All posts by Grace

Splattering the monitor

A lot of big issues upset me, which I think is a sign of sanity. Yet I now wonder whether my riotous fury can occasionally be misguided after a recent visit to the toilet in my office building. You see, it has a dispenser of single sheets of shiny paper masquerading as toilet roll. Fuck the beheadings and retaliation bombings, this is an absolute disgrace.

These single square sheets are fucking ridiculous. The dispensers are usually gigantic and situated at such a height you have to bend down whilst attempting to gracefully use facilities, so your face is far too close to a floor that you know is covered in pubic hair and menstrual flickage.

If you feel frugal or environmental, you will pull a single sheet. A sheet that barely covers your arsehole and disintigrates within one foot of water. With echoes of “for fuck’s sake” coming from stall to stall, the sound of a hamster on a wheel begins as you all pull as many sheets out as you can. No matter how many times you pull you’ll either get two (pointless) or fifty, enough to clog any toilet.

With the wadge gathered after an hour of tugging, you then have to try to crumple or fold (if the advert is true) the paper into a mesh that wont rip if you try to use it. Flimsy loose leaves of it trickle onto the floor, either sticking to the unknown substance around the panty liner bin, or just under your shoe. No matter how many times you gather the paper, you never feel sanitary.

As everyone knows, toilet roll is also the safety net for the sudden office cold. Sitting in these germ ridden places full of martyrs dragging in their kids’ latest phlegm-intensive disease, you will at some point find yourself rushing to the emergency tissue supply. These dispensers of evil barely cover a nostril, and any blowing will just burst through, splattering the monitor.

Meanwhile the infested turn up with boxes of Aloe Vera soft tissues that don’t rub the skin from your nose like sandpaper. Will they share? Will they fuck. Instead you turn into an advert for cocaine abuse as your septum cracks and bleeds. How can this paper be so harsh yet totally useless at actually mopping up solid or watery substances?

I sometimes attempt to study this paper when seeking peace from meetings. Sitting in the toilet I hold the paper to the light, poke it, stretch it, yet I cannot determine exactly what this element is. It certainly isn’t paper in any traditional sense. It has nothing in common with pulped wood, papyrus, newspaper, even the beautiful Andrex you can only dream of.

As a poor student I used to relieve toilets of their spare loo rolls. This ‘eco-friendly paper’, seemingly the result of boiling plastic bags in battery acid, defies such support for the poor. If you handed it to a homeless person they’d shank you, and rightly so.

As much as I understand the underhand tactics to reduce our arseholes sucking up paper as we work, surely there must be another option? Even just a slightly bigger leaf of paper would be enough. Then again, that would probably quadruple an average company’s budget on what they can spare to keep their employees from self harming.

Mad Moose

This election is boring me. Maybe it’s my cynicism or my allergy to buzzwords, but the parties are saying nothing to me as a voter of conscience. I’m pretty far left, but lately I’ve actually started to question the sense of Caroline Lucas for a comment that’s so ridiculous I’m actually enraged.

Every April I put up with the endless jibes of idiots that point at the Grand National and shout ‘cruelty’. Lucas has gone on record asking to ban it and possibly all horseracing as we are watching “horses raced to death”. This is an MP I have previously stood up for and followed, but this statement is a rare lapse into misinformation that has sorely disappointed me.

I know my nags. I grew up in a big racing town and worked in the yards and equine veterinary practices through my youth. I’ve seen handicappers, Derby, Gold Cup and Grand National winners both in training and undergoing treatment. The standard of care given to those horses in training is outstanding – the best food, constant love and attention by their lads every day of the week, frequent checks and scans at the slightest hint of a problem.

Horses are worth too much to be mistreated; would you harm a creature worth millions of pounds? They have clover flown in, solarium lamps to warm their backs, swimming pools and cushioned gallops. Racing vets are the best in the world, developing many procedures later rolled out even to humans (such as stem cell therapy on tendons). Jump horses sustain careers over many years, something that can only be achieved with care.

The races themselves have been made safer with whipping bans, safer ground standards, better jump build. Despite what people think, you cannot force a horse to jump or run. Many child has tried, believe me. The best example of this is the famous Mad Moose – now retired and banned by the British Horseracing Board for…not starting. He just said no. No violence, no danger, he just walked off. He once made it to a fence, slowing to a standstill. Does he jump? He does at home and out drag hunting, just not on racecourses. They tried, he said no, and now he’s retired and enjoying life (with a huge fanclub).

