Bernard Manning: From Beyond The Graaaaaaaaaaaaaave

There are plenty of weird things in life. Eyeballs that secrete milk, salmon that travel thousands of miles for a shag, women who can fire ping pong balls from where the sun does not shine. But I think having Bernard Manning who is now dead presenting his own televised obituary has got to be at least up there with hermaphrodites. Apparently Manning gained some kind of psychic insight into when his demise was going to occur and so set about making a film about his life and saying goodbye to people for Channel 4. Or he might have known his death was imminent because his kidneys were playing up due to his diabetes, the programme didn’t make that clear.

What was made clear from the first minute was that this was going to be a bizarre fucking programme if ever there was one. Watching someone look down at themselves lying dead in a coffin and taking a chair at the funeral service, chuckling along as if the speakers were making birthday speeches through the magic of blue screen is a pretty unnerving way to kick-off a programme. It’s the televisual equivalent of arriving at a large scary castle in the middle of a dark stormy night and having the door answered by a hunchbacked Igor character.

The theme continued throughout as well with Manning being filmed picking out a coffin, cracking jokes along the way. And the weirdness didn’t even stop there. Oh no. Clearly Manning wanted to raise the ante in the surreal stakes so we were treated to him sat in a spot-lit chair in the middle of a stage answering moral questions about his life from a man in a box dressed as St. Peter. All very symbolic yes, but when you’re dealing with a man who even has to turn his obituary into a slice of entertainment you know that this is a mind already slightly askew to the norm.

These moments were interspersed with clips of his best gags (not all of which I was shocked to learn were racist) and a kind of documentary trying to answer the question ‘Bernard Manning: Fat racist bigot, or Britain’s funniest comedian?’ Not really a question in my eyes, there are 127.8 British comedians funnier than Bernard Manning, but I could see the point they were trying to make, and it is an interesting problem.

Unfortunately this is where the programme hit a bit of a snag. For a documentary to be good it has to be objective. And it was in places, there were honest interviews and footage that commented on a lot of issues surrounding Bernard Manning. However, it is a bit of a challenge to stay unbiased when a man is weeping into a camera making his final farewell speech to his family. And it jars horribly when there’s a clip showing Manning singling out and mocking the one black man in the audience, followed immediately by a real heart tugging moment with Manning close to death. I found myself thinking, ‘He’s a bit of a racist cunt… but I’m so sad he’s not with us!’ Confusing to say the least. Then again, humanising an apparent racist is better than labelling him and making him a symbol. Symbols be divisive.

At other times they felt the need to play totally inappropriate wispy spiritual music over the top of his gags, as if to remind the viewer that he’s dead. Like that wasn’t made abundantly clear from the start. It’s this ridiculously saccharine way that we have to venerate the dead which meant it was difficult to make as balanced a judgment as if it had been shown when he was alive. Which would’ve undermined the concept a little.

That aside, on to the big question: was Bernard Manning just a big fat racist and is there a place for his brand of comedy in the world? Well for starters his brand of comedy was first and foremost in his ability to tell a gag. Stephen Fry was quoted as saying that Manning delivered a joke better than anyone else. And as we all know, if Stephen Fry said it, it must be true. If something is said in just the right way it triggers off some bizarre involuntary spasm in the brain that produces a physical response. It doesn’t entirely make sense but it’s one of the nicer things about being of the species homo sapiens.

Gags also require a setup and racist characters are perfect for this. They provide a character that is different or ridiculous to laugh at. All comedy is based on someone else’s tragedy, or whatever the damn quote is.

This is why I wasn’t sure if Bernard Manning was actually a racist or just a comedian with an act. The programme wasn’t sure either. It flipped back and forth between implying that he was actually a racist, due to his upbringing and the time he came from, and then implying that it was actually just an act, just a joke, harmless and all that. There was a clip from when Manning went on the Mrs Merton Show in the 90s, when it all went completely tits up for him. She asked him directly, “Are you a racist?” to which he replied, “Yes” and went on to explain how there are “some people I like and some that I don’t”. Meanwhile, Future Manning was looking back on the incident saying that it was a show that set people up and he was trying to do that to her and, in his eyes, out funnying her. Then there was the one about when Bernard told a joke about policemen beating black suspects at a police event. I couldn’t tell if it was all an act aimed at offending anyone and everyone, or if these really were deep-seated racist beliefs.

I don’t think poor old Bernard did either. The lines between comedy routine and personal life blurred long ago. Which is fucking obvious given that he took part in this headfuck of a concept for a television programme.

If it was all just an act then there is something to be said for being controversial and saying things that society doesn’t necessarily see as acceptable. I am a firm believer in the fact that anything can be funny if presented in the right way. The problem for Manning was that his style of comedy was so out of date with every other modern comedian. When he first started out, it was ‘just a joke’. Comedians told jokes, they were there to make people laugh and so to certain extent it didn’t matter what they said. Nowadays though the role of the comedian has become much more one of social commentator. Manning’s excuse that it was just a joke and you shouldn’t take jokes seriously doesn’t hold water now when it comes to a topic like racism. Modern comedy aims to attack and ridicule racism, to mock it rather than use it to get a laugh. The likes of Gervais get away with being controversial because it’s done with a sense of irony, you’re laughing because he’s playing an idiot character, you know he doesn’t really mean it. When looking at Manning I was trying to apply that same sense of playing a character to see if it would fit. Doing that was a mistake, more likely than not he was just a good old fashioned racist, as were most people then. And probably still are.

Whatever, it doesn’t matter. Comedians become big and famous because they’re saying what people want to hear. Once the crowd want to see something new, the comedians fade into the background. Manning wouldn’t have become big when he did if racist jokes weren’t acceptable and funny at that time. And if he didn’t have racist jokes he still would have succeeded because he was a funny guy, but then he would have faded out into obscurity. It’s just because everyone cares so much about racism that we’re still talking about him. Why? His views used to be the majority, he said them because he was a comedian, they’re not relevant now, let’s move on.

Manning knew he could stay in the public eye if he kept up the racist act, and everyone allowed him to do it despite changing attitudes because they wanted to stare in at him in that curious way that people have observed social freaks through the ages, be it Imperial Games, Freak Shows, or Big Brother. Everyone wants fame, Manning was no exception. The most damning part of the whole show was when Manning was trying to defend himself to a comedian and the director of a comedy school. When he got in a tight corner he started getting angry and saying that these two were nothing, he’d played the MGM Grand in Las Vegas, what the fuck had they done? As if being famous and talking to lots of people makes your view better and right. Yeah, the Nuremberg Rallies were pretty well attended too (fuck Godwin’s Law and fuck you).

It seems some people will do anything for the attention; even play up to the fact that people think you’re a racist if it keeps people talking about you just a bit longer. No one wants to fade out and be forgotten; the proudest thing about Manning’s life to him was that he would be talked about for a long time, that he’d live on past other comedians. Which said more about him and everyone else than the rest of the programme put together.

Bernard Manning’s final words to the people of the world were, “Get fucked the lot of you.” At least I can agree with him there.

al-qaeda: slightly less scary than timid moles

Once again, this post was at the cutting edge of relevance on the 2nd July when I originally wrote it, but given that there haven't been any terrorist attacks since I guess it's still true.

if i were in a position of command in al-qaeda right now (which i'm not in case any of you mi5 people are watching) then i'd be seriously considering putting all the british cells on indefinite hiatus round about now. the point of terrorism is, surely, to win your case through fear and terror. not to make yourselves look like a bunch of incompetent nincompoops.

9/11, 7th July, both terrorist attacks that genuinely shocked the world and changed a lot of what we now take for granted. since then... well, it hasn't gone so well for those dippy terrorists. everytime another bomb fails to go off or a plan gets foiled, as it has done repeatedly since 7th july, they start to become less and less scary. blowing up a car must be one of the easiest things in the world to do. lots of petrol, a bit of fire, ba-da-bing ba-da-boom. they manage it in baghdad on a daily basis. obviously their basic explosive training is at a slightly higher level in iraq.

i begin to worry (actually, not worry, hope is probably a more accurate word) that the uk is the craggy island of the terrorist world, where all the big thickos are sent because they keep embarrassing themselves in front of all their other terrorist buddies. the buck-toothed ones who keep tripping up over their robes and setting their beards on fire by accident while osama mutters, 'this is another fine mess you've got me into al. why i oughta!' is it just me, or was the image of a bumbling idiot stumbling out of a burning jeep the kind of thing you'd expect frank dreben from naked gun to do? it's not scary it's just a bit... well, sad really.

i'd love to have seen the look on those clowns' faces when they realised it had all gone pete tong, frantically pressing the detonator, wondering why the bomb's not going off, realising that, d'oh!, they've left the plastic in the oven and now they have a group of angry glaswegians kicking the shit out of them. although the look on their face would be difficult to spot given the hideous burns. come on, glasgow airport? it's got to be the hardest fucking airport in the world! they should've known they were entering a world of pain before they even started.

well, they probably did realise that, but assumed it would be followed by eternal paradise once they detonated the bombs. arhahahahaha!! fucktards. al-qaeda is meant to be the biggest threat to this country and they can't even make a bomb that explodes. the irish could manage it and they're the butt of all the idiot jokes. and they're doctors as well! the fact that fuckwits like this are allowed to operate on sick patients worries me more than their aborted feotus attempts to cause panic. they shouldn't be shipped off to some unknown prison to face torture, they should just be shoved in the stocks so that people can walk by and laugh at how utterly rubbish these evil cunts are at doing the most basic of all terrorist activities. they are idiots.

well done al-qaeda, you have succeeded in making me not so much scared, more tickled pink with your complete incompetency at scoring more than a couple of lucky hits. consistency is what's important in life, and it's something these dippy tarts seriously lack. thank fuck.

