The World On A Stick

FUCK THE OLYMPICS

2011-11-14T14:12:00.001-08:00

10 reasons why I already hate the London 2012 Olympics

(This article may include some factual inaccuracies in order to emphasise certain points)

1. The Olympics is full of shit sports that no-one normally cares about. Why would I pay £70 to go and watch long distance fencing or equestrian tennis? Fuck off.

2. The only way to be sure of getting a ticket for one of the events was to apply for tickets for all of them. Unless you're rich, the resulting ballot and automatic collection of payment from your bank account would then more than likely bankrupt you and lead to you and your family being turfed out on to the streets into a life of drug addiction and prostitution, and all you'd be left with is a pile of tickets for the women's 800m pole jumping.

3. Due to the apparently universally accepted fact that the Olympics MUST SUCCEED AT ALL COSTS, politicians are using the Games as a smokescreen to introduce draconian legislation limiting the democratic right to protest and indulge in macho masturbatory counter-terrorist posturing, like deploying surface-to-air missiles around Hackney to police an Olympic no-fly zone. Which is all pretty handy for quelling dissent while the Government is pulling the support of the welfare state out from under the people who need it most so that banks and big business can carry on feathering their filthy nests.

4. The Olympics has been designed to deliver a lasting legacy to one of the more socially and economically deprived areas of London. This legacy is a world class velodrome, a load of expensive flats and a shit sculpture named after a billionaire tax-dodging steel magnate.

5. Don't even get me started on the fucking cable car.

6. The London 2012 Organising Committee is so committed to brand protection - or, in English, 'greed' - that simply saying the word '2012' out loud without prior consent from Locog can result in a hefty fine or imprisonment.

7. The corporate sponsors of the Games, whose adverts will be ruthlessly installed not just all over the venues but all over London, include: Coca Cola, well known for their championing of human rights throughout the developing world; environmentally responsible companies such as EDF and BP; Lloyds TSB, who are presumably paying for the sponsorship with whatever was left of the money lent to them by the British taxpayer once this year's bonuses were dished out; and the well known health food chain, McDonalds.

8. Boris Johnson's progressive transport strategy, which involves measures such as scrapping the congestion charge for wealthy, Tory-voting west London and bumping up fares for the Tube and bus services most Londoners depend on, is being ramped up further in the run-up to the Olympics, to help pay for the interminable upgrade works he desperately wants to be finished by 2012. Boris is allowed to do this because the Olympics was actually his idea.

9. The Olympic mascots are a pair of anthropomorphic cyclops robo-penises, and the London 2012 logo looks like it was designed by someone recovering from a massive stroke.

10. Sebastian Coe.

Failed State 2012

2011-11-03T16:32:00.000-07:00

You survived Pipeline.

You made it out of Meat Circus alive.

But have you got what it takes to take hardcore to the next level? Are you ready for the most dangerous weekend of your life?

Can you handle the FAILED STATE?

Pumpenhausen Productions is proud to unveil our most audacious event yet - Failed State 2012.

We have struck a ground breaking deal with Somalian militant group Al Shabab, granting us four days access to a camp where Islamic extremists from around the world are trained, deep in the heart of one of the world's most dangerous countries.

Make your way by boat to the rendezvous point in the Gulf of Aden, where you will be met by a fleet of the Horn of Africa's toughest pirates, who will transport you to a secret location south of Mogadishu where we have an incredible ten stages of high risk fundamentalist beats that will literally blow your brains to bits.

Your luxury tented accommodation is guarded round the clock by battle-hardened mujahideen child soldiers, and as well as the music you can take part in guerilla fighting workshops, study the philosophy behind global jihadism and head out on to the high seas to learn first hand how to hijack an oil tanker. Just remember, when you hear the drones overhead, find some cover and take aim.

Failed State - this time there's no place to hide.

BASE CAMP

Warlord

Mogadishu Knife Ensemble

Lethal Bismarck

Alan Qa'ida

DJ Arab Spring

Wahabi Peas

George Galloway (Live PA)

THE BUNKER

Smashed Knuckle

Fanny Magnets

Dads On Pills

Nut Muck

Naughtyculture

DIGITAL MECCA

Sharihanna

Burka Som Sistema

The Gaza Strippers

Stoned To Death

Jamie Cullum

UNITED NATIONS

I Think Darfur I Am

The Peacekeepers

Dusseldorf Fun Boys

George W. Butch

Dutch Mist

THE GABBA MOSQUE

Wet Piss

Inifidelboy B2B Rodney

Magic Helmet

Touching Ross Kemp

DESERT STORM

Bursting The Pig

Tit Crust

Richmond Superkings

DJ Microwave

PIRATE BAY

Hairy Slazenger

Shitwrecked

Customer Service

Anstis

Bent Justice

CHILL-OUT CAVE

Dalston Cock Fart

Terminal Decline

Axis Of Evil DJs

Lice

Mescaline Driving School

Camel Toe

Al SHABAB PRESENTS

Flex Wheeler

DJ Night Bus

Cheap Leather

#hashtag

Slag Accident

SEMTEX ARENA

Bomb The Mosque

Zenga Zenga

Rough Bicep

Only In Wigan

Special Guest: Jim Davidson

Tickets available from all the usual outlets. More acts announced soon...

MTV Cribs

2011-10-27T15:06:00.000-07:00

I stood in my porch, leaning against the frame of my front door, arms folded, watching the crew unloading their equipment from the van. The director stood apart from the rest of them, squinting at the clipboard held in his hand and absent-mindedly rubbing his forehead with the back of the other hand. He clocked me watching him, and raised his head briefly to flash me a wink and a smile. It's fine, I thought. No need to be nervous.

I was nervous though. It's great watching Cribs on TV, but did I really want them snooping round my house? Not that I felt I had anything to hide, but still.

I heard the crunch of tyres on gravel, and glanced over to the gate, where a black Land Rover with tinted windows had just pulled up. The man who stepped out of it looked even more nervous than I felt. After a moment's pause, I recognised him as Xzibit. I walked over.

"Hi. You're Xzibit, right?"

"Uh, yeah," he replied. "How you doing?"

"Yeah, good cheers."

"Cool." He scratched his stubble briefly, but vigorously, then looked up at me, as if waiting for me to push the conversation forward a little further.

"So, um, how come you're here man? I thought you did Pimp My Ride?"

"Yeah, well..." He tailed off and looked down at his feet, then looked up again sharply. "It's just, you know, money's a bit short at the moment and, well, I could kind of do with the overtime."

He looked nervously back over his shoulder, then quickly checked his phone. He seemed to relax again when he saw he had no messages, no missed calls.

"Ok, well, come on in and see my crib!".

* * * *

"And....action!"

The nearest cameraman swivelled round to face me, and as his zoom lens moved smoothly towards me I beamed at him and delivered my line:

"Hi MTV, I'm Tom, welcome to my crib!"

Xzibit was sat on the other side of the room in a corner behind the camera, staring blankly at a pot plant and passing his sunglasses back and forth from one hand to the other.

"So, this is my hallway," I said, turning to walk back down it, "I'm gonna take you down here to see the living room."

The cameraman followed me into the room, and I playfully leapt on to the oversized leather sofa, lying back and smiling to the camera. I grabbed the remote control from the coffee table and hit the button that activated the chandeliers. The camera panned up as the hatches in the ceiling slid open, and fourteen lightweight aluminium chandeliers, fitted with energy saving pink bulbs, descended to within about three feet of the floor.

"I call this my Pink Room. Watch out for all the wires on the floor, I'm having some more chandeliers fitted."

* * * *

I led the cameraman down another corridor, past the various signed photos of Rhod Gilbert, into the large room at the back of the house. I pushed the door open, swivelling round as I did so, so that I was walking backwards into the room, and I gestured to the rows of stuffed animals behind me.

"This is my taxidermy room."

Xzibit followed the cameraman into the room, then took a few steps backwards, wide eyed, and his mouth dropped open.

"Wha...?"

* * * *

"This is probably my favourite thing about the garden," I said, bending down to open the hatch at the bottom of the wall. "On the other side of this wall is my nightclub."

I crawled into the tunnel, crawled a couple of metres along it, then looked back over my shoulder at the camera.

"The great thing about this is, there are different tunnels, it's a little bit like a maze, and you have to find the right way into the club. It's changed on a daily basis, so even I don't know which way is the right way. At the end of some of the tunnels are dead ends, little rooms where we put stuff in, like a dog, or a load of ice. It's fun."

Xzibit had said he wasn't fussed about seeing the club, he was outside in the garden, trying to get reception on his phone.

"Hey Xzibit! Are you sure you don't want to come in here?"

I'd reached the end of one of the tunnels, where it narrowed almost to a point. There was a speaker on the wall playing a recording of some German poetry.

"Nah man I'm cool."

* * * *

"There's only one way into this bedroom - down the fireman's pole."

I slid down the pole and landed on the bed. The bed took up the whole of the room, there was no space for anything else. The bed was massive. I lay there for a while, trying to think of something to say.

"Chuck me down that rope ladder," I said, eventually. "I need to get back up."

* * * *

"Don't worry man, we probably don't have enough time to do the bathroom as well," said Xzibit, now clearly agitated and keen to leave.

"Are you sure? It's pretty cool, there's two toilets, one of them is real and the other is a kind of fake oversized toilet, and when you go up to the bathroom in the lift you come up out of the toilet bowl. If you want to go back down, you pull the flush. Sure you don't want a go?"

"Yeah come on," said the director. "We've got plenty of time. We don't have to be at the next one for another hour."

"Nah it's cool, it's fine," insisted Xzibit. "I just... I just think.... nah, it's fine."

I looked at the director, and he looked back at me. My smile was quizzical and slightly bemused. His had more a look of worry. Fear, even.

"Come on," I said, "it'll only take-"

Xzibit bolted back down the hallway. I thought I heard a muffled yelp as he tripped on one of the wires in the lounge, but he managed to stay on his feet, flailing wildly as he ran out the door and across the gravel driveway. We got to the front door just as the Land Rover screeched off, back up the road.

In the end, MTV decided not to broadcast that episode. No-one has seen Xzibit since.

The A-Z of N7

2011-09-08T15:49:00.000-07:00

A guide to the postcode I call home, Holloway N7, North London. We deal in raw truths, totally losing it hard forever.

A is for Admiral, The

The Admiral, also known as the Holloway Road Pirate, is a local character who can often be seen leaving Holloway Road Tube station after a hard day at the office, dressed all in black and sporting a tricorn hat.

B is for Big Red

Known affectionately by locals as "Big Red's", this sports/metal bar caters for the young and beautiful weekend party people of N7. Table football, pool tables, AC/DC tribute bands, straight-to-DVD slasher films on the big screen - this place has it all, whether you're looking for a big night out or a place to take a girl on a first date.

C is for Calypso Café

Calypso is home to the infamous 'mega breakfast', a 2' by 2' slab of meat, grease and cholesterol for less than £4. Recently the Calypso seems to have been closed, though it is unclear whether this is anything to do with the health and safety concerns that are sometimes prompted among customers by the odd coiled hair in the fried eggs.

D is for Damaged Goods

A pejorative term used locally to refer to inhabitants of neighbouring N4.

E is for Euston to Hackney Central

The route taken by N7's most celebrated bus, the 253. Running from Euston, up through Camden, the 253 then cruises through the heart of N7's vibrant Nag's Head shopping district before heading up Seven Sisters Road to Finsbury Park, Manor House, Stamford Hill and Hackney. At night the bus is transformed into the N253, a luxury after-dark service that goes all the way to Aldgate.

F is for Front Line

Popular term for Brecknock Road, the border between Islington and Camden boroughs that runs along the northwestern edge of N7.

G is for Golden Triangle

The Golden Triangle is an unprecedented concentration of shops selling discount sportswear on Holloway Road. On the eastern side are JD Sports and Foot Locker, while the opposite side is home to the recently opened Sports Direct, where you can pick up the equipment for an N7 Tea Party (see below).

H is for Holloway Road

The artery that carries the lifeblood of N7, this charming 6-lane A road plays host to a rich and dynamic social tapestry, and brings visitors from as far afield as Finsbury Park (N4), where they don't have a Sports Direct.

I is for Islington Borough Council

These are the people that collect your council tax and empty your bins all over the pavement.

J is for John Barnes Library

Former Liverpool and England midfielder John Barnes has long championed the cause of municipal libraries, and the library built in his honour is a great place for getting photocopies done and renting CDs that came out 10 years ago.

K is for K&K

'K& K' is a cocktail that was invented by local drinkers in N7 (see Tramp's Corner, below), a turbo charged version of snakebite created by blending equal parts Kestrel Super and K Cider. Side effects of the drink include irreparable liver damage, uncontrollable bouts of rage and a life spent living on the streets.

L is for Latin Corner, The

This incongruous Colombian pub on the corner of Camden Road and Dalmeny Road is usually empty, but the new management is surely on to a winner with their much vaunted new 'Ska BBQs', which is exactly what this overwhelmingly residential area has been crying out for.

M is for Mereb's Food & Wine

The lads at Mereb's are always on top form, whether they're dealing with a tramp counting pennies out of a carrier bag to pay for a can of Kestrel, or selling smug middle class Tufnell Parkers vast quantities of fresh fruit for less than the cost of a second class stamp.

N is for N7 Tea Party

An N7 Tea Party is a common social gathering in N7, where a group of friends - lads, lasses or both - dress up in cheap sports gear and get together with the giant 99p mugs you can buy at Sports Direct, to have a few cups of tea and talk about what they got up to the night before in Big Red's.

O is for Old Clothes

If you're a fan of old clothes, you will be spoilt for choice by N7's many charity shops, supporting good causes around the world by selling pretty much any old shit.

P is for Prisons

You're never far from a criminal in N7, and perhaps N7's most famous addresses are its two prisons, HM Holloway and HM Pentonville. Holloway is a female-only prison, making it one of the most popular places for the lads in the area to pick up women.

Q is for Quemerford Road

Quemerford is unique in N7, in that it is the only road that is named after a suburb of the Wiltshire town of Calne.

R is for Raw Truths

The main thing that inhabitants of N7 deal in, almost like a parallel currency, as summed up in the area's motto, which translates roughly from the Latin as: "We deal in raw truths, totally losing it hard forever".

S is for Strip, The

Holloway Road's number one primo piece of real estate, The Strip is the stretch that runs from Big Red's in the north to The Coronet in the south. In between these two sophisticated metropolitan boozers are some of the best shops in N7, including the Golden Triangle (see above), as well the local branch of Chicken Cottage, where dreams are deep fried and served up in a cardboard box.

T is for Tramp's Corner

The junction of Parkhurst Road and Holloway Road is known as Tramp's Corner, thanks to the friendly local characters that sleep, drink and shout on the bench outside NatWest.

U is for Upper Holloway

Also known as N19, this is where Holloway Road narrows to two lanes, the Tube gives way to the Overground, and the streets are lined with second rate kebab shops and burnt out Irish pubs. Avoid at all costs.

V is for Victoria Line

Perhaps the biggest affront to N7 in its long and distinguished history was the construction of the Victoria Line, which entirely snubs the area on its route from Finsbury Park (N4) direct to Highbury & Islingon (N5).

W is for Weekend Boot Sale

Head down to the weekend boot sale just off Seven Sisters Road if you're hungry for a bargain. The car stereo stall is always particularly well stocked, with new merchandise on offer every week.

X is for XXL

It is illegal, under a Holloway bye-law, for shops in N7 to sell clothes that aren't available in sizes up to and including XXL.

Y is for Youth

The youth of N7 is one of its strongest assets, as demonstrated in the recent London riots, when the only damage was a broken window at the Carphone Warehouse on Seven Sisters Road, the kids of N7 keeping it together while nearby Tottenham, Hackney and Camden went up in flames.

Z is for Zenith, The

Another local name for N7. It really doesn't get any better than this.

Excerpts from the History of the Future

2011-07-14T13:25:00.000-07:00

As the traditional structures of power collapsed under their own weight following the Great Existential Crash, a new political school of thought emerged that came to be known as New Wave Eco-Libertarianism. The New Wave Eco-Libertarians were the precursors to modern Art-Politics as we know it today, the first generation to pursue politics as a viable form of artistic expression, rather than as a path towards power accumulation and socio-economic dominance.

Their manifesto drew on many traditional intellectual strands, with a strong emphasis on sustainable re-modelling of the economy, decentralisation of power, redistribution of wealth, and a progressive, liberal attitude towards individual freedoms. But they also recognised the way in which culture had overtaken politics and geography as the basis for shared identity and aspirations amongst the electorate, and they turned political campaigning and the workings of government into a challenging and abstract form of perpetual performance art.

The first ever New Wave Eco-Libertarian party political broadcast famously consisted of a 10 minute stop-motion film of a piece of sheet metal slowly buckling in a vice, a move widely derided at the time as a bizarre stunt but which captured the imagination of millions, and turned the election on its head overnight. NWEL candidates appeared at debates dressed in tin foil romper suits, often refusing to speak at all unless a translator was present to repeat everything they had said in Portuguese. An estimated six hundred thousand people turned out at London's Hyde Park three weeks before the election, where the NWEL unveiled their flagship economic policy, a short poem written in charcoal on a found swatch of denim, entitled 'Prometheus' and dealing with the feeling of loss encountered by a Mauritian immigrant in New York the first time she sees snow melt. The policy was widely credited with winning the election for the NWEL.

In government, the party abolished the NHS and replaced it with a Lottery-funded grant system, whereby patients had to demonstrate a quantifiable cultural value to all treatment requested. By the end of their first term in office the health service was generating a healthy profit, money which was used to expand the government's conceptual education programme. This programme promoted increasingly challenging abstract forms of teaching as a means of producing a withering deconstruction of decades of failed post-war social policy. The Foreign Office moved increasingly outside of the US sphere of influence, drawing on the work of Latin American magical realist authors such as García Márquez and Cortázar to infuse their policy with an ethereal sense of lingering uncertainty. It became increasingly difficult to distinguish between genuine international conflicts and those that had simply been collectively imagined, which in turn gave birth to an unprecedented era of peace and stability.

When the New Wave Eco-Libertarians were re-elected for a second term, the House of Commons and the Lords were closed, Parliament was dissolved and government was henceforth conducted exclusively at street level. Public spaces were given over to the free expression of political will through mixed media and mixed disciplines. In the North, dance became the prevailing artistic-political current, with former mining towns rejuvenated and regenerated through a concerted effort to tackle social inequality with aggressively aspirational dance. Cornwall enjoyed an economic boom after cornering the expanding global market for ethically produced psy-trance, while neighbouring Devon became the first fully 3D county after a closely fought referendum.

However, the government of the NWEL was not without its problems. A series of scandals centred around plagiarism led to several influential members of the cabinet resigning midway through their second period in office, and their replacements are generally blamed for steering the party in an increasingly commercial direction. After a while, every policy seemed to be the same, with one particularly damaging year seeing seven different versions of the same financial regulatory body created, each one slightly smaller than the last. A terrorist attack on the London Underground was mistaken for a contemporary drama symposium, and the emergency services were prevented from reaching the injured for four hours by a series of flash mobs that had been contracted by Transport for London to carry out maintenance on the Tube network.

The fatal blow came just three weeks later, when the government decided to withdraw all government funding for its own policies, on the basis that this had 'never been tried before'. Within a matter of days the country descended into chaos, and the whole government resigned. The Conservative Party won the resulting election by a landslide.

Product Placement

2011-06-05T14:24:00.000-07:00

There are several sites online devoted to laughing at foreign products with funny names, and at the hapless foreigners valiantly failing to master the English language. However, personally I think I take more enjoyment from some of the names that are bafflingly given to products sold in my own country, so I thought I would share with you some of my favourites.

There is something intrinsically funny and satisfying about the word 'vag', and this product seems to harness this unique quality in a slightly inappropriate context. The euphemistic term 'feminine itching' is also a great example of a euphemism failing to really fulfil the basic requirements of a euphemism. They could have called the cream 'Fanny Scratch' and I don't think anyone would feel any less embarrassed asking for it at the chemist. It does always amuse me when a product for treating a sensitive personal hygiene or health issue is given such an unambiguous, unsubtle name, though Vagisil pales in comparison with this:

It literally has the word 'anus' in its name.

Like 'feminine itching', the concept of 'feminine wipes' is again at odds with our general perception of what constitutes femininity. The name Femfresh evokes images neither of freshness nor of femininity. Also, it reminds me a little of the word 'femidom'.

Moving on to a different kind of cleaning, I find Cillit Bang interesting because the branding seems wilfully European and naff, and yet by welding this with the quintessentially British activity of shouting, as personified by Barry Scott, the brand has managed to acquire a certain degree of ironic cool. Cillit Bang is probably the first domestic cleaning product to have gone viral, to the extent where I almost wonder whether Jakazid was commissioned by the company in a very clever piece of marketing. The brand has certainly taken the UK market by storm.

In contrast, I can't help feeling that Cif is an example of a branding strategy that has lost its way. While the reasons for the change in name were well documented at the time, changing the name of a familiar product to cater to foreign markets is not something that sits well with the British consumer. The name Jif was reassuringly evocative of classic British cultural concepts, such as doing things in a jiffy, or jiffy bags. Cif is basically a straight banana.

I don't find Garnier Nutrisse funny so much as incredibly irritating, specifically the advert with Davina McCall where she tells her mother that "Nutrisse means 'nourish'". The clear implication is that it means this in French, but it doesn't. The French word for 'nourish' is the verb 'nourrir'. Among its derivatives in French are the word 'nourriture', meaning 'nourishment' or 'food', and the word 'nutrition', which means the same as it does in English. There is no word 'nutrisse'. The nearest would be the subjunctive form of the verb, 'nourrisse', but this word would not have the same connotation of 'nutrition' to most English speakers, so Garnier have just made up a word and pretended it means something. It doesn't. It means nothing, Davina. Nothing.

Based on the packaging and branding, Benecol looks and sounds like something you would smear on yourself if you were suffering from feminine itching. Its whole aesthetic just seems medical, clinical, and in no way suitable for something you're supposed to spread on your sandwiches. I can see what they were aiming for, incorporating the Latin word 'bene' into the name to communicate the idea that this is something that's good for you. But sometimes brands can try a bit too hard, sometimes it's better to keep things simple:

Natch. Sweet, delicious Natch. It sounds like 'snatch', and it looks like what it is: paint stripper for the guts. The complete opposite, in fact, to Benecol.

The Movement

2011-05-11T13:24:00.000-07:00

There was a Movement afoot. I had to be part of it.

The Movement was not something that had appeared overnight, but nevertheless I had been caught off guard by it, by the capacity it had to suddenly and violently take over my life. I knew there had been Movements in the past, but they seemed unreal somehow, like scripture, like truths that were to be swallowed, to be digested if possible, but never to be proven by my own experience of the world. I grew up watching grainy black and white film of these Movements, reading about them in textbooks and journals, talking about them with people who had been lucky enough to take part in them. But I had never joined a Movement.

I remember a story someone once told me at school, one of those apocryphal tales that the young love to share. A boy had been at home on his own, in his bedroom, masturbating, when he had heard his mum come through the front door, back from work. He heard her coming up the stairs, he panicked, and he grabbed a knife and slit his wrists in a desperate attempt to hide his shame, and to make it look like he had been trying to commit suicide so that his mum didn't realise that he'd been having a wank. He died.

