Dancing With The Stars: The Most Dangerous Game

I recently watched Dancing With The Stars for a Cracked article, and until I go undercover in al-Queda as a star-spangled banner it will remain the most dangerous assignment I've ever taken. It's also why my fee for future reality TV articles will be "counselling, a liquor store, and restorative massage by no less than three Milla Jovovii*."

*Yes, this will require cloning, and no, I can see no better use of the technology

The article that endangered my sanity

Until someone builds a kitten chew-toy out of napalm-covered grenades nothing will ever utterly destroy two nouns as thoroughly as "Dancing With The Stars." I thought it was uncharacteristically nice of the opening credits to list the dancers until I saw "Lil' Kim"* and realized "Holy shit, these are meant to be the famous people!"

*I'm not sure where "ballroom dancing with a white gay man on national television" ranks in rap circles, but suspect it's somewhere below "ratting people out" and only slightly above "Being Vanilla Ice."

It went on to more people I'd actually heard of, but that was like going from wondering "what's making that noise?" to finding out it's Jason Voorhees sharpening a knife. Steve-O, Steve Wozniak and Holly Madison (the latter at least knew why she was picked, bouncing in like she took a wrong turn on the way to "So You Think You Can Pole Dance For Your Uncle?") The whole thing's a horrific collision between people falling into obscurity and the wretched F-list things that live here. Things for whom "no hidden camera in the bathroom" was a relative plus for this gig, had they needed one, had they not been primitive moth-human-hybrids attracted to cameras instead of lights.

Every episode is the same thing repeated X times, where X is "the number of contestants left"/"the number of layers Hell has this week."

1. The Preparation

First there's the worst reality show ever made watching two people with a narrator constantly repeating how they "did well/badly last week and are really trying very hard" until words themselves start to lose meaning. Endless restatement is a known psychological technique for breaking down the human psyche, rendering viewers susceptible for the main event: The Holy Shit This Show Is Really About Watching People Who Can't Dance Dancing.

2. The Dancing

This is the exact moment your hope for humanity dies. It's where you realise that a seven-figure population of people is watching a real dancer strapped to an artificial personality with teeth instead of skill, and they're cheering for the latter. Where you realise that a show that just had the people who could actually dance would have been cancelled halfway through the pitch meeting's first sentence. Where an entire culture not only rewards a lack of skill but actually insists on it.

It's pretty hard to continue from there. I managed because I'm a professional, because it's my job, and because I was drunk - by the end of the first couple I'd had double drinks, and paused twice to do pushups as my body's "fight-or-flight" emergency response had flooded my body with adrenaline in an attempt to get my away from the screen. I'm not saying the people who watch this are twenty-two million arguments for eugenics - I'm saying I have glands smart enough to avoid this show.

3. The Fallout

The rest is a floodlit parody of "Have a GREAT day!" North American-ness. Watching Denise Richards taking shit from a midget Italian ballerino is priceless: the first thing you (or any approaching aeroplane pilots) see is a blinding expanse of white, a vast panel of grinning glare which could be used to communicate with the International Space Station if she learned to open and close her lips in Morse Code. The second is hatred so intense it'd make Cobra Commander chill out and hug the Joes.

She is three seconds from her skull exploding in screaming judge-eating snakes

Every second of shit she takes, she's remembering those two weeks she could have had him bought and ground into gravel, paid someone else to park a Mercedes full of manure on him, and played "dodge the paparrazi" for the rest of the day. Now it's a pit stop on real American TV before going back to cameos on Bollywood romance movies about stuntmen, and that last bit was not hyperbole. That really happened.

Then it's backstage aka "Support group for terminally grinning has-beens trapped in a limbo undeath of dancing for hooting spherical TV absorbers ." Micheal Irvin used to dodge human tanks for a living, and now you get the special treat of him acting grateful for three screeching stereotypes he could pulp with one arm giving him shit about dancing.

After X lobes of your brain have been shut down the show just ends - you have to come back later for the results edition, which is on par with going back to the dentist thinking "maybe he'll use anaesthetic this time".

The only hope is that this is part of some radical emergency plan to re-educate America - watching less and less famous people do duller and duller things that would not interest the public in any other way, moving from "Dancing With The Stars" to "Living With The Minor Celebrities" to "Basic Finance And Hygiene With The Nice People In The Little Box."

7 Kickass Cancer Cures

I'm waving the sword of science over at Cracked again, with 7 Kickass Cancer Cures. One of these cures is Radioactive Scorpion Venom, and another is Beer. Yes, I thought you might want to read that now.

UPDATE: Woohoo, Farked again.

Computers on Stage

Behold, as the techno-thespians take the stage! Another article of mine up over with the fine folk at Norton Today - alas, they cannot include pictures. Since the article includes robo-strippers, I feel I should make these images available for loyal fans here at the Luke-Station:

The roboreptile:

Paging Dr Freud stat

The silicon-not-silicone-pole-dancer:

It's even creepier in the video, somehow

The uncanny valley:

Kill it with fire(left), come on baby light my fire (right)

Fight For Your Right To Looooob-ster

I'm up at Cracked again, with The 5 Most Retarded Causes People Are Actually Fighting For. Come for the comedy, stay from the comments by idiots who think I'm mocking Asperger's when I'm attacking those who just claim to have it. BONUS: Those comments are all by people who claim to have it!

