Jim and Paul (dot) Net

Diamonds are forever…

Posted on October 7, 2011 by Jim

…Or so Sean Connery would have us believe, the Lying, Caledonian prick. It turns out the half-life of crystalline carbon isn’t in fact limitless but is finite, i.e. not ‘forever’. I’ve never trusted that man, any individual that bangs on about his place of birth and how good it is to be ‘Scottish’ when you spend all of your time on the Moon is clearly a top grade knacker. ‘Moon Man Connery’ needs to get a grip, take a look at the real world and the people within it, and the laws of degradation, wear and decay! Diamonds, Emeralds, Opals and even Jade all have a limited lifespan. They don’t live longer than trees or planets or ex-Tory prime ministers, they eventually fizzle out into their base elements and form you, me, him, them or the others.

Let’s carry this on. The very idea that ANYTHING can live forever is a most ridiculous idea. If Shaun Connery (of 1 Moonville Avenue, Moonville, Moonshire, The Moon MN1 0ON if you want to write) seriously thinks this, he should have the time awareness lobe of his brain removed and transplanted with a piece of haddock. Uncle Shawn’s fish lobotomy would be a welcome bit of brain surgery given his immense naivety concerning the concept of eternal stuff.

Lets sum this up in a nutshell, and let’s get Connery in from his moon patio where he drinks his moon cocktails to listen. This nutshell only lasts a few lines and words and is therefore FINITE (Connery). It is a synopsis. Connery? You lie and are ignorant. You living on the Moon in your Moon Mansion is all well and good and I’m sure it is a lovely property, but don’t rub it in our faces. Get into your moonmobile and leave us normal Earth-folk alone. Finally, and most importantly of all, please, please, please do not lie to us about the lifespan of precious gemstones again.

Posted in Films, Poppycock, Rant - tenuous | Leave a comment

Man in the pub

Posted on October 5, 2011 by Paul

I invented the diamond, right, and I don’t get any praise from anyone. I’m not interested in financial rewards or anything, I’ve got enough food on my plate and there’s company and the occasional drink – I really don’t care for anything more than that. But I sometimes just want people to appreciate that if it wasn’t for me, they wouldn’t still be picking those shiny little blighters out of those tubes of Kimberlite I cast in to the Earth millennia ago.

So to the problem.

It’s not so much an issue of auditability, I have everything I would need – paperwork etc. to prove it was my idea, I led the team that put everything where it was, finding the right types of strata in which to insert our veins and then pressurise them in-situ over the course of many more years to give us those tiny and beautiful little gems that people get so worked up over. I’ve got an issue in actually getting the paperwork, sure. I think I left it in a locker in the sub-surface of Mars last time me and the boys were over there. But it’s there, for anyone to see at any time they so choose.

Admittedly I have some difficulty explaining to people how we fused the atoms together in the centre of the sun until we had the right consistency of material, how we cooled it at the right rate and how we transported it over to the world on the back of those giant space creatures that just so happened to be passing through the system at the time. We had to make sure it entered the atmosphere at the correct speed so as not break apart, losing all our material in a fine, hot dust. I could explain how I had strapped a huge parachute to my back, and wrapped the falling rock mass in my coat as we descended gently, but would they really believe me? I get looked at a bit funny when I try and explain how the Diplodocus powered earth-splitter enabled us to open up the crust enough to drive the material down, but at the time it seemed about the best option.

And they ask me why I don’t know where they all are now, why can’t I take them to a new vein, to make them (and me) rich? I try and explain to them that they don’t want to get involved – the nice ones I will go on to tell them how there is the motherlode of all diamond reserves directly beneath the footings of this pub – The Golden Arches – where I have coming for the last two hundred and fifty years. That is normally the point they give up, and walk away. But if I’m lucky, they’ll buy me a pint or a pack of crisps and thank me for entertaining them. If I’m unlucky, they’ll call me names, get violent and might get thrown out by the landlord.

