Another Year?

Another one? Where do these bloody things keep coming from? They're worse than Reader's Digest.
Having received an unbroken run of five spectacularly shitty years I suppose this next one will follow suit and head straight for hell in a handcart.
Hey ho.

As for resolutions for 2015:
I hereby resolve to get older and bitchier, to be more cynical, drink too much coffee, read books, moan about politics, mercilessly mock religion, swear a lot, read more books, jest in a most unseemly manner, spend money I do not have, act in as ungracious and curmudgeonly a fashion as is humanly possible and generally to fail dismally at love and life; resolutions I am confident of achieving with flying colours.
Happy crappy new year, peeps.

Sick of Snow

Architecture … It's a glamorous life. You get to drive a hundred miles in the snow, stand outside in a howling nor-easterly gale and look at a hole in the ground.
Then drive back again.
Whoop-di-doo.

Hum and Bug

Fuck it! I hate snow with a passion; a passion so intense that the like of it is rarely seen outside of Mexican TV soap operas.
You guessed it. Hiver est arrivé and with it the swearing.
Outside my window this morning the fields are as white as week-old dogshit.
If I had any money I'd get the hell out of this miserable shithole and move somewhere warm.
Donations gratefully accepted.

While I wait for the cash and plane tickets to roll in - and because I know you like that sort of thing and I'm a kindly soul - here are some of the Christmas lights from my second spiritual home of Piccadilly.

Note the hordes of Christmas shoppers. Having taken away all of our money, the government now begs us to "spend our way out of the recession."

Yeah? With what, you fuckwits? We don't all have a forty million pound personal fortune like "Call me Dave; I feel your pain" fucking Cameron.
You've taken everything we have, you utter bastards. You've given it to your friends (£9 billion in UK bankers' bonuses this year alone - and all this mess is their fault) who have hidden it offshore.
Spend your OWN way out of the fucking recession.
Gits.

Can you tell that Christmas is coming? If you're new to this blog, don't worry; it's like this every year.
Bah, and a great big dolloping side-helping of Humbug.

A Grumpy Old Man Writes …

Guess who's fifty-smegging-four today …
Yup.
And I'm grumpy as hell.
I get to spend my birthday driving to bloody Birmingham (the real one, not the one in Alabama) and my special birthday treat is attending an all day convention on dementia care home design.
Then I'll drive all the way back and fall into bed.
Party!
Not.

Modern Times (Again)

As my long term neighbours here in Blogville are well aware, I am a patient and easygoing man, rarely given to splenetic ranting. Certain things about this modern world, however, have been known to confound me to such an extent that I am pushed to verbal retaliation; the inexorable rise of the mobile telephone, for instance.

Just lately I have noticed another unfortunate trend (oh, and don't get me started on those 'trendy' morons who misuse the word 'trend' as a verb; they deserve to have their tiny dinosaur brains ripped out through their anuses by hordes of ravening mutant mole-rats and I am currently working on a viable method of achieving this, so watch out).

No, the trend of which I speak - yet another irreversible and slippery step downward into the fœtid  morass of cultural despair in which we helplessly flail - comes from the users of touch-screen mobile devices, who are now so inured to mindless, chimp-like finger-painting on their imbecile micro-screens that they become confused when faced with a professional using a real screen to produce real work.

Listen up (you know who you are): keep your filthy, arse-scratching, smeary, nose-picking, greasy, food-covered, stinking, mayonnaise-smirched, fat fucking fingers off my nice clean monitor screens, you unutterable bastards!

Message ends.

Halloween, Schmalloween.

I'm giving it a miss.
This evening I might sit in the dark and listen to Schumann's Geistervariationen (Ghost Variations - written when he was convinced ghosts were taking over his mind, during the writing of which he attempted suicide and then died in an insane asylum … yay fun), but that's about my limit.

The sad news is, we no longer do Halloween here. Or at least we no longer do it right.

A couple of decades back some idiot imported the nastier side of Halloween from across the Pond but never got around to importing the good stuff. We somehow managed to turn "Trick or treat" into gangs of teenagers in cheap Scream masks demanding goods with menaces, terrorising lonely elderly people and plastering the fronts of people's homes with eggs if they don't get what they want. I got that treatment regularly myself when I commuted to London and was unable to get home in time to stop it, and believe me, caked-on egg takes industrial machinery to get out of brickwork.

And yes, you heard me. I said the good stuff. Stop falling over and pretending to faint. I'm actually fessing up to being jealous of the Colonies for doing something right.

If there's anyone from England sneaking in here to read this, just check out Petrea's post from Sunday or Robyn's . I defy you not to go all gooey at these übercute kids from Robyn's Halloween Party  and you simply must go back and watch that wonderful Buffy Halloween episode (series 2, episode 6) to see what we're missing (apart of course from my favourite sexy witch Willow).

Back when I was a kid (around the end of the last ice age), the neighbourhood parents would get together and put on a great time for kids at Halloween. We dressed in old sheets, made paper witches' hats, baked potatoes in bonfires, carved swedes (that's the vegetable, not the people from Sweden) into little jack'o'lanterns (in austerity Britain pumpkins were for the rich) and bobbed for apples and played games while our mums and dads stood around getting quietly plastered and eating themselves silly. Good innocent fun. And nobody went around demanding "trick or treat."

Now all that is gone and I honestly don't know how to get it back. We seem to have had all the fun sucked out of us as a nation since Thatcherism destroyed the last shreds of our decency, Blairism drained us of our souls and Cameron the plastic-faced bankers' buttplug took away our jobs and stole all our money. England is a truly shitty place to live now.

