Who? What? Where? How?

Hello, Sickbaggers!

I am not dead, nor nearly dead, nor dead but kept alive by a horrifying rage virus - to be honest, I have just not felt like writing for Digital Sickbag for a while, so didn't. Hey, it's a free country (unless you are reading this in a country which heavily infringes upon your civil liberties. In which case I doubt you will be reading this anyway.)

So: what has been going on since the last time I spewed forth into this blog? Well...

* I gained part-time, Christmas employment at HMV, which was good fun! Jimmy Carr came into our store twice, which would be impressive if it wasn't for the fact that I hate Jimmy Carr. But then...

* ...the job's contract ended, thus leaving me unemployed (again). Boooo! Back to watching Jeremy Kyle repeats I go!

* But! I have been quite productive with my new-found spare time. (Of course, it depends on your definition of 'productive).

* I drew THIS, for example! Hee-hee!

* I have also been updating Lord Likely, as well as setting him up a Facebook Group, a Twitter page and even a shop.

* I made these celebrity ghost t-shirts. Here is the ghost of Queen frontman, Freddie Mercury:



I also did Elvis, and Kurt Cobain. Why not buy one?

* I had many poos.

* I found myself getting Popmashed by the excellent Mike Whaite, in celebration of his relaunched Popmash website. Groovy!



* But, best of all, I have met an incredibly beautiful and completely lovely woman, and - rarer still - one who does not seem to be completely repulsed by me, despite me being so wretched. Hooray! She makes me very happy indeed, and is super-special to me already. Bless you, honey!

So yes. Great ups and downs, lefts and rights, but I have been keeping myself busy throughout. I am hoping to be able to bring you some more exciting news shortly, if everything goes according to plan...

Failing that, I shall just fill this blog with nob jokes again, then disappear for months on end.

See you soon!

- Fanton.

Follow me on Twitter. It may or may not be fun, I am not entirely sure.

A New Tenant For The Tardis

I knew this time would come. It was as inevitable as the changing of the seasons, as sure as night follows day. But I didn't expect it to be this sudden.

Yes, Sickbaggers, I am of course referring to the news that David Tennant is leaving Doctor Who, ending his four year stint as the titular timelord in the BBC's long-running sci-fi series.


I had hoped he might hold out for one series under Stephen Moffat's stewardship (the incoming show runner who previously penned excellent Who stories such as Silence in the Library and Blink), but it seems it is not to be. He will appear at The Doctor for five more specials to be broadcast over the next year and a bit, meaning there is just five, short hours of Tennant left to enjoy.

I know Tennant's tenancy of the TARDIS has divided opinion; the majority seem to love him and think he has really made the role his own, while the moaning minority seem to think he is a useless clown who has no place in such a serious-minded piece of powerful drama as Who. To the latter crowd I only have this irrefutable argument to offer: piss off, you tits.

I for one will miss David Tennant's Doctor immensely; I think he has done a bang-on job in balancing the comic with the dramatic, and it is not for nothing that he has become so popular with the audience. But equally I can quite understand his desire to move on before it is too late, and hope he gets to enjoy even bigger success hereafter.

I was going to do an hilarious 'Who Should Be The Next Who' post (what about Russell Brand? LOL! Or Bill Cosby? ROFFLE! Or a cat in a wig?) but quite frankly it is far too soon to be contemplating the next Doctor. The wounds are still raw, dammit.

Now let me be. I have some mourning to do.

Weeeeep.

- Fanton.

An Extra Hour

So, the clocks went back one whole hour today, heralding the end of British Summer Time. Of course, most of us spent this extra time sleeping, but what else could you possibly do with an extra sixty minutes? As ever, Digital Sickbag has the answer!

• Watch an entire episode of 60 Minutes.
• Alternatively, watch two episodes of Hancock's Half Hour.
  
• Bake a potato, then set the clock back, and marvel at how your food was ready in no time at all.
• Refuse to set your watch back the one hour, but change all the rest of the clocks in the house, and then pretend you are a time traveller from the future visiting the past.
• Boil twenty three-minute eggs, one after the other.
  
• Watch part of a shitty film, read some of a rubbish book, or simply spend an hour doing something you don't like. Then, set the clocks back and be safe in the knowledge that you didn't waste any of your precious time doing those things.
• Prepare for the onset of Seasonal Affective Disorder by going out and buying loads of lamps and Prozac.
  
