Freakspotting

Choose Life. Choose a job. Choose a career. Choose a family. Choose a fucking big television, choose washing machines, cars, compact disc players and electrical tin openers. Choose good health, low cholesterol, and dental insurance. Choose fixed interest mortgage repayments. Choose a starter home. Choose your friends. Choose leisurewear and matching luggage. Choose a three-piece suit on hire purchase in a range of fucking fabrics. Choose DIY and wondering who the fuck you are on Sunday morning. Choose sitting on that couch watching mind-numbing, spirit-crushing game shows, stuffing fucking junk food into your mouth. Choose rotting away at the end of it all, pissing your last in a miserable home, nothing more than an embarrassment to the selfish, fucked up brats you spawned to replace yourselves. Choose your future. Choose life... But why would they want to do a thing like that? They chose not to choose life. They chose somethin' else. And the reasons? There are no reasons. Who needs reasons when you've got Cosplay?

Yes, Cosplay, the biggest threat to the country since Hitler and his sharply dressed army. But, unlike the Nazis, this lot know nothing of discipline. In fact a good dose of National Service would sort them out. If you have no idea what I am talking about, let me explain. Cosplay is the attempt by people with nothing to wake up for in the morning to dress up as their favourite characters out of comics or TV series. It probably all began with Trekkies dressing up like General Kirk or Doctor Spock, but has gotten all out of control with people dressing up as minor characters in the Legend of Zilda or E.T. The Extra Testicle. It gives them a sense of being, a belonging in a world that hates them. They gather together and perform strange little rituals, usually at comic conventions. Which is where I gazed into the face of madness. I was attending Thought Bubble, 'an annual celebration of sequential art in all its forms' (LOL. Just call them comics!) Ninjasaurus Rex had brought it to my attention and he was desperate to get to a Japanese restaurant in Leeds again, so this seemed like a perfect opportunity to kill two birds with one stone. If only we'd killed one hundred Cosplayers with the same stone we would have come home happy men.

I arrived at the plaza between the Royal Armouries and the new Savile Building and gazed on what looked like a scene from the Fourth Circle of Hell. The avaricious with their cossetted material possessions danced about to the tuneless horns of Mars. Dressed as Manga characters. I panicked and telephoned Ninjasaurus who had been struck immobile by the scene of human degradation. Seeking comfort in numbers we banded together quickly and watched one anothers backs like hawks. Our fear was soon dissipated by the sight of the very chair SIR JIMMY SAVILE sat in:

Not only his Chair, but his car as well!! This was a man who was living the dream!

This was without doubt the best thing we saw all day and was well worth the ten pounds admission fee alone, but was nothing to do with the Comic Con. Which, frankly, was just loads and loads and loads of comics for sale. But then, what else did I expect it to be? Ninjasaurus saw some of his friends from the dark world of comic publishing and I bumped into the Big O, who rather kindly gave us a free comic each!

Cheers big man!!

Outside, the swirling mass of madness was gathering it's momentum and here are a few pictures to illustrate just what we saw. I beg you, gentle reader, do not allow your eyes to linger too long on these images...

Aren't you a little shit to be a Stormtrooper?

I wanted a photo, not a pose...

Electra's arse and Mario and Luigi. The mind boggles...

Is that a lightsaber or a lipstick?

Wrap up warm, love...

Interviewer: So what is missing in your life?

We retreated into the Armouries to look at real weapons, rather than over sized foam hammers and realised that we had a vantage point over the assembled freaks. After a few minutes of playing 'spot the tard' we both said in unison 'I wish I had a rifle.'

Sargent, three rounds rapid!

I was going to run up to him shouting 'Help! Help! Judge, I've just been raped in the Armouries toilets!' to see if he'd help, but I bottled it at the last minute. 

We finished the afternoon off by a visit to this authentic U-Boat which had surfaced in the docks.

