Christmas Is In The Air And In The Toilet

Only three days until Christmas and I'm still trying my best to feel festive. I've watched at least another four or five Christmas films, bought Christmas themed earrings, been wearing a lot of red, using Christmas themed toilet paper (stocking fillers from the last two years finally put to good use!) and even been doing my daily pilates to Christmas music.

As the days before the holy one's birthday dwindle away, with each phone call home my mum is sounding increasingly stressed. My family has a pretty unusual Christmas with an awful lot of traditions we adhere to. Every year we rotate between my parents' house and my two Aunts' houses with up to fifteen of us staying for three nights for Christmas Eve through to Boxing Day. This year it is being hosted at ma and pa's house and dad decided to up the pressure by getting a new kitchen fitted that would be completed “well before Christmas”. “Well before” has of course actually translated as about a week before – surely plenty of time to give it all a good clean, put everything back in place and pre-prepare all of the food for the three days?

In addition to worrying about food and sorting out bedrooms etc, games need to be made. In my family, the only TV really permitted over the three days is to watch the Queen's speech on Christmas day and late night TV once the majority have gone to bed. Instead of ogling the box we go back to Victorian times without the singing around the piano. Games like “the drawing game” (known as Pictionary to many), “Give Us A Clue” and name the famous people in the newspaper cuttings are commonplace every year, as well as the annual Boxing Day “Car Treasure Hunt”.

As I've been uncharacteristically twiddling my thumbs a bit over the last few days, I decided to start devising some games to play to try and at least take one stress away from Big G. After having a long think about different games we could play, I wanted to get a series of Christmas song clips sung by unusual folk in the hope people would be able to guess the original artist. This actually proved more tricky than I could ever have imagined but prompted an amazing discovery.

When faced with a vast choice of music to listen to, I sometimes find it difficult to think of anything I fancy putting on but still love Spotify - it allows me to listen to unowned childhood guilty pleasures like Spaced and provides some fantastic recommendations of artists related to my search. Searching for “Christmas Pop Songs” I somehow stumbled across an amazing album I would have never previously believed existed: Christmas Cats (I promise I wasn't intentionally searching for cats on this occasion!).

I'd love to be able to play some to you but sadly as it is on Spotify I can't - those of you on Spotify must give it a listen. Unbelievably, it is actually a whole album of 30 Christmas songs all sung by cats. And I'm since even more shocked to discover there's a whole range of animal sung albums. The Maj is quite disturbed by the cat piano iphone app which merely plays piano keys as meows so imagine what entire songs with cats singing did to him! While he tried to eat a chunk out of the side of my laptop, I rejoiced I'd found a ridiculously effortless Christmas game.

One day over the festive period, my family are going to be listening to a variety of songs by feline artists and trying to guess what popular Christmas favourites they are. If the image of a room full of “adults” carefully trying to discern song titles while listening to cats meowing isn't enough to put a smile on your face, then perhaps a selection of Christmas cracker style jokes from one of my two Christmas toilet rolls might help:

Q1: What are the wettest animals in the world?

A1: Reindeer

Q2: What do you call people who are afraid of Santa Claus?

A2: Claustrophobic

Q3: What's the difference between roast beef and pee soup?

A3: Anyone can roast beef

Q4: What do you get if you cross a snowman with a vampire?

A4: Frostbite

Q5: Why would you invite a mushroom to a Christmas party?

A5: He's a fun guy

Q6: Why was Santa's little helper feeling depressed?

A6: He had low elf-esteem

Have a purr-fect Christmas (Sorry, I couldn't resist!).

The Newfangled Festive Spirit

As the big day draws near I'm trying to perk-up my Christmas spirit – as you can see, The Major has already found his.

Despite hating most traditional Christmas foods and being non-religious, I've always loved Christmas - for me it's about family and tradition. Every year in the run-up to Christmas I start re-watching my large and somewhat embarrassing Christmas film collection and planning our annual Christmas party.