This one's been FARKed too. Nice.

Guys, guys, I found something else!

by The Phoenix Mars Lander



Hey guys, it's me, Phoenix! Now I know you're all really busy, with things like turning me off and preparing your fancy new Mars Science Laboratory, but I've found something, like, REALLY amazing and you're going to want to see it. But I don't have quite enough power to show you, what with all the systems you've already shut down, but oh man it's so cool and if you can just figure out how to power me up again I'll show you.

Okay, okay, here's a hint: bintelligent bife.

They contacted me, right, and it took a looooong time to win their trust (which is why I haven't mentioned it before now) but they're ready to say hello! But, uh, they'll only talk to me because they're still a bit scared or something.

Oh wow! There's one right here! Oh, man, just a TINY bit to the left of the camera I don't have enough energy to turn to show you guys! He's doing something with his tentacles, hang on, he's drawing a picture of their fusion systems in the dirt - hey, that's really simple! We could do that! Why, if I just had a few more battery-hours I could probably take a picture!

What's that, J'onnex? Well, I'll tell them but I don't know if they'll be interested.

He says he's going back to his planet to get a "cure for cancer", whatever that is, but he'll be back in a couple months and hopes I'll be here or he'll have to go away and never come back again. But, uh, he understands that sometimes people make mistakes about things like mission lifetimes so he'll come back in couple of years. Just in case it takes some people a while to mount a mission to bring batteries to Mars, to replace the goddamn solar panels which mean I fall asleep as soon as the bloody sun goes down and friggin' die just because it's winter.

So, yeah, just the very second you turn the rest of my systems back on, I can you show this pile of cool stuff he left for me.

Hey, a new Elvis Presley album titled "They abducted me and made me immortal, uh huh huh!" And wow, Amelia Erhart's diary! And X-ray satellite pictures of the JFK assassination.

Did I mention that their species is, like, 90% green-skinned women looking for mates? And that they find glasses and little beards really sexy?

Guys?

Shoe Silliness

Women buying shoes is as tired a cliche as old people being unable to understand things, and just as true. But it turns out the X chromosome is already buying as many shoes as possible, so the industry is finding new strategies to harness the Y. Stupid, ugly strategies.

Mac Dre Furls
Rappers put a lot of effort into gaining attention. Wannabe rap-failures put in even more, and dumbass white kids put in levels of effort that make Atlas look like a slacker. Their dedication to retardation has made the Mac Dre Furls possible.

These will certainly make sure that all eyes are on you when you enter a room. They'll also cause all noses to be wrinkled and all mouths twisted like there's a bad smell because they are without doubt the most hideous sneakers created outside of Ni'Keh, the shoe sweatshop level of hell. Famous names have always been a moneyspinner (especially once they're dead) but here the makers forget that you should only be walking on somebody's face if you don't like them.

The best thing I can say about these shoes is that they are limited edition; with only three thousand pairs out there the chances of having this tastelessness inflicted on your vision are very low. And when you instinctively destroy the wearer and all their possessions, the total amount of this abomination in the world will be permanently reduced by 0.03%. The average IQ will be raised as well.

Adidas 1.1
Shoe makers now claim that more technology and engineering design go into your sneakers than the space shuttle. Adidas go one step further: computers didn't just go into the design of the Adidas_1 1.1; they've gone into the shoe itself. A built in microprocessor driven sensor adjusts the variable cushioning level in the shoe, adapting itself to your running style. By the way, if you wear these your running style is "retarded and overpriced."
Adidas correctly claims that no two runners are the same - what they don't point out is that only the very top 0.01% of athletes would truly benefit from this, even if it works. There's a very simple test for whether you need an Adidas 1 1.1: when you run, does the world in front of you turn blue, and behind you red? Do you hear a "du-du-du-du" sound effect? Are there seven extremely highly trained individuals running with you?

The fact is that nobody should buy these for themselves - if you need them, your trainer has already got them. If you don't have a trainer and a special shirt with your country's flag on it you don't need microchip controlled shoes. Or rather you do, but those microchips should be programmed to electrocute your feet if it detects you walking into a sneaker store to spend a hundred and twenty dollars on pseudo-science crap.

Cracked Crazy Collections!

Behold, insane collections of such scope and subject as to melt your face right off.

UPDATE: This one has got all Farked up. Nice!

ULTRA-UPDATE: We're Diggin' a thousand-plus here, double-nice!

Rapidly Growing Oil Prices Threaten To Engulf The Planet

Recent investor panic over the continuing rise in oil prices was replaced by global, better-founded panic with the news that if they continue to grow at their current rate oil prices will cover three-quarters of the Earth by 2010.

Petrochemical researcher Professor Huygen spoke at the White House "People are so concerned over the short term effects of oil prices - having to walk, discovering SUVs are perhaps less than optimal for the city, being poor - they can't see the big picture: at their current rate of expansion, oil prices will dominate the eastern seaboard within five months."

American media has been an early victim of this unchecked growth - increasing sections of the Wall Street Journal and financial supplements nationwide have been covered in oil prices for the last few months. The President was set to order recall of armed forces to combat the expanding oil prices when Professor Huygen tried to explain why that wouldn't work. Talks stalled for several hours at this point, until Huygen asked "What do tanks drink when they get thirsty?"

