Pedal Power

Ding ding.

What po-faced fucks serious cyclists are. No, really. I live on a trail that's popular with said beasts and every time I use it I'm faced with some lycra-sprayed, muddy arsed goon who is doubled up over his bike as if Lance Armstrong himself is trying to throttle him with a yellow jersey. I wouldn't mind except that these guys (because they're always, always men) are too up their arses to slow down, shout a warning or avoid walkers, kids, dogs and any other being who believed that the sign 'public footpath' implied democratic use. 
Just what is their problem? Oh, don't tell me, they're practising for the Tour de France. No? Oh, in that case they must be trying out for the Olympic team. Oh, not that either? Then they're trialling some new super-bike that'll explode under speeds of 40mph. Nope? Then they must be inherently incapable of giving a shit about anyone or anything that doesn't come clad in knacker-gripping shorts.
What is it about sharing that they are unable to grasp? It's as if these trails belong exclusively to them which would account for the sneering looks and spinning silence you receive when you 'hello' anyone who comes towards you. Christ, they can't even warn you that they're bearing down on you, giving you a chance to drag your toddler or terrier out of the way. Clearly bells are for bell-ends. 
Anyway, if this is what they chose to do with a Sunday morning why in the fuck do they look so miserable about it? Jesus, I've seen funeral mourners with perkier faces. You'd think they were cycling with barbed wire wrapped around their knackers rather than just taking an hour out to indulge a hobby.
Look, you tit-heads, you're on a footpath in Wales, OK? You're not heaving through the Samatan - Pau stage of the Tour de France. And no one gives a fuck whether you make your PB or not. They do, though, give a fuck if you happen to knock their three year-old into a hedge and take one of the legs off their dog. 
Just how far up his arse does a serious cyclist have to clamber? Jesus, but the single-sacked Lance Armstrong has a lot to answer for.

Faking It

Me, when I get up in the morning

What the frig is all the vitriolic fuss over hot pop warbler Lana Del Ray? If the ranting on the t'web is anything to go by you'd think she'd spent her life kidnapping children to feed to her whippets. But no, she hasn't. Instead she had a failed pop career under her real name of Lizzie Grant before rebranding herself as Lana Del Ray. This, though, has turned her fans against her to the point that they're this close to holding a witch hunt. What, may I ask, the fuck?
So she found herself a new image, new name, savvy record company and banged out some new and improved songs. Amazingly that's set t'internet afire with the rage of fans who claim to have been duped. Excuse me? Duped? Oh, do you mean duped in the same way that Lady Gaga fooled the nation by not really being hatched from a giant egg when she was Born This Way? Or perhaps you mean duped in the way that Michael Jackson wasn't really a white man? Or duped, perchance, in the way that the Spice Girls presented themselves as singers?
So do these distressed fans think that Del Ray is the first popstrel to ever fake it for the fame? Oh spare me, you indignant, goon-eared fools. Who the fuck do you think fills the charts at the moment? Mustachioed, overweight, wart-sprinkled women or lythe, golden-skinned and clear-eyed beauties? And where, pray, do these beauties come from? Well, they sure as shit don't crawl out of local talent shows looking like that. They - get this - fake it. They change their images with diets, cosmetic surgery, furious gym habits and armies of stylists. Every one of their moves is decreed in the meeting rooms of record companies and the media dictates everything else, from what they say to who they shag.
In fact, you'd need a skull crammed with hamster droppings to even imagine that the usual MTV fodder hadn't been manufactured in some way. 
Del Ray has hardly dragged the music industry to a new low by cranking up her image. For frig's sake, we're talking about an industry that's accepting of the toss that's turned out by the X Factor, where desperados sell their souls just to get a walk on part in a Cheeky Girls video. Is Del Ray really more conniving and cynical than that? Unless she's Harold Shipman without the beard and scary stethoscope, I doubt it.
Which means these duped fans need to get what is commonly known as a grip. It's pop music for Christ's sake. Pop music. We're not talking about perverts parading as paediatric consultants, here, or Syria's Bashar al-Assad opening a HR consultancy. We're talking about the bollocks that Fearne Cotton knocks out on Radio 1 of a morning. 
So as we say on a Saturday night out, leave it, mate, she's not worth it. No, really. Leave. It.