This year's “Echo Christmas” managed to avoid the ridiculously repetitive playlist we created on Spotify last year, instead opting for background sounds courtesy of music channels with Christmas shows. Momentarily stopping between putting batches of snack foods in the oven, I was disturbed to see what had been deemed “Christmas music” - Rockin' Robin seemed to have been replaced with amusing 80s ballads and one-hit-wonders.

As the night progressed, a monumentally unfestive discovery was made – something that managed to slip me by at the time of release. The video below is likely to cause children nightmares and make it very difficult for Santa to delivery presents:

Several days later and we're browsing through TV channels, shocked to discover the so-called “Christmas Channel” is showing Predator followed by Piranha. This year feels distinctly unChristmassy, despite my best-efforts. I've even over-heard people in the hairdressers talking about a local library banning the term “Christmas Tree” and using “Festive Tree” instead, deeming it to be less “offensive”.

With music channel playlists avoiding Christmas tunes and the designated TV Christmas channel showing slasher-flicks, it's no wonder I've lost that festive feeling. It's lucky Lonely Island are on hand to remind me about the spirit of giving at Christmas:

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=XZLIQodHaFk

And if like me, the video on the above link is enough to make you chuckle, then you may also perhaps enjoy two more particularly entertaining Lonely Island videos:

Perhaps, instead of searching for bad taste joke videos, I should get back to supping on vast amounts of mulled wine while wrapping presents and up my intake of Christmas classics like It's A Wonderful Life, Santa Claus: The Movie and Rare Exports.

Surreal Signs

The last three weeks have been photo hell. Although it doesn't feel like it, it's now rather shockingly over two years since I returned from my year of travels. Ever since arriving back, sorting through the travel pictures has been on the list of things to do but with thousands of them, I kept inevitably putting it off.

Having embraced the joys of discount sites like Groupon, I purchased some print albums to begin the daunting process of finally documenting my travels. I'd planned to sort through my pictures over a month before the deal ended but in reality started sifting through pictures a few weeks before and actually created the albums on-line on the last two days of the deal.

The website I was using reassuring said it would take between five to ten minutes to create an album. Try anywhere between five to eight hours! Just uploading the pictures took several hours alone and traffic on the site was so busy it took an hour and a half to pay for the second album. Of course there's all the fiddly nonsense like rotating pictures, getting them in the right order, labelling etc to be done too.

I finally finished and paid for the second album at 11.30 (half an hour before the deal ended) to discover I'd actually purchased three albums and had someone changed the figure to two in my head. Queue some frantic downloading and a 3am finish that ended happily with the Groupon code being accepted anyway.

Having finished the task, I thought I'd treat myself to the less arduous job of looking through my more recent holiday pictures from Budapest, Slovenia, Salzburg and Italy. I love a good sign and there are quite a few comical or frankly bizarre ones among my photos that I thought I'd share:

Budapest:

I just love the additional use of colour in this image from our hostel.

This place doesn't seem to understand that the real meaning of “Happy Ending” was widely recognised some time ago or perhaps they're merely trying to use it as their unique selling point?

You may wonder what's going on in this sign?

Then you see the next one that helpfully illustrates the service offered:

Slovenia:

I've always been amused by the randomness of Punkys in Indian restaurants but this Slovenian Pizzeria takes their plastic encased dessert collection to a whole new level.

I've no idea why this sign seems to suggest females are banned from holding hands with children along the footpath.

Or why this sign says it's OK for men to hold hands with children wearing hats resembling kites.

The existence of an erotic 3D cinema and shop in the tiny Slovenian town of Bled is a tad bizarre but one specialising in Avatar?!

Italy:

Is this finally recognising the snail's right of way on our roads?

We thought this might be prohibiting any skiing on the flower beds.

This sign is dually strange – one side seems to be encouraging dog golf while the other encourages walks with ghost dogs. Unfortunately the dwindling daylight hours means this picture is a tad on the dark side but the version with flash manages to somehow mask the strangeness of the right hand side of the sign.

Decide for yourself, what the “yes” and “no” on the toilet flushers are trying to say.

