HAPPY LIMBO-MAS!

The tinsel's faded.
The pine-needles are a pain in the socks.
Silvery wrapping paper is being a recycling nightmare.
There's the unmistakable smell of used-sprouts and Febreze in the air....

ITS LIMBO-MAS!!

That bit in the end of your old Diary that you can't even be arsed to write in.

And the first few pages of the new Diary that you can't even be arsed to write in.

The week when no-one can work out what day has gone before.

"Is it Boxing Day?
Is that a Wednesday?
It feels like a Wednesday..."

Nobody knows what to do during Limbo-Mas.
It's like an episode of The Walking Dead.

"Are the pubs open?"
"Why is the supermarket shutting at 6pm?"
"Why is Next open at 6am?"
"Will the News at Ten be on at 4.30pm or five to eleven?"
"Are the buses running?"

It's a period when TV becomes a wibbly-wobbly-timey-wimey strand of overstretched elastic, where Dickensian drama school orphans jostle for attention with Angela Ripon's legs and godawful foghorn singing voice.

Stuff that we would love to see all year round is smashed together like a televisual coleslaw.

Morecambe & Wise, Tommy Cooper, Les Dawson, Victoria Wood, Blackadder, The Two Ronnies and even that Botttom episode where Richie has to cook a meal for Spudgun & Dave Hedgehog, are ALL crammed into ONE week, reminding us that there's nothing new being made at the moment because everyone involved in making telly programmes clocked-off sometime in November.

The same stuff is on EVERY year, and we don't mind.
We lazily lap it up. The repetition is comforting and we're in no mood to use our brains for anything other than shovelling peanuts into our gobs.

It must be like being programme controller of BBC3.

Or the scheduler for Dave.

Apart from the repeats are relics from the past that are dusted off and given one last trot around the televisual paddock before hopefully, and mercifully, having a bolt shot through their pained unfunny faces.

Putting on the TV in Limbo-Mas also reminds us that there are a great many terrible, terrible, terrible American Christmas films - and that's why we're all drinking Buck's Fizz from nine-thirty in the morning, because the alternative is to watch a fucking Tim Allen movie... SOBER!

Fuck's sake.
Tim Allen.

Has he actually made a decent film?
One where he wasn't a cartoon spaceman toy?

And then there's all those adaptations of A Christmas Carol...

"Next, a new spin on an old classic as Charles Dicken's perennial favou.."

OH, FUCK OFF!!
FUCK RIGHT OFF!!
IT WAS GOOD ENOUGH AS IT WAS!!

SMURFS?!

MUPPETS?!

BILL MURRAY?!

ROSS KEMP...

ROSS FUCKING KEMP??

FOR THE LOVE OF ALISTAIR SIM, LEAVE IT THE FUCK ALONE!!

(Although, I do quite like the Muppets one....)

But I digress, it's Limbo-Mas, so what to do?

Well, I like to spend Limbo-Mas in the traditional way, by finding a place for all those newly acquired Christmas presents. Usually by storing them in the spaces recently vacated by taking last year's stuff to the charity shops three weeks ago.

The books I don't need.
The CDs I'll never listen to.

Then I like to take a minute or two to bin those receipts out of my wallet for presents for all those books that I bought that no-one needed and CD's that they didnt want.

I also like to cram my fridge with the food I bought too much of and will never eat, the cheese-platters, the sausage rolls, pork pies, various hams, individual prawn surprises and other titbits that no-one took from my home buffet... mainly because I didn't have one.

Then there's that mountain of mince pies that you could fucking ski-down that I have to pour in the bin, because no-one ever wants a mince pie. It is one of that massive unwanted food group that you are obliged to buy at Christmas.

Brandy butter.
Turkey.
Marzipan.
Stollen.

Egg nog.

The stuff that isn't on your shopping list at any other time of year.

I wouldn't be surprised if mince pies were actually made of wax and balsa wood as I've never seen anyone enjoy one.

