New Year's Revolutuion

Happy New Year, like

Funny thing, losing the plot. it doesn't half change your priorities. In fact, it doesn't just change them, it gives them a sound buggering before dousing them in petrol and attacking them with a flame thrower. 
Take this new year malarchy of list making, goal setting and generally piling on the pressure until you sweat spinal fluid. Prior to the loss of my marbles my new year's eves were laden with fevered promises to write books, crack new editors, run marathons and travel to far flung outposts with nothing but a toothbrush and reversible knickers. I'd usually do what I promised I would too. 
Then I found myself sailing up Barking Creek on HMS Nutbag. Suddenly the steaming urgency to swim for the Olympic team or knock out 10,000 words of award-winning literature per day was, pardon the technical terminology, pushing my luck all the way to Fucksville and back. In fact, mid-breakdown you could have tasked me with showering after remembering to take off my pyjamas and you'd have been bitterly disappointed. I used to stare at the kettle because I couldn't remember when it did, for shit's sake, and panic when there were too many baked beans on my fork. In the blink of an eye I'd gone from glowing over-achiever to being bewildered to the point of insanity and with the functioning capacity of a gin-soaked toddler.
Which is why, post-breakdown, all this new year pressure to do, do, do looks to me like a big bag of bollocks. So my resolution for 2012 is to have no resolutions. I have absolutely no intention of making 2012 my big year by publishing a novel or bagging a column or swimming the channel. My only vague requirement for the following 365 days is to survive them, ideally with a modicum of mental faculty, by exactly this time next year. 
See, having been tossed so far into the hole of depression means that even the slightest gains become towering achievements. I can read a book without becoming so overwhelmed that I cry, which is my new version of writing a book. I can spend two hours with Kraken Junior without needing help and support, my replacement for marathon running. And I'm capable of basic hobbies, which will replace 2012's attempt at forging ahead in my career.
All of which makes for a happy new year. The lack of pressure is glorious as is my contentment at what I've achieved since my marbles rolled under the sofa. Which means that January 1 won't be the first day of anything. It'll be another day of something and that, for me, really is the greatest achievement of all. 

Pissed List

Go get 'em Wayne

Shit on a white hot shovel that's fresh from the bowels of hell. I’ve just had to vile misfortune to read the list of the BBC’s Faces of the Year 2011 which includes, for each month, the name of a woman who hit the headlines. What a foaming bag of bollocks. It’s enough that I hate these lists anyway (what, pray, is the point?) but this transforms my levels of bile into spewing geysers.

The list in question is the most disheartening thing I have read since I saw a three-year old girl’s t-shirt which read ‘Future WAG’. It includes:

Jan: Gabrielle Giffords, shot US Congresswoman

Feb: Adele, singer

March: Eman al-Obeidi, Libyan rape victim

April: Sarah Burton, royal wedding dress designer

May: Nafissatou Diallo, accused IMF chief of sexual assault

June: Jelena Lecic, had identity stolen for a hoax Syrian blog

July: Princess Charlene, married Prince Albert of Monaco

August: Pauline Pearce, riots campaigner

Sept: Rebecca Leighton, accused of hospital saline murders

Oct: Duchess of Alba, Spanish aristocrat who remarried aged 85

Nov: Corp. Kelsey de Santis, attended a US marine ball with Justin Timberlake

Dec: Tian, Tian, the fucking panda

Gripe #1: Five of the women in this list are victims (or in the case of DSK, alleged victims). What the fuck is that all about? Like being raped is enough to bestow a woman with celebrity status. What an inspirational message that is. Oh, and one last addition to the victim list: Princess Charlene who, if reports of her pre-wedding escape are to be believed, is currently being held hostage somewhere near Monte Carlo casino.

Gripe #2: And what the fuck is with this notion that 2011’s women are memorable because of a shag? The Duchess of Alba got wed and Kelsey de Santis had a date with Trousersnake which apparently makes them far more vital to a progressive society than scientists or rising political stars. Tell you what, I’m going to make a bid for 2012’s list on the grounds that I once met Uncle Tobermory, the womble, at an agricultural fair in 1977. Jesus.

Gripe #3: What po-faced, PC obsessed, lank-haired, latte-swigging buffoon insisted on coming up with this list in the first place? Look, if you can’t find enough women go make a decent list, don’t have a list at all. Or start a scintillating debate about why women aren’t represented in society. Don’t just dredge up such bubbling turds as this and present them as a list of female achievement. Perhaps I should publish a list of my BBC people of the year which would include the rats in the basement, the obsessive Arsenal fan who calls Radio 5 every Saturday afternoon and Jeremy Fucking Clarkson.

Gripe #4: A panda? Really? A fucking panda?

I’m off to stab myself in the ears and then send Kraken Junior to Venus where she’s got a better chance of developing a sense of worth than she has in a world that gives this pile of shite any wiggle room. You never know. It might bag me a mention for January 2012. Oh look at me! I’m made!

Fucking license fee-frittering idiots.

