Branson Troll Face.

When we decided to go with Virgin for our telephone and internet connection, we thought it looked like a good deal.  I was hesitant for quite a while but the cost compared to other providers combined with a landline, phone service etc. was pretty good, plus they could install it quickly, and “going fibre” sounded like a good move.

So now we have a crackly phone line that won’t stop ringing random numbers on it’s own, an internet connection that constantly drops out, and I have to leave work early so an engineer can come and do nothing about the problem – otherwise they’ll charge me £10.

It’s funny really because my friend at work had – and still has – the exact same issue with his Virgin line. I should have listened to him and stayed clear, but for some reason I assumed his problems must have been a one-off. The chances of me experiencing the same problem were slim, right?

They are comics, but I'm not really laughing.

Skip foward to today. The engineer has been round, and disconnected our telephone line, because the cable was shorting out under the ground and causing the phone to dial out random numbers. He said someone would be round to “repull” the cable, but didn’t give a date or time, and nobody has rang to give me a date or time – probably because they can’t – we have no phone. The internet is still on but patchy at best, the modem requires a reset two or three times a day.

Yesterday Virgin decided to bill us for the pleasure of this. £78, of which, £54 is call charges for calls that lasted less than 50 seconds. I don’t make calls that last less than 50 seconds, infact I don’t often make calls off the landline at all. My theory? The phone has been dialing out to random people and we’re being charged for it.

Virgin Media have been a complete and total fuckup from day 1. If anyone is considering going with Virgin Media I strongly suggest you treat them like Asbestos and stay clear.

I’m about to ring them back to try and get the problems resolved. Ultimately I’m about to speek to Pooja Bhuttar in Mumbai, who will fail to do anything useful for me except baffle me with his strange accent. I’m not racist, I’ve got nothing agaisnt the fella, but he won’t be able to do anything  from there.

……Going to Sky as soon as we can get out of this contract. Murdoch, all is forgiven.

This then is the story of our constitution, arranged in chronological order. There is no reason for this to be analysed as any kind of food product other than that of it’s base constituants and assosiated offspring.

John has 3 bags of sweets. Dave has six bags. How many bags does Ranjit have? Fucking hundreds, fool, Ranjit owns the shop. And let that be a lesson to you.

Casual racism asside, there are important messages that you should take away from this experience here today. Always eat your veg, milk, cookies, and vitamins. Always say your prayers, and most importantly, never let Hulk Hogan move you to Monday Nights.

What? It’s not like anybody actually reads this stuff is it?

Me, I’m somthing different. I am founding the NLCALP, the National Liberaly Consevative And Labourers Party. We’re the party who does what it says on the tin. We’re the Ronseal party. We’re the party that just say’s NO. I mean seriously, check us and our key policies;
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MEET MY CABINET

Christy McDermott, Chancellor of The Exchequer	The Ultimate Warrior, Minister For Transport	James Last, Minister Of Culture	Doctor Robotnik, Minister For Defence	Bobby Davro, Minister Of Agriculture	The Iron Sheik, Minister For Education

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Free Tea & Biscuits for the Elderly
Old people spend the majority of their time sat indoors eating custard creams, slurping tea and watching Countdown. Did you know that nearly £240,000,000 of state pensions are spent on tea and biscuits every year? This is a huge void that needs to be sealed. Our proposals are clear on this pivotal issue; Nationalise the biscuit and tea industries, and make tea and biscuits free for all people over 60. All biscuit and tea manufacturers will be amalgamated into two companies, British Biscuits and British Tea (Note: “British Telecom” will be renamed “British Phones” to avoid confusion. “British Petrolium” will become “British Stuff That Make My Vroom-Vroom Go!” in turn). All tea and biscuits will be excempt from tax, and all profits will go into the research and development of products, with a percentage returning to the national coffers. I will be provided with an unlimited supply of biscuits and tea.

