Jolly Dreaming 1

So last night I had this properly awesome dream.  It's happened a few times in the last few weeks and I've been determined to start writing them down.  Unfortunately, this intention was never followed up with the act of actually writing them down.  I would remember that I had some bizarre nighttime narrative, but I wouldn't actually remember the content.  Anecdotally, remembering that you had a good dream isn't quite as engaging as the dream itself.  But this morn I wrote it down.  I'm not a dream analyst so make of this what you will.

The dream started in Salisbury.  It wasn't Salisbury, but it was a city playing the part of Salisbury in the dream, and I was heading down the A36 in my Mini Cooper.  It was red (it gets better than this, just stay with me).  So I'm in my Mini and I pull up at the Castle Road roundabout which has three lanes of traffic, and a white van pulls up alongside me.  The light goes green and the van tries to drag race me.  Initially I decide not to participate, but eventually I make the move to teach him a lesson about racing Minis.  This was a Mini Cooper S, by the way.  The fastest of all the Minis.  I make him look a fool.

The reason for my journey in my Mini Cooper S is to go see Alan Sugar (the British twat at the centre of the original "Apprentice").  Think Donald Trump, but with more hair and a face that needs a good slap.  I made my way to his underground lair, where he is sat at his desk at the back of a cave hollowed out of a mountain.  Hollowed out mountains are few and far between in Salisbury; that place must have cost a fortune.  I'm arguing with him about something, I think it was KFC, and was throwing around some pretty cleverly constructed insults: "Oh, my God!  You're such a twat!  Is there something wrong with you?  I hate you!  You're everything that is wrong with people!"  In retrospect, not my finest lines, but I think it gets the point across.  It was like one of those dreams where you're punching someone over and over again and it doesn't even phase them.  They hardly seem to notice but you really want them to take stock of how much you hate them; you know, 'cos of the punches.  But Alan Sugar could give a rat's ass about my abuse.  He just calls over his henchman Vinnie Jones who escorts me out of the building.

(It's at this point that I sincerely hope other people have regular dreams in which they relentlessly pummel people with their fists.)

I'm escorted to a huge escalator where there's a line of people, presumably being kicked out of the cave also.  When I was in Japan I went to the largest escalator in the world and this one was considerably bigger.  Unfortunately, its construction was not to the same specification of the Japanese one.  Parts of it were made from wood and swayed from side to side.  It was then that I noticed the man in front of me was none other than Stephen Fry.  Stephen Fry was mere inches from my face!  He's in my top five of "famous people I'm going to force to be my friends!"  My excitement lasted all the way up until the escalator started giving me electric shocks.  The shocks became more frequent and increasingly intense the higher the escalator got, although I seemed to be the only person that this was affecting.  About two thirds into the ascent I can feel myself passing out from all the electric shocks, and I collapse on the escalator.  My eyes open to see Stephen looming over me with a look of utter contempt.  As he rolls his eyes he simply mumbles "pathetic..." and walks off.  Oh, God, no!  Stephen!  No!

And I wake up.

Jolly Blog 11 - Much ado about everything PART TWO

Additionally to this blog, I’d like to talk, if I may, about the Olympics.  First off, if anyone has any tickets lying about, I want them.  But to the Paralympics.  I’m not interested in the able-bodied one.  I really wanna see para-volleyball - it’s probably the best sport in the world.  Wheelchair basketball is a close second.  Compared to the Paralympics, the Olympics is watched by more people, more money is spent on it, and a lot more money is made from it.  I am one of the few who actually thinks the Cripple-ympics is more interesting.  The games are far more competitive, and, I believe, more awe-inspiring.  And thanks to the wars in the Middle East (and an acute observation by Jimmy Carr) our, already phenomenal, Paralympic team has recently become even better.  So if y’all know of any para-tickets going let us know... assuming of course that due to the ineffably under-staffed security they haven’t all been blown to smithereens [again].  I’d like to say ‘I don’t know what imbeciles G4S have in their employ’, but I actually know exactly which imbeciles they’ve hired.  How’s the job going, David? :) 

So the big news, some of you already know.  Some of you I’ve told, some of you heard it through the rumour mill.  In either case, I have finally found myself a job that I don’t hate.  For the moment I’m still at the pub, but for the last couple of months I’ve been going through the application process for the BBC’s Production Talent Pool.  From over 3,000 applicants, I am one of 120 people who have a place.  Essentially, when producers need people for running and/or production assistant jobs, they’re encouraged to pick people from this list what I’m on.  That means that at any time they could offer me a contract.  It could be a long weekend in Cardiff, or eight months in London.  I just have to wait and see.  This is also the reason why I’ve been forced back onto social networking sites.  Remaining anonymous is not going to help me stand out from the crowd when it comes to securing a job in this field.  This all means that in the very near future I could be moving to Lundun.  I play the part of an obnoxious, self-centric tosser pretty well, so I should fit right in.

A few weeks ago I came to the conclusion that I wasted too much of my time doing nothing.  I spent all of my time at work or asleep, and on my days off, I just slept a bit longer.  So I decided to develop some hobbies.  If you’ve read my last post you’ll know that there’s a girl at work who’s teaching my sign-language.  Here are just some of the things I could say to a deaf:

‘Hello’

‘How’re you’

‘What’s your name?’

‘My name is...’

‘Shut your black mouth’

‘Go fuck yourself’

‘I wish you would die, you stupid retard’

All the day-to-day essentials, basically.

I have also bought, and am teaching myself to play the guitar.  Thus far my repertoire includes:

‘Your Song’ - Ellie Goulding

‘Our song’ - Taylor Swift

‘You Belong With Me’ - Taylor Swift

‘Wind Beneath My Wings’ - Bette Midler

‘Hot and Cold’ - Katy Perry

‘Chasing Cars’ - Snow Patrol

Some are saying I’m the new Johnny Cash.

And then there’s my final hobby and my last bit of news.  I’ve spent literally thousands getting to this point in my final hobby.  It was seriously worth it, though.  Youtube’s online editor was just tolerable enough to edit this one as a video... t'ra for now.

Jolly Blog 11 - Much ado about everything PART ONE

Right now it is 17:17 on Tuesday, 17th July and I’m sitting down-stairs in the pub what I live in ‘cos this dodgy guy has come in and the waitress on duty is scared; and with good reason.  This guy is one of those genuinely unhinged weirdos, who’s somehow managed to slip through the cracks in the mental health system and is allowed out by himself.  The last few times he’s come in, he would buy seven or eight Guinesses then try and pay with an expired card.  I was by the bar once when he came in and he decided to strike up a conversation with me which mainly consisted of asking me inappropriate questions about my lifestyle.  Then he asked one of the waiters for a arm wrestle before he followed me into the bathroom when I went to go pee (I’m seriously not making this up).  So now I’m helping to guard the pub while we wait for the manager to get back and tell this guy to go do one.

In any case, it was my genuine intention to do a vlog today; I filmed about half an hour of footage then came home to edit it together.  It didn’t occur to me, however, that I’ve not tried to edit a video since my old laptop broke and I got a Mac.  iMovie (for anyone who cares) is seriously shite.  I could get Final Cut Pro X, but I don’t have the money at present, ergo, what was going to be a video blog is now just a regular old blog.  C’est la vie.

You may have noticed that I am back on Facebook, and I also have twitter and Google+ accounts.  The first two I’ve had to drag back into my life for reason which I will explicate later.  Google+ I have for the very reason that no-one else does; I can trawl through trending topics and recent news without having to listen to whatever inane drivel my generation feels the need to vomit onto the internet.  Please tell me again how shit your day was, LOL!

