Dear Youtube...

 Hello there Youtube, you got a minute for a little chat? 

We've been together for quite a while now and while for the most part it's been great - I honestly don't know what I'd do without you giving me a regular supply of music, dogs  and memes - there are a few things I wanted to bring up. 

 Starting with:

1. Adverts.

We both knew this one was coming, didn't we? Look, I am OK with you needing to make a profit but  50 minutes of unskippable ads before every video?  30 minutes of unskippable adverts every 15 minutes?  Calm it down will you? 

 Also, I am a 55 year old man. Why am I getting adverts for beauty products and tampons? 

Are you trying to tell me something? 

2. Youtube Premium 

 This is never going to happen. Accept it and move on. 

3. The Algorithm. 

 Please stop recommending me things I have already watched. Jeez, that gets frustrating after a while.  

4. AI Music Videos

...Are creepy and disturbing.  Make them stop. 

5. Deleted videos

Lastly, I'd like to make a suggestion.  Can you please add a feature where I can remove deleted/private videos from a playlist without having to go through each and every one? Cheers. 

Now that wasn't so bad, was it?  

Let's sit down with a cuppa and some hobnobs, and find a video of people failing at parkour.

Sound like a plan? 

That's all folks. 

Petty Annoyances

 So, since I'm in a grumpy mood right now, here's some more things that get on my wick.  Don't expect these to be in any kind of order or be particulary coherent.

1. Getting invested in a TV series only to find out that it got cancelled after one series.

  Looking at you "1899" Also "Truth Seekers" the "Thundercats" reboot and way more Sci-Fi series than I care to think about. Guess that cliff-hanger ending will remain unresolved forever. Awesome.  Meanwhile bollocks like "Love Island" refuses to fucking die. 

2. Youtube adverts. 

Because while I can cope with 20m seconds of ads at the start of the video...

No, scratch that.

While having to sit through 20 seconds of ads to watch a thrity second video about a cute Shiba Inu is irksome, I can at least appreciate that Youtube needs to make money and so does the make of the doggy vid.  

 Where it really gets into piss-boiling country is the frigging adverts every 5 minutes.  Even ITV doesn't do that. Not only does it disrupt the flow of the documentary/wrestling vid/snarky movie review I'm enjoying but most of the time it's for something I will never buy. 

  Trust me, I am never, ever getting a bamboo razor.  Or gym-wear. Or hair-colouring. 

Frankly I am amazed that the algorithm can run through my viewing history and still conclude that I might be interested in anything aimed at improving my appearance..

However, I did get an advert for industrial conveory belts once. That made my eyebrows go up a bit. 

Sticking with adverts for a moment...

3. That sodding wombat in the Comparethemarket adverts.  

Everybody hates you. Fuck off back to Australia and feed yourself to a Saltwater Crocodile. 

4. Youtube Recommendations. 

Stop recommending things I have already seen, you buncha numpties. There's like a zillion videos on Youtube that I've never seen. Try showing me  one of those instead. 

5. Whispering In Films

I noticed that a lot of "Serious" film and Tv does this.  Everybody talks in this sort-of semi-whisper.  Which makes sense if you're trying to avoid a hungry T.Rex but when it's just two people talking why aren't you actually talking like normal people do? 

Looking at you "1899"

 It doesn't make the dialogue any more "dramatic", it just sounds like you would rather be doing an ASMR instead. Speak up!

And lastly...

6. Action Scenes

Stop filming action scenes in super close-up. I want to be able to track what's going on and I can't do that if the fucking camera is two inches away from somebody's nostril. What I'm getting instead is motion-sickness. 

The Saga of The Vouchers Or Why SSE Can Eat All The Dicks.

 Most of the time my blog is about stuff I like; books. music,  videos, models, pictures of women wrestlers. Nothing really serious. Even the odd rants are not exactly heavy going.

Today is different. Today I am in a bad mood and I have been for a while.  

Let me explain.

 Earlier this year the UK Government announced that they would be giving everybody some assistance with the energy bills that suddenly shot up.  Why they shot up is a topic for another day but I'm pretty sure i can blame the Tories for it. 

 Anyway, there would be £400 in assistance spread over the winter months and for those of us who have Pay As You meters, said assistance would come in the form of a £60ish voucher that could be redeemed at the paypoint.  "Neat" I thought then promptly wondered how that would get fucked up. 

 At the start of November I got a letter from SSE Energy reminding me that I needed to redeem my October voucher and this confused me because I had never received one. 

So I rang them. 

"Oh not a problem, we'll send it again and they November voucher should be turning up in a bit too."

"Neat" I thought. "But I wonder if they'll actually arrive."

Which they didn't.

To cut a long story short,  November came and went without any sign of vouchers. Repeated phone calls and online chats did nothing beyond raise my hopes and my blood pressure.  I couldn't help noticing that getting through to customer support was proving difficult, especially if I wanted to talk about PAYG. 

