of my little cat, the ginger ninja Simba, who'd come into the basement the same time as Ray, unbeknown to any of us.

Simba had been watching me try and weasel my way out of my fate for sometime before he decided to interject. The good thing about Simba was that Ray didn't see him as a threat, which would ultimately be Ray's downfall, for the moment at least.

Ray had gone into evil bond villain mode and had started to tell me that nothing could stop him from taking care of his wife. That was untrue however, as Simba decided to prove to him.

Like a flash of ginger lightning, he struck without warning! Leaping from his curled up position at the bottom of the stairs, he launched himself at Ray, hitting him with all his force in the chest, and causing Ray to lose his balance.

What happened next happened in a kind of strange slow motion. Ray staggered back, and turned as he did so to face his wife. Shav opened her mouth in horror, a bit of humanity still remained it seemed, and she uttered two words in a deep voice that was no longer recognisable as her own.

She simple said "Bad Times", as the front half of Ray vanished inside her gob. Ray had been the ultimate gob stopper and Shav began to choke on her husband's torso.



Ray Screamed as his face, that was now in the pits of his wife's stomach, had began to be slowly digested, Shav gargled and tried to pull Ray out, but with her feeble arms that looked like they belonged on a T-Rex, she couldn't get a hold of him, and as this happened I couldn't help but feel sorry for the pair. They never wanted any of this, but here they were.

Suddenly, the door to the basement burst open, and the mutant youths came to their master's aid, leaving the door wide open behind them, which was my cue to get the hell out of there.

I raced for the front door and was about to escape when Simba reminded me that I had left my stuff, and more importantly, Professor Humeprdink, in their living room, so I sneaked back into their lounge.

The bag was where I had left it, and luckily everything I had packed was still intact, Professor Humperdink however was a little worse for wear. He was sitting in the punchbowl that I had last seen him lapping out of, and was now drunker than I had been on my stag night all those moons ago.

I scooped him up in one arm, bag over the other shoulder, and pelted it out the house, with Simba in tow. I honestly don't recall how long I had ran for, but by the time I had stopped, I was lost.

Everything seemed strange and unfamiliar and it wasn't just me, the cats had no idea where we were either (Professor Humperdink didn't have a clue about anything, he was too busy singing a sea shanty at the top of his voice) I rested under a tree for a moment, when the heavens decided to open and the tree caught fire.
Rain used to be an annoyance in the past, when things made sense, but since The End, even Rain tries to kill you. This wasn't Acid Rain though, it was Flame Rain! So I had escaped the clutches of a crazed couple intent on eating me, only to be rained down upon with... well, rain from above.

I pegged it with the cats, trying to avoid the fiery death that plagued us and all of a sudden I found myself outside a school, which I could use as shelter from the flame. The doors weren't locked and the teachers lounge was the perfect place for me to hold up whilst I got my breath back.

The school wasn't familiar however, and certainly wasn't a local one. Either I'd been running longer than I thought or things had moved since The End. It turned out the latter was the answer. Things had moved, just because they could. For instance, The Eiffel Tower, which used to be in a country called France, now resides in Skegness where an Irish guy called Barry charges you a can of coke (a rare commodity) for a ride on the elevator. (That's not a euphemism)

Night had fallen and I decided to spend it in the staff room resting up with my cats, wondering about my long suffering lady wife Louise and how she was coping. Hoping she was safe. My thoughts through the night went all over the place and I began to wonder about the fate of my other friends... hell, to the fate of everyone I ever knew, and I wondered then, how long it would be before things went back to normal, not realising that normal would no longer be achievable.

I kinda wish my friends had died at The End, along with most of the world, as 9 out of 10 of my friends had become bat shit crazy or freakishly mutated! I wondered, back then, how long it would be till I ran into another friend... it wasn't long before I did, in fact it was the following morning, god rest her crazed soul.

As for Ray and Shav you ask? Well, I hadn't seen the last of them. Rule #1 in the survivalist guide book. If you kill something, make sure it's dead.

Thursday 18 November 2010

Whatever happened to Ray and Shav?

4
Whatever happend to Ray and Shav?

When the world ended, Ray was at the supermarket getting some medicine for Shav, who had been in bed all week with a cold that he'd inadvertently given to her. She'd been nothing but a perfect carer whilst he'd had the bug and he wanted to repay the five star treatment he'd had, by giving her the same if not better.

He'd gotten a basket full of various remedies and was headed towards the checkouts, which for a weekday, was surprisingly full. Ray had wanted to get back to Shav as fast as possible, so weighed up his options. Did he risk going to the self service checkout and get stuck behind a pensioner with no comprehension of how the machine worked or did he risk going to the ten items or less checkout with the sixteen items he had? What's the worst the ten items or less cashier could do when he'd already loaded the conveyor belt with his stuff, refuse to serve him?

Maybe if he got rid of some of the items, then he could use the ten items or less queue with no kind of remorse. Ray studied his basket; did Shav really need a "facial soothing mask" or an "anti-flu body balm"? Half the stuff in there was unnecessary, but Ray didn't want to look like he didn't care by just turning up with a pack of Lemsip and a tub of Vic that he could offer to rub on her chest for her, so he decided to throw caution to the wind and go in the ten items or less queue, even though he was six items over.

Just as he approached the end of the queue, by chance, he noticed a free checkout with a nice looking lady sitting behind it, staring out into space. Now he needn't break the social rules of the supermarket! Ray was over to her in seconds and tipped the contents of his basket onto the belt, which brought the woman back into reality. She smiled at him and greeted him as he went to the end on the conveyor. Then she asked if he needed help packing, to which he usually said no, but for some reason today he decided to ask for help.

She looked at him, without the pleasant smile that had been there moments ago. It had been replaced with a deep sadness and a shocked expression like no one had asked her to before. Ray then happened to glance around him and the woman on the checkout behind was giving him evils, along with a tutting old man who was being served. Ray was really confused until he watched his cashier struggling with the carrier bags and then he realised that in his rush to get back to his ailing wife, he had completely neglected to see that this woman had a really small hand.

