If you could have one superhero power, what would it be?
This question is unarguably TRITE and DESPERATE and gets inserted into awkwardly silent gaps in social situations as a conversation-inducing enema. But it CAN throw up intriguing answers.
I’ve considered all the usual responses. I wouldn’t want to FLY, because I damn near shit my pants last week going just 200 feet up at 80 mph on STEALTH at Thorpe Park. I wouldn’t want superhuman STRENGTH, because I’m such an easily provoked, bad-tempered and self-righteous bastard, that I’d be constantly beating up blokes as if I was Batman on crack. And the idea of being INVISIBLE in order to spy on women getting undressed, well... that’s just perverted and creepy. (I’d much rather just ACCIDENTALLY stumble into that kind of situation.)
The other problem with having a superpower is that it can only lead to a sense of elitist arrogance and egotism that would make me just one incident of anal sex away from being David Starkey.
So, what I would rather have instead of a super power is my very own MAGIC SHIT GOBLIN.
My Magic Shit Goblin would be magic in that only I can see him. He is totally invisible to everyone else, as is his MAGIC SACK OF SHIT. What’s magic about his magic sack of shit is that it is full of an infinite number of turds – of every possible texture, consistency and tensile strength – all of which remain invisible when hurled by my magic shit goblin until the point of IMPACT, when magically they assume absolute clarity of existence.
My Magic Shit Goblin would accompany me everywhere and await instruction as to whom (or at what) he should throw a shit. I SAY THE WORD, HE THROWS A TURD. (Can you see what I did there?) He’s also clever enough to select whatever type of poo I ask for and to hurl this with whatever degree of force I instruct him to use. He’s a bit like a golfer’s caddie in that sense.
My Magic Shit Goblin would require some subsidiary magical powers in order to fulfil his function. For instance, he must be able to remain rooted to the roof of my car in order to hurl shits at the inordinate number of wankers I encounter EVERY TIME I drive anywhere. On my prompt (which might have to be telepathic seeing as he’s outside the car and I’m in it) my loyal and trusted goblin will be broadcasting handfuls of crap at every tailgater, wrong-lane-changing over-taker, speed-limit-spanking twat-racer, white van driver, sports car owner and those inconsiderate lazy cunts who never indicate. SPLAT SPLAT SPLAT SPLAT SPLAT SPLAT!
I’d take my Magic Shit Goblin to the pub so that when you get one of those ubiquitous moments when some selfish oaf arrives at the bar AFTER you but allows him/herself to be served BEFORE you without having the fucking decency to say “He was here before ME,” then the self-centred COCKBUCKET won’t see the lump of REVENGE TURD until it actually submerges in his or her glass and starts to break up like the wreck of the Titanic.
I’d even take my Magic Shit Goblin to the supermarket and put him in the baby seat bit of the trolley and have him primed to offload the odd dump into the momentarily-abandoned trolleys of those thoughtless and blinkered bastards that block the aisles. A great big nut-laced plop right on top of their tins of cat food and organic celery sticks.
Now, you might be thinking that I have wasted a wish here. I could have chosen to have some magical power or superhuman feature that could be employed in ending war and poverty and repression in the world. It’s true to say that even if I could send my Magic Shit Goblin on long-distance missions, a lump of shit in Colonel Gadaffi’s couscous is not going to save Libyan lives. Nor is a multiple raining down of plops over a Taliban hideout going to save us all from terrorism. And those societies that still stone women for adultery and homosexuals for being homosexual, if my Magic Shit Goblin lobbed some plops in their direction they’d just use them once they ran out of stones.
I could set my aspirations lower, I guess, and seek to rid British TV of all primetime shows that involve talentless twats trying to get attention for themselves in an elimination competition that moronic members of the public text in to vote for. I could indeed send my Magic Shit Goblin to those TV studios and pepper the producers and presenters with a torrent of turd, but I would expect one of those turds to consequently pull in the most text votes and win the series before going on to enjoy a 12 month popularity rise and find itself photographed on the beach in Ibiza with its cellulite showing.
So, selfish as it seems, my Magic Shit Goblin will serve only my own petty purposes. That is until he has his mind corrupted by ideas from Twitter which encourages him to question the nature of his servitude and ultimately turn against me, backed up by the full arsenal of the contents of his magical sack.
If I do get myself a Magic Shit Goblin, I’ll be sure never to let him go on Twitter.
Tuesday, 12 July 2011
Tuesday, 14 June 2011
Marching Up & Down the Bastard Square
“AWOLs will be severly dealt with!”
Each week I would read the same notice and each week “severely” was spelt wrong. Or perhaps not. Perhaps there WOULD be some degree of SEVERING a limb or other appendage. Because we AWOLs deserved it, cowardly bastards that we were, traitorous fucking oiks!
I was 13. I was one of the impressionable students of St ******** College, all-boys Catholic secondary school, who succumbed to the BIG FUCKING LIE that the Combined Cadet Force was FUN. A 6th former from the RAF section of the school’s CCF strolled back and forth in front of us in assembly, arms folded, brow furrowed film-star style, telling us about field camps we could go on, how we’d get to fly a De Havilland DHC1-Chipmunk two-seater plane and how we’d get to shoot a Lea Enfield rifle. OH YES. We were having some of that.
We had been streamed that year into 7 form classes according to test results in our subjects. A strict hierarchy from the boffins at the top – we called them “stiffs”– to the “remedial” class at the bottom. There was a distinct correlation between the 3 sections of the CCF and the academic demographic from which they attracted recruits. The RAF appealed mostly to the top classes and that included me, because I was good at tests. But I wasn’t a stiff. The Army appealed more broadly to boys from the more able classes down to the below-average ones. And inexplicably the Navy consisted exclusively of remedials.
I say “inexplicably”, because in terms of who looked the biggest DICKS in their uniforms, the Navy were OUT THERE in their own league. If the stigma of being labelled a “remedial” and treated like thickheads by the school system wasn’t bad enough, here they were, the poor sods, volunteering to wear the biggest DING DONG FUCKING BELL BOTTOMS seen this side of 1975. And this was 1983. So. Not cool.
Obviously the Army cadets DID look cool. Consequently, they wore their combats and big bastard boots to all lessons on Thursdays, as Cadets was after school that day. We stiffs and stiff-deniers in the RAF carried our uniform to school and changed at the end of the day, because it WAS NOT cool. It wasn’t knockabout fucking comedy hilarious like the Navy cadets’ clown outfits, but it certainly wasn’t cool. Our trousers, which were made from pure starch, blue dye and asbestos, were moderately wide around the hem (i.e. twice the 12 inch hem width that was considered de rigueur in those days.) And they itched like an eczema-sufferer in a sand-pit filled with council road grit. The blue jumper with obligatory epaulets and badges was bearable and could be worn to Thursday’s lessons with normal school trousers, but the beret was ill-designed to match the sprouting hair-styles of the mid-80’s, my Bono mullet in particular, but also the occasional George Michael bouffy wedge. Luckily, most stiffs had a short back and sides, a sensible decision by their mothers I feel.
Our first field trip allowed me to bond with some of the stiffs in my class, who were fellow privates in the RAF. They were all into heavy metal music and - I should imagine - Dungeons and Dragons. The first night at camp we were allowed to roam around the local town (Folkestone, I recall) and spent most of it sat outside the cemetery listening to tales of Ouija boards, subliminal messages on Iron Maiden albums, devil worshipping and encounters with ghosts. In hindsight, they were sad fuckers really, but at the time – given the fact that I was then still Catholic and had seen “The Omen” several times since a young age – I was so worked up by all these ghoulish and supernatural stories that I near as hell shat in those starchy blue flares. Had I done so, of course, the wide hem would have allowed any ballast to fall unimpeded to the pavement outside the cemetery.
