Urban Survival Technique #1 - Avoiding 'Chuggers'

Working on busy Tottenham Court Road has it's advantages; there are loads of good restaurants within spitting distance of each other (allowing you to spit at the dinners of other restaurants, if you so desired), there's every type of shop you could possible need within 3 minutes and there is a thriving drug scene by centrepoint allowing you to get your afternoon fix of heroine to numb that Monday feeling.

TCR however does have some major drawbacks. One is that it is simply not possible to walk more than 10 metres without a begger, chugger, free london "newspaper" vendor, big issue seller or scientologist (Crazy-Cult HQ is about 50 doors from my office) stepping in your way.

However having worked here for over two years I have developed various tactics I thought I should share with you on how to combat these.

This time...I tackle the Chugger.

Technique 1 - The Shield

This is probably the most effective way. As you approach the chugger get behind someone walking slower than you so that they are directly in line with you and the chugger (ie acting as a shield). This works pretty much all the time. The only risk is if there are more than one chugger and the "shield" is stopped by the first, or if they suddenly change direction or cross the road, before reaching the chugger. In this case all you can do is follow them in their new trajectory and hope that they don't notice.

Technique 2 - Out-Chugger them

This works better if you are a guy and the chuggar is a girl or newbie. Chuggars rely on high confidence to stop you. they make you change your plans by trying to act more confident that you in the situation and taking control. All you need to do act even more confident.

As you approach a chugger, start singing or dancing (a combination works best). Wink at them and wave. Once you reach a certain thresh-hold of ridiculous over-confidence they won't be able to compete....hopefully and you can actually probably get them to do things for you.

This is probably the more risky.

Technique 3 - Lonely Drunk

The easiest. You see the chuggar.....immediately act drunk....also make a beeline straight for them. As above, singing will help in this situation, but remember to slur your words. They will immediately try to find someone else to bother to give themselves an excuse to ignore you.

If they try and talk to you about their charity just start talking about something else, but remember to slur it so that they don't understand.

If you don't actually have anything pressing to do, and you are a good actor, you can have fun by hanging around the chuggar for the rest of the day. Leave every now and then because the most fun part is seeing their face sink when you return.

There are many more ways but the above are by far the most effective.

Next time - How to safely make someone who is drunk and wants to hit you, cry.

US ELECTION NIGHT LIVE!

21:53 - It's finally all set up. The blue balloons are hanging from the ceiling, the table in front of me is covered in various US State booze and nibbles, a big colouring-in map of the States sits leaned against the wall and live BBC news 24 is being projected onto the wall.....well actually it was a bit boring seeing as all the action doesn't start for another hour or so, so I've actually switched it onto an old episode of QI on Dave (Joe Brand just made another "fat-bird" joke).

Now before you start, I understand the utter pointlessness of writing a live blog of the elections - i know no one actually reads this blog unless they are very very bored at work....and so the chance of anyone waking up in a cold sweat at 3am in the morning, turning on their computer and visiting this little ego project of mine is even smaller than me being able to point out Delaware on the map, or explaining the difference between a governor and a senator.

22:00 - BREAKING NEWS - QI has just finished, on next is "Celebrity Blow your Tits-up"...(100 points if you get the reference)

23:47 - ACTUAL BREAKING NEWS - The results for the first two states are in. Kentucky (McCain safe) and Vermont (Obama safe) went as predicted.....um....yeah. This could be a long night. (D=3, R=8)

Richard Dumbledore has just brought up the issue of Obama's race for the 500th time tonight. Fortunately Jeremy Vine doesn't have a graphic for this. Someone on Dumbledore's round table of experts (ie those not important enough to get on US TV coverage) just said that the issue might not be that Obama is too black for people to vote for, it might be that he is too "green". Award winning.

23:55 - I should probably explain that me and my "team" will be celebrating the arrival of results from states by drinking related drinks, ie Californian wine, "Spirit of Louisana" (don't know what it is yet), Vermouth, Oregano. All this, and the fact that I am using a tiny new keyboard will probably mean that this becomes even more nonsensical as the evening goes on.

24:20 - Jeremy Vine is operating his completely unnecessary touchscreen graphic interface
with all the confidence and success of John McCain trying to roll a spliff with his bumcheeks. We have a better system, with marker pens.

01:02 - BREAKING NEWS - Crap, shit and wowzer! You look away from the screen for one moment and it's all over! (maybe)

Obama is reported as taking Illinois, Washing DC, Delawhere? Conniticut, Mashitushits, New Hampshire , Maine and Tony Soprano's very own neighbourhood - New Jersey. More importantly he has also been reported as having taken the hugely important state of Pennsylvania, one of the big three that Obama needs to take to almost guarantee a clear victory tonight. The next of the big three is Ohio, which was being counted as a close fight, but latest reports indicate an easy win for Obama. McCain has won Tennessee, South Carolina and Oklahoma...the bloody racists! (D=103, R=34)

01:16 - One of the group, Simon, has just shaved off his goatee and now looks exactly like a younger version of either Barry or the other Chuckle.







01:44 - It's gone quiet for a while which has given us all time to refresh ourselves with wine. Speaking of which, Jesse Jackson's voice sounds a little slurred....but that might just be my inherent racism. Jesse Jackson reminds me of Beckham, cheering on Walcott (Obama) from the sidelines. His time came and went and it never happened. The new wonderkind who might actually get what...um...yeah...what the hell am I on about?

Still 103 Democrats to 49 Republicans

1:59 - Ten second to poles close in another 9 states
8,7,6,5,4,3,2,1

2:00 - Apparently FoxNews...the most reliable and honest news network in the world has given Obama Ohio. If true, and I'd be shocked if it wasn't 100% fact checked, then Obama has won and the world is saved from the possible inauguration of a moose shooting, witchcraft fearing idiot woman. Georgia is being as going to McCain. If it didn't then it's be the equivalent of the socialist workers party taking Chelsea. (D=175, R=76. Another 95 for Obama to reach the magic 270 to ensure victory)

2:31 - Sorry got a bit distracted there. I completely given up any facade of being non-partisan and was forcing everyone here to look at Obama shooting hoops. He's so cool. I think I love him in the same way that we all loved Tony Blair in 1997. Here it is.

2:38 - Simon Shama is mocking John Bolton about the Republicans losing New Mexico. Life is so, so, so good. For those of you who don't know who John Bolton is, think of a dreadful, dreadful man then imagining him holding a kitten in one hand and with the other repeatedly jabbing a fork into its head, then denying that he was doing it and telling everyone that you were responsible for 9/11. He looks like a paedophile physics teacher. He is dreadful. He just keeps going with the same un-rational analysis, he's like the Duracell Bunny, but one with a penchant for gang-rape.

Anyway....it's lovely to see his brain struggle....

Having said all this I did take certain things about 30 minutes ago to keep me awake that may be affecting me.

