Monday 8 November 2010

Shit Supermarket of the Year Award

This year's 'Shit Supermarket of the Year Award' is a bit of a surprise result.

Asda, the previous winners of the title for the last 10 years are out of the running as there sadly isn't one on the island. A shame, and I quite miss them, especially their 'Smart Price' food range which is like normal food, but with all the quality, taste and joy removed beforehand. I really don't know how they manage it, time after time, making similar goods to all other stores ... but nowhere near as nice. It never ceases to amaze me.

Prior to that, Kwik Save had been the main recipient of the title, due to their poor spelling and the fact that they were neither 'kwik', nor much of a saving. There was a particularly grim store near where I lived that was permanently grey with grime and the shelving looked as if it had been made from Mecchano. Still, you did get cardboard boxes to take your shopping home in, which was a bonus.

So who wins the prestigious title this year then?

No, it's not Sainsburys- despite living next door to one and being woken up early in the morning each day by delivery vans- and their Self Service tills which can't seem to complete a transaction without having a mad bleeping fit about the 'Item Not Placed In Bag'. It's a tiny fucking sachet, you metal tit! It weighs about as much as a feather. You couldn't possibly know if it was placed on the scales or not, you electronic piece of fuckwittery!

The winner by a mile is.... *drum roll* ... Tescos.

And not just for Tesco Mary from X Factor either, a singer so dull she makes Susan Boyle sound 'edgy' and 'contemporary'. No, Tesco win hands down for their Customer-Unfriendly, Impossible- to - Navigate home delivery shopping site. Want some shopping delivered? Well good luck to you, because it will take you the entire day to find the shopping you want. I have wasted entire weeks of my life scrolling up and down trying to find a particular bottle of squash or packet of cereal. Don't even bother trying to find particular CD or book on there- you will be trying for months.

And when you finally think you have done your shopping- oh, no you haven't! Because when it arrives - and a grumpy bloke in a van turns up late moaning about not being able to find you - there will be loads of items wrapped up in little blue bags. This means- 'Fuck You. We couldn't be arsed to find what you actually wanted so we're fobbing you off with this heap of random shit replacement things instead'.

So , you couldn't find a carton of apple juice in the whole of Tescos, could you? All ran out, had you? All you had left was a carton of Breakfast Juice, was it? FFS! I ordered a pack of 6 pork faggots because I needed 6 pork faggots. Why the fucking fuck did you decide to replace them with TWO packs of 2 Pork faggots? By my calculations that makes 4. So what happened there then? Were these the last 4 pork faggots in existence? Is that all there is?Have they stopped making them now? Or is t that you can't you do the basic maths? And the two packs of 4 Beef Quarter pounders- why did you put in one pack... and then another pack of Quarter Pounders with Chilli? I don't want Quarter Pounders with Chilli. Did you not read the label properly? Or do you only have one of each item? Are you getting your stuff from a tiny freezer in a corner shop somewhere? Christ, - you are the biggest supermarket in the UK, you ballbags. So why does it feel like you're giving me wartime rations?

And NEVER EVER EVER buy any meat or dairy things from Tesco online - because they will all run out of date about two days after they arrive! Half the things I've brought from them I ended up having to replace or buy extra portions from somewhere else - so I spent nearly twice as much on shopping as I intended to.

Also, Tesco, I think it would be a good idea if you gave away magnifying glasses with every order so that your own brand stuff appears normal sized. Has everything been shrunk? Your chickens are little more than runty pigeons and your Mega- Giganto-Collosso-Family-Bargain Buckets are like everyone else's 'Set Meals for One'.

So Well done Tesco - you have made shopping much more difficult, stressful, expensive, pointless and disappointing than it ever should be. Every Little helps? Well,thanks for nothing. I think you've been Very Little Help.

Friday 8 October 2010

Last Night I was in Ancient Rome.

There was an Open Evening at the local High School last night. I had to sit through a whole load of tiresome waffle from the head teacher and the architects about plans for a new build. They might be able to create amazing new futuristic buildings but they couldn't understand the simple principle of holding a microphone to their lips in order to be heard clearly. Instead they stood and mumbled away like a pair of old grannies outside a fruit & veg shop. They could have been moaning about 'oh, he's too good for her' or 'it's not like the old days, is it' for all I could make out.

