See and Touch Their Bathing Suit Area

Posted on November 29, 2011 by Matt Taylor

So, hello. Where were we? I’ve not done this for a while for plenty of reasons, most of which involve:

a) not being arsed

and

b) the modern world moving on so fast that blogging took a matter of months to stop being even marginally relevant and instead look hopelessly old fashioned and quaint, like David Niven movies or the notion of shame.

However, these are important times and someone needs to be here to document them. Especially as it turns out that both the Mayans and Roland Emmerich were right, humanity- as I think we all suspect but don’t want to say out loud- will crumble to a messy end sometime in 2012. It’s important that a person grasps the mantle of banging on about these end-days at tedious length for whatever civilisation springs up in our place in the distant future, so that’s what I might as well do.

Hello future civilisation if you’re reading. I hope you’re well.

You’re all probably wondering what happened to us all, reading this in the distant future. Well, obviously, I don’t know yet- we’re still here for now, though everyone’s running out of money, pissed off with everything and taking to the streets. We’ll probably just all end up shouting each other to death in a mass orgy of impotent rage. That’ll do it. Or an asteroid, obviously.

Anyway, since the terminal descent of life as we know it into some unknown cataclysm isn’t due until some time in the new year- though hopefully not until after the Olympics as I’ve got tickets- we can turn to More Pressing Affairs.

Today’s More Pressing Affair is ‘textalgia’- a term recently coined by me when I should have been doing something more productive like, for example, absolutely anything else that anyone could care to name. Basically, experiencing ‘textalgia’ is the process of going through old text messages to relive interesting, exciting or funny moments in your recent life. Obviously, that’s if you’re the sort of person whose lives’ interesting, exciting or funny moments involve a beep and a pithy communication from a fellow human which, considering I’m the wrong side of 30 and with little to look forward to beyond Type 2 diabetes, is pretty much me.

Most modern technology is, of course, nothing special. The internet’s great and all that; but really mankind peaked with fire, the wheel, television and garlic paste in a tube. Mobile phones are mostly awful, being as they are merely a way for a man called Alan to interupt me at any time of the night or day and talk about mortgages, but they do hold also allow for the sending, receiving and storing of texts- which is useful for the sort of emotional retard like me who struggles with even the most basic face-to-face dialogue and never has a thought or emotion which needs expressing in more than 160 characters.

Texts are great. This is because phone calls are the preserve of those with bad news to impart or some drudgery to ask. Think about it, when was the last time gave you a ring to say something lovely, like “I know where to find wine” or “please can I do something lovely to your lower bits?”. No, it’s always people asking for money, telling you a family pet/member has died/is ill/is a cow; or its someone called Alan talking about mortgages. If your job involves a phone, you’ll also be aware that it’s simply a portal for whinging rather than the magic device through which someone rings to offer a pay rise or, at the very least, a sandwich.

Now, go on and check your recent texts. I’ll bet that it’s mostly nice stuff in there. Some of it mundane, sure, but possibly signed off with a nice ‘X’ which is more of a kiss than you’ll get on the phone (though that’s probably a good thing- kisses sound weird down the phone, like someone farting in a diving bell). There’ll probably be some really sweet messages in your inbox if you look right now, and definitely something funny. Possibly both if someone managed to recently send you a knock knock joke which also alluded to the fact that they like how you’ve done your hair today (a long shot admittedly but I’m working on it).

The reason texts are nice is because they serve the emotionally stunted section of contemporary society which, as luck would have it, isn’t just me but all of you as well. You want proof? You know that person you really like? With the eyes and the nose and that smile? Them? Desperate to let them know how you feel aren’t you? It wouldn’t be hard to do, would it, face-to-face? You see them enough. You suspect they might fancy you too don’t you? So have you spoken to them? Or given them a call? To tell them?

Of course you bloody well haven’t.

But your inbox is full of slightly flirty text messages pinging back and forth, isn’t it? Because you’re emotionally stunted, so is the other person, and texts at least allow you to think you’re both performing some intricate waltz of attraction when, in fact, you’re just trying to shoehorn into an SMS about shopping in Sainsburys how much you’d like to see and touch their bathing suit area.

I was in that situation once. It went on forever. Until I finally told the girl how I felt. By text. And she responded. By text. We’ve been together nearly 8 years. It could have been longer but, we were just texting back and forth for ages. Like idiots.

Nearly 8 years. Blimey. I should probably marry her. I won’t though.

I couldn’t make the vows fit into a text message.

A Little Understanding

Posted on June 6, 2010 by Matt Taylor

It recently occurred to me that I really don’t understand anything. If I had to round up the amount of stuff in the world as a whole that I understand, to the nearest decimal point, it’s probably about 0.001%. And that’s being generous.

Take the foilbles of human behaviour for a kick off. For example, why do the sorts of people who get blacked out windows in their cars to protect their identities from prying eyes (footballers, club promoters, gangsters, bell-ends) also get personalised number plates? Do they actually stand in car dealerships having conversations like:

“Can I get the windows blacked out please- don’t want everyone to know it’s me driving by”
“And the license plate, sir?”
“Can I get R10 FERD please?”

If so, I really don’t understand that. And that’s just the little stuff. What about gravity? I know what it does; but why it does it or how? Nope, not a clue. Don’t understand.

The problem is that when you start thinking like this then, much like spilled shampoo, you can’t ever put your thoughts back in the bottle. Your perception is forever changed- much like losing your virginity or the first time you wake up next to a submachine gun with a blank hole in your memory where last night should be.

Start realising you don’t understand anything and life is no longer something you can confidently skip through with cocky brio. Rather it suddenly becomes a parade of events, concepts and creatures that you can barely hope to even grasp onto the minutest comprehension of. There are plenty of people in the world who look at the average prole with arch superiority and think this level of flailing ignorance is how they exist on a daily basis. This is true, of course, but it’s also true that even the smuggest, most knowing of folk are almost exactly the same in what they really know about anything. The only difference is that a dim person is never likely to realise that they actually know bugger all and will therefore remain in blissful unintellectual simplicity. They don’t read stuff like this. You are doing. They win. Damn.

Let’s move onto the economy. Now that he’s safely installed in 11 Downing Street, alongside the panel saying “In Case of Emergency, Break Vince Cable”, George Osbourne- the bloke in the Tory party that even David Cameron refers to as ‘the posh one’- has to now stop the Government spending any money on anything. This is because the government has a huge national debt to deal with. As does pretty much every other nation on Earth. Some, like Greece, have had to borrow money off people so they can afford to pay them back some other money. This is generally the sort of behaviour associated with men who spend their entire lives in the bookies smelling of sweat and old string, rather than whole sovereign countries.

The thing I don’t understand is this- in any situation where money is owed, there’s usually a debtor, who does the owing, and a debtee who does the borrowing. However, it would appear that absolutely everyone on Earth at the moment is the debtee. Everyone owes someone some money. Lots of money. Now, who the hell do they owe it to? Who’s waiting impatiently and sending out mardy final warning letters addressed to ‘The People and Government of Spain, Spain’?

And if we can find out who this money is owed to, can’t we just all ask them to shut up and wait a while longer? Or just ignore them? After all, I’m going to hazard a guess that there’s more of us than there is of them. I’m pretty sure if we all actually knew who all this cash was owed to, that’s what we’d do. But then again we don’t know, do we? We don’t understand- none of us.

Either that, or all the people in the world who run everything don’t understand how basic economics work. And if that’s the case, then never mind vanity plates and gravity, can you even begin to understand how that happened?

