My name is Dracula and...well...I'm a Vampire...

   I'm sitting here flicking through the channels in the cave and have settled on a ridiculously bad film named Sharkboy and Lavagirl. Its not just bad, its attrotious. I have no idea who most of the cast are but Sharkboy, I have noticed, is familiar to me, and then it hits.
   Sharkboy is that kid who plays the werewolf in those Twighlight movies.
   Though terrible, I actually think Sharkboy is a better role than the werewolf. It has better dialogue and he has some pretty cool powers. Sure he might not turn into a giant dog (he doesn't look like a wolf, he looks like a dog) but he has a cool fin on his back and, hey look...he just grew some sharp teeth.
   But you know what really makes Sharkboy a better role? He's not in a movie with a winey, PMSed out cow and a skinny enemic nancy boy who sparkles in the sun.
   Yes I have seen the first 2 Twighlight movies. I was tricked into the first one, but watched the 2nd out of some sort of perverse curiosity. I had to see if it was possible to make 2 films that were that bad.
   The 2nd was markedly worse. Where the 1st shit on the vampire myth, the 2nd shit on it, scooped it up in a doggybag, marinated it for 4 days, and then served it up with fries and a hot apple pie.
   Now when I was a kid vampires were scarey bastards with fangs, some limited mind powers, super strength and they could turn into a FUCKING BAT!!! They were badass, and drank blood, but then they had their troubles. They couldn't eat garlic, so italian food was out, they couldn't go near crucifixs, you could stake them with a "WOODEN" stake (not silver. Silver is for werewolves!!!) and if they went out into any sunlight, even on a cloudy day, they burst into flames and died.

   The vampires in Twighlight are of a different, more palitable breed. They don't seem to have problems with religious parafinalia, they can cook with garlic (even if they don't actually eat it), they don't turn into anything furry and/or vicious animals, they're all frozen at the age of 17, and yet none of them are stricken with an eternity of acne, random hard-ons, or (and this is what really makes them unrealistic) none of them seem to have an eating disorder.
   Well...unless you include the blood thing...but the main vampires in these movies don't even do that, or at least they don't go around sucking on virgins anymore (well that's not completely true). They drink blood but instead they pilfer it from the hospital, that's right, the red cross.
   This is supposed to be okay? Stealing blood from the hospital? So the ads I see on tv all the time asking for much needed blood at your local red cross don't mean anything to these people? Huh...maybe they are evil pricks after all. Its more of a white collar crime this way though I figure, like tax evasion or embezzlement.
   But look the worst thing about these much watered down vampires, I'm sure you will agree, is their reaction to sunlight.
   I don't know how else to say this but to just lay it out...they sparkle.
   There's no burning, no sizzling of flesh, no peeling of skin, not even a blister, or a nasty rash. The Vampires in Twighlight...sparkle.
   Huh?
   I sat gagging through the second movie and watched as, fraught with the pain of leaving his girlfriend (who is just a little young for him don't you think. The guy is a vampire. He's like 200 years old. He should be going out with senior citizens or at the very least adults...not seventeen year old girls. Its creepy, and I don't mean in the horror sense, I mean in the Pedophile sense) the main "vampire", who's name escapes me now, showing that I have at least a shred of self respect left, decides that he will expose himself to humans, thereby sentencing himself to death at their hands.
   There's a problem with that. Nobody would give a shit.
   I mean am I supposed to believe that people would see a sparkling kid and that the first thing that would come to their minds would be "Oh shit! Its a vampire! Kill the evil bastard!"?
   At best he might raise a few eyebrows. Its possible that their might be some conservative old folks passing by who might just be homophobic enough to sneer at, what to anyone, would look like some stupid kid with his shirt off wearing glitter, lipstick and foundation. Oh and hair product.
   Really the author should have just called them something other than vampires because I'm not really seeing the resemblance.
   Mind you, this is just another example of how western culture is making everything more safe and easily digestible, like how American football was made vaguely watchable by having girls play in lingere, or how now a packet of nuts has a warning on the label saying "MAY CONTAIN NUTS". I should bloody hope so.
   So where do we go from here?
   Perhaps I'm a vampire. Yes. I do believe I am a vampire. I'm a vampire for the modern cotton wool, you can't smack your kids, or show pictures of a baby with a penis drawn on the side of its face on facebook, age.
   It sucks being a vampire. The life of a vampire is a burden. Too much garlic gives me heartburn. I have trouble sleeping more than 7 hours per night. I will live for a very long time, some 80 or 90 years at best guess, and in that time I shall see the world change. I have watched as my loved ones, mainly my parents and grandparents have died, leaving me emotionally challenged and alone. I have seen the era or good saturday morning cartoons come and go and then come back again.
   I can be killed with a wooden stake, just like most vampires, which I think is fairly reasonable proof, and I can't go out in the sun...for more than 15mins...without a hat...a shirt...and sunscreen...or I'll get burnt and eventually, if I'm also genetically predisposed, I may die of skin-cancer.
   God its hard living with this curse.
   And don't get me started on True Blood.
   I'm not sure when Melrose Place became a vampire show but I have to say that I was a lot more afraid of Heather Locklear than I am of any of the characters on True Blood.
   Angel is a more believable vampire...and that's saying something.

