The Shitcionary 2007, Part 2

Welcome to the second half of my 2007 Shitcionary, the alphabetical list of everything that's wrong with the world. Unless, like me, you've started drinking for New Year already, you should be able to navigate most of the big words unless you're a thickie, or, also like me, you've had about three hours' sleep. Fuck me and I glad I wrote this yesterday and so only have to faff about with the introduction and conclusion this afternoon, because I'm knackered. Introduction and conclusion? It's like being back at school again. It's a blog entry, not a dissected frog. Anyway, let's move swiftly on to things I don't actually have to type...

N: 'Nuts' Magazine
Amusingly homoerotically-named Cosmopolitan for 'lads', which only goes to show just how shit 'lads' and being a 'lad' and reading 'lad mags' really is. That and is single-handedly responsible for the fame of Lucy Pinder, the music of Scrabble king Eric Prydz and the rise to power of the military junta in Myanmar. Alright, so maybe not, but it is really, really shit, and I bet they had something to do with it anyway. Maybe the military dictator currently oppressing millions of innocent Burmese in the troubled south-east Asian republic has, you know, really big tits.

O: Oranges, Chocolate
I'm going to go out on a limb here and state that I have never in my life encountered anyone who has willingly eaten a Terry's Chocolate Orange. Maybe it's Dawn French eating them all. I always see them on the shelves, particularly at Christmas, but nobody's ever eating them, and there's an extremely complex reason for this: They taste like my arse. Now, I don't know what my arse actually tastes like and have no desire to find out, but on a scale of pleasantness, I can't see it being a great deal worse than a Terry's Chocolate Orange, or any form of orangey chocolate for that matter - it's just two tastes that don't mix, like onion custard, or Russell Brand and comedy. Yet for some infathomable reason, Terry's, who's only product seems to be said chocolate oranges, seem to still have the advertising budget to plaster Dawn French all over my television every year, larding about and trying to convince me that I want to buy fruit-infested chocolate, because it will turn me into a lovely, bubbly, funny, morbidly obese ball of condescending fat.

P:
Everything that can possibly be filed under 'P' is shit, so specifying one individual item would in fact imply that everything else is less shit, which is not true.

Q: The Letter 'Q' (and Quails)
It's a completely pointless letter, nothing ever begins with it, except the word 'Queue', which just makes things worse. 'Quiet', 'Quite' and 'Quaint' do as well, but fuck it, we can easily rebrand those with Ks, and do we really need the actual word 'Queue' when a long, drawn-out scream generally gets the point across far better? I'm going to launch into a campaign for the rest of this post and refuse to use the letter 'Q' for anything. I bet nobody even notices, because it's not a real letter, it's a ploy invented by the government to throw people off when they're trying to compile humorous lists of things that are shit. Nothing actually tangible has a word that begins with 'Q', except Quails, and fuck them, the bunch of birdy shits.

R: Russell Brand
So much of a complete and utter fucking wanker that I feel compelled to mention him twice. Did anyone see him on the telly last night with Noel Fielding? (see also: Noel Fielding) He spent what seemed like seven hours completely justifying every ounce of my pure unadulterated hatred for his annoying little face. I hate him. My new year's resolution is to run him over with a bus. Hate hate hate hate hate.

S: Stereophonics
Every song you have ever made, ever, sounds exactly the fucking same. Please go away.

T:
Dear

U:
God

V:
I

W:
Can't

X:
Go

Y:
On.

Z: Zebras
Zebras? Cunts, more like.

The Shitcionary 2007, Part 1

Now if anyone was wondering why there was no blog entry yesterday, it wasn't because I was wanking myself into an early grave - although I was - it's because I was slaving away typing my fingers to the bone creating this, my masterpiece, my magnum opus, and my pitiful attempt to cover the shittest things of the year 2007. Welcome, one and all, to my Dictonary of Shit. A Shitcionary if you will. And if you won’t, you can call it Steve. Twenty six entries, one for each letter of the alphabet, the existence of each of which makes me want to fire large nails into the faces of small children. I won’t waste your time with a long introduction, I’ll just get on with it, so here goes:

A: Arseholes, the appreciation of
By the appreciation of arseholes, I don’t mean people saying “oh, that Richard Branson, he’s a nice chap, you know, despite being an arsehole”, because no sane person in the world has ever said anything nice about Richard “Look at Me and My Great Big Fucking Balloon” Branson. I’m speaking, of course, about the appreciation of the female arsehole, rump, booty, whatever the kids are calling it these days – and what business have the kids got having a special name for an arse anyway – because it’s just so fucking pointless. Not once in my life have I looked at a woman’s arse and gone “hmm, I want me a piece of that.” Why? Because I’ve got an arse. I don’t need to gain an arse to fulfil my sexual requirements in a relationship, because I’ve got one already. I don’t need a spare. You keep it, and don’t jiggle it around like that, you’ll get all sore. I don’t have breasts, so I stand to gain them in terms of pure physicality from a relationship, along with such things as a pretty face, feminity, etc – I’ve got an arse, any arses that come with the more interesting parts of a woman. If you saw my arse, you’d know that adding a ‘booty’ to the relationship would lead to something of an overabundance.

