Dork Side of the Moon

The Time Warp

History has a funny habit of re-writing itself. With every successive generation, everything that happened before a time called ‘now’ becomes clouded by the shiny, new, electronic present and must seem pretty irrelevant to the bug-eyed yoof of today. And now, thanks to Youtube, this has become even more evident.

Now kids who care enough to ask what happened before the X-Factor and the Wii can just log on and view videos that document most of the last century rather than open a dusty old book. Want to see what happened in 1983? Just type it in and have a look. Never before could you go to a museum and see who was on Top of the Pops in any given week of the year. Armed with this revelation, I decided to try it out.

Right, Youtube, open, typing, nineteen-eighty-three, bang there it is. First result and I’ve got an idea of what it was like to live in good old ’83. “Kajagoogoo’s debut single ‘Too Shy” shot straight to number one in the UK charts in February 1983″. A quick smash of the play button in my excitement and I’m there. I’m in 1983. There are perms, there’s bleach, there’s a mullet, there’s a yellow vest. There’s even a glitter ball. I’m in the sodding 80s!

But wait a second, what’s this? A wartime dancehall? Khaki uniforms? No glitter? This isn’t the 80s I’ve heard about. And then they get all mixed up. What?! Kajagoogoo welcomed back the troops from defeating the Third Reich?! Why have I never heard this before?!

Suddenly I realise something. This Youtube lark could become pretty confusing to an uneducated yoof. “Wow,” they’d say between mouthfuls of chocolate-coated cheesestrings, “they wore some funky gear in ’83. Wicked innit.” And in the blink of an eye, some poor kid thinks Britons in the 80s were still going to dancehalls to waltz with their sweethearts in full officer’s garb.

I decided to test out my theory. 1973. I’ll go there. A quick scroll down the results and again, I’m getting a feel for the year. There’s Led Zeppelin’s ‘Black Dog’, Wishbone Ash progging it up, and Luxembourg winning Eurovision. So far so normal.

But wait, what’s this? James Blunt, ’1973′. That’s not right. In fact, that’s just plain confusing! A yoof in years to come could be conned into thinking that Blunt was moping around in the 70s too! He’s practically re-writing history!

My mind at this point is spinning. What if Blunty boy knew this would happen? What if, in some cackling fit of evil genius, housewive’s favourite James Blunt decided to plant himself back in time through Youtube to cement his place as an eminent artist, straddling the millenium like a massive time jockey? I always thought he had sinister eyes. A quick snoop on Wikipedia tells me he wasn’t even born by 1973!

I sat in stunned silence. ‘”It’s just like Terminator or Back to the Future,” I thought “I have to stop him.” But before I could embark on my time-travelling mission, my attention was diverted by a video of Led Zeppelin live at Madison Square Gardens in the real 1973. “Wait,” I said, this time out loud and to nobody, “How do I even know this one is real?”.

And in that instant I knew it was too late. An evil shadow was already lurking on the horizon, laying in wait to rise again and claim his lifetime acheivement awards and mult-platinum discs and acclaim. That man’s name is James…Hillier…Blunt.

Ian Ravenscroft

TV and Shit

There are many things in life which we know are bad for us if not respected; kebabs, booze, drugs, sticking your head out of moving trains etc, but all of these are eclipsed by the addictive power that the mighty television has over us all. So much so in fact, that I’m not sure we even care about what we’re watching anymore, as long as it involves ‘real people’ and a sense of competition, we’ll stare at it like shagged out crack monkeys. I’m talking of course about reality television.

I can safely say without exaggeration, that Big Brother is the worst thing that’s ever happened to me in my life. Everything about that programme makes me want to go on a killing spree, the way it’s advertised, the long periods of time in the so called highlights when nothing happens and last but not least, the self-confessed ‘Wacky’ contestants. I’ve happened to catch a lot of this series, because others around me appear to have lost their marbles as well as countless hours of their lives watching it and let me tell you something, I don’t like it.

Big Brother is the programme that gave us the adorable charm of Nasty Nick, the dry wit of Chantelle and of course gifted the nation with the bastion of tolerance herself, Jade Goody. So why do I hate it I hear you ask. Well, what’s particularly harrowing for me is the way that channel four can hold on to an audience of millions for years, without seemingly doing anything.