Don't try it, you'll lose a tooth.

That's if you haven't already chipped one on the coin secreted in that godawful fruit pudding that was set on fire... seriously, why do we buy all this inedible shit??

Anyways, Happy Limbo-mas to you!!

A time to reflect on the year just passed and look forward to all the resolutions you are going to break in precisely one week's time. A time to rest your liver until you give it one almighty fucking good kicking on New Year's Eve. A time to smoke and eat and fester and bloat - because next week you ARE joining that gym.

And this time you might even go..


In the meantime go and have some Gala Pie, there's loads leftover...

...and Eric's about to call him "Andrew Preview"!!

SEE YOU IN 2012!!

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CHOP-CHOP, BUSY-BUSY, WORK-WORK, BANG-BANG!

Ooh, my little bloglets and blogettes, I am sooo sorry.

I feel like I have been neglecting you of late by not posting anything vitriolic about popular hate figures in the news. And there have been so many too.

Right, I'll be quick:

Kim Jong Il - no. Kim Jong Dead.
Well, he hadn't been Kim Jong Well for quite a while.
BOOM!!



 Still, at least his lad, Kim Jong Un can now get that Despotic Ruler badge he's been craving.
SLAM!!

Piers Morgan has denied hacking anyone's phones whilst he was the Editor of the Daily Mirror, yet did admit to hearing private conversations between Sir Paul McCartney & his then wife Heather Mills-McCartney.

On their phones. Which he definitely didn't hack.

He also compared himself to a rock-star hearing only his worst hits and argued that he didn't "want to get into the business of rumour-mongering".

Bit fucking late for that, you boiled-ham-faced, self-publicising sack of soulless shit. You edited the Bizarre column in the fucking Sun! That's what paid for your daily face-oiling.
BRRAAAP!!

Still, he could be innocent? As @carlmaxim said on Twitter a couple of days ago:

"I can't believe Piers Morgan would hack anyone's phone.

Not without leaving a very long message all about himself."

WHOOP-WHOOPAH!!

And finally, John Terry has been summoned to attend court (again) to answer charges of alleged racist behaviour.

Erm... um... ah, fuck it.

The man's a cunt.

BADDA-BING!!

Will that do?
I am sorry.

I have just been so busy with my Christmas shopping that I have forgotten how to hate properly - which is odd given that I everytime I've been out in town I just want to punch everyone in the fucking face despite it being the season of goodwill to all men.... the trouble is that a lot of those men are fucking arseholes.

Take last Friday.

I'd got off the bus in Leeds and saw two drunken fist-fights in the street within 10 minutes. It was 2pm on a Friday afternoon.

Black Friday.

MAD Friday.

The Friday when everyone goes mental and drinks their faces off from about lunchtime. The first Friday after payday and the last Friday before Christmas - except this year there are two of them. The other one is tomorrow.

Taxi-drivers, doormen, bar-staff will be verbally & physically abused, the emergency services will be stretched to breaking point dealing with record numbers of incidents of domestic abuse, and all because a bunch of part-time drinkers equate the probable birth of a possibly-fictional semi-deity with a dare about how many pints of Jagermeister they can fit into their stupid faces before someone objects to their stupid faces and promptly fits the glass that the Jagermeister came in into their stupid faces.

TRA-LA-LA-LA-LAAAH
LA-LA
LA-LAAAAH!!

In the meantime, there's the last minute shoppers to contend with, the ones who amble along a pavement as if they've just discovered walking and treat every illuminated shopfront as if it is a signal from another world.

The type of clueless cocksmudges who are baffled by an escalator reaching it's journey's end. The shoegazing pillocks who stop dead in the middle of the path as if they've just remembered they've left the fucking gas on.

And as well as these moronic rubberneckers there's the harassed, dead-eyed, mono-toned shop assistants, forced to wear Santa hats and sprigs of mistletoe when all they want to do is take an overdose of Nytol.
If they haven't already.

