DECEMBER 31

HAPPY New Year!

DECEMBER 28

THE polystyrene containers above harbour one of the most fun meals I've ever had. They're from Takeshi Ramen in Glendale and contain the ingredients for House Special noodles in miso soup. Think of it as a sort of DIY Pot Noodle, only bigger, smellier and costing a fiver.

The oblong container holds the House Special part. It's a classic mix of onion, beansprout, cabbage, carrot, shrimp, pork and squid, all sitting on a bed of noodles. And it reeks.

Here's the miso soup. It also reeks. But enough about the ingredients - now for the fun bit.

Take the first container and dump the contents into the soup. Be careful to splash some on the table And for the observant among you, yes, that is a bottle of Tŷ Nant water from Wales on the right.

I think we can all agree that this is a meal fit for a king. Albeit one with no sense of smell. Or sight.

Leave it to stand for a while and then dive in. To be honest I love this stuff; it's easily the most filling meal you can get for a fiver and, appearances and stench aside, one of the tastiest. Fun can also be had trying to identify the various bits floating around in it. Result!

DECEMBER 26

THE Magical Mexican Advent Calendar of Doom (And Shitty Chocolate)™ may be consigned to the dumpster but its memory lives on here. You don't think I'm going to stop milking it, do you?

DECEMBER 25

DECEMBER 24

SO HERE we are. Finally. Door 24 and the end of our near-month long odyssey through the Magical Mexican Advent Calendar Of Doom (And Shitty Chocolate)™ beckons. Or rather beckoned, as this pic was taken after we'd opened it, looked at the chocolate and chucked it out. Sorry about that but it just didn't occur to me to take a photo of the double doors at the time. Duh.

First we opened the left side of the door to discover the scamming gits who made this crappy calendar have just stuck a normal-size piece of chocolate in there and not the supersized chunk of utter disappointment we were hoping for.

The right door was flung open in a fit of anger to reveal a poo-filled balloon. Ev - who is always on the ball in the highly-competitive subculture of crappy Mexican chocolate identification - claimed it was supposed to be a crescent moon. After realising that "poo-filled balloon" is something not even the most desperate Mexican sweatshop is liable to put in an advent calendar, I agreed with her assessment.

Once again Ev was right and I was left to choke back tears of bitterness.

AND speaking of moons, here's one I snapped on Seal Beach Pier. Happy Christmas!

DECEMBER 23

TODAY we decided to escape the flat and head to Main Street in Seal Beach, which is only about 10 minutes down the road from us. I wanted to visit an antique store that does cheap second-hand postcards and Ev just fancied having a walk up and down the pier. As usual I took the camera and snapped away for your delectation. Thanks to the cold weather and rain we've had recently the air is clear and free from haze, meaning the light was great for taking photos.

In the distance is Catalina Island. We took my parents and sister there last November.

I know the temperature hit 78 degrees today, but even after nearly four years in California seeing people in the ocean in December is still odd.

After circling the pier we went back up Main Street only to discover the antique shop I wanted to look in had closed down. So we headed home, stopping in Ralphs on the way. As it's two days to Christmas the place was packed - for the first time ever they actually had more than three checkouts going. We got our stuff, Ev got in line and I went off to try to find some windscreen-washer fluid I'd forgotten to pick up. I failed miserably in the attempt and headed back to the queue to discover it had barely moved thanks to Mr Lazy Bastard who just stood and watched while the checkout girl rang up some of his stuff, bagged it, rang up some more, bagged that, rang up some more... and all the while the idle sod just watched. Way to hold everyone up, dickhead.

On the way back from Ralphs we stopped in one of the beach car parks to take some photos of the sunset.

NOW for some catching up with the Magical Mexican Advent Calendar Of Doom (And Shitty Chocolate)™! Here's Friday:

Ev: "It's a mushroom."

Me: "ARE YOU CHEATING?"

Here's Saturday:

Ev thought this one could be a strawberry. Or a bauble. I didn't get a chance to offer an opinion before she'd had a look.

It's a heart. At least it wasn't another nob-endowed strawberry like Door 5 gave us.

