NY

The time of happiness and goodwill has gone on long enough, and needs a decent refreshing dose of cynicism to crush everyone's spirits. Not that I plan on complaining about Christmas, with the possible exception of everyone's drug-like addiction to a TV spot involving a gaudy LGV containing thousands of litres of tooth rotting soft drink, which is tiresome mainly for the hypocrisy of the large number of teary-eyed fans who then spout onto social networking sites about how people are "forgetting the true meaning of Christmas" (which is of course, consumerism and mass-marketing).

That paragraph aside, I generally quite like Christmas. There are plenty of minor niggles shared by (probably) a large number of people and voiced in an amusing manner by Michael Mcintyre in some stand up or other: just as he performs about every social peculiarity.

Thanks to a delay in my timetable resulting from the fact I have a life, I should now also note that I don't mind New Year either, especially when it includes embarrassing quantities of German explosives and a despicably cutting look at the previous 365 days by Charlie Brooker (a man I'm convinced deserves to be a world leader more than Nelson Mandela ever did).

So instead of insulting our arbitrary temporal celebrations, here's a new years resolution aimed at most of the Facebook generation: stop taking pictures of your face next to another face.

HEY- REMEMBER THAT TIME WHEN THREE OF US HAD FACES?

Yes that's right- in our digitally saturated culture the average clueless peasant has long had at least a flimsy grasp on how to operate a camera, and with ever increasing storage densities on things like SD cards we're now finally at the stage where pointless mug shots of grinning idiots on their social network profiles now vastly outnumber their own brain cells. Clearly their nights out are so uneventful and joyless their only wish is to remember how they used to look once-upon-a-time before age kicked in and robbed them of what modicum of attractiveness and worth they used to have.

If someone wants to explain to me exactly the attraction in cataloguing the fact that you still have stuff on the front of your head each and every time you engage in social interaction, please write your answer on a postcard, addressed to my blog, and post it with £50 in cash.

Merry New Year.

-Neop

A week in writing

Well haven't I had the most schizophrenic personality this week? Yes I have. That was rhetorical. You can't answer me directly: I'm typing. What the hell did you think this was- a conversation?

From the dizzying tiger-blood highs of (brace yourselves) teaching successfully, to the alcoholism-inducing lows of boredom, boredom, boredom and losing things, of all the weeks I've experienced in my life, the last seven days have certainly been one of them. But fuck. I'm not here to talk about my life (see various previous blogs) but to, hopefully, mildly entertain you; the remarkably resilient reader; with useless advice and cutting word-bullets. I may cheat a bit, and use some recent occurrences as framing devices, but I promise it won't be the insipid garbage spouted by the likes of this.

First let's share some wisdom. Sharing is good. Ask Gadaffi (n. A generous Libyan dictator currently running the largest High-Velocity Bullet Donation Program in all of Africa). Here goes: Kids are idiots.

Well... some of them. Which is obvious really. Whilst apparently drooling over how cute little Johnny-Toddler is, everyone's really secretly thinking how dumb kids are. How stupid. Look at him... eating his bib, puking on Mum, burbling like a drunk hobo... he must be monumentally thick. From teaching for a week in a secondary school, it seems some young 'uns never grow out of this, and wear their idiocy on their sleeve as a mark of pride.

You wouldn't catch Einstein getting baby food all over his face.

Far be it from me to dictate that there should be some kind of minimum IQ for people. That's ridiculous. But some of these guys just don't care. They're self centred, entitled little gits who think society is a tit to be sucked on until they die of liver failure at age 25. And they're proud of this. It's probably not even their fault, but it's hard to feel sympathy when you see them twatting their classmates with textbooks for shits 'n giggles. Anyway- that's more or less all I have to say on that. There are obvious points for discussion like how there are also quite a few genuinely (surprisingly) intelligent, witty, funny, nice students at the school I just worked at. Also there's the question of why the trouble makers are in their current state (professionally called the 'Who Fucked Up?' question). But this isn't a sociological forum. Go have clever dialogue elsewhere. I'm going to rip into something else.

Actually I've decided I can put a positive spin on an otherwise quite worrying story. Nothing too topical mind: there are exactly four hundred quintillion bloggers out there finger bashing about Lord Charles of Sheen or how nuclear power is clearly dangerous because Europe is in constant danger of Mag 9 earthquakes. So let's go with this story: http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/science-environment-13011073

For the lazy among you, the headline readeth thusly: "New York set to be big loser as sea levels rise". Very briefly, my polarity shifting attitude to this delicious little news slice is because at long last, the land of Hope and Burgers- refuge of the climate sceptic; and user of around 25% of the world's energy and home to less than 4% of the world's population- has got a reason to get down to some greenpeacing. Because if they don't, some New Yorkers will drown. This is the only way they're ever going to get the idea. Apparently knowing that half the Pacific islands will disappear isn't enough- it has to be brought home. It worked in WW2, right?