I'm not sure how, if that story were true, anyone would ever have found out that he was knocking one out when his mum got home. Unless she could tell. Unless she could tell, and she then told that story to the kind of person who likes to share gossip with friends and strangers about unspeakable local tragedies.

I first realised there was a Movement taking shape when everything started going wrong in my life. I was on a train and I'd just spent the last of my money on the ticket. Not the last of all the money I had, but it would be the last for a while. The man sat opposite me was thumbing his way listlessly through a faded broadsheet. Glossy supplements fat with aspiration kept leaking out of the pages of the newspaper like tongues being born at a funeral. The writing on the pages was so close together that you could barely read it, the letters all flowing into one another, the ink still liquid on the paper. I had a headache.

Not a bad headache. Just a dull bore behind the eyes. My eyes felt raw and vulnerable. The backs of my hands were sweating, the palms completely dry. It would be at least another two hours before the train arrived at my destination. And the heat. The heat was relentless. Three weeks it had been like this, and the grass was brown and brittle. People in the cities kept dying. They said it was because of all the heat.

The Movement was happening all over the country, as far as I could tell. It was a reaction of some sort, of that everyone was certain. People were finding new ways of banding together in the same old fashion, congregating in the same old places, saying the same old things. I thought it would be harder to stop this time, harder to put back in the box.

There was one night in a club where I saw a man in the middle of the dancefloor, eating whole boiled eggs. He ate four or five at least, barely flinching. I'm not sure what he had used to carry them in. Some kind of plastic tub I guess. People barely took any notice of him. At least I think that's what happened. It was a long time ago. I might have imagined it.

That was all before the Movement started up again though. Before I started running out of places I could stay the night, and started heading south, towards the sun. I'm making the whole thing sound like some kind of lonely trek across the desert, like some timeless and apocalyptic American novel where everyone is going somewhere and little ever happens. In my world, in my story, it was different. No-one was ever sure where they were going in the first place. It seems inevitable that so many people got lost. You could see whole herds of them alongside the road, if you knew where to look, milling around in the shadows while the traffic sped past. A Movement was already building, even before the clouds started to dry out and the air grew thick with dust.

I've come to realise that life is made up of Movements, of these underlying currents always forcing things forward. The Movements ebb and flow, wax and wane, and constantly underpin everything we do like a drone oscillating in the background. The Movements are punctuated by Events, by spikes in the graph, by the things we can remember. These Events, these islands of life, are eventually swallowed up by the Movements, until you can no longer remember where they were or what they really looked like, only that they happened.

So that summer we braced ourselves for the tide about to wash over us. For most of us, it was the first time we had really felt it. A lot of people drowned in it. They were consumed by it, they disappeared into it, and many didn't reappear for years. When they did, they were unrecognisable. Some are probably still up to their necks in it.

I never joined the Movement in the end. I was more like a bystander, an observer, but by no means a casual one. The Movement affected me and everyone I know in ways that to this day I still haven't come to terms with. I remember a time when we all went camping, and a girl we used to know fell in the sea. When they pulled her out, there was a small crab in her hair, thrashing about to try and free itself from her tangled plaits. We took it back up the beach and we tortured it. We took it in turns to rip its legs out, then its claws, and then we smashed it on a rock. Afterwards we all stood back to have a look at what we'd done, and we lit a fire. We slept outside that night, and when we woke in the morning the crab had gone. Probably seagulls that took it.

I never joined the Movement, but I hear there's another one on the way.

This Summer's Must-Watch TV

2011-05-09T15:09:00.000-07:00

The World On A Stick previews this summer's TV highlights...

That's So Swansea

Channel 4

Reality docu-soap charting the lives of a group of rowdy young lads and lasses in Wales's second city. Expect break-ups, bust-ups and make-ups.

It's All About Abroath

BBC Three

Documentary-style reality soap following eight twenty-something Arbroathians as they flirt, fight and fuck their way into the nation's hearts.

Why Didn't You Tell Me You Were From Wigan?

Sky Living

Soapumentary lifting the lid on Wigan's wild and sexy party people, getting on down and getting it on at the town's legendary Pier.

Of Course I'm Portsmouth

Reali-soap exposing the truth behind the glamorous Pompey party scene. Get ready for sailors, studs and slappers.

Totally Tottenham

Channel 5

North London's chic party set revealed! Remember, if the night doesn't end in the chicken shop, you're so totally not Totally Tottenham!

Suffolk Uncut

ITV4

Buff young farmers and sexy agriculture students collide in this red hot exposé, dishing all the dirt on the saucy sexploits of the most sophisticated socialites in the bars and clubs of Ipswich and Martlesham.

I Love Leicester

MTV Base

The Midlands as you've never seen it before. Sit back and gasp as this outrageous clique of Leicester love rats lose all their inhibitions night after night at the city's hottest joints.

Flags

2011-03-21T16:51:00.000-07:00

One of my more unusual talents, for reasons that I can no longer really recall, is an apparently abnormal knowledge of the various national flags of the world. So I thought I would give you all a quick run through some of the 'highlights' of the fascinating world of flags. I'm not going to try and go into too much detail of where the various flags come from, or at least if I do it will be mostly made up. I'm more interested in just presenting brilliant pieces of visual symbolism such as this:

Up until recently, the fact that the flag of Libya is a plain green rectangle was probably my favourite piece of flag trivia, because not many people were really aware of it. It seems staggeringly boring and pretty lazy when you compare it to, say, Turkmenistan:

If anything, this has gone too far the other way, with a sort of Persian carpet inlay and a frankly overindulgent five stars adjacent to the familiar Islamic crescent. Also, I particularly like the ring of H's in the bottom left hand corner. Imagine how long it would take to paint this flag on to your face if you were going on a protest. This is probably why the country remains rigidly autocratic.

Returning to the first flag, the reason why the Libyan example is no longer such a good piece of trivia is because it's been all over the news for the last few weeks. As it turns out the green represents Colonel Gaddafi's 'Green Revolution' and his 'Green Book'. Or, perhaps more accurately, creating a national flag consisting of a plain green rectangle symbolises the staggering arrogance and delusional nature of the man. Anyway, coalition airstrikes are now in the process of replacing it with the much more dynamic post-independence tricolore:

This is, quite simply, a first class flag. It's simple, its colours are vibrant and compliment each other perfectly, and it's distinctive. Scroll back up to the top and have another look at Gaddafi's flag, then look at this one again. I have to wonder whether the international support for the Libyan rebels is in some way influenced by how achingly cool this flag is. Particularly when you compare it to the former flag of a country in which the international community was not willing to intervene, Rwanda:

I don't want to come across as insensitive, the Rwandan genocide was a truly shocking event that eclipses everything that's happened in Libya so far, but this flag looks like it was made on Microsoft Paint.

In contrast, Nepal has taken a much more left field approach when it comes to flag design:

It takes some balls to stick two isosceles triangles together and call it a flag, but the result is something that, unlike many of the world's flags, is utterly unique and gives some sense of a unique culture, in a way in which the flag of, say, Yemen simply does not:

Indeed, the Yemeni flag is part of a family of flags that hark back to the previous golden era of pan-Arab nationalism, based on the same tricolore as Egypt, Iraq, Syria and Jordan, whose flags I won't bore you with here. Whilst this may give these flags an important historical significance, visually it's pretty uninspiring. Compare this with the properly badass flag of Mozambique:

Yep, that's an AK-47. Another flag not to be fucked with, and one of the few decent communist flags left, is the machete-wielding banner of Angola:

I also like the flag of Barbados, because it looks like the flag that Poseidon, god of the sea, would carry if he led an army of mermen out of the ocean to slaughter us land-dwellers:

Arguably the funniest flag ever, however, was this gem which is believed to have been used within the Empire of Benin, in West Africa, around the 19th century. I sense from the highly sophisticated and subtle symbolism in this flag that this was a welcoming culture, one which preferred to show restraint and favoured diplomacy and negotiation over confrontation and violence:

I hope you have enjoyed this brief journey through the world of flags, and that you have perhaps come to appreciate why they have tended to stick in my memory more than some of the less practical and less useful things I have learnt about in life, such as algebra, or German. There are many more I could have included here, such as the Kyrgyzstan tennis ball, the theologically unambiguous Saudi flag or the Mauritian gay pride flag, but I feel it is only right to end with the greatest flag of all, the three cutlasses of my home county:

MEAT CIRCUS 2011

2011-02-04T12:02:00.000-08:00

From the people who brought you Pipeline...

Pumpenhausen Productions is proud to present:

MEAT CIRCUS 2011

A blast. Guaranteed.

Calling all Pipeline survivors: this time we're going underground. This spring we're taking over a decommissioned nuclear bunker in Belarus to bring you five days of hardcore euphoric meltdown. Ten arenas, five thousand ravers, no daylight. Arrive on Friday by specially arranged military transport and adopt the brace position before the sirens hit and it's full-on lockdown. This one is going to be so far off the scale we will never, ever be allowed to do it again.

ARENA ONE

Bullyrammer
Asbestos

Income Support
Safety Unconscious

Robotnik

Busted Flush
Brainbow

Posedown

Richard Hammond

THE PAYLOAD

Drilldo

Lord Of The Iron Fist

Polonium Euphonium
Air Strike
The Village Snipers

Rivers Of Jizzum
Fuck Me Like You Wan Kill Me
Orlando Doom

Payload DJs

GAZPROM LOUNGE

WMD-Ream

Manilow

Baneeki

Dark Ghent
Gear
Welterweight
Parmesan Colonoscopy

Pecker Patrol
Toni Diamante B2B Ed Ballz

MAN AGAINST MACHINE

Cunty Bunter
Spongiform

Hammer B2B Tongs

Dusseldorf Fun Boys

The Ropey Hookers
Fathers 4 Justice DJs

Meatwave
Toothcake
Hard Bollock

DEFCON TWO

Eat The Wrap

Crossbow Artichoke

Arthur Daley

Black Ice

Very Romantic
Sperman Goering

EASTERN BLOC

Captain Hotpants
Barry Scott (Live PA)
Sketches Of Paul Ross
Judi Hench
Back In Bosnia
15Peter20 (VJ Set)
Puppet Regime
DJ War Crime

WARZONE

Thundercunt
Bunker Buster
Jihadi-hadi

Clusterfuck

Knifes Und Stabbing Weapons

Muzzlesuck

Shock & Awe

Gammel Dansk

KLUB STOLICHNAYA

Shadwell Love Pirates

Henry Muff

Control Alt Delete
Denzell Perez
Hot Mess
Postcode Gang

Snowblower

LAZORS

DJ Northern Ireland B2B Chebs

NATION

Igor Zakharev

Pyotr Oshkashenko

Borshta-CPOK

Oleg Luzhny
Yevgheniy Bum Whistle
First National Mining Company of the Uzbek Republic

MedvedEver After
Made In Chechnya
Stalin

KGB-Boys

CHILL OUT OR DIE

Regretamine

Spatchcock Balaclava

Gust
Commercial Suicide
Up Your Council Gritter
Clank

Buff Justice
Cliff Richard Ate My Twat

They Call Me The Hydrogen Jehovah

Moaty B2B Gazza

Loads more acts and further details to be released so keep checking back here. Tickets available from all the usual outlets, early birds at a bargain basement price of 725,000 Belarusian rubles (GBP 150).

An Idiot's Guide to Spread Betting: Postscript

2011-01-20T15:50:00.000-08:00

I never actually mentioned on here how my experiment with spread betting turned out. I ended up around £500 in (imaginary) profit at the end of my free trial period. I have nevertheless decided not to pursue spread betting in the real world, despite this apparent success and the phone call I received from City Index asking me if I wanted any advice on how to play the markets. It is an astonishingly effective way of losing massive amounts of money pretty much instantaneously, and I intend to steer well clear. I'll leave stuff like that to the professionals...

The absurdity of reality

2011-01-17T15:22:00.000-08:00

I watched the Horizon programme earlier on the nature of reality, a brief journey through the world of theoretical physics, a world which I find equal parts fascinating, incomprehensible and utterly absurd. The programme moved through theory after theory at what was, for a layman like me, a dizzying speed. In truth it could have been four hours long and I still wouldn't have grasped most of it, and the scientists interviewed on the programme confirmed as much, admitting that no-one really understands quantum reality, or the theory that reality is a holographic projection of information at the distant edges of our universe.

I have to admit that, while I'm familiar with ideas such as string theory and the Higgs boson, I'd never heard of the Holographic Principle before. I'm sure an hour-long programme cannot really do it justice, but I was just absolutely baffled by the scientist who was carrying out an experiment to try and detect "fuzziness" in a reflected beam of light, or rather by the idea that this would somehow prove that the universe is a hologram. I'm sure that if you didn't see the programme, or if you've never heard of this theory, what I've just written will seem even more incomprehensible than it does to me.

I suppose what really interests me about it all though is the effort and the expense devoted to the pursuit of this level of understanding. Of course it speaks to the human thirst for knowledge, the great historical narrative of science and discovery, and to that very personal desire to understand exactly what we are and why we're here. But on another level, perhaps a more philosophical level divorced from the purely scientific, you just wonder whether it really matters and how far it needs to go. Literally billions of pounds have been spent on things like the Large Hadron Collider, a vast scientific instrument designed to try and find the Higgs particle, something that may not even exist. So far, they haven't found it.

Before you accuse me of being a Luddite, before you start waving in my face all the benefits to the human race scientific research and discovery have provided, I should point out that I am in no way saying we shouldn't be undertaking this research. Nor am I really trying to fashion a moral argument regarding the relative merits of funding quantum research compared to, say, overcoming starvation in the developing world. It's more a dumbfounded admiration of the ability of our species to drill down to such a minute level of detail in the fabric of reality, and to construct such complex and mind-stretching theories. It's that, and the seemingly absurd and just plain funny nature of what reality may actually mean.

The idea that the universe is a hologram, or that it's made of maths, or that one particle can be in two places at the same time, could just as easily come from the lysergic haze of an acid-fried conversation at a music festival, or from an episode of Brass Eye. I could sit here and make up theories no more ridiculous, but equally no easier (I believe) to disprove than those which the world's most gifted minds and billions of research dollars have spent years refining. The universe is a giant pork chop and time is a marinade sloshing in a cosmic Pyrex bowl. Reality is a series of four dimensional cubes that look different from the inside looking out than from the outside looking in. The earth is a giant quark inside an infinitesimally small atom in a cloud of molten lead in the atmosphere of a planet orbiting an electron inside our own earth's core.

If one of these theories had been put forward by one of the scientists on Horizon, I wouldn't really have understood it, but they would have had some kind of apparent proof, and I would have accepted it as a possible explanation. And that is perhaps the most remarkable thing about the reality which the programme was seeking to define.

Porterage

2010-11-01T16:33:00.000-07:00

I got home from work today, and as I walked up to my front door, I noticed a man sat on the garden wall. He offered to carry my luggage for me.

No, that's not right.

As I made my way up the path to my front door, a man approached me from behind. He was dressed in a funny little uniform, like a bellhop from a posh hotel.

No, that's not what happened either.

I alighted the bus at the stop conveniently placed outside my front door, and fumbled in my pocket for my keys with one hand while turning off my iPod with the other. I glanced around trying to make out the porter in the November gloom. He emerged from his little hut and gestured towards my luggage.

No, it wasn't quite like that.

I awoke from my slumber as the limousine glided to a halt outside my house, and I hurriedly gathered my possessions together. The driver removed my cases from the boot of the car and I fished around in my pockets for silver coins, tipped him handsomely, and folded my newspaper under my arm as the porter wheeled my luggage up to the front door. I half-noticed the paint peeling off the sign next to the front door, the battered old wooden one with 'Compulsory Porterage Fee' daubed across it, and reminded myself for the umpteenth time that week to get it seen to.

Hang on, that still doesn't really sound right.

As my train drew up to the platform, I manoeuvred my trunk down the central aisle past dandies in bowler hats and tempestuous-looking ladies in sack cloth and beige, and flustered my way out of the carriage as an acrid jet of steam shot upwards from the nose of the locomotive like the muggy breath of some iron serpent. Henry was waiting for me on the platform, and I gladly surrendered my luggage to him before wiping my jowels with my kerchief and balancing my top hat on my brow as elegantly as the circumstances would allow. A crack of the whip and the familiar clatter of hooves carried me off down the High Street, out towards my manor in the leafy northern environs of the city. Disembarking from my carriage with my body sufficiently reposed, I took a deep draft of the fragrant autumn air and watched on contentedly as Henry made his way up towards the cottage with my sundries and my trinkets. Little Bobby Bunter, the simpleton child with his mop of tumbledown hair and his cock-toothed grimace, stood slouched against a gatepost with his grubby palm thrust in my direction, dribbling lazily from the corner of his mouth and eyeing the makeshift wooden panel with the word 'Porterage' inked haphazardly across its splintered face.

Actually that's not right.

I got home, opened the front door, and went up the stairs to my flat. No porterage fee was incurred.

An Idiot's Guide to Spread Betting: Day 2

2010-10-27T14:03:00.000-07:00

Today has been a day of fairly substantial losses on the stock market for Tom PLC. I had a look at my two open bets when I woke up and saw that, happily, the euro had depreciated overnight and I was £25 up. This more than made up for what I lost last night, so I closed that bet and filed it in the draw marked "WIN".

Unfortunately, gold had fared less well, and I was around £100 down. Gold has to be more about the long game though, people have been going nuts for gold for thousands of years, so I left my position open throughout the day. When I got home and checked how it was doing, I saw I was now £200 down. I'm beginning to see why this is such a brutally efficient way of losing money in the real world. My £1 stake, thanks to a 20 cent drop (or 20 pence, I'm not really sure) in the value of gold, is currently manifested in a £200 loss. I feel I have no choice but to leave the bet open a bit longer, ignoring the advice of this man, to see if the price rebounds.

I've also increased my portfolio to a couple more bets against the now thoroughly victimised euro, and I've bought into oil in a big way. I'm talking about a £2 bet on the price of US crude rising, you knuckle-dragging wage slave pov fucks. I've also taken a punt on a rise in the average share price in travel, the industry I work in, and a cheeky bet on everyone's favourite airborne calamity British Airways, since they seem to finally be placating their rebellious staff. Since I'm now a high-flying imaginary City trader, it's pretty safe to say I want to see all unions smashed and austerity measures ruthlessly targetted at those who can afford them least.

I am currently down on all my ongoing bets.

An Idiot's Guide to Spread Betting: Day 1

2010-10-26T15:44:00.000-07:00

Having spent an uncomfortable couple of weeks eking out the pennies like a miser to compensate for an unusually dramatic budgeting miscalculation this month, I finally crawled over the line today to gratefully reach pay day. Rather than sit back and give thanks that my bank account has now been replenished to ease my stress levels, I of course began instead to mull over the most irresponsible ways in which I could splurge my cash this month. While glancing over the incomprehensible collision of jargon and numbers on the financial pages in the Evening Standard on the way home, I was reminded of a couple of drunken conversations I'd had during the past few months on the subject of spread betting. The first was with a couple of people who were teaching themselves to do it, and I really struggled to grasp even a basic understanding of what the fuck they were talking about. What I did glean from the conversation was that it was like a kind of online markets-based gambling, with the potential for big gains or big losses. The second conversation was with a lawyer and a couple of people who work in the City. Again the jargon was virtually inpenetrable, but the tone of the conversation differed from the first in that it seemed to be principally centred on the truly vast amounts of money people can and often do lose from gambling in this way.

Well, curiosity may have killed the cat, but I don't reckon the cat had a 'demo' option. So, having read up briefly on what exactly spread betting entails, I signed up for a two week demo account with City Index. This basically allows you to trade imaginary money for two weeks to get a feel for how spread betting and the City Index trading platform works, with none of your own, real cash at stake and no obligation to start trading for real at the end of your two weeks. So, armed with £2,500 of virtual currency and more or less no idea what the fuck I am doing, I opened up the trading platform software and tried to take in an interface that resembles a cross between the Ladbrokes website, stock footage of trading floors used in news reports about currency devaluations, and Microsoft Excel on acid. As I tentatively placed my first bet, I thought it might be fun to write about my two weeks as a financial cowboy on this blog. Parts of this might seem a bit dry, but my aim is to speculate in as entertaining a way as possible. I think my main goal is to put myself off ever trying this for real, because I'm certain that, given the track record of financial misfortune and mismanagement in my family, I would almost certainly bankrupt myself very quickly. However, I am well aware that what I'm doing may also be the financial equivalent of cooking up heroin for the first time.

With my first bet, it now transpires, I bet on the opposite of what I thought I was betting on. With the rebound of share prices today due to the figures on UK economic growth, and my limited knowledge of currency fluctuations due to the fact that I monitor them every Wednesday as part of my job, I decided to bet on a rolling EUR/GBP spread. What I wanted to bet on was the pound strengthening against the euro, but of course what I actually wagered was a pound for every point that the euro increased in value. Within seconds I was four imaginary pounds down. A predictably disastrous start. But then my fortunes change, and I'm only three pounds down. Back in the game! At this point I realise that I've bet on the wrong thing, and frantically scroll through the user guide to work out how to close my bet. I eventually extract myself at a loss of £6. I've still got £2,494 though. My balls are still large and dangling freely, like a sword of Damocles bearing down on the unsuspecting markets.

So I decide I'm going to try again, placing the same bet but on the actual outcome I want. Bang! Straight away, £3 wiped off my net equity. This is more expensive than the lottery, executed with the precision of a bet on the Grand National based entirely on the name of the horse, and with the likely same outcome as a game of poker against someone who can always remember whether a flush or a straight is better.

The rate doesn't seem to be fluctuating an awful lot. I'm putting that down to the fact that it's 11.30pm in the UK, deciding to ignore the fact that you probably don't have to live in Europe to trade in European currency. The Japanese will still be awake, so I have a look for something to bet on in the land of the rising sun, the sumo wrestler, the sushi chef, the kamikaze, and the rapidly depreciating currency.

All of the markets that come up when I search for 'Japan' are closed. A reassuring confirmation of my complete lack of understanding of the stock market. Instead I consult a list of the most popular markets, and settle on a bet on crude oil. That sounds like the sort of thing you could make a lot of money from. Maybe if I get chatting to a stranger at the pub on Friday I could tell them I'm "in oil". Consulting a chart that looks like the heart monitor of someone on the way out, I decide the price of US crude oil is too volatile. This decision comforts me as it makes me feel like I'm applying some degree of rational thinking to what I'm doing. Gold, on the other hand, seems to be rocketing. I'm pretty sure the price of gold is always going up, or at least it has been since the credit crunch happened and I started reading articles about the economy in the paper.

I am immediately £9 down on gold. My loss on the euro against the pound is hovering around £4. I might have a bit more of a play around before I go to bed but I am probably going to leave my account alone to see what happens overnight, and I will post another update on here in the next day or two to let you know what the markets have been doing...

Free roaming

2010-10-17T12:50:00.000-07:00

A lot of people have been asking me about free roaming. What exactly is this new extreme sport that promises to effect positive social change on a scale beyond the imagination of all but the most idealistic utopian thinkers? Well, I should really explain what it's all about.