Death Rattle

How undertakers should look

This is going to make me sound like a bring-back-national-service kind of kraken but it’s getting on my tits so must be said. Funerals: what the frig goes through the minds of those who attend them wearing jeans?

In the last year I’ve been to two funerals, noteable not for their terrible circumstances or wailing relatives but for their being heavily populated by Levis. And just last week our local rag had pics of the particularly tragic send-off of a child, again displaying a denim-clad congregation. What in the world of funereal fuck is going on? What makes anyone go to a funeral in their jeans? Are these people terminally disrespectful or is it just that digging out something sombre and fluff-free is just too great a task even on the rare occasion that someone they know pops off?

The first of my skirmishes with funereal skinny fits was at a mate’s cremation. She’d requested lots of colour while she was ill which seemed to give the mourners carte blanche to turn up in all manner of get-ups. Colours, fine, but in the form of scruffy fleeces, torn denims and filthy trainers? I thought I’d mistakenly turned up at a dog walking convention. I’ve never seen so many people who looked as if they just couldn’t be twatted. But it was a funeral, you gimpwalds! What were you thinking? That it just wasn’t a big enough deal to warrant a face wash?

My second skirmish with deathly boot cuts was even worse. Some people looked as if they’d come in their pyjamas and there was a worrying parade of Ugg boots and, get this, slippers. Yes, one 20-something woman wore Tesco slippers (I know what they were. A mate has a pair). There were puffa jackets, leggings, football shirts, hoodies...It was the most astounding display of disrespect I’ve ever seen without Molotov cocktails being flung through the air. I swear, the best dressed person there was the corpse.

Why, you miserable bunch of feckless imbeciles? Why couldn’t you just make an effort? I mean, how many fucking funerals do you go to in any one year? It’s hardly as if your mourning dress is in the wash. And yes, should the departed request a colourful final hurrah, you can wear something bright without it being polyester/ branded/ motheaten. At what point did you throw on what you wore to the pub last night, check yourself in the mirror and think, “Looking good, me ole mukka, looking good!” before consoling broken-hearted children and spouses during one of the worst days of their lives?

I’ve requested a colourful cheerio upon my demise but I’ll be fucked if I want anyone to attend my funeral as if they were nipping to the pub. And believe me, after 18 months of suicidal tendencies I’ve given this plenty of thought. I’m willing to forego my place at Satan’s side just to haunt anyone who even briefly considered slinging on jeans to see me off. You’ve been warned and I’ve got the rattling chains to see this promise through. Er, whoo-ooo-ooo....

Lies, Damned Lies

Me, parenting.

Shit on a stick, have you any idea how many lies I and Conjugal Kraken have told Kraken Junior this Crimbo? Seriously, if you put them in a pile they'd stand high enough to poke the flying reindeer in the frozen smalls. We have told porkies like they'd be our last ever taste of bacon and we've done it with the selfish desperation of any poor fucker corralling a three year old just as Santa raids Argos.
Thing is, most of the time we are straight with the infant beast. She wants to know why the moon shines, I blather on about bouncing sunshine and orbital patterns. She asks why grass is green, I bore her to tears about chlorophyll. Seriously, she asked me about periods last week (that's what happens when you never get to go to the bloody toilet on your own, pardon the pun) and I found myself describing menstrual patterns as if they were created by Michael Rosen. 
So what the fuck happened when Christmas came? Suddenly we're telling her that Santa's watching every move, like a peeping tom. As the kraken cave lacks a chimney we start carving stories about how he's going to sneak through the front door like a bauble-strewn Crimewatch re-enactment. Fuck knows what happened in the minutes before KJ went to bed on Crimbo Eve but I found myself telling her that she had to clean her teeth properly so that Santa could find her stocking by the glow of her fangs alone.
And now that it's all over I wonder what the fuck we've done. if she found out now that there's no such thing a Santa (sorry to spoil the surprise, kraken-fumblers) we'd never be safe in our beds again. She'd be distraught and we'd be in freshly dug graves by the morning. 
So we'll tone it down a bit next year. Perhaps drop the stories about rain being reindeer wee. Or forget to tell her that Santa'll commit suicide if we don't leave him a minced pie and a bottle of stout.
Then again, come next year when she's giving us her fifteenth rendition of Jingle Bells in the same one hour period for the tenth day in a row, I'll tell her any-fucking-thing I have to just to get her to shut the bugger up. So on second thoughts, perhaps this year we didn't tell her enough lies. At least I've got another 360-odd to think up a few more. Suggestions on a postcard please.

Small Beer

Anchor. I said Anchor.

