Thoughts of a Ladma

My Wrongs

2009-06-23T23:53:00.003+01:00

I took the bus home after some late night comedy. Four women got off on their own. Just I was thinking the words "Rape City" an event occurred.

Just recently I have been farting a lot. I don't know why this has started to happen but it's starting not to bother me. Whilst riding home on said bus I felt a large body or gas forming. I knew it would be a three seconder. "No worries" I thought "you've done longer without anyone knowing". I began.

This time it made a farting noise forcing me to stop after only one second. The chances of someone on the bus hearing me were about forty percent. I still have two seconds worth left though. I think to myself "I don't really care" and let the rest out audibly. This was the second time this had happened in two weeks. The chances of someone hearing are now about sixty five percent.

A man who was sat behind me got up and seated himself down further down the bus. It turned out that we was just moving to get closer to the stairs as he had a gammy leg and needed more time to get off. I don't know if he was aware of the fart.

Pete

*EDIT*
I now know that my recent spate of farting was due to being on antibiotics which kill all the bacteria in your stomach. I was unable to breakdown my food properly which led to me farting on buses and at work. I ate pro biotic yoghurt which has fixed the problem. Thank you so much for listening you fuck.

Should old acquaintance be forgot? Yes.

2009-05-07T20:05:00.007+01:00

I expect that you probably already know about Facebook. You probably even have an account. Like me you will probably have used it to spy on and mock other people. No? Well after this you will have.

One of the major drawbacks of Facebook is that you will inevitably, at some stage, rediscover a whole load of people from your past who now wish to be ‘friends’ with you again. Chances are they will not talk to you, or try to rekindle the friendship in any way. There will be an uncomfortable and indefinite silence between you. This is because you have literally nothing to say to them, apart from “So...a bit older, huh? How’s that working out?”

This is usually fine. You both simply serve the purpose of boosting each other’s friend count. You will never say anything meaningful to each other, but that’s okay because you both look better and more popular than you really are. Win-win, surely? Why not just accept all of these people and have one big silent reunion?

WRONG. First, you will be bombarded with invitations to moronic, occasionally amusing (but mostly moronic) groups and applications. I have 37 group invitations currently pending including “Lewis Hamilton: 2008 Grand Prix Champion”, “SUPPORT OUR TROOPS” and (my personal favourite) “GET THAT BASTARD IAN HUNTLEY OFF FACEBOOK”, all of which past acquaintances have thoughtfully invited me to.

I also have 57 ‘other requests’ including challenges to find out what kind of animal/film character/car I am, how good a marriage partner/kisser/gangster I would be, and a whole bunch of invites to games and other bits of crap that I have no intention of playing. In return, I would like to invite them to play my own game that I made called “How much of a fucking wanker are you?” which simply consists of them looking at my screen and counting up how many crappy requests they’ve sent me.

But all this is water under the bridge. You can ignore it quite easily. What is so much more mysterious is the need these people have to continually keep everyone informed of their thoughts and feelings, however mundane/pathetic/embarrassing, via “status updates”. If you don’t know already, these are quick bulletins that sometimes appear in your general updates feed so you can keep an eye on how everyone is doing. Some people use these sparingly, simply to announce information that they think people might be interested in. Unfortunately it is also a great platform for idiots who wish to boast, fish for compliments or sympathy, bitch, whinge and otherwise bore people with their stupid thoughts.

The below example is taken from an old school friend over the last two months. I have not made any of it up or added anything. Names have been deleted for privacy, or changed for a bit of a laugh.

[name deleted] is so happy had best wkend with my gorgeous amazing Jamie - u rock my world buby xxxxxxxxxxxxxxx
[name deleted] is so so happy...seeing my gorgeous Jamie Fuckwit this wkend!!!!!!! be in his arms by 5pm!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!
[name deleted] is dreaming of her Jamie buby bear xxxx
[name deleted] is happy for my sis-getting married - going to be gorgeous bride!
[name deleted] worked out i dnt even know who i am yet...must do that before nething else lol but know my best friend is GYM & POOL! lol
[name deleted] is exhausted after serious exercising day, but feel GREAT!!!
[name deleted] had fabulous friday night and got gr8 wkend ahead :)
[name deleted] does infact have a pretty gr8 bf even if not everything perfect :)
[name deleted] is confused bout guys lol - 2night and my wkend going 2 be gr8 fun, really looking 4ward to it :D
[name deleted] thankful for good friends mwah to uli bear and laura bear :D
[name deleted] reunions gallore over nxt few weeks yay
[name deleted] is happy and had fab wkend - love u baby xxx
[name deleted] doesn't know what 2 do any more :(
[name deleted] had quite the day, so tired now! SEEE MY GORGEOUS MAN IN LESS THAN 2 DAYS!!!! xxxx
[name deleted] feeling fat n frumpy :(
[name deleted] is looking at my beautiful roses and realising how in love i am :D
[name deleted] has the most amazing bf ever, had beautiful roses delivered today and yummy chocs :D i love Jamie Fuckwit :D
[name deleted] is crazy inlove with Jamie Fuckwit n wants to be his angel forever
[name deleted] is amazingly happy all thanks to her darling bf
[name deleted] is so happy and is totally in love with the most amazing man ever!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!
[name deleted] says Jamie is the most amazing loving gorgeous man ever to exist - love u always xx
[name deleted] is stressed at her flaming car! applying for teaching stuff and missing a certain some1 who is incredible and gorgeous and amazingly brilliant :D
[name deleted] believes Jamie is the most amazing man she has ever met and is never letting him go :D
[name deleted] is so happy due to Jamie Fuckwit!!!! mwah!!!!!
[name deleted] is an insured driver of 1.4 206!!!!!!!
[name deleted] is unbelievably happy due to some1 amazing
[name deleted] is SOOOO happy, had best weekend ever with the gorgeous yummy Jamie - official bf ;) lol
[name deleted] is so happy that my wkend is with Jamie!!! xxxxxxxxxx
[name deleted] is so happy as some1 amazing coming home early :D he knows who he is :D
[name deleted] is so happy, had gr8 gym sesh 44 km!!! oh and hey to the most gorgeous man in world - Jamie Fuckwit
[name deleted] wants to be loved and wanted

I particularly like the last one. I suppose we all do, really. In true Facebook spirit I have sent her an invite to my new application called “How much are you loved and wanted?”

Chris

Repidophilia

2009-05-02T10:27:00.005+01:00

Garnier, the makers of skin products, have decided on a new paedophilic marketing campaign. Click here to view their latest advert in full. There is something about repeating the term "repido" and spraying white stuff on children's bodies that makes me feel, well, just uncomfortable.

Pete

Toilet Troubles

2009-02-11T21:21:00.003Z

I never usually have trouble with toilet management but recently I have slipped up twice to embarrassing effect. I was expecting company but needed a shower and a crap. I did my business, as I was bursting, but then realised that I could not flush because it would mess up the hot water. No worries. I will just put the lid down and flush after my shower. The problem was that I was in such a rush I forgot the flushing part. I was then asked by the young lady I was trying to woo why I had left my crap floating around the toilet.

The second time I was wondering what I could do with a bowl of Fruit and Fibre I was eating. The problem was that I had poured out of date milk on the usually refreshing cereal. I couldn't put it down the sink as the cereal would clog it up. I couldn't put it in the bin as I had just changed the bag and it would smell after a matter of hours. No problem, I will flush it down the toilet. If I had eaten it I would have ended up putting it in there anyway. So down it went. The flush dealt with it swiftly, or so I thought. I ended up being left with just the raisins at the bottom of the bowl. They looked like rabbit droppings through the water. I was alerted to this fact by the same visitor. I think she thinks I don't know how to use a toilet. She is right.

Pete

The Friendship Test

2009-01-23T00:40:00.005Z

A good way of finding out who your best friends are is to go through you friend list on Facebook and comment on their status updates with "I don't care". If you don't have a Facebook account then you might want to think about learning how to use your keyboard.

Those people who don't reject you as a friend are what I call "keepers". Do this around once a month and you will soon get down to the core keepers. This is unless you are are one of those pricks with more than 100 friends. Come on! You don't really know that many people.

Pete

The PC Brigade

2009-01-21T20:19:00.007Z

I used to be an avid PC gamer. I don't have much time to play games any more outside rare drunken sessions of The World of Warcraft with Dan. To my knowledge we are the first racist guild on WoW, only accepting a certain species of character. We thought our name of Strength Through Joy might get us in to trouble with Blizzard, the makers of the game, but since our racism is justly confined to the fictional species of the game world we are fine. Anyway, everyone knows that if you play as a Blood Elf you are a bell end.

Unfortunately not all games embrace the freedom of expression found in WoW. I was playing the "free form" game Fallout 3 a week ago and was bitterly disappointed with the world in which I found myself. The beauty of role play games is that you get to sculpt the character and world in which you live. When I played Mass Effect a number of months ago my character did no wrong and justly fought for the weak and innocent no matter the personal cost. In Fallout 3 I choose a darker path.

I generally go around killing anyone who upsets me or might have something of value on them. The beauty of the game is that you can kill anyone, even central characters, which changes what options you have in the future (a dead person won't be able to give you tasks and rewards but may have valuable items). There is a karma system that operates based on the decisions you make along the way. Even if my character cured aids, cancer and puppy death I still would not be halfway up that karma scale based on my current play.

In my pursuit of evil I picked the lock of a solder's house that I thought would have good weapons and money. I then stole everything inside of value and messed around with his furniture (there is no benefit to messing around with other peoples furniture in the game but as I already have explained I am evil this time). On investigating the last room in the house I came across something unexpected, a young child that had been adopted by the soldier. He made a shout and made a run for the door to the town. If he got out then I would have about 30 townspeople on my ass. My shotgun didn't need much aligning with the back of his head as he ran past. A child's life versus the stuff I had stolen was an easy decision to make. My shotgun rang out with the sound of child murder. To my surprise the child kept running. Another blast failed to down him. I then got out my flame thrower and cooked him for about 20 seconds. Still nothing. I then realised the situation. The makers of the game had made it impossible to kill children.

In Fallout 3 you can club in the head of a defenceless animal or murder an unarmed prostitute by beating her to death with a knuckle duster after having slept with her but you can't kill a child when he is about to snitch on you.

Pete

Wingman Dan

2008-12-29T14:57:00.006Z

Dan has now given himself the position of “Pete’s Wingman”. This basically means that he is on a constant search to set me up with a lady friend. He is quickly finding out that this is a thankless and fruitless task (because of my general contempt for the opposite sex and use of terms such as “lady friend”).

Dan’s club strategy is to talk and joke with a female and then pass her off onto me to start loving. This way any awkwardness or rejection is neatly handled by Dan and gives me the opportunity to chastise him for behaving in such a way (to make it look as though I am too cool to be trying desperately to talk to women). There have been many failures with this approach that are largely down to me. However, on engaging a young lady standing close to us wearing an obviously fake fur coat, the failure was all hers.

Dan’s opening joke backfired as follows:
Dan: “I like your coat. What animal is it made from?”
Lady: “It’s fake”.
Dan: “What kind of animal is a Fake?”
Lady: “No, it’s not real”.
Dan: “ Oh right it’s from a zoo then.”
Lady: “No it’s fake”
Dan: “Yeah you said. What kind of a mammal is a Fake?”

At which point she turned around and said to her friend “I think that guy just had a go at me for wearing fur”. I then became extremely protective of my semen. If any were to escape and inseminate her then I would receive an idiot baby.

Pete

How to insult someone safely (the non sequitur insult).

2008-12-19T03:08:00.005Z

When I was 19 I discovered a great way to insult people who have power over you. At the time I worked for the KC Stadium in Hull in the presidential suit (I will let you in on a secret. No president ever visited that suit, only football managers and egotistical sponsors). Every drink I served was on the house and went to major sponsors and mangers/chairpersons of the respective clubs. I think one of the reasons I was given the job of working in that bar was that I was completely ignorant of who these people were (due to my general dislike of most sports) which meant that I never asked for autographs or acted like a cock.

Anyway, of all the people I came into contact with there was one type which was the worst, the sponsors. The reason for this was that they felt the need to exercise as much of their power as possible to highlight their own importance. They would always try to mock bar staff in order to make themselves look like they were in charge and were they big man. Due to the fact that I wore glasses and looked about 12 years of age a common directive I got was “Hey Harry Potter can I have a [shit drink]”. It wasn’t long before I got really fucked off with people abusing me in such an ignorant manner. What was I to do? If I was to say “Hey fuck you cunt!” I would be fired.

My solution was this. Whatever they would mock me with (or order me to do in a cock like fashion) I would come back with something that did not correlate with what they said at all. For example, after serving a couple of drinks I may have been met with something like “I bet you have never kissed a girl”. My response would be as follows “No, not on a Tuesday”. The other two bar staff would laugh to support the non sequitur and the dickhead would be left feeling like he misunderstood an awesome joke, rightly putting him in his idiot place. He could complain to whomever he liked. Repeating what was said wouldn’t place me in the wrong. It would only make him look drunk or like he had misheard.

You don’t need the support of others around you to enforce the non sequitur insult. The fact that you think you have won and laugh at them is enough to totally fuck them off. You can’t beat someone who thinks they have won. Insults require a mutual understanding of the dialogue for there to be a just winner. If you disrupt that and assume you are the winner then you win.

I will note that you need some correlation to the insult to win. If someone says “Mate you look like a dickhead” and you respond with “Yeah but cucumbers are green” you will look like a total douche. A good response in this situation is “Yeah but at least my forehead isn’t 15 inches in circumference [you then laugh at your joke]”.

