Finding yourself

It's come to my attention that there's no such thing as a good Business Teacher.

Think about it. A business teacher, teaches business. Duh. So, if they're the fountain of knowledge when it comes to business, why aren't they millionaires?

The one thing you don't want to know about your business teacher, is whether or not they ever started their own business, because it's a 'catch 22' situation. It makes it physically impossible to understand how they could be a good teacher.

If they did, what the hell are they doing teaching a bunch of muppets about how to be rich instead of being rich themselves? They can't have been very good business people.

If they didn't, how the hell do they know what business is really like? They can't be very good teachers.

Something doesn't add up here. When I go to a business class, I want to be reassured that I'm in good hands, and that these people are going to show me how to make a million pounds in 12 seconds. Is that so much to ask?

There's only one way they could make me feel any more skeptical, but it's a long shot. I mean, there's no way that my teacher is going to be a former psychiatrist, right?

Oh. Shite.

A bloody psychiatrist. Of all the people in the world, we get a psychiatrist. I want money. Not hugs. As if psychiatrists don't have enough money anyway. He looks like this:



Let's give him the benefit of the doubt though. Psychiatrists can be good business men too. They must be, to be able to bleed so much money out of people's wallets just for having a little chit chat about feelings. Shit, I do that for free on an almost daily basis. Give ME money.

So he opens his mouth to speak. It sounds like the equivalent of hearing sand. If sand could talk. It's literally the softest voice in the whole world. When he speaks, it's almost like I'm having Andrex Puppies thrown at my face. Why do all psychiatrists speak like that? Do they think they're just going to take off on wings made out of people's money, propelled into the air by their own smug farts? Probably.

Sorry if I'm going off on one, but we took a business class to learn how to become complete bastards by milking people for what they're worth. However, when we actually attend the class, most conversations go like this:

Fairyman: Hello boys, mmmm, so tell me, how are we feeling today? mmmm.

US: Like we want money.

Fairyman: Mmmmm, yes. So, tell me, how does money, mmmm, make you feel inside?

US: Like we want more money.

Fairyman: Mmmm, more money, yesssss. Mmmmm. Why do you think we want more money?

US: So we can buy shit. Where's this going?

Fairyman: Mmmmm, more stuff, yesssss. Mmmm. How do you feel about more stuff?

US: ARGGGGGH!

Fairyman: You need to find yourselves boys. Mmmm, Be at peace. Here, take this golden egg of light. It will guide you on your spiritual journey towards your 6 Month Business Schematic.


Whatever. If I get asked how I feel one more time, I'm going to require a lawyer, and a good excuse.

Living on this street...

Living on this street kicks ridiculous amounts of ass.

Why? I hear you ask. Well this is why...



Everyone on our street is about 4 million years old. Honestly, the combined age of everybody in this street would look more like a phone number than anything else. There's so much 'old' in this road, I'm surprised our address isn't 300BC, Old Kent Road, Oldham, OL6 0LD.

But what's so great about living on a street full of old people? Well it depends on your perspective. If you're old, and you live on a street full of old people, or 'Old Zones' as we call them, then I guess you just fit in, no questions asked, problem solved. You're with your own kind, and you're ineviteably going to make some friends of your age group.

We however, are in our very early 20's. There's nothing to talk about. We have nothing to relate to these people. We don't remember the war, and quite frankly, I'm kind of glad. We don't know how it was 'back in the day', but we're sure as hell glad that we don't have to grow our own spuds, or walk 15 miles to the nearest post office, or carry our parents to work, or whatever other exagerated stories the 'Olds' like to concoct to make you feel guilty about how good your life is. To be perfectly fair, they should be happy that we don't have to walk 15 miles in the snow just to get a stick of butter, because if we did, they'd be screwed, I know that. They should cheer up every now and then, and be thankful that idiots like myself work for tesco.com, so that they don't have to leave the comfort of their knitting in order to get their crumpets on time.

I'm going off on a tangent now. Where was I? Oh yeah, the point is...we don't have to socialise with them, at all. They leave us well alone, and that's perfectly fine by us. This has led us to a number of conclusions.

Through frequent testing, we've discovered the following:

1) Old people live in old houses.

You know what that means right? You ever hear the saying "they don't make 'em like they used to". Well guess what? That's very, very, very true. In our house every room is seperated by a whole layer of bricks at least. None of this dry wall shit. There's no likely chance of you putting a hole in your wall every time you sneeze in the wrong general direction. This is good for one thing, and one thing only:

2) We can make as much noise as we want.

We did a series of tests over the course of about a week, courtesy of this guy:



Snoop knows a little somethin' about making loud music. Not only that, but he swears a bit. He's the perfect candidate to use in our test to try and piss somebody off.

