Three Lions kissing my arse

It's nearly world cup time again. It hardly seems like 4 years since fans rioted on the streets of Germany.

Ok so I lied, hardly any fans rioted in Germany. Maybe that's because they knew that they'd be taken away for a 'special shower' if they did.

Before I start the rant that this blog entry is surely destined to be, I should be open and honest and lay my cards on the table. I am Scottish. Ok I said it. We Scots have a reputation of hating the English, their football team in particular and supporting 'anyone who plays England'. This usually brings on the pathetic retorts from the xenophobic fuckwits at large such as 'if you don't like it here, fuck off home'. No thanks, I rather like it here. I don't hate the English in fact I live in England, I love it here, I consider it my home in fact. When I go to visit Scotland I can't wait to get back home, to England.

The facts above should lend particular weight and credence to the arguments I am about to present, hopefully.

I hate English football. I hate the team and I especially hate anyone who supports the team. I hate the World Cup and I hate the European championships. I can hear screams of 'go home then' being transmitted through the internet already. So why could a man who so loves living and working in England, who considers it his home indeed, hate the very soil that his fellow countrymen walk on?

Humility

Yes read it and try with your tiny mind to understand. Humility. Something that evades 99.99% of England fans. Let me offer a little insight into an age old question. A question that has been debated on countless talk radio station over the years, a question that has been drunkenly discussed in pubs north and south of the border for many a moon. The question is this:

Why do the Scottish hate the England football team so much?

Many postulations have been made over this age old question. Many a drunken night has been spent discussing and falling out over just this question. Many talk radio hours have been wasted giving air time to English people claiming the Scots are just jealous and counter claims by the Scots that the English are just stuck up bastards. I can reveal, neither are correct. Although both have an element of truth.

I can reveal in a scoop: The reason that the Scottish people hate the England football team and the English fans so much is quite simple: Expectation of triumph.

Don't believe me? Just switch on your radio and listen to any English DJ who shows any passing interest in football. As I write this the date is 02nd June. I listen to a UK wide radio station everyday, I like the DJ who does the breakfast show, although he is predisposed to football and for the last month (at least) he has been talking about England WINNING the World Cup. Not participating, not getting to the quarters or the semis, not doing well, WINNING.

That is why Scottish people hate anything to do with English football. It's not jealousy as most people believe. It's not because Scots just hate the English whatever. It's because of the expectation of triumph that every England fan seems to be predisposed to.

You see the Scottish people know and understand that they have a shit football team. We know this, it's no revelation to us that every 2 years we swallow down the phlegm of sporting disappointment as our team either fail to qualify or do qualify and then crash out in the first round. But we don't ever expect to win, we have a humility that carries us through this disappointment and spits us out at the other end with a sense that we done shit, but hey we're Scottish and we didn't expect anything else, lets get drunk anyway, and hey, there's always next time huh?

The English however are a completely different breed. Fuelled by fuckwit DJ's preaching what they mistake for patriotism or nationalism, there's not an English football fan in the country that doesn't believe they are going to win the World Cup by the time the first ball is kicked. I can't blame them. I always watch the English games and usually for the first 5 mins I am supporting England. Yes you read it correctly, I support England. That is until.... the commentators (usually John Motson) starts reeling off the old cliches like the following or at least including the following words:

1966

Geoff Hurst

England's famous 5-1 defeat over Germany

the Scottish stole the goalposts from Wembley

We was robbed by Maradona/Argentina

Three lions

Bobby Charlton

...and sundry other bullshit. As soon as the commentary starts on the first England game of the World Cup I can bet that one of the commentators will start to moot the idea that England can actually win the whole championship, quoting some or all of the above as evidence of England's impending triumph.

So what am I actually getting at here? After all what is the point in taking part in a competition such as the World Cup if you don't set out to win? The problem is that England fans have an expectation of triumph, unwavering and unswerving confidence in victory, a victory so sweet and so perfect that for ANOTHER 44 years we good people of the British Isles will never hear the end of it. This is unacceptable. Believe it or not, everyone knows the England football team are one of the the best in the world, but no one wants them to win because we couldn't possibly stomach the arrogance, overbearing and conceited pride that the average Englishman would walk around displaying like a bloated cockerel with three lions on his beer belly.

The untermensch of this land oft wander around screaming "2 world wars and 1 world cup" when England play Germany. They say this like they were actually there at Dunkirk, having their legs blown off and their friends decapitated by German Panzerfaust. So proud they are of their football team they suffer extreme delusions of participation in WW2.

That's why everyone except the English hate the English football team. It's not because we are bitter at being shit at football, it's not because we just hate the English with no justifictation, it's not even because you talk funny. It's because you are a nation of swaggeringly arrogant, immodest, narcissistic, pompous, conceited, egotistical cunts.

Go get some humility, then I might change my mind. But you know what, I bet you are so arrogant, you don't even care.