And here's today's:

This one had us both scratching our heads until Ev ventured the suggestion that it could be a penguin.

I think it's supposed to be one of the Three Wise Men, although it could just as likely be Gandalf. Now there's just one door left on the MMACoD(ASC)™ and it's twice the size of the others. We cannot wait to open it and see what Christmas symbol has been poorly rendered in crappy chocolate. So tune in tomorrow to find out!

DECEMBER 20

LAST night's hotlinking shenanigans had one benefit: they made me remember that PlanetMut was mentioned in a talk at the annual conference for the International Communications Association back in May, although I only found out about it in October and only then because that's when it showed up in my stats.

The guy giving the talk - Dan Perkel, a phD student at UC Berkeley, School of Information - presented it on a panel called “The Rise of Remix Culture: Identity, Power, and Imagination” (PlanetMut is about half-way down). The basic gist is that people's MySpace profiles - the photos, music, graphics, videos and so on - aren't really theirs, they are "remixes" of other material taken from sites such as HotFreeLayouts.com and PimpMySpace.com. Fair enough, it's an interesting way to look at it, although there's no mention of whether the panel discussed why MySpace users seem to go out of their way to look like morons.

Anyway, PlanetMut is mentioned in relation to hotlinking. I don't know how Mr Perkel found me but he used the first victim of Emric's poo - Steve-O - as an example of what happens when people who own content discover it's been nicked by, say, a retarded 14-year-old who likes AC/DC.

PlanetMut also gets a mention here where another participant in the discussion writes about content remixing. This person obviously doesn't have to worry about bandwidth charges as she seems to come down on the side of the thieving bastards... er, I mean remixers. Here's a quote:

One way to think about remix is as the production of a new artifact through the artistic interweaving of other artifacts. Many hip-hop songs are "remix" in that they mix different tracks to create a new one.

Yes, and another way to think about remixing is "talentless wankers stealing other people's work to make up for their gaping and very obvious lack of originality". Thinking about it, that's also another way of thinking about hip-hop artists. In fact it's the only way to think about hip-hop artists.

Now, before anyone sends me some monging email along the lines of "But not all your content is yours duurrr" let me say for the record that not all of it is. For example, of the 1,399 photos currently on Planet Mut, I'd say roughly 1,380 are mine and the others are sent to me by friends. But the point is not that those 19 or so photos aren't mine, the point is that a) I asked if it was OK to use them and b) I'm not nicking anyone's bandwidth. But I digress.

With this in mind, think about an average MySpace profile. What should come to mind is a multimedia collage: music, videos, images, text, etc.

No, what comes to mind is an utter mess which serves only as another reason why the world needs a cull of teenagers.

This collage is created through a practice known as "copy/paste" where teens (and adults) copy layout codes that they find on the web and paste it into the right place in the right forms to produce a profile collage. One can easily argue that this is remix: a remix of multimedia to produce a digital representation of self.

I believe the practice is also known as "stealing", but I guess "copy/paste" is far more 21st century. And yes, I suppose you could argue that it's a remix of video, image and words, but if you're the one being "copy/pasted" from it's an utter pain in the arse. As for a "digital representation of self," all I can say is that if your average MySpace page represents the self of its creator, this planet is screwed. Screwed, screwed, screwed. The number of MySpace pages that play Linkin Park songs alone should be enough to summon the Four Horsemen; Christ alone knows what the ones playing Nickelback will bring about.

I'll leave it to a commenter to shine the light of common bloody sense on this "remix" bollocks:

But it just seems like common courtesy that if someone wants to use an image on my site they'll download the image and host it themselves. I'm not in the image hosting business. For while you can copy an image (i.e. save an instance of it on your own computer/server) you can't copy bandwidth. That's a measurable resource.

LADIES and gentlemen, boys and girls, here's what you've been waiting for!

Ev: "It's a sleigh. And I don't like you using phrases like 'pimple on the cock of a rotting dog' or 'arse-picking from a dead tramp's ringpiece'."

Me: "I'll be buggered, so it is. And believe me, those phrases were a bloody sight more polite than what I wanted to put."