A week's worth of testing, and frequent volume increases, and we haven't heard a peep from Joan next door. This can only mean one of three things.

a) She's deaf. Not the worst case scenario.
b) She's dead. The worst case scenario.
c) We have really thick walls.

Or a combination of the above. Either way it bodes well for future parties.

3) When people think you're old, they think you're useless.

Never before has the saying 'out of sight, out of mind' ever applied so truthfully to any scenario. Honestly, when people think you're old, they just do shit for you.

There was a storm a while back. Our back yard fence got totally trashed. A day goes by. It's still trashed. Another day. I've got a broken leg, so I ain't fixing it. Another day. Another. 5 days later, someone's fixed it! HA! Like a senior citizen in the night, somebody came and fixed our fence!

Another example: We haven't been very good with our recycling recently. In fact over the last couple of months, we haven't done any. Yet for some reason, the bin men will take away anything we put in the wheelie bin! HA! Trying to find bin men round here that do that is bloody impossible. But hey, if they think we're old, they obviously think we don't know any better. We could get a corpse in there with a briefcase full of twenty's and a 'Congratulations You're A Winner' banner and they'd probably just chuck it out.

Bottom line is, living in Old Zones is awesome. I suggest everybody moves to a street where they're at least 40 years younger than everyone else. It does wonders for your chi.

Bad Movie Sequels

Watching such a bad movie the other day (War), my friend Gary and I came up with a number of movie sequels which we would never pay to see, but probably would end up getting made some day.

In fact, screw that, I'd watch all of these movies. They kick ass:

1) Willow 2



Set after the events of the first movie (by about 1000 years), Willow now lives in LA. He's been enjoying a cushy lifestyle under the guise 'Wee Man' for a number of years. Oh yeah, he's also a skateboarder now. Whilst filming another 'ill' demo, he hears news that Lord Jason Statham, his arch nemesis from the 60's, is back with a vengeance, and unless he can deliver the Daikini baby to Hilton Castle, Las Vegas, in time for the Grammy's, the world will be completely destroyed by Statham's lack of talent.

An intelligent twist on the template of the classic fairytale.

Chances of being made: 9/10

2) Traffic Jam Of The Dead



After having milked every other scenario to it's death, we celebrate the release of George A. Romero's Traffic Jam Of The Dead.

Thought getting to work first thing in the morning was hard? It's about to get harder, and a hell of a lot more shit too.
After a nuclear meltdown in a petrol station or something, the world is now teamed to the brim with zombies, and what's even worse...they all drive gas guzzling SUV's!
With a dreadfully slow plot, our heroes quickly discover that they're doomed, either from the threat of the zombie invasion, or the far less imminent global warming situation, but which one will claim their mortal souls first?

Chances of being made: It's probably already been made.


3) The Passion Of The Christ 2: Payback



Set sometime in the distant future, Christ is back, and he's pissed. This time around, he's packing laser vision, and a bluetooth headset, making him the most advanced Son of God for thousands of years...and he's about to take out the trash. The white trash!

Passion Of The Christ 2: Payback is the true story of how one day Christ will come back from the dead, again, and properly lay into our asses for pretty much shitting all over him a couple of thousand years ago. The love interest will be played by Jason Statham's grand daughter.

Chances of being made: It's written in the scriptures.

Bad Acting

Andrew rented a couple of dvds from Blockbuster last night. Being an employee he can pretty much rent anything he wants, any time he wants. They treat you like kings at Blockbuster. In fact, no, I doubt even a king would get free unlimited rentals at Blockbuster. But to be fair, the king of an entire nation could actually afford to rent every dvd there, so he can kiss my ass.

First on the agenda was a delightful little ditty called 'WAR'. If you've not heard of it, the movie comprises of Jet Li, Jason Statham and little else in terms of plot.

Now, I can understand the drawing power of this movie. For a 45 year old man who'd probably still have trouble getting into a nightclub without an ID, Jet Li kicks supreme ass.



YES! I can feel my ass getting kicked already, and this is just a jpeg.

But any other inclination to watch this movie is immediately murdered by one name: Jason Statham.



You know those days you sit there thinking..."Why the hell am I not famous?"

Well at the end of a long day's worth of shooting and grunting, I can guarantee you that Mr. Statham drives home to his penthouse suite in New York or whatever; He sits down on his leather couch in front of his 50 inch HD TV, and he thinks..."Why the hell am I famous?"

Let's for a moment take into account the formula that is required to 'make it' in the Hollywood industry these days. Sex sells, we know that, but there has been a surgence of good acting talent emerging recently.

So the two most important things you need to make it in Hollywood are sex appeal and talent, or a lot of either one of those two things. Failing that, you have to be either extremely clever, entrepeneural or as a last resort, absolutely loaded.

