Voy Por Ustedes

I happened across a news article today from a decade or so ago detailing the US Governments intervention in the Balkans and their attempts to stem the tide of ethnic cleansing and genocide. In order to do this and without any sense of irony whatsoever, the US Army sent in Apache helicopters. Yes'm, Apache. Helicopters named after the tribe of native Americans lead by Geronimo who were obliterated over the course of a few decades by the US army.

You couldn't make it up.

Tonight I shall be showing Lutons poker sharks how the game is really played. The swanky new G-Casino will witness the 18th best Amateur poker player in the UK in full stride. And if I don't come back with my pockets filled with other peoples money I will have serious words with the universe.

The car on the left is a Mclaren F1. It's the fastest car in the galaxy with something in the region of a 240mph top speed. Faster than flies off shit off a shovel. It costs £600,000 and comes with a guarantee that it will open any womans legs in 3.2 seconds, coincidently the same time it takes to reach 60mph.

The bloke on the right is Steve Mclaren. A prat from York. With not intelligence enough to pick his nose let alone pick a football team capable of winning a major tournament. Astoundingly he is costing the FA and indirectly, the mug punting football fan four times the price of the car.

Now I'm not really a car enthusiast and could never justify spending £600,000 on one, even if it gave me instant access to some of the softest, pinkest, most expensively scented fanny in the world, but £2,400,000 A YEAR! for the services of a man who really should be working in a carpet warehouse is taking the piss.

That much money is too much for any football manager, especially an international manager where their predominant role is to eat rolls and put cones out at training and talk to the media about how high confidence is and how the team spirit has never been better. If you must pay someone that much for a part-time job, at least get someone in who knows what they're doing yes? And someone who has won a thing or two yes? No!

Steve McLaren actually knows nothing about football. He has a stubborn refusal to accept he is bald, even though you'd think it a blessing in disguise considering he is ginger too. He is no more inspiring than constipation and if I gave a shit about England he'd have me wishing Graham Taylor was still in charge.

This is what happens when xenophobia gets in the way of common sense and logic. All those England fans and journalists who are slating Steve McLaren now; tough shit. You wanted an Englishman, whether he was shit or not and that's what you've got.

As Ian Wright ludicrously declared, "I'd rather win nothing and have an Englishman in charge, than win the World cup with a foreigner", *booming Genie voice* Your wish is my command.

I think, now I've had time to collect my thoughts, we ought to discuss Easter. It's coming up in a couple of weeks and I think this year we ought to be straight about what it is we're actually celebrating/having days off work for.

Obviously I don't work, so I'm off everyday, but public holidays are an inconvenience to me. There's too many people about, and I think I've made it quite clear how they can ruin ones day. Also, there's nothing on TV except the epic religious nonsense starring Kirk Douglas in leather and Worlds Strongest Man contests.

So anyhoo. Are we saying this is a Christian celebration or a Pagan celebration? Easter is always celebrated on the Sunday immediately following the first full moon after the spring equinox. It can fall anywhere between March 22 and April 25. OK, fair enough, so that points to a Pagan celebration.

But, didn't St George do away with the Pagans? Is he or is he not our Patron Saint? He was last time I looked. And isn't the whole George slaying the dragon thing not just an allegorical methaphor representing the triumph of Christian nonsense over Pagan nonsense?

Well is it or isn't it? If we're gonna have a patron saint who represents the doing away of Pagan cashizzle, well then let's have Easter on the same damn day every year. The day Jesus was supposedly resurrected.

But, BUT, ...if we're gonna call it a Christian celebration and actually accept in the 21st fucking century that a man can be tortured, nailed to a wooden cross and skewered with a sword, die and then be resurrected, I mean if we're gonna actually believe that is happened, then let's stop selling massive bloody chocolate eggs that are meant for kids, that end up being eaten by greedy housewives and let's stop the sale of gormless looking fluffy rabbits.

Also, employers; I know you like to moan when people phone in sick and are very suspicious of anyone who claims to have come down with a cold, but if you're not gonna kick up a stink about losing two whole days of trade because of this religious tripe, then I don't think you can justifiably complain about people getting colds.

If you can accept that a man died, was buried in a cave and then came back to life, and then happily give people two days off to celebrate it 2000 years later, then I hardly feel you have very solid ground to stand on when you become suspicious at someones crocky voice when they phone in sick.

Also, I'd like to at least have some James Bond films back on the TV over this period. If I'm to tolerate having the entire population of my town wandering the streets for four days then I need something to keep me occupied in my own home while I wait out the storm. A weekend I can cope with, but four days, NO! Whoever first dreamed up the idea of public holidays didn't stop to think just how long four days can be. Especially if you have to share it with people. The boredom is so crushingly soul destroying, it's actually more isolating than being by oneself I always say.