Here are a list of examples:
Insult
“Why don’t you fuck off”
Response
“I would but I don’t really want to go Costa Rica [laugh at own joke]”.

Insult
“Pete you are a complete turd”
Response
“That’s exactly what your Dad said 4 months ago [laugh at own joke]”.

Insult
“Peter, if you don’t start arriving at work on time we may need to revisit your terms of employment”
Response
“That’s what I said to my gynaecologist [laugh at own joke]”.

Pete

To Hull and Back

2008-11-03T16:04:00.003Z

Here’s another review of our double bill show with the Scarlet Lights in Hull.

Hull’s Edinburgh Heroes: Double Bill

This show contrasted the routinely overstated Scarlet Lights against the routinely understated Ladma; though somehow this worked as evidenced with the show’s finale when all performers shared the stage with a rousing Chicagoesque number.

First up were Ladma, whose calmly confident delivery and squabbling had the majority of the audience in creases. The new Ladma logo and fourth member of the group material sailed very close to the wind though went down well. Ladma routinely addressed pretty much all of the taboos with a set that appealed mostly to the teenagers in the audience, and much less so to those easily offended; the content too strong for one audience member to stomach as they left halfway through.

Despite an array of deranged characters, the live comedy outshone the videos and it is in parodying themselves that could give Ladma future.

Scarlet Light’s Edinburgh show was a no-holds barred story of modern relationships, female insecurity and male indifference. The polished performance was applauded by the many Scarlet Lights fans in the audience and at times shocking for the newcomers to this group.

It seems clear that first and foremost Scarlet Lights are group of actresses, rather than comedians and although their principle characters do play to Hull-lass stereotypes, the energy and timing leads the audience to laugh when they are meant to.

The show’s finale steals the show as we see a new bride self destruct through the medium of a track borrowed from Grease 2 - the perfect closer to compliment the opening orgasmic scene.

In summary, this double bill wasn’t for the fainted hearted, wasn’t ground breaking, but it was pretty darn funny.

Reviewed by Hull Comedy

I’d like to say Hull was the first time someone walked out of our show, but sadly it’s not. A few people did walk out of the show in Edinburgh only to return a couple of minutes later having been to the toilet. Everyone else had the foresight to go to the toilet before the show. Anyway, I later learned that the woman who walked out of the show in Hull was actually a clairvoyant. It makes you wonder why she spent £6 on a ticket when she knew the show was going to be shit? Or maybe she just needed to go to the toilet? Either way she should've seen it coming.

Dan

Having a Hull of a Time

2008-11-01T15:45:00.000Z

We’ve just returned from our second Hull Comedy Festival and, like last year, we thoroughly enjoyed it. Thanks very much to everyone who came to the show and thanks very much to the wonderful Scarlet Lights who we performed with. They did all the leg work up in Hull and without them there wouldn’t have been a show. Big shout out also to festival director John Gilbert who helped organise our show and got us the venue for free.

It was nice to perform Ladma vs The World for the last time. It’s been great fun doing the show in Brighton, Manchester, Edinburgh and Hull but now we’re looking forward to writing new material and developing new projects. I think we’ve performed the show something like 30 times (not to mention the countless rehearsals!) so the material was becoming a bit stale and it was hard to keep the performance fresh. Anyway, we’ll leave the final words on the show to a review from Chortle, the King Dong of comedy websites. We were initially a bit disappointed with the review (particularly the criticism of some of the films) but, considering Steve Bennett sees loads of professional comics, it’s not bad for our first year of performing live. We can also use the quote “inappropriately hilarious”. I think at least half of that is true.

Dan

Show: Hull’s Edinburgh Heroes

Part of the second Hull Comedy Festival, this double bill gave friends and family the chance to see what local performers got up to during the Edinburgh Fringe – and offers the sketch teams themselves at least some exposure outside the festival hothouse.

Ladma are a confident all-male trio, introducing short films they’ve made for the internet with some traditional stage banter; while Scarlet Lights are a loud five-women troupe for whom the adjective ‘brassy’ could almost have been coined.

The gents went first, in matching black shirts and colour-coded ties: Chris, the obligatory team leader imposing his scant authority on his underlings; Dan, the dumb-but-jolly one; and Pete, the cheeky, eager, woefully naïve foil. If you’ve seen Pappy’s Fun Club, there are shades of the same characters here.

Like many such groups, their interaction is inescapably artificial, but it can lead to some good gags, especially when they flirt, faux-innocently, with hideous bad taste. Their opening skit, introducing some hilariously inappropriate new branding, is especially fine. They can’t maintain the quality, but as live performers, they’re likeable lads with some promise.

They are accomplished film-makers, too, and the bulk of their show comprises screenings of their professional-looking output. However, the content is shakier – taking easy, familiar subjects and doing little with them.

A spoof educational film introducing Southerners to their mysterious Northern cousins is clichéd and slow, only really garnering a laugh with a subtly-executed gag about needing translators. It feels like something Harry Enfield would have done a decade ago, only much better.

The mockumentary about internet porn, on the on the other hand, feels like a reject from People Like Us, complete with droll Chris Langham-style commentary. But the subject is too obvious with the supposed jokes coming simply from mentioning X-rated material.

Their Pet Hates short is much better; parodying the genre of ‘taking heads’ list programmes, it allows for a brisk list of observational one-liners which is hit-and-miss, but pacy and with a fair smattering of unexpected laughs.
All the films are well-shot and expertly edited; the Ladmas just need to bring their writing skills up to match their directorial ones.

Scarlet Lights storm on to the stage in an explosion of noise and energy, and don’t let up for an hour, from the opening fake orgasm scene that makes When Harry Met Sally look demure to the gruesome prison musical number at the end.

But a bit of light and shade wouldn’t go amiss: the relentless high volume, aggressive delivery and extravagant overacting does become wearing. To a woman, they all bring a forceful physicality to the stage, which can be impressive, but often it’s papering over some very ordinary writing.

Unlike some all-girl groups, who aim to be deliberately asexual, Scarlet Lights ensure that all their sketches are about being female. The result can be mixed – banging on, even tongue-in-cheek, about their vaginas is as cheap as blokes obsessed with their knobs, but they are also very good at capturing the insecurities and bitchiness some women fall victim to..

Their better sketches step back a bit from the brashness, and nudge towards the realisitic: the drunk girl slagging off her ‘friends’ around the table or the singleton fretting after receiving an unexpected text from an ex. This partisan audience do go for the bigger performances, but the team might be best to remember the adage that sometimes less is more.

Reviewed by Steve Bennett, Chortle

The Ladma Business Plan

2008-10-21T00:34:00.006+01:00

HSBC rang me the other day to enquire if the Ladma business account required more credit. As the unofficial Ladma accountant I am proud to say that we have always been in the black so I refused the offer. Anyway the HSBC representative asked if expanding was in the Ladma business plan. I suddenly realised that we have never officially drawn up a buisiness plan. Making comedy was always a secondary objective when compared to making a lot of money so it's strange that we left this vital step out.

I have never drawn up a business plan before but have tried my best to put on to paper what we all have discussed is the future for Ladma and us as indivuduals working within the business.

Pete

The Toilet Inspector

2008-10-12T02:20:00.000+01:00

My mother’s sister (hereby known as auntie or aunt) had a very important job throughout my youth. She did something that as a child I knew was very important. She was a toilet inspector.

Whenever we were on a family outing, periodically she would see a public toilet block and proclaim that this toilet in particular was a rare one that needed to be inspected immediately. I never actually questioned what exactly she was inspecting or how. As far as I was concerned the camera she took in with her completely validated her status as a toilet inspector. Why else would you take a camera into a toilet with you?

From the ages between 7 and 12 I fully believed that my aunt was a toilet inspector. It is only recently as an adult that I actually worked out the reason for the deception. My aunt had devised a very good solution to a common problem. On family trips it is perfectly acceptable for children to demand that they need to go to the toilet irrespective of when a toilet was last encountered. They need not justify themselves. An adult on the other hand has trouble even admitting in front of children that they need a piss.

My aunt had two choices. She could either stop the car that she was driving and state to all the children present that she needed a “dump” or she could state that she had just spotted a rare toilet that needed inspecting. She chose the most respectful option. An option that most people don’t know they have.

Pete

Popularity

2008-10-04T02:37:00.003+01:00

We keep an eye on our YouTube account to make sure we don't accidentally miss the fact that we are online superstars. One thing we take note of in this endeavour is the popularity of our videos. We have noticed that our most popular videos have one thing in common. It's not the satirical style nor the production value, it's the fact that we have "rape" in the title and tags.

Our film Safe Blokes is a comedic educational guide based on premise that all men appear or are rapists. We have taken clips out of this and put them on YouTube to keep under the 10 minute limit. These are by far our most popular videos but are the least commented or favourited. This leads us to the conclusion that they are many people out there who believe that searching for "rape video" on YouTube will net them something other than a comedy short featuring three white men (and no actual rape). I don't know why someone looking to source a video of an act of rape would choose YouTube over other less regulated areas of the internet but there you go.

With this in mind we have decided to give out Safe Blokes out to schools, not as a comedy but as an actual guide in avoiding thinking about rape.

God bless you all out there.

Love

Peter

Why don’t you go take a running jump?

2008-09-16T18:32:00.007+01:00

It is approaching two years since we made our first video “Sebastien Foucault: The Life of a Freerunner”, the success of which spurred us on to create all our other videos. If you haven’t seen it, it is a short and bafflingly ill-constructed mockumentary on the sport of ‘free-running’ and its creator Sebastien Foucan (changed to “Foucault” to emphasise the faux-philosophical tendencies behind the “sport” which is essentially just running and jumping around everywhere).

Despite being quite technically inept and completely nonsensical, “Seb Fou” (as we have taken to calling it) will always have a special place in our hearts. For better or worse, it has been hawked around the place more than any of our other films and has had the most plays on the internet. We would prefer something like “Look North!” to get the same amount of exposure, but there you go. We have had lots of nice feedback from people on the film, which has been great, but there is one audience who are quite polarised in their opinions of it: Freerunners.

Some freerunners absolutely love it. These articulate, reasonable, handsome people often leave us very nice messages and don’t mind us poking fun. However, mainly the free running community has responded by saying: ‘your all jelous twats’ and ‘watta twat get out and get a life you freaks’. They have even had the temerity to accuse people who like us of being ‘fat people who sit around doing nothing but jacking off to photo's of horses.’ Our negative feedback from freerunners hasn’t been exactly constructive. In fact, it has really only told us two things. These are:

· Freerunners are easily confused, and very easily angered.
· They are fiercely proud and defensive of their “sport”, but have trouble communicating this on account of their borderline literacy skills and inability to proofread.

If any freerunners are reading this, I implore you – please, please do not think we had originally intended to attack what you do in any way. That being said, judging from your messages, most of you do thoroughly deserve an attack of some kind. You could also do with a proofreader, a GCSE in English and less free time.

From ‘stop being a little bitch’ to ‘I hope you die...’ to ‘gay gay gay’, most of the advice was just expressing heartfelt anger at the film. Some however, were of a violent or threatening nature. ‘Gays’ or ‘bitches’ we might be, but we certainly don’t deserve to be physically beaten. What if one were to find me and go through with his wish to: “fuck u up like littal pussies yu r”? Never mind that he used two different spellings of the word ‘you’ in the same sentence, he’s angry. Even verbal abuse would be enough. I keep thinking any minute now a freerunner is going to leap from a tree branch into an upstairs window, vault over a couple chairs, roll into the hallway, slide down the banister and run out the front door shouting: “you disgrace this sport this is the best sport ever how do you dare to call that freerunning you asshole...DON’T FUCK WHT THIS SPORT!!!” As he ran down the street (probably shouting that last part) I would probably be shaking my head and thinking something like: what have I done?

My favourite ‘violent’ threat is one that stops just short of describing what he will actually do by using an ellipsis:

u r asholes sebastien is my favourite freeruner u r gelous beatches do not take the piss out of him again because i will......dont fuck with us

Sorry, you’ll what? Well obviously I’ll....erm....I’ll...look, just don’t fuck with us, okay?
So much more articulate (and fond of emoticons) are the ones that like us. These cheerful and erudite runners expressed their admiration the proper way, with a colon and a ‘D’:

lol im a freerunner but i still find this realy funny :D
he said: "Dimitri, never give your cat chocolate, it make him very sick".
omg hilarious ;D
Funniest shit on youtube! :D

There was also one comment which was quite neutral but did give some constructive feedback:

its some kinda funny but sebastien isn’t white

Thanks for that. We’ll make a note of it for next time.
Chris

So, how was Edinburgh? I want to know ALL the details...

2008-09-03T20:56:00.002+01:00

Of course you don’t - you want a brief summary before you lose interest and navigate away. It’s alright, I’m not offended. Well we’re back from Edinburgh and, as some people may have noticed, we failed in our efforts to bring you a blog entry every day. After we realised we had an awesome show, the success went to our heads. We were suddenly far too busy rocking out and doin’ hot babes to care about writing the blog anymore*. We didn’t keep that promise. And so our blog, like some online, text-based Maddy, was unthinkingly neglected whilst we enjoyed our holiday.