What the festive fuck? Over Crimbo I saw a story on the BBC news website that made me splutter a half chewed twiglet over my keyboard. Not because it was particularly horrific or shocking, but because it was such a belter of a non-story. The headline? Dad gives up drinking for sick daughter's hospital.
Aye, poor, poor kraken-fumbler, you did indeed read that right. To cut a shit story as short as possible, said father is not drinking for a year to raise funds for the hospital that is treating his sick daughter. And that's the story. That's it. That's some bloke isn't chugging beer for 365 days. Yes, his daughter's rare illness gets a mention but for some fucked up reason it's this most piffling of sacrifices that makes the headline.
Again, I ask you, what the festive fuck? Who in the frig decided that this was a story? Perhaps it's someone who is so incapable of passing a discarded tin of half-swigged Carling that not drinking for the flimsy sum of a year warrants star billing on a news site. 
Ok, so I'm not a drinker. I've just had my annual port n lemon. But that's because dealing with Kraken Junior while cradling a hangover would be the equivalent of dipping a foot into the seventh circle of hell and letting Satan himself nibble on my toehairs. It just ain't worth it. It sure as shit, though, doesn't warrant a BBC news story. Just label it under parental sacrifice, one of the things you do to stumble from one day of childrearing to the other without alerting the lankier-haired factions of the social services.
Sure, raising money for charidee is a noble pursuit. That's not the problem. Nor is the fact that the dry dad's daughter has a rare illness. That's, of course, horrible. But the guy hasn't exactly decided to reject his body's own production of amino acids for a year, has he? And I haven't heard mention of how he's scaling the Burj Khalifa via the Blu Tack he's stuck to his tongue either.
Like the dad says in this arsed-up excuse for news, refusing booze has been a "piece of cake". He also revealed this thrilling insight: "I almost ordered a drink by mistake the other day and then I realised". And if this wasn't enough to convince the misguided reporter that there was fuck all to write about - if these are your best quotes, you're barking up the wrong exclusive - then I suspect that booze is indeed a problem, mainly because you'd have to be as drunk as fuck to file it. 
So get a grip, BBC. Go into rehab, picture a world without Heineken and reconsider whatever wild reasons make you want to be a news service. Whatever the hell they are, this story ain't it.

Mental Hell

Bloody misery guts

Think I'm a Bah Humbug kinda kraken? Well,this is nothing. You should have seen me last Christmas when I was in the middle of my breakdown. You'd swear Santa'd been found dead in our chimney and that the wailing of the world's children was making the globe spin off its axis.
The thing is, this what was going on in my screwed-up noggin. If Santa was festering in the chimney I was the only person who knew it. As far as the rest of the world was concerned I was being my usual festive self, secretly propped up by regular sobs into a cushion before resuming the merry state that I thought everyone expected of me. 
In short, last Christmas was fucking horrible. I alone was carrying Santa's sack and it was weighed down with breeze blocks. Blitzen, Donner, Rudolf and the crew were all too busy pissing their names into the snow to help and I was drowning in goodwill that I felt I just didn't deserve to receive.
It got worse on Crimbo morn when I was presented with a fantastic gift by Conjugal Kraken which pitched me into a swirling state of panic at whether I deserved to receive anything other than a kick in the face. I was trapped in some terrible mentally-induced purgatory but with baubles and Noddy fucking Holder. 
Anyway, why am I telling you this? It's my blathering way of saying that happy Christmases don't necessarily arrive dressed in ribbons and spangly paper. Sometimes it's what you do for people, rather than what you get them, that's important and when you're grappling with a depressive that's more important than ever.
This year, when I've been asked what I want for Crimbo the best I can come up with is that I want some semblance of peace. In my head, I mean. I just want a day that contains some happiness and laughter and most of all a day where my depression gets so knotted up in tinsel that it throttles itself. Yeah, I'd like a few books but that's it. Most of all I'd just like to feel anything but the biggest failure/ oddball/ nutjob in the known universe. 
I know, I know, it's too late for that. It's not too late for this Crimbo day to be a good one though. I'm keeping the hope alive, especially now that the sweep has rendered our chimney corpse free.

All Talk

Just. Shut. Up.

Can someone please tell me what I can talk about with Kraken Junior when we wake up on Boxing Day morn? I ask because for the last three months the conversation in our cave has been about bugger all but Christmas. I'm starting to wonder what filled our parental chats for the first nine months of 2011. Whatever it was, it must as been as dull a fuck.
Don't blame Conjugal Kraken and I. If I had my way Crimbo would be dropped into conversation at approximately 5pm on Christmas Eve and the festive spruce would be torn down 24 hours later. Blame the world around her. Christ, KJ's school started practising carols for the Christmas concert the day after Halloween. In the middle of October I was accosted by one of her fellow three year olds who told me, advisedly, "Christmas is just around the corner, you know!". And Tesco was letting tinsel slither about the place by then which meant my festive denials were the equivalent of Santa pissing into the wind.
KJ's school - a place of great fabulousness - really hasn't stinted with the Crimbo contributions. There have been concerts, parties, gift making, singalongs...even breakfast with Santa. I seriously wondered if KJ'd start getting Santasick or develop a festive fatigue and start begging for mercy.
All of which means that every day for the last six weeks KJ has asked me whether it's Christmas yet. And every day I've muttered something like "No, darling (for fuck's sake), not yet." Thankfully an advent calendar has helped her to pace herself lest she should have an excitement-induced stroke somewhere around Dec 12. 
Course, now that we're hours way from the big day things are becoming frenzied. School's out. There are gifts under the tree. People we try to see just once a year are appearing on the doorstep. The festive jig is, indeed, up. The three year old's hysteria can no longer be contained. 
By the time Santa comes down the chimney, KJ will be Broadmoor-ready. In fact the big man will need all his powers of strength and stealth if he's to avoid being wrestled to the ground by a wild haired, knee-high goblin dressed in Tinkerbell pyjamas while shrieking a rendition of Santa Claus is Comin' to Town that's thankfully nearing the end of a three month run.
So, as I say, what shall we talk about on Boxing Day? I've a feeling it'll be witness statements and a list of charges that include murder.

