I'm going to Hell

It seems a little strange to me that a country as small as ours would feel good enough about itself to put 'Great' in front of it's name. It makes me wonder who we're trying to convince, the rest of the world, or ourselves. I always hear people complaining about living here, but if you think about it a bit, it's actually an awesome place to live!

Here's five reasons why this little Britain really is Great:

1. We used to have the largest empire in history, spanning a quarter of the world.
2. Music
3. Free health care on the NHS
4. Drinking at 18
5. Sex at 16

Sure we always bang on about what we used to own, but the point is when this country was a little younger we really were an over-achieving bunch. We make up for that now by continually losing to the rest of the world at sports we invented.

We still have good music, and an amazing history of music, even inventing Metal (Thanks Ozzy!). But we're also famous for the Beatles, The Who and The Rolling Stones. Not to mention more recent great bands like Led Zeppelin, Queen, Black Sabbath and Iron Maiden. We were also well into Punk, with the Sex Pistols and The Clash. In the 80s there was New Wave, but the less said about that the better.

I like this country's drinking culture. It's always raised as a negative, but I myself am a binge drinker, and I like doing it. I like that I could drink (legally) from 18, and have sex at 16, I felt I was old enough and responsible enough to do those things. I still drink as much as I did at 15 18 and I don't plan on slowing down. Sure this may eventually lead to some problems later in my life, but on the positive side, health care is free!

Labels: drinking, fun, health, history, music, nostalgia, teenagers, UK

At boarding school I was the kid with the films. At the time hardly anyone had games consoles, I managed to get a PlayStation a bit late in the game. Quite a few people had N64s which we used to 'borrow' to play 4 player MarioKart or GoldenEye. However my main claim was my TV, then my TV/VCR combo. I used to live in Cyprus, where there was no such thing as copyright and I could get pirated videos of the latest blockbuster by walking to the NAAFI (the UK version of a US PX).

One of the weirdest examples I have of this is a young friend asking if I wanted to watch this new film his Dad had bought, it's called 'Jurassic Park' or something. I thought it was pretty good, but the guy on screen who's head was in the way was a little annoying. Afterwards I went home and walked in as the news was reporting how people had queued around the block to watch that very film back in England.

I kept buying videos, they were ridiculously cheap, and I had a case of them I would take to school, to watch and lend. My favourites at the time amongst me and my friends a few years later were:

1. The Rock (1996)
2. Pulp Fiction (1994)
3. Bad Boys (1995)
4. The Usual Suspects (1995)
5. White Men Can't Jump (1992)

We knew each of these films pretty much line by line. I had a fairly limited collection of videos so we used to watch them A LOT. Back then only a few people had their own PCs or laptops, and time available on someone else's was mostly spent playing Duke Nukem 3D or X-COM: Terror From The Deep. Internet connections were barely available in school buildings let alone boarding houses, so there was no Internet, no downloading, a feeble amount of digital porn and the occasional film brought in from home on multiple CDs. That was how I first saw The Phantom Menace, on 3 CDs before it had even been released.

I think one of my favourite moments was creeping down the dorm while eight people were sat in the dark after lights out watching House on Haunted Hill. I reached through the curtain and grabbed the closest shoulder at a particularly scary bit and then listened to the chain reaction of screams. Of course if you watch a bad film you can always forward to about 38:19mins into Wild Things and remove the bad memories. I recall having to do this after watching Animal Farm. Not the cartoon version.

Labels: films, friends, fun, teenagers, TV, UK

Happy Valentines Day! Yeah! Can anyone tell me what St Valentine did? No you can't! Because no one knows. And I don't just mean a general no one, I mean literally no one knows. However I'm pretty sure whatever they were martyred for does not include giving out flowers, cards and chocolate.

As I don't really like Valentine's Day I won't be talking much about it. I will however be getting the Wench something, or else I'm in trouble, not that she ever gets in trouble for not getting me anything, but I'm wondering off the point. The topic today will instead be about pants, as we call them, or underwear for the Americans in the audience. My Top 5 types of undergarments are:

1. Pants (The traditional tighty whiteys, in case you think I mean trousers)
2. Boxers
3. Thongs
4. Lingerie
5. None

I gave up wearing pants quite a while ago, at some point boxers just became more comfortable, plus they were less embarrassing, like wearing swimming shorts instead of speedos.

Thongs are brilliant, and I'm not talking about banana hammocks, and I'm not saying that I wear them. But aren't they great? Who ever invented thongs should win a nobel prize. I'm not sure which category it'd be in though, maybe peace, but also possibly physics or medicine... banishing the VPL should certainly be worthy of something. On the topic the Wench should win some kind of prize, as pretty much all her underwear consists of thongs, and that's why I love her!

Lingerie is a gift from the gods. Is there anything better than lingerie? And it's so comfortable... Although every one knows you can always trump lingerie by simply going commando.

