Voy Por Ustedes

I bought myself a chicken premier today from McDonalds. Not quite as tasty as the fajita things they were offering recently, but nice enough. I had to wait a moment for it though so to pass the time I read the flyer in my little polythene bag they gave me, which I think I was supposed to use as a rubbish bag even though the food comes in a bag too. Anyway, I digress. It was a recruitment leaflet. “McDonalds needs people like you,” it said in big yellow letters. I looked around, but I was the only person in the car park.

Surely they didn’t mean me?? Didn’t they know who I was? First of all, I’m not Eastern European, secondly, I’m not prepared to work for £4 an hour, thirdly, I’m not actually prepared to work for any amount and finally, I’m not a physical monstrosity borne of an incomprehensibly disgusting sexual collision between a farmers daughter and a taxi driver. It must have been a wrong leaflet. Somewhere in West Oxfordshire a simple common chap is driving home with a Big Mac and fries and a leaflet recruiting the finest minds in the country for an indefinite period of teaching girl guides palates for £250 an hour.


Wundervolle Luftguitarre

The 2007 Air Guitar Championship’s have been won by German student, Oscar Wettenberg. His superb performance of Back in Black by AC/DC was an airtastic piece of Hanoverian beauty, but then the 19 year old took air-guitarring to another level by actually smashing up his air guitar on speakers and throwing it into the crowd who went wild and threw air punches at each other and air beer into the..erm, air.

Oscar then stomped off the stage arm raised giving the sign of the devil finger gesture to collect his first prize of an imaginary cheque for $5,000 and congratulations from a throng of imaginary friends.

Otto Van Bismarck, Kaiser Wilhelm and Adolf Hitler may be turning in their graves that German victories should be reduced to this, but I found it equally as magnificent as Bismarck’s empire building, Wilhelm’s lunacy and Hitler’s rallies at Nuremberg and all three of their moustaches put together.


Clothes Flowchart

BERTRAM, TEXAS -- Following a huge upsurge in horse thefts in West Bertram, Texas, Police efforts to stop so-called joy-riders have trebled, a senior officer has said. Local residents have criticised the police for their inability to suppress the growing tide of horse crime and spoke of feeling terrorised by gangs.

“I done got my shooting irons locked ‘n loaded ‘case them there gangs come within spittin’ distance a-my horse, you can’t rely on the poe-lease now see,” said local resident Bobby Ray Thorpewallop, 38. "There's more burnt out horses in this town than flies around shiiit."

However, Police Chief Dwayne G. W. Townley said police remained determined to deal with the problem. "Well boy, you can just be as sure as hell that those folks fixing to steal what ain’t rightfully belonging to no one but someone else is gonna get what’s comin to ‘em," he told a reporter from the Bartram Gazette.

“I got’s five of my best deputies on the case and we will bring home the bacon. We need help from the towns folks though, we ain’t making no more progress than a rattle snakes piss in a bucket of pig shit if they don’t start taking preeee-cautions, you understand what I’m saying boy?”

The pooooe-leesee, erm..I mean the police have said there has been a 28% reduction in horse crime in Bertram over the last three years. On Saturday, it emerged that gangs of horse thieves in the area have made a video of stolen horses being raced around the streets of the town and in the car park of Monty’s Bitches in Britches strip bar.

“I got my horse a stolen only last Toosday,” said local mechanic John T. Coltroone III, 34. “I done found him burnt out 'n smokin' in the south field oh Doc Anderson's ranch just dis mornin’ and I ain’t seen a sorrier sight than that more than an angels broken wing.”

Chief Townley has sympathised with local residents frustrations and repeated his determination to end the current wave of joyriding. “Son, I can promise you three things in this life: One, there ain’t no place but hell for a queer; two, you ain't nothing but a fool if play cards with a man with the same first name as a city and three, we’ll have these there joyriding som’bitches in chains faster than a whore with a Catholic priest, I can promise you that.”

Now then,

I'm not quite sure what to make of this. Does this man have an incredibly dry sense of humour or does he really have passion for the larger lady? Either way, this is a very catchy song and I found myself singing it earlier today in the Spar when I was purchasing a bacon and sausage sandwich. Coincidentally, there was indeed a big girl behind the counter. I say 'behind it,' she was sort in front of it too, so big was she. The kind of girl who has to put her belt on with a boomerang etc. She wasn't beautiful though. Kind of repulsive actually. And not much of a coincidence either really considering the state of most women over 30 these days.

Each to their own though. Making love to a larger lady is a lot like owning a mini. It's something everyone should do at least once in their life. And if you're gonna do it, do it properly. Pick someone whose silhouette looks like gang of lads coming towards you. Back in the day I could often been found, after a skin-full, trapping off with a creature who most people assumed was the jukebox because of the poor lighting.

They say they're good sport and try harder but I'm not sure that's true; I think it's the extra weight just makes it seem so. And they may have curves in all the right places, but unfortunately, they have an awful lot of curves in the wrong places too. I will say this for 'em though, they certainly know how to knock up a bacon sandwich on a Sunday morning and if you are to wake up next to someone undesirable, it may as well be someone who knows their way around the kitchen, that's what I always say. So in that sense at least, they are beautiful.

