Oi! Oi, you! Polish geezers and geezettes; bugger off home! And you Lithuanians; you’re not from here, so what are you doing here? Not on holiday, are you? No, well go on then, catch a boat, a plane, a unicycle or whatever, and go back to your own country!
What’s that you say? Your children were born here to an English mother? Who cares! Off with you, and take them with you!
That goes for all the black and asian people as well, regardless of how many generations of your family have lived here, how much you’ve contributed and how much tax you’ve paid.
All the Chinese, Vietnamese, Japanese and Korean people too; Britain is full! Get on with you!
Muslims? Well, I think you can see where this is going, can’t you? What do you mean you’re not an extremist? I don’t care mate, you all look and sound the same to me, and better safe than sorry!
But while you guys are off chartering your transport home, do me a favour. Take anyone else you know of that isn’t British with you, drop them off on the way or something. So that’s all of you with roots in southern Ireland; back on the boat.
Now they’re gone, lets keep the ball rolling and evict everyone of French heritage as well, not to mention your Spaniards and Italians, your Belgians, your Dutch and your Norwegians. Better not leave behind any of your Swiss or your Swedish, your Germans or those pesky Greeks, (they’re everywhere, you know).
Got a little bit of Danish in ya? Well I don’t want any of ya in my Britain! I love the bacon, but this island is for “true” Brits only, and that isn’t you. You too, Ghanians and Nigerians, Americans, Canadians and Turks. I’m not racist, but you’re not British, are you?
Get lost all you Finns, Latvians and Austrians. No, I don’t care if your family have been here over a thousand years; if you’re not “properly British” you’re not welcome. Which part of that don’t you understand?
Right, I’ve had enough of this now. Read the title! All of you with foreign blood in you; you ain’t British, so go back to your own country.
Sorted.
But sadly, now there is no-one here, including me. Due to my combination of Cornish, English, Welsh and Scottish blood, there is almost certainly the blood of an invading nation in there somewhere. Maybe it’s Roman, maybe it’s Viking. It doesn’t matter. I have no more claim to being “proper British” than any of the masses I’ve sent packing. But, as I’m the last one here, I guess I’ll turn the lights off on the way out.
Friday, 12 November 2010
Tuesday, 5 October 2010
Review: "Primary Instinct" by Sarah Cawkwell
Spoiler alert. I'm alerting you to spoilers. They're minimal, but just don't say I didn't warn you if you add 2 and 2 and get four. K?
What is this? A serious blog post? Without sarcasm and highly infrequent use of the work "bollocks?" Just put it down to personal growth and get on with it. Jeez, like I'm never serious.
Anyway, I have just finished reading the space marine short story "Primary Instinct" by Sarah "Pyroriffic" Cawkwell from the all new and extremely shiny "Hammer and Bolter", the digital publication from the folks at the Black Library.
Suffice to say, Primary Instinct is a Warhammer 40,000 short story featuring the Silver Skulls chapter of the adeptus astartes and centres on an assault squad lead by Sergeant Gileas, accompanied also by one of the mighty space marine librarians who, for the benefit of those unfamiliar with this particular IP, are much more badass than they sound. These guys are eight foot, armour clad, power-weapon carrying, post human psychics who could rip off Chuck Norris's testicles with one hand while pimp-slapping Bruce Lee with the other, stealing your pin number directly from your memory at the same time. Cool, huh?
Needless to say, the shit hits the fan in double-quick time and the limits of the marine's powers are sorely tested, particularly those of Bhehan, the aforementioned librarian. (Well, prognosticator, but let's not over-complicate things.)
Obviously it will be mostly existing warhammer fiction fans who read this and the story, being short, will appeal most of all to those who have at least SOME familiarity with the source material, as if the writer had spent all of her time explaining in minute detail what the astartes were, the specifics of why the marines seem to be so appallingly xenophobic and exactly why there isn't a red-shirted ensign getting bummed to death by carnivorous plants, the story would have been bloody awful to read.
Having said that, the tale is written with enough skill and detail that it can be enjoyed as a Warhammer newcomer without the reader needing to endlessly stop and think "Ok, that's great, but how long exactly IS a snargleclack, and what's he going to do with that florkinator? Hit someone, or eat it?" I believe it was Stan Lee that said "every comic book is someone's first comic book", and in this case I can safely say that you do not need to be a warhammer nerd-supreme to enjoy the writings of Cawkwell.
The action is certainly very well written and handled in an intelligent fashion. While at times visceral, the fighting never descends into the kind of brainless goriness that would have Charles Manson reaching for the tissues, nor does it feel detached and sterile. The correct balance of detail and pacing is struck throughout and at no time do you ever get the feeling that everybody is going to come out of this intact.
For those of us familiar with them, Primary Instinct sheds some more light on the Kroot, the cannibalistic foot-soldier allies of the Tau, adding a further layer of interest to them in what I would hope would be a sign of things to come, with the "other" alien races being explored further in Black Library fiction.
The underlying premise of the story is solid and well executed, eliciting more than one massive grin as a new revelation comes to light, particularly when the "truth" of the hostile alien race comes to light.
There is not much more I can say without giving the game away, so I'll end with this:
Well written, an interesting and original plot, great characters and plenty of scope for further stories, "Primary Instinct" scores a solid seven out of ten on the arbitrary scoring table, with ten being a story so well written I am compelled to spontaneously orgasm, and a one being "Beware!" by Richard "let's repeatedly rape the protagonist for no clear reason" Laymon.
If I wasn't already familiar with Sarah's work, I'd still be putting myself down for a pre-order when Gildar Rift comes out.
Congratulations on a fine debut, Pyro!
What is this? A serious blog post? Without sarcasm and highly infrequent use of the work "bollocks?" Just put it down to personal growth and get on with it. Jeez, like I'm never serious.
Anyway, I have just finished reading the space marine short story "Primary Instinct" by Sarah "Pyroriffic" Cawkwell from the all new and extremely shiny "Hammer and Bolter", the digital publication from the folks at the Black Library.
Suffice to say, Primary Instinct is a Warhammer 40,000 short story featuring the Silver Skulls chapter of the adeptus astartes and centres on an assault squad lead by Sergeant Gileas, accompanied also by one of the mighty space marine librarians who, for the benefit of those unfamiliar with this particular IP, are much more badass than they sound. These guys are eight foot, armour clad, power-weapon carrying, post human psychics who could rip off Chuck Norris's testicles with one hand while pimp-slapping Bruce Lee with the other, stealing your pin number directly from your memory at the same time. Cool, huh?
Needless to say, the shit hits the fan in double-quick time and the limits of the marine's powers are sorely tested, particularly those of Bhehan, the aforementioned librarian. (Well, prognosticator, but let's not over-complicate things.)
Obviously it will be mostly existing warhammer fiction fans who read this and the story, being short, will appeal most of all to those who have at least SOME familiarity with the source material, as if the writer had spent all of her time explaining in minute detail what the astartes were, the specifics of why the marines seem to be so appallingly xenophobic and exactly why there isn't a red-shirted ensign getting bummed to death by carnivorous plants, the story would have been bloody awful to read.
Having said that, the tale is written with enough skill and detail that it can be enjoyed as a Warhammer newcomer without the reader needing to endlessly stop and think "Ok, that's great, but how long exactly IS a snargleclack, and what's he going to do with that florkinator? Hit someone, or eat it?" I believe it was Stan Lee that said "every comic book is someone's first comic book", and in this case I can safely say that you do not need to be a warhammer nerd-supreme to enjoy the writings of Cawkwell.
The action is certainly very well written and handled in an intelligent fashion. While at times visceral, the fighting never descends into the kind of brainless goriness that would have Charles Manson reaching for the tissues, nor does it feel detached and sterile. The correct balance of detail and pacing is struck throughout and at no time do you ever get the feeling that everybody is going to come out of this intact.
For those of us familiar with them, Primary Instinct sheds some more light on the Kroot, the cannibalistic foot-soldier allies of the Tau, adding a further layer of interest to them in what I would hope would be a sign of things to come, with the "other" alien races being explored further in Black Library fiction.
The underlying premise of the story is solid and well executed, eliciting more than one massive grin as a new revelation comes to light, particularly when the "truth" of the hostile alien race comes to light.
There is not much more I can say without giving the game away, so I'll end with this:
Well written, an interesting and original plot, great characters and plenty of scope for further stories, "Primary Instinct" scores a solid seven out of ten on the arbitrary scoring table, with ten being a story so well written I am compelled to spontaneously orgasm, and a one being "Beware!" by Richard "let's repeatedly rape the protagonist for no clear reason" Laymon.
If I wasn't already familiar with Sarah's work, I'd still be putting myself down for a pre-order when Gildar Rift comes out.
Congratulations on a fine debut, Pyro!
Tuesday, 28 September 2010
Crisis as parenting is outsourced to BBC! Children unable to sleep without soporific bullshit to ease them along! Oh the humanity!
