Back again, another issue, another column, another waste of precious column inches from your resident airhead Mssr Remains in residence. Did you know, oh loyal readers, that my last column for Happy House inspired more feedback than I've ever had to any other of the multitude of columns I've written over the years. In fact it pretty much illicited more of a response to most of the stuff I've written in Charred Remains too, apart from that piece on wanking which I guess hit a nerve (huhuh!) amongst us repressed punker kids. Oh and that article I did about the nudie beach in France was popular too, lots of folk wrote and asked stuff "But what was it really like? How did you prevent a rising betwixt thy legs?" and such other inane questions. But anyway, yeah, the response to that last column merely served to impress me with your appreciation for educated, intelligent, and reasoned prose. My column covered two topics; pumping in public and angering thy Lord above and you all loved it. You have all proven yourselves as worthy fools and I for one like that kind of behaviour.

So anyway life in this little abode has been hectic of late.
I guess a lot of you know already but for those that don't; myself and Dave (of Mad Monks zine) are doing this big new zine thing called Fracture. I think we were both just fucked off with never being able to push the print-runs of our respective zines above 500 and also fucked off with chasing many a distro for cash that's been owed for a decade or something, that something had to give. And it did. We decided it was time to look to the stars and go for something big, and free. So Fracture was born, or rather shoved out into the daylight blinking and moaning. We're having a print-run of 5000 and like I said it's free, so you should be able to pick up a copy in your local independent record store. We're not MRR, or Punk Planet or Flipside or HeartattaCk, we're just Fracture and that's it. We do things the way we like, we have about as many policies as the Labour Party and we're just taking things as they come. And it's fun. We cover what the fuck we want and we slate what the fuck we like.
We've even donned flak-jackets and chain mail padding to cope with the inevitable back-stabbing and bad-mouthing that will occur, but that's all part of the fun. I think if everybody loves you you're not doing your job too well. So anyway, that's the Fracture thing, look out for it.

And swinging forth into another paragraph (and without even an apology about changing the subject with no warning) I shall now tell you about something that happened about 15 years ago now, just for the hell of it.
Y'see I went to this Church of England school for some reason. I really don't know why, it's not like my parents are religious or anything, I think it was just the closest school. Anyway it was a lot of fun apart from el bastardo of a headmaster that revelled in giving me the cane and the lash across my hand, and dare I say across my buttocks (please pronounce that word with the emphasis on the second syllable - it's much more fun!) though not my bare cheeks. I once forgot to put my grundies on when I was in the first year infants, and when the teacher was undressing me she took my strides down and there I was in the middle of the class with it all hanging out, weener and all. From that day on I was kinda popular with the girls - much to my dismay. I wasn't too popular with the hamster though, because he escaped and chewed up all of my maths work.
Oh for a quiet life. And once after PE someone piddled in this kids Rider boots and it was about an inch deep in them - but at least we knew they were waterproof, from the inside at least. And there was this girl that would take you to the bottom of the sports field and show you all of her bits if you gave her a blue pencil. Only a blue one mind you.

The local shop frequently sold out of blue ones. And I had my one and only ever playground fight with a tiny kid with wiry hair called Snail. He'd stood on my lego space-buggy so I hit him once and he fell over, grazed his knee and ran off crying. I felt dead guilty cuz he was so small so I apologised and gave him a blue pencil for use in the lunchtime break. And I once became Babe Ruth of the school by cracking a rounders shot so far that it put the Junior 1 classroom window through and showered all the kids inside with glass. And I stapled this other kids thumb to a desk once, by accident you understand.
He saw the blood and was sick all over his stapled hand, but he couldn't get away from his sick because his thumb was seriously attached to the desk. And we'd developed the game of tag into catch-and-kiss, except during one game all the girls in the class conspired against me and rather than chasing all the boys, they all chased just me.
I ran for my life, like a frightened kitten hunted by a pack of wild dogs, sweating and glancing over my shoulder only to see them gaining on me and pursing their lips in readiness for the kissy-assault. Then they caught me and pinned me down by weight of numbers, and each girl gave me a big wet one on the lips whilst the rest of them sat on me. It was horrible, I was close to tears; clearly my hormones hadn't taken affect yet, my voice was still a squeak and my plums were held somewhere up in my stomach region. Talking of plums, I remember when this female doctor came to school and all the boys had to undress to their y-fronts and line-up whilst she put her hand in your pants and asked you to cough. It was a strange experience and I had a suspicion the cough was to distract you from something ugly she was doing to your twin-swingers, but apparently if your plums are 'dropping' correctly she could feel the cough at the base of your pair.
Females reading take note; every male reader is currently cupping his pride and hacking up a guttural cough....