DECEMBER 19

SO TONIGHT I check my site stats and the hits are up, up and away. "Blimey," I think, "maybe this Magical Mexican Advent Calendar Of Doom (And Shitty Chocolate)™ thing is catching on." However, I soon discover the reason why - some festering puddle of mongspew has hotlinked a load of pics (11, to be precise - five of the cabin fire, six of dirtbiking) and posted them to several different MySpace forums.

Not that the forums this gurning sack of shit posted to had any relevance to the photos, oh no. Why PlanetMut was hit, why these particular pics were nicked and why the utter, utter retard who did it actually, well, did it are beyond me and, I would think, most of the human race. Those over the age of 21 and/or with IQs over 50, anyway.

So thanks to this pimple on the cock of a rotting dog, this arse-picking from a dead tramp's ringpiece, this complete and utter spastic bastard, this speck of flyshit on the windscreen of humanity - in a nutshell, this absolute waste of skin - I've had to spend a while renaming and re-uploading pics and generally pissing around when I could have been playing Quake II. Not that I haven't played Quake II a million times before, but that's not the fecking point, is it?

I've also changed the .htaccess file on my server to hopefully block hotlinking. Well... it doesn't actually stop hotlinking, it just displays the image of Emric's turds no matter what pic the little twats try to access. I could have done this right back when the MySpace morons started but frankly it's been far too much fun taking the piss out of them. But tonight's escapade has been such a pain in the arse that I just decided to use this blanket coverage.

Anyway, back to our regular programming...

Ev: "It's a boot."

Me: "I'll be buggered, so it is."

DECEMBER 18

AS I am honoured - nay, privileged - to use the 710 freeway on my daily commute to work I get to see some wonderful things, a few of which I manage to catch with the trusty moby. Today my Mini was attacked by a vicious burger wrapper which assaulted my windscreen wiper and wouldn't let go no matter how many times I put them on intermittent. Faced with this problem I did the only thing I could - I grabbed the phone and took a photo. Or three. The wrapper wasn't moving so I had to switch the wipers on, put the window down and reach out - while doing 82 (or 65 if dad's reading this) - to grab it and throw it into my slipstream where it promptly flew into an SUV. Result!

ONCE again Ev is asleep, so I'm having to do this myself. After long and careful study, I guessed this was a head, in profile, facing to the left, with a MASSIVE ear. In case you don't see it, I spared literally every expense knocking out this high-tech diagram:

See?

My mistake - it's a squirrel. With an LG phone charger plugged into his arse.

DECEMBER 17

I'VE been out with a stinking cold for the past few days so one or maybe both of you may have noticed the site's not been updated. But we have kept up with the Magical Mexican Advent Calendar Of Doom (And Shitty Chocolate)™, so I dragged myself from my sickbed to present the weekend's offerings. And remember - I did it just for you.

Friday presented us with this miniature oilslick. Ev guessed it was a star, I went for a Christmas tree.

How wrong we were - it's a ghost! Or a snowman! Or possibly the ghost of a snowman! That solved the mystery of Friday's "treat" - now for Saturday.

Here's Saturday - is it a bird? A plane? A 1973 Vauxhall Chevette?

No, it's a sheep not even a New Zealand hill farmer would find attractive.

On Sunday, Ev guessed that this one might be a Christmas cracker and I - in my Lemsip*-befuddled state - decided it must be an elephant. *Sort of like Theraflu.

Well, DUH - it's a candle. To give the MMACoD(ASC)™ credit, at least it's Christmassy.

Ev was certain that tonight's offering was a puppy, even going as far as pointing out which bit is the nose and ears while I ate handfuls of Sudafed in between swigging down another steaming mug of Lemsip.

It's Santa! To be more precise, it's what Santa would look like if Jeffrey Dahmer moulded him from chocolate after dragging his body out of a vat of acid, flaying the skin from his face and using it as underpants for a week.

DECEMBER 13

DISASTER - we already opened Door 13 when Ev mistook it for Door 1 back at the start of the month! Looks like you'll have to tune in tomorrow for advent-calendar-related shenanigans!

