Me vs The General Public

Afternoon all!

Well, after last Fridays share of testosterone, I’m back. I think, the truth be told, I was feeling a bit ‘blokey’ last week, which is a thing that rarely happens with me… I never liked blokey blokes, so I’m going to try and leave that there from now on…

And I’ve just been told there’s a possibility that quite a few people around this office might have read that post.

Oh dear.

Anyways, I remain steadfast about what I said.

But enough of that. How was everyone’s weekends? Mine was OK, I managed to get completely trashed on Friday night, and then I went home and had an argument with my flatmates girlfriend. The rest of the weekend involved watching sport – and the less said about the football the better, thanks.

So. Sososo. I usually come here to rant or bitch or generally grace you with my viewpoint on something-or-other… And today is no different.

Today we’re going to talk about the general public, and why they shouldn’t be trusted.

Item 1) I get the tube to work every day. And every day, someone jumps on to the already packed train (you think that when livestock is transported it’s got it hard? You should try the Central Line…) as the doors are closing. These people are monumental bastards. They should be ostracised from pleasant society. Do these people not understand that there’ll be another train along in 2 minutes? You CANNOT be in that much of a rush.

But today I discovered a new breed of arsehole. A bastard of such gargantuan proportion, a git of such gut wrenching stupidity and evilness that it was all I could do not to ritually execute the fucker after what he did to me.

I was stood by the door of the already packed train. Me and the other sardines were vainly trying to read our Metros while still guarding the little personal space we had left. I had become personally acquainted with the armpit of the gentleman next to me, and was valiantly trying to turn to page three of my Metro when we pulled in to Stratford. And that’s when this story really gets going. The doors open, and sweet fresh air fills the tube. And then, as no-one is getting off, the doors start to close. This guy jams his briefcase in the door, making it open again. Then, seeing there’s no space in the carriage, he chooses his victim (me) and pulls me off of the train and steps smartly in to my place.

“Sorry mate,” says he “I’m in a terrible rush!”

I instantly hate this tube-grabbing fuck-tard of a bastard. Not only has he stolen my space, he’s trying to be fucking nice about it. I reeled of a string of exceptionally strong expletives, wished him the pain of a thousand papercuts and mentally threw the bastard on to the tracks below. I really hope he’s had a shit day today.

Still, I got to turn top page 3 of my Metro without restriction, so silver linings and all that.

Item 2) Any viewing population who not only watches Celebrity-Fucking-Big-Fucking-Brother, but then nominates a dozy Essex tart with more make up than sense and less talent than breasts to win the bloody thing needs to be taken in hand – almost immediately.

90% of these people get to vote who runs the country, for God’s sake. I can see it now, at the next general election… We’ll have Tony (or Gordon), vs Cameron, vs whoever-the-lib-dems choose… And then another candidate representing the, I don’t know, the Green Party or something – and the twist is they’re not a real politician! Text 1 to vote Tony! Text 2 to vote Cameron! Text 3 to vote Lib Dem! Text 4 to vote Chantelle! Who runs the country?

YOU DECIDE!

Lord help us. We live in a society where we are so obsessed by fleeting celebrity… My god! Charlotte Church has had a drink! Gasp! ‘Some banal Celebrity or other’ has had a baby and she looks a bit bigger now! The shock! The horror!

England, we need to watch out. We’re getting stupider, fatter and slower. We should be in the political driving seat – we should be protesting, striving for change, becoming part of the European family – not sitting on our slowly-expanding backsides watching faux celebrities fawn at each other for the love of the general public.

The people who vote for these things keep them going. If we round them up and, for the sake of argument, throw them in the North Sea, we might just be able to save ourselves.


Item 3) That fucking whale. All I have to say is this – Londoners don’t give a sweet flying shit about each other (see Item 1) – but the minute a whale gets lost and swims up the Thames we’re all immediately “Save the Whale!”

And then we were surprised when, in order to rescue a water dwelling mammal, we take it out of the water and it dies.