The next step. Pay attention nature.

Lastly and probably leastly, I have a literally vital* piece to say about time wasting. You know- what you're doing reading this, and what I'm doing writing it? That stuff. Time wasting benefits you in a great many ways. It makes you a stranger person: in my case, a person who knows pi to 50 decimal places, the names of every country in the world, and who has read extensively on the difference between a Fajita, a Burrito, and a Taco† and conclusively decided that hell... Old El Paso dinner kits may not be too authentically Mexican but at least they make some damn sense. On the other hand, I find that being bored is joint bottom of my list of least-favourite-feelings along with: being unable to find things, and being forced to listen to that fucking 'Friday' song. I despise, loathe, detest and hate boredom with an unquenchable passion that would make a psychologist kill themselves and all their children.

This ludicrous overreaction is due mainly to the fact that I listened to some well-intended advice a little to carefully, and now tend to analyse every waking moment to see if I'm wasting time. Do lots of people do this? Do you feel slightly dirty if you're watching TV for more than 12 seconds? Do you feel you have to reserve those less exciting activities like videogaming until you're older than Tutunkahmun and can barely walk or piss anymore? Apparently the thing I've soaked-up most from all the tidbits of info in my younger years is that doing something unproductive is a phenomenal waste of potential and you should immediately be sent to the circle of Hell reserved for the 'sloth'.

Kids, if in between beating the everliving shit out of each other (or in rare cases solving Fermat's Last Theorem) you happen to stumble across this pointless piece of literature, take this away from it:

Live life to the fullest: make every second count: be passionate in all that you do.
Unless you just feel like chilling out. As an idea, new Dr Who starts soon.

Neo "Get the hell off that computer and do something useful" phlegm



*For 'vital' read 'unimportant'
†Have you ever read about this stuff on Wikipedia?
Taco: "a traditional Mexican dish composed of a corn or wheat tortilla folded or rolled around a filling "
Fajita: "any grilledmeat served on a flour or corn tortilla. "
Burrito: "a type of Mexican food. It consists of a wheat flour tortilla wrapped or folded around a filling"
Why don't we just come up with three words for 'sandwich' and export it to North America? 

The Big Epic Advert Hating Rant Part2- The Sequel

I hesitate to call this 'the conclusion': for there are many putrid and hateful advertisements out there which deserve ridicule, and I would hate to leave anybody out. I got a nice amount of suggestions for this one: thanks for everyone's input. If you sent me something saying "I love this advert!" and it ends up below with the piss taken out of it... well... you've only yourself to blame.

The Graham Norton award for Hideously Disturbing Campness
Some of the less easily concerned among you might find this funny. I would ask you to take a good hard look at your life. Here is a company who presumably pays eleventy billion dollars a year to some sweaty marketing executives who decide the best way to advertise their product is with a character less likeable than Adam Sandler's testicles, sexually harassing his fellow male colleagues. Smooth.

The Spaghetti Bolognese Award for Things Nearly Everybody Loves but which I Hate

The YouTube comments for this next pick would have you think you were about to watch something so artistically masterful that Van Gogh would've immediately hurled himself off a building with self-hatred at never being able to accomplish such greatness. The reality, I find, is a pathetically cute advert doing nothing to sell its intended product and introducing a dog who apparently likes watching your daughter through her bedroom window.

Then again, the average YouTube user has the IQ of a potplant.

The Andrew Lloyd-Webber's Face Award for Creepiest Shit

Hey you! Yeh you! You big shiny member of our target demographic! I think I know what you want. You want some mineral water! You know what encourages drinking mineral water?

Utterly deformed, badly animated, babies.

Yup. I'm thirsty now. I warn you, this is one of those things you wish you could un-see.

The worst thing is it goes ON. You think it's finished but OH NO! We hired this 16 year old college kid to do our animation and by god are we going to get our money's worth.

The Piers Morgan Award for Narcissism

Personally, I think perfume companies should give up on adverts. You can't possibly convey a smell through the television anymore than I can convey punching Beyonce in the face through the internet: which is a real shame because that's the overwhelming desire I'm left with after exposing myself to this nauseating visual depiction of the unwashed singer making camera-love to herself. I say we disfigure her.

The Frankie Boyle Award for Political Incorrectness

I personally find Paris Hilton about as attractive and likeable as a face-full of malaria. But it's ok: because we can mock this disfigured person instead.

Dear God in heaven...

The John Prescott's Anus Award for WORST EVER THING IN THE UNIVERSE EVER.

This really does need no introduction. If you haven't heard of this, well.... I envy you. In fact, if you've not heard of this, don't watch the video below. Lead a happy life, safe in the knowledge you never exposed yourself to the vilest, most sickening, hateful pile of breakfast-cereal based garbage in the history of mankind. Never before has an advert drawn such universal hatred and derision. Never before, and hopefully, never again.