So first news happened about three months ago, when I finally cut off my hair and donated it to charity.  I hate it when I have a drastic change in my hair.  It’s comparable to the feeling of post-coital guilt.  That sinking you get after climax; the feeling of loss, of loneliness, the feeling that somewhere, somehow, my mother is disappointed with me.  So I donated this hair and all I got in return was some stinking certificate, which didn’t even have my name on it.  When I first decided I was going to grow my hair for charity, I figured ‘meh, it costs me nothing to grow it.  The length of my hair is inconsequential.  Why not just grow it and then give it to some kid who ain’t got no hair.  One of them rubbish ones with cancer, or alopecia, or one of those kids who’s so annoying that their parents shook them until their hair fell out?’  But I’m telling you now, growing hair is not free.  Hair brush, hairbands and bandanas for work, hats for when it’s dirty, shampoo AND conditioner, and then ANOTHER shampoo AND conditioner, because if you only use one it ‘builds up’ and goes greasy.  It does, it actually does.  I spent a fortune on this damn hair and for what?  For a certificate?  I want a photograph of a diseased child, in a god-awful, greasy, Jesus wig and a hand-written thank-you letter telling me how great I am.  I want it now or I’m gonna thump someone in the throat.

In other news, my mum is getting re-married, and she’s asked me to give her away.  She claims that it’s to stop my Grandfather from being offered the opportunity to draw focus.  He will do a speech, and he will find a way to play his trumpet at least twice if he’s not properly attended to.  She also claims it’s because she wants her children involved in the wedding.  My younger sister, Alice, is a bridesmaid, and my older sister, Emily, is a witness.  Whatever the reason, just so long as my mum is happy... and I get the suit she’s promised me.

I also have a new tattoo, which I got a few months ago now.  It’s something I’ve thought of getting for a while, and I positioned it as a segway into getting my Hong Kong one on the top of my right shoulder.  As soon as I forget how much it hurt, I’ll get the Hong Kong one.

END OF PART ONE

Offending my honour

The comedian, Jimmy Carr, said once that he thinks offense is taken, not given.  If you’re not British watch this to familiarise yourself.  I was thinking this evening about what offends me and why, and I reached an impasse; nothing does.  Nothing causes me offense.  I can literally think of nothing you could say to me that would upset me.  I am essentially, untouchable.  Go after my mother, my intelligence, my looks (good luck finding an angle on the last two) and it rolls off me like drool off a window licker’s tongue.

The whole concept confuses me.  Rude, hurtful or ‘offensive’ behaviour essentially means to cause someone psychological harm through your actions and/or language.  Take ‘nigger’ as the quotidian example of an offensive term.  It’s offensive because at its offensive origin, the implication is that the target of the term is somehow inferior to the user of the term.  By sheer association of the word to the concept, the word has become just as unpalatable; as is the case with most offensive terms.  We find people who think that way to be offensive, we therefore find the associative word offensive, even if the user doesn’t necessarily believe in the concept.  Nigger, Kike, Spastic, Wog, Chink, Fag and I think I already used Window Licker.  Similarly, jokes about sensitive subjects like the Holocaust or Gay marriage, leads people to assume that the joke-teller is anti-Semitic or homophobic.  This is simply not the case, and this is where my confusion is seated.  Blacks (or anyone else who takes offense) aren’t offended by the word, ‘nigger’, but by the underlying concept of hatred.  They are hurt by the viciousness of the opinion.  If I had to sum up offense in three words it would be ‘hatred of haters.’

Having said all of the above, I suppose it would be prudent to take notice of the fact that I’m not a member of any real minority; I’m white, I’m middle class, I have a job, a car, and am in full control of all my mental faculties (although, I fear this article is one day going to be used as evidence to contest that).  I don’t really know what it means to be on the receiving end of such ignorance-induced hatred.  You could argue that I'm therefore not qualified to discuss such matters.  Or, alternatively, you could claim that my lack of bais gives me the perfect non-partisan credentials.  Let's go with the latter, shall we?

I think the hurdle to overcome here is to focus on the fault with the offenders, not the damage done to yourself.  The problem lies with the person giving the offense.  What does it matter to me if there are people so obtuse that they still have a staunch belief in xenophobia, racism or sexism?  It’s like the deeply religious taking offense what they consider to be blasphemy.  I curse and routinely point out the absurdity of religion in general.  Come the apocalypse, and I’ve made some terrible mistake and am now abandoning all hope as I enter the seventh circle of hell; what difference does my blasphemy make to the Christians stood around chatting the shit with Saint Peter.  Right now, my opinion means precisely dick to those Christians, despite all the time they spent being offended by them.  We need to stop worrying about the imaginary damage caused by offensive words, but by the actual damage caused by dangerous beliefs.  

Perhaps the vantage point of absolute nonchalance with regards to offense affords me the opportunity to point out the ridiculousness of it all to those who still take offense.  I think this is why I like to cause offense; I don’t like needlessly upsetting people, but I do like to highlight the absolute absurdity of the concept.  There’s a girl at work who’s teaching me sign-language, and when she started I though it was hysterical to ask her ‘how do you say that in deaf?’, or to refer to deaf people as ‘deafs’.  Within a couple of months, other people at work are now using the same terms.  The state of affairs which I have quite brilliantly, albeit unwittingly, brought about is to disassociate the term from the concept.  Calling deaf people ‘deafs’ has become the norm.  It’s not British Sign Language anymore, the language that deafs speak is called ‘deaf’; i.e. ‘how do you say “hello” in deaf?’  To an outsider I’m sure it would seem incredibly offensive, but what the hell do they know?  They’ve not read this article, they’ve not met me, and they’re probably so ignorant that they don’t even know that it’s OK to be as offensive as you like so long as you make an overly wordy argument, justifying why it’s not just OK, but in fact right for you to be as rude as possible.

Drawings 'n' that 6

This is an Owl, but it has cutlery instead of wings... I may have had a few drinks.

Drawings 'n' that 5

This is a picture of me pointing a gun at Ed's head.  Ed is on his knees begging for his life.

Jolly Blog 10 - Tales from across the pond

Hello, all.  So I just checked, and it's been more than six months since the last Jolly Blog.  I'd fill you in on what you've missed, but in the last half-year few of you have bothered to ask, so I see no reason why I should tell.

Today I was thinking about my recent holiday to America, 'bout some of the amusing stuff what happened, and I decided I should write it down, lest I forget.  I'm gonna have to leave out a lot of stuff, but I'll make sure that every detail is included in my memoirs.

The trip began at the end of December in LA with my chum, Chris.  We were only in LA for a day, and other than having to pull my hair back to convince two border officials that I was who I said I was, not much happened.  We did see an old guy get roughed up by the LAPD during their inordinately heavy-handed traffic stop, but I should think that happens all the time.

First stop was San Diego to stay with Chris's friend's boyfriend.  Spent a few days there just bumming around, not doing much.  New Year's Eve was spent in some random bar where the only free table was next to the band.  Literally next to the band; we were so close we were high-fiving them at points.  Then some little Turkish gay chap came over and started making some shapes.  The 'shapes' in question were arrhythmically bobbing up and down and occasionally lifting up his knee.  He was thoroughly unspectacular, but a joy to watch and more than a little interested in Chris.  Chris spent most of the evening slowly unbuttoning my shirt for no reason; then two days later on our flight to Vegas he complained that I was being gay because I wanted to hold hands across the isle.  We did.  People saw.  Chris pulled out first.  I won...  Or lost.  And my hands are NOT clammy!

Vegas was a right laugh.  Saw Deadmau5 at some club.  Calling them 'Deadmau-five' stayed funny a lot longer than it deserved to.  I met a guy there who also looked like Jesus and I took a photo with him.  Then I made out with a girl from Israel who gasped with delight when I told her that I thought Palestine were dicks; it really was that easy.  On the way back to our hotel we met this girl who was really up for having some fun with us.  She seemed very nice, lovely skin, seemed genuinely interested in me.  Just a pity that she was a whore.