So, In The Night Garden is due to finish in its present format, leaving Iggle Piggle (bastard son of Spongebob Square Pants and a crack-addict female jellybaby) Upsy Daisy (clearly the product of a hedonistic night of passion between a pillow and Frank Zappa) and Makka Pakka, who can only really be described as the larval stage of the Golgothan shit-demon from the movie “Dogma”.
All things must come to an end and sometimes we are sad to see them leave, but in this case I am breathing a huge sigh of relief as an institution that I firmly believe is bad for our children is finally taken out the back, given a last cigarette and shot in the face. Hopefully in comedic fashion using a harpoon, but I digress.
A great deal of people are fans of this show, and that is fair enough. I can fully understand why children enjoy the show as it is a sedate affair, with soft speech and nothing threatening, and parents find it keeps their children calm and happy. Fine, but throwing an armful of potent marijuana into an open fire and getting your kids to sit in front of it would have the same basic effect.
Pardon me for wanting my children to learn to speak English, but I don’t want them exposed to a world of Ninky Nonks and Pinky ponks, sponge demons and Aah-Boos at an age when they are supposed to be learning to converse.
What’s wrong with animals? Or people? Or calling a train a train and a zeppelin a zeppelin instead of making up bullshit names for things, then having to teach the child later on that that is not what they are called?
But the thing that really got me, was the reaction of one of the parents. “Now my child will not be able to get to sleep in the evening.”
I’m sorry, what? At bedtime you stick your children in front of the electric fish-tank until they fall to sleep? You have out-sourced an essential part of being a parent to the BBC? Are you completely, totally fucking insane?
A bit of TV is fine and can be an excellent educational tool if handled properly, but to think that you use it as an auditory equivalent of valium to make up for your own inadequacies as a parent is frankly galling, and I would love to meet up with you and punch you in the head, if I’m honest.
Every year it’s the same, record pass rates in GCSE’s, mingled with never before seen levels of illiteracy.
I once threw a teenage lad out of a shopping centre and told him that once his ban was lifted, he would have to apply in writing to the management for permission to return. His response? I can’t write. Was he severely dyslexic? Did he have a learning difficulty? No, and yes, I did ask. He had an attitude problem at that was about it.
Do I have a sneaky suspicion that the dumbing down of children’s TV might (in part) be responsible for things like this? You bet I bloody do.
Ok, so we had the Transformers, Thundercats and the X-Men which were lots of fun with bright colours, explosions and a lot of violence, but with it we had morality, not to mention the fact that even the bad guys had the decency to speak English in an intelligible fashion.
Should small children’s television be fun, with oodles of fun characters and silliness, an innocent place where people come to no harm and the good guys always win? Yes, absolutely.
But should childhood be spent growing up in front of a load of fuzzy, inoffensive nonsense that will have the same basic effect as ramming a knitting needle into my child’s brain so that I too can slack off from parenting and raise a dribbling, poorly educated moron? Should it bollocks.
I’ve been Alec, and if you’ve been allowing a household appliance to take your place as a parent, you’ve been a fucking idiot.
Ciao!
All things must come to an end and sometimes we are sad to see them leave, but in this case I am breathing a huge sigh of relief as an institution that I firmly believe is bad for our children is finally taken out the back, given a last cigarette and shot in the face. Hopefully in comedic fashion using a harpoon, but I digress.
A great deal of people are fans of this show, and that is fair enough. I can fully understand why children enjoy the show as it is a sedate affair, with soft speech and nothing threatening, and parents find it keeps their children calm and happy. Fine, but throwing an armful of potent marijuana into an open fire and getting your kids to sit in front of it would have the same basic effect.
Pardon me for wanting my children to learn to speak English, but I don’t want them exposed to a world of Ninky Nonks and Pinky ponks, sponge demons and Aah-Boos at an age when they are supposed to be learning to converse.
What’s wrong with animals? Or people? Or calling a train a train and a zeppelin a zeppelin instead of making up bullshit names for things, then having to teach the child later on that that is not what they are called?
But the thing that really got me, was the reaction of one of the parents. “Now my child will not be able to get to sleep in the evening.”
I’m sorry, what? At bedtime you stick your children in front of the electric fish-tank until they fall to sleep? You have out-sourced an essential part of being a parent to the BBC? Are you completely, totally fucking insane?
A bit of TV is fine and can be an excellent educational tool if handled properly, but to think that you use it as an auditory equivalent of valium to make up for your own inadequacies as a parent is frankly galling, and I would love to meet up with you and punch you in the head, if I’m honest.
Every year it’s the same, record pass rates in GCSE’s, mingled with never before seen levels of illiteracy.
I once threw a teenage lad out of a shopping centre and told him that once his ban was lifted, he would have to apply in writing to the management for permission to return. His response? I can’t write. Was he severely dyslexic? Did he have a learning difficulty? No, and yes, I did ask. He had an attitude problem at that was about it.
Do I have a sneaky suspicion that the dumbing down of children’s TV might (in part) be responsible for things like this? You bet I bloody do.
Ok, so we had the Transformers, Thundercats and the X-Men which were lots of fun with bright colours, explosions and a lot of violence, but with it we had morality, not to mention the fact that even the bad guys had the decency to speak English in an intelligible fashion.
Should small children’s television be fun, with oodles of fun characters and silliness, an innocent place where people come to no harm and the good guys always win? Yes, absolutely.
But should childhood be spent growing up in front of a load of fuzzy, inoffensive nonsense that will have the same basic effect as ramming a knitting needle into my child’s brain so that I too can slack off from parenting and raise a dribbling, poorly educated moron? Should it bollocks.
I’ve been Alec, and if you’ve been allowing a household appliance to take your place as a parent, you’ve been a fucking idiot.
Ciao!
Monday, 6 September 2010
“What? They put leftover meat in sausages? The bastards!”
Those that know me in real life will know how much this subject annoys me, and it is one I want to briefly share with the approximately three people who read this that only know me from the interwebz.
People complaining about the contents of sausages.
I’ve just read another article about foods that are bad for you, and YET AGAIN they lament the fact that sausages and chicken nuggets contain the bits of meat left on a carcass after all the large sections of meat have been cut off. Well bugger me backwards, paint me purple and dip my nads in butterscotch, can this BE?
Of course it can, you dizzy bunch of brain-dead, feather-headed nipple-jockeys. Why do you think people made sausages in the first place? Did you think that they were a throwback from a day long past when tribes of wild sausages roamed the plains, eking out an existence by cultivating tiny carrots while keeping the large predators at bay by doing their tax returns for them?
Get real!
You take the left-over wobbly bits of meat, the bits that remain stuck to the skeleton, and make them into things like sausages to use up all the available meat. Presumably you would rather we ditch the animal carcasses with all this edible material stuck to them, meaning that even more animals are killed so we can use the “choice cuts” to make a product designed to be an economic use of leftover meat?
Personally I find the idea of taking all the “good bits” and grinding them down to make products like chicken nuggets and sausages mildly offensive. Sure, they might taste better, but I don’t think that flavour is the issue here.
It is simply that people are woolly minded and turn their noses up at perfectly edible and good-tasting food purely because of its origins.
Need I remind you that when the menu says “Rump steak”, it really means “Thick-sliced cow’s ass?”
But never mind. As they say, “you can’t educate pork”.
But the crux of this “health issue” is simple. People want to be able to eat shit-loads of such foods and not suffer any ill effects. Well boo-ruddy-hoo. If people weren’t so hell-bent on eating quantities of food that are nearly sufficient to make them explode, there wouldn’t be an issue. So people would rather harp on about the contents of innocent things like sausages than decrease the amount they shovel into their gigantic mouths.
It’s one or the other. Eat less processed food, or don’t. It’s really very simple. But there is really no point in claiming that a product designed with reclaimed meat in mind should be made healthier. That’s like saying those environmentally friendly bags at Tesco (you know, the ones with the texture of a bull mastiff’s scrotum) should be made from the finest of Egyptian cottons so they don’t rub your hands raw when you lug the sodding things up and down the aisles.
Personally from an ethical point of view I’d rather such things remained as they were, as they seem to be the one salute we still have to the principles of our ancestors, where when we kill an animal we use every single part of it out of a basic respect for life.
So I’ll take my sausages the old fashioned way thank you, nipples, nostrils and weird, wobbly-bits included.
People complaining about the contents of sausages.
I’ve just read another article about foods that are bad for you, and YET AGAIN they lament the fact that sausages and chicken nuggets contain the bits of meat left on a carcass after all the large sections of meat have been cut off. Well bugger me backwards, paint me purple and dip my nads in butterscotch, can this BE?
Of course it can, you dizzy bunch of brain-dead, feather-headed nipple-jockeys. Why do you think people made sausages in the first place? Did you think that they were a throwback from a day long past when tribes of wild sausages roamed the plains, eking out an existence by cultivating tiny carrots while keeping the large predators at bay by doing their tax returns for them?