No, me neither.

It Takes Two…

Posted on May 13, 2010 by Matt Taylor

So, what’s been happening? I’ve not been on here for a while but, luckily, the world at large has been billowing tonne after tonne of grade-A terror and misery for us all to enjoy as civilisation slides happily into terminal oblivion. First of all, Iceland started spewing most of itself into the air over Europe meaning everyone had to suffer the indignity of an extended Easter holiday abroad. It’s worth bearing in mind that Iceland is still trying to recover from almost going bankrupt last year and so has enough problems without slowly turning itself into an ash cloud. I can only speculate that, much as the monarchy is said to fall should the ravens ever leave the Tower of London, these are the sort of disasters legendarily forewarned to hit Iceland should Bjork go 5 years without making a decent album.

At least they can content themselves by now being world trend-setters in terms of catastrophe. Already BP have joined on to the end of the eruption conga and had one of their oil pipelines burst all over the southern United States. The good news here is that the US government for years has been talking about the country needing to find more oil and now everyone can get some of their own just by popping down to the beach with a bucket.

Over in Greece, meanwhile, Iceland’s mantle of bankrupt nationhood has been taken up in spectaular fashion. Unlike those polite Icelanders thought, they’ve been rioting on the streets, setting fire to banks and asking the whole of Europe to look down the back of the sofa for a spare hundred billion Euros in unmarked bills. Now they’re threatening to drag the rest of the continent down with them which means it’s good for us in Blighty that this country has finally sorted out the tricky conundrum of whose running it.

We’ve ended up, due to the fact that in 2 millenia no-one even thought about writing our constitution down on so much as a fag packet, with a country being run by a diverse combination of a 43 year old posh bloke and a 43 year old posh bloke. For those of you struggling to tell the difference between them, Nick Clegg is the one who’s disarmingly like Richard Madeley. The people of Britain seem to be strangely unsure what to make of this newly founded political double act at the controls of the country which is odd really because we’ve got a long history of embracing famous duos on this island.

Morecambe and Wise, Mainwaring and Wilson, Burke and Hare, Ant and Dec, Lennon and McCartney, Mick and Keef, Sooty and Sweep- we can’t get enough of the unique relationship between two men indulged in a common pursuit- whether it be entertaining (Morecambe and Wise, Ant and Dec), songwriting (Lennon and McCartney, Mick and Keef) or grave robbing (Burke and Hare, Sooty and Sweep). Now we’ve got Cameron and Clegg to enjoy; though the uncertainty about how they’ll pan out in practice may well be due to it not being clear yet which of the men will fill which role in the twosome.

Put simply, the roles in a great British duo are clearly defined and are thus:

- The pretentious, loveable buffoon (Mainwaring, Wise, Jagger, McCartney, Ant or Dec, Sweep)
- The knowing, sarcastic wit (Wilson, Morecambe, Richards, Lennon, Ant or Dec, Sooty)

The obvious answer would appear to be that Cameron is the former and Clegg is the latter though it really isn’t that clear. Maybe this is why there is so much disquiet and worry about their prospects in the country at the moment. Well, this and the potentially incendiary consequences for our still unwritten constitution and the fact that we’re sailing an untried political vessel into an apocalyptic financial storm, but ill-defined roles within the nation-helming two-hander can’t help.

So I’m proposing this- when everything inevitably goes tits up they need to take one of the following leads from a great British double act:

1. Morecambe and Wise- they need to do that old Eric and Ernie skip up to a lectern in Downing Street to the strains of ‘Bring Me Sunshine’. Then Cameron needs to say “What do you think of it so far?” before Clegg yells “RUBBISH!”. Then they skip off into the distance. Everyone laughs and cheers up.

2. Sooty and Sweep- Clegg devlops a really squeaky voice, Cameron says nothing and they spend their time spraying William Hague in the face with a water pistol. Everyone laughs and cheers up.

3. Burke and Hare- They decide to take up grave robbing. We’ll probably be so poor as a country soon we’ll need to burn corpses for heat anyway.

or finally;

4. Lennon and McCartney- They are forced to decide between them who has to get shot dead and who has to marry Heather Mills. And we all thought the coalition negotiations were tough…

Welcome to now

Posted on January 4, 2010 by Matt Taylor

So, that was the noughties. Did you enjoy it?

No, I’m not sure either. When you really think about it, lots and lots of stuff happened since the Millennium but all I can really remember of the previous decade is that everyone got an i-Phone and then Louis Walsh judged them. This is probably not a suitable eulogy for 10 years that, logically speaking, should represent the pinnacle of all human achievement and existence thus far.

Actually, I do genuinely believe that humanity is constantly achieving greater and greater feats of excellence as time goes on but, unlike those who think this is represented by all those clever people and their big pipe in the ground at CERN, I reckon our species has thus far peaked with the Shea Stadium level of Beatles Rock Band played with the Rickenbacker controller.

Anyway, leaving the noughties behind us it’s time to boldly embark on a new year and a new decade (technically, it actually isn’t as pedants like to point out, the new decade starts with 2011 just as the Millennium actually started with 2001. Don’t worry about it though, people who think like this are an evil on par with ethnic cleansing). However before we get down to it this upcoming year and decade need something really quite important.

They need naming.

First of all, are we in 2010 or 2010? I’d probably better do that in words rather than numbers. Are we in two-thousand-and-ten or is it twenty-ten? Personally, I favour twenty-ten, it sounds more futuristic and and while me might not all be whizzing around on hover-boards or watching Jenny Agutter undress while we run away from a chap called Francis and the ritual of Carrousel it’s at least nice to pretend we could be by giving our years more sci-fi sounding monikers.

And it looks like the future might need all the help it can get as, not only has mankind peaked as I’ve already demonstrated, but the teenies (that’s what I’m calling this decade till I can think of something better) have already got underway with the dis-spiriting news that we’ve already started hurtling down the other side of the evolutionary mountain. Because we’ve started getting uglier.

Yes, that’s right- our old friends at BeautifulPeople.com have been at it again, this time turfing over 5,000 people off their dating website for the aesthetically pleasant and socially retarded as they have slipped below the appropriate standard of loveliness. The folks who have managed to get through the stringent selection process and get on the website have been doing a spot of internal policing and have complained about anyone who has posted a photo of themselves that suggests they’ve gained any weight over Christmas.

Now I don’t want to pour scorn on anyone so early in a new decade but isn’t this moving slightly from an endearingly self-absorbed form of sociopathy into full blown nutterdom? I can’t decide if BeautifulPeople.com is now on the path to becoming either a new and terrifying cult or a breeding ground for worldwide network of slightly more attractive versions of the killer from ‘Se7en’.

Judge for yourselves by reading this quote by BeautifulPeople.com’s founder Robert Hintze from possibly the most chilling press release ever unleashed: “we mourn the loss of any member, but the fact remains that our members demand the high standard of beauty be upheld; letting fatties roam the site is a direct threat to our business model”.

Tough call isn’t it? That talk of how they ‘mourn the loss of any member’ is exactly the sort of thing you’d expect to hear some demented cult leader utter to comfort his followers after a few of their number had been at the mass suicide punchbowl a few days before ‘The Ascension’; while the use of the word ‘fatties’ does hint at the sort of simmering anger and resentment that fuelled Kevin Spacey to get Gwyneth Paltrow’s head Fed-Exed to the middle of nowhere.