From Vegas I went to San Francisco and stayed with Christy in her amazing place.  Met up with Christine and Rich and spent a few days wandering around San Fran and ignoring every word that fell out of Christine's mouth.

Got the train from SF to LA, where I stayed with me mate, Becca, and then with me mates Mason and Katie.  I saw the obnoxiously large, blue headquarters of Scientology and fulfilled a long-held ambition to see the Goodyear blimp.  Of all the things I saw, thems was the best.  Went to an art event on Friday 13th organised and hosted by Becca, and went for a '4 courses for $15' at Red Lobster with Katie and Mason.  Plus all-you-can-eat cheese biscuits!  I did find it difficult to call them 'biscuits', as I was clearly eating scones, but so long as I'm not paying for them they can call them whatever they like.

Amusing anecdote #1.  So while in LA, I was wandering around Venice beach and decided to go into this hat shop.  It was a little too trendy for me - fedoras and the like - but I thought I'd check it out anyway.  I should have gone with my first instinct.  The obviously-working-for-commission guy started following me around giving me hats to try on, to the point where he was actually throwing them across the shop at me.  This man actually threw hats at me.  He decided I needed to be shown how I should wear the beanie I came in with, and demonstrated this to me by yanking on the back of it.  The back of it is where I keep my obnoxiously long hair.  He threw hats at me, then he pulled my hair.  Then he decided that I should definitely 'invest' in a trilby.  I did not.  His attempt to persuade me failed miserably.  FYI, if any of you want me to buy a hat in the future, you're not going to achieve it by telling me that 'it totally goes with your lovely red hair'.

From LA I went back to my favourite city on Earth, San Diego, and checked in to my favourite Hostel, Banana Bungalow.  Right on the beach and a stone's throw away from dozens of bars (and an inexplicably large number of tattoo parlours).  One of the reasons I like SD so much came to me in an astute observation from Chris, who pointed out that no-one living there was less than a seven.  And by 'a seven' I mean 'out of ten' on a standard hotness scale.  Some outstandingly good looking people live in San Diego.  That facet was underscored by the fact that I had come on holiday to a relatively warm part of the world, whereas back home it was winter.  I could see ankles.  Sometimes I got the odd glimpse of a shoulder.

While staying at the Banana Bungalow, a  few amusing things happened.  Went out, got smashed, passed out at fourish, you know the story.  The Australian guy in the bunk above me came back shortly after and passed out.  That would have been fine if he hadn't thrown up on my legs before he did so.  The worst of it was, I got blamed.  I was woken up by a guy who works there, who had to strip my bed and mop the floor, while I stood there and yelled 'the Queen shall hear of this!"

There was this Chilean guy called Matias who arrived on the same day as me; we were talking to this ABK (American Born Korean) guy called Mike (I think).  It was about 8:00, Matias was hammered, turned to Mike and said, "I bet you're from China, aren't you."
Mike: 'No, I'm not' (in a very apparent American accent)
Matias: 'Japan?!'
Mike: 'No'
Matias: 'Thailand? Philippines? Mongolia?'
Mike: 'No.  No.  No.  I'm from LA.'
Matias: [rolls his eyes and sighs] 'No, I mean like "where are you from".'
Wow.  Just, wow!  I didn't think conversations like that really happened.  Only in America.  Home of the free, land of the incredibly racist.

On a separate night, I met this proper red-neck, hill-billy, idiot, fatso (he was very nice otherwise), and while we were talking it came up that he didn't believe that the moon landings actually happened.  The two particle physicists who were sharing our table and I spent an hour trying to convince him otherwise, to the point where if he said 'but the flag is waving' one more time I was going to slap him.  In what could have been a very foolish move, I told him that I didn't actually believe people could be so stupid, and that it really irritates me when people call in to question achievements, which in their wildest dream couldn't do themselves.  He was much bigger than me, and I was being a smug, know-all, English tit.  In retrospect he probably should have punched me, but I think too much of his brainpower was being taken up with conversation for him to be able to clench a fist.  It upsets me that he's been allowed to procreate.

So drove to Phoenix for a bit to see the BFF, and decided to go read my book in a park.  I read my book, making sure I picked a bench that did not directly face the little girls playing volleyball or the little boys playing football.  After choosing my bench, it occurred to me that I spend a lot of time and energy making absolutely sure that people don't think I'm a pedophile: making sure I never look at babies, that kind of thing.  Anyways, after my read, I suddenly felt rather sleepy.  It was warm, the bench was cleanish so I decided to take a nap.  I was awoken half an hour later by a Mexican couple shaking a bag of nuts in my face, because they thought it would be nice to share their snack with the homeless man asleep on the bench.  Annoyingly, every item of clothing I had on was designer, and I genuinely thought I was looking pretty sharp.  Apparently, even at my best, I still look homeless.

I've held a few stories back to give me something to talk about when I next see some of you, but those were the highlights.

T'ra, douches.

Our father, who art in Kentucky

If you're well into religion and that, stop reading now.  You're not going to like any of this.


So I was chatting with a friend a couple of months ago - the previously mentioned, Scott - and somehow the exchange headed in this direction. 


At their core, almost the entire gamut of religious writing are works of pure fiction.  The Bible, the Koran, the Book of Mormon: just a collection of stories.  I'm not calling them lies.  'Lies' implies that their intent is to deceive.  I actually believe that there was a man call 'Jesus' and a man called 'Mohammed' and that they were genuinely pleasant people.  I also believe that the books which serialise them are based on real events, but I don't believe that they hold any more significance other than figuratively.


People read these books as if they were naught but fact and live their lives according to what they teach.  I don't personally believe that these books are inherently wrong, or backwards.  Quite the opposite.  They have a lot of good stuff to say.  It does however, seem ludicrous to base your ethics, your morals, your entire system of beliefs on an anachronistic work of fiction, about events which happened thousands of years ago.  It's this blind belief in religious texts which leads people to maintain ridiculous convictions like the Earth is 6,000 years old.  But trying to convince people not to take the Bible literally and derisively poking holes in these flimsy works of fiction is not the raison d'être of this article.  I believe that battle has already been won.  What's more fun is to take the ethos of living your life by a story and to pick another work of fiction to lead your life by.  


This phenomena is by no means confined to old books.  Modern history has seen just as many examples of people coming up with works of the most incredible nonsense to define the parameters of their lifestyle.  Hitler did it with Mein Kampf.  Marx and Engels did it with the Communist Manifesto. Unwittingly, L. Ron Hubbard did it with Dianetics.  I'm am merely the most recent in this very long line of idiots.


Unfortunately I have neither the time nor the inclination to write a whole book.  But the Gods of post-stucturalism are full-square behind my mission to find a book which I can redefine to mean whatever the hell I deem it to.


I'll cut to the chase.  The book I have chosen is Charlie and the Chocolate Factory.  I picked it because it's well known, it's popular, it has a lot of messages, and even if you haven't read it you've probably seen Jonny Depp's appauling portrayal of Willy Wonka in Tim Burton's terrible remake of a film which wasn't very good the first time round.  What follows is an air-tight system of beliefs which I drew from my thorough analysis of its content.


Charlie Bucket and his parents live in a some horrible little tumble-down house, with four elderly relatives.  The primary wage earner is Mr. Bucket, whose job consists of putting tops on toothpaste bottles.  His meagre earnings means that they all live in extreme poverty.  Poverty which, perhaps, could be overcome if Mr and Mrs Bucket's parents would hurry up and die already.  This is a clear allusion to the overpopulation of the planet.  People are living longer and becoming an ever increasing drain on resources.  I have inferred from this that population control is essential, and from this we can glean that stuff like AIDS, morbid rampant obesity and starvation are all part of His plan to push back the shore of ever increasing seas of people.