Pop Picking

Al would turn on his table

Look, explain something to me, will you? Which is Beyonce's/ Rihanna's/ Gaga's latest single again? See, I haven't got a frigging clue because they churn them out at such a rate of knots that I fear they're colluding to create a new measurement of speed.
Just how hard do these people work? When do they ever get to take a shit? Jesus, Beyonce's been knocked up since last summer (until recently) and suddenly she's got so many singles out that I fear she's given birth to a child made of vinyl. And as for Rihanna, she's been around for the last 20 minutes but already seems to have enough released singles for a bloody box set.
I just can't keep up with them. Can you imagine what their record management meetings are like? They must consist of shiny-suited music execs pushing miniature figures of Bey/ Ri/ Whoever across a table-top map of the globe, like domination hungry Nazis, as they bark at each other about the military-like timing of the next release.
Worse, they're on a loop on TV's music channels. At any given time you can grab yourself an eyeful of Rihanna's waggling or Beyonce's jiggling just because they're never, ever off the bloody telly. Seriously, if aliens tuned into MTV they'd weep for us based on the fact that we seem to have a total of three singers worldwide.
Thing is, this lot just don't have to work this hard, do they. Don't they ever demand a break? Do they ever look at their musical achievements and think,"Fuck it. I've done my bit. I'm pissing off to the Bali dope trail for a year". Or do they live with some terrible fear that if they don't release a single fortnightly the world will forget about them in a fit of global amnesia? Christ, Grand National horses don't get flogged this hard. If I were RiRi or Bey I'd start demanding a nosebag.
Anyway, if they take a break then we'll get a break. There's only so much more of these singers that I can stand before I start pouring concrete into my ears. Yeah, yeah, yeah, RiRi, you found love in a hopeless place. Just stop fucking banging on about it will you? And yeah, Bey, finally he's put your love on top. Perhaps it was in an effort to get you to shut the fuck up.
Laydees, spare me. Girl power is one thing but girl omnipresence is doing my head in. Change the bloody record, will you?

Boffins

A starter for ten

If you ask me - you didn't, but that's the risk you take in these here parts - there's only one good reason to watch the geek-swollen, virgin-fest that is University Challenge. Sod the finer points of geo-thermal dynamics or post-modern American literature. It's really about the reaction of the contestants whenever they answer a question correctly.
Have you ever seen a more socially inept bunch of individuals? Yeah, they may look like regular human beings but this thin veneer of normality is cracked wide open whenever they bag themselves points. They just don't look like they know how to handle it, do they? I've seen less seat shifting in the local GUM clinic. In fact, you can narrow their behaviour down to just four responses:
The shrugger: It's the boffins' version of 'whatever', as if answering a question about the conversion of carbon dioxide into organic compounds is the equivalent of doing up your shoes with velcro. 
The bored: As if being on University Challenge is so, so dull that they're desperate to get back to the lab. They'll answer a question about interpretivism in political science while learning back in their chair with such an insouciant slouch that they look dead.
The ashamed: It's that embarrassed look they get when they manage to identify the Laughing Cavalier from a quarter inch of canvas. I say shame because there's a direct correlation between their correct answers and the number of extra years they'll have to wait for a shag.
The hotshot: With that self-congratulatory nod that displays such enduring smugness it's hard to believe that the contestant hasn't learned to blow themselves off yet. 
Funny thing is that these responses look laughably well practised, like actors who've lost out on an Oscar while still having to gurn happily for the camera. Jesus, across the land there are lank haired contestants standing in front of mirrors in their pants while learning how to say 'photosynthesis' or 'Aristotle' without exploding with happiness at their own intelligence.
And that's the problem with University Challenge, isn't it? The contestants. They actually make me grateful that I spent more time necking cider than I did studying. Appearing on UC would have been social death. Well, for normal human beings at least.

Boo!

Yup. I have this effect on everyone.

