You wish it could be Christmas everyday? Fuck off!

I can’t stand this time of year, it’s getting colder outside and it’s the lead up to Christmas which is my most hated holiday of them all, but what I can’t stand most about this time of year is all the fucking Christmas songs on the radio.

I can put up with a lot through the winter months even though I hate the cold and I have a special hatred reserved only for religious extremists, paedophiles and Christmas, but I can’t put up with Christmas songs. Every year as soon as November looks like it’s about to finish every radio station in the country seems to go into an unspoken competition to be the first to start playing Christmas songs, it gets earlier and earlier each year, the way it’s going I won’t be surprised if you’re hearing ZZ Top’s “Wish it could be Christmas everyday” just after August 2015! There’s a reason why I’ve stopped paying any attention to all media outlets apart from the internet and that’s because with the internet I can choose what to listen to and what to avoid, not the case with all the others, so as soon as the clocks go back an hour we’re all subjected to a barrage of shite music that predominantly came from the 60’s or Simon Cowells cancerous growth on the music industry.

Christmas seems to be the only time that it seems a good idea to resurrect songs from decades past dust them off and play them again as if nothing has changed! How is that a good idea? Those songs were never any good anyway! The only reason they made number one is because they mentioned Christmas and lo and behold! Were released at Christmas time! So what makes a shit song, released at a time of flares and giant hair, played relentlessly every year regardless of the change in music tastes and styles any better? It doesn’t! It just makes it more shit! How many people out there, if you were in a club and Noddy Holder came on, would immediately jump on the dance floor with the sudden urge to throw shapes like a mad cunt without any sense of irony? Don’t worry, I’ll wait.

Then there’s the scourge of the music industry, Simon Cowell, and his audibly cancerous contributions to the Christmas chart. Every year the X-factor serves to take talented people and make them strip away their dignity and jump through hoops on live television in order for them to get to sign probably the most unfair and horribly one sided music contract ever, so they can be thrown into the limelight to ferry someone else’s song to the Christmas number one slot before being lost to obscurity as SimCo chews them up and spits them out to fend for themselves, its fucking sad.  However even though the X-Factor is blatantly a farce and only out to make Simon Cowell enough money to buy a small tropical island made entirely of platinum and have a small boy from the Philippines wipe his arse with £50 notes every time he shits out another song for whichever poor sod got selected to win that years X-Factor, it works and has managed to give him the monopoly on the Christmas number one slot every year since the show began. Except once…and we all know when that was, and it was glorious.

Now I will admit that not all Christmas songs are bad, there have been 2 in my opinion that have been any good. The first one, The Pogues little number being arguably one of the better songs to be released over the Christmas period, probably because it’s a decent song, written and performed by a band that actually knew what they were doing, and it also isn’t full of cheery festive bile! If you actually listen to the lyrics it turns out the couple aren’t actually having a great Christmas after all and I like that! The second, and best one in my opinion, is that lovely Christmassy number one from 2009, “Killing in the Name Of” by Rage Against the Machine! Now I don’t just like this because I’m a huge fan of metal and RATM is a staple band in the diet of heavy stuff, i love this because of what it represents. A couple of DJ’s from a Metal radio station got sick of Mr Cowells dictatorship over the music charts, around the time when all the leaves turn brown and die and all the birds fuck off to tropical climes for 6 months and decided to do something about it and that something was to place something so utterly un-Christmassy in the charts, and it worked, which helped restore some of my fleeting faith in humanity. So not only was the Xmas number one an awesome song, it was also a huge “Fuck off!” to the ugly behemoth that is the X-Factor, now then fuckers! I best see “Smells Like Teen Spirit” as Xmas number one 2011 or I’ll set fire to some puppies….and if it does make number one I’ll set fire to some Twilight fans!

There’s a party in my head and everyone is painful

I hate drinking…well that’s not entirely true, I love drinking! there’s nothing better than going out on the town with your friends and consuming so much alcohol it defies medical science how you are still alive, all the while passive-aggressively staring out of your tight knit group of friends at all the girls wearing less material than is used to make a singular tube sock, knowing full well you’ll never talk to them anyway as you’re spending the majority of your time loudly talking to your friends about stuff like how much you either love or hate the latest game release, or the last time you were so drunk you mistook your cat for a urinal and various other topics which women find so attractive, but anyway I digress. The thing I hate about drinking is the hangovers. I used to think that the cause for the hangovers was sleep, that as soon as your head touched the pillow and your eyes closed into sleep, a large man paid for by the alcohol companies creeps into your house and spends the remainder of the night punching you in the head and pouring cat litter in your mouth. I know that’s not true any more as my capacity to drink has got to the point where im waking up in the morning fresh and fine and ready to start the day in a good mood, only to be knocked clean on my arse, at about lunchtime, by a headache that feels as though I’ve just had a brain haemorrhage. now this leaves me in a bit of a predicament as not only has my large man punching you while you sleep theory been disproven but I’ve just realised that I’ve spent the majority of the morning still drunk! I even drove my car during that time! God knows what would have happened if id been pulled over by the oh so vigilant police! “Ah, you seem to have failed the breathalyser test” “Really? but I haven’t had a drink since last night!” “How much did you drink last night?” “Hmmmm, well about 4 bottles of Rum, but I’m not entirely sure as I cant remember past the 14 Jägerbombs” “Step out of the car please Sir”.