3:20 -McCain, who I have been slightly neglecting for some reason or other is now up to 135 votes. Obama is up to 207, although these are unconfirmed. Things have quietened down a tad, which mean more time for drinking which is taking it's tole. Apparently Louisiana has gone to McCain which means we can break open the "Spirit of Louisiana" booze. Results from California come in 30 minutes and the 55 seat jackpot that is a relatively safe result for Obama could well be the moment of "change". This word and that fact that is it repeatedly used is the only worry I have. It's like "choice" or "fit for purpose" - a phrase of rhetoric that may mean nothing. Socialised Healthcare, Responsible Foreign policy...shit...Texas went to McCain ages ago!

We all rush for the previously forgotten about the Texas BBQ Sauce Pringles, who cares if they're Republican...once you pop you can't stop.

3:50 - The reason why alot of people are feeling sorry for Mr Chips is that he actually didn't run that nasty a campaign....the majority of the negative messages (ala Rove, so important for Bush's victories) didn't come directly from him. He has run a relatively clean campaign compared to what I expected. If you think that negative campaign techniques are a new thing check out this INSANE campaign video for the DEMOCRAT chap Lyndon B Johnson (of "LBJ, LBJ, How many kids did you kill today")

3:56 - The next 5 states will be closing voting in 4 minutes. They are California, Hawaii, Oregano, Washing Town and Idaho. Only Idaho is thought to be red. With Obama just 63 short and California giving 55 votes alone.....This could be it!

California - Clear projection for Obama (262) !

Washington - Clear projection for Obama (273) !

That's it!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!

WE CAN LOVE AMERICA AGAIN!

04:34 - It's all starting to sink in. McCain has given his concession speech. Genuinely moving and honorable. If only he had beaten G.W.B when competing for the Republican candidacy.

Listening to Black voters interviewed afterwards you can feel the 2 feet added to their height afterwards, a genuine change for a country.

Sure this result might end up being America's version of Tony Blair 1997 and there's a chance Obama may not really improve things through his policies (after all he has little room to make the changes he has promised in his policy), he will make mistakes and eventually we will probably lose our love for him but THIS is important. The weight has been lifted, the blockage unblocked.

It also is a shot in the arm to democracy. The young and the minorities queued for hours. They believed they would make a difference....and they did.

Why bother?

Why would you work for the Daily Mail....you have a choice....and yet you clearly choose to work for a hateful, nasty, selfish-breeding, paranoid and destructive organisation. The big, rascist bully in British society.

Why would you work for British American tobacco. Your job to try and increase the sales of addictive, carcingenic drugs to a developing country. Your meagre graduate paycheck buying your complicity in the addiction and death of millions of people.

Why would you work for the bookmakers. Turning the desperate hopes of disillutioned and beaten down men, who just want a safety net, into profit for your mafia system of the house always wins.

Why would you lobby against scientific reason, be it for religious or commercial gains (is there a difference). Knowing that you'll hold back the gains that have come from reason and open, rational, proofbased, critical review.

Why would you work to place a cage around us, knowing the dangers that this will cause.

In summary....it's been a bad day.

Twitching curtains

I hate caravan sites.

I spent so many holidays in my youth in them and I think it probably did a lot to encourage my general misanthropy.

So many rules, you have even less freedoms than at home. Why not just check in to your local prison. There's a lot more chance of getting fucked.

I like wild camping, although I'm not sure why. People usually say that the enjoyment is the feeling of freedom that it gives you, but in a way I think it's the opposite.

Instead of worrying about 100 insignificant things, all you need to worry about is where you're going to shit, and what you're going to do to stop yourself freezing to death in the night. That's real freedom...so you can't do 99% of the things that you can usually do at home. You can't choose the brand of leaf you're going to have to wipe your arse with, you can't change channel, you can't consolidate all your debt into one monthly loan, you can't change at Waterloo rather than at Bank, you can't buy the own brand rather than the leading manufacturer

Freedom isn't about choice from a list.

It's about the basics. What do you want to do.

Anyway.........caravan sites.....if the Nazi's had won (and it's not over yet) we'd all live on caravan sites.

Misunderstood?

I hate when people delight in producing obscure and confusing pieces of amateur art believing that what they're doing is so difficult to understand and so "wacky" that it can't be critically reviewed or understood. It's cowardly. It is not interesting. Art is the communication of an idea. If the so called artwork is only "understood" by the "artist" it cannot truly be art. It's just a thing, or stuff.

I'm not saying art has to be easy to understand by the masses. I don't get hip-hop or poems, but I'm pretty sure that they're an art form. Could you say the same for someone who intentionally aims to be difficult to understand?...in this case I suppose you could say that this is the idea that they're trying to express. Their expression is the exploration of the language of art...but I think I'm giving them too much credit.

I guess most modern art comes into this category. We're told that it's no longer the artist's role to put meaning to the art, that the meaning comes from the beholder....and the role of the artistic object, be it a painting or installation is to inspire the thought, whatever it may be.....but if that's the case then why do we have to pay. Surely if anything Damien Hurst should have to go 50-50 with the millions he earns from his art to us poor saps who have to make something of it.

No...in most cases it's just another form of zany, wackiness......a crappy prank, a joke no one gets and a very expensive retelling of the emperor's new clothes.

Dread Poets Society

Last night I went to a poetry evening in Covent Garden to support a friend of mine who has a desire to become a poet and was about to read his work for the first time in public.

Now before I get started, I'm have to admit I'm not the biggest fan of poetry, it seems like the least practical way of getting an idea across. Song lyrics I can understand because you have a melody to carry the mood but a simple poem usually leaves me cold and bored. The great American comedian Doug Stanhope once compared poems to looking at other people's baby photos - "They're beautiful....to their creator....but to other people they're silly and fucking irritating".

However I think I know good writing when I hear it (and my friend writes some good stuff) so I went along, by way of the pub to reward myself for the 'culture' I was to endure.

I actually ended up arriving late....my friend was already halfway through his "set" when I came in. I squeezed my way to the back of the hot, packed basement room as if I was pushing my way through a Northern Line tube at rush hour, trying to find a small spot I could stand without having someones middle aged arse rubbing against my crotch. By the time I reached the back of the room my friend was onto his 2nd or 3rd piece....As I already knew the poems he was planning on reciting I concentrated on his delivery. It was actually pretty good and I later remarked to him that he has a cool poets stance....sort of a half-slanted lean at the microphone stand, a cheeky sideways grin relishing every filthy line in his verse.

I looked around the room and noticed that everyone in the room had a notebook, or some piece of paper. It dawned on me I must have been the only one who wasn't actually reading something that night.

The poems came thin and fast. The group could be roughly split into 3 categories; First I noticed the middle aged Hampstead art crowd who probably are livelong "Friends of the NFT", perfectly nice people, all in their 40's with money, large houses with bookcases full of important leather bound books, peppermint tea drinkers, dressed in baggy clothes, longing for the 70's.