Taking the Mick

Praying for a Buble-free Crimbo

Quick! Call the rozzers! Christmas has been hijacked! Oh, hold on, no it hasn't, it's just Michael Bublé and his Crimbo album. It might as well be a hijacking though. You'd think that Micky Bubbles - as we call him in our cave - has bloody well invented Christmas, the way he's being slathered all over the nation. 
For fuck's sake, he's on the radio and telly so much that I've started mistaking him for Santa. Kraken Junior thinks that on Crimbo Eve a grinning Canadian warbler is going to drop down the chimney just to initiate her into his housewife-cluttered fan base. 
In fact, between his crooning rendition of Silent Night and his nice-guy persona it's a Christmas miracle that ITV/ Daily Mail/ the hags from Loose Women haven't mustered their own hijacking of Bubbles himself, kidnapping him just to drool over his middle-of-the-road style of innocuousness.
Look, I'm sure that he's a lovely guy. But can someone just turn the man off now? I dunno, send him to Labrador where he can bang out Little Donkey without it representing another assault on our tellies/ radios/ festive sensibilities.
That's it, Bubbles. Bugger off to your own baubles and leave ours to dangle in peace.

Blast from the Past

Oooh, remember..?

Give me strength and kick me in the chops. Do you know what I saw yesterday? A bar called Retro which intices in it's slurring clientele with - wait for it - 90s music. I know, I know, 90s music is now retro according to this deeply avoidable watering hole. 
For fuck's sake. I'm still wearing knickers from the 90s. I have eyeliner that dates back to 1996. How can that decade possibly be retro? It was all of 12 years ago. 12 years! Worse, the doors to this pit of despair were festooned with pictures of the likes of Oasis and the Prodigy, as if they were relics from a previous age.
Look, if you wanted to relive the 90s you could probably do it by tuning into Heart FM. You hardly need a flux capacitor for Christ's sake. I mean, if you walked backwards fast enough you could nudge the bloody 80s so the 90s is hardly going to be a problem. 
And, for better or worse, I've been trying to imagine the people who go there. My assumption is that it's full of braying students who joyously proclaim how Chumbawumba produced the soundtrack to their childhoods before shouting things like "Oooh, remember...!" about various adverts and comedians as if they died on the stroke of midnight at the end of 1999.  
Worryingly, though, now that we're pitching headlong into 2012 said Retro will probably start advertising the Noughties as if it were a time of air raid sirens and rationing. Before you know it there'll be 8 year olds cooing about how Britney bloody Spears informed their childhood musical influences.
Jeez, never have I felt older or more out of date. Seeing Retro yesterday was the emotional equivalent of a a fifteen year old shouting "Fuck off, grandma!" at me. I'm 40 for God's sake. As if I didn't feel sidetracked enough by the fact that I'm not a size 6, have never tried meow meow and have never queued up for an X Factor audition.
Anyway, I suspect that Retro isn't really aimed at krakens like me, is it? Tell you what though, give it 15 years and I'll open my own bar, labelling the 20teens as the new retro. That'll give the 90s huggers something to chew over. Revenge never goes out of date does it?

Going Postal

A man with big sacks

Just as I do every frigging year, I'm currently performing an internal debate over sending Crimbo cards. It's a bastard. I love my friends and family and want 'em to know it but I hate writing out festive cards. Last year I had a legitimate excuse for not doing it - even breakdowns have silver linings - but what about this year? 
Well, I've learned several things from spending the last 18 months rocking back n forth in a corner of the living room and chewing on a leather strap. One of them is that life's too short to be fretting over this malarchy.
Believe me, this is no reflection of how much I love my mates. It's a reflection of how well my nosebag of meds is working instead. Card writing has always made me want to shove a pen up my nose but now that my brain has been re-wired by a monumental meltdown it's even more of a dance with the demons of stationery.
The kraken festive farce will begin with me wracking my brains for the names of even my closest friends. Then I'll make and lose and make another and lose another list of recipients. By this time I'll be so confused I'll start thinking it's Easter. Then I'll get so overwhelmed at the prospect of having to write out a grand total of 30 cards that I'll need a good sob, a diazepam and an afternoon's sleep. Upon waking it'll take me an hour to find my address book and and then I'll blindly drive around in circles looking for a post office. That's all before I goggle at the friendly local post mistress and holler, "46p! For a first class stamp? Really? 46p?" Then, in my fury, I'll rip three of the little fuckers, have to buy more and will round off the entire debacle by stumbling into the street to the tune of police sirens and psych nurses wielding laden syringes.
So this is why your mantelpiece won't groan with kraken greetings this year. I am, though, happy to clog up your web browser with f-bombs instead. So please accept this new regime with many happy hugs and much love. Much fucking love, in fact. Ha, and you think I'm not festive...