B: Brand, Russell
Need I really say more? This chokingly self-satisfied smack-dandy seems to have gotten himself an army of female fans by doing nothing more than shooting heroin, ripping off Johnny Depp and not carrying a comb. It's because you know he's felt pain, isn't it? How you can look deep into those soulful brown eyes and see he's been touched by the kind of beautiful, manly torment that only manifests itself in a really stupid haircut. I'm sorry, but to me he just looks like a New Romantic that’s spent every night since the breakup of Spandau Ballet sleeping in a hedge. His jokes aren’t funny, his book isn’t interesting and his near-omnipresent appearances on my television throughout a full six months of this year not only drove me to distraction, but honestly had me half convinced that I’d died and been condemned to some level of Hell previously unforeseen in the writings of Dante’s Inferno – the Circle of Acerbic Bloggers, perhaps, where the poor wretched souls of the internet age are condemned to writhe for eternity in the pain of a smack-laced numpty being perpetually wedged needlessly into the public consciousness, slowly distorting and destroying everything that is good and just with the world.

See also: Davina Fucking McCall.

C: Chelsea F.C.
They have one of the richest men in the world bankrolling them, the ability to, almost at whim, pluck the world’s greatest players from the world’s greatest clubs and deposit them into a playing staff already overflowing with the greatest talent the world has to offer, and yet they still act like a bunch of complete and utter fucking wankers. You’d think a team with the resources of Chelsea, with the talent of Chelsea’s players, would be able to win things without resorting to screaming at the referee every time a decision goes against them, without attempting every sneaky tackle and stamp that they can and then acting as if a great injustice has been done against them if they are called out for it, and without pinning any possible loss or misfortune that befalls them on the opposition or the referee instead of their own rare lapses of concentration or confidence, but you’d be wrong. They can and will lie, cheat and generally act like a bunch of schoolboy tossers until someone finally stands up and kicks John Terry in the face and keeps doing it until he looks slightly less like a self-satisfied shithead who’s “uncharacteristic mistakes” have us down every time he plays for England, but puts on his A-game when it’s something more important than national pride at stake, you know, something like a few extra thousands of pounds a week. Repeat for however many other players they have in their squad. Wankers.

D: Disco, Panic! At the
Like being punched in the music gland. Over and over and over again. In 4-4. For three minutes. Take the top hat off, it's not 1923.

E: ‘Extreme’ Sports
Are you eleven years old? No? Then get off the fucking board and get a proper job, you grasping tosspot.

F: Fondue, There being rules for eating
The most pretentious of all finger foods for rich people, Wikipedia has a whole section of its article on fondue dedicated to the ancient and complex etiquette surrounding the consumption of what is essentially warm cheese in a pot, into which you dip bits of bread. Apparently, if you are an expert at the rules of cheese-goo engagement, and demonstrate your prowess to your host, you’re allowed to eat the congealed gunk at the bottom of the pot after everyone’s done dipping their toasted soldiers or whatever they are into the cheese. As if the sheer pretentiousness of all this wasn’t enough, in late December, fondue actually started maiming people, cutting a swathe of burns and other injuries through the heart of Southampton, which admittedly would be a good thing were it not for the tying up no less than half a dozen emergency services vehicles in order to sate it’s thirst for human blood. This cannot be allowed to stand. I’d like to say it’s secret murderous intentions are the real reason for fondue’s inclusion on this list, but actually it’s mostly to do with the sheer concept of it, and the fact that probably, as you read this, there’s a bunch of wankers standing around in a posh part of Kensington getting into a heated argument over the rules to eating damp cheese from a pot.

G: ‘Girlfriend’, as a term for someone you’re not having sex with.
Now I’m not sure where this irritating corruption of the English language came about, but I’d hazard a guess that it came from the culture of rap music, as it seems to be the sort of thing that burly lesbian rapper Missy ‘Misdemeanour’ Elliott would say. Wherever it came from, I do wish it would go back. Girls, your female friends are simply your friends, they aren’t your girlfriends. The only girls for whom every girl they know is a girlfriend only exist on the internet. I don’t go around referring to all the men I know as my ‘boyfriends’, and they are thankful for it, and do you refer to all the men you know as ‘boyfriends’? No, no you don’t, because that would imply something completely different, wouldn’t it? Or could it be that they both imply the same things to anyone with half a brain and a working knowledge of how the language worked before we started being dictated to on our diction by people from Detroit who have barely mastered basic grammar and control of their bodily functions. I know if I started referring to all the women I know as my girlfriends, more than a few of them would be a little weirded out. I might as well start licking their faces. Unless you and your nearest and dearest are going to end the evening with a steamy shower-based orgy with copious loofah action, a ‘night with my girlfriends’ it is not, it’s just a night with your friends. Stop disappointing me or let me bring a camera.