On the 11th of July this year I hope to be singing "1 Eurovision song contest and 1 World Cup" for obvious reasons.

Fairness, equality and discrimination.

Unless you have been living in a news vacuum or mental institution for the last month, you will know there is a UK general election just around the corner.

In the last weeks the main political parties have rolled out their manifestos as if they were rusty old lawnmowers which have been festering in the political sheds for the last 5 years. All have had one common theme, fairness.

Except of course for the SNP (Scottish National Party). In the true xenophobic bigoted ignorance which runs as a steady undercurrent of sewage in Scotland, they have set out their manifesto as: vote for us and we'll protect the things that are important to Scottish people. Surely the first time that square sausage, cheap booze, batter and heroin have been the centre piece of a political party's stall.

Alongside fairness, there has been countless debate on talk radio and sundry other news outlets about equality and discrimination. These three ideas: fairness, equality and discrimination are all components of the misdirection which seems to be driving this election.

In the most simple terms I can muster, there is no difference between the two biggest parties at the moment. They are vying for the same piece of middle ground and simultaneously losing. The issues which have been highlighted are so subjective as to be laughable. Come on, discrimination? Please. Everyone thinks that they are discriminated against at some level. usually they are the bullshit rhetoric cliches which are trotted out day after day in the media i.e:

I'm black, I have been disadvantaged by not being given the same educational and social standards as a white person....... FUCKING LIES

I'm a white middle class person (usually a line trotted out by the white working class) and I feel discriminated against because I don't get the same concessions and allowances as..(insert: blacks, muslims, asylum seekers etc here)..... FUCKING LIES

I am a mum, although I cry a lot and am essentially a shell of the person I once was, I now believe I'm a super strong woman who would do anything for my children and I feel discriminated against because...(insert: there aren't enough mother and child spaces at Tesco, I can't have any more than a year off work when I shit out another kid, I can't get my kid into my choice of school even though I've bought a house in a specific area for that sole purpose).... FUCKING LIES

So as you can see, I think if you really drilled into everyone's psyche that 95% of people believe they have a valid reason to infer discrimination against themselves. In reality, it's bullshit. We live in the UK, the laws of this country and the multicultural society that we live in means there are very few people who could claim actual discrimination.

The definition of discrimination has become clouded with ideas of race and religion, these are the two main protagonists of the grounds on which people believe they are discriminated against.

Here is a different and I think, clearer definition of discrimination, from Dictionary.com

something that serves to differentiate

So discrimination is essentially, being different. This is why, as political ideal, discrimination is a winner, because everyone is different. So we all could have a fairly water-tight case in saying that we are discriminated against in some respect.

The idea of fairness plays into the hands of someone who believes they have been discriminated against. Another winner with everyone. Equality? Same story, doesn't everyone want to be equal, no they don't, only the people who perceive themselves to be 'less than' equal, actually want everyone to be equal. And I'm sure if I took a straw pole in the local High St, I could find that everyone thought of themselves as 'less equal' than some other section of society.

So what do the political parties really purport to do about all this discrimination, inequality and unfairness? Perhaps we should all become Communists? Yes that's it, lets live under a totalitarian regime. For that is truly the only way to iron out the inequalities in society, is it not? Well I for one don't want to be queueing up at the supermarket to find the shelves bare. Communism has been tried and it doesn't work. As much as the idea of driving around in a papier mache car and growing potatoes for my dinner appeals, it won't work.

Why can't people realise that we are all born different? I might be tall and strong, but I also have bad teeth. Things always balance out in life and voting for a certain political party because they promise to make everyone equal is just madness.

I live in the London Borough of Sutton. It's a 'two horse race' here between the Tories and the Lib Dems. The Lib Dems have been in power since I've lived here (10 years). I don't mind admitting that I've always voted for them and will do in the future unless something radical happens to their ideals.

They have a good local council, Sutton is one of the safest places in London (when I'm at home), they take account of the views of the people who live here and despite a few little (forgivable) mistakes they have made, they keep the borough in good shape, it is a desirable place to live.

So in the run up to this election the Tories have been out in force, trying to run down the Lib Dems, with no real evidence or justification to back it up. The Conservative candidate Phillipa Stroud is a Cameron clone, a smile on a stick, a career politician. She sends out mail shots with the holier than thou message that she'll 'fight a fair campaign, it won't be personal'. The reason for that is our MP Paul Burstow, is squeaky clean, a model politician, I know, I've trawled through his expenses when they were released. So she couldn't hope to do otherwise. It's a real irony, shes fighting a 'fair campaign' yet when I drive around there are 15 foot high pictures of Gordon Brown, grinning and telling me he's going to steal my pension and give it to and Afghan asylum seeker, all funded by the Conservatives of course.