Zombies Ate My Neighbours

Last night a worrying thing happened. I was sitting quite calmly looking at Facebook, hitting ‘refresh’ repeatedly, when all of a sudden the lights went out. Not only that, my speakers cut out, the TV died and I could hear shrieks of terror from flats above and below (they might have been mine, I can’t remember. Trauma does terrible things to the memory). My worst fears had been realised, it was a power cut. It was emergency time.

Some people may have wondered about their loved ones, others may have gotten out the candles they had specially prepared for such an event, a select few may even have used the dimming of lights to make an inappropriate move on a loved one. I have to confess my initial thoughts were how to best plan for the oncoming zombie invasion.

I immediately ran a sink full of fresh drinking water and started searching for weapons. The best I could find were a few empty wine bottles for projectiles, a guitar for close range combat and a gun with a single bullet if worst came to worst. Next I pondered food. Obviously a supplies run to Scotmid was necessary for survival, but was it worth the risk of taking on extra zombies by heading up to Waitrose and having an all round more satisfactory ration supply?

A few sirens blared past the window and I sat tensely, waiting for the screams of people running down the street, away from those with no desire but to tear flesh from innocent faces with their teeth. Those neither living nor dead, with no goal but to consume every living thing within their bloated guts. The only beings that may very well bring about the end of humankind.

It turns out my intense paranoia was slightly misplaced. T’was merely a power cut that had affected various patches of Edinburgh and caused no end of anecdotal trouble for various Edinburgers (stupid stupid word). The news that it had been caused by a fire at a substation did nothing either to alleviate my worries at the time though. I had recently watched an episode of the West Wing where Russia covers up a nuclear missile blowing up in a silo by claiming that it was a fire in a substation. If those ruskie bastards thought they were gonna fool me over the invading pinko zombie hoard by using one of the oldest Cold War tricks in the book then they had another thought coming.

No, I was definitely wrong. There were no zombies approaching, the end of days was not here, we were all going to be fine. The worrying thing about the whole episode is that I wasn’t the only one with such paranoid delusions. One of my flat mate’s biggest phobias is the zombie attack scenario, so she too was planning our best means of escape and survival. Oh how we laughed at our unique sense of humour.

Nope. Turns out that most of my friends had had similar thoughts. To the majority, a zombie attack was the most logical assumption to make. Mentioning to one comrade via text that sleeping with a cricket under their pillow wouldn’t be such a bad idea was met with ridicule at the very notion of not being fully prepared with an EMP bomb for the robot armies that were at this very moment descending on our nations.

I think it’s safe to say that we all watch too many movies. More worrying than that though is the extent to which we rely on electricity in order to live a normal existence. Thousands, if not tens of thousands, of years of human civilisation has been living without electricity. It was simple: you went to bed with the sun, you got up with the sun. In between you’d fill in the time by banging rocks together. I’m guessing. Well what else was there to do to keep yourself entertained? I suppose you could pray for some kind of device that would keep you and your family amused.

Then some bright spark came along and invented electricity. Which is awesome and everything, but we really are dependent on that stuff. The reason myself and everyone flipped out when the power went down was because we saw ahead of ourselves the ultimate bleakness that lay in the abyss where there was no internet, no television, no computer games, no light, no cooker, no radio, just the endless black. No entertainment, nothing to shut out the tedium of life. These visions of zombies and robots flooding the streets were just the natural reaction of a species being plunged into the unknown. Of course some poor bastard panicked because they were working on their essays in the library and made the rookie error of not regularly saving their work. For shame.

The nice thing that came out of this was whole sorry mess was that despite our jonesing for electricity and the automatic reaction in the Edinburgh consciousness that a simple power cut = Armageddon, at least we were all prepared and knew what to do in the event of a zombie infestation. And if you didn’t know what to do, start drawing up emergency plans that you can follow in the case of an outbreak of zombies, robots or velociraptors. It’s not if, it’s when.

Homeless On The Streets of Edinburgh

Tramps fascinate me. Not so much in a ‘Ooh, fascinating! Let’s a don an old jacket, grow a beard, grab a bottle of White Lightning and join their tribe in order to learn their ancient and mystic noble traditions’ kind of way, more in a ‘What the hell…?’ kind of way, where the blank can be filled with such phrases as ‘is he drinking?’, ‘is he doing?’ and ‘is he saying?’.

Outside Bedlam Theatre there is a bench that is dedicated to the memory of a student who died a few years ago. This bench is set in concrete and raised about two feet from street level on an extended wall that runs around the front of the theatre. If you sit on it you get a beautiful view all the way up George IV bridge, with the striking dome of New College in the distance. It really is a lovely bench, the perfect kind where you can sit comfortably, relax and watch life happen around you.

In tramp circles it is known as The Bench (emphasis entirely necessary). When tramps arrange to meet up and achieve whatever goal they have set themselves, they meet at The Bench. It is a beacon, a focal point which pulls any tramp within range inexorably towards itself. Fair enough, it is a lovely spot especially for those whose lifestyle means they spend a lot of time outdoors, and it adds a nice effect to the name Bedlam. This is why at any hour of the day The Bench can be found draped in tramps whose goals today seem to be the same as yesterday.

Given that I spend a lot of time at Bedlam I regularly come into contact with these folk. They’re all harmless enough, they stick to themselves, drink and occasionally stumble into the building whilst looking for some kind of mysterious object. Divining anything more about their habits is a challenge due to the lack of the most useful human skill: communication. When a flaky, bleary-eyed, reeking (sorry but they do have a certain fragrance about them) individual lurches towards me and garbles a few sounds, sniffs a bit, rinses and repeats, I normally respond with a few half-hearted ‘Yeah mate’ replies while smiling vaguely, until one of us sort of wonders off. It’s not exactly a melting pot for stimulating conversation.

Now I’ll admit to not being the most natural at making conversation with people I don’t know, but I think of much of the communication problem lies with the gallon per hour intake of White Lightning that your average sized tramp will get through. That much booze can’t be good for you…

It’s not uncommon for those of us who may occasionally and responsibly enjoy getting pissed to be struck with a mind-numbingly brilliant thought that everyone else must hear. In your head you’re coherent, urbane, insightful but for some reason your audience don't agree and start wondering why exactly they’re friends with you. Thankfully you get a good night’s rest and the next day brings the terrifying eye of sobriety and past mistakes are swiftly rectified or ignored.

Not so for the tramps. A constant intake of alcohol means that they never break out of that drunken state. It must be confusing for them. Inside their own heads they are a sparkling font of witticisms but for some reason no one will listen to them, and I can’t help but feel that might be a little frustrating for them. But that’s not really a problem because they pretty soon forget it all anyway.

Memory loss is huge when you’ve drunken that much alcohol. I worry that these tramps are like Guy Pearce in Memento, without any ability to formulate new memories. The last thing they can remember is leaving the house, saying ‘I’m just heading out for a quick drink.’ As far as they’re concerned they’re still on that same bender, any chalk that falls onto the slate that passes for their memories is wiped clean with a healthy dose of alcohol every 12 hours. They go to sleep and wake up bright-eyed and bushy tailed, looking forward to that day off work they promised themselves ‘yesterday’. Of course, after a while they must cotton on. Become aware at the back of their head that they’ve been living the same day for a while now, they've met all these tramps before and their clothes are getting a tad scruffy. That’s when the switch flicks and they embrace the psychosis induced by their ethanol-rotted brains.

Possibly. I don’t know. I’m probably insulting some group of people when I imply that all tramps are insane preachers of some drunken gospel. This is not my intention. There is of course a veritable rainbow of folk who make the homeless community such a vibrant place, from the smiling Big Issue seller trying to get their life back on track right through to the hard to identify mass in the gutter. And the alcoholic tramps probably have sad stories and they should be sympathised with, not mocked by some arrogant cock who’s never had to worry about spending a night on the streets or being dependent on alcohol to such a horrible extent.

Fair point, but I still find the insane lifestyle of the tramp an enjoyable curiosity.

Technicians: The Unsung Villains

This article was originally printed in Noises Off, the daily magazine for the National Student Drama Festival and was written in response to an article 'Technicians: The Unsung Heroes' by Joseph Coates. As you can tell, it angered me somewhat...

Shakespeare was more of a genius than I realised. Not only did he write some of the most beautiful and influential plays in the history of literature, but he did it all… without tech! That’s right, he was happy for his plays to on at venues where the concept of the gobo hadn’t even been considered. Somehow he felt that a stage in the middle of a field was sufficient for the full weight of his plays to come across. What a fraud. That’s right, a fraud! At least that’s what Joseph Coates would have you believe.

