Here Is Good

"Equal parts malice and orgiastic delight"

2006-04-27T09:59:00.000+01:00

Yuck.

The very idea of John Prescott having sex makes me want to vom. It’s really not a huge effort to imagine the bruiser’s bulldog-licking-piss-off-a-nettle face contorted into a sex-grimace, equal parts malice and orgiastic delight – a vile image. A real erection-killer. I wish I’d been able to visualise it when I was a bit younger and my private parts were considerably less in my control. That time on the trampoline, for example, which to this day I haven’t quite managed to live down.

What is it about politicians that makes them all want to fuck each other / their staff / their guide dog? God knows that as a breed they’re a pretty repugnant lot. Whilst I’m sure that, say, John Major* may have many redeeming qualities, raw sexual magnetism isn’t one of them. Is it? Or have I missed something?

In a way I suppose it’s quite nice (maybe nice is the wrong word: ‘apposite’ is better) that our elected representatives are just as lowdown and sleazy as the rest of us. This is, after all, a nation that cares more about what size tits Chantelle from Big Brother has, or about who the next England manager’s going to be, than the 35,000 innocent people who’ve died in US-whipped hostilities in Iraq since 2003. For example.

* heh. Can I do my “What’s grey and tastes of Currie” joke now?

"Don't say 'for the craic'"

2006-03-15T23:15:00.000Z

It’s St Patrick’s Day this Friday. Give a fuck about St Patrick’s Day.

I mean, what: am I Irish? Do I seem Irish to you? I was born in England, you fuckers, and I still live in England now, and apart from a brief stint in Edinburgh (which is, let’s face it, virtually England anyway) I’ve lived in England my whole entire life. So why on Earth should I feel any compulsion to drag myself to a horrendous tar-stained bar, bedeck myself in green and orange, and sing along like some kind of barely-conscious chimp to mock-Mick songs? And don’t say “for the craic”, you stupid, gullible, manipulated idiot.

It’s always the same. I resist fearsomely, noting to all and sundry that I consider the commemoration of the Irish’s ritual nationalistic hoo-ha to be about as relevant to my life as the Black Death. But accusations of spoilsportiness eventually see me standing in the local faux-Paddy pub, rubbing shoulders with drunk tarts, smelly leprechauns and the homeless, drinking Guinness from plastic glasses. And hating it.

What a waste of time.

Don’t get me wrong. I’m not getting all raw-knuckles and BNP about this. I consider all nationalism to be preposterous, not least that of the land of my birth. But if there’s one thing more ridiculous than celebrating a xenophobic, thuggish and primitive concept of national pride, it’s celebrating someone else’s – and doing so only because business people in suits think it’s a good way to shift stout. Guinness is, in my opinion, if anyone cares, a very nice drink, but one I wish to consume when I wish to consume it. Not merely when Diageo’s marketing wankers decide that their coffers need boosting.

Don’t you people realise what’s going on?

Foot in Mouth

2006-02-23T14:26:00.000Z

I had a job interview today.

My prospective employers told me that I had a good CV, but I was overqualified and might get bored with the routine.

"Don't worry," I said. "It's the same problem with my current job."

KLANG!!!

"Only influenced everything that’s a bit shit"

2006-01-25T22:32:00.001Z

Come on. The Beatles were a bit shit, weren’t they?

I don’t mean in the same way that, say, Cast were a bit shit – or indeed in the same way that getting stabbed in the eyes with a steak knife is a bit shit. I just mean that if you add up all of their distinctly unimpressive parts, you don’t – despite all the hoo-ha and the wibbling of hands in the air – really get anything of any critical note whatsoever.

Sure, they knew how to bash out a good tune occasionally, but it should be pointed out that for every Hey Jude there was a Maxwell’s Silver Hammer to fuck up the balance. And you can chuck out anything pre-Rubber Soul right now. I was listening to She Loves You and Love Me Do today, and my ears threw up.

Then take the individuals concerned. (No please: take them). What were The Beatles, really? A drummer who couldn’t drum, a pair of singer-songwriters with the quality control and vocal ability of a tramp going through a bin, and another bloke who people only remember because he was once alive and now he’s dead. Chuck in dodgy barnets and rampant egos all-round, and it’s a matter of some stultifying alarm that this decidedly average quartet are revered in some quarters as simply the utterest rock colossi that ever did bestride.

Some define their greatness by their influence on the shape of 20th Century pop music. Well, fine – I take that to a point. It’s the reason that my stupid A-level music textbook featured, alongside Mozart, Liszt and Beethoven, Eleanor Rigby. But it’s arguable that The Beatles only influenced everything that’s a bit shit about modern music: Keane, the Stereophonics, James sodding Blunt. Simple chord progressions, lyrics about love and tweeness, style over substance; fame by being in the right place at the right time and looking a bit pretty.

Look, I’m not saying they were awful. Skunk Anansie and Belle & Sebastian are awful. The Beatles were merely bland: average look, average sound, average songs. The fact they endure to this day is testament not to some ethereal greatness on their part, but merely forty years of brilliant and opportune marketing, a wagon's worth of middle-aged nostalgia, and a rather willful tendency amongst many to overlook the great big buckets of cack that comprise much of their back catalogue.

Happy New Year!

2006-01-04T11:19:00.000Z

Remember kids, don't get into strange cars with strange men.

"Although, yes, I'd love a pint. If you're buying"

2005-12-17T10:56:00.000Z

Last night I stood on a hot stage in a crowded pub and sang my little heart out. Hit my notes, the band kept time perfectly, and I didn’t forget many of my words. Even when I did it didn’t seem to matter, because the crowd kept going fucking bananas.

I swear, it was like I was Tom Jones or something. Girls and boys alike whooped and hollered and begged – begged! – for more. Knickers were thrown and everything*.

And I stood there, bathed in red and yellow lights, sweating like a nonce on the run, being treated like some kind of God. And thought: How peculiar. I mean, I’m only me. Radiohead song ‘How To Disappear Completely’ is about just that feeling. You catch your own eye from a different perspective, and ask yourself: what the hell is going on?

Sure, it’s seductive, this being the centre of attention lark. For the rest of the evening I was bought drinks for and celebrated. One very drunk man described it as 'the best live gig he'd ever been to', which presumably says much more about his social life and blurred senses than any particular genius on our part. But whoop: it was great, man. Easy to see why people leave their jobs and go on the road in cacky Volkswagens in search of it.

But it’s not real. It’s all just part of the lunatic miasma in which we cover ourselves, just so that we as a species can get through the day. It doesn’t mean anything, nothing at all. It’s false, it’s fake. I’m no better a person than I was before I got up in front of everyone and trilled along for a bit. But now because everyone’s seen me singing a high E flat it seems I’m worth so much more to people. Well, fuck you all. Although, yes, I'd love a pint. If you're buying.

I couldn’t do it for a living, not that I’m pretending to be remotely good enough to, anyway. The buzz of performance is amazing. The thrill of getting things right in front of people will never die. But just self-indulgent, selfish, nonsense. No way to live your life. Ego injection. Meaningless.

There are more important things.

* OK, so not really. But it’s the sort of thing that might have happened.

The Italian Job

2005-12-05T17:56:00.000Z

Last weekend I went to Italy, to the Apulia region in the south. A family friend is renovating a house in Fasano, so I went with my dad and my brother-in-law to see how things were going. I won't bore you with every little detail about the trip, but I wanted to note down a couple of interesting things. Humour me.

Firstly, there were olive trees everywhere I looked. In the fields, in the town squares, in my hotel room... EVERYWHERE! Apparently - though I can't verify if this is true - it's illegal to chop down an olive tree; they're too precious a national resource. If you don't pull it up by the root when it first starts to sprout, then you're stuck with it forever, even if it's growing in your hotel room. Myself, I love olive oil, can't get enough of it in my cooking, but not sure if this law makes a lot of sense. Like I said, I couldn't verify it, so it might be bollocks.

Secondly, the region of Apulia is famous for these funky little buildings called Trulli. They have a distinctive conical shape, they're made of limestone, and they'd make a perfect home for a hobbit. UNESCO has labelled the region a world heritage site on the basis that Trulli are "an exceptional example of a form of building construction deriving from prehistoric construction techniques that have survived intact and functioning into the modern world." Couldn't have put it better myself.