You know what's the bat shit craziest thing about having depression? No bugger ever asks you how you are. Well, no bugger outside the circle of family and close friends, that is. It's as if my depression is a grenade and that asking "how are you?" will yank out the frigging pin. That'll also explain the look of abject fear that I see on some faces, as if I'm perpetually on the verge of going postal. At least, I hope it will.
What the fuck is it all about? I've had the mental equivalent of a train crash but no one ever mentions it. If I'd just recovered from a broken arm or a gall bladder removal I suspect I'd have no end of questions about my fluctuating health. Yet recovering from a breakdown seems to befuddle said well wishers into such a deep state of panic that they're rendered incoherent. 
Twice in recent times I've been invited to mates' places for grub only to feel as if I'm making everyone so maniacally uncomfortable that I'm better off nipping to the chippy. Seriously, I've sat at tables where everyone has been asked about their work, kids, hobbies, views on whatever-the-fuck but I've been asked little more than to pass the salt. And when I have chipped into conversations - offering vignettes on day to day life, say - everyone shifts as if they've collectively had pins stuck in their arses. Some mates' dates have even turned into interviews because they have been so scared of asking me anything that I have simply fired questions at them in a hideous effort to keep the conversation going. I come home exhausted at having made sure that everyone else is having a good time.
Thank fuck I'm able to talk to my close friends and family. My best mates will happily ask me how I am doing, crack jokes about my ongoing banana-ness and offer all manner of wonders when I am mid-meltdown. And behold! None of this has ever come even close to pushing me further over the edge than I already am. In fact, I'd rather a stammered and panicky "how are you?" rather than no "how are you?" at all.
Then again, p'raps this is the price I'm paying for being so open about my depression. Had I spent the last two years sobbing and gibbering yet glossing it all over with a "No, I'm fine!" then perhaps everyone would feel more comfortable about me losing the plot. They could pretend that my marbles had done anything other than rolled away.
Thing is, though, that would have made everyone else feel better but it would have sent me straight to B&Q for a length of rope. And I'll be fucked if I'm going to let politeness kill me. You know, when it comes to being bat shit crazy I reckon I'm the only sane one out there.

Falling Stars

Inside Glitter's mind.

Look, just tell me that's not Gary Glitter who's, er, popped up on Twitter will you? Either him, or some nutbag fake him, has started a Twitter account announcing a comeback tour, autobiography and various other activities for covering up kiddie fiddling. 
Fuck me, though (and I can say that because I'm way too old for Glitter), if it's his followers who are giving me the shits this time around. Have you seen their comments? Have you? Well go and have a look, come back here and try to do it without taking a scouring pad to your eyeballs. 
"Gary, you are the best! Welcome back!" blathers one twatter. "I hope everyone can get over that unpleasantness now, Gary!" moons another. Oh, and how about this gem of "Gary is too precious for us to be without him!" Oh fuckety, fuckety fuck. Are these scrotes for real? I refuse to believe that Glitter has followers at all, let alone people who would publicly offer him their devotion. 
I dunno, perhaps they're all tweeting from a home for terminal amnesiacs or perhaps the GG fan club is offering free lobotomies with every concert ticket. Can you even start to imagine what a stadium full of these fans would look like? Dante's Inferno comes to mind but that didn't have nearly enough circles of hell. Nine don't even scratch the surface. Glitter's minions would pitch it well into double figures.
Oh, and I love the request that we all allow Glitter to put his fetid past behind him, a past that's so recent it's almost yesterday. His last conviction for pawing at minors was in 2006, for fuck's sake. Anyway, I bet his victims would equally love the chance to put the past behind them but crucifying flashbacks of Glitter looming over them have probably put paid to that. 
All of which his loyal fans seem too gullible to remember. What pitiful creatures they are.
Still, at least they can be guaranteed prime seats at GG's comeback tour (a worrying title for a tour where GG is involved, according to Conjugal Kraken). I'm not sensing a sell-out here. And if I were Glitter I'd hold on the t-shirt printing too. I reckon he's got enough front to go around the entire bloody nation.
Spare me, Glitter, spare me. And something tells me that it's not the first time you've heard that request either.

Bleeurgh

Just. Go. Away.

Alex fucking James: strummer, cheese fondler, champagne swigger, failed artist, professional toff, skint festival organiser, Sun columnist and now sell-out personal plaything of McDonalds, KFC and Greggs.
What a complete and utter tosser.
Just sayin'.

Dawn Chorus

Yeah, you're laughing now...

Whoa! Just came out of my shed where Radio 2's Steve Wright kindly regaled me with Marvin Gaye's Sexual Healing amongst other popular music choices. Having never bothered to listen to the song before, I've just realised the complete fucking outrageousness of the lyrics. No, no, no I don't mean the bits where Marv, ahem, bangs on about wanting a shag. But the part where he hounds his, undoubtedly knackered, ladyfriend with his "wake up, wake up, wake up, wake up..." and "get up, get up, get up, get up..." for the purposes of said procreative activity.
Ha! Ha ha ha ha! Haaaaaaa! Marv, mate, are you frigging kidding me with this stuff? Wake up? Get up? Jesus, are you seriously telling me that you've woken up at 3am with a semi and considered it a good idea to nudge the missus until she's wide awake just to ask for a happy finish? 
Fuckadoodle do. Marv had a shed load of kids too so bare in mind he was harassing the women who probably had, just hours before, exhaustedly collapsed into bed after a day of funnelling baby vom, spilling shitty nappies, singing The Wheels on the Bus and generally talking to one-year olds as if someone had kicked their brains to death.
And after all of that he thought it a good idea to wake them up and ask for a shag? I'll tell you something, had I been one of Marv's good lady wives he'd have needed more than sexual healing after coming at me with a woody at 3am. He'd have needed gender reassignment surgery and a good defence lawyer.
Either Sexual Healing is a testament to how utterly out of touch Marv was when it comes to the perils of mothering or it's a towering monument to a man who didn't know when to stop pushing his luck.
In fact it's a miracle that Marvin Gaye was shot by his father. Personally, had I ever woken to Marv's nudgings after endless hours of dribbling my own tit milk down my front I'd have taken a fucking gun to him myself.
Perhaps Marvin should have recorded Afternoon Delight instead, at least hedging his bets that his woman had two minutes to spare before the school run. Or perhaps Morning has Broken, with Broken being a direct reference to what would be left of him should I ever have received a stupid o'clock booty call. Yup, heal that, Gaye m'boy, heal that.

