Vent

2011-10-23T10:02:00.002+01:00

http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/magazine-13445487

Sorry, brief post, this just makes me really angry. Don't glorify their ridiculous slang by giving it the credibility of an article. Anyone who talks like that should have their dumb fucking mouth sewn up for a minimum of one year before being sent on an intensive course of elocution lessons.

Utterly ridiculous. Bellends.

2011-10-23T09:58:00.000+01:00

Ahh X-Factor, what an abomination.

I understand it's very fashionable to bleat on about how bad this show but I just can't resist. It makes me too angry.

It's made by morons and aimed at morons. Granted, a large proportion of the audience aren't morons, they're normal people seeking amusement in an otherwise bleak world, but let's face it, the show is aimed at pond life. The horrendously cheesy back-stories to the week's token sob-story performer, the embarrassingly OTT music, the crowd that look like they decided to live in Chernobyl following the nuclear disaster and those rent-a-quote wankers on the judging panel.

The performers themselves are just so depressingly predictable and homogenus. They all sound the same, they all point to the notes they're singing (watch for it, you'll understand) and all sing the same, dull, tiresome songs. It would be really nice if they could all realise that it's not a virtue to warble every vowel; if anything that shows you're incapable of holding a note for more than 2 seconds before your voice starts wobbling. It might sound a bit pretty but to me it sounds like you're a fucking shit singer. Does Emperor Ming with his high trousers notice this? Of course he does, he and his cronies don't know the first thing about musical talent. They do however know a lot about marketing and sales.

If I had the choice I'd continue running the show but the end result would actually be a secret "prize" of having your vocal chords removed and being banished from public life forever. Why? Because you're too fucking lazy to put in the hard work of regular gigging in every kind of shit venue you can get yourself into, promoting yourself at every opportunity, putting in your hard-earned cash to create merchandise and advertisements and generally busting your ass to make something of your musical talent. Can't be bothered with that? Then you don't fucking deserve a career in music.

I successfully avoid this abortion of a show but it naturally creeps into my peripheral vision now and again and never fails to rile me. Ah well, nothing I can do about it aside from mass murder. I'll just have to put up with yet another dull-as-shit "singer" that sounds like Leona Lewis, who sounds like every generic "R'n'B" (it's not real R'n'B) in history.

Piss off

Royal Wedding

2011-04-28T12:33:00.001+01:00

I really don't understand the fuss surrounding this monolith of a Royal Wedding. It's just two people getting married, one of which happens to have a royal title. Big fucking deal.

It seems 90% of women around the country are ogling it because it represents their pathetic ideal of their perfect, fairytale wedding that they've dreamed of since they were a child and will eventually forcefully impose on some downtrodden, and soon to be empty-pocketed man.

I just couldn't give a crap. Prince William seems like a genuinely nice chap and Kate Middleton seems nice too, if somewhat dead behind the eyes due to her relentless media coverage. I wish them all the best but bloody hell if I was them I'd be running a mile. The media are clambering over each other the provide the best coverage they possibly can of the wedding, bringing out as many simpering, sycophantic big-guns as they can to ooh and ahh over the rich people they wish they were mates with. The public are holding fucking street parties for fuck sake. Seriously? At what other point in your life would you hold a party in the street for a wedding of some people you don't even know? Oh sorry, I forget last week a party was held in London for the wedding of Bob and Mary up in Inverness. Complete strangers but clearly it's the done thing now.

Let them get married, congratulate them and get on with your lives. Stop the sycophantic wank fest and cover something more important. You know perhaps something like the fact that Japan is still utterly devastated from the Tsunami. Apparently that event never happened now, other than the odd report on the "stricken" (seriously, I've never been so sick of that word) nuclear plant at Fukushima.

I'm off to sit in a dark room and cry. Actually I need to get ready and go into town to pick up my renewed prescription of anti-depressants. A hint of predictable irony there perhaps?

Protest! Resist!

2011-04-28T12:25:00.001+01:00

Lately the theme to my thoughts can be summed up with the word "futility", most recently highlighted by the large NUS conference that I worked on.