 
   Anyway...
   I don't get riled often but there's something else that has caught my attention of late and its shitting me off a bit. Its the use of the phrase "the old".
   Its used mostly, as far as I can tell, to lend a familiarity to things, objects, etc. You might hear people refer to things with the preface "the old", as in the old car, or "the old" house. I'm not talking about when it might be used in a descriptive fashion. These people aren't saying that the car or the house are old as such, only that they hold an affection for these things.
   It goes further than that and people are using it to describe things like governing bodies and even concepts. People say things like, 'Oh the old governments doing a pretty shit job ay?' and I've even heard someone say, "the old Philosophy is a bit of a tough nut to crack."
   There may be nothing inherently old about these things.
   Do you see what I'm talking about?
   The straw that broke this camel's back was hearing a guy talking about his newborn at the beach and saying, "the old baby gave the missus a fair time comin' out. Reckon he was draggin his fingers against the sides."
   Its a baby...its NOT old! Unless its a vampire baby, in which case it must have been a neuveau vampire like me because it was pretty sunny out.
Stay Filthy.

Beer Googles

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A Prank A Day Keeps The Bear Away

   I don't know if I've mentioned this, but I hate toilet jokes. Jokes about poo, jokes about menstruation, jokes about bodily fluids. I just don't like them. They're crass and disturbing and I'd rather people didn't even mention toilets, much less make jokes about them.
   I know that might make me a killjoy or a prude, but its not like I don't like fun. I like to dance. I like the odd drink. I like small animals. I like to drink with small animals. I like to dance with small animals. I like to dance while I'm drinking small animals.
   Filthy likes a good party.
   I used to go to a lot of open-house parties, literally parties where someone had opened the doors of their house to anyone who wanted to come along, usually some kid who's parents had foolishly gone away and left them in charge. Sounds nuts but it was a pretty tight nit area where I was living at the time and, though there could be anywhere up to 3 or 4 hundred people turn up, things rarely ever got too bad...well...except for the night there was a gang war, but thats another story.
   These parties were awesome. Sure some of them fizzled out a bit or were punctuated by too much ABBA but many were a roller coaster of fun fun fun and the pranks were many.
   Some of the pranks were perpetrated by yours truly, for which I am not so proud...well only a bit pround...of.
   I remember when I was still too young to have a liscence, there was this party where I filled up some poor girl's mother's car with drunk idiots and drove it around and around the block. Every time we came upon the house where the party was at, she would run out and implore us to stop. We would laugh, thinking it hilarious, and take off again.
   At another party, there was a huge birdhouse seated upon a tall wooden pole in the back yard. There were hundreds of people milling about, most of them in various states of inebriation. A buddy of mine, a polar bear, and me found a couple of tomahawks in the shed and, to the delight of the assemblage, we began to chop the birdhouse down. When it teetered, we called timber and people jumped out of the way as the structure crashed to the ground and splintered into a million pieces.
   There were always people sampling things at these parties, drinks, drugs, etc and I was fine with that, it made for good mischief.
   I remember there was this one guy who was so stoned that he sat propped against the side of a house, just completely out of it. My friends and I went to the garden shed, found an old empty petrol tin, and filled it with water. We went to where the stoned guy was and began splashing him liberally with the water in the tin. He hardly moved and looked up at us incredulously. 'What the fuck dudes?' he mumbled.
   I showed him the petrol tin and splashed him some more, then my mate, a particularly moody sunbear, started flicking lit matches at the guy.
   The matches went out upon contact with the water, but this guy was so wasted that he freaked out. He got up like a rocket and began throwing punches, screaming 'THEY'RE TRYING TO KILL ME! THEY'RE TRYING TO KILL ME!'.
   The last we saw of him, he was running away down the street, screaming and calling for help.
   Dumbass.
   Now we weren't all bad. We had a sort of moral code. Like one night when there were younger kids at a party, chopping up dope in bowls. My mate went over to them, all about 14, and said he knew of a way to make their experience way better.
   The kids seemed keen to try anything and so Grouchy went to the kitchen, came back with a carton of milk and poured it into each bowl in turn, filling them up.
   The kids didn't stop him, thinking that this was part of some mystical process or something, but they looked worried. Finally, when all bowls were full and the dope saturated, Grouchy said, 'There you go. Can't have cereal without milk. So...you boys into sugar or honey?'
   All good fun and nobody got hurt...as far as I know...but not everyone was so kindly with their pranks.
   There was a time there when a great mystery had arisen among the party-goers, a mystery so strange and devilish that it confounded everyone. Someone it seemed, was going to these parties and waiting for a moment when everyone was outside. They'd then sneak into the loungeroom, take the VHS machine from wherever it sat (yes this was a while ago), place it on its end, open the slot where the video would normally go, squat over said slot with their pants down, and there...they would take...a shit.
   The perpetrator would then wipe any excess excrement from the face of the VHS machine and place it carefully back where he'd found it. A lovely surprise for the owner of the house.
   This was happening over and over again, at every party that my friends and I went to and everyone had their suspects. I personally thought it was one of the football crowd. After all they have to start somewhere. You don't just start with date rape, pissing yourself on airplanes and writing your name on hotel room walls in poo. You have to start small.
