Sick Shit

Whao. I'd better catch us before we slip off down the spiral of the unprovable, unsinkable, un-fucking-believable mystery of Jaysus. Come back in a while Christ-men, perhaps you'll be ready to deal with the things that really matter. Like TV ads for instance.

We get this ad where this suit is laid low with a surfeit of nasal mozzarella. We see him manage to drag himself out of bed to clinch a business deal (apparently by merely sending an email) while cradling a mug of delicious revitalising Lemsip. So anyway, he goes to work the next day where he meets some sneering twat who gives him abuse about being out and thereby fucking up the whole arrangement. So our hero whips out his trusty packet of miracle medicine (which he now apparently carries everywhere) and smugly tells us that working while sick sorts the men from the boys.

Well I'm not sure I have the capacity to describe in full why I hate that ad, but when I think about it I get a pain in my chest from bile pressure, so I'd better try.

I suppose I could sum my position here as follows: When you're sick, do yourself and the rest of us a favour by staying at home. Daily I am confronted by these coughing invalids. I hear them spluttering all round me.
"Why don't you take the day off? You're clearly not well."
"Oh, I can't. I've *cough* too much to do *sniff*."
These are the subway mucus flingers, on their way to spread their malaise at the office as if it wasn't a horrible enough place to spend the day.

A couple of things trouble me about this ad, firstly the suggestion that you can work on through illness with a quick dose of their chemistry but more obnoxious is the subtext indicating that illness is a black mark on your performance report and your employer and colleagues will shaft you in your absence. Perhaps in future they'll have an ad where your mates come round to shag your woman of an evening because you're clearly too sick to do it yourself.

So if you're reading this at work and are sick. Then piss off home and don't come back till you feel better, not forgetting to throw some phlegm in the direction your Nazi boss on the way out.

The Blogospheric Adventures of Christ Man and the Earth Lamb

This may be a heinous breach of Department protocol, but here’s a thing I don’t hate: blog comments. Blog comments are hilarious. These pages have seen their own mini-shitstorm of back’n’forth in the form of a ham-fisted attack on the Department’s values by a posse of anonymous Jesus-boners (which you can check out here and here), so perhaps I should take a moment to explain how this particular display of limp-wristed outrage was sparked by a comment of my own, elsewhere.

During an idle moment in an evening mainly spent weeping and chewing timber, I happened upon the blog of a tortured young soul named Philip “The Christ Man” Christman. The Christ Man is tortured, you see, because he has given up reading for Lent, and has dedicated his own toxic little corner of the blogosphere to sharing his pain with his fellow giants of the mind. Oh good gracious, whatever shall a poor intellectual do? Sure enough, a veritable orgy of back-slapping, name-dropping and Jesus-loving inevitably ensues, causing these tired eyes immeasurable distress.

I have so many issues with the premise of this guy’s site I can barely even think about it without spitting blood. Even leaving aside the ass-clenching stupidity of writing a blog when one is not even supposed to be reading, Christ Man’s sacrifice for the Lord involves giving up the one thing that might have a chance of saving him from total imbecility. Keep reading, dickhead, it’s your only hope! There’s no point linking Dostoevsky and Noam Chomsky if you remain unable to think for yourself, especially to the extent that you are still swallowing thousand-year-old mythology like it was anything other than a quaint little fairy tale.

So, I decided to let Christ Man know how I felt. In my opinion, my comment was reasonable, balanced and uncharacteristically polite, but I suppose you can judge for yourself. In any case, it didn’t take long for our great man of letters to ban me from commenting, ostensibly for making fun of one his retarded buddies. Beforehand, however, he did manage to send a few of his flock over to these parts, and I am happy to say that they will continue to enjoy the privilege of posting comments for as long as they please, making fun of whoever the fuck they want. I’ll leave it to the book-lovers over at the Virtual Cantina to indulge in censorship.

One of these anonymous halfwits has been weighing in on the God debate, insofar as there is one, regurgitating a palsied version of one of my favourite arguments, best paraphrased like this: “You can’t get something from nothing … uh, unless you’re talking about God, in which case you can”. I’ll leave that up to philosophical bad-ass Bertrand Russell to deal with (don’t you click on that link, Christ Man – stay strong!), but it should be noted that had Anon managed to hold that Chicken/Egg analogy in his head long enough to follow through on its implications we may have had a break-through of sorts, right here on these pages. Instead, we appear to have the world’s worst biologist.

Funnier than all that, though, is the latest post from Matt “sensitive Earth Lamb” Lind, riding in with kinetic exuberance to defend Christ Man’s virtue from the barbarian blogging hordes. The post is pretty innocuous as a whole (he calls me a “cockroach”*, oh crumbs!), but the choicest moment is right at the end where he solemnly intones “God bless America” as if I had hijacked a United Airlines flight and crashed it into the south tower of his friend’s website. I honestly think this might be the funniest shit I have ever read, and it is proof positive that belief in the personal-empowerment hype of the blogosphere is the death knell for every last shred of a sense of proportion. “Oh me oh my, the nasty man said a bad thing on Phil’s blog, God bless America, oh dear!”