Get real!
You take the left-over wobbly bits of meat, the bits that remain stuck to the skeleton, and make them into things like sausages to use up all the available meat. Presumably you would rather we ditch the animal carcasses with all this edible material stuck to them, meaning that even more animals are killed so we can use the “choice cuts” to make a product designed to be an economic use of leftover meat?
Personally I find the idea of taking all the “good bits” and grinding them down to make products like chicken nuggets and sausages mildly offensive. Sure, they might taste better, but I don’t think that flavour is the issue here.
It is simply that people are woolly minded and turn their noses up at perfectly edible and good-tasting food purely because of its origins.
Need I remind you that when the menu says “Rump steak”, it really means “Thick-sliced cow’s ass?”
But never mind. As they say, “you can’t educate pork”.
But the crux of this “health issue” is simple. People want to be able to eat shit-loads of such foods and not suffer any ill effects. Well boo-ruddy-hoo. If people weren’t so hell-bent on eating quantities of food that are nearly sufficient to make them explode, there wouldn’t be an issue. So people would rather harp on about the contents of innocent things like sausages than decrease the amount they shovel into their gigantic mouths.
It’s one or the other. Eat less processed food, or don’t. It’s really very simple. But there is really no point in claiming that a product designed with reclaimed meat in mind should be made healthier. That’s like saying those environmentally friendly bags at Tesco (you know, the ones with the texture of a bull mastiff’s scrotum) should be made from the finest of Egyptian cottons so they don’t rub your hands raw when you lug the sodding things up and down the aisles.
Personally from an ethical point of view I’d rather such things remained as they were, as they seem to be the one salute we still have to the principles of our ancestors, where when we kill an animal we use every single part of it out of a basic respect for life.
So I’ll take my sausages the old fashioned way thank you, nipples, nostrils and weird, wobbly-bits included.
Thursday, 22 July 2010
The kids are alright! Probably anyway, they were armed when I let them out to play.....
Haven't had a good shout in a while and now my time has come! Mwuhahaha!
(Rant inspired by Sarah "Pyroriffic" Cawkwell and a stupid bitch from Redruth)
I was driving around the other day, smiling softly, death-metal blaring out of the radio, when I saw a woman approach the kerb with her little girl clutched firmly by the hand and look both ways. Now, I wasn't speeding because in towns and near houses I just don't do that, but what the woman did made me use the phrase "cupid stunt", or similar at about 400 decibels.
She had the girl stand at the edge of the pavement, look both ways for any sings of danger, saw me coming along in my little green death-mobile, grabbed the girl tighter by the hand and RAN THE FUCK STRAIGHT ACROSS THE ROAD.
Now what the hell does that teach the little girl? "If you see danger, stop, look, listen, then run like shit and hope nothing bad happens?"
Yeah, good parenting...
(Rant inspired by Sarah "Pyroriffic" Cawkwell and a stupid bitch from Redruth)
I was driving around the other day, smiling softly, death-metal blaring out of the radio, when I saw a woman approach the kerb with her little girl clutched firmly by the hand and look both ways. Now, I wasn't speeding because in towns and near houses I just don't do that, but what the woman did made me use the phrase "cupid stunt", or similar at about 400 decibels.
She had the girl stand at the edge of the pavement, look both ways for any sings of danger, saw me coming along in my little green death-mobile, grabbed the girl tighter by the hand and RAN THE FUCK STRAIGHT ACROSS THE ROAD.
Now what the hell does that teach the little girl? "If you see danger, stop, look, listen, then run like shit and hope nothing bad happens?"
Yeah, good parenting...
Friday, 28 May 2010
Indicators? Noooooo, they're not indicators! I prefer to play GUESS WHERE I'M GOING!
I love driving, yes even in my 1.4 litre Czech motor which is actually pretty damn good in the corners and accelerates much faster than you might think. But there are certain issues in driving that are slowly eating away at my sanity.
Firstly, indicators. These, my dear children, are for indicating. That's right, they are a signal of intent. The number of times the person in front of me has done an emergency stop, yanked hard on the wheel to turn left WHILE SIMULTANEOUSLY TURNING ON THEIR INDICATOR, honestly it drives you insane! (Drives? eh? see what I did there? wink wink?
Secondly, roundabouts. Now I know these stupid paint blob mini-roundabouts are a pain in the ass, I know, no-one likes them, but on big roundabouts there be rules. The simplest of which is this. If you find you are on the inside lane and are about to miss your turn off, keep fucking going. Do not, and I really mean DO NOT abruptly pull across in front of me while waving apologetically into your rear-view mirror. You will find that if you had continued forward, the road would have miraculously brought you back to the same place. Cool huh?
Thirdly, people who speed. Then don't. Then do. You know the ones that do 40mph in a 40mph zone, until they reach a 30mph zone, where they continue to do 40, then they reach a 60mph zone, and I'll be buggered if they don't just keep on doing 40mph. Now, I have some sympathy if you drive a Toyota, as this may not be a situation that you have chosen so much as something the car had decided to do all on its own, but seriously, one of the hallmarks of a good driver is consistency. Having someone tailgate me through a 30mph area only to disappear into my rear view when I hit a 60 or 70mph zone is bloody irritating, save for the vaguely pleasurable "Knight Rider" feeling you get when you roar away from someone without actually roaring at all.
And for the finale, with reference to what happened to me on the way to pick up my wife last night, if you find yourself on the inside lane when the lanes merge, let the poor buggers stuck on the outside in will you? I know it's irritating when you are stuck there and you have to let someone in who has rocketed past the last half mile of stationery traffic, but consider this. If no-one was letting them in, what choice did they have other than to go looking for a gap? Sure, they could risk an accident by muscling their way in, but even this is not an option when you drive the aformentioned 1.4litre Czech bubble car. I, for one, was out there because the person in front of me had executed an emergency stop at 85mph while towing an overloaded trailer tent. Given the way it started jumping and bucking like a hippo being electricuted, I pulled out. I then found that the next mile of traffic was moving but with stopping distances of about .25 of a second between their bumpers. In fact, so determined were several drivers to strand those poor unfortunates in the outside lane that I saw three, and I mean THREE almost rear end crashes. I did not pull out because I was driving like a dick. I pulled out because the guy in front of me was, and looked like he was going to lose control. As I was being tailgated, an emergency stop of my own was not the safest option.
So to the guy in the Maroon Fiat Stilo, who stuck his fingers up at me when I got to the point I was totally stuck while screaming "FUCK YOU!" out of his window, fuck you right back dear heart. It is people like you who cause the traffic jams, by tailgating and stop-starting and refusing to allow the traffic to flow because you think you are in some sort of race. Pulling out is sometimes the safest thing to do. For example, if your father had pulled out you wouldn't be here at all, and that would have made the road a safer place for us all. I am a sensible and highly competent driver after my only two years experience and acted to avoid what could have been a very nasty accident. You are in your sixties and, quite frankly, if you haven't learnt to reign in your anger by now you shouldn't be driving at all. One day you will do that to someone who will either follow you, or just happen to be going to the same place as you and you will then realise the stupidity of a sixty year old man enfuriating a much larger man in his twenties. Thankfully, that would not be me because, as I said, sensible, competent and not that sort of bloke. But quite a few are.
P.S. the look on your face when, several miles later, you looked in your rear-view mirror and saw me smiling back at you in my most wolfish manner, was worth a million pounds at least. I was not following you, although the colour rapidly draining out of your face made it clear that you thought I was. Think on this, because the next person might not be decent, competent and sensible.
Firstly, indicators. These, my dear children, are for indicating. That's right, they are a signal of intent. The number of times the person in front of me has done an emergency stop, yanked hard on the wheel to turn left WHILE SIMULTANEOUSLY TURNING ON THEIR INDICATOR, honestly it drives you insane! (Drives? eh? see what I did there? wink wink?
Secondly, roundabouts. Now I know these stupid paint blob mini-roundabouts are a pain in the ass, I know, no-one likes them, but on big roundabouts there be rules. The simplest of which is this. If you find you are on the inside lane and are about to miss your turn off, keep fucking going. Do not, and I really mean DO NOT abruptly pull across in front of me while waving apologetically into your rear-view mirror. You will find that if you had continued forward, the road would have miraculously brought you back to the same place. Cool huh?
Thirdly, people who speed. Then don't. Then do. You know the ones that do 40mph in a 40mph zone, until they reach a 30mph zone, where they continue to do 40, then they reach a 60mph zone, and I'll be buggered if they don't just keep on doing 40mph. Now, I have some sympathy if you drive a Toyota, as this may not be a situation that you have chosen so much as something the car had decided to do all on its own, but seriously, one of the hallmarks of a good driver is consistency. Having someone tailgate me through a 30mph area only to disappear into my rear view when I hit a 60 or 70mph zone is bloody irritating, save for the vaguely pleasurable "Knight Rider" feeling you get when you roar away from someone without actually roaring at all.