Luckily for us though, it is still here and it’s simply desperate to have more entries put in it. I would like, in this one, to mention our review from Three Weeks and reprint it. We were very happy indeed to get a lovely 4 stars from them. In fact, we were so happy that we just wanted to shout it from the mountaintops! We then realised, though, that this would be an inefficient and impractical way of informing people and that a blog posting containing the review would be more appropriate. Here it is:

Ladma Vs. The World
Ladma
Get rid of that archaic 'it's free so don't expect much' attitude; this is gold, and it's lying about in a stuffy little room above a pub on the Grassmarket. This show features films (not your standard grainy shot-from-a-mobile YouTube variety, but skilfully produced television-worthy ones) and sketches with a bit of banter. I'm not one for hysterics, but the film about pet hates had me in fits, and my only criticism is that people were laughing so hard they blotted out some of the jokes. A Southerner's take on 'the North' produced some priceless mockumentary genius, while the live element of the show, featuring a scarily believable life coach sketch amongst others, is well executed. Highly recommended free comedy.
Beehive Inn, 2 - 23 Aug, 18.30pm (19.30pm), free non-ticketed, fpp 69
tw rating: 4/5

Chris
*Actually we were eating soup, playing Grand Theft Auto 2 and watching Terminator 2 but it’s basically the same.

Minute man

2008-09-02T22:47:00.003+01:00

I recently phoned up Virgin as our Internet was down and we wanted to play World of Warcraft. I hate talking to tech support as they treat you like an idiot. I understand their problem, most of the people they will be advising won’t have a clue what they are doing. My ‘advisor’ was particularly disdainful.

After I had explained the Internet was down but he still spent 10 minutes making me unplug the router and modem and conect it all back up again. He forced me on both occasions to wait a full minute when it was unplugged. What are you supposed to do when you are waiting on the phone for a full minute with a stranger? The first ten seconds was the worst. I quickly generated some stock small talk to fill the void.

“It’s been really bad weather this summer hasn’t...” No he is in India he won’t know what the weather has been like here.

“So what’s it like being from Ind...” Actually he might be in another Asian county. I don’t want to be racist.

“I actually work in IT so I know it is your line which is at fault not my internal netwo...” No, I will sound like a cock, even though I am totally right.

“So what’s it like being brow...” That’s just racist. Why did I even think that?

In the end I just kept silent until he told me to turn it on again. When all that failed he finally looked at the local exchange and told me their network was down.

Pete

Pete's got M.E.

2008-09-02T22:42:00.003+01:00

It’s out. Everyone now knows I've got ME. People started picking up on it a few weeks ago. I would get to work and have no energy all day. I was constantly tired and lethargic. I couldn't concentrate on my job or Ladma for more than about half an hour which has lead both to suffer.

I got ME about 2 months ago. I must say it is life changing. It first came out on the Xbox 360 in November and I heard it was good but when it came out on the PC I thought I would give it ago. I usually hate console ports and this looked bad as it is a third person shooter. It is the best game I have ever played. It is well written and has the perfect blend of action and storytelling. I play it until around 4am every night before work. Not even the World of Warcraft gets that attention. Having ME has never been better.

Pete

PS We were supposed to update the blog everyday we were in Edinburgh. We managed a pitiful 5 out of 24. Sorry.

Edinburgh Day #5 - Ladma’s best and worst fan

2008-08-05T23:52:00.001+01:00

One problem with doing a free comedy slot at a pub is that you inevitably get inebriated audience members. This can either be a good or a bad thing. Some drunk people will laugh at anything, some fall asleep or mock you. Today it was all. The audience member in question was a middle aged Scotswoman from Loch Loman. All throughout the show she provided hearty and regular laughs even to events that were mundane, such as picking up a hat.

However, there is a small amount of audience participation in the show where all that is required is gleaning the person’s name. The woman in question was asleep when first asked. She then said her name was Michael and then gave a response that word for word was Dan’s punch line. This didn’t faze Dan as he had a backup punch line. That bit of interaction finishes with Dan handing the audience member his half drunken bottle of Volvic. When the bottle was returned it was empty. She ended up donating ten pounds. Not bad for half a bottle of Volvic.

Pete

Edinburgh Day #4 - Easy Money

2008-08-04T13:58:00.002+01:00

Today I received the following email from Mr Raha Ali Musa. It was marked urgent:

Greetings to you, I am Mr.Raha.Ali.Musa. the Account Manager of Late Mr.Morris Thompson in here in Burkina Faso. Recently I discovered a Dormant Account with a huge amount of Money Valued USD14,000,000.00 (Fourteen Million Dollars only) that belongs to one of our late Customer who died in a plane crash.

During our investigation and auditing in this bank, my department came across a very huge sum of money belonging to Late Mr. Morris Thompson an American great industrialist and a resident of Alaska, who unfortunately lost his life in the plane crash of Alaska Airlines Flight 261 which crashed on January 31 2000,including his wife and only daughter. The fund has been dormant in his account With this Bank without any claim of the funds in our custody either from his family or relation before our discovery of this development.

The Banking law here stipulates that if such money remains unclaimed for Ten years, it will be forfeited to the Bank treasury as an unclaimed bill.It is only a foreigner that can stand as a next of kin and It is upon this discovery that I decided to contact you to collaborate with you to pull out this dormant fund.

In order to avert this negative development, I on behalf of my trusted colleagues now seek your permission to have you stand in as next of kin to Our late Customer so that the fund will be released and paid into your account as the beneficiary´s next of kin now that the bank is still expecting a next of kin or relative of the deceased ,Late Mr. Morris Thompson.

In fact we could have done this deal alone but because of our position in this country as civil servants, we are not allowed to operate a foreign account and that would eventually raise an eye brow on our side during the time of transfer since I still work in this bank, this is the actual reason why I required a second party or fellow who will assist me forward claims as the next of kin and also provide either an existing bank account or to set up a new Bank a/c immediately to receive this fund, even an empty a/c can also serve for this purpose.

On smooth conclusion of this transaction, you will be entitled to 40% as gratification for your assisting me, and the remaining 60% will be for me.

What I want from you is for you to act as the deceased next of kin. I have in my possession, all the necessary informations to successfully accomplish this operation. Bear in mind that this proposal is 100% risk free.Further Information will be given to you as soon as I receive your positive response. I suggest you get back to me as soon as possible stating your interest to enable us proceed.I await your Urgent Response.

I replied with the following email:

Dear Mr Raha Ali Musa,

Thank you very much for getting in touch and furnishing me with the information regarding the unfortunate demise of Mr Morris Thompson. But I have some information for you. Mr Morris Thompson (the great industrialist and resident of Alaska) was actually a distant cousin of mine and, as a result, I am his next of kin and am entitled to 100% of his wealth! Indeed, I was wondering why I hadn't seen him since 30th January 2000 - we'd just spent a family Christmas together in Skegness. Do you know Skegness, Mr Musa? It is very nice, you should definitely check it out next time you're over. Anyway, shut up about Skegness, it's beside the point. I am eternally grateful for you bringing this (horrific) event to my attention and I am willing to offer you a deal. I am proposing that I receive 60% of the money and you receive 40% as a gratification for helping me. How does this suit you, boy? Further information will be given to you as soon as I receive your positive response. I suggest you get back to me as soon as possible stating your interest to enable us to proceed. Details of your bank account would also be useful. Please bear in mind that this proposal is 100% risk free.

Yours,
Dan Smith (formerly Thompson, on my mother’s side)

I await his (urgent) response.

Dan

Edinburgh Day #3 - Toilet Troubles

2008-08-03T14:11:00.004+01:00

We have now entered the third day in our Edinburgh flat. You probably know that already if you’ve read the title, which you have, so sorry about that. The flat on the whole is very nice. The only downside is the bathroom. The shower is less effective than pissing on yourself, the lock doesn’t work and the light is operated from outside. This means that a common occurrence when wanting the toilet is to walk up to the bathroom door, switch the light switch and open the door to find someone on the toilet in the dark.

Pete

Edinburgh Day #2 - Ladma's Drink Problem

2008-08-02T22:26:00.003+01:00

There are a number of props which we use in our act – including a bottle of Volvic, a juicebox, a copy of the Guardian and a can of Special Brew – which we couldn’t see the point carting up from Brighton and thus decided to buy them in Edinburgh. We didn’t think sourcing any of these products would be a problem. Particularly the can of Special Brew.

Anyway, for some stupid reason we’d left acquiring these props until the day of our opening show. The first three proved relatively easy but the Special Brew proved a stubborn mistress to conquer. Everywhere we tried refused us service – Sainsbury’s, Tescos, Scot Mid, Costcutters. Each one of us tried and each one of us failed. No I.D so no sale. But we’re 23-24 years old! So what if none of us have a driving license or had brought our passport, does that mean we’re not real people who should be able to enjoy a nice can of Special Brew like everyone else? Clearly it does.

As the time of our show approached we became increasingly worried. What if the Special Brew joke was the only good one in the show? What if the whole show fell flat because of its absence? In the end we decided to approach one of the many tramps festooned across the Edinburgh landscape. We explained our predicament to a young tramp with matted hair swept across his face and asked if we could buy his can of Special Brew for £5? After intially refusing us sale because of our lack of I.D, he eventually backed-down.

“Aye, sure,” he said before downing the rest of the can and handing it over. We thanked him and beat a hasty retreat to our venue.

As for the show, we were happy with our opening night. We got 8 people in which wasn’t bad and everyone seemed to enjoy it. Someone even donated a ten pound note! Although it was a Scottish note so it doesn’t really count. We got laughs consistently – despite the small turnout – and all the rewrites worked well. We did make a few mistakes and missed a few lines but, overall, we’re pretty happy with the first day. We’ve always known numbers were going to be the biggest problem so hopefully, if we keep up the flyering and the P.R, we’ll be able to build up a bit of momentum. We’ll just have to wait and see how the audience figures look mid-week.

Dan

Edinburgh Day #1 – Ladma make a new friend

2008-08-01T18:25:00.002+01:00

Today I was flyering our show for the first time and discovered, to some confusion, that I didn’t know as much about comedy as I thought I did. I don’t pretend to know very much mind you, having only been doing it for a couple of years. Still, you’re learning all the time and today was no exception.

The revelation itself came from an elderly lady who seemed to be in a spot of bother, shaking her head and muttering about something. I tend to be very reluctant to talk to people I don’t know, a barrier which she quickly overcame by suddenly launching into a fierce monologue about banks and everything bad about them.

“Do you know…” she spat, “I’ve been going to that same bank for a hundred years and they still ask me for ID? I mean, really! So of course I had to go all the way back and blah blah blah and they wouldn’t accept that so blah blah blah…”

As it happened, we shared a mutual hatred of banks and so I started to agree with everything she was saying. Until the conversion took a slightly odd turn.

“I hear some of them aren’t even based in the UK anymore. A lot of them have their headquarters in all sorts of places. Is it Barclays? – I think it’s Barclays – actually have their headquarters in Spain!” She thought for a moment and then cautiously intoned: “And you’ve got to be very careful about something like that.”

I had meant to suggest that I was simply uncomfortable with the general level of incompetence in high street banking staff, but now I found myself apparently teetering on the brink of a big racist whirlpool. If this woman had such negative feelings about the Spanish it was probably best not to bring up anything that might cause her to use the word ‘coloureds’. I decided to take a different tack and tell her about a positive experience that I had when banking, which was when I had to go in to do my bit in setting up a business account for Ladma. You see, when you have a personal bank account you are, in your bank's eyes, a kind of money generating livestock. You are part of the seething mass of plankton that feeds the banking whale, and you have no individual rights or identity. If you have a business account on the other hand, they greet you as if their whole lives had been completely pointless up until the time they finally got to meet you. The manager (who deals with the business accounts) would probably even give you a blowjob if you asked, although I haven’t tested this.

She then wanted to know of course, what my business was. I said that Ladma is a comedy group that I am part of and held up one of the flyers to show her. Before I continue I should add that we don’t really make money from what we do, we once won a competition for which we got some money and so we had to have somewhere to put it. Anyway, when I said that I was in a comedy group, her face suddenly lit up.

“Oh how exciting!” she cooed. As it turns out, she had spent her life in theatre as a singer and actress and all kinds of things, probably calling everyone ‘darling’, singing all the time, criticising other people and doing all the other things that hardcore thespians do. She also seemed to have quite strong views about comedy that were heartfelt, if not a little out-of-touch.

“I don’t care for a lot of these young comedians these days,” she said solemnly.

“There is a lot of rubbish out there,” I replied.

“I just can’t stand some of them. What do you think of that Stephen Fry?”

Judging from her face, she didn’t much care for Stephen Fry in particular. I gave a very neutral, noncommittal response to this and the conversation moved on. I actually quite like Stephen Fry, but I wasn’t about to cause a rift between us, particularly when we were otherwise getting on so well. She began to ask what sort of thing we did in our group and I said sketch comedy. I wanted to give her a point of reference that would be familiar, so I said “a bit like Monty Python”. She acknowledged this without approval, presumably because they also ranked among those other youngsters who had ruined comedy. She went on to enquire what else we did, so I said we did some music as well and I was responsible for that. She liked the sound of that very much.

“Oh how wonderful!” she beamed. “I expect you wear white face paint don’t you?”

She expected wrong. I replied in the negative.

“Ah…” she said, shaking her head. “Lazy!”

In our defence, we had no idea that we were supposed to wear white face paint. I can only say that we haven’t been doing this very long and we’re still complete amateurs in many respects. But are we also lazy?

"Yeah, we are a bit," I replied.