It's been over fifteen years since I last saw a group of cute little kids all dressed up as ghouls and witches, politely knocking on doors and chaperoned by friendly parents (that was the time I asked the biggest kid how many of them there were so I could count out chocolate bars and he counted all the others and forgot to count himself - He looked so crestfallen I had to laugh but I gave him his chocolate anyway).

Now it's just gangs of thuggish kids and drunken teenagers in hoodies wearing cheap, unimaginative plastic masks instead of home-made costumes, sneering "Trick or treat" by which they mean "Give us sweets or money or we'll trash your house."
There's no dressing up, no community spirit, not a pumpkin to be seen in my entire village, no parades or neighburhood parties and definitely no fun. If someone decorated their house and front lawn like the one in Petrea's photo the kids would just destroy it.

For God's sake, America. Come over here and show us how it's done.
Please?

Fucking Fuckity Fuck

Fuck me.
I'm fifty tomorrow. How the smeg did that happen?

Time to wallow in self pity …

I wonder what seventeen year old Dive (lithe and toned and enjoying copious sex with the hottest girl in school - hi, Judith) would have done had I known that at fifty I would be a saggy, balding sack of shit, living a loser's life alone in the middle of nowhere, without a girlfriend for so many millennia that if a naked woman were to drop into my lap I wouldn't have the faintest idea what to do with her.
Add to that a seven hour a day commute through the lower regions of Hell, bed at nine o'clock every night, alarms shrieking at four-forty in the fucking morning, a social life somewhat less romantically eventful than that of Lonesome George (look him up) and nothing to look forward to until the merciful oblivion of death.

It's gonna be a fun birthday.

I very much doubt seventeen year old Dive would have said "Yay! Good one, dude. That's just the way I planned it!"

I've said it before and I'll say it again:
Roll on death
(it's like roll-on deodorant only much, much heavier).

At least I'm another year closer to it.
I am so fucking glad there's no afterlife.
Joy might say "Look forward to your next incarnation."
Shan might hand me a fire extinguisher and wave me off with "Good luck down there, you miserable sinner. Send me a postcard."
But thankfully, here in the real world dead means dead.
Finito.
Nada.
Oblivion.
A total cessation of the existence of self.
Forever.
Woohoo!
It can't come soon enough.
All that will be left of Old Dive will be the constituent atoms of my flabby old corpse which will be free at last to go off and do something more interesting, exploring the wonderful world of rotting and decomposition; whooping it up with all those fun chemical processes.

At least my atoms will have more fun than I'm having.

While I'm waiting for that I might as well use my fiftieth birthday as an excuse to be really fucking grumpy and to snap at people.
Not that there'll be any people to snap at; I'm working from home tomorrow.
With the curtains shut.
I might celebrate by slamming some doors.

In the evening I'll go to Japanese class and smirk at my shiny little teenage classmates so full of innocent hope for the future - HA! - smug in the knowledge that they've got all this crap to come - a lifetime of misery, despair, heartbreak and rejection, lost hope and failed dreams - and wondering if they'll fuck up their own lives as totally as I've fucked up mine.

At least that's an achievement of some kind.
I'm a first rate fuck-up.
In the game of life I've played to lose and have been spectacularly successful.
So where's my framed certificate of loserdom?
Eh?
Bastards!

What's it like, having a life, bloggy-people? I honestly can't remember.

And what the fuck DO I do with a naked woman should one drop into my lap?
Do they come with a Haynes Manual?
Or a tool kit?
Which hole do I blow in to get a tune out of one?
How do I change the plug?
Not that I'll ever get a girlfriend so you don't need to hurry with your answers.

Fuck fifty.
Fifty is the new bleah!

Can you tell I'm not at the peak of my perkiness today?

Regime Change

Some of you may have noticed with surprise that over the past few months, out of respect for my Republican blogpals I have - with a tremendous effort of will - refrained from posting about tomorrow's US Presidential election.

I have watched from a safe distance, with varying degrees of horror, fascination and hilarity, the Clinton-Obama bitch-slapping fest, Senator Mc.Cain betraying his own admirable liberal beliefs on immigration to secure the support of the white supremacist, neo-nazi bloc within his party, the exceedingly clever choice of a female Republican running mate when Clinton was dropped by Obama, followed by successive waves of horror (at the realisation that Palin is a God and gun nut) and laughing my fat ass off as soon as she opened her mouth and wrecked any serious chance Mc.Cain might have had.

I have sat and giggled at YouTube videos from both parties ridiculing the other (though I've yet to discern any trace of a policy from either side).

And I have kept my mouth shut until today.
Today, I am not a happy bunny.
Let's get the backlash in early …

While it is true that an Obama victory would be a huge leap forward for black civil rights and humanity in general and would be a cause of worldwide celebration (whereas a Mc.Cain victory would bring hope to the elderly and to Christian fundamentalists but send the rest of the planet running for cover), I remain cynical.

Republican … Democrat …
We've seen them chop and change so many times before and yet US foreign policy - both military and commercial - remains the same shameful and disgusting cesspool of greed, arrogance, criminality and cowardly bullying whoever is in power.

Not since FDR has the US Presidency been worthy of respect in the eyes of the world.
Much as it pains me to say it, I don't see an Obama victory changing a damned thing.

