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.