Baby Talk

Oh, the glamour!

Wonders never bloody cease, do they? I’ve just been privy to an absurd debate on how the MTV shows 16 and Pregnant and Teen Mom glamorise teenage pregnancy. Shit on a stick, it was like listening to common sense and intelligence spiral down the plughole.

Have these people ever seen the shows? If they have while simultaneously witnessing anything that encouraged teenagers to get knocked up then I’ll willingly let them take their pick of any of my vital organs. I’ve watched the shows since they first clogged up MTV and I’ll be fucked if I can remember a single moment of glamour. In fact all I can remember is broken hearted parents, abandoned 15-year old girls, feckless boyfriends, screeching infants, resentful 3am feeds and fuck all chance of a decent education this side of Russell Grant being straight.

So tell me, which part of this is glamorous?  At what point would any half-sentient teenager watch these shows and think, “what a fucking great idea! If I’m pregnant by November I can be dumped, broke, uneducated and friendless by Christmas. Whoo-oo!”

I’ve even heard the argument that these shows encourage teenage pregnancy. Are you for fucking real? Encourage pregnancy? What, by wooing viewers with graphic scenes of teenagers tearing their vaginas during childbirth? Or by wowing them with the blazing rows they could have with boyfriends who swear the kids aren’t theirs? Look, if this stuff encourages some girls to get pregnant then may I put forward the idea that said girls are unlikely to be chucking away great careers as physicists or diplomats as a result. Instead they’re probably so bat shit crazy that they’re an insult to bat shit.

Problem is, this argument is reeled out whenever any TV show or film addresses the shittier side of life. Chuck a scene about drugs, booze or sex into a show and suddenly we’re glamorising anything from overdoses to abortions. Oh spare me. No fucker ever complains that Eastenders glamorises the soul-sucking boredom of running a market stall on the square you are born and will die on, do they? And frankly, I find the encouragement of the latter way more worrying than the encouragement of the former.

So turn your ire on something a little more deserving, you soothsaying nutbags. When you see a show that rewards pregnant 12 year olds with duffel bags of cash and a shag with Justin Bieber feel free to holler. Until then, try rescuing your common sense from that plughole, if it’s not too late.

Toffs Ahoy!

Bastards

Oh God, oh God, oh God, I think I'm having a relapse. I can't stop weeping, panicking and feeling as if I've been tossed into the blackest of pits. Oh, hang on though. It's not depression. It's just my reaction to MP Michael Gove's comments that the Queen should be given a new royal yacht to celebrate the Diamond Jubilee.
This is almost more than I can comprehend. Gove, the flap-mouthed Tory arse-wipe, is seriously suggesting that in these times of economic crisis, spiralling unemployment and commercial and personal debt that the nation coughs up £60m as a gift to a woman who has already spent her entire life living off the tax-payer? 
Well, fuck me, Gove, I've clearly had my priorities wrong all along haven't I? And there I was fretting about how young people are wasted in the dole queue, how intelligent kids are excluded from a university education because they can't afford it, how millions of people can't afford to get on the property ladder, how libraries are closing almost weekly, how families are collapsing into debt because they can't afford the basics, how pensions are being stolen from those who've spent their lives paying into them...Clearly, all along I should have been focusing my 3am fears on the fucking Queen and how nightmarish her life must be without a brand new tub to flash about in.
Astounded doesn't cover it. Just think what £60m could do to alleviate some of the biggest social problems this nation faces. And just think of how often the fucking Tories have told us that there's no more money left in the pot. Yet, suddenly, there's £60m sloshing about in some dark corner of the Conservative Party's bank account and the best that Gove can do is to blow it on the Queen?
You know, all I hope is that something good will come of this. Perhaps all of those people who foolishly voted Tory in 2010 will suddenly see what a big fucking mistake they made when they put their cross in the box. Like receiving a kiss from a prince, the nation could now stretch and yawn, gaze about and realise that they've been well and truly had. Let's hope that the nation's memory isn't so short this time around though and that next time they stumble into a voting booth they'll remember Gove, his cash-blowing stupidity and his haw-hawing chums. A Tory government? For fuck's sake, at the next election let's put that one astern.