Chris

Suspicious Minds

2008-07-23T14:55:00.003+01:00

Today I was nearly kidnapped. For reasons I won’t go into, I had been shunted from Hove to Brighton and back to Hove by Brighton & Hove City Council. Having walked miles and miles in the blistering heat I was sent to an office in Kemp Town (just outside Brighton) only to find, again, that I’d been sent to the wrong place. I should, in fact, have been at Brighton City Hall. Now, without being rude, I explained to the man in the Kemp Town Office that I’d been sent to numerous incorrect offices and thought the council service was poor (bear in mind I’ve actually worked for the council for over a year and know how shit they are). Just as I was leaving to return to Brighton City Hall a man who had overheard me interrupted.

“I can give you a lift, if you want?” he said.

I was hot and annoyed so didn’t really think about what I was saying so I just thanked the man and accepted the offer.

“I’ll only be a couple of minutes,” the man continued, “I’ve just got some business to finalise”.

So I sat next to the man in the waiting area and we began chatting. He was a tall, broadly built man – much bigger than myself – who spoke in a deep booming voice. He began telling me how he’d been evicted from his council house without notice and that council workmen had smashed up furniture which he had bought.

“But I filmed it all. I filmed ‘em doing it. Got the date and time on it and everything. And I’ve still got the receipts for the furniture. There’s nowt they can do.”

Suddenly I started thinking. Why had I accepted the invitation to get in a car with a complete stranger?! Not only a complete stranger, but someone who was much bigger than me and enjoyed filming things being smashed up. How foolish I had been! Never trust people, Dan. That’s the first rule of civilised society. Keep yourself to yourself. Keep your head down and try not to attract attention. But what had I done? I’d done the exact opposite. Firstly, I’d been overheard by a stranger. Then I’d spoken to a stranger. And very soon I was about to get into their car and be driven to Godknowswhere. If I wasn’t careful, this stranger was dangerously close to becoming an acquaintance. I had even sat down next to him – there was no getting away now. And then I started to panick. What if the guy’s a complete nutter? What if he kidnaps me and takes me to a secluded old warehouse and abuses me? He might cut me up into little bits and send them to my parents. But what could I do? What’s worse than being kidnapped, tortured and murdered? Well, being rude. I couldn’t just come out and say to this person “oh sorry, I don’t want a lift actually because I’m scared of you”. I didn’t want to hurt his feelings. There was, after all, a small chance that he was perfectly normal.

In the end, I opted for the safe option.

“Are you waiting to see someone?”

Brilliant, I thought. He’ll say that he’s waiting for someone then I’ll be able to say I’m in a rush a beat a hasty retreat.

“Yeah, but to be honest I don’t need to I’ve got the footage”

Shit, I thought. He turned to the receptionist.

“Tell Mr Robinson I don’t need to see him. He’ll be hearing from my solicitor.”

And with that, the tall stranger stood up and left the office. I followed him out into the hot afternoon sun and approached the car. I had to be on my best behaviour now. Don’t antagonise him, Dan. Just agree with what he says.

“Sorry, it’s a bit messy in here,” he said as I slipped into the passenger seat. I laughed. Loud. Too loud really. Could he tell I was scared? But what does a psychopath care if you’re scared? They probably like that. The problem would be if he’s a borderline psycho and all he needs is some terrified person in his passenger seat to push him over the edge. I had to act. Quickly, make a friendly remark, I thought.

“Haha, don’t worry about the mess – you should she my bedroom!” Why did I say that? What a stupid thing to do. Not only had I got into his car but I’d invited him back to my place!

He laughed and pulled out of the carpark.

“Where do you want to be? I’ll just drop you by the Pier shall I?” he said. Very clever. That’s right, lull me into a false sense of security before you butcher me. I clung onto my seat belt and began wondering how I could break free of this metallic fortress. Foot through the windscreen? Elbow through the window? He might smother me too quickly.

We drove slowly along the front, passing a pub.

“Ah, The Legend. Great pub! You ever been there?” he said.

“No,” I replied.

“Used to spend a lot of time in there when I was younger.” Damn, I thought. Bring in some witty banter, Dan. Break the atmosphere of fear.

“Haha, propping up the bar, I guess?”

“Yeah, shouldn’t really talk about it though, I used to have a bit of a drink problem. Well, not a bit, it was quite serious really.”

No! I was stuck in a car with an alcoholic nutter who was going to rip off my balls and feed them back to me. What a way to go! All I’d wanted to do was pay my council tax! Just as I was about to barge open the door and roll into the road, the stranger pulled the car into the verge and popped the doors.

“Here OK for you?”

“Yes, great ,“ I said, “thanks very much for the lift. Bye”.

He drove off and I wandered up to the City Hall. I felt ashamed. Why had I been so suspicious? Why had I thought the worse of someone? And why can’t people do a nice deed without being accused of being a psychopathic murderer?

Dan

Our first stalker

2008-07-22T16:52:00.007+01:00

If you're anything like me you'll spend most of your time searching your name on Google. Well, I was Googling Ladma this morning when I came across our Comedy Blaze account. Imagine my delight when I discover that our film, Look North, was on the Comedy Blaze homepage as one of the top four rated films. Right up there with Ben Stiller of all people!I checked the Ladma Channel on Comedy Blaze and saw all our details - along with accompanying picture and blurb. All our other films were also up there. Yet, for the life of me, I couldn't remember signing up to the site. I tried our username with all our usual passwords. I couldn't get in. I tried requesting the password to all our usual emails. I couldn't get in. So I emailed Comedy Blaze saying that we couldn't access our account and could they tell us which email we signed up with? But they didn't reply.

Suddenly it dawned on me, I had never even signed up to Comedy Blaze. A quick cross-reference later, and neither had Pete or Chris. So who the hell has signed us up to Comedy Blaze? And who wasted their time entering all our details? Could it be that we have a fan that is so obsessed with Ladma that they go around creating profiles for us on comedy websites and uploading our films? A fan, not just of Ladma, but of all the laborious administration which is required to forge an internet presence. Yet, like with all stalkers, there is a downside. Along with five genuine Ladma videos on Comedy Blaze, there is one which has absolutely nothing to do with us. The video in question is entitled 'Arab Lebanese Wog Sex Hotline Ahmad Sabra by SKIITZAPHERENIKZ Ahmad Sabra' and features a half-naked Asian man eating an apple. We would like to categorically state that this video has nothing to do with Ladma and its appearance on the Ladma Comedy Blaze Channel is completely unauthorised. Indeed, as far as we can tell, the Ladma Channel itself is completely unauthorised.
As you can imagine, this is a very alarming concern. Either someone has created a profile on our behalf or stolen our log-in details (but we still can’t remember making an account). I feel like a white middle-class lawyer who's had their identity stolen by a bin thief. But instead of spending all my money on themselves they've put down a deposit on a really nice house - the only drawback being they've decorated the house with Nazi memorabilia and insist on lynching black people in my back garden. If anyone’s got any ideas, please let us know. We appreciate the plays and being featured on the main page, but this racist video just isn’t cricket.

Dan

A case for the Grammar Police...

2008-07-08T12:05:00.003+01:00

Dan

Nazis in Training/Recycled Material

2008-07-08T11:56:00.005+01:00

Last weekend I went to Glastonbury. For some reason it reminded me of World War Two. Maybe it was the endless queues for banks echoing the super-inflation of the Weimar Republic. Maybe it was the segregated waiting area at the train station or the uniformed officials ushering us along walkways. Maybe it was the endless fields of mud and the scorched earth of the last day as the revellers retreated. Or maybe it was the specially timetabled trains which took us to a walled site in the middle of nowhere. Who knows?

Despite the World War Two parallels, it was a great festival and I fulfilled a lifelong ambition to see Kevin Eldon live (as the poet Paul Hamilton). I was, along with my girlfriend and Dad, part of the site-wide crew (the recycling crew to be precise). And, as a party cadre, we enjoyed the benefits of two meals a day, a private campsite, backstage access and a free ticket. In return all we had to do was a daily 6hr shift of back-breaking labour starting at 6am (I know what you’re thinking, forced labour camps...). During our litter picking duties we found a total of £24.65 (consisting of a £20 note, two £2 coins, two 20p coins, one 10p coin and three 5p coins). Considering the three of us did 24hrs work in total, we made approximately 35p each per hour. That means scavenging a field at Glastonbury Festival is more economically rewarding than playing online poker (Pete and I make around 3p a day if we’re lucky) or working in a sweat-shop in Indonesia. I know which one I’d choose. Pass me that Nike trainer…

Dan

PS: I only wrote this blog so I could use the pun 'Nazis in Training'.

Trapped

2008-06-24T22:35:00.004+01:00

An aspect of animal life that doesn’t relate to human life in any regard is the fear of death through being trapped. When I was child I opened a black plastic bin at the bottom of the garden to find three frogs in various stages of starvation next to a sludge of dead frogs and frog skeletons. The horror they had endured was largely due to their own stupidity. There is one basic rule that they could have followed to have avoided death. Namely, don’t go anywhere you can’t get out of. Now unfortunately today due to a lapse of concentration I had neglected this very basic rule to embarrassing consequences.

I had worked late for reasons that are too boring to go into, meaning that no one was left in the office when I left. Now I work in an old building that is just about big enough to get lost in if you don’t know what you are doing. I usually leave via the front entrance through a set of double doors. The inner door is always open due to a broken buzzer system that is activated by the receptionist to let you in. Today it was fixed. On passing through the door on my way home I noticed that the heavy outer door had been locked with a key I didn’t have. At the exact time I spotted this I head the click of the door behind me. On pressing the now working door buzzer I saw the light activate by the now empty receptionist’s chair. Fair play the electrician had done his job. The system now worked perfectly.

I found myself in a situation that wasn’t dangerous; the worst that would happen is that I would be trapped for about 13 hours. Is that enough justification to pick up the small table that resides in that space and smash my way through the shatter proof glass (you know the stuff with the little wire squares in it) to freedom leaving the office reception in disarray? No it isn’t. This meant that the only option left was the more embarrassing one of calling for help. Cries for help when danger is involved is perfectly acceptable. When you have trapped yourself in a 4 foot glass room it is embarrassing. I decided quite quickly that shouting “help!” was not an option as it sounded too alarmist. I would have rather stayed in there all night have been caught shouting that. The cry I went with was “hello!” and occasionally “is there anyone there?!”. Far more dignified I think you will agree.

I was in there about ten minutes when I realised that I could not be heard. One option was to stick my fingers through the letter box and cry for help at passersby on the street outside in the hope that they would come to my aid. I don’t know what they would do exactly, probably phone someone. Phone someone? I have a phone! I then rang a colleague who later said that when I spoke to her I sounded “really scared”. She then got someone who was still in the building to let me out. Pete Allen will live to fight another day.

If only those frogs at the bottom of the bin had used mobiles to phone me to let them out of the bottom of the bin then they would have avoided the horrors of starvation and death. I was lucky in the fact that I didn’t have to endure the decomposing bodies of workmates who had been trapped previously. Unlike the frogs however I probably wouldn’t have tried to have sex with them.

Pete

Putting my foot in it

2008-06-11T00:57:00.008+01:00

I’ve just kicked a hedgehog. Not on purpose, I’m not a hoodlum, but by accident. I was running out my house to put the bin out but just as I strode out the door a hedgehog ran out in front of me. It was too quick and too dark for me to notice before my foot smashed into my spikey little friend. As my foot began to bleed (that’s right, I didn’t have any socks or shoes on, who are you feeling sorry for now?) the hedgehog rolled down the garden path and rolled into a ball (see below). I watched over him for a while (from the kitchen window so as to not disturb him) as I was worried that he might be seriously injured. After lying still for a couple of minutes, it washed its little face and scuttled off into the night.

I wonder how many other people in the world have accidentally kicked a hedgehog with their naked foot whilst putting their bins out? Not many I’d vouch. Not many.

Dan

You know you've made it when...

2008-06-10T20:30:00.004+01:00

It doesn't get much better than that (although admittedly our ranking is solely down to us having a video called 'Men, Women, Rape and Sex')

Dan

Bill Gates loves Linkin Park

2008-06-07T16:21:00.006+01:00

While I was writing the last post I had Windows Media Player randomly playing the 1389 mp3s I have in My Music folder. Now I will admit I have one Linkin Park album in there for reasons I can't remember. Even though it is set to random, Windows Media player decides to play Linkin Park at least every other song. The only conclusion I can come to is that Bill Gates is a massive Linkin Park fan and has programmed it to play them any time it is set to random. I don't even like Linkin Park. Fuck you Bill Gates.

Pete

A comedy of errors

2008-06-07T14:28:00.005+01:00

When we started gigging we expected that our first show would be the worst. We assumed that once we got underway we would iron out the kinks, end up word perfect and the show would be better for it. Somehow the opposite has been true. The more we do it the less we seem to know. Wednesday’s gig in Manchester was proof of this being technically the worst but somehow more fun than the rest.

The only words that I need to get right are my opening lines. They are also the words I have spoken the most as they open the whole show. Of course on the night I just said something completely different which messed Dan’s actions which relied on them. The sound also didn’t work which meant that Chris had to sort it out mid show. It’s alright though because I managed to cover for him by dancing for the audience while he was gone. We are lucky to have my dancing skills in the group otherwise I don’t know where we would be.

In our defence we had never seen the venue of the set up and had virtually no time to set up the props and sound. The atmosphere was so warm however, that we could just relax and mess around a bit more than we were used to. In past gigs if the sound had failed I would have dealt with it swiftly by running off the stage crying.