So- BeautifulPeople.com; sinister cult or club for serial killers? Robert Hintze; the new David Koresh or the new Dennis Nielsen? Whatever it turns out to be- it’s definitely an incredibly successful website and Robert Hintze is clearly a gifted entrepreneur and the sort of man who knows how to be a success and get some publicity in 2010.

Maybe that’s what we could call this new decade then. Not the ‘teenies’ but ‘the we-all-just-realised-that-to-be-successful-in-this-day-an-age-you’ve-got-to-be-a-cross-between-a-manipulative-control-freak-and-a-murderous-psychopath-ies’.

Here’s to the future. Happy New Year to you all.

So Here It Is…

Posted on December 17, 2009 by Matt Taylor

The Germans have a word: weltschmerz. Actually, the Germans have lots and lots of words but anyway, for now we’re just focusing on weltschmerz. It means the feeling of realising that the real world will never live up to to the ideal of it that a person has in their head. There’s also a word in English that means exactly the same thing.

Christmas.

Here’s the image of Xmas that’s sold to us every December: snow, carols, food, presents, friends, family, love, peace, Morecambe and Wise, enconsed by the fire in the snug of a beautiful old pub, Slade at number 1, Christmas Wrapping by the Waitresses, James Bond, Chocolate, Boxing Day football, The Queen.

Here’s the numbing reality: frost, ice, rain, indigestion, scrums in shops, crowded trains, A My Family Christmas Special, drunken works parties stumbling around town centres, The X-Factor, people thinking they’re annoying Simon Cowell by sending Rage Against The Machine to number 1 when he’s actually just getting more publicity, Misteloe and Wine, nuts, Boxing Day defeat, The Queen.

It is, in a word, cack. You’re only hope for any joy is in the giving and recieving of presents (or drinking mulled wine till your tongue falls out). This, however, is invariably a minefield of desperately trying to second guess what various realtives want until you just give up and buy them something from Lush (for females) or a Mock the Week DVD (males). If only everyone was as easy to buy presents for as me (Adidas trainers or single malt scotch whisky- Islay if possible. Thanks).

However, in the Christmas spirit I present to you the follwoing cut-out-and-keep (if you’re monitor’s made of paper) guide to 2009′s ultimate Chrimble gift ideas:

Bulimia Barbie- for the teenage girl in your life who’s fragile and still developing sense of self has been battered to death by a constant stream of air-brushed images featuring unattainable perfection and stick thin celebrities who’s diets probably make their breath smell like it should be rolling down the streets of Bophal. This new Barbie comes with a hearty selection of realistic lovely food to stick down her plastic gullet and her hand already moulded into the ‘two-finger’ shape familiar to seasoned regurgitators. Watch in wonder as Barbie eats every last morsel before spewing litres of authentic warm vomit down the Barbie Toilet TM (sold seperately) and, after every 25 pukes, a tooth falls out due to chronic bile erosion. Includes 2 AA batteries. Only £29.99.

iBreville- ultimate proof that bolting the letter ‘i’ onto the front of any product allows you to clog it up with pointless extras, this next generation sandwich toaster comes equipped with a spirit-level, dipstick, medieval witch dunker, alligator repellant kit, .pdf manual on jousting, hoover bag, DVD burner, rubber duck catapult and 3 different of vibrate settings. All this technology has left it unable to make toasted sandwiches to any greater degree than any other sandwich toaster but the cool, crisp white design is guaranteed to make you not feel any shame in essentially paying £350 for a lump of gizmos that might as well be a neon sign saying “I Am A Shallow Tossrag”.

Suicide Adventure Day- by the third day of Christmas you’re probably happily contemplating a blissful, self-enforced end to your life but still clinging to the meagre hope that things might get a bit better next year. Why not, then, experience all the fun of suicide with none of the consequences with this exciting and informative adventure day?! You’ll get to experience a number of different terminal scenarios with the guarantee that all injuries are none-life-threatening and that you’ll be brought back round to consciousness within 20 minutes ready to try your next method of welcoming oblivion. From the sudden adrenaline thrill of the ‘High-Rise Plunge’ (simulated using a virtual reality machine and a mallet) to the tender and emotional final farewell of the ‘Dignitas Experience’ (simulated using sleeping pills and a room in a Travelodge) this is a day you’ll never forget. Book early to avoid disappointment and to make sure you’ve got something to look forward to before you finally decide to end it all and take a train-carriage full of commuters with you.

Fuckwits- the brand new board game for all the family that allows YOU! to stuff up the planet for everyone else in a variety of EXCITING WAYS!. Dads, why not play as the MERCHANT BANKERS who nearly sent Western civilisation to the wall and who cost you your job last year by forcing us all into a RECESSION that was none of our faults and for which they appear to have got off scot free while you’re flung on the scrap heap 7 years shy of retirement but now with no employment prospects and a woefully underfunded pension! But look out! LITTLE Freddie’s playing as the arbiters of a celebrity obsessed culture that makes him feel less and less worthwhile every day until he finally decides to DEBASE himself before a stern-faced group of producer for Britain’s Got Talent int he hope that he can repeat the exact same ‘Ventriloquism but with his own gaping anus’ routine in FRONT of Simon Cowell, Piers Morgan and millions of viewers at home who’ll make him feel justified only through their sheer naked hatred of him that masks the fact that they all wish they’d though of it fair! But wait! Mum’s GOT a gun! She says she can’t take it anymore! That she can’t live in world like this knowing what we’re capable of and seeing what we ACTUALLY have to put up with! She’s got the special ‘weltschmerz’ card! Hang on! That gun didn’t even come with the game! Where’d she get that! Put it down dear! Put it down! Oh, Dear God… No… NO….!

Merry Christmas everyone. And a Happy New Year.

Christmas.

Here’s the numbing reality: frost, ice, rain, indigestion, scrums in shops, crowded trains, A ‘My Family’ Christmas Special, drunken works parties stumbling around town centres, The X-Factor, people thinking they’re annoying Simon Cowell by sending Rage Against The Machine to number 1 when he’s actually just getting more publicity, Misteltoe and Wine, nuts, Boxing Day defeat, The Queen.

It is, in a word, cack. Your only hope for any joy is in the giving and recieving of presents (or drinking mulled wine till your tongue falls out). This, however, is invariably a minefield of desperately trying to second guess what various realtives want until you just give up and buy them something from Lush (for females) or a Mock the Week DVD (males). If only everyone was as easy to buy presents for as, say, me (size 11 Adidas trainers or single malt scotch whisky- Islay if possible. Thanks).

However, in the Christmas spirit and to help you along, I present to you the following cut-out-and-keep (if your monitor’s made of paper) guide to 2009′s ultimate Chrimble gift ideas:

Bulimia Barbie- for the teenage girl in your life who’s fragile and still-developing sense of self has been battered to death by a constant stream of air-brushed images featuring unattainable perfection and stick thin celebrities who’s diets probably make their breath smell like it should be rolling down the streets of Bophal. This new Barbie comes with a hearty selection of realistic lovely food to stick down her plastic gullet and her hand already moulded into the ‘two-finger’ shape familiar to seasoned regurgitators. Watch in wonder as Barbie eats every last morsel before spewing litres of authentic warm vomit down the Barbie Toilet (TM) (sold seperately) and, after every 25 pukes, a tooth falls out due to chronic bile erosion. Includes 2 AA batteries. Only £29.99.

iBreville- ultimate proof that bolting the letter ‘i’ onto the front of any product allows you to clog it up with pointless extras, this next generation sandwich toaster comes equipped with a spirit-level, dipstick, medieval witch dunker, alligator repellant kit, .pdf manual on jousting, hoover bag, DVD burner, rubber duck catapult and 3 different vibrate settings. All this technology has left it unable to make toasted sandwiches to any greater degree than any other sandwich toaster but the cool, crisp white design is guaranteed to make you not feel any shame in essentially paying £350 for a lump of gizmos that might as well be a neon sign saying “I Am A Shallow Tossrag”.

