Tales of Rad: The Internet's Most Impossible Impacts

Welcome to Tales of Rad, the only internet column series that Newtonian Physics is too afraid to fuck with. 

You know those people you just inexplicably hate without any justification or cause? So does Gravity. And occasionally, Science gives that petulant, prejudiced prick of a phenomenon free reign to do whatever it wants, and almost always takes that opportunity to make a human it doesn't like kiss concrete. Like my girlfriend. If she isn't surrounded by people committed to catching her around the clock, she'd eat total shit once every three hours. And she doesn't even make Gravity's top 500 shit-eaters list. 

Now I know that videos of people falling over are pretty much the lowest common denominator when it comes to comedic material, but every once in a while, something beautiful happens. Someone will hit the ground with incredible force, when there is absolutely, no goddamn way they were going fast enough to warrant it. You know what I mean, like when a fat lady's teetering on the edge of the curb, just to plummet maybe four feet down onto the road like a trebuchet fired a wedding dress full of beef joints against a brick wall. She had no business hitting the pavement that hard, but the Laws of Inertia had just run out of fucks that day, or maybe they were tired of swinging that fat bitch's shopping bags around.

Whatever the reason, Youtube is full of hundreds of poor fools like that one I just made up. And seeing as there isn't really a tone here to lower, here are five of the most awesome: the human meteors, whose collision course with Earth was so physically impossible it actually deserves to be immortalised in the gallery of human failure that we know as the Internet. These are people who fought the law. But the law didn't just win, it went to impossible lengths to destroy them.

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This Guy

When Gravity spotted that reporter covering a toboggan race, It knew exactly what to do. But got a little overwhelmed by the options. It could have done the sensible thing, and made the inflatable ring bounce off the reporter's ankle with the anti-climactic result of a man being nudged in the leg by another man riding a pregnancy ring that the logic centres of our brains were screaming for. Or even brought the reporter down to headbutt the shit out of the rider. But Gravity isn't known for thriving under pressure, and when prompted, will turn a failing sports journalist into a ninja for Its own amusement. This video looks like Gravity has been pissed off by all the levitating in Crouching Tiger Hidden Dragon for years, so gave the secret, air-bending acrobatic techniques of the Orient to the whitest guy it could find.

Also This Guy

BREAKING NEWS: Dublin man Irish whips himself into a stone wall. Deadly black ice blamed. In other news, Physics, the notorious criminal wanted for millions of counts of crimes against dignity and for confounding Catholic scholars everywhere, made a rare statement to the press: 'Hahaaaahahahahahaah! Sir Isaac was wrong about everything! Muahahahah!' 

Don't even get me started on This Guy

Did you see the look of horror on Simon Cowell's face? It's because he knew. He knew that every two thousand years, the cervix of the night opens and an ancient and terrible god emerges, demanding a sacrifice. Luckily for us, Fate chose someone we wouldn't miss - X Factor's Onkar Judge. Go ahead, skip to 1:35, all you'll be missing is some godawful crooning, but what else are the X Factor auditions for than laughing at the delusions of failures? Watch, as this maniac ploughs his lower body into the floor with the kind of mindless suicidal instinct that can only be explained by the Dark Hand guiding him to his ignominious end in front of a panel of vacuous arseholes. Implausible? Then you explain to me why someone so in love with themselves would try so hard to liquidise their own kneecaps.

And then there's... This Guy?

Nerds are known for three things, and none of them are sweet dance moves. So when this kid walked on stage to compete at the BlizzCon dance contest, you can bet he probably wasn't the worst thing the judges had seen that day. But he does look like chemical waste. Or the guy that sobs when Luke Skywalker muders his pet Rancor with a skull and as you can probably guess, doesn't dance very well. See, a lifetime of World of Warcraft has strange, arcane effects on human bone structure and eventually, helping one of these people support themselves outside their natural environment is like playing catch with a scale model of the Wicker Man made of Twiglets. After twenty seconds jumping up and down he crumbles like so many bricks of cocaine. He does get up and have another go though, and the result is so impossible I think just typing it voids my mental health warranty. From a height probably a foot shorter than the average a full-grown human can standing jump, this guy breaks his own leg. People have fallen out of airplanes and not broken bones. If this video was made into an Anime, and the only person that wants that more than me is that kid, to do this, the kid's foot would have had to hit the ground with the force of an exploding star. And that would have left an impact crater the size of Essex.

