Topical Thunder

Imagine sitting in a tiny cell for 12 hours a day with nothing to do but constantly get up to hand ignorant fuckwits a key that they bark the number of as they walk through the door. Imagine doing that for seven days a week. Welcome to my hellish existence. And people wonder why I sometimes appear to be a miserable cunt. Yep, my job involves little more than what I have just described, only augmented with a liberal dose of boredom and a good dollop of feeling like a worthless bitch. So, the next time you may think your job is dull or maybe a little monotonous, spare a thought for me sat in this horrible, tungsten-lit nightmare...where every fucking day is exactly the same. Groundhog day ain't got shit on this...at least Bill Murray could kill himself in inventive ways, safe in the knowledge that he'd wake up again the next morning to the ambient chords of Sonny and Cher. Damn him and his fortune. Damn Bill Murray to hell.

Just seen an advert in the jobs section at the back of The Sun (the newspaper, not the heavenly body) that is advertising a position with a salary between £40k and £100k per annum. What is slightly bizarre though, is that it doesn't actually state what the job entails...just that you need your own car. I'm guessing for that kind of cash, it won't be delivering Grattan catalogues to council houses in Merseyside. Saying that, it could be delivering catalogues to houses in Newcastle - the massive wages coming in the form of danger money, what with that nutter running about with a shotgun up there. Topical and humourous? That'll be me. Guffaw.

It's 'Air Day' this weekend at the base that I'm currently calling 'home.' What this means is that the airfield will be opened up to thousands of plane-spotting geeks and their spoilt, bratty, posh children so that they can wander around taking photographs of old planes and marvel at the Vulcan bomber as it soars overhead burning thousands of pounds worth of aviation fuel every few minutes. Not that I'm all about berating the Vulcan. I've seen it flying a few times at various airshows I worked at whilst I was a recruiter, and it's a pretty impressive sight. I'm just being a moany biatch because I hate my job (see paragraph one, above). That's enough cock and bull for one day. See you next time for more of the same. Bye!

Minimal Pretention

Hello. You must excuse my absence from bloggage...it's just that nowt has really been happening that I thought anyone would want to read about. Saying that - does anyone actually blog about stuff anyone else wants to read about? The answer is: NO. I've been looking at some other blogs on blogger, and the vast majority are complete and utter arse. I'm not saying that the shit I write on here is any less arse, but at least I fucking know that what I compose comes under that heading. I can't actually explain why I get so riled up about this, but blogs with stupid, in-jokey names and have posts about the most mundane crap written in some kind of obtuse manner in order to make the author appear to be a troubled literary genius...well, they fuck me right off. Don't use long words where you can use a short one, dickhead, because contrary to what you may think, it actually just makes you look like a fucking cunt. Oh, and you're not a troubled genius - you're a pathetic amoeba scrawling excrement all over the internet and nobody cares what it is you're scrawling, big words included. So there. And my dad could beat up your dad, too.

As an experiment, go to the top of this page and click 'next blog' or whatever it is in the blogger navigation bar thingy. Chances are, the next blog will be some minimalist bullshit with a little entry written about raindrops on a window with a sultry image of the author holding a rose. FUCK OFF! I wouldn't mind if it was meant to be a joke or something, but the vast majority aren't! Aaaaargh!

Anyhow. Now I've got that off my chest...what else? Went and watched Shrek Forever After the other day with 'er indoors. A word of advice: never go to watch a kid's film at 6pm. Because, invariably, the theatre will be full of...erm...kids. As this one was. Fucking thousands of the little cunts. All screeching and whooping and cackling at the screen. Now, I realise that what I'm saying here is making me sound like Victor Meldrew...but fuck it - I don't give a toss. The film was pretty good...the surroundings slightly annoying due to having to strain to hear the film over all the prepubescent hollering. Furthermore, when we emerged from the cinema, I managed to fall down the steps and land on my back like a complete retard. Winner!

The day after, I went down to Plymouth and got hammered. Which was all well and good...except the drive 'home' on Sunday was slightly emotional due to the fact that I kept (almost) nodding off at the wheel of the inglorious Proton. I stopped a few times in order to get it together, but it was no use - I just had to power through. Got back in one piece though, so it's all good.

Look, I told you there was fuck all interesting happening at the moment.

Another rant though: Facebook. Again.