• Before the clocks go back, go out and rob a store, or hot-wire a car or something, and then watch with glee as the time in which you committed your felony is wiped from history, allowing you to completely get away with your crime.
• Make love. Thirty times.
  
• Count to 216,000.
• Go to Greenwich and be really mean to everyone there. It is Greenwich Mean Time now, after all.
• Laugh smugly at people who have forgotten to set their clocks correctly, and revel in their bleary-eyed confusion as they wake up one hour too early.
• Refuse to acknowledge the time change, and insist upon living in your own, personal time-zone.
• Use the extra hour to finally update your crappy blog which you have been neglecting for the past three weeks.

What will YOU do with this extra hour, Sickbaggers?

- Fanton.

When Celebrities Collide

Do you like celebrities?

Of course you do. We all do. But do you, like me, worry that there are maybe too many celebrities in the world today, making it a little more difficult to spread the celeb-love equally to them all?

Thank the Maker, then, for Popmash.

Popmash is the genius creation of awesomely awesome animator Michael Whaite (who I have mentioned before, in equally gushing terms, here and here). The concept of Popmash is simple: take two celebrities and fling them together in a genetic tumble-dryer, and marvel at the freakish composite entity that pops out later.

Already Mike's Popmashing madness has led to two brilliant short cartoons; namely Bee Geesus and Mr. Benn-y Hill. Watch them, they're fab.

Recently Mike has been hard at work expanding his Popmash empire, resulting in a spiffy new web site with the added bonus that you can now purchase fine goods bearing the spliced-up celebrities' likenesses. Most excellently of all, this includes t-shirts, so now you can proudly display your love of two famous folk at once, whilst out and about leading your distinctly un-starry lives! HUZZAH!

Here's just a sample of some of the Popmash apparel you can now purchase:

Brilliant. Clearly, the Popmash phenomenon is only going to get bigger, so hop along to the website now, or directly to the Shopmash store, and snap yourself up some top-quality merchandise before everyone else does. That way you'll look waaaaay cool, and you'll probably get shagged heaps too.*

See you on the red carpet!

- Fanton.




*likelihood dependent on physical repulsiveness.

Fanton: Established 1978

Bloody hell. I am now thirty years old.

Yes, dear readers, as of yesterday I bade a fond farewell to my twenties and found myself staggering into my thirties; 'staggering' being quite the correct word here, as I was partying through Monday night into the wee hours on Tuesday, with some of my very favourite people on the planet. Good times!

I've had lots of people remark on this milestone year, asking me how I feel about hitting the big three-oh. To be honest, I don't really appropriate any large significance to hitting thirty. I certainly don't 'feel' thirty; whether that is due to crippling immaturity and irresponsibility, or whether it is because I have been blessed with incredibly youthful (good) looks, I cannot say. But so far, nothings really changed.

I've just thought: that above statement could be seen as being rather tragic. Here I am, thirty years old, and nothing has really changed over the last few years. Except, y'know, I have no job now.

So, yeah: I'm an awful, thirty year-old jobless loser.

Uh-oh. This party is in danger of going sour. BRING ON THE MUSIC!



I love that tune. For the curious, it is called 'L-O-V-E' and is by a great new band I've recently chanced across called SugaRush Beat Company. Groove-a-licious, as the kids might say. If they were particularly dumb.

Anyway: there we go. Next time I see you, I might have taken to smoking a pipe and wearing a cardigan. But I doubt it.

- Fanton.

I Am Shit, I Am Best

Its been a rather odd day today, all told.

It began terribly when I got fired this morning from my awful, minimum-wage job, for committing the terrible crime of...eating a hotdog. A hotdog that was due to be chucked in the bin anyway, as it was the end of the night and thus was not going to be sold.

And so, for that horrendous act (no doubt causing the multi-million pound company for which I work untold damage and distress), I had my employment terminated. After seven and a half years of loyal service, it turned out that at the end of the day I was worth less to the company than an old, discarded sausage.

And as an added bonus, this took place only four days before my birthday. DOUBLE FUN!

Naturally, I was less than pleased and felt completely and utterly depressed by the whole affair.

However, on the flip-side of this particular coin, was the fact that when I got back to my house, I found that an earlier, off-the-cuff suggestion to The Guardian's 'Comment is Free' on Twitter had resulted in Lord Likely's blog being selected as one of the 'Best of the Web' on their website!

BEHOLD!