THIS FUCKING GUY

The number of fucks a person has to give in a given day are inversely proportional to the number of balls they have. This Fucking Guy has all the balls. He's such a perfect combination of gutsy and stupid that if you followed him around with a camera in two hours you'd have enough material to fill Youtube's humour section for months. A good piece of media raises more questions than it answers. And this CCTV footage is nothing but questions. Unless there's a back door to that building, or there's a lab in the basement where they're genetically engineering brainwashed Punjabi zombies, this is at least the second time this idiot has seen an automatic door. So, what? Is this how he solves every problem? Face-first? How did he survive the Internet's most incredible impact? Is his sexual history just vaguely human-shaped holes in the floor of his apartment? How do door manufacturers not plan for people like him? At least I can answer the last one, there is no goddamn way there are people out there like That Fucking Guy, they'd have broken every bone in their body by the time their parents got them back from the hospital.

5 Ways To Tell Whether The Guy You're Dating Is Dangerously Insane

This was originally a scientific paper that I meant to submit to this week's guest publication, Psychology Weekly. However, the publishers I signed up with a few months ago technically own every piece of work I produce and there hasn't been much of that lately. They've already taken my house, tv and first-born son, so after a few bad decisions and a slight change in editorial direction, the article has been published as follows, for the popular women-parts-oriented magazine, Cosmopolitan. I'll be using Psychologist Will's Nose-Fucking-Psycho Scale (patent pending), the number 1 indicating Run For Your Lives and 5+ Make Peace With Your God. Try to keep up.

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He's a Conspiracy Theorist.
PWNFP Scale: 1

Identifiable by their: tin-foil hats, opinions unburdened by fact. 

It takes a fair few balls to read one sensationalist article about a horrendous national tragedy and scream 'ISN'T IT OBVIOUS? THE GOVERNMENT DID IT!' So I actually have a little respect for these people. All you ladies out there though, should be wary. Though they're certain to have some, let say entertaining, opinions, they're just as likely to be living in their mother's basement on a diet of Gatorade and crazy. I'll make this easy, if you're seeing a man romantically, you're not dating a conspiracy theorist. Unless you're one too. Which makes you something of a valued commodity on the interne- alright fine. More valued. But it also begs the question, how did you come to be reading this? Did your miraculous fingers, honed by years of keyboard molesting on forums, actually, make, a mistake? Or are you just here looking for love?


He enjoys Hostel it a bit too much.
PWNFP Scale: 4

Identifiable by their: moody eyes, stock of human fingers.

Torture porn films like Saw and Hostel enjoyed a surge of popularity in the noughties, but like the erections of so many in their core fanbase, the excitement didn't last long. Just having seen these films doesn't make you a monster, thousands of people didn't walk out of cinemas all over the world to suddenly realise they're a serial killer. They were intended to purely shock, but let's not get into a discussion about what constitutes true artistic merit here, this is a magazine for women. I know my audience. No, what you need to know is this: don't panic if you see a stack of horror films in his DVD collection when you're taking your first tentative steps into his apartment (giggle). Panic when you wake up to find him drawing 'cut-here' marks on your skin in permanent marker. Unless he's a plastic surgeon. In fact, ignore it just on the off-chance that he is a plastic surgeon. They make a lot of money you know.


