LifeGauge - A Hardcore Effect Experiment

Life, both yours and mine, is nearly always broken down into statistics.

We heard recently for example that the average woman will spend one year and four months, or 12,012.92 hours, of her life crying. Teenage girls clocking up an impressivly emotional two hours and thirteen minutes a week crying like.. erm.. a girl.

Men spend over a year of their lives somewhat more constructively by looking at women they don't know when they shouldn't be.

Women earn the equivalent average of $1 million less than men in the same job over a full working lifetime, and we're told that an average person eats 10 spiders in their life, while sleeping. Yet, none of those examples feel like a tangible fact, you still don't really appreciate the gravity of facts like those, so, since this life assessment lark is all the rage I've begun work on my own little project.

The Hardcore Effect Pile Of Crap.

Over the next twelve months, I will be monitoring [because I'm curious about it] how much time I spend doing stuff I really don't want to. The rules are really quite simple;

-Work is not included, and so time measured can only be taken from what would otherwise be free time.

-I must express clearly that I have no wish to participate in said actvity.

-The moment I begin to participate in such a task in anyway, the clock is started. My free time has been priced at a rather paltry £2 per hour, which is a fucking bargain.

-Money earned over this period must then be spent on crap. The rules for selection allow only items that are random, pointless, broken or hideous.

-Every month, these items must be placed into The Hardcore Effect Pile Of Crap to be photographed, prices must be recorded. Thus progress is monitored.


I started today, after I was dragged to Lancaster to go shopping, which is the fifth worst thing that can happen to a man after serious testicle trauma, catching ebola, being set on fire and catching a bus. Thanks to inexplicably bad traffic the whole debacle took an impressive 5 hours, which earned me ten pounds to spend on utter crap.

I chose to put a tick next to the random party today and decided to find the most out-of-place and pointless item I could. How the winner ended up in a branch of TK Maxx in Lancaster I will never know, but, today ladies and gentlemen I came home with the away shirt of Austrian Premier Division football team, Red Bull Salzburg. It's a bit rubbish and has made me truly happy.

New Blogger

Hey, once again its time to add to our team, Please welcome Hitler.

Yes, you thought he was dead, but it turns out thats just rumour and hearsay. Adolf will be chipping in with occasional posts from time to time, first up though is a video contribution.

Hitler has fit in with the team surprisingly well, being consumed with rage is what we're all about. However, it seems some announcements about the forthcoming Command and Conquer game have upset him even more than usual. Enjoy.

Meet the team: Adam

Dr. Adam Jagermeister Gruppenfuhrer Brainspiller M.D. 1987-


Originally named Jurgen Von Gayhair, Adam actually came out of a kinder egg his parents bought from a covered market in Slough. Despite this, and the firm belief he holds that he is a 6ft 5" black man in a white guy's body, Adam did go on to make us all proud and gain a variety of doctorates including, amongst others;

Erotic Massage
Crochet
Advanced piss artistry
Hair bleach: safe use and storage
Insults and casual violence
Bouncer provocation
Rocking out
Jellymould manufacture
and Feminism for bastards

Also the proud owner of a 2:1 in shut the fuck up, whatever that may be.

A connosieur of incredibly shit cars, Adam's previous car history reads like a What car? guide to looking a right dickhead. The most treasured of these former motors was the white Mk 1 Ford fiesta that could just push 70mph, whilst giving you an electric shock and shuddering as if re-entering the Earth's atmosphere.



One of Adam's biggest secrets is that after a few beers in a evening, he has an uncontrollable fetish for brightly coloured jukeboxes which contain the American Head Charge album "War of Art", however, as yet he has only actually made love to one, which he described as "The shizzle".

Adam's spare time is usually spent indulging in one of his many hobbies which include wanking, bribing nightclub security staff with chips and drinking Jagermeister until blind, then vomiting on a roundabout.



Known to genuinely believe that a group of homeless people is actually known as a "wankfest of tramps", Adam freely admits to a deep held respect for the hobos of Britain which resulted in his founding of the charity "Wank a Tramp", where drunkards are encouraged to give a little love to the more neglected members of society.



Co-wrote with Benji the bestselling book "Trick ass bitches: An illustrated history", which enjoyed a massive sales boost after the pair appeared in a double-action naked centrefold in Practical Pimping Magazine. A fall from grace followed, which saw Adam arrested as a sexual deviant. Originally sentenced to 3 days and a spanking, his sentence increased after an incident during room inspection which saw a large prison guard thrust his face close to Adam's and say in what he probably thought was a menacing voice "Sort your cell out!"

Adam looked back at him for a second then replied in a tender whisper, that was audible half way across the jail "You look like a girl, if we were alone in this cell I'd bend you over the table and fuck you" Then he pursed his lips into a little kiss. If nothing else showing the wit, class and intelligence that landed him a slot writing here.



This incident was later documented on his number three single "I Shit On You", a rap recorded to a imple drum beat and an audio recording of him actually taking a shit. Sheepy was the producer, naturally.