"I wonder if that's deliberate" I thought. "Come to think of it, I wonder if them not sending my vouchers is also deliberate."   SSE had no issues with sending me a twice-monthly leaflet badgering me to get a smart meter but now they keep losing my mail? 

So here I am, sat in my living room with 4 layers of clothing on and in a shitty mood.  December is half over and the voucher I was supposed to get this month never turned up either. Frankly I would be amazed if I ever get any of the Government support I was supposed to have. 

I wish this country wasn't so shit at everything. I also wish that when Santa visits SSE this Xmas Eve, he leaves a big sack of freshly cut, steaming horse dicks and a note that reads "Eat up, motherfuckers"  

That's all folks. 

A Short List Of Things Which Can Fuck Off

 Since I'm feeling a bit grumpy today,  here's a short list of things that can get in the bin and then the bin can get set on fire.

1. WASPS

Wasps are bastards and exist for other reason than to spread fear and pain across the world. 

2. SPROUTS

There is food I don't like and there is food that I detest to the point where it's practically a blood-feud. 

Sprouts are top of that list.  Fuck off sprouts. Fuck all the way off.  

3. PEOPLE WHO DEFEND SPROUTS

There's always some little bollocks who decides to spout the old "Ah, you just need to cook them the right way..."

 No. Fuck you, you sprout-loving traitor to humanity.  You can cook potatoes in a hundred different ways and they're worth eating. Same with eggs. Same with bread. and cheese. If you have to  be a frigging alchemist to make sprouts edible then it's not worth the effort.

Also, if you love sprouts then you are my enemy and I despise you. 

4. THIS FRIGGING HEATWAVE

I don't like hot weather. I particularly don't like the part where I nip round to the shops and when I get home my t-shirt is wringing wet. When did the UK become a tropical  country?  Make it go away.

5. TRICKLE DOWN ECONOMICS

I don't have a picture for this one so you're going to have to bear with me. 

As i understand it, this is the theory that if you let rich twats make as much money as they like, some of that money will "trickle-down" to us plebs. 

Doesn't work.  Ever. 

Nah. what happens is that rich twats grab as much money as they can, hang on to it as much as possible and the only people that money "trickles down to" is politicians and other rich twats. So really more "trickles sideways"  Wankers. 

Well now I'm even grumpier and hotter than i was before so I'm going to get a cold drink and look at pictures of dogs. 

THAT'S ALL FOLKS

The Unique Logic Of Pro Wrestling

Disclaimer: I've been a wrestling fan for most of the last 40 years. Just so you know. 

  Professional Wrestling is a unique form of entertainment. Loosely based upon an ancient sport in the same way that a Jumbo is based on a kite, Pro Wrestling is part soap-opera, part morality-play, part stunt-show and these days, part self-aware pastiche of itself.

 This does mean that Wrestling has it's own set of "rules" and tropes that make sense only within context.

Or to put it another way: Stuff happens in pro-Wrestling that only makes sense if you accept that it's wrestling and roll with it.  Here's a few.

1. Employers have no control whatsoever over their employees.
 Most other places one or more employees running riot, refusing to play the game and literally kicking their employers in the balls would be met with a p45 and doubling the security force.  Wrestling? Nope.
  In what will become a definite pattern, the only way for say, Vince McMahon, to deal with one of his workforce playing up is to have one of his other workers (try) to beat him up.  This rarely works.

2. Rules? What rules?
     Winning a match by twatting your opponent with a chair is bad but for some reason, doing it in front of 20,000 people and a TV audience of millions has no repercussions whatsoever.  Cricket will spend 15 minutes going over camera footage to see if a toe was an inch over a chalk-line but the WWE will show the footage of (insert babyface here) getting coldcocked by a rival manager and go "Meh. what can you do." *Shrug*
 Of course the babyface might get a chance to face the villain again, in which case exactly the same thing will  happen again.

3. The Good, The Bad and the Good Again.   
    In theory babyfaces are the heroic good guys while heels are cheating, dastardly villains. The weird part is, when a good guy turns bad, they will wrestle in the exact same way, using the exact same moves and usually wearing the exact same outfit.  They might insult the audience a bit in promos but other than that, what's the actual difference?   And anyway, wrestlers dance back and forth across the line so often that you need a crib sheet to remember if he's supposed to be cheered or not.

Don't even get me started on "babyfaces" that get booed or "Heels" that are adored by the crowd.

4. Sucker Punches Do More Damage. 
   Picture the scene. Our hero is walking down the corridor backstage when out of nowhere a big, nasty bastard lunges out of the shadows and starts kicking his head in. Three minutes later our boy is lying flat on his back and not moving. He may even be in no fit state to wrestle tonight. The Horror.

Except...  the exact same two people had a match last week where they beat the living shit out of each other: punches, kicks, hitting each other with bits of wood, crashing through tables, piledrivers and suplexes and powerbombs, oh my.
  It took thirty frigging minutes of violence and the bad guy still couldn't put the good guy away. How come he's now out cold after a rabbit punch and boot in the ribs?