So I think it's about time we gave young Natalie Imbruglia a round of applause. As Antipodean fillies go, there's no one I'd rather take over the jumps than Miss Imbruglia. Granted, Kylie Minogue is not someone you'd ignore at a barbecue if the opportunity to chivvy her into the shrubbery arose, but with the greatest respect to Ms Minogue, I always felt there was something a little unadventurous about her.

When I say she's unadventurous, I'm not talking about an aversion to the kind of sexual deviancy you'll only find in the memoirs of a Conservative member of Parliament, I'm talking about sort of entry level perversion we all like to indulge in once in a while after a good dose of the randy settles in.

Rumour round the campfire is, "I should be so lucky" was written by a man who shimmied his way towards Kylie wearing a set of chocolate testicle hand-cuffs. See what I'm saying? What's wrong with that? I know Aussies are sensitive about their nefarious ancestry, but where's her sense of humour?

Natalie on the other hand has the potential for a much wider spectrum of indecency. A Chinese dude from ages ago once said, "blondes are the sun at midday and brunettes the sun at midnight" and in my neck of the woods the most fun is always to be had after dark.

Christ in sandals, this is the fucking President of the United States, it's not a shelf stacker of an Alabaman Piggly Wiggly. Somebody do something!

Gordon Brown insists that there was no possible way anyone could have predicted the deluge of rain that kept hundreds of other people confined to their homes and cut off my access to Tescos when I really needed a sammich and I was almost out of Shake 'n Vac.

Buuuuuuullshit Mr Brown. If science boffins can predict that most of north-western Europe will be under water in 2,000 years because of the effects of global warming, then surely they can predict a bit of flooding in West Oxfordshire; particularly when most of Yorkshire was under water a few weeks ago and Cornwall was washed away a couple of years ago.

Here look, you don't even need to be a science boffin, I'll do it: I predict, because we're the wettest country in the world and in light of recent flooding in many areas of the country, sometime in the near or distant future, extreme flooding will cause chaos somewhere.

I also predict the following:

- A Tornado will cause thousands of pounds worth of destruction somewhere in the UK
- A heat-wave, seasonal or unseasonal, will kill off most of the pensioners in Eastbourne
- Many feet of seasonal or unseasonal snow will cut-off many villages in various parts of the country
- Mild winds will knock some kids ice cream off it's cone in Whitby causing crying.

Right, predictions made Mr Brown. Let's start preparing for these events so the damage caused is minimal. I don't want to hear any of that shit about how no one could have predicted these conditions when they happen, cause I just did and there's a date and time stamp on this blog.

Might the real cause for this flooding be that our Council Planning Departments spend all our money painting waving lines of various colours on the road for no fucking reason whatsoever and on piddly little fucking roundabouts and silly bollocks speed restrictions, so there's no money left to build decent drains and flood defences. And it might help if we stopped building houses in areas that turn into lakes after half an hour of rain. I know common types need housing, but this is not the way.

Also, people; you have a part to play in flood prevention. If you see water creeping down the street towards your doorstop and it's pissing down without sign of stopping; don't wait until the water is in your living room before you start blocking up your doorway. And if there's four feet of water on the high street, don't get in your Fiat Punto and head down it on your way to or from work.

And how about this, if you live in an area prone to flooding, keep some sand-bags in your shed. Don't wait until Dads Army shows up to hand them out, cause that's gonna be a while. Finally, just so we've got all the bases covered; if this is Biblical and God is trying to get rid of us again because of our wickedness, let's all just be a little nicer to each other.

OK, so it’s been a while and I’m afraid it’s about time I knocked out something serious. I say serious, it’s not really serious, because I long since abandoned the idea of taking life seriously, but this will be one or two observations on an issue that has had me and others thrashing around in throws of indecision and woe for quite some time.

Initially I was going to advise anyone not directly effected by this subject to ignore this post and wait for the next one which is bound to be a little more light-hearted. But a recent proposal by the Chief Medical Officer Liam Donaldson has given everyone a vested interest in the subject, so even if you’re not waiting for an organ transplant or don’t know anyone who is, you might still want to read on. Unless of course you’re in a good mood and a light-hearted mood, cause this can read a little depressing.

Let’s start at the very beginning, a very good place to start. This Donaldson character, who is ginger, wants to introduce an opt-out system for organ donation in the UK, which would make every UK citizen an organ donor unless they opt-out. It’s a system other countries have used, including Spain and Sweden. In the former case it has successfully increased the number of organs available, while in Sweden it has been reduced.

Advocates of the system claim that surveys suggest that the vast majority of UK citizens would like to offer up their organs for donation. The actual percentage of the population actually carrying donor cards in this country (20%) does not reflect this claim.

My feeling is, that the answers people give to High Street questionnaires very rarely reflect their true sentiments. People give answers that show them in the best light. At best it’s not the most solid of foundations on which to build an argument for such a contentious issue, at worst it’s plain ridiculous to base a campaign on answers to surveys given by people exiting Argos with some bargain floor lamps under their arm.

I tend to think that the reason people don’t carry donor cards, is quite simply because they don’t want to. The idea of being carved up posthumously is only slightly less undesirable than being carved up alive. It’s really not difficult to register yourself, so I think the fact that people are not signing up, is not down to ignorance of the system, just an aversion to it.

