Notes on a Premise

I hate people younger than me. They have absolutely no idea how to interact in a social setting. Or, rather, they do, and they do it far too fucking well, which is the crux of the issue. I was happy spending a quiet evening in the pub yesterday watching the football, only for one of my regular drinking companions to bring along his 'mate from work', a curious entity who is almost guaranteed to be some sort of cunt. This 'mate from work' swiftly found his 'mates from college' and proceeded to get them all drinking with us as some sort of scheme to him chatting one of them up. He worked his short-arsed effeminate charm and copped off with her while I missed most of the football and the closest I got to anything all evening was a very pretty woman telling me I have a Jewish nose, which I'm not sure is either a back-handed compliment or a precursor to genocide. Then someone was sick on a table and it was all over.

Anyway, news. Two helicopters have collided over Arizona. Good. Fuck them.
Coldplay have lost their position on top of the UK pop charts. Good. Fuck them.
and a third of Britons are unable to save for the future. Good. Fuck them.

It may have dawned on people who regularly read this blog that I don't like people very much. Drinking and football, yes, but people tend to rile me up a bit. I wouldn't disagree with that assumption, but I have to admit that I reserve a special, gilt-edged place of carefully-selected loathing for this precocious little shit. "People around the world are getting killed. We should end the violence and strive for world peace."- Fantastic insight there, Chomsky. Where did you pull that snippet of political brilliance from? People should stop killing people? What an insightful little cunt you are, why don't you just show us how wonderfully, spectacularly insightful you are and stick your face in a threshing machine?

Rant alert. Sound the klaxons.

Here's the thing: There won't ever be world peace, because people enjoy being shits to each other. Like it or not, there will always, always be some cunt wanting to bomb some other cunt for some stupid cunty reason. It has been going on since the first time one primordial hunter-gatherer whacked another primordial hunter-gatherer around the head with a bone for stealing his fire, and so it has progressed through the ages through rocks, spears, crossbows, trebuchets, flintlocks, muskets, cannons, machine guns, howitzers, tanks and smart bombs. Deep down, on the same prehistoric level that tells us who to fuck and when to shit, there is something that loathes all other human life, because, well, they might steal our mate, or our food source, or might run faster than us next time the sabre-toothed tiger popped in for another round of toast and spleen. When resources are plentiful we can mostly behave ourselves, but we still fight over religion, we fight over territory, and we'll even fight wars over football matches if we really run short of things to have a scrap about. When resources aren't, like with oil at the moment, we fight over every last drop until it all runs out, and then we'll probably fight over who wasted the most.

We are by our very nature a violent species. It's how we got to the top of the food chain. It's why a scrawny little biped like us managed to gain the upper hand over lions, tigers and everything else that wants to eat or maim you out there in the world; we are extremely cunning and extremely dedicated to killing things. The only way you could stop war, stop shootings, stop stabbings, etc is if you took everyone's arms off at the shoulder, and even then there'd only be a lull in the fighting long enough for one side to work out how to fire a machine gun with your tongue.

See, this is the reason humans are the dominant species and not guinea pigs - guinea pigs are happy to live in the jungle making little burrows with their tiny front paws and eating flowers with their giant heads, and they squeak and they jump and they're happy little bundles of fluff and wonder, and then a snake eats them. We're ugly sinewy polluting little shits, but snakes don't eat us, because we've got knives, and we'd kill the fuckers. Then go back to killing each other, probably now using the snake as some sort of makeshift flail to beat back the enemy until he goes right ahead and invents the Glock semi-automatic and shoots us in the tits. I'm not saying it's good, I'm just saying that it Never. Fucking. Ends.

This goes all the way from continent fighting continent, right the way down to two blokes having a punch-up in a pub. It will go right up to planet fighting planet if we ever find anyone out there ready to have a barney with us. It's just in our nature. It's what we're good at. Some precocious little shit organizing a few thousand people on YouTube to declare that world peace might just be a good idea means absolutely shit-all, because everybody wants world peace on their own fucking terms. There are people out there who will only accept world peace when we've all converted to their particular brand of Islam, there are people out there who will only accept world peace if we all just stop eating meat, there are people out there that will only accept world peace when we're all fundamentalist Mormons living fifteen to a room in Salt Lake City, and there are people out there that just won't accept world peace at all. As great an idea as it is in theory, the first country that lays down it's arms in a declaration of world peace will promptly be invaded by every other country on the planet, will probably get it's population killed for being so stupid, and will deserve it for being the first country to ever be conquered by Vanuatu. It might be a nice concept, but like many nice concepts, it is a stupid one.

Admittedly the boy is 16, so he probably doesn't realise this. Also, all my concerns at the fact that when I was 16 all I could think about was where I could sneak off to have my next wank rather than trying to organize world peace can be left for another post. My concern, however, lies with the other 5,999 people who really should have known better. At 16, you really don't have the mental faculties to rationalise the idea that the only reason we're not all still cavemen clutching rocks and leading charges at the next tribe over is because we've made the tribes bigger and now call them countries, or religions, or football teams, and have delegated the charging and the killing to what we now like to call 'armies'. At that age, world peace still seems like an attainable in-our-lifetime goal.

In many ways, I'm jealous. In many other ways, this entire post is about that jealousy. Jealousy of the teenager in the pub, for whom everything is attainable and nothing is impossible. For whom life is but a constant roundabout of the proverbial wine, women and song, where the sun is always shining and there is no sign of the great yawning chasm that is the daily grind, the Black Dog that can and will slowly consume us all. Jealousy, too, of Trever Dougherty, the boy from the Youtube story, for whom the same thing applies on a much larger scale. For whom the impossible dream of world peace can be attained if enough people can just see that we don't need to kill each other.

For whom the sad but inescapable truth hasn't yet dawned: We don't need to, we just seem to really fucking like to.

We're all bastards.

Goodnight.

The Internet Makes You Stupid

No news today as the interesting stories of the world seem to have gone into hibernation again, so instead I'm going to bring you some sort of social comment: The internet makes you stupid. Now as you're reading this on the internet and probably don't like being called stupid, I should clarify that statement a little before I press on - if you don't understand the internet, it appears as a huge sabre-toothed killing machine looking to mince little Timmy far more than any other technology or device. It sends people into a frenzy of rediculous overblown technophobia and makes people who have 'the internet' in their homes but have no idea what it is lap up any amount of overblown bullshit that makes them think it's out to kill and rape their children.

But that's too many words. The internet makes you stupid.

My example for today is so ridiculous, so over-the-top and such a blatant act of imaginary scaremongering that I've decided to dedicate an entire post to how fucking ridiculous it is. The example in question is this: 20 Internet Acronyms Every Parent Should Know. I could cover them all at once and get this over with as fast as possible so we can all get back to our weekends, but that would look like I wasn't trying, so you'll have to sit through the whole thing.

Are you sitting comfortably? Then I'll begin.

#01: POS (Parents Over Shoulder)
I suppose I shouldn't be in the least bit surprised that the first few entries on the list are all involving keeping secrets from the parents - how else are you going to get them to shit themselves every time their children use a computer? - but this one did tickle me because it already exists as an acronym - Piece Of Shit. Offensive, I suppose, but not really paranoia-inducing, so maybe that's why they decided to make one up instead. Who knows.

#02: PIR (Parents In Room)
The second in a long line here. Maybe I've been off the chatroom 'scene' too long and the text talk lot have really taken over, but whenever I spoke to anyone who felt the need to tell people their parents were there, they'd just say it. They wouldn't resort to acronyms that nobody understands, as people would just ask what it meant anyway. (Though there's more of that later).

#03: P911 (Parent Alert)
How many letter and number combinations do these kids need to tell each other that their parents around? I'd just figured out what 'PIR' means and now they're using some other funny acronym that I don't get - surely they're planning on molesting each other! Quick, pa, get the broom!

#04: PAW (Parents Are Watching)
Those crazy teens. That's four now, all of which I would be completely baffled by. If I was a dirty paedo looking to touch your kids via the internet, right now I'd still be waving my cock at the screen and making grunting noises, thus forever corrupting your children's innocent minds, because I have no fucking idea what any of these mean. Quit making shit up.

