Category Archives: Fimbles

Following the drainage work done on our house to prevent it from subsiding into the mud, and the subsequent mayhem of having to cram four rooms worth of our accumulated belongings into a room-and-a-half while the plasterers and painters erased all memories of the cracks in the walls upstairs, we decided to take advantage of our insurance-financed first-floor “year zero” by awarding ourselves all some new bedroom furniture. So it is that my wife and I have been enjoying to the full all the associated pleasures of flat-pack assembly; the dowels, the barrel nuts, the instructions simplified to the point of incomprehensibility, and of course the inevitable accompanying medical complaint of “Allen key thumb”.

Through this chaos we managed to stumble upon my son’s old Fimbo toy, a first birthday present from my brother, if memory serves. Delighted, my son took it away to play with, but soon returned ashen faced, stating that Fimbo was “too scary.” Understandable, I thought; I always felt there was something not quite right about old Fimbo, which is why it was the perfect choice as the picture on my old Blogger profile, and is still the image for my About page, Gravatar, and so on. More specifically, however, I reckoned my son had simply forgotten that this Fimbo was the talking version – if you press its tummy it emits one of its famous phrases from The Fimbles television programme – so when it started to speak my son got a bit of a harmless shock, as anyone would.

But having now heard Fimbo for myself, I wonder if my son may indeed be onto something. Over the past few years has the absence of human contact driven poor Fimbo completely mad, or into the arms of someone or something much darker? See for yourself, if you can stand it. Too scary? I certainly think so.

If you were paying attention at the tail end of last year (and there’s no particular reason why you should have been) then you’ll know that I like cartoons, and Tom & Jerry in particular. I’ll regularly watch a couple of their animated shorts with my son last thing before we pack him off to bed, while my daughter sits at our feet massaging a carefully concealed piece of banana into her hair. It would be a cruel assignment, but if anyone were to force me to pick my favourite Tom & Jerry cartoon then I would probably plump for The Cat Concerto; you’ll likely know the one, where Tom attempts to play a piano recital in front of a concert audience while Jerry, apparently a resident of the piano, at first tries to sleep through the performance but in the end decides to play merry hell with Tom, as is his wont.

It is not only a beautiful piece of animation – winning the 1946 Oscar for Best Short Subject: Cartoon – but I think the music featured in the cartoon is fantastic, and so I wanted to find out what it is. Wikipedia was its usual helpful self, informing me that the piece of music in question is Hungarian Rhapsody #2 by Franz Liszt; but it also told me something more. Under the heading “Controversy” Wikipedia reveals the intriguing story that in the same year The Cat Concerto was produced, Warner Bros released a Bugs Bunny short, Rhapsody Rabbit, that – wait for it – features the central protagonist trying to play Liszt’s Hungarian Rhapsody #2 in front of a concert audience while a mouse inside the piano causes all sorts of mayhem. Both cartoons were nominated for an Oscar in the same category, and understandably there were claims of plagiarism; but who copied whom, or whether it was all just a bizarre coincidence (the same piece of music having also been used in numerous other cartoons) has never been resolved. Instinctively I would assume that if anyone copied anyone it would be Warner Bros that copied MGM, what with a mouse already being an established part of the latter’s star double act, but Peter Gimpel, son of the pianist who played on the Bugs Bunny cartoon, offers a plausible alternative in this fascinating article.

It is unlikely that we will ever know the truth for sure, and due to current terrestrial broadcasting policy we will probably never get the chance to watch either cartoon on telly; but thanks again to the wonder of YouTube there are a number of copies of the cartoons held on their servers, and I present them to you today, as a sort of 29th of February gift. If this blog is still here in four years time I may do something similar then, if I think on, and if you’re good. Which cartoon is the better? Well for me it is a clear win for Tom & Jerry, but I am probably a bit biased, so why not take a look and decide for yourself?

The Cat Concerto

Rhapsody Rabbit

Word arrives of a terrible event in the World of Clarkson.

When CDs containing the banking details of seven million Britons went missing late last year, Jeremy Clarkson insisted it was a storm in a teacup.

To prove no one would be able to access money by using the records, the outspoken broadcaster and columnist published his own bank details.

Now, however, the Top Gear host has ended up with egg on his face – after one entrepreneurial thief removed £500 from his account.

The fraudster set up a direct debit using Clarkson’s bank account details and paid the money to the British Diabetic Association, one of many organisations which do not require a signature to set up a direct debit.

Writing in his newspaper column, Clarkson, 47, said: “Back in November, the Government lost two computer discs containing half the population’s bank details.

“Everyone worked themselves into a right old lather about the mistake but I argued we should all calm down because the details in question are to be found on every cheque we hand out every day to every Tom, Dick and cash and carry.

“To hammer the point home I even printed my own bank account number and sort code.

“And guess what? I opened my bank statement this morning to find out that someone has set up a direct debit which automatically takes £500 from my account.

“The bank cannot find out who did this because of the Data Protection Act and they cannot stop it from happening again.”

A very sad state of affairs. Sad, obviously, that the prankster didn’t manage to set up a direct debit for Friends of the Earth, RoSPA or a similar organisation that would really wind up the fool. Far worse though is that I wrote a fairly sanguine post on the whole HMRC lost discs fiasco back in November that made much the same point that I now realise Clarkson also made; and that is sad indeed.

But there is still some hope. Clarkson now states that

“I was wrong and I have been punished for my mistake.”

“Contrary to what I said at the time, we must go after the idiots who lost the discs and stick cocktail sticks in their eyes until they beg for mercy.”

