Do Not Be Alarmed, The Room Will Stop Spinning Shortly

Bleurgh. I don't know what I was drinking last night, but right now it's fighting a pitched battle with the stringy kebab I spilled down my neck at 2 in the morning, and the losing side is me. I remember some people I met at the quiz machine, a nightclub and there may even have been some breasts, but other than that it's just a blur of various noxious brews with a soundtrack provided by the fucking Ting Tings. Believe me when I say that they are truly awful. They're not even half-decent enough to be good to jump around on a dancefloor to while pissed off your tits, and I'll dance to the rhythm of my own burps.

It does raise an interesting question, though: According to my research (alright, it was Wikipedia), they've had two top 10 singles and a number one album - who's buying this tripe? It's the sort of inoffensive radio-friendly background-pop that you use to break up the monotony in between long silences or to cover up the sound of clacking keys in an office, but you wouldn't buy it. Unless you're some sort of insufferable tit who wouldn't know good music if it punched you in the bollocks. Let's just get this clear: If you listen to the Ting Tings, you are worse than Hitler.

Worse, also, apparently, than Radovan Karadzic. An extradition request for the former Bosnian Serb military leader is due to be in the offing in the next few days, designed to take the Serb to the Hague on charges of war crimes and, as with all things Balkan, it hasn't passed without a riot. Serbian nationalists, who presumably consider Karadzic's slaughter of a few thousand Bosniaks a generally good thing, have taken to the streets and President Boris Tadic has called out the riot police just in case they go on a jolly and try to nick Kosovo back, or something. It's been a bad time of late for Serbian nationalists, with the government seemingly determined to press forward with integration with the west and membership in the EU despite a vote suggesting at least a third of the population opposes it, as well as losing territory long considered Serbian in the shape of Montenegro and Kosovo, and now having a man many still consider a hero captured after 13 years on the run. You can see why they're a bit miffed, really, and it being a region where people will launch into street-burning riots over the price of bog roll, the riot police are probably a neccessary precaution. Or a good source of truncheons for clubbing each over the head. Either way.

Other than that, there's not a great deal going on. The football transfer market is going to go a bit doo-lally in the next few days, apparently, but for now it's just Roy Keane signing anyone who's Irish or ever played for Spurs, except Robbie Keane, the Irishman who used to play for Spurs. The Express reckons Liverpool - the younger Keane's new club - are now out of transfer money and are trying to flog Xabi Alonso to Arsenal in order to fund a bid to finally bring the second most protracted transfer of the summer to a close - signing Aston Villa's Gareth Barry. But the Express also think that rain is caused by Muslims in biplanes spitting at the Queen, so it's probably best to take most of the above with a good fistful of salt until something actually happens.

As for the most protracted transfer of the summer, Cristiano Ronaldo's subtle winking at Real Madrid behind Alex Ferguson's back, it's all still up in the air. The man himself has apparently been recuperating in L.A. on a strict diet of hair products and film premieres as a result of his knackered ankle, and has still managed to garner more back-page column inches than anyone actually doing any sport, so I'm not going to give him any more publicity than he's already had, except to call him a cunt.

Cristiano, you're a cunt.

That's about all the news I can fit into my addled brain just now, so you'll have to check in tomorrow to see if anything interesting has happened between now and whenever whichever part of the brain controls comprehension and short-term memory decides to start working again. At least it's not as blisteringly hot today, so I might be able to lie in bed making gentle mewling noises without sweating off another stone.

Happy tuesday.

Goodnight.

A Pigful of Cancer

Attention Builders: If, by the end of this post, you are still across the street not working and playing 'Puddle of Mudd' loud enough to drown out your own shittily redundant pneumatic drill (which you have left chuddering away despite not fucking using it), I will be forced to stab your wives and children to death with a broken vodka bottle covered in my own faeces. Please shut the fuck up.

Anyway, it's all gone a bit Pink Floyd in eastern Scotland, with a giant pig cycling around Glasgow and miraculously not being knifed. It's for cancer research, apparently, but I don't see the link between giant blue pigs and cancer if I'm perfectly honest. Still, it's a very honourable cause and if you want to donate a few quid without having to go all the way to the Land of the Jocks to hunt down two blokes pedalling a pig, you could always donate the normal way. Usually I hate preachy charity but I've got a mate who's dad has just been diagnosed as terminal, so I'm not saying you giving them a tenner will help them find a miracle cure in the next eight minutes, but it might help him feel a little bit less shit. Or something. You'd at least be giving purpose to two slightly deranged blokes sitting just in front of a massive carbon fibre pig.