The children who go to visit Mr. Wonka are analogous to the new 5 deadly sins;
Augustus Gloop: Gluttony
Mike Teavee: Laziness
Veruca Salt: Being bratty
Violet Beauregarde: Overly-ambitious
Charlie: Poor


The first four children all met their ends because of the sins that they represent.  By the end of the book, Charlie had overcome his dismal existence by shedding himself of his awful, refugee-like lifestyle.  He stopped being poor, and started being happy.  Ergo, greed is good.
Willy Wonka is the deity at the centre of the book.  Much like the Gods of every other religion, Willy Wonka is imaginary and entirely fictional.  My new life will be entirely reasonable and rational.  In the character of Willy Wonka, Roald Dahl is clearly alluding to some actual person who is my new God; the person I look to for strength in times of need.  Willy Wonka is enigmatic, elusive, a bit paedofiley, and his cholesterol is probably through the roof.  I can think of only one person that this could possibly be.  From this day forward, I will devote myself to the KFC guy.


Now onto the Oompa-Loompas.  The Loompas were led away from their native home to the promised land which was, of course, his chocolate factory.  On this pilgrimage it seems as if Willy Wonka in His infinite goodness, has saved the Loompas from a very real hell.  Or has He?  What are their opportunities for promotion?  When was their last pay increase?  Have they been told they can't unionise?  They are living lives of complete subjugation under a glass ceiling they can't even perceive.  But.  They're small.  They're orange.  They're different.  The implication is that this is something they deserve.  Colonel Sanders is obviously in favour of slavery.


Now, how should I behave to my fellow man?  Willy Wonka did an incredibly generous thing by opening His factory to a group of children and offering His chocolate empire to the most deserving.  What have we learned from this?  That it's nice to be nice to other people?  That kindness is its own reward?  No.  None of these.  Those wretched children were guests and caused thousands of pounds worth of damage to a state of the art factory.  What did Willy Wonka get from the whole endeavour?  An astronomical repair bill, and custody of a malnourished child, a man with no ambition, a woman with zero culinary skills, and four pensioners all one cold winter away from death.  Do you know how expensive a funeral is, let alone four?!  The lesson here is to look out for number one.  Willy Wonka did everything in his power to ensure the survival of his business, so that the people of the world could continue to eat His, apparently quite good, chocolate, and now look at the mess He's in.


So if I have to sum up my new lifestyle in eight sentences, here they are.  Slavery is OK.  Small people are creepy.  KFC is heavenly.  Johnny Depp sucks.  Old people are a burden.  Children are good for nothing.  You are the only important thing in your life.  Being nice gets you nowhere.


Now I've got all that straightened out, I'll get on with overhauling my life.  Forget Christians, Muslims, Seeks and all that other made-up trash.  Cut me open and I bleed chocolate.  Until the sweet release of death, I pledge spend the rest of my life trying to be the world's biggest Wonker.

John Terry: f**king white c**t!

I'm going to preface this article by telling you that I don't like John Terry.  The man can do some nice kicks, and just as many excellent runs, but more prevalent is the fact that he's a fucking moron, and should have been stripped of the England Captaincy a long time ago if he ever deserved it at all.  Having said that, I do believe that his recent controversy has been blown out of all proportion, has been misread, misrepresented and is a true misunderstanding of what racism actually means.  For those of you unfamiliar with the story go here, or just google "John Terry Racism."  The long and the short of it is basically that the England football captain called another player a "fucking black cunt" during a game, it was caught on camera and now he's in trouble.

The story is being followed endlessly by the news with the focus now turning to racism in the game as a whole.  I have issues with the whole saga, and it has annoyed me to the point where I need to start telling people about it.

Racism, in its truest form, is essentially the belief in superiority based on ethnicity, and the discrimination that follows from that line of reasoning.  The traditional paradigm would be, "white people are better than black people", although its scope is obviously much wider.  Terry's comment is ostensibly racist in content, but to extend that to the point where he's labeled a racist is naught more than hysterical oversimplification.  The real issue here is offensive language in general, not racist language.

Offensive language is a choice of words designed to cause harm.  If I call you a "motherfucker" am I saying that I literally think you have sex with your mother?  No.  If I call you a twat, am I sexist for referring to you by a lady's happy-bush?  No.  If I call someone a ginger, I don't literally think that I'm better than that person.  They could have any hair colour and that would be true.  What I'm actually doing is picking a feature of their's which I think will cause them harm when I treat that term as an insult.  John Terry doesn't believe in the innate inferiority of black people.  He's just a simpleton whose aptitude for hurting people's feelings got caught on camera.  Do you think there'd be all this media hype if John Terry had called this guy a bastard having known his parents weren't married.  It seems unlikely.  Difference is, race is a sensitive topic; illegitimacy is not.

In my mind, true racism is such an anachronistic concept that it's almost laughable; think of the homophobia practiced by the Westboro Baptist Church.  Their belief in the crimes of deviant sexuality is not only baffling, but hilarious to most people.  Aside from the small minority of actual rasicts, most people would say the same of racism.  Of course discrimination based on race still exists, just as it does based on gender, sexual orientation, aesthetics, etc.  People are always going to be different and those differences are always going to create problems and cause divides.  John Terry doesn't really believe that black people are inferior to him.  He just knew the words which would be the most hurtful.  Placing this huge focus on race and racism isn't going to help the problem go away; if anything, it compounds the issue.

When arguments about taste, acceptability and decency arise, I try to ignore them.  I'm more than happy for offence to be caused and for people to get upset.  Boundaries are never pushed and opinions are never changed by accepting the status quo.  But for the love of God, John Terry is not an actual bigot.  Wait until he joins the KKK, then call him a racist.  Until then, these retarded, nigger-loving faggots need to climb down from their moral high ground, wipe the sand from their vaginas and let.it.go!  I bet they're on their periods or something.

Wham, bam, diazepam!

I don't believe in luck, I don't believe in coincidence, I don't believe in jixing, the power of prayer, murphy's law, or any of that crap.  As far as I'm concerned those are all just words we've invented to try and apply meaning to things we think we should understand.  Perhaps you're hoping for a sunny day.  For whatever reason it may be incredibly important to you that the weather's nice.  So if you then verbalise this desire for sun and it does rain, have you jinxed yourself?  Is it raining because you didn't want it to?  No, of course it's not; no more than it's raining because there were some people who did want rain, but you're a liar if you claim you've never thought in those terms.  There is literally nothing within your power that can affect the weather on any day under any set of circumstances but it doesn't stop us thinking that our actions have pull over incidental circumstance.

Parenthetically, to a degree I do believe in Karma, but not in the spiritual sense.  The first way is scientific: "what goes around, comes around" is, more or less, just a poetic way of phrasing the principle in physics that every action has an equal and opposite reaction.  The second reason is sociological: if you're bad, and you do bad things, you're likely going to spend your time around other bad people.  Through your bad actions you've placed yourself in a position where you're statistically more likely to have bad things happen to you.  If you hang out with thieves, eventually someone's going to rip you off.  It's Karma without all the Hocus Pocus.  But I digress.

