Life is Healthy

As research for a script I found myself on YouTube listening to Heaven 17's Temptation. It's a fantastic song, and the experience was only slightly marred by the comments proclaiming that Cradle of Filth's version is better. Aside from the fact that it isn't, there is also the fact that Cradle of Filth have the worst, most pathetically obvious trying-to-shock name in the whole history of music. All they have done is taken something nice (cradle) and immediately juxtaposed it with something nasty (filth).

Here are some of the names they rejected:

Mug of Sewage

Kitten Basket of Snot

Cushion of Fishguts

Chocolate Box of Grime

Pram of Excrement

Fruitbowl of Dirtiness

Paddling Pool of Rubbish

Biscuit Barrel of Slime

Christmas Stocking of Industrial Effluence

Vase of Diarrhoea


EDIT:

Müller Fruit Corner of Vomit

any more?

1. I can't count.

Girlfriend With a Head Injury

Annie, Sit Down, I’ve Got Something to Tell You

23:18 to Georgia

Where’s the Radio, Kenneth?

The Penultimate Countdown

Grandma’s Identical Twin’s Condition Worsens

Papa’s Lost His Bag

I’d Do Anything for Love

If You Tolerate This Your Children Have One More Chance

You Can Hurry Sex

(Like these? Try these and these.)

Never marry an archaeologist – they’re always digging up the past.

Never marry a proof-reader – they’re always looking to find fault.

Never marry an astronaut – they always want more space.

Never marry a boxing promoter – they’re always trying to pick a fight.

Never marry an ascetic – nothing is good enough for them.

Never marry a typesetter – they won’t let you get a word in edgeways.

Never marry a socialite – they won’t have any common interests.

Never marry a cruciverbalist – they always have to have the last word.

Never marry a model – they’ll change before your eyes.

Never marry a tennis player – love means nothing to them.

Here are some of the films that we can look forward to seeing this year:

I Know What You Did Last Year At Marienbad
Did Giorgio Albertazzi have an affair with a married woman last year? The writer of a taunting letter seems to think so in this post-modern art-house slasher.

Guess Who’s Coming to My Dinner with Andre
Existential stagey two-hander livens up in the second reel with the introduction of a black man. Yes! A black man!

The Unbearable Lightness of Being John Malkovich
John Cusack finds a portal into the head of a man who has sex with Juliette Binoche a lot. He ignores the Russian invasion, and pretty much everything else.

Barefoot in Jurassic Park
Mismatched newlyweds try to make it work, despite having to share their tiny fifth-floor apartment with a velociraptor.

The Empire Strikes Back to the Future
Luke Skywalker goes back in time to save his father from the dark side, but Jar Jar Binks starts falling for him...

Buena Vista Fight Club
The first rule of Buena Vista Fight Club is – you do not change key. The second rule of Buena Vista Fight Club is – you do not change key. Apart from that, it's just like jazz.

To Kill a Mockingbird on a Wire
Gregory Peck defends Mel Gibson on charges of racism. With Goldie Hawn as herself.

Eternal Sunshine of a Beautiful Mind
Russell Crowe tries to forget that he ever had an imaginary friend.

The Dirty Pretty Dozen
Illegal cleaners and minicab drivers are rounded up into a lean, mean fighting machine.

The Sixth Sense and Sensibility
Mr Dashwood wasn’t dead all along.

Liverpool manager Rafael Benitez offered the following explanation for his side’s recent 6-3 defeat to Arsenal:

"The problem was conceding four goals in the first half.”

Thanks, Rafa. I’d been reading the match reports for hours trying to work out what might have gone wrong, but you’ve really hit the nail on the head there. As Basil Fawlty would say, “Can’t we get you on Mastermind? Specialist subject: stating the bleeding obvious”. Here are some answers you could give:

The problem was the ship hitting the iceberg.

The problem was the plague making the people ill.

The problem was the earthquake knocking the buildings down.

The problem was the man with the rifle shooting at the president.

The problem was the people not having enough to eat.

The problem was the airship catching fire.

The problem was the volcano erupting and burying the city.

The problem was the first aeroplane colliding with the second aeroplane.

The problem was the nuclear power station exploding.

The problem was the asteroid hitting the Earth.

I was rather worried to hear the latest instalment from David Blunkett’s diaries on Radio 4 this morning, in particular an entry from September 2001 regarding national security. He described the problems of damping down fear by telling the public that the government knew what was happening, whilst simultaneously having to get to grips with officials to make sure that things were actually done. He wrote of an old school-friend and his wife, Christine, who lived in Vancouver:

“Christine said that a patient in her physiotherapy clinic had told her a curious story. A relative who’d been in London had found someone’s wallet, and having returned it to them were offered money as a reward. They turned this down. So the owner of the wallet, who was an Arab, said, “Well, I’ve got to do something for you. Don’t be in London on the 11th of November.” I immediately registered the significance of this. The 11th of November is Armistice Day – the one day in the year when all leading politicians from the three parties, the Queen, other members of the royal family and the leading personnel of the armed services are in the same place at the same time. A known time. In Central London. I decided that I should at least tell Tony as it was absolutely clear that nobody had fully thought through the significance. We agreed that there was no way we could cancel Armistice Day, but we were certainly going to have to take increased precautions.”

I know it was five years ago, but is there anybody who hasn’t heard a variation on this story and instantly dismissed it as an urban myth? It’s usually Birmingham in the version I’ve been told, and I tend to reply, “Yeah, I’ll stay away – it’s a right dump.”

What if our whole country were being run according to things that had happened to a friend of a friend?