Sure, I'll whoop it up if he wins and start digging a fallout shelter if he loses, but will an Obama victory (even with a huge majority in Congress) bring about a Palestinian state on the lines of the UN resolution?
Will it bring about the end of the embargo on Cuba and compensation for that disgraceful policy?
Will we see a complete military withdrawal from Iraq and Afghanistan and genuine help to rebuild those countries along the lines THEY choose?
Will it bring about a sea change in US environmental policy?
Will it see an end to the terrorist destabilisation of legitimate and democratically elected left-wing governments in Central and South America by CIA subversion and financial and military support for illegal coups and extreme right-wing dictatorships?

Will we - in effect - see any vestige of respect for international law?

I somehow doubt it very much.

Sad to say, but if Obama becomes President, after the initial euphoria things will remain pretty much the same.

Over here in England we have a similar problem: people will vote for what they see as the lesser of two evils rather than any party that truly represents them. We have not had a major party worth voting for since the war. And those in power slavishly toe the US line in cowardly betrayal of any semblance of justice or indeed reality.

Democracy is a precious and a wonderful concept but we do not live in a democracy. In the current system our votes count for very little.
The United States Declaration of Independence states that:
"We hold these truths to be self-evident, that all men are created equal, that they are endowed by their Creator with certain unalienable Rights, that among these are Life, Liberty and the pursuit of Happiness. That to secure these rights, Governments are instituted among Men, deriving their just powers from the consent of the governed, That whenever any Form of Government becomes destructive of these ends, it is the Right of the People to alter or to abolish it, and to institute new Government, laying its foundation on such principles and organizing its powers in such form, as to them shall seem most likely to effect their Safety and Happiness. Prudence, indeed, will dictate that Governments long established should not be changed for light and transient causes; and accordingly all experience hath shewn, that mankind are more disposed to suffer, while evils are sufferable, than to right themselves by abolishing the forms to which they are accustomed. But when a long train of abuses and usurpations, pursuing invariably the same Object evinces a design to reduce them under absolute Despotism, it is their right, it is their duty, to throw off such Government, and to provide new Guards for their future security."

Tomorrow's vote will be yet another charade and a mockery of the principle of democracy.

For some light relief, here's Simon Schama in today's Guardian on the disgusting legacy of the Bush years that tomorrow's victor will be burdened with.

Grumble

I put my stupid back out last Thursday and it doesn't seem to want to get better; I'm still hicking around with a stick today.
Normally, this happens around once or twice a year; I'll do something utterly trivial, like lean slightly forward and BANG … Flat on my back for several days and then another week of hicking around with a bloody stick.
I'm sick of it.
Moan, moan, moan, bloody grumble and moan.
Having said that, I have at least had lots of good swearing practice.
Every cloud has a silver lining? Bollocks.
Every cloud is just another fucking cloud.

Happy days …

Crappy Answers To A Crappy Filler Meme

How fucking boring and worthless must my life be if all I have to do is sit here churning out this crap?
TOTALLY fucking boring and worthless, that's how much.
For what they're worth, here are my answers to that stupid meme … Probably best not to read this if you're about to eat.
And a huge thank you and lots of giggles to the fine folk who had a go at this yesterday. You are truly strange people and that's quality I admire.

1. When you were in the womb, what was the weird food your mother craved?

Nothing weird (at least she's not saying), but my mum ate tomatoes by the bucketful, a habit I must have picked up intravenously because I gleefully ingest industrial quantities of that yummy red squishiness to this day.

2. If you had to kill a fellow blogger, who would it be and why?
And no weaselling out of it. You've got to choose one of us and pull that trigger. C'mon! Have a little fun!

I would happily shoot that splendid chap Istvanski and steal his phenomenal guitar collection.

3. Do you own a pair of "cargo pants"? If so, do you know how fucking stupid you look wearing them?

Hell no! I see those hideous clown-pants on other people and shake my head in disbelief.
What in hairy hell do they think they look like?
Dorks; that's what.
They're almost as bad as those stupid fucking three-quarter length baggy trousers designed to make your legs look deformed, or those jeans with the crotch down at knee level that make you look (and walk) like an elephant has shat in there.
For fuck's sake dress elegantly you morons; the world is ugly enough without you adding to it.

4. There has to be a "who would you shag" question in these stupid things so let's make it personal: Which ONE resident of our little town of Blogville would you sleep with and why?

Sheeit. I wanted to say "All of you", but as it's got to be just one I'll narrow it down to those who live in the most beautiful places so when they throw me out on the street at least I've got something good to look at.
That means it's a toss up between Jules in Rabaul and Prudence in the NH Lakes …
Well; I tossed a coin and it's one of you lucky ladies. I'll not say which, but start barricading the door now.

5. Possibly linked to the above, which present from a prospective suitor would most impress you?
(a) jewellery
(b) flowers
(c) shoes
(d) a book token
(e) an erotically-shaped vegetable
(f) other (please specify)
I ask merely for information … ahem.

Me? A book token, every time! In case you're wondering, my favourite ones are the Waterstones' mock credit-cards with Charlie and Lola on them.

6. Which acting parts were you forced to play on stage back at school?
Be honest; we're looking for embarrassment here. Full stories, please.

Yikes! Non-embarrassing ones included:
Cassius in Shakespeare's Julius Cæsar (that was great fun);
Rosencrantz in Rosencrantz and Guildenstern are Dead;
Azdak The Judge in Brecht's The Caucasian Chalk Circle;

More embarrassing were:
One of a pair of star-crossed lovers in a Latin play about a luurve triangle. That was actually quite fun; none of the audience understood Latin and I got to push Tubby Cummings into a lake (a hole in the stage with a bathful of water in it) and snog token class fake-redhead Frances Cant (whatever happened to her? … and yes, Jules, there were lizards present) in front of the whole school and our parents …

I was also forced to impersonate a French schoolboy (don't ask) in the same production as the Latin play; only the timing of the evening's events got cocked up through illness and I had to get out of my toga and into a Froggy schoolboy uniform in the time it took for Lizzie Bruce to read a poem on stage (about two minutes).
The problem was that my Latin master had smeared a greasepaint beard on me for the "lover" part and the bloody stuff didn't come off, so I ended up playing a schoolboy in short trousers whilst sporting a rather splendid beard, much to the demented, shrieking apoplexy of my French mistress (actually, I kinda miss that about school; the opportunity to claim I have a French mistress without lying).

