Omens. Omens are what alarmingly superstitious people look for as they bounce eagerly from bad situation to bad situation. People who believe the old hokum about black cats and ladders invariably lay traps for themselves, only to be surprised when they fall into them, screaming in metaphorical agony. These are the people that don’t make jokes about Friday The 13th because they’re too busy wrapping themselves up in bubble wrap to protect them from the oncoming apocalypse of minor misfortune.

These people need us- the non-believers- to show them how good life can be away from omens, faeries, bad luck and fishwives’ tales. They need us to lampoon and mock the beliefs that they hold as fervently as an evangelical Christian holds onto a fading belief in a benevolent creator. We need to be out there, dancing jigs under ladders, crossing swords with black cats and breaking mirrors over the heads of Arch-Bishops.

We need to show people that you make your own luck and believing in omens and superstition will only lead you to dash yourself against the rocks of life! Unless they’re right of course. In which case, those of you who just threw your mobile phones at a mirror on my command might be in for a bit of a tough time.

The only evidence I can find which backs up the theory of ‘bad luck’ can be found in advertising. All the tales you’ve been told about the man who walked under a ladder only to have his house burn down at the same time are probably true but then again, he probably left the chip pan on while he went to clean his windows. All of these things are twisted and made into advertising gimmicks but what if there was one person who was the unluckiest person on earth. What would you turn their story into?

How do you twist the story of someone who is so monumentally unlucky that the cloud of bad fortune that hangs around them can be seen from Uranus’ orbit into something that can be enjoyed by all and sell a few of your shoddy wares in the process?

It’s easy!

Take Noah. He must be the unluckiest bastard in all of creation. Not only did he wake up one day to find that everyone on earth except him had been judged as unrighteous by bloody GOD himself, he was then forced to build an ark using only a flimsy set of IKEA instructions and an allan key. Does divine intervention and losing your local haberdasher to moral corruption qualify him as the unluckiest man in the world? No, probably not but having to fill his flat-pack boat with the world’s most dangerous creatures definitely bloody does.

The poor bastard was left to deal with the mountains of crap and carcasses left behind by the animals in his biblical supertanker without as much as a by your leave from the big bearded bastard in the sky. They’d have been eating each other, shitting all over one-another and generally making Noah’s life a living hell. So yes, he is the most unlucky person in history*.

Until now!

Advertising has jumped in and reminded us that while Noah may have been unlucky, at least his ark was fit for purpose. Unlike the poor git in the latest Lynx commercial.

You’re probably sitting there dumbfounded that I’ve managed to go through 600 words of a column about Lynx and not mention either the brand or the fact that it’s the sexist preserve of hormonal teenagers that have an innate desire to smell like vapourised cat vomit but that’s not the point! You all knew that anyway. I bet some of you occasionally walk past a group of teenage boys and make some flippant comment about the smell of Lynx and stale farts- and that’s okay.

Usually, I’d go for that angle as well but Friday 13th got me thinking about luck and how little luck this modern day Noah is having. There he is, given the task to build an ark and GOD hasn’t even given him any instructions, let alone the sacred Allan Key of Antioch that he gave Noah. He’s having to make it up with a rudimentary pencil carved out of the wood he’s being forced to work ON HIS OWN without the use of the flatpack Ark that Noah had.

It’s no wonder that he ends up with something that resembles an ocean-going pleasure yacht instead of a good, sturdy biblical ark.

The poor guy has done what any of us would do and modelled it on something he was familiar with. Will there be space for all the animals in there? Only time will tell. It’s not only that though, he’s clearly gone for comfort over substance with his tilled-wood interior and convenient fireman’s pole to allow him easy access between decks. He’s not leaving enough space to fit the animals in. No cages either. How will he keep the predators apart from their prey?!

I’m sure he has it all in hand. After all, this is GOD’s chosen man. The man who will lead all the creatures of this earth out of the darkness of the apocalypse and into a new world. A better world. A world populated by people descended from this brave but unlucky man. We should welcome the forthcoming apocalypse with open arms if this man is to make us better.

It’s no wonder he’s feeling a bit warm. He’s worked up one hell of a sweat working all that wood in time for the world ending. Having a spray of deodorant before the animals start to come isn’t going to make any difference, is it? Unfortunately for our plucky hero, all the shops had sold out of real anti-perspirant and he was forced to pick up a can of Lynx. Still, no matter. There will be no people to react to his smell of vapourised cat vomit where he’s going.

