Big In Sudan

While casually looking through the visitors and locations of the people who visit my blog, it came as something of a surprise to discover that I seem to have an ardent fans and supporters living in Sudan? As some of you may know, Sudan is currently in the grips of a political, moral, civil and religious war, with hundreds of thousands of its citizens having been killed from either direct combat or starvation and disease inflicted by the conflict in the Darfur region.

Undeterred by this seemingly hostile environment, I decided to travel to the Sudan and thank my fans in person. Was it dangerous and stupid? Yes, absolutely. But I grew up on the mean streets of the South Wales Valleys, a place where militant coal miners regularly form unlicensed Welsh Male Voice choirs and where you have to travel nearly 20 miles to get a Burger King. So don’t talk to me about poverty and putting my life on the line cause I’ve walked through the fires of Hell to get some curly fries I’m sure a few pissed off Arabs with machine guns and attack helicopters are nothing compared to the one way system on the Porth by-pass.

Porth By-Pass: 8:30am on any given weekday

Chartering a flight to the Sudan proved somewhat difficult owing to the whole UN embargo thing. But some perseverance coupled with several pound coins (which equates to a year’s wage for those people), managed to get me a single propped jalopy that flew me in from Egypt. 

Landing in a dusty and barren landing strip, I surveyed the Sudan environment around me.

"Thats some quality work"

 Large holes pitted the runway and scorched the earth. Destruction of runways is pretty much the first point of business in any war as it cuts off supplies for the opposing army. Without food, provisions and weapons, the enemy is there for the taking! Admiring their gutsy and well executed bombing runs I was unaware of the rustling coming from behind me.

I turned round and found myself staring at a thin, dirty looking man called Mubingto. He wrongly assumed that I was some kind of relief worker and was there to help him for some reason.

I explained the situation the best I could to him using my (admittedly) rudimentary understanding of the Sudanese language. 

I showed them print outs of Batdad and Animals That Deserve to Die in the hope that they may have some kind of knowledge as to who my mysterious fans were. I thought I saw a flicker of recognition in his eyes as he scanned over a badly drawn caricature of Rebecca Black with a bowl of cereal. He instinctively knew that I wanted to explore and find people who had an internet connection. Were there people in this part of the world who were even online? The answer when it came was understandable in any language. “One”.

 This “One” must be the people I’m looking for. It would be a 3 day hike through hostile jungle...

Searing hot desert

Snow-capped mountains 

And deep, dry valleys. 

He had heard about this town, the town of the “spiders-web signal” and “magic glass box”. Up until I had arrived he had assumed that it was just a fairy tale, something that was impossible, achievable only in the most cheese fever induced dreams. 

But now that I was with him, he started to see it as a sign from the mighty Goat God, Guhindi that he should lead me to the Promised Land and that he would be rewarded with life eternal and a Facebook account.

 

The trip was arduous and difficult. We dodged bullets and bombs, drank Pepsi Max at room temperature and suffered through patchy 3G reception. Just when I thought poor little Mubingto could carry me no further, we came to a clearing in the forest. A path lay before us at our feet, leading towards a place.. A special place, a place that I had travelling half the world to find....

I approached the town slowly. It was so unlike anything I had seen in Sudan that I was convinced that I was having another of my cheese hallucinations. I reached out and touched the sign that bore my name. I was real.

I slowly started to walk into the town. Pristine houses lined the spotless streets. I could sense eyes on me as I slowly advanced towards the town centre. They remained hidden as I turned the corner and moved towards the figurehead of the town to find....

A giant, solid gold statue of me!

I gazed up at this majestic figure of wonderment. What did it all mean? A town elder exited the Church of Winning-ication behind him and slowly advanced towards me. 

They say you should never meet your hero’s. What they don’t say is that you should never meet your God’s either, as it will only result in mass disappointment and running for your life with a village of pissed off Sudaniesians chasing after you. Managing to escape and barter my way out of the Sudan, I returned to Wales with one less set of fans and a harsh lesson learnt. In the future I will stick to posting links from the safety of the virtual world and never again make the mistake of actually interacting with other humans.

Charlie Sheen, Rebecca Black, Revolution and ME!

Someone, can’t be bothered to check who, once said that “I love the whooshing sound a deadline makes as it goes flying past.” That pretty much sums up my work ethic. I’ve always thought, why do something now when I can do it at a later point in a half assed attitude. Probably five minutes before the do or die period when I start crapping myself.

As with this blog, I’ve had several ideas recently that I have not followed through on and now these moments have passed and left me with a load of material that people are bored to death with already. But you know what, screw it. I figure I’m going to get on that damn band wagon (what the hell is a band wagon anyway??) and squeeze the last few precious drops of life out of recent cultural landmarks.