Students do generally fill me with a feeling of nausea and loathing but the NUS conferences attract a special kind of simmering derision from me that I usually only reserve for vegetarians and fundamentalist faith-heads. The main target of my bile were, as always, the Socialist Workers. Without a doubt they are the most tiresome, hypocritical, boring idiots I've ever encountered. Up there with PETA, any political parties and that odious prick Bill O'Reilly.

Firstly I'd like to state that they're neither Socialists nor Workers. They're nothing more than angry young people that, with the absence of socialism or workers, would be angry at anything else they could get their hands on. You could put a pile of bricks in front of them and they'd find something about said bricks that was infringing their rights as working people. They're not Socialists because they're so militant with their views that they want to impose them on everyone else with force, surely one of the defining attributes of Fascism. They're not workers because firstly they're fucking students and secondly they're at University, a traditionally middle and upper class institution full of people who claim to be salt-of-the-earth workers but would never dare walk into a working mens club or go and bend some metal in a steel plant. Same old Tories? What would you know? You were, at most, still in nappies when the Tories were last in power. Read all the angry books and articles you want but don't claim to have in some way experienced previous Tory governments. I think Thatcher is a moron but I wouldn't dream of claiming to have been personally affected by her horrendous policies of the 80's.

I actually witnessed said Socialist Workers getting angry when it was suggested that the notion of them comparing themselves to the Suffragette movement is offensive and ludicrous. I'm sorry, exactly how does ranting in public with shit placards and smashing up a Topshop store bring you anywhere near those women who fought and died for their cause? You're just a bunch of angry young dickheads who are just angry for anger's sake, with deluded notions that you're one with the working men and are emboldened by the spirit of Lenin (y'know, that guy who gets lauded a lot but was also a mass murderer, along with every other Communist leader that has ever gotten into power). The man who put this notion to them was roundly booed and aggressively heckled but he came out with a corker of a line..

"who are you trying to impress? The public or yourselves? Have a think about that"

Brilliant.

The point I'm getting as is how fucking futile it all is. You'll never achieve anything, you'll just be angry for a few years before mellowing out with age. Of course you'll still hold your views dear but you'll soon realise that the universe, nay, the world, doesn't even bat an eyelid at your actions. No matter what government gets into power, nothing changes. Human nature doesn't change. That's the essential failing of Socialism and its many forms. It forgets that it's human nature to look after yourself over anyone else, to fear difference, to dislike change, to feel superior to other tribes, to fight and so on. Deny it all you want but just take a look at the world around you, humans are a fucking blot on this planet and all your rallying, ranting and criminal damage won't change anything. After you've mellowed with age you'll realise you never achieved anything other than being extremely angry. Eventually you'll die, probably alone, and the world won't even care. It will carry on like usual, destroying itself, and your "efforts" to change whatever you were rallying against will be a forgotten footnote in history at best.

There's plenty of worth causes around the world worth supporting but in the back of your mind there should always been the reminder that nothing ever changes. You could eradicate poverty but something else would replace it. Try by all means but don't fucking lay into people who don't see the use in it. Not everyone gives a crap about your utterly futile socialist utopia and don't delude yourself into thinking your ranting will change that.

You're born, you grow up, you do some shit, wars happen, disease happens, many people die, injustices crop up everywhere and then you die and the world doesn't bat a fucking eyelid.

Retail

2011-03-06T19:16:00.001Z

For anyone who gives a shit I work in a shop. A shop in a music venue. I won't reveal the name of said venue because I might get shafted but you probably know anyway if you have any knowledge of me.

Now, I don't mind this job, it drags a bit and the hours are long but it's better than what I used to do at said venue and I get a lot more responsibility. However the one thing that really makes the job difficult is customers. Ironic really as they're pretty central to the whole thing. So I'd just like to vent some gripes here in a advisory fashion for anyone looking to browse the shop in the near future...

Firstly, if you pick something up to look at it, fucking well put it back where you found it. Not at the other end of the shop, not next to where you found it, put it exactly back where you found it. If you don't, you're just fucking ignorant. I may have nothing better to do but it does rather take the biscuit having to tidy up after you like some nursery school spawn.