Jason Statham, by all accounts, appears to be none of these things. He can't even decide where he's from in this film. He spends half of the movie talking like he's been deported from Eastenders, and the other half slurring into West Coast American, so the whole portrait painted for us is that we have here a middle aged, balding, ugly cockney who seems to be having a stroke. That's 'War', in a nutshell. There wasn't even a war. It was a bitch fight between an Asian guy and an 'American', which led to the clever idea of showing subtitles in both Chinese and English. Whoo.

I won't spoil the ending for you. Hell, do you even care? I can't even remember it anyway. I almost forgot what movie I was talking about. It bemuses me how these Hollywood types continuously get work on the back bone of shoddy performances like this. Which brings me to today's topic:

My Top 3 Worst Performances On Screen

This list is by no means an all time definitive top 3 of bad acting, just the first few horrendously bad performances that came to mind. So here we go:

1) KEANU REEVES; Matrix Re-whatever.

I met Keanu Reeves once. We were in a bar in Soho. I bought him a few drinks and we ended up reminiscing about music, the film industry, his latest release, and the state of the economy.

Imagine my surprise at around 4am when I realised I'd been talking to a menu all night. I quickly realised my mistake, apologised to the menu for thinking it was someone else, and left.

Now I'm not saying that Keanu Reeves is...static, but he does seem to have a little problem making any kind of facial expression what so ever. Almost like he fell into a bucket of Botox when he was little. Don't get me wrong, I think he's great in a few other movies. I loved the first Matrix. There was just something about his repeat performances that actually made it look like he could do even less acting and get away with it. It's almost like he woke up one morning, realised he was both BLIND and DEAF, but was too ashamed to tell anyone about it, so he just carried on. Heck, there were even days he just didn't show up on set. If you skip through the dvd, you'll notice there are scenes where he's literally been replaced by a mannequin.



Freaky shit, no? Regardless, $281.5 million at the domestic box office says that not many people noticed he was missing, or cared for that matter.

2) Kiera Knightley; Any Pirates Of The Caribbean movie.

What is wrong with this girl's inability to make decent conversation at any point in her entire life? If I have to sit through Keira friggin' Knightley shouting at somebody over something completely unintegral to the plot just one more time, I'm going to find her house and schedule it for demolition. Is she like that in real life?

"Hey Keira, do you fancy going out tonight?"

"YEAH, SURE LOL. WHERE WE GOING?"

"You know what, forget it. I need to go and have my ears syringed!"

Note the following images:



I have it on good authority that these were all taken as she was presented with each of her birthday presents at her birthday awards ceremony last year; An awards ceremony created entirely by the tax payer's money in order that we might honour the shining star of excellence in the sea of blackened despair that is...Keira 'The Shit' Knightley.

3) It's saddening that the third worst performance that springs to mind is from the same series of movies as the second. I love the Pirates Of The Caribbean movies, but the combination of both Knightley AND Bloom in certain scenes sometimes makes me involuntarily soil myself.

Orlando Bloom should have had his name legally changed to Legolas, because quite frankly, he was born to play that role. Only that role. For some odd reason, playing that role on a continual basis seems to get him MAJOR work in Hollywood. They should have called the Pirates films "Pirates of the Caribbean and Legolas Also" because I literally can't see how the two characters he portrays in those films differ in any way.

He's ridiculously flamboyant whilst trying to pass it off as being masculine at the same time. This culminates in him often beating his chest at the most innapropriate moments to declare his authority over the situation, only for a second rate character to then say "Yeah alright mate, piss off, yeah?"

The most obvious example that comes to mind is when he's sat in Davy Jones' ship hull, and they're all sat around playing 'Liar's Dice', which as you might know, is the dice game currently all the rage in the Pirating world. Bloom ingeniously figures out that if he beats Jones in a game, he could essentially win his freedom.



At this point he could do one of two things:

1) Offer Jones a game of dice, in a friendly, curtious manner, befitting those of an aristocratic background such as his character was written.

2) With all the macho bravado of a raging bull in a phone box, he could stamp his foot, beat his chest and declare to a cabin full of uninterested buccaneers that he "challenges Davy Jones!" and by hell, he's going to challenge him in his Big Boy voice.

He chooses the latter. A pirate to his left says

"Alright Legolas, sit down. You're going to lose mate".

Sigh. Another million dollars in the bank, another million audience members smack their foreheads in disgust at their own naivety in thinking Bloom was bringing something new to the table. Thanks Bloom, thanks for nothing.

Unicorns

Andrew's been talking about drawing unicorns a lot. A LOT.

From an outsider's point of view, I can understand how that might sound a little bit... odd, but you'd have to hear his idea before you make any prior judgements. He actually makes it sound a lot less gay than you might think.