Second were the posh art school graduates, trained in how to make something empty look like it has content, fresh out of college or universities and having to work as waitresses in expensive Bloomsbury cafes, probably back from travelling around Nepal or India with boyfriends called Ramsey, Finnegan or Rollo.

The third group was by far the most interesting. These were the 'true' artists. Desperate to show how 'raw' and 'precise' their genius was. Aggressive and desperate for everyone to understand that they were the only true poets in the room.

The first example I saw was a guy wearing a Nirvana T-shirt, with a shaved head and an ear-ring who read a poem about a boy who (I believe) stabbed another boy or man on a disused railway line either before or after being gang raped....I'm not sure really as the verse was fucking muddled and the guy could hardly read two lines without shouting things like "Yeah you fucking listening", "You better be fucking listening, or I'll fucking wipe that grin off your fucking face" to the poor listeners in the frint row.

After he finished he stormed to the back of the room saying loudly "What happened to doing it for the fucking art? This is bullshit" whilst wearing the cliche's of a dead man on his chest.

Then there was the utter loser sitting on the table next to us....he was especially hilarious. He was wearing sunglasses in doors, muttering and shuffling about constantly, clearly playing the heroin addict or gonzo poet, loudly whispering his uninformed two cents on every single poem to anyone who made eye contact with him and conspicuously checking out every female poet as if he was some Russell Brand-esq Lothario just because he had wankers facial hair and an alcoholics complexion.

He couldn't wait for his 5 minutes of ego inflating superiority, his moment on the stage reading his profound thoughts to the room. Rocking back and forth, standing up, then sitting down, he looked like a dog locked in a kitchen desperate for a shit in the garden.

And I think that's the problem with these places, they sustain a self-created delusion for people who want to put themselves in the outside role of the genius artist, not yet understood and appreciated. In the basement of a small cafe off Covent Garden they turn up week after week believing that they're actually saying something important, paying their £4 for 5 minutes of attention to their pretension...knowing as soon as they step outside they're just another replaceable, insignificant and pointless bag of guts stumbling about this steaming, rotting vagina we call London.

100% Juice and 100% Twats

Ok so I was a bit hungover this morning.

This was my flatmates fault.

I want to make that clear first.

He has a problem and I just drink with him to make him feel that he's not alone.

On my reluctant way to the train station this morning I thought I should buy a drink of orange juice. For some reason I was running early. This doesn't usually happen, which makes me think that I operate better hungover.

I went into the shop. Looked at the selection of drinks. Remembering it was still morning, and I had to go to work, I ignored the large selection of wines and beers and went for something that looked healthy. Hmmmm.....how about Just Juice! (the exclamation mark is compulsory) Made from 100% oranges! As if that's some kind of impressive claim. It's meant to be, the clues in the fucking name. Anyway, I couldn't find anything else that looked healthy so I bought it....it was 100% of £1.50.

I left the shop and read the label of the bottle of the Juice! as if it was a fine wine. Where had I seen that label and that ugly bottle before. Then it hit me.

A few years ago in the summer, I think while I was still at university, I ended up working in a factory. This factory made all the Del Monte orange juice (including Just Juice!) distributed in the UK. To cut to the point, the job was shit, the people were wankers and I quit after 2 miserable weeks. Also I saw how the orange juice was made. It came to the factory in large barrels. This was apparently the concentrate. It had the appearance of napalm and the stench of stale urine. It also burnt the skin, teeth and eyes of anyone unfortunately to walk within 10 metres of the vile stuff. It was poured into huge vats, and mixed with soapy looking water and large sacks of citric acid. This was then poured into the hideous bottles and sent out to our children to get fat on and burn holes into their mouths with the 100% sugary acid goodness. After two weeks, my job was to pick up bottles that had fallen on the grimy floor and then put them back in the conveyor belt. I did 12 hour shifts, slowly losing my mind.

Obviously times have moved on and we now have highly educated foreigners to abandon their school classes, medical practices and ministerial posts to do these jobs for us. Ah, isn't market capitalism great! I mean it's 100% great!

Anyway, back to this morning. I tried to drink the Juice!.....it was fucking horrible and made me feel worse. Also the bottle said "Just Drink it! Then bin it!" (with a picture of a bin for those thick enough not to get the reference) which is a wonderfully exciting and distracting way of saying, "This bottle is not recyclable".

I walked down the steps to the platform. I was still running early. The train wouldn't arrive for another 5 minutes so I could take my time and.....then I got a tap on my shoulder.

I turned and took my earplugs out. This was probably just a mugging I thought. Apparently they're happening all the time and I've been in London way too long and not been a victim of crime.....'maybe it's going to be one of those stabbing or gun crime things I've read so much about, how exciting!'. Maybe I could get Elton John to play at my funeral.

"Could you hurry up or get out of the way!" a rude and rather ugly woman snapped. I moved aside. Was I really moving that slowly? I think I'd have to describe my motion as ambling or maybe even strolling. Either way I believe that's officially acceptable.

More people push past me and ran to the platform. Had I got the train time wrong. I checked the electronic notice board....nope. I still had 3 minutes to walk the remaining 5 metres to the platform edge. The running people pushed past an old man ahead of me. I turned the corner at the bottom of the platform to see the delightful lady who had bothered me a few seconds before standing on the virtually empty platform. She was reading one of the shit papers handed out free in London. Where was her hurry. She was either dressed for work or a funeral. Where was the hurry?

Anyway. The train arrived. I made sure I got on the same carriage so I could give her evils but she was too engrossed in reading about Kerry Katona's new flap clamps or something.

The train arrived at Finsbury Park. From there it takes another 5 minutes to get into King's Cross, the last station on the route. People barged onto the train. Rushing for the spare seats like a game of musical chairs....only instead of music there was the beeping warning that precedes the closing of the train doors and in place of children there were twats in suits.

Again. Why bother rushing for a seat? It's 5 minutes. Can you not stand for that that long? OK it makes sense if you're old, fat and/or pregnant but these were the same people who spend hours in the gym, sweating and stretching and farting and running.

We pulled into Kings Cross. The doors opened and a flock of suits surrounded me, pushing and sighing and squeeze and all of them 100% pure, straight from concentrate, unrecyclable twats.

Non-blog plug

Morning,

Thought I'd put a shameless plug out for my band - "I have a table, this is my table, get away from my table".

We have a myspace here - http://www.myspace.com/ihaveatable
And a garageband here - http://www.garageband.com/artist/I_have_a_table

and we're on facebook groups too.

The Real Olympic spirit

What's the fucking point of the Olympics? It's just a stupid expensive event with sports that aren't good enough to have proper competitions of their own. People mindlessly run, or swim, or throw things....its boring. It's like a school sports day except it goes on for a month and there's no chance of skiving off and drinking cider in the park.

We're told about the "Olympic spirit" as if it's represents some human goodness.

