Sapporo Snow Festival 2012

I wouldn't usually take a ten hour train ride to a city experiencing sub-zero conditions, but I made an exception this week to go to the Sapporo Snow Festival.

It was more than worth it. Not least because the hotel had a massage chair in the room. But mostly because it was an amazing spectacle. Here's some pictures:

A Japanese castle


An underwater scene


Underwater scene at night


Mickey Mouse


Characters from Japanese cartoon 'One Piece'


The Taj Majal


My favourite kawaii character, Rilakkuma


A games controller


Mario Kart


Sonic


A monkey


A dragon being carved


A crashing wave being carved


Peacock ice sculpture


Bear ice sculpture


Fish frozen in ice


Suntory Whiskey ice bar


Sapporo Beer ice sculpture


'Illumination Road'


There was loads more too...

While we were in Sapporo we were reading about the snow and ensuing travel chaos back in the UK. Given that we were somewhere where we kept seeing bikes in this condition...


...and that we'd got there without any delays, even though this was the view out of the train window most of the way...


...well, 'embarrassing' comes to mind!

I particularly liked this from my local paper:
(click on the picture to maximise)

Attention. Only make essential journeys. There has been a 'smattering' of snow.

The horror.

New Year's Resolutions

As I write this I have Bid TV on in the background (Peter Simon is seeing us through to 1am) and I'm using my non-typing hand to alternately eat a curly wurly and swig from a bottle of alcholic ginger beer. It can only be....New Year's Eve.

What better time for me to write a blog about ideas for New Year's Resolutions?

Not resolutions for me of course. These are all things I do/have done. I don't need to change. YOU CAN'T IMPROVE ON PERFECTION! (I shouldn't write blogs when tipsy)

Ok, let's get down to it. First things first, if you haven't already - and you should have, I suggested it a year ago, CHOP CHOP! - sign up as an organ donor.

I know it's morbid to think about your own demise, but death is coming for you whether you put it to the back of your mind or not.

That sounded like a threat. It wasn't...

I'm just stopping to eat this curly wurly, they are so messy...

Secondly, apply for a free first aid booklet from St John's Ambulances.

Up to 150,000 people a year die in situations where first aid could have helped. You could be the difference between someone living and dying. Like Batman.

Next, sign up for Easyfundrasing and Everyclick. These sites allow you to raise money for charity - for free - with your online shopping and web searches respectively.

I already wrote about them in last year's blog and I am finding it a challenge to type tonight so read that.

And finally, here are some *free* charity clicks that you can do daily:

Care2 (various causes) http://www.care2.com/
Click to Give (various causes) http://www.clicktogive.com/
Ecology Fund (save forests and offset carbon) http://www.ecologyfund.com/ecology/_ecology.html
Fiat (help Japan tsunami victims) http://www.fiat-auto.co.jp/clickdonation/
The Hunger Site (various causes) http://www.thehungersite.com/clickToGive/home.faces?siteId=1
Improving Your World (cause changes monthly) http://www.improvingyourworld.org/
Land Care Niagra (plant a tree) http://www.landcareniagara.com/
Red Jellyfish (save forests and monkeys) http://www.redjellyfish.com/wildlifeconservation.html
Ripple (various causes) http://ripple.org/
Solve Poverty (donate to projects in Asia) http://solvepoverty.com/
Unilever (help Japan tsunami victims) http://www.unilever-sabd.jp/click/?lang=en

Well, there's only twenty minutes of 2011 left. I have to get going. I am drunk and a man called Jonathan Hamilton has bought every single thing Peter Simon has sold tonight on Bid TV. I have converted a fair few people on Twitter to Bid TV tonight, we are all following the Jonathan saga.

I don't know if he's off his face, an eccentric millionaire or the victim of a malicious ex but I want to see if his 100% run continues with this pearl bracelet.

HAPPY NEW YEAR!

PS: Jonathan just bought the bracelet and Peter's sidekick shrieked "JONATHAN AGAIN!?!?!?!"

Addendum. This video was taken at a quarter to one in the morning. Jonathan was still buying, after nearly three hours. As I head up to bed, he is still buying. I think he may be in some sort of Brewster's Millions type situation:

Frankie Boyle Joke Generator

Frankie Boyle has a new book out and according to the reviews, it’s offensive.

I know, who’d have thought?

He writes about the Queen being gang raped, Kate Middleton dying, makes fun of Cameron and Brown’s disabled kids and describes two comedians he doesn’t like, being fucked to death and being raped by Nazi monkeys respectively.

I don’t know about you, but I am not offended by any of that.

Not because I’m amoral or a heartless bastard, but because it’s all so ‘by numbers’.

Soft target + offensive buzzword = edgy joke. Apparently.

Unfortunately for Frankie Boyle, the law of diminishing returns dictates that his joke formula is starting to equal a big fat yawn fest. As someone sick to death of him mocking disabled children, this makes me happy.

Anyway, around the time of the book coming out James wrote an article for Viz about Frankie Boyle bravely setting up a TV appearance in South Africa where he was planning on calling Nelson Mandela a cunt, live in front of the nation, and hail it as a new departure in his no holds barred comedy approach.