However I did enjoy the student choir's renditions of songs by Lady Gaga, Mika and the Cranberries. Although I did wonder what message was being conveyed about to the standard of education on offer as they belted out ' what's in your he-ead? In your he-e-e-ead? Zo-om-bie!... '

But best of all imho was .. The Classroom of the Future!!!! Yes, in future classrooms you can't sit on anything that looks remotely like a chair or sit at anything that looks remotely like a table. Soft, brightly coloured weird shapes will be the order of the day. If it looks like something from out of Teletubbies or In the Night Garden then so much the better. And there were Voting Eggs- litle oval things with keypads full of buttons to press your answer in a Who Wants to Be a Millionaire type way.

The best thing though was a giant 3D screen. I put on my big Bono glasses and watched in amazement as biological dissections and geometric shapes flew all around me. This was the way to learn things properly - looking like a rock star twat and dodging a whole load of expensive flying graphics. There was also a programme which made it look as if you were moving through the empty computer game streets of Ancient Rome on a sort of conveyorbelt. It was utterly stunning - I was bloody loving all this I can tell you. Unfortunately my wife was completely hating it and she was wondering where all the books and proper classrooms were. Spoilsport. I want the school to really embrace future thinking and for my daughter to wear a shiny silver spacesuit for a school uniform, travel to school by jetpack, be taught by robots and eat roast dinners out of tubes.

Wednesday 29 September 2010

A Bug's Death

You'll probably think I'm totally wet for saying this... but today I cried over a daddy long legs.

I had just taken my youngest daughter to school and we were waiting in the porch of the main doors of the school. There was a cranefly in the corner of the window and I was telling her about how harmless they were when a nasty little boy arrived and went completely beserk, yelling 'Kill it! Kill it Mr. Git!' and instantly started whacking it. I was shocked and upset by this aggressive display of playground bloodlust and I told him to stop but he pulled its legs off and smashed it with a football.

I took the poor thing away but it was too late. I watched it twitch in my hand for a moment and then it died. I informed the school secretary but there was not much that could be done as I didn't know the boy's name. I don't really think that was true and I think it would be nice if the school saw teaching children to respect living things as important.

I am not usually such a wuss (OK I cry at Disney films, what of it?) and I'm certainly no hippie-dippy treehugger (I like baths too much). I couldn't live without meat (Can you be Vegephobic? I think I must be.) and I have, in my time, squished countless flies, ants and wasps. I even lobbed a book at a mouse once. But these were all intruders into my home and whenever I can help a bug escape by opening a window I will. I've never felt this way about a cranefly before. Maybe it's to do with my time spent in the children's hospital (and hearing about far too many kids dying) that seeing such an unnecessary death, even of an insect, now cuts deep. :' (

Excuse me, I'll go back to watching Alien Quadrilogy now....

Monday 23 August 2010

Tegan

When my OH isn't destroying islands by digging them up to search for unlikely Aztec artefacts on Bejeweled Blitz she makes friends with other mums who have lost children to cancer. As a result of this she has made online friends with a family from Nottingham who have a 9-month-old daughter called Tegan who was born with an inoperable brain tumor. Tegan’s doctors don’t know how long she has left, and she lives day to day. The chances of Tegan making it to her first birthday are slim as she stops breathing so regularly.

So she wrote to the Island's newspaper and appealed to readers to help the family, saying that it was really important the family had wonderful memories and special times with their little girl before she died. She wrote :

'I would like to appeal to anyone who has a caravan, chalet or holiday home they can use free for a week to give this family, who can’t afford a holiday, the opportunity enjoy a holiday and for Tegan to experience the seaside. The family can come at any time, however they would need a couple of weeks to arrange for oxygen and other medical equipment that currently helps keep Tegan alive. I am desperate to help Tegan and her family as I lost my son when he was nearly five months old, after he, too, had been born with cancer. My son’s only experience of life was a hospital room, I would like to help create memories for Tegan’s family as I know how important it is.'

The article was featured prominently under the headline 'Can anyone help little Tegan?' and the readers' response was incredible, the parents were moved to tears by the kindness of complete strangers who had offered their homes so they could enjoy a week’s holiday on the Island. The generosity of people was amazing - it's the kind of thing that puts a warm glow in your heart.


Tuesday 13 July 2010

Goodbye Mum

Goodbye Mum.

It feels strange calling you that. You never let me call you that. I always called you by your first name as you thought 'Mum' sounded too old. But I like it. It indicates a bond between us that was never there.

I know you always hated me. I never hated you though. I always wanted your respect and approval but never got it. We have not spoken for 8 years but I never gave up hoping. I only wish that things could have been different between us.