All That Jazz

You reckon?

It's always the same isn't it. Just when you think the world can't get any bleaker, that evil has finally won it's battle against mankind and we're doomed to perish in the toilet bowl of our own weaknesses things get just that little bit worse. Today that happened to me. How? I discovered the term 'experimental jazz'.
Experimental. Jazz. Experimental fucking jazz. God, hasn't the world suffered enough at the hands jazz alone? What the frig did we do so wrong that it had to be winched up a level to experi-bloody-mental?
Jazz is distilled evil. Throw it in a lab beaker, place it over a bunsen burner and once the juices have evaporated you're left with a bubbling layer of tiny gnashing demons. I hear that someone did the same with experimental jazz once but went blind and deaf and then their children melted so we'll never know the results.
Like slugs, Gary Rhodes and lemon curd, there is no conceivable reason for the existence of jazz. I mean, can't the tuneless find something else to do, like chiropody or mole hunting? Do they have to parp into a clarinet or twang an overstrung double bass while nodding like meth heads?
Anyway, it's safe to say that I shan't be badgering iTunes for the latest in experimental jizz, sorry, jazz. I shall, though, be splashing out on ear plugs, anti-nausea medication and something fetid to shove up the nearest nodding trumpet. Now that's an experiment I'd be happy to see.

The Bread Line

Now, that's thick.

Whoa! I've just swallowed a sandwich so irritating I'm re-naming myself Mama Cass. 
Yesterday I bought a loaf of bread, Brace's wholemeal thick sliced, to be specific. Today I cracked it open to make a cheese n pickle sarnie, mildly excited at the prospect of a right ole doorstep thanks to the tantalising word 'thick' that was splashed all over the packet. Well, what a frigging mug I was. 
You know what I found? Slices so hilariously thin that the packet should have read Brace's wholemeal communion wafers. In fact, I dug out an old school ruler to prove the point and lo! the slices were exactly 12mm thick. 12 mm. Yes, that's a measly 1.2cms or a rough 0.5 inch. I tried to take a photo of the offending slice but when I turned it on its side it disappeared and I couldn't fucking find it. 
Call this thick bread? If so, what the fuck is thin? Transparent? Christ, I'm thinking of buying myself a packet so I can use it like cling film.
Brace's, either your bread machines have been tampered with by some shady Warburtons/ Hovis/ Greggs cabal or you are ripping the shit out of your customers. I hope it's the latter but I fear it's the former. Bring back the doorstep or I'll put you in a serious pickle on yours.

Screen Scream

Bad film.
Bad cut n paste poster.

Perhaps it's the meedja hype that ruins film watching for me these days. You know, the hysterical reviews, the bandwagon bouncers, the 'must-watch' articles by hacks who wangled freebies in return for a stout fawn. Anyway, something sure as shit ruined two recent films for which I had the misfortune to pay Sky+: The King's Speech and Bridesmaids.
What utterly hateable films. I didn't get to the end of either of them, the latter being wildly predictable and indulgent and the former being as funny as an episiotomy (and I know because I've suffered one). So what the fuck were the many reviewers watching when they suggested that we drop everything and dash to our nearest multiplex to take in these two hour stretches of hell?
Take the King's Speech. My God, Colin Firth was so utterly bloody annoying. I wanted to kick him up the arse so badly that I after one hour in I went for an infinitely more enjoyable - and interesting - shit. That was where my negligible viewing pleasure ended, thankfully. Any more of Firth's jaw jutting and I'd have given myself a fucking stammer by biting off my tongue.
Then there's Bridesmaids. What the fuck was with all those reviews that called it hysterically funny and what women want from modern comedy? I swear on my newly formed stammer that I sat through over an hour without raising a smile. And by God I wanted to. I'm sick of my modern female humour coming from reruns of Sex and the City. I'm craving something new that doesn't involve the deeply unfunny Miranda Hart. But once again I had to be rescued by a bowel movement.
Perhaps it is the hype that's to blame. Perhaps, by the time I get to the opening credits I'm expecting something so mindblowing that anything less than a psychotic episode in the back row is disappointing. But then again, perhaps I have a finely tuned arsewipe antennae that cuts through the hype and sees these films for what they really are. Bollocks. And that's a review you won't find anywhere else.

