#virtual dundee

The old potato vending machine on Shore Terrace offered peeling, boiling, baking, frying, and mashing portals, and in each case you could specify the number and size of potatoes up to four large.

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You could further select how you wanted your tattie. For instance, in the ‘Raw’ section you could selected unwashed, washed, or washed n peeled.

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‘Baked’ could be unbuttered, buttered, buttered with ‘spread’, or buttered with cheese (orangey cheddar only). ‘Chipped’ could be frites, chipshop-shaped, or fritters (scalloped or unscalloped).

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‘Mashed’ could incorporate potato’s siblings: swede, or sweet, but, alas, no celeriac, and certainly no Jerusalem artichokes. Selecting rumbledethumps sent the machine into thunderous overdrive.

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virtual dundee: new design unveiled for ‘SunDalí’ to be positioned on broughty ferry castle 

 The IIA (Institute for Incremental Anarchy) have released sketches for their new public art project, a ‘tribute’ to Salvador Dalí called ‘SunDalí’.) The sundial resembles a large egg, thrown against the castle, and is designed to cover the damage done by cannon fire with a dripping gold yolk and blue albumen. The numerals of the clock are also picked out in gold. It is not known if the sundial will actually tell the time due to the eccentric position of the ‘beaky gnomon’.

‘By the end of his life,’ said an IIA spokesperson, ‘Dalí was basically parodying himself on a massive scale. We thought we could take that on a step. ‘Now everyone’s used to Surrealism, the runny clocks sort of belong to the public realm anyway, so there shouldn’t be a problem, should there?’

This follows on from the IIA's controversial 'Ca' Pollo' design for the Venetian Biennale, which sank in the Grand Canal. Or did it?

The recent discovery that the rare fish known as the sparling has again been caught in the waters of the Forth bodes well for the Scottish fishing industry. A distant cousin of the salmon, this little fish has for many years been caught by the tonne in the Tay, where it is considered a great delicacy because of its scent. The sparling is also known as the “cucumber smelt” for the simple reason that it smells strongly of that large oblong fruit. Fishermen in the Carse of Gowrie are able to detect a shoal of sparling from the river bank, simply by dilating an experienced nostril. Dundonians have long had their own piscine version of that English dainty, the cucumber sandwich.

Now geneticists, spurred on by ancient documents in archives in Dundee and Perth, are striving to reintroduce the sparling’s full range of subspecies. A cryptic note in the accounts of a Perth merchant for the year 1538 refers to “thae puir soules wha depend sa on the Orient tae gust thair mowes, given hou hereawa is sic a fouth o spice fish.” A Dundee chronicler in the late 1570s refers to “the sparline, that is baith benigne and breme.” Scientists conjecture that there were once several types of sparling, and are experimenting with two new strains.

The first of these, the garlic smelt, looks like it may prove more popular for its eggs than for its flesh. The unfortunate fish smelt so strongly of garlic that the population of Newburgh were recently advised to stay indoors with windows shut while river police “herded” the guilty shoal downstream. The eggs, however, are odourless and may be eaten like caviar. Their beneficent qualities have already aroused the jealousy of producers of garlic capsules. River police have been alerted that industrial sabotage is possible, and spawning areas are being guarded round the clock.

The chilli smelt has proved slightly less successful as the fish have displayed a marked tendency toward spontaneous combustion. When one sparling explodes this sets off a chain reaction amongst the others. One fisherman, displaying a learned bent, has described the effect as resembling “Greek fire”: “Ye can see the haill shoal burnin awa ablow the waater like a coal fire through a windie.”

Compensation comes for the sparling at least in the form of jet propelled excreta. Marine scientists observing the chilli smelt have established that the small fish can employ the considerable power generated by their unstable constitutions both to thrust themselves through the water at high speeds, and to repel attackers with a focussed squirt of shit. As one young diver put it, “When the lot of them turn their backs on you it’s quite a daunting experience.”

In Virtual Dundee, the Losergate is a street which appears to recede into the tenemented distance, but actually just grows rapidly smaller.

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The Losergate ends in the Fail Port, AKA the McGonagall Arch, where the original Makar of Virtual Dundee would gather to read his poems.

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The actual arch of the Fail Port was so small that you had to crawl through it on hands and knees in order to exit the city.

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The tunnel leading out of the Fail Port was reputedly lined with haddocks' teeth, all facing outward, so that once you'd left, you could never return.