Here’s where our story comes to an end though, perhaps with the most unlucky element of all. It’s a well-known scientific fact that women cannot resist the smell of Lynx and will actively seek it out across continents if they have to. It’s not this man’s fault that he had to buy that can of Lynx. He’s going on to the birth of a new world, of course he needs some home comforts. Now his ark is suddenly full of beautiful women, attracted by the smell of his body tonic.

What is he supposed to do? Turn them away? The ark can very easily be converted to house people and the animals haven’t bothered to walk the lengths of themselves to join him. He tried to resurrect the world as we know it but was left with a giant wooden boat full of women that will eventually turn against him when ‘The Lynx Effect’ wears off and the can lies empty. He needed two of every animal but he didn’t get them. He failed GOD and when the waters subsided, he was left a broken shell of a man, completely ruined by his failure to create a new world.

The unluckiest person in the world stands, crestfallen, on the deck of that ark: make no mistake.

*Mythical history, that is. It’s a long-established fact that the unluckiest person in history is Adam Rickett.

Awesome or Off-Putting is a weekly delve into cryptozoology, ufology, aliens, medical marvels, scientific wonders, secret societies, government conspiracies, cults, ghosts, EVPs, ancient artifacts, strange facts, odd sightings or just the plain unexplainable.

What’s the scariest thing you can think of? If you said Mof Gimmers in a silk nightie we don’t blame you. You’re wrong though. What would be far scarier than that is a man morphing into a pig then morphing into a bat right in front of your freaking eyes. You don’t think that sounds scary? Well what if we told you the bat would fly up your butt then start the whole process again. Scary, right?

We thought so.

This story contains no further reference to bats flying up people’s butts. Let’s get that out of the way right now. It will contain plenty about a shape-shifter though. Just so you know – this particular creature doesn’t seem to have a cool name yet. We’d really like to see ‘Jack the Ripper II, Son of Jack’ catch on. It’s an established name and may really get this beast a solid publicity jumpstart.

And it could probably use that murderous tie in – because it sure isn’t earning a name on it’s own. This thing isn’t known to have ever harmed man nor beast.  As we understand things, you’d be more likely to be handed a doughnut when in this creatures vicinity than to have your throat bitten and mangled. Monsters nowadays are so lazy.

Here’s what we know, according to News24.com:

“”The community says that the monster changes shape while you are looking at it,” Warrant Officer Zandisile Nelani said.  He said one man had reported it changed from a man wearing a suit into a pig and then into a bat. The creature had been sighted on a number of occasions near a church and only appeared at night, Nelani said….Although some locals were frightened of it, it had not harmed any people or livestock.”

If we saw some guy in the middle of the night scream out in pain, writhe down to the moon-lit ground, disappear into his loose clothes and then emerge as a pig, we’d be 1) Pretty relieved that we probably weren’t about to die, and 2) Disappointed that no ancient ceremonial dance started the whole process.

Of course when the pig then turned into a bat, we’d probably reach for a broom and see if we couldn’t find a taxidermist with reasonable prices. If we could make it change shape while stuffed on a wooden base, well there’s probably some money up in there.

We’ve heard a time or two that it’s difficult to be gay. Not only do you have to drink from separate drinking fountains in California, but there’s all that chaffing in really crazy places.

Both of those factors may have contributed to Cher’s daughter Chastity deciding to become Cher’s son Chaz. Let us be clear in stating that we don’t know for sure why Chastity/Chaz is going under the genital-hungry knife. We suspect it’s probably because she just doesn’t want to be gay anymore, and a patch-work penis is her only way to the front of the bus.

If gender transition surgery is anything like we imagine, then pretty soon Chaz Bono is gonna be laying unconscious on a table with current-conducive wiring connecting a tank full of electric eels to the little metal bolts on either side of his heavily stitched penis. That’s because Chastity Bono has decided she needs to be a man.

We just want her to know it takes more than a blood-filled skin flap to be endowed with masculinity. No – she’s gonna have to sign up for football throwing lessons. Also, it wouldn’t hurt if she started chewing tobacco for a few years post-op. That way everybody will know she’s really serious about the whole thing.