Something happened to me today which got me thinking about all this.  I woke up this morning and went into the bathroom.  To say I was in a good mood would be a stretch; it would be more accurate to say that I wasn't in a bad mood.  I had lots of time before work, plenty of time for all the morning things (I'm assuming you've all woken up before and are aware of what stuff gets done in the morning).  So while in my bathroom I do one of those big yawn/stretches.  Like the mega-stretches you sometimes do in bed; those ones which, on occasion, gives you a leg cramp.  Anyway, while doing my vertical-mega-yawn-stretch something snapped, there was a loud cracking sound, and I was in more pain than I've ever experienced in my life.  Somehow, while doing my mega-yawn I'd managed to tear a muscle in my neck.  This week it took me less than a day to recover from a half marathon.  Five days later and I'm paralysed from a fucking yawn!  I spent the morning all lopsided, hobbling around like the hunchback of Notre Dame, and endlessly dropping things as excruciating pain shot through my body every few minutes.  I took three different pain killers to little effect and ended up going to the Doctor's.  I don't like my Doctor.  In the past decade I've been to see him three times, on each occasion he's refused to look at the mole on my back, and spent a solid ten minutes each time trying to convince me that I need therapy.  The last time he was actually dialling the number of a shrink when I just got up and left.  Ok, so I have gone to see him before with a list of the medication I'd like him to prescribe me and then told him exactly why I think people who go into the caring professions are narcissistic, disingenuous and that their desire to help people is rooted in their appetite for self-satisfaction.  In retrospect I can kinda see his point, but that doesn't make me wrong.  I'm not having some nosey psych-major poking around in me noggin.  But happily he wasn't there today, and I was seen by this nice lady who gave me Valium.  Every cloud.

It seems like these unfortunate events happen more frequently to me than they do to other people.  If you read back on previous posts this will be confirmed: living with the lazy-eyed hungarian psycho, being repeatedly stung by wasps, getting flipped-off by cripples, etc.  Does stuff like this happen to everyone?  Do I just fixate on this kind of stuff more?  Like I stated in the preamble, I don't believe in luck. I don't believe in the philosophy that I've done something to "deserve" this.  The cards of the universe are dealt arbitrarily and all I can do is play them as best I can.  So hands up if any of you have ever torn a muscle while yawning?!  No, didn't think so.

I find it hard to imagine that Einstein ever walked around for hours with food in his mustache, or Madame Curie coming out of the toilet with her skirt tucked into her underwear, and I think it's highly improbable that Stephen Hawking will be pulling a muscle any time soon.  Has Clint Eastwood ever done that thing where he thought he saw someone he knew, and then smiled and waved at them, only to see that he's actually just waved at a total stranger?  I don't know.  My theory is that these things do happen to other people, only that their self-esteems aren't totally dependent on the attention of others and they never have the urge to tell absolutely anyone who would listen every time when the world wasn't exactly as they want it!

But long story short.  Valium.  Weeeeeeeeeeee!

Jolly Jog

So I ain't posted anything of any substance in a while.  Truth is I can't be bothered.  The three people who read this are more than capable of entertaining themselves.  But in recent weeks peeps be given' me their money for damaged children and, at the very least, deserve something in return.  Here that be.

Last weekend I did this run thing.  So I, like, ran 13.1 miles in aid of, like, this children's hospice, like, no big deal.  Some people have been throwing the word "hero" around, but you can make up your own minds.

Here is just some of the things what happened on the day I made the world shine for countless children 'cross the south of England.  Seriously...  Hero.

Before the race even started I was stood in line waiting to go pee when something made me angry.  There was this man in the line behind me who was joined by his bitch and her spawn.  I was so chilled at this point that I didn't even mind that they totally weren't allowed to be there, and that MY application money was paying for these damn toilets. Then the unthinkable happened.  The child toddled up behind me and poked me in the leg.  It.poked.me.in.the.LEG!  If I was a horse, and in some ways I'm very similar, I would have been well within my rights to buck his little head in.  People know better than to spook horses.   Children should know better than to touch me.  It's just not smart.

Then we were told, approximately 30 seconds before we started, that personal stereos were strictly forbidden and that I was condemned to spend the next two hours of my life listening to nothing but the sound of my own wheezing broken up by the noise of the woman I couldn't accelerate away from complaining endlessly to me about "all these damn hills!  Why didn't they tell us about all these hills?"  I'm sorry, miss.  Were you expecting salt-flats as we ran through the Woodfod Valley.  Woodford Valley!  I'm surprise she managed to make it to the end with all that stupidity she was dragging around with her.  It's ok though.  She was kinda old and flagged at 10 miles, which led to me utterly annihilate her time.

I finished.  Nothing much else to report with the race.  Except that I didn't get a medal.  When I was nine I completed a 3 mile fun-run and I got a fucking medal.  All I have to show for running 13.1 miles was a Mars Bar, a pulled calf muscle and a flyer for a 10k race next week.  You're welcome, assholes.

That evening I was supposed to get an early night.  Instead I got hammered drunk, had to get my mother to pick me up from a place that sold fried chicken, and then I filled up her dashboard with food before telling her that she was going 12 fries an hour and for the love of God needed to slow down.   I hadn't had a drink for the last fortnight while I was training, so I think I was due some nonsense.

Thanks to all those who sponsored me and that.  After I'm done kicking St. Peter's head in, I can guarantee you all a place in heaven.

Spooning

Today I made friends out of spoons.  From left to right their names are Owen, Cledwyn and Owen.  Cledwyn is cross because he is Welsh and a ginger.  Owen doesn't like it when people confuse him with Owen, but Owen doesn't really mind when that happens.

Tomorrow I think I'll buy a guitar - because without a hobby to focus your mind you drink too much and end up making.friends.out.of.spoons!

The Virgin Poppadom

Jolly Blog 9 - Hungarian Barbarian

You may remember a few weeks ago I was whining like a child about having to share my place with some random Slovakian.  I was upset because he might use my stuff, and he might take up all the space in the fridge, etc.  He actually turned out to be an alright guy.  He bought hand-soap for the bathroom, gave me a beer this one time, and he was bald so I could be fairly certain he wasn't using my shampoo.   Well, the random Slovakian went back to Slovakia last week and some new guy has moved in.  This one is Hungarian.  I'm now sharing my flat with this living-cliche of a bad room-mate.

I'm told he's 34 years old, which I'm sure would be true if it was 1995.  If he's a day younger than 50, then I'm a foetus.  He also has a lazy-eye.  Lazy-eyes that I've come across before have never bothered me, but this guy's one is something else (think 'Sloth' from The Goonies).  I think it's the fact that he doesn't turn his head to speak to you, he just peers at you through the eye which points anywhichway but forwards.  Within hours of his arrival he made more of a mess of the bathroom than I thought possible.  I'm hardly a paradigm of clean-living, but the state this guy left the bathroom in actually made me heave.  Then he did the unthinkable.  It's one thing for me to be paranoid about people using my stuff; even if my paranoia is justified and they are using my stuff, if I never know about it I can't get properly annoyed by it.  Ignorance is bliss.  But this guy, not only used my hair-gel, but left the lid off and two grey finger gouges running through it.  I then spent the next 5 hours at work glaring at his stolen hair-do.  If you have to steal hair-gel, at least have the common decency to cover your tracks; if you do something wrong, do it right.  He's already got the lazy eye to watch his own back.  As per-usual, I won't confront the problem head on, I'll passive-aggressively convey my anger and let him know that I don't like him by behaving like a petulant child.

The ridiculous thing is, my hair is too long for hair gel.  I don't use it, and haven't for more than six months.   I would have just given it to him had he asked.

And I'm almost sure he used some of my bread.

He probably has herpes, too.

Dick!

In other news, I've finally set up the fundraising page for my half marathon: link here.  I eventually decided to support "Naomi House: hospices for children and young adults".  Personally, I would have gone with "Naomi House: helping terminally ill children stay at the brink of death for longer".  Or, "keeping sick kids above ground since 1997." (I'm working on the assumption that raising money for the charity gives me a passport to make fun of them without retribution).  You are under no obligation to give anything - just be aware that not donating will categorically make you a worse person than I.  Yes, you will be a worse person than the guy whose nemesis has Down's Syndrome.

