The Sims 3? Bah.

It’s a video game, yeah. And video games are awesome – skull-explodingly, ‘boom-motherfucker-headshot’-yellingly, firebombing alien warlord palace excitingly, cacking-your-pants-when-the-Tank-runs-at-you in Left 4 Dead terrifyingly, utterly utterly brilliant.

When they’re good.

When they’re bad? They’re The Sims. The bleeding Sims. Ferchrissakes, Hecklerspray doesn’t want ORDINARY PEOPLE in our video games. We can see ordinary people when we go outside. And going outside scares us. So, so much.

Anyway: The Sims 3! Rubbish!

Except … except … without The Sims 3, we wouldn’t have ‘Alice And Kev’. Created by design student Robin Burkinshaw, ‘Alice And Kev’ follows the exploits of two of Robin’s creations in the game (you don’t need us to tell you what they’re called, surely). Better than any soap opera, Robin’s daily blog keeps us up to date with these characters, who are both struggling homeless people in a virtual world. Seriously – it’s enthralling, captivating, and sometimes even (whisper it) a bit moving.

Yes. Moving. Don’t mock us.

Alice And Kev

The internet can move at a phenomenal pace sometimes. Why, no sooner has hecklerspray twittered ‘I’m outside your window with a pair of binoculars and a dagger’ to an ex-girlfriend than the police are called and we all have a good old chuckle about the misunderstanding. In court.

Anyway – further proof of this ultra-speedy Web 2.0 culture is the previously-webthumped Keyboard Cat. No sooner has someone uploaded a video of their cat being ‘manipulated’ to look like it is playing a zippy keyboard tune (which, as YouTube content goes, is already roughly sixteen-billion times better than the standard ‘why Muse matter more to me than anyone in the world’ nonsense) … than it takes on a whole new life.

‘Play Him Off, Keyboard Cat’ might just be the most meta concept in the history of the web. Already-famous internet videos are given the keyboard cat treatment to create something genuinely bizarre. Occasionally the results are lame. Occasionally – as with the Chinatown clip – they’re the funniest thing you’ll see all day.

And guess what? Some kind bastard has only set up a site compiling these vids! Take a look, why don’t you?

http://playhimoffkeyboardcat.com/

Take that anti-drink-driving campaign from about ten years back. Remember the one? Some bloke called Dave was in the pub with his mates, who were urging him to sink another pint with the refrain “just one more, Dave.” In the next scene, Dave has a horrific car crash and is reduced to a bedridden vegetable being fed slop by his mother – who, in a Swiftian twist of irony, tries to feed him a spoonful with the refrain “just one more, Dave.”

All very clever and affecting, yeah. Unless you’re a kid, of course, at which point you run out into the school playground and make David Hargreaves cry by thrusting spoonfuls of Muller Crunch Corner at him while shouting – you guessed it – “just one more, Dave.” We’re sorry, David. So very sorry.

Why has hecklerspray gone on this rant? Because we couldn’t help but draw parallels with the new Think F.A.S.T campaign: a well-meaning PSA about dealing with stroke victims whose effectiveness will no doubt be diluted by children the nation over pissing themselves with laughter at the lady’s silly face and trying their best to emulate it with their pals.

As for the rest of us? Well, we’re probably just wondering exactly how F.A.S.T that ambulance will actually be arriving. What’s the betting on 45 minutes?

It’s heartbreaking on an epic scale, then, to realise that 99% of the predictions made just didn’t come true. Like this fine little fella from a 1951 edition of Mechanix Illustrated – a piece entitled Helicopters For Everybody which paints a utopian vision that even Barack Obama would feel a bit dubious about offering up.

It’s featured as part of Modern Mechanix, a spiffing site which highlights similar such bygone idealism. Lots of other good stuff there, but nothing quite lives up to the rampant exuberance of Helicopters For Everybody. Seriously. Just say it to yourself. Helicopters. For. Everybody.

Fifty-eight years on, has humanity created a better manifesto?

Modern Mechanix

Yeah, yeah, it’s almost the end of January, 2009 has kicked in in earnest, and frankly you can’t be bothered sticking to an arbitrary plan you made to shed those pounds (simply because you managed to convince yourself for a brief second that this year might not be as soul-crushingly disappointing as the last one, and that your ambitions and schemes might actually work out without being shredded apart like so much worthless confetti)?

Awww, who are we to lecture you? What you need is the help of the good people behind AYDS. Take a look…

Sure, sure – it’s pretty good. It’s got that whole ‘democratised, innovative, flawed yet genuinely revolutionary source of information’ thing going for it. But you know what it’s missing? Creationist rhetoric spouting forth like smelly Bible-piss, that’s what.

Thank the seven arses of Aslan, then, for CreationWiki. Now you too can find out about anything you want with a unique Creationist edge, free from the tyranny of such nasty things as logic, reason, accountability and common sense. Yay!

Seriously – unless you’ve got all day to waste by clicking from article to article and shaking your head in amused disbelief, we’d leave this site well alone. If, however, your life is as empty as ours, then knock yourself out! We’ve given you the starting point of the Dinosaur entry.

Have fun.

This week? We don’t know what to say. Seriously, people … we’ve got nothing. Other than to say this is the oddest thing we have ever linked to. Ever.

Just watch.

