Issue27 3rd Nov 2003

Transmitting Satire From Scotland

Home Page
Go Home
Past Issues
Past Issues
Letters
Your Letters Mail letters@hootsmon.com.
Links
Virtual Tour of Scotland
FirstFoot
Jaggy Thistle
Wreckered Webrag

Rugby World Cup Fever Sweeps Scotland

"McLeish - You're Not Getting Big Sir Fergie's Phone Number Off Me!" said the latest sports headline in last week's Daily Record. "Balde joins Valagren in Anderlecht defeat self-blame!" said the Sun in a similarly high-profile football story. "Scunnered!" reported the Herald about the Scotland fans' attempts to get tickets for the football play-off clash with the Netherlands. "Bobby Williamson - let's threaten to sack him every week!" said the Hibs fans in many letters to Scottish newspapers' sports sections, jubilant that their football team had won something this season now that the manager's coat is on a shoogly peg. "Old Firm Footballer in Charity Elvis Outfit Joy!" reported all the papers.

"Oh yeah, nearly forgot." reported the Auchenshuggle Talbot's evening edition website. "Scotland played in the Rugby World Cup this week."

Concorde's Last Flight

It's 1968. By the year 2003, people will be working on the moon, wearing tight-fitting silver clothes and driving really, really cool hover cars with all chrome wings and a'. Ha ha ha ha! If you're reading this in 1968, it's time to come off the hallucinogens! What really happens in 2003? Well, things like 60's-era technology finally being retired; not because it's being replaced by something even cooler, like an anti-gravity transporter-beam hovercraft with a big green light coming out the front and a 500W quintophonic sound system playing 'I'm Gonna Be (500 Light Years)' by The Special Proclaimers. No. Concorde's finally being retired because it's too old. We don't have anything as cool to replace it. The jetset have taken to teleconferencing and not only technology, but action movies as well, have been rendered less cool by the transformation. Have you ever seen an action movie where the hero sits at a computer for half the film? Ridiculous, isn't it? About as cool as a ferarri-red Yugo. But enough! I have a plan whereby 2003 can finally gain the march on the late 1960s!

1) SUPERSONIC COMPUTERS
That's right. I'm typing this at Mach 2.5, where air friction dictates everything be made of titanium. Pretty cool, eh? If all computers are launched into the stratosphere on the back of rockets, we're going to have to use supersonic methods just to catch them and type our 'Hello, worlds'! Yes!!

2) MICROCHIPS WITH INCREDIBLY SHORT SKIRTS
If the 1960s invented one thing that was worth keeping, it was miniskirts. If the early 21st century invented one thing worth keeping, it was that internet dating wasn't necessarily a deeply shameful thing, even if most people still wouldn't actually try it themselves. So why not combine the two? Mmmm, sexy computers!

3) COOL COMPUTER IMPLANTS WITH CHROME FINS
I'm going out on a limb here, but I'm guessing that your average 1960s punter wasn't thinking of getting computers implanted into their head, mainly because computers took up the size of a whole room and noone has a head that size, not even Steven Fry. Not now! These days, everyone could have a microchip implant, though feck of a lot of good it would do them. HOWEVER, if the heatsink was designed the right way, it could look damn cool!!

4) SPENDING ALL OUR VAST LEISURE TIME ON IMPROVING WORKS
Ha ha ha, this one is just in for the laugh. Of course, noone has any leisure time at all in 2003. We're all slaves to the fucking computers we've just implanted into our heads!

So there you go! Concorde is cool, but computer implants can really take the cat's cream, if you know what I mean. All hail Arnold Cyborgenegger!!

Tally Ho! It's IDS Huntin' Season

With Ian Duncan-Smith's coat officially fallen off its shoogly peg in Conservative Central's dressing room, with a few other players performing warm-up routines at the touchline hoping to take his place, and his name merely chalked on the team blackboard with a wet sponge hanging nearby (no, not Portillo, come on, wet sponge? Football metaphors?), the position of leader of the British Conservative party is up for grabs. And sometimes when this happens, the transfer market can provide the answer to a struggling captain. But who, you ask, could possibly return the Conservative Party to prominence in the headlines? Someone charismatic, his own man, who can provide vocal opposition to the current Labour government? Why, look no further than the recently-deselected member for Glasgow Kelvin, George Galloway.

George Galloway? Gorgeous George?? The Champagne Socialist, the Hon. Member for Baghdad??

But why not? After all, now Galloway is out of favour with Labour, he makes an ideal opposition member, wise with Labour's internal workings, yet motivated to go that extra mile by the bitter feelings of the spurned. A little unstable to be a leader, perhaps, but these are desperate times for conservatism in Britain. I mean, the Liberal Democrats will become the official opposition at the next election if the Tories keep voting for people like IDS for leader, for goodness sake, no offence to the man.

It remains to be seen if the voters of Glasgow Kelvinside will retain their reknowned sense of humour, demonstrated by repeatedly returning Mr Galloway as their parliamentary candidate. Should they wish to continue, however, what better revenge against the Blair regime than Galloway standing for the tories, and winning a seat in Glasgow? Now that has to be worth a laugh.

This Year's MTV Europe Awards Hosted in Edinburgh

Pop, pop, pop, pop music
Fills every cranny of the day
And even when it's gome we use it
Hooks in you in unseen ways
For in ten years time the forgotten chord
Recalls her smell and..... - Oh Lord!
The marker of time
Is a throwaway rhyme!

Disclaimer: Any resemblance to truth or humour is strictly coincidental. Copyleft 2003 Craig Weldon.