It made me wonder though. There's a great mysticism surrounding the Unicorn. Obviously, a lot of this is due to the fact that it doesn't exist (sorry kids). That might give it somewhat of a mythical advantage over, say, a duck, or a cow. But whereas the cow performs a function (it gives us milk, and in some cases, food), and thus earns its role in society, the unicorn, well, let's face it; It's just a horse with a dick on its head.

Look at this guy.



What a mess. Honestly, who came up with that? Can you imagine the implications of having something like that on your face? No wonder you don't exist mate. It's no good trying to put a hat on to hide it. That thing sticks out like a sword in somebody's face.

A unicorn would have never been able to survive in society. Can you picture the scene? It's a hot summer's day in Jonestown, Texas, 1875. A mysterious stranger rides into town from the West. The sun is setting, so all you can see is a silhouette, as the dust dances around him, disturbed by the slow majestic sweep of his mighty steed. The townsfolk look onward as he approaches slowly. He's menacing to behold. There's a new sheriff in this town, and his name is...

"Hang on a minute. Is it just me, or does your horse have a Cornetto on it's face?"

From therein the rider loses all respect in the community. Who knows, he may have even been shot there and then. Aside from all the smoke and mirrors that comes along with an animal as mystical as a unicorn, there's little anyone can say to try and quash the argument that it is just a horse with a nob on its head.

A horse is no more special than you, I, or the next human being, so I fail to see how sticking a fallic object on its face makes it magical. I see nobheads everyday. They're all over my TV.

You wouldn't catch me riding Amy Winehouse bareback to rescue the fair maiden over on Channel 4.

Googling yourself

First off, let me just say, I'm deeply saddened by the death of Heath Ledger yesterday. I'm a Batman NERD. I've been following the progress of the latest film since before Heath was even cast as the Joker. I remember seeing the first picture of him, and ultimately the first live footage of him playing my favourite character of all time, and he blew me away. So to hear of his passing suddenly, well, it sucks major ass.

Imagine if Godzilla came over to you and said:



"Hey there dude, I was wondering if you could help me out?"

"Go on..."

"Well, this is kind of embarassing, but whilst I was stomping the shit out of New York, I accidentally sat on the Empire State Building and got this huge spire stuck in my ass".

"Ouch".

"Tell me about it. Anyway, I got the spire out, but as you can imagine, the high level of toxins in the city's ever corroding eco-system has caused the wound to become slightly infected".

"Get to the point Godzilla".

"Well I was just wondering if you would mind extracting the infection from my ass for me, please. Of course, the only way you could do it would be to suck it out".

And then three years down the line, your mate goes "Hey dude, remember that time you sucked Godzilla's ass?"

All I'd be able to say is, "Yeah, I remember. But you know what sucked more ass than when I sucked Godzilla's ass? That time Heath Ledger died. That sucked major ass".

But it got me thinking, as I walked past the national paper stand at Tesco, only to see Heath Ledger's face emblazoned across every page. It made me think, "Crap, a LOT of people are talking about Heath Ledger right now. If I died tomorrow, nobody would talk about me".


Or would they? How many people are talking about you...right now?

This all lead to me thinking "I wonder what would happen if I Googled myself"

So I did. And guess what? Turns out, people are talking about me. In a variety of languages in fact.

So my first search was pretty useless. I typed in Kyle Webster and I got 449,000 results. Naturally, I'm quite elated at this. 449,000 pages? Who do they think I am? Elvis Presley?

So I was pretty disheartened to find that roughly 448.400 of those pages actually referred to either Kyle Webster the illustrator, or Kyle Webster the business manager. Scarily enough, I'm moving my career into both those categories. I'd like to take this moment to raise my middle finger at the two aforementioned Kyle Webster's, and declare them, as of now, obsolete, for I can do both of their jobs, in one ruggedly handsome package. Go me.

Anyway, I narrowed down my search to simply this "kyle andrew chog zoo" and was simply delighted to find 683 webpages talking about us. What a quaint little number for a company with hardly any interest, and no website.

What was odd, however, was when I found a bunch of our videos linked to a website named Fooooo.com, a site written entirely in what appears to be chinese, specialising in videos taken on a phone, videos taken of a phone, or just generally any kind of porn. As you can imagine, the site makes literally no sense, there's a bunch of flashing lights (standard with most Asian things), and you're just bombarded full on by the bizarre inner workings of a seedy online chinese community, complete with videos like this:



I mean honestly, what the hell is that? I have no idea, but I do know this:

4 days ago, I get annihilated by an array of messages on my Myspace by some girl from China. 4 messages in, I still don't know her real name (but I'm pretty sure 20 year old Chinese girls don't get named Shirley), and she's trying to get me to tell her my blood type! Yeah right! I don't even know it myself, so fat chance of me telling her!