Labels: fun, nice, presents, religion, shame, underwear, valentines, wench

I recently read this article. In it the female author complains how men aren't growing up like they used to, how they're underachieving. Men should be less adolescent and do more mature activities, instead of playing Halo 3 with your buddies you should be 'packing leisure hours' with the following grown up pursuits:

1. Shopping
2. Traveling
3. Dining with friends
4. Getting your hair done
5. Having sleepovers

Of course these pastimes seem like infinitely more mature activities than 'playing basketball with your buddies, downloading music, playing on your xbox360, then going out to bars and parties', after all it's not like I haven't been doing her list of activities since I was 7 myself. Well except for the sleepovers, but I did use to have house mates. The list she's deriding is pretty much the same as hers, just a male equivalent, none of these activities are 'mature', surely by that she means something like visiting museums and art galleries, reading dusty books and wine tasting.

I suspect what she's really upset about is that men just don't want to get married and have children. Oh no, what a disaster, she can't find a man. This doesn't make them immature or in need of growing up. What are the advantages to getting married? Companionship? Men have friends, as she pointed out. Sex? Also as she herself said, men are capable of finding this without being married. A family? Men can have children later in life, so what's the rush. Basically men have no incentive to get married. Unless you call getting divorced, losing your kids, money, car and house like over 50% of marriages an incentive.

By the way I'm getting married in just under 8 months, I'm 25, I have a job, an apartment and four games consoles, how immature am I?

Update: Looks like this is becoming a trend, get some more gamer hate here.

Labels: assholes, family, friends, horror, rant, stupidity, wedding, women

Have you ever wished for a flying car? I know I have. But just give it a bit of thought, how great would flying cars really be? There would have to be so much associated technology developed along with it to even make it feasible as a mode of transport. Not to mention the fact that you'd have to find a method of propulsion smaller and safer than blades of metal spinning around at head height.

Here's five problems with the idea I came up with off the top of my head:

1. Fuel expense
2. Lack of suitable parking
3. Mid-air collisions
4. Driving tests would be impossible
5. Car trouble could be fatal

I think the first problem to overcome is cost. The cost of fuel (nuclear or otherwise), the cost of insurance (crash protection, unscheduled landing cover), the cost of learning to fly, the cost of renting a landing pad, the emotional cost of scraping your daughter up after she slams into a building while applying her makeup.

It seems that the flying car is a dream that is destined to never be realised. Sure we may see flying cars, the same as we see helicopters, but they will be owned by company CEOs, and piloted by trained chauffeurs. Come to think of it, it would probably be safer and cheaper all round to invent the jetpack. Or rocketboots!

Labels: comedy, driving, fun, science, stupidity, teenagers, women

Everyone needs a little box of comebacks, for those times when people just hurl abuse at you, like at breakfast. At times like that your sanity relies on you being able to whip out an appropriate put down which will silence your assailant. This is especially important when your a kid. I went to a boarding school and bullying was so common it was just a way of life. Everyone was a bully, including me, it just depended how good you were at it.

The bullying wasn't as important as your counter, or as we referred to it 'banter'. You had to have a comeback ready, and if you weren't quick enough to come up with one to suit the occasion, you used one of the many standard retorts:

1. So's your face.
2. I am rubber, you are glue.
3. That's what your (girlfriend/Dad/Mum/Sister/Dog) said.
4. A 'Your Momma' joke.
5. Your Mum's dead.

A lot of the time we just insulted each other to say hello, so a good your momma joke was an appropriate response. However if someone really pissed you off you could use 'Your Mum's Dead'. This was the childhood equivalent of the modern nuclear weapon, mutually assured destruction. The 'Your Mum's Dead' answer could be taken one of two ways: The first would be a standard counter-retort, and an argument that would probably just escalate into the ridiculsphere, where insults no longer make any sense. Of course you could end up with the second way, when your assailant's Mum is actually dead... Chances are that will not end well.

Labels: assholes, comedy, history, stupidity, teenagers, UK

Happy New Year! I know it's late, as always. I've not had the greatest start to the year, probably better than last year, but still not great. After the God of Hangovers finally decided to move on from the party he and his insane, screeching hyena entourage were having inside my skull on the 2nd of January, I was granted a day of reprieve until I fell ill on the 4th. After a miserable weekend spent on the couch curled up with the Wench and a duvet I got back to work on the Monday.

So I've been catching up with stuff since then. Cleaning up, doing work, blah blah, the usual grind. Every so often I need to remind myself of a few things:

1. 2007 is over
2. I have a new car
3. I'm not ill any more
4. 2008 can finally get going
5. I'm getting married this year!

We actually bought our car last year, finally getting rid of one of the things that made 2007 so unbearable. The car cost £600 when we bought it, since then we've spent at least 3 times that on keeping it running. No longer will things drop off our car unexpectedly, deflate, collapse, spin away or break apart. Fingers crossed.

The other big news is that this is the year I make the Wench an honest woman. Not that she's not an honest woman now, it's a bit of a stupid expression really. The realisation that we have less than nine months left to plan, book and arrange our wedding was a bit of a shock. I'm not really involved in the planning so far, which can only be a good thing, it seems to be ticking along nicely with the Wench and her mum doing their thing. As long as I get my pimp cane, top hat and topless ushers I'll be fine.

Labels: crap, drinking, hangover, health, holiday, wedding, wench