In politics - I know it's American politics but it's been front page news all week over here so all of you pissers and moaners who want to piss and moan about American politics being all over British blogs can do it somewhere else - the world has gone slightly bonkers over the presence of Barack Obama in Britain. The more he campaigns and the more his PR people keep doing the absolutely brilliant job they're doing to promote their man, the more I think he's going to walk the November US Presidential elections - John McCain just isn't even on the radar of anyone who wasn't already voting Republican even if they ran a stuffed hamster as a candidate. The man has been compared to Kennedy in various national papers and while I think that's a bit premature, he's certainly had a Kennedy-like ability to make people dribble all over themselves in 3.4 soundbites. As far back as I can remember I can't think of another US Presidential candidate with that sort of ability, so the only problem I reckon he'll have is if someone takes it into their head to shoot him for being one of those damn negroes.

Hopefully they won't, though, as even if he wouldn't make a great President he seems like a genuinely nice sort of bloke. The sort of President you could have a pint with. Though any President that lets a slightly sozzled Englishman influence foreign policy is a very silly one indeed. Though it would be a bit of a change.

Of course, not all change is good. The sort of change that leaves you vomiting your kidneys up and gives you permenent brain damage is probably not the desired response for 'The Amazing Hydration Diet', though I have to say anyone who is willing to undertake anything that self-identifies as 'Amazing' is probably a bit thick anyway - If I walked around nightclubs introducing myself as 'The Amazing Sexual Dynamo' I might get a few sideways looks but I'd be extremely unlikely to find success. It just smacks of overcompensation. Still, £800,000 should be good enough for anyone, especially just for a 'cognitive defecit', which probably means she forgot what sort of pasta was her favourite for just about long enough to win a lawsuit.

I don't understand these fad diets anyway to be honest. If you want to lose weight, take up cycling. I love cycling. You can speed about like a low-budget Lance Armstrong and get your adrenaline going, or you can gently trundle through the woods at about half the speed of a tectonic plate and look at the rabbits, and it's also absolutely fantastic exercise. It's also about seventy-eight times more enjoyable than staring at a wall on the running machine at the gym. Admittedly my last cycling experiment the other day ended with my saddle falling off and me being spreadeagled and feeling sick after going dirt-cycling following three days of cider and bourbon, but, if I'm honest, I don't think that's entirely representative of the full cycling experience.

Still, I'm off the point I was trying to make - 'detox' diets are crap and kill you. Atkins was crap and killed you. All stupid diets are crap and will either kill you or make you feel like a baby-rapist for helping yourself to that bowl of soft scoop you felt would go perfectly with that weepy film on Channel 4, neither of which are particularly pleasant endings. If only people would move about a bit more they wouldn't need to eat nothing but green peppers for a month and have a hose full of boiling water pushed up their arses twice a week. You've got to have some sort of cognitive defecit to like that sort of thing in the first place.

It's all down to stupid celebrity worship really. Posh Spice weighs about four ounces and wears sunglasses that make her look like an insect, so obviously that's what everyone should do. I hate those glasses. Even my mother's got a pair, because they're the only style you can buy anymore. I expect these diets are all down to Gwyneth Paltrow swigging down nothing but tomato juice for six months to 'Get Back her Summer Bod', or some other terribly trite fashion-mag shite. We really do go so pointlessly fucking mental over celebrities - Halle Berry has just tried to get papparazzi arrested for trespassing onto her property in order to get pictures of her 4-month-old baby. Why? It's a baby. They all look fucking identical. Fat, starey and with little tufts of hair on top and none on the sides. You could pass off a picture of Ed Balls as one of Halle Berry's baby. Who'd really notice? "Oh, it's not got her eyes, has it?" "Looks a bit like a cunt politician to me."

Oh, and prisoners have been banned from playing adult-rated games - heaven forbid those hardened criminals see a bit of digital blood. Best let them play nothing but Mario Kart until one of them snaps and beats his cellmate to death with a spiny shell forged out of sharpened biros and an old shoe brush. Oh, and apparently, as well as for good behaviour, you can also get to play computer games if you're feeling suicidal in prison - "I know we've had to take your shoelaces away because you're desperately looking for a way out of this constant torture of beatings, intimidation and rape where any day now you might be left half-dead with your intestines hanging out on the floor of the exercise yard because you looked at Big Daz in just the wrong way, but here, play some 'Legend of Zelda', you'll feel better".