I can still remember the exact moment, two days ago, when I came up with the concept of free roaming as I was traversing the dark, rain-licked streets of north London. The basics are simple: remove all possessions from your person except your clothes, and go for a walk. Take all your valuable gadgets out of your pockets, take out your wallet, leave your keys with a friend, remove your watch, don't wear anything too flashy, and go for a wander. Stripped of your material possessions, you suddenly have nothing to lose if you're confronted by one of the muggers who you imagine patrols the streets of those certain areas of the city that you wouldn't normally walk around on your own, or even with a friend. With no phone, no means of communication, you can go about your business freely without the threat of interruption, of temptation to alter the destination of your route to meet a friend. If you get lost, you will be able to experience the city on your terms, not hemmed in by the sharply defined lines of Google Maps. Devoid of your Oyster card and all your money, you will have to navigate the city at ground level, on foot or through the generosity of a stranger with a bike, a car, a rickshaw or a beast of burden. Without money, you are barred from participating in the economy, in the two way commercial exchanges that punctuate your normal life. With the threat of theft removed, your only concern is that someone may instead seek to harm you for fun rather than financial reward, but the hope is that through explaining that you are free roaming your assailant may pause for thought and decide to let you be. In a sense you are stripping away all that is modern about the city and reducing your existence down to the level of the first primitive humans, with no possessions, no concept of money, no borders or boundaries, and nothing to fight for except pride, territory or your own amusement.

To begin with, free roaming is likely to only involve a few people at a time, doing it because it seems like an interesting thing to do, as a kind of experiment. This soon snowballs, and free roaming becomes massively popular across London. The ubiquity of free roamers means the distinction between nice areas and dodgy areas disappears. At any one time any area of London will be full of fearless free roamers, all keeping an eye on their community while they are at it, meaning there is nowhere for the criminals to hide. What's more, there is no way of telling who is free roaming and who isn't, so crimes such as theft and mugging become something of a lottery. The positive influence of free roaming begins to change more and more of the people on the outside looking in, more and more people are brought into the embrace of the free roaming community, and soon everyone spends part of every day free roaming across the benign urban utopia that London has become.

I hope that I have begun to show you the light, as it were, by introducing to you the basic concepts of free roaming. There is considerably more to the movement than the purely physical act of free roaming, which I may explain in more detail at another time, but I don't want to bombard you with too much information straight away.

So get out there on those streets, and I'm sure I'll see you free roaming somewhere soon. I'll be the bloke on the floor getting his head kicked in by a group of confused muggers.

Pipeline 2011

2010-09-15T15:16:00.000-07:00

Pumpenhausen Productions is proud to present:

PIPELINE : 12 - 17 JANUARY 2011

The World's first music festival on an oil rig.

Experience nine stages of cutting edge piston-powered beats and gaswork grooves on a sturdy rig at a secret location in the North Sea. The only way in is on board your specially chartered Sea King helicopter on Wednesday afternoon. The only way out is to survive until Monday...

Confirmed acts so far:

MAIN STAGE

Barrelhammer

DJ Squat Thrust

Iodine Knife Incursion

Lemon Wipe (live)

Clarkson's Folly

Giant Anal Beads

Gascoigne

Brown Christmas

Pecker Patrol

Meatwave B2B Ramrod

Hardcore Blowout

22 SAS

Splendid Erection

Special Guest: Bez

CASTROL GTX ARENA

BreakHorsePower

Fanny & The Benders

Mung

Son Of Mandrill

Sir Loin B2B Girthquake

Mosquetapus

This Is Cheese

Deaf Aware

Womb For Manoeuvre

BLOWHOLE

Wiretap Paedophiles

Sexy Crackpipe

Orthodon'tics

Nailsea Badlands Crew

Smorgasbord

Panpipe Coronary

Atrocity

Danny Sex Face

Slaughtermelon

THE REFINERY

Methadone Man

Summer Of Pork

DJ Quimfast

Lonely Hosepipe

Can I Play With Your Face? DJs

Hoist

Different Stroke Victims

Butane

Ed Pilliband

MAN AGAINST MACHINE

Dusseldorf Fun Boys

MC Three Hundred Thousand

Akabussi

Peter K-Hole

Driveshaft

Muscle Dusters

Inlet

Chopnut (classics set)

CLAG NATION

Bad Smegma

Jugular Penis Error

Solid Arse Candle Orchestra

Buzz Dangler VJs

Swallow Like I Showed You

MDMA-4 Corridor

Barrymore

Giblet Farm

Guide Dog B2B Soldiers Of Denmark

THE CAGE

Nigel "The UK Hammer" Hudson

Ron Shatkinson

Stuffed Crust

Bare Enemies B2B Jimmy Spanners

Here For The Hardcore

Paul Ross

Farmyard Challenge

Error/Win

Tit Missile

CHILL-OUT PIPE

Ken Benson 2K

Septicon

Beefcake Olympiad

Russell Dust

F.U.N.T.

Some Sandwich

Ambient Pork

Ben & Stimpy

Danny Dyer (Live PA)

THE FURNACE

Sausage Fuck

My Name Is Fist

Daddy Knows Best

Clit Clamp

Deep Clean

Bilge

Asbo Wheelchair Ensemble

The Iron Domino

Angle Grinder

Avogadro Number

Trapped In The Pantry

Dutch Mist

In addition to the music, expect fire jugglers, metalwork demonstrations, live smelting, cage fights, authentic industrial decor, boutique food stalls, 600-metre high pyro-bungee platform, children's entertainment from the Reverend Peter and much, much more.

Tickets available now - ~~Special Early Bird Price £119!~~

Early Bird tickets sold out! Regular price tickets at £147 still available from all the usual outlets...

PIPELINE 2011:

ONE OIL RIG

NINE STAGES

NO WAY OUT.

Alternate realities

2010-08-23T14:27:00.000-07:00

Apparently there was something on Radio 4 the other day about an imagined alternate reality where the Millennium Dome was really successful. I like the idea of imagining a world where history panned out differently. I used to be quite interested in it in a military sense, i.e. what would have happened if certain wars had turned out differently. I remember in year 9 I did a project for school where I wrote about what might have happened if Hitler had won the Second World War. I imagine the document is lost now but I remember it included scenarios where Britain became an administrative region of a Greater Germany, the Nazis were the first to detonate a nuclear bomb, and, perhaps straying a bit too far from the realms of sensitivity, I suggested the Middle East conflict would never have come about because a homeland would never have been created for the Jews in Israel.

Somewhat predictably, it turns out that the Internet has a whole community dedicated to this kind of thing (as seen here). From an academic point of view it might seem that this kind of hypothesising is no more than fantasy and conjecture, but really I think it's just a way of interpreting history from a different angle. Studying history is all about identifying cause and effect, placing individual events within the context of broader trends, and trying to make sense of how we got to where we are today by reflecting on the past. The better thought-out alternate histories take events that did happen, place them within the context of the historical trends that had the potential to influence them, and then tweak a few of the parameters to imagine events that might have happened if things had turned out slightly differently. It's a lot like one of these. I also think that it's useful as a tool for separating the historical study of cause and effect, which is a way of applying a linear progression to events in the past, from the more nuanced true nature of cause and effect, that is to say the way things are perceived at the point of their 'happening'. I guess I'm alluding to chaos theory, which is explained by this trusty source sufficiently for me to refrain from going into more detail here. History as we know it is only one of an infinite number of outcomes that were possible at the beginning of time, so it is perfectly reasonable to imagine alternate realities where events took a different route.

When I started writing this post I was thinking along the lines of writing a few such brief reimaginings of world history, probably in a pretty frivolous way, but clearly there is more than enough of such material out there on the Internet for you to read if you so choose, for example on the website mentioned above. So it's got me thinking instead on a more personal level, and wondering how my life could have turned out differently, or indeed could have never happened, if certain things had gone in even a slightly different direction. For example, my dad told me that when he was young, younger than I am now and before he met my mum, he was on the verge of emigrating to Australia. He had all the relevant paperwork and was all set to do it, but he bottled it and stayed in Essex instead. This raises the thought "I could have been Australian", but then of course he wouldn't have had a child with my mother, so is it really a case of "I"? I suppose this brings up all sorts of questions about the nature of consciousness and the idea of the soul. Would a resulting child have been 'me' in the same way? Possibly only in the basic biological sense of being his first-born child. Nevertheless, every moment of my life as I know it wouldn't have happened in any way, and instead an alternate life may have come about in Australia. A ginger Aussie kid called Bruce O'Hara. Or Brad. Or maybe Tom. What would Brad be doing now if he was the same age as I am? Writing a blog about an alternate reality where he was English? Having a barbecue on a beach and just generally being a stereotype? Playing professional cricket? Stealing car radios to fund a crack habit?

It's pretty inconsequential, you might argue, compared to what might have happened if Hitler had won World War II. But Hitler was only one accurately lobbed grenade away from being killed in the trenches of the First World War, one inadequately treated wound away from the Nazis never coming into being in the first place. The ripples from that butterfly's wings can travel a long way, if you believe the theory. If my dad had moved to Australia, the Berlin Wall might never have come down. This is the kind of bewildering train of consequences that starts to become apparent when you consider the true nature of cause and effect. So if imagined alternate realities teach us anything, it's that the very concept of reality is perhaps a little less two-dimensional and linear than the history books make it out to be.

Which brings me, if not exactly neatly, and by now almost irrelevantly, then at least gratifyingly to the main point I wanted to make at the beginning of this piece. And that is this: You don't have to imagine an alternate reality where the Millennium Dome was a success.

You just have to look at it in the broader context of the successful re-branding of the venue as the O2.

Motivational Speaker

2010-08-14T12:32:00.000-07:00

A concept for a performance piece, where I stand on a stage giving a motivational speech to an assembled throng of software engineers in the most demotivating way possible, delivering the following script in a dull monotone, accompanied by a slide show of photographs of mistreated dogs:

You need to turn your indecision into a win decision.

You need to get your head in the game.

It's time to step up, or step off.

If you don't get the pay off, be ready for the lay off.

If you don't buy a ticket, you won't win the raffle.

If you don't believe, you can't achieve.

Are you ready to win big?

A bear might shit in the woods, but birds lay eggs.

There's no 'I' in 'money'.

Client-facing? Client embracing more like.

Business is like riding a Harley Davidson. Wear a helmet.

It's time to step up to the plate.

If you're working out in the ideas gym then you'd better be sweating.

Profit, profit, profit. Which part don't you understand?

Feel the deal before you seal the deal.

This time we're playing to win.

Relish the pressure.

Synergy is a winergy.

It's all about who wants it more.

Life is a roller coaster, you've just got to ride it.

Your life is a legend waiting to be written.

England

2010-08-10T15:07:00.000-07:00

Something which I developed an interest in at university, and which continues to intrigue me, is the concept of national identity. I think this is particularly true as an Englishman, a native of a country whose identity so many people seem keen to lament as something that doesn't really exist, something that is in the process of being eroded, or simply as a blanket term for the various strains of prejudice, xenophobia and intolerance that are characteristic of the uglier forms of right wing nationalism. Many artists, writers and thinkers over the years have tried to sum up 'Englishness' in their work, inspire national pride in their fellow countrymen, or simply condense our identity down into a bullet-pointed list, and yet arguably none of them have succeeded.

Those who mourn the 'loss of our identity' are usually those with a romantic ideal of what makes this country what it is, often rooted in the past and unwilling to accept that something as seemingly primal as national identity can and does change over time. They are also often keen to proscribe a certain set of values and interests that sum up their own feelings of identity, resistant to the idea that identity can be both collective and individual at the same time. They may also feel threatened by the way in which our identity rubs up against that of other nations and cultures, sometimes absorbing aspects of other identities, sometimes spilling over and changing the identity of those who come to England from abroad, and sometimes finding itself challenged and confronted by other ways of thinking. There are even those who fret that the whole notion of the nation state is being steadily eroded by the rise of multinational corporations, media-driven cultural homogenisation and mass migration.

National identity is naturally a subjective and emotive topic. It is frequently bound up with political, religious and moral beliefs, which in themselves have clearly become more of a spectrum than was the case even fifty years ago in this country. This can make it difficult to analyse and quantify, but nevertheless there are a number of ways one can measure how a people expresses its shared identity. Firstly there is the identity that has developed within, that is to say the fundamental historical roots in a certain ethnic make-up, language, religion and perceived national traits. For England, we would be talking about a mixture of indigenous Celts and settlers arriving mainly from France, Germany and Scandinavia; the bastard language they created, English; the adopted Middle Eastern monotheism of Christianity; and a perception that we have always been a nation of conservatism, independence, enterprise, politeness, eccentricity, modesty and community. If you are already seeing some contradictions in that list, then you are already beginning to appreciate the argument which I am trying to map out.

The second main way we express our identity is by defining it against the 'other', that is to say the way we differ from our neighbours. This is a particularly powerful current in England, thanks no doubt to our geographical situation as an island nation, separated by a thin stretch of water from the main bulk of Europe, the continent with which we enjoy such a dysfunctional and confused relationship. One only has to look at common attitudes towards Germany, with whom we have now not been at war for 65 years, or France, with whom our peaceful co-existence stretches back still further, to see this type of national identity in action. Even within the British Isles we have our national identity shaped by that of our Celtic cousins who we share our borders with, and it is often a source of bewilderment for the English that our closest neighbours seem so much more certain of their identity than we are. Throw in on top of that the effects of administering an empire that covered a third of the world and you have something akin to a global pinball table that our collective self is bouncing around, trying to plot a clear trajectory towards a sense of satisfaction that we know exactly who we are.

The third strand of expression that I would pick out is the way in which we express our identity through culture, sport, cuisine, art, politics, commerce, science and law, in a way that is truly national. As we have seen our geopolitical and military influence over the world fade, and as industrialisation and modernisation have transformed our society ever more rapidly, we find our feelings of national identity at their strongest when expressed through vessels as diverse as football, Yorkshire puddings, gay marriage, Jeremy Clarkson, royal weddings and UK garage. In this short piece I am not intending to subject English national identity to a thorough and academic examination, as this has doubtless been done more effectively elsewhere; all I really want to do is offer my own brief thoughts on my national identity without falling victim to either the liberal tendency towards guilt, embarrassment and self-loathing, nor the jingoistic, anachronistic and restrictive tenets of the more right-leaning school of nationalism. One thing, however, should hopefully be clear: it is simply wrong to say that there is no such things as an English national identity.

In order to offer my own personal deconstruction and reinterpretation of Englishness, I will run through the three main strands outlined above. The most basic of all the aspects I have raised is immediately indicative of a more nuanced form of identity than "(white skin + cup of tea + Blitz spirit) x 1966 = English". That is to say, I'm at most 75% English, since my grandfather came here from Northern Ireland. I was born in England, I've lived here for all but 10 months of my life (plus a few holidays), and my only visit to Ireland thusfar was a couple of days in Dublin, which isn't in the North anyway. And yet, even judging it on the most basic criteria, my identity is already looking a little more like a shade of grey. Add to this the fact that I studied to degree level, and can make a reasonable fist of speaking, two foreign languages, coupled with a more basic working knowledge of two more, and I'm already displaying what might be considered peculiarly un-English traits. We are not a nation known for our desire to speak to foreigners in their own language. I don't believe in any religion, I am politically very liberal and I live in the centre of one of the most bustling, cosmopolitan and modern cities in the world, a far cry from the sleepy parochialism of the English rural idyll.

Those from the traditionalist, romantic, nostalgic school of Englishness might well say I am symptomatic of the way our national identity has been eroded, tainted, even destroyed. And yet I drink tea by the gallon, I devote an inordinate amount of my time to watching millionaires kicking a football around, I enjoy the witty barbs of Ian Hislop on 'Have I Got News For You', I can drink ale without complaining that it's warm and flat, I consider a sweaty carrier bag full of deep-fried cod and grease-drenched chips to be something of a treat, I know who The Stig is, I went to a school where they still divided people into 'houses' like in 'Harry Potter', I have alighted a train at Didcot Parkway, and I will probably never tire of talking about weather. Some of these observations may well strike you as being more symptomatic of a British identity rather than one that is simply English, but I would put it to you that, over the centuries, the English way of life has permeated the rest of the British Isles to the extent that English national identity is largely the concept of Britishness, minus those particular cultural and linguistic characteristics that are very specific to Scotland, Wales and Northern Ireland. Our language doesn't separate us, because everyone in Britain speaks English. Our history for the most part doesn't separate us, for our domestic history is the history of the conquest of the rest of the British Isles, for better or for worse. Our culture often doesn't separate us, because everyone watches the BBC and drinks tea. There is more that unites us than divides us. But that is, perhaps, a testament to the benign influence of the English character on our neighbours. I don't seek to belittle the rest of the UK, and I certainly don't seek to gloss over the injustice and repression that we have often visited upon our neighbours, but equally I don't think that we should feel inadequate because we don't have a national holiday like Paddy's Day, a unique language or a regional government. I think we should be proud that we have helped to build a country in which all of these things can exist, rather than having a monolithic identity like the French or a fractious pressure cooker of mutually antipathetic communities like the Balkans.

So if I'm proud of England as it exists within itself, and within the UK, how do I feel about it as defined against the 'other'? Well, I would again take issue with the received wisdom. I am very much in favour of being an active part of Europe, and from my experience of living on the continent as a student I feel that cooperation and interaction with our neighbours is an overwhelmingly positive thing. At the same time, living in Europe also gave me a greater appreciation of what I cherish about my own country: our tolerance and welcoming attitude towards other nationalities, cultures and religions; our often subconscious espousal of classically liberal attitudes towards individual freedom; our spirit of artistic innovation; and our impulse to travel, explore and discover, just as our ancestors did on their ships all those years ago. I guess the main difference between me and Sir Francis Drake is that I went on Easyjet.

One particular bugbear of mine is the attitude of many in England towards immigrants, and the concept of multiculturalism. This is in large part because I believe this is the single most admirable facet to the English national character. Travel around London and you don't just see women in veils, tourists speaking foreign languages, convenience stores run by Pakistanis, Polish bus drivers and halal butchers' shops. You see women in veils reading The Sun, tourists speaking foreign languages on the night bus in Finsbury Park, convenience stores run by Pakistanis with drum n bass blasting out of the radio, Polish bus drivers explaining to tourists the best way to get from Finsbury Park to the Arsenal stadium, and halal butchers' shops full of Guardian readers trying to find the best ingredients for the tagine they're cooking for their friends at a dinner party tomorrow night. If it sounds like I'm trying to make London out as some kind of egalitarian utopia, believe me, I live here and it isn't. But immigrants are a fabric of life in England, perhaps more than any other country, and I just don't think that would have happened if we hadn't let it happen. This welcoming attitude towards outsiders is perhaps one of the most striking aspects of the English national character, and it frustrates me when my fellow countrymen don't feel the same way. Yet I would say that the fear and mistrust of foreigners is also a quintessentially English trait.

This perhaps sums up the crux of my argument, that we are a nation of contradictions. Our identity is pluralistic, unrestricted, we can't be tied down and crystallised in just one symbol, one defining trait, one moment in history, one system of beliefs. I think that maybe the reason it is so hard for people to grasp the idea of the English national identity is that it what makes us English is our resistance to pigeonholing, our eccentric and independent streak, and our innate liberalism and receptiveness to a diversity of worldviews. No doubt some people will disagree with this, but, perhaps frustratingly for them, that will serve only to illustrate my point.

The role of the windmill in society

2010-07-12T15:18:00.000-07:00

- In the old days, it was used to grind up coarse materials such as grain

- Nowadays, its use is mostly decorative

- Modern windmills are used to generate electricity

Campeones

2010-07-12T15:16:00.000-07:00

I am sufficiently overstuffed with pundit meat that I don't have the stomach for a lengthy analysis of the World Cup and my pre-tournament predictions. I picked the winner, maybe not that impressive a feat considering Spain were the favourites, but at least I correctly identified weak points in other contenders such as Argentina's over-reliance on only playing strikers, Italy's average age of 76, France allowing their team to be managed by a man that even his own players found too French, and Holland's tendency to forget how to play football just as they reach the cusp of success. Among my more spectacular misjudgements were writing off Uruguay and Germany, thinking France would get to the quarter finals, tipping the USA for the semis, and of course failing to foresee how difficult scoring a goal against Algeria would prove for England. Now that it's all done and dusted I will spend my winnings, all £45 of them, and return to my usual blogging topics of cookery, ornithology, contemporary Sudanese poetry and the role of the windmill in society.

The World Cup On A Stick: Falling At The First Hurdle

2010-06-22T15:22:00.000-07:00

The World Cup has now reached the stage where teams are dropping out thick and fast, making more and more of my predictions look misguided in the process. Though I alluded to the problems of France in my pre-tournament preview, I hadn't realised just how farcically they were capable of crashing out of the competition, and indeed Group A finished almost as an inverted version of my prediction. While I was right about Mexico and South Africa I have underestimated Uruguay a couple of times now, and I think they'll get at least as far as the quarter finals. Whether they'll face England when they get there is something I'd really rather not talk about until tomorrow, when we'll know for sure whether we really are as jaw-droppingly awful as the performance against Algeria suggested. Group B was more in keeping with my predicted outcome, with Argentina comfortably winning the group while South Korea and Nigeria fought for the leftover scraps, and Greece grimly defending any result that came their way, even if they found themselves 1-0 down with 10 minutes to go.

Tomorrow is another big day, with England and Germany teetering on the brink of a shock exit, Ghana teetering on the brink of squandering Africa's last hope in this tournament, and Australia teetering on the brink of making it through a whole match without getting one of their best players sent off. For now I'm going to stick with what I originally forecast, since I believe that England will finally kick into something resembling their form in qualifying with a win to set up a second round tie with Serbia, who I think will see off Australia with the odd goal or two, while the USA will make slightly more comfortable work of Algeria than we could manage to progress to a last 16 clash with Germany, who I feel will more than cope with a Ghana team that made such a fist of finishing off Australia after Harry Kewell was red carded for one of the most convincing pieces of goalkeeping of the tournament so far.

The World Cup On A Stick: Eastern Promise

2010-06-15T16:08:00.000-07:00

Another couple of days of high octane goalless action, and a few more of my predictions starting to look a bit shaky. Danish 'one to watch' Daniel Agger's back scored Holland's first goal in Group E, it became apparent after watching the Japan-Cameroon highlights that I had confused their midfielder Stephen M'Bia with Ghana's Stephen Appiah in my Group D preview, Slovakia suffered the embarrassment of conceding a last minute try to New Zealand, while in North Korea the people will be partying all night after watching the state-sanctioned highlights of their 1-0 win over Brazil (I'd like to point out that I made this joke on Twitter a good hour before Colin Murray wheeled out a similar joke on the BBC highlights show).

But I guess the main feature of the last few days has been the uncomfortable truth that no-one really wants to admit to, that most of the games just haven't been that good so far in footballing terms. The South African setting is fantastic, the colour and noise at the matches is already defining this World Cup, and it's been fascinating seeing how some of the lesser-known teams such as North Korea, New Zealand and Japan have been holding their own. However, goals have been in short supply, with the main excuses seemingly being the altitude, the fear of losing the first game and the Jabulani, a ball so round that it is apparently impossible to pass, shoot or catch in the manner we are accustomed to seeing from men who have played this game professionally their whole lives. The "roundest ball ever" is causing problems that just never occurred in the good old days of square balls made of wood and playing matches below sea level.