The £9.99, £19.99 notes and 99p coin
It takes no dummy to realise the real cause of the economic crash; and that is people loosing their change. The economic upturn caused a surge in pricing down among retailers, resulting in various “99p”, “£9.99″ and “£19.99″ offers. The resulting wave of shrapnel entering the economy has been unprecidented, with nearly £240,000,000 of 1p coins being lost in shopping centre fountains every year. Millions more are lost to grids, the backs of sofas, and piggy-banks that are never opened. This money needs to be recirculated into the economy, and fast. These new denominations will prevent the wastage of change.

New National Bank Holidays
44 new bank holidays will be introduced, in addition to the curernt 8, making 52, to cover the various religous and historical events that should be celebrated in Britain. These will include; Man Day, Eating a Bionic Limb Day, Fish With Three Eyes Day, One Time Pad Day, Radio Manchester Day, My Lordz Day, Eating a Nappy Day, Woman Day, What’s That Boy? Day, Mug Day, Monday Monday Day, Good Lord is That The Time Day, Sunday 2.0 Day, Can’t Be Arsed To Day, Boy Day, Fire Me I Dare You Day, Not Getting Out Of Bed To Day, Girl Day, Chocolate Day, Cake Day, Biscuit Day, Toffee Day, Candy Day, Food Day, Burger Day, Hotdog Day, Bread Day, Brandie Tschauner Day, Carbon Fibre Day, Instant Gravy Day, Saussage Patte Day, McDonalds Straw Wrapper Day, Cracked Floor Tile Day, Traffic Cone Day, Plastic Bottle Day, Flonger Day, One Stop Knocking Shop Day, Protectatron Day, Baby Day, Rapture Day, Jim Ross Day, Fire Evacuation Drill Day, Tiling Grout Day, Sellophane Wrapper Day, and Inconspicuous Cloud Shapes Day.

Investment in Green Technology
White Goods will be renamed Green Goods in order to help create a greener technological landscape for Britain. All white goods will be green by the year 2014, a year that was arbitrarily picked by a “think tank” because it sounds close but far away simultaniously. All electrical goods and personal electronic devices will be green by the year 2016, which is a bit further but still, just the round the corner so, it’s real change, real quick, y’know?

Benefit Reduction Scheme
Benefit funding will be cut and several initiatives will be used to force the unemployed back into work. These include various pilot schemes, including, forced labour, slavoury, iron cuffing, mame and slaughter, and bycicle pump. Should these initatives prove sucsessful in their pilot regions, they will be rolled out on a national basis. Those who are “on the sick” or claiming incapasity benefits will be taken away, locked in giant warehouse, and plugged into a giant supercomputer, which will be used for mundane everyday tasks that you don’t need to concern yourself with.

Our Other Policies Include:

• Re-opening Jillys Rockworld
• Opening a Subway on every street corner.
• Mandatory playthough of all Sonic The Hedgehog games every year.
• Reduction on taxes for video games.
• AceyBongos from Xbox Live to be replaced with a robotic version of Sting.
• NHS to offer additional “services”.
• Mortgages to be written off and replaced with a complex bartering system involving Jaffa Cakes.

So forget the other parties, and vote for the NLCALP on May 8th. I mean 4th. Or is it the 6th? Yeah, 6th, better go with that one. AND MAKE BRITAIN, OURS AGAIN!

Sponsored by Doctors Assosiates, Inc.

Today we’re looking at The Oregon Trail, Third Edition for Windows 95 Pentium PC and Macintosh Power PC. I first played this game in 1997, on what was then my state of the art Windows 95 machine with 133mhz processor, 16mb of ram and a 4GB Hard Drive. The fact that my wristwatch beats these specifications today however should not detract from one important fact; at the time, the graphics on this game were the shit. And by that I mean, shit.

The box for this game makes many bold claims. “Top Selling”, “Used in Schools”, and, most interesting of all, “Internet Linked”. The internet was just starting to become a household thing, but online play and interactive applications were still in their infancy.

The Oregon Trail 3rd edition was no exception, however, since all it really did was create a shortcut in the Start Menu to a website, the contents of which have long since been washed away by the tides of Internet change and are to be anybody’s guess.

So, after installing from the 3 CD-roms (Yah. Why this game is 1.6GB in size is anybody’s guess. DVD’s didn’t exist at the time.), the game proper begins. We start out picking our team of five intrepid explorers to join us on this quest to Oregon City.

