Issue 7 Diving Downsides from the Archives of the Tanked Up Magazine

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4 December 2024

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ISSUE 7 ARCHIVE - DIVING DOWNSIDES Jules Eden
I love it. You love it. That bloke down the pub with all the kit who never gets wet loves it. So there has to be... a downside. ATLANTIS Honestly, you would think TV people and writers had better things to do with their time. "In search of the Lost City blah blah bloody blah". Look guys it was all made up. Socrates and some of his mates, Plato and Solon probably, all met up during an Olympics and had a laugh. Let's send those Romans off on a wild goose chase for a whole bunch of gold as well as the elixir of life (this was before lager was invented) by knocking up a bit of a story, whacking it down on papyrus and letting it be found in some blinking library by Caesar. Well more fool us, its sucked in that Hancock bloke – no not the funny depressive, but the guy who reckons the Mayan calendar is gonna spell the end of the world in 2012, and most "archaeological divers" that pitch the Discovery Channel. Look you lot; if it really existed, don't you think it would be on Google Earth Underwater by now? Yes, so stop dreaming and go find El Dorado instead, like that bloke Sir Walter Raleigh who invented fags. BARRACUDA Long jawed fishy arses. God only put them there to make spelling difficult, especially the ones from Dominica – "Carribbean barracuda" or is it "Caribbean baracudda" – no wonder we are all dyslexic nowadays. They sit and float smugly knowing how dense we are. Yeah well, Mr Cuda, try pronouncing "Trimix" – you can't can you? Because of your dentition and silly face. Dangerous? You're having a laugh. How come there are so many photos of divers in the middle of a swirling ball of 200 of you – AND YOU DON'T EVEN HAVE A GO. Not one. It's like watching Etonians at a Chelsea match on their Daddies season tickets. Sure you can sing the songs and make the hand gestures but come the rumble after the match in Munster Road, you don't want to know. You're off in your Mummies 4x4's home for scones. Nonce-fish. BIBLE, THE And on the first day God created Heaven and Earth. No He bloody did not. As someone who was brought up in Derbyshire and holidayed all his life in landlocked countries in South America, the concept of open seas was clearly a lie until Channel 5 had the wisdom of sticking Monty Halls with a few sharks and calling it "Great Ocean Adventures". That convinced me. If the Bible had any remote truth about it then Moses would have not needed to part the Red Sea. There are plenty of liveaboards available to ferry him over. And why starve in the desert? Fools, the Camel Bar has so many menus for a reason.
CELEBRITY DIVERS This did it for me... gorillas in Rwanda. In the old days, Attenborough would schmooze up there and caress their silverbacks whilst nuzzling the babies. Andrew Sachs would do a voice over and we would all feel a whole lot more love for watching the experience. And then the Fat Controller decided we couldn't watch Big Monkeys without a proper celeb. So in went Nicholas Lyndhurst. F* me, are we that moronic. Well Rodney the Plonker hoiked up the viewing figures a tad and damned us all forever. We now can't watch fishies and stuff underwater on the tele without some bloke who's been in Dancing on Ice to explain it to us. Neil Morrissey does the South China Seas in search of the mimic octopus. Ruby Wax goes cage diving with Great Whites alongside the hurdler and that bloke out of Withnail and I. Jeez what next? "Ice diving with Gordon Ramsay" – Britain's top chef explores the Antarctic ice shelf then cooks up krill. "DLT does BLT" – hairy 70's Radio 1 DJ dives the Bali – Lombok – Timor triangle, to the sounds of Steppenwolf. "Linda Lusardi goes topless with seals" – now that would have been worth seeing. Well, maybe 30 years ago. CONGER EELS Man these dudes are creepy. You know they can bite off your cheek if they see you have an earring. Apparently they think the metallic flashing is some kind of saucy come-on and they go for that eely-Frenchy. Next thing you know you are missing half your face and you end up on a Discovery Special. Sort your life out divers – avoid these killers at all costs or do what footballers do when playing Liverpool or Everton (in case they get nicked during the match) and put a plaster over said jewellery. DOGFISH They made me dissect one of these for my Biology A level. Jesus it was rank. Soaked in formalin for a year – then they present one on my big day. Cut this f*** up real good and I go to Uni, make a pigs ear of it then it's an apprenticeship at B and Q for you boy. Needless to say the stink of what CSI preserve body parts in threw me. I failed to expose the correct cranial nerves of said dead fish and now I am an expert in Bosch drills. I mean what do dogfish need cranial nerves for anyway? They don't do that much. Eat, be a fish and reproduce. Give my dick a laptop – it's the same thing.
So, whenever I see a picture of one of these I break into a cold sweat, weep into my orange overalls and think that I could have been a lawyer. Bastards. DARWIN, CHARLES "How do you explain the eye?" say the Evangelicals. "I'm just trying to grow an awesome beard and beat Wallace to superfame" says Mr Evolution. Either argument you can trust the Beeb to wheel out David Attenborough for a big old series. But here's the rub. What Charlie forgot to factor in – is De-evolution. Yes, we are regressing. Not getting taller and cleverer, we're getting fatter and stupider. That image of the ape slowly standing up and losing the hair will reverse. In 50 years time we will be fish again. Then we will dive and have a look at ourselves. But fish will have caught up and be docu-filming us and it will be all freakin' weird. The only winners will be dolphins that have that "master race" look about them. DOLPHINS If they were that clever they'd get royalties. EGYPT Come on you lot. You gave us pyramids, the Sphinx, cotton, writing, culture, civilization, papyrus, Moses and Carry on Cleo. The whole damn lot. The world would still be a backwater picking its nose with a twig if it wasn't for you lot. So what's so bloody hard about a visa entry system and a taxi rank in Sharm eh? Sort it out. ELEPHANTS There's an elephant dive you can do in the Andaman Islands. Frankly having something that big and not noted for buoyancy near you on a dive is terrifying. Likewise the peoples of the Andamans are the last bit of humanity still left out of touch with the modern world. So why do narcisstic TV presenters keep going to find them? If they wanted to be part of our society they can easily buy a mobile and give us a call or use the Wifi from their Starbucks to email the modern world to tell us of their stone-age habits. They have NOT so can we leave them to develop further and invent sub prime lending in their own time. Does anything about diving annoy you? Send us your "Diving Downsides".
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