The Olympic spirit is about competition and trying to be better than everyone else. It's purely an egotistical endeavour. The athletes who can run the fastest or jump the furthest have no real useful qualities for the human race. Not once has someone running a hundred metres increasing our understanding of the world we live in. Not once has someone throwing a shot put reduced poverty or inequality....it's just a self led ambition to be the best at something.

And while I'm at it, swimming is not, and has never been, a sport....it's just something you do to stop yourself drowning.

The athletes pretend that they do it for their country and hide their ego behind flags and anthems but when it really comes down to it they just want to be able to say...I'm the best, and we hold them up in great esteem, give them knighthoods, pay for their training and buy the products they sponsor. So that's why I'm saying fuck the Olympics, fuck the corrupt IOC, fuck Redgrave, Radcliffe and Sue-Cocking-Barker.

We never win anything anyway.

REVIEW: The Dark Knight - No spoilers or lies (or bad jokes) this time.

Here (in italics) follows a not so brief history of how we got to this point. Feel free to skip.

In 1938, National Publications (later to become DC Comic) was looking for a follow up character to their hugely successful Superman superhero. Bob Kane, a writer, came up with the idea of "The Bat-Man". The early undeveloped character was pretty much just a man who dressed up as a bat and shot bad guys. It wasn't until later that he evolved into the brooding playboy and gadget packing vigilante that we all know.

In the 50s, having introduced the "Robin" to the comic, the comic was in trouble for homoerotic undertones This is what is widely is thought to have led to the creation of Bat-woman and Bat-girl as if to say...IT'S OK.....HE'S NOT A GAY, YOUR CHILDREN ARE SAFE.

In the 60's a TV series was made starring Adam ("somebody's stealing my water") West. By today's standards it's ridiculously camp and absurd but at the time cynicism hadn't been invented and so the series was success.

The 70's, after the end of the TV series, DC comics tried to shake off the image of The Bat-man as the Camp Crusader by making the stories darker. However this had limited success and by the mid 80's the comic sales had reached an all time low.

In 1989 Tim Burton, fresh from the success of Beetlejuice, was hired by Warner Brothers to make a Batman movie. His stubbornness in casting the comedic actor Michael Keaton in the casting role put off fans of the series. However the film, backed by a huge marketing campaign, was a commercial and critical success and led to the sequel Batman Returns (1992), also by Burton.

Despite the success of Batman Returns, Warner Brothers decided that the films were too adult and gothic under Burton and replaced him with Joel Schumacher for the third film - 'Batman Forever'. Keaton was replaced by Valerie Kilmer and Burton's favorite film score composer Danny Elfman was replaced by a chap called Elliot Goldenthal , who once did the music for Demolition Man. Robin was introduced, Two-Face/Harvey Dent was chewed up by Tommy Lee Jones, Jim Carrey was hired to be zany and Nicole Kidman was the tits-interest. Batman Forever was rubbish....but it made money, so we got a 4th - 'Batman and Robin' in 97'. I haven't seen this because by 1997 I was old enough to have taste and sense.

The gash-a-thon of Schumaker's Batman sequels pretty much killed off any interest in making movies about men in batsuits for nearly a decade.

What the franchise need was a new start. It desperately need a big fat needle full of depressing realism. Where better to look for this than the home of rainy Sundays, cancelled trains, tutting, pessimism, grim cafes, burnt down seaside piers and big sighs.

Yes, Britain and Ireland. The most "real" places on the planet. Step forward Christopher Nolan. Step forward Christian Bale, Michael Caine, Liam Neeson, Cillian Murphy and Tom Wilkinson.

Batman Begins (again) came out in 2005 and was a commercial and critical hit. By starting the series a fresh it gave the young director Nolan a chance to put his take on the comic. Whereas it's predecessors had relied on action set pieces and two dimensional villains to carry the story, Nolan's Batman Begins was more a of a character study on Bruce Wayne and how he becomes the Batman. Rather than trying to make a comic book which was a good entertaining film, he tried to make a good film set in a real world which just happened to have the story and characters from the comic. Everything had to be explained and if it wasn't possible, it was cut from the story.

That pretty much brings us up to date and to the release of the widely anticipated sequel to Batman Begins - "The Dark Knight".

The film starts with a set piece bank robbery as exciting and clever as anything I have seen in cinema in recent years. It introduces Heath Ledger's "Joker" superbly. In Nolan's Gotham, the Joker is a John Doe, a sweaty, hyperactive, fanatic anarchist whose face is caked in peeling paint and who wants to expose the contradictions of people who try to be good (apparently this is pseudo-Taoism). Through acts of terror he hopes to create a world of chaos in Gotham. Unlike the Jack Nicholson's Joker, we are given no clear back story behind Ledger's interpretation of the Joker. He even gives two conflicting stories to explain his scars, which run in a gruesome smile up his cheeks perhaps inspired by the main protagonist in the Asian extreme film Ichi the Killer. The Joker's crimes are not caused by a desire for money, power or infamy unlike normal villain but by an obsession with an ideology. There is even a wonderful scene in which he burns a giant pile of money to demonstrate this.

Another character which is introduced is that of Harvey Dent, the city's up and coming district attorney and competition for Batman in more ways than one. His incorruptibility and refusal to brake the law infuriates the Joker as it directly contradicts his beliefs.

Christian Bale returns as Bruce Wayne / Batman, ready to hang up his batwings and pass the job of ridding the city of organised crime onto Harvey Dent. An interesting connection is made with the Roman Republic's use of a anti-democratic dictatorial system which was reverted to in times of civil emergency. This appointed one man to protect the city. Having done this, the protector was meant to then restore democracy and step down (this didn't always happen though). As the war against crime in Gotham seems to be being won at the start of the film Bruce Wayne muses whether it is time for Batman to step down and allow the democratic law, and it's new white knight, Dent, to take over.

Gary Oldman returns as Lt Gordon and is fantastic. In fact the film has as much to do with his character as it does with Batman. Whereas Dent is idealistic incorruptible lawman, and Bruce Wayne is the vigilante working outside of the law for the concept of "good", Oldman's Gordon is the realist in the middle who has to openly denounce the lawless Batman, whilst all the time relying on his actions. This conflict is repeated when Dent discovers that Lt Gordon's staff included officers with muddy pasts, but who get the job done. Nolan gets great mileage out of this and I feel that it is one of the most interesting aspects of the film.

Whereas the recent rash of comic book adaptations (The Hulk, The Fantastic Four, Ghost Rider, The Hulk (again), SpiderMan3, Iron man and Hancock) were severely lacking in brains and relied heavily on special effects and lots scenes of things hitting things and blowing up, "The Dark Knight" is idea heavy and is over-burdened with concepts. On top of the usual Batman themes of dark and light, vigilantism and the drawbacks of democratic judicial systems the film explores torture, mass-surveillance, terrorism (the Joker's ideological fundamentalism is juxtaposed with shots of firemen walking through the rubble of blown up buildings), there's even a sequence exploring game-theory (the ferry bit).