I pity the shop zombies, I really do, but it does lead to some unexpected bargains...

Take this little exchange I had in Leeds Market:

"How much are the selection boxes?"
"Two quid each. Or three for a fiver."
"Ah, that's a shame. I need four.." "
"That'll be four quid then, mate."

What??
Where the fuck did you learn to barter?

Lehman Bros??

Incidentally, here is a Guide To Coping With Zombies At Christmas.

Good luck.

Now last year I'd got everything done a fortnight earlier as I was going to Edinburgh with my girls for a few days before Christmas. We calmly spent our days sat in the windows of cafes and art galleries watching everyone panic-buy pashminas and Brazil-nuts.

It felt great, and so Christmassy.

But Edinburgh is one of those cities that looks perfect dusted with snow.

It so wonderfully encapsulates that Dickensian Victorian perma-frosted view of Christmas that we see on Christmas cards from our Nan's but that hardly ever materialise in reality.

Leeds isn't like that.

It's like a city with a permanent hangover. Not as pretty as Manchester, not as important as London, a bit better than Birmingham (in it's own mind), but still the dowdy, miserable, best-days-are-behind-it weary little shithole clinging on to some kind of misguided, half-arsed pride.

There's an innate grimness to the place at this time of year, as the city centre becomes crammed with neck-jerking tattooed shellsuits pointing their fags at each other with drunken menace.

The perfect place for this disappointing Christmas, then!

This year Christmas is predicted to be a mild, damp October day that's just got a bit lost.


It's just not got that Christmassy zing about it.

For a start it's at the weekend, so it'll just be another big Sunday Lunch or a visit to the relatives. The religious programmes would've been on telly anyway.

Probably the Bond film too.

There's no fun in Christmas being on a Sunday. It doesn't feel Special. It doesn't feel exceptional. It feels a bit... meh!


Put it this way, if this coming Christmas was a person it would be Ed Milliband...

(coincidentally, a Leeds United fan.... just saying...)

Yes, this Christmas is all a bit wet, a bit beige, a bit bland.

Not quite as impressive as the one that came before it, not the one we really want, but for the time being it's the one we're fucking stuck with and we'll just have to take a deep breath and make the best of it.

Or just put up with it for now until we can get excited about the next one.

So let's hope that 2012 is a little better than 2011, eh?

It couldn't be much fucking worse....

Maybe if we all write to Santa...?


DO TRY AND HAVE A MERRY CHRISTMAS, EVERYBODY!!

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AS SEEN ON TV...

It's that time of year when the shops become battlefields and all common sense goes out of the window. People walk along the pavements with their heads fixed 90 degrees to their right, hands are torn by plastic bags, grown men have punch-ups in the Disney Shop, others just shuffle along, shoulders hunched with grim bargains....

She has been paid to smile. You haven't.

Go and buy some pointless shite, it's baby Jesus' probable birthday!!

Except it isn't. Most religious scholars reckon it was around 6th September, before we changed the calendars and added a few more months, but can you imagine trying to get a decent Nativity play like this one organised during the first week of a brand new school year?? 

Nah.

Let's stick to December 25th, shall we? We can be flexible when it comes to Baby Jesus deathday, but not his birthday.

Not that he had either of them.
He's not real.


That's why it's called Faith and not Fact.

Anyway, enough of this atheistic nonsense, it's Costmas!

The streets are Merry with the sound of people shouting on their phones over the sound of the Salvation Army Brass Bands, the poor and the needy are stepped over as folk make their way to HMV for that solitary non-Amazon CD purchase, drunks decorate the pavements outside the parameter of the ubiquitous German Market and the streets are lit by gaudy council-funded festive illuminations that will be deducted from the budget of next year's bin collections or Meals on Wheels.

"And now, Peppa, if you'd like to press this button that cancels all free school meals.. 5-4-3-2-1!!"

