Cats crying out in the street at 12.33 at night..

..is the scariest fucking thing ever. No sleep for me tonight!

Burmese Monks.

YANGON, Myanmar – As many as 100,000 protesters led by a phalanx of barefoot monks marched Monday in the most powerful show of strength yet from a movement that has grown in a week from faltering demonstrations to one rivaling the failed 1988 pro-democracy uprising.

Hours after the protest ended peacefully, Myanmar’s military government broadcast an ominous warning, telling senior Buddhist clerics that unless they restrained their juniors, the government would take action on its own against those it said were instigated by the regime’s domestic and foreign enemies.

Marching for more than five hours and over at least 12 miles, a last hard-core group of more than 1,000 maroon-robed Buddhist monks and 400 sympathizers finished by walking up to an intersection where police blocked access to the street where democracy leader Aung San Suu Kyi is under house arrest.

Making no effort to push past, the marchers chanted a Buddhist prayer with the words “May there be peace,” and then dispersed. About 500 onlookers cheered the act of defiance, as 100 riot police with helmets and shield stared stonily ahead.

Some participants said there were several hundred thousand marchers in their ranks, but an international aid agency official with employees monitoring the crowd estimated said the size was well over 50,000 and approaching 100,000.

MSNBC – Monks lead 100,000-strong Myanmar protest

Anyone else following this? Probably the most inspiring news story in a long time. Imagine if they succeed in peacefully bringing down the junta….

BBC Q&A About the Protests.

That advert with the gorilla playing the drums to Phil Collins…

…is one of the greatest things I have ever seen. Its like they looked directly into my mind and made that.

Seriously.

¡Ventiladores españoles del “S Club 7″ de los saludos!

I’ve noticed a bit of traffic this past week from a Spanish S Club 7 fan-forum, seemingly drawn here by my exclusive competition to win an a limited edition S Club 7 single. I would like to formaly welcome you all to my little corner of the internet, I hope you enjoy it and hang around. Remember, the competition is still open, having only had 3 entrants. You never know, it could be you!

Off The Meatrack. Come for the S Club 7-based competitions, stay for the poorly written rants.

Seen on Pearse Street

No comment.

Freedom isn’t free

Isn’t it amazing how we live in a so-called free democracy yet we are forced by law to pay for a license so that we can have the privilege of watching Eamon Dunphy get paid to stumble onto our television looking like a slightly more decayed Worzel Gummidge and talk absolute balls? To quote Homer Simpson, did we lose a war? As is customary, get Dunphy onto the subject of Stephen Staunton, the Irish football manager, and his head suddenly farts logic out its arse, and complete and utter gibberish out his wordhole. He might even have had a point, but it was buried under a series of seemingly unconnected words, moans and whimpers. And we foot the bill.

Speaking of gibberish, I was reading David McWilliams thoughts on sport today and struggled to make head nor tail of what he was trying to say. He starts off talking about Ireland losing to Namibia and somehow ends up bringing in Pavarotti before asking us to picture sporting stars “as children, with outsized kit bags, muddy knees and full of hope.” How odd, and wonderfully naive. Well I guess in one way they are like children in that they are spoilt bastards. In the end, I couldn’t really work out his point as he seemed to drift aimlessly from one point to the next, in a style similar to my own admittedly, before you cry hypocrite. The difference is McWilliam’s is paid to jander on and on and wander off on wild tangents, i’m not.

I nearly was though. Recently your humble author was contacted by a representative of a leading men’s toiletries firm with an eye to exchanging my words for free samples of their product. Let’s just say they wanted me to “spice” up their “old” image. Hoho, so clever. Of course, as I am a fearless truth crusader on the frontlines of something I turned down their offer. Or more accurately forgot to reply. In fairness they were probably barking up the wrong tree. They noted my “active college lifestyle” but clearly their marketing department is unaware that college scum like me don’t use their type of product, our fragrance needs catered to by the good people at  [insert super-market brand name deodorant]. Let this be a lesson to the evil corporations, i’m not for sale.