It’s at that point I normally weigh up the perils of fame in this world. I feel quietly happy that of all the people in the pub at that moment in time, I might have achieved the most, but at least no-one wants anything from me anymore. I look up through the roof of the pub – to the stars. I carry on waiting for the human race to leave me in peace, so I can go exploring once more.

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A misunderstanding and a reluctant apology

Posted on September 30, 2011 by Paul

As a very serious group of Journalists here at Jimandpaul (dot) net, obviously we take the veracity of our articles very seriously. As such the thousands of emails we received on our most recent factual piece (‘The Japanese’ – 28^th September issue) questioning the facts presented within were a little bit surprising, if not pretty hurtful.

Perhaps the context of this article should have been more clearly stated in the introductory piece, for this was not intended to be a factual piece on ‘The Japanese’, a defined ethnic group who have developed culturally over the course of human civilizational history on the islands of Japan in the Pacific Ocean. We thought this was obvious from the nature of the article, but clearly there were some misunderstandings and for that we apologise. We feel slightly validated by the positive responses we did receive, who in fact spotted that this was clearly a piece on Quantum Mechanics.

For those with little to no background in Quantum Mechanics, this describes the process by which large amounts of money are invested in huge buildings to search for really small things that we can’t see, but which affect the rules of the Universe in profound ways. By finding these particles, this will raise questions that are completely unsolvable by Human Civilisation, and it is hoped that these problems will be so obtuse and complicated that they will submerge the Human Race in to a state of complete and utter stupor. In this state, all the problems of the world will go away as the catatonic shells of our bodies are fed by tubes linking in to giant machines, and a new world order of peaceable, sentient cockroaches will rise from the ashes of our horrendous civilisation. The Earth will be saved.

Quantum Mechanics Experts are therefore working round the clock at the Large Hadron Collider to search for the most elusive of particles, the Higgs Boson. This particle is currently only theoretical, in which its presence and its properties are predicted by what we currently observe. Amongst some of the more accepted theories, there is the assumption that this is the smallest particle to actually have emotions. Fundamentally it is this emotional capacity that means it is so difficult to spot, as after decades of not being seen by the eye of a single human being, they are probably really self-conscious and shy. There are several theories on the actual physical appearance of the Higgs Boson, Jimandpaul.net have exclusively sourced the following from the meeting notes of an eminent physicist at CERN, which shows some imagined sketches of what the particle might look like (note the presence of the AE, believed to be the cryogenically preserved mind of Albert Einstein):

Ultimately until the particle is found and photographed, we will not truly know what it looks like, so for now, all we can do is postulate based on the currently available information.

Our thoughts remain with the boffins around the world, and the good work they continue to do. Without them, we would be nothing, and we wish them luck in their current endeavours.

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The Japanese

Posted on September 28, 2011 by Paul

Thirty five year ago to this day, God invented Japan. Thirty four years ago his actions inadvertently populated it with the people we now call The Japanese.

The Japanese were originally a group of underground dwelling primates very similar in stature to the Bonobo of the African Continent, but with an advanced brain and motor skills beyond that of a typical Homo Sapiens. Around this time (Approximately 1977-1978) it is generally believed that The God of the Earth took this tribe and blessed them with a lack of bodily hair and an improved posture. It is widely accepted that this general improvement in appearance gave the tribe the confidence to live outside the dark caves they had previously been living in towards the centre of the earth. After a hike of several miles from under the Earth’s crust, they emerged from Mount Fuji with dreams of setting up a new nation under the warmth of the Eastern sun.

This new tribe immediately began manufacturing reliable motor cars and sophisticated audio equipment, and by 1979 were a population of several million, based out of a large city carved in to giant mushrooms which they would call Tokyo, with one of the largest economies in the world.

The President of America (played by Morgan Freeman) immediately saw that this new civilisation of hyper-intelligent, super-dextrous hairless apes threatened his own vision of world order and immediately set about fabricating and revising known world history prior to about 1960 to paint the Japanese as an ethically defunct race of warmongers. This hurt the feelings of most Japanese to the extent that some commentators feel that they never really recovered emotionally from this cultural and civilsational peak of 1980-1982. Some eminent Eastern sociologists have linked these events to the fact that many children and young men of the time have now grown up to form debilitating schoolgirl-panty fetishes – which make them entirely unemployable.