That wasn't the worst thing that would happen to Ray, but it was still a low point in his life that he felt really awkward about.

Whilst Ray had been out, Shav was snuggled up on her sofa under a duvet watching re-runs of old television shows. She’d had colds before, but this was unlike anything she’d had before and she knew deep down that it wasn’t what Ray had had last week; it was something much, much worse.

The television was a blur to her, the whole world was spinning and her nose was running like it was sprinting for the gold medal at the Olympics. Her only comfort whilst Ray was out was her cat Lilly, who was keeping her company.

Then The End came and everything suddenly went dark. Shav thought the illness had blinded her till the lights went back on. Then Lilly started talking and Shav thought the illness had made her crazy, so much so that she picked up the phone to call for an ambulance, but all she got was a dead tone.

Ray thought there had been a sudden total eclipse, like most people, until the lights came back on and the cashier in-front of him had been reduced to a skeleton. In-fact, he was one of only a few people left alive. Everyone else had collapsed on the floor in a pool of congealed blood.

Ray’s only thought was for the safety of Shav, so he ran outside, got in his car and sped off to his house. The roads were chaotic, with abandoned cars, people driving the wrong way, and bodies littering the road. But Ray made it back in record time, raced into his house and found Shav.

They were reunited and nothing else mattered as long as they had each other.

The laws of time were no longer in effect, for everyone experienced time differently after The End. For me, it had been a day, for Ray and Shav, by the time I found them, it had been several months... and things had gone from ok to horrific in that time.

Shav wasn’t right after The End. Whatever illness she had, had been amplified, and Ray was desperate to make her better again. Shav had developed a sickening hunger, and her appetite couldn’t be appeased, which was ridiculous as she had such a light frame, in-fact there was nothing of her!

Over the next few weeks, Shav had eaten everything in the house, and everything Ray had brought home for her. He was beginning to despair when who should turn up at his door but the youths he had taught. They’d been affected by The End as well, and had all taken on monstrous features, that they were hiding with their hoodies. Also, any form of independent thought had been wiped clean, and they’d come to Ray to ask what they had to do.

Ray told them to gather food for Shav, which they did without question. They scoured the supermarkets, picked clean people’s pantries and culled the cornershops, bringing back as much food as they could carry. Shav grew from quite thin, to quite fat, and kept growing. During this time Ray had smashed all the mirror’s in the house to stop her from seeing what she was becoming; a bloated monstrosity of her former self.

No matter how much food they brought back, it was never enough. Then one day, Ray came home early from one of his searches to find Shav sitting on the sofa (which had begun to strain under her weight) with a cat’s tail sticking out of her mouth.

She had eaten Lilly, their cat. But Ray wasn’t horrified, he just told her he loved her and that he’d look after her “for better or worse”

As the food around the area began to get sparse, Ray told the youths to bring back animals, and then when the animals eventually became sparse, he told them to bring back anything else, including people. Shav’s humanity had been replaced with an insatiable hunger for everything, but Ray still loved her. He moved her, with the help of the youths, to the basement, and that’s where I had just found her.

For some time I had wondered how my mind would cope with seeing something as monstrous as the site that had befallen my eyes in Ray's basement. With all the horror films I'd seen and video games that I'd played over the years, I had expected to be slightly or majorly desensitized to gore or horrific imagery, however this wasn't the case.

I stood staring at the creature that simply looked back at me with its hungry eyes. I believe I would have fainted if it had not been for the light-switch cord I was hanging onto. A large part of me was screaming for me to turn the light back off and for me to run back out of the basement, but I was rooted to the spot with fear and confusion.

I’d expected something pretty wrong had happened to the world, what with talking cats and the deserted high streets, but I never thought I'd find something quite as wrong as the creature that squelched before me. I of course didn’t realise it was Shav till Ray appeared behind me and told me what had happened to them both since The End.

Ray added.
"Of course, I can't possibly let you leave here alive, after all... you were supposed to come over for dinner, and now's your chance.

Friday 12 November 2010

The Party at Ray's

3
The Party at Ray's

My watch had stopped working when The End happened, so my concept of time and how much of it had passed at any given moment wasn’t reliable. What seemed like an hour to me, could have been half of that, and visa versa. It wasn’t just my watch however, as all watches, clocks, anything that could tell the time, had stopped working after The End, and I’ve yet to find a working timepiece, so as far as I know, time died on Monday along with the rest of the world.


So I’m not sure how long it was before I had packed some personal belongings in a rucksack, locked up my house and began walking down the road with my cats, but it seemed to be no time at all before I had gotten close to where some of my friends lived.

Professor Humperdink and Simba were keeping an eye out for anyone or anything, but all the way there we didn’t see a single soul, however that was about to change as when we approached our destination we heard music. Cheesy pop music to be precise, and there was only one person with an eclectic taste like that, my old buddy Ray.

I sighed a sigh of relief when my brain connected the music to him, as surely he must still be alive if his music was blaring out? So I ran, with my cats ahead of me, to the home of Ray and Shav.

Ray had been a hardworking bloke who was a bit of a jack the lad back in the days when life had a meaning, but as he grew older and wiser he mellowed out, met the beautiful Shav and settled down with her. His day job was helping troubled youths become valued members of society, which was a job he loved and one he was good at.

Shav was a highly intelligent motivated pretty lady who you couldn’t help warm to as she was as clever as she was funny. I helped her get a new job with my CV writing skills just before The End and the four of us (my long suffering lady wife Louise being the 4th) were going to go out for a meal sometimes that week, but the world ending kind of scuppered that idea. Ray and Shav were very much in love and everyone was happy for them, but thanks to The End, like most of us, their happy ending wasn’t quite what anyone had expected.

As soon as I saw the house, I was surprised, as there were large balloons outside, and a handmade sign which read “All Welcome” hanging over the door.