Write Off

I hope you're ashamed, man

You know the author, Dan Brown? He of such laughable tomes as The Da Vinci Code and Angels and Demons? Well his writing is such vile and ridiculous piffle, so cliched, predictable and - pardon the technical jargon - shite that he makes me want to kick holes in the fabric of the universe in the hope that he'll be sucked through one into a parallel universe where bad authors get terrorised by the very cobblers that they've unleashed upon the world. 
Anyway, why am I mentioning this now? Because an article in one of today's newsrags, about the glorious CERN, spoke of Brown's description of the place in one of his assaults on literature. He talks of its "voluminous lobby...its bluish glass roof shimmering in the sun" and calls it a "glass cathedral" to science.
Well I call that a crock. I was in CERN back in May and it sure as shit didn't look like that to me. In fact it looked like an abandoned 70s comprehensive school taken over by wombles. As fabulous as the place is - and, by fuck, it is as fabulous as fabulous gets - Brown's description is several light years away from reality.
This just confirmed in my mind that Brown is to literature what Peter Sutcliffe is to human rights. I recall trying The Da Vinci Code when it first spewed onto the nation's shelves and got no more than 20 pages in before my brain fizzled at the appalling rape of the English language that this tome constituted. 
Perhaps, when CERN has mastered the quantum universe, we can use the knowledge to our own ends to avenge Brown's evil. Or perhaps we can just shove him into the LHC, making him and his work travel in opposite directions at almost the speed of light, colliding them until they disappear up each other's arses. Now how's that for the wonderful miracle of science?

Ask a Stupid Question...

Please?

Christ on a bike, I was treated to some supreme inanity today. I was in my local coffee shop, which runs various music channels on its TV, whereupon the winkle-eyed, mouth breathing Olly Murs appeared (on the telly, not behind the counter). He was being interviewed by some off-camera goblin and do you know what he was asked? "What's your latest single about?"
Now, you could forgive said goblin for asking this question had Murs been bleating the lyrics to Hotel California or The Times They Are a-Changin'. But no, Murs latest single is called Dance With Me Tonight, leading most sentient beings to believe that he's singing about dancing. With someone. Quite possibly tonight. 
Oh, for fuck's sake. Dumbing down has never been so dumb and has never made me feel so down. Who in the giddy crevices of hell asked such a glaringly retarded question? What the fuck are they doing in paid employment? And why haven't their organs been harvested for those who need them to lead useful lives?
Assuming the goblin in question did his research beforehand (by reading back copies of Heat) he'd have known that the penetrating lyrics include the lines I just wanna, oh baby/ I just want you to dance with me tonight/ So come on, oh baby/ I just want you to dance with me tonight before inviting some lucky laydee to run her acrylic nails across his permanently broiling wedding vegetables. 
So, my celeb-whoring goblin, what did you expect the boy Murs to say in response? "Actually, I'm highlighting the heinous crime of female genital mutilation,"? Or perhaps, "I was so excited about the possible discovery of the Higgs Boson that the lyrics to this song came to me in just ten minutes. It'll also form the basis of my next concept album."
In fairness to Murs, when asked the question he sounded as dumbfounded as I felt listening to it. He blathered something about walking into a pub. Or club. Or bar. Then asking someone to dance with him.
Look, I don't expect searingly in-depth questions on a music channel (or on any channel when it comes to ex-X factor wannabes) but I sure as shit don't expect the sort of questions a toddler would snort at. Perhaps acting hip, shuffling like your piles are seeping and wearing the contents of Top Man/ Shop are enough to bag you a job on the likes of MTV or VHM. How fucking depressing is that (and I know what depressed is, by Christ)? 
So could somebody direct said gremlin to, I dunno, Billy Joel, Bob Dylan or Jackson Browne? I'm not a fan but with any luck the gremlin in question will have a meltdown at a song being about more than clumsy bollock nudging, sparing us valuable oxygen on this withering planet. it's not the only remedy I have. But it is my only legal one.

What Are You?

No thanks. I'm already
a member of  the Wombles

Pretty arsed off actually. Why? Today's The Times carried one of those really fucking irritating features which insists on wedging its readership into pigeon holes. It was all about the "new tribes" in British society and begged readers to find out whether they were such ridiculous things as Retronauts, Craftivists, Girl Geeks...whetever the fuck else the desperate editor could come up with to fill a worrying amount of white space 20 mins before deadline.
Who in the frig reads this shit? Seriously, does anyone actually read articles like this in the hope that by the end of it they'll have been duly labelled as one thing or another? If they do, I'm afraid they're really fucking weird. Apart from the fact that these pigeon holes are the work of one hack sitting at one desk in one newsroom they are, of course, non-bloody-existent. 
Take the bollocks I saw in a magazine a few weeks ago, imploring its female readers to decide whether they were yummy mummies/ slummy mummies/ Myra Hindley. Excuse me? So it's no longer enough that I'm a depressed working mother who is all things to all people? Suddenly I have to belong to some fucking clan or other? Jesus, is that supposed to give me hope because the reality is that it makes despair. 
Look, idiots, I don't want a label thank you. I don't want you to tell me what I am supposed to be. I'll sodding well decide what I am and right now it's this far from nipping up to the News International offices and introducing someone to a large pointy stick. Oh, and a 'tribe' called 'patronising gimps'.