People were on the news – “I cried when Willy (Willy? We gave the bastard a name? By Christ…) died. He felt like a friend to me!” That woman, that woman that said that, went to M&S later and bought Sushi. She’s a hypocrite.

Oh. Dear. Lord. God. Please. Make. The. Bastards. Go. Away.

Back in the old days, there would be plagues to rid the world of these people! Let’s get Biblical!

And still the homeless people in London are wondering exactly why a giant fish (I know, I know, Whales are mammals) gets more help in London than they do…

Well, that’s simple. Homeless people aren’t cute, are they? (I’m being sarcastic…)


Item 4) I’m going a bit left-field here. Supermarkets. Yes, it’s not exactly the supermarket that’s the problem here – it’s the sort of people that frequent them. Yes, I know we all do, but there is a special breed of fantasmalogical dick wipe that chooses (as if out of spite) to go to ASDA on a Saturday, right about the same time as me.

These people do not understand queues.

They do not understand restraint.

They do not understand… Well, anything really.

They amble around in their mongolithic hordes, muttering “ready meals” and “pasta sauce” under their collective breaths. These are the people who let their children push the trolleys, or worse just let them play on the floor, or piss in the pork pies. And when you accidentally trip over one of these marauding little satanic bastards, the parent looks at you as if you just shat in her cereal. And then you immediately want to commit a brutal murder.

Of course, when I talk about supermarkets, I also lump in people who work in them. You find someone in their luminescent green top, which has a badge saying “Hallo! I’m retarded! How can I help?”, and you approach them and ask, quite politely, “Where’s the bread? I wouldn’t usually ask but the whole store seems to have changed rather dramatically since I was last here!” (this last bit is inherent to the nature of the supermarket – it is a living beast and as such it changes the shape of its aisles day on day, just to fuck with our minds). Once you’ve asked this question, you get a blank look. A bit of dribble emerges from one corner of the mouth. After a period longer than the Ice-Age, this mongol git utters the words “’s on aisle 7”.

At which point you scream “It talks! It talks! What’re you gonna do next? Go on a quest for fire?”

And you’ll get to aisle 7, and it’s invariably panty-liners and womens things. The store attendant has just fucked you. You don’t want to look like you came down here for nothing, you had such purpose, so you throw some thrush cream and some Tena Lady in to your basket (which is way too fucking small anyway) and get the hell out of there. You then go and find the store attendant to kill him – but he’s gone. He is a mystic fairy in the forest of Associated Dairies.

Final item, Item 5) Anyone, and I mean anyone, who isn’t scared of spiders. That person who says, while you’re frozen with fear in a corner refusing to move – “It’s more scared of you than you are of it!”

No.

No it isn’t. Anything with 8 fucking legs and 8 fucking eyes is fucking fearless. I’ve seen spiders run towards me when I’m trying to catch them in a glass. The weave webs across doors to try and catch humans. They’re persistent, arachnid, malevolent fuckers and I hate them. And as a consequence of that I have a real distrust of people who are not only not scared of them; but who will pick them up.

Even sitting here thinking about it I’m breaking in to a cold sweat.

Listen up. You’re in league with the spiders, and when they take over this world they won’t spare you. They’ll suck out your guts through your eyes and eat you just the same as the rest of us… You’re better off being a Jehovah’s Witness (don’t even get me started...) But not much.

And that’s it. That’s the end of the tirade of the day. And I did it all without saying the word cunt.

Oh, bollocks.

I love all of you individually in your own special ways. Unless you’re the guy in Item 1, or unless you voted for the thing in Item 2, if you supported Item 3, if you work in Item 4, or if you like the creatures in Item 5. But I can be persuaded to change my opinion.

Conspiracy Theories vs Bloody-Minded Normality

Hello!