#05: PAL (Parents Are Listening)
AAAAARGH!!! Maybe they made up all of these just to pad out the numbers - maybe '17 Internet Acronyms Every Parent Should Know' just isn't dramatic-sounding enough to convey the evil of this new secret children's language (entirely made up by this website, of course). Either way, if I started frantically typing 'PAL' at the end of every sentence, my conversation partners would think I'd suddenly gone all Mafiosi on them - 'Careful you don't get whacked, PAL!'. Morons.

#06: A/S/L (Age/Sex/Location?)
OK, so this one really exists, no qualms from me here. What does amuse me is the fact the laptop in the picture of this one doesn't actually have any programs open, either on the desktop or in the taskbar, so unless Microsoft included a special 'IntelliPaed' patch in the last version of Windows XP, it must be those mind-perverts on the prowl again.

#07: MorF? (Male or Female?)
This one might exist, I'm not sure. I suppose it's existence would make sense, I'm just not sure why it's on this list.

#08: SorG? (Straight or Gay?)
I'm sure why this one is. Quick, the homosexual cabal is coming to seduce your children!

#09: LMIRL (Lets Meet In Real Life)
OK, here's where they start making them up. 'IRL' exists, I'd use it myself if it wasn't such a cliche (what, and all the swearing isn't? -Ed). It's the 'Let's Meet' part that troubles me - I'm no scientist, but I reckon it takes longer to type 'LMIRL' than it does to type 'Lets Meet'. I just did it, and it felt quicker. Perhaps it's some child-devised secret language to ensure they get molested without the parent's knowledge. That's just the sort of jape they're always getting up to, the cheeky little tykes.

#10: KPC (Keeping Parents Clueless)
I was right! Those damn kids are developing their own language to shut us out and make sure they can have sex and shoot drugs without us ever knowing! Or, on the other hand, a website on the internet could be making up acronyms to scare the shit out of you. Make up your own mind. Just remember THEIR LIVES ARE AT STAKE!!!

#11: TD2M (Talk Dirty to Me)
If being completely fucking baffled as to what you're on about gets you off, then you're in for a treat, because I have no idea what you're talking about. I thought TD2M was a robot from Star Wars. Oh well, you live and learn.

#12: IWSN (I Want Sex Now)
Hahaha. Who actually says this? And how fucked up would your kid have to be to go "wow, you want sex? I'll give you sex!" to a fucking acronym? If your daughter is getting her mimsy out because someone typed an 'I Want Sex Now' acronym at her, even if it did exist, the internet is not to blame for the ways you obviously fucked up as a parent.

#13: NIFOC (Nude In Front Of Computer)
Correct me if I'm wrong, but if you're spying over your child's shoulder to see what it is that they're typing into that evil chatroom pit of murder and death, you'd notice if they were naked.

#14: GYPO (Get Your Pants Off)
All this time, there was me thinking that GYPO was merely an offensive term for our Romany Traveller bretheren. As it turns out, it's actually a request to remove your underpants. Is little Suzy being molested by a pervert or just spreading intolerance and racial hatred? You might never know, and you cry yourself to sleep at night because of it. If only you didn't believe The Internet, like a fucking idiot.

#15: ADR (Address)
Alright, I've seen this one on envelopes and form letters, so it does exist, and not solely in the hidden world of the internet pervert with their molesting machine and their big bucket of fried chicken that they're sticking up their bum. I actually can't think of anything to say for this one, so you'll just have to entertain yourselves. GYPO.

#16: WYCM? (Will You Call Me?)
Another one that probably takes longer to type than 'Call Me?' and would probably require an explanation anyway. WTF? isn't on this list but it's definately one that you'd see in response to about 3/4 of these entirely imaginary acronyms.

#17: KFU (Kisses For You)
Maybe I've just been to all the old-fashioned places, but I've only ever seen the good old 'xxx' for representing kisses. See, if I was to take a guess at what 'KFU' meant, I'd think they'd mistyped 'FKU' or meant 'OK Fuck You', so if I was trying to chat someone up through only text, I'd probably stick with the x's. I might even throw in an 'O' or two, but I certainly wouldn't go with KFU, but then I'm not a child molester, so maybe they do it differently.

#18: MOOS (Member Of Opposite Sex)
This has the same number of letters as 'Girl' and one more letter than 'Boy'. Nobody is going to really use this, except so you find it when you go through their internet logs and throw a fit.

#19: MOSS (Member of Same Sex)
Same as above, except less amusing because it puts me less in mind of your child having a sudden mid-conversation attack of presuming they're a cow.

#20: NALOPKT (Not A Lot of People Know This)
If you see this acronym on your child's screen, it's a sure-fire sign that they are being secretly bummed to death by Michael Caine.

So there you have it, the internet makes you stupid. Parents, watch out for the acronyms DTTW (Death To The West), LSSAKP (Let's Shoot Smack and Kill Puppies), FMESUMBR (Fuck My Eye Sockets Until My Brain Ruptures) and IILFATSTSOOMPAMTLMIACFFMHTTK (I Invent Long Fucking Acronyms That Scare The Shit Out Of My Parents And Make Them Lock Me In A Cupboard Forever Feeding Me Homework Through The Keyhole).

Alternatively, you could do some fucking parenting.

Goodnight.

The Code of the Facebook Ninja

I hate Facebook. Hate Hate Hate Hate Hate. I want to jump up and down on it until it's beady little eyes pop out, and then kick them against the wall while laughing insanely about how much I hate Facebook. I hate it. I loathe it with every fibre of my being. I shake with rage at it's very mention. Once again at some unholy hour of the morning, I've dragged myself bleary-eyed and blinking out of my pit to write today's post, checked my email, and what makes up the vast majority of communications I've received from the internet superhighway, this fantastic and wonderous tool to allow instantaneous communication with anyone anywhere on the globe? Fucking Facebook asking me forty-seven seperate times if I want to compare movie tastes with people I might have gone to school with once, about ten fucking years ago. Fuck off. How compatible are YOU?! I don't fucking care.

They're bigger than MySpace now, apparently. It's hard to see why - MySpace might be the sole domain of preening emo pretty-boys in jeans made for the wrong gender, but at least it doesn't bombard me with constant inane emails - Do you want to see which Superhero you are? About as much as I want piss to come out of my eyes, now leave me alone.

Anyway, lets move on to dealing with the outside world, regardless of how insignificant they clearly are in comparisons to my ongoing struggle against social networking, and talk about something highbrow for a change: International politics. First up, Gordon Brown has come out and said that the world 'should not recognise' Robert Mugabe's rule in Zimbabwe. While this is a worthwhile endeavour and the speccy twat does need shouting at a good deal, the reasons why it's a bad idea for us and not the African Union to do so are legion. Number one is the fact that this plays right into the hands of Mugabe in that it makes it look like we are trying to pull a colonial trick on the Zimbabweans and trying to unsettle a leader that has based his entire rule on hating the British, but the big number two is the fact Mugabe quite obviously does not give a shit.

He seems quite willing to have journalists beaten along with the rest of the populace that dares go against him, and I don't think Gordon Brown telling him to stop being such a naughty boy is going to stop the psychopathic lunatic from, well, being a psychopathic lunatic. He is obviously revelling in his Idi Amin in gold-rimmed spectacles act, and shows no signs of giving up. Maybe the African Union can go and give him a bit of a kicking, but I doubt it. Let's just wait for the old bastard to die and hope whoever takes over is a little less fucking mad.

Speaking of fucking mad, and of schemes that are doomed from the very beginning, a school on Teeside is trying to teach kids to avoid bullying by teaching them 'The Code of the Samurai'.

Naomi Beeley, of the council's museum service, said: "Using the Samurai as an example, we hope the young people will be inspired to develop and spread their own code of honour, including a healthy respect for other people". This won't happen. What will happen is that either, misguidedly, one of the weaker, spottier kids will say "get back, I'm a samurai!" and promptly be beaten to death with his own breastplate by the bigger boys from Year 9, or you'll just be teaching a bunch of chavs called Darren how to stab people more efficiently.

Moving over to sport, Paul Ince has been announced as the new manager of Blackburn Rovers, and while most of the articles in the media focus on the man's achievements at being one of the most promising young managers in the game, the BBC just can't resist pulling out another instance of the phenomenon of The First Black X, right in the first paragraph.

Never mind the fact that, in his first full season in management, he managed to win the League Two title and the Johnson's Paint trophy, or the fact that he is the first in quite a while of a long line of illustrious former England captains to move into management, what's important is he's black, and thus is completely unable to do something for himself, he has to do it for all black people everywhere. I might be thick, but I completely fail to see what relevance his colour has on his appointment at Blackburn Rovers - he's clearly a young, very talented manager and he could be green for all Blackburn Rovers care if he starts winning trophies - or indeed if he doesn't - so why the fuck does it matter to the BBC?