   I'm sure that some people thought it was us. I mean people have an unfair prejudice against bears to start with so it wouldn't surprise me if they thought we were into this sort of thing, which of course we weren't...or so I had believed.
   One night, Humphrey, who was a weird bear by all rights, (quiet, he wore a straw hat like he was in a barber shop quartet, and liked to dress in a waistcoat and tie a fair bit) said he was going to talk to someone and left our little sloth of bears to wonder the crowd.
   Five minutes later we hear this scream, (which we heard before anyone else due to our far superior bear hearing) and the music died. That was followed by yelling and things inside the house breaking and a minute later Humphrey was ejected from the premises by a large man in a polo top. The man proceeded to wail on Humphrey and our first instinct was to help him. "More opression from the biped slavers" we thought, but then the girl who's parents owned the house stormed up to me and asked if we knew what Humphrey had been doing. We were in the dark but then she described his being caught in the act of shitting in her video recorder and all was clear. Humphrey was the culprit and he'd never said so much as a word to us.
   Well we didn't feel such a need to help him after that and went back to our drinks instead. We never saw Humphrey after that but looking back it should have been more obvious. He was slightly unhinged. When we went to the zoo to visit Bogey and Mopey, two of our captive slave brothers, he took great pleasure in going to the butterfly house and stuffing butterflies into his waistcoat pockets, giggling giddily the whole time, until we had to usher him out of there.
   And sometimes...just sometimes...he wore a scarf...in the Summertime.
   Speaking of toilet stuff...
   I was in a unisex toilet the other day which was a little weird but did make me feel quite modern in a way that my ipod does not.
   Now I'm not a fan of public movements. I don't much like the smell and it continues to confound me that people find it so hard to press the flush button. You can't ever sit on the seat because its generally covered in urine or some other random forms of DNA and stem cell goop that you'd never purposefully lather your bum with, and so you end up taking up all sorts of yogic positions and contorting your body so as to make a deposit without picking up HepB or Menapause or getting pregnant.
   I personally have nearly perfected "the Eagle" and can perch on the rim like a proud raptor for quite some time. Yes...there was one instance where my foot slipped out from beneath me in South America and my bum touched water, but generally its my favorite. From that hight however you need to set up a paper landing pad so as to avoid the inevitable splash.
   Another is the human scaffold, single or double handed, where you take up a position as if you are seated a few inches above the actual seat with your hand, or hands, against the wall behind the toilet, holding you up. Its pretty strenuous and if you get stuck with a hanger-on, the muscles in your arms and legs can take a nasty beating.
   Then there's "the TeePee" where you basically stand with a leg off to either side of the bowl, but I find my big bear cheeks don't allow the bum junk to pass freely in this position and I HATE having to lick my arse clean in public.
   Anyway I have strayed from the point.
   I was in such an establishment the other day and this lady was in there with her kids, all of which were small. I'm talkin' maybe waist high or somethin like that. Maybe a bit smaller. So one of the kids is in the stall next to mine, and she's giving it a really good go, grunting and talking to herself, making all the noises of someone exerting themselves, only in a higher tone. Think Tele Tubby.
   It was like Pappa smurf snapping one off next door and i was losing it, and then to top it off, when she'd finished, the mother went in to see how she'd done (I'm not sure why. Maybe its a point of contention among mothers these days. "My son pinched a loaf that would feed a whole family." "Oh yeah, well my daughter dropped a stool that that family could all sit on side by side while they ate that loaf". I really don't know, but when the mother went into the cubicle, there was a gasp and then she said, "Oh that's not even funny." She must have flushed the toilet about 5 times in an attempt to get rid of the evidence, all the while the little girl giggled to herself proudly.
   I really don't know what it could have been. I've never heard a little girl grunting so loudly when taking a shit before. Usually that sort of thing is the realm of old men.
   I have, on occasion, been to the casino near where I live and its the one thing that I've noticed that sets it apart from a lot of night time destinations. The number and sheer fervour of the sounds coming out of those toilets is beyond the imagination and better not heard.
   Oh if only my ears were virgin again.
   Maybe its the loss of cash, maybe its the alcohol, maybe its the giant steak dinners, I don't know, but going to the toilet in a casino seems to be a harrowing, distressing and painful experience for many.
   I'm thinking of getting a colostomy bag...either that or a catheter.
   The guy in the flat in front of mine a year or so ago had a colostomy bag. I know this because he used to take great joy in showing it to me. He'd open up his shorts and say things like, "oh oh...almost full again."
   The sight of the colostomy bag was bad enough, but he had a hernia smuggled away down there as well. Do you know what that looks like? Its like a tennis ball sized lump of flesh that hangs from your stomach. And don't get me started on the smell...
   Eventually he moved out. Seems he took a fall and was laying on the floor of his flat for 4 days in his own filth, calling out to me for help as I went to and fro from my door. Being a modern bear, I always had my headphones on and so never heard a thing. Well...that's what I told his family.
   I really don't like that smell and like I said, I can't even talk about toilet stuff without wanting to gag.
   STAY FILTHY!