H: Home Improvement shows
I know this has been covered a million times before by comedians far more talented than I, but they still get right on my fucking wick. What’s that one where they have an hour to ruin someone’s house before they come home and call the police? The one with the woman with the annoying face? 60 Minute Makeover? Fuck me that’s annoying, and what’s that woman’s obsession with logs? Every time I put the fucking telly on and actually catch a glimpse of it, she’s stacking logs in someone’s fireplace and claiming it’s an original feature. No wonder they only let her have an hour – give her a day and she’d have the whole place looking like a lumber yard. And they never leave the place looking in any way decent, and always like some sort of minimalist post-modern horror that might be nice to look at for five seconds at a time, but would be a nightmare to live with because there’s never any fucking shelves. Reading a book and need to put it down? Fuck off and put it on the shiny new original rescued-from-scrapped-lifeboats polished wooden flooring. Need somewhere to put your cup of tea? Fuck off put it on the book. Don’t put it on the floor or it’ll catch fire. What happened to my antique oak coffee table handed down through generations of my family from the original Earl of Sussex? Sorry darling, it didn’t fit with the new white-lemon-citrus minimalist decor, so we took it outside and hit it with some hammers.

I: Internet pornography
And the fact it’s getting weirder. My complaints about pornography on the internet used to be centred around the fact that all the clips were about 15 seconds long, meaning that you barely had long enough to get your hand from the mouse to your cock before you had to go back again and select the next one, and lining up a dozen or so clips in a playlist so you had long enough to unzip your trousers before you had to reach for the back button was too much effort by half. Now my complaints are, largely, that unless you’re some sort of sexual deviant, you’re about as likely to find reasonable stuff for sexual release as you are a lost page to the Bible dedicating it to Jesus’ brother, Frank the Rapist. You can’t look anywhere on the internet now without running across shemales, shit porn, gangbangs, gagging, bukkake, bondage or - God help me - butt-licking. What happened to good old fashioned standing about smiling with your tits out? Its like it went out of fashion. Maybe we’ve got it all wrong, and porn directors are the true visionaries of the moving picture, and all that softcore nonsense just got too passé. Maybe now unless you’ve got a radio-controlled cock-monster having simultaneous sex with nine black transsexuals in clown outfits, you don't get invited to all the coolest porn director parties (which, to be fair, must be a pretty good incentive). I never thought I’d say it, but internet porn is shit.

Except, of course, SuicideGirls, which is the best website ever invented by anyone, ever.

J/K: Jay Kay
Not because he’s done anything particularly wrong, but because it allows me to bypass two particularly tricky letters. That and he hasn’t released a new album in a while. Cunt.

L: Lucy Pinder
Now I’m not sure what’s so special about the latest in a long line of celebrity slags, but it’s become pretty much a law that all ‘lads’ must bow at the admittedly not unremarkable chest of a woman who, I’m sorry to say, is not actually that attractive. I've nothing against her personally, and I'm sure she's a lovely person (actually I'm not, and I'm sure she's every bit the slapper I expect her to be), but I’m straight, I’ve touched boobs and everything, and yet I still can’t get past the fact that the woman who every discerning Saxo driver on the face of the planet believes to be the second coming of whatever Greek fertility Goddess is in vogue with the readers of Max Power magazine looks remarkably like Celine Dion with tits. I see better looking women than her buying fruit in Tesco, so either I live in some bizarre sort of babe-haven or the fame of Ms. Pinder is an annoying testament to the truly worrying power of the Nuts magazine groupthink, one which is presumably also to blame for the fame of a certain Mr. Prydz, who's only point of interest in the real world is how many points his name is worth in Scrabble. Incidentally, that's my second Scrabble joke within a week. I think I'll stop before someone mistakes me for an entheusiast.

Speaking of Eric Prydz, did you know that 'Call on Me' topped the German pop charts for six consecutive weeks? Those poor bastards.

M: Muse fans
Don't get me wrong, I like Muse. I think their danceable blend of rock and electronics is one of the best acts in the country, and I hear they're great live, but every other Muse fan in the world is a pretentious fucking wanker. Quite how a band that makes such interesting (if not always spectacular) managed to inherit Coldplay's fanbase is beyond me, but if I hear one more wanker in fashionable black-rimmed glasses talking about how he "loves his rock and roll" because he once saw a Muse gig, and now chooses to clothe himself solely in Muse-brand clothes and listen to his Muse iPod, on which is nothing but Muse, pictures of Muse and, just for variety, some fucking Muse, I'm not going to be responsible for my actions. The White Stripes have a similar effect on people, but mostly in America, so they're quite far away and thus slightly less irritating. Maybe it's a cultural thing, and every nation is obsessed with one band they've produced, forever. In which case, the Swedish will be obsessed with Eric fucking Prydz and the Germans with Rammstein. The shocking thing is we let these people in the E.U.

Anyway, come back tomorrow for all the other letters, or this is going to end up filling up the entire internet. Haven't you all got parties to be going to tomorrow? Get to bed.