One positive thing that I do want to mention is the possible emergence of a certain continent on the international stage which has hitherto made little impact on the established football order. All the talk coming into the first World Cup on the African continent was of the possibility of an African team finally making the step up, but it is the teams from Asia that have really impressed me so far. Apart from Ghana's dramatic win against Serbia and Tshabalala's thunderbolt for South Africa on the opening day, there hasn't been a great deal to cheer for those hoping for a new dawn in African football. Certainly nothing yet to rival South Korea's incredible run to the semi finals in 2002. This triumph has since largely been put down to home advantage, but South Korea and Japan's opening wins in South Africa both impressed me. While their opponents, Greece and Cameroon, may have been pretty woeful, it is perhaps a sign that these 'new world' teams are starting to supplant some of the old guard of international football. North Korea too put in a tremendous performance against Brazil, and could yet cause problems for the Ivory Coast and Portugal.

While I am not saying for a moment that I expect an Asian team to win the 2010 World Cup, and the opening round of matches is a flimsy basis for sweeping generalisations, I am at least entertaining the thought that maybe we will see the first Asian World Cup winners before we see the first African victory. The enthusiasm for the sport is certainly there, as is the money to develop the game thanks to the emergence of the Asian 'tiger' economies and the widely predicted shift in the international balance of political and economic power towards China. North Korea to win the World Cup in 2014? It might not be the most ridiculous prediction I've ever made...

The World Cup On A Stick: Buzzing

2010-06-13T16:06:00.000-07:00

I wasn't originally planning to return to the subject of the World Cup until after the tournament in order to look back at how my predictions had panned out, but since I enjoyed writing the previews and the first weekend has already infected me with World Cup fever I'm going to carry on regurgitating Andy Townsend's opinions and poking fun at foreigners' haircuts throughout the next month.

The first thing that will have made an impression on most people this weekend is the sound of that giant bee buzzing round the stadium at every game. I watched the Confederations Cup last year, which was also held in South Africa, and in addition to being the flimsy basis for my predictions regarding the USA the competition also introduced me to the constant drone of the vuvuzela. 'Vuvuzela' is a Zulu word meaning 'annoying plastic trumpet', and I was initially not a fan. However, three matches into the competition I realised what I wanted more than anything in the world was my own annoying plastic trumpet. A quick look online revealed Amazon are selling them for £7.50, but this seemed a bit expensive and would mean waiting for it to be delivered.

Luckily for me, within seconds of walking into Sainsbury's on Saturday afternoon I spotted a whole rack of novelty World Cup plastic tat, and at the bottom was an enticing array of hastily manufactured red vuvuzelas emblazoned with the word 'England', reasonably priced at just £2 per shit trumpet. We bought a couple and, let me tell you, the vuvuzela undergoes a rapid transformation from the most annoying thing in the world to the most entertaining thing in the world once you've got one in your hands and you're blowing on it, as a couple of violent blasts while walking down a busy high street will demonstrate. The rest of the day was spent sneaking up behind people and ignoring the safety warnings on the packaging by honking at full pelt into their ears. The joke really never gets old, although it is pretty unpleasant if someone does it to you. I also found it was useful during the England match for drowning out anyone in the room who was starting to express cynicism and doubt regarding the team's performance.

As for the actual football, there haven't been a lot of goals so far but I was smugly satisfied to see a few of my predictions bear fruit, and I should probably take the opportunity to highlight this now, before the deficiencies of my crystal ball start to become apparent. No less than three of my 'ones to watch' scored in their opening match: Marquez with Mexico's equaliser, Park Ji Sung's tidy finish for South Korea and Robert Koren's amusing demonstration of why most African goalkeepers are crap. Still, at least Algeria keeper Chaouchi's howler deflected attention from his particularly shocking haircut. Another player I picked out, Tim Cahill, was sent off for the Aussies, somewhat harshly I think, and it looks pretty unlikely now that the Socceroos will get out of their group.

In my Group A preview I also highlighted Uruguay's propensity for foul play, which they lived up to admirably during their painful 0-0 shitfest against France by getting one of their substitutes sent off, and I think all those who picked them out as 'dark horses' based on the fact that their strikers have scored a lot of goals at club level may now be revising their predictions. There were few surprises too from Greece, whose fans may now be regretting scraping together the few euros they had left to fly out to South Africa and watch Georgios Samaras play like Georgios Samaras, while the USA proved the tough opponents that I thought they would be, and Ghana provided a host of clichés for the commentators with their 'colourful support' as they saw off a fairly average-looking Serbia. The biggest surprise for me so far probably shouldn't have been a surprise, with the Germans suddenly playing like Spain as they smashed four past an Australia team relying on Richard Garcia for goals. With half the teams having played you'd have to say England could go far in this half of the draw if they get their act together, and the next few days should give more clues as to our chances with the arrival of big guns Italy, Holland, Brazil, Ivory Coast, Portugal, Spain and North Korea, who have some of the biggest guns of the lot, all pointed at South Korea.

The World Cup On A Stick: Group H

2010-06-05T10:12:00.000-07:00

GROUP H

Chile

Chile are back in the finals for the first time since 1998, and after such a prolonged absence from our TV screens over here it's hard to know how good they will be. The fact that their most recognisable player is former Liverpool misfit Mark Gonzalez doesn't bode well, but their passing game has been likened to that of Barcelona, a comparison that is almost certainly bollocks. Despite the fact that they're in one of the easier groups, I'm not convinced they'll progress very far.

One to watch: Humberto Suazo

Humberto is presumably the Spanish equivalent of the sadly non-existent English name Humbert. Suazo scored 10 goals in a qualifying campaign in which the Chileans beat Latin American heavyweights Argentina and, um, Venezuela to finish second, and he could grab a few more in this predominantly Latin group.

Prediction: 3rd in Group H

Switzerland

Competitive football has often proved difficult for a nation so dedicated to the pursuit of neutrality, as demonstrated at Euro 2008 when they achieved the impressive feat of crashing out of the tournament that they themselves were hosting after just two games. There are grounds for optimism this time round, however, with a developing young team fleshed out with a few more experienced campaigners such as skipper Alexander Frei and midfielder Hakan Yakin, one of the few Swiss players who came out of Euro 2008 with any credit. My money's on their medal-hoarding coach Ottmar Hitzfeld steering them through this group to a second round defeat at the hands of the Brazilians. Oh and here's a fact that shocked me when I saw it on Wikipedia: Philippe Senderos is younger than me.

One to watch: Valon Behrami

The Swiss David Beckham has been a solid performer at West Ham, and his Premier League experience should stand him in good stead in a squad largely drawn from the weaker Swiss and German leagues. Born in Kosovo, Behrami will be looking to make a similar impact on the world stage to that which NATO made on his homeland when they bombed the shit out of Serbia in 1999.

Prediction: 2nd in Group H; Second Round

Honduras

Given the inherently evil nature of North Korea and the absence of Scotland, the Hondurans seem to be the side most likely to be patronised with adjectives such as 'plucky', 'brave' and 'courageous' at this year's World Cup. The Honduran team, drawing on the experience of its many foreign-based players, was a surprise qualifier for the tournament, beating the likes of Mexico, Costa Rica and Trinidad and Tobago on the road to South Africa. I expect a courageous and plucky performance, possibly winning a lot of new fans and possibly involving a lot of red cards, but a valiant exit in the first round beckons I fear.

One to watch: Maynor Figueroa

Figueroa scored one of the most spectacular goals of the Premier League season for Wigan in their clash with Stoke back in December, but it will be his defensive qualities that are called upon faced with the attacking prowess of Spain and Chile. He is the latest Latin American talent to roll off the Wigan conveyor belt, and he may well be angling for a move to a bigger club after this World Cup, following in the footsteps of fellow Honduran Wilson Palacios.

Prediction: 4th in Group H

Spain

So, I have reached the last team in this series of predictions and I still haven't picked a winner, and you would therefore be correct to assume that this means I think Spain will win the World Cup. Another of those 'perennial underachievers', the Spanish finally achieved in a big way at the last European Championships, winning the tournament with the kind of free-flowing possession football that gives Ruud Gullit a hard-on. It's not inconceivable that this was an anomaly and they could revert to their default setting of a disappointing exit in the quarter finals, but they really do seem to be on another level right now and there is no reason to believe their squad is not at least as good as, if not better than, the squad which won Euro 2008. The prospect of the final being contested between Spain and fellow favourites Brazil is the football equivalent of smoking DMT while getting a handjob, and I'm backing the Spaniards to pass their way to the cup for the first time in history.

One to watch: Francesc Fabregas

The fact that a player of the calibre of Fabregas is fighting for a place in Spain's starting eleven is a testament to the quality of their squad. Fresh from another disappointing season with Arsenal, and with the carrot of a move back to his ancestral home at Barcelona dangling in front of him, if Fabregas can put the transfer speculation to the back of his mind and force his way into a team boasting two of the best midfielders in the world in Xavi Hernandez and Andres Iniesta he will be all set to be one of the stars of this World Cup. Alternatively, he might spend most of the tournament on the bench.

Prediction: 1st in Group H; Winners.

So there you have it, my predictions for all eight groups at this year's World Cup. I hope it has made for entertaining reading, and I have put my money where my mouth is with a couple of bets on Spain winning the tournament and the USA reaching the semi finals. However I will be happy to see Ladbrokes keep my money if it's England who eventually triumph in South Africa. Some of the predictions I have made will undoubtedly be made to look quite ridiculous by the month of football ahead of us, so I will revisit what I've written when it's all over and reflect on how I got it all so hilariously wrong. Two of my 'ones to watch', Adam Johnson and Jon Obi Mikel, have already been ruled out of appearing at the finals at all, while another, Karim Benzema, had already been left out of the French squad when I wrote the Group A preview, which all bodes well for the remaining 28 players and 1 dictator that I have singled out...

The World Cup On A Stick: Group G

2010-06-03T16:18:00.000-07:00

GROUP G

Brazil

So, the 'Group of Death'. I think we all know who's going to finish bottom, but picking two out of the other three teams is a bit tricky. Luckily I have spent this whole exercise of World Cup predictions analysing the teams in simplistic and superficial terms, in order to validate a series of gut feelings and ill-founded assumptions. I'm going to take another massive gamble with my credibility, stick my neck out, and declare that I think Brazil will do pretty well at this World Cup. The last time they went out in the first round was in 1966, and this tournament is unlikely to echo that year, in more ways than one. Current manager Dunga has welded the creative flair of players like Kaka and Robinho into a well-organised unit that I think will tear the North Koreans apart, outscore the Portuguese and outfox the Ivorians, winning the group and heading all the way to the final.

One to watch: Luis Fabiano

In Luis Fabiano the Brazilians have the kind of old-fashioned centre forward that they have often lacked in recent years, and his record of 25 goals in 36 internationals looks set to improve in South Africa given some of the defences he will be up against. A decent bet for the Golden Boot in my book, if I did indeed have such a book, in which I listed the footballers I think will score the most goals at the World Cup, which I currently don't.

Prediction: 1st in Group G; Finalists

Portugal

Carlos Queiroz has followed in the footsteps of many other assistant managers who have stepped out of the main man's shadow to go it alone, such as Brian Kidd, Steve McLaren and Chris Hutchings, doing a fairly shit job and just scraping into the finals in the process. While it may be a little unfair to describe the Portuguese as a one man team, their fate clearly depends greatly on the form of a man that near enough every English fan will be keen to see fail miserably, preferably ending in a tearful hissy fit as Brazil dump them out in the last group game.

One to watch: Cristiano Ronaldo

Ronaldo's talent is undeniable. As for his role in the Portugal team, and what I hope and believe will happen, please see above.

Prediction: 3rd in Group G

Côte d'Ivoire

With this being the first World Cup to take place in Africa, hopes are high on the continent that one of the African teams will do well, and the Ivory Coast are widely reckoned to be the most likely. Sulky goalsmith Didier Drogba has had a prolific season at Chelsea, and even Salomon Kalou showed flashes of ability that were previously believed to be a myth peddled only by people whose knowledge of the Africa Cup of Nations extends beyond a few YouTube clips and something Martin Keown said on Match Of The Day 2. Unfortunately for the Elephants, second place in Group G will more than likely result in a second round clash with Spain, which while bound to be an entertaining match, will probably be a bridge too far.

One to watch: Yaya Touré

Their attacking prowess alone will probably not be enough to get the Ivory Coast out of this group, and African teams have often been let down in the past by comical defending and erratic goalkeeping. Barcelona's defensive midfield linchpin will be crucial in shielding his back four from some of the best attacking players in the world, and North Korea.

Prediction: 2nd in Group G; Second Round

North Korea

The World Cup often throws up intriguing political side-plots, the most memorable of recent times being Iran's historic victory over the USA at the 1998 finals. In this respect it's a bit of a shame that the North Koreans have ended up in this group, but politics is likely to provide an intriguing backdrop to the team's campaign nevertheless. Their task in South Africa really couldn't be more difficult, and I have a feeling the North Korean censorship of the TV coverage and the accompanying propaganda is going to need to be pretty fucking creative to convince the downtrodden peasants back home that their national team has had a successful tournament.

One to watch: Kim Jong Il

Lets hope for the sake of the South Koreans that the People's Democratic Republic doesn't get too humiliated at the World Cup, since this man has torpedoes and he isn't afraid to use them. I'm not going to lie, I don't know who a single one of their players is.

Prediction: 4th in Group G; UN sanctions.

The World Cup On A Stick: Group F

2010-06-01T15:49:00.000-07:00

GROUP F

Italy

The reigning champions, Italy seem to have been bringing the same squad to the World Cup for about the last 15 years. With an average age of around 57, the Azzurri are perennially written off as being over the hill, but always put in a solid performance, as seen in Germany in 2006 with their unexpected win. Euro 2008 went less well, but it still took the lottery of a penalty shoot-out for eventual champions Spain to see off the Italians. This year, in addition to the aforementioned veterans such as Zambrotta and Cannavaro, there are a few promising youngsters set to make their mark on this tournament, such as the sprightly 31 year old Antonio di Natale. I expect a decent showing, but ultimately another quarter final exit at the hands of the Spaniards.

One to watch: Giampaolo Pazzini

At 25 years of age Pazzini really is a youngster in Italian terms. Together with Antonio Cassano he knocked in a bagful of goals for Sampdoria this past season, and he also holds the impressive record of the fastest sending off in Italian history, seeing red after 2 minutes of only his second appearance for the national team, after elbowing John O'Shea, which is surely only a yellow card offence. One way or another, Pazzini could make something of an impression at the World Cup.

Prediction: 1st in Group F; Quarter Finals

Paraguay

Sadly the days of lunatic goal scoring keeper Jose Luis Chilavert are long gone, and the best hope for a bit of excitement from the Paraguayans rests on occasional Manchester City striker Roque Santa Cruz rediscovering the form that convinced the club to fork out enough money on him to buy a decent striker. The squad is frugally sprinkled with a few other European-based players, but it's hard to see the South Americans doing much more than making up the numbers.

One to watch: Oscar Cardozo

Wikipedia tells me that Cardozo has averaged better than a goal every two games for Benfica, but whether he'll be able to make the same impact at the World Cup as he has in the Portuguese Liga is debatable. However, his nickname is 'Tacuara' (Guarani for 'bamboo tree'), which at the very least is a bit more imaginative than 'Crouchy'.

Prediction: 4th in Group F

New Zealand

If the 'All Whites' were as good at football as the 'All Blacks' are at rugby, they would have a real chance of winning the World Cup. But they're not. The presence of New Zealand will satisfy that very restricted niche of people who've longed for the day when they would see Ryan Nelsen at a major international tournament, but any kind of result is going to be a major bonus. As it happens, I think the feel-good factor of making the finals may well be enough to see them scrape a heroic win against the Paraguayans and avoid finishing bottom of their group.

One to watch: James Bannatyne

The Kiwi third choice goalkeeper is the son of Duncan Bannatyne, and owns a chain of health clubs in New Zealand called 'Musclenuts'. He was a musical consultant for 'Flight of the Concords' and is the only player at the World Cup with the hind legs of a stag. None of what I have just written is likely to be true.

Prediction: 3rd in Group F

Slovakia

"Slovakia? What chance have they got?" I hear you ask, with an air of barely-concealed cynicism and arrogance. Well, in actual fact they did pretty well in qualifying, topping a group that included Slovenia, the Czech Republic, Poland and, um, Northern Ireland. Liverpool's Martin Skrtel, a powerful blend of underworld hitman and Ryan Shawcross, plays at the heart of an imposing defence, while going forward the Slovaks racked up 22 goals in 10 games in qualifying (thanks again, Wikipedia). The second round beckons, I feel.

One to watch: Stanislav Sestak

Sestak scores a fair few goals for a midfielder, and is probably the closest the Slovakians have to a Darren Fletcher-style underwhelming midfield talisman. Currently plying his trade at German club Bochum, he could be the kind of player who attracts a rash £10m bid from a mid-table Premier League team after a couple of decent performances cause Clive Tyldesley to wank his cliché sack dry like it's Barcelona '99 all over again.

Prediction: 2nd in Group F; Second Round

England Update: Just a quick note to say that, yes, my selection of Adam Johnson as 'one to watch' seems slightly silly now that he's not been included in the squad. I would have liked to have seen him picked, but maybe it's a bit too soon this time round, and after all, he could never hope to emulate the kind of impact that untested rookie Theo Walcott (remember him..?) made when Sven took him to Germany in 2006 at the tender age of 8. In Johnson's absence I'm going to pick out Stephen Warnock as one to watch. As a Villa fan I was hoping he would go, but it seemed unlikely given his failure to even make a substitute appearance in the warm-up games. I can only assume that Capello was either stringing Leighton Baines along the whole time, which given his performance against Mexico seems possible, or else Warnock has done some incredible things in training that are going to blow the opposition away when he's unleashed on 12th June...

The World Cup On A Stick: Group E

2010-05-31T15:51:00.000-07:00

GROUP E

Netherlands

Holland are arguably the greatest footballing nation never to have won the World Cup. Their teams are invariably good to watch, and they qualified for this tournament with a 100% record in their group. However, they showed in Euro 2008 their capacity to produce incredible displays, such as the 3-0 and 4-1 wins over Italy and France respectively, and then get knocked out of the competition by an unfancied team like Russia. I predict a similarly comfortable progression from their group in South Africa, but it looks likely that they will face Brazil in the quarter finals, which I think is where their tournament will come to an end.

One to watch: Robin Van Persie

Van Persie should be as fresh as a daisy having sat out a large chunk of Arsenal's season. Provided the Dutch can make sure he doesn't get touched by an opposition player or fall on the floor, the brittle defendant turned striker should net a few goals before his team crash out with an Arsenalesque whimper.

Prediction: 1st in Group E; Quarter Finals

Denmark

Brian and Michael Laudrup, Peter Schmeichel, Martin Laursen, John Jensen. None of these players are in the Denmark team any more. Instead, the Danes sail Viking-like into this tournament relying on the likes of Nicklas Bendtner, Jon Dahl Tomasson and Jesper Gronkjaer. Nevertheless, they look a solid team at the back, with a decent keeper in Sorensen, and their physical presence could work well against the other teams in Group E.

One to watch: Daniel Agger

Although Agger hasn't made as much of an impact this season, as Liverpool sank from the upper echelons of the Premier League like a dense turd, he's a player that's impressed me in the past couple of years, particularly with his ability to pop up and score the occasional ridiculous long range goal. I do like to see centre backs kicking a ball really hard into a goal from quite a long way out.

Prediction: 2nd in Group E; Second Round

Japan

To the more unreconstructed English xenophobe, Japan may appear to be a team of players named after motorbikes representing a nation that is hardly synonymous with international footballing excellence. However, Japan proved in 2002, along with co-hosts South Korea, that Asia has started to catch up with Europe and South America. A handful of players based in Europe along with experienced J League players such as Inamoto and Nakamura will give Japan a decent chance of qualifying from what is another tough group.

One to watch: Keisuke Honda

CSKA Moscow midfielder Honda has a talent for free kicks and one of those haircuts that you remember long after the memories of what the player actually did at the World Cup fade (see also: Taribo West).

Prediction: 4th in Group E

Cameroon

Since the days of Roger Milla, Cameroon have been pretty solid performers on the world stage without ever looking like making the step up to become the first African nation to join the European and South American elite. Recent tournaments have been more memorable for their unique kit designs than for their football, and this year's stylish yellow number from Puma may well continue the trend.

One to watch: Samuel Eto'o

A lot rests on Eto'o's shoulders. The man with the roundest head in football has just won his second Champions League in a row, and I wouldn't bet against him scoring a few in an ultimately disappointing campaign.

Prediction: 3rd in Group E

The World Cup On A Stick: Group D

2010-05-30T10:20:00.000-07:00

GROUP D

Serbia

Serbia, in their various recent guises, have been one of those teams often touted as 'dark horses' when a tournament comes around. In international football, a 'dark horse' is a team with a few players who you've seen do quite well in the Champions League, a manager who looks like a war criminal and who, it quickly become apparent, have no chance whatsoever of winning the tournament. I see them getting out of this group but England will see them off in the second round.

One to watch: Nikola Zigic

Zigic has just joined Birmingham City, and at 6 feet 7 inches tall will step into the void created by Jan Koller and the Czech Republic's absence as the World Cup's most brutally effective, freakishly tall one trick pony, bouncing balls in off his head from all angles. Alternatively, he might make Peter Crouch look like Pele.

Prediction: 2nd in Group D; Second Round

Ghana

Going into this tournament without the talismanic Michael Essien, the Ghanaians will have to look elsewhere for inspiration. Luckily for them they have Kevin "The Prince" Prince Boateng, one of the top players in world football right now after his scintillating displays for Portsmouth on the way to their glorious Double of being relegated and losing the FA Cup final. Other familiar faces include Fulham's marauding right back John Paintsil and occasionally good former Pompey winger Sulley Muntari. Some of the best names in the tournament can be found in the Ghana squad: watch out for Prince Tagoe, Quincy Owusu-Abeyie and football's fourth most famous Boateng, Derek.

One to watch: Stephen Appiah

Appiah seems to be linked with English clubs every summer, but at the age of 30 this may be his last big chance to impress David Moyes enough for him to smash open the Everton piggy bank and offer Bologna a few dusty coppers, an unopened packet of Ikea AAA batteries and a signed photo of David Unsworth for the Ghanaian's services.

Prediction: 3rd in Group D

Germany

Never write off the Germans. They've just won Eurovision and were undefeated in their qualifying group, but having said that, they've received a bit of a kick in the Ballacks with their influential captain being ruled out of the finals, and I don't think this German team is looking strong enough to win the tournament. Indeed, they seemed to fluke their way to the Euro 2008 final where they produced a tepid display against Spain, and I have a feeling they will be dumped out in the second round of this World Cup by the USA on their run to the semis (see my Group C preview).

One to watch: Jerome Boateng

The Prince's brother, apparently bound for Manchester City, is presumably an even better player given that he has made the German squad while Kevin is turning out for Ghana. If the two line up against each other, you can expect the kind of unforgettable football drama not seen since Gary and Phil Neville first faced each other as opponents.

Prediction: 1st in Group D; Second Round

Australia

The Socceroos had a tough route to the finals, having to see off the likes of Qatar, Iraq and China to qualify for South Africa 2010. At the last World Cup Australia impressed, before being cruelly shafted with a dodgy last minute penalty scored by Francesco Totti for eventual champions Italy. This time round they're in a pretty tough group. While Group G is undoubtedly this year's 'Group of Death', Group D is at the very least the Group of Mild Peril, and I see the other three teams in this group all being too strong for the Australians to progress.

