Allowing criminals to do-good.

Just below accidentally eating my own head in 'things i don't ever want to have to deal with in my short and futile existence'; is do-gooders. Well aren't they just a cunch of bunts. For people who strive for making life happier, better and more equal for others, they do a spectacular job at making me woefully unhappy. There are two types of do-gooder.

The first seem to be fairly easy to categorise, but more importantly spot; on clocking group of them heading in your direction, you'll almost certainly wish to hurl your self into the nearest shrubbery. The common 'category one' do-gooder is very much similar to the common church-goer. The boredom just oozes out of every aspect of their life. Their grey clothing, their lego-man like hair cuts, 'would you like tea or coffee?', 'just water thanks'. I gnaw violently on my fist at the thought of the conversation at the dinner table, or in the car, what do they talk about! Category one is a dangerous category in that a normal person, dropped into this life of cardboard-eating greyness, runs the risk of biting their own legs off in desperation. These are the kind responsible for the constant murdering, raping and general debauchery we see in society. Not them personally obviously, they couldn't wipe their own arses with out being offended, but their constant christian line of thinking; 'treat others as you would like to be treated'.

This has resulted in a state that once hung-drew and quartered people being watered down, to almost homeopathic levels, and that now gives an 8 year sentence for a fatal, 37 wound stabbing. Oh you bastards. Why are these psychopaths, that are clearly no good for society and are beyond mental rehabilitation not being either indefinitely locked away or alternatively given the death sentence. 'Well they are still a person', No! the minute the other persons life was taken in cold blood, he stopped being a rational minded person. Also it is a fallacy that we instantly become 'their level' if we killed them in the name of justice. It is not to be compared. It is not as if i am suggesting we hang innocent people for looking at us funny, only then would it be comparable.

I'm sure it is all well and good for a do-gooder to stand there and spout flowery bollocks about how we all do wrong and how we should forgive, up until the point where it is their husband being mutilated and spread up the walls, or his wife being brutally raped with a foot up her arse. We shouldn't lock him away for ever and the death penalty is completely out of the question? Ok, this repeat offending, hammer wielding nutcase will be living with you from now on.... i wouldn't look him in the eyes mind, that's when he starts trying to eat people...

It is only fair that those who don't want to see a return of the death penalty fund for the institutions in which we can safely install these no-good loonies, and stop just expecting the prison system to replicate like bacteria and for institutions just to fabricate out of nothingness.

Category two are the younger, Che Guevara-esque arsemonkeys that 'fight for rights' in a manner that is so hypocritical, every time it is exhibited, it gives me the knee-jerk reaction of very almost blowing my arsehole out in an unstoppable wave of fecal artillery. These are the ones responsible of campaigning against the making of armaments, on the grounds they cause harm, by violently attacking precautionary police. These are the band of wank-each-other-off brothers that campaign against animal cruelty by vandalising a persons house and using arson. As you can see in both cases, these unhinged, revolutionary minded psychopaths display irrational hypocrisy to get their all important 'message' out there. Do they have a message? Or are they just looking for a fight... It seems to me that these younger do-gooders are not do-gooders at all; they are hate-inciting, shoulder-chipped maniacs, looking for an excuse to be violent but not brought down.

When the British empire (the finest and most expansive seen by the world) was at it's peak, the policy was to send criminals abroad, even for thieving...to the front line. Well it is clear then what we should be doing! Stop qualifying teenagers as professional arseholes with ASBOs and ship them out to the front line. I suppose there is a problem in arming these already unstable, misbehaving youths with guns. Then we arm them with an assortment of rudimentary weaponry; swords, spears we can create a table-reversed Rawks Drift. Fuck it, you category two do-gooders can go with them as you're always looking for a fight! In fact anyone caught displaying testosterone filled violence in Britain can be shipped eastward to fight the front line war and show how hard they really are.... I'll sit here and watch your balls shrink and you plead for a weapon more substantial than a cocktail stick...or a ticket home. The Jeremy Kyle show can convert effortlessly into a recruiting service and no longer will our forces be suffering the drought. Crime rates would plummet because offenders are being shipped out to the east and potential offenders would begin to reconsider their actions, whilst all the while our gains in the middle east would be more fruitful than ever.