DECEMBER 12

WE WENT out again tonight to take advantage of the clear skies and get some photos across the water to the Port of Long Beach. As there was no Arctic wind blasting across the ocean we managed to get more than one useable picture - three four, in fact. This night photography lark is obviously going to take more practice.

Looking straight across San Pedro Bay to the port with the lights of San Pedro in the background.

White Island, an automated oil drilling platform that was built to resemble an offshore resort. You can read more about it and the three others - Grissom, Chaffee and Freeman - here.

Looking straight towards downtown.

The Queen Mary, with a harbour cruiser (the collection of blurry lights to the centre-left) about to pass in front of her.

Here's a shot looking down the beach towards downtown. But that's enough of this night-photography malarkey - I know what you're really here for!

Yes, 'tis once again time for the Magical Mexican Advent Calendar Of Doom (And Shitty Chocolate)™. This time we were both available for the grand opening of Door 12, and to be honest were both stumped as to what this poorly-moulded brown lump could possibly represent. Ev took the plunge and claimed it was an angel.

Silly girl - it's a rocking horse with what appears to be a huge nob! As if an angel belongs on an advent calendar. DUH!

DECEMBER 11

EV CONFESSED to opening Door 11 before I got home tonight but claimed she hadn't actually taken the "chocolate" out. This must be true as if she had, she'd have died laughing before I was halfway down the 605. For tonight's masterpiece of the art of confectionery is...

...a gnome taking a dump.

DECEMBER 10

JUST after we got our Chocolates I talked Ev into getting some MicroSD cards for them so we could store pictures and mp3s on the phones. After doing some price checking using the magic of the interweb, it seemed a company on Amazon offered the best price - a 2-gig card for $15.50. So we ordered two.

The only thing I balked at was the postage - nearly $14 for the two cards. Like most online sellers, the shipping charge was fixed per item and there was no way to combine it. But even at $44 the cards were still a lot cheaper than any other price I'd found. Anyway, we placed the order and the cards turned up today. As I opened the envelope I spotted something:

Yes, we'd been charged nearly $14 for postage even though the ripoff artist / scamming bastards we bought them off paid less than a dollar fifty. I'm pretty bloody pissed off about this and I'm looking into what I can do. I doubt very much if we can get any of the cash back but it's worth a try.

AS EV is asleep, I've had to do this one myself. But it does look familiar... I'm guessing it's a symbol of the holiday season crudely rendered in shitty chocolate.

Hey, I was right!

DECEMBER 9

LAST week Blunty went to the CIA in Cardiff to see Bill Bailey perform his new show "Tinselworm". The lucky bugger. (If any of you care, I got to see BB at UCLA last year). Anyway, he sent me some BB stuff which turned up on the weekend.

First off, here's the tour programme. It has pages, photographs and words and is hysterically funny.

Next up, a CD of Das Hokey-Kokey, Bill's tribute to German keyboard-meisters Kraftwerk. First performed during his Part Troll tour, this is without a doubt one of the bestest things I have ever seen. You can see it being performed at the Hammersmith Apollo in 2004 here.

Last but most definitely not least are the badges, which are now adorning my satchel (or "manbag" as Ev calls it) and a guitar plectrum. Now I do not need a guitar plectrum and I will never need a guitar plectrum. In fact, I had to do a Google search just to check the spelling of plectrum. But the point is, it's a Bill Bailey plectrum and therefore is the best plectrum in the world.

By sending this stuff over, Blunty has redeemed himself for that dark day in 1978ish when he broke his leg in the playground and blamed it on me - even though I was at home at the time listening to the Star Wars soundtrack. Honest.

OK, LET'S get a move on as it's gone two in the morning. Door 9 of the Magical Mexican Advent Calendar Of Doom (And Shitty Chocolate)™ was opened with excitement and anticipation in the kitchen here at Planet Mut to reveal what appears to be a headless ghost rendered in piss-poor choccie. But wait a second - see the yellow rabbit on the right? Notice how he's carrying that wrapped pressie with just one finger. He's obviously spent sod all on it and is a total cheapskate. That's how much this calendar hates you.