Goodnight.

Fourteen Dead in Brita Filter Massacre

Good morning, shite fans. I'm not normally one for openly and directly laughing at people who have been hospitalised, but one story today was just too good to pass up - Let's face it, Idiots who manage to get themselves maimed by exploding superheated cheese just deserve as much scorn as can be humanly poured upon them. Other than the usual brushes with the deliciously stupid, I've spent a good portion of my day making frequent furtive visits to SuicideGirls.com.I don't feel guilty about giving them some free advertising by linking to them because it's not like they're going to pay me for it, and that's the only reason I'd feel bad about giving them free advertising, and secondly because if you're a straight man and don't want to do at least half of the girls featured on that site, there is something wrong with you and you need something rammed through your face. It's not a porn site, it's like MySpace, but instead of incredibly annoying emo girls, you've got incredibly attractive emo girls. With their tits out. Yay. So alright, it is a porn site, and if you clicked it at work you are now unemployed.

Worth it, though, wasn't it?

First up, because I know you've been waiting a whole paragraph to find out the full story, we have the story of the exploding cheese set. Three people managed to sustain serious burns and another three received minor injuries - requiring no less than three ambulances and a team of firefighters - resulting from some unimaginable misuse of one of these. A way of hospitalising yourself and others which, frankly, makes you a retard. Please, if you find yourself physically incapable of managing a small pot full of warm cheese without physically maiming your family, might I suggest next time you try something a little less challenging to serve your guests during your holiday season parties, like jelly or a handful of grapes - seedless, of course, we don't want you choking on a pip like the knuckle-dragging moron you are. Also, if you manage to tie up what sounds like half the emergency services of Southampton with your cheese-based rampage, you should have to pay for your own skin grafts. Seriously, if I come on tomorrow typing with one hand because I've managed to blow my right arm off while making myself some toast, I'll post an apology and express my heartfelt sympathies for this family and the other unnamed victims of this warm-dairy menace. Until then they're mouth-breathing cunts.

Speaking of cunts, next up we have Joey Barton. Isn't that fun, kids? The midfielder who at Manchester City was formerly an untalented, wasteful, violent, nasty piece of work who's family have a penchant for sticking axes in the heads of black schoolchildren has since been a reformed character at Newcastle, where he has become an untalented, wasteful, violent, nasty piece of work who's family have a penchant for sticking axes in the heads of black schoolchildren. For our Joey, it seems that tens of thousands of pounds a week and countless chances afforded to him by fans, managers and chairmen alike just isn't enough. No. What our Joey wants a fight every friday night, or he just isn't satisfied with his existence. Not satisfied with attempting to blind a teammate last year, being on bail for attempting to knock out another, breaking the leg of a pedestrian while in his car and recently trying to break the leg of an opponent on the pitch, Joey has decided he felt the need to start a fight in Liverpool city center, and has now been remanded in custody and refused bail. Good. Hopefully the little shit will get locked up. Now I've got a soft spot in my heart for Liverpool, and with everywhere I've been in Britain, I've never met a nicer, more friendly group of people than Scousers, but this one is a wanker. Some people will say it's because he got too much too soon, that it's not really his fault, he's just a young man given enough money to make him think he's invincible. I say it's because he's a cock. Lock him up.

Finally, I have to congratulate the BBC on reporting something that men have known for years - stable relationships turn women off. We have known for years that women prefer to climb into bed with the bad boys that mess them around while remaining an enigma wrapped in a mystery wrapped in a secret wrapped in a tosser, and using us decent blokes as shoulders to cry on when it all goes tits-up. Ah well, we still won't get anywhere and the wankers still will, but at least now it's science, and somehow that makes it a whole lot more comforting. Except it isn't. It's the most frustrating thing in the world to have people claim that they want a stable, loving relationship with someone only for them to go out and find some utter wanker with a BMW who treats them like shit for four months while they fall all over him, then come and cry on your shoulder when he upgrades to a different model (of girlfriend, not of BMW - at least probably; it takes all sorts, after all). If I had a penny for every time that's happened to me, I'd have £17.42, which doesn't sound much, but it's an awful lot of fucking pennies. Still, apparently only 25% of men who had been in a relationship for 10 years said they still wanted 'tenderness' from their partners. Whether that means they no longer want kissing and cuddling or that they'd rather their partner strapped them to the wall and belted them with a cat o' nine tails for three hours every evening isn't adequately described, but if it's true, then maybe we're all wankers, regardless of age, gender, race, creed or nationality. Who'd have thought it?

Anyway, fuck this, I'm going to go and kill myself with the toastie machine.

Goodnight.