So what’s been going on? It’s been a bit of a hectic weekend all told… After work drinks on Friday turned in to a bit of a binge session and Saturday was just full-on, no-holds-barred debauchery. Or Kollin’s birthday as it’s better known. Had the somewhat freaky experience of a girl who could have been no older than sixteen being all over me – eventually there comes a point where tact and diplomacy become rendered useless – and one has to say to these people:

“Look. Will you just fuck off? I’m really not interested. Besides, when I was your age you were still 6, and frankly that just doesn’t bear thinking about. So be on your way, you young rapscallion!”

Christ. Bollocks. Son-of-a-bitch. I’m getting old.

But I’m dealing with it, you know?

Anyway, the night was rounded off with me happily passing out in my room and was followed by a full Sunday of sofa-based sports watching. Olympic Ski Sunday was brilliant, as usual – and with only one week to go until the games, it’s looking pretty good for the UK team. In that we might maybe win a medal, if everyone else dies. Which isn’t so likely. Still, it’s the taking part that counts, eh? Rubbish! It’s about winning! What’s the point in playing if you’re not playing to win?

So why do I write today? You know that I like to have a purpose and not just while away the time telling you about drunken nights and horny teenagers. Today, I’m here to dispel conspiracy theories. So here we go:

1) Cats are, in fact, evil Alien Ninjas.

No. No, I don’t care how much you don’t like cats. They are not from outer space and also, due to the lack of opposable thumb, cannot operate ninja equipment such as throwing stars. I will take the point that if cats did have an opposable thumb they’d probably have taken over the world by now.

2) Tony Blair is a Cunt of Monolithic Proportion.

Umm. OK. You’ve got me on that one. The big smiled, more-Tory-than-Thatcher bastard has pretty much destroyed everything and has introduced crippling debt in to today’s student population. Apparently, we don’t have the money to fund free higher education. Oh, but we do have the money to fight a bloody, immoral, illegal war in the middle of bum-fuck nowhere, do we? Oh, that’s good. As long as we’re not creating a class divide… What’s that? We are? Well, why don’t we just go back to the Good old days of the 80’s and get settled down for a good old-fashioned recession? OK, so this isn’t much of a conspiracy theory, so I’m going to make one up. “Tony Blair’s Penis Smell of George Bushes Ass Crack.” Which is not so much Conspiracy Theory as Slander, so I’ll go with (as before plus) “… But the Government Covered it Up”.

3) The Loch Ness Monster

Is, quite frankly, bollocks. For the last hundred years various Drunks, Lunatics, crazy haired ‘Scientists’ (who obviously did WAY too much Acid at college), Tourists (NEVER trust a tourist), and Fishermen have claimed to have seen a huge, crocodile-like-dinosaur-like-hallucination-like-fish-thing in the water up at Loch Ness. Hmm. So what do we do? We send a boat with all sorts of super-fancy bits and pieces on to the Loch to search the fucker out once and for all. What did they find? A plesiosaur? A fuck-off great big bastard of a Dolphin. No. They found (dramatic drum roll!) – BUGGER ALL! Nothing! Nada! Zip! Not even an unusually large cod! I won’t believe it until I’ve seen the bastard myself – and even then I’ll phone my dealer and complain very heavily that the shit is no good. I’m seeing fish, for fuck’s sakes.

4) UFO’s and shit.

I’m grouping in any UFO/Alien/Anal Probe story here. Hang on, hang on. I do believe in intelligent life somewhere else in the universe… I think it would be arrogant not to. But to think that these silver people with black eyes and no nose (and no clothes!) can develop a craft which can traverse the depths of space and possibly even time only to get to earth and crash is beyond me. And why do they always abduct retards? That’s not painting the best picture of the race, is it? What we should do is get Stephen Hawking, Bill Gates and Steve Irwin down to a UFO hotspot and wait for them to be abducted. You might question my choice of Irwin alongside the likes of Hawking and Gates, but the fact is that Grey Alien bastard would get out of his ship or whatever – and Irwin would be on him like “Ah, yeah! I got him now! You can see he’s getting pissed off!” – and then we’d know that it was real, because everything Steve Irwin says is gospel, out of the mouth of God himself. Fact.