Plus various minor and less embarrassing parts way too boring to mention.

7. Hokay kids, let's talk phobias. What totally fucking freaks you out and leaves you whimpering for you mother?

Americans.
Oh, and daytime TV.

8. Which great opponent of Cartesian dualism resists the reduction of psychological phenomena to a physical state and insists there is no point of contact between the extended and the unextended?

Yes, of course it's Henri Bergson, but can you spot the quote? … (and no, it is NOT Cardinal Fang of the Spanish Inquisition as his version of that particular question stopped at "physical state"). I expect only Phil to get this one.

Well, Phil and me and Jules, anyway. It's the question John Cleese asked Mrs. Scum on the quiz show "Spot The Brain Cell" from Monty Python's Live At Drury Lane album; a childhood staple in our house.

9. How many fluffy, rubbery, plastic, wind-up, edible or just plain strange creatures inhabit your personal workspace and what are they?

One pink squishy stress pig, one foot-high rubber Gojira (the proper Toho Studios Gojira, not the crap American Godzilla), one cute, fluffy kangaroo in a bush hat (courtesy of Mme Benaut).

10. Memes are hard work to write. I am SO running out of ideas here … How about: Do you personally find your own genitalia attractive?

Ick! My ball sack has more wrinkles than the entire population of Florida but yes, I have a quite beautiful penis (when it's awake). I also have baby man-boobs and a cute ass if that floats anyone's boat.

11. Here's a topical one as the Olympics have just finished: Naked, greased and sent up to your room: Mark Spitz or Michael Phelps?

I'd have to go for Spitz; that moustache would turn any guy's head.

12. Great on-screen love affairs. Fess up; which one gets you hot/moist/whatever?

Raul Julia and Anjelica Huston as the incendiary Gomez and Morticia Addams.

13. Still on movies, who would you have play you in your bipoic?

Is Jabba the Hutt a real person?
Oh …
Okay then, I'll go for Keira Knightley. We have the same sized boobs.

14. What's your regular coffee shop order?

Medium skinny latte first thing in the morning; double espressos after that.

15. Give it up with two of life's great mysteries.

First up: why, oh why did Christina Ricci have to grow up? I was so in love with Wednesday Addams.
Secondly: Jennifer Aniston. What the fuck happened there?

16. What's the most disgusting thing you've ever eaten? We'll exclude "my own semen" from this for reasons well known to trawlers of my archives.

It's probably got to be my home made wasabi chocolate experiment.

17. Clowns; do they make you:
(a) Laugh,
(b) Sudder,
(c) Horny?

Clowns creep me out. I just wanna slap those fuckers.

18. Who was the last person you told to "Fuck off!"?

I think that phrase might have slipped in to the stream of rather inventive invective I screamed at a moron towing a caravan who had stopped in the middle of the dual carriageway to read a map while I was coming home from the city this morning.

19. An alphabet of "Who's the best" …
(a) Bond?
Connery.
(b) Batman?
Adam West. No Messing.
(c) Monster in Gojira movies (other than the rubbery one himself)?
Mothra. Yay!
(d) Member of Village People?
The cop. He was fucking hilarious.
(e) Member of the Banana Splits?
Why, Snorky of course.
(f) Simpsons supporting cast member?
Edna Crabappel (red hot mama)!
(g) Beatle?
Lennon.
(h) Magnificent Seven character?
Yul Brynner.
(i) Frasier or Niles?
Shit! I model my entire life on both of them but at a pinch I'd go for Niles as he's prissier and I confess to doing that thing with the hankie before I sit down in the coffee shop.
(j) Character in Doonesebury (my primary source for US politics since around 1970)?
Zonker Harris.
(k) Osmond?
Mawie. I love a girl who has cute "R"s.
(l) Disney baddie?
Cruella deVille, dahlings.
(m) Bond Girl?
Akiko Wakabayashi in You Only Live Twice. No contest.
(n) Bond villian?
Jaws, though Sean Bean did a pretty decent job in Goldeneye.
(o) Member of the Partridge Family?
Hoorah for sexy Susan Dey.
(p) Radio DJ?
Verity Sharp from Radio 3's Late Junction. I love her total bored disinterest in her listeners, her interviewees and anyone who isn't a rabid fan of Norwegian jazz and Tibetan throat-singing.
She also has sexy warts.
(q) Non-monotheistic deity?
Zeus was a tricksy bastard and quite fun, but I'll go for Shiva, the Destroyer … all those arms must make her a dab hand at the washing up.
(r) Fictional deity?
I always rather liked Terry Pratchet's "Oh God" Of Hangovers.
(s) Monkee?
Mike Nesmith.
(t) Witch: Samantha off "Bewitched", Hermione Granger or Willow Rosenberg?
Well they're all three cute and sexy but you know me; I'm a Willow Rosenberg man and I always will be.
(u) M.A.S.H. character?
Radar.
(v) Flintstone?
Betty Rubble. Hubba-hubba!
(w) Tom or Ray, off Car Talk?
Both of 'em!
(x) Jackson?
Rev. Jesse (I don't remember seeing him in the Jackson Five but my memory's not what it was so I'll just assume).
(y) Jedi?
Answer you I will, for Yoda it is.
(z) Member of your household?
Stouffer seems to have found a gun from somewhere so I think I'll agree that it's him.