Secondly, if it's approaching 11pm (i.e, when the building closes), don't fucking amble around the shop as though you're doing your morning's shopping. I actually have a home to go to, as do the rest of the staff, and would quite like to be in that home on time. In all liklihood I will have been stood in that shop since the early afternoon and I'm quite eager to get the till cashed up and the shop closed down. At the moment the security barriers are broken so in fairness it does look like the shop is open all the time but you'd think that perhaps at a time so late in the evening you'd have the fucking courtesy to ask whether it's still open. Not just assume that I'm there to hang around like a twat whilst you umm and arr over some kid's toy for half an hour. I'm only on the rota until 11pm and I think that's pretty fair. Once it's gone half 10 I'm starting to close stuff down. Pick want you want, pay for it and leave. Don't piss and moan when I'm busy cashing up and you can't buy your meagre purchase of a postcard and a pencil. Also it would be useful if customers had a better understanding of how tills work. For example, I CAN'T PUT YOUR THINGS THROUGH THE TILL IF THERE'S NO MONEY IN IT AND IT'S BEEN CASHED UP.

Finally, don't assume the shop is just there for you. You may think it's a wonderful idea for us to stock some shite like bouncy rubber nail clippers but in reality you're the only person that has ever, and will ever, ask us for such a thing. By all means suggest it but don't have a go at us if we say we don't stock it. It's not a travesty, it's a simple case of supply and demand. In all liklihood, your shit idea won't make us any money. If you want it that badly, buy it on the internet.

Contrary to what this blog entry may suggest, I am actually very polite and friendly towards customers. I want to keep my job in the end. What isn't obvious is my raging internal monologue.

Thankyou.

My acupuncture experience

2010-09-07T12:17:00.000+01:00

Recently I was contacted by the University of York to take part in a study on treating mental health issues. The three test groups were acupuncture, continuing your current treatment or counselling. I thought it would be worth taking part as it's something that affects me, however I didn't really weigh up the risk that I would get lumped with the fucking witch doctors serving up acupuncture.... which is exactly what happened.

First appointment was last week and it's safe to say it really did reinforce my opinion of that sham "profession". It's the placebo effect. It's all the fucking placebo effect. Homeopathy, acupuncture, aromatherapy and so on. You know why? Because the stuff that worked from ancient medicines became modern medicine, the stuff that didn't became the domain of woo-peddlers rambling on about "Chi" and my lack thereof. Or more precisely, my Chi that is currently not flowing properly.

Lets move onto my actual diagnosis. Apparently I store too much heat in my body and have heaps of phlegm. The voodoo priestess "treating" me seemed rather rattled when I ever-so-boldly went against convention in suggesting the reason why I was hot and sweaty was because I'm seriously fucking unfit and just huffed and puffed my way into town to get to said appointment and hadn't cooled down yet. Still she plugged on with her diagnosis of poorly-flowing Chi and dragged me through an arduous questionnaire before laying me on a bed that wouldn't look out of place in a morgue and stuck some needles in my feet, hands, stomach and scalp. I was then asked to relax for 15 minutes while she left the room, no doubt heading off to have some fucking green herbal tea or something. I was left with some genuinely awful music playing; something resembling someone slowly dying of boredom on a piano with a prick on a Casio keyboard holding two keys down for all eternity in the background. How exactly am I supposed to relax when I'm being aurally raped, have needles protruding from areas I've never had needles in before and I'm lying on a bed covered in that papery shit that rustles constantly, feels like a combination of tracing paper and grease-proof paper and is commonly found in school toilets?

Instead of laying there and slipping into some kind of zen-like trance while all my troubles leak from my precariously attached needles I sat wondering what the fuck I was doing in that room and how exactly the NHS justifies this kind of service. I think I was also beginning to admire the determination of said musical tormentors, much in the way that hostages supposedly eventually grow attached to their terrorist kidnappers. Musical Stockholm Syndrome. The medical treatment that claims to rid me of my problems in fact gave me a new one. Anyway she came back, took the needles out, asked how I was... to which I replied with about as much enthusiasm as I could possibly blag so as not to hurt the nice woman's feelings, and that was that.

