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.’  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.

Beck – Burnt Orange Peel

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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!

One drink, home early, not staying out, want to take it easy tonight… it’s just never going to bloody happen, is it.  Pure fantasy.

Last night’s escapades mean that I had far too little sleep last night, and something of a hangover this morning.  This puts me in no fucking mood to piss about with my cunting colleagues, who seem to have decided that answering the fucking phone is beneath them.  Our receptionist is off today, which means that we all have to take turns answering the phone, but apparently ‘taking turns’ needs to be explained in really big letters, and preferably with pictorial aids.  Apprently some people simply don’t hear and some people ‘have a deadline’.

To put you in the picture, there are only about twenty of us in our office in the first place, and we are a consultancy – every single fucking one of us is working to a fucking deadline, because that’s what our damn clients pay us for: to do their panicking for them.  I actually had to reach over some cunt’s desk this morning in order to answer the incoming call on his fucking phone.

“Hi, SuperdesignCo…  yes just a moment, who’s speaking please… yes I’ll put you through.”  Hardly enormously time consuming or intellectually fucking challenging you would fucking well think.  It reminds me of those cunts who are forever boasting about how many emails they bloody well have.  Yes, don’t worry, we all know how jolly clever and important you are.  There’s time for a chat, time for a coffee, time to fanny about pissing and moaning about how fucking busy they are, but not enough time to spend a minute answering the fucking telephone.

So for the rest of the day, I am far too busy and have decided that I am going to be pointedly too important to answer the damn phone.  Fuck it, it isn’t going to be for me anyway, so if anyone wants me I am going to be having a nap in the loo.

1. Name the worst violation of workplace etiquette which regularly gets your goat at your job.
2. And confess to the one you are most guilty of yourself.
3. Which office charicature is most prevalent in your place of work.
4. You have one bullet, and the world has promised to turn a blind eye… who’s for the chop?
5. How many hours of actual work do you tend to accomplish on hangover days?

The Sequins – Let’s Go Drinking in the Morning

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Clem Snide – Don’t Be Afraid of Your Anger

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The Divine Comedy – A Drinking Song

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John Cooper Clarke – Twat

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The Notwist – Pick Up the Phone

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This podcast is unconscionably late once more and again I am going to plead that there is a perfectly good reason for this.  Today has been taken up with constant recording here at Toad Hall, and I myself have been finishing the video for the Honeytrap Toad Session which finally, finally will be making an appearance this time next week.  My job is virtually finished, and it’s messy, but it will be a corker.

This podcast has no real theme, but I did let Neil choose most of the songs, so that gives the podcast something of a character of its own.  I did make him be on a podcast with a Noah & the Whale song on it though.  Ha haaa!  That’ll teach the trendy little bastard!

Toadcast #89 – The Latecast

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01. Sunset Rubdown – I’ll Believe in Anything You’ll Believe in Anything (02.09)
02. King Creosote – Homeboy (09.14)
03. Rob St. John – Domino (Live) (18.13)
04. Noah & the Whale – The First Days of Spring (23.05)
05. Melanie – What Have They Done to My Song, Ma (31.35)
06. The Scotland Yard Gospel Choir – Stop! (39.42)
(Interlude music: The Divine Comedy – Theme From Casanova)
07. The Notwist – The Devil, You & Me (45.53)
08. Mum – Green Grass of Tunnel (49.26)
09. Sol Seppy – Hafiz, a Mime (60.18)

[After unfairly raising my expectations with the saucy title, Mrs. Toad has lapsed into something of a furious rant about mobile phones. She walks it the way she talks it too - I can never get the old bat on the bloody phone when I need her. Anyway, she's erm, gone a bit mental and good luck to you...]

Mobile phones are useful. Even an anti social fuck like me has to admit that. However, they also have the unfortunate side effect of turning amiable people into annoying, rude fucktards. And that is why it fills me with dismay that mobile phones will soon be allowed on planes.

Mobile phone rudeness provokes me to the point of apoplexy. People sit in the pub with phones in front of them, peering at it and fiddling with it, holding up a finger to cut fellow drinkers off in mid conversation so that their phone can be answered, texting and chuckling at incoming texts mid dinner. Strangely, no-one hits them (though I am available for random acts of violence and children’s parties if anyone wants to outsource). Remember when even having a mobile (and before that the carphone) was the mark of a total tosser?