We did get to shoot guns at this camp as well. And take them apart and clean them and put them back together and feel like REAL MEN. And not long after, we went flying in Chipmunks. That was cool, although I didn’t get to take the controls, because I was the last one to go up and the lad before me had been sick in the cockpit and it smelt and I think the pilot was rushing a bit.
And so, up until this point, the “Warrant Officer” from the 6th form had been honest. CCF WAS fun. And that fun lasted exactly one term. In our second term, every single Thursday after school we would have DRILL in the playground (embarrassing, as other boys leaving school late would walk past and take the piss) followed by an hour’s classroom lecture on the rudiments of FLIGHT. Every single week. Drill then lectures. And the next term. And the next.
We’d been enticed in and entertained and now it was this old shit every week. So a couple of us started bunking. As the noticeboard said, we became AWOL’s. This is where the whole Mickey Fucking Mouse aspect of the CCF really sunk in. We were 14 now, less willing to be ordered about by older kids, whatever their pseudo-rank; and we were VERY BLOODY HOSTILE to the worst of the pseudo-rankers, the RAF’s “Squadron Leader” who was an English teacher and Head of 6th Form by day.
Mr G****** (and yes the Head of 6th form in “The Inbetweeners” does share the name) was a 1940’s throwback with a huge portrait of Margaret Thatcher on his office wall. Enough said. Except to add that he REFUSED to let anyone leave the RAF cadets. Even when my Dad came up to the school to demand that I be allowed to leave, he was told that the boys were being taught responsibility and commitment and so, as with the real armed forces, would not be allowed to leave until they’d finished their enlistment. In our case, this was 3 years. A decision made at 13 committed us to 3 years marching up and down the bastard playground, attending countless lectures about what makes a plane fly, dressing up in musty old uniforms (that must have been stitched together 40 years before) and playing soldiers (or in our case pilots, and even then we’d only done that once all year!) What utter BOLLOCKS!
So, with my Dad’s consent, I just refused to go. At first, while still young, I’d have to run away from the 6th form officers stationed at the school gate to apprehend the AWOLs. I even disguised myself once by wearing glasses and giving myself a centre-parting (only slightly less likely to elicit scorn that the RAF uniform.) But even at 16, while sitting my O’Levels, I’d look at that CCF notice board to see my name amongst the list of AWOLs alongside a threat to be “severly” dealt.
I never was. And needless to say, I never went on to join the RAF in later life, but mostly because I still can’t shake that smell of Chipmunk cockpit vomit from my nasal hairs.
Each week I would read the same notice and each week “severely” was spelt wrong. Or perhaps not. Perhaps there WOULD be some degree of SEVERING a limb or other appendage. Because we AWOLs deserved it, cowardly bastards that we were, traitorous fucking oiks!
I was 13. I was one of the impressionable students of St ******** College, all-boys Catholic secondary school, who succumbed to the BIG FUCKING LIE that the Combined Cadet Force was FUN. A 6th former from the RAF section of the school’s CCF strolled back and forth in front of us in assembly, arms folded, brow furrowed film-star style, telling us about field camps we could go on, how we’d get to fly a De Havilland DHC1-Chipmunk two-seater plane and how we’d get to shoot a Lea Enfield rifle. OH YES. We were having some of that.
We had been streamed that year into 7 form classes according to test results in our subjects. A strict hierarchy from the boffins at the top – we called them “stiffs”– to the “remedial” class at the bottom. There was a distinct correlation between the 3 sections of the CCF and the academic demographic from which they attracted recruits. The RAF appealed mostly to the top classes and that included me, because I was good at tests. But I wasn’t a stiff. The Army appealed more broadly to boys from the more able classes down to the below-average ones. And inexplicably the Navy consisted exclusively of remedials.
I say “inexplicably”, because in terms of who looked the biggest DICKS in their uniforms, the Navy were OUT THERE in their own league. If the stigma of being labelled a “remedial” and treated like thickheads by the school system wasn’t bad enough, here they were, the poor sods, volunteering to wear the biggest DING DONG FUCKING BELL BOTTOMS seen this side of 1975. And this was 1983. So. Not cool.
Obviously the Army cadets DID look cool. Consequently, they wore their combats and big bastard boots to all lessons on Thursdays, as Cadets was after school that day. We stiffs and stiff-deniers in the RAF carried our uniform to school and changed at the end of the day, because it WAS NOT cool. It wasn’t knockabout fucking comedy hilarious like the Navy cadets’ clown outfits, but it certainly wasn’t cool. Our trousers, which were made from pure starch, blue dye and asbestos, were moderately wide around the hem (i.e. twice the 12 inch hem width that was considered de rigueur in those days.) And they itched like an eczema-sufferer in a sand-pit filled with council road grit. The blue jumper with obligatory epaulets and badges was bearable and could be worn to Thursday’s lessons with normal school trousers, but the beret was ill-designed to match the sprouting hair-styles of the mid-80’s, my Bono mullet in particular, but also the occasional George Michael bouffy wedge. Luckily, most stiffs had a short back and sides, a sensible decision by their mothers I feel.
Our first field trip allowed me to bond with some of the stiffs in my class, who were fellow privates in the RAF. They were all into heavy metal music and - I should imagine - Dungeons and Dragons. The first night at camp we were allowed to roam around the local town (Folkestone, I recall) and spent most of it sat outside the cemetery listening to tales of Ouija boards, subliminal messages on Iron Maiden albums, devil worshipping and encounters with ghosts. In hindsight, they were sad fuckers really, but at the time – given the fact that I was then still Catholic and had seen “The Omen” several times since a young age – I was so worked up by all these ghoulish and supernatural stories that I near as hell shat in those starchy blue flares. Had I done so, of course, the wide hem would have allowed any ballast to fall unimpeded to the pavement outside the cemetery.
We did get to shoot guns at this camp as well. And take them apart and clean them and put them back together and feel like REAL MEN. And not long after, we went flying in Chipmunks. That was cool, although I didn’t get to take the controls, because I was the last one to go up and the lad before me had been sick in the cockpit and it smelt and I think the pilot was rushing a bit.
And so, up until this point, the “Warrant Officer” from the 6th form had been honest. CCF WAS fun. And that fun lasted exactly one term. In our second term, every single Thursday after school we would have DRILL in the playground (embarrassing, as other boys leaving school late would walk past and take the piss) followed by an hour’s classroom lecture on the rudiments of FLIGHT. Every single week. Drill then lectures. And the next term. And the next.
We’d been enticed in and entertained and now it was this old shit every week. So a couple of us started bunking. As the noticeboard said, we became AWOL’s. This is where the whole Mickey Fucking Mouse aspect of the CCF really sunk in. We were 14 now, less willing to be ordered about by older kids, whatever their pseudo-rank; and we were VERY BLOODY HOSTILE to the worst of the pseudo-rankers, the RAF’s “Squadron Leader” who was an English teacher and Head of 6th Form by day.
