Be the Best

Would you like to be shouted at by some Scottish little prick for six weeks, then given a gun and an inadequete tin hat and sent off to Afghanistan and be blown to bits by an improvised explosive device?
Then join the army today.
We're always looking for fresh meat.
Chink Chink!
Why be alive today, when you can be dead tomorrow?

Nakedness

It is actually illegal to be naked. What on earth have we come to? Think about it.
Pretty much everyone knows what people look like, so why should it be offensive?
I propose a World Naked Day. People would then realise that there is no big deal about what our bodies look like.
I once regularly went to a nude beach in Australia and it is amazing how quickly it seems normal. They were mostly fat, old people who looked like baked potatoes, but even on the occassion of seeing an attractive young woman with no clothes on, you didn't really look twice. In the context of that situation, there was nothing sexual about nakedness. And certainly nothing offensive.
If our physical being is deemed to be somehow distasteful, I think we've taken a wrong turn somewhere.

Led Zeppelin

When I was at school, this guy once told me that Led Zeppelin were the best band in the world, and that was a FACT. He obvoiusly failed to grasp the concept that art in any form is subjective and thus its merits can only be judged in the mind of the person who consumes it. I, personally, think the Mona Lisa is a rather grotty, ugly little painting. And I think Led Zeppelin are rubbish. They sound like someone who just read a Tolkien book and decided to write some really long, really boring songs afterwards.
That's not a fact. That's just what I think.
Things aren't intrinsically good. They're only good if you think they are.
I think Madras curry is good, but some people think it is too hot. I think shooting birds with a camera is more satisfying than shooting them with a gun. But some people would disagree.
I think we should get out of Iraq and Afghanistan, and invade Switzerland instead.
But facts are essentially solid, arguably boring things.
Here is a fact...
Granite rock is made up of quartz, feldspar, and miccah.
That's a fact.
Flourine has an oxidation number of -1.
That's a fact.
If everyone in China jumped at the same time, the world would explode.
That might not be a fact.
But Led Zeppelin being the best band in the world? That can never be a fact.
Sure, everybody knows AC/DC are the best band in the world.
Now, that's a fact.

Comments

The comments don't seem to work. Tried posting one myself and it got rejected. I'm not sure why this is happening. I have looked at the settings, but can't see anything there that would be blocking them. I will investigate further when I have time. But right now I have to install a piece of skirting board in my living room. The excitement.
I'm telling you...

Michael Douglas for f**k's sake

Michael Douglas, for f**ck's sake!
Was there ever a paunchy, jowly, hang-dog man less gifted with the ability of acting?
A bucket full of dog's crap would be more appealling than watching this turd of an actor trying to make himself look like a sexy male lead role.
He looks like someone's Da floundering about in a swimming pool in a pair of red Speedos and trying to chat up someone's daughter.
Disgusting. Embarrassing
He should be taken out and shot.

Record broken

Belfast man Billy McProd entered the Guinness Book of Records today for being the person to use the phrase " know what I mean, like?" more than any other living person.
Billy was unavailable for comment when our roving reporter, Chummy Dockenleaf, called at his modest West Belfast terraced house, which has been decked out to make it look like some kind of Roman villa, earlier.
Billy's brother, Sammy, answered the door, dressed in a Rangers track suit, and told Chummy, "Know what I mean, like? No. No. Know what I mean, like? He's not in, like. Know what I mean, like? I think he's away down the boozer, like. Know what I mean, like? Know what I mean? Know what I mean? Know what I mean? Know what I mean? Know what I mean? Know what I mean? Know what I mean? Know what I mean? Know what I mean? Know what I mean? Know what I mean? Know what I mean, like? F**k sake, like! Know what I mean, like?"

Great!