The exorcism of Filthy the Bear

   I think the people who live across the street are serial killers or at least mild psychopaths.

   I get up early every morning and head out before the sun comes up, before its even vaguely light, and every morning, as I make a u-turn my lights flash across the front of the house across the street and the people who live there, sitting on plastic chairs, in their carport.

   They don't seem to be doing anything, just sitting there staring at me...watching me. Its a little unnerving. Who, in their right mind, gets up before the sun on a cold winter's morning, and sits out the front of their house to watch the street?

   I've taken to calling them the Klopeks, after the family of serial killer weirdos from that legendary 80's film "The Burbs". You might remember them; they were killing people and burying them in the back yard.

   In the photo below you can see one of the Burbs talking with the Klopek's son, Hans.

   The only time that I have met them in the couple of months that I've been here was when one of them, "the wife" stumbled over the road pissed and introduced herself while I was moving in. It was uncomfortable and weird and I've tried to keep my distance since. I sort of get the feeling that they are sitting over there either 1; talking about what a household of arseholes we are and are therefore planning our demise via mulcher or 2; hoping and wishing that we might make contact.  

   If its "2" they might want to get out more and if its "1" then I might want to get out more.   I think they have a dog but I rarely ever see it. I have a dog. Some dogs are big, some small, some happy, some angry, and some...it seems...are posessed.

   Check out this article from a Jewish website;                                                                                                       

Dog sentenced to death by stoning Rabbinical court rules spirit of secular lawyer who insulted judges 20 years ago transferred into wandering dog's body Akiva Novick Published:  06.16.11, 14:21 / Israel Jewish Scene share A Jerusalem rabbinical court recently sentenced a wandering dog to death by stoning. The cruel sentence stemmed from the suspicion that the spirit of a famous secular lawyer, who insulted the court's judges 20 years ago, had been transferred into the dog's body. Several weeks ago, according to the Behadrei Hadarim website, a large dog entered the Monetary Affairs Court near the ultra-Orthodox neighborhood of Mea Shearim. The dog scared the court's visitors and, to their surprise, refused to leave even after they attempted to drive him away. One of the judges suddenly recalled that about 20 years ago, a famous secular lawyer who insulted the court was cursed by the panel of judges, who wished that his spirit would move on to the body of a dog (considered an impure animal by Halacha). The lawyer passed away several years ago. Still offended, one of the judges sentenced the poor animal to death by stoning, recruiting the neighborhood's children to carry out the order. Luckily, the dog managed to escape. The head of the court, Rabbi Avraham Dov Levin, denied that the judges had called for the dog's stoning. But one of the court's managers confirmed the report to Yedioth Ahronoth. "It was ordered by the rabbis because of the grief he had caused the court," he said. "They didn't issue an official ruling, but ordered the children outside to throw stones at him in order to drive him away. They didn't think of it as cruelty to animals, but as an appropriate way to 'get back at' the spirit which entered the poor dog."

 .....................................................................................................................................................................
   And People think I'm weird. There's a whole religion that has gone bonkers and I doubt there's a bear suit between them.
   Getting back to the people across the street however.
   I recently took a test to see if I was a psychopath. I'm serious and it was surprisingly easy. You can take the test right now if you like.
   Actually...if you're going to do it, get someone to do it with you. Its more fun that way and also if one of you is a psychopath then I would like the other one there to call the police and report it. But don't be paranoid...just be honest.
   Ok? Here goes.
   Now I'm going to tell you a story and I want you to answer the question at the end of the story truthfully and with as little deliberation as possible.
   Ok so a young woman goes to her father's funeral and while there she meets a charming gentleman and falls instantly in love with him. She's never met him before but this is it...the big one...the soul mate. Only problem is she fails to get his details or a phone number. The next day she kills her sister.
Why?

   BRRRRIIIIIIINNNNNGGGGGG!
   Alright finished?
   Ok well I'm sure you came up with a few different answers. Maybe she was so messed up with self hate that she went off the deep end and murdered her sister? Maybe you thought the sister was with the man and the girl got jealous?
   Well obviously there is no right or wrong answer and no true answer either but according to experts there is an answer that is a good indicator that you may be a psychopath and it goes a little something like this.
She killed her sister in the hopes that, if the man went to her father's funeral then he might very well go to another member of her family's funeral and so she killed her sister thinking that it might bring her into contact with the man she fell in love with.
   I hope nobody ever loves me that much.
   Seriously though, apparently when they have asked this question to serial killers they almost always answer the question with that bizarre response.
   (Now is when those with a normal answer restrain those with the weird answer and call 000 or 911 or whatever number you use in your locale to alert the authorities)