The supporting cast is so impressive; Heath Ledger, Gary Oldman, Aaron Eckhart, Michael Caine, Morgan Freeman, Maggie Gyllenhaal that it actually manages to sideline Christian Bale. It seems that you can have too much of a good thing.

Having said this, the performances are faultless, the script is well written and the action sequences are fantastic.

Late night shopping #1

Time has no meaning in the world of the 24 hour shopping centre.

I went last night at midnight to the ASDA in Southgate, North London; a sprawling giant adult candy store, open non-stop except for a short period on a Sunday evening.

As you walk through the giant electric doors, it's like entering a strange new dimension. Clocks run backwards, society is broken.

I found myself staring at cheese. I have no idea of how much time had passed. I could spend my whole life there, reading the different prices of cheeses, reading how much they cost per kilo, not taking any of it in. Lobotomised by the choice.

The strange, half asleep, caffeine fuelled arbiters of the shop shuffle around with huge metal cages occasionally doing something that looks useful although I can't be sure that they actually work here. Maybe they came in like me, wide-eyed and confused. They've been in the shop for so long that they've started to take on the appearance of the shop, crafting name badges from bits of thrown away plastic packaging, forming a complex hierarchical system of self filler, checkout operative and (for those who have been there the longest) store manager.

I start to replace a few fallen items back on to the shelf. Maybe I could integrate too. Maybe I could get in as a self filler. I look about for something to disguise the telltale signs that I am not "one of them".

It's at this point, the lady friend, who transcends the 24hour shopping dimension (and therefore is immune to it's hypnotic power) grabs my hand and guides me and the trolley to the self service checkout.

I'm back now.......I think. But I know in my heart that this could just be a hallucination and I could well be still in the dairy section, shivering gently, gazing at Camembert.

REVIEW : The Chronicles of Narnia: Prince Caspian - or The Passion of the Simba - WARNING CONTAINS SPOILERS.....AND BLATANT LIES

The critical and commercial success of Wes Craven's 90's slasher film Scream led to a spate of rubbish films being commissioned including such utter fecal sludge as I Know What You Did Last Summer, Urban Legend, Valentine, Cherry Falls, the remakes of The Texas Chainsaw Massacre and Craven's own The Hills Have Eyes.

Now this might seem an odd way to start a review of 'Prince Caspian', the second installment of 'The Chronicles of Narnia' (primarily a children's fantasy story) but there is a connection. Without the huge success of Peter Jackson's Lord of the Rings trilogy (and to a lesser extend the Harry Potter films), this film probably would never have been made.

Like the Lord of the Rings, the first two Narnia films were made by a New Zealander - Andrew Adamson (having previously been behind Shrek 1 + 2). The first Narnia book - The Lion, the Witch and the Wardrobe (for those few of you who don't know) takes place in a wardrobe. There was a witch played by Barbara Windsor. She spent all day in the wardrobe farting and giggling.....I can't remember there being a lion. I think it was meant to be a metaphor.

I jest. Can't you tell? Look at my jesty hat.

Anyway, I was dragged along to the Barnet Odeous Cinema by my CS Lewis obsessed lady friend last night to see the second installment - 'Prince Caspian'.

The film begins with a shot announcing the birth of some kid. A hairy man looks out of a window. He is a BAD MAN - you can tell by his brooding stare and his beard. You can't see what he's looking at out of the window but it's probably a seagull or a puppy and he's probably thinking nasty things about it. He almost looks.....well.....no....they wouldn't do that.

Anyway it turns out that this kid that's popped the womb door is the Broody Beardy man's son. Prince Floppylocks (played convincingly by Peter Andre) is woken and told he needs to run away because Broody Beardy man is his uncle and plans on killing him so that he can become king.....although surely that means that Floppylocks is actually a King...I don't really know how monarchy works.

It's not really that important. More important is that Prince Floppylocks has a secret door in his room, which is cool. He runs away aided by The Professor, who in a piece of casting genius is played by a dotty old man, with glasses and a long white beard.

Oh yeah, and he gives him a horn. It looks a bit crap.

Floppylocks is chased by some of Broody Beardy man's soldiers. To make things easier, they all look a bit like Broody Beardy man in that they are both Broody and Beardy (to varying degrees). Unfortunately for Floppylocks, since 1934 it has been law that any film that contains someone travelling at high speed though woods must at some point be hit in the head and knocked off their horse/carriage/Imperial speeder by a previously unseen branch....so this happens.

Instead of an Ewok with a stick, Floppylocks is woken by Warrick Davis (of Time Bandits, Labyrinth, Willow, The Princess and the Dwarf, Snow White and the Harry Potter films) who in what have many described as a career changing role.......plays a dwarf.

Oh yeah, he also played an Ewok once too, with a stick.

The Broody Beardy man's soldiers surround them and Floppylocks blows his horn.

Crikey, buttered scones and hurrah for Churchill! We're suddenly back in Londontown! It's the Blitz dontcha know and for some reason all the kids are fighting! Clearly this is before the days of Boris' alcohol ban. Feral Children fighting on our streets! The Daily Mail would be up in arms (well....it would have been if it's owner, Lord Rothermere, hadn't been too busy frantically trying to break all pre-war ties with his buddies Hitler and Mussolini at the time)

Anyway. One of these kids is High King Lord Emperor Penguin Pete. The fight is broken up and the kids; 'High King Lord Emperor Penguin Pete' (HKLEPP), 'Frumpylips', 'The Insignificant One' and 'I see dead people' all sit down and discuss how rubbish it is being in London.....all of a sudden they're transported to a beautiful beach, surrounded by green hills and a bright blue sea. They all run about and act like idiots.....

blah blah blah.....Floppylocks finds the Narnians.....Eddie Izzard is a killer mouse....Ken Stott is a fat arsed badger....'I see dead people' see's a Lion.....HKL Emperor Penguin Pete suddenly becomes very good at fighting (this bit is actually quite cool)....and there's a couple of big battles....which are actually quite well done......and then finally, just like in LOTR, the trees save the day.

It's always a huge bonus when films have trebuchets in. I get to knowingly whisper to my girlfriend - "that's a trebuchet!". I can tell it impresses her. There are 4 in this film.

In the end Frumpylips and Floppylocks flirt like farting oranges, Simba the Lion King turns up (he'd been at a Christian Rock Festival), Broody Beardy man gets stabbed by one of his own guys, the lion makes a bridge fall over, the evil Muslims.....I mean Broody Beardy men all fall in a river and drown and all is good.

Boom, Woosh and Spangles! We're back in London, and the tube is finally here.

All in all a good kids film. I actually preferred it to the first. Some of the kids simply can't act and there are some truly comical moments in it where the Christian allegory aspects come through but it's all silly fun really.

FB / GF

Me and *** first came in touch with each other about a year ago....maybe more. We hit it off really well, you know how it is - when you first start you can't get enough of each other. I spent all my time thinking about ******. I was even checking ****** through my phone on the way home.....the 20 lost minutes between my work and my home computer was really stressing me.

