All posts by Jonny

Pomp

You know that sinking feeling you get when you bump into an old friend you haven’t seen for years? You go for coffee, a beer, something stronger. You reminisce about the old times and compare notes on the new – what’s that, Paul? Married now? Kids, is it? Four of the fuckers? Why, of course I’d love to see photos of them!

At least in the old days, this farcical pretence of interest in the progeny of others would only last for the time it takes to brandish a couple of beat-up Polaroids from their wallet or purse; now, the wonders of modern technology mean that Paul or Janet or whoever the fuck can bash you over the head with a slideshow of their sprogs until hell freezes over.

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Witty but woebegone

If 2016 was the year of celebrity deaths, 2017 was surely the annum of celebrity downfalls.

Sparked by the toppling of one of Hollywood’s most prolific alleged sex pests Harvey Weinstein, an entire balustrade of power-wielding, pussy-grabbing men has come tumbling down in recent months; Kevin Spacey, Louis CK and Brett Ratner head up a very lengthy list. Of course, the most powerful man on the planet has had many a finger pointed in his orange direction, but so far, to no avail…as has another wormy, smarmy, self-obsessed star.

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Of course a dragon

It’s official – Game of Thrones is the Best Thing Since Sliced Bread.

It has more blood and guts than American Horror Story, more familial rivalries than The Sopranos and more zombie legions than The Walking Dead. It has more flashes of sideboob than Eurotrash and such a fondness for our favourite word it might as well be called Game of Cunts.

It’s also high time to put it out of its misery.

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Humdrumification

In 1971, windswept crooner Don MacLean penned a little-known ditty (presumably inspired by the Weitz brothers film of the same) in which he warbled about “the day the music died”. Though MacLean was actually referring to the tragic 1959 plane crash which claimed the lives of Buddy Holly, Ritchie Valens and JP Richardson, the true fate that has befallen music has proven to be far longer, more drawn-out and exponentially more painful.

Not that careering Earthwards in a ball of flame would be a fun way to go, but at least it would be over in a matter of minutes and carries with it a certain poetic panache. Come to think of it, there are few deaths that are more protracted and boring than the one in the throes of which the music industry currently finds itself – death by streaming.

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Strength and stability

This month sees the seven-year anniversary of the Tories’ ascension to Downing Street.

Seven is considered to be a magic number by many. Seven days of the week, seven colours in the rainbow, seven continents and seven seas on this great green-and-blue Earth. Seven Samurai, seven books in the Harry Potter series and seven fucking psychopaths.

Seven might be a magical number to some, but it certainly hasn’t proved magical for the majority of Britons over the last seven years, and it’s apparently not quite magical enough for Theresa May, who has decided to reach for five more years in the Prime Ministerial hot seat.

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The next boat back to Tuvalu

FIFA has certainly had a rough patch of late. Dodgy deals behind closed doors, confederation presidents handling suspiciously overstuffed briefcases, botched bribery attempts from the chronically awkward Brits (bless them), more expensive Swiss watches than even Salvador Dalí would know what to do with and a couple of incredibly misguided venue choices for the next two footballing extravaganzas. Could it get any worse?

Amazingly, yes.

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Trumpspotting

Blame life. Blame racism. Blame misogyny. Blame the Director of the FBI. Blame sex, lies and videotapes. Blame social media. Blame the great unwashed. Blame not only their hygiene but their appalling lack of education. Blame the 54% of white women who voted for a guy that jokes about dating his daughter and brags about casually groping complete strangers. Blame nationalism. Blame media bias. Blame the tilt of the world’s axis. Blame the callous, cunting disaster that 2016 has shown itself to be. Blame life. Just don’t blame Hillary Clinton…

…but why the fuck shouldn’t we blame Hillary?

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Taking our pills and watching our cartoons

Some people say the world has gone bonkers. Some people say the world is dying. While I agree with the sentiments of both, I’ve got to think neither are true. The world is neither bonkers nor dying; it just is. We, however, we humans – we’re definitely all going to die. And we’re just bonkers enough to try and make that happen a little bit sooner by bringing down the world with us.