I wonder if this pisses them off as much as it would me. I'd occasionally like to do something monumental in my life and have it all for me, and not have to have my race drawn into it in the first paragraph of every article ever fucking written.

Maybe I can be the first British Jew to do so! Commence your OMG'ing now.

Finally, some bloke who used to be in boy-band Blue has been up in court for punching a taxi driver during an argument over a car accident. Personally I think this monster should be locked up and the key thrown away - not because he punched a taxi driver, but because the bastard was in 'Blue'.

Goodnight.

Daily Express Makes Valid Point, Aliens Land, Gordon Brown Declared Mr. Universe

Every now and then, something happens to make you wonder if, against everything you have ever believed, the Daily Express might just be close to being right about something. It's a soul-rocking revelation and one that can shake you to your very core, but sometimes, someone just comes out with something so ridiculously, so fundamentally over-the-top in terms of 'tolerance' and 'understanding' that it makes the right-wing ravings of a paper who's sole claim to relevance is being cheaper than the Daily Mail (so you can get your fix of hatred for LESS!) seem slightly more correct than they by all rights should be.

Today that thing is this. An aide to London Mayor Boris Johnson was forced to resign yesterday over a 'racist comment aimed at Britain's ethnic minorities'. That comment, which you might believe from that statement to be more along the lines of 'nigger nigger nigger, out out out', was in fact, in reference to claims that some black people might leave the country if Boris was elected Mayor, "Let them go if they don't like it here". I fail to see the racism.

First of all, if you are stupid enough to want to leave a country because of who's elected to run a city, you're an idiot. If you don't like the fact that Boris Johnson is London mayor, move to Essex, or Kent, or anywhere else in the country, the vast majority of which is not run by Boris Johnson. There's no need to start crossing borders. I wouldn't live in London under any circumstances, but that doesn't make me want to leave the country entirely - that would be far too much fucking effort just for a rather tame political statement.

Second of all, if you don't like it in Britain, then leave. That doesn't just go for immigrants, ethnic minorities or any other easily-offended group that you can pull out to justify your arguments that such a statement is racist, it goes for everyone, and it isn't one of those aggressive "you're either with us or against us" statements, it's just a gentle word of advice: If you are living somewhere which is abhorrent to you, it's a good idea to move, to stop things getting so bad that you start vomiting blood out of your eyes with the sheer hatred for everything that surrounds you. My suggestion would be Spain - it's warm, they have a 2 hour Government-mandated nap in the middle of the day and all the women look like Penelope Cruz. Alright, so they have the second-highest incidence of AIDS in Europe, but when they all look like Penelope Cruz those odds suddenly don't look all that bad.

You could go to Iran, I suppose, where there's a chance they all look like Shappi Khorsandi, but even if they did they'd chop your hands off for touching her, and having limbs lopped off for a good grope (or even a bad one) just isn't worth it.

But still, my point stands - it's not racist to suggest that if people don't like where they are living, perhaps they should try somewhere else. Perhaps some people genuinely beleive that every time someone of an 'ethnic minority' complains, everyone else should jump to attention to fix this terrible wrong. What if two ethnic minorities clash? Would the world explode? I'm going to start demanding everything in Sainsbury's be Kosher or I'll leave the country. That'll get 'em.

Anyway, Wimbledon apparently gets underway today, so that'll be a few million people munching strawberries and using a thin veil of incredibly boring sport to cover up their hours of staring at either Nadal's forearms or Sharapova's arse. It's not like you'd actually go to watch the tennis unless you were some sort of massive-necked masochist, which surely can't make up the entire demographic of Wimbledon watchers - the rest are just perverts. Frankly I've never seen the appeal of women tennis players - to me they all either look like albino giraffes in silly shorts or heads on sticks with tiny flailing arms. The idea of some nine foot tall giantess who weighs nine and a half grams and likes to hit balls with a great fuck-off webbed stick is not an erotic one.

Still, I think my theory about Wimbledon is borne out by the fact the number one story isn't about the actual tennis (because let's face it, it's fucking boring) but about the fact Sharapova will be wearing 'boy shorts' and not a frilly little skirt.

Earth-shattering revelations on the part of the Daily Express.

Also in there today is Sir Paul McCartney banging on about how we should all stop eating meat because it's better for the environment. Sir Paul has obviously never been locked in a small windowless room with a man with a penchant for asparagus. It isn't better for your personal fucking environment, let me tell you. Go back to making shit albums that people only buy because you used to be in the Beatles.

At least he isn't fucking Coldplay, who have now topped the British charts in a damning summary of the complete dull shit awfulness of British music at the moment. Coldplay really are the most boring, insipid, limp-wristed excuse for rock that has ever been shat out of Simon Cowell's horrific musical anus and, much as I try not to, I truly do harbour a deep, unshakable desire for them all to die quietly and uninterestingly lest they go down as 'rock legends' if they all plowed into a tree or something. Plus 'uninterestingly' is just how Coldplay do things.

Maybe Amy Winehouse could give Chris Martin a bit of a snog and give him Emphysema, which she now apparently has. I'm still not sure how that's news, given that JUNKIE SMOKING CRACK ALL DAY GETS BAD LUNGS is probably the most obvious headline possible short of 'Man Breathing In Breathes Out Again', but I'd still shag her over that scrawny albino mouse that the Coldplay singer's sticking it to. It'd be a step up for him, you know, before she coughed blood all over the carpet.

To be fair, that would even put me off my stroke.

Finally, a company in the UK has launched a website where you can buy the contraceptive pill over the internet, without the need to go to a doctor. Frankly I would have thought it would be un-understanding parents more than doctors you'd live in fear of, so sending the things to your house is probably not a goer of an idea, but I've never been in the situation of buying them so I wouldn't know.

I am, however, developing a similar, more direct product in the online contraception market. Basically, you fit it to the front of your computer, and when you press a button, it kicks you down the stairs.

Goodnight.

Edit: Amy Winehouse's dad has come out saying that his daughter will recover completely from emphysema, 'provided she stops smoking'.

So who's got 'Dead by Christmas' in the sweepstake?

Eight Million Horsepower Inside My Aching Brain

Argh. It's hot and I'm hungover, which is the worst combination of anything since parents and tapas. The sound of two dozen or so Formula 1 cars is tearing through my poorly head and yet here I am, still writing another post for you lovely people. I've even gone out of my way to peer through my bleary eyes and do something involving domain settings and something called 'cNAME' so now things will properly forward themselves to blandfordexaminer.co.uk rather than the blogspot domain.

I think.

Anyway, surprisingly enough given the last couple of days, there's some actual news this afternoon, so brace yourselves - The Daily Express thinks it's made a breakthrough this morning in the case of the Bridgend suicides, blaming it on the effects of 'dozens' of mobile phone masts. Now this conspiracy has bee doing the rounds for years, pretty much since people knew what mobile phone masts were, and I put about as much stock in it as I do the theories about lizard-men and underground UFO bases. Admittedly, something's got to be up - I know that surely that many people wouldn't top themselves all in the same place, even though Wales is a fundamentally soul-destroying place to be, it's just I don't think it's evil influences coming through the phone signals.

The Express also manages to come up with a good idea, which frankly shocked me - they reckon it would be a good idea to put The Bearded Loony in the Big Brother house. I think that's an absolutely fantastic suggestion, as either they'd drive him mental enough to own up to all his crimes and beg to be extradited to Jordan just for some fucking peace, or he'd kill them all for being decadent Western nonbelievers and do the rest of us a huge favour. Fucking hell, if he did that, I'd give the man a pardon.

Speaking of Big Brother, I do have to point out the humour of The Sun's coverage, as it seems to have completely replaced any sort of news and have just turned into The Big Brother Paper. Oh, and Amy Winehouse, they seem to like her a bit as well. Fucking pointless.

Jay-Z has hit out at people saying they don't want rap at Glastonbury, saying "It's ridiculous, if we don't embrace what is new, then how do we progress?" - shut up, Jay, nobody wants to hear about your 'hoes'. Your carbon-copy cookie-cutter 'gangsta' rap is the most boring kind of fucking music in the entire world, even worse than chamber music, which is fucking awful, and you are an ugly cunt. Please go away.