20. An alphabet of "Who's the crappest" …
(a) Bond?
Timothy Dalton.
(b) Batman?
Val Kilmer. Twat.
(c) Monster in Gojira movies?
Megalon. I mean what the fuck?
(d) Member of Village People?
The Native American.
(e) Member of the Banana Splits?
Drooper.
(f) Simpsons supporting cast member?
The salty sea captain.
(g) Beatle?
Does not compute.
(h) Magnificent Seven character?
The annoying kid.
(i) Frasier or Niles?
There is not a trace of crap in either of them.
(j) Character in Doonesebury?
Rick was so lame.
(k) Osmond?
Little Jimmy.
(l) Disney baddie?
Captain Hook … What a non-evil let-down.
(m) Bond Girl?
Jill what's-her-face from that stupid one in Vegas.
(n) Bond villian?
Christopher Walken. What was he thinking?
(o) Member of the Partridge Family?
That shitty little ginger kid. If ever a kid was in need of a good slapping ….
(p) Radio DJ?
Tony Blackburn. Back in the good old days of Stiff Records in the seventies (remember my teeshirt: "If it ain't STIFF it ain't worth a fuck"?), Binky Baker had a hit with an anti-Tony Blackburn song, the first verse of which was simply Tony Blackburn's name sung over and over; each verse after that simply moved the syllables forward by one progressively until we got to the rousing fourth verse where we all sung "Burn Tony Black" at the tops of our voices. Ah, memories.
(q) Non-monotheistic deity?
Venus. Goddess of Love? Pah! She's done fuck all for me.
(r) Fictional deity?
Glorificus from Buffy. Boy, did that goddess suck. What a bitch!
(s) Monkee?
Peter Tork. Come on, people! What was he DOING there?
(t) Witch: Samantha off "Bewitched", Hermione Grainger or Willow Rosenberg?
So tough! I've got the hots for all of 'em but I'll call Samantha the lamest as she was too dumb to ditch Darren.
(u) M.A.S.H. character?
Frank Burns … Duh.
(v) Flintstone?
Barney. What the hell did Betty see in that dumb schmuck? She should have been mine … MINE, I tell you!
(w) Tom or Ray, off Car Talk?
Neither of 'em!
(x) Jackson?
The Plastic Pædophile himself (alleged, of course … ahem).
(y) Jedi?
Lame Luke Skywanker. Probably the crappiest lead character in a movie ever!
(z) Member of your household?
Old Dive, of course. So lame-ass that I can't even think of anything to post except this shitty biscuit of a meme.

Feeling Snarky

Sheesh!
I'm up at six, slaving in front of a hot stove, getting ready to represent England and our glorious cuisine at the Norwich Festival of Cultures (don't ask).
I hate English cuisine. I NEVER cook it at home.
If anyone asks me to tell them about England I'll just point to the ground and tell them "You're standing on it."
I've been looking forward to this for weeks and then the trains were so crappy yesterday that I ended up running really late and suddenly all the enthusiasm evaporated and I really don't feel like doing it at all. I hate it when that happens.
Hey ho. Back to the kitchen.
Work work busy busy chop chop bang bang …

Jumpy

What's wrong with Mondays?
That's what I want to know.
They always used to do it on Mondays. Regular as clockwork. Four weeks out of every five, some inconsiderate fucker would jump under a train.
Always on Monday.
Always on my line.
Always in Essex (which at least is understandable; anyone finding themselves in Essex is bound to feel suicidal).

Today is Tuesday and we have just had two of the selfish little buggers (so far).

I've offered before and I repeat the offer here: if you feel like killing yourself by jumping under a train on my line, come and see me first. I'll be happy to kill you myself and be saved the hours of delays.
Plus - if I'm feeling generous - your relatives will have something to bury; not just a few gristly lumps in a plastic bucket and a damp patch on the verge where the rest of you has been hosed off the tracks.
Oh, and if they're going to leave flowers, tell them to leave plastic ones; it gets so dismally depressing seeing the piles of rotting vegetation festering there for weeks (though the sad little helium balloon at the Manningtree daughter/mother double jump was pretty funny).

Surely nothing in life could be so bad that dying in Essex seems preferable. If you really feel you have to top yourself, go and do it somewhere nice.
Just don't do it on my line you inconsiderate bastards!

Koons Balloons Swizz

Stupid fucking newspapers!

There it was, splashed across all the papers this morning; a big, shiny, purple Jeff Koons balloon flower "on the lawn in St.James's Park, London, where it will remain on display until it is auctioned off on Monday."

So … Off I toddled to the park.
Could I find it? Could I buggery!
"Ah," said the park attendant. "It's not coming until tomorrow."
"So where did the papers get their photos?"
"Dunno … But it wasn't here."

Hey, fucking ho.
I wandered back to the office and took a closer look at the photos in the papers.
Hang on a mo … Some of the photos had buildings in the background. There are no buildings like that anywhere near the park.
This one had it sitting in the water.
The only thing sitting in the lake was a bunch of birds.
Swizz!
Fucking crap journalists!

I'm as grumpy and unimpressed as old Mister Pelican, especially as it will only be there for the weekend while I'm in Norfolk so I'll miss it.

Arse!