Hmm. I can only think of 4 and they’re not even all that specific. But give me a conspiracy theory and I’ll probably be able to tell you why it’s full of bovine doo-doo.

What else is news? Well. Work is the same as usual, a relentless round of grey and boredom. I have no cigarettes, so the day is d-r-a-g-g-i-n-g. I have nothing to do except sit here and blog away happily! And you’re probably thinking, “Jensen, STFU!”

You do have a point there, I suppose.

So after the weekend, Monday brings us crashing back to Normality. I don’t like normality. It’s a strange little town where the local shop has a counter clerk with an unusually high pitched voice and webbed hands. Screw normal, I tells ya, screw it!

Horrid thought – I’ve been working here for a year today! One whole year that I’m never going to get back. Now that is disturbing.

And now I’m nearly done, I’m going to talk about being single.

Being

Single

Blows

Goats.

I’ve been single for a long time now, and I was out on Saturday night and all of the people I was with were couples. Every single bloody one of them. All hand-holdy and kissy-kissy and staring in to each others eyes. And I’m getting more and more pissed off and cynical about this, because (I’ve realised) I want that back. I want someone to cuddle up with and watch a movie on the sofa. I want to wake up next to a woman and realise that I’m the luckiest guy alive to know that she’s with me. I want to hold hands with someone. I want to laugh out loud because they can make me do that. I want someone to play with my hair. I want someone who I can kiss. I want someone to hug me, to hold me, to tell me that everything’s going to be ok. Moreover, I want someone who I can love and know that it’s true and it might even last.

And every now and then I think I find that person. I have someone now who I really like – but the problem is this… They’ve always got boyfriends – or even worse just think of me as ‘Chris’ and not potential relationship material… Perhaps I give off too much of a “I don’t give a fuck” attitude… Perhaps I’m too much the ‘funny’ guy… Perhaps I’m not so good looking after all… Perhaps I smell… (I don’t take any of this too seriously, so hey ho…)

But the main thing for me is this: My flatmate, a lovely guy but socially retarded, can bag himself a girlfriend. Yes, she’s a prissy little rich-bitch, but that’s beside the point. I don’t have to go out with her, do I?

Perhaps I should try this speed dating thing… Or even worse, a dating agency?

But enough about me vis a vis loneliness etc. That’s not fun reading at all, is it?

I’m going to be off. I think I’ve talked enough today. But here’s another song for your delectation:

“Nineteen Would Sink While Twenty Would Swim”

With every light
Of every day
She would turn to me
If only to say
“It’s been nineteen seconds
Since you last said
“You know that I love you”
And predicted my death”
She said that me hurting
Can break her
In an instant
But all of my
Singing
Goes straight to her head
We both bait our hooks
And dangle them down
Just touching the water
Are we
Waiting to drown?
She says
“I won’t let them take you
I won’t open the door
What they took from me
Is mine
And what is mine
I’ll never give”
I stole all her make-up
And painted my face
I hide behind foundation
Been lost here for days
There’s a look that she has
As she walks away
Covering over
Her
Hurt and dismay
She can see
My Shrine
Devout
In my soul
So she prescribes a
Sedative
A lingering kiss
But more and more the
Dirt collects
I’ll never find her now
She never knew the
Difficulty
Of telling her lies
Through a swollen throat
And a Karma debt
Which pales
My regret
And when I
Turned her over
Saw in to her eyes
I saw her
Agony of Oblivion
And her stifling cries
I could never
Help her
But how could
She
See
The light that she gave me
Did nothing but
Burn me
With every light
Of every day
She would turn to me
If only to say
“It’s been twenty seconds
Since you last said
“You know that I love you”
And dragged me to bed”

[I can’t remember if this happened
I’m convinced I saw you leave
And struggle
In to a bed
Of our regret]

Farvel, Oldemor

A brief post…

In Memoriam.

My Great-Gran in Denmark died yesterday. I found out just as I was walking in to the pub – put a bit of a bleak turn on the evening. My flatmate feels bad – it was his Birthday yesterday and now he thinks that every Birthday from now until forever I’ll remember it as the day my Great-Gran died. She wasn’t my Great-Gran, I’ll give her her proper title.