Paul Burstow and his cronies visited my house in their publicity marathon in the run up to the election. One of his councillors came to my door and I seen him walk down the street. I told her that I wanted to speak to him and he duly came back and spent 10 mins chatting. I quite unfairly (see, there's the fairness again) pounced on something he'd once said against the expansion of Heathrow Airport. I gave him a 5 minute diatribe on the importance of the airline industry to a country which has systematically destroyed every industry which we could have been proud of. To his credit, he listened and he told me his thoughts on it. No Bullshit, no excuses, no flannel, none of the usual political misdirection usually employed by MP's. He's a real person, not one of the Westminster massive, using your tax pounds to pimp their second homes (duck houses, moats, toilet seats, buy porn films etc).

For me the Lib Dems are the only choice for this country. Everyone has been banging on about how there is no difference between the main political parties. This is true of Labour and the Tories. There was a televised debate (the first of 3) between the three party leaders. Nick Clegg, the Lib Dem leader undoubtedly came out on top. Gordon Blair... sorry Brown and David Cameron spent the whole debate trying to run each other down. They argued backwards and forwards about which successive governments had made the worst job of running the country. Nothing positive, nothing of substance, just empty political promises which have been made time and again with little or no action or results.

Nick Clegg was different. He said things that meant something, he had ideas, some which he'd been talking about for years and which Cameron and Brown had suddenly adpoted as their own. There seemed to be a common sense and an honesty which could only come from a party which probably believes they have no real chance of getting into power, after all, what have they got to lose by telling the truth? Nothing. Labour and the Conservatives have had 65 years to run the country, it's time for a change now.

Let someone else have a go, after all, it's only fair isn't it?

Dog Shit

I seen something that was very rare today. As I was driving to work I passed a dog, on it's own, which had just squatted down on the pavement and was curling off a huge pooh. It was a very small dog and a very huge turd, relatively speaking. If I had a shit that big, relative to my body size, it would have been like squeezing out a large brown cucumber.

Now I say this was rare for 2 reasons. Firstly, in this country I think it's fairly rare nowadays to see a dog wandering about on it's own, no owner in sight, no poopascoop at the ready. In France, where people are filthy and have no morals, it's probably a common sight. The second reason I thought of it as rare occurrence is that I don't often see dogs having a shit these days, call me insular if you will.

This scene had filled me with a sense of satisfaction and by the time I'd gotten to work I felt compelled to share the fact in a Facebook update. That prompted the questions, why was I so satisfied by seeing a dog have a crap and why did it play on my mind to an extent that I'm now writing about it.

Just a quick reality check for myself at this point: I am 33, I'm writing on the internet about a dog shitting on a pavement, there'd better be point to this.

Anyway, I started to think about why a dog and a log had caught my eye. The dog looked happy, he needed a pooh and he just jolly well sat down and let it out. We as humans are so constrained by the boundaries society and moral understanding/expectations place on us. Whether that is about bodily functions or otherwise, we are bound to act by a code of what is acceptable and what is not. We all have the nightmares about arriving in work and being totally naked, with an erection and having to have a wee in the corner, or is that just me? OK, maybe an extreme example, but our brains play out these mortally embarrassing scenarios whilst we sleep. Whether that is our brain's way of release, or simply to sub consciously prepare us for situations of emotional stress, or just to get it's own back for all the horrible things we put it through from day to day, who knows. But the fact stands, these scenarios are some of the things that petrify us most, because as humans, a civilised race (French excluded) we find the thought of doing this, or at least being caught doing this, abhorrent.

So what about the dog? He didn't give a shit, or rather, he did. He didn't care that I was watching him, or that other cars and other people were passing. He either didn't care about what people thought, or didn't have the self-awareness to understand. I have often felt quite jealous of my cats for this same reason. They only care about 2 things, food and security. As long as they've got those, nothing else matters:
Got fleas, don't care. Licking my arse in the front garden, don't care. Petrol prices gone up again, couldn't give a fuck as long as I've got a locking cat flap and some tuna.
That's their attitude to everything. Sometimes I wonder if I'd trade my self-awareness to live without boundaries and self imposed stress for a day.

They say "It's a dog's life" and now I know why. They can shit anywhere, that's why. But the shit isn't just brown and smelly faecal matter. The shit is their freedom from expectation and self-awareness that we humans hold so dear. So when I seen that dog laying a "dog egg" today a little bit of me felt jealous that I couldn't just squat down anywhere I like and shit on the idea that I have to conform to what society expects of me.

The sense of satisfaction I felt came from the knowledge that although the dog was just an animal and probably dependent on a human for it's ultimate survival, for that moment the image of it having a shit on the pavement embodied freedom. So from now on, when politicians or religious extremists or anyone for that matter, talk of freedom, I shall be thinking of that little dog and doubtless a smile will come to my face.

Confucius (should have) said: for a man to truly find his freedom, he must shit on the pavement.