One of the low points of Japanese history was on the night of October 14th 1989, when every single Japanese citizen dreamed exactly the same dream. This massive coincident subconscious thought was enough to summon a giant space tortoise from the stars to do battle with a huge nuclear lizard from the sea. The resulting firey breath and laser eyes led to most of the fungal mass of Tokyo being reduced to a fine white ash. In 1990 the city was rebuilt, with many buildings being constructed entirely out of neon light fittings.

Recent history has seen the Japanese bounce back culturally, as the lies told in the mid-80s by the President of the USA have begun to be unravelled around the world. However, there remain political tensions with nearby China after the Mayor of Guangzhou was made to look a complete tit on the special live summer showing of Takeshi’s Castle (a TV entertainment show).

JAPAN, Facts and Figures (Sept 2011):

Population: 1,200,075

Capital City: Tokyo (Population 1,180,250)

Major Exports: Automobiles, Audio Equipment, Happiness

Major Imports: Chess, Darkness, Time

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1908

Posted on September 26, 2011 by Paul

One day in the near future, we’ll all be living with sentient intelligent robots that are capable of fulfilling all our basic day to day needs. This will enable us to carry out free lives, with more free time than we know what to do with.

I will love and cherish my robot and I am going to call him 1908. I know this because 1908 came back from the future, late last night, to tell me.

You’ll have to excuse some of the language in the following, it is necessarily paraphrased in parts as 1908 and I spent most of the time after he arrived last night in a massive psychoactive trance brought about by some mushrooms he found on a siding, whilst travelling between his dimension and mine.

Anyway, on to the story.

1908 and me were going out for the night on one of the orbital stations of the moon and apparently there were a load of professional space-football players just checking in to the nearby hotel. Despite 1908 having these massive visual and sonic sensors, I spotted them first, and was giving him a right good verbal ribbing. In the future I’m apparently not much of a space-football fan, and 1908 just LIVES for it – it’s all he’s interested in! So I spot these space-footballers (first, did I mention?), and one of them, a giant three legged toad-beast from the jungles of Arcturus, gives me a bit of a funny look.

So I go up to him (I mean he might be a famous space-footballer but I don’t care who you are – you should show a little respect?) – and I ask him if he was looking at anything in particular?

If any of you know me, you’ll know I couldn’t possibly take on a normal space-toad, never mind a giant one that plays sport professionally for a living, but this bit made me laugh. Apparently ( in the future) I have genetically and bionically boosted myself to the shape and size of a male walrus – so you can imagine how terrified this poor guy was!

But 1908 knows me better than anyone, and he knew that I was just jerking this guy’s chain, having a laugh. I wouldn’t start a fight with anyone, not really. I had just had a few drinks – that was all.

Regardless, the team doctor comes over, and as you can imagine 1908 is literally DYING of embarrassment. But I’m still laughing to myself inside, even though the doctor is an industrial medical unit and he makes even me look small. He asks me to calm down, and if there ‘is anything going on here’. I decide not to push the point, although I’m tempted to keep the act going, and as I said – I’ve had a few drinks – so it probably seemed funnier than it actually was.

But I apologise to him and say ‘I’ve had a few drinks and actually what I wanted was this guy’s autograph’ – I explain to him that I’m a massive space-football fan.

1908 is stood there next to me pissing himself now, nudges me with his elbow and everything. As it happens this space-toad was the star player’s wife – as I’m looking at what I think is a professional sportsman, I’m actually looking at the most famous WAG in the near galaxy! So she opens her mouth and this big croak comes out – my on-board neuro-translator tells me (in the most feminine voice the little piece of technology is capable of) to ‘Eff off’ and I just went bright red. Like a Betelgeuse Beetroot, apparently.

I just about twig as this point, and I apologise AGAIN looking all sheepish now. The massive medical unit is standing there looking all condescending, tapping his right drive-actuator on the floor and glaring at me with his transponder-probes crossed. 1908 is stood there hiding his face – trying his best not to giggle.