5. You wait right there so I can hurt you some more. 
  Because modern wrestling is so dependent on flashy moves these days, it can look a bit odd when one man is down and stunned but instead of, you know pinning his ass, the other wrestler decides to climb on the top rope, pose a bit then hit their flippy, spinny dive-y thing.
 Extra silly points if the prone opponent recovers and gets out of the way.
Double extra-silly points if they visibly shuffle into position.  

Any spot which involves a table or any kind of prop is so much worse because it means the target has to lie there looking vaguely silly while hoping the flyboy doesn't slip off the top rope.

6. All Of You wait right there so I can hurt you some more.
   CM Punk recently pointed out that one of today's common "spots" - the one where a cluster of wrestlers stand there waiting for somebody else to dive out of the ring onto them - looks a bit silly. I really can't argue with this. It's almost like they're hanging around to catch him or something...

7. Everything gets settled in the ring.  Everything. 
  Courts?..Police?.. Child protection?...HR? Hah! Pro Wrestling has no need of such things. The only way to settle any kind of dispute, up to and including attempted murder, is for two men to step inside the squared circle and beat each other up using the standard moves.

Impact wrestling did a storyline last year where one girl got stabbed in the throat and the fallout from this was... a wrestling match. Because apparently getting pinned is such a fitting punishment for fucking killing somebody. 
  Not even the weirdest part of that whole saga.


That's all I've got for now but I bet there's others that come to mind. What great examples of pro Wrestling Logic have you seen lately? 

That's All folks. 

A Short List Of Things Somebody Really Needs To Invent.

Because it's hot and that's making me grumpy I thought I'd share some thoughts on inventions the world ought to have but doesn't...Yet.

Seagull-Proof Binbags
Because on bin day the feathery, squawking bastards always get up extra early to have some fun with the piled-up binbags.  I don't know about anybody else but I really, really appreciate having to tiptoe through piles of rotting garbage on way way to work.

A Sensible Corned Beef Tin.
Why the bloody hell are these things such a twat to open?  Even if you manage to wield the tiny key properly, yous till have to poke and prod the corned beef to get it out of the tin. God help you if you lose the key or it snaps.  Corned Beef tins are damn-near impossible to open with a conventional tin-opener and they are razor sharp to boot.

Bus Seats Designed for Humans. 
I refuse to believe anybody involved in designing bus seats has seen a normal-sized human or a normally-shaped human. The alternative is that they were deliberately designed to be uncomfortable.

A Self-Stirring Saucepan.   
I admit it, I just want one of these because I'm lazy and stirring stuff is boring.  I'd also really like a frying-pan where it was the same constant temperature across the whole bloody thing.  I should not have to shuffle my sausages about in this day and age.

A Remote Control That Stays Where You Bloody Put It. 
Alternatively: A Remote Control That Has  A Homing Beacon attached. 
Because I don't like having to dismantle my sofa and conduct a fingertip search through my entire living room to find a damn remote. especially when my programme is just coming on.

A Sonic Weapon You Can Fire down The Phone At Cold Callers and  Microsoft Scammers That Will Make Them Shit Themselves.  
Do I really need to explain this one?  Maybe Phase 2 would be something to make Grammerly adverts fuck off from Youtube forever.

Any you can think of?  Let me know. 

That's All Folks. 

Can This Heatwave Just Sod Off Already?

I know there's lots of people enjoying the UK's highly unusual, long spell of dry, sunny weather.

I'm not one of them.  

I'll admit that it was fun at first. After the snow,  the wind and rain, and the grey, drab, soul-witheringly bleak skies of Britain's winter, the sunshine was a blessed relief. 

That was a month and a half ago. Now I'm sat here sweltering and this isn't fun any more. 

Let me take a moment to list all the positives.

1. The sky is a nice shade of blue.

2. When I hang out my laundry it dries really quickly.

That's it. 

"But what about all the wonderful things you could be doing in the sunshine. " I hear some aggravating little twonk say. " What about sitting in the garden with a pint? What about going to the beach? What about going for a walk in the fresh air. Enjoy the summer!"

To which my reply would be "I think you've mistaken me for somebody else. Do I look like I  enjoy being out and about in bright sunshine? FFS, I'm so pale the last time I tried to give blood  the nurse offered me a couple of bags of  O Positive because I clearly needed it.  So fuck off."

You know what I do like?  I like walking to work and not arriving with my t-shirt and gusset soaked in sweat.  I like being able to sleep at night because the air in my bedroom  isn't the temperature of toast.  I like looking out of my window and seeing lovely green grass instead of the scorched straw that's out there right now. I like stepping out of doors without feeling like the sun is out to get me.  I really like being able to get on a bus without spending the entire journey soaking in the delightful scent of other people's armpits and sweaty bollocks.

So yeah. I'm not enjoying the hot weather as much as I might be. 

Make it go away.

Until then I'll be drinking a pint of water every hour and wondering how I can shave off every single hair on my body.

That's all folks. 