So where exactly is the cruelty? Sadly horses do die, but if Lucas looked at the facts it is far worse in the leisure industry where stupidity kills many horses. The worst cases I have ever seen of cruelty are by nameless individuals who starve, overfeed, overwork and even violently attack horses. I’ve been to too many riding schools which beat and overwork their animals, conning the authorities who discourage complaints.

Then there is the meat trade. Most abattoirs do not have CCTV to prove their treatment of all animals is humane, and horses fall through the gaps of the livestock laws. They are packed into trucks where many fall and are trampled to death; the volume of deaths through dehydration is staggering. This is cruelty at its most disgusting.

The real issue with horseracing is not the racing itself – that is after all what they are bred for. It is what happens after their career ends. Then they fall into the hands of arseholes who have no idea how to retrain a beast that knows mainly how to run, that has been treated as a god in a comfortable stable with little interaction with traffic. There are also many horses bred only for speed, with no consideration for temperament or a future career.  Only the economy reduces the amount of (sadly) shit horses being bred. A lot fall into the meat trade, as I’ve said a deplorable and grotesquely unlegislated area for the equine.

So where exactly is the fucking cruelty? I was the first to shed a tear when Balthazar King fell this year, choked up that he might die. Thankfully he is still alive, and being treated incredibly well by top vets in Liverpool. His fall was a mistake, and another horse hitting him a freak accident.

It is horrible, but falls happen. I’ve been fallen on by a small, fat, hairy Welsh pony before – every rider has at some point. Jumping a big fence makes it more likely. If you compare the amount of injuries or deaths in runs against the number of deaths happening daily among normal horse owners maybe it would put this into perspective. Lucas should speak with all the information at hand, spending time in a racing yard and seeing for herself how the sport and industry is run, not spouting vote-courting buzz-phrases.

Guy Pearce-era Neighbours

The more films or TV shows you watch, the more you realise that everything follows a pattern. The couple that seem to hate each other will get together. The plain Jane will suddenly scrub up to be beautiful. Remember Guy Pearce-era Neighbours and you get my gist. Soon you start to notice lazy plot items, and the end is sure to be nigh.

Impressionism appears to have passed the popular film media behind. Never will you see a mundane act tackled without it leading to the same fucking conclusion. If a character is washing up, you can guarantee they will cut themselves on glass or a sharp knife. Should a cut occur, the house will have a full first aid kid with bandages and rafts of gamgee. A burst water pipe in the garden? Clearly a dead body is down there. Milk is either off or empty. Rubbish bags always burst. Mobile phones have no signal or no battery. Mundane always leads to a plot twist.

Has anyone ever just used a bathroom in a film without needing to talk to themselves in a mirror? If someone announces they are washing clothes, secret love message will be scooped out of a pocket. No one just reads a book, it has to be a metaphor. Bills are always overdue. Getting drunk means clutching a toilet and refusing to move for a few days – strange, as I know people who get drunk, don’t vomit and manage to go to work with a hangover. Even eating isn’t safe – ketchup is pulled by gravity out of a bun onto a shirt or tie. The majority of film stars just hilariously burn food, and don’t get me started on crisps put in bowls. In bowls? Why?

The exceptions appear to be European art films and depressing soaps. In Walford you can witness people cleaning with even more misery than you would usually associate with such a meaningless task. Watch a European Art film and everything is reversed. For hours a woman will stare endlessly at the washing up, each bowl symbolic of her wasted youth, a spoon a reflection of her aged face. I once heard of a two-hour film all about a married couple watching a potato boil. I’m not stupid, I know it’s a metaphor, but a) you do not boil a potato for two hours, and b) who the fuck watches food boil? Maybe that’s why I cant cook rice.

If art imitates life, where are the boring Sundays where all you do is eat crisps and watch Antiques Roadshow? Without wanting to sound like a Mike Leigh film, just let people talk while they do normal things. Or maybe just surprise us occasionally with a ring not falling down a plug hole.