Disco Boy

Yup; another lyric title; this time good ol' Frank Zappa.
"Disco Boy … Run to the toilet and comb your hair."
To take my mind off the pain in my foot, Katie had me singing "Disco Inferno" at three o'clock this morning (see yesterday's comments).
Which kinda helped …

But it also reminded me that I have never really understood the strange beast that is the "discotheque."

Of course, back in the golden age of my youth there was no such thing and life was blissful in the Garden of Eden.
People danced to live bands.
They talked and socialised in the intervals between sets.
Life was intercoursingly groovy.
People even wanted to listen to a bunch of teenagers playing Mahavishnu Orchestra, Yes and Focus songs.

And then it all went poo-shaped.

I remember the first time I met a discotheque.
It was the early seventies and we had been having problems in the band with girls inexplicably wanting to listen to David Cassidy and "go down the disco" in preference to watching a spotty kid in glasses play a twenty minute guitar solo.
I still can't figure that one out.
Sigh …

Much against my better judgement I decided to see what was so wonderful about this "new craze" that would drag girls away from real music.
So I got dressed up in my best flares and a flowery shirt with a collar that would not look out of place billowing from the mast of an America's Cup racing yacht.
To which spectacular sartorial splendour I added the indescribable aroma of Brüt (the ad for which had elderly boxer Henry Cooper growling "Splash it on all over!" … probably not the most alluring image for teenage girls).
Thus rendered as irresistible as I could be to the fair sex I ventured forth and … er … bicycled into town.

Where I forked over perfectly good money (something I still resent having had to do) only to find myself in a large, dark room with some flashing lights and somebody playing records loudly.

What the fuck?

People were actually PAYING to have someone play records at them?
I could go home and do that.
With far better records!

So I did.

I've never been in another one.
My drummer couldn't figure it out either.
"I mean what the fuck's that all about? It just goes THUD - CLAP - THUD - CLAP on and on and on. Where's the skill in that? It could just as well be a bloody machine."
Prophetic words indeed. I have quite a collection of drum machines.

Years later I found myself booked to play in a grown-ups' disco, or what was termed a "night club".
It's the only time I've ever been in one of those, too.

My idea of a good time would never even come CLOSE to … er … jigging up and down in a sweaty crowd in the dark, having people scream into my ear to be heard whilst paying more for a round of drinks than I did for my car.

Somebody PLEASE tell me: What the fuck is the point of discos and nightclubs? Why do people go there?
To scream at strangers in a dark room?
To get covered in beer and sweat?
It can't be to socialise as you can't see or hear one another.
Help me out here.
What's the story?

It's not just that I'm old; I felt the same way at thirteen.
Sometimes I feel that not only was I born in the wrong decade, I was born into the wrong species.

Oh, Crap. Old Misery Is Back.

Lynn has tagged me for a meme.
Luckily for you, it's a short one; one of the old classics that are still floating about out there.
The meme instructions are:

1. Write your own six word memoir;
2. Post it on your blog; include a visual illustration if you'd like;
3. Link to the person that tagged you in the post, and to the original post if possible;
4. Tag at least five more blogs with links;
6. Leave a comment on the tagged blogs with an invitation to play!

Now you know me; I love to break chain letters and I never tag, so this is the end of the line for this meme.
And I'm sure "memoir" is the wrong word, but since most memes come from the language-strangling, Bushism-infested Colonies I'll have to endure it.
Hey ho.

Old Dive summed up in six words.
That's never going to happen as I'm so voraciously loquacious; a logorrhœiac of monstrous and tedious pretentiousness. Concision is something that happens to other people.
As I'm such a first class indecisive waverer, I'll have to sum up Old Dive in a shortlist of six episodes of six words each:

- Why does my head always hurt?

- Life is hateful; roll on death.

- If you exist, God, SMITE me!

- I want it all to stop.

- Happy, happy, happy, happy, happy, happy.

- Filling in time, waiting for death.

I suppose the last one would be the one I'd choose at a pinch. That's what I'm doing. Simply spending the rest of my days searching for pleasantly futile things to do until the sudden confused "Oh, shit" as my heart pops.

You can tell I'm enjoying life at the moment, can't you?
Mostly because Old Dive is back to being single again, singing Smiths' songs and wearing black, but also because some fucking kid offered me his seat on the tube last night.

I knew it would have to happen some day, but it was still a shock.
I just glared at him for a few seconds and said,
"Fuck; do I really look that old and infirm?"
He tried to back off and say "No, no. I just thought you might want to sit down."
But the damage was done.

Actually we had a bit of a laugh about it but I now know that I've entered the next awful stage of my life.
It was as horrifying and ego-shattering as - back in my teens - the first time one of the local kids called me "mister" instead of "Dive" and I realised I would have to go out and face the world at some point as a "grown-up".

Now I have to face it as an old bastard.
All I can say is "Look out, world; you're gonna regret this."

Cynical Invective Day

What with all the Coast posts, I'd completely forgotten it was that time of year again.

What I said about it last year cannot be improved upon and bears repeating, so here it is again:
"Ugh!

Yet another Hallmark Shareholders' Smirk Like A Twat Day.
A day when I'm filled with hatred and bile toward a disgusting capitalist shithole of a company that thrives on people's guilt.
Every year sees yet more spurious Hallmark Days where we are suddenly made to feel like uncaring or uncharitable asswipes unless we cough up and pay the cock-faced Hallmark tax.
Fucking hypocritical, profiteering, wank-brained, manipulative, thieving, shit-headed, emotionally blackmailing cocksuckers!

I make no apologies for the swearfest as it's been thirty years to the day since I received a genuine Valentine's Day card and I'm in a right strop.