Suicide Adventure Day- by the third day of Christmas you’re probably happily contemplating a blissful, self-enforced end to your life but still clinging to the meagre hope that things might get a bit better next year. Why not, then, experience all the fun of suicide with none of the consequences with this exciting and informative adventure day?! You’ll get to experience a number of different terminal scenarios with the guarantee that all injuries are none-life-threatening and that you’ll be brought back round to consciousness within 20 minutes ready to try your next method of welcoming oblivion. From the sudden adrenaline thrill of the ‘High-Rise Plunge’ (simulated using a virtual reality machine and a mallet) to the tender and emotional final farewell of the ‘Dignitas Experience’ (simulated using sleeping pills and a room in a Travelodge) this is a day you’ll never forget. Book early to avoid disappointment and to make sure you’ve got something to look forward to before you finally decide to end it all and take a train-carriage full of commuters with you.

Fuckwits- the brand new board game for all the family that allows YOU to stuff up the planet for everyone else in a variety of EXCITING WAYS!. Dads, why not play as the MERCHANT BANKERS who nearly sent Western civilisation to the wall and who cost you your job last year by forcing us all into a RECESSION that was none of our faults and for which they appear to have got off scot free while you’re flung on the scrap heap 7 years shy of retirement but now with no employment prospects and a woefully underfunded pension! But look out! LITTLE Freddie’s playing as the arbiters of a celebrity obsessed culture that makes him feel less and less worthwhile every day until he finally decides to DEBASE himself before a stern-faced group of producers for Britain’s Got Talent in the hope that he can repeat the exact same ‘Ventriloquism but with his own gaping anus’ routine in FRONT of Simon Cowell, Piers Morgan and millions of viewers at home who’ll make him feel justified only through their sheer naked hatred of him that masks the fact that they all wish they’d though of it first! But wait! Mum’s GOT a gun! She says she can’t take it anymore! That she can’t live in world like this knowing what we’re capable of and seeing what we ACTUALLY have to put up with! She’s got the special ‘weltschmerz’ card! Hang on! That gun didn’t even come with the game! Where’d she get that?! Put it down dear! Put it down! Oh, Dear God… No… NO….!

Merry Christmas everyone. And a Happy New Year.

Charity begins online

Posted on December 4, 2009 by Matt Taylor

Hopefully I recently pumped a little entertainment into all your faces by detailling a harrowing night sat in front of Children in Need which, 5 minutes of jiggling newsreaders aside, basically amounted to nearly a third of day’s worth of light entertainment attrocities scorching themselves on my retinas- a bit like the aversion therapy Alex undergoes in Clockwork Orange only with more John Barrowman.

Well, not content with that particular evening, charities all over the place have been going out of their ways to grind all the goodness and humanity out of my core and replace them with a yawning, gaping wound that wouldn’t look out of place in the first 20 minutes of Saving Private Ryan.

First of all, those new fangled charity collectors seem to be back in even greater numbers to clog up the streets of town and city centres and try to corner unsuspecting people into giving them their bank details for a £5 a month donation of which the collectors themselves probably take a good £4.50 home with them to spend on ridiculous haircuts (the male ones) or stupid facial jewellry (the female ones).

They’ve also got smarter too and started working in packs of three or more to shuttle oblivious members of the public down blind alleys until they have no choice but to make eye contact and engage these people in conversation. At which point they’re hoping traditional British sensibilities kick in and instead of being nasty to someone’s face the luckless prole will then stump up the number off their debit card and more tattoos (the male ones) and hair dye (the female ones) can be bought on the commission. They’re like velociraptors in bibs.

At least we can say that in some respects charities are getting more cunning in some respects with their attempts at raising money because, in another way, they’ve got fantastically fucking dumb.

This weekend, if anyone plays recent X-Box 360 shoot-fest sensation ‘Call of Duty- Modern Warfare 2′on X-Box Live (which is essentially Facebook for sociopaths) then the imaginatively monikered game shop ‘Game’ will make a donation to the charity Warchild which- clue in the title- aims to help children who’s lives have been shattered by the grim realities of armed conflict in countries where it’s a harrowing daily reality and not an excuse to fire up an X-Station Zebra and get some ‘frags’ or something.

Let’s explore this in a little more detail making reference to evidence from which to deduce reasoned conclusions. A bit like a dissertation except with the word ‘fannies’ in the 7th paragraph. The money from this ‘Game for Good’ event is being raised for ‘Warchild’ who describe their noble mission as ‘to support and strengthen the protective environment for children who, as a result of conflict, live with a combination of insecurity, poverty and exclusion’. The money is being raised by Game encouraging people to ‘strap on the frags, pull on the kevlar and lock and load the M4′

For those of you to whom this isn’t clear- what is basically taking place this weekend is the equivalent of raising money for the Princess Diana Memorial Fund by having a virtual rally through Parisian underpasses. I don’t want to pour scorn on what is obviously an attempt to raise much-needed money for a very worthy cause but wouldn’t it be more fitting to do it by encouraging people not to run around cyberspace pretending to shoot their friend to death? Maybe donations can be accumulated by having gamers enter death match arenas and then just wandering around chatting to each other and handing each other small gifts like a Kinder Egg or something. Or change half the players into war orphans and half into desperate infertile parents and having them search for each other till everyone’s paired up and living happily ever after. The best players on the planet could even get some power-ups and play as Madonna.

I honestly didn’t mean this to turn into a cri de coeur against the idea of donating to charities but it’s obviously how I feel right now. A student was recently telling me how they’re i-Pod was a special ‘anti AIDS’ edition for which £50 of the purchase price was given to Aids charities. And guess how much more than the usual retail price for an i-Pod it cost.

Right.

It’s much like ‘Fairtrade’ products in shops which aim to demonstrate how the company supplying it is being caring, sharing and humanitarian by offering more money to the original farmers and producers when in fact, all they do, is shunt up the retail price and get us to pay it instead. We can feel good about ourselves, the little people get more money and the company gets all the credit despite just labelling some of their produce ‘Fairtrade’ and instantly implying that everything else that they do is based on exploiting the people at the start of the supply chain and then flogging it to us as cheaply as possible. They’ll be nice once in a while to the farmers, but only if we’re the ones willing to pay for it.

Just as we’re the ones being cornered on the high street by idiots in tabards because we can’t be trusted to be nice without being tricked into it. Just as we’re the ones who will happily give money to Warchild provided we can do it by pretending to wage war against our best friends. Just as we’re the ones who can only make a concerted effort to raise money for children who need it if we’re promised a night of Eastenders musical specials and John bloody Barrowman.

God this planet’s fucked.

At least we can say that in some respects charities are getting more cunning with their attempts at raising money because, in another way, they’ve got fantastically fucking dumb.

Right.

God this planet’s fucked.

That Was The Year That Will Be

Posted on November 29, 2009 by Matt Taylor

It’s that time of the year again where every newspaper, website, magazine, pamphlet, TV show and idiot-with-a-keyboard in whatever field produce their end of year awards or lists. You know the sort of thing- ’50 Best Albums of the Year’, ’25 Best Movie Scenes of 2009′, ‘The Top 10 Shows Which Are A Bit Like Flash-Forward, But Aren’t Flash-Forward’ and, being a decent sort, I’ll sum them all up for you right now and save you the time of actually reading them.