Quite right to. It’s not a coincidence that the only people who campaign for this sort of thing are people who are in desperate need for an organ themselves or have immediate family members on transplant lists. If they didn’t, they’d be like the rest of the country and not care. People will champion the prevention of animal cruelty measures without having pets themselves, because morally we all see this as wrong.

Organ transplantation is a little more subjective and I don't think it's appropriate to preach to people one way or the other. It’s always irritated me that this campaign, (campaign really being a euphemism for harassment), is undertaken by people who previously didn’t give a shit about the subject, but suddenly because of a change in their personal circumstances have decided it is the most crucial of issues.

"Compulsory-donation" is a contradiction in terms. Donation by definition is a gift; a voluntary offering. Once organ donation becomes compulsory it is no longer a gift. The state does not own your body, and in my opinion should not have the authority to make these kinds of demands.

I would actually like to see an end to all organ-donation. I think it is about as wrong an idea as the medical profession has come up with to date. Worse even than the quacks who felt they could alleviate the pressures of a headache by drilling a hole in the patient’s temple.

I chose to decline a lung transplant for a number of reasons: first of all, the idea of having someone else’s lungs in my body appalled me. I used to joke that I was bound to end up with a Tottenham supporters lungs in my chest, but at the time I was only half joking. The idea kept me awake at night. More disturbing though, were the physical and emotional burdens life on the waiting list and life post-transplant places on the individual.

I couldn’t see how it would be possible to life on such a perpetual knife-edge. We all have little diversions and issues in life: flat tyres, lovers tiffs, spilt milk, car insurance, bad hair days etc etc. These little diversions are absolutely necessary for us to live. Without them, all we’d be left with are the enormous philosophical issues about mortality and life and we’d be so weighed down by them that we wouldn’t be able to lift ourselves off the sheets in the morning or even see the point of doing so. We call it complacency but it’s just the small change of life’s currency.

This is how I came to see life on the transplant list. They give you a beeper and it can go off at any time of the day or night and you can’t travel beyond a certain distance from the transplant centre. How are you ever supposed to forget it’s there? How can you live any semblance of a normal life knowing that little beeper can go off anytime? And once it does, life as you know it is over. Or, your life is over.

The operation will either change you profoundly or you’ll not survive it and should you survive, you’re essentially back to living under the same pressures as with the beeper, as the possibility that your body will reject the new organs will always be present. How can you forget about that?

Of course, the beeper may go off and it’ll be a false alarm, so all the millions of thoughts and fears that went through your head will have to be packed away for the next time, that is of course if you’re not so shit scared you decide you don’t want to do it again.

When advocates of organ transplantation call for more awareness and education, they’re talking about awareness of how many poor souls require organs and how little are available. They’re not talking about awareness of what is actually involved in the transplant process and what a gruelling life and journey it can be for the individual and the family and whether it is actually worth the trouble.

I think there’s two ways you can reduce the deficiency of organs available. You can make more organs available by making registration easier, although it already seems pretty simple to me. And you can reduce the number of people on the list in the first place by educating those in need of organs on the processes involved more thoroughly, because I don’t think they do that. I’m talking about the whole naked truth, warts and all. I think people assume that death is not an option and sign up for transplant lists without making themselves fully aware of the implications and burdens they’re placing on themselves by living under those conditions.

I’m not suggesting people might be so shit scared as to rather perish naturally, just that, no matter how thinly you slice something, there is always two sides to a story and there is a fate worse than death. Everyone dies; you can’t prevent death. The one true certainty in life is death and I think people tend to try and ignore this most fundamental fact.

Under these circumstances Kenny Rogers’ Gambler had a point, if you are to die, the best you can hope for is to die in your sleep. Cystic Fibrosis is a pretty undignified illness, so I felt I owed it to myself to at least make my death as dignified as possible.

I decided that the “list” was no way to achieve this. I came to accept that when my lungs are no longer strong enough to sustain me, I should slope off to the blissful nothing from whence I came, naturally. I also felt that, to be fair, the world isn’t actually that nicer place that I should feel like fighting that hard to stay in it. Any place where George W. Bush can be the most powerful man is probably somewhere you don’t want to spend too much time anyway.

I think a more humane system for everyone would be ditch transplanting. It’s a brutal system for all involved. It’s physically appalling, emotionally disturbing and we’d all be better off without it. I’d like to see all further funding of transplantation stopped immediately and diverted towards stem-cell research. It’s only really religious crazies who oppose this field of research and I feel that’s even more reason to support it.

I don’t see transplantation as playing God, mostly because I don’t believe in God, if anything it’s playing at natural selection and I think we’ve proven time and time again, that we’re no good at deciding who should live and die. Are we Germany?

The problem with transplantation is that it’s assumed that once a person dies and their organs are slotted into someone else, that the transaction and consequences end there. Life is a little more complex and chaotic than that. It’s absolutely impossible to contain life in such a simple equation. Have these people not seen Jurassic Park for fuck’s sake?

Once you keep someone else alive longer than their initial allocation of time on this mortal coil, you change history. This person’s actions cause a cazillion reactions and interfere with the course of literally farsands or even miwyans of other peoples lives.

By “saving” one life, you may end up costing several others theirs. Now this is complicated stuff and I think it’s best left to natural selection to decide who lives and who doesn’t.

Stem-cell research on the other hand seems a little more compatible with natural selection. I mean, chopping and changing organs between each other seems to me to be fundamentally wrong, but if we have the power to regenerate ourselves from ourselves, well that must surely be the essence of evolution.