In other news, some poor bastard was shot in the next town over from me the other day. Fucking hell, that's a bit close to home isn't it? Spain vs. Italy later on tonight, and as I've correctly predicted the last two quarter finals, I'm going to go out on a limb and go for 3/4, and say I reckon this is the year of the Spanish. With Luca Toni finishing like a drunken rugby player and a defence with a pace matched only by the laziest of arctic glaciers, I reckon David Villa will kick seven kinds of shite out of them and win it by a couple. A Germany vs. Spain final would beckon if that's the case, and a Germany vs. Italy one if it isn't, which would be frustratingly predictable to say the least. Part of me really wants Turkey or the Russians to really put the shits up everyone this tournament, but we'll have to wait and see.

I'm going to go and make myself a fried egg sarnie. Best hangover cure ever. The Formula 1 is shit.

Goodnight.

Beer Beer Beer Beer Chew Chew Snore

How fucking shit at everything do you have to be to fail to kill someone with a shotgun? Honestly. A device designed to shoot to death anyone within a 45-degree spray of the barrel of your weapon, and not one but two targets, and you still manage to fuck it all up and only wound them. Some people are just phenomenally shit at life, really. You've got to feel sorry for them. I'm too drunk and full of kebab meat to write out a full-length post, so I'll probably get back to you with a proper one after the Grand Prix tomorrow. Hopefully Lewis Hamilton will manage to win it, but starting 13th on the grid because of the penalty imposed on him last week, you have to doubt his chances. He's good, but not that good.

Race starts at about 1 tomorrow afternoon, and I'll be nursing a hangover and the noise will be driving me insane, yet like some sort of masochist I'll keep watching it anyway, and I hope you will be as well. Anyway, all of that is a good few hours away, so meanwhile, you can pass the time by reading the article on the world's ugliest dog. It's only got one eye, you know.

Hard-hitting journalism at it's absolute finest.

Goodnight.

Never Underestimate the Power of Boredom

Ah fuck it hurts. I've just gone and made myself an onion sandwich and wiped some onion goo into my eye when it started itching, and I'm now typing this post with one eye. The sandwich was rank as well, so I'm not impressed at all. Onions are smug round little cunts.

Anyway, the eagle-eyed amongst you might have begun to notice that things look a bit different, and that's because they are. I know the graphics for the last look never quite worked right as the people hosting them seemed to stop serving them up after about four people a day viewed them, which meant that if you visited this page at any time after your morning toast you were presented with plain text on a white background, and a misaligned logo if you were lucky. It was unprofessional, inexcusable and, most of all, it was fucking me right the way off, so I've fixed it all up - we are now Blandford 3.0, with all the bells and whistles of the dynamic age. Or something. At least the search function works properly now anyway.

The reason for this boffining about on a friday night is simple - the only place in town that plays music that doesn't consist of DJ Bling Daddy Dogg talking about his millions of hoes over a beat taken from the Grange Hill theme, or some tit in eyeliner being miserable about his missus leaving him or his jeans being too tight, has decided to shut itself down and go 'mainstream', and by 'mainstream' they mean 'Kaiser Chiefs', and by 'Kaiser Chiefs', they mean 'feckless Indie shite'. Anyway, so instead of finding another place to go and drink in, I sat on my arse and knocked out a redesign for my blog. Fuck me I feel like a nerd. At least there is sweet, sweet alcohol to look forward to in about 14 hours, or I might just punch myself in the face out of shame.

Anyway, hope you like the new look. Hopefully this one will last longer than the previous, because fuck me is it a lot of work to sort these things out. Just when you think you've got everything just fine, something somewhere cocks up with a HTML error of some sort that I don't understand and, me being the dickhead I am, I haven't kept copies of everything so I have to start all over again from scratch. Repeat and repeat and repeat until you've gone completely round the twist, you're bleeding from every orifice and you have become a broken man, but at least everything fucking lines up as it fucking should. Believe me, this was far more effort than it should have been.

This isn't today's post, even though it is 3 in the morning. I'll still try to knock something out for you tomorrow, but I've been at the whisky the whole time I've been editing and I'm not sure I'll be in any fit state. Especially as come five o'clock (in the evening, not in two hours - fucking hell that would be a stretch) I'm heading out to paint the town vomit-coloured.

See you lot tomorrow, if my eye hasn't dissolved and taken my brain with it.

Goodnight.

Dear Linford Christie, Shut the Fuck Up

Oh well. With none of the home nations qualifying for Euro 2008, I only had one hope for the tournament: That Cristiano Ronaldo wouldn't win it. With Portugal crashing out to Germany last night, my - and his - tournament is now over, only mine ended the way I wanted it to while his ended with Michael Ballack's forehead. The glamour-hogging fairy is trying to keep himself in the papers by saying he's going to announce his plans for the future in the next few days - grand, sweeping plans which will hopefully include breaking both his legs in sheer anguish. Personally I hope he does fuck off to Madrid, if only so I don't have to see his smug face in the back pages of my paper every saturday morning from August until June, but I am aware that that might be selfish reasoning.

Still, it was a good win for Germany, who were without manager Joachim Low, who has the haircut of someone from Panic at the Disco, who had to watch from the stands after his punch-up with an Austrian in the group games. Scolari can now swan off and take over at Chelsea and proceed to sign the world - presumably a much easier job than keeping Ronaldo playing football and not bursting into tears - but he'll have to do it on the back of being tactically outclassed by a German team that are showing again their frustrating capacity to grow as a tournament goes on. Later on it's Turkey vs. Croatia in the second quarter-final, which promises to be a much more passionate affair even if it isn't a technical spectacle on a par with Germany vs. Portugal, and if we're lucky we might even get to see a fight. You can't say fairer than that and I'm going to go for a Turkey win.

Elsewhere in football, France's subbed sub Samir Nasri has apparently flown into London for a medical with Arsenal and will sign a 5-year deal with the Gunners 'within days'. Given the fact this is about the twenty-fifth time Nasri has flown into London for a medical in the past few weeks, I wouldn't put too much stock in it until he actually turns up holding an Arsenal shirt and claiming he was a Gunners fan growing up in Marseille, as the only reasons I can think of for that many medicals are that they're all media bollocks or he's really a girl and they're trying to find a doctor to sign him off as a bloke but they can't find one thick enough yet.

Oh, and the Express, for all it's faults, reckons Ronaldo will definitely be off to Madrid this summer. Marvellous.

Moving away from football and towards those boring sports that nobody cares about, lets look at running. Former Olympian Lindford Christie has started shouting about institutionalised racism in Britain and reckons he should have a knighthood for having "achieved more single-handedly than any other sportsman in this country" and claims he doesn't have one because he's black. Of course, it could have nothing to do with the fact he brought shame on his sport and his country by being caught pumped full of drugs and banned for life in 1999, the ego-stroking twat. Maybe if you'd achieved something while not pumped full of nandrolone and hadn't gotten yourself a lifetime ban from Athletics, we might have given you a knighthood. We might even have let you carry the Olympic torch a bit. But you didn't, you fucked up, and Konnie Huq got to carry it instead, who, despite not having "achieved more single-handedly than any other sportsman in this country", has regularly achieved stuff like 'getting up in the morning and not immediately shooting up steroids'. Shut the fuck up.

In other news, people are idiots. At least, that's what Dartmouth council thinks, seeing as they've put up a sign saying 'Beware of Incoming Tide', as if people are somehow unlikely to see the enormous wall of water creeping up on their person. Now I agree with them, to an extent - people are idiots, but anyone who is that stupid that they wouldn't notice a large, horizon-filling body of water sneaking up on them should probably not be allowed out on their own. Not without a dedicated Youtube camera crew anyway.

Maybe the ocean-going experts at Dartmouth could help the Canadians find out why there are so many feet washing up on their beaches. In what is probably both the most macabre and the most brain-achingly bizarre case I've heard about in years, there has now been 5 human feet washed up on Canadian beaches in the last year. The Mounties reckon that none of them were 'removed or severed by force', which makes you wonder where they actually come from - feet don't just fall off and make a break for it. Forensic experts say it's not unknown for body parts to detach after long periods of decomposition in the water, but that still leaves the question as to why it's all feet, and nobody's yet found a face or an elbow washed up somewhere in British Columbia.

Probably a good thing, really. I wouldn't want to find a face.