Christmas is a time for shoving and mumbling as everyone up & down the land get into the spirit by repeating the age-old mantra "I'll just be glad when this is all over..."

So, have you got all your shopping?
The big presents? The stocking fillers? The food and drink?

Which celebrity convinced you to spend some more money? Because right NOW is the very height of the celebrity endorsement season.

I think he plays football...?

Did Wayne Rooney convince you to have a Wii?

Maybe Hugh Laurie persuaded you to buy some baby lotion?

What about that floaty lady and her perfume? You know the one...  Kate Moss? No, Beyonce. Halle Berry... Rhianna? I mean Britney! Or was it Charlize Theron? No. Eva Longoria? Eva Mendes? EVA GREEN!!

Did the singing shelf-stackers from X-Factory coax you into M&S?


Or maybe that giggling afghan hound Stacey Solomon got you to buy some gourmet mini steak-burgers from Iceland with her dire Rea song?

Perhaps it was miserable tap-dancing old skeleton Bruce Forsyth gumming a pie on a Ferris wheel as his carers from the Make A Wish Foundation let him speak to Freddie Flintoff?

And who could fail to be impressed by Roger Federer and his rucksack of chocolate balls?

The answer is - Everybody.
Everybody in the world could fail to be impressed by this terrible, terrible advert.



It really doesn't matter what they are hawking around as all these ads have one thing in common. They are absolute fucking rubbish and serve no fucking purpose.

From Heston, Delia and Jamie telling you to buy food from a food-shop to Rory McIlroy fluking a shot for a struggling bank, everybody is trying to convince you to spend spend spend!!

The thing is, we already are.

We don't need Alan Hansen to mumble "mazin'valyooo" to a basket of groceries, it's fucking Christmas. We're already spending November's wages on December's gluttony and January's wages on February's charity shop donations, and it has nothing to do with which famous face tells us what to buy and where.

I'm not going to buy insurance off Iggy Pop for the same reason I'm not going to go on an online casino because Shane Warne thinks it's fun. Can you imagine living your life like that? You'd be sectioned..

"That's a nice cappuccino-maker, where did you get it?"

"Well, George Clooney told us it was the best one..."

"You KNOW George Clooney? Wow!"

"Umm... no. Actually, he was paid to say he liked it. On telly."

"Oh."

PAUSE

"Have you had your hair done? It looks nice."

"Thank you, it was Davina McCall's idea..."

"Oh, do fuck off."

"Get your hands off my mocha.."

OK, so Hugh Laurie gave his entire L'Oreal fee to Comic Relief, which is undoubtedly admirable, and Wayne Rooney plugs a football game because he's a footballer, I can see the logic there - but why the fuck would you want to insure yourself with a man who used to cut his own chest with a broken bottle or a bank that's drawing comparison's with a golfer accidentally getting a hole-in-one?

What a reckless and slipshod attitude towards finance and security.


Anyway, happy shopping, people!

You have just over a week left to get into more debt. Make up your own minds on what to buy and don't get a lipgloss just because Scarlett Johanssen pretends to like it.

I'm off to get some Austerity Christmas Crackers... instead of a gift and a joke each one has a picture of a Greek picket line and an IOU inside.

Robert Peston reckons they're great....

Merry fucking Christmas everybody!!

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WHY I HATE CATS...

OK, the Internet, I've been patient with you long enough.

I thought you'd have grown up by now, I thought I'd let you get it out of your system but you're showing no signs of stopping anytime soon. I don't get why you're so obsessed, but the time has come.

As Barbara Streisand & Donna Summer will tell you - Enough is enough.
(Is Enough...)

You've had this coming for a long time, the Internet, so I'm just going to give it to you straight...

GIVE IT A FUCKING REST WITH ALL THE FUCKING PICTURES OF FUCKING CATS!!

Fuck's sake!

Cats in hats, cats on mats, cats on their backs, fat cats in macs, cats who are stretching, cats that are retching, cats in sunglasses, cats with fat arses, cats playing golf, cats like Adolf, cats who are going fucking crazy, cats who look like Martin Scorsese..