The shameful slip

It has become fashionable to be classified as a depressed person. I’m talking to you, Mr Fry. In a way it has made it easier to admit, but it really doesn’t make it easier to deal with.

I am one of those who frequently suffer the chemical imbalance, so much so that I am medicated daily in order to keep relatively sane. This could be called depression, or hereditary manic depression, or the latest craze – bipolar. All wildly maverick terms that sound deadly and impressive.

Let me be honest – I have no interest in actually manically killing a person. That is a psycho- or sociopath. Thank you, bipolar, for causing that confusion. I have just always struggled with what someone quite correctly coined as brain flu. Since 14 years of age my brain has not produced the right chemicals to operate properly. The absence or overproduction cause my brain to misfire.

That is the rational explanation. In reality when these chemicals fuck about you have no idea what is rational as you cannot get thoughts to link together. Instead you feel like you are falling into the seven circles of Hell, with memories flitting and saving into areas they really shouldn’t be.

Then there are the hormones, those crazy little shits that cause emotions to take over. Emotions, they are the worst.

It starts with a comment, moment or feeling that would be normal on any other day. You aren’t aware at the time it is happening, but slowly it builds. You examine that moment in every possible way, but your brain’s memory path only offers bad comparisons. Soon you are convinced you are being attacked or destroyed. Meanwhile the physical reaction is like trying to scratch your skin off. Your nerves quiver, joints and muscles cramp as panic endorphins race through your system.

Depending on the intensity, it’s either a day of shame or a slow descent into blackness. The shameful slip is like skidding on a dog turd – unavoidable, smelly and leaves you wiping shit on a friend’s carpets. The sudden flail of depression suddenly lifts, and all you can do is apologise and beg forgiveness from faithful friends. I’m sorry my limbic system threw up on you.

The slow descent is difficult, crushing and indescribable. If you have never felt the need to slowly draw a rusty razor blade down your arm, then I both congratulate and envy you. You do not need to know what it is like. It is lonely, confusing, tormented. You pick and push at people, then shudder into tears of remorse. You get furious, hurt yourself, destroy things, but it doesn’t ebb away. You start to contemplate value and worth; everything is mundane. You can’t eat, sleep, go anywhere you might enjoy yourself. Then you hit the bottom and realise, just like Pam Ewing, it was all a dream.

After many years of trying to fight it on my own I decided to try medication. For most depressed people this is like giving in, admitting defeat. It really is tough to think you cannot win. I am here to say you are wrong. Of course I wish I could manage it, but spending energy fighting chemicals with will power just won’t win all the time.

It’s hard to get used to, as the drugs fuck you up for the first month. Then it all settles down. Rational thought returns. You feel yourself, just not the massive extremes. I miss the brain that wouldn’t stop thinking sometimes, I ask people if I appear different – less manic, more centred, more rational. Rational to a person with depression is a compliment.

It isn’t a cure though. I still get the lows, the suicidal thoughts, just not as often. The little voice of doubt that used to plague me every minute is a lot quieter.

Why write this? I slipped on a turd today. If I did, maybe one of you did too. You are not alone. To the person I barfed limbic on, this is part of my apology.

Quite clearly a different animal

In space no-one can hear you scream. Creepy as fuck until you realise that no-one can hear you not because you’re all alone but because space is a vacuum. There is no noise, even if a film does make it seem like a comet sings like a whale.

By now whoever is reading this has fallen into one of two camps: either sighing in exasperation at this pedantic fun sapping or screaming (silently) that comets do not make sound and anyone who says they do is a wanker.

I have a habit of collecting friends in the second camp. As a fellow slave to detail, discussions constantly meander towards little-known facts that few people would ever notice. As a teenager I learnt that tanks used in Bond films were frequently from the wrong era. Tube journeys rarely make any sense – that is clearly not Green Park, and you can’t get to Paddington on that line. Guns cannot be accurately fired one-handed flying through the air. Spiderman not appearing in the Marvel Civil War? Be still my joyfully geeky friends, it still may be. Shhhh now.

My personal bugbear is horses in films. “Hey Zac, what do you think of my A-rabian?” That isn’t an Arab you utter cunt; for one thing it’s fucking Palomino! Cowboy rides in on a chestnut; leaves on a bay. Multiple horses are painted to look the same, with what looks like wet talcum powder that starts to drip as the scene rolls on. Even writing this brings back memories and makes me fucking furious. Do they think I am fucking stupid? It is quite clearly a different animal. Before someone says “they all look the same” they really fucking don’t. That sort of comment is just like saying all Korean people look the same – come on Kim, shut me down!