Alright, it’s a facetious point to start with, theatre has moved on leaps and bounds in the last 40,000 years since Shakespeare’s time. Tech is now as an integral part of theatre as any other aspect. I’m not interested in belittling tech. No, instead I’m interested in belittling the moaning, pathetic, pre-pubescent, hormonally confused excuses for people that disguise themselves as techies of varying descriptions. But it’s unfair to talk about all techies like they’re one homogenous blob of angst. The word ‘techie’ is far too broad a term that applies to too many different people. Instead I’ll divide them into two categories, for simplicity’s sake let’s refer to them as the ‘talented’ and the ‘shits’. And it’s these ‘shits’ that are fucking it up for the rest of us.

I’ve had enough of hearing the same childish and unnecessary complaints from these people. Let’s have a look at just a few of these ‘shit’ comments: “Without us there would be no light. Literally.” Think someone’s got a bit of a God complex going on here… perhaps there’s a missing part of Genesis where it mentions that first God invented techies who were then graceful enough to invent light but I’ve yet to hear of it. Besides, I’m not a genius but I know how to flick a fucking light switch. Fair enough, it wouldn’t be the most impressive tech in the world but since the age of two I’ve literally been able to turn on a lightbulb.

Another typical ‘shit’ comment: “We technicians are the glue that hold you actors together.” Arrogance on this scale is so mind boggling it must be genuinely retarded. Actors get together months before a show, they rehearse and work together over a long period of time and this probably goes a long way to making them the self-obsessed luvvies (I’ve got to get some balance in here) that they are. But it’s the job of whichever poor bastard is directing them to make sure that they are a cohesive an functioning whole, the ‘shits’ a) don’t want to get involved and b) wouldn’t have the first idea how to communicate with someone from then outside world.

Please don’t think I’m talking about all techies here. Some of my best friends are techies (although unfortunately they’re not also gay, black or disabled). Let’s take a moment and consider these ‘talented’ individuals. The most important thing to say about them is that these ‘talented’ are competent. They know what they have to do and they do it quickly and efficiently with no dicking about and without that high-pitched whining that attracts dog-bitches on heat to the theatre. They have ideas, imagination. They communicate well with the director, they take an interest in the show from an early stage, they’re amicable to all the cast.

Tech runs, usually a source of immense pain to all involved, are relatively painless under the guidance of the ‘talented’. Whatever they’re spending their time doing you can rest safe in the knowledge that they’re doing it for a reason. They know that good tech is subtle. When an audience is trying to concentrate on the emotional context of a naturalistic play they don’t want to be distracted by garish and out of place lighting that happens to be ‘cool’ according to some ‘shit’. And when the ‘talented’ have done a good job they know it. They don’t seek praise like some three-year old begging for acknowledgement for the fact that they’ve managed to eat their food without spilling it down their bib. A nod and some words of praise from one professional ‘talented’ to another is enough because theirs is an art too subtle and complex for most laymen to appreciate.

Not for the ‘shits’ though. Faith in a job well done is not enough for them. Let’s have another look at the Gospel according to Coates: “When was the last time you heard someone say, ‘Who did those lights? They were cool! What about that sound? It was beautiful!’” Just because no one’s said it about your tech, doesn’t mean it’s never been said. In a recent production of Iolanthe I saw, a huge functioning waterfall at the back of the stage got one of the largest and most appreciative rounds of applause of the night. In a production of the Cosmonaut’s Last Message To The Woman He Once Loved In The Former Soviet Union the tech were brave enough to suspend two actors playing cosmonauts 30 feet above the stage. In another play, Sour Heart, there were at least 15 televisions spread out and around the stage that at various intervals played videos, images, etc. and all at separate times.

All of these plays got countless praise for the bold directions that the tech had taken from members of the public, even if they didn’t quite understand how much work went into it. And these are just three of the most recent shows I’ve seen. The ‘shits’ moan and complain as an excuse. It’s a mask used to disguise the lack of self-confidence they have in their own work. The fact is that when tech is exceptional people do appreciate it. When an actor is good people appreciate it. When an actor is appalling everyone knows who they are and will single him or her out. When the ‘shits’ completely bollocks up a show they have their anonymity to hide behind from the public.

Things have to change. No longer should actors be stuck in 10 hour long tech runs and abysmal first night performances because the ‘shits’ are too lazy and unskilled to get the lights and sound rigged properly. No longer should the ‘talented’ be tarred with the same brush as the ‘shits’. And no longer should we be subjected to the same repetitive ramblings of those with delusions of grandeur.

Hell Ain't No Bad Place To Be

An article from June 2007. After going back over things I wrote a few months ago, I'm starting to notice some recurring themes...

I love the BBC website. Whenever I’m feeling particularly drained of ideas I just have to make a short trip there and I know I’m going to find an example of cutting edge, hard-hitting journalism which will inspire me to put fingers to keyboard and voice my opinion on the most important of current affairs. Or not, as the case may be with this article which makes the shockingly obvious claim that six out of ten of us Brits are opportunistic criminals.

Yes, it’s time to face facts and realise that when someone receives more change than they’re meant to they’ll keep it anyway. The dastards! Or when given the opportunity to take cash-in-hand for a job so as to avoid paying tax* most people will choose that option. Who would’ve thunk it?! Clearly these groundbreaking researchers are correct in saying that there is no “law-abiding majority” and that the respectable middle-classes are a “seething mass of morally dubious, and outright criminal, behaviour”. Maybe now this problem has been highlighted we can all join hands and combat this problem together.

Alright, enough of the crap sarcasm. I honestly don’t know why they bothered wasting billions of pounds on this survey when they could’ve just paid me a £5 million consulting fee so that I could tell them that people are, in general, opportunistic bastards. The fact that there was even the suggestion that middle class people are more morally upright than lower class people is a view which is frankly insulting, naïve and belongs in the Bronze Age when it might conceivably have been true*

Actually, no. Not even in the Bronze Age could it be said that people wouldn’t commit a ‘criminal’ act if it was advantageous to them. It really gets my goat when tossers make this comment, which I’ve heard more times than, “Fuck off Richard”,

“People talk about not having to lock the door in childhood, and I remember that myself. There is unquestionably more opportunistic crime. I would have to say that behind that lies a decline in belief in God, and a culture of hedonism, self-fulfilment getting on, and materialism.”

Such a statement is horseshit* through and through. The reason no one used to have to lock their door was because they lived in small, isolated communities where everyone knew each other. A criminal would have to be pretty fucking desperate/mentally challenged to nick something from a mate’s house and then try and flog it back to them down the pub. And if little Maddie went missing in a small Gloucester village, everyone would know who the local paedo was and a short lynching later everything would be gravy. Now that we live in an age where people can ship stolen goods on without breaking a sweat, it’s hardly surprising that you have to lock your door*.

Since when did a belief in God lead to better morals? Since when did being an atheist lead to better morals? Catholics rape small children, Muslims blow themselves up in crowded areas and atheists commit acts of genocide. Sure I’m generalising, but so are these pricks who constantly generalise about the world going to the dogs in the face off rapidly improving health care, technology, social equality and falling crime levels. So fuck ‘em.

I always laugh at those piss-poor anti-piracy adverts that ruin the first 30 seconds of whatever film you’re watching. “You wouldn’t steal a purse! You wouldn’t rob a bank! You wouldn’t rape a granny, defecate in her mouth and make off with her savings! Don’t steal our films!” it confidently states. Err… yes I cocking would if any of those crimes were as easy and consequence free as downloading an mp3 or the latest episode of Heroes*. Of course I don’t commit these crimes because I have respect for other people and don’t want to live in constant fear of vigilante OAPs. My moral compass is pretty straight but I won’t not do something that will benefit me and not harm anyone else significantly just because it’s against the law.

“If I thought something was OK, then found out it was against the law, I wouldn't do it. I would think it was wrong.”

It’s that kind of opinion I’m talking about. Laws are an integral part of society but I don’t think there’s a compulsion to obey them blindly. Take cannabis for example. I have no qualms with admitting that I regularly smoke joints, even if it is against the law*. And I don’t say that because I think it makes me cooler than those who don’t*, but because I personally enjoy it, I’m not harming anyone else by doing it and I think to apply the law to me and send me to jail for it would be a waste of everyone’s time and money. Speaking of drugs and petty crime, if you want to get rid of what I’m assuming people refer to as ‘lower-class’ crime then let’s tackle this whole issue of sick addicts turning to crime to fuel their addiction.

Anyhoo… I know I’m not alone in my views. After all, 6/10 people can’t be wrong. Right? We’re all ‘criminals’, we all take advantage of laws that are in place but aren’t a matter of life and death, so what? People are ‘allowed’, according to the law, to dick people over and do things to their advantage all the time. That makes them cocks, and also human. Taking more money than perhaps the government says you’re entitled too, whilst it is technically illegal, isn’t as bad in my sincere opinion as breaking up with your partner by spit-roasting their mum. Which is legal. Thank God.

Once again it all comes down to common sense. Something you and I have an abundance of and everyone else is in desperate need of in order to make this world a sensible place to live in. Don’t worry, they’ll catch up eventually.

Working On My TV Tan

There’s a piracy advert that always makes me laugh. It is not, as you may think, a recruiting video aimed at encouraging young students to join the pirate navy. There is no such thing. It is instead an advert that is designed to discourage people from buying pirated vitamins or downloading copyrighted minerals from the internet by equating these actions with such moral wrongs as stealing an old lady’s purse, shoplifting and flying a plane into a New York skyscraper because piracy apparently funds terrorism.

