Posts Tagged ‘Rant’

What is it with Britain and the cold weather? Every year its freezing and every year we all complain that we are too cold. I had a massive argument with my car today. Yes it may be an inanimate object but that’s no reason not to give it some rather unmentionable names. I stepped out in to what the car told me was minus 8 degrees, and had a look at the windows: Covered in a massive layer of ice - Not a good start to the day, and at 7.20am not great at all.

I delved in the boot and dragged out a bottle of De-icer. Which, the packaging would lead you to believe, would help de-ice the cars windscreens. But no. Instead it left a sludgy, mucky mess all over my windows and barely took anything off. The can was unbearably cold, being captain sensible I’d left my gloves not even in my flat but in another country – I’m not even kidding, I angrily tossed the now “stupid” can in to the back seat of the car, and grabbed the scraper.

To me this is always a bit of a pain for two reasons. 1. You valiantly scrape your completely frozen car window, and due to the amount of elbow grease you’re using, you end up being really hot feeling. Then when you’ve finished scraping you realise that you are rapidly getting colder, and feel worse than you did before said scraping, and 2. what the heck is that brush bit for?

Anyway, I stood scraping the car window for ages. Everytime I scraped a bit of ice off, the sludge from the spray I’d used slip back on to the window and froze almost immediately. Starting to lose the plot, and the will to live, I shouted some more, cursing this weather and rubbishing Halfords for not releasing some kind magic wand that does all this stuff for you.

Finally I started off down the road, peering through a gap that my heater had made in the window – my heater is terrible. As I was driving I accidentally nudged the windscreen wiper meaning that I had now scrapped a layer of icy, sludgy mush across my windscreen blocking my view of the road. I pulled over and had to essentially repeat the process I’d just done – more scraping.

This kind of thing happens every year to Britain. I can’t count the amount of times I’ve seen someone driving around peering through a 2 inch gap in their steamed up windscreen, or driving past someone trying in vain to clear their driveway of snow. I used to prefer the cold weather to hot because I always used to say, ‘at least I can put more clothes on if I’m cold’, but now I want the sun please. Brr…

I want to have a moan about a popstar who I think deserves a slap, but first…I’m slowly driving myself a little mad. My eye will not stop itching. I made the school boy error of scratching it, and now its bright red. Good times. I’m starting to think it’s the heater next to me – when its on my head spins a little, and I feel a bit rubbish, so actually I now definitely think it’s the heater. Maybe it’s seeping out gas or something, who knows.

Anyway, that’s not what I’m going to whinge about today. It’s Madonna. You know, she’s the old women that gyrates in-front of young people at concerts because she thinks that makes her look hip and cool. Sorry luv, but it’s a plastic hip you’ll need soon (if she isn’t entirely made of plastic already).

You have to feel sorry for her now ex-husband, Guy, who has to see photos of ‘Madge’ “sticking the fingers up at her marriage” at her concerts in front of her young fans. What a top lady. If I had a wife like that I’d be glad to see the back of her, she’s horrific. She looks like an old bit of bacon that’s still to be cleaned off the cooker from last Sundays fry-up.

I think though all divorces are like this, but because she has a platform to shout from she’s using it. She’s not exactly setting a good example to her army of fans, and I think its massively unfair of her to do so, you can’t help but feel that it’s all just a publicity stunt to generate interest for her current tour. I mean, come on! Most people would be gutted at having to get divorced but instead she’s happily performing, and raking in tons of money. And that my friend’s is the problem…

It’s a simple thing: feed a person, they’ll get fat. She has a fat wallet because the general public insist on feeding her. It’s like that car crash Winehouse – whom I despise. If people stopped buying her digitally enhanced records – don’t tell me you think that either of these girls old women knows how to sing properly. You can make any of these ‘artists’ sound half decent with readily available auto-tune software, believe me, I’ve used it before for fun.

As a world we love feeding these terrible people, giving them longer careers than they truly deserve, along with special treatment when they deserve a slap for being so full-of-it. I’ve seen it first hand. I’ve cringed when backstage at festivals certain musicians have demanded something ridiculous – like a 7-seater van for they’re entourage to travel a whole 40 metres to the stage – I’m not even kidding.

