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A year ago, a momentous event happened, one which was to change the world. Or at the very least, alter it slightly. Yes. On the first of May, Tony Blair was elected as Prime Minister of the UK, but that is not the event of which I speak, but it was a catalyst for it. For that election inspired Douglas Robertson to write The Flumcake On-Line Election Special and so, on the third of May, a new light shone bright over the country when it was released throughout the land on the new-fangled internet malarky
Of course. This wasn't the first Flumcake article, nor was it the last. But the true tale of what came before Flumcake as you know it has remained secret. Until now that is. As this is Flumcake's first birthday I feel the time is right to reveal the truth about the hideous dangers that lay before Flumcake On-Line. Some readers may find this material disturbing. Others may simply realise it to be me running over the same old jokes in a slightly different context, in which case you can be disturbed by the fact that people still find it funny.
In the beginning was the word. Maybe that's going back a little bit too far. Flumcake On-Line first began during the first World War where it was used as a means of sending coded messages to our secret agents on the front line. It was reasoned that, as the internet didn't actually exist yet, the enemy agents wouldn't even begin to think about looking there for the messages. Just as the plan was about to be put into effect a fatal flaw in the plan was realised. The internet didn't exist yet, in fact, computers didn't even exist yet and the plan was swiftly abandoned.
The plan didn't resurface again until 1942 during the second World War. The internet still didn't exist at that point, but a short experiment was carried out involving the creation of a minor version of the internet. It was obvious that conventional phonelines could not be used for this task as they would immediatly be tapped by confused enemy agents who were not aware that water didn't come from telephone lines. Instead, they decided to use the old standard of two tins and a piece of string between them. A series of these tin cans were set up between various groups of people who had the appropriate military clearance (It was the criss-crossing of these strings that give the name Internet) and a mildly humourous discourse about ration books was sent down the tin cans to see whether Flumcake was a suitable method for passing messages.
Alas, by the time the article had reached the fourth man on the chain it had suddenly become a very funny article and the general began laughing. It was when this happened that they realised that the Internet could no be used due to the obvious degredation of information and could not reliably be used to send top secret messages.
When the war ended it was realised that placing money into the transmission of slightly amusing articles in a bid to hide secret messages was kind of pointless when there was much better ways of hiding secret messages was kind of pointless and Project Flumcake was closed down. Instead they started up Project Standup instead.
The basic idea behind Project Standup was to prepare for another war in the distant future. In the fifties a number of New Stand-up comics appeared on the scene and were given a lot of brand new material to perform with. As the war had only recently ended, people were very bored and were looking for some entertainment to try and distract them from their desires to kill Germans. Or, in some very special cases, entertainment to keep them going while they killed Germans. As a result these new comedians became very popular and appeared on practically every radio show going (and TV as well, assuming TV was invented around that sort of time. To find out would involve research and I really can't be bothered.) Fast forward on forty years and these same comedians are still going now. Unfortunately their material hasn't improved with age, and no-one, apart from some confused old people, bother to watch them on the telly any more. As no-one watches them any more they can say whatever they like and no-one will know. Which is how the army transmits their messages. The only people who watch these shows are members of the army and the secret service, etc, to find out what's happening in the world. This explains the ridiculously high viewing figures TV programmes like Last of the Summer Wine and 2000 years of the Two Ronnies get. If you actually watch any of these programmes you can get arrested for stealing state secrets so you have been warned.
Some of you may be thinking. Some of you may even be thinking specific thoughts that are actually related to what you are doing. Which is hopefully reading this and not doing something strange and kinky. One of those thoughts may be "But what happens when all those comedians die. What will happen to our war effort then?", but they have already planned for that. It's called Project Channel 5 and I don't think I even need to begin to explain the reasoning behind it. I won;t insult your intelligence, at least, not to your face.
But what happened to the team behind Flumcake. Well, for the most part, the team just gave up the ghost. After losing funding, their pay, their self-respect, their homes, their wives and everything they ever owned ever, a lot of people just couldn;t take it. Well, lets not beat about the bush here. All the members of the Flumcake team apart from me committed suicide. A nasty business all things considered, especially as they came round to my house to do it and their was that slight altercation with the police. And they got blood stains in my carpet. bastards.
Anyway, some of you may be wondering why I didn't join them in this multi-way suicide pact. Some of you might be thinking that it's because I was a stronger man than they, and was prepared to stay alive to keep alive what it was I believed in. Well you're completely wrong. It's because I had no self respect anyway so the loss of the project didn't effect me quite as much as it did the others. Of course, there's always the fact that I'm a coward to include as well and wimped out of actually doing the dirty as much as anything else.
But no matter what the causes was, I was the only person left from the original Flumcake time. The only person who knew exactly how to word what could have been a decent joke to render it completely unfunny. The only person who new the exact number of spelling mistakes to include in one article. And the only person who knew exactly where to misplace the commas for full effect. Unfortunately there was little I could do with this knowledge as I was locked in a prison cell charged with 10 counts of Murder.
Fifteen years later I made my escape disguised as a tube of toothpaste. Unfortunately I chose to make my escape on the day they were going to release me. I don't think my disguise would have worked though as they took one look at the 7 foot tube of toothpaste which was lying on the floor as I couldn't fit onto the sink, and promptly took me to a mental hospital where I spent another five years of my life.
