Worst Things Ever: Why Seas Should Be Banned

I've touched on my intense distaste for sharks here before, briefly, but believe it or not, they're not my greatest marine fear, and shouldn't be yours either. Every patch of salt water, no matter how minuscule, is a breeding ground for slimy, serrated, toxic Lovecraftian horrors and I want nothing more to do with it. The seas are fucked, and if I had my way I'd have every inch of them fired into the sun. That's not to say I approve of fresh water, rivers can and do hide this kind of goddamn thing, but I accept that we kind of need water, to make tequila and irrigate our fields of agave, to make tequila. But no amount of tequila could make me forget these reasons to move to a landlocked county, right fucking now. No time to grab your possessions or loved ones, just run.

 ***

They're Deceptive

Ok, so if you're reading this, you've made your first mistake by not listening to me. You may come to regret that. I'm going to assume you're sceptical, in which case, I'm also going to assume you're a cretin. Every second you don't spend screaming and firing a gun wildly into the water at your local beach is a second something in there spent plotting your end. But you probably didn't spend the last five seconds doing that, you spent it reading this. Saying that, I didn't either. The coastguard at Weston-Super-Mare took my assault rifle. 

The thing is, people like the sea. They love going to the beach, even the British, and we're so safety-conscious we can't take a piss without an under-paid official patting down the urinal for switch-blades. And yet at the first sign of sunlight, the whole country drops everything and makes a screaming dash for the nearest stretch of grey, dismal sand or shattered razor-pebbles. Although, to be fair, we're mostly already drunk. Our first impulse when the weather wizards prophesise the two hours of sunny conditions we get a year are imminent, every off-license in the country sells out of Pimms and Gordon's within seconds. Then we head for the seaside. At least these ridiculous people I call countrymen understand the Second Law of the Oceans after: You Keep What You Kill: Leave Your Limbs, For They Are Mine Now, and that is - The warmer, brighter and more beautiful the sea is, the more prehistoric killing machines it contains. The British think the freezing, sewage-flavoured waters off Brighton beach are safe, and they are so wrong.

There's Lots Of It

Someone with far too much time on their hands said that 2/3s of the planet's surface is ocean. Clearly, the guy also didn't have much compassion. He might as well have said 66% of the floor around me is lava and the rest is covered in prison rapists with dossiers of all my childhood fears for all the good it did my sense of security. But tragically, I can imagine he's right. There certainly is a lot of salt water, which means the only marginally safe places on the planet's surface, other than my water-proof bomb shelter, is the Atacama desert and a shallow grave. 

What that also means, is they're aren't a whole lot of physical barriers stopping every godforsaken creature in the depths from turning up in, say, Portsmouth. I know, why would anyone go to Portsmouth?

These Fucking Things Are In It

Ssssskkkkrrriiiiiiyyyyyyaaaaaaaaaaaaaa!

Didn't I say you'd regret staying here? This is, apparently, a Sarcastic Fringehead and feel free to join me as I say, f-f-f-fuck you, Sarcastic Fringehead. Fuck you for existing.  

And then there's this:

I know what you're saying to yourselves now: 'Will my good man, do you think me slow? That's clearly H.R. Giger's early concept art from the original Alien.' Well it brings me no joy to say that, no, unfortunately, you're quite possibly fatally, wrong. That thing is known to people with exponentially more balls than me, as a Black Dragonfish. Because screw it, you might as well be killed by something with a badass name than something that sounds like a passive-aggressive bitch, right? Aaaaaannnnd, smash cut.

No. No way. That cannot be a thing. That's a fucking Draugr if it's anything. A marine biologist might call it a Northern Stargazer, I call it proof that God wasn't paying much attention when he came to underwater life. 

'Gotcha again, Mr Franklin. Those are budget voodoo earrings.'

I know it's hard,  but try and look again - that's a squid with dentures. Or, what I will forever think of when I remember this.

As if the universe wasn't terrible enough without a jellyfish that's ten fucking feet across. And before you ask, yes, of course they're poisonous.

There Could Be Anything Down There. Anything. Yo. Anything.

Someone with even more time on their hands and even less compassion posited that we know less about the floors of the world's oceans than the surface of the moon. Granted, that's not saying much. The mind boggles at how much is not up there to know about. Lunar observation is a more boring job than trainspotting during a London Midlands strike. Space travel doesn't have the popularity it used to when Houston put a man on a low budget set in Michigan, but people are still content to be ignorant of our planet's soaking basement. And so am I. And yet, it seems like every month some intrepid team completely lacking any sense of basic self-preservation pulls another ancient monster from the depths:

Figure A. (for Awful).

Meet the goblin shark. Yes, that's it's name. Guess where one was found, very much alive? Look I know you know it's Japan so let's just get on with this. I'd rather not dwell on it. This thing has been kicking around since the Middle Eocene, roughly 56 to 34 million years ago.