This basically just involved creating five people with rude names. There was no real skill to the selection, no special abilities or powerups, merely a choice of name. Cockface, Dickhead, Arsewipe, Buttplug and Jane however, are missing one thing. Supplies, of course!

Any game worth it’s salt needs a shop to buy upgrades, items and junk from, and this game is no exception. The EMH from Star Trek Voyager seems to run the ”general store” at the start of the game, which makes me wonder from the offset weather this is just a holographic simulation.

All manner of interesting items could be purchased from the Doc, including, but by no means limited to, the 5 month package, and the 6 month package. The contents of these packages remain a mystery, but supposedly they contain “basic supplies for the size of your party and the trip you’re travelling on.” I wish my local Co-Op was that comprehensive.

Oh, and for those who like a challenge, you can opt to “No Thanks” and attempt the trip without any supplies whatsoever. Clever.

So, now we have our band of intrepid explorers, miscellaneous supplies, Large Farmwagon, and four random Oxen that appeared from nowhere, we’re ready to set off on our trek across America. The game promises “human drama” which unfolds with events such as “dust storms”, “thirst”, “bartering” and “cholera”.

Say what you want about Modern Warfare 2, it just isn’t in the same league without a cholera feature.

One of the first obsticals to overcome is a river. There are several techniques to this, which including caulking the wagon and trying to float across, waiting for a ferry, attempting to traverse the shallow parts, or just praying that oxen make good life-rafts. This part of the game is generally quite annoying, since the ferry option is usually too expensive and your team die of starvation due to spoilage and dysentery before it arrives. Caulking the wagon is your best bet, and the only real option, however 90% of the time this fails and you’re greated with several messages telling you Cockface, Dickhead, Arsewipe, Buttplug, Jane, Danny, and Four Oxen have died.

Should you be lucky enough to get across the river, you’re ready to go hunting! That’s right, this game promotes to young children the need to mame and slaughter young animals for food with a shotgun. To be honest this is a bit more like Duck Hunt than a hunting simulator, as rather unconvincing sprites of lions, deer, birds and so forth move across the screen. As the difficulty increases, the animals move quicker and quicker until they’re so ungodly fast that it looks like the animal kingdom’s version of an acid party.

Still, what food you do gain is quickly lost to spoilage anyway, and things like broken axles, food poisoning, thives, drowning, broken legs etc. serve to make this game unrealistically difficult to complete for anyone, nevermind someone “Age 10+”.  Ultimately this leads to the untimely deaths of your crew to various forms of illness, the most popular of these being;

• Dysentery
• Typhoid
• Cholera
• Exhaustion
• Measals
• Snake Bite
• John Cena Championship Match

A funeral is then held for the poor dearly departed, until eventually there’s nobody left to bury you. Strangely, you always seem to be the last one to die. Misfortune clearly being on your side, dying lonely and from the shits in the middle of the American desert.

I’m not entirely sure what happens if you make it to Oregon. I’m not entire convinced you can make it to Oregon. I did manage to get to a random fort once, where I discovered, to my amazement, that the Holographic Doctor had somehow beaten me there.

This game is actually kinda fun though, and of course, it launched a thousand T-Shirts. Which is always cool.

DANNY’S RETRO RATING:

Don’t get me wrong, I love Twitter. Since I started “tweeting” I’ve been a bit of an addict; sure, some days I’m a bit too busy, but by and large I’m always grabbing my phone from my pocket and writing a random tweet. There is an element of vanity to it though, that’s the nature of the beast. That’s okay though, and for the most part, I find people do randomly like to see what you’re up to, and more importantly I like to see what other people are doing too. Facebook, MySpace, and whatever else are all variations on that theme.

Is it cool for celebrities to “tweet” each other constantly to try and look like “the shit”, though? No, not really. I can side with Ricky on this one; it does give Twitter a bad name, even though in principle it’s a fantastic social networking tool. It’s very light, simple, and serves the job of letting you share those things that aren’t big enough to blog about easily, quickly, and most importantly, on the go.