Personally I think it's stupid they get games at all - I remember seeing a documentary on young offenders' institutes a few years back, and those little bastards had a PS2 before I did. I very nearly stabbed a pensioner just so I could get the new Gran Turismo before my mates. Anyway, it's blazingly hot again and I'm going to go and burn off my epidermis and risk skin cancer while lying in the garden like some sort of pasty fruity-drink-sipping beached whale.

After I've killed some builders.

More tomorrow.

Goodnight.

Rain, Rain, Go Away, And Erm.. Don't Come Again. Ever.

So Lewis Hamilton won the monsoon-struck British Grand Prix, and immediately dedicated the win to his family and disabled brother, who he said inspired him to win by saying he was "The Master of the Wet". That's a wonderfully human gesture and he deserves the win because he seems a thoroughly nice kid, and we've all been missing the human touch from Formula 1 after a decade of Schumacher winning everything for the Reich. There's a lot of people out there that hate Lewis Hamilton, but they're just sad old cunts that are bitter that they never got to race anything bigger than Scalextric, and should shut up and get back to quietly wanking themselves to sleep in a bath of their own tears. David Coulthard crashed out on the first lap of his final British Grand Prix, but he's won it twice so we can probably forgive him and let him move on from it and hope he gets a few more points before the end of his final season. Maybe one last podium for him before he retires, as I expect a win is a bit too much to ask.

The women of SW19 are happy as well, as Rafael Nadal won the battle of the biceps vs. the cardigans (no, not those Cardigans) against Roger Federer at Wimbledon - a damn sight happier than the men of SW19 were at having to watch the Williams sisters butch it out for another final. Call me cynical but tennis really isn't exciting enough on it's own to warrant that amount of squealing and jumping up and down from the crowd, and the huge backing for Nadal was doubtlessly due, in part, to him being a dusky musclebound Mediterranean called Rafael up against a slightly awkward-looking man called Roger who dresses like my grandad. I can't say I'm much better, though, as just about the only thing I noticed about the tennis was that Jelena Jankovic was quite pretty, until I realised that she's about fifteen feet tall and suddenly the idea wasn't quite so appealing.

In proper news, David Cameron has come out saying that anyone found carrying a knife should be jailed, which is a pretty big turnaround for a man who not two years ago was suggesting that we should hug them and give them lots of money. More than the money in our wallets, obviously, as they've probably taken that already, along with our phones and kidneys. Presumably Cameron is just trying very hard to gauge the mood of the nation so he can work out how to win the next election, which really shouldn't be difficult as all he has to do is not be Gordon Brown. Mr Grumpy himself has spoken up this week that we in Britain should 'stop wasting food' in order to avert an economic crisis in this country. Any suggestion that Mr Brown himself should 'stop fucking the country up' to avert an economic crisis would presumably be met with a lot of murmuring and a quiet and feeble admission that he's out of a job the minute any of us get a chance to vote because he's been such a useless feckless cunt that just about 90% of everyone is going to vote for the Tories.

The government is also continuing their frankly fucking stupid campaign to make children 'eat healthy' and are genuinely shocked at the fact kids are avoiding asparagus in the canteen and are just going to the local shop to buy a Mars bar instead. "This is not simply about children preferring junk food", they said. Yes it fucking is. Kids. Like. Chips. If you take chips out of the school canteens and replace them with 'Healthy Option Vegan Friendly Watercress Salad', no fucker is going to eat it. There'll be a queue right from the gates to the front door of the local chippie every lunchtime. You simply will not ever force kids to eat healthily unless you shackle them down and lob lettuce leaves down their gobs after you've prised their mouths open with a car jack. Why? Because junk food just tastes better. When we get older most of us realise we should eat healthier and start munching down on the occasional bag of onion salad with our vindaloo, but when you're a kid it's a constant onslaught of crisps, drink and cake, which is as it should be.

