Life Lessons

Road hog

If I’ve almost killed one student, I’ve almost killed athousand of the ignorant fuckers. Living near a university campus means a daybarely passes when I don’t find myself bearing down on some undergrad or otherbefore pulling over onto the side of the road to sick up into my own lap withterror. This, though, has sod all to do with the state of my driving. It’s allabout the inability of said Pot Noodle enthusiasts to tear themselves away fromtheir mobile phones before leaping from the kerb.

Tell you what, for what should be the most intelligent groupof people in the country it isn’t half heavily populated with idiots. Or thesuicidal. I haven’t yet decided which. Either way, they step, lemming like,into the road with such frequency that I’m wondering whether the local bywaysshould  be populated with emergencytelephones like the Golden Gate Bridge.

What the fuck is wrong with these individuals? Exactly howhard can it be to check the road before stepping onto it? And what in the fuckis happening on their phones that’s so much more important than protectingthemselves from the bus that’s hurtling towards them? They must be in receiptof some stunning information, if it’s enough to blind them to a steaming river ofvans and lorries.

I dunno, perhaps they’re furiously texting state secrets orreceiving incoming messages about the development of their terminal cancer.Surely, these emergency missives wouldn’t contain anything as unimportant aspictures of kittens wearing moustaches or offers at Bargain Booze.

Seriously, driving a car around here is like a test ofendurance. And being aware of the idiocy of the local undergrads I’ve developeda road awareness of Olympic proportions. Yet, astoundingly, it’s still notenough. Exactly how many times have I reversed in a car park, after severalchecks of my mirrors and blindspots, only to suddenly find my rearview window filledwith the whites of a student’s eyes? Too fucking many. That’s because it doesn’tmatter how careful you are. A lecture-bunker could leap out at any givenmoment, like demented flashers, from the bushes.

It’s hard to believe that these festering gimps will one dayrun the country, lead our government or develop our cities. If their foresightis anything to go by we’re fucked. Armies of fascists could be scrambling theirway over Dover cliffs and they wouldn’t notice.

Of course, all this is based on the premise that thesepeople are still alive 20 years from now. At this rate, that’s laughingly unlikely.So rather than braking, perhaps I should be revving. Something tells me I’d bedoing the nation one fuck of a favour.

Art Attack

I just like blue, innit

Youknow what makes me ever so slightly nuts about modern art? Not the art itself,no. In fact the art itself I love.What makes me wantto run through a gallery with a flame thrower, though, is the little explanationsthat accompany said pieces of art. Jesus, what stunning displays of completeand utter bilge.

In fact, I reckon that these little plaques which have beenadorned with 200 words of festering bollocks are works of art in themselves.How else could you explain the levels of creativity employed to make a canvasof splodges appear to be the work of the giddying extremes of humanity?

This is partly down to the fact that I have my own mind.Look, if a lawn mower strewn with condoms and bunting is your contribution tothe world of art, fine. Just don’t tell me what to fucking think about it, OK?

Yet my loathing is more down to the irrepressible poncinessof said descriptions. No one ever accompanies their work with a plaque thatsimply says “I just like pink, that’s all” or “It’s something I knocked upwhile I was watching Corrie.” Oh fuck, no. I get the feeling that anything lessthan three paragraphs of indecipherable toss and a reference to an abusive pastgets you chucked out of the club.

In fact, one way to pass the time while surrounded by modernart, however much you love the stuff, is to play bullshit bingo. Just look outfor the following words:

• Juxtaposed
• Vagina
• Reference
• Idealised
• Coherence
• Juxtaposed
• Dialogue
• Penis
• Organic
• Femininity
• Encapsulation
• Juxtaposed

And that lot is just to accompany the building works thatare currently going on in the reception area.

I once had to be removed from the Geffen Contemporary at MOCA in LA after reading 500 words about one tiny pencil mark on ablank wall. Then there was that moment in Madrid when a white canvas was saidto represent my very own ovaries. And in the Glasgow Museum of Modern Art,after learning how a pile of bricks and drainpipes represented the journey offeminism, I filled an entire page of its guestbook with my own lengthyexplanations. I do believe that had my fellow visitors been playing bullshitbingo they would have then spotted the words:

• Cobblers
• Ponce-buckets
• Conceited
• Stool-water
• Spleen
• Bastards
• Don’t
• Sausages

So spare me the convoluted imaginings of exactly why a onedollar note has been pinned to the wall, will you? And don’t bother with thedeep and meaningfuls over an empty milkbottle that’s been balanced on ashoe. You’ll get more admiration from meif you put your wittering to one side and just admit that you think it lookskinda cool. Oh go on. It’s called showing originality, isn’t it?

Talk Talk

Connolly's not here yet?

Oh Jesus. By all accounts Michael Parkinson – professionalYorkshire-born gruffbag  – is coming outof retirement to host his own talk show again. Just what telly needs, yetanother outlet for celebs to have themselves tickled under the chin.

