Past midnight, Blogging is go.

Ah. So having been suitably roused by some well-meaning idiocy in our quaint student household, coupled with an overarching desire to not-sleep, I find myself as usual in a slightly pissy mood doing what I do best at this time of the night. And I don't mean clubbing children.

GOD. Children piss me off.

Not all of them mind. Mostly only the ones I see around here. Maybe it's because the more innocuous younglings don't draw any attention to themselves and I can happily ignore them in my daily routine of wake->uni->home->eat->go out [replace 'go out' with 'write blog' as appropriate]. But, living next to a run down council estate you'd be forgiven for thinking that every sub-18 year old is a badly dressed loudmouth with the IQ of a football and the public decency of Lindsay Lohan on ketamine. You can't pass a miserable, sweaty group of the jumped up little bastards without getting insults hurled vaguely at you (or anyone you're standing near) in this sort of pathetic pre-pubescent powerplay that smacks of underdeveloped brain syndrome (medically classified as being "Fucking thick").

You know the sort. 

They potter around in their little 'cru' with their stupid hair and their stupid Adidas trousers tucked into their stupid socks, feeling like entitled little dictators. I don't believe in capital punishment for one minute but I wouldn't hesitate, if I were the parent of one of the swaggering little parasites, before branding 'dickhead' on them with a hot iron. That being said, probably the average parent of one of these respiring little shit-sacks is a fat wobbling mass of cheap lager and nicotine farting their way through benefits only stopping to occasionally piss and moan about rich people. Yes fat-cat businessmen are wankers, but at least they're wankers who own yachts and aren't going to die, writhing in chest pains from a self induced heart attack, at an age where their sole achievement is contaminating the earth with their useless effing offspring.

An aside:

I'd like at this stage to add some caveats: being as we are living in an age of very loud online groups with acronyms instead of names, if more than my customary audience of about 20 readers get hold of this and feel that I've somehow implied that all council estate dwellers are in fact bottom feeding scum, I will be summarily lynched publicly and expensively. As this is the case I'll qualify this by saying firstly that I have nothing against council estates inasmuch as I can't have anything against inanimate areas of habitation: and also that I'm somehow generalising whole groups of the population (perhaps unfairly) into a category of sub-human faeces whom I utterly despise.

This second point holds some value: it's impossible to completely generalise people. You can't even say you hate Nazis because Oscar Schindler was a Nazi and he helped a whole bunch of Jews in a bizarrely altruistic way.

However I take the view that most people clever enough to type in a web address (or at least follow a hyperlink) can also realise this themselves. In this case generalisations are useful and you shouldn't have to worry about the sort of covering-your-own-ass which I am relentlessly pursuing in this very paragraph. In short: I'm picking on the people who deserve to be picked on. If you're not a stupid little cock, and your parents aren't blundering arseholes, then I'm not aiming my comments at you and please don't take offence; even if you live/lived on a council estate. By virtue of the fact you're reading this you're a completely different league of human being.

These guys obviously agree with me. You can tell because they have sunglasses on.

To resume, then.

I haven't been alive long enough to make the kind of conceited comment that this wave of human-shaped viruses is somehow a product of the current times/government/digital revolution/water fluoridation. I imagine a large majority of the older populace does just this on a regular basis. My main question though, is why does there seem to be such a divide? This is all based on the microcosm of society that I have been exposed to in my short 21 years but you rarely find people that sit in the middle of laddish-thug and what I'd call a normal person. It's an honest question and I'd be happy for some sociologist to explain to me and then give me a firm telling-off for cheapening their science by blogging about it.

Until they eradicate the stupid gene though, we're stuck with them. We even have the word 'Chav' to encapsulate the whole nauseating class into one succinct syllable for easy conversation. We as a society have clearly hunkered down and just gotten used to the fact that they exist and aren't going anywhere except possibly the old-folks home to steal things and piss on the walls. They're going to keep yelling that bystanders are gay, keep smoking from the ripe old age of twelve, keep knocking back White Lightening like it's not fermented Demon-piss, and keep getting each other knocked up so that their kind can continue to get on everyone's tits for generations to come.

And there's nothing you can do about it. Goodnight.

-Neop

Here we go again

I always seem to pick late nights when I'm in a slightly irritable mood to come on here and spill my typographical guts. It probably helps stimulate the part of my brain that craves spreading my less-than-ideal mood to the masses in whatever little way I can manage (seeing as how I don't have a death-metal band yet, I figure this is the next best thing).