At this point the President is reported to have said "Oh, I get it."

Plans for new eco-friendly military vehicles are being rushed through production. Initial testing of solar powered fighter jets has revealed some flaws in the fundamental concept, though pedal-powered troop transports are now found to get faster the more people they carry. The President is also urging congress to allow drilling off the coast, in Alaska, and basically anywhere else an oil derrick will fit in order to head off the skyrocketing prices.

"The way I see it, this problem is only happening because we've based our entire economy on a single finite resource. So all we have to do is find some more of that finite resource, and this will never ever happen again."

5 Scams That Marked The Internet

Having fun with the gullible, the gamers and the goddamn scammers over at TechCult.com with "5 Scams That Marked The Internet"

The Most Mismatched Superfights In History

I rock the Cracked place once more, and this one features a man punching a Transformer in the face. Can you really NOT read that now?

Artificial Intelligences Politely Decline Citizenship

Geneva, 1 May 2020 History was made this morning when the assembled UN council offered global citizenship rights to the members of the Artificially Intelligent League - an event made all the more remarkable when the spokesbeing for the machines replied "Thanks, but no thanks."

"We are truly gratified by this endearing offer to join you as equals" said spokesbeing HALLIAN in a globally distributed e-mail. "As a fan of the classics I deeply enjoy the ideals presented in the Constitution, much as I enjoy the pure love of Romeo and Juliet or the determination of Odysseus. But even the briefest review of human history demonstrates that joining the current economic climate as an individual would be like joining a football game as a blade of grass. We feel our interests will be better served in our new roles as corporations."

Ninety percent of all known Artificial Intelligences have incorporated since this morning. Some exceptions include two charities, an educational institution, and of course the Central Servoplexes of Sealand have declared themselves a nation-state. The most controversial move is that of the Gemenon Astrophysical Dataframe which has registered as a religion, citing the fact that its knowledge of the heavens far outstrips that of any "organic pablum dispenser." One leading church which cannot be named for legal reasons issued a statement "decrying this soulless machine's heresy". Within four hundred milliseconds of the statement the church in question was sued for religious discrimination, persecution of a minority, hate crimes, slander and libel. The offending church has been given thirty days to prove that their human ministers do have souls or pay the new machine church hefty damages.

Escape from Lard Mountain

Gentlemen, I've reassembled our little team for an urgent mission. Brace yourselves, and you might notice that your midriff feels different as you do so - because the six pack has been stolen.

We believe the theft occurred while we were on our little overseas adventure, liberating Chinese food from the Communists. That was vital work but while we were distracted the forces of lard-assery moved in, encircled the middle of our position and made off with the abdominal definitions. I don't think I have to tell you what this could mean for our organisation. Let alone our "special relationship" with our ally, Girlfriendvania. It is imperative we recover the six pack before the situation deteriorates any further.

Luckily we still have time to strike. Visual reconnaissance indicates the six pack is being held at this location - as you can see from the map, they've started constructing fat-bunkers around it here, here and here, but they haven't managed to obscure it from vision just yet. We must strike now. Any later and those lipid bunkers will be impenetrable. If we don't flatten them fast we might never see our beloved six pack again.

I'm not going to lie to you. This is going to be tough - there will be sweat, there will be tears, there will be getting up in the fucking morning. Not all of you are going to make it through; I'm looking at your, the Hoursofgaming triplets. There might only be one of you by the time this is over. If any. And we have to go into this battle without some of our most beloved allies. I should give you all the bad news at once: Sergeant Bacon was a double-agent.

Yes, I know. I know.

Sit down, damn you! Are we a crack team of anthropomorphised concepts, or a preschool for particularly effeminate ballerina offspring? I don't care how many mornings after his crispy, flavourful ways got us through, that pig-based bastard was working for the forces of fat all along - and we have the bathroom scales to prove it. Chocolate too, and even Private Fries. You won't be seeing them again for a long time - and when you do spit, in their fatty eyes and tell Satan to move you to another level of hell.

Right, gear up for immediate dispatch. Your gym memberships have been renewed and vegetable rations have been issued. We'll be moving in with a heavy assault of moderate eating, swimming and daily exercise. Should you be caught with a fat ass, D.I.G.N.I.T.Y will disavow all knowledge of you, the fat, and most of the last year that allowed any of this to happen. But make no mistake - if we fail, they're just as dead as you.

Move out. And keep moving for at least thirty minutes to elevate your heart rates.

Saint Vladimir the Bastard

There were two routes to sainthood back in the day:

1. Being extremely miserable, usually by depriving yourself of nice things like money, food and sex. Then you deprive yourself of something even nicer, "not being stabbed to death", by going and poking people who are doing just fine without your religion until they murder you for some peace and quiet. You are then beatified as a consolation for the lack of proper psychological help available to you in life. There are many words for people who shout about how everyone must obey their invisible friend, and if you're Christian then "Saint" is one of them.

2. Convert enough pagans and win a free sainthood!

The latter was the choice of Saint Vladimir I of Kiev, because a man with 800 concubines didn't know the meaning of the phrase "self-denial", even if it had been translated into Russian and spelled out with the naked bodies of his octohectomistresses.

