Rings Can Only Get Better

The Five Rings of the Apocalypse are almost upon us and London is in a frenzy of painting rings on ring roads and installing missiles to shoot down anyone eating fries that haven't passed through the happy anus of Ronald McDonald. The ring road rings designate Olympic Lanes, allowing athletes to get to their places of running, tossing and leaping faster by forcing locals to drive their cars on two wheels like the Dukes of Hazzard. On the footpath.

Picture nicked from @theJeremyVine

I love the Olympics. Once when I was young and the Earth was 1984, I drew a beautiful poster for the Los Angeles Olympics instead of a poster about Jesus. It was during Scripture Class at Northcote Primary School, and the religious man who turned up once a week to fill us with red wine and the body of Christ thought it was quite good, although he was very old and may have thought my picture of the guy who flew into the opening ceremony on a jet pack was actually Jesus.

Not Jesus.

Jesus.

A guy on a Jet Pack! London will have a tough time topping that. Danny Boyle's directing it so hopefully it will be lots of Scottish people pretending to inject heroin, and lots of British people pretending to die of a mysterious virus, and lots of Indians pretending to become millionaires, and lots of Americans pretending to cut their own arms off, and then they all work together to re-ignite a giant dying sun disguised as the Olympic flame. Then Gary Barlow shoots the tax money he's avoided paying out of a huge cannon, and the Spice Girls shoot Posh Spice out of a cannon, and Daniel Craig catches her unless a gust of wind blows her away. Finally Underworld play their hit 'Born Slippy', cunningly changed to 'Born Zippy', and Zippy from Rainbow flies in on a Jet Pack and joins Sir Paul McCartney in a rousing sing-a-long of Mull of Kintyre, with every audience member playing complementary McDonalds bagpipes for the final chorus. I can't wait.

I'd love to compete in the Olympics, but unfortunately I'm rubbish at all the things you need to be really good at to compete in the Olympics. This is obviously discriminatory and I'm surprised nothing has been done about it. It's all running and rowing and cycling and swimming and jumping and throwing and lifting and shooting and beach volleyball. The only remotely athletic things I've ever done are punching myself in the face with a hand-weight during a boxing class, and nearly shitting myself during a yoga class.

So, I have made a list of five new events I think I'd be quite good at that should be included in the 2016 Olympics in...somewhere

Synchronised Sinking. I'm an OK swimmer, a terrible diver but I'm great at sinking. After bombing off a high board, both competitors must sink in perfect unison, ideally hitting the bottom at exactly the same time. Extra points for a big splash and if your togs fall off on impact.

Horse Whispering. I've ridden a horse once in my life and that is enough. I am very good at flapping my lips like a horse and dressing up like one though. This event involves two people dressed as a pantomime horse. Real Equestrian athletes are blindfolded and competitors must try to fool them into thinking they are a real horse by making horse noises and eating sugarcubes. The most realistic horse wins gold and the chance to compete in the Dressage.

Gymnastics: The Rommel Horse. Scheduled after the previous event to put the rear half of the horse through their paces. Two competitors dressed as an equine version of Field Marshal Erwin Rommel must perform an interpretative dance encapsulating his achievements in the North African campaign, while male gymnasts perform circles, scissors and kehrswings on their back.

BADminton. The winners of this event are the most inept at playing badminton. I'm guaranteed a medal.

100m Walk. I'm good at walking but I'm buggered if I'm going to do it for 50 km.

Other possibles include the MC Hammer Throw, where competitors hurl a copy of 'Please Hammer, Don't Hurt 'Em' at MC Hammer until someone hurts him, and the Pole Vault, where competitors must use a very stiff Polish person to propel themselves high into the air.

I hope you all enjoy the Olympics as much as I will. It sounds like the competitors will be having a fantastic time as well, with unlimited free McDonalds, and 100,000 free flavoured condoms that taste exactly like a Quarter Pounder with extra cheese.

50 Shades of Chicken

I've blogged about KFC before and now it's happening again. A lot has changed since my last KFC inspired post in July 2009. Michael Jackson died, TomKat divorced and a bunch of people discovered a particle of God hiding inside a giant ring underneath Switzerland. I tried to feel clever by watching the live announcement of this discovery but ended up feeling annoyed by the lackluster state of their PowerPoint slides.

Some pedantic font-Nazis pooh poohed the physicists for using the Collingwood of fonts Comic Sans, but people who get foamy and fisty about a typeface need to take a good hard look at themselves in a glasshouse with a black kettle. The font isn't the issue, it's the text. The physicist reads the text aloud so it doesn't need to be in the slide. The slide should have an exciting image to support what is being read. I'll whip something up now.

  

But back to the chicken. Today I came across this article detailing the details of KFC's intention to introduce self-service kiosks to their house of chicken emporiums. Here's a picture of some lucky French people ordering their deux poulets pièce et paquet trimestre puces using nothing but pokey digits and a greasy screen.

I'm no French speaker but those words above their heads look suspiciously like speed and attitude and ici. By using Google Translate I can tell you they translate to speed and attitude and here. Having ordered a metric-tonne of KFC in my lifetime, I can honestly say the last thing I want when ordering my guilt-gobble is attitude, and the first thing I want is speed. Here. Ordering KFC is like buying condoms, the less human interaction the better. They also taste quite similar...apparently. The French have had these Automatic Poulet Machines (APM) for years, lucky bâtards. I've studied this picture for a while and the slots don't look big enough for a breast or thigh, possibly a wing might make it through, chips should be fine although they'd have to come out all nicely lined up.

Restaurant Brands CEO Russell Creedy is a big fan. 'Yes indeedy', said Russell Creedy, 'there's a real needy for speedy feedy for the greedy and the weedy...oooh, there's Shahid Afridi!"

Mr Creedy also explains how the APM enhances customer's in-store experience by, "allowing people to spend more time considering what food items they wanted to buy." I'm sorry Mr Creedy, but surely this defeats the purpose of the speedy? I know what I want. I want a two piece quarter pack if I want to loathe myself for an afternoon, or a three piece quarter pack if I want to hate myself for a day. What I don't want is some arse standing ahead of me pondering the merits of a Giant Feast versus a Super Variety Bucket.

Mr Creedy goes on to say, "They can browse instead of being at a counter face-to-face with somebody who's looking at them saying, 'What would you like?'" I know where you're coming from there Mr Creedy. I fucking hate having to look at someone who's looking at me and rudely asking what I would like. Who do they think they are? Don't look at me. Don't look at me! Don't talk to me! I would like a two piece quarter pack please. DON'T LOOK AT ME! Do you sell condoms?

KFC have spent $2.7 billion dollars with Itchy & Saatchi to come up with the name 'Project Fusion' for this little escapade. Nuclear fusion is the process by which two or more atomic nuclei join together to form a single heavier nucleus, Project Fusion is the process by which you get your fried chicken faster. Auckland's North Shore will be the first lucky suburb to get this incredible technology and then it will be rolled out to other stores once they figure out how to fuse the kiosks with four wheels. Heaven knows when they will reach Australia. Still, in Australia KFC give you those dinky wee moist wipey finger sanitary napkins that are but a distant memory back in NZ. So there.

Exciting times. God particles. Self service chicken dispensers. Fifty shades of grey. What will they come up with next?