And for the finale, with reference to what happened to me on the way to pick up my wife last night, if you find yourself on the inside lane when the lanes merge, let the poor buggers stuck on the outside in will you? I know it's irritating when you are stuck there and you have to let someone in who has rocketed past the last half mile of stationery traffic, but consider this. If no-one was letting them in, what choice did they have other than to go looking for a gap? Sure, they could risk an accident by muscling their way in, but even this is not an option when you drive the aformentioned 1.4litre Czech bubble car. I, for one, was out there because the person in front of me had executed an emergency stop at 85mph while towing an overloaded trailer tent. Given the way it started jumping and bucking like a hippo being electricuted, I pulled out. I then found that the next mile of traffic was moving but with stopping distances of about .25 of a second between their bumpers. In fact, so determined were several drivers to strand those poor unfortunates in the outside lane that I saw three, and I mean THREE almost rear end crashes. I did not pull out because I was driving like a dick. I pulled out because the guy in front of me was, and looked like he was going to lose control. As I was being tailgated, an emergency stop of my own was not the safest option.
So to the guy in the Maroon Fiat Stilo, who stuck his fingers up at me when I got to the point I was totally stuck while screaming "FUCK YOU!" out of his window, fuck you right back dear heart. It is people like you who cause the traffic jams, by tailgating and stop-starting and refusing to allow the traffic to flow because you think you are in some sort of race. Pulling out is sometimes the safest thing to do. For example, if your father had pulled out you wouldn't be here at all, and that would have made the road a safer place for us all. I am a sensible and highly competent driver after my only two years experience and acted to avoid what could have been a very nasty accident. You are in your sixties and, quite frankly, if you haven't learnt to reign in your anger by now you shouldn't be driving at all. One day you will do that to someone who will either follow you, or just happen to be going to the same place as you and you will then realise the stupidity of a sixty year old man enfuriating a much larger man in his twenties. Thankfully, that would not be me because, as I said, sensible, competent and not that sort of bloke. But quite a few are.
P.S. the look on your face when, several miles later, you looked in your rear-view mirror and saw me smiling back at you in my most wolfish manner, was worth a million pounds at least. I was not following you, although the colour rapidly draining out of your face made it clear that you thought I was. Think on this, because the next person might not be decent, competent and sensible.
Friday, 21 May 2010
Dangerous stuff eh? Terrorists? Meteorites? Pigeons armed with plasma rifles? Yeah, ok mate, I'd better go over here now.....
Ham. Oh yes, the great beast of legend has returned to eat our souls and fill our nostrils with aids! Mwuhahaha!
Is it just me or does practically everything give you cancer? Or heart disease. Or makes your testicles swell up and take on a life of their own, rampaging down the high street armed with a pair of nuclear powered chopsticks, molesting your children, driving down property prices and stealing your personal information to sell to the highest bidder, a man who runs an Icelandic bank who will then run off to spend your savings on hardcore Vietnamese goat porn?
Makes you think doesn’t it. I’m half tempted to fund scientific research of my own that will conclude with “The X-chromosome gives you cancer. All attempts to treat it will give you cancer. Worrying about it will give you cancer. We are ALL screwed now get on with your lives, you gullible, paranoid, fish brained butt monkeys. PS. Further research in this field will give you cancer”.
Now the average person is fairly smart, but when surrounded by so many health warnings, who wouldn’t become a little paranoid? We are already concerned with our own finances, health, our jobs, our kids education, war, famine, artichokes, the bubonic plague etc without it being constantly added to whenever a piece of flawed, biased and just plain stupid research surfaces from the primordial soup. Can you imagine taking a child that is worried about the monster under their bed and saying “That’s nothing! There’s bird flu, old men that want to touch you in the pants, aids, all manner of shit exploding and endless re-runs of Friends to be scared of too!”
Ethically you shouldn’t scare the living piss out of people unless you either have a very good reason or are a total gimp, and I do have to wonder which category these so called “researchers” fit into.
Take war for example. War is a terrible thing, something to be avoided whenever possible, yet now it is televised. We don’t get radio broadcasts and grainy, black and white pictures of troops neck deep in the dark and brown like in the good old days. We no longer have the comfort of a reasonable degree of detachment so we can all get on with our lives in the meanwhile. We hear the names and circumstances involved in every roadside bomb. We see each individual grieving family, the little girls who have lost their daddy, the heaped flowers outside a soldiers home.
We see each and every Asian guy who is less than satisfied with this country, even if their reasons are legitimate, held up as if he was caught drowning kittens in caustic soda. We then hear the details of his benefit history; as if there aren’t white people out there scrounging for all they’re worth too. Sure, it makes me mad that people who hate this country have the brass balls to sit and claim benefits and make up bullshit claims for why they don’t have to work, but there are far fewer of them than there are perfectly able bodied white people who could work but can’t be bothered. Not to mention women who are quite open with the fact that they don’t see why they should work when the government will fund them to sit at home and knock out children like there is no tomorrow.
All these people steal money from people with genuine disability and people who deserve the help of the benefit system, to prop them up so they can rejoin the workforce later and educate their children properly. But the way the media makes it sound is like all people on benefits are scummers.
Is it true that Polish migrant workers can claim disability benefit for their disabled children who do not live here? Yes it is. Is that a fair reason to hate all the Polish migrants? No it isn’t.
The British media has become a huge, bloated old witch stirring up a cauldron full of misery, throwing in statistics to fool us into believing they have anything of value to tell us.
Is this news to anyone? No, probably not, but that is not what concerns me.
What worries me is that one day, in the wake of the BSE scares, Bird Flu, Bovine TB, SARS, Terrorism, Megan Fox and bras that will rise up and sacrifice you to the Blood God, I am seriously concerned that when something serious actually DOES come along, we will all be so sick of bloody hearing it that no-one will believe it and, in the biggest case of “little boy who cried wolf” in human history we really will all be in deep shit.
But nevermind, I’m sure that when we are all scrabbling for the last few tins of food and murdering each other for the last copy of “What Hi-fi” magazine, there will be an idiot there to film it all for the evening news.
And they will probably blame the Coalition Government.
Is it just me or does practically everything give you cancer? Or heart disease. Or makes your testicles swell up and take on a life of their own, rampaging down the high street armed with a pair of nuclear powered chopsticks, molesting your children, driving down property prices and stealing your personal information to sell to the highest bidder, a man who runs an Icelandic bank who will then run off to spend your savings on hardcore Vietnamese goat porn?
Makes you think doesn’t it. I’m half tempted to fund scientific research of my own that will conclude with “The X-chromosome gives you cancer. All attempts to treat it will give you cancer. Worrying about it will give you cancer. We are ALL screwed now get on with your lives, you gullible, paranoid, fish brained butt monkeys. PS. Further research in this field will give you cancer”.
Now the average person is fairly smart, but when surrounded by so many health warnings, who wouldn’t become a little paranoid? We are already concerned with our own finances, health, our jobs, our kids education, war, famine, artichokes, the bubonic plague etc without it being constantly added to whenever a piece of flawed, biased and just plain stupid research surfaces from the primordial soup. Can you imagine taking a child that is worried about the monster under their bed and saying “That’s nothing! There’s bird flu, old men that want to touch you in the pants, aids, all manner of shit exploding and endless re-runs of Friends to be scared of too!”
Ethically you shouldn’t scare the living piss out of people unless you either have a very good reason or are a total gimp, and I do have to wonder which category these so called “researchers” fit into.
Take war for example. War is a terrible thing, something to be avoided whenever possible, yet now it is televised. We don’t get radio broadcasts and grainy, black and white pictures of troops neck deep in the dark and brown like in the good old days. We no longer have the comfort of a reasonable degree of detachment so we can all get on with our lives in the meanwhile. We hear the names and circumstances involved in every roadside bomb. We see each individual grieving family, the little girls who have lost their daddy, the heaped flowers outside a soldiers home.
We see each and every Asian guy who is less than satisfied with this country, even if their reasons are legitimate, held up as if he was caught drowning kittens in caustic soda. We then hear the details of his benefit history; as if there aren’t white people out there scrounging for all they’re worth too. Sure, it makes me mad that people who hate this country have the brass balls to sit and claim benefits and make up bullshit claims for why they don’t have to work, but there are far fewer of them than there are perfectly able bodied white people who could work but can’t be bothered. Not to mention women who are quite open with the fact that they don’t see why they should work when the government will fund them to sit at home and knock out children like there is no tomorrow.
All these people steal money from people with genuine disability and people who deserve the help of the benefit system, to prop them up so they can rejoin the workforce later and educate their children properly. But the way the media makes it sound is like all people on benefits are scummers.
Is it true that Polish migrant workers can claim disability benefit for their disabled children who do not live here? Yes it is. Is that a fair reason to hate all the Polish migrants? No it isn’t.