His blood is a pale, corrosive acid.
PWNFP Scale: Eleventy-Hundred and Fine

Identifiable by their: hivemind, disregard for simple mating patterns

Quick! Find a sharp implement like a kebab skewer or an ornate letter opener. Dammit this is no time to be choosy! Right, now drive it into your man's subclavian artery. Now, this is critical. What, exactly mind, are you covered in? Hot, red fluid with a metallic tang? That's good. Those of you in this position can just skip straight to the make-up sex now. Those of you who've been screaming for the past 30 seconds while your flesh melted, are in a less fortunate position. It's a common misnomer that men with lurid, caustic liquid in their veins in the place of blood, are gay. Not true, the blood of homosexuals is actually highly sought-after for its miraculously curative powers. But if your man has highly acidic blood then chances are he's already impregnated your face, so... congratulations! Enjoy your 12 hours of maternity leave before his love child emerges screaming from your abdomen.


His flesh is a dozen ravens.
PWNFP Scale: Gargle.

Identifiable by their: dislike of cats



Let me take this oppurtunity to say that if you've been prudent so far, and made all these checks on your new beau, at this point, why wouldn't you make sure he's not a dozen arcane ravens hiding in the skin of a man? Because that would be crazy. That's why. He probably isn't, but just in case he is, just be sure to have the Rite of Bel-Shamharoth memorised, and pay particular attention to the two-step plie when you're libating the blood of the pig-nosed vipers. The whole thing really hinges on it.


He is Pandemonium, The World Ender.
PWNFP Scale: AAAAAAAIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIII!!!!!!!!!!

You're all fucked.

I'm afraid I haven't been totally honest with you, ladies. Because while you were earnestly checking up on your new fling, I opened up a portal to the kind of universe that makes Cthulu roll up his windows when he drives through. It's nothing personal, I just had to distract you all while I was daubing the ancient runes in orphan blood on the floor, but don't worry, you're going to love living under the hegemony of Kal Dez-Hur. Trust me, it's pretty swell. You'll all get access to Channel 666, which has all the repeats of Keeping Up With The Kal Dez-Ashians and plays them pretty much all day, and there's at least three violent deaths an episode on that show. It's a great lark, I'm telling you. What's wrong? You look upset. Yes, I can see you. He is here now. I am his eyes, because I have been chosen. Chosen to facilitate his glorious ascent to our plane. And to mark his consorts. Quickly it understands. But it's too late. Your fear is on my tongue and your screams only make it taste the sweeter. It should have chosen better last words.

Top 5 Free Android Games

If you're willing to risk the malware epidemic on the Android Market there's an astonishing range of video games available there, and no reason such a rich catalogue deserves to be overshadowed by the iPhone's. Corporate and indie developers churn out dozens of offerings at an impressive rate, and speaking of rates, many of the brightest and best handheld games are free. And here are five of the choicest, exhaustivelly checked and rated for your approval. Good luck getting anything done in the next few weeks.

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5. Beats
The design concept of music and rhythm games is perfectly attuned to gaming on the move. You can jump in, play one song, then get back to whatever it is you weren't doing in the first place. Beats doesn't do anything ambitious with the tried and tested formula of hitting on-screen promts with the right timing, but then again, why would it? It comes with a selection of thumping, unlicensed techno but you can download and use songs of your choice, and a greater degree of customisation allows you to set your ideal difficulty - lessening the risk of vulgar outbursts of failure on the bus. Slightly.

4. NinJump
Surivial platformers like Copter, Fruit Roll & Zombie Dash hit on a great idea, forcing players to navigate obstacles without control of the pace their avatar is moving at, through a single level that throws new challenges up at every turn, until their concentration runs dry. No checkpoints, no continues, your only goal is getting as far as possible before inevitable failure.

NinJump is a gaming press mainstay along the same (although vertical) lines. You'll scale a never-ending building side by leaping between two walls, avoiding or taking out obstacles for brief bursts of invulnerability and an intuitive leader board makes getting slightly further next time an attractive prospect for weeks.