The "Sad Warrior" Pose

 Earlier this week I posted a review of low-budget horror-flick "Land Of The Pharaohs"(It's crap. don't bother) but in the process of writing the review something occurred to me.

I looked at the DVD cover and thought "Why does that look familiar?"

And the answer was "Because I've seen that pose used on a few DVDs lately.  Let me demonstrate.

This is the one that immediately came to mind.

I've decided to call this pose The Sad Warrior pose because let's face it, do any either of these people look like they're having fun.

  At best you have a warrior praying for strength and fortune before an epic battle. Alternatively, here's somebody on the verge of a nervous breakdown because of all the heinous shit they've been put through.

 My theory is that DVD artists like this pose because it suggests a depth of feeling to the hero that might make us care about them a little more. "I'm not somebody that stabs people then parties. I stab people then feel really bad about it afterwards. Such is my fate"
 
 Problem is I've watched both of these DVDs and neither of the blokes on the cover are in the frigging movie.  
 Not even a little bit.  If it comes to that, the movie on the cover is not the movie on the disk because "Land Of the Pharaohs" is set almost entirely in a municipal museum and "Clash Of Empires" is about Javanese villagers fighting an evil king.

I suspect this is deliberate. 

Still don't believe me? Let's have another one.

Sympathy is not the only emotion being deliberately courted here, I feel. 

It's also  curiously similar to this Red Sonja promo poster. 

 A film we never got to see, sadly. 

 Once again the packaging for "Red Reaper" is deliberately misleading. No chainmail bikini for a starters.

  Beyond the fact that the hero is a pretty redhead, you don't get the film you' paid to see.

Moving on to film's I haven't seen. A five minute trawl through Amazon pulled up all of these adventure movies, coming to a CEX near you. 

  (I did try watching this one but gave up after 20 minutes because it was so dull. I doubt it got better.) 

 A slight variation here. Yay.

 I haven't seen this movie but I'm going to go out on a limb and suggest that it isn't about "one man's fight to destroy an entire empire". It's more likely about a Thracian farmer fighting against the Roman prick that nicked his donkey. 

  One more to finish. 

  Here's a funny thing. When I went looking for this DVD cover I found two different versions. It's interesting how there's such a wide gap between the film you'd expect from this cover and what the other cover suggests.

Almost like one of these covers is lying to you.,

Here's my tip. If you see The Sad Warrior pose on a DVD, save yourself time, money and frustration and walk on by.  Maybe then the people who perpetuate this bullshit will finally stop taking the piss. 

 That's All Folks. 

Youtube ads are just taking the piss now.

 I'm going to go on record as saying that I'm not a big fan of Youtube ads. Intellectually I'm aware that the the site and the video creators need funding, and that adverts are required for this.

  That's my head talking. What my heart says when I have to sit through another painful Lilly Singh advert before I can watch some parkour fails is unprintable until somebody comes up with Black Speech keyboard.   I also wonder who thinks that when I want to watch a new Metal video, what I'd really be interested in seeing first is 30 unskippable seconds of twee indie-pop.

Don't even get me started on adverts midway through a video. "What the fuck?" barely covers it.

Today, however... today marks the point at which Youtube ads cross over into whole new realms of fuckwittery.  Because today is the day I decided to watch the trailer for upcoming disaster-fest Geostorm and had to sit through another trailer first.

A  trailer for Geostorm.

 That's right, my pretty marsupials. The bots that run Youtube decided I had to watch the exact same trailer that I was going to watch anyway, only without the option to skip. 

 The only way that could be any more up its own arse would be if the trailer stopped midway through so I could watch a trailer for Geostorm while a pop-up ad for Geostorm suddenly covered half the screen.  I pray I am safely dead before things get that bad. 

And Geostorm looks a bit stupid anyway.

That's all folks. 

Enquiring Minds Want To Know...

  Given that this blog is called "Assorted Thoughts From An Unsorted Mind" I suppose it's well past time I shared some actual thoughts with you.
 Not deep, meaningful nuggets though. I don't really do those. More like the sort of thing that pops into your head when you realise that the world is not only random but actively going out of its way to screw with you.

So...

How come... whenever I change my duvet cover, it take ten minutes of grappling, copious amounts of swearing and way too much sweat to get the new cover over the duvet...
But when I put a duvet cover into the washing machine it will magically swallow everything else in there.

Maybe that's where I'm going wrong. Maybe I should wash the duvet and the cover at the same time and let them bond naturally.

How come... I can spend an entire night desperately trying to get to sleep...
But when the alarm goes off I suddenly can't keep my eyes open.

I'm convinced that I've spent most of my adult life surviving on the 40 minutes of sleep I get in the gap between my alarm going off and actually getting up.
 So tonight I'm going to try a little experiment. I'm going to set the alarm for 2345 and see what happens.

How come... I keep seeing discarded underpants lying in the street? What's the story there?

I can understand if there was an accident involved but I keep seeing perfectly intact, perfectly clean grundies draped across hedges. Never mind, "Who Shot Kennedy" I need to know whose kecks those were I saw on my way into work on Friday morning.