Thirdly, Italian TV is shockingly awful. I had the misfortune to sit through a variety show where Patrick Swayze was wheeled onto a stage and several hysterical women competed for a dance. The Dirty One didn't speak a word of Italian and looked dazed and confused, like he'd been knocked over the head and abducted beforehand. One of the trials was to walk across a log. Another was to kiss and fondle a life-size cardboard prop. When the "lucky" finalist got to do the tango with Swayze, he took a couple of faltering steps and fell over. It was like watching a car crash in slow motion. I think the kidnappers were a touch overzealous when they bagged 'im.

Fourth, the weather. It was early December, and the sun was still shining and the sky was a clear blue. Not a cloud in sight. The temperature took a steep drop in the evening, but that's about as extreme as it got. Meanwhile, back in London, you got rained on. Repeatedly.

Finally, the FOOD. It was DELICIOUS. A typical meal was four or five courses and took place over three hours. It was a challenge, but I acquitted myself admirably. On the final day my dad and I visited a supermarket to empty our wallets and fill our arms - olive oil, balsamic vinegar, parmesan cheese, pesto, pasta, panettone, the works. Smuggling it back into the UK proved troublesome because the airline had some bullshit policy of baggage limitation, but I stuffed it all under my jumper and the woman at the check-in didn't even notice. It was the perfect crime, except now my clothes smell of cheese and vinegar.

It was a nice little break, and I'm definitely going back soon.

Italy, I love you.

"A really really heavy hat"

2005-12-01T18:31:00.000Z

I’ve worked out the answer to the question that’s been vexing me for ages, by the way (the most damage you can do to yourself whilst on a bouncy castle is to lick it). And I’ve cleared up the one about whether it’s possible to cut off your own arms, legs and head with an axe (it is, but you have to be seriously committed to the idea).

Next.

If I was wearing a really really heavy hat and jumped up and down on a really really sharp cattle grid, what would happen?

"As much use as is a Ken Hom wok to a man with no arms"

2005-11-25T16:29:00.000Z

Now here’s a fine and dandy couple of examples as to why the world is being run by a cartel of uncoordinated nincompoops and fools, and why we’re all fucked.

Next week some seriously important international UN climate change negotiations will begin in Montreal. The meeting is designed to begin discussions around what action, if any, the world will take when the current Kyoto Protocol runs out in 2012. Given that the USA are still being as greedy and bullish as ever, and that dear old Tony’s getting increasingly shifty on the need for anything decent to be done about climate change at all, there’s a real danger that the conference will be as much use as is a Ken Hom wok to a man with no arms. Nonetheless, the bare concept that the world recognises climate change to be enough of an issue to bother discussing at all remains a Good Thing, in spite of the cackhandedness with which it’s gone about.

But then a week later in Hong Kong a different set of ministers from the same countries will meet under the auspices of the World Trade Organization to discuss how best to continue making Americans rich. Sorry, I mean 'liberalising trade': removing national barriers, taxes or policies that prevent or limit companies' ability to trade internationally for certain reasons. For example, if I’m a small African country that has a tax on imported bananas but not on home-grown bananas – presumably to grow my own economy – I’d have to get rid of the tax and let everyone else's bananas be sold in my shops with no conditions. So in practice this of course just means that those companies that can sell their products internationally at the lowest prices can just undercut everyone else and get even richer, and because these companies usually come from the USA (due to some fairly basic capitalist economies-of-scale stuff) it’s not hard to work out which nation gets the stroppiest about the whole thing when it doesn’t go their way.

Anyway. As part of this whole removing barriers to trade thing, the Americans (together with the Chinese and Koreans) will use the WTO meeting to kick up about the EU’s energy efficiency labelling scheme, which sees pretty taqs attached to products like fridges which pass certain key energy efficiency tests (energy efficiency is good because it means your product isn't spitting out as much climate-changing CO2, etc). The Yanks want these labels removed, because they’re a barrier to trade, and they’re going to use the legal might of the WTO to get their way. And they'll probably win, because they can bomb anyone who disagrees with them, and we all know it. And because the whole WTO is rigged in their favour in the first place, for the reasons outlined at the end of the previous paragraph.

So within the space of one month you’ll have governments in one city saying that we need to do more to avoid climate change, and then you’ll have them in another saying that things designed to prejudice against polluting products are a barrier to trade and stop fat people making even more money and should therefore be made illegal.

Go figure.

Slave to the rhythm

2005-11-24T12:13:00.000Z

Okay, so I've finally jumped on the bandwagon and bought myself an Apple iPod. I had an MP3 player already and it served its purpose, but the damn thing was the size and shape of a frisbee on steroids. Taking it out in public would elicit squeals of laughter, not least from the Apple fashionistas and their bright white "mug me" earbuds. Time to upgrade.

I've now got a iPod Nano 4GB, a gleaming black slab of audio wonder, complemented with top of line Shure E3c headphones and a silicone case from iSkin. Yep, I'm cock of the walk now, bopping along to my favourite tunes whilst lovingly stroking this lion in my pocket. And baby, it's ready to roar.

But wait, what's this? BBC News reports that audio listeners risk damaging their hearing though repeated (ab)use of their iPods. And The Scotsman chimes in with the case of the iPod Thumb, a condition caused by repetitive hand movements when using the iPod click-wheel. Have I just entered a world of pain?! It's not fair! I only want to listen to music on the tube, I don't want to go deaf and have hobbled thumbs!

Hysteria aside, this story has the potential to develop into the greatest public health disaster of the 21st century... no, wait, I'm still being hysterical. I'm having nightmare visions of hospital wards filled with midddle aged hipsters, their hands twitching and heads wrapped in bandages whilst Apple corp. is buried under a mountain of lawsuits.

Y'know, once upon a time, people used to believe that smoking was good for you. Or, at the very least, they didn't know the health implications of a habit that was encouraged by society. The same could be said - at a stretch - about the iPod phenomenon.

"Maybe I should get someone pregnant"

2005-11-03T16:36:00.000Z

Right, so this one’s going to be a bit self-indulgent – pretty poor form for a team blog, I know. Forgive me. But today is my twenty-seven-and-a-halfth birthday. And this means I am officially, as of right now, in my late twenties.

For comparison, Wayne Rooney is only just 20.

Fuck have I achieved in this time? OK, so I’ve collected a few academic qualifications here and there, but I haven’t put them to much actual use. People I went to school with are now big and important and running things, like charities or IT sections and stuff, and although some of these people are socially inept cretins they remain object lessons in what happens if you don’t bugger about at university leering at girls and talking crap for huge chunks of your little life and just go out and get a bloody job instead.

How do I measure success? I don’t crave cars or stacks of cash (although it would be nice to clear my mountains of debt, purely so I can buy things from Sainsbury's that aren’t in tins). And in many areas I consider myself to be distinctly blessed: lovely girlfriend, challenging and interesting job, great friends, good health. Lord knows there are enough poor souls around me who don’t have each or any of those things.

But by any objective standards I suppose I hoped I would have, y’know, done more by now. Written a book. Headlined a rock festival. Scored the winning goal in the FA Cup Final (not that Mr Rooney has managed that either, but that’s got more to do with his team descending down what’s likely to be a decade-long slope of underachievement than any lack of ability on his part).

Other, more stupid, people might at this sort of point start fretting about their meaningless existence and seeking refuge in the concept of a benevolent and omniscient God and some sort of afterlife. These people have rather too much say in how the world is run for my liking.

For me, I’m afraid it’s a more sobering reality: you’re born, you get to try a few things and have a few pints, then you die. That’s the whole Darwinian shitblister for you.

If you’re lucky you might get dusky maidens sobbing at your funeral, or your football club might name a seat after you. If you’re really special you might get a statue or something erected in your honour, assuming you’ve managed to put the brains and guile with which you were born to a suitable use. But that kind of thing doesn’t really happen very often.

Sigh.

Maybe I should get someone pregnant. Just so I can say I’ve done something.

Things I have learned this week

2005-10-21T16:48:00.000+01:00

Never EVER rub your eyes after cooking with chillies. Not only will you go temporarily blind, but you'll be in screaming agony for several hours. In fact, don't touch ANYTHING without washing your hands thoroughly, especially your nether regions.
Karaoke is immensely entertaining. You might have doubts when you're first handed the mike, but in the end you can't let go. And your voice will never sound as good as it does in the bathroom.
Rich people have more fun than poor people.
There comes a time when you're just too old to crash on a sofa. You'll know this when your back gives out the following morning, and you spend the whole day hobbling around like an old man.
Laurel and Hardy are pretty damn funny, whatever the occasion and whatever the time of day.
LATE ENTRY: Plasters on the end of your fingers have an annoying tendency to attach themselves to things. I learned this when wiping my bottom and having to shake off the toilet paper from my hands.