Post-script: Evil corporations who sell beer, laptops, DVD’s, CD’s, cars or houses please note I am for sale. Please email for details.

An observation

Apparently not that precious.

Ninja News.

From the BBC Website:

Ninja leader due in Congo capital

An advance party of around 300 former rebel fighters have arrived in the Congolese capital, Brazzaville, to welcome their leader, Pastor Ntumi.

The ex-fighters, who call themselves the Ninjas, are a semi-religious group led by the guitar-playing Pastor Ntumi, whose real name is Frederick Bintsamou. He is expected to return to Brazzaville for the first time since he left 10 years ago to launch a guerrilla war.

Full Article…

Ninja rebels led by a guitar-playing pastor. Everyday you realise there’s something amazing in this world you didn’t know about.

Random Hip-hop videos on a Friday.

The great thing about YouTube is that I can look at hip-hop videos that I used to like as a young’un. Isn’t that great? Anyway, here’s some videos of varying quality from the past to the present. Why? Why not.

This is kung-fu Taoist East Coast rapper Afu-Ra with his 2000 DJ Premier produced song “Defeat”. Its very good. Please excuse the semi-naked woman, brandishing a shotgun at the start, the oik who stuck it on YouTube tacked it on. As Afu says “Stop worshiping cars, clothes and weapons”

Next we have Jeru Da Damaja’s epic cartoon “You Can’t Stop the Prophet” from way back in 1994. This is a Pwadjo favourite.

Finally we bring it right back to the modern day with a new song from a group that’s been around for 20 years. A few posts ago I lamented the fact that Public Enemy have fallen off. This is their new song, I’m glad to say I was wrong: they haven’t fallen off one bleeding bit. Enjoy “Harder than you Think”. Its the proverbial bee’s proverbial knees.

I might treat you to some more next Friday.

Nike go from “The Beautiful Game” to “Let’s kick footballs at people’s crotches!”

I’ve always liked Nike’s football ads. They usually go one step ahead of the posse in terms of creativity, from the old school Ian Wright and Eric Cantona playing against the devil, to Cantona’s own bizarre dystopic prison boat where he forces superstars to play 5-aside inside cages they’ve been eye catching to say the least. Last year they had the “Joga TV” campaign, which was about bringing football back to it’s “beautiful” roots, via Eric Cantona (him again) taking over TV stations in a Carlos the Jackyll stylee and showing us bits of Ronaldinho playing keepy uppy like no-one else. So they’ve usually had some kind of subversive element to their advertising style, and they’re the better for it.

This year they’ve come out with “Put it Where you Want it” which is all about accuracy. So, they have (fake) clips of Rooney and Malouda displaying sniper-like precision as they boot footballs at targets and apples on peoples heads (alá William Tell). Not too bad. But they’ve also enlisted the help of the Dirty Sanchez boys. The Welsh lunatics show up at Rooney’s house and he duely trys and knock their teeth in with footballs. Still, its all very funny and all. Im gonna be honest here and say i’m a fan of the whole Jackass, stick a bottle-rocket up your arse type stuff. Jackass Number Two is probably the funniest film i’ve seen in the last year so I was fairly entertained by this silly stuff.

But there’s an odd part to this whole thing, the website encourages you to send in your own clips of your footballing accuracy. So, naturally then, boys will be boys and thus on the Nike official website you can see footage of a kid sticking a target to his crotch then waits as his mate boots the ball at him. His mate is no Malouda or Rooney, so misses the target but does succeed in hitting little Ryan from Ireland in the head and knocking him off the electrical box he is standing on. I dunno, call me old fashioned or square, but I’m not sure im 100% comfortable with a company like Nike using role models such as Rooney and all in a campaign that encourages children to film each other trying to kick footballs at each other. In co-opting the latest trend of home-made YouTube entertainment they’ve taken on probably its least favourable aspect, that of children inflicting pain on themselves. In the end, its one thing to show footballers destroying the devil by kicking exploding footballs through his chest, another to enlist children to kick footballs at each others crotches, isn’t it?

Link: Nike “Put it Where You Want It”