Ah! My brain! My braaain!

Skip to 0:23 if you fancy a disturbing close up of the little twat's crotch =/

So there we have it. The end of part 2. If you enjoyed this, please feel free to spew your ideas at me and we can continue the flaming well into the future.

Ta

-Neop

Quick YouTube update. Lucky you!

My favourite git on YouTube has just sent me this heartwarming message. I guess we should all take heed:


"re-post it dont let the flame dieeeeee Youtube is deleting all accounts in December! 
Dear Youtube users, This is a real letter from our Youtube Service Team, Rober and Angela.We are putting this because there is too much fake accounts, and robotsin our Youtube community.In order to get rid of them, we are going to delete every account that did not repost this bulliten, or send this all to all of your friends in a message. 
BE WELL AWARE, that if you do not send this or repost it, your account will be deleted permanately. Sorry for the incovience! By the way we added some new features on Youtube, if you you reposted, and is gratified by us, Do not change the content inside, or else you will also get deleted. 
-Youtube Service Team"

Man- the YouTube service team really ought to learn to use a spell-checker. But still, good job I saw this message from "Rober and Angela": I'd be worried if they thought I was one of the "robotsin the Youtube community". But it's ok: I'll repost it and then it'll be "gratified by us". 

One final piece of video-website humour is a comment I received on a video where I'd deliberately misspelled a word in the title ('parkour' misspelled as 'parcore'), and subsequently explained this in the video description. Nevertheless my faith in literacy levels is clearly too high as I received the following comment:

"can u spell propelly" 

To which I naturally replied:

@joeschmo10155 Yes, it's "properly".

A further commentator on the video deserves credit for retorting with this to someone who clearly doesn't understand the concept of a spoof (which the video is):

"parody - noun. meaning an imitation of the style of a particular writer, artist, or genre with deliberate exaggeration for comic effect.

Now you know a new word! One day you may be able to take a joke.

(PS. I wrote this slowly to help you understand it)"

Kudos to that guy. Any stupid stories send 'em to me on Facebook (if you have me) or on here.

-Neop

Thinking of a title before you've written anything is tricky

If you're of a foreign disposition, and don't happen to live under the regal wing of the UK monarchy, I'll let you in on a secret.

It's snowing in Britain.

If this is a hard concept, I have a diagram below which I prepared over several seconds.

Despite this having happened for the last several years, despite everyone in the country expecting it, and despite having had rather a  long time to prepare for it, the entire infrastructure of the country has done what it does best and totally imploded in a grid-locked mess of complacency and piss-poor planning. To be fair, there are the odd roads dotted around which don't require skidoos to navigate, and some of the trains are even arriving at stations (some within a day of their timetabled slot) but realistically any form of long-distance travel has now become fraught with frustration to the point where the word 'cancelled' loses all meaning. Even isolated as I am in a bubble containing Southampton University and the surrounding 3 miles, the effects are being felt as lectures are cancelled and bored students are prone to spontaneously bursting into snowball fights.

If you're expecting the usual slew of dry derision I'm afraid I'll be disappointing you on this front. Basically this is because since we were foetuses human beings have had a primal urge to go and roll around in snow, throw it at each other, build things, and generally act about half your actual age. And why shouldn't we? As long as we're tolerating not being able to achieve anything productive beyond churning out the occasional blag post, we may as well have the option open to put on 12 layers of clothes and prat around outside until our limbs fall off.

And of course, it's also fine that year-on-year the travel companies, airport operators, and particularly Network Rail remain strangely clueless to the impending cold spell until it comes crashing down on their hollow little heads like an avalanche of..... snow... I guess. New motto suggestion for them: "Because it never happens here!"®

Some things we also learned these last few weeks: in what scientists are calling a "meh" announcement, Prince Will and some other person are to be happily wed. Awww. For most of the country I think this comes as some slightly happy news. For the press, it's apparently more important than the moon exploding or life being found in Cliff Richard's undergarments, because they literally cannot stop talking about it. The Times for example, had a lovingly puke-worthy column by someone called Carol, who complained that she's 'already sick of hearing about it', which was of course followed by six articles in the paper's features section devoted to the happy couple. The Telegraph were similarly eager to lampshade their own relentless pursuit of the engagement, with another derisive column and a cartoon lampooning the press coverage, all nestled deep within 16 full pages, and 3 part-pages of stories about Will and Kate. Either these publications have suddenly found the ability to poke fun at themselves (and Hell will soon be ordering out for some heaters to melt all the ice) or their editors should probably be sent back to Kindergarten and re-taught how to read.

