Paperjam

No Shit Presents

Rant // Steve // 23rd December 2003

It's been my birthday this weekend, and I can categorically say that I've had No Shit Presents. In fact, they've all been good.

All boys like electronic daft gadget things, and I got some good ones. A silver knob, which you attach to your computer (um, like this), a printer, a copy of "Computerworld" on CD (my vinyl copies have seen better days), "PopArt" - which doesn't work on my computer (grrrr), some films, a rather nice book on the Royal Festival Hall in London - a building which I have long planned to steal in small chunks, and rebuild in Coventry - and a digital camera, which is rather fantastic. One of those Canon things, with the screen on the back and the zoom feature for possible pervery, or at least just extreme close-ups of peoples nostrils in the Name Of Art.

Which lead me to thinking about momentous presents when I was young, now I'm old and rapidly greying. Ah, poor me. Probably the one which had the most effect on me, maybe even more than a computer or my Casio calculator/keyboard thing, was my Boots walkman. I got it when I was about ten, which as I've said before, once I'd finished listening to Alexander O'Neal, Inner City and the Pet Shop Boys on it, ended up getting converted into the nastiest sounding distortion pedal ever when I was fifteen. Maybe the Alexander O'Neal rather affected it. Hmm.

Point was that it was the first time I was able to choose what I listened to, I could listen to that Man Parrish record "Male Stripper" in my own private world, when it came on the radio before I would have left the room, hideously embarrassed for some reason (um, "strip for me babe / strip for you / strip for me 'cos I want you to") - but now it was all beamed directly to my lugholes, I could listen to loads of different, really parent-annoying things without them having to hear it. And later on, late night programmes on Radio 1 with swearing and everything.

Maybe once you've sobered up off the gin a bit, you can tell us what was your favourite present when you were a child. Did that Junior Smokers Kit start you on the rocky road to fags and booze? Did the Atari video console really make you pop pills and move around a lot in darkened rooms?

So hooray for good presents. Now Paperjam will come with added daft photos. Here are some, taken near randomly, with not much looking at the handbook. They're not too big so hopefully it won't kill your computer.

Adam, in a still taken from the 15
second pico-budget micro-epic "Beware Kids"

Here, the camera reveals it's inner dirty
mind by appearing to see through an Atomic Kitten's
dress to her shiny pants. Hmm.

Here we are in the pub on Saturday,
and the Judge is rather artfully presiding.
"You are guilty, and I sentence you to another pint".

Slightly unfair, 'cos it was getting dark, but this is
a view of Coventry's wondrous new Millennium Place.
I know it looks a bit wobbly, but that's the way it is...