Since everyone else has had plenty of fun and success ripping off these people, I see no reason why I shouldn't also. Granted I won't be the first and will most likely be the last, but better late than never right

Charlie Sheen's Mental Breakdown

 Yep, that's right. I'm starting with the big one. The meltdown that was so popular a few weeks back that it spawned a series of its own catchphrases and viral videos. This particular event was ripe for parody and I had this whole series of stories lined up where I enter the “Charlie Sheen First Church of Winning-ication.”

It was to feature a series of sketches where I get indoctrinated into the Holy Church of Charlie:

“Tiger Blood transfer sessions”

“I'm different. I have a different constitution, I have a different brain, I have a different heart. I got tiger blood, man. Dying's for fools, dying's for amateurs.”

Charlie Sheen

“Adonis and your DNA”

"I have Adonis DNA" Charlie Sheen

“Face Melting Drug Use” 

"I am on a drug, it's called 'Charlie Sheen.' It's not available because if you try it once, you will die. Your face will melt off and your children will weep over your exploded body." Charlie Sheen

Sadly Charlie Sheen pretty much ruined all of this by spoofing himself and his own message before the ink on the original quotes had even dried. Countless “Winning Cooking Shows” and stunts where he played up to his public image and drank bottles of “Tiger Blood” sadly took all the fun out of mocking him. I don't know if Charlie actually believes what he is selling or if he is just going along for the ride and maybe wearing the joke a little bit too thin, but either way I have missed my window of opportunity to spoof this amazing period of instant classic quotes and “oh my god, did he just say that?” public curiosity. 

But as popular as Charlie Sheen has been, he pales into nothingness when compared with the epic popularity and jokeability of my next missed opportunity.

Rebecca Black: Friday!

For those of you who have been living under a rock or have had your governments cut off your internet connection in the last few months as you attempt political revolution, you really don't know what you have missed here.

 Rebecca Black was just another 13 year old on Youtube who decided it would be fun to make a song and post it online. 

Her mother, deciding that sitting in front of a webcam like some common filthy Bieber was not good enough for her little girl, spent some money and arranged for a company to film a music video and write an original song with her. The resulting shit storm of perfect insanity and disturbingly catchy chorus is something that only happens once every lifetime. 

My plan was to parody the song in some way, probably by doing my own take on it and making the already silly lyrics make even less sense. 

However it seems that the entire internet had the same idea. Just a month or so after my original plan, there are now thousands of spoof videos, each getting millions of hits each. Some of them are genuinely funny, while others are just lazy, cheap, dull efforts.

Taking cues from my previous Blog entries I was going to change the lyrics to reflect my Blog life thus far. So for example, instead of “Friday, Friday, gotta get down its Friday”, I was going to sing;

But I have now lost the motivation needed to properly execute this plan as I don't want to be just another unoriginal voice amongst the millions currently baying for the blood of a 13 year old child!

The subtle comedy genius of the line “Moths will eat my face!” will now be lost forever.

I don't even want to get into the epicness of the rapping snail scene. That’s just too much of a loss for anyone to take.

A rapping snail in sunglasses. Yes, this was going to be an actual thing.

Toppling a Dictatorship

2011 has been the year of the political revolution in those far off dusty places that no one really cares about unless they were once as a filming location in Star Wars. 

No Jawas, no care

What makes these revolutions so different from others is the inclusion of social media in their process. This managed to peak my interest at the time as I use Facebook around 98% of the day and if you're going to start a war, you may as well get some good publicity and “likes” out of it. 

The MySpace Revolution....

Sadly, as with my other ideas I left it too long and the whole “Facebook Revolution” has kindda fizzled out or has become bogged down in street fighting. It started well enough in Egypt and for a moment it looked like there could be wide spread changed across the Middle East and Africa. But then the ruling governments stopped spamming pro government links on their Facebook revolution fan page and just kind of started shooting people instead, which takes pretty much all the fun out of it. Once people start getting killed, you may as well go and start using Twitter. It’s pretty much like Facebook, but has all the fun, interesting and useful parts taken out. Much like a modern dictatorship!

It’s a bit of a shame that peace didn't prevail as I had a story planned where I travel to Libya with Charlie Sheen, where he and Gaddafi have a “Winning-off”. Gaddafi is pretty much an older version of Charlie Sheen, so I envisioned it as something similar to how Luke and Vader fought in Star Wars. Each strong in the force and ready to tell anyone who would listen that they were living gods! Such a battle between two men would have probably ripped a whole in the Universe due to its sheer awesomeness. 

 

All opportunities that have now sadly been missed. Though as I write this Gaddafi is still just about hanging in there so perhaps my last entry was just about still culturally relevant.

Now to get onto my Royal Wedding blog entry! Meh, by the time I’m finished it will probably be more suited towards William and Kate's children.