Another thing I cant stand with hangovers is how you get a different type of hangover depending on what alcohol you drink! As if your brain has a filing system “Hmm, I’ll take a shot of debilitating headache, followed by a pint of face down in the toilet”. For example, I can drink a bottle of Eristoff Black and be pretty much ok…slight headache but otherwise fine, however if I have a glass of Jack Daniels…different story! Now I love Jack but Jack doesn’t like me! If I have two glasses of it I can pretty much write off the following day to spending the morning in bed sounding like a Cow in labor and the afternoon shuffling around my house looking and sounding like a zombie. How does that work? Why is it one rule for one drink and one rule for another? My brain should man the fuck up and take its hangovers like a boss, or suffer its punishment regardless of the alcohol consumed!

And its not just me who suffers when I have a hangover, as you’ve probably guessed, I like to have a good old moan, and no one suffers more when I’m hungover than the people around me. Yes I know its self inflicted, yes I know I’m not getting any sympathy from you, guess what, I don’t want any but I’m still going to moan about it when my head feels like I’ve been kicked in the teeth. Right, I’m off to get drunk and do it all again!

Call it what it is Television

Now I’m in the process of sorting my house out ready to pack up and move, and I cant readily do this in complete silence as my best friend moved out a few months ago and has left me devoid of something entertaining to listen to, so I decided for the first time in a long time to switch on the dusty telly box and put on the music channels…oh good lord what have I done!

Now I am aware that ragging on the dire state of Music Television in a blog is like flogging a dead horse with another dead horse but (cue cliché) this is my blog and I’ll write what I want!

Being a metal-head I decided to settle for something heavy to sooth and relax me as I bounce around the house like a roided up Millwall supporter trying to head-butt everything, but this being Virgin Media there was nothing except Kerrang TV and Kerrang TV has not had anything resembling Metal on it since James Hetfield had hair. but I will refrain from harping on about the problems with Kerrang TV for now, save it for another blog and instead move onto the biggest culprit of false advertising, MTV.

MTV stands for Music Television, a fact that has been missed by the producers for many a long year, leading me to believe that the entire production team of MTV are a bunch of illiterate fuckwits that somehow think that the word “Music” means “shows about washed up celebrities living their boring miserable lives, mocked up situations between air-headed, self absorbed tits living off daddy’s trust fund and pregnant teenagers” and not “things that bands and recording artists make for a living”.

I mean back when Beavis and Butthead were on MTV we still got all the toilet humour and comedy violence that we get from Jackass and all the other shows of that kind, albeit in a cartoon format, but at least they showcased music during the show and it was usually heavy as shit! Now you’ll be able to find more music being showcased in the depths of space! I’m sure they have satellites floating round out there playing recordings of Earth music, which is more than MTV has.

It wouldnt be so bad if the content of the shows wasnt absolute utter dogshit! A prime example being “My Super Sweet Sixteen”. Never have I been more angry than when I first saw this show, if you have not seen it then I envy you greatly, imagine if you will a reality show that follows an American teenage girl (or incredibly camp, more than likely gay boy) whos parents are multi-trillionaires and insist on bowing to the every whim of their pre-pubescent demon offspring as if every little tantrum could trigger global apocalypse. Then it documents the preparations of the Satan-child’s birthday party which usually involves outlandish requests such as inviting the entire teenage population of the State they happen to live in, the inexplicable booking of an A-list celebrity and the hiring of a venue the size of Wembley Stadium all so they can show to their “friends” and peers how much richer their parents are thus alienating themselves from said “friends” and peers (I use quotation marks on friends because I find it rather difficult to believe these obnoxious little shits have any idea what its like to have true friends and only have people who follow them blindly either because they have equally rich parents or their house is so much cooler). Of course all these requests are followed to the letter by the bitch parents, usually without question, who for some reason would rather throw obscene amounts of money at A-list celebrities to show up at their brats party for 10 minutes, feign an interest in them and give them a false sense of importance that every spoilt little fuck seems to have, rather than say no and put up with a few hours of screaming. It wouldnt be a reality show without a little bit of drama and in this instance the drama is provided in 3 ways: 1) Someone who was not invited, possibly due to not being pretty or rich enough, somehow manages to get into the party followed by many minutes of low angled footage of a flustered teenager running through the party looking for the culprit like a scene out of a spy movie. 2) The inexplicable anger, tantrums and shouts of “my party is ruined!” when the over-privileged twat doesn’t get the specific model of brand new Mercedes she/he asked for, or the certain A-Lister doesn’t show up due to scheduling issues or more than likely they couldn’t give a flying ballsack about them! or 3) a combination of the two. The baffling thing about all of this is that with all these garish displays of “look at me! I can sponge off my parents!” one would think that all of the normal human beings who come into contact with these parasites would look upon them in disgust and hopefully violence but no! At the end of it all of the other kids are praising them like some kind of God! As if the fact that they were invited to the party somehow gave meaning to their otherwise mundane, middle-class suburban existence.