Obviously I'm a little aggrieved to see my stuff BELOW a LOLCats-based story (especially being the purveyor of high-quality RIPDogs, myself), but still, there it was. A link to my writing, on The Guardian's website.

Fuck me.

Since then, I've been fielding loads of text messages, emails and Facebook comments either commiserating with me on the loss of my job, or congratulating me on getting a link from The Guardian. I don't know whether I should be wallowing in self-pity and sadness, or leaping for joy and hurling myself into fresh writing work.

Like I said, its been a really odd day.

Now all I have to do is find a way to build upon my writing success, and, y'know...actually get paid to do it, or something. I think that'd be nice.

Either that, or its off to McDonald's.

See you in the dole queue!

- Fanton.

Virtual Wordsack: One

Welcome, dear readers!

Having seen the Sickbag become something of a repository for meandering posts about nothing of any interest lately, I thought it was high time I forced this blog back on track, and restored it to its rightful position as the best place on the internet to find the very finest writing imaginable.

To this end, may I welcome you to a new, regular feature on the Sickbag, which I have called 'Digital Sickbag's Virtual Wordsack' (henceforth known as DSVW, which I admit does sound like a car-simulator for Nintendo's current handheld console of choice).

DSVW will feature some of my own personal poetry, created by my own hands and brain, and shared with you, The Internet. It's about time we had some real culture here, wouldn't you agree?

So here for your enjoyment I present my verse. I hope you enjoy. It.

Love Machine

My pistons are pumping
My gears are turning fast
I'm ready for humping
Inspection I have passed.

My motor is turning
My nuts and bolts are tight
My furnace is burning
I'll be running all night

My crankshaft is cranking
My engine purrs inside
Get ready for spanking
-Oh!
My battery has died.

Oh no!
Now I'm leaking oil
See it drip onto the floor
Girl please don't recoil...

This never happened before.


Splish Splash On My Moustache


Splish Splash, Splish Splash,
Gotta go, really must dash,
Splish Splash, Splish Splash,
There's rain on my moustache.

Aw no look at that it's rainin' down on me,
Coming down hard like an upside-down sea.
This has ruined my day, robbed it of its fizz,
It's like God pulled down his pants and took a mighty whizz.

Splish Splash, Splish Splash,
Gotta go, really must dash,
Splish Splash, Splish Splash,
There's rain on my moustache.

The rain in Spain falls mainly on the plain,
Well I took a plane to Spain during Juan Carlos' reign
And do you know what I saw when I got there?
Everywhere was rained upon, it all got its share.

Splish Splash, Splish Splash,
Gotta go, really must dash,
Splish Splash, Splish Splash,
There's rain on my moustache.

I guess what I'm saying is rain will always get you wet,
I know that's kinda obvious but just don't you forget.
The real reason why the rain has made me so dismayed
Is that its pissed upon my perfectly-planned parade.


Donut

I really don't understand your dislike of the donut
Some people share your views but I simply do not
Why is it that you hate donuts so, what gets you in this knot?
You can tell me honey, let me in your doo-dah nut.

Why do you despise this tasty treat from the bakery?
Did it cheat on you, was it bigamy?
I'm sorry that wasn't very big of me
But I cannot comprehend your hate of this delicacy.

What about the ones with the tasty chocolate icing?
Surely those donuts have got to be somewhat enticing?
Jam donuts I always find so appetising
I really cannot see what it is that you are despising.

Were you bullied by donuts when you were at school?
Did they pick on you and make you look a fool?
'Cos that kind of behaviour is really not cool,
But to take it out on all donuts is just plain cruel.

I'm sorry to go on, girl, but it just shows how much I care,
I hate to see these donuts driving you so very spare,
If you really don't want one then I guess that that's fair,
If you would much prefer, I'll get you an éclair.


To Bille



Oh Billie, Billie, Billie,
Can't you see what you're doing
To my willy, willy, willy?

When I noticed you,
on Doctor Who
You looked so cute I wanted to
Doctor You
We'd fly off in that box of blue,
just like the
Doctor'd do,
We'd find a lonely planet and there we'd screw
I'd really like to
Doggy you.
Yeah!

Now you play a ho
on that TV show
But you're beautiful so
you ain't no ho
I can't believe yo'
would lower yourself so.
But if the rates were reasonable
I'd still give you a go
yeah.

Oh Billie, Billie, Billie,
Can't you see what you're doing
To my willy, willy, willy?

I thank you.

- Fanton.