We need to calm down with the molly-codling of these celebrities because they have such a ridiculous degree of self worth – yes you may be the big thing right now, but so were the thousands of bands before you, and the thousands there will be after your forgotten.

I don’t know how I do it, but I often eat food really fast, knowing fine well that it’s hot, only to moan for the rest of the day that I burned my mouth. Is it stupidity, or is it because I like to moan? Well yeah, I do like a moan, as anyone who’s read any of my posts in the past will say – “that guy likes having a moan.”

Well I can’t deny it, I love moaning about stuff. Things that have annoyed me, things that will annoy me in the future, people that annoy me, playing a game of football and not scoring, animals, drivers, idiotic football fans, people who tie a knot in the bread – why? Why would you intentionally ruin my morning, as I try to open a knot that is far too tight, on a slippy cellophane wrapper. What a nightmare.

I’m not by nature an angry person. I’m actually quite sedate in real life, but sometimes the people on this stupid planet do drive me insane. Like people who don’t indicate until they are three feet from the junction. Or what about people who insist on making your life difficult, or people who trigger your guilt.

Like the time an old granny queue jumped me in Tesco. I let it slide, she’s old, and has probably led an interesting life, but then she did it to the next person. Then the next. I watched as this be-hatted old woman played on the emotions of innocent shoppers to get herself to the front of the queue.

So what next. What should I direct my natural ability to have a moan at? Its cold, but my left side is too hot due to the heater. But if I turn it down, I’ll be cold all over…do I sacrifice having a half-flu next week because I wanted the vaguest amount of heat imaginable, or should I have a whole flu from turning it off.

I played football the other night. Did I score? Did I hell. I hit the bar twice, and the post once. No matter what I tried, I couldn’t get the ball in the net, but everyone else playing that night scored…I reckon my chi has been disturbed.

So how do I reign in my favourite hobby? Maybe I should become even more relaxed, but if I did that I’d never achieve anything. I think I’ll stick with moaning abut stuff. Its good to vent, and it doesn’t hurt anyone either as usually I’m only annoyed because I’ve done something dumb. Anyways, if you enjoy my rants, check back on Monday for the latest news on my stupid weekend.

So Didier Drogba is in the dog house for retaliating against football fans who pelted the Chelsea’s striker with coins after he scored against Championship side Burnley in the Carling cup. He got a yellow card for the incident last night, and the media have been giving the player a hard time with headlines like:

“Metropolitan Police to investigate Didier Drogba coin throw” – the times
“Police Probe Drogba Coin Throw” – Sky News
“Police investigate Drogba coin throwing incident” - Reuters
“Drogba is facing FA charge after throwing coin at fans” – This is London
“Chelsea’s Didier Drogba faces FA and police probe after throwing coin at Burnley fans” - Telegraph
“Drogba may face ban over missile” – ITN

Now I’m not even being remotely funny when I say, shouldn’t it be the fan who threw the coin at Drogba making the headlines for being a pathetic human being? What I’d really like to know was when did this become acceptable at football matches? It happens at almost every game, and believe me as someone who got hit with a coin once before, let me tell you – it hurts like hell.

Now, I’m not necessarily defending Drogba, he was wrong to let is emotions get the better of him, but at the same time, the Burnley fan/thug should come forward and apologise for making our footballing nation look bad.

The media have had a field day on the striker, and that’s not fair at all. I bet the fan in question is feeling one of two things right now. Hopefully he’s feeling guilty for being a stain on the underpants of society, but in reality he’s probably feeling proud of himself, as it’s the first noteworthy thing he’s ever achieved in his life.

The fact is that this hooligan’s team got through to the next round of the cup, so his throw at Drogba has even less significance. Surely in the crowd they must have seen ho threw it? Surely one fan from the crowd actually had enough guts to say to security point him out and say “he did it”, or is it like play ground again where the bully’s get away with murder because the nice kids don’t want to get beat up to.