Benazir Bhutto Was The Most Important Person in the World

Or at least that's the impression you get from reading BBC News' front page, which contains no less than six different stories about her being blown up thousands of miles away in a country that, other than the fact we used to own it, has about as much to do with Britain as Middle Earth. Of course it's very sad whenever someone dies - unless of course it's Vernon Kay - but a woman running for leadership in a country full of people who are violently and suicidally opposed to allowing women into any position other than ten full paces behind the men? Really, what did she expect? She might have had two terms as leader in the past, but the last was over a decade ago, and the political situation in Pakistan has degraded so far that one shed full of extremists throwing a bit of a tantrum almost brought down the entire country. Red Mosque my arse. This would hardly have been a more likely occurrance had she been Nick Griffin in a KKK rag.

Moving on before I get too annoyed, we have a story on how three women somehow managed to collapse in 'Next' stores during the first day of the sales. The ability of this story to powerfully cut a swathe through the damaging stereotype that women get far too excited about clothes shopping aside, if you're going to collapse in a shop due to being overwhelmed by bargains or whatever stupidity actually went on, you could at least have the sense to do it in somewhere slightly more fashion-conscious than Next, or the decency to choose a low-end outlet that actually admits it is what it is - then again, everyone who shops at British Home Stores is too no-nonsense to end up hyperventilating over a handbag, and if it was anywhere more upmarket there wouldn't have been any women collapsing, just a selection of personal shoppers being admitted with severe heatstroke.

And finally, as if that wasn't punishment enough, the BBC also has a review of the best and worst adverts of the year, slamming WKD adverts for being 'cruel for cruelty's sake' and the Apple ads for not being as funny as their US equivalents while praising the Marks and Spencer adverts with Myleene Klass for their 'air of knowingness' and the Mail on Sunday advert with the dogs and remote control cars. Personally I would dismiss the WKD adverts not because of cruelty but because of their persistence in marketing a girls' drink at blokes - have you ever seen a bloke drink WKD, except in adverts for WKD? No? Me neither - despite the fact they've been trying and failing for years, and the Apple adverts for the same reason I shun anything that has Mitchell and Webb in it: It has Mitchell and Webb in it. If those two were as funny as they think they are, I'd be rolling in the aisles. But they aren't, so they're just a pair of cunts. You're a Mac, you're a PC, and Peep Show is shit. Fuck off.

But I'm getting sidetracked.

Coming back to the avertising review - though they are shit - I'd also praise the Marks and Spencer advertisements, though solely because I'd do Myleene Klass until my willy got sore, but I'd dismiss the Mail on Sunday extravaganza because it's quite the most annoying thing I've ever seen in my life. That and it conveys nothing of what the content of the Mail suggests should be in an advert for said early-morning tome of right-wing hate, which would presumably be three minutes of Boris Johnson mowing down gypsies with a machine gun. As for the rest of the advertising pack, I'd also dismiss every advert with Davina McCall in. Which is all of them.

That's all for tonight. If that's not enough for you, you can read Benazir Bhutto: A Life In Pictures. Because I for one just can't get enough faux-liberal simpering over dead politicians from far away.

Goodnight.

Watch Out, Robocop: Fighting Crime at 25MPH

Good morning, campers. I've got a cold and my head feels like someone has been using it to test the aim of the steam-hammer they got for Christmas. What a great present that would be. Anyway, back on topic, I'm all sniffly, so I've spent most of the day in bed feeling sorry for myself, which has given me a lot of time to peruse the internet for my - and your - bi-daily injection of news-based ludicrousness, and for that reason the first story comes from the distant shores of New York, New York. Now I know this is a British blog and we're not supposed to give a toss about America, but I'll blame it on the delerium that only a slight cold can bring. That, and the fact something is wrong with Gmail this morning that means it notifies me whenever I have new mail, so something is obviously running somewhere, but it steadfastly refuses to actually let me read my email, so it's less Gmail Notifications and more Gmail Mocking and Taunting While Holding Your Precious FaceBook Notifications Hostage. Who's written on my wall? What have they written? Do they have large breasts? I just don't know! The tension is unbearable. Anyway, on with the story.

Apparently, the NYPD has taken time out of it's busy schedule of clubbing ethnic minorities and signing licencing documents for new series' of Law and Order to road-test 'green' motorcycles. We'll sidestep the use of the word 'green' in this article except to mention that the motorbikes themselves aren't green in colour, they are electric. Perhaps that was too many extra letters for whichever limp-wristed teenage vegan tosspot decided this was important enough to be news for anyone interested in anything other than the frankly ludicrous. But anyway. There is just something about the idea of a copper on an electric scooter chasing after a gang of hoodies at his top speed of about six miles an hour that I find deeply hilarious. His embarrassed shouts of "STOP!" and "IT'S GOOD FOR THE ENVIRONMENT!" being drowned out by the torrent of scorn and mockery raining down upon him from the general populace. If this manages to spread over here - and it will, you can bet the greenies will jump all over anything like this, regardless of how fucking imbecilic it is - I for one am looking forward to identifying the bodies of my loved ones, safe in the knowledge that the coppers who gave chase to the fleeing rap-blaring teenagers did his best to chase them while ensuring at no point did he ever put a sapling in danger. Wankers.