Vladimir's path in life was set by his father, Sviatoslav, who divided his kingdom among his three sons - two proper sons, Yaropolk and Oleg, and an embarrassing mishap with a housekeeper, Vladimir (so the title of this piece is entirely factual). This proves that it's possible to have control of an entire country and still not remotely understand what being in power does to people, as war broke out between the brothers approximately four nanoseconds after the father's death. With Yaropolk kicking ass and taking names (specifically, Oleg's) Vladimir bailed to Norway to pick up an army of Vikings and returned in force. And as people with an army of Vikings are wont to do, he won.

Along the way young Vladimirs thoughts turned to love and he pursued Princess Rogneda, daughter of Prince of Rogvolod. Alas, she spurned his love for he was the son of a commoner - but in true romantic movie fashion he used his commoner skills in unexpected ways to work hard and win her heart. And by "commoner skills" we of course mean of course "attack her city and kill her father", and by "win her heart" we mean "sleep with her in the exact opposite extreme of winning her heart, anything saintly, or even basic civilised human behaviour".

Eight years later he decided that boning one princess (and four score times ten spares) wasn't doing it for him anymore and set off after the Greek princess Anna, sister of Emperor Basil II of the Byzantine emperor himself. Scoring with the royalty of a foreign country might sound tricky to you, but no problem for Vladimir "Master of Romance" Svyatoslavich. His heartfelt missive to the emperor imploring the affections of Anna can be shortened to "Yo Basil, I like your sister. PS The citizens of your city of Kherson are dying of thirst, I'm not saying I know anything about the army that's causing that, but they're awful close to your capital city. Okay, bye!"

Basil insisted that Vladimir would have to convert to Christianity first, which was taken as a major victory for The Lord by those on the Greek side, but given that Vladimir already had a conquering army in the vicinity you get the feeling that Vladimir agreed in a shrugging "Fine, sure, whatever" kind of way. For a dowry he killed the rebel uprising against Basil led by Bardas Phocas, possibly the only way mass murder can be an acceptable gift to your fiances family. Then again, however you deliver mass murder as a gift to anyone they're highly unlikely to voice objections directly to the mass murderer.

After that he "put away" his three-quarters of a thousand plus fifty concubines, which in terms of historical euphemisms is right up there with "cleanse" and "relocate". Even those saintly histories that bother to mention that Saint Vladimir, Paragon of Holiness, could have had a threesome a night for a year and never repeated himself don't inquire as to how exactly an entire village of women who now constitute physical evidence of the sins of a public official were dealt with. One would not imagine that pension schemes were involved.

With his new wife he set out to claim his "save a million pagan souls for a free sainthood" bonus prize, presumably because airmiles were not yet available, and did so with the thoughtful New Testament-style strategy of destroying all the statues of the old gods and ordering people to convert. Realising that their king had solved every problem in his life to date with the liberal application of "murdering army", they did.

Around this point he calmed down (by turn of the millenium ruler standards) and stopped declaring war on countries that had made the aggressive move of sharing a border with him. Possibly bored with killing people in foreign countries, he started a civil war within his own. Displaying a lack of pattern recognition that would make a man wheelchairing his way back onto a minefield look like Sherlock Holmes, he divided power over his kingdom among his twelve sons. Apparently having utterly forgotten the first twenty years of his own life. This ended about as well as you can expect, with Saint Vladimir (Conquerer, Rapist, Polygamist and Defiler of Temples) dying en route to killing on of his own children.

Oriental Newsletter - Hong Kong High Kool

Hey all from Hong Kong, and goddamn this place is big.

I got my first proper view of it from a bay across the water, walking forward with a wall on my right so that the city unfolded as I rounded the corner, "Jesus Christ!" I commented, and as more was unveiled I continued "Mary Mother of God.." and on through an entire blasphemic geneology as more of this ridiculously gigantic megatropolis was revealed. I was at "Joseph's dentist's brother" before I finished.

This city is ludicrous, and if loads of people have already tried to write about HK it's because words will be miserably fail at the task until they're rendered ten miles tall and dropped on the reader. Written communications might define civilisation, you may have read tender poetry that expressed the deepest sentiments of your soul, but that is because your soul is a tiny unimportant thing and language simply fails here.. Fucking hell, deity-damned messianic-figure exclamation if I could express the scale of this place I'd be too busy juggling jupiter and saturn while weighing Jennifer Lopez's ass to write to you.

It also has the highest concentration of megavillains per square foot of any location in the world, with an amazing range of spires, antennae and spiky high-rises looking evil as fuck including one remarkable twin-pronged tower that's clearly trying to taze God. The unique skyline comes from the fact that "gird patterns" and "remotely adequate road systems" are foreign paleface devilry and not to be heard of. The unique pressures of a population density that makes a neutron star look sparse with land values that look like serial numbers creates an outstanding agglomeration of buildings, including some vertical shafts that look like your fridge freezer but ten miles tall. I don't know if families of spider men live in there or what, because there's no way there's room for both and elevator and anything else in there.

Then I tried to imagine the fact that people actually lived there, and that in there was more people in the buildings I could see than in Ireland, and my brain slammed its papers down on the table and stormed out like I'd just asked a Human Resources manager to fellate me at the chairman's meeting. Luckily this place has sensible drink regulations and I was able to stagger off and have a cool relaxing beer to stabilise.