Have an average one, cretins.

From your unerring moral-compass,

Joe

Jolly Blog 8 - Cyclops for a day

If you don't already know that I'm allergic to wasp stings, then you haven't been paying enough attention to me.  If you could pull your thumb out of your ass for three minutes and martial your powers of concentration long enough to read this to the end, I will elaborate on this condition and the recent events surrounding it.

It was Friday night last week, and I'd finished watching my rental copy of Cruising, starring Al Pacino (which, by the way, no one told me was a totally gay film for gays about gays!) and had fallen asleep.  My window was shut (due to the wasp nest outside my room).  I had also finished taping up the hole in my fireplace because the wasps were coming down the chimney like little black and yellow santas, carrying sacks full of venom to make me die.  Somehow the little bastards are still getting into my room but with less frequency now that I've taken preventative measures.

4:35am and I roll over onto a wasp which stings my arm.  Angry.  I pull the sting out of my arm and punch the offender against the wall, which by now is starting to look like a waspy Jackson Pollock.  I don't have any epinephrin, only over-the-counter stuff.  One specific antihistamine doesn't work for me and instead of writing down which one it was I decided to remember it.  I didn't.  So I just knock back four different tablets and go back to sleep.  Fifteen minutes later and I'm woken up again after a wasp lands on my face and stings me on the eye.  On the eye!  I jumped up, turned the light on, grabbed the nearest object and flip-flopped the mother-fucker out of existence.  By now, I've already taken an unhealthy dose of antihistamine; other than go back to sleep there's nothing else I can do.  I did swear and shout quite a lot, but it ended up not being as productive as it felt.

9:00am and I get up for work.  The arm is fine.  A bit itchy but nothing I can't live with.  My eye on the other hand has completely closed up and is weeping from one side (from rage, I presume).  I go to work anyway, like an actual hero.  Seriously, my mettle is phenomenal.  Apparently, working in a kitchen is more than a little dangerous once you've lost binocular vision.  Perspective and depth perception, turns out, is rather reliant on two eyes.  I managed to burn every single knuckle on my right hand.  Not at once, but on four separate occasions over two hours.  Ok, so the fourth time I was angry about the previous three burns and I threw something into a fryer and the oil splashed my remaining knuckle.  I take no responsibility - it was the Universe's fault.

Four burnt knuckles
Two wasp stings
One eye

That Saturday I have never been more livid in my life, but with nothing to focus my anger at.  It's series of events like this which cause people to go mad and do genocides and that.  I bet Mao was lactose intolerant and got locked in a cheese factory as a child.

If I ruled the world...

I sit here after the day-at-work-from-hell, having just opened my fifth beer, rocking arrhythmically back and forth to Taylor Swift, wondering exactly how am I going to trick her into marrying me.  My attention turns to Facebook; it's been approximately 45 seconds since I last checked and any number of updates may have occurred.  Perhaps Amy Winehouse has died again.   Alas, no.  That most erudite and obnoxiously well-informed chum, Scott, has - for the tenth time today - posted something which makes me feel ashamed for spending my free time trawling through youtube, eating pistachios and poking my lizard (which both is and is not a euphemism!).  This particular article pertains to writing an essay about what one would do if one ruled the world.  I write stuff.  I have a messiah complex and the megalomaniacal mind of a tyrant.  Get involved, Joseph.  Get.Involved.

Here is that essay… If I ruled the world.

With a blank slate, there are almost endless possibilities for running the world.  I spent most of my degree studying Political Philosophy and as a result feel better informed than most (i.e. you!) on this subject.  Gather 'round, dear peasants.  Forget what you know and let my words wash over you.

With regards to structure, I happen to side with Aristotle: Oligarchy, or rule by elites.  Democracy, to my mind, is a phenomenal nonsense.  People, or demos, have precisely zero qualifications or credentials to rule themselves.  Power to the people is, euphemistically, simply tyranny of the majority.  Has the greatest literature on this subject (right or wrong) been written by intellectuals and academics, or by plebeians who scratch out their thoughts on napkins while they're on a break from building monoliths for their betters?

Obviously, I see myself as part of this elite, and obviouslyer I'm at the top of this hierarchy (I do rule the world, after all).  However, having the last word, isn't the same as having the only word.  For example, I have very little interest, and even less knowledge of economics.  It's people like me, who have no idea what they're doing, who make stuff like hyper-inflation happen.  There is no rational or reasonable argument why I should be have any dealings in finance.  I wouldn't feel comfortable making those kind of decisions, and for the same reason, the general population have no business in deciding how a society is run.  On an individual basis, of course people know how they want to live their lives.  But humans are, by nature, selfish.  They know what's best for themselves, not what's best for all.

Now that's all fairly boring.  What we're looking for from this kind of text is some harsh and scathing opinions (as if the above was naught but fact).  I'm well into liberty, and freedom of thought, expression, speech, association and all that gumpf.  That's pretty much a given.  There are a few things I would be stricter on, though.

Population control.  This would be a big issue under my regime (based on the assumption that the world's makeup is by-and-large the same as the current one).  Hitler had the right idea with his eugenics program but fucked up the execution (pun unintended).  Instead of forcing people with the "right" characteristics to have children, he should have prevented people with the "wrong" characteristics from reproducing.  Under my reign, anyone and everyone is allowed to reproduce so long as they can fulfil the following requirements:

They can afford to raise it

They keep it out of sight and out of my way

No gingers.

No diseases which can be transferred in utero (AIDS, for example)

The child can be conceived naturally - essentially to stop the elderly and lame from conceiving

Two parent house holds only (male/female)

This last stipulation is going to get me in trouble, I feel.  Gay-rights is essentially my generation's civil-rights movement.  I see no fault or problem with any and all gay issues… with the exception of one: gay adoption.  Put short, I don't think it is fair to subject children to what is, essentially, a social experiment.  The paradigm of the ideal family, is man - woman - child.  I'm not speaking religiously or ethically, I'm speaking anthropologically.  In an ideal world (read *my ideal world*), only people with the ability to successfully raise and support children would be allowed to have them.  Gay parents, for me, essentially fall under the same umbrella as single parents.  The only difference between these categories is that gay parenting can be legislated against, single parenting can't.  As a child of a single parent family  I don't consider myself damaged or hard-done-by for only having one parent.  My mum is awesome and I know most gay parents would be too.  But given the choice, my dad wouldn't be some sociopathic, adulterous moron, and I would have had someone to watch sport with.  Therefore, having given me the option, I choose to only allow parents who fall under the ideal paradigm the right the bear offspring.

(Additional: corporal punishment within parenting would not only be allowed, but encouraged.  Do you think a child is going to talk back to you again, if it's pushed down the stairs after the first offence?  No.)

There would be universal healthcare, for reasons which John Rawls would be in agreement with.  If you got hit by a bus, you would want to know that you could receive medical care regardless of your financial status.  "No, no.  He's only got car, van and truck collision insurance.  Just leave him there to die."  HOWEVER.  There would be an enormous tax levy against things like fast food, cigarettes, drugs (more on this in a moment) and alcohol - destroy your body as much as you want to, but you can pick up the medical bill as you do so.

