-- Download Please Urinate BEFORE Reading This as PDF --
I HAVE warned you. It’s from here, Things My Girlfriend And I Have Argued About [bookmark it now]:
It’s getting worse. I’ve mentioned this, in passing, before, but it’s getting worse. We were watching Hannibal on DVD the other week, and Margret was sitting beside me, looking at the screen, right from the moment I hit ‘play’. This, incidentally, is because before we watch any DVD or video we have this ritual.
Mil – ‘Are you ready?’
Margret – ‘Yes.’
Mil – ‘No you’re not, you’re clearly not. Sit down here.’
Margret – ‘I’m ready, I’m ready, I’m just cutting out this magazine article and putting the kids toys away in an order based on the psychological warmth of their respective colours and making a cup of tea and wondering if we should move that mirror six inches to the left, but I’m ready – go ahead, start the film.’
Mil – ‘No. I’ll start the film when you’re sitting here. If I start the film now, you’ll sit down in three minutes time and say, “What’s happened?” and I’ll have to do that thing with my mouth. Not going to happen. You sit here right from the beginning.’
[Margret makes an injured pantomime of dragging herself over to the sofa and sitting down beside me.]
Mil – ‘Thank you.’
[I press ‘play’. The FBI copyright warning comes up and, knowing full well it won’t work, I repeatedly try to fast forward through it for the annoying amount of time – precisely long enough for me to fully hate the FBI and the entire motion picture industry – it takes to fade. A logo swirls around the screen. Darkness. A single, threatening, bass note rumbles low. Swelling in volume as the first image seeps into life.]
Margret – ‘I’ve just remembered, I need to phone Jo.’
Mil – ‘Arrrrggghhheeeiiiiiieeeeerrrrgghhhhhhhhgkkkkk-kkk-kk-k!’
Margret – ‘I only need to ask if she has a text book – carry on.’
Mil – ‘No. Make the phone call. I’ll wait.’
[Three hours later. Margret returns; I am still on the sofa, remote control poised in my hand, but now visibly older and covered in a light film of dust.]
Margret – ‘OK, done.’
Mil – ‘Right.’
[I wind back four or five seconds to have the moody intro again, Margret complains we’ve already seen this bit and – as it’s getting late now – there’s no need. I reply it’s important for setting the mood, she thinks it’s a stupid thing to do, the exchange degenerates into a twenty minute row about foreplay, and then we finally begin to watch the film.]
So, that’s what happens, every time, and thus on this occasion as with all others, Margret has been sitting beside me since the very beginning of the film. Which, casting your mind back, you’ll recall is Hannibal.
Titles. Silence. A face appears.
Margret – ‘Who’s that?’
Getting worse. I was watching the Davis Cup on TV and, as the players are sitting down for a of change ends, the camera idly pans round the crowd, pausing on a woman eating an ice cream. Margret says?… Louder – I can’t hear you… Yes, yes she does.
I’m here to make an appeal for the population of the Earth to wear name tags at all times, three tags if you’re an actor: your character’s name, your real name and a list of things you’ve been in before. Please, do it. They only cost a few pence – please don’t make me beg.
More from my site
March 22, 2006 George W. Churchill
February 22, 2010 National Housing Strategy Rally in Vancouver: Bill C-304
November 27, 2008 Theft: Arbitrary Credit Card Charges
July 20, 2015 Is Greece the Front Line in the War Against Neoliberalism?
January 28, 2008 Society’s Celebrity Bloodlust Complex and Britney Spears
February 25, 2010 CBC Treats VANOC Like a Crazy Drunk with a Gun
Stephen Elliott-Buckley
Latest posts by Stephen Elliott-Buckley (see all)
- Goodbye, Politics, Re-Spun! Hello, WePivot.net! - October 21, 2016
- Fixing the Cleveland I*****s Racist Team Name - October 19, 2016
- What the BC Premier’s Reconciliation Smells Like - October 18, 2016
oh yes. don’t read this webpage at work. you’ll surely be fired for lack of productivity.
oh hey, not THIS webpage. feel free to read mine at work.
don’t read HIS webpage at work.
Now this tidbit, from further down his page, is bloody brilliant (though it’s unfortunate that his entries are not explicitly dated):
Before I start, I feel I ought to mention how sad it is that the Texan readers are no longer with us. As you know, the notoriously irresponsible Supreme Court has seen fit to tear down the safety barrier protecting society and thus Texas is now like a ghost state. Machinery lies idle; offices are silent; the streets of Dallas shimmer motionless in the summer sun. No one goes to work nor chats with friends nor watches television nor even browses the Internet. Because, whooping atavistically that the police are now powerless to stop them, the entire population of Texas has, since last week, been ceaselessly engaged in endless consensual homosexual sex in private so as to bring about the extinction of the vital institution of marriage.
Oh, and let me make it clear that I’m not just some dull-witted, homophobic idiot here by saying, “it’s the children I’m concerned about”.