I will not watch them any more.
Don't want to see a single paw.
I've seen them doing this and that..  

I'VE HAD ENOUGH OF FUCKING CATS!!

Why is everyone on the planet taking pictures of these feline freaks and flooding cyberspace with their stupid kitteny faces? Why are there so many fucking pictures of cats?

Sweet Jebus!
What's the big deal?

Is Google being run by the ancient Egyptians??

Were the ancient tomb walls just King Tutankhamen's Facebook page?
Cleopatra's collection of YouTube clips?
Nefertiti's LOLCatz?

I don't get it. I just don't get it.

But then again, I hate cats.

They make my fucking flesh crawl.

Evil, predatory little shits that come and go as they please leaving a trail of disemboweled birds and mice. Thinking they own the place because they've convinced their soft-headed owners to vandalise their own homes by putting a special fucking flap in the door. Shitting and pissing in a tray in the kitchen because, for once, they can't be arsed to go outside.

And then they go outside.

To another house, where they have a different name and a separate tray and more fucking food, the lazy, parasitical, duplicitous shits.

Whenever I tell anyone how I really don't like cats they say to me "Ah, but you'll like my cat. I've had him since he was a kitten.."

No.
No I won't.
I'll fucking hate your cat.

Your cat will make a fucking beeline for me and sit on my lap, while you smile at my terrified face. While I'm desperately blinking Morse code for GET YOUR FUCKING CAT OFF ME your bastard cat will be stretching and purring like the bullying little bastard he is, and as soon as you're looking the other way he will dig his fucking claws through my jeans and into my leg to show me that he is fucking boss.

"You've already said you hate me." he'll purr to me, and me alone, "If you react in anyway then I'll just get more love from these mooning simpletons and you'll be the bad guy. Sit there and take it. I am a cat. I fucking own these people... and now I own you."

Then the furry little bastard will cough some wet hair onto my lap, to go with all the loose dry hair on the back of my jumper from your fucking piss-stained sofa, and softly pad away, flicking it's tail up and displaying his arse in my direction.

Cats are fucking scum.

 "But, Mister Williams, why do you hate the ickle wickle kitty wittys so?" you ask me, in that simpering child-voice that cat-owners always use, the voice that I see as a precursor to the inevitable mental breakdown that owning a cat will bring.

Well, I shall tell you...

IN THE INTERESTS OF FULL DISCLOSURE AND TRANSPARENCY I MUST TELL YOU THAT MANY OF THE EVENTS IN THE FOLLOWING TALE MAY OR MAY NOT BE TRUE. 

IN MY DEFENCE I WAS A LITTLE BOY, IT WAS A LONG TIME AGO, I WAS TERRIFIED, AND LATER TRAUMATISED, BY THESE EVENTS... THE MIND PLAYS TRICKS. MEMORY FADES. DETAILS BECOME HAZY.

PLUS, I AM A HABITUAL LIAR.

PLEASE CONTINUE. >>

Many years ago I was playing Cowboys at my Grandma and Grandad's house. I was decked out in my little cowboy outfit, running around, firing my cap guns, yelling "Yeehaaah!" and having a ton of fun with my brothers and cousins.

I will have been about six.

At some point I was rushing up and down the stairs with my little cap guns going off when behind the net curtain at the top of the landing a furry black blur hissed and clawed onto my face.

I screamed, it hissed and dug deeper. I ran around screaming, it hissed, staring it's Satanic yellow stare into my baby blues. No matter what I did this frenzied evil was stuck to my face.

The evil had a name.

It was Sammy.

Sammy had probably been sleeping in the sunshine and had been disturbed by a tiny, noisy cowboy, and I accept this now. But his fucking reaction was a bit OTT. The bastard thing was clamped to my face like an Alien on John Hurt or a predatory female TV host on a pubescent boyband member.