Next up, somewhere in Essex, Christmas has been ruined by two cases of monumental stupidity, resulting in the death of a 7-year-old girl on a quadbike. Now, I can't possibly express my disgust for drunk drivers enough, and the woman responsible for the death of this little girl will inevitably deserve a far harsher sentence, probably involving baseball bats and half-bricks, than the inevitable £100-fine slap on the wrist she will actually receive for destroying a young life via the medium of a motor car when by any other would net you a 25-year sentence. But that's for another story. While what she did may be irrefutably dumb and impossible to understand, there is another source of stupidity that is being carefully skirted around by the eager-not-to-cause-offence British media. What sort of fucking idiot lets a 7-year-old ride a fucking quad bike? There should be some case of neglect to be made here, for the parents that thought it would be a good idea to allow their 7-year-old daughter to ride a full-size quadbike around country roads filled with the inevitable inebriated idiots that fill the streets at Christmas time.

Speaking of inevitably inebriated idiots, it looks like Paris Hilton, who's contributions to society surely merit the Nobel Prize she is sure to receive this year for services to humanity, is having her allowance cut off. Grandaddy Barron Hilton, 80, is donating 97% of his fortune, which is what has been funding granddaughter Paris and her humanitarian mission to have sordid hotel sex with everything on the planet capable of sexual climax, to charity. It should bring warmth to my heart that a billionaire is making such a gesture of selfless philanthropy, and it does, but not nearly to the same degree as the knowledge that Paris, though still very rich, will have to share just a few million dollars with the rest of her family, and makes her, while rich, no longer the society bitch that she has thus far insisted on being. Alright so my wish that she ends up on the street rambling incoherently to disbelieving bystanders about how it was all going so well for her until it all went wrong while swigging from a bottle of Tesco Value Gin on a park bench in Barking hasn't quite come true, but you can't have everything, can you? Merry Christmas, Paris? Thought not.

Anyway, last but not least, we have one surprisingly ugly creature turning into another surprisingly ugly creature. They're called Axlotls - which would net you about four million points at Scrabble, by my reckoning - and every now and then they turn into Salamanders. Which is really, really boring, and I'm posting this here on the off chance that some sort of passing geneticist will be able to genetically engineer one that turns into a woolly mammoth, because that would be far more interesting. My birthday's in August, guys, so you've got plenty of time. Steve Eddy, from Exmoor Zoo, which presumably consists of three sickly cormerants and an overweight hamster, describes the changes that an Axlotl goes through in order to become a Salamander:

"Its gills shrink and skin grows over the gill space, it then has to grow lungs to breathe with and it also grows eyelids and its tail changes. Just imagine how stressful that would be."

Piss off. I grew eyelids once. It wasn't a particularly stressful experience. Don't know what these Axlotls are on about, the great bunch of aquatic nancies. Grow up and seal your gill-flaps like a man. I will admit, though, that were my tail to start changing, I for one would be pretty stressed out. The fun part, however, is where he describes this apparently momentous event as "the first he had heard of in Devon in his 40-year experience". Now I'm going to go out on a limb here and list a few other things that haven't occurred in Devon in 40 years: sunrise, sexual relations between human beings not related by blood, and occupations other than mud farming. But they've got an Axlotl that's turning into a Salamander, so they must have something going for them, or maybe the poor thing has just realised that it lives in Devon, and by becoming a Salamander it can halve it's life expectancy and thus spend as little time in the bloody place as is lizardly possible. And don't write in to tell me they aren't lizards, if indeed they aren't and are some sort of amphibian or something. I don't give a toss.

The question we all want to ask is: do they taste nice with chips?

That's all for now. Goodnight.

Indiana Blandford and the Bollocks Christmas Presents

Hello, fellow 4am drunkards. First, a little background information. Those in the know will remember that, while I am Jewish, all my family on my mother's side are various breeds of Christian. Those who were not in the know, now are. This means, of course, that Christmas is celebrated with as much forced gusto as it is in most other places up and down the country and indeed the Western world, crappy presents and all. Now, before I sound like an ungrateful little oik, all my family bought me books, largely autobiographical and factual, which I really enjoy, particularly the one I'm reading at the moment, 'Ross Kemp on Gangs', the book accompanying the Sky One series where former Eastenders hard man Kemp hangs around with some of the toughest street gangs in the world in a desperate attempt to reclaim his tough guy image following the highly public pasting dished out to him by his wife some time last year. Indeed, the bollocks present-buying was on my part, and on largely to myself.

Now I'm a big kid at heart, and I do like my computer games every now and then. I'm a certified addict of the Football Manager series, which I heartily recommend to anyone, anywhere, ever, though if you can I suggest you get the 2007 edition as the 2008 one is just a tiny bit shit. I don't know why, something about it really winds me up, so you should forgo all those other reviews by professional games journalists and go on my subjective twenty-minute gaming experience before it went back in the cupboard. That was a birthday disappointment, however, so it has no place in the tome of Christmas computer shite that is to follow.