This monstrosity survived and far larger, but only marginally more monstrous things, didn't. That should tell you all any right-minded person would want to know about it and every other species older than a round million. Like this old-timer, and not forgetting the granddaddy of everything that ever crawled out of your nightmares to feed on your screams, the lamprey. And we don't even have a clue what else is down there.

Thanks a bunch, creationist God. Now that's sarcasm, Fringehead. Seriously though, fuck you both.

Worst Things Ever: 4 Cases of Animal Cruelty in Children's Films

We live in a world where a whole nation can be united by nothing more than a soothing voiceover from an octogenarian and stock footage of penguins fucking. And yet, there are still people willing to get all angsty about a fictional Italian plumber wearing the skin of a raccon dog. Organisations like PETA need to get off Nintendo's back and focus on the people who are really sending the wrong message about treatment of animals to kids - the creators of our most beloved children's films. 

***

Juju - The Princess and the Frog

It's almost hilarious how this film swings between moral extremes. It starts off with a spoilt, demanding young girl tormenting the shit out of her kitten, but she's quickly reprimanded by her responsible adult maid. Thirty minutes later a blind, ageing and presumably drug-addled Voodoo woman is using a snake as a walking stick and loving every second of it.

There are three clear messages driven home by The Princess and the Frog. One - all black people care about is an almost masochistic obsession with hard work. Two - all white people care about is playing ukulele and getting laid. And three - life as a frog sucks harder than Aquaman. Literally everything in the Bayou tries to kill our two heroes on their quest to turn themselves back into humans, in order to do the only things they respectively do: manual labour and partying. On that quest, they meet the above mentioned blind lady. Now I'm not saying that Mama Odie acts like she's tripping balls but she clearly is and after a predictable song and dance number, points out the important distinction between what a person wants and what a person actually needs. But apparently neither of them really need to be human, because guess what? You can be a more passive-aggressive workaholic than Geoffrey from The Fresh Prince of Bel-Air or a slovenly, hedonistic douchebag and be a frog at the same time.

Imagine that you're a child watching this, and you have a shitty home life with an abusive parent: the film is basically telling you to man up and deal with it you little bitch, leave it to a complex series of events you have no control over to fix your life. And also that if you see a frog, fucking destroy it. Even disregarding that, Odie's treatment of her poor snake Juju is criminal.

Abu - Aladdin

Life as a street rat in Agrabah ain't easy because there's no such thing as a petty crime. Sure that loaf of bread or melon looks both tasty and unguarded, but is it really worth tangling with a platoon of militia with scimitars for it? Because they seem to have nothing better to do.

What annoys me most about Abu is that he only gets irritated by one thing throughout the film: the possibility of Aladdin parking his homeless dong in the Sultan's sultry daughter. Not, say, a life of abject destitution.

The Squirrelettes - The Sword in the Stone

Sometimes the aspiring animal abuser just doesn't have time to spare from their other evil doings to give their non-human companions the level of abuse they so richly deserve. At this point, they usually send their magically inept apprentice into the woods in the form of a rodent to cocktease squirrels.

Squirrels are kind of adorable, when they're not savaging park-goers, but this scene from The Sword In The Stone seems a little unnecessary. By this point, Merlin and Wart have already, pointlessly, robbed an innocent pike of a probably much needed meal, in order for young Arthur to learn about the circle of life. Then, in order to teach his young ward the vital maxim: 'look before you leap', England's most successful wizard turns the boy into a squirrel and does his utmost to ensure he breaks his neck. Along the way, they both attract the attentions of the opposite sex, and instead of embracing the opportunity to teach a young'un about the 'birds and the bees' as well, they both add some broken hearts to the trail of chaos the two have left in Pendragon's hold. Annoyingly, I would have thought being groomed for royalty had exactly the opposite benefits.

Scrat - Ice Age

No animated organism in the history of cinema has received more punishment than Scrat. Another squirrel/rodent of some description, his only involvement in any of the four films is purely for the audience to laugh at while he desperately starves. Don't get me wrong, it's hilarious. As are all of the above, but for that to be true for me, something must have gone wrong in the minds of these directors.

Mother Nature's a bitch, sure. And I'm all for kids learning that at as early an age as possible. Nurses shouldn't just be slapping newborns on the rump, they should be screaming at them that they'll never achieve anything in life. But Scrat is such a tragic figure, removing him in the next goddamn instalment would be a mercy killing. They even introduced a romance for him, just for the opportunity to see heartbreak and a look that says 'I'm definitely not going to survive this winter' on his pathetic face at the same time. The monster who pitched this character probably knows exactly how long every major brand of hand lotion is good for before it turns to paste when he's masturbating to UNICEF adverts. Shit. Even I felt bad about that one.