Seecuhritaaahy

Everyone is so paranoid about security these days. I have to admit I have become just as paranoid about it too. Having had my credit card details stolen twice, but fortunately the fraudulent transactions have been intercepted by the bank. It's no wonder I'm a little suspicious about the security of my personal details. So as a precaution I now use the same strong password for every account I have whether online or otherwise.

It's really simple to remember: ●●●●●●●●

It's just 8 black dots, easy.

Guns don't kill people, tourists do.

I watched the film Hostel 2 last night. In the same vein as the first, the film depicts people being lured into a foreign Hostel, where they are captured and taken to a mass torture facility, where rich people pay to torture and kill them, fulfilling their own psychotic and often sexual fantasies. A nice sunday afternoon family film for sure. In the second part the film not only follows the victims but also 2 men 'murder tourists' if you will, prepared to partake in the act of torture and murder in the hope of changing their own life for the better.

I was watching the film thinking, I bet this really happens somewhere. What are the great taboos of civilised society? Illegal sex is one of them, sex with children, but allegedly (I say allegedly, it's a well documented fact) 'sex tourists' can go to Thailand or Cambodia to indulge in such a truly evil and mentally retarded practice. Drugs are another taboo in civilised society, but there are plenty of places in the world where anyone can go to indulge in whatever they like.

So is it really so inconceivable that a place exists that people, with enough money and no morals, can go to torture and murder innocent people?

I believe this is not too far from the truth, it happens somewhere. There are enough impoverished people in the world that would be easy targets, living in slums, with no family, no one to care about or protect them. These people could be easy targets, viewed as sub-human by some Western cultures no doubt. Perhaps these poor people's lives would be thought of as having less value than someone from a rich society who has the means and will to sustain their own life and develop it. So I am under no doubt as to the fact that there would be rich pickings around the world for any organisation wanting to set up such an operation.

It is possible, but is it conceivable?

I think it is. Killing someone is the greatist taboo of the human race. No matter how much of it is around, in wars, in the national or local news. The fact remains that humans, in general, know that killing another human is a bad thing. It is held as the highest of all crimes in Law: Murder. So if there is a rule, a moral, a code or a law, we as flawed and perverted creatures will seek to ignore it and want to do it anyway. For these reasons I fully believe that the greed of our species will seek to exploit this taboo for it's own gratification and proliferation.

So what would it be like to kill someone?

I find it a matter of some intrigue. Now I must state here that I'm not going to rush out and slice some poor bastard up, just to indulge that. But what is it like? The moment when such a complex organism, capable of thought and reasoning and self awareness just dies. Imagine it, something that lived, that had thoughts and memories and opinions, just gone. The shell of the organism still present as a dead body, but the body isn't the person, the person is gone forever. What must it feel like to be directly responsible for extinguishing that life. It's curious, that's for sure. I don't think I ever want to see someone die and I realise that some people who read this will have had the experience of watching someone die and not have relished it, in fact, quite possibly be scarred by it.

The whole matter leaves me confused. With so many questions:

What is it like to kill?
If life isn't the body, or the brain, then what is it?
Could someone gain a greater understanding of life by extinguishing one?
How would it change my perception of my life seeing another life disappear?
What drives serial muderers to repeat the process most people find so abhorent?
Why has each of these questions got longer until now?

Maybe that's why people want to kill. To answer these questions. I know I couldn't do it. We all joke about it and make flippant comments "I could fucking kill that bastard" or "I wish he was dead". But when it really comes down to it most of us, thankfully, couldn't kill a fellow human.

Perhaps the reason we can't kill is that we spend so much of our lives actively trying to stay alive. Protecting ourselves from real and perceived threats. Insuring our lives and those of our loved ones. Is that what makes us cherish life and hold it sacred, that we realise the fragility of our own life?

Luckily I have never been in the position to suspect that my life is about to end iminently. Maybe if that ever happens, my views will change about life and death. For now I am not scared of death, although I will be doing my utmost to avoid it.

So I believe that people would want to kill an innocent person for 'fun' or even just 'curiousity' but I don't think I'll ever understand why or how any sane person could justify it to themselves. Let alone, live with that knowledge afterwards.

This post typifies my life in some ways. I started off by watching a film, a piece of fiction (or 'kidology' a great word my dad uses). It ended with me tying myself in knots with unanswerable questions, unfathomable posturings and more confused than I started out.

If I ever think of a conclusion to all this I will be sure to add it, unless of course I am doing a 20 stretch for murdering Jade Goody (and everyone thought it was cancer, pah!)

Demented!

I have noticed there is currently a radio and television campaign about Dementia. I kind of know what Dementia is, having some personal experience of a family member who suffered from it. Nowadays it has a proper definition:

Dementia is a syndrome (a group of related symptoms) that is associated with an ongoing decline of the brain and its abilities

This encompasses all sorts of diseases and conditions such as Alzheimer's disease. Whereas in years gone by it just meant: being old and a bit mental.