All drugs would be legalised and therefore brought under state regulation.  The immediately dangerous ones (LSD, heroin etc.) would fall under the same tax bracket as cigarettes and fast food.  Marijuana, cocaine, etc, less so, but subject to laws similar to those which regulate alcohol at the moment.  Take it as much as you like, but if your use of it negatively impacts someone else (i.e. drug-driving and knocking someone down) you can expect a heavy prison sentence.   This may sound irresponsible, and there is of course no way to prove or disprove the success of this initiative.  Alcohol is pretty much the basis for this line of reasoning.  It's intoxicating.  It's bad for your health (long term).  It's addictive.  Yet, the vast majority of us are able to enjoy it without becoming mad, toothless, old alcoholics.  Why wouldn't the same be true of other drugs?  (I am hardly the poster-boy for responsible alcohol consumption, but I think my point stands for itself)

As a personal gripe, spelling, punctuation, grammar, syntax, and all the other linguistic foibles which seem so irrelevant to most people, would fall under strict legislation.  In the same way that companies can currently be fined for using misleading advertisements, they would also be fined every time they displayed the word "DVD's".  (If you don't know why that's wrong, stop reading now.  Go away.  Go away and hang yourself).  Similarly, once people reach the age of adulthood (say, 18) they'd become culpable for the language they use.  It would fall under antisocial behaviour laws, I think.  Kick in a shop window: fine.  Thump an old woman: jail.  Pronounce the t in "often": pummelled to death with dictionaries.  For example, I'm sure I've misused a few commas or misspelled some words somewhere in this (you point them out to me and I'll stab you with a quill) but, if I was fined for every one of them, I'd learn not to do it again pretty quickly.

There would be fines for driving too slowly as well as for speeding.  Old people would have to retake their test at 50, and then again every 5 years.  If they don't pass the rigorous examination, their licence is torn up and their car impounded.  Speed limits in and around residential areas would be relaxed, and punishments for drivers who hit children outside schools would have immunity.  A child has no one to blame but themselves or their parents if they step out in front of a car.  If a child doesn't already know that a car will kill you should you step in front of one, then the driver has done the world a favour by removing such stupidity from the gene pool - buy that man a pint… then send him out on the school run!

Now for international affairs (although "international" may be a misnomer considering the only state which now exits is Joetopia).  Global issues would be administrated from my ivory tower at the centre of Joetropolis, the capital of Joetopia.  The system of trade would be capitalism.  In an ideal world, I would go for communism, but this isn't about an ideal world, it's about my world.  I've essentially been put in charge of almost 7 billion idiots.  People are competitive by nature - it's what spurs evolution - and competition in trade is a logical extension.  Like it or not, but for the most part capitalism is self sustaining, self regulating and it works.

Taylor Swift would be my second in command, and "Our Song" would be the global anthem.  My cabinet would consist of the following people:

Steven Fry (Education secretary: Hugh Laurie as an independent contractor)

Those blokes that wrote Freakonomics (Finance ministers)

Russell Brand (Media and the arts minister)

Sarah Silverman (diplomatic relations)

Some no-nonsense type matron (Healthcare)

I've been writing this for a while now and have already exceeded my 750 word limit by more than double; if I don't stop soon I fear never will.  But I think you get the gist by now.  

Any and all criticism will be read, assimilated and ignored.

Jolly Blog 7 - The Mac Daddy's Back

Hello all,

After taking an extended leave of absence from both Facebook and The Jolly Box, circumstances beyond my control dictate that I rejoin the online community.  It does, however, beg the questions why and where?  For those of you looking for a reason, I am prepared to give you one.  Well, these things happened that are totally none of your business, then I deactivated my Facebook and Blog.  How was that?

In any case, recent events have led to me wanting to write them down.

So last week I went to another pub to help out in their kitchen.  Long story short; most of their chefs quit at the same time and now they're fucked.  It was actually obnoxiously quiet, and when I wasn't arguing with the chubby imbecile from Romania who was running the kitchen I was stood around doing nothing.  I was only there for two days and one night, but it was on that night that I met Callum.

Callum was a forty-something local, who was described to me as "a paranoid, schizophrenic, manic-depressive."  I thought the staff were just taking this piss out of some nutty regular, but no.  They were being quite literal.  Callum was, in fact, the single most insane person I've ever come into contact with.

He came up behind me while I was talking about some South Africans I knew, decided, for some reason, that I was a South African Soldier and started quizzing me about the readiness of the South African Military.

Once he was done with his questions about South Africa's ability to take on Nato, he told me a story.  When reading the transcription below, imagine Callum as a 5' 6"ish, rotund chap, with thin greying hair and a slight northern accent (Yorkshire, I think).  Every word he came out with was said with such staunch sincerity and a stern expression that it would have been unnerving if it wasn't so hysterical.  It went a little something like this...

Callum: "So I was on this planet millions of light-years away from here, that was populated by these Witches, right?  And me and my mates had this broom which we had to keep away from the Witches because they were going to use it to destroy something"

Me: "Who were your friends?"

C: "There was me, John and this other bloke.  John wanted to use the broom to destroy the Universe, but I wouldn't let him."

Me: *Don't Laugh. Don't Laugh. Don't Laugh*  "When did this happen?"

C: "Ooooh... more than eight hundred and fifty seven years ago.  It was shortly before Ray Mears took over Canada."

That's the basic jist of the story - it actually carried on for more than fifteen minutes in great detail before he decided to tell me which version of the Bible was his favourite and the best way to drain someone of their blood.  The manager then refused to serve him any more alcohol, he got angry and said he was going to get a gun and kill us all.  Ten minutes later he strolled back in with (what I hope was) a plastic machine gun.  I laughed so much it hurt.

In other news, I think I've finally decided which charity to support for my half marathon.  I think I'm gonna go for Naomi House, which provides care for children and young people with terminal illnesses.  As a general rule, I can't stand any and all children, so why would I want to support this charity?  In my experience, terminally ill children are far less irritating than the healthy ones, so I've decided to do all I can to keep them that way.  And it just so happens to be the charity that my company is supporting this year, and I may or may not get extra sponsorship because of it.

Also, my laptop of four years finally gave up the ghost on Sunday, which has left me feeling somewhat ambivalent.  Annoyed: I had to use a credit card I finally finished paying off two weeks ago to buy something which four days ago I didn't need.  Happy: I have finally joined that most noble lineage of smug pricks who use a Mac.  "Oh, what's that?  You're PC has crashed again?  Vista?  Oh dear, no.  If you've got three seconds to wait for it to boot-up, I'll look up a solution for you on my MacBook Pro.  You're so, totally welcome."

I'm not sure I can be bothered with all this social-networking crap.  As much as I enjoy looking at photos of events I've not been invited to, I can't see me putting up with it for long.  We shall see.

Later, a-holes.

Joe.

Squid Pro Roe

A few things have made me cross over the last few days. I was pondering them on my day off today, and came to the conclusion that they can all be explained away in the same way. There are two main things which have made me cross and they both fall under the umberella of 'people are idiots.'

First thing: Old people.

On Monday I went to the gym as usual. I only had a short time to go there and was in a hurry. There was, of course, a queue. One day my gym will join the rest of us in the 21^st century and get a machine which people can use to scan themselves in and out of the building. Until that day you need to hand your card to one of the two people on reception who will let you in. My lack of time and the line of people had made me more irritated than is generally healthy, but nonetheless I joined the back. I finally get to the front and continue to patiently wait. A receptionist finally becomes free and before I can take a step forward some old man (maybe 60) breezes past me and the eight people behind me and checks himself through with the women. I don't think I've ever been more angry. I stomped up behind him saying nothing, just standing there fizzing in silent rage. He sees me and says, “Oh, were you next? I thought that was a separate line for the pool...” Do I look like I'm waiting for the under 5 swimming session, you fucking moron?! What on Earth could possibly make you think that?! I said none of this, of course.  I simply said, “Yeah, OK” and thought I'd leave it there. Up until this point I'd handled the situation quite calmly. Then he gave me an indifferent shrug, sort of rolled his eyes and walked away saying nothing more. It was at the point of the shrug that the mental dam we all have, which holds back the things we know we shouldn't say, broke and a resevoire of pure rage was suddenly released, submerging the quite town of Pleasantville below, and drowning the whole population. “Twat!” He heard me. At the time, I was glad to have pointed out what a social-retard he was being, and it was nice to vent. In retrospect, swearing at someone who I see on a weekly basis is probably a bad thing.