There I go, the fact bomb explosion. I can guarantee that every single one of you are mocking, and yet there will be a single, tiny little bit of expertise in your head that if misrepresented in film, book or news article would send you mad.  Henry VIII had five wives. Gary Lineker is England’s top goal scorer. The capital of Australia is Sydney. What’s that over their?

Come on, that last one must be killing you. You see, it’s hidden in there, that tiny little throbbing vein which makes a dodgy fact turn you into a raging torrent of red pen correction. Do it, let it out, be free with your knowledge. Embrace your talent at being fucking right!

With the volume of money spent on major films and publications, you would think that someone somewhere would pay a little attention to detail. Just one little apology or correction in the end credits, that’s is all we need. If only to prove we were right all along. In the cinema, everyone can hear you scream.

I’m already trained to smoke

There are many things wrong with the world that deserve government intervention. Protecting those in care homes and stopping animal cruelty are clearly worthy of the sweat and tears it takes to get anything through Parliament. When it enforces ‘common sense’ or invades my own sense of well being I cannot help but explode in fury.

Instead of educating idiots, the UK is going to bring in a ban that stops anyone smoking in a car containing children. If you happen to own one of these things then you should be fucking responsible enough to know that it’s bad. If you don’t, then do not embark on expanding the species. It is a simple enough thing to understand. Look after your blight on humanity, protect them from danger and illness. Why the fuck does it need a new law and yet another fine structure?

As a hater of children who occasionally has to transport them in my car, smoking is one of the only things that stops me from putting the foot down and driving off a cliff. They can open a window for fuck’s sake, onto all of that good motorway air. I warn any little bastard’s owner that I will smoke; if they allow the thing into my space then fine. The kid is, after all, their responsibility not mine.

Now I face an even more excruciating time getting my lungs ripped out by tedious mirth at the new inability to control my own life. I pay for my vehicle; as long as I’m not transporting another body it is my private world of joy. In my rented flat I’m already trained to smoke leaning dangerously out of a window, paranoid over any smell fouling the walls. Only on the road can I fully let rip, inhaling the little cancer sticks with two fingers up to other people. This is my England; jog on usurpers.

If this law made any sense it would just fine the parents. There’s already enough mollycoddling of these untouchables who choke up hospitals and block pathways. They get paid to have time off to ‘bond’ with a baby. Then there are family credits, free NHS prescriptions and special parking spots.

Despite working I get fuck all. Start piling fines onto these breeders so they consider it before the bloody thing arrives. Make them responsible for how everyone else’s life is puked over. Taking a giant pram on public transport? That is an extra two spaces lost. Pay. Bringing a disease into work from your beloved little shit? Pay for everyone else’s sickness time off. I supporting a ban on children in pubs, especially past 6pm. I’m not there to babysit for you, and the noise is excruciating. My mental health is impacted. Pay.

Needless to say the upshot is all children are now banned from my car. So, actually, maybe it’s not all bad.

Ho

I have no doubt that there’s a merry band of curmudgeons on this website joyfully compiling their rendition of ‘Christmas: sucks’. I’ll go first. Bearing in mind how long I’ve endured the garish lights around town and Slade on repeat on the radio, I’ve done bloody well to wait so long.

Christmas, as far as I can tell, is about tradition for the sake of it. Turkey with the trimmings is a certainty I actually cling to but the rest involves a day that can only be described as the loneliest day of the year.

I’ve never enjoyed Christmas. I tell people that it’s because it always starts with disappointment: I’ve never woken up to find a pony under the tree. Yes, the equine-less dawn of Christmas Day still hurts.

But mainly my sadness is the feeling that I have  never felt included in the ‘merry’ experience. I’m invited, but never actually part of the day. It’s a pity invite, one that only points out I have nowhere better to be.

I grew up with a few special Christmas traditions that are slowly evaporating. Leaving jelly out for reindeer, eating Twiglets until lunch, watching Dr Who in silence. All gone. Now I watch families make up their own routine comforts. Being on the outside is never more hurtful. I am an old orphan with no option but to travel alone to my dreaded home town. I am a charity case. Please sir, can I have some more?