I know it's only one treatment and I have 11 more to go but the main problem for me, aside from feeling like an utter tool, is that this type of treatment relies almost exclusively on placebo. If I already know it's horseshit then that pretty much negates said effect. Oh well, all in the name of science!

Long time no whine.

2010-05-14T15:32:00.001+01:00

I'd totally forgotten about this shitty blotch on the internet. How are you all, my wonderful readers? I hope you're in a bog of mediocrity like me, but then who am I kidding? I can't imagine anyone actually reads this, so really this is just me communicating with my inner-monologue. Fun times.

"WHY?! WHY??!" I hear you ask in regards to my lack of updates. Well I'll tell you... I've had nothing to stir my ranting juices. Actually that's a lie, there's plenty I could rant about but why rant when you can be so fucking crushed by a seemingly endless blanket of mediocrity, boredom and underachievement? It's hard to get angry about something when you just couldn't give a shit about anything other than your own pathetic self-pitying.

For example previously when walking through the twat-gauntlet otherwise known as Newcastle city centre on a Friday night, I'd fill with rage and disgust at the huge array of marine life waddling through the streets spilling out of ill-fitting clothes, starting fights with their own bulbous shadows and vomiting up the contents of their bargain bin ready meals. Now however I can't raise much more emotion than that of despair and resignation, with the only lasting thought being "what happened to human evolution?". What kind of blog will that make? A painfully dull one I'd venture.

Still, there's always the odd flicker of joy around me. The Tories getting into power was one. Not because I'm a supporter of that cretinous party but rather because I found such hilarity in the collective anguished groan emanating from the North of England, the pathetically defiant Facebook status updates, the trendy and sneering Cameron-bashing, and the sight of the Lib Dem hype wagon utterly failing to live up to its blustering. The piss-weak Lib Dem results were reminiscent of someone silencing a room of people and building up the tension with promises of an epic and earth-shattering fart, only to release an impotent splutter. The Lib Dems are a collection of weak farts. Still, they're marginally in power now so clearly they've had the last laugh. Oh and before anyone jumps to conclusions, I have no real allegiance to any party, I'll vote for whoever has the best policies at the time rather than following some fucking ridiculous notion of loyalty or family tradition. To quote a rant I had elsewhere on the internet, when discussing the then-upcoming election..

"That's not to say anything would change with the other parties in power, they're all just as shit as one another. They're entirely populated by smug liars that will do little to improve our lives. You're born, various fucking showers of governments fanny around for your whole life making things difficult, then you spend your last days grumbling about it whilst pissing yourself while your mind crumbles away in, if you're lucky, some shitty retirement home; but more likely in some shitty little house where no-one from whats left of your family visits you anymore and struggles to care. Eventually you die, some people are forcibly sad because that's what is expected of them and then you're forgotten within 10 years and life just goes on with some other shit government."

I really try to be positive. Honestly.

How unoriginal

2010-01-22T18:59:00.000Z

Do you find that popular music doesn't seem to be going anywhere new? The same goes for high-street fashion too.

I was pondering recently when reading through all the usual banal "best of" lists from the past ten years and I got thinking, how much originality is there these days? Every decade before the "noughties" (I hate that phrase, almost as much as I hate the phrase "big freeze" or the word "guestimate") had its own distinct style. For example you can instantly recognise something from the 60's, 70's or 80's but I just don't see the 00's being that original and distinct, particularly with fashion.

Most fashion these days is just an utterly shameless rip-off from previous generations. At the moment the popular styles are some weird mixture of 60's, 70's and 80's all rolled into one. Now I'm not saying there's no merit in the fashions of those eras, I love a lot of 60's men's fashion, but surely you want to create your own identity? Where there isn't any merit is in worshiping bygone fashions with that awful post-modern irony that has become symptomatic in the past five years.

I understand the notion that fashion goes in cycles but come on, have some fucking originality and a mind of your own. To me re-hashing old styles and adding some irony to it stinks of being lazy and pretentious. Of course me being the massive hypocrite that I am, I buy into this and I enjoy quite a few bits of male fashion at the moment; the skinny jeans, the Chelsea boots and so on, but then I've always loved older fashions so I don't know whether that's me buying into a trend or me just going with what I've always liked.