So he has changed his mind, which is at least something; he is no longer my ally, and even when he was I was blissfully ignorant of the fact. The worry is, though, that if we have agreed on this one matter, could we agree on others? Doubtful; but just to make sure I don’t upset myself I vow never again to read anything written by the silly sod.

You can keep that one. It’s free. Well, it’s got to be better than “Between a Northern Rock and a hard place” and all the other similar, equally obvious and unimaginative headlines recently. But to be honest, I don’t want to talk about the current turmoil in the financial markets. I mean honestly; pensioners being criticised for being naïve as they take their life savings out of Northern Rock, while city institutions do the same thing with their money but without censure; laissez-faire, capitalism-red-in-tooth-and-claw-government-should-just-get-out-of-the-way free-marketeer types squealing for state intervention; it all seems beyond parody to me, but then fortunately I don’t really know what I’m talking about.

No, far better to simply announce, albeit late in the day, that we still have a few minutes left of…

…International Talk Like A Pirate Day! Quick quick, me hearties, there be not much time to go!

In my wildest dreams. Picture courtesy of the never-reliable “Camera Obscurer.”

Picture courtesy of the ever-reliable “House of Zamyatin.”

I really can’t get my head around email spam. I mean, why bother? What’s the point? I can understand why people try to hack into systems, spread computer viruses or engage in a bit of old fashioned fraud. Such people are wankers, but at least there is a reason for such twattishness, be it for financial benefit or mischievous pleasure. But sending out those emails that are full of badly translated gibberish that – even in the unlikely event that they get past the spam-blocker – are instantly deleted by all but the loneliest; what’s that all about?

But the spammers have really messed up this time. I’ve just received an email from my dear old never-known friend alaa Gionet who kindly writes

Hello quinn
want to fit into extra large condoms?

What a waste of time and effort. They’ve really picked on the wrong bloke here. Listen, I don’t mean to boast but I already can fit into extra large condoms; and with plenty of room to spare. I certainly don’t need any info on some bizarre knob diet, that’s for sure.

Remember me? Just a quick word to those who care to say that I’m back from my extended jaunt, where along the way I sampled many of the regional dishes of these fair isles; Cornish pasties (obviously), macaroni pies (ubiquitous in Scotland, seemingly) and Cumberland sausages (in butty form, following a sneaky trip to the Lakes for lunch on our way home). I am now approaching the size of house, whereas at the start of my break I was merely the size of a holiday cottage. Time to think about dieting. Again.

I’ll spare you the slide show. Not that we have too many pictures of golden beaches; we only got one really good week of sun out of the four we were away, but that’s fair enough if you are holidaying in Britain (that global warming we hear so damn much about can go and get a bloody move on). But I will show you just one picture, as a request for assistance.

I mean; what the blinking flip is this? We unwittingly received it from Burger King at Exeter services, where I bought a “Dark Whopper” for myself and a Spiderman meal for my son (the Dark Whopper was very average, but the description featured black pepper somewhere in it; my Achilles heel, and so the marketing men hauled me in like a grateful mackerel). So clearly it must be some character from the new Spiderman 3 movie; but what? And why has whatever it is been dismembered and put atop an HGV (where I think he is supposed to spin around as the vehicle moves forward, except the mechanism doesn’t seem to work)? Frankly I am as baffled as my son was scared. Answers on a seaside postcard please; or just uses the comments facility below.

Anyway; normal service will be resumed soon enough; i.e. I’ll probably write fuck all now for another few weeks. See you soon?

I can take or leave Easter really, but now it’s come and gone one thing I won’t be sad to see the back of is all those adverts in pubs and shops promoting their various Easter “Eggstravaganzas”. I has gone beyond a not very funny joke.

In fact this year that oh-so-clever pun has been so omnipresent that I have resolved to act. I’m going to track down whoever it was first fashioned that keen wordplay and deal with him or her accordingly. And once I’ve started, why should I stop there? Why not go after the originator of “sax appeal”, and then the person who dreamt up “life’s a beach”. If I’m lucky they will all have been invented by the same person, holed up in a cave somewhere with a wi-fi laptop from where they work out their commission for ITN, thinking up those smart-arsed one-liners that lead into the ad breaks for Channel 4 News; if so, that would certainly make my job easier.

But I don’t hate all puns, clearly; what makes the difference between the good and the bad? For instance, each October Alton Towers hosts its Halloween “spooktacular”. Now that is surely no better a pun than “eggstravaganza” in essence, but somehow I quite like it. Is it because it is not so established, less commonplace, so it still seems to hold some originality and charm that it would lose if it became more ubiquitous? While I’m at it I actually appreciate most of those Channel 4 News headlines. And looking at the title of this post, and the titles of about 40% of my posts, if my task is to rid the world of bad puns perhaps I could make my job even easier and start a little closer to home?

So perhaps it isn’t the puns themselves I dislike but the way they spread virally? Maybe I react negatively not so much to the actual puns as to the unthinking manner so many people take them up? Should I instead go after all the slack brained copyists who thoughtlessly and lazily regurgitate those same tired old puns that have lost their sheen? But their very popularity means that I really would be making work for myself, and that ultimately would involve me having to tackle poor old PTA members and charity shop workers who scrawl “eggstravaganza” onto cardboard posters with marker pens and whose only real crime is a lack of imagination.

Overall then, is it the originator of the pun I should fault, who releases their idea into the public domain but who has no eggsclusive control over its subsequent use or eggsecution? Or do I tackle those who take on the pun and eggstend the idea beyond breaking point, transforming a quirky play-on-words into a eggsecrable cliché far away from whatever the inventor may have intended? Or am I perhaps looking into this far too eggsistentially?