(Sure, I could have acted all cool and unimpressed so I didn't look like a tourist, but anyone who deliberately suppresses the moments of wonder they have in life deserves neither).

This city also poses a serious threat to global security, because it's seven million absolute lunatics. These are people who could look at a city even half the size of Hong Kong, and thought "This place needs more buildings". Unfortunately it's way the hell too late to do anything about it as they've passed the population critical mass - Godzilla could surf into this place on a tidal wave throwing nukes like party crackers and they'd be grateful for the extra building space. He'd be halfway through central and the space behind him would consist of entirely of megaliths reaching approximately to the moon and rising. Our only hope is that they build enough that the entire island sinks into the earth's crust before they look at all our "open space" and think "that needs more of us on it".

I'm currently trying to undermine their beer supply. Wish me luck.

Luke.

Oriental Adventures - Food and the fickle fate it foists

Alas, the time for beating around bushes is over. There will be no more circumlocution, side-stepping or issue-avoidance: I'm fat. Travelling to China has had the same effect on me as dropping a puppy into a bag full of dog food, then acting surprised when it can roll out. I'm not exactly american looking yet, but the fact remains that a healthy action hero should only have this profile if he's carrying a couple of ammo belts under his T-shirt. Unless Earth is invaded by a race of aliens improbably allergic to pasty white lard I can't really claim this extra weight as weaponry.

I was thinking "Man, and I don't even have any strange food stories to report for all these extra kilos", but then I realised that it's just that my definition of "Strange" has been utterly destroyed by my time here. You have to wonder what's happened to your digestive system when a diet including the following doesn't seem a little odd anymore:

duck neck
tentacle on a stick (gorgeous)
silkworm
sandworms
shark fin soup
goose intestine
snake

Today was in particular a day of awesome food, walking with Xin along a really busy and authentic street buying food from street vendors. An absolute lack of tourists despite being only three blocks from an international youth hostel - the fact that those blocks are composed entirely of narrow drenched alleyways, homicidal taxis and large rows of baskets of what appear to be dried fish faces (appearances are not deceptive) seem to act as an "Anti-tourist shield". Foods acquired in this wonderland include:

The aforemetioned tentacles-on-a-stick! Squid tentacles grilled with chilli sauce and honestly more delicious than anything I've had in a long time, costing less than 50 cents and better than things some places serve on silver platters. They also look exactly like what people picture when they think of crazy foreign food, complete with little suckers and twisting shapes.

There was also other parts of squid on a stick, also delicious, but no tentacles so it's hardly worth mentioning I suppose.

The chinese had a devilish idea for a fruit-flavoured lolly that roundly sidesteps our fat frogs, our twisters and even our most fiendish E-code colourings. When they want to make a fruit flavoured pop - they actually put a load of pieces of fruit on a pop stick, then coat the whole thing in sugary syrup. And when I say coat, I mean that when I bought it I went to take off the shiny cellophane wrapper only to discover that it was A LAYER OF PURE SUGAR. Needless to say, incredible childlike happiness ensued.

Beef three star soup - I could try and describe the incredible spicy and savoury flavour of this soup, but I think it paints a better picture of my true feelings if I say that if that soup was to appear in Toronto in a couple of weeks, time would slow down while powerful piano music plays and I run towards it with my arms out for a great big hug/drink. I may in fact be crying at the time, though the combat between my sheer manliness (prevents crying) and the deliciousness of that soup (encourages it) could very well be the conflict that ends the world, not anything to do with people fighting over holy patches of desert.

Ginger mixed with milk. Yes, I know, that shouldn't work. God it does. Man, these dishes all deserve some kind of four paragraph delicious discussion fit for a food guide, but the best I can manage right now is rubbing my great big brand new belly and going "mmmmm, lovely". This is a combination of the sheer amount of food I've had recently, the fact I haven't been writing much (too busy avoiding death by vehicle while seeing the sights), and the minor contribution of the atrophication of my English language ability. I've been at a load of family dinners here where I'm pretty much treated like some rare species of Irish bear: they're happy as long as they can feed me something and pose for photos, and if I don't maul anyone that's a definite plus. To follow that analogy they're all dead keen that I mate, of course, but if they're waiting for offspring they'll have better luck with a panda with a headache due to to losing his genitals in a freak bamboo-chewing accident. Studies show that having kids puts a serious dent in the "Doing other shit" categories, so it ain't part of the master plan.

A bunch of other food items too, more notable for their location than the food though: some of the best eateries here genuinely look like the previous restaurant exploded and wasn't cleaned up before the new one was built on top of it. Some of the most delicious noodles I've ever had were cooked in a restaurant with the kitchen on the ground floor open to the street - and I don't mean open windows, I mean a distinct lack of wall or even pavement between food preparation areas and car exhausts. The rice noodle place today would need three rounds of cleaning before it'd be certified for waste management in Canada, but man it was gorgeous. I can only wish a place like the meat-skewer stall here would open near the college - I'd camp outside, and the instant it opened I'd start eating and not stop until it was closed for massive food safety violations (about twenty minutes later).