Simba spoke up “I’ve got a bad feeling about this Gunva!”

I ignored his cockney apprehension however. I was just glad that there was other human life, as much as I had enjoyed talking to my cats, their interests and mine weren’t really the same. Apart from living together, we didn’t really have much in common, which was a bit of a shame.

It was only a few moments after knocking the door that it opened to reveal a overly happy Ray. Before I could say anything he put his arms round me and gave me a massive hug, which lasted just a little too long. You know when hugs can go from nice to creepy, well this hug was just about to go into creepy territory when he let go.

“I can’t believe you survived Adamicus, I mean, no offence, but out of everyone you have the survival chances of a slug on a salt flat! I expected Hagley and Myke, and the Grays to survive, but you!?”

With that, he ushered me in to “the party” past several of the troubled youths who he’d worked with. As I past them, I thought I noticed something odd about them under their hoodies, but I thought that my eyes were playing up. More fool me.

His house was full of people, people I’d never seen before, and people Ray didn’t know either. They were all having a massive party. Professor Humperdink went straight for the punch bowl, but Simba went looking for his sister Lilly who lived with Ray and Shav.

The booze was flowing and the cheesy music was playing, I put my bag down for a moment and took a beer from a cooler. It was the tastiest beer I’d ever had, and the last one I’d have for a very long time. If I’d known that then, like a lot of other things, I would have taken my time with it.

I then put my foot in it by asking the overly merry Ray, where Shav was. The music seemed to suddenly stop and everyone looked at me. Ray sighed, looked me in the eye and told me that Shav died when The End came and that she’d always said

“Ray, if the end of the world comes and I die, please have a non-stop party and invite everyone and anyone along to it”

It was one of the crazier things that Shav had always said apparently. In retrospect, this was a lie however, so just know that before The End, she was as sane as most people.

Now as I’ve said, I had no concept of time, and I could see Ray was upset so I didn’t want to leave his party too soon to find my long suffering lady wife Louise, as that would just be rude. So I agreed to stay for a bit.

Simba came up to me and told me that he couldn’t find Lilly anywhere, and that he was worried. I told him to chill out and enjoy himself, but he couldn’t shake the feeling that something was wrong. I should have listened to him really as cat’s hunches are usually right it turns out.

Some hazy time later, and after several long chats about the old days with Ray, I noticed that the room had thinned out quite a bit. I decided that that was my queue to use the toilet. As I went to use the facilities I saw Simba scratching at the door that led to their basement.

“What are you doing Simba?” I asked him.

He looked up at me and told me that he’d seen some of Ray’s work youths take people down here, and when the youths came back up, they came alone. He was sure there was something going on and that we should investigate. I reminded him that curiosity killed the cat, so he should be careful, but he insisted, so I opened the door and stepped into the darkness.

I’d only ever been down in Ray’s basement once before, to watch a transformers marathon and when I got down the stairs it was pitch-black. I recalled that there was a cord for the light hanging down near the bottom of the stairs so I felt my way blindly to it and pulled.

This is what I found.

Friday 5 November 2010

Conversing with Cats

2
Conversing with Cats

Professor Humperdink and Simba, pre-The End

The world had ended, and so had the laws of the universe it would seem, as my ginger cat Simba had just spoken to me. My mind could just about cope with all the oddness that had happened so far in my day, but the talking cat in front of me was the straw that broke the camel’s back, or in my case it was the cat that made me faint.

I awoke some hours later, in my own bed, with my ginger cat on my chest purring. I seem to recall that I had foolishly thought it was all a dream, and that I’d be laughing with my long suffering lady wife Louise about it later on.

My first clue that everything wasn’t ok was when I turned over in my bed to see my long suffering lady wife Louise was not present, leaving an empty feeling in the pit of my stomach. My second clue and a more obvious one was when Simba, in that same high pitched cockney voice spoke again.

“Professor, he’s awake!” he cried out

I rubbed my eyes like someone out of a Disney cartoon did when they couldn’t believe what they were presented with, but no amount of rubbing was going to rub out the fact that my cat could speak. I stared at him gone out; he then began to lick my cheek with his sandpaper tongue, purring whilst he did it.

The familiar sound of a low pitched bell jangled up the stairs leading to my bedroom, and my other cat, Professor Humperdink (the one I got to name, and the oldest), jumped onto the bed, landing gracefully. Like always, he looked happy to see me. Then he began to talk, but not in a high pitched cockney voice like Simba, but in a very dry English accent.

“Hello to you master, I was hoping you were still alive. We’ve not seen Other Mother since everything went terribly strange, I do hope she’s ok”

I stuttered for the first time in a long time, still not quite sure if I was dreaming, and as if they were reading my mind, Simba scratched my face to show me I wasn’t dreaming. I then stated the obvious.

“You... you can talk!?”

The cats looked at each and rolled their eyes, then turned back to me. Professor Humperdink spoke

“Master, we’re as surprised as you are over these events. I had been stalking a few tasty birds when it all went terribly dark, which isn’t usually a problem for me as I can see in the dark, but even I couldn’t see. When the light returned, I found I had cognitive speech! We were waiting for your return Master, and that of the Other Mother, but she’s not been back since she left this morning. Incidentally, you must be famished Master, would you like something to eat?”

It was true, I was hungry, so I agreed, and followed my talking cats down the stairs, still shell-shocked from the events of the day.

They sat me down at my dining table and then Simba placed a small half dead bird on a plate in front of me.

“There you are Guvna!”

The bird looked at me with half conscious eyes.

“I can’t eat this!” I protested, which I could tell hurt the cat’s feelings. “Where’s the human food?”

Professor Humperdink, jumped on the table and reminded me that I was supposed to go shopping at the weekend, but had spent that time instead playing on my Xbox and that there was no human food in the house. I was starving, and looked back at the bird.