Mr G****** (and yes the Head of 6th form in “The Inbetweeners” does share the name) was a 1940’s throwback with a huge portrait of Margaret Thatcher on his office wall. Enough said. Except to add that he REFUSED to let anyone leave the RAF cadets. Even when my Dad came up to the school to demand that I be allowed to leave, he was told that the boys were being taught responsibility and commitment and so, as with the real armed forces, would not be allowed to leave until they’d finished their enlistment. In our case, this was 3 years. A decision made at 13 committed us to 3 years marching up and down the bastard playground, attending countless lectures about what makes a plane fly, dressing up in musty old uniforms (that must have been stitched together 40 years before) and playing soldiers (or in our case pilots, and even then we’d only done that once all year!) What utter BOLLOCKS!
So, with my Dad’s consent, I just refused to go. At first, while still young, I’d have to run away from the 6th form officers stationed at the school gate to apprehend the AWOLs. I even disguised myself once by wearing glasses and giving myself a centre-parting (only slightly less likely to elicit scorn that the RAF uniform.) But even at 16, while sitting my O’Levels, I’d look at that CCF notice board to see my name amongst the list of AWOLs alongside a threat to be “severly” dealt.
I never was. And needless to say, I never went on to join the RAF in later life, but mostly because I still can’t shake that smell of Chipmunk cockpit vomit from my nasal hairs.
Thursday, 26 May 2011
My Mid-Life Non-Crisis
Why haven’t I had my mid-life crisis yet? I hit 40 a year ago this week.
When I say “hit” 40, I mean that 40 kind of gushed over me and seeped down the back of my shirt like a tank of piss-and-spunk-based gunge on “I’m a Celebrity, Get me Out of Here.” The difference being that no one can get you out of here when “here” is that time of life called Middle age.
So, I’ve had a year in which to conform to the male middle-age-crisis stereotype by having my ear pierced, buying a sports car and finding myself a 19-year-old girlfriend.
I’ve done none of these.
Earrings suit a minority of blokes. If you don’t have the right overall look, the right hair and general dress sense, then there’s no halfway house with pierced ears. You either look good or you look like a dick. They’re as uncompromising as waistcoats. In fact, more so. I can’t think of any man who doesn’t look like a dick in a waistcoat unless he’s holding either a dinner tray or a snooker cue.
Sports cars? Sports cars are for WANKERS. Macho wankers. END OF FUCKING STORY. We all know it and the wankers who drive sports cars know it. They just won’t admit it. Which is another reason why they’re wankers.
And as for a 19-year-old girlfriend, I’m yet to meet a 19-year-old who doesn’t look like a kid from my chronological vantage point. Regardless of the legality of it, I’m not cursed with a desire to indulge in exploitative relationships; and although this wouldn’t quite be in the same drawer as paedophilia, it is in the same piece of furniture.
(For the record, the morality issue is the main barrier, of course. Adultery, misguided vanity and gratuitous machismo are all on the same playlist on every wanker’s ipod.)
All this isn’t to say that I haven’t experienced SOME changes on turning 40. I’m not trying to recapture my youth in the ways described above, because other than having the odd 19 year old girlfriend when I was that age (and by “odd” I mean an odd number, like maybe 3 if I’m being generous), I never wanted to own a flash car, drive fast or adorn myself in ear accessories.
But I AM trying to recapture my youth in other ways. Sad ways.
For instance, last week I bought a tin of spaghetti bolognaise and ate it on toast. A tin. Spaghetti Bolognaise in a fucking TIN. I hadn’t had such a meal since I was a teenager. I’m now on the look out for a tin of chicken in white sauce – equally delicious on toast. (When you’re in your teens.) Of course, anyone who knows about this will attribute it to a mid-life crisis.
Lots of things I do make me feel young again. Watching Dr Who. Wearing a Harrington. Having a stink bomb in my office at work and an intention to deploy it.
And lots of things I do make me feel old. Like getting out of bed. And breathing. And moving around. You know, all that difficult stuff.
Perhaps, as with the retirement age, the kick-off time for middle age has been put back by the government, and in fact I am still too young to embark on a mid-life crisis. That leaves you in a frustrating limbo period then really. A pre-male-menopausal twilight zone. A bit like half-past three on a Sunday afternoon.
Hmmm. I’ve lost the will to carry on now…
When I say “hit” 40, I mean that 40 kind of gushed over me and seeped down the back of my shirt like a tank of piss-and-spunk-based gunge on “I’m a Celebrity, Get me Out of Here.” The difference being that no one can get you out of here when “here” is that time of life called Middle age.
So, I’ve had a year in which to conform to the male middle-age-crisis stereotype by having my ear pierced, buying a sports car and finding myself a 19-year-old girlfriend.
I’ve done none of these.
Earrings suit a minority of blokes. If you don’t have the right overall look, the right hair and general dress sense, then there’s no halfway house with pierced ears. You either look good or you look like a dick. They’re as uncompromising as waistcoats. In fact, more so. I can’t think of any man who doesn’t look like a dick in a waistcoat unless he’s holding either a dinner tray or a snooker cue.
Sports cars? Sports cars are for WANKERS. Macho wankers. END OF FUCKING STORY. We all know it and the wankers who drive sports cars know it. They just won’t admit it. Which is another reason why they’re wankers.
And as for a 19-year-old girlfriend, I’m yet to meet a 19-year-old who doesn’t look like a kid from my chronological vantage point. Regardless of the legality of it, I’m not cursed with a desire to indulge in exploitative relationships; and although this wouldn’t quite be in the same drawer as paedophilia, it is in the same piece of furniture.
(For the record, the morality issue is the main barrier, of course. Adultery, misguided vanity and gratuitous machismo are all on the same playlist on every wanker’s ipod.)
All this isn’t to say that I haven’t experienced SOME changes on turning 40. I’m not trying to recapture my youth in the ways described above, because other than having the odd 19 year old girlfriend when I was that age (and by “odd” I mean an odd number, like maybe 3 if I’m being generous), I never wanted to own a flash car, drive fast or adorn myself in ear accessories.
But I AM trying to recapture my youth in other ways. Sad ways.
For instance, last week I bought a tin of spaghetti bolognaise and ate it on toast. A tin. Spaghetti Bolognaise in a fucking TIN. I hadn’t had such a meal since I was a teenager. I’m now on the look out for a tin of chicken in white sauce – equally delicious on toast. (When you’re in your teens.) Of course, anyone who knows about this will attribute it to a mid-life crisis.
Lots of things I do make me feel young again. Watching Dr Who. Wearing a Harrington. Having a stink bomb in my office at work and an intention to deploy it.
And lots of things I do make me feel old. Like getting out of bed. And breathing. And moving around. You know, all that difficult stuff.
Perhaps, as with the retirement age, the kick-off time for middle age has been put back by the government, and in fact I am still too young to embark on a mid-life crisis. That leaves you in a frustrating limbo period then really. A pre-male-menopausal twilight zone. A bit like half-past three on a Sunday afternoon.
Hmmm. I’ve lost the will to carry on now…
Saturday, 14 May 2011
The Complete (Bastardised) History of Popular Music
Pop music was invented the day that Vera Lynn went electric in 1944. (She’d been using gas before that.) Judas!
But the seeds of popular music were sown hundreds of years earlier, thanks to the actions of one particular bastard, John Hawkins, who started the Atlantic Slave Trade triangle in 1562. Hawkins knew full well that three centuries of slavery would help African-Americans to invent the Blues. His was a rather controversial social experiment and would be frowned upon today by most of the UK’s main political parties. However, had he left Africans to their own devices and they’d still managed to influence what Europeans listened to today, then all pop music would sound like Paul Simon’s fucking “Gracelands.”
