And what, you might ask, is a Stinky Liberace? Well I will tell you. It comes from a strange and strangely detailed dream I had last night, which I will try and explain in the sanest way possible.
Myself and a random other person were monitoring someone’s internet usage for some unspecified reason or other. We noted that the pages were flicking by so fast that it was probable that they were just scrolling through but not actually reading anything.
Then, for the briefest second, another page popped up and then vanished again. ‘Oh,’ I thought to myself, ‘so they are reading something.’ I went to have a look at what it was, and as I did I was vaguely aware, out of the corner of my eye, of someone running out of the front of the building to the public toilets across the road. At this point I became aware, in that vague way you do in dreams, that we were in South America.
Anyway, I went to investigate the page which had snagged the attention of the person we were (for no reason that remember being aware of) spying on. It was just a plain text ad a bit like the ones on Google, and not very interesting, and beside it was a link which said something like those captions you see on Page 3 of the Sun: ‘Michelle, 23, from Taunton’ or something like that.
‘You dirty bastard’, I thought to myself. ‘You don’t pay attention to anything, but you’re aware enough to find the link to the titillating picture of the pretty girl.’Â And then I thought, ‘ah fuck it, I might as well’ and clicked on the link myself.
There was nothing there, though, just a small, vague jpeg of what looked a bit like one of those 3D barcodes. ‘Ach, just bait for spyware’, I thought and peered at it to see what the fuzzy little thumbnail might actually be. At that point someone jumped up and pointed and screeched with laughter “He got a Stinky Liberace, he got a Stinky Liberace!”
Everyone around me was cackling with glee and pointing, but I had no idea what they were on about, but I happened to put my hand up to my head, and found I had this nasty glue-like substance in my hair. It suddenly dawned on me why that guy earlier had dashed across the road to the public toilet – he had to wash it out fast.
So I charged off myself and frantically barged someone out of the way, to plug up the sink and run the hot water. Because the toilet was a bit of a shack in South America there wasn’t much handsoap, so I scrabbled around trying to cobble together whatever I could to wash whatever it was out of my hair.
Around now it dawned on me that a Stinky Liberace was one of those nasty internet pranks to dupe people into clicking on links and then shaming them by getting them to lean into the monitor to peer at the vague thumbnail before shooting some sort of nasty gluey stuff at them as the punchline. There was even a song everyone was singing at me, with a sort of circus-like tune: “He got a Stinky Liberaaaa-chee! He got a Stinky Liberaaaaa-chee!”
And all the time I was wrestling people out of the way in that public toilet in South America to get at the sink and all the handsoap I could get my hands on was ‘How is that fucking possible, it shouldn’t be possible to make something like that squirt out of a computer’ while that fucking annoying song rang around the bloody place.
So now you know what a Stinky Liberace is. Be careful what you click on on the internet people, or you could end up trying to wash your hair in the sink of a public toilet in South America. And then what a tool you’d feel.
And you thought you were strange.
I even, as soon as I woke up, looked up the term ‘Stinky Liberace’ to see how the fuck it ended up popping into my head, but it seems not to exist. Entirely a product of my sleeping brain, apparently. Which is reassuring in some ways, and kind of terrifying in others.
Anyway, ummm… yeah, I’ll stop now, here’s the Friday Fives.
1. In a word, how did this post make you feel?
2. Stupidest email/attachment anyone ever forwarded you.
3. Of which beast would you like stuffed and mounted head to hang above your fireplace?
4. Best prank you’ve ever played.
5. Best (ie worst) prank that has been played on you.
These five songs were foisted upon me by Neil from Meursault because (with the exception of a particular Scottish emo-folk band) he thinks my music taste is fucking shite.
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The Notwist – Gloomy Planets
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Melanie – What Have They Done to My Song, Ma
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Fog – Ditherer
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Dufus – Radiation
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I love how I’m the self-appointed expert around here, but every damn fucker I know has better taste in music than me. DAMN YOU, INTERNET!
This podcast was recorded – not a word of a lie – on a deserted mountaintop in Corsica in the shadow of a ruined castle. Not an especially enormous ruined castle, I’ll grant you, but the shadow of a ruined castle nevertheless.