How long before someone comes forward complaining that he/she was hit with the return throw of the coin? If that happens, then the media will tear Drogba to even tinier pieces. Drogba now looks to be facing down the barrel of a three match ban from the FA, but what good will that do anyway? Anelka’s doing pretty good on his own these days, and Drogba’s already said he shouldn’t have thrown the coin back.

Does anyone have a thought on this? Was Drogba right to strike back? What would you do if you were the FA? Ban him, or would you ban the fan from attending any football match for the rest of his life?

Yesterday I had an insane drive in the car. I was at work and I had to leave at 2.45pm to go back to my flat and take the missus to the doctors for an appointment at 3.40pm. The journey was supposed to be easy, however it ended up more like a mix between Clockwise (cringe-worthy John Cleese film) and an Indiana Jones movie.

In classic Jack Bauer style, I’ll go by the clock:

2.40pm: I start switching my computer off at work, and I make a quick call to the missus to let her know I’m on my way home.

2.45: I pull out of the work car park, and get cut-across by a huge lorry with a cement mixer thing turning on the back of it…He’s being difficult and driving in the middle of the road on the way out to the main street, so I’m stuck behind him.

2.47: Finally approaching the junction, he signals right…sweet I say to myself, as I want to go left. He’s about two feet from the junction, and then he changes his mind and signals left. Damn!

2.50: I’m crawling through the winding roads of the village just outside my place of work at 20mph, cursing my luck. I start doing the maths: it normally takes me 15 minutes to get home from where I was, so if I could just get past him I’d be back for 5 past. The missus was sitting waiting, so I’d call her at the bridge, and we’d get back to the doctors at about 3.35pm.

2.51: I begin to pray to the traffic god. “Please make this guy turn off at the next junction/roundabout/whatever”, but no, instead he continues down the same way I want to go. Now I know I have to get past him before the back roads (about ten miles of near-single-track roads, but to my dismay, he decides he’s taking his 5 ton truck down the country roads, at about 25 mph. Aaaarrrrggghhhh…

2.59: I’m starting to lose my hair rapidly, I’ve called the missus to explain, and while talking an the phone, in front of my cement mixer lorry, was another car, led by another lorry.

3.02: The lorry in front pulls off at a farm. Sweet. The cement Mixer pulls off a few hundred yards later. Awesome. I zip past the other guy in the car. Nice. I pull out of the junction into my town. Great.

3.02 and 12 seconds: I’m sitting in a traffic jam. I contemplate getting out my car, and walking away never to be seen again… I call the missus and tell her to start walking, and she does.

3.10: I’m still in traffic when I pick up an un-amused girlfriend, and try to turn in the road, which I can’t do because some idiot in his Land Rover doesn’t understand how roundabouts work and is sitting half-out of it with a bemused look on his face.

3.15: Were on the road to the main town, we’ve got 25 minutes to get their and get parked. It’s a 40mph speed limit. So why in gods name is their a guy driving a chicoquento (the worlds most pathetic car) at 27mph, so far over to the right hand-side that none of the 3 cars in front of me can get past.

3.35: We approach the final round-about before the town. Sensing the chance to pull a fast one, I nip up the outside lane. I get past the three cars in front of me, but somehow the guy in the Chicoquento has found the accelerator, so I can’t overtake (I’m nervous about speeding theses days…), then he cuts in-front of me in to the second lane, but behind a transit van. Infuriated, I quickly signal and pull in to the left lane, but the transit van does the same, and I nearly lose the nose of my car.

3.39: Some swearing, beeping of the horn, and a general cloud of misery forming over my head, we pull into the car park, and my girlfriend makes it on time.

3.41: One minute after her appointment, she comes out with a prescription for painkillers. And that was that.

Now I know, no exciting end to the story – think of it like a Will Smith movie, but that was the most stressful hour of my year so far. So I’ve prepared this list of things that drive me insane when driving. Feel free to give me suggestions to add to the list!

• Driving considerably slower than the speed limit, and not letting people pass you easily
• Driving a chicoquento – it’s a girls car that most girls would refuse to drive
• Taking lorry’s up country roads
• Not looking in your mirrors
• Traffic Jams/lights

Everyone these days has a social networking profile, but some are better than others in my opinion. We all have our favourite, so in an effort to stem today’s boredom, and have a bit of a rant, I’ve done a comparison of the three main ones that I’ve used: Myspace, Facebook and Bebo.

