This article is not an accomplished work of art like Monet's waterlilies, The Scream or the life-size sculpture of a homosexual on the roof of the butcher's shop in Pontypridd, but I'm presenting it to you anyway. I originally wrote this for a magazine I was going to self-publish, and then didn't. If you want to know why I aborted self-publishing, then consider this: The last issue of my magazine cost me £50 and was read by 70 people, of whom about 7 actually liked it. The Matt Groening 9/11 auction, however, cost me nothing at all and was seen by 23,662 people, of whom about 7 actually liked it, but one of them was Matt Groening. See the difference?

And the thing with the magazine was, I had to work to get even those 70 people. People just wouldn't take it off me in the street, so I had to get sneaky and slip copies in their shopping bags or under their wheelchairs when they weren't looking, or mail them to strangers with a note saying 'here's that magazine you wanted- your secret admirer? xxx'. This is because I strongly believed that my message deserved to be heard. That said, all that was in the magazine was a song my friend wrote about Pikachu, and a comic strip where a man gets punched in the groin.

If you really want to get a message across to people, you don't always have to resort to guerrilla tactics like I did. Instead, you can do like I ended up doing and do workshops at local inner-city primary schools. In my monthly globalization seminars, I lay out the issue by connecting with the 'kids' in their own lingo, using terms that they can understand:

I feel that if my lectures can convince just one child not to buy Nike trainers, then it will all have been worth it. I sometimes go one step further and put on impromptu street theatre to get my message across to the public. For example, to symbolise how Nike exploits Asian children through sweatshop labour, I went around the town centre kicking any child who looked even vaguely asian in the face, whilst wearing sweatshop-manufactured Nike trainers. I think I really made a difference - the children's parents seemed to get the idea anyway, as many of them made similar metaphors in return using my face and my groin.

But if you think the efforts of one man, no matter how noble and valiant, will save this society then you've got another thing coming. Even as I type this, the Japanese are developing new ways to cause our downfall. Japan's last bid for world supremacy was in 1942 when they fought the War in the Pacific, using suicidal kamikaze pilots to dive-bomb American warboats and kill thousands of innocent people. But when that plan was thwarted, they went back to the drawing board. 60 years later, they have come up with an idea a thousand times more devastating.

I'd take a thousand Pearl Harbours over this shit.

And there it is on the left. In case you haven't played 'Boong Ga Boong Ga', it's a video game you control via a large plastic ass, with two plastic legs attached to it. Fixed to this is a big electronic glove, worn by the player. The aim of the game is to ram your finger into the ass as many times as you can before the timer runs out. Adding to the fun, however, is the fact that you can choose to be violating any of 8 different people, including a gangster, an ex-girlfriend, a child-molester, and Leonard Nimoy. That last one was added for the western audience. It's been done quite well though, because its got digitised sound samples from the Star Trek TV series, which play as you frantically fist Mr. Spock:

'Captain, this is highly illogical.'

' Beam me up, Scotty.'

'She cannae take it any moore, Captain!'

 

Yeah, sometimes it's a little bit jarring, because that first sample plays EVERY TIME you put your finger in. So most games sound like this:

'-Illogicogiccogiccogical. Illogicogicogicogicogical. Captain, this is highly illogicogicogicogicogicTAKE IT ANY MOORE, captain! Illogicogicogicogical.'

Plus it keeps playing the Klingon Battle Theme at random intervals, which is another downer. All in all I don't recommend playing it, although I haven't played it myself because I suspect it's actually a big finger trap installed by the metropolitan police in order to catch random perverts and deviants. Every time someone puts money in that thing I hope a siren goes off somewhere in Scotland Yard, because anyone who wants to play Boong Ga Boong Ga shouldn't be allowed out in normal society. 'This is the police. Put your hands in the air, and step away from the ass!'

Korea's a cool country too, because their whole culture seems to based around becoming a cheaper, even more messed-up version of Japan..They've made a video game called Cutey Fatty (the dieting miracle), where you play an overweight girl who dreams of becoming a supermodel. You have to fight donuts and collect salad, and she is only 1" tall. 'Wow Psycho! Happy fun dieting joy joy!' And once, when I did work experience at Ocean Software I got the honour of playtesting Korean Bootleg Final Fantasy, and Korean Bootleg Megaman, which was called Gabuman. Gabuman had a talking hole in his stomach which told him what to do, and inhaled cops and dogs. He'd then spit them out of his mouth as pellets. I have no idea what I did to deserve to see something that cool. To get that much good karma I must have gone down on an entire family of starving ethiopians.