Brat's Life

2005-10-12T16:22:00.000+01:00

If there's one thing I hate more than fat kids, it's child actors.

I hated Macaulay Culkin then and I hate Daniel Radcliffe now.

And it's a strange form of hatred, because it stems from pity - knowing that for all their wealth, their Wine Gum-filled riders and their Smash Hits grins, they're dead inside (right?) - and yet it bypasses actual sympathy and heads straight for active contempt.

And I'm glad to say I'm not the only one. If I may raise the tone of this blog just a smidgeon, I'd like to quote a review written by Noel Coward, himself an intense opponent of child actors, of a play he once saw in which some curly-haired ribbon-wrapped little shit danced across the stage for his entertainment:

"Two things should be cut: the second act, and the child's throat."

Ah, Noel, if only you were alive to hear the youngest of the four lead actors in the upcoming film production of The Chronicles of Narnia proclaim: "I don't want to sound selfish or anything, but I kind of like being in the spotlight. It's nice to be noticed."

Fetch me my rifle.

This town needs an enema

2005-10-12T13:22:00.000+01:00

Posh burgers. Have you ever had one? It's the latest trend in the restaurant trade. Dotted along the high street are shiny new eating emporiums like "The Gourmet Burger Company", "The Fine Burger Company", "Real Burgers", "Hamburger Union"... you get the idea. They can be distinguished from your conventional burger joint by the upmarket clientele and the astronomical prices.

And you won't find a spotty school-leaver serving your food.

It's clear the chattering classes still have that fast-food craving, but they won't be seen dead in downmarket establishments like Burger King or McDonalds. The double whammy of Morgan Spurlock's Super-Size Me and Eric Schlosser's Fast Food Nation put paid to that. So they turn to the Posh Burger Chain, their conscience salved by the knowledge that these burgers are special, made using only thoroughbred cows fed on bavarian beer and organic wheatgrass.

But seriously, let's get some perspective here. Creating a burger is not rocket science. It's a greasy stack of meat and bread, interspersed with the occasional bit of lettuce or tomato. It's a childish meal for a childish palate. Calling it "Gourmet" was ironic in the first instance, but now the bourgeois burger-munchers take it as a serious proposition. Alas, it doesn't matter how "fine" the ingredients are; it's still a chunk of dead animal that resides in your intenstines for several months before being completely digested.

I don't object to the popularity of the burger per se; I've scoffed enough in my short time on this horrid plane of reality.* But it's a pity that, with so many exciting restaurants in this city, with all their exotic tastes and flavours, international cuisine is being sidelined by a form of food that is nothing more than ordinary.

*Most often when I'm drunk or feeling lonesome.

"Forget all about this environmentalist bullshit and start burning car tyres to keep warm"

2005-10-11T15:43:00.000+01:00

Christ, it’s hot, and it’s getting on for Hallowe'en. Don’t you try and tell me that global warming is a leftist conspiracy. There’s nothing but leftists in this office, and we’re all being persecuted just as much as the sinister marketing people over the road.

The only thing keeping me from taking all my clothes off and dunking myself in the nearby canal is the tantalising prospect of the coldest winter since the 1970s (link), thanks to a reasonably regular but sadly unrepresentative meteorological occurrence. I’m taking this forecast with a huge pinch of salt, because I was promised lots of snow last year and it didn’t happen and I got a bit upset. But nonetheless I can’t help squeaking a bit in excitement.

However, should this frosty winter appear it’s going to cause a few headaches for me at work, given that it’s my job to tell people how imminent and serious is the reality of global warming and climate change. It’s a task that has been getting less challenging of late; I’ve found it relatively easy to catch people’s ear with tales of raging heatwaves in Europe, snow in Algeria and hurricanes in the States. It’s true that debate persists in some quarters (quite often Exxon-funded quarters) about the degree to which this sort of weather stuff can be said to be as a result of man’s emissions of climate changing gases, but what we can say with relative confidence is that the impacts and frequency of such events are something we’lre going to get much more used to if global temperature rises continue. Which virtually all scientists of any renown think it will, unless we mend our ways PDQ.

(There's a philosophical squabble to be had, which I'll have another time, about whether we environmentalists are secretly delighted that climate change is coming because it'll mean we were right and you were wrong and now you'll all have to wear hair-shirts and bow at our altar. I give more credence to this than perhaps I should.)

But aargh. We’re in for a winter so cold it’ll freeze one’s knackers off, and so the short-termist idiots (some of which are very powerful Americans, sadly) that are lucky enough to live upon this Earth will forget all about this environmentalist bullshit and start burning car tyres to keep warm again. All it’ll take will be a bit of snow and a runny nose or two, and the fact that the ten warmest years ever recorded have been since 1990 will disappear back into the damp unused bits of people’s heads. How thoroughly depressing.

To attempt to be positive, it is I suppose conceivable that the winter snap might bring some hearty debate about the amount of heating fuel we have left in a world increasingly unsure about how much oil, gas and coal there is left, how economically viable it is to get it out, and how we’re going to stop those damn Chinamen taking it all. But then again, given that the ice cap is melting, thus exposing lots of juicy previously-untapped oil fields for fat Yanks to exploit (link), that’s probably not something that people are going to worry about for long either.

Perhaps that Lomborg git (link) was right when he said that we shouldn’t worry about stopping climate change but should just concentrate our spending on adapting to its impacts. I suppose on a long enough timescale, it doesn’t matter if we kill all the polar bears, sink a couple of islands beneath the waves forever, or cause some really rather notable inconvenience to about thirty million brown-skinned people.

Oh bum, now I hate people again. Sorry. But sometimes it’s all-too-easy to accept that humanity deserves everything it’s going to get.

"Moaning and thrashing slightly"

2005-10-10T14:12:00.000+01:00

I took a bath yesterday, what with it being nearly Christmas and everything.

Bathing is not something I do often (although I do wash, y’know – I’m not a complete tink) because I get bored. But this time I resolved to take half an hour out of my exceptionally hectic and important calendar to lie still for a bit and enjoy the nice warm water lapping at my private parts.

I was doing well, for a while. I rinsed everything that needed it and, y’know, blissed out. It was lovely. I began to make out pretty shapes on the ceiling and the hints of soulful, preternatural rhythms in the whirr of the extractor fan thing. I was calm. There was one point where my heart slowed down so much I thought I might be dead. It occured to me that some people spend their whole lives in this kind of catatonic state, and that perhaps - just perhaps - that mightn't be such a bad way to live after all.

Then my eye was caught by the big wall clock that we recently put in the bathroom. I grew transfixed by the limited spread of numbers and the ceaseless grind of the passing seconds. And I realised with horror that each little tick-tock represented a whole bit of my life that I would never get back again.

Started to go a bit odd; jumped out of bath too hurriedly; slipped on pair of pants; bashed head on the skirting board. Just kind of lay there on my back, moaning and thrashing slightly, like some sort of big cold spindly naked man-tortoise. Man, I felt low.

The moral is this: if you’re going to try and relax, do it somewhere where you can’t be so readily reminded of the monumental futility of our short, pathetic lives.

Country mouse

2005-10-10T14:03:00.000+01:00

I went home last weekend (which is a strange thing to say, cos when I’m there I say ‘I’m going home tomorrow’ – I’m such a nomad), and whilst nestling in the bosom of my parental home I heard some news which saddened me greatly.

The farmer who ran the farm at the end of my road was when I was growing up has died, and the farmland is set to be sold to developers.

The minute I heard this, the memory flooded my mind of peering curiously through the main gate when I was about six or seven, and being asked by the kindly farmer whether I would like to see the cows being milked. He showed me round the barn and explained all the machinery, patiently and kindly (he never had any children of his own, as far as I can remember), and I left in my little wellington boots very grateful to him for sharing his time with me.

This may all seem very Darling Buds to you, and I may well be looking through rose-tinted specs, but finding out that such a defining memory of my childhood has come to such an obvious, inevitable, but poignant end, that the next generation of children who grow up on that road will not remember it as I do, makes me feel old.

