Hot Air: Loud Trump Politely Ignored By Scots

Scotland has approved the construction of a wind-farm situated off the coast of Aberdeen, much to the dismay of leather-faced shit-magnate Donald 'Grizzly-Tits' Trump.

The custard-maned billionaire criticised the construction as a 'purely political decision'.

Trump - who owns a £750m golf resort/trouser exhibition that overlooks the north sea several miles away from the proposed site - has threatened to use his raging financial lovemuscle to nip the project in its tender virginal bud. The basis of his complaint being that those distant pylons will spoil the view from his luxury course, itself controversially built on protected Scottish dunes. Hypocrisy, thy name is Donald.

The custard-maned billionaire criticised the construction as a "purely political decision." As opposed to a culinary decision, like "what am I going to have for tea tonight?" or "do I prefer my nipples smothered in peanut butter, or whipped cream?" Which are far more relevant decisions to ol' murder-eyes-Donny. 

What Trump means to say is that no factors apart from political popularity-mongering have been considered, which is highly ironic considering how unpopular the decision appears to be. Also ironic, yet satisfyingly typical, is the fixation behind Trump's own opposition to the scheme: He thinks it might lose him a bit of money. 

You see, the clients of his golf course are millionaires, and millionaires don't like to be confronted with the realities of cheap, renewable energy. It makes them worry about terrifying things like healthy poor people, wealth redistribution and affordable luxuries. Donald never wants to have that nightmare ever again, you know, the one where he wakes up in the middle of the night screaming "NO FIDEL, NOT THE HUMMER, TAKE ANYTHING BUT THE HUMMER!!!" before realising it was all some quasi-socialist dystopic dream, coddling up to his US constitution-inscribed body pillow and wanking over the dots and zeroes in his bank balance. If you squint they look a bit like boobs, hurr hurr.

It appears that all this worrying and furious masturbation has put a dent in plans for a second 18-hole course. Poor little Donald Duck-face can't believe that something as irrelevant to his short-term future as a government sponsored £230m renewable energy project might get in the way of these plans. Oh, and it's ruining the Scottish countryside or something...

Interestingly, the proposed windfarm in question would be used as a test-bed for advanced turbine designs, thereby contributing to global research into how we are going to survive on this planet after Trump's all-encompassing ego is gone, no longer blocking the thick smog from reaching the ozone layer. To criticise the project for disregarding natural beauty is tantamount to criticising flu vaccinations for giving you the sniffles. Those glorious highlands and his tosser-filled golf course won't look so pretty when the icecaps melt and they're 200ft underwater.

In the end it appears that Trump's enormous wealth won't buy him the same political sway he enjoys across the pond. His 'good friend' Alex Salmond - the Scottish first minister, a teddy-bear clone of Gordon Brown with the ability to smile and not look like a wincing turnip - has ignored persistent tantrums and pressed ahead. Donald will just have to hope that when he does finally suffer through the indignity of phallic turbines penetrating his precious Scottish vista, he'll remember to clear out all the muck from his sand pit.

Armenia's Compulsory Chess Curriculum (and how it might change the world.)

In an attempt to make the world a brighter place, Armenia has added compulsory chess lessons to its curriculum for pupils as young as seven.

Beyblades and Pokemon cards just won't cut the mustard for adolescent strategic training these days.

Armenia - as a former soviet state and a place of eccentric cultural heritage - is as obsessed as any other developing country with improving the quality of its education. Over the past 7 years, Armenia has won the comically pretentious 'chess olympics' three times. The country's leading chess player Levon Aronian is a national hero; Bestowed the title 'Honoured Master of Sport of the Republic of Armenia' by the government, he is essentially the Armenian David Beckham, minus the angelic face and athlete's physique - yet crucially in possession of a fully-functioning brain. I suppose he's a bit more like Sebastian Coe, you might say...if you were Sebastian Coe. The blubbery narcissistic windbag.

As any civilised member of society knows, the natural progression from domination in any sport is a dogmatic shoving-it-down-the-throats-of-anyone-and-everyone. The Armenian leadership has even gone so far as legislation to such an effect, by forcing their premature kinderwinks to play the family-friendly war simulator. Beyblades and Pokemon cards just won't cut the mustard for adolescent strategic training these days, chess providing you with strategic know-how, competitivity and hours of fun. Right...

The games of chess I experienced at a young age were about as tactically coherent as the Pyongyang guide to military strategy and about the same level of fun as turning on a tap. The only thing I found more boring at the time was the activity that led me to consider playing chess, such was the drudgery involved. All this aside, perhaps if I were given some actual insight into how to play the game - and a suitable reward for winning - I would have found some enjoyment in it, maybe even suffered some irreparable brain development. Gee-whiz!

But hold on a minute! Chess teaches children the raw basics of aggressive military combat. Flank your opponents, attack their most vulnerable resources and if all else fails, shatter the foundations of their society with religious extremism. Those forwardly challenged bishops, a covert metaphor for the subversive nature of religion. This is what we should be teaching our children? That we should ruthlessly strike at those who are our equals, but for the colour of their skin? What exactly is Armenia's plan? To condition a super-race of ruthless, xenophobic tactical experts? The Hitler youth had it all wrong! Start them off earlier and subconsciously impregnate them with your sadistic views through the most socially acceptable of violent war-games. In twenty years time we'll all be hailing Aronian as our 'Supreme Master of Racial Cleansing' as we goose-step through the black-and-white marble streets, homage to the game that started it all.