So we won't return to the death penalty, and our prison system is clogging like Johnny Vegas' arteries? Fine. The elite unit for special operations in the middle east can be made up of our finest, most insane repeat offending psychos. Apart from getting them out of our country and leaving us all the safer for it, i see two benefits. One, we are allowing them to reach their pinnacle, to fulfill their life's purpose for we are allowing them to do what they do best; murdering. And two, imagine the fear that would be installed into the enemy when they see the corpses of their comrades being eaten and their entrails thrown about by ' Psycho squadron'.... we'd be left with no opposition come Christmas 2010.

It's All About The Game

Shamefully, i am a self confessed gamer. And to add a twist to the knife of douchebagery, I'm a PC gamer; the worst kind . There is something so desperately infectious about the fastest growing section of the media. Gaming, in essence, provides you with the opportunity to fulfill childhood thoughts that have had the benefit of having a script, a storyline and sensory enhancement all injected into it so as to not strain your already vegetable like brain. I have always played games, since the days of the legendary Nintendo '64, through the distinct averageness of the the ps1, into reign of the triumphant ps2 and out the other side into the equally impressive years of the xbox 360.

Now and again a game comes along that shakes the four-eyed, virgin world; the Grand Theft Auto series, the Halo series, and most recently the Call Of Duty series. Although it's been going since 2003, its popularity has soared since it's modern edition to the series in 2007. Unlike most games, 'COD' is one of the few that one can get obsessive over playing because of its near faultless online facility. COD is essentially a war game, with scope stretching from WW2 to fictional (perhaps foreseeable) modern warfare. In caveman terms, you go around with guns, shooting other people.

For the un-initiated, online gaming is where you can play the game with people all over the world, provided they have internet, and the game of course. Who ever said gamers didn't have friends! They don't. This online gaming is one way to incite hatred, over nothing. Never in all my life have i heard so many hypothetical things going in to and violating someone else's mum whilst their dad embarks on equally distressing acts. I've seen death threats and racial abuse.

The gaming community is impressive in size. They have their own language, personas and hierarchy; Starting, as everyone must, at the 'Noob' who can only dream of being part of a 'Clan'. Again, for those who may not be familiar with gaming terminology, this will seem like I'm speaking in Hebrew. A 'Noob' is someone who displays incomprehensible ineptitude, one that jeopardizes victory or just deserves highlighting and segregating. It's the lowest of the low. A 'Clan' is a collection of players who have earned respect enough to enter an official team, of course, Clans vary in both size and skill, they all, however, are gimps.

I have spent around a fortnight of my life on the COD series alone, counting only online play . A fortnight doing the same mind-numbing thing over and over. Even if you're playing like you're using your feet, you find your self dying over and over like some poorly funded, modern take on the Somme, you persist, for hours, but you find yourself slowly winding up with rage until you want to just hammer your testicles to the desk out of frustration. (I don't even want to begin thinking about how long, in total, i have spent playing games or why i have done so, I'd just cry, a lot.)

Despite having the ability to foster such rage, create hatred towards someone you have never met and will never meet and to ruin a persons social standing if widely known about, i genuinely believe gaming has worth. It allows the venting of taboo feelings, feelings of violence. A lot of reports and studies show violent games leading to the expression of violent behaviour, especially amongst children, i think it's the opposite. Whilst perhaps not healthy for the pacifist within children, if an adult can exhibit a behaviour that's not socially acceptable in actual life, even if it's within the gaming realm, it allows relief of this desire, it allows the feeling to be played out. After all, games are certainly moving towards the teaching of morals, violence is not being glamorised but instead discouraged.

Gaming is something to be ashamed about, there is no question. The way to get around this is to keep your gaming presence completely separate from your social life. Keep it hidden from people that might judge you but never forget it. Others will play, they just need to be discovered, you just need to locate and overturn their rock. It's a complex game of knowing your target audience, of sussing people out. Once initiated, a gaming chat will last, covering the days of the N64 up to the most recent of games and you will discover something about every game on the way. If you value peoples perceptions of you, the trick is to be discreet... why not write a blog on it?