Happy holidays, kids!  

Worst Things Ever: 5 TV Shows Too Insane To Think About

TV is like religion. For every one suicide bomber there are a hundred Catholic choir boys getting all the sex they could want. Also like religion, a lot about TV is crazier than a shithouse rat. The following are five of the goddamn insanest programs it wasn't really that hard to find. What was harder, was understanding what went through the minds of all the presumably un-institutionalised people that saw this madness before it made it to small screens and let it happen.

I should note, that in the spirit of fairness, I didn't consider anything made in Japan for this list. I'm sure you were expecting Takeshi's Castle or something like it here, but that sort of thing is like Midlands Today to them. Being Japanese means you couldn't see something being unremarkable harder than Banzai without actually being Prince Charles sniffing through a schoolchild's used-pantie vending machine. 

***

Finding Bigfoot

You know how you always start to get the feeling that TV producers can't seem to finish what they start, right about the same time they completely run dry of interesting ideas? Then they go on for a few more seasons? Well Animal Planet hit on the best damn idea to sort that out. Every week they send four douchy backpackers into another corner of American forest to search for the totally-not-mythical creature. Now that's a pitch with legs. They could, quite literally, keep this show going until the end of time. Along the way, the 'experts' have every kind of emotional breakdown. It's like a fat camp, except fat camps occasionally achieve something. Don't these morons realise that airport security also pay people perfectly good money to search for something that obviously doesn't exist? 

Steven Seagal: Lawman

Look, I'm not saying Steven Seagal doesn't have superpowers, but he sure as shit thinks so. And who's going to argue with an Aikido 7th dan blackbelt? Not me. I appreciate my bone structure just as it is. And I don't even know what Aikido is. I considered Armed & Famous for this spot, where CBS gave established jackasses like Wee Man, La Toya Jackson and Erik Estrada badges and guns and set them loose in Indiana as, I really, really goddamn wish I was making this up, officially sworn-in reserve police officers. But sadly, the idea of attention-whoring idiots taking the oath to 'Protect and Serve', is actually less terrifying to me than 600 pounds of 90s action star stalking the streets of Jefferson Parish, Louisiana.

Watch, as he hypnotises some poor homeless guy with ancient Chinese zodiak mysticism, and then at some other time, for no reason, shoots the heads off matches. There's no point being coy about this, I've seen many a Seagal flick in my time, so I can say, quite safely, that Steven solves most of his problems with femur smashes. And mostly recently, in (my personal director's soft spot Robert Rodriguez's) Machete, where he solved the problem of Danny Trejo's wife, by katana. Seagal has spent the last 20 years in worlds where he walks into a sports bar, and everyone tries to kill him. Who wouldn't be effected by that? It doesn't surprise me that petty crime in the great state of Louisiana has gone done 40-odd per cent, because most of the county's muggers and vaguely-gothy looking men are just puddles of meat in dimly-lit alleyways these days.

To Catch A Predator

I just don't see the appeal of To Catch A Predator. Any hunter would tell you, it's no fun putting down deer if they just stumble blindly into your trap one after another. There's no challenge. And therefore, no satisfaction. If you're the kind of person that enjoys watching the stupidly helpless destroy themselves, then you're probably Chris Hanson anyway. If not, South Park took the piss out of this show better than I ever could. So just watch that episode, I guess. 

A Shot At Love With Tila Tequila

Plenty of reality tv shows offer sex with a 6 as a prize, few offer Uatu, the alien super-villain from X-Men. The votes are in, and apparently, no-one wants to have sex with you, Tila. Sorry.

Bridalplasty

The concept of Bridalplasty, where a dozen brides-to-be compete for plastic surgery, sounds like something a terrified husband would scream to the police when his deranged wife takes him hostage in her wedding dress. And predictably, E! didn't choose charming, relatable women who happened to be on the large side for this, because, how would that make good TV? No. They're all screeching, self-important psychopaths whose only motivation is some fucking botox up in those billowing cheek bones. Plus everything else they ever dreamed of. Every tummy tuck, jowl limitation, wing clipping, neck-hot-dog reflapping that they ever wanted. And for what? Their dream wedding? Fuck that. Every second these whingeing pork shoulders live, one micron of the essence of human achievement is sucked from the world. If you asked any of these vacuous cro-magnons what 'enlightenment' meant, they'd say it was that awful, particular camera angle that illuminated their knee fat. 

I'm no stranger to hating on reality TV series, but I truly believe that TV is pissing in our collective cornflakes with this. It does not, deserve, to exist. Where the rest of the shows on this list defy logical reasoning, Bridalplasty manages to violate every moral or ethical standpoint I hold. And I don't even value human life. Don't be like that. You've been here before, it shouldn't surprise you. Watching these horrendous excuses for humans squabble and scrounge for cosmetic treatments, in even the briefest of moments, is honest to god, the most fucking depressing thing I have ever seen. I mean, one of these twats actually pawned her engagement ring without telling her fiancee.

