Have we been too Harsh on Alanis Morrisette?

Critical re-appraisal time, prompted by me hearing my sweetly singing colleague quietly singing "Ironic" by Alanis Morrisette. Twenty years old now, that song. Crazy.

(BTW - "Crazy" by Aerosmith is even older, 23 years old).

She had an amazing impact, did Alanis. I thought "You oughta know" was astonishing when I heard it, even if it was castrated by Radio 1. "Are you thinking of me, When you __________ her" my tower hi-fi used to say. What? "Instruct?" "Massage?" "Cook?".

Oh. Fuck. Oh fuck.

But then a bit later "Ironic" came out, and things started going a bit haywire for our favourite Canadian chanteuse. First up, people began to talk about her acceptable, but hardly Cindy Crawford, looks. "She's got a big behind" said others. "Is that a hint of a moustache problem?" mused an unsubtle minority.

But the real problem was "Ironic" itself. It wasn't. Ironic. English lit. smart-arses have been on its case ever since.

"Oh, what she's singing about isn't ironic" they would chirp. "They are just things that piss you off a bit. That's not irony. Tchah."

And looking at the song 20 years down the line, they are right. It isn't really ironic. Not being able to smoke on a fag break is an annoyance. Dying the day after winning the lottery is a pisser as well. Rain on your wedding day is a drag, but it isn't even remotely ironic. "Ten thousand spoons when all you need is a knife" is just bad culinary planning.

However, I'm going to be charitable. I think being a chap who is afraid to fly, who then musters up all his courage and steel to get on a place only to be immediately killed in a plane crash; well, at the very least that is certainly in the ball park of irony. I might even be so bold to call it, here and now, actually Ironic.

Sorry Alanis. We've been far too harsh on you. We should take at least one, tiny bit of it back.

Even if we can't forgive the unflattering nudity in the "Thank You" video.

Copyright Bloody Mulberry 20.05.15

Who Will do the First Striptease in Space?

We live in a world now where such things as lap dances have becom regarded as a common, low brow, peasanty-footballer viewing pursuit, and burlesque, although still an exotic pursuit, is something that can safely be discussed on 7pm chat shows and other mass media.

Nudity for pleasure on Earth is just sooooo over.

Other frontiers are of course available. Despite the recent Spaceship 2 accident, the race for leisure trips into space goes on unabated. Soon it won't just be the preserve of serious types with degrees in aeronautics, “The Man in the Street” - as a Tory councillor type patronised me the other day – will be up there too.

And where there is leisure, there is pleasure.

Up until now, as far as is known, being naked in space has been a purely practical exercise for the purpose of showering in a pretty unromatic bag of water droplets. To live permanently in space, one would think there must be breeding in space and there have been rumours that on one military shuttle missions, experiments into the practicalities of weightless sex were carried out. Results unknown.

Newton's third law will be a real headache for sex “up there”.

One would think however that shameless exhibition would be a lot easier, and I reckon it will happen a lot sooner that you think. I'm surprised that no-one was hired a so called “vomit comet” for adult movie production purposes, but I guarantee you that pretty early on in the space tourism industry, one of the major adult production houses will hire an entire flight of Virgin Galactic or their equivalent, and even if “fluidic exchanges” may be banned on grounds of risk of short circuit, stripping off should be no problem for folk of any sex.

It will be filmed, streamed, and sold. I give it seven years, tops, before it happens.

Copyright Bloody Mulberry 01.04.15

  

"My Only Wish, to Catch a Fish"

I am a sociapathic criminal, alone in my lair with my devil ponderings.

I have so many enemies. I have a very large pond concealed under a false floor that drops away when I press a button on my megalomaniac console – don't worry, I also have an app on my mobile phone if I'm walking around a bit – but its deep, dark water is empty.

I have no suitable predators to put in it yet.

The agony of choice...

To have a concealed pool full of sharks, well, that jumped the shark years ago. Bloody Blofed and his Selachian cliches. Besides, they are protected, and as a committed environmentalist I cannot use an endangered species to tear my enemies limb from limb. I was a big fan of Steve Irwin, I used to love watcing him getting chased up trees by Komodo Dragons,  so I'm not going to use Stingrays. Horrible things. Frisbees with a toxic prong.

Jeremy Wade teaches us that there are many dangerous fish in the rivers of the world. The beautiful arapaima of South America, the repulsive, slimy wels catfish of Europe and the prehistoric looking giant alligator gars of America. All of these have their merits, but they are difficcult to transport and would struggle with captive living I suspect.

Piranhas schmiranas. All been done before. And as Jeremy Wade has shown, they aren't always that deadly. Sometimes, they are just too docile to strip a human being to the bone to order.