It was a young bird, but not a baby, he had feathers and a puncture wound through his chest where Simba had carried it to me. Its chest raised and lowered slowly, then its beak opened and in a weak voice it cried “Pleeeeasee... kill meee...”

I was hungry, but not THAT hungry, so I knocked it onto the floor and told my cats to have it and to make sure they finished it off quickly, which they did in no time at all.

After they'd eaten the morsel that was that poor talking bird, I asked the question that had been on my mind since I learnt my cat’s could talk. “Is it just you guys, or can all cat’s talk?”

“Well, I’ve spoke to a few cats, so it’s not just us. In fact, I spoke to a fine young cat not ten minutes ago, he was telling me that a lot of the Masters have disappeared and that the cats were all heading north for some reason, he wasn’t sure why.” The Professor replied.

“So Guvna, What’s next?” asked a curious Simba.

“Next?” I replied “Next we find your other mother Louise, but if she was with the horse, she’s all the way out in the middle of nowhere... I have some friends who lived on the way, maybe they’re still alive, or their car’s there. I’m sure between the three of us we can figure out how to drive a car.”

I paused for a moment, and realised that I was talking to two cats about driving a car.

That wasn’t the maddest thing that’s happened to be since The End, but it was still an odd moment. Not as odd as the fate of my friends Ray and his wife Shav; who were the next people I encountered on my journey.

Thursday 28 October 2010

Monday, the last day of the rest of my life.

1
Monday, the last day of the rest of my life

One possible theory about what happened!

I’d like to say that when the world ended, I was doing something important. In a way I was. It was about ten in the morning and I was sitting down in my work’s toilet squeezing something sordid out of my behind. This was something else that I had taken for granted, being able to have a number 2 on a nice toilet, with real toilet paper and a sewage system that would take away the unwanted waste as oppose to poisoning you.

These days, if I need a number 2, nine out of ten times I have to go in a hole I’ve dug in the ground, whilst constantly looking out for things that are trying to kill me, sometimes even from the hole! And as for toilet paper, well... I’ll use whatever’s to hand; hence why some of the pages at the back of this journal, are missing.

I had just finished my business, and as I flushed the chain, the world as I knew it, was no more. I still hope to this day that I didn’t inadvertently cause the end of the world, with my expelled waste and subsequent flush. I know there will always be a small part of my brain that will wonder “what if I did?”

As I flushed the chain I heard a strange noise that sounded like a million elephants falling on a million monkeys from a million miles above, and then everything went as dark as that delicious substance that is sadly (or happily depending on your tastes) no longer available to us, called Marmite.

I was alone in the darkness for what seemed like an eternity, before someone decided to turn the sun back on. I waited for a moment, then picked my mobile phone out of my pocket and automatically went to update my status on Facebook (being the social networking site whore that I was); however my phone couldn’t access the Internet. That was because; there was no Internet, not anymore. There would be again, a very crude form of Internet, but I’m getting way ahead of myself, I hadn't encountered that strange individual just yet.

After a few moments (trying twitter) I opened the door to the toilet, and walked out to see that my office was no longer there. All that remained was a large crater, with the work’s toilet in the middle. My initial reaction was "Wow, that was some shit I did" but this wasn't the time for joking to myself. My so called work colleagues had ceased to be, they were all missing, along with the rest of the office. The other buildings around where my office once stood, were piles of rubble and the roads nearby were empty of any signs of life. I felt like I was the only person left in the world ... sometimes, I wish I was.

Slightly happy that I didn’t need to continue my work day, I decided to explore for survivors. Some time had passed, and I couldn’t find anyone, not even any bodies. My happiness for having work off indefinitely was short lived as despair had started to set in. What if I was the only person left? Why would I have been spared this unknown fate that had befallen the rest of the world? What of my family, my friends, my cats and of course my long suffering lady wife Louise, what had become of them? Would my Xbox still work? All questions I needed answering!

I decided I would find out, so began the short walk home to my house in hopes that I would find everyone I cared about round there with similar stories of how weird they day had been so far. As I ran down the road I kept my eyes peeled, but didn’t see a single person or car on my journey. I heard birds singing, and a dog bark as I got onto my street, but that was it. Unlike my office and the buildings around it, all the houses here looked the same as they had on the way into work, with no visible signs of damage, but one thing they did lack, was any human inhabitants that I could see.

I turned onto my drive and saw that my long suffering lady wife Louise’s car wasn’t there, I hoped that she was either at work and safe or seeing to her horse and safe, but mainly that she was safe. Loosing no time, I quickly went into my house, straight into the living room to the television, in hopes that the idiot box would have something to say that would explain the strange occurrence. However, the television didn’t work, which meant my Xbox wouldn’t work. Looking at all my games I realised just how much money and time I’d wasted on my hobby.

There's a lot of other things I now wished I had had as a hobby or learnt to do. In-fact, if I had a time machine, I'd go back and tell the school body to forget about teaching things like Science and Drama, and instead focus on lessons in wilderness survival and how to kill various monsters. As far as I know those subjects weren't on the curriculum when I was at school, but even if they were, chances are I wouldn't have listened anyway.

Actually if I had a time machine, I'd probably go forward and see how truly messed up things will get. Sorry, I seem to be going off on one again, where was I. Oh yeah, I was in my lounge, the telly didn't work and I'd realised I'd wasted time/money on computer games!

That was when I saw something moving out the corner of my eye, I turned just in time as a ginger ball of fur leapt through the air, claws first at where my head had just been. If you'll pardon the pun, it had missed me by a whisker.

I looked at to where it had landed and there was nothing there. Something was trying to kill me in my own house and I had a sneaking suspicion that it was the ginger ninja Simba, one of the two cats we had. It turned out that for once a man was right.

Simba waited for me to turn my back on him, then scrambled out from under the sofa and nicked my shin with his claws, causing me mild discomfort before he scrambled under another chair and out of sight.

“Simba, it’s me you Pratt!” I shouted at him

And that’s when someone turned the dial on the weird-ometer all the way to 11.