One more mention which I have to make to a beautifully constructed piece of commentary (19 Oct this year) from that 'newspaper' the Daily Mirror: "Others have made a small industry out of wrongly predicting the nuptials- we chose to got our facts right. Their formal engagement will be announced in early 2011". Isn't hindsight wonderful?

Also in the news: North Korea are Murderers, Sarah Palin: Still a Retard, Students in Britain Actually Protest with Good Cause, and Latin-American Twatsalad Finally Leaves X-Factor.

All in all, a good few weeks, despite the bruises and aches caused by mucking around in snow. Once it's all melted I'd like to place an advanced order to have Spring implemented two months early.

Merry Snowmas

-Neopbbbrrrrrrrrrr

Ironically, this took me three attempts to upload too. Thanks for improving my mood Blogger.

Since I seem to get the best praise for the prose I write whilst in a half awake state of consumate hatred for most everything, I figure now's a good time to once again spew social commentary onto my keyboard. If there's one thing worse than an unproductive day where you've achieved nothing except tying some fireworks together and playing a video-game you don't actually enjoy very much, it's having an unproductive day where you've achieved nothing except tying some fireworks together and playing a videogame you don't actually enjoy very much AND have had to deal with a total cock spanner of a window cleaner and a University server crash (presumably because their entire IT department is staffed by howler monkeys).

Fate seems to have a nice sense of humour too- since the ever-stress-relieving past time of squash is denied to me because there are no slots left today. I know there are 25,000 students at this Uni but I didn't realise they apparently all play squash on the same sodding day of the week.

As a result I'm feeling as charming and sociable as Jeffrey Dahmer on a Monday and would quite like to just sit the rest of the day out and wake up tomorrow. That probably sounds pathetic but when the weather outside is bleak and miserable, the news is doleful, you're hungry and don't have enough food in, and every attempt at doing productive activities is met by stubborn refusal from your arch nemesis Your Brain, it all mounts up to a festering deep rooted hatred that not even homicide can satisfy.

If you know what I'm talking about, try a blog. It doesn't make you feel better but at least you can inflict it on other people.

Like playing Justin Bieber really loudly.

-Neopblllleeeeeeeerrrrrrggggg

The Big Huge Epic Advert Hating Rant Part 1

Inspired by being reintroduced to TV after my self-imposed televisual exile at University, I've decided to commemorate the stupidest adverts ever (that I can find) with a nice little blogging. Rather than do a countdown of the worst adverts ever (which was my original intention, but has been done many times) I'm going to pick out a few choice pieces of thick-headedness and give them my own coveted Neophlegm Patented Advert Award 2010®. Without further ado, let's see the winners!



The Duct-Tape and DVD award for Most Forced Movie Tie-In


We're probably used, by now, to the relentless capitalist empires of large firms throwing money at big Movie production companies to leisurely paste their logo all over the resulting film. Audi in I Robot and Iron Man, Sony in Terminator Salvation, iPods in.... everything. But while these at least bear a passing relation to the subject matter of the film, I think the forced-marriage of Twilight and Volvo leaves many, many questions unanswered:

The Microsoft Help Centre award for Useless Information

This category is dedicated to all those adverts which tell you absolutely bugger all about their product, under the pretence of being useful. I was tempted to award this to anything with a figure like "75% of Women prefer [Product]" but instead have to award this to any advert which includes the phrase "Up to 100%". There are plenty of these, but the one I've highlighted here is a particularly retarded Head and Shoulders advert which gives you the useful information that it can make you 'up to 100% flake free'. 

This tells you two useful things: That you may be anything UNDER 100% flake free (for example, 0% flake free, which presumably means your head is one enormous flake... yummy), and that it will never make you MORE than 100% flake free (which I imagine would mean it had an area effect which cleared other people's dandruff?). Anyway, video here if you need reminding how easy it is to baffle large groups of people with figures and crap French soundtracks.

The Mel Gibson Award for Barely Concealed Racism

There are a worrying amount of entrants in this category: of note are Sony's poorly thought out PSP ad, and this more obscure advert courtesy of an air-headed Spanish basketball team.

The runaway (pun intended) winner however, is this wonderfully bad-taste piece that appeared from Intel a few years ago, which is definitely not a concealed veil for white supremacy. Original piece on Gizmodo.

The High School Musical Award for most Cringe Inducing Soundtrack

If you're expecting a certain cereal advert for this section, I'd like you to consider that 'cringing' is not the same as 'contemplating murder'. Be patient.

This category though, I think is jointly won by two different stupid pieces of advertising garbage for two different reasons. The first winner is this pathetic attempt to appear 'cool' by one of those oh-so-trendy sofa companies DFS, who saw fit to pick out a bunch of photogenic but otherwise useless actors using a recruiting piece which probably ran "Wanted- Actors to mime horribly to utterly inappropriate soundtrack for Sofa store ad. Must have no appeal whatsoever, and dance moves that would make Michael Jackson cough up blood".