Blues music was all well and good if you were poor and black and generally pissed off, but it needed to evolve after the Second World War because of the invention of the teenager. Teenagers were white, unburdened by the experience of racial discrimination and had money to spend. They needed a less pissed-off version of Blues - and thus Rock and Roll was born. Rock and Roll singers were generally men in their twenties who sang songs about 16 year old girls but married 14 year old ones. No one minded this in the 1950’s, because you didn't have paedophilia in the good old days.
Some white people were just as poor as black people, though, and they adapted Blues to folk music, which had been sung mostly by men with beards and ugly people for centuries. Blues also spawned Jazz, because if you tried to dance to Blues then there was no way you’d end up shagging anyone at the end of the night.
And you also had gospel from generations before, because another intended outcome of John Hawkins’ social experiment was to make all Black Americans believe in Jesus. Gospel, Blues and Jazz thus led to Soul music, which allowed Black people to look cool while geeky white teenagers simulated masturbation by playing air guitars along to the angry child of Rock and Roll, who was just called “Rock” (probably after Rock Hudson, it is believed.)
The 1960’s were dominated by The Beatles, who were bigger than Jesus according to a claim made by John Lennon. Although this caused a lot of controversy among the people of the southern United States (well known for their good reason and tolerance), the Beatles WERE in fact bigger than Jesus, who was probably only 5’2” (typical height for your Roman-era Palestinian living on a diet of just fish and bread.)
The Beatles revolutionised pop music and are generally considered to be the best band ever. This is proven by the fact that they got away with putting Yellow Submarine on Revolver and Octopus’s Garden on Abbey Road; and no one minded. That’s like being on a date with the person of your dreams and not caring much if they shit themselves early in the evening and don’t change their underwear.
Meanwhile, Rock music started to split off into a number of strands much like a leper exfoliating with a cheese grater. Hard Rock and Heavy Metal were like Dungeons and Dragons with sex. Glam rock gave transvestites a bit of breathing space until social attitudes made it unfashionable to laugh at them. Prog Rock was where all the wrong notes were played but in the right order. And Punk Rock was all the wrong notes played in the wrong order, plus phlegm. New Wave was required to sort out that mess, by putting ex-punks in suits and insisting on some degree of talent.
Pop Music then became increasingly sanitised in the 1980’s. Margaret Thatcher and Ronald Reagan passed laws in the UK and USA banning the use of acoustic instrumentation and ushered in an age of mechanised pop music where machines did the work of humans. There were huge protests in the northern parts of England to these reforms. Supporters of Indie Rock clashed with police in bloody scenes that made the Miners’ strike look like a domestic tiff between sitcom legends of the time, Terry and June.
Eventually, Indie Rock won, managed to overcome the trauma of watching Grunge shoot itself in the foot (or to be more precise, the head) and set up the last golden period of music in the UK. This was known as Brit Pop, because for a few years all American bands were shit, so we had to make do with Blur and Oasis.
Meanwhile, record companies noticed that the section of the population who’d always eschewed song writing, musicianship, and talent for something more superficial and glossy were becoming even less discerning in their demands than in the days of The Monkees or The Bay City Rollers. And so Boy Bands were untied and rescued from the deeper recesses of Louis Walsh’s closet and marketed mercilessly at an audience that would ten years later financially prop up the TV talent-less show industry and it’s bastard offspring.
But the seeds of popular music were sown hundreds of years earlier, thanks to the actions of one particular bastard, John Hawkins, who started the Atlantic Slave Trade triangle in 1562. Hawkins knew full well that three centuries of slavery would help African-Americans to invent the Blues. His was a rather controversial social experiment and would be frowned upon today by most of the UK’s main political parties. However, had he left Africans to their own devices and they’d still managed to influence what Europeans listened to today, then all pop music would sound like Paul Simon’s fucking “Gracelands.”
Blues music was all well and good if you were poor and black and generally pissed off, but it needed to evolve after the Second World War because of the invention of the teenager. Teenagers were white, unburdened by the experience of racial discrimination and had money to spend. They needed a less pissed-off version of Blues - and thus Rock and Roll was born. Rock and Roll singers were generally men in their twenties who sang songs about 16 year old girls but married 14 year old ones. No one minded this in the 1950’s, because you didn't have paedophilia in the good old days.
Some white people were just as poor as black people, though, and they adapted Blues to folk music, which had been sung mostly by men with beards and ugly people for centuries. Blues also spawned Jazz, because if you tried to dance to Blues then there was no way you’d end up shagging anyone at the end of the night.
And you also had gospel from generations before, because another intended outcome of John Hawkins’ social experiment was to make all Black Americans believe in Jesus. Gospel, Blues and Jazz thus led to Soul music, which allowed Black people to look cool while geeky white teenagers simulated masturbation by playing air guitars along to the angry child of Rock and Roll, who was just called “Rock” (probably after Rock Hudson, it is believed.)
The 1960’s were dominated by The Beatles, who were bigger than Jesus according to a claim made by John Lennon. Although this caused a lot of controversy among the people of the southern United States (well known for their good reason and tolerance), the Beatles WERE in fact bigger than Jesus, who was probably only 5’2” (typical height for your Roman-era Palestinian living on a diet of just fish and bread.)
The Beatles revolutionised pop music and are generally considered to be the best band ever. This is proven by the fact that they got away with putting Yellow Submarine on Revolver and Octopus’s Garden on Abbey Road; and no one minded. That’s like being on a date with the person of your dreams and not caring much if they shit themselves early in the evening and don’t change their underwear.
Meanwhile, Rock music started to split off into a number of strands much like a leper exfoliating with a cheese grater. Hard Rock and Heavy Metal were like Dungeons and Dragons with sex. Glam rock gave transvestites a bit of breathing space until social attitudes made it unfashionable to laugh at them. Prog Rock was where all the wrong notes were played but in the right order. And Punk Rock was all the wrong notes played in the wrong order, plus phlegm. New Wave was required to sort out that mess, by putting ex-punks in suits and insisting on some degree of talent.
Pop Music then became increasingly sanitised in the 1980’s. Margaret Thatcher and Ronald Reagan passed laws in the UK and USA banning the use of acoustic instrumentation and ushered in an age of mechanised pop music where machines did the work of humans. There were huge protests in the northern parts of England to these reforms. Supporters of Indie Rock clashed with police in bloody scenes that made the Miners’ strike look like a domestic tiff between sitcom legends of the time, Terry and June.
Eventually, Indie Rock won, managed to overcome the trauma of watching Grunge shoot itself in the foot (or to be more precise, the head) and set up the last golden period of music in the UK. This was known as Brit Pop, because for a few years all American bands were shit, so we had to make do with Blur and Oasis.
Meanwhile, record companies noticed that the section of the population who’d always eschewed song writing, musicianship, and talent for something more superficial and glossy were becoming even less discerning in their demands than in the days of The Monkees or The Bay City Rollers. And so Boy Bands were untied and rescued from the deeper recesses of Louis Walsh’s closet and marketed mercilessly at an audience that would ten years later financially prop up the TV talent-less show industry and it’s bastard offspring.
Friday, 29 April 2011
I felt very unbastard-like during the Royal Wedding
In the run-up to the Royal Wedding today I was subject to a wave of indifference that was more tidal than royal. But I’d also been mildly irritated to hear or read so much lazily clichéd criticism of the event. So, with no intention of doing much else this morning, I sat and watched the wedding, tweeted some inoffensive comments throughout (incorporated within this post) and found myself “enjoying” it.