And memories are such strange things, aren’t they? In theory, I could describe that farmyard for you in great detail, and if I were at all capable of drawing anything more sophisticated than a stick man, I’d give you a picture too.

But the fact remains that I’m the only person in the world who can remember being shown that barn on that day, in those wellies, from that short height and in that childhood-specific spirit of trepidation and marvel.

An open letter to the bird that shat on my favourite jacket last night…

2005-10-07T09:34:00.000+01:00

Oi, you! Yes you! No, come back here and face up to your responsibilities.

Do you see this? This is very expensive tweed. How dare you spit out the remnants of the worm you picked out of Clapham Common last night, or the remains of the stale Kingsmill crumbs that someone chucked at you in Trafalgar Square over my jacket??

Do I crap on you? Well, do I?

There’s no target on my shoulder, is there? And no, you may not use in your defence the fact that it is considered good luck to get bird shit on you – bollocks to that. There is such a thing as basic courtesy, you know?

And you can tell your little friend who did exactly the same thing to me not two months ago that I’m onto him too.

I mean, it was 11pm, what the hell were you doing in Soho anyway? What are you, gay? Shouldn’t you have been tucked under an awning somewhere, sleeping peacefully, or cooing in a train station, instead of taking a dump on innocent women trying to enjoy a pint?

You think you’re so clever with your feathers and your stupid beak.

Well I hope you get run over on the M25, or that a nice domestic cat rips your head off and dumps your carcass in someone’s living room as a trophy. I’ll send you the dry cleaning bill, you fuckwit. You haven’t heard the last of me.

"Of little or no consolation to the poor sod left scratching their nuts outside the tube station in the rain"

2005-10-06T19:30:00.000+01:00

Look, I know I always rant on about how mobile telephones are destroying the fabric of civilisation and giving us all diseases and melting the polar ice caps and killing kittens and stuff, and I'm sorry, I really am. Am also fully aware that am disgusting walking hypocrite who sends one million text messages per week, and thanks for pointing that out, but just because I'm wedded to the dang thing doesn't mean I can't long for a better world, does it?

But I just chickened out of calling someone to tell them something that they wouldn't want to hear and sent them a text message instead (don't fret, this wasn't anything unpleasant like dumping someone - I'm not Phil Collins, for God's sake), and am now cross.

See, I'm a typical Guardian reader; always looking for someone else to blame rather than accepting the fundamental shortcomings of the human character. But honest, Guv, I didn't really do this just because I am an unstinting coward - although coward I assuredly am; it's also because the mobile phone has made doing nasty things really too easy. This ranges from the big-scale acts of malice, such as being fired (link), to the smaller things that in themselves are just annoyances, but taken all together are like a big stabbing knife hacking at the shower curtain of human decency.

Example. In the olden days, if you arranged to meet someone at, say, 2 o'clock, you bloody well left the house promptly and made sure you got there on time. Now, you leave whenever you damn well choosy, safe in the knowledge that you can send a quick text to your unfortunate victim informing them that you're going to be half an hour late, and they can Jack if they don't like it. The fact that you were able to do this is of little or no consolation to the poor sod left scratching their nuts outside the tube station in the rain. This is not just discourteous; it's downright disrespectful.

My grandfather killed a lot of Germans once so this kind of thing wouldn't happen, but now it's happening anyway, and the Bosch are nowhere to be seen.

The underlying question, of course, is whether the spread of this new technology is the cause of this terribleness or merely facilitating it. It's like the hardcore porn filth that I'm led to believe clogs up the arteries of the internet: does its prevalence mean that perverts are more into cocks, minge and jism than once they were, or rather that they're simply able to share and view it more easily? Does the latter beget the former? Similarly with mobiles, is society's increasing rudeness (if one more person breaks off a conversation with me to answer a bleeping appliance, I swear I'll snap like a twig underfoot and punch them in the eyes), tardiness, abruptness and general slapdashery a result of its addiction to phones, or the reason why the witch things are so successful in the first place?

The Sounds of Now

2005-10-03T16:12:00.000+01:00

I say, has anyone heard of a popular beat combo called The Arcade Fire? They're really rather good.

One of their songs, "Wake Up", can currently be heard adorning the trailers for the BBC's Autumn schedule.

"I’ll get used syringes stuck in my toes"

2005-10-03T14:49:00.000+01:00

This week builders will infest the flat in which I live and rip it to pieces. They’re hunting for dry rot and to find it they need to sledgehammer through the entire front room.

On the one hand this is a good thing, because there are fungal Beasts living in there that need attending to. The Beasts have indeed been the source of much amusing flat tension over the months, culminating in one of our number going a bit potty with a spatula and then retiring to his room for a few months to cool down. I sympathise; not even I, with my wooliest plant-loving hat on, can bring myself to feel anything but scorn for fucking great mushrooms on stalks winking at my party guests from the corner of the room.

On the other hand, however, it’ll mean living for what is likely to be the best part of a month knee-deep in ceiling ash and Beast carcass. I won’t be able to cook. I’ll have to go round to the girlfriend’s house a lot, and that means going to horrible South London more than once a week, and that means I’ll get my trainers nicked, and that means I’ll get used syringes stuck in my toes, and that’s bad, bad, bad.

None of this would have happened if we hadn’t moved to Willesden by mistake.

"Norwich Union are a bunch of lying, duplicitous, callous, shit-faced bastards"

2005-09-26T23:05:00.000+01:00

Seen that current Norwich Union ad campaign - the one that yells"SAVE £200 ON YOUR CAR INSURANCE!"at you as if you're some sort of salivating consumerist penny-pinching disloyal dog-whore-slut-cunt?

It's a LIE. WE ARE BEING LIED TO.

See, it doesn't yell "SAVE £200 ON YOUR CAR INSURANCE!" at all. It actually yells "SAVE £200* ON YOUR CAR INSURANCE!".

Note this:

*
And where there's one of those, there's usually a LIE.

In an idle and inquisitive mood yesterday whilst waiting 39 minutes for a piss-smelling tube train, I followed the trail of that interesting asterisk all the way down to the bottom of the advert, even though this meant getting down on all fours and sticking my head perilously over the yellow line, squinting like a masturbating pensioner as I did so.

You know what it said, in the smallest print that ever was printed? This:

"* 35% of customers save money, 14% save over £200 (based on 50,000 quotes)."

WHICH MEANS that 65% of customers don't save any money at all with Norwich Union. None at all.

WHICH MEANS that Norwich Union are a bunch of lying, duplicitous, callous, shit-faced bastards, and that this sort of thing is precisely the reason why I should be made King and why you should only be allowed to put things in advertisements that are actually factually accurate and not wilful distortions of truth, not that I'll allow advertisements anyway, not unless they're advertising nice things, like a tombola or Homes Needed for Kittens, or something.

BASTARDS.

Funny Ha Ha

2005-09-22T12:33:00.000+01:00

Donald Rumsfeld is giving the president his daily briefing. He concludes by saying: "Yesterday, three Brazilian soldiers were killed in an accident"

"OH NO!" the President exclaims. "That's terrible!"

His staff sits stunned at this display of emotion, nervously watching as the president sits, head in hands. Finally, the President looks up and asks:

"How many is a Brazillion?"

Student bodies

2005-09-22T09:30:00.000+01:00

Last week I had a rant about the McCarthyite hysteria of the government. Certain parties accused me of over-reacting, in which case I offer this news item as proof my concerns were justified. The ironic thing is, it happened on my doorstep; the university campus in question is located very close to where I live.

Middlesex University has suspended the president of its student union and revoked his studentship until further notice after he refused to cancel a debate with the controversial Islamist group Hizb ut-Tahrir.

The union was ordered to cancel the debate at the end of last week but refused, with the president of the student union, Keith Shilson, arguing that it should be allowed on the grounds of freedom of speech. He claims the group, which is considered by some to be extremist, including the prime minister who announced his intention to proscribe it last month, is a non-violent organisation.

Yesterday, Mr Shilson was escorted from the campus by university security in what is believed to be the first disciplinary action to be taken against a student over the issue of extremism.