How come... I see people happily marching along with their nose stuck in the phone - but when I walk along reading my book I get shouted at?

That is, admittedly, a bit dumb on my part but some consistency would be nice.

How come...  I can use my debit card to buy a bottle of Coke and the whole transaction can last less than a minute - but it then takes two days to come off my account balance?

 The bank presumably knows whether I have the money or not, and Christ knows they're fast enough to put the kibosh on when I'm 15p short. So how hard can it be to have an account balance that reflects current events?  

Whatever. Now I'm in a bad mood so I'm going to go raid my fridge and watch dumb shit on Youtube.

That's all folks. 

Cheapo DVD Review: Rise Of The Fellowship (2013)

This bad-tempered rant  review is likely to get quite sweary. You have been warned. 

 Just for a change I'm going to post the back cover of the DVD as well. It will become relevant, trust me. 

  "A group of friends embark on an epic journey to find a new world they have only heard of, encountering dangerous obstacles and threats around every corner. During their quest they lose one of their most precious possessions and must display depths of bravery and heroism that they never thought possible. With the aid of some unexpected allies along the way, the companions fiercely look for certainty that they can reach their destination. "

    There's a reason one of my post tags is "DVD artists are lying bastards" and that's because of stuff like this :  Films cynically repackaged as something they aren't to grab more sales. 

I've seen a lot of that over the last few years and it annoys me. Maybe I'm naive but when I pick a film off the shelf because the cover looks interesting, that's the film I want to see. Discovering that I've been gulled yet again does not put me in the right frame of mind to appreciate the movie. 

"Rise Of The Fellowship" is probably the most extreme example of this bullshit I've ever encountered. 

Look at the DVD covers, both of them. You should now have a mental image of the film contained therein, right? 

Wrong.

Very, very fucking wrong. 

  I was expecting a low-budget fantasy that bore a suspicious resemblance to a certain recent series about hairy-footed little people. What I actually got was a low-budget, indie-flick about a bunch of gamers on a road trip. 

  Instead of a LOTR ripoff, I got a film that really wants to be "Fanboys - Gamer edition"

I would be impressed at the way the marketing wankers carefully concealed any clue to the real film...

...If I wasn't so pissed off.   

  If you'd made the DVD cover bear some resemblance to the bastard film I'd still have bought it.  A bunch of gamers trying to get across the country to a gaming event? Sounds like it could be interesting, so let's give it a whirl.  

  As it is, I started watching and my immediate reaction was "What the fuck is this?" which is not a positive thing by anybody's standards. 

 And why the hell is the DVD sleeve covered in knights? There aren't any in the fucking film. That's the sort of thing I'm good at noticing.  

 I'm really good at spotting beautiful women too. So believe me when I say that if the blonde on the cover was in this film, I'd have spotted her.    

  Somebody made a conscious effort to put "Rise Of the Fellowship" out in a sleeve that outright lies.

  Somebody is taking the piss and I am not fucking happy. 

Aargghhh!

  Now that my blood pressure has gone back down and I no longer want to punch somebody, I suppose I'd better talk about the film itself.

 "Rise Of The Fellowship" is OK, I suppose. Amusing, rather than funny, in that low-key Indieflick fashion and with some nods towards the LOTR trilogy that make sense in context. 

 There's quite a few daydream sequences - which does explain the pics on the back cover.  

  The gang are straight out of Geek Casting Central - the straight man, the chick, the fat kid and the guy who thinks he's funny - all of whom are easy to like, so wanting to see them prevail is also easy. . 

 The bad guys are exactly what you'd expect from this kind of film - a bunch of Jocks who act like utter tossers just because they can and some authority figures who just don't listen, man.  

 You have to wonder what the hell was going on in American schools when the last two generations of film-makers were growing up. Somebody ended up with some real issues. 

  The story is straightforward with few real twists, none that can't be seen from a mile off anyway. No real wacky hijinks either. This is a PG film which does limit the shenanigans a bit.

How much did I pay for this: £1

Was it worth it?  Once I'd stopped being angry at the blatant bait & switch, "Rise of the Fellowship" is an ok movie. Not stellar and "Fanboys" does the same thing but better. 

 Having said that "Rise of the Fellowship" has its moments and enough charm to keep me watching so, yes, I'd say this film was worth the quid I paid. 

Ler me finish with a personal message from me to the misbegotten son of an ape who came up with the packaging. And all the other tossers who keep pulling this trick. 

  That's all folks. 

  

Twiglets. Why?

   I must confess to being a fussy eater. When I was a kid I worked out that if I flat-out refused to eat stuff I hated then eventually people would take the hint and stop trying to make me eat it.

 Having said that, my palate has expanded over the years to include many things I formerly shunned.

Once upon a time I feared mayonnaise. Now I've come to appreciate the way it complements chips.

 And the first time anybody invited me to try a Doner Kebab I remember thinking "It's grey, it's greasy, I don't know what it's made of and I can smell it from across the room. Why are you asking me to eat chemical waste?"
  Whereas nowadays I walk into my local kebab shop and they just say "The usual?"