If you're looking for the nub of the obesity issue in this country, don't look at kids' diets, look at their activities - half the people I know who have kids don't want to let them outside 'in case of paedophiles' and so keep them indoors every non-school hour of the day. Maybe I just live in a quiet part of town but I used to be out playing football every night after school and not one of us ever got snatched by a man in a raincoat (except Steve's dad, and he was generally snatching Steve home for his tea). It doesn't matter how many crisps or fizzy drinks you eat if you burn off the energy they give you. Let the kids eat what they want and have government-mandated fun. Everyone's happy, and Jamie Oliver can stop pretending to be a Cockney and fuck off back to cocking Surrey.

Meanwhile, in Bristol, concerns have been raised about the clearing of scrubland by gay men that like to use the area for sex. Fuck off. If you want to have sex, with whoever you're planning on having sex with, find a flat, or a hotel - I couldn't count on both hands the amount of hotels around here that charge an hourly rate. The local gay and lesbian trust have said that clearing the scrubland is 'potentially discriminatory', though no mention is made of the fact not clearing it is clearly discriminatory to anyone who wants to go for a quiet walk late at night and not come across pale bouncing bottoms glistening in the moonlight. You do not have the right to have sex wherever you please contrary to the wishes of the general public, and if you do, I'm going to come and have a wank in your tea. If you try to stop me it's potentially discriminatory and I'll take you to court. And spunk on you.

I ought to do some entertainment news before I go, so here we are - The Osbournes are going to be back on telly with a new 'variety show' of 'music and comedy sketches'. Oh no. 'The Osbournes' itself definitely overstayed it's welcome and the concept of them trying to do comedy sketches is making me cringe already. Ozzy is obviously a hugely talented man and Kelly is still quite possibly the cutest, sexiest (bleurghhh - Ed.) thing ever to walk the earth, but apart from the big man himself, none of them have the slightest modicum of ability. I'd have thought we'd have all learned that when Kelly released an album.

Oh, and someone called in a bomb threat on the Big Brother house, but it was only a hoax.

Shame.

Goodnight.

Mutant on the Loose! Fortunately, It's Just a Lettuce

Alright, I picked this story just for the headline, but scientists really have created a mutant lettuce. OK I admit that it's mutations only let it grow in the dry and it won't actually level Tokyo, but a mutant lettuce it genuinely is. It doesn't have adamantium claws or glowing red eyes and it doesn't even look a bit like Sir Ian McKellen, but we can't let this take away from what is clearly a massive scientific achievement, even if it quite probably was put together by a bunch of bored lab techs looking to create the shittest mutant ever, and this came in just ahead of Gary's slightly taller -than-average radish. Truly the days of a new scientific Renaissance are upon us.

As I mentioned yesterday, they've nicked the bloke they reckon stabbed those French students, then stabbed them some more, then set them on fire. They reckon the motivation for the attack was robbery, as their bank cards and a couple of games consoles were stolen, but the pathologist says there were no less than 243 seperate injuries on the two before they were set on fire, which seems a bit too much overkill just for stealing someone's Pokemon save. You really do have to be a special sort of nutter to do that sort of thing - see also the story of the east Yorkshire father killed and cut up by his son and dumped in a field. I know we're having a horrific swathe of knife crime in this country at the moment as all the 50 Cent wannabes try some sort of terribly violent oneupmanship as to who can maim the most pensioners, but it really does take a particularly extreme brand of insanity to take an axe to your own father, or stab a couple of Frenchmen 250 times just because you fancy stealing their PlayStation.

You also have to be a special, completely different, sort of nutter to go about in the sort of costumes they've been wearing at London's gay pride parade. Well, you don't, you just have to be gay. I say that in the nicest possible way, but I do often wonder if the more understated members of the gay community don't get embarrassed by the actions of the hotpanted minority; I'd certainly get a bit self-conscious if half my town were going around in giant wigs and spangly sunglasses. I only know one gay bloke and the reason I know him is because we play football together, and I can't imagine him having anything in common with the sort of people that dressed up for the parade - surely you can be proud of who you are when who you are is just a regular, normal guy that has sex with other regular normal guys, not some mass of glitter and spangles. Obviously there's nothing wrong with people expressing themselves, I just think it's a bit odd that everything has to go that over the top.

While we're on the topic of rediculous hair, I really ought to bring up James May. It was apparently reported that the Top Gear presenter wanted parity of wages with frontman Jeremy Clarkson, but that was, according to his agent, a lie. I can't really see it, to be honest, as surely May would know that he's not nearly as recognizable as Clarkson, who has been fronting the thing even when it was the old, shit Top Gear, the one that was actually sensible and reviewed Fiestas instead of driving Ferraris into walls and racing around America for no good reason - you know, boring telly.