One thing's for sure, she got deleted, lickety split. Methinks the Chinese are gearing up for a hostile take over of Chog Zoo. Who could blame them? We kick ass.

How to defy gravity...

People often say to me, 'Kyle, you're so smart, how is it possible that I might be able to defeat the laws of gravity?"

To which I always reply, "Well thank you, woman of my dreams. Allow me to show you..."

There are few things that are certain in life. Science doesn't always provide the answers. In a lot of cases, it merely provides more questions. Questions like:

"What came first, the chicken or the egg?"

Actually, I believe they answered that one. Turns out it was the egg. Bad example really.

Anyway, amongst all the theories yet to be proven or found legitimate, there are two which should stand firm in the minds of all human beings as being completely infallible in every way.

1)



It is a proven scientific fact that if you drop a piece of toast, it WILL land butter side down. That's the honest truth. Try it. You'll only waste your toast.


2)



If a cat is to fall or, Heaven forbid, you drop it from a great height, it will ALWAYS land on its feet. ALWAYS. Don't even try it, just believe.

Now I know you know where this is going. If it's completely impossible to drop a piece of toast butter side up, and it's completely impossible to drop a cat on its back...what the hell happens when you glue a piece of toast, butter side up, to a cat's back?



I'm not going to pretend that I invented this argument. 5 minutes on Google will show you that this has in fact been discussed by other Scientific minds across the globe. I'm merely going to tell you exactly what I think happens in a situation such as this. I don't need to test it out, mostly because I have no intention of harming feline creatures.

So we know that we have no way of landing this monstrosity pleasantly. Something might get hurt. It's impossible for the cat to land on its feet. It's impossible for the toast to land butter side down. So how does it land?




Simple answer: It doesn't.

It's my belief that as the toastcat approaches the floor, the opposing polarities of both the toast and the cat act like magnets and shoot the thing back on itself. When you were a kid in school, did you ever get the North side of two magnets and try and put them together, only to find that they pulled apart? This is exactly what happens, causing, in essence, a rotating cat, as shown:



So now we've got this huge power potential. You must remember that trains in Japan can be powered by magnets alone, and they can reach some incredible speeds. This got me thinking about gravity. If there was a force constantly pushing you away, you would technically be forced out of the way. But if there was an opposing force on the other side of you, you might actually be able to float.

Thus, my design for an anti gravity chamber was born:



As you can see, our man is floating inside the chamber above. This is because he has smeared himself in dirt. Every time the butter or paws side of the spinning toastcat is subjected towards him, he is drawn to it, only to be thrown aside by the force of the spin. By throwing multiple toast cats around the chamber at slightly different times, we can ensure the man stays afloat constantly.


So there you have it. It's that simple. Try it yourself. You won't be disappointed.


*Note from the author: If you feel inclined to believe in any of this, seek professional help.

How to beat depression...

Right, allegedly today is the 'most depressing' day of the year. Apparently. Although to be quite honest I don't see how they could go about measuring that in any kind of way that would amount to something classed as 'scientific'. Do they go around the world clocking off how many suicides there are in each city or something? And even if they did, surely they'd only know which was the most depressing day of the year 24 hours after the day itself.

Regardless, my mother informed me at 9am this morning that today is indeed the most depressing day of the year.

Well, today can kiss my ass, because considering all the elements in place, my day hasn't been too bad. In fact, it's been a pretty good day in the life of this temporarily crippled pirate. So, follow my lead people, I'm going to teach you how to battle the blues.

1) Firstly, wake up, but don't get up. I sure as hell didn't. I led there for a good hour or two before I even moved. I knew I was awake the whole time, because I was thinking about cereal, and I never remember my dreams. If I know what was on my mind at any point in bed, then I must have been awake at that time.

If you've got to go to work, set your alarm an hour early. Then just lie there. It's not like you have anywhere else to be but in bed, and waking up on your own terms kicks ass.

2) Don't get dressed. Again, I can see this getting in the way of people's jobs and all that, but for now let's just say that everybody is at home today. Besides, if you're depressed, and you're at work, chances are you're depressed because of work. In which case you just quit your job, and thank me later.

So don't get dressed. Pretty self explanatory. There's a reason you sleep in pajamas. They're comfy, so stay comfy.

3) Eat something with chocolate in it. If you're like me, a diabetic, chocolate becomes the forbidden fruit of Eden. Which makes it taste all the more satisfying to eat shit loads of it. So get it done. Today is all about you, the depressed. Screw it, drink chocolate if you must, just get some of that brown love inside you.

4) Spend 1/24th of your day on the toilet. The keen minded among you will know that 1/24th of a day is an hour. So you take that hour and you literally shit all over it. It's just Karma.

