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Words and pictures
A new attempt at entertainment by Adny Warren

Before anyone writes to me (not that I imagine anyone would...) I should point out that none of what follows is even almost true. Actually, that itself is a bit of a pork pie, since some of the notes may end up being true, but that's pointless. This is going to be a little journey into a mainly made-up tale with lots of interesting pictures to look at, that you will be able to have a look at by clicking on the stuff in brackets wherever that may occur (except for here, and the bit up there). Anyway, without further ado, on with the story...

It has come to my attention that many people don't believe that I actually went to Australia at all. This is a great travesty, since I most certainly did not endure 36 hours of travel there, and another 40 hours back, just to have the existence of said trip disputed. Pah. What many don't know is what drove me from Britain in the first place. Well, I shall now explain; One cold, dismal night long ago, I was due to head out in Bristol with my good friend Tony. Our plans was to have a few beers at home while playing games, a few more beers in the pub, a curry and finally a great big ROCK at the Bristol Bierkeller. The prospect of this night excited Tony a lot (as you can see here) and of course also caused great joy in me too. In fact, I was so excited that my moustache spontaneously curled up, causing great hilarity when I was mistaken for that bloke who plays poirot, you know the one, with the moustache (and this is here).

So we were most excited about said evening, but it was not going to turn out as planned. Everything went well until we arrived at the curry house, and I almost walked into a plywood model of "actor" Keanu Reeves (whose uncanny likeness is here) as we walked through the door. Luckily Tony saw him in time and was able to perform a bullet-time jump to push me out of the way of the staccato cheeseboard. I think it was this event that shook me, so that when I sat down to order my food for the evening I uncharacteristically chose to begin with an onion bhaji. Little did I know that this would be the last curry-based mistake I would ever make.

The waiter appeared overtly cautious as he brought the plate to our table, and held the metal bowl over the dish with far more effort than should have been necessary. Without warning he slammed the plate down in front of me, spun on his heels and darted back into the kitchen. Obviously this was not something that I was used to, even the hottest Vindaloo only scared the newest waiters, and not nearly to this degree, and so it was with more than a little trepidation that I reached forward and lifted the metallic dome that covered my starter. As I released the seal on the meal, I felt something rattle under the hood, and suddenly the onion bhaji leapt out from under it and hurled itself at my neck. Unaware of the biting power of these Indian treats, I was shocked that I appeared to be suffering a tooth-based attack from one of them. It was only the pot of lime pickle on the table that saved me, for I tossed it over the bhaji, which seemed to subdue it enough for me to spear it on a fork and eat it. Unfortunately the bite turned me into the most hideous monster ever. Ever ever ever. The poppadom vampire! (and this is what I looked like. Scary eh?)

I would have remained in the country, but as soon as the garlic naan arrived I had to flee to Australia. Luckily Tony had already decided to go there as well, so we went together. While there, Tony and I went on a trip into the desert, where Tony unsuccessfully tried inverse-bungy jumping without a cord (the poor result of which is here). After that we took a trip into the deepest jungle we could find, which was about 3 inches deep, and I attempted to ROCK the jungle while wearing a T-shirt from the Lightside/Nishe 24/7 tour (the equally poor result of which is here). After all that anarchy, we thought it was time to retreat to our hostel and have a bit of a rest. Being as it was the Christmas period we made a Christmas tree out of moss and chocolate (the pretty decent result of which is here), which we put up for all 10 people in the room to enjoy. We also bought presents for most of the people in the room, in particular I bought Tony an Incredible Hulk figure thing, and he bought me some plasticine and a Star Wars dude. This is what happens when the Hulk and plasticine, and my mind, collide, WITH LETHAL FORCE! (in fact, this is what happens). Needless to say, we all loved the presents and tree, but unfortunately one of our party loved the tree so much that he decided to try to make love to it on New Years night.