Up until Ruth Kelly made her speech last week, Middlesex University was going to allow this debate to proceed. A large proportion of their students are Muslim and would likely have been in attendence. It would have been the perfect opportunity to discredit these 'Islamic extremists', if indeed that is what they are. In front of a large audience, difficult questions will be asked and ideas interrogated. If a group consensus had been allowed to form, it is highly likely that this particular political philosophy would have been rejected and the threat neutralised.

But now Middlesex University has been frightened into submission, and their students have been denied a chance to prove they can think and act for themselves. The danger now is that these fringe political groups will go into hiding, where they will flourish on the oxygen of notoriety and persecution. That's the point where an imaginary threat becomes all too real.

UPDATE: here's a clipping from my local newspaper reporting the situation just before the student union president was suspended.

I particularly enjoyed the comment by local Tory MP David Burrowes at the bottom.

"It is unacceptable for the student union to condone activities by an organised body that is involved in any form of hate preaching."

This fool clearly has no idea what's he talking about. Since when was having a debate condoning terrorism?

Who rools the skool?

2005-09-16T12:30:00.000+01:00

Taken from the BBC:

The UK government is encouraging university chiefs to watch out for extremists on campuses and report suspicious people to the authorities. Education Secretary Ruth Kelly said they should protect free thinking but inform police of "unacceptable behaviour" by students or staff.

And it gets better. Taken from the Guardian:

Extremist organisations are operating on university campuses across the country and pose a serious threat to national security, according to a new report.

I'm sorry, but this has to be one of the most idiotic suggestions I have ever heard. Perhaps even THE most idiotic. The government is now so caught up in hysteria, panic and bullshit that they are proposing we watch students?! What next? Shall we round up all the pensioners and lock them away because they use up too much oxygen? Shall we put down any dogs that bark without a license?

We go to university in order to educate ourselves, to learn about the history of ideas, and to meet people we might otherwise never meet. We also go to get horrendously drunk and make unwise decisions about our sleeping partners. We do not, I repeat, DO NOT go to university in order to form covert terrorist cells and plot the downfall of Western civilisation.

This very much a cause for alarm, my friends. History shows that a great many political movements have indeed sprung from the halls of academia, often to the betterment of humanity, so the notion of supressing those political movements which might make the establishment uncomfortable is something that makes ME uncomfortable.

Certainly, extreme views can and will be found on any given university campus, but it's all part of an important process where individuals are allowed to explore the political spectrum and find their place in it. If the behaviour of any one person or group becomes detrimental to the wellbeing of others, then the self-regulating nature of an academic environment will ensure that those offending bodies are removed.

Self-regulation is the important phrase here; universities do not need secret policemen patrolling the dorms and the lecture halls and the libraries to ensure that everyone is behaving as they should. Ruth Kelly and Charles Clarke can take their scare-mongering rhetoric and shove it up their arses. Go find some other sheep to worry.

"Don't leave it too late"

2005-09-16T09:39:00.000+01:00

For the love of God.

Every now and then the medical profession throws its hands in the air and warns that as the avergae age at which a woman has her first baby is rising, having a child after one turns 35 is risky and unwise.

It makes me so angry I want to throw this mug of hot coffee at my colleague's head.

*thud*

It's not that they give us this warning that I object to, mind, it's the way they word it.

Let's take this morning's BBC story, for example.

It quotes 'leading obstetricians' writing in the British Medical Journal, who say that

"Their [women's] delays may reflect disincentives to earlier pregnancy or maybe an underlying resistance to childbearing."

A Dr Susan Bewley goes on to say, "The reasons for these difficulties lie not with women but with a distorted an uninformed view from society, employers, and health planners."

If she really thinks that, why does the story bow out with her saying, "The message that needs to go out is 'don't leave it too late'."

Don't leave it too late??!!

Do you think we're all procrastinating here?! Twiddling our thumbs and thinking, "yeah, yeah, in a minute, I just want to read War and Peace"?

How can you possibly hope to change people's lifestyle choices if you talk to them in such out-dated and insensitive terms?

I understand that there are health risks, and that it is their job to warn women, but they have no right to assume that the reason we're not all pushing a pram around Mothercare is because we can't be arsed to have kids.

(Not that I want them anyway, bloody parasites...)

When will the madness end?

2005-09-15T16:23:00.000+01:00

Gillette has today announced their newest innovation: a 5-bladed razor. (link)

For gawd's sake, wasn't just the one enough, all of a sudden we need FIVE blades?!

This is utter insanity... and it's also entirely predictable. The market is pretty limited in how many razors it can sell, so the ketamine-snorting scumbags in marketing need to justify their existence by cooking up a fresh gimmick every few years to boost sales. And like the mindless cattle we are, we fall for it. Well, the men do anyway.

You might think that this is pretty insignificant event, but did you know that Gillette are one of the world's biggest offenders when it comes to animal testing?* One shudders to think how many half-naked monkeys are sitting in a cage right now, staring ruefully at the five-bladed torture tool being wielded by a sadistic lab assistant.

And have you even SEEN the prices they charge for these stupid gizmos (which offer no discernible improvement to your shaving routine)? It's no surprise that razor blades are shoplifted more often and in greater quantity than any other products in Europe. Thanks to their perceived desireability, supermarket chains like Tesco have implanted microscopic RFID chips on Gillette products which set off CCTV cameras whenever they are pocketed (link), and in so doing the Big Brother states looms ever closer.

Well, I'm not standing for it, nosiree bob. From now on, I'm growing a beard. That's right, you heard it here first, I'm joining the hirsute legions in protest against this bullshit tyranny waged by the follicularly challenged. Sure, growing a beard might impact on my pulling power with the laydeez, but that's a risk I going to have to take. There are prinicples at stake, see, and hairiness is going to be my particular path to happiness.

*Okay okay, they stopped in 1996, but why let facts get in the way of a good rant?

Storm of Protest

2005-09-09T14:38:00.000+01:00

History repeating

2005-09-06T12:30:00.000+01:00

Holy shades of Britpop! Damon Albarn's Gorillaz is at number one with DARE! It deserves to be, seeing as it's an excellent tune with a class video. Have you seen it?

Basically, someone has sawn off Shaun Ryder's head, taken it to a castle at the top of a mountain, and hooked it up to a bank of computers. When it's swtiched on it bops away to Eastern drum beats, wearing dark shades of course, whilst a procession of animated goofballs dance around the head as though it were a tribal totem. It is absolute GENIUS, and I'll fight anyone who says different.

The icing on the cake, however, is that the song has knocked Oasis off the number one spot. Nearly ten years to the day when Blur and Oasis first fought for chart supremacy, where middle-class Southerners clashed with working-class Northerners, Damon Albarn has once again given the Gallagher Brothers a swift kick in the goolies before skipping off to quaff champage and snort coke with a Page Three lovely.

Indeed, even The Grauniad has picked up on the story - here's Alexis Petridis, resident music critic, and his analysis of how Britpop has evolved:

"It's two contrasting routes to the top, two contrasting ideas of the way to sustain success. Oasis still knock out blokey guitar rock. They've got to the point where the new record doesn't matter, people just want to go and see them because they're still a really good live act. But Damon Albarn is very much the artist who has moved on."

Not sure that I entirely agree. The two bands might be worlds apart, but the songs themselves share a common theme - both are sung by Northern monkeys. I reckon the success of this particular song has as much to do with the Gorillaz' school-age fanbase as it does with Shaun Ryder's cult status as the godfather of Madchester.

Regardless, it's good to know that, ten years on, both Albarn and the Gallaghers are still making some kind of an impression on the nation's ear drums. Hopefully, it'll be followed up by an ugly war of words in public. I love a good fight.

Breaking and Entering

2005-08-31T14:02:00.000+01:00

Last weekend, my dear old mum locked me out of the house. I was in the garage, tinkering with my bike, and she assumed I was out so she locked the garden door and took off to do whatever it is that mothers do.

Half an hour later I realised what she'd done, and I was pretty p@#$ed off about it. I had no keys, no phone to call for help, and worst of all, no asthma inhaler to deal with a sudden attack of breathlessness. I wasn't prepared to go anywhere on my bike without a helmet and gloves, but nor was I going to walk to my sister's house wearing a bright yellow flourescent jersey and cycling shorts. I looked like an idiot in that get-up.

There was nothing else for it. I'd have to break into my own home. I did a quick tour of the house, front and back, and noticed that there were windows open on the first floor on both sides of the house. Tsk tsk. To an experienced thief that was practically an open door. To me, it was a possibility. I briefly considered clambering up the wall like a deranged Spider-Man wannabe, but decided against it because of the danger of slipping and impaling myself on the giant satellite dish that my parents used to watch Turkish television. It looked like I was stuck.