Similarly, I was in the bank last week; another day another queue. You expect lines at the bank. I was prepared for it, I wasn't annoyed. I got to the cashier and she started fingering through the stuff I'd handed to her. To my left were an old couple who had been at that desk for as long as I'd been queuing up – say 10 minutes. They were asking endless questions about every product this bank sold; questions which could have been answered with a leaflet. But no, the bitch just went on, and on, and on. Eventually her husband turns around and sees the monstrous queue which they've caused and tells his wife they should be going because they're holding up other people. She responds by snapping, “I've had to stand in enough queues in my life, so now they can.” This is a matter of common courtesy you silly old bint. Surviving to the point where you become a social burden is not a passport to an old-age of being a sociopathic, vicious, old biddy.

This is essentially why old people get mugged all the time. It's not because they're frail, it's not because they're weak, it's not because they carry a lot of cash, it's because they're assholes.

In much the same vein as the shrugging, indifferent man at the gym, I believe the systemic problem to be this: it reminded me of something said by a girl I once worked with (if you've ever had a job dealing with the public, you will know this to be true). “Why do old people always act like you owe them something?” Having stood in a lot of lines for your life does not grant you the title of Queen of the Queue, and a carte blanche to behave like a dick. In a way I can see why they might have this attitude. They begat the generation which currently supports them. Without the old people, our parents wouldn't be here and, by extension, our generation wouldn't. Yes, without them we wouldn't be alive, but that doesn't mean we owe them our lives. They're still alive largely because of the medical advancements afforded to them by their children, but that doesn't mean that their lives then belong to their children. Quid pro quo isn't applicable in a situation where the initial deed done is for the benefit of the first party. Look Grandma, we didn't ask to be born. That was your decision. Now wind your neck in, and stop acting like a spoilt child.

(Plus they drive too slowly and it makes me want to punch them in the throat).

Second thing: stupidity.

Today has been my only day off for a while, and as always I made a list of stuff I needed to get done. Seriously, things just aren't worth doing unless they're on a list. Anyways, I'd scheduled some time to sit and watch TV at my mum's house, in between picking up my mail and playing with the cat (both of which were also on the list). Unfortunately I hadn't thought it through properly and chose a time when there was nothing worth watching. The Paralympic World Cup kept me amused for 15 minutes while I watched men with varying degrees of paralysis slide around on their asses playing Volleyball. Then I watched 10 minutes of a Top Gear episode that I'd already seen, before I fell upon 'Loose Women'.  For my North American chums 'Loose Women' is the British version of 'The View'. For everyone else, it's a show comprised mainly of menopausal women, discussing topics they have zero expertise in, punctuated with obvious and poorly delivered double-entendres every other sentence. Today's topic of conversation was plastic surgery. After much clucking, they eventually concluded that the real problem was with magazines and TV etc, ruining people's self-image, which is then cashed in on by the cosmetics industries. The debate was finished off by Carol McDrywomb saying something along the lines of, “... and these women's low self esteem is then exploited by costmetic surgeons and beauty products” to a round of rapturous applause from the 300 also-past-their-prime audience members. Not a dry seat in the house.

Of course they've been exploited you stupid female! That's the very nature of capitalism. Whether or not someone else has caused your insecurity is irrelevant. It's your insecurity. It's your body that's falling to pieces. It's your problem to deal with. Stop complaining and start taking some responsibility. To add to all this, it is always on this kind of show where they hark on about losing traditions and customs which used to be part of the national fabric. The decline in communities and community spirit, for example. The rise in yob behaviour. Always complaining about the fact that small businesses are shutting down while at the same time complaining about the extortionate price of food and fuel. You idiots can't have it both ways. (I was about to explicate that reasoning for you, but if you don't understand it already then you probably never will. And we probably shouldn't be friends any more. Now go write yourself a little note to remind yourself to keep breathing).

It makes me sad that people like that can get on TV. It should amuse me but it doesn't. It's like people who read the Daily Mail. The stuff they come out with is the most amazing rubbish, but I know people reading it and absorbing every word like it was fact. In the same way that all the people in the audience are inanely clapping away at the most appalling drivel like a well trained circus seal, there are people all over the place watching this trash, believing it to be the most profound thing they've ever heard, while they sit on their asses stealing my oxygen.

… rant over.

Ok, so I've covered the old, the menopausal and the stupid. For a sense of demographic symmetry I should probably trash a few other groups too.

Umm, yeah. Those lesbians and blacks can fuck right off too! Dickheads.

Jolly Blog 6 - Events

Lots of little things gone on over the past few weeks. There was, of course, April 20^th, or 4:20. An important day for all of us I think. I hope you all had as much fun as I did celebrating Hitler's birthday.

Then there was that wedding thing. Fortunately I was working so I missed the whole tiresome event and instead earned a shit-ton of money. I have a care-less attitude about many things, but Jesus was that thing over-hyped. My sisters actually camped overnight so that they could secure a good spot on the route they drove down. I'm so ashamed to share genetic material with people who would do that. The new South Park does a lovely job taking the piss out of it – you should definitely watch it.  Link here.

In other news, for the first time in a long time I've actually done summink! 'Citing! Some of you will know him, the rest of you should count you blessings that you don't, but me mate, Ed, came over yesterday and we had ourselves a little jolly in Salisbury.

It's been a long time since I've been that drunk and obviously I can remember very little of it – as is tradition. Started out in the local Weatherspoons. For those of you who aren't familiar, Weatherspoons is a pub chain in the UK known for being a bit scummy but, more importantly, cheap. I spent most of the time there being bullied by my company for being different *read: awesome* – although I happen to know it's actually because they're threatened by my grace and intellect and couldn't think of a better way to vent their frustration. From there we went to some random bar, the details of which are irrelevant. Here are just a few of the things that happened. At some point I was caught dribbling on the bar. I'm not sure why, but anecdotal evidence suggests it may have been a reaction to tequila. I also tried, and failed, to hook up with a girl from work – I wish I could say the dribbling happened first so I could use that as an excuse for my failure, but I don't think it did. At another stage Ed was dancing with this same girl. I saw this happening and obviously it made me angry, so like a child having a tantrum I stormed over and cut in.  You may assume I did this so I could dance with the girl.  No.  Apparently I wanted a tender moment with Edward.  A few things going on there for his absent girlfriend to be worried about. Back at my house I had set up an air-bed for Edward to sleep on. He went to the bathroom and by the time he came back I was lying on the air-bed and his sleeping bag was on my bed. Why? Apparently because, “You're a guest; you deserve maximum comfort!”

It was a very messy night, and once again I escaped serious injury, which I'm surprised about for two reasons. 1) Some of you may have noticed, but I can be a bit of a dick when I've been drinking, and I'm long overdue for a karmic injury of some kind. And 2) There's a lot of stab-happy people in my town. A guy in a wheelchair got his head kicked in the other day by some of the many lunatics I share this dump with.  Proof. It's only a matter of time until I go drinking, come accross one of these people, they mispronounce something, I helpfully point out their ignorance and wake up in hospital.  Nonetheless, I'm still here and live to drink another day.

In half-marathon news, I still haven't made a decision about which charity to support for me half marathon.  I think it's gotta be the spastics, but we'll see.  Suggestions still welcome.

Hope all's good with you all.  If not, then at least I hope things could be worse. 

Later, idiots.

Joe