The article didn’t get printed in the end, most probably due to the fact that there was a full-page advert for Frankie Boyle’s tour in the issue it was pitched for.

You can’t really slag someone off who has paid for advertising space in the same pages.

I won’t recreate the article here as James might want to use it again elsewhere, but the joke generator he put at the end of the piece needs to see the light of day, as it is the perfect satire of Boyle’s writing style. Enjoy:

Do you long to be as hilariously daring as the original bad boy of British comedy, Frankie Boyle? Well now you can, thanks to our special patented Automatic Frankie Boyle Edgy Joke Writer. Simply pick one phrase from each of the four columns below and say them in order in a slightly angry sounding Scottish voice:

Column A
Wouldn't it be great if

Column B
Stephen Hawking
Desmond Tutu
Her Majesty the Queen
Jordan's wee kiddy
Amy Winehouse's Corpse
Dame Tanni-Grey Thompson
Sir David Attenborough
Rolf Harris

Column C
Got raped in the arse
Got injected in the arse with AIDS
Got brutally murdered. In the arse

Column D
By Peter Sutcliffe
By Colonel Gaddaffi's Corpse
In New York on September 11th
By Hitler
By a lesbian paedophile
By Al Qaeda
In Aushwitz
By Ian Huntley's cock

Now go forth and get your very own Channel 4 shows!

The 30th November Strikes & Schadenfreude

My other half was off work ill for just over a month recently (not a trifling illness – properly bed ridden and in agony)

He’s public sector, so accordingly he was humanely accommodated, permitted to work from home, and was ultimately seen by occupational health to make sure he was ok to come back.

Around this time a friend of mine who works in the financial sector said to me “Huh, if I was off ill for that long, I’d just get sacked”

But they didn’t say it as a lament or a complaint; no, they said it with real pride.

That same weird, misplaced pride I’ve been witnessing all day in conversations and on Twitter whenever the topic of the 30th November strikes comes up.

I find it very odd that some private sector workers seem to almost revel in how apparently shit their pay and pension is.

“I work in a slurry pit, for no money, 23 hours a day, without a lunch break, my boss hits me with a mallet, whilst Agadoo plays on a constant loop, and I have to do it in just my pants...but do I complain? NO!”

Well...you fucking should!

That kind of attitude is exactly what allows Cameron and Co to keep you in your box and continue to lower the bar for all of us, on what is starting to feel like a daily basis.

Whilst the strikes today are primarily about public sector pensions and pay, they are also about fair pensions for all.


This should not be a race to the bottom.

Cheerleading for someone else to lose the possibility of a comfortable old age, just because you have too, that makes no sense, and won’t change your situation.

Aspire to better things for yourself.

The taxpayer has already paid once to bail out the banks who caused this financial crisis. Now public sector workers are being made to pay twice, with their pay and their pensions (which are completely sustainable http://www.newstatesman.com/blogs/the-staggers/2011/11/public-sector-strike)

Cracking down on corporate tax evasion and taxing the super rich seems a much better way of getting the economy on track.

Employing an economist as Chancellor rather than an Eton boy without a Maths A-Level would also help.

I’m not public sector by the way, I work in the third sector and have also worked in both the private and the public sectors.

Peter Simon Says

James has already given me one of my Christmas presents.

Now, before you all rush to judgement, consider this. Could you sit on a gift this good for a whole month?...

We're talking Peter Simon's book, 'Peter Simon Says':


It's signed:


...You get an insight into his life:


...You get a style guide (remember when people used to say 'crucial'?):


...You get...whatever this is:


...And finally, my favourite - Peter's Poll. Wherein we learn that racism is only slightly worse than going in lifts:


A mischievous friend of mine photo shopped my picture and put Peter Sutcliffe's face over Peter Simon's:


It puts a new spin on reading the list, eh?

So that's one Christmas wish come true. Care to help me with another one?

If you do one web search through this charity search page, it will raise money for the disability charity which supports my brother: www.everyclick.com/canterburyoasttrust

I'd love to get them up to £2000 by Christmas.

It's free and takes seconds. Pretty please!

Richard Herring's Objective

For those of you who missed it, Richard Herring covered disability in this week's edition of Objective.

The subject was brilliantly handled, the tone was non-patronising and it was really sweet in places.

Most of all it was funny.

Like I've been saying for, well, forever; disability and comedy can mix. But the jokes should be about attitudes to disability, and not be mere pot shots at disabled people.

The show will be available on Listen Again for a few more days. Give it a go. You'll even get to hear my freakish Dr Girlfriend voice:

http://www.bbc.co.uk/iplayer/episode/b0174gl1/Richard_Herrings_Objective_Series_2_The_Wheelchair/

Derek Acorah has not been drinking. Honestly.

I was on Twitter the other night when a post appeared in my feed from psychic medium Derek Acorah.

It was clearly a direct message which he had accidentally tweeted.

He deleted it two minutes later, but not before I screen grabbed it.


He had so been drinking. *Insert pun about spirits here*

Speaking of ghosts, here is a terrifying moment from Most Haunted that I filmed this Halloween:


Don't have nightmares.