Keeping with the macabre, Damien Hirst is back with another pickled animal. This time it's a cow with a bit of gold on it's head. No word on what rediculously pretentious statement about the state of humanity a pickled cow is supposed to represent, but it is expected to raise £8-12m at auction, though I seriously doubt anyone anywhere can tell me why with a straight face. Twelve million quid for a pickled cow and you call it art? It's not exactly a Picasso is it? It's not like you can hang it in your dining room as a conversation piece when you're having guests - well, unless you're really, really odd.

Modern art is fucking awful. Look, I've got a jar of my own piss with a dead dormouse floating in it. It represents man's futile struggle against sewing machines. Eight million to you, guv. Whoever buys this is clearly very rich, but no amount of money could possibly make up for how completely fucking stupid they are. Or the futility of having a special room built onto your house for you to keep your picked cow in.

Finally, moving over to America for a moment, 17 girls from one school in Massachusetts have gotten pregnant at the same school after they formed a 'pregnancy pact' after watching the film 'Juno', in which a teenage girl gets pregnant and decides to keep the baby. Now I know first-hand how influential films can be - this reminds me of the time when I watched The Godfather after drinking too much coffee and ended up forming an international crime family and took over 1940s New York, right up until some bastards shot me five hundred times at a toll booth. Or that time where I genetically recreated the dinosaurs from DNA trapped in amber fossils and they ended up eating Jeff Goldblum.

Oh wait, that didn't happen, because I'm not enough of a twat to copy things I see in movies that I know will ruin my life.

That's me done for the day. More tomorrow.

Goodnight.

Na Na Na Na, Na Na Na Na, Hey Hey Hey, Goodbye

Germany 3, Blubbering Twat 2

Your Say Thursday; Do you feel cut off from the criminal justice system?

It's back! Seeing as there weren't any good questions last week, I left out the idea of Your Say Thursday because it's been a bastion of insanity and unbalanced bigotry since the very beginning, and I didn't want to risk damaging it's image with some boring story on petrol tax with a bunch of BMW-driving cunts shouting from the rooftops about how it would now cost them an extra quid to drive their company car at rediculous speeds while talking to their mistresses on their mobiles and wanking themselves into an early grave.

This week, though, there's 'Do you feel cut off from the criminal justice system?', a question bound to draw the morons out in force. I don't pretend to be able to make any comment funny, which is why I didn't bother last week, but the answers you get for questions like this just write themselves. Read on.

"Criminals have no rights. Break the law and you should be so harshly treated you never do it again. Simple. Get the scum off the streets and stop the police targetting speeding, parking and other rubbish until all the real crime is solved."
Tom, London

Yes, the police should stop investigating all the crimes you fancy committing, and dedicate themselves solely to the pursuit of incriminating people who aren't you. I reckon the police should stop targetting me punching you in the face over and over again until all the real crime is solved. You know, the stuff committed by people who aren't me.

"I think the criminals should be sent to Helmand province to act as mine detectors for are brave soldiers."
Pablo, Bradford

I think anyone found guilty of littering should be strung up by their toes and beaten about the face with shoes until they're really really sorry, and then blasted into space. It's the only way to be sure. If we don't blast them into space, they might come back and MURDER US ALL. As for the ones guilty of belching in public, well, best to blow them up as well, in case.

"Ten million people were convicted of motoring offences (exceeding the speed limit, parking in the wrong place or entering a bus lane). Meanwhile just a few thousand people are convicted of theft, assault, criminal damage, trespass, or other anti-social behaviour. Seems to me the justice system has got it the wrong way round."
Brian Worboys, Chelmsford, United Kingdom

Ding ding! Here comes the maths fairy, try not to doze off. If, within a set length of time, ten million people commit driving offences and 'just a few thousand' people commit theft, assault and so on, and the police convict ten million bad drivers and 'only' a few thousand theives, assaulters, etc (far less common crimes than speeding and so on), then both will still have a 100% success rate. Now, none of this means that's the case, it just means you're a moron.

"No more slapped wrists, fines, or community service. Send them DOWN!"
Suffolk Boy

Send them DAHN, Guv, send them DAHN! All legal decisions should be taken by Suffolk Boy after an overdose of coffee and The Bill. I used to get like this when I watched crime shows, but then I discovered Law and Order and now I can't take my eyes off Mariska Hargitay long enough to get a stonk on about sending people DAHN, or stroking my baton, or anything.

"Round up all the do gooders who let us get into the state we are in today , and bang them up for twenty years . It's a start !"
[lassiethegeesechaser]

I am firmly of the belief that all people who disagree with me on any issue whatsoever should be locked up forever. This will make the world a better place (for me) and will make a huge difference in the areas that matter most (to me). It's a start (for me).

"You relentlessly criticize our country for every little thing, imaginary motives and all the world's ills, but your little island is a pseudo-democracy of social degeneracy."
Jeremy Mason, Houston, United States

Pro tip: Criticising people for lumping everyone in your country into one group by lumping all of them into one group makes you look a bit of a hypocrite. And a twat. It also looks like you might be vomiting up parts of a dictionary.

P.s. Americans stink of bums and wee. Nyah-nyah, etc.

Finally, I know it's harsh to joke about it so soon, but I really am finding it difficult not to laugh when I'm watching the news report with the father of the female soldier killed in Afghanistan describing her as 'the Angel of the North' - 60 feet high and made of metal? Calm down.

I know you're greiving and everything, but think about what you're saying, eh? I don't think me pissing myself laughing is quite the response you're trying to elicit.

Though that wouldn't half put the shits up the Taliban, 'Wicker Man' style.

Goodnight.

How Tall is John Kerry?

Drinking whisky until four in the morning is a bad idea. This might sound like obvious advice, but it's obvious enough of us aren't realising it so it bears repeating. It leads to antisocial behaviour, headaches, shivers and the typing of blog posts while carefully looking anywhere but the Satanic brightness of the computer screen, so I'm going to apologise for any spelling mistakes in advance before I move on to the usual round of things you probably didn't want to know - you know, the sort of thing that gets into the news, or into your circle of friends, and no matter how disgusting it is, or even because of how disgusting it is, it keeps on doing the rounds, despite how much it makes you feel like you're going to spew last night's kebab all over your desk.

The BBC's entertainment page has done quite well in managing to beat it's death-and-stabbings-filled bretheren (largely because there's only one shooting today, and shootings are boring) for the vom factor this morning, by telling us that Angelina Jolie likes to have sex while pregnant. Now I know that she's some sort of alien mentalist, that much has been clear from the times she admitted shagging her own brother and then moving on to bonking old men, but I didn't need the graphic mental image of Brad Pitt's love-ferret poking his unborn children in the head because his mad bitch of a wife has decided that she likes being humped while the size of a house. "As a woman you're just so round and full," she told Entertainment Weekly magazine in the US, "so you have fun".

And then the interviewer vomited on her face.

Interestingly (OK, it isn't), the article also says that Angelina Jolie is the third most powerful celebrity in the world. Presumably that's only temporary and she'll be moving up to first once she peels off her human skin and reveals herself to be some sort of giant intergalactic eyeball-beast, because no normal human being looks that fucking weird.

Speaking of powerful celebrities, Richard and Judy have put out a book list for summer reading that the BBC is saying will cause the lucky books on said list to fly off the shelves this month, because the Geriatric and her Sex Carer are so rediculously influential on people's choice of reading. Given their fame and the almost deifying worship they get from the middle aged middle classes I can believe that, but you really have got to wonder how and why the two dullest, most insipid people on the face of television are seen as the final arbiters in the decision of what is and isn't a good read. They obviously don't have time to read every single book that comes out to check 'for their faithful viewers' if it's a good read or not, so they're basically just going to be listing books that they've read offhand and reckoned are alright, and if you don't like those genres, you're fucked and might have to actually think for yourself instead of letting Richard and Judy decide everything for you like surrogate fucking parents.

Personally I reckon she likes books about recipes and the past while he likes gentle war novels and child pornography.

As evidenced by my essay on the stupidity of backwards racism yesterday (resulting in a rather bizarre Google search coming up when I started up my computer again, which has now made it's way into the title of this post), there's fuck all going on in the news. All the killers, maimers and other societal cunts have fucked off on holiday, so it seems, and left me with nothing to write about except the fact that the government has left another set of classified documents on a train. What the fuck are they doing? That's about the eighth this year. I take the train twice every weekday and I'm yet to leave anything as much as a crisp packet behind when I get off again, while they seem to have massive lapses of concentration with massively important documents about once every three weeks. I'm no James fucking Bond, but maybe they should employ me to cart these things about instead of the obviously mentally incapable idiots that are doing it at the moment.