Unfortunately, rather than guilt tripping the public into giving up their immoral, barbaric ways and paying for their entertainment like they should, the advert has highlighted how certain rogue members, that make up the vast majority of the moral whole, will quite gleefully break the law without any ethical considerations or legal concerns if they think they’re going to get away with it.

‘You wouldn’t steal a car!’ the advert reminds us. If breaking into a car and selling it on cheap was as big a challenge as clicking a mouse once, twice, maybe three times in order to download a song, then there would be no cars left in the world. There would only be an endless, never-seen stream of stolen cars flowing like credit around the black market.

The internet is by its very nature an absolute bastard for copyright law enforcement anyway. The anonymity of the millions involved makes policing or controlling file sharing in any effective way as pointless a task as asking Sisyphus to push a boulder up Mont Blanc. It just can’t be done.

Radiohead’s recent decision to release their album on the internet for free/a charitable donation (if you feel that you’re the kind of person who just can’t bear to see these millionaire rock stars go without cash) wasn't a brave step in a new direction. I've been able to download albums for free for the past ten years now. It was just a sign that bands and labels have started to give up and realise that they can’t win the battle against the millions who are downloading their songs for free. They're going to have to adopt some new tactics to deprive us music fans of our cash, which is why more and more bands are starting to exploit t'internet for cash prizes.

Even Cliff Richard is using the internet to promote his new record. The more people that pre-order his next shitsandwich slab of fetid drivel online, the cheaper it will be when it’s released. If, for my pre-order, I received a section of Cliff’s vocal chords that had been forcibly torn from his throat then I would be more inclined to being seduced by such an internet bargain.

At the moment though the music industry is still a long way from using the internet properly to promote, sell and spread music to the public at large. In the meantime hopefully the TV industry will cotton on quicker to the advantages of internet based media. It doesn’t look good though given that they’re arresting internet pioneers like the 26-year old man from Cheltenham who ran TV Links.

TV Links was a magical place, full of joy and wonder. Where childrin could skip through a vast library of links to TV shows, cartoons, documentaries, anime and movies, a bottomless pit of visual entertainment. Almost any TV show you'd care to mention, from Red Dwarf to Louis Theroux and back again via QI, was available to all who ventured into that domain. And for free!

Now I like TV a lot. There are amazing shows out there, both old and new, a lot of which in recent times have come from America. From dramas such as the Wire, Deadwood and the Sopranos, to South Park, Heroes, 24, Firefly, Battlestar Galactica, the list never ends. There is not a chance I would be a fan of any of these shows or many others were it not for sites like TV Links.

Living the hectic nocturnal schedule I do, I’m never consistently in at the right time to watch television. This is why I missed 24, Lost, The West Wing and the Sopranos when they first came out. I simply could not guarantee seeing every episode and these shows are like newspapers, miss them for a couple of weeks and any reality outside your own becomes a distant blurry memory. If it weren’t for internet TV I would not know about these shows or many others because I would never have watched them in the first place. The internet has reinvented what it means to watch TV shows, a method which is far more liberating and accessible than any previous system.

The BBC’s World News channel YouTube and Channel 4’s On Demand program, which makes much of the Channel 4 archive available to watch for free online, are signs that the industry is waking up and using the internet the way it should be now that it’s possible to instantly stream near DVD quality videos, but it’s still not enough. It’s a stubbornness on the part of the TV networks not to see that this is the way a lot of people watch their TV now, and the number is only going to get bigger.

What NBC should be doing, for example, is hosting every new episode of Heroes for free on their website, surrounded by advertising, and with a guaranteed good connection. They would get millions more hits, they would know exactly how many people were watching it thereby making the horseshit ratings system a thing of the past, a whole new legion of fans would be available to watch the shows, and I wouldn’t have to trawl around loads of different websites trying to find one with a working, albeit illegal, link to the episode.

The entertainment industry needs to realise that it can’t win against the internet. Sure, TV Links was taken down but there were already another bunch of websites ready to take its place. One of the main reasons it was taken down was because of the links it had to pirated movies. But the thing is, pirated movies are rubbish. If given the choice between watching some shitty, grainy handheld camera version of the latest epic on my laptop screen, or the 50 metre screen, surround sound cinema version that will blow your head off, I’d always go to the cinema because that’s an experience you can’t recreate at home. And blockbusters still makes x hundreds of millions so they can’t be too badly off.

With music and television, however, the advantages of using computers and the internet to access the media compared to the traditional methods are numerous, just like the advantages of supermarkets over having to go out and gather all your food yourself from the wild. Instead of waving their hands about and complaining about how the ol’ grey mare she ain’t what she used to be, the music and TV industries should be at the forefront of internet entertainment, leading the charge and surpassing all the other sites that offer a vast range of TV shows for free. If only to save themselves the hassle further down the line.

An Alternative Drugs Experience

Drugs are bad. Apparently. This is the never ending, incessant view of drugs shoved down our throats at every available moment by all those shady individuals who make up 'they', as in 'they' told me so. In the first place I'm uncertain about assigning moral values to an inanimate object, it is after all those who can't control their habits and vices that are bad and even then 'sick' is a more appropriate term, but more importantly these people seem to be missing another key point. Drugs are fun.

Drugs have been fun for a long time. One of the few constants through the evolution of human civilisation has been the people getting wasted on some kind of chemical substance. It is the unfortunate case about every aspect of human life that things which are bad for you will inevitably be more fun than things which are good for you. There are a million and one things that are potentially lethal to human life and serve no purpose apart from recreation that are perfectly legal, and yet most drugs are illegal and anyone who takes them is damned. A little unfair I feel.

Taken to my idealistic extremes I will quite happily argue for the legalisation of drugs based on personal responsibility, safety and tax revenue. But more importantly than that, and before we get close to coming up with a solution to the drug problem, we first of all need to take a much more mature and intelligent look at drugs than the bipolar 'these things are bad because we say so' argument that has so utterly failed so far.

The worst kind of hypocrites when it comes to drugs are those who will condemn any kind of drug use and yet quite happily sit there and sip their wine. It is an obvious point to make but it’s one that some people clearly can’t get their heads around: alcohol is a drug. An extremely dangerous drug. It’s highly addictive, causes major damage to your body and kills tens of thousands of people in the UK every year. And yet so many people drink it because it’s a highly enjoyable habit to have. Those people who say, ‘You don’t need to drink to have a good time’ are just bare-faced liars.

Alcohol is a drug that has class A written all over it, but I’m not concerned with the alcoholics who die from alcohol abuse. Nor am I concerned with the 48 people who died from ecstasy in 2006, or the 54 people who died from cocaine in 2004. Drugs are not perfectly safe, anyone who claims they are is a moron. If you develop an addiction to a substance, for whatever reason, then it’s more than likely that it’s not going to end well for you. That’s obvious and doesn’t interest me.

What interests me is the millions of people who drink alcohol who are not alcoholics. Those who have responsibility and mental stability, who know their limits and when it is acceptable to drink. You can see them everywhere, people whose lives are not ruined by drinking, who go out for a drink and still manage to be a normal, functioning part of society. It’s not that big a leap to realise that there are people who use other drugs in a similarly mature and measured manner. Just because the story of the person who took some cocaine to celebrate a promotion, partied all night, had a great time and woke up the next day and got on with his life doesn’t make the front pages doesn’t mean it never happens.

It’s patronising and insulting to the rationality and personal freedom of human beings to be told that you’re allowed to choose to take mind altering and damaging chemical substances in the form of caffeine, nicotine and alcohol for your own personal enjoyment but none of the other drugs because… well, because… er… ‘they’ say so? If as a rational thinking adult I am free to make the decision to have a few pints for my own personal enjoyment I should be allowed to say that I want to have an ecstasy tablet because it makes clubbing more enjoyable, or a joint because I want to relax with some friends and giggle inanely at youtube videos. It’s my body, my responsibility, I’ll do what I like with it. We allow pregnant mothers to commit infanticide based on the argument that it’s their bodies and their right. Can I please have the right to lie on the grass, take some shrooms and feel happy and content with the world?

A lot of the problem lies in the intensely personal nature of the affects of drugs. Most people know what it is like to be drunk, and how they behave after a few drinks. Some people become more aggressive, some become more confident, some think it’s the best time to burst into song and tell everyone just how lovely they are. Alcohol affects everyone differently because people are many and varied in their personalities. And other drugs are the same. They bring out different aspects of people’s personalities. While the physical process in the brain may be the same the mental effects will vary from person to person.

Despite this there is a perception that illegal drugs have a homogenous effect on everyone that takes them. It’s a ridiculous thought that just goes to show how little these people, who have a knee-jerk ‘All drugs are Satan’s sperm’ reaction to drugs, respect the individuality of humans. Taking an ecstasy tablet doesn’t transform you into some pre-defined ecstasy robot whose functions are dictated by the drug. The pill will temporarily affect parts of your brain, but how these affects manifest themselves depends entirely upon the personality of the individual. That’s why some people enjoy some drugs, some people enjoy others, and some find the whole experience too weird and off-putting. That’s their choice to make, the state can’t say how drugs will affect everyone and therefore how illegal they should be in the same way it can’t say that football is a better sport than rugby.

Drugs are a nightmare topic and there really is no easy answer. The idea of legalisation seems too ridiculous for many people to even begin to comprehend and there would be some serious consequences to such an act, not all of them good. But there is no doubt in my mind that our current attitude to drugs, from treating users as criminals to presenting only one side of the drug culture in the media, is fundamentally flawed and until there’s a more open-minded and even-handed debate on the subject the problem will never get close to a resolution.