Anyway, you know how these things go. Eventually, no matter how amazing it seemed at first, you start to notice the flaws, you start to look at the alternatives, see things in them you wish were in the one you have.

I mean there was no instant chat, like ***** (who I used to go with). Time dampens the flame of passion but if there's something inherently good then you stick with it.

I noticed that I was no longer checking my phone every 5 minutes, if woken suddenly and unexpectedly at 3am in the morning no longer would I have to reboot my computer to check to see if anything had changed. I could sleep. I had began to stop caring.

Of course I still spent time with ******. There were times when it was like when we first met.

Anyway, I write this basically to get a few things off my chest. I still love ******. It has so many things going for it (to think I used to go with Myspace - what was I thinking!), so I will stick with it for now.....

BUT IF I GET ONE MORE FUCKING APPLICATION REQUEST IT'S OVER.

No i don't want to be a zombie - grow the fuck up and stop bothering me.

No i don't want to rate you as a friend. You don't want to know what I really think of you and your "hilariously" ironic profile picture. I probably only added you because i wanted to see how pitiful your life has become.

So you sent me a beer did you? Well woopty fucking do! Can i drink it? No? So what the fuck is it for except to waste my cocking time and make me realise what a prick you are for never buying me a real one.

I obviously now expect all the people who read this, who are on facebook to bombard me with application requests.....well there's no point. You're not being funny. I thought of that jape first.

Anyway, that's cleared the air. I think maybe things will get better between me and FB from now....if not I reckon I've always got a chance with Bebo

-----------------------------------------------

See what I did there! I wrote anthropomorphically about Facebook . I'm so hip to the cultural zeitgeist - What will I write about next? Maybe I'll say something even more up to date, original and topical like "Why I think the Iraq War was a bad thing" or "Let's make poverty history"

......actually I want to tackle that second one, next time.

Fever, in the morning, fever all through the night

Achoo,

Sniff, sniff, cough, scratch.

sniff.

My body thinks it's under attack. All these tree's and grasses have been jizzing their pollen into the air and for some stupid reason my body is responding to it by making me feel shit.

I grew up in the countryside for fucks sake, surely it should understand that it's just a bit of pollen. I've tried antihistamines, nasal sprays, eye drops, exorcism...nothings working.

The plants are basically forcing their unwanted sperm in my face and there's nothing I can do. I feel like I'm their bitch.

Cough, scratch, sniff, curse, punch own head.

Wimbleydone Tennish

I love tennis.

I should clarify. I love PLAYING tennis.

It's go just the right amount of hitting stuff without any of that running around. You get a rest every 10 seconds or so. Perfect.

Also it's got angles and shit. Being the son of an engineer, angles are in my genes. I can do angles.

I'd say that it was in my top 4 favourite sports, closely behind football, cricket and throwing bits of paper in a bin.

However, regarding watching a tennis match.....you would have to literally put drugs in my milk (ala BA Baracus in the A-team) to get me on that plane. I DON'T UNDERSTAND. WHERE'S THE ENJOYMENT!?

You see these middle class fools, waiting for days for the rain to stop, sitting on an uncomfortable plastic seat that's set them back £100 a day, regularly interrupted by Cliff Richard singing like some kind of discographic irritable bowel ("oh isn't it great of him cheering everyone up"-"NO, he's a shameless egotisist"), eating overpriced strawberries covered with clotted cow tit-sweat until finally the "covers are off" and we get 20 minutes of completely emotionless hitting back and forth of a ball.

There's no variation, no prolonged strategy, just mindless hitting back and forth, back and forth until one of them fucks up or hits something slightly better than the other. Then we start again.

Even worse...it's on my TV all the fucking time. I can understand it's popularity when McEnroe was playing...he got pissed off and shouted at posh people. It was funny but the "recent" stars..."TIGER" TIM HENMAN.

How exactly did Tim "Flannel" Henman deserve the name "Tiger". Did he turn up on centre court - his face covered in antelope blood, did he bite the heads off opponents and in between sets attempt to hump ballgirls....no.....he....just sometimes..........pumped his fist. Ooh, how very fucking "tigerish" of you. He wouldn't last a second in the jungle, he'd be buggered to Balmoral by Tigger (as in Winnie the Pooh) and Tony (as in Frosties).

Why do sportsmen and women have to be so bloody lobotomised! It's even starting to affect cricket, which has seemed to be immune and retained some characters (probably because...well....no one watches it).

Anyway, I digress. I think I was meant to be annoyed about tennis.

It's like Royal Ascot. It's pointless and it should be stopped.

GO ON MURRAY!

---------------------------------------------------------------

ps....my favorite joke this week -

---What time does Andy Murray go to bed

--- Tennish

badoom-pah!

no?....well fuck off then.

Meh, pah, piffle and guffle

I haven't written anything in weeks.

Maybe the fad of writing a blog has faded. Maybe I've started to subconsciously acknowledge the futility and pointlessness of it. Maybe I've actually been doing work at work.

Actually it's more to do with me just forgetting and doing other things. I'm like that. I can't actually do something for a prolonged period of time without being incredible bored or distracted. I guess that's why I've never quite achieved a 6 pack, I've never had long hair, I never finish books or computer games (I'm currently simultaneously the football manager of Barnet, the Roman ruler of two thirds of Europe and a relatively unsuccessful Black gangster in the streets of San Andreas), I never finished that film I was pour hundreds of hours and thousands of pounds into......It's a good job for my woman this habit doesn't seem to translate to my bedroom technique....I can imagine the disappointment of the aforementioned woman, after 5 minutes of sweaty fumbles and amateurish thrusting, with me stopping with a tired...."Oh I can't be bothered anymore".

In fact it's probably the fault of the aforementioned woman that I haven't written anything. She's buggered off to France for the last month and so I have had way too much time (and other stuff) on my hands. For some reason that seems to have actually reduced the amount I've achieved. I've not written or recorded anything for weeks. I keep getting home from work and just sitting, eating and going to bed. This must be what it's like for normal people. No rushing home, attempting to record podcasts and songs, write radio plays and films and blogs before giving up at 3am every night having achieved less than Greece at Euro2008.

Oh yeah it could be that ; Euro 2008.

Isn't Gary Lineker a twat....and Alan Shearer the dullest, most un-insightful man on television. The phrase gravy train comes to mind. Hansen's is OK I guess (although I can't take anything he says seriously after those Morrisons adverts) but none of them even compare to the criminally underused Martin O'Neil.

Anyway, this post isn't really a proper post. Sorry. It's just to try and reinfect myself with the writing bug. I asked a friend what I should write about, he suggested talking about either Jelly, Big Brother or my "feelings".....thank god I never listen to him, eh?

Can you prove your age?

I've never had sloe gin before. I was quite excited about having it because a few people had told me it was really nice.