Seriously man, have you no self-respect? God bless America? Dude, I bet even God thinks you’re a fucking pussy.

Well, it’s been a fun journey. It’s a bit of a shame that I had to do this in the main body of the blog – it would have been fun to have had this out in a comments section somewhere, but these literary types are awfully sensitive, it seems. It’s really too bad I’ve been banned. But who knows, if one or two of you rational, free-thinking types out there happen to make it over to visit the Christ Man or the Earth Lamb, perhaps you could drop them a line on my behalf?

Happy hatin’, folks. And tell ‘em Snotty sent ya.

*The Earth Lamb would like us to make clear that his "cockroach" line is a reference to Kafka, because the Earth Lamb, like his chum Phil, is at pains to establish his high-brow credentials. If a person refers to Kafka he is a genius and that is all there is to it, so please ensure that you feel appropriately humbled when you visit his learned pages. It is also useful to have a flexible definition of sarcasm in mind, otherwise you will miss all the quality jokes. Thank you.

Godheads - Piss off and die quietly

I seem to have a parasitic infestation of Jesus loving freaks here on the site. Hold on till I scratch them off...

Hey freaks, I'm asking you nicely to leave me alone and get back to bible studies and your childish fantasies of creation. You've been immersed in that shit so long now evolution has passed you by and you have lapsed into irrelevance. You are a circus side-show. Kill yourselves for the good of humanity.

OK, let normal service resume.

Disabled Barking

So I come out of Tesco the other day and am unlocking my bike when I overhear the following coming from a car parked in the disabled space right by the entrance.
"Don't you fucking lock that you bollocks. Fucking leave it alone for fuck's sake you prick. Fuck off and get it yourself!"
The speaker is a young woman leaning in the driver's side window, the recipient is a man in the passenger seat holding a 2 year old child. No-one is disabled in the classic sense.

A wave of doom washes over me, is this what happens when The Scumbag breeds?

This Is How You Remind Me To Fucking Despise You

What Would Assholes Do?

Scientists have a term for rats that are a cut above the rest. These are the vermin that transcend their names. These are the little backsliders too preoccupied perpetuating their miserable existence to waste time with distractions like mirrors and tail and electric currents. These are the "maze-bright", and they can soldier through a maze toward their food faster than all the others.

When the door cracked on my Boeing cage yesterday and the lot of us went running, spilling through the cracks in all directions into the labrynthine terminals of O'Hare International Airport, I'm proud to say it was I- it was this Snotty McShot who found the only bar in the domestic terminal mere minutes after pushing through customs. I was into my second Sam Adams before the "Breckenridge - 2005" ski team in matching shirts, the three hippies with guitars and that guy from Wisconsin in the Cosby sweater got their bearings straight and scurried in.

Tip to note: avoid the moving walkways. There's always an asshole with a Cheops of luggage who thinks it's a ride.

I was chuffed, if that's not too snotty to say. I was calm. Relaxed. Enjoying the cold Sam Adams and the nuts and the chance to let my legs dangle off that tall stool and feel like a kid again. My alma mater was embarrassing some redneck school in a basketball game on a TV in the corner, and the snatches I stole from the adjacent conversation reminded me how fucking funny it is to listen to a drunk try to pick up a woman. I hate being that guy.

Here I am. This is what I wanted. Those awful eight hours of cramped misery are over, and I have my beer and a holiday sitting here before me.

I motion two fingers over the bar, and my new waistcoated friend Rafael hits me with another Sam. Everything's coming together now. I smile at the skiers. I nod to the hippies. Shine on you crazy diamonds! Then from behind me I recognize nasal inflections that could only come from Wisconsin, and there he is, the guy from 41H, the guy who brought frozen food for the flight attendants to keep cold, the guy with that fuckin' Cosby sweater is sitting down between the drunk guy and the tail he was working hard for. Who is this fuckin' guy? My eavesdropping just got grievous. This moment just got stressful. He's fuckin' killing my entertainment over here.

Now, they say, and I'd agree, that Snotty McShot is prone to tall tales. But what happens next is a level of discourse this old curmudgeon has not the talent to contrive on his own.

He talks about cheese. He knows a lot about cheese. Some say cheddar's a boring cheese, but not our guy from Wisconsin. There's always something you can learn from cheddar, he says. It can be as strong or as mild as you like it. Edam's edam. Gouda's good, but it's just gouda at the end of the day. Cheddar, man, it can be anything.

The coach of the redneck school's team calls for timeout, and I'm wishing this guy would do the same. The basketball game breaks for commercial, and here's Nike giving us two minutes of black men jumping around in snappy footwear. I sense a comment about to come from Wisconsin when a news flash warns the bar gathering that an earthquake of 6.8 has just hit Indonesia. There's a brief, collective gasp and the question of how much do these poor people have to suffer begs itself in at least a few minds. By the time the game resumes everyone is safely settled back into conscience-less drinking, and as a conscience-less drinker myself, I say, Hey. Fair enough.

Then a comment comes from the left of me.

"Again in Indonesia," says the drunk guy.

I hate myself for training my ears to do this.