I'm going to go home and slam all the doors."

Right … That's cleared the air.
I'm gonna be skulking in the house today, behind locked doors. It's a leap year and I don't want any of the scary, turnip-faced local weemen proposing to me.

Groucho, Ergo Sum

February …
What the fuck's the point of February?

Just twenty-eight days of cold, miserable, shitty weather, broken down trains, twats who cough and sneeze and sniffle all over me on the tube, darkness, depression, howling gales, chipping ice off the car, inflated heating bills, more broken down trains, more fucking darkness and the unutterable misery of Valentines, the Hallmark Tax Day in the middle of it all.

And this year, some incompetent fuckwit decrees that we suffer an extra day of it!
Leap year my arse!
Just because some prehistoric dickwad couldn't count properly we have an extra day every fourth year.
How crap is that?
And couldn't we have it on the end of May, when the weather's nice?
Someone fucked up, that's for sure.

When I die, if it turns out there really is a God, I'm going to kick His arse so hard!

On the up side, that has to be my best post title since Iraqtile Dysfunction.

Grumpy Meme

Today has been one of those days, so I'll let Mister Grumpytrousers play with one of Maria's old memes that Terroni and Vic found:

Where is your cell phone? For the last time, I do not have a fucking mobile phone!

Vehicle? Small, black, sexy.

Hair? Making a pretty darned successful bid for freedom.

Father? Roistering in the Halls of Valhalla.

Your favorite thing? My old Gibson Les Paul. We've been together and in love since 1969.

Dream last night? One of my regular ones, which involves chatting away with various people while ENDLESSLY packing away mike leads and equipment after a gig.

Favorite drink? Water/Coffee/Green Tea; depends on my mood. Or scotch.

Room you are in? My office in Westminster. Looking out the back window I can see the spire of St.Paul's Westminster (The RC Catherdral) and out the front, the tops of the Eye and Big Ben and Victoria Tower.

Your ex? Ming The Menstrual. Thanks for sixteen years of physical and mental abuse. I've learned to live without it now.

You are? Old, tired, grouchy. Roll on death.

What do you want to be in ten years? Dead and gone.

Who did you hang out with today? A bunch of snoring, drooling people on the 5:40AM from Norwich to London, a bunch of sweaty, coughing people jammed into a tube train and a bunch of boring colleagues at the office.

What you're not? Pretty, witty nor gay.

Muffins? Bollocks. Plain croissant every time.

One of your wish list items? For it all to just stop.

Where is the ____? Fucked if I know.

The last thing you did? Sipped some green tea and started typing this sentence.

What are you wearing? Black.

Your pet(s)? A wyvern. Plus I think I have a ceramic toad somewhere.

Your computer? An ever growing army of Macs.

Your life? Filling in time, waiting for death, as are all the rest of you.

Your mood? Black as my sweater, but nowhere near as soft and fluffy.

Missing? The body I had thirty years ago.

What are you thinking about right now? What a fucking stupid question that is.

Your shoes? Black.

Your work? Designing girls' schools.

Your summer? Hateful but for two days.

Your favorite colour? Black (you couldn't guess)?

Don't Call Me.

Telephones.
I hate the fuckers.

You all know my views on mobile telephones, but I think my advice to the fuckwits who use mobiles on my commuter train bears repeating:

"Now … heads up, mobile phone users. If you don't want to be wearing that thing up your arse, here's a little piece of advice (this is best read slowly and clearly, as if to a small child):

• First up: the concept of the "telephone":
If you speak into your "telephone", the person you're connected to can hear your voice coming out of their "telephone". Just because they may be miles away doesn't mean you have to SHOUT to make them hear you.
Related to this point: If you cannot hear them clearly over the noise of the train, shouting at them is unlikely to resolve the problem. They will, in all likelihood, be holding their phone at arms length because you're so fucking LOUD! It also causes other mobile users around you to stick a finger in their ear and raise their own voices, and is therefore counterproductive.

The urge to talk loudly if you cannot hear somebody else speaking is caused by "Basic Stupidity".
We now move on to "Advanced Stupidity".

• "Hi. It's me. I'm on the train".
Whoever is waiting for you at the end of your journey (and one day it might be me, with a nasty headache and a baseball bat), you need only call them if you MISS the train, or if it breaks down. Should your partner be so insecure and pathetic that they need to be constantly informed of your whereabouts, ditch them NOW and get a life. Grow up, for Chrissakes!

"Postgraduate Stupidity" includes the following:

• The constant, repetitive and loud barking of the word "Yeah" merely informs those around you that you are a moron who would lose a drooling contest with George Bush.

• Using your inane laugh as punctuation when you speak merely highlights the fact that the tedious drivel spewing from your mouth does SO not justify your whinnying cackle at the end of every boring sentence. If you were that funny, we would all be laughing. Look around you. We are not …

• Secretaries: If your boss fucks off early, leaving you slaving late in the office, then phones you from the train to ask about some email or tell you something he should have told you before he left: get a new job. He is a worthless piece of shit who clearly does not deserve you.

• In the thousands of train journeys I have suffered since the dawn of mobile technology, I could count on the fingers of one hand the words I have heard bellowed into phones that actually needed to be said. THINK before letting a carriage full of annoyed people know how utterly worthless your life is and how fucking BORING you are.

• Your ringtone is neither cool nor amusing."

As well as hating those fucking things and wanting to kill - in amusing and protracted ways - anyone who uses one near me, I hate ALL telephones with a vengeance.
The thought of having one actually follow me around gives me the creeping horrors.

