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.

We’re having an Olympics in London next year. You’ve probably noticed. And if you’ve seen an Olympics before, you’ll know that you need to build a nice, big shiny stadium to put them in. So we’re having one of those in London next year too. Thing is, an Olympics only lasts for about 3 weeks. Stadiums tend to last a lot longer than that. For instance, the new Wembley’s been standing for over 3 years now, despite being built by Australians.

And so we’re going to have to figure out what to do with the Olympic Stadium (that’s what we’re calling the stadium that the Olympics will be in) when all the athletes have buggered off down the drugs testers. Essentially this has boiled down to two competing bids to take over the site from London’s 2nd and 3rd least likeable football clubs and a great big argument over the word ‘legacy’. There’s a popular movement among athletes and athletics fans to keep the running track and the stadium intact while allowing a football club to move into the infield. This is what West Ham plan to do if they win. There’s also a popular movement among absolutely no-one to ensure the legacy of the stadium by tearing it down and building an entirely new one. This is what Tottenham Hotspur plan to do if they move there. A basic grasp on London geography would also suggest they’d be stretching the ‘Tottenham’ bit of their name a bit as well if they relocated.

Clearly, if the legacy of the Olympic Stadium and it’s running track is what the decision committee’s prime concern is, there can, of course, only be one winner.

Tottenham.

And let’s call the reason why ‘The Hacienda Effect’. For those of you that don’t know, The Hacienda was a club in Manchester where a newsreader invented dance music (I may be paraphrasing Wikipedia a bit here). However, crucially to our story, it isn’t there anymore. It’s now got some posh apartments on it. Nowadays though, it is statistically impossible to meet any Mancunian over the age of 35 who doesn’t claim to have been there every night of the 80s getting spanked of his tits with the bassist from the Inspiral Carpets. If you believe all of them are telling the truth, the capacity of the place must have been somewhere around the quarter-of-a-million mark.

As long as things are still there, they’ll always be just there, at the mercy of grinding reality. And grinding reality always fucks things up in the end. When they’re gone, on the other hand, that’s when they can have a legacy. To put it another way, if Robert De Niro had died in about 1985, he wouldn’t be primarily known to a generation of filmgoers for terrorising Ben Stiller in all the ‘Focker’ films. He’d be Travis Bickle forever.

One more example- Lennon died and was sainted. McCartney made ‘The Frog Chorus’ and married Heather Mills.

Getting back to the Olympic Stadium- when the Games are actually there, Usain Bolt could win the 100m in 7 seconds running backwards on one leg playing the harmonica, Jessica Ennis could set 7 world records in the heptahlon and Paul Weller could win the pole vault. It’s be ace. But if the stadium was kept standing then, a year later, when the superstars have gone home, it’d be on ITV2 as the venue for Joe Pasquale taking on Lembit Opik in a run-off for a show called ‘Celebrity Athletics’ or some such shite. What sort of legacy is that? And then the rest of the time, West Ham would be playing there, which is arguably even more humiliating.

But if you knock it down, no matter how sensational the performances that had happened there, they’d only get more incredible in people’s minds and stories. Usain Bolt wasn’t playing the harmonica, it was a full orchestra- single handed. Jessica Ennis didn’t break 7 world records, she broke the sound barrier. And Paul Weller didn’t win the pole vault. It was the bassist from the Inspiral Carpets.

Spanked off his tits he was…

I went to a festival recently for the first time in a few years. Clearly it’s taken that length of time for me to forget a very important point- I would happily kill 95% of people at any given festival. I’m sure they’re all nice and lovely the rest of the time when their enagaged with normal grinding reality like the rest of us- but stick them in a field with a soundsystem, 48 cans of Stella and access to some industral strength ketamine and everything goes horribly, horribly wrong. They begin communicating at the sort of volume usually associated with a jumbo jet crashing on take-off and decide that 5am is the appropriate time to begin an interpetation of Massive Attack tunes on the bongos to impress a posh girl called something like Iffy.

And these are people I just paid £70 to spend a weekend camping with.