We also did a few things that we had done in rehearsals but didn’t have the balls to do on-stage which was nice. Ironically one of these was me hitting Dan and Chris in the balls as I ran past. Actually we had never really rehearsed that. All of which proves that planning and preparation get you nowhere. Next year we won’t bother writing a show. We will just turn up, fuck around for an hour and end on us all kicking each other up the arse.

Pete

Brighton Fringe: From Washout to Sell-out

2008-05-28T15:08:00.002+01:00

A week is a long time in politics. It’s even longer if you’re a Daddy Long Legs and your average lifespan is 24hrs. But in comedy, a week can be a roller coaster.

After months of writing, re-writing, cutting things out, rehearsing, putting things back in, publicising, fliering, hoping and shitting, all our hard work comes down to two gigs in one fine week in the middle of Brighton Fringe Festival. One fine week prefixed by Chris losing his voice, Pete’s inexplicable nose-bleeds and my unfortunate rash. From our point of view, the first gig was a bit of a washout. Despite hours of fliering and my ridiculous headgear we only got 13 people through the door. And most of those were people we knew. We were initially taken aback by the turnout (and I think this was reflected in our energy at the start of the show) but the material was well received, we got consistent laughter, and the delivery and performance was good. We were just pissed off that no-one was there to see it, although with the show being at 22:00 on a Tuesday we were always going to struggle for numbers (despite being comedy pick of the day in the local newspaper and the fringe email!).

The second show couldn’t have been more different to the first. Demoralised by the first show, we threw caution to the wind and gave up on fliering and rehearsing. Instead we hired our resident heavy, Jon, to force people to come and utilised the power of Facebook to network our way to success. It worked. The second show was a sell-out. More chairs had to be brought into the theatre and the show had to start late as a result. The energy levels were good all the way through, the material consistently went down well and it was much more enjoyable than the first gig. Because of the first gig we went into the second a bit more relaxed and confident which allowed us to play around with the material a bit more and ad-lib some extra material. As the gig went on, however, I think we became a little bit more self-conscious and because of this (and lighting and sound issues) we missed out a couple of sections and lines. This was really annoying as we reference them later in the show and some good material was lost.

Overall, the festival was a great experience. I think our performance was more solid in the first gig – we performed the material well and without (much) mistake but the second gig was much more enjoyable and allowed us to gauge the quality of the material more effectively. The bigger audience also allowed us to establish a better rapport and atmosphere – because of the small audience at the first gig this was very difficult. Most of all, we’ve got a better idea of what works and what doesn’t in the show. We’re playing around with the material a lot more now which means we’re writing new bits and improving sections. The familiarity also means the performance is getting better. But there’s still a long way to go before Edinburgh. The show will be further road tested in Manchester, London and Brighton before then. It’ll be polished, refined and tweaked but rest assured we’ll return infantile, silly and slightly obscene.

Dan

Anonymous Email

2008-05-18T22:10:00.005+01:00

Today we received this anonymous email. It amused us. We thought it might amuse you too:

I was appalled when I accidentally logged on to your website

Those two young men in the bath were obviously severely mentally impaired and to film them during their ablutions was little short of abuse! Does their mother know? She must be a caring mum having taught the boys the intricacies of parts washing in such detail but I am damn sure it wasn't her on the other end of the camera!

Do your films have to be so nauseatingly realistic?

I would love to see a film about a kitten or better still, two kittens frolicking gayly with a ball of wool or a cardboard box. By 'frolicking gayly' I do not mean in the sense of feline homosexuality. In any event, pre-pubescent cats would have little or no notion of that sort of thing. I should not have to explain myself, however, given the sort of material Lamda goes in for, maybe I do have to explain myself. So, just kittens alright, gender is unimportant, wool or cardboard box also unimportant although I tend to lean toward wool as they may get frightened in a box (though no doubt you would think that funny).

And another thing............

Dan's a Head Case

2008-05-11T14:02:00.004+01:00

We’ve recently been flyering for our Brighton Fringe show. Due to the greed of Brighton & Hove City Council it’s now compulsory to buy a pass to flyer. This means that all the small productions (like ourselves) can’t afford to buy a pass because we’ve already forked out on venue hire, fringe registration, entry into the brochure, costumes, posters and fliers. Conversely, all the big productions and commercial outlets can afford to buy passes. The whole point of the pass system is to reduce litter but, when the biggest culprits have always been big productions and commercial outlets and these can continue to flyer at their will, how the fuck is that fair? It creates a two-tier system. The big shows will get bigger because they can publicise more and the small shows will get swallowed up. It undermines the whole definition of an ‘arts’ and a ‘fringe’ festival.

Anyway, there is a small window of opportunity to flyer for free. This opportunity falls during Fringe City on each Saturday during the festival. With three Saturdays and 2, 500 flyers that’s 833.33333333333333 flyers per day! However, due to the restrictions, every other show in the world is out flyering. Therefore, we needed something different to distinguish us from the crowd. We needed something unique yet attractive. We needed something distinct yet inviting. In short, we needed something that makes me look like a bell-end. And so we came up with this:
I originally had the idea when I was pretending to be a beekeeper by putting my washing basket on my head. The idea soon evolved from a beekeeping costume into a PR machine. It has garnered much interest in our show and one person even called me ‘block head’. I’m not sure if that’s bullying or not. The only drawback to my magnificent headdress (apart from being precarious during even slight winds) is the craterous indentations it leaves on my forehead. This can be painful and has caused my forehead to start peeling. But the positives outweigh the negatives. For anyone interested, I will be holding workshops throughout the 2009 Fringe on how to make these head cases.

Dan

Jackwert in progress: 50 Curly Wurlys eaten, scenes filmed.

2008-04-26T22:55:00.002+01:00

A few weekends ago we filmed “Jackwert” a little epic at just over 20-25 minutes, divided into three episodes. We managed to film over 7 hours of footage, containing some 50 scenes. Of course, back in the day (i.e. last year) we would need 7 hours of tape to make something five minutes long. We’re much more efficient now, mainly because we press the stop button whenever we’re dicking around - thus saving hours of recording time. Shot entirely in one flat and on a shoestring budget, it is currently being edited into a fully-fledged film. What I want to do is tell you some stuff about the making of the film, so that when it comes out you will either a) Forgive us for the quality of the finished product OR b) Be even more amazed by the quality of the finished product. Preferably b).

As usual, our usual share of troubles was dished up sloppily on to the Ladma plate. A shortage of crew, and the presence of a highly contagious (and debilitating) disease meant that filming was harder than usual. The disease was kept at bay by various pills, sniffing fumes from albas oil and guzzling lemsip. We managed to keep it from harming our acting (which, let’s face it, needs all the help it can get). However, despite our best efforts with these medicines, we soon found that we were in the midst of a most pernicious and destructive epidemic. Pete reached “Phase 3” of the disease right during the busiest period of our schedule, but acted so hard that he managed to break through its negative effects. Community life in the flat is close knit and people move around a lot - soon I too began to develop some of the symptoms, such as sneezing. Some several days later I succumbed fully to the illness, but during the filming I was actually alright. We had sound problems too - people kept doing things like mowing their lawn, shouting, setting off alarms and flying planes. I certainly found out that the people of Hangleton, Hove can be a noisy bunch when they want to.

We also endured plenty of other hardships, as is quite typical for filming time. Pete and Dan almost invariably end up with the short straw during films – their roles require them to do things like almost drown in the sea in November, be naked, almost get set on fire, get doused in milk, wear a woman’s dress, eat cold chips and so on. I, on the other hand, mostly get to do the more cushy options like voice-overs. This time both Pete and Dan had to be naked at times, and Dan had to sip cold tea filled with salt (because we had no sugar to use as a prop). Even I wasn’t spared this time, having to eat a bowl of cereal with SKIMMED milk because we had no semi-skimmed.

The budget ran into the tens of pounds. The list of props purchased were: 50 Curly Wurlys (now all eaten), copies of Tomb Raider & Tomb Raider III, a pair of knickers, a key ring, some basic hair products, assorted charity shop costumes, a bunch of men’s and women’s magazines, 12 scratch cards (pilfered from other magazines), and 12 ‘Munch Bunch’ yoghurts.

Because of our current workload, we intend to balance work on the film with preparations for our live show, “Ladma vs. The World”. We have nurtured both projects from tiny idea eggs, then to little half-written hatchlings, and finally to the early stages of comic fruition. Soon, both of them will be big and strong enough to be set loose, so that they can make their own way in the world. Just when we’ll get time to play Tomb Raider I don’t know.

Chris

Post Traumatic Stress

2008-04-04T20:46:00.001+01:00

Today we received our neighbour’s post by accident. Normally this wouldn’t be a problem as it’s usually a bill or junk mail. You just go downstairs and stick it through their door. Not in this case. Today we received a catalogue. Shapely Figures catalogue to be precise. With the strap line ‘Make the most of your figure’. A nice sentiment I think you’ll agree but not really something I’d like to consider in association with my elderly neighbour. So what do you do in a situation like that? Bear in mind that it wasn’t a discrete catalogue but plastered with a large picture of a large lady. I couldn’t just post it through their letterbox. It was almost one o’clock in the afternoon so, if I posted it, they would know that it wasn’t the postman. They would know that it came from upstairs. They would know that I’d seen my neighbour’s underwear of choice. It’s not that I was embarrassed (which I was) but more to do with the fact that my neighbour might be embarrassed when she knew I’d seen her catalogue (which she wouldn’t have been). So what could I do? Post the letter through her door and leave us both in the knowledge that I’d seen her large smalls? Keep the catalogue myself? Throw the catalogue out in the recycling? (I knew this wasn’t a feasible option because my neighbour might see our recycling and think I’d been stealing her mail). In the end I just took the catalogue to the post-box and reposted it. I know I’m costing the Royal Mail more money but, to save our collective embarrassment, I think it’s worth it. I just hope my next issue of Fat Kids Magazine doesn’t get delivered downstairs by mistake.

Dan

Sale of the century

2008-03-17T01:48:00.003Z

I was browsing laptops when I came across this incredible saving. I really don't know how some online retailers turn a profit when they slash prices this much.

Pete

Lies, Damned Lies and Statistics

2008-03-16T17:29:00.001Z

We’ve just finished writing 95% of our live show Ladma vs. The World. We know it’s 95% because Final Draft gives us an in-depth breakdown of all statistics relating to our script (even though we haven’t finished writing it). As a matter of interest, we have so far written 8, 595 words. These have been split into 1, 440 paragraphs. That’s an average of 5.97 words per paragraph. Chris speaks 38% of the time and interacts mostly with me. Pete speaks 27% of the time and interacts mostly with Chris. I speak 33% of the time and interact mostly with Chris. As you can see, I’m the only Ladma who’s had the decency to claim my allocation of 33% of the words.

It also does an interesting breakdown of the use of profanity. Pete, Chris and I all have at least one cock. Both Chris and I have a shit but I’m the only one to have a piss during the show. Pete and I have a couple of fucks but unfortunately Chris doesn’t get to fuck. I’m the only one with a dildo. I’m also the one responsible for bullshit appearing in two separate scenes.

Dan

White van

2008-03-16T11:28:00.003Z

I was travelling home on the bus the other day. I was sitting upstairs, as I usually do. You’re further away from the engine (and usually most of the other people on the bus) so it makes things like reading or listening to music easier. You also get a better view, and it is a view that I saw that I want to tell you about.

I saw two men, clad in similar dull navy jackets, talking about something near the rear of a white van. One of them had a disconcerted look on his face, and was gesturing and saying something to the other. They were evidently in some kind of uniform, and so I took them to be responsible for driving the aforementioned van. As the bus drew nearer I could make out the gestures he was making – a sort of wiping motion, and pointing to the rear doors of the vehicle. They were clearly trying to work out how to clean something off the back of the van. Interested to find out what, I wiped the window a bit more and peered down.

The two men had not seen the funny side of it, but someone had written something in the dirt. What made it funnier was its originality – usually people write ‘clean me’ or ‘also available in white’ or ‘I wish my wife was as dirty as this’, but this comment was much more personalised. The message the two were so frantically trying to find the means to remove was this:

‘I like to probe sheep’s arses with my tongue.’

Chris

An Anal Barmaid

2008-02-26T03:24:00.000Z

“I know you love anal sex”. This is a true statement I could have said to a barmaid that I had never met before I asked for a pint. I bet you’re thinking that I had been looking at her arse whilst I was waiting for her to serve me and that I have an unnatural ability to determine if she has anal sex regularly simply from the circumference of her bottom. Well you’re wrong. I knew because Dan and myself were browsing groups on Facebook when we came across one that was entitled “I love anal sex”. Dan recognised one of the members as the barmaid from the pub around the corner from where he works. She had made a comment about how she tried it once with her ex-boyfriend and would like to try it again. I was in the very same pub for the first time the other day and saw her for myself.

The world in which we live is a strange one. There I was ordering drinks from someone who had never seen me before thinking “all I know about you is that you have had anal sex once with your ex-boyfriend and that you would like to try it again”. Although I couldn’t even remember her name, I almost felt compelled to say something as I felt that my knowledge of this fact brought me some sort of proximity to her. I suppose my logic of this is that knowing someone’s sexual heath history is pretty much the last thing you find out about a person after all the boring mundane stuff like their birthday and the names of their brothers and sisters. God had given me the social fast forward button. I was basically her best friend. As she shared a joke with a regular at the end of the bar I felt like shouting out to him “yeah but I bet you didn’t even know that she had anal sex with her ex-boyfriend before they broke up and she wants to try it again at some point”.