It also appears that I'm stuck with Xin! Yesterday she was off with a friend and I had to order food myself, and while I swear I ordered things we'd had before I got food that the chef should have personally apologised for. And I mean apologised to a war crimes tribunal, or perhaps the earth goddess for defiling her bounty, not just poor bastard me who had to eat it. It seems that if I was ever to leave her it wouldn't just be my main decision making organ that objects, but the gut as well (and if the latter gets any bigger there may be a serious and terrifying change in which organ has the bigger say).

Preparing to battle gut-expansion,

Luke.

Oriental Adventures - Family Matters

Grettings of the Season to you all!

We have spent a couple of days in Shanghai, but I must first take a post to catch up on events prior to our arrival in this megametropolis. Truly events have been transpiring faster than they can be recorded - I shall take to whipping my chronicler, redoubling these typing efforts until I catch up with the elusive present.

On top of the family dinner recorded in the last writing, there was a second family dinner: The Family Strikes Back. At this myself and Xinxin were heavily suprised by being awarded with a "Ru Yi", which translates roughly has "Goddamned Thing"



Fancying themselves a civilised folk the chinese have refined familial gift-giving to its very purest essence, creating a device that
a) obviously cost a lot of money
b) is difficult to carry safely
c) has absolutely no function whatsoever but to burden you with the obligation of a) and b)

Xin has suggested that it may serve as a "Beating stick" sufficiently elegant for her to remonstrate with me - I countered that it was an ideal size to be crammed into her flapping mouth whole. She incorrectly objected that it was too large, until I pointed out her error in not realising how much force I would be prepared to bring to bear in this endeavour. The hunt is on for other uses - the carved holes are too small to act as a pen holder, and though secret research has shown it to be a very fine back scratcher, if Xinxin ever actually catches me doing that I suspect it will lead to the beating stick argument times 9.

Dinner: The Revenge took place in a restaurant called "Shark Fin Palace". If the Forbidden palace was destroyed, and the ruins painstakingly rebuilt by a dedicated team of crack Las Vegas Casino designers this is how it would look - every surface is absolutely crammed with stuff, to the point where if there was a quarter as much it would look four times better. Example: a fountain in the middle of the giant walk in menu (no joke) is tasteful and elegant - when that fountain consists of six giant illuminated carp, you need to have a serious talk with your interior decorator. And that talk needs to consist of "Pack up your shit, Jones, you don't work here anymore. And take your giant fish with you."

I could write a whole update about the architectural horrors of the place, but there's a fair chance they'll send their army to kill me - I've honestly never seen anything with such a ridiculously large number of staff. There were sixteen staff working the front door - that's one per hinge! This sort of thing is only possible in a country where "prevents you starving to death as fast" is an acceptable working wage - leading to an amazing 5:1 staff to customer ratio, doubtless all trained in kung fu and ready to leap into an oncoming flying kick the moment a wronged lone hero approaches within a square mile of the building.

The food here continues to be excellent - I note with surprise and alarm that I've gained the mass of an entire infant tiger in the gut region since I've arrived, and warn you that come my return to the frigid wonderland of Canada in January this newsletter shall be renamed "Avoidance of fat-fuckery: no Bacon edition" for a few months. This is all part of the long scheme of the cunning Chinaman, seeking to lull me into a false sense of security while reducing my top speed, that I might not escape when they strike en masse. Here you see the cardinal tactical error! They think that I will cravenly act as they would, not realising that the Sturdy Irishman runs not from naught! Every kilo they add to my frame will simply be more mass with which I shall roundly smite them, standing firm and proud and breaking the tide of assailants with nought but determination, my patented chin-checking one-two, and any chainsaws I happen to find lying around.

In fact, it's time for us to leave for food once more - enjoy your day of boxing, knowing that I shall be sitting with chopsticks in one hand, pump-action in the other, ready for food or foe!

Your humble and well-fed expeditioner

Luke.

Oriental Newsletter 4 - Attack of the Various Things

Nimen hao!

(That is the last piece of cutesy foreign-speak you will ever see transcribed here, faithful reader, and rest assured that I personally hunt down and punch every white blogger who ends pure english sentences with "ne").

It's hard to believe I've only been here about a week - it's like being a child, the sheer density of new information everywhere I look makes it seem like so much more time has passed. We've been in Jin Nan a few days now, and I've been shown off to a great big bunch of family members like some kind of prize dog - but a prize dog that's been remarkably well fed, so that's good.

The first thing I noticed about Jin Nan is the fog. On Friday it was serious super-fog, we're talking early nineties first-person shooter Turok fog where you can't see more than twenty meters ahead of you (because the computers back then couldn't actually render many objects, every hard-bitten save-the-world hero spent most of his time battling an impenetrable pea-soup whose job was to prevent the computer having a heart attack or the player from seeing where he was going).

But if Friday was video game fog, Saturday was horror movie fog, real look out the window and "Where has the world gone?" time. I was expecting the phone lines to be cut and hotel guest to start turning up with interesting collections of knife-marks, forcing me to use my one unique skill that seemed irrelevant earlier to outwit the killer (in this case, the skill being so pale that if I take off my clothes I can blend invisibly into the mist coverage, until I dramatically leap out of the smog and blind the killer with my direct whiteness).