And then, with a snap of my fingers, I had an idea. There was a LADDER in the garage! I dashed back in, hopped over assorted debris and clutter, and grabbed the rickety old ladder resting in the corner. I threw it onto the lawn and wrestled it into shape, and then I marched around the house again. I was a clever little scoundrel, oh yes I was.

The front of the house looked like the best option, so I propped the ladder against the wall and looked upwards. Curses! The f@#&ing ladder was too short! It stopped just before a little overhang of slated tiles underneath the window. I could risk climbing to the top of the ladder, but then it would've been a real stretch to get to the window from there, and I needed someone to hold the ladder steady. Breaking into my house, it would seem, was going to be a two man job. I sat down on the ground, still clutching the ladder, and looked at the ground despondently. It looked like I was stuck, again.

Suddenly, from out of nowhere, this old Jamacian man came doddering up to me. I think he was a neighbour, but couldn't be sure because I'd never seen him before in my life, and most of our neighbours made a point of avoiding us because of the strange noises that emanated from our house at all hours of the day. Turkish people aren't known for being quiet and orderly folk. Anyway, he asked me what I was doing. I said that my mum had locked me out. He offered to help. I accepted.

He held the ladder steady whilst I clambered up, and offered encouragment as I flailed my arms about in desperation. Eventually I managed to grab ahold of the ledge, and I hauled myself through the window face first, scattering chintz everywhere as I tried (and failed) to roll as I hit the ground. I'm sure the whole neighbourhood enjoyed the sight of my fat behind dangling out of a first floor window, but at that point I didn't care. I just wanted to get inside and find an inhaler.

Five minutes later I'd thanked the old Jamaican, grabbed my stuff and took off on the bike. It was the perfect crime. It did occur to me though, how did my neighbour know I was who I said I was? I could've been a dirty rotten crook for all he knew, and he might've been an unwitting accessory to a burglary.

Silly old fool. Someone needs to tell him to mind his own business.

Cheers

2005-08-25T13:37:00.000+01:00

I'm reeling slightly from having read this. A boy died in April after drinking three pints of lager, four double whiskies and three double Aftershocks on the eve of his 18th birthday (the eve of his 18th, mind - what on Earth did he have planned for the night itself?). I've a very strange relationship with alcohol, myself. It has driven me to vomitting only a handful of times, but it has hospitalised me not once, not twice, but three (count 'em) three times. And me a former head girl. The first time, I arrived home from a party and was convinced that making a hot water bottle was the best idea in the world. (Tells you how wild a party that was). Turns out I was wrong. The second time involved a portable tumble dryer. I don't think it's necessary to go into the details of that story. The third, and by far the worst experience (which I think was someone upstairs' way of saying "don't test me, I will beat you"), was when I fell and tore the cartiledge in my knee, but was so drunk I didn't notice, so I carried on dancing till 3am, then walked for an hour cos I couldn't get a cab. I only noticed at 4am when I couldn't get my pyjama leg on, and when I switched the light on it looked as though I'd swallowed a beach ball which had travelled to my knee. Three months later, doing aqua-physio in a pool full of coffin dodgers, I realised the error of my ways. I'd love to have a decent excuse for getting drunk, but there isn't one really. And it's hypocritical. People who take hard drugs alienate those in their company who choose not to, plus it's insulting to think that your friends need to be off their tits in order to enjoy a night in your company, but the same applies for teetotallers - they must look at people like me with utter contempt. Having been abroad a few times in the last year, I've seen with my own eyes how other people view our yobbish drinking culture, and it's no wonder they think so little of us. But then what do we do after funerals? We raise a toast. This is a very fucked up world we're living in, people.

"But then promptly lost it again for being out of stock of Marmite ice cream"

2005-08-24T21:01:00.000+01:00

Yesterday I went to Harrods for the first time in my poor deprived life.

It was a real disappointment.

I expected rivers of champagne, upon which would float golden longboats ferrying stinking-rich patrons from the food hall to the massage parlours. I expected skivvy, stooped porters to be carrying delicate porcelain artefacts from the shelves to waiting Bentleys. I expected ice statues of Al Fayed himself, his head cracked back in a welcoming laugh, his beneficent arms thrust wide open, beckoning the dollars, yen and roubles of the world's gentry.

In fact, given that I was wearing tatty jeans and scuffed trainers and live with a Labour voter, I was surprised that they even let me in the front door at all.

But it wasn't like that at all. It was just a slightly up-market department store - like Daniels in West Ealing, but with the prams and the toys and the wool all in different rooms rather than just piled up willy-nilly on the floor. Sure, if you bothered to look for them, there were the occasional bits of garish and pricey tat: the £6,000 glass table, topped with a pyrex statuette of a pouty angel, was my particular favourite. There was also a quarter-size Porsche for some brat to drive around in which cost more than most real cars do. But mostly it was just the same old schtick - y'know, Monopoly, pens, squash rackets, Timberland clothes.

The store did temporarily gain my respect for having two whole floors dedicated to Christmas decorations - in August - but then promptly lost it again for being out of stock of Marmite ice cream, the only reason that my lady-companion and I had entered in the first place. (There weren't even that many jodhpur-wearing, fox-hunting, income-tax-evading toffrels there to poke fun at; where were they all? Short of actually doing a decent day's work, I rather assumed the upper classes did little else than hang around in Harrods all day, spitting out of the 5th floor window onto passing tramps. But no.)

So there we are, folks. Harrods? Waste of time.

It smells funny, too, like that time my brother tipped a whole bottle of my dad's Brut all over the cat to try and make it stink a bit less like death.

Set phasers to "stun"

2005-08-23T12:54:00.000+01:00

McSweeney's has a list of Klingon Fairy Tales (link), including:

"Goldilocks Dies With Honor at the Hands of the Three Bears"
"Snow White and the Six Dwarves She Killed With Her Bare Hands and the Seventh Dwarf She Let Get Away as a Warning to Others"
"Old Mother Hubbard, Lacking the Means to Support Herself With Honor, Sets Her Disruptor on Self-Destruct and Waits for the Inevitable"

Ye gods, I miss Star Trek. I miss that utopian dream that proves so enticing to both idealists and perverts alike (link). When are they going to resurrect the franchise proper, d'ye think?

"If science doesn't come to terms with that PDQ then the aliens will come and eat us all"

2005-08-22T22:17:00.000+01:00

Once I wrote elsewhere about how I have recently developed the unsettling habit of knowing when my mobile phone is about to ring about three seconds before it actually does. My brain has evolved into a gigantic aerial. I am a cyborg or something.

I subsequently explained this to my annoyingly literal-minded flatmate, and he called me a "silly, silly cunt" and talked about transceivers and carrier waves and the funny noise that your computer monitor makes if you have your phone underneath it when a text message is coming in*, and how it's all connected and perfectly rationalisable by Science, but the mobile phone companies don't want you to talk about it because it proves that we're all swimming in a plasmatic sea of electromagnetism and will all get molten heads and die and then they'll get a huge can of whup-ass opened upon them.

But then I thought about other things that happen that Science can't explain, prompted by an article I've just read in a magazine. Things like dogs knowing when their owners are coming home, regardless of what time of day it is. Things like identical twins sharing pregancy pains. Things like the 20-year experiment in Amsterdam in which 19,000 couples have tested, using real Science and that, whether you can tell if someone's staring at the back of your head or not, and got it right so many times that the odds on this being sheer fluke are apparently 10 to the power 376 against.

And I started to ponder whether there might actually be something to all this ESP stuff after all. I'm not saying I believe the witterings of daft old women in floaty dresses and caravans, and neither do I expect to be able to use the Jedi mind trick on my boss and get out of the presentation I've got to do tomorrow morning, more's the pity. I'm just saying, that's all. Whole lot of weird shit goes on sometimes, and between you and I, dear Internet, I'm not sure that Science always necessarily knows which end of the dog is barking and which is having a big poo.

You can't say stuff like that, of course. You'll be tarred and feathered and stapled to a bit of wood. No-one in the scientific community is even interested in the faintest possibility of so-called "extra-sensory" perception - between 1890 and 1990 only four papers worldwide were written about people's ability to tell when they're being stared at - but WE ALL KNOW that there are things in the world that are more than a little bit odd, and if Science doesn't come to terms with that PDQ then the aliens will come and eat us all, and we won't be able to say we weren't warned.