Of course, the ones we know about are the ones where the finder of the classified documents has taken them to a paper. We don't know how many have been left behind and found by some bloke who's now sat flicking through them in his living room, laughing at all the people with the surname 'Bumder'.

That's about it, I'm afraid. Oh, and the football's gone all boring again. Today's biggest transfer news is Middlesbrough (it's started bad already - Ed) saying they won't be signing a goalkeeper to replace Mark Schwartzer because they reckon Brad Jones and Ross Turnbull are good enough to fight it out for the number 1 jersey next season. That's a crying shame for Boro, because they aren't. So today's biggest transfer news is someone not being transferred. Bloody hell.

Other than that, I've got to find £500 and a passport from somewhere so I can go to New York in September. That's a lot of money, but it is after all the place with the highest concentration of Nice Jewish Girls in the world, so I guess I'll be going then.

Enjoy your Sunday.

Goodnight.

The Phenomenon of the First Black X

Right you box of cunts. Because none of you have had the decency to go out and start maiming each other in entertaining ways for the last couple of days, you've given me absolutely nothing to report on and take the piss out of, and, this being the early hours of Saturday morning and I'm still without a blog post, it's starting to aggravate me. So you're going to get an essay. That's right, an essay. A proper, well-thought-out (well, sort of) political comment with little to no swearing at all. Probably. My topic, ladies and gentlemen? Racism. Not the bloke-shouting-in-the-street garden variety England-shirted bigoted racism, but the more subtle variety that seems to permeate the British media like some sort of infection and always seems to rear it's head at the most cringe-inducing times, like that unfortunate uncle everyone meets at weddings that, in the middle of the speeches, always knocks the punch bowl over with his arse.

Readers, I give you the phenomenon of the First Black X.

Why do we have to constantly act like the black community is playing catch-up? Why does the media rouse up such hype over the first black man to do this, the first black woman to do that - the first black X, the first black Y? No other race receives this condescending treatment from the mass media. If one did, support groups would be up in arms.

Let me take your minds back to around this time last year, round about the time when the furore around Lewis Hamilton was really starting to take off. Do you remember the BBC constantly plugging the story about Hamilton being the first black Formula 1 driver, despite Hamilton himself really seeming generally unconcerned by the whole thing? That illustrates my point with the media completely. What was it about him being a black man racing in Formula 1 that was so shocking? Is there really, in this day and age, something so sensational about the idea of a black man driving a car that it warranted that much exposure? I'd never heard the point made before about a lack of black drivers in Formula 1, then suddenly one comes along and we're all swept away in the tide of media hype over Lewis Hamilton, the First Black X.

The phenomenon is not just limited to sport, but ranges out to almost every field of human achievement. Anywhere you look, you'll start to find heaps of praise lavished by doubtless well-meaning white folks on black people who achieve something that someone else who isn't black has already achieved; now I'm sure this isn't their intention and they mean only to draw praise to these people for being the first black Formula 1 driver, the first serious black candidate for a major US political party, etc. but what it does is it invokes a far more insidious form of ingrained racism than average bigot shouting his mouth off with his friends. It makes out, however unintentionally, that black people are slower than the rest of us and deserve special praise for their achievements much like overprotective parents congratulating a slightly slow child for tying their own shoelaces. It's "yeah, we know X number of guys did this before you, but hey, you're the first BLACK guy!" like their skin colour is a handicap to their abilities. It's rediculous.

I know the people that do it are probably the most left-wing people on the planet and probably swing far more towards the political left than me. I'm sure they would be horrified to have any accusations of racism levelled at them. I'm sure that their actions are, in their minds, designed to stop racism and challenge bigots' assertions that other races are slow, behind or backward, but they are subtlely reinforcing them. It is not special when a black man goes into competing in a sport, and it shouldn't be special in the 21st Century when a black man runs for President of the United States. If you truly believe that all peoples are equal, then why is it special that a black man can do these things? Where was the fanfare for John Kerry as "first man over 6' 3" to be nominated by a major political party?"

(I don't know if he was, I haven't checked my facts).

The people who go out of their way to point these things out make being black out to be a disability more than any ignorant racist shouting his mouth off, because people know to ignore obvious stupidity when they hear it. What they don't know how to filter out is the subtle implication that the black community needs to be patted on the head and told they're doin' great every time a black man or a black woman achieves something. It's unneccessary and insulting.

And that's your essay. Hopefully someone will get stabbed tomorrow and the usual routine will be restored.

Goodnight.

Chris Martin: Professional Dullard

Shite. I hate oversleeping, it drives me mental. I'll make all these gushing flamboyant plans for what I'm going to do with my day, then I'll wake up about four hours too late to do any of them and instead start moaning on and on about my habit of oversleeping to anyone who will listen. Today I missed out on playing football, which is a crying shame as it's probably the one 'outside' thing I look forward to other than things involving a beer garden and a big telly, but who plays football at 10.30 in the morning? It's just not natural. Football is for the afternoon, once you've woken up properly and have had a fried egg butty and about seventeen cups of proper hard tea for strength. Anything else is just blasphemy and I'll have no part in it. Particularly if I'm asleep until midday.

Anyway, news. There's got to be some stuff happening today, as the last few days have been so razor-shittingly dull that if today was another duff'un, I'd have started to worry that I'd woken up in the world of I Am Legend, and the only reason I hadn't noticed was I hadn't been outside long enough to run into one of those hideous creatures. Thankfully, I found some, so for once I actually have something to comment on. In probably the least surprising thing in world politics since Hitler turned out to not be a very nice man dabbling with his watercolours after all, Robert Mugabe's supporters have said they are going to take up arms to stop the opposition taking power, despite the fact they've won about seventy-four different elections in the last couple of months. I don't know who really thought that a mad dictator like Mugabe was just going to step down and give what he thinks is his country by birthright away to some bloke who doesn't agree with him, but whoever they are, they're some sort of collossal prat who should really stop writing about politics as it appears that intelligent debate clearly doesn't agree with them.

Mugabe also goes on to bang on about evil white oppressors again. As opposed to the nice black oppressors like him, who are so much better because they're the same colour as the people they're killing.

Speaking of killing, a woman has become the second person charged with punching a man to death over a supermarket queue in south London. Now I don't know about you, but I don't consider breaking my personal best time for getting my pot of jam past the dead-eyed Sainsbury's assistant enough to even kick up a fuss, let alone start killing people, but I suppose this is London and London is very rapidly turning into something like downtown Mogadishu. So far in the last few weeks we've had punchings, stabbings, shootings and even some dickhead smashing up a bakery in order to kill a bloke who didn't want to fight him in the street. The BNP and UKIP have been going mental talking about how it's the evil forrins causing all the violence but I reckon it's just the standard London fuck-you attitude run amok rather than anything else. London is the only place where I've actually had to get into a physical fight to get on a train, regardless of how busy it is, and the only place where I've seen employed officials refuse to help anyone with an accent different to their own. Londoners hate each other and they definately fucking hate you.

Speaking of twats (there's a theme to my segues today), let's move on to Coldplay. Coldplay singer Chris Martin has left an interview halfway because 'he wasn't enjoying himself' - presumably because the interviewer asked him how he'd managed to make that much money when every single thing he's ever made has been that fucking boring. I know it's a rock megastar's prerogative to storm out of interviews if they don't like what's going on, as well as demand glasses full of certain coloured M&Ms or an amp that goes up to 11, but Chris Martin is not a megastar in any sense of the word - he married a now-irrelevant actress and gave a kid a stupid name, but that does not a megastar make - and Coldplay's music is less the spirit of rock and roll more the sound of sock suspenders and beige.

To combat this, I propose a new law; unless you've actually had to have been hospitalised in the past year because you've overdosed on coke and supermodels, you should legally lose the right to storm out of any interview in a huff. To do so is punishable by five years in prison and having all your records thrown into a chalk pit, because burning them would be too rock and roll for a punishment. At the very least it would stop Chris 'Fucking Boring Miserable Cunt' Martin from storming out of interviews and Pete 'Do I Actually Have a Band Anymore?' Doherty from acting like a rock God despite the fact the last time he released a single was just before the first time he stuck a needle in his arm. If that's Britain's answer to Kurt Cobain we really ought to give up on music altogether.