Sometimes, it’s too easy to be cynical. I don’t mind so-called Republicans calling for the abolition of the monarchy (although, I’m sure a President would be equally useful/useless, costly and subject to hostility.) But I had to respond when some sanctimonious (and self-described “conservative”) twats on Twitter used the opportunity to say how nice it was that people could gather in London peacefully, unlike the TUC march and the UK-Uncut protesters. Ignorance is the chicken feed of Self-righteousness, someone once said (me, I reckon.)
Anyway, the wedding. I came downstairs after a nice lie-in to be immediately confronted by the nation’s favourite couple. Or so they think. The Beckhams. They had no one to talk to (thankfully for everyone else) and apparently Posh is pregnant again. Is that right? I couldn’t see. And if she’d swallowed a frozen pea, then even that would’ve shown.
Strange how people turned up at Westminster Abbey so early, hours before they needed to. Was it “unreserved seating”? Fucking Ticketmaster are wankers, aren’t they? I was hoping that the Archbishop of Canterbury would open the service by paraphrasing John Lennon: “Those of you in the cheap seats rattle your jewellery and those in the expensive seats get your servants to do it for you.” Now, he was an untidy-looking specimen, wasn’t he, Dr Rowan Williams. Fucking hair all over the place, like a 1970’s porno full of GILFs. Mrs Bastard was indignant about his unkemptness and said to me, “You’d think he’d have done some grooming beforehand.”
He’s the Archbishop of Canterbury. I’m sure he had.
I thought maybe Rowan Atkinson, not Williams, was going to marry the royal couple when I saw him on screen. As it was, he just stood in the congregation, fiddled awkwardly with a sweet in his tweed jacket pocket and sang “Hallelujah” in his Mr Bean voice.
Apart from these celebs, all the recent Prime Ministers who weren’t Labour were invited. There was some controversy about Samantha Cameron not wearing a hat, but there’s no need when David is such a fucking big helmet. As usual, he boasted about how he’d been outside talking to the people, as if he deserves a medal for soiling himself from such close contact with the proles. It made sense to see him and Professor Snape with short hair (George Osborne) in attendance, when the commentator pointed out that the wedding had a Nietzsche theme. Then I realised that she’d said nature. But given that the Middletons were staying in the Goering Hotel, maybe I heard right first time. Furthermore, the chosen wedding date of April 29th is the same as Hitler’s marriage to Eva Braun. That only lasted one day of course. I’m sure Katie Middleton’s marriage will be longer, while Katie Price’s tend to be shorter.
Things got interesting as the royals started heading to church. Harry resisted the obvious urge to do a moonie out of the car window and neither he nor William noticed they’d gone on a circuitous route, typical of a London cab. Mrs Middleton only just stopped herself from using the opportunity to pop inside the Abbey gift shop as she was dropped off right outside it. Camilla wisely kept her window wound up this time. And the rest of the royals booked themselves some mini-buses and all piled in so as to avoid the confused looks of the crowd who wouldn’t have known who half of them were if they’d seen them individually. I think we need to bring back Spitting Image.
Wills and Harry went into the Abbey and immediately suffered a hat-hair moment, but at least next to the Archbishop this didn’t really matter. Talking of untidy, did you see that the Queen just dropped her blanket onto the floor of the car when she got out? Messy cow. I won’t be too hard on her though, as she and the Middletons all contributed a sizeable amount of their own money towards the wedding. I think it’s only right that parents stick a couple of hundred quid behind the bar.
And then Kate turned up. Sadly some people would have missed seeing her dress, because judging by the screams I’d say that they were being crushed to death in the crowds outside. Apparently, the dress was a Burton one, which has made me think I should get my suits from there from now on.
She looked fantastic. I went upstairs to the toilet at this point.
I actually went for a poo, because it was now the boring religious bit and I’d been holding it in. When I came back, the service was nearly over I thought, because Kate and Wills seemed to be reading a couple of menus. I supposed they were looking at what was going to be on the buffet later that day, but they were in fact A3 sized orders of service. There were a couple of random nuns sat right next to them, “Church Hymn-Nazis” who check that you’re singing rather than miming. (Must have been Nietzsche before; I knew it.)
Then came the slow journey back to Buckingham Palace. I’m glad that Kate didn’t have a Paula Radcliffe moment. However, the horses left a tonne of plop along The Mall. I thought it was a clever decision to then let the crowds onto the road once the procession had finished. That way it saved picking up all that poo. I’ll be checking Ebay tomorrow to see if anyone’s selling any royal wedding souvenirs scraped off of their shoes.
Sometimes, it’s too easy to be cynical. I don’t mind so-called Republicans calling for the abolition of the monarchy (although, I’m sure a President would be equally useful/useless, costly and subject to hostility.) But I had to respond when some sanctimonious (and self-described “conservative”) twats on Twitter used the opportunity to say how nice it was that people could gather in London peacefully, unlike the TUC march and the UK-Uncut protesters. Ignorance is the chicken feed of Self-righteousness, someone once said (me, I reckon.)
Anyway, the wedding. I came downstairs after a nice lie-in to be immediately confronted by the nation’s favourite couple. Or so they think. The Beckhams. They had no one to talk to (thankfully for everyone else) and apparently Posh is pregnant again. Is that right? I couldn’t see. And if she’d swallowed a frozen pea, then even that would’ve shown.
Strange how people turned up at Westminster Abbey so early, hours before they needed to. Was it “unreserved seating”? Fucking Ticketmaster are wankers, aren’t they? I was hoping that the Archbishop of Canterbury would open the service by paraphrasing John Lennon: “Those of you in the cheap seats rattle your jewellery and those in the expensive seats get your servants to do it for you.” Now, he was an untidy-looking specimen, wasn’t he, Dr Rowan Williams. Fucking hair all over the place, like a 1970’s porno full of GILFs. Mrs Bastard was indignant about his unkemptness and said to me, “You’d think he’d have done some grooming beforehand.”
He’s the Archbishop of Canterbury. I’m sure he had.
I thought maybe Rowan Atkinson, not Williams, was going to marry the royal couple when I saw him on screen. As it was, he just stood in the congregation, fiddled awkwardly with a sweet in his tweed jacket pocket and sang “Hallelujah” in his Mr Bean voice.
Apart from these celebs, all the recent Prime Ministers who weren’t Labour were invited. There was some controversy about Samantha Cameron not wearing a hat, but there’s no need when David is such a fucking big helmet. As usual, he boasted about how he’d been outside talking to the people, as if he deserves a medal for soiling himself from such close contact with the proles. It made sense to see him and Professor Snape with short hair (George Osborne) in attendance, when the commentator pointed out that the wedding had a Nietzsche theme. Then I realised that she’d said nature. But given that the Middletons were staying in the Goering Hotel, maybe I heard right first time. Furthermore, the chosen wedding date of April 29th is the same as Hitler’s marriage to Eva Braun. That only lasted one day of course. I’m sure Katie Middleton’s marriage will be longer, while Katie Price’s tend to be shorter.
Things got interesting as the royals started heading to church. Harry resisted the obvious urge to do a moonie out of the car window and neither he nor William noticed they’d gone on a circuitous route, typical of a London cab. Mrs Middleton only just stopped herself from using the opportunity to pop inside the Abbey gift shop as she was dropped off right outside it. Camilla wisely kept her window wound up this time. And the rest of the royals booked themselves some mini-buses and all piled in so as to avoid the confused looks of the crowd who wouldn’t have known who half of them were if they’d seen them individually. I think we need to bring back Spitting Image.
