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.