Education
All exams to be replaced by one that just has one question: “Is this a question?” Anyone who answers “Yes, if this is an answer” will get an A. All exam pencils to be sharpened down to less than 4cm in case pupils stick them up their noses and bang their heads down to commit suicide. Because that happened at my mate’s school. And they gave everyone an A.

Health
All money from Aids and malaria programmes to be diverted into eradicating the world of spiders. Because this woman got bitten by one once and a few weeks later this lump came up on her arm, and she went to the doctor, and he cut it open and loads of little spiders came out and she went mad.

Also more money urgently needed for stomach pumps for Marc Almond. Or was it the other one out of Soft Cell?

ID Cards
Passports to be combined with organ donor cards. Because I heard about this guy who went abroad and he woke up in a bath of ice and they’d taken his kidney. It’s true. You can’t trust them.

Arts
All theatres to be closed down to prevent criminals stealing your car, then returning it with a note saying sorry and two theatre tickets to compensate, so they then know that you’ll be out all evening and can burgle you. Subsidies to be spent instead on a memorial for the kid from the Frosties advert.

Also Countdown to be moved to a post-watershed slot. Did you know that the letters once spelt W-A-N-K-M-E-O-F-F?

Transport
Urgent recall of all 32m cars currently on the road to have their door handles redesigned so that they can’t be opened by serial killers who have hooks for hands. Did you hear about that poor woman? The policeman told her not to look back...

Crime
All homes to be fitted with constantly-monitored CCTV cameras in case a burglar ever breaks in and puts your toothbrush up his bottom then takes a photo of it with your camera. And much stiffer sentences for this crime because it happened to friends of mine and I retched when I heard.

Sport
Sarah Greene and a pool table to be drafted in to boost the morale of all national teams.

Social Security
Channel Tunnel Rail Link to be extended in an extra 250 mile loop winding through the back gardens of everyone in Kent. Then a train will be sent through at 6am every day to wake them all up. Too late to go back to sleep; too early to get up; only one thing to do: baby boom, end of pensions crisis. There was this village this really happened in, you know...

Foreign Affairs
There’s this guy at the Foreign Office, yeah, and he says that Iraq have got these WMDs or something and in 45 minutes we could all be dead. It’s true – a friend of a friend told me...

My girlfriend and I are on our way to see some old friends. They have moved since we last saw them, and we only have a small fragment of hand-drawn map to guide us. As a consequence we are late, and driving aimlessly around a modern housing estate – the kind where all the roads are named according to a central theme.

“Look at that”, I say, as we pass a small parade of shops for the third time. “Shackleton Drive.”

“I know”, she says. “That doesn’t help us.”

“Yes, but Shackleton was famous for perhaps the most astonishing feat of courage and survival ever – leading his men across the Southern Ocean to safety. Of all explorers, he is perhaps the one most associated with having a lot of drive.”

Suddenly the hairs on the back of my neck stand up. I slam the brakes on.

“Look! Look!”

“Is that their house?”

“No. Scott Close.”

“So?”

“Scott narrowly failed to lead the first expedition to the South Pole. Of all explorers, he is probably the one who got the closest to his goal, without achieving it: Scott – Close.”

“I think we need to do a left up here.”

I drive off.

“Why are you turning right?”

“Don’t you see? This whole estate is named after explorers, but in an amazingly apt and witty way. I bet that each road has had the same amount of love put into thinking up its name. I want to see what the rest are called.”

“Can’t we do that afterwards?”

“It’ll be dark then.”

I look at my girlfriend, slightly concerned that the etymology of street names might not fit into the intersection of our Venn diagram of hobbies. I try to rouse her interest in the project.

“Don’t you think this is brilliant? Someone in the planning department has made this series of wonderfully subtle little jokes, and I might be the first person to have discovered them. This is... this is beauty.”

Alas, someone in the planning department hadn’t made a series of wonderfully subtle little jokes. All the other road names are rubbish – most of them just have the suffix Close, even applied to people such as Sir Edmund Hillary, who clearly achieved his objective.

“How can Amundsen be a Close as well as Scott?” I rage. “And it’s not even as though Amundsen Close is further south than Scott Close – that would have at least made some sense.”

My girlfriend phones our friends to explain that we are back by the shops and we may be some time.

I do not enjoy seeing our friends as much as I usually do. I am disappointed and distracted. At one point, my girlfriend leans over to me and whispers, “You’re thinking up road names, aren’t you?”

I was. Here they are:

Hillary Rise

Magellan Circle

Drake Alley

Oates Walk

Upper Piccard Way and Lower Piccard Way

Stanley Approach

Lewis Estate

Cook Court

Armstrong Crescent

Columbus Road (the last little bit of the way)

How Are We Going to Get This Dutchie Going Around?

Bela Lugosi’s Unwell

Peckish Like the Wolf

Things Can Still Get a Little Bit Worse

Begin to Suspect the Boogie

Oops!... I Did It

Bang You’re Seriously Wounded

It’s My Party and I’ll Tell You You’re My Best Mate and I Love You If I Want to

Smells Like Some Kind of Spirit

Do They Know It’s Only September Yet the Shops Think It’s Christmas?

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I Still Haven't Found What I'm Looking For, and Now I'm Looking in Places I've Already Looked

The Day We Came Back On the Replacement Bus Service

There Are Also Ways Such As Down, Left and Right

Einstein-a-Come-Back

It's Actually About 60/40 What You Do/The Way That You Do It

(Yes, You, I'm Talking to You) The Rocksteady Crew

Leavin’ a Note On Heaven’s Door

Bring Your Daughter Back and Explain Why You Thought That the Slaughter Would Be an Appropriate Place to Take Her

Hang On a Sec, Isn’t That Your Lovin’ Feelin’ Over There?

I Just Called to Say Did You Get My Last Message?

(Like these? Try these.)