   Actually that photo reminds me of an old boss of mine from my days in the circus and brings to mind a little story that I think you might like.
   We were traveling around the country, setting up the tents and putting on our show. We stopped at some big towns but we also stopped at some dinky little smears on the planet as well, and it was in one such speed bump that three of us, including my boss (Rufuss), myself and Zandor the Magician thought we'd hit the local hot spots and have a few drinks.
  The tequillas were many and we were all a bit drunk, my boss especially so.
   He had the keys to the hotel and when he was at his most hammered he decided it would be funny to run away with them. Zandor and I chased him and crash-tackled him in the middle of the street. We took the keys and headed to the front door of the hotel.
   Rufuss eventually got up and started running up the street after us, looking strangely like the terminator from the second Terminator film, you know...the guy who was sort of a liquid metal?
   We were desperately trying to get the key into the lock before he got to us but didn't make it in time.
   Funnily however, he ran up to us, crashed into me, and bounced off. He fell backward and cracked his head open on the tiled floor.
   A pool of blood immediately began to form around his head and he wasn't moving.
   Now remembering that we were drunk, it was a confusing time. We checked to see if he was breathing, and he was but we couldn't wake him up. All I could remember was something I'd seen on an old Three Stooges show on TV. I figured a bucket of water might help wake him and so I sent Zandor inside the hotel to find one that we could throw on his face.
   Zandor took a while and I was quietly worried about my boss who was losing a lot of blood.
   Eventually Zandor appeared with a small bin full of water. I took it from him and asked where he found it.
   He said he had found it in the bathrooms.
   Knowing that I had to move quickly, I poured the water onto my boss' face, and suddenly realised that water was not the only thing that was in the bin. A couple of small things that at first glance resembled dead mice dropped onto his cheek. They were wet and sort of fury, with long white tails...but they weren't brown...they were dark red...you know...the sort of dark red that you get when blood dries.
   I looked at Zandor and asked him why he didn't empty the bin out first, but he was vomiting too loudly to hear.
   Rufuss did wake up and we got him upstairs, and after soaking up three t-shirts with the blood that was pouring out of his head we stopped the bleeding. Looking back I realise that we should have called an ambulance but everything turned out fine and but for a headache, he seemed to get over the injury quickly.
The tampons however, took a little longer to get over.

   So you know...hygiene is pretty important, and that is what you should take away from this little rant.

   STAY FILTHY.

Tiny is as Tiny Does Sir.

   I have this friend who is a tad on the small side. He's not a midget, or whatever the politically correct term for a dwarf is these days, but he is quite short. I guess you'd say he was hobbit sized and I often refer to him as the "halfling".
   He doesn't seem to like it very much.
   The other day I met his girlfriend and she too is diminutive. They're both pretty much the same size and its sort of cute when you see them together. Its like watching shetland ponies with backpacks. I like to think of them as Shetland People and in that way I don't feel so bad about staring at them. Its more like watching a David Attenborough doco on the tv and that makes me feel better about staring because there's fewer descriminatorial conotations involved.
   Its especially interesting to watch how they walk. I never notice it when its just one of them, but when they're together its like their legs suddenly become too short and they shuffle alot. There's even a bit of the Ewok in their strides and I sometimes imagine them with spears fighting the seemingly far superior empire and swinging from trees with wookies.
   Did you know that the final battle in Return of the Jedi was originally supposed to be on the wookie homeworld, with wookies instead of Ewoks?
   I'm glad it didn't work out that way or everything I just said would have made no sense and I'd have sounded like a lunatic.
   Do all short people shuffle?
   I would think that being low to the ground would make it easier to lift your feet because you don't generally have to lift them as high as everyone else, but then maybe I'm wrong. Gravity does get weaker the farther from the earth's surface you get, so maybe people who exist at lower heights than normal folk are living under a higher level of gravitational pull.
?
   Anyway its strange that these two tweenies got together. If I was short, the last person I'd go out with was someone the same size as me. I'd go out with someone shorter so that I would have a height advantage and look taller.
   I select most of my friends based on how their proximity to me will effect other people's perceptions. I hang out with short people in order to feel tall. I hang out with dumb people so that I seem smarter, fat people so that I feel thin,  really ugly people so that I feel handsome, pasty people so that I seem tanned...
   I once went out with a girl who was flat chested and it made me feel like I had big breasts, which was fun. Quite often I hang out with people with penises and then go home and finger myself.
   On the downside however I've started to mensturate and its getting harder to find my g-spot, especially when my blood sugar is low or I'm feeling delicate. But that's your fault not mine!
   My dog is short.

   I like short in a dog.

   She's managable and easy to take for walks and play with. I also like the fact that it reflects well on me to have a small dog. 

   Dogs are much the same as cars. A pitbull, much like a Hummer, says "I'm trying to compensate for a small penis", where as a cute little dog, much like a VW Beetle, says "My friends call me the Living Tripod."

   Hummers are dead now, which is a bit of a result.

   General Motors ended the brand. They said it was due to financial concerns but I'd like to think that it was a conscious effort on their part to do something good for the environment, the economy, the safety of small school children everywhere and to end the vicious circle of dickheadedness that Hummers are an obvious symptom of. 

   I just hope that Apple takes note and does something about the iphone.

   Many of you may know of my disposition toward the iphone.

   Just call it a fuckin phone for christ's sake and stop with the "i" crap!!! I call my phone a phone. I don't call it a nokia or a blackberry or whatever because I don't want to sound like a wanker. 