One of my Grans had Dementia. She was as mad as a bag of snakes. But she was a lovely lady and even as a youngster of 5-10 I could see that there was a normal person with a normal perception trapped in a mind which obscured the outside world with 'smoke and mirrors'. Thinking back now I wonder what frustrated her more, was it the delusions which made her act in the way she did, or was it the moments of clarity in which she realised that her condition robbed her of the real world around her and the cognition to interact normally with it?

The aforementioned adverts use the slogan: I have dementia. I also have a life.

Two things popped into my head after listening to/watching these adverts. If the people in these adverts are real and not actors, they have real Dementia. So how fucked up will it be for them when they are sitting at home one night, minding their own business and suddenly, their own face pops up on the screen, telling themselves they have Dementia? Still, at least the next day they'll have forgotten all about it. A constant cycle of surprise! Also I thought with such a serious and debilitating disease, they could inject a little humour into the campaign by changing the slogan to:

I have Dementia. I also have a bag full of magic Marbles and did I ever tell you about the time that I paddled to the moon in a canoe made of Pedigree Chum?

The Mont Blanc challenge

When I go to the gym, I always try to take the time to read the hastily made and amatuerish notices posted up around the place. They are usually mundane, rich with trivial details which are soul-crushingly boring to me: A new class which the brain-dead mums can go to make their fanny's tighter again, why the air con has been moderatley too cold in the men's changing room, a reschedule of this week's 'Spin Class'. But last week one really caught my eye.

The notice proclaimed. COMPETITION:

Complete the Mont Blanc challenge, 120Km trek/climb on the cross trainer this month. The person with the quickest time will win 3 sessions of personal training.

If I could complete a 120Km trek/climb in a sweaty gym, choked by the stench of stale sweat and testosterone, I wouldn't need a fucking personal trainer, because, arguably I'd be the fittest (or at least the most competitive) person in the gym. I think that the person with the worst time should win the personal training, they obviously need it most!

This kind of incentive is self-defeating and nonsensical. It's like watching Michael Schumacher winning a Grand Prix and then walking on the podium to receive his prize of... 3 free driving lessons.

The Pizza constant

Every good mathematical or physics formula has a constant.

I discovered a new constant yesterday , quite by accident, whilst writing an email to my good friend Joni.

I was explaining to her about when my cooker suddenly broke down. Not in an emotional way, it just stopped working. I'm not sure cookers have emotions. I think some electrical appliances do have emotions, for example my fridge, which has been revelling in my torture for some time now.

My fridge is just a youngster of about 2 years old. It was manufactured by Beko, a company I always presumed was Japanese, but it turns out they are Turkish in origin. Already, you can see the problem, letting Turkish people make electrical goods. A nation famous for kebabs and other fatty delicacies. However Turkish labourers re-built Berlin after WW2 and made a bloody good job of it, so why not have a manufacturing industry? Unfortunately for the Turkish kebab swilling labourers, fridges and other electrical equipment aren't usually constructed from bricks and mortar, under the direct supervision of a squad of Nazi commanders who've just lost a war and have been 're-skilled'. I am sure the Turkish took a few short cuts with fridge building, using materials like egg-plant and yoghurt, where clearly alloyed metals should have been employed. I guess that's why, just after the 1st anniversary of it's purchase, it failed horribly, defrosting everything inside. It's only got worse from there. I paid £300 for one year of reliable refrigeration. This is very un-Turkish indeed. I have been eating kebabs for years and by the look of my bloated frame, they are ALL still with me. I digress (which is the point of blogging).

So back to the story of my cooker. Ironically due to the nature of this post, which will become clear no doubt, I discovered that my cooker was knackered when I found a stone cold pizza in there after 20 mins of cooking, with cold air. So I rushed out to buy another one. I got a second hand one though because we want to move this year and I didn't want to shell out for a new one that we may end up leaving behind. The new one is very nice, nice and gassy, which the other one wasn't.

Electric cookers are shit to cook on but the nature of the fan assistance in the oven makes for perfect pizzas. They are crispy and cooked all the way through. Gas however is a different story. The hob cooking experience is a sheer delight, instantaneous temperature control, a luxury. The oven however is total toilet. Put it on, wait for a fortnight, then it's just about ready to cook, badly.

So here comes the real science behind this blog. Whilst writing the email to Joni, I realised that I use the hob more than I use the oven for the specific task of cooking pizza. So although I am happy about the thrill of instantaneous temperature control, I am disappointed about having burnt round the edge-soft in the middle pizza.

Let's put that into a formula where:

H= Happiness (measured in Jollynesses)
nP= Number of pizzas cooked for any given time period (expressed in pizzas per unit time) The SI (Scottish Idiot) unit for this is Pizza/week.
F= Fuel type where Electric ovens have a higher 'oven quotient' than Gas.