Overload Overlords

Just say no

Don't know about you but I'm worried about Katherine Jenkins. What I mean is that if she doesn't take a day off soon from forcing her way into 'nation's sweetheart' status, she'll implode, dragging fellow crumpled sweetheart, Dame Vera Lynn, into the warbling black hole she'd have created. 
Jesus, does Jenkins ever say no to anything? If she's not knocking out tours or tunes for people with the musical discernment of Helen Keller, she's dragging her arse in front of anyone who'll have her, from desert-dusty troops to drunk rugby fans. Forget asking her to attend the opening of an envelope. She'll be too busy attending the opening of someone's bowel.
Perhaps my impression of Jenkins is such because my kraken cave is in Wales which means that, thanks to the desperate Welsh media, she is never, ever out of the bloody headlines. Jenkins represents a tenuous link to the Principality's global importance so all she has to do is take a shit and the Welsh papers are all over it like fleas on a mongrel's bum. Jesus, The Western Mail - our national rag - would prioritise a story about how Jodie Marsh's grandma once visited Tenby so you can imagine what a meal it makes of K frigging J. The paper is this close to printing a schedule of her menstrual cycle.
It's desperate stuff and it's going to get worse. The Six Nations is around the corner so I have absolutely no doubt that Jenkins will be wheeled out to do everything from bawl through our national anthem to lead the Welsh players through tunefully pissing against their urinals. Add to that her bookings at the Olympics and the Jubilee and she's going to redefine the word overload in ways that have hitherto been unimaginable. For fuck's sake, she's even been quoted as saying that the reason she couldn't get around to marrying her (now) ex-boyfriend this year is because she's got too much on. Take a hint Jenks, take a hint.
Fuck knows what will happen if Jenkins is taken out by a missile the next time she's harassing our troops. Wales would plunge into mourning so deep that it'd have to be crop-spayed with prozac. Our papers would drop 16 pages overnight, our TV channels would be physically sick onto the nation's carpets and the M4 would curl up into a ball. It'd be like some freakish wartime experiment to test the mettle of the Welsh.
So, kraken-lovers, we need to gird ourselves in 2012. We're heading for one fuck of an overload of warbling, doe-eyed, bottle-blondeness. I'd suggest ear plugs and a blindfold. Me? I'll be staying in my cave and probably beating my head against its walls. It'll be much more enjoyable.

Feel the Noize

Yeah, I'll do it.

Oh man, I love that Robert Webb (the ubiquitous, flare-nostrilled goon from Mitchell & Webb, Peep Show etc) has had a pop at Jeremy Kyle. He's today described Kyle as, "a presenter with the heart, soul and voice of a Dalek". 
Fair enough, but could Webb do what he wants Kyle to do and shut the frig up too? Because from where I'm standing Webb says yes to every fucking job he's offered which means he is reaching saturation point on the nation's TVs. If he's not blathering over TV ads he's providing endless voice-overs for a stunning array of shite TV shows. If it's got 'top 50' in the title you can bet your arse that Webb is presenting it, under the wondrous delusion that if he talks like a drainpipe he'll make it funny or interesting. The problem is that he's neither. Having a face like a collapsed swede does not a comedian make. 
Amazingly, I can withstand Kyle's barking for hours longer than I can Webb's droning. If there's a show I want to see and Webb is presenting it I go for a lengthy shit instead. Funnily enough, that just doesn't happen that often.
So think before you deride, Webb m'love. As someone who is on a mission to flood the nation's ears with bollocks I'd leave the heated debates about who has heart, soul and delightful vocals to people who don't turn up to the opening of any old fucking sound booth. Just sayin'.