Irrefutable Proof of God's Existence

I’ve always been a hardcore atheist. I’m not exactly sure what a softcore atheist is, but whatever it is I’ve never considered myself one of them. To me the world of religion was a world of fantasy, an ancient method of explaining the unexplainable that was no longer relevant or necessary in these modern times of rationality.

If there is a God, I thought, why has he abandoned us? Where are the miracles, the signs of his existence which seemed to be so common a mere two thousand years ago? Now my life has changed. I have witnessed a miracle. A sign. Proof from God that he is there watching us and cares for us.

I refer of course to this Countdown video.



On the surface it is nothing short of hilarious. Through apparent random chance and happenstance, Carol Vorderman has spelt out the word CUNTFLAPS on the board. There is nothing about this that isn’t comedy gold. However, if we scratch the surface of this comedy nugget we come to realise something of much greater importance on a spiritual level. God has sent us a message.

The two contestants playing the game are vicars. Or priests. Or some kind of religious morons anyway. They are the ones who are constantly telling us to search for God, to look for his actions. Well now I have. My eyes are truly open. Allow me to explain.

The Book of Daniel in the Old Testament contains this story about the feast of King Belshazzar of Babylon. In this story Belshazzar is an arrogant, power hungry king who believes himself to be invincible. Then at one drunken party, a hand appears and writes on the wall,

God has numbered the days of your kingdom and brought it to an end; you have been weighed on the scales and found wanting; your kingdom is divided and given to the Medes and Persians.

Clearly God’s vocabulary is different but his method is the same. God has sent us a message, using a most classical device. The clergy are a bunch of cuntflaps who have angered God and seek for nothing but to act like a bunch of twats and lower the universal consciousness of this planet. God be not pleased. That is what he is trying to show these priests. That they must mend their ways or lose themselves forever.

We must take strength from this miracle. It proves that God is not ignorant or blind to mankind’s suffering at the hands of the clergy. He is all too aware of how they have raped his good word and done all they can to hold back humans from advancing into the unknown possibilities of the Universe. Through Countdown, he has given us a sign that change is on the horizon. Not only that, but clearly God has a cracking sense of humour to boot.

All I can pray for now is that the clergy will heed this message from our great saviour and change their ways. For surely they will not be so arrogant as to claim that this event is mere coincidence. That is the way of the heretic atheist. When God sends a message as clear as this you’ve got to be a pretty big cuntflap not to realise its true meaning…

Stop The Madness

Again this is another article from a few months ago, I'm still transferring them all across slowly but surely. The message is, I'm sure, still relevant though...

So Manhunt 2, the new computer game from Rockstar, has been banned for sale in the UK by the BBFC. If your first reaction to that sentence is, “Oh it’s a video game, I don’t care about that kind of mindless entertainment” then reconsider for a moment. This isn’t just an issue over video games, this is an issue of censorship and as soon as that word appears everyone should take notice.

The reason given by the BBFC for the ban was the high level of “casual sadism” in the game, apparently the fact that you spend the entire game going round committing unspeakable acts of violence means that it’s not suitable for you, me, or anyone to play. I’m so sick of hearing this whole ‘violent computer games create a violent society’ argument that I now instinctively reach for a blunt instrument to bludgeon myself with every time it’s mentioned*.

The first thing to make clear is that computer games have been violent since their inception. In Space Invaders you weren’t playing the role of Ambassador of Peace to the first extra terrestrials to make contact with Earth. Instead you were the Ambassador of Dread, launching endless missiles at E.T. and the rest of his goofy buddies who had dared to stray on to your turf. And the trend has continued. Nearly every computer game involves fighting, destroying, capturing or blowing up some kind of enemy. For fuck’s sake, even Mario enjoys setting fire to any innocent turtle that strolls his way*.

The reason for this is that computer games rely on action. The reason they’re called computer games is because, wait for it, they’re fucking games*! Games of all types are based around competition and action. There needs to be something to compete against, to beat, to overcome. It’s hardly surprising then that when playing as a computer game character you have to attack or defeat something else that’s in your path. It’s possible to have non-violent games and concepts, the likes of the Sims and most point-and-click adventures, but they’re some pretty narrow genres.

But, and this is a really big but, all these people that keep pointing the blame at computer games for causing violence are grabbing the end of the stick that’s unfortunately been dipped in bullshit. Society isn’t violent because of computer games; computer games are violent because of us. Violence and death are two of the most intriguing and compelling things to humans. They are what intrigues and entertains us.

Just look at every form of entertainment if you’re unsure. Art, music, theatre, television, film. All of it involves violence or death in it somewhere. People live their lives constantly thinking about their mortality and the unanswerable question of death. Who has never walked over a bridge and felt a strange compulsion to throw themselves off, just to see what it’s like?

A combined desire to compete and a fascination with death and mortality are pretty much the two most powerful forces in nature*. It’s not surprising we’re so easily engrossed by these things and we enjoy them to the extent we do. It’s why when people play Tomb Raider they sometimes enjoy making Lara Croft hurl herself off a 100ft cliff to a messy, explosive end on the craggy floor below for no apparent reason. You do it not only out of curiosity but also because you know that a short loading screen later Lara’s going to be safely back on the top of that cliff ready to go for another 9.0 score from the judges for her triple somersault swan dive into solid ground. No consequences, no repercussions, nothing.

It’s why when playing Grand Theft Auto it’s hilariously good fun to smash over pedestrians with your car for no good reason. Why blowing a zombie’s head off with a shotgun in Resident Evil is enough to keep you chuckling for years. And why I’m sure sawing a hooker’s arm off with a hacksaw in Manhunt 2 would have been so enjoyable. Because it doesn’t matter. Never once have I paused and questioned my moral actions in a computer game. Not once have I felt genuine guilt for levelling a village of innocent people and slaughtering them and their livestock.

The fact that these violent decisions are so easy to make is what proves how little effect they have on people. The very idea of actually battering a stranger to death * with a metal pole is morally reprehensible and unquestionable. I wouldn’t hurl myself off a cliff Lara style*; I certainly wouldn’t actually run my car into pedestrians on a whim. This is the real world.

Just writing that sentence makes me feel like a fucktard for pointing out the obvious. We all know the difference. Honestly, we do. And when I say ‘we’ I’m talking about all 6,603,487,066 of us. Everyone can tell the real world from a fucking computer game. There isn’t anyone who can’t. Not even the most off-the-wall psychotic braindead Texan* could confuse a video game with the real world. If we couldn’t then surely we’d show a little more emotional connection when the body count hits the thousands as it does in some games.

“But when the first Manhunt was released that kid got stabbed and the 14 year-old who stabbed him was obsessed with playing Manhunt, therefore Manhunt made him do it!”

A convincing logical argument for the period it takes for the optical nerve to transmit the image from your eyes to your brain. What these special people are saying is that a kid who was violent and mentally unhinged enjoyed playing a computer game where you can be violent and mentally unhinged. So far so groundbreaking. But wait! their deductive powers don’t just stop there; using this evidence they firmly conclude that video games are what made him violent in the first place.

Now since I’ve been alive there have also been computer games, so I don’t know for sure what the world was like before then. I’m starting to worry that I missed out on some golden age that lasted from the dawn of mankind until 1971 where there was no violence. People suppressed their more aggressive instincts and didn’t lash out at anyone. Then game computer games were invented and Pandora’s Box spewed forth hate and violence into the world. Why Pong? WHY!?!

But then I stop worrying because I’m not a complete muppet. I’ve said it once, I’ll say it again. We were violent before computer games, we cause the violence in computer games because it’s entertaining to us simple humans, and it’s ok because we all know the difference between the magical Xbox world and this world we can actually touch. When young people go on killing sprees it’s tragic. So tragic that everyone feels guilty because everyone knows deep down that the responsibility lies with the rest of society to identify those people who are out of sync with the rest of us and treat them. It’s shockingly apparent that parents have a huge responsibility to look after their children and provide them with a stable upbringing. When these things don’t happen, sad things are often the result. But just because you feel guilty about your inaction and want something easy to blame, don’t try to ruin my innocent entertainment you pathetic cunt.

And part of being a parent is keeping your children away from overly violent imagery that may affect them. That’s why we have the BBFC and the whole rating system. These are adult games. For adults. If you don’t think your children should be playing these games then don’t let them. And campaign harder to make sure retailers are more stringent at checking IDs. Do whatever you want to fill the empty void in your lives where your sense of fun once was, but don’t let it get to the stage where we’re being told what, as rational and free-thinking, sane, balanced adult individuals we can and can not do for our own personal enjoyment in what is fast becoming the most exciting and revolutionary form of entertainment. If we start censoring now, it’s only going to get worse.

I’m off, if you want me I’ll be decapitating something helpless and innocent.

Kill Id

Superheroes are rubbish because their powers are so utterly unattainable. No matter how much you screw up your eyes and wish for it, you're never going to become invisible. Nor will you ever be able to fly, not least because the main technique adopted by most superheroes when it comes to flying is to stick two fingers up at every law of physics and gravity. Where's Superman's thrust, eh? Where the fuck is it*?