Gabuman's even cooler when you realise that Korea is now part of George Bush's 'Axis of Evil'. I'm never going to stop watching BBC News 24 now, because I want to be ready to start taping when Peter Sissons comes on to say 'The american bombing campaign of North Korea was thwarted today by a plucky 7-year old and his giant inhaling belly button. Go, Gabuman, go! For love and justice!'

 

Ten Things You Never Knew About The World We Live in

1. The Common Sea Turtle has no smell, and no one knows why.

2. In the Australian outback, every male Kangaroo born within the last 3 months has had no pouch.

3. In the popular 'Looney Tunes' cartoon series, the Road-Runner's full name is Ian 'Road-Runner' Jackson.

4. Adolf Hitler was left-handed, and no one knows why.

5. Black People don't really like to make rap music. They just pretend they do because they can't think of any more funk, jazz or soul songs.

6.When you touch a mirror, there is a gap between your finger and your finger's reflection, and no one knows why.

7.Evil is scientifically measurable. It is carried by electrons in a special lobe in the brain. The more of these electrons you have, the more evil you are (this is why you should never sleep with your head next to a microwave).

8. AIDS was invented 20 years ago by government scientists, in order to promote solidarity in the gay community.

9.In the Disney film 'Aladdin', Aladdin is wrongly depicted as a white man. This is because the Disney animators decided that all the drawings of Aladdin as an arab looked too similar to Donald Duck.

10. The popular Hollywood actor Vin Diesel is secretly a heterosexual.

I can't tell if this is really a joke or just something stupid I said to my Dad once.That's right. I'm writing this from the depths of poverty. I'm so poor, I can barely afford the electricity to play any of my vast record collection on my brand new Aiwa Stereo Full Automatic Turntable System, or my Denon CD Receiver UD-M30. A girl asked me 'How overdrawn are you?' I said 'One-thousand and thirteen pounds.'

She handed me some spare change and beamed 'Now you're overdrawn one-thousand and thirteen pounds and thirty-seven pence!!' Yeah, thanks, crazy lady. Thank you for your negative money.

 

I try to feel better about making myself so destitute. I do this by telling people that my last 70 pounds or so went on Christmas presents for my stupidly large family, which is true. Thing is, while some of them got good presents like CDs, others drew the short straw and got stupid 'ironic' presents like the 1978 Girl Guide Annual, or a Dream Phone set. If you ever see a Dream Phone, get it, because they are awesome. The one I got my sister was £1.50 from Help the Aged.

Basically, it's an insane board game that comes with a large, pink, plastic mobile phone that doesn't work. At the start of the game you're given a card with the phone number and photo of one of 30 'hunks', all of whom look like they got the job through a classified ad saying 'wanted: ugly homosexual'. You then call the 'hunk' on the toy phone and he'll give you a clue as to which of the guys is your secret admirer. Sometimes they'll say 'I know what he likes... but it's not popcorn!' and other times they'll say 'I know who it is... but I'm not telling. Hwa hwa.' If you really want to know what it's like, imagine an even gayer version of Guess Who. Thing is, this game is actually targeted at 9 year-old girls. 'Guess which one of these 25-year-old men has a crush on YOU, little girl!' That's disgusting. If I were a nine-year-old girl playing that, I'd be calling '999' faster than I'd be calling any of those pederast 'hunks'.

One of the drawbacks of the internet is that the people who write for it are usually dorks. Put it this way- if this page was written by my friend Ben, it would be full of hilarious anecdotes from when he spent the summer travelling around Europe or the time he taught at the school for deaf children. It isn't, so instead you have to read about 'a funny thing I said to my dad once' or 'I like board games.' Please don't blame me. I wrote this page while on a 4-day sugar rush. It was a few days before christmas and everyone had gone home, leaving me alone in halls of residence. I didn't have any food left, so I had to live off of the 60 Boost Guarano bars we had lying around, left over from when my flatmate Anna and I stole a box full of student welcome packs. I'm just rambling now, so here's a comic strip and a link back to the main site. I never want to look at another Boost bar ever again.

My plan is to go to MB Games and pitch a version of Dream Phone targeted at mentally ill people such as myself. It's called 'Wet Dream Phone'. 'Guess which one of these girls wants to have phone sex with YOU!' Wow, is she hanging out at the Snack Shack, the Adult Movie theatre or the Pussy Barn? 'I know what she likes... and it's not blowjobs!' Right. Remind me not to call her, then. 'You're right, I really like you! And now I'm putting my hand down my pants... and I'm getting soooo wet-' Uh-oh, Mom says hang up! This game should be on the shelves by Christmas 2003. That name again is 'Wet Dream Phone', 14.99 rrp.

Those clearly aren't the real Ghostbusters, Dream Phone. I feel cheated.