The British media has become a huge, bloated old witch stirring up a cauldron full of misery, throwing in statistics to fool us into believing they have anything of value to tell us.
Is this news to anyone? No, probably not, but that is not what concerns me.
What worries me is that one day, in the wake of the BSE scares, Bird Flu, Bovine TB, SARS, Terrorism, Megan Fox and bras that will rise up and sacrifice you to the Blood God, I am seriously concerned that when something serious actually DOES come along, we will all be so sick of bloody hearing it that no-one will believe it and, in the biggest case of “little boy who cried wolf” in human history we really will all be in deep shit.
But nevermind, I’m sure that when we are all scrabbling for the last few tins of food and murdering each other for the last copy of “What Hi-fi” magazine, there will be an idiot there to film it all for the evening news.
And they will probably blame the Coalition Government.
Monday, 17 May 2010
Hung Parliament? We’re not getting everything we want? Right, that’s it. SEND IN THE UNCLEAN!
This is a brief thank you to the group of morons currently camped outside of parliament square in London, in protest at the fact we are not likely to be getting the sort of electoral reform that some of us wanted.
I voted for the Liberal Democrats at the last election and am proud of that fact. I am also proud of the way in which Nick Clegg and his people have conducted themselves after the fact, helping to set up what they would consider the best government we have available at the moment.
I am pleased that when there are issues that are unacceptable there are pressure groups and people who go out onto the streets in protest, waving their banners and placards in safety, given that we live in a country where they are free to do this without being dispersed with tear gas and rubber bullets.
What displeases me is the conduct of the idiots that have been out to buy tents from the favela section in Millets and set up on the lawn outside parliament. Why? Because I believe they are doing much more harm than good and because of the slapdash attitude they have taken to the whole affair.
“We will only leave if we are evicted by force or if our demands are met”. Followed by a laundry list of demands including electoral reform, ending the war in Afghanistan, making Ed Balls change his name to something that doesn’t make me giggle and free machines that go PING! for every hospital in the land.
Now if you want to organise a protest that will garner support from the general public, there are a few simple rules which you should follow.
Firstly, it has to have a permit if it is within one mile of parliament square. Was it too much to ask that you organise the damn thing properly? Now the police are immediately involved and as soon as any of you does anything at all that could be considered nuisance behaviour, it will be shut down and you will be moved on and it will be your own fault. Believe me, they are waiting for this to happen and their response will be well organised and rapid, as if they had been expecting this to happen. Funny that…
Secondly, keep it clean! Nobody will sympathise with you if you dump all your rubbish everywhere making the place look like Glastonbury bloody festival. Nobody takes any notice of stupid people in tents, up to their necks in their own detritus. Remember Swampy? He was a media darling for quite some time when the council wanted to build a motorway across Bambi’s forehead, but nobody really took him seriously. He was a novelty, little more. To get something like electoral reform we need to be taken seriously, not as some bunch of bleeding heart Muppets littering Parliament Square with McDonald’s wrappers.
Lastly, if you want something done, even in the dim hopes of a successful protest, you need to have a clear message for the powers that be. Chants of “What do we want?!?” “Your agreement to implement points one to eighteen, with particular attention to annexes one to fourteen in section two and an end to the war in Afghanistan with reference to the issues raised in the appendices section part four, paragraph two” will not work. You need a clear and concise message or you look like a bunch of whining, far left wing idiots. Ordinarily that would not bother me, but this time you are representing an issue that is of great importance to a great many people and your behaviour is acting in detriment to this cause.
The Lib Dems are in a position to make things better, even if not to make them the way that a lot of us want. But you must remember that those that are against electoral reform are going to hold you up as an example of the kind of people that want this reform. We need to be seen as serious, dedicated and intelligent people in order to be given the time of day and setting up a shanty town next door to the seats of power is not the way to do it.
Please either clean up your act, re-organise this properly or simply get the fuck out of London, because you are damaging the cause and making us all look stupid.
Thanks, disgruntled in Cornwall.
I voted for the Liberal Democrats at the last election and am proud of that fact. I am also proud of the way in which Nick Clegg and his people have conducted themselves after the fact, helping to set up what they would consider the best government we have available at the moment.
I am pleased that when there are issues that are unacceptable there are pressure groups and people who go out onto the streets in protest, waving their banners and placards in safety, given that we live in a country where they are free to do this without being dispersed with tear gas and rubber bullets.
What displeases me is the conduct of the idiots that have been out to buy tents from the favela section in Millets and set up on the lawn outside parliament. Why? Because I believe they are doing much more harm than good and because of the slapdash attitude they have taken to the whole affair.
“We will only leave if we are evicted by force or if our demands are met”. Followed by a laundry list of demands including electoral reform, ending the war in Afghanistan, making Ed Balls change his name to something that doesn’t make me giggle and free machines that go PING! for every hospital in the land.
Now if you want to organise a protest that will garner support from the general public, there are a few simple rules which you should follow.
Firstly, it has to have a permit if it is within one mile of parliament square. Was it too much to ask that you organise the damn thing properly? Now the police are immediately involved and as soon as any of you does anything at all that could be considered nuisance behaviour, it will be shut down and you will be moved on and it will be your own fault. Believe me, they are waiting for this to happen and their response will be well organised and rapid, as if they had been expecting this to happen. Funny that…
Secondly, keep it clean! Nobody will sympathise with you if you dump all your rubbish everywhere making the place look like Glastonbury bloody festival. Nobody takes any notice of stupid people in tents, up to their necks in their own detritus. Remember Swampy? He was a media darling for quite some time when the council wanted to build a motorway across Bambi’s forehead, but nobody really took him seriously. He was a novelty, little more. To get something like electoral reform we need to be taken seriously, not as some bunch of bleeding heart Muppets littering Parliament Square with McDonald’s wrappers.
Lastly, if you want something done, even in the dim hopes of a successful protest, you need to have a clear message for the powers that be. Chants of “What do we want?!?” “Your agreement to implement points one to eighteen, with particular attention to annexes one to fourteen in section two and an end to the war in Afghanistan with reference to the issues raised in the appendices section part four, paragraph two” will not work. You need a clear and concise message or you look like a bunch of whining, far left wing idiots. Ordinarily that would not bother me, but this time you are representing an issue that is of great importance to a great many people and your behaviour is acting in detriment to this cause.
The Lib Dems are in a position to make things better, even if not to make them the way that a lot of us want. But you must remember that those that are against electoral reform are going to hold you up as an example of the kind of people that want this reform. We need to be seen as serious, dedicated and intelligent people in order to be given the time of day and setting up a shanty town next door to the seats of power is not the way to do it.
Please either clean up your act, re-organise this properly or simply get the fuck out of London, because you are damaging the cause and making us all look stupid.
Thanks, disgruntled in Cornwall.
Saturday, 8 May 2010
Come on then! Come on! I'll bite yer ankles ya giant bastard!
Since the first utterances, those first vestigial syllables that came a tumbling out of the mouth of what can just about be called a human being, sat somewhere on the plains, poking their own faeces with a stick, words have had power.
There are words which vent frustration, words that show rage, ones for the expression of love and adoration for another, words that comfort and words that will endure long after those who spoke them are gone.
Then there are words which fill you with an intense mixture of feelings as their foul and pestilential tang disrupts your humours until you want to burst your eardrums with a screwdriver so as to never have to hear them again. And among these, there are two which irk me most of all.
DANNY DYER.
Don't know him? Well it doesn't matter, because you've met him. Yes, you really have. Remember at school the huge kid, the one that had bigger knuckles than brains? Used to beat the living hell out of kids that would have stood no chance had they come armed with a chainsaw? Right, now remember the weedly, smirking little prick that stood behind that kid,goading his trollish master onto further acts of violence and torment? Hid behind him because he was far too chicken shit to ever actually take anyone on himself but loved to hang out with the hard kids and thought he was the dogs back wheels?
That's him, at least it is to all intents and purposes. I cannot fucking stand Danny Dyer, he is a total and utter pussy yet likes to hang around with some thoroughly hard blokes like Jason Statham and Vinnie Jones and bask in the reflective glory of how tough his mates are.
He hosts that show, you know, worlds hardest Ice Cream van drivers etc? Standing there posturing like a fucking peacock, swaggering around like the hardest man in the world, until the tough guy that is the basis for the show inevitably beats the everlasting crap out of him and shows him to be the pansy that he truly is.
Now why do I have a problem with Danny Dyer? Because I hate bullies.
I have been bullied myself and have stood up for people in my life whenever I have been able to and that has a lot to do with why I am the slightly sociopathic, ranting nutjob I am. But I got over it, grew up, got some perspective and learned to take care of myself, no thanks to wankers like Danny Dyer.
His response when asked by a reader of his low-level wankmag column how to deal with a very upsetting breakup from a girl he had been truly in love with?