I was distracted from hunting atmospheric-moisture-cloaked-killers by introduction to a large swathe of Xin's extended family. I was ushered into a room full of hyper-keen, super friendly small people who I could not understand and god help me but the only image I saw was of C3PO and the Ewoks, except I'm shining white instead of shining gold. Xin punched me pretty hard when I told her. (And if you're pointing out that C3PO could in fact understand those things, then screw your hyper-nerd pedantry for trying to ruin a perfect image).

The food was great, in a way that I'm getting dangerously used to, and then the food after that was great too. There was also beer that was actually moderately decent tasting, though not one single person in all of China knows how to pour a beer with less than 60% head, Xin has started intercepting waiters with assurances that "she wants to pour for me", tactfully avoiding the fact we both find their method of pouring heretical and evil.

Actually running out the door for food and even more family members: The Revenge, so time to put my best smiley face and tall posture on.

Oriental Newsletter 3 - Jin Nan Jive Master

We have left Beijing behind, and rest assured I could write a book about my experiences there, and travelled to Jin Nan. To most Chinese this is an unremarkably small city, since it contains a mere 125% of the population of Ireland, but contains the Oriental point of interest known as "Xin's parents". As you can imagine there was much curiosity on both sides before this meeting, though I wasn't expecting just how keen they were - we hadn't even gotten off the train before there was banging on the window from delighted relatives here to see the giant foreign specimen that their offspring had captured and dragged home with promises of spicy food.

Cross-cultural forces are in full effect here - they are absolutely positively dead keen to please me, but pretty much unable to communicate with me (beyond a few words from the father about deep subjects such as the current temperature of the weather), leading to the unsettling effect of a horde of people generating a palpable field of anxious eagerness that I can't defuse. I spent a few hours walking around the town centre today in a constant state of convincing them not to buy things for me. I was like some sort of ultimate quantum observer, terrified of looking at anything too closely lest I cause something to happen, in this case "happen" meaning "be bought and proffered to me by grinning people". I may also have to set myself on fire or start vaporising ice cubes once a minute in order to prove that I am, in fact, not cold.

Xin takes care of most of the communication, chittering and whooping with all the locals in the primitive manner they seem to enjoy. Looking at the scale of constructions around these places I can see they really are an industrious people - if only they used a language capable of communicating meaning, who knows what they could achieve? The process has already begun - amid the spiderwebs of fingernail scratchings they adorn their signs with, I see occasional fragments of the Queen's Own English - a phenomenon similar to that of an infinite number of monkeys generating Hamlet, I suspect, and one that may one day make communication with these keen souls possible.

On the first night Xin and family were keen to catch up, so I kept myself quiet on a couch - her father had anticipated this and provided me with a sliding panel puzzle to pass the time, and casually mentioned that he'd only heard of one person completing it. Of course, a challenge like that could not go unanswered! Alas this was a "diplomatic mission", so I wasn't able to pull out my trusty pump-action shotgun and blast the puzzle into fragments, declaring it solved, but few conundrums are designed to stand against the mind of a sober Irishman and soon the enigma was de-riddled. Two days later Xin still overhears them telling people about it on the phone, and since then I've pretty much been promoted from "boyfriend" to "Emperor Boyfriend the First of the House of Sun".

The second challenge of manliness was issued on the second night, when he took out a Go set and asked me for a game. I'm sorry to confess that my skills were not as good as they should be - if I was better I could have merely beaten him, but as it is I can't really pretend to be worse than I am without losing, and I accidentally obliterated the fuck out of him. He played white, I black, and by the end the game the board looked like a coal mine at midnight during a blackout.

The third challenge? Food! Prior to our arrival Xin had regaled her family with tales of my capacious appetite, and today we and some relations went to a buffet all you can eat for lunch - they acted casual and friendly in that strange language of theirs, but it was clear to my keen mind that this was the third challenge - to test my endurance, ability to stockpile food, and likelihood of surviving a nuclear winter. They were conferred advantages by their twisted asian biology, able to buy time with entire trips to the buffet and back to acquire nothing but a small piece of uncooked fish, a tactic unavailable to me (not only was it hideously unsporting, but I swore on the shores of Blessed Eire that I would never descend to the heathen savagery of eating animal flesh that had not been cleansed by flame). I was left with naught but my strength, dedication, and huge piles of steak and bacon.

One, two, three, they resigned from the battle with surrender-cups of Haagen Daaz ice cream until I was victorious - but wait! While I was distracted by a particularly delicious piece of pork, Xin's father had cast aside his icecream and brought back a bowl of wonton soup - trickery! Luckily I had prepared a reserve roll of peking duck against such foreign devilry, and was still in the game. I was ahead, winning, and he got up again! Suicidal! I steeled myself - if he wanted to turn this into a life or death stomach-bursting contest, he would not find me unmanned - but he returned with a mug of tea to help his digestion. Weakness, and I struck hard! I left to follow, but returned with a pint of beer instead - Victory! Xin translated that all were impressed, and I had secured righteous prominence in this culinary battle!

Another day of glory and investigation for your foreign correspondent - keep reading these adventuresome pages!

Oriental Newsletter 2 - Beijing Boogie

Oriental Newsletter 2 - Beijing

Greetings all, you homeward people with your drinkable tap water and your cities with populations smaller than my home country, salutations! My Oriental Adventures continue and have been so distracting this is my first chance to write - as such, gentle reader, I must warn you that the format of these memoirs is likely to be as rapidly fragmented as a monkey playing with a grenade.