It usually starts in some crappy office bedecked with cheap tinsel and false cheer. Parties and stupid jumper days flood my inbox, all of which I dread – watching people you don’t know get drunk and do karaoke just reminds me how low humanity has sunk. Then there is the disease-riddled coughers who prove a point by coming in to sickeningly cough every 30 seconds. They never cover their mouths, they never consider that spreading these germs is fucking cruel. Right now I’m surrounded by these cunts and my first hysterical meltdown of Christmas is upon me.

The run up revolves around being organised by other people – some may call them family. Umpteen phone calls about who will be where and when. This kid is with that dad, the in-laws are coming round at this time, family friends will pop in – you remember Libby from down the road, the one with the cist, you must! I literally have nothing in common with you people. I drag my heels until Christmas Eve and slowly load the car with bags of cat litter and fury. Luckily the cats’ dread matches my own. Another hour loading cats is an hour of sanity gained. It may only be two days but I’ll be fucked if I’ll tolerate them alone.

Donning the traditional black and frown, my endurance trial begins, moving from one family to another as they couldn’t bear to share the same village. The kids run about on an apparent acid trip, adults shout, I cower in a toilet with hysterical Tourette’s and an urge to cry. Presents are exchanged and I pretend a jar of Marmite is the best gift ever, silently seething over the fortune I yet again wasted on children. The noise really hurts me on Christmas Day; bearing in mind my love of My Bloody Valentine and their famously deafening gigs you can only imagine how truly epic this racket must be to irk me.

I cheer up slightly for lunch, although it’s a risk to raise one’s hopes. Once I was presented with a nut roast. My dirty protest was noted. Everyone shuts up and shovels food. Of course the cracker session is met with a silent seethe as twats try to force me to wear a paper hat. My cigarette intake explodes.

On Boxing Day it all starts again. Driving back and forth, counting the hours until I can politely fuck off home. Oh home, how far you seem. Each house is fucking boiling and filled with the tears of kids who have already broken a toy. Frequently I am tasked with assembling the plastic tat that defies logic to unpack. Using a clear substance that’s surely made from Black Box material I end up stabbing it like a man in drag, usually ending with a severed finger or craft knife stuck in my thigh. All I ask is three minutes of silence to watch one horse race at Kempton. Just one request, that is always ruined by shouts of “they all look the same”. Ho.

Every year I consider hiring a cottage in the middle of nowhere, with internet and a TV of course. There I will cook, laugh, stay in pyjamas all day. It’s not that I’m happy to be alone stewing in my own juices; others of a similar mindset are of course welcome. Sadly, I don’t think any of them can escape their own personal Christmas family hell. I also fear they would say no, and that would bring a whole new depression – never once have I been asked to share Christmas willingly, it’s only a charity after-thought.

Such is my lot. In a fit of bravado I agree to return yet again to my family’s dwellings. One can dream though.

The other guy started it

A day after the horrific massacre in Peshawar and we are all still in shock. Of course a lot of very important people are dive bombing into the media pool with condolences and false platitudes, twisting it to their own agenda, but common sense appears to be absent.

My first question after any such attack is ‘Why?’ What makes someone do something so ridiculous? The catch all term of ‘terrorism’ is handed to us on a plate as if that explains everything. “It must mean something.” Er, no. There is no excuse. None.

The experts say that this act is intended to demoralise the Pakistani Army. Anyone with a sound knowledge of Hollywood movies knows that this is idiotic. Killing a kid just leads to a desire for revenge. Liam Neeson and Mel Gibson would be all over their ass, renewed in vigour with gigantic guns and damning puns. Then again, even they are terrorists. Oh to erase Rob Roy and The Patriot from my mind.

The groups who commit these atrocities are, above all, certified loons. Going into a school and shooting over a hundred kids is not something that’s easy for a sane person to do. No cause can justify it. No matter whether it’s religious fervour, greed or fear, to repeatedly shoot a two year old in the head is not normal. Believe me I’ve considered it many times, especially over Christmas when trapped in a shop with brats crying over the latest plastic tat. Yet even with my anger issues I stop, I say no, I walk away. If you blast a child into the next life no-one will suddenly think you have a good point, and only other mentalists will sit and plan their next holiday training in a desert.