* phit-phatta-phit-phatta-phit-phatta-phrrrrrrrrururrurrrrrrrr

Gonzo Firecracker

2005-08-22T13:38:00.000+01:00

Taken from the NY Times:

"WOODY CREEK, Colo., Aug. 21 - Hunter S. Thompson indulged in numerous hallucinogenic fantasies over the years, but this weekend, one of them morphed into reality: his ashes were blasted into the sky over his farm here, carried by red, blue and silver fireworks in front of a 153-foot monument that Mr. Thompson, the writer and avatar of 'gonzo' journalism, designed himself almost 30 years ago."

The man was a freakin' looneytunes, no question, but he also had an enormous political conscience. You can't ask for much more from a steenkin' journalist.

Rest in peace.

Thriller

2005-08-19T12:51:00.000+01:00

Click here to hear a novelty record about Halloween.

Featuring the combined talents of Beck, Sonic Youth and the Yeah Yeah Yeahs, amongst others, it's a satire on all those well-intentioned but ultimately patronising charity records that have scorched our ear-drums in times past like an aural plague.

This one's rather good though.

You can buy it from iTunes on Oct 4th, all profits go to UNICEF.

Busting those blocks

2005-08-19T12:33:00.000+01:00

Great article about the summer blockbuster meltdown in today's Guardian (link).

I always find the inner workings of Tinseltown fascinating. The place is populated by burgeoning numbers of dead-eyed piranhas who, if they weren't so intent on devouring each other, would perchance realise they're all trapped in a gaudy fish-bowl where the water levels are slowly falling.

Schadenfreude aside, this article also contains a prediction by Steven Spielberg which is rather touching in its naivety:

"...And I think there will be another medium coming up: direct input into your cerebellum. There will be a medium some day that will use images - that are artistically combined, with storytelling and good performing, and all the creative forces - to create complete sensory experiences that will be directly downloaded into your mind. I think that kind of Orwellian medium is only about 30 years away."

Hmmm. One close encounter too many, eh Steve?

I predict a riot

2005-08-17T14:00:00.000+01:00

Taken from CNN:

RICHMOND, Virginia (AP) -- A rush to purchase $50 used laptops turned into a violent stampede Tuesday, with people getting thrown to the pavement, beaten with a folding chair and nearly driven over. One woman went so far to wet herself rather than surrender her place in line.

These events are uncannily similar to what happened in London earlier this year, where the opening night of the Ikea Edmonton superstore led to assorted riots, stabbings and shootings (link).

It's quite frightening, isn't it? In our decadent Western sociey, a crowd of strangers are only too happy to debase themselves and each other for the sake of a cheap laptop or a new sofa.

Given the opportunity, I'd have been tempted to join in myself.

Wish You Were Here?

2005-08-12T14:12:00.000+01:00

I don't know why this is getting to me so much, but it really is. John McCririck, that Tory-voting racing pundit with a wardrobe that sends kids screaming to their mother's aprons, used his 5 minutes in the pulpit during Robin Cook's funeral today to score political points. "What an impressive attendance we've all got," he said. "All of us have changed our plans to show our respect and affection for Robin and for Gaynor and the boys and the family. "But there is just one exception to that - and that's the nation's leader, the prime minister. "Now Margaret Thatcher, of course, she attended Ted Heath's service. "I believe the prime minister's snub to Robin's family, to millions of New Labour voters, demonstrates a petty vindictiveness and a moral failure, opting to continue snorkelling instead of doing his duty. What a contrast with Lady Thatcher." Firstly, I'm not sure that you want to accuse anyone of moral failure by comparing them to any member of the Thatcher clan (there is the small issue, McMcCririck, of Lady T having fuck all else to do with her time these days, other than keep her kids out of jail, than go to funerals). Secondly, are Tony's holiday plans (and I'm not his biggest fan, but I wouldn't begrudge the man a holiday) anyone's business other than his own? Thirdly, according to all the obituaries I've read in the last week (depressingly, that's rather a lot), Robin Cook was very well regarded across the political spectrum for his grasp of rhetoric and political conflict, but was equally well respected for leaving his disputes behind in order to nurture personal friendships. Hell, he was a pal of McCririck's for 20 years, wasn't he? And yet his this fat, self-aggrandising bigot has learnt nothing from a man who he claims to have admired for decades. Idiot. Tony, if you're reading this, put on Club Tropicana on repeat and get back to that snorkelling. Cos when you come home, nothing will have changed.

Game Over

2005-08-10T12:04:00.000+01:00

It says here that a man in South Korea has died of heart failure after playing a computer game for more than 50 hours. According to witnesses, the 28-year old would not leave his spot at an Internet cafe for three days straight except to go to the toilet and take brief naps on a makeshift bed. He had even quit his job to play games full-time, his speciality being online battle simulations.

Blimey. So this the future of gaming, where people become so addicted that they'll keep on playing to the point of death. Does this mean that the company who made the game are somehow liable? The mind boggles at the kind of screaming headlines the Daily Mail will cook up in response.

Myself, I have been (un)fortunate enough to have reviewed videogames for a national publication, and I think it's safe to say that modern games have come a long way from playing Space Invaders or Pac-Man in a dingy arcade in the back of a newsagent. They're still exciting, but gone are the days when you could pick up a joypad and immediately understand the objective. Nowadays it's all about total immersion in a virtual world, with hour upon hour of our precious time flittered away in achieving a goal that, let's face it, has no bearing on our lives other than a brief flicker of satisfaction.

Hmm. Perhaps it's time to put away these childish things. Or perhaps not. Occasionally I still get a buzz out of the imagination and energy that has gone into creating these digital diversions (my current favourite is Beyond Good and Evil). And I feel a lot less guilty about playing them than watching television, which is far far more likely to turn you into a vegetable.

By way of compromise, the powers that be should come with a health warning, just so that people are aware of the possible risks. Maybe something like:

"CAUTION: This game will give you pale skin, sunken eyeballs, and bad breath. Oh, and it will also cause heart attacks and epilepsy."

Yeah, that sounds about right.

The Invisible Manning

2005-08-04T11:01:00.000+01:00

Busted. Sony have agreed to a settlement of $1.5 million with filmgoers in the US after a reviewer who bigged up a number of their films turned out to be a figment of their spin doctors’ dribbly imaginations. They named him David Manning (mmm… dynamic), and said that he was a critic for the Ridgefield Press in Connecticut. Not surprisingly, when the editor of the paper read an employee he’d never heard of describing Hollow Man as "one hell of a scary ride" and The Animal (nope, me neither) as "another winner", he blew the whistle. So now those who paid to see any of these films in the US can claim a $5 refund, which I strongly suggest they spend on getting their heads examined. This may sound like an amusing Stateside anecdote to you, but think it through. There may be wider, and overwhelmingly welcome implications for us Brits – what if Paul Ross is just a figment of someone’s sick imagination too? It’s almost too much to bear…

Goat commits suicide

2005-08-01T11:44:00.000+01:00

This news item comes from well-respected Ghanaian publication "The Weekend Palaver", dated Fri Jan 29 - Feb 4, 1971:

No sooner had Dr. Amoako reached home than he saw the goat suspended in mid-air with legs akimbo as if to protest against the imminent danger of "human assassination."

A classic example, I'm sure you'll agree, of fine journalism for all roving reporters and associated hacks.

Many thanks to "Spesh" for passing it on.

"Feed herself some tar"

2005-07-31T13:44:00.000+01:00

Good. Cigarettes have come one step closer to being wiped off the face of the planet forever. As of the morning of 1 August, the EU will finally ban the sponsorship of sporting events by tobacco firms - and in the UK it will be illegal to use clothing to advertise the foul-smelling, anti-social things (link). Step forward, civilisation: you might just be savable after all.

Anecdote. I was out drinkin' and dancin' on Friday night. Gyrating a bit pathetically in the corner was this girl who I thought might have been quite lovely in a certain light (although given that I had consumed several pints of liquid and was not wearing my glasses, it is entirely possible that the light in question may have needed to be darkness). But in between her dainty fingers she gripped a cigarette, and every twenty seconds or so she would pause conversation with her companions to feed herself some smoke and tar. It didn't look as if the robotic act was bringing her much pleasure, but she seemed compelled - a vice-ridden, cancer-craving wench, sucking furiously on a little stick of stink from a lack of anything more exciting to do. Needless to say, I opted to give Miss Yellow-Gums a wide berth (shame for her, because otherwise she would have been guaranteed to sleep with me).