Simba’s little head poked out from under the sofa, and he went to meow... but instead, in a high pitched cockney voice he said “’Ello Guvna!”

Monday 25 October 2010

Cracker FM

Some exciting news for anyone who enjoys my particular comedy stylings.

My good friend Polly has invited me to co-host a local charity radio show for 2 hours every Friday starting from the end of November. I am looking forward to trying out this medium called "Radio" as people always tell me I've got the face for it. What a nice compliment! :)

So if you're a rugby-ite, and have nothing better to do on a Friday from the end of November, tune your bad self in to Polly's music and my mouth. More details when I have them.

Remember to come back on Friday for the first entry proper of JOAPAOD!

Wait a minute... face for the radio... sons of bitches!

Ciao for now!

Friday 22 October 2010

Journal of a Post-Apocalyptic Office Drone

Journal of a Post-Apocalyptic Office Drone


Unlike everyone else’s story, my story doesn't begin with the beginning; my story begins with the end, which in the
end became my real beginning.

The Mayans predicted the end of the world with their calendar, but nobody believed the Mayans. I mean who’d trust the predictions of a race that didn’t see their own demise? I half think that the guy who was in charge of the calendar died suddenly one day and that’s the reason the calendar ended when it did, in 2012, or maybe I’m wrong, maybe they did see it coming, but as I said, no one believed the Mayans. We were much more trusting of the desk calendars on our computers that seemingly had no end date, than a thousand year old prediction of our demise predicted by a dead civilisation.

The world as we knew it, ended on a Monday. Maybe that's why the collective masses had always hated Mondays as much as they had for so long, maybe it was some kind of sub-conscious knowledge that the world would end on that day or maybe we all simply just hated our working after a nice weekend. One thing I am certain of, is that I hated my job.

That was one of the few benefits of the world ending when it did; I could finally quit my job. I'd wanted to for some time, but always found a reason as to why I couldn't. It was a shame though, as "The End" robbed me of the pleasure of telling Mr. David-Smythe-Smegwell exactly what I thought of him and his office politics, as he'd died like everyone else in my office had... mysteriously.

Other benefits of the world ending were things like: no debt, responsibilities were out the window, you could wear what you wanted and do what you wanted whenever you wanted to!

Unfortunately there were things to counterbalance these benefits, like mutants, psychopaths, hunger, thirst, disease, killer robots, rabid animals, vicious fauna, no TV, no beer, no computers that didn't try to kill you and the constant brushes with death you get living in a post-apocalyptic nightmare. But at least I didn’t have any debt.

Half of me wondered if that was what the world governments brand spanking new plan to get rid of debt was... by ending the world as we knew it. But as all official channels no longer exist, not in any sane capacity anyway, I guess that one will remain unanswered for the time being.

I'd read somewhere, when reading like so many things was taken for granted, that you should keep your mind busy, so that's why I decided to write down what I've written here. (Reading’s still alive, but grammar as you've probably already noticed, died with society and common decency I’m afraid)

If you find this journal, then I'm probably dead. I hope I died painlessly, and that you've not had to kill me because I became mad as trousers and tried to wear your skin as a suit, or steal your shoes, or attacked you because you were French or something!

I also hope that you don't do anything “odd” with my corpse. Please bury me, and if I did attack you, I'm sorry.

If you however are a crazy person, you no doubt have already or are planning to eat me, if that is the case I hope you choke on me and if you use this journal as toilet paper, I hope you find these pages extremely coarse.

There's always the chance that this has been found years after my death and is being used as a historical insight into what these nightmarish years were like. That'd be nice.

I’ll keep writing in this till I eventually die, so if I suddenly trail off, you know what’s happened.

Yours ever faithfully,
Adamicus the 3rd.

Thursday 21 October 2010

New Theme

In celebration of the fact that I'm actually doing something with my blog, I have changed the design in preparation of tomorrows first delve into a post-apocalyptic fictitious world that my brain has come up with.

I accidentally posted a chapter last night that's not due till next Friday, so if you read it you got a sneak peek, you sneaky peeker!

This time I am writing in advance so there should be little to no delays in updates, unlike the Zombie Survival of last year.

I'll still be updating my blog with other stuff like half arsed reviews and random musings, but mainly focusing on the random writing that is JOAPAOD (for short)

Wednesday 20 October 2010

Adamicus the 3rd presents...

Well, some of you asked for it, others didn't ask for it but are getting it anyway, and still more people won't even realise this exists, (so tell them!)

For some time now, I've been secretly planning another piece of creative writing, but something that includes a lot more people than the Zombie Survival blog of last year.

This new piece will be (hopefully) out every week, for your perusal. If I know you, chances are, you are in it at some point.

On Friday, the first part will be up for your reading pleasure (disgust) so I hope you enjoy it as much as I have.

"Journal of a Post-Apocalyptic Office Drone"
Available Friday

Hello Reader! :)

Hello to you all, it's been a while. How are you doing?

Really?

That bad?

Sorry to hear that. Can I cheer you up maybe with some creative writing like last years Zombie Survival?

No?

What... you didn't like my Zombie Survival blog?

Well do I care about your opinion?

Of course I care about your opinion, please calm down!

Okay, that's going too far, put the puppy down!

Alright then, I'll go. I just wanted to inform you about a new creative writing project winging it's way to my blog. A post-apocalyptic journal of sorts, with humor and horror, in that order. So, maybe once you've stopped having a hissy fit, I can put the first chapter up on here?

Ok, well, get some rest, and I'll put it up later.

Monday 4 October 2010

7 ways to improve the sport - Cricket Edition

I don't like sport. It's not because I'm not psychically apt or because I was sexually abused in the showers of my high school PE class or something. It's just because I find it boring.

I'm sure that people who love sports would find sitting in front of a computer playing a game for hours on end boring, but one man's Super Mario is another man's ET: The video game. If you don't get why ET : The video game is awful, congratulations, you're not a nerd. Or not as much of a nerd as I am.