After an intensive course of psychotherapy where they introduced me to the bathroom habitat and tried to persuade me that I wasn't a tube of toothpaste and that Sally, who thought she was a toothbrush, was not interested in me squeezing my...let's just skip over that one before we go over the bounds of decency shall we. Anyway, I was eventually released and let out into the real world. But everything was different. It was the sixties (see, I can do continuity when I want to) and everyone was strange. Hippies abounded and everyone was taking illicit substances. It was at that point in time that I decided to restart Project Flumcake all on my own. As the Internet had obviously failed. I decided to channel my energies elsewhere. As all the hippies were around and all of them were stoned I decided to use them for my experiments, simply because I knew that they'd be hard pressed to remember why they were doing anything, and besides, no-one would believe a word that they said anyway, except for other hippies, who didn't count. Literally.
So I started conducting experiments on the Interpot as I called it. This was a variation on the Interpet, an experiment I had carried out before joining the main Flumcake project which involved tying messages around the necks of dogs and cats. Unfortunately they just scratched them off so the results were rendered useless. And as for trying the same experiment with fish, the less said about that, the better.
No, instead I started the interpot. The first attempt at this involved hiding jokes about the Ronnettes inside Rizla papers. This was a success at first the message got passed between hippies quite easily. Unfortunately it was being smoked, and therefore burnt, at the time and later experiments proved that this method had not managed to get the message into the hippies mind.
For the next experiment I tried simply telling the hippies the message. A seemingly simple object but one beset with difficulties. Every time I tried to give a hippy a message disguised in a badly thought out and inconsistent routine about Hendrix, the Hippy just laughed at every tortured wordplay (living proof that drugs addle your mind) then said "Cool man. Hendrix rocks" and then promptly forgot who I was or what I was doing. After experiments involving disguising the jokes inside Hendrix lyrics and even a morse code experiment involving his guitar playing, which all failed I decided to give up with the Interpot idea. And party because it was getting a bit too close to Interpol for a convicted murderer's liking.
I decided to give up on it for a few years until the seventies arrived. I tried to set up a World Wide Leg, which involved the use of fashion as a joke, hence the existence of Flares. The idea being that it was the width of the flare that would dictate the message being passed. For more subtle messages, Collar lengths and tackiness of tanktops could also be used to add depth and meaning. Unfortunately people actually liked this fashion and everyone was wearing it. And I mean everyone. As a result all the messages got confused and had the army actually adopted this as their messaging system, we would have tried to invade Russia armed only with two bananas and a copy of the Beano annual. The only people we would be allied with would be any Americans called Dave and their wives. But only if they weighed enough to distort the space time continuum. Admittedly this would probably have given us enough allies to take over Russia and beyond, but it's never a good idea to take chances.
In the eighties I tried to restart the InterPet idea, although this time it was formally known as the InterPetShopBoys. Utilising the morse code idea of the Hendrix material, we tried to pass hidden messages in the electronic sounds of the Pet Shop Boys recorded output. We were hoping that, as the band would rarely vary their performances, ever, we would be able to pass messages during rock concerts without it being a noticable reworking of an original song. Unfortunately this was, as you may have come to expect from this article by now, a failure. The problem was that we had underestimated the Pet Shop Boys ability to sound the same. Their skill at this was so great so that every single record they released sounded exactly the same. As a result we were only able to transmit one message. This message was "Brian! Get home, your dinner's on the table", which led to some very confused soldiers (and some mothers) in the days when Pet Shop Boys songs were played on the Radio.
And so we come, with crushing inevitability to the Nineties, and Flumcake's current incarnation. As you can see, this is availiable on the internet and is disguising top secret military messages in some poor quality humourous writings. And so ti only remains for me to pass on some messages to Squadron 543X who are currently serving in the Gulf...
Am I the only person in the world to be confused by Opal Fruits renaming to be called Starburst? For some reason, the head honcho's at whoever it is that makes them, have decided that calling them Starburst was a good idea and is likely to attract new people and new customers. Wrong. The name Starburst is rather pathetic and, while it may appeal to young children, it is hardly going to appeal to the mature sweet buyer.
There was no need to change the name of Opal Fruits. It summed up the product perfectly. The sweets tasted of fruit, and they weren't shaped like an Opal. Perfect. The name summons up images of summer days and sweets that were specifically designe d to make your mouth water, as opposed to the ones that were made to make your mouth dry up and the short-lived sweet that was made to make your mouth urinate. Starburst on the other hand sounds dangerous. Like an explosion of noxious gases is about to go off inside your mouth. This can only be a bad thing. And they're not even shaped like a star, what sort of name is that?
Anyway, I propose that we start a campaign against the so-called Starburst and try and get the name Opal Fruits to be reinstated into it's rightful place. To this end I propose a boycott of the sweet until it is renamed again. Come on. Join with me and we can do it. I realise that some of you may find it hard going, but we must stop the company that makes them of their profits. Then they'll know we mean business. For those of you who don't think that you can cope with out a fruit flavoured chewy sweet made to make you salivate, don't worry. I have a plan. While out shopping today I discovered a sweet that tastes exactly the same as Opal Fruits. They're called Starburst and they even have a similar packet to aid easy location. I reccommend eating these instead and this will show them that we're not going to back down easily. Come on people, we can do it. Lets get Opal Fruits back in the shops! ...and remember, you're only supposed to blow the bloody doors off. Flumcake out.
Comments? Suggestions? Mail them to us at flumcake@geocities.com and we'll treat them with the respect they deserve. No, really we will.
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©1998 Killing Lambda Productions