3. Slice It!
Slice It! approaches puzzle gameplay in a traditional manner for handheld or indie projects, by taking a simple concept and stretching it to brain-warping extremes. You'll be tasked with dividing a vast stockpile of shapes into a designated number of equally-sized portions, within a designated number of moves.

No amount of remedial geometry will prepare you for the mystifying visual trickery you'll be contending with, but there are hints available for the more defeatist players, strategically offered to reward perfectionists going for flawless stages. Not that those two personality traits often coincide. A pleasing maths-textbook art style really completes the classroom feel.

2. Inotia III: Children of Carnia
If there's one game design paradigm that's seemingly least suited to playing on a mobile, it's got to be the RPG. The best role-playing-games demand forethought, persistence and personal involvement, and that's not something developers are lining up to provide to people who'd probably only be playing on public transport, or in lectures or lunch breaks. It's surprising then, that Com2Us made three.

Inotia III fits most of the archetypal tenets of RPG-dom: Players are offered a generous six choices for the protagonist's class, including the typical Warrior, Mage and Rogue models. Play is driven by plot, which follows said protagonist, Lucio, on a quest that will see him tangle with political eruption and a shadowy organisation. It's a banal concept and a colorful cast of characters that drop in and out of your party as well as the story might have kept things interesting until the end, but its undermined by cheap attempts to spin the yarn out longer. Still, even the most vaguely coherent story is a rare occurrence on this platform.

There's a lot of depth in the gameplay too, which is fast-paced and chaotic, and if you're happy to jab wildly at the attack button on your touch-screen to bring down a boss, this could be the most fun you've had on your phone since sexting.

1. Robotek
A perfectly designed mobile game aims to do just one thing - addict you. Coming back to one repeatedly for brief bursts of play requires adaptive gameplay and a solid central concept that isn't going to get stale over time. You could say the same for gaming on any platform, but when there is so much on offer out there for zero investment or commitment, a truly great mobile game has to truly amaze despite immense competition and the limitations of the hardware its running on.

But that's exactly what Robotek does. By combining head-scratching turn-based strategy with the thrill of slot-machine gambling, developers Hexage created a blissful distraction from real life. Robotek's beauty lies in its simplicity, (although it certainly helps that it visually pops at every stroke with bright luminescent colours and appropriately binary team designs, which are as disparate as Wall-E and Eve). You're given just one directive - conquer the world, one vibrant, laser-filled battle at a time. And you'll do so by directing a gigantic commanding android, selecting one of three methods of attack each round: a single, directly damaging assault; constructing smaller machines to defend yourself; or information warfare - hacking your enemy's robots to fight for you, or generating shields or energy drains.

The gambling element comes in the form of a slot machine, which will generate three randomised methods of attack from your desired paradigm and then execute them all at once. Getting three of the same moves in one roll will maximise its effect, and the whole system produces genuine strategic conundrums; and the A.I. controlled opponent makes great use of the exact same roster of moves in a way that lets you learn from your inevitable defeats.

Its simplicity could still have been its downfall, as you progress you unlock four special moves that you can then use in battle after a certain number of rounds, as well as perks that increase the odds of temporary stat and effect boosts, but that's it. Otherwise, over the game's hundred plus stages, you'll be fighting the same battle dozens of times. In the end, Robotek hinges on its gambling element, which is pervasive enough that a lucky roll can save or doom you, but subtle enough that you'll rarely be completely reliant on it. And that is Robotek's greatest victory - after dozens of near-identical battles over a course of weeks, every victory is still your own.

A Gentlemen's Guide To The Art Of Incivility - With All Your Favourite Celebrities!