Out of all the sports in the world, there's one I find the worst. That'd be cricket. I just don't get the "thrill" of a potentially endless game that's about as exciting to me as spending an hour in a lift with a certain work colleague of mine.

So with the current murmurs of fixing in Cricket, I thought that they may need to drum up some more support for their sport. So here are 7 ways they could improve the sport to get a bigger or newer audience.

1 - Sexy Cricket: Get rid of all those musty guys, and replace them with super hot women. When they run down the (green?) they go via sprinklers, making them wet all over and the replays would be immense. Loose a stump, loose an item of clothing. Everyone's a winner!

2 - Speed Cricket: 90 minutes and it's over. It works for a lot of other sports and they seem to be popular. Get rid of endless days of endless play and replace it with 45 minutes for each team. Then it'd be over and everyone could get on with whatever it was they were doing before being dragged to the Cricket. Also, poison the team members, if they don't get the antedote before 92 minutes are up, they die. Keeps the pace going.

3 - Full-Contact Cricket: Cricket balls can be lethal, so why not make them even more so. Get rid of the current teams and replace them with dangerous inmates on death row the world over. The batter has an explosive collar attached to his neck, so if it hits the stump, kapow. Instead of trying to hit the ball as far as possible, he has to hit a fieldsman with it. The ball would be spiked and the game would be gory.

4 - Themed Cricket: Forget England and Pakistan, how about Pirate's and Ninjas? Each team picks a theme and dresses up as said team. That'd make it a lot more entertaining for sure. Each team could have entrance music and cheerleaders.

5 - Moon Cricket: Blast all the cricketers up to the moon, there they have space suits on and jet boots to help them get around. Miss that ball and it could end up knocking the international space station out of orbit! Or if they mistime a jump, they'd never be seen again. Till we land on Mars, probably.

6 - Paint Cricket: A combination of Paintball and Cricket. Where the fielders would have paintball guns and just pummel the shit out of the batter with paint. It'd be hard, and it'd be painful, but it'd be different enough to warrant going to see. Oh and the crowd have paintball guns too, why not?

7 - Motor-Cricket: It's cricket, but on motorbikes! Nuff said!

Well there are just seven suggestions I've sent off, hopefully they'll take them into consideration. Till then, I guess I'll just have to put up with ignoring the regular kind.

Friday 1 October 2010

[REC]athon < It's happening baby!

As Danny DeVito sang to his "twin" in the aptly named "Twins", "tonight is the night bro" or maybe he sang tonight is YOUR night. I don't know. It's been a while since I've watched Twins, the movie I mean, not dirty pornographic twins. Not that I watch dirty pornographic twins. Oh dear.

Anyway, tonight, is the night, for my long awaited [REC]athon. The first film [REC] being one of my favourite horror films since The Grudge, I have high hopes for the sequel, which some genius named [REC]2.

Joining me for this will be my evil brother Kristofus, my thoughts on [REC]2 and the whole [REC]athon will be up sometime in the near future.

Ciao for now

Eurogamer Expo!

This weekend is the Eurogamer Expo. It's a big ass gaming thingy at Earls Court in London.

After years of wanting to go, this year I actually am. So tomorrow, I will be playing games I wont be able to afford till I sell another Kidney.

If anything fun happens, I'll let you know. :)

The Cube

Yesterday I was wearing a wet suit, due to the ammount of channel surfing I was doing, when I stumbled across "The Cube". I thought I was going to be watching the excellent horror film, until Phillip Scofield's near white hair appeared on the screen.

I realised my error and was going to continue catching the waves, still keeping with this surfing theme, when I saw that it was an awful awful gameshow. So I put my board down, and watched in awe at how bad televison has become.

The Cube, for those that have been fortunate enough to not see it, is a gameshow where a contestant has to do various skill games in an attempt to get £250,000, whilst inside the titular cube. The players have 9 lives for the duration of their program, and once they're in their glass case of emotion, they have to complete whatever challenge they're doing or they lose a life, and once their 9 lives are gone, all the money they've won up to this point goes into Scofield's back pocket. They get the chance to simplify the game if it looks to challenging and they have the chance to give it a trial run.

This all sounds interesting, until you see the actual skill games they have to play. One of the games, the contestant had to catch a ball fired at him from the other side of the cube. Sure there's a certain amount of skill involved in that. Another game a woman had to roll a disc through a narrow gap. Also, there's some skill involved in that. Infact It's not the skill of these games that I'm putting into question, there is a certain element of skill involved in these games, and I'm sure I'd fail miserably at most of them. However to me this show seems like a bunch of games you'd find at a village fete. What's next in The Cube, hook the duck? Knock the cans over with the baseball?

The producers of the show, obviously knew that these games aren't that thrilling on their own, so instead decided to employ camera techniques from The Matrix. At one point the camera will  almost do bullet time effects to increase the intensity of the game from nil to "a tow-sand percent" as Louie Walsh would say.

The ammount of pomp and circumstance that's added to this gameshow is cringeworthy!

Check this out and see if you agree with me, or tell me I'm talking shit. Of course you'd have to find me to be able to tell me that, wuhahahaha... ahem.

Monday 20 September 2010

Good Neighbours

Even if you don't live on Ramsey Street, it's important that you have good neighbours, perhaps with a little understanding.

When my long suffering lady wife Louise and I moved into our home, we were convinced that the neighbours connected to our semi detached house were either Vampires or growing drugs, or a mixture of the two. this was because we never saw them during the day, their curtains were stapled shut, and we heard strange noises from them. Having watched the brilliant film "The Burbs", I was more than a little concerned we were living next door to the Klopeks.

2 years on and we were wrong about them being vampires. They're actually a nice "foreign" couple (they're eastern European, but I don't know quite where) and haven't exploded when I've seen them in daylight. Are they growing drugs? Probably, but who isn't these days?

Well, I'm not. But in my sleep deprived brain I imagine most other people are.