Incredibly, I still had a brilliant time. This is mainly due to the company of friends I don’t see often enough who through a combination of humour, love and understanding managed to smooth the edges off the seething rage that festival people pump into the dense black gloop that’s where my soul should be. Thanks for that guys. Appreciate it.

I was also helped by the fact that festival was everything that Glastonbury always promised to be. Impressive, really, considering that it was a festival called Beatherder I was at and not Glastonbury.

I’ve been down to the big one at Pilton a couple of times and it was great- although as an event it’s so smug and in love with itself that, for one weekend per year, it briefly overtakes Manchester as the cockiest, most-likely-to-harp-on-about-it’s-inherent-greatness place in the UK. If it could fellate itself, it would snap it’s wonderful, oh-so-cool neck doing it.

Glastonbury is brilliant, no doubt, but it likes to present this image as an insane bacchanale of decadence and music where anything can happen. Rumours always ping around the festival like Twitter after it’s received a blow to the head: “Paul McCartney and Neil Young are in the acoustic tent at 4pm!”, “I’ve just seen Kurt Cobain eat a falafel during The White Lies set”, “Glenn Miller’s plane just crashed through a timehole- he’s playing on the Pyramid Stage with Slash”- that sort of thing. The chinese whispers about what’s going on in the awful, rubbish, not-at-Glastonbury outside world are even more insane. Apparently, when news spread about Michael Jackson’s death last year it took about 30 minutes flat for the rumour to mutate into news of every single celebrity called Michael having passed away in the night; Barrymore, Buerk, Jordan, McIntyre, Portillo in a freak yachting tragedy etc, etc. And what really happens that’s a surprise? Bugger all.

Oh, and those festival twats I mentioned earlier? There’s 175,000 of the fuckers.

The truth about Glastonbury, and what actually makes it great, is that it’s lots of bands you’ve heard of playing tightly scheduled sets to ensure they get some coverage on the BBC. That and the fact that Lauren Laverne’s there.

Beatherder, this past weekend, meanwhile turned out to herald all the unexpected insanity that Glasto had to stop having when they let the BBC film it and had to put up a massive fence to stop every baghead in Europe from getting in and ransacking tents. Here’s just three things I saw there this year:

- A stall honest enough to advertise that it sells ‘Shit Cameras’
- A talent competition won by a human-beatboxer and judged by, among others, a drag queen and the woman who plays Janice Battersby on Coronation Street.
- A main stage guest appearance from GMTV’s leotard-toting Mr Motivator which featured backing dancing by a friend of mine dressed as Bertie Bassett

This is what festivals are meant to do; remove us from everyday and let us experience a different reality for the weekend. One where there’s lots of drinking, loads of live music and remarkably few consequences. Unfortunately, this also means experiencing the reality of life in a refugee camp for a few days, albeit a refugee camp where half the residents have gorged themselves on cheap speed and spend their time tripping over guy ropes and walking past tents fruitlessly yelling “DAZ!” at the top of their lungs in the hope of finding their friend who went off to have sex with that posh girl called Iffy because, disgracefully, in this alternate festival reality playing Massive Attack on the bongos in a drug induced stupor at 5am actually does get you laid.

And then instead of bongos you’re listening to sweaty tent-rutting for 3 hours as Daz bangs away at Iffy with admirable tenacity yet few results as his substance-addled brain has forgotten to tell his testicles what to do and Iffy passed out in the early stages anyway. The fucking degenerate scum. Maybe one day he’ll rut right through her pelvis and I’ll be woken by the glorious sound of Daz charging round the campsite as his mind finally caves in with all the horror while Iffy flails around in muted agony looking for her severed legs. The shits. The absolute rotting shits.

Er… Anyway, I had a point, can’t remember what it was now.

Um… yeah… I went to a festival this weekend. It was great. I’m just not sure why.

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.

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…

2010′s got off to a pretty awful start all things considered- Britain’s been paralysed by some frozen water, those bankers who sent us to the brink of financial oblivion last year are getting gut-fuckingly huge bonuses for doing it, the Carribean has been ripped in two by an earthquake and Teddy Pendergrass has died.

