Further to my note of the 4th of January 2010 in which I complained about the rubbish pair of Clarks Oxfords that had fallen apart on me (after very little wear, I hasten to add), I write to tell you of the fate of their replacements. Putting my faith (perhaps foolishly) in Clarks I bought another pair of Oxfords. After only four months the heel is already worn through, exposing an unsightly and impractical void within. They are rubbish shoes. They are rubbish Clarks shoes and I hate them and I am very cross with you, Clarks. Very cross.

That’ll learn them.

Hullo!. Who’s that cheeky scamp over there? Why it’s deranged cyclops cleric Abu Hamza! And what’s that Abu? The first person to kill an infidel in the ultimate act of martyrdom will win this delicious glazed ham? Well there’s a tantalising offer and no mistake. I think I’ll be getting the Tube home, eh?

So, all I need to do is learn how to code, sign up for the iPhone Developer Program, write a complete clone of S.T.U.N. Runner and submit it to the App Store. What a piece of piss. I’m willing to bet small amounts of someone else’s money that I could have the whole shebang done in under ten years.

Don’t worry, I don’t really have any phasers. Phasers are a made up ray gun thing from Star Trek. It’s all part of a hilarious pun you see, in as much as you can make a pun out of something by simply adding some punctuation. Oh it’s all falling apart isn’t it?

I’VE DONE IT ALL WRONG.

This whole pun fiasco was supposed to serve as a devastatingly witty introduction (where necessary) to S.T.U.N. Runner, a fantastic 1989 arcade game by Atari. For reasons still not entirely clear to myself you, the protagonist, had to hurtle down a series of tubular 3D chasms at breakneck speed in some sort of futuristic bobsled. It’s an experience probably not unlike doing the Cresta Run having been spiked with a near fatal dose of weapons-grade hallucinogens, or being shrunk to the size of an ant and flushed down the toilet into a sewer system made entirely of brightly coloured geometric shapes. In a little ant toboggan, of course. I have vivid memories of jaunts to the arcades by the seaside with my good pal Flaps as a child, straddling the brightly coloured S.T.U.N. Runner machine and pumping a startling quantity of freshly-minted 20p pieces into it. Happy days.

It was while playing my fashionable iPhone the other day that I happened to reminisce on those halcyon days of my gaming youth, when suddenly a thought rammed itself right up my brainpipes:

“Why hasn’t S.T.U.N. Runner been ported to the iPhone?”

It makes as near to perfect sense as you’re likely to get from me. The iPhone (or iPod Touch, for the paupers among us) has more than enough magical computer powaz to churn out a game from 20 years ago, and the motion sensors in the iPhone could be used to replicate the movement of the yoke-style controls from the arcade machine. Why, it’s almost too easy. All we need now are the following things (in no particular order):

You see? This should be a piece of piss. If that bearded West Country oaftrumpet Justin Lee Collins can just about but not quite get the original cast of Grange Hill together, then I can surely get an elderly computer game ported to the iPhone. Think of it as a sort of challenge which I’ll almost undoubtedly fail and then pretend never happened in the first place.

The first step is to get in touch with the original Atari team who produced S.T.U.N. Runner…

As something of a ‘fuck you‘ to the British Egg Information Service who, as keener readers will recall, have still not answered my query, I’ve taken it upon myself to infiltrate the British egg industry via other means.

Here is the first item in a vast portfolio of advertising material which I’ll send to the British Egg Marketing Board who will immediately hire me, making me their EGG CZAR responsible for every aspect of egg promotion in the British Isles. I’ll then shut down the British Egg Information Service, cackling and wanking as I do so.

Thank you very much for your email. I’m sorry to hear what happened to you
and your Clarks shoes.

Please return your shoes to the shop, along with your receipt, so the manager can look into the problem, I can see from your email that this is what you were going to do and I hope the issue has been sorted out.

They went IN THE BIN with ALL THE OTHER RUBBISH.

Thank you for making us aware of this issue. I’m sorry we haven’t met your expectations on this occasion, but I do hope you and your family will continue to buy Clarks shoes and that we’ll be able to restore your faith in us.

Thanks, but no. I’d rather spend a month as the carnal plaything of a pack of vicious baboons than squeeze my foot into another of your abortive leather trusses.

Kind regards,

Rodti MacLeary

I shall endeavour to visit your Edinburgh presence at luncheon today and cause some sort of a scene, after which I shall purchase new shoes from an ALTERNATIVE HIGH-STREET COBBLER.

Yours angrily,

Mr Rodti MacLeary (barefoot)

I spent longer on this than I’d care to admit.

This is Anita.

She lives in a slum in Bangalore.
This is her life.
It’s a tough life for an 8 year old.

But here’s a thought:

What if she didn’t have to spend all day doing chores?
What if she didn’t have to walk so far to fetch water?
What if she didn’t have to look after her baby brother?
What if she had enough to eat every day?
What if she had a sponsor like you?

Well that would be amazing.

For just 50p a child like Anita can buy the fishnet stockings she needs to forge a career in prostitution.

Anita’s life won’t be any different tomorrow unless someone like you steps forward today and gets her on the game.

Go on. SPONSOR NOW.

Everyone hates corporate buzzwords and boardroom slang. Everyone. Even newborn infants, yet to glimpse the world for the first time or hear anything other than the beating of their mother’s heart are filled with a primal, instinctive dread at the very thought of modern business phrasiology. It is an unspeakable horror, more twisted and vile than anything described in the pages of H.P. Lovecraft’s ‘Cthulhu’ mythos.

By far the worst however, by several orders of ghastly magnitude, is the term “singing from the same hymn sheet“. Derived from the slightly less foul but equally forbidden “reading from the same page”, this sickening utterance not only fills the meeting rooms of the English speaking world like a deafening, crackling static, but by introducing hymn sheets to the fray drags Christianity into the fucking equation. Bloody Christianity.

While contemplating this term and the various methods I would employ to dismember any soul foolish enough to use it in my presence, it occurred to me that it would offend me far less if there were a variety of multi-faith equivalents that could be used by, for example, our Islamic chums or those nice Buddhists.

Some examples:

Take note, international people of business. Take note, or I will punch your stupid heads off.