One superpower that at first glance appears really cool and is always presented thus is the ability to read people's minds. It's a power that is always shown in the same way too. Take Parkman* from the TV show Heroes for example. He seems to have some mental radio in his head that he can tune in at will to hear anyone else's thoughts. Mel Gibson in What Women Want was able to hear the thoughts of women in what was possibly the most sexist film released in the latter half of the 20th century*. There are at least 12 examples of mind readers in popular culture* and the thoughts they hear are always the same: a simple and clear snippet of speech that the other person is saying to themselves.

Now take a brief moment to sit back and think about what you're thinking. Yeah, that sounds a little bit confusing but you know what I mean. Think about all the thoughts, images, sounds, words, ideas, emotions and images of your mother naked* that pass through your head in any one instance. It's an immensely confusing cacophony of noise which you're constantly struggling with for control. Now imagine that you could hear everyone else's confusing babble of mental bollocks. If you had that ability your brain would be out of your nose and into a small bubbling puddle of mess on the floor within 17 seconds.

Of course even if you could work out a way to filter out all the crap and get some clear image of what the other person was thinking in their head it still would be a distinctly unpleasant experience. The reason being that people think bad, embarrassing, personal thoughts all the time. In any one conversation with someone a million inappropriate, ridiculous, offensive and puerile images pass through your head. People constantly think about horrible stuff and if that information were available to everyone else all the time humans would be solitary animals living in caves, each one trying to work out whether they're more disgusted at themselves for imagining their neighbour dressed up in a baby costume and suckling at their nipples just for fun, or at their neighbour for thinking the same thing*.

This is why humans have developed inhibitions, filters to keep the dark thoughts locked up. But the brain, specifically the subconscious, is an absolute bastard and refuses to take censorship lying down. I don't know what I did to annoy my brain, maybe I wronged it in a past life or something, but now it's filled with a thirst for vengeance. A thirst it quenches by humiliating and embarrassing me at every turn and generally eroding my life*.

I know that I'm not alone in this. Anyone who has ever of a night partaken in the consumption of a couple of drinks tinted with ethanol will know how the brain will leap on any opportunity for it to blurt out the most cringeworthy statement it can come up with. It's not your fault, you didn't mean to say that you think your friend is a hefty whining trollop who should get over herself and sort her life out*, but she wouldn't shut the fuck up and*, your inhibitions dimmed by the booze, your subconscious leapt in there and spunked out what you were thinking. Why? Because your brain is a bastard and hates you.

Even when you're sober you're not safe though. The subconscious adopts more covert, guerilla tactics to make your life a living misery. It mostly achieves this through guilt and love, the two main weapons in the subconscious' 'Gonna Fuck You Up' arsenal*.

Guilt takes on many forms but it all essentially boils down to the same thing: when you make the wrong decision based on what the voices in your head told you to do. When your alarm goes off at 7.30am on a cold winter morning and you're tucked up in a snug warm bed, every instinct you have is telling you to just stay there you are and let work deal with itself. Similarly, when confronted by something that you really want to buy even when strapped for cash, the mind invents a million different reasons why this purchase will revolutionise your life and make you a better person*.

It's only after the bloodshed and the tears that the guilt sets in, always caused by that one wish that you could go back and listen to the sole rational voice that had clearly thought things through. This voice is your conscious, the sensible planning area of your brain that is locked in a constant battle against the overwhelming, savage, barbarian hordes that make up the subconscious. It's hardly surprising the poor blghter loses so often. Some people might suggest that you should take some kind of personal responsibility, but these people are forgetting that the subconscious is a bastard that wants to hurt you.

As powerful a weapon as guilt is, it's nothing compared to the power of love*. If the subconscious is trying to confuse, disorientate and disturb us, which it is, then it has no better weapon than love. In the early stages the subconscious uses our inhibitions against us. It does, in fact, amp them up. So you become nervous in front of the person you fancy, tongue-tied, awkward, unable to express how you truly feel for them, until you're left as a gibbering wreck wondering why all those wonderful things you'd planned to say suddenly vanished from your mind the instant you saw the object of your desire. Meanwhile your subconscious is guffawing away at your misfortune.

Then it builds on this groundwork. It starts flooding your mind with images and thoughts of the person. You don't want it to, you're trying to move on and focus on other things, but the subconscious is a persistent bugger and it just won't let up. So your every waking hour is filled with thinking about the one you 'love'. You wonder what they're doing, what they're thinking, if they like you, if you should throw caution to the wind, seize them and make wild passionate love to them right there on the dancefloor*, never realising that there is no rational reason for what you're doing, it's just because your brain hates you.

If you're lucky the other person will be having the same screwed up thoughts about you and then bam! you're in a relationship. Now you don't only have to deal with one subconscious that's out to get you, you have to deal with two. Anger, jealousy and confusion. The three elements, so sadly forgtten by Hollywood, that make up the other half of love. The only parts of a relationship that are continously content and happy are the two subconciouses involved that have formed a mutual bond of affection together over working so hard to mislead and bring general hurt and pain to those who are ultimately just trying to fulfil a biological imperative. Sex is easy for animals because they don't have a little demon in their head which is trying to destroy their sanity.

Guilt and love are the two main examples, but the harmful effects of the subconscious can be seen in every aspect of life. Irrational mood swings, decisions, thoughts, everything is caused by a part of the brain that doesn't take too kindly to being restricted. It was partly for this reason that for a while I took part in an intensive marjiuana relief programme*. For whatever reason, I found that marijuana had an effect on my subconscious not unlike that of an elephant tranquiliser on a small yappy Yorkshire terrier. Marijuana makes everything about you content and happy, with no pesky emotions or conflicting feelings to get in the way of living.

Unfortunately the flipside of such extensive use of cannabis is an utter lack of motivation and the feeling that you're slowly fading away as a person. So now that I've stopped smoking every hour that God sends, my subconscious has woken up. And it's pissed off. What I really want is a superpower that enables me to wage a stronger war against the subconscious, that will tell it to 'fuck off' every now and then. But superpowers are another invention of the subconscious to make us feel inferior about ourselves. If I survive the year with my sanity intact I'll consider it a personal victory.

P.A.L.E.S.T.I.N.E. - E.N.I.T.S.E.L.A.P.

palestine is a country in the middle of the east that regularly appears in the news, but there were probably some facts about the country you didn't know about. until now...

first some history. before palestine was created it was actually going to be used as a nepal site. the country of nepal was going to occupy the territory and the two countries were close to going to war over the dispute until saint peel stepped in and decreed otherwise. this is why there is still a high level of distrust between the nepalese and palestinians.

the people of palestine are enthusiastic lovers of exotic animals; many families have at least one saline pet. the high salt count in the animals caused by their regular dipping in the dead sea. this is also why eel paints are so commonly used to mark the country's borders. these paints are made by squeezing the eels, the liver juices of which can then be used to paint the pâté lines. this technique was used when constructing the now infamous spite lane, a long strip where prisoners were paraded through to the jeers, taunts and rotten tomatoes of onlookers.

palestine also plays a key role in the entertainment industry. many of the very first tape lines were recorded in jerusalem on the now hard to come-by salient ep by the band steep nail. there is also an entire alpine set which has been used to film such hollywood blockbusters as 'on her majesty's secret service' and 'cool runnings'. the sequel to spinal tap, spinal tee, a mockumentary about the world of golf, goes into production there this autumn.

palestine was also the setting for the arabian nights story, penis tale. a raunchy erotic love story about a penis struggling to find love in the gaza strip. penis tale was removed from subsequent editions of the arabian nights for reasons of decency.

whilst many site america as been the ufo centre, it's actually palestine that has the most flying saucer encounters. it's become such a problem that hamas has now set up the alien pest bureau. this bureau is designed to tackle the problem of alien invaders, and a highly disciplined army has arisen as a result. the recruitment scheme works as follows: anyone entering the bureau is told, "silent ape!" the shocked and stunned recruit is then told to, "enlist ape!” which he subsequently does, after which his only orders are to, "listen ape!".

this military force has recently suffered from a bout of the snipe late disease, where the snipers have a two second delay between their brain and trigger finger, which caused the disastrous crash of a passenger plane when a sniper shot late, thinking it was a ufo, the bullet caught the tail of the plane sending it into a tail speen and crashing it. ironically enough, it landed on the plane site. a site dedicated to planes and their uses.

palestine's main industry is in snail peet. this peet is created by placing layer upon layer of snails on top of each other until the weight creates this kind of gooey snail paste, a rare delicacy in arabian kitchens and a good source of non-carbon fuel. however, the process has meant that palestine has had to adopt an antipsleep policy, to prevent the snails running off when no one is looking. penalties can be severe, if one is found asleep on the job a stale pine may be inserted into any orifice the justice system deems appropriate.

palestine: the state of wonder. go there and experience something you've never experienced before. for more information, visit silent pea, the palestinian tourist board website.

Opera Vulgaris

Here’s some things I’ve never done before: hunted dolphins, stuck myself to the wall with blu-tac, assassinated the sovereign leader of a country, jumped into a lion pit at the zoo*, and, perhaps most shockingly of all, before last night, I’d never been to the opera.

At school it had been easy avoiding social exclusion by pretending that I knew my Il ritorno d'Ulisse in patria from my Die Entführung aus dem Serail, but at university the embarrassment and humiliation from being one of the few not to have experienced opera was just too much. So when the opera was suggested for an evening of entertainment I jumped at the chance to rid myself of my embarrassing social leprosy.