The second winner is something of a no-brainer, and doesn't really need any introduction, except to say that there probably aren't many people left who don't want to cause some amount of bodily harm to this guy.

Anyway- that does it for part 1. More to come in part 2 later this week. Keep your eyes open!

-Neop

Another one!

We've just had another Jack Wills catalogue delivered. Thanks very much to the previous tenants for the continued entertainment. Mwuhahah!

Hideous outfit? That'll be all your money please.

So I was sitting here, on teh interwebz, minding my own business and considering how my experiment to see if a human can subsist entirely on ice-cream was going, when suddenly! Good god! Holy Blood Pressure Batman! I realised I could be shooting my word-bullets at blogger.com in a far more productive (?) use of wasted time. I also feel I owe some repentance for not having posted since forever, but I am doing this degree thing, and occasionally we get (totally unreasonably) asked to do some actual work, and exams etc etc. I've already written a sternly worded email to some MP or other about how I feel and I'm certain the entire existing academic system will bend to my finally-honed student opinion.

I'm in the extraordinarily fortunate position of having come into possession (at no cost to myself) of a catalogue. I think it's a catalogue anyway, it pitches itself as a "Summer Term Handbook".

Well anyway it has clothes in it, and prices, and is adorned with that brand name associated with every floppy haired public school ponce in Britain. It is, of course, a Jack Wills catalogue.

Or to give it the full title, Jack Wills University Outfitters Fabulously British Summer Term Handbook (I shit you not).

Or to give it its proper title, The Jack Wills Guide on How To Dress Like a Dickhole for Lots of Money.

I think my expectations of such a document were understandably low when I picked it up, but my GOD does it exceed all of them. I can't believe society tolerates people buying this kind of garish, hideous, clashing, overpriced turd instead of throwing them into a hideous lime-green polka dot insane asylum. Some of the skirts in this book look as though a square of fabric had dolly-mixture shat onto it and a few buttons attached. The models are so ridiculously overdressed they might've been shot with a wardrobe cannon, and the jumpers would make the most knit-happy Grandmother fall on her needles in shame. But the worst, the absolute WORST thing is the prices.

I will probably at some point put some pictures up from the catalogue to illustrate the insanely entertaining hobby of filling in the gap where the photographer cut the head off the model in the photo. For the meantime, I'll pick a few prime examples where I swear some joker buggered around with the printing and added some extra zeroes onto the prices.

Because the Jack Wills website was coded by an overkeen programmer who's just discovered Flash, it's sort of hard to put pictures up.... at any rate, imagine if you will a flowery, mid-thigh length dress with a bow on the front (strapless, if you really care). I guess a large number of asian orphans died making it because it's a staggering £300. THREE HUNDRED. You could buy a car for that. Or maybe (if you're of the feminine persuasion) a really fancy ball gown, but this is a bloody silly frock thing. You'd look classier in a tutu.

There's a jumper here, which is the kind of thing your dear, old, senile granny might give you for Christmas and which you'd lovingly bury deep in your wardrobe and hope never to see again. Mr Wills, however, thinks you'd pay £100 of your hard earned money for the privilege of dressing up like a tosser. There are far cheaper ways of destroying your social life and damaging everybody's eyesight. These two items (one, two), for example.

I can't possibly continue this to the end, but it goes on. There are bikinis made from dental floss for £50, socks for over £20, stupid camp-looking shirts that would make Boy George hack up blood for £35, and it's a good job it's clearly divided into men and women's clothes because, like emos, you can't tell by looking at them. There's a target market here which looks like people who hate owning money and don't have any mirrors. If you're one of those weird people who values currency you'd rightly laugh in the face of anyone cretinous enough to think this sort of stuff makes you look anything more than a pastel-shaded douchebag.

I think the people who see genuine attraction in this stuff probably get their well-off noses stuck in the front fifty pages for a good few hours and have lost all mental faculties by the time they begin to order things. This is because the first portion of this catalogue/well-photographed-freakshow is dedicated to basically soft-porn. Sure there's a couple of photos of people just wearing the clothes and looking like run-of-the-mill retards, but there's also a good number dedicated to barely (or not) concealed female toplessness, females cuddling, females in not-enough-clothes frolicking etc etc etc. Playboy probably ask them for ideas. Surely there's a time and a place for that sort of thing? I guess the lonelier guys out there might resort to a clothes catalogue for self gratification if it came to it but the whole affair looks awkward and pointless, like a hippo pole-dancing.

There's a lot more to be said for this frankly hilarious (and troubling) collection of pages which I might share in good time, but for now just remember that if you're ever tempted by this sort of thing there are perfectly decent, and cheap, plastic bags available in all manner of colours for you to poke your limbs and torso through.

And at the end of it, people will still be able to tell what sex you are.

-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.