2012 is here and if you're anything like me, as the clock ticked over to midnight and the fireworks erupted behind a building two miles from where you thought they would, you drunkenly resolved to dish out more insults to those special people in your life that so richly deserve them. The thing is, statistically speaking, you're not, luckily, anything like me. You may have made the decision to spend this new year of your rapidly depleting mortal life being more of an insufferable bastard, but you definitely lack the linguistic elegance to do so. Moreover, any charitable attempt by me to try to remedy that is futile, except this one. I'm well aware you couldn't isolate the operative verb in this sentence, but if there's one thing an idiot knows about, it's celebrities. So here they are, the five archetypes you're trying to offend in 2012, named for the great and the good that most accurately represent them. 

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1. The Susan Boyle

Judging someone chiefly for their appearance is shallow, intellectually flimsy, and hilarious. But not to the subject's face. An ugly person's self-esteem (especially if it's a woman) is intrinsically fragile and the wrong comment at the wrong time can completely destabilise their meaningless lives. But a Susan Boyle is such a boner-annihilating, freakish homunculus that it just demands to be vilified, if only just in the hope that your jibes will offend the Twisted God that allowed this abomination to be conceived. That way, maybe It will think twice next time before giving Cúchulainn, The Blight and Cthulhu the keys to the Champagne Room.

Attack Method: Narrative invective works great against the Susan Boyle, because its always a critical point to consider how this thing came to be, so making up an offensive story that explains it, can be a good laugh. Don't bother with the why, some people are just too horrific to justify without getting to exceedingly depressing conclusions about the nature of God.

Example: Mary Poppins! What is that?! It looks like George Lucas lost interest halfway through shaving an Ewok and decided he'd rather beat it with a leper's loofer.


2. The John Terry

A John Terry is the kind of insensitive imbecile that isn't actually aware of the unreasoned, bigoted opinions they're happy to hold and to share with anyone that will listen, or of the volatility of these opinions until they are way, way too fucked. Essentially, if you're taking any notice of this, this one is you. But handing out a little invective to another should hopefully divert a little attention from yourself. And here's how.

Attack Method: The John Terry is especially vulnerable to doses of their own medicine. If they hate Jews, Blacks, Guatemalans and so on, insinuate that they don't. Nothing pisses these people off more than claims that they're actually tolerant, because they're impossibly proud of their 'call a spade a dirty, fucking spade' attitudes. Plus, they'll doubtlessly have been forced against their will to make some kind of rudimentary public apology. And that's just embarrassing.

Example: Hey Mel, I could have sworn I saw you at that Portuguese restaurant last night. How did the Filipino transsexual you were sitting with like the lobster?

3. The Stephen Fry

Everyone uses social networking to stalk other humans, but slightly fewer use it as an outlet for an incessant stream of consciousness that barely registers as thought. The Stephen Fry has never been so fucking excited to tell the whole world about their latest epiphany - no matter what it is. There's no such thing as an innocuous idea, but these people get pretty goddamn close, approaching their most recent bowel movement or their cat's most recent 'shenanigan' in the same way as someone who just cracked the Voynich Manuscript.

Attack Method: The weak-willed gentleman might just defriend or unfollow such a person. But the most effective way to upset a Stephen Fry is to challenge every single thing they say. Pointing out their every spelling or grammatical error (of which there are bound to be many), is laborious, but the rewards can be startling.

Example:

Textbook.

4. The Kim Jong-Il

Simply being slightly famous and dead is enough to get the mighty force of the internet united against you. But it's pretty unlikely you know someone in both of those uniquely undesirable positions, and if you did, I get the feeling you wouldn't need my help to abuse their memory. No, a Kim Jong-Il is what it is. A maniacally Draconian dick-bag with far less authority over you (as your manager, boss, sex-mistress) than they think. They're only happy throwing their weight around, and if making your life less convenient is a result then so be it.

Attack Method: Dealing with a Kim Jong-Il is easier than it seems. They say power corrupts, but not as absolutely as a half brick in a sock collapses the windpipe. Be sure to write something vulgar on their forehead in permanent marker while they're unconscious.

Example: Will, I asked for those forms yesterday an- What are you doing with that piece of plywood with a nail stuck through it? Is it a nail? Sure looks lik- KERSPLUNCH!!