So, I’m glad to report that I’ve got something pleasant and uplifting to tell you all. Finally, this year has something good going for it other than the fact than everyone ignoring Celebrity Big Brother.

The Doomsday Clock has gone back by a minute.

A quick sidebar for those who need it: The Doomsday Clock was set up in 1947 by a bunch of atomic scientists to both demonstrate how close they felt humanity was to smearing itself out of existence via auto-inflicted armageddon and to provide a neat narrative framing device for Alan Moore’s ‘Watchmen’. It was originally set at 7 minutes to midnight and has got as close as two minutes to when Russia and the US were indulging in one of their periodic Cold War atomic dick-swinging contests. By 1991 it had fallen back to 17 minutes to midnight but slowly crept up as close as 5 minutes to in 2007 thanks to the antics of North Korea’s enjoyably unhinged Kim Jong Il.

However, owing to “leaders of nuclear weapons states cooperating to vastly reduce their arsenals and secure all nuclear bomb-making material and for the first time ever, industrialized and developing countries alike pledging to limit climate-changing gas emissions that could render our planet nearly uninhabitable” it’s been decided by the Bulletin of the Atomic Scientists at the University of Chicago- the chaps and ladies who run the clock- that we can all sleep a little easier, breathe deeper and get back to the noble pursuit of drinking till the screaming in our head stops- rather than because the planet outside the window is going to hell in a hovercraft. Accordingly the Doomsday Clock now reads 11:54.

With the threat of fiery nuclear destruction on the wane the World has needed something else to get all serious about and it seems that sport has decided to take up the mantle.

When you think about it, sport is very, very silly and we really shouldn’t get all that bothered about it. Sport is of no real consequence. Sport should be a distraction. Sport shouldn’t matter.

So why did the Togo football team find themselves staring down the barrel of a gun? Why do we care what Tiger Woods and John Terry do with their privates? Why is a 21 year old Georgian dead for misjudging a corner? Why have Canada, previously everyone’s 2nd favourite nation, become so vilified for a few organisational issues at the Winter Olympics? Why am I sat up at 1am watching some women fling themselves face-first down an ice chute?

Clearly, sport is of some real consequence. Clearly, sport is more than a distraction. Clearly, sport matters.

Even curling- a activity which lies somewhere between bowls, shuffle-board, ice-skating and spring-cleaning. A game takes anything up to 2 and a half hours and, thanks to the BBC’s brilliant compendium of delights on the Red Button, has filled most of my afternoons this week with more drama and tension than ‘Diagnosis: Murder’ and ‘Doctors’ could ever dream of. Quite an achievement for a sport which is, uniquely as far as I can figure out, mostly played with brushes.

Maybe, it’s the fact that humans like a story and a competition; after all reality television works on the exact same principles and mechanisms as television sport coverage- only without the necessity for people who are actually good at something. In both we get to know competitors, we see them develop, we employ experts to analyse their performances and we dismantle them ourselves with forensic intensity. We shamelessly take sides and hope our favourites achieve the glory of a gold medal or winning the public vote.

And, for those sports or reality TV stars who survive in our conscience, we wait with relish for them to make the cock-up that proves their falability- such as being caught in a tawdry episode of adultery that threatens to detonate their career; or, even worse, recording and releasing ’3 Words’ featuring Will.I.Am.

Mind you, at least something which is genuinely serious such as causing the Doomsday Clock to move hasn’t become the subject of a sport or a reality TV show.

Yet, that is. Yet.

I was recently looking for something to read in the bookshop at Manchester University, which was a mistake really as it’s a typical uni bookstore; i.e. the graphic novels section contains no Batman and 9 copies of fucking Maus. After fruitlessly trawling for something interesting I happened upon the self-help section and was quickly reminded of an anecdote borrowed from a friend of mine.

Four young men, for reasons known only to themselves, are sat in the front room of their shared house playing that old parlour game where someone has to hold the name of a celebrity up in front of their forehead for everyone else to see, then ask them questions to try to decipher who it is on the card.