Right, on my phone (Palm Pre), I used to be able to access three different versions of Facebook: The official Palm 'app,' the official Facebook 'touch' site, and the actual proper version of Facebook that you get on your PC. Now, for some reason I can no longer access the proper version of the site, just the two cut-down 'mobile' sites. These are all well and good for updating statuses etc, but they are too basic to do anything else...you can't view photos without the thing locking up, you can't view photo comments, you can't actually do anything of any real use...in short, it's fucking useless. The thing is, somehow, the powers that be at Facebook have engineered it so that you can no longer access the full site, even if you put the normal url into the address bar...it just reverts to the 'touch' version. Why? WHY?! Fucking arseholes.

I'm off to look at some more pretentious blogs with stupid names. Adios!

A Thousand Words

Have a look at these two pictures:

Do I really need to say anything? Well yes - I do, actually. That first picture...why did the artist see fit to include the broken pots on the right? There's a naked guy with a face in his chest wandering around - surely anything else in the picture is purely academic? And the bottom one...what the fuck?! Jesus after a car crash? No - apparently these two creations are actual mythical (oxymoronic) 'beasts' from cultures around the world. I don't know about you, but a guy running about with backwards legs is hardly the stuff of my nightmares...but hey. Who am I to argue with shit cultures from foreign lands?

Speaking of foreign lands, Jamaican rozzers have arrested a 'suspected' drug lord who goes by the name of Christopher Coke. Could his his name be any more apt?! Chandler mode de-activated. I'm bored, by the way. Just so you know. I was going to do a post about how much I hate my job and how shit everything is, but what's the point? Every cunt thinks I'm a moaning twat anyway, so why fuel their bonfire by confirming it through well-written, humorous, Booker Prize-worthy prose? They can suck my 12ft cock, to be sure. To be sure.

Hurry up and get here, Sunday night. You herald my release from this work-based prison of boredom and my one-way ticket to drunken buffoonery. Can't wait!

EDIT: I deleted the top picture because I was accused of being rude. There are some fucking assholes on the internet aren't there? The artist probably only realised I'd posted it here because they Googled their own name or some shit. Tragic twat.

Small Pleasures

Life is full of small pleasures. From the sound of cartoon bluebirds tweeting outside the window every morning, to the smell of freshly cut grass and sizzling bacon. Some may also cite the tarring and feathering of a black person in this category, but I don't, as such an activity being carried out by myself would probably make me some kind of racial hypocrite. But I digress.

Today, I discovered a new small pleasure:

Yep, it's Original Source Mint & Tea Tree shower gel. What's so great about shower gel, you may be thinking. Well, apart from the divine menthol fragrance that eminates from the dark green slurry once it is ejaculated from it's plastic prison, Original Source Mint & Tea Tree has a little trick up it's sleeve (?). When one applies said gel to one's scrotal region, the sensation can only be described as 'pleasurable,' and I'm also reliably informed that if you shave your bean bag prior to applying a lather, the experience is magnified thrice-fold. Guess what I'll be doing next time I visit the shower. No, not that - you filthy fuck.

But don't take my word for it, people: in the immortal words of Art Attack's Neil Buchanan (above left, in the shower, yesterday) - "try it yourself!"

Wonder what would happen if a female experimented with the stuff. Hmmm. Answers in the comments box, please.

In a slight change to the tone of this post (it was getting a bit on the perverted side - I know), I've recently learnt of Nintendo's successor to the Nintendo DS, the imaginatively monikered Nintendo 3DS. Who the fuck comes up with Nintendo's hardware names? OK, Wii is a departure from the norm, but the vast majority of their consoles have been pretty obviously named: Nintendo 64 was a Nintendo console with a 64-bit architecture; Gamecube was a cube that...er...played games; DS had Dual Screens etc etc etc. So, with the 3DS...you get, well, a 3D screen! You read that shit right, Sherlock - it's a Nintendo DS-style contraption that plays games in 3D...but without the need for 3D specs! I know it sounds mental and hard to believe, but according to the various reports that have come out of this year's E3 convention, the technology is pretty darn special-looking.

Here's what one looks like:

So yeah, you can see the similarity with the DS but it's the specs-less 3D technology I'm excited about. And it's not crappy old red & black pseudo-3D like you got with the Virtual Boy (I actually owned one of those, back in the day...and it was shite); it's genuine, full-colour, Avatar-esque 3D...BUT WITHOUT GLASSES! This kind of shit is what I used to dream about when I was a nipper...and now it's real! Also, a lot of the launch titles seem to be re-releases of old N64 games but re-invented with 3D imagery in mind. This shit makes me want to rub more Mint Source on my balls right now, and make no mistake. I want 3D Mario Kart, and I want it right fucking now, Nintendo.