The Perils of Property Rentals

Having been back from my holiday for nearly two weeks now, we've been asked to leave feedback about the villa five of us rented near Lake Como for the remaining three days of our escape. Our stay didn't begin well after my friend's car was scratched by a piece of the garage door perilously tumbling on top of it on arrival. The log fire we'd been looking forward to using was apparently "out-of-action" and for "display purposes only", despite the large pile of firewood in the garage and adverts for the property suggesting to the contrary. We soon discovered the villa's caretaker lived above us and could easily pop in and out as he pleased and after exploring all the rooms, found a seriously disturbing painting:

An even more worrying boxed possession:

And an eerie tunnel running around three walls of the house like something a masked gimp would patrol in a horror film:

It was hardly surprising we initially mistook stacked sun-loungers for a surgical table:

After the paranoia of the first night, the rest of our stay was thankfully smooth-running with restaurant recommendations all proving well-worth a visit, even if other suggested tourist activities were an impossibility during the winter season or a serious let-down.

Having just left mixed feedback, it seemed appropriate to share an amusing survey of holiday home providers I've been sent:

Top Five Most Bizarre Requests

1. A toupee stand - the holidaymaker complained when the owner didn't have one that every respectable beach house should have its own.

2. Hot water bottles in the villa - this was a request made in Costa Blanca for the last two weeks in July when the outside temperature is 24 degrees at night.

3. A pot for the poo - after speaking to the holidaymakers, the owner determined it was a potty they wanted for their three year old child.

4. Are clothes compulsory? - The owner advised that public nudity was banned in Barbados, although they were OK to walk around inside the property naked. The holidaymakers requested that as the owner lived on site, they would expect her to comply with their revealing "dress code" too.

5. A donkey to ride a pregnant bride up a long wooden platform.

Top Five Strangest Items Left

1. Two pet rabbits next to two violins - the owners are still looking after the pets now.

2. A set of surgeon's scalpels - the owners carefully checked every part of the property to make sure there were no hidden body parts.

3. A full roasted pig with head and legs still fully intact left on the breakfast bar.

4. A wedding dress screwed up in a ball left in the master bedroom wardrobe.

5. A whip found on the top shelf of the main bedroom wardrobe (alongside other related items).

I'm now wondering what feedback our chatty Italian left about us and if we left anything comical behind... I hope so!

Web Whispers

Having just spent the last days of my holiday in Italy there were inevitable topical Berlusconi discussions. Mention of Italy's player ex-PM led to all of us collectively admitting we had no idea what “bunga bunga” actually means. Being inquisitive folk, we undertook a quick web search and were delighted with the results.

Rather than finding a definitive answer, google prompted a game of “Web Whispers”, taking us on a magical mystery tour of vaguely related and highly amusing search results. From “bunga bunga” our first stop was “kancho”.

Kancho is the name given to a childish Japanese prank. Wikipedia helpfully describes it as “performed by clasping the hands together so the index fingers are pointing out and attempting to insert them sharply into someone's anal region when the victim is not looking. It is similar to the wedgie or a goosing (also known as “poo-fingering” in some English boarding schools)... A Kancho is often executed simultaneously as the offending party loudly emphasizes the second syllable of "Kan-CHO!":

Although surely likely to lead to sexual harassment charges if attempted in the UK, this bizarre practise is also apparently common in South Korea as “tong chim”, “dong chim” or “ddong chim” (translated as “poop needle”); in the Philippines as "katsibong", "bembong", "bombet", "jempot" or "pidyok" (from the Filipino word "tumbling", meaning “rectum”), in Taiwan where the translation means "I am a rapist" and in Vietnam as "Thông đít" ( translating as "to penetrate your anus").

The Japanese even have a TV game show where a celebrity gets to “Kancho” someone and a South Korean arcade game allows folk to simulate an anal probing. Of course this final discovery led to our next web search, “Boong-Ga Boong-Ga”...

The ever helpful Wikipedia told us: “The object of Boong-Ga Boong-Ga is to score points by spanking or performing kancho on a model of a human posterior embedded in the game's cabinet. A plastic finger is attached to the machine for players to perform the latter.

The game features eight characters players can punish: 'ex-girlfriend', 'ex-boyfriend', 'gangster', 'mother-in- law', gold-digger', 'prostitute', 'child molester' and 'con-artist'. During gameplay, the facial expression of the chosen character is displayed on a monitor.