The formula is therefore:

H=F/nP

Elementary you may say, but my discovery is the 'oven quotient' for Gas. It's -5, whereas an electric oven is 7.5. So with 1 pizza per week cooked on Gas Jollyness is -5. Conversely, for every 1 pizza per week cooked in an electric fan based oven the Jollyness is 7.5.

So as we can clearly see, whilst cooking with a Gas oven, Happiness is inversely proportional to number of pizzas cooked. Whereas with an Electric oven, the opposite is true.


I am hoping to get this ground breaking and philosophical epiphany published in New Scientist magazine. This could revolutionise the world, by promoting happiness and unhealthiness across the globe.

Stephen Hawking popularised 'String theory', the understanding that a body with a gravitational pull acts like a ball in a blanket, please, spare me, was that one of the blankets he was dribbling on? What the fuck has he ever done for science except disprove one of Newton's fundamental laws. Every action has an equal and opposite reaction according to Newton's third law. So what happened when his wife knocked fuck out of him in 2004? He fell out of his wheelchair and she escaped without sanction. Well done Stephen, you've just blown away one of the foundations of Physics.

And Einstein, what the fuck did that forgetful fluffy haired weirdo ever add to society. I'll tell you, 2 flattened Japanese cities and 40 years of cold-war terror. Well done old man. Pretty clever eh, but never remembered to wash.

So in short, I hope to be held up there amongst the greats with this discovery. It has also led me to the conclusion that to attain true happiness I must eat less pizzas from now on, unless I change my cooker of course.

Extending the smelly hand of friendship

There's this man, who drives a bus. Let's call him the bus driver. Anyway it's a bus that I have to use to get around work and he's one of the regular drivers. He's a nice man, very friendly and polite, a gentleman. He's one of the people in the world that can put a smile on your face because you know that when he greets you that he's doing it sincerely and genuinely.

But there's a problem. He loves to shake hands with people. A warm handshake, not only with one hand, but with the other clasped around the back of your hand in a very welcoming way onto his little bus. That's not the problem though. The problem is his hands smell. They smell like they've been doused in aftershave overnight and then sprayed with some more just to make sure they still have that eye-wateringly strong aroma.

So what's the problem with that you may ask yourself? Perhaps he gets up in the morning, has a shave, then pours some Brut into his hands and rubs liberally on his freshly scraped face, it's what lots of men do. (I don't know if his face smells, thankfully, so I can't confirm or deny that) The man has a sense of hygiene, he's always smartly turned out, surely I can't knock him for that? What's the big issue?

So I just wander into work, sit down and get going for the day. Then it happens. I put my hand near my face, perhaps resting my head in the palm and I can smell him. He's invaded my day! He's invaded my nose, he's with me at work, my hands even smell of him. This is not acceptable to me. I begin to think that everything I've touched previously will smell of him, my pen, the mouse (I keep a little mouse in my pocket and stroke him every now and then, it makes me feel big and powerful). It's not even nice aftershave, it smells like he concocted it from cheap household cleaning products from Lidl. Even Cillit Bang (Barry Scott's favourite aftershave) would be an improvement. So off I traipse to the toilet and scrub the bastards until there is no trace of the repugnant stench left.

Afterwards I start to resent the bus driver. I feel that he's upset my day by invading my personal space. It's not that I mind shaking his hand, that's just polite. It's the that he then proceeds to follow me around, on my hands no less, until I wash him off. Also he's got very rough skin on his hands, no wonder if the aftershave he uses can also be used to descale toilets! So now when I'm walking towards the bus and I see his face gurning out of the window like a fish in a tank full of turgid bleach I think 'ah fuck, it's old stinky hands'. I imagine sitting in the bus with my skin withering away slowly, unable to touch anything in case there's a sudden onset of leprosy and my epidermis departs my person in one large hand-shaped scab. I get phobic about walking to the bus in case he's there and starts beaming out of the window at me, ready to infect me with his aromatic AIDS.

Then I feel guilty. The bus driver is a nice man, he only wants to make friends and make people happy. Sometimes his kind words are the only kind words I hear all day and here's me hating him because of his rough skin and refusal to use a spray on aftershave or at least one that doesn't have the same effects as Sarin.

I'm trying to think of a logical ending to this little saga.
Maybe it's that no matter how nice you are, you'll never please everyone.
Maybe it's don't befriend bus drivers.
Or maybe it's subliminal advertising for a company which produces hand sanitising gels.

Swimming

Today I had a swim for the first time in ages. I really enjoyed it. I don't know why I don't do it more often (laziness may be the answer to that question). It's a very liberating form of exercise, although it does make my back ache a bit. I swam in the pool in the gym I go to.

There's a man who goes to that pool every day and he gets in and just walks up and down. I call him Luke Poolwalker. It's not that funny really cause he's disabled and looks like some sort of hunched hobbit from Lord of the Rings. He went over and spoke to the young lifeguard today at length. I watched the interaction and was imagining that he explained to the young man that he'd dropped his ring in the pool and he had to walk up and down everyday, feeling for it with his toes. Of course that wasn't case, by the look on the young man's face I imagine he said "Do you know how to make an old crippled man happy? No, then suck my cock and we'll see how it goes" Of course that's probably not what happened either because I imagine his cock is crippled too.