But, you deserve it. All those people who have to spend this time with their extended family eating dry turkey and watching the Ten Commandments, it's your own fault for never objecting to this ridiculous "holiday", until people; the sane atheist normal intelligent people in our society actually rise up and make concrete steps to dismiss religion from public life, then the Ten Commandments and the Worlds Strongest Man is all you deserve.

I've said my piece. I'll leave it up to you.

I saw this sofa on Ebay recently. I liked it. Italian leather it said. Oooh I said to myself. They're the best at lounging about and doing nothing, I'll have one for myself. And for something which is supposed to cost £1000 I felt I was getting a good deal at £470.

Too good a deal as it turns out as the selling company it seems, are a bunch of crooks and made off with my hard earned tax money and left me with nothing but an empty living room and a quickly emptying bank account.

I think my flowers must not have been delivered to the universe yet. It's a good job I think there's more to life than money, but this is exactly the reason I don't interact with the general public anymore. There's no respect these days. No morals, no scruples, no nothing.

Obviously my trying to sell my soul for $1500 may at first glance seem a little exploitative also, but that's different. Anyone who's prepared to believe that someone could transplant their soul into a Smurf and pay handsomely to take ownership of it, shouldn't have money and I'm doing the world a favour be relieving them of it.

Now this is just taking the piss. This is an eight game accumulator I put together yesterday. It's very difficult to predict the outcome of one game let alone eight games, especially when the games involve Mexican and Colombian teams you never heard of. But looky here. I got one game wrong. ONE!!

AND AND AND...That game was going my way until the last two frookin minutes of the match. All I needed was that game to end in a draw and I would have been paid at odds of 209/1. But no, with two minutes left in the game with the score at 1-1 Boyaca Chico go and score and ruin it for me.

I think the universe has yet to forgive me for calling it a c*nt yesterday. I bought it some flowers today though and instructed Interflora to deliver them to the skies. That should do the trick.

I like the idea of there being a law of attraction. When you really want something the universe conspires to help you achieve it. You don't need to know the how, you just need to want it.

ha ha ha ha ha ha ha HA HA HA HA HA HA HA HA HA
uuuuuurghhhhh HA HA HA HA HA HA HA HA HA HA HA HA HA HA HA HA HA HA
HA HA HA HA HA HA HA HA HA HA HA HA HA HA HA HA HA HA
woooooooh HA HA HA HA HA HA HA HA HA HA HA HA HA HA HA HA HA HA
HAHAHAHAHAHA ...etc

I had some beef jerky today. Now, to most people that sentence is the very essence of the double-entendre. And quite right too. It's magical. It's very difficult to tell someone you had some beef jerky without them thinking you've been indecent. It's so difficult to separate the product from the masturbation euphemism one has to assume this is a gift from Kinki the God of Smut.

Or perhaps the two meanings are not quite so independent from each other? Obviously solo indecency referred to as jerking is self explanatory, but from my research I gather that the word jerky is derived from "Charqui" meaning dried meat, which seems a little tenuous to me. Is it be possible the original manufacturers of beef jerky for the masses call it jerky because of their fairly warped sense of humour? I hope so.

I love the idea that when this product first hit the market in the USofA, the perverse maker or makers of the product would hang around in stores sniggering away as old women, so pure and Bibley they wouldn't give their fire a poke, would wonder in and ask the guy behind the counter for a load of his beef jerky.

Wherever you are today fellas, I salute you.

Ireland beat Pakistan at cricket, which is as unlikely as Jamaica beating Canada at Ice Hockey; the next day the coach of Pakistan who was rumoured to have been writing a book outing match fixing cartels, is found dead in his bathroom and the Jamaican police needed an investigation before they declared his death suspicious!!

You have got to be shitting me. Columbo's wife could have told you that. It would have been suspicious had someone not been found dead. You don't need Hawkeye and the Snickometer to work out what has happened here. Not that I'm accusing Pakistan of cheating. I mean, they wouldn't would they? Pakistans players would never throw a match against possibly the weakest team in cricketing history in order to make a few quid would they? OK so they're embroiled in some sort of cheating controversy on an annual basis, but this is cricket and anyway, it says in the Koran that you won't be allowed into paradise if you steal.

What is harder to work out here, is what the f*ck is happening to the world? This is cricket for f*cks sake. THE gentlemans game! adopt Tom Hanks character in A League of Their Own - There's no murder in cricket. THERE'S NO MURDER IN CRICKET. If the Columbians want to gun down their own players for scoring own goals in vital World Cup games, I can accept that. We expect that, but this is cricket. Cricket is village greens. Cricket is lemonade and straw hats. Cricket is sportsmanship and may the best team win.

Cricket is this:

Come on Mafia types, jolly well leave off will you.