The Resistance by Muse, Jade Goody R.I.P., Roger Federer’s French Open Final, That Scene From ‘Bruno’ On The Talk Show, Roy Cropper in a Canal, Michael Jackson, Thierry Henry’s hand, Michael Jackson, Barack Obama, Michael Jackson, The 4th Series of 30 Rock, House is in a Mental Asylum!, A Creeping Sense of Existentialist Dread, Michael McIntyre, Jedward, Jedward, Does Anyone Else Feeling This Gnawing Emptiness?, Fucking Bono.

There you go. Done. That was 2009 which, if it had a unifying theme, was essentially 2008 with more resonant celebrity deaths. And now that it’s out of the way and I’ve summed it all up for you we can get on to job of dishing out next year’s awards- a process rendered infinitely more fun that for 2009 as it’s based on a combination of idle speculation, crackpot brainstorming and desperately chased hunches. And so, ladies and gentleman, 13 months early, I present The ItSaysHere 2010 Awards…

Album of the Year- ‘Susan Boyle’s Second Album By Susan Boyle’- Susan Boyle: Boyle won 14 Grammys, 8 Brit Awards and sold 47 million copies of this, her 2nd album, on which she presents a stirring collection of touching but powerful cover versions of her favourite touching but powerful Leona Lewis cover versions. Bonus Track: Leona Lewis and Susan Boyle cover Will Young and Gareth Gates’ cover of ‘The Long And Winding Road’.

Film of the Year- ‘Paedophil’- Sascha Baron Cohen trawls across America’s deep south in the guise of a convicted child sex offender called Philip. Spends all his time making incredibly insensitive comments about any children in his vicinity and offering to buy an hour of delirious sexual pleasure with any passing kids by negotiating with thier parents in a thick Belgian accent and outrageous hat thereby making a point about the reactionary nature of many Americans but actually just proving that Baron Cohen can do funny voices and is happy to risk getting his head kicked in.

TV Show of the Year- ‘The X Factor Election Special 2010′- Hosted by Dermot O’Leary and David Dimbleby, the nation goes to the polls to decide who will occupy 10 Downing Street next year with a mandate to ease Britain through difficult economic times and increasing European intergration as well as a 1 year record deal with Simon Cowell. The public vote and Peter Snow’s ‘Swing-o-meter’ will decide the final two before they go before the judges panel (Cowell, Louis Walsh, Cheryl Cole, Diane Abbott MP, Ian Hislop) for a vote-off. They both get to make one final impassioned speech to the nation, highlight 3 manifesto policies of their choice and perform their favourite Rod Stewart song before the winner is announced and the Queen joins them onstage to plug her latest single and ask them to form a government.

Sportsman of the Year- Thierry Henry- Redeems himself for his handball against the Irish by not only guiding the French to World Cup glody but also winning Strictly Come Dancing- beating Greg Wallace from Masterchef in the final foxtrot round- and also starring in the greatest Gillette advert ever with Tiger Woods who everyone’s been looking at a bit funny since that car crash. Not that anything happened in that car crash, you understand. I’m just saying. I mean, they don’t crash themselves do they? And what was he doing out at that time of the night anyway? Two words- Geroge Michael. That’s all I’m saying. Just that.

Fiction Book of the Year- ‘Flags and Giraffes’ by Eileen O’Murray- Utterly pretentious load of shit which features no discernable plot whatsoever, has hardly any interesting or likeable characters, is sprinkled with swear words and descriptions of drug taking to try to seem edgy, and is mostly told from the perspective of a narrator who is needlessly cryptic and moany. Is easily battered in terms of originality, ideas, interest and sheer story-telling ability by every single comic produced this year but everyone on Newsnight Review is terrified that they’ll be struck of the list of pretentious clever-clogs for even admitting they’ve heard of Superman. Throughout 2010 comics will remain so hopelessly uncool that not even Will Self will pretend to like them ironically to annoy The Guardian.

Non-Fiction Book of the Year- ‘Battered in the Pants’ by Jim Hell- A publishing milestone as, after years of misery memoirs clogging up the nations’ bookshelves and being bought by an apparently multi-million strong population of unsettling voyeurs, this represents the first book to be written by someone who actively set out to get abused as a child knowing the lucrative career that would follow as a writer in later years. This particularly harrowing tale of constantly going to the vicars house in a tight shorts and a vest top to take showers while asking for help in finding the soap will move even the most hardened psychopath to tears.

Celebrity of the Year- Robbie Williams- Scores a major hit in all the celebrity magazines and websites by finally reuniting on stage with Take That. His decision to patch things up with Gary Barlow was, he says, a really special moment for him and not in any way to do with the fact that they now sell more records than him and is entirely unconnected to the reality that he’ll suddenly get a bit of an attention spike in a career that was rapidly plummeting downhill while his former bandmates about whom he’d not shown the slightest interest in the last near-decade were suddenly the biggest act in Britain again.

News Event of the Year- The End of the World As Gabriel’s Trumpet Sounds, The Rivers Run With Blood and War, Famine, Pestilence and Death Stalk The Land. All in HD on Sky News!

It’s that time of the year again where every newspaper, website, magazine, pamphlet, TV show and idiot-with-a-keyboard in whatever field produce their end of year awards and lists. You know the sort of thing- ’50 Best Albums of the Year’, ’25 Best Movie Scenes of 2009′, ‘The Top 10 Shows Which Are A Bit Like Flash-Forward, But Aren’t Flash-Forward’ and, being a decent sort, I’ll sum them all up for you right now and save you the time of actually reading any of them.

The Resistance by Muse, Jade Goody R.I.P., Roger Federer’s French Open Final, That Scene From ‘Bruno’ On The Talk Show, Roy Cropper in a Canal, Michael Jackson, Thierry Henry’s Hand, Michael Jackson, Barack Obama, Michael Jackson, The 4th Series of 30 Rock, House is in a Mental Asylum!, A Creeping Sense of Existentialist Dread, Michael McIntyre, Jedward, Jedward, Does Anyone Else Feeling This Gnawing Emptiness?, Fucking Bono.

There you go. Done. That was 2009 which, if it had a unifying theme, was essentially 2008 with more resonant celebrity deaths. And now that it’s out of the way and I’ve summed it all up for you we can get on to job of dishing out next year’s awards. Yes, just for you, I’m going to get the jump on absoultely everybody else on the planet and give you the highlights of 2010 before they even have a chance to happen. Doing this is a process rendered infinitely more fun than doing it for 2009 as it’s based on a combination of idle speculation, crackpot brainstorming and desperately chased hunches. And so, ladies and gentleman, 13 months early, I present The ItSaysHere 2010 Awards…

Album of the Year- ‘Susan Boyle’s Second Album By Susan Boyle’- Susan Boyle: Boyle won 14 Grammys, 8 Brit Awards and sold 47 million copies of this, her 2nd album, on which she presents a stirring collection of touching but powerful cover versions of her favourite touching but powerful Leona Lewis cover versions. Bonus Track: Leona Lewis and Susan Boyle cover Will Young and Gareth Gates’ cover of ‘The Long And Winding Road’.