In the last month, I've had to prove my age 3 times to buy alcohol. This weekend it was in our local Marks and Spencer's. My booze stained, wrinkled-brow, world weary face and the fact that I was buying expensive Sloe Gin should have been enough for the idiot they put in charge of the till but she still thought it necessary to ask me for ID to prove that I wasn't under 18 (and a schoolchild). Now I know that there's currently an appetite for fearing our feral young who are all, according to the gutterrags, hoodie wearing drunks. I know it's not necessarily a good thing for kids under the age of 18 to be trained pissheads but for fucks sake, If we're going to have a society where people can freely use alcohol there will always be a period of time when those who suddenly have access to this power drug have to learn the limits, how to behave and the consequences of taking alcohol. Therefore there will always be pissed up kids being antisocial and doing things they wouldn't usually do sober in the cities on a Friday night. It's not a new thing. It's been happening for hundreds of years. Still I can't see the teenagers down the local park getting pissed on Sloe Gin for the same reason I can't see them stealing caviar from Harrods to use as in a sex act they saw in the latest Skins episode.

I'm fucking tired with the middle aged constantly having a go at youth as if the young people of today are some new thing to be afraid of. The middle aged of today were the Teddy Boys, Rockers, Psychobillies and Punks of yesteryear. I remember getting pissed when I was too young and doing things that I would be ashamed of today. I remember being antisocial. We all do stupid things when we're young, whether we're drunk or not. The teenager's of today are monitored, caged and fretted over more than any in history. It won't be long until suburban parents start fitting CCTV cameras into their children's bedrooms. There are already many companies like www.traceamobile.co.uk which offer parent's the opportunity to track the movements of their children (through their mobile phone) without them knowing. They say "Do you worry where your children are? Are you anxious if they stay out late?". Can you image what kind of perverse mindset a parent must have to think their child will benefit from this surveillance.

We worry that our children are stressed, suicidal and drink and do terrible things without thinking that this (if it does exist) could be related to the fact they're constantly being tested, examined, pressured, watched, told what to do and what to think. We tell them they'll have a crap life if they don't pass their stupid fecking GCSEs (who even remembers what they got for their GCSEs anymore!?) and that if they have the sex their bodies are telling them to have they'll get pregnant and their genitals will rot from diseases, that there are paedos around every corner....and yet we wonder why some lose respect for society and stop listening to us.

All is beside the point that I'm clearly not under 18. Now I've seen the posters which state they'll ask you to prove you're not trying to buy alcohol underage if you look under 21 to cover their own arses...but I really wouldn't pass for looking under 21 even if I stood at the till in a faeces packed nappy, sucking on a giant breast and gurgling baby sick.

Still gigglytits at the counter made me get out my old man wallet, go through my cards for my drivers licence and hand it to her before passing it back to me without even fucking glancing at it.

Anyway, I got home and drank the sloe gin. It tasted like the bladder contents of a drunk Thai prostitute with a urinal infection.

btw.....

I still haven't managed to get around to recording the first podcast. I bought the wrong equipment but this should be resolved soon. I'm more than ready to rant more than a drunken Hitler at a Bar Mitzvah in Israel (though I hasten to add of an entirely different nature). I've got a massive swollen ball sack of bile built up and hope to be spray the aforementioned juices into your ears in no time.

A real man eats meat

So I've been so called vegetarian for about 7 or 8 years now. I say "so called vegetarian", not because I'm one of those people who claims to be vegetarian but then eats fish, birds and anything else that doesn't have a fluffy face, but because I don't necessarily like being automatically put into the specialist category. I just don't eat the flesh of animals. Pretty normal really when you think about it. I don't need to, so I don't...in the same way as I don't need to give hand jobs to tramps for the bus-fare home (yet) or stick my finger inside my anus before holding it aloft to tell which way the wind is blowing.

In fact, you don't "need" to either. But I'm not going to get all preachy or anything because it's more important that you do what you want.

What fucks me off though, more than the constant questioning you immediately get if you let on that you don't happen to eat meat, more than the stereotype of a health obsessed, tree-hugging, sandal-wearing, head-in-the-sand fart machine that is immediately stapled to you, is the arrogant and nonsensical concept of men who eat meat thinking that it's some kind of macho activity.

What's so fucking macho about it?!? Sure, if you fucking caught it and killed it yourself then I'd be impressed....but you fucking didn't did you? No, you just went down to the shop (you probably minced there in spangly hot-pants) and bought something that someone else has raised, slaughtered, cut to pieces, and then reshaped into something that looks different enough form the fluffy lamb you stroked, fed and fawned over earlier.

Think of the number of people who would become vegetarian tomorrow if they had to actually raise and kill the cow/lamb/sheep/pig/chicken/dog themselves. It's the height of hypocrisy to pretend that by doing the so called "macho" thing (ie having someone else do the "dirty" work for you so that you don't have to examine the ethics and morals). Surely only a fucking pussy takes the easy way out.

And another thing....just because most people do something, it doesn't mean that you don't have to question the fucking ethics behind it. Just because as humans we have 4 "canine" teeth doesn't mean we are breaking some natural rule if we don't use them to tear up meat.

Vegetarians are apparently all lacking in protein and obviously at a disadvantage....well fuck me...Carl Lewis must have been amazing because he won 10 Olympic medals (including 9 golds) whilst being vegan. I'd like to have lined up some of the twats I've met who think they have some inherent hardness purely because they fill their colons with decomposing animal flesh with Carl Lewis in his prime and see who lasted longest. In fact, fuck Carl Lewis, I'll take you on myself. I might lose but it won't be because I don't eat meat.

Anyway...I could go on, but for now I won't. I'll probably return to this one day, because until the question is "why do you eat meat" rather than the opposite, until I don't have to justify and explain a moral consistency in my behaviour towards animals and my diet, I'll never be a "real" man.

Why there have been no posts recently

Don't worry.

I know you were getting worried.

I haven't died, or found some great enlightenment, I'm not on medication and I am still Grumpy. the reason I haven't posted in the last week is that I've been saving it all up for the podcast that should be going up here fortnightly from next weekend. The link to the podcast will work from here or iTunes. It's inventively titled "The NewsRant" and I'll let you know more nearer the weekend when I get my act together.

It's one of those days.

What's the fucking point, eh?

Can someone please let me know? I must be missing something. I've been sit here all day just staring at the monitor screen in front of me. How did this happen? How did I end up sitting here; waiting.

When we're young we're taught many things but the cruelest thing we’re taught is ambition. We're told we can be anything we want to be. Well for a start, that's a complete fucking lie. Tell me about Father Christmas, God, The Tooth Fairy, that TV and wanking will make me go blind, if you really want to, tell me when I turn 17 a huge flying goat called "Dick Rippington" will come and rip off my cock and spit fire down my arse whilst singing "The Eye of the Tiger"...just don't tell me I have the opportunity to make something of my life because that's fucking child abuse and no amount of therapy is going to help you deal with that shit when you get older.