I would've loved to have been able to have helped you. You had psychological problems - depression, schizophrenia, paranoia - but you could never admit it to yourself. Your erratic behaviour drove you apart from your family - a sister who was only referred to a couple of times and two brothers who were only ever mentioned once - and also my Dad's family.

My dads parents were really lovely people. They were never the demons you made them out to be. It's a shame I only got to know them when I was an adult and when they only had a year or two left to live. But it was a pleasure to have known them and I am so glad that I got to reunite my Dad with them at the end. I'm quite proud of that.

And so I became the villain. You saw enemies everywhere. You always had to have an enemy, someone whose fault it all was. It was sadly inevitable that once I had patched up the relationship between my Dad and his family that it was going to be me, that it was my turn to be the baddie. I could no longer do anything right in your eyes. The atmosphere in the house when I came to visit became very tense, the temperature sub zero. I became terrified of you - I dreaded going round to see you because I knew you were going to say horrible things about me and belittle me in front of my family.

Looking back now it seems that I didn't have a choice. I did the only thing that I could do to protect my family and my sanity. After one particularly bad screaming-at, (during which you made it clear that you hated me, didn't care what I thought, didn't care what I said...) I stood up and told you that it was unacceptable behaviour to talk to anybody like that, that I couldn't take it any more. And I demanded an apology.

I have waited 8 years for that apology and I don't think I'll be getting one now. The decision to walk away from you was the best (and one of the hardest)decisions I have ever made and I don't regret it for one single moment. I saved myself from further mental bullying and I saved my children from having to witness that kind of behaviour.

I wish that it had all been different, of course. I wish that we could have been a normal family, with love and hugs and respect for each other. I wish that my Dad had had the balls to stand up to you and not just nod his head blindly at everything you said. You always wore the trousers in that relationship, eh?

I am glad you didn't suffer for too long at the end. From diagnosis (Pancreatic cancer from your heavy drinking) to coma and a quick, peaceful death at home (by which time it had spread to other organs) in just 3 weeks. You never wanted to get old and fragile, did you?

It's a shame you were the way you were. You missed out on other people. Not just me and my family, but your family, Dad's family and all the friends you may have got had you not verbally attacked and pushed everyone else in your life away over the years. Most people are a lot nicer than you ever gave them credit for.

I would like to eventually get my Dad back as a friend, although my name will be poison now. I will give him some time but it's not going to be easy for either of us. My brother (who has Asperger's and schizophrenia and suicidal tendencies) never really understood what was going on, just enjoyed being your favourite son. But the negative voices he hears in his head say very similar things to what you have said to me in the past.

I am a very lucky man. I finally know what a family's love feels like. If ever one of my children hated me I would be utterly devastated. Not angry. And I would do anything I could to get them back because I love them so much. I cannot understand what you did to me: all the hurt and hate and venom over the years. How could you ever do that to your son? I just don't get it at all.

R.I.P. Mum. Hope you now have all the peace and inner harmony you never found whilst you were alive. I would have loved to have made peace with you but deep in my heart I knew that that was something you would never have let happen. I was not meant to know that you were terminally ill and I had to respect your wishes. I had no wish to open old wounds. It wouldn't have been right and it wouldn't have been fair to my family. I didn't want to pass that shit on. I am not angry, could never be angry. I just feel sorry for you and the way things were and I wished it all could have been so different.
Love, your son. x


Thursday 8 July 2010

I Can't Get This out of my Head


Other people - @ArmyofDave and @antonvowl among them, have written better blogs than I ever could about the Daily Express headline today. http://www.dailyexpress.co.uk/posts/view/185617 focussing on the proper issues raised by the piece and formulating reasoned arguments against the atrocities contained within. I would just like to use it to highlight the importance of not having narrow-minded preconceptions about certain types of people - whether they be straight or gay - and hopefully as a little thing to cheer up people who are naturally different and don't fit into the rigid boundaries set by 'society' (whatever that is)and spend a lot of their time feeling a little awkward as a result (like me). 'Judge not, lest ye be judged yourself' as someone once said- I think it was James Hetfield of Metallica - and 'There Must be more to life than stereotypes' as Blur eloquently once put it.

It is sad that British newspapers like the Express and the Mail are just platforms for extreme prejudice and the way in which the views of Supreme Court judge Lord Rodger (great name btw) have been reported seems to be an insult to everybody's intelligence. He seems like a very judgemental judge. He said -

“Just as male heterosexuals are free to enjoy themselves playing rugby, drinking beer and talking about girls with their mates, so male homosexuals are to be free to enjoy themselves going to Kylie concerts, drinking exotically-coloured cocktails and talking about boys with their straight female mates.”