YouTube follow ups and Fancy Bloody Dress

So

I did promise a while ago that my YouTube political-commentary career would take off at some point. Clearly it's been a bit slow going. My world domination plan has taken up a good portion of my time; but mostly I can't really be bothered.

Anywho, a friend of mine came upon some real gems whilst pointlessly looking through terrible rap videos on our favourite vid-sharing website. This little exchange took place on a video of one of Lethal Bizzle's songs:

laurablabs (2 days ago) 0 Reply
learn how to spell you fucking retard! people dont listen to this because they think they are gangsters dont get me wrong im sure a few fucktards do but dont generalize and get a life!

binstig (2 days ago) 0 Reply
Agreed! Or should I say ... "agreaad!!"

iwatchseries (1 day ago) 0 Reply
thats the whole fucking point you cumbucket
and you generalize saying i have no life because of my opinion?
get a dick in you and stfu bitch

danners2003 (4 days ago) 0 Reply
dunno think its scratchy

iwatchseries (4 days ago) +2 Reply
I LUV DIS CULTER OF BAD SPELLIN AND POINTLESS AGRESIVNES
YEA ITS SYK MN
POW in2 ta moms pussyHOOO

I particularly enjoy that last little addition. Oh by the way, in case swearing offends you, the preceding post contained bad language and should not have been read by young children, pregnant women, sensitive men, or anyone without a sense of humour.

Here's another one. Similar video, similar exchange. Reproduced for you in glorious technicolour:

themini500 (21 hours ago) the white kid is dapp

herecutiegirlkat (21 hours ago) Dont Dis Dappy!

prokhan17 (13 hours ago) if he was in my hood he would get his ass kicked

ElReyRemy (11 hours ago) I piss on your hood,, internet gangster.

Leq001 (4 hours ago) That's a nice one "I piss on your hood" Hahahaha way to represent fighter spirit man

If anyone comes across any particularly satire-worthy examples of human idiocy on YouTube or any other site, please send them to me and I'll stick them up here like mouldy human skulls on parapets: to deter would-be perpetrators.

The second object of my affection this fine miserable sunday after-morning, is something which has bothered me for some time. I feel this may offend a good deal of people I consider friends, so I begin with a warning:

Never take anything I say seriously, ever.

Formalities now resolved, I can begin my tale of hatred.

Yesterday, was Halloween. If you didn't realise this, you either live in a cave in the Scottish Highlands in which case you haven't got a computer, or you were too immersed in World of Warcraft to notice in which case you should seriously consider self immolation (look it up. There are lovely pictures). Halloween, in it's beautiful obscure, modern, capitalist way, requires people to dress up and go to parties and similar social events. Dressing up is now down as one of my least favourite past times in the entire Universe, narrowly out-edging Bear Wrestling, and gargling Jellyfish.

Simply put, we have here a unique scenario where people are actively encouraged to dress as diabolically stupidly as physically possible, then go somewhere with a vast number of people to show everyone how utterly retarded you look. Sometimes, if you're REALLY lucky and go out to a club, these people won't be dressed up; and will therefore have a perfectly normal and worthy moral high ground from which to cast over your saggy plastic accessories with disapproving eyes and quietly muse whether you're supposed to be dressed as Han Solo or a well-presented tramp.

This obviously applies to more than just Halloween. Frequently, in a blistering fit of thick-headedness, people will decide to throw fancy dress parties for no apparent reason- or under the guise of a Birthday. I think in reality, people like this have a malicious agenda to make you go and spend money (which you don't want to spend) on an outfit (which you don't want to wear).

Once you reach your selected venue for self-humiliation, having spent £874 on safety pins, stupid hats, fake guns, wigs, robes, chains, swords, nipple tassels, goggles, bed sheets, fake blood, fangs, headbands, stickers, glitter, face paints, shower gel and a scouring pad (for removing the face paints), masks, and a little note from the doctor that explains that you aren't an escaped mental patient, honest; [deep breath] THEN you get the honour and pleasure of realising that inevitably, someone's done a better job than you.

Think about it: at every fancy dress event, there will be at least one person who stands head and shoulders above the rest in terms of costume skills. This person spent that little bit more to buy a REAL wig, or a proper biker's jacket. This person can walk around, smug in the knowledge that everyone else's efforts look like a joke next to them.

If you go to parties that average, say, 50 people, then even if the relative effort of costume making is evenly split (which it isn't), you only ever stand a one in fifty chance of actually being Johnny Looksbetter. Every other time it'll be someone else on whom the spotlight falls; and every one of these times, no matter how hard you convince yourself that you like your costume and you think it was the best you could do, a tiny festering little feeling in the back of your head will be yelling subconsciously to you "your outfit's crap!", just because one person killed a real wolf to make his mask. Suddenly the three hours you spent looking for fake blood because everywhere in Southampton had sold out seems like a waste of time (not that I'm talking from experience.......).