In terms of general other-news round-up, the NHS is saying that the current boom in body piercing will lead to a mass of cases when they all go green and wrong. Personally I reckon that the current boom in body piercing will lead to a mass of people who look rediculous, which should be more of a dissuasion. Elsewhere, Spain have admitted two children to rehab for mobile phone addiction. Just take the fucking phones away. Oh, and in a stunning example of what really, really isn't newsworthy at all, Wayne and Colleen are spending their first day as a married couple. Yes, that's what tends to happen after a marriage, BBC. How long is this going to go on for? Wayne and Colleen Spend 3,456th Day as Married Couple? If this is our new Posh and Becks we're in real trouble. At least those two weren't actually painful to look at, for the first few years at least.

Meanwhile, new Chelsea boss Big Phil Scolari is trying to sign fucking everyone. No surprise there.

Goodnight.

Edit: Sorry about the lack of Your Say Thursday yesterday, it got to about 10 o'clock and then I just couldn't be fucked. I have no excuse, and I'll arrange a time and date in the stocks for you to come and throw rotten fruit at me for my crime. If I can be fucked.

A Belated Wednesday Post, Actually on a Thursday

You know there's pretty much fuck-all news going around when the most entertaining thing I could find on my usual trawling of the internet was a link from Google Ads. This time it was DateAMillionaire.com - I can't be the only one that doesn't think millionaires have any trouble finding people to give them a good seeing to, and if they did they'd find a damn sight better place to find them than the internet, as everyone knows that internet dating will, in 99% of all cases, end in lies, recriminations and your broken body turning up in a drain in rural Suffolk because the sort of nutter you find who wants to 'date' on the internet can't bear to see you leave when you take a walk to the shops for milk and more Durex.

Still, I suppose at least you'd get something out of it, unlike this bloke, who was arrested for laughing at the telly. Now I know Paul Merton is criminally funny, but this is rediculous, with the bloke being pepper sprayed and arrested after police forced their way into his home because he fell off the couch laughing at Have I Got News for You. I'm not sure why that's illegal and my cursory glance of the article didn't really reveal what he was arrested for or what warranted this treatment other than he was apparently 'uncooperative' with the officers that came to arrest him for wanton giggling. I can't say I blame him, really. If the real coppers came and tried to arrest me while I was enjoying an 'educational' episode of Law and Order (with the delicious Mariska Hargitay as Det. Olivia Benson. Yum.) then I'd spunk all over their shoes in protest. Unless it was actually her come to do the arresting, obviously, but that's happened before and before she even got the cuffs on I'd woken up in a puddle of my own dribble.

I hate to tell you this, but that really is pretty much it for today's news, after just one proper story. There really is completely fuck-all going on and nobody's died in a painfully funny way in fucking ages. I could report more on the big 'current issues' that the BBC is all over this past week, but I'm not interested in Wayne and fucking Colleen's 'big day' and I doubt you are either. Six million high resolution photos of the two ugliest people in the country snogging each other in hideous 'designer' gear courtesy of 'Hello!' cuntazine really isn't my style and I hope you'll understand if I hold off reporting on either of them until the inevitable three week breakup when he gets outed for shagging another blue-rinse and she walks off with half his cash.

Well, what other possible reason could there be for being willing to get yourself humped by Wayne Rooney?

I suppose I could concentrate on the fact the Fathers for Justice protesters that are being arrested after climbing up that MP's house and sitting there dressed as idiots, but frankly, it was pretty obvious that was going to be the conclusion. I know they're fighting for a reasonable cause and the rights for fathers in this country have been reduced to essentially fuck-all if the mother decides to hold a bit of a grudge, but until the pendulum of political correctness starts to shift a bit back in the other direction this is all that's going to happen. I've got a mate who's over a barrel and his ex missus gives him the baby to look after every friday and saturday so she can go on the piss, and knows full well if he refuses even once then she can take the kid away permenantly because he will have 'willingly refused access'. This is after months and months of her keeping it away altogether until she decided she wanted to go out on the town. Cow.

Still, I don't know what other response they were expecting to get from the Minister for Women. That's no slur against feminism or anything else, but Harriet Harman, as the Minister for Women, is employed to always take the woman's side, no matter how rediculous she's being. What we need is a Minister for Men. I reckon Jeremy Clarkson would do a good job, and anyone who's ever punched Piers Morgan in the teeth has my full support on anything. The odious smug little cunt.

What else? Ah yes, football. Portugal beat the Czechs 3 - 1 and now Ronaldo thinks they're going to win the tournament - and, annoyingly, they probably will, just so that hair-gelled little cock can smug around even more, and send new Chelsea boss Big Phil Scolari into a tailspin of signing up even more hair-gelled little Portuguese cocks (because we haven't had enough of those at Chelsea before), while Turkey beat Switzerland with a last-minute deflection after spending ninety-three minutes playing in a puddle which the Turks had no idea how to handle. Switzerland's Hakan Yakin scored the easiest goal I've ever seen in a professional match after the ball stopped in a puddle 2 yards out with nobody within 10 yards and he poked it in, but the Turks fought back and scored 2 in the second half when the pitch dried out a bit and people could actually play football again without the aid of water wings.

Tonight, Croatia play Germany, which promises to be an exciting game with lots of neat, passing football, while Austria play Poland, which doesn't. The Austria game is the evening one, though, so hopefully I'll be drunk enough by the time it rolls around that I'll think it's pretty good. Germany and Poland to win it in what has, so far, been an astonishingly predictable tournament.

Oh well, beer and football await. It can't all be bad.

Your Say Thursday coming later.

Goodnight.

Keeping the Shit One

So apart from some exceedingly predictable football at Euro 2008, there seems to be very little going on in the world - well, except drunk footballers maiming people, but then they're always doing that - that, and shagging models in toilets. In fact, things have gotten so dull in the world of the media that they've gone back to putting up stories about that mentalist that stabbed Jill Dando to death some time back in the Triassic era. I don't know exactly why they're bothering with a mistrial as he quite clearly did it, and is just the sort of person to have done it. Anyone who changes their name in tribute to Freddy bloody Mercury (he was good, but come on) has got to be a bit odd, and ripe for a bit of celebrity shooting.

Speaking of shooting, that's the reason behind this posts title - according to reports in various newspapers, Chelsea are allowing AC Milan to enter contract talks with Dider Drogba, but not with Andriy Shevchenko. Can anyone think of a good reason why? At all? Didier Drogba, while a diving squealing girly headbanded little cunt, is quite astonishingly effective, while the man from Ukraine about as good a footballer as I am in ice skates after three quarters of a bottle of whisky. People are going to say it's because he's Roman's mate and everything but surely Abramovich didn't get to where he is in the world by putting his shit mates in charge of Russian oil fields, and Andriy Shevchenko is the footballing equivalent of drowning several peasant villages in 5,000 gallons of crude because you left the tap on, and this decision is the footballing equivalent of leaving it on because your mate Alexei did it and you quite like his smile.

Still, I hope AC Milan do get Drogba, the tree-like twat. Nothing would make me happier than next years' Premiership kicking off without Drogba or Ronaldo, who for all his bleating does indeed look like he might just be off to Real after the Euros. Quite why they'd want him after his stunningly ineffective performance against the Turkish I don't know, but I expect he sells a lot of shirts - no word on how many get burnt as effigies, but it's all money, isnt it?

Back off the pitch - because everything on it has gone to shite and 1 - 0's - the United Nations are wreaking havoc again, this time saying that the UK demonises youngsters and is locking too many of them up. Great. Here comes legislation saying we have to smile and give them a cookie as they happy slap pensioners to death, while the police stand aside and nod sagely as 'kids will be kids' as blood splashes on their shoes. They reckon one in three children experience poverty, which I think is complete bollocks as the number one concern of most children in Britain is new trainers or who they're going to knife next, not where their next meal's coming from, which is the sure sign of real poverty. When they get too listless and hungry to shoot toddlers with air rifles for a laugh, get back to me about their suffering and poverty. Until then, shut the fuck up and lock the nasty little cunts in a nice warm basement with a nice genial guard called Josef. That ought to teach the little fuckers a lesson.

Oh, and there's going to be an opera about Brokeback Mountain. That's that come full circle, then.