The cheeky bastard floats away as fast as he can, leaving me stood apologising and doing my best not to look like a complete tool. Apparently I got a right cob-on then, being made to look like a prick in front of these famous types (even though it was all my doing!). That’s the way it goes though sometimes, I’m sure some of you will sympathise with my future self!

Next thing you know (by all accounts) I stomp off (proper childish hissy fit!), and angrily whack my giant robotic walrus tail against the space-glazing, cracking it through. Within three minutes all living creatures (including me) on the orbital station are functionally brain-dead – completely starved of oxygen – and the fusion reactor de-stabilised causing a massive implosion and a local catastrophic inversion of matter.

To top it all off, the game went ahead (even though one side was down to a bare-bones team), it was a score draw, and 1908 went on to be the single winner in the Pools that week, scooping 19 trillion space dollars!

Can’t wait until the future now, sounds like such a laugh.

Posted in Poppycock, Stories | Leave a comment

All the colours of the rainbow

Posted on September 25, 2011 by Jim

DIY Chameleon you say? I’ll show you how to make one:

You will need
1 Cat
1 Tiny Mallet
Paint in various colours
1 Pair of Secateurs
1 Tiny Spoon
Some Polyfilla
1 Pair of Clippers
A Shitload of Toilet Paper
An Industrial Stapler (and Staples)
4 Big Plasters
4 Fork heads
1 Lolly Pop Stick
1 Roll of Gaffer Tape
1 Sucker Dart
String
Glue
1 Party Blower
Some Smelling Salts

Method

Knock the cat out with the tiny mallet (be careful not to hit so hard as to cave it’s tiny skull in) then lay it on it’s side
Cut the bottom of its legs of just below the knees using the secateurs. Kiddywinks, you may want to get a grown up to help here as these could be very sharp! Use the toilet paper to mop up the copious quantities of blood that will undoubtedly piss out of the leg wounds.
Place the plasters over the leg wounds to aid scabbing over etc.
Place the fork handles at right angles so they are poking out sideways, at the base of the legs (where you have just severed) and staple them on at the bottom. Secure them with the gaffer tape and ensure they are on tight, your Chameleon will need these to help him climb the local foliage!
Gouge the eyes out with the tiny spoon and fill in the holes with the Polyfilla, glue the eyeballs onto the filled in cavity and ensure they now have a full 180 degree field of vision
Plug your clippers in and proceed to shave your half complete ‘Chameleon’ till he is as bald as Brian Glover’s bell end
Now you need to make the prehensile tongue! Take the lolly stick, gaffer tape along it the sucker dart and attach to the end of an outstretched party blower
Open the cat’s mouth as wide as you can and jam the newly created ‘tongue’ to the actual tongue. Ensure the blowy end of the blower is stuck down the cat’s throat. Please ensure you tie this on tight with the string and ensure complete attachment by adding inordinate amounts of staples/glue and gaffer tape, or any other shit like that you can find. This is important for your pseudo-lizard to be able to eat! If it wakes up.
Your chameleon is now finished, he just needs to look the part. Paint him as you see fit with assorted colours to match the near background. For example, if he will be living on grass, paint him green, if he will be living on a sunflower, paint him yellow!
Take the smelling salts and waft them under the cats nose. This should (probably won’t) wake him up. He will then be free to roam the locality catching praying mantis’ with his newly acquired prehensile tongue and to climb among the local foliage with his side ways feet!

You can extend his wardrobe by knitting new, colourful outfits that he can change into whenever he wants to, ensuring complete camouflage whenever and wherever!

Enjoy x

Posted in Poppycock, Roadkill | Leave a comment

Wax

Posted on September 22, 2011 by Paul

An unsung hero.

Why do we not appreciate wax more than we do?