I didn’t do that. Instead I took my drinks she gave me and sat down next to my girlfriend. “That barmaid had anal sex once with her ex-boyfriend and would like to try it again” I said. “Why did she tell you that” she replied. “I don’t know” was all I could say.

Pete

AutoComplete Truths

2008-02-11T00:01:00.000Z

AutoComplete is a system that remembers what you have typed in text boxes on webpages and saves them for later use. The idea is that they can save time when having to enter repeated things like email addresses and names. If you double click on an empty text box on a webpage then it will show you everything that you have entered in a box with that name in the past.

If you really want an in-depth psycho analytical review of your life then double click on the Google search box with AutoComplete on and find out what a tool you are.

Mine starts with about 12 empty records which means 12 times I have clicked the Google search button without actually typing anything in. This makes it my favourite Google search term. The following are some of the highlights of the list. Most are too boring and nerdy to list. I have tried to include my incentives for the search if remembered or calculable.

"massive titties yeah"
I can't remember why I needed to research this particular topic. I obviously needed the exact terminology, putting the term in speech marks to get an exact match.

2 girls 1 cup
A friend told me to search for this and to watch the video of the same title. I did this. You should never do this. If you know what I am talking about then you will understand. If you don't then forget I said anything.

alex the kid
Yeah, I downloaded the classic Master System game Alex the Kid and played it to take a trip down memory lane and yeah I still play it daily because it is a damn good game. For those who aren't in the know, you play a kid who has one big friggin' hand. You basically go around hitting stuff with this big hand (as you would do in real life if you had one really big hand) and then complete the level by eating rice cakes. It's basically the unofficial video game of the film Schindler's List.

Antony Worrall Thompson abused
Someone once told me that famous chef Antony Worrall Thompson had been abused as a child by three uncontected people at three different times in his childhood. This search confirmed this fact and his status as unluckiest child alive.

average penis size
After preforming this search I can tell you it's about 6" errect. I have never measured my own penis for fear it is below this figure. "Why not just do it now?" I hear you ask. Well, in your face, Dan borrowed my ruler earlier in the day and now he has gone to bed so fuck you. Anyway rulers are for drawing straight lines not measuring you penis so I probably wouldn't anyway.

cerazette pill can i take any pill in the pack
I think my girlfriend did this one. She takes about thirty pills a day at specific times so it's no wonder she has mistimed one and worried that she might die. Most of them are consumed to stop my 5" penis impregnating her (Pete W (her dad), if you are reading this then that was a joke we don't do that sort of thing, she only takes the pill for hormonal reasons).

fiddle with your penis
Can't remember ever searching for this. It was probably Dan or Chris.

hidden messages in money
There are some crazy people out there. The idea is that if you fold money up in different ways then you get hidden messages. Most revolve around 9/11 and are stupid.

i love sex
This wasn't a search, I was just informing Google about the things I like.

kitten gun
I wanted to know whether someone had invented a gun that fired kittens (safely). No, once again I would have to wait for technology to catch up with my ideas.

pete allen ladma
A bit narcissistic I know but seeing myself on Google gives me a sense of importance that I can't replicate anywhere else. I doubt my dream of just putting my name without "ladma" and being on the first page will ever come true due to the commonness of my name. Although I will achieve this a lot sooner than Dan Smith, which is the only more common name. Speaking of namesakes there is an Amercan stand up called Dan Smith who is a douche. There is also a Kris Marshall comedy actor based here in the UK. There is also a Australian paedophile called Pete Allen so Googling yourself isn't always fun and games.

sexy ladiy
What's upsetting about this is that there was no entry for "sexy lady" which means I gave up quickly, probably moving on to "massive titties yeah".

St Lucy's Home for Girls Raised by Wolves
I didn't search for this but thought the concept was funny. The chief reason know I didn't perform the search is that the user used capitalisation. Goggle searches are not case sensitive you douchebag!

Simply skimming over my search history tells me I am an inadequate sex obsessed narcissistic idiot who can’t type but likes scatology. If you currently visit a councillor or psychologist don’t bother, look through your search history instead. That will tell you quite quickly what a messed up pervert you really are. If it doesn’t then fuck you, at least I have two friends you fucking shit.

Pete

UFOs exist

2008-02-07T14:21:00.000Z

I’ve just been reading the news because I like to feel informed about the world and stuff. I found this on the BBC news website:

"UFOs exist, says Japan official"

"Japan's chief government spokesman has announced that unidentified flying objects (UFOs) exist."

They actually explain the acronym, and then pretend he means aliens anyway. In other words, he's confirmed that he thinks there is such a thing as flying objects that are unidentified. Like when you look at the sky and think 'Is that a helicopter?...no, it's just a bird.' He believes in them. What a nutcase. He actually thinks that sometimes you see things and you don’t know what they are. Idiot.

They also add helpfully '[a] document revealed that Japan has not yet planned what to do should aliens arrive here.'

Interesting - a document that doesn't mention something. That could be...let's see...any document in the world. If you want to emphasise what a document doesn't do, you can stress anything you like:

"Chris's blog entry shows that he has not yet planned on how he will have sex with farm animals should he find himself on a farm."

See - the above sentence is completely true, while saying nothing of the content of what it’s based on.

I paid my TV license the other day. Just making sure that the BBC have enough money to carry on with the good work. The license mentions a lot of useful information, but it failed to mention the extent to which I'd feel anally violated every time I watch Panorama.
Chris

Please give up this seat if an elderly or disabled person needs it

2008-02-01T15:02:00.000Z

But what happens when two people want the seat? One is elderly and the other is disabled? Or one is elderly with a minor disability and one is young with a serious disability. Who gets precedence? It’s a bloody minefield. Just sit upstairs at the back where only youths and able-bodied people can bother you.

Dan

He’s not really funny anymore, is he?

2008-01-27T16:01:00.000Z

For as long as I can remember I have felt like I’m living in a kind of global pantomime, a worldwide farce in which one actor has captivated audiences night after night in his role as villain: George W. Bush. Whenever he comes on (or even gets talked about by the other characters) all the children around me dutifully boo and hiss and they bloody love it.

Except these aren’t children – they’re adults. And it’s all real. We all thought it was brilliant in the early days, and most people still do, but I have to say that I’ve had enough. Watching George Bush do anything now is a bit like watching a modern day clown. He’s unfunny, tedious, slightly unsettling and really has no right or need to exist at all. Yes, we don't like him - but it's getting boring. He's the obvious choice. Obvious things are dull.

In his credit, he has been such a stalwart – so reliably hateable, so inarticulate, hopeless and rubbish. We have been enjoying a veritable orgy of disdain, a parade of contempt that needed only one central premise: we don’t like George Bush. This was all you needed – slap a picture of the Great Satan on to your verbal punch-bag and you’re away. Everything is so simple about it. Finally, something that we can all enjoy. From hippies to yuppies there is no corner of our social world that disagrees. Brilliant. George Bush is rubbish! Yeah, fuck George Bush. Hey, look at me! I know where I stand politically! Give me a pat on the back!

One of the reasons he is so accessible as an bad guy is the fact that he is so uncomplicated. We have been so accustomed to villains as super-geniuses that were on a completely different level to the likes of you and I. The cat-stroking, well-spoken, art-loving psychotics of Hollywood have always remained distant and enigmatic. Sure, they were evil, but there may well have been good reasons for their actions – if only we could understand the things that they knew. Which, not being geniuses, we could never do.

Then finally, a baddy who is also a cretin comes along in real life. We could hate him and feel good about ourselves! It’s two for the price of one! What’s more, he doesn’t just get things wrong in a subtle, unfunny way – he produces comic gems that can be captured in brief sound bites and stills: ripe, pre-packaged nuggets that seem to have been made for Mock The Week and Have I Got News For You. He makes gaffes and blunders like a pie maker makes pies.

Unfortunately, just as you get very bored and sick of eating nothing but pies (or I imagine you would), so have I grown tired of George’s antics. I have a calendar on my desk (bought for me as a Xmas present) called the ‘George W. Bush Countdown Calendar’. As you can guess, it not only has a calendar but also a countdown until he leaves office. Each day you get a fact or quote that will make you tut, shake your head and say ‘George Bush, man. What an idiot.’ Personally, I am counting the days – but mainly because when he is gone we might actually start talking about (and more importantly, joking about) someone else. By the way, there are 359 days to go.

Chris

Darts

2008-01-12T21:34:00.000Z

I’ve never really been interested in the game “darts”. However, when the opportunity to take part in this pub “sport” recently presented itself, I thought I might as well have a go. You basically have to throw three darts at a board, and depending on where they land you get a certain amount of points. And that’s all there is to it, really.

You may well protest that it is not a “sport” at all. I thought this too – but after thinking about it logically, I changed my mind. This is basically how I worked it out:

I am rubbish at sports.
I am rubbish at darts.
Therefore, darts must be a sport.

The numbers (that tell you how much a segment on the board is worth) are all over the place – there is no rhyme or reason to the way they are arranged, and no one seems to have a problem with this except me. The middle (!) of the dartboard isn’t even worth the most points. At least in archery they have the sense to make the middle worth loads because it’s a) really small and b) right in the middle. Archers may not be perfect in many ways (for example, they haven’t realised that you can get guns now) but at least they know how to put together a good scoring system. Whoever made darts evidently designed the board after a long night of drinking, and had reached that point where you just love everyone and so decided to scatter the numbers anywhere so at least the most shit player could sometimes land a ‘17’ by accident now and then. In other words, players like me.

Anyway. I was throwing my darts at the board in my customary, haphazard way, when I noticed a craggy old man drinking at a table nearby. He was smiling at me. His expression was kind and careworn, but with perhaps a hint of quiet rage that was tucked away somewhere in the folds of his leathery face. I got the feeling that he wanted to look after me, but yet that process would involve a beating at some stage. I smiled back and continued to play.

After a while he got up, came over to me and just stood a couple of feet away, still nursing his pint and…well, watching. Watching - with eyes that has seen a thousand games of darts. Sipping his beer with a mouth that had sipped a thousand pints. He didn’t say anything, he just watched.

It was getting late, and the pub had become quite full and noisy. The old man decided to lean over and say something to me. Above the pub PA system, and the general hubbub, I could just about hear him say:

“Championship darts.”

What on earth? What could that mean? I thought for several seconds, looking at his inscrutable face and trying to guess what he meant. Championship? Was this some kind of mysterious portent? Maybe I wasn’t so bad after all? Maybe he had observed the rapid progress I was making – the grace with which I had mastered the basic elements of the game in merely half an hour! I thought that I had better get him to repeat it.

“Sorry?” I said.

“Yer rubbish at darts,” he said.

Chris

Protection Money

2008-01-08T22:59:00.000Z

I’m stood having a wee in the pub (in the pub toilet that is). It’s one of those long communal urinals which run along the gutter. It mixes your urine with that of complete strangers – a cocktail of piss. On this occasion I'm stood alone and my wee flowed undiluted. I made my best attempt to control my outpouring so as to not splash wee-flecks onto my shoes. I was largely successful.

As I stood at the urinal, the toilet door swung open and two men walked in. The first was a young guy in his early twenties. He had long foppish hair swept across his face and tight black drain-pipe trousers. You know the sort – a cunt. The second was a large thuggish brut of about fifty. He had a shaven head and wore a luminous tabard. You know the sort – a bouncer. Conscious not to maintain eye-contact for too long in a gentlemen’s public convenience I averted my gaze but continued to listen to their conversation.

“I put in the money but nothing came out,” said the dandy Emo.

“What type did you select?” grunted the thug.

“Ribbed – for her pleasure,” he replied timidly. What a guy, I thought. A real modern man. And fair play to him for asking the bouncer to solve his problem. I’d have written it off as an unfortunate embarrassment and run off with my (flaccid) tail between my legs. Having said that, maybe he should’ve taken the time to get some ‘doms from a more reputable source. Or maybe he was just too horny.

“Just give it a hit,” said the bouncer as he pounded the machine. Whack. Nothing. Thud. Nothing. Smack! As he hit the machine for the third time a pound coin shot out of the change dispenser and dropped to the floor. It bounced and rolled quickly towards my foot. I could feel the eyes of the two men stalking the coin. The coin tapped into my foot and ricocheted into the urine-aquaduct which lay before me. Without changing my stream of pee it pushed the coin down the gutter towards the outlet. A shiny gold boat sailing on a yellow sea.

“Well I’m not fucking havin’ that,” moaned the young ragamuffin.

“Your choice,” said the bouncer “we’ll see what the manager can do”. They both left. I quickly finished my deed and washed my hands. As I turned to leave I gave the condom machine a quick nudge. Out popped £2 and a pack of three ribbed condoms. I pocketed the money and sheaths and beat a hasty retreat. I didn’t see the guy in the pub to return his stuff but I do hope he managed to find some protection. I can’t bear the thought of him having unprotected sex and contracting an STD.

Dan

Hierarchy of Tragedy

2008-01-06T01:27:00.000Z

Not every tragic event is front page material. News editors often have to prioritise the deaths that they cover, and place them in their newspaper or news programme accordingly. Should you ever become the editor of your own news publication or production company, print out the following chart and tape it your desk or wall. Consult it whenever you need to know where to place that difficult story.

Of course, even if you don’t work in the media, the chart can be a useful way to find out how much you should be grieving for any given tragedy.

Chris

Google

2007-12-28T16:34:00.000Z

No I didn't.