OK, I think that’ll be enough of this serious horse hockey. I’ve had this in my head for a few days now and I had to vomit it out before it did me some harm from within. Like farting really; dirty pants clean bottom.

Back in olden day times, when the Roman Empire was busy empiring, Tiberius rode along the beeches of Capri and, in awe of the beauty of the place, exclaimed, “si quando capillus ager, fas ludo ludus.” No wait, that means, “if there’s hair on the wicket, let’s play cricket.” What he actually said was, “Sol omnibus lucet,” which means, “The Sun shines upon us all.”

The Witney (inc. Carterton) Mob shared the same sentiment as we arrived at the swanky new Isle casino in Coventry, owned by American casino chain The Isle of Capri. As we entered the place, (which to be fair seemed to have a tropical theme rather than that of an Italian Island, but whatever; the Yanks do their best bless them) the reputation of the Mob obviously preceded us as people stopped, stared and pointed. “It’s the Mob,” a waitress shrieked in excitement. “I don’t like his shirt,” whispered a gay waiter. Not sure to whom that comment was aimed. Alan’s was black. I wasn’t wearing one. Paul’s shirt was pink.

The spacious poker room was deserted. My assumption that local players had heard of our intention to play and decided to save their money and stay at home proved a little flattering. We had just arrived an hour early. While we waited, Alan and I had a couple of drinks. Paul lost £80 playing Blackjack. With the registration period finally over and 60 runners chipped and chaired we were off. The danger of Mob cannibalism immediately presented itself as Paul and Alan found themselves on the same table. I was seated between a Brummie maniac on my right and a man to my left, either so tight or clueless I felt he had only come for the free sandwiches.


It would be easier to pick up a matchstick with ones arse cheeks than to understand how I managed to call off two thirds of my chips on the third hand of the tournament with the hand I had been dealt. Not quite as difficult, but still fairly baffling was how I managed to exit the tournament. With pocket Queens and under-the-gun with blinds at 300-600, I raised to 2500. With only a couple thousand left behind, my intention was to show the table I was pot committed and my bet essentially amounted to a little under 6000-ish.

Judging by the man’s play, the individual to my left, as I have mentioned, was either clueless or just there for the buffet. It was the former. After pondering for a couple of minutes he re-raised all-in for 5300. It was then folded round to the table chip daddy who called. Folded round to me and with disgust I throw in the rest of chips and what I felt must also have been the towel. Surely one of these dudes must have Queens beat.

Chip-daddy looked at me and said, “Queens”. I said, “yep.” I assumed he was predicting my hand, but the puzzled look on his face when I confirmed meant he was actually stating his own hand. Sure as eggs is eggs we’d both been dealt queens. Mateyboy to my left then showed his hand and said, “Looks like I need an Ace then.” I assumed he had Ace-King, but to my astonishment he showed Ace-Seven. I wanted to say "you need more than an ace mate, you need counselling," but I held my tongue. I was about to be busted by a ragged old fucker of an ace three days on the trot and words failed me.

Chip-daddy and I were unable to improve barring a miracle straight or flush so we prayed for an Ace-less board and a chop. Door card was an Ace and I left to have a shit for myself soon after, to try and work out what the hell had just happened. Now, I’m not one to complain about bad-beats as you know, but the previous two days I had gotten my money in with a big Ace against a weaker Ace and lost. Tonight, I had pocket Queens against a shitty Ace and with both my outs already in someone else’s hand, had lost again. Collectively this amounts to a pretty decent kick in the bollocks from the Poker Gods to be fair. Woe is me etc. From a personal point of view, this was not a good performance. But the collective performance of the Mob was impressive.

At the break Alan and I discussed our progress, or lack there of, and Paul lost £80 at Blackjack. Rather prophetically the three of us discussed a previous game where it was clearly established that only a fool, only a genuine spasticated retard, would put his whole tournament on the line with an all-in re-raise with pocket nines. The tournament re-started and with shorter blind periods we were down to the final table in a couple of hours and I had another shit for myself.

By about 2am Paul was showing signs on not being able to stay the trip. Whether he had been working too hard recently, or the fifteen pints of Carlsberg had taken its toll on him I’m not sure, but he continually fell asleep. When the action was on Paul, there was no action. That is until Alan raised his big blind with pocket Queens and he decided to re-raise all-in with ….erm…pocket nines! Finally the Mob cannibalism that promised to occur, had occurred.

A flop of 10-6-8 looked rather dangerous, but the turn and river were blanks and Paul was out and then passed-out. As Paul slept and I had a rather nice pasta dish in the restaurant, Alan manoeuvred his way through the remaining players until three-handed, when a deal was done and the tournament was a done deal. By turns lucky, unlucky, impressive and not so impressive, lucid and confused; a mongrel display of pokering by the Mob. Though a thoroughly enjoyable evening and a very impressive Casino. Next stop, Slovenia.

If you're up in time, see if you can get tis one Paul. I'll give you a clue, it's running at Uttoxeter.

5.00pm: The Witney (inc. Carterton) Mob are off to Coventry tonight, in about 20 minutes actually, to take down the £30 freeze-out at the plush new Isle Casino. The plan is to subject the place to a display of naked aggressive not seen since Lady Godiva trotted through the place wearing nothing but a cheeky smile. Now let's get out there and twat 'em!