Candles:

Candles enable us to find our way in the dark when under the influence of a power cut. IKEA are selling us ‘Tea-lights’ for less than the price of electricity, these days, so there is no excuse for not having some in a pinch. You can also litter them about the place, either by placing the classic candles in bottle necks (or ordinary candle-sticks) or just sprinkling the ubiquitous IKEA tea-light around generally. Light them all to achieve some wonderful ambience at your next barbecue event. Be careful of your sleeves though as you reach across the table to tap your ash out in to a dead tea-light.

Ears:

Wax impairs our hearing, but gives us something delightfully hideous to poke about with and play with. The bits that you promptly sweep up as they drop out of your ear at your desk? Nobody else saw that except you, and you get to be alone in your revulsion. The caked fingernail when you withdraw your little finger from your earhole? Yuck. Don’t tell anyone else what you get up to, it’s pretty important that nobody else finds out.

Waxworks:

I’m not talking about that terrible film with Paris Hilton in (actually that was called House of Wax, wasn’t it?), I’m talking about the traditional pastime of making dimensionally accurate doppelgangers of fuckwit celebrities, for the express purpose of entertaining children and idiots.

Without these, we couldn’t spend so much time dangerously close to those whom we have restraining orders against. I mean, that night I sneaked in to Madame Tussaud’s was the most memorable night of mine and Britney’s life (in the morning they thought she had melted – but she cleaned up just fine).

Self Harm:

Is it wrong to enjoy the feeling of hot wax on your hands? (I’m talking about something else now, not the ‘Britney Incident’ as London Metropolitan Police like to call it).

I mean, that feeling when you drip wax from a candle on to your hand, then it solidifies, and you get to pick it off. I don’t know what temperature it’s at, but it’s a funny feeling indeed. The idiot side of your brain – the one that hasn’t been subjected the concept of rational thought and believes only the things that you knew on the day you were born – believes it should be as hot as the fire itself.

It doesn’t burn me like the fire does, why? I am confused?

Furniture Care:

Last, but by no means least, wax enables us to keep our delicious pine tables in tip-top condition.

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The Yurt of Time

Posted on September 21, 2011 by Jim

I found the tent
It seems quite big
I thought I’d got it wrong
I hadn’t, it’s a yurt

I’d been told it was a tent
This must be it
It should travel in time
Let’s give it a go

I typed in the destination
I pulled a lever
The lights flashed
The motion knocked me over

I got up
It seemed like ages
I dusted myself off
I pushed the door open

The light was bright
My eyes focussed
I looked around a bit
It was disappointing

It was as I had left it
I hadn’t travelled in time
The lying bastards
What a dull yurt

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Airports, Chunky Alan and 80’s celebrities

Posted on September 20, 2011 by Jim

AAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAH! A bomb!

Not really, just trying to get your attention. It worked didn’t it?

I used to work as a bag handler at terminal 17 in Manchester Airport. What a great life, carrying bags and stacking them tetris-like. Clearly my youth spent wanking away my time on a GameBoy wasn’t as useless as my aggressive ‘knuckle happy’ father led me to believe.

The varying sizes and shapes, the multitude of colours and quality of the containers for travellers paraphenalia was remarkable, many fabricated from materials I didn’t even know existed and designed by chaps/ladies with foreign sounding names! The crux of the job, and what we got paid for was lifting. Some of the cases you could lift by yourself, others you need your bulky colleague (‘Big Stan’ or ‘Chunky Alan’ on Wednesday-Saturdays Night shift) to give you a hand. Whatever happened, the stuff needed loading on the plane 1 hour before take off otherwise little Jimmy wouldn’t get his flip flops for the Corfu beach.

Now the fun part was the ‘left luggage’, the stuff that people left behind. If it didn’t get claimed in 5 years, we’d get free dibs on what was remaining! We couldn’t keep the cases themselves, something to do with a piracy law dating back from the domesday era and connected with the King etc. I forget the facts. But we could keep the junk kept within. Anyway, the assortment of shit we’d get our filthy, thieving mits on was out of this world. Knickers, belts, shoes, dog leads, snow globes, shark fins, bush meat and pickled duck were all par for the course. Rocking horse shit, chickens lips and honest South Africans rarely turned up but were not unique. The most outrageous thing I came across (and subsequently sold on eBay for £433.91) was Morrissey from off of The Smiths, you know, that singer? I couldn’t quite believe my beady eyes when his coiffured bonce sprung forth from a mound of y-fronts, singing one of his more popular hits from that “Meat Is Murder” album. Whichever one it was, I’m sure I’d heard it somewhere. We kept him in a shoebox under the bed in the spare room, keeping him in as near as mint condition as we could. He was in surprisingly good nick for being shut in a bag for over 5 years with no food, water and light.