Wills and Harry went into the Abbey and immediately suffered a hat-hair moment, but at least next to the Archbishop this didn’t really matter. Talking of untidy, did you see that the Queen just dropped her blanket onto the floor of the car when she got out? Messy cow. I won’t be too hard on her though, as she and the Middletons all contributed a sizeable amount of their own money towards the wedding. I think it’s only right that parents stick a couple of hundred quid behind the bar.
And then Kate turned up. Sadly some people would have missed seeing her dress, because judging by the screams I’d say that they were being crushed to death in the crowds outside. Apparently, the dress was a Burton one, which has made me think I should get my suits from there from now on.
She looked fantastic. I went upstairs to the toilet at this point.
I actually went for a poo, because it was now the boring religious bit and I’d been holding it in. When I came back, the service was nearly over I thought, because Kate and Wills seemed to be reading a couple of menus. I supposed they were looking at what was going to be on the buffet later that day, but they were in fact A3 sized orders of service. There were a couple of random nuns sat right next to them, “Church Hymn-Nazis” who check that you’re singing rather than miming. (Must have been Nietzsche before; I knew it.)
Then came the slow journey back to Buckingham Palace. I’m glad that Kate didn’t have a Paula Radcliffe moment. However, the horses left a tonne of plop along The Mall. I thought it was a clever decision to then let the crowds onto the road once the procession had finished. That way it saved picking up all that poo. I’ll be checking Ebay tomorrow to see if anyone’s selling any royal wedding souvenirs scraped off of their shoes.
Friday, 15 April 2011
Supermarket Bastards
If you really want to know where the bastards are, then obviously head for your local English Defence League committee meeting, City bankers’ wine-tasting brunch or night-club frequented by Z-list celebs who would sell a kidney to get on page 10 of Heat magazine. That’s if you want a concentration of society’s arse-waste. For sheer numbers, though, I recommend a supermarket. Not Waitrose or Morrisons’s, because you’ll end up with a polarisation of bastards. For a healthy, comprehensive range of common garden shitheads, spend a Saturday afternoon at Tesco or Sainsbury’s.
For some reason, when I go to a supermarket, I always end up parked at a 25 degree angle to the car next to me, which almost impossibly manages to ensure that 3 of its 4 over-sized tyres are touching a white line. But who’s to say that this car isn’t in fact straight and the rest of the car park is crooked? It’s relative, isn’t it? In the same way, disability is a matter for interpretation. Who am I to argue with someone who has been refused a disabled badge, because “being a selfish cunt” doesn’t come under the disability act? I don’t argue when these people park in a disabled space. Not unless they catch me pulling their windscreen wipers outwards or flobbing at their side window on days when I am blessed with a build-up of superfluous phlegm.
I eagerly await the day when trolleys are fitted with parking sensors. Such a device, completely unnecessary for anyone other than those drivers who are retards by choice, would bring harmony to the supermarket. As it is, a shopper’s invisible blinkers slip into place automatically the moment that person’s hands grip a trolley and the sort of belligerency you’d encounter on the roads of south-east England is thus transferred to the supermarket aisles.
The barriers you walk between on the way in, which most people think are there to detect stolen items, actually emit high-frequency sonar waves designed to fuck up your spatial awareness. Handicapped by this assault on your brain and encumbered by your invisible blinkers and general piss-off attitude, you the shopper are now a helpless slave to bastardness for the next 45 minutes.
When you’re not looking to take a layer of skin off someone’s ankles with your trolley, you are parking it at a right-angle to the shelves, blocking the entire aisle while you wander back to fruit and veg for something you’ve forgotten. With typical English self-righteousness, someone will tut loudly and give your trolley a slight push. The brave might even drop something small and expensive into it. That’s as far as I’d go, seeing as there are no windscreen wipers and a grolly in this situation would be a little beyond the pale.
When these bastards are not leaving a trolley in your way, they manage to plant their bodies in such a position. If I leave more than an arm’s length between myself and the shelf full of products that I am surveying then I expect someone to move into that gap and completely deprive me of both my view and ability to pick up what I want. The only place in the supermarket that this doesn’t happen is in front of the Pot Noodles, because anyone buying these tends to do so at speed. Personally, I like to browse and give myself time to decide between the two flavours that only moderately taste like the inside of a rubbish truck.
I worked part-time in one of those now obsolete small branches of Tesco in Palmers Green for a year when I was younger. The store manager conformed lock, stock and barrel to the archetypal nasal-voiced, petty autocrat you’d expect to find wielding small amounts of power in retail. He told us to call him Mr J, because he was Polish and he didn’t think we’d cope with anything more complicated. His full name was Janus and I suspect that the J stood for Justin. He’d wander round the 5 aisles telling us in his oily voice to “face up tinned meat, yeah.” A thoroughbred bastard. I hope he has syphilis now.
My days treading the aisles, facing up tinned meat and other products, were days of missed opportunities. There are so many things you’d hope to be asked by customers, but never were:
Customer: Have I passed the pasta yet?
Supermarket assistant: I don’t know; when did you eat it?
Customer: Can you direct me to mince?
Supermarket assistant: Certainly. Walk this way, ducky.
I think the policy they now have of walking you to where you want to go was fine in 5-aisle supermarkets like the one in Palmers Green, but now when you ask the whereabouts of frozen chips and some slow fucker escorts you 30 aisles to the east wing of the supermarket, you want to grab them by their tasteful brown and orange nylon lapels and shout in their face, “Just-fuck-ing-point!”
In the old days, of course, supermarkets weren’t monopolising the entire range of retail products. You certainly wouldn’t dream of doing your Christmas shopping in Palmers Green Tesco; not when you had “Boots” across the road for the obligatory boxed sets of Old Spice and lavender bath products. Nowadays, the concept of “all under one roof” means “we sell a limited range of cheap, lowest common denominator products so you don’t need to bother going elsewhere.”
Or am I being cynical? Perhaps, in fact, Tesco is aiding the cultural and literary education of society with its wide selection of Danielle Steel novels, Mills and Boon and witty coffee table compendiums. Fucking hell, I hate those coffee table books. Presents bought by the unimaginative for the undiscerning. Should anyone ever buy me one of those twee and corny coffee table books, I am likely to marinade it in anthrax, reduce it to a fine pulp using a Molineux blender and feed it directly into that person’s stomach using an endoscopy tube that has been left overnight on the floor of a Piccadilly public lavatory.
You have to hand it to them in regard to clothes, though. When my generation was growing up, the idea of wearing supermarket clothes was as much of a social anathema as having sticky plaster on your NHS specs, riding a bike with stabilisers after you’ve reached 14 or not finding Jim Davison’s brand of casual racism and misogyny hilarious. It was an inspired move for Asda to brand their fashion as being by “George” and for Tesco to use “Florence and Fred.” Who would have thought that applying the name of 1970’s kids’ TV characters would create such immediate kudos? Maybe the inspiration came from the fact that the clothes are all made by children earning the same amount of pocket money per week that I was given in 1976.
Good old Tesco, supporting the global economy! And hopefully, one day selling everything everyone ever needs. I was hoping that the move into car insurance would lead to the provision of car parts, because the manufacturing companies pretty much fist us mercilessly with their prices. I’d gladly wander along to aisle 453 for Ford Parts in my local supermarket if it meant paying less, although I might balk at the idea of “Tesco Value” brake pads and discs – guaranteed to bring your car to a halt on most occasions.