5. The Entire Cast of TOWIE

Let me be frank. If you even watch the scripted, faux-reality/nightmare program The Only Way Is Essex, affectionately known as TOWIE, then I hate you. That should put in perspective the kind of broiling, catatonic hatred I have and you should for every foundation-coated excuse for a human being involved in it. If you started to explain the plot of an episode to me and I punched you in the face, I'd have inadvertently spoiled the ending for myself. Therefore, you're safe in assuming that any target that ranks as a TOWIE, is pretty awful. And you'd be right. They are the absolute worst of everyone you know - they're narcissistic, braindead attention whores that would suck off a horse if the farmer promised to tell the local village newspaper about it.

Attack Method: Don't even bother. These people are delusional, wiping anything that anyone says that isn't metaphorically kissing their arses from their tiny, avian brains. The worst you can conceivably do is ignore them. Ensuring that their asinine word vomit is heard by as many adoring ears as possible is all these sociopathic wax sculptures can do to achieve orgasm, other than gently nudging their genitalia against one of their own kind until the cameraman is too revolted to continue.

Example: ... oh... oh my god. You are... just the worst. There aren't words. The English language doesn't contain a word remotely strong enough to describe what you are. Not even... you know, that one.

GL3 Stat-Tracker: Sci-Fi Edition

Commander Reno Clio

Space Captain

Weapons: Authority, Awesome lasers

Allegiance: The Alliance 

Coordinates: Punched-in

 Space Driving: Circuitous

Diet: Narrow-minded. There are a lot of tasty aliens out there.

Special Ability: Avoiding Enemy Lasers Until A Critical Moment In The Plot

Chief Isaac Mobo

Engineer

Weapons: Mining Equipment, Mobile Turret, Tech Support

Allegiance: Windows

Career Choice: Unpopular

Memory: Upgraded

Star Sign: RAM

Special Ability: Turning It Off And On Again

Dr Strangerlove

Zeno-Geologist

Weapons: Again, really?

Allegiance: SCIENCE

Specialization: Earth Oil
Relationships: Rocky

Usefulness: Deluded

Special Ability: Methodical Research

Darf Zen

Dark Space Wizard

Weapons: Purple Lightning, what else do you need?

Allegiance: Whoever he likes, he's a fucking Space Wizard

Philosophy: Awesomely deranged

Dress Sense: Ditto

Sex Life: Risky

Special Ability: Choking You With His Mind If He Gets Bored Of Electrocution

InEBr1-AtD 22

Malfunctioning Droid (on the right)

Weapons: Lost Portal Gun, Awkwardness

Allegiance: Cake or, if pushed, any form of confectionery

Thinking: Rarely lateral

Motor Skills: Fucked

Bromance Receptors: Overloading 

Special Ability: An Ironic Degree Of Willpower

Things Regular Sport Could Learn From MMA

There's a reason the social pole is slippery. And you find out pretty early on in your school career that it's because it's been greased by the sweaty taint of sportsmen who got up there before you. But nerds are destined to inherit the earth - as technology marches onward through this information age, there will come a time when knowing how to farm experience points with maximum efficiency will be a more applicable life skill than being able to score trys or touchdowns or whatever. And I've decided to help this process along. By accelerating that precious moment when we, the doughy, weezing, Pop Tart repositories of the human race make our glorious ascent to supreme power. Which could be done pretty easily if the most influential dignitaries of the most popular sports in the western world, took a few cues from the MMA community.

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MMA stands for Mixed Martial Arts, a full contact bloodsport with a history of hilarity. I say history, but it's only really been going since 1993 when the Ultimate Fighting Championship was founded, but in that short time, the sport has racked up a record of shattered dreams and brain damage that's never been equaled. I've never even watched a complete match, being content to watch or read about the highlights of historic moments and my God there are so many. From taped-up faces to emotional breakdowns, MMA takes everything you love about regular sports, pumps it full of untested steroids and throws it in a ring with a gorilla. People like FIFA need to learn from this. Because if every sport started taking this reckless approach to the value of human faces, we nerds would be running the world within a month. 