Timber!

We're going for
something small this year

Tomorrow we're decorating the kraken cave with a Christmas tree. I tell you this because it might be useful information when the police ask for witnesses. Personally I'd put the tree up at 9pm on Crimbo Eve and then saw up the fucker at 9am on Boxing Day but with Kraken Junior in her fully festive mode that's out of the question. 
Ironically, I used to love shoving an expensive spruce into the corner of the living room and festooning it with flammable tat. Now, while I long to love the day of erection (as it were) I know that doing it with a three year old who's stamping on baubles/ chewing tinsel/ crying because the fairy is the wrong shade of pink is a complete and utter fucker. Yes, it should be a day of great joy where we share the hanging of lights, conjure up fabulous displays of glitter and then gaze adoringly at our creation as it twinkles but c'mon will you? It's more likely to end as it did last year with me sobbing on the doorstep while stabbing myself in the foot with the sharpest plastic star I could find.
And that's the thing about Crimbo with kids isn't it? Yeah, it's a joy to see how excited they get at seeing Santa and to watch their faces on Crimbo morn. Yet it's also a complete bastard when they refuse to eat their turkey dinner because the stuffing isn't the right colour and throw an almighty wobbly at 3pm because exhaustion has stolen their brains.
It's the same business with the tree. In my imagination it's a scene from a Bing Crosby festive bonanza. In reality it's just a scene from, well, Bonanza. Except where the Injuns win. 
Now go dial 999 and forewarn the police. And tell them to bring a chainsaw.

Greatest Tits

N-Dubz, post-styling

I gather, according to my more yooful and, er, with it, counterparts that N-Dubz has released a Greatest Hits album. May I ask the inevitable and obvious question: what the fuck?
N-Dubz? Greatest Hits? They've only been around for the last six weeks and even then are only well known because they look like Jeremy Kyle audience members who looted clothes that fit them. That and the fact that one of them wears ridiculous hats to detract from a face like an abattoir.
What unimaginably tuneless arse fodder have they managed to conjure into an album-worth of tracks? How much gap-toothed grunting and squealing have they fashioned into a stocking-filler? God only knows and I sure as fuck don't intend to listen to find out. Instead I'll listen to the squalling of mutilated monkeys, overlay it with the sobbing of children and then picture Fazer, Tulisa and Dappy flogging it in Asda. That should do it.

Crackers and Cobblers

Can't afford clothes, though

Whoa! Listen to this for a big bowl of wrong. Abbey Clancy, model and footy wife (God, what a dispiriting description) is bemoaning the fact that her nine month old daughter - yes, nine months - has already opened all of her Crimbo presents in a fit of festive excitement. Poor Clancy now has to buy her more presents so that the kid has something to open on Christmas day.
What a pile of complete and utter fucking bollocks. What a load of absolute cock. What a bulging sackful of self-indulgent, spoiled, overpaid, deluded stool water. There are so many things wrong with Clancy's 'predicament' that I barely know where to start ripping it apart. Every lobe of my brain is misfiring and sparks are squirting from my nostrils. 
Clancy, love, you need to learn a few things and fast. Your kid is nine months old. She still doesn't know what to do with her various sphincters let alone root around at the bottom of your many wardrobes, find her presents, unwrap them and fret about how she's fucked up her first Christmas. If she's opened her gifts in a festive frenzy it's your fault not hers, you pan-faced footy shag. Get a grip woman. Kraken Junior turns four next month and she's still happy with a cardboard box, a roll of sticky tape and a fistful of Cheerios. 
Anyway, spare a thought for the rest of country before you start cracking on about what a fucker it is to have to spoil your daughter twice in quick succession will you? These are straitened times for Christ's sake. Most people reading your ridiculous spoutings will be struggling to make ends meet enough to produce a turkey for the table. Gifts for their kids will drag them screaming into the red and January will be decorated with unpaid bills. And yeah, while that in itself is a blog post (working title: the many daft fuckers who go into debt for Christmas) for most families that's the only option open to them these days. 
So, Clancy, if you're expecting sympathy from this particular kraken you're barking up the wrong Norway spruce. Go ahead and buy your nine month old a diamond encrusted motorised scooter or treat her to her first catamaran. Whatever. Just don't expect us to give a flying fuck about what a terrible burden this is upon you this festive season. Now go back to your baubles and shut the bugger up.

God Tink Rest Ye Merry Gentlemen

Move over Charlt, there's
a new Tink in town.