As I draw to a close, I can hear, far off in the future, the insufferable cries of socialites telling me that I don't understand: that dressing up is just a bit of fun: that maybe if I joined Dress-Up-Society I'd enjoy myself: that I'm denying a part of me that yearns for this kind of silliness.

I put to this moaning bunch of moralistic common-sense haters, that it is YOU who is denying yourselves. The little childish voice in me is quite happy with the odd game of laser tag, or falling out of trees, without having to parade myself around like a mentally-deficient sideshow freak in an outfit that would make Brüno look as dignified as the Queen. You people who truly believe you enjoy this sort of idiocy, should take a good hard look at your lives and identify properly the moment when society ingrained in you the sense of longing for fancy dress.

Then think that all the money you spend on outfits could just as well be spent on more alcohol.

You can thank me later.

-Neop

Ps: Awesome party last night. But while I thought I liked my outfit then, fate has kicked me squarely between the legs by showing me this morning that fake blood doesn't come off. I'm destined to be crying blood forever.

A lesson in stupid

This, gentlemen and ladies, is the Earth.

It's big, it's covered in people and water, and it's about 5 billion years old... ish.

These are some facts which are more or less indisputable. Here's another one:

The earth's crust is made up of plates. These smack together and make earthquakes, volcanoes etc.

Now a geologist or a geophysicist could do a more thorough job of describing geothermal activity but none of them could do it quite so controversially as proponents of the "Expanding Earth Theory".

If you've not heard of this before, don't be surprised. There's a lot of blurb on the wiki page. The biggest modern day supporter of this.... 'theory' is some yank called Neal Adams who, despite being a comic book artist, has decided he's more knowledgeable than every notable physicist, geologist, geographer, and sane-person in the history of everything ever.

The idea is that Earth has been, and is still, expanding outwards due to some... bizarre and inexplicable process of matter creation happening inside its juicy innards. Now... I won't go into the physics here but suffice to say the theory is (what's technically called) "crap". Anyway, this expansion explains everything that plate tectonics already explains fine, but in a more roundabout and convoluted way. Hooray! And clearly, this is all a big conspiracy that all the world's governments are in involved in because.... they make a lot of money from this sort of thing?

I'm sure there are plenty of scientific and psychological reasons why people feel it necessary to hold totally unreasonable, unsupported and plainly idiotic opinions when there's overwhelming evidence to the contrary. This goes out to all you "the moon landing is fake" people; or all you 9/11 conspiracy theorists- WHY do you feel it necessary to hold desperately onto your inadequately supported ideals in the face of people that actually know what they're talking about?

*Sigh*

I've spent too long on conspiracy theorist articles and websites to hold too much anger anymore. I've moved on to despair and pity.

Ikea- or how I'm allergic to Swedish furniture stores.

There was a terrible amount of fuss when Ikea opened in Southampton. Allegedly people slept overnight to get inside first.

Peculiar.

If they were that desperate, they could have gone to the one in Croydon instead.

People's personal strangenesses aside, here are five reasons why I hope to never, ever set foot in the store again.

One

Permit me initially, to set the scene. Upon completing the spiral-staircase-for-cars that is the entrance ramp, you find you need to go to the top of the store to get into it. Unless you go in at the bottom (which you won't- as it's harder to park there). Fine. Ok. Not TOO bad. So you bimble gently up the travelators and marvel at the scale of the box that is Ikea (9 taped together make a Borg cube).

Once you make it inside, you approach the first point of annoyance. The maps. These show a vague scribble of an outline of the floor you are on, and are dominated completely by a big, white, wiggly arrow that shows you where to go.

Through the shop.

It even tells you "shortcuts" if you happen to decide you don't want to mooch past the throw pillows today.

I think this is beyond the remit of a map. Maps are there for us to find out where we are, and where we want to go- not to tell us that walking a certain way makes the shop happy. Isn't this like buying an AA road atlas and finding it was done on MSPaint, and includes a picture of your house, and a single marked route to north Wales? Or maybe buying a fridge whose instructions inform you what food to fill it with?

Two

Having navigated your way to the section of your choice (or the map's choice) you are now faced with a further problem. Labels.

These are, at best confusing. Each of them is laid out in a similar manner: the name of the product is written in small type, and beneath it, in very large, visible letters, is a word like, 'Snørf'

Or 'Plåp'

Or even 'Dave'.

Now, let's be fair, these words clearly mean something. But... what exactly? I'm not stupid (mostly not anyway) and I could not for the life of me work out what they were supposed to be telling us, the bewildered public. Neither could my friend. Neither could my girlfriend. Did I miss some sign?? Or a helpful pamphlet in the art of translating from English into Swedish Furniture? My best guess is that they're somehow part of 'sets' and by matching names you can sort of co-ordinate your kitchen or living room. In that case, it would help if half their products didn't look the same as the other half. Because it really really wouldn't make any difference trying to match things.