5) Shower, but only after you've spent all day smelling. Shower when it's least appropriate. There's nothing quite like sitting in your own filth for the first half of the day. When you've got no one to impress, it's great. When there is somebody to impress, it can also be great. Depends how sadistic you're feeling. All I know is I haven't showered, and I've yet to complain about myself.

6) Do something great at night. Wasting the day is one thing, but to top it off, you have to get the full use out of your night. Otherwise, wasting tomorrow won't feel so sweet. So for me, I'm going to hang out with my band, but here's a list of suggestions of things you can do to complete the perfect day:

Get wasted.
Get wasted and dance a lot.
Get wasted, then get a tattoo.
Get a tattoo and then get wasted.
Get a tattoo of you getting wasted.
Hunt and kill your own dinner.
Gamble away something really important.
Pretend to be a tramp with 3 of your friends, and race each other to be the first to beg your way to a tenner.
Travel to another town in a wheelie bin.

How to be a pirate...

So I woke up this morning and noticed something wrong. Aside from the fact that I have to sleep with a huge cast sticking out of the end of my bed, there was something else causing me uncomfort, and it took me a few minutes to realise exactly why I couldn't drift back off again.

Turns out I'd slept on my hand all night. You know when you fall asleep with your hand behind your head, and you wake up and all of a sudden you can't feel it attached to the end of your arm, where you're pretty sure you left it the night before? Well I did that. So I now had pins and needles down my arm, or as we in the North West of England call it, a dead arm. I must have had it in under my head all night, because I sure as hell couldn't use it, but I could feel some kind of pain in my lower arm.

So what does this have to do with pirates? Well let's take a look:



This is the modern day pirate, and he is badass. I can relate to this guy on a whole bunch of levels, but there are 3 things that define the modern day pirate, weaponry aside:

1) The hook - Or more specifically, the inability to use one hand for its intended purpose, thus drawing a positive out of what is surely a very tender subject, and turning that thing into a weapon.

I could quite easily use my arm as a weapon right now. I can't feel a thing in it, so it's perfect for like, a club or something. Check.

2) The peg leg - Peg legs are a little cliche these days. I've gone one better. Without actually having been subject to a variety of situations where I might end up losing my leg, I just went ahead and broke it. The outcome is the same, even if the circumstances differ slightly.

Case and point, I'm still a one armed, one legged freak at the moment. Check.

3) Facial hair - SHIT. Curse my inability to grow any kind of substantial amounts of facial hair. All pirates need facial hair. It's a pre-requisite. All famous pirates have names like, Blackbeard, Bluebeard, Gingerbeard etc... You never heard of a pirate called The Stubble. A buccaneer named Gillette.

Regardless, of the 3 things, this is the most fixable. All I have to do is not shave for about 3 years, to change this:



into this:



Let's think positive eh? I could be plundering villages before you know it.

K x

How I ended up with a syringe stuck in me...

I wrote this a while ago, sometime last year, but I think the story itself is pretty interesting.

Hospitals are strange places. It's hard to form an opinion of them, especially if you're the type of person who finds themselves constantly roaming the corridors with a brand new ailment every time you visit. Your experiences always differ.

I've been in and out of hospitals for most of my known life, and I've experienced the good, the bad and definitely the ugly. One thing always remains the same however, and that's my complete respect for the people that take the responsibility to care for and treat the people that wind up in the same position as me every single day, because I know for a fact that I couldn't do it.

So last night I found myself (once again) in Accident & Emergency at Chorley Hospital. I was there for possibly the most retarded reason yet. Somehow I'd managed to break a syringe whilst injecting myself (I'm not a junkie by the way, I'm a diabetic) and the needle part unfortunately stayed underneath my skin and totally buried itself into the muscle in my arm. Admittedly, the first thing that went through my mind was, "Crap, I'm going to miss PR1". The second thing that went through my mind was, "Crap, I'm going to miss PR1 because I'm going to be in A&E for hours!"

Anyway I got to A&E. There was a huge wait but fortunately not for X-Rays, which was where I was headed. Some old lady took my X-Ray after getting my name completely wrong. The odd thing is she wanted me to take my shirt off, which is completely unnecessary because, shockingly, radiation travels through clothes. Nonetheless, it turned out that the sod of a needle had indeed buried itself right in the middle of my arm. This brought about two conclusions. Firstly, the needle was probably going to have to come out, as the nurse so delicately put it "if it gets into a vein, it could make its way to your heart and give you a fatal heart attack". And secondly, I'd have to be transferred to Preston Royal Hospital. So I knew I was DEFINITELY going to miss PR1.