You Wouldn't Let Her Lie

Gone, but she sure as shit isn't forgotten

Just when you thought our national obsession with Princess bloody Diana was getting creepy, I'd like to nominate the magazine Vanity Fair for reaching levels of weirdness that would make Fred West blush.
I read VF every month - tidy, in-depth journalism on the whole - but what is with it's never-ending probing into Jackie Kennedy? For fuck's sake, she's been dead since 1994 but VF bangs on about her as if she's just risen from the Greek tycoon-shagging grave. VF has never knowingly produced an issue without a photo of Jackie-O shoved in there somewhere. Look, I have the latest issue in my kraken paw and even though there are no J-O features in it they've still managed to include a frigging pic of her on the contents page.
What. The. Fuck? Is J-O catnip for Fith Avenue toffs? Can VF not find a more current woman to bang on about? And what in the bollocks is there that's left to say about J-O? Perhaps we've not yet been regaled about how many shits she took a day or whether her cuffs matched her curtains. And perhaps said information is so vital to our existence that it would almost be inhumane of VF to not pick over it, word by word, until we're actually sicking up pill-box hats with matching handbags.
Look, VF, leave J-O to enjoy her eternal rest, will you? Even she must be spinning in her fabulously accessorised tomb by now. Jesus, you're this close to dusting off the ouija board, begging for a photoshoot before disinterring her for the delectation of the chattering classes. Move the frig on, will you? Just make sure that's it's in an open top car through Dallas. I fear a bullet to the brain is the only thing that'll cure VF of this particular malady.

Phone Goblins

Just. Shut. Up.

Another prime example of how mobile phones have destroyed humanity. Yesterday I was sitting in a small group of people, all of us discussing some shit or other, when one of the group got out her phone. You know what she did? Dialled a number and started a conversation with whoever the fuck she called, barking so loudly that the rest of us were unable to carry on our conversation.
What, in the barren land of bollocks, was that all about? It was so rude on so many levels that I've actually lost count of them. In fact, I was embarrassed for her, seeing as she was acting like a wanker who'd snorted a record weight of wank. 
Couldn't she have left the conversation for later (I don't recall it starting with "Run! Run for your life!")? Couldn't she have left the group to make it in private? Or couldn't she have conducted it at a level of decibels that wouldn't have resembled a Metallica gig?
Worse, said group member wasn't some acne-riddled, hoody-wearing oik with the manners of a truffle-snuffling boar. It was, in fact, a 50-something woman who sure as shit should have known better.
I know, I know, I sound like a Daily Mail reader. If it's any consolation, I hate myself for it. But spare me the glaring rudeness will you? And said rudeness must be rude if this F-bombing kraken is arsed over it. 
Bloody phone goblin.

Fruit of the Loon
Tell me, who came up with the term 'fun size' for microscopic foodstuffs? More to the point, have they been severely and floridly punished for this? If not, my darling kraken-lover, I am happy to step into the breach to administer said retribution. Believe me, it is long overdue.

Now that's fun size

At what point did fodder that measures smaller than a ping pong ball become fun sized? I mean, how much bloody fun can you have with a pear like a gobstopper or a Twix like a hamster's leg? That's about as much fun as removing your own ovaries with a wooden chip fork, for Christ's sake.
No, no, no. If you really want something to be fun sized, you food producing titheads, you'd make it bigger, not invisible to the naked eye. Think anything over 15ft long, three stone in weight or with the circumference of a space hopper. You know, bananas the length of commuter trains, apples like footstools, Snickers bars like three seater sofas. Now, that's fun sized. Not this poxy business of shoving fifteen pieces of fruit into bags like baby's mittens.
Imagine the fun you could have with a bar of chocolate that cast a shadow over next door's house? Or the joy of burrowing into an apple, making a nest and using the pips as furniture? God, it would be worth every frigging penny of the extortionate price tag.
You never know though. Perhaps the term 'fun' refers to the poor bastards who have to pick n pack these ridiculous offerings. I like to think that they put wagers on how tiny their bananas need to be before they can persuade Del Monte or Fyffes to flog them to a wildly gullible western world, desperate to stuff the nation's lunch boxes with anything other than Monster Munch.
So don't go fretting over the fruit producers who have to feed entire families on wages equal to the price of a jelly baby. They're laughing their frigging heads off at us as we wedge three fun size apples into our mouth at any one time. Which means we've all been bloody well had doesn't it and there's fuck all that's fun sized about that.