The bidding went clinically on eBay and we got a few bob for him. He went to forlorncatcatcher9, somewhere in Sussex. I posted him 2nd class to save some reddies and I was over £400 better off! Lovely stuff.

Anyway, I’d spent the money I procured from flogging the asexual Mancunian on a rug and the beginnings of a loft conversion in my Stockport pad. Kept me in the wife’s good books and let me get some much need work done on the house. Good times, and an anecdote I’ll never forget. It’s coming up to the next round of stealing next week, and I’ve got my fingers crossed I’ll stumble upon Max Clifford, so I can punish the cunt in the most unimaginable ways for the rest of his sorry, prolonged and painful life.

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Sleeping With The Enemy

Posted on September 20, 2011 by Paul

Julia Roberts stars in this story, playing a trophy bride who starts getting the shit beaten out of her shortly after marrying a wealthy investment counsellor (Patrick Bergin). Three years later she fakes her own death and disappears off to Iowa to spend some time with her mammy.

Julia Roberts is obviously exceptional, and the movie doesn’t lay it on thick with the violence – preferring a few key scenes to show how malevolent Bergin’s character is, and spending more time dwelling on the psychological aspects of his controlling relationship. Patrick likes his hand towels straight, his jars all aligned, and his tea on his table when he gets home. He didn’t appreciate it when Julia felt it necessary to go to her Mother’s funeral without telling him. Bless him, he could have starved.

Excellent stuff.

So Julia learns to swim, in secret (Patrick thinks she is incapable of swimming, you see – important plot point). She jumps off a boat in a storm, discards her lifejacket and swims away to safety. Patrick assumes she has drowned, and howls at the moon. “Laura!” “Laura!”. Poor Laura.

She cuts off half an inch of her hair and flushes it down the toilet with her expensive wedding ring, which I can’t help but think would have come in handy if you needed some spare cash. She puts on a black wig, and gets on a bus. An old lady gives her an apple, and sympathy.

And in Iowa, the primary message of the movie really hits home – 1991 was a terrible year for Male Fashion. Jesus Christ almighty, what is that goon wearing? Look at his hair?!

We meet the second man of the film, who is definitely given a name by the scriptwriter, but I can’t remember what it is. Is he playful? He’s singing some songs from Grease. Or is he serious? We are supposed to be moved by his reading to his class (he’s a drama teacher). In truth, he’s pretty unbelievable as the love interest, and I don’t think it’s entirely down to his choice in clothes. I found myself wishing Bergin would have actually properly shot him at the films climax – like in the face and everything. No such luck.

Julia knocks about Iowa for a bit, convinces us that she’s a great actress with terrible taste in men, bakes an apple pie, meets up with her mammy whilst dressed as an alcoholic boy and eventually gets found by Bergin’s cookie-cutter baddie. Partly due to the wedding ring sitting at the bottom of the toilet pan (surprised?).

I think we were supposed to be punching the air at the end when Julia fills Patrick full of lead in the hallway of her massive house (why did she rent such a massive house?), but in honesty I kind of wanted her to show him some mercy.

But maybe I forget what the early nineties was like in Hollywood, such humanity was seemingly scoffed at. Even a sweet-faced Ms Roberts succumbed to cold murder.

Perhaps if the two boys in the film were better actors I would have gone along with the director’s vision – of Bergin deserving his ultimate punishment.

And perhaps if Bergin didn’t have such a classically evil moustache, I would have taken the film a bit more seriously.

Posted in Films | 1 Comment