To paraphrase Mr J. Anus, we have to “face up” to the fact that Tesco are indeed taking over. In Hertfordshire, they are the second biggest employer after the NHS. Given the government cuts, they might soon become the biggest. We might find ourselves going to Tesco for routine operations. From an entrepreneurial viewpoint, removing an appendix or an in-growing toenail would help support sausage production at the Deli counter. But perhaps the most useful medical care Tesco could provide would be psychiatric, because one of these days it won’t just be windscreen wipers…
For some reason, when I go to a supermarket, I always end up parked at a 25 degree angle to the car next to me, which almost impossibly manages to ensure that 3 of its 4 over-sized tyres are touching a white line. But who’s to say that this car isn’t in fact straight and the rest of the car park is crooked? It’s relative, isn’t it? In the same way, disability is a matter for interpretation. Who am I to argue with someone who has been refused a disabled badge, because “being a selfish cunt” doesn’t come under the disability act? I don’t argue when these people park in a disabled space. Not unless they catch me pulling their windscreen wipers outwards or flobbing at their side window on days when I am blessed with a build-up of superfluous phlegm.
I eagerly await the day when trolleys are fitted with parking sensors. Such a device, completely unnecessary for anyone other than those drivers who are retards by choice, would bring harmony to the supermarket. As it is, a shopper’s invisible blinkers slip into place automatically the moment that person’s hands grip a trolley and the sort of belligerency you’d encounter on the roads of south-east England is thus transferred to the supermarket aisles.
The barriers you walk between on the way in, which most people think are there to detect stolen items, actually emit high-frequency sonar waves designed to fuck up your spatial awareness. Handicapped by this assault on your brain and encumbered by your invisible blinkers and general piss-off attitude, you the shopper are now a helpless slave to bastardness for the next 45 minutes.
When you’re not looking to take a layer of skin off someone’s ankles with your trolley, you are parking it at a right-angle to the shelves, blocking the entire aisle while you wander back to fruit and veg for something you’ve forgotten. With typical English self-righteousness, someone will tut loudly and give your trolley a slight push. The brave might even drop something small and expensive into it. That’s as far as I’d go, seeing as there are no windscreen wipers and a grolly in this situation would be a little beyond the pale.
When these bastards are not leaving a trolley in your way, they manage to plant their bodies in such a position. If I leave more than an arm’s length between myself and the shelf full of products that I am surveying then I expect someone to move into that gap and completely deprive me of both my view and ability to pick up what I want. The only place in the supermarket that this doesn’t happen is in front of the Pot Noodles, because anyone buying these tends to do so at speed. Personally, I like to browse and give myself time to decide between the two flavours that only moderately taste like the inside of a rubbish truck.
I worked part-time in one of those now obsolete small branches of Tesco in Palmers Green for a year when I was younger. The store manager conformed lock, stock and barrel to the archetypal nasal-voiced, petty autocrat you’d expect to find wielding small amounts of power in retail. He told us to call him Mr J, because he was Polish and he didn’t think we’d cope with anything more complicated. His full name was Janus and I suspect that the J stood for Justin. He’d wander round the 5 aisles telling us in his oily voice to “face up tinned meat, yeah.” A thoroughbred bastard. I hope he has syphilis now.
My days treading the aisles, facing up tinned meat and other products, were days of missed opportunities. There are so many things you’d hope to be asked by customers, but never were:
Customer: Have I passed the pasta yet?
Supermarket assistant: I don’t know; when did you eat it?
Customer: Can you direct me to mince?
Supermarket assistant: Certainly. Walk this way, ducky.
I think the policy they now have of walking you to where you want to go was fine in 5-aisle supermarkets like the one in Palmers Green, but now when you ask the whereabouts of frozen chips and some slow fucker escorts you 30 aisles to the east wing of the supermarket, you want to grab them by their tasteful brown and orange nylon lapels and shout in their face, “Just-fuck-ing-point!”
In the old days, of course, supermarkets weren’t monopolising the entire range of retail products. You certainly wouldn’t dream of doing your Christmas shopping in Palmers Green Tesco; not when you had “Boots” across the road for the obligatory boxed sets of Old Spice and lavender bath products. Nowadays, the concept of “all under one roof” means “we sell a limited range of cheap, lowest common denominator products so you don’t need to bother going elsewhere.”
Or am I being cynical? Perhaps, in fact, Tesco is aiding the cultural and literary education of society with its wide selection of Danielle Steel novels, Mills and Boon and witty coffee table compendiums. Fucking hell, I hate those coffee table books. Presents bought by the unimaginative for the undiscerning. Should anyone ever buy me one of those twee and corny coffee table books, I am likely to marinade it in anthrax, reduce it to a fine pulp using a Molineux blender and feed it directly into that person’s stomach using an endoscopy tube that has been left overnight on the floor of a Piccadilly public lavatory.
You have to hand it to them in regard to clothes, though. When my generation was growing up, the idea of wearing supermarket clothes was as much of a social anathema as having sticky plaster on your NHS specs, riding a bike with stabilisers after you’ve reached 14 or not finding Jim Davison’s brand of casual racism and misogyny hilarious. It was an inspired move for Asda to brand their fashion as being by “George” and for Tesco to use “Florence and Fred.” Who would have thought that applying the name of 1970’s kids’ TV characters would create such immediate kudos? Maybe the inspiration came from the fact that the clothes are all made by children earning the same amount of pocket money per week that I was given in 1976.
Good old Tesco, supporting the global economy! And hopefully, one day selling everything everyone ever needs. I was hoping that the move into car insurance would lead to the provision of car parts, because the manufacturing companies pretty much fist us mercilessly with their prices. I’d gladly wander along to aisle 453 for Ford Parts in my local supermarket if it meant paying less, although I might balk at the idea of “Tesco Value” brake pads and discs – guaranteed to bring your car to a halt on most occasions.
To paraphrase Mr J. Anus, we have to “face up” to the fact that Tesco are indeed taking over. In Hertfordshire, they are the second biggest employer after the NHS. Given the government cuts, they might soon become the biggest. We might find ourselves going to Tesco for routine operations. From an entrepreneurial viewpoint, removing an appendix or an in-growing toenail would help support sausage production at the Deli counter. But perhaps the most useful medical care Tesco could provide would be psychiatric, because one of these days it won’t just be windscreen wipers…
Saturday, 2 April 2011
A week in a life of watching mostly bollocks on the bastard telly
Watching telly is like picking your nose. On a few occasions it’s necessary, sometimes enjoyable, but mostly just a habit that deserves strong reproach. We all moan about most of it. The appeal of having Twitter on my iphone is that I have something comfortably less mindless to do than watch whatever’s on telly – that is, tweeting about what’s on telly.
I’ll put the news on each morning, but fuck knows why. For starters, nothing new usually happens overnight (except the occasional celebrity death, to which I find myself indifferent) and I can’t even hear the TV anyway over the noise of my Coco Pops being assaulted by cold milk, because I don’t want to turn it up too loud in case I wake the kids. Secondly, the choice seems to be between BBC Breakfast News, which is essentially a magazine programme presented by and targeted at the more bland and twee Middle class/aged/England demographic, and SKY news presented by Eammon Holmes who has all the charm of dog shit on toast. Given that I usually wake up these days feeling like I’ve been sat on all night by Eammon Holmes, I ignore the TV (without thinking to turn it off) and read the Independent App on my phone.