So, armed with this knowledge, please enjoy his ramblings. . Or he'll fucking nut you..or shag you.

A brief note on future reviews written by us

When I was perhaps 18 or so, My all-consuming passion in life was to lead a lifestyle beyond my means. I have no doubt that I am not alone in this.

I would get paid on a Friday and by Sunday be hopelessly poor again until Friday came round thanks to weekends spent drinking far too much with a group of friends, then getting overpriced taxis home.

Naturally this lifestyle was never particularly cheap, and so I went down the old road of credit cards and unauthorised overdrafts.. thats the kind that come with a £30 charge, presumably to pay the extortionate wages of some bloke who approves or denies such requests.

Of course, borrowing for beer is unsustainable and eventually the time came to pay all this cash back. This, however, was not really of concern to me.. because I was drunk. I decided, in a quite logical way that I owed a lot, but in small sums to various debtors who were all threatening to have some bloke come over and remove my TV, my magnificent collection of utterly disgusting porn and my kidneys. I decided that these threats were empty, it would in effect cost them more than I owed to clear it all legally and pay the burly morons to rock up to my door. I was right.

It was 2 years before I grew up and cleared many of these debts for which I was threatened almost daily with legal action for, and I now live damn near debt free. Why is this?

Well, at the time I got many letters from various account managers and bank types declaring they were "concerned" and any variation thereof, to note I'd done nothing about my debts. Truth is they could have put "angry", "suicidal" or "vomiting with blind rage".. the fact remained, I had their money and I wasn't going to do anything about it.

Until one day, I got a letter from Capital One, saying they were "disappointed to note". Thie changed everything, because you see, they were disappointed. This means THEY had high hopes for ME, THEY thought better of ME and I had let THEM down. Some months later I was clean and clear and I'll never go back.

When most people think of the strongest word in the English language, they instantly think of the word "cunt".. or at least we do. Yet, that word is really more shocking than strong. Disappointed wins hands down, so I don't like using it.

Yet here I am finding myself noticing increasing numbers of people, situations, events and news items that warrant me dropping the "D-bomb". The purpose of this piece is to illustrate that if we ever describe something as "disappointing", avoid it like the plague. Sadly, you'll be seeing it plenty in the coming months.

Organic Chicken melts your face

Some people are naturally unfortunate, the sort that always seem to be down on their luck and having a hard time of it.

Gordon Brown springs to mind, with his regular verbal shoeings at the hands of a right wing, Tory owned media machine. I don't imagine Michael Barrymore has much to smile about either, sure he has loads of days off these days, but no-one will come to his pool parties. So, he went on Big Brother and went slowly mad.



David Cameron may be everyone's new best mate, but he has to walk around all day knowing that deep down, he's a bit of a twat. Fernando Torres has to deal with having hair like a girl and being Spanish. Alan Titchmarsh has wasted his life in flower beds, ignoring Charlie Dimmock's barely contained breasts to potter around in a shed like a cock muttering "Oooh.. wheres my Trowel?", all the while his wife is in bed with the milkman.



Its not even strictly applicable to people, I don't imagine being a Koala bear is all that great to be honest. Spending all day in one of the world's hottest climates, wearing a fur coat you can't remove and waking only to chomp on Eucalyptus, which aside from having the nutritional benefit of water, makes them high. So high, infact, that if they see anything that isn't another koala or a eucalyptus tree they get so scared they give themselves Chlamydia. Thats no fun at all, being tired and sweaty all day while rocking a sex disease you caught without actually having sex.

However, the award for "Git we'd least like to be" goes to that floppy haired, tofu munching ponce, Hugh Fearnley-Whittingstall.

Aside from being a bit of a dick, poor Hugh still appears on TV, oblivious to the fact that his habit of eating shit he finds in his garden has melted his face.

Hugh's mission statement in life is to make sure we all wear sandals, eat organic food we grow on roundabouts in the middle of a city and give up our gardens so chickens can dick around and ruin them.

I heard him only the other day, blithering on about how its everyones responsibility to eat well, and source food from free-range, organic, hippy communes and that such behaviour is not simply the preserve of the wealthy. He explained this while trying to showsome inner city dwellers, that killing and gutting a chicken you raised yourself, and turning it into a nice bit of Coq-Au-Vin was far better and more rewarding than dropping into KFC. This is plainly bollocks.

Clearly, Mr. Whittingstall has never tried the Colnel's secret blend of 14 herbs and spices.

Plus, maybe doing such a thing is better, in the same way that building a shelving unit from Ikea is better than buying one built by someone who knows what they're doing, who gets other men to drop it round your house and put it in, while you eat a pie. In that it isn't better at all.

Its also all well and good saying that its irresponsible to tamper with nature and not eat correctly. Well I have news Hugh, what is fucking irresponsible is growing crops that produce smaller harvests and have a tendency to die for no real reason when we have famine on the go in Africa and the like. Furthermore, there is a finite amount of space in the world and the population is on the rise dramatically. How can we feed these people on organic hens that have several acres to play in? We'd all have to live in concentration camps and tree houses.