WHAT. THE. FUCK?

I am straight. I don't play rugby. I don't WATCH rugby. I don't like golf or Bastard bloody football. (Are you listening people who make Father's Day cards? I don't give a shit about sport. Or DIY. I'm not bald, I've never watched the Simpsons and I don't fart that much.There. Run out of fucking ideas, now, haven't you? )

Just writing about football now is bringing me out in a rash. I have always hated it ever since school when I had to stand and shiver on a freezing field in the snow and ice, dressed in a flimsy pair of shorts, whilst the games master (in a jumper and coat and holding a mug of coffee) barked at us like a mad, angry sea-lion. Afterwards, it would take at least 10 minutes for my fingers to thaw out enough to be able to zip up my trousers.

I have spent the last few weeks desperately trying to avoid all mentions of what I consider to be the most pointless bloody boring past time in existence. After being on tv since about February (well it seems like it) the World Cup finally ends this weekend (had to check that) and then thankfully everyone can shut the fuck up about it. (OK, I did try and bear watching a few minutes of the match that England had to win to qualify but that was more out of a communal sense of 'please don't humiliate us this much, England you wankers' than of any loyalty to the team). 'I don't know or care which teams are in the final. I reckon they should just ask Paul the Psychic fucking Octopus who will win it and save millions by not having to play any of the deathly dull matches.

I don't drink beer. Never liked the stuff. To me it tastes of sweat, fags and unpleasantness. I hardly drink alcohol, apart from at Christmas. But when, a couple of years ago, I DID go out with work colleagues, I would always plump for something sweet, tasty and colourful. Again, this is not because I am gay- I just have a sweet tooth ( I mourned the passing of alcopops as they were priced further and further out of my price range).

I have never talked about girls- not even when I was single. I didn't really think that guys actually did that sort of thing much. I have never been with a group of friends where the conversation has turned to what girls we like or who we fancied. I have never even given that particular topic of conversation any thought and I wouldn't want to talk about girls in that way anyway. I have never cheated or slept around as I have only dated one woman and I've ended up being married to her for the last fifteen years.


What else are heterosexual men meant to like? Cars? I can't stand stand cars and I can't drive, If I had a wish it would be that we's all wake up tomorrow and there'd be no cars (or at least none of those horrible metal, petrol-guzzling cars- I'm up for trying other alternatives and public transport would have to be a million times better organised). There'd certainly be no more football and no more beer (more readily available mead please).


I'm sure there are plenty of beer-swilling, heavy rock-loving, homosexual men out there who've seen the Express article today and were equally offended. It is thoughtless statements and blinkered generalised opinions like those voiced by Lord Rodger that really fucking hurt, every time. But we're all just bloody people - We 're all different- and allowed to be different-aren't we?


But at least everyone likes Kylie - don't they?

Friday 18 June 2010

There's Life in the Old Dwarf yet.

(Forgive me if you've already read this on my Twitter timeline but I enjoyed thinking these up and the #tag became better - and longer than I thought it would. )

Inspired by seeing the speculation over a new series of the classic sci-fi sit-com Red Dwarf ( http://www.reddwarf.co.uk/news/2010/06/11/craig-speaks-out/ ) I wondered what potential new episodes would be like. This is the complete rundown of my ideas for series 10 & 11 : (In the end I decided not to include a porn episode entitled 'Dwarf Tossing')

Series 10

1. Schindler's Lister - Followed by a totally incomprehensible 2 minute explanation of everything that's gone on in Red Dwarf before, The Red Dwarf crew arrive in a Nazi concentration camp. With hilarious consequences.

2. The Vicar is Dibbley - Cat's geeky alter ego Duane Dibbley becomes the vicar of a small village( and has a new-found craving for chocolate oranges). Without any hilarious consequences.

3. Robot Whores - Kryten visits an android red light district. Lister shouts a lot and gets over excited.

4. Cat on a Hot Tin Roof - Self explanatory really. Expect lots of Danny John Jules tap dancing.

5. Shopping Lister - The crew must go to the shopping planet Sainsdsco to stock up on supplies. But the trollies have minds of their own.

6. Polymorph Begins - Set in the time when the genetic mutant creature was just known as Morph and spent a lot of time on Tony Hart's desk.

The Holly and the IV - Christmas Special where Holly the computer gets the ship stranded between two periods of time at once and the crew have to do battle with their younger selves from series 4.