 There are, however, a few things I will never, ever touch so long as I have working tastebuds and full control over my own limbs. Here's one of them.

I'm starting to get a bit fed up with the weather.

In place of today's scheduled post, we will be bringing you this important message. 

Dear God, Buddah, Simon Cowell or whoever it is that actually controls Britain's weather these days,

Look...whatever we did to piss you off, we're sorry, OK?

Now enough with all the bastard rain already. 

Love,

Big D and the rest of the United Kingdom.

You know what, while I'm here and in a venting frame of mind...

Dear person who built the bus shelters in Portsmouth Commercial road, specifically the one right outside CEX. 

  I really appreciate the way you designed it to offer the illusion of shelter while utterly failing to offer any actual protection from the weather. You also cunningly fitted not enough seats for everybody to sit down, just enough lighting to make it (almost) possible to read the bus timetable and I have to admire the way you carefully sculpted the pavement to collect as much water as possible, giving me and fellow travellers the additional joy of splashing about in a big fuck-off puddle. 

 Give yourself a round of applause and then go eat a bag of goat dicks. 

That's all folks. 

If you'll excuse me,  I'm going to peer out of my kitchen window and contemplate the soggy mess that is my back garden.     

Catherine Kieu is a violent nutcase. Why are people supporting her?

This is Catherine Kieu-Becker

When her husband told her that he wanted a divorce she did not react well. 

 On July 11 2011, Catherine drugged him then hacked off his dick with a kitchen
knife and stuffed it down the garbage disposal. 

 This is the cast of US Talkshow "The Talk" offering their opinion on the incident. 

Most of them find it amusing. Sharon Osbourne especially.

Now in all fairness, Sharon did offer an apology. (Ff to 1.32)

(Although for some reason I'm having a hard time believing she meant it.

Giggling will do that.)

This is US televison "personality" Wendy Williams putting her two cents in.

"When you cross a woman all is fair."

This is a website claiming that the plaintiff needs "Care not punishment"

http://www.change.org/petitions/the-president-of-the-united-states-fight-to-get-catherine-kieu-care-not-punishment 

There was (briefly) a Free Catherine Kieu page on Facebook which has since been pulled.

All of this leads me to one simple question:

What the fuck is wrong with you people?

   I see this time after time. Male victims of female violence are blamed ("You must have done something to deserve it.") shamed ("You got beat up by a girl. What kind of a man are you?") and then mocked. (Beating up a boyfriend is fun and empowering.) So basically told "You do not matter."

  There's this "You go, girl" attitude around that tells women that pretty much anything shitty a woman does to a man is not only OK but a victory for womankind. If you want an example as to where that leads, pop round to your local battered husband's shelter. Assuming you can find one.

   Incidentaly, according to the defence team the victim was an abusive asshole but since that's been the go-to defence for violent women for decades, I'm not entirely convinced.  By all accounts, neither was the judge.
 I'm also confidently expecting Jezebel to come with an emotive article explaining how the whole thing is really the fault of The Patriarchy. Tell me I'm wrong, I dare you.

  So to sum up.

Catherine Kieu cut her husband's dick off and fed it to a garbage disposal. 

If you think that's OK then you are a hateful moron.

Why I Support Mens Rights

Why do I feel that somebody needs to raise the issues affecting men?


Because...Despite what people think, depression, stress and grief cannot be cured with the magic words "Man up"
Because ...The only way to get people to give a shit about prostate cancer -  a disease that kills thousands of men a year -  is to claim women are victims too.
Because...A man can get his dick cut off and stuck down a garbage disposal machine and tv hosts will call it "fabulous"
Because...Women attacking men is not only OK but is actively encouraged as some sort of bullshit "empowerment"
...But God forbid he should defend himself in any way shape or form.
Because...If the police turn up to a DV incident and get confronted with a man bleeding from a vase-inflicted cut to the forehead, they  will probably nick him instead.
Because..if a battered male tries to get help, most shelters and helplines don't want to know.
.. And a few will accuse him of being a batterer himself.
... And the media will laugh at him.
Because...Men have died at the hands of women, unable or unwilling to defend themselves.
Because... A female head teacher can get up in front of a national conference and tell them "There's no point in trying to teach boys anything. they're too stupid" and nobody will call her on it.
Because...Education has been failing boys all over the Anglosphere for years and the teaching industry cheerfully ignores them in favour of the pressing issue: Not enough girls wanting to be plumbers.
Because...Any job that is dirty, involves being away from home or could get you killed is almost invariably done by men.
..And somehow this makes them "privileged"
Because...A man can end up in prison purely because a woman regretted having sex.
Because... A male cabbie can almost end up in prison because a group of girls decided they weren't going to pay him.
Because...Male workers should not have to carry recording devices to protect themselves from false accusations.
Because..."Innocent until proven guilty" doesn't apply in rape cases or harassment accusations.
Because... In a divorce a  man can lose his home, his kids and his pension almost overnight.
Because... A man can be ordered to pay more in alimony and child-support than he earns.
Because... A man can be ordered to pay child support for a kid that isn't even his.
Because... A man can suddenly find himself a father despite being told she was taking birth control...
Because ...Every other month there's an article on the lines of  "Why aren't men getting married anymore? How dare they think they can devote time and money to stuff they want to do instead."
Because...Everytime I take my two little nieces to a playground, I'd like to do so without a gaggle of mums glaring at me.
Because...I resent this idea that the only thing stopping me from raping somebody is a two-colour poster.  
Because... Every time I turn on the Tv I get to watch yet another man bumbling through life, barely evolved from a starfish.