After a quick pit stop at home we eventually got to Preston Royal. I will tell you now, the polar opposite of Chorley, Preston Hospital is one scary, scary place. Everywhere looks the same because it's all long corridors and right angled turns, in huge squared formations with yet more corridors coming off those corridors, and corridors coming off those corridors too, probably leading back to your original corridor. We had to make our way to Ward 16, a.k.a The Dead End. Ward 16 is on the top floor right at the back of the hospital. The air is stale and warm, the walls are yellow and you get the impression that the people in ward 16 don't get to see the light of day much, if ever.

I've never been so freaked out in my life. I didn't want to have to go through all the bullshit of staying a night in hospital. I wanted to go home and so far I'd been lead to believe that I would be able to go home that very night, but when I got to Ward 16, I felt like I was going to be there for a long, long time.

I was stood at the front desk of the Ward when some old Polish guy came up to me. He stood next to me and started talking in words I couldn't understand. After he'd finished he looked at me as though saying "what do you think?" I just said, "I'm sorry, I don't mean to be disrespectful, but I can't tell a word you're saying". At first he looked offended, but then he went behind the desk and started pulling peoples files out of the cabinets and playing around with them. This totally freaked me out. Before I knew it this old woman was walking up to me shouting "I'm going home tonight!" I just smiled as the nurse behind her shouted "No you're not!" The old lady shouted "I'm going home tonight, yes I am!" in defiance, but she was led back to her bed.

There was no way any of these people would have been able to function in society, and all I seem to remember thinking was that most of the people in that ward, would probably die in that ward. It was horrible. The nurses were so nonchalant about the whole thing though. For me it was like being in some kind of alternate universe where everything was gloomy and morbid, and for the nurses it was just business as usual. A nurse eventually came over and said I'd been transferred back to the A&E ward. I breathed a sigh of relief.

Over in A&E the atmosphere was calmer and not as stuffy. A doctor eventually came over to me and told me I had to stay overnight for an operation first thing in the morning. He said the operation was essential, but he had to warn me that there was a very small chance that my arm would never be the same. He said things like nerve severage, muscle failure and other complications weren't common, but they could happen. I basically had to sign a piece of paper saying that I was allowing somebody to slice my arm open with the possibility of it never being the same. Not a very comforting thought when you're pretty much only good at art.

I went for my X-Rays and prepared to stay overnight in the crammed rooms, complete with hourly "wake-ups" to check my blood pressure and other stuff. I recall having an interesting conversation with a nurse about how she was able to do some of the things she was required to do. It went something like this:

ME: "I don't know how you manage it...just doing this every night. I don't think I'd have the stomach for it"

NURSE: "It's not that bad... once you get past the faeces...and the urine...and the blood...and the vomit...and the occasional visible organ".


To conclude, the whole experience ended with a wake up call this morning barely after dawn had cracked. The consultant came in and told me they weren't going to operate after all, saying that the risks were too great. She said the needle is considered a foreign body and my body's natural defence will be to shroud it in scar tissue, hence it isn't neccessary to remove it provided I take some antibiotics.

So on the one hand, I spent a pointless night in hospital worrying about losing the useage of my arm all for nothing, and on the other hand, at least I know I'm ok, and you can guarantee that no matter how bad things get, in every hospital, less than 100 feet away from you is someone with a worse problem. It puts things into perspective a bit. All I know is that I couldn't do what some of those people opt to do every single day.

Our latest cartoon

At Chog Zoo we're mostly working on one show. It's a show about square people, living on a square planet. There's not much else to say about it really, except that we think it's hilarious. This could be either due to the fact that it's hilarious, or it could just be that Andrew and myself are two of those people that other people refer to as 'special', but like, not in the good way.

Anyway the show follows a guy called Wellington. Here he is, look:




He's basically a miserable bastard, whilst also being the show's protagonist. He's impolite, harsh, rude, ungrateful, uncaring, yet he's always there when the day needs saving.

Just to iterate, he NEVER saves the day. He's just always there when the day needs saving. Whether or not it gets saved is a different matter.

So right now we're working on something like the 4th or 5th episode. We've got plans to get this thing on TV at some point. You can catch pretty much every episode HERE.

But here's a short episode we made as more of an advertisement. Don't worry if it doesn't make sense. We don't, hehe.

Wellington and the Invention of Glass
Uploaded by ChogZoo

How I broke my leg.

So, animation is all well and good, but when you're a couple of 21 year old guys trying to make it in the real world by working for yourself...let's just say, ends don't exactly meet.

So how do we rectify this? The short answer would be, as my Dad, and pretty much anybody else over the age of 45 with a chip on their shoulder would say, get a real job.

So I did. And guess what? It sucks.

You know when you're watching E! True Hollywood Story, and the guy narrating the thing is babbling on about how Angelina Jolie used to flip burgers or some equally degrading shit like that? Well my job is one of those jobs that hopefully some dude on E! is going to talk about on my Hollywood Story in years to come.