Myspace

What is it: Myspace wants to introduce you to loads of new people, catch up with old friends and hear new music.

Who’s it for: Although initially Myspace was used by alternative types (yes I was within the first 15,000 members) as a place to met other people, more commonly referred to as scenesters. A scenester, as you may or may not know, is someone who attaches themselves to the scene of the moment. If dance music is cool then they listen to dance music, dress like they listen to dance music, and also play terrible music. The same can be said for most genre’s of music but none more so that the Emo scene, or Emotional Hardcore scene. This means big hair, black eyeliner (girls and boys) and loads of pictures of hearts, stars and self took ‘emotive’ pictures of themselves frowning, along with other stereotypical stuff you can see in Kerrang! Magazine every week.

Why’s it good: It’s good because you can find cool people who you know, and cooler people you don’t. Myspace Music is genius, and when it first arrived was an amazing way of letting thousands of people hear your band – believe me its amazing when you hit 10, then 20, then 30, the 40 then 50,000 plays. Other cool stuff are ease of use, the photo albums and the ability to design your own profile.

Why’s it bad: Myspace has become the place that not-cool people go. I like to think of it as the overspill from Bebo. The music section is now over saturated, and the excitement of finding new music has all but vanished, because they’re not just your band that only you and know one else has heard of. Also the new site design is horrible, and it slows your PC down to a grinding halt if you have a slow one.

Facebook

What is it: Facebook is a way for people in suits to talk to each other about business, their kids, and look at each other terrible photos. It’s also the place your boss looks to see what you get up to at weekends.

Who’s it for: Facebook is for people with no imagination, and who feel the need to spy on each other.

Why’s it good: Some nice user-made apps, and can be handy for spying on someone you want to see fail.

Why’s it bad: Facebook is rubbish. It looks rubbish. The back end is rubbish. Sending inane gifts to people is pathetic. The people you meet all work in an office (probably yours). You get found by people that gave you hell at school, and think because you haven’t seen them for ten years, you’ve forgave them. You can’t do anything cool with your profile, and you have to rely on user made content to make anything remotely amusing. Facebook can go to hell.

Bebo

What is it: This is where the dreg’s of society go. This is like that club beside the awesome club that only cool folk get in. This is a microcosm of how much or society is in trouble. Bebo has been responsible for the suicide of a hell of a lot of people.

Who’s it for: Bullys and Schoolkids

Why’s it good: Its not.

Why’s it bad: design is terrible. Back end is terrible. People are terrible. Photo function is terrible. It’s terrible. The designer needs to go back to stacking shelves in Tesco.

The moral of this story is this:  If you are a remotely decent person who wants to find good new music (and doesn’t mind hunting for hours) then head to Myspace. If you are a guy in a suit – Facebook’s for you. If you are lazy, and want to bully people till they can’t take it anymore – head to Bebo.

Hands up if you like wasps? Anyone? I thought as much…

I hate them. I mean I don’t purposely go out of my way to hurt them, but I hate the way they buzz around your head, they way they buzz around your food, and why they insist on hanging around the same place – which is invariably where you need to stand/sit/walk/run/whatever.

The place I work has a wasp problem. A massive one. They never seem too stop coming out of the walls, and they always go for me. They should be dying by now, but they continue to haunt me. I read somewhere once that wasps are more likely to sting you when they are close to death…comforting.

I’m not really afraid of the creatures themselves, they just upset my chi. It’s the fear of the unknown – I’ve never been stung by a wasp/bee/hornet or any other bug. Now I’m not afraid of needles, I’ve got a ton of tattoos, but I have this insane irrational fear of what might happen if one of the little critters gets me.

This got me thinking about what exactly I am scared off. Well I’ll tell you. Sharks. Sharks suck. I really don’t enjoy the fact they have a lot more teeth than the majority of creatures. Ever since I saw Jaws when I was a kid, I was literally afraid to go in to any water, which included swimming, having a bath, and at one point mildly freaking out about putting my hands in a sink full of soapy water.