Series 11

1. Smeg Heads - Rimmer & Lister get trapped inside a giant fridge.

2. Cat's Cradle - The cat has kittens - literally. Panic ensues when the ship runs out of wool

3. Brahms & Lister - Rimmer becomes Rimmersky-Korsakov as the whole crew turn into classical composers and get very drunk.

4. Top Cat - Cat falls into a cartoon universe where he meets a gang of other cats and has to outwit Space Officer Dibbley.

5. Kristine - In a nod to the Stephen King / John Carpenter film, when the crew finally do track
down Kochanski they discover that she is now dead but her mind possesses the body of a vintage spaceship.

6. Arniegeddon - Series finale. Epic disaster movie style episode where the crew try to prevent certain death by both an asteroid shower and Holly's planned 'Nuclear Hollycaust' armed with only a couple of tatty vests and a 1990s hard rock soundtrack.



Plaudits must go to the incredibly witty @BertSwattermain who came up with many good episode ideas too, including 'Cat's got your tongue - an episode enacted entirely through the medium of mime', 'Cat O'Nine Tails' in which 'A space virus causes the crew to grow extra limbs. Hilarity ensues because Rimmer has six cocks' and 'Aye Aye Robot' where Kryten thinks he's Captain Spack Jarrow and renames the ship the Red Pearl.' Also @mark_spencer came up with the brilliant idea of (due to BBC cutbacks) combining Red Dwarf with Doctor Who and having Kryten punch the new doctor for being a 'smug head'.

I hope Grant Naylor Productions are taking notes on this and I fully expect to see some of these episodes airing on the Dave Channel next year.

Friday 28 May 2010

Gates Of TV Heaven

The previous post was the one I'd planned for February and I'd delayed posting it as I saw it as my equivalent of Prince's Black album. I want to include it now as I want to say how much I do now enjoy having Sky especially as I got it just in time to catch the second season of the glorious, ludicrous, sweary vampire series True Blood. (Not in time to catch Being Human though... Hang on, letter to the Beeb coming up - "Come on, BBC, time to repeat it now, surely? It's been Bloody Ages (excuse the pun). I for one am very pleased about the amount of vampire programmes being made now and I'm wondering if there are any plans to make a vampire soap? If Albert Square in Eastenders became overrun with vampires then I would even start watching that tired old miserable wank. Thanks, WD".)

My favourite TV guilty pleasure, though is
Monster Hunter- ( Known in the US as Destination Truth - Sorry, I can't tell you what day it's on in the UK, or what channel - I stumbled across it by accident and series-linked it). It's a bit like Ghost Hunter but instead of not finding any ghosts they don't find any monsters. I bloody love Josh Gates,though- the Kermit-voiced Monster Hunter of the title. It is his job to travel the world, take the piss out of locals, fuck about for a bit and look for things that don't exist. I so want his job!

The series is as enjoyably formulaic as an episode of Scooby Doo . Josh leads his trusty team halfway across the world, takes a broken down jeep along a dirt track to the middle of nowhere in search of creatures with names like Wazzat or Hoojaflip. There he finds a starey-eyed local with teeth like piano keys who informs him that the Yazoo, an enormous bat-like creature which makes curious 'whoo' noises, has been terrorizing the local village and once arse-raped his brother. (I am constantly amazed just how he finds these mouthbreathing fucktards - these people look like they've only just been toilet trained and worked out that their pants don't go over their heads. I suspect that none of them are actually locals and that they are specially flown in by the TV crew. )

Armed with such valuable inside expert knowledge, intrepid Josh finds a likely hangout for the mythical creature and sets up infra red cameras at nightfall to capture it on film. Cue lots of Blair Witch/ Derek Acorah bollocks and close ups of frightened team members getting startled by random noises or creatures showing up on heat monitors. It is usually the girl member of the team's job to scream wildly at something just before it cuts to an ad break. Sometimes it can be genuinely suspenseful but other times less so,such as when they went to investigate Icelandic Elves ( I shit you not).

So when they have picked up the sound of a jungle twig snapping or a thermal image of a passing mouse, they head back to their studios in Los Angeles to analyse the data. By this stage I am yelling at the TV 'Of course you picked up something on the thermal camera, you were in the middle of a fucking jungle at night.' Using state-of-the-art equipment, the blurry pictures caught on camera which don't look like anything are sharpened up to reveal ...blurry pictures which don't look like anything. 'GET FUCKING BETTER THERMAL EQUIPMENT! I am bellowing now " YOU TRAVEL HALF WAY ROUND THE FUCKING WORLD, BUT YOU COULD'VE PASSED A DOZEN APEMEN AND DINOSAURS ON THE WAY AND YOU'D NEVER FUCKING KNOW ABOUT IT BECAUSE YOUR CAMERAS ARE SO SHIT'

If something is revealed, it is usually just a passing bat or a hippo and the results are unsurprisingly inconclusive and the programme lurches to a halt. All it really needs is Josh Gates to unmask Mr.Crawly the butler ( "I'd have gotten away with it too, if it wasn't for you pesky meddlin' cryptozoologists"), make an unfunny joke and crow "JoshyWoshyDOO" in to camera and the whole thing would be perfect.