I am going to burn in hell one day for my thoughts. And If I don't, I'll burn in hell for posting them here.

Also I was reminded today how fucking disgusting my fellow men are. Men are desperate, desperate for sex or just even to look at women and imagine themselves sliming all over the women they covet. There were a couple of pretty women in the swimming pool. I think they were mother and daughter, but both well kept. There was also a couple of lecherous men in the jacuzzi (I was observing them from the sauna). The jacuzzi sits in front of the pool so in walking from either the changing rooms or the sauna to the pool, one must pass the bath of bubbles and piss. Anyway these 3 guys watched these 2 women as if they'd never seen a woman before. They craned their heads, leering and leching with their eyes almost on fucking stalks as if Beyonce and Alicia Keys had just started to lick custard off each others naked bodies (Beyonce and Alicia Keys aren't members of my gym, to my knowledge anyway, although maybe they slip in and out early in the morning).

These guys though, they looked like they'd never seen a woman in a swim suit before. I hate that desperate streak in men. Have some dignity, look, but don't make it so obvious. The two ladies were clearly uncomfortable by the unwanted attention of two men who looked like candidates for a UK Border Force eviction special and a fat beer bellied speccy twat who hasn't seen his own cock for 12 years. The kind of guy you see hanging around outside men's toilets in the hope he gets the 'come-on' for a bit of willy fun.

At the risk of repeating myself (and I can it's my Blog after all) I fucking hate men like that. There was another man in the pool when I was swimming doing the same thing. The younger lady was swimming in the lane next to me, about 10 meters in front. This horrible hairy greasy desperate fuck had positioned himself at the far end of the pool to letch at her when she turned and swam away. I watched him, he didn't care. I was watching him while I swam to the wall and she had swam away. H didn't even try to hide that he was transfixed by her body. He might as well have held up a sign saying "I AM MASTURBATING RIGHT NOW BECAUSE I HAVE NO SENSE OF SELF WORTH OR OTHER PEOPLES PERSONAL SPACE, I WATCH WOMEN IN SWIMMING POOLS THEN GET INTO MY CAR AND WANK INTO THE ASHTRAY".

I hate people like that. Men like that. They are sad and clinically unable to keep their testosterone in their pants, or a in handkerchief where it belongs.

The duality of man presents itself here. Lets put the boot on the other testicle. If a gay man were to openly ogle a straight man in the shower or changing area of the gym, he'd most probably end up as a mess on the floor, blood seeping from every conceivable orifice, staining the tiles. The same man who would give the gay man a kicking would most probably stare at a pretty woman in a swim suit and think nothing of it, even if it made her uncomfortable.

While I'm on the subject, another thing I hate about the typical man is their total lack of hygiene. You would be surprised how many men have a piss in a pub toilet and don't wash their hands. Maybe they think it's a bit gay, or they are too hard to wash their hands. Piss soaked idiots the lot of them.

Sometimes I hate being a man. Not that I want to be a woman, I would definitely hate myself more then. All women hate themselves for some reason or another. Maybe I should be a cat in my next life. The only down side to being a cat is the compulsion to lick your own anus twice a day, with an unfeasibly rough tongue. Actually, maybe licking your own arse is a small price to pay to live a life without the minutiae that I get myself so worked up about.

Conclusion of this rant: If I lick my own arse, maybe I'll be more content.

Crying

Today I cried for the first time in ages. Why?

My best friend left London today. Not just London, he left the UK. Now let's just get things in perspective, it's not the first time he's been out of the country for an extended period. But this time it's different cause this time I think it's forever.

He and his wife have gone on a once in a lifetime trip around the world which is due to last 6 months. 6 months is nothing really. There are people I don't see for 6 months and I couldn't care less. However this, is different. I think they'll find that they belong somewhere else, that they can have a better life somewhere else. I don't blame them if that is the case, but selfishly I'll be sad. It's not something that happens often, that 2 guys meet and become friends and 15 years later they are still in the same place, still knocking about together, talking shit and getting drunk. But there are the friendships that only happen once in a lifetime.

So, my best mate is gone for a while. I hope that whatever happens to him on his travels only enriches his life. But I'll miss him. We only met maybe every 2 or 3 weeks. In a pub in Wimbledon with a grumpy Scottish barmaid who sounded like she smoked 300 fags a day. But it was always good fun and we always put the world to rights. I hope we can again. Maybe, since he'll have seen more of the world, we'll be able to put more of it to rights!

So I wrote this after much cider and whiskey. That perhaps has amplified my normal emotional response. But so what? I don't care.

I don't mind admitting I had a good cry tonight (not very manly or macho I know).