Because...I am so tired of people thinking I should be ashamed of having a penis.

Because..I would quite like to be able to say "Hey look, being a guy in the 21st Century isn't always fun" without being hammered with "patriarchy" "male privilege" "Centuries of oppression" "Womanhater" and 101 other variations on "Shut the fuck up you...you.. MAN, you

It's not just Mums who make Christmas happen.

Over the Christmas period I couldn't help noticing a couple of adverts along the lines of  "Mums , you're wonderful and Christmas couldn't happen without you." and fair's fair, appreciation for hard work done is never amiss. But I couldn't help noticing the absence of something.
 Not a single advert mentioned Dads at all. They show up at the end to eat the Xmas dinner in a couple but that's it. The obvious implication being, they're sat around scratching their balls while Supermum busts a gut. 
 And I thought that more than a little unfair so... 

 To all the Dads that slogged away throughout the year so their families could afford Xmas...
 To all the Dad's that nearly did themselves a mischief fetching decorations down from the loft..
 To all the Dads that spent hours out in the cold putting up the lights on the house and garden..
 To all the Dads who had to elbow their way through crowds to find the toys their kids wanted...
 To all the Dads that got up at 3am to put the pressies under the tree...
 To all the Dads that cooked Xmas dinner ...(More of those about than people think)
 To all the Dads who spent Xmas day putting together toys...
 To all the Dads who took their kids outside to try out their new bikes...
 To all the Dads who've been driving their families from one relative to another...
 To all the Dads that had to sit through the "Eastenders" Xmas special...
 To all the Dads who put up with family rows and sniping in-laws without chinning somebody...
 To all the Dads who did all the above and then have to sit through yet another advert that paints them as bumbling idiots who cannot be trusted to choose their own socks...

Gentlemen

You are awesome.

A grumpy man's guide to a better gig experience.

I've been going to gigs for over twenty years now so I feel I have some experience in the area. Allow me to make some suggestions that will benefit everybody.

1. If you are the same age as I am - and especially if you are the same shape  - please keep your t-shirt on.  Nobody needs to see it and the only thing worse than having a sweaty, fat bloke bump into you is colliding with a sweaty, half-naked fat bloke.
2. Deodorant is your friend. Having a shower before you come out is also polite. And a few of you apparently need to learn how to wipe your arse properly .
3. Dear Promoters: Putting on the opening band 5 minutes after the door opens pretty much guarantees that they will play their first couple of songs to the bar staff. Congratulations on wasting everybody's time.
4. Dear local bands:  Ever wondered why you keep seeing the same faces at gigs?  It could be that your mates are the only people who knew you were playing that night. Try putting up a few flyers.
5. Personally I'd like to watch the band rather than engage in a brawl but if you want to mosh, fine by me.   But grabbing some poor sod from the crowd and throwing him into the moshpit is a dick move. As is lobbing your half-drunk pint across the room.Knock it off.
And finally:
6. Dear soundmen at metal gigs: For the love of Dio, please learn how to mix properly. When Spinal Tap talked about turning the volume up to 11 they were joking.  And dialling the bass up until my fillings vibrate does not constitute a well balanced sound.  I'd like to be able to hear something besides the rhythmn section, thank you ever so frigging much.  I'd also quite like to be able to hear anything the next day.

Thank you. Now go away and have fun.

Dear Rest Of The World...