Anyway, I hate to break it to you, but that's all that's happened today. It's raining and all the good news has gone inside. Formula 1's on in a bit, but Hamilton's in 4th and on very little fuel and probably won't win, and Coulthard's doing his last Silverstone so he'll probably just tour around waving at people. Jenson Button will also do his usual bout of fucking up and finishing last. We could cheer for Mark Webber, I suppose, he's on the front row and sort of British, being an Aussie. Come on, Mark!

Also, Kevin Keegan says he feels Joey Barton will 'become suicidal' if he is sacked by Newcastle - remind me again why we care one jot about that spiteful little thug? If you asked around my way you could probably even get a whip-round for the rope.

Goodnight.

The Kids have Stolen Rock and Roll

I've just spent my afternoon, for my sins, watching two hours of 'Kerrang', and my conclusions are thus: Music has been stolen by teenagers. Squeaky-voiced effeminate men with perfectly-preened faux-hawks hurling themselves about to three-chord bollocks about love and relationships - what happened to the days when people wrote songs about getting drunk and pissing on the Alamo? Proper music, with guitar solos and singers with warts instead of eyeliner. Oh, and Linkin Park have become 'politically aware' - not properly aware, obviously, but 'aware' in that simperingly patronising Green Day way which amounts to sticking pictures of Mother Theresa in their music videos because, well, she looks a bit holy.

I was going to watch MTV as well, but after about twenty minutes of flicking through the listings I couldn't find one bit of actual music, just ream after ream of shit-awful reality TV. It could be worse, I suppose, it could be MTV Base, which as far as I can gather is a constant parade of ho-ownership oneupmanship on the part of some amusingly large men rather than anything approaching actual music. Not something I'd pay for, but someone must be paying an awful lot for it as they all seem to have enough jewellery to make Mr. T blush.

Oh no, they're playing Panic at the Disco again.

Anyway, now I've killed the television, we can move on to the news - there isn't any. None at all, not a single little bit. They've nicked the bloke that knifed those French students about five thousand times, but that's not really anything to laugh about, it's just a very bad story altogether. You can't get laughs out of mutilation.

Unless it's a waxwork, obviously, and it's one of Hitler, in Germany, which is probably the stupidest thing for Madame Tussauds to do as it decides to go global, seeing as a bloke got nicked, on the first day, for pulling it's head off. What the fuck Madame Tussauds were doing putting a waxwork of the man Germany is eternally ashamed of in their outlet aus Berlin is beyond me, unless they were going for some sort of 'Biggest Faux Pas in History' award, but I was just tickled by the method of defacement - he didn't chop the head off, he didn't just push it over and give it a good kicking, he just pulled it's head off. Give that man a medal.

Take the money for it out of the BBC's funds if they run one more story on the 'pregnant man' - it's not a man, it's a woman who had her tits lopped off and grew a beard, so it's less 'pregnant man' and more 'pregnant exceedingly ugly woman', which isn't quite the same thing, unless you're the BBC and you're desperate for something to keep the 'BodyShock' fans interested before the next series of babies born with an arm for a face.

Elsewhere, the Have Your Say lot are debating the idea that Britian should adopt certain aspects of Sharia law, and it's giving me a headache, because I'm starting to agree with them. It takes a truly stupid idea to unite me and the Have Your Say nutters, it really does, so the senior judge that suggested it really has made a brazen cock-up. If this passes I want my own laws as well, which means I can shoot your children then come round and do a shit on your telly. Tradition, you say? Mine is one of long standing - it's been going for all of five minutes. It's also worth bearing in mind that in some parts of the world it's traditional for boys of a certain age to be suspended from a pole on hooks pushed through their skin,in order to determine if they have become a man, and I don't think we need that sort of thing going on in Plaistow. Slough, maybe, but certainly nowhere remotely civilised.

Sport? Fuck all. Just tennis, tennis, tennis over and over until you want to kill yourself. The football's over for the summer and now it's time for a month of no good sport at all so we can all calm down in time to see Manchester United win everything again. It's not all bad, though, as Cristiano Ronaldo is having an operation on his ankle, and I suppose there's always a chance he'll die on the table.

Also, Amy Winehouse is starting to look vaguely attractive again. Still drinking, though, so at least she's a girl with good priorities. Heroin, kids, it makes you ugly.

Goodnight.