Back in about 12 hours.

5.00am: Told you. Congratulations to Paul for his final table appearance; when you said you can play this game in your sleep your weren't kidding were you. Even bigger congratulations and a cake to Alan for winning the damn thing. Well, a three way split, but he obviously would have won had it played to a finish. Me? I may be agnostic when it comes to THE God, but when it comes to Poker Gods, I'm a believer. The pasting I am currently being subjected to can only be of intelligent design. I don't know what I did to upset them, but please, if you can hear me, HELP ME SUPERMAN!

Full report to follow.

This song is actually nonsense. I suggest any prospective gamblers give it a wide berth. Basically it's a lesson on survival delivered by a guy who then dies.

OK, I don’t actually mind this first verse. The “gambler” is on a train bound for nowhere. He’s illustrating his thirst for gambling by getting on a train without even knowing its destination. Fair play. Although, if I’m the one narrating this little tale, I’d wanna be asking myself why I’m on a train bound for nowhere also, unless Nowhere is actually the name of a town. Nowhere, Alabama or something. I’m also wondering why these two were too tired to sleep, even though it’s only evening. A true gambler in my book is one capable of a 72-hour stint at the poker table without so much as a yawn. Anyway…

Nosey git. This is where I start to get a bit suspicious. This is a guy who claims to have made a living out gambling, and is so good at it, he can even tell what people’s cards are just by the look in their eyes, yet, evidently, he doesn’t have the funds to buy his own fucking whiskey. Perhaps he does have his own and he just wants to drink mine first. OK, I’ll give him the benefit of the doubt, for now.

Hang-on, what’s going on here? It was evening a minute ago, now it’s night-time and he’s now asking me for a cigarette! He’s had my last drop of whiskey (he said he only wanted a taste) and now he wants my fags too. He’ll be asking if he can give my wife a tupping next. Jeez, not only has he not got the money to buy whiskey, he can’t even afford three bucks for a packet of smokes. I’m starting to dislike the old fucker. Has he even got a ticket for this train? Am I gonna have to fork out for that too when the conductor comes a calling?

Well, that’s just bullshit. You never count your money when you’re sitting at the table?? Course you fucking do. How else are you gonna know where you are in the tournament? You need to constantly count your stack to know how it relates to the size of the blinds. You should also be counting everyone else’s stack. Especially if it’s a cash game, you need to know who can bust you. And anyway, I don’t care about cards, I thought he was gonna give me advice about my life. He could see I was out of aces he said. What a tosser. I need marital advice not unreliable advice on how to play cards.

Aaaaah, he’s talking metaphorically. He DOES know I’ve just cheated on my wife and she’s chucked me out and now I’m off to go and live with me Mum and Dad. But wait; the best I can hope for is to die in my sleep? Surely not; the absolute best-case scenario for anyone is to die in their sleep??? How can that be true? Surely if it’s death we’re talking about, the best you can hope for is to be fucked to death by a gang of crazed fragrant Persian whores. I shouldn’t have let him drink all my whiskey. He’s talking bollocks.

When he'd finished speakin', he turned back towards the window,
Crushed out his cigarette and faded off to sleep.
And somewhere in the darkness the gambler, he broke even.
But in his final words I found an ace that I could keep.

Crushed out MY cigarette and then he died. OK, so let’s recap. This old parasite on a train talking to a total stranger, dies in his sleep and according to him, that’s paradise? Oh and this “ace,” this sage advice is that I should know when to fold ‘em and when to hold ‘em. Literally or metaphorically, I already knew that. Everyone knows that. What I was really after here is a lesson in how to recognise when I should fold ‘em and when I should hold ‘em. What he’s basically told me here, is that you ought to know how to win. Not, here’s how to win, just you should know how to win. Oh well thanks. Now I’m stuck opposite a dead old guy with no cigarettes or whiskey and I don’t even know where I’m going, so I could be here ages. I think I’ve been had.

Having said all that, it’s a pleasant enough song if you ignore the lyrics. Inexplicably, it’s also a song that used to pop into my head in moments of post-coital contentment. While others smoke, eat or fall asleep, I chose to hum along to the Gambler by Kenny Rogers with my foot tapping away beneath the duvet.

Er...who?

It has become abundantly clear to me since I began my research into these things, that the human race has now lost its ability to produce anything that can genuinely be described as beautiful. Modern art for example is the most brutal example of our skewing off on a tangent from natural aesthetics. Contemporary architecture too, while in most cases rather impressive from an engineering point of view, is for the most part, enough to launch ones dinner on a violent reciprocal course from stomach to mouth after much choking and gagging.

By definition, anything natural is beautiful. Our attempts to imitate nature have gradually gotten worse and worse over the last few thousand years, culminating in the kind of architectural horse shit you see rising up in most cities over the previous few decades. The following lists clearly show this gradual decline in good taste.

The original idea here was to produce three lists of seven wonders: Natural wonders and man-made wonders; both ancient and modern. It became clear though that, “modern wonders” was a contradiction in terms, and the only wonder being how Mother Nature has allowed us to survive as a species after watching us systematically rape the shit out of her natural world.

One explanation for such grotesque violations being permitted may come in the form of what most men will understand as the “pinter-scale.” A chap out on the piss will judge women on a scale of pints, which is to say, how many pints of lager would one need to drink before one would find a particular young miss attractive enough to shag.