As always when out drinking, I arrived home that night and utterly reeked. I stripped myself naked, threw all of my pungent clothes out into the garden, and had a shower. Still I couldn't seem to shift the whiff of other people's fags from my nostrils, and I started wigging out a bit, kind of like Macbeth when he couldn't get the blood from his hands. A good job I was nearly comatose through drink, or I'd have started hitting myself again.

I think society's changing, though. The current advertising campaigns that make smoking out to be repulsive and un-sexy are spot on, and the above-mentioned legislation can only help to further stigmatise this increasingly reviled habit. When at the airport recently I noted how seedy the smoking areas looked - beige-lit cordoned-off areas with extractor fans whirring, filled with ashen-faced women holding drooping cigarettes in their fingers (and no, I'm not being sexist - I swear more women smoke than men, I swear it. Personally I am too much an admirer of the the female race to see an otherwise attractive lady puffing away like a locomotive and not want to cry through the sheer bloody waste of it all).

Maybe in years to come we'll look back on this strange addiction and wonder what the hell we thought we were up to. I hope so. But in case history judges us all with the same scorn, I would like it hereby put on record that I always thought it was a fucking rat's game in the first place.

Taking the biscuit

2005-07-29T14:13:00.000+01:00

It's a proud moment when you can settle a debate than can only exist among swirls of marijuana smoke in a student flat at about 4am on a weekday morning. Jaffa Cakes are, legally, cakes. In a tribunal held in 1991, Customs & Excise insisted they were a chocolate-covered biscuit, and were therefore VAT-able, while McVitie's argued they were a tax-free cake. According to my sources, "McVitie's won its argument by baking a foot-wide Jaffa Cake and passing it around". Judges make big decisions on such a broad spectrum of subjects, don't they? Whether to feed a dying man, whether a film director is as randy as the papers say he is, whether a cake is a cake or not. It's hardly the making of a John Grisham novel, but it does make me wish I'd studied Law. Mmmm... a foot wide Jaffa Cake...

"Something which looked suspiciously bulky"

2005-07-29T13:58:00.000+01:00

There are some right spastics in charge, aren't there? The law which was designed and approved by Parliament specifically to remove anti-war protestor Brian Haw from making a scene outside the House of Commons has a loophole in it - he's exempt because his protest started before the law came in (link).

How wonderfully inept. Presumably now the government will have to crack down on this overwhelming public menace by other means. Maybe the police can jump on him and fire eight bullets into his head.

It's as amusingly cack-handed as the story recounted on Popbitch (link) about the guy on the tube arrested by police for having something which looked suspiciously bulky under his coat, only to find out when they got him to the nick that he was, in fact, just really fat.

Spellbound

2005-07-28T15:11:00.000+01:00

By now you've finished reading Harry Potter 6, yes? Well whatever you do, don't tell me how it ends - I'm only a third of the way through. Devoted Potterites looking for their next fix will probably want to click here for an exhaustive list and description of every spell used in all the books (and films and games).

My favourites are Densaugeo (causes teeth to grow rapidly), the slug-vomiting charm (have a guess) and the bat-bogey hex (guess again). Yes yes, I know they're not real. But it's fun to pretend, innit?

In related news, Greenpeace have been campaigning to save Muggle forests because Scholastic, the US publishers of the Harry Potter series, are not using recycled paper for this hernia-inducing tome. Shame on you, Scholastic! Details of the campaign can be found here, along with instructions for ordering the book from forest-friendly folks in Canada.

Deep Throat meets Legally Blonde

2005-07-28T12:26:00.000+01:00

A cautionary tale to remember, this one. This lovely lady is Nadine Haobsh, who was the 24-year-old beauty editor (or fashion editor, depending on which version of this story you choose to trust – all hail the accuracy of American journalism) of a woman’s magazine in New York. Was, until last Thursday that is, when the Post unmasked her as the author of Jolie in NYC, a new but very popular blog which has been exposing the hypocrisy and shallowness of the fashion industry since May. Her identity was revealed on Thursday and she was promptly sacked on Friday, but the fairytale end to the story, which serves as a satisfying finger gesture to the corporate bullies who fired he ass “due to lack of respect” is that she’s never been so popular. As you can see from her blog, she now has a publicist with what I’m told is “arguably the most important talent agency in the United States”, and she’s about to sign a book deal that could make her enough $$$ to sit back and continue writing her blog until she’s dictating it to her heirs from an adjustable bed. And judging by the few photos of her that have been published since this blew up, she’s probably got herself an image consultant too – looks every bit the polished and groomed NY media celeb. Which, in a way, is a sad thing. Once a respected rebel informant with a dedicated following, whose on-line confessions had all the glamour, the duplicity and humour of all good blogs, Haobsh has become just another twinset-and-pearls page-filler with a pretty face. Still, the blog is ongoing (until, of course, her former employers choose to sue), and she seems to be happy enough with the way things have turned out. Right, back to work. These burgers won’t flip themselves, you know.

"A dusky love affair with a hairy lady"

2005-07-28T10:53:00.000+01:00

I might try and get myself arrested tomorrow. This is enormously exciting. I’ve never ever been arrested, not even for something cack, although I did come close when I was a kid when I got collared for nicking people’s trolleys in Safeway’s carpark when they weren’t looking, taking them back to the shop, and pocketing the quids.

See, there’s a big relatively secret anti-capitalist thing going on, and I’m going to take part. As I’m a novice I probably won’t get to do anything exciting like kicking a copper in the man-sack; I’ll most likely be relegated to the back of the horde. Maybe if I ask nicely they’ll let me chuck a brick at an Evening Standard vendor, or something. I don’t really know how these things work.

Ultimately it is my particular ambition to be televised being hauled shoulder-high by a battalion of plod and carried, screaming obscenities, to a meat-wagon. Ideally I’ll have a torrent of blood pouring from a non-painful but deeply dramatic head wound. I’ll be banged up in clink for the night and treated like a medieval serf by the night sergeant, and my tearful mother will have to come and bail me out. She’ll tell me how disappointed she is in me (although being a crusty old hippy sort herself, inside she’ll be beaming with pride).

This could be the beginning of a whole new dark adventure. It’ll certainly add spice to my memoirs. Perhaps I’ll begin a dusky love affair with a hairy lady co-rioter and catch an interesting STD. I might get something pierced.

Golly, I can’t wait.

You Wonka

2005-07-27T13:31:00.000+01:00

There's a little film called Charlie and the Chocolate Factory released in the UK this weekend. Aside from the usual topics of debate, like "Is this remake of the 1975 classic really necessary?", or "There's no way in hell that Johnny Depp can fill Gene Wilder's shoes", now is a good time to scrutinise the book's author, Roald Dahl.

According to this profile in the New Yorker magazine, kids still can't get enough of his terrific tales, whereas parents have long disapproved of his grubby little stories. No surprise there, but did you know that he was also a bit of an anti-semite? No, me neither.

Read and weep, dear friends. If it's true, then my heart is broken, and another childhood hero crumbles into dust.

"It can respond to people touching it. It's very satisfying"

2005-07-27T12:25:00.000+01:00

Those crazy Japs have invented a robot that looks like a burns victim (link). Point of that? The only possible use for a robot that looks like a burns victim is to have sex with, and if that’s what I wanted to do I could just go and get a real burns victim from a hospital and have sex with them.

Robots disappoint me. When I was a child I thought that by the year 2005 the whole world would be run by a robot president, and people would be living in a people zoo being ogled at by robot children with robot dogs on strings. But like so many of my childhood expectations, the glum reality is much more depressing. Robots can’t do anything. Robots are gay.

But the Japs aren’t going to rest until the whole world looks like Blade Runner and everyone’s ordering rice and beans from conveyor belts and eating it with sticks and having adverts for Mitsubishi and Sony beamed straight into their frontal brain lobes by sinister death rays and doing chop-socky in the street. I’m telling you, we need to start watching them

Willkommmen

2005-07-27T10:11:00.000+01:00

Hier ist gut, jah?