Have I ever swam near a shark? Have I hell – you won’t get me in the sea. It just won’t happen. I’ve got over the having a bath, and swimming thing, but I still have a check, and can easily freak myself out, and panic. It’s bizarre. I know that Jaws was fake, but I still can’t get it out of my head. It’s a stupid fear. But it’s shared by many people, and it even has a name: galeophobia.

I think fear is with you forever. Many scientists and psychologists believe that if you face your fears, you can conquer them, but I’m afraid to say I ever came face to face with a shark, I would die of fright before it had a chance to bite me. I hate pictures of sharks, movies with sharks – hell even the astonishing Plant Earth series by the BBC had me hiding behind my couch.

Apart from that scary fish, I’m not really scared of much else. Sure I’ll jump out my skin when a spider falls on to my lap, or jump out my skin when I hear a loud bang, but that’s a different type of fear, it’s not the kind of fear that creeps under your flesh and eats away at your courage.

So what scares you?

When I was a kid I used to be driven to near insanity when on the way to the local supermarket my dad would insist on putting a Neil Young tape in the cars high-tech (at the time) player and I’d beg for it to be turned off – much to his hilarity. Much to my fathers dismay, I wanted to listen to 80s hair rock like Billy Idol, Bon Jovi, Kiss or anything off the Hot City Nights compilation album, but I’d have rather listened to silence than Neil Young.

But it’s funny how your music tastes change. When I was really young I was addicted to these glam-rock bands. Unusual for a toddler yes, but I think I wanted to be a rock star form an early age. I used to sing along to Whitesnake’s “Here I go Again” on repeat, and thought I was cool signing along with Kiss’s classic “Crazy, Crazy Nights”. In fact, I was cool dammit!

As I hit double figures in age, and headed to secondary school I have to put my taste down to peer pressure, and the inability to find anyone remotely cool in my school which was full of pathetic malcontents and buck-toothed reprobates. I call this my dark days of music. Oasis were beginning to emerge, along with the dreadful Blur, and a host of other moronic Indie bands. But before they came along was 2Unlimited, and other such faux-techno bands that populated the early 90s rave scene. I hang my head in shame.

The mid-nineties was when Indie was really taking shape, but at the same time as that mediocre, emotionless drivel, the saviours of my musical soul arrived. 1991 brought me Nirvana, Pearl Jam, Sonic Youth, Mudhoney, and my music taste was changed forever.

I remember listening to it and feeling connected instantly, this music had anger, passion, thought, and talent – everything my idiotic peers had tried to push out of me. Deciding that I was better off with music than friends, I went deeper in to a world that seemed like a billion miles away. By the time 1994 hit, I think I’d heard about every grunge band going and it was the time of Nu-metal’s birth with the band Korn.

If I thought grunge was angry, my 13 year old mind was not ready for the sheer aggression of Korn. Ok it’s maybe tame-ish by today’s heavy music standards, but you can’t deny it didn’t stop you in your tracks the first time you heard it. There was no going back, I was addicted to metal. From Korn I got into Snot, Limp Bizkit, Coal Chamber, Slipknot, and so many more I couldn’t possibly list.

I broadened my taste from the American Nu-metal to UK hardcore sludge with bands like the immensely heavy Iron Monkey, Raging Speedhorn, Charger, then onto metalcore bands like Killswitch Engage, Lamb of God and God Forbid, and onward to Gallows, This Is Hell, Comback Kid and Champion. All of these bands in their own way left something with me, whether it would be immense enjoyment at “finding! A band before any of my mates like Still Remains (whose demo I picked up three months before they got signed to Roadrunner), or disappointment like when Limp Bizkit went painfully commercial, or when kids started wearing Slipknot hoodies having never even heard the music.

I suppose the moral of this story is that everyone is entitled to a music taste. Be it my dad with his Neil Young CDs or someone covered in glow-sticks listening to the Prodigy. The best thing about a music taste is that it’s yours and only yours. Even though I listen to hardcore/metal/punk and everything in-between, I still find time to chill out to Vivaldi, or Buddy Holly. Appreciation of musical ability, dedication and conviction should drive music on forever, not some guy with his trousers so far up his body that he can tuck his man boobs in the belt.