"My God," says the tail. "Is that close?"
"Nah," booms Wisconsin, "That's thousands a miles away."
"Y'know I donated. For that tsunami," says Drunk Guy, hoping his compassion gets his cock in Tail a little faster at a little less cost.
"I heard about that," says Tail. "We did an awful lot for them."
"Sure we did. But I don't get why they needed all that much money. It's just water. You don't gotta clean up after water. It shoulda just washed out the build'ns, that's all."
"'Specially since they coulda just picked up ther huts and ran."
"What happened," chimes Wisconsin, "is that the current pulled all that water out- 'bout a mile out to sea just b'fore the big wave and those people saw all that new land. Indonesia ain't big. If they didn't all run out there toward it you wouldn't a had these thousands of people dyin'."
"Why'd they run out there? Just 'cuz there was land?"asks Drunk Guy.
"Prolly they saw loads o' fish out there flopping and thought they could catch 'em," Tail explains.
"Well," says Wisconsin. He stands erect and puffs out his chest, a silverback ready to impart wisdom to the lower echelons of the tribe. There's a sense of something momentous.
"I donated and I feel sorry for those people..." he lowers his big voice and says.
"But?" says Tail.
"But God chose to punish these people for whatever reason, and I ain't one to disagree with God. He has a plan."

I sit stewing in my hate, choking Sam Adams down all the wrong holes and wishing that God has a plan for his connecting flight. I glare at him. I think of 1,000 organisms just off the bat that I would rather see thrive in existence before this infected side effect of sexual spillage. I squint like Clint, and I'm begging him for a reason. My head is screaming at him. He catches these eyes I make and he looks back with that child-like look of recognition washing over his face and he smiles and he says, "Hey! 43C!" And he has no idea.

"Yeah," I say. I get up and pay Rafael and walk to my gate early. I take my time wandering through the maze. I stand on the moving walkway and I watch all the people streaming past and imagine belonging to another species. I imagine I would hate that, too.

5-7-5

I’ve written a poem. A haiku actually. I was told it would be calming and, fucking, fucking, cathartic or some such. Girl told me this while I wailed at her in a bar the other evening about the tube and my frequent brushes with mania.

London Underground
By Snotty Mc Shot

Too upset to write
Fucking infuriating
Underground fuck wits

This haiku can be amended

Ryanair
By Snotty McShot

Too upset to write
Fucking infuriating
Ryanair fuck wits

Commuters
By Snotty McShot

Too upset to write
Fucking infuriating
Commuter fuck wits

But it’s not helping. This morning a woman walked so slowly ahead of me up a set of stairs that I had to pause on each step like a lame child. I chanted my commuter haiku like a Buddhist mantra and closed my eyes at every pause. But it’s more a rallying cry for my frustration and pent-up rage to explode into a punch to the back of her flabby thighs. At "fuck wits" I saw myself each time throwing a right cross to her kidneys, tears of frustration spraying from my red eyes. Please! Please fucking move! Please! I chanted the haiku 12 times. Once for each step. At the top I realised I wasn’t breathing.

The lady arrived at the ticket gate in front of me, and searched in her bag for her ticket. My chin twitched.

You Are My Hero and I Love You

So I'm on the tube this morning, jammed in the corner like a question mark and following the sensory deprivation protocol. It's getting pretty packed, but it's Friday so it's no big deal.

At some point in the journey, the world's most beautiful woman disembarks the train and is replaced by two bickering middle-aged american men. Now, this is by no means a fair swap, but these guys are definitely delivering the goods in the comedy-value stakes. Evidently, one of these two choppers, Chopper 1, utilised the tried and tested London technique of forcing himself on to the carriage before anybody else could get off, and is now being sternly rebuked for his lack of manners by Chopper 2.

I pop my 'phones out of my ears, happy for the entertainment. Ah, the follies of man. I have next to no patience for Chopper 1's tube-boarding style, but there will be no taking sides here: both of these gentlemen are fucking unreconstructed idiots, pure and simple. Big fat jowly children, all gold Rolexes and self-importance, subjecting the captive audience of commuters to their petty gripes like it's the most important thing in the world. If they all of a sudden killed each other, right here between Angel and Old Street, I swear I wouldn't bat an eyelid. I'd just crank the volume back up and turn the page over to the cinema reviews.

Anyway, Chopper 2 won't let it lie. It appears he fixing to talk aloud to himself about Chopper 1's rudeness for the entire journey. Fair enough - it's smiles all round as far as I'm concerned. But wait, what's this? A third voice floats out of the amassed throng: "Don't worry about him, some prats never listen".

What the fuck? Who's this fucking guy? Why would somebody suddenly decide to weigh in with their two cents right here? Why get involved, for fuck's sake? And why say "prats"? Chopper 2 is happy for the support - "The public speaks!", he says - but I feel my Friday morning upside-down-frown reverting to type. Chopper 3 is a cunt, and he is ruining my buzz.

At some fucking station somewhere, Chopper 1 departs. He makes a big scene about being all super-polite, and the drama unfolds like this:

Chopper 1: Oh, excuse me. Sorry. Excuse me.
Chopper 2: Yeah.
Chopper 1: Have a nice day.
Chopper 2: I'm missing you already.