It was captained by this fellow:

 

Bring me the head of Yuri Gagarin

Today is the fiftieth year and one day anniversary of the first man in space. The one, the only Yuri Gagarin, the greatest dead man alive today! What do you mean, you don't know who I'm talking about? Where the fuck have you been for the last fifty years and one day? Have you been hiding under a rock? Yuri Gagarin is the name on everyone lips, his name is plastered on billboards fifty feet high! The news is full of him! Jesus, if you still don't know, then sit back and I'll tell you about one of my heroes, Yuri Gagarin (one of my other heroes is Buzz Aldrin, second man on the moon. That's right, second, not first. Second). But this post is not about Aldrin, it's about the ONLY Hero of the Soviet Onion, Yuri Gagarin!

I swear to God, I will fuck you up

Yuri was born into peasant stock in Tunguska in 1908, his arrival was heralded by an explosion equivalent to thirty megatons that blew the entire region back to the stone age. The instant he was born, young Yuri was up and running, in fact he ran ten miles without even thinking about it. And this was even before he could walk. His parents finally caught up with him and fed him on a diet of beetroot and bear wrestling. By the time he was twelve Yuri could fight eight bears with one hand tied behind his back and one eye closed. After a vodka fuelled rampage in 1942 that resulted in the destruction of an entire village the authorities began to take notice. Yuri was drafted into the NKVD and sent to Stalingrad to help the beleaguered Russian forces dug in on the banks of the Volga. He single handedly re-took the hill of Mamayev Kurgin after punching Panzers into the stratosphere and kicking an anti-tank battery into the heart of the sun. Next Yuri was sent out to Kursk to help the Russian tank forces out on the steppe. He was, again, in the thick of the action, pulling the turrets off of Tiger tanks and breaking Panthers in two with his bare hands. By 1945 Yuri was leading the assault on the Reichstag in Berlin. Not only did he build a Fuhrer detecting machine between firefights, which he used to locate Hitler's bunker, he pummelled Hitler into submission and made him sign a ceasefire in HIS OWN BLOOD!

I will dig up your grave and I will wear your skin.

After the war, Russia was embroiled in a space race with the US and A, both countries desperate to get a man to the moon to snap up all the real estate. The US and A sent an entire zoo up into orbit, they sent monkeys, badgers and giraffes in a desperate attempt to win the prize. None of these animals proved any good at being able to navigate spacecraft and either they were killed by flying too close to the sun (the marmosets), exploding on take off (the Jesus lizard) or grew too intelligent due to the radiation and landed on Mars and slowly and surely began to draw their plans against us (the monkeys). The USSR decided against using animals with their lack of opposable thumbs to pilot their spaceships. They turned to the Hero of the Soviet Onion, Yuri. He jumped at the chance to beat the hated Yankee Imperialist Bastards. Bam! Yuri didn't need a rocket to get him up there, he just ran really fast then jumped really high and he was in space! As soon as he arrived in space he started whaling on all the Yankee Oppressor animals that were floating around up there as well. He punched a shark into Venus and smacked a mearcat so hard it caused a black hole that swallowed the entire Spiral Galaxy 28948. Before planting the Hammer and Sickle flag on the moon he took a bite out of it to ensure it was made of cheese. This important scientific data was brought back to Soviet scientists when Yuri's space flight was over.

Stand by for a Yuri style pounding...

After being the only man in space, ever, Yuri had made enough money from the TV rights to his life story that he never needed to work again and spent the rest of his life living in a massive fucking mansion outside of Moscow. He had trucks full of bears shipped in so he had something to fight during his lunchtime. Yuri died in 1968 when a swan he was chewing on got lodged in his throat and choked him to death. The Soviets knocked down the Kremlin to build his tomb which millions of visitors still flock to each year. Yuri, a true Hero of the Soviet Onion! You fleshbags aren't even fit to lick the dog shit off his boots. You think about Yuri's acheivements everytime you weep yourself to sleep.

I've been to space, what the fuck have you ever done? You useless fucking fleshbag!