The first thing that confused me on arriving at the Festival Theatre was the general age of the audience. Most of them had been present in at least three different centuries. They all kept glancing nervously at the steep gradient of the theatre steps, wondering how best to attack them without popping another hip socket. Where were all the hip young dudes? The crazy cats ready to have their emotions frayed and torn apart by the spirit of opera? There were a few young kids; the higher up you got in the theatre, the younger the opera lover tended to be so the top bar was practically empty, but we were severely outnumbered should it have turned nasty over a particularly saucy aria di bravura.

After all the usual non-stop hilarity of finding out seats and settling down I prepared myself mentally for what was about to happen. The only things I knew about opera were the bits I’d picked up from reading Maskerade time and time again*. I couldn’t help but be reminded of that whore from Pretty Woman who’s never been to an opera before, what with being a crackwhore and living on the street and all, and of course she loves it because Hollywood loves bullshit. Would the dulcet words of Richard Gere come true for me too*?

The whole thing got going in expected fashion, the orchestra started playing, people started walking about on stage. But then came the first snag of the evening, which really I should’ve seen coming. None of them were singing in English. This was going to make it a bugger to follow, no doubt about it.

Then I noticed what the large television screens in the boxes either side of the stage were for. Subtitles for opera. Genius! They would be my guide to the action on stage. Unfortunately it soon became clear that a lot of the emotional impact was lost this way. When characters are singing long, emotional, drawn out lines on stage and the screens simply state, “Edgardo. I hate him.” it somehow detracts from that all important emotional knee to the groin.

The plot kicks off like this: Enrico is trying to marry his sister Lucia to Arturo for financial reasons but Lucia is in love with Edgardo, Enrico’s sworn enemy. When Enrico finds out that Lucia and Edgardo are at the hanky and the panky he gets a little bit angry and comes out with a plot that reads like one of those modern day honour killings.

At least that’s what the screens would have me believe. However, my suspicions were first aroused when, at the emotional peak of the scene, when Edgardo is apparently saying that he’s going to slaughter his sister and her lover, the orchestra is playing a happy little ditty and everyone on staging is singing in an upbeat manner reminiscent of puppies on a warm spring morning. I began to suspect a disgruntled slide employee of tampering with the slides to change the story. Perhaps what everyone was actually singing was, “We’re very happy with our long sticks.”

Oh yes, the chorus. The poor bastards. All the male members were dressed up in black trilbies and long black cloaks and for some inexplicable reason carried sticks around with them that were twice their height. It was bizarre. I was hoping one would flip and cry out, “You. Can not. Pass!” but I was sadly disappointed. The female members were all dressed up in black with the same wigs, creating a weird homogenous blob effect. They spent most of their time just standing on stage listening. Some characters only job was to stand still on stage, listening to the action, and occasionally move. That was it. No singing, and no explanation for their presence. It looked like the most boring job in the world…

As Act I Scene I ended with revenge being sworn, the tragic heroine of the story, Lucia, entered for Act I Scene II. She was a buxom lady in ways that I am assured are in keeping with the finest traditions of the great female divas throughout the ages. I’m not entirely sure why larger ladies have such powerful voices. A quick Google turned up some stuff about fatty tissue around the vocal chords and larger diaphragms, but I reckon it’s something to do with the personality and good sense of humour these people are apparently blessed with. Whatever the reason, she had a voice on her that would make a dead man come*.

Lucia was going on to her friend (I think) about this vision she’d had at the fountain of a girl and the water running red with blood. It sounded like Lourdes if the Virgin Mother had been on her period. Then came on Edgardo*. The screens of lies said something about the two loving each other despite the danger, bobloblaw, but my attention was distracted when Lucia knelt down.

She was wearing a red dress that had a train so long that when she knelt down it looked like she was melting into the floor in the style of the T-1000*. I got caught up in this entirely different storyline in my head where she had melted into the floor up to her thighs and keeps begging him not to leave, and he keeps making to go before the guilt brings him back to this weird cripple that he can’t help but love. Then she stood up, shattering the illusion, he gave her a quick peck on the lips, fucked off stage and the curtain came down for the interval leaving me completely dazed and confused.

So instead of trying to catch up, I decided at the beginning of Act II to ignore the screens, which obviously had no idea what was actually going on, and instead focus all my attention on the stage. This made things instantly clearer. For example, time and time again at the beginning of a scene, female members of the chorus would walk across the stage carrying candles while people sang, to no explanation from the screens. Suddenly an entire sub-plot involving a cult and ritualistic sacrifices became apparent, the material obviously being too violent and explicit to translate into English given the high chance of heart attacks in the arcane audience.

Probably not, but I didn’t care. I discovered that the most fun to be had at an opera was to sit there and just imagine how you think the scene should be going based on the music and what’s happening on stage. I was starting to create my own ridiculous plot involving mafia weddings and plans to poke the King with long sticks, when all of a sudden Lucia burst on stage, covered in blood. I found this a bit hard to work into what I thought was going on, so decided to go back to the screens and find out what I’d missed.

It turned out that Lucia had gone totally batshit. Having being convinced of Edgardo’s infidelity, she married Arturo, then killed him, and proceeded to lose every one of her marbles. She wandered about on stage in a blood-stained wedding dress hallucinating about Edgardo and getting gradually more barmy until literally crazying herself to death after about 35 minutes.

Now this bit was sung beautifully and was well done, but I kept wondering why no one was stepping to stop her. Here’s the bridesmaid at her wedding, covered in blood and going round the twist. I was hoping someone would put a blanket around her, calm her down a bit and wait for the police to arrive and put her in a mental hospital. Not just stand there staring blankly on. Then Edgardo hears that she’s dead and decides that’s as good a reason as any to plunge a dagger into his stomach and again draw out his death beyond necessary lengths. “All a bit over the top” I initially thought.

But that kind of thinking takes all the fun out of opera. It’s all about the tragedy, the melodrama, the ridiculousness of it all. That’s what makes it all so appealing. At least that’s what I deduced from one trip to the opera. It’s a Red Wine type problem. I know what red wine tastes like, if I have one type of wine immediately after another I can identify the differences in the taste. But I have no idea what makes up a good red wine, how to tell one red wine from another, or any of that kind of thing. Same with classical music. I enjoy listening to it, but I’m buggered if I have a clue what’s actually going on. And cricket as well. No idea what the finer details of cricket are. These are the kinds of things loved more by older people. Maybe it’s something you learn to appreciate with age. Personally I enjoyed making up a story* and listening to voices that were so incredible it’s humbling.

Uninformed Murderers And Liars, The Lot Of You

People go on about human evolution, but human society hasn’t changed one iota since the first group of people built a wall around themselves and told everyone else to go fuck themselves. Oh sure there have been some cosmetic changes, but us cogs in the machine still have the same kind of hopes, dreams, pains, general bodily functions, as we did c.50 million years ago.

There are those who speak in disgust at the idea of gladiators in Ancient Times hacking meat off each other for the general amusement of the public, but death and violence are still what dominate our entertainment industry. Then there are the ol’ Victorian freakshows which everyone pretends to be horrified about before pouring themselves into the brand new super-deluxe freakshow for the 21st Century that is the celebrity industry.

If there’s one thing that represents a serious downward curve in the human evolutionary path towards a higher purpose, it’s the celebrity industry. Everytime a copy of heat, or any other kind of vacuous glossy shitmag is bought and someone earnestly sits down and takes an interest in all the pretty pictures, made-up stories, unimportant news, flimsy reviews, common-sense personal advice and plain hypocrisy, the human species as a whole takes a giant leap back towards the trees.

I used to think that the blame lay entirely with the celebrities. These shallow, money-grabbing, arrogant, talentless nobodies who can’t go without attention for longer than half a nanosecond before volunteering to humiliate themselves again in yet another degrading reality TV show. And it does, to a certain extent. But the real troublemakers, the ones determined to get us the ‘Worst Century for Human Evolution Ever’ title currently held by the 14th Century, are the stupid bastards who actually care about these nothingfolk.

Recently I’ve caught whiffs of the whole Britney Spears fiasco wafting past me like farts in the wind. Let’s make this absolutely clear from the start: the only important thing about Britney Spears is her singing. In the same way that the only important thing about Brad Pitt is his acting. That’s what their jobs are, who they are as people and what they do in their private life is entirely immaterial. They could mainline heroine into their eyeballs and enjoy regular bouts of pig fucking for all I care, as long as they can do their job what codgesnuffling difference does it make?

All the difference in the world apparently to some emotionally stunted shit-for-brain inepts. These individuals who feed and suck on celebrity gossip like bloated pubescent larva. Any story about the likes of Amy Winehouse smashing her head through a pint glass or Pete Doherty purchasing a new shoe stirs a feeling deep within these people not unlike the kind that perverts get when watching a snuff film. Sometimes they’ll make the arbitrary decision to ‘like’ the celebrity. They’ll get the idea that this celebrity is a nice person and should be sympathised with. Or they’ll go the opposite way and mock the celebrity to the point of ridicule.

How dare they? Genuinely how dare they? These celebrities are total strangers, all the information we get about them is horseshit churned out by PR machines and bare-faced tabloid liars. These voyeuristic bastards want to invade the lives of celebrities and uncover every facet of them for their own personal amusement. And they do so with no sense of irony or guilt. It’s a self-fulfilling prophecy that if you hound someone and put immense pressure on them they’re more than likely to mess their lives up with drugs and alcohol. If you really care about them, leave them alone. Let their private lives be private.