This last line gets a few laughs, but that's not enough for Chopper 3. Oh no.

He sidles up close to Chopper 2. "Brilliant", he says. Also, "Fantastic". And then: "Best put-down ever". He's right up on the guy now, gazing adoringly, like he wants nothing more than to drop to his knees and gargle with the dude's dried-up old balls.

Chopper 2 slowly inches away. Not for the first time, I'm thinking that maybe Sarin gas isn't such a bad idea after all.

A Slice of Hate

There's a natural human tendency that tells us when you sit down and write something in your free time, it must be something significant, something worth your time.

I fucking hate that.

And you know what else I fucking hate? Left-over pizza.

Now before you Domino's denizens cast your first olive stones, just hear me out: I'm not hating on pizza. As if. People, I'm talking about left-over pizza. That's not pizza. It's stillborn pizza. Its development's been arrested. You wouldn't call a bowl of uterine sluice your brother, and you shouldn't call a left-over pizza a meal.

Listen, I sympathize. I really do. Ol' Snotty here has woken up many an afternoon and reached first for that pizza, wishing to recapture all the beauty and splendor and tender, warm moistness, the lightly salted bottom, the way it dimples to your touch when it's warm and you can just hold it and admire, your head loitering at first trepidatiously, then moving slowly toward it with your mouth until its heat overcomes you and, god, it just explodes in a million flavors. It's like going down on a young Sophia Loren. But in the morning when you nuzzle close for more she's gone gray and cold.

Look, friends, the next day is always worse. It can only be worse, and we know it will be worse. But. We. Just. Keep. Trying. Isn't it time we throw our hands in the air and give up? What are we really pursuing at this point?

I'm saying no to rubbery cheese that looks like frosted glass. I'm saying no more wet mushrooms. No more raisined olives. No more crust you knaw and you tear with your fist like an animal or a fool. I hate things that make me feel like a fool. I'm throwing my pizzas out the night before the next day because I fucking hate all that. I get so high and fall so low. No. Nuh uh. Not me. Not here. Not anymore. Snotty McShot doesn't do left-over pizza. And this little decision in this little waste of time has just made all those next days more worth my time.

Sometimes I Just Hold It In

Dear Mr. Nightclub Owner,

You know, I simply cannot tell you how many times I have found myself standing by the handbasins at a nightclub establishment, dripping water and staring forlornly at the paper-towel dispenser on the wall. Gosh, I think, those towels are awfully far away. It would be so much more convenient if there were a coloured gentleman here who could hand them to me. I mean, it is quite enough that I was forced to squirt the soap betwixt my palms unaided, but surely this is an indignity too far.

Consider that when perched atop my own commode I am never without the invaluable assistance of my faithful manservant Mbeki, and I know that many of you are privileged enough to enjoy the same level of attention. So why should we do without such comforts purely because we are no longer within our own four walls? I am not, of course, proposing that nightclub managers provide washroom services quite to the extent of those that I am accustomed to chez moi - I acknowledge that there are time-constraints and besides, I rarely "go number two" in unfamiliar surrounds. Naturally I would accept some degree of compromise.

Oh, I know that some will protest. I know that there will be those over-sensitive types who would rather not be reminded of our country's imperial past every time they visit the little boy's room, and who consequently may even claim that said past is not quite so distant as we may believe. Such people will be predictably disturbed by the various connotations of employing a black man to administer to the toileting needs of relatively affluent white folks. They may even argue that they are perfectly capable of taking care of their own ablutions and may question your motives in supplying such amenities.

I beseech you, do not be swayed by these arguments. After all, and not to put too fine a point on it, the toilet is no place for so-called political correctness. The inconvenience of acquiring my own hand-towels far outstrips the unpleasantness of spending an entire evening surrounded by drunken pissing revelers for pocket change. At least, it does as far as I am concerned - the Old Spice will not spray itself, what?

I am pleased to see that my ideas are being implemented in a number of establishments across the capital. I can only hope that this trend continues. However, I must make the following caveat: the coloured gentleman who attended my needs last night at a popular London music venue insisted upon calling me "geezer". I'm afraid I cannot accept such familiarity - I would not even accept it from Mbeki, and he has been in my family for upwards of thirty years. In all other respects, though, a good show!

Yours faithfully,

Snotty McShot Esq.

Spread of evil

Motherfucker, if you're standing in a packed train carriage and you have a cough, cover that shit up. In fact, if the train isnt packed, cover your fucking mouth. I dont like having to hold my breath for the whole journey, trying not not inhale the fucking dirty bacteria and viruses that infests in your stanky mouth, that you have kindly coughed into my direction bitch.

COVER YOUR FUCKING MOUTH WHEN YOU COUGH!!!

Or better yet, cough till you fucking die, at least there's a reason for you to cough. Not for some shitty reason like an itchy throat!

Northern Exposure

----Original Message-----
From: Transport for London
Sent: 16 February 2005 12:19
To: Me
Subject: Weekend closures on the Northern Line

Dear Snotty,

I am aware that your recent Northern line experience has been affected by slower trains and signal failures. We are working with our engineering partners to improve your journey and make it faster and more reliable. To speed up these improvements we will need to close the Bank branch of the line southbound between Camden Town and Kennington on the weekends of 19/20, 26/27 February and 5/6 March.