The same goes for popular music really. Anyone who knows me knows that I'm generally not a fan of anything popular. Not out of some elitist snobbery but because, well, as a rule if it's hugely popular it tends to be fucking shite unless it's something that has gotten success with integrity, step up Pink Floyd as an example.

It's now dying on its arse but look at all this jingly-jangly Indie we've had over the past 10 years. How much of that has a scrap of originality to it? Fifty percent of it is just a total rip-off of The Smiths and the other half is a rip-off of Sigur Ros. I know that it's always hard to be truly original and inventive but how can you take yourself seriously as a musician knowing that your music has no integrity or originality? Sure you can decide to play to a particular style of music but don't just shamelessly rip-off the most popular band in that genre. Of course marketing ass-truffles like Simon Cowell (I don't credit him with being anything to do with music because quite frankly he knows nothing about it. He knows everything about marketing) don't care about that, they care about the money and will snap up any souless shite in order to sell records so you're always going to get one band making it popular with a particular style and then hundreds of bandwagon jumpers wanting their 15 minutes of fame. The problem is that even the band that starts the bandwagon doesn't have any originality these days, so it just becomes a wave of uninspiring rip-off acts.

Oh how I fucking hate post-modernism.

A ban on mobile letterboxes?

2010-01-21T18:10:00.001Z

I understand the point behind this law being pushed in France; I've always felt these sweaty mobile tents are hugely oppressive of women and a striking symbol of the misogynistic nature of Islam. This isn't some attack on Islam at all, rather I'm just understanding the reasoning behind this law.

The problem for me though is choice, which is where it becomes rather murky. Who are we to say what people can and can't wear? True it's an incredibly anti-social form of dress but it's their choice to wear it.. or is it? You could argue that "choice" is merely the product of being brought up brainwashed by the religion their parents forced upon them. In fact that is something I would agree with. However you can't go passing laws to ban a style of dress, not only is it hugely draconian but it sets a precedent and where do you stop? The potential law claims that ANYONE wearing anything covering their face would be fined, how far can that go? Are the French government going to be fining Motorcyclists if they're wearing their helmet when not riding a bike? To me it just seems like a knee-jerk law for what is such a small "problem" in France. Of course it's related to the much bigger issue of multiculturalism and integration, which has caused all kinds of mayhem in France in recent years, but isn't this just a bit too pedantic and petty?

The answer is through education, not through sartorial prohibition. You don't force people to integrate by using laws to regulate their clothing, if anything that alienates people further.

I know, look at me being all serious and political. I'm a bit worn out from ranting at the moment.

Group Interview

2010-01-20T12:22:00.001Z

I have a job interview tomorrow with Paperchase for a part-time position that, if I got it, I could nicely slot in along with my current job at The Sage. You'd think I'd be happy about it but you guessed it, I'm not. Why? It's a fucking group interview, that's why.

I understand why companies set up group interviews, it's all about saving time and money, but that doesn't make them any more bearable. What makes this one seem even worse than all the previous ones I've had to go to is the fact that the email I've been sent asks me to bring "1 item from home that reflects your personality". How about a fucking noose? Or a dead child? Or some animal porn? None of these reflect my personality, except maybe the noose, but perhaps they'd raise some kind of sincere expression on the faces of the sycophantic, vapid dipshits I'll be sharing a room with. As it is everyone will try to out-do each other with something oh-so-fucking-quirky and I'll have something shit like a book or a keyring. I'm not one of these douchebags that goes shopping, sees something and says "oh that is sooooo me!". Why the fuck would stuff around my house reflect my personality? The stuff around my house is there because it's either performing a function or it looks nice.

Apparently the day will include " an ice-breaker and some group activities based on team work and customer service". So some stupid, demeaning yet "fun" activity to start off with, followed by the same old cliched shite that every other employer uses. I swear these group sessions are designed to make you hate the world even more than you already do.

A collection of thoughts on Metal; the music not the group of chemical elements.