Losing the Plot

Aye, the sound gimps are here

If I watch one more TV show that treats its audience as if they just got washed up on Thick-as Shit Shore I'm going to be certified illegal. Twice in recent days I've been privy to the sort of incidental and accompanying music that could only have been the work of severely en-gimped producers/ editors/ who-the-frig-ever. 
I've just witnessed a show about hiking which did for soundtracks what Harold Shipman did for patient care. To accompany footage of a group of women walkers, some pancake-eared fool chose Sisters are Doing it for Themselves before playing Why Does it Always Rain on Me when it, er, rained and Shine On when, you guessed it, the sun came out. It was like listening to my own cranial fluid seeping from my ears.
I was also recently forced to take note of one of these vile daytime property shows as it was piped into my dentist's waiting room (presumably to save him the cost of anaesthetic). To ram home the fact that one property was collapsing the overpaid sound goon chose Danger! High Voltage. Go West led us numbingly into a piece on a house in Devon and when some gaff got sold at auction Nina Simone turned in her grave when Feelin' Good got reeled out.
Shit on a brick, it's like TV for the hard of thinking. And to think that there are people out there - mouthbreathers, I suspect - who think that this is must-see TV. 
Exactly how low-brow can viewing get? And to think that somewhere is a TV exec who decrees this stuff fit for public consumption. How the fuck would they feel if they had to watch telly that was the viewing equivalent of a jar of Cow & Gate? Of course, that is based on the assumption that once they have proclaimed this tripe viewable they're then so busy swigging Gray Goose, snorting gak and boffing their assistants in the disabled toilets that they never have to view their own fetid creations. John Loggi Baird would poke out his eyeballs with a cathode ray tube just to witness it all.
So spare us the televisual mush, will you? If I want to be treated like a retarded barnacle I'll start watching Channel 5 and perhaps you could accompany it with Suicide is Painless as a little send off to my intelligence. That or Going Underground.

Teenage Kicks

An actual improvement

Just a couple of quick questions for the motley yoof of our crumbling nation: 
1. Why in the giddy corners of fuck do teenage boys walk about with their hands down their trousers? 
and
2. Has all the bollock grasping turned them blind, hence the trend for hair like Frankie Cocozza?
As far as the knacker fumbling goes, I'm at a complete fucking loss. Really, I am. I can think of no good reason why anyone would roam the streets while boshing their knackersacks against the man-made fibres of their looted JJB Sports trackie bottoms. Seriously, the last time I was approached by a man doing this he requested a glimpse of my tits before I punched him and called the police. 
So what's with the public rummaging? Are these yoofs plucking tunes on their scrotal hairs? Perhaps the fear of their bollocks re-ascending is such that they have to constantly exert downward pressure on their clams with ballast hands. Or are they locked in a perpetual cycle of wanking that can only ever be broken by a kiss from Jeremy Kyle?
And talking of baby batter, is this what they use to recreate the nit-fest that is Cocozza's hair? At what point did these dull fucks look at the F-Cock, believe that his hair would do wonders for their social standing and pull their hands out of their trousers long enough to mould their greasy shags into badgers arses?
Worse, do you realise that someone, somewhere is F-Cock's stylist? That they get paid legal tender to make him look like that? Which blind hairdresser got that gig then? You could let Stevie Wonder loose in Toni & Guy with a chainsaw and he couldn't create anything as bad as F-Cock's scalp warmer. 
I dunno, perhaps with all the bag waggling these feckless yoofs are simply transferring their pubes to their heads, like knacker-to-noggin transplants.
Jesus, these really are damming times for the nation's yoof aren't they? Imagine choosing to mould your own image by fusing ball-fussing with hair like the sick-up from a diplodocus. Perhaps it's pity they want, not derision. That and a fistful of wetwipes.
Skanky bastards.

Mothering Heights

My kind of girl

Have you any idea, kraken-fumblers, how much I loath and detest the term 'yummy mummy'? Well, if you didn't before you will now, bless your poor, poor souls.
What a vile fucking concept this yummy mummydom is. It's no longer enough to be a mother, you now have to be a mother who is fragrant, delightful, erudite and, all in all, some mythical creature who has never been near a nipple pad in her life. It's utter bollocks, of course, and just another way of women bashing the fuck out of each other rather than just getting with the endless to-do list that they're already embroiled with every day of their lives.
Why the fuck does anyone want to add the burden of being yummy to the already crippling responsibility of being a mummy? Look at it this way: we, mothers, have already grown another human being, developed size 24 arses, had our vaginas poked/ stretched/ torn, shat on the delivery table with the effort of it all, leaked milk from our tits, fed another human from our tits, gone bananas to the tune of PND, survived on two hours sleep a night, wept with exhaustion over tasks as basic as getting dressed, swapped sex for Benjamin fucking Bunny and blown cosmic sized holes in our careers. And now you want us to look pretty too? Go, as they say, fuck yourself.
This yummy mummy malarchy is yet another unachievable myth, of course. Worse, it makes women feel like dribbling failures if their school run shoes have anything less than three inch heels. Excuse me?
I see women who have achieved this myth as the biggest victims of all. For fuck's sake, how much effort must it take? And why don't they have anything better to do with their time? The likes of Victoria Beckham are praised for their perfect mummydom but all I see is a woman so cowed by this image that she's not allowed to leave the house unless she's catwalk ready. Who, I ask you, wants a life like that? It's amazing VB has time to take a shit. Most mothers don't and that's when they haven't seen the business end of a mascara wand for three months. How the fuck you do it while matching you spring wardrobe with your new Laboutins is beyond me.
Funny thing is, I have a picture of myself and Kraken Junior by my bed and the frame has the words Yummy Mummy written on it. It was given to me when my fanny stitches still meant that I had to pee with my head lower than my pelvis just to stop the stinging (you work it out). I now revel in how the frame and picture are poles apart. It's my daily act of seething rebellion. My smiling face is hiding the rapid onset of severe PND and what would become visiting rights to the local psychiatric unit. That's about as yummy as I managed to get. And that's about as yummy as I'd like to stay, if it's all the same to you.