First of all, though, on a surprisingly upbeat note, I have a recommendation instead of a critique (God I hate that word) - I heartily recommend 'SimCity Societies' for those of you who like the idea of SimCity, but don't have autism. I'm feeling generous so I'm going to clarify that for the easily offended: SimCity 2000 and onwards are the most rediculously in-depth games ever created by humans, and to find enjoyment in meticulously laying your own sewer system via the medium of 10,000 tiny little buttons on a computer system you really must have to have some sort of artificially heightened powers of concentration. If you ever sat down and decided that was going to be your weekend, you either have autism or you are the most boring Crystal Meth addict on the face of the planet, and there must be an awful lot of Crystal Meth in the offices of most major games magazines because they completely slated it for having no real goals and no depth, because all you do is put down buildings and watch how people behave in your city.

Duh.

That's what I always wanted to do with SimCity, but I couldn't ever get past my first building because I could never figure out how to lay the cunting sewer pipes. Or the water pipes. Or the million other things you have to do to make anything work in that fucking game. I wanted to make a city and generally act like a juvenile bastard God by carefully ensuring that every resident of my virtual city was at their absolutely most content and controlled, and then every now and then lobbing meteorites of flaming death at them to see what would happen. This is my virtual ants-and-a-magnifying-glass, I don't want to have to worry about the refraction of the lens when I'm burning their legs off.

However, back to the bollocks. Chief amongst the tormentors is WWE: Smackdown vs. Raw 2008. Now, I do like my wrestling games, even if it does contain slight homoerotic overtones of flexing, oily men dressed in PVC underpants dancing around and slapping each other. After all, what other fighting games allow you to stamp on someone's face for twenty solid minutes without any of that pesky martial arts getting in the way? That said, I don't like this one. I loved Smackdown vs. Raw 2006, the 2007 version was even better and took me back to the hours I spent as a child and early teenager cheering on The Rock, Mankind and Stone Cold Steve Austin as they heroically pretended to hit each other week-in, week-out, all for our enjoyment. This new installment, however, takes me back to the time when, in my wrestling-fuelled bravado, I picked a fight with the hardest kid in the street, got my nose broken in three places, jarred my back, and was to move for so long that several small children passed by to call me names and openly urinate on me.

OK, so that didn't really happen, but that's how annoying this game is.

Let me give you a rundown of the features they've added in this new game compared to that old, outdated, obsolete Smackdown vs. Raw 2007: They've butchered the control system, dumped all over the create-a-wrestler, and added Kenny Dykstra. These three features combined into some sort of wrestling hell around four o'clock as I eagerly tore off the cellophane, slammed the CD into my PS2 and dived straight into the create-a-wrestler mode to bring my usual 7ft-tall black-clad ninja behemoth wall of muscle vision of myself to vicarious video game fruition, and imagine my horror as I realised that, no matter which options I selected, what features I gave my created vision of death, what combination of eyebrows, eyes, nose, mouth, ears or jawline I chose, all manipulated with full 21st Century 3D morphing graphics, I could not for the life of me make him look in any way even the slightest bit unlike Vincent Cassel. Suitably enraged, I gave up. Time for a fight.

Here is where my other two problems with this game crashed together like cruise ships and badly-behaved icebergs. Selecting someone suitably weak as an opponent - as all good bullies should - I chose Kenny Dykstra, because of his weedy body and annoying face, and his comparitavely low skill level. This was going to be a walk-over. The game loaded up and sure enough, he was at least a foot shorter than Virtua Cassel, and about half as wide. I was going to enjoy this. Stepping forward to unleash my inner rage, Virtua Cassel swung a huge left at his ugly, slightly mouldy-looking head. Or at least, that's what he was meant to do. What he actually did was do an entirely unconvincing and slightly unnerving taunt involving waving his crotch around. In a devastating broadside to my murderous French intentions, whatever pixies exist that are tasked with cocking up people's gaming experiences had changed the controls around without telling me. I watched as I got the shit kicked out of me, desperately looking for the 'for God's sake just punch the bastard' button and succeeding only in taunting, running away and some sort of ballet-style leg-waving ring exit move.

I hate that game. It's going in the cupboard. Also, how did Vincent Cassel end up marrying Monica Bellucci? He looks like fucking Gollum. The world doesn't make sense anymore. Fuck this, I'm going to bed.

Night.

Christmas Day: Insanity, Disappointment and the Irrepressible Yuletide Fear that You'll Live and Die Alone

So, good readers, this is what it has come to. Does it annoy anyone else that when you're on your own at Christmas, whether you celebrate it or not, you're still bombarded with a constant diet of couples who are loved up, lost in each other's eyes and inevitably and unbearably wearing the kitsch his and hers socks that they bought for each other because they were sooo them. It's enough to drive a man to drink, and it has. I recommend Kopparberg pear cider for the temporary relief of all woes, worries and sucking chest-wounds of the soul, but if you don't have any, you could always try paint stripper or some antifreeze. At least it'll stop your insides getting all chilly on the off chance that we get a white Christmas. Alternatively you could paint some tipp-ex on all your windows, chuck some Dulux Mighty White all over your lawn and have a good old pretend. Just don't try making any snow angels in your new jacket. Or drink antifreeze, that was a stupid suggestion and I'm sorry, but not quite sorry enough to locate the backspace key in the dark. If you die, it's your own fault for not reading my personal woes to the very end. Suffer.