Thursday 27 May 2010

Blue Sky Thinking

Having Sky installed, especially after about six months of terrestrial channels , made me feel a little sordid. Not just because it was created and controlled by Evil Mediatyrant Uberbastard Rupert Murdoch - ( a kind of Napoleon from Animal Farm for the Digiwank Generation.) But also because of all the sex channels - there are loads. Far too many fucking channels!

Everyone who has ever had Sky installed must've idly (and one-handedly) flicked through these channels at some point and wondered stuff like 'Why is that girl wearing black tape on her vag?' It is actually quite depressing flicking through and seeing channel after channel of garishly made up topless women and there are a lot of close ups where you might as well be watching a couple of blancmanges on a trampoline. Admittedly, most of these channels you do have to pay extra for but there are more than enough freeviews and ads and gyrating women wobbling their buttocks, sucking their manicured fingers and fellating their mobile phones to satisfy any casual tosser. Especially ones who can lipread.

But whoa! There's way too much- surely it's a saturated market (could've worded that better)- and it's one I often feel quite uncomfortable about in certain areas (could've worded that better too). Even if I did pay out for one of these multichannel packages, It's not all that exciting to watch , really, is it? I mean a few minutes of slurping followed by a lot of huffing and puffing ? It's all just in-out, in-out, turn around, in-out, in-out, Sploort, isn't it? Just the pork tram pulling into Grimsby? It's just one set of reproductive organs... slamming... repeatedly... into ... another... again and ...again... ooh, excuse me, a moment ....


Now don't get me wrong here -I'm not about to come over all Mary Shitehouse (must amend that sentence) and bang on about 'thrusting sex down people's throats' or similar (hhmm, this is proving difficult trying to phrase things for this one). I like seeing pretty girls taking off their clothing as much as the next person. Unless the next person is Dale Winton. But what I think I'm uneasy about is that it's there without asking for it. It's like opening a book by your favourite author and realising that at the back is 50 pages of writhing nekkidness. Or going to the cinema to watch Sex in the City (not that I would ever advise anybody to do such a fucking horrendous thing) and getting an extra half an hour of something tawdry called 'Sexing the Clitty'. I'm not saying it's any worse, just that it's an out-of-context distraction and it doesn't quite belong. You should have the option to activate the channels, but they shouldn't already be there automatically.

It's like reading The Sun- (if anyone actually does that and doesn't just ogle and collect the holiday coupons.) I don't WANT Zoe, Young-enough-to-be-your-daughter of London, parading her newlyformed paps as if she's only just discovered them alongside some hack bullshit comment about David Cameron 's politics making her feel sexy . FUCK RIGHT OFF! It's a newspaper. GIMME NEWS THEN YOU LAZY JOURNO CUNTYBEARS. You want to see a ladies' rudie bits in printed form? OK-buy a porn mag. Want to see them on video performing naughty acts? Get a DVD from a sex shop or go to Red Tube or similar (er... so I'm told). At least these things are honest about what they are. I don't want titties in my face when I'm just trying to watch tv or read a paper. I don't want them there. I want to get on with my life,thank you very much. As a human man, I am penis-powered enough - I don't need to be encouraged to think filthy thoughts when I don't want to.

Friday 7 May 2010

Feeling Louse-y

Kids!

You think you're just going off to collect a couple of little 'uns back from school, when what you're actually doing is collecting a couple of hundred little 'uns back from school. Most of these (unless you really are taking a whole load more schoolchildren back home with you (#notgoingthere #hopeitsforabirthdayparty) will be tiny, microscopic bastards known as Pediculus Humanus Capitis AKA Headlice AKA Nits AKA Ohfucknotyoufuckingtossbagsagain. These bugs are a bit of a bugbear and I can't buggering bear them.

I'm sure we never had them like this when I was little. True, we had Nitnurses that came to the school, but I can't remember any of them ever finding anything. Now they've mutated into evil, super-resilient beasts (the nits not the nurses) and they're everywhere. Every town, every school, every classroom, just about every head. Makes me itch just thinking about it.