The other problem with most of these species is that they are a bit dull to look at. Electric eels can kill for fun, but they look like the inside of someone's colon. I man, urgh. For an aesthetic villain such as myself, no dice.

So, I made a decision. What fish could be better to keep in a freshwater tank than a neon tetra? The most familiar exotic aquarium specimen of all, beautiful, glowing red and blue ornaments to any fish tank.

Te trouble is, they only grow an inch long. They aren't going to eat many people at that size. But, genetics my friends! Even now my scientists are researching a way to make them grow to three metres long, with teeth like daggers and an irresistible desire for human flesh. No mtter how many men, women and children I throw to them, they will come back for more.

And my flesh eating fish will be as pretty as faeries, and swim amid their plastic pirate ships and treasure trunks. And my fortress of suffering SHALL BE COMPLETE!!!!

Copyright Bloody Mulberry 25.03.15

Ye Olde Terminator

My head spends an awful lot of time on idle thinking. Such things may or may not include...

1) - A meeting at the Bond Villain's volcano headquarters. Blofeld type chap sits at the end of the table, stroking his squashed face ugly Persian cat with one hand while fiddling with a cigar cutter with the other. Henchman sit around, fat ones, thin ones, scared ones, oriental ones, ones missing eyes, ones missing limbs. There is a solitary woman amongst them, sporting the correct number of eyes, arms and legs, but looking rather chubby.

"Gentlemen, before we discuss the implementation of "Operation Terror" can I just take this opportunity to give our best wishes to Jacqui from HR, who is going on maternity - and by the way, it isn't mine! Seriously, we wish you all the best, and enjoy being a mum!"

The fingers sporting rings containing poison pick up an envelope from Clinton's Cards. A factotum with a claw for a hand passes a bunch of Waitrose flowers over. A tin of Celebrations is opened, everyone goes straight for the malteser ones.

Well, it happens like this in every fucking workplace I've been in, why not Doctor Death's?

2) Due to navigation error, the Terminator goes too far back in time and finds himself having to kill a 13th Century ancestor of Sarah Connor. Naked, he first has to cloth himself.

"I want your jerkin, your bootikins, and your donkey" he announces to a passing peasant, before taking himself off down the Blacksmith's to get tooled up.

"I want a phased pulse rifle in the 40 megawatt range"

"Prithee Sire, only what you see!"

"The sword, the dagger, and the mace"

"A fine choice young master. All these weapons would surely grace a stout castle, which art thine fancy?"

"All of dem."

"Crivens! Thou shalt not do that, my liege."

"Wrong."

SWIPPPPPPPPEEEEEEE....kudummmmm

Test Post Via Gallery

Inception - How do you Learn to Dream?

My dreams, head full of Tourette medication and restless sleep patterns, often have outbreaks of craziness. Most dreams you barely remember, flickers of images that are burnt out the moment you open you eyes and the sandman drops you back off in the land of consciousness. Others are burnt into the gallery of your memory with a laser.

They come and go. In my super stressed university days, every dream I had was a) lucid and 2) involved flying. I was aware I was dreaming so often, in a REM world little different from ours.

Until I decided to lift off the ground like an airship made of feathers, and drift around like a sky manatee. No propulsion was necessary, no awful flapping. Just ease of movement by the power of thought in a world where no harm could come.

Paradoxical movement. Inception. Niever since have I been able to control my dreams as well as they do in Christopher Nolan's other masterpiece - after The Prestige.

The dream machines in inception are never quite explained to us. We see a suitcase with a metallic case, centred with a large button used to kick the dreams off. The use of sedatives is implied, but none are seen being introduced into the machine, although it looks as if there are places for them to be placed.

The tubes that network the dreamers to the machine don't appear to be IVs, you never see any of the cast introducing them into their veins; they just seem to be strapped around the wrist. Likewise, there seems to be no connection from the brain to the machine, this must be being served by the tube on the arm.

And then, how do they get such control over the environments; the architecture, clothing, and weapons. Eames (how I want to be him) produces a huge gun when the team are trapped in the warehouse, but gives no idea as to where it comes from other than saying, movie stealingly "You should dream a little bigger, darling." - so, do you imagine your own gear coming in, or is their some kind of central dream server you gear up in, akin to The Construct in "The Matrix."

Also, how do they dream with such utter clarity...no fuzziness, changing faces, suddenly changing locales? Is it in the militarily developed software or hardware, or are only certain people good enough at dreaming to work in this alpha waved mindscape?

I wish I was that good. And I wish I was Tom bloody Hardy.