The Dark Furie

Ah, Bower Lake. There really is no more beautiful sight in the entire land of Albion than the sunset reflecting off the lake. Of everyone in the world I should know that best. I've travelled across the entire land from mountain to swamp, bustling city to peaceful farming village, haunted tombs to balverine infested coastal roads. Yet it is here, where I grew up that I can finally find peace. Well, I didn't grow up only in this place. For a while I had a family. A loving mother and father, and a sister who used to set up games on the farm where we lived. Time is truly the cruelest of my enemies though, taking each of them from me, forcing me to scrape by on the cold streets of Bowerstone, then taking the last thing I could call my own and leaving me for dead. So many tragedies in my life, yet each is a distant memory now. I've always been a survivor; always had the will to put my hardships behind me until I was ready to face them. And that's why I'm here now.

I stroll casually past Hero Hill, wondering what past heroes had glorious moments there and if they'd felt even a fraction of the pain that place had caused me. A travelling games master passes me on the road and offers me a game of spinnerbox. For a second I imagine a vast city of lights filled with spinnerboxes and people piling their life savings into them. It's a beautiful place yet corrupt to the core. Shuddering from this thought, I decline his invitation and make my way to the camp.

Ten long years I spent in this camp. They took care of me when I was all but dead. Raised me to be one of their own. As I set out into the world and made a name for myself they were the first to benefit. I bought the entire camp from the lord of the land and set the rents to free as repayment for their kindness. I even put a friendly word in with traders to decrease the prices they have to pay in shops. They saved my life so I gave them a better life. It seemed so simple back then.

I can see her caravan as I enter the camp site. Theresa - it was she who saved my life that fateful night when destiny took everything from me, she who set me on the path of revenge. Funny thing about revenge is that it's an acquired taste, and once you've got the feel for it you want more and more.

The first of my former family falls beneath my blade easily. The gypsies react in shock, some instinctively drawing their pistols, others running for shelter. But there is no hiding place for them. I run them through one by one until all that remains are the children and Bob, the guy who runs the general store. Calling forth the power in my blood I conjure a ball of fire in my hands and pour more of my energies into it. Bob stands paralysed with fear as the raging inferno grows ever larger until I can contain it no longer and hurl it into his face, frying him in his own juices. I turn my attention to the children and tell them that they have been spared so that the camp might live on. They're crying. Poor kids are just too young understand that I grew up here and had to endure ten damn years of being called Little Sparrow by these people, all cause a bird crapped on my head once. Once, damn it!

Crossing the gypsies off my list I head back to the lake to catch the first glimpses of sunrise. Yes, revenge has a distinct flavour, Theresa. And I, Albion's Little Dumpling, like it.

Yet more hilarity from the legendary Bill Hicks.

I was in Nashville, Tennessee last year. After the show I went to a waffle house. I'm not proud of it - I was hungry. And I'm alone, I'm eating and I'm reading a book, right.

The waitress walks over to me,
"Hey, what you reading for?"

Isn't that like the weirdest fucking question you've ever heard? Not what am I reading, but what am I reading for... Well, God damn it, you stumped me. Why do I read? Hmmm, well...

I guess I read for a lot of reasons and the main one is so I don't end up being a fucking waffle waitress.

But then, this trucker in the next booth gets up, stands over me and goes,
"Well, looks like we got ourselves a reader."

What the fuck's going on here? It's not like I walked into a Klan rally in a Boy George outfit, God damn it! It's a BOOK!!!

There are many reasons to love the irish. This is just one.

An old irish guy is invited to an art gallery to view his grand daughter's paintings in her first exhibition. Being escorted round by the artist he gets continually annoyed at the new art.

"What's that?" he asks about a group of multi coloured triangles.

"Grampy, that's supposed to be a mother and child. Each colour represents a different aspect of..."

"Well if it's supposed to be that, why the feck isn't it then?"

Cyber sex offends me. Don't get me wrong. I'm not stepping all over people's freedom to connect with a loved one while they're away from each other, although I do find it kind of tacky. I mean it's bad enough that people do it at all, without them having to make it obvious. Come on, if you want sex without an actual other person there, just use your imagination. People have been doing it that way for thousands of years with no problems.

Then along comes the printing press and not long after a whole generation of guys grow up thinking that women have staples in their stomachs. Which of course led to some shocked expressions on honeymoons which never got explained until now. No need to thank me ladies. The fact that you know now is enough. I've done my bit. Remember, knowledge is power.

But we've progressed beyond even that now and into an area that is getting more and more dangerous. Now we live in an age where the majority of men know (and they actually do think that they know this as a fact) that all women who use the web are sluts who will have cyber sex with them as soon as look at them. These are guys that come online, search for women (which they count as anything female regardless of age) and send them sexually themed and usually aggressive messages. They actually think that these girls should be happy to get such messages. It's a result of a generation raised with easy access to porn websites combined with that generations utter depravity.

Well let me grease back my hair, put on a black polo neck and get up on the stage as a little fucking sixties poet just to send a message to all those people. You are sexual predators - sadists who put their own sexual pleasures above all else including the law, common decency and anyone else's feelings. In most cases you are paedophiles as you all seem to have some underaged girls on your wank lists. And yeah, it is a wank list and not a friends list because friendship goes both ways and never consists of a twenty year old man adding a twelve year old girl against her will and refusing to remove her. We call that "grooming" in my country and it's a common practice of baby raping sickos like you. You are perverts and everyone knows it including you, else you wouldn't hide behind the perceived (and not as tangible as you may think) anonymity of the internet. You will never be happy in your lives and don't deserve to be because you'll always have to hide what you are, and if anyone ever found out how sick you are you'd spend the rest of your lives in jail getting anally raped by a seven foot tall gorilla named Bubbah!

Do everyone a favour and kill yourselves! You know it makes sense. Don't ask me how. Chew an exhaust pipe, tie a noose round your neck, blow your fucking brains out, or jump the fence in the zoo - I don't care how you do it. Just kill yourselves. Soon. It's the only valuable contribution your sort will ever make to the world after all. Kill yourselves.

A family walks into a restaurant and asks for their reservation. The waiter directs them to a table in a corner, but there are no seats. Instead they're seated on toilets set around their table. They look around and see that everyone else is seated on toilets too.
"I hear the food here goes right through you." jokes the husband.

It sounds like a really bad joke, but in fact this family are at the Marton, a toilet themed restaurant in Taiwan. And you thought you'd seen everything eh? Marton comes from "Matong" which means toilet in chinese and the restaurant certainly delivers on it's name. Customers are seated on toilets. Food is served in miniature ceramic toilet bowls with a choice between the traditional eastern squat toilet bowls or the western variety. Starters come in miniature men's urinals and noodles and rice tend to be served in tiny bathtubs.

Eric Wang, the creator of this restaurant, made his name selling ice cream to kids in a now patented plastic toilet container. Apparantly the chocolate flavour was most popular, disgustingly enough. The idea took off and now he owns a chain of toilet themed restaurants around Taiwan, of which Marton is the first.

Brilliantly the manager, Hung Lin-wen, has introduced a loyalty system has been introduced to allow repeat customers to save up points towards earning their own miniature toilet bowl to serve food in at home. I'm trying to find a way to order one on the web right now.

Back to our family from the beginning of this post and they're having some problems at home after their trip to the Marton. Lets just say it's not the ideal place to take a child who's potty training...