Oh also, don't lets gang up and leave a stream of "But it's obvious! It means....." because I don't care- it can't have been that easy to find out, so it's a fail.

Three

This one is quite personal to me. Having worked our way past a collection of 'Fleskes' we finally found ourselves in the kitchen section. Hooray! Rejoice! This is where my sought item must reside.

Basically, I want one of these:

There it is. Nice and simple; sure you've come across one before.

Now, note that I said I WANT one. That's because, they didn't have one.

WHAT? I bought the one that I recently smashed to bits from SAINSBURYS. That's a shop that sells rubbish cheap vodka not crockery- AND YET they managed to sell me one. Here we have IKEA, a store so vast it could hide Johnny Vegas completely; that has an olympic sized kitchenware department; and they didn't have a bloody pyrex dish, with a lid. Oh, don't get me wrong they had dishes, but I needed three things from my simple dish, and they could provide one:

I need it to not blow up upon microwaving.

I need it to have a lid.

I need it to have handles.

I think a recent study showed that over 107% of glass dishes in, and out, of Sweden meet these requirements; so why are they trying to sell me a sodding glass trough with no lid to protect the microwave and no handles to avoid me smashing a second one??

This, probably, sounds petulant. It is after all only a dish. But realistically, you'd be pretty pissed if you turned up at a clothes shop and found they didn't sell trousers, or a stationery shop with no pens, or a car showroom where none of the models had wheels.

Four

A minor niggle, but one that many, many companies are guilty of. Allow me to phrase this as useful advice to any store chain, service provider, or brand of goods:

If I already have your goods, have already paid for your service, or am already in your store, for the love of [enter deity here], STOP ADVERTISING TO ME ALREADY

Five

The car park is large. Not a problem in itself, but now consider that for the entire... what five floors of parking, there are THREE ticket machines, next to each other, and one wasn't working. Now imagine that everyone wants to leave said carpark down the single lane exit ramp, through the single barrier.

If you're struggling, try this:

Fit this:

Through here:

Quick! I'll explain on the way!

OK!

By all means, please, read my last entry, but take note fair interwebber, that there is no longer nothing to talk about. I am of course referring to this!

News Report.

It seems that a certain female monkey, sorry girl, from somewhere called Barry Isle, has lightly toasted herself in a tanning salon. This apparently constitutes news.

Shocking, I'm sure.

She makes some extremely well educated points regarding how stupid she is, including that she was well aware that the salon was for over 16s only (she's 14), but pointed out that:

"Teenagers are going to push the boundaries. They are going to do things they should not do." 

Prolific.

I offer this in return (fully aware that I myself, am a teenager):

"Teenagers are going to push the boundaries. They are going to do things they should not do, and if anything bad happens as a result they bloody well deserve it".

The human race doesn't survive on the principle of "survival of the stupidest, because the cleverer ones look after them". If you're too much of a fool to use a tanning bed, under age, for FAR too long, then you can suffer for it. Who'd have guessed that a bloody sunbed could give you sunburn? I suppose she'll soon find out the hard way that drinking too much alcohol can kill you (before suing the alcohol companies for not physically taking the drink off her).

This situation seems to me to be akin to an asthmatic sneaking past warning signs and barging into an asbestos storage room, then moaning when their lungs start bubbling out their mouth as a pinky-red foam.

Put it another way, wouldn't a similar news report look like this:

Girl Breaks Leg Falling Off Cliff

A girl of 14 was hospitalised today with a severe fracture to her leg, after falling more than 30 ft from a cliff near Lyme Regis.

Annie Spoonacre was out for a walk with her friends when they decided to make their way to the cliff edge. Annie fell from the precipice after she slipped on the muddy grass along the side. "I just sort of, fell. It was very sudden. I was well shocked".

Her mother today commented that cliffs were "an extreme risk".

Annie acknowledged she was "partly responsible":

"I knew I wasn't supposed to go near the edge, but teenagers like to push boundaries. They are going to do things they should not do".

The cliff lies on land owned by Ernest Blitherington who said in an interview:

"It is a shame she ignored the warnings. There were thirty-three signs and a large fence between the path and the cliff edge. We were operating within the law".

Annie's mother is considering pressing charges. She commented on the dangers of cliffs and suggested stricter controls be put in place, such as twenty four hour armed guards and force fields. "I'm very concerned that children could go through the same experience as Annie. I was completely unaware that there are un-guarded cliffs".

It is expected that the matter of cliffs will be discussed in Parliament tomorrow. Some Health and Safety analysts have already suggested cliffs be outlawed completely.

Local ambulance staff said Annie was "lucky" and that in future she shouldn't behave like such a total prat.