Why do they only sign TV shows in the wee small hours of the night? Perhaps they do it during the daytime too, but I'm never up in time to find out, but it appears to me that deaf people are only able to benefit from the signing facility if they're prepared to stay up until 2am to watch the signed repeat of their favourite shows.

Surely with technology as it is we can have this facility available 24 hours for the nations poor deafers. Can we not just have them press the blue button or something and have a wee little signing dude pop up? Is that to much to ask? Is it? Blair, are you listening or are you deaf too? Let me sign it for you.

I nearly lost my life today. I was in the process of suffocating as I had put this bag over my face and sucked in. The warning, as you can see, says it ought to be kept away from babies and children, but mentions nothing about grown men, so I figured I would be fine to do what I wanted with it.

Fortunately just as I was about to sh*t myself and my face had turned purple my Mum turned up at my place with some dinner for me and some Monster Munch and ripped the thing off my head and brought me round with a few slaps and by squirting bleech in my eyes. She then went around my place with a biro adjusting all warning labels to include advice for adults.

Close call folks, close call. Still, my brush with death has made me appreciate life and I have vowed to live every day as it if it were my last. I have also vowed to express the deep affection I have for the people in my life via rear goosings for the ladies and firm handshakes and back pattings for the chaps.

Why so much fuss over a teeny weeny under-estimation in the Olympic budget? An increase from £2billion to £9billion in a little under 18 months and probably something closer to £10billion when it’s all over is surely nothing to get the tax payers knickers in a twist over.

Granted, if the Government were a business they’d be subject to fraud charges by now and in all other walks of life a ‘miscalculation’ of this magnitude would be considered inexcusable and in many cases unlawful, but this is different isn’t it? I’m not entirely sure why, but I’m assuming it must be or someone would have been sacked or resigned by now wouldn’t they? Wouldn’t they??

We really should have expected this anyway. When you want some building work done at home it always costs more than your original budget doesn’t it? Granted, on those occasions you’re not asking the rest of the street to stump up the extra cash, but we still should never have expected this project to run to budget.

Some people might question whether £10billion to stage a summer Olympics represents value for money. Some have argued that if we had £10billion to spend on sports, then perhaps it could be invested more wisely in laying foundations for the future. To nurture talent and systematically prepare our young talent for future competition in the same way as the Australians and the Americans do and then once we have this infrastructure in place and have athletes capable of competing for medals, we can then bid for the games and have a chance of seeing their success on home soil, but...

The games are a unique event and the opportunity to host them doesn’t come around every day. We had to take this opportunity regardless of whether we have any chance of collecting any medals. Where else can you watch small Lithuanians lifting ridiculously heavy weights and wrestling each other? Where else can one drink in the spectacle of table tennis, gymnastics and fencing all beneath one roof?


Consider the blue riband event. The one hundred metres final is a magical experience. Watching a selection of Americans sprinting for 9 seconds, five years from now IN LONDON is worth the investment in itself surely. And it’ll be great seeing our chaps try their best and reach the quarterfinals too.

Now I accept there is somewhat of a contradiction in the enthusiasm some people show for the Olympics. Women for example are bored to tears with World Cup hype when that tournament comes around, despite football being the world game and the World Cup being the biggest prize in professional sport, but are quite happy to stay up until 3am to watch a fat lady from Burnley win an archery bronze medal, but again, we must look at the bigger picture.

If one ignores this disproportionate enthusiasm for minority sports, the drug scandals and the Prima-Donna attitude of athletes and if we put aside how completely useless Great Britain is at all events except the ones reserved for the over privileged, and consider instead what the Olympic games represents, it really does look to be a worthy investment.

What do the Olympic games represent? W-w-w-what do they represent you say? Well, they stand for…they stand for…they stand for a lot of things ok? Now just stop being so bally unpatriotic and get behind the troops, I mean the athletes and let’s have a little less of the lip. My grandparents didn’t fight in WWII so we could hand the Olympic games to Madrid you know.

I found some poo on my front lawn today. Not two feet away I also found this little dude. I questioned him thoroughly, and he responded with wagging and an audacious attempt to give me a lick, which I took as a clear sign of guilt.

However, there was also innocence in the eyes, there are a lot of dogs around these parts and although the lab boys (no pun intended) have confirmed it as Labrador poo, I still couldn't be sure, so I apologised and gave him some of my biscuit instead, but left him in no doubt that a severe reprimanding was waiting for him should I catch him pooing on my grass in the future.

I like dogs far more than people though. I think the last thing I would do if a person had shat on my lawn and fallen asleep next to it, would be to give him some of my biscuit, so don't get any funny ideas people.

Building flat packed furniture and shitting blood. Those are a couple of things I don't want my afternoons taken up with. Unfortunately today, needs must and although my bowels are fine, I did have a bookcase to knock up...and by bookcase to knock up, I'm talking literally.