I'm a celebrity get me...a trampoline.

50 years ago the most valued people in society were an individuals family and the Queen. Now, however, our culture seems to have bumped the value of so called 'celebrity personalities' to staggeringly unaffordable heights. They get praised and followed like demi-Gods and their followers, these vultures of all things famous continue like the undead snuffing out fresh brain. To couple nicely with this hierarchy of madness, what constitutes a 'celebrity' has also wandered from it's traditional definition of someone who has talent, talent enough to be payed for. It wasn't so long ago that i found myself watching a Kerry Katona Iceland advert and realised the pointlessness of it all. What does she even do? Apparently she used to be a singer...perhaps 'used to be' gives insight to the quality of said 'singing'. Yet since her musical career has ground to a halt, she still clings on desperately to the highly sought after 'celeb' status, unbelievably. On my list of 'top 100 good for nothing people who need to be attacked with a wrench' she rates fairly highly, just below Vanessa Feltz (she's is marginally worse for she genuinely believes she has worth to society, she couldn't have less), and just above that free-loading, band-wagoning rip-off merchant Timberland (does he write anything of his own or just force is fat fingers into everyone else's pies?). Not only can Kerry not sing, she is the first women in the history of television to be out-acted by 12 sausage rolls.

Liam Gallagher: now there's a twat. He really is a bastard among men. Usually, when i talk of celebrities, of how i have a burning desire to lash at them without constraint, i am referring to their persona, their tv presence; if i bumped into one in the street, the speed at which I'd become a jelly-legged, star-struck hypocrite would be breath-taking . Gallagher, on the other hand, i genuinely hate. I do hope i never have to bump into his sunken, gormless face topped with his medieval stable boy hair-cut on the street, for my actions would surely see several fixed life sentences.

Is my hate that irrational? No. He really is a fucking idiot of inconceivable proportions. An installment of Would i lie to you? Opened my eyes further to his complete worthlessness. He once asked at the front desk of, presumably a five star hotel, if he could, through room service, order a trampoline to his room. Now if i were that clerk, i would feel compelled to visit Gallaghers room, and set fire to his face, and probably his brother, whilst shouting 'of course you may not have a trampoline, of course you may not!' . The soul crushing truth is likely to be that the hotel actually tried to locate and deliver a trampoline to his room. I shudder at the thought of it.

So what is he famous for? Oasis of course. Their legacy is undeniably far reaching and in the last two decades, their success unrivalled . But why? I don't want to know the reasons for the creation of the universe, nor the answer to the riddle of the space-time continuum. Instead why everyone bows downs and worships Oasis like deities. Gallaghers monotonous, droning voice serves only to spiral me into both depression and anger whilst the unrelenting chord progressions grind on my conscience as if i had murdered a small child. The worst of their crimes is not this however, instead it is the constant desire of Gallaghers to become the modern Beatles. I doubt he even likes the beatles! Judging by his music he certainly doesn't. Maybe Gallagher bears more intelligence that I'm allowing credit for, perhaps Oasis is a satire, a parody, homage to the Beatles through Oasis' juxtaposed, 'how not to be' music. I think not. Instead i reckon Gallagher wants to be like the Beatles in the sense of their domination of the music world, in the sense of being an unstoppable force rather than being musically adept. This comparison was inevitable also, the critics has no choice. When Gallagher opted to dress like he was from the era of the flower-children, where else were they to head? Perhaps it is just not for me, there is clearly something 'right' about the 'Oasis' enterprise for their fan base is unscaleably sized. Oh well, just another one of my frustrations left bleeding in the gutter.

This said, Oasis had to hire ex- SAS, lions of men to act as bodyguards after repeated attacks and threats to members of the band. Maybe that clerk didn't take to kindly to the trampoline request after all.

Maybe then, it is the mimicking of celebrity's bastard like behaviour that is the cause of the 'younger' generation's decline in manners and increase in foul-mouthed, alcohol induced actions. Maybe i gave 'the Boohbahs' a overestimated role in this. I certainly believe that celebrities play a much larger role than they did in influencing teenagers, everyday they are rammed down our throats from every angle, but this is not a profound view. It's not so much that their temperament has altered, Elvis was a party hard, nympho just as Marilyn Monroe was, and Zeppelin were doing more drugs than that gonk Pete Doherty could possibly dream of doing. It's just that they get more coverage, in radio, tv, papers, and because they live the life they want to, soaked in money and martini, it is only natural that they become role models for the young and dreaming.

