Won’t Someone Please Pass Me Something To Staunch This Awful Bleeding?

Oh my, there’s so much of it. Seriously, I thought it would stop, but it won’t, I can’t make it stop. I’ve tried holding it in the air and cutting off the circulation, but it’s still like the set of a Tarantino film in here. The stuff is everywhere, everywhere I tell you. I keep slipping over in puddles of it. It’s on the walls, the ceiling. It’s awful, just awful.

I know what you’re thinking. You’re thinking that you know what’s going on here. You’re thinking that I’m only tricking you into supposing that the unstoppable liquid flows of which I speak are blood, and that in fact I am about to make a terribly amusing toilet-humour joke along the lines of what you're used to appreciating on this fine internet we've created. Well, if that's what you're thinking, then you’d be absolutely right. At least, most days you would. But not today. Right now I don’t really feel like making any puns of that sort, because I’m pretty much drowning here. And let me tell you, it’s not half as pleasant as you might suppose. I know you’ve got that thing about liquid suffocation, and sometimes you like to indulge yourself. How you manage to find time amongst all your other perversions for things like that I don’t know. But look, you’ll just have to take my word for it. Being knee deep in one’s own blood is just not as enjoyable as you might imagine. Sure, you can imagine a lot. I know, I’ve read your disgusting emails. But believe me, this is quite unpleasant.

This is how it all happened. There I was, minding my own business, when who should turn up but my arch nemesis Miles Mayhem. You know, the dude from that TV show, MASK. Yeah, you remember MASK. Matt Trakker and his fellow have-a-go-heroes of Mobile Armoured Strike Kommand bravely took on the forces of proper spelling with only the power of acronym, cars that can fly, and a big rig with missiles in it. On their off days, they enjoyed videotaping themselves happy-slapping the vile terrorist forces of VENOM. VENOM, or the Vicious Evil Network Of Mayhem, specialised in terrorism which focused on acronymic pleonasm and redundancy. You can see why the two forces might have been in bitter conflict.

Anyway, everyone knows the story of how Matt Trakker’s mission to eliminate all trace of the dangerous letter C from global spelling eventually led him into the infamous Bloody Wednesday Sesame Street massacre. Surely we all still feel a shiver within our souls at the memory of those shocking images: I for one can no longer close my eyes at night without again seeing the burnt and eviscerated corpse of Cookie Monster hovering before my tortured vision. Still, as I say, this is a story with which we are all too, too familiar. Matt Trakker’s righteous anger led him down a dark path which his long time girlfriend and fellow poorly-animated cartoon character, Natalie Portman, could not follow. But less is known of what happened to the unfortunate and misunderstood Miles Mayhem.

Following Trakker’s dramatic fall from grace, Miles attempted to put his criminal past behind him by taking up new and more secure employment in merchant banking. But with a name like that, Miles Mayhem never really stood a chance of a normal life. The markets were slow, investors were nervous; I imagine there were many times when Miles had very fond thoughts of climbing back into the cockpit of his Helicopter That Transforms Into A Plane Which Still Kind Of Looks Like A Helicopter.

Well, to cut a long story short, the Waspinator-for-President campaign outreach programme tried to help Miles, and I don’t mind telling you that we obviously didn’t do a very good job. Because here I am, deep within the campaign bunker, sitting in a whole load of blood. To be honest with you, it’s getting a bit uncomfortable, and I think it would be fair to say that I’m pretty cheesed off with old Miles right now. It’s not like the outreach programme hasn’t had successes. We’ve helped any number of ineffectual cartoon villains find their place in society. Why, Cobra Commander, Megatron, and even Dr. Claw have all learned that packing shopping bags in the local Co-op really isn’t all that bad an end to a career in hero-baiting.

But I guess we’ll have to chalk one up on the failure side now, won’t we Miles? Thanks a bunch. As soon as I heal these rotor-blade shaped wounds, we’re going to sit down together and have a serious talk.


Notes:

I am aware that the phrase “pleonasm and redundancy” is itself an obvious pleonasm. That is why I used it, so please don’t email me to correct me on this. Do email me with pictures of your attractive sister. Thanks.

My Personalised T-Shirt Now Reads “I Know It Looks Like Herpes, But It Probably Isn’t”

So the news is that I’ve come down with a spot of shingles, which is quite like herpes, only socially acceptable. Anywho, whilst scratching my now crusty and infected skin in the futuristic isolation ward of the Waspinator-for-President campaign headquarters, I was treated to a new television advertisement highlighting the hidden danger that is Sexually Transmitted Infection. In this advert, a host of very conventionally attractive girls…well, let’s use the phrase “get it on”. Pretty good, huh? Bet you’d like to see some of that action, yes? But just wait one moment, because the camera is going to switch to a close-up shot of their skimpy discarded underwear, and guess what? It’s got the word gonorrhea written on it in lacy writing! Oh, the horror!

Okay, so I know what the advert is trying to say. Hey, this girl may look pretty hot, and yes she has nice underwear, but, you know, you should probably use a condom. But what it also says, just as loudly, is that this girl looks pretty hot, and she doesn’t mind if you don’t use a condom, which, as far as I'm aware, is quite a nice proposition for exactly the sort of people to whom this advert is so obviously aimed. So why not get out there and spread it around? I’m pretty sure there’s a cure for gonorrhea anyway, whereas there’s clearly no cure for having to wear a condom. STI’s: are you willing to take the risk? Not until watching this advert, but now I think that yes, yes you probably are.

Actually, I think it has real legs, this idea. I was too quick to ridicule the herpes advertisement, because it’s certainly on to something. What if people really did have warnings about themselves helpfully written on their clothing for all to see? Surely there wouldn’t really need to be all this fuss about giving more “stop and search” powers to our wonderful police force if only Arabic-looking juvenile delinquents could be persuaded to embroider their hoodies with helpful phrases such as “actually, I’m not really Arabic, so you can leave me alone officer”, or perhaps “well, I have a PhD in bio-chemical engineering so I’m definitely not a delinquent, but on the other hand I’ve been openly ambivalent about your ideas of political justice, and I can see that this brick-sized lump under here might look like a dirty bomb, so I guess you should stop and search me although in doing so you’ll probably be prompting me towards terrorism anyway”. 

And forget all that public money spent on ID cards. All we really need is for The Gap to come up with a line of comfortable bio-metric slogan clothing. And alongside the fiddly stuff about names, addresses and previous criminal convictions, all sorts of useful phrases might present themselves. Imagine the greater ease and safety with which social interactions in society could be conducted with the application of textualised garments such as “Don’t date this one, she’s had three kids”, or “I don’t actually have any kittens at home, kid, just a meat rack”.

See? It’s a winner.