I don't mean I was obligated to get the frumpy looking twenty-something who works at my local library, up the duff. Also, I know I frown upon bookcases, but I'm not using it as a bookcase, so it's ok.

Once it arrived my mind turned to the brothers Grimm and that magical tale of a couple of short arsed, pointy eared pikies who according to the story, were quite happy to work for free to prevent a shoemaker and his wife from starving to death. I know it's a fairytale, but even that should have an element of reality about it. You show me a pikey who'll work for free and i'll show you a pikey with something up both sleeves.

Anyway, I digress. I was quite sleepy and open to new and interesting ideas, so I decided to see if there were any of these pikies lurking in the nooks and crannies of my house. I gave an exaggerated yawn and said in my best pikey accent that Oi was gonna sleep now and oi wouldn't be waken up for a good four and foive hours so I wouldn't if the truth be told, oi'd probably not here or feel a hoss having a shit for himself on my face oi'm so tired. This gave any lurking DIY pikies confidence to come out and build my bookcase for me without any chance of me waking up.

I slept soundly apart from a nightmare about a couple of foot high pointy eared and pointy toothed gypo's who had sewn me to my bed and were threatening to chisel out my intestines if I didn't pay them £2000 for the spare gravel they'd dumped on my front lawn. So, sometime around 1-ish I ventured into the living room expectantly. What I saw there almost made my knees buckle and my eyes pop out.

As sure as eggs is eggs and no word of lie, there was my bookcase! Still in it's box. Those tight arsed little spud faced chancers had built the thing and then taken it back down again and put it right back in it's box, all just to spite me because I assume, I had forgotten to leave them a saucer of milk and some cheese.

So anyway, I got my Dad to build it for me instead. So the moral of the story kids, is if you want something doing, don't ask a miniature tax dodging thief, also, if you give a little love, it all comes back to you.

The End.

If you were unfortunate enough to engage me in conversation anytime between late October and Christmas Day last year, you'll have just about managed to smooth out my phlegm from your hair by now which would have roared it's way towards you from the back of my throat as I screamed my way through a rambling diatribe about how pointless the festive season was and how much of waste of money it is and how people are sheep who can't think for themselves otherwise they wouldn't jeopardise their financial and physical well-being on what is nothing but a bogus obligation. An obligation to spend, spend, spend with nothing to show for it afterwards.

It was only today when Detroit City started wheezing it's way up the Cheltenham hill, the same hill Amaretto Rose an hour and half previously, had negotiated with all the strength and grit of a Dutch hairdresser, that I realised what a hypocrite I had been.

The Cheltenham festival for me and thousands of others, is just another Christmas. It's an opportunity to lose money once a year I might have otherwise invested more wisely elsewhere and I have done it blindly, voluntarily and more often than not been left with nothing but a sense of anger, frustration and wallet filled only with nothing.

A 5/1 shot at Cheltenham is not the same as a 5/1 shot at Southwell or Lingfield. You win and lose the same, but the chances of winning are far better in the less glamorous meetings. But, I do it, cause it's Cheltenham innit. You have to. Sounds familiar.

No. NO! You don't have to. Naughty spending. DOWN! It's just gambling. You don't get more back just cause it's a Champion Hurdle, 5/1 is 5/1 even if I'm betting that Prince Harry's Dad is that James Hewitt fella. No room for sentiment. No room for Cheltenham, that's what I say. Thank god I'm saved. I've seen the light.

So anyway, I apologise. If I insulted you, or spat at you, I'm sorry. There's still no excuse for over spending at Christmas, but clearly I am no better. We should be ashamed of ourselves. We've let our families down, we've let our bank accounts down and most of all, we've let ourselves down.

I don't care how good your prices are, there's no need for a shop to be so big that you can't see the last few aisles because of the curvature of the Earth. From a disabled persons point of view it is madness. It doesn't matter where you put the car parking spaces, they're always going to be at least half a mile from something in the shop.

The real danger with a shop that literally sells everything, is that it will bring everyone together. If the United States has taught us anything, it's what levels of carnage and disaster can be borne from bringing everyone together in one place, but the United States at least, has buffer zones to keep wildly diverse people apart.

Hundreds and hundreds of miles of farm states keep the folks of Texas apart from harming the educated inhabitants of the New England states for example. In ASDA there are no such buffers.

Some of the people I encountered today I should never have to be subjected to in person. I saw someone buying approximately 200 pot noodles for christs sake. All I wanted was a shoe rack and I've come away psychologically damaged.

What ever happened to the little man, that's what I always say. Money isn't everything. I'd be quite happy to pay 12p more for a can of pop if it meant my sanity and love of humanity remained in tact after a quick shop.

I didn't get a shoe rack incidentally, I decided instead to sell my shoes.

So with four days to go until the 2007 festival, let us draw inspiration from Act 3 Scene 1 from Henry V; once more unto the breach dear friends;