They really are the most persistent little shitters in the world, discounting Jehovah's Witnesses and Jedward, obviously. And, as I'm gradually discovering NOTHING GETS RID OF THEM. So far we've tried and failed with Hedrin, vinegar, vodka and Nitty Gritty combs. We even poured jars of mayonnaise on our heads (which makes your hair feel quite luxurious but you do smell of egg). Try it yourself, it's fun for all the family.

I don't tend to get them but the rest of the family is usually riddled. I think I must be immune or have really unpleasant, substandard foul-tasting hair, the hair equivalent of Asda Basics. But I have to be deloused along with the rest of the family just to be on the safe side. And you can't just try vanquishing the lice once, either, because the chances are they've laid eggs in your hair and then you've got the next generation to deal with. It's probably best done at least 3 or 4 times to make completely sure.

So this Sunday it's the usual 'Spending All Day Sunday Trying to Get Rid of Headlice ' ritual. We will all be once again be pouring Listerine mouthwash on our hair, which seems to work best so far (also good for athlete's foot, apparently, though I don't advise gargling with Hedrin). For added amusement we will also be sporting plastic shopping bags on our heads with circular holes cut in them for our faces. Last time I had two pointy ends of a Sainsbury's bag sticking up in the air so I looked like a poorly animated orange cat. I tried to work it best I could, but it wasn't a good look and I don't expect it to catch on any time soon.

Frustratingly, it's all probably all for nothing anyway because of course the kids have to go back to school and mix with other children. And you can always tell who your kids' best friends are : they're going to be the ones whose hair is visibly on the move, the ones who have them crawling all over their faces because the lice have ran out of head space.

Excuse me, I think I need to scratch my head a bit now....

Monday 12 April 2010

Walking on the Beaches , Looking at the Faeces.

Yesterday I was on Ryde beach, one of the nicest beaches on the Isle of Wight. Unfortunately, so were a group of 30-odd people walking their dogs. So very soon the idyllic soft golden sand became littered with turds and infested with flies. Not the kind of thing I want to be the crowning glory on top of my sandcastle.

I could bang on about dogpoo containing toxocara eggs (roundworm) and say that someone I knew became infected and lost an eye. I could point out that there are plenty of other places to take your pet for a communal shit, that the tide was out a long way and that there was a vast expanse of mudflats which would have been marginally more preferable for use as a dog toilet.

But all I really need to say is this : It's FUCKING DISGUSTING. It's like rounding up all of your mates and getting them to shit all over a kiddie's playground. It's like playing a game of 'Catch the Crap' in the middle of a crowded cinema. It's like saving up a week's worth of poo in plastic bags and emptying them into the local swimming baths in the middle of the Mothers and Toddlers Group session.

IF YOU CAN'T KEEP YOUR PETS UNDER CONTROL FUCK THE FUCK OUT OF SUCH A PUBLIC PLACE YOU IRRESPONSIBLE BASTARDS, OR I WILL COME ROUND AND TAKE A DUMP IN THE MIDDLE OF YOUR LIVING ROOM AND WIPE MY ARSE ON YOUR TEATOWELS.

Thursday 25 March 2010

The Return of the Inlaws.

My inlaws have come to stay. They have been here for an hour and a half . I have ran out of things to say already. They are here for 3 and a half weeks. Tweets will be restricted to narganarganarggh which is the sound of me gnawing my own legs off. One of them has a Hitler moustache from where they have neglected to shave, but I'm not at liberty to point out which one.

My father in law has recently been diagnosed diabetic. And they both seriously need to lose weight. As everything I usually like to eat is either very sugary, salty or fatty I haven't got a clue what to do for the 20-odd evening meals I will have to cook for them . Neither of them has ever been known to make any drinks and I feel like I'm running a fucking cafe.

They don't DO anything. I keep having to check to see if they are still breathing. They are human sloths, they seem content to spend 90% of their time slumped alseep on the sofa. And I can't go anywhere that hasn't got a long succession of conveniently spaced benches as they need to sit down and rest every two minutes. It doesn't help that my Mother In law has become agoraphobic and has to cling onto something /someone everywhere she walks. Walking unaided she becomes a big wobbly scary thing, like a fat Bambi.

****
Well, they came , they sat down on sofas and they went again. They say that they had a good time but I'm not entirely sure how. Maybe one day I will be able to understand and be able to enjoy the experience of sitting on a sofa a couple of hundred miles away from the usual sofa that I sit on.

