Cunk on Everything: The Encyclopedia Philomena

by Philomena Cunk

A human skellington is made up of over 200 separate bones, but not so separate that they fall into bits. The knee bone’s connected to the thigh bone. The thigh bone’s connected to the hip bone. The hip bone’s connected to the back bone. Most of this is explained in a song which doctors spend up to seven years studying before they are allowed to run an accident and emergency department.

Soup is like food except it’s a drink. Except it’s not, it’s a food. Get your head round that if you can.

TV has some of the most amazing wildlife programs on it, like Blue Planet and Raa Raa The Noisy Lion. But my old Nokia had Snake on it, which is not just wildlife, but also a game. So that’s 1–0 to phones. TV’s got loads of great game shows on it. But not Soda Candy Crush. Which is brilliant. 2–0 to phones. When you get bored with the TV or the adverts come on, where do you look? Your phone. 3–0 to phones. You can’t take your TV into the bathroom with you to whack off to porn. 4–0 to phones. Unless you’re P Diddy and you’ve got a TV already in your bathroom. And I’m not P Diddy. I’m P Cunk. So that’s 5–0 to phones. My mate Nev’s got a huge telly, like the size of a shop. But so what? I can hold my phone really close to my face and get the same effect. 6–0 to phones.

Perhaps the only thing we know for sure about time is that it’s slowly running out for all of us. And that’s a comforting thought.

What is truth? The dictionary says it’s a noun, whatever that is. But is that true? Can we trust the dictionary? Well, if you look up “dictionary” in the dictionary, what does it say? “Noun.” Again. Whatever that is. It’s as if someone doesn’t want us to know the truth.

Relativism has nothing to do with having your family over at Christmas—it’s about saying that everything’s up for argument, which is actually a lot like having your family over at Christmas.

Where does the truth go when it dies? (I got this question from the words of a power ballad.)

The United States of Americans is a great big country on the other side of the world (or “the pond,” as they sometimes call it) where there’s Hollywood and hot dogs and huge cars and guns everywhere and cowboys and cactuses and skyscrapers and superheroes and stars and stripes. But there’s more to the USA than that. Although, to be fair, not much more. That’s quite a lot already.

In America, they speak English except they change loads of the words, so you have to sort of struggle to keep up, which is how they like it.

The real world is disappointing, especially if you have trouble relating to other people and smell funny, so coming up with an alternative has for many years been a priority for the planet’s top boffins. This is why even though we haven’t got a cure for cancer or jetpacks or any of the other stuff we were promised, you can buy a virtual reality headset in Argos and live on the Tardis Enterprise.

Xylophones are not used much in music, at least not compared to the guitar or the laser harp. They are mainly used in alphabet books and posters for children, to teach them about the sound “x.” They do this by beginning with the sound “z,” which doesn’t help.

One of the annoying things about people is that there’s always more of them being made. And not only that, but the more of them that there are being made are nearly always younger and more excited than you. And you’re meant to keep up. Which is knackering.

The problem with young people is that they don’t care enough about things that happened around 1980–95 (the best things) and vastly overrate things that are bullshit (stuff happening now).

The best definition of “young people” is anyone whose date of birth makes you think “Shit, I was drunk most of that year.” Eventually you realize that you’re spending more and more time scrolling down drop-down menus on websites to find your own year of birth. I reckon really old people spend most of their retirement scrolling down menus looking for their birthdate. It’s probably what makes their hands look so knackered. Eventually your birth year starts to look stupid, like it’s from the War. You start to expect to dig out an old photo of you and find out it’s actually a tapestry or a statue. Pictures of your mum and dad start to look so old they might as well have been taken at the fair in one of those Victorian photo booths with stupid hats and a frilly umbrella. Young people don’t know any of this. And they’re idiots.

The calendar gets sad in the winter, because the days shrink. Cold weather does that to things. So to cheer up the calendar, it’s a good idea to get really drunk and eat cake. There was nothing to do in Yule times anyway, because the harvest was in and nothing needed planting, and everyone was bored because nobody had invented Nintendo Switch.