It's a shooting star, which appears to have been made by getting a cat to sit in soft chocolate and then pushing it slightly to the left.

DECEMBER 8

AFTER three weekends of trying, we finally managed to make it to the antique/junk shops in the Orange Circle. Not only is it interesting to look at the tat on sale, it's also interesting to look at the price of the tat on sale. So, armed with my mobile, we had a shufty around one of the bigger stores there.

As disgusted as I am to admit it, I actually took a few seconds to realise that these are videotapes and not books as I'd originally thought. It then took me another few seconds to remember what a videotape is.

I couldn't see the title of this magazine as there was a pile of books on top of it, but I'd love to work for them. I can't decide if this is a) supposed to look like this, b) the sub-editor honestly forgot to replace the ETCs with actual words (God knows we've all done it) or c) it was the designer's last day and he'd ceased to give a shit.

In the dictionary under "political incorrectness" there's a photo of this ashtray. In fact, words are failing me so badly I'm just going to move on to the next picture.

When I said these places sell tat, I mean tat. And overpriced tat at that. There wasn't a Christmas bauble under $2 here, and the large gold one is priced at $5. Christ, for $5 you could clear out a Wal-Mart.

"I think it was Kurt, in the garage, with a shotgun. Could someone check the envelope?"

Want to reduce your kid to a gibbering wreck? This clown will have him/her scared shitless in 30 minutes or your money back!

If this vampire was real he wouldn't have a castle in Transylvania, he'd have an apartment in West Hollywood.

This little item is from the days when caffeine and nicotine were seen as the staples of life (on my own personal timescale, that's about six months ago). There's something terrifying about this ashtray/cup combo; I think it's the cheerful way it's telling you to reward yourself by taking five minutes off your life.

Holy crap, is it? Yes it is - a real vintage Star Wars lunchbox for $75. But given the number of these vintage lunchboxes on the shelves I did wonder if there's some factory in China knocking them out for 50 cents a go.

I can see it now:

Seller: "How much will you give me for this Shrek doll?"

Store owner: "Well, it looks like a cheap knockoff so I'll give you two dollars."

Seller: "OK."

Five minutes later

Assistant: "How much do you want to charge for this?"

Store owner: "Twelve dollars."

Honestly, this Shrek doll is such a crappy knockoff it should be on sale for $3.50 at the OC Swap Meet. And even then it wouldn't sell.

On the way out I spotted a tray of old political badges and I just had to have this one.

IT JUST wouldn't be an update without the Magical Mexican Advent Calendar Of Doom (And Shitty Chocolate)™.

I honest-to-God thought this was a chocolate Buddha until I realised it's supposed to be an angel/cherub type thingy. Tune in tomorrow for the next thrilling installment!

DECEMBER 7

THANKS to the wind and rain we're having at the moment the sky is pretty clear so tonight we decided to go out with the camera after I got home from work. What we hadn't counted on was the wind, which felt like it had come direct from Vladivostok, and me forgetting the magical bit of gear that lets me attach the camera to the tripod. After a couple of attempts at holding the camera still for 10 seconds in a 50mph headwind, we gave in to nature and went back to the flat for the missing piece and our woolly hats. Upon returning I managed to get the above pic before we bottled it and headed down Ocean to get photos of the Christmas trees in the bay.

Of course, what I forgot was that wind + water = movement, meaning I couldn't get a shot of the Christmas trees without at least one of them moving across the shot. Or, in this case, all five.

By now we were both cold so I snapped this shot and we buggered off home to where...

...the Magical Mexican Advent Calendar Of Doom (And Shitty Chocolate)™ was waiting for us!! I'm going to make this quick as it's 2am, so:

EV: "I think it's a puppy."

ME: "I think it's horrible chocolate."

BOTH OF US: "Oh, whatever can it be?"

It's a sleigh. Which is doubtless waiting for a chocolate elephant to come along and pull it.