Pete

TV

2007-12-28T16:24:00.000Z

I don’t like being told what to do. It grates. I am intelligent enough to work out that if I need something then I should get it. For example, if I am hungry then I will make a small trip to somewhere that houses food (such as a fridge or my pocket) and eat it. If I need to shit then I make a calculation that takes into account the time I have left until I shit myself and all the available shitting locations for the most efficient place to shit. See intelligent stuff. It is now the Christmas holiday season and I am beginning to get the feeling that I am not able enough to make any of these decisions for myself.

The reason for this is my increased consumption of television. I don’t normally watch a lot of live TV, mainly due to the fact that Ladma related activities prohibit me from being in the same place every week to see the same programs. The modern PC is a multimedia god. It pretty much services all my needs in a way the humble TV never could. However, I am back in the family home, away from my PC and TV has stepped in to fill the gap and what a horrific job it does.

The more television I watch the more I get the feeling that it’s getting one over on me. There is no way of cheating it or telling it to fuck off. Adverts are the worst. If I do happen across a program that takes my fancy then it is rudely interrupted by a series of completely irrelevant Ads that tell me to buy Cars, Sofas, Shampoo and everything else there is no point me buying. They curtly cut through my passive viewing with increased volume and shouty voices. What’s worse is that I have seen each Ad around 30 times already. It’s ok though, I have choice I can change the channel and watch something else. Oh dear, all the commercial channels are running Ads at the same time so I can’t escape.

The only thing I can do is resign myself to slouching back in my seat and turning my brain off. I live in time with what the television tells me to do. For now I live the same life as the rest of the idiot country do. I eat and shit when the adverts come on and masturbate to the news.

Pete

Christmas Already?

2007-11-23T01:52:00.000Z

I’m no Scrooge but I’m sick and tired of all the Christmas nonsense which is currently permeating everyday life. Everywhere you look on television, in shops or...well basically just on television and in shops, there’s just bloody Christmas this and Christmas that. It’s not even December yet for god sake! They’ve been taking bookings for Christmas parties at my local pub since September. Soon we’ll have the January sales and it’ll be straight back into preparations for next Christmas. Why won't they just let us celebrate Shrove Tuesday in peace?

I have therefore decided to respond in kind. Next year my birthday celebrations (which should take place entirely on July 27th) will begin in May. A protracted preamble will ensue before culminating in a dull drab celebration on July 27th which would’ve been much more exciting had we not built it up beyond recognition for the previous three months. And just in case you’re worried that you’ll miss my May celebrations, there’ll be adverts all over T.V and mince pies will be half price.

Dan

Hull Comedy Festival

2007-11-05T00:00:00.000Z

After taking part in Brighton’s Fresh Meat festival last month we were eager to continue our foray into live comedy. This time we would be doing our own one hour gig in front of paying customers as part of Hull’s Comedy Festival. Even though this had been planned in early June we hadn’t given much thought to the show until two weeks before we were due to perform. This meant that we had to publicise, write and rehearse the show in a very short amount of time. Chris was also busy teaching which meant we would only have one day to rehearse together in Hull.

Dan and I had travelled up to Hull a week early to prepare and publicise the gig. This proved to be time consuming and tiring due to having to walk around Hull from gig to gig handing out flyers and putting up posters. We also went to a few promotional events to meet other performers and to show films.

The amount of take-away food we consumed in this period began to increase. Having grown up in Hull we knew where the best take-aways were and that they were half the price of those in Brighton. The worst case of this was the night of Chris’s arrival. Dan and I had been out all day setting up the tech in the venue and were starving when we eventually finished at around 8pm. Chris wasn’t due in till 10 so we went for a Wetherspoon’s curry and waited. He was early so we finished up and set off for home. He hadn’t eaten so we decided to get him a pizza from the local pizza place, Pizza Hot (which for some reason looks uncannily like a Pizza Hut). We ended up getting a 15” a 12” and some garlic bread to share as it had been a full hour since our last meal. Chris would then continue to live on take-away food for his remaining time in Hull before declaring that he ‘was ever so greezy’.

The venue was a bit of a nightmare due to none of the staff knowing anything about the set up of the room and how to work the AV. The old massive CRT project wasn’t correctly configured and not only overspilled the screen but was blurry in the left corner. The PA system also didn’t have the correct leads which meant we could only use subwoofers that tended to distort.

One day before we were set to perform my confidence was quite low. What with the tech problems and the lack of rehearsing and ticket sales my conception of the show was that it would be poorly performed, badly attended and with bad sound and vision.

This was a new festival and a show unlike the others that were being put on so we didn’t have much of an idea of what to expect on the night. However, with a last minute gasp of energy we improved the AV greatly (Dan blacking out most of the windows in the room with some of my mum’s bin liner bags helped a lot). The day of the gig our rehearsals went well. We had all been good boys and not only learnt our respective lines but improved them (or in Dan’s case written and adlibbed loads more). All we needed now were punters.

Ten minutes before the show was set to start we were told that we had only sold ten tickets in advance, mostly to friends. At this point I shat my pants and cursed all the nights we spent handing out flyers and putting up posters. The land lady was also quite eager to have an interval (so she could sell drinks to our friends to at least make some money) which meant us performing a quick rewrite of the act in order to incorporate an interval.

Luckily the numbers of people swelled to nearly 40, meaning we had to give instructions to Jonny (our tech and ticket man) to put out more chairs.

The gig itself went well. No mistakes were made and confidence was so high we riffed and played around with the material. The films were particularly well received. Perhaps this was due to the contextualisation that we gave them beforehand as we were able to explain the motivation behind Deep Catalyst and Safe Blokes.

After the gig we were approached by a number of people who said that they had enjoyed the show and wanted to know more about us, which was nice. One guy even said that he had come after seeing a poster in a local take-away. It just shows you that the £90 we spent on printing and the hours of trudging round handing out flyers and posters paid off by bringing in £5 from one lonely guy who had nothing better to do with his Friday night than see three pricks trying to be funny.

Pete

Small Is Beautiful

2007-10-30T19:00:00.001Z

The more time I spend back in Hull for the Comedy Festival the more I feel like I’m existing in some kind of eighties fantasy film or sub-Tolkien incubus. Hull proudly claims its place as Britain’s Middle Earth, but finds itself more Mordor than Shire. Although the vast majority of Hull’s population are perfectly normal and well-rounded (at least more so than Middlesborough’s) there is a small demographic of grotesques who trample the city’s streets clad in pink tracksuits or hideous purple wooly jumpers. Surrounded by queer oddities with sunken jaws or floor-scraping knuckles, one suddenly becomes a seven out of ten (a safe seven at that) when in Brighton one might have been a six…or maybe a five. Yet it’s only when you look closer at the people that you realise that these are your people. They’re people you grew up with and – if you look closer in your wardrobe – you can still find those three-stripe Adidas trousers that fit you like Cinderella’s glass slipper.

And so Hull got me thinking about my past – my friends, my family and my school. I went to William Gee School for Boys. When I first joined the school our motto was “Aiming for Excellence”. By the time I left, the school motto was “Being the Best You Can Be” and the GCSE pass rate was 11%. It seemed that some people weren’t taking the motto seriously and it won’t surprise you to know that the school closed a year after I left. Yet my time at school remains one of my happiest periods and seeing old school mates around town reminded me of one old school tale.

Dean Barnes was a slip of a boy. With the rest of the year towering at just under the six foot mark, poor old Dean hovered around the five foot area. As he watched his peers shoot up and out of sight, Dean’s height stagnated and drew to an unfortunate halt. But Dean’s height wasn’t his only lamentable affliction – Dean was cursed with the darkest of dark eyelashes. In a mixed school, Dean may have been able to use these long, luscious, ebony hairs to his advantage but appearing like you wear mascara in an all male school is not a good look. The combination was to have wicked and terrible results for Dean.

Now, it may surprise you to know that the biggest bully in our school was a teacher – Mr Anderson. In one particular Maths lesson – as we worked less than intensely at our desks – Mr Anderson whipped out a large piece of card and proceeded to fashion himself a large cone. Giggling to himself, he then took the thick, wooden board ruler and attached a long piece of string to the end. Grabbing his makeshift items, he ordered Dean to his feet (it transpired he was already standing) before placing a chair on one of the desks.

“Get on the chair,” Anderson bellowed as the dazed Dean scrambled onto the desk and mounted the chair.

“Put on the hat,” Anderson ordered as he shoved the cone onto Dean’s head and thrust the board ruler with attached string into his hand.

“Now pretend to fish,” Dean just sat there bemused. “Pretend to fish, dwarf!” Anderson bawled.

And so the impish Dean sat hunched over on top of the desk. The cone hat sunk over his forehead and finished just above his mascara eyes which gave Dean’s baby-face its fairy-like quality. His cheeks began to glow a fiery red as his eyes began to swell with tears. But this mascara would never run. As Dean’s pole swung limply from his wrist like the fishing rod of a garden gnome, the class erupted in laughter and Dean the Dwarf took his place amongst Hull’s hobbits, elves and other fantasy creatures. He sat there for about ten minutes before the bell rang. To this day I wonder how long this bizarre picture would’ve persisted had it not been for that French lesson.

So was Mr Anderson being cruel? Well let me just say this: In the sixties a man of Dean’s stature and facial curiosities would’ve been used to carry round lines of cocaine on his head for people like Andy Warhol or Elton John; in the late-nineties he was used to mimic a fictional creature in a failing inner-city comprehensive. I think it shows how far we’ve come.

Dan

I am probably more successful than you

2007-09-27T16:26:00.000+01:00

I once heard that you can only really judge someone’s success by using their own aims. In this way Pol Pot is one of the most successful leaders of all time as I heard he had a little wall chart in his bedroom that he marked every time he killed 80,000 people. He only stopped when he reached his elusive goal of 25% of the population dead (which thankfully as we all know he achieved in 1979).

Anyway, we are not here to talk about how great Pol Pot was. No, this is a blog so I have to pretend to be erudite so you realise how great I am, but be slightly self deprecating so you don’t realise I am a turd like you with this goal in mind (just like that, and this, and that). I would just like to point out that I am listening to really good music whilst writing this. It’s the kind of music you like, but I know slightly more about it than you so that makes me a little bit more impressive than you. Come on be impressed by me! Come on, that’s what blogs are about. I never used to keep a diary because I knew that I could never be arsed to go back and read about what a twat I was yesterday. Now with a blog other people can do that for me and hopefully slap me on the back for it.

I digress. I decided to use this measure of a person’s success on myself by trying to score my life according to what I my aims were when I was thirteen. I will then know if I am successful in meeting my aims. Let’s begin.

For starters I have a PC and laptop (that’s right both). The PC has two screens. I would have wet my pants for that. But that’s not all, both can play the original Grand Theft Auto whenever I want (in your face mum). It gets even better. We have our own network and more PCs hanging around. So many in fact that we can play network games of GTA2 (also free) and have done so until 5am, when we decided (on our own) that we wanted to go to bed. We also have the internet. That means if I would like to see a woman nude I can in about three seconds flat without fear of my mum walking in and telling me that “it’s ok to be curious”. If all that isn’t good enough I can also walk into and pub or club and buy myself a beer. Then I can drink it. Yeah I know, pretty damn sweet. Lastly I have a girlfriend and sometimes I get to touch her boobs and it isn’t even awkward anymore. In school I would only be able to squeeze past girls in tight spaces and get a bit of boob with my elbow (the elbow has nowhere near the same sensory nerves as the hand).

So it looks like I am nearly as good as Pol Pot. No one can ever have ago at me again. At thirteen I would have never dreamed that I would be living the perfect life.

Pete

Mould

2007-09-06T00:23:00.000+01:00

Today I ate some mould. I smeared some pesto onto a corn-on-the-cob and, on devouring the cob, I discovered that the pesto jar was riddled with mould. I cursed my own stupidity for not checking the pesto jar for mould before smearing it on my cob but – considering green pesto looks like mould anyway – I would’ve had to have been extra vigilant. I hope I last the night.

Dan

Children

2007-08-02T02:01:00.000+01:00

“It’s ok! I don’t want to steal and fuck your kid”. If only I could say that and it be alright. Yesterday I was travelling home on a bus that was carrying far more people than was legally allowed, so many people in fact that around ten people were standing upstairs. Upstairs! I am very good at travelling in crowded areas due to my complete lack of interest in other people. I see them as objects that move at random that simply need to be negotiated. Yesterday though was different. After fighting my way onto the bus I worked my way to the stairs knowing that there may be a few seats on the top deck of the bus. For some reason the stairs act as a sort of impenetrable barrier for most people. While there may be standing room only downstairs, upstairs is usually a desolate utopia of better views where the dream of bagging yourself a double seat becomes a reality.

Not yesterday though. On manoeuvring myself past the usual crowd downstairs I was shocked that the top deck was so full I had to wait on the stairs for some young men to shuffle back so provide me room for my assent. I then learnt why they had done this. The only free seat was next to me and housed a small girl who was wriggling around on a double seat. Shit! This was a no win situation. I had the pressure of everyone on the bus thinking “why doesn’t that dickhead sit down and clear some more space for people” while at the same time a small child without parental responsibility to contend with. Suddenly she stopped wriggling, sat up straight, moved over to the window and looked at me signalling that this was an invitation to sit next to her. “Out of the frying pan…” I thought.

I am only comfortable around children when boundaries are set. I like a professional relationship with them. Sitting down I said sternly “Thank you, much appreciated”. Someone on a close by seat laughed at my inappropriate tone and language as though I should have sat down and said condescendingly “Thank you for sharing this seat with me little girl. Isn’t it fun to share?”

