Category Archives: Musings

Vampires! Zombies! Giant killer hamsters!

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hamsterHorror has become big business these days and you can hardly have failed to notice the waves of the undead shuffling, flying or bounding across screens big and small. With a plethora of assorted suckers, rippers and biters, horror fans are spoiled for choice when it comes to grisly supernatural thrills.

There are a ton of psychological theories about why we love to scare ourselves silly with these films. But whatever the truth, many of us just can’t help but subject ourselves to what one might call a safe scare. All the adrenalin and terror without any real danger (despite what some cunning marketing people would have us believe).

We make up horrors to help us cope with the real ones.” – Stephen King

What would the creators of Nosferatu or Dracula make of all this ghoulish entertainment? Would Mary Shelly find our modern day monsters a little OTT? Could George Romero have ever imagined we’d become so addicted to the brain-munchers?
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Halfbananas is one year old today!

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olderbettermug_medIt seems it’s exactly one year since an absurd idea became an absurd blog and halfbananas was launched upon an unsuspecting world.

It all started with an odd tale of mutant mushrooms and Armageddon. Thus the tone was set for the multiple servings of half-baked concoctions, delirious ramblings and occasionally almost readable flights of fancy that is today unknown to tens of millions of readers around the world.

For my followers old and new, many thanks for your support and I hope you will stick with me as we continue to explore the frontiers (or indeed back-ears) of this crazy mixed up planet of the apes on which we find ourselves.

Cheers!

 
© Copyright Jason Lennick 2016. All rights reserved.
 

Pic source
 
 

Kick the bucket-list

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desert ship_medThe concept of making a to-do list of amazing experiences and must-see places has become something of a cliche in recent years. There was even a movie called The Bucket List with Jack Nicholson and Morgan Freeman, although I’ve not seen it (it’s not on my list).

If you’re not climbing the Matterhorn for charity dressed as a penguin, or piloting your own fantastical steam-punk ship/house to the Burning Man festival, you’re not really thinking big enough, man. Run an ultra-marathon across the desert, take ayahuasca with an Amazon shaman, or unicycle to the South Pole to raise awareness for world albino-hamster day. But don’t just sit there!
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Most wanted

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wolverine-Squirrel“I want it all, I want it all, I want it all, and I want it now..”

So sang Freddie Mercury in the Queen hit “I want it all”. And from what I heard, he probably got a lot more than most of us.

Of course we all want stuff. Some of us want fancy stuff – our own pyramid, a gold yacht or a helicopter made of chocolate.

Some of us want simpler and more meaningful stuff – good relationships, inner peace and a sense of purpose (or, for confused dolphins, a sense of porpoise?).

And of course some of us just want another bag of popcorn and the return of Game of Thrones / The Walking Dead.

I imagine if you were a criminal in a chain-gang on the run, the thing you’d want most would be some good solid bolt-cutters and a place to lie low. But few of us will experience that situation – although, incredibly, chain-gangs have been reintroduced into some US prisons recently. Most of us have some degree of freedom to go where we please, and make our own choices, within reason.
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How to fix the Olympic games

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trumpclown_medSport is pretty dull isn’t it? Don’t you just yearn for some new ideas and fresh approaches to those tired old games? Here, for your consideration, is the Olympics re-imagined.

 

The catapult-vault
This exciting revamp of the pole vault would be quite spectacular, although perhaps somewhat difficult to train for. Contestants are flung from a powerful catapult having first been set ablaze. (They have on fireproof suits naturally) They must clear a bar one hundred metres high, then deploy a parachute to land safely in a tank of water.
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Halfbananas awards – the winners!

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The agonising wait is over at last! Here are the winners in the very first ever halfbananas awards.

halfbananas award
There are so many amazing blogs out there, it’s hard to keep up. I hope you enjoy discovering some great new ones, and if you’ve won a coveted halfbananas award, congratulations!

The dedicated awards committee have tried to recognise the best examples in various categories, but inevitably there will be lots of other fabulous blogs that missed out this time around. But never fear, there will be more awards, accolades and virtual pats-on-backs coming soon. Let’s spread the love people!

I look forward to seeing all the lucky winners and honourable mentions, at the lavish Hollywood party I will be hosting, assuming awards condition #3 is met (see below).
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Sunday Supplement #2

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After another depressing week of news and a Danish Summer that is currently awol, I thought I’d look for some things to cheer about. It wasn’t easy.

As the good ship UK begins to slowly sink beneath the icy, post-Brexit waves, the news from the rest of Europe is a little more heartening. A number of countries, including Denmark, are seeing an upswing in support for the EU. Polls suggest there is less enthusiasm for a referendum here than pre-Brexit and a more EU-friendly vibe among the people. Hopefully the referendum shock will make other euro-sceptic members see sense and pull back from the brink of following the UK to Davy Jones locker.

With the surge in racist attacks in the UK and the awful violence in the US, it’s been good to see citizens responding with gestures of kindness and solidarity. If every cloud has a silver lining, or at least every fifth cloud, we may see a great swell of unity and of people finally waking up to the fact that black lives matter, that immigrants lives matter and that no life is worth less because of where you were born, or because of some minor variations in hair or skin pigmentation. We are all in this together.
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