Aye, the consumerist juggernaut carries on driving then reversing then driving then reversing over Christmas in this particular kraken's cave. Hauling Kraken Junior to school this morning she was warbling some God-based tune or other that she'd learned there. Course, the conversation turned to praying (I was praying for peace and frigging quiet which shows exactly the power of prayer). Here's how it went:
Me: "People pray to lots of different gods you know, not just the guy with the beard."
Kraken Junior: "Like Jesus?"
Me: "Kind of. And like Buddha or Shiva. Depends on what you believe in."
Kraken Junior: "And Tinkerbell?"
Me: "Eh?"
Kraken Junior: "And Hello Kitty?"
Me (under my breath): "Oh for fuck's sake..."
Kraken Junior: "Whoooaaa, you said a naughty word!"
Too fucking right I did, my lovely back-seat beast. Problem is that as far as little krakens are concerned the slinky Tinkerbell and the soulless Hello Kitty are gods aren't they? They may not wage wars against infidels or plunge pitchforks into gays and lesbians but they wreak frigging havoc amongst the toddler masses. It's like an infant form of Catholicism, where God is everywhere even when you're beating one off. That's because the likes of Tink and Kitty are similarly omnipresent. Yeah, they're on toys but they're also plastered all over magazines, tins of food, yoghurts, shoes, clothes...I've even seen Tink and her fairy dust mantra on cars, for fuck's sake. No wonder Kraken Junior reckons Hello Kitty wants her for a sunbeam.
It's not that I want her to believe in God, mind you. Every time she bounds out of school with some new prayer under her belt I pep talk her about how she doesn't need to ask God for strength or power or whatever because she embodies all of those things herself. Sod getting on your knees and asking for a better life. Get on your feet and make it for yourself instead, that's the gospel in our cave.
But the idea of putting Tink and Kitty up there with other spouting deities withers what's left of my belief in mankind. By the time she's 16 she'll be praying to the Benson and Hedges bible and crossing herself at the altar of Diamond White. I think another one of my pep talks is in order. She'd better start rubbing her Tink beads and muttering her Hail Kitties, by Christ on a bike (and even he's pedalling as far from here as he can get).

Calling All Car Goblins

Not quite close enough...

Just a short letter to the guy who parked next to me in Tesco's car park yesterday...


Dear Sir
It was lovely to meet with you yesterday. You have no idea how overjoyed I was when I found that you'd parked so close to my car that I was unable to get into it via the driver's door. In fact I was hardly able to reach the handle of said door so congratulations to you for splitting the atom with your battered shit heap of an Astra.
I have no doubt that your lack of thought for fellow car park users was entirely down to you being so deep in thought about the East African food crisis. Was that why you were in Tesco perchance? To stock up on cheese strings for the starving? In that case, forgive me! Indeed from now on feel free to scrape your way into any pifling space you can find, ideally removing the paint from cars on either side before evacuating your vehicle via the sunroof. It's the least we can do for someone so noble and thoughtful.
If I fail to see you again before Christmas, please do have a wonderful time shoving baubles into thimbles and stuffing your turkey with a goose. After all, your goodwill knows no bounds!
Yours 
The Kraken
P.S. You'll find this funny but for one moment I actually mistook you for a selfish, fat-handed twat who is so far up his arse that he's formed his own black hole. Oh, how I'll laughed over this at the bodywork garage when I'm getting my paintwork fixed. Merry Christmas!

Jeremy meet Alf

Hard to tell the difference

Has Jeremy Clarkson turned into Alf Garnett? Apart from the worrying perm I think said transformation is almost complete thanks to his stupendous views on the elimination of nurses and various other public servants. 
Watching Clarkson spew bollocks is like watching black people being dragged behind Chevies by KKK maniacs wielding flaming torches. Really, he's one flux capacitor away from inhabiting the 70s all over again (and that includes his horrific fashion sense). Clarkson, apart from desperately wanting you to shut up I'd also love it if you set fire to your knacker-grabbing jeans. You lumber about my telly screen like the Cerne Abbas Giant, man. I've seen more of your wedding vegetables than I have of Conjugal Kraken's and that's one fuck of a high price to pay for a Sunday night car review I can tell you.
Problem with Clarkson is that he's starting to parody himself, much like Nigella Lawson blow-jobbing spare ribs and Jeremy Vine playing his Jeremy Paxman mini-me. Clarkson thinks he's being controversial, speaking for the nation, daring to say the unsayable, the non-PC stuff that he thinks the rest of us are too fearful to spout. Ironically, though, this has just made him predictable. Don't know about you but I expect him to babble complete and utter fucking rubbish and, like a dog performing for a choc drop, that's exactly what he does. 
Aye, Clarkson was talking through his piles with these latest Daily Mail-like comments of his but what did you expect? He presents a show about cars which is aimed squarely at haw-hawing blokes (not men, blokes). He raves about the sponginess of clutches and the roar of engines, salivates at the overpriced pieces of engineering that get you from A to B. Were you really waiting for him to review his favourite piece of prose by Dostoyevsky or host an insightful debate into the Arab Spring? No, neither was I. Which is why his kicking about of the public sector is so obviously the next stage in his rapid regression. 
So don't froth over Clarkson. Just sit back, grab a bag of popcorn and prepare to watch him fuck up over and over again until that flux capacitor whisks him back to the 70s and gives us all some peace and frigging quiet.