Film of the Year- ‘Paedophil’- Sascha Baron Cohen trawls across America’s deep south in the guise of a convicted child sex offender called Philip. Spends all his time making incredibly insensitive comments about any children in his vicinity and offering to buy an hour of delirious sexual pleasure with any passing kids by negotiating with their parents in a thick Belgian accent and outrageous hat, thereby making a point about the reactionary nature of many Americans but actually just proving that Baron Cohen can do funny voices and is happy to risk getting his head kicked in.

TV Show of the Year- ‘The X Factor Election Special 2010‘- Hosted by Dermot O’Leary and David Dimbleby, the nation goes to the polls to decide who will occupy 10 Downing Street next year with a mandate to ease Britain through difficult economic times and increasing European intergration as well as a 1 year record deal with Simon Cowell. The public vote and Peter Snow’s ‘Swing-o-meter’ will decide the final two before they go before the judges panel (Cowell, Louis Walsh, Cheryl Cole, Diane Abbott MP, Ian Hislop) for a vote-off. They both get to make one final impassioned speech to the nation, highlight 3 manifesto policies of their choice and perform their favourite Rod Stewart song before the winner is announced and the Queen joins them onstage to plug her latest single and ask them to form a government.

Sportsman of the Year- Thierry Henry- Redeems himself for his handball against the Irish by not only guiding the French to World Cup glory but also winning Strictly Come Dancing- beating Greg Wallace from Masterchef in the final foxtrot round- and also starring in the greatest Gillette advert ever with Tiger Woods who everyone’s been looking at a bit funny since that car crash. Not that anything happened in that car crash, you understand. I’m just saying; I mean, they don’t crash themselves do they? And what was he doing out at that time of the night anyway? Two words- Geroge Michael. That’s all I’m saying. Just that.

Fiction Book of the Year- ‘Flags and Giraffes’ by Eileen O’Murray- Utterly pretentious load of shit which features no discernable plot whatsoever, has hardly any interesting or likeable characters, is sprinkled with swear words and descriptions of drug taking to try to seem edgy, and is mostly told from the perspective of a narrator who is needlessly cryptic and moany and who you wouldn’t piss on if they were on fire. Is easily battered in terms of originality, ideas, interest and sheer story-telling ability by every single comic produced this year but everyone on Newsnight Review is terrified that they’ll be struck of the list of pretentious clever-clogs for even admitting they’ve heard of Superman. Throughout 2010 comics will remain so hopelessly uncool that not even Will Self will pretend to like them ironically to annoy The Guardian.

Non-Fiction Book of the Year- ‘Battered in the Pants’ by Jim Hell- A publishing milestone as, after years of misery memoirs clogging up the nations’ bookshelves and being bought by an apparently multi-million strong population of unsettling voyeurs, this represents the first book to be written by someone who actively set out to get abused as a child knowing the lucrative career that would follow as a writer in later years. This particularly harrowing tale of constantly going to the vicar’s house in tight shorts and a vest top to take showers while asking for help in finding the soap will move even the most hardened page-twitching psychopath to tears.

Celebrity of the Year- Robbie Williams- Scores a major hit in all the celebrity magazines and websites by finally reuniting on stage with Take That. His decision to patch things up with Gary Barlow was, he says, a really special moment and not in any way to do with the fact that they now sell more records than him and is entirely unconnected to the reality that he’ll suddenly get a bit of an attention spike in a career that was rapidly plummeting downhill while his former bandmates about whom he’d not shown the slightest interest in the last near-decade were suddenly the biggest act in Britain again.

News Event of the Year- The End of the World As Gabriel’s Trumpet Sounds, The Rivers Run With Blood and War, Famine, Pestilence and Death Stalk The Land. All in HD on Sky News!

The Beautiful People, The Beautiful People…

Posted on November 16, 2009 by Matt Taylor

Gratulationerna för varelse mycket söt än jag och all min bog trotting Engelsk vännerna. That’s Swedish for ‘Congratulations for being much prettier than me and all my bog trotting British friends’, though I suspect the translator I used didn’t understand ‘bog trotting’ and kept it in English rather than bothering to find a Swedish interpretation. If I put the two words in by themselves the apparent translation is ‘bow pavement’ which I think means that my web browser is having a nervous breakdown. Or the original programmer of the site was too busy being gorgeous to put in the requisite information to discover the Swedish translation for ‘bog trotter’. Though he did program in ‘swamp donkey’ (‘svimmat åsna’).

The chances are there is no direct Swedish translation of ‘bog trotter’ because, and this is official, the Swedish are the most beautiful race on Earth. For men that is. The hottest women, on the other hand, are from Norway. Though it seems pretty much everyone in that part of the world is a drop-dead eye-festival of prettiness. No wonder all Scandinavians are smug.

Meanwhile, the Brits, like me, are among the ugliest folk on the face of the Earth. If Earth actually does have a face, we’re the exzema.

This Earth-shattering research comes from a website called Beautifulpeople.com which I’m going to tell you about, but not before you’ve taken some deep breaths and thought some happy thoughts. You’re going to need them. And make sure there’s nothing sharp, breakable or precious in arm’s reach. Ready? Good.

Beautifulpeople.com is a dating site that asks “Do looks matter to you, when it comes to selecting a partner?”, wonders aloud if “you want to guarantee your dates will always be beautiful?” and promises to offer you “No more filtering through unattractive people on mainstream sites”. It only lets you onboard if other people on the site decide you’re good looking enough to get in by rating you as being in one of four categories- ‘Yes definitely’, ‘Hmmm yes, OK’, ‘Hmmm no, not really’ and ‘NO definitely NOT’. It guarantees that the ugly, the average and the plain won’t even get a look in to spoil your culpted magnificence as it searches for a love as knee-tremblingly adonis-like as your own. It guarantees that personality, soul, warmth, humour, sweetness and humanity are sucked clean out of the messy business of finding love.

It’s the Black American Express Cards of last-ditch cyber-seducation. Essentially, it’s matchmaking for people who find speed dating too in-depth. It’s a plotline rejected from Sex and the City for being both ludicrous and awful made tragically real. It feels chillingly like one of the seven signs of the Apocalypse.

Beautifulpeople.com was set up in Denmark (I told you all Scandinavians were smug) and went global last month. Since then about 2 million people have applied and only one-in-every-six applicants have got through. They’re the beautiful ones. Well done. Good for them.

I’m determined not to hate the website for three reasons:

1) Hatred is clearly what they want. It couldn’t be a more naked attempt at stirring up some attention-grabbing controversy from newspapers if it was a musical about paedolphilia called ‘Massive Sweaty Cocks’.

2) It might be a self-aggrandising cult for beautiful people but at least they aren’t as bad as ugly people. Beautiful people are often intolerable but at least they don’t make the world a worse place to look at just by exisiting.

3) It’s really, really hard not to feel sorry for the beautiful people who not only sign up to the website but get through the selection process. Think about it- most people in the world are OK looking. They’re fine. Pretty good. And the chances are, owing to the vaguries and varieties of human taste, there’s always likely to be at least a few people in the world who find someone attractive. It’s a matter of odds. This means that, chances are, if you want to find someone you fancy to have a relationship with you can and you will. If you’re beautiful, all it means is that you’ll have a few more people to pick from. You’ll still have to have a personality, be engaging and form a loving bond with someone but at least if God gave you a nice face and great figure you get there’s more chance you’re partner will be that millionaire, romantic/nymphomaniac, artistic/fun-loving, yoga/ski instructor with the classical dancer’s body/great tits you always wanted. Unless, that is, you’ve somehow ended up in the murky world of online dating and “filtering through unattractive people on mainstream sites” before finally seeing the light and being accepted into the hallowed pantheon on beautifulpeople.com.