Anyway, the news. Do we have stories of lost puppies coming home for Christmas? Families reunited after hardship through the power of the Yuletide spirit? No, we've got children being shot in the face. Lovely. I woke up to this story on the radio this morning, which really made my Christmas let me tell you, and if ever there was a good and just reason for bringing back stoning, I think this is it. I'm not entirely sure what it is about the residents of south-east London that makes them think it's some sort of war-torn African republic instead of the capital city of a civilized country, but someone really needs to sort them out, and before any bleeding hearts cry racism, I don't give a toss what colour they are, they could be NWA, IRA, KKK or the WI for all I care, what troubles me is the fact they've got fucking guns. It's not that hard to process, even if you have been at the Sainsbury's 'Fair Trade' 'Four Times More Expensive But Some Farmer Somewhere Has a New Stick' brandy already at four o'clock in the afternoon. Sort it out, Brown, everyone hates you anyway, you're not going to tarnish a reputation you don't have by getting the police to do their jobs and nick the jumped-up wannabe Yardies that decided to use ranged weapons to ruin a family's Christmas. Softly-softly doesn't fucking work, get kicking doors in.

Next up, we have this idiot, who has decided that humanity will peak in the year 3000, and then will split off into a genetic 'super race' and a subspecies of squat little runts. Unsurprisingly enough, it was a study comissioned by that well-known and highly-respected source of genetic research, Bravo. Who's viewership, as far as I can tell, already consists of a subspecies of squat little runts, so perhaps they're just making themselves feel better. Quite why the BBC chose to report on a genetic study commissioned by a TV channel that, as far as I can see, consists entirely of short men in bad sunglasses homoerotically chasing down and rolling around on the floor cuddling other short men in bad sunglasses is frankly beyond me, but the research itself is frankly rediculous. Apparently, in 100,000 years' time, humanity will be split into tall, attractive, creative people and a bunch of fat hogs. Any resemblance between that and the average secondary school class is purely coincidental. Quotes like "men will look athletic and have squarer jaws... women develop lighter skin" have ever-so-slightly worrying overtones to Hitler's 'Ubermensch', and labour under the worrying impression that women with lighter skin are more attractive, and thus more likely to breed with the square-jawed Teutons who will be striding about the earth in the year 3050.

Someone, evidently, has never been to the beach on a hot day in Spain.

In other news, X-Factor contestants I'm not willing to name here for fear of further inflating their grotesquely distended hype glands have scooped both the album and single Christmas #1's. Truly a gift to musical innovation and creativity.

That's all for today, I'm going to get drunk. Merry Christmas. Try not to get shot.

How Jeremy Clarkson Did his Bit for Britain

So, it turns out that Jeremy Clarkson, presenter of seminal car review show Top Gear and pioneer of the, only three words, at a time, delivery style, has been questioned by police over an incident with a 'hoodie youth'. Apparently, a teenage girl reported an 'assault' on her friend by Mr. Clarkson, who allegedly picked him up by his hooded top and told him to go away (although I imagine Clarkson used somewhat stronger language).

The question is, what was he supposed to do? A gang of youths harrass him and his nine-year-old daughter, and he understandably feared for her safety. I would too. With the criminal climate in Britain as it is, gangs of youths seem to be allowed by left-wing lawmakers to barrack, maim and murder with free abandon, while any attempt to stop them that isn't met with a swift knife or gunshot to the stomach is answered with a hail of blows, be they from sovereign-ringed hoodies or scorn-dripping bleeding hearts who seem to think casual violence is somehow endearing in young children. More people should have the guts to stand up to these morons, though many have tried and ended up hospitalised or worse. Clarkson has the advantage of being a burly man of 6' 5", intimidating enough to scare away youths that act the tough man but seemingly shy away from anyone who might knock their baseball cap askew on their way down.

Those criticising Clarkson's actions claim that his reputation for solving his problems with violence goes before him, conveniently forgetting that his altercation with Morgan was prompted by the former Daily Mirror editor splashing accusations of adultery on the part of the BBC presenter all over the gossip columns of his newspaper. If anyone cannot understand Clarkson's reaction to someone endangering his marriage for the sake of petty sniping, or his response to a group of delinquents threatening him and his young daughter, then they do not understand a man who, unlike so many other media figures, does not put their media image before their family. I for one hope - and I suspect - he won't back down, and he won't apologise. It isn't his style, and he has nothing to apologise for. I have no shame in saying I would have done exactly the same thing.

He doesn't deserve a police caution, he deserves a medal. Children of Britain, if you don't want to get hit by enraged 6' 5" television presenters, I suggest you act slightly less like utter cunts.

Good day.