All Bank branch stations will have northbound services, except Old Street, which will be closed on these weekends so we can move heavy equipment in and out of the station. The ticket office will still be open for ticket purchase. Moorgate station is a 15 minute walk from Old Street and it may be easier to start or end your journey there.

Valid Underground tickets will be accepted on bus routes to and from Old Street. A leaflet detailing alternative travel information will be available in all Northern line stations. Click here for more details.

Yours faithfully,

David Millard
General Manager Northern Line

____________________________
My reply with type-os left in. I was typing in a blur of hatred. And I can't spell "renowned" anyway.

Mr Millard,

The Northern Line is a disgrace and it has been getting progressively worse. I'm disgusted I have to pay over £80 each month to use it. Unfortunately I have no choice, like so many others. So, yeah, close the Bank branch for a few weekends. Who cares. It really won't make any difference seeing as it's so rubbish anyway it's practically at a stand-still. Most of us "customers" are pretty exhausted at complaining and we're all well aware that you are totaly incapable of getting it running.

It is renouned as the joke of the london underground. "I have to get the Northern Line" you say to friends. "Hate to be you" they reply and laugh their way home.

Well done, and enjoy your bonuses.

Snotty McShot

p.s. Why is it that we are only referred to as passengers when a train is delayed due to "passenger action"? Actually, don't answer that. I don't care.

A Word From Our Sponsor

(or "How to Hate, Part 2")

Hello pitiful Earth dicks,

It's your one true God here, with a couple of quick words for all you pussy assholes who didn't appreciate my latest bad-ass natural disaster: SHUT UP YOU FAGS.

Oh, boo-fucking-hoo. Don't you get it already? Huh? What's that? You don't understand how a loving God could allow such a thing to happen? Oh for My sake. Not that old horseshit again.

Have a look at this fucked up shit right here:

Crystal clear now, huh? Yeah that's right, fuckholes, I'm gonna kill you all indiscriminately and in the most fucked up way I can think of, and there's not a Me-damn thing you can do about it. That seems unreasonable to you, eh? Well suck it up, bitches - you shoulda thought of that before all of that apple-eating bullshit went down. You have only yourselves to blame.

And while I'm at it: 9/11? Your fault. The Holocaust? You again, you bunch of fuckups. Y'all best watch your backs.

Don't make me come down there. Oh, and I love you.

Peace out,

Yahweh

The Gamut

I feel good today. I'm rested. Fresh. My clothes are clean. I mean just dried. People have left me alone. Even my excretions have been crisp and lightening with minimal wiping. Yes, sir, I'm sitting a couple inches taller. It's like that gordian knot at the base of my neck done slipped loose and lassoed some other steer.

This is nice, Snotty, she says. It's just that everything's a catastrophe with you. You have so many issues. What do you like?

Like? I like a lot of things, I say. I like movies, you see, but I hate sitting through a 25-minute preamble of advertisements.

Right about now the guy behind me tuts his stuff for his snow-booted beauty, and she giggles out a soggy Malteaser. She likes the new Mini ads. It would be wicked to have one. And my voice is like an Orange mobile phone I forgot to turn off at the door. The Inuit princess can't fathom that this projected corporate vomit is just as offensive to me as ol' Snotty's hems and stammers are to her wounded hipster psyche. Oh Jesus, now I got an issue. Go tell it on the mountain, sister. Or better yet, Parliament Hill, where in winter a low-lying cloud might sneeze a light dust of snow and your ridiculous boots might begin to make a modicum of sense.

I'm standing now. And here come those crazy Swedes in Part II of their Mini Adventure.

Movies are an escape, I say. We're not meant to see this. Oops! This time the jogger has a bigger fish and slaps those mischievous Swedes first. Doesn't this make you feel like crap, I say? Omigod, you can see that Swede's bum! But I have a point! I have a point!

The guy behind me no longer tuts. He looks away nervously like I just asked him for money or the time.

Now Patrick Swayze has an idea for a film. He pitches it to the Orange brass. Asses line up like Normandy invaders on the edges of seats. They are ruining your experience, I say. She pulls at my sleeve. They are insulting you, I say. She tugs. The actor opens his gob. Here comes that pop reference. They change the premise of his film to include mobile phones. They always change the premise to include mobile phones.

She wants to leave, and I get my coat and hers. She hurries to the lobby while I meld the teeth on various zippers and turn on my phone. I could try for another excretion, but I walk right past that toilet with the gangway with the door that opens inward and the other door that opens outward, those doors that clash and trap and crush you like those sewer walls in the first Star Wars, god they make me so fuckin' mad.

I don't say I'm sorry. I'm not wrong. She chose to leave, not me.

She can choose the bar, I say. Anywhere.

Anywhere?

Now I regret the inch given.

We find a place called Sodium Chloride, or something like it. They serve olives. Not chips, not crisps, not a peanut in the fuckin' house. It's lit like a seance, and there are snowboots under every table. I sigh for my pint and her wine.