The maths here are pretty simple. People want to have realtionships with someone they find attractive. Therefore: beautiful people are more attractive and will therefore have more potential suitors to choose from. Therefore: any beautiful person who cannot find a relationship by conventional means and has to resort to their own online cross between a dating website and advanced eugenics is clearly a gold-standard mental whose aesthetic charms are clearly not enough to keep a partner round long enough in the face of some atomic-powered personality defects.

And that’s why I feel sorry for them all on beautifulpeople.com. Not only do they have to trudge through life peering with horror through their (still gorgeous) squinted eyes at the rest of us normal people, but they then have to resort to finding love on a website that, basic logic tells us, should really be called hot-nutters.com. They’ll end up in relationships with fellow gorgeous lunatics which will inevitably lead in many cases to either petty, vindictive squabbling (if you’re lucky) or horrible, bloody axe murders (if you’re not).

So, by all means get join this site if you want to and have the chance meet a Scandinavian who is as stunning as you. Apparently they’re all lovely over there (a frankly staggering 76% of Norwegian women who apply to beatuifulpeople.com get in) but just don’t expect them to be too together on the sanity front. The whole region’s teeming with gorgeous looney-tunes.

No wonder Scandinavians are all smug. No wonder Scandinavians all commit suicide.

Meanwhile, the Brits, like me, are among the ugliest folk on the face of the Earth. If Earth actually does have a face, we’re the exzema.

This paradigm-shattering research comes from a website called Beautifulpeople.com which I’m going to tell you about, but not before you’ve taken some deep breaths and thought some happy thoughts. You’re going to need them. And make sure there’s nothing sharp, breakable or precious in arm’s reach. Ready? Good.

Beautifulpeople.com is a dating site that asks “Do looks matter to you, when it comes to selecting a partner?”, wonders aloud if “you want to guarantee your dates will always be beautiful?” and promises to offer you “No more filtering through unattractive people on mainstream sites”. It only lets you onboard if other people on the site decide you’re good looking enough to get in by rating you as being in one of four categories- ‘Yes definitely’, ‘Hmmm yes, OK’, ‘Hmmm no, not really’ and ‘NO definitely NOT’. It guarantees that the ugly, the average and the plain won’t even get a look in to spoil your sculpted magnificence as it searches for a love as knee-tremblingly adonis-like as your own. It guarantees that personality, soul, warmth, humour, sweetness and humanity are sucked clean out of the messy business of finding love.

It’s the Black American Express card of last-ditch cyber-seduction. Essentially, it’s matchmaking for people who find speed dating too in-depth. It’s a plotline rejected from Sex and the City for being both ludicrous and awful made tragically real. It feels chillingly like one of the seven signs of the Apocalypse.

I’m determined not to hate the website for three reasons:

3) It’s really, really hard not to feel sorry for the beautiful people who not only sign up to the website but get through the selection process. Think about it- most people in the world are OK looking. They’re fine. Pretty good. And the chances are, owing to the vaguries and varieties of human taste, there’s always likely to be at least a few people in the world who find someone attractive. It’s a matter of odds. This means that, chances are, if you want to find someone you fancy to have a relationship with you can and you will. If you’re beautiful, all it means is that you’ll have a few more people to pick from. You’ll still have to have a personality, be engaging and form a loving bond with someone but at least if God gave you a nice face and great figure there’s more chance you’re partner will be that multi-millionaire, romantic/nymphomaniac, artistic/fun-loving, yoga/ski instructor with the classical dancer’s body/great tits you always wanted. Unless, that is, you’ve somehow ended up in the murky world of online dating and “filtering through unattractive people on mainstream sites” before finally seeing the light and being accepted into the hallowed pantheon on beautifulpeople.com.

So, by all means get join this site if you want to and, who knows, maybe you’ll have the chance to meet a Scandinavian who is as stunning as you. Apparently they’re all lovely over there (a frankly staggering 76% of Norwegian women who apply to beatuifulpeople.com get in) but just don’t expect them to be too together on the sanity front. The whole region’s teeming with gorgeous looney-tunes.

No wonder Scandinavians are all smug. No wonder Scandinavians all commit suicide.

Old Age and the Boss

Posted on March 16, 2009 by Matt Taylor

Did you notice it? Where you aware it had even taken place? What were you doing when the world finally fell completely through the Looking Glass and we all ended up groping around Wonderland as reality melted round our ankles like pyjama trousers?

Because that’s what’s happened. I’m sure you’ve read various writers and commentators over the years peddling their default ‘you couldn’t make it up!’ stance when something odd happens (prime culprit: Richard Littlejohn bemoaning such acts of terrifying modern lunacy as people being gay or black people having the vote) but if the past few weeks the planet officially went, for want of a better word, wonky.

Let’s review. Television in recent weeks has presented us Heston Blumenthal serving a dessert made of absinthe and dildos to a dinner party featuring former BBC Iraqui correspondent Rageh Omar and this was merely a side dish to the sullying taste of sour scandal eminating from, of all places, ‘University Challenge’. Meanwhile, the most dangerous and therefore rock’n'roll job for anyone to have is now as a Sri Lankan international cricketer; a comic deemed ‘unfilmable’ has been filmed into a film; global warming has lead to the coldest winter in 13 years; this year’s Best Director Oscar has been shown off at a working man’s club in Bury and the new kings of political agit-rock are apparently Oasis who’ve been banned from playing in China because Noel Gallagher once played at a Free Tibet concert and Liam’s new hairstyle is based on ‘Hong-Kong Phooey’.

Mind you, most of you may not have noticed any of this happened as these stories need more than 140 characters to be explained in detail and therefore won’t have made it onto ‘Twitter’- which you probably all know by now is a mind-bending innovation in which, after a couple million years of learning to speak to each other in complex setences embracing a breadth of tones and inflections, mankind has decided that the next logical step is to boil communication down to an un-nuanced string of text which is shorter than the real name for Bangkok (which runs to 155 characters, so at least it could be just about squeezed into the average SMS text message).

In short, the world- as usual- is currently confusing the hell out of me. Normally, I’d put this down to humanity’s unlimited capacity for absurdity (the sort of thing so expertly skewered by Stewart Lee- watch his Comedy Vehicle this week on BBC 2. Seriously. That’s an order) but now it seems I can actually ascribe my bafflement at existence to old age. And this isn’t some late-20s existencialist rage at the slow dying of the light as my glorious late-teen years fade into the distance. This is down to actual, genuine, proper old age.

Because it starts at 27.

An American scientist (isn’t it always) has discovered that mental agility starts to decline noticably from the age of 27- therefore heralding the onset of old age. Brain speed, reasoning, puzzle-solving, memory; all start hitting the skids at this particular age. No wonder Hendrix, Cobain, Morrisson, Joplin et al all kicked the bucket during within 12 months of their twenty-seventh birthday. I’ve written previously of my owrry that I’d never make it to 28 owing to my obssession with this strangest of rock ‘n’ roll phenomena but now it seems my real concern should have been getting through to my next birthday and still remembering how to tie my shoe-laces.

My new job currently sees me dispensing study-skills coaching to a variety of perky, enthusiastic and terrifyingly young University students when what I clearly should be doing is getting them to teach me how to program a VCR while I regale them with stories about when the internet was all fields.

To asuage both my worries about the world going mad and me becoming an elderly gibbering vegetable I’ve decided to listen to music by a man who most certainly didn’t pop his clogs at 27 and never seems to have gone in for the kind of absurd behaviour which is usually perpetrated by massive rock stars before it filters down to the rest of humanity.