How do you think her mother feels about the whole thing? After all, when Chastity initially came out as not-straight her mom had a hard time with it. Not this time though – this time Cher is fully supportive. That’s why she’s having a urinary track embedded in her nose to prep it for a daughter’s-crotch donation, if you catch our meaning. We’ve studied the matter, and anatomically that’s actually quite plausible.

Plausible maybe, but not true. Here’s a direct Cher quote to clear things up:

“Chaz is embarking on a difficult journey, but one that I will support. I respect the courage it takes to go through this transition in the glare of public scrutiny, and although I may not understand, I will strive to be understanding. The one thing that will never change is my abiding love for my child.”

When asked what would happen to Chaz’s discarded ovaries, Cher hinted silently with her eyes:

“I don’t know what Chaz will do with them, but if they end up in my possession I fully intend to  fill them full of grandbabies.”

The singer failed to elaborate on just how that would happen. Maybe if she sewed them into a sterile monkey and slowly lowered it into an oozing vat of donor sperm.

Science could probably do that, you know. They really probably could.

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Nicole Kidman has made flops for five years, so now she’s going to change that – by making a film about Nicole Kidman’s penis.

According to reports, Nicole Kidman has signed up to play Einar Wegener – the world’s first male-to-female post-op transsexual – in a movie adaptation of the novel The Danish Girl. It sounds like playing Wegener could be the biggest gamble of Nicole Kidman’s career, but we’re certain that she’ll cope with it.

Why? Two reasons. Firstly, Nicole Kidman’s face is now so unsettlingly immobile that at least if she has a penis flapping about between her legs we’ll be able to know when she’s sexually aroused, which is one more identifiable emotion than she’s been able to convincingly deliver recently. Secondly, Nicole Kidman knows about getting your dick removed – she did get divorced from Tom Cruise, remember.

Nicole Kidman has made some blinding movies lately, hasn’t she? Like that one where she had it off with a 10-year-old boy because she thought he was her dead husband. That was a good one, although not as good as the one where she played a woman famous for taking photos of a hairy man. Oh, and who can forget the remake of Invasion Of The Body Snatchers where she screams a lot and beats up little Asian kids with a bed?

However, chances are you didn’t see any of those movies because, well, because nobody did. Just like nobody saw Bewitched, The Golden Compass or Margot At The Wedding. In fact, things have got so bad for Nicole Kidman professionally that she was recently named the worst-value actress in Hollywood.

And now that Nicole Kidman has taken some time out to have a baby and give some genuinely uncomfortable interviews about it, it’s time for her to make her dramatic comeback. How does she plan to do that? By getting her agent to seek out a surefire blockbuster for her to star in? By securing a small part in a comedy to show that she can make fun out of herself, Tom Cruise-style?

No. Nicole Kidman has decided to stage her comeback by making a film about a man who his his willy chopped off. Worse still, it’s a Danish man. Reuters reports:

The Australian actress will star in and produce “The Danish Girl,” based on the true story of Danish artists Einar and Greta Wegener… Greta encouraged her husband to adopt [a] female guise. What began as a harmless game led Einer to a metamorphosis and landmark 1931 operation that shocked the world and threatened their love.

Of course, Nicole Kidman should find playing a man particularly easy – her rigid batlike face makes it perfect to convey masculine suppressed emotion, for instance, plus she’s married to Keith Urban and he’s a man. She should get into practise for the role by copying his mannerisms. Not all of them, obviously, because we’re not sure how many Danish transsexuals from the 1930s were roaring drunk rednecks who look, act and talk exactly the same as Sawyer from Lost, but some of them.

But still, it’s easy to see why Nicole Kidman has decided to play a post-op transsexual. After all, she won an Oscar for playing a lesbian in The Hours, and Hilary Swank won an Oscar for play a transgendered boy, so it seems certain that The Danish Girl will be an expressway to Oscar glory for her. Provided, of course, that the Academy introduces a category for Best Shameful Pandering To Oscar Voters By A Woman Rendered Inscrutable By What Appears To Be Botched Cosmetic Surgery. It’s in the bag if that happens.

For years the Rolling Stones have been giving hope to the dead and the nearly dead. Not through their music – no, just in the fact that they can still get around reasonably well without having had an actual pulse in over thirty years. Seriously – its inspiring.