We don't do pints.

They don't do pints. Only halves. A spit's worth of corporate lager in glasses too small for a urine sample. Why not insult me further and serve me Stella in a pointy, paper sno-cone cup they give children at the dentist. As long as we're being trendy. I mean, no one does that!

I look over at her. In the early 1900s a prominent New England physician was hanged because he went nuts and killed a portion of people, believing his eyes could capture the moment a person's soul leaves the body. They were already dying, was his rationale. They were of no social import. At his trial our doctor spread out his cache of photos, one after the other, gaping mouth and bare torso. It didn't take the jury long.

My evening could go either way at this moment. I can let this one go. I can swallow my pride, and maybe she'll talk to me again once she finishes her wine and gets that rush of head running to her blood. I could do this, and this is why I hate relationships of any kind. Her face spasms and quivers between disenchantment and relief. Our evening could go either way.

On the bus home I look at her face in the window. She's sitting two rows in front of me. I try to pinpoint the moment her patience escapes her body, but it probably fled while I was laughing at that barmaid. So it goes. A fat man splays his legs next to me. I adjust and hang off my seat. I slouch. I have no height. The way I'm sitting you will never see me.

What you doin, morning ruin?

This morning my anger caused me some ruin.

The only mode of transport more stressful than the tube is the bus. Filled with idiots and old people, none of whom can make a decision about where to sit. I hate their worried looks as they glance about the stinking crate looking for a free double to accommodate their peas and chips arses. Fucking English people. Arrived at Highbury corner having clenched my teeth all the way down Holloway Road, hoping one Dresden incendiary bomb was still blowing in the breeze sixty years later and headed straight for London to rid us of these shoplifters and pavement cyclers, road crossers and pram pushers, smokers and toothless fucks, and had to squeeze past an orange tanned leathery skin-pole of a woman, standing in the stairwell. I boiled and howled inside. At the bus shelter the was a queue of brainless shits waiting to get on and blocking my escape. And old lady with an impossibly large girth hobbled in front of me, swaying from side to side and refusing to die. I tried to get past. She saw me. She stood aside, stretched her arm out and let me by.

At the cash machine, waiting while some confused prole read re-read the screen, retrieved her card and re-entered it and again, and again, the old lady past me by. I pretended not to see her.

BFGs - Big Fucking Giants

I don't hate tall people...I hate tall people who think it's OK to walk to the front of a crowd in a concert and fucking stand there while the poor sods behind him have to look into the back of their sweaty fucking head or even the growth on the back of this guy's head (who i had the misfortune to be standing behind at 2 different gigs!....cut that thing off u tall prick, then fuck off to the back where you can still get a good view and not block the view of people who arent as vertically blessed as you!).

Now im not just hating for me, i can just barge through to the front while giving people the "yeah, what?" look, with my slightly red-eyed eyes. No, im hating for my girl who isnt able to pull that look off yet and has to make do with bobbing up and down to catch a view/glimpse of the show. I feel like confronting this man giant and having a few words, but thoughts of what might spark off prevent me from doing so as my friends are closely watching and VERY eager to come to the aid of my other half and I.

If you're going to stand there, at least do the decent thing and vibe to the music by dancing (or in your case, moving from side to side) that will at least give the people better views now and again. BUT no, you just stand there like a smelly shit waiting for someone to come and step on you..while causing my girl to be increasingly upset, because she spent £30 quid of her hard earned money to come and watch an act she/we have been waiting to see forever and then have to stand there and see your fucking head..YOU TWAT!!!!

Monkey Magic

That guy, with the wee simian mug, full of aggression where there would normally be intelligence. I don't even know him, but I know that I hate him and he hates me back. If those eyes were any closer together he'd only need a single socket. He's the kind of guy who'd stab you if you asked him a tough question.

He's doing the crossword in The Star and asks his buddy, "How do you spell carol? Like Christmas carol. Is it two Rs or two Ls?" Imbecile. I know that you might argue that I should be patient and understanding, perhaps he didn't get a privileged start in life. Fuck off. I listened at school while apes like him swung from the light fixtures, and you want me to pity him? Call a social worker.

U Matter… Because U deserve the best

The caterer at my place of work has its employees sport the above slogan on the back of their shirts. Just answer me this, if I deserve the best and if I matter, why do they serve me substandard, adulterated foods at a profit? These people are scum, but they are only the last line of scum in a chain reaching all the way up.

I pick up a single serving Bran Flakes and in a moment of ill advised curiosity I look at the ingredients. The second and third in the list are both sugars. Bran Flakes are 20% sugar. These corporations are out there replacing the stuff our bodies need with cheap alternatives with no concern for the long term effects. For 50,000 years our diet was relatively unchanged but in the last 50, we've moved to processed factory foods making up almost our whole intake. They are killing us and they know it.

There are hormones in our beef, beef proteins in our chicken, there are pesticides on our fruit and vegetables, bread is no longer made from water, yeast and flour but dozens of ingredients including fats and sugars, we are provided with ready meals that are little but sugar, salt and fat, bulking agents are used to thicken yoghurt to disguise the lack of fruit in them, machines test new food products for "mouth feel" but no-one checks that they are good for you. All this and we say nothing, we just take it. We are being messed with from the inside out.