Sportsmen have a reputation for bullying, thanks to spectacles of disappointment like Footloose and other 80s High School movies. But they're all pussies really. Cricketers run screaming for cover when it starts to rain and won't stand in the path of the ball unless they're covered from head to toe in body armour. Boxing, generally accepted by people unaware of the existence of MMA to be the most savage of legally sanctioned sports is just two professional dietitians gently slapping each other until one of them remembers when he was paid to fall down. Not to say that you don't get boring matches in MMA. Fighters run away, endlessly circle each other, throw punches with all the excitement of a bored receptionist hitting refresh on her Twitter feed, or just lie down in the ring together to have a bit of a cuddle. Except that last one is kind of meant to happen. See, MMA is, supposedly, a descendant of Pankration. The Greek martial art which combined punching with wrestling in an oily tangle of man parts.

It sounds like bullshit when you consider that it's mixed martial arts, fighters square off against people with completely different fighting styles - Jiu Jitsu, Karate, Muay Thai, but generally, the more clinically batshit insane guys (that's most of them by the way) just make up their own name for what essentially is Pankration with slightly more clothing. Slightly. 

Don't tell me you looked at that and didn't instinctively want to give them some privacy.

How many other sports can claim such distinguished Classical ancestry? Fucking Alexander the Great enjoyed a roll in the grass with an opponent from time to time. And he kicked ass at Pankration. Fine. That was pretty weak. Point is, you're not getting into that ring if you have a chronic aversion to forcible male bonding. Unless you're this guy. Thing is, most sportsmen are that guy. They're rippling sacks of emotional issues of which homophobia isn't even in the top 5. Your average boxer wouldn't step in the ring against a real mixed martial artist. It wouldn't matter how much money you offered to have his ass handed to him. He's not going to get groped by another man in front of an audience of screaming drunks 'like some kind of fag.'

So we've established that if more sports involved some Ancient Greek manhandling most jocks would defect to us. Maybe we'll let them live. But we can cross that bridge when we come to it. How do we get shot of the rest of those aggravatingly sculpted athletes? Easily. That's how. All we'd have to do is throw them, one at a time, into a cage with this monster. Or this one. Or if you're feeling really sadistic, this one. MMA isn't just a competition to see which of two men is more adept at tantric massage, it's also a grand exhibition of the human form. And how quickly it can be liquefied by a kickboxer that's more cyborg than man. 

You could play full-contact Rugby for your whole life and not receive a tenth of the physical punishment some unlucky souls get during one fight. The fighters with long careers only survive them if, like Ernesto Hoost they've got a solid enough defense to not get pounded within an inch of their lives every match or, like Kazuyuki Fujita, are simply unkillable. Most of the latter breed of fighters are Polynesian, which, in MMA, is kind of like being a bulletproof road-sign in Alabama. And even these guys get smashed open like so many uncooperative walnuts by men with nuclear-powered pile drivers for limbs. That guy Fujita, managed to maintain a career with one very specific gameplan in mind: letting the dishonourable foreigner in front of him unload on his face until they got tired and fell over when he pawed at them. That's not a joke. During Fujita's fifth fight, his opponent Ken Shamrock had a heart attack because he'd been pounding on Fujita so hard. And you thought The Simpsons came up with that.

If every sport was like MMA, those people that laughed at your pathetic attempt at the sit-ups your bitch P.E. teacher forced you to do, would destroy themselves. We wouldn't even need that virus that kills anything with a BMI in the 'Good' section that we engineered while they thought we were playing World of Warcraft. 

BUT WHAT CAN THEY DO ABOUT IT NOW? NOW IS OUR TIME. 

Jukebox: Tracks of 2011

Another year, another list. As 2011 draws to a close, it's time again to take a look back at the tracks that really stood out from the masses. And here they are. 