I like to think of the world as one giant lunatic asylum for the mentally and terminally ill. But instead of taking our pills and watching our cartoons and smelling the nice roses, we’re intent on smashing the fucking place to bits. On ripping great handfuls of plaster off the wall and shaping them into effigies of our deity of choice. On tearing up the nice potted plants dotted everywhere and creating useless baubles and trinkets of every imaginable size and shape, simply for our own amusement. On biting off chunks of the sofa and sticking our dicks into the exposed foam, then rutting until both us and the sofa are mere husks of their former selves. On, almost literally, fucking our environment into annihilated oblivion for no other reason than because we can and because it will help us to buy stuff to put with our other stuff and the stuff we’ve forgotten we bought and didn’t really give that much of a fuck about in the first place.

And the worst part? We don’t even acknowledge that we’re doing it. We refuse to admit our own insanity and the reckless effect it is having on our environment.

If all that metaphorical flimflam was too obscure for you, I’m talking about climate change, our role in it and, most gear-grindingly of all, the morons who deny it’s happening, and who, by some twisted logic, seem to end up being the ones in charge of addressing it.

If you haven’t noticed that it’s happening, you’ll probably want to pull your head out of your arse or that sand you’ve been burying it in or the oven or wherever you’ve been allowing it to coagulate for the last decade or four.

Of course, as with most things, this destruction of our planet and simultaneous shoulder-shrugging is most noticeable in the good old U-S of A. Only there could men who have quite literally written the book on climate change conspiracy (see The Greatest Hoax by Senator James Inhofe… then burn it … err, I mean recycle responsibly, of course) and compared the Environmental Protection Agency to the Gestapo (yes, really) be elected into the role of chairperson of a body supposedly designed to champion the causes of our flagging planet. Only there could the House of Representatives try to usher through a bill banning scientists from commenting on their own work (that’s right, those who are most qualified and most practiced in the subject are prohibited from sharing any of that pointlessly accrued knowledge). And only there would an elected official argue with regulations prohibiting the over-extraction of coal because “God said so”.

Of course, although our American chums are some of the prime offenders in this sadistic charade of planet-buggery, they are merely the over-zealous frat-boys at the cult shindig where everyone has most certainly partaken of the Kool Aid.

Closer to home, our politicians seems to have foregone all pretence of giving a fuck and are rapaciously pursuing the practice of fracking (it even sounds dirty) which has made our American brethren so delirious with capitalist glee. With their rubber fucking faces contorted into postures of patronising contrition, they nod and smile at the droning regulations imposed by the EU, which is becoming increasingly reminiscent of a senile old grandfather, forgetting his admonitions while still in the process of administering them. “What’s that…? Fossil fuels, you say…? Global warming, you say…? 20% reductions, you say…? Of course, of course…” they soothe treacherously, all the while tapping the walls for hidden oil reserves and sidling ever closer to the door marked EXIT where Nigel Farage proffers forbidden fruit and pints of bitter.

Meanwhile, Australia, our long-lost son, has appointed as its political kingpin a Speedo-toting moron whose complete lack of morals seem to be a point of honour. When faced with opposition to his barbaric planetary policies, the man and his cronies seem only able to reply that “COAL IS GOOD” in a macabre Orwellian pastiche of Hodor from Game of Thrones.

And just in case you thought my focus on Anglo-centric countries was indicative of the racist cap I donned to pen this harangue, then fear not – there’s plenty of bile stored up to shower over Earth-plunderers who speak other languages. Until recently, Saudi Arabia and Russia were so good at fucking the Earth and charging others to watch that they were ranked even above the outspoken Yanks. The giant cloud of impending doom that hovers relentlessly over the vast country of China is something of a clue to its stature as top dog in greenhouse gas emissions, cheerfully releasing more than 6 million tonnes of the fuckers into the air each year.

The industrial boom in India, not content with spitting out huge amounts of carbon and shitting all over the land it’s built on, has also saved some excrement for the exploited workers in its factories. Meanwhile, the Japanese, like the Russians, are all for cutting harmful emissions, but only on the principle that “you go first”. Even the endearingly benign Canada are not free from blame, mining their country’s vast resources into a state of ecological butt-hurt. Of course, not everyone is to be tarred with the same brush. Germany, for all its current environmental havoc-wreaking, is at least making some very loud and convincing noises about “wanting to change” in the near future. And Scandinavia… well, the Scandinavians certainly seem to have it all worked out. Though never having actually been there myself, I can’t be 100% sure it actually exists. Another Narnia, I suspect.

The great race to wreck our surroundings continues unstoppably and every one of us is to blame. But what does that matter when another Christmas is always coming and there’s ever more STUFF to buy?