On one particular turn, the questioner asks “Do I help people?”
“Yes”, is the response.
“Do I have magical powers?”
“Yes” say the questionees.
“Am I often seen in the company of loyal followers?”
“YES!”
There’s a contemplative pause
“Am I Jesus?” is the confident enquiry
“No.” is the response. “You’re Paul McKenna”

You can see the similarities though, can’t you? After all, where people once turned to The Bible and Mr Christ’s parables to guide them through their lives, now they’ve got the self-help missives of McKenna and co. In these books everything from losing weight, to quitting smoking, to getting a better job to becoming a more effective canoeist (probably) is explained to you in easy to understand (i.e. patronising), step-by-step (i.e. really patronising) guides by the World’s leading experts (i.e. people who got their degrees by mail order from questionable institutions like The Guadalajara Institute of Food Sciences). This is the time of year when people are likely to take stock of their lives and recoil in horror at the sheer naked mess they’ve made of it and therefore it’s boom time for the publishers who can lay off the pointless celebrity autobiographies for a few months (Justin Lee Collins? Really?) and set about helping people to help themselves.

Provided that help comes not from themselves but from the faintly creepy expert pictured on the cover, natch.

Here’s a few of this year’s biggest titles:

Joseph Stalin’s Scorched Earth Diet

A team of military historians and dieticians at the University of Spartak Moscow have combined on this groundbreaking project to use Stalin’s highly self-attritional tactics for halting the Nazi war machine to help shed those Christmas pounds and get you into that bikini this summer. By scoring different types of food according to 1940′s German military hardware (1 tuna sandwich = 1 Panzer tank; 4 chocolate digestives = 2.3 Stuker dive bombers; 1 Dominos pizza = Colonel Walther von Reichenau) and suggesting different dietary techniques as ‘Stalin’s Orders’ (only drink water today; make yourself sick, mash up all your food with a lethal dose of diuretic) you too can protect the Worker’s Republic of You from fascist calories. WARNING: if diet is not strictly adhered to you will have to shoot yourself for the crime of cowardice.

Richard Littlejohn’s Bigoted Way to Happiness

Britain’s very own cross between Ann Coulter and Jabba the Hut shows you how to be happy simply by blaming everyone else for anything that makes you miserable. Why mope around doing a job you don’t like when you can cheerily convince yourself that a cabal of Muslim lesbian extremists are at fault for forcing you to do it in the first place? Suffering through the death of a loved one? No you’re not! You’re just the victim of political correctness gone mad- in the old days people would be dead and continue to live for another 200-300 years! And they wouldn’t need a hi-vis vest to do it. Are you struggling to overcome a crippling addiction to alcohol or drugs? It’s not your fault- not since the EU introduced all those nasty new addictive substances when Britain had once become the Greatest Nation on Earth ™ by having alcohol which did no damage whatsoever and crack cocaine which acitvely repulsed the user after every toot of the crackpipe! You couldn’t make it up! Although, for this to work, you’ll probably have to.

Quit Smoking With Bisto

Using pioneering psychological research, this guide will help you quit cigarettes for good using the hitherto untapped nicotine supressing properties of gravy. Everytime you feel a craving for a smoke just drink 3 pints of piping hot Bisto gravy and feel those urges slip away. This is part of the upcoming Bisto Better Life range, due to include such titles as ‘Career Success with Chicken Stock’, ‘Find Love with Yorkshire Puddings’ and ‘Quit Heroin the Vegetable Broth Way’.

Neuro-Linguistic Programming- Not As Interesting or Sinister As It Sounds

This vaguely controversial approach to psychology and self-improvement is clearly and simply explained as not actually an awesome mind-control art that allows those who master it to have terrifying levels of power over all those they come across. It will help you to alter your behaviour to help you achieve your goals via considerations of the effect of language on self-actualisation and not by teaching you to subtly program all those around you to submit to your every whim and fantasy so that your goals become less about getting a promotion and more about achieving one long round of delirious sexual pleasure amongst people who readily except you as their Earth-bound emperor.