"You could do A, B, C, or you could just cut her face so no-one else would ever want her".
Charming, you little shithead. And now you are trying to claim you were "miss-quoted". How exactly? Cup her face was it? You didn't want to pie and mash her boat race? Oh right, I forgot, like all bullies you squeal like a little piggy when you are confronted over your actions because you don't even have the balls to back it up.
Mr Dyer, I honestly hope that the next person you annoy takes you to task for the things you do and say. You think there is anything funny about domestic violence? Guess again. I know you will claim that you didn't mean it, or it was out of context or whatever, but you know the truth. You know exactly the kind of man you are and one day, when you open your mouth too far, someone will be waiting for you and your hard mates won't be around to protect you.
Now that is a TV program i would definately tune in for.
There are words which vent frustration, words that show rage, ones for the expression of love and adoration for another, words that comfort and words that will endure long after those who spoke them are gone.
Then there are words which fill you with an intense mixture of feelings as their foul and pestilential tang disrupts your humours until you want to burst your eardrums with a screwdriver so as to never have to hear them again. And among these, there are two which irk me most of all.
DANNY DYER.
Don't know him? Well it doesn't matter, because you've met him. Yes, you really have. Remember at school the huge kid, the one that had bigger knuckles than brains? Used to beat the living hell out of kids that would have stood no chance had they come armed with a chainsaw? Right, now remember the weedly, smirking little prick that stood behind that kid,goading his trollish master onto further acts of violence and torment? Hid behind him because he was far too chicken shit to ever actually take anyone on himself but loved to hang out with the hard kids and thought he was the dogs back wheels?
That's him, at least it is to all intents and purposes. I cannot fucking stand Danny Dyer, he is a total and utter pussy yet likes to hang around with some thoroughly hard blokes like Jason Statham and Vinnie Jones and bask in the reflective glory of how tough his mates are.
He hosts that show, you know, worlds hardest Ice Cream van drivers etc? Standing there posturing like a fucking peacock, swaggering around like the hardest man in the world, until the tough guy that is the basis for the show inevitably beats the everlasting crap out of him and shows him to be the pansy that he truly is.
Now why do I have a problem with Danny Dyer? Because I hate bullies.
I have been bullied myself and have stood up for people in my life whenever I have been able to and that has a lot to do with why I am the slightly sociopathic, ranting nutjob I am. But I got over it, grew up, got some perspective and learned to take care of myself, no thanks to wankers like Danny Dyer.
His response when asked by a reader of his low-level wankmag column how to deal with a very upsetting breakup from a girl he had been truly in love with?
"You could do A, B, C, or you could just cut her face so no-one else would ever want her".
Charming, you little shithead. And now you are trying to claim you were "miss-quoted". How exactly? Cup her face was it? You didn't want to pie and mash her boat race? Oh right, I forgot, like all bullies you squeal like a little piggy when you are confronted over your actions because you don't even have the balls to back it up.
Mr Dyer, I honestly hope that the next person you annoy takes you to task for the things you do and say. You think there is anything funny about domestic violence? Guess again. I know you will claim that you didn't mean it, or it was out of context or whatever, but you know the truth. You know exactly the kind of man you are and one day, when you open your mouth too far, someone will be waiting for you and your hard mates won't be around to protect you.
Now that is a TV program i would definately tune in for.
Thursday, 6 May 2010
A rant in all its pure, simplistic beauty.
Ding dong the iPod's dead! Hooray! Stupid bloody shiny piece of monkey rectum gave up the ghost this morning in response to absolutely nothing whatsoever.
Now the loss of an iPod is one thing, but thanks to how bloody ridiculous and stupid Apples software is, all of the music I have paid for from iTunes cannot be copied directly onto my wifes Creative Zen! I have to now buy a load of blank cd's to copy it onto disc, then back onto the computer so I can play music I have already paid for!
Now I wouldn't mind, but I do not illegally download music, so I have to pay AGAIN a small sum to play music I HAVE ALREADY PAID FOR!
That and iTunes has completely and totally fucked up all of the locations of the music files on my computer, and deleted music from iTunes that I downloaded which I now cannot get back without paying for it again!
Thank you Apple, I sincerely hope you do not fall down the stairs onto a skateboard full of rusty nails that give you tetinus, before rolling down the road with you still stuck to it and rolling in front of a truck which knocks you into the air, where you are sucked into the rapidly twirling blades of a jet engine which shreds you and fires your vaporised remains over a forty square mile radius.
Thank you.
P.s. FUCK YOU APPLE!
PRICKS!
Now the loss of an iPod is one thing, but thanks to how bloody ridiculous and stupid Apples software is, all of the music I have paid for from iTunes cannot be copied directly onto my wifes Creative Zen! I have to now buy a load of blank cd's to copy it onto disc, then back onto the computer so I can play music I have already paid for!
Now I wouldn't mind, but I do not illegally download music, so I have to pay AGAIN a small sum to play music I HAVE ALREADY PAID FOR!
That and iTunes has completely and totally fucked up all of the locations of the music files on my computer, and deleted music from iTunes that I downloaded which I now cannot get back without paying for it again!
Thank you Apple, I sincerely hope you do not fall down the stairs onto a skateboard full of rusty nails that give you tetinus, before rolling down the road with you still stuck to it and rolling in front of a truck which knocks you into the air, where you are sucked into the rapidly twirling blades of a jet engine which shreds you and fires your vaporised remains over a forty square mile radius.
Thank you.
P.s. FUCK YOU APPLE!
PRICKS!
Wednesday, 14 April 2010
DONT USE THE TOASTER! IT MIGHT GIVE YOU HERPES!
Well the mad scientists over at Twatville University have done it again, gifting the world with their unique scientific insight and saving us all from ourselves. Now, what exactly were we doing wrong this time? Giving ourselves cancer again. Oh, silly, silly us. And what were we doing this time? Filling our Y-fronts with depleted uranium? Microwaving our testes? No, something much more stupid than that.
We were putting the light on when we get up in the night to go for a leak.
I know, I know. Dumb isn’t it?
Apparently, putting a light on while it is night time buggers up your circadian rhythm and yadda yadda yadda, increases your chances of contracting cancer.
They found this, because when they woke up group A Laboratory mice without a light and group B Laboratory mice with a light, Group B suffered more cancers.
Now look, I understand that it is important to find those things in the environment that make us sick and learn how to deal with them, but how in the hell can this research be justified as being of any use to mankind? Were the tumour riddled bodies of previously healthy people found huddled on the bathroom floor at three in the morning with the lights on? Heck no, and to me this smacks of a group of pseudo-scientist pillocks trying to justify their departments existence by producing anything that alludes to a possible reduction in the C-WORD. No, not that C-word…
I agree with the use of laboratory rodents to find cures and treatments for serious human ailments to save us at the expense of a small, short lived animal. What I cannot abide is giving an animal cancer and producing absolutely no useful information from it. That is disgusting, vulgar and no better than throwing a big bag of mice into an open fire. Are people going to get a 0.01% increase in the risk of contracting cancer from turning on a light while they pee? Perhaps. Would 100% of married women, considering our aiming expertise during the day, be much happier knowing that their husbands were not peeing in the dark? Hell yeah!
Now let me make this clear. Mice are nervous creatures, and the poor little things suffer from cancer, especially if they are stressed. If you increase the amount of stress (say by waking them up with a bright light as opposed to not) you will increase the chances of giving the poor little buggers cancer, so this “Science”, tells us absolutely nothing.
But how about this. In the full knowledge and acceptance that I am sacrificing the lives of hundreds of cancer ridden mice to do it, I propose that I repeat this experiment only with one important difference. The first group are woken up gently with a Wagner track playing, the second are woken up with Coldplay blaring out loudly with a giant, neon-lit picture of Chris Martin dangling in front of their tiny faces. It’s no more scientific, but the results would do the world a damn sight more good.
We were putting the light on when we get up in the night to go for a leak.
I know, I know. Dumb isn’t it?
Apparently, putting a light on while it is night time buggers up your circadian rhythm and yadda yadda yadda, increases your chances of contracting cancer.
They found this, because when they woke up group A Laboratory mice without a light and group B Laboratory mice with a light, Group B suffered more cancers.
Now look, I understand that it is important to find those things in the environment that make us sick and learn how to deal with them, but how in the hell can this research be justified as being of any use to mankind? Were the tumour riddled bodies of previously healthy people found huddled on the bathroom floor at three in the morning with the lights on? Heck no, and to me this smacks of a group of pseudo-scientist pillocks trying to justify their departments existence by producing anything that alludes to a possible reduction in the C-WORD. No, not that C-word…
I agree with the use of laboratory rodents to find cures and treatments for serious human ailments to save us at the expense of a small, short lived animal. What I cannot abide is giving an animal cancer and producing absolutely no useful information from it. That is disgusting, vulgar and no better than throwing a big bag of mice into an open fire. Are people going to get a 0.01% increase in the risk of contracting cancer from turning on a light while they pee? Perhaps. Would 100% of married women, considering our aiming expertise during the day, be much happier knowing that their husbands were not peeing in the dark? Hell yeah!