Now, Parkinson would quibble at that description, I have nodoubt. It’s clear from his quotes about his latest televisual skirmish that hethinks he offers viewers something new. He grumbles: “If you look at Graham(Norton), Jonathan (Ross) and that chatty person (Alan Carr), the host is asimportant as the guest. That’s fine but there isn’t the kind of show that Iused to do...We’re kind of stuck in this area where it’s all about humour. It’scertainly not about interviewing.”

Well, fuck me. Call Billy Connolly. And David Beckham. Oh,and Billy Connolly again, because every time they’ve appeared on his show inthe past (they’re on some 3-week rota or other) they sure as shit don’t get thebusiness end of Jeremy Paxman, do they? No, they get to breeze their way thougha few carefully chosen anecdotes at the growly nudging of best mate Parky whowould rather renounce flat caps than offend them. It’s celeb chin-tickling atits fawning best so it beats me why Parkinson has the bulging hump over thelikes of Norton and Ross.

And, yeah, Parkinson may be remembered for his must-watchinterviews but they are now dust-bunnies under the futon of modern telly.Muhammad Ali? His last interview with Parkinson was in 1981, thirty one yearsago. And Rod Hull and Emu? That was in 1976, thirty six years ago.

Problem is, the world, telly and the juggernaut of celebrityhas changed since then. If Parky thinks he can take his pick of A-listers andgrill them until they sweat spinal fluid then I fear he is deluded. Their PRs would be all over him like syphilis and the show producers would live in fearof pissing off the screen meat. His no-nonsense recipe for a show would soon bediluted and before you know it he’d be interviewing Billy fucking Connolly forthe fifteenth time.

All of which means that Parkinson needs to wake the frig up.Unless he really is going to make a new interviewing mark and to fuck with themodern etiquette of celeb-loving, that is. Otherwise we’d better gird ourselvesfor yet another foray into Connolly’s well trodden past. Oh, and another andanother...

Beauty Myth

Shut it, Hurles

Liz Hurley. Isn’t she just vile? I’ve just had one of herquotes pointed out to me, a jumble of words that have made me search for acorner in which to vomit. And while this quote was uttered many years ago, byall accounts, it’s still worthy of my rage, as are most things that I come acrossthese days.  Here you go, here’s the Hurleygem: “I’d kill myself if I was as fat as Marilyn Monroe”.

Oh. My. God. There are so many things wrong with this vapidfucking statement that I’ve had to invent numbers to count them all. It’s just11 words but they carry such a burgeoning amount of snobbery that it’s amazingthat the sentence hasn’t collapsed in on itself, creating undiluted evil.

For a start there’s the suicide reference, a boggling reactionto the piffling issue of putting on a few pounds. Not for Hurley, the prospectof suicide as a reaction to the death of her entire family or the loss of allof her lower limbs in a bomb attack. Christ no. Instead she keeps a stash ofparacetamol and razor blades next to her weighing scales in case her entirelife is inverted by the appearance of an extra ounce.

Then there’s the laughable comparison of herself with MarilynMonroe only for her to conclude, by her remark, that she is thinner andtherefore better than the bombshell of blondeness.  Fuckety-fuckety-fuck. First, the only way youcould put Hurley and Monroe in the same category is by identifying them both asfemale. That Hurley thinks she is up there with one of the most beautiful womenin the world displays a giddying lack of self awareness, a bit like David Cameronbelieving that he’s actually improving the NHS.

Worse, Hurley has then studied Monroe’s curves and definedthem as fat and therefore as ugly. Oh fucking hell, Hurley, spare me, will you?Not only was Monroe the definition of womanliness,  so it’s no surprise that Hurley doesn’trecognise it, but she was hardly trapped in her bed under 40 stone of suppuratingflesh either. Monroe? Fat?  Then pass methe Mars Bars because I’d prefer that to looking like the lettuce-suckingHurley.

Anyway, tell me who is more fun to be with, who is moreappealing? A gorgeously curvy woman who knows exactly how to treat a chocolate éclairor a hatchet-faced stick insect on alert for rogue calories? Quite.

Which is why Hurley’s statement blows holes in the beautymyth that she’s surrounded herself with. It’s brimming with ugliness,bitterness and self-obsession, none of which makes Hurley the beauty that shethinks she is. Shrivelled. That’s the word that springs to mind. Inside andout.

Dog Days

I blame Dastardly

Shit on a shovel. Literally. Orshould I say shit in a sack. Again, literally. 

I've noticed a bleak trend on my daily constitutional along apopular walking trail near my cave. Dog shit, strung along fences and treebranches like festive turds. Steaming mounds of poop festoon trees like baubles andfence posts like finials, thinly disguised in red, yellow and green plastic.

Course, you know what this is allabout don’t you? Arse-brained dog owners who have the scant capacity to cleanup after their squatting hounds but clearly not enough left to then dispose ofsaid outpourings in a way that doesn’t make you want to put your own eyes inthe bin.