Oldemor. Oldemor died yesterday.

I have fantastic memories of a jovial, vivacious woman who would always make us eat. I remember she made the best meatballs. I remember she would run up and down her stairs when most of us had real problems with them. I remember her insisting I can’t speak Danish and she would insist upon translating through my family. I remember her house, in the quaint little cobbled streets of Struer. I remember her carpets, her uncomfortable camp-beds, and her smell.

Farvel, Oldemor, farvel. Jeg elske dig.

Christian.

How Will it All End vs Hope for Humaity

I’m a little… Perturbed at the moment. There’s this pervading sense in my life that this planet is racing towards Armageddon and there’s fuck all anyone can do about it.

I sit here typing this, and I can hear you asking why I’m feeling this just now.

Just read the paper.

Avian flu, scientists believe, is mutating in to a strain which is easily passable to and between humans.

Iran has removed the UN seals in its Nuclear plants – under the premise of developing Nuclear power – but the international community widely believes Iran to be developing Nuclear weaponry. It’s not so hard to believe, when the country has a hard-line political partisan as a leader; a man who believes that Israel is a “blot that should be wiped off of the map”, and that the holocaust (and let’s not forget here that 6,000,000 Jews (before we count the Homosexuals, Communists and anyone else who found themselves in the concentration camps of the Third Reich) is a “Myth”. And that’s only two of his opinions – you just wait until you get him started on the West. But we’re ok, according to the news. Even if Iran does develop a Nuclear capability, they’re still 5 years away from actually being able to deliver it. (Deliver being a military term for “drop a fucking bomb on the Israelis”). Whatever way you look at it, it can’t be long before that American General utters those infamously Bush-esque words once again “When the President gives the call, it’s Hammer Time”.

And no doubt Tony and Britain will be stood behind once again, in sheer and utter political ignorance, waving fist-thick dossiers of intelligence that Iran does have WMD, and that justifies going to a potentially bloody, illegal and ill-thought of war.

But moving on…

Gangs of kids are attacking people – there was a story in the paper today… Well, I say paper, I mean the metro which only just qualifies as decent journalism. It is, after all, produced by the Express Newspapers group – and when was the last time you paid attention to any opinion the Express has put out there? Exactly, never. But the Metro does have one thing going for it – it’s easily digestible news that is bad – but not too bad so as to ruin your commute to work. Decaffeinated news, you might say. Anyway, I digress. There was a story in the paper, about a boy in Manchester who beat a man up so badly that he was in a coma, and now has no memory of his life before the beating. Which was unprovoked – all he did was ask a gang of youths to leave his yard, where he was working on his car. So now he has no memory of his life, of his children growing up, of his time in the Navy, of his wedding day, of his first night with a girl, of the first time he jumped off a bridge, the first time he rode a bike – nothing. His head is now so fragile that he has to wear a helmet to keep it safe and he is in constant pain.

For the record, the kid that did this (and at 16 you are still a kid), is only going to serve a 6-month jail term. And it won’t even be proper jail, it’ll be a young offenders institute. So Playstations, TV’s and 3 square meals a day all round then? Rent free for the next 6-months? What sort of message does that send about living a life of crime and/or violent behaviour?

Yesterday, a crush at Hajj killed 345 people. This was during the part of the pilgrimage that takes place at the bridge of Jamarat – supposedly where Satan tried to tempt Mohammed. There’s three pillars there that represent Satan, and part of the pilgrimage is to cast stones at the pillars (3 stones at each pillar), a symbol of casting Satan out and purging yourself of sin. Problem is, the crowds bottleneck, and these people are so desperate to complete their pilgrimage (and rightly so) they effectively crush each other. Millions of people in one space all trying to throw stones (he who is without sin may cast the first stone) – and if one falls over he’s never going to get up again. 345 people? This is the biggest loss of life during Hajj in the last 16 years (4 years ago 200 people were killed in a similar way) – and the Saudi authorities were “just about” to begin building a $1bn network of bridges and slipways to ease the pressure. Just about isn’t good enough. And, as much as you would want to finish your pilgrimage, if that is your faith, what ever happened to helping your fellow man?