Now let me make this clear. Mice are nervous creatures, and the poor little things suffer from cancer, especially if they are stressed. If you increase the amount of stress (say by waking them up with a bright light as opposed to not) you will increase the chances of giving the poor little buggers cancer, so this “Science”, tells us absolutely nothing.
But how about this. In the full knowledge and acceptance that I am sacrificing the lives of hundreds of cancer ridden mice to do it, I propose that I repeat this experiment only with one important difference. The first group are woken up gently with a Wagner track playing, the second are woken up with Coldplay blaring out loudly with a giant, neon-lit picture of Chris Martin dangling in front of their tiny faces. It’s no more scientific, but the results would do the world a damn sight more good.
Thursday, 18 March 2010
Hey kids it’s pocket money time! Now you promise you wont spend this money on crack, right?
Right well, here we go with todays mind buggeringly pathetic headline from Yahoo! News, “£10 a week to stop pregnant women smoking”.
*Sounds of muffled yelling, as of someone screaming expletives into a cushion*.
Ok I’m back. Cue the slow clapping Mr Government think tank! I can see you really did your homework on this one! Did you interview a few pregnant smokers? If so, how did that go?
“Quit smoking while pregnant, it could lead to a dangerously low birth-weight!”
“You mean I’ll have to push less and the baby will be smaller, so labour will be less painful?”
“Oh, well that’s not really what we were going for there. Umm, Ah ha! Smoking can impede the development of a childs lungs, leaving them gasping for air in an incubator for the first weeks of their lives and affect their general health by leaving them at risk to infection with an immune system unable to cope! It may also give them asthma which could seriously affect their life until the day they die!”
“Yeah but I like don’t smoke that many anyway, and I used to smoke loads more and pregnancy is well stressful innit, and I’ve got asthma already anyway (puts down fag to take huge lungful of inhaler) so the baby will probably get that anyway. It’s called like genetic predisposition or somefin innit”.
“What? Oh go on, please? Please quit smoking? Pretty please? I’ll give you a tenner…”
That’s right, some prick thinks it’s a good idea to wheel out the money catapult again! Sure, the NHS already provides stop smoking services for free and Nicorette gum and inhalators on prescription. Which are free to pregnant women anyway, but try to drown the problem with cash? Well that’s a splendid idea! Just like the £30 a month we give to AS and A-level students just to turn up to a course they opted to take in the first place! Why didn’t I think of this? Because I’m not a raving great DILDO that’s why!
Has it come to this? Are we using petty bribery to try and solve a social and medical issue? We’re spending a massive amount of money on guilt tripping everyone into trying to bag their farts to lessen their carbon footprint, (at the same time offering £2000 scrappage bonuses when people trade in their old car for a new one, sending plenty of re-usable second hand cars to the scrap heap, to be replaced with a new one, the production of which far outstrips the damage done by driving the aforementioned banger until it was actually ready to be scrapped. Thus neatly costing us all millions and buggering up the planet at the same time….) why not spend some of this on better education? I know our mid-wife would have hit the fucking ROOF if either of us had smoked while ‘er indoors was up the spout!
Or how about something simpler. How about “Smoking during pregnancy does this this this this and this to the unborn child. This can lead to this this this this and this. Smoking is bad for your baby. Quit smoking, or we will hold you personally and legally responsible for any repercussions your child suffers as a result. You have been warned”.
Basically an “official” and legally binding way to say “You hurta your child, we breaka your face!”
Well that’s another rant, I’ve been the Vampiric Chicken, and now I hear the dulcet tones of children jumping up and down on the roof of my car. I’m going to go bribe them with tins of Ambrosia Devon Custard (Devon knows how they make it so creamy). If that doesn’t work, I’m going to fucking shoot them.
*Sounds of muffled yelling, as of someone screaming expletives into a cushion*.
Ok I’m back. Cue the slow clapping Mr Government think tank! I can see you really did your homework on this one! Did you interview a few pregnant smokers? If so, how did that go?
“Quit smoking while pregnant, it could lead to a dangerously low birth-weight!”
“You mean I’ll have to push less and the baby will be smaller, so labour will be less painful?”
“Oh, well that’s not really what we were going for there. Umm, Ah ha! Smoking can impede the development of a childs lungs, leaving them gasping for air in an incubator for the first weeks of their lives and affect their general health by leaving them at risk to infection with an immune system unable to cope! It may also give them asthma which could seriously affect their life until the day they die!”
“Yeah but I like don’t smoke that many anyway, and I used to smoke loads more and pregnancy is well stressful innit, and I’ve got asthma already anyway (puts down fag to take huge lungful of inhaler) so the baby will probably get that anyway. It’s called like genetic predisposition or somefin innit”.
“What? Oh go on, please? Please quit smoking? Pretty please? I’ll give you a tenner…”
That’s right, some prick thinks it’s a good idea to wheel out the money catapult again! Sure, the NHS already provides stop smoking services for free and Nicorette gum and inhalators on prescription. Which are free to pregnant women anyway, but try to drown the problem with cash? Well that’s a splendid idea! Just like the £30 a month we give to AS and A-level students just to turn up to a course they opted to take in the first place! Why didn’t I think of this? Because I’m not a raving great DILDO that’s why!
Has it come to this? Are we using petty bribery to try and solve a social and medical issue? We’re spending a massive amount of money on guilt tripping everyone into trying to bag their farts to lessen their carbon footprint, (at the same time offering £2000 scrappage bonuses when people trade in their old car for a new one, sending plenty of re-usable second hand cars to the scrap heap, to be replaced with a new one, the production of which far outstrips the damage done by driving the aforementioned banger until it was actually ready to be scrapped. Thus neatly costing us all millions and buggering up the planet at the same time….) why not spend some of this on better education? I know our mid-wife would have hit the fucking ROOF if either of us had smoked while ‘er indoors was up the spout!
Or how about something simpler. How about “Smoking during pregnancy does this this this this and this to the unborn child. This can lead to this this this this and this. Smoking is bad for your baby. Quit smoking, or we will hold you personally and legally responsible for any repercussions your child suffers as a result. You have been warned”.
Basically an “official” and legally binding way to say “You hurta your child, we breaka your face!”
Well that’s another rant, I’ve been the Vampiric Chicken, and now I hear the dulcet tones of children jumping up and down on the roof of my car. I’m going to go bribe them with tins of Ambrosia Devon Custard (Devon knows how they make it so creamy). If that doesn’t work, I’m going to fucking shoot them.
Tuesday, 16 March 2010
Vampiric Chicken Vikings, ATTAAAAAACK!
Right ok, lunch nice and hot, Volbeat on the iPod and an annoying notion in my mind.
Right. Go!
Norrie May-Welby. Not a name you are likely to be familiar with, but a name that had me shaking my head at the over whelming pointlessness this morning at the headline “Briton becomes world’s first OFFICIALLY genderless person”. What the hell does that mean?
Let me start by saying this is in no way a personal or homophobic attack, but it’s just the stupid implications of this “news” that have got my back up. The Australian authorities declared themselves unable to determine the actual gender of Norrie’s body. Now, Norrie was born a man, but had a sex change back in the eighties at some point. Since then, she didn’t feel that female was appropriate either, so had surgery to make herself basically gender neutral. Fair enough, whatever it takes to make you happy, right? Well yeah, it’s important to feel happy in your own body, after all, it is the only thing that truly belongs to you and no-one else, but here’s the thing. The term gender has bugger all to do with biology. No, don’t start to disagree just yet, look it up from a reputable source and you will find that I am correct. Your SEX is a biological fact. Quite simply, you either have Y-chromosomes or you do not. If you do, you are male. If you do not, you are female. (This is a simplification, it is not always xx or xy, you can have xyy, xxy, even xxxy, look up super-males, bloody interesting if you are into genetics).
The thing is, gender is the thoughts, feelings, behaviours, stereotypes and emotional attributes that a given culture associates with each of the two sexes, and these are not always the same cross culturally. The Amazonian warriors for example. Typically, they have a male gender role as we would see it, but are still female. But I digress. Where the hell does “officially” come into it? Is this an attempt to make life easier for Norrie? Maybe. But what the hell is the point? Ok, be whatever you want to be, but is this something Norrie can put on their passport? What the hell do we call him/her now? Is it to become un-pc to call her her? Or him? What about IT? Is that fair, or even in any way helpful? No, but sadly, that is what is likely to happen.