A ten-pinter for example, would in the cold light of day, have a face like a bag of hammers. A four-pinter on the other hand would be quite attractive. As these beer-goggles kick in around the four-pint mark, anything below a four-pinter would be a genuinely attractive creature and be absolutely shaggable without any alcohol.

A similar system may be effect with Mother Nature. Perhaps she likes a drink and is by now so pissed that she finds the Spaghetti Junction north of Birmingham quite attractive and would quite happily allow St Basil’s Cathedral to hump her three spouts ragged in an alleyway.

Whatever the reason, I’ll think you’ll agree that the following lists clearly illustrate that contemporary engineers and architects, to coin a phrase, have been so preoccupied with whether they could, they haven’t stopped to think about whether they should.

So now then, if you're sitting comfortably, let's begin.






I don’t think you can argue with anything on this list. It’s pretty standard stuff. I’ve generally gone for things that make me feel small and insignificant. I chose the Great Barrier Reef because that irritating Aussie twat Steve Irwin perished there. Oh, and I chose the Andes because those Argentine rugby players crashed their plane there and had to eat each other.



Now these selections are very impressive from an engineering point of view, but aesthetically too, possibly because they’re made from natural materials rather than plastics and synthesised nonsense and therefore tend to blend into their immediate environment, apart from maybe Bran Castle. I chose that because people tend to think Vlad the Impaler, a.ka. Dracula, used to live there. Apparently he didn’t, but he may have spent some time in its dungeon. Also you can buy it. It’s up for sale and who wouldn’t want to live there?

Again, I don’t think you can argue with too many of my choices. I chose the Great Wall of China and the Terracotta Army as most would, for their splendour but also because the reasons for their construction are so absurd they actually add to their magnificence.




The Great Wall of China was designed as some sort of fortification, but it runs along the ridge of a mountain range. Surely, any army capable of climbing a mountain with full armour and weaponry, would not then find the additional 20ft or so of this wall too hard to negotiate. Essentially, what you have here is 4,000 miles of unnecessary walling. It’s like putting an umbrella on top of your house to keep the rain out. Silly Chinky Chonks.

Continuing with the theme of redundant fortifications, a couple of hundred years before the birth of the little baby Jesus, the Terracotta Army were sculpted on the orders of some crazy Emperor dude who thought he could be buried with them and thus when he arrived in the afterlife he could use these soldiers to conquer his new world.

I’ve often felt the Chinese were in fact aliens; dangerous and violent aliens too. I don’t doubt the Terracotta Army were indeed sculpted for the purpose stated in the legend, but I also feel they were built to serve as a tangible reminder to all future generations of Chinky Chonks, that their purpose in life is for war and it is no coincidence that since they were uncovered in 1974, Chinese take-aways have become so pervasive in the western world and it is from these I fear the mother of all uprisings will emerge. Eeek!



So, within this list the decline from absolute beauty to absolute puke is completed. What we have here are seven of the most unforgivable violations of good taste and decency on Earth. These things are the architectural equivalent of an encounter with a freak when you’re out shopping. You know; people with limps and fat boils on their faces or gammy hands and crazy disfigurements. You don’t want to look, but a combination of voyeurism and schadenfreude forces you to.




As stadiums go, White Hart Lane is no different to any other and as an offence to the eyesight, fairly innocuous. However, it becomes one of the most revolting sights on Earth when full to capacity. Any structure attracting 35,000 mongaloid humans on a bi-weekly basis should be condemned and collapsed, preferably with the “people” still in it.

St Basil’s Cathedral was commissioned by Ivan the Terrible and on it’s completion, legend has it, he poked out the eyes of architect, Postnik Yakovlev, so he could not produce a more magnificent structure for someone else. Personally, I feel it would have been almost impossible for him to produce something less pleasing to his sockets than this monstrosity, so Ivan ought to have killed him rather than just blinded him. If there’s ever to be a Disneyland Moscow, good luck finding it amongst this kind of architecture, that’s what I always say.

Now then, I know technically speaking, the International Space Station shouldn’t really qualify for this list, but since man built it I’m counting it. I’m including it because of how pointless and gay it is. Space may very well be the final frontier, but before we try and crash through it in true bull-in-a-china-shop human fashion, should we not breach Earth’s frontiers first?

We know nothing about the oceans. Can we not use our Science boffins to research what the hell is lurking three miles down in the Pacific? That should keep them all occupied for yonks. Who cares about stars and possible planets that are so far away the mathematics become irrelevant. What about the oceans man? I’d much rather live under water than in space. Watching the little fishes swimming by the window would be lovely. Space nonsense is a tragic waste of genius and I blame George Lucas.


The final entry on my list are the Rio De Janeiro Favelas. What in the name of all that is good and holy are we doing allowing people to live like this?? This is the kind of thing that has made me lose my faith in humanity. It’s this sort of complete indifference to poverty and suffering that makes me leave all my lights on at night and pump my car full of the worst kinds of petrol and fart as much as possible to hasten the process of global warming that will finally see the end of us as a species.