I visited animal prison yesterday, otherwise known as the local Zoo. I love seeing animal’s, they are often fluffy, toothy, trunky, smelly, funny… but after a short time I started to feel really sad. It’s the monkeys and apes. These awesome creatures share 99 percent of our genetic make-up, yet they are the ones locked in cages. I swore that they were looking at all the buck-toothed passers-by gawping at them, and thinking to themselves “why me”.

No I know that they are there for a reason. They are bred in captivity to preserve the species, etc etc, but you can’t help but feel terrible.

I look at it this way: As a nation, we pretty much suck. Knife crime is through the roof, robberies are common place, the police are useless, the courts are pathetic, the government seems to brush over areas of the country with a magic brush that hides over this nations pathetic excuses for human beings, yet we hold creatures that probably have more intelligence in their left nostril than the majority of the dregs that pollute of towns, shopping centres and public parks in tiny little enclosures, that doesn’t exactly look very fun.

Now I’m not having a go at the zoo keepers, or zoo’s for that matter. Do I think more could be done to make these animals lives more bearable? Yes I do, but I understand that the government can’t afford to subsidise the zoo’s, and other animal sanctuaries, as they are too busy subsidising Vicky Pollard look-a-like’s with seven kids called; Briteni, Kristina, Briteni 2, Beckum, Roonney, Cher and Crystal Dimonnd the third.

Perhaps I’m being shallow-minded? Perhaps as a nation we are secretly terrified of a monkey rebellion, and this is a government’s way of quelling any thoughts of a primate takeover.

Anyways, I saw some cool animals, tortoises, giraffes, and I was about five feet away from 4 African elephants – amazing. That’s the great side of zoo’s. In our world these creatures can’t walk around freely without fear of some poacher hunting them down, so at least they are safe. I just wish that the government would do something to make their stay a little bit more comfortable.

So I’m sitting in my car, just chilling on my way to work this morning. Stuck in my usual 45 minute traffic jam, I was listening to the fat idiot Chris Moyles on the radio, I had my hot air blower on to de-steam my windows, school kids were walking past shouting/screaming/being kids, cars were beeping their horns, a workie was drilling in the road, and I was rapidly becoming the opposite of “chilled”…I was becoming, not-chilled…

I felt like William ‘D-Fens’ Foster, in Falling Down, I groaned to myself as I was surrounded by wave after wave of obnoxious noise. This noise was horrible, painful, if it was a person it would be Jeremy Kyle, and if it was a car it would be a Humvee. The oppressive nature of this racket was swiftly becoming agonising. I must have looked like a man possessed as I childishly stuck my fingers in my ears, in a vain attempt at drowning out this cacophonous din.

Once the traffic got moving the sense of relief I felt at getting to work was unbelievable. The silence was truly golden. It’s got me thinking though, gone are the days when I used to listen to music screaming out my car at a ridiculous volume. I used to look at people glaring at me and think, ‘what’s their problem?’, as I’m getting older, I’m realising that this was dumb. Now I’m the old git looking at daft chavs with intolerable dance music blasting from their windows, believe me, there is NOTHING cool about a repetitive drum beat that shakes you to the core.

When it comes to noise, the most infuriating thing is the washing machine. I can’t describe the noise my machine makes. It’s like having a dentist drill attached to a wall of Marshall Amps screaming its way around your flat. When it hits the spin cycle, I have to leave the room. Watching the television becomes instantly pointless, as you have to turn that up to hear it, and when the washing machine stops – suddenly and without warning – you get your face practically blown off by the idiot box.

I need to invent an anti-hearing aid. I don’t want ear plugs, because they make everything sound tiny, and I want to hear some stuff normally. So I need something that will allow me to adjust the volume – down the way – so I can handle the insane noise created by the world. I’m sure there is something already available, and a short Google search might prove fruitful, but the tapping of my keys as I type this is driving me daft.