...Man i hate Liam Gallagher...

Mr DJ won't you turn the music on....

Music has to be one of life's higher pleasures. If, with the benefit of knowing what music provides for us, it was suddenly taken away, prised from our hands, i really would be struggling to get through the endless wave of hours that are thrown at me without eating my foot. I like a lot of music, and I'm not just one of those people who says that, who claims to 'be into everything' but actually couldn't even spell the word music, let alone maintain a conversation about it. I really do, Folk, Metal, Rock, Blues, Bluegrass, Motown (when Boyz II Men exploit it) and even classical. If it has a catchy melody, i will listen to it. If it has strange timing, i will listen to it. However in recent years, there has been a hasty decline in not just 'good' music, but music in general. It is not that 'music' is not being produced, in fact the amount of 'music' that is churned out each month has reached new heights, it is that this 'music' is not music at all.

There is, i feel, a distinction to be made. It is instilled in human nature that much of our focus is on sex. It is an evolutionary drive, passed down from generation to generation to help us sustain and increase our numbers where we can. But, it is not always alright to express this drive; you may like the look of the girl you keep gawking at, but the minute you unzip your trousers, start licking your lips and begin trying to lick her 'lips', you're getting locked up. As such, we have strived for ways of having sex without having sex. Our solution? Dance. (Perhaps it should be said now that dance is also instilled in us to an extent, acting as mating rituals and so on).

So throughout time, we have had the urge to dance, to move rhythmically and provocatively or indeed eloquently, but with a member of the opposite sex all the same. And of course, this rhythmically based movement is aided by the addition of music, of a set rhythm. With this basis, of music and dance being entwined throughout history, the two have become near inseparable, so closely linked, we can effortlessly blunder back and forth, between the two, without even realising it.

And this what i think has happened. With our culture as centred around sex and as comfortable with the concept of sex as it is, and with our culture as technologically advanced as it is, it was only a matter of time before we made the unrecoverable step into face-punchingly bad, digital dry-sex noise.

I could begin stamping my foot to the first track off a dance album, and not stop until the end of the album. It's relentless in its invasion of the ears, and as mundane and monotonous as eating dry oats, listening to Morse code spell out 'Tinie Tempah wouldn't know decent music if it came up on shit on his head'.

On that note, i would like to use 'Tinie Tempah' as evidence that music has taken a great turn for the worse. No matter how much i would like to blame the man however, this simply isn't feasible since his songs are written by machines. He did write his lyrics though, and brought us such classic lines as; "I live a very very very wild lifestyle" and "I've got so many clothes i keep some in my aunt's house". There is such insight from Tinie there, such profound words, unrivaled even by Eric Clapton's lyrics mourning the death of his infant son, or Led Zeppelin's existential lyrics in 'stairway to Heaven'. Having listened to Tinie's 'Pass out', i felt compelled to seek out something that would raise my cerebral activity somewhat, such as picking my ball sack.

Tinie is not the only guilty one in today's 'music' industry that uses machines with which he constructs his work however . Almost every song on recent radio features a voice auto tuner, the gadget that gave Kanye the ability to sing (i think it speaks volumes that his live performances of his 'singing' album have gone down like a well lit orphanage). Even Fergie, a person who can sing un-assisted, who has a good voice, has resorted to this new-era bastard machine. When the singing is done by a machine, and the background bass and melody is also produced by a machine, there is nothing left for a human to do... the only reason Rihanna still gets paid for 'her' songs, is that she provides the legs, tits and arse of the record and video. This synthy, digital mess is not 'music' in the same way playing FIFA '10 is not football.

Perhaps it is just a phase. Perhaps there is still light at the end of this long, dark tunnel. Even in these dark times there are glimmers of hope; personally i think Professor Green's "i need you tonight" is an absolute triumph within the 'popular music' genre. His masterstroke is that he has used an old, classic track with melody and groove for his backing, and in the midst of the piles of ball-aching, machine music, it sounds both different and catchy because of it. Yes he hasn't written it still, but i would much prefer to hear an old musical track with a new spin, than a brand new track that just blends in with all the other disgraceful bollocks that has come out recently.