We were good people once. The Acropolis represents education, humanity, thinking, respect, beards, flip-flops, walking about in sheets, the good stuff. Somewhere in history though we lost our way and ended up on the M6 section of the Spaghetti Junction. These days all those laudable qualities are in a worse state than the Acropolis. We've been very very naughty, seduced by money and material possessions. Not all of us have been lost however.

There are times I have felt like the child born of those two fathers, but be that as it may, those of us who did make it have an obligation to build again, to teach to others what we know and to try with what's left of our lives to find a goodness and meaning to this life (I stole that bit from Platoon).

I have already began the construction of the Playboy Bunnies Army, which I shall take with me in case my new life is filled with ten-pinters. They will be uncovered in many thousands of years and added to a new list of wonders by whatever species has replaced us and will serve as a reminder to them, that their purpose in life should not be for war, but to experience the kinds of emotions only felt when fully oiled up, playing twister with equally oiled up TV weather girls.

The End.

When I made my hilarious version of the Greenhill Finance advert my aim was to just look as dorky as possible, I didn't actually base it on any of the "employees" that feature in the real commercials. But look at this:

This is a version of the Greenhill Finance advert I had not seen before. I swear on the life of the little baby Jesus.

Now then..I happened to be in the Co-op today. I’m a Tesco’s man now so I’d usually only be in there to ask for directions for how to get away from there etc, but on this occasion I was there because the Post-Office is located at the back, by the stationary and dairy produce.

There was an Australian present. I immediately made sure my money was secure. I knew he was Australian before I even heard his accent. I’ve spent a lot of time in the North-East and I can smell an underwear thief from 200 yards.

There’s some thing very unperturbed about the Aussie accent. I wouldn’t mind one of those accents myself I don’t mind admitting. I know for a fact that in NHS hospitals, when someone is in a seriously grim condition, they send in the Australian Doctors to deliver the bad news.

An Australian Doctor can make certain death seem like a cold. “Oh yeah Mrs Parker, we're we're not playing for sheep stations, looks like you’ve got a pretty serious bit of breast caaaancer, but we’ll just start you on a bit of Chemo this arvo and you’ll be right, skipping about like a bush whazzchucker.”

What’s he’s actually said there and how an English Doctor would deliver the same prognosis, is; “Mrs Parker, you’re fucked. You’re almost certainly going to die soon, but we’re gonna disfigure you for what little life you have left so that the very sight of yourself will make you choke and gag and we’re also going to pound you with radiation until you’re so fucked up that you won’t have the cognisance to care one way of the other and the sensation of flames thrashing your veins will take your mind off the fact that you’ve got no hair and you’ve just shit yourself without realising it.”

If I was Mrs Parker I know how I’d like to be told. Yes, Australians are genetically ordained for a life of underwear thieving or bar work, but if there’s some bad news to be delivered, there’s no better accent to deliver it. My advice if you ever need to inform someone of a death in the family or explain to your wife/girlfriend why you have lip-stick on your testicles, is to get an Australian to do it for you.






















No worries.

I’ve recently been doing some research into the scandalous brainwashing and indoctrination of children into religious beliefs and political ideologies through children’s literature and television programmes.

Obviously C.S. Lewis was a ferocious sexual predator and religious fruitcake judging buy the thinly veiled filth in the Narnia series of books; The Lion, the Witch and the Wardrobe being the most appalling example.

During the wee small hours of this morning I also identified a blatant and overlooked championing of Stalinist Communism by the company Smallfilms, in the shape of the 1970’s classic kids programme; Bagpuss.

Bagpuss was the story of a shaggy old pink cloth cat, (or should I say Pinko!) owned by a little girl called Emily, who set a bunch of mice to work for what appeared to be no financial reward, patching together various items, which were not then be sold on for a profit.

I don’t know how Smallfilms managed to get away with these obvious and outrageous Communist propaganda films. Thirteen episodes were made in all! Thirteen coincidentally being the age at which historians agree Joseph Stalin started to develop into a real bastard.

Let’s look at some of the other characters in this tragicomedy. Professor Yaffle was the academic wood-pecker who clearly represents the Politburo. Gabriel the banjo playing toad and Madeleine who would sing songs while the mice were set to work. The mice dancing to their tune..much the same way peasants danced to the tune of the KGB.

Finally, Bagpuss himself; General Secretary of Emily’s Russia. A pink cat because that’s cute or because pink is the colour associated with communist sympathisers? Pinko was a phrase coined by Time Magazine in 1920s to refer to these commy som’bitches and was never more appropriate than in this case. And a cat because cats are cute or because C.A.T was MI5’s code name for Joseph Stalin? Possibly an acronym, meaning: Communist, Awesome Tash.

If further evidence were needed, let’s look at the “magic words” Emily would use to awaken Bagpuss:


Fairly innocent you may say as far as magic words go. That is of course until you take a quick look through Stalin’s poetry. This effort in particular:


It’s sickening. I think you’ll agree that our children; our BABIES are being systematically brainwashed IN OUR OWN FRONT ROOMS!! And you paid for it too people. Your television license is paying communists to destroy your own children from within. This stuff was all on the BBC (Britains Broadcasting Communism).

It’s got to stop, especially with that commy Jock in number 10 now. It’s time to fight fire with fire. The solution can be found in the form of another Joseph: Joseph McCarthy. Fair do's, he was by all accounts a mad man, an alcoholic and possibly a whoopsie, but boy did he know how to root out a red. If we don't act now it'll only be a matter of time before our children are writing poetry, singing songs and mending peoples broken crap for no financial reward. And no decent capitalist parents wants that now do they. Remember kids, every time you do something for nothing, you move Great Britain closer to Moscow; that's what I always say.