Or perhaps not. Perhaps it will merely plant a seed of intellectual strategy, one that will blossom into a nation of sharp-minded, forward-thinking individuals. Or perhaps, as is most likely, it will be quickly forgotten about and have zero impact on their meagre lives, as they toil through the economic wasteland we are so happily laying out for them. Either way, it might be worth a go Cyprus, you've got very little to lose.

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Black Mirror - 'White Bear' : Review

The second installment of Black Mirror’s eagerly anticipated follow-up series is a confusing, sprawling and horrific thriller. Desperately bleak in contrast to the episode that preceded it, ‘White Bear’ takes inspiration from zombie horror and spins an imaginative satire of communication technology and capital punishment.

We follow a young woman, waking up in a strange bedroom with a splitting headache and no recollection of how she got there. Fun as that may sound, our ‘protagonist’ apprehensively meanders around the house desperately looking for clues as to her whereabouts. As she leaves the house and wanders the encompassing estate, her movements are stalked by unresponsive voyeurs armed to the teeth with iphones. This serves as a blunt comment on the social media apparatus that have provided yet more barriers between us and the real world. These iphone zombies are herded by a set of masked hunters with video-game comical weaponry, from a hunting rifle to a baseball bat (typical Brooker), who have taken it upon themselves to hunt down those that are immune to the pseudo-zombification that has befallen the rest of mankind. 

The episode goes on to play out as any other horror flick would do, the woman and her accomplices getting into some jeopardy with their hunters and striving to knock out the zombifying radio signal that is responsible for all the stalking masses. It feels like a B-Movie, and so it should given the context. Unremarkable dialogue, with strange pacing and some odd camerawork, make the first half an hour slow watching, as though it were building to a crescendo. And crescendo it does, with a twist as unexpected as Bruce Willis being dead on The One Show.

It turns out that the leading lady is being punished for a Myra Hindley-esque role in the murder of a young child, of which brief glimpses had been seen in flashbacks throughout the episode. The entire plot up until this point has been an elaborate fiction, her accomplices and tormentors just actors. Inside the radio tower, the blinking lights of electrical equipment rotate and reveal an audience of people recording her confusion on their iphones. As she is strapped to a chair, the woman is told of her crime by an irish justicar and led through a cackling canyon of incensed citizens, the very zombies who had pervaded her fictitious adventure. The mob want to punish the ‘murderer’, whose crime was to film her boyfriend as he torched the young girl to death. It makes for extremely uncomfortable watching.

So, it turns out the entire episode had taken place in a sort of ‘punishment theme park’, where people can pay to interact with the groundhog-day justice system. An endless loop of allegorical torture is painted as a fate worse than death, and one would be inclined to agree. I certainly found it sickening, but couldn’t be certain that it was Brooker’s intention. I don’t think he intended any message convincingly either way, rather I would imagine his only intention was to paint an absurd parody of what capital punishment could become. He succeeds, and despite its flaws this series stands as some of the most imaginative and enthralling television I have ever seen. Long may it continue.

Review: Black Mirror - 'Be Right Back'

Black Mirror is back for a second series. Back to enthrall, disturb and forebode with macabre allegory and technophobic satire. It would be safe to say that there is nothing else like it on modern television, certainly nothing that manages to weave such disturbing thematic overtones into such a tangible science fiction. It is precisely this reality, with only minor futuristic perversions, that renders watching it such a brutally engaging experience. 

The first installment of this subsequent series epitomises the artistic depth that such a method can achieve. Charlie Brooker’s dialogue in this episode has surprised many critics through its sheer innocence and believability, his characters - a young couple deeply in love - converse in a natural and endearing manner. So subtle is the dialogue, that only on second watching are the foreboding hints noticed: Martha questions Ash as he ignores her while poring over his mobile phone, ‘Are you still solid?’.

Quite predictably, Ash is killed off within the first 15 minutes. Martha’s apprehensive wait when he does not return home, and the consequent blue lights that appear on the driveway, are typical of every spouse’s worst paranoia. Ash returns, however, through an app that allows a deceased user’s voice and mannerisms to be amalgamated into an automaton that lives inside Martha’s phone. This leads to an unsettling relationship between Martha and her phone, culminating in Martha’s hysterics after she accidentally breaks her phone on the floor. The acting is fantastic, the emotions tender and universal, the trauma crisp and captivating. 

Brooker does not stop there. Ash explains that there is ‘another level’ to the artificial resurrection. The body comes shipped in a cellophane bag, and must be left to stew in the bathtub before activation. When Ash is restored, just a computer program inside a robotic body, the confusion and revulsion are profound. Martha is so pleased to have Ash back, yet slowly discovers that there is something more to a human being which the computer program cannot capture, an autonomy and spontaneity that makes human relationships worthwhile. 

In this moral we find the underlying motivation for the series itself. Something can be so convincing, yet with one slight defect or mutation can be considered abhorrent. There is something human to society that Black Mirror perverts, much like Ash’s digital persona does not quite appease Martha’s grief. However, the difference is that this sinister effect is the purpose of Black Mirror’s exercise. The revulsion we experience can enable us to question how we might act in a similarly tragic scenario. Not only that, it reveals something about the subtleties of human nature which melodrama ignores, which in this instance is the necessity of grief when mourning someone you love, and the strength that confronting loss can provide. Fascinating and cathartic, brilliant television.