I would also like to quickly confront peoples objection to my traditionalist view that on the grounds that their taste is opinion, their stance is unquestionable. Incorrect. Yes, i cannot change your opinion of what you like, but with something like music, the more educated you are in the topic, the more your opinion stands for. If a dedicated football analyst tells me something opinionated about the premiere league, and then a uneducated, farming dweeb tells me something also opinionated about the premiere league, i will value the football analyst's opinion far more. The same applies here, I am not a music genius by any stretch of the imagination, i play several instruments to an average to good standard, but as such that makes me more qualified to talk about music than someone who cannot meet the same status. In the same way, the opinion of someone more qualified than me, with a greater understanding will count for far more.... Let's see who they would agree with here.

Please sir...I don't even want anymore...

Food is an integral part of our short and pitiful existence. We rely on it as fuel but we have also come to enjoy it, to relish it one might say... In fact, with the exception of sex, it has become probably the most wealthily documented and talked about subjects. There is a tremendous amount of reference to food in all walks of life, but perhaps most of all, is on our tv screens, and not just in adverts.

The diversity of cookery programmes is somewhat overwhelming. For the laid back approach one can enjoy Jamie Oliver, if you like a sense of competition with your food, go with Masterchef, if you like soft pornography served with your chips, i recommend Nigella Lawson and if you like Top Gear, you're bound to like Gordon Ramsey (And Nigella).

My particular favorite, not listed above, is when food is mashed mercilessly into science until they vaguely see eye to eye. The culmination of such a process is Heston Blumenthal and his take on food. His approach to food is one that can only be described as obscene, it is as if willy wonka (wasn't clinically insane) and had been unleashed on to the entire culinary world. His last and current series' have focused laying down a different themed feast (first the ages of history and now fairy tales), each week, to a handful of low A to high B list celebrities with invariable success. He has explored from flying pies to savory testicle sweets, from recreating Alice in wonderland's multi flavoured concoction, to jelly with dildos in - Nigellas next step i feel. His work is simply awe-inspiring and the programme gripping, if you don't like food, marvelling at his command on science should suffice.

It was during the last installment, however, when the sheer scale of our excess hit me. I wasn't shocked, but i had never confronted the thought directly. It was when Heston went about constructing a house out of confectionery and cake, a house so substantial that its walls needed structural reinforcement bars (in this case pieces of rock) and welding to build, that i realised that perhaps, in the name of entertainment, this might not be the 'right' thing to be doing. Just imagine if the programme, at this point, was played on a projector to an African village. The people wouldn't understand for they cannot make houses and nor can they find food. Here Heston combines both in the name of excess, but with no intention to live in it or have it wholly consumed. The African people's disbelief might just be enough to make them completely malfunction; to make their bowels just release their contents, their stomachs tighten and vomit, and their eyes be blown from off their faces.

The point is that the western world, through no fault of our own (in fact because of our intuition, intelligence and a hospitable climate), have so much food that we can afford to take the piss. We can afford to build houses with our food, to cook a michlan style course everyday as 'practises' in preparation for Fridays all-in-one final, to form competitions in which the prize is not to consume your lavish creation, but a sum of money with which to splash about on more food cooked by someone else, because we have the resources and we have the viewing demand that implicitly implies to us that 'this must be right'... if it wasn't, we would all stop watching it, wouldn't we?

This is not to say i don't like these programmes, or having had this moral enlightenment, i want them to change.... i don't, I'm as selfish as the next man. It is, however, startling to think of the extent to which our culture conditions our appetites, in all senses.

Boohbah black sheep have you any...