On the other side of our house however, are two old ladies. I wasn't around when they introduced themselves to my long suffering lady wife Louise, which is more the pity as she was unable to tell me which is which. One of them is Beryl and one of them is Babs. As far as I'm concerned they are interchangeable, and it's been so long since we first met them that too much time has passed to stop proceedings and just say "I'm sorry, but which one is Babs?"

Also, I wonder what exactly do I know about my neighbours? I mean, what do I really know about my neighbours? I'm sure the people living next door to Fred and Rose west thought they were maybe a little odd, but never suspected they'd have bodies under the patio!

Thinking about it, as I tend to do, I don't know anything about Beryl and or Babs. The one time we invited them over for coffee they snubbed us, stating that their arthritic dog couldn't be left alone for seconds (perchance for fear of Goblins?)

My long suffering lady wife Louise said they were sisters, but are they? Maybe they're lovers? Maybe they were cell mates and escaped from a mental asylum prison twelve years ago?

They are old, live together and have a dog. This is all the information I have discovered over the past two years.

So this weekend, I decided I'd find out a bit more about them. I was about to leave my house to break into theirs, when one of them was at my door. I wondered what she wanted and at first thought that maybe she'd killed the other one or wanted help milking her dog (she could be crazy after all)

In the end, it was the exact opposite of milking her dog, she'd come over to ask about Professor Humperdink, my injured cat, as she'd not seen him for a while and was concerned. It actually touched my blackened heart that this lady took time out of her busy dog milking schedule to come over and ask about my cat.

After she left I put my "breaking in to discover their true identities" idea on hold, at least till Christmas.

Monday 13 September 2010

Liza & Huey's Pet Nation

Holy shit, I was watching drab television with my long suffering lady wife Louise and on came a program I try to avoid, but like a car crash, I can't help but watch, it is of course the lovely "Liza & Huey's Pet Nation"


It’s by far the worst television has to offer. The presenters are awful, Liza and Huey, with the guy being some weird metro-sexual Hispanic weirdo whose shirt was open pretty much down to his belly button and if he’d moved to his left, his nipple would have said hello. I later found out that he is the lead for The Fun Loving Criminals, which makes me cry inside.

Usually each week is filled with weird British people and their pet fetishes.

This week, was no different, when we were introduced to a Welshman (Careful), who was a farmer who lived with his wife and his sheep. No word of a lie, this man, let his massive sheep wonder through his house. I watched in awe as this couple sat on their flea-bitten sofa, laughing about how odd they were, when out of nowhere, the biggest sheep I’d ever seen, came in and knocked over a tin of custard creams off a table, and began gnawing on them. The people’s reaction? They smile and laugh to each other, probably about how eccentric they think they are, but really, we all know they're probably dying from a sheep related viral infection.

This is exactly how the Texas Chainsaw Massacre family started... by letting a sheep live with them. As I watched transfixed at how truly messed up this pair really were, I found myself wondering what the sheep did regarding it’s toilet habits... then the program answered my question, well the wife on the show did anyway. She smiled as she said “You can’t house train a sheep, he just goes where he wants”. I had to pinch myself to see if I was dreaming this. After learning this fact I noticed that their carpet, looked like death.

If you get a chance to watch this abomination car crash television, I suggest you do. The hosts are awful, the “jokes” are followed by the sound of crickets and the whole thing stinks as bad as the sheep’s carpet does. I had to wonder if the producers intentionally made the show this bad? How else could you justify serving up this honking pile of dog turd to the public.

Wednesday 8 September 2010

Where are they now? : The Scooby Gang!

If you, like me, grew up, then you would have probably watched Scooby Doo on television.

It was always a good little cartoon, where you'd try and work out who the monster really was, and 9/10 times I would get it wrong. (I was a special child)

But whatever happened to the Scooby Gang? Well, I took time out of my pathetically free schedule and caught up with the gang. I just need to warn you that things aren't as rosey as you'd have hoped they'd have been for these poor poor people.

Using my investigatory powers, I was able to track down Fred Jones, leader of the old gang, to a trailer park in Nebraska. Fred hasn't aged well, he was deshevelled and drunk when I found him, lying in a pool of his own puke on his trailer floor.

After helping him clean up a bit, he told me what he'd been doing since the gang stopped solving mysteries.

"The gang split and went their own way, except for me and Daphne. Man she was a beauty back in the day, butter wouldn't melt in that mouth, but I didn't realise that she was a she-harpy! I tells ya, I spent my youth un-masking monsters and finding people underneath, but with that banshee, it was the other way round. I dunno if marriage changes you, but she, she bled me dry. We were happy for the first few years, then the flirting started. Some guy called Adam turned up on the scene, some kinda prince... well, it wasn't the best divorce, she took the money, the condo in beverly hills, and worst of all she took the money!"

It was clear that Fred had turned into an alcoholic after Daphne left him for He-Man. I decided that I should leave, but he pleaded me to help him solve the mystery of where he'd put his shoes. Fred Jones, lady and gentleman is a hollow shell of the handsome investigatory sleuth he once was.

Daphne was un-available for comment, due to her being on the planet of Eternia, but the royal palace issued a statement saying the Daphne was very happy and wished nothing but the best for her ex-husband Fred. So I went to see Velma, and she was in an even worst state than Fred.

Velma's dead.

She was spotted by a high ranking employee at microsoft and spent several years rising through the company before she was appointed as Bill Gate's right hand man. Not long after that there was a scandal publisised over the internet that Velma and Mr. Gates had been having an affair. She denied the allegations, but stepped down from her job. Her maid found her body days later, holding a copy of Microsoft Office in one hand and an empty bottle of pills in the other. Tragic.