One to watch: Tim Cahill

Either Cahill plants magnets inside the ball before matches and his head is made of metal, or else he is very good at winning headers in the box. If he can stay fit through the World Cup after a patchy season for Everton he may just be able to inspire the Aussies to overachieve in a difficult group.

Prediction: 4th in Group D

The World Cup On A Stick: Group C

2010-05-29T17:08:00.000-07:00

GROUP C

England

So, England. What more is there for me to say that won't have already been said a million times over? "Our year", "golden generation", "real chance" etc. We finally have a manager who seems to know what he's doing, the injury situation is so far looking good, and we have what looks like a very easy group. My gut feeling is an impressive run to the semi-finals, where we won't quite be good enough to beat Brazil. Sweden haven't qualified this year so it remains to see who we will draw with in the group stage to give everyone a fright. My guess is the first game against the USA.

One to watch: Adam Johnson

If Capello takes Johnson, which I hope he does, he should be able to capably fill the crucial role of spending the whole tournament on the bench before coming on to the pitch and consoling Leighton Baines after his penalty miss sees England crash out of the competition.

Prediction: 1st in Group C; Semi Finals

USA

Now, this is probably going to be my most controversial prediction, and the most laughable in a few weeks' time when they get thrashed by Algeria and finish bottom of the group. However, every World Cup has its surprise packages, such as Turkey and South Korea getting to the semis in 2002, and arguably France and Italy contesting the final in 2006. I've sensed a steady improvement over the last few tournaments, and the Americans have some good players currently plying their trade in Europe. They looked impressive in the recent Confederations Cup, and this coupled with the Obama effect could well see them sneak past a few of the old guard to reach the latter stages of the tournament.

One to watch: Landon Donovan

Jason's younger brother impressed this season during his loan spell at Everton, and he is one of a number of US soccerball players who have enjoyed success representing European franchises. At the very least he is set to be the best player at the World Cup with the name Landon.

Prediction: 2nd in Group C; Semi Finals

Slovenia

Slovenia weren't half bad in Euro 2000, and although the star of that side, Zlatko Zahovic, will not be gracing this tournament with his flowing Slavic mane, the fact that Slovenia overcame Russia in a play-off to get to South Africa means they shouldn't be written off. Which is exactly what I'm going to do by predicting an early exit.

One to watch: Robert Koren

By virtue of the fact that he is the only player English viewers will have heard of, I am nominating West Brom's midfield string-puller and Slovenian captain Koren as the one to watch. I'm not promising he'll do anything worth watching mind you.

Prediction: 3rd in Group C

Algeria

Algeria defeated their bitter rivals Egypt to reach the finals, prompting scenes of wild celebration in Algiers and Finsbury Park. Egypt have bafflingly failed to qualify for the World Cup yet again, despite having seen off the likes of Ivory Coast and Ghana to win the Africa Cup of Nations an unprecedented three times in a row in the 2000s. Algeria have only won that competition once, in 1990, and haven't qualified for the World Cup since 1986. It is hard to see the Desert Foxes improving on their points tally of that year, a valiant 1.

One to watch: Nadir Belhadj

Algeria's answer to Leighton Baines has had a decent season amongst the wreckage of Portsmouth's financial car crash, and he will may well be angling for a move back into the Premier League this summer. A couple of good performances during Algeria's campaign, certain only to consist of three games, and the likes of Tony Pulis could be lining up a £3m bid come the end of June.

Prediction: 4th in Group C

The World Cup On A Stick: Group B

2010-05-27T16:02:00.000-07:00

GROUP B

Argentina

There is batshit crazy and then there is Diego Maradona. Argentina's most famous obese, drug-addled, handballing football genius used around 700 different players in an unconvincing qualifying campaign which brought advertisers perilously close to seeing their investment in endorsement deals with Lionel Messi rendered embarrassing and worthless. They scraped through in the end and they certainly have the players to go a long way, but I can't help feeling Maradona's international management career will end swiftly and mired in farce. A quarter final embarrassment at the hands of the USA is my gut instinct, more than likely involving several red cards and a Clint Dempsey wonder goal. By the way, if you're looking at the tournament schedule and wondering if I'm mental, wait until you see my predictions for Group C....

One to watch: Diego Milito

I have rated for Milito for a while now, and I am happy to admit that this is solely down to how good he is on Pro Evo. The Champions League final left me feeling vindicated in my baseless assumptions, and I expect him to grab a few goals if Maradona chooses to employ a formation that includes strikers, which is far from a given considering his cavalier approach to rational decision making.

Prediction: 1st in Group B; Quarter Finals

Nigeria

Nigeria have produced some of the more likeable try-hards of recent World Cups, from Taribo West's luminous beaded mop to Kanu's gangly stumbling via the electric pace of turbo-midget Obafemi Martins. A smattering of decent Premier League players and John Utaka should see them through this group but not much further.

One to watch: Jon Obi Mikel

The jury is still out on Mikel in the Premier League, but the boy is still young and this World Cup is an opportunity for him to cement his reputation as a poor man's Claude Makele by semi-effectively shielding his defence from renowned free-flowing attacking teams such as Greece.

Prediction: 2nd in Group B; Second Round

Greece

Everyone kind of forgets who won Euro 2004, then you remind them, and then they shake their head and stare blankly into the middle distance. German coach Otto von Bismarck has moulded the Greeks into a solid and stultifyingly dull defensive unit whose time, you feel, has now passed. Their opening match with the Koreans has 'shit on a stick borefest' written all over it and you wouldn't bet against them failing to score a single goal in three games. Over to you, Greece, to prove me wrong.

One to watch: Sokratis Papastathopoulos

David Pleat is going to struggle with the pronunciation of a lot of players' names at the World Cup, but I am particularly looking forward to him regurgitating this one from the depths of his muddled brain sack.

Prediction: 4th in Group B

South Korea

Joint hosts in 2002, South Korea won many new fans with their courageous ability to win questionable refereeing decisions on an unlikely run to the semi-finals. This year their collection of Kims, Lees and Parks are likely to cause more problems for commentary teams (see above) than opposition defences, and while they clearly have a few talented players it's going to be a big ask to get out of this group.

One to watch: Park Ji Sung

An obvious choice but Park is probably the second most recognised face in Korea after Kim Jong Il thanks to Manchester United's inspired franchising ability - sorry, I mean transfer market nous - which has probably exceeded even their own expectations in the sense that he is still at the club and a pretty handy player in big games.

Prediction: 3rd in Group B

The World Cup On A Stick: Group A

2010-05-26T15:42:00.000-07:00

With only a couple of weeks of tenuously football-themed adverts left to go before it all kicks of, it's time for the first installment of my World Cup preview. If my recent predictions are anything to go by, you could do worse than base a few bets on what you're about to read. I correctly foretold that Chelsea would win this year's Premiership, that Portsmouth, Hull and Burnley would be relegated, that Spain would win Euro 2008, and that Cardiff would win the 2008 FA Cup Final. Well the last one wasn't strictly correct, but they did come a close second. Add to this incredible foresight an expertise drawn, in the case of about 75% of the teams in the finals, almost exclusively from Pro Evo, and you really have no need to listen to anyone's opinions other than mine.

GROUP A

South Africa

The first World Cup to be held on the African continent presents a great opportunity for the host nation. An opportunity to clear away all the poor people with a bulldozer, invest millions of rand in unnecessarily extravagant sporting infrastructure and banish forever the image of South Africans as a country of racist farmers, blood diamond-hoarding Hollywood villains and corrupt tribal politicians who believe that showering after sex is an effective protection against HIV, by fielding a team even less likely to progress past the group stages than Austria at Euro 2008.

One to watch: Stephen Pienaar

When he's not battling it out with Florent Malouda for the title of 'shittest dreadlocks in the Premier League' Pienaar is a skilful and effective operator on the wings for boggle-eyed jock whinge muppet David Moyes and his jobbing band of Everton nearly-men. Expect a few 'diamond in the turd' stand-out performances to earn him a summer move to a slightly less mediocre team as he inspires his side to a courageous third place, or possibly fourth if they lose to Uruguay.

Prediction: 3rd in Group A

Mexico

Not so much perennial underachievers as more or less achievers of exactly what you would expect. A nation riven by drug-fuelled violence and steadily depleted by the stream of desperate migrants fleeing across the Rio Grande to the US, Mexico is one of those footballing nations that is temporarily unified every 4 years as the country comes together to celebrate with wild hysteria a narrow defeat in the second round to one of the Eastern European 'dark horses', ageing former winners or grindingly dull Scandinavian teams who are destined to go out in the following round. My money is on a second round exit to Argentina this time.

One to watch: Rafael Márquez

Márquez is one of my favourite players of recent years and much underrated I think. Pony-tailed Latin American defenders are two a penny at a World Cup but few ever impress in the way Marquez does so consistently. This may well be his last chance to shine on the world stage, and if he can shackle the attacking threat of the dysfunctional French the Mexican front line have a real chance of causing a surprise in this group.

Prediction: 2nd in Group A; Second Round

Uruguay

Winners of the first ever World Cup in 1930, it's been all downhill since for Uruguay, who were overtaken long ago by their Brazilian and Argentinian neighbours. Their job at international tournaments nowadays is to win as few friends and new admirers as possible by combining some of the nastiest foul play and the most ridiculously overblown play-acting a team can muster, flying the flag for the true spirit of Latin American football while their more successful peers pander to European audiences with their skill, tactical organisation and ability to finish a match with eleven players and zero crowd fatalities.

One to watch: Diego Forlán

Forlán has already broken English hearts with his displays for Atlético Madrid against Liverpool and Fulham in UEFA's answer to the Johnstone Paint Trophy, the Europa League. Expect him to do the same to the Uruguayan fans as he fluffs a series of simple chances against South Africa in a gritty nil-niller that condemns them to fourth place in their group.

Prediction: 4th in Group A

France

If France do well in this tournament it can surely only be in spite of and not because of the efforts of their artfully clueless manager, Raymond Domenech. Domenech takes all that the English find baffling about the French national character, with his stubbornly ill-informed arrogance and his avant-garde intellectual posturing, and channels it through the medium of such tactics as selecting players based on their star signs, in order to render one of the most talented teams of their generation an embarassing shadow of their former selves. Whisper it, but I think a quarter final exit at the hands of Les Rosbifs beckons.

One to watch: Karim Benzema

A big money buy for Real Madrid last summer, Benzema's first season at the Bernabeu has been so underwhelming that he hasn't even made the French squad for the finals. One to watch as his career nosedives, his transfer value is decimated and he is either picked up and revived by Arsene Wenger or he plays out his days in the Dutch and German leagues, occasionally popping up in the Europa League to provide English viewers with a "remember him?" moment as they watch their mid-table Premier League team sweep him aside.

Prediction: 1st in Group A; Quarter Finals

A Party Political Broadcast on Behalf of My Brain

2010-05-05T14:35:00.000-07:00

I know I've been posting political stuff online for the last few weeks to the point where it's probably quite annoying, so I will give you my Election eve message and then I'm done till it's all over:

1. Putting class and personality aside, I don't think the Tories will represent the average British person. David Cameron will give tax cuts to millionaires, leave Britain on the fringes of Europe, take an ideological axe to public services and leave our undemocratic voting system as it is. Not to mention the fact that he looks like he's made of ham.

2. I'm not anti-Labour and I'd rather Brown was PM than Cameron, but I feel let down over Iraq, tuition fees, expenses, electoral reform, the soft treatment of banks since the bail-out and the mistakes in immigration policy that have led to the argument being driven by racists, xenophobes and, yes, bigots instead of a government capable of showing people the benefits that multiculturalism and integration can bring.

3. I know that voting Lib Dem isn't a magical panacea that will cure our nation's ills overnight, I know they're not perfect and are untested in government, and I know that the chances of a Lib Dem victory seem remote at best. But because I think the tax system should help encourage those at the top to help those at the bottom, because I think we need a more representative electoral system, because I think immigration and Europe need to be addressed in a sensible manner, and because I think we should rebuild our economy in a green and sustainable way, I'm going to vote tomorrow to give them a shot at it. If you're still undecided then I hope you consider doing the same, and even if you think (probably fairly accurately) that all politicians are as bad as each other, you should still exercise your democratic right and vote.

And that's my rant over.

Why I can't vote Conservative, in hard numbers

2010-05-04T12:27:00.000-07:00

Two key questions, four key statistics, one easy choice on Thursday.

Do the Conservatives represent the interests of the majority of the people living in the UK?

£44,000,000 - Estimated combined wealth of the ten richest members of the Conservative shadow Cabinet, according to this report from The Spectator in 2008.

£700,000,000 - Estimated total tax cut to be given to the richest 3,000 estates in Britain if the Conservative inheritance tax plans went ahead, as verified by Channel 4's 'Fact Check' here.

Do the Conservatives, as they claim, constitute a "real change" from the "broken politics" of the past?

£155,397 - Total sum of expenses paid back by Conservative MPs following the expenses scandal, over half of the total sum paid back by all parties of £305,499, according to this BBC report.

35.3% - The share of the popular vote Labour won in the 2005 election, which still led to them winning 55.2% of the seats in the House of Commons, thanks to the 'first past the post' system which the Conservatives intend to preserve if they win the 2010 election.

Manifestly Unsuitable

2010-04-26T15:38:00.000-07:00

A leaked memo from Conservative HQ has revealed a list of policies which were considered for inclusion in the party's election manifesto but later rejected. Here we recap the key pledges that were dropped:

The Big Society

A number of overarching concepts were proposed before David Cameron settled on his hazily-defined 'Big Society' as a central pillar of the campaign. Among those eventually scrapped were:

'The Communal Pledge' - A proposal that every voter should take an oath to vote Conservative for the rest of their life, in order to safeguard the economic recovery and prevent Labour ever ruining this great country again.

'The Cameron Paradox' - The idea that all policy-making should reflect the fundamentally illogical nature of presenting a conservative, traditionalist party led by the vanguard of the privileged social old guard as an agent for progressive politics and social change. Examples of this would include appointing Nick Griffin as the chairman of the Commission for Racial Equality, or funding a tax cut for the poor by reducing the national minimum wage to 57p an hour.

'National Cricket' - Any MP accused of corruption can be challenged by his constituents to a game of cricket. If defeated the MP would lose his seat and a by-election, or 'follow-on', would be triggered.

Crime

- London's 'Crossrail' project to be scrapped in favour of a 20 mile long 'prison tunnel', running from Acton to Stratford, designed to alleviate overcrowding in Britain's prisons.

- A drive to cut down on recidivism by changing the law so that all crimes are only illegal the first time they are committed. Thereafter the same crime would go unpunished if committed by the same individual, effectively cutting the number of reoffenders to zero.

- Legal definition of 'anti-social behaviour' to be broadened to include being under the age of 18, attending a football match, talking on public transport and using slang.

Immigration

- In order to earn citizenship, all immigrants from newly admitted EU member nations to be forced to complete a 6 month teaching and apprenticeship programme, training British school leavers in trades such as plumbing, carpentry and catering.

- New 'community cohesion programmes' to teach recently arrived immigrants traditional British values such as intolerance, blamelessness and a deep-rooted sense of entitlement and victimhood.

- Immigrants from outside the EU to be barred from employment in sectors where native British people are willing to work for the national minimum wage.

Foreign Policy

- Continued British membership of the European Union to be conditional on the replacement of the blue and gold EU flag with the Union Jack.

- Every soldier in Afghanistan to be equipped with their own Apache attack helicopter.

- Sanctions against Iran to be dropped in return for a 51% controlling stake in the Iranian economy, to be paid in a combination of sterling, share issues and mortgage consolidation franchises.

- Replacement of the Trident nuclear deterrent to be abandoned and the money to be diverted into a scheme to build a giant nuclear bunker covering the whole of southern England.

The Economy

- The pound to be privatised and applications to be tendered by companies wishing to run one of seven regional currency franchises.

- Income tax to be replaced by a new system whereby poor people are simply paid less, and rich people are paid much more.

- Interest rates to be set by the Bank Of England on a monthly basis, in accordance with the number of column inches given by the right-wing tabloid press each month to the subject of house prices.

- Massive savings in the public sector to be achieved by: replacing the NHS with a personal carbon trading scheme, where unused carbon credits can be traded for medical treatment; giving parents the power to draw up their own curriculum, teach classes and mark exams; outsourcing all police administration to India; and closing all railway stations and converting them into privately-run regional airports.

The Environment

- A 5 year investment plan to fit all bicycles with solar panels and wind turbines.

- Creating 500,000 new green jobs insulating coal-fuelled power stations and car manufacturing plants to increase their energy efficiency.

- Urban centres in Wales, Scotland and the North to be demolished and replaced with a new network of National Parks.

Political Reform

- The House of Commons to become a partially elected chamber, with 30% of MPs to be appointed by the governing party, to ensure a strong and decisive government.

- Party funding to be reformed so that each party may only receive political donations from one donor, with a minimum donation of £55m per year.

- The practice of 'flipping' second homes to be tackled by a new housing programme to provide every MP with two houses upon election, funded by a 10% rise in VAT.

- A referendum to be held within the first Parliament to decide which voting system is most suited to keeping the governing party in power for as long as possible.

Out to the 783

2010-04-13T15:56:00.000-07:00

One thing I love about London is listening to pirate radio while I'm in the kitchen cooking or washing up. Up here in North London we mostly get house and garage stations, you can generally turn the dial until you find something you like. However it's not so much the music that entertains me as the DJs. Out on the fringes of radio, beyond the reach of the kind of quality control and high production values you might find on a legitimate commercial radio station, every DJ on every show sounds like he is having the single best night of his life.

It might be Monday at 8pm, he might be accidentally knocking the cross fader every 5 minutes, he might be yelling inane shout-outs to anonymous mobile numbers over the music you're trying to listening to, but my God is this man enthusiastic. And it doesn't matter if he's talking about the music or, as I enjoyed listening to last night, how he's been ripped off at a garage and had to pay £200 to get a new car alarm fitted, he'll still do it in a string of drum n bass MC / pirate radio DJ clichés, unable to actually speak in normal language, everything is ABSOLUTELY IN-STEPPER, going in DEEP on this, dun KNOW bruv, who remembers this one, BIG tune, out to the 419, keep it absolutely LOCKED, for those who KNOW, out to the missed callers, until you begin to build up this mental image of this guy whose brain is absolutely shot to pieces from all the pills he's done in the twenty years since his twenty-first birthday. No longer able to hold a coherent conversation, the only way he has of sustaining his existence is by living his life as one constant rave, always on pills, always DJing old garage and deep house. This may also explain how these DJs are always playing out at clubs every night of the week, filling the line-ups of all the nights you hear advertised on the same radio station, happening at a nightclub in Enfield, £8 on the door, and you WILL be refused entry if you don't have ID.

So this one goes out to all the pirate radio DJs keeping it locked, forever, having the best night of their lives, over and over again, while I'm washing up.

A political bit

2010-04-07T15:03:00.000-07:00

I posted an article from the Daily Mail on my Facebook yesterday, which as usual was a crock of balls, and a friend commented that "It must be comforting to know that you can blame a dozen or so factors for everything that is wrong with the country." I thought to myself, is it really as many as 12? But I suppose that is more or less spot on, I would say the dirty dozen, one or more of which is blamed for every one of society's supposed ills by the Mail, consists of the following.

1. Immigrants.
2. Travellers.
3. Gays.
4. The Labour Party.
5. Over-zealous local councils.
6. The 'PC brigade'.
7. The BBC.
8. The diminishing importance of Christianity in Britain.
9. Feral youths / Young people in general.
10. The poor.
11. Drugs.
12. Pretty much anything that a new report claims causes cancer.

I would however posit that we actually have it pretty fucking good in Britain, that the people who complain so much don't realise how lucky we are, and that the idea that we live in 'Broken Britain' is actually pretty distasteful and ungrateful when you consider the plight of truly 'broken' states like Somalia or Afghanistan, not to mention the millions more people who live in parts of the developing world that aren't quite so relentlessly horrific, but where life is nevertheless pretty tough. If I were to compile a list of 12 things that do undermine and negatively affect life in this country, I would probably go with:

1. A lack of personal responsibility and the use of those who are marginalised and vulnerable as scapegoats, whether it be with regards to unemployment, crime, parenting or community relations.
2. Racism, xenophobia, intolerance and a general lack of understanding for people who live differently to oneself, whether through choice or due to their upbringing.
3. Homophobia and empty moralising with regards to sex and sexuality.
4. An unrepresentative, outdated and sometimes undemocratic political system.
5. Apathy.
6. The undue influence of the tabloid newspapers and media monopolies.
7. The political influence wielded by vested interests, whether commercial or religious/cultural.
8. The class system which still pervades and shapes an unacceptable swathe of public life.
9. The demonisation and marginalisation of young people.
10. The ever-increasing gap between the richest and poorest in society.
11. Alcohol and tobacco, or rather their preferential treatment by the law compared to other narcotics. Which ever way round it should be, we've surely got it wrong.
12. Things that actually cause cancer.

I know you could argue that my list is basically just a left wing version of the Mail's list, but I maintain that you would find it very hard to argue that any of the things I've listed are good things, whereas a lot of things on the first list could definitely be debated. I also know that it may seem that I've defeated my own argument by complaining about how bad this country is.

I guess my point is, you could shorten the second list from 12 to just one:

1. The Daily Mail.

Insomnia

2010-03-30T15:06:00.000-07:00

I was lying awake at about 2am on Monday, desperately trying to switch my brain off so I could get to sleep and not wake up late for work, and I had an idea for a story which I will almost certainly never write. Let's refer to the main character using the first person for the sake of convenience.

In this story, I go through exactly the same experience described above, except I don't manage to eventually switch off at 3am, and I end up lying in bed awake all night, tossing and turning, running through every little inconsequential mental bollock careering off the inside of my head, and eventually moan in dismay at my alarm going off at 7. I survive a brutal Monday at work with several buckets of coffee, twice the normal number of cigarette breaks and by generally being unproductive and irritable towards colleagues. Once I get home in the evening I am relieved and don't see the need to go to bed too early, spending a few hours cock-knocking about and inevitably going to bed around 11.

The previous night then repeats itself. The first hour is fine, vibing off the warm comfort of the duvet and the knowledge that heavy sleep will soon repair the mental damage. By 2 in the morning I am livid at my existence. All I can think about is how desperately I want to sleep and how incomprehensible my sustained consciousness is becoming. At 4 in the morning I switch my light back on, have a cigarette and read until my eyes burn. As birds begin to chirp outside and my curtains are slowly illuminated by dawn, I start thinking about calling in sick for work. Then my alarm goes off.

I go into work anyway. Swinging from one throbbing arm from the roof of a meat-filled Piccadilly Line carriage, I know I don't even need to be paranoid to know that everyone on the train is staring at me as if I were turd. The first hour at work seems like nine. At lunch I struggle to eat and I have a shit like a hazelnut baguette. On the way home I can barely stand being alive. I don't bother with dinner when I get home. A raspily half-hearted rant to my flatmate, and then I collapse into bed and fail to masturbate to completion. At 8pm I am still awake and get up and watch moving images on the TV. By this point the sleep deprivation is already becoming chronic and I see light trails swirling around the edges of the screen.

By 6 in the morning on Wednesday my behaviour has become increasingly erratic. Four glasses of rum and coke has no effect other than thickening the perception of fur on my teeth. I've caught up on iPlayer with every episode of various programmes I have never heard of. The bags under my eyes look like slices of black pudding, halved and hung from my eyelids.