***

Labrinth – Earthquake (feat. Tinie Tempah)

In terms of mindless, unassuming fun, nobody produced a polished urban pop hit of the same magnitude as Labrinth this year. On a meaty set of speakers, Earthquake really will make the planet shake. Probably the best club hit in recent memory, the chances that you haven't heard this are slimmer than Kyle Falconer's jeans.

Listen here.

Jay-Z & Kanye West - Gotta Have It

The most surprising thing about Watch the Throne is that it took this long to happen. The men are like peanut butter and jam, gin and tonic, or hookers and cocaine - they just belong together. They share this contradictory attitude to material wealth which borders on the ridiculous. Being equally happy to spend tens of thousands of dollars on a sample, and then spend four minutes rapping over it about the simple lives they want for their children (New Day); right after this punchy number, smacks of the kind of narcissism that's usually impossible to stomach. Gotta Have It is violently selfish. In it, J and K manage to transcend consumerism, operating with this impossible, almost imperialistic need to drink the world dry. Galactus listens to this song and feels like an altruist.

Listen here.

Friendly Fires - Helpless

Friendly Fires have made larger strides in pop than most, but took quite a risk with their sophomore album, Pala. Their self-titled debut was glorious, for the most part, thanks to vocalist Ed MacFarlane's rousing voice, but also for the hints of exoticism tucked beneath the songwriting. Taking those undertones, and basically constructing a whole LP from them was brave, and brilliant. Again, mostly. Helpless is actually the exception, bar a few bars at the end, being mostly concerned with crooning 'helpless' over a rent-a-synth chorus. In the best possible way. 

Listen here.

Rizzle Kicks - Dreamers

Starting up the debut from Brit-hop duo Rizzle Kicks, you wouldn't be clinically deranged to assume their defining thought in the studio was, 'Cat Empire are cool, let's do something exactly like that'. But then album opener Dreamers fizzles out in a flash of ecstatic, jazzed-up beat wizardry, and they delve into literally everything else. Sure it's hip-hop, but there's such a wide-eyed approach to backing in Stereotypical that it's hard to care about their lyrics, which are suitably inane. Never has so much fun been had by so few.

Listen here.

Lana Del Rey - Video Games

As an entirely label-moulded personality, Lana is quite unique. Styled as a pin-up beauty with a baroque pop sound, there's a charm to her whole act which really sets her apart. And there's no doubt she's got the voice to match it, Video Games is an powerful ode to devotion, channeling the essence of Americana and a demanding need to be loved. 

Listen here.

Theophilus London – Love Is Real

Theophilus has become the latest poster boy of Brooklyn hipster-hop. With an interest bordering on obsession with The Smiths, he ticks all the right genre-bending boxes, and his first real LP (Timez Are Weird There Days) after a multitude of mixtapes has become a bit of a Music section favourite at Redbrick this year. We’re still waiting on a collaboration with Nicki Minaj to make all our pipedreams come true though, Theo. Just sayin'. 

Listen here.

Washed Out – Amor Fati

2011 was the year chillwave died. Toro Y Moi went all disco on us, Neon Indian’s sophomore LP didn’t emerge, and Ernest Greene, aka, Washed Out, decided he’d rather write songs about the politics of love than getting high on a sunny day. His debut Within and Without is still astonishingly lovely, like a slowed down, synth-heavy cutting from Bloc Party’s Intimacy, but it’s got that all-important soothing influence that made the Life of Leisure and High Times EPs such a joy.
Listen here.

Active Child – You Are All I See

I can’t recommend Active Child enough. I’m In Your Church At Night was one of the sleeper-hits of last year, and his unique formula of choral synth-pop is all the more refined on his debut of this year. Its titular opener You Are All I See is a thing of wondrous beauty. There’s something deeply touching about it, but at the same time, with it's heartwarming harps and raining bells, it's distinctly festive.

Listen here.