Monday 22 March 2010

Hang the DJ

*whrrrr * Alright, who spiked my apple & raspberry j2O?

I am not comfortable in pubs or clubs at the best of times. I think it's because I resent being reminded of the fact that I don't really like alcohol or the effects it can have on me. A bottle of mead at Christmas is normally my entire alcoholic consumption for the entire year (For a while I was known for just drinking blue vodka drinks although I always wished I liked beer so I could feel a bit less freaky). I usually just sit in a corner looking awkward, playing with placemats and trying my best to reply to the odd snatches of conversation that I can actually hear.

So my first night out to a club in a new town was always going to be daunting. Especially as it was to see my eldest daughter (9) take part in the junior category of a Carnival Queen competition.(She is surprisingly pretty in a gothy Wednesday Addams way but can't do the cheesy smile thing you need to do for these things, unfortunately).

But when she went off to be judged, my younger daughter (6) dragged me straight onto the dancefloor and started doing all her funky moves. She has limitless energy when it comes to dancing, the room was packed with young wannabe beauty queens and I was still in my coat as we were too late to grab seats. And I was to be the Big Floor Show Entertainment for the evening. To put it simply, I looked like a total veiny cockshaft. It was more cringy and toecurling than a Jim Davidson Boxed Set.

I am a bloke in my late 30s. When I get on a dancefloor I get an image of Ricky Gervais doing his David Brent dance pops into my head. So all the alarms are going off inside my brain and I can't do anything about it, my daughter is dancing like a demon and the DJ is a big,brainless wobblyarsed zombie.

Take a James Corden, the acceptable face of fat. Then cover him with several thick layers of lard or beef dripping. Work outwards so that his piggy features are lost in the middle of his great lardy face and his eyes resemble cats' arseholes buried in the snow. Then you have something that looks like the DJ we had.

Now don't think that I'm having a go at Fatboy Fat because he was grossly obese. No , the reason I am blogging this is to try and answer one of life's great unexplained questions: Why is always the same shit songs?

For someone to become a DJ, you would assume that they would enjoy music in some way. And there are millions of songs out there. Not all of them are suitable, granted, but a good percentage of them are songs that could be played in a room of mixed age people and get a good cross section of them gyrating.

I reckon these great fat lumbering subhuman bollockbrained DJs hate the rest of the human race so much they become DJs so they can make us all look like twats by dancing to utter pantgravy.

What else would explain the fact that it's ALWAYS ALWAYS ALWAYS Agadoo, the Macarena, Hey Baby, the Cha Cha Slide, Mambo No 5, 5678, the Fuckawful Damian version of the Timewarp, Cotton Eye Joe and Y-M-C-fucking-A? We even had 'I am the Music Man' for fucks sake!! Noone likes these songs! Noone plays them at home! Why then, when we're all gathered together in a big room somewhere are we all meant to arse around going 'A Pizza Hut, A Pizza Hut, Kentucky Fried Chicken and A Pizza Hut'?


I don't get out much. It's probably just as well.

Monday 11 January 2010

The World has Stopped

No bread. No milk. And worst of all, no hot chocolate. What's the point of being trapped at home, freezing your testicicles off if you can't even have any hot chocolate FFS?
And how can the shops still be getting any newspapers then? Surely in an emergency situation they are only truly useful as arsewiping fodder. The Mail is best for this as it has so much crap in there already, that smearing it with your own buttjunk hardly makes any difference at all.

I can't even get my online shopping delivered. That's not fucking fair - I'm not on a sidestreet, I'm sure there's plenty of grit on the all the roads between the warehouse/store and my flat.

Oi, Tesco! Employ some drivers with proper dangly things swinging about between their legs, not the bunch of wet simpering pussies you currently employ ( This is not a sexist comment BTW - I'm sure there are plenty of brave women drivers you could employ who possess flaps like Cowboy Saloon doors.)

The schools are all closed of course as we all know that children die horribly if exposed to a little bit of snow.... no, wait, that's teachers isn't it?

And the bins haven't been emptied since before Xmas and won't be for at least another week now. There is a huge army assault course wall of black bags (three flats worth of turkey carcasses and unwanted Xmas shit) all rotting outside next to my kitchen-cum-fridge. (When I say kitchen-cum-fridge I of course mean that it is freezing in there, not that I'm storing up all my wankjuice).

ARRRGHHH! I really hate Jan & Feb. Wish we could ditch them altogether and just go straight into Spring when things can actually start happening again...

Happy Fucking New Year !