By lunchtime I decide to tell my boss I haven't slept since the weekend. His concerned look screams ARE YOU ON SPEED but he tells me to go home if I don't feel well. I take the Tube as far as Hyde Park and sit on a bench amongst the greenery for a while, trying to cleanse myself of urban fatigue. It is fucking cold.

Two weeks later and I am so incredibly tired I am barely capable of coherent speech. The sleeping pills prescribed by the doctor serve only, paradoxically, to make me more alert. I have a constant, raking cough that evacuates my lungs like a phlegmy leaf blower. My turds are grey and viscous. My eyes feel like they are full of pins and chilli powder. The hair around my temples is becoming silver at an unrealistic rate. My flatmate has gone on holiday for three weeks, but he tells me he hopes I manage to get to sleep while he's away. I hope so too. I really hope I can get some sleep.

Three months later and I am off work on long-term sick leave. My life is one constant hallucination, beyond even the most imaginative uses of the senses conjured up by LSD. Reality is a shimmering, rippling greyscale nightmare that beats in and out of my eyes like sand in the wind. I am not insane, but neither am I completely sane. This is sleep deprivation magnified a billion times. I have tried every drug, treatment and therapy. I feel as if I have spent more time in my bed, awake, in the last three months than I have spent asleep in the preceding 25 years of my life.

A year later and I am still awake. My skin is white, waxy and feels like I could peel it off if I wanted to. I have probably tried. I have no way of remembering, no way of separating all the trillions of thoughts I have had and the things that I have actually done, things that have actually happened. I have been in the newspapers. Channel 4 wants to make a documentary about me. My parents are no longer my parents, they are my carers. All the hair has fallen out of my body. My pupils are blue and cloudy, my eyeballs are deep dark crimson. My genitals have the appearance of a smashed bladder. I don't piss or shit any more, I leak.

There is no happy ending to this story, there is no tragic climax, there is no resolution at all. I just stay awake until I die, at the age of 59.

A brief note

2010-03-10T15:29:00.000-08:00

I'm really into using capital letters at the moment. Particularly at the end of a sentence to make it sound like the words are being kind of shouted in a sort of BRAINLESS MONOTONE.

Geoff and Ian

2010-02-18T15:19:00.000-08:00

Just thought I should plug another blogging venture by myself and Matt. Geoff and Ian follows the highs, lows and despicably lows of two bankers riding on the crest of the recession, laying bare the workings of high finance through intercepted BlackBerry transmissions. After the collapse of Shaft Capital in the third quarter of 2009, a government-backed refinancing operation has seen the directors scrape together enough capital to merge with a German investment bank and relocate to Zurich as Schaft-Mannheim AG. Slippery old toad Geoff Hunt has taken up a new consultancy role, and one of his first moves has been to bring fund manager Ian Swanton back into the fold after an aborted attempt to abscond to the Caribbean with his ill-gotten gains...

WHAT'S ALL THAT ABOUT?

2010-02-11T15:00:00.000-08:00

Observational comedy. Have you seen it? WHAT'S ALL THAT ABOUT? It's probably the most common format for stand up comedy. Probably because it's the easiest to write, and provides what you might argue are the cheapest laughs:

Here is an observation I have made, that I believe a critical mass within the audience will also have observed, sufficient to make just the very recognition of their own observation repeated back to them enough to make them laugh. I will embellish this observation with a punchline or twist, thus forming a joke. WHAT'S ALL THAT ABOUT?

Ah yes, those four words, staple of the lazy, awful, irritating comic. What's. All. That. About. If your observation is tenuous, your point is getting lost somewhere in the delivery, then deploy the faux incredulity, put on your best high-pitched silly voice, screw up your face and scream: "WHAT'S ALL THAT ABOUT?"

Then proffer some explanations as to what indeed the that in question may or may not be about. It's easy. I can do it. Here's one I've made up:

"Has anyone noticed how Asian shopkeepers are always on the phone when you walk in their shop? WHAT'S ALL THAT ABOUT? Don't worry, I'm not about to go all Jim Davidson on you. But seriously, why is that? You know what I reckon? I reckon this entire country is run by a secret cabal of Asian shopkeepers, all in constant communication, monitoring the people of Britain as they pop in for their pint of milk, their newspaper or their Toffee Crisp. I reckon they are you know, they're telling the government what to do. 'Mr Home Secretary, sales of king size Rizlas are down 75% this month. Downgrade it to Class C'. Then a couple of weeks later: 'Mr Home Secretary, Rizla sales are up 300% and there is not a single tube of Pringles left in London. Reclassify to Class B immediately!'"

Some of the more racist comedians could have particular fun with accents in the above routine. But the point isn't whether or not you think that was funny, the point is it seems so easy. Which isn't to say there's no talent involved, that it can never be funny, or even that there's anything intrinsically wrong with it when done really well. Hearing people rail against it when their own, more 'experimental' or 'edgy' brand of comedy is complete shit is just as irritating. The venom with which all of a sudden every self-proclaimed alternative comedian is suddenly ripping on Michael McIntyre, for example, does not seem to be particularly edifying in some cases. I mean, WHAT'S ALL THAT ABOUT? Yes he plays it very safe, yes he seems to be a less funny, more Southern attempt at Peter Kay, and yes he's fucking everywhere with a new DVD out every time you blink.

But I think the worst examples of WHAT'S ALL THAT ABOUT? are at the other end of the success scale. Watching amateur comedians in tiny pub basements dying on their arse doing ill-conceived, woefully pitched WHAT'S ALL THAT ABOUT routines bereft of any comedic value is one of the most achingly cringe-inducing things I think it's possible to observe. The demise of the traditional joke teller and the rise of the everyman observational comic on TV over the last couple of decades means that any prick with an ego and an asymmetrical haircut thinks they can get up on stage and make their vacuous existence into a comedy routine, as long as they remember to insert those four words at the end of every bullshit anecdote.

Which is why, having made this observation first hand, I've now attempted to make a joke out of it.

WHAT'S ALL THAT ABOUT?

Where to hide different types of meat

2010-01-24T16:02:00.000-08:00

Pepperami - behind a drain pipe

Black pudding - on the heels of your shoes (lady's shoes)

Smoked salmon - in the glove compartment of a Ford Orion

Prosciutto - make into tights

Lamb shank - under a traffic cone

Biltong - under your turban

Pâté - in a urinal

Bacon lardons - sprinkle in long grass

Chorizo - inside bicycle pump

Chicken wings - in a jewellery box

Mince - in a carrier bag, on the deck of a ferry

Pork chop - anywhere in Lincoln

Veal - inside a sleeping bag

Turkey crown - in a lift

Sausage roll - it is impossible to hide a sausage roll, either eat it or take it back and see if you can get a refund

My life in texts revisited

2010-01-21T15:19:00.000-08:00

This is a just continuation of a previous post which continues to induce a moderate degree of chortle:

Hit him back then take a

Sorry about the door,i do

Hold tight piss on the fl

Fuck's sake,i just though

Oh che it was amazing! f

Alright rude lad.just got

I shouted at the security

Oi gip ninny gip,what u d

Butter my arse,i hear you

Re: threesomes - i'm no

Fuck you cunty chops

Fucks sake

Scum, subhuman scum

I just ate 9 sausage roll

What is christmas? we jus

Safe as tits,see u in a b

We are playing ring of fi

Feeling completely brain

I'm such a retard,i woke

While wearing the manki

I will prob be a bit late

I'll be exploding back on

I smell like a pork scrat

Fw: Oink

I've got the alpine fart

Alright quiche tits.i'm j

Yo.any of you goons up

HELP HIM BUILD A NEW

Is it wrong to eat yorksh

Alright beef captain.goin

He looks like a gay porn

I have a vast tool kit of

Garlic acquired

Harry hill's soft toy is

I've only heard of dappy

My balls are well and tru

Alright treacle tits. are

The ken bandana

Grooming them are you?

The bosh cap?

Nah the more fire trilby

Yo clag captain. goin for

Snow poem

2010-01-21T14:58:00.000-08:00

The snow is all melty and gone

There is:

No more snow.

Do you remember the snow?

That time we had all the snow?

Yeah it was well snowy and that.

I hoped

How I hoped

That there would be enough snow

That I wouldn't be able to go into work

This didn't happen

Instead it was a right bloody nightmare.

Sort of.

It's only fucking snow

Fractured Essays: 'Why I am left wing'

2010-01-12T15:56:00.000-08:00

I thought for a change I would write something relatively serious, and try to get to grips with my political views through writing. While I don't consider myself political in the sense of being aligned with a particular party or movement, and I can't really say with any degree of credibility that I actively campaign for or against anything, I do have a strong, though flexible and pragmatic, political outlook. However, I don't really want to get bogged down in the minutiae of policies, ideologies, or even in relating my beliefs to the national or global political landscape. I am, rather, seeking to explain my reasons for considering myself left wing in a more basic, perhaps philosophical context.

When I find my political beliefs challenged, when I seek to defend them, or when I find myself questioning them, I always find myself returning to what I believe to be the fundamental difference between the philosophies of liberal, left wing politics and conservatism. What I think it boils down to, whether it be in relation to the economy, social policy, immigration, international relations or law and order, is a difference between the belief that every person should act out of a common human decency to make life as tolerable as possible for every member of the human race, and the belief that humans are condemned to exist as a species that can only ever prioritise self-interest over a hypothetical and unattainable 'common good'. To elucidate the point I can, already contradicting my earlier point, use some tangible examples.

A first example would be the current economic situation. The reason we have arrived at the bus stop, and scan the timetable fully expecting the crushing news that we are indeed in a half-hour interval blackspot. The snow is tiny, like miniaturised white ball bearings. The Chancellor is driving the bus and he barely spares us a glance as we sway, muted and confused, to a thrumming and faded human shelf atop the engine. Right wing demagogues wail at the taxi that refuses to stop, the light already extinguished and the job under way. The awful brat spews irrelevances and the embarrassment is palpable as the drugs take hold on Labour's so-called 'Third Way'.

What seems like a month lasts for four, and the Third World serves as a useful analogy for the forced cohabitation between the rich and the envious. Perhaps a better balance could have been achieved had Wednesday not ended in such a crushing solo oven pizza oratorio. By now you are probably thinking that there is little merit in this argument, since it is not based so much on logic and hard data as a wishy-washy, idealistic sentiment that can have little bearing on the realities of the mechanics of government. But I would ask you to look deeper and consider what you really understand as the meaning of the term 'politics'. In reality every day of your life is a manifestation of your political philosophy on some level, however much you find yourself distracted by a stream of text, images and opinions that scarcely matter outside of a brief and fleeting zeitgeist. You realise that the seat on the bus is a direct consequence of the sofa, which is a consequence of the bar stool, which was brought about by the bed and which in turn could not have happened without the Valium and the decision to revert to 17.5% VAT. Now your life is whirring past in a stream of numbers, hours clocked up and pay cheques squandered on baubles and booze, and you find yourself waist-deep in meaningless conjecture and faux-artistic linguistic posturing atop a metaphorical plinth swaying in the wind, barely supported by a haphazard totem of bad books, curry paste and the innate conservatism of the British hinterland.

If we have learnt anything from this essay it is that Sartre had far more in common with David Cameron than he did with Gordon Brown. Existentialism has no moral compass, and this is why he was rubbish at orienteering.

2010 Festival Preview

2010-01-11T15:34:00.000-08:00

The new year may only be a week and a bit old but already plans are afoot for a clutch of new festivals, as the feel-good factor returns to Britain and the recession is officially over, apart from for all those people who it actually genuinely affected and stuff. Here are just some of the highlights of what no-one is already calling the 'third summer of love'.

Wigan Pier Presents: Donkfest
July, Wigan Pier

A three day vision of hell, in which 30,000 ravers will descend on the pier that for some reason exists in Wigan, some 15 miles inland, for a festival of pure northern hard house / MC fusion. The festival will culminate in a 9 hour set from the Blackout Crew, and a selection of lagers, alcopops and smacky pills will be available from the bar.

Blandstock
August, near Guildford

A festival celebrating all that is bland, soulless and unengaging in modern popular music. Attracting a crowd of middle income 30-somethings who don't really like music, highlights will include David Gray, Elbow and some other band whose songs all sound the same. Eschewing the psychedelic visual decor of festivals like Glastonbury, Blandstock will instead be decked out with partition walls painted in Dulux magnolia, faux mahogany dado rails and throws.

F**k The Planet
June, Hastings

A reaction to the environmental movement and climate change protests, F**k The Planet is a four day gathering of global warming sceptics, industrialists, right wing think tanks and people who perceive absolutely no irony in anything the presenters of Top Gear say or do. Festival goers are encouraged to bring along old tires, refrigerators and fossil fuels to burn at any of the 25 designated 'Pollute Points', and metal roads are laid out across the festival site to allow punters to travel everywhere by car. The climax to the festival will see Jeremy Clarkson set light to a giant effigy of Al Gore, made out of dead battery hens and plastic bags.

Get Loaded Into A Lorry
September, Clapham, London

The latest extension to the 'Get Loaded' franchise will see punters volunteering to help alleviate the problem of Britain's expanding population by climbing into one of 300 lorries, each destined for a different remote and empty part of the globe, where they will be unloaded and left to fend for themselves with nothing more than a £30 tent from Millets, enough cereal bars to dry out the mouth of the Ganges and an acoustic set by the Wannadies. The idea is to create 300 'micro festivals' around the world, in far-flung and desolate locations as diverse as Outer Mongolia, the Atacama Desert and Crawley town centre. The first person to make their way back to the UK will be deported to a country where prison conditions are best described as 'inhumane', and will win a ticket to next year's festival.

The Summer of Hard Clag
June, secret location on the M4 corridor

A new festival dedicated to the emerging claggage scene (see my previous post), in which a disused distribution warehouse will be turned into a 24 hour throbbing clag node where high-frequency noise will quite literally cause brain damage to a crowd of enthusiastic glue guzzling clagheads. Visuals will be provided by Didcot's notorious Buzz Dangler VJ crew, who have pioneered the use of white phosphorus and child pornography in their incendiary performances. Headliners include scene favourites Bad Smegma, Jugular Penis Error and the Solid Arse Candle Orchestra. Dogs are not allowed on site, including guide dogs.

2009 - The year in headlines

2010-01-07T12:34:00.000-08:00

"Mugabe lands Christmas number one after controversial recount"

"The nanny state gone mad - councils grit pavements to stop people 'slipping over and hurting themselves'"

"Sterling now worth more melted down and sold for scrap"

"UK faces 'coldest recession since records began'"

"Jade Goody's corpse dancing to Jacko's hits is latest YouTube sensation"

"Jermaine Defoe caught driving at 142mph in school playground"

"Cameron to voters: 'I'll even swallow'"

"Jedward spit roasting Susan Boyle on Trafalgar Square's fourth plinth wins Turner Prize"

"Pope backs 'sex with young boys' as alternative to condoms"

"Millions killed by swine flu in alternative reality imagined by media"

"Milliband urges national debate on dubstep"

"Dawkins: 'God invented by creationists to test our rational empiricism'"

"Geordies to dispense with clothes altogether by 2030, warn climate experts"

New Year's Day Psychosis

2010-01-02T17:25:00.000-08:00

With my stomach lodged firmly in my head I crawl out of a filthy beer can and my eyes are sick into my brain, a thick black wash of half-remembered disgrace from the previous night. A year of intense mental aerobics and passive disappointment has typically collided with everything that I'm actually happy with to produce a familiar feeling of alarm at 365 days chewed up and spat out so quickly. A hacking cigarette cough rattles my memory in such a way that snapshots of new years past bounce viciously between my temples. Long walks home across deserted countryside, collapsed relationships, visits to the police station, prolonged liquid conversations with toilet bowls, firing potatoes from a catapult. As my face dangles from my skull like bad tits I wonder what will be the enduring memory of this particular gut smash. Feeling like the lesser of two idiots, wringing bad metaphors out of my semi-conscious mind like stale wine from a tea towel, scanning through cack-brained text messages for signs of moronic alcoblathering, and later reconvening with the altogether less hysterical reality, I decide I've come out of this one generally unscathed, while others have fallen and now lay slain on the battlefield, prostrate in a pool of sticky red dignity, new year's resolutions leaking offal-like from their smashed in hangover heads.

Happy new year.

Oh my God there has been a terrorist attack on The X-Factor

2009-12-07T15:42:00.000-08:00

Cowell is halfway through a simpering tribute to the fat one from East 17. Sweaty and wheezing he lolls around the stage having just mimed, unconvincingly, through the 3 awful minutes and 47 seconds of his comeback single. Cowell's hair stands stiff and black like a pubic Brillo pad, lines etched in his face like knife slashes on a cooked ham. His shirt clings to his tits like a grey bin bag. Cheryl Cole throws back her head and her mouth flaps open like a spastic fish. Walsh claps his fat pink hands together and whoops like an Irish car alarm.

Stage left, Dermot O'Leary rubs his dry fists up and down his thighs and a contestant who looks like Gary Barlow with Down's Syndrome squirts tears down his snow white gilet. Lights whirl, the baying mob squeals, per minute phone rates scroll across the screen like falling shares on the Nasdaq.

No-one notices the three men sprint from the front row until it is too late. The camera zooms in, then out, on the shaggy beard of the crazed loon climbing the stage. Cowell throws his hands up in front of his face too late as the first bullet flies into his leathery temple and exits through his wiry crop. Cheryl moans as hot wet brain slops down her face like yoghurt on a patio door. Walsh scarpers into the crowd, but he is cut down by sniper fire. There is an explosion and the cameras go dead, but not before a horrified audience sees O'Leary's fuzzy peanut head bounce across the stage and into Cowell's clammy, twitching lap.

Three hours later. A special edition of Newsnight. Germaine Greer: "This was always going to happen". Piers Morgan offers: "They were so brave". Bruce Forsyth phones in his contribution. Stephen Fry says something on Twitter. Ashley Cole wears a black armband in the midweek clash with Hull.

And next week, Jamelia will sing a tribute. Live, on ITV1.

A short description of my dream

2009-12-07T12:11:00.000-08:00

Rather than posting my latest mind fart on here, I will instead direct you towards two excellent blogs where it is featured:

A short description of my poo

ARKA

The piece in question is a critical write-up of a dream I had last week in which I dreamed that I shat myself.

Tao Te Chingford

2009-11-24T15:42:00.000-08:00

For he who lowers his expectations, each turd found is a treasure.

Wake up with a list of things to achieve each day. Rewrite the list throughout the day. Fall asleep before you can assess why you did not achieve anything on your list.

Do not tell anyone what you really think. Eventually it will change.

Speak with your eyes. Sing with your heart. Hear with your soul. Love with your fist.

Look both ways before crossing the road. Sometimes cyclists will use the incorrect lane.

Do not judge others. Just point.

A cup cannot be half empty unless it is drunk from. A cup cannot be half full unless it is filled. Coffee goes cold surprisingly quickly.

Speak only when spoken to. Listen only when listened to. Give your debit card details to pretty much any online company that seems reasonably legitimate.

The pen is mightier than the sword. Guns are more problematic.

The beanbag by moonlight is dappled with the tears of sinners and madmen.

The strong leader is calm in his reactions. The calm leader is firm in his convictions. The firm leader is convicted and sentenced to 30 hours community service. There is nothing to learn from this.

When all is stripped bare there is only the way. The way, and also the cock and balls.

Some people say I'm bonkers.

The essence of the now is the shadows of the past, the rising tide of the future, and good local produce, simply cooked.

When all fades to black, it is time to move the mouse a little bit to bring your screen back up.

The secret letters of the alphabet

2009-11-09T15:42:00.000-08:00

Recently declassified government papers from the 1950s have revealed that a number of letters were removed from the British alphabet during the first half of the 20th century, since for various reasons they were considered a danger to those who spoke, read or heard them. These letters have since been more or less erased from the collective consciousness of the British people, but a debate is now raging about whether to restore the so-called "secret letters".

Jaitch

The letter jaitch traditionally sat between H and J, but was very much distinct from the letter I. There is some debate among linguistic historians as to whether the jaitch took its name from its neighbours, or whether the jaitch existed first and the other letters evolved at a later stage. The pronunciation is believed to be roughly equivalent to the noise made when stifling a sneeze, though with more of a voiced, guttural feel. English speakers have long since lost the ability to pronounce this phoneme, and it now only exists in a handful of Papuan dialects. The jaitch was retired from the alphabet in 1946, after the letter was attacked by a group of Cambridge professors who claimed the jaitch was inherently Nazi during the Second World War, a claim which has since been discredited following the unearthing of new evidence which shows that Hitler was unable to pronounce the jaitch.

Zay

The zay is the missing letter between Z and A, which links the two ends of the modern linear alphabet together. The alphabet had been circular since the time of the Romans, but the British government of the 1950s considered this to be a dangerous situation given the communist undertones of each letter having an equal rank in the so-called 'alphabetical order', which after the banning of the zay came to mean an arbitrary sequence whereby A is the first letter and each subsequent letter has its own fixed place in the order. The removal of the zay led to the concept of alphabetisation, which, though it brought benefits to small sections of society such as dictionary compilers, ultimately left the English language bereft of one of its most versatile letters. The zay acted as a kind of universal consonant which could represent any sound depending on where it was placed in a word. Indeed the word 'zay' was spelled BLLB(ZAY)ay, and was pronounced 'zay', whereas 'zebra' was spelled ZE(ZAY)O(ZAY)RA, with the double zay plus 'O' construction producing a sound akin to a modern 'B'.

It is another little-known fact that the number 14 was originally a letter, which was placed in between M and N. The letter 14 was pronounced like the Spanish palatalised L sound, as in 'Valladolid', but it became the source of much confusion after the number 14 was discovered on the 30th December 1913. This discovery led to a constitutional crisis, and an emergency session of Parliament was called to decide what to do about the impending new year. As a result the 31st December lasted for four days, before the new number was eventually approved and the year 1914 was ushered in on what would originally have been the 5th January 1915. This is the true reason for the modern phenomenon of 'leap years', and ultimately led to the deletion of the letter 14 a few months later, though it continued to be used in everyday speech until the early 1920s.

My poem for the Tube ("Stations")

2009-10-26T16:51:00.000-07:00

holborn.

you have some medieval pictures, you are like a museum that hasn't tried very hard.

caledonian road. you have to take the lift to get to street level. it is like an airlock
in a sci-fi film.

earl's court, you are like a big glass barn, with your arrow-based departure boards that give no specific times. this is not ideal for commuters.

have you been to embankment (northern line platform)? low-slung and moody, like a goth made of bricks and soot.

at arsenal they have a cage to put the football fans in. the football fans go in the cage.

angel has the biggest escalator. i read this on the escalator at camden town. the escalators at camden town are a right bloody shambles.

but soon they will fix them. but not to make them bigger than angel. that would be

too bloody big.

they would come right out the station and up into the air. and the people would fall off the end and on to the street below, like a faulty conveyor belt at a meat factory.

what time is the next train to wimbledon?

i don't know, i am at earl's court and they don't tell you
how long the next fucking train's going to be.