Tell me, boggled reader, just who doesthis? Who puts their dog’s shit in a poop-a-scoop bag and then hangs it on atree or fence? At what point does that constitute cleaning up after your pooch,exactly? Yes, the offending turd has been picked up off the ground and that fulfilsthe first portion of the cleaning up process. However, it has then been drapedon the adjacent flora, thus, as far as I’m concerned, obliterating the firstact so completely that it’s like the Hiroshima of dog walking.

What a stunning fucking disconnect inthe minds of these idiot dog owners. It’s as if their brains short circuitmid-cleanse and they suddenly wake up to find themselves clinging onto a bag ofshit before casting it into a tree in a blind, amnesiac panic.

It’s also so astoundingly selfish thatmy own brain short circuits at what this means for fellow path users. And youknow what it does mean? That some poor fucking council worker, who gets paidsod all to roam the area with his litter picker, has to collect up these arselygifts like a cat burglar with a fetish. It also means that the rest of us havetheir glorious spring walks regularly punctuated by the sight of trees thatactually look as if they’re growing their own tag nuts.

Worse, the area in question actually hasbins for the disposal of dog shit. Yes, bins. In which bags of turds are placed.A stunning invention, I’m sure, but one that has passed by these dog ownerscompletely.

So perhaps I should start stalkingthese fat-handed twats, collecting up their stinking decorations and strewingthem about their own gardens in the dead of night. I mean, who needs petuniaswhen poo will do? Bastards.

Flight of Fancy

I feel your pain

No, no, no, no, no, no, no. No, KLM, abso-fucking-lutely no. It has been brought to my attention that the airline KLM has launched Meet & Seat, a service that allows fellow passengers to view your Facebook and LinkedIn profiles and then find out where you are sitting on the flight you are sharing. You know, just in case they fancy passing the time by indulging in a little light harassment.
Oh my giddy God, what in the fuck is KLM thinking? That it just doesn't carry enough stalkers on its flights? Or that not enough passengers end up sitting next to people they hate? Ok, so you have to sign up to this service to allow fellow passengers to see photos of you snogging at last year's Christmas party on Facebook but why the fuck would anyone do that? Even in the name of networking and good business practice are you really going to leave yourself open to the wiles of any old crotch grabber who happens to share the flight with you?
Worse, the service is currently only available on flights from Amsterdam to New York, San Francisco and Sao Paulo. You know what that means, don't you? That you won't be lumbered with some business obsessed bell-end for just an hour. No, no, no. You'll be forced to make small talk over your poxy in-flight catering for anything up to eleven hours. Eleven fucking hours!
Christ, I feel the need of a scalding shower just thinking about it. Imagine settling in for a long flight with a good book and pressure socks only to have some nutbag with a comb-over give you the hard sell on some new breed of semiconductor all the way to San Francisco? Sod the added security. I'd chew my way into the cockpit and plunge the plane into a nosedive with my own bloody hands.
And what's with this need to make every second of every day profitable or valuable or useful? What in the frig is wrong with just watching a film, listening to music or reading a book? Christ, do we even have to be networking at 3am somewhere over the Atlantic?
Oh, spare me KLM, spare me. If I wanted to spend the best part of 12 hours with a loon I'd catch a bus to Broadmoor. I sure as fuck wouldn't pay your inflated prices to do it. No. I'd use that money to buy a seat with a security guard instead.

Word Up

Yup, I'm talking to you

Far be it from me to get arsy about anything. You should know by now that I'm a seeping heap of serenity and calm. Except when it comes to the misuse of apostrophies, a practice so spleen-explodingly evil that I harbour fantasies of thrashing literary miscreants with a copy of The Oxford Guide to English Useage.
Jesus, not a day goes by when I don't see such reprehensible sights as 'Vegetable's for sale' or  'Terrys Bike Shop' or 'Its time for tea'. For fuck's sake, you have to wonder what the point is of English teachers, when so many people leave school with the glaring inability to stick a punctuation mark in the right place.
Worse, though - much worse - is that signwriters, the very people who use the English language for a living, are just as incapable. What the frig is with that? Imagine if a brickie didn't know how to use a trowel or a nurse was bewildered at the sight of a syringe? You'd me more likely to employ Harold bloody Shipman on your ward than someone so incapable of the basics of the trade.
Yet there are signwriters who rape the English language every day of their lives but, miraculously, stay in business. How can you not know where to use an apostrophe when it is your fucking job to use apostrophies? Eh? Go on, signwriters, explain that one.
And, Ok, Joe Bloggs the butcher may have asked for a sign that reads 'Quality meat's inside!" but surely it is then the signwriter's job to take to one side the purveyor of said produce and point out the error of his ways. Well, you'd frigging think so, wouldn't you? If, as a journalist, I was asked to write sentences backwards I'd make it known that the request was a bag of bollocks. Why signwriters are incapable of doing that is bloody well beyond me. 
Which means that until said profession bucks the fuck up I'll have to keep on correcting their mistakes with a fat red pen. Someone's got to teach them how it's done. Well at least while thrashing people with a copy of the The Oxford Guide to English Useage remains illegal. Shame.