In public places, phones constantly chirp with loud, irritating ring tones; if 666 is the Mark of the Beast, the Crazy Frog is the Mark of the Cunt. This noise apparently lets the phone’s owner know that it’s time to stop dead in the middle of a busy thoroughfare like a crippled bovine retard and engage in long conversations that make Paris Hilton sound positively intelligent by comparison. The truly inspiring knuckle grazers also manage a muttered “fucks sake” or martyred look when the hordes behind try to push past them as they exchange their bons mots. I admit that, as a Blackberry addict, I am not immune from indulging in a form of telephonic twattery, but at least by obsessing over e-mail, I’m quiet about it and rarely park myself right in front of busy escalator in the mall to engage with my addiction.

Like a car, where the cocooned environment seems to provoke a “me versus the rest of them”, attitude in otherwise placid people, the mobile phone seems to inspire truly remarkable selfishness. People turning down or postponing the demands of a strident phone in favour of their human companions is the exception rather than the rule despite the existence of voicemail. The relationship between phone user and phone is needy, slightly anxious and immediate. For the truly afflicted, the phone constantly in their hands is a sad physical manifestation of their insecurity, like those sad fucks that used to leave the Hugo Boss labels sewn on the sleeves of their suits in the 80′s.

And now, even 30,000 feet won’t be far enough away from these mongers. I travel regularly on planes and already, without mid air usage, there are particularly annoying phone patterns associated with air travel. The Touch Down call – the people who are so important that the instant the planes lands, they must whip out their phones and make a call (loudly, otherwise what’s the point). The Terminal Bore – the men (usually) who strut up and down the terminal bellowing into phones, often on a Nathan Barley headset, checking to make sure people are watching them (FYI quickly belming or making a silver quick wanking gesture knocks them off their stride). The Telephonically Immune – the people who in, defiance of all the rules that render plebs like you or I un-contactable for 10 minutes, have the unique and god given right to make and receive calls in the security areas and the customs hall. I have actually seen one of these spanners do the finger holding up thing to a customs officer who asked him to terminate his call. Funnily enough, he got pulled aside for extra immigration checks and I do that hope KY and a vigourous rubber glove were involved. Actually, fuck that, I hope they were out of KY and let the day release trainee use meths and a wire brush to have a good root around his jacksie.

Will it be popular to use mobiles on planes? A hippy view might be that since it is so annoying to have other people make phone calls on planes, considerate people won’t choose to make calls themselves, in the advancement of the mutual good. Well, fuck the hippies. No-one seems to give a shit about the mutual good since it stopped involving sitting under bushes at open air festivals, whacked on acid and indiscriminately banging people called Leaf, Wind and Moonbeam. In fact, I suspect there will be more than a few former such hippies, now encased in Brooks Brothers uniforms, among the first to bray into their Motorola flips about the S&P as the seatbelt sign pings off.

And even if it is common, surely people will be discreet? Hmmm, no.

A former (and very slight) acquaintance used to have his mates call him and then hang up when he was in trendy bars in London. The purpose being that he could stand next to hot chicks at the bar and bark into the mute handset about holding out for another million, yeah, Noel and Liam are lined up and, yes, Kate Moss should be guestlisted but that that kraut boot Claudia can fuck off. This bellend actually worked for an insurance company in the ass end of the auto claims department (until he was fired for sheer uselessness). Now, there’s no fucking way that a total cocksmoker like that isn’t going to use his mobile on a plane and there’s also no way that I am not going to want to ram it up his asshole sideways before beating his face bloody on the back of the chair in front.

I am the avenging air marshall for those who enjoy dozily relaxing on an 8 hour flight, being served hand and foot and watching movies in peace and quiet. Be warned. I fly a lot. I might be on your plane. Think before you use that phone.

Casiotone For the Painfully Alone – Don’t They Have Payphones Whereever You Were Last Night?
Blondie – Hanging on the Telephone
The Notwist – Pick Up the Phone

[You know why I love this post?  Because I have been so busy all weekend with the Alela Diane session and Mrs. Toad took it upon herself to write a little something because she knew I would be struggling and I looked exhausted.  So a foul-mouthed old harridan she may be, but she's a sweet lass in her own way.  And I wouldn't be without her for anything, silly girl.

Oh, and she only touched on it, but there are monumental levels of Blackberry hypocrisy going on here which are really quite hilarious- T]