2010-01-18T14:24:00.003Z

I’ve just come across this link (click the post title) via a friend on Facebook and it got me thinking. When I say “thinking” it tends to mean my piss is boiling with rage over some insignificant issue that normal, well-adjusted people merely shrug at but in this case I think it’s more a case of jaded disappointment

The popular opinion of Metal is one of patronising bemusement; it’s treated like the senile grandparent at a family gathering who’s just called everyone a bastard before shitting himself, “aww dear, poor old man, he can’t help it”. Now this is partly the fault of Metal itself. The 80’s brought along terrible bands clad in spandex, mullets and an array of spiked cod-pieces. Who can blame people for thinking Metal is a joke? The release of the ever-popular film “Wayne’s World” further reinforced the stereotype of the Metal fan as an underachieving, scruffy, unwashed yet dimly loveable adolescent who is yet to grow out of a phase. The problem is that this stereotype has stuck and given the nature of Metal and its fans, it’s a stereotype that has proven incredibly hard to shift; for every Metal fan that can be taken seriously there’s some drunken douchebag head-banging around the room to Pantera whilst crushing cans on his head before going to work in a petrol station the next morning.

Of course I’m not suggesting here that Metal should lose its sense of fun but generally anyone who bemoans the state of Metal and its many dumb-fuck fans gets labelled a dour elitist, ironically in a genre of music that often proudly holds itself loftily above all other forms of music with its nose firmly stuck up. Therefore I think it’s time Metal got its face caved in with a nice reality check and a strong dose of weary venom, because quite frankly I’m finding the Metal scene to be pretty fucking tiresome.

Over the years I’ve been to countless Metal gigs and I’ve gotten to the point where I just can’t be bothered with it anymore. I’m sick of the Metal uniform (long hair, leather jacket, obscure t-shirt, black jeans, boots) and the juvenile way in which you’re judged at every concert you go to. I used to be like that, every Metal fan has been at some point or more often than not, still is. The issue that grates with me is when you stay that way. When you’re into the infant years of your Metal loving life you tend to think you’re the only true Metal fan on the planet, you’re almost like one of those awful born-again Christian types, a blind zealot that will get to the gig as early as possible to get a place on the front row to spend the entire gig head-banging wildly, throwing the horns and screaming “METAAAAALL!!!” at every opportunity. I’m not saying there’s a particular way in which people should enjoy themselves at a concert but as soon as I got tired of that I just wanted to simply enjoy the music I’ve paid to see by viewing it from a bit further afield, not flailing everywhere and just having a good time by appreciating the performance. The problem lays in those double standards of Metal though; if you’re not wildly going mental at the front you’re a snobby elitist and there’s no possible way that you can be enjoying the concert, I mean, how can you listen to music without trying to break your spine? It’s such an infuriatingly black-and-white view and one that has put me off going to all but the most special, not-to-be-missed concerts.

It gets worse when you chose to review the concert. Your opinion is often instantly dismissed due to you having not spent the entire concert in the crush at the front. No in fact I was actually stood a bit further back actually fucking listening to the music and appreciating it. With hindsight I find that if you’re going mental at the front your enjoyment is more about the fact you’re going mental with your friends than the music being any good. So many bands get away with creating mediocre, generic music because their stupid-ass fans will go blindly mental at the front no matter how bad the music is.

Anyway back to that link at the top of this stupid article. Said NME (yeah that well-known authority on Metal and not at all that fucking rag of a magazine that regularly masturbates over some jingly-jangly Morrissey rip-off whilst calling them the next big thing before they fade away a year later after the hype has gone) article seems to think the music in the world of Metal is in a dire state. You could be forgiven for thinking that if your only exposure to Metal was through that annual vacuous twat-gathering, Download Festival, but how can someone writing for a supposedly well-respected music magazine be so ignorant?