Bruce Springsteen, and this is a fact, is as old as America. His recording career started just after he signed the Decleration of Independence and he only failed to become the first President of the United States after missing the election due to selling out 437 consecutive nights at Madison Square Garden. Absolutely every single one of his recorded output of 4 billion songs is about a) girls, b) cars, c) girls and cars or d) Vietnam and there are people who genuinely believe he finishes playing to 80,000 people a night around the world for 10 months and then goes home and back to his job running a hardware store. He is so earnest he sings everything with his eyes shut with a look on his face like he’s defacating gravel and most of his songs have outros that are longer than most people’s careers. And in ‘Ain’t Got You’ he wrote the ultimate ‘being-a-rock-star-is-rubbish-I-don’t-care-what-you-think-cause-I’ve-got-lady-trouble’ song. He’s so utterly plain, in fact, that he’s beaten to the title of New Jersey’s Most Exotic Rock Star by Jon Bon Frigging Jovi.

He is, in short, the Anti-Prince. And I’ve started to absolutely love him.

Told you the world had gone mad.

To Hell In A Handcart, By Any Means…

Posted on October 6, 2008 by Matt Taylor

If I’m honest, I wasn’t really taking the global financial crisis seriously. I’ve been far more interested in my new job- which, for those who are interested, remained a novelty for about 4 days before my superiority complex kicked in and ruined everything- and the U.S. Elections which have now essentially boiled down to a scrap between Denzel Washington and a man who seems more and more to be a facsimile of George W. Bush. Although actually this is unfair on Bush- he was a much better pilot than McCain.

The financial crisis seemed to revolve mainly around various rich people who were interviewed coming out of offices in the City of London looking terribly flustered before slinking off to their mansions while the stock market lost more points than Newcastle United. And to be fair, it’s hard to take a monetary panic seriously when it revolves around stocks losing ‘points’ rather than tangible pounds and pence. If they equated the loss of the stock market in a day to a real value, like ‘The FTSE lost 4 million pints of Stella today’ or ‘Panic in Tokyo today as the Nikkei dropped by a thousand Nissan Micras and Andrei Shevchenko’ then everyone would start taking things seriously and dutifully cacking themselves.

Luckily though this step will not be necessary as something has happened to bring to the world’s attention just how much the bankers have pushed us to the brink. Iceland’s gone bankrupt. Not the supermarket. The country.

A. Whole. Chuffing. Country.

Now I’m no economist but I’m pretty sure that’s not meant to happen. The forces of capitalism and the free markets are desinged to cause various weak businesses and organisations to fall by the wayside as time rolls merrily forward but when it’s a nation going down the swanny it’s hard not to think it’s time to start mainlining smack directly into our eyeballs and find out just what bumming sheep is actually like. Truly, these are the end of days. Once Iceland have sold Bjork they’ll be out of assets and then the finance devils will come looking for the rest of us.

But before an apocalyptic global meltdown comes and snaffles us all it’s probably a good idea to have a sit down. (Personally, as much as I admire how much Shakespeare contributed to the English language, I doubt the Bard ever summed up the English better than the first man to turn ‘sit down’ into a noun). When having the aforementioned sit down we’ll probably end up watching the telly and, if you time it right, you’ll catch a show that’ll make the oncoming economic catastrophe seem like blessed relief. If you’ve watched Charlie Boorman’s ‘Dublin to Sydney… By Any Means’ you’ll invade Wall Street and start short-selling like a madman just so you can send the planet back to the Stone Age before the next episode is broadcast. It might just be the worst programme in television history and, considering it’s transmitted just a day after BBC 1′s extraordinary ‘Hole In The Wall’, that’s quite some achievement.

The premise of the show is that professional hanger-on Charlie Boorman, shorn of the star charm of ‘Long Way Round/Down’ co-star Ewan MacGregor, travels from Dublin to Sydney by any means of transport he can find FOR ABSOLUTELY NO REASON WHATSOEVER. He isn’t following a historical trade route, or retracing the adventures from a book, or sticking to any particular geographical feature- he’s merely taking your licence fee and taking his preposterous little beard across four continents for no better reason than the fact that he just can. And not only does he drag a film crew along with him, he then dedicates half the show to detailling how hard it is to make the kind of show he’s currently dedicating half of to pointing out how hard it is to make this kind of show. It’s tough not to think that if he dumped the camera crew and made the trek by himself it’s be a whole lot easier for everyone involved but then we’d never catch a glimpse of just how difficult it is for a bunch of jumped up media fuckwits to get a stack of expensive digital video equipment up the Khyber Pass on a 70 year old bus. And there’d also be no-one there to watch Boorman take patronising local residents to stratospheric heights.

Boorman clearly comes from the school of gap-year twatism that believes that anything being done by a peasant in Indian bandit country is worthy of gasps of delight and breathless tales of how “simple the life is there” even though the peasant in question is weighing up whether or not to infect the Europeans with cholera or sell them to the local bandit leader and pinch their i-Pods. He schleps from country to country and village to village eating terrifying meats in everyone’s front rooms and taking part in rituals that the locals clearly made up on the spot just so they could get on the telly. Then it’s time to move on though, instead of a travelogue, we’re greeted to another 20 minutes of some work-experience girl in the London office struggling to get Charlie and his crew visas to get over the next border. They genuinely believe we give a flying fuck about any of them and their preciously challenging documentary shoot when, in fact, we’re sitting on our sofas watching Boorman piss out licence fees up the walls with gay abandon. If the show’s premise was changed to an eight part series of Charlie and his team brutally chronicaling the difficulties of getting a film crew up to a Scottish island to burn our collective licence money in cash a la the KLF it would be no worse. In fact, the locals in this case would be Scottish rather than backwater peasants which would be infinitely more entertaining- especially when Boorman desperately tried to condescend his way through a visit to a local chippie for a deep-fried Twix and a fight.

Luckily, once Charlie’s finished filming his latest intercontinental mid-life crisis, James May potters onto our screens with his show ‘Big Ideas’ to remind us that, imminent global financial catastrophe aside, the future might be a good place to be after all. Like Boorman he travels around the globe but, instead of wasting time with people who haven’t even bothered to get out of their hovels and buy a widescreen TV, he meets scientists and inventors who are at the bleeding edge of everything. Encouragingly, this has so far involved bespectapled chaps in white coats who spend their time perfecting either a) robots or b) jetpacks. While this may seem like simple Boys Own fun he is actually, in the current climate, giving us all a glimpse of a world worth fighting for. One that we will all enjoy if all the bankers of the world stop trading in money that doesn’t exist and whisking us promptly back to the Great Depression. He is giving us something to aim at, a world to aspire to. Forget Barack Obama- maybe Top Gear’s shaggy-haired third-wheel may actually turn out to be the 21st century’s Franklin Roosevelt. As a side-note, he also manages to shoe-horn the fact that he’s actually a pretty nifty pianist into proceedings which at least demonstrates he has a talent beyond being mates with Obi-Wan Kenobi.

Maybe I’m being harsh on Charlie Boorman. He might be squandering the licence fee on his self-indulgent trek but at least his folly hasn’t managed to bankrupt an entire island. Mind you, much like the Masters of the Universe on their trading floors, he’s failed to think of things in the long term and that’s to his eternal discredit and demonstrates what makes James May a much more worthy TV presenter. After all, imagine ‘Dublin to Sydney… With a Robot on a Jetpack’.

Who wouldn’t want to watch that?

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