Unfortunately, as with any good thing, as soon as the mass-media-whoring celebs figure out that it’s “hip and trendy” (which is usually around about the time the shark is in mid-flight) – it starts to become retarded. I’m kinda sad that Twitter is heading in this direction. Stephen Fry for example, one of Twitter’s early adopters, among other early noteable “twitterites”, are I believe shunning it now, although I’m not entirely sure if they’re just jumping off one bandwagon and onto another.

Ricky Gervais for example, although don’t get me wrong, he is hilarious, is a walking, talking, douchebag hypocrite. He’s the sort of person who’ll denounce celebrity culture, even write an entire sitcom, that is cleverly written, on the subject, while at the same time aiming for the same goal he makes a career out of deploring. If you really hated the “Big Brother” culture, why would you pay Channel 4 XYZ sum of money to get it to appear in your sitcom to get people talking about it?

If you hate people who use Twitter to get themselves in the Spotlight, why are you rambling about Twitter in the mainstream press? The same reason?

The only conclusion I can come to is the same one I’ve always come to, mainstream celebrities are retarded. But I’m not going to stop using Twitter just because they think it’s “cool”, or “uncool”, in the same way I won’t stop watching TV or listening to the radio.

That, and it’s just too addictive.

The first thing to note about the TV series of Geordie Racer, is that it’s almost impossible to understand what any of the characters are bloody saying. Trying to decypher the random dialect of Geordie people is nearly impossible, so to save the embarassment of trying, we’ll just assume for the rest of this review that the programme is filmed in a forigen language, and subtitles are required to fully appreciate the plot.

Oh, and what a plot it is. Setting the scene of Geordie Racer, the townspeople are currently 50/50 split obsessed with one of two things, either, the Great North Run, or the Great Pigeon Race. Now the reason for this, I can only assume, is that half of Newcastle is stupid enough to run through the North of England, and the other half are stupid enough to try and get a pigeon to do it for them.

The main protagonist is named Spuggy Hilton, a name that has all sorts of dodgy connotations throughout the series, the many references to “Spuggy in his bird, like” – which is Geordie for “Kevin is with his pigeon” – well, the sexual inuendos speak for themselves really. Anyway, Spuggy is the only person in his family who takes an interest in the Pigeon race. The rest of his family are nutters obsessed with long distance marathon running, and the thought of “The Great North Run” is making them “spuggy” in their pants.

As a keen Pigeon fancier, Spuggy (or the Spugmiester as I shall now call him), manages to aquire a pigeon all of his own, named “Blue Flash” – one of the best birds in Newcastle. Then some random bitch called Janie turns up, and along with the Spugmiester witness a spate of local art robberies, (I know, it’s hard to figure out what the fuck is going on at this point). Just how Bonnie and Clyde here managed to witness several acts of people stealing paintings, and what that has to do with racing people OR pigeons, ugh, I don’t know anymore.

The fact they had to witness these people stealing paintings on THREE seperate occasions to cotton on to the fact they were stealing them speaks volumes.

So rather than call the police, like most sane people, they decide to go and spy on the crooks themselves, using their pigeon and other stupendously dangerous methods. This is such a good message to give out to kids, isn’t it? I really gave up trying to decypher the plot at this point so you’re just going to have to make up how this thing ends in your own head.

BUT WAIT, there was more to Geordie Racer than a bad television show. That’s right, there was GEORDIE RACER, THE GAME, FOR THE BBC MICROCOMPUTER.

The game was released on a 5 1/2 inch floppy disk, you know, the kind that actually flopped and took ten minutes to load, the video game version of Geordie Racer actually was kinda cool, but purely because it beat the endless handwriting and Italian lessions that my primary school forced upon us.

The BBC Microcomputer had the graphics of the old style Teletext, and this is pretty much what this game offers. After a very badly rendered title screen with one-bit rendition of the theme tune, players are treated to the main game, which consists of…. “Part 1″ and “Part 2″.

Comprehensive.

After selecting one of these, you can choose to go to a “Metro station”, which is funny, because Newcastle-upon-Tyne has no form of underground or overground tram system. It barely has bus routes. It’s also funny how this tram system conveniently has stations named “Home”, “Shoe Shop”, “Chemist”, “Bank”, etc. – I sure wish that the GMPTE would build me a tram system that only went to the places I went too!