 I haven't had a proper rant in a while so let's get a few things off my chest.
Ahem.
Dear rest of the world,
 Please find below a short list of things that annoy me ever so slightly. Please knock it off.
1. "You know wrestling is fake don't you?"
  Leaving aside the fact that scripted action has never stopped anybody enjoying movies and tv, this one winds me up something fierce. If you tell me this then one of two things is happening.
 Either you think I'm too dense to have worked it out for myself or you are trying to score points.
 Now I've been watching wrestling for almost 30 years and that's not likely to change just because of your opinion. The one thing that has changed is that I now think you are a bellend.
2. Talking at the cinema.
 And no, I don't mean whispering to the person next to you if they were having trouble with the plot, I mean chatting merrily away like you were sat in a beer garden. The film starts, you shut the hell up. How difficult is it to grasp?
 I should have the legal right to beat these people to death. 
3. "Ladies, buy this product. Aren't men stupid. Hurr hurr."
  This has been pissing me off for at least a decade and if anything, it's getting worse. I turn on the tv and one ad after another has the smart mother/daughter/girlfriend showing up some hapless male for the semi-literate shaved ape he is.
 That's supposed to be me up there is it? Thanks ever so frigging much.
Hang on, apparently I'm supposed to prove I can take a joke and laugh it off. However,  I have a better idea.
 How about, I stop buying your product you patronising sack of monkey turds, and how about you stick a broken bottle up your arse and give it a quarter turn to the right. 
4. "But it's the Olympics..."
  The Olympics was a big deal, clearly made a lot of people happy and no doubt the next World Cup is going to get a lot of people bouncing around happily.
But not me.
 I'm not interested in sport, never have been interested in sport and Elvis will make a comeback paying dubstep before my feelings towards athletics ever get beyond "Meh!" So why do people get astonished because I'm not cheering for Team GB?
  So if you enjoy watching people running around a track, I wish you joy but just because a sporting event is bigger profile does not give me any more incentive towards giving a shit.  I'll listen politely but that's all you're going to get. Accept this and we can move on with our lives.
5. "We paid good money for this footage. We're going to get our money's worth."
 Coming up, I will explain exactly how annoying it is to see documentaries reusing the same short snippet of film time and time again.

  Ever noticed how certain documentaries will keep showing the same snippet of recreation throughout the programme?  Any programme about the end of the dinosaurs is  guaranteed to use the compulsory  shot of an asteroid tumbling towards earth every ten minutes or so. This starts to grate after a while, especially when you realise the narrator has to give a recap after every ad-break, complete with that damn shot of the asteroid again.
 The trashier "World's Dumbest Rednecks" type of programme takes this to extreme levels by running the same clip 3-4 times right after each other.     

  We've been discussing documentaries using footage over and over again and how much it gets on my tits.
 Pack it in. 

 That's it for now folks. I'll maybe do some more when my blood-pressure gets back to normal.

My Musical Pet Hates.

1. Songs that don't know when to end.

  If you're going to have a seven minute song there had better be something interesting going on in those last three minutes - have the guitarists duel with each other, suddenly change gear and crank up the volume, let the keyboard player have a solo, anything but repeat the chorus again and again and again and again...
Example: Anything off Judas Priest's Jugulator album. No kidding. There is not a single song on that album that couldn't lose a minute and a half and be all the better for it.

2. Mariah Carey Syndrome

   And this seems to be exclusive to female singers. specifically female singers who have a good range and want everybody to know it. Every single word is stretched out, bounced around the scale  and occasionally turned into something only dogs can hear. Why? It serves no useful purpose and gets on my tits something fierce.

3. Sudden outbreaks of rapping. 

   I'm not a massive fan of rap but I can appreciate the odd song here and there. What I do fail to understand is the ongoing tendency to shoehorn rap segments into songs that are otherwise mainstream.
 Fun fact. There has never yet been a pop song that has been improved by having Snoop Dogg pop up in the middle.
 Even Rush did this on the Roll The Bones album. Oh dear.
 (No, it wasn't Snoop Dogg. That would have been too weird for words.)

4. Miserable women with pianos. 

  I'm not a big fan of singer-songwriters. I prefer my music amplified and upbeat so having somebody wander onstage clutching an acoustic guitar will usually send me off to the bar.
  But there's one subspecies that causes me actual pain plus a fervent desire to stick a pencil in somebody's eye and that would be Miserable Women With Pianos. Adele, for instance.
 Fans would probably describe their product as "Personal", "Intimate" and  "Emotional" whereas I'd describe it as "Boring", "Shite" and "Why am I listening to somebody whining about how much their life sucks?"
 Screw that.

5. The Musical Makeover

 There's nothing wrong with tweaking your sound to keep current. Rush, Judas Priest, Black Sabbath, Yes and Pink Floyd (among others) have all taken a look at the musical climate around them,thought "We can do that" and adapted to fit. Usually there's a clear progression from album to album where you can track this happening.
 Then there's the bands that suddenly switch sounds completely.  Let me give you an example.
Ultravox made their name as a synthpop outfit, albeit one with grandiose leanings and a surprisingly useful guitarist.

But then they went  from this:

To this:

 Note the new clothes, brass section, backing singers and 

blatant ditching of all the elements I'd liked them for.

 If you want more examples, pick a Hair Metal band from the early 90s. An awful lot of them tried to jump on the Grunge bandwagon and got run over. Or any fading star that suddenly discovers dance music. (Looking at you, Cher. And you Wishbone Ash.)
 It gets particularly annoying when said artist announces that they are now making the sort of music they wanted to make all along.
 It's always nice when somebody basically let's all their fans know that he thinks they are mugs. Cheers.

Thanks a bunch Youtube.

Well, my ongoing mission to post metal songs kinda came skidding to a halt when Youtube decided to delete my account for reasons which probably make sense to somebody.
Once I've rebuilt my archive and to-go list I may pick this back up.
In the meantime, Youtube are currently top of my list of people who can go screw themselves.