Or does this go back to something basic, stupid and really damned annoying. People don’t like to use the word sex. Think about it, are you ever asked for your SEX on a form anymore? Nope, it’s always GENDER these days, which is not right, whatever some weasely little tit with a clip board might tell you. Sexes. There are two of them. Male and Female. There are also two basic genders. Essentially, Masculine, feminine, and degrees thereof. Hey, don’t get me wrong, there should be allowances made for the fact that it is perfectly possible for there to be hermaphrodites. But do you know how many TRUE hermaphrodites there have ever been? And by true, I mean having both male AND female organs (not just a vagina and vestigial penis or vice versa, but one functioning ovary, one testicle etc). Have a guess? Put it this way, you can count them on one hand. Last I researched it at University, there had only ever been one. And no, someone with ambiguous sexual organs, under-developed genitals or growth deficiencies DOES NOT count. I cannot see any way in which this daft judgement call is going to help Norrie, rather it is likely to make things harder as people are going to have no clue how do deal with her.
Stupidly, no-one has mentioned a psychological evaluation to determine her gender, they have based this “OFFICIAL” declaration entirely upon a medical examination. Well, that’s like a bit like trying to discover someone’s religious beliefs by giving them a fucking MRI scan.
Let us take this to a ridiculous conclusion, shall we? I like beer, large edged weapons, breaking things, growing my hair long and have a penchant for comely wenches. Right, that’s it. I’m going to the court of human rights to be “OFFICIALLY” declared a Viking. Or maybe a Klingon. Oh damn you and your irrefutable facts, you’re encroaching on my personal feelings if you let facts and scientific principles get in the way of my “OFFICIAL” Viking/Klingon status. Hey, we even have our own language.
So that’s my first inane and pointless rant. Stop giggling like bloody five year olds every time you hear the word “sex” and use it properly, and stop misusing words like “OFFICIAL”, it’s stupid, and it’s pointless and it isn’t going to help anybody. I only hope that years down the line when Norrie is stood at an airport check-in unsure of which box to tick on the “Gender” (GRRRRRRRRRRRR) section, and the security staff are unwilling to force the other 6 Billion odd people in the world to choose between these and a little box stating “other”, he/she/they/whatever doesn’t come to seriously regret this announcement.
P.S. Interested in any of this sciency stuff? Take a look at the Batista Family, it’ll blow your mind.
Right. Go!
Norrie May-Welby. Not a name you are likely to be familiar with, but a name that had me shaking my head at the over whelming pointlessness this morning at the headline “Briton becomes world’s first OFFICIALLY genderless person”. What the hell does that mean?
Let me start by saying this is in no way a personal or homophobic attack, but it’s just the stupid implications of this “news” that have got my back up. The Australian authorities declared themselves unable to determine the actual gender of Norrie’s body. Now, Norrie was born a man, but had a sex change back in the eighties at some point. Since then, she didn’t feel that female was appropriate either, so had surgery to make herself basically gender neutral. Fair enough, whatever it takes to make you happy, right? Well yeah, it’s important to feel happy in your own body, after all, it is the only thing that truly belongs to you and no-one else, but here’s the thing. The term gender has bugger all to do with biology. No, don’t start to disagree just yet, look it up from a reputable source and you will find that I am correct. Your SEX is a biological fact. Quite simply, you either have Y-chromosomes or you do not. If you do, you are male. If you do not, you are female. (This is a simplification, it is not always xx or xy, you can have xyy, xxy, even xxxy, look up super-males, bloody interesting if you are into genetics).
The thing is, gender is the thoughts, feelings, behaviours, stereotypes and emotional attributes that a given culture associates with each of the two sexes, and these are not always the same cross culturally. The Amazonian warriors for example. Typically, they have a male gender role as we would see it, but are still female. But I digress. Where the hell does “officially” come into it? Is this an attempt to make life easier for Norrie? Maybe. But what the hell is the point? Ok, be whatever you want to be, but is this something Norrie can put on their passport? What the hell do we call him/her now? Is it to become un-pc to call her her? Or him? What about IT? Is that fair, or even in any way helpful? No, but sadly, that is what is likely to happen.
Or does this go back to something basic, stupid and really damned annoying. People don’t like to use the word sex. Think about it, are you ever asked for your SEX on a form anymore? Nope, it’s always GENDER these days, which is not right, whatever some weasely little tit with a clip board might tell you. Sexes. There are two of them. Male and Female. There are also two basic genders. Essentially, Masculine, feminine, and degrees thereof. Hey, don’t get me wrong, there should be allowances made for the fact that it is perfectly possible for there to be hermaphrodites. But do you know how many TRUE hermaphrodites there have ever been? And by true, I mean having both male AND female organs (not just a vagina and vestigial penis or vice versa, but one functioning ovary, one testicle etc). Have a guess? Put it this way, you can count them on one hand. Last I researched it at University, there had only ever been one. And no, someone with ambiguous sexual organs, under-developed genitals or growth deficiencies DOES NOT count. I cannot see any way in which this daft judgement call is going to help Norrie, rather it is likely to make things harder as people are going to have no clue how do deal with her.
Stupidly, no-one has mentioned a psychological evaluation to determine her gender, they have based this “OFFICIAL” declaration entirely upon a medical examination. Well, that’s like a bit like trying to discover someone’s religious beliefs by giving them a fucking MRI scan.
Let us take this to a ridiculous conclusion, shall we? I like beer, large edged weapons, breaking things, growing my hair long and have a penchant for comely wenches. Right, that’s it. I’m going to the court of human rights to be “OFFICIALLY” declared a Viking. Or maybe a Klingon. Oh damn you and your irrefutable facts, you’re encroaching on my personal feelings if you let facts and scientific principles get in the way of my “OFFICIAL” Viking/Klingon status. Hey, we even have our own language.
So that’s my first inane and pointless rant. Stop giggling like bloody five year olds every time you hear the word “sex” and use it properly, and stop misusing words like “OFFICIAL”, it’s stupid, and it’s pointless and it isn’t going to help anybody. I only hope that years down the line when Norrie is stood at an airport check-in unsure of which box to tick on the “Gender” (GRRRRRRRRRRRR) section, and the security staff are unwilling to force the other 6 Billion odd people in the world to choose between these and a little box stating “other”, he/she/they/whatever doesn’t come to seriously regret this announcement.
P.S. Interested in any of this sciency stuff? Take a look at the Batista Family, it’ll blow your mind.
Monday, 15 March 2010
The Mission Statement.
Ok, here it goes. Ever get angry for no reason? Ever want to throw things at your TV, kick something or just plain get so impotently hacked off that you want to slam your head repeatedly in a door? Or photo-copy your private parts and post them to all those people that send you junk mail? Or set fire to a cat? You do? Ok, someone needs to chill out.............................
Well, I have gotten to the point that my wife will no longer allow me to watch the serious news, due to sudden and expletive ridden rants at the poxy, melodramatic, sensationalist BOLLOCKS that the news readers spout. Is it a bit cold this winter? Nooooo, that's not going to scare the pants off of anyone. No, it's THE COLDEST WINTER SINCE RECORDS BEGAN! It's WINTER-GEDDON! It's FROSTY THE SNOWMAN COME TO RAPE YOUR GRANDMOTHER TO DEATH! And of course the weather isn't a NATURAL phenomenon, it's THE GOVERNMENTS FAULT.!
Relax Al, breath. This blog is the avenue for my frustrations at a world full of stupid things, places and people and the way they make those of us with a brain want to pull it out through our noses with a spoon. I will try and keep my posts topical, informative and angry, not that I expect any particular difficulty with the latter and will include my (over)reactions to the news, music releases, films, car reviews and current affairs, plus anything else that pops into my mind and hacks me off.
The Vampiric Chicken is a 25 year old father of one (so far) from Cornwall in the UK in SERIOUS need of an attitude adjustment, a good nights sleep and probably some form of sedative.
Hope you enjoy the ride...........................
Well, I have gotten to the point that my wife will no longer allow me to watch the serious news, due to sudden and expletive ridden rants at the poxy, melodramatic, sensationalist BOLLOCKS that the news readers spout. Is it a bit cold this winter? Nooooo, that's not going to scare the pants off of anyone. No, it's THE COLDEST WINTER SINCE RECORDS BEGAN! It's WINTER-GEDDON! It's FROSTY THE SNOWMAN COME TO RAPE YOUR GRANDMOTHER TO DEATH! And of course the weather isn't a NATURAL phenomenon, it's THE GOVERNMENTS FAULT.!
Relax Al, breath. This blog is the avenue for my frustrations at a world full of stupid things, places and people and the way they make those of us with a brain want to pull it out through our noses with a spoon. I will try and keep my posts topical, informative and angry, not that I expect any particular difficulty with the latter and will include my (over)reactions to the news, music releases, films, car reviews and current affairs, plus anything else that pops into my mind and hacks me off.
The Vampiric Chicken is a 25 year old father of one (so far) from Cornwall in the UK in SERIOUS need of an attitude adjustment, a good nights sleep and probably some form of sedative.
Hope you enjoy the ride...........................
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