   Do you call it "my iphone" so that everyone knows you have an iphone? Is it you flexing your metaphorical muscles? Trying to seem cool?

   If you must call it an "iphone", man up and call everything by its brand name, or alternatively put an "i" in front of everything so that Apple can have an easier time when they finally take over your life. 

   I do it. I already call my dog my ipuppy, my shoes my icons, and my car my ivan, which makes it sound cool in a sort of russian sort of way.

   Did you see Russia in the Eurovision? Boy bands wouldn't have been round in the old Soviet days. Oh how I long for the cold war when there was a clear and obvious bad guy for the Americans to hate. They don't seem able to make up their minds at the moment and are using crappy reasons to go to war. They'd wage war on Rabbits if they could find a way to make Bugs responsible for a terrorist attack.

   Wait a minute!!!

   Is that a turbin!?! Don't terrorists wear turbins!?! Is that a gun in his hands!?!

   And Australia just seems to suck up their arses. Howard was Bush's little bitch and I've seen nothing to make me think Julia is any different. The problem is that Bush was relatively tall and so is Obama. Howard is short and so is Julia. They should be making alliances with the shorter world leaders. That way they'd look less pathetic and I wouldn't have to feel so ashamed when I see them at G8 summits and the like. Actually, Howard should have hung out with ugly people and dumb people and Julia should hang out with Chopper Reid.

   

A Telephone in the Head is Worth Two in the Bush.

   I'm sitting here with a fine bottle of port, nibbling on tiny teddys by the fire and thinking about the old days when ol' Filthy was just a young cub out on the Canadian tundra. Those were the days.
   I bought my first real six string at a five and dime. I tell ya, I must have played until my fingers bled. I think it was the summer of 89'.
   You see me and some guys from school, we had a band and we tried real hard. But you know how it is. Jimmy quit, Joey got married...
   I should have known we'd never get far.
   Jimmy and Joey were fuckheads.
   But I've met some nice people along the way. Some I've stayed in touch with.
   There's this lady who knows all that glitters is gold. I last saw her riding a stairway to somewhere.
   Who rides a stairway? Isn't a stairway that you ride called an escalator? I suppose "She's riding an escalator to heaven" wouldn't have had the same punchiness, but then I've never really liked that song, so who cares.
   Its the chocolate bunny holiday at the moment and I've been thinking maybe its time to sit back for a moment, stop everything, and think long and hard about what this holiday truly means.
   "What does it mean Mr Filthy?" I hear you say.
   Well I'll tell you what it means tender lumplings.
   There's the chocolate of course.

 Its tasty as hell. I always think the best chocolate is Easter chocolate. Doesn't matter how cheap it is, if its wrapped up as a bunny or an egg, it just tastes better. Its like normally chocolate is just chocolate, but for a few weeks of the year it can also be meat, or an omelette. How good is that? I don't know why they don't make chocolate into the shapes of more things, like cows, little baa-lambs and robots.
   Speaking of robots. I love this little fucker.

  

   But robots, though retardelly cool, just don't seem like the real meaning of easter. 

   There's the bunnys...

   They hop about and make a lot of smaller, more compact, bunnies, which I suppose is the point of the original pagan origins of easter. (The name "Easter" originated with the names of an ancient Goddess and God. The Venerable Bede, a Christian scholar, first asserted in his book De Ratione Temporum that Easter was named after Eastre. She was the Great Mother Goddess of the Saxon people in Northern Europe. Similarly, the "Teutonic dawn goddess of fertility [was] known variously as Ostare, Ostara, Ostern, Eostra, Eostre, Eostur, Eastra, Eastur, Austron and Ausos." ₁ Her name was derived from the ancient word for spring: "eastre.") which was to celebrate the coming time of fertility in the Northern Hemisphere, but thats outdated a bit now.    

   There's the eggs. 

   Woops! Wrong slide.

   Okay not exactly what I was after but it'll do.

   We used to pick eggs that were nearly hatched and write backwards messages on them in felt ink pens. Things like "otirrub ecin a ekam annog er'uoY" "otsep htiw llew tnew mum ruoY" "team etihw rehto eht...nekcihc ybaB" "muy-eldood-a-kcoC" and other such stuff. 

   In this way we avoided the cruelty of a surprise death and warned them fair and square of their impending doom before they were even hatched.
   Eggs are only part of the true meaning though aren't they? Besides, a chicken's menstrual cycle is not what I want to think of on Easter Sunday so I'm gonna ignore it.
   Look...I think we all know where I'm going with this right?
   Let me elaborate a little for those of you who don't know the story.
   Ol' Filthy once met and almost had sex with a supermodel.

YAAAAAYYY!