Oh, I was gonna tell you about a particular event wasn't I?
Uh, I kinda got side tracked but I'll tell you what, that paragraph was about the most fun I've had since I watched the fat guy opposite trying to break into his own house through a window that was about the size of shoe box. Eventually his little sidekick managed to get in but also managed to rip the curtains off the wall in the process. I meanwhile observed from behind the safety of my bamboo blinds, hooting with joy and hilarity as the situation progressed. But anyway, back to that event I mentioned (which hardly seems worth mentioning now) that occurred in Junior school. See, because it was a C of E school, we all got blessed from the local vicar in front of the rest of the school and teachers. So there we all were, my whole class all lined-up in an assembly as the bald guy in black robes moved along the line, touching each of our foreheads and muttering some insensible crap about the Baby Jesus. And I got the giggles. I got them really bad. I don't know why, I just did, you know what it's like.
I was barely controlling them, staring at the floor almost suffocating because I was frightened to breathe in case my breath came out as a whoop of hilarity. I was thinking about sad and serious things; airplane crashes, third world hunger, funerals, Sunderland playing in 80s pinstripes rather than proper stripes and the like, but it wasn't working. And worse still, the vicar was getting closer. Deep breaths. Count to ten. I was on the edge of losing it but still holding it together. And then as I gazed intently at the tile patterns on the floor, I saw them. The vicar took a step toward me and I saw them. As his foot extended from beneath his solemn black robes, I saw them. I saw bare ankles and Dunlop Green Flash. It was enough, and just as his hand touched my forehead I let out a donkey-style guffaw and a whiney of giggles. And then I stood there and I laughed. I laughed at the vicar. I laughed at the headmaster. I laughed at the rest of my class. I laughed at the rest of the school. I even laughed as my ear was grabbed and dragged out of the hall with my body following closely behind it. I got 10 lashes from the cane and in the next assembly I had to stand in front of the school and write "I must not laugh during my blessing" 100 times on a blackboard. I think that event was the beginning of my atheism.

Joy of joys #1; the new SCARPER! 7" EP will be out by the time you read this on the most godlike of labels, Resolve Records. It took us longer to think of a title than it did to write, rehearse and record the songs and even then all we came up with was "Not As Punk As You". Great huh? Still it's better than the other two we came up with; "Bunch of Botters" and "Suck My Arse".

Joy of joys #2; the new ANNALISE CD should be out on my own label Pigdog Records by the time you read this too.
It's called "Something's Got To Give" and if it sells as well as the last one I released by them than I shall wear a grin from ear to ear for the rest of the year.
Joy of joys #3; this column is finished so go and live some.
During production of this column I listened to: BRAID, KEROSENE 454, REFUSED, SCHEMA, ONE CAR PILE-UP, TOOL, VISION, GOO GOO DOLLS, CHRISTIE FRONT DRIVE, IRON MAIDEN, SICKO and the sound of my stomach digesting a family-size bag of tortilla chips.
Contact: Russell, PO Box 43, Hull, HU1 1AA, UK
GEEKS CONTACT: pigdogrec@hotmail.com