I have never been an avid fan of the television, it seems to me you have always had to dig endlessly through the piles of nonsense in order to entertain yourself for a short burst, only to be left with a feeling of injustice, wondering what i might have achieved in that last hour of my life had i not been so concerned with other peoples.
That said, occasionally a programme will be unveiled that genuinely keeps me entertained, but more importantly wanting more. The BBC's "The Apprentice" for example is a masterstroke. There is something so warming, so fulfilling about watching the most driven, emotionally cold and self centred people that the BBC could filter out and herd together, fail and subsequently have their egos shattered by a man who they know is not as qualified nor as well spoken as them, but is worth more than all their and their families insignificant lives collectively. As if this were not enough, these robotic, clone like egos, that are all fighting for the same thing, are smashed together under the same roof for 14 weeks. It's engaging in the same way as a bull fight is, noone is there to see the fighter's success, but rather the expression on his face and the shitting of his pants as he realises the imminence of his finality. However for all its fruits, the tv also provides some of the worst, shit-grippingly bad 'entertainment' that I've have ever been so unfortunate enough to bear witness to. In Particular is one show, a children's programme that made me nauseous whilst also providing me with a sense of such overwhelming anger.

I am of course referring to ITVs "Boohbah", a series that ran from 2003-2005. It is near impossible to provide you with a clear outline of the plot or conceptual idea behind this insanity, given the choice of the two, I'd sooner attempt to write out the Magna Carta with my head than embark on unravelling the reason for the Boohbahs existence. I will however clench my jaw and describe it to you. It consists of five furry, bright-coloured, gumdrop shaped bastards, with hairless eggheads and wide eyes, prancing about a blank environment. Their frustratingly symmetrical heads have the ability to retract into their weeble like bodies, in a way that can only be compared to the tip of a penis being covered by its foreskin. The Boohbahs do not speak also. Instead, they make noises; squeaks and squeals. When they are not dancing about aimlessly, they tend to involve themselves in what can only be described as cult like behaviour; linking of hands in a circle and chanting with their unbearable, dissonant shrieks.

Watching the show, as i did, for the full twenty five minutes, provided me with an experience that i imagine is exactly similar to taking LSD or some other heavy, hallucinogenic drug. Without actually altering chemical workings in my body, it had the effect of destroying my emotional balance, of tearing apart my mental and cognitive processing to the point where i wanted to urinate up my walls, and left me questioning my existence and the existence of all around me.

Perhaps then i shouldn't have watched it. Indeed, it is not aimed at teenagers. But on reflection, this was the most shocking part of the 'Boohbah phenomenon'. It is aimed at children! The most impressionable and innocent among us, and this is what tv is saying is reality to them. It is little wonder that at each generation, the youngest band gets blamed for all of society's shortcomings; there is a clear and direct correlation between this apparent 'steep decline in good and respectable behaviour' and the quality of children's shows. I remember when "Captain Scarlet" used to fight off the peddlers of arseholery and when "Thomas The Tank Engine" used to sort out the moral and practical issues between his locomotive friends. They provided such examples, they laid down what was right and wrong, good and bad, from the very start of a persons life. Instead, now children are left with a collection of mute entities, that look like they are out of a sex store, that stimulate their visual receptors with jazzy colours, but do little else. All they have to build their sense of morality on is colours and noises. If you showed Knife crime offenders an episode of "Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles", they would realise which side they were on, and soon change their ways.

I find my self weighing up what would be better for my (hypothetical) child's needs and moral building. I think i would rather allow my three year old to experiment on any of the Grand theft Auto series. Perhaps i could show them how to violently kick the already bullet wounded remains of a prostitute, in order to reclaim the money we have just spent on receiving some ambiguous sexual action in a freshly stolen vehicle; in order to learn the value of money of course. Is this lesson

It is a shame that the Boohbah's reign has come to an end however. Yes it is. It seems somewhat of an injustice that they were never hideously beaten on screen, tied up and burnt for all to see. There is something gratifying about the thought of the Boobahs being gunned down on the streets on London. Perhaps it is the irony, for it is they who i am (temporarily) blaming for recent increases such crime.

If this has not convinced you, you think the Boohbahs are innocent, fun and of benefit to children, please allow a little time to visit their website and experience, first hand, the madness that they provoke. However, let this be a warning to you, it is not a friendly environment, the dissonant, high pitched noises drill deep in to your ears and the hallucinogenic colours into your retinas. I would not recommend more than three minutes.

http://www.boohbah.com/zone.html