The subsequent Taliban news release (yes they have a press team, cementing our complete hatred) loudly stomped and threw a rattle pointing out that the other guy started it, their kids got killed, ner. What exactly was the result? Did you get all sad and give up as you’re presumably hoping the enemy will? No, I’m pretty sure you just shot a load of kids who you’d never met before. All of you got shot as well. That’ll get the message out there. You’ve been sacrificed my friend, and have just made life impossible for many of your religion across the world. I love it when a plan comes together.

Just remember when you next read about a terrorist attack that these faceless suicide bombers and gunmen are not just in it for ‘a cause’. They’re human like the rest of us. Look at the action, what was involved and what was actually achieved. In most cases I think we’re better off just agreeing that there’s a percentage of the human race that are prone to complete and utter lunacy. These killers migrate to causes andthey feed off them as an excuse to kill. Treat them like you would treat Ian Brady.

Sliced off and sewn up

Tell a story about a man getting his bollocks damaged, and you can see every man in the room go green. Some women, like myself, start to dry heave at horrific tales of child birth. Today however I think everyone will be horrified to hear that Egypt have decided to find a father and doctor not guilty after the 13-year-old daughter died from “complications” due to female circumcision. I’m sorry, I said that incorrectly – after female genital mutilation.

The judge also gave the family $8,500 in damages. Happy days. This is in a country where the practice has been banned since 2008.

For those who don’t know, this is a procedure you should read about despite the fact it will burn in your memory and make you wonder why we don’t just nuke the entire planet right now. Attached to some religions, and I say attached loosely as it is a cultural practice – let’s be honest many old religious practices have been stopped – it is a procedure that has no medical benefits whatsoever. It is done to keep a woman pure. Now get a pillow to hide behind. This will be brutal.

From birth to puberty a girl is brought to an FGM practitioner. Without anaesthetic she is held done forcibly by four people, usually including her mother. A scalpel is then used to slice off the clitoris and its hood, and in extreme cases the entire labia sliced off and sewn up. Imagine that – the area where you have a lot of delicate little nerve endings getting hacked off as you scream and fight with no painkiller. A small hole is left to excrete piss and blood of course. We are disgusting beasts to even need that. They then pour on some antiseptic and a bit of coffee, and off you go. Just typing this I am retracting my pelvic floor into my body and trying not to spit blood.

It doesn’t stop there. If they survive, and many bleed to death, get septicaemia or even HIV as scalpels are not always sterilised in poorer countries, then life is not a bowl of raspberries. It’s not something you can forget about. Many women get cysts, become infertile and the rate of infant death is higher. Let me take you to the wedding night though. The husband looks down and sees the purity, tick on the box there. Sometimes he brings his friends and family along, just to make sure. They must then force the hole open with, well, his dick clearly. This results of course in ripping, tearing, all so romantic. Husbands who struggle have to call in the secret practitioner; you don’t want it getting round that your dick cant stab and cut female skin after all. The woman is then scalped open again, off he pops, hoorah, babies! Some blokes are shy, bless them, so instead it’s a quick turkey baster up the chuff and waiting until the contractions start, when they’re carved open again. Remember, even after the baby you’ll be sewn up. Mmm pure as the driven rusty metal blade.

You can come back now. Honestly. All those thoughts and feelings spinning round your head right now, you’re disgusted, sick, confused and above all angry. Imagine if you were a little girl knowing it was coming (let alone him cumming). Thank God we are in the UK, phew.

Think again. It’s been illegal of course since 1987. Yet not one case was taken to court until March 2014. There are over 137,000 girls from countries where FGM is standard practice living in the UK. As much as I would truly love to believe this glorious isle offers protection from such blatant barbarity, I can’t. Why was the 2014 case held? Just so happens the UN expressed concern that not one case had ever been found in the UK. Not one. Not even in the 1980s. Just going out on a labia here but maybe, just maybe, no one decided to legally enforce the ban. You know, cos it might be seen as racist?

Anecdotal evidence also shows that many young men in the UK also still believe it is a marriage requirement, none of whom of course know what the fuck it involves. They are slicing up a human being for no other reason than to prove she is a virgin. That’s it. You’re going to have to fucking hammer that thing, and I hope you like the sound of flesh tearing.