Hangers On

You want company?

I’ve a question for womankind: what in the fuck are you thinking of when you take your male partner clothes shopping with you? Is it not enough that you have to shove yourself into teenage fashions that you have to be accompanied by a miserable, be-knackered fellow bill-payer who’d rather be beating one off in the comfort of his own home?

It’s no fucking wonder blokes look so bored when they’re hanging around changing rooms like consumerist perverts. Wouldn’t you? If Conjugal Kraken leapt out of a changing room and  demanded sartorial advice from me every five minutes for six hours, but then quibbled when I said that yes, his arse does look big/ no, the colour doesn’t suit him/ can we go the fuck home yet, I’d be the most po-faced bastard in the world too.

Why, women, why? Why do you need to take non-Gok men rummaging for chunky knits? Fuck me, even if you needed help forming an opinion about some dress or other, surely you’d take someone better informed about the last spring/ summer collection than your old man? Fair ‘nuff if your bloke is Marc Jacobs Jacobs but from yesterday’s sales foray the men I saw looked more like Jacob’s crackers.

See, women always moan about how shite their men are when they take them clothes shopping, but I blame the women, not the men. If you’re dull enough to expect them to enjoy watching you root through the fashion wasteland that is Next then you deserve all the moaning you get. Hasn’t it crossed your mind that a) he doesn’t give a shit about hemlines, b) when you ask him about whether your bum looks big he says “no” for a quiet life, c) you’d get one fuck of a lot more done if you were on your own and d) quality time together cannot, I repeat, cannot, be found in a snaking Debenhams queue.

Anyway, I don’t need CK’s sartorial advice in the same way that he doesn’t need mine. Otherwise, how the fuck do you think I managed to get dressed in the 32 years before I met him? Can we just assume that I’m able to pick out a t-shirt in the same way that he’s able to pick out a packet of pants?

So spare me the sight of arse-faced men hanging about changing rooms will you? Let the poor sods off the hook for once and just go clothes shopping on your own. You know, like grown women are meant to do. Revolutionary, I know.

Beerstalker

Beady-eyed bastard

Just saw half an hour of the first episode of the new Sherlock series. It was only half an hour because it was so intensely annoying that I'd rather watch a loop of Anne Widdecombe taking a shiff shit than sit through the whole thing. 
I know, I know, everyone is banging on about how good it is. Fuck knows why. I fear the writers tainted the nation's Quality Street with whatever evil it'd take to make viewers enjoy a script that could only have been the product of gargled bong water. 
Problem is, if Sherlock is a cracker it's buried beneath such an avalanche of quips and cocky one-liners that even Hollywood would think it hyperbolic. The half hour I saw (and I make no apology for not suffering the full hour) looked like the product of a scriptwriter's boozy challenge: endless wisecracks, retorts and taunts that made for a staccato dialogue with sod all benefit to the story. If it had wanted to be unpredictable it could have had Sherlock speak a full sentence in any tone other than a man picking at his vasectomy stitches.
Parts of that regretful  half an hour were painful to watch. You could actually see where Steven Moffat, the writer, was trying to be clever rather than a great storyteller. It was excruciating to the point that I'd have had more fun listening to my nails being dragged down a blackboard after they'd been wrenched from my fingers.
Look, it's not that I'm hankering for crap telly. I'm not. I'm all about The Killing and Braquo too. But neither am I willing to donate my precious time to some over-played BBC love-fest that reeks of smugness. I have better things to do, like blog about the snippets of TV I've seen in order to make wild generalisations about what the fuck my license fee is blown on. If you ask me, it's elementary.