I know I'm a bit of a Socialist, I don't like injustice and I quite like animals, in a way. Yet, while farmed meat isn't perhaps treated as well as I'd like. I think that human beings have certain qualities that elevate them above poultry, animals so stupid that technically, they can function without a head. If thats elitist, then I'm sorry.

Ignoring all this stuff though, you must realise that most of the people in the world aren't quite as wealthy as you, thus when the choice comes down to £2.39 smartprice chicken fillets, murdered by Mr. Matthews, or Free range organic chicken costing a million pounds. People with a brain and a limited income will always feed their families for mroe than one day a week, meaning the cheaper option is the only option. I know you believe that if we all went organic, more people would grow it and it'd be cheaper... but it won't.

On top of that, even science says its pointless, because organic veg has no added benefit in terms of nutrition.

I'm from a generation that grew up eating e numbers, too much salt and artificial colourings and guess what, we turned out ok.

Pensioner's advice meets hip-hop

A discovery has been made that may well change the world forever. Parents all over the world are going to rejoice when this technology becomes available to the masses. Using this new equipment you can now auto-tune Granny's gruff voice to make it pleasing to the ears of teenagers and then lay it over a phat beat so that they can relate to it. Pure genius, I think you'll agree. Thus starts a new feature, where we find the most genius of inventions and bring them to you. Once we have a few nominees we can then vote for the best invention of 2009. So, here we go, Nominee number one... the senior citizen auto-tuner...

The Hardcore Effect Awards 2009 - Best song

We have an early, but clear winner.

Enjoy

Meet the team : Sheep

We're undergoing some changes and expansion in the team here at Hardcore Towers, so, please allow us to introduce some familiar faces and somenew ones over the coming weeks, beginning with Sheepy.


Sheepay McSheepington Van Der Sheep-Sheep the First BSc.
1987 -

Well known sexual deviant and serial drunkard Van Der Sheep-Sheep has been writing for us since pretty much the beginning.

Most famous as the current holder and four-time winner of the title of 'Sexiest man in NATO', Sheep lists his hobbies as; Keeping it real, Schooling white kids, bringing sexy back, verbally abusing women, colonic irrigation, poo-ing, drinking, reading The Times and masturbating to local parish council magazines.


Once reached number 12 in the charts in Uzbekistan with a surprise cover version of Vanilla Ice's hit, "Ice, Ice Baby". The song sold well due to limited spread of the English language preventing many listeners picking up that most of the lyrics had been rewritten to be about taking a shit. Ice later took legal action after the line "Check out my hook, while my DJ revolves it" was changed by Sheep into something still legally unprintable today. The case was later thrown out on the basis that Sheep kept it roughly 73% more real than Vanilla.

Currently in the employ of Her Majesty's Armed Forces of the United Kingdom Of Great Britain [.. and Northern Ireland and The British Dependencies.. on occasion], which is an incredibly respectable position to hold, Sheep is still characterised by the self-loathing and hard-living that invariably accompany utter brilliance.

Found medically incapable of making a mistake.


Once described by the bloke that sold Thora Hird her stairlift as "a complete bastard", Sheep maintains that the disputed stairwell remained his property and Thora should have "got a fucking grip of herself". Later attended Hird's funeral purely to announce that he had indeed had the last laugh, as he had so often threatened. Little else of this feud has come to light.

We hope you enjoy his articles, he doesn't really care either way.

Kate Nash On The Street

Here we find our old mate Kate, receiving a trendy award for being so.. well.. trendy and from the street. We wish her well.

The Hardcore Effect World Cup.. for Crisps - The qualifiers

Listed below are the snacks fighting out to be crowned the Hardcore effect World Crisp Champion. We recognise some are not STRICTLY crisps, but merely corn based snacks, but we felt they should be represented. The crisps will be split by characteristics into groups, each one will be compared to the others in its group, with an overall winner and runner-up moving on to the latter stages to fight it out against crisps from other groups.

This really is seriously vital stuff.

Group A - Basic Crisps

Walker's Ready Salted
Seabrook's Prawn Cocktail
Highlander Salt & Black Pepper
McCoy's Flame Grilled Steak


Group B - Novelty Crisps

Walker's Squares
Wotsits
Skips
French Fries
Nik Naks
Pom-Bears
Chipsticks
Frazzles

Group C - Premium brand and corn based crisps

Kettle Chips
Philleas Fogg
Doritos
Walker's Sensations
Pringles

Group D - Other snacks

Beef Jerky
Salted Peanuts
Pork Scratchings
Dried Apple Crisps

Group E - Budget Crisps

Asda Smartprice
Space Raiders
Attack-A-Snack
Tangy Toms
Onion Rings


Group B, is of course expected to be a hotly contested group this time out. Young pretenders like Skips, vying against the might of Bacon Frazzles in the largest group in the competition.

This years surprise omissions include Walker's heavyweights - Quavers, a crisp that would under normal conditions fair quite well has failed to make the cut this year.

Stay here for all the action.