Maybe I'm angry because I'm poisoned.

DIE MOTHERFUCKER DIE

Fucking-public-fucking-transport

I hate it.

And I don’t mean in some whiny ass "my train was 10 minutes late and I had to wait in the cold" kinda way. Fucking amateurs. I mean, I despise it in a way that can otherwise only be found standing in the supermarket behind the fattest bitch on the planet (although maybe the planet’s on her, given that her festering mass is nearly twice that of most any solar body) while she meanders down the aisle, only pausing to abandon her trolley (filled, naturally, with shite processed to within an inch of its life, containing such elements of nature’s bounty that Dow Chemical would balk at producing) at random, leaving to me fume and rage within the comfort of my own head while attempting to navigate over her while not actually coming into contact with the pale, glistening, quivering morass.

And none of this, "I’ve waited for a bus for ages and then 3 come along at once". Christ. At least have the dignity to come up with an original complaint you prick.

No, I’m talking about getting up at a godforsaken hour of the morning to get the bus, knowing that you’ll have to wait 10 minutes but hey that’s ok, because you don’t want to miss it, which would mean missing the train at the other end, only to find that the timetable (both at the bus stop and online) is a lying piece of crap – and it’s at this point that I’d make some useless crappy joke about the lies only being matched by the US and UK’s reasons for going to war. But only if I had the intelligence and humour of the aforementioned piece of crap found in the supermarket and liked to whine about Tony Blair because, well, y'know, he’s Tony Bliar, ain't he? Oh Doctor, my sides.

I’m talking about then having to get a taxi to the train station to discover that the train has just left and you, buddy, you got 40 minutes of standing on a freezing, empty platform at 5am.

I’m talking about being aware the next morning, getting to the bus stop early (note: 20 minutes earlier than the advertised time, but only 10 minutes earlier than the actual time of arrival) and getting to train station with 15 minutes to spare. So everything’s finally going ok for once. And then a train arrives. But it’s not the train, because it’s at a different platform and the screen at the correct platform is still showing your train. But you don’t trust that, so you go to have a look. And of course, just as the train pulls away you discover that was the train, but at a different platform. But hey, why bother making an announcement or changing the screens? I want to cry. I want to scream. I want to kick something really fucking hard. But you’ve read enough to know that’s not the way it’s done. So I sigh, trudge back to the platform (who knows if it’s the correct one?) and wait for the next train.

Claustrophobia in Cyber Space

I’m claustrophobic I think. Although it’s not so much small spaces as being unable to move. Perhaps there’s another word for it. The tube is a good example. It’s not exactly tiny, but you are completely incapacitated. My phobia manifests itself differently from others. I’m not afraid. I don’t break into panics and weep and think I’m dying. I become enraged and wish death on everything. When I was young this kid pinned me to the ground while another kid gave me dead legs and arms. I couldn’t move. I squirmed, I wriggled, I howled, I bit a chunk out of the kid’s leg, I stood as he rolled about the place screaming and banged my head off the wall, I cried out of uncontrollable frustration, I threw up every profanity I could think of.

Why do they push me? The global internet. The world wide web. A vast expanse of knowledge and some fucks just have to push me. Just won’t let me leave. Why do they do that? Why can’t I use the back function in their fucking sites? Don’t they know? Don’t they realise the rage boiling in me every time I click the back button and am greeted only with the same page? I’m trapped. I’m caged. My hands are sore from the claws I make with them. I just want to get out!

And when I click the X I am left with a residual pop up reminding me. Like a scar from a knife wound, or my teeth marks in a regretful adult’s deformed thigh.

Another day at the orifice

So he calls round to my office at 8:45am and says,

"Hey Snotty. I don't think we should go down to the canteen for a coffee too early."

I'm not sure what he means, but I have a suspicion. So I look quizzically, saying nothing.

"I don't want the plant manager to see us there early and think we're not doing any work. So lets go down at 9:15."

Its time for me to speak.

"I can't believe you're afraid of these people. You think that taking an early break makes you look bad? What if you had an important meeting at 9 o'clock and were getting a coffee in first? What if you were just so damned efficient that you were on top of the day's tasks already and could afford a little kick back? What if you wanted to take your break when the canteen wasn't knee deep in sycophants like yourself? What if you had a little bit of self respect and realised that all that matters is that you get the fucking job done and that you might as well suit yourself while you're at it so that the whole miserable experience will be just a fraction more bearable?"

So I didn't say the last two sentences, but he knew they were in me.

fashion hell

I just took my daily stroll around my offices (to break up the mundane-ness of the day and my office) and noticed something I've noticed nearly everywhere I go...women like to dress a like. Now in 10 offices, i noticed 7 different coloured pashminas hanging off the chairs and 2 women with pashminas wrapped around them.

Call me a fashion guru, but i thought pashminas were 2 years ago...i think those at my offices have been stuck in here too long and have replaced their subscriptions to "Heat" magazine with "I'll wear what the girl in the next office is wearing".