Sammy continued to scratch and hiss into my terrified face as I was somehow ushered into the garden where my loving grandfather decided that the best way of removing a ferocious feline from the face of your tiny grandson is to first set the hosepipe on both of them.

An interesting approach.
Not entirely successful.

Now I had a wet, screaming cat on my face, howling it's demonic curses, flashing it's tiny teeth, staring it's starey stare.



Grandfather now decided it was time for more direct action and so he swung a broom at the cat attached to my face.

Now before you write to the RSPCA I want you to know that both my Grandfather & Sammy have since passed on. And not because of what happened in this tale.... besides, attitudes to cats were very different in the 1970's. They had nine lives after all.

Also none of this probably happened.

Swinging the broom around like a Scotsman with a hammer, my doorframe-filling, hard-handed giant of a Grandad initially failed to dislodge my arch-nemesis and Sammy stayed on for at least two more hits, managing to drag his claws around my face each time, making me look like a shellshocked and tearful barber's pole.

Finally he loosened his evil grip and fucked off into the bushes - where he probably killed a vole or had a shit on the neighbour's lawn or summat.

I trudged inside the house to stand on some newspaper and have TCP painfully dabbed all over my torn-up little cowboy face.

I took off my papier-mache stetson.
I put my guns away.
Handed in my tin badge.

I never went near Sammy again.

As I say, very little of this probably happened. It's just what I chose to remember, and have then since embellished.

But if anyone asks why I don't like cats, this is what I tell them.

So now, the Internet, PLEASE stop it with the fucking cat pictures.

Some wounds take a long time to heal - and imaginary ones run deepest.
Probably.


Thank you.

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THE MEANING OF CHRISTMAS?

"Isn't it strange how certain words and phrases can take on entirely different meanings?" I thought to myself the other night as I settled down for my tea.

To some people a 'banquet' conjures images of huge medieval halls, bedecked by candle-light where some great and powerful monarch roars approvingly between plates of wild boar, pheasant, plump grapes and the like, jauntily tossing chicken bones over his shoulders to his faithful hunting hounds.

To others a 'banquet' conjures up images of David Cameron and his sappish fag "Boy" George Osborne dressed up like penguins and stiffly puckering up to assuage a large ceremonial hall full of financiers.

But to Colonel Sanders the word 'banquet' means three limp lumps of tablelamp-warmed chicken, a small box of rooster-knackers in breadcrumbs, a quarter of a cob of corn boiled within an inch of liquefying into yellow, dribbly mulch on a stick and a paper envelope of tepid, deep-fried potato remnants.

All dusted in the Colonel's secret recipe of germs and spices. 

Mmm!! Fit for a King, it were!!

"B-B-But..Sir.. Did the banquet displease you?"

"Verily, it fuckinge displeased me! I spent the best part of six quid on that shyte? If I don't have the Tom-Tits by morning I'll be fuckinge stunned. GUARD! Chop his nuts off..."

 "Touchinge Clothe: The King's McMalady"

by Thomas Kyd

(Act IV: Scene II)

Other confusing definitions of words that I used to understand are 'classic', which once referred to anything old and stylish but now, apparently, means that episode of TOWIE where Amy Childs describes putting glitter on her friend's fanny, and 'legend', which once meant paritally historic/ part folk tale and now means any footballer in his mid-thirties or beyond.

Then there's the word 'cougar'.

When I was a kid there was a character in a sporting comic book called Johnny Cougar. He was a fierce, proud native American wrestler, never one to back down from a fight but always on the side of good.

The writers of 'Johnny Cougar' probably picked the name because of it's association with the ferocious, solitary, wildcat of the rough, tough mountainous regions where a strong Native American would be inspired by the sight.

Little would they know that within 25 years it would be used to describe any delusional women-of-a-certain-age who've had a few too many mojitos in Harvey Nicks' bar and are now feeling-up the nervous arse of any & all terrified male students in the cab queue home.