I seem to have developed a kind of phone-phobia over the decades.
Every piece of bad news, be it deaths, disasters, heartbreak and general "change my life in a really unpleasant way" crap has come at me down the phone and I shudder with apprehension whenever one of the bastards rings.

Six people know my phone number and I really wish they didn't.
And they know to only phone me between 8 and 9 PM as the mute goes on after that and ring all you like, I'm not going to hear it.
If what you have to say is not worth popping round to say to me face to face, then it's probably not worth saying at all, so shut the fuck up.

Emails are bad enough, in that - if one doesn't wish to appear rude - they demand an instant reply.
I wish to appear rude.
I wish we could all just go back to writing letters.
That's one of the things I like about blogging (and why I don't leave my email address where people can see it); that I can communicate with my blogpals when I feel like it.
When the phone rings I'll often just ignore it as shouting "FUCK OFF!" can sometimes set a conversation off on the wrong foot.
I'm an antisocial and grumpy old fucker and I'm only good to talk to when I'm in the mood to talk.

This has been a public information announcement for those who don't like to be told to fuck off.

L'enfer, C'est Les Autres … Again

Maria posted a splendid piece today, rightly bemoaning overheated bookshops and under-heated cinemas and giving some justifiable reasons why the modern cinematic experience sucks such huge and hairy wide-screen arse.

As I turn fifty this year there will probably be a plethora of posts about how much nicer things were back "in the good old days"; that golden age of Cold War, cold houses, outside toilets and creepy old men stalking schools with canes in their hands.

This is one of those.

Let's follow Maria and start with "going to the pictures".
Back in the olden days, my small town boasted a magnificent, art deco cinema called The Regal; a monstrous cavern of a place that doubled as a proper theatre, with an orchestra pit and full stage.
It also had toilet facilities stuck out at either side, accessed directly off the auditorium, with convenient fire-escape doors so that every gang of kids only had to send one paying kid in through the front doors while the rest waited for him to nip to the toilets as soon as the lights went down and to open the fire doors. We would then all hide in the cubicles and sneak in to the cinema two or three at a time during the ads before the first feature.
Each eternally sunny and wonderful Saturday afternoon during my youth, every parent in town would send their kids to The Regal for the matinee performance; it was the only opportunity grown-ups ever got to have sex.
And we loved it. A whole afternoon's worth of glorious, huge-screen entertainment for nine-pence (a little under 4 pence after decimalisation).
At tea time, the doors would burst open and the streets would be full of joyful, shrieking children armed with pretend swords or pretend guns, depending on whether we had seen Errol Flynn or John Wayne, re-enacting the past few hours of swash and buckle, and making their way home to their strangely smiling parents.
It was bliss.
Really!
Of course all kids walked (or ran) back then; right across town to school or the cinema or the surrounding fields with all of our mates. There were no monstrous four-wheel-drive behemoths blocking the streets, or pathetic "people-carriers" each containing one idiot parent and one small child who never gets exposed to the outside air.
Today's children are rapidly evolving into gross globs of fat who will soon lose the use of their legs due to being ferried every-fucking-where by over-protective, drooling imbecile parents. Most of them have already developed allergies, asthma and diabetes from lack of exposure to fresh air and to other kids' germs and are drowning in their own fat from a diet of deep-fried "recovered" gristle.
Fuck 'em. They deserve to die horribly and so they will.

I digress (as usual).
Back in the world of "the pictures", things suddenly went very wrong …
The first I knew of it was when we went to Norwich to the ABC cinema, only to find the big auditorium had disappeared and had been replaced by five tiny little boxes with paltry, home-movie-sized screens.
They called it a "multiplex".
Yeah, right.

Suddenly all the joy had been sucked out of the cinema.
We started going to the Odeon instead (The Regal had already died and been tragically resurrected - zombie fashion - as a bingo hall), but a year later, the Odeon too succumbed to being chopped into small, crappy pieces.
Then they closed the ABC altogether, re-opening the building as an amusement arcade (for fuck's sake)! The ABC was eventually replaced with what was promised to be a fabulous, custom built cinema "complex" but turned out - inevitably - to be a bunch of industrial tin-sheds with some neon lights on the front, each containing ever smaller screens, like a Russian doll, and all showing the same fucking "blockbusters" as everywhere else.

I rarely go to the pictures these days, except to Norwich's wonderful alternative cinemas at Cinema City and The Noverre, where I can sit amongst quiet, like-minded people and watch black and white movies or subtitled foreign films on a single big screen.
The "multiplex experience" these days involves paying an exorbitant amount of money, walking down a dingy corridor and into what would have (in the olden days) been called a private viewing room, which - as Maria points out - is invariably freezing; finding my shoes sticking to the filthy floor and being surrounded by noisy, inconsiderate dolts who bellow and shriek throughout the film and invariably include (always sitting really close to me) a pair of twats eating popcorn with their mouths open, making the most disgusting noise imaginable.

Popcorn …
Why?
What fucking idiot thought it would be a good idea to sell huge buckets of fat-covered crunchy stuff in a room where a film is being shown?
If it's not popcorn it's fucking crinkly wrappers.
These places have become the equivalent of the "anti-gym", where fat fucking retards congregate to slurp, crunch and loudly masticate their way through gallons of wet sugar and buckets of greasy cholesterol.
How the fuck am I supposed to hear the film? It sounds like feeding time at the hyena enclosure.

These days, if I want to watch a "blockbuster", I stay home with a DVD.
I have a big screen Mac, a comfy chair, a non-sticky floor, a phone with a mute on the ringer, a glass of scotch and most importantly of all, no fucking people.