Everyone cries. About different stuff. Life affects us in different ways, some cry at the birth of their first child, some because Celtic lost the old firm game at the weekend. Today, I don't mind admitting, I cried because my best friend, Colin, left.

Tommorrow I'll be back to my hard-hearted self no doubt.

Malvinas

The Falkland islands.

28 or so years ago Argentina decided that they wanted the Falkland Islands (or as they call them, Malvinas). However as the UK have had this sovereign territory since 1833, we said: no, fuck off.

Argentina then proceeded to invade the islands and claim them, holding the British citizens hostage. What happened next is not only well documented but is one of the things that makes me most proud to say I am British.

A small island in the North Atlantic, a tiny island nation called Britain, sent their finest troops on a 3 week sea voyage to defend British territory. A tiny British territory, which many may have called insignificant. This was a point of principle and that's what makes me British and proud to be so. We could have easily given up that barren rock deep in the south Atlantic and simply recovered the few residents and re-settled them here. But we didn't, we sent our forces half way around the world and gave Argentina a bollock punch by wearing their troops down to the point of surrender.

So now Argentina and a group of other impoverished south American countries are condemning the UK for drilling for oil off the Falkland Islands, our territory.

Fine I say. We may be at the depths of our deepest recession, we may be over stretched in Afghanistan. But fuck it, bring it on anyway. At the risk of sounding like a fuckwit neo-nazi loony, just try it and see what happens. You can say whatever you like about the British, but our spirit and resolve will always prevail.

We have values, we have pride and we have determination, that will never be crushed, oil or no oil, 10 or 10000 miles away, whether for 5 British citizens or 5000 British citizens or 5 million British citizens.

In 1982 British citizens were reminded of what we stand for, why we are proud and what we can achieve as a nation. In these disparate days of British politics, perhaps it's about to happen again. I hope not, but in a horrible way, I hope so. We are not to be undermined and we are not to be divided.

Oh my, who the fuck do I think I am, Churchill?

Fridge/bus mentalist

An excerpt from an email which I enjoyed writing:

Well I've been off work, and I have to say, having fun. However, I suffer from a crippling deficiency of motivation and this plagues my time off. So other than socialising, going to Tesco, drinking more than the government prescribes, scratching my arse, the odd gym visit and pondering long and hard about my return to stand-up, I've achieved very little. I did do a wee bit of DIY the other day. You see I've been 'doing up' my hall and living room for about a year now, with small and tiring bursts of activity and long periods of inactivity, longing for the 'magical DIY fairy' to visit during the night and finish it. I've pulled out 5 of my teeth and placed them all under my pillow (one at a time of course, I'm not daft), but that fairy never comes. I noticed the other day that the house 2 doors down has nice new living room decor and curtains, maybe just another 2 teeth and the fairy will make it here. Of course the re-constructive surgery will be more expensive than just getting a painter and decorator in to do it, but I'm a man and will never admit defeat. Unless defeated by a fairy of course. This is one of my great failings, being a man.

I haven't been sleeping well, because of my fridge and nightmares. My fridge was making a horrendous noise, today I ripped that mother-fucker apart and found the source of noise that was keeping me up nights. I had to force defrost a frost-free freezer (LIES damn LIES). I have diagnosed a new defrost cycle timer is required, cost £20, better than a new fridge-freezer, cost £350. I will feel very smug when that tall white bastard starts acting like the 2 year old it is, then I will sleep easy. It ruined 3 haggis today, the fucking Japanese bastard.

The nightmares are mainly the usual: unable to get upstairs on a double decker bus due the poorly thought out design and anti-tall-people devices fitted in the future and then abusing a tramp loudly about not moving seat. Then being chased through a high st shopping centre by an angry bus-rage fuelled mob, who plainly couldn't see my point. I think some of them have pitch forks, that should be reserved for vampires and aliens, not the Scottish.

Maybe I have issues, with white goods and public transport. Maybe a I should go for some counselling. Or a new mattress, that might do it.

Mick, fridge/bus mentalist.

Up to date

I am really shit at keeping things up to date. I probably wouldn't have a TV licence now if they didn't keep sending me one every year and extracting money by direct debit every month from my bank.

So it's no wonder then that I don't keep this page of random rantings up to date. I really would love to, but I guess at the age of 33 I have come to realise that I am just, well, too lazy.

It's a shame really, cause I started this blog as a material generation tool for my stand-up comedy. Which, of course I have been too lazy to keep up, both the comedy and the blog.

The last time I updated this was 01st Oct 2009. Now I'm sure lots of very funny things and more importantly infuriating things, have happened to me since then. So why don't I just spend 5 mins writing them down????

I don't know the answer to that and maybe I never will. However having read over some of my previous posts, I really enjoyed them and had forgotten how much I enjoyed writing. I guess it's about being disciplined. I should be more disciplined, however I won't hold my breath for that to kick in!