Non-committal is pretty depressing, especially when it hits you in large doses (he says, at risk of upsetting his entire friend group). Fact is, individual cases are pretty reasonable (mostly) but when you get a veritable cascade of invitation turn-downs in the space of a few hours, and lose your wallet, it makes for a somewhat repressed dose of endorphins swilling around in one's grey-matter.

Three years ago I could've quite happily spent entire weeks by myself with only my own brain for company and occasional surreal conversation; but times move on and I quickly realised my brain was pretty malicious and probably had a sinister hidden vendetta which I'd best stay out of the way of.

Also, people can, on occasion, be good company.

I suppose what might actually help at this point is to wade headlong into a crowd of rowdy shoppers at some nondescript and utterly typical shopping-centre or other. I can picture it now... hordes of barely-literate, greasy, overweight mothers throwing their children around with one hand whilst furiously keeping hold of their supersized Coke with the other, all the while screaming furiously at little "Wayne" to "FUCKING SHUT UP" (pronunciation of the "t" in "shut" purely optional). That'd make me miss people significantly less.

Whilst this is a total, massive, sweeping generalisation (in the same way that all American people have double figure IQs, and all role-players need to grow up and get a life) it is true that I find large herds of people something of a drain. This probably makes me sound like an utter sociopath (which I may be) but since you've either never met me, or have met me and already realised this, I see no problem with stating the issue explicitly.

Dumb Britain, for those of you cultured enough to read Private Eye, is possibly the greatest example of human thick-headedness this side of climate-change deniers. Every issue it publicises some remarkable examples of thickery from the world of game shows.

Case in point:

Anne Robinson on Weakest Link: "The traditional wording of The Lord's Prayer asks that we be delivered from what?"

Contestant: "Our daily bread".

A mentally retarded Sea-Monkey could've put in a less ridiculous guess. Here's another one from the slightly more intellectual Mastermind:

John Humphrys: "Which insect gets its name from the ancient superstition that they crawled into people's ears while they were asleep?"

Contestant: "Ants".

Anyway, I do enjoy a good laugh at the expense of the less intellectually favoured- mostly because I really think intelligence is as much down to effort as anything else. Most people who are dumb, are dumb because they're lazy. That's a character flaw worth laughing at because God knows it's never going to be useful for anything else.

One other thing I'd like to mention tonight, which has little if anything to do with what I've just spoken about, is plastic bags.

Ok- now you've got over the jarring discontinuity in this narrative, I'll qualify my statement by saying that a MASSIVE social stigma has arisen regarding the use of plastic bags. Supermarkets are at each other's bulging capitalist throats over which one of them has forced the most customers away from the flimsy little carriers and onto more sustainable, and brown, re-usable bags.

I take issue with this for two reasons. Firstly, for a supermarket to say they have a good environmental record from the number of plastic bags saved, is a bit like a mass-murderer claiming rehabilitation by pointing out that he only severely injures people now, and has stopped actual killing. Plastic bags are thin, mostly totally pathetically weak, highly compressible, and mostly now bio-degradable items that I imagine sensibly contribute about as much to landful as used knitting needles and maybe dice. Think how little difference it makes whether or not there's a bag in amongst all the waste that gets hurled into the crushing jaws of the rubbish lorry. They're largely insignificant.

What IS significant is the inordinate amount of food packing thrust improperly onto the consumer when they buy some Jammie Dodgers or Lemon Slices. Trays, in bags, in boxes, in bigger boxes... It's too much, it's ugly, and it means you have to physically beat your way into some items using a crowbar. THAT is a real problem, and something worth boasting about if you sort it out.

My second huge issue is that, for all the hype about reusable thick chunky plastic bags or cloth bags, they make pretty crap bin-liners. Or temporary food storage units. Or ANYTHING other than a carrying device.

The humble plastic carrier is SO MUCH MORE than just a shopping receptacle. It's perfect for stuffing in little litter bins as liners, which can then be thrown away as a nice, whole, transportable unit. They're also great for keeping food in outside the back door when your fridge packs in. You simply don't want to be doing this kind of thing with a bag that costs actual money to replace. You don't prop doors open with Fabergé eggs....................... which is a ridiculously over-the-top comparison but I don't care. Not at this hour.

In conclusion class, we've learned today that a lot of people are very very stupid, and that plastic bags are amazing and you should feel no shame in using them when you go to Sainsburys next.

Finally, if anyone finds my wallet I will be their eternal friend and buy them a drink.

-Neop.