Spot the Difference?

It's a trick. Both of these scantily clad Cougars repel mortal men.

They weren't 'cougars' when I was younger.
No, they were 'slappers' back then.

(The only difference I can see is that they pay too much for their shoes these days.)

Anyway, "Johnny Slapper"?
It might describe them to a tee but it's not really a good name for a Native American wrestler.

But most confusing of all are 'ideal' and 'perfect' which, when used to describe a gift or present, now mean (according to every Christmas advertisement and supplement I have seen) something thoughtless, pointless and of no redeeming value.

Every Sunday magazine has pages and pages of absolute tosh that they have deemed 'ideal' gifts for the ones you love, 'perfect' even.

Earlier in the year I described how difficult it was to get something for my Dad for Father's Day as the shops and advertisers seemed to think that my he would love to recieve absolutely anything, from a pink birdbox to a biography of Josef Fritzel, as a token of affection from his grateful eldest son.

So, let's see what they have in store for the rest of the family!!

(PLEASE NOTE - THESE ARE ALL GENUINE SUGGESTIONS FROM THE SUNDAY NEWSPAPER'S MAGAZINES):

Hey! Is your partner obsessed with the last game of kickball of any international significance for this country? Then why not fork out FOUR HUNDRED AND FIFTY FUCKING QUID for a REPLICA of a 45 year old jersey scrawled on by TEN of the surviving geriatrics from that dubious victory....in a frame!!

He can look at - but not wear - the vandalised FAKE shirt during the next World Cup tournament as he drunkenly blurbles the classic pop-hit "Forty-eight years of hurt.. never stopped me dreaming..." into his warm can of Carling.

PERFECT!

Are you being kept awake by an annoyingly cute little insomniac kid who loves lacklustre cover versions of The Smiths? Then you might need some caffeine to keep up with the little tyke! Why not spunk away TWO FUCKING GRAND on this glorified kettle?

I can't even work out which bit of it that fucking is!!
IDEAL!!!


Do you know a hypocritical tosspot who reads the broadsheets but secretly likes paparazzi shots of what they think celebrities ought to be doing? Good news! Pointless "artist" Alison Jackson has yet another collection of her grainy photos of vague lookalikes doing something staged.
It's like manipuating the contents of Madam Tussaud's and staring at the compromised waxworks through a sheet of greaseproof paper!

It's satire or summat, you divs!
PERFECT!!


Ladies! Tired of being your own person? Feminism too much fucking hassle? Then why not become the subservient cretin you always dreamed of being by letting your fella buy you the new Louis Vuitton 2012 decorative collar?
Slave or pet? Who cares?

Wearing a £1,340 fancy metal collar at the height of a fucking recession says more about you than you will ever know...
IDEAL!!


On a budget but think your kids are not being bullied quite enough?
Then why not get them some snorkel blue or magenta slipper socks with non-slip soles? They're bright enough to be seen from a fucking mile-off and soft enough for the wearer to be unable to fight back!

At only ten pounds a pair you can victimise the whole family for under a ton!
PERFECT!


Fuck's sake.
I could go on....

There are tons and tons more of this needless shite, and we'll be bomdarded with it right throughout Christmas and beyond - particularly when the trendspotters tell us what the New Looks and Must Have Bullshit is for 2012.

On the one hand we're reminded that old people cannot afford their heating, that we'll all be working until we're in our 70's, that the economy is far worse than predicted and the recovery is further away than forecast - and on the other hand we're being urged to buy a dog toy shaped like a moustache....

For the love of Jimmy Edwards!

I, for one, can do without any more pointless crap and have decided that all I want this year are a few PG Wodehouse novels. That's it.

No ties, aftershaves, socks. No selection boxes, no novelty singing Christmas trees, no albums from Mojo's Top 50 Albums Of The Year, no DVD of Robbie Fowler's Football Howlers, no KFC Festive Feast, no Nancy Dellolliollio Shave Up & Dance Badly fitness DVDs, no New WKD cranberry & violence alcopops no Best of HBO boxsets... none of it.