So what of the beloved Shaggy and Scooby. Well, after the gang split, Shaggy began taking Scooby all over the country in the Mystery Machine. However, one fateful day in October, Scooby was admitted to a vet, and it soon became clear that he had gastric torsion due to Shaggy overfeeding him. An ex-ray showed several enormous sandwiches that hadn't been chewed at all, lodged inbetween Scooby's stomach and his anus. Shaggy was arrested for animal cruelty and upon searching the Mystery Machine, they found copius ammounts of heroin.

Scooby Doo was put down on the 1st of november 2008, and he was buried in a paupers grave. Shaggy, after the death of his beloved dog lost his mind, and was stationed at a mental asylum on a remote Island. He refuses to believe that Scooby is dead and believes that he is on the island to find him. I learnt recently however that his radical treatment on the island was made into a film called Shutter Island, but they changed certain facts and names to protect his identity. Something I just ruined by telling you that.

So there you have it, two dead, two divorced and one mentally unstable, who said cartoon's were for kids?

Tuesday 7 September 2010

Half Arsed Review: Inception at the Imax!

Before watching Inception, I believed that Leonardo Di Caprio was a wishy washy (yes I just used that phrase) actor, with good looks, but that’s about it. I don’t quite know what I based this opinion on... maybe the fact that during my childhood all the girls pined over him and not me, had something to do with it?


Anyhoo, I went to the IMAX, for the first time, with my pal Polly. The screen was bigger than Clifford, alarmingly so, and I honestly thought I’d have a seizure if there were any flickering lights (like the lights over my desk as I type this) and the sound, to quote Jim Carrey “would make George Lucas cream in his pants”.

I’m sure this film looked amazing in a regular cinema, but the IMAX experience would shit on it from a great height. So... I should probably talk about Inception:

Before going to see this film, I was told by several people that it was complicated beyond recognition. In fact at one point in the film even one of the characters was confused! However, I don’t know if it’s my sci-fi addled brain, or the fact that I live 90% of my life in other people’s subconscious’s, but I was never lost at any point in the movie, and...Drum roll please, although there were some plot points I figured would happen, I didn’t predict the twists!

Yes, you read it here first. This movie kept me guessing, then, like a bully in a playground, it pulled my pants over my head and posted a video of it on Facebook. (I’ll get you yet Stuart McGreg!!)

(Read this in a Nazi voice) Zis review vill contain Ze Shpoilerz! You hasv Been Varned!

The plot is simple (not simples, as the Meer-cat’s would want you say, the bastards!) and involves Di Caprio’s Cobb (not a corn on the) and his 3rd Rock from the Sun buddy, being able to infiltrate people’s dreams and steal their secrets. Instead of using their powers for good, like learning what exactly they put in KFC, companies hire them to commit the ultimate form of industrial espionage.

It starts off with Cobb washing up on a beach, and getting discovered by some angry Japanese people, I had a similar experience at Bournemouth one year. Anyway, they bring him to a wizened old Asian guy. He seems to know Cobb, and spins a spinning top that they found on Cobb... then it rewinds to Cobb and 3Rd Rock trying to steal a secret from the same old wizened Asian guy, but now he’s a young Asian guy, called Hanzo (I don’t remember if that is his real name, but that’s what I’ll call him) but he gets wise to their treachery thanks to Cobb’s wife. (bitch)

Anyway, it soon turns out that they’re already in a dream, and they wake Hanzo up and threaten him in the “real world” which also turns out to be a dream. So it’s a dream within a dream, and they’re actually on a train.

They all go about their own way, and are later apprehended by Hanzo, who tells them he has a job for them, but this is different. Instead of stealing an idea, he wants them to plant an idea. That’s Inception baby. The film get’s 10 points, just for having the balls for saying the title of the film, within the film. I love it when that happens. I just wish that he’d looked at the camera and said “Inception” that would have been hilarious, but Nolan’s too good for that, bless his Cotton Joker Socks.

Well, Cobb accepts so he can see his kids, because for some reason the American’s don’t want him back (possibly because his dad is Michael Cain). Anyway, Cobb gets a team together, consisting of Juno, 3rd Rock, Indian Dude from Drag Me to Hell, Hanzo and a guy called Eames, who totally steals the show. All the actors in Inception are great, even 28 days Later Cillian Murphy, (or however you spell that silly name) but Eames honestly lights up the screen whenever he’s on it.

Fast forward past a tutorial into world building with Di Cobb, it also becomes clear that Cobb has a dark secret that could jeopardize the whole mission! And then a few montage’s later they’re going in for the Inception. They mission, to implant an idea in Murphy’s head to dissolve his father’s (Pete Postlethwaite’s) company when he inherits it.

Special mention goes to Pete’s nose in this, which took up 60% of the screen whenever he was on camera.

So, as Inception is especially hard, they have to make a dream, within a dream, within a dream! Sounds complicated, but the film eases you into it so as not to fry your puny human brain cells.

Upon entering Murphy’s head, they are set upon by his subconscious, and Hanzo is wounded. Usually, this wouldn’t be a problem as it’s just a dream... however; something Cobb didn’t think to mention was that if you die in the dream, you end up in Limbo. Not the fun Caribbean dancing game, but an endless world with collapsing buildings.

So, after some really cool stuff, that I can not reveal due to this only being a half arsed, and not a fully arsed, review, they have some great set pieces, you learn of Cobb’s dark secret, and before you know it you're back at the start (which is technically the end) and Hanzo is trapped in Limbo along with Cobb. They both realise where they are and Cobb convinces Hanzo to kill them both, thus waking them up from their dream..

The ending, was amazing. It left it open to interpretation, which is the best kind of ending in my opinion.
The lady in front of me, actually said “NO WAY” out loud. Now that would have brought a tear to Nolan’s eye I’m sure, that his work touched someone that deeply. The problem with that of course, is that Nolan’s tears are made of Unicorn blood, and as we all know, Unicorn blood didn’t do much for he who shall not be named. The dirty bastard...

SAITO! That’s his name, so forget everything I’ve said as if I can’t even remember his name, I obviously can’t be trusted with a half arsed review of something.

Ciao for Niao!