Daytime TV deserves a blog of its own and fortunately for most of the year I am at work and so avoid the human abattoir that is the Jeremy Kyle show. Lucky for me, we have SKY+, so Mrs Bastard is able to record the lunchtime soap “Doctors” and I am tortured with this ridiculously puerile pantomime once we’re both home in the evening. I love it. The scriptwriters are unintentional comedy geniuses, and have assembled their lines of cliché-ridden dialogue with meticulous care. I suspect they bought a load of old Crossroads scripts from the 70’s, cut them up and rearranged them. It’s clearly an art form in the same way that defecating on canvas is an art form. I strongly recommend that you watch it.
After this, my daughter will watch a recording of that week’s Glee episode, which somehow I end up watching about three times. I’m not sure why it’s originally shown after 9pm, except perhaps to protect younger children from the effects of watching something so saccharine-coated that they could contract diabetes just by sitting through one episode. While she insists on watching Glee, I go and stir two jars of English mustard into the bolognaise that will form part of her dinner.
For some reason, no one in my house will ever turn the TV off. It’s stuck on like a clagnet on an arse hair. Irritates me senselessly. And it always seems to be left on unwatched when The One Show is on. This is where the BBC manages to screw with your mind by confronting you with a presenter like Alex Jones who is both nice looking and yet so utterly devoid of any personality, that the question of whether you fancy her or not can cause a crisis of dignity. Only when she interviewed the dead-eyed fame-whore Katie Price, did I decide that relatively speaking “I would.” But watching The One Show on a Friday when she is joined by Chris Evans is like contracting pubic lice and genital thrush simultaneously.
Late evening, with the children in bed, I regain at least 50% control of the telly and look forward to settling down with a glass of wine (see other blogs) to watch something less likely to make me want to hold my head against a hot stove and stab my testicles with a wedge of out-of-date cheddar. I have decided not to drink mid-week, so that means no wine on a Wednesday, but Thursday feels close enough to the end of the week to stay up late and finish a bottle during Question Time. This is when Twitter goes into overload. Usually it is over the now ubiquitous appearance of one social pariah or another, someone like Kelvin McKenzie, Baroness Warsi or a similarly objectionable, sensationalist bigot like the loathsome panto dame David Starkey.
Come the weekend, an evening’s viewing degenerates into farce. We might all scoff at the concept of watching not-very-famous celebrities doing what they are NOT not-very-famous for, on ice or otherwise, for weeks on end and then text in our votes for who is the shittest of the shit; but we still watch it. Well, I don’t, but like the inexorable arse-clagnet, its just there, hanging about and difficult to get rid off.
The pitiful standard of such entertainment helps to elevate everything around it, so much so that any old shit can pull in 10 million viewers if Ant and Dec or Harry Hill are plonked on stage to front it. Even Paddy McGuiness’s Take Me Out has assumed the mantel of Blind Date for making light entertainment out of corny flirting between the egocentric and the shallow. Personally, my preferred method of flirting is to stop myself from gobbing in someone’s face when I tell them to piss off, which is why I have so far held back from applying to this show. Come Dine with Me is far more appealing, as it successfully manages to distil around one dinner table a town’s most scathing bastard or bitch, most drunken opinionated lush, most socially retarded middle-aged man and one averagely bland straight (wo)man to act as a foil. Now that’s good telly! I might apply. I’m sure they’d enjoy a course of English mustard with bolognaise, followed by stale cheddar and mutilated testes on crackers.
I’ll put the news on each morning, but fuck knows why. For starters, nothing new usually happens overnight (except the occasional celebrity death, to which I find myself indifferent) and I can’t even hear the TV anyway over the noise of my Coco Pops being assaulted by cold milk, because I don’t want to turn it up too loud in case I wake the kids. Secondly, the choice seems to be between BBC Breakfast News, which is essentially a magazine programme presented by and targeted at the more bland and twee Middle class/aged/England demographic, and SKY news presented by Eammon Holmes who has all the charm of dog shit on toast. Given that I usually wake up these days feeling like I’ve been sat on all night by Eammon Holmes, I ignore the TV (without thinking to turn it off) and read the Independent App on my phone.
Daytime TV deserves a blog of its own and fortunately for most of the year I am at work and so avoid the human abattoir that is the Jeremy Kyle show. Lucky for me, we have SKY+, so Mrs Bastard is able to record the lunchtime soap “Doctors” and I am tortured with this ridiculously puerile pantomime once we’re both home in the evening. I love it. The scriptwriters are unintentional comedy geniuses, and have assembled their lines of cliché-ridden dialogue with meticulous care. I suspect they bought a load of old Crossroads scripts from the 70’s, cut them up and rearranged them. It’s clearly an art form in the same way that defecating on canvas is an art form. I strongly recommend that you watch it.
After this, my daughter will watch a recording of that week’s Glee episode, which somehow I end up watching about three times. I’m not sure why it’s originally shown after 9pm, except perhaps to protect younger children from the effects of watching something so saccharine-coated that they could contract diabetes just by sitting through one episode. While she insists on watching Glee, I go and stir two jars of English mustard into the bolognaise that will form part of her dinner.
For some reason, no one in my house will ever turn the TV off. It’s stuck on like a clagnet on an arse hair. Irritates me senselessly. And it always seems to be left on unwatched when The One Show is on. This is where the BBC manages to screw with your mind by confronting you with a presenter like Alex Jones who is both nice looking and yet so utterly devoid of any personality, that the question of whether you fancy her or not can cause a crisis of dignity. Only when she interviewed the dead-eyed fame-whore Katie Price, did I decide that relatively speaking “I would.” But watching The One Show on a Friday when she is joined by Chris Evans is like contracting pubic lice and genital thrush simultaneously.
Late evening, with the children in bed, I regain at least 50% control of the telly and look forward to settling down with a glass of wine (see other blogs) to watch something less likely to make me want to hold my head against a hot stove and stab my testicles with a wedge of out-of-date cheddar. I have decided not to drink mid-week, so that means no wine on a Wednesday, but Thursday feels close enough to the end of the week to stay up late and finish a bottle during Question Time. This is when Twitter goes into overload. Usually it is over the now ubiquitous appearance of one social pariah or another, someone like Kelvin McKenzie, Baroness Warsi or a similarly objectionable, sensationalist bigot like the loathsome panto dame David Starkey.
Come the weekend, an evening’s viewing degenerates into farce. We might all scoff at the concept of watching not-very-famous celebrities doing what they are NOT not-very-famous for, on ice or otherwise, for weeks on end and then text in our votes for who is the shittest of the shit; but we still watch it. Well, I don’t, but like the inexorable arse-clagnet, its just there, hanging about and difficult to get rid off.
The pitiful standard of such entertainment helps to elevate everything around it, so much so that any old shit can pull in 10 million viewers if Ant and Dec or Harry Hill are plonked on stage to front it. Even Paddy McGuiness’s Take Me Out has assumed the mantel of Blind Date for making light entertainment out of corny flirting between the egocentric and the shallow. Personally, my preferred method of flirting is to stop myself from gobbing in someone’s face when I tell them to piss off, which is why I have so far held back from applying to this show. Come Dine with Me is far more appealing, as it successfully manages to distil around one dinner table a town’s most scathing bastard or bitch, most drunken opinionated lush, most socially retarded middle-aged man and one averagely bland straight (wo)man to act as a foil. Now that’s good telly! I might apply. I’m sure they’d enjoy a course of English mustard with bolognaise, followed by stale cheddar and mutilated testes on crackers.
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