A few months ago when I had just started my current job I needed to buy some black trousers. The answer as always was Primark at £6 a pair. They really are perfect aside from the fact that they give me a look of a permanent erection and were made by someone working a 30 hour day for 4p a year, probably.

Around the same time I bought these trousers Dan, Chris and I were sat in a pub garden waiting for some women we knew to show up (we had arranged this; we weren’t just sat in hope of the affections women). We were accosted by two small children of inadequate parents whom I suspect were using the kids as a way of endearing themselves with young men (although these female mothers were of a similar age to us). These children were very active and kept jumping on us and asking for our mobile phones to play games on. Dan was plagued particularly as he was able to remember and find the games on his phone. The favourite of the children was called Stack Attack. At one very surreal moment Dan had the duel horrors of a small child pulling on his arm shouting “I want to play spack attack!” Whilst the other child, a little girl, started unbuttoning his shirt. Dan looked as though someone had used a stun gun on him, jittering and moving uncontrollably in random defensive limb actions. I thought this the funniest thing I had seen that day, but now it strikes fear into me.

So, there I sat next to the little girl on the bus in my £6 trousers looking like I had a big hard on hoping she wasn’t going to grab the ruck and shout something like “Look mummy I have caught the snake!” or worse undo my flies and expose my bare penis so that a passer by would just witness me with my cock out looking startled at a young 4 year old girl next to me. I know the chance of this was low but using Dan’s experience as a precedent I was scared.

I noticed numerous glances to my left from the worried parent as they calculated the percentage chance that the skinheaded young man sat next to their daughter was the guy who stole little Madeline from her bed (I hope you are still remembering to look for little Maddy. Chris forgot to look for her on the way to Tesco so Dan and I stuck her image above his bed so that he sees it when he wakes).

The only people that children don’t evoke fear in are children themselves and paedophiles. I have drawn a crappy MS Paint diagram to illustrate this unchecked social problem. Sorry, I am too tired to fire up Photoshop to do a decent one. Fuck you anyway, I have work in the morning, you are lucky I did that.

Pete

Ladma Steals the Accolades

2007-07-25T19:10:00.000+01:00

You probably won’t be interested, but with every Ladma film made there is a sort of ‘unofficial’ soundtrack, which is as much responsible for the final product as we are. Favourite tracks in the past have been The Fat Boys ‘All You Can Eat’ and ‘We’re In Jail’ (that’s not the title but it is the chorus), Scatman John’s body of work (in particular ‘Scatman’ and ‘Scatman’s World’), and of course the Picard Song (if you haven’t heard it, go to YouTube and search for it now – fuck reading this).

I feel we must give credit where it is due, and so thank you, John Williams, for the complete Jurassic Park score from films 1-3. Okay, so you didn’t do the third one (that was some other dickhead) but you did the first two and produced two shit-hot albums that stand alone even without their respective films. You need only listen to stand-out tracks such as (our personal favourite) ‘Dennis Steals The Embryos’ to fully appreciate it’s depth and mastery. So what if the main theme repeats about every minute in each song? Why have burgers when you can have steak?

Since it’s my turn to write in the blog, I get to tell you about the load of stuff we’ve won recently. Well, two things. The prestigious Cotswold Festival’s ‘Best Comedy’ and ‘Runner Up’ in the ‘Emerging Film’ category at Stamford Film Festival, proving once again that we are brilliant at comedy and emerging. We’ve also got two films showing at Portobello Film Festival – but that’s not the good part of that. The good part is that they gave ‘Safe Blokes’ an ‘18’ rating and the message ‘Warning – Extremely Bad Taste’ after the description that we gave them. Unless Pete or Dan wrote that on there without me knowing, I’m pretty sure we didn’t write that. An 18! Not bad for a film that has no swearing, nudity, or other explicit content. Is the subject matter really that bad? We are quite lucky that it is being shown at all, though. At the moment the only award it seems likely to get is ‘Most Rejected Film’.

Most important of all recent events is that Look North! has been finally finished. Yes, we have finally relieved ourselves of its burdens, and now we bestow those very same burdens on to you. Please tell us what you think. We’re pretty sure its brilliant but we’d like a second opinion. It took ages, as well. If you're wondering what's next for Ladma, keep checking the news page. Although I can tell you now its podcast and writing live stuff mostly.

-Chris

Long Live the King

2007-07-13T16:39:00.000+01:00

Unto every generation is born an enlightened oracle, a prognosticating prophet, a soothsaying sage. Bygone eras have seen such perspicacious gurus as Jesus Christ, King Solomon or Mohammad. But no erstwhile augur’s insight or wisdom compares to today’s sagacious Svengali – the rotund messianic paedophile Jonathan King.

King was imprisoned in 2001 following four indecent assaults and two sexual offences on boys aged 14 and 15. King has always maintained his innocence and – in 2007 – released his exhortational album Earth to King. Earth to King is a modern-day Bible for the internet generation and is available on Myspace, YouTube and Google Video.

The centerpiece of Earth to King is a passionate defence of Britain’s most prolific serial killer, Harold Shipman. In The True Story of Harold Shipman, King seeks to rehabilitate Shipman as a martyr who practiced euthanasia. King sings: “…but a real psycho monster who’s killing for fame would leave notes for a claim to establish his name”. King raises a good point here. As far as I know, all criminals leave notes detailing all the crimes they’ve committed. Otherwise they lose track of how evil they are. Shipman didn’t leave any notes – unless they’ve fallen down behind the fridge – and so must be innocent. King didn’t leave notes either and ergo I can assert that Jonathan King is as innocent as Harold Shipman. As the King said, for God’s sake don’t fall for a media demon!

The True Story of Harold Shipman

In his ode Plead Guilty, King urges all those facing false allegations (like himself) that
“the verdict’s never true…the law ignores the truth” and suggests “whatever you do, plead guilty”. King argues that the whole system is wrong and wants a guilty verdict from the onset. He claims people shouldn’t be judged without a fair trial and that the media shouldn’t have such an influence. This is interesting because, in Vile Pervert, he suggests that Jesus, Mother Theresa, Winston Churchill, Vladimir Putin and Prince Charles are vile perverts who ogle boys, lift their shirts, look at girls and roll in dirt. But I’m sure he has his reasons. And I’m sure Prince Charles has probably fingered a few young boys too.

Plead Guilty

Vile Pervert

Finally – and without wanting to go through all of King’s album – in Satan’s Ultimate Weapon of Mass Destruction King attacks society for persuading children that “love is wrong” (56 secs) and – in I Hate Coca Cola – he argues that society should accept people’s beliefs whatever they are – even if they are loving children. He goes on to assert that he hates “all organised structure that tell you what to do” (1 min 8 secs). Yes, or ‘prisons’ as they’re usually called – the same place you’re told to go when you try to teach young children that love is right.

Satan’s Ultimate Weapon of Mass Destruction

I Hate Coca Cola

And so there you have it, words of wisdom from one of today’s greatest minds. Keep an eye out for his new singles Adolf Hitler – The Misunderstood Genius and Genocide Isn’t Always Bad.

Dan

Tennis Elbow

2007-07-09T01:44:00.000+01:00

Many weeks ago Dan and I had decided to play tennis together. We had spied out a school yard court that became desolate when the children had been released home to play on their consoles and chat with each other over MSN Messenger. Dan and I were looking for completely the opposite release. We were trapped, flat bound in a day long struggle with our computers that demanded our undivided attentions for editing, emailing, burning, and chatting with each other over MSN Messenger (they also demand our sexual attention but this rarely happens in daylight hours). The escape route to personal fitness heaven was agreed to be tennis. I have a genetic tendency to be shit at all sport, but tennis appealed to me for two main reasons. The first of these was that I had never really played before and thus could fool myself that I might actually be good at it. The second being that I required a tennis racket to play, which I knew at the back of my mind I would never get around to buy and thus would never have to make the effort. Alas, whilst shopping in Tesco I came across cheap rackets and balls that sealed mine, Dan’s and Chris’ fate.

A long spell of bad weather finally ended last Sunday. This was bad news. We were now in the middle of Wimbledon tennis season. At the sight of three people playing tennis badly in the middle of Wimbledon season, most people would assume that we had just seen it on television and thought that it was fashionable to be playing it now. They might easily expect us to be playing cricket next month and snooker the month after, like the fickle trend followers we are. But no! We had planned this months ago you fucks. On the walk down to the school court I could feel the scornful eyes sweep us with disdain. “If only there was some way of letting people know we aren’t playing tennis today because of Wimbledon” I remarked to Dan. Little did I know that in a few short hours he would be wishing for that scorn and the ability to play once more.

After about three hours of serving the ball into the net and the inevible realisation that I was indeed shit at tennis as well as every other sport, Chris (who had also interloped onto the Wimbledon tennis bandwagon by deciding he would accompany us on the trip) finally won a game again the previously invincible Dan. The winner stays on policy that was in operation meant that Dan never left the court. Chris and I were at a comparable level of shitness.

He might claim that he beat me more times than I beat him and while the “facts” may support this hypothesis I was a much better ball boy so win the moral victory. Even so he decided that the title “ball boy” was inadequate for him and stated that he was to be referred to as the “ball master” (his idle walks across the court mid game to retrieve balls did this title a major disservice). Dan not caring about denting Chris’ ball authority declared himself the “ball viceroy”. I, not wishing to upset the balance of power declared myself the “ball deputy”.

Finally, in the last match of the day the two squared up. Could Chris take invincible Dan down? He did. My vantage point as “ball deputy” gave me the hideous view of what befell. A shot very close to the net sent Dan running at full steam to make the return. I still wonder why Dan, at about 12” from the net was still running with all his might towards it. Knowing he would be unable to stop, Dan made an all too meagre jump to clear it, but on clipping both feet landed elbow first on the other side of the net onto the concrete floor. The result of this action was a hospital trip in which he was informed he had broken his radial bone and many questions from people asking “how did you break your arm playing tennis?”

He then for the past week has been sling laden and annoyed by his own disability. I have been annoyed that the only time we were ever able to play tennis it looked as though it was because we thought it was “in”.

Pete

Birth of a Blog

2007-07-01T12:48:00.000+01:00

Dear Friend,

I’d like to take this opportunity to cordially invite you to the christening of Ladma’s first blog. Various things run through your mind when you decide to bring a new blog into the world. Can you support the blog financially? Are you bringing the blog into a loving relationship? But more important than the blog’s health or weight is the blog’s name. There’s no easy way of choosing a blog’s name. It’s not like naming a baby. There’s no book that says “You better not call your child Adolf because people might wrongly (or rightly) assume that he’s a fascist”. You can’t just reminisce about people you’ve known throughout your life and think “I remember Phil, he was a nice guy. I don’t know many other Phils so I think I’ll call my child Phil. And the good thing is I’m not in contact with Phil anymore so he won’t think I’m naming my son after him (even though I am) because that would be weird. Also, Phil doesn’t rhyme with penis, fanny or minge so he shouldn’t be bullied at school.” To apply this logic to the world of blogging would be farcical. Only a fool would do so. We’d be left with a blog called ‘Ladma’s Phil’ which would be shit.

But we didn’t call it ‘Ladma’s Phil’. Instead we called it ‘Thoughts of a Ladma’. To reach this stage we first asked ourselves one simple question: who are we? Ladma came the reply so out came the suggestions:

The Curious Incident of the Ladma in the Night
Harry Ladma and the Philosopher’s Stone
The Good, the Bad and the Ladma
Treasure Ladma
The Guinness Book of Ladma
Ladmas Aren’t the Only Fruit….

These all seemed like weak suggestions. And so we asked ourselves the second question: what are we doing? We’re writing down our thoughts. We’re chronicling our opinions. We’re logging our ideas. So what would it be? The Diaries of Anne Ladma? Very nice, but none of us are called Anne. The Tale of Two Ladmas? Nice literary reference but there are three of us. If only Dickens could have been more forward thinking! Ladma’s Daily Log? Well, I’m not sure we could keep our logs that regular…even if we do eat more roughage. And so we came careering and skidding to crash at the door of Thoughts of a Ladma. Thoughts because we will be logging our thoughts and ‘of a Ladma’ because it will be written by one of the Ladma team– be that Chris, Pete or Dan.

God knows what form the blog will take. He also knows how often it will be updated. So if that’s what you’re interested in why not ask him at god@hotmail.com? All he’s told us is that these entries might be funny, they might be us venting our spleen, or it might be us letting you know in a bit more detail what the hell is going on with our petty little lives. Hopefully there’ll be a new entry every couple of days, but don’t hold your breath.

I’d also like to take this opportunity to return to the newborn baby analogy. Like a new born baby, a new blog is finding its way in the world. Both often smell of excrement and both take a while to find their feet. After all, they’ve both just spent 9 months incubating in a lady’s womb. Some grow up to be Harold Shipman, and some grow up to be Mother Teresa. Who knows what this blog will grow up to become? I hope you’ll join us along the way. At least that way you’ll be partly responsible if the blog ends up killing 300 old women in Manchester.

Anyway, thus draweth to an end the first Ladma blog. It consists almost entirely of an account of the naming process. One can only wonder at what the blog may have contained had we immediately stumbled upon ‘Thoughts of a Ladma’. Perhaps we would’ve gone on to discuss how we designed this colour scheme or decided upon our description. But that, my friend, is for another time. I hope you’ll return in the future to join us on what promises to be a prolonged and agonising journey.

Please, why don’t you join us, please.

Dan