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Immediately next to the Fail Port, however, was an unlocked 'Door for Exiles & General Monk' by which you might gain 24 hour access.

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Once you had left Virtual Dundee by the Fail Port, though, even if you immediately re-entered, you were forever an exile and to be shunned.

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virtual dundee presents, ‘the adventures of the topaz enigma’, 2: ghost orcas in the sky

Who knew where the whale-zeppelin had come from, that blotted out the sun over Dundee, but Dixon Hawke knew who to call… the Topaz Enigma!

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In his secret lair beneath the bandstand in the Magdalen Green, McGonagall raised an eyebrow as the bejewelled telephone glowed and reglowed.

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‘Are you no gonnae answer that?’ asked Wee Alfie, his self-elected butler. ‘Whit is it?’ ‘It’s a telephone - it’s no been inventit yet…’

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‘T.E.!’ Dixon Hawke said. ‘Huv you seen the whale-zeppelin?’ ‘Huz it been inventit yet?’ McGonagall asked. ‘Aye!’ ‘Eh am undergroond, ken?’

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‘Listen, get up there and check it oot. Tak the Dixon Hawke-Moth…’ ‘Which is…’ ‘A flyin machine!’ ‘Maist magnificent tae be seen?’ ‘Aye!’

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As the Dixon Hawke-Moth ascended into Dundonian cloud, a strange music began to pulse from the whale-zeppelin: ‘WE WILL WE WILL HAUNT YOU!!!’

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‘Wait a meenut!’ said Wee Alfie, and, crawling out on the slowly beating wing of the Dixon Hawke-Moth, he began a tentative saft shoe shuffle.

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Wind velocity plucked Wee Alfie fae the wing. He fell, yelling ‘Bucket o sh-i-i-ite!’ The ‘Moth was stuck behind a slow moving tractor beam.

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Dragged before the Ghost Narwhal Admiral by selkies with legs, McGonagall listened to a long, true, but allegorically complex, speech about marine pollution…

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Fortunately, he had a Calvinist Exorcism Kit in his inutility belt that the Reverend Gilfillan had given him…*

*Not for casting out Calvinists.

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Maist Calvinist exorcisms spend ages on supra- versus infralapsarianism, which neither McGonagall nor the Ghost Narwhal Admiral could follow.

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They therefore decided to plunk aff tae a milk bar in Stobswell while the exorcism thing worked itself out, and so descended by knotted thairm.

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The whale-zeppelin was hovering over the Law Hill at the time, blasting out ‘Ghost Orcas in the Sky’. First person they meet’s Wee Alfie.

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Anyone know if Sean Bean, the famous Northern actor, has ever played or indeed is related to Sawney Bean, the infamous Scottish cannibal?

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I’m casting for a panto - ‘Sawney Bean Celebrity Murderchef’. Kids love kannibalism, but it’s difficult to attract adult audiences without a star name.

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The basic idea behind ‘Sawney Bean The Gralloching Gourmet’ is: there’s a new celeb for every show, a couple of songs, then they’re cooked and eaten.

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Everybody has a good time and nobody goes home hungry - that’s the 'Simply Sawney’ Panto Promise! Plus we will fricassee a Tory for matinees.

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Cannot believe how reluctant theatres are to stage 'Sawney’s Kitchen Nightmares’! It’s basically a good-natured 'rompchomp’ for all the family.

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Critics say 'Sawney Bean Psycho-Cook’ is 'sick’ but how come Peawee (the Radgie Wee Veggie Weegee) is aabdy’s favourite character? - Literally a broth of a boy!

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The annual Christ-on-a-Bikemass parade is just starting in Virtual Dundee city centre: the spectral Oor Wullies o the Wisp have been released.

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Now the Undeid Broons lumber past, twenty feet high and reeking of the crypt, seizing ‘bad bairns’ up and crunching on their skulls.

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Next is the Zombeano Characters - jist kids got up to look like Dennis, Little Plum etc, so they shouldnae really be attackin people like that.

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The 'Demonic Dandy’ float is Dan and Korky with boring old horns & pitchforks, tho Brassneck’s gone a bit Terminator this year.

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The fact it’s a howlin gale and invisible devils are spitting rain directly into the spectators’ eyes only makes the parade more special-er.

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Now the moment when the skeleton of the Tay Whale 'swims’ down the Seagate, every bone held in place by choreographed teams of sea scouts.

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