Metal, like all genres, is awash with mediocrity. There’s an endless supply of Cannibal Corpse, Darkthrone and At The Gates clones and it can take a bit of effort to sift through all that shite but it’s certainly worth it in the end. There’s so many wonderful bands such as Deathspell Omega, Agalloch, Drudkh, Negura Bunget, Blut Aus Nord, Fen, Wolves in the Throne Room, Riverside, Sunn O))), Glorior Belli (before their latest effort, which was utterly, utterly dire), Enslaved, Morgion and so on. Of course given the nature of pricks reading an article I’m sure I’d get endless morons telling me why those bands are shit, what bands I should put in, what I should take out, how I’m a “faggot” and so on. Fill your boots. Anyway, the point is, you can’t bemoan an entire genre like some jaded veteran when your only experience of said genre is quite possibly the most mainstream tip there is without completely leaving the genre. Look a bit harder than the pages of that fantastic ass-cleaning product Kerrang! Magazine and you’re sure to find something great. The same issue goes for Metal fans though. Often the same people who will rabidly shout “elitist!” at you have been listening to the same three bands for the past ten years and either can’t be bothered or flat-out refuse to leave their comfort zone to explore other sub-genres, or even other genres of music all together. In the past year or so I’ve found myself listening to far more Drum & Bass, Classical and various other bits and bobs from all kinds of musical styles than Metal. Not out of any dislike of Metal but simply because I’ve bothered to branch out and sample as much as I can from elsewhere.

I’ve completely lost what was left of my point now and can’t really be bothered anymore. In fact I think this never really had a point. Fuck off.

Health Zealots Pt.II

2009-10-20T19:49:00.001+01:00

Another thing that has been irritating me and is linked to my rant about health zealots is the hysteria over alcohol abuse. Now I'm not denying there's an alcohol problem in this country, you only have to go down the Bigg Market to see that, but it's the terminology and preaching that gets to me.

If you have more than four drinks in an evening it is medically considered a binge. You are officially a binge drinker. How on Earth is that fair and more importantly, accurate? Of course there's going to be a drinking epidemic if you consider a binge to be such a stupidly low amount of alcohol. All it does is feed the frenzy whipped up by sensationalist rags like the Daily Mail where they say the entire youth of the nation is stuck in an alcoholic stupor and we're all doomed.

What's the government's answer to this? Slap ever growing taxes on alcohol. Smart one, instead of targeting actual alcohol abuse they just decide to punish all drinkers. Not just drinkers but also the many micro-breweries and local pubs that are being wiped out by huge taxes. Genius.

Health Zealots

2009-10-20T05:07:00.000+01:00

I’m not the healthiest eater in the world; in fact most dieticians would be rather concerned at my eating habits. My poor diet mainly comes from laziness and finding cooking to be extremely boring and arduous. Also there’s the small matter of money; I don’t care what Jamie Oliver says, making meals every night full of vegetables, eating loads of fruit everyday and so on is not cheap at all and no weak argument you can put forwards can change my mind on that, it is officially not as cheap as eating shite. When you’re on an incredibly tight budget, which itself is very small, you just can’t afford it.

Anyway, that’s not what I’m intending to rant about. Instead this rant is aimed at health fanatics and fitness freaks. The biggest shower of utter bastards since the Nazis, fact.

I’ve just been vaguely watching a program on television with some supposed doctors ganging up on some overweight woman and thinly disguising their utter disgust at the vile, barely-human specimen they have in front of them with the façade of helping her have a healthier lifestyle. I just saw the diet they gave her; it’s actually less interesting than licking concrete. At least concrete might have some taste to it. Oh but apparently food isn’t about taste, it’s merely about looking after your body, you should never actually enjoy food! They also highlighted the fact that the woman had, on average, 8 cups of coffee a day. This was met with a mixture of mind-blowing horror and a hysteria that can only be matched by the Daily Mail when someone gets a tattoo and touches someone of the same sex. They even claimed that the 8 cups of coffee would lead to alcohol addiction and erratic behaviour close to that of someone suffering from manic depression. A well-informed statement I'm sure. They're television health doctors after-all aren't they? They're surely not just sniping, bitchy, haggard little rodents that believe humour, taste and fun are works of the Great Mars Bar burning in Hades below.