Sure some people might just about fluke something and then convince themselves that's where they wanted from the start but for the huge majority of us it’s just not true. When we grow up, we don’t do or create anything like all our childhood dreams and fantasies told us we would, our only function is to choose. Choose and consume.

We spend our childhood sat in classrooms, bored. If we’re lucky, we go to sit in lecture halls, bored. Then later we get jobs in offices, counting down the hours, the minutes, the seconds until we can go home and watch idiots on TV, start an alcohol habit, lie in bed awake all night, unable to fight through the weeds and the bracken to force through one single intelligent thought to completion…and finally it happens, the thought reaches it's completion........and it’s…well it’s shit. You’ve just wasted your fucking time.

So you learn not to bother. You rely on reflex and reaction. The small clearing in the forest that represents original thought is lost, eventually you get used to that, and you forget it ever existed.

I told myself when I was young that I never wanted to work in an office. It looked soul destroying. But I didn’t try hard enough to avoid that fate and so ended up betraying myself. It’s pathetic….I’m pathetic. but I can't get rid of the feeling that maybe I’m just a boring person. Maybe I’m meant to be here. Maybe this is as good as it gets. All I know is that given the chance, I wouldn’t be in front of a computer screen, writing this shit, whilst pretending to work.

It’s still 3 hours and fifteen minutes until I get to wait for a crowded train, wait for the train to reach Oakleigh Park and wait for sleep.

I reread this entry and realized that…well it’s shit. You’ve just wasted your fucking time.

Today's ramble

I used to be baffled by why people read the Gutterpress or how people could think that a person could be born evil, why did people follow Hitler, how does a person believe that everything was created by an omnipotent guy in 6 days or that one race is biologically more moral than another....etc ad nauseam.


I guess the answer was made more clear to me when reading a recently Richard Littlejohn column. Before you say it, I know! I grumble about the reactionary gutterpress and yet seem to spend half my time reading it. In it, Mr Littlejohn writes that John Prescott, who recently has confessed to be suffering from bulimia, is lying because.......well......he's fat.


Well yes, that..if you think about it makes sense......except it's bulimia NOT anorexia you fucking oaf. Two completely different forms of nervous eating diseases, then main difference being bulimics (because of the bingeing nature of the disease) often gain weight. It's like saying someone who tells you they have had surgery to remove skin cancer is lying about it because they haven't lost their hair from chemotherapy. It takes 2 minutes to find out that bulimics gain weight. Fortunately, I don't have any close family or friends who have suffered from an eating disorder (to my knowledge) but even I knew that bulimia is not anorexia. So why does this kind of thing get published....and uncritically read by millions.


It's because it's simple. People like simple. Life's fucking complicated at the best of times. Even the simplest of our actions require hundreds of tiny judgements; what we buy, what train we get into work, where we sit, what we look at. In all this noise it's so comfortable to simplify, simplify, simplify - So bulimia becomes "eating disorder" and "eating disorder" means anorexia.


Keeping a handle of what's going on at any point in time is like trying to keep hold of a child's turd in a swimming pool, it's slips and slides everywhere and even if you do manage to get a hold of the thing, you'll probably just end up with shit on your hands....so what the point, just ignore it like everyone else.


That's why we simplify, like when a blogger repeated use a metaphors to explain something. We digitalised things, put them in clear black and white categories, on or off....in the deafening white noise of the tiny judgements that make our decisions. But things are not digital, they are analogue, beyond true categorisation.


That's why people believe that god created the earth and life, because the alternative is can't be explained in less than 20 seconds. That's why people used to believe that the earth was flat, that people of a different race were a lower species, that homosexuality was the work of the devil, climate change was a myth....etc ad nauseam.

But without this way of simplifying we couldn't function. We'd be fucked, unable to make a single simple decision, constantly re-waying the consequences in a constantly shifting reality. We'd just be stood there, like a crashed computer. (This happens when I try to decide which DVD out of the hundreds to watch...I'll stand there for half an hour just reading the names. Unable to make a decision).

So we need it, and it's nice but the real judgement we all need to make is how much to use it. For a final metaphor - Simplicity is like a nice warm bath......except if you're not careful....it's a bath that will eventually be full of child's turds.....

.....and Richard Littlejohn.

Let's all tut loudly and feel better about ourselves

A friend, knowing full well what it would do to me, sent me a link to this article on the Daily Heil.

http://www.dailymail.co.uk/pages/live/articles/showbiz/showbiznews.html?in_article_id=561401&in_page_id=1773

It's typical death-watch journalism by the mail about the singer Amy Winehouse. Apparently she was seen with a rolled up cigarette which could be a joint (SHOCK HORROR). This apparently means that she's on heroine again and about to die! Also she was seen with a man! And lost her keys! What a mess, let's all tut loudly and feel better about ourselves. The online article (I'd never actually buy the paper, I'd feel less guilty repeated stamping on a box full of kittens) comes with loads of pictures of her not looking her best. There are also "hilarious" sarcastic, cowardly comments under each one. So here's my message to serial offender Donna McConnell.

You're a journalist, you didn't do this job for the money, you did it to report news and information to the public, you have a fucking responsibility to do that, not only that...you're a fucking human being so start fucking acting like one and stop abusing the concept of "the public has a right to know", the public DOES NOT have a right to fucking know the details of some pop stars medical condition and mental health issues, it DOES NOT have the fucking right to know which club she goes to, when she goes out, who she hangs around with. She's a fucking singer. Not a politician or someone whose lifestyle and behaviour has a direct influence on the public's day to day life. You don't get to judge her because not only have you abandoned your sold your morals as a journalist to the fucking Daily Mail, you have abandoned your basic responsibilities as a human fucking being.

It's St George's day......

...but what exactly is a patron saint, and who the hell was St George.

Well obviously it's a Christian thing and to explain what they do......well it's kind of like a call centre, you see God is really busy up there in heaven listening to all these prayers and it's not like he can hire a few temps or outsource the business to India or whatever. So to try and deal with your prayers more efficiently you can go through your patron saint, which I guess is sort of like a customer advisor. They're meant to fast track your prayer to the guy upstairs.

This is where Patron Saints come from. St George has been working at the Heavenly call centre now since 303AD, in fact we actually celebrate on his first day of work. He was decapitated by a grumpy Roman Emperor called Diocletian for not killing Christians. So far so good. Anyway, he's now been working as a patron saint in this call centre for the last 1705 years. In that time St George has sort of specialised in dealing with prayers from people with skin conditions, herpes, syphilis and and the English.

According to the UK statistics, STD's have increased a staggering 63% in the UK over the last 10 years.

To be honest, I don't want to be too harsh on the guy but I think this shows that St George has probably lost all enthusiasm for his job. I don't blame him, I temped in a John Lewis call centre over a Christmas once to earn some extra money and it was soul destroying; he's been doing it for over one and a half millenia!

so today, whatever you do, don't forget poor old St George.....the patron saint of skin diseases, syphilis, herpes, plague and.....oh yeah England.