Claggage

2009-10-03T16:46:00.000-07:00

Claggage is a new genre of music coming out of London, principally areas within the ECN36 postcode in northeast central London. Keen followers of ridiculous dance music subgenres will be aware that UK funky has undergone something of a split, with the cheesy dance crazes and grime MCs on one side and the more dubstep- and house-influenced 'funkstep' sound on the other. A further development is the idea that a techier, more US-sounding house being produced in the UK by artists weary of funky and funkstep is worthy of being classed as a genre in its own right, 'dubbage', despite sounding basically indistinguishable from house.

Even so, no-one was ready for the way that claggage has exploded on to the scene. Clag producers strip away conventional musical elements and instead experiment with compositional techniques that transcend the idea of 'listening' to dance music as defined by the last 20 years, working on levels hitherto unexploited in anything but the most experimental subgenres. One of the defining aesthetic aspects of claggage is the use of sonic frequencies which, if played to a dog, will cause the animal to suffer a massive and fatal brain embolism. These frequencies, inaudible to the human ear, are complemented by rhythmic loops which will normally consist solely of hi-hats. The European school of claggage has also dabbled in the use of syncopated male voice choir stabs and pitched-up Mongolian throat singing, while in the US claggage is often sped up to 960bpm and accompanied by a stringless violin played by a robot.

A scene and a culture has quickly built up around claggage. Claggage raves usually take place in the loading bays of disused distribution warehouses along the M4 corridor between Swindon and Chippenham after the scene was driven out of London by heavy-handed policing and more stringent licensing restrictions. The drug of choice for claggers tends to be glue, which is drunk rather than sniffed, in large and often lethal quantities. Claggage is yet to cross over to the mainstream, although underground anthems like Bad Smegma's "Summer of Hard Clag" and the Nine Boris Norris remix of Alpha Bollock's seminal clagstep anthem "Norwegian Sponge Clamp" are huge YouTube hits with the online claggage community. Claggage has been banned from all mainstream radio and TV stations due to the effect the music has on dogs, but it can be heard on many pirate stations both in the capital and in Wiltshire. It is surely only a matter of time before claggage mutates and cross-pollinates with other dance genres, with a burgeoning 'psy-clag' scene in the Israeli cities of Haifa and Tel Aviv already taking the sound in new directions.

What am I rubbing into my face?

2009-07-27T16:21:00.000-07:00

I'm always amused and annoyed in equal measure by the barrage of pseudo-science that the cosmetics industry bombards us with in their adverts, the overenthusiastic way that the voiceover man tells us this new face cream is enriched with hydroglycerol B8 plus or whatever bollocks it is this month, like we should be really fucking excited about the prospect of massaging some chemical compound we've never heard of into every pore on our wrinkled, sagging, pockmarked ballbag of a face. It's a phenomenon that's been well documented elsewhere but I thought I'd just do a bit of internet research and find out exactly what some of these things are.

Pro-retinol A

Retinol is the animal form of vitamin A, and occurs naturally in the liver and in eggs. Mmm, eggs and liver all over my face. It's used in anti-ageing products because the vitamin A is absorbed by the skin and increases the turnover in skin cells, encouraging the production of collagen which makes your skin look younger. Now I'm no biologist (this is, in fact, an important point to note when reading the ill-informed opinions to follow), but this almost seems to imply that it's actually making your skin age faster by speeding up cell turnover. Can you eventually run out of new skin cells? If you use this stuff for long enough will all the skin fall off your face? I think that would be my conclusion.

Pentapeptides

A pentapeptide is a polymer formed from the linking of five amino acids. Like retinols, they are said to stimulate collagen production, but without the same risk of irritation to the skin. Pentapeptides occur naturally in the body but the ones you get in cosmetics, though similar, are synthesised in a laboratory. They have been slammed by scientists and the Advertising Standards Agency as ineffective in reducing the physical signs of ageing, which to me seems unsurprising if they're just synthesising something we already have in our cells, which clearly aren't working if our skin is hanging off our faces like chunks of meat curing in a Spanish tapas bar.

Nutrileum

Garnier claimed to be enriching one of their shampoos with something called nutrileum. I initially thought this was spelled 'neutrilium', which seemed odd given that the only definition I could find for this was that it is 'the most non-corrosive metal known to science'. I was thinking, I can't imagine how washing your hair with metal is going to do it any good, but I suppose if you must do it then it's better to use something that isn't going to melt your scalp off. I have fond memories from school chemistry lessons of what happens when you mix metals like sodium or potassium with water, and it's not something you'd want to be happening in your hair. However, it turns out it is 'a complex of camelina seed micronutrients'. Camelina seed oil is dripping with polyunsaturated fats and allegedly provides hair with a protective coating, which just makes me think of those people who say that if you don't wash your hair for long enough the grease that builds up will help your hair 'clean itself'.

Boswelox

Something about the name 'boswelox' leads me to think this is just someone at L'Oréal having a laugh at our expense. Apparently boswelox is 'a breakthrough phyto-complex that combines a power dose of boswellia serrata extract and manganese, which help reduce the appearance of lines caused by facial micro-contractions'. For the uninitiated, boswellia serrata also goes by the name of...frankincense. Presumably if you burn the stuff it would smell nice, and it would also make a good gift for a newly-born messiah. And, of course, idiots will buy it because it sounds a bit like 'botox'.

There are countless more examples of this that I could go into, but really I'd just like to finish by saying that, Davina McCall, I have a degree in French and 'nutrisse' does not mean 'nourish', it doesn't mean anything you daft fuck.

Five of the least impressive things I have done

2009-07-23T12:42:00.000-07:00

1. I have gotten off the train at every major station on the London to Bristol line - London Paddington, Reading, Didcot Parkway, Swindon, Bath Spa, Bristol Temple Meads - except for Chippenham. I have never alighted from the train at Chippenham.

2. I have seen all the Rocky films and all the Rambo films, but I have never seen any of the Godfather films.

3. I saved a penalty taken by ex-Manchester United footballer and scorer of the winning goal in the 1990 FA Cup final replay, Lee Martin. The goal was not a full size goal, it was a tiny one.

4. I spent one day working as a window cleaner for a Jehovah's Witness. I wasn't very good at it, and I was paid around five pounds for four hours' work.

5. When I was younger I had a drawing published in the magazine Farthing Wood Friends. The picture was a bad drawing of an injured fox and I received a £10 book token for my efforts.

Inside Nature's Giants

2009-07-22T16:26:00.001-07:00

Danny Dyer's Deadliest Men 2: Living Dangerously

2009-07-19T17:10:00.000-07:00

I feel compelled to write about a programme I have discovered recently, Bravo's Danny Dyer's Deadliest Men 2: Living Dangerously. Since I've been unemployed I've had a bit more time for TV, so rather than skip past things like this I took the time to stop and watch a bit, and I'm glad I did. The premise will be familiar to anyone who's ever watched Bravo, or any of the similar documentaries made by Ross Kemp et al. Each week Danny meets a different man who is 'dangerous', whether they be inner city gangsters, old school cockney hardmen or crazed ex-military psychopaths.

However, I think the appeal of this programme does not really lie in the subject matter, although these people always seem genuinely interesting characters with incredible life stories. No, I derive my entertainment from Danny himself. I'm not overly familiar with his oeuvre, having seen only Human Traffic and his appearance on Never Mind The Buzzcocks (where, incidentally, he was ripped apart for his 'hardman' image in shows like DDDM2:LD). He is a bizarre caricature, a man seemingly so cockney that even actual cockneys struggle to relate to him. To his credit he often seems to try and distance himself from his 'hardman' image, since, after all, he is an actor. As Danny puts it himself, "personally ah've nevah done any bird", he's just a "poncey actah". What he is, though, is a massive drama queen. In the episode where he meets Gulf War veteran and cold-eyed psycho Mo Teague, Mo gives him a punch in the chops while demonstrating some of his fighting techniques, and Danny won't fucking shut up about it for the rest of the hour-long show. "You've almost knocked me spark aht wiv that Mo, fahkin 'ell".

You can't help but cringe, then laugh, then cringe again as Danny's attempts to pitch himself on the same level as these ex-cons and nutjobs make him look utterly ridiculous. Similarly, his emotional range seems bewilderingly compressed. It doesn't take much to shock him, bringing out his much-used catchphrase "faaahhk me", and he seems to be able to strike up what are to him life-affirming bonds of friendship in a matter of minutes. All you need to do is get Danny drunk and tell him something about your 'dark past' and he'll go all teary-eyed in awkward pieces to camera where he tells us how he and this week's fucknut have "really fahkin bonded".

As I said, his subjects have some interesting stories to tell, but most of the time Danny is so keen to put across how dangerous and crazy these men are that it's almost like he isn't really interested in what they have to say, more in odd little things he picks out like the fact that they have a nice house or a posh voice, and yet are still "faaahkin scary". He constantly feels uneasy and terrified around these hardcases, despite the obvious presence of the camera crew, but also he always seems to come out with some of the most inappropriate things you could possibly say or do. When he's in Brixton spending time with the former leader of a drug gang called the Pill Dem Crew, they come across the scene of a recent stabbing. Once the police cordon has been removed, Danny and his new chum go and have a look at the blood-stained wall where the crime occurred. Danny looks down at the pool of congealed blood, and delivers this pearl of wisdom: "That's wank".

Another example is when he is in the woods with the aforementioned ex-soldier Mo Teague on one of Mo's bizarre military exercises he sets himself to try and work through his demons. Having followed Mo into the growing darkness of the night, taking part in the mock assassination of a 'sentry' and then getting tucked up in a foxhole with him to eat cold sausages and beans from a foil bag (I'm not making this up), Danny brings up the delicate subject of post-traumatic stress disorder. Mo is clearly having real emotional issues at this point, so Danny lightens the mood by announcing that he needs a shit. But then while he tries to shit - into some clingfilm of course so he can wrap it up and take it home with him - Danny is suddenly spooked and decides that he's too embarassed to "pony", and what's more he "can't be faahked" with sleeping outdoors as was originally planned, so he phones a taxi and fucks off home, leaving Mo alone in the woods to come to terms with his deep-seated mental issues and the fact that he's just laid them bare in an hour-long TV documentary. What a cunt.

I'll come back to the way Danny speaks though, because that's what makes the programme. Now I'm not trying to poke fun at cockneys, and I know Danny is from London, but really, is anyone that much of a geezer? Should he really be calling ex-drug kingpin David McMillan "sunshine" and "mah son"? Is it appropriate to ask Mo Teague if he "ironed out" an Iraqi soldier by shooting him "in the nut"? And why is he so keen to go on about how much coke he does on TV? Maybe it's just Dyer doing what he does best, putting on an act for the camera. But who cares, however much it makes you cringe, it's compelling and entertaining stuff, and I can guarantee it will make you think: "faaahhk me!".

The moron

2009-07-18T16:21:00.000-07:00

I've become quite interested lately in the concept of the 'moron'. Not really in the dictionary-defined concept of the word, nor in the sense of a label that can be applied logically to any one type of person. It's more like a loose philosophy, a way of describing a certain way of living, either by myself or by others. In a way it's a development of the 'idiot' as portrayed in Nathan Barley, but the moron is less self-aware, and to deem someone a moron is both less of a vitriolic attack than calling them an idiot but also more of an incisive and cynical judgement of whoever I choose to apply it to. The moron is an absolute, a value judgement that has no shades of grey, a binary state. You are either a moron or you aren't. But it isn't necessarily permanent. You can be a moron one day and not a moron the next.

A moron can be someone that elicits an aching cringe in my brain by their actions. If you try too hard at something, if you enjoy telling people certain things about your personality a bit too much, you are probably a moron. At the same time, if you question nothing and accept everything as it is presented, slack-jawed and stubborn, you are also a moron. Sometimes when I read back to myself something I have written, recall something I have said, or spend too long thinking about something and playing out every possible outcome of a hypothetical situation in my head, I realise that I am an utter, utter moron.

I feel little or no guilt in deciding that someone is a moron, as a moron can come from any social stratum, any class, any age, race or nationality. A moron can be male or female, they can lay bare their moronic nature online or in the real world, they can be me, you or them, us or not even a real person. I seek not to assert any superiority over the moron, since I recognise the innate moron in myself and in everyone I meet or hear about or see on a screen or in a newspaper.

I'm not sure what the significance of all this is. I'm not sure why morons need to be identified, why moronic activity matters to me, or what a moron should do to correct the things they have been doing wrong. I don't even want to offer up any examples of morons, for in doing so I think it would make me a moron. In fact, just by writing this, indeed just by even thinking to write this, I have condemned myself as one of them. Whatever conclusion you have reached having read this, it probably makes you a complete and utter moron.

In a way I think that 'moron' may be the default setting of the human condition, and life is a series of fluctuations from this base existential state, a series of waveforms that periodically reach up, away from the zero line, but will inevitably return to it every time, sometimes gradually, sometimes hovering and oscillating above it, but normally just hurtling back down on a near vertical, over and over again. To be a moron is an absolute, and to be an absolute moron is inevitable.

TV Pitch Generator

2009-07-07T15:25:00.000-07:00

After carefully studying and analysing the output of the main television channels in the UK I have devised the following method of putting together a marketable format for the sort of easy to make show that can be broadcast all the time, on every channel, forever, to bring in massive viewing figures and huge revenue from advertising, phone voting, blanket press coverage etc. All you need is a 6 sided dice (use this if you don't have a real one) to select one of the 6 numbered options for each aspect.

(a) Programme to take the format of:
1 - Singing contest
2 - Forced co-habitation on desert island
3 - SAS survival-style competition
4 - Physical combat
5 - Cookery competition
6 - Beauty contest

(b)
Participants will be:
1 - D-list celebrities
2 - Screeching hysterical narcissistic women
3 - Children
4 - Self-proclaimed "hardmen"
5 - Underprivileged, uneducated, unemployed scum
6 - Smug Middle Englanders

(c)
Winners will be determined by:
1 - Nationwide phone vote
2 - Panel of judges (one smug cunt, one patronising prick, one arsehole)
3 - Gruelling assault course / quiz / practical task combo
4 - Totally random selection
5 - Fight to the death
6 - Weekly drawn-out process of elimination, with ridiculously long dramatic pauses before announcing who's leaving

(d) To be presented by:
1 - Ant & Dec
2 - Adrian Chiles
3 - Jeremy Kyle
4 - Tim Westwood
5 - Ross Kemp
6 - Terry Wogan

Then all you have to do is come up with a name for your programme and hey presto, you can pitch it to ITV. Do let me know what you come up with.

Some of my randomly generated pitches:

Terry Wogan presents "Britain's Hardest Hairdresser"

"Jeremy Kyle's Celebrity Cooking School"

"Westwood's Mad Crazy Chicken Cook-Off" with Danny Dyer, Bear Grylls and Stan Collymore

"Ross Kemp On Opera" featuring Carole Thatcher, John Leslie, Little Mo from 'Eastenders', Henry Kelly and Plácido Domingo

Customer Review - "Rambo: First Blood"

2009-07-07T12:23:00.000-07:00

This film combines gritty realism with a forest setting, creating an aesthetically pleasing yet serious story. Rocky Balboa plays the part of a Vietnam veteran who has quite literally lost his mind. My favourite scenes include the one where they fire a bazooka down a mine shaft, and the scene where Rocky kills a "loose cannon" police officer in a helicopter by throwing a rock at his head. However I thought the film was let down by an overly emotional conclusion, and I found his arrest at the end hard to believe, since an elite special forces soldier would surely take his own life rather than go to jail. For this reason I have rated this film: 3 stars.

Customer Review - "Dark Side Of The Moon"

2009-07-07T12:17:00.000-07:00

Pink Floyd is possibly the gayest name for a band I have ever heard. Which one is Floyd? This album does not really provide any answers, and the lyrics are mainly gibberish. Also there is only one gap in the music, which makes the tracklisting confusing. One track is written in 7/4 time, a time signature which is literally impossible to dance to. The artwork is really clichéd, like something from the 1970s, and the use of both guitars and synthesisers means that this album does not belong to any genre. If I was to remake this album, I would make it a lot simpler and break it up into individual tracks which could be released as singles, so I have given this album: 3 stars.

Customer Review - "On The Road"

2009-07-07T12:10:00.000-07:00

If Jack Kerouac had been writing today, his protagonist would probably have just taken a plane. And instead of all the references to jazz, he would probably have been more into R n B or hip hop. This makes it hard for me and my generation to relate to this book. I think I would probably rather watch 'Run's House' on MTV. Consequently I have awarded it: 3 stars.

Michael Jackson Dead - Omegle Reacts

2009-06-25T16:12:00.001-07:00

MICHAEL NOW DONT PERTUB THE BABYS

Salamander

2009-06-23T16:01:00.000-07:00

A man is speaking loudly in Chinese outside. I'm not sure what he's saying.

He is more than likely from the Chinese restaurant about three doors down. If I were to speculate based on the limited knowledge I have of this man, I would suggest that maybe he was shouting something to do with the restaurant. He might have said something about food, or cooking the food. But he sounded a bit angry.

I wondered if maybe it was the very old man who leans out of the door next to the restaurant watching people in the day time. I can't work out whether he is white but looks Chinese, or whether he is Chinese but looks white. He is very old and he plays on my mind like some recurring motif from a David Lynch film.

I wonder if a man so frail in appearance could manage the sustained volley of mid-level shouting that I can hear outside. I can't hear anyone talking back, so maybe he's on the phone. Or maybe he has just shot someone and he is delivering a series of pithy one liners to the corpse, like a victorious hero in a grainy 70s kung fu film stuck on a loop, but changing each time, and not overdubbed in English, but in the original Chinese.

But then surely I would have heard the shot. Maybe the old albino man held down the victim while the man who was probably just on the phone slashed him or her up with a huge knife from the kitchen. Maybe they are involved in a gang feud with Vietnamese weed dealers. I saw a thing in the Bristol Evening Post about them so it's perfectly plausible.

By the time I'm writing this paragraph the noise outside has stopped, quite a while ago. To be honest I don't know if I can even really describe it as shouting. I probably got mixed up in preconceived notions that seeing as you never seem to see a Chinese person being angry, if a Chinese person does sound angry then they are probably in a Triad death gang. Or maybe there is a body outside on the pavement. I will go and have a look out the window.

There is literally no-one outside. They must have hidden the body. In my mind I can see the chalky salamander man, all taut skin and wispy hair, staring murder at me.

Omegle

2009-04-07T15:06:00.000-07:00

The best way to approach Omegle is to try and destroy the conversation with your opening gambit.

Sometimes more perseverance is required.

Web 3.0

2009-04-06T13:53:00.000-07:00

The internet has apparently gone through two main stages of development.

I'm going to try and simplify them right down. The first stage was basically everything being put on the internet. By which I mean, we built a sort of infrastructure. We invented emails, to contact eachother, like sending a letter or using the phone. We stuck all our information on there. Kind of like libraries. This is where the knowledge is kept. We had browsers or home pages that acted as our individual home. We populated our new electronic landscape with shops, websites where you can buy things. People set up personal websites, to provide opinions. Kind of like talking in the pub, or scribbling on toilet walls. And news media set up websites so we could get news, sport etc online. This is simplified, other stuff filled in the gaps, but what we set up was essentially still grounded in the concepts of the real world. We just put everything on the internet.

The second stage, or Web 2.0 if you must insist on calling it that, is where we started to go beyond that into concepts that are unique to the internet. Ever expanding bandwidths, broadband, widespread availability of the internet, new technology and easily transferrable multimedia data opened the way for a flood of shit. A flood of shit that I am clearly actively engaged in, I should add, but shit all the same. Now everything is feeding, tagging, embedding and cross-referencing. The internet is awash with widgets, blogs, clients and content. The sum of human existence in the real world is boiled down into parcels of content, links in infinite chains that fly out across cyberspace, double back on themselves or intermesh in such complex patterns that you need a special program on your computer just to keep track of it all. User-created content nets fashioned from videos on YouTube, tweets on Twitter, groups and events on Facebook, interminable streams of opinion on Blogger and self-promotional sensory overload on Myspace, nets cast out by individuals, businesses, bands and politicians in the hope of briefly ensnaring some innocent passing online pedestrian for long enough that you can slap on the shackles of "being added as a friend", stamp someone as one of your "followers" to validate yourself through their perceived endorsement, or even move them to say something back in a "comment" or "reply".

But as the central driving force of the internet becomes ever stronger as market forces and e-democracy bring the same innovation that has shaped the real life evolution of man to the internet, the web becomes frayed at the edges. As companies get their heads round online economics, so do the scammers and fraudsters. Malicious programmers and anti-virus software companies are locked in perpetual struggle, prompting the question are they one and the same? Previously localised and marginalised perversions like child pornography, neo-Nazism and fundamentalist religion become co-ordinated and globalised, able to function more effectively in the untamed frontier of the human condition. Pornography and advertising dominate the landscape, quality control was left behind long ago and security is no more than an afterthought, locking the door when the horse has already bolted.

So what of the next step, of Web 3.0? Some people have already put forward their theories on the evolution of the internet. However I am not burdened with their expertise, and am thus able to base my predictions entirely on generalisations, suppositions and misunderstanding.

Antisocial Networking

There will inevitably be a backlash to the chummy, connected world of Facebook and Twitter. Microabuse will be the next big craze: using a Twitter-style interface, users will be able to search for people based on criteria like political views, favourite sports team, music tastes etc and trade insults, arguments and abuse with their 'abusers'. Posts are limited to 140 characters and are fed into a constantly updated abuse feed. You will even be able to receive abuse on your phone or directly to your Facebook page. Along with this new concept of antisocial networking there will be new technology. Text will largely be replaced by video chat, and whenever you are logged on to your computer your HD webcam will be continuously broadcasting live footage of you through feeds to all your favourite networking sites and clients, a practice known as 'vid-to-vid interfacing', or 'vid-vid'.

Expanding commercial uses

You probably think there's nothing left to sell on the internet, but, er, there is. You'll be able to use online brothels to choose a prostitute for the night, with the ability to filter your search using criteria such as price, age and rate of infection. Criminals will increasingly use the power of the internet to expand businesses previously confined to the real world. 'Gearwire' is a P2P client that connects you to drug dealers and enables you to see what they're holding, how much it will cost and how quickly they can get it to you. The popularity of the drug and your geographical location will affect the number of 'seeds' available for your requested drugload. Diehard fans of particularly obscure research chemicals may be sat there for hours waiting for the dealer to turn up, only to find on finally receiving the merchandise that it's actually 3 seconds of white noise.

Multi-platform meltdown

Most predictions for the future of the internet are positive, utopian and usually made by people who work in the industry. However, what no-one has realised is that the increasingly multi-platform, open-source, user-created nature of the web means that it is on the verge of collapsing in on itself. We will become so overwhelmed with the tide of incoming information and the demands of keeping all of our various feeds and datastreams updated that our relationships, belief systems and economic models outside in the real world will fall apart as we struggle to replicate the cohesion and immediacy of the internet. This combined with information overload and the homogenising of all formats, protocols and distribution channels online will leave us feeling hollow and devoid of purpose, as the sum of human knowledge and endeavour is hypercompressed into one incredibly dense and impenetrable pellet of uniform content, like an intellectual black hole from which no light can escape. At this point civilisation will rebel against the technology it has created and mankind will start anew, or 'Web 4.0' as it will be known.

These are just a few of my thoughts. I would be interested to know your own predictions, so please leave me some comments or follow my blog.

Moron Manifesto

2009-04-02T15:11:00.000-07:00

Comparing the comparisons

2009-01-22T15:29:00.001-08:00

This is what the post credit-crunch economy of the future will look like. Endless websites to compare prices, but no actual products to buy.