After you visit the bank to get “£20″, the chemist to get “Foot Cream” and the “Shoe Shop” to get shoes, you can start the race. This involves answering questions, each one you get right progresses you 1 mile, each one you get wrong earns you a blister. Too many blisters and you’re out!

The questions are basically asking about things that happened in the TV show, so without watching it, you’re pretty stuffed to actually complete this game, and as such, I have now eaten the floppy disk.

Well, that was painful. Time to tally up.

Danny’s Retro Rating:

WHO CAME UP WITH THAT DUMB IDEA?

Anyway, ALON-ZEE, as the late, great 10th Doctor used to say. Sad that really, he was a very good Doctor and a very sexy man indeed. If I was a woman or a gay I’d have him in a heartbeat. The new kid, though, not so good. I mean he might be a very fine doctor indeed but, having looked at this new trailer, the size of his jaw is just highlighted by that stupid bow tie.

Still, a new year, a new decade even, so it’s somthing new to get used to. Another new thing to get used to is the new trams in Manchester City Centre. They’re very funky and ride like a baby’s freshly talc’d bottom. Smooth as. It’s like Johnson’s Baby Oil on rails.

Anyway, new year, time for some predicitions;

Danny’s Predicted Historical Events in 2010

• Manchester City might actually win something.
• Michael Jackson will return Tupac style and release a new album.
• Woolworths will return to the high street.
• Sonic The Hedgehog will return to his #1 spot as the king of all Video Game time.
• Star Trek II will be properly announced.
• Red Dwarf Series IX will air on Dave, over a decade since Series VIII aired. Rejoyce.
• Nothing at all will happen with the Afghanistan situation.
• President Obama will improve the lives of all working class Americans, and in return they’ll remove him from office.
• George Bush’s new son, Bushdroid, will take office.
• GLADoS returns to extract revenge, and ensure that she triumphs in huge success.
• The Conservative Party will return to power for the first time since 1997 and privatise the last remaning public services.
• David Cameron will stop riding his bicycle to work.
• The New Doctor Who will either Flop or Fly.
• Bioshock 2 for Xbox 360 will be made of epic win.

Danny’s Predicted People who will die in 2010

• Bruce Forsythe will die on live TV groping some 20 year old stunners breasts as he goes down.
• Gordon Brown commits suicide after loosing to the Tories.
• Fern Britton will die after being strung up by her ladyparts in some freak sex accident.
• Bear Grills will do an “Irwin” and be killed by a woodpecker, or other seemingly innocent animal.
• Yuji Naka will be flogged publically and killed if his input on Project Needlemouse results in lots of random unavoidable pits.
• PC Doyle will die of fat.
• Smithy from The Bill will be killed off in a freak handgliding accident.
• Elvis will return from the grave, only to be instantly killed in a freak yaughting accident.
• Kaz Hari of embarassment when, at E3 2010, he announces the price of the PlayStation 4.
• Takeshi Kitano in the same freak yaughting accident.
• Myself.

I know, I know, dry your eyes, it’s tuff to hear. But the topic has to be discussed in a blog. I have to share the pain and help the heeling process. I have to write about this;

Terry Wogan has left Radio 2.

I know, I know, I feel the pain, I feel it fellow readers. The morning commute will never be the same again for millions of us up and down the British Isles. No more will the rambling Irish guy who does the Eurovision song contest tell us about the abusive letters he gets, the millions of dodgy old people who love him, and stories about ‘those two who are having an affair’, whatever they’re called.

I have to admit I never really understood a single word he was saying, anyway, but there you go.

Naw, honestly though, people are waiting to hear about the foot (because it’s a very funny subject?) and so, I suppose I had better write somthing about my foot.

Apparently the fact the Health & Safety bloke has broken his foot is very funny, especially to the workforce, who, in there hundreds (literally) stand outside their vans in the yard of a morn, and laugh at the safety guy who “wasn’t very safe, were ya’, lolol”, and whistling the tune to Tresure Island behind my back.