Fact: you have been told lies all your life.

From ‘why, your home cooking is delicious’ to ‘no, seriously, season four of The Upper Hand on DVD is exactly what I wanted for my birthday’, fibs and fabrications have a habit of springing up like poppies on an abandoned battlefield.

Want to know the worst lie ever, though? The time a kindly teacher told you to work hard at school, with the encouraging lines ‘if you study well and get good grades, you’ll be able to do whatever you like in the future! Like get a job you really enjoy!’

Well – guess what? That’s a big bag of monkey bollocks. Chances are that your forays into the world of employment will be depressing, unfulfilling and humiliating ordeals interspersed only with the nightly wolfing-down of TV dinners and the tearful doomed-to-repeat-forever collapse onto your lonely, lonely pillow.

Oh – unless you’re these guys, of course. They, like, totally bucked the system.

What true American heroes.

Wallace was reportedly found by his wife on Friday evening. He had committed suicide.

He was best known for his sprawling 1996 epic Infinite Jest – an epic satirical panorama which simultaneously enthralls, infuriates and excites. It’s without doubt one of the most remarkable books published in … well, forever … and if you haven’t tackled it yet you should run out and buy yourself a copy.

Failing that, have a gander online for some of his journalistic efforts and check out his short stories. In an age in which Jordan’s ‘novels’ can outsell the combined Booker shortlist six-to-one, a gleaming beacon of intelligence such as DFW will be sorely missed.

R&B is sexier than any other musical genre.

Think about it – you ain’t gonna have much luck pulling the laydeez with your swept-haircut indie or your monocle-wearing classical or your no-one-really-likes-it-anyway jazz fusion. The most immediate way to make yourself attractive is to give yourself a smooth backing track full of ‘woah-oh’s and ‘mmmmm-baby-yeah’s.

This is something advertisers have been quick to latch onto. You can make virtually any product sleek and super-fine by associating it with a laid-back groove and harmonious vocal stylings. Right? Right? Eh? Are we right or are we right? We’re right. We always are.

Oh – apart from the commercial for Mr. Sprigg’s Barbeque.

This is … well … more just weird.

Thank the pissing todger of Christ, then, for Otherkin Dating. Why? Because they’ve bravely stepped forward and broken new ground – providing a dating service for the ‘less normal’ inhabitants of society. By which they mean the Elves, Werewolves or general ‘Visitors From The Outside.’ Who all obviously exist. Obviously.

Any lonesome ladies out there might want to check out the profile of ShadowShifter, a 27-year-old wolfman from Washington who unfortunately ‘hasn’t had much luck’ with his shapeshifting as of yet. The primary characteristic he’s looking for in a girl? Pretty obvious, really – she must ‘believe in shapeshifting’.

Takes all sorts, eh? As the creators of Otherkin Dating put it:

“Where else would you find the “Changing Color” option in relation to the color of the eyes?”

Generally written in shit on an asylum wall, to be honest. But failing that, have a click here:

Otherkin Dating

He’s good at swimming, isn’t he? And – boy – does he ever have a lot of gold medals.

Sorry. We’re trying our hardest to think of something amusing to say about the record-breaking Olympic champion, but to be honest we just came up with a big list of puns like Phelp, I’m A Fish. And then slapped ourselves.

Instead of straining our imagination glands, then, we’re just going to show you a remarkable video. Many of you will have gawked in amazement at what Phelps eats for breakfast every day in order to keep his strength up … something in the region of sixty million billion calories (or a ‘Chris Moyles’, as it’s known in the business). No-one has ever tried eating the same amount in five minutes, though.

Apart from this man.

From the greatest hits of Take That assembled into one menopause-magnet stage show, to that Queen-based thing that’s been going on for about sixteen universe life-cycles now, it’s never been a better time to put a fresh slant on an old formula.

Still – no-one’s going to go near the Opera, are they? Surely no-one would be mad enough to combine that particular artform with, for example, a revamped version of a cult horror film about a giant talking insect?

Oh.

Yep – if you’re hanging around Los Angeles’ Dorothy Chandler Pavilion in September, keep a beady eye out for The Fly. That’s right – The Fly. As in the David Cronenberg remake of the 50s schlock horror reimagined as grisly AIDS metaphor.

With… y’know… tunes.

Unbelievably, Cronenberg himself has given his stamp of approval. And even more unbelievably, opera titan Placido Domingo is acting as conductor, revealing:

“I was a little skeptical about the subject. ‘The Fly?’ I said ‘well, how is it going to be reading for an opera?’ but it just takes somebody that has the experience of composer Howard Shore to write the music, and he has done a score that goes fabulously well with the story.”

Altogether now: “Theeeeeeeeerrreee’s a cock in my cupbooooaaarrrdddd…”

Reality TV is brilliant.

Seriously. Why, hecklerspray simply can’t wait for the Autumn season and the superb roster of new shows it’ll bring – from Celebrity Piss Drinking to Maggot Farm Teen Romance to Look At Me, Look At Me, I Lack Any Real Basic Talent Or Charm But Look At Me Anyway.

Of course, there are many that claim the genre to have a tired and rather predictable formula. We say: bah! Just take a look at this clip and treat yourself to the wide variety of cliche-free, independent-minded characters the wonderful world of the tellybox has to offer.