Better Living Through Genocide

If all else fails in your life, fuck it. Kill everyone. A worrying sign of the modern world is that this is currently number 4 in the UK book charts. Even more worryingly, the top 3 places are all taken up with books ‘written’ by Jordan.

It’s something of a cliche to suggest that we Brits spend all our time talking about the weather, at least when we aren’t dealing with our other favourite topics i.e. health & safety, snooker or sentences that begin “I don’t mean to sound racist but…”. The irony of this is that, while we may be conversant in weather, we’re head-bogglingly rubbish at dealing with it when it turns in any way slightly beyond what would be considered ‘mild’- if you believe the news anyway.

In other parts of the world, people live in places such as Tornado Alley in the US where a good day in August is one where you come home from work to find your house in the same street you left it, or there’s the monsoon lashed regions of Asia which can experience as much rain in an afternoon as Somerset would in the average lifetime.

Meanwhile we live in possibly the most temperate country on the face of the Earth.   Thus we’re depicted as being prone to either all dying of sunstroke if the mercury climbs over 80 in July or, as the last few days have demonstrated, getting hopelessly befuddled and often caught completely unawares when water freezes into snow and starts lazily billowing out of the sky. I’ve allegedly been practically housebound for the last 48 hours because, despite us now being in a year with a funky futuristic name, we can’t manage to put salt- one of the most abundant substances anywhere- onto our roads and pavements to prevent us having to deal with the minor inconvenience of driving or walking on snow that has been compacted down into unending sheets of ice which lie in wait ready to make us skid or tumble and snap our necks with no warning.

How the would-be Brittanic members of the human race managed to get through ice ages that lasted for millenia is anyone’s guess when all we get now is news bulletins booming that the cold snap is due to last “a few more days” with so much portent they might as well be saying it’ll last “till the absolute end of all time”. Reporters have been stationed up and down the country to tell us that everywhere has become ‘snow-bound’ and ‘inaccessible’, despite the fact that they’ve managed to get several hundred kilos of broadcast equipment there in the first place  to tell us this.

I don’t know about you though but, for all the tooth-gnashing horrorbastardism of the news reports on the snow, all I’ve seen is people collectively taking time off work and school to joyously, for want of a better phrase, dick about. Everyone’s found their Christmas/New Year break unexpectedly lengthened by a couple of days and, in the case of my neighbourhood, set about building ever increasingly massive snowmen (there’s a 9 footer round the corner), have snowball fights, drag each other round on sledges and, in a couple of magnificent cases, build igloos and have a picnic in them. The 9ft snowman has even had a huge snow living room built for him. And a trumpet put in his mouth.

Clearly, far from being bewildered by snow, we’re better at dealing with it than any other nation. In a few weeks the Winter Olympics get underway in Vancouver and, no matter what events you may end up watching through the Games, I guarantee you won’t see one snowman, one snowball fight and certainly no snow living rooms constructed by either spectators or competitors. If the Winter Olympics were held on these isles there’d be a packed Wembley Stadium watching nations throw snowballs against nations, the whole of Dartmoor stripped of snow during a snowman building contest that’ll end up with an army of massive 50ft high creations straddling the South Downs, and all the skiing events replaced by the infinitely more tense British pastime of crowding round the radio first thing in the morning and waiting to see if your school’s been closed.

And, for another guaranteed British medal, the newsreader biathlon- where they have to travel to a snowy village, then file a report about how it’s impossible to travel to the same snowy village.

Obviously, over the next few days the snow will freeze into ice and then it’ll turn slushy and things might be a bit unpleasant for a bit but, for a while, let’s just enjoy the snow. The world’s all pretty and white and fluffy, every footstep makes that crunchy snow noise, many of us have an extended holiday and- this is a fact, by the way- sitting in a pub is for some reason infinitely more satisfying when there’s snow on the ground outside.

All of these are good things because, at a time like this, there’s really no reason to stay indoors. For one thing, there’s bugger all on the telly. Unless you like panicking reporters.

Or Labour simply handing the election to the fucking Tories 5 months early. This snow might be the best news we get all year.

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.

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, 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.