But the crowd effectively ignored the plight of the 345 people who were killed, and the only reason for it is they were trying to complete an intense spiritual journey. People die every year while undertaking this, and for some reason it’s viewed more as ‘collateral damage’ as opposed to a tragic loss of human life.

Radical, fundamentalist clerics who live in the west are preaching murder and racial hatred in our own back yard. (See 7/7 for confirmation of this).

Hurricanes, Earthquakes and Tsunami’s rock countries all over the world every other month. People are dying in their thousands.

It seems to me that, as human beings and the dominant species on this little planet – we’re for the chop either way. I’m not preaching doom – I know the end of the world isn’t around the corner and the world is much more stable now that it was, say, at the time of the Cuban Missile Crisis. This isn’t Judgement Day – not yet, anyway. All’s I’m trying to say is, if we fail in killing each other and blowing each other up and stamping each other to death – Mother Nature has her own little backup plan. It’s like we’ve infected this planet. We’re making her suffer.

And it’s our ignorance – and in some cases (this is you, Mr. Bush) political stupidity that is preventing us from stopping the damage before it’s too late. All the US (the biggest polluter in the world) had to do was sign the Kyoto treaty, and we could have all worked together to make the world just a slightly better place.

Who said revolution never changed anything? Who said that the few shouting voices could never make a difference? Where is he who won’t bang with us while the band plays?

I was in a play a few years ago called ‘Singer’. I had the privilege of taking on this vast and technically very complex role. ‘Singer’ was written in the 1980’s, and was performed with Anthony Sher in the title role by the RSC. It’s a political satire on the Thatcherite Government, and also on the life of Peter Rachmann, a polish Jew who came to the UK after being liberated from Auschwitz. He eventually came to London, became a slum lord, a hero of the Thatcherite housing movement and an Antithesis of everything he ever was. “If we had all night,” laments the chorus in the opening scene of the play “if we had all night and another day. If we had a thousand skeletons to stamp their feet upon the cold earth and not these barefoot actors on a wooden stage. If we had an army of stage crew to bring on Auschwitz central by day and wheel on Clapham Common by night. If we had make up artists who could perform miracles with likenesses. We could never give you all of the fantastical life of Peter Singer”.

Peter Singer (Rachmann) who was forced to eat the shit off of a Ukranian camp guards boot. Peter Singer, who witnessed his best friend (Stefan Guttman) be forced to send girls, young girls, Children, to the camp guards office – just so they could survive another night. Peter Singer, who was forced to beat a German Communist about the head until the poor man lost sense of who he was. Peter Singer, who cam to London, became successful, faked his own death, came to life again and was eventually burned out of his own house by the people who held him as a hero. “Arbeit Macht Frei?” says Peter, “no, work does not bring freedom. It brings only death. You enter Auschwitz through a gate – you leave through a Chimney”.

But why am I telling you all this? Am I trying to prove the Holocaust did happen? We all know it did. No, that’s not my point. I’m trying to give you a background in to Peter’s personality, a narcissistic misogynist who spent his entire life on the make – but proved that at least one leopard could change its spots. At the end of the play, as he’s running out of a burning building, he says something particularly poignant:

“When someone employs a cast of thousands, creating a vast Wagnerian machine, just to turn you in to soap – it’s hard to take entirely seriously the idea of progress.”

And that’s the message I’m trying to put across here. Unless we learn from the lessons that history has taught us – we will implode.

Only we can change this. Only we few can fight the system and make our voices heard.

Please – let’s save ourselves before it’s too late.

“And there we have it… Have we told the truth? Yes. Have we told the whole truth? No. For this is a theatre, and we could not possibly hope to tell everything. But we could. If we had all night. And another day.”

Love,

Chrisxx