Well the fact that a symptom of this allergy is that when you lie down you are incapable of breathing through your nose, and barely wheezing through your mouth, means I have had less than 3 hours sleep in what is now coming up for three days. Maybe that explains the hideous undead appearance of my face in general, and my eyes in particular. I am also starting to get extremely irritable.
I have even tried sleeping sitting up, but to no avail. I don't really want to miss a day of work tomorrow ( or today, technically ) but when the delerium-induced hallucinations start, which I know they soon will, it will hardly be safe to operate machinery that is capable of severing a hand in a matter of seconds.
So I don't know whether to try going back to bed now, as it makes me feel rather sick when I do.
Maybe I will just stay up and listen to the tennis on the radio.
Yes. That was, tennis on the radio.
"Well, the guy hits it. The other guy hits it back. The first guy hits it back. The other guy hits it back. The first guy hits it back. The other guy hits it back...but...it's out."
"So, the first guy hits it. It goes into the net. But he's got another go. He hits it again. This time it goes over the net. The other guy hits it back, the first guy hits it back..."
Scintillating. I don't know why I didn't sell my TV years ago.
Seeing as I am up, and I haven't written for a while, I might as well have a go at reviewing late night radio.

Okay, World Service. News at the moment. I used to work the night-shift and listen to the World Service, so I know you don't get much other than news. Sometimes quite obscure news. Like, "Mr Wamba'lok! Bakatingi has disputed the results of local elections in Molepoleole in Botswana, accusing his opponent Mr Dingdong Wigidi-wigidi-whack of corruption."
Well, I'm glad I know about that, now.

97.4FM!!! Cool FM!!!      Jesus wept. I left the Royal Mail three years ago. They used to play this all night over the crackly tanoy system. There was an air of Arbeit Macht Frei about it, and they are still playing that Snow Patrol song. I must dive at the radio dial before Foreigner want to know what love is... too late. It's Oasis, with "Roll with It".

OK. I assume this is Radio 1, given the 3 second attention span. Trailers for increasingly irritating shows hosted by increasingly peurile school-bullys rain down upon you, tumbling over each other like so many Lidl carrier bags full of used cat litter flung down a staircase. This is perhaps to cover up for the fact that no-one is phoning the phone-in. Someone eventually phones in and is asked if they can say, "Sperm whale" without laughing.
If you have a TV licence, you are paying for this. Let's try Radio 2, as some boy band have just come on singing a song whose chorus sounds like, " I'm feeling like this, this, feeling like this, this, could be ylehahh ylehahh ylehahh ylehahh ylehahh..." Oh wait its the news. Apparently there is trouble in a place called Haiti, and reports say that it is rather bad. Back to the music...

"It must be love" say Madness on Radio 2. It must be half five, I say. I wonder what the DJ will say when the song ends? Oh God! It's Sarah Kennedy. She's reading out letters from "fans" which I suspect she has written herself, and talking utter drivel. I suspect I might be the only person voluntarily listening to this.

Classical music. Not sure the name of the station, but it seems quite soothing for this time of day.
It's going on for a bit...
Just made and drank a cup of tea, and it's still going on. They must have got paid by the hour in those days. It is quite nice though.
I could almost go to bed now, but there's not much point, as it is nearly time to get up.
I might just go into work and try to avoid anything that has potential for cutting, burning, drilling holes in, or in any other way maiming me. If anyone needs help putting a sculpture together, I will just have to introduce them to the joy of masking tape... 

My eyes! My eyes!

Isn't it great when you get nice things for Christmas? Like "Facial re-moisturising, re-juvenating, hydrating gel".
Well, it is if you don't have an allergic reaction to them and you end up with puffy bags under your eyes like Taggart after a New-Year's eve party, and eyebrows that itch worse than Russell Brandt's festering yoghurt encrusted, lice infested crotch.
The doctor gave me steroid cream, but I haven't won any olympic medals yet, and although the unbearable stinging and itching has subsided mostly, under my eyes still resembles an arial photo of an Indian river delta.
Obviously that product was not tested on enough animals.
I might need a face-lift if this situation turns out to be permanent.

I don't know. Is it a good thing or a bad thing?

You know when you get to that age when you don't really care what your hair looks like anymore? I mean you don't want it to look like you just slept in a hedge or anything (although a lot of young people these days seem to put a lot of effort into making their hair look like they have just slept in a hedge).
I just mean, you have a "sensible" haircut, and you aren't really that bothered about what your hair looks like anymore.
Is that a good sign, or is it a bad one?

Shoe-in for Helen Mirren, surely?

The inevitable movie of the Iris Robinson story is bound to star Helen Mirren.
Or maybe Joanna Lumley, or Judy Dench, or Thora Hird. Or maybe Bette Davis.
Is she not dead?
Dead, schmead! Dig her up and give her a hair-do!