   I was working in a swanky wanky London hotel, carrying bags, stealing chocolates from the store room, hooking people up with prostitutes, looking the other way when rich twats overdosed in the hallways, things like that.
   So this supermodel from a number of years ago...well...to avoid any legal suits we'll just call her Maomi Pambel. She walks, neigh SWANS, in and takes a room. We set her up in a nice suite and don't hear from her for an hour or so when the phone downstairs rings and her name comes up on the phone as it did with all visitors. I answer and she says, "I can't get the water out of the bath. Could you please come up and help me."
   Its not rocket science so I go through the steps of taking the plug out, ie; grip with hand, pull gently (we're still having a clean conversation at this point) but she says she tried and asks again that I come up to her room and help her.
   Being a somewhat accomodating bear I agree and hang up the phone. As I go to head for the elevator however, my boss, another foreigner like me, asks what Naomi...I mean Maomi wanted.
   I told him and he refused to let me go up. Instead he sent a gay fella that I worked with by the name of Fabian (now seriously, was he ever going to be anything but gay with a name like that? He wasn't even Italian or anything. He was a white sydney lad. Why not just call him Fleur de la Fleur or some shit.)
   Anyway Ita Burtose comes racing out of the lift a few minutes later screaming like a little girl and wincing as if he'd just been vomited on.
   When asked what happened, this is what he said;
  "I knocked on the door. It was slightly open. She said 'Come in. I'm in the bathroom'. So I went in, opened the bathroom door and there she is, laying in the bath stark naked, no soapy suds, no bubbles, just a naked supermodel. She said, 'Are you going to help me unblock the hole?' To which I nodded. I then rolled up my shirt sleave, knelt down beside the bath and reached in for the plug.
   She then lunged forward, grabbed my hand and forced it up between her legs!"
   Now ol' Filthy is losin' it at this point. Its half fantasy, half possibility and I'm thinking He's gay! What a waste of a supermodel! But the story continues.
   Fabian:- "I tore my hand away from her vagina and ran out of the room. Oh it was disgusting, it was disgusting, eww eww eww!"
   To this day I still want to kill the bastard.
   So without another word, I marched toward the lift doors, hoping that the plug was still in position and that Maomi still required the aid of a gentle paw.
   My boss stopped me again. He barricaded the lift and refused to let me into heaven. Apparently this had happened on a number of occasions over the years and many hotel staff had had a close brush with jail time because of it. Rich toffs get smashed on whatever drug is the latest deal and sleep with staff, then wake up and cry rape because they were either too shit faced to remember or too embarassed to admit to anything else.
   Its not uncommon. I'd heard stories of similar things.
   Like one girl who apparently looked like  "Vlad Schmidt's" (name changed to avoid legal hassles) wife, Genifer Banniston. She had sex with Vlad, only to be told the next morning that he only did it because he missed his beloved wife so terribly and was only fucking a stranger because she reminded him of her.
   Ummm Brad...I mean Vlad... I'm pretty sure its still considered cheating if the girl looks like your wife. I don't think that makes much of a difference. In fact its a little creepy.
   So there you have it...the true meaning of Easter. Its a message that we should all try to remember and instill in the minds of the children. Its a story of hope, of supermodels and of plug holes, but most of all its about self-esteem.
   I personally decided long ago never to walk in anyone's shadow. If I fail if I succeed, at least I lived as I believed. No matter what they take from me, they can't take away my dignity. Because the greatest love of all is happening to me. I've found the greatest love of all inside of wine.
   Oh there's that stuff with that fella on the cross too but how many holidays does an omnipotent  and omnipresent being need anyway?
   Not that I'm complaining. Its a 5 day weekend after all.
   Stay Filthy.

If you are what you eat then I'm a Cadbury Cream Egg.

   I never wear underpants. Its a thing with us bears. We're not good with clothes in general. Its not our forte.
   You see I'd end up forgetting that I was wearing them. I'd eat a big old salmon baritto, drink a bottle or two of the red stuff, feel the call of the bowel munchkins and promptly make a mess of myself. But look even if I did wear underpants, I don't think I'd wear them on the outside of my other clothes.
   Superman does.
   And Batman does too.
   But why?
   Batman is supposed to be all dark and tough and stuff, but how scary can a person be with blue undies over a gray spandex catsuit? I can see why they make him all black and leathery in the movies.
   Speaking of making a mess in your undies, have you ever heard of Timothy Treadwell? No? Well Timothy Treadwell was this fella from America who was...how shall I say...stupid.
   Timbo was a bear "enthusiast". He was into us bears in a way that was somewhat intrusive, somewhat ignorant, somewhat obsessive. Tim felt that he and us bears had an affiliation with one another, that he was one of us in some way, that he was "special". He spent almost 13 summers hanging around some of my cousins up in Katmai National Park in Alaska, thinking that he was being accepted into the fold in a way that no-one ever had before.
   Tim gave my cousins names, names that were not their real names, human names. Slimey, Slippy, Gastro and Barfy, good Bear names, were replaced with things like Ramona, Caroline, Rochelle. The bastard didn't even ask for their true names, and so my cousins never spoke to him.
   They remained silent, hoping that he might get the hint and fuck off, but he never did. In fact his intrusion grew over time.
   Like a pedophile he would often coerce the cubs into playing with him, fondling them and rolling around in the grass. He was a voyeur, an intruder and...well...one of my uncles...he sort of ate him.