Map Art II

2009-01-19T15:37:00.000-08:00

'Independent Kidderminster Hospital & Health Concern gain'

2008 (mixed media)

Map Art

2009-01-19T15:17:00.000-08:00

The proposal would bring the region under the jurisdiction of the county of Breconshire. Bilingual signage will be installed as required.

Interpretive Dance Odyssey

2009-01-06T12:05:00.000-08:00

Interpretive dance odyssey
Just like Neil Morrissey
But not the other Morrissey
He's a whiney little clit

Neil Morrissey and Martin Clunes
Dancing to my new wave tunes
Watch as the dancer swoons
Didn't he shag Les Dennis' wife?

Yeah that's right, Amanda Holden
She enters stage right, her hair is golden
Right now it would be incredibly lazy to squeeze in the word 'embolden'
Poems are shit anyway

I'd much rather interpret my feelings with dance
I'd tour with my show, through the jazz clubs of France
Hold my whole body rigid as if in a trance
Then spin across the stage bashing into people like a fucking dick

Interpretive dance odyssey
In my defence I had drunk a lot of spirits that night

In memoriam

2008-12-12T16:09:00.000-08:00

As Woolworths, that dependable purveyor of crap, finally goes under, it's time to take a moment to remember some of the other great British retail institutions that are now sadly defunct.

Rumbelows - ceased trading, 1996

Radio Rentals - merged with Granada Ltd, 2000

John Menzies - retail arm bought by WH Smith, 1998

C & A - Withdrew from UK market, 2001. Still widely found abroad.

Gateway - Now known as Somerfield.

The idiots are winning

2008-12-10T15:18:00.001-08:00

This is the whole of the Internet summed up in one video.

New capitalism

2008-12-09T15:25:00.000-08:00

The ubiquitous BBC Business Editor and credit crunch profiteer Robert Peston-Silk has written an article SO IMPORTANT that you have to open it as a separate PDF file. The article, which you can read here, is called The New Capitalism and makes an interesting read if you've got the stamina or the understanding of economics to wade through all the terminology which, despite reading countless articles to try and understand the credit crunch, I still only really get about 10% of.

However the article left me a bit disappointed, I felt like I'd been titillated a bit by Sex-Peston, he teased me with this promise of some post-apocalyptic vision of the new world order that he never quite delivered. I expected Chinese armies marching into the Middle East to secure oil resources, Latin American socialism taking hold of the burgeoning Hispanic population in the US and sparking off civil war, wheelbarrows full of worthless pound notes, Lloyds TSB under the control of anarcho-syndicalist co-operatives, a totally green economy where everything is powered by miniaturised Large Hadron Colliders.

Instead he paints a drab and distinctly sensible picture of a world where taxpayers have a bit more say in how Bradford & Bingley is run but not that much say, they might, like, not repossess your house if you go over your overdraft or something. China will stop lending us all their savings and start spending them on, I don't know, cars and stuff. Maybe they'll start making cars in Africa for the Chinese to drive because wages in China will rise a bit. Apparently lots of people will be unemployed (this tends to happen during recessions), plus we'll have to co-operate a bit more with other countries, and stop entrusting the fate of the world's economy to greedy coke-hoovering prick nuggets in the now defunct financial sector.

All in all it's a disappointingly rational analysis from the Piston, all academic-style fence sitting and far from the earth-shattering, doom-mongering lunacy I was hoping for. The 'New Capitalism' is a bit like when Gillette bring out a new razor. It might have an extra blade and a vibrating pressure tip, but it's still essentially just a tool that you use to shave hair off your face.

Not racist

2008-12-08T15:28:00.000-08:00

The British National Party deny that they are a racist organisation. They're just ordinary hard-working British people who've seen their country go to the dogs and want to restore some national pride. They haven't got anything against foreigners or people with dark skin, they're not violent thugs, they're just brave enough to say what everyone else is thinking, right?

Here's a few genuine extracts from their website:

Greece Suffers under Wave of Asylum Seeker-Caused Violence

Unlike soft-touch Britain, some European nations do actually make half-hearted attempts to protect their working folk from being undermined by masses of ‘cheap’ Eastern European labour.

It seems that as soon as the white population of an African nation is driven out then they go back to their roots: tribal warfare, poverty and dictatorship.

The British National Party exists to secure a future for the indigenous peoples of these islands in the North Atlantic which have been our homeland for millennia. We use the term indigenous to describe the people whose ancestors were the earliest settlers here after the last great Ice Age and who have been complemented by the historic migrations from mainland Europe.

We will link foreign aid with our voluntary resettlement policy, whereby those nations taking significant numbers of people back to their homelands will need cash to help absorb those returning.

Our 2000 mosques - more than any other country in Europe - and the 12,000 seat mega-mosque planned for London by 2012 are not really in preparation for the Olympic Games to be held here. Terrorists who attempt and sometimes succeed in killing us in our own country were once only from abroad where we could at least exercise a degree of control over their ingress. Now, they are home-grown. In number.

Within very few years then, Britons will no longer have the majority vote and the burgeoning non-white population will inevitably vote in a government, culture, religion, way of life and system of law fundamentally different from ours.

The Muslims are as crafty as a barrel load of monkeys. They know they only have to mention the words “good relations” and this looney shower in power will throw money at them.

Just watched the videos and realised exactly why the UAF and Antifa hate us: we’re the best of British! White working class people, a noble breed, and one that will ultimately be the saviour of this besieged nation!

Again, coming from a Muslim - a group known for pathetic educational non-achievement - that’s a rank piece of hypocritical, impertinent, ignorant garbage.

DIY Christmas

2008-12-07T15:35:00.000-08:00

With the recession biting hard, Christmas is going to fuck you in the finance hole harder than ever this year. With this in mind, here's some top tips on how to make your own thrifty gifts, both saving money and showing your friends or relatives that you really care.

1. Take a blank or unwanted CD, cover in a layer of PVA glue, and attach attractive sea shells for an eye-catching table ornament or wall hanging.

2. Cut an old sock in half and sew one end of one of the halves shut, creating two new and unique socks.

3. Wrap a lump of coal in several layers of clingfilm. It's now a gemstone!

4. Take an empty Fruit Corner pot and fill the main compartment with houmous and the corner with small cubes of celery. A quick way to create a mini health food hamper: both tasty and practical!

5. Attach a brass hook to a tent pole with a length of string for a quirky fishing rod. Quite a catch!

6. A couple of old bike saddles mounted on flat bases make great portable arm rests. You'll never need a chair again!

7. Punch a few holes in a plastic bag and you've got a cheap and easy to store alternative to a colander.

8. Kids can make their own fun with homemade lego. All you need are matchboxes, some old watch batteries and a glue gun.

9. You'll never lose your TV remote again with the remote control holster. Just staple a pencil case on to a sturdy leather belt! Can be worn around the waist or slung over the shoulder. You're a TV gunslinger!

10. A coathanger covered in sandpaper might sound ridiculous, but you'll be the one laughing when you're sanding down those hard to reach corners!

They're just characters

2008-12-03T13:27:00.000-08:00

I was watching Charlie Brooker's Screenwipe last night where he was interviewing TV writers, and they were talking about how they create characters. I found it interesting, but I can't be bothered to write a whole script or novel or whatever, so I've just come up with some characters. That's all they are, just characters.

Moira Tulip - A woman with a tulip for a clit.

Declan Hannegan - A 1970s police chief from Boston. Has a pet rat called Clarence.

Sean Phaze - A Welsh trance DJ. Only wears clothes made of black rubber.

Gary George - A used car dealer from Essex who moonlights as a stripper.

Marc Brantano - Gay R'n'B singer. Star of Sky One teen drama set in Majorca.

Shift - Cyborg porn star. Has a South African accent.

Lance Frantic - Canadian wrestler. Peroxide blonde crew cut and pierced nipples.

Barry Small - East End thug. Hates Turks, Guinness and dogs.

Mistress Lumba Lumba - Indonesian prostitute turned politician. Fucks lots of old men to get to the top.

Bruce Nelson - Australian goalkeeper. Plays by his own rules. Sweats.

Ryan Huntcroft - Some cunt off Heroes who can shit out fireballs or something.

Bog Standard

2008-12-02T15:33:00.000-08:00

I've taken a bit of an interest recently in toilet wall graffiti. I once read somewhere that toilet wall graffiti could be considered the purest form of art, since it is done neither for financial reward nor for personal acclaim. This is an interesting point, though one that only hints at the apparent complexities of the medium.

Evaluating these two aspects is relatively simple. As far as I'm aware no-one has ever been paid for scrawling above a urinal in biro in between the fifth and sixth pint of Blackthorn. You are unlikely to be commissioned by an advertising agency to come up with a product placement solution involving carving a loose approximation of your name into a wooden cubicle door. Similarly, you're not going to find one of these pieces in an auction room or on eBay.

A lack of ambition in terms of personal acclaim is more open to debate. Presumably, by writing your name, or that of the organisation, sports team or gang you belong to, you're gunning for some kind of affirmation in the eyes of others. The observer may perhaps be inclined to think better of you if they see you've daubed your name in between the pubes and toilet roll holders. And if they don't know who you are, maybe they'll wish they did. Hmm.

The thing that really fascinates me, however, is what the perpetrator is thinking or intending as they reach out and place their mark on the wall. Like the person who, in a pub near where I live in Bristol, wrote 'Nailsea badlands crew', really small, in biro, just above the urinal. I had images of some terrifying band of post-apocalyptic outlaws, riding across across a vast and arid plain on horseback, striking fear into the hearts of the people of Nailsea. Yet somehow this didn't sit with the image of the bloke I had in my head, rather the worse for the wear, one hand against the wall to prop up his drunken body, the other holding the pen, eyes screwed up in concentration as he spelled out the words in his head, hot piss cascading down the front of his jeans in a tragic misprioritisation that will only become apparent back in the bar, ten disgusted stares later.

And what of the single word offenders, the person who writes 'Fuck' or 'Shag' or 'Gaylord'? Why did those people even have a pen on them in the first place? How did they narrow down the entire English lexicon to one pithy nugget of cathartic expletive? Maybe it's just a simple territorial act, akin to a cat spraying in a bush to let other cats know it was there. Maybe they think, 'Right, I've written 'TWAT' in every pub in Hackney, so I've the got the whole place fucking sorted now. It's all covered'. I guess this might be an offshoot of tagging, that practice whereby you spray your name, or pseudonym, in such a way that there's not a chance someone will be able to read what it says, preferably on as inaccessible a piece of wall as possible. Take a train into London and you'll be amazed at the risks people will take to leave their illegible calling card every five metres along a length of railway. Again I think it's territorial, and the risk taking also implies that this is a person not to be messed with.

So is the same true of toilet graffiti? I've never walked into a pub toilet and seen someone in the act. I'd love to know what the person who wrote 'Benton is a spaz bender wally' looks like, but I know that I never will, that that opportunity has been and gone. There must be an element of risk involved, the adrenaline rush knowing that someone could walk in on you at any second. Your reaction if caught would surely have to involve some amount of shame, unless you were constructing something particularly profound or aesthetically appealing. You could maybe equate it to the mythical act of the 'danger wank', where, it is claimed, you phone your mum and tell her she has to come home immediately, and try and knock one out before she catches you in the act, thus eliminating for the rest of your life the possibility that you can ever look your mother in the eye. It's not so much a search for personal acclaim as for self-affirmation, of making yourself feel alive through risking public humiliation.

There are other explanations. Many would call it simple vandalism, an act lacking in any intelligence or merit. Others would suggest it indicates a troubled mind, that it acts as a release, or even a cry for help. Whatever it is that motivates a person to write shit graffiti in a public toilet, it seems a convincing argument that this impulse possesses a purity and a stylistic freedom that other art forms are simply no longer able to achieve.

So next time you're in a pub and you need a slash, keep an eye out for the newest exhibits on the walls. And maybe take a biro with you, just in case it dawns on you just how much you need to tell the world that 'Ya pullin me fuckin pisser maite geez'.

Mark Lawrenson - an apology

2008-11-27T15:08:00.000-08:00

I'm so sorry.

Haberdasher Carbuncle

2008-11-27T14:50:00.000-08:00

Haberdasher Carbuncle slipped shoddily up betwixt the mauve felt underlinings. Soft touch and all filibuster peristyle, he nevertheless shook and was he any the worse off? This is what thousands of taxpayers demanded to know. So, all in all, quaffing a furry nebuchadnezzar for old time's sake and reminiscing all shuddery and forlorn, perhaps, he mused, he was getting too old for all this. Let's list all of the television programmes we watched when we were eight years old.

Five years earlier and six years too soon was far removed from the current idiosyncratic emotional zeitgeist forced upon his troubled cerebellum witheringly and, according to regional broadcasters and suchlike, probably erroneously. Something of a simpering overindulgent twat? Certainly, but that's never stopped the constant flux, verging on a torrent, overriding every barrier the Environment Agency had erected to protect his home. You are three times as likely to die from carbon monoxide poisoning if you don't wear shoes.

Whether it was a base linguistic need, a primal urge to articulate the redundant verbal jetsam of the cognitive process, or whether it was just another tentative attempt at sports rehabilitation farming subsidy and then lost in another maelstrom of frustrating nothing. Like writer's block with the values inverted, like the bits of cheese left on the grater so difficult to scrub clean, all this story serves to highlight is the likelihood that people will read this to the end and wonder why they bothered.

My life in texts

2008-11-26T10:47:00.000-08:00

When you scroll through the sent messages on my phone, it displays the name of the person I texted and the first few words of the message. Scrolling through these without stopping to read the whole message amuses me, so I've gone through them and listed the best ones below.

I think cluj is my new fa

Yeah its shit but could b

Can't,i'm out gettin drun

Still in a bit of a daze

how's your rash?

Ched evansio?

Did u see bruce parry in

Operation 'brockie and s

He's an idiot.he drinks t

Geoff,ian here.currently

6 suitcases and a copy of

Head shot,double tap.i'm

Geoff,ian here.i'm still

That's bare weak

A handful of cocks

The most irritating child

Obrigado!it's sunny here

STOP TELLING ME WHAT

Bloody hell that sounds l

Move and fire,move and

They're called scotch egg

Do it in a plastic bag an

Baked bean

It's what sid's head looks

Hi mate my name's tom,t

I'm something of a homo

We've just smoked a blu

The state i'm in after th

Tally ho biggles.we're at

You're a slippery toad.i'

Fw: Pictionary kriss akabu

WHAT'S GOING ON? THI

That's quite literally me

Are you in dawlish?x

who are you?

2008-11-25T15:14:00.000-08:00

who are the people who break the light in the little box with the button you push at pelican crossings so you can't tell if someone's already pressed it?

and who are the people who stand waiting at pelican crossings without pushing the button? these people would be stood there forever if it wasn't for people like me coming along and pressing the button.

who are the people who take biros into pub toilets to write really small graffiti above the urinals?

who are the people that use those binoculars you get on the back of the seats at theatres?

who are the people who need such a wide choice of magazines about carp fishing in wh smith?

who are the people that leave single gloves on railings?

who are the people constantly recording every tv channel live in case something worthy of posting on youtube happens?

who are the people who let off fireworks in the day time?

and who are the people that break all the locks in nightclub toilets?

if you are one of these people i'd love to hear from you.

Actually

2008-11-25T15:12:00.000-08:00

I wrote this years ago but I still think it's funnier than most of the stuff I've posted on this blog:

29 New Ways To Spend Time

1. Take a car for a test drive, dump it in a river, then go back to the car dealership with a pushbike and act all indignant.
2. Cut off your eyelids and sew them over your nostrils.
3. Make a newspaper out of bread.
4. Name your firstborn Crusher if it's a boy, or Dominator if it's a girl.
5. Realign the planets so the solar system looks like a big cock.
6. Get your gay on.
7. Replace a friend's pint with a jar of locusts while he's in the toilet.
8. Climb inside an incubator in a hospital maternity unit and demand to speak to the King.
9. Offend the entire population of Japan with an ill-advised joke involving sushi, small penises and Nagasaki.
10. Feed the birds. Then eat them.
11. Dress up as a cathedral.
12. Shit on a treadmill.
13. Eat every element in the periodic table.
14. Train a stroke victim to hunt weasels.
15. Sing happy birthday in Hebrew to a tree.
16. Video yourself opening a tin of tuna.
17. Pitch a tent in a bank.
18. Sniff a civil servant's knee.
19. Eat fucking loads of toothpaste.
20. Ask a policeman for a tit wank.
21. Mow the carpet.
22. Go to Prague. I hear it's lovely this time of year.
23. Draw a new map of the world, where each country is replaced by a different mathematical equation.
24. Denounce the ideas of medieval German pastor Martin Luther from inside a giant chocolate egg, every Wednesday.
25. Replace your passport photo with a crudely drawn picture of an abacus.
26. Make a nun bleed.
27. Tie your kangaroo down, sport. Then shoot it.
28. Write a list of your favourite types of tree in a car park.
29. Speak only in binary.

The markets today

2008-10-21T15:40:00.000-07:00

The Cac-40 continues to recover following the massive injection of liquid cheese by the French government, while the FTSE index was haemorrhaging wildly following the collapse of compound interest rate bonds on the wet market and a big hedge quite literally spilling the guts of fixed-rate high street mortgage prospectors. Further East, the Russian government was forced to suspend all trading in lead following a default on all payments made since 2004, while Gazprom announced massive cuts in dependent fund indexes across the board, triggering a run on African heavy metals which is expected to last until Tuesday. Over the next few days the Japanese will be announcing their own bail-out plan, which will involve shoes and is expected to have a knock-on effect on Swiss poetry and the months of May, July and November. Several Australian banks have now short sold all their capital to raise funds for the renationalisation of all rate holders (subject to credit intervention in government deleverage initiatives), though this raises the spectre of three times as many recessions over the next few weeks, with the real economy expected to be axed in a cabinet reshuffle. The next four days will be crucial, with a series of managed collapses expected to test the resolve of Nasdaq equity bandits, already reeling from the news that gay marriage is to be merged in the US with gun control laws and debt-based buy-to-let shortfall turnover.

Vox populi

2008-10-21T14:22:00.000-07:00

No commentary needed

2008-10-15T13:52:00.000-07:00

Sometimes you don't need to make fun of people, they do all the hard work for you. Here is a selection of comments posted in response to articles on the Daily Mail's website.

i have worked all my life and never claimed benifits. I am sick of these people. Iam sick of our gutless government. Jeramy clarkson for prime minister.

- leslie robinson, doncaster, 15/10/2008 15:45

This country has gone way too far down this road, and it's the reason criminals are literally getting away with murder.

- John, Lancashire, 15/10/2008 14:38

This is what the British authorities do best - bend over backwards for minorities, and deny their Christian heritage.

- John Ballard, Nottingham, UK, 15/10/2008 11:35

This country has a cheek to call itself a democracy. All our soldiers that fought in two world wars would have surrended or refused to fight had they seen the state of britain today.

- Gary, dorset, 15/10/2008 10:54

With so much unemployment predicted, there is no excuse to allow continued immigration into the country. What are Labour going to do about that?

- Sue M, Watford, Herts., 15/10/2008 14:27

We will see a lot more teachers taking sexual advantage of pupils from now onwards - they're no longer even getting jail terms. Absolutely no deterrent whatsoever.

- Renee, Melbourne, Australia, 14/10/2008 21:37

To die in prison is the answer for these animals.

- Mike, ex pat, Khon Kaen, Thailand, 15/10/2008 13:01

If a woman expects me to look at no other, then the least she can do is keep herself attractive.

And before you all start, I respect my wife enough to keep myself in shape too.

- Andy, Lincs, UK, 15/10/2008 16:14

And a bumper selection of tributes to recently deceased Austrian neo-Nazi Jörg Haider:

He was an exeptionally charistmatic man! I am still very shocked about his death... May he rest in peace!

- Hedy L., U.S.A., 11/10/2008 21:28

Haidar is a sad loss for all who value freedom and a future for European people.

- Ian Millard, Exeter UK, 13/10/2008 13:06

One thing is for sure. In this big democratic Europe those who dare to disagree with the established mainstream, PC views are immediately ostracized and labelled far-right, nazis and so on. What is wrong with Europeans wanting to protect their identity and heritage?

- Miina, Brussels, 13/10/2008 13:27

How the financial crisis unfolded

2008-10-13T15:09:00.001-07:00

British pound to be privatised

2008-10-08T15:24:00.000-07:00

As the global economic crisis deepened today, the British government unveiled radical plans to privatise the national currency, the British pound.

Chancellor Alistair Darling made the announcement Wednesday afternoon after protracted meetings with the Prime Minister and the governor of the Bank of England, and the measures were rushed through the House of Commons as the government frantically attempts to prevent the economy from flatlining.

Under the proposals, the ownership of the nation's currency will be transferred to a number of private companies, with the bidding for contracts in each region due to begin next week.

Among the first to declare an interest in administering the currency was Virgin, who are expected to bid for the right to currency across the Midlands and Southwest England, where the pound would be renamed the Branson. In the Northeast a deal is being brokered with Newcastle Brown Ale, while Scotland and the South coast of England will now trade in Gaviscon pence and Wales will join the euro. In London the pound will continue to fall under the jurisdiction of the Bank of England, but ten pound and five pound notes will be merged to create a new fifteen pound 'supernote'.

Speak your potential: be think-ready.

2008-10-08T13:21:00.000-07:00

In today's cut-throat competitive job market, you need to maximise your business potential by not just thinking, but speaking outside of the box. Merely being talented is not enough. In fact it's not even strictly necessary. You need to be able to deliver your pitch in a language that businesspeople understand and will respond to, which is why The World On A Stick has put together this e-résumé of essential think-ready business vocabulary.

Salmoning - The opposite of cascading, salmoning refers to the process by which information is transmitted back up the management structure, from low level employees to bosses, e.g. 'I need you guys to put together a report on our forward sales, then salmon it up to the relevant managers'.

Wet sheet - A spreadsheet put together just minutes before a meeting.

Bowling for a twat - This cricketing term has been borrowed to refer to when one has to explain a very simple concept very slowly to a fellow colleague of lesser intelligence.

Calculationate - To calculate a given figure based on the interaction of other contributing figures. See also the derived term calculationation.

Working out at the ideas gym - A more motivational way of expressing the concept of brainstorming.

Iron briefcase - A job no-one wants to do, as in 'Tony sold me an iron briefcase with this audit'.

Thinkology - The application of innovative ideas to the use of technology. Known in the US as thinkometrics.

Sales tank - A three dimensional space in which sales staff are able to map out their own individual paths of consumer delivery through interaction with and empathy towards their working environment.

Bursting the pig - Firing the least productive members of a business or team.

Donkey punch - Used to refer to an unexpected pension shortfall discovered following retirement.

Christ marketing - Expresses a marketing ethos which focuses on very short, often abstract campaigns which leave a lasting impression on the target demographic.

The credit crunch

2008-10-05T15:42:00.001-07:00

Apparently Carole Vorderman is leaving Countdown because they're not paying her enough. Unfortunately the credit crunch means employers are having to cap their wage bills and take on less staff. Carole may remember that, as the face of daytime TV all-in-one debt consolidation advertising, she is solely and entirely responsible for the credit crunch.

What goes around comes around, Carole Vorderman.