I work for Tesco. For the English readers, you all know what Tesco is. For my American readers, let's just say that Tesco is the equivalent to your Wal Mart, only more grocery based. You know how you wake up one morning to find that some asshole has rudely just built a Wal Mart on top of your house or somewhere else inconvenient, because the world is crying out for another one? Well that's Tesco for you.

I work for the .com division. Those people that have never had the displeasure of working for Tesco can be forgiven for not understanding how unpleasant it actually is.

My day starts at 4.30am. Now I don't care what time you go to bed, waking up at 4.30am isn't natural. I can go to bed at 4.30pm the previous evening and still wake up the following morning feeling like it's just too early to be awake. There's a reason the Earth revolves around the Sun. It's to keep people from going out at ridiculous times of the day. 4.30am is a ridiculous time, and I'm most certainly wide awake to appreciate it.

By 5.30am I'm at work. Outside. It's dark, and cold all the time, and thanks to the geographical lottery that my country so clearly lost, I can guarantee it's going to rain all the time. From here on in I have 8 solid hours of lifting and sorting heavy boxes full of food for customers that can't be bothered to travel the 3 minutes down the road to the store, so instead choose to shop from their computer. Seriously, it's not a big country. Surely it's not so 'out of the way' to drive to the store and do your own shopping? Isn't there like an obesity epidemic or something? Whatever.

Anyway, the point is, my day starts too early in the morning for me to be able to get the bus. Public transport doesn't start running till something like, 7:30am. So I had to invest in a scooter. I look something like this:



Honestly, that's not photoshopped in the slightest. I actually have a turret gun grafted to the front of my vespa.

Now, around Christmas time, it can get pretty frigging cold outside at that time in the morning. Cold + wet= ice. If you've ever ridden a scooter, or any two wheeled vehicle over black ice, then I can guarantee you've only done it once. I had to find out the hard way that this is a 'no-go' area. I skidded like crazy, threw myself over the handlebars, and then next thing I know, I'm calling my manager whilst still lying in the road. I didn't go to work that day. Instead, I WALKED MY BIKE HOME.

Fast forward by about a month. I'm back at work. I only took a couple of days off. No big deal. I'm thinking, 'hmmm, it's been a month now, and my leg doesn't seem to feel any better. In fact it seems to be getting worse'. I wasn't prepared to believe that I'd broken anything. For starters, I can drink quite a bit, and that always leads to manic dancing, and I know I'd been doing that shit at least twice a week every week since the crash.

Imagine my surprise, when I walk into casualty for an x-ray, just over 3 weeks after the incident, to be told that I shouldn't really be able to walk. My leg looks something like this:



Pretty cool eh? Well I think so. Turns out it's a perfect break. basically every time I put my foot down, the bones fit back together, and then move apart when I take pressure off it.

So they've casted me, crutched me, and I scored a sweet two weeks off work.

If there's one positive out of all this, I have nothing to do but work on my animations.

And my new blog of course.

K x

Hello everyone...

So I guess this is my first blog post...well, ever really.

I don't know why I felt like I had to have a blog, but for some reason today I felt the need to start documenting my life. And, as they say, there's no time like the present.

Talking of which...the present, well, it's a pretty monumental time for me. Let's see, in the past few months I've broken my first bone (whoo!), I've started to take my business seriously, even signing up to a course to help me do so. I've also moved into my own house, got a new job, realised I hate my new job, and bought a scooter. All this is getting a little ahead of myself though. I'm really here to talk about a little thing called Chog Zoo.

Chog Zoo is my baby I guess. In a totally non-gay way, it's actually the baby I created with my best friend Andrew. God, that sounds so gay. Let me start over.

We've been animators for a good few years now. We've known each other since we were 8, and if my maths is any good, and it is, I'd say that brings us round to a solid 13 years. Unlucky for some, as they say, but I'm feeling pretty good about going into business with this guy. After 13 years, he's yet to piss me off. Here's to another 13.

So we make cartoons. Amongst other things. The other things kind of pale in significance to our cartoons, which we want to help finance us in later life.

Check it out:



This is from a cartoon I did a while ago about dreams. This dude below:




He's from a show we made about square people living on a square planet. We like to mix it up a bit, that's for sure. Anyway we weren't thinking of actually going into business as an animation house until we got our cartoons hosted with the wonderful people at Daily Motion .

After they hosted our videos for like a week, we found ourselves racking up views in the mega thousands! So we were like, "we should really do something with this".

As you can imagine, we didn't know the first thing about how to run a business, so we signed up to a course to teach us all about it.

I guess that brings us to now, in a nutshell. Fortunately, our lives are far more exciting than anything you've just read in this brief overview, but those are other stories, and there will be other times. So until then, you'll just have to wait.


K x