   But Timothy isn't the only person to act like this. Loads of people like to think that they have an affinity with wildlife of one sort or another. Its usually the popular animals;

DOLPHINS

WHALES

WOLVES

PANDAS

   But its rarely if ever the less attractive animals such as...

RATS

WORMS

COCKROACHES

   Sea Shepherd would never work if it was warthogs or horseshoe bats that they were trying to save. All those Sea Shepherd stickers you see on cars wouldn't sell very well if they stood for wood lice or that little fish that swims up your penis in the Amazon.

   Actually when you think about it Sea Shepherd are a lazy bunch. It must be easy as piss to get donations for dolphins and Whales. The ones that need your help most, the ones that struggle are groups like www.pegasusfoundation.org (I didn't think there were any pegasus left but if there are they need help), www.wingsforgreyhounds.org (who wouldn't like to see a greyhound with wings) and www.nodowners.org (a happy animal is a good and tasty animal).

   People like to humanize animals, to give them attributes and personalities that are like their own but newsflash...we're not like you. Dolphins are known gangrapists, chimps tear other smaller monkeys limbs off, wolves...oh wait...I guess we are like you, but not in the fuzzy "warming the cockles of your heart" way that some humans like to think.

   Basically the best thing that people can do for us animals is leave us the fuck alone.

   I went to Seaworld on the GoldCoast the other day to visit some distant cousins, Chilly and Frigid, the polar bears. Much like the brown bears in Melbourne zoo, Chilly and Frigid walked laps over and over and over again. Its a behaviour seen in animals in captivity the world over and isn't, as some people think, their way of getting exercise. Its actually a mental illness that forms in the brain when animals are trapped.

   I have a mental illness. Its also from being trapped, not in a cage but in a world full of dipshit humans. Unlike Frigid and Chilly however, I have alcohol to keep me from straying too far from the path.

   A lot of humans have a path. Its a bit weird, a bit windy, a bit hard to fathom and a bit ridiculous. It takes some twists, makes very little sense and seems to be riddled with potholes. Its called religion.

   Now don't get me wrong. I used to have an imaginary friend when I was a cub, so I know how comforting it can be to believe in something that doesn't exist, but I grew up and I don't know if its healthy to continue with imaginary friends into adulthood. I'm sure if I spoke to Mr Gargles, my imaginary friend, these days I'd be considered crazy, but how is it any different than religion. Mr Gargles was there for me when my body was going through changes, he was always there with a smile, always there with a helping hand. Our relationship was much like a belief in god...with a few small differences.

   Instead of a deep booming voice he had a high lisp. Instead of long flowing white robes, he wore a long overcoat. Instead of kneeling in a church I had to kneel in a public toilet block and instead of making thousands of fish out of one, My Gargles would often produce milk from his....

   Sorry, I'm getting off the track a little and you're not really interested in Mr Gargles.

   I have a theory on Jesus that I'd like to share. Wanna hear it? Sweet!

   I've thought about the whole son of god thing and tried to imagine an alternate, more believable version of events at the time.

   You see back in Jerusalem in its heyday, the whole adultery thing was taken much more seriously that people seem to take it today. If a woman was found to have slept with someone behind her husband's back it was a serious crime, one that may have resulted in execution.

   Now just imagine that Joseph was a hard working man. Lets say that he was busy, perhaps not home as often as Mary would have liked. and because of this his marriage is failing. Mary is getting bored with her life and starts hitting on...let's say...the local donkey salesman. We'll call him Roger.

  So Mary sleeps with Roger while Joseph is at work and after one such rendezvous she falls pregnant. Its obviously not Joseph's cause he's always so tired that they haven't had sex in months, so the question arises as to how she is up the duff.

   Mary knows her answer will either save or sink her and so, not wanting to be executed, she comes up with an elaborate story. She tells people that an angel came to her and that god himself is responsible for the sudden miraculous pregnancy. Its a last ditch effort but Mary is good at telling a story or two and the people, including Joseph, eat it up.

   They eventually have the baby Jesus. The lie gets a little out of hand, what with three wise men and all turning up to the birth, but its too late for Mary to back out and so she charges ahead.

   The problem arises years later when Jesus grows up. He knows the story but he also knows that he ain't no son of god and so he starts an investigation into his own beginnings. 

   It becomes pretty obvious that Mary had gotten up to some suspiscous things in her day. He basically starts to think that his mum is a slut.

   So what does our friend Jesus do? He goes and finds himself a prostitute named...of all things...MARY. He was projecting his disgust over his mother onto a rent girl. Its all very Freudian if you think about it.

   And the crucifiction? Stag party gone wrong. You've heard the stories. People are always being tied up to lamp posts naked and stuff. 

   They didn't have lamp posts back in Jesus' day, but they did have crosses. I guess the disciples drank too much at the last supper. 

   Mary, the Mary hooker or the Mary disciple or whatever, (he really had a problem with Marys) must have been pissed when she found that they'd crucified Jesus and fucked the wedding for her. 

   Drunk idiots.
   Luckily there aren't any crosses in Surfers Paradise or Saturday and Sunday mornings would be a messy affair.
   I wonder if they'd let a bear into church..?