The Back Page of the Merry Goblins Warhammer Page
(Where you find out just how warped my mind really is)
Issue #3 : 20th September 2002
Hi, and welcome to issue three of The Appalling Green Biology, the back page of the Merry Goblins Warhammer Page. This is a place where I put some of my more random thoughts to keyboard as they flit across my mind in a grand effort not to get run over by the overarching twin juggernauts of mindless tedium and inane logic.
This issue, the theme is spy films, and more specifically why the spies in all the spy films I can think of are so inept at their job. Now I'm not a spy (though if I was I wouldn't imagine I'd tell you), so maybe I'm completely off the mark here, but surely being a spy is about not being discovered as a spy by the Evil Villain of the Moment (EVM, for short).
So, given that, why do virtually all the main characters of the well known spy films - Harry Palmer, James Bond, etc. - end up giving themselves away, being captured, almost getting killed and escaping by some marvellous gadget provided by Q, etc. They then, of course, have to fight their way out cutting through the swathe of evil henchmen, and usually destroying whatever plane, boat, island or underground facility they happen to have been taken to. Hardly very secretive.
So it seems that the 'super-spies' we see in the films are the ones who, for some reason never explained, were specially trained to eliminate the threat to the world/national security/small kittens in as explosive, flamboyant, and dramatic way possible, preferably also (a) getting captured so as to discover in its full depth the full scope of the EVM's sinister plot, (b) destroying or losing any special equipment they may have been provided for the mission, and (c) seducing, if possible, as many beautiful young women as they meet while on this super-important, time-critical, world-saving mission.
I'm guessing we never see double-oh-six, or double-oh-two, because they actually act like responsible, well hidden and actually secretive spies, unlike a certain Mr. Bond who gets captured by the enemy and loses special equipment every chance he gets. If I were a spy who was constantly losing equipment, getting captured by the enemy and generally alerting the entire cosmos to my being a spy, I'm guessing that I'd soon be either (a) dead, or (b) sacked (or both).
But then I'm not a spy. Not that I'd admit it if I was...
Next issue: If water turns clockwise down the plughole in the northern hemisphere, and anti-clockwise in the antipodides, which way does it go down on the equator? Does it just sort of stay around blocking up the sink 'cause it can't decide?
Do you know why this page is called The Appalling Green Biology ? Mail me at if you work it out.