This year it's just me, Wodehouse and a glass of wine.

Maybe the exquisite language, lazy-plotting and genteel caricatures will cure me of all this anger and  profanity?

In an imperfect world that would be ideal.

Pip-pip!

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 @misterwilliams

PAST? TENSE.

I'd hate to be a Historian.

The past is an awful place.

Quite apart from the plague, the malnutrition, the scurvy, the infant mortality, the slavery, the genocides, the Kajagoogoos and so on, I've been watching the News of late and have discovered it's also full of recent racism, sexual-misconduct, bad banking practises, phone-hacking, illegal wars and whatnot... what a godawful place.

Bloody History.

I can't even think about it anymore.

Why do the Time Team keep insisting on digging up the History and prodding it with sticks?

What is wrong with Tony Robinson?

Did he hate being Baldrick that much that he feels the need to grab a hold the History, render it in glorious 3D graphic-form and rub our faces in it's dirty business?

Leave the past where it is. Don't you realise what a sour, foul, horrible place the History is, Baldrick? Don't you watch the News? No-one likes it.

Everybody wants to move forward, not backward.

How many times have we heard a a public figure say they want to move forward?

"It's time to move forward." 

"What's done is done."

"Let's look to the future." 

"History will judge us," they say, "It's time to draw a line under this."

They're very keen on drawing lines under things. Unfortunately, they haven't understood that if you underline something you don't take people's attention away from it. Quite the opposite.

If anything, you make whatever it is you want people to forget a lot more noticeable as it has a big fucking line under it.

Still, many people in positions of power who have displayed gargantuan levels of hypocrisy, selfishness, and brain-melting fuckwittery like to draw lines under the decisions they have made in the hope that we will forget these nuggets of horseshit and continue with our day.

The Banks say it about the financial meltdown. Apparently banging on about their culpability makes it difficult for them to concentrate on clearing up their mess.

Tony Blair said it about his decision to invade Iraq on questionable 'evidence'.

Sepp Blatter has said it about his idiotic statements about how to tackle racism in football.

Republican Presidential hopeful Herman Cain has said it about the sexual harassment charges he is accused of. And his alleged thirteen year extra-marital affair...

Tha tabloid press have said it about intrusive, abusive, malicious reporting and the illegal practice of phone hacking.

David Cameron has said it about his conduct in the Bullingdon Club, his decisions to shut libraries, charging students to attend university, the NHS, his own alleged drug-use at University...

....in fact he pretty much says it every time he opens his big posh gob.

(Although, why he wants us to "move forward" to a society that his Chancellor, Boy George, is determined to fashion into a Dickensian Workhouse is a bit more of a mystery?

Sorry, that's probably being a bit unfair to George Osborne. When I think back, I was pretty terrible at my first proper job too... )



Anyway, back to the Future...

"Move along," they say, "let's embrace the future. The future is where it's at. Let's look to the future. All those bad decision, calamitous injustices, illegal wars, broken promises, shattered vows, they are all in the past.

They are history."

But the trouble with history is that it repeats itself.

At the moment we have an unpopular Tory government, disgruntled and politicised students, riots in our major cities, record youth unemployment, unions calling for strike action, severe austerity measures, two wars, a budgetary collapse.....

....and if all that wasn't bad enough we have Sinitta and Pat fucking Sharp back on prime-time telly!

If History HAS to repeat itself, does it have to be the fucking Eighties??


As the great dramatist George Bernard Shaw once said:

"If history repeats itself, and the unexpected always happens, 

how incapable must Man be of learning from experience?"

We have to learn from History in order to make things better, not just dump any old toxic shit we don't want others to notice there, otherwise History becomes the domain of bigotry, hatred, and ignorance.


Mind you, that does explain why David Starkey is such a massive tool....

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