But whatever. Yeah, so, the crutches do not agree with my hands and my ample frame. I regret all those years I went back for seconds now. Back is starting to kill me. I’m bored ridged but there isn’t really many people to talk to (apart from the McDermott Cube of course when he isn’t KO’ed or GETTING DRUNK WHILE I AM NOT ALLOWED TO DRINK) – so, no, its not much fun at all actually.

Apparently WOE IS DANNY is bad for me though so, rather than go on about the negative aspects of the foot, lets talk about some of the positive aspects of the foot.

1. Angela actually being nice to me for once.
2. The laydays being sympathetic towards me.
3. Reruns of Top Gear on Dave. Richard Hammond.
4. Sponge Cake.

So I guess it’s not all bad. Now over to Terry Wogan for his final thoughts;

WELL NOW THEN, my weiry listeners, you’re LISTENING TO the breakfast show, here on, RADIO TWO.

Today’s challenge, which actually is becoming quite humorous if it wasn’t dangerous, is how I’m going to eat for the next two days. I really don’t have anything left to eat, I have £6 left in my account, with no authorised overdraft. I don’t have a credit card, and although I sound like a rum turkey, I have not spent any of my wages on alcohol, drugs, cigarettes or any other vice except Subways and Taxi’s because I’ve been getting up quite late recently.

Who said living on your own was easy, eh? I need help, my friends and followers. I need help.

No, I’m not going to ask for money! I need to come up with a solution on how to make a meal with only the following ingredients. Any suggestions will be appreciated;

1. Salt
2. Pepper
3. A sachet of mustard
4. A packet of tomato ketchup flavoured crisps.
5. Four bottles of water.
6. Ten oven chips. (French Fries in Canadaland? Je Suis Francé Potatospud to the Qubecians no doubt. You should comment!)
7. Some Levi Roots’ REGGAE REGGAE SAUCE, PUT SOME MUSIC IN  YOUR FOOD…
8. Ice cubes.
9. Half a penguin biscuit.
10. Dog Food.
11. A tube of Bonjella gum ointment.

Not exactly the best bag you could take to an episode of Ready Steady Cook, is it? I could eat five chips today and five chips tomorrow, and put some REGGAE REGGAE SAUCE on them, but I don’t think that’ll cut the mustard really.

Maybe some dog food combined with REGGAE REGGAE SAUCE cooked and flavoured with salt, pepper, sprinklings of tomato ketchup flavour crisps (chips?) and then melting half a penguin chocolate biscuit over it might actually work in some weird way. It sounds nice right now. That’s how hungry I am.

I might just eat the REGGAE REGGAE SAUCE on it’s own.

Nothing to do with this post, just thought I’d share that.

So, check this out. It’s the worlds smallest snow man, and, believe it or not, it’s 1/5th the width of a human hair.

There’s been a bit of a trend really towards making tiny tiny versions of things. The worlds smallest toy car, coin, match stick, and whatever else you care to think of, are all so small they’re beyond the naked eye. There’s even one company out there than can write your full name onto a single strand of hair.

Not entirely sure what the point is though. It’s a great advancement in technology, to be able to form snow at a microscopic level into such an intricate arrangement, but surely there are better things to be doing with the latest technology? What are these scientists doing?

“Shall we cure Cancer today?”
“I can’t, bit busy at the mo…”
“Why, what are you doing?”
“I’m seeing how long it takes a frog to assemble a flat-pack Ikea wardrobe.”

Still, nevermind.

While we’re on the subject, Bruce Forsythe is a randy old git isn’t he? Why is he always commenting on the girls on Strictly Come Dancing. “You could have stood at the top of the stairs doing this for my money!” while he grinds his hips. He’s eighty fucking five. 85. I wish I was that flexible NOW.

It’s surpsing how addictive this show can be actually. I don’t really like ballroom dancing or anything but it’s one of those shows you just get swept into.  That and it has a lot of pretty ladies waggling their assets around. I can see why Bruce made the career choice that he did.

Bring back the Generation Game I say. Now that was a fucking class show. Infact that needs to be Hall of Famed. There’s nothing more entertaining than watching people trying to make clay pots and ending up with something resembling a malformed scrotum.