Get on that Lifetime.

OK, well sometimes the hope-giving is through their music. Take a man who was recently in a coma, for instance. His wife plugged some headphones into his ears, blasted I Can’t Get No Satisfaction, and then the guy’s ears started to tremble and bleed. That song does the exact same thing to us. It usually starts 1/3 into verse 1.

The guys ears didn’t really bleed – he miraculously woke up.

Nowadays whenever any of the Rolling Stones make the news, its for things like poon-jabbing a Russian bar-maid who’s so young she’s not entirely sure what communism actually is. Also they make the news for getting hit in the head with coconuts or something, getting those coconut-hit heads operated on (or something), and imbibing their parents by whatever means necessary.

No or something necessary for that last bit of sentence. Allegedly.

The Rolling Stones’ news-worthiness has just been stood on its ear. Suddenly they are famous for good reason. Suddenly they can be looked upon, not as gross and prunish, but as brave and overly-skinned.

Here’s what ContactMusic.com reports on the matter:

“The ROLLING STONES have been hailed unlikely life-savers after waking a British fan from a coma. Sam Carter lost consciousness after contracting severe anaemia but came to when his favourite Stones track, (I Can’t Get No) Satisfaction was blasted into his ears. Ironically, the single was the first the retired baker bought when he was a teenager in 1965. Carter, from Stoke, England, was given just a 30 per cent survival rate by doctors, who advised his wife Eva to play his favourite track through headphones strapped to her husband’s head. Carter says, “I suddenly had a burst of energy and knew I had a lot more life left in me and that’s when I woke up – to the sound of the first song I ever bought.”

What Contact Music didn’t tell us in there is that the man who just awoke from the coma, well he’s gonna wait until the girl Geri Halliwell woke from a coma comes of age, and then they’re gonna make ex-coma babies to the beat of an extremely mediocre soundtrack.

Incidentally, there’s a reason Contact Music didn’t tell us any of that.

A very good reason.

hecklerspray is on a waiting list three-years long for the privilege of touching some soap that's said to have once washed the velvety-nethers of Louis Farrakhan during the million man march.

And literally during the march too – at the intersection of Pennsylvania Ave & 14th St we heard he just felt sweaty down there. Whether or not we'll ever actually get to touch that soap is unknown to us – we hope so though. We hear it has an incredible lather.

Also, one day we'd really like to touch Cher - if we plan things right we can do it seconds before we touch that soap if you know what we mean. Some drunk in a bar was pretty set on touching her recently – he tried a whole bunch of times.

But alas, destiny was not in his favor, and she stabbed his throat instead.

She didn't stab him. We reiterate – Cher has never stabbed anybody. How could she? Her adult granddaughter was using the steak knife to cut Cher's meat into more age-friendly sizes.

Cher can cut her own meat. We reiterate – Cher can cut her own meat.

We are absolutely positive that people all over the world would love to touch Cher – and why wouldn't they? After all, if you touch her and then put your fingers straight in your mouth your spit actually becomes a gonorrhea-antidote – over twelve scientists have proved this.

That's why, when the horrible time comes that Cher lays down to give her ghost, Canada's already made a big jar to keep her skin in. They know it's gross – but it's for science. Once gonorrhea has been triumphantly defeated forever we can afford to put her skin underground with her skeleton – but until then, venereal diseases everywhere simply won't allow it.

On to truer news – Cher was sitting in some bar somewhere simply trying to enjoy herself behind a velvet rope, when some young drunk kept trying to get all handsy. Fox News says:

"Police say 36-year-old Calvin Hutton Houghland tried to make contact with Cher at the club early Wednesday morning and was asked to leave. The report says Houghland complied but returned a short time later and grabbed Cher by the waist as she sat in a roped-off area. Houghland was escorted from the bar, but he returned again and approached Cher in an aggressive manner. When security blocked his advances, he called police to say he had been assaulted…Police said Cher declined to prosecute the man for assault for grabbing her, but police said he asked to be arrested."

Cher probably spent the rest of the evening wondering if Houghland could be 'the one' for her, and sketching pictures on cocktail napkins of what she thought their kids might look like.

Two of them looked like the guy from Mask, which she wasn't as open to as she'd hoped that film had made her.

This is just what we heard.