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.