I'm obviously still on my betting hiatus so have no interest at all in Newmarket this week and the July Cup in particular, but if I was still a betting man I might be persuaded to have a few shilling on Bentley Biscuit; currently available at 10.5 on the exchanges. I was on Betfair just now by accident. I clicked on the wrong button when I was looking for porn.

"Gai tells me that he's absolutely flying. He was over the Ascot race within two or three days and in terms of the ground, the softer the better with him. "We're very confident we'll turn the tables. We think that the six furlongs at Newmarket will suit him far better than the five furlongs at Ascot. He'll have no trouble with the track or the distance."

So anyway, I personally feel there is some value in that price for such an obviously outstanding horsey with much trading possibilities. Oh, ignore those green and red numbers beneath the horsey's names. Those were there when I logged on to Betfair. Someone must have left them there.

My arse I say. Apparently, since only the great pyramid at Giza remains of the original seven wonders of the ancient world, it's time we had a new compilation of magnificent feats of engineering and religious crap. I think this is a good idea. I don't however, think asking the general public to vote on it is equally as good an idea. Can the public not stick to Pop Idol and Big Brother and leave the cultural stuff to those who don't read Heat magazine?

The new Seven Wonders are: Chichén Itzá, Mexico; Christ the Redeemer, Brazil; The Great Wall, China; Machu Picchu, Peru; Petra, Jordan; The Roman Colloseum, Italy.

This new list is tripe. If you piled up all the horse shit from the Cheltenham Festival and heaped upon that, all the horse shit from the Royal Ascot meeting, you still wouldn't have anything comparable to the amount of horse shit contained in the block of text justifying those selections. Really, the only wonder involved is how those people who selected these things are allowed out without supervision.

So then, I shall be compiling a new list. Three lists actually. A list of seven natural wonders of the world and two lists of man made wonders; one ancient where those involved in building the things had only brute strength and possibly donkeys to help them and one where the use of heavy machinery, electricity and any other example of modern technology were available.

Thus; I won't have something like that piss poor giant statue of Christ, (which was built in the 1930's) on the same list as something which was built 5000 years ago, probably by a bunch of blokes in leather thongs lugging two tonne slabs of granite up a mountain. Anyone could have knocked up that statue. Once you have access to machinery and electricity anyone can knock up a great big statue of a fucking hippy. I could do it in my garden if I wanted to.

In fact, I won't be having any religious nonsense because, well...cause it's shite isn't it and it's the 21st century and I think it's fair to say by now, we have enough real world scientific evidence to prove that Jesus was just a hippy and not someone who could perform miracles and certainly not someone whose dad was an all omnipotent, omniscient sky fairy who lives in the clouds and can read all our minds and control everything and make 7-2 offsuit beat Aces and so on.

I have given myself seven days to compile my lists, seems like an appropriate amount of time, so check back on Saturday if you want to see real wonderment. I won't give anything away, but Blackpool Towers' people have been on the blower and they make a good case.

I have imposed on myself a betting prohibition. A self-imposed hiatus to safeguard my sanity rather than financial well-being. However, a loophole was discovered in the small hours of a few days ago and has subsequently given me an interest in the Coral-Eclipse today at Sandown.

Note-to-self: Down to the last two, with 2.5/1 chip lead, and dealt quacks off-suit, there's really no need to call an all-in bet from a tight rock type player who has tended to fold pre-flop rather than get involved even at heads-up stage. It may very well have been 2am and you may very well have wanted to go home and have a cup of tea and some pie, but one still requires a certain degree of patience if the first prize is to be taken down.













Queen with a Jack; A welcome sight in the form of a gay RAC man, but not so good in Texas Hold 'em.

Hands up (no pun intended) if you know who Margaret Hill is?? Come on now, someone must know, no conferring. OK..we'll come back to that. Here's an easier one, who knows who Madeleine McCann is? Yes indeedy-do, Madeleine McCann was the wee three-year old girl who was apparently abducted from her holiday apartment when she was left on her own by her parents who wanted to go out on the piss despite the availability of a babysitting and creche service. Her parents; both Doctors, white, Scottish, affluent were able to command two million hours of TV news coverage and insist the whole world drop what they were doing and go out and search for their child who was missing because of their own mind numbing irresponsibility.

Now then, Margaret Hill is another three-year-old British girl, also abducted, but this time not because her parents were out drinking Sambuca from the bottle, but because a Nigerian gang armed with AK-47's and pointed sticks removed her. Now, if the McCann "abduction," which was a consequence of uber-shit parenting, can command such huge media coverage, why hasn't this case? A case which, it seems to me, is so much more horrific!

I'll give you a clue. A controversial, somewhat cynical clue, but a clue nonetheless:

This is her mother:

Might it be that no one gives a hoot about this particular kidnapping, because Margaret Hill is half Nigerian and it happened in Nigeria, where that sort of thing happens all the time and where the people aren't really people are they, they're more sort of animal types and so it's not as bad. Where as angelic Madeleine was nabbed from a Portuguese Butlins, where nice folk, (like Doctors) go on holiday and so it's more nasty innit.