It wasn't my intention to depress anyone with this, or turn people off TV as a whole, which as an industry, continues to produce great products, occasionally. I didn't even mean to mention the fact that some shows (reality, obviously), actually make you stupider for watching, according to genuine, scientific study, which I conveniently can't be bothered to post links to. But seriously, TV is fucked. I can sort of understand that a certain demographic might want to watch Steven Seagal karate chop perps, or desperate bisexuals fighting for a skank's attention. But Bridalplasty crosses a line. Making it far, far, too insane to think about.

Worst Things Ever: The 8 Worst Black Eyed Peas 'Lyrics'

I'm now going to prove beyond reasonable doubt that the Grammy award-winning Black Eyed Peas outfit are the laziest sons of whores to ever hold wet fart contests over the mouths of producers and sell the recordings as pop music. They've been shitting in the ears of us all for years and I mean to destroy them. I'll be measuring the mathematical degree of shitness in their lyrics in three, easily quantifiable categories: Stupid, Gross and Repetitiveⁿ. They're all represented by the appropriate number of cartoon faces, Stupid is measured in Ralph Wiggums; Gross in Ursulas and Repetitiveⁿ in Slippys. Keep an eye out for the special Tragic Bonus, aces are low and always roll to save against Losing the Will to Live. Alright? Let's do this.

***

"Check it out, Check it out
What?
Check it out, Check it out, Check it out
What?
No you
Check it out, Check it out
What?"

(Party All The Time)

Stupid:

Gross:

Repetitiveⁿ: 

Some people spend their whole lives examining the lyrics of their favourite songs, grasping for implied meanings or allegory. Good luck trying that here. You could spend your whole life on some of BEP's songs and not find any meaning, they're total violations of sense. I mean, what are they trying to do here? Set off their cyborg agent's secret self-destruct code?

"Girl, me and you were just fine (you know)
We wine and dine
Did them things that couples do when in love (you know)
Walks on the beach and stuff (you know)"

(Shut Up)

 
Stupid:

Gross:

Repetitiveⁿ:  

Will.I.Am is such a pussy that he could dare The Punisher to a bare-knuckle boxing match in the tongue of Mordor and still sound like a hypochondriac begging for a pap smear.


"Fill up my cup (Drank)
Mozoltov (La' Chaim)
Look at her dancing (Move it Move it)
Just take it off"
(I Got A Feeling)

Stupid:

Gross:

Repetitiveⁿ: 

When Google finally unveils its master plan to wipe out 75% of the population leaving only the brightest and best for its Utopia in the sky, having 'are any of Black Eyed Peas actually Jewish?' in my search history is exactly what they'll use to justify having me humanely destroyed.

"They always standing next to me,
Always dancing next to me,
Tryin' a feel my hump, hump.
Lookin' at my lump, lump."

(My Humps)

Stupid:  

Gross:

Repetitiveⁿ:  

When Fergie lifts a leg up, every divorce lawyer's eyes turn to dollar signs for miles around, and every gynaecologist shoots himself. What's more horrifying, is that she apparently doesn't mind attracting the kind of man that likes his deadbeat hookers to come with cancerous growths.

"Hello hello hello hello hello.
Cause the girls want ding a ling a ling ling,
Ding a ling a ling ling, ding a ling a ling ling,
Ding a ling a ling ling, ding a ling.
Dam dam dang a lang"

(Ring-A-Ling)

Stupid:  

Gross:

Repetitiveⁿ:  

The saddest thing about the Black Eyed Peas is I thought the mentally disabled were meant to be lovable.

"Give it to me baby, yea, get off your stump
Brothers on the floor just wiggle your front"

(Ba Bump)

Stupid:

Gross:

Repetitiveⁿ:  

Fergie has so much semen on her breath that by the end of a gig, the roadies can't pack up her mic without a certified abortionist present.

"Chicks say, she ain't down
But chick backstage when we in town (ha)
She like man on drunk (fool)
She wanna hit n' run (errr)"
(Pump It)

Stupid:

Gross:

Repetitiveⁿ:  

I didn't add that pause at the end, they really meant to say that. Called for Hesistation, am I right Just a Minute? Check and mate, Black Eyed Peas. This is actually starting to feel like torture now, I think they really do enjoy making those of us with human hearing and a primary school grasp of English suffer. Why else would they keep, fucking, coming back? It's not like they need the money or anything, by this point they must be suckled and fat on the collective pocket money of millions of morons. They can't just be in this for the money? Can they?

"I'm way out like NASA
I'm way over here I done past ya
I get stacks of cash, you get cashews,
I go hard, statues"

(The Hardest Ever)

Never mind.

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.

***

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.

***

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.