Look at it this way: imagine Facebook acted like the tabloid press. Every action you performed, every person you met, every drink you had, every word you uttered, was repeated and shared with the rest of Facebook. Not only that, but it would make up lies about what you had and hadn’t done. It would share embarrassing photos and everyone else would comment and laugh at you. If this were the case Facebook would be a cold, desolate wasteland on the internetwork highway, its space littered with broken hearts and suicide.

When taken to its extremes, this celebrity obsession does have some serious and hilarious (in a depressingly cynical way) implications. First off the bat is the death of Diana. Ten years on and I still don’t get this. Her life was pretty much ruined by the unwarranted public interest in her day-to-day actions. And in the end, the paparazzi pressure killed her. Then, in a stroke of genius, the tabloids managed to make it seem like they loved her all this time, the public went with it because they didn’t want to face up to the fact that they might have just slightly been responsible for murdering her, and so began the most pathetic period of mourning and people pretending they cared this country has ever seen.

But it didn’t stop there. Now we have this whole Madeleine McCann saga. Everyone has their own opinion about what happened to Madeleine. Some blame the parents, some blame the Portugese police and some believe she was kidnapped by Elvis. Unfortunately they all seem to be missing the key point that they don’t know jackshit and should all shut the fuck up immediately. Who are you to judge whether someone is guilty or not based on what you read in the papers? Do you think you have some keen insight into the case because you’ve read some sensationalist headlines? The job of the press and the public is not to act as judge, jury and executioner. Although the latter role has been pretty well adopted given that there’s nothing more likely to make a kidnapper slit a young girl’s throat and hide the body than making his victim the most famous girl in the world. But that’s just my opinion.

The fact that this cult of celebrity is creeping into the world of abducted children is weird enough, but the problem started long ago when it became acceptable to take average people and idolise them for no particular reason. There is a national thirst for fame and to have your 5 seconds of fame, but why? As far as I can tell having strangers pretend that they know you and judge you is one of the most hellish things in the world.

It’s all very simple: if someone is good at their job then they should be praised for their talents. If you want to get to know a stranger with a drug problem who can’t look after their kids then just turn left out your door and walk ten metres up the road. And please, I implore you, stop caring about fake bullshit personalities so that we can focus on the important stuff like advancing the human race and colonising Mars or something.

temporary blockage

i don't know if anyone will see this/notice/care but it's been bugging me that i haven't written or posted anything in over 2 weeks. however, i will do soon. i've just started on a new piece and everything. you can blame going to lectures, doing shows, new heroes, new house, new south park, new charlie brooker's screenwipe and halo 3 for my procrastination. or you can blame me.

comedy celebrity racists

i saw this today and thought i'd travelled back in time through the power of my mind alone. sadly not. time travel is still one of the many, many cool things beyond my grasp*. the whole affair is brilliantly sordid. i can just imagine barrymore socialising with these young, hip guys... the champagne's flowing, the drugs are starting to kick in, and there's a swimming pool outside should anyone be so inclined for some water sports. i would have loved to have seen his hilariously elastic face contort into a grimace of horror as, naked and covered in shit, he realises the fun and sex games have gone too far and someone's lost an eye. or become plugged up with drugs and semen in this case.

it reminds me of the scene from i know what you did last summer where the teenagers try and decide what to do with the body of the man they’ve killed. barrymore would be the quivering wreck of a teenage girl who's in over her head as everything falls apart around him and the police come searching for a suspicious body in a swimming pool because where else are you going to dispose of a corpse when you're off your head on coke?

unless of course it was barrymoore who was the one leading the gang rape, screaming for more as he buggered this poor individual until he could take no more, before fulfilling his sick snuff fetish by keeping the guy's head held firmly under the water, creating a vacuum between mouth and cock as the hapless individual sucked barrymore off for one final, fatal time.

which version turns out to be true is for the police to decide. i can only speculate. still, i can imagine the cries of, "not giltee!" that will be bleated out by the more docile in society. their foolproof* defense goes along the lines of, "i've seen him on tv and he looks like such a lovely man, i can’t imagine him doing anything nasty like drugs and anal buggery". i take a different view. i've seen barrymore on television too. i'm not surprised hosting some of that concentration camp television drove him to drugs and anal rape. it's a wonder he could keep the facade up for so long. how many other bodies are there barrymore? been receiving any calls from portugal or vietnam*?

it wouldn't matter if a thorough search of the barrymore mansion turned up a troop of castrated gorilla* sex slaves, some people would still refuse to believe that he was guilty. these fucktards who can't see through the implicit lies of telelvision and entertainment as a whole tend to be the ones who waste everyone's fucking time talking about the negative influences of media on society, ignoring unimportant factors such as parental upbringing and whether the person being influenced has an IQ above 80. i think of it as a form of pascal's wager. whether they're right or not, i want to do everything in my power to make sure i don't turn out like them. if that means being influenced by violent films and computer games then so be it.

i digress...* i like this kind of story because it reminds everyone that celebrities are just people. we shouldn't be so shocked and surprised when they do drugs, or have sex, or whatever it is anyone else would do in the same situation. but then everyone loves to have someone else to criticise because we're all such lovely human beings deep down. ok, so maybe what happened to this guy isn't your everyday affair but barrymore's such a natural comedian, i can't help but find it funny.

sometimes though i do feel sorry for the way celebrities are expected to be beacons of moral virtue, until i look again into the cold dark eyes of a killer...

p.s. i don't want to give her any genuine space but it’s along similar lines… i hear paris hilton's been crying in prison. good, i hope your skull gets smashed repeatedly against a prison wall in the middle of the day while the other prisoners and guards stare on with a quiet, blank look until your skull finally cracks and your brain bleeds out from your eye socket. the last sight i want you to see as the blood drips into your eyes, blinding you, is the way an entire group of people will finally execute you with complete indifference.

again, this was a note from back in june so it may not be cutting edge relevant, but if you were living in a far off nepalese mountain which it takes 4 months to get to then it totally would be. i like to thing of this blog as the nepalese mountain. if this pisses you off then just catch up on my facebook page.

Trivial Pursuits

The pursuit of knowledge is a wonderful thing. This constant, insatiable drive to learn, achieve and better ourselves is what’s caused humans to go from lion fodder on the Serengeti to sole dominators of the Earth. The list of human achievements is staggering. People always go on about animals, but animals are rubbish. All they do is shit, shag and sleep.

Humans have created art, philosophy, maths, science, architecture, we’ve fired each other into space for fuck’s sake! I say ‘humans’, but in actual fact it’s the few gifted individuals in every generation. Those revolutionary minds that can unlock the simple beauty behind the great mysteries of the universe. Meanwhile the rest of us lag behind and use their innovations to access porn and blow each other up in even more elaborate ways.

The great works of those who stand on the shoulders of giants are unattainable for most of us mere mortals, so instead we have another way to consol ourselves and feel more intelligent than we actually are: trivia. Trivia is the diluted form of years of hard work and research, distilled and bottled into interesting nuggets that make us simpletons go, ‘Ooh, what an interesting quirky fact about the world we live in’.

And it’s bloody brilliant. Like most people I hoard trivia. Any fact or figure about anything in the world that is vaguely curious goes straight in the trivia bank. Universities don’t do degree programmes in Trivia Studies, which is a shame because it’d be freaking soopoib.

The only factor getting in the way of this happening is the sad fact that trivia is absolutely sodding useless. It’s a real kick in the knackers because I spend all my time filling my head with trivia instead of apparently useful stuff like academic work, an up to date knowledge of my finances and where I keep my passport.

However, whilst trivia may be useless for practical things like earning money and proceeding in life, for recreational purposes it’s perhaps the most useful social tool we mortals have. What conversation is complete without someone dropping in some sparkly pearl of wisdom along the lines of how King Harold’s nickname was Bluetooth (actual fact)?

Mentioning little titbits of information about a wide variety of topics is a good way to start conversation and also create a complete intellectual façade to hide your lack of any substantial knowledge. It must be an attention span thing. My tiny little brain can’t concentrate on things long enough. The people who discovered that sperm have a sense of smell did so after many years of research, blood, sweat, and various other bodily fluids. And in mere seconds I’m able to take that fact and pass it off as something I know. Which must be annoying as hell to the people that put all the work in.

Unfortunately, as with every kind of uninformed oral communication, there’s a hell of a lot of bullshit to be found in the trivia field. When I first watched QI it almost destroyed me. With reckless care and abandon Stephen Fry ridiculed and rubbished trivia that I had previously held as common life-truths. Undeniable facts about the nature of things. Lies. All lies! Now it’s compulsive viewing for trivia fans, it really is quite interesting.

The daddy of all trivia shows though is Mastermind. It’s the Premier Leage for the trivia professionals. Those precious few who truly have made trivia their lives. The pioneers, pushing the boundaries of what can be achieved. They can be spotted in the pub quizzes, the teams who always seem to be there and always seem to double your point score, humbling your own aspirations of trivia skill. They are the renegades, the heroes of pointless knowledge. If only they’d get a real job. I mean, I suppose you could survive for a while on free beer and cash prizes, especially if you stick to a strict eight hour training schedule on pub quiz machines, but that just doesn’t seem healthy…