I've honestly not been as excited about getting my hands on a new piece of gaming kit since I saw the first fuzzy, low-res screens of Super Mario 64 in CVG Magazine back in 1995. I was always more of a Sega/Sonic man when it came to allegiances, but as soon as I saw Mario in 3D, I knew I had to have it and an Ultra 64, as it was still known as then. That's what it feels like now. Call me sad if you want - yes, I'm 28 and I'm getting a boner for a fucking games console...but FUCK YOU! I don't care! Nintendo 3DS - you will be mine, oh yes...you will be mine.

Right, I'm off for a shower. Peace out, ma bitches.

Clutter Snipe

I've been a bit of a miserable cunt recently and I've let a few things get out of hand, so what I propose to do from now on is try to keep myself busy to take my mind off all the less appealing events that have been going on recently. So, the first things I intend to do are finally have a good auld fucking tidy up. You may remember how I waxed about being evicted from my house-share a few weeks ago via text message. Well, since then, I haven't actually unpacked any of my belongings or clothes - I've just thrown them into a big cupboard in my room and left it all in a big heap, leaving me rummaging around for items of clothing whenever I need them. Not an ideal situation by any means, so I need to sort the detritus out and put it in some kind of order.

On the subject of my recent eviction, once I had got back to my previous (or is that current?) dwelling, I noticed that I was slightly lighter on clothing than I thought I should have been. After a quick call to one of my previous housemates, I discovered that I'd left a load of clothes in some draws in my old bedroom. Shortly after this call, the cowardly bastard of a landlord texted me to tell me he was leaving my clothes in a bin bag outside the back door on the following Sunday. Fucking charming behaviour for a middle aged, apparently professional adult, eh? What a cock (sucker). Hope him and his live-in closet boyfriend go on to be very happy in their own little version of Narnia.

I also need to tackle the obscenely scruffy article that is my car. Since I used it to move all my shizzle from the house of a thousand pillow-screams, It's become something of a shit-tip. Food wrappers, empty bottles, old shoe boxes (?) - it is just full of crap. It needs a damn good internal clear out and a good scrub on the outside too. It shall be returned to it's former glory and regain the crown of best mid-range family saloon driven by a family-less bloke in the South West...you mark my words.

So what else has been happening? Well, it looks as though my time as a glorified security guard/boredom researcher is coming to an end - and thank fuck. I can honestly say that the last 6 - 7 months (of my employ, naturally) have been pretty damned dire. Overall though, said months have been pretty interesting and, let's say, 'character building.' Sometimes, random sequences of events pepper your life and they can leave you head-fucked and completely at a loss as to who you are, where you're going or where you've even been. My sequence of events, I'm sure, have been going on for a few years now, but I just need to re-address how I'm looking at things and move on. So that's what I'm doing. If not physically, certainly in an emotional sense. And the first thing I'm going to do is sort my clutter out.

Insomnia

Christ. Feel like I'm some kind of ethereal trance as, for some reason, I haven't been able to sleep for the past few days. I'm currently working nights (that is, from 6.30pm through the wee hours up until 6.30am), so as soon as I finish my shift I try to get my head down. However, due to some fucked-up disorder (or whatever it could be described as), I'm finding it very difficult to drift off to slumberland during the daylight hours. Makes me kind of glad I don't live in Alaska or wherever it is that the sun doesn't set for 6 months. Perpetual daylight would no doubt inevitably lead to my premature death through obscene tiredness and exhaustion. On the flip-side, living in such a location would also mean 6 months of perpetual shadow, meaning I would probably have to go into hibernation like some kind of bear/human hybrid. I'd gladly take that though, if it meant I could evolve massive Grizzly-style claws with which to gouge out the eyes and throats of my enemies.

But yeah - back to reality, and here I am - bleary eyed, feeling light-headed and fuzzy and oh so tired...but without the physical means to actually go to sleep. Could this be the fabled insomnia? Whatever it is, I'm going to invest in some sleeping tablets if this crap doesn't sort itself out over the next 24hrs.

I'll keep you pos...zzzzzzzzzzzzzzz

Excursions

Hello there. Been an odd couple of weeks for me, and I've been all over the place so not really had the time or the inclination to post any of my usual brand of shite on here. I'm back at work for the next two weeks though, so I should be spilling my mind onto the tinterwebs with alarming regularity over the next couple of (well, 14) days. So what's been occurring then?