I hate these dour, sniping little weasels that spend their whole lives eating nothing but pulses, nuts, fruit, pottage and foliage. Want something sweet? Oh well why not enjoy the delicious, natural sweetness of a Kiwi fruit? Want something to treat yourself with? Why not have a naughty packet of dried peaches? You filthy, disgusting person. What kind of life is that? You might, by some good luck, live about 5 years longer than everyone else but that’s 5 years of wetting yourself, smelling like rotting vegetables, having a face like a rucksack full of dented bells and being patronised by most people you encounter, which is normally no-one as your friends are dead and your family are miles away and only remember you at Christmas or on your birthday when they send you the customary bottle of gin, whether you like it or not. So well done you, you’ve lived longer to enjoy those benefits of old age. You can be safe in the knowledge that you’ve spent the entirety of your joyless life sneering at other people for being fat, denying yourself endless wonderful foods and spending more time in the smug, sweaty, homoerotic utopia that is “the gym” than anywhere else, desperate to lose those two pounds that are stopping you from becoming a person worth something to society, at least in your eyes anyway. Personally I’d rather pump people like that full of cake so that it comes out of their eyes and drowns them in fatty, carby goodness. Not only that but they’d actually experience something that tastes good for the first time in their life.

You’re going to die like everyone else, don’t try and kid yourself that you’re not. You only get one life and there’s no point in wasting it with the delusion that because you’re more healthy than everyone else you’ll live 100 years longer. No, you’re going to die, decompose and fade into obscurity like pretty much everyone else. Except those people will have had happy, fulfilling lives. They’ll have enjoyed a huge variety of foods with endless different tastes and textures, they’ll have made many friends with that alien concept known as a “personality” and they can die safe in the knowledge that yeah, they might not be healthy, they’re a bit wheezy, there are a few extra lumps of flab but they enjoyed themselves.

A bit of an old one

2009-06-26T17:18:00.001+01:00

So Michael Jackson is dead. Yep. It's rather sad isn't it. I'm more concerned with the public and media reaction though, which is where my inevitable rant is coming from, cantankerously rumbling towards this journal post like a hungry fat man chasing pie.

I've had to turn the television off because after a mere 20 minutes I just can't take any more of it. All of this sickeningly cynical, sanctimonious bullshit swarming the news channels with celebrities not wasting 5 minutes to get their face on the screen before bleating out some meaningless platitudes that will probably be repeated by every celebrity and fan under the sun. Naturally the public loves a massive outpouring of grief; there's very little that gets the general public quite so excited as the chance of being able to stand in the street holding vigils for a celebrity that a day ago they couldn't have given a shit about and probably spend the last 15 years calling a paedophile.

Cue a seemingly endless stream of messages in every form of media available on this planet, even fax machines I dare say, or perhaps carrier pigeons, seeing as everyone wants to remind me every 5 fucking minutes that he's dead. Naturally 99% of said messages will either contain a sick joke from someone trying to show off or more likely some vapid, generic comment like "omg cnt believe hes ded! luv u michel, 4eva in mi hart!". The advent of Facebook and more recently, Twitter, has magnified this by an unquantifiable amount so now I just have a large proportion of my friends list telling me he's dead. Yes I know he's dead, yes I know it's sad, you don't need to tell everyone on Facebook. We have these things called eyes, ears, the internet, television and so forth. We've actually moved on from the era when I'd have to give a sealed document to my faithful rider who can gallop across the land to give news to the king.

Not only do we get the generic grief messages that are bawled out whenever anyone famous dies, we also get the incredibly strange and rather cynical phenomenon of people trying to out-grief each other. Also there's a similarly awful attitude where people try to out-do each other on how "mature" they can be. You know, where they haughtily condemn any distasteful jokes (rightfully so, in fairness) and suddenly become massively more eloquent than they normally are when writing some conceited little message of grief, which is more about them "rising above" everyone else in the grief competition and giving them a pedastal to moralise everyone from, rather than actually paying any respects to the dead person in question.

It is a genuinely tragic event and I sincerely feel sorry for his family who will now have to face a refreshed barrage from the media and public whilst they're just trying to mourn, but then I suppose that's what they've dealt with for the past 30 years so if anyone can deal with that it's them. He was a wonderful talent and a genuinely nice person, albeit with a rather warped sense of reality, probably due to his insanely fucked up childhood.

I now wait with baited breath for the interviews, documentaries, vigils, newspaper specials, magazine specials, band tributes, texts, emails, status updates, fan sites, memorabilia and shit knows what else. All cashing in on this vapid public grief.