Rest assured im not going to go into more scathing detail about any of the other shows on MTV because that would be too painful even for me, But for a good idea of what to expect take the devil spawn from My Super Sweet Sixteen, fast forward them about 10 years but keep their maturity levels at age 12 and put them in various “reality” situations that are blatantly scripted and painfully acted and watch the ratings pile up. others include “16 and pregnant” a show that does what it says on the tin, girl of 16 gets pregnant, hilarity ensues…well hilarity for me anyway, I always find it funny watching an 8 month pregnant girl shouting at her idiot boyfriend about being more responsible because he’s about to be a father! He’s still in high school! He doesn’t even know what he’s going to do for a living yet and if he was more responsible he wouldn’t be in this mess! This show only serves to give idiot teenagers a fleeting moment at celebrity by getting up the duff and for that reason, in my eyes, its a massive advert for Pro-Choice…and mass sterilization.

Then finally you have the celebrity reality shows that follow around obscure “celebrities” that have been so far removed from the public conciousness that they could be declared legally dead, and Jackass and all its clones showing you all the crazy stunts, idiocy and poo that inevitably comes with giving idiots a camera, some alcohol and a fuck-ton of money.

So in summary then if during the past 10 years anyone has noticed anything resembling music on MTV then I’ll retract most of the above opinions but until then MTV and all its producers can fuck off and die in a large fire.

10 things I hate about me

When I started thinking about writing my musings on what generally annoys me about the world we live in and the people who reside within it, I could foresee with perfect clarity comments such as “you’re not perfect yourself! Blah-de-blah!” coming up time and time again as if I needed reminding of this fact day in day out! So I figured I’d beat you all to it and cunningly justify all further posts by showing you that nothing is safe from my ramblings! Not even me!

Well the first thing I hate about myself I find is that I’m too nice. It’s not escaped my notice and my best friend who is generally not a nice person at all feels the need to remind me of it all the damn time! I’m not saying I need to start being malicious and evil from now on to the point where when I die Satan himself will roll out a red carpet for me and give me my own circle of Hell to reside over, because after 8 years in the Army god knows I’ve done an awful lot of morally questionable and a many downright horrible things, usually under the influence of alcohol when I lived under a bar that served pints for €1! I’m saying I need to be a bit tougher with people, sure if you’re a friend and you need a hand I’m happy to help but please don’t take the piss out of my inability to say no to people who ask nicely! I’d be shit if I was captured by the enemy “tell us where your squad is!” “No!” “Please?” “Oh go on then they’re over there!”

I’m also lazy! I procrastinate so much it makes me sick! You know how long I’ve had this planned? 2 weeks! It’s taken me two days to write this so far! Damn you internet! Why are you so fucking interesting?!  The one time I actually got any meaningful work done on time was when I was on my teaching course in college recently and I was living in what could be honestly mistaken as a prison cell with no contact with the outside world! Honestly I’m like a magpie “gotta get work done, gotta get work do-OOOH SHINY!!!!” and then you don’t hear from me for days!

So after another 3 hours of shiny internet distractions I come on to my third point, I’m stubborn! I’m highlighting all these problems and digging into the deepest recesses of my personality to find what I don’t like about myself for the amusement of you all and I’m not even going to consider doing anything about it! It may tie into the previously mentioned laziness but in the words of Garth from Wayne’s World “we fear change!” I think the reason for this is because I’m quite content with my life the way it is so far I feel that if I change even the slightest detail of how I live it it’s all going to come crashing down around my feet like a 20ft jenga tower, and any suggestion from anyone to change the way I do anything is usually met with a resounding “NEVAAAR!” that sounds like it was shouted by a bloke on a horse riding into a battle holding a giant flag, which probably explains why I hoard so much shit that I managed to fill a 3 bedroom house with all of it after moving out of a single room, but also means I may need to seek professional help.

Now I know I advertised 10 things I hate about me but that was an attempt at a clever play on a movie title because I’m a geek and I can’t go 10 minutes without making any kind of reference to a movie or game, it also highlights my final and biggest bugbear, I can’t count. Now I consider myself to be quite the intellectual, my discussions can include words longer than 3 syllables and most of my favoured topics of discussion usually leave most of my colleagues with a glazed look in their eyes, but being unable to count past 20 without help is fucking irritating! Now this isn’t anything to do with the laziness that i mentioned earlier or the fact that i pretty much rodded off school to join the Army, I have Dyscalculia which is the numerical form of Dyslexia which apparently every fucker in the world suffers from but i think is just a poor excuse used by people too stupid to use spell-check. I’m sure you can understand how infuriating it can be for someone who enjoys discussions on quantum theory and reading Plato and Aristotle that can’t perform simple addition and subtraction, i honestly think if i gave an orang-utan an abacus it’d be able to work out 56+32 before me! It’s a good job I’m becoming an English teacher!

So that was my little introductory rant about myself. I feel i can righteously direct my anger at everything else in the world that deserves it now that I’ve directed at my own flaws first! Stay tuned for next week’s rant, it’ll be funnier than this one….promise!