They struck upon the formula for Big Brother as we know it somewhere in the second series, when they’d begun to phase out all that psychological nonsense, you know, that stuff that actually gave it some credibility. Now the procedure is roughly as follows: Get a small contingent of attention seeking half-wits and put them into a house. Note, must be willing to make tits of themselves. These half-wits will ideally be (a) idiotic (b) willing to get naked (c) obnoxious and (d) part of a minority in society, preferably an obscure one so they can overcome adversity and gain acceptance by the nation. Put this rag-tag ensemble into a house with dozens of cameras and let the hilarity commence, as they do the washing up, dry their clothes and shave…

What fecks me off about Big Brother the most, is the effect that it has on the people who watch it. The fact that families are content to sit in silence, watching these ignorami whilst they perform banal menial tasks is a sad indictment of our society. Another sad reflection is how easily manipulated people are when it comes to voting, its idiotic enough that they spend their money on this shite, but now the viewers are pretty much told who to vote for. For example on celebrity Big Brother a few years ago, when the viewers were coaxed by Davina into saying ‘wouldn’t it be great if Chantelle won?’ Why? Just because she’s intellectually equivocal to a peanut, it doesn’t mean you should vote for her, or vote at all.

The viewers imbecilic tendencies tend to come to a climax during the last few weeks; take this year’s Big Brother, it’s blindingly obvious (no pun originally intended) that Mikey will win hands down. What riles me is that they even question the outcome and start to pose idiotic, quasi philosophical questions such as, ‘could Big Brother really see its first blind winner?’ Well of course it bloody will, because the morons who line channel fours pockets by voting for these cretins, now feel a moral obligation to vote for a guy would otherwise just be a moaning Scotsman. What’s worse will be the patronising gloaters, who as always will doff their middle class hats in celebration for modern Britain, totally ignoring the fact that he won through a mix of pity and guilt.

I just don’t get this obsession with reality television, on a positive note however, I believe that it must be on its way out, as the reality barrel appears to have been scraped by the BBC in their creation, ‘Last Choir Standing’. This pushes the reality competition to its very limits, as the show presented by the lovely Myleene Klass and Nick ‘that bloke from the building programme with the fat head’ Knowles, seek to find Britain’s best choir, or something. What is the point of it all? The best that the winners can hope for is to make an album which will inevitably end up in Woolworths bargain bins up and down the country.

At least with this ridiculous programme the contestants were enjoying their perspective choirs before the show began, but you can’t help but feel that they must start to get swept away by notions of stardom. Imagine the poor look on those welsh middle aged faces after the show, when they are tenderly led to the back of the BBC and informed, ‘What, you didn’t think you’d be famous did you? Ha ha, you’re a choir dickheads!’ Just save them all the years of unfulfilled dreams and put them all down now, it’s the only humane thing to do.

So there, I’ve got most of it out of my system. Why can’t we have a return to quality evening entertainment after this plague of reality baloney, or at least remove the infuriating attention seeking morons who drive me to insanity. Maybe I could set up a show where I try to find people in the country with self respect, I could call it ‘Britain’s got dignity’. Well it’s something to ponder, but I’m off to watch the X-Factor.

Tom Reid

The Power of Fish

Mmmm, I didn’t realise fish could be so nutritious.

Not me you see (Botched Court Defence)

Video Recommendation: Kipple

I think we can allow one of this blog’s functions to be to allow us to show unusual videos that we like / wish we had made. For example, this one made us laugh till we cried.

I’d also recommend these: The Microwave Magician, Kipple Intro Rough, Robin Morley’s Smelly Cheese. In terms of who the creators are, the nearest to a normal name that I can find is Peter Ward. A normal place? Sheffield?

Chicken or the Egg – Uncovered

Here’s a question that’s been a bee in my bonnet. Which came first: Chicken or the Egg? It’s annoying because anyone who accepts Darwin’s theories could only logically conclude that the Egg was indeed first (as illustrated). Saying that though, whatever did poo out that egg would have given birth to what was essentially a mutant and would have got rid of the evidence before prehistoric society laid it’s judging eyes on this odd-ball family. Or, maybe I just haven’t quite grasped the theory of evolution. So, like a Channel 4 documentary, there are no real conclusions here, just lingering, time-wasting afterthoughts.