The game also dispenses cards that rate players on their 'sexual behaviour', and for players who perform exceptionally well the machine will dispense a small plastic trophy in the shape of a pile of faeces.”

Next stop? Yes, you guessed it! Youtube clips of the game:

Alongside a few bizarre clips like the one above, related videos included the following:

Before things unintentionally delved into the downright wrong and potentially illegal, we finally stopped riding the electronic wave but did at least manage to find the below information. Where did we find it? Perceptively you've again guessed correctly...

Wikipedia says bunga bunga was allegedly taught to Silvio Berlusconi by Muammar al-Gaddafi and has recently acquired a whole new meaning, referring to an “orgy involving a powerful leader. Descriptions of bunga bunga disagree on its meaning, or perhaps illustrate the range of its reference. It is said to be a sort of underwater orgy where nude young women allegedly encircle the nude host and/or his friends in his swimming pool; an African-style ritual performed for male spectators by 20 naked young women or an erotic entertainment hosted by a rich host involving pole dancing and competitive striptease by topless skimpy-costumed women in nurses' outfits and police uniforms - the prize being prostitution for the host.”

Actress Sabina Began has proposed an alternative origin for the term, claiming it was a nickname based on her surname and that she'd organized the parties. We'll never know the correct origin but have certainly learnt a few disturbing things along the way!

Everything In Excess

I've lost track of how many Leeds Film Festival Nights Of The Dead I've now been to but every year follows a similar pattern. Before the evening begins I attempt to catch a bit of extra sleep and despite best intentions end up getting less than two hours or unsatisfactory tossing and turning, waking up feeling more exhausted. I take far too many drinks and snacks with me and look like I'm going away for the weekend when I set-off.

Each year starts later than the scheduled midnight start time and gets progressively more delayed throughout the evening – this year finished at 10am. There are always ridiculous competitions between each film led by the same two guys (this year involved a banana eating race) and prizes are not too exciting - generally all courtesy of Travelling Man. Folks religiously bring their worst films to donate to the “Shit Film Amnesty” and the poor bugger whose film gets voted the worst has to take away everyone else's.

Over the years sponsors have changed and a few times the venue but NOTD is guaranteed to sell- out and has become almost more about the vibe than the films with some punters dressing up for the occasion. Loud-mouthed horror enthusiasts shout out remarks and continue to heckle film-makers during Q & As. The same irritating guy shows up every year and from the balcony continues to annoy the hell out of everyone, despite the feelings of other audience members and the presenters being made very clear.

This year was no different. The main four features (Monster Brawl, Little Deaths, Blind Alley, Helldriver) were entertaining but with the exception of Little Deaths, below average. Once again the short films were the most amusing so as I'm away again for a few weeks, I thought I'd keep you busy with a few links to trailers and where possible entire shorts. I decided a few were less worth sharing and sadly couldn't find some but what follows are the cream of the crop:

Tune for Two

Brutal Relax

Banana Motherfucker - trailer

Spoon Wars

Feline Fetishes For Dirty Undies

Still working from home and distracting myself with Major Richard Parker's idiosyncrasies, I'm becoming increasingly jealous of The Boy's pants. In the past I've had a cat with an unhealthy weakness for crisps and witnessed many who seem to have foot fetishes. Like his predecessors, The Major is a keen sniffer of feet and shoes with a tendency to lie across feet when gracing us with his presence on the bed.

More unusually, he's repeatedly taken a shine to The Boy's discarded dirty pants. He first displayed this bizarre and slightly disturbing fetish when climbing into a laundry basket and crowning himself with said item. Since then, I've discovered him many times lain across the floor cradling dirty undies and have actually started to feel a little put out that my own raw human scent doesn't seem to hold the same appeal.

His liking for pants seemed so abnormal I thought I'd Youtube “cat dirty underwear” to see if it was something exclusively enjoyed by The Major. My findings were quite revealing. There are a number of video clips like the one that follows and in many instances the underwear attacker seems to be a ginger cat! Equally intriguing is the tendency for cats to go for same sex underwear.