Recently, the fairer sex suddenly appear to all have gone to Mexico and brought back with them, Clint Eastwood-style ponchos...oh no wait, once again it's another fashion trend. It seems as if once a trend starts, every woman in this city will cling on to it for a few months until some celebrity decides to start somehing new. Dont get me wrong, men are guilty of such non-individualistic acts, dont let me see another twat wear a "thailand" style t-shirt, underneath a blazer with jeans...i spit on them.

It's just women commit them on such a frequent basis. Let's go through a brif history with examples:
summers '01 - '04: flip-flops, now women with nice pedicured feet..nice. older women with nasty, flaky feet...not nice.
winter: women wearing fuck-me boots with a denim skirt.
Pashminas, ponchos, women tucking their jeans/trousers into their boots, von dutch trucker hats...the list goes on!

Now to balance this rant out i'll give u an example of how little runts, like the ones mentioned in the previous blog, commit the same crime. About 2 years ago, my love of hip-hop made me buy a baggy hip-hop track suit one and a half years down the line, I see these scally shits walkin around with similar trackies. Now everywhere I go, I have to grit my teeth as i see more and more twats with IDENTICAL track suits (to this day, i havent seen anyone with the same as mine, not even in NYC), i find out that they are all fakes from the market and cost a third of what i paid for them. This pisses me off, cos it has basically made this item of clothing redundant..how do i wear it without looking like one of these vermin?

The reasons for buying the clothing in the first place was my love of hip-hop, not because everyone else is wearing one, so i have to fit in..little shits. They come and make a mockery of my music and the culture that i live by, without having a clue about what they're doing. it's fucking like these people who wear basketball tops, for fashion reasons...
"oh, so you like this team do you?"
"er, no..but the top is cool"
...dick!

STOP fuckin the things i live by just so u can look cool!!!!

Bubble Invasion

Not to hark on about the tube but I need this.

Having had my earphones yanked from my ears by a clumsy fat bitch climbing laboriously down the 6 inches from the tube to the platform, interrupting my necessary sensory deprivation, this shitbird in winkle pickers (for I was looking only at the floor all the way home) insists on putting his hands in the pockets of his waist length jacket, thereby bringing his arms into an acute angle and sharply poking me in the back.

Now, I’m sure this is on purpose. He’s pissed off that I’m standing so close to him. Sure, pal, I’m happy about this too, but if my rage is in check yours surely should. And after one rather rocky part of the track I’m sure. I sway with the movement of the train like everyone else and after one particular judder to the left I feel two sharp pokes of his elbow into the small of my back. I feel raped. I sense that he’s glaring at me out of the corner of his eyes and rolling them for the anonymous audience he hopes are on his side. So I stay where I am and pretend he’s not there. I think, "Yeah, this’ll show him how silly and small he is being." At each stop I politely get off to allow people on and then reclaim my irritating spot right my his protruding elbow.
And then there are more pokes.

"Do you mind?" he says, in my head, that over confident public school-boy, I got my homosexuality out of the way with the school chaplain and am now married to a fur coat wearing cow with cheeks as rosy as mine look on his face.
"Sorry?" I imagine.
"I said" he replies, dragging out the "ai" into a lilting song of pure anger fuel, "Do you mind?"
"Oh, that was on purpose, the whole back rape thing?" I cleverly retort, feigning surprise, "See, it’s like this, Paul McCartney, (winkle pickers – he didn’t get this in my head because he’s a retard) you get so banged about and brushed off and breathed on and poked on the tube, you give up so much of your dignity and personal space that I can ignore it most of the time. I just enclose myself in a bubble of music and fiction and pretend none of it is happening and try not to annoy anyone else. So, everytime some aggressive fucking ape elbows me in the back I assume it’s an accident. Sorry."

It’s my stop and I get off. In my head some passengers giggle at my witty remarks and he takes his hands finally from his pockets and hangs his head.

At home I throw a courgette at the floor and scream and scream and scream.

Community service announcement

Some morons have just destroyed 5 newly planted saplings around the corner from my home for no apparent reason. I mean, what reason could there be? I know who's responsible, not the individuals of course, but I know that they are part of a larger body, a single organism which feeds on the whole country. Its called "the scumbag" where I live, but you all have your own word for it. Its manifestation is less diverse however. Its incarnations appear to be human, 15 - 18 years old, shaven headed or baseball capped, they wear sportsgear, and travel by scooter.

What's going to become of these creatures in years to come? Maybe they'll grow up to become well adjusted adults who respect their neighbours and locality meanwhile passing onto their own offspring the wisdom gained from their own mistakes.

Or maybe not, and personally I'm not willing to take the chance. Now I'm not one to identify a problem without suggesting a fix, so here's my solution. Bear with me it’s a bit radical.

I will offer my services to man a 200 foot watchtower overlooking the ghetto in which I live. Just me, a sniper rifle and a bag of ammunition is all that's required and I'll dish out some high velocity justice. Anyone on the streets in a tracksuit and a baseball cap after dark is history.

"Clean-up crew to Tesco car park. 5 useless sacks of shit for burial."

And on top of each anonymous grave, a sapling.