Goodnight.

Blandford's Comprehensive Guide to the Big Brother Housemates

Cunt.	Cunt.
Cunt.	Cunt.
Cunt.	Cunt.
Cunt.	Cunt.
Cunt.	Cunt.
Cunt.	Cunt.
Cunt.	Cunt.
Cunt.	Cunt.

© Some Cunt 2008, All Rights Reserved.

Fuck Off UEFA, Plus My New Personal Hero

So it's come to this. After a rip-roaring performance on Monday where I played in the pouring rain like the spirit of Garrincha lost in a puddle, I'm sidelined for my lot's friday kickabout because, like a girl, I went out and bought myself some new boots and they made like a bacon slicer on the backs of my heels. Arse and sod. Still, football's coming back, at least to the telly, in just under 30 hours from this posting, at about five o'clock tomorrow afternoon. Alright so it's only Switzerland vs. Czech Republic, but it does signify at least a fortnight of football at least once a day, which will drive any women in my house completely mental, but I'm bigger than them and I've got the remote, so provided I can drown out the shrieking with the volume button (It's a fucking big telly) I'm in for a fortnight of absolute shouty bliss.

But it might not happen for much longer. Not next time. Not if UEFA get their way.

The meddling cunts have decided that there just aren't enough people making enough money from Euro 2008 because the UK is showing it on free-to-air television. Now I don't see what an organization that is supposed to govern football is doing interfering with television rights, but they're going to take British TV heads to the European Court to make them put the rights up on general sale to be bought up by the for-pay satellite TV companies. This is fucking rediculous. They've evidently sold someone the rights, and if they didn't like the price, they shouldn't have sold. But they did, so they should shut up and stop being such greedy cunts. You could probably say I'm only saying that because I want to be able to watch the stuff for free, but you'd be wrong - I'm fully in agreement with the BBC and ITV, and I've already got Sky Sports.

The thing is, it's a worrying trend that we should have to pay for the football twice. I pay my TV licence and the only thing I really watch on TV is the football. I've not watched a terrestrial channel in months, and Sky is more than worth the money I pay them for the sheer coverage of sport that I enjoy - Football Focus, Friday Fight Night, etc, are all things I watch religiously whenever they're on. I've watched so much banter between Jeff Stelling and co that I almost consider them old mates, and I've ordered every Hatton fight on their Box Office service for as long as I can remember. That's fine. But people who don't have the money to pay out for Sky Sports and Sky Box Office deserve to get their fill of sport as well, out of the TV licence. UEFA say that the Euro 2008 tournament isn't important enough to British interests to fall under the protected charter that says that it can only be shown on free-to-air television here, because we don't have any of our teams at the finals. I disagree. If the average armchair fan can't sit on his sofa and watch every last second of the tournament through a Carling-filled haze, how is he ever going to tell Fabio how to run the team when we have to play you cunts in the future? We might actually have to rely on his expertise, and not that of millions of armchair Football Manager players.

Seriously though, we get precious little on 'free' TV anymore. BskyB and, increasingly, Setanta (every fucking Calzaghe fight ever) are buying up everything worth watching. Football is massively important to this nation, and is probably part of our national identity even more than it is in Brazil. We in Britain truly do eat, sleep and breathe football, regardless of trite adverts for a certain brand of fizzy pop, and it doesn't matter who's playing, we just love watching. With the international makeup of our Premiership as it is, all of us will likely have a star player for our clubs at the tournament; Liverpool have their Fernando Torres, Arsenal their Cesc Fabregas, right through to Portsmouth star Niko Kranjcar and Celtic legend Henrik Larsson. Players their fans want to see do well, and opposing fans want to see do themselves in - I'd consider it a personal low point if Cristiano Ronaldo got punched in the face by a great big Romanian and I wasn't able to see the teeth fly in full high definition clarity.

Not massively important to Britain? Tell that to everyone who'll be sitting down and tuning in from saturday afternoon. After the initial lull, the initial promises that we would never watch football again, let alone Euro 2008, we've picked ourselves up and have been clamouring, ever since the Champions League final ended so dramatically, for the tournament to start? Why? Because football is our first love. Our wives hate it, our daughters don't understand it and our bosses shout porkily at our answering machines as they're left alone in the office to handle that big thing that needed to be done today, but none of it matters. Not even the fact England aren't there matters, because there's football on, and football is in our blood.

Anyway, there was one good story to come out of today's BBC updates. Britain's oldest survivor of World War 1 has turned 112, and fuck me that's old. Henry Allingham, born on this day in 1896, is the last surviving member of the original Royal Air Force, has lived through 6 monarchs and 21 Prime Ministers. He has, somewhat tragically, outlived not only his wife, but his two daughters. He fought at Jutland, Ypres and the Somme, and was awarded medals of high status by not only Britain, but also France, and attributes his longevity to "cigarettes, whisky and wild women". Brilliant. Happy birthday, Henry. You've done all of us proud.

Goodnight.

Ding-Dong, The Witch is Dead

Today has gone pretty well, all things considered. Despite the fact I woke up with thighs aching like they were missing a long-lost lover and the backs of my heels look like I have the beginnings of a nasty case of stigmata, I received probably the best piece of information I've heard in months. It could have been better, Mariska Hargitay (is it me, or do you have a burgeoning obsession for women who could quite easily kick your arse? - Ed) could have turned up on my doorstep declaring an almost nymphomaniacal lust for slightly hairy Jewish bloggers that just needed to be satistifed right now and she wasn't going to take no for an answer, but staying within the confines of reality instead of my endless realms of depravity, it was just the fact that Hillary Clinton has apparently lost the race for the Democratic nomination in the US elections come November.

Good. The completely mental bitch.

Her relentless campaign to ban everything fun in the entire universe (music, games, porn) and lock up anyone with the audacity to buy anything for their kids other than the Bible or Paper Mario probably wasn't the thing that did her in, and it was probably more her copious lying and exaggeration at every corner, but at least it looks like she's going to have fucked off by the weekend. Of course, now it looks like we're going to get the first serious black candidate for the United States Presidency, there's going to be a whole new breed of nutjobs coming out of the woodwork, and with Senator McCain and his health problems on the Republican side, it could well come down to which candidate manages to outlive the other. Oh well, gentlemen, start your sweepstakes. My money's on a McCain win.

My second story tonight is the nailing of a pig's head to a Muslim community center in Cornwall. Now obviously this his horribly wrong and completely illegal, and a heinous affront to peace and community relations, but you've got to admire the sheer Godfather factor of it, haven't you? Our local bigots just turn up with the odd sign, not something they've nicked off the butchers. The Cornish Nationalists are apparently trying to drive out the Muslim community in much the same way as they're trying to drive out everyone else who isn't Cornish, so it's not so much race related as someone somewhere going for maximum offence and getting it dead on, but the police are still treating it as a racial offence. One has to wonder why the Muslims want to live in Cornwall anyway - I mean, the scenery's nice and everything, but it's full of mentals nailing bits of offal to your house. I'd much rather go somewhere where the local bigots just shout at you a bit, in exchange for better supermarket facilities and less feeling like you're somewhere between Narnia and Royston Vasey.

In sport - because there's fuck-all else going on, as everyone from politicians to the dreaded Euro 2008 'WAGs' (an appropriate tag, seeing as they're all fucking dogs - Ed) is hiding from the constant shitting rain - it's all gone a bit swings and roundabouts, with the Man from Del Monte fucking off to Inter, Inter's old boss Mancini being touted to take over at Chelsea after number one target Mark Hughes went to Man City to replace former Chelsea target Sven-Goran Eriksson, who's fucked off to manage Mexico. If that isn't complicated enough for you, Mourinho is reportedly planning to return to old side Chelsea to nick all their best players, meanwhile his old old side Porto have been booted out of the Champions League for match fixing back when he was in charge in 2003/04 - not that he had anything to do with it, obviously - while managerless Blackburn have decided they can't be fucked appointing anyone at all just yet. Allardyce is being touted for it but I think that's a bit of a sideways step for a club like Blackburn, who should be looking to kick on with someone who can add to the squad full of attacking flair they've already got, not sign Kevin Davies and kick it his head season after season.

Still, what do I know? I'm just a man with achy legs.

Finally, I knew it, I fucking knew it. Drinking is good for you. Fuck you, patronising 'units' adverts and that one with the multi-voiced madman at the pub from Hell.

Goodnight.