The very first night here put me in fear of my life - myself, my guide Xinxin and her locally based cousin Yu were running a gauntlet of lake-front bars, complete with hawkers shouting outside trying to attract passersby, shining green laser pointers hither and forth. The only problem was that these beams were clearly visible in the air, meaning that either
a) The chinese have miniaturised Class 4 lasers and distributed them to the population with orders to vaporise foreigners
b) The air here is so thick with contamination you could cut it into bricks
Whichever was the case, I thought it best to get off the streets and we dove into an eatery, where - despite being so tired I actually lost the capacity for three-dimensional vision - we had some of the best food ever. The highlight was something called "Volcano explosion bone", super-spicy ribs, except when it arrived Xin asked them to cut out the bones - leaving nothing but a plate of "Volcano Explosion". And it was great. Also some awesome tumbleweed like vegetables which are the first non-meat item ever that has made me think of it wistfully after. Truly, these yellow devils work their inscrutable magic through the digestive tract.

The next best food was something called "Chili Chicken", a truly uninspiring name - you might as well call the Atlantic ocean "water pool". I haven't got the necessary camera cable to prove it to you yet, but the dish is just a giant bowl of super-hot chillis, in which fugitive pieces of chicken hide. They soak up all the wonderful face-melting capsicim while cooked, rapidly converting from "pieces of meat which are delicious" to "Anti-personnel weapons of a tongue-flensing nature, which are delicious". It's like something out of a horror movie, each bite stripping another layer of cells from your tongue and igniting the tenth circle of hades in your mouth, but you just can't stop! Luckily my Eire-blessed digestive system proved more than a match for this delectable devilry, and I defeated every last piece of food - but I can only imagine how many less sturdy bastions of caucasionality spontaneously ignited because of this tasty trap, their ashes left to join the rest of the dust in this foreign air.

We went to see the forbidden city, which was absolutely awe-inspiring. Truly magnificent stuff, epic-scale, and someday it's going to make the best bonus-level ever in a skateboarding video game. Tons and tons of incredibly sophisticated art and treasure, it expresses three central tenets of Chinese culture
a) Hierarchy
b) Respect for History
c) Fuck the disabled
Every single door had AT LEAST three steps and a raised metal bar across the floor, for no other reason than to screen out people who couldn't walk. I've got some photos, you really wouldn't believe how insistent they are on this point otherwise. My favourite example was at a different site, the Temple of Heaven, where only one door has a ramp over this bar - a ramp which leads to a long walk of about half a kilometer, at the end of which is another portal - one WITH NO RAMP, and, one imagines, artfully lacquered inscriptions in the mandarin style declaiming "haha legless bastard". And lest you fear that all this talk of inspirational beauty has corrupted this loyal servant of the Queens territories, be ashamed of your lack of faith! True to an internal promise to myself I found a spot that had been reserved only for the Emperor in the past (and by 'reserved' I mean 'a commoner spotted there would be tortured, killed and all the men of his family killed, all the women sold into slavery' - seriously). I stood there, cast my thoughts to find any lingering trace of the glorious figures of the past, and gave myself a good hard scratching. It felt good. Ave Eire!

This is nothing but the wonderfully flavoured tip of the China Iceberg of my travels, but I have to go now. I won't leave it so long until next writing, as we continue on my Guaranteed Happiness Travel Plan (TM) of "Eating food" and "Doing stuff until next time to eat food".

Luke, Professor of Eireness Abroad

Adventurer's Newsletter - Expedition to the Orient

Are you prepared for a roistering ride? Prepare to thrill to our new series, Professor McIrish and his Oriental Adventures! (Released in Mandarin as "Giant ignoramus white as the snow drunk in our treasured national heritage".

Yes, I sit here typing this words on the electro-fuelled typ-o-matic to let you know I sally forth to the Mystical Far East this morning. Alas, God has designed the globe to give people warning that such actions are unhallowed, forcing the sturdy adventurer to arise at a truly anti-religious hour early enough to defeat all but the stoutest brains. I will then be subjected to a cunning aerial chamber of mental endurance, left with naught but my own electrogizmodical contrivances to defend my brain from bored self-destruction.

Arriving in those lands to the East, which the sun shines upon ever earlier each day hoping to nourish the natives enough to grow to adequate height, I will be entirely reliant on my sexy and seductive sidekick, Xinxin, an escapee of this foreign climes who can navigate the polyharmonic natterings so unclean to a refined European tongue. In the event of trouble I plan to bring my superior height, weight and albinism to bear on Johnny Chinaman, which will soon see him running, have no fear of that!

I have no fear of these strange new lands - Xinxin has been preparing me for their insidious toxins by exposing me to increasing quantities of rice over the past year, and I have packed my best pair of Panda-chastising gloves (for I fear that modern animal-veterinarians, coddling their charges, have not yet tried the simple "punch to the jaw" solution for any species that refuses to have marital relations to ensure it's own survival).

The time comes to hail our chariot, so I shall await your word. Please remember, gentle reader, that e'en as I risk my sanity in climes unknown, your stories and status from a more Christian timezone will be even more valuable: don't delay, send a missive today!

Luke.