I am of course all for equal rights. I also think male circumcision without consent is wrong. There are proven medical benefits in certain cases, and if the man in question wants it removed to stop urinary infection or penis cancer, you go for it. Also consider the procedure. The area is injected with anaesthetic for a start. Quick slice, ban on spanking the monkey for a few weeks, all better. Gross, completely wrong if for religious purposes alone or done without the individual’s permission, yet pretty quick and once done it’s done.

Notice I pointed out that the five finger shuffle is still a possibility. Now imagine your ability to get an erection was also removed, or to ejaculate. No pleasure for you. Well removing a clitoris means fuck all bloody joy out of sex (after the sausage stabbing night of course). Welcome to the world of women as a fucking receptacle.

What amazes me is that there are still educated women who support the use of FGM. Don’t oppress our culture! It is the same as having a nose job – just cosmetic. Are you fucking blind? Do you not have any empathy whatsoever? And what of the mothers of these butchered girls? Maybe they are bitter that they have endured it, or quite possibly they are made to believe they are worthless without being sewn up, but it’s still utterly abominable.

This whole thing could be destroyed in a single generation in Europe. Tell your friends, tell your kids, think about what it actually means. How would it feel? How would it change a person? There are many things most people can choose to see or learn about, but this is something everyone should face, read, see, imagine, and above all loudly insist stops. Otherwise let me near the big red button.

Does that cancel the bumming out?

Charles Manson is getting married. Rather than choosing this moment to evaluate his role in 1960s culture or the crime itself I stupidly popped onto Twitter. Unsurprisingly the social media of self-promotion has its own response. The overriding sentiment is from single white singletons: “If Manson can get married, why cant I?”

I confess I have never understood marriage. Other than one shining example I come from a broken family of divorce and false engagements. The fuss around it never makes sense. Many of my friends got married when all other life achievements had been ticked off, as if they had nothing better to do. The day itself is expensive, long, and focused on dresses and free booze.

What surprises me is that Manson has never had one of these psycho bunny weddings before. Look at the facts – he is supposedly the master of mind control, he is famous, he’s begging to be cured (by a real woman). For each of those prison pen pals he’d be a real catch. A trophy in fact. So what if he is 80. Look at the beard and attractive swastika. If his face looks like that imagine his satanic balls! Mmm wrinkly goodness.

For all the study of offenders, the nutters they attract are the real curiosity. They are the ones who really need studying to work out the edges of society and its faults. These women seem desperate to believe that anyone has a soft centre, a romantic core that can be reached. They can see the real person and make them better. This tends to lead to marriage and the inevitable spawning of some poor child. “What did daddy do?” “Well Damien, he got loads of rich kids to believe the Beatles signified the apocalypse, then they butchered a pregnant woman.” School will be a blast!

So what does this say to me about the underbelly of society? That there is a breed of people that cling to ownership and marriage no matter what. This life-affirming incident is not only legal but transforming. Even marriage can make a killer become human, a loving husband and father.  The lack of responsibility in choosing who to make a baby with is also unbelievably stupid. Which leads me to poor old Pope Francis.

Everyone should have equal rights. Why the hell the LGBT movement would want their share of the religious institute of marriage I don’t understand, but if they want to endure the same hell as a lot of people go for it. Oh no. You see marriage is OK for a serial killer, as a redeeming event, but for a gay person? No. No saving, no changing, no babies. Get thee to hell.

I really had high hopes for Pope Francis and he seems to be trying to move the Vatican towards real life, but it is starting to resemble Obama fighting the Senate. He says one thing, the Cardinals vote another.  So no to gay marriage, but yes to an infamous nut job getting betrothed to an idiot.  Am I the only one that thinks maybe that’s a bit wrong? I agree you cant marry an animal, or an object, but should those who kill really be included when upstanding homosexuals are excluded? What if you are a serial-killing homosexual, does that cancel the bumming out? What if you’re straight and like the odd spot of uphill gardening? Argh, the rules, all too confusing!

To all the sad singletons out there: find your own local killer if you want to see if marriage really will save us all. So far the jury is out for me. Save your pity for all the gays and lesbians who the church deems can never be saved.