Well, last week I ventured out of the south and headed back up to the Great Industrial North (tm) for a week of head-clearing, reflection and relaxation. Inevitably though, it just ended up being a bit of piss-up that lasted for 5 days. I had every intention of going up there to just chill out and get some good running and cycling done, but due to recent events my mood was slightly awry and this was perceived by most of my friends and family (Gawd bless 'em all) as "let's get him pissed to cheer him up." It kind of worked for the most part, and I had an enjoyable time (more later), but I still just couldn't help but go over the events in my personal life over and over and over...ad nausea. Which was shite.

However, apart from get monumentally bollocksed, I did partake in some decent activities. I went up to Jodrell Bank space telescope in Cheshire with my cousin after enquiring with a former housemate (who now works there) as to whether there was a visitor's centre. He enthusiastically informed me that there was a 'small' one there. So me and cousin ventured out to the place...only to discover that the 'small' visitor's centre (that also charged a £2 entry fee), was little more than a room with a few pictures and an extortionately expensive cafe. Unimpressive is the least offensive word that I can use to describe said vistor's centre. The telescope itself, however, is a real feat of engineering - the thing is fucking hur-uge, and it can rotate on a massive track-type job. It did actually move at one point, and it makes you think why it was moving and what the bods in charge were looking at/for. As a side note, I remember that when my former housemate (who was studying for a PhD in Astrophysics at the time) hooked up his bedroom PC to Jodrell Bank's through the internet, all that came up on the screen were rows upon rows of numbers etc. Not what I had in mind when I thought about telescopes...although it is a radio telescope so assuming that there'd be big pictures of nebulae and shit on the guy's computer screen does seem a little on the naive side when I actually think about it!

Also at Jodrell, there were these things called 'the whispering dishes,' which are these two big green...er...dishes facing each other and are spaced about 200 yards apart. If you stand in front of one and whisper into it, the person standing in front of the other one can hear your voice as clear as a bell. Fuck knows how it all works, but I would hazard a guess that it's got something to do with acoustics or something. Still, a brilliant little curiosity and unlike the crappy visitor's centre, they were free to marvel at.

After Jodrell Bank had offered up all (well, both of) it's wonders, I took a trip to Stockport to see a mate who I've not seen for about 2 years (which, as you've probably predicted, turned into a visit to the pub). This event was tinged with regret though, as it saw me break my year-long, self-imposed ban on the consumption of the donner kebab. Look - It was late, I was pissed and I hadn't eaten all day. I was attracted to the bright lights of the kebab outlet like a moth to a flame...and the rest is history. I have to say that after I'd consumed it, I felt disturbingly horrible. Greasy and disgusting, in fact. I toyed with the idea of trying to wretch the fucker up into some bushes, but there were a load of boy racers watching me from their hideously coloured and 'tuned' Vauxhall Corsas in a supermarket car park across the road.

The week also saw me take a train ride to Southport, which is a little seaside town just down the coast from Blackpool. It's quite a decent place, but you can tell that it's a shadow of it's former self (thanks Resident Evil for that quote - I use it more often than I should). There is a fun fair like the Pleasure Beach at Blackpool, but it's been closed for a while and there are umpteen closed down food stalls and arcades along the seafront. It's quite sad, really, as you can see that the whole place is slowly dying off - maybe it's down to the recession, or maybe just down to the fact that Blackpool is just up the road (you can see the tower and the Bog One roller coaster from the beach at Southport), but it's still quite eerie when you walk past the closed rides and empty pier. On the plus side, we did stop for a pint at the world's smallest pub (they've even got a plaque on the wall that was issued by the Guinness records people) and also got some proper fish and chips that was devoured with gusto on the sea front.

On Thursday, I finally got to speak to my sister and see her baby girl (my niece, obviously). She's a big old unit considering she's only 8-ish months old and I was scared shitless of dropping her, so declined the offer of carrying her. Added to this, she was probably wondering who the fuck I was and started to flap every time I got near her, but I eventually got the chance to have her sit on my lap...at which point she shat her nappy. Always nice. But yeah, seeing a real-life baby was cool. Which reminds me that my brother's baby is due in August, too. Mental. Gonna be an uncle for the second time in the space of a year!

So, it was fairly good week, and it was good to see so many people again who I've not seen for ages...and it only took me 4 hours to get back up there in the Proton (which is still going strong, for those who are interested). If only there hadn't been so much negative horse-shit going round in my head. Ah well. Maybe the shrink I'm off to see can suck it all out of my swede. If that doesn't work, I'm going to employ Mike Tyson to beat it out. Hmmm...!