While Ross was busy humping our labour of love, and by that I mean the tree, Tony and I decided to head to a bar and then to the harbour, where we would witness $300 billion dollars worth of fireworks being blown up. The first bar that we arrived in was rather empty, save for the mysterious hermit using the force in the corner and the german midget playing the harpsichord on the ceiling. Tony ordered a two pint jug of petrol and I had a vimto and gin cocktail, but imagine my surprise when the novelty umbrella in the drink had a tiny lady holding on to it while tap dancing around the rim of the glass (don't believe me? Check this out). Why, it was none other than the Fresh Prince's wife, Jada Pinkett Smith. Weird. After downing our drinks, which according to the guy in the corner were not the drinks that we were looking for, we head for the harbour. After spending the last countless number of New Years either in sunny Trowbridge or odd family-based Canada, I was very much looking forward to the spectacle of millions of dollars being spunked away on fireworks. Crammed on to the dock area were hundreds of people, and claustrophobic though I'm not, I did feel slightly suffocated at some times. Then the fireworks started, and that didn't matter, because I saw something great (I saw this. Wow). I saw something that looked like fireworks, but when photographed actually looked like spunk. And what does that tell us? Nothing.

By this point, I decided that I needed to get some money, so I went to work in the tallest building in Sydney, which strangely had floating writing hovering beside it as if to tell me where to go (see? Strange isn't it?). However, after two days Hugo Weaving saw something on the floor near me, and told Tony and I to do something else (this is him seeing whatever it was). When we asked what it was that he wanted us to do, we were not prepared for the answer, because it was very odd. For some reason he told Tony and I that he would pay us to trouble local wildlife with our ways, and so we took him up. On the offer, not the arse. Natch. Taking a bus to a zoo, we prepared for our task by chanting and pulling each others fingers, much to the distaste of the other passengers. They ganged up on us, and tried to inject some culture into us by making us stop at a winery and being poncy with the wine. Luckily I was wearing my "I'm stupid" T-shirt, which countered the effect of the etiquette-inducing wine (like this, lucky break eh?), and we left the winery being no more grown-up than when we entered.

Upon arrival at the zoo, my T-shirt was greeted with odd looks and general bemusement, but this was good for 'twas the point of the shirt in the first place. First on the list of animals to generally annoy was the wombat, a nocturnal animal that looks very much like a large furry thing. Since it was asleep during the day, annoying it was simply a case of waking it up, which I achieved by holding it's head and making it look at Tony who was holding the camera (and this is it being annoyed). Strike one slightly confused marsupial from the list. Only two remained, the kangaroo and the koala. Tony decided to have a go at pestering the kangaroo, and since there was a field with about 20 of them in it nearby, it seemed he would have a rich lot to choose from. Now then, I don't know if any of you are familiar with the old "smell my cheese" trick, but if not it goes something like this: hold one hand flat, palm up, pointing towards someone. Clench the other fist and place it atop the first hand. Invite the person to smell your cheese, while offering the hands like a cheese on a cheeseboard, and as they approach to smell it, hit them right in the face. However, we at twistedmindz have an alternative to this violent trick, and it simply involes everything but the punch. Sometimes it helps if your hands smell cheesey. Anyway, Tony did this to a giant kangaroo (which you can pretty much see here), but sadly Hugo didn't think this was baffling the kangaroo enough, so I bummed it (which you can definately see here).

Although we obviously thought that kangaroo sodomy was one of the funniest things ever, the security guards at the zoo did not agree, and they chased us back to the hostel. We believed that we were finally safe, and so let our guard down, which was to be our undoing. It seemed that the guards had a giant koala working for them, and he had been told to get revenge on us for the kangaroo bumming, which I thought was unfair because Hugo Weaving had told us to do it. Anyway, one day a few weeks later, we came back to the room to find that the giant koala had infiltrated the hostel and gained access to our room. We realised this because he was in our room, and using his amazing giant koala strength he bummed us both at the same time (and for some strange reason we photographed it). Luckily Hugo deemed that this was bothersome enough for the koala, for it had to leave it's natural habitat in order to anally violate myself and Tony. Therefore he gave us that which he had promised for completing his task. A tie fighter designed by M C Escher (like this one), which we somehow used to fly home.

And that was the story of our Australian adventure.

For those of you who are interested, I actually took the pictures of Keanu, Hugo and Jada at the Sydney premiere for The Matrix Revolutions. And yes, I did get that close. And no, I didn't see the film at the premiere. And yes, I did think it was shit when I saw it.

And by the way, all these pictures are copyright Andy Warren 2004, so if you want to use them, ask nicely. Thanks.