DECEMBER 6

I DON'T generally link to news items but decided I had to make an exception in this case. For, in a move only marginally more incredible than it is stupid, the Songwriters Association of Canada is pushing for a $5-per-month tax on Canadian internet users to combat the costs of downloading music illegally. Apparently these geniuses (genii?) believe that "it would represent excellent value to the consumer, since this fee would grant access to the majority of the world's repertoire of music". Dear Canadian government, here's a cheque for $60. I'm off to download EVERYTHING.

YOU thought I'd forgotten, didn't you? When yesterday's update failed to appear I bet you thought I'd gone back on my threat promise to put a pic of each day's offering from our Magical Mexican Advent Calendar Of Doom (And Shitty Chocolate)™ up on the site. Well all four of you can relax - here's Wednesday's abomination. Once again there was some discussion 'twixt Ev and me as to what part of Christmas lore this was meant to represent. We decided it must be a bell. Or possibly Darth Vader.

We were both wrong - it's a rocketship with a bell-end. Those rascally Mexicans fooled us again!

Here's today's gift from the gods. Whereas Ev used some common sense and guessed it was a horseshoe, I - still stung by the travesty of Wednesday's intergalactic cock - once again went for "the toilet in a certain student house in Hounslow, round about October 1993. Well, maybe November, it was definitely autumn and I'm pretty sure it wasn't December."

Oh foolish us - it's an elephant! How could we have not guessed correctly seeing as how elephants play an enormous role in the story of Christmas. For example, Mary and Joseph could have got a room at the inn if only they'd checked Expedia and found out about the elephant convention that had kicked off in Bethlehem that weekend. Anyway, there are 18 doors left to open, meaning I don't have to come up with a decent update 'til Christmas Day. Lovely.

DECEMBER 4

"IT'S a puppy!" said Ev as we opened door no4 on our advent calendar. After long and careful study I guessed it was supposed to be a duck, although there was one thing for certain: it didn't matter who was right, it will still be made of sawdust mixed with creosote.

I suppose it sort of looks like a duck, in the same way that Madoc looks like a cat. It did go straight in the bin though, which was where I'd liked to have put Madoc after he woke us up at about six in the morning by having a coughing fit. I didn't know cats could have coughing fits and was most put out when Ev refused quite violently to try my remedy of punching Madoc in the head.

DECEMBER 3

HERE'S the Christmas tree we bought from the local supplier (who also does pumpkins at Halloween). Going here is a bit like going to a normal store; within minutes of walking in you're surrounded by assistants being attentive and courteous because a) choosing from 250 identical trees obviously requires the help of an expert and b) they want a tip. After much fending off help, we picked out a six-footer, had it trimmed, got the base attached and then had it tied to the roof of the Mini, all for only $42 plus tip. To be fair our little helper tied the tree to the car pretty well - when I smacked it into the pipes on the ceiling of our car park it hardly moved. The tree is now decorated and ready to be vandalised by Emric whenever he sees fit.

AND our cheapo knock-off advent calendar just keeps on giving!

This time we got a star, although it looks like instead of using a mould the makers just got a cat to sit on some soft chocolate.

DECEMBER 2

THE advent calendar continues to provide us with festive treats. I'm going to take a pic of each day and post it up here as a) it's an easy update for every day of the month and b) it's too good to miss.

At last - a piece of chocolate even more unappetizing than Hershey's. To be honest it looks like something Iestyn curled off in the litter box, and the pattern of the tile is just reinforcing that comparison. Even though I love choccie I refused to go anywhere near this, so Ev stepped up and tried it. She spat it out three seconds later.

DECEMBER 1

DURING a trip to Walgreens tonight we spotted the advent calendar pictured above. Not only does it have "Hecho en Mexico" written all over it, it also wouldn't scan on the register so the harassed assistant let us have it for 99 cents. Once we got home Ev, being the Christmas fanatic she is, opened door No1 hoping for a chocolate treat only to be confronted with the unappetising sight below:

What should have been a sweet treat instead reminded me of the toilet in my student house in Hounslow circa 1992. Ev then realised that the numbers on the doors are printed so badly that she'd actually opened door 13 instead of 1, so hoping for more luck this time she prised open the real door No1.

Oh dear.